This is a story out of KWCH in Wichita, Kansas. A local woman who had made a blanket for Eli still had her doubts that the “Dirr Family” was fictional… until she received a package with the blanket, a return of her donation to Alex’s Lemonade Stand and a donation to her own foundation so she could make more blankets for real children with cancer. Even the postage spent on sending the blanket to “Eli” was returned.
This handwritten note was also included.
The part that kills me the most about this is that Emily is only apologizing to the people who made donations and such. not to the people that she damaged emotionally.
Been following this for a while now and I know the damage that Emily has done. This really spiraled out of control and it is so, so wrong what she did. However, I do have to say that she is trying to make retributions and I honestly have to say I respect her for trying to make right where she can. It would be easy for her to disappear back into the internet and pretend like it never happened. At least she is doing something to apologize.
I hope that Emily does get the help she needs to deal with all the lies she told, people she impersonated, etc – all of her issues and her Munchhausen disease. I hope that she is able to grow from this and to become an adult who has made mistakes (admittedly, large mistakes that hurt a lot of people) and to maybe use these failures and recovery as a tool for herself or for others. I’m glad she was uncovered, although I am so sad for the families she hurt. There is still time for her to become a better person and to atone for these mistakes… and I am glad she is trying to make steps towards that goal.
Is that you, Emily?
No, it’s not her, and it’s not anyone that she ever hurt. I don’t think that hoping that she gets the help makes me Emily.
I don’t know much about all of this beyond what I’ve read on this blog, but one thing I’d bet on – that is a man’s handwriting. I’m no expert on the matter, but that looks like the handwriting of just about every 35-45 year old guy I know and not at all like that of a 22 year old girl. Call me skeptical.
Emily appears to be very masculine appearance. The fact that she impersonated a male also makes me think she has some gender identity issues. Concluding gender from handwriting is very dicey because there are males you have very “girly” writing and females who have very small and sloppy handwriting.
I disagree; It’s pretty generic. In fact, there are several words in there that look like my handwriting.
Now, I did pull out some of my handwriting analysis book (and people thought I was crazy for not selling my book back afte college), and found some interesting stuff.
1. Straight baseline (her words don’t ascend or descend as you go across the page): This person exerts a heavy degree of control over their outward moods. This is something that takes an enormous amount of mental control – which would also explain her mental ability to keep so many people/personalities straight. The lines aren’t perfectly straight (and good thing, because overtly straight lines mean someone is uptight and trying too hard too control themselves) but they don’t rise or fall. The exception is line two, which has a convex baseline, indicating a quitter.
2. Partial Ascension (where a word or phrase suddenly rises off the line): Indicates an elevated feeling about that particular word or phrase. This is really only evident in the ‘never’ in the third line, which follows along with the shock at getting caught.
3. Slant (whether your letter lean to the right, left, or have no lean): Most of her letters lean to the left or remain vertical. Vertical slant, or no slant, means the real emotional feelings are suppressed. This goes well hand-in-hand with the baseline, in having control over mood expression. Add to this the mix of left-leaning letters, which indicate the real feelings are being repressed, and can mean that one spends a great deal of time living in the past. Also, because over the course of the letter the writing changes slant with no predictable pattern (for instance, it’s one thing if every line starts off vertical and ends up leaning), this could be considered an unstable slant – which indicates lack of control over emotional expression, see also: Emotionally unstable. Strangely enough, her ‘+’ sign between blanket and postage is slanted right almost 90°.
4. Spacing: The overly wide spacing here is between words (as opposed to letters – those people are truly nuts), which indicates a person puts a great deal of space between his or herself and others. Can sometimes indicate paranoia.
5. Zones: This has to do with dips and loops. In this case, Ys don’t dip very low, and letters like F don’t go very high. Everything seems to be centralized in the middle zone, which means Emily writes with a Dominating Middle Zone. These people are described as immature, and living for the moment. They revel in instant gratification, without seeing future consequences or outcomes. This, if nothing else, seems to fit the best. I imagine Emily never thought this day would come.
6. Loops: She doesn’t retrace her loops of create little forks or extra loops, which is actually a strong indicator that she’s not lying. That’s a good thing, I guess.
That’s pretty much it. This was nice, actually gave me a chance to put this old brain to work for awhile.
This is nonsense, you might as well evaluate her with tarot cards. I hope no one looks towards you for medical advice in these forums. This is a serious matter and posts like this and people’s theories truly make me wonder.
Seeing as how I went to school for this stuff, it’s certainly not nonsense. This isn’t medical advice, not is it a forum. Also, since the investigation, if any, will not be done by any one here, it really doesn’t matter what we say.
Just in response to your third handwriting point, the + sign to which you refer is actually a & sign.
Ahh. It looked like a lazy plus to me.
I totally agree with you — that was the first thought I had when I saw this letter. That looks like my husband’s writing!
I want reealllly want to know who Emily really is.. Oh and I suggest everyone go to net flix and watch the movie “catfish” hell Emily may be the woman in this documentary!!
Catfish also has a website, Google it!
Emily is truly Emily.
Catfish isn’t a doco it is a fictional movie.
Not sure what you mean, Anonymous – Emily really is Emily Dirr. Emily Dirr is not Angela Wesselman.
Erm I was joking! Are you sure she is Emily Dir or not some assumed character name?? I have an email address to a college I never went to, they aren’t that hard to get actually.
I’d just like to see a pic, video anything that confirms she is who she claims she is.
Its over. This is becoming a circus. Move along everyone!
Agreed
LOL Not until we see you/ the real Emily!!!!! 🙂
Just because “Emily” sent the blanket back doesn’t mean it’s over, oh no,no,no…. Why not make an apology video?? You have A LOT more people to apologize to.. 😛
I’m guessing the whole fake college email address struck a nerve?
Can we point out that the total amount she sent back was only $80?! I highly doubt she did not recieve other money and gifts from people, who just haven’t come forward or aren’t on the Internet enough to know how this all played out. I give her ZERO credit. She has returned ONE thing – that everyone already knew about. I guarantee you she has zero remorse, her family is probably not doing anything to get her help. This went on for YEARS. You don’t get this coo coo over night. She was put up in a (very nice) family home during her stay at college and I am
sure ignored most of her adolescence to be able to spend the HOURS AND DAYS AND MONTHS AND YEARS she spent on the computer without anyone in her family suspecting it was off?! Watch what your teens are doing!
Well for her to have had that much time on her hands in all her teens to be able to pull all this off, she clearly had no other important relationships in her life. This likely led to this all spiraling out of control. By that same token, as she is an adult now, what exactly do you think her family would even be able to do?
In Mass (I don’t know about Ohio) you can go before a judge and prove that a person is mentally imcompitant and a judge can force them to go to inpatient treatment. I think if that law in Ohio allows it and a judge were to hear all she did to the cancer community, he / she would definitely have her admitted.
Someone IN Ohio would have to do that, in the process of trying to press charges. And unfortunately, with all the work put into this, there’s no judge on the planet that would say she’s incompetent. She’s unbalanced, sure, but definitely not incompetent.
I meant her family going before a judge not just any random person – that’s how it works in Mass. Again, not sure about Ohio laws.
Well that still falls under the fact that it would be hard to actually find her incompetent.
She wouldn’t necessarily need to be found incompetent. Most states allow a 72 hour hold to evaluate someone. Then usually if they can get two separate psychiatrists to sign the paperwork, they can keep someone for treatment who doesn’t want to say.
That being said, I don’t see Emily as being a danger to herself or others, which is usually a big criteria in getting someone admitted under these circumstances. She’s screwed up for sure, but in the big picture not as screwed up as a lot of other people.
personally, i think that if this “dirr” family was all that emily had set up, then it would have been a WAY bigger deal that she was caught. she would probably be freaking out.
take a second to think about this.
she has been doing this for most of her life, and then all of a sudden its over? shes making amends and moving on? no way.
i think that emily MUST have a back up, because there is no way that she can go from having 6,000 online friends that she can talk to, to none. there is no way that one of her characters was friends with me for FOUR years and now it doesnt matter to her anymore because she got found out.
emily has more secrets, and this is no where near over. and thats why this search needs to be continued. i still am desperately trying to recover from this and it makes me sick that she could still be doing this. one letter of apology does not fix anything. 80 $ returned does not change anything. she still did what she did and she needs to be evaluated because this will keep going on until she literally has no access to a computer.
I agree with a few things you have said — there is NO WAY IN HELL that she can go from aaaaallllll those friends and yahoo answers and the blog and the facebook pages, aaaalllll the characters she had made up and used to become friends with us all… She can’t possibly be able to just shrug her shoulders and say, “oh well, I’m busted, I’ll never do this again and I’ll return all the things that people sent me for Eli.” All the hours and days and weeks an YEARS of doing this, to suddenly go to nothing, no friends, no photos to find and post, and friends on facebook rallying around “Eli”, all the messages and the time she would have spent visiting other childhood cancer pages and leaving wall posts etc is going to be an EXTREMELY empty life all of a sudden. It’s be a HUGE shock to her system to suddenly have NOBODY!
I would bet that she already created some sort of backup plan, new characters and new pages & blogs in order to fill her emotionally warped head. I agree, she has more secrets, and that she probably has rooms FULL of items sent to “Eli”, which is another reason I have doubts as to her age — if my daughter was getting lots of packages in the mail from all over the world, I would be opening them myself to find out what’s going on!
Sorry all that is so long!
In a way, I wonder if she was waiting to be found out. Something like this has to get to a point where you’re like, I can’t keep up with this any more. Buy she couldn’t just stop, because then people would wonder. Maybe why she killed Dana off. Now she CAN walk away.
Incredible point. I’ve been reading everything I can find about this case and it truely is horrifically fasinating. Its frightening to think that shes still out there hurting more unknowing people.
At the risk of joining the double-agent conspiracy believers, I have to ask. Is there even a facebook group about this? I friended “Taryn” and asked to be added about a week ago. She accepted my friend request immediately, and then that was it. I sent a casual follow-up message about 5 days later, and no response. I feel like I’m a pretty normal, average person, with enough facebook info to back up my identity, so I’m not sure why there’d be a problem. Was the facebook group thing just a ploy to get access to people’s private pictures and info? I don’t have kids or anything particularly interesting on my facebook profile, so I’m not terribly concerned about “her” having access, but it makes me wonder if this whole thing really is just another page in the book of lies. Has anyone else tried to join the facebook group?
I agree. Maybe this blog is ran by Emily too…this is her “back up plan”
I emailed Taryn a while back with no reply. I sent it to the address she keeps posting on here. Makes you wonder, huh?
I apologize for not adding people to the Facebook group and not replying to every email.
Many Facebook messages and emails were delivered to spam folders. I tried to check often but I may have missed a few.
I haven’t been near a computer since Friday morning. Before I add people to the group, unfortunately I have to review profiles. We already had one pretend person establish himself in the group, and I need to be sure I can vouch for you as real before I add you.
Yes, it’s annoying and it’s a pain for me too. I’m not the hall monitor type at all, but this is unfortunately necessary right now.
I don’t understand the logic that thinks because something isn’t replied to immediately, I must be Emily, but I do understand the paranoia after this situation came out.
Once I get back to a computer, I’ll check spam folders and friend requests. You have my apologies for not being more timely with it.
I have a stressful real life job and occasionally I take a weekend off from computer stuff to save my eyes and my sanity 😉 If you need an immediate reply, it would probably help if you sent your email again. I’ve received thousands and, while I thought I replied to all, I probably missed a few.
Thanks for understanding. -Taryn
People have joined the Facebook group. Taryn has already said once you join the group she’d unfriend. As far as emailing, we’ve have a few conversations over email. Keep in mind that Taryn’s entire life is not this site, and she’s probably getting all kinds of messages and emails.
Actually if she were Emily, she’d probably be better about responding, looking back at Emily’s track record juggling all those identities for years. But that would be funny as hell.