Post by LadyBlue on Sept 23, 2016 12:42:05 GMT -5
One day in 1994, Tracy Lundeen opened her heart to a socially awkward loner while attending middle school in Renton, Wash. Little did she know her act of kindness would set in motion a nearly two-decade-long campaign of fear and harassment that has changed her life forever.
Lundeen was just 13 when she offered to help schoolmate Shawn Moul after seeing him struggle with his class work in the McKnight Middle School library. Moul began following Lundeen around as they moved onto high school — a problem that became so pronounced he was expelled for stalking her.
But that was only the beginning. Over the years, Moul harassed Lundeen and her family members through repeated phone calls and more than 100 letters. In some, he threatened the family; in others he talked of killing himself. “My blood will stain your hands forever,” he wrote.
Even an eight-year prison sentence beginning in 2001 failed to end Moul's obsession with Lundeen — he found ways to get letters to her from his cell, and six months after his 2009 release, he was at it again, asking to move in with the family and badgering Lundeen’s sister Jennifer.
Today Moul is locked away again; on Jan. 24, he was sentenced to a 26 1/2-year prison term that prosecutors called the longest stalking sentence in memory. But is still does little to give Lundeen piece of mind.
Man gets 26-year jail term for 17 years of stalking
"Unfortunately, I don't think it's over," Lundeen, now 32, told Matt Lauer live on TODAY Tuesday. "He won't stop."
Decades-long ordeal
Lundeen's case has shined a new light on the U.S. stalking laws, which permit a near-stranger to continue a course of harassment and threats despite a family taking every step the law allows to thwart it. Even now, with Moul serving a long prison sentence, Lundeen's mother told NBC News: "It's not realistically going to be over until one of them passes away."
Over the years, Lundeen has consistently tried to keep Moul from contacting her: She keeps her home address secret, has her mail delivered to a post office box, and has tight privacy controls on her Internet presence.
But Moul focused on Lundeen's mother and sister in his desperate attempts to reach her while he served his first prison sentence: He would have other inmates send letters for him, or address the letters to his lawyer, but at Lundeen's family's addresses.
Lundeen's mother, Holly Knowles, told NBC's Aditi Roy of one particularly chilling letter she received just as Moul was nearing release from his first prison term, in 2009.
"He wrote me a letter saying that when he got out he had nowhere else to go and he wanted to live with us and he said it'd be better if Tracy didn't have a boyfriend," Knowles said. "That just scared the heck out of me."
"There were two instances; one where he let my sister know that he was on his way to her employer, and then there was another instance where he said he was on the way to her house," Lundeen said. She added it's "very frustrating" to ponder what is around the corner when it comes to her stalker.
"I never know and I still don't know," she said.
www.today.com/id/46202443/ns/today-today_news/t/woman-stalked-years-i-dont-think-its-over/#.V-VoaCgrIhc
Lundeen was just 13 when she offered to help schoolmate Shawn Moul after seeing him struggle with his class work in the McKnight Middle School library. Moul began following Lundeen around as they moved onto high school — a problem that became so pronounced he was expelled for stalking her.
But that was only the beginning. Over the years, Moul harassed Lundeen and her family members through repeated phone calls and more than 100 letters. In some, he threatened the family; in others he talked of killing himself. “My blood will stain your hands forever,” he wrote.
Even an eight-year prison sentence beginning in 2001 failed to end Moul's obsession with Lundeen — he found ways to get letters to her from his cell, and six months after his 2009 release, he was at it again, asking to move in with the family and badgering Lundeen’s sister Jennifer.
Today Moul is locked away again; on Jan. 24, he was sentenced to a 26 1/2-year prison term that prosecutors called the longest stalking sentence in memory. But is still does little to give Lundeen piece of mind.
Man gets 26-year jail term for 17 years of stalking
"Unfortunately, I don't think it's over," Lundeen, now 32, told Matt Lauer live on TODAY Tuesday. "He won't stop."
Decades-long ordeal
Lundeen's case has shined a new light on the U.S. stalking laws, which permit a near-stranger to continue a course of harassment and threats despite a family taking every step the law allows to thwart it. Even now, with Moul serving a long prison sentence, Lundeen's mother told NBC News: "It's not realistically going to be over until one of them passes away."
Over the years, Lundeen has consistently tried to keep Moul from contacting her: She keeps her home address secret, has her mail delivered to a post office box, and has tight privacy controls on her Internet presence.
But Moul focused on Lundeen's mother and sister in his desperate attempts to reach her while he served his first prison sentence: He would have other inmates send letters for him, or address the letters to his lawyer, but at Lundeen's family's addresses.
Lundeen's mother, Holly Knowles, told NBC's Aditi Roy of one particularly chilling letter she received just as Moul was nearing release from his first prison term, in 2009.
"He wrote me a letter saying that when he got out he had nowhere else to go and he wanted to live with us and he said it'd be better if Tracy didn't have a boyfriend," Knowles said. "That just scared the heck out of me."
"There were two instances; one where he let my sister know that he was on his way to her employer, and then there was another instance where he said he was on the way to her house," Lundeen said. She added it's "very frustrating" to ponder what is around the corner when it comes to her stalker.
"I never know and I still don't know," she said.
www.today.com/id/46202443/ns/today-today_news/t/woman-stalked-years-i-dont-think-its-over/#.V-VoaCgrIhc