HOW THEY CAUGHT THEIR STALKER

An elusive hacker humiliated a group of high-school girls. Then they teamed up with a determined detective to set a digital trap

- Stephanie Clifford

BELMONT, NEW HAMPSHIRE (population 7,200) is an old mill town in the northeastern United States surrounded by lakes and forests. A hardware store and a hair salon are about all Main Street has to offer. At the local police department, a donation box is stuffed with change and dollar bills to support Vito, the department’s dog. “We don’t have a lot of people who are rolling in the dough,” says Raechel Moulton.

For years, Moulton, 42, was the town’s only detective. She grew up about 32 km away, in Concord. A bold kid, she would stride up to uniformed police officers to ask them about the things on their belts. When she was in fifth grade, an officer came to her school to run a drug-awareness course. That’s when she decided she was going to be a cop.

In high school, Moulton enrolled in a law-and-policing course, during which she was assigned to ride along in a patrol car with a male officer. He told her that women shouldn’t become cops. That cemented her ambition. In 2005, she was hired onto the Belmont police force. “This job picks you,” she said, sitting straight-spined in the police department, her brown hair pulled back in a tight bun.

Crime in Belmont tends toward opioids, thefts and burglaries. But before long, Moulton was fielding complaints from parents and staff at Belmont High School about teens sending nude photos, often to people they were dating.