Hey. You okay?
Hiya.
Can I tell you a secret?
There's something I need to tell you.
Can I trust you?
Let me start from the beginning.
Your name was mentioned.
They... They come for you.
And then they come for your family.
Beware.
Are they gonna get you?
Are you still worried?
A nightmare figure infiltrated their lives.
This was the biggest stalking case I'd ever seen.
{an8}Wait till I really get going.
{an8}Hundreds of victims.
Women, girls, family members.
Too many to comprehend.
I'm going to come and get you.
They take over your identity.
Like a shape-shifter.
The stalker seems to know everything.
What's up?
And guess what?
Not saying who I am.
But you have an idea.
What are they gonna do next?
Are they going to hurt you? It's terrifying.
Unsafe, watched, like prey.
Will you promise to keep it our secret?
I was ready to fight the battle of finding out who this stalker was.
Defend myself. Fight my corner.
But they knew that they were winning.
Not a word.
Otherwise, I'll find you, and you'll get hurt.
Before the madness,
before the nightmare,
I am full of happiness.
When I'm performing fire-breathing,
I feel really strong and powerful.
I know that the fire is completely in my control.
I've never been this free in my whole life.
And I'm always sharing everything I do on Instagram.
People care about what I'm doing.
And you know what? I love it.
Ow!
I couldn't imagine a world without social media.
My family all use social media.
We love to see what each other put on there.
Live videos, an event or a party.
I've always been a family girl. We're all really close.
That's my girl.
They're the happy social media memories.
Living life to the full.
Everywhere I went, social media followed me.
♪...define your goal ♪
Always a free spirit.
I love seeing the world and traveling.
♪ Close your eyes and fly... ♪
My Instagram grew and grew and grew.
I kind of started a career from Instagram.
- ♪...feel the magic so divine... ♪ - I started my modelling.
It was a great platform for connecting with photographers.
♪...you'll find your soul ♪
My Instagram, it's kind of like,
a personality of mine.
Helps me know who I am.
Without that, I think it would be pretty lonely.
You've got the confidence to be who you want to be.
I couldn't really see any negatives.
Don't know if I was just being naive,
but I would never have dreamt of what happened.
None of us did.
It was a weekend.
I got a message through from a lady called Tracey.
Hi, babe. Sorry to bother you.
She did modelling as well.
A bit of a different style to me, I'd say.
Being on social media, in general, you get quite a lot of messages.
She said something along the lines of, "I really like your work."
Have you modelled long, chick?
Naturally, I was like, "Thank you, that's very kind."
If you ever need any advice on anything, let me know.
And I didn't really think anything more about it.
Thanks, beautiful.
Then, around a week later,
I got a message through on Snapchat...
...which was a little bit more unusual
because Snapchat isn't really a platform I ever use,
and it come through from a pool photographer.
Hey.
{an8}Hiya.
{an8}It was, "Would you be interested in working together?"
And then he would say...
{an8}Can I tell you a secret?
"You can trust me."
Promise you'll keep this between us.
"What is it? Yeah, tell me what's happened?"
"What do you know?"
If I confess, it would spoil our friendship.
I had that fear in me of, like, "Oh God. What am I going to find out?"
I'm about to hear some information that's going to really rock me.
It would be absolute disaster for us all, Zoe.
It was very intense.
It was like, "I don't know how you're going to react,
but it's really bad."
And I was like, "Just tell me."
Zoe... I will,
but in a private deal,
like, you'll keep it between us.
In private.
Hold on, this seems a bit weird to come from a photographer,
so I went on Instagram,
and on the photographer's profile, I sent him a direct message.
"Really sorry, this is a bit strange. Are you speaking to me on Snapchat?"
And he was like, "No, I don't have Snapchat."
So, then, I went back on the Snapchat.
"Right, I know you're not who you say you are."
"Who are you?"
Are you worried?
The conversation started to turn.
It started to get a little bit more aggressive and mocking.
Why do you crave attention?
They didn't like me, and they were using
social media as their mask.
Who is this person?
Guess who I managed to talk to?
About 50 people.
Even some of your family's fellas.
Bet you're arsed now.
The fact that he knew quite a bit about me was alarming.
I thought pleading might help.
Why are you doing this? It's not fair.
I'm actually quite scared now.
Don't be scared. Let me start from the beginning.
It was yesterday when I made the fake Facebook of you.
So, he sent me two photos of me.
They were just modelling photos from my Instagram.
Guess who else I've contacted?
He sent them to my friend's dad.
The conversations got a bit flirty,
him thinking it was you.
It's all good fun, Zoe.
I needed to find out who it was that was doing this.
So, I noticed in the screenshots that he sent me
that this person hearted one
because it comes up with a little red heart,
and then the other one didn't.
I literally went through both of them photos
{an8}and wrote down every single person that had liked one of the photos
{an8}but not the other one.
And I ended up with about seven or eight names.
Right, I know it's one of these people.
And then I noticed,
in the very bottom corner of one of the photos,
there was a small icon which shows someone's profile picture,
and the second I caught sight of it, I knew instantly.
It's Tracey.
Ah!
The lady that had messaged me about a week before.
There's the picture.
The evidence is there. That's her.
This strange woman that seems to... have an interest in me,
trying to upset me a bit.
I wrote on Facebook,
warning people, "This is a woman that..."
"Just be wary of her."
So that was that.
Then... a photographer contacted me
and said, "That isn't her."
"That isn't Tracey."
"I know her personally."
{an8}"She's had an issue with someone making profiles about her."
Oh God.
She's obviously having her identity stolen.
Zoe... are you still worried?
We're back to square one.
Will you promise to keep it our secret?
Keep messaging constantly.
{an8}You've got to be thick-skinned for this next bit.
And at that point, I was scared...
...because this person didn't seem to want to stop.
He was only just starting.
I want you to do something for me.
You know we get on so well.
I didn't understand why. Why me?
My mum and brother invite me to go on holiday to Ibiza.
It was so fun.
Sunbathed, went on adventures.
Yeah, baby.
I was on cloud nine, having the best time with my boyfriend,
and I ended up meeting amazing people, famous people...
...influencers.
I really want to make friends.
I like to feel like I'm accepted.
The main girl, Lexie, she invited me to a boat trip.
♪ We're heading out for good times... ♪
They really took me into their circle.
♪... where the light shines brighter ♪
♪ So I'll take you... ♪
These girls really trust me, and we're really building a friendship.
♪ You and I can reach the sky Let's touch the top... ♪
It was like a dream.
Yeah, we've made it to this private beach.
This is so lovely.
I just felt bliss.
♪ We're heading out for good times ♪
I get home from my trip.
I was back at university with my friends.
I'm going to classes, and my boyfriend was living at home with me.
Jodie, one of the girls on the boat, messaged me.
{an8}Don't drop me in it, babe.
I know something huge.
She started to say weird things that really made me nervous.
You know you can trust me anytime.
She said, "Can I tell you a secret?"
"I know what you did."
I remember my heart, like, pumping.
"What do you mean? Have I done something wrong?"
- Can't tell. - She was like, "No, it's a secret."
You know Rick?
She said I had been talking to Lexie's boyfriend.
Her fella, Rick.
He just said some nice things about you, from that day.
"I haven't spoken to him. Why do you think I have?"
He said, you know, you got on quite well in Ibiza, doll.
That's really weird.
Like, that's a really odd and weird thing to do.
My boyfriend told me that I should ring Lexie.
And I said, "Your friend Jodie has been WhatsApping me,
and she said that I've been speaking to her boyfriend."
And she was like, "How strange. I'm going to get in touch with her."
"Just bear with."
Lexie ended up calling me back, and she said, "Jodie's just texted me."
"She hasn't texted you at all."
"Just ignore it. It's fine. We get it a lot."
So...
It wasn't Jodie that messaged me.
It was just some stranger.
Phew. It's fine.
Over, I guess, a week,
my boyfriend started to be really quiet.
He didn't want to spend time with me when I got home in the evening.
He kept to himself.
Why... Why is he being so distant?
And he was like, "Okay, I know you're cheating on me."
"I've had all this information."
"I know that you went clubbing and you got with this security guard."
I was like, "What's happening?"
He said, "Okay. Yeah, there's two girls that have been messaging me on Instagram,
and I know that it's true
because they described everything you were wearing that night."
And he showed me their accounts, and I didn't recognize the accounts,
but they looked like girls that were at university age.
They had followers. They had, like, a full profile.
So, I knew that they were real girls.
And I said, "Babe, like, it was not me."
{an8}"I... I don't know why they're messaging you."
{an8}"I think it must be a girl that just doesn't like me,
{an8}or they like you and want to break us up."
Things were never the same after that.
{an8}Those girls...
{an8}definitely planted a seed in his mind
because, a few months after, he did say he didn't trust me.
He ended things with me,
um, and that he doesn't want to have any contact with me.
Like, he was, like, my first true love, my first boyfriend.
I still really loved him,
but since those messages, it just...
I could see it in his eyes.
{an8}It just was...
{an8}The love was getting less and less until there was nothing.
I remember thinking,
"Who are these girls? Do I know them? Who is the security guard?"
I didn't actually put two and two together... straightaway.
And it was the girls, both of the girls,
saying to him,
"Can I tell you a secret?"
I worked in an office as a paralegal,
8:00 till 6:00 every day.
Yeah, that was my life.
Sorry to interrupt you. Babe, it's urgent.
I got this message from this profile called Rachel.
Can I trust you?
Oh God, that's a weird message to say. Like, what's she going to tell me?
Babes?
What is going on?
I swear my life, right...
She's calling me "doll," calling me "chick."
This must be a girl I know.
Don't tell her, will you? Yeah?
I went into my mum and dad,
and I said I've had this really weird message,
and they told me just to ignore it.
"It will go away."
When I woke up in the morning,
I had loads of messages from loads of different accounts.
Will you be truthful?
Friends, family,
old school friends,
saying that they had had messages too from accounts asking if they knew me.
I did something today.
It spiraled out of control.
Can I say what I know in secret?
She was involving my friends and their husbands.
There's something I want to say. You'll go mad though.
And then I thought, "Right, I'm going to say, like,
'If you get added by a fake account, can you report and block?'"
But I needed to make sure people knew it wasn't me.
Yeah, that went down well.
It made it worse.
She obtained every single person's number connected to me.
Laughing out loud.
You know Lia?
Aww, how did you meet?
Snapchat, WhatsApp,
Facebook, every social media,
fake accounts of me, my family,
insinuating that something had happened...
Lia used to talk about you.
Don't say a word.
...messaging males, pretending to be me in a sexual way.
{an8}She said, you know, you got on amazing at one party.
People's husbands, boyfriends, my dad,
family friends,
any men.
Your name was mentioned.
You know, you both try to spend time together at family events.
We're talking, invite older males round to my house.
It was very sexual.
Lips sealed.
People was messaging me thinking that I'm...
messaging their husband or their boyfriend...
...with my picture
and my name.
Bye.
It was escalating.
I was getting 100 messages, 200 messages a day.
Who is this person?
Is it someone I saw day-to-day?
I'd be at work and someone would help me with something,
and make a comment like, "You don't need to go to the gym."
I'd be like, "How do you know I go to the gym?"
Everyone was guilty to me.
Was it a friend?
Zoe.
It was me made the Facebook of you.
Not for fun. For a reason.
Not a word.
One day, I'll tell you what I did.
They seemed to be gaining more and more information about me.
For example, he seemed to know all the exercise classes I was going to.
I lived on my own.
I didn't know if he knew where I lived,
if this person is sitting outside.
That was frightening.
Don't be scared. Okay?
I wasn't replying.
Just everything that they said I was screenshotting.
I thought I need to keep a record of this. I need proof.
{an8}Why are you screenshotting?
Screenshots won't get you anywhere.
And you can do better.
{an8}Not saying who I am.
But you have an idea.
It must be someone that I know taunting me.
Sounds like you're sulking.
Mocking me for being upset.
He didn't like me for some reason.
He wanted to upset me.
He knew that he was winning at that.
We can talk when I next see you.
And you do know me well.
A friend messaged me just saying, "Just wondering, are you messaging me?"
And I said, "No, like, what number?"
And then they sent me the number.
Yeah, that's not me.
I got a message from my phone saying,
"Hi, Zoe. It's Nathan from boot camp."
I looked at the number,
and it was exactly the number that had messaged my friend.
I was like, "Oh my God, it's Nathan."
Nathan's been behind all of this.
It made sense to me.
He knew about my family. He knew about my relationships.
He knew the sort of information that this person knew.
The next message from that number was,
"Are you still coming to your session at two o'clock?"
I did have a session booked.
So I was like, "This is definitely Nathan,
the only person that would know about this appointment."
It all made sense.
So I rang boot camp.
Nathan's wife answered.
"Has Nathan just messaged me?"
And she was like, "No."
"Oh, you've just messaged us."
Sorry, like, what?
Nathan was there with her...
Hey, Zoe.
...and I said, "Hold on, what is this message that you've got from me?"
And he read it out. It was, "It's Zoe, hehe."
"What number do you have on record for me?"
And Nathan had sent him my number.
It was that whole roller coaster again of, "I know who it is," and then,
that realization of, "Oh no, this is just another level."
Hello.
Who are you?
"Why are you doing this?"
It was silent. There was just breathing down the phone.
Thank you so much for all the support, everyone,
tonight, over the last weekend, over the last week.
I really appreciate it.
Since my boyfriend moved out,
I was still vlogging every day
about things I was doing, places I was going to.
And I'm about to go and perform for a virtual festival.
And, actually, my Instagram really started to grow.
I started to get to know lots of different photographers.
That led to me working with a photographer called Lee.
Lee does boudoir lingerie shoots and implied nude shoots.
Lovely.
Great. That's it. Nice.
And we shot all day.
Lee's also a really funny guy.
Hold that. Hold that.
Straightaway, I felt really comfortable with this photographer.
I choose the photos I want to keep, and then I get to decide
who I want to give them to, or where I want to put them.
It's a business for me. Everything is in my control.
That's it.
So I don't want these photos just going out to everyone.
When I left, I was really happy.
A senior guy I used to work with
messaged me something... weird,
apologizing, saying that he's been having a conversation with me
and he's only just realizing now that it's not me.
I'm like, what do you mean that you've had... a message from me?
I haven't messaged you.
I had a dread. I had a whole dread in my body.
He said that we'd been having a flirty conversation
and that I had sent nude photos to him.
He is old,
and I am, like, a 20, 21-year-old girl.
Like, flirting with him, sending nudes?
When I got the screenshots through, I saw the photos of me, naked,
from the shoot that I did with Lee.
How did he get those photos?
I have no idea.
Where have these photos gone? What has Lee done with them?
I was, like, angry.
Um...
I didn't want to tell anyone...
because...
I was really embarrassed.
Like, I knew I hadn't sent them the pictures,
but there was evidence of me sending the pictures
and having this conversation, but I knew that I hadn't done it.
It was just so embarrassing, and I'm, like, upset
because I do have respect for myself.
Yeah, um...
In, like, a few hours of me finding this out...
...uh, Lee called me,
and he just kept apologizing and saying sorry.
He told me he was talking to an Abby on WhatsApp,
and he just assumed it was me.
That Abby had asked for the photos from the shoot,
and Lee re-sent the photos to Abby.
But it wasn't me.
I feel, like, gross and sick and...
Yeah, the magnitude...
just felt insane
because I was having this realization that I'd been a target for weeks now.
I did not know if it was one person. Is it a gang?
And I don't know where they're going to pop up.
Every day, it's something different. It's chaos.
I don't even know what I'm running from.
I don't even know what they look like.
I don't know. Is it just me or other girls?
I suspected my ex-boyfriend,
my best friend, housemates.
Is it a girl?
How do they know how I text, how I type?
I suspected so many people.
I even suspected my family.
I couldn't trust anyone...
and I had to be really careful about what I said... who I said it to.
They had to be someone close to me.
We thought it was somebody Lia must know,
someone near us trying to destroy your family and friends.
This person is creating this... rift between all connections in your life,
fake accounts, messaged my friends.
I've only just started, by the way.
"I'll punch you. I hate you."
Bitch.
"You silly cow. You fat slag."
You think I'm jealous of you.
It kind of got worse.
Now we have laughing faces.
Scared. She seemed scared. Yeah.
I just felt like she was getting closer.
She was creeping in further.
She was, like, closing in.
Wait till I really get going.
All my friends were going out. I just didn't want to go.
It's the first time she's not wanted to go into town.
So, we went with Lia to town that night.
We went to the place that Lia was going to go to, who have doormen,
and we told them what was happening.
We asked them to look after her.
And even the doorman said, "You're not to go to toilet on your own."
I mean, why was she having that fear?
What? She wasn't allowed to go to the toilet on her own.
My mum, she used to drive me to places,
pick me up from places.
People would walk me to her car.
I'm lucky to have that close relationship that we have.
I'm lucky for the support that she gave me.
We've got steps going to our bedroom.
She just sat on them one night,
and just burst into tears
because she just said, "Mum, how am I going to get this to stop?"
I did have, like, a samurai sword
because I'd felt that unsafe,
and for me, it felt safer to have something to protect myself,
and that's the steps that I took.
I went back home to my mum's and dad's house.
I feel so alone.
I went from a life being with... all of my friends...
carefree...
to me not being able to trust anyone.
The Stalker... took on my persona,
and then this fake Abby targeted one family member.
It spread from me to my family,
and no one really trusts anything I say anymore.
And I'm just trapped.
I was out with one of my best friends.
The phone rang.
It was the number, and my friend said, "Let me answer this."
So she answered it and said, "Hello. Stop being weird. Leave her alone."
And put the phone down.
They instantly messaged.
They said, "Oh, hi, Lily. How's..." And they used her father's name.
They somehow knew my best friend's father's name.
And she looked at me, and I looked at her,
and, again, it was, "How do they know this?"
How do they know who her dad is?
I know how to hack your account, you know,
and your closest family's accounts.
They know everything,
what I'm wearing, who I'm with, what I'm doing.
There's no need to say he doesn't know where I live.
He probably does.
David's account might be interesting.
I used to picture in my mind that they have a diagram,
there was me in the middle, and then they'd have my family,
and then they'd have everyone connected.
And then they'd have another connection, and that would be my school friends.
And then people coming off that, my work friends, my social friends.
Because, at this point, I didn't know
that there was other women out there that was affected by this.
Me too. I thought, "It's just me."
They'd established my family and my relationships,
details and portfolios,
and webs of connections and what connections meant.
Lia used to talk about you. Don't say a word.
Sophisticated, cleverly done.
Hand on heart, it's about Rob.
How do you draw that much information? I couldn't believe... I just...
It can't be one person.
It can't.
Guess who else I've contacted.
Obviously, more than one person...
...were building this web and then using it against me,
or using it to gain more information.
Nothing was private anymore.
Who are these people? How do they do it?
Not a word. Like, you'll keep it between us.
Like a spider's web.
That's how they build their path of destruction.
You need to be very careful.
Enough was enough.
I had to go to the police.
I remember being sat there,
and I felt a little bit embarrassed because I was like,
"So I've got this social media platform."
"I have some of my modelling portfolio on there."
And that itself felt a little bit embarrassing.
I think there's always this sense of if you display a certain thing,
you need to expect a certain reaction from people,
and that was the response I kind of got from the police.
I felt I was being blamed for part of the problem.
So the police's response to the... to my crime report
was that no crime had actually taken place.
Nothing had happened to me.
{an8}Their response gave me no comfort, nothing.
{an8}So, I said to the police, "I've got the number."
And I said, like, "Trace where the calls are coming from."
But he sat there, and he said, "Oh yeah, we can do that,
but we only do it in high-profile cases, like a rape or a murder."
And I remember, at that point, I sat there...
I sat there and I said, "So, you're not going to do anything
until something like that happens?"
I walked out of there.
They don't care.
When someone... has that deep fear,
and then to basically make you feel like, "Oh, it's nothing. It's nothing."
Babes...
police won't do anything.
He was right.
The stalker knew.
Nobody knows who I am.
I had no idea how to sort this out,
that I just thought the best way to deal with this is to go away.
So, my friend and I decided to book a trip to Ibiza.
Before we fly to Ibiza, I receive an Instagram message.
You know you're going to Ibiza. You need to be very careful.
Beware.
I was thinking, "Beware of what?"
I'm gonna come to Ibiza and get you.
I'll find you,
and you'll get hurt.
Not in a violent way. In other ways.
I was really scared.
Nobody fucks about with me.
I felt like it was a threat, and I was in danger.
I don't want to get hurt.
So, I made a call to Kent Police,
and they said, "Do you think you're in... immediate danger?"
And I said,
"I think so because I don't know if he knows where I live."
She told me that the police would come within the next hour.
Twenty minutes later, I receive a call.
He worked for the police,
and he said that he doesn't think I'm in immediate danger.
So, he asked me, "Do you want us to come?"
And with him saying that he thought I wasn't in danger,
I was made to feel really silly.
So I just said, "Oh, it's okay."
And they put the phone down, and I never had a call back.
I could just hear in the policeman's voice
that he thought I was silly.
But, in my heart, I don't think it's okay. I'm scared.
I used to go out and, like, not be scared at all.
It makes me feel sad that just having something as simple...
as feeling safe taken away from you,
for no reason whatsoever...
And, like, I just feel that...
I've worked so hard
making connections with people...
I've worked so hard making connections with people...
...that have just been ruined.
People don't want anything to do with me now.
It's upsetting... ...and it's so confusing.
And then one day, my ex-partner messaged me,
saying, "I've received this strange message from someone."
He sent me a screenshot of this conversation saying,
"Oh, you know, there's a secret."
It was a guy who I couldn't link to anything.
There was something different about that message.
When it's been photographers before, or people I've known,
there's always been that link towards me.
This name, I had no idea who this person was.
There was no common ground that they would be contacting me on,
so it did feel different.
I went on to Facebook.
There was this profile that come up, looked different to the other ones.
It was this guy.
He seemed normal, I'd say.
I put that name into Google,
and, instantly, what come up
was an article from the Northwich Guardian ten years ago.
And I was like...
Everything that I was reading, that's what he's done to me.
It was like reading it about myself.
This... this was the person, Matthew Hardy.
I was ready to fight him.
Now I can get justice.
I'm going to get you, Matthew.