HOW A HOAXER TERRORISED RESTAURANTS AROUND THE US FOR OVER A DECADE
An ordinary day at work quickly turned into a nightmare for Deborah in 2002, when one phone call had life-changing consequences. Then a naïve 19 year old, the teenager worked at her local Taco Bell in Statesboro, Georgia. Her shift that day took a menacing turn when her manager received a call from a police detective, accusing a petite blonde employee of stealing $50 from a customer.
As the only worker who fitted the description, Deborah was called into the office by her male manager. The police officer on the other end of the line then ordered the manager to conduct an extensive strip search on behalf of the cops to find the money, while the security cameras continued filming.
“I didn’t know what a strip search involved. I was very vulnerable,” Deborah recalled. “I [thought] if I didn’t succumb to the search, I’d lose my job or be arrested.”
After removing all her clothes, including her underwear, Deborah’s private parts were inspected before she was told to jump around, still naked, so any stolen cash would drop out – all on the detective’s orders. “The call lasted for hours, but it felt like eternity. It got scary. I felt like my body was violated,” she said in Paramount+ documentary Pervert: Hunting The Strip Search Caller. Her hell finally ended after her manager had enough and put down the phone.
The humiliating and degrading incident ruined Deborah’s life. She dropped out of school and quit her scholarship. “There was an innocence and a brightness to Deborah that was always there. When this happened, she went to a really dark place,” said her twin brother Daniel. Deborah would later discover that she was the 67th victim of a bizarre phone hoax, targeting young women working at fast food restaurants in small towns around America. Their managers would be tricked into conducting strip searches on these innocent girls by the “detective” on the line.
Louise Ogborn was another victim whose life was ruined by the hoax caller. The church-going 18-year-old former Girl Scout was coming to the end of her shift at McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Kentucky, one day in 2004 when the call came in. Like Deborah, she was taken to the back room for the body search after being accused of stealing money by “Officer Scott”. Scared and tearful, she was left with no choice but to obey orders. “I was completely undressed. I was embarrassed and really scared for my life,” she said. After her clothes were removed layer by layer, she was given a small apron to cover her modesty. When Louise’s female boss left to tend to the busy restaurant, the manager called her fiancé Walter Nix in to look after Louise. The cop on the line then told a naked Louise to kiss Nix, show him her genitals to prove that th
