The terrifying true story of how a Wiltshire UK based NHS staffer stalked and then hacked and surveilled her former partner

FireStalked is not a unique story. It does, however, highlight critical issues surrounding the misuse of Amazon Fire children's, device management tools enabling tracking and other technology so often used for offending. Including Google's Family Link and other innocuous tools that are now harnessed for coercive control. Particularly in cases of high conflict divorce. By shedding light on these technical flaws, and the mistakes now admitted by Amazon. Whose concerns over global bad public relations damage (and potential class action suits) led to the involvement of Amazon PR and Legal in Summer 2023.

Failures of Wiltshire Police and the Need for Accountability

Even though this matter was supported by two Domestic Abuse bodies (The Suzy Lamplugh Trust and FearFree in Wiltshire), the Police dropped the ball numerous times showing an inability and lack of technical skill sets to engage. Our investigation highlights the troubling failures of Wiltshire Police in the UK during their initial inquiry into the misuse of Fire tablets.

Two separate failures to engage, and significant documented breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the tenets expected of Wiltshire Police by the College of Policing and The Peel Review team. Especially after Wiltshire Police were in Special Measures during this period. The fact that this now sits on the desk of the Chief Constable of Wiltshire, Catherine Roper and her staff is no accident.

Their compounded failures to enage with a victim of serious domestic abuse, and to offer support to him and the children impacted by the abuse and the stalking. Ms Grist having already made multiple false statements during 2018 to courts and Police and also having been recorded clearly on CCTV admitting the actus rea behind the offence of Perjury under the 1911 Perjury Act in September 2018 days before losing her Legal Aid funding due to fraud by false misrepresentation. Stating on clear audio, her having proactively researched an intent to intentionally mislead a respected Judge in a court hearing where she was respondent. And where she actually did so under oath while represented and in the presence of a Judge having falsified evidence before a Court in Bath. Ms Grist is currently a suspect in Police investigations regarding that and a further fraud matter by another force outside of Wiltshire.

The conduct of Wiltshire Police massively fails the expectations of The College of Policing, His Majesties Inspector of Constabularies and The Home Office. It is a considerable stain on their reputation and a dramatic failure in technology offending investigation.

Next steps

This matter now returns to the Police for action with fresh evidence provided to Police in April 2026 from cryptographic key signed and digitally assured Amazon data reports. The opportunity now to arrest and prosecute an offender now becomes a reality.

Firestalked - now a major podcast

FireStalked. the podcast, tells an accurate and truthful story without emotion, without drama and by sticking to facts and absolute attention to key signed digital assured data. It is helping to raise public awareness about the intersection of technology vulnerabilities and domestic abuse. In this case offending supported not just by Amazon, but by Google - who share no common fabric or technology estate with Amazon Web Services. Aligning to historic event and account data from Santander and then cross referenced with school attendance data from The Grove School in Trowbridge in Wiltshire in the UK. Belts and braces. Which is even more worrying why the Police when they had the opportunity couldn't get their heads around the matter. Their adage "Technology offending is too hard to solve", is not acceptable in this day and age.

If it can happen to the man who invented the technology that protects hundreds of millions of people and children online every day, it can happen to anyone.

But more worrying is the behaviour and the failure to follow lawful and legal process by a Detective Constable within their volume crime team and his management chain within Wiltshire Police.

And now, the press in the US have the data, the digital chain and the signatures, keys and tokens from signing servers and the provenance of the evidence. And the names of the officers who failed in their lawful and legal duty to bring an offender to book for serious offences including Breach of The Computer Misuse Act and Perverting The Course of Justice.

And if any of this was untrue, it wouldn't be a podcast, it wouldn't be a news story, data supported, evidence supported offending only tells one story. Domestic abuse using devices, or using computers or phones, tracking devices or by the control of information is insidious and far reaching. This podcast identifies the offender by name, whose digital footsteps left indelibly across the Amazon Cloudwatch estate on servers dotted across the world, made sure everything was recorded remotely.

You can't outrun data, no matter how hard you try.

Wiltshire Police attempt to censor the BBC

The BBC's Bill Thompson, who knows Ms Grist personally having met her at BBC Broadcasting House in 2016 was made aware of the evidence from Amazon and it's provenance and it's weight in lengthy discussions with the victim. The victim being known to him personally, Bill having appeared regularly on two of his podcasts (click to see a photo of Bill with Ms Grist in Broadcasting House looking out towards the concourse leading to Portland Place).

This podcast episode was recorded at BBC Broadcasting House, feet from the newsroom, where this story now heads. The show features Bill and the victim talking, as they had many times about technology provenance, and was broadcast to an audience of over 400k listeners and syndicated by the international technology press.

Bill, who is a massive part of BBC's technology crew on BBC Click and heading up great swathes of the BBC's technical advocacy and direction, has had the story since 2023.

What he never knew, and what must have been rather confusing was when the victim went silent, unable to contact Bill further. As the victim had been handcuffed legally by Wiltshire Police to prevent communication with Mr Thompson and any other press outlet or agency. Wiltshire Police having been advised, in writing that the BBC had the story, panicked and decided to stop the victim engaging further.

Catherine Roper, Chief Constable of Wiltshire

The Chief Constable of Wiltshire by proxy actively then attempted to take every step to try to stop the matter gaining further press coverage in the UK. And definitively any further engagement with Bill Thompson who deserved much more respect and transparency than a County Force in panic mode. Wiltshire knew he was in the loop and acted almost instantly to stamp on him.

An abuse of power against the press, the victim also being a press card carrying journalist afforded credential recognition by The Association of Chief Constables as a bona-fide news gatherer. And a massive own goal.

Ms Roper, you would have to hope, briefed Phillip Wilkinson in the autumn of 2023 and in January 2024 about this matter, an examination of the published risk registers does not show, and would not expect to show operational matters. But an escalation to the PCC given the fact that international press coverage had already been afforded to the offending would make you presume that a Chief Constable would have alerted the PCC to the risk to the reputation of the force and also the operational need to handcuff the BBC. To handcuff and stonewall the victim rather than support and investigate would be a breach of her duty and a failure of such enormous proportions that the engagement of The Home Secretary may now be appropriate. Especally given the fact that hundreds of thousands of Amazon users in the UK, many of them in Wiltshire had been at risk during 2015-2023, many of them children. Many of them in hospitals, creches, special needs centres, hospitals where Kind Direct and Teach First work with refuges, STEM units and schools - all of whom were at risk of abuse. One would presume that a risk assessment was carried out and a copy of that was lodged with the Chair of the PCC during their monthly meetings.

Currently all attempts to find that information has been unsuccessful. You would have to assume a decision to handicap BBC journalists would have taken into account a weighted and clear decision making assessment on or around 15th-24th February 2024 when the order was sought. If Ms Roper did not do so, her position now becomes untenable. Additionally information was withheld during summer 2024 from Cardiff Crown Court. The latest communication from that Court is dismissive of the lax and unprofessional attention to expected procedure and protocol by Wiltshire Police and also drawing attention to the officer concerned of the Court's expectations to his future conduct.

Wiltshire Police's abusive and unprofessional manner, their attempts to handcuff the BBC, and interviews and phonecalls recorded on video and audio must now be a point of embarrassment. The compensation due to the victim from Wiltshire Police now must dwarf previous payments to those seeking resolution for past force failures.

But also, and importantly an apology is due to Bill Thompson and the BBC, who have been deliberately usurped by a Chief Constable who was fully aware in writing of the issues.

Wiltshire Police having been in special measures and under the scrutiny of His Majesties Inspector of Constabularies then shines an uncomfortable light on this matter.

April 2026

It is now April 2026 and that order is now lapsed and seen to fail in legality.

It's now open season for the press and all Wiltshire Police have done is make themselves seen as a massive failure point in the story attempting to use the courts in Cardiff to curb the freedom of the UK press.

However, regardless of Wiltshire Police rather silly and very fervent attempts to prevent any press engagement, this has featured widely outside of the UK in US media on TV and radio. Now the UK media is free (as of April 2026), to report on the story. Wiltshire Police having attempted to block press publication of the matter for more than two years by fervent attempts to prevent their involvement.

All interested media are asked to contact Steven J Vaughn Nicholls Senior Staff Writer at ZDNet who originally broke the story in June 2023. His details are below. Steven also has the data and the digital signatures from Amazon assuring the provenance of the information for reporting journalists.

Further, it must be noted that it now looks from the disclosure in the audio in episode four, that Amazon deliberately sought to mislead the Editor in Chief at ZDNet in June 2023. Also putting implied pressure on ZDNet to not run the story, threatening to put their most senior PR person on a plane from Seattle on a Sunday, and also asking ZDNet repeatedly to hold from publication. A digital escrow of all messages was retained and also provided to Wiltshire Police as recently as January 2026.

The bombshell then dropped when a very senior insider within the products team at Amazon, a Principal Engineer, whistleblew. The telephone recording of that lengthy conversation and a supporting message chain retained in secure encrypted digital esrow now puts Amazon in serious difficulty.

Additionally supported by messages between the victim and Amazon senior staffers on the Signal messaging platform which are curated in secure digital token signed escrow. This will be of interest in any future evidence gathering by US law enforcement (in the shape of the FBI) and also the FCC, who had fined Amazon previously for infringements much smaller than this a month prior in May 2023, should they require them.

Episode four of the podcast (12 mins 25 secs in) will also provide full clarity to those interested in editorial coverage. It is not Amazon's finest moment by any stretch of the imagination. Anna Cooper Chief Legal Counsel for Amazon UK and Ireland has twice been served communication asking her to engage.

Ms Cooper has failed to do so as of April 2026, although she is politely invited to get in touch. It would seem the most attractive option on the table for Amazon right now to sit down and resolve matters. The common sense money would be for Amazon now to engage as this is now a global news story due to the enormity of the security breaches and failures in the core FireOS design schema present for more than six years. Affecting tens of millions of users and leaving them wide open to abuse due to architecture choices and design decisions rooted in lack of understanding within Amazon's device team.

Amazon now face significant censure and potential fines for having worked so hard to make sure this story went away.

By attempting to hide the story - they amplified it.

The clumsy and deliberate way Wiltshire Police then attempted to prevent press engagement now is seen to fail and their reputation not only lies in tatters, but opens them up to national and international scrutiny.

A Data Driven Resolution

The one major boost in resolution is Wiltshire Police are a Microsoft Azure user and implement Halo, Qlik Sense and two other critical platforms for information storage and management. So there is absolutely no hiding place for any officer, of any rank to be able to deny their part in this appalling debarcle. It is now a very simple, data and evidence led matter for His Majesties Inspector of Constabularies and any outside Force, engaged in investigating Wiltshire, to follow a simple trail of failures. It's impossible to delete footsteps. And as that will align to failures obtaining digitally signed Amazon data of absolute provenance. This only amplifies the compund repeat failures of one Detective Constable and his supervising chain of command who were aware from the outset of matters having been babyfed and detailed how Ms Grist had committed the offences.

The Detective in question having failed to 1) obtain evidence - either physical in the matter of the Amazon tablets themselves 2) digital evidence assured by a chain of handling that would meet the expectations of the Crown Prosecution Service or Wiltshire Police's own defined written standards 3) or to engage effectively with Amazon.

Amazon, in writing, describe him as an idiot. I am sure the Chief Constable, Catherine Roper, will have her own perspective.

Additionally the dismissal and the barring of two officers involved in the timeline of matters comes into full view. Placing Wiltshire Police into a further difficult position. With two further officers disciplined and given further training.

The further deliberate timeline based misleading of Salisbury Law Courts by that serving officer is a stain on his character. His failures to follow the law and the basic tenets expected of him are a matter for a disciplinary team from Professional Standards within Wiltshire itself.

It is now simply a matter of a Chief Constable making a public apology and a compensation committee awarding hugely substantial commensurate damages to Mr Morrell and his children.

And most importantly Wiltshire Police owe a public apology to the BBC and to Bill Thompson, who is one of the UK's leading technology journalists and who deserved your transparent and open cooperation. Not a twenty six month legal roadblock to make the story go away.

All that's happened is Wiltshire Police become a focus, a compensation cheque well into the seven figures now becomes unavoidable and further support to Mr Morrell and his children.

Catherine Roper - you have a clear opportunity to ensure this matter is resolved. There has to be public trust and confidence in a County Force and it's leadership. Trying to handcuff the BBC was potentially career limiting at best, and career ending being more likely.

Female perpetrated domestic abuse and key repeat failures on Ms Roper's watch are not good indicators of a leader of a force which only just escaped special measures within very recent memory.