In mid-August, I received an alarming text message from the National Victim Notification Network, also known as VINELink. My stalker, who’s been languishing in custody on an unsentenced probation violation since October 2023 due to concerns surrounding his mental competency, had been transferred out of the jail where he had spent the last nine months. The text message stated that he had been moved to another facility, but it didn’t specify where. Meanwhile, Tom* vanished from both the New York State and U.S. Bureau of Prisons online inmate databases, leaving my stalker’s location a complete mystery.
For more information, the message instructed me to visit VINELink’s website or call the authorities in the county of his last known whereabouts. VINELink’s website stated that it did not have information on my stalker’s location at that time, and the jail employee I spoke with on the phone also had no clue where Tom had been whisked away to.
Simple information, including a stalker’s whereabouts, is not much to ask for – and it’s incredibly helpful.
Knowing Tom was still in custody was enough to prevent me from full-on panicking, but I was nevertheless anxious and frustrated. I knew Tom was likely being shuffled between facilities by the U.S. Marshals for his third court-ordered mental evaluation. But not knowing where he was or if he might be released soon put me in a heightened state of vigilance which has become part-and-parcel to my existence.
It’s a form of survival mode, an evolutionary trait that human ancestors benefited from in the face of imminent danger while living in the lawless elements. Spending hours, days, or weeks in this mindset, however, will eventually take a massive toll on a person’s mental and physical health.
With this in mind, I do everything I can to mitigate stress while enduring the most terrifying, traumatic, and psychologically draining situation of my life. There are a few surprisingly simple things which help greatly, including knowing where my stalker is being housed at any given time. Him being in jail isn’t enough to put me at ease. The authorities have released him before without notifying victims, including from facilities that are close to where I live, and I worry constantly that they’ll do it again.
Like so many times before, I realized that I was on my own with finding even the most basic information about the SOB who’s been ruining my life for nearly three years. He somehow got away with driving hundreds (if not thousands) of miles to stalk his victims at their addresses, sending physical mail to our residences, and threatening to dox us (despite being in jail, he has not been charged in accordance with the full scope of his crimes). But we’re apparently not even allowed to know what jail he’s at. Talk about a slap in the face.
Doxxing puts people in more danger than it may seem like on the surface.
When I first became concerned about Tom’s mental health during our friendship (before he started stalking me), I was especially disturbed by his habit of threatening to dox his victims. This became one of his go-to methods of inflicting psychological torment. He knew it made his victims feel violated and unsafe, so he pulled the White Pages up on his laptop and went buck-wild. To this day, it remains one of the most frequently used items in his stalking toolbox.
(To be clear, I vocally disapproved of Tom’s stalking activities and never participated. For a long time, I was also unaware of the extent of his actions. He kept a lot of things hidden from me, presumably because he knew our already-fractured friendship would be further jeopardized if I learned the true extent of his cruel behavior.)
From my understanding, addresses are public information. But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay for an ill-intending person to use their knowledge of someone’s address in an intimidating, threatening, or otherwise malicious manner, which is precisely what Tom does. His mommy also does this at his command while acting as his little foot soldier, as I learned firsthand in 2023.
The internet has taught us that there are a lot of crazy people in the world. This alone is reason enough to feel scared that something bad might happen if someone posts your address online – especially if it’s accompanied by vicious slander and bullshit claims that, if believed, make you look like a really bad person or an easy target.
Tom gives my contact information to sexual predators (in violation of a court-imposed contact ban) and doesn’t get in trouble for it, but I can’t even find out what jail he’s in.
Tom depicts me to anyone who will listen as a drug-addled, desperate-for-cash prostitute who indiscriminately fucks strangers, causing me to fear that I could become a glaring target for sexual predators. After all, there’s an overwhelming tendency in the U.S. for the authorities (and society in general) to pay far less attention to rape, assault, and murder cases involving victims who are sex workers. If a rapist doesn’t think anyone would miss me, why would he hesitate to sexually assault me and then silence me?
On one occasion, a recently-released inmate from the jail Tom was being held at called me in the middle of the night. He said that Tom told him I would have sex with him for $80 and that I’m essentially a fiending pillhead who would do anything for my next fix.
More recently, a high-risk twice-convicted sex offender, who sodomized two minor victims, called me from Tom’s jail. Tom apparently told him that I would provide him with legal counsel (I’m not a lawyer and pedophiles can rot, for all I care). Given incidents like these, I’m actually shocked that a predator hasn’t shown up at my house yet. I’m waiting for it, because it’s probably only a matter of time.
Anyway, not only is this a safety concern, but it’s also a matter of principle.
It would be a gross understatement to say that it’s unfair for Tom to maliciously use his victims’ addresses while the authorities refuse to even say what fucking jail he’s currently in. Like with many other things surrounding this case, it makes me feel like they go out of their way to coddle and protect the demonic scumbag while he actively destroys his victims’ psyches and lives.
Meanwhile, I’ve been unable to obtain even the most basic of protections (especially from the state), like a restraining order. I have yet to convince the state authorities to pursue even a misdemeanor harassment case despite my certainty that Tom has committed crimes against me (and that they would discover these crimes if they would investigate in the first place). It’s as if Tom gets to do whatever he wants with minimal to no consequence, while I have to be ever-so-careful not to even slightly misstep or I risk no longer being considered a victim from a legal standpoint.
It’s human for someone to talk some smack, have a bad attitude, or snap back at someone who drives them off the deep end. After all, a person can only take so much mistreatment before they naturally push back.
But as a stalking victim, I’m not allowed to be human. I have to take his abuse, which the authorities do practically nothing about, for the sake of being able to say I didn’t fuel the fire or mislead the bottom-feeding shithead into thinking I want to interact with him. On top of already feeling like the standards don’t apply equally, I feel utterly worthless knowing the authorities protect his privacy more than mine.
About a month after Tom’s whereabouts became a mystery, he reappeared in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons database.
By then, I had traced his most recent movements by accessing letters in his court file. He writes to the judge overseeing his case at least once or twice a week, often droning on about me for pages, and I was able to see where he had most recently been detained based on the return addresses he used. But these are not real-time updates, and I shouldn’t have to go to these lengths to know where Tom is.
First, he had been moved to an Ohio state prison that contracts with the U.S. government to house federal pretrial detainees. From there, the feds transported him to the infamous Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, which is conveniently situated on a property next to the Will Rogers World Airport.
FTC Oklahoma City is a stopping point for inmates who are en route to facilities elsewhere. Most of the prisoners who pass through there are on their way to prison to serve their sentence. Some, like Tom, are being taken to a place where qualified experts are tasked with analyzing their dysfunction. Equipped with its own runway, it functions as the main hub of the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS), better known as Con Air (yup, that’s a real thing).
After passing through FTC Oklahoma City, Tom was flown to a federal pretrial detention center in Chicago. He finally reappeared in the BOP’s prisoner database, and I felt immensely relieved. The fact that he was over 500 miles from where I live was a much-welcomed bonus. Knowing he’d eventually return to New York to resume his court proceedings, I soaked up every last moment of this extra breathing room.
Tom has once again vanished from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and New York State inmate databases, leaving his current whereabouts a mystery.
During the first week of November, the Bureau of Prisons updated Tom’s custody status to “not in BOP custody.”
Meanwhile, Tom no longer exists, period, on the New York State VINELink website, which claims to be a comprehensive and reliable source for a victim’s informational needs.
*Name has been changed