Husband (23:41)
I was 16 years old. We lived in a pretty small town, east Texas. I was asleep one night, and this flickering light at my bedroom window woke me up. I went to the window, to the blinds, and just kind of peeked out. I saw this car sitting in the cul de sac. I was like, oh, Sarah's got a new boyfriend. Sarah was my neighbor. We were in the same class at the high school. And I'm like, she's got a new dude she's sneaking out with. Especially because it was around 1:32 in the morning. I sat there for a minute, peeking out the blinds. The person in the car was flashing their high beams. And the way they were situated in the cul de sac, the high beams were actually facing my bedroom window. So I kind of thought whoever was in the car was trying to get my neighbor's attention, where she was either sneaking in or sneaking back out. And they had the wrong house. It was one of those huge, like a town car kind of thing. I sat there for a while, watching, and then the person in the car just drove off a couple nights later, same thing, lights flickering, directly aimed at my bedroom window. And that's when I said, okay, let's see what's going on. That next day, I went next door and talked to Sarah and said, bitch, what are you up to? And then she said, what are you talking about? Who has been picking you up? Nobody's been picking me up. I kind of looked at her and I said, why are you lying? I said, I saw the car. I saw the car twice this week. She just says, what car? What are you even talking about? Kind of went through it with her. I described the car. She just looked at me and said, like I would ever be seen in that car. And I said, well, who was parked in front of the house last night. And she said it wasn't for me. She said she's going to ask her brother. So she asks him, and he says, no idea. So that's when I got kind of freaked out a little bit. And I really got freaked out when her mom comes in there and she overheard our conversation. And she said, girls, let's talk for a minute. I saw the car you're talking about last night, and she got up because she thought her daughter was sneaking out and went and checked in Sarah's room to make sure she was still there or that she didn't have company. She was asleep. And she told me, you really need to go tell your parents and we can keep an eye out and see who this is to see if whoever it is is looking to cause trouble. I went back to my house, told my mom and dad what I had seen. And my dad said, if it happens again, you wake me up immediately and I will handle it. Sure enough, the next day, it happened again. I woke up. Lights are flashing, high beams at my window. I go directly to my parents room, wake up my dad. I told my dad, I said, the car is back in front of the house. He gets up and he tells me, he says, stay inside. And he tells my mom, call the police and tell them that there's someone in front of our house that's not supposed to be there. She called the police and they said they were going to send a car by. And my dad went out of the back of the house and snuck around and came up behind the car from the neighbor's house, opened up the driver's side door and pointed a shotgun at the driver. My dad had opened the door and there was no light inside the car. I could see my dad holding his shotgun and he was talking. But no one ever got out of the vehicle. Three minutes later, two cop cars roll up. One of the cops got out and drew his weapon and stood behind the door of his cruiser. I saw my dad take two steps back and kind of put his hands up with his weapon. The cop in the other car got out, came over and started talking to my dad. My mom opened our front door and we went out on the porch. They took the person in the car out. I still couldn't see who this was. I couldn't get a really good look at him. I remember seeing blonde hair. And they put him in the back of one of the squad cars and closed the door. And then they both came up to the porch and started asking me questions. When did it start? When did I first see the car. How many times did I see it? Why didn't I say anything sooner? And I kind of had to go through the whole story with them. And then they just told my parents that they would be in touch. Someone would come by, a detective or whoever would come by the next day. And then they left. This detective comes over to my house the next day after he speaks to my neighbors to verify my story. He comes over and he asked me, he said, hey, do you know John Smith well? Yeah, he goes to my school. How long have you been dating him? How long has he been your boyfriend? I said, john's not my boyfriend. We've never dated. He said, well, he has pictures of you. And I said, what do you mean, he has pictures of me? That's when my dad said, what are you talking about? What kind of pictures? And the cop told him, he said, well, we found pictures in his bedroom and in a Foot Locker. Pictures of me at Dairy Queen, sitting in a booth with my friends, eating ice cream. He had pictures of me in a crowd at football games. I was a gymnast. He had a picture of me doing High Bar at a gymnastics meet. He had pictures of me on floor when I was talking to teammates. They were not posed. They were all random, like candid photos. My daddy freaked out and said, what are you gonna do about it? The cop says, well, it's kind of taking care of itself. If you agree not to pursue this, he's gonna go live with his mother in another state. My mom, who is a retired corporate attorney, steps up and she says, is he moving now? The cop said, he will be gone within a week. His mom lives several thousand miles away. He will be moving in with her. He won't be an issue anymore. My parents agreed. They said, okay. I remember the cop telling my mom that he thought that this was a kid who made a mistake, that he didn't have any ill will towards me or anything. The cop kind of made it out like it was a crush that just kind of got out of hand, that it was a kid who didn't know how to express himself, I guess would be the way to say it. And that was kind of the end of it. I graduated from high school, went to college, got engaged to a guy from New England. And we had moved to Rhode island and I worked in Massachusetts at a mall. One night I was driving home, it was probably about 10 o'clock when I was leaving there to go back. And this car, it was this Grand Prix, got right on my bumper and stayed on My bumper. I exited off the highway and went to a gas station, went inside because I did not have a cell phone and told the guy that was working behind the counter, hey, I think I'm being followed. He asked me, said, did the car pull in? What does it look like? And I told him, I said, it's a Grand Prix, has tinted windows. He looked outside and he saw the car. We called the police. I called my fiance, but when the guy went outside to go try to get the tag number off the car, he left. The police show up. It's almost like they thought I was just being paranoid. I had never had anybody doubt me quite like that. And it was very clear that they thought I was frightened, female and flipping out over nothing. When my fiance got there, I was freaking out still. I said, I just want to go. So we got in the car. I got in my car and he followed me in his truck back to our house. Well, it happened again after it happened the second time. For the next couple weeks, either he or his brother would either meet me at the store or they would bring me and drop me off and then pick me up in the evenings when I worked closing shifts because I was freaked out about this car. After two weeks of my husband and my brother in law escorting me back and forth to work, I was like, okay, enough's enough, I'm fine, nothing's happened. I was thinking maybe I am crazy, like maybe it was a one off, maybe it wasn't anything. The very first night I drove home with no one, without my husband or my brother in law. Here comes that Grand Prix, same car, tinted windows, driving down I95, I was terrified. And then I got really pissed off. He was right on my bumper and I slam on my brakes. He ran right into my rear end. My airbag deploys in my face. Kick at the door with my feet to get it open and I'm walking towards the back of my car. When he had hit the back of my car, it had popped my trunk and I saw a tire tool in the trunk and I reached in and I grabbed it and I went directly to that Grand Prix and started swinging the tire tool at the windshield. And then I went to the driver side door and started swinging at that driver's side window. I was so incredibly angry that that window was not breaking, just kind of spider webbed and was kind of gooey and stuck together. And about this time, a guy and his wife driving this Mercedes station wagon pull up. The gentleman gets out of the car and he's got his hands up and he's walking towards me. And he said, are you okay? No, sir, I'm not okay. This person has been following me and rear end of my car. He walked back to his car and told his wife to call the police. And he came up to me and he said, what are you doing with that tire tool? And I just dropped it on the ground. I got really upset, like, got really emotional, started to cry. The driver of the car of that Grand Prix never tried to get out of the vehicle, never tried to engage with me in any way. And then the Massachusetts State Police pull up. When the cop got the driver out of the Grand Prix and I saw him, I said, oh my God, I know that guy. That's John Smith. The cop asked me how I knew him and I said, there was an incident with John when I was in high school years ago, and I haven't seen him since. The cop decides, okay, we're taking everybody. And they took both of us to the state police substation nearby. I'm telling the police what happened in the whole time. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, this is un freaking believable. This is unbelievable. Turns out his mom lived in Massachusetts. He literally was walking by in the mall and he saw me in the store and it just clicked. And it took him a week to figure out which car was mine. We ended up going to court because I was absolutely pressing charges at this point. He never testified, he never said a word. His mom got up and explained that he had some mental health issues and that he could be a bit obsessive. John was actually sentenced to an inpatient mental health facility in New England. I know he was transferred to different facilities. And every time he would get moved to a different facility, I would get this robo call on our house phone. And then six years after we had actually already left New England and moved again, I get a robocall telling me that he was released. I haven't heard anything from him, haven't gotten any strange social media requests. And I figure if he finds me at this point again, he gets what's coming to him.
