FBI agent’s wife tells of terror inflicted on family by deranged cyberstalker

Her voice shaking and holding back tears, the wife of an FBI agent told a South Carolina federal judge on Thursday that the terror inflicted on her and her family by a deranged cyberstalker posing as a friend will last a lifetime.

“I never once suspected that behind my back, he was plotting to have me raped and tortured,” the woman said, facing U.S. District Judge Joe Anderson in a courtroom crowded with FBI agents and staff to show support.

“He fantasized about having me trafficked with 10-year-old girls,” said the woman, identified in court documents only as “Victim 2.” Beside her stood her husband, a former Richland County sheriff’s deputy, who now works various criminal investigations with the FBI.

“I’m not just Victim Number 2. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a daughter.”

The event, with its themes of torment and betrayal, was a sentencing hearing for Scott Robert Tardy, a 32-year-old former friend of the FBI agent and his wife. Unbeknownst to the agent and his wife, Tardy tried to hire contract killers on the internet to seek them out and do them in, prosecutor Elle Klein told the judge.

“He wanted a Molotov cocktail (a bottle of flammable liquid) thrown into their bedroom so they could cook to death,” Klein said.

Tardy’s plans were foiled only because in cyberspace, he inadvertently stumbled upon a law enforcement undercover agent trolling for criminals in internet chat rooms, Klein said. That set an investigation in motion that led to Tardy in February 2025, she told the judge.

“It’s chilling to think what would have happened if it had landed with the wrong person,” Klein said.

Judge Anderson agreed, saying that if Tardy had contacted someone “to do the dirty deed, (the FBI agent and his wife) might not be here today.”

Judge bumps up prison sentence

The judge, clearly moved as the agent’s wife revealed shocking detail after detail of how the threat affected her, said he was so struck by her emotional damage that he said he would give Tardy 80 months — a little more than 6 and a half years — in prison.

“The emotional scars on the victims will be there the rest of their lives,” the judge said.

Anderson’s sentence was above the recommended range for Tardy’s crimes – cyberstalking, obstruction of justice and making false statements to law officers – which in his case was from 57 to 71 months in prison.

Prosecutors had asked for 71 months. It is rare that judges go above a recommended range of prison time. Tardy had no criminal history, which made him eligible for a lighter sentence. One of his crimes – obstruction of justice – carried a 20-year maximum sentence.

Tardy will also have to pay restitution of $5,738 and spend three years on supervised release after leaving prison.

It was far less than the agent’s wife had wanted. “I ask this court to impose the maximum sentence allowed by law, not out of vengeance but out of justice,” she told Anderson.

Mental decompensation?

Tardy, a former Marine and former Connecticut state corrections officer, had pleaded guilty to the crimes before Anderson last July.

Since then, he has been allowed to be free on bond because he had taken serious steps including counseling and medication to deal with mental illness ailments, including PTSD and depression, disorders that Tardy claimed had caused him to become detached from reality.

​​”I ended up in a state of mental health decompensation, where my reality became distorted, and it felt like I was living in a clouded nightmare,” he wrote in a letter to the judge.

“It is my true belief that I was also in spiritual warfare. I reached a breaking point mentally and the enemy took advantage of this and made me out to be a monster. I became the opposite of what I stand for and have strived to become. This point of my life was incredibly hazy, and it was dangerous,” Tardy said in the letter, much of which he repeated in open court.

Now, Tardy said, when he reads the threatening messages he posted on the internet, “I can’t read those things without throwing up.”

His church has been a great help in recent months, Tardy said, and the pastor and his wife are helping him, and he feels he is “saved.”

“I have done all I can to ensure this will never happen again,” he said.

Evidence

Tardy did not send the threats directly to the FBI agent’s home or office, according to evidence in the case. The family learned about the threats during the investigation as FBI agents tried to find out who was using internet chat rooms to hire a killer and posting vile threats identifying the agent, his wife and their children, and where they lived.

The threats included saying things like the FBI agent’s wife had “a face made to be beaten and a body made to be used and tortured.”

Anderson said of Tardy’s postings, “It’s just the most revolting language.”

Evidence in the case showed that Tardy first joined an anti-law enforcement chat group on the Kik social media platform, where he posted messages saying the victims’ association with the FBI was a reason to target them. He then moved to Telegram because he thought it was more secure.

On the Telegram platform, he discussed what a cartel would do to the agent’s family and shared the location of their home by posting a map with a pin drop on their street. He queried another user as to how long it would take them to get there, according to prosecution evidence.

Effects on the agent’s wife

The FBI agent’s wife told Anderson about how her faith in the goodness and value of life itself had been shaken by the monstrous nature of the threats against her and her family – a faith supported by her husband’s background as a U.S. Army Ranger combat veteran who should be able to deal with just about any kind of trouble.

“He has spent his life defending the safety and freedom of others,” but he had to endure his family becoming prey, the woman said.

Moreover, she comes from a family of police and law enforcement officers, people who put their lives on the line and the idea that Tardy or anyone would want to inflict such pain upon her and her family has been almost too much to bear, she said.

Tardy attended her wedding, and photos of the marriage have him in them.

“I can’t look at the pictures anymore,” she said. “My children live in a world where their mother cries behind closed doors.”

Her dreams are haunted by scenes of torture and once she woke “with my body paralyzed by fear,” she said. “My body was collapsing under the weight of trauma.”

She lives in a state of fear, she said, checking to see if her doors are locked, scanning the faces of strangers in stores and making sure no one she doesn’t know gets too close.

According to a charging document in the case, Tardy used the social messaging platforms Kik and Telegram to seek out killers in cyberspace.

Why did Tardy do it?

Tardy’s court-appointed lawyer, public defender Katherine Evatt, told the judge that she had no answers for why he did what he did. But she said he had been severely traumatized as a child and was suffering from multiple mental illnesses in February 2025 when he began going online seeking a killer.

Since being arrested, Tardy “has done everything to figure out why he went to this dark place,” Evatt said.

Measures Tardy has taken to get back to normal include spending $200,000, mostly health insurance money, on treatment and spending weeks at an in-patient mental facility and joining a Christian church where he is welcomed, she said.

“I learned, and I know that mental illness is a hidden disease,” Evatt told the judge. Men often find it difficult to ask for help, she said.

In a court filing, Evatt told the judge the median sentence in cases like Tardy’s was a little less than four years. She asked for less than that.

Klein argued for a stiff sentence, saying Tardy knew what he was doing, and he repeatedly lied to FBI agents investigating the crime. He also deleted incriminating information on his digital devices, she said. But evidence showed that Tardy controlled Kik and Telegram accounts related to his cyberstalking.

Tardy had lived a different life from the FBI agent, who had a job with a legendary law enforcement agency, an attractive family, and they had just moved into a new house.

In contrast, the unmarried Tardy was a lowly prison guard whose days were spent among society’s worst.

The judge remained mystified.

“There was no love triangle, this is not a case of a jilted lover,” Anderson said. “None of this makes any sense.”

Besides FBI agents and staff, those in Anderson’s courtroom Thursday were U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling and Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott and several deputies. Federal prosecutor Elliott Daniels, who worked with Klein on the case, was also there.

This story was originally published February 27, 2026 at 9:24 AM with the headline "FBI agent’s wife tells of terror inflicted on family by deranged cyberstalker."