Madder than a Wet Hen

If you want a deeper look behind Cut, Color, Kill, now is the time. Join our free newsletter at patreon.com/thabinge and you will get exclusive story details. You can't get anywhere else. Again, join me at patreon.com/thabinge. Listen to every episode of You Are Next. Add free right now when you subscribe to the binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else. Get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap subscribe or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. To binge, feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. Sergeant Ben Finley has always been kind of an analog guy. He definitely wasn't what you'd call an early adopter of the internet. I think I kind of resisted it for a while and he was like, "Oh man, you got to get on Google and look this up." And I'm like, "What the hell is a Google?" Ben's digital prowess has improved a lot since he said that, which to be fair wouldn't be hard. But he still never saw himself being a digital sheriff. Chasing bad people on the internet. Never thought that would get to that point. I always thought how fun it was to chase him in person. I never knew what it was like to chase him through the digital world. So how is it that a country cop who once said, "What the hell is a Google?" ends up being the guy chasing the online predator who targeted Esther, her family, and countless others. Well, for that we need to go back to January 16th, 2014. It's about 4.30 pm. Ben is in his precinct in Johns Creek, Georgia. We're going through the evening before reports and whatnot. We always have our radio zone and I can hear stuff, but it's kind of like in the background. Just by our person shot, we had an armed invisible inside who claims he's already shot children. Holy shit. Hey, this is up for an unknown one. Can you do me a test, there? I'll kill the car. I'll fill the lane. Fill the street for me. C-A-R, K-L-S-L-E, lane. Haha, in Johns Creek. Let me cop here. Where did I shoot that? Okay. See if I ain't going down without a motherfucking fight. I'm going to throw up. I'm going to take some motherfuckers with me. I killed the mom. I killed the dad. And I killed the little boy in the house. I got the little girl right here. I need $30,000. Do you want $30,000 to keep from killing the girl? Yeah. Man, this is a multi-million-dollar gated neighborhood. Who is down here shooting people in this house, especially shooting children? As Ben and his team arrive at the scene, 15 officers are scattered across a well-manacured lawn. Guns loaded and aimed at a large ornate house. Everybody's there. All of our fire department, M-S people are at their stage and right down the street, hearing case something happens. We got a three or four man quick ration team sitting on the side with the shield, a couple rifles, staged up on the corner of the house. We're also setting up medical stuff as well. How many ambulances have on staff? We're in a needy back zone. We're probably going to need a rescue helicopter. We need to go in and plot out a place for a landy zone for this. When I say it's K-Oss, it's literally K-Oss. I patrol guys on a loudspeaker trying to make contact with somebody on the inside, not get anything, trying to get a phone number called to the house. That doesn't get a response either. There's something Ben can't put his finger on, a cop's hunch honed after years on the beat, a feeling deep in his gut. Something's not adding up here. I don't know what it is. Something is not right with this. After multiple attempts to contact the house with no response, Ben gives the nod to the SWAT team to enter the house. Ben's gripping his radio tightly as the SWAT team clear each floor of the upscale home. He's worked homicide cases before, so he knows what kind of gruesome updates to expect from a scene with multiple murders. Show cases on the floor, blood splatter on the wall, but none of that was there. No bullet casings, no blood, no body, never mind three. This is odd. Ben's gut stirs again. What the fuck is happening here? A message comes through from the SWAT team. They found people during their sweep, alive. They were housekeepers inside the house. They were scared to death. The housekeepers are each carrying a trembling, terrified child. They come out, both the children, naked, wrapped up in towels, which explained why they were nowhere near their phones. They couldn't hear anything. They were in the bathtub, bathing the children. And of course, we're immediately going into debrief for them. It's like, who's in the home? Who else is in the home? Is anybody hurt? They're in shock, so they're not really giving great information. They're finally like, "It's just us, it's just the kids, no one else is in the home." The penny drops like a bomb. All right, we've been had. This is bullshit. From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is You Are Next. I'm Leigh Alexander. [Music] This is Episode 2. Matter, then a wet hen. [Music] I was born in Tacoma, Georgia, which is up in far northeast Georgia. We lived on top of a mountain. You could crawl up on the roof of the house. I could see all the mountains and stuff. On a good, clear day, you could see South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Ben Finley is a country boy through and through. He was born in his beloved Georgia in 1966. No, that sounds like a long time ago, doesn't it? It's like, damn. I saw a movie the other day from 1966. It's black and white. [Laughter] When he's about 15 years old, Ben's parents get divorced. And like any kid, his age, he kind of spins out about it. I was suddenly my dad's not there. I was kind of gaffin off at school when I was doing what I was supposed to do, and my grades got bad. So the next thing I know my dad had me yanked out of there, and I went to military school. That was a sobering experience. In retrospect, looking back, that was probably the best thing in the world that ever happened to me. I want a fan of it at the time. I look back at it now and go, "Had that not happened, I don't know what my life path would have been." One day, a pair of Marines visit Ben's new school. They leave a hell of an impression on him. Wearing their dress blues, standing there in front of me, and I was like, "Well, I gotta have some of that stuff." I did that, signed up. "Say what you want." "Whatever branch of service you're in. All these guys have to tell you too, man." "The Marine Corps, knowing how it says, uniform like ours." "I'm biased, but I'm just telling you, they don't look that good in the uniform as we do." I've seen a picture of Ben from his old Marine days, the Navy Blue uniform with red trim, a brilliant white hat on top of his head. He's like a walking American flag with added shiny gold buttons. It suits him. But Ben's always loved the uniform. What made you want to become a police officer? Was that something that started in your childhood? I remember growing up, we'd see the police officers and deputy sheriffs and state troopers. They'd be in town. Some of my friends' fathers were one. When I was small, my dad worked for the sheriff's office in Arcanon, and the city police department for a while. I thought it was pretty cool. After Stinson, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, and more, Ben retires from the Marines. In 2008, he starts working for the Johns Creek Police Department as a detective sergeant. In 2014, Johns Creek is considered one of the safest cities in the whole of Georgia. So its police department is on the smaller side. And while its officers investigate all kinds of crimes, a mysterious hoax call about a triple murder is not exactly in their wheelhouse. I never worked one like that. No one in our department has ever worked one like that. Turned around with my guys. I'm like, "You got any idea how to start this?" Thankfully, there's no grisly scene for Ben to contend with, but he's still got both hands full trying to bring a bit of order to all this chaos. We're trying to move neighbors out of their homes because they're coming out, you know, being the old-looking loose. Is there anything I need to know? Well, yeah, if 17 cops in your neighborhood or rifles outporn your neighbor's house, it's probably a good indication you need to go out and back to them. Don't go somewhere else and not stay on the front porch with your French Bulldog and ask about stupid questions. Ben's busy trying to figure out his next move while local and national media are hovering overhead searching for a scoop. Channel 2, Channel 5, Channel 11 at the time are all flying or helicopter is around in circles. News chopper, two captured Johns Creek Police and firefighters racing to the Nupscale Gated Community in North Fulton County. Offices received the call. Word eventually makes its way to the children's parents. Mom hears about it. Through her friends call her saying, "Oh my God, your home is on TV." She sees it, freaks out, just distraught thinking her family's been killed. The mother races to the scene. Firsting out of her car, she pushes through the remaining crowd of cops in her front yard, screaming after her children. She's like, "Where are they? Where are they?" And we're like, "Look, the kids are fine." They were sitting in the back seat of the fire chief's Tahoe. So we opened up the door and both the ladies that are the caretakers of, are sitting in her with them and they're wrapped up in these blankets. And she stared at her for a minute like she was in disbelief. And then finally, she breaks down, starts crying, hugging them and she's like, "Oh my God, oh my God." And she's like, "Why are they naked?" And I was like, "Well, they were evidently in the bathtub when we show up." That isn't too far behind. You can bare been to Atlanta airport, CNN plays on every TV in there. So they got a live shot in there of the house, John's Creek, home invasion, reported people shot. Well, dad had just landed at Hart'sville Jackson airport and was walking through the airport and looks up and was like, "That's my F and house. He's trying to call home, of course, no one's answering." So he's thinking the worst too. So he gets to his car. And I'm sure he violated their botrific law known to man, telling him from the airport his home. This whole thing might have been a sick hoax, but as those parents sped down the highway, their hands gripping the steering wheel, their hearts pounding out of their chest, the fear that their children or their spouse were brutally murdered, that their life as they knew it was ripped away from them was all too real. They literally changed their lives overnight and changed their lives forever because now they look at everything in their life through a completely different lens of what they looked at it the week before. They were just a family. He's a business owner, lives in the attorney. We got two small children. They're doing very well in life and all of a sudden now, for whatever reason, so much targeting him and his family. And as a dad, I could see his frustration. I don't know what's going on. I don't know who's after me. Why are they after me? The family aren't the only ones asking questions. Ben's boss, Chief Ed Denzmore, is, to use a good old country phrase, "Matter than a wet hen." For city folks, that means he's pissed. His entire department has had their time and thousands of dollars of resources wasted in front of the national media. He wants answers. He turned around and looked at me. He goes, "I want you to find out who did this. Now." Hi, I'm Grace, host of Red Run True Crime Podcast. Why not jump in at episode 114, "The Trotic Murder of Jasmine and Alia." The main suspect in this case may even have thought he was going to get away with the double murder he'd been accused of, but what he didn't know was that two undercover officers were on their way to catch him out. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Just search "Red Run True Crime." That's Red Run Murder Backwards, R-E-D-R-U-M True Crime. For years, a deranged man in Wichita, known as the poet, stalked Ruth Finley. He sent her letters, gifts, and poems. The Wichita police put everything they had into Ruth's case, but got nowhere. The poet was always two steps in front of us and we just didn't know why. In the city was already living in fear under the watch of another monster who called himself BTK, and he also had a thing for poetry. "Could we really have two different people?" But no one could have guessed how this would end. That's one of those hitchcock endings that we did not expect. From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, this is the poet, I'm Rachel Brown. Coming July 1st to the Binge, search for the poet wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to the Binge can listen to all episodes all at once. Add Free. For the first few days of Sergeant Ben Finley's investigation, he doesn't make a lot of headway. He can't figure out why someone would target a perfect, all-American family out of the blue. Every lead he follows takes him to one dead end after another. He's desperately searching for something that might spark a new hunch and new thread he can grab hold of and pull. "And of course, your chief's walking back your office every morning. Where we at? That. Chief, I'm right here and I don't have a damn thing." Ben sits down with his team to hash it all out from the start. "All right. We received a phone call on this day and this time to the Alfredo Police Department, now in one center. And they were like, "No, it didn't come through now in one center." And I said, "Where did it come through?" They said it went through Records Department, on the admin line. Huh. Ben gets his hands on a recording of the original call. "Final, please be fired." "Hey, it's Dawn. I'm going to add on a hostage situation." He said he just shot a woman and asked one of her children and he'll give the other one away free with $30,000. He's on my other line. I'm going to transfer him in. "Okay. Give him to me." "Okay." If you've been unfortunate enough to have to call 911, you'll have been automatically connected to your local emergency dispatch center. It works through a combination of geolocation and your phone pinging off of cell towers. That tells the system where to direct your call. That way, the closest response team can jump into action. It also tracks your phone number so if you get cut off, they can call you back. But this hoax caller didn't call 911. They called the police's admin line and that complicates things. They were counting on the administrative line transferring it to the 911 center, which would in turn, the phone number that called would not have transferred up with it. So it would have been the phone call and the person, but no number associated with the call. If I'm a dispatcher sitting on the end of the call, listening to that, I've got no way of knowing this isn't legit. Because at the time, you're not thinking about, "Did this come in on an admin line? You don't think any of that. You've got somebody saying, "Hey, I had to shut my dad, I had to shut my mom." You know, the act like you're crying and all this other stuff. All this other stuff. Next thing you know, you got every cop in town, hollum butt over to this location. Ben gets a hold of the admin line phone records and digs through them until he finds the right call. But something's off about it. It was like a very strange number I've never seen before. I found out this was a VOIP number. At that time, I had no idea what a VOIP number is. I soon found out. VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. Basically, it's a virtual phone number that uses the internet to make calls. They're pretty much everywhere nowadays, like WhatsApp, FaceTime, or Google Voice calls. Back in 2014, though, they're not as common. But it's what Ben learns next that finally blows the case wide open. Searching for some background info, he calls and asks the father how long he and his family have lived in the house. "We've lived your lesson a year. Okay. Who lived here before you?" "I don't know. I don't know what he was. Some kid. He's some kind of YouTube star, did like, raffying or something on YouTube. He's also a huge gamer." "I don't know." "Okay." Something starts to stir in Ben's memory. We have belonged to Bulletin's intelligence briefings that get sent out if there's something going on. There had been these things popping up about swatting. These Bulletin's described a growing trend across the USA linked to the online gaming community, and a rise in hoax calls designed to elicit a SWAT team response. "You'd get a brief or two about that every now and then I think it first started out on Los Angeles." Of course, this kind of crazy online shit might happen out there in the tech-saturated big cities. Never in a million years did Ben think it would happen in his town. Plus, this cookie cutter family just didn't fit the profile of the victims in these swatting Bulletin's. The parents were not online figures, and the kids were too young. If someone had tried to target the previous residents where they thought a YouTube The two gamers still lived. Well then, that starts to make a lot more sense. Ben turns to his team. I said, this is going to be a swatting. Ben feels a small pang of self-doubt. He's never worked a swatting case. He's not a gamer. He's used to hunting down criminals in the real world, not through a maze of screens and digital phone numbers. But he also feels energized. It took him a few days, sure, but now he's finally on the right track. Plus, he's a former Marine. He's not the kind of guy who's afraid of a challenge, no matter how daunting it might seem. We never quit, no matter what. And that's one thing you got to have in law enforcement. You can't have a, well, this is too tough. I give up mentality. You have to figure out what I can do to win. Ben starts digging deeper into the VOIP number he's discovered. I realized it was a Skype number. Now what do I do? You got to call Skype and find out what's going on with them. They're based out of Luxembourg. And I was like, well, this is wonderful. I'm going to try to subpoena my country that I've never even heard of. Luxembourg, which, if you're curious, is in the middle of France, Belgium and Germany, is just the start of Ben's worldwide digital tour. This number led me over to a VOIP company in Amsterdam. The next one sent me down to the coast of Africa. And I had another one go up into Russia. I tried to email the guy and get some information. And he didn't understand me. And he's like, telling me that I needed to call him. I've never called Russia. I'd eat call Russia. I dialed it up and this guy answers his phone. What do you need? And I said, this is what I need. I keep no records of such. I have no required a tube. I had to skip over to two or three other countries and then finally brought me back. Stay side here to some other companies here. Basically, I got a trip around the world and I got to talk to a Russian guy, which again, I thought was pretty hilarious. Ben might have enjoyed his journey around the world in 80 calls, but it ultimately doesn't get him further along in his case. He's certain he's looking at a swatting with the house's old resident as the real target, but he still hasn't found the culprit who called in the hoax. What's more, the call could have come from anywhere in the United States, from anywhere or anyone in the world. Ben starts mulling over his next move, but he barely gets a chance to catch his breath. We had another call at the same residence a few days later. Swatting attempt from a different caller. Thank you for holding on to the healthiest. I'm currently at one of my old buddy's houses that stole like 10 grand from me. And what I want you to do is send a SWAT team up on squad and a helicopter. What address please come out for? Carly Lane, Alphoretta. Hello, street name. I don't know it. C-A-R-L-I-S-L-E. Al-Carla Lane, Gotcha. Is that Is on the Great Sir? That's in Alphoretta. Okay, and I have four. What is this on the Beach College? Shut up. I have four B-118, the Rebarate Napalm bombs. Now I have them all set on a timer. They go up in exactly 30 minutes. Okay. And I want a SWAT team up on squad and a helicopter here. If I see any police cruisers, I'm killing everyone in the house and exploding other bombs early. Okay? You understand that? Okay. Thank you. Bye. This new swatting attempt on the Johns Creek home comes in on the 25th of January. That's just nine days after the first call. But the police don't fall for the same trick twice. Police like, I got, you know, a bee, napalm bomb and blah, blah. Okay. Okay, buddy. Yeah, you have that, but like I've got a thumb growing out of my forehead right now. You don't have any of that. Given that this is the second time, in less than two weeks, the same house has been targeted, the cops still need to check in on the family. So they send a single officer to check everything is okay while Ben gives them the news. I called Mama Dad. Hey. What's going on? Is there better than other call? Yes. Why is this happening to me and my family? I have no freaking idea, man. I don't know, but I promise you. I'm going to find out he did this. And his wife was like, that's a mighty bold claim. Yeah, that's what I thought of myself. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. The family aren't the only people Ben owes answers to. His police chief is still breathing down his neck. And if Ben thought his boss was pissed when the first swatting call came through, it was nothing compared to the second. He goes, I don't know what's going on. I don't know who's doing this. I don't know why they're doing it. I got on with it. Who it is. As the weeks go by, Ben's finally making good on his promise to the family and his boss. He finds the first swatter by tracing the January 16th call back to a teenager in a small New York town. But this teenager comes from a wealthy family with enough resources to stop Ben's investigation in its tracks. So that hits the back burner. It goes cold. I'm simultaneously working this other thing. The January 25th caller, though, want to be Napalm bomber. Ben's determined he's not going to be defeated a second time. Doing the same exact thing that I did before. Ben Sapien has called records from the past 30 days for the second number. He's looking for any connection between that and the teenager from New York that proves they were working together. I was thinking they were both connected and I was trying to do my evidence and I was trying to shove it together and go, "Yeah, these are connected. These are connected." The call logs come through a few weeks later and it seems like this second caller has been busy. I had no idea how much information I was about to get back on a 30 day call log from Skype. Truckload of stuff. So I started going through it. Ben spends hours looking at line after line, trying to spot any interaction between the first and second callers. But he can't find a single call, nothing to link the two swattings. And then it finally comes to me. I'm like, "These two are not connected." I got two different guys that I'm tracking at the same time. Got nothing to do with each other as far as I know. They don't know each other. The realization that these two hoax calls aren't linked changes Ben's whole perspective. Again, the first swatting had been all over the news. If this second call wasn't part of a conspiracy, maybe it was a copycat. And if there's already one copycat, what's to stop there from being more? How many swatters could he be up against here? Ben can't shake the nagging feeling he's outnumbered. So decides to call in some unorthodox backup. We had three hospitals in our city down there and we had some very intelligent students that work in several of the computer classes that they have down there. So I spoke to one of the teachers. I said, "Hey, do you ever discuss gaming?" And all they could say, "Oh, yeah, man. Just kids love that stuff." And I said, "I have a question about investigation I'm doing. Do you think they'll be willing to talk to me?" They come back next to me. I got three of them sitting right here. They love to talk about this stuff. So I drove down to high school and asked the guys to tell me what I'm looking at here. The first thing his new teenage deputies let Ben know is just how much of a challenge it can be to unveil these swatters true identities. They know that if they cloak themselves by enough different firewalls and VPNs and spoofing apps and multiple VIP numbers, they have an emity behind the screen. To me, a new sound is like, "That's a big deal to do this." They can route themselves through nine different countries in about 10 seconds. Thinking back to his digital trip to Russia via Luxembourg, Ben knows the kids are right. That's when they began to tell me about the absolute psychopaths that are out here in the gaming world. Some of them are absolutely ruthless and relentless and they told me that you have to be very careful not to do anything to anger or provoke these people because they will do everything they can to destroy you. Back at the Johns Creek Station, an overwhelmed Ben is at his desk. The high schoolers warning still echoing in his ears. He's looking at the towering stack of call logs on his desk. That makes war and peace look like a pamphlet. With a heavy sigh, he picks up the first page and starts again. Looking at some of the numbers and then I ran across one for Disneyland. A call made on the same day as the second Johns Creek swatting attempt. January 25th. 2014. And that's like surely this guy didn't do that. On the next episode of You Are Next, Ben finds out exactly what happened at Disneyland. He said there's a bomb at Space Mountain. And then discovers that not only is his curb on a swatting rampage. The disguise call every one of these places. He's targeting young women and extorting them. I find out what an absolute animal this guy is. He would unleash hell upon them. Every month a brand new series drops for subscribers. All episodes all at once. And between drops, every Thursday a new episode of Crime Scene lands ad-free in your feed. Plus you've got instant access to over 60 true crime and investigative podcasts. Shows like wild boys and blink so you'll never be short on stories. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe. Not on Apple. Head to getthebinge.com. This is You Are Next, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and novel, hosted by me, Lealexander. Leigh Meyer is our senior producer. Verity Decala is our assistant producer. Sandra Schmuele is our editor. Production management from Sheree Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolf. For novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch, story development by Nell Gray Andrews, Willard Foxton, and Selena Metta, who is director of development for novel. Special thanks to Carolyn Sherleven at Miller-Corzenick Raymond LLP and to Ford Collier, who performed the woodwind for our theme music, and a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.