News-Info-Alerts

Re: Phone Hoaxes An Epidemic

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 08, 2003

"Phone hoaxes not uncommon

Angie Moreschi/Eyewitness News Investigators

Indianapolis, August 4, 2003 - Donna Walker stands accused of impersonating the long-lost daughter of a Thorntown family.  This type of cruel hoax is becoming more common than you might imagine. There's no shortage of vicious prank calls and lawmakers want to do something about it.

A phone call in the middle of the night. A man identifies himself as a police officer and says your son, daughter, mother or father, is dead. But it's all a hoax.

Police say two Louisville, Kentucky teenagers, 19- year-old Michael Higgenbotham and 19-year-old Joseph Allgier, pulled off this cruel prank this spring.

This is one of the calls.

Higgenbotham: "Ma'am, this is, uh, Sgt. Winston with the police department. Your son, uh, is your son Kenny?"

Victim: "Yes."

Higgenbotham: "He has just been in a fatal accident, Ma'am."

Victim: "God, no!"

Higgenbotham: "He was pronounced dead about an hour ago."

Victim: "Oh, God."

Hard to believe, but there's more.

Higgenbotham: "This is Sgt. Winston with the Louisville Police Department. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sir, but your mother just passed away."

Victim: "What?"

Higgenbotham: "I'm sorry, sir. She passed about 30 minutes ago. Are you okay?"

Victim: "No. My mother's dead. I'm not okay.  Where is she?"

Higgenbotham: "She was at the University of Louisville Hospital, sir, but she's, uh, been taken to the morgue, sir. The morgue downtown. Do you know where that's at?"

Victim: "Yes."

Police say the two made more than a dozen calls and even recorded them on compact discs. Both are now charged with 16 counts of impersonating a police officer. Now imagine that kind of vicious phone prank directed at the families of service men and women fighting overseas.

"They received a call at night,” according to Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter. “They were told-- this was early in the war.. that their son had been killed in action in Iraq."

After hearing reports of these phone pranks made to families in Michigan, Delaware and Alabama, McCotter, who represents the Detroit area, decided to take action.

"Nothing we do to punish these people is enough in my book." McCotter sponsored a bill to make it a federal crime to misinform a relative of a member of the armed forces that their loved is dead or missing in action.

Indiana Congressman Steve Buyer is a co-sponsor.

As for Donna Walker, the woman behind the voice police say tricked the Sherrill family of Thorntown, she faces a maximum of four years in jail, if convicted.

Boone County prosecutor Todd Meyer says he is very frustrated that four years is the maximum penalty Donna Walker could face given the mental anguish this type of crime can cause.

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