Fighting back against harassment

Victims News Online takes to the courtroom to protect its families and team members from stalking and harassment

VNO Staff Report
Updated 8:45 a.m., March 23, 2024

For the first time since his daughter’s 2010 kidnapping and murder, Clint Dunn took the stand in a courtroom to discuss the nightmare he has been living since she disappeared.

Thirteen-year-old Hailey Dunn was kidnapped and murdered by her mother’s boyfriend in Colorado City, Texas, two days after Christmas, 2010. Although that man – Shawn Adkins – was arrested in 2021 for Hailey’s murder, a technical mistake by prosecutors allowed Adkins to walk out of jail a free man last year, three weeks before his trial was set to begin.

Now, because of two strangers and 300+ onlookers he has never met, Clint Dunn believes his daughter’s killer knows his new address and where his surviving children attend school.

Back in 2010, when Dunn went to the media for help with Hailey’s case, he was the instant target of two strangers who became fixated on him and his missing daughter. One, a woman with an extensive criminal history in Florida (including kidnapping) named Angelina Diana Reddoch Mitchell. The other, a man with connections to jury tampering and witness intimidation from Iowa, Graham Allen Ward. Mitchell and Ward — along with several other unknown individuals — have created at least a dozen Facebook pages surrounding his daughter’s case since early 2011, all including inaccurate information and malicious allegations against Dunn personally, along with hundreds of fake profiles to stalk and harass him.

When our team stepped up to advocate for Clint Dunn against this harassment in 2011, we became secondary targets for Mitchell and Ward, receiving our own dedicated Facebook pages and troll accounts, now spanning nearly 13 years. Jobs have been lost, finances have been affected, and personal and private information has been plastered online by Ward, Mitchell, and their co-horts, all in an effort to silence the investigation into the murder of Hailey Darlene Dunn.

In addition, when the man accused of murdering Hailey Dunn was incarcerated in Mitchell County, Texas, for two years awaiting trial, Angelina Mitchell and Graham Ward claimed to be in direct contact with him in jail, while continuing to stalk the Dunn family.

Since 2011, Ward and Mitchell have also been accused of harassing other families of the missing and murdered, including those of Heather Elvis and Dylan Redwine. Although advocates and attorneys in at least five states have attempted to stop Mitchell and Ward from their ongoing harassment, those efforts have been unsuccessful.

Our team hopes to change that, and begin holding accountable those who terrorize families of the missing and murdered and their representatives.

For Dunn, however, the situation is more urgent: these particular stalkers claim to be in direct contact with the man who killed his daughter, and now know exactly where the family resides.

Yesterday in an Indiana courtroom, Clint Dunn testified as to the nightmare he and his surviving daughters have had to endure, as a result of seeking Justice for his firstborn child. Dunn testified he has endured threats of kidnapping, stalking at his home, pictures of his middle child being plastered online, messages from fake profiles, and the trauma and anguish that goes with watching over one’s shoulder every moment of every day.

In 2020, Dunn made the decision to move cross-country to start over, as he has custody of his two surviving daughters. Yesterday, he testified that there was a “time of peace and quiet” that finally came with his stalkers not knowing his whereabouts, but it was short-lived. At the age of 43, Dunn suffered two massive heart attacks, as a result of the ongoing stress associated with his daughter’s case shortly after moving to Indiana. Recently, local residents in Dunn’s new town have connected with his stalkers online, leading to more than 300 people targeting him and our team. At least one local supporter of those stalkers recently sent correspondence to Victims News Online indicating he was intentionally trying to cause Dunn to have a third coronary event, leading to the first of what is anticipated to be several hundred restraining order applications in the small, Indiana community of Michigan City, located in LaPorte County.

Currently, 319 people are now involved in a Facebook page dedicated to terrorizing Dunn and our team, including the local Police Commissioner and several members of law enforcement. In a state that is currently seeing law enforcement accused of serious corruption and retaliation, Dunn and our team felt it was time to take this battle to a courtroom.

When asked how it felt to finally be heard in a court of law, Clint Dunn told VNO it was “empowering”. “I feel heard – and a little vindicated — for the first time since the day Hailey was taken”, Dunn told VNO. “Now, it’s time to get Shawn in a courtroom to face his Justice”.

VNO Founder and private investigator Erica Morse shared the following statement this morning:

“For 13 years, Clint, other families, our team, advocates and investigators throughout the United States have been subjected to ongoing harassment and doxing, by criminals who seek to cloud and interfere with those efforts to seek Justice. These individuals target the parents of children in high-profile cases, as a way to make themselves feel important. Many of these trolls create Facebook pages and YouTube channels, in an effort to monetize off of the names of these murdered children. It is torture for the parents to see their children’s faces being sensationalized by strangers for money, and a labor-intensive and time-consuming interference for advocates and private investigators, who often have to scour social media to find that ‘one tip’ which could lead to answers”.

“Since many of these trolls have their own extensive criminal histories, they would never qualify to do the work on behalf of these families” Morse continued. “Instead, they sit behind their keyboards and ‘tap tap tap’, hoping to diminish and humiliate parents desperate to find their children and put away those responsible for taking their lives. These are not people who seek to do good in our world. These are folks, some of whom have been accused of the exact same crimes, who have nothing better to do with their lives then hurt those who are already suffering the worst possible torture: not knowing where their child is or who took them”.

In recent years, social media targeting has spiraled out of control, as it relates to high-profile missing childrens’ cases. One Indiana case, currently in the news, has hundreds of social media groups and YouTube channels dedicated to sleuthing and uncovering clues that may or may not pertain to the actual case. Recent media coverage shows YouTubers getting into a scuffle outside an Indiana courthouse this week, leaving very little coverage of the actual victims themselves.

Morse says she and her team want to pave the path for these families to take action when targeted, and to stop what appears to be a growing call for locals to physically stalk these parents when they flee to other states for safety:

“As a result of this ongoing, circus-like mentality, especially in the Hoosier state, VNO feels it is time for us to lead the charge to change the way parents of missing and murdered children are treated on social media. By talking about what Clint and our team have endured, others have now found the courage to come forward and share their stories. It turns out, their stalkers are also our stalkers. What is concerning in the Hoosier State at the moment, is the fact that others are now being aggressively recruited, locally, to physically stalk, photograph, and scare these families on a much more aggressive level. Since law enforcement does not seem to take this seriously – or, in our case, is involved in the mockery – we will take this fight to the courtroom, where neutrality is not only expected, but required”.

Superior Court One Judge Jamie Oss is expected to rule on this case within the next two weeks. Dunn and his team have not only requested an emergency protective order against a local man for his role in the stalking, but also for the court to order the man to provide the identities of the stalkers with whom he has been communicating in multiple states.

Stay with Victims News Online for more updates on this ongoing situation.