Homewrecker | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

To be honest with you, I just looked at the phone and I said, "Nothing is that important at 6:00 in the morning." and I
turned it off. Monika Glennon grew up in Poland, but today she lives in Huntsville, Alabama,
where she works as a real estate agent with RE/MAX. At 6:00 in the morning in September of
2015, she got repeated phone calls and texts from a colleague. And I thought, oh,
maybe a bad review. I mean, so many years in real estate, 16 years in real estate, it eventually was going to
happen. I'm not perfect here. And I called her up and she says, "You don't understand." So, she sent me
screenshots of what was posted on the RE/MAX Facebook page and also was sent to the RE/MAX corporate office.
And I have to tell you, I I think honestly I went into shock. Everything seemed to kind of close in
and I started reading it and it was so awful. >> [music] >> It was a link to an anonymous post. It
had also been sent to Monika's friends [music] and members of her family and directly to her husband, Scott Glennon,
>> [music] >> with the message, "Sorry to be the one to let you in on this." This lady
claimed that her and her husband have hired me [music] as a realtor. And um you know, she wanted to see a
home and she couldn't make it, so [music] she went ahead told her husband to go with me and go take a look at the
house. >> [music] >> So, um she said all of a sudden she was able to make it, so she drove over to
the house >> [music] >> and she ended up walking in. She saw both of our cars. She walked in and she
found me and her husband having sex on the floor. And that [music] she has pictures of all
of that and nobody should ever hire me as a realtor because I'm an enemy of all decent women out there.
>> [music] >> The anonymous poster began by saying she and her husband had been happy working
with Monika. That she'd shown them eight to 10 houses. On the day of the alleged incident,
[music] the anonymous poster had admired the granite countertops and gas stove in
the house before walking in on her husband and Monika on the {quote} plush white
carpet. From there, it becomes graphic. And I live in Bible Belt. And um and I did think that um she definitely
used the kind of story that could be very believable to people. At the end, the anonymous poster writes,
"She knew he was married." And in all caps, "Do not use this person as a realtor."
Then, they included a large photo of Monika along with all of her contact information. [music]
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. >> [music] >> I was still sleeping. Uh and then she came in and woke me up
and said, "You need to see this." And so I I walked outside. She already had her computer fired up and had the
story pulled up on the website. Monika's husband, Scott Glennon. So, I read the story and then
you know, I yeah, I definitely wanted to find out who did it and [music] and you know,
let's just call it have words with them. Did you for a second when you first read
the post think, "What has she done?" >> No, not not for a minute. Not not for a minute.
There's just no way. The link had been shared all over Facebook by someone named Ryan Baxter.
Scott and Monika had no idea who Ryan Baxter was. It was a link to a website called
shesahomewrecker.com. The site's tagline is, "Did you think it would stay a secret?"
Everything on shesahomewrecker.com is posted anonymously. Anyone can submit an entry accusing anyone else of being a
so-called homewrecker. The entries have photos of the accused women's faces, their full names, where
they live. Some say where they work. In most cases, the posts are short. Things like, "This girl is 27 years old
and sleeping with my 54-year-old husband." And "She'll go to the ends of the earth to ruin a marriage. Ladies,
watch out." The post about Monika was much longer. It was full of details. The the damage,
you know, was immediate and it was severe. Before the story came out, I think she had like 20
22 23 active listings. A week later it was down to four. The phone calls were coming in every day of
people just pulling their listings away. And it wasn't just the business side of
that, it was the the self-confidence hit. So, you know, she'd be talking to them on the phone and I'm watching her
talk to them on the phone. I can't hear the other end, but I can see her. And she's nodding her head a lot and she's
using her cheerful real estate voice going, "I'm I'm so happy for you." and you can just watch the confidence just
draining from her. Scott says he and Monika had hoped this would become old news and they could
move on. But it didn't go away. The damage kept coming. The phone calls kept coming.
Creepy men from somewhere in the country that would just breathe heavy or that would
ask for a hookup and things like [clears throat] that. So, we couldn't ignore it.
Uh it was just too big a a thing. Did you suspect people in your life? I did. I did. And as you just starting looking
around and going, >> [music] >> "Could it be this friend? Maybe she was mad about something. Maybe a rival
realtor." That was actually my biggest guess. [music] Uh you know, I had to look at everybody
around me and kind of say, "Could it be the [music] person?" You know, it's really funny, but we even
talked saying, "What if one of my children did it cuz they got mad at me?" >> [music]
>> But you know, your mind just starts wondering in every direction and it's an awful way to live.
We found ourselves questioning, you know, all of my friends and business contacts,
all of her friends and business contacts, all of her mutual friends, all of our family [clears throat] members.
We didn't know who did it, so we found ourselves questioning every human relationship in our lives.
When you stop trusting every human in your life, you know, that's a that's a big problem.
So, we we couldn't ignore it. We had to find out who did it just for the sake of
sanity. But you know, the whole time I I was thinking it must be somebody I've had
contact with. Maybe somebody I did a deal with. Somebody that I crossed paths with.
It did not make any sense. That story was so mean and so personal, we figured it had to be somebody we knew.
There's no way a stranger would go to that length. RE/MAX deleted the post from their
Facebook page right away. But it was still up on shesahomewrecker.com. Monika emailed the website and sent a
message to their Facebook page asking them to take the entry down. I was very naive. Um I thought if you tell people
this is not true, then they're going to go ahead and take it down. And um I just got one answer
from the Facebook whoever is in charge of the their Facebook that said that they will look into my case and that was
the last I've ever heard from them. And I thought all it's going to take is [music] cease and desist letter. So, I
had an attorney generate that letter and I right away signed [music] it and I sent it over to shesahomewrecker.
Um and I got no response. I just could feel that this is not going to end well when [music] I was starting to get
no responses from those websites. I'm like, this is going to What am I going to do?
Not only could [music] she not get anyone to remove it from shesahomewrecker, but the post, along with Monika's name
and picture, was picked up by similar websites designed to shame people. One called badbizreport
says, "There's no way in hell to get off of badbizreport and >> [music] >> American lawyers make us laugh."
As the post about Monika was picked up by other sites, it moved higher up search engine algorithms. So, when
people in Huntsville, Alabama saw a for sale sign in a yard and Googled Monika Glennon, that's what they saw. And they
ended up becoming number one search result of my name. And basically destroying my reputation.
Uh I don't think I stopped crying for >> [music] >> weeks. I walked around and I felt like I walked
around with a scarlet letter on my chest. Um you know, and a lot of people were making really awful comments saying,
"Hey, you know, if there is [music] a smoke, there is a fire. For sure she did it." Um I thought, "Oh my goodness,
what's going to happen is some [music] crazy men out there are going to make appointment with me just thinking that's
what's going to happen when we when we end up, you know, when I show a house." So, we decided [music] we going
to go ahead and priority number one, find out who did it. I don't want to walk for the rest of
my life wondering who did that to me. They found a lawyer in Huntsville named George Kopel. He was literally the
lawyer that would take the case. Nobody else would take it. Uh maybe was just the only guy crazy enough
to take it, but everybody we talked to said, "No, I'm not touching it." The problem with Monica's case was that it's
extremely difficult to compel a website to remove something one of its users posted.
She's a homewrecker.com, along with websites like Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter,
are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields them from liability.
It's been called the most important law protecting internet speech. For example,
if someone posts a death threat against someone else on Facebook, Facebook isn't responsible.
As of very recently, Section 230 no longer protects sites responsible for and that profit from content related to
sex trafficking. She's a homewrecker says in their terms of service that false, defamatory
material is prohibited. We contacted them for this story, but haven't heard back.
Monica and Scott knew that George Kobler wasn't going to be able to sue the website to get the post removed.
But what he could do was file a lawsuit against the person who wrote the post about Monica,
even without knowing who it was. George took the case. Um, his idea was to use the fact that her
professional photo was taken as a way to get it into the federal courts because he felt that this would
get more traction in federal court than in state court. So, we sued for both libel and for copyright
infringement, and it worked. It got into the federal courts. Whoever wrote the entry uploaded the
same photo Monica used on her business cards and real estate signs. Monica owns the copyright, and anyone
posting the photo without her permission is breaking the law. Attorney George Kobler. And then we had
to find the identity of John Doe by uh, issuing having the court issue a subpoena to the website
to find out where the post came from or which internet service provider uh, allowed that post to go through.
Um, and then we had to issue a subpoena to the internet service provider to um, find out who the individual was.
Uh, in other words, the internet service provider customer that that uh, uh, that put up that post.
So, a judge can compel someone to reveal IP addresses and then names. Yes. Yes. This isn't that easy to do.
Courts have to balance a user's right to say what they want against the damage their comments may cause.
It's usually pretty difficult to prove that the damage of a critical [music] comment outweighs a person's right to
free speech, but not always. So, whatever we think we're saying anonymously online could be traced back
to us. That's what happened in Monica's case. And we found out [music] that this this
person who wrote it was a woman who lives in Athens, just about 45 minutes from here. Did you know her? No. I have
never met her in my life. A total stranger. >> [music] >> It took a long, long time to finally
figure out who done it. And then when it turned out to be a complete stranger, we
were we were both flabbergasted. It just did not make any sense. The stranger's name was Molly Rosenblum.
And while she and Monica had never been in the same room, they had interacted before, kind of.
Years earlier, in 2014, an Alabama teenager posted a photo of herself at Auschwitz.
In the photo, the teenager is smiling. The caption says, "Selfie in the Auschwitz concentration camp."
And then, she posted a smiling emoji. The photo went viral, and the teenager was harshly criticized.
She responded saying she'd always wanted to visit with her late father, and that
they'd studied World War II together. That made things worse. A local television station in Alabama
posted a story about the teenager on Facebook and asked readers to share their thoughts.
Some people commented on the post sticking up for the teenager. Monica was one of them. I just said
teenagers do really stupid stuff, and all she is is a teenager. There's no need to go after this girl. So, I
defended her. Molly interpreted that uh, as so inappropriate that she went online
and attacked my wife uh, with that story. So, I angered her so much that she ended up
spending couple hours figuring out who I was, where I worked, where I lived, and
she wrote it, and she forgot I existed. When Monica learned the name Molly Rosenblum, she searched for her on
Facebook. And then, against the advice of her attorney, Monica reached out to Molly
directly. I ended up Facebook messaging her saying, "Look, this this story this has done such a
huge damage to me. It's just getting ridiculous. What what is it that you want from me? Let's meet. Ask me
anything you want to ask me, and I'll answer all your questions, cuz this is crazy."
And she agreed. The two women met at a diner for breakfast. Monica was nervous. Her
husband drove her and waited in the car. When Molly walked in, Monica recognized
her from Facebook right away. They sat down. Monica was too uncomfortable to eat.
Molly told Monica that she assumed from their exchange on Facebook that Monica was a neo-Nazi.
Monica told her that wasn't true. So, she started asking me questions, and I explained to her um,
what who I was, what kind of person I was. Um, and uh, she told me about her life.
Molly told Monica that she'd been through a lot. She'd lost her husband. She'd had a long-term struggle with
drugs. They talked about politics and books and growing up. So, it was a very long
meeting, and I cried, and she cried, and she said I was a kind person that she wishes she knew
what I was like back then. Um, and she promised right away to take everything down from online. However, I already
knew she couldn't. There's no deleting posts on these sites, even if you're the person who
wrote them. So, she went online, and she made apologies um, on all those sites. [music]
Molly Rosenblum wrote the she's a homewrecker post, but as Monica discovered, she wasn't the
person who spread it on Facebook. That person, Ryan Baxter, turned out to be another complete stranger, unknown
[music] to both Molly and Monica. Ryan Baxter was the fake persona [music] of a 20-year-old woman in California who
Monica describes >> [music] >> as a kind of vigilante. So, you can see actually Ryan [music] Baxter taking multiple
stories off of she's a homewrecker, and even making comments [music] under the stories that say somebody needs to tell
the employer, somebody needs to get this person fired, somebody needs to tell the
husband. >> [music] >> Kind of, you know, um, basically taking over as a person who is going to set this right
for the family, and shame that person. >> [music] >> It's amazing that a a stranger can
totally ruin your life in the middle of the night with you [music] completely not being aware, and then all of the
sudden I find it outrageous, and I am >> [music] >> I just don't know how this is still
allowable. >> [music] >> And anybody can do this to anybody. In the end, Monica [music] says she lost
about half her income. She's been slowly rebuilding her business. The post is no longer on she's a
homewrecker.com, in its place is a legal notice indicating that the claims made about
Monica were false and constitute defamation. [music] But the post wasn't removed because of
legal action. It was removed because Monica kept writing to the site's owners asking them to take it down, and that
worked. The post still lives online because other sites reposted it, including Bad
Biz Report, the one that says American lawyers make them laugh. Monica's working with attorney George
Kobler to see what she can do. If she can't force the site to take the post down, she'd like it to be de-indexed
from search engines. That's very difficult. And Monica says she's already spent more than $130,000
in legal fees. Do you still comment on news articles on Facebook? Yeah, a little bit.
>> [laughter] >> It hasn't stopped you. So, I do comment once in a while, but I really, really
stay away from controversial subjects. I really do. Has it changed how you feel when you hear gossip about other people?
Yes, I actually I get actually very upset. I I had couple comments I've made to my friends before saying it really
doesn't matter because it really doesn't. If the story is true, let's just say infidelity.
Um whether the story is true or it's not true, it is nobody's business. And people just need to stop being those
keyboard heroes behind a computer screen and do this to people. It's just not right. This is their lives. This is
their business. It's their their families. If I had any reason to believe that infidelity could be true, this might
have been enough to break up the marriage. I didn't, but you know, in a in a if the marriage were
different, if we'd had some infidelity in the past or something, and if I had some reason to believe it, this could
have been enough to kill it, right? >> [music] >> Has this changed anything about your
marriage, this whole experience? Yeah, it's changed uh >> [music] >> So, let's go good and bad. Uh
it's good in the sense that, you know, we know we can we've persevered things before that we've persevered this now as
well. So, it's made us stronger. It's made us closer and >> [music] >> the number of hours that we spent
talking about it has put us more in touch with each other's feelings. So, that's a a very positive thing.
>> [clears throat] >> On the negative side, um >> [music] >> you know, the girl I married
had this belief that if she just lived her life a certain way and treated people a certain [music] way, that all
the good she was putting out would bring good back. Uh this has shattered that belief and she's
never going to believe that again. So, there've been real changes to her and even though her self-esteem has mostly
recovered from this, there are still little moments where I can see that it still
you know, it still hurts. There's still a scar there. >> [music] [music] >> Criminal is [music] created by Lauren
Spor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. >> [music] >> Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks
to Suzanna Roberson and Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo. [music] We have a link to her reporting about
Monica in the show notes. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
Criminal. [music] You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at
criminalshow. Criminal is recorded in the studios [music] of North Carolina Public
Broadcasting, WUNC. We're proud member of Radiotopia [music] from PRX, a collection of the best
podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Radiotopia
>> [music] >> from PRX

It’s one thing to get into an argument with a stranger on Facebook. It’s another thing to try to ruin that stranger’s life. In 2015, Re/Max realtor Monika Glennon discovered how far a stranger would go, when she found herself on a website called “She’s a Homewrecker.”

Special thanks to Kashmir Hill, at Gizmodo. (https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-life-1827546385)

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Join Criminal Plus on Patreon for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, listener chat rooms, behind-the-scenes content, and more membership perks. https://www.patreon.com/Criminal

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://pod.link/809264944

Say hello on Twitter (https://twitter.com/criminalshow) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/criminal_podcast) Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/thisiscriminal) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@criminal_podcast)

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We also make the podcasts This is Love (https://pod.link/1337100398) and Phoebe Reads a Mystery (https://pod.link/1503921457).

Artwork by Julienne Alexander: http://www.yssrs.com/. Check out our online shop: https://shop.thisiscriminal.com/

Episode 109 originally published March 1, 2019. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-109-homewrecker

Music in this episode: “Threads and Veils” by Blue Dot Sessions “Under Your Skin (Instrumental)” by Nick Jaina “Steps” by Podington Bear “Waltz and Fury” by Blue Dot Sessions “Highride Chrome” by Blue Dot Sessions “Stucco Grey” by Blue Dot Sessions “Ranch Hand” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

Monika Glennon's life was shattered by an anonymous online post falsely accusing her of infidelity, leading to legal battles and emotional turmoil.

Key points

Monika's Morning Shock. Monika Glennon receives shocking news about an anonymous post damaging her reputation.
The Legal Battle Begins. Monika and her husband seek legal action against the anonymous poster.
The Anonymous Accusation. An anonymous post claims Monika is a homewrecker, leading to severe consequences.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Nothing is that important at 6:00 in the morning.

Monika Glennon reflects on ignoring early morning calls.

0:01WatchApr 7, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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