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THE STALKING

By Lucie Nelka |

For the past six years, Linda Thomas, 36, has been the victim of the same faceless stalker, a man so proud of his acts that he signs his name to everything-cards, letters, gifts, flowers-all of his little tokens of affection. He also takes credit for the razor blades and blood-stained panties left in her mailbox, the bricks thrown through her front window, the eight times he’s ransacked her home, the six times he’s spray painted his messages on the side of her house, the hundreds of phone calls, and of course, the kidnapping.

In May of 1985, Thomas had returned home from picking up her children at school. She walked into her back bedroom and realized that the window over the bed had been shattered and black spray paint splattered everywhere. In the middle of the mess was the first of many messages to come. Scrawled across one of the walls were the words, “We will be together. ” For the better part of that year, her assailant would make contact every two weeks, either on a Thursday or a Friday.

In 1986, after Thomas and her family sold their home and moved into a new home, she enjoyed six long months of calm. Then the stalker and she celebrated “their first anniversary, ” an occasion he commemorated by leaving a cheap pair of earrings on the seat of her car. When he called Thomas later that day to see if she liked the gift, she replied, “No, I didn’t. ” And then she asked him what the “anniversary” was. “That was the downfall. When I didn’t know what we were celebrating, he got really mad. From then on, it turned ugly. “

On numerous occasions during the following year and a half, Thomas had undercover police stationed in her home, a wiretap on her phone, and a police tail whenever she left the house. When the police were there, nothing happened (although he did manage to slip by once in order to drop off razor blades and a note stating how she could put the blades to good use). When the wiretap was on the phone, the calls stopped. When she was escorted on her errands, he was nowhere to be found. “I swear we thought the house was bugged. ” Each time the police left their post and the wiretaps were lifted, the break-ins and spray-painted messages started again.

Right after Memorial Day in 1987, the stalker apparently decided he wasn’t getting through to Thomas with his messages. So he kidnapped her.

“I had run into the grocery store to return a videotape, and when I jumped back into my car, he was hiding in the back seat. ” She felt a gun poking at the back of her neck while he calmly ordered her where to drive. “When we came to a stop, he told me to get my purse so that I could make myself beau-tiful because we were about to go away together. ” At some point, he pushed her to the ground, and, says Thomas, “I came up spraying Mace. ” She ran and found a neighbor who called the police.

Although the notes and phone calls persisted, police think the foiled kidnapping attempt kept the man at a physical distance until the fell of 1989. That’s when Thomas and her family arrived home one night to find their home once again ransacked. (When the man enters the house, he rummages only through Linda’s drawers and closets, never disturbing anyone else’s things. ) When the police arrived, they decided that the assailant had been in the back bedroom the whole time. While the family waited in another room, the officers discovered a sliding glass door wide open, the curtain fluttering in the breeze. Thomas’s husband swears the door had been shut.

For the last nine months, Thomas has heard nothing. The police have kept the case open, hoping that the next time he hits, they can catch him in the act-making a phone call, painstakingly lettering a message, going through her lingerie-so that they can arrest him. Unfortunately, they need to wait on him-that’s the law.

“Even after all these months, ” says Thomas, “I’ll start to cry when the phone rings. You can never go back to just having an ordinary good time. It’s always in the back of your mind. “

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