I promise that I will hurt you (Very long post)

The BBQ Pit
1

Yesterday I get a phone call from my commander at work. Seems that my wife had called the headquarters, crying, saying that she had called the police to the house because some guy who said he knew me had threatened her and our boys over the phone.

I call home to hear my wife still very upset and in tears, but a sheriff’s deputy is there. I tell my co-workers that I’ll be back when I can and leave.

Rushing home (about a 15 minute drive) the whole time, I’m wondering who the FUCK would be threatening my wife and kids. So far as I know, I have no enemies. It’s been some time since I’ve wronged anybody on such a scale that I could imagine violence being done to myself, much less my family.

Pulling onto my street, I pass the deputy pulling out. When I get home, I get the story. Phone rings. Wife answers. “Hi, I’m a friend of your husband. I just got back from Panama and I thought I’d see about getting taking him out fishing this weekend.” This immediately sets off my wife’s curiosity as she knows that I haven’t handled a fishing rod since I was about 12 years old. She begins to make the usual polite statements. “You must have the wrong number.” “Who were you looking for again?” Yada yada yada. He coninues for a few minutes trying to convince her. Finally, “If you give me your name and number I’ll pass it on to my husband.”

He gives a name and number and then says that he’ll just come on by RIGHT THEN so they can hang out. To which he’s told he’ll do no such thing as she doesn’t believe him. If he shows up, she’ll call the cops.

Then he snaps. “Do you care about your children? If you hang up on me I’ll come over there and FUCK YOU UP! Do you hear me?!”

She can’t take anymore. Hangs up. Calls cops. Tries to call my office. But I’m working in another office this week. Can’t remember the number so calls HQ. She’s so upset she can’t even remember what section I work in. Luckily the guy at the desk was able to figure out where I worked and managed to track me down.

The cop says 90% of the time it’s a crank. Just some guy getting his jollies out of trolling for a reaction or trying to get somebody to talk dirty to. We’re rather sure that’s all it was as I didn’t recognize the name and the phone number didn’t check out. Mrs. Drillrod has calmed down, and is doing much better now but frankly I don’t think she feels very safe in our home right now.

Now for the reason this is in the Pit:

You ignorant rat-fuck bastard. You are a cowardly, immature and sick little turd. What kind of asshole gets off by scaring a good and wonderful woman by THREATENING HER KIDS?

Don’t you have the goddamn testicular fortitude to play your games where face-to-face?

YOU had better pray that you don’t ever actually get up the balls to try that shit in person. If I find out who you are, I will make you wish you’d ended up a fucking stain in your father’s sheets. I’ll break your fucking fingers to ensure you won’t be dialling the phone any time soon and I’ll break you garbage-spewing jaw so you won’t be able to threaten any woman or children.

Most likely, we’ll never know who you were and this’ll pass as an unfulfilled rant, like most.

But, you are a worthless piece of crap and frankly you’d be better off if I found you, than if SHE did.

2

Would it be possible for someone to stay with her for the next few days? He apparently knows enough about you to know that you are in the service, anyway. Not to make things worse for you, but I can understand that Mrs. drillrod might not feel safe right now. I wonder if they would consider tapping the phone, or if the phone company would do anything.

Please keep us posted. This worries me.

3

Spider Woman, thanks a lot for the concern.

Basically she was told to let the phone company know, which she did. The phone company just told her to keep track of any future calls like this and to hit #57 if one comes in. This will apparently track the number for future retrieval.

The Caller ID came up “Private Call” so that’s no help. Apparently, local phone calls aren’t normally trackable.

And actually, right now I’ve got a job with rather normal hours, no extended field problems or anything. Also we do have some good neighbors.

Like I said, just a rant over what is most likely nothing.

4

What a supreme asshole. Someone getting their jollies from scaring people like that? There are some sick fucks out thre. It’s sad.

5

My great-aunt Lil, who passed away several years ago at the ripe old age of 101, lived all her life in rural Michigan - the UP. She told us the story once of - many years ago - getting several obscene phone calls over successive nights. After she simply began hanging up the phone, the caller called back, infuriated, apparently, that she was unwilling to sit there and listen to him pant and moan. He told her she better not hang up on him again, because he had been watching her and knew where she lived.

She replied calmly - and truthfully - “Then you know I have a 12 gauge shotgun, and it’s loaded with four-ought shot. Come by anytime.”

Never heard from the guy again.

  • Rick
6

Ooh! Ooh! I forgot, I have an anecdote that I can share.

When I was about 14, I already had my own telephone line. I used to get a LOT of weird calls. Often people calling for the people that had the number before, as well as crank stuff.

But I started getting a series of breathing calls. It was really weird. Then I got a call on my answering machine “oh, I want to stroke your pussy…” before I cut it off.

So we called the police. They managed to trace the calls. To a telephone booth in a prison.

Man, did that freak me out for a long time. They never called again, though.

7

I find it remarkable that they could not trace this call knowing the time it was made. They must have VERY old equipment, like 20/30 year old mechanical switching systems.

8

Yeah, you’d think so. But, that’s what she was told. Maybe it’s just that due to it probably being a crank, they don’t see a need. No cite, just inherant paranoia.

LaurAnge, thanks, just the image I needed. :eek:
Well, at least he’d already be in jail. :slight_smile:

9

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Revtim *
**

Actually, it isn’t all that surprising, either. Consider the amount of storage space a day’s worth of local calls would take up in your average switch. It’s much more important to track all the LD calls so you can bill them…

10

I wouldn’t call it nothing. Probably there’s no real physical danger, but since your wife is upset about this (and I don’t blame her a bit) it’s something.

If you have an answering machine, I suggest letting the machine pick up all calls. Let your friends and relatives know about this, I’m sure they’ll understand. If you don’t have an answering machine, now might be a good time to get one.

Ask the phone company about a service that blocks all unidentified calls. I know that such services exist, I just don’t know how much they are.

11

Drillrod, I think your wife handled this very well. When I was 19 and just starting out on my own, I got a few obscene calls, and they are very disturbing - it really does feel like the person on the other end is actually watching you. One way I discovered to get rid of an obscene caller was to pretend to not understand what he was talking about. It might not work for everyone, but it sure worked for him - he got frustrated and hung un, and never bothered me again. I hope you’ve heard the last of this “person”.

12

The only heavy breathing/prank phone call I ever got was when I was about 12 or 13. I answered the phone for my mother as she was busy cooking dinner. When I answered this guy asked what I was doing and he sounded just like a male friend of my mother’s so I said we were getting ready to eat dinner could he call back later. He said no he wanted to talk to “her” now. Not sure which ‘her’ he meant, I said are you looking for “Candy”? And he said I’d love to see your candy.

Okay I was a kid and I just hung up horrifed by what he’d said. See I thought it was my mother’s friend who had said that because my mother and I sounded exactly the same on the phone and I figured he thought he was talking to her. Needless to say I figured it out after talking to my mother and she was a little freaked out by it.

You go through a lot of hell when your mother’s name is “Candy”…

That just came back to me as I was reading so I figured I’d share with the group.

13

Drill- I have a handgun and a shovel you can borrow. How big is your backyard?

On the subject of obscene calls, I remember reading about one… I honestly can’t recall if it’s true or not, but here goes.

Seems this woman kept getting calls every couple of nights, and the guy on the other end would just breathe heavy. After several weeks of this, she decided to take action.

She started to talk to him. He never said anything, of course, but she didn’t let him.

“You know, my friend Mabel, well she has a bowling league team and they bowl every thursday and Saturday. Her husband George is on the team but he can’t throw well, kind of like my husband who had really bad arthritis. Anyway, Mabel just had her hair done and it’s this simply awful shade of yellow. In fact, I was just telling Agnes yesterday over Bridge and she said that Mabel had been thinking of dying it red but Sally, she’s the lady who runs the Kut n’ Kurl you know, anyway Sally convinced her that the red would be too obvious, and I think secretly Sally wanted to add ‘at your age’ or something but Mabel’s been going there so long Sally doesn’t want to make her mad and all…”

After about an hour- non stop- the caller hung up. Hasn’t called back since.

I figured if somebody called me like that, I’d grab a paperback or something and recite it to 'em. The key is don’t let 'em interrupt. I bet if I used anything by Piers Anthony I could get the guy to run screaming into the night in less than ten minutes. :smiley:

14

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Lynn Bodoni *
**

I have this feature - I believe it’s costing me less than $10 per month.

It’s fabulous - I get a different ring if the call generates from a number that caller ID can’t recognise. The caller hears normal ringing then a recording picks up and they’re told that this # does not accept unidentified calls and given a message instructing them to identify themselves. When I answer the phone I hear “You have a call from (their recorded name)_”. At that point I can press 1 of 4 options to deal with the call. Accept call - decline call- send to voicemail - or the ever valuable “take me off your list”. Phone solicitations, the bane of my daysleeping existence, have been reduced to practically zero in the course of 4 months.

I dunno about your local phone company, but I was able to order this feature online through mine, Qwest. No lines no waiting.

Cheers

15

Hmmm.
I had occasion not so long ago to have the police initiate a wire tap on my line.

Now i’m not sure how different things are where you are but at the time I was on a GSM (read full digital) line and the calls were being made from another country.

The police here had no way of tracing any calls made prior to my nofiying them and giving permission for a full wire tap (okay not the real term they used …I think they called it a line trace but the upshot was that all of my calls would actually be recorded along with originating location etc).
They did this until I had the chance to change all my buisness cards and publicise my new number.

It worked fine but my problem was this … no history for calls could be pulled. I like to think that thats due to some archacic exchange problems here in Ireland but I would hate to think that some guy who called say… our national broadcaster to advise of an imminent bombing or some such couldn’t be tracked.

I think it may be down to how much power the cops are prepared to wield and the seriousness of the crime.If Osama
makes a call I’m pretty sure the feds will have that phonebox obliterated before he gets much past “can i interest you in a full life policy”.I would suggest that you ride them a little to see if it is possible for them to take it further than they are telling you.

Now FWIW I’m a big boy now , crank calls whilst particularly annoying when they happen 50/60 times in the middle of nights when you’re on call dont really get to me too much. Sure I had the whole graphic death threat thing going on but it was more humourous than anything else. … and to tell the truth my caller had some innovative ideas involving music lyrics and such that admittedly had me smile at their ingenuity.

So thats that. I can take it. No biggie.
But if someone starts making threats to someone I care about and who takes them seriously then yeah the hunting down and severe pain and danger thing will happen. drillrodI know you must wish that the caller had gotten you instead.
Crank callers are pathetically cowardly in what they do , but when they start making threats to a woman about her babies then they reach a level lower that beast and pain needs to happen.

I do hope this was just a case of a random dialler getting his jollies by being a twisted fuck drillrod and that he has forgotten the number.

If not then make sure the cops do their job.
They should be able to advise you on things like whistles and techniques for combatting this.
Changing your number can also go a long way towards narrowing suspects down.

16

We normally do screen our calls, but my work and some of our family come up as either private or unavailable, so she figured business as usual. We are now screening our calls, and we’ve turned on the blocker for caller-id blocked calls.

We did let our friends with caller-id blocker know first.

Welcome to the boards Arieanne. Thanks for making this your first post. I’m sure there are plenty of interesting threads to come just from that one little fact. :smiley:

Doc Nickle, actually I own several machetes and there is a nice, muddy lake not half a mile from my house.

17

If you have caller id, at least on my phone system (the idiotically named Qwest), you can hit a key combo (I believe #66) which triggers an unidentified call blocker. It’s built in, no addt’l fees (I’ve got a friend who calls from work and it took us about a week to figure out why he was getting those “This caller has chosen to block unidentified calls” message when he called, since I hadn’t subscribed. It turned out that I’d hit the combo while trying to remember the “last number called” buttons.

Fenris

18

One time when I was 14 I got a call at about 8:30 on a Friday night. Some guy saying he wanted to do a survey. Whatever, I said, why not. The subject was abortion, but it wasn’t really a survey at all, (“What would you say if I told you that X number of children are destroyed before birth every day?”).

That much was weird, but then the guy started talking about suicide and talking about how he tried to commit suicide. The whole call was bizarre, but that part of it really started making me feel uncomfortable.

I can’t quite remember what I did to get of the phone, if I hung up or whatever, but I remember feeling extremely unnerved by the call and that was a call in which nobody even threatened me in any way, it was just a weird call.

By comparison I can’t imagine what your wife is going through, drillrod but if you find out who that guy is I hope that your friendly law enforcement authorities will look the other way while you deal with him.

19

Oh, one more piece of advice:

Your voice should be on the answering machine, not your wife’s. I suppose it’ll discourage the '“preying on teh weak wife” thing he might be going for.

20

Or, as in my case, a mechanical voice. No clue to the caller as to who’s on this end.

That said, I’d dearly love for a crank-caller to get my wife on the line. After she got done scaring the bejeezus out of them, they’d think twice about ever doing it again (Mrs. Tranq can be frightening when she’s pissed!).