Sociopaths… they’re gonna make it after all! (pt. III): The strange case of Nancy Nusbaum
Posted by Mark Allen on 05 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Sociopaths… they’re gonna make it after all!
Out of deepest New Jersey… check out this archived 2002 article from The Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ, “Web of Deceit Unravels,” presenting the diagnostic oddity known as “Nancy Nusbaum,” a malefic force of super-crazy (read: borderline genius) who, from her bedroom in her parent’s home, became a one-woman army of a hundred different personalities, using the internet to deceive, steal, seduce and change the course of people’s lives. The newspaper article was a vindication of sorts for people from all over the U.S., who had banded together to expose her after collectively learning of each other. The case seems to go back to the early 90’s, and her con habits appear to pre-date the internet. Here’s a cached version of above article which includes the photo. Here is the original StopAglaia site (the active forums have been removed). Here is a cached version of one page of the Bravenet forums. Here is another cached forum, this one the main page of the original site’s forum (if you want to read each thread, you have to punch it’s original url into the Wayback Machine). Here is a cached page from Henry Rollins’ own website, warning his fans that Nancy has been impersonating Henry Rollins and to avoid her. Here is a cached MySpace page someone created about her, with more photos. Here is an old Metafilter thread about the phenomenon. I tried to find some of the other newspaper articles and forum links about the woman and her case (on internet archives), but they seem to be permanently gone. Find anything else? Please email it to me.
That photo sent chills down my spine before I even read what she was about. SCARE-EEE! Those eyes!
All you had to do was type “it happened in New Jersey� and we could have imagined the rest.
Another one for “Weird New Jersey” magazine, eh?
Hello
You are The Best!!!
Bye
I think my favourite line is “As long as I didn’t look at her much I could pretend she was who I wanted her to be”
I’m her biggest fan, I’ve known her for a while.
I reached out to her after I read some poetry she said she had written. When I talked with her, she claimed to be the editor of a literary magazine in Boston who commuted every weekend to her home Princeton. We chatted and talked on the phone a few times but I became suspicious when she clearly didn’t know much about publishing and clearly had lots of free time to chat and talk, even for the publisher of a literary mag. Then I googled the poetry and found that she was impersonating a published poet. Then I found the many other stories about her.
Since then I’ve found many of her aliases. She uses the 9/11 game a lot, posing as a volunteer EMT who worked at ground zero, a berieved mom who lost her daughter on 9/11 and is looking for the daughter’s beloved doll, a battered spouse trying to get a new start, etc. I’ve found her on a butch-fem matchmaker website and S&M sites.
And of course I want to talk to her more than ever before! I want to make a movie about her! I want to write her life story. But does she answer my emails and return my calls? No!
Here’s her prison record: https://www6.state.nj.us/DOC_Inmate/details?x=1073194&n=0
Is she the person behind the Tania Head 9/11 hoax? Sounds right up her alley. I just caught a newscast about it. I went to high school with her, so it’s been many years (she was a couple of years behind me at Montgomery High School in Skillman, NJ…maybe class of ’80?) but the picture on the Tania Head news report looked a lot like her! If it’s not, I’d hate to think there’s another one of her around. Woman has no shame.