A Dangerous Man

Cassandra Rosa had just moved back to her home state when she began receiving vulgar messages from an anonymous number. Cassandra was being stalked. The more Cassandra asked for help, the worse things became. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pisha. Hannah, we have merch it's the cutest bright red
tote bag with our logo on it, and everyone will know.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
That you have great taste in podcasts. You can find
it at Exactly rightstore dot com and just search the Knife.
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
the speaker and do not necessarily represent The Knife or
Exactly Right Media.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
And I just remember opening that last message and I
immediately started crying because it was real and it was
my life.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith, I'm Patia Eaton,
and this week we're speaking with because Andre Rosa Cassandra
has been the victim of a stalker for years now,
and the escalation of this stalker is both shocking and
not because we know that stalkers can start to feel
emboldened as time passes. Yeah, we talk a lot on
the show about how it's hard to catch and stop

(01:16):
stalkers practically and legally. This story is no different, but
it also highlights how wrong things can go with an
investigation and how a victim can start to look like
the villain.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, I mean, Cassandra lives in a small New Mexico town,
and we're not going to say the name of where
she lives because things became so contentious with her case.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
As a warning, we do talk about text messages that
Cassandra received, which are of a violent and sexual nature.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Let's get into the interview.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
My name is Cassandra and I've been working in my
little community for the last five years. Is a realtor,
and I'd say I'm a pretty regular gal. I'm seeing
no kids in my mid thirties, but yeah, I would
never expect that in the last five years I would
be in a place where I could even tell a
story like this. It was in twenty twenty is when

(02:13):
I decided to move back home. Before that, I was
living in El Paso. I was a restaurant manager. And
the reason I did decide to move back home was
for family reasons. At that time, my mom was diagnosed
with stage four breast cancer and she was a single mom,
and I just knew it was going to be really
hard for her to be going through her treatments and

(02:33):
still trying to maintain her household. And I was just
in a position where I could go home and really
support her. So that was very meaningful to me. I thought,
you know, I could go like, get a little serving job,
work hard, and still be able to support my mom
and take care of her. But with the quarantine, it
totally killed that plan, and so I had to pivot

(02:54):
into real estate. I was able to get my license
in so by October of twenty twenty, I was working
as a real chor.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Cassandra was back home, living in her new Mexico town
for the first time in years. She was launching a
brand new career in real estate, which meant rebuilding her
connections from scratch and developing a marketing plan which mostly
focused on social media. For real estate agents nowadays, having
a social media presence is really not optional. It is
how they get their clients. People want to feel like

(03:25):
they already know you before they trust you with buying
or selling a home. In a lot of ways, Cassandra's
success depended on making herself and her contact information visible
to the public.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
It was a lot of fun, and it definitely takes
a lot of dedication because you're doing that NonStop without
a lot of return for your effort to be honest
with you, So I did that for the first few months,
and I was getting pretty regular interactions until things kind
of got weird.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, and tell us more about that sort of transition
and from Okay, I'm putting myself out there and I'm
getting some traction to something strange happening.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
So I started getting messages in February of twenty twenty one,
and automatically it was inappropriate. So the first message I
got was telling me that they saw me on Facebook.
They wanted help from me, that they had a loan
from money from their parents, but they solicited me for

(04:30):
sex in that same text, asking me if I was
sleep with them. I never answered back, and I just thought, Wow,
I can't believe somebody would do that. I cannot believe
somebody would send a text like that. But I thought, Okay,
you know it's twenty twenty one. Guys are crazy out there.
There's the Internet. People see you online all the time.
They can get my number.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Okay, so you're getting a text on your phone, which
you know your phone number is public because you're trying
to advertise your services. But are you mainly advertising on
Facebook at that time? Is that why you believe that
they got your info from Facebook?

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Facebook Instagram. Those are the ways, at least in my
little town, that we really we connect with people. We
call it a Facebook community because if anybody's going to
find out what's happening in our town, it's going to
be through Facebook. So a lot of people that's how we,
you know, connect with one another.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
So when this person texted you, did they introduce themselves
and say I'm so and so or was it just
anonymous message?

Speaker 3 (05:37):
They didn't give me a real name. It would always
be like hey, and then go off into it. I
saw you, you know, I want your help. I thought
you were attractive. Would you sleep with me?

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (05:48):
And you don't know who it's coming from. I asked
the other realtors, you know, can you trace this number?
Can you cross reference it? Can you check in your app?
And I didn't go back to anyone. I really did
think that it was somebody messing with me, and they
would it would not be a regular occurrence. But it
was just a couple of weeks after that that I
got another message, and this time it said that they

(06:11):
were my Facebook friend named Robert, and in the message
they told me that their wife had cheated on them
with their best friend and that they wanted to kill themselves.
And so when I first started reading these, I was like, wow,
this is so intense, Like I thought maybe it could
be well I kind of already knew. I was like,
I don't have a Facebook friend named Robert who would

(06:32):
even tell me this type of thing. So I was like,
this can't be somebody I really know. But I didn't
know if it was like fake or not. I wasn't
really on edge yet, so I told them, like, call
the police if you're thinking about killing yourself. I just
didn't know what to say. And it got weird because
they told me I need somebody to talk to, Cassandra.
I need somebody to talk to someone like you. And

(06:54):
I was like, this is just it's very bizarre, very weird.
Because that was also a fake.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Number, but it was a different number than the first number.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yes, it was a different number than the first number,
and it was a fake number.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
When Cassandra says fake number, she means the number did
not trace back to a registered user. A registered phone
number with a cell phone carrier is traceable back to
a human being, but these numbers led nowhere, leading Cassandra
to believe that they were generated by an app. It's
kind of alarming actually, how easy it is to download

(07:31):
an app on your phone that allows you to text
from random numbers that aren't associated with you. And these
random numbers are really hard to trace unless you have
the phone they were sent from. Cassandra started to receive
regular text messages with unwanted sexually explicit content, and blocking
the phone numbers also didn't help, since each message came

(07:53):
from a new random number.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
And that's the key thing to all of this is
that they're always new random numbers, no caller ID. At
that time, I was still not thinking it was like
a huge deal, but I was like, I need to
document this. That was one thing I am very glad
about this whole process is that I documented everything as
well as I could. So I did make a police

(08:17):
report online. I think at that time there was three numbers.
By that time it had been messaging medium, so I
included those. I made the report of what they said
because there was another number that texted me big booty.
So I was like, well, let me just throw it
in there because you never know. And man, I look
back at the police reports I've made, and literally all

(08:38):
they ever stay on there is that they took my
word that it was not a real number and anonymous,
and they concluded their investigation from day one.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
It doesn't say like what they did to try to
figure out who this was or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
It literally says they did nothing, wow, that they took
my word that it was a fake number and that
concluded their investigation.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
We weren't able to get a hold of that initial
police report, so we don't actually know the exact reason
given as to why this wasn't looked into further, but
it started off what's not been the most amicable relationship
with Cassandra and her local police department. Cassandra said what
she felt then was simply she was scared. She asked

(09:24):
for help, and she didn't get it.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
I really thought that police would have my best interest
for me, so when nothing came about it, I was
just like, Okay, well, at least it's reported. At least
they know, and if it was serious, they would probably
try to look into it more. That's what I thought.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Honestly, did you talk with any real estate friends and
you know, had other people had experiences of weirdos reaching
out to them? I guess I'm trying to understand if
at this point, how you were understanding this, like, oh,
this happens to real estate agent. It's really annoying, but

(10:02):
it's harmless. Or was it scarier than that to you
at the time already?

Speaker 3 (10:07):
I think it was. It was getting scary, but I
was still very naive to maybe the danger that I
was really in, or just maybe the obsession that somebody
had about me. But I did recognize that it's not
normal for somebody to say such extreme things to you.
It's not normal for somebody to be soliciting you for sex.

(10:29):
So I did know that something was wrong very early,
and I did ask the other realtors very early on.
At that time, I was with a rather large brokerage.
It was the biggest one in town, and it was
majority women, and you know a lot of women in
real estate are very beautiful women, and so I did ask,
and I would reach out to the association as a whole,

(10:50):
asking is anyone else getting inappropriate messages from numbers they
don't know, from numbers that are untraceable, And over all
the years, no, but he's ever said me too. Nobody.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
When you realize the police had sort of concluded their
investigation and weren't going to help you at that point,
what was your next step?

Speaker 3 (11:11):
So that was like in February, and by March is
when I reported it. So from March until probably July
of twenty one, I had started then receiving not only
anonymous texts from random numbers, but then I would also
start receiving no caller ID phone calls. And it was
on those phone calls where I would hear somebody masturbating

(11:34):
on the phone, and I know, you're like, how can
you know it's that? But it was done so often
and it's such a disgusting thing to have happened to
you that you just kind of know.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Cassandra believed the same person who had been texting her
was the person who was now calling her. It felt
like he was becoming emboldened and his actions were escalating.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
But it was July of twenty one and I had
received another message from a phone number I didn't recognize,
and this one this time said basically saying that they
were my client. They told me that they liked my
ass when I was showing them a property, and they said,
I don't know if we can move forward with me
putting an offer because of what I've just told you.

(12:23):
I knew right away they were not my client. I
just never got any vibes like that from anyone I
was working with, and so I just knew that it
was this person who's been messing with me. And so
I told them, if you're my client, why don't I
have your number? And they said, what did I get
myself into. There's just one woman, Cassandra, and that one

(12:43):
woman is you, and I would give my left nut
to see you in red panties. And that's when I
was like, oh my gosh, like, yes, this person is crazy.
Whoever is messing with me is like next level weird.
And then I told them to stop messaging me, leave
me alone, and that's when they told me that they
wanted to marry me and have my babies. And then

(13:05):
after that is when they told me that I could
go to the authorities and that had no control and
there was nothing they would do for me, and that
if they wanted to rape me they could, that they
could schedule a showing, that they could go to an
open house, that they could rape me as many times
as they want. I would think. I was like even
at work at that time when I got that message,
I was showing a house. I had to go back

(13:26):
to the office and I just remember opening that last
message and I immediately started crying because it was real
and it was my life, and I think I tried
to deny it for so long that that was my.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Life, first of all. I mean, that's just so horrible
and terrifying. And I imagine as a realtory, part of
your job is going to these open houses and you
don't know who's going to walk through the door, and
so that's a really scary threat that this person is
watching you and obsessed with you this really horrible way
and threatening violence. Whenever they would call you and you

(14:06):
could tell that someone was masturbating, which is so disturbing,
did this person ever speak to you, Like, did you
ever hear their voice?

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Sometimes they would they would call and pretend to be
a customer and then pretending to ask me regular questions,
and then they would say something disgusting out of nowhere,
like just throw it back to something sexual, and I
would hang up because he would fool me again. But
when it was just the masturbating for whatever reason, he
would already be doing it, and so you'd answer and

(14:38):
you're like hello, Hello, and then you're hearing this sound
and you're like, what is this sound? And then yeah,
that's the sound you know?

Speaker 2 (14:45):
My god?

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, but yeah, that's he had different techniques, I guess
you could say, right, different ways to terrorize me. It
wasn't just the text messages being anonymous. It wasn't just
the masturbating on the phone. It wasn't just the no
caller ID. It wasn't just pretending to be somebody who
needed help and then freaking me out by saying something
disgusting to me. And so of course when I got

(15:09):
the rape text messages, I went directly into the police
station by that point, and I think that was either
my second or third police report.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
And with these reports that you're continuing to file, as
this stalker's behavior is escalating, is the police response escalating
it all? Is their reaction to their reports changing only when.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
I came to them with the text about going to
the police having no control in them raping me. But
the action was not equivalent to the threat in my opinion.
So what they did was they put a watch on
my house.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
What does that mean? They put a watch on your house?

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Well, I never knew what it meant, right, because That's
all they told me is that we'll put a watch
on your home. So what that means is that they
have your home known is an address to be looked over,
is what I assume. And I assume that because there
was one time, randomly, for whatever reason, somebody was running
from the cops, and for whatever reason, they decided to

(16:11):
pull up to At that time, I was living with
my mom. Still, they pulled into my mom's driveway and
they got out of their car and they ran to
the backyard. And because my mom, my sister, and me,
we were all in the house and we knew I
had a stalker, we all got very scared and we
called the police. And the police came and they checked
the backyard and everywhere around, and they told us, Okay,

(16:33):
this is what happened. This man was running from cops.
He just happened to Polunteer driveway. We've already taken him
into custody. We do know that you have a watch
on your home. Can you tell me why. And so
my sister, because I was traumatized, I was crying. I
didn't know what was going on. I was super scared.
My sister told them how somebody had been stalking me,
somebody had been threatening to rape me, and that the

(16:55):
police had not helped me. And so I mean, I
do know that they did put a watch on my.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
House, but that the officer didn't even know what it
was for. We know there's a watch in your house,
but why It's like, I don't know, I don't know
how it works. But that kind of makes you think like, well,
how serious are you taking this?

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Then? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, Like what good is this watch if you don't
know what you're looking for?

Speaker 3 (17:17):
I mean, but if you can imagine just being in
my shoes, even thinking that something's being done for you
is just it means the world, right, because what resources
did I have at that time? Nothing?

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Really at your job was anything done as far as
when you went to open houses, did someone come with you?
Was there anything put in place to help you feel safer?

Speaker 3 (17:43):
There was more like safety protocols that I had to
take more initiative on if I was ever at the
office alone and had to remain locked at all times,
which I still do to this day if I'm ever
in an office, no showings with people I don't know
by myself. For a long time, I didn't do evening
without either somebody on the phone or somebody with me.

(18:03):
Even to this day, I really don't like working with men.
I don't know. It makes me very uncomfortable and I
feel really horrible, But it's just one of those effects
of what's happened to me. And I did get a
constilled carry license, not because I'm trying to assume anyone
and everyone's my stalker, but because I had real fear
of somebody trying to take control of me physically.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Cassandra became hyper aware of her environment, always on the alert.
For example, when she had to meet a client in
person to show a house, she was very cautious, confirming
their identity before meeting in person, and often having someone
else come with her. She continued to live and work
this way for months, and then the months turned to years,

(18:54):
and still the texts and the phone calls kept coming.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Sometimes it would be for mone, so I wouldn't hear
from him, but he would always pop back up into
my life. And so it just happened to be that
I got a listing in the next town over, and
for whatever reason, somebody decided to vandalize that property. And
I do really think it was just random. I don't
think these two things are connected. But what had happened

(19:21):
was they went and took like a lot of the
medals out of like the electrical stuff and out of
like the plumbing. Right. So it was a home that
was already under contract that seller needed to sell, so
we had to get those repairs done. So because of that,
there were a few contractors I had to contact in
order to get quotes for the work. So I reached

(19:42):
out to the contractors I would need, and I called
one of the contractors and I called into the office.
And when I called into the office, I spoke to
the office lady, and the lady told me that she would,
you know, let one of her employees know that they
would reach out to me to set up that time
for a quote.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
And this is a company that you had worked with before,
you had some level of familiarity with them.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
I had never worked with them, but I had known
about them because of their online presence. Like I said,
we're a Facebook community, so they had a pretty strong
Facebook presence, and they also had really good reviews. Okay,
that's another thing, is realtor's If we're going to suggest
a service provider which is really not a great idea,

(20:30):
because you know, you want your customers to be choosing
who they've worked with because there's liability in everything. So
of course I'm going to look for what I think
is that a reputable company. So within me calling the
office and you know, setting up a quote, within not
even a minute, I mean it was immediate. I get
a text on my phone and it's from a person

(20:53):
who did work there. But this person had previously messaged
me about real estate over the last year. I'm always
uncomfortable about guys who like me and I don't know them,
and so he had mentioned in those previous texts about
like some charity work I had done. I used to
do work for Losagnulo, and so I mean he was

(21:14):
familiar enough with me to even ask about that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Maybe because of the stalker she'd been dealing with, Cassandra
was on high alert when interacting with men in general,
and she noticed that she'd previously texted with this guy.
I'm going to call him Chris, even though that's not
his real name. Looking at past texts with Chris, she
noticed heep been a little flirty. He probably had a
crush on her, but it didn't seem like that big

(21:39):
of a deal. So she scheduled him to do the
repair work on the rental property, and she said he
did a great job.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
He gave me a discount immediately, so it kind of
opened up that personal relationship, right because then I'm like, oh, well,
what a nice man. Then when he came to do
the work, he gave me a gift card, so it's like,
oh wow, you know, he really appreciates his custom. So
I did need a stove for that same property. I
posted on Facebook in search of a you stove because

(22:07):
I was going to get it for my sellar. I
wasn't going to make him pay for it. I was
going to do that all my own. And so I
was like, I got to find a U stove. Let
me go to Facebook. I know somebody on there will
have one. So I posted, and not even within five minutes,
that man messages me telling me that hey, I saw
that you needed a stove. If you can find one,
I can help you put it in.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
She did find a stove, and true to his word,
Chris helped her install it. It took a couple of
days and Cassandra and Chris got to chatting and she
says she ended up being kind of interested in him.
She thought he was cute from the.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
First moment I remember seeing him, I thought he was
really attractive, and he was kind to me, and he
was helpful, And when you're a single woman who nobody
is helping you, I mean, that's a way to really
like look great in someone's eyes, you know. So to me,
I was like, Wow, this guy's a really nice guy.
But then there were also little red flags that I

(23:06):
was like, is he nice because he's a nice guy,
or is he nice because he wants something from me?
So with all the gifts, with all the compliments, with
trying to get my attention all the time, you know,
I've dated a lot of guys where you really do
need to see their actions before you can determine whether
somebody is an appropriate fit for you. And you know,

(23:27):
just talking to somebody a few weeks is not enough time.
I've always had a lot of boundaries. I've always had
a lot of walls up, and so I even though
I really liked him, I wanted maybe to pursue more,
but I needed to know more about him first.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, can you describe to us or at least howe
very much you feel comfortable, Like what did he look like?
How did he carry himself? How did he dress?

Speaker 3 (23:52):
He's just a very regular guy. I mean, he's just
somebody that you wouldn't think twice about interacting with. You know,
he's just really a nice looking guy to be honest
with you, and the way he presents himself is very
like I almost want to say soft, like honestly somebody
who's just a really kind person. But what I was

(24:14):
thinking was, this man's always asking me questions. He's always
trying to talk to me, but he won't ask me
on a date. That's kind of weird. He's a decent
looking man, he's got a good business. Why is he
not asking me out? If he is finding reasons to
talk to me all the time. So I thought he
was a married man. I really did. I thought he's married,
he's got a family or something, and he's trying to

(24:36):
be a little sneaky with me to see if all
all out. I wanted to know more about him. All
I knew was the first name he was going by,
and so I was really starting to like him. But
I wanted to know more about him. One if he
was married and too just you know what his past was.
It wasn't until that evening when he helped me. We

(24:57):
finished the stove and everything, and I was talking to
some friends and also a guy friend, and I was like, Hey,
do you guys know this guy in his last name
or his business or anything? And my friends were like, no,
not really. And then I asked my guy friend and
he was like, no, but look up his number. Use
this reverse phone number. Look up and when I use
one of mine, it didn't give me his last name,

(25:18):
but when I used that one, it gave me the
first name and the last name.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Was that the same name that he had given you?

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Absolutely? Not. No.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
So you're with someone who's like, you need to run
this phone number through this reverse number search. You do that,
and you come up with a name that, upon searching,
is this person that you've been interacting with, But it's
not the name that he gave you. And what do
you find when you search his name? What comes up?

Speaker 3 (25:49):
One of the first things that come up is an
article about that person and being wanted for attempted murder. Wow.
He had tried to to kill his girlfriend at the time,
and he stabbed her so many times, fled to another
city before they were able to capture him.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
And at the point that you're reading this article, is
he still wanted or is it in the past, And
he had been apprehended since the article was written.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, so at the time that I was reading the
article was many many years later, and he had actually
already been apprehended and he had been tried and convicted
for the attempted murder.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Did it say that he had served prison time anything
like that?

Speaker 3 (26:38):
So for that, he did serve three years in just
three yards out on probation, and that was already his
second offense.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
What else did you discover after this?

Speaker 3 (26:51):
I saw the sex registry and on there it says
he's a registered sex offender for second or great criminal penetration.
So that's a different offense from the attempted murder. So
there's two women he's attacked at two different times. They
were like Facebook news articles, right, and so people can
comment on them. So one of his previous victims, the

(27:15):
one before the girlfriend, had commented that she didn't even
know him and that he raped her and stalked her afterwards.
And so from there, when I read those things, Okay,
it's not like I ever wanted to put these things together,
but to not would be a grave mistake. This person

(27:38):
never went by his name that's on the registry. He's
going by a totally different name. He never ever disclosed
to me that he is a registered sex offender, and
he was doing work on a home. His employer didn't
disclose that to me either. I have been stalked for
five years, threatened to rape, and then here I am
with this man who will not leave me alone, who

(27:59):
is always finding reasons to be around me, who's giving
me gifts, and who has never told me that he
is riped and tried to kill somebody.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Cassandra was shocked and horrified to find out that Chris,
the man who she'd hoped to date and who worked
at this reputable company around town, was a convicted criminal
who had violently attacked two women in his past. Cassandra
found this out in January of twenty twenty five, and
for context, she had been getting unsolicited phone calls and

(28:30):
texts with threats of violence since February of twenty twenty one,
and suddenly she had this feeling that it was the
same guy that Chris was the one who'd been harassing
her for almost four years. When she looked at his
flirty texts. They felt eerily familiar.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
It's not that I one hundred percent knew he was
my stalker. It was that this was the first time
anybody had ever come into my life that made me
fear for my life in that manner.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
What is your level of contact with him during that
time and how do you navigate that once you understand
him to be an incredibly dangerous person.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
It was constant, he would not leave me alone, and
that was another reason why I was like, this man
is texting me all the time, constantly. I don't think
anybody can truly understand how horrified, how discussed, and how
scared I was for my life. When I say I
was in fear for my life, there's just no exaggeration

(29:37):
to that. That's a fact. I knew that this man
is a smart man. He's a manipulative man. And I
knew that just removing myself and just going straight to
the police would not be a smart idea. I was
also worried that would they believe me, and so I
decided and I told my girlfriends right away in a
group text, and I called my dad, and I called

(29:59):
my sister and me as soon as I put that
together in my mind, I'd started telling people I think
I know who my stalker is, or I believe I've
figured out who my stalker is. And of course they
say why, and I say, because of his interactions with me,
of the way he's obsessed, because of his history, Because
I've never ever been around anyone who's ever made me
feel like this.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
What Cassandra did next, the steps that she took, could
be confusing at face value, even controversial, and it would
honestly cause a lot of problems for her later because
what she did next is not the textbook reaction that
you might expect from someone afraid for their life. But
I'd argue that you actually don't know what you would

(30:42):
do unless you were in that situation. She'd been hyper
vigilant for four years. She'd been looking over her shoulder.
She'd been dealing with someone who was sending her threats
of rape consistently for four years. She'd been scared, and
she'd asked for help from the multiple times, and she
felt like she hadn't gotten any. Cassandra says she felt

(31:11):
like if she just cut off contact with Chris, if
she ghosted him, she wasn't sure what he would do,
and that really terrified her, so she wanted to figure
out a way to extricate herself from the conversation without
letting him know that she believed he was her stalker.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
And so from that day, I probably talked to him
for like the next five or six days. And when
I say talked to him, I mean that I no
longer was trying to meet up with him in person.
That was never an option again, and that was frustrating
for him. I was causing a lot of friction by
pretending to be jealous, by saying he liked other people,

(31:50):
by saying he was taking too long to message me back,
just being as chaotic as possible, because what I wanted
him to feel like is that if something was wrong
between us, it's not because I knew something was wrong
with him.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
So you were sort of coming up with conflicts to
have with him to get him away from you without
letting him know that you knew who he was.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yes, it was very important to me that he did
not know that I knew he was my stalker.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
And I don't know if you're comfortable seeing this, but
up until this point, you know, because you had seen
him in person. Had you, guys, ever engaged in any
sort of like romantic relationship.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
No, I'm so grateful for that. You don't even understand
how mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. I am grateful that I
never held his hand, that I never kissed him, that
if I gave him a hug, it was only ever
a side hug. Just knowing that he never physically got
to have any emotional intimacy with me other than those

(32:55):
messages is a triumph for me. And so through that
there's messages. Me and him probably started messaging pretty often
just within that like first week before I found out
that he was my stalker. And in between that little
bit of time, we have twelve hundred messages together. Over
twelve hundred messages. That is so excessive, And it was

(33:16):
just me constantly having to deal with the emotional baggage
of putting up this front. It came to a day
to where I finally told him, like, I don't want
to talk to you anymore. You're not giving me the
attention that I want, and so I'm just going to
block you, because to me, that was the best way
to put it.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
The next day, Cassandra went to the Sheriff's department. She
said she had a personal connection with an under sheriff there,
which made her feel more comfortable coming forward with something
so vulnerable.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
And I went to him and I told him, this
is the reason why I believe this man could be
the stalker, and I gave him text messages. I told
him that it was his behavior, and I was very upfront.
I told him we had been talking that because we
had been talking, I had to continue talking to them
once I did put two and two together, because I

(34:05):
was in fear for my life. When I reported to him,
he told me he knew about that man. He knew
about that man, that he knew that that man had
caused trouble in the community, that even he knew recently
about some issues he was having because he had possibly
been harassing another woman in another social network. And so
he seemed like he believed me. And so he said, Okay, well,

(34:28):
since he's a sex offender, I'm going to give this
to the investigator to handle, because she's the one who
should be handling it.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
At first, it seemed to Cassandra like her case was
being taken seriously and that something would be done. But
because Chris was a paroled sex offender. This case had
to be transferred to the local police department and they
had to coordinate with his parole officer. So Cassandra got
a call from a detective at her local police department,

(34:57):
and this is when things began to go downhill for her.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
When she called me, she told me to tell her
my story, and I did the same story I'm telling
you here today, and I did mention that I'm a believer.
I believe in God and I believe in Jesus Christ.
I do believe that, you know, the Holy Spirit protecting
me from this man by being able to put these
things together. But it's not like the behavior and his

(35:23):
actions weren't there. So she told me that day, she
told me that because he was on Facebook and he
shouldn't be, because he's a Pearl sex offender, that she
could have him arrested. That she was going to get
with his parole officer and that they would get together
to go through his phone and to have him arrested.
Did I want her to continue with that? To me,

(35:44):
it was like, finally, finally, somebody's going to help me.
There's going to be some action. This person has been
harassing me, causing me so much harm for so many years.
This person has a really bad history. The cops are
already aware of him, he's already under their supervision. Finally,
so she told me that she would get with the
parole officer, that they would work on getting him arrested.

(36:08):
That it was Friday, so she would give me a
call later on that afternoon, and I told her please,
because I want to know how much I will be involved,
because I don't want him to know it's me that
I'm in fear of my life. She asked me if
I wanted her to ask him if he was my stalker,
and I told her, no, I don't want you to
ask him that I am afraid of him. I'm in

(36:30):
fear of my life, and I don't want him to
know it's me accusing him. And so the weekend passed by,
and I think I waited until the following Tuesday, and
I followed up. So she reached out to me, and
from there that's when the story started to change little
by little. And so from there she said, oh, well,
you know, I have to get with his parole officer.
She hasn't brought him in. I have to see what's
going on with that. I think she's sick. She's usually

(36:51):
on top of things, you know. Another week goes by,
I'm asking questions again, still getting a run around. They
haven't brought him in, haven't looked through his phone, so
I'm just taking her word that she's helping me.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
We have a copy of the detective's report. In it,
she notes that she told Cassandra on the phone call
that the tech screenshots were not evidenced that Chris was
her stalker. She says she also informed Cassandra that she
would have to contact Chris's probation officer, and then if
it were true that he had a Facebook profile, that
would be a violation of his parole. But she also

(37:25):
states that they can't do anything without evidence. As time
ticked by, Cassandra was losing faith that the police department
was taking her claim seriously. Were they taking appropriate action
to stop someone who she believed had been threatening to
rape her.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
So there comes a day where I think it's already
almost two full weeks and nothing's being done. And I
told her that I regretted coming to them because I
felt like they weren't helping me. And that's when she
called me and she told me that she was going
to get with the pearole officer again to find out
what's going on, that they do have to go through

(38:04):
his phone, that they can't just accuse him of anything,
and that she would have to wait and see what
happens with that. And I said, well, you told me
that he could be arrested, and I feel like, if
you guys don't help me, there's going to be nothing
for me to do. And I really do believe that he's,
you know, the person that's been doing this to me,
for y'all to look into him, and I told her,
I feel like, if y'all don't help me, the only

(38:27):
recourse I have to keep myself safe is to come
forward and let people know that he's a danger. And
she told me that she knows he hates public humiliation,
that his other victims have come forward in the past,
and that she thought he was a changed man. And
so I had a bad feeling about her, and I

(38:49):
knew that nothing was going to get done. And so
the following morning again she told me she was going
to reach out to the parole officer. Within like twenty minutes,
she told me that they had already brought him in
they looked through his and that there was no evidence
in nothing they could do. So when she told me
there was nothing they could do, I knew there was
something that I should do. And so what I did

(39:10):
is I made a post. I made a Facebook post.
I never name him. My community was already aware I
have a stalker. I'm a realtor and I let people
know and I've had somebody stalking me. I would post
the messages because I'm not going to let somebody ruin
my life without people watching over me. So when the
sheriffs didn't help me, my first post was just something

(39:32):
pretty basic, saying that I found out who my stalker
was and that I went to the sheriffs and they
would not help me. And so the following day I
made another post. This one was more specific and it
included the message where he threatened to rape me. But
in the post, I never name him, but I just
said that this person was a registered sex offender, that

(39:55):
the sheriffs were not helping me even though I went
to them, that this person hides behind their business and
that they're a very dangerous person. And really that's all
I had to put because within like just a couple hours.
There was tons of shares, there was tons of comments
because people had put together through those details who this

(40:18):
person was, and because he has such a heinous history,
people got very angry with him. I never ever asked
anyone to do anything on my behalf. All I wanted
to do is to notify people that I had no help.
And so he started receiving death threats from people, So
he says, because who even knows. But that's all it

(40:38):
took was him saying that he went to the sheriffs
and he served me with the restraining order that same day.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
If it seems unbelievable that, after everything, Cassandra is the
one who gets slapped with a restraining order, there's even
more that's mind blowing about this. After Cassandra felt that
her local police department was not taking action to help her,
her relationship with them totally devolved. She became outspoken in
her criticism of the police department, and eventually they closed

(41:07):
her case. Things got so bad that it's hard to
know how to interpret that. Did they close the case
due to lack of evidence or potentially out of spite
they did not like that Cassandra had gone public with
her story and that she was saying negative things about
both the police Department and the Sheriff's office on Facebook.
As Cassandra said previously, this was a Facebook community and

(41:31):
people were outraged on her behalf. And even though she
didn't name her stocker on Facebook, people in the community
put two and two together and some people figured out
who she was talking about, and now Chris had a
reason to claim that Cassandra was harassing him. Additionally, all
of those text messages that she'd sent him back when
she was trying to carefully extricate herself from the conversation

(41:55):
with him, at face value, they could appear like a
woman who was obsessed with him. Regardless, Cassandra said, the
police department reached out to her and tried to make
amends and repair their relationship, but according to her, their
efforts were not long lasting or helpful, and nothing was
really resolved. We reached out to the police department for

(42:17):
comment on this story and have not heard back.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
I was receiving phone calls from the Sheriff's apartment in
the Police Department after I made that post that same day,
because it just blew up. Everybody was reading it, everybody
was sharing it. I guess people were interacting because of
it or having responses because of it. So what ended
up happening was they were trying to get a hold

(42:41):
of me. The Sheriff's is calling me because I guess
they did not like the way that the community was
reacting to the way they handled it. Investigator called me
saying that she had to take care of it if
I wanted their help. I initially said, I don't want
their help because they told me that they weren't going
to help me, So I said, why would I want
your help now, And because they served me with the

(43:03):
restraining order, I told them I wanted to speak with
an attorney first because I was scared. But on that
same conversation, I told her I wanted to speak with
an attorney because of how she never collected any evidence
for me, how she never brought me in to talk
to me, how she never really even investigated is why
I didn't want to talk to her. And I told her,

(43:23):
I do want y'all to investigate. I just don't want
your help.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
And so all of that is taking place in what
the summer of this past year.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
No, all of it was taking place in February.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
And March February in March, and where does it all
stand right now? Because it seems like you did everything
that we quote like tell not we Hannah and I,
but like society is like, well, if they had just
reported it, and if they had just documented it, but
you did all of that and you didn't get the

(43:59):
help that you were looking for. Where does it all
stand right now?

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Well, things got a lot worse because I went to
the police department and I met with a detective. Detective
took information and pretended like he was actually going to investigate.
But over the next like probably three months, I would
follow up with him. I would ask him, Hey, have
you looked into these numbers? Have you tried to access

(44:25):
the Apple ID? Can you subpoena for real information? And
he just always would tell me it'll take more time,
I'm waiting on phone records. Honestly, I think he was
lying to me the whole time. So what ended up
happening was I decided to share my story on a
pretty big podcast and so through that, the Lieutenant governor
of the state actually reached out to me.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
That's right, The Lieutenant governor's office got involved with this
after Cassandra told her story on a big podcast, and
because of that, we actually have access to emails that
relay conversations between the Lieutenant Governor's office and the police
department about Cassandra and her case, and they are very
illuminating as to how bad things got.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
It is clear that.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Cassandra was not a well liked person at her local
police department. One email states when a detective was asked
about Cassandra, he claimed she consistently lied, screamed, and cussed
at officers. The main detective, the one Cassandra made her
initial report to once she felt she'd identified her stalker
as Chris. That detective told someone in the Lieutenant Governor's

(45:34):
office flat out that she did not believe Cassandra's story.
She also said that Cassandra had no evidence except her
claim that the Holy Spirit told her that this man
was her stalker. She claimed that she offered to help Cassandra,
but Cassandra was hesitant to have her name listed on
the report, which is true, and so she closed the case. Now,

(45:56):
to give this police department the benefit of the doubt here,
it is it is true that Cassandra has no fool
proof evidence proving that this man Chris is the same
man who has been stalking her for four years, and
the police should not just go around arresting people without cause.
But I also have to wonder how did Cassandra become

(46:16):
such a hated person in this department, and were the
detectives letting their personal feelings about her impact the case.
How hard had they really tried? Because to me, Cassandra
has a compelling theory that this man is her stalker,
and she has a lot to back up that theory
enough to where I think it should be looked into.

(46:37):
She has saved many, many messages from the random numbers
that have harassed her for years, and she has compared
those messages to Chris's verifiable cell phone and the messages
that he sent, and a lot of them are very similar.
The phrasing he uses, the content they sound alike. Cassandra
also looked up Chris's cell phone number again, the real

(46:59):
number registered to his name on a site called tellos
dot com, and his number has multiple complaints of harassment
against women connected to it. Someone from the Lieutenant Governor's
office verified that that was true. Additionally, when Cassandra met
Chris in person and they began texting. The mysterious and

(47:19):
harassing random text messages that she'd been getting for years
suddenly stopped. That timing was interesting to her that along
with the allegations that he'd been using Facebook, which she
clarified that he had been using his company's Facebook account,
but he had reached out to Cassandra multiple times on Facebook,

(47:40):
and using Facebook was a violation of his parole, So
wouldn't that be enough probable cause to search his phone
and computer. It is noted in an email that at
some point Chris's phone was searched, not by the police department,
but by his parole officer, and it stated that nothing
was found, no more details than that, And I have

(48:02):
to wonder how deep was this search? Did they know
what apps to look for? And what if he had
deleted the apps? Did they look through his app store
history to see what apps he had downloaded and deleted.
There's not a lot of information about what exactly they searched.
All of this to me begs the question what kind
of victim? Do police departments have a responsibility to help?

(48:26):
Just the ones they like or everybody? Because instead of
looking into Cassandra's case, something completely bizarre happened. They charged
her with harassment. They said she had been harassing Chris.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
And I was arrested in August and spent three days
in jail.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Oh my god, you spent three days in jail. What
was the charge?

Speaker 3 (48:50):
It was a charge of harassment and they threw me
in jail for harassment. That's not a normal thing to do.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
We have a copy of the arrest record. In August
of twenty twenty five, Cassandra was charged with harassment and arrested.
As far as we can tell, there was no additional
inciting incident that led to this arrest, and the harassment
charges came from Cassandra repeatedly claiming that Chris was her stoker.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Yeah, it's also, like, what could be scarier than to
think that while you were just trying to protect yourself
from someone else, the other powers that be, like the
police department, sheriff's department, is actively working against you and
doing that.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
So you can imagine as I'm like being taken to jail,
just the total shock I was in. Oh, but I
did not cry. I did not cry, and I was
not scared because I one hundred percent knew that it
was retaliation. I knew that I was not a harasser.
I knew that I had not made contact with that

(49:57):
man since I blocked him in jan For the last
four months, I've been trying to get myself out of
that charge, and it was difficult, but I really do
believe they thought they were going to be able to
get me with that charge, and so I had to
change attorneys three times before I found an attorney who
was not going to try and make me take a
plea deal. And so it wasn't until that last attorney

(50:20):
that the DA automatically dropped the charges dismissed him as
soon as they saw the attorney's name on the docket.
That should tell you a lot.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
How much have you spent defending yourself against this charge?

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Ten thousand dollars?

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Wow? Wow, that is so much money. Yeah, And I mean,
we believe you. I believe you.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
You know, it's horrible, and it's clear that this guy
is also used to navigating the criminal justice system and
is smart about it.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
But the other thing is I'm just curious, like, from
a legal standpoint, it seems like there's a big barrier
that could the evidence hold up in court because you
have the text from what you you know, whateveryone recognize
this is his number, his registered number. You have his
history of violence. But is there anything evidentiary that can

(51:09):
connect him to these other phone calls and text messages
from these untraceable numbers that you know of.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
I believe if an actual detective looked into it, they
would because there's a lot of the way he would
spell things, the way he would like use grammar and punctuation.
There's a lot that are similar. And even the detective
even on his report, he says that they do seem similar,
the two text messages. But what really kind of made

(51:40):
me sick to my stomach one time was I always
remember that message where he said he wanted to marry
me and have babies. When I was interacting with this
person over that week, we were not talking about family
or anything like that. I just randomly said, like, hey,
what's your four or five year plan? You know, like
talking about like what do you want for yourself? I
was sinking business wise or something, you know, and he

(52:02):
said to have a wife named Cassandra and his last
name in a baby.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
He said this to you in person in text, in text, but.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
We may be been talking not even a week yet, Like,
I mean, you don't say that to a woman. Even
the way he interacted with me, Like he remembers a
time that we met at a toy run and I
don't even remember it, and that's something significant for him.
And then he just weird stuff, like really creepy stuff,

(52:31):
like how he one time he told me like that
he liked that I didn't remember that it was him
and that I came off like it's a cold bitch
because he wanted to win me over or like change me,
and like, I just really believe that the evidence is
all there. And to me, I've been stalked for five years. Okay,

(52:52):
you're telling me it can't be this man, So why
won't you find out who it is? Especially because I'm
still being stalked. What woman should have to endure five
years of threats of rape? Why can I not rely
on the police department, the Sheriff's apartment, or the state
police to look into these numbers when I have actual

(53:14):
threats of violence against me. Also, I am in the
real estate community. This is not just something that's affecting me.
This is affecting the community. This is a professional job
that affects everyone why are they not taking this as
a public safety issue? And another thing I like to

(53:35):
say is that this person is a pearled sex offender
who does not have to report the name they go by.
To me, I don't just see my issue as dealing
with just this person who's caused me harm. I see
my issue as dealing with the system that is enabled
this person to possibly live a life without any restraint,

(53:57):
even though they should be under extreme supervision. And so
that's the real issue that I have. My issue is
that I'm living in an unsafe community where I can't
even report the violence that's happening to me.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah, I mean, it is unbelievable. One thing we haven't
talked about yet is that you did reach out to
his other victims. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 3 (54:25):
So when I first came out on Facebook at the
beginning of the year, his victims reached out to me
because he's showing up again, and so I spoke with
his victim that he attempted to murder. She still lives
in our community as well. She still battles this every
day too, these poor women. In March of twenty twenty four,

(54:48):
she did try to get a restraining order on him,
and the courts denied it. Somebody had poisoned her dog.
He was driving by her kids' school, and somebody vandalized
her car, and the courts still denied training order. Even
though the best part of his stipulations is to have
no contact with her. They just will not consider anything
he does is wrong, I guess. And she's also told

(55:12):
me that she has judgments that because she followed the
civil suit against him, and she has like a ton
of monetary damages that have been awarded to her because
of this, and he's never paid a dime. He's over
here hiding behind his business and pretending to be a
rich person. I just don't understand how he's had no

(55:32):
repercussions whatsoever. And I feel for her so bad. And
the other victim that he did rape, she told me
about the violent attack, and she did have to move
out of state because he was still stalking her and
nobody would do anything.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
It's horrible if it happens to one person, and to
learn that it's happened to multiple people with the same offender,
it's surprising, you know, it's very scary because obviously you
would think, at least you know from my civilian perspective, Well,
you should have more than enough information to know that

(56:10):
this is a very dangerous person and that you should
listen to the people who are shouting from the rooftops
that they're being threatened by him, because you know, I
don't know the stats in front of me, but a
crime that violent, I don't think it's probably unlikely for
people to commit crimes again, or for there to be
an escalation.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Just a follow up question I have, what is his
role in this company that you reached out to? Is
he like a higher up there? Is he a contractor?

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Like?

Speaker 1 (56:38):
What can you tell me about him professionally?

Speaker 3 (56:42):
He does own that company, so it's a shield. There's
people in the community that shield him too. He hides
behind his nickname so people can't just google it and
see that. You know, the man who owns that company
is a registered sex offenner. I think that's scary. This
person was going into homes like probably still is not

(57:05):
giving notice and his parole officers now and there was
no consequences about that.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
So as of today, you know, we're speaking with you
mid December twenty twenty five, he's out and about in
the world.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
Yes, and of course I'm alleging that it is this person,
you know, but there's a lot that has made me
weary for my safety and made me suspicious to where
I did report him to police, and I think it's
a reasonable expectation for them to have had a way
better investigation on him. So I did file notice of

(57:42):
tort to sue, and so I have tort notices out
with the county, with the city, with the sheriff Department,
the police Department, State of New Mexico, Department of Corrections,
the New Mexico State Police. Because there should be accountability.
Officers should not be rogue like this in the state.
There needs to be accountability. There needs to be more oversight.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Yeah, I mean the idea that you could be victimized
by someone. I mean, yes, it's alleged, but like, you
believe this to be true, and this is your story,
and you're going to police, and then you know, to
go in thinking someone's about to help you and to
be arrested. Yeah, it's such an incredible violation of trust.
I totally see where you're coming from, even though I

(58:28):
do think it's sad.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
And I think time will tell for sure, and I
think as a woman, the most important thing you can
do is to believe in yourself and to try to
keep yourself safe even when nobody else is helping you.
So I think that's the most important thing. Because it's
a victim, you're going to be isolated, you're going to

(58:51):
be silenced, and sometimes even when you go to the
proper authorities, they might punish you. But don't give up.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Wow, that was such an interesting conversation with Cassandra and
something you and I talk about when we go into
stories like hers, where you have this person who has
been victimized, She is being stalked, has been stoked, and
that is a very scary situation to be in. And
you know, she is very valid in her fear and

(59:23):
anger around how the case was handled, at least from
her perception of that.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
I mean, if someone were threatening you for years, you
can imagine how eventually that would make you feel so enraged.
It would make me feel enraged, would make me feel unsafe,
And also just like, how is it possible that someone
is able to still do this?

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Yeah, it's maddening. And anytime you and I interview someone
who has been arrested or has any sort of criminal history.
It's something that we look into. We have to do
our due diligence and ultimately with Cassandra's story, and just
like with others where we've come across this, it's like, Okay,

(01:00:08):
she has this arrest for harassment. Yeah, and we didn't
talk to law enforcement about their decision to arrest her
for her assment. We reached out, by the way, but
they have not responded. Okay, yeah, we reached out, but
no response. And so it's like for us in our show,
this is Cassandra's experience, and I think what it does
really highlight that we can all agree on is that

(01:00:31):
the experience of being stocked and feeling like you are
in danger and not getting the support that you need
from law enforcement can make you do things that you
wouldn't normally do. And that can range from the way
that you interact with law enforcement once you feel like
they're not working for you, to you know, her need
to go out and get a concealed carry permit, yeah,

(01:00:53):
to protect herself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Or even her talking about when she is texting with
this guy who we call Chris the episode, obviously that's
not his real name, and she comes to believe and
I say, comes to believe because still there's no evidence
one hundred percent that shows that he is her stalker.
She comes to believe that he is, and she's in
this really weird position where she's been texting with him,

(01:01:16):
kind of flirting with him, kind of likes him. Maybe
once the datam suddenly everything changes. She finds out his
criminal history and history of violence against women, believes he's
her stalker, and now she is terrified for him to
find out that she believes this because she doesn't know
what he'll do. And I think that's a valid fear.

(01:01:38):
It's a tale as old as time. It's like keep
your friends close, enemies closer. Yeah, she doesn't know what
he's fully capable of, but she does believe he's capable
of violence. Yeah, And so then she goes through this
whole thing of taking on a character. This is her
story to us, right, pretending to be a jealous woman.
She's trying to drive him away by being sort of

(01:01:58):
unpredictable and crazy and clinging and all those things. And
that's the choice that she made in that time. Again,
like you could see it from two perspectives. You can
see how if you really feel like no one is
helping you or even believing you you're on your own.
You're scared, So it's like it's an interesting strategy to
come up with to protect herself, but then it ends

(01:02:20):
up really hurting her in the long run because the
police can look at that and say, no, look, you're
obsessed with him and you're harassing him. So it's obviously
so messy and tricky.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
It muddies the waters for someone whose job is to
discern from electronic communication, like a text, who's in the
right and who's in the wrong. Because if you're kind
of in a relationship or you were at one point,
and your text messages allude to like you being clinging
to him, portraying that he's a stalker is even more difficult.

(01:02:52):
But if you believe you're fighting for your own safety,
you do things that you wouldn't expect yourself to do.
And you know, you and I, for as long as
we reported on different stories together, have seen this and
victims of all manner of crimes where you think you'd
react one way, but then it happens to you, and
that's usually not the way that you end up reacting. Totally.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
This is really random. But the texting thing makes me
think about the Diddy trial and the way that Cassie
was texting with him, and all these texts are pulled
up by attorneys like, well, looks like you say I
love you, kiss, kiss or whatever, And the reality is, yes,
those actual physical texts were sent. But when you look
at the greater situation of someone who's being abused, who

(01:03:37):
is also aware that if they anger the person who's
either abusing them, stocking them, whatever it is, that that
is not going to go well for them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
It's self preservation. Yeah, and it's not that black and white.
You just can't say, oh, well, because you were nice
to them, you must have been okay with it. There
must not have been a problem. Yeah, I mean, I
mean we all do it in like such a in
small always all the time in our life. Like how
many women have been at a bar and been approached

(01:04:06):
by someone they weren't interested in and tried to like
kindly exit, maybe even after that person was too abrasive,
because it's just safer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Totally, Yeah, you don't want to piss that person off
and then suddenly you're in danger when you literally were
just trying to have a drink at a bar.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Yeah, likely and that's the thing I love about our
show is that it's an individual story and we don't
have to call the shots. A listener can interpret for themselves,
you know, their take on what happened to this person.
And this is Cassandra's authentic experience. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
One thing that this story, this interview made me think
about in relation to stocking, and it's something that has
kind of come up as a theme on our show
on a lot of different episodes. It's this idea that
crime is occurring in a different way than it used to,
the fact that you can literally and I look this
up because I was like, how easy is this?

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I went to the app store. I looked at all
these apps, like, it's actually so easy to download an
app on your phone that allows you to send text
messages that look like they're coming from random numbers that
aren't traceable. Now they're traceable technically back to the app.
So if someone had my phone and I was doing this,
they could see I have this app, they could open
it up and see that I've been sending text messages.

(01:05:20):
But it's also like you could just download and delete
an app. Yeah, and you know, I don't know to
what lengths. This guy's phone was searched when it was searched,
but it makes me wonder did the people looking at
his phone were they aware that this kind of app existed?
Did they look for that? Did they look at his
app history which you can do and look at what

(01:05:41):
apps he's downloaded and deleted?

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
You know? How thorough was this search?

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
And maybe it was. We don't know because they didn't
respond to us when we asked these questions, and it's
not listed in any of the documents that we have.
But it makes me think that there's such a need
for investigations to become technologically like intelligent, for the investigation
to match the crime. If the crime is happening on

(01:06:08):
the internet with different apps and whatever like, there needs
to be an investigation that's competent, right about these types
of things?

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
And how well resourced are these small town law enforcement agencies?
You know, they're probably spread thin. And what is the
continued education on cyberstocking? Yeah? I don't know. Yeah, but
thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you next week.
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is the Knife at exactly

(01:06:38):
rightmedia dot com or You can follow us on Instagram
at the Knife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
This has been an exactly Right production, hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and me Paytia Edy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.