Man accused of illegally living on Stanford campus for 10 months, university says
Many students were reportedly convinced William Curry, the accused imposter, was in fact a student
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Stanford University confirms a man lived illegally on campus for nearly a year after posing as a student. The university says the man was reported on campus several times since December 2021.
He was most recently caught on Thursday, Oct. 27 in the basement of a dorm after taking a television from the location.
The story was broken by the University's newspaper The Stanford Daily, identifying 20-year-old William Curry as the accused imposter.
Curry was also identified by the university.
Reporters Cassidy Dalva and Theo Baker were tipped off by a fellow writer who lives in the University's Crothers Hall.
"(We went there) armed with kind of the screenshots that I had gotten from that writer, which basically revealed through messages sent by an RA (Resident Assistant) in that slack, that there was a squatter who had been living in Crothers Hall in the basement for weeks," Dalva said.
They say many students they spoke with were convinced that Curry was in fact a student.
"There were sources in our article that were talking about baking brownies and eating them with this man," Dalva said.
The Stanford Daily also confirmed he had been on campus for nearly a year with the University's knowledge.
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"He sometimes climbed through windows, he sometimes was able to take a student's ID card, according to residents who lived with him last year," Baker said, "He was getting let in a lot of the times by people who thought that either he was living there with them, or he was a friend of somebody living in the dorm."
The Daily confirmed that he had stayed in at least four different dorms, something the University never communicated broadly to the campus.
"He was able to weave a new story every single time," Baker said.
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Stanford university officials referred to an online statement saying in part "the university's Department of Public Safety has obtained multiple stay-away letters, a prerequisite to citing someone for trespass on campus, to present to Mr. Curry but was unable to locate him until the incident on October 27."
They go on to say that they're reviewing procedures to make sure this doesn't happen again. Including making sure information is shared with residential staff across campus if someone is found living there inappropriately.
We reached out to Curry on Instagram, and he replied to us saying that he had nothing to add and that the school's newspaper has pretty much said everything they need to say about the topic.
The Stanford Daily says it will continue to follow-up on this story.
"I think a lot of people are still wondering about the unanswered questions," Baker said, "Which is really how did this happen and why did it happen?"
You can read Stanford University's full statement here.
