In 2018, while he was under investigation for sexual assault in D.C., Bill Rausch (Maura Murray’s boyfriend at the time she went missing) deployed to East Africa, where he worked on a psy-ops project for the U.S. Army at Camp Lemonnier. His role had a lot to do with social media, specifically Twitter, in part monitoring accounts of suspected ISIS members. And while he was tasked with protecting American citizens, he created a fake Twitter account which he used to stalk and harass me, a civilian journalist. Active military are forbidden to use psy-ops to target American citizens.
I filed a complaint with the Inspector General’s office then. An investigation was conducted but it was unable to find any evidence that Rausch was, in fact, behind the account. Little was done to investigate and it appears a simple Internet history search was never conducted on the computers and servers he used at Camp Lemonnier.
Bill Rausch is back in the U.S., now, where he awaits trial for felony sex abuse. He has already been found to have stalked yet another woman – a civil court has required him to take 22 domestic violence classes. Yet, he still serves with the Army and has top secret clearance. That may change, though. The IG’s investigation was re-opened after Rausch allegedly told podcasters that he was the creator of the fake accounts which were authored while he was deployed.
In fact, when he was recently re-interviewed, Rausch admitted to the IG investigator that he did in fact create the fake profile on Twitter where he used the alias “Anti Bully Batman.” Using that account, he did things like contact a film festival that was running a documentary I directed and accuse me of murder. See screen caps:
Erinn Larkin, a blogger who often works with the family of Maura Murray and represents them at public functions, was also interviewed. At issue is how Larkin obtained counseling reports of Matt Fecteau, a soldier who worked with Rausch in East Africa, who Rausch butted heads with and had sent home. Larkin published the report on Twitter. She has refused to tell the IG how she obtained the form. She has used the report to mock the mental health of Fecteau, who (because this case will always be bizarre) is actually Larkin’s cousin. See screen cap:
It’s unclear what relationship Larkin has with Rausch, but she often comes to his defense, and acts on his behalf – once going as far as pretending to be an advocate for his victim in order to get information about Rausch scrubbed from the Internet. Her podcast devoted to the case was recently taken down by its distributor for defamation.
Rausch and his family, it appears, has been using fake social media accounts to steer the narrative of Maura’s disappearance for nearly 17 years. Rausch’s victim revealed he was behind a fake Reddit account that actively attacked people on the subs dedicated to his girlfriend’s disappearance. And Rausch’s mother, Sharon, is connected to a fake account on Websleuths.