Maspal!

Child's stalker terrorizes family, baffles police

By Anthony Colarossi | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted January 21, 2002

A neighbor found the first horrible letter Easter morning.

The envelope stood out as an unusual piece of litter on the
clean streets of the Bear Lake Highlands neighborhood. It
contained an unused condom and a note written in red ink
describing the violent sexual fantasies of an adult man. It
was addressed to the 11-year-old girl across the street.

The neighbor rushed over and gave the message to the
girl's father.

"If you read this, you will not sleep tonight," the father later
told his wife. "This is bad. This is scary."

A series of increasingly graphic and violent letters
followed. All in red ink. All dropped in the street near the
girl's home. All in the same sloppy and wild handwriting.

"We didn't know if it was a teenager or somebody playing a
prank," the father said in an interview last week. "But we
knew it was disturbing enough that police needed to get
involved."

The bizarre letters have baffled local and state
investigators, who say a survey of hundreds of other
law-enforcement agencies around the country has not
turned up anything else quite like it.

In all, authorities have recovered more than 20 letters in a
case that has traumatized a young girl and consumed the
neighborhood that straddles the northwest Orange and
southwest Seminole county line.

"This is every morning," the girl's mother said. "You get up
and go to the window and look for something in the street. And you hope to God
something is not there."

Another young girl in the neighborhood is mentioned by name in some of the notes,
and the stalker has made reference to other children unfamiliar to investigators. A few
of the notes have been dropped near other homes in the community -- but most have
targeted the one girl.

Investigators hoped to catch the stalker in the act but came to realize that wasn't going
to happen because he was being too careful. Finally, after exhausting every logical
avenue of investigation, police approached the news media to ask the public for help.

But a week after publicizing many details of the case, including a sample of the
stalker's distinct handwriting, investigators still have no suspect.

They had hoped a friend, associate or family member would recognize the writing and
put an end to the nightmare haunting this girl, her family and their neighbors.

"It has pretty much terrorized the whole neighborhood," said Denise Nevers, an
investigator with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement working on what has
been dubbed "the red letter stalker" case.

"We've done everything short of putting a satellite in space to catch this guy," Nevers
said. "He has no pattern."

The letters seem to appear out of nowhere. They come days or weeks or months
apart. They end up on bushes or along the curbs.

But the writing contained in the letters strikes even closer to home.

When the girl's parents decided to keep the child under careful watch and refused to
let her outside the house without close supervision, the stalker noticed it. And his
writing reflected his frustration -- not being able to see her. One note asked, "Where
have you gone?"

"Part of the enjoyment he's getting is the psychological terror he's putting this family
through," said Mike Plitt, an agent with the Orange County Sheriff's Office. "It was
obvious he was keeping an eye on the house and her."

In one letter, the writer boasted that he had "bumped into" the girl in public, prompting
her family to retrace her steps during the previous few days.

The girl spends her nights in a sleeping bag at the foot of her parents' bed. Although a
new letter hasn't come in a couple of months, she is still too frightened to sleep in her
own room.

Her 15-year-old brother, who already stands 6 feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds,
now sleeps with a baseball bat.

Her father started taking medication to treat the anxiety attacks that would come with
each new letter. He has turned the home into a fortress with motion sensors,
peepholes and additional locks. The family removed trees from the front yard to get a
better view of the street.

"I just consider it psychological terrorism," the mother said. "You don't know who he is.
You don't know when he's coming back. You don't know what he's going to do.

"Where is he psychologically?" she asked. "What's his next step? You can't help but
think that way."

When the family went on vacation last year, the stalker still consumed their thoughts.

The girl asked her mother, "He couldn't follow me this far, could he?"

She has asked why the writer picked her. And although she has never been allowed to
read any of the letters, she wants to know when they will stop.

"We basically told her there's a sick individual out there who wants to hurt her," the
father said, adding that she is also aware that the house is "probably one of the safest
places she can be."

The girl has seen a counselor throughout the ordeal, and her parents wonder how it
will affect her ability to trust and develop relationships later.

But there's enough fear in the present.

When the girl's family doesn't spot the letters, sometimes the neighbors do.

"Because they're addressed to my daughter, the people who find them know who
they're intended for," the father said.

And when they find them, they call. So whenever the phone rings early in the day, the
girl, now 12, turns pale, starts shaking uncontrollably and runs to her parents,
screaming, "He's out there. He's out there."

One time, the girl found one of the letters, mistaking the note for trash. She raced to
the closest adult neighbor, crying hysterically.

Police say the letters describe the abduction, rape and molestation of children. Many
of them are focused on the 12-year-old, but some describe fantasies involving another
girl.

Those notes were dropped in the same neighborhood, covering unincorporated
Apopka, the Piedmont-Wekiva area and parts of southwestern Seminole County.

The earliest letters almost resembled personal ads with the writer stating that he was
looking for young girls, ages 9 to 12, and describing relationships he'd had in the past.

They've had the writer's handwriting analyzed and cross-checked it against the
scrawls of registered sex offenders in the area. Again, there were no matches.

But based on the self-descriptions in the letters, the vocabulary and the correct
spelling and grammar used, handwriting analysts and investigators concluded that
the stalker is a well-educated, middle-aged white man.

"There's never a misspelled word, never," the girl's mother said.

Plitt thinks the distinctive handwriting is a major clue.

"Take a look at the A's," Plitt said. "It's basically a backwards six."

Investigators have largely dismissed the possibility that it could be an especially
demented adolescent prank. The family seriously doubts it could be a close family
friend or business associate. But investigators do think he is someone who lives very
close.

And it very well could be someone who has never been arrested or exposed and
doesn't fit the "dirty old man" image, they say.

"I absolutely think it is somebody in the neighborhood," Nevers said. "And I don't think
we're looking for a boogeyman here."

She's convinced a member of the public knows who's doing this.

And that's why investigators have made an appeal to people living or working in the
area, especially bank tellers and co-workers who might come in regular contact with
someone's handwriting.

"This is a case of community policing at its best," said Dennis Lemma, an investigator
with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. Its Crimes Against Children unit also is
working the case.

"This is somebody who feels comfortable in that area," Lemma said.

Louis Schlesinger, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York,
teaches students about stalkers' habits and thoughts. He specializes in forensic
psychology and sexually motivated antisocial acts. And he often consults with law
enforcement.

He said adult stalkers are often loners who are underemployed or unemployed.

"Most have an underlying and disturbed attachment to other people," Schlesinger said.
"A stalker wants contact. It could be that he wants the personal contact of going by a
person's house."

Schlesinger says it's impossible to determine whether the stalker will commit the
crimes he threatens. But stalker behavior tends to escalate over time.

"Is it dangerous?" he said, hearing some of the facts of the Central Florida case. "I
would say, yes, this is potentially dangerous."

The girl's family simply wants the stalker caught.

"About the worst thing that can happen is that we not catch him," the father said. "How
many years can go by before we relax?"

Anthony Colarossi can be reached at acolarossi@orlandosentinel.com or
407-420-6218.