When 23-year-old Ellie Weik vanished from her West Chester, Ohio home on July 29, 2018, her journal entries and messages revealed a dangerous presence in her life. Over the course of a month, detectives unraveled a web of deception, catfishing, and stalking, all leading to someone she already knew.
Chapter 1: What happened to Ellie Weik?
Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
What the? Crazy, I know, right? That's what I'm saying, man. It's just, it's kind of spooky stuff.
It is spooky stuff, isn't it? We like spooky stuff around here, don't we? Sassholes. Hello! Happy Thursday! Welcome to your favorite podcast, Sword and Scale. Season 12, episode 295. The show that reveals that the worst monsters are real! Well, if you haven't checked out Zordon Scale TV, you know, I don't know what to tell you. We got one out right now that's pretty intense.
And you might want to take a look if you're interested in the true crime genre. Because these things are... It takes a lot out of me to make one of these episodes. It really does. I mean... Wow. Wow. Imagine you're 23, living in a small town in godforsaken Ohio. Life here isn't exactly exciting, so you chase excitement wherever you can. Parties, festivals, raves. Do they still do raves?
New faces and old acquaintances. Some days, you barely know half the people you're with. You smoke, of course. You dance, you draw. And for a few hours, you let the music drown everything out. You're a free spirit. But eventually, the music fades, the lights go off, and you're back in your bedroom. feeling that ache of deep loneliness that you just can't shake.
Your room is a mess, littered with sketches, collages, and little scraps of ideas that don't quite come together. You feel like an artist, but you live like a homeless person. The faint scent of weed lingers in the air, mingling with the smell of incense. Probably a few hints of patchouli as well. Gale, your gecko, is asleep in her tank. You write little reminders to love yourself and keep going.
I mean, somebody has to, even when you feel like you don't matter, which is becoming a more frequent occurrence. You scrawl big letters into a bullet journal, filling page after page after page.
Anyone that wants to date me wants to hurt themselves.
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Chapter 2: What eerie messages did Ellie receive?
This is just how things are. You try not to think about it, but it's there. This feeling that you're not worthy of happiness or love. That somehow everyone you meet will leave you in the end. Weird. I thought I was the only one who felt that. It starts in January. One cold night, you're mindlessly scrolling, checking messages. You're used to chatting with people you know.
random party friends, the guy from last week's smoke session, etc. But then a message comes in from someone new. A guy named Kun Joe. Who the hell is Kun Joe? You don't know him, but you're curious. So you accept his Facebook friend request and start chatting. At first, there's nothing out of the ordinary.
You're used to people hitting you up out of nowhere like this, so you don't think much of it. A few days later, after some casual banter with this guy, he sends you another message. This one makes your heart skip a beat.
Just want to show you it's not that hard to find someone unless they don't want to be found. I worry about my privacy as well. My social and personal info is on my license. That's why I don't share. Because you could show that to anyone. And if I'm not sleeping with you, it's hard to trust you.
After this message is a screenshot of your address, this person knows exactly where you live.
Just saying. If anyone goes missing, it's not hard to find. LOL.
What does that mean? That's what you're thinking, at least. A few days go by and more messages come through.
I can't stop. You seem like the type that likes to be choked, force-fed and held down.
Your stomach turns. He's included a photo. It's a collage of your own selfies overlaid with a sea of penises. Does this person know that you like to do collages? Is this their twisted way of turning something you enjoy into something disturbing? The next message isn't from Kunjo. It's from a random text me number.
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Chapter 3: How did Ellie's life change before her disappearance?
Some of them were guys she liked, but nothing was panning out the way she'd hoped. That's when Nate Peters texted her. Nate Peters wasn't a close friend, but they'd hung out before. They'd smoked together, they'd gone to a few of the same parties. He was familiar. And in this moment, familiar felt safe.
Hey, stranger.
Who dis?
Nate, how's it going? New number, my bad.
Nate who?
Peters. Do you know a lot of Nate's, LOL?
Yes, actually. Hoping it was you, though.
For Ellie, these conversations were a small escape. Over the next few weeks, they kept in touch, and by late July, they were making plans to meet up and rekindle their friendship.
What you doing later?
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Chapter 4: Who was Nate Peters and what was his role?
Ring the doorbell a few times all at once.
See you soon.
Ellie left her house that night, unaware that everything was about to change. The streets were dark and empty, just like her life had felt for the last few months. It was late, and she was tired. Tired of being scared and tired of feeling alone. There, in the stillness of the air, she convinced herself that this was just another hangout. That Nate was just a friend.
The alarm bells in her head fell silent. She didn't know at the time that sometimes the familiar can hide the greatest danger. Sometimes trusting the wrong person can be a fatal mistake. At just 23 years old, Ellie Weick was a free-spirited soul, trying to navigate the loneliness and uncertainty of young adulthood in Westchester, Ohio. You know, the entertainment hub of the U.S. Just kidding.
Don't ever go to Ohio. It sucks. Anywho, Ellie longed for connection, filling her days with art, journaling, and fleeting friendships. But beneath her vibrant exterior was a growing sense of fear. For months, Ellie had been targeted by an anonymous stalker. Unsettling messages had escalated to invasive voyeuristic videos. Her world, once chaotic but manageable, was becoming dangerous.
Despite making a report to the police, Ellie's cries for help went unanswered. Her journal entries reveal the depth of her fear and isolation. Still, Ellie tried to move forward, clinging to hope that familiarity could bring comfort. When an old friend, Nate Peters, reached out, Ellie hoped she'd find that comfort. On July 28th, 2018, the two made plans to meet up.
After sending the text messages that arranged their meeting, Ellie was never heard from again. At first, her absence didn't raise alarms. It wasn't unusual for her to disappear for a day or two. She was, after all, a so-called free spirit and had a tendency to drift between friend groups.
But when Ellie's mom returned home on August 1st after spending a few days with her boyfriend, she couldn't reach her daughter. The house was eerily quiet. Ellie's car had not moved, and she wasn't answering the phone. That's when her mom made a call to the Westchester police. The investigation began slowly. Ellie's lifestyle made it hard to pin down where she might have gone.
And at first, the police treated her disappearance like a young adult who'd simply walked away. Apparently, none of the detectives working the case thought to connect the stalking report to her disappearance. But Ellie's friends reminded them, offering up text messages where Ellie had told them each separately about her stalker.
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Chapter 5: What did the police find in their investigation?
Yeah, so I'm not really asking about them, okay? Don't ask about Michael.
This kid, also in his early 20s, had grown up next to the Strauss family for over 15 years and was close friends with Michael's brother. But Michael? Not so much.
Okay.
When did he come back? Do you know? like a month or two ago within the last, yeah. Have you ever seen who drives which car? Like which car does Michael drive specifically when I'm interested in that? I don't think he has a car or he probably, he probably doesn't have a valid license if I had to guess. I mean. What do you know about him from me now? You're smiling.
He's an interesting character, right? There's a lot about him. The stuff in his room is kind of weird. I guess he doesn't like the government and stuff like that. He used to have in his basement a flag that said Marines, and then he wrote lies on it. And then one that said US Army, and it said deception or something. Stuff like that.
What the neighbor says next would become crucial information for detectives once they had Michael Strauss in an interrogation room.
Like in high school, he played football, but he seemed a lot more, I guess, normal in high school. Yeah. I mean, I guess he's not that crazy, but... What do you know? Most people think he is. What about him is crazy? The stuff that he wears, the music that he listens to... Stuff like that, yeah. What's he do for a living, you know?
I don't think he's had a job in a while, but he always has some story that we know isn't true about, like, some job that he's doing or something. But he actually, it's hard to tell, it's hard to tell the truth from the non-truth, because he actually, when he went to California, I know he did something there, like, man, you wouldn't believe the amount of stories this guy says, like, um,
At one point he said he was going there to roll blunts for Snoop Dogg. He said he's going to be an actor, he said he's going to be a film director, tattoo artist. Because, like, Tristan and Noah, they think it's funny, and especially Noah will, like, tell me everything he says just because he thinks it's funny.
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Chapter 6: Who is Michael Strauss and what is his connection to the case?
But while suspicion mounted against Michael, there was still another loose end to tie up. Nate Peters. Detectives had taken his phone in for evaluation, and now they were ready to return it, having learned some surprising information.
And then on, let's see, on May 28th, She texts you and says something, or excuse me, someone else is calling themselves Nate Peters and is texting me. It's confusing, LOL. And then you reply with surprise. I think you say WTF. And then she responds that the subject is sending her a phone reviews of another female. asking if it's her, meaning asking if it's Ellie.
So my question is, is that we know that not only did Ellie text you, but she also, I think, called you a few times. Was there a follow-up conversation or a follow-up phone call saying who that might have been? trying, purporting to be you. Do you remember that conversation, though? No, not at all.
And I tell you, like, you know, scouts on her swear the last time I ever remembered actually talking to her, you know, which is what surprised me if that was on my phone in the first place, because now I'm actually kind of blown away.
Yeah, if you want to look at it, it's, so if you go to your text messages from her, You have to scroll him, obviously, all the way back to 2017, but you'll... Oh, from... Okay. Yeah, it's 2017. It's a while ago. When you guys were still kicking it.
So that's probably why... And that's why it's kind of important, because, man, if someone's trying to be you all the way back to 2017... We want to know who it is. We want to know who it is. What the... Crazy, I know, right? That's why I'm saying, man, it's kind of spooky stuff.
Ah, now I get it. He's tricking him. Wait, he tricked me. I take it back. This guy's really good. At this point, detectives were pretty certain Michael Strauss had been the one not only stalking Ellie using anonymous phone numbers, but also the one posing as Nate Peters. So they start by explaining Ellie's story to Michael.
They tell him about the night she received the creepy video of herself shot through the window.
Like an image.
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Chapter 7: What led to the police questioning Michael Strauss?
Either someone extraordinarily dedicated to the ruse was creeping on Michael, or you could live in reality and choose to believe that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. Michael's life had become a shadow of Ellie's, spent watching, waiting, and anonymously weaving himself into her world. Michael Strauss... And his doctor, Michael Strauss, had planned this whole thing.
Do you fish?
Not really, no.
Ellie took the bait.
Okay.
Ellie took the bait.
The others, it might have been like, hey, what up, whatever. I don't know. It was Ellie took the bait. And yeah, I probably did do something like that. And I probably did, like I said, I messed around. I did mess with people. And the thing is, I don't have names to numbers. And I messed with a bunch of numbers. And I prank called before. I don't do refrigerator running or whatever.
That is kind of funny because it's a classic. It is a classic. I'm not lying, but I would never send a video. Tell me about sending out the text blast. He has an excuse for everything, doesn't he? You're the serial... And it's only an issue because she's missing right now. That's the problem. It becomes an issue. So when you did that, and she kind of took the bait, so to speak. Yeah.
Because I think we're both understanding that that was you doing that. Yeah, but it wasn't... It's really, really obvious it was you doing it. I don't want to insult anybody's intelligence or whatever. But it's not like... But you weren't talking to her as you. No, I was nobody or somebody. You were... You know what I mean?
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