The Insidious Abuse of Stalking

Stalking has only recently been recognized for what it is – a profound form of psychological abuse where the victim’s life is “infected” by the stalker, as one survivor put it. Stalking can go on for years, and in some cases may be the prelude to murder. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and
this is Stuff you should Know. Jerry creepily in the background, right,

(00:22):
she just has stopped working in this staring at us
right now, that's right, which is not at all funny. No,
it's not. It's like we can get around about this stuff,
but nothing about it. It's funny. No, it's really like,
but we just try to make light of things that
are uncomfortable. That's what we do. Yeah, we did one
on Coma's once, remember, that's right. That was hysterical question

(00:44):
with a laugh. Right. It was like Leslie Nielsen and
Priscilla Presley coming out from Platoon on Naked Gun. You remember,
just laughing, all right, watch Naked Gun two and a half.
The other days hold up, holds up and then some Yeah,
especially once you've met the director personally, right, that's right. Man,
we met him a thousand years ago, maybe maybe five

(01:08):
thousand years ago. It was a while. So, Chuck, we
have a good hundred and fifty pages on stalking here.
It's at um and you say, like, no, it's not funny. Absolutely,
it's not funny. And it's really tough to put yourself
in the situation of a person who's being stalked. But
there are there's a lot of quotes from people who

(01:30):
um compare it to what's a form of abuse. It
might not be physical, although if it frequently can turn
into something physical or violent. There's a lot of blurred
lines here. Um. But even if it never gets physical
at all, it is a form of abuse. It's a
form of psychological abuse, protracted torment wherein you the victim,

(01:52):
feel like your life has been infected. It affects every
part of your life and you're constantly you feel like
you're certently being watched. And as one victim to put it,
like not in any sort of flattering way. Yeah, I
had the most minimal form of stalking happened to me
in college, and I cannot imagine what like a serious

(02:16):
stalking situation might feel like considering how that made me feel.
Really yeah, and not, you know, very minimal. Trust me,
I'm not saying like I know how it feels, man,
but like, you know, a girl that I was dating
in college and didn't date anymore. I couldn't get enough chuck.
I mean a few times, like banging on my bedroom

(02:39):
window in the middle of the night kind of thing,
like come out here and talk to me, that kind
of thing. Well, I mean that is that is stalking,
especially if it happens repeatedly, if especially if she had
like escalated over time. Yeah, this didn't really escalate, and
it was only a couple of times. I think then
that would probably qualify as what's called harassment. Yeah, her asthmate.

(03:00):
But I will say this, I moved to New Jersey, uh,
just a few months after that, because that was the
end of college and that's what I did. Um, and
I didn't go because of that. But it was definitely like, well,
there's also the benefit of moving to New Jersey. And
one week into being in New Jersey, we lived out
in the woods. I had a dream that a bear

(03:22):
came out of the woods and pounded on my windows
and like pounded on my door until it fell down
and the bear came in. It was one of those
where I woke up and I was like, well, I
know what that means. Yeah, the Blair the bear. Her
name is not Blair, by the way, that wasn't a
Freudian slop right, the bear definitely like resembled her in

(03:45):
some way. It was her name wasn't Blair, but she
looked exactly like Blair from Facts of Life. Oh wish. Yeah,
I wouldn't have broken up with her now, To be fair, also,
this was I was young and immature and probably wasn't
the best breaker rupper. Oh, it's not to say I
deserved it, but well, I really think that that's a
really that's a good point. You've made like seventeen good

(04:07):
points in there. Okay, So number one, men get stalked
to UM, and depending on where you live, it can
happen pretty close to UM in equal frequencies women being stalked,
although I don't think anywhere it's equal. I think almost
across the board, if not totally across the board. Women
are stalked more frequently than men are. But men can

(04:27):
be stalked pretty much evenly by women and other men. UM.
Not just in the realm of like ex lovers, whether
you're hetero or straight, but also like you might be stalked,
and if you're a woman, you might be stalked by
another woman to someone who's jealous angry or resentful of
you or your arrival or something. Single white female, right exactly,

(04:49):
somebody who's just going to become obsessed with you. So
that was one thing. Men can be stalked, and that's
very important. But um, but also you said like that
you weren't the us to break her upper and there's
a lot of um. There's a lot of perceptions, like
misconceptions and misperceptions about what stalking is, what the victims
of stalking do or don't deserve, what they did or

(05:12):
didn't do wrong, and from everything that's kind of emerging
over study of this for the last few decades. If
you're a stalking victim, you basically did nothing wrong, but
everybody assumed you did something wrong, Like you didn't break
up with them properly. Yeah, mixed signals or yeah, maybe
you flirted or you were too nice or whatever. Um

(05:32):
or maybe you're making a big deal out of all
this one Really it's not the guy just likes you
or something. Maybe you're just seeing at Yeah, yeah, maybe
you got it in your head from watching Sally Jesse
Raphael or something like. We're not saying these things. By
the way, this is like a lot of the misconceptions
that that people who are victims of stalking run into
even from law enforcement. Luckily, it's changed dramatically and the

(05:55):
laws and law enforcement are taking it far more seriously
than they did before. But it's definitely still not automatically like, oh,
you're being stuck. Great, let me here's how they help you. Well,
and especially I think of a certain age group, like
your grandparents may think it's romantic. There's this great Hampton
youw um joke. Yeah, remember him, he was at her Okay,

(06:15):
so Hampton youw was saying, um, he was like our
grandparents generation were nuts. It was like my granddad said,
you know, for three and eight days in a row,
I went to your grandmother's work and I asked her
to marry me. And finally on days and yes, it's funny,
like uh, yeah, I mean, stalking is a and we'll

(06:36):
go ahead and tell you straight up, it's it's a
new term that's only been around for a few decades,
but it's an old behavior. It's an old yes, it's
just we're finally waking up to the impact that Yeah, yeah,
thanks granddad. So so um, let's talk about kind of
the history of the understanding of stalking. It was actually
not until the late eighties that the world really started

(06:58):
to kind of wake up to this whole thing after
a couple of high profile killings. Uh. Yeah, celebrity obviously.
If you know, if you want to get something sadly
in the news, if you want to get something in
the news, it's having a celebrity undergo that or be
a victim to that is the best way. Uh. And
that did happen a few times. Um. Well, first of all,

(07:20):
there's been a lot of movies over the years, like
a lot, and Robert de Niro was in a lot
of them. Yeah, victim and uh taxi driver no wait,
and and the fan he was he was also he
was the stalker in there. I think it was Wesley
Snipes was baseball player, he was a fan. I was thinking,
was he the baseball player? But that was banged the

(07:42):
drum slowly. Oh yeah, he's a baseball player in that. Yeah,
he played catcher Thurman monthson of the Yankees who died young. Um,
but yeah, Taxi Driver, Stalker, Cape fear Stalker. What was
the other one with the fan? Not a very good movie,
but I remember the two were good. I remember reading
he hung out with knife salesman to understand his character better. Uh,

(08:07):
fatal attraction, of course, of course. Um the crush single
white female one our photo. Do you see that, Robin Williams. Yeah,
but I forgot all about it. Was that that was
sort of family obsessed, like they have the perfect family.
I want to be that husband. Um, so what do
you do? Well, I'm not going to ruin it. Was
he like scary Robin Williams in it. Yeah, he was

(08:27):
a photo processor, like a photo booth guy, and so
he would look at his pictures of the family and
sup unnerving in that. Yeah, it's always portrayed the same way. Um,
The King of Comedy Classic. These are just a few
of my favorites in that he was. That's what I'm
saying that that's four. I think he likes these roles. Boy,

(08:50):
I had never thought about that. And then there was
one I want to shout out from a few years
ago called The Gift that was really good. Jason Bateman. Oh,
I didn't see that one. It's good. And I saw
that as well. I thought you were talking about the
one with that Billy Bob Thornton directed with Kate Blanchet
as a psychic and oh no, that was good too, though,
was he was just I don't think he directed that

(09:10):
though he did? Did he? I thought that was Sam
Rami Now I've always positive did he write it then?
And I don't know he did something for it. Well.
It's interesting though, to look at these movies. I like
so many of them, and there are a lot of them,
considering that stalking hasn't been around that long. Well, I
also thought, like, there's also comedies too. There's something about

(09:31):
Mary stalking through and through. Oh yeah, say anything standing
outside with the boom box. That's romantic stalk, right, That's
what I'm saying, all right, Grandpa, I just wonder what this.
It's interesting, though, the obsession with entertainment about stalking, Like
people are into these movies, right, and dozens and dozens
of them. We know it's creepy and weird to stalk

(09:52):
before we even called it stalking, though, is I mean
based on this this body of movies, Yeah, and I
think not. Actually a lot of these are post like nine,
but not all of them. But not all of them,
You're right? Uh? The Grabster wrote this though, and he
points out Peter Lawford from The rat Pack Um was.

(10:16):
He talked about it in his book Without There wasn't
a name for it though, that shows just how new
it is, because this was and he said, they are
crazies who become so obsessed with celebrity that their fantasies
are lived as though they're a reality. They can walk
your streets, follow you everywhere, telephone you, send you letters,
generally harass you. They can threaten you, discuss the scene

(10:37):
X they're planning to perform on your body. Can do
almost anything they wish, but as long as they do
not physically hurt you, the police have limited power and
elaborate rules to follow. Yeah, because that's a that's a
confounding factor for years, was that you know, you've got
like First Amendment protection, you can say weird things and
you can be in public places. But after the death

(11:01):
of well first actually, the first taste of stalking in
real life that that America at least had was with
an actress named Teresa Seal Donna who was in Raging
Bowl with de Niro. Yeah, pet played Petci's wife. Huh
and um, she was very publicly stabbed in front of
her apartments like I think ten times, very violently, like

(11:22):
the knife bent even it was really horrific. Fortunately she
survived and she actually became a victim's advocate for stalkers
for the rest of her life. But that was like
kind of a big whoa, whoa what what was that? Like?
The guy the guy was a drifter, had become obsessed
with her. Yeah, he was mentally ill, and we'll talk
a lot about mental illness throughout this this show. But um,

(11:46):
he eventually was extradited to the UK on another murder charge. Uh,
and they found him not guilty. I guess whatever they
call reasons of insanity as different wording over there. But
he was committed and died in a hospital in two
thousand four. But she went on to you know, I
think she made a TV movie about it. Yes, it

(12:07):
was scary stuff. Yeah, but Rebecca Schaeffer was the one
seven years later that really hit the news. My sister
Sam that that was. I mean, these are all equally
horrifying and sad, but this she was stalked for three
years by this man who um again an obsessed fan

(12:28):
yeah who who did the same thing to other famous women,
Like she wasn't the only one, but he is, She's
the one, um who he killed and Marcia Clark actually
tried that case. A little known fact. Huh yeah, yeah,
he's he's still in prison actually, um and he was
shanked in prison like ten years ago eleven times. Yeah,

(12:53):
so he's still in jail. So um they they actually
the guy who stalked Rebecca Schaefer took a lot of
his cues from the playbook of the guy who uh
stalked Teresa Seldana actually use things like um, something called pretexting,
which is a really uh pretty common way that stalkers
will get information about their victims is pretending there's somebody

(13:15):
either not and then get it get info from unsuspecting
like family members or whatever. UM. Hiring a private detective
to get info used to be a lot easier way easier,
like you could go to the d n B and
be like, hey, where does this person live? Right, it
might tell you up until it wasn't your information wasn't
federally protected at the UM. And then there was actually

(13:39):
a website, one of the early websites, and I think
the nineties UM helped you stalk people easily, Like I
cannot remember the name of the site, but they would
basically socially engineer a chance meeting with whoever you wanted,
and they would give you all this information on them
and teach you how to strike up a conversation and

(13:59):
talk about all the stuff that you knew they already knew,
they liked. And it was a website that was dedicated
to helping stalking. It almost sounds like a dating app
social media, right. And then Letterman also really shined a
light on this with his stalker, who was a woman
who used to break into his house pretty frequently. Yeah,

(14:20):
that was a very sad case. Um, and we'll get
into where she fits in the modern definitions, but uh,
she was afflicted with schizophrenia and he was he was.
He often didn't press charges, and he was pretty like
cool about it. He joked about it here and there
on the show. I think too. She made his top
ten lists a lot. Yeah, just to try and make
light of it, I guess. But um, she went on

(14:42):
to stalk and Astronaut as well. Yeah, and they both expressed, um,
just sort of a general condolence and sadness when she
took her own life, like I think Letterman knew, uh,
and you know she would they would wake up with
her on her pretty she stole his car one time,
like serious stuff, but as we'll learn later, she falls

(15:05):
into a category that generally is not physically dangerous to
her victim, but still like it's just unnerving. So all
these celebrities being stalked kind of shine a light on
stalking in general, although not necessarily the most the correct
light initially, but they definitely brought it to everyone's attention

(15:29):
and that kind of brought it under the jurisdiction of
the law. That the law got much more involved after that.
And um, let's take a break and then we'll get
into that. You want to, Yeah, okay, we'll be right back,

(16:02):
all right, Chuck. So the America said Letterman's being stalked,
Rebecca Schaefer's killed, Teresa s al Donna went through this,
let's do something about this finally. Yeah, And and it's
tough to get good statistics because you know, it depends
on what states you're in, what the definition of stalking is,

(16:22):
whether or not. And this is one of the big
problems is the actual crimes committed. Like now stalking is
a crime, but before that it was it's like, you know,
it's not necessarily crime, like you said, to be waiting
for someone in a parking lot. Right, it's creepy, but
a law isn't broken, or if laws are broken, they're
little misdemeanors usually. Yeah, So it was always a sort

(16:47):
of legal gray area until you know, like you said,
the high profile incidents happened. Um, and that's when the
d O G A U d O G, the d
double ghg uh, the d O J went um got
serious and they created a legal definition of engaging in
a course of conduct directed at a specific person that

(17:10):
would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or
her safety or the safety of others, or suffer substantial
emotional distress. And that definition is really important because it
says cause a reasonable person to fear. And while that's
open to inter interpretation, it's not a It doesn't say
like there has to be a literal, vocalized threat to

(17:34):
to count, you know, like they don't have to say
like I'm gonna get you in in you know where
you for a raincoat, Like you can just feel that
threat if you're a reasonable person. Um, And that and
that counts, thank god, because that's that really opens opens
it up, you know, right. Um, And it doesn't even

(17:55):
have to be The threat doesn't even have to be um,
a physical threat. Either could be like I'm going to
make up lies about you on the internet or I'm
going to go tell your parents. Um, you know, all
the all the like stuff we did together, like we
did drugs. Like, there's all sorts of different ways you
can threaten somebody beyond violence. I'm going to trample your

(18:17):
flower bed exactly. Um, there's a lot of like ways
you can threaten and intimidate somebody, and all of these things,
each of these acts is considered harassment. I was looking
up to try to figure out what is the distinction
between harassment and stalking, and it's really tough to find
an obvious distinction. But from what I could get, harassment

(18:37):
are the individual acts that people do when they're stalking,
and stalking is a pattern of harassment frequently escalates over time. Yeah,
and it also obviously blurs lines with domestic violence, like
it is. Yeah, and I think you can you can
even say it as a form of domestic violence. Um,
depending on you know the person at all, right, then

(19:00):
it doesn't count. Yeah, there's a lot of categories of stalking.
We'll get into him in a second, but um, domestic
violence is definitely one of the cradles that stalking is
born from. Yeah, And one of the really sad things
about it is there's a a lot of times it
it just there's no possible uh good result, Like oftentimes

(19:25):
a start a stalker might stop but then start back up,
like too often the end result is like someone's death
or a physical attack. It can be or there's just
no closure resolution, right, Like even if the stalker stops,
that doesn't mean that the victim is like, oh good,
I can have my life back. I don't worry about
that guy anymore. Like that that the trust, the security,

(19:46):
all of those things that that most of us just
take for granted on a daily basis have been lost
and they're not just immediately regained, because it's like you said,
with stalkers, the behavior can just be discontinued and then
it can start back up, get out of the blue,
and so you never know when they're going to pop
back by, or it probably freaks you out even more
when they stop communicating, because what are they doing? Right? Yeah,

(20:10):
and even if they get even if your stalker gets
thrown in prison or gets hit by a bus, like
there can be irreparable psychological damage done to you. You
may never be able to trust another man or woman again,
and and have a hard time finding a love relationship
that you can trust, you know. And this happens so

(20:30):
much more to women. And it's not I think these
statistics you can kind of just flush down the john
because so many of it, so much of it goes unreported,
and so much of it is stuff that women have
just dealt with since you know, the beginning of time,
Like the guy who's a little too handy or a
little too creepy, or a little too forward, or doesn't

(20:53):
take Noah on a you know, ask me out for
a date, like Grandpa showed up every day. You know.
It's just it's just sad. I mean, I think things
are starting to change. But um, as far as stats go,
it's hard to even take those seriously sometimes, and before
these incidences in the early nineties, it was hard to
even get cops sometimes to investigate or like either they

(21:15):
didn't have power, they didn't take it seriously. UM in
Violence Against Women Act really broadened um well like training, advocacy, counseling,
but really like law enforcement, giving them broader powers to
investigate and arrest um was a big deal, and Joe
Biden was actually one of the the champions and big

(21:37):
supporters of and drafting that violence. Yeah. Yeah, So part
of our national shame from the shutdown is that that
law was allowed to expire in the um Stalking Awareness Month,
which is January. Yeah, everything about that sucked. Yeah, but
it has been signed immediately like after Like that was

(21:59):
one of the first things that happened was they they
re up to that Act as soon as the government
went back to work, which I mean, it is a
big deal that there is. I mean, that's a larger
Umbrella Act, but it does include all sorts of funding
for stalking support and resources. And as we'll see, if
you're being stalked, there's a lot of places for you
to turn, but those places need to get federal funding

(22:20):
because they're usually pretty small nonprofits that can't float themselves. Yeah.
Two thousand eighteen, you want to talk about another feel
good act, the Pause act Um, which had you know this,
it wasn't just about this, but under that Umbrella act
Um it included threats to your pets, because that's a

(22:40):
big one. People. A lot of times part of the
pattern of stalking is you know, you come home and
you find your animal dead, fatal attraction, that bunny got boiled.
UM and not only protecting the pets, but UM grants
and funding for shelters to allow you to bring your pet,
because that's some people rightfully won't leave their pets behind.

(23:05):
I mean, that's that's a decision you shouldn't have to make.
But you like, I can't go to that that home
that can protect me because they won't take my dog.
Right And it's not just with UM, with people who
are being stalked. Homeless shelters have the same problems too.
There's there's very few homeless shelters that have accommodations for
pets as well. UM. So one of the other, UH,

(23:28):
one of the other big laws came in that Clinton
signed in UM which basically made stalking a federal crime.
It extended UM protection like UM restraining orders. Basically they
enjoyed nationwide protection, like no matter where you were, if
you had a restraining order, it was good across the
United States. UM. If you went to stalk somebody across

(23:52):
state lines, it was now a federal crime and the
FBI was on you. If you use the mail to
stalk somebody just sending lighters. It was now a federal crime.
So it became a big deal. And we're talking like seriously, um,
nineteen nine, Rebecca Schaeffer was kind of when it really started.
By ninety four, Um, California had the first law. Six

(24:16):
the Feds had a law, and I believe um, within
a couple of years after that, every state in the
Union had a law. So no, I'm sorry, California had
a law that same year in nine and by every
state in America had anti stalking law. It happened like
that fast. Yeah, And in nine nine the l a
p D actually started the Threaten Management Unit, which was

(24:38):
a big deal because now you have an actual unit
of dedicated officers that will study behavior and trying to
determine risk and things like that, whereas before it was
just like yeah, like we'll get to it. Yeah, we'll
send We'll send a couple of our heavy hitter cops
over to to tell them to leave you alone. Send over,
Russell Crowe remember, like of an a job that's a

(25:01):
great character, so that I advocate for Vendetta's and like
extra judicial I think, like beating down. But you said
it's a great character. It was pretty great in that
movie when he would stick up for the abused women
and go beat down those jerks. Um, there's a good character.
I agree, So, Chuck, we kind of we kind of

(25:23):
kind of defined um stalking here there, but let's talk
about like what some of the behaviors of that stalkers have.
Like there are there are some set things that just
about any stalker will engage in that it's basically a
pattern of stalking behavior, which is really surprising because when
we talk about stalker psychology and a little bit, you'll

(25:43):
see there's a lot of different people and a lot
of different personality types that engage in stalking, but they
all kind of tend to do the same stuff. And
one of the first things that they'll do is just
show up where you are. Yeah, showing up now obvious
slee um calling and texting, like texting is a big one, um,

(26:06):
and social media harassment and stuff like that. But I
mean that falls, I guess under cyberstalking. It does, so
cyberstalking kind of deserves its own episode, but it so
it's its own thing where you might just be targeted
by someone you've never met before and just found you
on the internet, and they're using the internet exclusively to

(26:26):
stalk you and harass you and maybe even extort you.
That's cyberstalking. But also using email or um, you know,
location tracking or spyware to stalk under the traditional definition,
that's also technically cyberstalking. It's like two things. Yeah, it's
scary though with all those personal things that people have
online now, it's certainly not like the old days. People

(26:49):
can see so much about your life. Um, even if
you think you've protected yourself in that way. Yeah, we'll
do a whole episode on cyberstalking. Okay, so they're showing up.
There's um non consensual communication. You kind of hit on emails, texts,
letters that can be UM and apparently a lot of
stalkers will communicate in ways that they think is totally

(27:10):
obvious to their victim, but their victim has no idea
what they're saying. Like some examples I saw in real life,
or like fingernail clippings, a stack of Texas monthly magazines,
a rat, a dead rat wrapped in cell What did
that stack of magazines? Had no idea what that meant.
It was like it was like a message. No one

(27:31):
knows what it meant except for the stalker is the
only person that made sense to But the stalker felt
like they were communicating in their opecial stack of magazines. Yeah,
or left him outside of their house, gotcha, gotcha. Um.
Obviously you don't even have to, like like if you
there could be a coworker that you see every day
in the office and they can stalk you at work

(27:53):
even though they're also supposed to be in the same
office as you. Like the line is very fine. They
can someone can stop by your desk too much and
pay you too many compliments. Uh. Again, that overlaps with
harassment too. But like if you go to your bosses
and you're like, hey, I want to be in a
different part of the building, because this guy's really giving

(28:15):
me the creeps, then he starts showing up over there
every day. Like that's stalking, right absolutely, you know. Um.
There's also threatening family members, friends, anybody that the person
cares about, pets, making threats, whether explicit or otherwise. Um,
And all of these combined. They can be separate. They

(28:37):
can be um. They can be repeating the same one
over and over again. They can be a random assortment.
There's also very frequently like trespassing, breaking into your house,
breaking into your car, um, just basically getting into your stuff,
and then sometimes making it so like you can't tell
how they got in there, but you just know they
were there. Like I read one account of a woman
who was being stalked, and like she went and unlocked

(28:59):
her car and there was a rose on the seat,
like the passenger seat, and she's like, how did this
even get in here? She had no idea how the
guy got in there, but he got in there. So
just just knowing that this person is watching you, could
could show up wherever you are um and can get
to you. Is all of these things that combine that

(29:19):
makes stalking so insidious. Yeah, and it's and like the
effect goes beyond just psychological harm, of which that's obviously
the worst part of it. But like financially, you can
you can have missed work and lost wages and you
might have to move, uh, Like people have picked up

(29:40):
and moved house at great loss, changed jobs, changed jobs
at you know, salary loss, Like it has like a
real financial impact as well. Yeah, and you were saying,
like how technology enables people to stalk so so much
more easily now, Um, that's a big one. Like if
you especially if you m we're already if you had

(30:02):
a relationship with your stalker previously, um, and they had
access to your computer or your phone. Most stalking advocate
groups say, if you can afford it, get a new computer,
get a new phone, because those are compromised, and that's
that's too expensive for a lot of people. So there's
some tricks and stuff you can deal with or work
with if you can't replace it, which we'll get to.

(30:24):
It's hard to research this without feeling a sense of
unease for sure, you know, and just the injustice of it,
like like considered you just were nothing but but passingly
friendly to a stranger and all of a sudden they're
doing all of this to you and disrupting your life
like this and robbing you of your security and you
have no idea what they're going to do next. That's

(30:46):
about as unfair as it gets. Yeah, and uh, I
think we'll probably take a break now, but and come
back and talk about the different types. But you know,
one of the types specifically is like the photo matt guy,
or you know, the casual acquaintance, the bank teller or
or you're the bank customer, and the bank teller is
the victim. Like these these short little communications that someone

(31:11):
who uh has mental illness maybe and is prone to this,
you get a too nice of a have a great
day and a smile and yeah, and that sends them
down the road. Scary man, because you don't want to
like stop being friendly to people, or should we all?
I think we should. It's the only way to protect ourselves.

(31:31):
All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna
talk more specifically about the different types um of stalkers
right after this, So Chuck, remember we said like California

(32:01):
was like the first state to really take this seriously. Well,
l A was the first city to take it seriously
because at first people thought, oh my god, celebrities are
in trouble. And now that we've done more research, we
know like, actually celebrities are the least stocked group and
they're actually the probably the safest of all the stocked groups.
But initially l A really went a whole hog on

(32:23):
studying stalking and that's where we got some of our
earliest data and understanding of the stalking mentality. They created
the Threat Management Unit with some forensic psychiatrists and some
security guys, and they came up with basically some early
stalker profiles, And one of the first things they figured
out is you can roughly categorize stalkers into three different

(32:46):
pigeon holes. Basically, all right is the first one arato mania? Yes, right,
which is uh. If you just sound that word out,
you probably have a pretty good idea what that means, um,
and that is uh. That is someone who feels like
are those the ones who feel like they're in love?

(33:09):
Those are the with the person. Those are the ones
who who feel like they're in love but also that
the other person loves them, right, Like Letterman's stalker was
an erotomaniac, a person with a rotomania, but she also
was someone with schizophrenia. Right, Yeah, there's all these are
co morbid. I guess there's a lot of overlap with
mental illness. But from what I've seen, um, depending on

(33:31):
the type of stalking you're engaged in. When when an
actual diagnosable mental illness comes into play, the stalking kind
of takes a back seat to that diagnosable mental illness.
It's it's like it's it's a byproduct of it or
a symptom of the mental illness, rather than the stalking
being the main part, you know what I mean. Yeah, Like,

(33:52):
if she didn't have schizophrenia, she probably wouldn't have been
stalking Letterman exactly. But it's it's characterized by a deep,
profound illusion that that the stalker and the celebrity victim
who has no idea that the stalker exists, at least
at first, are are basically bound souls, that they have
their soul mates. It's rarely sexual, very rarely sexual. It's

(34:16):
sometimes it's not even necessarily romantic, but it's so hyper
romantic it it transcends romance. It's just complete and utter
delusional obsession. That's erato mania. Yeah, and this is the
one that I mentioned early on, which I think very
interestingly has an inverse proportion of danger. So the more
distant or unattainable the relationship, like this woman and David Letterman,

(34:40):
or really any any of the celebrity cases, um, the
less likely they are to actually injure the victim, and
the less likely they are to ever even meet them
face to face. Right. It's usually like in Letterman's case,
you know, like I don't think he ever met her
face to face in an incident. No, but I mean, like,
I'm sure she would have liked to have him face

(35:00):
to face, but um, like her, his in her case
is very much an outlier. Although because of the medium,
because it's celebrities, we think, like that's very common. That
is extremely rare, first of all, in a rodomania's stalking
situation with the celebrity, but one where the person actually
tries to physically get in touch with the victim, that's

(35:23):
pretty rare. Yeah. Yeah, so a rodomania is one. And
that's also the that's the smallest group from what I understand, Yeah,
but the most probably press Grabby Yeah, and movie Mackey Yeah,
movie Mackey. Um, like De Narro's got It cornered. Love obsessional, Yeah,
that's another one. Uh, And that is one that I

(35:45):
was talking about with Like, could be a fleeting acquaintance,
could be a co worker, um yeah, those are like
two types. Yeah, Like it's either someone like you work
with every day, or it could be the bank teller
right or again and you could be the bank I
saw that the healthcare worker UM is very frequently the

(36:06):
victim of love love obsessional stalking because the UM, like
the experience of being in the hospital or whatever and
having somebody, some stranger take care of you. It is
they're healing you. So they're very frequently a target of that,
but it can be something like a grocery store clerk
or a bank teller or something like that, anybody, Um,
just this the most fleeting casual acquaintance ship can turn

(36:30):
into a full blown stalk, and in that case, the
person who is doing the stalking is aware that the
other person isn't in love with them yet, but has
seen basically too many rom coms and believes that that
if they diligently pursue this person and show up at
their work and send them all these unwanted gifts, that

(36:52):
that the person will eventually their heart will melt as
they see how wonderful they are, and um, they will
be together forever. The problem is, first of all, it's obnoxious, annoying, well,
it's it's also a real like narcissistic personality disorder totally,
but it can also once once you reach people have
a breaking point, and if you become obsessed with somebody

(37:13):
and it finally becomes clear to you that they're not
going to reciprocate you, already feel like you're entitled to
their attention, to their love, and now they're they're withholding
it from you, So that might turn into rage, which
is extremely dangerous in a stalking situation. And that's almost
every movie the way it goes down. Yeah, it wasn't
there one with like Marky Mark or Donnie Fear Market. Yeah,

(37:35):
Fear Fear with Reese Witherspoon, Markey Marker, Donny Mark. You
know the Marks? Did you know Reese Witherspoon listens to
Did I know that? I don't know. I read it somewhere. Yeah,
I can't remember. She listens in the car. She said
in some magazine art. Well, we think you're great. Yes,

(37:58):
come on movie crush and come on into the world.
You could work her in there somehow. I think her
son also, she said, her son makes like music or whatever.
He should make like jingles for stuff you should know.
Oh yeah, totally play this um so uh oh. The
other interesting thing I thought about the love obsessional, uh,
is that it says oftentimes they are affluent and well

(38:21):
educated and they are high strung professionals who have no
personal life except for this obsession. Right. Basically, Patrick Bateman
types who are interested in a relationship, yep. But who
were just like, yeah, this is in this this article,
this is that that was kind of old, but they
were basically saying like, yeah, they we could tell when

(38:41):
it said, uh, they're usually like the next door type,
like Olivia Newton John, not like Joan Collins. And I
was like, wait, years I read a victim's handbook that
was written clearly by a victim who like wrote a
book on what to do if you're being stalked, and
it was from I think, and she had advice on
what to do if like they were blowing up your

(39:02):
page or this is dated, dated information. She's not a
Joan Colin stype. But but they made a really good
point and it's still going on today that the distinction
between work and social life is so blurred because everybody
works so much that it's like, yeah, I mean the people.
You spend all your time with the people at work.

(39:23):
So if you um are already, as they put it,
high strung neurotic narcissist types, you may feel entitled to
this person's affection or attention, and that so that becomes
the coworker stalking situation of love obsessional Yeah, in the
movie version, that's the well, let's just work late and
like order some Chinese in the office, and then they

(39:45):
have this like kind of funny exchange candles and that's
an Act one, and then you know, Act two is
all the hey, this is getting out of hand, and
then Act three is she rejects, rejects them, and then
it's it gets violent and angry. I think she'd reject
him in act two, and then Act three is all
the oh god, and then the resolution. Yeah, I think

(40:07):
the end of the first the first plot point that
the end of act one is probably the rejection, You're right,
and then that would set up the act to action,
the building of the tension, and then act three is
the yeah. But something always kicks off Act three, like
and I guess in Cape Fear it was I think
the kickoff Tact three might have been them getting out
of town and going to Cape Fear. That's what would

(40:29):
be my guess. It's so funny movies, you can almost
you check your watch next time you're watching a movie
and everything happens in thirty minute increments. Almost it's funny. Uh.
And then the last one, I think of the three
that we were talking about is um is this one
simple obsessional and this is this is the worst. I mean,
they're all bad, but most typically violent. Yeah. This is

(40:51):
like the someone who you generally had an intimate relationship
at some point and you don't want to be with
him anymore, and they harass you and stalk you, and
it seems like almost always it ends in violence. Well, no,
that's not necessarily true, but it's at the highest risk
of all of the types. Like if there's some dud
who comes into your bank every day and has a

(41:14):
crush on you, he's far less likely to become violent then.
And but that's not a former intimate, is it. No,
that's what I'm saying. That's a different category. The former
intimate is more likely to perpetrate violence, But that doesn't
mean that every time it's going to resolve in violence.
That granted, though. One of the first tips I've seen

(41:35):
for um stalking, like advocacy groups like their their lists
of stuff you should be doing, one of the first
ones is take yourself seriously, trust your gut than your instincts.
Very frequently family and friends will just kind of blow
off this all these signs. If you feel insecurely nervous
about it. Go with that. But that is that you

(41:56):
should take this seriously because it can turn into something
dangerous for you, and you should treat it that way
and take it seriously. Yeah, because I'll say this, if
let's say you me quote and not you, let's say
one quote unquote overreacts. Um, fine, that's okay, sure overreact

(42:19):
do it, because if this person is not a stalker,
it would just be just like, I'm really sorry. Things
obviously you got out of hand and you'll never hear
from me again. Um. The only person that would really
get super rag about that is probably a stalker. Yeah,
that's true. You know, so air on the side of

(42:41):
caution because um, I mean, a restraining order is one
thing I wrote in here. They are worthless. They're not worthless.
They're worthless in that it doesn't stop anyone from doing anything.
But I think the main juice of a restraining order
is so you officially have legal precedent that person has
done something. You're documenting it. Although I did see I

(43:04):
read a guardian Um article about a woman who was
stalked by like an ex boyfriend from high school or
college or something, and he stalked her for nine years,
and um, I think he broke fifty six restraining orders
over that time. So it's like, yeah, that's and then
he finally got two years in prison at the end

(43:25):
of this nine years after the restraining I'm not sure
exactly what he finally did that landed him in prison,
but the idea that you can break fifty six restraining
orders and still not go to prison or jail is
is it's got to be extremely discouraging for the victims
of stalking. Yeah, here's the saddest stat of this whole
podcast to me is that, uh, seventies six percent of

(43:50):
women who are murdered by an intimate partner, we're also
stalked by that partner and half of them or have
been reported as stalker. So they they half of the
murdered women were reported that they were being stalked before
they were murdered. Yeah, so yes, you should take it

(44:10):
seriously and cops. And that's with cops taking it seriously supposedly.
Oh yeah, yeah, So there's a So we were saying, like,
the um, what's what's it called, the significant not significant
other stalker, the simple obsessional. Yeah, the simple obsessional one
where like you've had a relationship with this person and

(44:30):
they didn't basically take the breakup very well. You belong
to them very frequently if you are a victim of
domestic abuse, that will turn into that. But it that
doesn't necessarily jibe with that. It can be it can
also kind of just come out of what you would
call a bad breakup. Um, but it's still like the same,

(44:51):
roughly the same. But I think if the abuser was
already a domestic abuser, the chances of which of violence
are much greater. That's the group that is the greatest
at the greatest risk of violence. Our domestic abusers turn stalkers. Yeah,
it says of women who are murdered were murdered by

(45:13):
boyfriends and husbands. Yeah, that's why they always look at
the husband and the boyfriend first. I'm surprised. Thirty percent.
That seems low even you know. Yeah, I mean that's stats,
so it's super old. But um, I bet it's somewhere
in that wheelhouse now, you know. Yeah, that's two different
and just real quick, it's um. You know, this is
not just an American issue. There are countries around the

(45:36):
world that have stalking um stalking laws, anti stalking laws.
I should say, it's much easier to list ones that
don't have it than the ones that do, because just
in the last like couple of decades, countries have really
started to take this seriously, which is heartening because it says, oh, okay, good,
we value women, the women in our society, and we

(45:58):
want to them to feel protected. Um. There's some that
just absolutely don't, like Cypress, Greece, Namibia, Spain, they don't
have anti stalking laws, but for the most part, most
countries do, and very frequently they follow like a high
profile murder at the hands of a stalker. UM. Japan
started to take it very seriously since I think like

(46:20):
two thousand or two thousand one. Um, Great Britain's like
really well aware of its stalking problem, and they have
a really high incidence of men being stalked too. And
then I read an article that France, Sweden, and Luxembourg
have the highest rates of stalking and I was like,
that seems a little weird, and then the article pointed out, well,

(46:42):
these are these are also probably countries where women feel
empowered to report stalking, whereas some of these other countries
that have very like artificially low rates of stalking and
the EU are probably um countries that are a little
more macho and where women feel like the cops are
going to just tell them to like feel flattered for

(47:02):
the attention, which happens actually sadly, and so are like that,
like you said originally, like the data and the stats
on stalking are are really hard to come by, but
it's it's basically a universal thing. Well, and it's hard
to come by too because not everyone can agree on
what behaviors even qualifies stalking. Um, there's this one interesting

(47:28):
thing that Ed put in here about incompetence. Did you
see that? Yeah? Yeah, not incompetence with the ce butt
Yeah e n T s uh. This is a category
of stalker. And this is someone who is so awkward
and unaware of social cues and norms that they're clumsy
attempts at initiating relationships feel like stalking. They might have

(47:51):
some sort of cognitive disability or something like that, or
just made not pick up on social cues and not
realize that you don't stopped by and compliment the ladies
dress every day right, like don't do it right? And
the guy's like, what, I'm just being nice? Sure, or
it might be like, uh, you know, or he may

(48:13):
be a legit stalker. Sure, but I think in that
case he wouldn't be an incompetent. He would be a stalker.
Well right, but that's what I'm saying. The guy who's
an incompetent is just like, oh, and then he never
speaks to her again. But that's so that's that seems
to be another whole, the other class of stalker. There's
the incompetent, there's the aratomaniac, there's a love obsessional. And

(48:34):
then there's even like subtypes to those larger types, like
there's the um scorned lover, there's UM, the the the
guy who UM is experiencing rage because he's not getting
his affection reciprocated. There's all these different little sub types,
and all of them, to one degree or another, have

(48:56):
some sort of mental illness associated with them. It's not
necessarily like diagnosable mental illness. And that's what makes stalking
so weird, is that a lot of stalkers are otherwise
utterly saying sure, or narcissism or something like that. But

(49:16):
you can diagnose that um, and yes you maybe we'll
we'll study them enough in the future that will be like, Oh, well,
when you put this this degree of narcissism with this
degree of sociopathy together and UM, mix in a little
bit of of an overly critical mother, you've got a
stalker situation. Right. But but socially speaking, especially UM, coworker

(49:41):
love obsessionals and um, the simple obsessional ones, those very
frequently seem to be people who have become obsessed with
somebody and have become so obsessed with that person they've
lost their their marbles basically in that in that respect,
in every other respect, they can kind of keep their
life together until the obsession leads them down the path

(50:04):
to where they're full time stalking and they like will
lose their job or whatever something. So we should probably
give a few tips, um before we go in case
you are being stalked, First and foremost that I've seen
is number one, take it seriously. But number two, if
you believe you're being stalked, or you feel like you're
being stalked, like go find a local stalking advocacy group.

(50:26):
They have them all over the place and they are
experts at what you need to do things like, Um,
if you are being stalked by a former intimate. Um,
you should assume that your computer and your phone are
being spy or spying on you. Um, you want to
change the passwords to your accounts, don't use your computer,
don't use your phone, Go use a computer at a

(50:47):
church or a library, and then change your past codes
and then don't log in on your phone or computer
until you can get a new one. From the get go,
you should log all activity, just say you can. When
you go to the cops, they're not like, oh, well,
this guy just came by your house once, Like let's
just see where this heads. You can hand over piece

(51:08):
of paper that says that these seventeen things happened in
the past four days. Uh, so you just have a
good log of activity. You also want to engage in
what's called like safety planning, where you, um, you don't
just think about what the socker just did. You have
to think about what your stocker is going to do.
And that really kind of gets to the heart of

(51:29):
how again unfair this is? Well, yeah, because then all
of a sudden you're obsessed with trying to figure out, yeah,
something that's going to happen in the future or may
not happen in the future. That's like how they bruin
your life, right Exactly. You're constantly thinking about them and
where they're going to show up or whatever. But you
want to um tell people at your school, at work, um,
at at at home, like here's a picture of this person.

(51:52):
If they show up, call the police. Do not give
out personal information to anybody because again they might be pretexting. Um.
There's all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't normally think
of to where if you're being stalk go find a
group that that helps people like this. They would probably
say get off social media. Now, yeah, that's I think

(52:13):
that's another one. But also I think it has an
effect where like not only do you get off social media,
you like stop going out because you're afraid they're going
to show up. You stop, so you like you lose
contact with friends, you lose your life, you know. So
the group that I found that I thought was pretty great,
it's called SPARK s p a r C. Stalking Prevention
Awareness and Resource Center. They have a lot of good

(52:36):
like starter tips, but they'll tell you, just like I did,
go find a local group to help you like come
up with a safety plan to be safe. Yeah, because
the one thing that won't happen there is they won't
disregard your fears and not take you seriously. And sometimes,
especially in those early moments, that's exactly what you need

(52:57):
is some support and someone to say like, you're not crazy, Uh,
this might actually be happening to you, and then um
to end on kind of a hopeful note, as distasteful
as it sounds. There's a growing awareness, um that stalkers need,
that they're, in a weird way victims too, and that
they need to be treated, that they need to be

(53:18):
pulled out of there this life that they've built for
themselves and basically, over the course of some very intense therapy,
be brought back to reality and to have pointed out
to them what they're doing and just how off their
views of this other person are, because very frequently stalkers
are found to be giving their victims tons of power

(53:40):
that the victim doesn't even know they have. And um,
and when they're reminded like, no, this person isn't doing
this to your No, they're not getting what you're saying
or anything like that, UM, it can there. It's starting
to look like stalking can be treated, and that that's
part and parcel with saving a victim is treating the
stalker to you? Yeah, sure, then the victim can have

(54:02):
resolution at some point without the stalker having to die
or spend the rest of their life in prison, you know. Yeah,
So that's that's kind of a growing thing, is treating
stalkers as well. Yeah, I could see it being something
that could be rehabilitated, you would hope, and then hopefully
you just don't bum into one another two years later. Yeah,
they'd be I swear I'm feeling better. Usually don't shop here.

(54:27):
This is just I'm gonna just go right, in which
case the victim would what I don't know, back slowly
out of the grocery stores. Yes, and never stopped there again.
So that's it for stalking. If you're being stalked, hanging
there and get in touch with this let us know
how it's going. Since I said that, it's time for
listener now. Hey, guys, love the show just started listening

(54:50):
into my surprise, one of the first episodes I listened
to was about the biggest misconception in my industry, bread
count the softness of betting. This is from a short stuff.
Softness of bedding comes down to the quality of the
material that's being used, not necessarily how many threads, which
I think we said that right. This person's just restating

(55:10):
everything we said. Long staple cotton only makes up three
percent of the global cotton production, yet it's best kept.
It's the best option for betting. The longer threads provided
smooth surface for sleepers to enjoy. It's also more durable
short staple cotton threads. This is what we said, isn't it.
The more popular and cheaper option are rougher and scratchier
because the shorter threads are tied together throughout the weave

(55:32):
of the bedding. In order to get the softest, best
performing sheet, a long staple cotton, preferably one that is
responsibly sourced, is necessary. Anyway, I just wanted to say
what you guys already said. Thanks for thanks for being
what you are. Uh, congratulations on the billion downloads guys.
Oh nice, there you go. Here's to another billion. That's
how you get your email read And that's from Ed.

(55:53):
Thanks Ed. We're glad you joined us. Um, welcome to
the family. That was a baptism by fire right. If
you want to be like Ed and get baptized by
Reverend Josh and Reverend Chuck and Cardinal Jerry. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

(56:18):
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com