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Craigslist Stalker Hits Close To Home
15 Comments | Posted by Sarah in Uncategorized
Boston’s newest strangler, but not strangler, is none other than the Craigslist Stalker. The Craigslist Stalker, who allegedly shot his victim, a “massage therapist” in a Boston hotel, evidently is so named because he met his victim via Craigslist. The shooting incident occurred a week ago. A similar story emerged just yesterday, but this time the potential victim was lucky enough to escape. The newest victim was a stripper from Las Vegas, who advertised her services on the same website. The attack was only thwarted because the stripper’s husband (?!) re-entered the hotel room and the suspect fled. The person of interest still remains at large.
Stalking is a serious issue with sometimes serious repercussions for the victim. Just ask John Lennon. Or at least Yoko. The US Justice Department reports that eight percent of women are stalked in their lifetimes. It seems like a small percentage, but talk to anyone whose ever experienced the trauma and you’ll see, despite the low statistic, how serious the issue actually is.
I had a stalker once. It was one of the most terrifying experiences I’d ever gone through. I was living with my parents, after a horribly bad break up with an ex-fiance. I began receiving telephone calls on my cell phone late at night after performing at a show with my band and this dude on the other line turned out to be totally insane. It’d start off as a request for phone sex (yeah, as if I’m going to have phone sex with a complete stranger or even someone of this mental caliber) and he’d then tell me that he was jacking off, just listening to my voice. Of course, I’d hang up or hit the ‘ignore’ feature on the phone each and every time, but the guy would call back ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty times after the first phone call. He’d always call from different telephone numbers (and different area codes), which could only lead me to believe that he was using a pre-paid phone card to make these calls, spending God knows how much.
Things went from bad to worse; I’d be sleeping in my bed at night and would hear a rock hit my bedroom window and I just knew that it had to be this guy – I’d safety-roll out of bed, onto the floor and crawl over to my bedroom door to yell for my dad. Each time my dad would run outside to check things out, the guy would be gone. My car was maliciously vandalized. Twice. In two different areas.
The phone calls continued, and sometimes he’d leave fifteen-minute messages on my voicemail. I had filed a police report, changed my cell number twice and started carrying pepper spray with me. None of these precautions prevented this douchebag from somehow getting my new numbers, which exacerbated the situation. He was filled with anger at the idea that I’d have the nerve to change my telephone number. This had been going on for two years at this point. He never mentioned harming me, which was a relief, but the fact was that this guy had been calling me twenty times a day for about two years. He’d never give hints who he was, when I did try to have a rational conversation with him, to find out what he wanted and why he had the issues he did, he’d only say “I’m your greatest admirer” and reiterate how much he “loved” me each and every time.
I began having my boss escort me out of the building and to my car when I’d work late nights at the office. I wouldn’t go anywhere where I could potentially be alone and vulnerable. The last straw was when my father came home from his office with a note for me. The letter had been left on my his car, outside his office. Left on the windshield, jammed under the wiper. The note was in a plastic baggie and the parchment (yes, parchment) was stamped and sealed with wax. It spoke of unrequited love and of two ships passing in the darkness on the sea; it spoke of how he would always care for me and would always be watching me, no matter where I went or who I was with. This fucking thing really made me lose me shit.
A few weeks after the note episode, the phone calls began to subside from twenty calls a day to about five. They slowly, over a period of months, tapered off to nothing and I decided to disconnect my cell phone indefinitely.
I’m not going to lie. To this day, I still don’t have a cell phone. Call it stupid, call it naive, call it asking for trouble; call it whatever you want. This freak really scared me. To this day, almost four years later, I still have my fears that some random dude is going to show up at my door and I’ll finally meet the one who caused me so many nights of insomnia. It doesn’t matter how fleeting or for how long it endures; the fear of it never goes away.
I think I had an anxiety attack just reading that post! Maybe its more info than you can divulge but…could the cops do nothing?! What kind of inept cops couldn’t do something with this?! My heart breaks for the insecurity with which you had to live your life! This is so wrong. Demented or not, this guy was exerting control into your life, making his presence felt — he had a relationship with you. A sick, twisted, morally-corrupt, deserves to spend a few months in the slammer, relationship. No woman should have to live with this fear!!!
It was bad. The police couldn’t do any more than to file a report and to let me know that I was “able to call them” whenever I needed. Shit on that. They recommended changing my telephone number, which I did, but it didn’t stop the psycho.
Geez Sarah, that SUCKS!!!! You poor girl!!! I’m so sorry you’ve had to endure this torment for years and years. I sincerely hope you have at least found some semblance of peace and safety. Did you ever consider getting a gun and CCP? I hope this is finally, totally behind you.
Thanks for sharing your personal situation!
YESSS!
…i accidentally hit submit before i got to finish. that was not in regards to the post, it was in regards to the fact that you’re working with sasha now! i’ve really enjoyed reading what you’ve had to say on eb and siam, and i’m so glad you’re posting on zelda lily now. yayy sarah!
Thanks, Taylor! I really appreciate that! I’m also stoked about working with Sasha; she’s an ubertalented lady!
When I was in college, my freshman year (1996), I had a creepy phone stalker. The phone stalker didn’t just terrorize me, but hundreds of other girls in the college town as well. There were probably copy cat versions too, but this guy was relentless. Even after I changed my phone number, he found me again, within a week. He knew all of my basic info, where I lived, what car I drove, where I worked….. blah blah blah. This was scarey. in 1998, the man believed to be my icky stalker, was arrested and still in prison.
This chronic fear was the catalyst that started my entire cycle of panic attacks and depression.
Speaking of “Craigslist stalker”, my ex- boyfriend that I hadn’t seen since my sophmore year in highschool (about 15 years ago) stalked me via CL, last fall. Once he located me, thanks to lots of friends who commented on his ads saying “She works at blah blah blah, she is my neighbor, blah , here is her address…. blah etc.” never thinking that this could be harmful, they thought that they were helpful. Wrong. That is a nightmare that I am still dealing with.
This is another one of those “taboo” issues. In some ways it’s getting better (your story notwithstanding, Sarah–it’s nice that the police passed on that you were “able to call them”) because more people are having the guts to speak out about it and an increasing number of people are listening and feeling empathy and trying to do what they can to help.
I’ve recently heard a story about a young lady experiencing what she felt was harassment by an older man. She had the courage to take it to the authorities, tell her story, and try to set the wheels of justice in motion. She has since been literally skewered by the public. This is why people don’t tell, and this is also why I believe that there isn’t an effective system in place to deal with problems of this magnitude.
Victims of stalking, abuse, rape, harassment, any sort of inappropriate crime perpetuated in many cases against women by men (although I realize it isn’t always this way, that females can be any of those things too) face the toughest conundrum–tell the truth and go for justice that is more than likely going to be less serious than the scumbag deserves, or suffer in silence, causing irreparable damage to your psyche, so that you won’t have the added pain of being branded a rat, a liar, a tattletale, or God forbid someone who “asked for it”.
Thanks for sharing your story, Sarah.
Sarah, thanks for sharing your story. It’s rare to hear of a stalker who is someone you don’t know.
I had a stalker about ten years ago – it went on for a number of years. What really scares me is that I think it was going on for a couple of years before I even knew about it. The really freaky part (at least I think it’s freaky) is that at the time, I was a married, stay-at-home-mom.
One of my kids was involved in a sport and my stalker was the father of another kid. I didn’t know him, didn’t know his name – I got a creepy vibe from him, so I avoided him whenever I could.
Once I realized what was going on – and he KNEW I finally knew what was going on – things went full force. He was everywhere I was, following me (even what I would describe as CHASING me), with my kids in my mini-van. I went to the police with his license plate number and was told he was a former sheriff’s deputy. He had no fear of the police and of course, I had to wonder how much they were actually doing to try and help me. I felt trapped and helpless.
When you are lying awake night after night, you can think of thousands of things you could do in retaliation, but I had to decide not to do anything outside of legal channels. I figured: if it went to court, or he ended up arrested, I didn’t want to have done anything where someone could point a finger at me and say: “Oh, but SHE did THIS!” It would muddy the waters and maybe cast doubt on me being an innocent victim. Maybe he would claim there was something going on between us? I was afraid to tell people – I mean, not everyone is going to believe that a normal, stay-at-home mom with young kids just happens to pick up a stalker.
Anyway, he eventually moved out of state, but I continued to get phone calls for years. According to things I’ve read, the stalker will only give up on you when they find someone else to focus on. I’m sure I’m not the first person he had done this to and most certainly I am not the last.
Its a crazy world we live in, just reading the post and the replies makes me wonder, of course there are female stalkers as well, is there a bloke on here that has suffered in this way.
Its scary that an infactuation can lead to a complete disruption of your life and your personal space. I’d hate to think I couldnt just walk to the shops in fear of being followed, chased or worse.
The other issue to this is the unknown factor, what could a stalker be capable of, is it just infactuation or something more serious – the fact that most of the above suggests a certain element of fear only makes it scarier – Oh, you say Sarah that you dont have a mobile phone to this day but the web provides more info about us than ever before, with facebook and other social sites you can build a pretty good picture of anybody – does this worry you, do you control what you release to the www??
Oh, most definitely. Even in my ZL bio, I didn’t write where I live, specifically, or even a general geographic area. I could be living in Guam for all anyone knows. I guess I’m not so naive that I know, God forbid, if someone really wanted to figure out who I was or where I lived, it probably wouldn’t be entirely too hard. But I try! lol
mad that you have to do that now, and proof that there are long term implications for anybody affected by nutjobs – ive heard guam is nice in the summer though :-)
I had a stalker. I was a manager at an autobody shop and in the front of the store it is a glass and you can see into the inside and this random man would pass by and just watch me. I never paid any attention. I used to go to the same place for lunch and one day as I was going inside he tried to talk to me asking me to ‘come here” I ignored him. I went inside the restaurant, I was eating he came inside yelling at me about how I thought I was too good for him. I got up and he backed me into a corner. I had never spoken a word to this guy before, then I told him to leave me alone, I wasnt interested, just like that. Not in a rude way. He PUNCHED me in the face, at which point I screamed he ran off and the guy who worked at the restaurant got up and ran over to me. People thought that I knew this guy and we were just having an argument. So I went back to work and called the cops The mechanics were so, sweet and went around looking for him with some shop tools but they couldnt find him. The cops were completley useless, they just took my statement and description. They didnt question anyone if they had seen him. So a couple of days later Im working at my desk, then I hear someone saying he is sorry he just really likes me and I look up and this guy is right in front of me. I freaked and started screaming and he ran off, The mechanics came and couldnt find him. I called the cops again and they didnt even bother to come this time. They said his description fit the description of a lot of people and it would be hard to find him, and suggested maybe I take a pic of him with my cell phone- BAD IDEA. The next time I saw him was when I was waiting for he bus and I sensed someone behind me and I turned around and it was him. He was trying to talk to me, saying he was sorry and I was just backing away from him. I tried to take a pic of him with my phone and he flipped, I did take the pic,I guess he saw the flash and I dropped it as he was coming towards me, but he ran off as people were coming. After that I quit my job, I didnt want to be in that area.
Thanks for sharing your story. So many are afraid to tell anyone, because it sounds so “crazy”. Hearing other stories makes you feel less alone.
Your mention of the car vandalism really caught my eye. Although not really recognized by the police as such, it is a big deal. Some people think car vandalism both literally and symbolically means taking away freedom and independence. All I know is that car vandalism is so prevalent in stalking and domestic violence, and is a high indicator of lethality.
Just my thoughts.
A friend of mine had a stalker who got off on the idea that she was scared of him, that he had some kind of dominant hold over her. This is while we were still in school, so we were about 16, and he was much older, about 40-ish. He went to our martial art class, and was really creepy – none of the women/girls wanted to partner him, because he’d get really inappropriate. He’d basically go in for what was a sexual assult and then pass it off as ‘valuable training experience’.
Anyway, he started following my friend around, waiting for her as she left school, popping up while we were at the cinema etc. She got totally freaked out and stopped living her social life, stopped coming to sessions etc. Until one day one of our friends pointed out that the more she treid to avoid him, the stronger and more persistent he seemed to get. Anyway, one evening we were walking round the park and he started following us, even loitered outside the ladies loos as we tried to shake him off. My friend then flipped out and basically said to him in a very (fake) ’sexy’ voice “Ok, you wanna have sex, let’s have sex, right here, right now, come on!” and other things along those lines, properly playing the part of a stereotypical female sexual predator. It totally freaked him out and neither of us have seen him since.
Based on this experience, I’d say that a lot of stalker-behaviour is about power, control, domination and other ego-based things. Once the ‘victim’ shows herself to not be a victim, the stalker shows himself to be the cowardly bully he is.
Of course, this is not true for every single case, and it is way easier to say than to actually do, but I find that remembering that any kind of bully is essentially a coward is helpful, and has always given me the inner strength to get through the experience.