Dear Roger: Its All In Your Head?

Being stalked is a horrible thing to experience, I should know, I have experienced it. My stalker was relentless and intelligent and he had help. He was also handsome and charming and well educated in the vernacular of law enforcement and he had friends who were manipulated into helping him continue stalking me for over a year. We had dated and it was a tumultuous relationship, he was and still is what is known as a psychopath and if you ever have the opportunity to read  Dr. Hares book "Without Conscience-The Disturbing World Of the Psychopath Among Us", You will find something called the "Psychopathy checklist", it is a screening tool for profilers looking for serial killers and the like. My stalker met 13 out of the 21 markers.
Back in 1994/95 the stalking laws were not as strict as they are now, though they did gain some teeth after the Rebecca Shaffer incident along with several other high profile stalker/murder cases, but proving you are being stalked is very hard.
I let people know I was no longer seeing him, I told him very clearly in front of people to leave me alone, and yet he would show up and demand to talk to me. He would treat me as if I was confused and he would show up at my work and act like I had called him for a lunch date and then become enraged when I would refuse to leave with him.
We worked with each other until he was advised to resign, and he made my life a living hell. He injured me several times, but they were all,"Accidental" including a broken tailbone, a severely dislocated shoulder, and multiple bruises and contusions.
I would get texts late at night when I was off duty,(before the days of good cell phones mind you) that were police code telling me that the man I was seeing had been shot in the line of duty. I was terrorized for months, followed and even though I was pregnant, he continued with the abuse and threats and assaults...yes, the assaults.
I moved. He found me. I changed phone numbers, he had it in days. I moved again, he found me again and left notes on my car. He denied the baby,(thank God), and threatened me and the child with death repeatedly, and then left flowers hanging on my door.
I moved to a security complex and things settled for a little bit. I had to hide from everyone. I had to cut of almost all contact with all friends, including the department I had started off with and I had to skulk into my own grandmothers house like a thief in the night.
I lost work, I tried restraining orders, protective orders, police escorts and when he tried to grab me at a college campus one night, coming out of the dark all clad in black with no warning, my shriek of terror had him surrounded by 10 very large and angry Tucson Fire Fighters who had been in the class with me and who already knew him from his past reputation, but it was the death knell of my career. I had to hide, so hide I did. I had my son very quietly with no fanfare or announcements and we moved to a place where we had over 150 very large and protective and armed brothers and sisters and for over 5 years we were safe. The state notified him about the birth he denied it, the state determined he was a very credible threat to our very lives and told me that no support or father would be forthcoming for my son, ever.
Before we moved to the far away place, he had tried to break into my apartment. He pointed a gun a me, he was a fan of the knife and razor as well, and the things he did to small creatures he caught on his property still leave me shuddering, so I count us lucky.
My stalker was very charming, he would tell me I didn't know what I needed, that I was,"Confused" and that he would take care of things.  He could be pleasant and fun to be around until that switch turned and then he was the most terrifying thing on the planet. His best friend was a Tucson PD officer who was giving him my personal information every time I updated my DMV records as required for my EMT license, so in essence, I was giving him my address each and every time. When that was discovered the officer was demoted and suspended, but I wish he had been fired because he cost me my credit, due to all the moves,(no allowance for that in most leases back then), and my career. There were days I literally thought I was going crazy and that maybe he was right, maybe I was imaging things, but then when he came to my door and tried to break in when my sister was there, I knew I wasn't and he would not stop until he was stopped or he killed me.
To this day I still twitch a little when I see a blue Toyota pickup truck or my son gives me an expression that looks just like him.
When I became a cop and focused my studies in Criminal Justice, I narrowed my focus to Serialized crimes and Sexually Motivated Homicides because I think I may have a very unique understanding of that line of insanity.
The state investigator who had questioned him and then later came out and spoke to me very candidly said that he was, in fact, quite clearly a psychopath and that I was probably very lucky to be alive and not dumped down some abandoned mine out in the west side of Pima County.
I've gotten pretty good at spotting folks like him and it worries me when I see they have resources like the internet to aide their insanity. I shudder to think what would have happened had my stalker had the net or phones with trackable Gps, or even worse, Google maps and public records databases on the web like those I have observed have to utilize at their fingertips.
I have advice for those being stalked, do not take it lightly, its a very serious matter. If a person has been by your house, that is a credible threat and you are in very real danger and if its happened more than once, they have met the California penal code requirements for Stalking (646.9) and if they have made threats, via electronic media, that is Criminal Threats  (422pc) and is a FELONY and they can go to prison for it and they SHOULD.
I quit worrying about what people thought about me when my kids safety came into play and I lived like a scrub for many years to keep him safe, 16 years later I have a healthy, happy and gifted son who knows what I went through and my stalker is a lonely and bitter man who is still just as scary.
The mental illness behind stalking is quite often Borderline Personality with Narcissistic tendencies, though I have seen what can only be some pretty significant schizo-affective disorder in those that I have observed of late. The interwebz is a scary place, and people send me the stuff of nightmares in what used to be a place of sunshine. God, I hope someone is paying attention.