Morgan gets her dad’s old iPhone to replace her broken phone. She is very happy, and I am very glad that she will be safer with a cell phone that works. She takes her new puppy to the vet at 10:30 am.
Later that day, after work, Steve and I have leave Morgan home alone for a couple of hours (I was very nervous about it, but we had borrowed our son’s lab/Shepard mix dog Joey; he used to be an amazing watch dog, and now there were 3 dogs at our house, so I felt like Morgan could relax at home, while we were gone for just a couple of hours before dinner. But I guess I was wrong, she was nervous. I sent Morgan a text, “How’s it going?” We are just leaving Eagle.” Morgan sends a text, “Good. Super hyper. Might leave.” I sent her a text back, “Noooo, I still want to go to Aspen with you.” Morgan writes back, “Dude…You’re not going to be home until too late, you left me hyper at home and you’ll need to feed dad too.” I texted her, “He ate, if you take his truck and be home by 6:00 pm we will eat salmon and go to Aspen.” Then Morgan wrote back, “I’m staying. But grumpy.” I wrote, “Noooo not Grumpy! Dad would like you to look up Apple TV to see the difference between the one for $99 and the one for $119 thanks.” Morgan writes back, “Dude, you guys suck.” Then I responded, “Just because he asked you to look up the TV? Dad says he’s mortally injured. :(“ We are always joking back and forth – I love our relationship, it’s fun.
After we have completed our list of people, in and around our neighborhood, we have 55 “suspects” (can you believe it?), and while we knew it would be easy to eliminate some very quickly, the full list seems daunting. We realize it will take a lot of time to whittle it down to the goal of no more than three or four. So, we draft the first plan of who to watch and how. We grapple with what is suspicious and what is not, and how long it will really take to get through 54 suspects. It’s amazing what happens when you look at people while thinking maybe they could be the stalker – innocent little things suddenly become strange actions, strange behaviors. I start to do research about the profile of stalkers.
Morgan doesn’t want to be involved in going over the list of people – it’s too upsetting for her…she just wants this to all go away. I don’t blame her, but realize this is naive thinking.
There are two houses that we know are empty and abandoned by their owners, because of foreclosure. We are concerned about them, so we thoroughly checked those houses out to make sure some homeless person isn’t crashing out in one of them. Those houses could be used at night to lay low and watch undetected.
One of the patrol officers told us he did a little experiment, and parked in the raft launching parking lot by the river on County Road 100, and then walked to our house – he told us it’s an easy walk, so someone could be parking there and walking to our house very easily and concealed. After dinner Morgan leaves to go see a friend, and Steve sets up a new plan with Morgan for her to text at least a half hour before she is supposed to drive home, Steve sneaks out of the subdivision on foot and hides in a tall pine tree across the County Road to observe the surrounding area when Morgan drives home. He wants to see if any car drives up and parks and someone goes into our subdivision, while Morgan is on her way home – in case the stalker somehow is not in our neighborhood, but is just getting tipped off that she is on her way home, and they get there before her in order to get in position. Steve found out the hard way that the sprinklers come on late at night (same time he was crouched in the tree), causing Steve to come home very wet. 🙁
Click here to read about the 18th day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=654
Photo credit Max Barbanell
Tonight, Ryan, Morgan’s brother, Leesa and the kids came over to celebrate Morgan’s birthday, they wanted to do a sleep over. We make dinner together, and birthday cake, with presents for Morgan. A little later on we send Morgan off, for just a little while to go visit friends, while Steve goes out the back of the house with Ryan (both dressed all in black). Steve hides in the back of the house on the berm, and Ryan is randomly running through the whole neighborhood trying to look for movement – Ryan wants to observe Morgan when she drives into the subdivision, so he can see if someone is following her, and parking somewhere nearby, then coming in on foot. Once they are ready, Steve sends Morgan a text, “We are in position, come on home honey,” he then sends a text to Ryan, “On her way back now.” A few minutes later Steve sees a small red light moving across the street from our house, we are pretty sure the stalker is using some kind of night vision goggles, as we have seen a small little red light moving off in the dark right after we know the stalker was at our house twice. Morgan sends a text back, “in drive?” Steve answers, “Yes, and Ryan is here, but I think he has now lost his phone, so you might as well come home.” Morgan replies, “K” Moments later Steve sees the little red light again from his position on the berm, he tells me later that he thinks the sheriff’s deputies were correct, despite how hard it was to believe, this stalker was most likely living right in our neighborhood. Otherwise, how else does he manage to be at our house so quickly after Morgan arrives home? Steve is thinking that solving who the stalker is just got a little easier. But now we are asking ourselves another question, is there someone who’s tipping the stalker off, right as Morgan leaves Carbondale? Because this night he appeared just minutes after Steve texted Morgan to come home! Steve tries to contact Ryan so they can coordinate a chase of the person with the little red light, but can never reach Ryan till much later. We hatch many plans to corner this person, using the little red light against them, but that night was the last time we ever saw the little red light off in the distance. Leaving us to only wonder how the stalker is always managing to stay one step ahead of any plan we have to catch him.