People have asked why Emily Dirr went to such great lengths to create over 70 fake Facebook profiles in order to create the world of JS, Dana, Eli and the rest of the Dirr family. Check out this profile of JS’ best friend, Mitchy Aaron.
All of the comments on Mitchy’s page are from sockpuppet accounts created by Emily Dirr. Mitchy also had over 100 pictures on his Facebook profile, most related somehow to JS and Dana or his job as a Canadian Mountie.
Mitchy was just a supporting player in the Dirr universe, but by creating a full profile for JS’ best friend, Emily made sure that anyone who had doubts about the Dirr family or Eli’s story could click and see that of course the Dirrs are real. Who would spend so much time making a fake profile just for a friend of the family?
This was all done to add depth to her story and make it appear more authentic. At the end of the Gawker article, Adrian Chen raises questions as to whether Emily Dirr acted alone in creating all of this.
Anna, who had the online romance with J.S., believes there was more to the Dirrs than just Emily. In early 2011, Anna and J.S. had a fight, after which J.S. gave Anna the silent treatment. So she decided to use a service called SpyPig to see if he was reading the emails she sent him. SpyPig lets you hide a code in an email that notifies you exactly when and where your message was opened, and if it was forwarded anywhere. SpyPig told Anna some of the emails she sent to J.S. were being opened in Vancouver, while some were opened in Ohio. One of her emails was opened three times in Ohio, then forwarded to New York.
Why were emails opened in Vancouver, if Emily had run the entire hoax from her father’s home in Ohio? Who was in New York? I sent an email to J.S.’s email account. So far, according to the Spypig code I embeded in it, it hasn’t been opened yet.
It could just be that easy for the Dirr family to disappear.
JS Dirr had a close friend who only knew him through online interactions. She lives in New York. My theory is that Emily used a proxy to make it appear like she lived in Canada, opened the email at her house in Ohio and forwarded it to this friend in New York. Why? She wanted JS and Dana to be rich and multifaceted characters, and what better way to show this than to share emails written by an online girlfriend to another friend?
The awareness bracelets were also a ploy to authenticate the story. Anyone questioning would have their doubts silenced when they saw that the family was sending out packages for free to draw awareness to Eli’s story.
The package pictured above was sent in November of 2010.
EDITED 7/3/12: Emily also made donations to cancer fundraisers in the Dirrs’ name. She had a YouTube channel of stolen videos that she claimed were the Dirr children here. You can also see screen shots of part of JS’ MySpace here.
Here are screen shots of the many fake Facebook profiles associated with JS and Dana Dirr. The ones that are still active as of today are marked.
According to Facebook you can either deactivate an account or delete it entirely. Interesting that JS Dirr’s account is deactivated and not deleted.
Kim Sutton (girlfriend of William Houston)
Wayne Houston (father of William Houston)
Marc LeBeau (friend)
Brittany Morton (friend and ex-girlfriend)
Adam Spain (friend)
Alex Spain (wife of Adam)
Benita Miller (friend and ex-girlfriend)
Mitchy Aaron (best friend of JS)
Shane Pellizer (friend)
Ben Palmer (friend)
Todd White (friend)
Rob Birclay (friend)
Shawna Birclay (Rob’s wife)
Doug Clark (friend)
Grace Benedatto (friend)
Joshua Dirr (brother of JS)
Ashleigh Miller (ex girlfriend)
Sid Baker (friend)
Wade Ralleigh (friend)
Dierks Cody (friend)
Lynn Aaron (Mitchy’s wife)
Tara Dirr (Joshua’s wife, mom of triplets)
Nicholas Brandon (friend)
Mike Walling (friend)
Mike Lucas (friend and fellow Mountie)
Kayla Pittman (friend)
Liz Aaron (friend, ex-wife to Mitchy)
The following are profiles created to fill up the Facebook group “The Ex-Girlfriends of JS Dirr” That Facebook group is still active and these profiles still exist. (I’m including screen shots in case they are deleted).
The following were women in the group whose profiles have since been deleted.
Jenny Roberts
Julia King
There were seven other women in this group whose profiles were deleted and whose names I didn’t screen shot, unfortunately.
This makes a total of 81 fake Facebook profiles involved in the Warrior Eli hoax. And I’m pretty sure there were more.
And, just because it’s interesting, here’s JS Dirr’s take on people who would try to trick the childhood cancer support community.
I just stumbled onto this blog last week, after reading ‘The Woman Who Wasn’t There’ and going online to read more. Now, after reading every post, I’m fascinated, disgusted, and blown away by the Greek tragedy of JS and Dana Dirr. You and your group of researchers have done an amazing job of putting this together so quickly. I have nothing to add, other than ‘good job’, lol. You could probably get a book deal, as I have a feeling that you have just uncovered the tip of the iceberg here. I have very little doubt that Emily (if she had the time, seriously-the time and effort devoted to this-no wonder she flunked out of med school!) has done this before, and is probably doing it right now. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…….
One of the reasons I posted the names of all the sock profiles is so she can’t just reactivate them (and in some cases they weren’t even deactivated) and start a whole new deception. If she does have Munchausen by Internet, that’s the pattern. They’re exposed and they wait a little while and start right up again.
One thing to be sure of. She won’t be able to perpetuate something similar using facebook. They are starting to make all accounts be verified with a mobile number. Even existing accounts are being asked to do this. One mobile number can only be tied to one account.
Do you have any idea if Google Voice numbers can be used to activate accounts?
This is the type of weirdness that happens with little NEOMED, the med school that Emily was enrolled in…they admit students straight from high school- the students do their bachelors in two years, then enter med school. The immaturity and lack of world experience is notable in those docs… so is the hard work they put into their studies. Which is why this Emily story is crazy. You have to work SOOO hard, so many hours into studying, to get through that program. How did she manage to create all this crap? How did she have the time? Did she actually flunk out? Was she not really a student there? Puzzling and in a sick way, intriguing.
At least she had good taste in men.
*giggle*
What do you mean my that?
The school’s official statement is that Emily left willingly at the end of April. According to classmates I have talked to, she flunked classes her first year and was given the opportunity to repeat them. When she had academic troubles the second year, she left before she was kicked out.
What about the taste in men thing?
The pictures she stole to use as JS and his friends were all of very attractive guys. She also picked attractive women to be “Dana” and JS’ various ex lovers. Not an ugly sock puppet in the bunch.
Ahh. Has any new information come out about this or is it all old news? (I have just found out about this and looked over this blog)
I posted these sock puppet profiles in case Emily starts using them to populate a friends list for a new blog or anything like that. We have known about them for a while but I wanted to post screen shots just in case.
Mitchy is so damn fine, though!! LOL.
There are a lot of people who would fight you for him 😉
I’m almost positive that my husband’s insane ex is crafting fake profiles all in a very sad attempt to piss off the father of her latest child. People don’t realize how easy it is to set up fake profiles and then have them interact with each other. I show them this hoax to prove to them that a single person doing 2 or 3 fake profiles is easy peasy.
Yikes. Good luck. If you need any help getting to the bottom of it, email me at tarynwright@gmail.com
Just looking back through stuff … I didn’t realize that the “Ex-Girlfriends” group was so recent! I just clicked on it (yep still there) and all these girls just joined about 4 months ago, all at once. Most of the photos are down, but 2 of the profiles still have pictures on them.
In all the investigating, was anyone able to figure out who those photos were of, like, who they were stolen from? Or did that end once the kids were identified? Or were all other photos dead ends?
Wow, I just came across this blog and this whole story for the first time. How bizarre. As well as munchausens by internet, is it possible that this person behind all this has Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder)? I know barely anything about it, but maybe that could explain how one person could keep track of so many different ‘people’ this way. It’s so elaborate. It boggles my mind to think of someone sitting at a computer, making a status, logging out or switching to another browser to comment on it as someone else, then again as another person… it is just insane.
Will have a lot of reading to do, I never heard of this story before. But I’ve seen quite a few fakes in action on facebook myself and… just argh. It really is good to see that someone out there has been able to expose people like this and hopefully prevent them easily just starting up again.
@fiona while i am in no way a professional my mother is a compulsive liar and DIDs is one of her fantasies so i have done a little reading. most likely if this women had DIDs she most likely would have had several accounts under different names that were not aware of each other. someone correct me if i am wrong but most often seperate personalities are not aware of each other and are usually restrained to a “child’, ‘mother’, ‘crone’ and ‘masculine’ split other then the original personality (for a female). while in some cases the splits are aware of and ‘protect’ the original it is unlikly to manifest in a interlinked ‘family’ ‘friend’ connection like this
That is really interesting, Insomuch. I do agree with you – I can’t see the seperate personalities being that aware and linking as ‘connected’ as these people are. It seems that the personalities are more ‘splinters’ from a fractured, traumatised mind, they aren’t deliberately created profiles such as these.
It boggles the mind to think of how you would keep track of all these personalities. It would be a full time job! She must have books of descriptions or something like that to remind herself, or a very good memory. I also can’t understand why someone would go to all that trouble to create and perpetuate a lie. There are much easier ways to get a need for attention or whatever filled.
I can’t imagine fantasising about having DID. I have a few friends with it and it’s very difficult to live with. People who fantasise about these things usually have never lived them and don’t have a clue of the reality, do they?
yes, at least as far as i have seen. as for my mother she is trying to avoid the complete destruction of my life that she has accomplished. and she has a startling disgusting habit of ‘echoing’ diagnoses or experiences that i have suffered and confessed to her. its almost as if she thinks this is a dress that fits her better…only maybe in a different shade
I’m really sorry – and I relate. My mother too destroyed me – and made everything about her. A bit of a narcissist I think. Have you ever been to http://daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com
403 forbidden…apparently i cant access it 🙁
Oh drat… I’m sorry. Maybe try googling Daughters of Narcissistic mothers? x