In 2024, Luke Wenke began finding ways to antagonise and torment me from behind bars. In one case, he had a fellow inmate (who happened to be a level-3 repeat sex offender) inundate me with phone calls. The caller told me that Luke Wenke had told him I could hook him up with a good lawyer.

I received at least 15 calls from the inmate before realising I could block calls from the entire jail. Aside from accepting a complimentary 30-second call to try learning who this person was and what he wanted, I never spoke with him again.

It Wasn’t a Misunderstanding.

Luke Wenke has known for more than three years that I want zero contact with him, and that I therefore want zero contact with anyone associated with him. He also knew that the judge overseeing his case had banned him from contacting me as a condition of his probation, and while the ban was apparently ineffective while he was in jail, he had no reason to believe my desire for zero contact had changed.

Simply put, Luke Wenke was not confused or delusional when he encouraged his friend to call me, like the feds would probably like to think (they seem to enjoy excusing his behaviour by wholesale blaming his actions on “mental illness”). He knew what he was doing and that our friendship was long over, and he was doing it to upset, anger, violate, and scare me. But no action was taken against Wenke for the unwanted indirect/third-party contact, so I carried on as best I could while this pathetic mess continued to dominate my life.

This experience has taught me that in 2025 America, you apparently don’t have a right to be left alone by someone who’s harassing, stalking, intimidating, or otherwise bothering you.

Several months later, I began receiving calls and messages out of the blue.

Throughout 2023, Luke Wenke’s jail stints were like vacations for me. Whenever he got locked up, it meant he was highly unlikely to bother me until he regained his freedom. But the calls I received from his sex offender friend marked a clear turning point in his harassment methods. It now seemed like Luke Wenke was actively trying to torment and harass me from jail via his predator buddy.

After blocking all calls from the jail, I didn’t receive any weird phone calls or messages for several months. Then, on a Saturday night in late summer of 2024, I received a text message from an area code and number I didn’t recognize. All it said was “hey.” I responded asking who it was but didn’t get an answer.

I went to bed unusually early that night (around 9-9:30 PM) and slept through several missed phone calls from numbers I didn’t recognise. When I woke up and tried contacting the numbers, they appeared to no longer be in service.

It’s extremely unusual for me to receive correspondence from even one unfamiliar number, let alone three in one night, and it especially never happens that late in the evening. I knew it wasn’t an old friend calling to say “hi,” and I suspected that one person was behind all three of the phone numbers. But Luke Wenke was in jail at the time, and I didn’t think he had any way of reaching me, so I initially didn’t worry that it was him. I didn’t want to be bothered, regardless of who it was, so I blocked the numbers and stopped thinking about it.

The next morning, I received another weird call.

At around 11 AM the next day, my phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number and area code. When I answered, a man on the other end asked, “Who is this?”

I replied, “you’re the one calling me, you tell me.”

The man then addressed me by my first and last name, making it clear that he was seeking me out specifically. His tone of voice was cold and almost mocking, so I immediately got the impression that he wasn’t calling for any well-intending reason. When I asked for his name, he outright refused to identify himself but continued to taunt me, to the effect of “I know who you are, Katie [last name].”

I couldn’t figure out who it might be, because I don’t have any significant interpersonal issues outside wanting Luke Wenke to leave me the fuck alone. I’m not involved in any major beefs with anyone, I haven’t screwed anyone over or betrayed anyone in recent years, and I keep largely to myself. As I racked my brain trying to make sense of the situation, I heard an all-too-familiar, high-pitched giggle in the background, as if someone was listening in on the conversation and relishing in my confusion and discomfort.

I initially told myself I was crazy for thinking Luke Wenke could be behind the call.

The caller continued refusing to identify himself, so I hung up and blocked the number. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the giggling in the background. It sounded a lot like Luke Wenke’s laugh, but he was in custody at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center at the time. I assumed that contraband phones were extremely difficult to acquire in prison/jail settings, and that Luke Wenke was unlikely to develop the social connections necessary to access one.

When I researched the phone numbers that had called and texted me, they did not link back to any correctional institutions. The area codes were from various states (if memory serves me correct, two of them were from California and Georgia), and none of the numbers traced back to any owners, leading me to suspect that they were used in a disposable fashion (especially since they appeared to be nonfunctional when I tried calling them back).

I’ve never been to jail or prison (contrary to Luke Wenke’s claims), so I spoke with some people who are more familiar than I am with that type of environment. Based on what they told me, accessing a contraband phone started to seem less impossible than I had originally assumed, especially since NEOCC is one of the “rougher” facilities that Wenke has spent time in. I don’t know what the atmosphere is like now, but according to past news articles, NEOCC was once rife with violence and defiance against authority. Even if Wenke himself couldn’t afford or get his hands on a contraband phone, maybe he befriended someone who let him use theirs (and harassed me on his behalf, hence the giggling in the background).

For some reason, it seemed far-fetched. I almost didn’t say anything about it, because I was second-guessing my own judgment. But like I said, it’s been many years since I’ve received harassing contact from anyone other than Luke Wenke and people associated with him. I took a screenshot of my call log and the text messages from the previous night, sent them to the U.S. Marshal assigned to Wenke’s case, and explained that I really couldn’t fathom who else might want to call me on a Sunday morning and bother me while giggling like a schoolgirl about it.

I have no idea what became of the situation.

The Marshal assigned to Wenke’s case is very polite and professional, and I think he took me more seriously than certain other parties involved in the case. Even if he didn’t, he certainly did his job in a very upstanding and dignified way, which made me always feel respected. I understand that federal personnel are busy people, but he made the time to hear me out when we spoke about the case, and he never outwardly dismissed me or gave me the standard brush-off that I’ve gotten oh-so-used to during my entanglement with this disastrous, life-ruining case. That said, I imagine he probably at least passed the information on to any relevant personnel, even if it didn’t send the place into lockdown or cause any cell raids.

Thankfully, I haven’t received any more strange calls or text messages in recent months. And while I’m open to thinking there may be another explanation, I also can’t think of who else the caller and the person in the background could’ve been. Most of the people I know outgrew prank-calling behaviour years or even decades ago and wouldn’t erupt into a fit of banshee-like laughter over it (especially since the person harassing me was extremely uncreative). For now, and possibly forever, the mystery endures.