marieclaire.com.aumarieclaire.com.au 3737T
he first time police
arrived at her home,
Courtney Allen was
elated. She rushed to
the door alongside her
dogs, a pair of eager
Norwegian elkhounds, to greet them.
“Is this about our case?” she asked. The
two ocers looked at her in confusion.
They didn’t know what she was talking
about. Courtney felt her hope give way
to a familiar dread.
Three days earlier, in March 2015,
Courtney and her husband, Steven, had
gone to police headquarters in Kent,
Washington, reporting they’d been vic-
tims of an online harassment campaign.
They had found a fake Facebook page
under Steven’s name with a profile pic-
ture of Courtney, naked. Emails flooded
their inboxes; some called Courtney a
whore and a bitch. One seemed like
a death threat. Courtney’s co-workers
received videos and screenshots of her
naked and masturbating. The messages
came from a wide range of addresses.
Some even appeared to be from Steven.
There were phone calls, too. So
many came to the dental oce where
Courtney worked that receptionists
kept a log: “Called and said, ‘Put that
dumb cunt Courtney on the phone,’” one
said in neat, bubbly handwriting.
Courtney and Steven told a police
ocer they had seen who they believed
was behind the harassment: a man in
Arizona named Todd Zonis, with whom
Courtney had engaged in an online
afair that she had since broken of. The
ocer assigned them a case number
and advised them not to have any more
contact with Zonis. E3682?2D2^:CE2E:@?3FE8C6H:?E@E96H@C=5\D
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C6G62=D9@H@?6H@>2?7@F89E324<C67FD:?8
E@=6EC6=6?E=6DD@?=:?623FD656DEC@J96CBut that was not why the ocers
were on the Allens’ doorstep: an anony-
mous tipster – presumably Zonis – had
left a report on the Crime Stoppers web-
site saying Steven “had been telling
everyone for months that his wife was
leaving him, but he had a plan to beat
her into staying”. The informant wrote
that the Allens had a “large gun collec-
tion” and two big dogs.
The police left after interviewing
Courtney, only to return again three
days later. Courtney wondered, more
cautiously this time, if she would now
get a response to her complaint. But no,
they were investigating yet another
anonymous tip, this one about an
alleged incident at a park involving
Steven and the couple’s four-year-old:
“His son screamed and he smacked him
repeatedly on the back, butt, legs and
head but not the face,” the tipster wrote.
In her report of the visit, detective
Angie Galetti described how Courtney
had had to coax her nervous son into
showing his skin to the detectives:
“There was no suspicious bruising or
marks of any kind,” she wrote. “He
appeared appropriately attached to his
mother and detective Lorette and I
had no concerns.”
But Courtney’s own concerns were
mounting. Having to “show them my
son’s body to make sure he had no bruis-
es ... was one of the worst moments of
my life”, she remembers. She found
herself sobbing in front of the detec-
tives. The harassment was so creative;
so relentless and unpredictable.
The Allens’ hell began in late 2012.
Courtney and Steven, now in their mid-
30s, met in a high school biology class
and reconnected later when Courtney
was going through a divorce. They lived
in a house full of fantasy books and
avidly played Grepolis, an empire- and
alliance-building browser game.
One day a player in an opposing
alliance asked if he could join theirs.
This was Courtney’s first introduction
to Todd Zonis and she liked him from
LION the start. “He was crude and rude and
CRIME