Mail dump

How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against
Fags, and atheist like yourself.

That sounds like America as it exists today; indeed it sounds like the anti-gay hate group that is the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Nazinger.

Wow. I can't believe you have to put up with this shit. I heartily approve of your new policy.

I fully endorse this new policy.

now we can start emailing them....and spamming them to death.

Entertainment on a regular basis in your mailbox, I don't see the problem.

It'a amazing how these religious bozos think that their magic god-thing can't fight its own battles. Do they, at some level, realize that their religion is just a made-up pile of stinking crap?

Disregard that; I suck cocks.

This has reminded me of a bit in one of Margaret Cho's standup routines (I think it's in Assassin).

During the '04 election, she did a lot of campaigning for the Dems, and, well, Margaret's comedy isn't really friendly toward Republicans, conservatives, or the Pope ("Queen, Please!")

She got a bunch of email like this, with all the intelligence of the offspring of brother and sister Freepers, and she prints the emails....and starts getting emails from the haters like, "Please call off the gay people."

"It was like I'd unleashed a sleeper cell of Al-Gayda!"

Re #4:

Spamming them? How about reporting them to the appropriate authorities?

Disregard that; I suck cocks.

You say it like that's a bad thing.

Could we get away from this idea that cocksucking is some kind of grievous insult? It's a wonderful skill, and it's practitioners should be praised not denigrated.

Man, here I wrote a NICE mail to Mr Myers and got no response. No wonder, if this is the kind of a-hole mails he get, i bet all of it ends up in the junk except some lucky few.

Well, good Policy PZ, cheeses, and its amazing they call ATHEIST immoral.

No! Don't respond by spamming them back! These could very well be fake or phished email addresses (I think you can count on it for the first one).

The first address came from 1800flowers.com.

You know what that means: Time to send emails to the corporation. :D

PZ -

You might want to forward Mr. Roll's submission back to HR at 1800Flowers. Most companies would have a corporate stroke if they knew that their employees were using company e-mail for threats like this.

This is actionable in court. You can at least have the satisfaction of watching one of your attackers burn.

- Robert

What do emails say?

Nothing.

Who knows who actually writes them.

That is, even with the IP information and so on...who are these people? Are they acquaintances of the Prof, sympathizers, who agree to write letters to make the prof's opponenets look worse? Are they just idiots with nothing better to do? Idiots who have no dog in this fight and just want the Prof to notice them?

An email tells me nothing about who really wrote them. It doesn't tell me anything about those who disagree with the Prof.

Sort of like the Bible.

Just because someone says they wrote something,doesn't mean anything in the text is true or accurate or even if the identity of the person is as claimed. It doesn't tell me anything about the true motivation of the person writing the email. Are they really in opposition to the Prof, or are they playing a convoluted game to help the Prof raise sympathy for himself?

Historical Critical Method v. Blind Faith in the Prof.

You decide!

And on another note, please tell me that the mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com addy was spoofed.

#9
yeah cause email isn't really anonymous is it.... :P

I shouldn't laugh, but including a mini anti-gay rant in the middle of an email from 1800Flowers.com just tickles my bitter queeny heart.

@ eyerock #4: Ha!

Seriously, these people are acting like demented barbarians. They NEED to be spammed. And prayed for, of course . . . in the new sense of the word ;)

I'm a long-time lurker; this is my first comment on Pharyngula. I love this blog!

One wonders if 1800flowers.com approves of company resources being used to send violent threats.

The first guy is emailing PZ from his 1800flowers.com work address. I wonder how his boss would take it if someone complained that he is sending violent threats using a corporate email address? Wouldn't he get fired for this?

I'm telling you, you really need to get a giant octopus bodyguard.

Scary people. At least one refers to you respectfully as "Professor" before threatening to snap your neck - must be new to the whole death-threat thing.

Horrifying.

Whether or not the first e-mail was spoofed, I suggest you send the email straight to their company's HR and tell them to check it out.

I'm always amused with emails that have that disclaimer at the bottom, as if just SAYING "any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited" makes it legally binding.

No! Don't respond by spamming them back! These could very well be fake or phished email addresses (I think you can count on it for the first one).
Hmm. If PZ thinks they're fake e-mails, why is he bothering to post them? I'm not saying he shouldn't, I'm just curious.

And yet, Chuck (#15), even without an IP address, your posting tells me a lot about you. For one thing, it tells me that you are an offensive little troll.

Hey, the first guy works for a florist!

The second's only managed three posts in four years!

He is not saying the emails are fake, but the return email addresses may be stolen or faked. However, the header on the 1800flowers one seems to be legitimate with the proper follow-back to the originating servers.

Judging by the Received headers on the first one, it certainly looks like it did actually come from where it claims to come from.

#26: "Hmm. If PZ thinks they're fake e-mails, why is he bothering to post them? I'm not saying he shouldn't, I'm just curious."

The emails aren't fake, he just thinks the addresses are. Someone still sat down and wrote that bilge.

These could very well be fake or phished email addresses (I think you can count on it for the first one).

In which case the IT people at 1800Flowers will want to know about it. You may also be giving these people too much credit. They may be too stupid to realize that a threat sent via email is not anonymous.

Received: from 1800flowers.int (mail2.800-flowers.net [205.153.87.31]) by mtain-a.tc.umn.edu (UMN smtpd) with ESMTP for ; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:08:01 -0500 (CDT)

UMN's mail server identified the source as 800-flowers.net

Domain Name: 800-FLOWERS.NET

Registrant:
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC.
Domain Administrator
One Old Country Road, Suite 500
Carle Place, NY 11514
US
domainadmin@1800flowers.com
+1.5162376000 Fax: +1.5162376101

I fully support you putting this information out. I certainly hope that the poster from 1800 Flowers has had his email stolen. Otherwise, I wouldn't want to be in the office once HR gets through. Good Luck!

With regards the first email, the IP address 205.153.87.31 resolves to mail2.800-flowers.net. The IP addresses that begin with 10. are internal addresses and are only of use for working out from where within a network an e-mail originated.

It is easy to put in a false email address as the originator, but quite a bit harder to fake the servers an e-mail passes through. Either the author of that e-mail is good at spamming or he (and I suspect it is a he for no other reason women tend not to be so aggressive) or they really do have access to an e-mail account with 800-flowers.net

Also the disclaimer at the bottom indicates it may well come from a genuine account. Given what the e-mail indicates about the intelligence level of the author I would be surprised if they would have thought to add that.

JRY wrote: And on another note, please tell me that the mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com addy was spoofed.

I wouldn't think so. Looks like the IP address is registered to 1-800-Flowers as well. It appears this guy is sending violent threats from a work computer, using his work email address. Not smart.

205.153.87.31 - Geo Information
IP address 205.153.87.31
Host mail2.800-flowers.net
Location US US, United States
City Westbury, NY 11590
Organization 1-800-FLOWERS
ISP 1-800-FLOWERS

1-800-flowers' human resources department can be reached at:
careers@1800flowers.com
- or -
One Old Country Road
Suite 500
Carle Place, NY 11514

And we will know they are Christians by their love, by their love. Yes we will know they are Christians by their love.

Yeah, I'm getting a LOT of email right now. Most of it is friendly, and I apologize for not replying, but…I can't answer a thousand messages of support every day. Most of the negative messages are of the "I will pray for you" sort, some are of the indirectly hostile sort ("I'm a marine and I can break people in half like toothpicks"), and a very few get very, very nasty — for some reason, several have launched into profane tirades against my mother — do Catholics have mommy issues or something?

I am most creeped out, though, by the way a majority express the same hypocritical sentiment: they are defending what they hold sacred in angry terms, and at the same time telling me I have to deface what Muslims hold sacred. It isn't the principle of protecting the holy at all...it's a selfish demand that their petty icons be held exceptionally sacrosanct.

I've been deleting almost all of the hate mail as it comes in, and I was just thinking that maybe I should salt some of the more threatening ones away in a public place. So that's why you're seeing this. I'm also thinking it may deter some of the real crazies out there.

Wow. That irrational guy from 1-800Flowers.com doesn't sound like any sort of company I would want to ever do business with.

I still stand by my belief that a great many religious people should be institutionalized for this sickness. This is the "morality" which religion promotes, but it is dangerous, vile and petty, and not moral in the least. You simply have to stop and scratch your head over how people can become so irreparably damaged as this. It makes no sense.

I agree with this new policy, PZ. These lunatics need to see the light of day, and people do need to be aware of these dangerous zealots whose minds and faith are so weak that violence is their only way of defending their grip on irrational things.

I hate these people. They bring nothing but fear and madness to the world.

When posting, if there's any doubt about the 'From' being forged (which is very common and easy and done to attract trouble to innocent people, 'joe job' attacks), that can be omitted while leaving the rest of the header information.

Other header information will be entirely usable for anyone seriously curious about the origin, and yet impenetrable for the kind of occasional nitwit apt to trust 'From' and attack that.

E.g.:

Received-Spf: neutral (google.com: 134.84.119.205 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of mkroll@1800flowers.com) client-ip=134.84.119.205;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 134.84.119.205 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of mkroll@1800flowers.com) smtp.mail=mkroll@1800flowers.com
X-Umn-Remote-Mta: [N] mail2.800-flowers.net [205.153.87.31] #+HN+NR+OF (I,-)

Too often, I'm shocked at the relationship between unmitigated hatred and fundamentalism. I'm sorry you have to deal with this PZ. I heartily support your policy of making these email public.

i googled smonte19...if you do the same you'll see that this guy has posted other lovely comments like:
"Geez no wonder I depise most women now"
"Just got back from lunch break,and in more than on place I saw "666" perfectly painted in red on the sidewalk in circular fashion. Well I always knew this town was close to the gates of hell, but I guess the diabolicals are trying to make themselves obvious. I highly doubt anyone here would notice them, cant wait to get a job in the suburbs. Credo un Deum"
"Christians and Muslims DO NOT WORSHIP THE SAME GOD... Muslims deny Christ's divinity and the Holy Trinity. People who convert from Islam can be killed according to their holy texts. I'll believe Islam is tolerant when they're church's in Saudia Arabia "

so it's a real addy!
and the guy's a freakin wanker.
this is the best one
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-D1YV2Lshc6f3nv6N3j6b?bid=535&yy=2008&mm=5
so PZ, you're not the only one getting hate mail from this sad, pathetic little man.

#39:

You're STILL getting a crapton of email? Wow.

The first posters email was mkroll@1800flowers.com

I wonder if 1-800-Flowers, a large company, knows that one of it's employees is sending hate-speech e-mails to college professors.

I called their customer support number, but thats mainly for transactions. The nice woman gave me their corporate number (516-237-6000) and said that that would be the number to call. I imagine it's only available during business hours.

She also said that using the customer support feedback tool would have the message routed correctly.

To Contact the Board of 1800Flowers http://investor.1800flowers.com/contactBoard.cfm

Normal Email
http://ww22.1800flowers.com/serviceform.do

If you speak/email, be civil and be courteous. Let them know that you are very offended by the hate speak by a 1800Flowers employee and that the action strongly affects your decision to use the companies services in the future.

Be sure to let them know that the user was 'mkroll@1800flowers.com', and that the email was sent from within 1800Flowers network. They sent the e-mail while at work, or through a VPN routing through the network.

These may be fake addresses but they're both written by utter morons.

Paul,

what I would like to know is how did you even
get a job at a collage.

when you are obviously a moron.
How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against
Fags, and atheist like yourself.

well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this.
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt

Nice job genius. Either you're entering high school or you're flexing that collage education. If theres one thing I noticed about reading the scriptures, it's that Jesus would of beat someone who desecrated his bread with a bat.

Oh wait.

Fucking hypocrites.

That first one might be traceable back to the perp's employer. It not only has the e-mail addy header of the "1-800-FLOWERS" email system, it includes the disclaimer tag at the end. That's a common text used by corporate e-mail systems for internally generated e-mail. Someone hacking into a header to conceal the source usually wouldn't bother with tracking down the disclaimer text and pasting it in to the body of the message - all they care about is masking their identity.

This idiot may have actually been stupid enough to use his work e-mail to send you a threat.

And since the guy sent the e-mail to your university .edu address, you could probably get your IT department at the school to help you track this guy down. The university I work for certainly has policies about such traffic entering their system.

The first step is a letter to the 1-800-FLOWERS corporate headquarters, preferably on a lawyer's letterhead. Corporate bosses take such things as death-threat e-mails going out from their systems very seriously indeed, because they might be found liable if they don't. You could at the very least get him fired from his job, which is a delicious irony considering his threat to you.

"Otherwise, I wouldn't want to be in the office once HR gets through. Good Luck!"

I somehow expect the author of that e-mail would not be in the office any longer either.

We were talking about your security situation after dropping you off at the hotel last night. I think you should be a little wary of some of these threats. All it takes is some little religious nut with a real violent streak to do some real harm to you. Stay safe.

#15: Yeah, PZ Myers is the REAL bad guy here. Thanks for enlightening us. I'm guessing he had a friend of his write up all the other hate-filled emails he's received over the past few days. And the Catholics who've responded in the forums haven't been concealing their identity and engaging in sock puppetry at all. These atheist bloggers, you just can't trust them.

I sent a note over to 1-800-flowers asking if mkroll is real, and asking if they endorse his/her message. The email header (not the address, but all the routing details) sure makes it look like that message originated on the inside of 1-800-flower's firewall.

"get that resignation in cunt"

This line is fantastic. Not only are you to write a resignation, you are commanded to insert it into a woman's vagina. Truly, a great mind at work.

Best wishes-
zombiehorde

There is a 99% chance that the 1800Flowers address is legit. Occam's Razor, people.

What's more likely.

1) An employee sends an email from work.

2) A clever hacker finds a way to intelligently hijack a random person from 1-800-Flowers's e-mail, and then send badly worded, anti-atheist hate speak while spoofing several layers of corporate networking (or sending the email through the actual corporate servers).

There's just no real way that someone managed to spoof the headers on that e-mail like that. It's legit. He should be fired, and could face charges if Mr. Meyers really wanted.

PZ said:

"...for some reason, several have launched into profane tirades against my mother -- do Catholics have mommy issues or something?"

I think the veneration they give Jesus' mother might be a clue. I think some Catholics have issues dealing with the fact their real mothers are not actually virgins.

"what I would like to know is how did you even get a job at a collage"

A collage? Is that like Bovine University?

I love the irony of where "Serge Savard"
(I assume that's a fake name and it's not really the famous drunk-driving ex general-manager of the Montreal Canadiens) AKA
(smonte19@hotmail.com) is complaining about islam being intolerant here:
http://www.pittnews.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticleComments&ust…

"Once again another attempt to white wash a religion which has historically been spread by force. Their prophet himself was a military commander, I challenge anyone to deny this fact. Christians and Muslims DO NOT WORSHIP THE SAME GOD... Muslims deny Christ's divinity and the Holy Trinity. People who convert from Islam can be killed according to their holy texts. I'll believe Islam is tolerant when they're church's in Saudia Arabia"

What a retard. Looks like some punk is hiding behind a fake identity. Liars for jebus!

Some of you people are really cunty. Do you really think the 1800Flowers guy's threat was serious? You're trying to ruin somebody's livelihood because they sent an obscene email that in itself has ZERO real-life repercussions. Grow up and chill out.

But it would be pretty funny if he did get fired. Nevermind, I guess.

/hates catholics

Who wants to give 1800 flowers a call? If it's not one of their PC's, which I doubt, then they'll want to launch their own investigation to find out who's hijacked it. But like I said, I doubt it's not one of theirs, the footer is clearly from one of their official email templates. What a moron. I'm sure if they had 100 people or so call and complain about this guy, he'd get canned right quick.

Well, for what it's worth I sent a complain to careers@1800flowers.com. I hope it does some good.

Stay safe, professor. This blog is a voice of reason in a cacophony of idiots.

Kevin -

They used THEIR COMPANY'S EMAIL to send PZ a DEATH THREAT.

Some death threats get acted on.

DUDE, WTF.

I'm sad there were only two to play with.

Wow. I disagree with the Professor's opinions regarding my faith, but the jerks sending hate mail like that to him have no idea what actual Christianity/Catholicism is about.

I completely support your decision to post, with complete headers, mail like this. These individuals should be penalized by civil authorities for these threats and, assuming they actually are Catholic and not posers, they really should open their catechism and discover what their church actually proclaims.

I'm sorry that people can be so full of hate and it disturbs me greatly that they make folks who are honest-to-God trying to live their faith in the manner that it is supposed to be lived (in love) seem like idiots-by-association.

I admit, if all of the people who called themselves followers of Christ actually followed his teachings, the world would be a better place. I do hope that people out there realize that this behavior isn't typical, or even remotely considered acceptable to Catholicism.

#57

He sent a death-threat from work. Read it, that's an ultimatum to resign, and it involves the children. Yes, his livelihood should be ruined.

Well, if that 1-800-Flowers email turns out to be from an actual employee, I hope those in charge reprimand the author and force him to write a letter of apology to Dr. Myers.

He's clearly unhinged, uneducated and dangerous.

Looks like there will no going away flowers from the boss for mkroll...

Let's hope he is reading this thread. The paranoia of impending doom coupled with the adrenaline rush of fear could cause him to recycle today's meals all over the floor.

Kevin,

Well the author of the first e-mail certainly does appear to be serious. I am having a hard job to pick up any indication that it was said in jest. Of course the chances are he is just full of bile and has no intention of actually carrying out a threat. I am not sure how that excuses his making death threats using his companies e-mail system.

Could you enlighten me as to how that is acceptable behaviour ?

Richard Harris @#6:

Do they, at some level, realize that their religion is just a made-up pile of stinking crap?

I think so. One thing that hasn't been emphasized enough IMHO is that at no point in this whole sordid affair has anyone offered any evidence that a blessed eucharist is anything more than a piece of bread.

(I'd love to see a Randi challenge-type of setup: one person collects 50 hosts, labels them A1-A50, gets 25 of them sanctified, and records which ones are sanctified. A second person shuffles them, and covers up the first labels with ones reading B1-B50. A committee of priests and theologians then has to determine which ones are the most precious Body of Christ, and which ones are just biscuits.)

I won't defend PZ for intentionally pissing people off. However, it seems that the offended Catholics a) have an unsubstantiated opinion that the bread in question is a god, b) want their opinion respected, and c) threaten reprisals against people who point out that their opinion is bollocks.

The second email seems to be from a Steve Montemurro, a proudly conservative Catholic. He sounds mentally ill. PZ, I hope you are forwarding these emails on to the police?

I looked up IP address 205.153.87.31 on DomainTools Whois and got the following, which certainly looks real to me:
_________________________________________

OrgName: 1-800-FLOWERS
OrgID: 1800FL
Address: 1600 Stewart Ave
City: Westbury
StateProv: NY
PostalCode: 11590
Country: US

NetRange: 205.153.84.0 - 205.153.87.255
CIDR: 205.153.84.0/22
NetName: FLOWERS-2
NetHandle: NET-205-153-84-0-1
Parent: NET-205-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS1.1800FLOWERS.COM
NameServer: NS2.1800FLOWERS.COM
NameServer: NS3.1800FLOWERS.COM
NameServer: NS4.1800FLOWERS.COM
NameServer: NS5.1800FLOWERS.COM
NameServer: NS6.1800FLOWERS.COM
Comment: Reverse DNS lookup for eshare.1800flowers.com
RegDate: 1995-05-19
Updated: 2002-11-21

RTechHandle: VSU-ARIN
RTechName: Subramainan, Vivekanandan
RTechPhone: +1-516-237-4679
RTechEmail:

OrgAbuseHandle: RRE4-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Reid, Robert
OrgAbusePhone: +1-516-237-4010
OrgAbuseEmail: rreid@1800FLOWERS.com

OrgNOCHandle: BI26-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Ingram, Bill
OrgNOCPhone: +1-516-237-4718
OrgNOCEmail:

OrgTechHandle: VSU-ARIN
OrgTechName: Subramainan, Vivekanandan
OrgTechPhone: +1-516-237-4679
OrgTechEmail:
_________________________________________

Looks like "kroll" is cooked........

shorter kevin:
threatening death to a person=ridiculing belief in a magic cracker

My first thought is that the 1-800 flowers address is fake; it creates great irony to send a death threat from a flower delivery company.

"Let's hope he is reading this thread. The paranoia of impending doom coupled with the adrenaline rush of fear could cause him to recycle today's meals all over the floor."

Oh man, I hope so. I can see him sitting there right now saying "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,..."

Did you enjoy work at 1800flowers, kevin? :P

PZ, will you let us know if our sending positive feedback to your university president had any effect, good or bad? Thanks.

Alert: Tardensity levels are overflowing...

While I despise religion and religious people just as much as the next guy, I guess I can sympathize with his vitriol. I often make vulgar threats at the slightest provocation with no intention of acting on them. If every old lady in traffic I flipped off and threatened to sodomize with my foot pressed charges against me I'd be in a world of shit.

Anyway, I associate this kind of bitter vengeance with the Bill Donahues of the world, not smart people.

"Let's hope he is reading this thread. The paranoia of impending doom coupled with the adrenaline rush of fear could cause him to recycle today's meals all over the floor."

I have this image of his rushing into to work, firing up his PC and deleting the e-mail from his outbox thinking that will mean it cannot be traced back to him,

"...desecrate his bread with a bat."

What an intriguing idea...

Jebus, PZ. I'd better come up and interview you before Christian love gets you.

I think that's better than my scenario.

Dammit, when referencing another's thread, it usually helps to include a quote. #79 was referring to matt in #76. I'll get the hang of this one of these days.

what I would like to know is how did you even
get a job at a collage.

We went to an art opening last night and I'd like to know how you got a job at a "collage," too! ;-)

I've been thinking of making a collage out of the religious crap that people send us. Humor is mightier than the sword (or the religious pen).

So is exposure. Keep airing those cowards' e-mails. And Kevin, don't go throwing around the word "cunty" like some little kid until you know what it means.

I should point out that there seem to be two Steve Montemurros that Google is picking up on. One is an IT guy in Meriden CT, the other is a retarded Catholic from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

I agree with CR (#53) the headers from the first email do look legit and that it was most likely sent by an illiterate and unsavvy computer user. My sources also confirm the email ip addy was located in Westbury, NY with a lat-long of 40.7570 by -73.5814.

1-800-Flowers: "We'll send flowers for any occasion, including death threats and pogroms."

Let's hope he is reading this thread. The paranoia of impending doom coupled with the adrenaline rush of fear could cause him to recycle today's meals all over the floor.

Posted by: mayhempix

Could make for a rather sweaty, uncomfortable Monday for this person. Which, considering the guy is such a maniac, puts a really nice smile on my face.

The thing is, Pharynguloids, you are making the assertion that someone who is crazy enough to write a threatening letter as a result of PZ's criticism of a cracker is also somehow smart or lucid enough to hack into someone's 1800flowers corporate email.

I mean, it's possible, but very unlikely.

Obviously, they've been cherry-picking the bible, and their favorite bit is the action-adventure scene where Jesus goes after the moneychangers in the temple with a scourge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scourge

Nice.

None of that "turn the other cheek" shit for them!

The name is Steve Montemurro.

Two references here:
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/journey/archive.asp?mon=Sep2007
and one here:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-D1YV2Lshc6f3nv6N3j6b?bid=535&yy=2008&mm=5

#75: "While I despise religion and religious people just as much as the next guy, I guess I can sympathize with his vitriol. I often make vulgar threats at the slightest provocation with no intention of acting on them. If every old lady in traffic I flipped off and threatened to sodomize with my foot pressed charges against me I'd be in a world of shit.

Anyway, I associate this kind of bitter vengeance with the Bill Donahues of the world, not smart people."

But you don't take the trouble to contact that little old lady directly to inform her of your wish to put your foot in her . You express your wishes in the relative privacy and obscurity of your own car. The little old lady presumably never knows what evil lurks (momentarily) in the heart of Kevin.

mkroll, on the other hand, took the time to contact PZ directly and made specific threats. This isn't just some twerp jumping into the comments to say "PZ is a doodyhead and I hope the Magic Sky Fairy smites is wicked head!"

By the header information, it is pretty clear that the 1800flowers.com email originated from within their IP space. A someone who has worked in the information security field investigating these types of incidents for more than 8 years, the headers look proper and worth sending to them along with the note that you reserve the right to turn it over to law enforcement.

They should be able to determine who sent it internally, regardless of whether the email address was forged or not. The last thing any legitimate business wants are threatening emails, which are criminal, being sent out by their employees because it puts their entire business in jeopardy. If something like this were to head toward a trial, their entire archive of documents/emails/etc would be subject to discovery orders.

"Steve Montemurro" seems to be a rather conservative catholic as well, so it sort of fits.

here he is talking about getting latin mass back:

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070706/NEWS/707060432…

re: fwd: your short life
1 message
Oren David Nimelman Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 5:55 PM
To: mkroll@1800flowers.com
Dear Mr. Kroll:

You seem offended by Dr Myers' remarks regarding the eucharist. I can't say I'm surprised. What he said was blasphemous and - yeah - offensive to those who follow the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. In calling him a fag and an atheist, you were right on one count: while Dr. Myers is not a believer in god, or any similar religious entity, he is, in fact, a married, straight man.

Even if he weren't, I'd disagree with you on one key point:

well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this.

Actually, good sir, he does. You love in America, a country borne of a blasphemy of its own: that the word of a king does not equate to the will of a god. That's why your founding fathers enshrined in your constitution and bill of rights the freedom to hold whatever belief you choose regarding religion. That includes holding none at all. As long as noperson is harmed, that right is inviolable. Nowhere in the constitution is the definition of a "person" extended to include a communion wafer. I don't even live in the United States, but this much I do know about your laws.

Well, that, and one other thing: threats of bodily harm or death are not covered as free speech under U.S. law. They're treated seriously, and can result in a jail term and/or thousands of dollars in fines.

You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the

children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt

Anyway, here are a few liberties I'm taking:

1) After I finish this email, my next one is to 1800Flowers.com. I'm not sure what their network use policies are, but they probably don't look too kindly on using company networks for personal reasons. The certainly don't if those personal reasons include issuing death threats and other fun felonies.

2) I'm asking everybody that I know to do the same.

3) I'm contacting the authorities in both New York state and Minnesota. They can probably handle this better than I can.

At this point, you seem to have a few options:

1) Talk to your boss. See if he'll back you up when the company starts taking heat over one of its employees sending death threats from the company's network.

2) Call a lawyer. You might want one if you get fired or arrested.

3) Send an apology to Professor Myers, explaining that while you don't condone his comments on the communion wafer, or Catholic doctrine in general, you recognize that in America, he has the right to be as offensive or repugnant as he wants as long as he doesn't threaten the safety of another person in doing so.

Personally, I'd suggest door number three.

Sincerely,
Phaedron Rising [name redacted]

@57: The way I see it, the moment you make a threat you deserve whatever consequences arise.

81) Oh please, I've been bandying "cunty" around town since I was three years old. You obviously never met my mother.

Since I am a no-holds barred atheist and apply the same method in dealing with cretins whom I deign to be dangerous, then upon receiving an e-mail threatening me with bodily harm or even death, I will copy that e-mail, and then send one to the sender urging him to act on that threat if he has the guts, and be ever vigilant if he is stupid or insane enough to follow through. So if I happen to be outside and he gives me indication that he was the one that sent the threat, and he makes a move to his belt or pocket in a way that I sense is his avowed act of harm against me then I will fell him with one sure shot, and legally plead self-defence with his copied threat to serve as the legal qualifier for my self-protection. His imaginary god will not have served him in his moment of dire need, nor will he ever know of this failure as his death negates all his belief in nothing. How ironic that he could not get his god to smite me down, but has to apply his human methods instead.

kevin writes:
Some of you people are really cunty.

"Cunty"?? Is that the best you can do?? With the tremendous flexibility English offers for invective, that's just pathetic!

I second Joe @#47.

He's right PZ, turn this over to the University's techs, they'll track this guy down easily enough if the address is legit or rule him out just as easily if this really is someone technically sophisticated enough to bounce the email off of 1800flowers.com's server (and then maybe be able to get some idea of where it did come from if so.) Either way, they have the resources and know-how to do the job. A good friend does this kind of work commercially (he administers large secure email systems) and I've had him track down phishers this way for me (and they're very technically sophisticated.)

Letting them do it also means that the law takes over, as it should. Criticism (however rude and wrong) is one thing, but direct threats or use of coercive violence is beyond the pale and must be dealt with by the authorities.

You are a scumbag, may your insides rot, may your neck be snapped by an iron boot against a curb, I hope
for a world without liberals, we can start with you

Making the world a better place one message at a time.

The world certainly does seem a little bit better after reading that lovely email.

The copy and paste missed the quotation formatting. If it looks like I'm demanding Mr. Kroll's resignation on pain of a beating, or accusing him (in some Kafka-turned universe) of blasheming, that's just lost quotations.

I often make vulgar threats at the slightest provocation with no intention of acting on them. If every old lady in traffic I flipped off and threatened to sodomize with my foot pressed charges against me I'd be in a world of shit.

You sound like a real prize, Kevin.

I just had to laugh when I got to the bottom of the first one... "This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or
proprietary information..." Yeah dude, and a whole lot more!

do Catholics have mommy issues or something?
Well, er... yes.

"81) Oh please, I've been bandying "cunty" around town since I was three years old. You obviously never met my mother."
(too easy)
Actually, many of us have, son.

Brandon@62

While you and I sit on opposite sides of the theological debate, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to speak out against the radicalized membership of your community. If you feel your faith and participation make you a better person I for one certainly would not begrudge you that.

Even on the off chance your public denouncement is selfishly motivated I still applaud your words and would encourage you to spread that message amongst your peers.

The relevant information is the ip address in brackets in the X-Originating-Ip field. That's the ip address of the person who sent it. Turn those numbers over to law enforcement.

In fact, Kevin, we've all prayed with your Mom. Together.

Check out the headers on the 1800flowers.com e-mail. It's legit, not a borrowed address. The first couple "Received" lines are at the university, then you see the entries for the 1800flowers.com internal mail servers. I'd wager this is really an employee using company e-mail to send threats. So don't spam the idiot. Get him fired.

94) Criticism noted. From now on I will strive to be more high-brow with my misogynistic epithets. How's "Senorita Vaginahead"?

#43, #68

Damn, Steve Montemurro is like the Larry Fafarman of hate.

Based on what I've been reading (and I've been known to accurately track e-mail address on occasion) it seems that the letter from 1-800-Flowers is legitimately from that company. This being the case, this guy is likely going to get fired. I sincerely hope he does.

There's just one little thing that worries me. This guy is going to blame PZ for getting fired. This might have some unpleasant repercussions. The phrase "going postal" became cliche for a reason. PZ, please report this idiot to his company, but also report this, as well as any other threatening letters to the FBI.

From what I have read, the first example seems to be real. But irregardless, I think that 1800flowers owes you an apology.
I will not forgive this company unless I hear that they have done the right thing regarding this situation.

I miswrote my above post, so let me ask my question again, this time more clearly:

If PZ thinks the e-mail addresses are fake, why is he bothering to post them?

PZ, I am Catholic and I sent your President a cc to you asking him not to fire you. I really could care less about people who call themselves Christians and make death threats against anyone. But you won't publish my email that you received (and how many others?), and if you decide to, you can include my name, but not my address, some of the people here also like to make death threats, or send me porn stuff, and junk up my email box with porn.

Just because they want to make me mad, and they never understand they just make me sad. I have added my blog address for anyone who is interested in a part of who I am, I could never show who all I am, and neither can you, this is why the PC world makes me mad.

You can contact 1-800-FLOWERS and tell them mkroll was abusing his account privileges by sending violent threats from his email address on their system.

The second one maps to Yonder, NY, and Optimum Online (Cablevision Systems). You can contact them too about the abuse.

The second message originated from IP 69.119.180.20 , which would appear to be that of an Optimum Online (aka Cablevision Systems) customer probably located in New York:

[...]
11 rtr4-tg10-1.wan.whplny.cv.net (64.15.0.54) 206.250 ms 57.290 ms 214.094 ms
12 64.15.8.122 (64.15.8.122) 14.716 ms 15.580 ms 15.269 ms
13 ool-4353e80e.dyn.optonline.net (67.83.232.14) 16.486 ms 16.571 ms 16.219 ms
14 ubr101-ge1-0-0.cmts.ynkrny.cv.net (67.83.232.45) 16.488 ms 15.877 ms 15.720 ms

YNKR .. Yonkers?

That's Yonkers, NY.

@ comment 69, I wouldn't put a great deal of trust in that website you linked to, I went to it and its information on "my ip address" regarding my own location was wrong. It got that I was in the UK, but it placed me on the other side of the country. I'm no computer whiz, I can assure you I wouldn't know how to disguise my IP, the website was just plain wrong.

Also, I would really like to discourage anyone from emailing these cretins or engaging in the kind of threatening gutter tactics that they have used.

Just so everyone knows, 1-800-flowers has free e-mail. If you go to their website, they have a sign up at the bottom right hand corner of the site. This means that person probably does not work for 1-800-flowers.

Kevin should get the dungeon on lameness alone.

This confirms that we live in a fucked up world. When someone gets deaththreats over an opinion of a cracker, you know that something is very, very wrong.
Waht a bunch of religious fruits.

"I really could care less about people who call themselves Christians and make death threats against anyone."

How do you know they're wrong? When your worldview is based on faith, you can't credibly dispute anyone else's faith. See the hazards of belief without evidence?

I'd wager this is really an employee using company e-mail to send threats. So don't spam the idiot. Get him fired.
Oh, the irony would be delicious.

Anyone sending such an email as the first from a company system is probably too stupid to forge "mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com", something much to easy to do. It could have been someone using the mkroll account from an unlock system, so mkroll would likely have something to answer to anyway.

One the second email way at the bottom there is this added header:

X-Originating-Ip: [69.119.180.20]

This was very likely added by hotmail. If so then the connection to hotmail was via this ISP:

CustName: Optimum Online (Cablevision Systems)
Address: 111 New South Road
City: Hicksville
StateProv: NY
PostalCode: 11801
Country: US
RegDate: 2005-11-30
Updated: 2005-11-30

NetRange: 69.119.176.0 - 69.119.191.255
CIDR: 69.119.176.0/20

That does seem to fit with a "Steve Montemurro" from New York.

George

Goddamn people are stupid. If you're going to send threatening emails, at least set up an anonymous account on Gmail or Hotmail. That 800 Flowers guy probably used his employee email address.

Jay: Because PZ is a biologist, not a computer scientist. Several commenters (who are either computer scientists or knowledgeable laymen) have since posted a number of indications that the 1-800-Flowers e-mail is likely to be genuine. If I received whackjob e-mails like that I'd want to consult my geekier friends to find out what steps to take next - and that's what's going on here.

117, because "your mama" jokes are the epitome of cool.

re: comment 116: I think that is merely to register to receive their emails, not create an e-mail account

Kevin asked "How's "Senorita Vaginahead"?"

That would be the wife of Biggus Dickus?

Both email threats come from NY, 1800flowers is in Carleplace, NY and smonte19 IP originates in Yonkers, NY. I am ashamed that fellow New Yorkers would send crap like that. I would easily expected those coming from the bible belt, but NY? I would be curious to see some data-mining on the emails before you delete them, and map the originating IP to their real locations and put them on a map.

If I may offer some unsolicited advice, I'd recommend that PZ contact the IT departments of the hosts that these messages went through, and request mail logs for these messages as soon as possible. Preferably in a form that'll stand up in court, should the matter ever get that far. This should be done quickly, before the logs are expired and the data lost.

As others have pointed out, it's easy to forge email, and even easier to just write a text file and claim that it's email that one received. Logs from multiple sites should go a long way toward establishing that the messages were really sent.

I don't know what the legal aspects of such a request are. I've been asked for mail logs in the past, but I just hand them over to the legal beagles, and they take it from there. Maybe they print the logs out and have them notarized, for all I know.

Yeah Kev. Met yer mum. Does she always have a 5 o'clock shadow, or was that a special occassion?

#116,

That signup is for you to *receive* emails from 1800flowers, not for them to give you an email account, isn't it?

Did anyone else notice the domain name in fucktard #1's little rant?
mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com

1800FLOWERS.com
You have got to be shitting me
You're getting death threats from a catholic fundie ...florist?
Fantastic.

So is mister mkroll an employee? Using his work email to send threats? Hmmmm. I wonder how said employer would feel about that...
Quick whois:

Administrative Contact:
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC.
Domain Administrator
One Old Country Road, Suite 500
Carle Place, NY 11514
US
domainadmin@1800flowers.com
+1.5162376000 Fax: +1.5162376101

And on another note, please tell me that the mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com addy was spoofed.

I don't think it was spoofed. If it was just a spoofed return field, it wouldn't have the legal boilerplate copyright notice at the end; that means the message had to actually pass through the 1800flowers mail server.

I think it's really from that address.

Well, mkroll@1800flowers.com is a real address. I just sent an email to it and got this auto-reply:

Melanie Kroll

I will be out of the office Friday July 4 and will return on Monday July 14. I will respond to you then. Have a fabulous weekend.

Since she's out of the office, a violent threat like that doesn't sound like something that a woman would send anyway, it's possible someone else used her account to send it. They can be tracked down either way (maybe her husband?).

Historical Critical Method v. Blind Faith in the Prof.

You decide!

Principle of Parsimony. Any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

Do you always stop thinking after three seconds?

I have a job at a collage. Long hours, many papercuts, endless stacks of construction paper... but I get all the paste I can eat.

Melanie?
MELANIE?! lol. thretnin, ur doin it rong!

You have my support.
I wrote a supporting note to your boss and I wrote a post highlighting this totally unacceptable behaviour exhibited by the fundies on my blog.
Has the mouthpiece of the catholic league come out and condemned these threats yet? Probably not because he and the league operate through bullying.
Take care and mind out for all that xtian love they constantly talk about.

For all the superstitious claptrap in the bible, there are nevertheless a few profound proverbs to be found there. One of them is "by their fruits, shall you know them".

The people pouring out their hatred and threats against PZ should take a good look at themselves.

-jcr

Looks like Melanie is about to learn important lessons in computer security.

"117, because "your mama" jokes are the epitome of cool."
No, because of your "Senorita Vaginahead" riposte. Sad, -truly sad, Kevin.

PZ, publish those four other death threats with the headers. We'll track them down for you and notify the relevant ISPs.

A tip: The email messages become much easier to read if you use View Source.

Both of these look like they were sent to his Gmail address (which is the one that's linked on this blog). If they sent their threats directly to his morris.umn.edu address, could he still publish them here?

Well now that we know that mkroll is a girl, are you people STILL gonna call for her head on a platter? Yes, Melanie Kroll was SERIOUSLY going to PERSONALLY drive her diaper-wearing FEMALE ass cross-country and beat in PZ's brains. Where is your compassion? You know she's just bitter because she's an old lesbian who was raised to hate herself. They're a dime a dozen in the catholic faith.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20202445957

We started up an Eucharist Desecration Facebook group for anyone who wants to piss these guys off.

email address smonte19@hotmail.com corrisponds to a Steve Montemurro

X-Originating-Ip: [69.119.180.20] corrisponds to a NY ISP

Along with the newspaper article stating mr catholic steve lives in Hastings on Hudson
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070706/NEWS/707060432…

And trade listings for these two businesses owned by a Steve Montemurro, both in Hastings on Hudson.

Scm Holdings Inc
19 Nepperhan Ave
Hastings On Hdsn, NY 10706
Phone : (914) 478-0470

Steves Teas Inc
Address data
Street:19 Nepperhan Ave
City:Hastings on Hudson, New York
Postal code:10706
Country:United States
Phone:+1 914 4780470
Fax:+1 914 4780470

google search on the phone number "914 478 0470" turns up a lot of janitorial links as well.

Bill Donahue must be proud of what he set into motion. I hope he gets Cc'd on all these.

Everyone recommending that PZ ask skilled techies in the IT department to track it down: PZ has been on the net for a long time, including time spent in the howling sewer that was talk.origins, and has done his geeking time as well. If he doesn't know how to read Received: headers at least as well as a random overworked IT goon, I'll eat my hat.

Just for the record, priests don't claim to be able to distinguish between magic crackers and regular crackers. Magic crackers have all the same "accidents," i.e. discernable properties, as plain ol' crackers. The difference is in the "substance," which is one of those supernatural things floating around out there in the platosphere. Kinda like the opposite of the actual meaning of the word "substance." (It's the ghostly is-ness that "stands under" the perceptible reality of the individuated actual thingamabob. This ain't science, people.)

One time when I was serving mass some regular unconsecrated crackers accidentally found there way into the ciborium with the Extra-Special Jebus Crackers. The priest didn't try to pick out which were which, just re-transubstanshified the whole mess next mass.

So Randi-type logic isn't going to work here. Remember that our reality here is conditional, second-class, dependent stuff, on loan from the superduper realer-than-real capital-R Reality that's God. The reason God seems--in absofuckinlutely every way--like he doesn't exist is that His Existence is on a Higher Plane. If you get confused, just start capitalizing shit--it always helps.

Either the 1800flowers.com mail really came from legitimate 1-800-FLOWERS servers, or the headers have been spoofed absolutely perfectly. In fact, in order to spoof them that well I believe you'd need to be sending the message from within Google or the U of M's mail servers.

That doesn't necessarily prove that the person at that address actually wrote that email, though, the account may have been hijacked via a lost password, stolen laptop, malevolent co-worker, etc.

#110

E-mail addresses may be easy to fake, but it takes a level of sophistication that religious zealots, being against learning, don't usually have to fake the headers.

Apparently smonte19@hotmail.com gets around. A quick google search turned up what other hate mail he's been writing.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-D1YV2Lshc6f3nv6N3j6b?p=535

Quote: "It is people like you and your evil website that I pray for God's wrath to come down on. The entire faggot culture has hoodwinked a weak society into accepting one man sticking his dick up another man's ass as normal behavoir. You and quite a few other corrupt "catholics" are trying to tell us that this sin crying out to heaven for vengeance is gift from God. 2000 years of Truth beg to differ"

You work on a collage, PZ? I thought you were a professor at a college.

"I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt"

Perhaps Melanie was too hurried and left out "to" and "my".

She may just have a strange fetish. Look out, PZ, I think this one has a secret crush on you.

@110

"If PZ thinks the e-mail addresses are fake, why is he bothering to post them?"

What PZ said was that the email header:

From: mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com

*COULD* be forged. What was not forged was the additional information PZ included, all of the email headers, especially the

Received: from 1800flowers.int (mail2.800-flowers.net [205.153.87.31]) by mtain-a.tc.umn.edu (UMN smtpd) with ESMTP for ; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:08:01 -0500 (CDT)

Received: from ([10.180.1.74]) by CPNYMAIL02.1800flowers.int with ESMTP id 5202711.34123806; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:07:31 -0400
Return-Path:

That is a chain of transaction handling the email.

A lot of things are very broken if they are incorrect! That is what the other people were commenting on.

George

Looks like Melanie is about to learn important lessons in computer security.
Posted by: Julie K | July 13, 2008 6:36 PM

Oh boy, Monday is not going to be her day.

I forgot to mention Steve's full name and birthday is:
STEVE C MONTEMURRO Born May 1967 19 NEPPERHAN AVE
Which matches the SCM holdings company he owns.

I sent that email, complete with headers, to abuse@1800flowers.com. Haven't received a message saying it was undeliverable yet, so that's probably the right place.

Christians are so loving, indeed, they are so much better than us evil atheists.

Why do I get the feeling Kevin is actually k8?

Posted by: JayD | July 13, 2008 6:21 PM

Insulting a cracker=issuing a death threat....OKaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Since I haven't seen it mentioned, I will:

This a super-accurate thread title. Dump indeed.

That troll calling itself "Kevin" is an immature egoist.
I wonder if it also calls itself a Christian.

A tip: The email messages become much easier to read if you use View Source.

Or PZ could insert a few line breaks that keep the text from disappearing underneath the ads at the right.

And we will know they are Christians by their love, by their love. Yes we will know they are Christians by their love.

Indeed. A veritable Ministry of Love they have.

161) Did k8 express contempt for your "yo mama" jokes too? I wouldn't cry over it, not everybody is smart enough to appreciate the sophistication and ingenuity those jokes require. Don't worry, you're absolutely hilarious.

Good work BG!

BTW, I love there's an autogenerated ad at the bottom of the second email that says "Making the world a better place one email at a time"

Anyone else sending Stevie a nice email about how it's not very 'Christ-like' to threaten people?

#56 - he wants the Muslims themselves to become Churches? Now that would be transubstantiation!

#150 - so the Jebus Magic is kinda like "Orbs" and "Rods"?

They're nasty stupid letters, but they're not threats.

There's no good reason to hype the "threats" made by, apparently, a relatively few people.

By now I think that both PZ and a certain (probably rather small) segment of shrill Catholics are just playing up a rather boring and meaningless "controversy" for their own ends.

Both sides should find something better to do.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Why do I get the feeling Kevin is actually k8?

Posted by: E.V.

I was thinking the same thing. But, I've been ignoring the idiot save for when someone quotes him.

Hopefully, ignoring the troll is something that will catch on. C'mon, people. It's fun. Like disco.

Alrighty then, I wonder if this is flowerboy's amazon account ... and it's his birthday next week. Just something about the 5 star reviews of anything with a stars n stripes on it (despite having Celine Dion and Bon Jovi inside) makes me wonder if this is our guy.

"Don't worry, you're absolutely hilarious."
Thanks.
You? -not so much...

So there's this guy. He goes into work one day and writes a threatening email. The following monday, he gets canned.
...
What? Were you expecting a punchline?
--
#94:

kevin writes:
Some of you people are really cunty.

"Cunty"?? Is that the best you can do?? With the tremendous flexibility English offers for invective, that's just pathetic!

Why bother sticking with English?
"Some of you people are really gauche."
And, for that matter, why bother sticking with any known language at all?
"Some of you people are really blagraspric."

Écrasez l'infâme! Crush the infamy!

W. M. Kroll is a bible beater from way back. Here's his Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_M._Kroll
This in itself proves nothing, but I note that the threat was sent at 8:07 AM CST, sort of like a guy pissed off by something he read and banged out an email just after getting to work.

The cops take death threats seriously, especially political or religious death threats. Expect a call from the black helicopter guys Mr. 1-800-flowers guy.

Echoing a couple of previous comments, I wonder if Ms. Kroll is indeed responsible for the emails or even aware of them being sent. It is possible that someone has taken advantage of her absence to use her email address without her knowledge (especially if she's got that "form fill" feature in her browser, or if she's got her mail software open on a shared system/pc), in which she may end up losing her job for something she didn't do. In which case, the guilty party would have sent out unstable death threats and ruined another person's career.

On the other hand, if it turns out that she did write those emails, then it's wise that she be disciplined for something disturbing, nipping it in the bud.

And again, I have to wonder why it's a damn wafer/cracker/whatever setting this all off. Can anyone tell me if the cartoon/dutch film controversies set off vitriol this bad?

Well now that we know that mkroll is a girl, are you people STILL gonna call for her head on a platter?

Well, I'm of the mind that if women want to be treated equally, we should certainly oblige them by smacking their sorry asses just as hard as we would a man. But I'm rather a cunty one, myself. -g-

Matt Penfold: I think the veneration they give Jesus' mother might be a clue. I think some Catholics have issues dealing with the fact their real mothers are not actually virgins.

Well, then, I can't have any mommy issues because I'm pretty sure my mother is a virgin. I figure that's why she referred to all of her children as "miracles".

Hey, it sounds better than "bastards", which my father said was inappropriate.

174) But could you teach me to be? I'm willing to learn. See, at my first instinct, I tend to not think that jokes I've heard a milion times by the stupidest, illiterate prebuscent wiggers after they got high on glue are somthing to emulate. Is that where I'm wrong? It appears I have a lot to learn so forgive me if I'm intimidated by all this.

"So there's this guy. He goes into work one day and writes a threatening email. The following monday, he gets canned."

I think it was established that "he" is a "she". Melanie Kroll. Rhymes with Troll.

AdamK:

Magic crackers have all the same "accidents," i.e. discernable properties, as plain ol' crackers. The difference is in the "substance," which is one of those supernatural things floating around out there in the platosphere. Kinda like the opposite of the actual meaning of the word "substance."

Platosphere. I like it. If nothing else, this business has enriched our language:

* Fatwa envy
* Platosphere
* It's time to get down on our knees and pray.

There's a good chance this will all blow over — ScienceBlogs has seen many a crise du jour, and who was that Kathy Griffin woman, again? — but our lexicon might be the richer for it.

Why do I get the feeling Kevin is actually k8?
Posted by: E.V. | July 13, 2008 6:49 PM

The tracks and of idiots and fools are easy to read.

My armchair psychology radar is pinging that it's not a female sending that message. I mean only insecure, little-dicked men with serious woman issues because they aren't getting any sex say the word "cunt". Don't they Kevin.

Hey all--

I think it is great to find out about these folks. Death threats shouldn't be taken lightly. It also highlights how far these religious nuts can take this stuff.

However, be careful about blaming a bunch of people until we find out a bit more. Melanie and that poster at Amazon may have no idea what is going on here.

well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this.
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

That's not a threat, Glen?

I mean, I'm not entirely sure, but it seems like a threat to me. It seems like something that could be a potentially valid threat depending upon the abilities of the person writing it.

I think knowing very little about the author escalates this threat. For instance, is PZ going to be in an area accessible to this person, or is this person capable of traveling to Minnesota to find PZ to carry out this threat?

You don't know for certain, so it's usually best to treat it as valid.

call bull-shit for what it is... im anti-bull-shit... therefore, an antibull-shitist... i subscribe to antibull-shitism... wherever that may lead

Question for the New Yorkers:
Are any of those New York addresses within easy commuting distance of 450 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10123?

Well now that we know that mkroll is a girl, are you people STILL gonna call for her head on a platter?

If she's the one who sent the email with the death threat, then yes.

Yes, Melanie Kroll was SERIOUSLY going to PERSONALLY drive her diaper-wearing FEMALE ass cross-country and beat in PZ's brains.

What's your evidence that she won't? While aggressive women are rarer than aggressive men, they do exist.

Where is your compassion?

Where's yours? Back in #57, you claimed that the death threats weren't real.

Sending a threat through the interweb happens to be a criminal offense. It doesn't matter if the threat is never carried out or is hyperbole on the part of the threatener. It's still a threat and is legally actionable.

You know she's just bitter because she's an old lesbian who was raised to hate herself. They're a dime a dozen in the catholic faith.

I bow to your expert knowledge about the sexual orientation of women Catholics. I just wonder how you know that Ms. Kroll is a lesbian. Did she not put out when you were in high school with her?

Jeff, #162:

I'm on PZ's side. The irony I was referring to will come to pass if the bastard demanding PZ to resign loses his own job. I suggest you read more carefully in future before posting sarcastic comments.

Capital Dan #84

"The thing is, Pharynguloids, you are making the assertion that someone who is crazy enough to write a threatening letter as a result of PZ's criticism of a cracker is also somehow smart or lucid enough to hack into someone's 1800flowers corporate email. I mean, it's possible, but very unlikely."

I agree. The fund a mental intelligence the doesn't come across as the sharpest utensil in the kitchen drawer. Rather more on par with a spoon.

One more thing: I think that your new "policy", PZ[ed] doesn't really mean anything when posted on your blog. I was under the impression that emails, whether threatening or not could be reproduced and retransmitted at the recipient's discretion. Maybe I'm wrong as I'm an engineering student, not a lawyer.

185) I wouldn't know, I'm gay and well-hung (I got pics, always looking to date) and I get sex constantly. I've had so much HIV shot up my ass I'm practically made of it.

Ya know, the IP addresses harvested from the nutmail file would be a useful start toward a distributed database of a different sort.

I would like to point out that whilst there is good evidence that the first e-mail did originate from 1-800-flowers' mail server the evidence as to the identity of the sender is less clear. Given how poorly many people handle password security it is quite possible that the person identified as the sender merely has her computer used by another person. If you factor in the fact she seems to have been away the last week the possibility that is indeed the case would seem increase.

Melanie may or may not have sent the message. It is possible that one of her coworkers hacked her account - most people use really lousy passwords. However, regardless of whether or not the message came from her, it should be investigated and the person that sent the email should be dealt with appropriately. It should not be discounted just because it came from a woman. I've known plenty of women that have owned guns and not all of them are emotionally stable.

er...actually, I'm the wife of Biggus Dickus. ;)

Hey Myers!!! Start sending that mail to the local, state, and federal (FBI) asap.

Keep copies and don't delete any of it, it is evidence of a crime.

The number of state and federal laws being broken here is many, most are felonies. There are some serious internet centric laws as well about this sort of communications. The FBI is the best bet, they have a cybercrimes unit and they are very computer savvy. Even a proxy won't stop them, due to Homeland security laws, proxies are legally obligated to keep logs for a certain number of days.

Been through this myself a while ago. You have to lean on the cops to get them going but they are legally bound to investigate all reported crimes. And they can have a happy ending, one group threatening me ended up arrested by the feds and indicted on felony charges in federal court.

There is a Karen M. Kroll that works for 1-800-flowers.com, or did in 2007.
This exhausts my sleuthing powers.

OK, everyone, let's connect the dots.

"smonte19@hotmail.com" originates from Yonkers, NY.

Elsewhere, comments attributed to "smonte19@hotmail.com" have been attributed to Steven Montemurro, a conservative Catholic from Hastings-On-Hudson, NY.

Hastings-On-Hudson is immediately north of Yonkers.

Apparently Mr. Montemurro also operates a business out of said hamlet, called Steve's Teas, Inc., which is a distributor of organic teas. The contact information is as follows:

Street:19 Nepperhan Ave
City:Hastings on Hudson, New York
Postal code:10706
Country:United States
Phone:+1 914 4780470

As of 2005, a Steve Montemurro also operated the local franchise of a janitorial service from the same address (but a different phone number) called:

Jan Pro Cleaning Systems

1 914 374 0217

Jan Pro Cleaning Systems does not list this franchise at their main web site, however. Instead, they show:

JAN-PRO Cleaning Systems of Hudson Valley
15 North Mill Street
Nyack, New York 10960
Phone: (845) 348-3137
Fax: (845) 348-3125

So, Mr. Montemurro may not have a franchise at present. This same Steven Montemurro appears to have been a parishioner for many years at St. Matthew's Church in Hastings-On-Hudson.

PZ, you should feel free to forward the contents of this email to the authorities, as well as any information that might help THEM connect the dots.

Try not to get killed, OK?

These people are amateurs. They should have used one of the countless free email providers:

www.christianemailservice.com
www.joyfulemail.com
mail.jesusanswers.com
www.jesusanswers.com
www.christianfunmail.com

(ad nauseum)

Jewel, read the rest of the comments. I already contact abuse@1800flowers.com

Some of you people are really cunty.

Oh, the irony.

Hey, I say we do a Top 10 of the Stupidiest Things Said During Wafergate . Here are of few of my entries,

- Bill Donahue: "It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."

- SFG:
"Zan,

That's spelled r-e-l-i-g-I-o-n. Sorry, but there's no E in that word. See what I mean about the IQ on here. "

- Random letter :
"But, over the years, as I experienced life, educated myself, studied (as a hobby) subjects such as physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, history, theology, biology, and many other topics"

- Dutch Hedrick:
"It is NOT in the nature of the rock, however, to get up and start singing show tunes."

- SFG (again!):

"The IQ quotient here is below 0.

I'm no "intellectual" (the thought of those people makes me violently sick)"

I'm sure there are some gems in the 3000+ comments better than these (except SFG on "religion, that's a classic). Please submit your entries.

re: #75:

Kevin, you're either making an unfunny joke, or you have serious, serious issues (or both).

You may want to do the primo's from each day since this started as well(if you saved them).

Well now that we know that mkroll is a girl, are you people STILL gonna call for her head on a platter? Yes, Melanie Kroll was SERIOUSLY going to PERSONALLY drive her diaper-wearing FEMALE ass cross-country and beat in PZ's brains. Where is your compassion? You know she's just bitter because she's an old lesbian who was raised to hate herself. They're a dime a dozen in the catholic faith.

Nice parody of a raving loony misogynist, kevin.

AdamK @#150:

priests don't claim to be able to distinguish between magic crackers and regular crackers. Magic crackers have all the same "accidents," i.e. discernable properties, as plain ol' crackers. The difference is in the "substance," which is one of those supernatural things floating around out there in the platosphere.

Yes, I was thinking that as well. One analogy that came to mind is that when I signed the requisite paperwork, my house stopped being "a house" and became "my house". However, you could've camped out in front of it with all the equipment you wanted, and wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the moment when this transformation occurred, or notice any difference between "a house" and "my house".

Of course, it is possible to tell whether a given house is mine or not: go down to city hall and do a deed search. I assume the equivalent in the case of ordinary hosts vs. holy eucharists would be to ask God.

Of course, that doesn't seem to work either. (If it did, presumably the NSA would be all over it.) I wonder what the theologians' excuse for that is. Maybe that it's better to believe on faith without evidence, as per the story of Doubting Thomas.

Patricia:
"er...actually, I'm the wife of Biggus Dickus. ;)"
Um, so you're really Incontinentia Buttocks?=)

Ugh, you people are almost as vicious and reactionary as those muslims who rioted over the cartoons. Of course there are differences but the similarities are perfectly relevant. You are both calling for real-world suffering over an insult that threatened nobody. It was an idle threat over the internet; these things happen all the time and 99.9999999999% of the time nothing comes of it, get over it. If it happened to me I'd think it was funny. Yes there are laws against it, but that doesn't mean you HAVE to report it. You're trying to get her fired because you're cruel to people who are cruel to you, an instinct you evolved; congratulations, you're a human animal. You are not doing this because of some abstract sense of duty to uphold the law. I stand by my use of "cunty."

So.. is it just me, or are religious fanatics incapable of using correct grammar and capitalization?

Someone needs to put P.Z. in an awesome collage in honor of the first letter. Maybe we could include a bunch of the Friday cephalapods to fill it out.

Here's the website for Steve's Teas, Inc. He appears to be a jobber for other companies.

well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this.
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

The forgiving nature of Christianity right there!

Here I was thinking to commit blasphemy you needed to be a part of that religion in the first place. Almost everything atheists say to do with religion is blaspheming, but that's fine because we aren't part of the religion. We have no social contract that prevents us from saying what we like. The Catholics don't have an exception from this, just as protestants don't, just as Jews don't, just as Muslims don't, just as Hindus don't, just as Buddhists don't, just as Pastafarians don't.

Catholics really need to understand that their religion is no longer the foundation of society and it's events like this that show it to becoming increasingly more irrelevant. Non-Catholics should not have to adhere to Catholic beliefs just as Catholics should not have to adhere to Islamic belief. Point is, get over yourselves, bask in your irrelevance and show forgiveness. So much for Christians supposedly following the message of Jesus. If he had ever existed, he would be ashamed of what the sycophants do in his name.

kevin, PZ receives an inordinate number of such threats. Who knows which one these Good Christian whackaloons might be a little more serious about it. They need to be intimidated away from making threats.

So far, NOT ONE SINGLE atheist has threatened violence. It's all coming from the Good Christian camp. Although that didn't stop Donohue from preemptively making himself the victim ("IF I receive any threats, it won't be hard to connect the dots). Well fuck him. WE'RE connecting the dots.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/plonk.php

Slagging, stupidity, trolling, wanking ... I think kevin is well on his way.

mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com
Subject: your short life
Date: July 13, 2008 8:07:31 AM CDT

Spoofed or not? Who in the hell knows? Not enough data.

I would certainly forward it to 1 800 flowers with a little note that if one of their employees is sending death threats on company time, they need to think about their liability. It's bad PR when a company like that starts gay bashing and killing customers.

Kevin, you're either making an unfunny joke, or you have serious, serious issues (or both).

Oh, I don't think there's any doubt that Kevin has serious issues. Most of them seem to stem from women; perhaps most of the ones he meets treat him like the jerk he is and he can't figure out why.

Given his comments, I strongly suspect "kevin" is in high school. If he isn't - well, then, he may have gotten older, but his brain is *still* in high school.

@46, Geral, "If theres one thing I noticed about reading the scriptures, it's that Jesus would of beat someone who desecrated his bread with a bat."

Actually he would beat someone who desecrated a temple with a scourge. And desecrated in this example means sold stuff that people wanted to buy near by. If you actually read the Gospels, Jesus is far less Jesusy as people claim. Geral apparently thinks his mocking little statement really showed up the trolls who have been harassing PZ. In the Gospels, Jesus actually does attack people violently for a perceived sacrilege that hurt absolutely nobody.

@Neural T -- I did read your comments. I was responding to others that think it should be ignored, that's all.

"Ugh, you people are almost as vicious and reactionary as those muslims who rioted over the cartoons. Of course there are differences but the similarities are perfectly relevant. You are both calling for real-world suffering over an insult that threatened nobody."

OH THE IRONY.

Kevin, you are a colossal moron.

Scott #201 "19 Nepperhan Ave"

That end of Nepperhan Ave is residential. It's probably where he lives.

Anyway, it's not like any of us can (or should) do anything about this. It's really up to PZ to forward the emails to the FBI and let them check it out.

That's not a threat, Glen?

Well, I guess it's technically a threat. But it doesn't strike me as a very meaningful one. I've had one that was a whole lot more definite and real-sounding than that one was (re an exchange about evolution)--it came to absolutely nothing.

Actually, on an anti-Pantera site there were regularly much meaner and nastier threats across both sides. To be sure, some of those people probably would beat your brains in, if they could find you. Most was useless bluster, though, and quite obviously so.

I just can't get very worked up about these "threats." They seem so tame.

By the way, if PZ does actually "desecrate" the crackers, he'll be demonstrating the opposite of his claim that they're "just crackers." Smash the idol, and you're agreeing with your opponents that it's more than an "ordinary chunk of matter", even if hardly what it is claimed to be.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

I'd also like to submit Kevin for the Top 10 Stupidiest Thing Said During Wafergate,

- Kevin:
"If every old lady in traffic I flipped off and threatened to sodomize with my foot pressed charges against me I'd be in a world of shit."

- Also,

"Yes, Melanie Kroll was SERIOUSLY going to PERSONALLY drive her diaper-wearing FEMALE ass cross-country and beat in PZ's brains. Where is your compassion? You know she's just bitter because she's an old lesbian who was raised to hate herself. They're a dime a dozen in the catholic faith."

- Finally,

"I stand by my use of "cunty."

I half suspect he is a Poe though. If not, I hope he under psychiatric supervision.

No, I'm the younger wife. :)
Kevin set off my twerp meter. He actually thinks there's someone on this thread he can shock. First time at trying to be naughty Kevin?

I thank the Lord every day that I'm not religious.

Of course, I'm really referring to my cat. I call him the Lord. Well he lords it around my house every day, that's for sure.

i read through the "reviews" by mkroll at his amazon page (h/t alan @ #173 above) and the literacy displayed appears similar to the missive to pz myers.

not that there's anything WRONG with liking celine dion or long walks on a tropical beach or patriotism which verges on a nervous breakdown, and not to infer at all that there is anything at all wrong about being gay, but mkroll's apparent preferences certainly do lean toward what could be considered fairly stereotypically gay choices.

perhaps mkroll suffers from small penis syndrome of a particularly extreme type.

On our campus we install software that logs the user off automatically after 20 minutes of inactivity. Professors hate it because they get logged off during their presentations if they don't at least bump the mouse every once in a while. (I never realized it was so difficult to bump a mouse).

But it protects them - at least after 20 minutes - from someone making unscrupulous use of their login account including email.

Of course, in their offices, they turn off that utility. Which would be fine if they'd at least lock the computer when they step away from it. But most don't; they leave their office computers logged in overnight. Janitors can get into their offices, and so can IT support people.

(On a Windoze computer, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and press Enter to lock your computer. Make it part of standing up from your chair.)

Mkroll may have left her workstation unlocked (as someone observed, women are not usually this aggressive) and someone used it. Depending on the IT policies she could still be in for a real bad Monday. Some companies have good reason to make that a firing offense but employees often think; "What could happen?" This can happen.

PZ, you've graduated from getting tossed out of a theater to death threats in Just Six Months!. When is your new book on Winning Friends and Influencing People coming out? (Seriously, please be careful.)

@126
Nope MH, her name is 'Incontinentia Buttocks'

Yeah, perhaps if I grew up I'd wake up each day to revel in the righteous indignation I would feel whenever somebody slightly disrespected me. Then again, I'd still be male so maybe not.

"Ugh, you people are almost as vicious and reactionary as those muslims who rioted over the cartoons."

You are spending an equivalent amount of time on the catholic.com forums berating them for their reactionary behavior, yes?

@Brandon

the jerks sending hate mail like that to him have no idea what actual Christianity/Catholicism is about.

Google "No True Scotsman".

I admit, if all of the people who called themselves followers of Christ actually followed his teachings, the world would be a better place.

You're a very nice fellow, Brandon, with considerable scruples, and if all Christians were like you, we might well just ignore our differences. But that simply isn't the way things are.

I do hope that people out there realize that this behavior isn't typical

There's a bell curve, and you're at one tail and they're at the other ... but I daresay the curve skews in their direction.

or even remotely considered acceptable to Catholicism.

Category error. It's people who consider things acceptable, not isms. And the history of the people who call themselves Catholics is nothing like the self-serving Catholic literature.

karen marie: Yeah, so small that it's a clitoris. We've already confirmed that the email address belongs to one Karen Melanie Kroll.

I just fired off an email to HR at 1800flowers.com. I sent it to careers@1800flowers.com. I hope to find out this joker gets canned and maybe even charged with a felony.

#52

This line is fantastic. Not only are you to write a resignation, you are commanded to insert it into a woman's vagina.

It's worse than that because most people only use the C-word when referring to a very unpleasant or hostile female person.

So PZ has to write a resignation, then sneak up on a hostile female then somehow.....

That's like when the Wizard ordered Dorothy to steal the witch's broomstick. Which would make this particular vagina a McGuffin .

And McGuffins are always dangerous to pursue

These people are very clever when properly analyzed.
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You Tube Eucharist Challenge

#229 "perhaps mkroll suffers from small penis syndrome of a particularly extreme type."

Well, as the current consensus is that mkroll is female, then you're probably correct (in an odd sort of way ;-).

By the way, if PZ does actually "desecrate" the crackers, he'll be demonstrating the opposite of his claim that they're "just crackers." Smash the idol, and you're agreeing with your opponents that it's more than an "ordinary chunk of matter", even if hardly what it is claimed to be.

Glen D

I see your point, but it seems equally valid that it can be more than an ordinary chunk of matter to them and still just crackers to PZ. Recognizing that they think it's a symbol doesn't change its basic crackerness.

Just so everyone knows, 1-800-flowers has free e-mail. If you go to their website, they have a sign up at the bottom right hand corner of the site. This means that person probably does not work for 1-800-flowers.

Still easily traceable. All servers and routers have logs and are required to keep them for a certain number of days.

The FBI cybercrimes could have Mkroll in a half hour if they wanted to. These are mostly ex hackers and IT guys. Seen it done a few times.

Scott #201 "19 Nepperhan Ave"

That end of Nepperhan Ave is residential. It's probably where he lives.

Anyway, it's not like any of us can (or should) do anything about this. It's really up to PZ to forward the emails to the FBI and let them check it out.

This is true, however the purpose of my comment was to demonstrate that there is good reason to believe that a real person known as Steve Montemurro did in fact originate a threatening message, and that PZ SHOULD take it seriously enough to contact the authorities.

p.s. to kevin: you have proven here today, indisputably, that you do in fact have a very, very tiny penis.

perhaps mkroll suffers from small penis syndrome of a particularly extreme type.

The type common to people named Melanie?

Things like these remind me exactly why I lost faith to begin with. I hope that you keep safe, PZ. Though sadly, I wish I didn't have to. :(

#201: "This same Steven Montemurro appears to have been a parishioner for many years at St. Matthew's Church in Hastings-On-Hudson."

The phone number for this church is (914) 478-3681. Maybe you should tell his father on him.

do Catholics have mommy issues or something?"

This is most likely from your Italian flavor of Catholic located somewhere in the New York to Philadelphia corridor.

Standard #1 'rip' as they call insults in Philly , or used to anyway.
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You Tube Eucharist Challenge

Hey,
while mkroll was seen as a man, you just wanted to get him fired, but now it's a Melanie, you just start thinking that she can have done it, and that she's gonna get into troubles.

does "innocent until proven guilty" means something to you?

even mkroll as a man, should have the presumption of innocence.

Death threat usually comes from couard people, so in a way or another, he or she, might have try to hide it (couard people used to be good at hidding and running away). Maybe the easiest was to use someone else computer ?

Even if the threat isn't real, people can still get in a lot of trouble over it. There was a case where someone "vandalized" a Wikipedia page and wrote something libelous about a Tennessee congressman. Some enterprising Wikipedians tracked his IP address to a company near Nashville. Turns out he had used his employer's computer to post the material, and he was forced to resign.

Sending hateful, threatening mail like this is bad for the reputation of 1-800-FLOWERS, and they very well could do something about it. Abusing company resources like that could very well jeopardize your job. If Ms. Kroll didn't send it, naturally I hope nothing happens to her. But it could be some serious shit for whoever did. There are timestamps in the email headers. Through an investigation, they *could* track down who was using the computer at that particular time.

Hi Guys!

I just sent a e-mail to the freaky Steven guy, I got these mails back from him after i told him my concern about his threats and how he acts:

Answer 1: Josh'

Sound like a neutered little man, yes it does make me feel better knowing how many good little progressives are upset, I accomplished my goal

Answer 2 (after i asked him if he hurts and threatens children to): NO just childish liberals, see unlike neutered liberal men who dont fight for anything they believe in, I would rather fight than try and talk my way out... now go back to your good progressive studies

Josh

anon@245 -
Um... I'm pretty uncomfortable with that idea, myself.

#90 "You love in America. . ."

Actually, it's pretty clear that he hates in America.

198) Patricia, you may claim that you are the wife of Biggus Dickus, but everyone knows her name was Incontinentia...

Incontinentia Buttocks

"Just so everyone knows, 1-800-flowers has free e-mail. If you go to their website, they have a sign up at the bottom right hand corner of the site. This means that person probably does not work for 1-800-flowers."
I believe that box is where you sign up to get promotional mail from 1-800-flowers.com, not where you sign up to get a free email account from 1-800-flowers.com.

"You're trying to get her fired because you're cruel to people who are cruel to you, an instinct you evolved; congratulations, you're a human animal. You are not doing this because of some abstract sense of duty to uphold the law."

Wow, you're a telepath! This is amazing! After all this time, psychic powers have finally... been... verified....

Except, of course, that you are completely wrong. I can only speak for myself, but I'm concerned that some of these threats may actually be serious, and I feel that issuing death threats is, in general, unacceptable behavior. I think most of the posters here would agree on both counts.

Oh, and I do consider the law worth upholding for its own sake. I even obey the speed limit!

Agh, what a typical, procrastinating grad student I am. Letter of support finally sent to your U's prez! Hope that just one more among many will help.

Just so everyone knows, 1-800-flowers has free e-mail. If you go to their website, they have a sign up at the bottom right hand corner of the site.

Good grief. That allows you to enter your email address, so that they will send you email. It does not mean they hand you an email address @ 1800flowers.com.

This means that person probably does not work for 1-800-flowers.

No, it does not mean anything of the sort; the evidence leans to there being a 1-800-flowers employee named Melanie Kroll. Whether that's who actually sent the email is not so clear.

while mkroll was seen as a man, you just wanted to get him fired, but now it's a Melanie, you just start thinking that she can have done it, and that she's gonna get into troubles.

"Beating someone's head in" is kind of a guy thing.

I think it was established that "he" is a "she". Melanie Kroll. Rhymes with Troll.

actually, I haven't seen anybody post the obvious yet, so I will.

Melanie's autoresponse indicates she is out of town.

Why couldn't she be married to W. M. Kroll (see #177), and MR. Kroll sent the email via her work address? Likely from their home computer, via standard web-browser access to company email, btw.

A picture?

Could be.

http://obit.edwardsanddowdle.com/obit_display.cgi?id=326618&listing=All

What a Good Christian.

Kevin, you are this close to being thrown in the dungeon. I recommend you toddle off somewhere that is more tolerant of outrageous stupidity.

Everyone else: I really don't like the idea of harassing either of these people. Let this stand as a record, nothing more -- it's just here in case there is an escalation.

Josh@249
well, really, what did you expect? I'm impressed that you attempted it, though.
Seems to some, neutered means a man who can actually think with the brain in his head, as opposed to the lower one.

This comment thread is 2% troll and 25% troll keepers.

#247 : read that she CANNOT have done it

sorry for the mistyping.

Also forward those 1800-flowers emails to the company CEO. His email address is jmccann@1800flowers.com
VP: cmccann@1800flowers.com

Well, I guess it's technically a threat. But it doesn't strike me as a very meaningful one. I've had one that was a whole lot more definite and real-sounding than that one was

Oh, do whip it out, Glen. A Who's Got the Biggest Threat contest would fit right in on this thread.

#247 : read that she CANNOT have done it

yes, of course, eric!

because never in human history has a woman killed anyone through the use of physical violence, nor hired anyone to do it for them, let alone threaten someone with physical harm.

Your logic is astounding!

what a twit.

also, see #258.

Hi Guys!

I just sent a e-mail to the freaky Steven guy, I got these mails back from him after i told him my concern about his threats and how he acts:

Answer 1: Josh'

Sound like a neutered little man, yes it does make me feel better knowing how many good little progressives are upset, I accomplished my goal

Answer 2 (after i asked him if he hurts and threatens children to): NO just childish liberals, see unlike neutered liberal men who dont fight for anything they believe in, I would rather fight than try and talk my way out... now go back to your good progressive studies
Josh

One down, one to go. I would be sending the original message and all subsequent info to the FBI cybercrimes division. Interstate, federal law applies.

The FBI will most likely pay him a visit with some questions. And run his license plate and name through a few dozen databases. Usually these guys have a long, long history of "involvement" with law enforcement.

I'm sorry you're still having to deal with all this shit, PZ. It's a good policy you've got, but it sucks that it actually has to be implemented. I mean, Christ on a fracking cracker, it's just a blog post. If people don't want to read it, they don't have to... and they certainly don't have to threaten your job and your life over it just because they're too dumb to realize the difference between a cracker and a person. Anyway, I'm behind you 100%, and I hope that this shitstorm blows over soon for you. All the best.

Why couldn't she be married to W. M. Kroll (see #177), and MR. Kroll sent the email via her work address? Likely from their home computer, via standard web-browser access to company email, btw.

#122

at least set up an anonymous account on Gmail or Hotmail

Those accounts are not anonymous, the origin of the emale still tracks back to the machine from which it was posted in the long header.
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You Tube Eucharist Challenge

If it is not mkroll who sent the email but a co-worker, her computer or account security need not have been compromised but just a co-worker forging her email address from another company computer. We have good evidence it came from her company from the received lines, but, we don't know it came from her computer (that is something her company IT people should be able to figure out). So we have the following possibilities:

1. MKroll herself sent the message
2. MKroll's computer or account security was compromised by an unknown, to her, third party (though why a third party would do this when there are other easier ways of hiding tracks is unknown). Possible scenario is that she does not password protect her work computer and a janitor has been using it to browse (though janitors don't have time to do this in my experience). It is also possible that there is a temp covering for her while she is on vacation and the company just handed mkroll's computer over to the temp for the duration.
3. MKroll's computer or account is accessible by a known third party (e.g., her kid, spouse, friend) and that person sent the email not realizing the repercussions that would follow (in which case most likely a kid) or they really dislike Mkroll and want to get her into trouble
4. A co-worker has it in for her and decided to get her into hot water by forging the from address using his computer at the company.

because WM Kroll's wife is named Linda (if wikipedia is correct)

good.

PZ: To avoid having the text go off the side of the page, you can wrap it with ... </div>

didn't close the #%#@*ing tag. sorry.

Why couldn't she be married to W. M. Kroll (see #177), and MR. Kroll sent the email via her work address?

Because the Wikipedia entry in #177 says he's married to Linda Piper?

scooter, yeah but it's better than using your company email address. Plus, there are ways to anonymize yourself, but I won't mention them here so the Good Christians don't get any ideas.

Yes, yes, Col. Fubster, sir thats the OLD wife. I'm Mrs. Dickus the Younger. Chosen not for my buttocks at all. Sometimes a grog & swill slinger does attract a gents attention. :)

PZ -- look on the bright side of the 1800flowers.com email.

Maybe they'll give you free flowers for life?

That would make anniversaries, birthdays, your kids' future weddings, etc easier.

Make that <div style="overflow: auto"> .. </div>, darn lying preview.

Ichthyic @267-
wrong target, I think.

pz myers, have you deleted the phone number to a church which is posted above?

i would hate to think that they got phone calls from anyone here.

"I will pray for you" means "You're going to hell. You're going to be tortured for eternity. You deserve it. I'm glad you are doomed."

These people are insane and dangerous, and deserve nothing but contempt.

PZ says: "Everyone else: I really don't like the idea of harassing either of these people..."

I agree; but given the rather wide ranging and free-wheeling nature of your considerable audience; should that not have suggested to you putting the details on your blog was a bad idea?

I don't know what I'd do in your situation, frankly. Passing the threats to police seems like a good idea. Would they get acted on?

#282
"pz myers, have you deleted the phone number to a church which is posted above?

i would hate to think that they got phone calls from anyone here."

what about JAN-PRO Cleaning Systems? wont somebody please think of the custodians?!???

I think that Melanie is probably innocent of this email. Her autoresponder says she's not in her office this weekend, and the nature of the email seems to indicate a different, masculine voice.

I think attempts to connect her to a wishlist and a wiki page are stretched - to say the least. I'll bet a cookie that she didn't write that email.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the email came from her work computer. Lots of people leave their computers on, and signed in to their email account after they leave at the end of the day.

And worse, she could have a zombie computer - which would be handily subverted by a script-kiddy.

I feel sorry for her - there's going to be a ton of abuse complaints coming to her employer, and she's going to have a terrible Monday morning.

Not sure if some of these were already posted (it's a long thread!) but I found these corporate e-mails for 1800flowers:

Brian Batjer
Director Human Resources
bbatjer@1800flowers.com
+1.516.237.6000

Maureen Paradine
Vice President, Human Resources
mparadine@1800flowers.com
+1.516.237.7843

I got these through http://www.jigsaw.com which shows you two free contacts when you sign up (you have to pay if you want to see more).

So if anyone is going to be sending complaints about Mrs. Kroll (or whoever used her e-mail if she didn't) to 1800flowers, these e-mail should work fine :)

BTW, the Nature episode on (at least my) PBS right now, "Encountering Sea Monsters," is about cephalopods. (I guess it's a repeat, but I've never seen it.)

Maybe it's time to admit that "yes, we can be intimidated by death threats and it will get you the same kind of respect it gets a rabid rattlesnake." And then, be careful how you mock religion in the future.

So far, this, from where I'm sitting (not so sure about where PZ is sitting), has been worth it. It has really exposed the underlying insanity and violence brewing in some of the religious minds out there.

As a female, I am offended at the use of the "c" word in that email. Doesn't mkroll know that Eve Ensler already reclaimed it?

Say it with me...

The first e-mail raises a good point. How do you get a job at a "collage" when a collage is an artwork? Can the collage pay you?

I say that before we discuss whether or not PZ is a moron we should discuss how a normal person can get a job at a collage. If we can solve that problem then perhaps we may help keep down unemployment.

I talked to 1800flowers.com.

The person to contact about the mail from 1800flowers.com is:

rggrant@1800flowers.com

She is a supervisor-type person.

Be sure to include the body of the email.

Mr. Kroll is going to soon be an ex-employee.

"174) But could you teach me to be? I'm willing to learn. See, at my first instinct, I tend to not think that jokes I've heard a milion times by the stupidest, illiterate prebuscent wiggers after they got high on glue are somthing to emulate. Is that where I'm wrong? It appears I have a lot to learn so forgive me if I'm intimidated by all this."

Did that seriously come out of a guy who's pinnacle of insults was to call people 'cuntys'?

what I would like to know is how did you even
get a job at a collage.

Because he could spell it.

Just so everyone knows, 1-800-flowers has free e-mail. If you go to their website, they have a sign up at the bottom right hand corner of the site. This means that person probably does not work for 1-800-flowers.

But the corporate disclaimer at the bottom of the message implies it was actually part of their internal corporate system. Still worth following up.

Catholics really need to understand that their religion is no longer the foundation of society and it's events like this that show it to becoming increasingly more irrelevant.

I never believed us Catholics were the center of all things, my Faith is for me. If you reject it, that's OK with me. I am not the judge, nor do I act as one, as PZ can tell you.

www.usdoj.gov:

At present, there are numerous efforts at the federal and state levels that focus solely on high technology crimes. These units do not focus on cyberstalking alone, but they have the necessary expertise in computers and the Internet to assist in the investigation of cyberstalking when it arises. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has Computer Crime Squads throughout the country, as well as the National Infrastructure Protection Center in Washington, to ensure cybercrimes are properly investigated. Additionally, they have Computer Analysis and Response Teams to conduct forensics examinations on seized magnetic media. Similarly, in 1996 the Justice Department established the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section within the Criminal Division. These units have highly trained personnel who remain on the cutting edge of new technology and investigative techniques. In addition, each U.S. Attorney's office contains experienced computer crime prosecutors. These individuals -- Computer and Telecommunications Coordinators -- assist in the investigation and prosecution of a wide variety of computer crimes, including cyberstalking. In addition, at the state level, several attorneys general have established special divisions that focus on computer crimes.

Although high-tech expertise is essential, police and prosecutors have developed other strategies for helping victims of cyberstalking. An Assistant U.S. Attorney reported that in two recent cases of e-mail harassment, he asked an FBI agent to confront the would-be harasser. The agent advised that such behavior might constitute a criminal offense. In both instances, the harassment stopped. Such strategies, however, are no substitute for prosecution under federal or state law in the appropriate circumstances.

Time to call the FBI. State laws may also apply but vary from state to state. NY has some tough laws as does California.

It is illegal to email Death Threats. Everyone pays taxes, might as well have your employees do something for once.

There are a lot of laws governing this and a lot of case law. Just google, cyberstalking and death threats and read.

FWIW, I know of cases where the creeps got picked up. One ended up doing 18 months in prison plus a fine. That idiot emailed their litle scrawls from work, Hewlett Packard as it turned out.

PZ,

If you don't send the info about these threats to the police then you are just saying and making it ok for these folks to keep treating folks like this.

I don't know about harassing them, but there should be consequences for the behavior they exhibited.

Not doing the simplest of things, which is forwarding it to the police and/or FBI since it is interstate is just enabling them.

Re: #116

I apologize if this has already been said, but I think the email you sign up for is to be spammed with their newsletter, etc., not to get a new email address.

# 185 I wouldn't know, I'm gay and well-hung

Somehow I suspect you are neither
-------------
You Tube Eucharist Challenge

holy crap! i read at #235 above that her name is KAREN melanie kroll!

omg! i seriously have cooties.

i'm really too old to change my name. everyone cross your fingers and hope to die with sugar on top that we are not one and the same.

pz myers can, through magical technology, confirm it.

ick ick [dusting clothes, etc]

Your logic is astounding!

what a twit.

Yes you are, Ich, as you will see if you go back and carefully read the person you responded to (who is on your side).

Everyone recommending that PZ ask skilled techies in the IT department to track it down: PZ has been on the net for a long time, including time spent in the howling sewer that was talk.origins, and has done his geeking time as well. If he doesn't know how to read Received: headers at least as well as a random overworked IT goon, I'll eat my hat.

Meh. At the university I work for, our IT department has their allocated quota of underworked student work-study kids that have plenty of time to track down death threats being sent through their mail system. It don' hurt ta ask.

#237 gets the prize for making me scream laughing

It's hard to image someone being dumb enough to use their business email to send a threatening letter, but then again, someone once tried to use a banana to disprove evolution.

The Stupids are scary, I guess.

The FBI would be interested in this information. Since it's an electronic mail death threat, it can easily be a Federal matter. Believe it, or not, the FBI does watch out of religious extremists.

Minneapolis FBI:
Address:
Federal Bureau of Investigation
111 Washington Avenue South
Suite 1100
Minneapolis, MN 55401

Phone: (612) 376-3200
Fax: (612) 376-3249

Although the FBI operates 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, our business hours are from 8:15 am until 5:00 pm (CST), Monday through Friday. If you need to speak to an FBI representative outside of business hours, you may telephone the office at (612) 376-3200.

Email: minneapolis@ic.fbi.gov

mkroll@1800flowers.com is innocent until proven guilty.

OTOH, he, she or it will have some 'splaining to do tomorrow morning.

The truth is out there!!!

I apologize if this has already been said

Third time's the charm.

Forget collages. I wanna know how to get a job at a mosaic or a terrazzo.

Ichthyic @267-
wrong target, I think.

oops.

I stand corrected, apologies to Eric.

Letters like this always make me wonder why so many people who generally identify as democrats are against concealed carry or firearms in general. While I think its just random puffery nuttiness...I'd still be packing were I PZ.

Concern troll

There, covered that part in advance.

Main point: Connecting the dots to a wide audience in this way is not a good idea.

The tubes of the internets stretch far and wide, peoples entire lives get published in this way, without any context or real verification of accuracy, and all that on the assumption that the original message wasn't a joe-job of the social engineering variety.

Consider the effects of giving a large audience the information they need to contact people directly, not companies, persons. Mobs are unpredictable as is the idiot in every social group.

I don't know the legal ramifications of unleashing an internet mob on the wrong person, but regardless of those the person who published them carries responsibility for it's effects.

I think Karl Rove would tell me I'm defending trrrsts right about now.

How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against
Fags, and atheist like yourself.

Umm, yeah, they already do, and they have been centuries.

The address for reporting abuse seems to be rreid@1800flowers.com . While Ms. Kroll's machine may have been hacked, it is also possible to sign in to work e-mail via the Web. However, I agree that it doesn't sound like a female's use of language.

Certainly, equal rights mean equal penalties.

Everyone seems to forget that this started with the physical assault of a student in church by people wrenching at his arm and prying at his fingers like purse-snatchers. He also has a case for legal penalties against his attackers.

#302

carefully read the person you responded to (who is on your side).

Yeah, I saw that, too.

It's important to read the entire post before troll-stomping due to the rampant use of irony.
-------------
You Tube Eucharist Challenge

I like how the end of the second message says:

"Making the world a better place one message at a time. Check out the i'm Talkathon."

Lulz.

Well that first dude is now signed up for as many gay porn mailing lists as I could find in a 5 minute search...

When looking at email headers you want to pay special attention to the ip address in the brackets[ ]. That is the hard part for a spammer/troll/dumbass to forge. Professional spammers can add additional received lines but there will always be one for the actual origin of the email. If their is an email address with it, start tracing the received line IPs backwards from the top. Most spammers will use a completely bogus reply to address but these dumbasses mailing the death threats probably didn't bother thinking that far ahead. When you find a received from IP that matches the email address it's a safe bet that is where the email originated.

Once you have verified the origin/source of the email, that would be when you unleash hell upon it. >:-)

I don't know the legal ramifications of unleashing an internet mob on the wrong person, but regardless of those the person who published them carries responsibility for it's effects.

No, they don't, unless they say something like "go harass these people." That would fall under the jurisdiction of inciting a riot, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, etc. PZ has explicitly stated in these comments that he doesn't want them harrassed.

They made themselves targets when they sent the email, as they knew (or should have known) there was a possibility he could publish the identifying information (why do you think, in all likelihood, someone used an account [Ms. Kroll's] that doesn't belong to them).

I don't know the legal ramifications of unleashing an internet mob on the wrong person, but regardless of those the person who published the personal information carries responsibility for it's effects.

@Truth Machine

the jerks sending hate mail like that to him have no idea what actual Christianity/Catholicism is about.

Google "No True Scotsman".

This does not fall within that fallacy. Catholicism has a code of moral conduct that excludes sending hate mail and a person who is following the teachings of Catholicism would not send hate mail that like. Yes, Christians/Catholics do not always follow their moral code (we call it a sin); however, something as immoral as threatening to end an individual's life, is far enough away from the code for me to personally feel that an individual would not do that if they actually internalized the teachings.

I'm not saying that the people who are writing these messages aren't Catholic (although, I do hope they aren't), but I am suggesting that they seriously need to examine their conscience and reexamine the divide between what their faith teaches and what their actions proclaim.

I must also admit that I haven't entertained myself in some time through debates so my word choices are not always the best. I meant "have no idea" in the same way that you or I would say "that person has no idea how to drive!". Obviously that isn't true or else they would not be operating a motor vehicle, but the point remains that the person's conduct is far outside what the set of ethics/rules/guidelines demands.

I admit, if all of the people who called themselves followers of Christ actually followed his teachings, the world would be a better place.

You're a very nice fellow, Brandon, with considerable scruples, and if all Christians were like you, we might well just ignore our differences. But that simply isn't the way things are.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. There's fault on both sides of the argument on the level of apprehension felt between the two groups. My personal opinion is that my belief does not require you to believe as I do. I'll engage someone in discussion, but my end goal is not conversion, it's conversation. If something I said lead you to rethinking the concept of belief, faith, spirituality or religious, great. If not, then hopefully we leave each other with a bit deeper understanding of the other. You won't be able to understand my faith better if I attack your lack of faith in my God, so there's zero point to do so.

In some of these posts, I've read many atheists who appear to think along those same lines. There are also plenty who seem to be more on the offensive in attacking belief as something that only the stupid possess and should be eliminated in an enlightened society.

On both sides of this theological issue, there are those who help bring opposites together for the sake of discussion and conversation and there are those who bring opposites together to mock and attack them.

Also, just as much as I hope that some atheists can see that not all Christians are possibly mentally ill hypocrites, I hope some Christians who are on the attack realize how hypocritical they're about to be.

I do hope that people out there realize that this behavior isn't typical

There's a bell curve, and you're at one tail and they're at the other ... but I daresay the curve skews in their direction.

Granted on the bell curve. I think the vocal response to Professor Myers is skewed toward "their end", but I think there are many more Catholics who, if they hear about Donohue's "mission" to stop Prof. Myers from "defaming" Catholicism would probably just shake their heads and move on with their life.

Although, I think it is funny in a sad way that if the Catholic League never said anything about this, it would have died with a couple of posts. The Catholic League jumps into the pit and now it is an absolute three-ring circus. If they left Professor Myers alone and stop going on these no-win tirades, I think the world would be a better place.

or even remotely considered acceptable to Catholicism.

Category error. It's people who consider things acceptable, not isms. And the history of the people who call themselves Catholics is nothing like the self-serving Catholic literature.

Disagree, although my wording may have led to error. Catholicism, at least as the theory goes, is transmitted through the so-called self-serving Catholic literature. The Vatican doesn't publish the stuff just for show; it is published to be used as a guide. Catholicism has spilled much ink on the topic of "Love your neighbor as yourself" and sending hate mail to others is not compatible with that statement. Since "Love your neighbor as yourself" is part of the "greatest commandment" given by Jesus, for someone to not do that, it is acting in a fashion not acceptable to Catholicism (or at least the Pope if you want to put a person into the mix, but I'm not intending to launch a new topic regarding the Pope-that's for a different day).

The church is a place for sinners like a hospital is a place for the sick. If Catholics were perfect in living their Catholicism, we wouldn't need churches. Catholics have failed plenty---sadly, the institution has failed plenty as well. No argument from me on that.

The Church asks that a person does the best they can in living out the faith proclaimed and yes, our best has been far too short far too often.

I must run now. I work for a church (of all places) and Sundays are busy days for us. Mass in ten minutes. Don't worry, no physical force will be exercised. :-)

LOL @ 317

PZ: "Everyone else: I really don't like the idea of harassing either of these people."

If by 'harassing' you mean 'obsessing over', I think you're too late.

And thus closes the brief chapter where PZ Meyers posts the full headers of email threats to his readers...

I worked at a collage once.
Took months, and involved hundreds of pieces of photographs, drawings, and magazine pages.

Never paid nuthin, though. Labor of love.

That said, the sooner our society has a line that says "you must be this smart to function here, the rest of you are soylent green" the better.

Does that seem elitist? But kind of attractive, getting these mouth breathers out of our gene pool, no?

Am I the only one who thinks the diaper comment in #145 is a reference to astronaut Lisa Nowak?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak

Even if it wasn't, she's certainly an example of a woman who was capable of posing a threat to someone else. I would be careful of ruling out a woman as the perpetrator simply for being a woman. Look at the evidence, and if it turns out that a woman most likely did it, then so be it. But don't let a suspect's gender be a determining factor.

That being said, I agree with Professor Myers that it wouldn't be a good idea to harass/spam these addresses. I'm not so sure about threatening this person's job at 1-800flowers.com either. As it has been noted above, Melanie Kroll may simply have had her account hacked.

Someone with two working brain cells would not be stupid enough to send threatening emails with their regular mail, so don't bother with the porn mailing list sign ups.

Prison time for email threats
By Courtney Macavinta
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 4, 1998 5:05 PM PDT

May 1, 1998
Net libel suit raises free speech issues
March 13, 1998

Online hate speech on trial
November 5, 1997 The first Net user found guilty of an online hate crime--where death threats were sent by email to 59 Asian university students--was sentenced to one year in prison today, time that already has been served.

A jury convicted former University of California at Irvine student Richard Machado, 21, on two counts of federal civil rights violations in February.

In 1996, Machado was accused of sending an email to a group of fellow students, most of whom were Asian, threatening to "...make it my life career to find and kill every one of you personally." The email, sent from a campus computer, allegedly was signed "Asian Hater."

Mkroll@1800flowers.com and the other clown, smontel19@hotmail.com are looking at some serious jail time here.

#317 - "Well that first dude is now signed up for as many gay porn mailing lists as I could find in a 5 minute search..."

And the constructive outcome of this is going to be...?

Prof. Meyers is a big boy and he's demonstrated in the past that he's more than capable of fighting his own battles. Taking some kind of punitive action nominally in his name is insulting and the height of arrogance.

My internet experience tells me that the words "go harass these people" might as well be automatically added into every post with personal details, because thats what people seem to read.

I'm worried about something.

If one of these bat-shit crazy nutjobs follows through with their threat...
how is the atheist community going to deal with PZ becoming a martyr?

PZ, on the outside chance that you are killed, how would you like your death avenged?

May I respectfully suggest that no one here strap dynamite to their bodies and blow themselves up in the lobby of 1800Flowers.

"Platosphere. I like it. If nothing else, this business has enriched our language:

* Fatwa envy
* Platosphere
* It's time to get down on our knees and pray."

How am I supposed to remain aware of all internet tradishunz when you people keep adding to them?

The only person who should be allowed to say cunt is the late Joe Strummer. Clash fans will know.

Besides, there are soooo many better words to use than that.

"The only person who should be allowed to say cunt is the late Joe Strummer."

Why not John McCain?

Well that first dude is now signed up for as many gay porn mailing lists as I could find in a 5 minute search...

Posted by: The Dude

And that will accomplish what, exactly?

Seriously, man. Grow the fuck up. For all we know, you just subjected some poor woman whose email was wrongly used to no end of stupidity all because you believe you are being cute.

I don't know if this has been said yet, but emails that PZ receives at his university email address are public records, and therefore can be made public with few exceptions.

People who threaten a public employee at their public email address are risking a stronger punishment than threatening a regular citizen.

chronicle.com

May 21, 2008
Lecturer Convicted for Death Threats to Colleagues
Xiang Li, a former lecturer in the department of computer and information technology at Morrisville State College, has been convicted by a federal court in New York of 11 counts of making threats with the intent to kill or injure his colleagues at the college, formally the College of Agriculture and Technology at Morrisville, which is a branch of the State University of New York system.

The Post-Standard, a newspaper in Syracuse, N.Y., reported that Mr. Li, who had a one-year appointment at Morrisville in the 2005-6 academic year, had been found guilty on 11 of 12 counts of making threats. He used e-mail messages and telephone calls to harass professors and administrators at the college after his appointment was not renewed. The messages included death threats.

In testimony before the court, Mr. Li was described as a "nightmare in the classroom" whose clashes with students led to the college's decision not to rehire him.

Mr. Li, who is a citizen of China, faces a total of five years in prison for the crimes.

Oops, mkroll and smontel could get up to 5 years.

Not going to post any more morons doing time for emailing death threats. There are way too many to list.

"4. A co-worker has it in for her and decided to get her into hot water by forging the from address using his computer at the company."

Yes this occured to me. A nice clean way to get a co-worker you do not like fired.

I imagine someone cowers in an office, after hours,
At the 1-800-Flowers building, somewhere in New York.
Overwhelmed by the unending flow of emails folks are sending,
With no chance at all, intending for to stop it with a cork.
Once you start to dance or revel, if the fiddler is the Devil
Then there's no more straight and level--you are gambling with your soul;
If you bend to your desires and you threaten P. Z. Myers,
It's your choice to burn in fires, and we'll see you in the hole!

I work in the internet division of a giant retail corporation very much like 1.800.flowers. Here's some stuff I've learned about internet complaints of any kind:

1.) emails are forwarded randomly to low-level grunts such as myself. The goal of the grunts is to get rid of you and your question as quickly as possible. There is a possibility that your email will get forwarded to a supervisor or corporate customer service, but just as good a chance that you'll get a "thank you for your comments, this will be forwarded to the appropriate department" response, then your email will get dumped.

2.) The CEO will never, ever see your email. Never. Never ever. Never never never. If you email it to him directly, he'll still never get it, because it will be routed to corporate customer service. He has more important things to do, like rolling around nude in a giant pile of money.

3.) It is very possible that someone is using Ms. Kroll's computer to send these emails. The same thing happened at my job, when a disgruntled employee used someone else's computer to send a companywide email with attached photographs of the man who had gotten a promotion he felt he deserved. In the photographs, the newly promoted man was screwing his immediate supervisor on one of the beds in quality assurance. It was teh awesome. After that, all the computers were programmed to lock down after ten minutes of disuse. Let's not call for Ms. Kroll's head until we have all the facts.

4.) The best thing you can do is contact either the HR department or corporate customer service. In a pinch, I would say call corporate. Giant companies are usually quite conservative and do not want their employees reflecting badly on the company, and they will take death threats written by one of their employees on company time *very* seriously. PZ may get some free flowers out of this! Plus, HR is going to think about all the work place shootings that have occurred over the past decade and seriously wonder if they have a mentally disturbed, violent employee on their hands that may end up hurting *them* someday.

PZ.
I am all for posting these vile and hateful email with their addresses for all to see. Its one thing to disagree and saying so. Its quite another to enter into the rim of threating violence . So go for it, post until your heart content, the most vile and hateful email and we the reader will spam them until they beg for mercy.

Now,we all know that this and the threads of the last few days have shown,if we didnt already know it,that fundie christians of any denomination will lean to the less educated and mentally ill or unstable side of the population.

I have no problem at all with mocking them when they come here to hate and rant,we all know you hardly ever can have a rational discussion with them.

However,I do not think that publishing IP addresses is a good idea PZ,neither is whois-ing them and sending out emails to the provider/employer etc.,if you feel threatened,and I think you do,judging from the new disclaimer on the site,then send those data to the Police or FBI and let them chase those people.

As I said above,these are some seriously unhinged individuals,and as pradeep said above,look after yourself and stay safe,if you feel threatened by any particular mail,hand it over to the authorities.

The Dude is just another troll. I doubt someone without issues relating to gays in the first place would ever consider such a response to death threats.

Scenario #5: Ms. Kroll went to the building on her vacation and used her work computer, or signed into the building after hours with an access card. (It's possible. The laws of physics do allow her to be in the building even if her Out Of Office message is on.)

Personally, I don't really think it's her, either, barring new evidence. I've worked for enough scumbags in my career to believe that Melanie is a secretary or other minor support functionary, and her moron boss didn't think any further than covering his ass with her job security.

"Someone with two working brain cells..."

You are assuming much. We ARE talking about fundamentalists here.

dutch the Death Cult moron:

My internet experience tells me that the words "go harass these people" might as well be automatically added into every post with personal details, because thats what people seem to read.

You are the poster moron for a cultist who is blind. The kind that could watch a priest stick his dick up a little kid and claim it didn't happen. Which BTW, plenty of Catholics did exactly that. The problem with xians isn't that they aren't any better than other people, it is that some of them are far, far worse than average.

If these morons weren't sending death threats to PZ Myers they wouldn't be up in public. Their choice, their problem. Their real problem will happen when the FBI picks them up. Email death threats are felonies and can and will be prosecuted. Again, "as you sow, so shall you reap". That book xians always ignore and never read.

And BTW, the laws and police exist to protect people like Myers from people like you, kroll, and montel. Sucks being a criminal sometimes, doesn't it.

Kevin wrote @ #145:
"Well now that we know that mkroll is a girl, are you people STILL gonna call for her head on a platter?"

I know several women with black belts in karate who could whup your sorry arse Kevin, and not even break a sweat. Besides which, how much expertise does it take to squeeze the trigger of a concealed firearm. Which, considering the American people's seeming obsession with owning firearms, is certainly not out of the question. Or how about stabbing with a knife, such as what happened to the Dutch filmaker who was murdered recently in broad daylight on a street in Amsterdam by a crazy Muslim fanatic?

Never underestimate the sheer lunacy and determination of an outraged religious fanatic Kevin.

The only person who should be allowed to say

Sorry, my freedom of speech doesn't require your approval. You're a cunt.

-jcr

Kevin (#101):

Oh please, I've been bandying "cunty" around town since I was three years old.

So you've been using it for what, six whole weeks?

Wow!

You have a published policy regarding threats of violence AND over 300 people have responded to your latest post.

Are you the second coming of Christ, or something?

:)

I look forward reading your blog over the next several days to find out why you are so (un)popular.

PZ,

Just wanted you to know that Hemant over at Friendly Atheist Blog is roasting you as well. Sigh...

If it counts, I back you.

http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/07/13/a-response-to-wafergate/#comment-…

So, how did the correspondent above get the impression that PZ has a job in a collage? It's not at all clear to me what having a job in a work of art would entail.

-jcr

#347 - well played. +1 internetz for you.

Bill Donahue must be proud of what he set into motion

Of course he is. Donahue is all about getting attention for his worthless self, and he got quite a bit of it this week.

-jcr

Re: collage. I think they meant to rub it in, that he had not moved on to decoupage.

These morons don't care about right and wrong, about truth or evidence or fact, about human life.
It disgusts me.

What if PZ is forwarding all this lovely email to The Authorities, but simply doesn't feel the need to broadcast that fact, so as to not warn off any potential purveyors of Righteous Fury? How cool would it be for Catholicism to register as a blip on Homeland Security's watch list?

The thing that really makes me sad is, I know people who would actually resign if they got a threat like that.

raven:

You are the poster moron for a cultist who is blind.

This is silly. Your post doesn't even address mine, so I'm wondering why you even went through the trouble of quoting me. If you even care, I'm not a cultist of any kind. Go search for my name in the last few threads if you are still undecided on that note, or are about to start a tirade against faux-atheists.

In case you misunderstood. I'm not just referring to Pharyngula or PZ, every forum with a large and motivated audience where personal details are published suffers from the same problem. Just asking readers not to harass a person can help a lot though. In the end, I don't care, I'm sharing an opinion, take it or leave it.

Or ignore everything I said and rant about cults and what they do all day.

A big chunk of 800Flowers people work from home - they're called "home agents" - and are part of a distributed call center. When you call to buy flowers, its really unlikely that you're talking to someone in Carle Place.

So there would be no need to go in to the office on vacation - they just need to walk over to their desk at home.

Fingers crossed - maybe New York is partially redeemed ;)

Here's an email I sent to his work address just for shits and giggles:

Subject: You have to be the dumbest piece of shit to ever walk the earth

Body: Threatening a guy's life from your work email is a fucking class act.
Expect to not have a very good week.

Also, while I am far from homosexual, your random rant about fags and whatnot just makes you look like a stupid ass dipshit redneck. Maybe you missed the memo on that over at 1800Flowers HQ. The more socially acceptable way to rant against fags is to protest gay marriage, which I believe is eventually going to get passed nationwide anyway (like it
has in most other, more progressive, countries). It's the pieces of shit like you that are holding back inevitable progress, as usual, and causing the US to drag ass. Maybe you should have studied your way to one of those "lib'rul" colleges, then maybe your ass wouldn't be stuck at 1800Flowers.

Brandon @ 321:

"Since "Love your neighbor as yourself" is part of the "greatest commandment" given by Jesus, for someone to not do that, it is acting in a fashion not acceptable to Catholicism (or at least the Pope if you want to put a person into the mix, but I'm not intending to launch a new topic regarding the Pope-that's for a different day)."

The Pope? The Nazi who calls me "intrinsically disordered" because I'm gay? Then shields his baby-raping buddies? You call that "loving"!!??!! That's one intrinsifuckinally disordered idea of "love," dude.

It's "acting in a fashion not acceptible to Catholicism," except when Pope Ratsy does it.

Correction: It's not a "him", it's a "HER"! It's not often that I see a violent outburst threat from a woman! I wouldn't necessarily go assuming it was a man using her account, though

I just dropped a note to Ms. Kroll:

Ms. Kroll,
It appears that someone has taken over your computer and used it to send threats of violence to PZ Myers, a college professor in Minnesota. I've included the full text of the message and its headers below, to aid your local police, and your IT security staff in investigating this misuse of 1-800-flowers's computers.
Dr. Myers has also posted the message at his web log, at the following address:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/mail_dump.php
Whether it's an internet break-in, or some idiot who actually has access to your office, I'm sure that a company that depends on its public reputation will want to get a lid on this situation as quickly as possible.
Sincerely,

-jcr

and I got an auto-reply from the same IP address as appears in the message the PZ posted above.

Note however, that since the computer it came from is running Windows, and since its user is apparently away on vacation, it's entirely possible that this message actually came from someone who is misusing Ms. Kroll's computer without her knowledge.

-jcr

For those asking if the email from 1800Flowers.com was real, just look at the headers: in particular the "Received" part.

the email came from CPNYMAIL02.1800flowers.int, was sent to mail2.800-flowers.net, and then was sent to Google. 1800flowers.int isn't a valid domain -- it must be used internally (which is common for larger corporations.)

If it wasn't sent by somebody that works at 1800Flowers.com, it was sent by somebody with access to their internal email system.

If it was the first, their HR department should know -- and if it was the latter their IT should know that they have a major security flaw.

From: mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com
Subject: your short life
Date: July 13, 2008 8:07:31 AM CDT
To: myersp@morris.umn.edu
Delivered-To: pzmyers@gmail.com
Received: by 10.100.126.5 with SMTP id y5cs262374anc; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:08:03 -0700 (PDT)

Received: by 10.65.237.15 with SMTP id o15mr14501258qbr.56.1215954482483; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:08:02 -0700 (PDT)

Received: from mtain-a.tc.umn.edu (mtain-a.tc.umn.edu [134.84.119.205]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id u2si9779510pyb.16.2008.07.13.06.08.01; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:08:02 -0700 (PDT)

Received: from 1800flowers.int (mail2.800-flowers.net [205.153.87.31]) by mtain-a.tc.umn.edu (UMN smtpd) with ESMTP for ; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:08:01 -0500 (CDT)

Received: from ([10.180.1.74]) by CPNYMAIL02.1800flowers.int with ESMTP id 5202711.34123806; Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:07:31 -0400

Benjamin,

The preponderance of evidence does seem to indicate that this message came from Melanie Kroll's computer, but we don't know for a fact that she's the only person with access to that machine. Could be an idiot co-worker, could be a janitor with an axe to grind, or even a rival who wants her fired.

Until and unless someone contacts Melanie Kroll and asks her directly whether she committed this crime (yes, transmitting threats is a crime), then we really don't know who did this.

What is appropriate is to report the matter to management at 1-800-FLOWERS, and have them take it up with local law enforcement.

-jcr

Comment #62 is exactly the sort of thing that should be bouncing all over the intertubes. Brandon, you've got the sort of moral fiber that's been lacking in every other Catholic whom I've seen address this issue (can't say I've read everything, but hey). Bravo, sir!

@Peter: Boy, you really told him/her! Next time I get any threatening emails you'll be the first person I'll call for electronic revenge.

@Goldfishflakes re#350

I read the post at FriendlyAtheist.com and didn't see it as a roast, just an opinion that PZ's approach (desecrating a "consecrated" cracker) would not be productive to resolving the secular vs religious issue. Personally, I agree with Hemant and I also continue to adore PZ. Just because I like and respect PZ Myers doesn't mean I think he is always correct on the best way to approach a situation (usually I agree with him and not always).

This is the first time I've posted on the Cracker "Crime" and I can only say the unfolding course of events boggles my mind. It reinforces my belief that we humans are not intrinsically rational.

As for me....I will send a brief one-page letter to Mr. Bruininks letting him know how much I appreciate PZ's blog.

P.S. regarding Bill Donohue - everytime I hear that name I am reminded of the South Park "hare-club-for-men" (I don't know the actual title) episode ;-)

Maybe --just maybe-- I am wrong, but I think the shit's gonna hit the fan up at 1800FLOWERS. Just waiting.

Though maybe someone in the US should also tip off some papers? Because the behaviour of the cat'lickers should be in the public interest.

Here in Australia the Chief Pedophile (aka the 'pope) is attending the World Youth Day.
Not all Aussies find it so enchanting, http://www.writeone.com.au/WYD2008.htm as there seems to be competition about getting the message across to the cat'lickers that the leaders of their religion stink, including the head of the Aussie cat'lickers, the protector of cat'licking pedophiles, cardinal Pell.

Ahhh - the warm glow of Christian love.

Send email to 1800flowers and let them sort it out. It's their server.

rggrant@1800flowers.com

The email is real. The IP address matches. I have confirmed this with the company.

There's an easier way to lock a Windows computer. Hold down the "Windows Key," and strike the letter "L". screen locked, no C-A-D needed.

Cheers!

PS: This is a great reason why I believe in posting under your real name. It at least imposes a modicum of restraint.

Interesting that many 1800flowers people work from home. Fewer possible people with access but way less security.
Wonder if she has kids?
"Now, dear, Mommy's a little tired because she had to spend all day defending herself because someone, I'm not going to say who, thought it was FUNNY TO SEND THREATENING EMAIL - I'm going to lie down with a headache. Wait till your father gets home."

With so many "new" people saying things that are rather silly, it would really help if SB would get us some identifying hashes, even if they were just ip or hostname based. ASAP.

I know I've seen more from the ugly insides of Kenny's head then I ever wanted to know.

For those who are interested, tonight at work/church, I led a discussion with individuals who are on the process of becoming Catholic.

The topic: Acting your faith. How the Word (aka our faith) will be judged by others by the words you use.

Everyone there thought threats and hate mail were completely wrong. I can't do anything about those crazy Catholics running around, but Lord help me, I'll do my best that new Catholics realize that to have faith means to act it.

Brandon,

"My personal opinion is that my belief does not require you to believe as I do."

That sounds rather more like a buddhist position than a christian one. I'm not knocking your position on this of course, but I'm not aware of anything in the bible that admonishes christians to leave their neighbors to believe as they see fit.

Of course, there is that "go into your closet to pray" bit, which admonishes believers not to make a great public display of their alleged piety.

-jcr

While I'm posting, I'm offline for the night. Have a good one folks.

@foxfire #368

Hemant is a moderate and personally, moderates make me ill...whether they be religious moderates or atheist moderates. They simply cannot be productive as moderates. Now, I do not believe that everyone has to be an ass to get things done either. But, you do have to take a strong stand when it comes to serious matters.

I did not say that I would have said the same things as PZ said...or how he said it...but the underlying message...yes, I agree. And I think we should stop roasting one another and get together on core issues and actually get productive as a movement. Religion is hurting people...always has and always will. It needs to be brough down about a thousand levels.

I applaud people like PZ for being willing to stand up and speak when others are crouching behind their desks at home.

Hemant has an opportunity to help get a message out, but instead he is criticizing others for doing just that.

I Googled 1800flowers.com, and this gave me a giggle:

Employment Opportunties at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM
There is no better job than bringing a smile to millions of people. Join the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM team today!

... and bring a smile by threatening to beat someones' brains it. That'll do it.

One last comment, couldn't resist.

jcr@376:

Brandon,

"My personal opinion is that my belief does not require you to believe as I do."

That sounds rather more like a buddhist position than a christian one. I'm not knocking your position on this of course, but I'm not aware of anything in the bible that admonishes christians to leave their neighbors to believe as they see fit.

Of course, there is that "go into your closet to pray" bit, which admonishes believers not to make a great public display of their alleged piety.

-jcr

I'll be honest, I can't pull up a quote to justify me on this one. My faith says I must evangelize it to others ("Go forth and baptize all nations..."), but my faith does have a famous quote from St. Francis, "Preach the Gospel at all times, and when needed, use words."

In other words, the way I act is how I try to evangelize to others. If I act in a way that impresses people and they want to know why I act the way I do, fantastic.

I don't feel that I need to yell out to everyone I pass "Jesus Christ is Lord!" or anything like that.

Hopefully that explains my point better.

Really offline for the night now.

By the way, if PZ does actually "desecrate" the crackers, he'll be demonstrating the opposite of his claim that they're "just crackers." Smash the idol, and you're agreeing with your opponents that it's more than an "ordinary chunk of matter", even if hardly what it is claimed to be.
Glen D

-

The liberation of the human mind has rarely been furthered by men of solemnity, but rather by the freeliving people who heaved dead cats into religious sanctuaries, and happily went on with their business; proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. ~H.L. Mencken

PZ,

You act like these threats are simply annoying to you, like a new type of spam. You've been in this game longer than most, so I guess I defer to your judgment. Perhaps these messages communicate nothing more than outrage.

But, please, try to follow-through on reporting them. While it would be sad to see a hastily written, angry e-mail ruin someone's life, at the same time these (death) threats should not be treated so casually.

I might think differently if you were a faceless online personality blogging from an undisclosed location. You, however, use your real name, you make public appearances, we know what you look like and where you work. You describe your weekly routine, and I seem to recall you describing your home town closely enough that I feel like it would be easy to show up on your lawn. Your real life is connected to the receiving-end of these threats.

The sender really has to learn that if these were intended as idle threats, meant to clog your in-box with anger and swear words, then they really can't take the form of threats against things that, realistically, could be in danger. If you want your threats to be clearly idle, you have to keep them hollow. When you make a realistic threat that you have no intention of performing, then you are sowing terror. So, either these people are potential killers or they are terrorists. (Yes, I did it: I dropped the T bomb.)

PZ, time to sick the dept. of homeland security on these Christian terrorists.

but I'm not aware of anything in the bible that admonishes christians to leave their neighbors to believe as they see fit.

In one of Paul's letters he does tell the recipients not to bother with non-believers. It is in the context that the world's about to end so it isn't worth the bother to do a bunch of stuff though. I don't recall which book/chapter/verse it is (might not even be one of Paul's).

Goldfishflakes,

If you hurt somebody's feelings, you aren't being "friendly," which would probably be a domain name violation, or some such. Or maybe even Conspiracy to Consider the Abstract Possibility of Inciting the Temptation to Infringe on Somebody's First Amendment Rights, Kind Of. Dunno, I'm not a lawyer.

Not all Aussies find it so enchanting, http://www.writeone.com.au/WYD2008.htm as there seems to be competition about getting the message across to the cat'lickers that the leaders of their religion stink, including the head of the Aussie cat'lickers, the protector of cat'licking pedophiles, cardinal Pell.

I'm so glad I'm not going to be in and around Sydney this week, putting up with WYD supporters on my last trip in May was bad enough.

@dinkum #384

LMAO!

Hi PZ,

You should report these e-mails to the FBI. I think these types of e-mails are quite illegal.

Regards

Steven

You know, I have to agree that you should be careful, and report these threats. I used to escort patients from their cars to an abortion clinic, past protesters. A few were really crazy. One frequently insisted that he was going to hold us down and "bleed the Satan out of us." We really didn't take it seriously, but a few years later (at different clinics) two people were shot and killed and one was killed by a nail bomb. Yeah, it's *probably* okay, but there's always the times when it isn't.

@92 You obviously never met my mother.

Why, no, I haven't. Maybe you should move out sometime.

ya'll are allowed to sing along to the wizard of oz and contribute your own lyrics: DINGDONG!!! your god is dead...your wicked god..your mean old god. hey DINGDONG, your wicked god is dead.

I think it was obvious to most people that PZ was being facetious when he solicited communion wafers. I personally never thought he was serious about desecrating one. But Donohue had to have a tantrum over it, and look where we are 7000+ comments later, with 5/6 death threats (depending on if you count that last email a death threat) and the job of at least one person (at 1-800-FLOWERS) in jeopardy.

Aggression just begets aggression and never gets you anywhere. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind, as Ghandi said.

Let me stop and Point out that there are two people who go by Dutch
Dutch Hendrick(?) the TROLL
Dutch Delight - A peach of a pharyngulite.
All Dutches aren't created equally.

@ MAJeff #10
Always enjoy your posts Jeff. Shorter version of yours and an old favorite of mine: There's nothing wrong with sucking as long as it's done well.

So it's less of an insult to Jesus to chew him up, swallow him, dissolve him in acid, turn him into poo then flush him down the toilet?

An eye for an eye...the world may go blind, but then it just starts in after the nose. lol

Wow, the love of Christ! Praise God!

I'm surprised Michael Korn's dumb ass hasn't caught wind of WaferGate.

I only read half the comments, but for those saying it's more likely somebody used her email because any emails to her come back saying she's on vacation...at least at my company, a lot of people still check, or at the very least use, their work email while on vacation via blackberry. I'm not entirely sure if it'll look like it was sent from within the company network, but it's a thought at least.

Well, if that 1-800-Flowers email turns out to be from an actual employee, I hope those in charge reprimand the author and force him to write a letter of apology to Dr. Myers.
He's clearly unhinged, uneducated and dangerous.

I agree . . . firing the asshole, well, who does that help? The asshole will be a bigger asshole, he'll blame PZ and atheists all the more, his family will likely drop into poverty.

PZ says: they are defending what they hold sacred in angry terms, and at the same time telling me I have to deface what Muslims hold sacred.

It is so strange that they do that. It's like they don't have a logical bone in their body. Reminds me of Americans who respond to criticisms of the US by demanding that the critic stop scrutinizing the US and start criticizing whatever country is the enemy du jour.

And let me say, while I have great affection for many of you, I freakin' love Digital Cuttlefish.

I'm sure this has been addressed but I can't read through the whole comment thread. I've already read all of the others ones.

Spoofing the address of the company etc.. isn't that hard. I get millions, yes actual millions, of spoofed emails a year through my mail server.

That does not mean that this didn't come from 1-800-flowers.

now if this has been addressed, then ignore this.

And let me say, while I have great affection for many of you, I freakin' love Digital Cuttlefish.

I think you speak for everyone.

i tolerate most of you, ;) but I LOVE D.C.

Apparently, the address is valid, if not stolen. I got this in response to my inquiry from mkroll@1800flowers.com

De : Melanie Kroll (mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com)
Envoyé : lun. 14/07/08 02:55
À : Marie-Annick Jean

I will be out of the office Friday July 4 and will return on Monday July 14. I will respond to you then. Have a fabulous weekend.

@Karen #301 ... You think YOU have it bad? ... My husband's name is Dave Scott! LoL!

Now if this makes anyone wonder ... NO - He's not the one you're thinking of.

BTW, has anybody noticed that PZ has explicitly stated he doesn't want these folks to be harassed, yet Donohue so far has not implored his fellow Catholics to stop with the death threats? Of course, he offered a veiled threat to prosecute if he should receive any (by "connecting the dots" back to PZ), but it's always about him. What an attention whoring fuckwit.

People, I think it is poor form to be emailing 1-800-flowers. PZ is perfectly capable of handling this himself.

If mkroll is just an unwitting participant in this whole incident of dumbfuckery then it is not fair to be slamming her or her IT people with the inquiries.

Paul Lundgren; "There's an easier way to lock a Windows computer. Hold down the "Windows Key," and strike the letter "L". screen locked, no C-A-D needed. Cheers!

(emphasis mine)

Doh! I 'knew' that but forgot, being an old DOS dog. CAD comes as naturally to my fingers as clicking a pen. But however they do it, I recommend people lock their computers when away from the keyboard. So someone won't send nasty emails to strangers on the interwebs.

http://center.spoke.com/info/p83khk0/SteveMontemurro

Neural T wrote,

Well, mkroll@1800flowers.com is a real address. I just sent an email to it and got this auto-reply:

BTW, did the ip addy in the headers from the email you received from her match the one sent to PZ?

I like how the second message ends with "making the world a better place, one message at a time" as its automated ad. It's... something. a little creepy. I'd laugh if it were less violent.

I hope that first email wasn't a phish or hack, and someone can find out who sent it.

At #57: Yes. He does deserve to be fired.

People need to learn that there actions have repercussions. If people feel that they can just send vulgar death threats on a whim and not experience any consequences, then they need to be corrected. If a dog shits on a carpet, you don't just say, "Wonderful! Go on with your livelihood!" If that were common practice, no dogs would be house-trained.

It's for his own good, and for the good of the people he may choose to threaten.

(Okay, I was late. But I had to. I needed to.)

Here's the relevant parts of the mail header:

Received: from 1800flowers.int (mail2.800-flowers.net [205.153.87.31])

Received: from ([10.180.1.74])
by CPNYMAIL02.1800flowers.int with ESMTP id 5202711.34143246;
Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:25:58 -0400

Looks like it came from the same place, CPNYMAIL02.1800flowers.int. That's the internal company mail server.

Just so everyone knows, 1-800-flowers has free e-mail. If you go to their website, they have a sign up at the bottom right hand corner of the site. This means that person probably does not work for 1-800-flowers.

That's used to sign up for their mailing list; you don't get an email address in their domain with that.

I'm surprised Michael Korn's dumb ass hasn't caught wind of WaferGate.

I may be wrong but I get the impression that Korn[hole] lean's more away from Rome and towards having lunch with Luther or Calvin.

It's one thing to spoof an email address, even a real email address. You just have to know what it is. It's another to spoof all the routing information. It would take someone with an advanced understanding of internet mail handling AND specific knowledge of the 1-800-FLOWERS mail system.

I don't think the semi-illiterate dimwit who sent that email is that sophisticated. I think we can assign a high degree of certainty to the proposition that whoever sent it had access to Melanie Kroll's email account.

renegade apostrophe... KILL IT

I don't think the semi-illiterate dimwit who sent that email is that sophisticated. I think we can assign a high degree of certainty to the proposition that whoever sent it had access to Melanie Kroll's email account.

I wholeheartedly agree, but I also think a measure of restraint is in order. Every one jumping off the deepend without any substantial explanation from FLOWERS is kind of how "they" act.

Lets be civil until we have confirmation, then tear them to pieces.

Wow...I guess that whole "Turn the other cheek..." thing is tossed out the window the second someone makes fun of their magic Jesus crackers.

#402: "I'm sure this has been addressed but I can't read through the whole comment thread."

The problem with linear comment threads, especially long ones like these, is there's no summary of information as time passes. If you want to be diligent and follow what's going on you have to commit hours (in some cases) catching up, and then the thread keeps growing in the meantime. But then there are those who simply pile on at the end and repeat knee-jerk statements after they've been explained or debunked earlier. So based on some rapid-fire sleuthing of the mail headers and sheer speculation, we've seen that the first message might have been spoofed, was written by a man, written by someone stealing another's account, written by a Pharyngula supporter posing as a crazy christian, written by a 'free email' account hosted by 800-flowers.com, written by a woman, written by the woman's husband, etc., etc. And then the responses have been likewise scattershot, *almost* to the point of returning a similar threat (give it time...)

Mob behavior is not the exclusive province of any one group. It's tough to temper reactions in a (generally) open forum like this. It's refreshing to see at least some people admit that they haven't followed the entire thread before offering new information.

Unfortunately the fallout from this may not reflect well upon the people here 'only trying to help'. We could all be very wrong (except for the origins of the mail headers, although nothing is 100% certain yet) and some innocent person(s) may have a very bad Monday morning. We can only wait and see...

Let's be civil? Nobody has DONE anything yet. A few people have contacted the company to let them know about the incident. That's it.

I merely emailed her to tell her that I was going to report the incident. That's when I got the auto-response. I didn't harass her. I hope nobody else did either.

This thread needs some Monty Python:
[Matthias is about to be stoned to death]
Matthias: Look, I don't think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying "Jehovah".
[Everyone gasps]
Jewish Official: You're only making it worse for yourself!
Matthias: Making it worse?! How can it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!
Jewish Official: I'm warning you. If you say 'Jehovah' once more--
[Mrs. A. throws a rock at the Jewish Official]
Jewish Official: Right! Who threw that stone? Come on. Who threw that?
Crowd: She did! It was her! [suddenly speaking as men] He! He. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him.
Jewish Official: Was it you?
Mrs. A.: Yes.
Jewish Official: Right...
Mrs. A.: Well, you did say 'Jehovah.'
Crowd: Ah! Ooh!...
[Crowd throws rocks at Mrs. A.]
Jewish Official (stamping up and down): Stop! Stop, will you?! Stop that! Stop it! Now, look! No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say 'Jehovah'!
Crowd: Ooh...!
[Jewish Official gets stoned to death]

Looks like it came from the same place, CPNYMAIL02.1800flowers.int. That's the internal company mail server.

As someone said before, the most parsimonious explanation is that the threatening email did in fact orginate from her email addy and was routed through the corporate server located in Westbury, NY.

Was the internal, private ip addy the same as well? (in the original email the private ip was 10.180.1.74) Not that it's definitive as most private ips are dynamically allocated. Still would interesting if that also matched.

One analogy that came to mind is that when I signed the requisite paperwork, my house stopped being "a house" and became "my house". However, you could've camped out in front of it with all the equipment you wanted, and wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the moment when this transformation occurred, or notice any difference between "a house" and "my house".

This is really good, and I'm surprised no one else has commented on it. It makes much more sense that transubstantiation is not the reality of the host changing but the receiver's attitude or perception of the host becoming the flesh of Christ. And even then, not in a literal sense of it becoming meat but instead becoming the essence of Christ. And this is what it means to become "in communion" with Christ. That by consuming some of His essence you actually incorporating His essence into yours. I think if the Church taught this it could still be just as miraculous to the faithful without sounding quite so ridiculous to non-believers.

Mmmmmmmmm.... kroll.........

Makes me want a donut. Or some Christians.

revbdc@ 417

hahaha! excellent response. If you haven't read "The Eyre Affair" you might check it out:
http://www.librarything.com/work/4921
word-eating irregular-verb-hating monsters with striped socks.

If Ms Melanie is indeed innocent, I do hope that she has been otherwise keeping her nose clean on the intertoobz because something tells me she's going to have the most scrutinised computer in the US on Monday.

As an aside, if she is innocent, can anyone think of a shittier "return to work after a holiday" scenario?

JD,

Yes, it was the same. But I don't think that's the ip of the original computer that the message came from (otherwise it wouldn't be the same for the auto-response). That's an ip within the 1-800-FLOWERS corporate LAN (probably the ip of the mail server, CPNYMAIL). Try to do an IP geolocation on it. I did. It doesn't map anywhere.

Let's be civil? Nobody has DONE anything yet. A few people have contacted the company to let them know about the incident. That's it.

I merely emailed her to tell her that I was going to report the incident. That's when I got the auto-response. I didn't harass her. I hope nobody else did either.

Fine. All I am saying is it isn't necessary. You may be one person but who knows how many people have done the same thing but not mentioned it?

Did PZ co-opt any of our assistance in tracking down this nefarious curd (handlebar mustache twirl and everything)? No. if you took it upon yourself to try and suss out the details of the situation, ok fine. No big deal.

What I am saying, as someone who works as the front line contact for massive amounts of email at my job...

let PZ handle it. He's totally capable and has requested we do not contact them

Unfortunately, the originating IP in the first message was scrubbed by the mail server. This may be because it was posted within the LAN. ie, somebody sent it from the company offices.

As an aside, if she is innocent, can anyone think of a shittier "return to work after a holiday" scenario?

exactly

Thanks PZ! Sending some good 'ol spam their way now. Keep exposing these hypocrites as much as possible.

Well, the last time I got threats like the ones PZ recieved, I talked to the local DA and shortly after that I got a call from an investigator at the state AG's office. The AG was very interested. They'd been trying to nail the guy for several years. He had 17 charges pending, including attempted murder.

My point: those emails are evidence of criminal threatening. The police have access to background info that may be relevant. The police should investigate. Everyone else ought to avoid muddying the waters.

That's an ip within the 1-800-FLOWERS corporate LAN (probably the ip of the mail server, CPNYMAIL).

Yes, I see that it was given in your post and I missed it (sorry about that).

Try to do an IP geolocation on it. I did. It doesn't map anywhere.

It won't because it's part of the range of ips assigned by IANA to private networks. Routers on the Internet are configured to discard packets from them.

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

Thanks PZ! Sending some good 'ol spam their way now. Keep exposing these hypocrites as much as possible.

sigh, again

Obviously, the person has some issues, but how is this any different than what Prof. Myers said to begin with?

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

Is there any chance that some of these 'threats' are merely facetious?

In any case, Christians and pro-lifers get this kind of garbage every day from people like you. Normally, we don't engage in it. You get a few oddballs in any group, though.

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

Wrong.

IT

IS

JUST
A
FUCKING
CRACKER

You are full of shit too about your last point.

how is this any different than what Prof. Myers said to begin with?

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

Seems to me that threatening real, living people is completely different from threatening imaginary people. Sorry, but Jesus Christ and the Holy Father are not recognized citizens of the US by our government.

are you fucking out of your mind JC? - it's a cracker, it has no real significance, there is no fucking body involved- DO YOU UNDERSTAND CHEEZIT! YOU FUCKING IDIOT

JC worte,

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

He did? Where? When?....oh you mean the cracker.

This does not fall within that fallacy. Catholicism has a code of moral conduct that excludes sending hate mail and a person who is following the teachings of Catholicism would not send hate mail that like. Yes, Christians/Catholics do not always follow their moral code (we call it a sin);

You've already contradicted yourself, Brandon. What determines whether a person is a Christian or Catholic is not whether they follow their moral code, else there would be no sinners. Therefore, to say that people who qualify by way of believing in the divinity of Christ or by membership in the church are not truly Christian or Catholic, or have "no idea what actual Christianity/Catholicism is about" is to commit the fallacy. What "actual" Christianity/Catholicism is about is the actual behavior of real Christians/Catholics, not the fantasized behavior of imagined Christians/Catholics, or the behavior that is prescribed by the code of conduct that real live sinning Christians/Catholics only occasionally follow.

he had TAKE-OUT - and besides, you can't threaten someone who's already dead right? - gosh you people can't assume that anyone else shares your delusions

You've already contradicted yourself, Brandon. What determines whether a person is a Christian or Catholic is not whether they follow their moral code, else there would be no sinners. Therefore, to say that people who qualify by way of believing in the divinity of Christ or by membership in the church are not truly Christian or Catholic, or have "no idea what actual Christianity/Catholicism is about" is to commit the fallacy. What "actual" Christianity/Catholicism is about is the actual behavior of real Christians/Catholics, not the fantasized behavior of imagined Christians/Catholics, or the behavior that is prescribed by the code of conduct that real live sinning Christians/Catholics only occasionally follow.

Ouch.

You need an ice pack Brandon?

let PZ handle it. He's totally capable and has requested we do not contact them

LOL

it's like posting an idiotic comment from a known troll, and then asking people not to respond to the troll.

not

gonna

happen

Catholics don't have the right to be protected from threats of violence to their god any more than a tin-foiled street barker has the right to be protected from threats to the aliens that visit him.

Or at least that's how it should be. Who knows how the law has been crafted in favor of religion lunatics.

LOL

it's like posting an idiotic comment from a known troll, and then asking people not to respond to the troll.

not

gonna

happen

You're right. What the fuck was I thinking. This is teh intartubes.

Hey, I have a little statue of Shiva Nataraja I'll go draw a mustache on if it helps the cause. :)

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

No he didn't. He said he'd desecrate a cracker. Now you aren't actually suggesting that Jesus IS a cracker... oh wait.

As long as the email to the company is civil and polite, then I don't see the problem.

However, it's going to be difficult to enforce that. What's preventing some creationist retard to send an uncivil and deragatory mail to that email address *pretending* to be PZ's blog reader? I think it's best if PZ had handled this privately, and contacted the police.

Oh well, too late for that now. Have to sit back and see what happens.

If that isn't good enough, I have an old copy of AD&D Deities and Demigods lying around here that I can spill some Dr. Pepper on semi-sorta-on-purpose. That ought to take care of much of the remaining pantheons in one dunk.

Christians and pro-lifers get this kind of garbage every day from people like you.

oh?

since PZ has been kind enough to open up his email bag, why not do the same?

you're a xian and a "pro-lifer" (HA!), right?

so you must be getting death threats via email on a daily basis, right?

I want to see what a death threat to a xian from an atheist looks like.

so you must be getting death threats via email on a daily basis, right?

I want to see what a death threat to a xian from an atheist looks like.

*waits while he changes the wording in the email he sent to PZ

PZ never asked that the writers of those two email be harrassed, he just said he would post it...what people choose to do is up to them - :)

he probably ment to be biblical ...

if you ask me, it's "eye for an eye"

muahaha

If the FBI get involved, nothing anyone types here or emails to the principles is teh intartubes. It's all real life. And no one is anonymous.

SteveM wrote:

I think if the Church taught this it could still be just as miraculous to the faithful without sounding quite so ridiculous to non-believers.

Nope, it actually sounds even more batshit crazy than standard transcombobulation. It's solipsistic; if you think it's real, then it's real for you because there is no reality.

If the FBI get involved, nothing anyone types here or emails to the principles is teh intartubes. It's all real life. And no one is anonymous.

Yep. Hopefully no one is being a dumbass.

You're right. What the fuck was I thinking. This is teh intartubes.

the sentiment was good, though, and someone had to say it, after all.

I can't fault the people who say: "Please, don't respond to the troll", because if nobody said it...

Still, it seemed a bit strange to me that PZ would post these "without comment" in the manner he did, then ask everyone NOT to respond to them much later.

like putting up a target at a gun range, and failing to request that people not shoot at it until after several people already have.

oversight? Perhaps due to being particularly tired after a long field trip and much air travel.

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

First, that claim is only valid when speaking to Catholics; for non-Catholics it has no purchase, as they don't believe that the wafer is God's bod. Second, even if the wafer is part of the body of Jesus Christ, no manipulation of the wafer can count as "physical assault" against the immortal all powerful creator of the universe. Even if the triune God is capable of physical suffering, as presumably it chose to be when it took human form, that can't be by way of the wafer, which has no nerve endings. I really rather doubt that it's part of Catholic dogma that God feels physical pain if you bite into the wafer. Your claim here may well be sacrilegious; it certainly isn't serious, and will not be treated as such.

@ 451

I'm a bit curious as well. Sadly I have a feeling it might not be any better then some of the ones we've seen aimed at PZ.

Not all theists are complete batshit nutters, much like not all atheists are reasonable, laid back folks like the ones I know.

I'll be waiting for 1800-Flowers to release a "Sorry about the death threat" gift basket sometime soon (or will it be the "I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR FAMILY!!!" pick-me-up bouquet?)

Have to sit back and see what happens.

hmm, maybe that's exactly what PZ was thinking too.

"let's just see what happens"

Hard to say one way of dealing with this is better than the other, without a lot of data on the subject. Could be an experiment.

Personally, I would have just forwarded them to my IT dept. for identification and follow-up with authorities as needed, but then I'm also not a public-figure-at-large.

I merely emailed her to tell her that I was going to report the incident. That's when I got the auto-response. I didn't harass her. I hope nobody else did either.

Posted by: Neural T

And still, what you did was completely out of line. The threats were not made against you. They were not sent to you. You are a spectator in all of this, and yet you felt obligated to email this person and tell them that you are going to report them for something that doesn't have a single thing to do with you.

Did you stop to think that since PZ didn't ask for yours or anyone's help, he doesn't really need yours or anyone's help?

Seriously. Why are you guys are taking it upon yourselves to harass this person for something that, not only doesn't concern you, you're not even sure they're responsible.

Astounding. And, embarrassing.

//Seriously. Why are you guys are taking it upon yourselves to harass this person for something that, not only doesn't concern you, you're not even sure they're responsible.

Astounding. And, embarrassing. //

I couldnt agree more.

E-mail addresses that appear to work at 1-800-flowers (and might be higher-level employees)

mkroll@1800flowers.com, jmccann@1800flowers.com, cmccann@1800flowers.com, thartnett@1800flowers.com, vmcveigh@1800flowers.com, mnance@1800flowers.com, cfraas@1800flowers.com, jmurley@1800flowers.com, marthastewart@1800flowers.com, franchise@1800flowers.com, invest@1800flowers.com, custservice@1800flowers.com, ENachimovsky@1800flowers.com, kyoung@1800flowers.com, tschubert@1800flowers.com, weddings@1800flowers.com

Oh for fucks sake.

#216: "So far, NOT ONE SINGLE atheist has threatened violence."

Ah. Let me be the first, then.

*ahem*

If I read much more godsmacked screed trying to justify, defend, or make light of DEATH THREATS over BREAD and REMARKS ABOUT BREAD, I'm going to have to beat my own head against my desk until I have the attention span of a hyperactive feeder goldfish and the expressive ability of the average theistic Pharyngula troll.

As for Donohue and his ilk, the worst thing I can wish on them is to be stranded in one another's company long enough to discover the petty little points of dogma on which they disagree, so they can fall upon each other with greater ferocity than they've shown Webster Cook and Prof. Myers. If history has taught us anything, it's that the only thing Catholics hate more than a non-Christian is the wrong kind of Christian.

It's not harassment to tell a company that they may wish to investigate and confirm or deny the actions of an employee.

If the employee did nothing wrong, their IT department should be able to figure that out quickly and publicly clear up the situation.

If the employee did wrong, the company will know that they have an employee who feels it's appropriate to use company resources to send deeply bigoted death threats.

I have trouble construing any of that as harassment, though. Harassment would be if somebody posted Melanie's home address or phone number and suggested some sort of vigilantism, but I haven't seen anybody doing that.

#216: "So far, NOT ONE SINGLE atheist has threatened violence."

Ah. Let me be the first, then.

I smell a quote-mine.

I'm just surprised at how anybody that DUMB can manage to type on a keyboard to send a message like that in the first place.

Did you stop to think that since PZ didn't ask for yours or anyone's help, he doesn't really need yours or anyone's help?

just to be clear though, PZ posted these without comment.

He certainly could have (and apparently as an afterthought DID, in the comments) post his concerns about people emailing the senders.

However, he did not originally do this.

as to motive, looking back I see PZ said this:

I was just thinking that maybe I should salt some of the more threatening ones away in a public place. So that's why you're seeing this. I'm also thinking it may deter some of the real crazies out there.

which again, might have been a good thing to add to the original post (still would be, IMO, along with his admonitions).

It's been fun speculating.

Capital Dan #461

Neither am I going to sit idly by when someone gets DEATH THREATS. Law enforcement or company management don't need PZ's consent to do something about it (like the battered wife who keeps her mouth shut when the cops show up).

You can sit around and do nothing when people get death threats. I won't.

It's not harassment to tell a company that they may wish to investigate and confirm or deny the actions of an employee.

Posted by: Pimbok

And it's your responsibility, because....?

Are you under the impression that PZ isn't capable of handling this himself? After all, how does this, in any way, concern you?

As someone who deals with computer fraud on a daily basis I can tell you that PZ really does have a point about it being "faked", in that the real owner of that email address at 1-800-flowers may very well be the victim of a his his own stupidity - surfing pron sites from work or opening nasty emails that made it past the corporate firewall. The result his work computer is p4n3d with a root kit on it (you don't have to be a genius hacker to start your own bot net - the code is readily available on numerous sites and irc channels - or you can just buy access to one just as easily. I've quite often dealt with frauds committed by idiots that have control over someone else's email accounts without that person knowing it - solely to intercept emails detailing their fraudulent actions (in my case the rental of data center servers) before the real user sees them and realizes something is wrong. So, while this is a less likely scenario in this case, it is still quite possible and should not be discounted. I hope the IT department of 1-800-flowers does a thorough audit of that workstation before they take any action against the holder of that email account.

psycho moron:

He threatened physical assault against both Jesus Christ and the Holy Father.

1. Well he didn't threaten Jesus and God.

2. I would expect that Jesus/God the omnipotent creator of the universe should be able to take care of themselves in a brawl against a mere mortal like PZ Myers. Even that pretender Zeus, could just toss a lightening bolt at Myers and that would be it, crispy critters.

3. In the event that Jesus and God have gotten old and feeble, they could press charges against Myers for threatening them. Hey, gods got rights in America too.

4. The cracker is just a cracker after all, isn't it? It doesn't run around trying not to be eaten, it doesn't hurl lightening bolts, it doesn't call 911, and it doesn't even get a lawyer and charge Myers with assault or menacing.

5. Oddly enough, under the laws of all countries in the world, crackers are not considered people with full civil rights. My cat has more civil rights than a cracker. They are just considered common diety items.

Well thanks for playing Who is the dumbest poster in the last 4 hours. You win a cracker.

vmcveigh@1800flowers.com

ha! I knew it: 800-flowers is a front for extreme militia groups and terrorist bombers!

/snark

#216: "So far, NOT ONE SINGLE atheist has threatened violence."

Ah. Let me be the first, then.

#467:"I smell a quote-mine."

ooOoooh allow me!

"I have the attention span of a hyperactive feeder goldfish"

Reading some posts above, I have the impression not everyone is aware that threatening to harm another person is a crime. In fact any threat communicated across state lines may become a federal crime.

From the US Criminal Code 876c:

Whoever knowingly so deposits or causes to be delivered as aforesaid, any communication with or without a name or designating mark subscribed thereto, addressed to any other person and containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of the addressee or of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Five years of Nutraloaf no haz teh lulz.

@467

Ugh. Yeah, good point. Still, if my head and my desk get any better acquainted, there are going to be a bunch of little headdesks scampering around here soon, soiling my carpet and eating all my food.

Neither am I going to sit idly by when someone gets DEATH THREATS. Law enforcement or company management don't need PZ's consent to do something about it (like the battered wife who keeps her mouth shut when the cops show up).

You can sit around and do nothing when people get death threats. I won't.

OH PLEASE. You you investigate murders in your town? Are you solving the shoplifting at the local five and dime?

Don't get all riled up. It was a simple let PZ handle it.... like he requested.

You can sit around and do nothing when people get death threats. I won't.

Posted by: Neural T

Don't be a drama queen. I'm sure PZ knows how to handle these sorts of things. This isn't the first time he's gotten such threats.

But, hey. Don't let that stop you.

And it's your responsibility, because....?

because they see a crime and want to do something about it?

don't overdo your own admonitions.

it really IS a bigger issue than just PZ

son of a whore.

I fail at simple html tagging.

FAIL. EPICALLY.

I fail at simple html tagging.

mistakes, or not sure of the right tags?

Capital DAn,

Actually, let me rephrase what I wrote above.

FUCK YOU. There's a sizable chunk of us who are not going to let fellow atheists get intimidated by lunatics who threaten violence because we dare to offend their superstitions.

We are going to make it clear that it's not ok.

Jumping down to comment without reading the last 200+ comments: Yes I know these are death threats and you know these are death threats, but they are not legally threats because they do not have the form: "I am going to..." "I know where you live," "You have 3 choices," "I can break a man in half" are not actionable threats because they are implied, not stated. IANAL, but am I wrong?

mistakes, or not sure of the right tags?

Fully a result of my fat fingering it. I know the code I just bang it out so fast and hit submit.

I'm a dummy. I embrace it. My wife would agree.

Neural T wrote,

Neither am I going to sit idly by when someone gets DEATH THREATS. ...
You can sit around and do nothing when people get death threats. I won't.

Actually, this is a perfectly reasonable position. As has been pointed out throughout this thread, issuing death threats is a serious offense and needs to be treated as such. It certainly doesn't need the consent or permission of the victim to be reported or to ask for a formal investigation.

mistakes, or not sure of the right tags?

ah, nevermind, I see; you just put the end tag in the wrong place.

I think it's better to alert the relevant state or federal authorities rather than the alleged perpetrator's IT dept. or employer.

Evidence has a way of disappearing when people know the cops are on their way.

ah, nevermind, I see; you just put the end tag in the wrong place.

Actually i more than likely mis-typed /blockquote to be something like /blokcquote

on the "implied" front:

you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this. You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in. I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt

the threat is not implied, it seems personal to me.

"I will give you until the end of the month to resign, or I will beat your brains in"

is how I read that.

you?

#483

Neural, chill. Read the thread thoroughly, plenty of people have already taken action on this whether PZ wants them to or not. You don't have to jump on the "me too" wagon, it's handled. Wait this out, watch for follow-up posts; PZ himself might have a better idea about how his loyal legion can be of use in this situation. Meanwhile, we don't want to overreact and make him regret posting these emails.

"how did you even get a job at a collage."

Honestly, I think this is beautifully poetic, worthy of e.e. cummings. I'm picturing a little guy running around a world of magazine clippings, cleaning things up.

Yes I know these are death threats and you know these are death threats, but they are not legally threats because they do not have the form: "I am going to..."

"I know where you live," "You have 3 choices," "I can break a man in half" are not actionable threats because they are implied, not stated. IANAL, but am I wrong?

Yes, you are wrong. Death threats can be implied - e.g. hanging a noose outside the house of some black people.

Peter @ #360:

Way to go, dumbass. If you'd read the thread, you'd be aware that there's some question as to whether Ms Kroll is the sender. It seems quite likely her email account has been abused without her knowledge or consent. So, there's a good chance that you've sent your infantile, expletive laden rant to an innocent woman who'll get a nice obscene slap in the face her first day back from vacation. Way to go. And great way to present yourself and your position. I mean, phrases such as "stupid ass dipshit redneck" and "pieces of shit like you " really show just how different and more reasoned you are than the bigot who wrote the threat to PeeZed.

Kevin: Fie! Get thee hence!

And to anyone sending emails or signing people up for porn spam or anything else stupid and childish like that: A) It's PZ's issue, let him handle it. It's not the first time he's been threatened and he knows best how he wants it dealt with. Respect that. I'm sure he appreciates the support and good intentions, but it's all best handled professionally which it seems some of you are not doing. Also, anything you do complicates the issue and it's more threads that have to be followed and investigated. And B) as I mentioned to Peter above, some thought should be given to how we represent ourselves, the community ilk that's grown around this blog, atheists, and those who support PZ's freedom of expression and reject the hysterical and reactionary behavior of the Catholic fundies that started this whole thing. If we want to claim the high road, we have to follow it's path.

And finally, PZ, like I said, it's your call, but I do feel that the authorities should be notified and given copies of all the threats you've received. They may all be cranks, kids, or loudmouths, but better safe than sorry. Also, a good scare like the FBI showing up "with a few questions" is probably a hell of a deterrent to any continuation of such behavior.

Neural T,

dont get all hot under the collar mate.You are not the one those letters are adressed to to start with,and you and noone else knows at this point who wrote those mails.

Last thing anyone should do is play around with whois and then start sending emails to strangers accusing them of sending death threats,or,for that matter,publishing some random names in a public forum,where these people might get into trouble for having their names rolled out here,having done absolutely nothing at all.

Im all for going after lunatics making threats,but its for PZ,not you or anyone else here.

Capital DAn,

Actually, let me rephrase what I wrote above.

FUCK YOU. There's a sizable chunk of us who are not going to let fellow atheists get intimidated by lunatics who threaten violence because we dare to offend their superstitions.

We are going to make it clear that it's not ok.

Posted by: Neural T

You are sounding more and more like you just stepped in off the playground.

As I read PZ's comment here at #261:

Everyone else: I really don't like the idea of harassing either of these people. Let this stand as a record, nothing more -- it's just here in case there is an escalation.

Posted by: PZ Myers | July 13, 2008 8:00 PM

I don't know. When the guy who actually is the victim of the crime that you guys are going so bat-shit crazy about tells me not to harass those responsible for these crimes, I'm thinking that most rational folks would respect that and step away and assume that he's got things handled.

You guys are acting just like the hordes of loons who came flying out of Donohue's cave once the story of PZ's criticism hit them. "Let's write emails! Let's get the person fired! Vengance vengance vengance!"

#490

Yeah. I think that's pretty clear cut.

Imagine getting the following note:

***DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING IS MEANT FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY***

"Sell your house and move away or it will be burned down. I give you until the end of the month."

***END HYPOTHETICAL, ILLUSTRATIVE, NON-SERIOUS THREAT***

I'm pretty sure that local law enforcement would be willing to act.

I sent their customer service an email asking for clarification.

Obviously, this guy needs to be terminated for sending hate mail on company equipment and time.

And for spelling 'college' wrong...

@484:

Yes I know these are death threats and you know these are death threats, but they are not legally threats because they do not have the form: "I am going to..."

IANAL also. But as I understand, the "reasonable person" standard applies - i.e., would any reasonable person hearing or reading the words feel worried and intimidated?

If I know and you know the words are a threat, we prove the "reasonable person" standard.

Respect that. I'm sure he appreciates the support and good intentions, but it's all best handled professionally which it seems some of you are not doing.

Ok, I'm sorry, but all of this is starting to smell a bit funny. I think I understand the general concern, but...

If it was all so clear as to how PZ wanted to respond to these emails, why do you think he chose to post them without comment?

again, it's like asking people not to respond to trolls, without even asking them not to until a bunch have already responded.

Frankly, as much as I can understand wanting to let PZ "handle it", I also wouldn't want to tell others how to handle it themselves.

It really is beyond a matter of personal grievance, after all.