Cultiples #1: part 2
Apr. 8th, 2019 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pirate_anonclick images to enlarge
Tristan Grey was a skilled emotional manipulator. He tried to
persuade us that he had magical powers, that he could speak to the
dead, that he had these powers and his plurality because he was
Indian. He tried to hit on the youngest member of our system, and use
his own multiplicity to avoid taking any responsibility or flack for it.
That it took us so long to recognize his nastiness is embarrassing, but
hopefully it will serve a useful purpose. Perhaps other people can
learn from our own vulnerabilities to protect themselves from tactics
like his in the future.
A note before we begin: I will be taking on lots of Tristan’s bunk
claims, but I’m not going to waste my time debating his multiplicity. I
usually find such things a masturbatory distraction from predators’
actions, which are far more important and much easier to prove. It
doesn’t matter whether Tristan was truly multiple or not; what matters
is that he is a predatory child molester.
All right, onward!
Teenage Girlfriends
Tristan favored teenaged victims, and he liked them geeky,
smart, “mature,” and unworldly. His two New Braunsfels victims were
fifteen and sixteen at the time of their kidnapping, and that age seems
to be his preferred target—we experienced it for ourself. He focused
special attention on our youngest system member, M.D., when she was
the same age.
Now, M.D. is not the most unworldly of us, nor is she the
youngest-looking, but Tristan had no way of knowing that. She was
the only system member with a professed age younger than eighteen,
so perhaps he assumed she would be the easiest target. He also
might’ve found her particularly interesting because she had a history
involving death that would’ve played nicely into his spiritual
philosophy.
Regardless, within about nine months of first meeting her, he
made his move—or rather, his headmate Echo did. She wrote M.D.
specifically to tell her, "my brother seems to think you are the bee's
knees and hung the moon." "My brother has a crush on you... He need
(sic) a lovelife (sic) its (sic) just part of his makeup... try to be nice even
if you dont (sic) like him like that" (Personal correspondence,
9/3/2015).
This has a couple layers of creepiness. Besides the obvious
grossness of a twenty-seven-year-old man crushing on a sixteen-yearold, there's a specific social trap that’s multi-specific. By having his
headmate express his feelings to M.D., Tristan could avoid
responsibility for them. Even though he had previously claimed that
his system did not have uncontrolled switches, he staged Echo’s
actions as a dramatic surprise, and implied that M.D. was special
because of it (Personal correspondence, 11/11/14). “My twin likes you,”
he wrote. “She said to tell you she’ll be writing you seperately (sic)
later. To be honest that freaks me out. She doesn’t talk to many
people” (Personal correspondence, 9/3/2015). Since Echo was hardly
ever around, it wasn’t as though M.D. could call her out. And since
Tristan claimed total ignorance, manners dictated that M.D. couldn’t
call him out either.
This ended up failing; M.D. has no manners. She shot him
down anyway. Since she’s aggressively asexual, and her old system job
involved driving off unwanted suitors, she felt absolutely no guilt or
pressure to do anything else. However, a teenager without that
history, one who perhaps liked Tristan back, might not have
recognized the trick and been taken in. They might've felt obligated
to play along, or worse, returned his feelings, which he would've
exploited. As he told M.D. later, "When you love someone their age,
looks, race, ect... (sic) stop mattering" (Personal correspondence,
11/13/2015).
Tristan did write things in his letters like, “Rape is never a
choice for anyone," but it was obvious that he didn’t truly believe it,
seeing his actions (Personal correspondence, 11/11/2014). He even
might have written about the kidnapped sisters to us, rewriting their
sexual abuse and captivity in his apartment as a polyamorous
relationship. “When I was out in the world I had more than one
partner,” he wrote. “I lived with the 2 of them, same apt., some bed, all
in one multiple person romantic relationship” (Personal
correspondence, 10/21/2014). We don’t know if it was the sisters or
some other people, since he never named them, but still creepy. It’s
possible he was even specifically testing us, to see if we’d question his
ethics.
Even though Tristan said he always had multiple partners, he
showed resentment about dating polyamorous people. In one letter,
he sent us a photo of an ex (thankfully not either of the sisters), and
wrote, “She was a poly which was and is the only type of person I can
ever seem to date. Which sucks! I have a hard time with this, as does
Nikola, but Morgan has stepped back from dating” (Personal
correspondence, 11/11/2014). At the time, Sneak didn’t understand
why he’d complain, since he seemed so intensely non-monogamous
himself, but perhaps he simply didn’t like extending his own privileges
to his partners.
He also may not have liked that his partners weren’t
completely attached to him alone. Which leads us to his next tactic.
Loyalty and Love-Bombing
Tristan’s treatment of his victims suggests that he specialized in
breaking up people’s most important relationships and reattaching
those bonds to himself. The girls only returned home “so that their
friend in California would not get into trouble,” according to their
mother (Lloyd, “Runaway sisters from Spring Branch return to Texas”).
This shows that they cared more about Tristan’s well-being than their
mother’s concern for them. Afterward, they refused to return home or
even speak to their mother, and their uncle reported the girls blaming
her for Tristan getting into trouble (Appendix E). I suspect that
Tristan persuaded them to believe this, treating himself as an innocent
victim and her as the attacker. Perhaps the girls’ devotion wasn’t
enough; he wanted to sever their other relationships too.
Tristan never tried to turn us against each other in that way,
but he certainly tried to inspire loyalty, and he certainly tried to get
very close to us very quickly. By his third letter to us, he was saying
things like, "Have you ever met someone who just seemed to melt into
part of you? --you have seemed to have done this to me" (Personal
correspondence, 10/21/2014). He quickly moved onward to, "Know
we're here for you all and will stand by you no matter what. If you
need us we are just a letter away" (Personal correspondence,
12/10/2014). In his next letter, he said, "You help me keep my head on
straight and I am glad I have you guys in my world. I wouldn't know
what to do without all of you. Your letters help more than just a little,
they help me tons, more than I could ever tell" (Personal
correspondence, 1/22/2015).
Tristan also liked to talk about the importance of loyalty and
honesty. In his second letter, he told us, "I promise to be honest with
you always. Lieing[sic] doesn't build it breaks." In the exact same
letter, he was blatantly lying about being Native American (Personal
correspondence, 9/23/2014). This was probably intended to test us, to
see whether we would catch him in a lie or call him out on it. He
acted as though we were special, that he rarely gave his loyalty to
anyone, that we had proven ourselves to him. “Trust is hard for me to
give. But once you have it I am loyal as to a fault” (Personal
correspondence, 9/3/2015).
All of this fawning attention was probably meant to instill
reciprocal devotion and loyalty. In this, he failed—Sneak thought
he/they were merely happy to meet another plural, so never returned
the intense interest. We weren't isolated like his previous victims; we
had many friends, plural and singlet, so Tristan wasn't anything
special. All his talking about loyalty did was make him look creepily
overenthusiastic.
But I imagine that a younger plural, one who was more isolated
and desperate for someone to trust, would’ve been far more taken in.
A lot of multiples are aching to find someone like them, and Tristan
did his damnedest to insure he was as much like us as possible.
Shared History
Tristan claimed we shared a great deal in common. Besides
being trans (which was most definitely true) and plural (which
might've been true or not), he also claimed to share a disability and a
history of incest with us. He expressed rage at people who victimize
children, called perpetrators of incest “COLD” and “heartLESS,”
apparently unaware of the irony (Personal correspondence, 9/3/2015).
He generally tried to act as though we were comrades in a battle
against the wrongdoing of the world.
Of course, his claims were empty buzzwords and bluster. But
had we not long since learned that victimhood does not preclude
perpetration, we very well might have bought in to the idea that he
was an ally. He might’ve convinced us that he understood us and
shared in our struggles.
Tristan wanted us to believe that we were in it together, that
we shared identities and thus ethical concerns. But there's no reason
to believe that is true. Even if we did have a lot in common, even if it
were all true, it only makes his actions more heinous. Someone who
has survived child abuse should know more than anyone the damage
it can do, and know better than to repeat the process.
But I suspect he may have hoped to use this shared history to
support more mystical claims.
I Hear Dead People
From almost the start, Tristan claimed to be able to hear and
see ghosts. He discussed his plurality as an extension of these beliefs--
every system member was a deceased relative. Tristan himself claimed
to be Morgan's twin, who was absorbed in the womb. Mercy and
Nikola were both sisters who died, while Julian and Zerra were the
system's own miscarried children. I have absolutely no idea whether
any of this is true.
He wrapped all of this together with his claims of being Jicarilla
Apache—taking advantage of our ignorance and hoping we wouldn’t
fact-check him. But he wasn’t the magical Indian shaman he claimed
to be at all. He legal documents list him as white, and Tristan himself
ruined his own claims by blatantly lying. In his second letter, he
claimed, "my Native Name in English is Sitting Winter Wolf or Sitting
Gray Wolf. Gray and Winter are the same word in Apache" (Grey,
Personal communication, 9/23/14). None of this is true.
Proving his claims false required a fair amount of effort. In all
our extended library system, only one had a Jicarilla dictionary,
buried in the closed stacks. Perhaps Tristan assumed we wouldn’t be
stubborn enough to go to the trouble of disproving him. He was
wrong.
First of all, there are multiple Apachean languages, of which
Jicarilla is only one; the language known as plain ‘Apache’ is a different
branch of the linguistic family tree, not even the closest linguistic
relative to Jicarilla, as shown in the diagram below, from Phone, Olson,
and Martinez’s Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache: Abáachi Mizaa Iłkee’ Siijai,
2007.
Second, Jicarilla is a complex language, not like English in the
least. It doesn’t seem to have independent adjectives the way English
does, but uses them as stems that modify verbs. ‘Gray’ has the verb
stem, -bá. The word ‘it’s gray’ is łibá. ‘Winter,’ however, is a stand-alone
noun, hai. So not only are the words completely different, they’re
completely different parts of speech, used in completely different
ways (Phone, Olson, and Martinez, Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache:
Abáachi Mizaa Iłkee’ Siijai, 2007).
Finally, Tristan claimed that because of his culture, his system
grew up in a family where seeing and hearing the voices of the dead
was a normal, celebrated thing, and that their grandmother (now
deceased) did it too (Personal correspondence, 9/23/14). The thing is,
the Jicarilla Apache do not see the dead as pleasant visitors. In fact,
they’re seen as evil and vengeful, a distillation of all the deceased’s
frustrations, to be avoided at all costs. They can also cause physical
illness by proximity. So speaking to the dead would not be a positive
experience, or a revered skill (Jicarilla - Religion and Expressive
Culture, 2017).
Why would Tristan claim to be Jicarilla? Perhaps he wanted to
seem exotic, or supernatural, utilizing stereotypes of the magically
spiritual Indian. Since Jicarilla dictionaries are hard to track down, he
might’ve presumed his words would never be checked. Maybe he
thought that he’d be more impressive as a Jicarilla shaman than as a
New Age white cult leader. If so, he was wrong. While Sneak didn't
contest his claims, ze wasn't particularly interested in them either.
Tristan was pretty insistent on it, though. Asides from building
his system off these spiritual beliefs, he'd try to convince us that he
had supernatural powers and had a special bond to us. At one point,
when sharing with him a strange and annoying occurrence, he
responded, "You can feel me wincing cause friend we got that BOND
like that we know each other" (Personal correspondence, Spring
2016). We, of course, didn't believe this; we had no special attachment
or bond to him; he was just a penpal. But Tristan obviously wanted us
to believe otherwise.
Over time, he read some of our comics, though often with long
delays. After reading All In The Family part 1 and 2 (our incest memoir
diary comic), he tried to persuade us that our father had attacked us
by claiming a ghost told him these things. He wrote, “there was more
than just you hurt and someone that was hurt can't speak for themself
unless she choose to come back, but I doubt that maybe one day"
(Personal correspondence, 9/3/2015).
It is a gross breach of boundaries to try and convince someone
that a relative abused them. In my opinion, nobody should ever do
that under any circumstances, even if it is true. And Tristan was not a
trusted friend whose opinion we asked on the matter; he came up
with that himself, and used it specifically to try and bolster his claims
of supernatural ability.
In All In The Family, we use ghosts as metaphors for lost
memories (and our mind uses them psychologically for the same
purpose). But they aren’t literal, actual ghosts. They’re psychological
symptoms of our own mental illness, of which All In The Family is a
chronicle. So Tristan was specifically leveraging our mental illness to
try and loosen our grip on reality and get us to believe supernatural
bunk.
This didn't work on us, for a few reasons. First, he was
rambling enough that we didn’t understand what he was saying; it
went over Sneak’s head, and we’d forgotten the incident entirely until
rereading the letters for this zine. Second, by that point we had a
pretty strong grip on how our mind and illness worked. We knew
what the apparitions were, and that they were psychological, not
supernatural, in origin.
And finally, due to the time lapse between letters and our
publishing schedule, Tristan didn't know that we had already long
since figured out for ourself our father's role in the whole business.
But had we been less certain in ourself, more spiritual in bent, and had
Tristan had better timing, we very well might have believed him. He
very well might've roped us into believing he had magical powers. I
can easily see that working on isolated teenagers, especially ones who
secretly yearn for a magical world.
No Shame
One other thing about Tristan. He never mentioned any of his
crimes at all (with the possible exception of the vague claim of his two
live-in lovers), but I am positive that he had absolutely no regret or
remorse for anything he did. Why? Because he spoke freely of things
related to his crimes, merely avoiding the bad parts. He happily told
us about his wolf paw tattoo and drew it for us, never mentioning that
he'd branded it on his victims. He was happy to natter on about his
religious faith, completely untroubled by the fact that he'd used it to
brainwash children and was now trying it again on us.
If he truly felt that what he'd done was wrong, he probably
wouldn't have been able to enjoy such reminders. But he did. He
happily talked about his love of tech and the Internet. He talked
about how age meant nothing when it came to love and used his own
multiplicity to try and rope M.D. in. He had absolutely no shame. He
merely censored his history to avoid driving us off and continued
doing exactly what he'd done before.
Did We Fall for It?
Well, sort of. We didn't believe much of anything he said,
certainly not that he had supernatural powers or that a ghost told him
about our trauma history. Tristan was emotionally sensitive and
intelligent, but his writing skills lagged behind, to the point that Sneak
flat-out didn't understand what he was saying sometimes. It seemed
like incoherent nonsense, so ze just ignored it.
However, since we didn't know the nature of his crimes, we
didn't realize that he was trying to manipulate us either. We thought
he merely had very poor social skills. I actually underestimated his
intelligence, passing him off as rambling and incoherent, when in
reality, he was making strategic steps to undermine our sense of reality
and convince us of total nonsense.
Unfortunately for him, the underestimation seems to have
gone both ways—he mistook Sneak's politeness for credulous belief,
and M.D.'s age for pliability. He didn't get a foothold into our head,
and he didn't establish a sense of control over us. All he achieved was
hurting Sneak's feelings, which is still not okay, but a minor setback in
the scheme of things. Ze is already bouncing back, and feeling much
better.
Ze is taking a break from penpals for a while, though.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 1 September 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 23 September 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 21 October 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 11 November 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 10 December 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 22 January 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 8 March 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 14 April 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 15 May 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 3 September 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 13 November 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. Spring 2016. (The exact date
has sadly been lost with the envelope.)
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 22 December 2016.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 13 January 2017.
"Jicarilla - Religion and Expressive Culture." Countries and their Cultures.
Advameg, Inc. 2017. Web. Access 9 February 2017.
Larson, J. Louise. "California woman indicted as co-conspirator in
kidnapping." Herald-Zeitung 10 January 2011. Herald-Zeitung. Web.
Accessed 2 February 2017.
Lloyd, Jennifer. “Runaway sisters from Spring Branch return to Texas.”
San Antonio Express News 16 March 2010. My SA. Web. Accessed 20
March 2017.
Lucio, Valentino. “Woman charged with kidnapping, sexual assault.”
San Antonio Express News 13 August 2010. My SA. Web. Accessed 24
March 2017.
Moultrie, Dalondo. "Hamm pleads guilty to several sex-related
crimes." Herald-Zeitung 12 August 2011. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed
2 February 2017.
Moultrie, Dalondo. "Woman pleads guilty in kidnapping case."
Herald-Zeitung. 10 November 2011. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed 2
February 2017.
Phone, Wilhelmina, and Maureen Olson, and Matilda Martinez.
Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache: Abáachi Mizaa Iłkee’ Siijai, Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Print.
(Note: you can find a searchable online version of this
dictionary at http://interglacial.com/d/jicarilla/ since the book is
tricky to find.)
"Registry Search." Maine Sex Offender Registry. State of Maine. 9
February 2017. Web. Accessed 9 February 2017.
Shettig, Bryan. "Woman indicted in sisters' disappearance." HeraldZeitung 12 August 2010. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed 2 February
2017.
The State of Texas vs. Desiree Hamm. Case No. CR2010-233. Comal
County Criminal Case Records Search. 207th District Court. 2010.
http://public.co.comal.tx.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=196731
The State of Texas vs. Desiree Hamm. Case No. CR2010-302. Comal
County Criminal Case Records Search. 207th District Court. 2010.
http://public.co.comal.tx.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=197375
The State of Texas vs. Sara Theresa Nadeau. Case No. CR2011-032.
Comal County Criminal Case Records Search. 207th District Court.
2011. http://public.co.comal.tx.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=199303
Weilbacher, Eric J. "Hamm pre-trial hearing postponed." HeraldZeitung 2 September 2010. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed 2 February
2017.
Due to the nature of Tristan’s offenses, early newspaper articles
covering his case were deleted from the Internet to protect the privacy
of his victims. However, before that came to light, enterprising
newshounds at scaredmonkeys.com collated these early stories. I have
chosen to insert screen-caps, so my words can be fact-checked, but at
the same time, I have censored them to protect the girls’ privacy.
Because these screen-caps are hard to read, you may also read
them online at: https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/824752.html
Appendix A
Transcription: A forum post from Nut44x4
Re: [BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10-
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2010, 04:24:45 PM »
This is very disturbing. [emoticon of a sad monkey face shaking its head]
http://herald-zeitung.com/story.lasso?
Parents still searching for missing teenagers
By Bryan Shettig
The Herald-Zeitung
Published February 20, 2010
Two Spring Branch teenagers have been missing for a week and law enforcement have asked their mother not to contact the woman she believes enticed them to run away.
[BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F], ages 16 and 15, are both students at [SCHOOL] and left their home between last Thursday night and Friday morning when a stranger picked them up outside the house, [Ms. F] said.
The girls told some classmates they were going to California and others that they were going to Florida. The girls met a 22-year-old woman, whose screen name is “Tristan” on an online role-playing game and decided to meet her in person.
The woman, who lives in San Diego, Calif., has called the family and even asked, “how she can help.”
“I want my daughters back, that’s how she can help,” [Ms. F] said. “The longer it takes, the more worried we get.”
[Ms. F] said Comal County Sheriff’s detectives, who are investigating the case and have listed the two girls as runaways, told her not to speak to the woman anymore.
[BIG SISTER] started role-playing online about eight years ago, [Ms. F] said, and she originally supported her daughter.
“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 said. “But eventually it went south.”
[Ms. F] said her daughter would not tell her parents what Web site she role-played on, but it was not a traditional video game, rather a writing game where participants wrote stories for each other to play through.
The games, which feature a shamanistic theme, spilled over onto online chatting, [F] said, where players couldn’t be regulated by a Web site.
[BIG SISTER] then started calling “Tristan” in December, racking up phone bills —9,000 minutes talking with her in December and 11,000 minutes in January, [Ms. F] said.
[F] said she pays phone bills online and didn’t look at all the minutes those months.
When [BIG SISTER] stayed on the computer most of Christmas break and didn’t interact much with friends and famly, Anne said she got worried. Soon after, she and her husband, Hollis [F], took their child’s computer away.
In a diary [BIG SISTER] kept from that time, she wrote “taking away her computer and all her friends was unacceptable,” [Ms. F] said.
“She’s a very intelligent girl and very mature,” [F] said. “We thought she had control over the game, but eventually it ended up controlling her.”
[BIG SISTER] is with her sister [LITTLE SISTER], who [F] said, went along to protect [BIG SISTER] and take care of her. [LITTLE SISTER] was not into the role-playing until recently, her mother said, after a relationship ended and she became “very depressed.”
She moved into [BIG SISTER]’s room, changed the way she dressed and a family member told the mother [LITTLE SISTER] got “very excited when [BIG SISTER]’s online friends accepted her.”
The pair are believed to be on their way to San Diego and have about $1,000 between the two of them, [Ms. F] said.
The family also believes the unknown San Diego woman has given the pair untraceable cell phones.
The family has hired private detectives to help find the girls and have been raising money through a Facebook.com page titled “MISSING GIRLS: [BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F].”
“It’s been amazing, the support we’ve got,” [Ms. F] said. “I’ve heard from people I haven’t seen since I was 10 years old. It’s given me a lot of strength.”
Parents are urging residents with any knowledge of the girls’ whereabouts to contact the Comal County Sheriff’s Office at (830) 620-3400. The girls are both about 5-feet 3-inches tall. [BIG SISTER] has blonde hair, while [LITTLE SISTER] has brown hair. The girls sometimes speak in British accents and often wear zip-up sweatshirts.
Forum signature lines: Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware/Of giving your heart to a dog to tear -- Rudyard Kipling
One who doesn't trust is never deceived...
Appendix B
Re: [BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10-
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2010, 02:47:24 PM »
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/
Internet role-playing cited after girls vanish
February 18, 2010
By Jennifer R. Lloyd - Express-News
Parents believe their two teen daughters ran away from their Spring Branch home last week after becoming absorbed in Internet role-playing involving witchcraft and vampirism.
The two [SCHOOL] students — [BIG SISTER] [F], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER] [F], 15 — left home between 9 p.m. Feb. 11 and early morning last Friday, said Anne [F], the girls' mother.
The Comal County Sheriff's Office has listed the teens as runaways, Lt. Mark Reynolds said.
Reynolds said officers are working to keep agencies posted that may be able to help locate the sisters.
Anne [F] believes someone else assisted the teens in running away. The two took money, passports, school records, health records and Social Security cards, Anne [F] said.
“Somebody has helped them because we live in the country, and they didn't take our cars,” Anne [F] said. “There was evidence that somebody has picked them up outside of the gate or outside of our fence, and we still don't know who that person was.”
Desperate for news of their two teens, the oldest of five, the family has hired a private investigator from San Antonio.
About 4,100 friends and family members also have sought to aid in the search by joining a Facebook page titled, “MISSING GIRLS: [BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F].”
The girls had told some friends at school that they were going to take a bus to California and others that they were going to take a bus to Florida, said Anne [F].
The mother believes a woman in San Diego, who [BIG SISTER] frequently role-played with and called, may hold clues to the girls' whereabouts.
Anne [F] said phone records show [BIG SISTER] and the woman spoke for about 20,000 minutes during January and February and that the girls might have received packages of clothing from the woman.
Anne [F] said both she and the police have spoken with the woman in California since the girls' disappearance.
The woman met [BIG SISTER] on a Web site about witchcraft and shamans after posting a blog calling for role-playing participants, Anne [F] said. The woman told Anne [F] that [BIG SISTER]'s role-playing often included vampirism and was bloody, gory and dark.
“We really think [BIG SISTER] has kind of become delusional, and she equates herself with the Internet character that she has created,” Anne [F] said.
Anne [F] said her daughter's role-playing character was named “Snow,” someone [BIG SISTER] described as cold, unforgiving and beautiful. She also believes [LITTLE SISTER] went with her sister to take care of her and keep her safe.
“In this diary, ([BIG SISTER]) said her Internet friends were her true friends,” Anne [F] said. “We'd been getting on her about spending so much time on the Internet and not doing anything, not being with friends. She's a junior in high school, and she doesn't have a social life.”
Anne [F] said she and her husband, Hollis, took [BIG SISTER]'s computer away at the end of winter break but gave it back to her a few days later.
“We think she just kind of snapped then, like we were taking her life away. She said that was unacceptable,” Anne [F] said.
Logged
" Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan
Appendix C
[BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10(Found Safe)
« on: February 17, 2010, 12:14:49 PM »
http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/
(Video Available)
Family says missing girls lured away by woman they met online
Reported by: Demond Fernandez
The girls’ mother, Anne [F], told News 4 WOAI she has not seen her daughters [BIG SISTER], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER], 15, since last Thursday. (WOAI.com)
SPRING BRANCH, Texas – [BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F]’s family is very worried right now. They believe the teenage girls were coerced into running away by an adult the teens met online on a role-playing website.
The girls’ mother, Anne [F], told News 4 WOAI she has not seen her daughters [BIG SISTER], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER], 15, since last Thursday. Family members believe the girls ran away to San Diego, California to meet a woman who goes by the online character name “Tristan.”
“This person online has advised them, told them what to do, what to take, and how to avoid detection,” [F] said.
[F] is convinced the girls now have untraceable cell phones and may be traveling by bus to meet the 22-year-old woman. [F] says the woman who’s been talking to her daughters claims she is an Indian Shaman who likes tarot cards, witchcraft, and dark sorts of things.
“I’m afraid for them,” [F] said of her daughters. “This person has not been completely forthcoming with us. She keeps feeding us tidbits.”
The Comal County Sheriff’s Office and police in California are investigating. Anyone with information on the missing teenagers is encouraged to call police.
[F] says she just wants her daughters back home safely.
“We really just are worried. We want to hear from you.”
« Last Edit: March 18, 2010, 03:44:47 PM by MuffyBee » Logged
Forum Signature Line: " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan
Appendix D
Re: [BIG SISTER] & LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10(Found Safe)
« Reply #15 on: March 18, 2010, 03:50:53 PM »
http://herald-zeitung.com/story.lasso?
Spring Branch runaways back with family
Wednesday, March 17, 2020
Two teenage sisters who ran away from home to California to meet up with a woman they met online are now back in Comal County. They returned by their own choice.
[BIG SISTER] and LITTLE SISTER] [F], ages 16 and 15, left home Feb. 11 after going to bed, said their mother, Anne [F].
They told classmates they were going to Florida or California to meet a woman they knew from an online role-playing game.
Family spoke to the San Diego woman, who goes by the name “Tristan,” on the phone, [F] said, but Comal County Sheriff’s Office investigators told her to refrain from speaking to the woman.
Phone calls resumed, however. [F] said her relatives spoke to the woman, and [F] was told Tristan had warrants out for her arrest. It was unclear to [F] on Tuesday what agency has warrants out for the woman’s arrest or on what charges.
Family members bought plane tickets for LITTLE SISTER] and [BIG SISTER] and they both boarded a flight from San Francisco on Sunday evening, [F] said. The girls said they were returning to “protect” their friend in California.
Both girls are [SCHOOL] students.
The teens had dyed their hair in California and were using aliases, [F] said.
They are now staying with relatives, and refuse to speak to their mother. Despite that, [F] said she is glad they are home.
“We’re just trying to get help for them,” [F] said. “They’re safe here. I’m really glad they’re back.”
[BIG SISTER] started role playing online about eight years ago, [F] said, but wouldn’t tell her parents which Web site she was using. The games soon turned more private as she started playing with people through chat services, where Web site administrators couldn’t monitor them, [F] said.
[BIG SISTER] started calling “Tristan” in December, racking up phone bills – 9,000 minutes worth in December and 11,000 minutes in January, [F] said.
Soon after, Anne [F] and her husband, Hollis [F], took their child’s computer away.
In a diary [BIG SISTER] kept from that time, she wrote, “taking away her computer and all her friends was unacceptable,” Anne [F] said.
The parents believe the woman gave the girls cell phones and paid for them to be picked up at their Spring Branch home.
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Forum signature line: " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan
Appendix E
Re: [BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10(Found Safe)
« Reply #14 on: March 18, 2010, 03:47:40 PM »
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/
Girls back in Texas after learning of warrants
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A Charleston family's two missing nieces have returned home to Texas after running away to the West Coast and eluding authorities for more than a month, relatives said Tuesday.
[BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F] flew home from the San Francisco area Sunday night after learning that investigators had obtained arrest warrants to charge a California woman with helping them run away, family members said.
"When the girls heard the news they got very, very mad," said uncle Dan [M], a Charleston real estate agent. "They came home thinking that maybe that would lead to the warrants being vacated."
Whether that happens remains to be seen. In the meantime, the girls are staying with relatives in the Lone Star State but have refused to speak with their parents or return to their home in Spring Branch, Texas, said Anne [F], their mother and [M]'s sister.
Anne [F], a Charleston native, said the girls blame her for getting "their best friend" in trouble with the law. [BIG SISTER], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER], 15, met the San Diego woman on the Internet through role-playing games involving witchcraft. Their family is convinced the woman helped the teens prepare to run away on Feb. 11 and assisted them while they were gone.
"I'm so happy my girls are back and that they are alive and well," their mother said. "I wish I could go to them and give them a big hug, but they don't want to see me. It's very hard."
Family members heard nothing from the sisters until early March, when they contacted relatives on their father's side to say they were safe. They wouldn't reveal where they were or discuss why they left. Before leaving, the girls turned off their cell phones, cleaned out their bank accounts and left with their passports, Social Security cards, health records and school files, [F] has said.
Phone records show thousands of minutes worth of phone calls between [BIG SISTER] and the San Diego woman in the two months leading up to their disappearance, family members said. The girls also received a package from her shortly before they left, they said.
Police and child welfare workers interviewed the girls on Monday, their mother said, but she has not yet been briefed on what they revealed.
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The Tactics of Tristan Grey
Tristan Grey was a skilled emotional manipulator. He tried to
persuade us that he had magical powers, that he could speak to the
dead, that he had these powers and his plurality because he was
Indian. He tried to hit on the youngest member of our system, and use
his own multiplicity to avoid taking any responsibility or flack for it.
That it took us so long to recognize his nastiness is embarrassing, but
hopefully it will serve a useful purpose. Perhaps other people can
learn from our own vulnerabilities to protect themselves from tactics
like his in the future.
A note before we begin: I will be taking on lots of Tristan’s bunk
claims, but I’m not going to waste my time debating his multiplicity. I
usually find such things a masturbatory distraction from predators’
actions, which are far more important and much easier to prove. It
doesn’t matter whether Tristan was truly multiple or not; what matters
is that he is a predatory child molester.
All right, onward!
Teenage Girlfriends
Tristan favored teenaged victims, and he liked them geeky,
smart, “mature,” and unworldly. His two New Braunsfels victims were
fifteen and sixteen at the time of their kidnapping, and that age seems
to be his preferred target—we experienced it for ourself. He focused
special attention on our youngest system member, M.D., when she was
the same age.
Now, M.D. is not the most unworldly of us, nor is she the
youngest-looking, but Tristan had no way of knowing that. She was
the only system member with a professed age younger than eighteen,
so perhaps he assumed she would be the easiest target. He also
might’ve found her particularly interesting because she had a history
involving death that would’ve played nicely into his spiritual
philosophy.
Regardless, within about nine months of first meeting her, he
made his move—or rather, his headmate Echo did. She wrote M.D.
specifically to tell her, "my brother seems to think you are the bee's
knees and hung the moon." "My brother has a crush on you... He need
(sic) a lovelife (sic) its (sic) just part of his makeup... try to be nice even
if you dont (sic) like him like that" (Personal correspondence,
9/3/2015).
This has a couple layers of creepiness. Besides the obvious
grossness of a twenty-seven-year-old man crushing on a sixteen-yearold, there's a specific social trap that’s multi-specific. By having his
headmate express his feelings to M.D., Tristan could avoid
responsibility for them. Even though he had previously claimed that
his system did not have uncontrolled switches, he staged Echo’s
actions as a dramatic surprise, and implied that M.D. was special
because of it (Personal correspondence, 11/11/14). “My twin likes you,”
he wrote. “She said to tell you she’ll be writing you seperately (sic)
later. To be honest that freaks me out. She doesn’t talk to many
people” (Personal correspondence, 9/3/2015). Since Echo was hardly
ever around, it wasn’t as though M.D. could call her out. And since
Tristan claimed total ignorance, manners dictated that M.D. couldn’t
call him out either.
This ended up failing; M.D. has no manners. She shot him
down anyway. Since she’s aggressively asexual, and her old system job
involved driving off unwanted suitors, she felt absolutely no guilt or
pressure to do anything else. However, a teenager without that
history, one who perhaps liked Tristan back, might not have
recognized the trick and been taken in. They might've felt obligated
to play along, or worse, returned his feelings, which he would've
exploited. As he told M.D. later, "When you love someone their age,
looks, race, ect... (sic) stop mattering" (Personal correspondence,
11/13/2015).
Tristan did write things in his letters like, “Rape is never a
choice for anyone," but it was obvious that he didn’t truly believe it,
seeing his actions (Personal correspondence, 11/11/2014). He even
might have written about the kidnapped sisters to us, rewriting their
sexual abuse and captivity in his apartment as a polyamorous
relationship. “When I was out in the world I had more than one
partner,” he wrote. “I lived with the 2 of them, same apt., some bed, all
in one multiple person romantic relationship” (Personal
correspondence, 10/21/2014). We don’t know if it was the sisters or
some other people, since he never named them, but still creepy. It’s
possible he was even specifically testing us, to see if we’d question his
ethics.
Even though Tristan said he always had multiple partners, he
showed resentment about dating polyamorous people. In one letter,
he sent us a photo of an ex (thankfully not either of the sisters), and
wrote, “She was a poly which was and is the only type of person I can
ever seem to date. Which sucks! I have a hard time with this, as does
Nikola, but Morgan has stepped back from dating” (Personal
correspondence, 11/11/2014). At the time, Sneak didn’t understand
why he’d complain, since he seemed so intensely non-monogamous
himself, but perhaps he simply didn’t like extending his own privileges
to his partners.
He also may not have liked that his partners weren’t
completely attached to him alone. Which leads us to his next tactic.
Loyalty and Love-Bombing
Tristan’s treatment of his victims suggests that he specialized in
breaking up people’s most important relationships and reattaching
those bonds to himself. The girls only returned home “so that their
friend in California would not get into trouble,” according to their
mother (Lloyd, “Runaway sisters from Spring Branch return to Texas”).
This shows that they cared more about Tristan’s well-being than their
mother’s concern for them. Afterward, they refused to return home or
even speak to their mother, and their uncle reported the girls blaming
her for Tristan getting into trouble (Appendix E). I suspect that
Tristan persuaded them to believe this, treating himself as an innocent
victim and her as the attacker. Perhaps the girls’ devotion wasn’t
enough; he wanted to sever their other relationships too.
Tristan never tried to turn us against each other in that way,
but he certainly tried to inspire loyalty, and he certainly tried to get
very close to us very quickly. By his third letter to us, he was saying
things like, "Have you ever met someone who just seemed to melt into
part of you? --you have seemed to have done this to me" (Personal
correspondence, 10/21/2014). He quickly moved onward to, "Know
we're here for you all and will stand by you no matter what. If you
need us we are just a letter away" (Personal correspondence,
12/10/2014). In his next letter, he said, "You help me keep my head on
straight and I am glad I have you guys in my world. I wouldn't know
what to do without all of you. Your letters help more than just a little,
they help me tons, more than I could ever tell" (Personal
correspondence, 1/22/2015).
Tristan also liked to talk about the importance of loyalty and
honesty. In his second letter, he told us, "I promise to be honest with
you always. Lieing[sic] doesn't build it breaks." In the exact same
letter, he was blatantly lying about being Native American (Personal
correspondence, 9/23/2014). This was probably intended to test us, to
see whether we would catch him in a lie or call him out on it. He
acted as though we were special, that he rarely gave his loyalty to
anyone, that we had proven ourselves to him. “Trust is hard for me to
give. But once you have it I am loyal as to a fault” (Personal
correspondence, 9/3/2015).
All of this fawning attention was probably meant to instill
reciprocal devotion and loyalty. In this, he failed—Sneak thought
he/they were merely happy to meet another plural, so never returned
the intense interest. We weren't isolated like his previous victims; we
had many friends, plural and singlet, so Tristan wasn't anything
special. All his talking about loyalty did was make him look creepily
overenthusiastic.
But I imagine that a younger plural, one who was more isolated
and desperate for someone to trust, would’ve been far more taken in.
A lot of multiples are aching to find someone like them, and Tristan
did his damnedest to insure he was as much like us as possible.
Shared History
Tristan claimed we shared a great deal in common. Besides
being trans (which was most definitely true) and plural (which
might've been true or not), he also claimed to share a disability and a
history of incest with us. He expressed rage at people who victimize
children, called perpetrators of incest “COLD” and “heartLESS,”
apparently unaware of the irony (Personal correspondence, 9/3/2015).
He generally tried to act as though we were comrades in a battle
against the wrongdoing of the world.
Of course, his claims were empty buzzwords and bluster. But
had we not long since learned that victimhood does not preclude
perpetration, we very well might have bought in to the idea that he
was an ally. He might’ve convinced us that he understood us and
shared in our struggles.
Tristan wanted us to believe that we were in it together, that
we shared identities and thus ethical concerns. But there's no reason
to believe that is true. Even if we did have a lot in common, even if it
were all true, it only makes his actions more heinous. Someone who
has survived child abuse should know more than anyone the damage
it can do, and know better than to repeat the process.
But I suspect he may have hoped to use this shared history to
support more mystical claims.
I Hear Dead People
From almost the start, Tristan claimed to be able to hear and
see ghosts. He discussed his plurality as an extension of these beliefs--
every system member was a deceased relative. Tristan himself claimed
to be Morgan's twin, who was absorbed in the womb. Mercy and
Nikola were both sisters who died, while Julian and Zerra were the
system's own miscarried children. I have absolutely no idea whether
any of this is true.
He wrapped all of this together with his claims of being Jicarilla
Apache—taking advantage of our ignorance and hoping we wouldn’t
fact-check him. But he wasn’t the magical Indian shaman he claimed
to be at all. He legal documents list him as white, and Tristan himself
ruined his own claims by blatantly lying. In his second letter, he
claimed, "my Native Name in English is Sitting Winter Wolf or Sitting
Gray Wolf. Gray and Winter are the same word in Apache" (Grey,
Personal communication, 9/23/14). None of this is true.
Proving his claims false required a fair amount of effort. In all
our extended library system, only one had a Jicarilla dictionary,
buried in the closed stacks. Perhaps Tristan assumed we wouldn’t be
stubborn enough to go to the trouble of disproving him. He was
wrong.
First of all, there are multiple Apachean languages, of which
Jicarilla is only one; the language known as plain ‘Apache’ is a different
branch of the linguistic family tree, not even the closest linguistic
relative to Jicarilla, as shown in the diagram below, from Phone, Olson,
and Martinez’s Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache: Abáachi Mizaa Iłkee’ Siijai,
2007.
Second, Jicarilla is a complex language, not like English in the
least. It doesn’t seem to have independent adjectives the way English
does, but uses them as stems that modify verbs. ‘Gray’ has the verb
stem, -bá. The word ‘it’s gray’ is łibá. ‘Winter,’ however, is a stand-alone
noun, hai. So not only are the words completely different, they’re
completely different parts of speech, used in completely different
ways (Phone, Olson, and Martinez, Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache:
Abáachi Mizaa Iłkee’ Siijai, 2007).
Finally, Tristan claimed that because of his culture, his system
grew up in a family where seeing and hearing the voices of the dead
was a normal, celebrated thing, and that their grandmother (now
deceased) did it too (Personal correspondence, 9/23/14). The thing is,
the Jicarilla Apache do not see the dead as pleasant visitors. In fact,
they’re seen as evil and vengeful, a distillation of all the deceased’s
frustrations, to be avoided at all costs. They can also cause physical
illness by proximity. So speaking to the dead would not be a positive
experience, or a revered skill (Jicarilla - Religion and Expressive
Culture, 2017).
Why would Tristan claim to be Jicarilla? Perhaps he wanted to
seem exotic, or supernatural, utilizing stereotypes of the magically
spiritual Indian. Since Jicarilla dictionaries are hard to track down, he
might’ve presumed his words would never be checked. Maybe he
thought that he’d be more impressive as a Jicarilla shaman than as a
New Age white cult leader. If so, he was wrong. While Sneak didn't
contest his claims, ze wasn't particularly interested in them either.
Tristan was pretty insistent on it, though. Asides from building
his system off these spiritual beliefs, he'd try to convince us that he
had supernatural powers and had a special bond to us. At one point,
when sharing with him a strange and annoying occurrence, he
responded, "You can feel me wincing cause friend we got that BOND
like that we know each other" (Personal correspondence, Spring
2016). We, of course, didn't believe this; we had no special attachment
or bond to him; he was just a penpal. But Tristan obviously wanted us
to believe otherwise.
Over time, he read some of our comics, though often with long
delays. After reading All In The Family part 1 and 2 (our incest memoir
diary comic), he tried to persuade us that our father had attacked us
by claiming a ghost told him these things. He wrote, “there was more
than just you hurt and someone that was hurt can't speak for themself
unless she choose to come back, but I doubt that maybe one day"
(Personal correspondence, 9/3/2015).
It is a gross breach of boundaries to try and convince someone
that a relative abused them. In my opinion, nobody should ever do
that under any circumstances, even if it is true. And Tristan was not a
trusted friend whose opinion we asked on the matter; he came up
with that himself, and used it specifically to try and bolster his claims
of supernatural ability.
In All In The Family, we use ghosts as metaphors for lost
memories (and our mind uses them psychologically for the same
purpose). But they aren’t literal, actual ghosts. They’re psychological
symptoms of our own mental illness, of which All In The Family is a
chronicle. So Tristan was specifically leveraging our mental illness to
try and loosen our grip on reality and get us to believe supernatural
bunk.
This didn't work on us, for a few reasons. First, he was
rambling enough that we didn’t understand what he was saying; it
went over Sneak’s head, and we’d forgotten the incident entirely until
rereading the letters for this zine. Second, by that point we had a
pretty strong grip on how our mind and illness worked. We knew
what the apparitions were, and that they were psychological, not
supernatural, in origin.
And finally, due to the time lapse between letters and our
publishing schedule, Tristan didn't know that we had already long
since figured out for ourself our father's role in the whole business.
But had we been less certain in ourself, more spiritual in bent, and had
Tristan had better timing, we very well might have believed him. He
very well might've roped us into believing he had magical powers. I
can easily see that working on isolated teenagers, especially ones who
secretly yearn for a magical world.
No Shame
One other thing about Tristan. He never mentioned any of his
crimes at all (with the possible exception of the vague claim of his two
live-in lovers), but I am positive that he had absolutely no regret or
remorse for anything he did. Why? Because he spoke freely of things
related to his crimes, merely avoiding the bad parts. He happily told
us about his wolf paw tattoo and drew it for us, never mentioning that
he'd branded it on his victims. He was happy to natter on about his
religious faith, completely untroubled by the fact that he'd used it to
brainwash children and was now trying it again on us.
If he truly felt that what he'd done was wrong, he probably
wouldn't have been able to enjoy such reminders. But he did. He
happily talked about his love of tech and the Internet. He talked
about how age meant nothing when it came to love and used his own
multiplicity to try and rope M.D. in. He had absolutely no shame. He
merely censored his history to avoid driving us off and continued
doing exactly what he'd done before.
Did We Fall for It?
Well, sort of. We didn't believe much of anything he said,
certainly not that he had supernatural powers or that a ghost told him
about our trauma history. Tristan was emotionally sensitive and
intelligent, but his writing skills lagged behind, to the point that Sneak
flat-out didn't understand what he was saying sometimes. It seemed
like incoherent nonsense, so ze just ignored it.
However, since we didn't know the nature of his crimes, we
didn't realize that he was trying to manipulate us either. We thought
he merely had very poor social skills. I actually underestimated his
intelligence, passing him off as rambling and incoherent, when in
reality, he was making strategic steps to undermine our sense of reality
and convince us of total nonsense.
Unfortunately for him, the underestimation seems to have
gone both ways—he mistook Sneak's politeness for credulous belief,
and M.D.'s age for pliability. He didn't get a foothold into our head,
and he didn't establish a sense of control over us. All he achieved was
hurting Sneak's feelings, which is still not okay, but a minor setback in
the scheme of things. Ze is already bouncing back, and feeling much
better.
Ze is taking a break from penpals for a while, though.
Sources Cited
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 1 September 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 23 September 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 21 October 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 11 November 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 10 December 2014.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 22 January 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 8 March 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 14 April 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 15 May 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 3 September 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 13 November 2015.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. Spring 2016. (The exact date
has sadly been lost with the envelope.)
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 22 December 2016.
Grey, Tristan. Personal correspondence. 13 January 2017.
"Jicarilla - Religion and Expressive Culture." Countries and their Cultures.
Advameg, Inc. 2017. Web. Access 9 February 2017.
Larson, J. Louise. "California woman indicted as co-conspirator in
kidnapping." Herald-Zeitung 10 January 2011. Herald-Zeitung. Web.
Accessed 2 February 2017.
Lloyd, Jennifer. “Runaway sisters from Spring Branch return to Texas.”
San Antonio Express News 16 March 2010. My SA. Web. Accessed 20
March 2017.
Lucio, Valentino. “Woman charged with kidnapping, sexual assault.”
San Antonio Express News 13 August 2010. My SA. Web. Accessed 24
March 2017.
Moultrie, Dalondo. "Hamm pleads guilty to several sex-related
crimes." Herald-Zeitung 12 August 2011. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed
2 February 2017.
Moultrie, Dalondo. "Woman pleads guilty in kidnapping case."
Herald-Zeitung. 10 November 2011. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed 2
February 2017.
Phone, Wilhelmina, and Maureen Olson, and Matilda Martinez.
Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache: Abáachi Mizaa Iłkee’ Siijai, Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Print.
(Note: you can find a searchable online version of this
dictionary at http://interglacial.com/d/jicarilla/ since the book is
tricky to find.)
"Registry Search." Maine Sex Offender Registry. State of Maine. 9
February 2017. Web. Accessed 9 February 2017.
Shettig, Bryan. "Woman indicted in sisters' disappearance." HeraldZeitung 12 August 2010. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed 2 February
2017.
The State of Texas vs. Desiree Hamm. Case No. CR2010-233. Comal
County Criminal Case Records Search. 207th District Court. 2010.
http://public.co.comal.tx.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=196731
The State of Texas vs. Desiree Hamm. Case No. CR2010-302. Comal
County Criminal Case Records Search. 207th District Court. 2010.
http://public.co.comal.tx.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=197375
The State of Texas vs. Sara Theresa Nadeau. Case No. CR2011-032.
Comal County Criminal Case Records Search. 207th District Court.
2011. http://public.co.comal.tx.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=199303
Weilbacher, Eric J. "Hamm pre-trial hearing postponed." HeraldZeitung 2 September 2010. Herald-Zeitung. Web. Accessed 2 February
2017.
Due to the nature of Tristan’s offenses, early newspaper articles
covering his case were deleted from the Internet to protect the privacy
of his victims. However, before that came to light, enterprising
newshounds at scaredmonkeys.com collated these early stories. I have
chosen to insert screen-caps, so my words can be fact-checked, but at
the same time, I have censored them to protect the girls’ privacy.
Because these screen-caps are hard to read, you may also read
them online at: https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/824752.html
Appendix A
Transcription: A forum post from Nut44x4
Re: [BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10-
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2010, 04:24:45 PM »
This is very disturbing. [emoticon of a sad monkey face shaking its head]
http://herald-zeitung.com/story.lasso?
Parents still searching for missing teenagers
By Bryan Shettig
The Herald-Zeitung
Published February 20, 2010
Two Spring Branch teenagers have been missing for a week and law enforcement have asked their mother not to contact the woman she believes enticed them to run away.
[BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F], ages 16 and 15, are both students at [SCHOOL] and left their home between last Thursday night and Friday morning when a stranger picked them up outside the house, [Ms. F] said.
The girls told some classmates they were going to California and others that they were going to Florida. The girls met a 22-year-old woman, whose screen name is “Tristan” on an online role-playing game and decided to meet her in person.
The woman, who lives in San Diego, Calif., has called the family and even asked, “how she can help.”
“I want my daughters back, that’s how she can help,” [Ms. F] said. “The longer it takes, the more worried we get.”
[Ms. F] said Comal County Sheriff’s detectives, who are investigating the case and have listed the two girls as runaways, told her not to speak to the woman anymore.
[BIG SISTER] started role-playing online about eight years ago, [Ms. F] said, and she originally supported her daughter.
“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 said. “But eventually it went south.”
[Ms. F] said her daughter would not tell her parents what Web site she role-played on, but it was not a traditional video game, rather a writing game where participants wrote stories for each other to play through.
The games, which feature a shamanistic theme, spilled over onto online chatting, [F] said, where players couldn’t be regulated by a Web site.
[BIG SISTER] then started calling “Tristan” in December, racking up phone bills —9,000 minutes talking with her in December and 11,000 minutes in January, [Ms. F] said.
[F] said she pays phone bills online and didn’t look at all the minutes those months.
When [BIG SISTER] stayed on the computer most of Christmas break and didn’t interact much with friends and famly, Anne said she got worried. Soon after, she and her husband, Hollis [F], took their child’s computer away.
In a diary [BIG SISTER] kept from that time, she wrote “taking away her computer and all her friends was unacceptable,” [Ms. F] said.
“She’s a very intelligent girl and very mature,” [F] said. “We thought she had control over the game, but eventually it ended up controlling her.”
[BIG SISTER] is with her sister [LITTLE SISTER], who [F] said, went along to protect [BIG SISTER] and take care of her. [LITTLE SISTER] was not into the role-playing until recently, her mother said, after a relationship ended and she became “very depressed.”
She moved into [BIG SISTER]’s room, changed the way she dressed and a family member told the mother [LITTLE SISTER] got “very excited when [BIG SISTER]’s online friends accepted her.”
The pair are believed to be on their way to San Diego and have about $1,000 between the two of them, [Ms. F] said.
The family also believes the unknown San Diego woman has given the pair untraceable cell phones.
The family has hired private detectives to help find the girls and have been raising money through a Facebook.com page titled “MISSING GIRLS: [BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F].”
“It’s been amazing, the support we’ve got,” [Ms. F] said. “I’ve heard from people I haven’t seen since I was 10 years old. It’s given me a lot of strength.”
Parents are urging residents with any knowledge of the girls’ whereabouts to contact the Comal County Sheriff’s Office at (830) 620-3400. The girls are both about 5-feet 3-inches tall. [BIG SISTER] has blonde hair, while [LITTLE SISTER] has brown hair. The girls sometimes speak in British accents and often wear zip-up sweatshirts.
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Appendix B
Re: [BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10-
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2010, 02:47:24 PM »
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/
Internet role-playing cited after girls vanish
February 18, 2010
By Jennifer R. Lloyd - Express-News
Parents believe their two teen daughters ran away from their Spring Branch home last week after becoming absorbed in Internet role-playing involving witchcraft and vampirism.
The two [SCHOOL] students — [BIG SISTER] [F], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER] [F], 15 — left home between 9 p.m. Feb. 11 and early morning last Friday, said Anne [F], the girls' mother.
The Comal County Sheriff's Office has listed the teens as runaways, Lt. Mark Reynolds said.
Reynolds said officers are working to keep agencies posted that may be able to help locate the sisters.
Anne [F] believes someone else assisted the teens in running away. The two took money, passports, school records, health records and Social Security cards, Anne [F] said.
“Somebody has helped them because we live in the country, and they didn't take our cars,” Anne [F] said. “There was evidence that somebody has picked them up outside of the gate or outside of our fence, and we still don't know who that person was.”
Desperate for news of their two teens, the oldest of five, the family has hired a private investigator from San Antonio.
About 4,100 friends and family members also have sought to aid in the search by joining a Facebook page titled, “MISSING GIRLS: [BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F].”
The girls had told some friends at school that they were going to take a bus to California and others that they were going to take a bus to Florida, said Anne [F].
The mother believes a woman in San Diego, who [BIG SISTER] frequently role-played with and called, may hold clues to the girls' whereabouts.
Anne [F] said phone records show [BIG SISTER] and the woman spoke for about 20,000 minutes during January and February and that the girls might have received packages of clothing from the woman.
Anne [F] said both she and the police have spoken with the woman in California since the girls' disappearance.
The woman met [BIG SISTER] on a Web site about witchcraft and shamans after posting a blog calling for role-playing participants, Anne [F] said. The woman told Anne [F] that [BIG SISTER]'s role-playing often included vampirism and was bloody, gory and dark.
“We really think [BIG SISTER] has kind of become delusional, and she equates herself with the Internet character that she has created,” Anne [F] said.
Anne [F] said her daughter's role-playing character was named “Snow,” someone [BIG SISTER] described as cold, unforgiving and beautiful. She also believes [LITTLE SISTER] went with her sister to take care of her and keep her safe.
“In this diary, ([BIG SISTER]) said her Internet friends were her true friends,” Anne [F] said. “We'd been getting on her about spending so much time on the Internet and not doing anything, not being with friends. She's a junior in high school, and she doesn't have a social life.”
Anne [F] said she and her husband, Hollis, took [BIG SISTER]'s computer away at the end of winter break but gave it back to her a few days later.
“We think she just kind of snapped then, like we were taking her life away. She said that was unacceptable,” Anne [F] said.
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" Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan
Appendix C
[BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10(Found Safe)
« on: February 17, 2010, 12:14:49 PM »
http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/
(Video Available)
Family says missing girls lured away by woman they met online
Reported by: Demond Fernandez
The girls’ mother, Anne [F], told News 4 WOAI she has not seen her daughters [BIG SISTER], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER], 15, since last Thursday. (WOAI.com)
SPRING BRANCH, Texas – [BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F]’s family is very worried right now. They believe the teenage girls were coerced into running away by an adult the teens met online on a role-playing website.
The girls’ mother, Anne [F], told News 4 WOAI she has not seen her daughters [BIG SISTER], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER], 15, since last Thursday. Family members believe the girls ran away to San Diego, California to meet a woman who goes by the online character name “Tristan.”
“This person online has advised them, told them what to do, what to take, and how to avoid detection,” [F] said.
[F] is convinced the girls now have untraceable cell phones and may be traveling by bus to meet the 22-year-old woman. [F] says the woman who’s been talking to her daughters claims she is an Indian Shaman who likes tarot cards, witchcraft, and dark sorts of things.
“I’m afraid for them,” [F] said of her daughters. “This person has not been completely forthcoming with us. She keeps feeding us tidbits.”
The Comal County Sheriff’s Office and police in California are investigating. Anyone with information on the missing teenagers is encouraged to call police.
[F] says she just wants her daughters back home safely.
“We really just are worried. We want to hear from you.”
« Last Edit: March 18, 2010, 03:44:47 PM by MuffyBee » Logged
Forum Signature Line: " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan
Appendix D
Re: [BIG SISTER] & LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10(Found Safe)
« Reply #15 on: March 18, 2010, 03:50:53 PM »
http://herald-zeitung.com/story.lasso?
Spring Branch runaways back with family
Wednesday, March 17, 2020
Two teenage sisters who ran away from home to California to meet up with a woman they met online are now back in Comal County. They returned by their own choice.
[BIG SISTER] and LITTLE SISTER] [F], ages 16 and 15, left home Feb. 11 after going to bed, said their mother, Anne [F].
They told classmates they were going to Florida or California to meet a woman they knew from an online role-playing game.
Family spoke to the San Diego woman, who goes by the name “Tristan,” on the phone, [F] said, but Comal County Sheriff’s Office investigators told her to refrain from speaking to the woman.
Phone calls resumed, however. [F] said her relatives spoke to the woman, and [F] was told Tristan had warrants out for her arrest. It was unclear to [F] on Tuesday what agency has warrants out for the woman’s arrest or on what charges.
Family members bought plane tickets for LITTLE SISTER] and [BIG SISTER] and they both boarded a flight from San Francisco on Sunday evening, [F] said. The girls said they were returning to “protect” their friend in California.
Both girls are [SCHOOL] students.
The teens had dyed their hair in California and were using aliases, [F] said.
They are now staying with relatives, and refuse to speak to their mother. Despite that, [F] said she is glad they are home.
“We’re just trying to get help for them,” [F] said. “They’re safe here. I’m really glad they’re back.”
[BIG SISTER] started role playing online about eight years ago, [F] said, but wouldn’t tell her parents which Web site she was using. The games soon turned more private as she started playing with people through chat services, where Web site administrators couldn’t monitor them, [F] said.
[BIG SISTER] started calling “Tristan” in December, racking up phone bills – 9,000 minutes worth in December and 11,000 minutes in January, [F] said.
Soon after, Anne [F] and her husband, Hollis [F], took their child’s computer away.
In a diary [BIG SISTER] kept from that time, she wrote, “taking away her computer and all her friends was unacceptable,” Anne [F] said.
The parents believe the woman gave the girls cell phones and paid for them to be picked up at their Spring Branch home.
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Forum signature line: " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan
Appendix E
Re: [BIG SISTER] & [LITTLE SISTER] [F] (16 & 15) Spring Branch, TX Last seen 2/11/10(Found Safe)
« Reply #14 on: March 18, 2010, 03:47:40 PM »
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/
Girls back in Texas after learning of warrants
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A Charleston family's two missing nieces have returned home to Texas after running away to the West Coast and eluding authorities for more than a month, relatives said Tuesday.
[BIG SISTER] and [LITTLE SISTER] [F] flew home from the San Francisco area Sunday night after learning that investigators had obtained arrest warrants to charge a California woman with helping them run away, family members said.
"When the girls heard the news they got very, very mad," said uncle Dan [M], a Charleston real estate agent. "They came home thinking that maybe that would lead to the warrants being vacated."
Whether that happens remains to be seen. In the meantime, the girls are staying with relatives in the Lone Star State but have refused to speak with their parents or return to their home in Spring Branch, Texas, said Anne [F], their mother and [M]'s sister.
Anne [F], a Charleston native, said the girls blame her for getting "their best friend" in trouble with the law. [BIG SISTER], 16, and [LITTLE SISTER], 15, met the San Diego woman on the Internet through role-playing games involving witchcraft. Their family is convinced the woman helped the teens prepare to run away on Feb. 11 and assisted them while they were gone.
"I'm so happy my girls are back and that they are alive and well," their mother said. "I wish I could go to them and give them a big hug, but they don't want to see me. It's very hard."
Family members heard nothing from the sisters until early March, when they contacted relatives on their father's side to say they were safe. They wouldn't reveal where they were or discuss why they left. Before leaving, the girls turned off their cell phones, cleaned out their bank accounts and left with their passports, Social Security cards, health records and school files, [F] has said.
Phone records show thousands of minutes worth of phone calls between [BIG SISTER] and the San Diego woman in the two months leading up to their disappearance, family members said. The girls also received a package from her shortly before they left, they said.
Police and child welfare workers interviewed the girls on Monday, their mother said, but she has not yet been briefed on what they revealed.
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