Stalking The Stalkers

I just picked up my mail at our P.O. Box. We live off a long dirt road on rural State Hwy 104, which runs between Kingston and Port Gamble, Washington.

Our little beach house sits on the shores of Port Gamble Bay. Our home is quite far from our mailbox, which is one of many mailboxes nailed to  a long horizontal post. They all stand  unguarded at the side of the rural highway.

People steal mail. So our mail, like most of the residents' here, is delivered to the safety of a P.O. Box in Kingston.

I pass the Post Office every day coming to and from the ferry. It's no problem to stop by,  you can access the boxes 24/7. So in my P.O. box on one  foggy Sunday morning, was a handwritten note from an address on the outside of the envelope  I did not recognize.

It was my first "thank you for saving me," letter.
Inside was gift certificate from Starbucks.
I found this surprising because that client had already paid me for the job.
The case was closed about year earlier.
I had not heard from that client since, which is the norm in my profession.
Usually clients come and go.... hoping not to cross paths with me ever again on a professional basis.
Because when you are paying an investigator for an assist, that means you're in a miserable situation and have exhausted all other options. I'm someone you want to forget about once the crisis has passed.

This woman who sent me the thank you note, let's call her "Lynn," was single, just turned 47, when she hired me.  She lived in  one of those enchanting, cottage type houses painted a happy yellow, surrounded by a white picket fence with  a small but elegant garden in West Seattle. She had two cats, Abbott and Costello.

For those of you who don't know the area, West Seattle is a considered a desireable and hip place to live. From Seattle, you can get there by bridge or foot ferry. It's a city built around the water.
Its most popular beach, Alki, faces the Seattle City skyline.

West Seattle is a melting pots of neighborhoods and ethnic groups.  There are pockets of great wealth there, pockets of poverty and everything inbetween. Neighborhoods are eclectic...meaning you can have  expensive houses and delapidated ones on the same road.

When I met her, my new client Lynn, lived in a charming yellow cottage next door to a family  in a run- down rambler with a rotten roof and dead vehicles in its yard.
The rambler hadn't always been in such a decadent state Lynn said. It was only when the family became addicted to Meth that their lives... their house... then their minds fell apart.

So the scernario was this:

Lynn bought her house seven years before I met her. It was the first home she ever owned, she'd rented before that and been single all her life. When she moved into the house, the family that lived in the rambler next door  -- a husband, wife and  their 17 year old son were courteous towards her, though
Lynn and her neighbors could not have been more different.

Lynn wore white collars to her job everyday. The man next door wore blue.  His wife didn't work, the kid seldom attended school and the husband fixed cars in a shop to the side of his house.
Never friends, they would nod or say a hello in passing.
They did not engage in conversation or idle chit chat.

But since the neighbors got into using Meth, all hell had broken loose. In their paranoid state, they believed she was the enemy. Lynn was being harassed, stalked and was terrified.

I asked Lynn how she knew they were using Meth. She said she saw them injecting something once, late one night, through a crak in their curtains. Then she looked up their record at the courthouse. She found a charge for the minor son she could not  access. She saw a possessions charged for the mother. When she dug deeper it the case file,  Meth was the drug of choice and posession was the charge.

Lynn noticed they stopped looking at her and ignored her when they passed on the way to their cars.
One day the 17 year old gave her the finger.
Someone sat under her windows at night and made strange sounds animal sounds, growls, or snorts.
They ripped up her flowers.
Then one day she woke up to find a pile of poop on her front door step.
And from there all hell continued to break loose.

The breaking point was the day she found her beloved cat Costello dead in the back yard. She took it to the vet, got an autospy. There was radiator fluid in its system. Lynn had no radiator fluid at her house. She knew the neighbors did. From that point forward Abbott, the survivor,  became a indoor, housecat.

She went to the police. The officers told her they were familiar with the family, rumors of their Meth use. Problem was they had none of the evidence they needed to make an arrest.

They said they could talk to the family, which they attempted to do. And it did no good. Because the family wouldn't answer the door and the police had no reason or right to break it in.

Someone suggested she get a restraining order. The police told her that might escalate things  without evidence that it was actually them who poisoned the cat or placed the stuff on her doorstep.

Someone else suggested she get a private investigator, which was why Lynn called me. My job was to get the evidence the police could use to press charges against them so maybe they would leave her alone.

I  read the police file, spoke at length with Lynn, ran backgrounds and did the initial surveillance to scope the situation out.
Indeed, there was drug activity at the unkempt house next door.
It stood in stark contrast to Lynn's enchanting cottage.

Work long enough as a P.I. and you get a feel for the comings and goings, the behaviors, body movements of Meth Heads. They showed all the classic signs, right down to the rotted teeth.
Lynn's dilemma was difficult and I knew it.
Even with the evidence of their harassing her... what next?

Meth Heads literally develop holes in their brain that never close up again. They become paranoid, hypersexual and extremely violent.

One of my former clients,  a Dead Meth Head, was shot six times, wrapped in plastic and stuffed in the trunk of a car by his very best friend, another Meth Head. So I knew this was very difficult and treacherous terrain my client was traveling. She needed direction.

First thing I suggested Lynn do was to move.
This shocked, then angered her.
She told me she hired an investigator not a realtor.
She said she had no intention of moving. This was her house, she loved it, and she was standing her ground.

This case happened before the housing market crash. I knew Lynn would have no trouble selling her home for the right price.
I  told her my experience with Meth Heads is you don't just spray them like bugs and make them go away.
The more you feed their paranoia, the more the evil and dangerous they become.
I said we would get her evidence. Then I strongly suggested she seriously re-consider moving.

I asked if she had a gun.
She said no.
Pepper spray?
No.
Her door had a deadbolt, her windows easy to break.
"Baseball bat?" I ventured
"Not even that" she said. "I'm a liberal and a pacifist. I set spiders free."

She was an attractive woman, far more so than the paranoid Meth Head Mama next door who no doubt
had delusions about Lynn and her men that made Lynn a target.

While Lynn reluctantly pondered my moving suggestion, I put our team of investigtaors in place.

We did surveillance from the van, watching and filming the Meth House.
It wasn't two days before we caught our first image.
About 2:00 am, Meth Mama exited  her front door.
She held a small bucket by its silver handle, walked to Lynn's porch, stood on the first of three steps and flung the the contents of the bucket on her front door. The contents of that bucket turned out to be a whole shitload of human excrement, pun intended.

At the same time Meth Mama flung her bucket; her son, no longer the 17 year old he was when she moved in 7 years ago,  walked out the same front door as Meth Mama did, walked directly to Lynn's house and pissed in the flower pot next to the steps leading to Lynn's door.
Bingo, I thought. We have it!

I showed Lynn the footage.
She asked "What next?"

First, the persistent pit bull in me suggested again... she sell her house and get the heck out of Dodge.
A house can be replaced, I said. Your life can't.
I said there are a ton of homes out there, she could get one with a view of the water.
I told her she needed the sign out front as an indicator to them, that she was leaving.
It would also allow more to  people to be seen coming and going to Lynn's house.
I explained everything I knew about Meth heads and I didn't hold back.
I showed her the footage of the fluid/poop fest at her front door a second time. And then she made what I believe was the right decision.
She chose flight, over fight.
She put her house on the market.


I then suggested she bring the footage we took to the police and tell them I suggested she move.

They agreed it was good idea. They said there was other drug activity in her area.
They laid out three paths for her.

They could arrest them now, for trespassing and other charges involved in the throwing of poop on her front door and for pissing in her flowers. They had the evidence, our footage.
But the police thought the Meth Heads would bail out, or get a light sentence and Lynn might be in danger because she was the primary witness against them.

Or, the police could attempt to talk to them one more time: to keep this from escalating; to let them know they have the footage; and the only reason they are not being arrested is because the neighbor does not want to press charges. The police could tell the neighbors all Lynn wanted was  to be left alone in peace so the house can sell and she will leave.

Option three was combination of option two plus a restraining order.

Lynn didn't know what to do so she did nothing.

Meantime,  the "For Sale" signs went up. The police never talked to the Meth Heads but did an occasional drive by. And we did more surveillance.

There were two more episodes after Lynn left for work.
One more poop flinging to the front walkway by Meth Mama.
And on one occasion, just after Lynn left for work, we saw the son, then 24, go to her side kitchen window. He looked in and pushed. It was locked.
Then he moved to the front door and turned the door knob.
We hoped he would've broke in, then we would have him on serious charges.
But that's as far as it went because the day we filmed this, was the day the house sold. 

The buyer, an retired ex-cop who knew the story and paid in cash, said he could handle the nieghbors. He said he and his room mate, a retired Navy Seal were up for a fight. They were eager and willing to bring a few Meth Heads down.

We moved Lynn out in the middle of the night, police on hand to make sure the neighbors didn't follow the van.We also set her up with a PO Box and did everything we could to keep her new address out of public record.

Lynn's new house is her safe house and she loves it. It sits on a hill overlooking Puget Sound.
It's a brick Tutor, even nicer than the first.  She lives at the end of the cul de sac and has upscale, lovely elderly neighbors who watch the coming and goings all day. They too know her story and look out for her.

And I got paid.
So all was well.
Until one last phone call.

It was Lynn. She was in her car.
"They're following me" she said, panicked
"Who is?" I asked.
"The neighbors. That kid and his mother. They're in their red pick-up.  They must've seen my car in the supermarket and followed me and I'm heading  home."
She sounded desperate and asked "What do I do?"

I told her to go to the police station. And get their plate number.
Park there, enter the police station, tell them what's happening. I suspected Meth Head Mama and Junior  would split once she parked at the police station, which they did.

From there, a police report was filed.

Next, I suggested Lynn drive directly from the police station to pick up a car-savvy friend, then get to  a car dealer and trade in her Honda for a completely different make car in a different color than the one she had then.
She did so that very day.
I also suggested she go to a different supermarket for a while, or chose unusual hours to go.
And I suggested she be ever vigilant.

Since then, all the trouble stopped.
I never heard from Lynn again after I got that thank you letter and used up all the free drinks on my Starbuck's card.

Recently I drove past Lynn's old house on my way to another case. The Meth Heads' old rambler  next door was no more. That house had been grazed to the ground and replaced by a modern duplex.
The owners of the duplex were the Ex-Cop and Navy Seal who moved into Lynn's old house. They accomplished their mission. Got rid of the Meth Heads and got themselves another investment property.