Stalking Their Prey

Thud.

Westminster Police Detective Mike Proctor drops a 3-inch-thick binder on the table of a cramped interrogation room. “This is Sandra’s file,” he says. “She has been stalked by the same person for over 17 years.”

Sandra is not an actress or any type of public figure. Her case, though, became one of the earliest to be prosecuted under California’s anti-stalking legislation.

“Celebrities are not the only people to be stalked,” says Proctor, Orange County’s foremost specialist on stalking. “Two-thirds of all stalking crimes involve ordinary people, like Sandra.”

And people such as Debra and Valerie, also of Orange County, whose names, like Sandra’s, have been shortened or altered to protect their identities. Debra has been stalked by an ex-boyfriend since she refused to spend her birthday with him last year. Valerie was stalked briefly but vigilantly by a stranger who had been hired by her ex-husband to serve her with legal papers.

The stalkers of Debra and Sandra have been prosecuted. Although Sandra won in court, and her stalker was sentenced to jail, she still lives in fear: He is free again.

Stalking is the repetitive harassment of one person by another. It can take the form of unwanted telephone calls, letters or physical pursuit and frequently includes verbal or behavioral threats against the victim’s person or property.

While it is most common for a man to stalk a woman, women also stalk men, and a small percentage of stalkers pursue the same sex. Stalking is a crime--though one its victims are often slow to recognize when it begins, and law enforcement is often slow to recognize when victims seek help.

Stalkers can be ingenious and frequently go to great lengths to contact their victims. Recently, police say, an Orange County woman arrested for stalking called a lawyer from jail to request his help in gaining release. She asked the lawyer to contact a man she falsely identified as her husband--the man whom she had been stalking--to arrange bail. The lawyer arranged a telephone conversation between her and the victim.

Stalking is against the law in all 50 states. In September, President Clinton signed into law a bill sponsored by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) making it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent to stalk or harass someone.

California was the first state to pass an anti-stalking law; the 1990 legislation was also drafted by Royce, then a state senator, and became a model for laws eventually enacted across the country.

Even with legislative backing, investigating and prosecuting stalking cases is difficult. It requires intensive, time-consuming work for police and a high degree of cooperation from the victim.

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Stalking gained notoriety long before it became a criminal offense. For years, “star stalkers,” as they became known in the entertainment industry, caused their famous victims and law enforcement agencies grief.

In January, entertainer Madonna gave many Americans a glimpse into the terror felt by a stalking victim as she testified in court against her stalker, Robert Dewey Hoskins. Hoskins was convicted of one count of felony stalking, three of making terrorist threats, one of misdemeanor assault. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

It was the fatal shooting of actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989 that helped spur legislation on the subject. Schaeffer was killed at her doorstep by a man who had previously shown up on the set of her sitcom, “My Sister Sam,” with flowers for the actress.

As the state law was being enacted six years ago, police began to learn more about the dynamics of stalking. Detective John Lane of the Los Angeles Police Department’s newly formed threat management unit and Proctor were among those who began focusing on the subject.

Proctor began seeing that stalking was a frequent component of many violent crimes being committed in Orange County. In the years since, he has talked with many women and men who, like Sandra, have been victimized by the continual, obsessive behavior of stalkers.

Proctor said that Sandra’s cooperation became paramount. “Victims and law enforcement agencies need to understand that managing stalking cases is a long-term commitment,” Proctor says. “We work with a victim as long as it takes to resolve the problem.”

Stalking victims often find themselves dealing with police or court employees who aren’t knowledgeable about the crime, Proctor says. To them, it sounds like just another domestic dispute. “When victims finally reach a knowledgeable investigator who is willing to work with them, they are usually overwhelmed with relief because, finally, someone is taking them seriously,” he says.

Although a restraining order from the court is no guarantee that a stalker will stay away, Proctor urges his clients to get them and keep them current. When the stalker violates the order, it gives police more evidence in the case they are building.

Victims are told to avoid any contact with the stalker, log all harassing behavior and notify police at once when an infraction occurs.

Each police agency has its own policy on pursuing cases. For example, the LAPD’s threat management unit takes a hard view of the commitment between victim and detective: If a victim disregards an investigator’s instructions, the case is dropped.

“Stalkers sometimes call their victims 20, 30 times a day to plead their case,” Lane says. “If a victim gives in and talks to the stalker, he’s going to conclude, ‘If I call 30 times, she’ll give in.’ That defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to do.”

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Michael A. Zona, a forensic psychiatrist in Santa Ana, has worked with the LAPD since 1990 in developing psychological profiles of stalkers. There exists in all stalkers an underlying obsessional attachment to others and an inability to accept rejection, he says.

Using information collected from LAPD records in 300 cases, he has identified three distinct stalker profiles: simple obsessional, love obsessional and erotomaniac.

“Understanding the type of stalker you’re dealing with is crucial to knowing what type of intervention strategy is necessary to manage a case,” says Zona, who works with Orange County police as well as the LAPD.

* Simple obsessionals: The majority of stalking case studied--about 60%--fall into this category, Zona says. A prior relationship exists between stalker and victim, usually a dating or work relationship. Eventually the relationship goes sour or there is a perception of ill treatment by the stalker, who begins a campaign to rectify the problem or seek retaliation. There is a high incidence of drug and/or alcohol abuse within this group, whose members are the most likely of the three types to carry out threats. In this category, 57% of the stalkers are male; 71% of victims are female, according to Zona.

* Love obsessionals: About 30% of stalkers fall into this category. They are obsessed with a person whom they don’t know, but they do not necessarily believe he or she loves them in return. Frequently these stalkers suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (manic-depressive). In this category, 88% of stalkers are male and 93% of their victims are female.

* Erotomaniacs: Less than 10% of stalkers studied fall into this category. They are under the delusion that they are intensely loved by another person of a higher socioeconomic standing. Often they know of this person only through the media. Part of the delusion is believing that the object of their affection would reciprocate their love if not for some external influence; eradicating this outside influence is usually what brings the stalker to the attention of law enforcement. In this category, 85% of stalkers are female; 71% of their victims are male.

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Proctor became involved in Sandra’s case in 1989 after her stalker, Jim called her life-insurance carrier and told them he had been hired by Sandra to kill her husband in order to collect insurance money. When Proctor--who was then working homicide investigations--called Sandra about the allegation, he was told that the man had been harassing her since 1979, when she was 19 and working as a waitress at a coffee shop that Jim frequented.

“We dated for a few months, but he became too possessive--wanting to know who I was spending time with and what I was doing every moment of the day,” Sandra recalls. Shortly after breaking off the relationship, Jim started phoning Sandra at home and at work, begging her to get back together with him. She immediately got a restraining order, but he ignored it.

Sandra and her husband eventually moved to a different city, but Jim knew where she went to school. “One day at Golden West College, where I was taking classes, Jim appeared out of nowhere and beat me up. He said, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can.’ ”

Throughout the 1980s, Sandra suffered much harassment at the hands of her stalker--tire slashing, car keying, being run off the road or beaten up, verbal threats on her life--but witnesses were few, and it was difficult to prove her stalker’s guilt. Local police agencies in the areas where the crimes were committed did little except take reports and file them.

When Proctor heard Sandra’s story, he immediately determined that a stalking was taking place and asked Sandra to come into the station for an in-depth interview called “cataloging.” He collected detailed information about Sandra and all the documentation she had on Jim, including her diary and phone entries.

Proctor obtained copies of all the crime reports filed over the years and gathered as much information as he could about Jim. He also interviewed Jim. Proctor learned that Jim had been accused of stalking at least five others, male and female, since 1976. Those victims were contacted as well.

“[Jim] is a serial stalker,” Proctor says. “In his case, all of his victims have physical features similar to Sandra’s.” Nearly all of the stalkers Proctor has dealt with are serial stalkers.

Proctor set out all the information he had on Sandra’s case into a stalking chronology, which he used as an outline for writing a crime report. The report--a collection of more than 10 years’ worth of infractions committed by Jim in several cities: telephone harassment, restraining order noncompliance, probation violations--was submitted by Proctor to the district attorney.

Sandra’s stalker pleaded guilty to stalking her and was sentenced in January 1992 to 18 months in jail; he was released after nine months. He has since been in and out several more times for various probation and restraining order violations against Sandra and others.

Stalkings and the terror they create in victims’ lives can end--or not end--in many ways.

Some end gradually or abruptly but without incident, some in successful prosecution, some tragically and explosively.

One of Orange County’s highest-profile cases is that of ex-Postal Service employee Mark Richard Hilbun, who had stalked postal worker Kim Springer. In a two-day rampage in May 1993, Hilbun killed his mother and then went to the Dana Point post office, where he killed a postal worker who had been his friend and wounded another in an attempt to kidnap Springer. He wounded five more people as he eluded police.

Hilbun was found guilty in August on two counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted murder and other felony charges. In October, a jury deadlocked on the question of whether Hilbun was insane when he committed the crimes, an issue key to his sentencing.

He had begun stalking Springer in July 1992, court records indicate. In fall 1992, the Orange County Sheriff’s office arrested Hilbun based on a complaint filed by Springer. Hilbun was treated in a psychiatric ward and released. In September, Hilbun was fired, in part for his harassment of Springer.

In the days before the killings, Springer twice reported threatening behavior by Hilbun to police and was in the process of seeking a restraining order. In one letter, Hilbun told Springer: “I love you. I am going to kill both of us and take us both to hell.”

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In some cases, when the victim has known the stalker--casually or in a dating situation--he or she is at first reluctant to report the harassment.

Debra, the Orange County woman stalked by an ex-boyfriend, says she saw the irrational side of his personality several months after they began dating in January 1995 and tried to break things off. He began harassing her, but she hoped that repeatedly telling him to leave her alone would do the trick. “I didn’t want to hurt him or send him to jail,” she says.

Instead, her stalker became more insistent. “He had two small children, whom I had built a good relationship with while we were dating,” Debra says. “He would follow me places, children in tow, begging me to see him again. Then he would turn to his kids and say, ‘You really like Debra, don’t you?’ It was hard to say no with the kids right there.”

In October 1995, Debra went into the hospital for surgery. When she was wheeled from recovery to her room, the man was there waiting to see her. This drove Debra to report him to police, but her initial contact was not positive. “I went into the station and described the trouble to the desk clerk, who turned to another officer and said, “Do I have to write all this down?”

The police recommended a restraining order, which limits physical and telephone contact. Debra immediately went to the courthouse to request one but says she was told she couldn’t get one because she hadn’t lived with the man and they had no common children.

That is not cause for denying a restraining order, says Jane Shade of the Orange County district attorney’s office, who specializes in prosecuting stalking cases. There was likely a misunderstanding between Debra and the person she spoke with, Shade says. “There are different types of restraining orders, and you have to know what to ask for.”

Confused after her failed attempt to obtain a restraining order, Debra contacted Victim Witness, a nonprofit organization that helps victims through all aspects of the legal process of criminal prosecution. Her caseworker helped her fill out the proper restraining order paperwork and went to court with her to finalize the permanent order before a judge. On the courthouse steps, with restraining order in force, Debra’s stalker threatened her life: “This won’t stop until someone stops me!” he yelled.

Over the next several months, Debra’s stalker continued his harassment by destroying her property, following her and threatening her friends and co-workers. Her employer hired an armed guard. Debra filed a civil suit this year against the stalker, who was sentenced in September to 100 days in jail; he was released after serving five days.

Since then, Debra’s stalker has been charged with multiple restraining-order violations. He pleaded guilty Oct. 31 and has been sentenced to one year in prison and five years’ probation.

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In the case of Valerie, the Orange County woman stalked intensely by someone she did not know, the stalking ended abruptly.

Valerie began receiving hang-up telephone calls at all hours of the day and night in spring 1991. She wondered if someone was checking her schedule in order to burglarize her home. Finally she filed a crime report with her local police agency, then initiated a phone “trap” through the telephone company to ascertain the caller’s location. This did not work, because the caller used pay phones and never called from the same location twice.

A couple of weeks after the phone calls began, Valerie was at a local park for an outdoor concert. Part way through, she left her friends to use the restroom. As she turned a corner, a strange man jumped out of the bushes and grabbed her breast, then let go and ran off. The next morning when she left for work, she found a pile of cigarette butts on the floor of her car.

Immediately after the concert, the phone calls changed. Instead of hanging up, the caller would leave obscene messages--spoken between puffs of a cigarette--often referring to their meeting in the park. Valerie realized he knew what she looked like and where she lived. “I was terrified,” Valerie explains, “but the police said there was nothing they could do. Sometimes I wondered if they even believed me.”

The obscene phone calls, which continued for several weeks, were never traced. One night, Valerie was home watching television with a friend when she heard a knock on the door. The man at her doorstep shoved an envelope at her and walked off. “It all happened so fast, I didn’t realize [at first] he was the man who had grabbed me at the park,” Valerie recalls. She opened the envelope and found a request for modifications of child support from her ex-husband. She never heard from her stalker again.

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Most stalking cases don’t end so neatly.

For some, such as Sandra, there may not be an end. She believes that, now that her stalker is free, he will again come after her. She is fearful but calm and controlled.

“Stalking is like a cancer,” she says. “I have suffered with it for years. Lately I’ve had a reprieve, like a remission--Jim’s been busy stalking other women and has left me alone. But I always know he’s out there. Like cancer, he can strike at any time.”