The Kuykendall Family Phone-Stalker Mystery

In 2007, an unknown caller harassed and threatened a teen girl, and her family for months using their own phones.

A 16-year old girl named Courtney Kuykendall randomly began receiving texts from her friends from her home in Fircrest, Washington in 2007. Upon looking at these texts, she’s met with messages from her friends, asking her why they had gotten text messages from her simply saying “gay.” Now, one could be mistaken for thinking it was a dumb, immature prank on Courtney’s part, except for one problem: she did not send those texts, at least not herself. Left, mildly confused at what they were talking about, she brushed it off and thought nothing of it. Neither she or anyone else involved could have imagined how far these strange occurrences were about to get.

Not long after that Courtney, as well as her friends and family ALL, started receiving threatening text messages and phone calls from an unknown person who they all later referred to as “Restricted” (named so after the word that appeared on their Caller ID whenever these calls happened.) As soon as Restricted began their calls, they would regularly threaten to kill or rape their human targets, attack the schools they attended and even threatened to kill their pets. The messages got to the point of coming through around the clock and would take place on both the family’s landlines, (noted: this all took place in 2007, a time when landline phones had not yet gone the way of pay phones), and their cell phones. In an attempt to stop Restricted’s harassment, everyone affected went as far as switching phones, changing their numbers and turning their phones off, and getting new accounts, but nothing seemed to even slow Restricted down. At one point, after Courtney and her family called the police after finally having enough of the harassment, and while in the middle of explaining their situation to an officer, all their phones turned on and called each other.

Things started looking bad for Courtney after the police traced the threatening messages back to her phone — which seemed to be able to send messages and make calls even when she had it powered off (though it was not precisely hard even in 2007 to some mask their number as someone else’s but I digress.) At another point, the Kuykendalls had just returned home after meeting with law enforcement concerning their phone calls, when they noticed they had a voicemail which consisted of a recording of the exact conversation from earlier that day. Thinking Courtney had something to do with all the harassment, her parents took her phone away, but that also failed to get the harassment to end.

To make matters worse, the family realized that Restricted, in addition to listening to everything they said, also seemed to be able to see them, even when they were inside their home; After they got a new security system keypad for their home, Restricted called them moments later to tell the family that they knew their passcode to it. Among other things, Restricted made comments about the family, was on their clothing. The most infamous quote to come from Restricted during this time was in response to one of their victims, Andrea McKay who was cutting limes on the counter one time, and Restricted responded by messaging her merely to say how they preferred lemons.

“I prefer lemons.” — quintessential quote from the stalker.

One night, an unknown person banged on the side of the family’s house before running off into the night. At this point, Taping their camera lenses and even removing the batteries from their phones failed to stop this stalker. Whomever this person was, and whatever their motives were, they seemed to be in the exact opposite position of their given nickname.

The on-going harassment and lack of answers proved to be the stuff of nightmares: A crime in which the victims are continually terrorized by an unknown person, who had no intentions or restrictions in slowing down or even stopping, and the cops left utterly baffled by it.

For reasons still unclear to this day, the mystery appears to have trailed off from there. There have been no new follow-ups, arrests, persons of interests or anything since the attention on the case reached its peak. Some sources hint that the FBI did get involved and the calls stopped then, but that’s it. Keep in mind, the very first iPhone had come out around this, but whether this had any bearing on the lack of any follow-ups on the case is anyone’s guess. The way it stands, if the situation was ever officially solved, it has never been publically stated by anyone involved, including neither law enforcement or any of the victims.

As it was not ever made certain if it was ever simply one stalker involved, let alone what the motive was, the only substantial evidence to come from the incident was recordings of the voicemails left by Restricted, which has been described as “throaty, juvenile rasps stolen from bad horror movies.”

As for the victims, to clarify on the three families involved, there was the Kuykendalls, the McKays, and the Prices: Courtney and her family her older sister and family (who was married and living with her husband in a different house), and a friend of Courtney’s who lived across the street from her. Some reports say another friend of Courtney claimed that her phone’s ringtone changed, without her doing anything, to a gruff voice. However, this has been included in very few reports compared to all the other details of the case.

So, what exactly happened?

Theories

Hoax

One theory on the matter is that it was a hoax committed by Courtney — it was her phone, and she could have done it to get on TV. In response to this, Courtney has defended herself saying, “Why would I do that to people I care about? Why would I harass my own family?” Just as likely as it could be that Courtney could have been responsible, I can also see her as having had nothing to do with it. Her mother has also adamantly defended her daughter as well.

Virus/Hack

Another theory argues that Restricted could have gained access to the phones through hacking or a virus. They could have possibly accomplished this through inside help or by someone smuggling the phones out to give to Restricted to mess with them, or even by one of the victims unknowingly abetting Restricted (i.e., Courtney unwittingly re-infecting her new phone by visiting her MySpace page.)

In terms of how the whole crime could have been technologically possible to pull off in 2007, theories vary. How likely was it to turn on and send messages/make calls without being in the room? Some military-grade technology would make it inside the realm of possibility, in accomplishing this feat but would have been extremely hard even to get physical access to it. Interestingly, Courtney and her family did live near McChord Air Force Base, and her brother-in-law did work there; he even received a text from Restricted at one point which reportedly said, “McChord needs us.” That said, it could have been just as likely been Restricted merely messing around, rather than serving as a real clue to their identity.

Other, less technologically-savvy ways Restricted could have used to creep on their victims was by physically looking through their window or texting with someone who was in the next room from a victim. A suggestion made by a law enforcement official on the case was that a “tech-savvy teenage boy” could have been responsible. While that could be true, the same could be said if Restricted stalked the family through more traditional methods.

Another thing about this that doesn’t make sense, and I’m not calling it as a hoax, just that, if all these victims were terrorized by their phones in those four months, why they still kept using their phones? I get it if they needed them for work or some other substantial reason, but undoubtedly if they were as affected by the stalker as they claimed, they would have fallen back on other means of communication, at least for some time to see if Restricted would return or stop.