CLAY CO. – Authorities in Clay County believe they’ve discovered who has been submitting vile Facebook, email and other messages across a wide swath of not only southern Illinois, but to other states such as Indiana, Missouri and Kentucky.
An arrest was made in the case in which it’s alleged a person was posing as an accused sex offender in Richland, Zac Leaf. Jennifer Block, 21, is the young woman who was charged on January 17, 2017, with multiple counts in the case wherein sexually explicit or graphic descriptions of various horrors were used under the name and guise of Leaf, this happening over the course of about a year’s time.
What authorities haven’t disclosed in the case, however, is what preceded the situation, as well as the functioning of Block as it pertains to her culpability.
The allegations in the formal charges are all Class 4 felonies, the lowest level of felony that can be charged.
The first two counts are of Cyberstalking, wherein it’s alleged that between October 1, 2016, and October 31, 2016, Block, using electronic communications on at least two occasions, directed at a Clay County resident, Mark Young, communicated material that would cause a reasonable person to fear for the safety of his children, in that the communications detail sexually explicit acts to be preformed on both children, including the threat of molesting one of the minor children, and threatening to torture and cause death to the child. The second count involved a threat of bodily harm to Mark Young himself.
The third and fourth allegations are those of Harassment Through Electronic Communications, in which it’s alleged Block used electronic communications for the purpose of threatening injury and/or death to a minor child, and threatened injury to another minor child.
Block turned herself in on the day the charges were filed; $2,000 was posted on her behalf and she was set for a February 27 hearing date.
The messages, the type of which can be seen on this page and on the front page (and these are the mild ones) were highly disturbing, detailed, graphic, and horrifying. They described hideous scenes of disembowelment, sexual activity on bound and tortured children as well as direct threats of harm to both children and adults, and employed every euphemism for every act or body part imaginable. The messages were sent under the guise of a Facebook profile of Leaf.
Over the course of late 2015 right up until late 2016, no fewer than 15 individuals from all over four states contacted Disclosure with screencaps of the vulgar material, asking if the paper knew about the messages being disseminated. Contact with Disclosure was made because the sender continued to reference a 2014 article the paper produced about new sex assault charges against Leaf in Richland County (which are currently dragging through the court there.)
Disclosure did not address these messages and screencaps in any article either online or in print, because if they WERE being disseminated by someone other than Leaf, those materials could be considered libelous if not part of a legitimate investigation (as they are now). However, Disclosure repeatedly advised people to contact local authorities with a complaint, in the hopes that in some jurisdiction, a prosecutor would take a look at them. Ultimately, apparently Clay County did.
What Clay County has not done to this point, however, has been to disclose what the relationship was between Leaf and Block...and the fact that Block’s family had, more than a year ago, reported allegations of theft by Leaf of family funds and other problems he caused them when in the summer of 2015 he began courting Jennie Block.
Sources indicate that Leaf hooked up with Block via Facebook at that time, this after multiple OPs had been issued against him by exes with babies, those OPs having been outlined in previous issues of Disclosure. In short, the young women (some, like Block, in their late teens, while Leaf was in his early 30s but posing online as being in his mid-20s) were terrified of Leaf, whom they claimed was brutal and abusive.
Block was thoroughly charmed, however, and Leaf was able to wrangle his way into her family’s life, going with them on vacation in July of 2015, which was made public on social networking.
Friends of the Blocks, noticing this, advised them about Leaf when they returned from Florida: That he was a known scammer, that he was still married to a woman in Indiana, and that the young Jennie needed to distance herself from him quickly, as he was under charges of sexual assault of a child in Richland, and Jennie Block ran a daycare in her home.
When the Blocks learned that Leaf had allegedly gotten ahold of an iPad of theirs and had used it, along with a bank card/account, to order items for himself, as well as allegedly having lifted at least $300 cash from one wallet, they began reporting the alleged crimes to local authorities in Flora.
To make matters worse, as Jennie Block was trying to end the relationship, Leaf was allegedly engaging in the type of disparaging campaign that has been seen repeatedly in the OPs on file in many counties: He is said to have called the girl a “retard,” which hit her hard as she has a diagnosed form of autism; and allegedly he denigrated her diagnosed hearing loss as well.
Law enforcement did nothing to address the theft allegations; by the time Jennie Block had managed to get away from him, the vile messaging was going on, and apparently, authorities believed they had a bigger problem on their hands.
As it turned out, authorities have indicated that Block ultimately admitted to having created accounts that appeared to be Leaf, and did so because, in her limited understanding, she believed she was calling attention to him so that law enforcement would pay attention to what he’d done to her family. Because of her diagnosis of mild autism, it’s not clear that she was fully aware that what she was doing was wrong or could be considered a crime. With some forms of autism spectrum disorder, a person can become obsessed without even knowing they’re obsessed, and they act out perpetually on that obsession.
The investigation into the messages sent to various people in Clay County ultimately isolated the internet provider (IP) going directly to Block’s electronic devices.
However, it’s being reported that there are other IPs not having been traced back to Block’s IPs that have submitted the same “Zac Leaf” messages to others...so it might very well be that there was another person acting out in this manner as well.
Whether that will be investigated thoroughly or not remains to be seen. Getting a prosecutor to charge Cyberstalking in the first place is a feat, and often, the feds have to be involved, as IPs and devices frequently cross state lines.
In the meantime, the “real” Zac Leaf is decrying the entire matter and somehow believes that if he whines loud enough over it, said whining might overtake his 2014 Richland County case and short-circuit it, perhaps leading to a dismissal.
According to Leaf himself, “his attorney” (public defender) in Richland has advised that Leaf has been “cleared” of any culpability in the Cyberstalking thing.
Whether the PD knows about the second IP address in question remains unknown.
However, Leaf is leading the charge of public crucifiction of Jennie Block, and many who have received some of the vile and vulgar messages are calling for her head on a stick, owing to the hideous nature of the messages.
In the meantime, the women who were the real victims of Leaf’s bizarre behavior are still suffering, and in silence, as they have small children belonging to him, and fear incurring his wrath if they tell the truth.
Those who have hooked up with him in the past and who have NOT bred with him, however, are a little more forthcoming.
Those women, to a one, advise that Leaf is a pathological liar, and is one of the most bizarre and disturbing individuals they’ve ever met. Disclosure has spoken to these women as far back as 2014; they state that Leaf has told them he was injured while on active duty in the military (which he’s never been) in Africa; that he was a prisoner of war; that he works for the mob as a professional hit man; that he is a confidential informant for the feds and does major drug movement for them; that he’s a helicopter pilot; and that he is some sort of computer expert...all of it a lie, and the latter of which is highly spurious, as, if he does have computer “expertise,” might lend to the discovery of the second IP involved in the case.
Whatever the truth is, women involved with Leaf have stated that he is dangerous...and that Jennifer Block is only the latest casualty to suffer at his hand.
More will be available as it develops.
