Ex-Boyfriend Jailed Under ‘Stalking’ Law : Courts: New statute gives officials power to act in cases of severe, prolonged harassment. They had been frustrated by their inability to protect potential victims of crime.

For two terrifying months earlier this year, Leslie Wein was looking over her shoulder, fearing he would be there.

The Encino woman had received numerous annoying and threatening phone calls. Twice the tires of her car were flattened. Twice acid was poured on her car. Her dog was taken from her back yard. Before the pet was found, unharmed, the abductor left Polaroid snapshots of it at Wein’s house.

Wein, 26, reported each incident to police and told officers that her former boyfriend was behind the series of unsettling acts. She obtained a temporary restraining order to keep 30-year-old Mark Bleakley of Sherman Oaks away from her, but police said the harassment continued. “You’ll be the next thing damaged,” the voice said on the phone two days after she got the court order, according to court records.

Wein’s story is similar to many reported to police. But until recently there was little they could do because each individual incident is considered minor and time-consuming to investigate. Violating a restraining order is a misdemeanor and difficult to prove when it is one person’s word against another’s.

But this time Los Angeles police were able to handle the case differently. Detectives noted that the pattern of abuse fit the guidelines of the state’s felony “stalking law,” which took effect in January.

In what law enforcement officials say is its first use in California, authorities charged Bleakley last month with felony stalking. He now faces up to three years in prison and remains jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail. Bleakley has pleaded not guilty.

Previously frustrated by such cases, prosecutors and police say the law gives them important new powers to protect victims of severe, ongoing harassment.

“It gives us more teeth to use against the persistent violator,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew Diamond, who filed the charge against Bleakley.

In the Wein case, authorities say the law might have averted an escalation of harassment to violence. After Bleakley was arrested, police confiscated a .357 magnum revolver from his home.

“We hope we stopped something before it was too late,” Diamond said.

The harassment of Wein got “more brazen as time went on,” Detective Carlos Vidal said. “(It) started with vandalism. Then her dog was abducted. Finally, . . . a threat (was made) against her. Who knows what could have happened?”

Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Fullerton), who sponsored the stalker law last year, said he sought its passage after a series of killings in Orange County in 1989. All were women who had successfully sought restraining orders against former spouses or boyfriends but were harassed and subsequently murdered by them.

Royce said law enforcement authorities were powerless to protect the victims because of difficulties in proving violations of restraining orders and because such violations usually result in brief jail time.

In such cases, Royce said, police have been unable to act until a serious crime occurred.

“The old adage was, ‘Once he attacks you physically, then we can act,’ ” Royce said. With the stalking law, “we established a precedent giving law enforcement the ability to intervene . . . before it is too late.”

Bleakley’s attorney, Bruce M. Kaufman, did not return calls for comment on the charge. Wein also did not return telephone calls, and police said she remains fearful of Bleakley.

According to court records, the couple had been dating for nearly two years when they broke up earlier this year.

The harassment of Wein allegedly began in April after Bleakley, who is 6 feet tall and 220 pounds, confronted her as she left a gym after a workout, grabbed her wallet and broke a bracelet she was wearing, and then shoved her into a pole before giving the wallet back.

Two weeks later, according to records, the tires of Wein’s car were slashed while she was inside a Canoga Park restaurant. Wein also began to receive numerous phone calls in which the caller would hang up after the phone was answered. Police later placed a device called a “trap” on her phone line, which traced the hang-up calls to the office of a carwash where Bleakley worked.

By mid-May, Wein had obtained a temporary restraining order forbidding Bleakley from annoying or going near her. But police said the harassment continued. Her tires were slashed again and on two other occasions acid was poured on cars she was using. On May 17, her German shepherd, Chazney, was stolen from her home. Twice the abductor secretly came back and left Polaroid snapshots of the dog on cars parked at the house.

Wein filed 13 reports with police on the incidents, including allegations that Bleakley had violated the restraining order by following her and vandalizing her car.

“She was very frustrated because she couldn’t understand why the police couldn’t do anything,” Vidal said. “She said, ‘What do I have to do?’ ”

“All we could do is document each incident. We could never catch him in the act.”

But on May 16, Wein left a Sepulveda Boulevard restaurant and found that two tires on a rented car had been slashed. Vidal said that while a police officer was taking a crime report, Wein saw Bleakley nearby and the officer identified him, confirming the violation of the restraining order.

The next day, according to court records, Bleakley called Wein at her Century City office and said, “I am ready to play hardball now, are you? Consider this an advanced warning. I’m not just coming after your possessions, you’ll be the next thing damaged.”

The numerous reports filed by Wein came to Vidal and Detective Tony Finchen at the West Valley Division where earlier this year investigators had been briefed about the new stalking law.

Vidal said Bleakley’s violation of the restraining order and alleged threat of physical harm to Wein coupled with the pattern of harassment of Wein allowed the investigators to arrest Bleakley on suspicion of felony stalking.

Bleakley was arrested May 24 after a police surveillance unit watched him drive by Wein’s home four times, Vidal said.

The detective said a few days later Bleakley’s attorney called police to report that Wein’s dog was tied to a pole outside his office. How the animal got there was not revealed, Vidal said.

Police said Wein reported that Bleakley repeatedly called her from jail to ask her to drop the charges. The calls finally stopped after his jail phone privileges were terminated by a court order.