A Family Was Terrorized By Their Own Cell Phones And A Mysterious Stalker Known As 'The Restricted'
It Started With A Phone Sending Text Messages On Its Own
In 2007, the Kuykendall Family was living in Fircrest, Washington (near Tacoma), when one of their daughters' phone started sending text messages on its own. 16-year-old Courtney claims that the phone would message her friends of its own free will. At the time of the initial reporting, there were no claims as to what the text messages said.
After the texts, a series of phone calls from someone with a "scratchy" voice started coming from a number that read "Restricted." The calls would describe what the family was doing at that moment and even what they were wearing. Kuykendall's neighbor, Andrea McKay, who said that she was also a victim of The Restricted's harassment, claims that one day, when she was cutting limes in her kitchen, a mysterious call came through and the voice on the other end told her that it preferred lemons.
In The Initial Investigation, Police Tried Tracing The Calls, But It Just Led Back To The Family Phones
The initial wave of phone weirdness prompted the families to immediately contact the police. They showed the cops how their phones would send text messages on their own, turn themselves on, and how the ringtones would appear to change themselves. But it wasn't until the phone calls started coming in that the police were able to actually do anything. The Fircrest police attempted to trace the calls, but they just went back to the family's own phones. The weird part about it was that this would happen even when their phones were turned off.
The Restricted Started Making Deadly Threats, From Murder To School Shootings
The calls from the "scratchy" voice escalated from the level of juvenile pranks to serious threats within a short period of time. Heather Kuykendall claimed, "They say you're going to die, we hate you, we're going to murder you." The family also reported that calls would come at all hours, threatening to murder everyone that they knew - including their pets.
The most terrifying call came during the day to the McKays, another family being harassed by The Restricted. They claimed that while their kids were in school, the voice called and told them that there was going to be a school shooting. It is unclear whether or not the family followed up on this threat and contact their children's school. A member of the McKay family told ABC News, "The level of fear went from, 'This is a pain,' to an uncontrolled fear and anxiety level."
The Restricted Kept Calling Them And Spying On Them, Making Them Paranoid
The families all claim that after making a series of death threats against them, The Restricted's calls seemed to exist solely to make them paranoid. Calls would come in from the mysterious person, telling them what they were wearing and what they were doing. The family claimed that some of the calls didn't feature the "scratchy" voice at all, but rather a playback of a private conversation between family members.
One call allegedly featured a recording of a conversation between one of the families and a detective. The Kuykendalls said they tried to end the harassment by changing out phones and switching their numbers, but the calls kept coming.
The Local Police Were "Dumbfounded" By Cyber Crime Cases At The Time
Photo: Sam Patrick / YouTubeAll over the country, law enforcement was still warming up to the idea of cyber crime in 2007. So,the fact that the Fircrest PD approached this case with the sincerity that it did is fascinating. At the time of the case, the police told ABC News that if the caller was actually harassing the family and not conducting an elaborate hoax, the person was actually violating multiple federal laws. However, the Fircrest PD admitted that they were in the weeds in terms of actual investigation. Fircrest Police Chief John Cheesman, who claimed to have known the Kuykendalls prior to the calls, said, "We're almost dumbfounded. We've never seen anything like this."
The local police reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, and they even looked at 16-year-old Courtney Kuyukendall as a suspect. A Fircrest detective noted: "At this point, we aren't saying it's someone inside the family, but it's someone that is close enough to them to know this much about them. It seems like it's someone who is tied into the group, a family member, a friend or an enemy." Which is a very roundabout way of saying that the caller is a person who knows the people they're calling.
The Culprit Likely Never Got Caught
After dealing with a lengthy police investigation, swapping out phones, and installing a security system in their home, surely the Kuykendalls must have figured out who was stalking them, right?
No one seems to know. The entire story seems to have evaporated after its first reporting. The Kuykendalls and the other impacted families have kept their social media presence low. In fact, it is as if they've all fell off the radar completely. If there ever was a harasser, he or she was not likely caught since it was never reported.
Was This Even Possible In 2007?
Phone hacking, or phone phreaking, has been going on since the '50s. Phone phreaks explored the mysteries of the phone system by hacking payphones and learning how to impersonate phone operators in order to make free calls. If a phone phreak was talented enough, they could definitely wire tap someone, and while phone phreaks don't necessarily exist in the 21st century (or exist in the same way that they did in the '50s and '60s), the desire to game the phone system and find technological work-arounds is still there.
The calls to the Kuykendalls were coming through in 2007, the same year that the iPhone was released. This means that the digital technology required to tap into someone's phone would have been easy to find. At that time, all you needed to listen to someone's voice mail was their four digit passcode, which is easy enough to guess. In addition, with the right software, you could track a person's every movement due to GPS technology.
It Is Dangerously Easy To Clone Or Tap A Phone
If you weren't already paranoid about people listening to your phone calls, now may be the time to get out your tinfoil hat. Even though cellphone technology is always changing and improving, it would seem that the ability to clone a cell phone, or tap into a phone's security, is rarely a step or two behind.
Methods for tapping a phone involve everything from getting your hands on the device and manually cloning it, to using software in order to keep an eye on someone from a distance. The proliferation of articles about how easy it is to hack into a phone makes it all the more plausible that someone who lived near the Kuykendalls decided to have a little phone fun before things got out of hand.
Could The Calls Have Been A Hoax?
Photo: kongjak1 / flickr / CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0Despite there being some evidence to the contrary, it's not out of the question for the Kuykendalls to have made the whole "The Restricted" character up. The three families (or members of those families) who were subject to the calls could have absolutely worked together to clone their phones and send messages, making it appear that there was an all-seeing hacker messing with them.
The fact that the police actually looked into the texts and recorded phone conversations shows that these anonymous messages could have actually occurred, but it's not enough to debunk the possibility that it was all just a hoax.
There Are Several Theories About The Unsolved Case, But It Remains Ultimately Unsolved
The idea that the Kuykendalls, the McKays, and a third family wove an elaborate plot to make themselves the center of police attention feels like it would be too complicated to be true. The police never found a culprit, or if they did, no charges were pressed. In fact, the whole case seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
There's a small group of people online who have their own theories about the case. But each theory, be it an unknown neighbor, Courtney, or multiple youths, all have holes in them. The most plausible theory is that someone was just trying to have a little fun and got carried away. However, there is a possibility that The Restricted is still in Fircrest, Washington, waiting for the right person to call.
