For the past couple months, someone has been emailing New Hampshire Senior Assistant Jeffery Strelzin, state detectives, and myself several times a day. The emails often include threats to specific people. Sometimes they include pornographic images. Many of them come through emails supposedly sent by a man named Eric Collins, a podcaster who goes by “Armchair Detective,” but it’s unclear if these emails are from Eric himself or someone impersonating him or if it’s a mixture of the two.
Here’s a sample:
The more recent messages all target the self-proclaimed reformed troll who goes by the name Fulk. Fulk, as you may recall, confessed to participating in an elaborate hoax last fall, which he planned with Erinn Larkin, another blogger whose podcast was removed by two hosting platforms for defamation. Larkin’s cohost is Ethan Marsh.
Last week, Armchair released a podcast targeting Fulk, which was promoted online by Jeni Decker-Lopaz and Kym Perkins-Sawyer, two friends of Larkin’s who dabble in self-publishing and YouTube videos. Decker-Lopez and Perkins-Sawyer also shared a defamatory video by Scott Wahl, which was taken down after privacy complaints.
Decker and others are trying their best to attack Fulk’s credibility, painting him as a habitual liar. Which, granted, it’s hard to tell where the truth begins and ends with him. But he did provide proof of Larkin’s involvement with the hoax by releasing their Facebook chat, which you can read here. Larkin served Fulk with a restraining order several weeks ago and has alleged that Fulk has threatened to release nude photos of her, though has so far provided no proof of this. It’s unknown how Fulk obtained the nude photos. He claims to have received them from Erinn, herself, and when Scott Wahl asked for proof, he shared the image with Wahl, and Wahl, said Fulk, recognized a mark on her body.
Scott Wahl is the former advocate for the Murray family who was the target of an FBI child pornography raid. He has also joked about raping my wife. Virginia detectives are currently trying to track down a teacher from the school Wahl’s daughter attended – Wahl allegedly told a Facebook administrator that he placed a tracking device on the woman’s car so that he could know where she was all the time.
Earlier this year, Julie Murray told me that she believes whoever is behind this rampant trolling may have had a hand in Maura’s disappearance. Otherwise, why the obsession? So I, along with Tim and Lance from the Missing podcast, have sent her all the emails and information we’ve been given by the unknown trolls in this case, going back years.
And while we’re talking inside baseball, much of Eric Collins/Jeni Decker-Lopez’s videos and posts last week were related to a post I wrote on an old blog wayyy back in 2013, referencing a tip about Maura’s car being spotted in Boston . I took the post down years ago, but here’s what it said:
Was Maura in Boston Just Before She Went Missing?
A couple weeks ago a tip came in that, on the surface, sounded crazy but has since gained some steam.
A man was photographing the area outside Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant, in Boston, a couple days before Maura disappeared. He was doing research into notorious mobster Whitey Bulger, who killed a guy there back in the day. There were two vehicles parked in the lot and he didn’t really think much about them until later.
See, one of the vehicles was Maura’s Saturn, he says. He knows because the license plate is clear in the photo and it matches to her plates that are in the public record. Only, he won’t scan the pics into a computer. He wanted to send them through the mail to a different source. But then the photos never came.
I know, right? Probably just a bunch of smoke. Except…
The other vehicle that was there. He provided the license plate for that one, too. And I tracked it down. I interviewed the guy who owned the truck. Says he doesn’t know Maura. But, yes, he was at Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant.
Which lends credibility to the photograph also showing Maura’s car.
And if she was in Boston, what was she doing there? And why was she driving her Saturn so far if it was on its last leg?
Fulk, when he was still speaking with Larkin, said that he made up that tip and that they had caught me fabricating news, because I said I spoke to this fake source. Fulk denies making up the tip, of course. I had actually forgotten all about this, so I went digging through my emails and found this email to my private eye friend, who runs license plates for me sometimes. The tipster provided the license plate number of a truck parked beside Maura’s car, which I passed along to him, and got back the owner’s name. I called and spoke to the owner of the truck, who verified that, yes, he was at Pier 4.
Does that mean Maura was there? No. I never put much faith it in, even back then, and was honest about it. But I did run down the plate, and that part checked out.
On Reddit, Fulk explained that he lied about faking that tip because he felt threatened by Scott Wahl, sharing some screenshots of their conversations.
The whole thing is insane. And the fact that these knuckleheads are now also taunting the police can only spell disaster in the long run.