Something Was Wrong - S10 E6: [Maribelle] Dating Website Predator

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

This week, survivor Maribelle shares her story.Maribelle met her charming southern gentleman boyfriend, Hunter, on a dating website. As an OG Crime Junkie, when Maribelle noticed the red flags started to pop up, she put on her detective hat and discovered Hunter was a dangerous pathological liar and a soon to be stalker.**Resources: For free mental health resources, please visit SomethingWasWrong.com/Resources HealthLine: How to Recognize Coercive ControlMedically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, PhD, PsyD — Written by Cindy Lamothe on October 10, 2019Battered Women: Coercive Control and the Defense of Liberty — Written by Evan Stark, Ph.D, MSW, Professor, Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration, Prepared for Violence Against Women : Complex Realities and New Issues in a Changing World, Les Presses de l’Université du Québec (2012)**Something Was Wrong’s theme song was originally composed by Glad Rags and is covered this season by Basic Comfort. You can listen to their cover of "U Think U" on all streaming platforms or at https://basiccomfort.bandcamp.com/Website: Basiccomfort.bandIG: Basic_ComfortTwitter: Basic_Comfort FB: Basiccomfortband See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. I'm Candace DeLong and on my new podcast, Killer Psychy Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the cold-butter killers you read about in the news. Listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psychy Daily in the Amazon Music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences. Episodes can discuss topics that can be triggering such as emotional, physical, and sexual

violence, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist or a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit something was wrong.com slash resources. For a list of nonprofit organizations that can help, names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Opinions expressed by the guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or audio chuck. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. Coorsive control is a strategic form of interpersonal violence, which perpetuates ongoing oppression and terrorism, used to instill fear and control. While anyone can experience coercive control,

it's often grounded in gender-based privilege. Between 60 and 80% of women seeking assistance for abuse have experienced coercive control. In order to subdue their targets, abusers use coercive control tactics, such as limiting access to money, monitoring all communication, isolation, gaslighting, emotional abuse, reinforcing traditional gender roles, parental

alienation, controlling body autonomy, accusations of infidelity, sexual coercion and abuse, and threatening children, pets or loved ones. While this form of abuse is illegal in some countries, including the United Kingdom since 2015. It's not considered illegal in the United States, unless another crime has been committed. I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is...something was wrong. You think you know me, you don't know me well At all, you think you know me, you don't know me well At all, you think you know me, you know, know me well, don't know. My name is Maribel.

I am 37 from Oklahoma and I'm going to be sharing my story with my ex Hunter. I met Hunter on Plenia Fish in 2018. I was attracted to him because he was the typical southern guy I was looking for. He was into all the same things I was into. After we started talking on Pliny a fish, we took it to texting, talking on the phone, face timing, he worked out on the road. So the first three or four weeks of our relationship was long distance. And I found it sweet and intriguing that he wanted to talk to me on the phone all the time.

That's how he caught me. I thought it was romantic and sweet. What initially attracted me to Hunter was his, everything about his profile was country. It was Southern gentleman. He liked to fish and hunt. That attracted me at first. Then after taking it to the phone, he had the accent. He just was everything I wanted and a man, I wanted this perfect Southern guy that was

outdoorsy and worked hard and he worked out in the oil field. We started texting and talking on the phone, FaceTiming, all the time it was all the time, all evening, every night. And at first I found that endearing. Later on into the relationship I found it to be very controlling. It was a whirlwind sweep you off your feet type thing. He was very good at love bombing. He showered me with affection while he was out on the road. He bought me jewelry and senate, to me, sent me flowers all the time, bought me a purse, just choured me with gifts. Maribel doesn't remember all of the specifics about their first in-person date, but she does

remember feeling comfortable enough with Hunter to invite him to stay at her place that evening. I was living with my roommate, and I felt safe with everybody there. The next day, it's like we started a relationship that we had already been in. It was like he came in from out of town in a relationship we'd been in for a year. What he had told me about his background was that he was from Alabama. He had four or five brothers, two or three sisters. He owned a very large property that he had down in Alabama,

but he was transferred up to Oklahoma from his job, he got a job up here. When he came back into town, he had told me that he had been staying at an extended stay hotel because he said his company put him up in it because he had just moved here and he works out on the road. So it made sense to me that he could live in a hotel. I used to work in the oil field business in the office, so I never questioned it. He had told me that he lost his wife and two-year-old son in a car accident back in Alabama.

The drug driver had hit them or he had fallen asleep. That drew me in because I felt horrible for him. I cried with him many, many nights on the phone and after he got back into town as well, but I felt like here is this widowed man that just moved into a state he doesn't know. He had me from there. I'm a loving, nurturing, caring person and he picked up on that quick and I wanted to be with him. I wanted to fix him. I wanted to with him. I wanted to fix him. I wanted to heal him. I wanted to show him that life can be great again.

Did he show you pictures and videos of his son? He did. He showed me a couple videos, pictures of him. As a baby, they ended at about two. He said we passed away when he was two, but he was shared videos, pictures. There was even one video that had his wife, the boy's mom, and the background.

And I heard her voice and felt horrible for him that he had lost his wife and son, it was tragic. What did your friends and family and your roommate think of him? My roommate, my best friend. She from the moment she met him, knew there was something wrong with him. She knew from the get-go that there was something not right. I didn't listen.

Even my mom, she felt the same way. And he didn't really meet a whole lot of my family. Something always came up that we couldn't go. It was work or something. Something always came up. But the one time he met my brother and a couple other family members, they all felt off about him. My mom and my best friend actually felt so much unease about him that a few weeks into

the relationship with him, they paid to have a background check ran on his license plate so they could find out information on him. It came up nothing unfortunately because it was a work truck and they couldn't get anything kind of at this point which they could have would have saved me a lot of trouble. I was in a vulnerable state when I met him. I came out of a pretty bad relationship before that and I know that sounds terrible but I did. I was in a vulnerable spot and just wanted to be loved like everybody wants to be loved and cared for. Here I have this night shining armor, this picture of what I was always wanted

come writing into my life and he's love bombing me with everything that I want to hear. I fell 100% head over heels in love with him. Absolutely. Absolutely. Another part of his story that also drew me near him and he led into fairly quickly that was that quite a few of his family members had passed away. He had lost his mom. He had a brother that was in jail. He had another brother that had passed away.

His life was just Surrounded in tragedy. I thought well, I've got a great family I can bring him into mind and show him love and what a wonderful family is Then he told me that he had four sisters. He never had a relationship with them. They have different Moms a couple of them have moms. A couple of them have different moms, a couple of them have different dads. It was a complicated story that he never went into much detail and he made it so upsetting that it was kind of one of those things that I didn't ask if he didn't tell me. I didn't talk about it unless he talked about it. Really into their relationship, the couple began

living together in a local hotel room that Hunter was staying at for work. He told me he had owned a couple different businesses. One was a trucking company. The other one was a food product. He had an engineering degree. He had two patents. He wanted me to quit my job and go on the road with him.

I was too scared to quit my job, so I started messing up on attendance, so they would let me go. It was so embarrassing to say, but I didn't really truly wanna quit my job. I didn't wanna leave. He wanted me to go and I felt like that's what I should do and I quit my job.

And that's really where the isolation said, and I didn't start going back home and staying back home. I basically gave my dog to my roommate because he didn't really want dogs in the hotel, even though it was a pet hotel. He didn't want him there. Even the dogs, he didn't even want you to have your dog. It's like his insecurity or something,

being projected onto you because they want that 100% power and control over you. Absolutely. I even stopped answering text messages. I turned my location off all the time because I didn't want my mom and my best friend to know where I was at because they were all starting to get suspicious. I started to get pretty bad. I'll very lonely road. They isolate you to gain that control because they know that the people around you can pick up on that they know that they have to

Doop you over one person at a time and he knew When he met my best friend and when he met my mom He knew from that moment. He was not gonna be able to win them over They have the most significant influence on my life. They're the two people I go to the most. I'm getting emotional. I didn't think I would. Things took a strange turn one afternoon. The couple had separated, so Maribel could do laundry while Hunter ran and errand, and then her phone rang. He called me and told me that the room key had expired and I needed to go to the front desk and get the key card renewed and to tell him who

it was under in the room number blah blah blah. So I get to the front desk and I tell him I need to renew the key for room 204 and he says what's the name on it? I give him Hunter's name and he says well I don't have anybody here by that name. Is there another name it could be under? I give them my name, Maribel. He says, no, it's not under that. I said, what's it under? And he says, John, and I just laughed it off.

I said, oh, he's funny like that. He likes to give fake names like celebrities when we go to hotels. And I got the key renewed and I went to the elevator and I knew at that moment that everything he had been telling me was a lie. That something was wrong. I knew he was lying to me and I got upstairs, got to the room, waited for him to get back, he got back. We were going to go out to dinner and I was trying to decide when I was going to ask him

about it. I decided I couldn't wait anymore. I asked him. I said, who's John Green and he looks at me and he puts his head down and he puts his head in his hands. He paces and I'm sitting here waiting for some kind of crazy explanation and he goes and sits down in the corner, put his head in his hands again and tears up and says, well, you remember how I told you I had to go to jail once, I said yes, he said, well I went to prison because I beat up the guy that killed my wife and son. And so I didn't endanger my companies. I changed my name legally. So my companies

wouldn't be affected so I could continue to have business. Did he seem convincing? He was 100% convincing. I of course inquired. I was inquisitive about it. I didn't 100% full on believe it. I asked him why he would do that, why he would have to change his name, why did it matter? People would find out the truth anyway. I then asked to see ID because I wanted to know what his actual real name was.

So he breaks out his driver's license in his passport, chose me me that that's him. And I feel bad for him because he had lost his wife and son and I didn't want to pry into that. I knew it was a difficult subject and I mean I couldn't blame him. I would want to hurt the person that killed my significant other and my especially my child. So I guess I sympathized for him and rationalized it in my head that it was okay, that that's what he did.

After her discovery, Hunter pushed for Maribel to put the subject to bed and move forward. Despite her hesitations about his truthfulness at the time, she'd become completely financially dependent on him, furthering his control. I had filed for unemployment, but that only gives you so much a month and he didn't want me to work, so he set me up an extension off of his bank account. So I would have money. So we go to the bank and go inside and set up and I get a debit card and everything. Money to use whenever I want. He wind and dined me. It was expensive restaurants. It was expensive clothes, jewelry. He would take me shopping. He would take me to Victoria's Secret. Everything. The whole nine flowers, everything.

So when we set me up on his bank account, they put in my home address for where my debit card should go to. And a few weeks went by and I didn't get it. And I called him and he had said it went to his trucking company's address and that they would be sending me a new one, which they did. Shortly after she received her new bank debit card linked to Hunter's account, she decided to log into their online banking to see if she could verify which name he was using. I started to question things. I started to really search him out on the internet and I couldn't find anything. So I was getting suspicious. So he leaves and goes back out on the road. He tells me that

the hotel's good through Sunday. This is a Friday. He leaves and I really get to work on searching this guy out to see who he is. So I started digging in his bank statements and I found another address for a town close to the town I was living in that he said that he did not have an address for. So, I dug around a little more and I found another name attached to his main bank account because my app fed into his main bank account I found out. And the name I found was Evelyn Green.

And I thought, well, okay, that's, I've never heard that name. So I instantly go to, where does everybody search? Facebook. I searched the name. And the profile picture is of a woman with two children. And one of the children looks familiar. So I open up and dig further into this profile because there were several evalants and I come to a picture of a little boy that looked familiar. And then I kept flip into the pictures and there was the picture that he sent me the

first time when he told me that his youngest son had died. The same picture posted on Facebook, like a couple weeks before he'd sent me that his youngest son had died. The same picture posted on Facebook. Like a couple weeks before he'd sent me that picture. There it was right there. The kid is alive and well on Facebook. I see the same video. This child is alive. This wife is alive.

It was unbelievable. What if you were trafficked into a cult over shot nine times or fell in love with a vampire or went into a minor surgery and woke up one week later, paralyzed? What would you do? I'm Whit Missildine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast from Wondry that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events, told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future with one choice, to a woman who survived a notorious serial killer, you'll hear their first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances.

Each episode is an exploration of the human spirit and personal discovery. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wunderly app. I never wonder yet. So I actually blacked out and passed out in the hotel. After she came to and tried to comfort herself, Maribel put the address she had found linked

to their bank account into her GPS and saw that the home was only 15 minutes away. And at this point it was about 3 or 4 a.m. so I get in the car and I drive over there. And I find where the house is and I park a little down the street and let the sun come up because it's dark and I didn't want to drive by the house just in case. So I park a little down the street, the sun comes up and I see a very familiar dodge. And there's this truck parked in front of the house. And I was like, oh my God, he has a home here.

That was the first thing that went through my head. He has a home here, he does live here. Then it was, he's got a kid, he has a home here. That was the first thing that went through my head. He has a home here. He does live here. Then it was, he's got a kid, he's got a wife, what was happening. Before I even had a chance to process this, I see him walk out the front door across the yard and get in his truck.

And two seconds later, my phone rings, and it's him. If it was that early in the morning, he knew I would be asleep. I knew I had to answer the phone if not. I was probably cheating, quote unquote. And so I had to like, I was sleeping into the phone, played the whole thing off, and he told me he was just over the border or wherever he was working at the time

and he said the gas station, filling up and getting back on the road. And I'm sitting here staring at him in his truck and we get off the phone, he gets back out and he goes inside. And I backed out and left and went home and didn't tell anyone. At this point, I was in complete disbelief that the woman and child

especially, because I mean, I've always wanted kids and at this point I didn't have any. And I was so just blown away that this child was still alive, that someone could say that their child was dead and passed them off as dead. Just that's where I couldn't wrap my mind. I was trying to wrap my mind around. It was this actually real. I think for several days I was in complete denial that this was even real. I went on pretending with him for weeks and weeks as if nothing ever happened, as if I never found out. But internally, I tried to process it more and more every day. And I was doing this alone too because I was so scared to tell my friends and family

for one, I was scared if I was wrong or if there was a legitimate reason for this. I didn't want them to hate him because I knew we were already struggling on that end anyway. I was scared to find out the truth. I didn't want to look like an idiot again for picking another bad guy, being in another bad relationship. I didn't want to admit I failed again. As she was processing and searching for more answers on social media, she came across a message that had been sitting in her spam folder from Evelyn, who she suspected to be Hunter's very much alive wife, asking me if I knew Hunter. And I never responded, I was too scared to. And he got back at a town and I still didn't ask him about it for a few days.

I pretended like everything was normal. I was 100% dependent upon him for money. I was scared to leave because there went my income at the time. I had to pay rent. I lived with my roommate. She has a daughter. I didn't want to leave them high and dry. So I scared for multiple reasons to even confront the situation with him.

At this point, really started to look into who Evelyn was and got her information. And I became an FBI agent with this guy, okay? Private investigators. So I found her phone number in email. So I created a fake email address, pretended I was one of my friends, and emailed her asking who he really was

to get some questions answered. I did not think that through. I just at this point wanted answers. I had to know. While trying to pretend everything was fine and simultaneously messaging Evelyn, she headed out for a night of bowling with Hunter. But before they even began their game, Hunter approached Maribel, furious. He comes up to me and he says, we're leaving leaving and I said why? And he said we're leaving right

now and he said don't play down with me. And I said well what are you talking about? And he said you know what you did, you know what you did. We got in the truck and we left and gotten to a huge argument, huge argument. And at this point I had started to see his anger a lot, so I started voice recording our arguments and things like that. Because I was scared that night. That was really the first night I saw that side of his anger. And I admitted it that it was me. At first I did lie. I told him that it was my friend and I didn't know. And then I admitted it that it was me because I wanted answers and he said you should have just asked me about her and I said well who is she? So we're arguing in the truck and we get back to the hotel and he gives me the second tragic sob story of his kids and who Evelyn is. He tells me Evelyn is his dead brothers, Widow, and

the two kids are their kids together, and he married Evelyn to give them his military benefits. And that neither one of those children were the child he had lost. He told me that there was a son that he lost. And he really did lose his wife, but this wasn't the same people. And I said, well, what about the picture you showed me? That was a different picture. That was a different picture. I was like, that is not a different picture.

I must have sent you the wrong one. There was always an explanation for everything. Is he again convincing? At this point, I'm thinking you are completely full of crap and you must think I'm done. But at the same time, I didn't know. I thought, I know for sure you've been lying about your son and you're trying to pass that one off. So how am I supposed to believe that you really

do have an actual death? Where's the proof of this? Who is this? How do you know? I wanted to know more about that. And he got really defensive and we got into a huge argument that night. And I ended up leaving, I told him I needed a break. Conveniently, Hunter was headed out of town for work. So she was able to get some distance to process. We spoke a little bit here and there. He tried to constantly win me back. And when he went out of town was when I decided to go ahead and

respond to Evelyn's Facebook message and tell her who I was and that I knew who she was and let her know what was happening to tell her what her husband was doing. So at this point, when I told her what was happening with Hunter, she told me that this was at the first time she started to lean into the whole story of him. You're one of several girls. She started giving me the names of the other girls. Just all of these unreal things. He never had of these unreal things. He never had the wife and kidded died story that was new with the two right before me and me, and she didn't know about the two right before me, but that's a whole another story. He was married to one other woman before her, and he cheated on her with Evelyn, and Evelyn and Hunter started off their relationship

staying in a hotel all the time because he worked down on the road and his story about moving and his same MO, she told him that we had spoke. So it cats out the bag, he knows I know, he knows that we have talked. And this is where he starts to flip and go completely. Psychotic, I would say.

So he turned into a complete psycho. He started to message me. I would block his number and he would text me from a texting app. And then he would text me from the texting app, from different numbers pretending to be friends of his, vouging for him that he loves me and that's not really his wife and just trying to defend him. It was crazy.

And finally, he came back into town and, like an idiot, I met up with him. And he came out with the full story. He told me the truth. That was his wife, those were his kids. But the news story was that they were separated. They had been separated for a long time. And she knew that and he was moving out. He was looking for a place.

And she knew about me and she's lying. He started to turn on Evelyn. And then start saying that Evelyn is saying that I'm making up things. He turns it into this whole huge back and forth thing. Starts pretending he's Evelyn to send me text message to convince me to be with him from her standpoint. Maribel tried to dig deeper into Hunter's background, and at first she couldn't find much, but

then she hit Peter. I'm digging. I find out he is not from Alabama. He is not from Oklahoma. He's from a completely different state. He does not own any businesses. He tries to pass off, however, that he did own a trucking business by creating a fake business card. I still have that fake business card, by the way. And he didn't have a degree, nobody had ever by that name been to college. None of it was real. No patents, nothing. Where he worked wasn't even real. Only thing I found out about him was that everything about him was a lie. And I got names of the other women that he had been in a relationship

with during the time that he had been with Evelyn, the ones Evelyn knew of. She gave me two names and one was a girl that is down in Texas, Amy. He had an assistant named Amy and this was supposedly his assistant but she was actually his girlfriend that was living in Texas that they had been together for five years. And let me just add in that him and Evelyn have been together for seven at this point. Do the math.

When Evelyn and I finally spoke to each other and we're telling each other our sides of the story, he panicked and went up to my mom's, worked my mom on the business, and he went up to her store. I didn't even know he knew where it was at this point. I think we drove by it once, and he showed up and as soon as my mom saw him walk in the door,

she told him to turn around and get out and to talk to him outside. She knew we'd broke up and that he was a controlling jerk, but not the name, the kids, everything. And I still don't know really what happened in this conversation to this day, but she'd basically told him to leave me alone, leave all of us alone, and to never show his face around us again. And if he did, that she would call a police. And he started sobbing to me, don't, please don't tell your mom that I'm this bad, terrible person,

nobody will ever like me. I won't ever be able to get in with your family, they'll hate me. I wish you could see our eye rolls right now. Right? It's the only downside of podcasting the eye rolls. Shortly after the incident at her mom's house, Maribel reached out to Hunter's other girlfriend, Amy, to warn her about his lies. It's the same story. The lie, the name was a lie, and at this point, she had still believed the

wife and kid story. She didn't know that that was fake. She knew that he was controlling and that he was a bad guy and that he was cheating and that he was married. She found out about the married part, but never knew about the wife and kids. So I broke her to that. So she's also just finding out this information. And they had been together for five years. Yeah, they had dated for five years. At this point, they had been broken up for, I think she said, at this point, it was six or seven months.

So he had just stopped seeing her when he and I met, basically is what it was. And did he use the same fake name with her that he used with you? He gave her the fake first name, but the real last name. She just solidified everything I already knew that he lied. I obviously knew that he didn't have an assistant name Amy Amy that there wasn't really actually a trucking company. His lies were truly unraveling and I knew tired of his excuses and we stopped talking and he came back into town and we met up once and he apologized. It was a sob story. It was, I'll do better from this. I'll prove to you I'm leaving Evelyn. These are my boys. I want you to meet my boys. I am proud of them. It was a whole new... You showed me that I don't need to lie. I was just unhappy in my marriage. I'm sorry I lied. It was a whole new hunter.

And part of me wanted to believe it. Part of me entertained it, I guess you would say. And he got a hotel and we started to hang out again a little bit. So like a complete idiot. But we did. And things were just bad from there. The couple's relationship was rocky. Intentions continued to rise. In spite of his promises to do better, Hunter's anger and abusive behavior continued to escalate. It was him acting controlling. It was him being mean, rude.

He started to tear me down physically, emotionally, about my body, about who I was. He would rip me apart. And then he would come back and love bombing again. And it became a toxic cycle for what seemed like forever, for several months. And he went as far as to rent a place in the same town I was living in. And I knew he was gonna do it,

and I didn't stop him, but I didn't encourage it either. And towards the end, whenever he did actually rent it, I told him that I didn't want him to, and he went ahead and rented it anyway. And made it this big show that it was going to be our house, and I could move in there. He gave me a key. I could go over any time I wanted. We don't even have to be together. If he's working out of town

and I just wanna go get away, I could go over there anytime I wanted. So that's how he tried to narrow me back in again, was with hopes of having something. And I took the key. We were off and on at this point, seeing each other occasionally. But this is when things really turned volatile and just nasty.

He really got to be verbally abusive and physically abusive. He would talk me into getting over what I would like to call lure. He would lure me over there with promises of love and care and gifts and dinner and I'm going to change and it was all these promises and I would get there and it would be the same thing. It would be the same fight. It would be the same controlling behavior. I would do something wrong. I would put a dish up wrong or I would close the bathroom door wrong or sit wrong. He would like grab my hood on my hoodie and rip me backwards or grab my hair and rip me backwards and I would turn and yell, I'm gonna get off me. Scream. Get off me

yell at him. He lived in a duplex. So if I ever yelled too loud, he would grab me and put his hand over my mouth and he'd say, shut up, they're gonna hear you. Now if the neighbor's here, you haven't called the cops. Don't say anything, They're going to call 911. I would just leave. And then I would get lured back in every time. And it got worse and worse. I finally just stopped. I was done. I said, this is ridiculous. I'm done. After Meribel broke up with Hunter and tried to cut contact with him. He began exhibiting other abusive behaviors. And he started stalking me. He started driving by my house, me, my roommate's house, and we lived on a dead end street, and he would still drive by.

He would go down, turn around, come back, and he would drive by on the highway. He would just leave messages in my mailbox on the driveway. He would throw gifts in the driveway. He just did weird things. Well, I had told him that I was done and that I didn't want to do this anymore. And he came into town early one morning.

He drove back purposely because I would not talk to him. And he drove all night and showed up at my house at six o'clock in the morning and my roommate answered the door and I was like, I don't want to see him. I do not want to talk to him. I said, please tell him to leave. So my roommate tells him to leave. After showing up at her place and being turned away,

Hunter texted Maribel to say that they needed to meet up one last time. It was, we needed to meet up and give each other back our things and he said he was going to go to my work and I said no, don't go to my work. He said, okay, I'm going back into town. So I'm driving to work and I turn and my work's right off the highway and I see his truck parked

in the gravel parking lot and I blow past it. I was not going to turn in. I blow past work. He sees me, but I have time to get far enough ahead of him and try to park in a store parking lot off the highway. And I see him coming and he starts to try to turn in and I see his blinker on. I fly out and turn across the highway. He turns across the highway to follow me in front of traffic in front of everyone. I hit the gas, I lose him behind me, I get to work, park in front and run inside because I truly honestly thought he was going to get a gun out and shoot me while I was trying to run into work from my car to work. I'm so sorry.

It's okay. He was truly such a predator. Oh my gosh, he was such a predator. Just after that, he started calling work. He would call my work and ask for me if I didn't answer the phone or he would ask if it was sonic and say he had a wrong number if I didn't answer the phone and even when I did answer the phone, he would just hang out. He just did it to see if I was there. And the text messages just went out of control. It was all day long. Some days he would create a new number and text me, create

a new number and text me. Sometimes it would be himself. Sometimes he would pretend to be, he liked to pretend to be other women that he was dating or talking to. And he would talk to me as if he were them trying to make New Jealous to come back. Hey, started sending me really vulgar, horrible things. He would send me pictures of naked women and him and other women engaging in sexual acts. He would send me pictures of himself. He even took a picture with one of my necklaces on her

and sent me the picture. I mean, do you really think this is going to get me back after his harassment and stalking behavior began? Hunter also started to try and intimidate her in other ways. He started threatening that he was going to tell my job that I was doing heroin and meth and all these things and he was going to get me fired and he was going to tell my whole family that I was on drugs and all these horrible things about me to try to get me back and then he would text me the next day or later that night as himself and apologize for that person and try to love me. I'm so sorry they did that. I told them not to ever do that again. You would be the protective defensive. And then when that didn't work, it went back to, well then you're a piece of crap,

you're fat, you're ugly, you're stupid. I mean, he would literally call me these things all the time. I'm not sure what he expected out of that, but it starts to wear dawn on your psyche after a while when you have someone calling you those things every day. Every day I had to look over my shoulder because he was always there. He just ended up always being there.

I had to change my route to work. I had to change my route home. I would call, see if my roommate had seen him drive by. I would go stay at my mom's on weekends. It was horrible. My life was completely consumed by him. And I mean, in all honesty, it ended up costing me my roommate. We're still best friends, but we ended up not living together anymore because she was in fear for her child. And I feel really bad about that to this day,

but I don't blame her for wanting to protect her child absolutely. And I just, I felt like a horrible person. So I moved in with my parents and I didn't tell him, but I got a bouquet of flowers one day at my parents from him. And it just said, I love you Hunter. And he did that not to be sweet. He did that because he wanted to tell me he knew where I was at. How does living in fear like that affect you physically and your ability to go to work

and function in everyday life when you're living in constant fear? Not only living in fear, but also the toxic things that he was saying, even if I would block, he would just create another number, 204 to be exact in the end he created. It tears your psyche down whenever someone does that to you. And then living in fear of that same person, just freaks havoc on your body. I ended up losing probably quarter of the hair on my head. All my hair started falling out. So I went a long time not really doing much

because I was afraid I didn't want to go to my best friend's house because I was afraid he'd follow me and find out where she lived. It was rough. It was a really dark time. Thankfully, Maribel was able to find a new job, which brought some relief because Hunter didn't know about it. Her car had also broken down, so she had gotten a different car which helped her feel a little bit safer. I mean, thank God for my mom and my best friend because they are the two people

that stood by me and loved me no matter what and no matter how much I isolated myself away from them, they were always there. So between that and getting a new job really started to help. So I started to get him off my back a little bit. Then he started again. Oh God, this time he caught me at another vulnerable moment. I had stopped talking to him completely. He was still messaging me. I wasn't responding to his text messages, but I got put in the hospital with pneumonia. And he found out about it. And he started texting me. He started texting my roommate and trying to act genuinely concerned. And I was in the hospital.

I was horribly sick. And I responded to his text messages. We just talked on a friendly level. He sent flowers again. He just tried to be my friend. And I got out of the hospital and we saw each other one time. I guess I just needed one last final confirmation that I was getting rid of him.

I stayed and I didn't sleep at all that night, so I was terrified. And he had to leave early that morning too. He went back on the road, he told me I could stay there and get ready and go to work. Well, I called him late, so I could snoop, because this was the first time he had ever left me alone around his stuff. I needed to know who this guy was. I found a lot of gifts and packages and pictures and Sweet little memory relationship book from a woman that he had been with for two years and was still

with her. After discovering this, Maribel decided to reach out to Hunter's other other girlfriend. They are still dating at this point. She thinks they are full on in a relationship. I am the one that broke to her. His name is not Hunter. It's John Green. She had no idea. She had no idea about Evelyn, the kids. She thought that Christy and the little boy were dead still. I mean, she had still believed the whole story and they were in a full-blown relationship. And I had to break it to her. That was hard. I turned her world upside down. She had kids, she involved with him and everything. Regrettfully, Maribel went to Hunter's house one more time after this incident. He came back into town, I went back over there one more time to

he lured me back in with getting my mom's earrings. I had been looking for a pair of earrings and he told me he found them and I went back over there and he expected me to, he literally thought in his mind that we were just on a break, that we would get back together

and I would move in to his house. And I told him no, that is not what is happening. We are done. And we got into an argument and I looked at him and I said, we are not together. I don't have to do this anymore. Why am I doing this? I said, I'm leaving. I'm done. And I turned around and walked out. And as I was stepping out of his front door He sucker punched me in the back of the head He didn't make full contact. I have Contact enough to jolt me forward and I had a water bottle in my hand and I turned and looked at him And I said really and I chunked the water bottle at him and hit his front door down at his shin level

But I knew soon as I really said that was probably a bad idea because at that point he took off after me and I took off at my car and I jumped in my car and he catches me at my car and he shuts my leg in the door and bruises the heck out of it and he's trying to reach in and grab my keys

out of the ignition. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to help me. It's like 4.30 of the ignition. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to help me. It's like 4.30 in the afternoon. It's the daytime on a weekday. And he even had a neighbor outside and I'm still screaming because he's like, trying to keep me from backing out.

And he stands in the street and says, go ahead, scream at the top of your lungs. Go ahead and yell for the cops, antagonizing me to call the cops. That's the last time physically I saw him. But he continued to still try to follow me. He would drive around my parents neighborhood. I would see that. But I had the new job. I had the different car. I didn't live at my parents house anymore. I had moved to another town. I had started to get rid of him. His only attachment to me was on the phone. So he tried for a while

longer with text messages with trying to get to me. It took probably a total of a year to finally get him to leave me alone. It took me changing my number finally to get him to stop and to be perfectly honest with you. The story continues. Last week he messaged me on Facebook from a fake profile. He is still doing the same thing. His most recent ex-girlfriend has reached out to me. He's currently doing the same thing to her.

The stalking, the fake numbers, the fake text messages, the fake people, the same story, everything. He's still doing this. Thank you so much for sharing your story and making the time. And I know you're a mom now and you have a whole new life and you're trying to move forward. Unfortunately, this person's still trying to make a negative impact on your life, but how is the recovery and you're moving forward process been? A lot of people ask me this question all the time. If you could go back to that dating site message and not reply, would you?

And I answered, yes, I would still reply. As much as it does still continue to affect me, it still affects me. On my everyday life, I still look for him because he is still around and he still mentions me. But it has made me become more vigilant about my surroundings. It has made me become a much stronger person. I no longer let men treat me the way I've let men treat me. He's a different level, but it taught me to stand up for myself and the importance of your friends and family. And if it weren't for all this, I probably wouldn't have met my now boyfriend and we have a son together and we're

going to be getting married in a few years. I hope, and I'm sure he'll probably hear this. It changed me who I was, but for the better. I would say that I'm still partially in recovery. I've got PTSD from the things that he did and the experiences and the stalking, but I live my life completely different every day. I live it as if I'm not going to get another chance to because he could have taken that away. There's so many men like him that domestic violence in so badly and my story didn't

in badly and so many others in badly. And I'm just thankful for that. I'm thankful that I'm able to share this story and maybe help another woman out or help one of his victims out. He is a dating website predator and there are men like him everywhere out there and if I can help one person with my story then every bit of it was worth going through. Thank you so much. Sorry, got emotional on that one. I know it probably sounded cheesy or anything but that is just the truth. I'm very passionate about this. You have been since the first time we spoke and I know it's hard and I really appreciate all of the emotional energy

and time you've given to share this story because I truly believe sharing stories like this saves lives. 100% and you have no idea how thankful I am that you selected my story because I mean I literally I sent that on a whim my best friend the same one I'm been talking about. She sent me the first season and she said, oh my god, you gotta listen to this podcast. This sounds just like you and Hunter. And you have to listen to it. And I listened to it and I was like, OMG, this, I feel for Sarah, I feel for this girl, I get it,

I get it. At the end of the podcast, it tells you you can submit the story. So I gotta do the website and I'm like, why not? And then I got your email and I was like, the timing of your email is so weird too because he had just crept back in with sending that inappropriate picture of me to his no recent ex. And that gave me the first courage to finally file a police report on him. This whole time that he did all this, I never filed a police report because I was terrified of him. And I was just, how can I stop this guy? How can I help? How can someone stop him?

Because men like him don't get arrested. You don't get arrested for cheating. You don't get arrested for lying. Our country doesn't take domestic violence serious enough, so how can I help get this guy out there somehow or help someone in a similar situation? And you chose my story and picked me and I was like, okay, well, this was meant to be. I so appreciate you. I've been getting so many stories of women like yourself being victimized by predators on dating apps. And the pandemic has definitely only increased this because what I've learned from speaking to law enforcement as well is that when the shutdowns happened, predators were used to being able to go to bars.

And women were staying home more. Absolutely. I just can't speak enough about how important it is for us all to just take those extra safety precautions when we can with online dating. But I also think at the end of the day, all the responsibility goes to him because it's his behavior that caused it. But I wonder if there's an opportunity for these dating apps to start taking more responsibility for what they're allowing to happen. And it's something that I've been thinking about a lot this past year.

If there's nothing legally we can do to protect ourselves or others, what else can we do to try and prevent these things from happening to the next person? Absolutely. Because with the internet, he can just go on there and tomorrow do it all again. Proof of it, he currently is. The current ex-girlfriend, he's riding around town with this new girl trying to make her jealous.

He's already got another one. I can guarantee you I know where he met her on a dating site. If I can give any advice, if you're going to be on a dating website, research, research, research who that person is. And if things start to add up or if they don't have an internet trail, something's wrong,

because everybody should have some form of an internet footprint, especially if they're being honest about who they are. Liars and cheaters and predators like this don't have an internet footprint because they use fake numbers, fake emails, fake names. If the evidence doesn't line up, it's probably fake. Thank you again so much. Thank you, absolutely thank you. Something was wrong is an audio chuck production created and hosted by Tiffany Rees. created and hosted by Tiffany Reese. Our theme song was originally composed by Gladraggs,

covered this season by Basic Comfort. You think you know me, you don't know me well. Oh, you think you know me, you don't know me. So, what do you think Chuck, do you approve? Hey Prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.