To show you how messed up it is here the timeline. All of this comes from Discovery.
Timeline of the Events
June 20, 2015, Todd Daugherty posts a message on his message board stating that he was going to sue the Taylorville police chief, the city of Taylorville and the state of Illinois. (See attachment A)
June 22, 2015, Police chief David Herpstreith got the message about the post from an unknown individual, who claimed Daugherty threatened the police chief and sent the message to Richard Bryan. Bryan went to the Assistant State Attorney Brian Bach who believed it was a threat. Richard Bryan, Sargent Thomason and officer Vince Childers went to Daugherty’s house and arrested him (See Discovery page 70)
On July 13th, 2015, the charges against Todd Daugherty were dismissed. Because threatening to sue the police under 42 USC 1983 is not illegal (See Daugherty - case number: 2015CF110). Daugherty didn’t threat to kill the police chief as the police believed, instead he announced on his site that he was going to sue the police chief, city of Taylorville and the state of Illinois for violating his rights under 1983.
On February 7, 2018, an individual known as @FCCBodyguard posted a tweet on twitter directed to Todd Daugherty stating “Smile next time you go to jail. Which hopefully will be soon.” (See Attachment B)
On February 22, 2018 @FCCbodyguard tweeted on twitter to Todd Daugherty and to Taylorville Daily News stating “N9OGL Todd Daugherty showing he also has access to weapons. Taylorville students deserve to feel safe, you either need to be in prison or a psych ward. At least put under a trespass ban from parks and schools.” In the tweet is a link to image sharing site where a picture of Daugherty holding a fake 911 gun pointing toward a camera taken from Daugherty’s blog which was deleted back in 2008. (See Attachment C)
On February 23, 2018 @FCCbodyguard tweeted to Taylorville Daily News on twitter “This is why school shooting happen. Warning signs get ignored even with dozens of threats made. Todd Daugherty N9OGL needs to be put into a psych ward and/or put on trespass for schools, libraries and parks” in the post was a link to a website owned by a group of ham radio operator who feel the need to attacks other hams and spreads mistruths about those hams. Which also has the now images from the now deleted blog (see Attachment D)
On February 27, 2018 @FCCbodyguard tweeted to Todd Daugherty and YouTube stating, “You will be kneeling soon enough in a jail cell” (see Attachment E)
On March 16th, 2018, at 9:25 PM an unknown individual using a Tor program made a threat against an elementary school in Taylorville Illinois under the name Todd Daugherty N9OGL. (See attachment F)
On March 16th, 2018, at 5.34 PM CST the FBI got a report from an individual through their tip line named Mark and their IP address was 2001:bc8:3c96:200:0:0:0:74 originating out of Paris, France. The tip was about the threat on a Hate and Flame website. In his message he stated:
“I don’t know if this real or not but this guy is crazy with a numerous arrest (Todd Daugherty) but he justed posted this to a message board. FUCK YOU YOU STALKING MOTHER FUCKERS. I’LL SHOW YOU WHO IS AUSTIC. I’LL GO TO MEMORIAL ELEMENTRY SCHOOL AND MAKE SAND HOOK LOOK LIKE A SUNDAY PICNIC” along with a link to the threat on the website. (Page 30 of Discovery)
On March 17th, 2018, The FBI acted on that tip (there was a delay due to huge influx from the FBI service center) The FBI service center then got a hold of the Springfield Division of the FBI, who in turn relayed it to Taylorville Police. Special Agent Alaina Arnold of the FBI went to Taylorville to meet up with Officer Dickey of the Taylorville Police department. Dickey contacted the Deputy Chief of police Vince Childers who provided paperwork, including paperwork of Daugherty being arrested for threatening the Chief of police in 2015. The police and Special Agent Alaina Arnold went to Daugherty’s house and knocked on the front, side and back door with no answer. Daugherty, who was away at meeting with relatives who were in town to attend a funeral on Sunday March 18th for his great aunt who had just died. Officer Dickey and Special Agent Arnold left the residence and the police said they would keep watch of the house and would contact Special Agent Arnold when contact was made.
Later that evening around 8:00 PM CST Deputy Chief Childers contacted Special Agent Arnold that officers went back to Daugherty’s house and knocked on the door and Todd Daugherty answered. (Discovery page 30 - 3
The police did knock on the door at Daugherty’s house. When he answered the door, The police stated that they wanted to talk to him about something he posted on his site. Daugherty responded, “what website?” because a week earlier Daugherty had shut his website down due to an unknown individual from the Hate and Flame website posting large qualities of ”questionable” pornography on his site after being told by Daugherty to stop and that the material wasn’t allowed on his site. The police told Daugherty that they wanted to talk about his “Hate and Flame forum” Daugherty then informed them that he did not own the Hate and Flame forum, nor did he post there. He also informed them right then and there that there was no login requirement for that site and that anyone can post as anyone.
Daugherty was aware of this fact because the software that the Hate and Flame website was using which is called My Little Forum (
https://mylittleforum.net/) is the same free software that Daugherty was using for his site.
Daugherty agreed to go talk to the police at the police station and he was taken to the station be interviewed. Detective Thomason read Daugherty his Miranda Rights and Daugherty understood them. Thomason then showed Daugherty the post and Daugherty once again stated that he didn’t post it. Daugherty also again told the police including Thomason that there was no login requirement for that site and that anyone can post as anyone. Thomason then told Daugherty “You would agree that this is a threat”; Daugherty said “Yeah”. Thomason then stated, “That is your name, right?” and Daugherty said “Yes”. Thomason then replied “then you would agree a reasonable person would believe that you posted that threat”; Again, Daugherty told them that he didn’t post it and that anyone could post on that site because there was no login requirement. Thomason then asked Daugherty if he knew anything about the Sandy Hook shooting and Daugherty said NO. Daugherty spends most of his day in front of a computer playing video games, watching Anime on the Internet, through streaming services and occasionally checking his email and website. When he isn’t doing that, he’s eating, sleeping, or taking care of his cats which at the time of his arrest was twenty. In fact, when the police knocked on the basement door; that’s where they found Daugherty, who was looking for one of his missing cats, who is blind named BG, who he (Daugherty) believed had gotten out from a broken window in the basement.
After the police were done talking to Daugherty he was charged and sent to jail at the Christian County Sheriff Office. (See Discovery 60 - 64).
On March 19th, 2018, warrants were sent to CTI (Daugherty’s ISP) where the police received Daugherty Internet logs as well as letters from concern citizens regarding complaints about Daugherty’s online activities (Discovery Page 52) (NOTE: letters from concern citizens regarding Daugherty activities was taken in as evidence but was not in discovery).
On March 21st, 2018, Officer Christian Nelson signed the affidavit to obtain the warrants to seize Daugherty’s computers. On the same day Judge Matoush signed the warrant and Daugherty’s computers were seized. Officer Nelson lied and used the dismissed 2015 case as “probable cause” in the affidavit to get the warrant. (Page 43 to 45 of discovery)
On March 30th a warrant was served to Respectmyprivacy.com and to NearFreeSpeech.net, the Internet Service Providers of the Website Hate and Flame. The police never got a response from the site owner but got a response from Nearfreespeech.com’s attorney Hathaway who was able to obtain the required information which was 13 pages. Hathaway was able to determine from the domain log records the original post was posted by someone who was using TOR. Hathaway was also able to identify the poster of the lewd photo-shopped images of Daugherty from an IP coming from Time Warner cable and the individual visited the site 2,262 times during the time frame of the warrant. (See Page 60 and 61 of Discovery)
During March 17th to April 16th, 2018, While Daugherty was sitting in jail more posts and threats by Daugherty were being posted on Hate and Flame, which was impossible because Christian County jail doesn’t have Internet access, so it was impossible for Daugherty to make those posts. Also, at time an unknown individual posted a video on YouTube admitting and laughing that he and another individual had Daugherty thrown in jail. This 15- to 20-minute-long video was later removed by YouTube for violating their “community guidelines” Both the State Attorney Mike Havera and Daugherty lawyer was aware of the video at the time.
On April 16th, 2018, the charges against Daugherty were dismissed by the state for the following reasons:
1. The Defendant was arrested on March 17th, 2018.
2. That during the course of this investigation law enforcement has discovered that the website used to disseminate the threat did not require any login credentials and allows anyone to post a message and sign it as a false author.
3. That after the defendant’s arrest there were more messages posted on the same website claiming to be from Todd Daugherty which is impossible due to the fact that he was incarcerated.
4. That it is known that other fictitious posts had be recently made on the same site claiming to be authored by judges, the president and other such individuals.
5. That search warrant have been obtained and executed in this case to analyze Daugherty Internet activity and have shown nothing to implicate him in this case at this time.
6. That the local, state and Federal Bureau of Investigation are continuing the investigation into the source of the threat.
On page two of the Motion to dismiss it states:
Upon Motion of the Christian County State’s Attorney’s Office the Charges identified above are hereby dismissed without prejudice to the People of the State of Illinois. Any warrants or summonses previously issued are hereby quashed. (See Attachment G and H)
On June 15th, 2018, Forensic Examiner (FE) O’Sullivan got physical image of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) under the file name 32824279etl.jpg (the State police report states its 32824279etl.pdf). It was later determined that this material was from a series called Mdew. (NOTE: The 32824279etl.jpg is not the name of the file. The file name is created through the “toolkit” called “ETL” so what the real name of the file is unknown. FE O’Sullivan also found on the computer thousands of Virtual child porn as well. Virtual child porn is not only legal, but is protected under the first amendment (Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition US Supreme Court 2002)
July 2, 2018, FE O’Sullivan reported to Special Agent Arnold of suspected child pornography.
On October 25, 2018, the FBI received a tweet on Twitter by a user named @fccbodyguard who claimed Daugherty had not only threatened twitter but lied to the Taylorville police and the FBI. (See page 72 - 80 of Discovery) The same @FCCBodyguard who was tweeting to Todd Daugherty and Taylorville Daily News, including the image of the gun (the 1911) that was also posted on the threat on Hate and Flame. The police and FBI were unaware of this fact.
On March 2, 2020, the FBI got a second warrant in federal court to search the computers for child pornography (see Page 128 of Discovery)
On July 22, 2022, the US Attorney declined to prosecute Daugherty and sent a letter explained why. (Discovery Page 175 Note: letter explaining why the AUSA declined to prosecution was also not in discovery). The FBI sent all the evidence back to Illinois.
On September 14, 2022, Daugherty was arrested for child pornography.