The Darris Moody Case: The Final Resolution

 

Darris Moody

We followed the strange tale of the Waynesville woman, Darris Moody, whose imagination got ignited by an anti-government website, the People's Bureau of Investigation, which induced Moody to begin sending legal-looking but bogus arrest warrants and threatening letters to a host of North Carolina officials. including judges. She was arrested in September of 2022.

That case has been resolved in federal court. Darris Moody will serve two years in prison, but the man who put her up to it, one Timothy Dever who lives in Illinois, was sentenced to 10 years.

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina Dena J. King, who prosecuted the cases, said, “Dever’s anti-government rhetoric and fake arrest writs were more than a nuisance. They put hundreds of lives at risk. Those who shared Dever’s warped ideology, including Moody, became self-proclaimed bounty hunters that turned innocent victims into targets of harassment, intimidation, and death threats. But, unlike Dever and Moody’s sham court proceedings, my office has legitimate authority to hold these defendants accountable for their actions.”

Update on the Haywood County Cray-Cray

 

Darris Moody, the sweet face of loony

Remember the Haywood County "digital warrior" Darris Moody who was arrested back in September for sending threats to scores of elected officials in western North Carolina (among other places), alleging treason on the part of those officials and promising some mystical Q-based retribution. Who got these threats? Easier to ask who didn't. The local Haywood sheriff (a Democrat) got one. So did some of his deputies, two county commissioners, the district attorney, three judges, the entire Haywood school board, every elected official in the town of Waynesville (along with three Waynesville public works employees), Canton’s mayor, the chairman of the Haywood board of elections, a few Asheville and Buncombe County officials, the Henderson County sheriff, several state Supreme Court justices, and the CEO and chief nursing officer of the Haywood Regional Medical Center.

The judge released her on bond after that arrest, but when she failed to show up for her arraignment in October, claiming that the government had no goddamn power over her, she was re-arrested. Now the indispensable Cory Vallaincourt of the Smoky Mountain News has updated the Darris Moody saga:

It took more than four months, 62 federal counts and a lengthy period of pretrial detention in Buncombe County, but Darris Moody has finally acknowledged the legitimacy of the United States justice system — by signing a plea agreement related to the threats she sent to elected officials last summer....

After Moody was released on bond, she failed to appear at a subsequent hearing and was taken back into custody on Oct. 14. Since then, she’s made multiple pro se filings reiterating her claims that the United States government and its legal system have no jurisdiction over her....

Moody, of Haywood County, signed the agreement on Jan. 6, offering to waive her right to trial and plead guilty to interstate threats and/or conspiracy to kidnap. Details of the agreement remain sealed.

A presentencing report will consider various factors and make a recommendation for sentencing. The maximum penalty for conspiracy to kidnap is life imprisonment. The maximum penalty for interstate threats is five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, plus three years supervised release.

According to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, Moody remains in custody.

 

Update: The Q Outbreak in Haywood County

 

Previously (the background).

According to the Smoky Mountain News:

A Haywood County woman arrested by the FBI on Sept. 7 for making threats to public officials is back in custody after she failed to show up for her arraignment last week on 59 counts of interstate threats and conspiracy to kidnap.

On Sept. 12, Darris Moody was released on bond by Judge Carleton Metcalf at the conclusion of her detention hearing, during which FBI special agent Bill Gang testified that Moody told him she did not recognize the legitimacy of the United States government or legal system.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Gast had argued for Moody’s continuing detention at that time, telling Metcalf that there was no piece of paper anyone could put in front of Moody that would compel her to appear as directed to a court she repeatedly claimed she didn’t recognize. Moody’s attorney, Sean Devereux, had argued for her release, saying he’d made clear to Moody that she needed to follow the rules.

Metcalf said at the time that his decision could have gone either way but considering Moody’s lack of criminal history, Metcalf opted to release Moody to home confinement, albeit with a number of conditions to encourage her participation in the forthcoming proceedings.

When Moody’s 10 a.m. hearing began on Oct. 14, she was nowhere to be found. Metcalf moved onto another matter, giving Moody time to show up, but shortly before 11 a.m. it became clear she wouldn’t.

In addressing Metcalf, Devereux acknowledged the court’s previous concerns about Moody being an active participant in her own defense and told Metcalf that he’d “bent over backwards” to ensure Moody understood that.

 

The Flowering of Q in Waynesville

 

So this happened in Haywood County: An energetic woman in Waynesville, Darris Moody, who describes herself as a digital warrior, got a good viral case of internet poisoning on hyper-conservative websites and began faxxing bunches of anonymous (although one was signed “ThankQ”), threatening "arrest" warrants and legal-seeming "writs" to public officials that contained hair-raising possibilities -- like placing "bounties" of $10,000 and up on the heads of the letter-recipients and calling for "citizen’s arrests" of treasonous officials supposedly acting on behalf of the Deep State. Who got these threats? Easier to ask who didn't. The local Haywood sheriff (a Democrat) got one. So did some of his deputies, two county commissioners, the district attorney, three judges, the entire Haywood school board, every elected official in the town of Waynesville (along with three Waynesville public works employees), Canton’s mayor, the chairman of the Haywood board of elections, a few Asheville and Buncombe County officials, the Henderson County sheriff, several state Supreme Court justices, and the CEO and chief nursing officer of the Haywood Regional Medical Center. Anonymous (and meaningless) writs and warrants threatening physical and professional injury.

The FBI arrested Darris Moody on September 7. She's charged under the Interstate Communications Act,  which prohibits the interstate transmission of "any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another." The judge let her out on an unsecured $25,000 bond, much to the alarm of the federal prosecutor. ("Interstate transmission" -- apparently Mrs. Moody included a few Washington, D.C., fax numbers and maybe some in Tennessee as well.)

Say you want to use the English language to put the fear of an angry right-wing God into the hearts and heads of a few elected officials. Where do you begin and what do you write? Luckily for you (and for Darris Moody), there's a whole website, “The People’s Bureau of Investigation,” which gave Mrs. Moody her templates and samples of "the peoples arrest warrants," fancied up in quasi-legal language. The website contains instructions on how anyone, anywhere, can “serve” the fill-in-the-blanks “writs,” and for every one served, the website promises compensation of $2,000. From whom the money will come remains unclear (but thank God there's a profit motive behind this craziness, although Darris Moody complained to a reporter that she had gotten nary a check for her good work).

Reporter Cory Vaillancourt of the Smoky Mountain News has been all over this story. In fact, it was Vaillancourt who pursued leads and uncovered the identity of Darris Moody, actually talking to her for an hour on the phone. The interview must have been a doozy:

Moody lives in a world of red pills and blue pills — not actual pills, but rather internet parlance for truth and ignorance, respectively. During a 50-minute phone conversation, she checked off nearly every single box on a long list of QAnon-style conspiracy theories.

She’s concerned about socialism, communism, chemtrails, weather modification and satanic pedophile cults that traffic children for their organs.

She believes that COVID-19 is a psy-op, that the vaccine is a bioweapon and that masks are a tactic of the deep state, worn to obscure the very image of God.

She bandies about faerie-tale talking points from self-proclaimed “sovereign citizens.”

She claims that upon birth Americans are transformed or absorbed into a corporate entity and then are bonded, insured and controlled by the New World Order.

She espouses support for Christian nationalism, maritime admiralty law and the so-called constitutional sheriffs movement.

She promotes the idea that actor Tom Hanks is somehow part of it all, and that President Joe Biden isn’t “the real Biden” but has instead been replaced by a body double.

“Anybody can go look at pictures of him,” Moody said. “It ain’t the real one.”

Of course, she learned all this on the internet.

Vaillancourt published his investigation on September 7th under the headline, "Author of threatening writs revealed, but still no action from law enforcement" -- emphasizing "no action" because Vaillancourt had asked sheriffs in particular why they had not taken steps to stop the letters. Literally, hours after that article appeared in the Smoky Mountain News, the FBI moved on Mrs. Moody. Maybe local law enforcement can be excused because they knew the Feds were on it. Anyway, the Feds were.