One afternoon I was driving while on splits with Elder Trucker. “Splits” are when you are with an Elder who is not your assigned companion. Both of our companions at the time were APs, or Assistants to the President, and they had important things to do together that day, leaving Trucker and I to the usual work. Being paired with an AP gave me the, then rare, opportunity to have a cellular telephone to use.
While out with Trucker, I got a call from Elder Gifford. He said that he and his companion had been riding in the car with Elder Doff and his companion after a grocery run. Doff had picked up a set of photographs he’d had developed at the store. Gifford was sitting behind him in the car, and as Doff flipped through the photo envelope, Gifford caught a glimpse of something that was highly intriguing. Gifford yelled out to Doff, “Hey what is that?!?!” The photos were of Doff with some girls. One of the photos was a close-up shot of a thong laden female butt. Doff quickly put the photos away and claimed that he must have gotten a couple of someone else’s pictures.
Gifford didn’t know what to do exactly, but he knew Doff was lying and it wasn’t something to ignore. I can’t explain why reporting this clear violation of missionary protocol never crossed the minds of Gifford or myself, but it didn’t. I had previously lived in the same apartment that the four of them were living in and I told Gifford to leave the sliding glass door to their apartment unlocked when they headed out.
I stopped by not long after. The incriminating photos from the envelope Doff had picked up were gone and opportunity had seemingly vanished from before us. There is something that people from the 90’s and early 2000’s would frequently forget and that is the fact that photo developers would include the photo negatives in the envelope of pictures. I found the negatives and I called Elder McGuire and told him what I had acquired. He volunteered to take them and develop them quickly. I handed them off to him.
When the pictures came back, there had been a few copies made. I was only concerned with the copies which were placed in an envelope with a note that said, “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” This envelope was mailed to Doff after several months had passed and he had moved out of Gifford’s apartment.
This brings us up to the day before I was to return home from the entire missionary experience. I had access to the new residence of Doff at this time when he received this special message in the mail. Gifford and I with a couple of other Elders entered the apartment when Doff was gone and found that Doff had torn up the note and the photos and thrown them in the trash. We dug out the pieces and reassembled the puzzle. A few days after I returned home Doff received the eerie postage, this time with a note saying, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”
(Names have been changed to protect the innocent, and guilty)