U Be Dead: The Stalking of Dr. Falkowski

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the True
Crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the True crime campfire.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Cell Phones are amazing, aren't they. You have this little
magic box in your pocket that you can look at
and use to call halfway across the world. New parents
can send photos of their babies to their loved ones
that live hours away. Best friends can start a podcast
even though they don't live in the same state, and

(00:41):
soulmates can meet even from entirely different countries. Of course,
we can't have good things without someone using it for evil.
Some people use phones as a means of harassment of control.
In today's case, a stalker uses their phone as a
weapon of mass destruction in order to try to get

(01:01):
the attention of one man. This is You Be Dead,
The Stalking of Doctor Jan Polkowski.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
So campers, today, we're in London in the United Kingdom.
Doctor Jan Folkowski and Debbie Pemberton are about to embark
on one of the happiest journeys of their lives marriage.
The couple had met in December of two thousand and one,
and two weeks later, Yan proposed on New Year's Eve.
Now we know, we usually poke fun of people for
these types of speedy engagements, and you know, deservedly, but

(01:42):
these two seemed like the real deal. They quickly started
to plan their dream wedding and decided to take their
time and have a long engagement, which I would say
is definitely the way to go if you just met. Doctor.
Jan Falkowski is a respected psychiatrist as well as a
professional powerboat racer. Debbie worked as a financial analyst. Together,
they were quite the power couple. Their engagement was announced

(02:05):
in a National Health Service magazine, which is distributed NHS
offices as Reading, which is funny to me as an American,
because we have, you know, cripplingly expensive private healthcare, and
I feel like if we had like cheery little magazines
announcing our doctor's engagements in the waiting rooms, they'd have
to add new Geneva conventions like oh, how nice for you.

(02:25):
You're getting married on a yacht, are you? Anyway? So,
one day in the fall of two thousand and two,
Debbie got a call from the phone company to confirm
her information. Just general housekeeping stuff, emails, workplace, that sort
of thing. That same week, a female friend of Yan's
called her to confirm Yon's phone number. Thinking nothing of it,

(02:48):
they headed to their normal weekend getaway the Dorset coast
to spend time at Debbie's flat in Pool. As the
couple drove down to the coast, watching the scenery slide by,
Debbie's phon ding signaling a text message, followed shortly by Yan's.
When Debbi read the words on her screen, she could
barely comprehend them. They were wrathful, violent, a bullet waiting

(03:13):
for you, a present for stopping Yon talking to me.
You can't escape, Yan's read, I'll get you. The messages continued,
sometimes accompanied by calls made by both a man and
a woman. The messages toward Debbie were obviously far more vitriolic.
Some examples prepare for a funeral, not a wedding. Tart,

(03:38):
You're gonna die, bang bang, that's all you deserve, Deborah Tart.
Your last days are counted up. Yikes. Meanwhile, Yon's text
says stuff like you will never know how much I
feel for you in the last four years. We should
be together now. In his book The Gift of Fear,
Gavin de Becker says that when you're trying to narrow

(04:00):
down who could be sending this type of message, your
first instinct is usually spot on. To Debbie and Yan,
it seemed like it could be a scorned lover, but
none of Yan's exes seemed like the type to get
so angry. They reported the messages and calls to the
Dorset Police, who said there really wasn't much they could do.
Stalking laws were quite a bit crappier than than they

(04:21):
are now, but they recommended that they keep a record
of the calls and messages, just to document. The following Monday,
October twenty eighth, the couple was back in London and
visited Yan's boat, but they immediately sensed that something was off.
They were sure they'd turned the lights off when they
left the last time they were there, but they were
on now. A couple days later, they got back and

(04:43):
smelled the distinct scent of cooking gas. They immediately went
and checked the stove, which had been left on. The
lock keeper at the marina told police that a woman
with orange hair and olive toned's skin had attempted to
enter the dock area, telling her that she was invited
there to dinner with doctor Falkowski. The caller indicated to

(05:04):
Jan that they knew Debbie's address and pool, and he
truly had no idea how on earth they got a
hold of this information until he was talking with his
mother about it. His poor mom was horrified. She'd been
contacted by the wedding florist in pool, telling her that
Jan had ordered Debbie some flowers but had forgotten to
send her other address. Now, if you've ever sat through

(05:25):
any sort of cyber security training at your job, this
might sound familiar to you. It's called social engineering. It's
a way to use psychological manipulation to create security weaknesses
or leak sensitive information. Fishing is one example. Another is
walking close behind somebody when they use their key card
to get into a secure building, or.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Calling an older woman whose son is getting married and
making it seem like he's doing something nice for his
fiance and getting her to divulge some super sensitive information.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, exactly, Now, it's not nearly A sex is typing
really fast on the computer and going I'm in but
it probably requires a lot more social aptitude.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
So the soccer knew their venue, a hotel called Salterns
in Dorset. She sent Yan a message that read tragedy
at Salturn's. Jan, I am a genuine invited guest. How
are you going to avoid me? It was clear the
stalker knew the date of the wedding as well. It
was a common feature of the messages September ninth, two

(06:29):
thousand and three. It was mentioned often constantly, often as
a date of someone's death. As the months wore on,
jan and Debbie kept getting messages almost constantly, and the
messages always had little clues that indicated that the person
sending them knew exactly what they were up to in
their daily life, like they were being followed, really really unsettling,

(06:55):
like they couldn't let their guard down for a single moment.
Debbie paid a visit to the dentist to get her
teeth whitened, and while she was in the chair, she
heard a sound she'd grown to be apprehensive of over
the months, the ping of an incoming text. When she
checked her messages after the procedure, she felt the floor
drop out from under her. The message read Deborah Tart

(07:20):
fancied whitening her teeth her mouth could burn. Oh my god,
how on earth this person knew the date of Debbie's
teeth whitening appointment was beyond anyone's grasp. It's still not
super clear how she got this info. Now, it's possible
she did more social engineering, or maybe this docker just
broke into Debbie's flat and had to look in her calendar.

(07:42):
I'm not sure which is creepier, to be honest.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah, I mean, obviously Option A and Option B are
both horrifying. I think I'd probably be a little more
terrified if she broke into my house, but I wouldn't
be happy about either one. It's very creepy to think
of these people worming their way into the people in
your orbit and like getting information out of them. It's
they're both horrendously creepy.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. The police told Jan and Debbie to start really
thinking about the people in their lives, to contemplate if
any of them could be the culprit. On the British show, Stalker,
Debbiett talked about how this was really the most difficult
part of the whole ordeal, having to look at the
people closest to her and wonder if they would try
to hurt her in such an invasive and cruel way. Meanwhile,

(08:27):
the police were pretty confident that they were going to
run the phone number through their system, find Yan's spurned lover,
and bing bang bosh, they'd be done in time for tea.
Unfortunately for them, their stalker had covered their tracks. They
were using an Internet number and withheld calls. Looks like
the cops Earl Gray was going to go cold because

(08:49):
it was time for some real police work.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Damn it, pain in the ass. We had oobnoms and everything.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
I know their crumpets. The crumpets are going to go
stale to the police. This was basically the perfect crime.
Internet numbers were basically untraceable. It was like a Google
Voice number before Google Voice was a thing. The police
asked Yan to get his phone company to block with
health numbers to see what the stalker would do if
she couldn't call her message. Anyone who's been stocked knows

(09:21):
that the worst time, aside from when the stalker is
harassing you, is when they become silent because what are
they up to? I can't imagine what Yan and Debbie
were thinking in the silence. Was it relief at first?
Did they still jump at every ping, at every ring?
Did it feel like victory? Was there a certainty that

(09:43):
the problem would be back, like a landlord painting over
mold before the next tenant moved in when the stalker
reached out again, did it feel worse? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (09:52):
And I'd be really interested to hear listeners stories about that,
because I'm sure some of you have experienced stalking. I mean,
just statistically, the likelihood is that multiple people listening have
been stalked, and I'd be interested to hear about it.
In the UK, in the early two thousands, British Telecom
had a series of phone boxes where you could email,
call and text BT multimedia boxes. The stalker started using

(10:15):
those to contact Debbie and Jan. The great thing for
the investigation was that these were traceable and they could
start monitoring this person's movements every weekend. Debbie and Yan
would drive from London to Dorset each Saturday. Right before
they'd leave, a silent phone call would be made from
a railway station in London, either from Liverpool Street or Waterloo.

(10:37):
Then silence for two hours, coincidentally, the amount of time
a train ride takes to get to Dorset, and then
the silent calls would start up again in Dorset, then
quiet again for two hours, and then a flurry of
activity back in London. There was some cooperation between the
London Police and the Dorset Police. DI Steve Thorpe decided

(10:57):
to begin surveillance on the payphones that were being used
them most frequently around Dorset every Saturday, a brilliant idea
that unfortunately turned over no leads. As the wedding got nearer,
the text got more frightening. One read you're going to
be burnt down in your wedding dress. Another said you tart,
you can't marry yan sas man will send you to heaven.

(11:20):
I think sas means special air service, but I'm not sure.
Let us know if you know for sure. A series
of texts in the weeks leading to the wedding read
please don't marry FDT, which we later found out stood
for fucking Debi Tart. It's her little affectionate nickname for Debbie.
You can do better. Look at you. Your life is

(11:43):
in danger. Give pembertose up now before we enter Marina
yacht will do well to bullet you down. Boats have
been tamper. Get them out of water before explode. Yon
can't go out on race. Take R four to seven
out of Hamsworth Trophy. I have met how many opportunities
we lost? Now it will all end in tragedy. One

(12:06):
last chance. Let DT go or you are going too.
I make sure it will not be a wedding on
nine to six h three. You had your last chance.
It's all an says man's hand. Cancel wedding. Gunman work
at Saltern's gun in ready for big feast. And you
know they said they were invited guests, which has got

(12:27):
to be creepy, like you're thinking, we invited this person
to the wedding. Who is it? Who is it? You've
got to be going through your whole guest list looking
and you're getting these texts all the time. One said,
hope you spoke to the wedding coordinator. Cancel it or
I'm ready. Gunman work at Salterns gun inside hotel. What
else can I ask for? If you've ever worked with

(12:48):
people for whom English is a second or third language,
you probably already noticed that these texts sound like they
came from somebody who did not grow up speaking English,
which could be a small help to the investigators if
they could narrow down some suspects. Right and more frightening
than the text. The chef at the hotel was approached
one day by a dark haired woman who asked about
the wedding couple's cake. This wedding had to be password

(13:12):
protected because a stalker had tried to cancel it four
separate times, so they had to sign a friggin password
to them four times. Like bitch, chill, You're like a
jealous mother in law at this point.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Hashtag boy mom, hashtag boy mom.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
And on top of everything else, somebody had left a
threatening note under Debbie's door. For poor Debbie, it was
almost too much. In an interview, she later said that
all this made her contemplate taking her own life, which
is so sad. She said to me, that was the
only way out, and it was the only way I
could actually stop this from hurting everybody as well as me.

(13:52):
With no end in sight and pressure mounting from the stalker,
Debbie Pemberton and doctor Jan Falkowski's relationship was pretty much
in tatters. A time that was supposed to be full
of love and magic and beauty was instead marred with
fear and suspicion and rage, and this included doctor Folkowski
having an affair. And don't get me wrong, I don't

(14:14):
think that this is an excuse for what he did,
because it certainly hurt Debbie. She'd been hurt more than
enough already. But pain and trauma like this can put
people in a bad headspace where they might be more
likely to make a bad decision.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
And like, except for children, obviously, there's no such thing
as a perfect victim, right, Yon Folkowski is a victim,
just as Debbie as a victim, and he did something bad.
We aren't here to judge his behavior because, frankly, that
is not our job. If this was Random Guy Campfire, maybe,
but I don't really think that podcast would get any traction,

(14:48):
So we'll leave the facts where they lie. He cheated,
it was bad, it's not really relevant for our purposes.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
To be honest, I would totally listen to Random Guy Campfire.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, I would too, But that's what reddit is for,
is Random Guy Campfire.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
We tackled that on the post show.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
Yeah, subscribe to our Patreon for Random Guy Campfire. In
her interview with the show Stalker, Debbie talks about how
this experience affected their relationship. I was a shell, devoid
of life, just a kind of almost like a skeleton,
sick pale. I just wanted to fade into the shadows

(15:32):
in the background. If you said boo to me, I'd
have jumped out of my skin. I didn't want to
be noticed. The phone, the mobile phone, actually became a
sort of instrument of torture and terror. It sort of
drove a wedge between us. The couple had come to
a mutual decision to call their engagement off, and they
let the police know. The police, however, wanted to ask

(15:54):
them not to announce it publicly. Their best bet to
catch the stalker was in the act, and they knew
that whoever it was would absolutely take a risk.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
To show up at the wedding. The day of the wedding,

(16:33):
police officers were posted at Debbie's parents' house, at Debbie's flat,
at telephone boxes all around town. In fact, time off
was canceled that weekend for police to ensure that they
had enough officers to cover the amount of work to
be done. At eight point thirty on the day they
were supposed to be married, Jan and Debbie got a
bunch of messages one after the other, one of which

(16:55):
is the most infamous in the entire case. It said
you be dead. That message would go on to be
the title of the made for TV movie about this
case that premiered in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
That's my least favorite reggae man. You be dead, you
be forty awesome, you be dead.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
The police were able to trace the text to Bournemouth.
Just as they arrived to Bournemouth, they got a trace
from a call from Pool in Dorset. They recentered their
base of operations around the hotel. The calls kept coming
in all over Pool. At eleven forty nine, the stoker
placed a call to Debbie's parents from outside the pool key.

(17:40):
An officer saw a woman leaving the phone box right
after that call, and they made the arrest right away.
So who was this terrifying, looming stalker that had ruined
two lives and sent two police departments scrambling. Well, she
was a small, stringy haired woman in her forties. Was
Maria Marchesi. She was born in Argentina and she worked

(18:04):
as a cashier in a shop at the time of
her arrest. When they searched her home, they found scraps
of paper with the names of Jan's boats, the wedding
venue's brochure, the hotel chef's number, and a planner with
a note from August of two thousand and two with
a note that read g to make appointment with Falkowski.
It turned out that Maria had been in a relationship

(18:26):
with a man named George, who was a patient of
doctor Falkowski's. Maria sometimes went with George to his appointments,
which is how she became acquainted with Jan. Jan, for
his part, had no idea who Maria was when the
police told him and Debbie who they'd arrested.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
God, it's not even his patient. It's his patient's weirdo
girlfriend that he'd probably said three words to. This is
just absolutely bonkers to me. And this was far and
away enough evidence to charge her with harassment. After she
was in jail, Jan and Debbie received no further contact.
In extent an interrogation, Maria said she had nothing to

(19:02):
do with the stalking, and because the evidence in her
apartment was so meager, the prosecutor wasn't feeling super great
about conviction. Personally, I think it's a pretty damn good
circumstantial case, especially if you can get some witnesses to
pick her out of a lineup, but that's just me.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, one witness, the girl at the marina, couldn't pull
her out of a lineup, but that's because she was
wearing a wig when she was sneaking onto the boat.
Like she showed up at the hotel a bunch. She
showed up at a boating event that Yan was at
once and was notably creepy, and the description matched her
to a tee, short lady, Spanish, olive skin tone. The

(19:37):
chef at the hotel did in fact pick her out
of a lineup, by the way, so this was a
rock solid case in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Well, and he was the one that spoke to her
face to face right like she came right up to him.
So I mean the chef would be a good witness
in my opinion. Yeah, our prosecution right would be either
like twelve percent or two hundred percent true. Either way,
it'd be interesting, you know, for us to try either way.
The prosecutors dropped the case because all they could conclusively

(20:05):
link her to was one call. Naturally, when Maria was released,
Debbie was pissed and scared, but I think her main
emotion was anger, which I completely get. I'm an anger
forward kind of gal myself. Jan was confused and upset.
Maria wasn't going to face any consequences for her actions.

(20:25):
Imagine how infuriating like this woman ruined your life, ruined
your relationship. You were getting ready to get married and nothing.
Almost as soon as Maria set her diminutive little feet
on free soil, the silent calls and the harassing text
started up again. Who's surprised, raise your hand? Nobody, Yeah,

(20:49):
didn't think so. Debbie, for her part, decided to move
to France. She just wanted peace, she wanted safety, she
wanted to be done with it, so she left, and
I do not blame her for her part. Maria's ire
was about to focus entirely on Yan. The police arrested
her again for stalking and were interviewing her again for

(21:11):
stalking and trying to get her to confess yet again
to stalking when she up and told them one hell
of a story. She said that in two thousand and two,
Jan Falkowski had raped her and she could prove it
to them. She gave them a pair of her underwear
that she'd saved in a plastic baggie ever since that day,

(21:33):
and when the panties were sent for DNA analysis, they
found semen from Jan Falkowski as well as Maria's DNA.
Senior Crown Prosecutor Kay Scudder decided to pursue the case.
To her, it seemed pretty open and shut. Doctor Falkowski,
who's a psychiatrist, had drugged her with a glass of

(21:53):
soda in his office, moved her unconscious body to her
flat and raped her. She came too, with doctor Falkowski
on top of her. So they pulled Yan in for
an interview. But something about the way they asked him
struck him as odd, so very wisely he brought in
a lawyer. He was completely gobsmacked when they told him

(22:14):
what Maria had alleged. Obviously, he denied everything, but they
had DNA evidence, and in February of two thousand and four,
doctor Falkowski was arrested. Jan was suspended from work and
forbidden from contacting any of his colleagues at the hospital
he worked for. He had his passport taken away and
was forbidden from going abroad. News articles were published about

(22:36):
the allegation, with his face and name printed. When the
police questioned him. He resolutely denied the accusation. I did
not do this. I don't know what the hell she's
talking about. But there was that DNA evidence, so the
case just kept on moving forward. There was one detective
with some doubts, though, DCI Malcolm Davis said he took

(22:57):
Maria's allegation incredibly seriously, but there there were just some
details that were hard to swallow. It seems strange to him,
first of all, that she'd been through several interviews with
detectives before she'd come forward with this info. Then there
were the details of her story. Doctor Falkowski's office was
on the upper floor of a Victorian building, so he'd

(23:17):
had to carry her unconscious body down a bunch of
stairs and get her into his flashy sports car in
broad daylight without anybody seeing, then take her to her apartment,
carry her up three flights of stairs, again without being seen.
Now we have said this before, but it bears repeating
every time that most reported sex assaults are genuine. Okay,

(23:41):
people do not generally make this stuff up for funzies.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right, We happened to host a show where bad people
do bad things, and sometimes those bad things are making
up false rape allegations. It is never our intention to
pick a part a victim's statement, but Maria was absolutely
lying and doing her part to make it much much
harder for real survivors to be taken seriously. So, you know,

(24:08):
fuck her from absolutely.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
That's what's so infuriating to me about it. It's like,
you know, we have enough problems already being believed, and
people do this kind of shit. It's just unconscionable not
to mention the damage it does to the person they're accusing.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Jesus, yeah, one hundred percent. The woman that doctor Folkowski
was currently dating was named Bethan Ansel in her mind.
This was obviously just one of Maria's ploys to get
Yan's attention, and the police had to do their due
diligence to protect the victims that came forward. It was
going to be over soon, right, And Yan's frustration was

(24:45):
that while they were pursuing him on this charge, the
police were no longer investigating the stocking charge at all.
Like it's like they couldn't, like, you know, pat their
head and rub their belly at the same time. If
all that wasn't bad enough, Maria had a summons sent
to Debbie Pemberton, who had settled in France by now
to give evidence against her ex at a trial, sent

(25:09):
her a subpoena.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Like Jesus.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Debbie said that this letter sent her into another like
suicidal spiral, Like what an evil fucking thing to do?
How is that allowed? Like did the prosecution do that?

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Like what the fun?

Speaker 2 (25:23):
No?

Speaker 3 (25:24):
But I feel I think, honestly, of all the people
in the story, Debbie is the one that I had
the most like visceral reaction, like, oh my god, that
poor woman, she just went through absolute hell.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, and I'm so curious if that means that Maria
got access to Debbie's address again.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, I think it Debbie's contacting right, or somebody did
in her defense team, somebody awful awful.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
It was looking pretty grim for the doctor until about
three weeks before the trial, when his defense team did
additional testing on the underwear because a third person's DNA
was found on the underwear. The third person's DNA belonged
to Bethan Ansel, his current girlfriend. Yeah, Bethan and Jan

(26:11):
hadn't started seeing each other until after Maria said doctor
Fulkowski had attacked her. Oh my god, Maria had gone
through doctor Folkowski's trash and stole a condom and put
it in her underwear. Wow, and do you think she
tried to inseminate herself? Like, Okay, don't answer that. I

(26:35):
hate myself for asking.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Don't do it? I hope not. I mean I kind
of feel like I feel like she might have had
a dual motive. She might have just taken it thinking
this will be my ace in the hole if I
get caught, because I can accuse him of doing something
to me sexually. But yeah, there might have also been
a thought of the other thing, because then she can
trap him, you know, and too be a with her

(26:57):
because she's having his baby. Or maybe he just make
Debbie mad enough to leave. Who knows, But yeah, this
woe was obviously not stable, so who knows what she
was thinking.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
So that's it, right, couldn't have possibly man him? They
have to drop the case? Well No, it took the
prosecution almost the entire remaining three weeks to drop the case.
The justice system had let doctor Jan Falkowski down. He'd
been tarred and feathered in the press for months, and

(27:27):
now his stocking case was ice cold. So Yan's reputation
was still demolished even with his name cleared, and Maria
was still out there, probably still plotting, waiting like a
terrifying little hobgoblin. The thing that galls me as well
is that Maria got everything she wanted from her schaming.
Oh Jehan's relationship, Yeah, Yan's relationship was destroyed. He didn't

(27:51):
get married.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
And also, like when you make a false allegation like that,
and it's especially of a prominent person, and he was
a prominent person. He was a you know, very well
known doctor. So his face and name are plastered all
over the media with this horrible allegation, and then they
find out it's not him. But that's not going to
be splashed all over the media, right, people are just

(28:12):
going to remember the initial allegation. So that's going to
stick to him. Now in this case, probably not because
now we know all this stuff about Marine. It's a
fascinating story, so it got out there big time. But
at the time that was probably just infuriating for him
that he couldn't just go around with a megaphone saying, hey,
I was exonerated, you know.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Well, and how often do you hear like, oh well
so and so is a pervert and then you look
at look it up and like, yeah, oh no they're not.
They got proven, you know, not a pervert.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, you know. People just remember the initial allegation. That's
the sad thing about the false allegation.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Maria wasn't one to take the indignity of being called
a liar in the press lying down. When she found
out that the case was being dropped, Dci'm Malcolm Davis
got a furious phone call from her, and then Prosecutor
Case Scudder started getting repeated calls over an hour long,
each saying she'd made the worst decision in the history

(29:09):
of the Crown Prosecution Service and she had to reverse
the decision, and asking why the case had been dropped.
The switchboard had to start taking her calls rather than
her taking her direct line. When stalkers no longer have
access to their victims, they will often up the ante.
That's when Maria showed up at Kay's office, telling the

(29:30):
reception desk that she had an appointment and needed to
see Kay right away.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
When she talked to the police about this, they were like, oh, yeah,
this lady is knucking foots dude. One of them said
she was the most dangerous woman he'd ever dealt with,
and that there was a risk to me and other
people involved in the case. Oh yeah, now you get it.
It reminds me so much of Diane Schaeffer. If you
haven't listened to that episode, you absolutely need to. It's

(29:54):
another stalking case, complete bananas, and she like during all
the frustrating time of her victim trying to get taken seriously,
there was some kind of court hearing and the judge
like clearly didn't think it was that big of a deal.
On tail, she started stocking him and then he finally
realized that she was a scary Mary. But it took that.

(30:17):
Kay changed her routes to work every day and didn't
come in at the same time. She wore casual clothes
to the office. The Crown Prosecution Service actually paid to
put a panic room in her house with a button
to call the police in her bedroom. They put a
security door in the front and added CCTV. And I'm
glad that they were taking this seriously, but it's incredibly

(30:38):
frustrating that these are the same people that threw their
hands up when Yoan and Debbie were going through the
same thing, right, just Dorist Prosecution refused to pick up
the charges and London Prosecution just let the stalking case
sit there while they were chasing their tails over a
false allegation that really didn't make a lot of sense.
From jump, they knew perfectly well what Maria marsh has

(30:59):
A was capable of before she started stalking case Scudder,
nobody was paying for Yan and Debbie to have a
panic room. Dc I Malcolm Davis decided that he was
going to get justice for Yan and Debbie, though he'd
need to get Yan on his side, and unsurprisingly, the
good doctor wasn't feeling especially keen on helping out the
police at that moment. Along with the team of four

(31:21):
officers DCI Davis started putting in overtime to put together
a case against Maria. They needed a fast arrest because
they kind of shot themselves in the foot with the
whole Jan Falkowski Prosecution CPS said that due to the
notoriety of the case, any publicity could be prejudicial and
rule out a trial. Prosecution had to ask if Maria

(31:42):
was even fit to stand trial. Now. It's obvious that
she's unwell from a civilian's perspective, but from a legal perspective,
No way, she's crazy like a fox. She took so
many countermeasures to prevent herself from being caught that she
was definitely, definitely aware of the difference between right and wrong,
and that, as y'all probably know, is the standard in

(32:04):
the courtroom. It's not whether you have mental health issues,
it's whether you know right from wrong. So, finally, finally,
it was grabs time. Maria Marches was charged with harassment,
threatening to kill, and perverting the course of justice. I
think that's what we call obstruction over here. She was

(32:25):
sentenced to nine years in prison. Now this was after
five years of stalking. As you may know, campers, stalkers
can have unbelievable staying powder. I have actually seen cases
where stalkers have gone on for decades. There's a crazy
case we might end up covering at some point where
an attorney represented a woman one time and she stalked

(32:47):
him for the next thirty some years. Unbelievable. Doctor Jan
Falkowski is still working as a psychiatrist and seems to
have a very successful practice as well as work as
an expert witness, which is kind of cool. As of
the last show about his case, he and Bethane were
still together, but obviously that's not really any of our business.

(33:09):
But you know, we really hope that he has found
peace and also some really really fast boats because he's
a boat racer. Remember, the last info I could find
about Debbie is that she's settled in France and she's
happy with a new partner. So glad to hear that.
About her ordeal, she said, I'm a different person. I'm
no longer so open with people. She took away eleven

(33:31):
months of my life and destroyed a relationship. But ironically,
on one level, it did me a favor. If I
had married jan it would not have worked and I
would be divorced. By now. I'm convinced now that he
was the wrong man for me. As for Maria, well,
she's definitely out of prison by now. Police, in the
course of their investigation, discovered that she'd stalked at least

(33:53):
one other man prior to Yan and Debbie's Price Prize.
Stalkers are one of the more terrified by human creatures
in our world. They will stop at nothing to get
in contact with their victims. They blow hot and cold.
They're both furious with and have deep adoration for their
targets and the legal system has no real way of

(34:14):
stopping them until they actually make threats or even actually
do something, which is the terrifying thing. Thank god, this
case has a happy ending and we're so relieved that
we don't have more news about Maria now that she's out.
Hope it stays that way. So that was a wild one, right, campers.
You know we'll have another one for you next week,

(34:34):
but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and
stay safe until we get together again around the True
Crime Campfire. If you haven't booked your spot yet on
the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise from November third through
November seventh, you better get on it because there's only
a handful of rooms left. Join Katie and Me plus
last podcast on the Left, Scared to Death and Sinisterhood
for a rock and good time at sea going to

(34:55):
the Bahamas. I'm so excited. You can pay all at
once or set up a payment plan, but you've gotta
have a fan code to book a ticket, So go
to Crimewave atc dot com, slash campfire and take it
from there. And as always, we want to send a
grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons.
Thank you so much to Holly, Autumn, Rose, Jill, and Lee.

(35:15):
We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if
you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}U Be Dead: The Stalking of Dr. Falkowski