Don’t Preach to Me

When Joanne Ruffner checked her email early one morning in October 2006, she discovered a surprising message waiting for her—a confirmation that she’d signed on to a swinging singles/couples website. A profile had been set up in her name, complete with personal information including her email address and IM screen name.

The About Me section was filled with intimate details that made Joanne blush. By 10 PM that night, nude photos of her had been posted on the site. By 1 AM the next morning, there were more than 16 such photos as well as a new email address with the username “joanneaznymph.” Fellow swingers were encouraged to share nude photos of themselves with her. In the meantime, she soon learned that various nude photos of her were being sent to the directors of the real estate association for which she worked.

Joanne hadn’t posted any of this material, but she knew who did and her immediate goal was to stop the nightmare that was unfolding before her own eyes. She recognized the photos as being taken by a former boyfriend, Mike Myers. She was in her late 20s when she met him in 2004 through a hiking group she had started on Yahoo! Groups. To get the group off to a strong start, she’d gone to Yahoo! Personals and invited other 20-somethings in the Tucson, Arizona, area to join. Though some lively discussions ensued, she never could seem to get the members together for a real hike—with the exception of Myers.

She had chatted with Myers on the phone several times before they agreed to meet for a hike. They met up at a mall in nearby Sierra Vista, where Joanne transferred her hiking gear into Myers’s truck. They drove to the Coronado Cave Visitor Center before hiking to the Coronado National Monument. During the 5 hours spent together, they enjoyed each other’s company and found that they seemed to have a lot in common.

“I had a boyfriend at the time,” said Joanne. “Mike knew this because we talked throughout the whole hike about everything. He told me he was in his late 30s, an officer in military intelligence at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and that he was single with no children.”

Joanne felt comfortable with Myers and continued to IM with him via Yahoo! and on her cell phone. He wanted to go hiking again, but Joanne’s boyfriend had become jealous of the frequent phone contact between the two and talked her out of it.

A few weeks later, Myers was transferred from Arizona’s Fort Huachuca to Camp Zama in Japan. He emailed Joanne, and she confessed that she missed their conversations. When he was later deployed to Iraq, in mid-2005, he began to email her more frequently.

Joanne welcomed Myers’s attention, which came during a rocky period in her relationship with her boyfriend at the time. The flirtations were innocent enough at first, but she soon sent him a few sexy photos of herself, to his obvious delight. After breaking up with her boyfriend, she lost almost all contact with Myers for more than a year. But by June 2006, she felt ready to start dating again and reached out to her erstwhile hiking buddy.

“We would spend hours on the computer chatting back and forth,” said Joanne. “On his days off—Mondays—he would call me because it would be Sunday my time. We would talk for at least 2 hours at a time.”

She shared every detail of her life with him, from her past relationships and childhood to her hopes and dreams. Myers seemed to reciprocate. He shared that he had two brothers; one lived in North Carolina with a wife and children, and the other, who was autistic, lived with their parents in West Virginia. He said he had been engaged once, but after realizing his fiancée only wanted him for sex and money, he had broken it off.

On June 17, 2006, Myers sent Joanne an email that changed the depth of their relationship, writing that he had been “thinking about ‘our house’ in West Virginia and thinking what it will be like to have you as my wife, companion, friend. I think of that a lot. I know we’ve kind of ‘joked/hinted’ at it, but I think of it a lot.” By July 4, they were calling themselves a couple.

“I thought I had found my equal,” said Joanne, “the one person in life that was meant for me. I thought God and my mother (who passed away in 2003) had sent him to me … he was an angel.”

Since Myers was still in Iraq, they began to exchange nude photos of themselves via email and snail mail. Joanne saw no harm in it. After all, they were planning to move in together and get married.

In August 2006, they were finally together again when Myers’s scheduled month of leave coincided with a conference Joanne was attending in Kansas City, Missouri. Myers told Joanne that he’d spent his first day back in the U.S. with his brother and his family in North Carolina before heading to West Virginia to go fishing with a friend. The reason she hadn’t heard from him for a few days, he said, was that there was no cell phone signal where they were fishing. She believed him, of course. He called her again on his way back to North Carolina before flying to Missouri for their brief rendezvous.

They shared 3 days together in Kansas City, spending most of their time in the hotel room making love, sleeping, talking, and eating. Whenever they went out, Myers held her hand or had his arm around her waist. They appeared to be a couple who were very much in love.

Joanne was oblivious to all of the red flags that appeared along the way. Later she remembered that he’d paid for everything in cash, never with a credit card. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time because some people are like that,” she recalled.

Returning to North Carolina for the remainder of his R&R, Myers continued to call Joanne often. One night, he said he was at a bar with his brother and asked if she would talk to him. His brother was eager to speak to the woman who was making him so happy. Believing the man was Myers’s brother, she spoke with him at length on the phone, loving the attention.

When Myers returned to Iraq in August 2006, he sent Joanne gifts: DVDs of movies he knew she liked, teddy bears, flowers, candy, and a necklace with a gold heart pendant. They set their wedding date for July 4, 2008, and she started planning the wedding.

Myers said he wanted to follow the traditional route and ask Joanne’s father for her hand in marriage. He even made arrangements to go to Arizona in December 2006 to meet her father in person. In the meantime, he emailed her father to say how very much in love he was with his daughter and to thank him for raising such an amazing woman.

On August 15, Myers sent Joanne the following love letter via email. (Certain sexually explicit references have been deleted.)

My dearest Joanne,

I have never had anyone who I felt comfortable with or didn’t ‘make fun of me’ or act like i was stupid for asking such things. That is one of the things from my past that I’m also working on. I am so happy that we are able to talk about these things, despite how difficult it is for me or you, we are doing it. Yes, it will be a slow process, but I think because of our relationship, our love and commitment to one another it will all be ok.

You will get a massage anytime you want or need one. It really is a pleasure for me to do that for you. It really is relaxing for me and gives me great joy to know that it pleases you so much. And when I say ‘pleases’ i do not mean in a sexual way of pleasing, but in a relaxing, enjoyable way. I think it will be so relaxing to take a bath together, to just sit in the warm water and enjoy one another’s company. Candles lit, sipping a glass of wine and talking about our day, our love for one another.

Please don’t be scared. I think you have seen that I am very easy to talk to and really like it when you do. I really like the ‘assistance’ and I do desire to make it ‘all about you.’ I’m sorry that it didn’t seem that way in Kansas City but I really did think i was.

It will just take a little time for me to learn your body and what really makes you happy. If you are happy then i am happy. I really mean that jo.

I believe I told you the same thing, ‘Just relax and let it happen as it does.’ I want you to be relaxed with me, and i think you were; we both were very comfortable with one another. I have had two ‘girl friends’ cheat on me and that was devastating. I thot they loved me or at least cared about me greatly. I was wrong and my trust was greatly violated. I had told myself I will never trust another woman again, but I DO trust you 100%.

I have never had a girl friend who was really beautiful like you are. I have never had anyone love me like you do. I love you so much.

There have been so many times that i have been ridiculed and put down, made fun of because of my glasses, or whatever. I know that I’m not great looking, but I do try and take care of myself, best I can. I also know that you love me for who I am.

I love you so much and i do trust you. I know we will have a wonderful life together. I love you joanne.

Myers sent Joanne money via PayPal to help with the wedding expenses, but then, suddenly, he told her that their plans would have to change. He said he was tired of his current work and was going to begin school in June 2007 to change his military operational status. He said he was hoping to be stationed in Texas after he finished so that they could get married and be together. Once again, she trusted him implicitly.

Though his emails continued to be filled with promises of love, Myers returned to Japan in September 2006. On October 8 of that year, he sent Joanne an email explaining what was happening in his life:

This is the most difficult letter I will ever write. There have been so many changes in my life in the past 4 days that I am so confused and sad, yet happy.

There are some things that I did not tell you because I never thought they would ever become an issue.

You had asked me a long time ago if I had ever been married. I misread it and thought you asked if I was married. Then you asked me a similar question again and at the time we were not ‘serious’ and I never thot we would ever be, so I just said no. Well, I was married some time ago and I also have two children who I have not seen in a very long time and did not ever expect to see any time soon. Well, 4 days ago they came to Japan. I was shocked, surprised, yet happy to see them after so many years. I have a daughter 16 and a son 14. It has been so hard on me. I had to take a couple days off work and have been scrambling to get into housing which fortunately was not too difficult, yet stressful. My doctor says this was not a good thing for me, but maybe it will help me. I have not been avoiding you, I just have not been online due to the move.

I’m so sorry Joanne. I love you so much, but I will not blame you if you hate me or don’t want to ever talk to me again.

One other thing that surprises me is that their mother, who I have not spoken with in several years came along with them, so I have to provide her a place to stay.

I was able to get a 4-bedroom house and we are all living here together.

I’m not real happy about her being here, but have no choice in the matter.

I love you with all my heart. The doc says I probably shouldn’t have made arrangements for a wedding because that has added a lot of stress on top of the PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. I don’t know what to do.

You have been so much of a comfort and joy to me. I love you so much.

Please forgive me. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. This deployment has wreaked havoc on my psyche and my mind. I’m not the person I was before I deployed. There were so many awful things I saw and was involved in over there.

I’m not asking for sympathy, just for forgiveness.

I love you Joanne

“I was stunned and hurt, and felt so betrayed,” Joanne said. “But I thought we could work through it. I loved him enough to forgive him. He knew my past and how I had a hard time forgiving … but this time I was willing to forgive him. I wanted to be with him. He was my world, the man I was going to marry. I was just going to accept that he made a huge mistake.” But he wouldn’t talk to her.

Joanne was so desperate to salvage their relationship that she made plans to move to Japan to help Myers deal with his PTSD. She had the paperwork for her passport expedited and told her family, friends, and employer that she was going to Japan. On October 13, she waited for Myers to come online so she could tell him she was coming to Japan to be with him. While she was waiting, she decided to type his name into a search engine.

The first result that popped up was a photo of Myers as a U.S. Army chaplain. He had never once talked about God or the Bible with her. He had been truthful about being part of the 441st Military Intelligence Battalion, 500th Military Intelligence Brigade, but he was the chaplain, not an officer. She soon found a link to information about his daughter on a U.S. Army news website. In fact, it appeared that Myers’s wife, daughter, and son had moved from Arizona to Japan with him in 2005. He had been lying the entire time.

In an email, Joanne angrily told Myers what she had discovered. Two days later, he sent her a confusing email about going to counseling with his wife. Joanne had had enough of the lies and called him in Japan. When he answered and heard her voice, he hung up, after which he emailed her, launching a flurry of messages between them. He tried to explain why he hadn’t told her he was a chaplain, but none of it was making much sense. When she asked him again if he was married, his emails turned nasty.

Hurt and angry, Joanne called the base chaplain at Camp Zama on October 18. She told him everything: how she and Myers had planned on getting married, how they had been lovers, and how he never told her that he was married or a chaplain but had claimed to be a military intelligence officer. As her story unfolded, she began to realize that she had ignored all of the warning signs from the beginning.

The base chaplain told Joanne that he would talk to Myers and that the bishop for his denomination in the U.S. would be notified. Myers could lose his sponsorship with his church and be discharged from the army.

Two days later, Myers emailed Joanne and accused her of fabricating the entire story. In response, Joanne pursued the investigation with a vengeance. She sent the paperwork and the naked photos of Myers that he had emailed to her to the inspector general’s office in Japan, as the office had requested. Myers continued to taunt her by email:

Joanne, You really should go for mental health counseling. I can’t believe you fabricated these emails and then of all things sent them to my supervisory chaplain. … You really have done a mean-hearted thing to me and my family. … On Monday I am going to JAG to see about getting a restraining order against you and try to put this scam to rest.

You tell them you are my fiancée? How can that be? I never proposed. … You are a very cruel person. … I am so hurt that you would twist our friendship into something that it is not. Then to send those photos of when we were just playing around, wow, that is something else.

On October 26, an email from someone she didn’t appear to know stopped her cold: “You will soon see photos of yourself on the internet in many compromising poses. David Chalmers.” She looked at the full headers of the message and traced the email back to Japan. She knew it was Myers.

Joanne called Camp Zama to report Myers’s new transgressions using the Chalmers pseudonym and about the photos of her he’d sent to a website for swingers, to friends, and even to her employer. It was obvious he was trying to get her fired. She finally admitted that Myers had a collection of nude pictures of her, which was something she had not mentioned in her initial complaint.

“Turning over those photos [to investigators] was difficult, but I didn’t have any regrets,” she said. She sent an email to the joanneaz nymph@yahoo.com address and wrote: “Mike, y ru doing this to me?” The person who replied claimed to know no one named Mike. But the profile of joanneaznymph on Yahoo! included a nude photo, her real name, her age, her city and state, and that she was a real estate secretary.

When Joanne contacted the swingers’ website and explained that the account had been forged in her name, the proprietors asked for a copy of her photo ID to prove her identity before they would remove the profile. She followed the same procedure with Yahoo!.

“I didn’t want Mike to do this to another woman,” said Joanne. “Not only pretend to not be married, but to stalk them online, as well.”

On November 3, Joanne’s co-worker told her there were more nude photos of her on another website. A search for more resulted in a seemingly endless collection of sites displaying her profile and photos.

It was May 2007 before Joanne’s persistence finally paid off. Army chaplain Myers was arrested on seven criminal charges: five for cyberstalking and one count each for adultery and conduct unbecoming an officer.

Myers pled guilty in September 2007 to all except one cyberstalking charge, which was dropped because a witness could not travel to Japan for the court martial. During the proceedings, Myers admitted his actions. “I did this with the intent to harass and cause her emotional distress by embarrassing her. … I was angry and I was hurt she had contacted my chain of command,” he said. “I had already told my wife what happened. We worked things out and our relationship is really good again.”

According to an eyewitness report, at the court martial, the 45-year-old Myers sobbed uncontrollably and put his head down on the defense table as the sentence was read. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison, was dismissed from the army, and received a reprimand.

“This was an individual who was a moral role model and authority figure,” said major James Crawford, a Camp Zama spokesman. “The Army does not tolerate this kind of behavior and felt it was important to prosecute.”

For Joanne, it marked the end to a long fight. “I wish he’d gotten more for punishment, but it’s closure,” she said after the court martial. She said she had no regrets about going through with it.

Deceit comes in many forms, but when it happens as it did to Joanne, you don’t expect it to be so deep and dark. “He never spoke of God,” Joanne said. “I was floored. I never would have known if I hadn’t caught him in his web of lies.”

Mike Myers holding a picture of Joanne [Courtesy of Joanne Ruffner]

 

A personal note to Joanne from Myers [Courtesy of Joanne Ruffner]

 

Myers with Joanne Ruffner [Courtesy of Joanne Ruffner]