Catfish: Open Investigation

Apologies to my Catfish readers, I know how many of you are out there. I am three weeks behind because the main readers around here are into other shows and people keep getting hauled off to prison, or beaten with a baseball bat or filing defamation suits or lying about their castmates wanting to drug and rape another cast mate or gettting fired.  And those are just some of the reasons I am behind.

I am starting with this episode because it is unlike any other and I am dying to watch it. I promise to back up and recap the other two episode as soon as possible.

This episode starts off with Paris Roxanne contacting the boys. She was on the show with Felipe and Jasmine. Her photos were being used by the Catfish, Jasmine.  But way before that, back in 2012, Paris was catfished by a guy who she thought was Chris “Birdman” Anderson a pro basketball player. She exchanged nude photos with Chris. She says she went out to meet Chris and they had a great weekend. Wait what? How is it catfishing if it is the real guy? How can you fake being Chris in person when he is covered head to toe in tattoos? It’s late. Perhaps I should have started with a more typical Catfish episode. 

The police investigation discovered that while Chris and Paris thought they were texting with each other, they were both really texting with a catfish named Shelly Chartier in Canada. WTF? We are not even three minutes in and my mind is already boggled.  Shelly  not only made up fake profiles for both of them, she also made up fake profile’s for Paris’ mother.  She contacted Chris as Paris’ mother and demanded money to keep from going public with their relationship. Chris paid the catfish. OMG. This is so intriguing.

Shelly got caught and went to jail. Chris was cleared ( it’s fine to have sex with a 17-year-old in Colorado) and life sort of went back to normal. But Shelly just got out of jail and Paris wants to make sure that no one else has to go through what she did. So the boys need to track down Shelly.

And I stop to read THIS post about the topic as it was unfolding. It’s fascinating and tragic.

First they go to meet up with Paris. Paris talks about how she had all these conversations with Birdman’s friend, Tom. Yet another fake account. She was sent a ticket to go see Birdman aka Chris and when she got there he acted like he didn’t know who Tom was. There were also things Chris had thought she told him that she said was not true, like packing up Victoria Secret underwear.  Every online interaction they had was filtered through Shelly who changed things in their texts. They had a great weekend and talked about seeing each other again.

This is really too complicated to recap. This Tom persona and Chris were both into Xbox. Shelly, as both Chris and Tom started talking about this one guy in Indiana who they could not stand because he was beating them both (really Shelly) on Call of Duty. So they both wanted her to fly to Indiana and steal the guys XBox password.  Look people, I am not making this shit up, I’m just recapping an episode here. They (both of Shelly’s fake accounts) were pressuring her to do it. The fake Chris account was offering to buy her any Louis Vuitton handbag she wanted if she would just do it. She said no. Then she started getting threatening messages from “Tom” who said he was going to send someone to rape her and kill her and throw her on the side of the street. Wait what? This case didn’t even go to trial until 2015. How is this cunt out of jail already?  That is when “Chris” posted her nude photos, her address, her phone number and her mother’s phone number because she had texted off that phone too.

Shelly Chartier destroyed the lives of both Paris and Birdman, at least for a few years. Apparently longer than she served. She was sentenced to 18 months and there was a 20/20 show about her case. I don’t know how much real time you serve in Canada for an 18 month sentence but WHAT THE FUCK?

Next the guys try to get in touch with Birdman. So far no luck but they are off to talk to Dudley Do Right, or Constable Gord Olson as the case may be. I kid, my Canookian friends, I kid. The constable says that  Shelly has duped tons of people in the US. He mentions one person in Texas where she could be prosecuted anywhere from 24 to 48 years. #DontMessWithTexas  He also says she is likely to reoffend. He says he will hook the boys up with Shelly.

The boys go up to The Pas, Manitoba which is like six kilometers south of the North Pole or some shit, They sit in the frozen tundra for days waiting for the chance to talk to the cunt catfish. Shelly is 33 but for most of her life she never left her house. Finally, they get her phone number.

Dear GOD. We are only half way through this episode. Nev calls to set up a meet time. She is married, as I learned watching a clip from 20/20, to some guy she pet on the Internet. They are off to the literal hinterlands to meet her. This story is so bizarre we see the production meetings of how the hell to handle this. They opt not to send in a crew. Just Nev and Max with handheld cameras. I am glued to my screen.

It’s a ghetto shack with a piece of plywood over the windows of the front door. This is like a horror movie. There is Rob the husband who married her in the kitchen before she went to jail and Shelly who when greeted with a “How are you?” replies with “Hungry” as if she is going to skin Nev and Max and roast them on an open spit before eating them. Nev asks to say hi to Shelly’s mom because he feels weird being in her house without saying hello. Translation, “I’d like proof your mom is still alive and the two of you did not enjoy eating her still beating heart with some fava beans and a cheap Chianti.”

The scene is further made awkward because they could not obviously give them the requisite free sofa because, North Pole.  Also, Shelly looks pregnant. They probably should have brought donuts or something. Surely there is a Tim Horton’s on the North Pole.  Her mother is bedridden apparently since Shelly was born thirty some years ago. She appears to be online during the introduction. Shelley’s cousin Bert is by her side.  So alive-ish. Then we see the happy couple’s room. They have recently made a heart of photos pasted on their wall.  I rarely feel better about my own shitty living arrangements, but I now am very thankful for them.

The lovely couple met because Shelly kept stabbing him on Call of Duty online. Nev points out that Shelly is wanted in the US, the mom says that would kill her. Nev is dying to see the rest of the house including the kitchen where they got married whilst Shelly wore pajamas.  Shelly shares a dream catcher that she made in jail with us. A dream catcher is something that captures evil spirits. Somehow this reminds me of Phaedra Parks and her religion. I’m sure Phaedra prays to be delivered from evil all the time. It’s an equally eerie and ironic and frightening experience all at once.

The next day they go back to Easterville, Manitoba, which I get if we take over Canada will be a state just above North Dakota. But deal Lord, no one lives in North Dakota other than people who would pull this same sort of shit. North Dakota needs to be annexed into Canada on the real. Crazy people who think they know people online.  I’ve heard stories…

Back at the crazy bitch’s house, HOLY CHRIST! they did get new couches! I just backed up and they were there the day before. Maybe they were not done staging? Shelly says she never left her house for 12 years. She never spoke to anyone. She was just home taking care of her mother. So she had plenty of time to catfish people and commit federal online crimes and play Call of Duty.

Shelly claims it all started when Paris posted her phone number to Chris on his Facebook. So she texted her as Chris. What what? First of all why would a chick do that, and secondly why wouldn’t like 99 male catfish do that, she really hot!

Shelly says she started to tell her friend (name bleeped out, it is the Texas woman who is the case that she could do serious US time for, I’ll call her Bleep)  that things were getting uncomfortable because Paris was sending nudes. So she told Bleep that she was  going to tell Paris she wasn’t really Chris. She is clearly lying. She is blaming everything on Bleep. She said Bleep said to just hook up Chris and Paris. This moron clearly has no attorney because she is lying out her ass. She says she posted the photos (that she served the whopping 18 months for) and then she saw it was all over the  news and she felt bad for herself and Chris.

According to Shelly she texted Bleep as herself. But the cops says that Bleep was in love with Tom and that is how Shelly texted Bleep. The Canadian cop said that when Bleep found out Shelly was not a guy named Tom and when they explained to her what was going on, her reaction was if someone had died. Nev points this out and Shelly continues to claim that Bleep was her friend and she texted with her as herself. Shelly is REALLY dumb.  Shelly claims that Bleep is telling her what to do. She says that Bleep tried to get #10K from ??? Chris??? And she admitted that to the cops. Um I have no idea what she is trying to say but she has warrants for her arrest in Texas. Apparently this chick agreed to be on the show to try to get out of the US charges. This is unreal.

She tells some sort of story about why she pled guilty. She claims she was pregnant at the time and had a miscarriage in jail? I dunno none of this makes sense.

Max, the good cop, asks why she did any of this in the first place and she says she is stupid. She says she is really stupid. She wanders around responsibility,

Nev, the bad cop asks what about the crimes she committed in the US?  How do you feel about that? She apparently did a year of the time. And she says she did her time an a year is a lot to waste in a human life, and “those people” should look at their life and wonder if she should be punished more for what she did?

And I say YES GOD. Throw her dumb ass in an American jail.

I keep telling you people to watch this show.

I would also like to say that Chris was doing a LOT of work with abandoned children because he himself was in the system. As a result of this fucking cunt labeling him a child molester he had to back off from that.

Shelly need to get cancer and die in a fire along with the Marcheses.