That afternoon, during a meeting at Netflix in a fish-bowl conference room, an urgent call from Eberle's wife overrode his phone's do-not-disturb mode. The texter wasn't just targeting him, Eberle realized, feeling his anxiety turn to anger.
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Delivery drivers were deluging his baffled mom with calls, telling her they had a pizza that Chris Eberle ordered for her. They were also going to Chicago and New York, where his sister and his recently widowed mother lived. And the orders weren't just going to Palo Alto. Throughout the morning, the confirmation emails and delivery calls kept coming.
He got in his red Tesla and drove the 19 miles to Netflix's offices in Los Gatos. Eberle was unsettled - the harassment was no less menacing for its banality - but he had to go to work. When Eberle woke up the next morning, his phone was deluged with messages and voicemails from confused and frustrated delivery people looking for his address. Eberle shrugged, put his phone on do-not-disturb mode, and went to bed.īut while Eberle slept, the anonymous texter was busy. The delivery guy had been directed to his old address on Moreno Avenue, about 2 miles away. He peered out the window, but there was no one there. Then came a call about a pizza order that Eberle had never placed. First there was the tow-truck driver, phoning to say he was outside and asking which vehicle needed towing. Countless people had offered to buy the handle from Eberle, and he suspected that the late-night message might be a prank by a friend. In 2019, he had taken a job as a marketing director at Netflix.īut in the years since he had registered novel usernames had become increasingly coveted on social media, a sign of early-adopter cool. Now in his late 40s, he had worked everywhere from tech giants like AOL and Facebook to the crypto startup Swarm. A hardcore punk-rock kid who had grown into a seasoned tech executive, Eberle understood the power of social media. It was a semi-ironic nod to what had once been a target of childhood teasing: his red hair. The threatening text wasn't the first time he had been contacted about He had nabbed the username on Instagram and Twitter not long after each platform launched. "Harassment to you and family will start now."Įberle laughed. Gonna need on Instagram," the message said.
The night before, Eberle had been settling in for bed with his wife when his phone pinged with a text from an unknown number. It was all because of his Instagram account. His name was Chris Eberle, he told the officer on desk duty. The puzzled officers apologized to the rattled family and headed back to the station house in downtown Palo Alto.Ī short while later, a tall, ruddy man with a shock of red hair and a beard to match walked into the police station. Eberle, it turned out, was the former tenant. Kids were rushed in from recess and bolted in their classrooms, window blinds drawn.īut when officers stormed the house, they found only a terrified - and bewildered - family of four inside. A nearby elementary school was ordered into lockdown. Armed officers surrounded the midcentury bungalow on Moreno Avenue, a sleepy side street. When calls to the number went unanswered, the police descended in force. The police quickly traced the 415 number and determined that it belonged to Chris Eberle, a midlevel Netflix executive. Before hanging up, he threatened to shoot any officers who got too close to the house. He had barricaded himself inside his home in a quiet, affluent neighborhood on the eastern edge of Palo Alto. The caller told the dispatcher he had killed his girlfriend. On a balmy Thursday in March 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic upended the world, a 911 call came into the Palo Alto Police Department.
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