Transcript of Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror

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OIBOS, individual skincare. I'm handcuffed to the wall in this torture chamber. There's no windows. It feels eerily silent. This is like a horror film. Am I going to die chained to this wall? There's nowhere to run. There's nowhere to hide. I'm just stuck. I did not picture myself surviving. I want other women, whether they've been stalked or not believed, to see my story and think things can change. I was 20, 21. It was my last year of school. I was working a job. I had an internship. I, I was so busy, um, I felt like I had no time. I show up at my job on campus and work my shift, and I hear the door open, and I look, and Christopher's there with flowers in his hands. I just freeze, and my eyes get big, and on the inside, I'm flaming mad. It was the angriest I've been because I thought we were past all of this. He said, "You know, I'm really sorry. I heard a grandpa passed away." I say, like, "I told you, Christopher, I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want the flowers.

Like, just leave me alone." I think he was surprised that I wasn't flattered. I'm, like, waiting outside in the cold at this bus stop, and he approaches me again. And he's like, "I just don't understand." And I cut him off, and I said, "I don't know what they're doing." is to not understand about this situation. And he's like, well, I just feel like there needs to be some closure. I want to figure this out with you. Christopher, I've told you multiple times by text, I've blocked you. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you. Don't talk to me. Don't text me. Don't show up where I am. Leave me alone.

He thought that was his chance. You know, he's a little Romeo. Not at all. He was creepy.

It's the first real experience where I feel like somebody knows what my wishes are very clearly and doesn't care.

Christopher, to me, he was like a sad, lonely guy.

I wouldn't say my first impression was very memorable. I mean, he was certainly older by 6, 8 years, maybe. He seemed very socially awkward.

She was a little bit nice to him, and he took that and he spun it into something it wasn't and ran away with it.

One day I caught him at frisbee practice, like, sitting in the stands by himself watching us, and it was a women's frisbee team. And then every week at practice, I would see him either up walking on the track or sitting in the stands, but he never approached me, never talked to me. But at that point, I was like, I just want to graduate. I just want to get through and do the things I'm going to do next. I felt like it was just something I could deal with on my own. Sam.

Initially seems hesitant to accept the situation for what it is. It seems like she's in danger, and it's frustrating to watch her downplay that. This isn't a normal situation. This isn't a coincidence. Like, this is a hazard.

I'm very excited to graduate. My mom and my grandma were there, so that was special. I wanted to take a little time off before I did graduate school, so I returned back to Elk Rapids in northern Michigan. The Christopher chapter is behind me. Kind of nice to just catch up with Pat and Robin and some of our other friends.

I met Samantha on the soccer team. Uh, she was a senior when I was a freshman in high school. It doesn't matter your age or your lifestyle. Sam will give everybody a chance.

We lived in this apartment right downtown, across from the local pub. Above the Chinese restaurant. Our door was always unlocked, and it was fun. It was cute.

Christopher messaged me a few times, like, you know, wanting to come up to Elk Rapids or meet with me. And when I show Carissa, you know, we just kind of laugh and just kind of brush the messages off. He became a running joke, just being this guy who doesn't get it and like, you know, "Get a life." There wasn't room for a villain.

It didn't fit in the plot of this story I had written about our situation in paradise.

I wanted to take a year or so off and kind of explore my faith a bit more. There was a ministry internship that really caught my eye, and I applied and was accepted. It was located in Kansas City. I was very excited.

I've known Sam about 25 years. My youngest daughter is her same age, so they were in, in school together. You know, Sam doesn't have an active dad in her life. And so I did a lot of the dad stuff, you know, provided rides, tried to be as supportive as I could.

Two days before I left to go to Kansas City, Craig and I are running errands together. We had noticed there was a red motorcycle following us. My heart just sank. I knew— I knew it was him. How did he find us? Like, I'm not even in my own car. How did he know where we were?

So I pull into the high school parking lot. He gets off his motorcycle. I'm going to go confront him. Sam says, nope, I'll do it.

I get out of the car and I say, Christopher, what are you doing here? Like, why are you in my town? He's like, well, I applied for the same internship you did and I was accepted. Do you think you could give me a ride out there? I am just stunned and deflated. Like, the thing I had been looking so forward to for so long feels like it's ruined. I tell Craig what Christopher says. Craig says, this is a problem.

I'm a solver. So it's like, all right, we're going to stop this. Sam's over at our house. We're sitting down at the table. Talking about what happened during the day.

Craig's son comes home and says, Sam, there was somebody looking for you. And I said, who was it? And he's like, well, I didn't recognize him. Was he like bald and short and redheaded?

Sam shows my son Josh a picture of Christopher, and Josh realizes he's seen him coming out of Sam's apartment. And that's really when it starts to get even more serious.

I realized the gravity of how terrifying that was, that he was literally coming out of our apartment.

I felt like actually scared and threatened that he would drive 2 hours and find where I lived.

This man is not just like obsessed with you.

He's dangerous. Craig says, I think we need to consider a restraining order or a personal protection order, a PPO. I was like, oh my gosh, like a PPO, a restraining order, like Christopher? Like, it just felt so surreal.

So we urge her, sit down right now and write down all the things he's done and all the places he's showed up. It's now not just a school issue. It's an all-year-round issue.

I thought through the past 2 or 3 years and wrote down the list of interactions with Christopher. I met Christopher in 2011. He had joined the same Christian group. I want to be welcoming and kind, so I saw him at different events the group was doing. He friended me on Facebook one day. At first, I think he's just lonely. For some reason finds me an approachable person to talk to. And then at some point it kind of changes. He's asking me out on a date, if I'm free between classes, have some time for lunch. And so I'm just kind of saying no and letting him down easy and thinking he must get the message. But he doesn't get it. Before my birthday, he approaches me. He says, "Hey, I know your birthday's coming up. I was wondering, would you want to go see a Red Wings game? I got us tickets." I am just kind of speechless in a bad way. I tell him, "I'm not interested in going to a Red Wings game with you." It's not like there's anything wrong with you, Christopher. I just— I just don't have any romantic interest in you.

He puts a few red roses under my windshield wiper, more flowers, like, at my doorstep with a weird love note. I said, I think you need to kind of back off and to leave me alone. But he won't stop. He was following me to my work, following me to my internship, there at frisbee practice. It was the first time I had really laid out each interaction with him in such a way that once they're put all together, I'm like, this guy's stalking me.

I received Samantha's petition requesting a personal protection order against Christopher. I have 24 hours in which to review it and decide whether it should be granted or denied. I've never seen a stalking case as severe as this. He was obsessed. If you looked up stalker in the dictionary, there'd be a picture of Christopher. So I granted the personal protection order for 6 years. At the time, this was the longest personal protection order I'd ever issued.

I get a hold of the director of the prayer ministry in Kansas City and explain to him, hey, there's a restraining order on Christopher. Can you take care of it? He calls him and says, we're revoking this. You can't come out here.

It was a relief. It was over. And I could just pack my car and drive off into the sunset.

After the PPO is granted, life goes back to normal, and it's like he never existed.

I went to graduate school, and I trained as a private practice therapist. I had friends that were, like, interested in what I was doing, so I write this blog, and There's a woman named Sarah Mott that comments, and she just said, "Well, I just stumbled across your blog." I was like, "Oh, this is kind of cool." I moved back to Michigan because I really missed— I missed home. A lot had changed. My mom and my grandma passed away. It was really tough for me. I think it shook a lot of kind of my identity. I buy a house and I dug into painting and house projects. I joined this, like, adult recreational soccer league.

This league is a true social gathering.

Sam's good.

She's a skilled player. She's very confident with the ball and Knows what she's doing.

I'm arriving to one of my soccer games and I see Christopher. I just stopped dead in my tracks. It looks like he's lost a lot of weight. Like, what? What is he even doing here? I was kind of shaken up the whole game just seeing him again. He didn't acknowledge me or speak to me. Like, what? Am I in danger? I went back through my files and found the PPO and saw that it had expired.

There's something wrong with this guy. This guy's not here to play soccer. He's here to watch Sam. And when did he start doing that? He started as soon as his restraining order lapsed.

I do worry that he maybe is coming after me in a vengeful way, wanting to hurt me for denying him all those years ago.

When Sam when I first met Christopher, he was this kind of just soft, chubby, seemingly harmless, awkward guy. It seemed to me when I saw him 10 years later, he had been training for something. That's how it felt.

Christopher didn't scream soccer player. He was kind of awkward with his body, didn't really know how to play, didn't know how to move his legs and feet correctly.

I approached this league's organizers and tell them about my fear that Christopher is following me again, and the league organizer says, "I'm sorry, like, I spoke with an attorney, and there's nothing I can do to really kick him out. Technically, Christopher is not doing anything wrong." Then one day, I am grocery shopping, and I see him.

I remember her telling me that she would go to the gym and she would see him there. He was everywhere.

I'm playing soccer one day and he's playing against me and somebody passes the ball. He's faster than me and he beats me to the ball.

Christopher was overly aggressive with Sam, just running into her almost to like just put a body on her instead of go for the ball. It was not normal behavior.

He turns around and looks at me and sticks out his tongue. He's like, "Ahh!" And I just am infuriated. Like, I felt like no matter where I played, he was just always in my area, and I just kind of broke down. Like, I subbed out of the game. I feared that I would never be free of him. Carissa comes into Elk Rapids, and she stays at the same apartment we used to live in in college.

We go up on the roof, we're drinking wine, we're chatting. Neither of us told each other, but we were both scanning the premises, and I happened to glance over next to this alleyway next to my apartment, and I see—

guess who?

Christopher looked around when he was walking down the street a lot, like he was looking for me.

And at that point in me, like, a switch flipped and I got up. I ran downstairs and I just screamed. I've never screamed. I said, Christopher, what are you doing? What are you doing in Elk Rapids? He said, well, I can't go home because I'm drunk. I'm like, you're not even drunk. Why are you following Sam? And he said, I haven't talked to Sam. I haven't said a word to Sam in 8 years. I said, then why are you following her? And he said, I'm not following you. I said, well, you're everywhere and it's weird, so stop. And if I see you again, I'm going to call the police. I was terrified. I called my family. I called all of Sam's friends. I said, I'm really concerned about this.

The more Sam sees Chris out in public, the more she gets concerned. She is a little more on edge. She's more irritable.

People were concerned for Sam at this point. You have to get another PPO.

We will all write reports.

There's no way that they can deny this evidence.

It's frustrating for me. I had the gut feeling that I did not have enough evidence.

We all thought that Christopher was a psychopath.

Robin had suggested, you know, do you have any protection in your home? Like, do you— have a firearm, like, what's to prevent him from potentially trying to break in your home? And I said, well, like, all my windows and doors are locked. My friend had gotten me a Ring camera. I kept, like, a really sharp hatchet, like, it was, like, sharp to the touch, like a knife, right under my mattress. I felt better having a weapon. It's an easy access thing if something goes bump in the night. Pat and a friend had come up to stay with me and hang out for the long holiday weekend.

We went to a bar. The first conversation we had was with Sam telling us how Chris followed her the other night. And Carissa, classic Carissa, she goes off on this guy. 30 seconds later, who walks in? Chris walks in. We all sink our heads. Holy hell. This guy's— this guy's tracking her.

I see Christopher sitting by himself with his phone out directly behind me. There's just no way. How is he here also? And I'm scared. And I say, hey, can we leave?

I got to make this stop. As soon as I got next to him, you could almost, like, see him tense up. I remember saying his name. I said, Chris. I know you're following Sam. I know what you're doing. I know you're stalking her. Once we got back from the bar, we knew he was tracking her.

That was the first time we really kind of brainstormed, like, how could Christopher possibly keep showing up at the same places?

Like, is he driving by her house?

I cleaned out the inside of my car. I looked around by my windshield and like my hatch. Like, I'm not— I'm not a mechanic. I don't know. What does a tracker even look like?

We kept digging till our flashlights died and till our shirts were dirty. Unfortunately, I didn't find it.

I decided I needed to try to get a PPO and I needed to try to get proof because I didn't think I had enough evidence to really get another restraining order.

She felt confident that she didn't have enough evidence for a PPO when we felt certain that she did.

We were all scared and feeling very urgent, like, Sam, we need you to do this.

Something has to be done. This guy's a weirdo.

I got in touch with Devin, who is an assistant prosecutor, and said, can you help me with a PPO? Christopher had smartened up. He never tried to even talk to me or get in touch with me. So I feel like it's going to be tough to prove. And she's like, I don't know. I think we should try.

I would be scared if I was Sam. I didn't want to freak her out, but I wanted her to start taking steps to protect herself.

I filled out the paperwork. I actually met Devin at the courthouse. And formally filed it.

We also attached her previous personal protection order. I wanted it to be shown that there was a 6-year personal protection order, which to me is unheard of for a first time.

When I was at the office, I specifically asked the clerk, I said, if Christopher were to come in and inquire if there was any petitions filed against him, would you be able to answer that? And she said, no, that information is confidential. I felt hopeful. There's an assistant prosecutor helping me file this. Like, she must think I've got enough. What's the harm in granting it? On Friday, I checked the mailbox and I opened the letter and it says the petition was denied because it appeared myself and Christopher had a complicated relationship. I was very upset. I remember just cranking music in my car and driving out to where I was meeting my friend. I felt so defeated. It felt like a slap in the face.

And then what does he do? He goes to Menards. He starts building his bunker. That's when he took action.

I was shocked and worried for Sam when the PPO was denied. What you're essentially telling her is you don't believe her.

The people that are supposed to protect her have failed her.

If Sam is gonna get stalked and not get protected, then who will?

I think it's definitely a comment on society about how hard women have to fight to be believed, how easy it is to just look the other way. He knew where she lived.

I don't know what his intent is. If he wants to hurt me, it's just this ticking time bomb that I couldn't do anything about.

When asked to comment, the court said Samantha had not alleged sufficient specific facts to show that immediate and irreparable injury would occur prior to a hearing and that her ex parte PPO lacked a copy of the first order of protection. Samantha was offered a hearing by the court but did not pursue it as she feared that Christopher would become angry when notified to attend.

This really becomes kind of a fight for my life.

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It was a Friday morning. I heard a noise. I heard like the squeak of a floorboard. It sounded like it was just outside my bedroom door. I could see some sort of shadow that wasn't normally there. And my heart starts racing. My mind shoots to the hatchet I kept under my mattress. In that second, someone storms into my room and jumps on me while I'm in bed, and I begin screaming, hoping that someone would hear me, and I feel his hands around my throat and he begins to choke me. And it gets tougher to breathe and I just think he's gonna kill me. I recognize immediately that's Christopher. He picks me up, we approach my car. He puts me in the back seat. I'm being kidnapped in my own vehicle. Once we leave my house, the likelihood of me surviving this experience goes down drastically. This really becomes kind of a fight for my life. He stops the car and asks me to lean forward, and he ties a bandana around my eyes so I can't see anymore. But I know the neighborhood, and I begin counting the turns. garage door. Christopher gets out of the car, he picks me up again, and we kind of take a couple steps and then we crouch, and I can I can smell lumber.

Then I can hear that I'm, like, in a more enclosed space. And then we go through another threshold. And then he sets me down on this soft surface and takes off my bandana. I look around, and I'm in this tiny 7x7 cubicle. Little room. I see, like, these soundproof patches on the wall. So no one's going to hear me scream. And I glance over and I see metal rings on the walls, and I just think, oh my God, this is like a horror film. And I say, "You want to talk? Let's talk." He says, "Well, I didn't just bring you here to talk for the day. You're actually going to be here for 2 weeks." He says, "I've taken vacation, and we're going to spend some time together." And I try to hold back tears. And I say, "Okay, what are we gonna do for 2 weeks, Christopher?" He says, "Well, I have a deck of cards." And I say, "Well, people are gonna know I'm missing." And he says, "Well, I think I'll keep them occupied. I've planned to take your paddleboard and leave it out at Lake Michigan." and let people think maybe you drowned, and that will keep them busy.

I maybe have the day before people start to raise eyebrows about where I am. Is he going to panic? Are things going to get tense? Is he going to kill me? I say to him, let's talk. I'm a social worker. I can— I can talk. He asks me specific things like, who was I with when we went camping on this date? What was I doing in Glen Lake 2 Thursdays ago? I answer him truthfully. I think he He's testing me because he already seems to know the answer. He reveals with some pride that he has a tracker on my car. He showed me the app on his phone that he used. And, you know, anytime you leave your little neighborhood, it alerts me and I see where you're going. And he revealed he also had trackers on my roommate's car and my friend's car. I asked him how long he'd been doing that, and he said maybe a year. Christopher is a psychopath. He is someone that I can't use normal logic with. I decide to ask him more about this space that he has me in. Did you build this? And he says, yes, he built it himself.

And he kind of takes pride in building this structure. He tells me, I kind of got this idea for this bunker from watching that show, the TV show You. The show You is about a good-looking young man who becomes obsessed with a woman, and he essentially kidnaps her and keeps her in this glass room, which Christopher says wasn't logistically possible. He had looked into it. This main character is this psychopath. He ends up murdering the woman, and you've related to this person. I need to try to convince him that we can be friends. That afternoon, he pulled a piece of clothing out of this tub, and he says, "There's something I've really wanted to give you." And maybe it's kind of silly, but I've kept it all this time. He pulls out this Red Wings jersey, and on the back it has my last name on it. He says, I actually got this for you when I bought those Red Wing tickets all that time ago. Christopher initially bought those tickets in college for my birthday, and I told him I never wanted to go to a Red Wings hockey game with him. And I said to him, you know, maybe after all of this, maybe we can go see a Red Wings game sometime.

You know, maybe we can be friends. I think, okay, I have this foot in the door. He says, "I'm really sorry I did that to you this morning. I just had to talk to you, and I thought you would never talk to me unless I did something like this." He has this moment where he says that he's scared of prison. And he says, I would never survive in prison. I think I could get in a lot of trouble for what I did today. He's panicked. He realizes what he's done. Christopher, if you will let me go tonight, I promise I will not go to the police. And he says, I don't— I don't believe you. And he says, I think what would really convince me that you want to be my friend and that you're willing to keep that secret is if you sleep with me. And I just think there's— there's no way. There's no way. And I just say, "Christopher, you know I don't like you like that. Like, I'm seeing somebody. I, like, don't— I don't want to sleep with you." He says, "I see. Well, I think that's the only way I can really trust you with this." You know, if I say no, is he gonna rape me anyway?

If he's set on that, what's to stop him? He could tie me up. That sounds a lot worse to me. I said, you promise me, Christopher, that if I sleep with you, you will let me out tonight? He said, "I will." And I said, "Shake me on it." And he looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. And I knew enough about Christopher to know that his integrity is important to him. And I was banking on that. He leaned in and kissed me. Me, and I just felt myself go dead inside. And I just broke down and I cried and I shook. And he asked me, he was like, "Are you okay?" I didn't want him to know that I was reacting to the experience and that I was disgusted by him. And terrified. When everything was finished, he said, "That's all I've wanted for so long. You cannot imagine how long I've thought of that moment. You're the person I'm supposed to marry." My stomach turns even just thinking about that, like— I said, "Okay, Christopher, like, I've held up my end of the bargain. You need to let me go." And he said, "Okay, I'll take you back to your car.

Let's go." He opened up the doors, and I realized we're, like, at the back of this this storage unit complex. Like, there's woods next to us. It's dark and cold. There's stars. And part of me thinks, "I thought I would maybe never see the world again." He pulled into the parking lot, and sure enough, there was my car. And I was just so thankful I survived. I did not picture myself surviving. Through that day. I need to get to the hospital. But because Christopher's tracking my car, I turned around and drove back home. Someone needs to drive me to the hospital. And Melissa comes to my mind. She's my neighbor, so she's close. She's someone I trust. Sam called me, and her voice was not her usual confident self.

I would say it was kind of emotional, shaken up. She said, "We have to hurry.

We have to get out of here right now." And then I was like, "What in the hell is going on?" The drive to the hospital was only 15 minutes, and I go up to the counter, and I said, "I need a rape kit." Through this whole process, my back is to the door, and so I'm glancing over my shoulder thinking, "He's gonna burst through this door any minute." Kaffee in seiner besten Form.

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When I received the call, it was 2:30 in the morning, and I was kind of half asleep when I was given the information by the supervisor. But I did question whether or not this was actually valid. I've been working as a police officer for 19 years, and I've seen a lot of things. And sometimes it's not always as it seems, but sometimes it is.

Hello.

I specialize in sex crimes, and when I first walked in the room and met Sam, before she even said a word, when I looked at her, I could just see the look in her eye. I knew this happened. My first thought is my own daughter. I have a 25-year-old daughter close in age to Sam, and I have to do everything I can, and it has to be done right. Is it an actual storage unit?

It's a storage unit that he spent $5,000 at Menards building. It's got soundproof square, you know, those rigid soundproof square things on the walls on two of the sides.

And you said it was the units where V is in vector.

It's at the back of V6 and V7. I'm pretty sure they're next to each other.

Sam was probably the easiest interview I've had. I was just in awe of her, the way she told her story, the details that she gave me. Were so important.

He says he doesn't want to go to jail and he'd rather police shoot him.

So does he have weapons? Did he say—

can I— rifle and a crossbow.

I'm going to make a quick call real quick. We called in detectives to get information about this guy because we didn't know much. We needed to find Christopher as soon as we could. So we went right to the storage units. We didn't know if he was hiding in the bunker. We didn't know if there were booby traps or anything like that.

I don't know what this is. Christopher, if you're inside, let us know. I'm going to have my dog come find you and he will bite you. Call out to us now if you're inside. There's like an entrance little thing here and And another room here.

There's this box. It's exactly how Sam described it to us. And I'm like, holy shit, this— this thing's actually here. I couldn't believe my eyes.

Hello? Hey, you.

When we realized Christopher wasn't there, that's when the evidence collection started.

Sandbags lined all the way to the ceiling there. Sandbags not completely— That's a leak from the plug. Let's head to the inside. This is the interior.

And I could see the soundproof panels that she had described all over the walls. So to give you another view of the inside, he packed insulation in the roof, insulation on all the sides. He really wanted to make sure that nobody knew that they were in there and that nobody could hear Sam if she was screaming.

There are 3 hooks in the wall.

So it's 2x6 construction. Now we're shutting the second door, which was the exterior.

So as soon as I saw the bunker, I just want to find them. I want to find them and I want to get them into custody. City as soon as possible. I knew that, that Sam was in fear for him being out there. And the longer that he was out there, the more fear she was going to be in for not knowing where he was at.

I don't know that my friends or family are safe or that they would be used to try to get to me or that he would hurt someone. He's out there and he's capable of murdering, I think.

I think if you kidnap somebody and chain them to a wall, you have no boundaries.

Even if you think somebody is creepy or crazy, you can't actually fathom that they would build a bunker for somebody in a storage unit.

I was convinced if he had gone through all that trouble, that there was going to be no end unless he was behind bars.

My specialty is cellular analysis. It's not pinpoint to the location, but I can get pretty close to where the cellular device was at. I was able to determine the area where I thought had the highest probability of being able to find Christopher's cell phone. We broke up into separate groups and we began driving. I was driving down Road Street. It was the first road that I had driven down. And out of luck's chance, I looked down an alley and I see the front of a car. Sam had told Detective Matucci that Christopher drove a black Cadillac CTS. I thought to myself, there's no way that this is going to be this easy. And surveillance detective then called out that the suspect was out of his house and was approaching his car. He was giving us updates. He's now inside of his car. The car is now driving away down the alley.

Everybody knew that he was what was at stake. We don't want to put our guys in harm's way, but we also have to protect the community.

Open the door!

Open the door!

I can't hear him.

Can you get him?

No.

Open the door! Open the door!

Hands off! Unlock your door. Don't touch your phone. Just get out of the car. You're good.

He's gone.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine. The detectives let us know that he's been found and arrested, and it was safe if I wanted to returned to my home. And I felt this weight lifted off of me, like, okay, he's not going to hurt my friends and family and me. And I don't know what's going to come next, but they caught him. Like, I, I did the thing. Like, I— they arrested him.

I was very excited that that we had him in custody, but also now I had a job to do because I wanted to verify everything that Sam had told me. Chris?

Yeah, Christopher.

Christopher, my name is Mike.

Hey, Mike.

How you doing?

He's just staring at me. Not much expression, not much emotion at all. Do you mind switching chairs with me?

I was there for not only as a secondary interviewer, but also to keep an eye on Christopher.

Do you know why you're here? Do you know why you're under arrest?

I guess. Tell me why I'm under arrest.

Well, it has to do with Sam. Do you know Sam?

Sam?

Last name Stites. He was kind of playing dumb with me, wondering why he was there. So, yeah, we're here to talk to you about Sam and what happened Friday. Um, would have been between 7 AM and about 9 PM.

Okay.

Okay. Were you working that day?

No, I was— I get out in the morning.

Okay. What were you doing?

But I'm on Friday, I'm on vacation.

I was hunting.

Chris, we know you weren't hunting.

Well, not the whole day, but—

Okay. What were you doing at 7 AM? I was in the woods. Okay, well, you weren't in the woods at 7. We have video surveillance from your storage units. Oh, Don Mann's Road. He was mad, and I think he was mad at Sam. He believed her that they were going to have this friendship, this relationship. Well, we did do a search warrant at the storage unit. We know what's in there.

It looks bad, Christopher. That's what we're seeing. Tell us the reason behind it so that there's an explanation behind it.

He started to lie to us.

It's weird because it's personal.

Tell us more.

It's uncomfortable for me.

Tell us what was going through your mind. If you weren't going to harm her, what was it for?

It was role-playing gone way too far.

He claimed this was a planned event where he was supposed to surprise her, but he overdid it and she didn't like the surprise.

Took it further than she wanted to.

So, okay.

We wanted him to talk. And the more he said, the more he verified, the better.

Have you ever watched that Next Foot series?

You possibly haven't.

Do you think you watched it?

Would it be on your Netflix history?

I don't have Netflix currently.

You don't?

I don't even know what's on TV.

So the way that he snapped his head and looked at me when I asked him, I knew that he had seen it. He's kind of surprised during the start of the role-playing.

Yeah, that's why I took it too far.

Like when my wife says surprise me, I take her out to dinner and give her flowers. I mean, there's role-playing. And then there's breaking into someone's house, kidnapping them, binding and gagging them, putting them in a car, driving them to a storage unit that you have staged with a soundproof room, hooking them to a metal bracket on the wall, making them shit in a bucket, and then raping them.

I didn't rape Sam.

But if she was not okay with this, as you said in the beginning, that's rape. Knowing the things that he did to her, I'm looking across the table at him and I am thinking that he is pure evil.

I'm never seeing daylight again.

Why do you say that?

Because you've already built a case against me and you're taking everything that she says as truth.

He's trying to give us a story to paint Sam in a terrible light and that she was complicit in everything. I have a lot of experience doing these types of cases, and what I've come to understand over the years, especially with juries, is they expect somebody to act a certain way. If they're being sexually assaulted, they should fight, they should run, and if they don't do that, they're not believed.

So I'm gonna do a buccal swab on the right side, a buccal swab on the left side.

There was a lot more information out there that we had to try to find. At the hospital, Sam mentioned that he removed all the hair from his body so he could avoid detection DNA-wise.

He didn't want to leave hair behind, so he He tried to chemically remove a bunch of his hair and had a bad skin reaction.

And when he took his pants and his shirt off, you could see chemical burns on his body.

I want to put a case together that makes him go to jail for the longest time possible.

One of my first phone calls was to Noel Mogenberg. She's the head prosecuting attorney in Grand Traverse County.

I got a call from Detective Matucci, and we've worked together for a long time, so I was kind of like, okay, what's really up? That's a good one, but what's going on? What do you need? And no, no, I'm serious. And in my mind at that point, I'm formulating, okay, what is this going to look like when we go to court? Went to court, I had just hoped that a jury would believe Sam. And she was extremely believable and had this long history of telling him no.

This is a prepaid call from Christopher Thomas. I don't know how much to say and not to say. I know you as a loving, caring, kind person. Yes, I am. And I don't know if something snapped inside you. No, nothing snapped inside me. Everything that happened on that day was loving, kind, and caring.

I did not hurt anybody. We had been in touch with the prosecutor's office, and Christopher was set to be arraigned, and so Robert and I streamed the arraignment. There on my TV screen in my living room, seeing him in that orange jumpsuit and hearing my name and hearing the actual crimes he was charged with, you know, they were very heavy words.

I charged Christopher Thomas with kidnapping, home invasion first, torture, aggravated stalking, and 4 counts of criminal sexual conduct first degree. He stalked the victim in this case for over a decade.

Christopher pleads not guilty to all of the charges. And I'm not surprised.

The judge agreed there'd be no safety for Sam if Chris was released. And so she denied bail.

I didn't have to find another plan to hide or escape. Or live in fear that he could just come to my home. He was locked up and it felt like another win. Hang on. All right, hold on one sec.

Tell me when you're going.

All right, so it's 10:24.

Every piece of information that we got was important. We did our best to locate the trackers.

Initially, he had outright denied having any trackers on any vehicles. Where's Sam's at on her car? You don't know where you put it at?

She put it in there.

She did not put a tracking device on her own car, Christopher.

She didn't.

He didn't want to admit to a misdemeanor of tracking somebody, and meanwhile he's looking at several life offenses for what he had just done.

Nowhere could I find them. I even told Sam that I can't believe that I'm being beaten by this guy on these placement of these trackers. One of the cars, we put it up on a rack where we could get underneath it.

It's like a small hockey park.

That's what I'm saying. He put them up underneath the bumpers.

These particular trackers, you only get a couple of weeks worth of battery life on them.

You can see it. I'm going to pull that up in there.

Hey, So he had to travel to all these different locations to constantly check the batteries, charge the batteries, and place the trackers back on and off all of these vehicles.

It seemed like when he was not at work or sleeping, he was tracking her. So when we looked at his phone, I can't even count how many videos and pictures of Sam. It's been 10 years, 10+ years, and this guy is not stopped.

After 2014, after the restraining order, my life moved on, but his didn't. But that whole time, I just had the feeling like I was being watched. While I lived in Kansas City, there's a woman named Sarah Mott that comments on my blog. So Sarah and I had some email sort of exchanges. I later found out that Christopher had posed as Sarah Mott. He made some fake account, and he was following me.

At Christopher's house, there were receipts from stores around town. Which led us to look at their video surveillance and actually catch them on camera buying all these things.

I filed the PPO in July and it's denied. August and September, he's building this bunker to kidnap me in and hold me in.

He spent thousands of dollars on creating this, this box so he could spend time with Sam and do God only knows what.

To see someone like that who was able to hold a regular job, who was able to appear as a normal, productive member of society, who's then got this other side of him going on in the background, was really scary.

You ever been arrested before?

Yeah, I don't remember the year.

What was it for?

Harassment, stalking.

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This is our sexual harassment training. Hands off your coworker. Now sign this saying that I trained you, or you're fired.

Yes, ma'am.

Work relationships are too messy.

I just met the woman of my dreams.

You gotta chill out and not come on too strong.

That goes against my entire personality, but— I'll try.

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I got a text message, and it was— It was the detective from Grand Traverse, and he said, "Can you call me?" So I called him, and he said, "Do you remember a guy named Christopher Thomas?" And I think I said, "I will never forget a guy named Christopher Thomas." In 2009, I was in college full-time and working at a residential treatment center, and that's where I met Christopher. One day he asked if I wanted to go to dinner, and I didn't really think too much of it, but apparently he did. So next, he wanted to know if I wanted to go ice skating. I did not want to go ice skating with him, but that's when I was younger and still trying to be nice. And so I told him that I had studying to do instead of just flat out saying, "No, I don't want to go." When I set those boundaries and he didn't like it, things kind of escalated after that. The spring semester, I was sitting in class and I would I would see him drive through the parking lot on campus. Not long after that, my friend was at the house, and I looked out the window, and I was like, "He's outside." But he was on foot.

And my friend got up and ran out of the house and chased him. I filed a PPO that night, and the judge signed it ex parte, which means there was no court hearing. This was serious enough that it was necessitated. After that, you know, it's just a matter of every time you see him, you have to document it. All summer, he'd drive by and I'd be like, well, am I calling the police today or am I not calling the police today? And then we got a new prosecutor, and she called me, and she said, "You know, all this is going on, like, do you want to press charges?" And I said, "Yeah, absolutely. I'm tired of this." He got 24 months of probation, and he was in jail for a few days, and he got credit for time served.

He's punished for what he does. He was held accountable for that in 2010, and instead of changing his behavior, he found a new victim.

I always knew that there would be somebody else, um, and at that point, you know, I, I didn't know who, I didn't know where, I didn't know when. And when I talked to the detective, there was like this guilty, like, he did do it to somebody else, I was right, I knew this was going to happen.

How could this have gone on so long with me if he's done something like this before? The system's not set up to really protect and defend women. A victim of rape or sexual assault doesn't necessarily see justice most of the time, so What's gonna be different about me?

I found out that the defense wanted to have Christopher evaluated for criminal responsibility, which means, was he, at the time of the offense, able to understand right from wrong? The risk always is if someone comes back and the report says that they are— are insane, then what happens is they're hospitalized, and then after a certain time, they're released.

It was several competency evaluations, and each time he was ruled responsible for his actions. You know, I want to get some closure for myself, and it just drags on.

His attorney wanted to get an independent competency exam to compare to the state exam, but they came up with the same conclusion.

He just said that there's crazy and insane and you're not neither. You're, you're just an isolated, lonely, depressed person. Yeah, that's what he said. Gotcha. And I'm sorry, they don't try not to cry today because I've been crying nonstop for 3 days.

There were a few conversations that he had with his mother when she would get upset. And it was one phone call in particular, really, um, it kind of scared me a little bit.

But anyways, I'm sorry that you were so lonely, and I'm sorry I made you get your own place. I should have just let you stay here. You know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't have mattered. I think it would have, because I don't think you even had her on your mind at that point. I mean, no, no. Every, every day for the last 12 years, I never heard you mention her name once. So we could have got you help or counseling or something. We could have worked through all this. Could have been a whole different path than this path, right? Yeah, I could talk to one person. Yeah, the person that didn't want you anywhere near her.

He's so far gone, so far obsessed with her that I believe if he had the opportunity, he would do something again.

We do have to always be prepared for trial. But we knew that there was a potential for a plea bargain in this case. So we get a call from Jesse, Christopher's attorney, and we started talking about what those pleas would look like. And Jesse came back a few days later and said, he's not ever going to admit that he raped her. He says it was consensual.

Despite his attorney's attempts to, you know, explain the concept of consent, Christopher will not plead guilty to the criminal sexual assault charges.

I didn't rape Sam.

But if she was not okay with this, as you said in the beginning, that's rape.

He's delusional. He thinks that, you know, she's consenting to having sex with him in this box, and she's in a situation where her life was at stake. And she's trying to survive.

I had conflicting feelings. I thought a plea deal seemed like a cheap way out for him. Why should he get a pass at some of the charges just because he didn't agree or doesn't understand consent? Noel really said, yes, this case is a slam dunk case, but if this does go to trial, You're going to be dragged through the mud.

You can put the best case in the world together. We don't like to leave it in the hands of a jury. Sometimes juries get it wrong.

Dropping the criminal sexual conduct charges didn't feel like full justice to me in some ways. I wanted everyone to be able to point at Christopher and say, this person is a rapist. But in the end, I decided to trust Noel's instincts and say, yes, let's— let's go for a plea deal, and let's try to make him look as awful as we can. When I asked Noel who the judge assigned to the case is, she tells me it's Judge Elsenheimer. That was the same guy who denied my PPO. How could this judge be assigned to this case? And I'm like, either that's going to be a good thing because he's going to feel awful, or potentially it could be bad.

A Traverse City man accused of kidnapping a woman and holding her hostage in a soundproof bunker took a plea deal today.

Is it your belief that you acted in such a way as to create severe mental pain on her part.

Yeah.

Thomas pled guilty to kidnapping, torture, and aggravated stalking. All other charges will be dropped when he's sentenced.

Christopher does choose to accept the plea deal. And finally, I get a date for sentencing. It's going to happen February 5th, 2024.

The day of the sentencing, we go into the courtroom. We have Robin, me, Sam. We have Christopher's family right there. Christopher is not there yet, but the stage has been set and we're all holding our breaths.

Christopher enters in his orange jumpsuit with his hands bound, and he's there in the flesh in front of me.

All right.

Do the people have any argument?

Yes, Your Honor.

Thank you. I wanted to make sure that the judge heard all the details of what exactly she went through that day. She agreed to have sex with him so that— hoping that he would fulfill his end of this bizarre bargain and let her go.

Noelle hoped that this would persuade the judge to sentence outside of the guidelines.

He then penetrated her with his penis to the point that she was crying and shaking.

It just felt like such a private thing that would just be out in the open, but I understood why she needed to do it.

So I would ask the court to, again, to think about the duration of both the aggravated stalking and the kidnapping, about the meticulous preparation that the defendant took.

And I felt like this was the first time After enduring that whole day with him, that I felt free to really tell him some of my true thoughts. I don't want to address Christopher, as he has not honored my requests nor shown he values my thoughts or feelings in over a decade. I wondered if I would see daylight again. I shook and sobbed after he raped me. I wasn't sure he would stop. If I tried to push him away, would he hold me down again? I never want to worry about him hurting me or another woman ever again. I ask that the court protect myself and other women from being stalked and raped by this sick and destructive man by considering the longest sentence permitted by law. Thank you, ma'am.

I guess when you see someone as strong as Sam is and as unshakable as Sam is, and then you see them break down a little bit, it just— it really spoke to the depths of what this person had done to her.

Chris got up there with his 3 pages of statement that he was ready to make.

I just remember thinking, oh, God, I don't want to hear whatever you have to say.

I wish I could take it all back. I can't. I really can't.

I wish I could.

He tucked his 3 pages of speech away and just apologized to the people he hurt and then stood there and waited for his sentence.

So you do have that one prior misdemeanor. You don't have a juvenile record. You have a master's degree. You're very well educated. You had a good job.

This court itself has let me down before. What if they only give 20, 25 years and then I need to move and go into hiding and change my name so that I feel safe?

Please, God, don't let it be just 20 years because 20 years is nothing.

But this stalking behavior and obsessive this behavior kind of behavior already happened in Big Rapids back in 2010. You knew what the result of this kind of behavior would be, and you continued to engage in it with a different person.

The judge said that he felt Christopher was not able to be rehabilitated.

Even after you were sitting in jail, you told your mother that nothing would have mattered that nothing would have stopped you from doing what you were going to do. That's an extraordinary statement. All of those things in concert, uh, lead me to believe that a sentence within the guideline range is inappropriate.

The judge, uh, started talking about a reasonable life expectancy for someone Christopher Thomas's age, and that's when we got really excited.

With regard to count 1, Kidnapping, you will serve 40 to 60 years in the Michigan Department of Corrections.

At the time of sentencing, Christopher Thomas was 39 years old, and Judge Elsenheimer gave him 40 to 60 years. So he's going to be almost 80 before he even has a chance of getting out of prison.

If somehow you are released at some point in your future, then it is a requirement that you will have a lifetime GPS tracker GPS, so that we will know where you are all the time for the rest of your days.

The judge's nice little piece of, and if you get out, you got to wear an ankle monitor the rest of your life. It's like, okay, you know, thank you.

You know, Christopher is in a place where the worst of the worst people are, and he needs to be there. To do something like that to another human being, I just I just don't understand it.

It was a little difficult to watch, but I just remember being really proud of her for doing that. I'm very proud of her. Gosh, I'm sorry.

Justice is a funny thing. It doesn't necessarily come in the form of prison years. I can't ever go back to before I was kidnapped. And that's something I had to grieve. Are you ready? Yeah. But knowing that I'm finally turning the page of this— And that I should feel safe with him off the street and that I'm protected. Meant a lot. I felt free.

When asked to comment, Christopher Thomas said, quote, I am tremendously sorry and immensely grieved for those impacted by my actions.

And that is our program for tonight.

Thanks so much for watching. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts.

From all of us here at 20/20 and ABC News, good night.

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