Armchair Anonymous: Stalking III

0:00Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman, who's currently trying to look up a fact to disprove me on something. It's an opinion, really. But I'll carry right on. Today is, this is a big trigger warning episode in that it's Stalking Part 3. So, you know, Stalking's going to have all the stuff you might expect in Stalking. It's really tough. It's really tough, but it was really good, too. It was. Yeah, incredible. I recommend listening to this one. Please enjoy Stalking Part 3. We get support from Quince. Have you been wearing the Quince linen shirts?

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3:03Oh, I got your shirt. Oh. Iron Cherry. That looks so cute on you. Yeah, it does. Stop. I can't take in a compliment from you right now. It's fantastic. Thank you so much. What time zone are you in? Central. Central. Wow. Wow. That feels special. I'm already so sad you got stalked. Oh, sure. But I also get it because you're so cute. I had a sex dream about Brad Pitt last night. You did? Can we pause, Kelly, to hear Monica's sex dream about Brad Pitt? I would love to. Yeah, yeah. I don't really remember the details. You were just having sex. It just cut to you having sex or you were on a date? Yeah, we were hanging out and flirty.

3:46Okay. There was a lot of really good kissing. Oh, there's a lot of kissing. He's so hot, you guys, especially my dream. I agree. But he didn't stalk you, unfortunately. No. Sadly, this was maybe the opposite of Brad Pitt. Oh, no. We'll get there. Okay. So, Kelly, you're in the central time zone. You have really adorable leopard and or hyena print curtain behind you. Thank you for noticing. They are blankets from my girls' rooms. And there's a frozen one that you can't see. I almost put it behind me, but that felt like too aggressive. No, we're not afraid. We're not afraid of affection. Okay, so please set the scene for us.

4:25What happened? What year? So to set the scene, this happened in my hometown where I still live in Springfield, Illinois. So we're three hours south of Rob's hometown of Chicago. We're in the land of Lincoln. Okay, great, great, great. This took place in 2002 when I was 16 years old. That's too young for a sadhawker. I already don't like it. Bad news. So one thing about me, I'm a lifelong scaredy cat. So I was that friend at the haunted houses that would wait in the car because even to wait in the parking lot just felt too risky. That's the level of scaredy cat that we're dealing with. And my friends knew this about me and they loved messing with me, especially one friend in particular.

5:07And it was that friend who was sleeping over at my house on the night that this all began. So as we were falling asleep in my room, she asked if I noticed someone outside of my window. And I know that that sounds alarming to you, but she would jump scare me all the time and just was constantly keeping me on my toes. So I really didn't think anything of it. I brushed her off. I told her to knock it off and just go to bed. And for whatever reason, she just like went along with it. And I don't know if she convinced herself she didn't see anything or she was just that tired. Either way, we went to bed.

5:40That was that. So a few days later, my mom came into the house after mowing our grass and she asked me if I'd been sneaking people in through my window. I said no. And I asked her why. Well, when she was mowing the side yard, she found an empty case of beer right outside of my window. Oh, my gosh. This person just fucking haphazardly left the evidence. It's important to note here that we had those retro like vertical slat hanging blinds. I don't know if you remember that. Venetians. Yes. Yes. So to close those blinds, they would be flush like side by side and they would be flush against the window.

6:17Well, mine were broken. And so when I would try to close them all the way, they would get tangled up. So I would just set them to almost closed. So they were stacked kind of by each other, but they were at an angle. That's important to note because the person outside of the window could just stand at an angle and see into the room very clearly. So my mom found this case of beer and all of the bottles were still inside, but they were all empty. So presumably he stood outside of the window long enough to kill an entire case while he watched my friend and I sleep. And it was summertime, so it's not like he had a couple left, came back another night, unless he really enjoyed a hot beer.

6:59So needless to say, I was very freaked out. I did not sleep in my room for a good long while. I did tack a dark sheet up over my window I don't know why I went with a sheet instead of a thick blanket But I was 16 and my brain was doing the best that it could There were just questionable choices being made Maybe a month or so passed without incident and things kind of went back to business as usual And then I was in my room doing homework at my desk after school one day still not sleeping in there But during waking hours, I was still spending some time in there So my back was to the window and I was sitting at my desk doing homework when all of a sudden I heard a slow tap.

7:39No. Tap on my window. Oh, my God. And what time are we talking? Like five or six or like night? No, this is daytime this time. So I jumped up. I ran out of the room, screamed for my mom. My mom ran outside. But by then the person was gone. He probably saw me through that flimsy sheet or he heard me scream. Can I ask how densely populated your neighborhood was? Were you like 20 feet from the next house? Were you a half acre? We were on the corner, but we did have really close next door neighbors. But we were surrounded by a lot of elderly neighbors. And so there wasn't a lot of people outside and nobody saw him.

8:14And we also didn't have that kind of relationship with our neighbors. It's not like everybody was chatting and comparing notes. So to our knowledge, nobody saw this person. So over the course of the next few weeks, this happened a few more times. before finally my mom and I came up with a plan. But the plan should have been contact the police, obviously, and maybe like install security cameras. I'm thinking pongee pit. Do you know what those are? I don't. It's like a trap you make in the jungle for a jaguar. You put palm fronds over a hole you've dug, and then at the bottom is bamboo spikes. So when it falls in, they're impaled.

8:52I would have installed a pongee pit in front of the window. The plan that we came up with was harebrained, but maybe somewhat similar to your train of thought of handling it on our own. So my mom's bedroom butted up to my wall that had the desk against it. And she also had a sliding glass door in her room that opened up into our yard. So her idea was, if you hear it again when you're at the desk doing homework, kick underneath the desk, kick against the wall. I'll hear it. We had a big black lab named Buddy. I know best boys are only humans. But Buddy was a best boy dog. She said, I'll let Buddy out and he'll catch the perp.

9:28So sure enough, like a week later, I'm at my desk. This time, Monica, it was evening. And I'm sitting there when I hear that terrifying, slow tap. Oh, the slowness. I heard the tapping. I held it together enough to kick under the wall. My mom heard the signal. She sent Buddy outside and he tore off after the person. So my mom and I went out onto the back porch and we were up at the top of the hill. And like I said, it was nighttime. So we could see all of the neighbors' motion sensors going off as Buddy chased this person. So unfortunately, Buddy did not catch the perp, but he did effectively scare the person off, or so we thought.

10:08Oh. Okay. Fast forward about six months, maybe. I was walking out to my car to go to school in the morning, and I parked out in front of our house on the street. Dax, I don't know anything about cars, but I can tell you that I drove an early 90s Pontiac Sunbird convertible. No, well, yeah. Two liter, four cylinder, probably. Sure. I believe you. We have no choice but to believe it. I mean, it's all we can do. So as I'm walking out to my car, I notice that there is a sizable hole that's cut out of the soft top of my convertible. What? Oh, boy. So I go around to the driver's side of the car and I open the door to assess the situation.

10:49And I quickly realized two things. Number one, there is a substance all over my steering wheel and up onto my windshield. And number two, there's a Polaroid picture that's underneath my driver's side windshield wiper facing into my car. Oh, my God. I wish that I still had the photo just so I could have submitted it to Emma to show you guys. but it was confiscated as evidence. So I'll have to describe it to you. So it was a man from the neck down, a selfie. He was shirtless, rocking some acid wash jeans. The top button of his jeans was still fastened, but his zipper was completely down and he had pulled his genitals through the open zipper.

11:35Thanks for referring to it as genitals. We are in a criminal case now. Keeping it above And it's that creative choice of keeping that top button fastened that I think really still sticks with me to this day. Oh, my God. So unnatural. Was he in the car in the picture? No, he was not in my car in the picture. He was standing upright. Were you able to ascertain or take a stab at what age this abdomen looked like? I would say 30s to 40s. It's not a classmate, and it's not one of your geezer neighbors. It's not a granddad. No, there were some apartments that were a little bit sketchy that were a few blocks from our house.

12:16And the night that we saw the motion lights going off, he appeared to be running in that direction. So I think it was somebody who was maybe 30 to 40 age range that was possibly living over in that complex. I don't know for sure. But the police did get involved after that, finally. And they did patrol our house for quite a while after that and would come by at night and shine their light on my window that I was no longer like anywhere near for a long, long time. But they never caught the guy. Oh, my God. I have a necessary but terrible question, which is, did they take the semen sample so that they would have like DNA if necessary to match?

12:57It was. Well, it had to be. That was the substance. I was going to say that's my peeping Tom slash stalker slash what I would like to call an unauthorized ejaculation story. Oh, wow. You got a lot of it. An unauthorized ejaculation. Oh, man. I guess, can you ever get comfortable in your house? It took a really long time for me to be able to sleep in my room again. And even now, to this day, my daughter's bedrooms face our street. And every night when I put them to bed, I pull the blinds all the way, make sure that curtains are around and it just stays with you. Absolutely. Did you ever get an eerie sense that you were being watched before you actually knew you were?

13:44I don't know. Like I said, I was such a chicken that I kind of always felt impending doom at all times. But since then, definitely. I mean, it's hard to guess what happened because obviously this person's behavior was escalating. They were fearless if they sat there and drank a 12 pack. They're out on the street cutting a hole in your car. They're jerking off in your car. I mean, so all the fear is gone. They're not afraid of this. So why did they disappear? A person doing this also could have gotten arrested for any number of things. If they're like impulse control, you just got to wonder why it stopped.

14:18I don't know if it was because the police were driving by at night that they just were like, well, I'll find a new person then to start this up with or what. But regardless, it did stop. That is so upsetting. It's a humdinger. But I'm so excited, you guys, because it got me here. It's like my only good story. And I never check your prompts ever. But I was listening to Armchair Anonymous last week. And you had said something about make sure that you're checking the prompts. I was walking the dog. I was like, oh, I'm going to check it out. I submitted and here we are. Oh, my gosh. That too. Well, we're happy to meet you, but I do wish that didn't happen to you.

14:57Same, same. Is it okay if I shout out? Absolutely. My husband, Henry, and then our three kids, Charlie, Willow, and Lola. Willow and Lola are not allowed to listen to this episode for many years, but I would love to be able to fast forward through to the end so that they can hear their names. Okay. They did also make me promise that I would ask you to tell Kristen hello for them, Dax. Consider it done. The princess Anna says hello. Yeah. Yes. Oh, so cool. And then I wanted to just quickly thank both of you for being so candid about addiction from the perspective of an addict and also Monica as a loved one.

15:37Even though my mom is not in my life and that's incredibly difficult, you guys have offered me a new lens to view her through and view her addiction through. And because of that, I can now carry compassion where I used to only carry so much anger. And that's just such a gift. Oh, thank you, Callie. We appreciate that so much. Yeah. Thank you guys so much. This was a dream come true. All right. Take care. Bye. Hello. How are you? I'm good. Tell us where you're at. I am in Alberta, Canada. What kind of temps do we have up in Alberta? Has it gotten nice yet? We've had a really rough spring. It's been like raining nonstop flooding and it's been a ton of shitty, but today's not too bad.

16:21Okay. So please set the scene for us. What year was this? What happened? My story starts a couple of years ago back in 2022. And my best friend and I, we were out for my birthday. We were at a Taylor Swift dance party at a bar. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Perfect birthday. Yeah. It was fantastic. We were having lots to drink. We were at the bar getting another round of shots and I got a text message from a random number. It said, happy birthday. Are you interested in making some money? I would love some photos. So we were both pretty drunk. We were like, this is probably just some like bot or some scam.

17:00Didn't really think that much of it. But because we had been drinking a lot, we thought it was hilarious. We were like, yeah we'll send you some videos of us belting out taylor swift they throw in a little extra we'll even show you our feet we didn't really think too much about the fact that whoever this person was knew it was my birthday yeah weird for a bot yeah we didn't think of it at the time and so the person responded back oh i have something a little sexier in mind and at that point we were like okay weird delete block and so flash forward a couple months i was out with another friend out for drinks for this friend's birthday we weren't doing anything too crazy but i started getting texts from another random number saying i see that you're out tonight have you given any thought to those photos i asked for

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18:52That turns on a dime. Now it's terrifying. Yeah, again, we had a little bit to drink, So I responded like, sorry, I don't send random pictures to strangers. There's a website called OnlyFans. I think that might be what you're looking for. Then a person was like, oh, I'm not a stranger. And I was like, okay, now I'm really creeped out. Block, delete. And so every once in a while, I would be waking up in the morning to text from random numbers, just being like$500, question mark. Have you thought about me at all? just weird things like that and never responded block delete then flash forward a couple months again and i'm at a concert with my mom and another friend and it's a country concert i start getting messages that are like i love a country girl what the fuck i'd love to see you with nothing but that cowboy hat on and i'm like okay now you know where i am you know what i'm wearing there was also references to who I was with.

19:54So I started to get like a little worried at this point. I hadn't really told anybody that much yet. I hadn't told my husband. I hadn't told my parents. But at this point, I was like, okay, this is what's going on. If something happens to me, like look at this, because somebody is clearly paying attention to where I am and what I'm doing. At this point, I didn't respond. But I was getting messages that were like, I've lusted after you for so long you wouldn't believe it just weird things and i'm like okay who is this and they also kept using two things that were really weird a lot of emojis in their text messages and then also they kept calling me dear that seems like an old man term yeah totally and just to be clear i heard you were married at the time yeah again flash forward probably one or two months and i'm out again with a couple friends well we're not out yet we're getting ready to go out and these are my high school friends and I start getting the messages again and they're like seriously I'm willing to pay more than 500 like just consider these photos I really really really have some things in mind and they start going into like pretty explicit details about what they want and then they start saying I want pictures of you and the one in the middle so then I start looking and I realized that my friend had posted some stories of us getting ready on Instagram oh okay yeah because i'm like is the dude an uber driver like how does he know every time she goes out is he a local driver is he a neighbor that night we go out i didn't respond or anything but my friend who is the one in the middle she then gets a text from the same random number all it says is 500 question mark this is somebody who has access to my number and her number and somebody who I think is following us on social media.

21:46And all throughout this year, randomly, I'm waking up to messages from random numbers. Every time I'm blocking it, every time Newman numbers popping up. And then one night, this is almost a full year after the original text message. And I was having dinner at my mom and dad's house. And I get a text message. And it's like, I see you're out having some fun tonight. Maybe you finally are willing to send me those photos. And I thought, look at my sweatpants of my mom and dad's like I am not out tonight what are you talking about and so I go and I look at my best friend's Instagram and she had posted a story of us from a couple months ago but didn't tag that it was from a couple months ago I texted my friend instantly I'm like who has seen your Instagram story right now because whoever has seen your story somebody on that list is who is harassing me and my online stalker essentially and so she was scrolling through and out of everybody who had seen her stories there was two that kind of stood out to us so one of them was a person that i used to date and then the other was our friend's husband oh no now we're getting somewhere i didn't think it was the person that i used to date because he wouldn't have had my high school friend's phone number to text her alarm bells kind of start going off for us where i'm like oh gosh, this is even more upsetting than we even thought.

23:12So we devised a plan where I said, okay, what you're going to do is you're going to post another story and we're going to have something very specific in this photo. And I'm going to respond to him and I'm going to like make him think that I'm actually starting to consider this like, oh, you've worn me down. I just need to know that you are who I think you are because I'm not comfortable sending this to stranger yeah yeah and then we decide that she's going to post the story and she's literally going to only allow him to be the one with access to that story we're going to change the settings and then i'm going to try to bait him essentially into referencing they need you at quantico where they train the fbi agents yeah i'd be willing post a picture of us like cheersing an espresso martini.

24:02So I start responding and I'm like, well, I could use the money. I just, I'm really not comfortable sending pictures to strangers. And keep in mind, I'm sitting at the dinner table with my mom and dad. Yeah, this is wild. It's a little uncomfortable, but I'm going to figure this out. So then I am like, I think I might have figured out who you are and I'm fine with that. I just need to know that you're going to keep this secret. So then he goes, those espresso martinis should really loosen you up for these photos i have in mind and i'm like bam got you yeah really good you set a trap and now he's in it i immediately send him back a text and i'm like i've got you motherfucker you did i did yeah i know exactly who you are and i could ruin your entire life if you ever contact me again i will not hesitate to do it and his only response was Okay.

25:01Oh, boy. How good of friends were you? So this is where things get a little bit dicey. We were really close. The person who was stalking me, I have known since I was a kid. And he actually married at the time. She was one of my best friends. They were high school sweethearts. They got married and they had a son. I mean, already, obviously, the whole situation was dicey. But at that point, things got a little hard because I wanted to tell our friend, And my other friend didn't want to tell her. Oh, this is so hard. This is not a clear cut decision. No, I don't know what the answer is, really. Yeah.

25:39And so to this day, actually, she still doesn't know. Oh, until now. Until now, maybe. Yeah. Oh, God. We're letting the universe decide. It ended up causing some rift between me and my best friend because she was like, well, If you're going to tell her, you can't involve me in the story, which is like the whole way we figured it out. And I'm like, we can't really say anything. If I can't say that's how we figured it out, because then I'm just accusing somebody for no reason. The other side note that was also kind of creepy is that the friend who he had texted, my high school friend, is actually his sister-in-law.

26:16The one in the middle. Ew, what? Oh, no. He's only shopping in his immediate circle. He's like, OK, my sister-in-law's hot. My wife's best friend is hot. More than I wonder if the wife of this person is going to hear this. I more wonder if five other girls are going to go. Oh, yeah, he did that to me. I wonder how many people he was doing this to. That's what I was wondering, too, because I had thought I don't want him doing this to other people. But yeah, we ended up deciding we were going to tell her. And then the day that somebody was arranged to like meet with her and tell her, she announced that she was having another baby.

26:55Did you tell your husband? Oh, I did. He was really angry. My husband is like a very gentle, loving person. Like he's never been in a fight. I had blocked this person on all social media, all number, everything. And then my husband had ended up posting a picture of me on his social media because my husband forgot to block him on all his stuff. so then this person went and was liking photos of me and my husband sent him a message and she's like leave us the fuck alone like if you ever go near her I will kick your ass essentially so wait so did you have to see him again in person I've been able to avoid him I feel a little guilty because I haven't really seen my friend since then because I didn't know how to look her in the face after this so we text and luckily like everyone's busy with kids and life So we had already kind of grown apart a little bit, but there is like weird things.

27:52Like she had given us some stuff for my son when he was born. She had her husband drop the stuff off on our porch. So I was in the house and then our doorbell camera went off and he's just standing on my porch dropping off a bin of things. And I'm like, creepy, leave me alone. Like, you know where I live. It was just a really crazy scenario. So that's the story of my friend's husband was my stalker. Wow. That's wild. That was really good. They say it's generally people you know, right? All abuse really is generally people you know. Fuck. Thank you for telling us. Yeah, big time. Thank you for having me.

28:31So nice meeting you. Have a great day. Bye. Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm good. I'm so excited to talk to you guys. Is this Christina? Yes. And do you have a nickname? We pretty much answer to any version. Christine, Christy, Chris. And where are you at? I am right outside one of your favorite cities, Austin, Texas. In New Brunfels. Close, Georgetown. How long have you been there? Actually, we just moved down here from the place that my story actually takes place in Dallas. In Dallas, okay. My story takes place in Dallas back in 2000. I had recently moved out there with my college roommate to start our careers.