U R NEXT | 2. Madder than a Wet Hen

I vowed I will be his last target. He is not gonna get away with this. He's gonna get what each serves.

We always say that trust your girlfriends listen to the girlfriends trust me babe on the eye hot radio app Apple podcast or whatever you get your podcast.

Listen to every episode of you are next at free right now when you subscribe to the binge you'll hear the entire series before anyone else get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts Just head to the binge channel on Apple podcasts and tap subscribe or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are to binge feed your true crime obsession Sergeant Ben Finley has always been kind of an analog guy. He definitely wasn't what you'd call an early adopter of the internet.

“I think I kind of resisted it for a while. He was like oh man you gotta get on Google and look this up and I'm like what the hell is a Google?”

Ben's digital prowess has improved a lot since he said that which to be fair wouldn't be hard but he still never saw himself being a digital sheriff. Jason bad people on the internet never thought that would get to that point. I always thought how fun it was to chase him in person. I never knew what it was like to chase him through the digital world. So how is it that a country cop who once said what the hell is a Google ends up being the guy chasing the online predator who targeted Esther her family and countless others.

Well for that we need to go back to January 16th 2014. It's about 430 p.m. Ben is in his precinct in John's Creek Georgia.

We're going through the evening before reports and whatnot. We always have our radio zone and I can hear stuff but it's kind of like in the background.

Just by our person shot we got an armed in this one side who claims he's already shot children. Oh, Alicia. Hey this is off for another time on one. Can you do me your sister? How are the lanes? I'll just treat for me. I'll just go at the police. I'm on John's Creek. I'm going down with our fucking sight. I'm gonna go off. I'm gonna take some more of us with you. I killed the mom. I killed the dad and I killed the little boy in the house. I got the little girl right here. I need $30,000.

“I think you want $30,000 to keep from killing the girl?”

Yes. Man, this is a multi-million dollar gated neighborhood who is down here shooting people in this house, especially shooting children. As Ben and his team arrive at the scene, 15 officers are scattered across a well manicured lawn. Guns loaded and aimed at a large or neat house. Everybody's there. All of our fire department, MS people, or their stage in right down the street. You're in case something happens. We got a three or four man quick ration team sitting on the side of the shield. A couple rifles to stage up on the corner of the house. We're also setting up medical stuff as well. How many ambulances have on staff?

We're in an ED back zone. We're probably gonna need a rescue helicopter. We need to go ahead and plot out a place for a landing zone for this.

“And I say it's chaos. It's literally chaos.”

Our patrol guys on the loudspeaker trying to make contact with somebody on the inside. Not getting anything trying to get a phone number called the house. That doesn't get a response either. There's something Ben can't put his finger on. A cop's hunch honed after years on the beat. A feeling deep in his gut. Some's not adding up. I don't know what it is. Something is not right with this.

After multiple attempts to contact the house with no response, Ben gives the nod to the swap team to enter the house. Ben's gripping his radio tightly as the swap team clear each floor of the upscale home. He's worked on the side cases before, so he knows what kind of gruesome updates to expect from a scene with multiple murders. Showcase is on the floor, blood splatter on the wall. But none of that was there.

No bullet casings, no blood, no body, never mind three.

Ben's gut stirs again. What the fuck is happening here? A message comes through from the swap team. They found people during their sweep alive. They were housekeepers inside the house. They were scared to death. The housekeepers are each carrying a trembling, terrified child. They come out both the children, naked, wrapped up in towels. They were explained why they were nowhere near their phones.

They couldn't hear anything. They were in the bathtub, bathing the children.

“And of course, we're immediately going into debris for them as like who's in the home. Who else is in the home? Is anybody hurt?”

They're in shock, so they're not really giving great information.

They're finally like to just us, assist the kids, no one else is in the home.

The penny drops like a bomb. All right, we've been had. This is bullshit. From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is you, our next. I'm Lee Alexander. This is episode two, matter than a wet hen.

I was born in Tacoa, Georgia, which is up and far north of Georgia. We lived on top of a mountain. He could crawl up on the roof of the house. I could see all the mountains and stuff on a good clear day. You could see South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Ben Finley is a country boy through and through. He was born in his beloved Georgia in 1966.

No, that sounds like a long time ago, doesn't it? It's like town. I saw a movie the other day from 1966. It's black and white. When he's about 15 years old, Ben's parents get divorced and like any kid, his age, he kind of spins out about it. I was sitting my dad's not there. I was kind of gaffin' off at school when I was supposed to do, and my grades got bad. So the next thing I know my dad had me yanked out of there, and I went to a military school.

That was a, that was a sobering experience.

“In retrospect, looking back, that was probably the best thing in the world we were having to do.”

I want to fan up at the time. I look back at it now, and you had that not happened. I don't know what my life path would have been. One day, a pair of Marines visit Ben's new school. They leave a hell of an impression on him. Where they're dressed blues, standing there front of me and I was like, "Well, I gotta have some of that stuff." I did that, signed up, say what you want.

Whatever branch of service you're in, all these guys have to tell you too, man. The Marine Corps, no one else has to uniform like ours. I'm biased, but I'm just telling you, they don't look at good and uniform as we do. I've seen a picture of Ben from his old Marine days. The Navy blew uniform with red trim, a brilliant white hat on top of his head. He's like a walking American flag with added shiny gold buttons.

It suits him, but Ben's always loved a uniform.

“What made you want to become a police officer? Was that something that started in your childhood?”

I remember growing up, we'd see the police officers and deputy sheriff's estate troopers. They'd be in town, some of our friends fathers were one. When I was small, my dad worked for the sheriff's office and our county and the city police department for a while. I thought it was pretty cool. After Stinson Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan and more, Ben retires from the Marines. In 2008, he starts working for the John's Creek Police Department as a detective sergeant.

In 2014, John's Creek is considered one of the safest cities in the whole of Georgia, so its police department is on the smaller side. And while its officers investigate all kinds of crimes, a mysterious hoax call about a triple murder is not exactly in their wheelhouse.

I never worked one like that, no one in our departments ever worked one like that. Turned around with what my guys are like. You got the idea how to start this?

Thankfully, there's no grizzly scene for Ben to contend with, but he still got both hands full trying to bring a bit of order to all this chaos. We're trying to move neighbors out of their homes because they're coming out, you know, being the old lucky loose.

Well, yeah, I have 17 cops in your neighborhood, a rifle's out pulling your neighborhood house, it's probably a good indication you need to go out to back door and go somewhere else and not stand in front porch, which your French bulldog and ask a bunch of stupid questions.

Ben's busy trying to figure out his next move, while local and national media are hovering overhead searching for a scoop.

Channel 2, Channel 5, Channel 11 at the time, are all flying or helicopter's running circles. News chopper to capture John's Creek police and firefighters racing to the upscale gated community in Northfulton County offices received the call. Word eventually makes its way to the children's parents. Mom hears about it. Through her friends calling her and oh my god, your home is on TV, she sees it, freaks out, just to stroll, thinking her family's been killed. The mother braces to the scene.

Bursting out of her car, she pushes through the remaining crowd of cops in her front yard screaming after her children. She's like, where are they? Where are they? And we're like, look, the kids are fine. They were sitting in the back seat of the fire chiefs Tahoe, so we opened up the door and both the ladies that are the caretakers are sitting there with them and they wrapped up in these blankets.

“And she stared at her for a minute like she was in disbelief and then finally, you know, she breaks down, starts crying hug and she's like, oh my god, oh my god, then she's like, why are they naked?”

And I was like, well, they were evidently in the bathtub when we show her. That isn't too far behind. You can bear up into Atlanta airport, CNN plays on every TV in there. So they got a live shot in there, the house, John's Creek, home invasion, reported people shot. Well dad had just landed at Hart's Field Jackson Airport and this walking through the airport and looks up and it was like, that's my effin house. He's trying to call home, of course, no one's answering. So he's thinking the worst too, so he gets to his car.

And I'm sure he biologyed every traffic long known to my aunt coming from the airport is all. This whole thing might have been a sick hoax, but as those parents sped down the highway, their hands gripping the steering wheel, their hearts pounding out of their chest. The fear that their children or their spouse were brutally murdered that their life as they knew it was ripped away from them was all too real. Clearly changed their lives overnight and changed their lives forever because now they look at everything in their life through a completely different lens of what they looked at it the week before.

They were just the family, he's a business owner, watching the attorney, they got two small children, they're doing very well in life and all of a sudden now. But whatever reason, some nice targeting him and his family.

“And as a dad, I could see his frustration. I don't know what's going on. I don't know who's after me. Why are they after me?”

The family aren't the only ones asking questions. Ben's boss chief Ed Ben's more is to use a good old country phrase, "Matter than a wet hen." For city folks, that means he's pissed. His entire department has had their time and thousands of dollars of resources wasted in front of the national media. He wants answers. He turned around and looked at me. He goes, "I want you to find out who did this." Now.

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He can't figure out why someone would target a perfect, all-American family out of the blue.

Every lead he follows takes him to one dead end after another. He's desperately searching for something that might spark a new hunch and new thread he can grab hold of and pull.

“And of course your cheeseball can buy your office every morning, where are we at? What do you got?”

See if I'm right here and I don't have a damn thing. Ben sits down with his team to hash it all out from the start. All right, we received a phone call on this day, on this time, to the Alfredo Police Department, now in one center. And they were like, "No, didn't come through now in one center." And I said, "Where do they come through?"

They said it went through records department. On the admin line. Huh. Ben gets his hands on a recording of the original call. Hi, it's Donna, I'm going to add on a cost of situation.

He said he just shot a woman and wanted for children and he'll give the other one away free with $30,000. He's on my other line, I'm going to trade for a man. Okay, can you do me? Okay. If you've been unfortunate enough to have to call 911, you'll have been automatically connected to your local emergency dispatch center.

It works through a combination of geolocation and your phone pinging off of cell towers. That tells the system where to direct your call. That way, the closest response team can jump into action. It also tracks your phone numbers, so if you get cut off, they can call you back. But this hoax caller didn't call 911, they called the police's admin line, and that complicates things.

They were counting on the administrative line, transferred it to the 911 center, which would enter the phone number that called would not have transferred up with it. So it would have been the phone call and the person, but no number associated with the call. If I'm a dispatcher, sitting on the end of the call listening to that, I've got no way of knowing this is legit.

“Because at the time, you're not thinking about, does this come in on an admin line?”

You don't think any of that, you just got somebody saying, "Hey, I got a shot on my dad, I got a shot on my mom." You know, the act like you're crying and all the stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Next thing you know, you got every cop in town, all in but over to this location. Ben gets a hold of the admin line phone records and digs through them until he finds the right call.

But something's awful about it.

It was like a very strange number I've never seen before.

I found out this is a VOLIP number. At that time, I had no idea what a VOLIP number is. I soon found out. VOLIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. Basically, it's a virtual phone number that uses the internet to make calls.

They're pretty much everywhere nowadays, like WhatsApp, FaceTime, or Google Voice calls. Back in 2014, though, they're not as common. But it's what Ben learns next that finally blows the case wide open. Searching for some background info, he calls and asks the father how long he and his family have lived in the house. They haven't lived here less than a year.

Okay, who lived here before you? I don't know. I don't know what he was, some kid. He's some kind of YouTube star. Did, like, ramping or something on YouTube. He's also a huge gamer. And I went.

Oh. Okay. Something starts to stir in Ben's memory. We have belong enforcement bulletins and intelligence briefings that get set out if there's something to go on. And there had been these things popping up about swatting.

These bulletins described a growing trend across the USA linked to the online gaming community and a rise in hoax calls designed to elicit a SWAT team response.

“You'd get a brief or two about that every now and then I think it first started out on the Los Angeles.”

Of course, this kind of crazy online shit might happen out there in the tech saturated big cities.

Never in a million years did Ben think it would happen in his town.

Plus, this cookie cutter family just didn't fit the profile of the victims in these swatting bulletins. The parents were not online figures and the kids were too young. But if someone had tried to target the previous residents where they thought a YouTube gamer still lived, well, then that starts to make a lot more sense. Ben turns to his team.

I said, "This is gonna be a swatting." Ben feels a small pain of self-doubt.

He's used to hunting down criminals in the real world, not through a maze of screens and digital phone numbers. But he also feels energized. It took him a few days, sure, but now he's finally on the right track. Plus, he's a former Marine.

He's not the kind of guy who's afraid of a challenge. No matter how daunting it might seem.

We never quit, no matter what.

And that's one thing you gotta have in law enforcement. You can't have a, well, this is too tough. I give up mentality.

“You have to figure out what I can do to win.”

Ben starts digging deeper into the VOIP number he's discovered. I realize it was a Skype number. Now what do I do? You gotta call Skype and find out what's going on with him. They're based out of Luxembourg.

And that's like, well, this is wonderful. I'm going to try to subpoena through my country that I never even heard of. Luxembourg, which, if you're curious, is in the middle of France, Belgium, and Germany, is just the start of Ben's worldwide digital tour. This number led me over to a VOIP company in Amsterdam.

The next one sent me down to the coast of Africa. And I had another one go up into Russia. I tried to email the guy and get some information. And he didn't understand me. And he's like, tell me that I need to call him.

I'm never called Russia. How do you call Russia?

“I dialed it up and this guy answers his phone.”

What do you need? And I said, this is what I need. I keep no records of such. I have no regret or two. Okay.

I had to skip over to like two or three other countries.

And then finally brought me back to stateside here to some other companies here.

Basically, I got to trip around the world and I got to talk to a Russian guy, which again, I thought was pretty hilarious. Ben might've enjoyed his journey around the world in 80 calls, but it ultimately doesn't get him further along in his case. He's certain he's looking at a swatting with the house's old resident as the real target,

but he still hasn't found the culprit who called in the hoax. What's more, the call could've come from anywhere in the United States from anywhere or anyone in the world. Ben starts mulling over his next move. But he barely gets a chance to catch his breath.

“We had another call at the same resonance a few days later.”

Another swatting attempt from a different caller. Thank you so much for helping me. I'm clearly one of my old buddy's houses that stole like 10 grand for me, and what I want you to do is send a swat team of bomb squad and a helicopter. What'd I do if we talked about this?

Carly Lane, Alfreda. It's the last street they run on the list. C.A.R.L.I.S.L.E. Carlaw Lane. Gotcha.

Is that a don't scream, sir? That's in Alfreda. Okay, and I have four... What is the call on the call? Give me time to catch up.

I have four B118. There were bearit name bomb bombs. Now I have them all set over timer. They go on, but exactly 30 minutes. Okay, and I want a swat team of bomb squad and a helicopter here.

And if I see any police cruisers, I'm telling everyone in the house and it's floating all the bombs early. Okay, you understand that? Okay, thank you. Thank you, bye.

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and of Chibu D.E. This new swatting attempt on the John's Creek Home comes in on the 25th of January. That's just nine days after the first call. But the police don't fall for the same trick twice.

Okay, okay, buddy. Yeah, you have that.

“I've got a storm growing out of my forehead right now.”

You don't have any of that.

Given that this is the second time in less than two weeks,

the same house has been targeted, the cops still need to check in on the family. So, they send a single officer to check everything is okay while Ben gives them the news. I called mom and dad to say, "What's going on?

This has been another call." Yes. Why is this happening to me and my family? I have no freaking idea, man. I don't know, but I promise you.

I'm going to find out that he did this. So, this wife was like, "Well, that's a mighty bold claim." Yeah, that thought going on, so, maybe I shouldn't have said that. The family aren't the only people Ben owes answers to. His police chief is still breathing down his neck.

And if Ben thought his boss was pissed when the first squatting call came through, it was nothing compared to the second. Because I don't know what's going on. I don't know who's doing this.

I don't know why they're doing it. But I got on to who it is. I don't want somebody's tailing jail.

“As the weeks go by, Ben's finally making good”

on his promise to the family and his boss.

He finds the first swatter by tracing the January 16th call

back to a teenager in a small New York town. But this teenager comes from a wealthy family with enough resources to stop Ben's investigation in its tracks. So, that hits the back burner.

It goes cold. I'm simultaneously working this other thing. The January 25th caller, though, want to be Napalm bomber. Ben's determined he's not going to be defeated

a second time. Doing the same exact thing that I did before. Ben's subpoena's call records from the past 30 days for the second number. He's looking for any connection between that

and the teenager from New York that proves they were working together. I was thinking they were both connected. And I was trying to do my evidence and I was trying to shove it together

and go, yeah, these are connected. The call logs come through a few weeks later.

And it seems like this second caller has been busy.

I had no idea how much information I was about to get back on a 30-day call log from Skype. Truck load of stuff. So, I started going through it. Ben spends hours looking at line after line

trying to spot any interaction between the first and second callers. But he can't find a single call nothing to link the two swattings. And then it finally comes to me

unlike these two are not connected. I got two different guys that I'm tracking at the same time. Got nothing to do with each other as far as I know they don't know each other.

The realization that these two hoax calls aren't linked changes Ben's whole perspective. Again, the first swatting had been all over the news. If this second call wasn't part of a conspiracy, maybe it was a copycat.

And if there's already one copycat, what's to stop there from being more? How many swatters could he be up against here? Ben can't shake the nagging feeling he's outnumbered.

So, decides to call in some unorthodox backup. We had three high schools in our city down there and we had some very intelligence students that were working several of the computer classes that they have down there.

So, I'd spoke to one of the teachers. I said, "Hey, do you ever discuss gaming "all the guys out of Yemen?" His loved that stuff. And I said, "I have a question about investigation

"I'm doing. "Do you think they'd be willing to talk to me?" They come back next year. He said, "I got three of them sitting right here. "They love to talk about this stuff."

So, I drove down the high school and I said, "Guys, tell me what I'm looking at here." The first thing his new teenage deputies let Ben know is just how much of a challenge it can be to unveil these swatters true identities.

They know that if they cloaked himself by enough different firewalls and VPNs and spoofing apps and multiple VIP numbers they have an enmity behind the screen to me and you it sounds like that's a big deal

to do this. They can route themselves through nine different countries in about 10 seconds. Thinking back to his digital trip to Russia via Luxembourg

Ben knows the kids are right. That's when they began to tell me about the absolute psychopaths that are out here in the gaming world. Some of them are absolutely ruthless and relentless

“and they tell me that you have to be very careful”

not to do anything to anger or provoke these people because they will do everything they can to destroy you. Back at the John's Creek Station

the high schoolers warning still echoing in his ears.

“He's looking at the towering stack of call logs on his desk.”

It makes war and peace look like a pamphlet.

With a heavy sigh, he picks up the first page

and starts again. Looking at some of the numbers and then I ran across one for Disneyland. A call made on the same day as the second John's Creek swatting attempt

on January 25th, 2014. That's like surely this guy didn't do that. On the next episode of You Are Next Ben finds out exactly what happened at Disneyland.

“He said there's a bomb at Space Mountain.”

And then discovers that not only is his curb

on a swatting rampage that just got called at one of these places. He's targeting young women and extorting them. I find out what an absolute animal this guy is. He would unleash hell upon him.

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Check out the Bench channel page on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. This is You Are Next an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and novel, hosted by me, Leo Alexander.

Lee Meyer is our senior producer. Verity DeCalla is our assistant producer. Sandra Schmuelle is our editor. Production management from Shuri Houston, Joe Savage and Charlotte Wolf.

For novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews, Willard Foxton and Selena Mehta,

who is director of development for novel. Special thanks to Carolyn Scherlevin at Miller, Corsonic Raymond LLP and to Ford Collier, who performed the woodwind for our theme music. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.

Hey, I'm Jeremy Schwartz from American Criminal. On our latest season, a deadly bomb blast rocks the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. But no one steps forward to take credit, leaving authority scrambling for answers.

Six months later, another bomb. This time outside an abortion clinic. As locals fear for their safety, investigators struggle to find evidence that will lead them to the killer.

Listen to American criminal domestic terror, the hunt for Eric Rudolph, wherever you get your podcasts.