Cultiples #1: Part One
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Tristan Grey/Desiree Hämm
by LB Lee
Hi everybody! Before we begin, here’s some vocabulary words,
just to make sure everyone’s on the same page…
Multiple: the state of being more than one person in a body.
More commonly known as ‘multiple personality,’ though we don’t care
for the term. Multiples may see themselves as suffering from a mental
illness, channeling spiritual entities, or merely having a different
psychological or neurological makeup. There’s a lot of variety!
Plural: umbrella term for multiples and multiple-ish folks.
Singlet: someone who isn’t multiple.
System: a name for a multiple group as a whole. For instance,
LB Lee is the name of our system. Our system members are Sneak,
M.D., etc.
Cult: a group orbiting around a charismatic leader with a
specific philosophy. This leader uses that philosophy to control and
abuse their followers, squeezing them for resources (usually money,
sex, or devotion). They are characterized by hiding their true beliefs
until someone is already hooked, making it obscenely difficult to
leave, and being highly authoritarian—a cult leader demands utter
unquestioning obedience, though they will often claim otherwise in
public.
A cult is not necessarily the same as a fringe religious belief—it’s
not the strangeness of the beliefs that define a cult, but the control and
abuse within it. Some cult leaders don’t focus on religion at all,
building instead around fandom, business skills, even random things
like cat hoarding. However, the philosophy rarely makes much sense,
since it only exists to control the followers and prop up the leader.
The stereotypical cult is a large organization, like Scientology
or the Moonies. But most of the cults in Cultiples are very small—at
best only having a few dozen followers. They can sometimes resemble
an abusive relationship more than a cult, except for the philosophy
that binds everyone together.
I hope that clears up all confusion! Let’s go!
It is unsettling to me how incredibly common a certain kind of
charismatic person is in plural/fandom circles. They turn up online
and promptly start creating a lot of creative work or discussion that
other people find interesting. They make friends and fans.
Then they start building a religious mythos. Maybe they claim
to be a shaman or prophet; maybe they build an entire religion around
their fandom of choice. Regardless, the mythos starts bleeding into
reality. The fun is no longer just a book or a roleplaying game; there is
something deeper going on, something of cosmic significance.
They start seeking out followers who have always wished for a
letter to Hogwarts, the Doctor in a police booth, that special wardrobe
to Narnia. The charismatic person then becomes that escape from the
humdrum world, spurring these impulses to a frenetic height, causing
an instant powerful bond. Only they know the True Secrets hidden
within the media they consume, the games they play. It gives a whole
new layer to reality, makes the world magical and meaningful… as long
as the followers stay with this charismatic person. If they leave, the
sparkle is gone.
In the absence of true affection or attachment, the affection
and attachment to the game, the fandom–the mythos–will work. The
charismatic leader now has people under control.
Now is when online becomes offline. The charismatic person
starts meeting their followers in person. They might move in together.
Often there will be one or two people who get in especially deep,
usually sexually or romantically, who are the other half of their folie a
deux for years and sometimes never escape. Other people will
eventually get drained by the constant world-saving and astral battles
and get burned out or thrown out.
Disturbing as it is, this is a pretty common thing. Back in 2014, I
lived with two roommates, and all of us had independently
encountered completely different people doing this, with varying
levels of success and in completely different areas of the country. I
came out the luckiest; the worst I suffered was hurt feelings.
Others? Not so lucky...
Folks like to make fun of people who get taken in by cults, but
the thing is, I totally understand why people get sucked in. We very
well could’ve become one of them, under different circumstances. We
ran into three cultish multiples within our first month joining the
community. We were young, vulnerable, isolated and afraid. Had we
been less lucky...
See, when first dealing with something like plurality, it causes a
huge reality shift. Everything becomes really uncertain, and what
folks often need most is reassurance and an explanation. Are they
going crazy? Can they have a fulfilling life? Will things be okay?
Cult leaders step up to fill this need. They take advantage of
that time of uncertainty. When Cult Leader Bob stays up all hours of
the night with someone, reassuring and validating them, (and
recruiting and grooming them) of course he’ll inspire devotion.
When in a huge life transition like that, it’s so tempting to
mistake difference for specialness, love-bombing for true care. It’s a
pretty easy transition from, “am I crazy?” to “no, it’s okay,” to, “actually,
I am intended for great things,” to, “I am here to help Bob in his mission
to liberate humanity.”
Imagine the kind of ego crash that comes from being convinced
you are here for a grand, important reason… and then realizing it was
all a con. Imagine being a leader surrounded by followers who are
absolutely convinced of your own importance, and having to lose that
reverence.
I’ve noticed that a lot of these cult leaders seem to start young—
in their teens. Often times, their cults are the most successful parts of
their lives! Which is why I kinda doubt they will ever stop. I think
they get hooked on that adoration, and can’t bear the thought of
quitting and settling for ordinary human mediocrity.
If they didn’t use people so nastily, I’d feel sorry for them.
This is the first part of the story of our experiences as the
penpal of Tristan Grey, the system that is currently in jail for
kidnapping and raping teenage girls. (His legal name is Desiree Hämm,
but since nobody in the system went by that name and Tristan seems
to be the one who did the crimes, I will call him by that name,
especially since the early newspaper articles called him ‘Tristan.’)
How We Met
We met Tristan through a penpal prison program in the
summer of 2014; Sneak was the one who wrote them. After we
disclosed our plurality, Tristan did as well. Tristan’s headmates were
named Morgan, Mercy, Nikola, Jullian, and Zerra, but we
overwhelmingly heard from Tristan, and occasionally from Morgan,
who also went by the name Echo (Grey, Personal communication,
10/21/14).
At the time, Sneak did not look up why Tristan et al were in
prison. Ze felt that zer job was to be a penpal, not a judge, and that if
he wanted to tell us, he would.
Asides from being plural, Tristan also claimed to be Native
American--specifically Jicarilla Apache. He claimed his multiplicity
was an extension of their spiritual beliefs. All of this turned out to be
total bunk; he made basic linguistic errors about Jicarilla, claimed
totally incorrect things about their religious system, and all court
documentation for this system that I could find listed them as white.
At the time, I felt slight suspicion. But Sneak didn’t think to
check his claims, and ze didn’t want to shut down zer penpal on the
second letter. So ze didn’t challenge him.
Sneak wrote to Tristan until the start of 2017. In mid-January,
he sent us a card telling us that ours were the only letters he received,
and that he was lonely. He asked us to find him more penpals.
At first, Sneak agreed, but the more ze thought about it, the
more responsible ze felt for anyone we might connect with Tristan.
We finally looked up why Tristan was in jail.
We always knew that he may have been incarcerated for doing
terrible things. We were ready for murder or sexual assault. But it was
worse than that.
The Kidnappings
Tristan’s victims were two teenage sisters who I’ll call Big Sister
and Little Sister. They lived near New Braunsfels, Texas, and Big Sister
first met Tristan through online roleplaying when she was thirteen.
He used the name ‘Tristan’ or ‘Tristan Grey’ as his screename; she used
‘Snow.’ The RP was apparently dark and gory, involving vampires and
paganism. Like with us, Tristan claimed to be an Indian shaman.
The girls’ mother, Ms. F, was initially supportive of the hobby.
“We moved around a lot for work, so I thought it would help her stay
in touch with people and could be a creative outlet,” she was reported
as saying. She also described Big Sister as “very intelligent and very
mature,” which might’ve been why she was lax with parental oversight
—she didn’t even notice the enormous phone bills her daughters later
racked up (Appendix A).
Poorly supervised, isolated, young, and lonely, Big Sister was in
the perfect position to be snatched up for an online roleplaying cult.
And she helped pull Little Sister in later; their mother reported that
Little Sister was “very excited when [Big Sister]’s online friends
accepted her.” (Appendix A)
The newspapers don’t talk much about the roleplaying, but I
suspect that after Tristan got the girls emotionally invested, he pulled
the classic move of claiming that the game was real. The roleplaying
spread into online chatting and phone calls as time went on and
steadily took over more and more of the girls' lives and identities. Big
Sister became convinced that she was Snow. “We really think [Big
Sister] has kind of become delusional, and she equates herself with the
Internet character that she has created,” her mother reported later
(Smith, “Family seeks answers about missing teens”).
In December, 2009, the girls spent over 9000 minutes on the
phone with Tristan. They spent most of their Christmas break on the
computer, not interacting much with friends or family. Frustrated,
their parents took Big Sister’s computer away, which enraged her. She
accused her parents of taking her friends away from her, and that her
online friends were her true ones. Finally, at the end of winter break,
her parents relented and gave the computer back (Appendix B).
The attempt to unplug the girls only intensified the process—
perhaps Tristan worried that if he didn’t move quickly, he might miss
his chance. In January 2010, the sisters racked up over 11,000 minutes
of phone conversations with Tristan—averaging roughly six hours a
day. He also sent them boxes of gifts (Appendix B). It was probably
during this time that Tristan was persuading them to come to
California to meet him in person.
His efforts were successful. The sisters emptied their bank
accounts, bought disposable cell phones, and gathered their passports,
Social Security cards, and health and school records. On February, 11,
2010, they disappeared into the night (Appendix C). The sisters were
fifteen and sixteen at the time.
The sisters didn’t take the family car. Instead, a middle-aged
woman named Sara Theresa Nadeau drove all the way from California
to Texas to pick the girls up (Larson, “California woman indicted as
co-conspirator in kidnapping”). It’s unclear whether Tristan was with
her or not; different articles said different things. I’m not certain what
Nadeau’s relationship to him was either, whether she was a follower, a
girlfriend, or a fellow predator. Regardless, she apparently kept the
sisters in a car trunk on the drive to San Diego, and then locked them
in an apartment "used by a coven of witches," according to their uncle.
I presume he means Tristan’s roleplaying shamanism cult (Smith,
“Woman indicted on kidnapping counts”).
For a month, the sisters’ family stewed in terror. They made a
Facebook group. Many newspaper articles were posted, spreading the
word of the missing girls, and in the very first one, a week after the
kidnappings, Tristan was mentioned as calling the girls’ family. The
details are vague; the girls’ mother, Ms. F, only reports, “This person
has not been completely forthcoming with us. She keeps feeding us
tidbits.” (Appendix C)
Tristan didn’t stop calling either, even after the cops told Ms. F
to stop speaking to him (Appendix A). He asked how he could help.
He also spoke with their lawyer and the cops. He claimed to have
been role-playing with Big Sister for three years "and they had
developed their own 'online language'" (Shettig, “Woman indicted in
sisters’ disappearance”). It’s unclear if he was trying to cover his tracks,
or just taunting the family. Regardless, it backfired on him; they were
suspicious of him from the start, and now it only made things worse.
In early March, the girls called their family, but they wouldn’t
say where they were, only that they were okay. They claimed that Big
Sister had gotten a job as a waitress and were paying rent in an
apartment, but the family was rightfully dubious (Smith, "Girls reveal
little during phone calls to family").
In March, they put warrants out for Tristan’s arrest. The family
bought the girls plane tickets home, and the sisters returned to Texas
(Appendix D). It was March 16, 2010, just over a month since their
disappearance, and it was not a happy reunion.
“When the girls heard the news [about the warrants] they got
very, very mad. They came home thinking that maybe that would
lead to the warrants being vacated," their uncle explained. The sisters
refused to speak to their parents or return home, staying instead with
other relatives. "The girls blame [Ms. F] for getting ‘their best friend’ in
trouble with the law," their uncle claimed (Appendix E). Their mother
in the meantime, reported, “I think that they are living in a fantasy
world, convinced by all their role-playing on the Internet...There's
going to have to be a lot of counseling” (Lloyd, "Runaway sisters from
Spring Branch return to Texas").
The girls’ attempt to protect Tristan failed. He was arrested on
March 19, 2010, and extradited from Fresno to Texas on April 8th
(Lucio, “Woman charged with kidnapping, sexual assault”). In June, he
was indicted for unlawful restraint, but the ensuing detective
investigation made darker things come to light (Shettig, “Woman
indicted in sisters’ disappearances”).
While being investigated, the girls accused Tristan of molesting
them and forcing them to perform sexual acts upon each other while
in California. (This led to the early news articles being deleted from
the Internet; see appendices for details.) On top of that, their uncle
claimed that “the girls were branded with a hot iron during their time
in captivity and left with a mark similar to a tiger's paw" (Smith,
“Woman indicted on kidnapping counts”).
I would bet good money that it wasn't a tiger's paw, but a
wolf's. Tristan told us he had a tattoo of a wolf's paw on his forearm,
because the wolf was his spirit animal. He also drew pictures of it in
his letters to us, included here.
(Personal Correspondence, 9/23/2014)
(Personal Correspondence, 9/3/2015)
Seeing Tristan’s bogus claims to Native American spirituality
and the link between that and his cult, the branding seems more likely
to involve the wolf, rather than the tiger. Perhaps he was marking the
girls as his property.
As more and more information about the sexual abuse came to
light, Tristan got into deeper and deeper trouble. After six months of
therapy, the girls seemed to have snapped out of his conditioning, and
the family seemed determined to press charges. Tristan pled guilty to
four counts of sexual performance by a child, two counts of
aggravated kidnapping, and seven counts of sexual assault in August
2011, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, followed by ten years of
probation. He will be released in 2030 (Moultrie, “Hamm pleads guilty
to several sex-related crimes”).
For completion's sake, I will also note that Sara Theresa Nadeau
pled guilty to two counts of aggravated kidnapping (Moultrie,
“Woman pleads guilty in kidnapping case”). She was sentenced to five
years in prison, has since got out, and is now a registered sex offender
living in Auburn, Maine, and working at Dunkin Donuts (Maine Sex
Offender Registry). I don't know what her relationship to Tristan was;
he was only 22, while she was in her late thirties, and he never
mentioned her in any of his letters or photos. Their court documents
also show them as having different addresses—Tristan was from San
Diego, Nadeau from Fresno, a good five hours away. Maybe she was
part of whatever pagan cult existed. I suppose I'll never know.
Snookered
So, that was quite a shock to find out about our penpal. There
are a million ways a person can end up in prison, and while we had
considered murder or rape, we did not predict this.
Sneak was horrified and immediately knew ze could not in
good faith connect Tristan to fellow plurals and find him new penpals
directly. Instead, ze considered disclosing what ze knew and then
telling people about his penpal listing so people could make their own
choice. That way, ze would feel less afraid of tricking folks.
Sneak went in search of the listing, only to discover it was gone.
We contacted the penpal organization, who informed us that they had
removed Tristan's listing because it was their policy to do so if
someone had over three penpals. Tristan, contrary to what he’d told
us, had over twenty.
Sneak realized that we had been duped. We sent him one final
letter asking him not to contact us again, and informed the penpal
organization of his behavior and our decision. That was February 9,
2017. We had been Tristan’s penpal for roughly two and a half years.
After a few days to get over the shock, we set ourselves to
looking through our stuff for all the letters of Tristan’s that we still
retained. There were roughly fifteen of them, and we read through
them all at once, searching for hints of his nature that we had missed.
In hindsight, and reading the letters all together instead of
spread out over the space of years, there were indeed warning signs.
Lots of them, actually...
Cultiples #1:
Tristan Grey/Desiree Hämm
by LB Lee
Terminology 101
Hi everybody! Before we begin, here’s some vocabulary words,
just to make sure everyone’s on the same page…
Multiple: the state of being more than one person in a body.
More commonly known as ‘multiple personality,’ though we don’t care
for the term. Multiples may see themselves as suffering from a mental
illness, channeling spiritual entities, or merely having a different
psychological or neurological makeup. There’s a lot of variety!
Plural: umbrella term for multiples and multiple-ish folks.
Singlet: someone who isn’t multiple.
System: a name for a multiple group as a whole. For instance,
LB Lee is the name of our system. Our system members are Sneak,
M.D., etc.
Cult: a group orbiting around a charismatic leader with a
specific philosophy. This leader uses that philosophy to control and
abuse their followers, squeezing them for resources (usually money,
sex, or devotion). They are characterized by hiding their true beliefs
until someone is already hooked, making it obscenely difficult to
leave, and being highly authoritarian—a cult leader demands utter
unquestioning obedience, though they will often claim otherwise in
public.
A cult is not necessarily the same as a fringe religious belief—it’s
not the strangeness of the beliefs that define a cult, but the control and
abuse within it. Some cult leaders don’t focus on religion at all,
building instead around fandom, business skills, even random things
like cat hoarding. However, the philosophy rarely makes much sense,
since it only exists to control the followers and prop up the leader.
The stereotypical cult is a large organization, like Scientology
or the Moonies. But most of the cults in Cultiples are very small—at
best only having a few dozen followers. They can sometimes resemble
an abusive relationship more than a cult, except for the philosophy
that binds everyone together.
I hope that clears up all confusion! Let’s go!
The Charismatic Leader
It is unsettling to me how incredibly common a certain kind of
charismatic person is in plural/fandom circles. They turn up online
and promptly start creating a lot of creative work or discussion that
other people find interesting. They make friends and fans.
Then they start building a religious mythos. Maybe they claim
to be a shaman or prophet; maybe they build an entire religion around
their fandom of choice. Regardless, the mythos starts bleeding into
reality. The fun is no longer just a book or a roleplaying game; there is
something deeper going on, something of cosmic significance.
They start seeking out followers who have always wished for a
letter to Hogwarts, the Doctor in a police booth, that special wardrobe
to Narnia. The charismatic person then becomes that escape from the
humdrum world, spurring these impulses to a frenetic height, causing
an instant powerful bond. Only they know the True Secrets hidden
within the media they consume, the games they play. It gives a whole
new layer to reality, makes the world magical and meaningful… as long
as the followers stay with this charismatic person. If they leave, the
sparkle is gone.
In the absence of true affection or attachment, the affection
and attachment to the game, the fandom–the mythos–will work. The
charismatic leader now has people under control.
Now is when online becomes offline. The charismatic person
starts meeting their followers in person. They might move in together.
Often there will be one or two people who get in especially deep,
usually sexually or romantically, who are the other half of their folie a
deux for years and sometimes never escape. Other people will
eventually get drained by the constant world-saving and astral battles
and get burned out or thrown out.
Disturbing as it is, this is a pretty common thing. Back in 2014, I
lived with two roommates, and all of us had independently
encountered completely different people doing this, with varying
levels of success and in completely different areas of the country. I
came out the luckiest; the worst I suffered was hurt feelings.
Others? Not so lucky...
The Grand Purpose
Folks like to make fun of people who get taken in by cults, but
the thing is, I totally understand why people get sucked in. We very
well could’ve become one of them, under different circumstances. We
ran into three cultish multiples within our first month joining the
community. We were young, vulnerable, isolated and afraid. Had we
been less lucky...
See, when first dealing with something like plurality, it causes a
huge reality shift. Everything becomes really uncertain, and what
folks often need most is reassurance and an explanation. Are they
going crazy? Can they have a fulfilling life? Will things be okay?
Cult leaders step up to fill this need. They take advantage of
that time of uncertainty. When Cult Leader Bob stays up all hours of
the night with someone, reassuring and validating them, (and
recruiting and grooming them) of course he’ll inspire devotion.
When in a huge life transition like that, it’s so tempting to
mistake difference for specialness, love-bombing for true care. It’s a
pretty easy transition from, “am I crazy?” to “no, it’s okay,” to, “actually,
I am intended for great things,” to, “I am here to help Bob in his mission
to liberate humanity.”
Imagine the kind of ego crash that comes from being convinced
you are here for a grand, important reason… and then realizing it was
all a con. Imagine being a leader surrounded by followers who are
absolutely convinced of your own importance, and having to lose that
reverence.
I’ve noticed that a lot of these cult leaders seem to start young—
in their teens. Often times, their cults are the most successful parts of
their lives! Which is why I kinda doubt they will ever stop. I think
they get hooked on that adoration, and can’t bear the thought of
quitting and settling for ordinary human mediocrity.
If they didn’t use people so nastily, I’d feel sorry for them.
The Rapes and Kidnappings of Tristan Grey
This is the first part of the story of our experiences as the
penpal of Tristan Grey, the system that is currently in jail for
kidnapping and raping teenage girls. (His legal name is Desiree Hämm,
but since nobody in the system went by that name and Tristan seems
to be the one who did the crimes, I will call him by that name,
especially since the early newspaper articles called him ‘Tristan.’)
How We Met
We met Tristan through a penpal prison program in the
summer of 2014; Sneak was the one who wrote them. After we
disclosed our plurality, Tristan did as well. Tristan’s headmates were
named Morgan, Mercy, Nikola, Jullian, and Zerra, but we
overwhelmingly heard from Tristan, and occasionally from Morgan,
who also went by the name Echo (Grey, Personal communication,
10/21/14).
At the time, Sneak did not look up why Tristan et al were in
prison. Ze felt that zer job was to be a penpal, not a judge, and that if
he wanted to tell us, he would.
Asides from being plural, Tristan also claimed to be Native
American--specifically Jicarilla Apache. He claimed his multiplicity
was an extension of their spiritual beliefs. All of this turned out to be
total bunk; he made basic linguistic errors about Jicarilla, claimed
totally incorrect things about their religious system, and all court
documentation for this system that I could find listed them as white.
At the time, I felt slight suspicion. But Sneak didn’t think to
check his claims, and ze didn’t want to shut down zer penpal on the
second letter. So ze didn’t challenge him.
Sneak wrote to Tristan until the start of 2017. In mid-January,
he sent us a card telling us that ours were the only letters he received,
and that he was lonely. He asked us to find him more penpals.
At first, Sneak agreed, but the more ze thought about it, the
more responsible ze felt for anyone we might connect with Tristan.
We finally looked up why Tristan was in jail.
We always knew that he may have been incarcerated for doing
terrible things. We were ready for murder or sexual assault. But it was
worse than that.
The Kidnappings
Tristan’s victims were two teenage sisters who I’ll call Big Sister
and Little Sister. They lived near New Braunsfels, Texas, and Big Sister
first met Tristan through online roleplaying when she was thirteen.
He used the name ‘Tristan’ or ‘Tristan Grey’ as his screename; she used
‘Snow.’ The RP was apparently dark and gory, involving vampires and
paganism. Like with us, Tristan claimed to be an Indian shaman.
The girls’ mother, Ms. F, was initially supportive of the hobby.
“We moved around a lot for work, so I thought it would help her stay
in touch with people and could be a creative outlet,” she was reported
as saying. She also described Big Sister as “very intelligent and very
mature,” which might’ve been why she was lax with parental oversight
—she didn’t even notice the enormous phone bills her daughters later
racked up (Appendix A).
Poorly supervised, isolated, young, and lonely, Big Sister was in
the perfect position to be snatched up for an online roleplaying cult.
And she helped pull Little Sister in later; their mother reported that
Little Sister was “very excited when [Big Sister]’s online friends
accepted her.” (Appendix A)
The newspapers don’t talk much about the roleplaying, but I
suspect that after Tristan got the girls emotionally invested, he pulled
the classic move of claiming that the game was real. The roleplaying
spread into online chatting and phone calls as time went on and
steadily took over more and more of the girls' lives and identities. Big
Sister became convinced that she was Snow. “We really think [Big
Sister] has kind of become delusional, and she equates herself with the
Internet character that she has created,” her mother reported later
(Smith, “Family seeks answers about missing teens”).
In December, 2009, the girls spent over 9000 minutes on the
phone with Tristan. They spent most of their Christmas break on the
computer, not interacting much with friends or family. Frustrated,
their parents took Big Sister’s computer away, which enraged her. She
accused her parents of taking her friends away from her, and that her
online friends were her true ones. Finally, at the end of winter break,
her parents relented and gave the computer back (Appendix B).
The attempt to unplug the girls only intensified the process—
perhaps Tristan worried that if he didn’t move quickly, he might miss
his chance. In January 2010, the sisters racked up over 11,000 minutes
of phone conversations with Tristan—averaging roughly six hours a
day. He also sent them boxes of gifts (Appendix B). It was probably
during this time that Tristan was persuading them to come to
California to meet him in person.
His efforts were successful. The sisters emptied their bank
accounts, bought disposable cell phones, and gathered their passports,
Social Security cards, and health and school records. On February, 11,
2010, they disappeared into the night (Appendix C). The sisters were
fifteen and sixteen at the time.
The sisters didn’t take the family car. Instead, a middle-aged
woman named Sara Theresa Nadeau drove all the way from California
to Texas to pick the girls up (Larson, “California woman indicted as
co-conspirator in kidnapping”). It’s unclear whether Tristan was with
her or not; different articles said different things. I’m not certain what
Nadeau’s relationship to him was either, whether she was a follower, a
girlfriend, or a fellow predator. Regardless, she apparently kept the
sisters in a car trunk on the drive to San Diego, and then locked them
in an apartment "used by a coven of witches," according to their uncle.
I presume he means Tristan’s roleplaying shamanism cult (Smith,
“Woman indicted on kidnapping counts”).
For a month, the sisters’ family stewed in terror. They made a
Facebook group. Many newspaper articles were posted, spreading the
word of the missing girls, and in the very first one, a week after the
kidnappings, Tristan was mentioned as calling the girls’ family. The
details are vague; the girls’ mother, Ms. F, only reports, “This person
has not been completely forthcoming with us. She keeps feeding us
tidbits.” (Appendix C)
Tristan didn’t stop calling either, even after the cops told Ms. F
to stop speaking to him (Appendix A). He asked how he could help.
He also spoke with their lawyer and the cops. He claimed to have
been role-playing with Big Sister for three years "and they had
developed their own 'online language'" (Shettig, “Woman indicted in
sisters’ disappearance”). It’s unclear if he was trying to cover his tracks,
or just taunting the family. Regardless, it backfired on him; they were
suspicious of him from the start, and now it only made things worse.
In early March, the girls called their family, but they wouldn’t
say where they were, only that they were okay. They claimed that Big
Sister had gotten a job as a waitress and were paying rent in an
apartment, but the family was rightfully dubious (Smith, "Girls reveal
little during phone calls to family").
In March, they put warrants out for Tristan’s arrest. The family
bought the girls plane tickets home, and the sisters returned to Texas
(Appendix D). It was March 16, 2010, just over a month since their
disappearance, and it was not a happy reunion.
“When the girls heard the news [about the warrants] they got
very, very mad. They came home thinking that maybe that would
lead to the warrants being vacated," their uncle explained. The sisters
refused to speak to their parents or return home, staying instead with
other relatives. "The girls blame [Ms. F] for getting ‘their best friend’ in
trouble with the law," their uncle claimed (Appendix E). Their mother
in the meantime, reported, “I think that they are living in a fantasy
world, convinced by all their role-playing on the Internet...There's
going to have to be a lot of counseling” (Lloyd, "Runaway sisters from
Spring Branch return to Texas").
The girls’ attempt to protect Tristan failed. He was arrested on
March 19, 2010, and extradited from Fresno to Texas on April 8th
(Lucio, “Woman charged with kidnapping, sexual assault”). In June, he
was indicted for unlawful restraint, but the ensuing detective
investigation made darker things come to light (Shettig, “Woman
indicted in sisters’ disappearances”).
While being investigated, the girls accused Tristan of molesting
them and forcing them to perform sexual acts upon each other while
in California. (This led to the early news articles being deleted from
the Internet; see appendices for details.) On top of that, their uncle
claimed that “the girls were branded with a hot iron during their time
in captivity and left with a mark similar to a tiger's paw" (Smith,
“Woman indicted on kidnapping counts”).
I would bet good money that it wasn't a tiger's paw, but a
wolf's. Tristan told us he had a tattoo of a wolf's paw on his forearm,
because the wolf was his spirit animal. He also drew pictures of it in
his letters to us, included here.
(Personal Correspondence, 9/23/2014)
(Personal Correspondence, 9/3/2015)
Seeing Tristan’s bogus claims to Native American spirituality
and the link between that and his cult, the branding seems more likely
to involve the wolf, rather than the tiger. Perhaps he was marking the
girls as his property.
As more and more information about the sexual abuse came to
light, Tristan got into deeper and deeper trouble. After six months of
therapy, the girls seemed to have snapped out of his conditioning, and
the family seemed determined to press charges. Tristan pled guilty to
four counts of sexual performance by a child, two counts of
aggravated kidnapping, and seven counts of sexual assault in August
2011, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, followed by ten years of
probation. He will be released in 2030 (Moultrie, “Hamm pleads guilty
to several sex-related crimes”).
For completion's sake, I will also note that Sara Theresa Nadeau
pled guilty to two counts of aggravated kidnapping (Moultrie,
“Woman pleads guilty in kidnapping case”). She was sentenced to five
years in prison, has since got out, and is now a registered sex offender
living in Auburn, Maine, and working at Dunkin Donuts (Maine Sex
Offender Registry). I don't know what her relationship to Tristan was;
he was only 22, while she was in her late thirties, and he never
mentioned her in any of his letters or photos. Their court documents
also show them as having different addresses—Tristan was from San
Diego, Nadeau from Fresno, a good five hours away. Maybe she was
part of whatever pagan cult existed. I suppose I'll never know.
Snookered
So, that was quite a shock to find out about our penpal. There
are a million ways a person can end up in prison, and while we had
considered murder or rape, we did not predict this.
Sneak was horrified and immediately knew ze could not in
good faith connect Tristan to fellow plurals and find him new penpals
directly. Instead, ze considered disclosing what ze knew and then
telling people about his penpal listing so people could make their own
choice. That way, ze would feel less afraid of tricking folks.
Sneak went in search of the listing, only to discover it was gone.
We contacted the penpal organization, who informed us that they had
removed Tristan's listing because it was their policy to do so if
someone had over three penpals. Tristan, contrary to what he’d told
us, had over twenty.
Sneak realized that we had been duped. We sent him one final
letter asking him not to contact us again, and informed the penpal
organization of his behavior and our decision. That was February 9,
2017. We had been Tristan’s penpal for roughly two and a half years.
After a few days to get over the shock, we set ourselves to
looking through our stuff for all the letters of Tristan’s that we still
retained. There were roughly fifteen of them, and we read through
them all at once, searching for hints of his nature that we had missed.
In hindsight, and reading the letters all together instead of
spread out over the space of years, there were indeed warning signs.
Lots of them, actually...