Setting Up For Success: The Plan To Take Down An Urban Legend

There is a lot of genius going into this investigation.  Most of it Lori doesn't figure out until long after we have set it up.  I find that "causing a distraction" is most easy with her when we are in the planning stages of dismantling her system of harassment.  I've been trying for a very long time to take what the system gives me and use it to my advantage.  Remember, my part of this investigation is that of pure victim.  That means I'm just a gay man that was implanted and infected with HIV.  I don't have direct contact with the website that is used to transcribe my thoughts to written words on a computer screen.  That had to come from somewhere else.  I knew that.  I also knew that if I acted like a shithead, I would get nowhere with the people that were actually looking at that page.

I think that it is best explained as a phenomenon that most people wouldn't recognize unless it was happening to them.  To the outside observer it doesn't look like what it really is.  I think that most of the victims of this crime have a major problem explaining what they are really going through because they don't know what it is triggered by.  So you have to look at the person masterminding the whole thing.

Obviously if someone is having you followed, you think of law enforcement.  It is time to get away from the concept that "gang stalking" is a law enforcement thing.  I've worked with tons of law enforcement on the federal level and I can tell you that they don't usually use a huge group of people following you in cars to intimidate a person.  Law enforcement isn't interested in watching a target in an agitated state.  They want to see the suspect in a natural state.   You can't get a good idea of what a person is like when they are fearing being followed.

In the beginning I knew it was odd that groups of people, men and women, would follow me from my front door to a school classroom or work.  They knew what bus I rode and what time I was working or working out.  They followed me at work and in my leisure time.  My experience started in Riverside and continued through San Diego with these stalkers.  They weren't polite and quite frankly they were aggressive.  Rude and annoying, they were everywhere in San Diego.  After the death of my brother in law, I decided to start writing down my experience with this phenomenon in diaries that I kept.  Unlike most journals, mine isn't filled with fantasies or dreams, instead they talk about being followed and not understanding why?

I am so happy that I wrote in these journals and dated every entry.  They serve as a timeline for the kinds of things that the mastermind was saying to them.  They show my state of mind from the time of my brother in law's death.  I think when people read them they will get a clear picture that I had no idea who these people were but I knew they were there and I knew it was dangerous and embarrassing.  Can you imagine meeting up with a friend only to have a whole group of people watching you?  My friends didn't usually notice or at least they didn't say anything, so I thought I would write about it for myself.  I didn't want anyone thinking I was paranoid though I maintain that a healthy paranoia kept me safe for a very long time.  It's okay to experience fear, it's innate in human beings.  Too often I think people are so busy that they are desensitized to a natural fear or awareness.  It's like you explain away what you are feeling because it is so outrageous.  I certainly didn't want to show fear, so I didn't.  I also let them know I knew they were following me.  Subtly though.

The first real clue I had was when I was driving I would see cars that had similar characteristics.  It was like they wanted to know who each other were.  In my case there were cars with several identifiers.  In Palm Springs it manifested itself with car license plates that all shared the same license plate frame from "Crystal Chevrolet" then with frames that said, "11-99 Foundation".  When you see a string of cars all with the same plates, then you start to think, "Why does that Ford truck have a Crystal Chevrolet plate frame...come to think of it all of them have these plates...none of them are Chevrolet's".  If you see enough of them you know you are being followed.

That was in Palm Springs, but in San Diego, the cars all had bumper stickers that showed an American flag on the bumper.  Car after car.   30 in a row.   Over and over again so to let these people know that I knew they were following me, I bought an American flag sticker and put it on my own vehicle.  I took a Sharpie pen and wrote, "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" on the sticker on my car.  I worked for the U.S. District Court so the concept of "presumed innocence" made perfect sense for me to write.  I wanted them to know that I was on to them...I think I would put my hand outside my car window while I was driving just to give them the finger, but subtly.  I would just put my arm on the window sill of my driver's door and hand my middle finger on the roof.  After all, this is an intrusion.

I was a really active guy back then.  I kept in shape and had a reputation for being a gym rat.  I can remember someone from the U.S. Attorney's Office telling me that the secretaries in their offices would look out their windows at me when I would go for my daily run at lunchtime.  They called it a "Diet Coke Break" moment for them.  I thought it was funny, but I was in the best shape of my life.  This is what they were referring to:

One of my friends from the U.S. Attorney's Office came to me one day and said, "You know you are the Diet Coke Break guy now?"  I'd seen the commercial and thought it was funny.  Looking back, I can only imagine it must have made Lori LaFond green with envy.  I was working out 6 day a week, I didn't smoke, and I ran every day.  Even though I was being followed, these daily runs relieved my stress.  I could run to places where these people couldn't follow me.  I'd run through Sea Port Villiage, pass the Star of India and run all the way past the airport...it was a freeing experience and I'd get back in time to shower and go back into court with my federal judge.  One of the judges that I worked for was also a fitness fanatic.  Judge Nita Stormes would also be out at lunch running.  She was awesome.  We'd meet back at the courthouse and in half an hour we'd be arraigning criminal defendants.
If these people followed me while I was running, I didn't notice.  I was focused on breathing and making good time.
What I did notice was on the days that I wouldn't run and would go to lunch with colleagues from work.
The federal courthouse in San Diego kind of is shaped like a "U" and when I first started there there was a kind of easy feeling around that complex.  Once I was being followed hard core, there seemed to be twice as man people standing around when we would go to lunch.  Unusual people too.  They would just stand around and stare.  To me it was embarrassing.  I don't know if any of my friends that worked there noticed.  I sure did.  I would walk with a friend or two to Horton Plaza and hit the Mongolian Barbecue with other courtroom deputies.  The stalkers would swarm us.  They would stand in line at the barbecue, sit right next to us and try to listen in and basically they seemed to be practically surrounding us.  It got so bad that I didn't want to go to lunch there any longer, but I would go if someone asked me.  Everyone did, it was a great place for lunch.
I love true crime books that show you lots of references...so I'm providing this map of where I use to work so that you can see, it was a small area that an influx of strange people would be noticed in.  In the "Diet Coke Break" area, is where you can see that there is a small courtyard...with buildings all around.  This is where I would start and finish my daily runs.  I will provide as much detail as I can to show you that an area like this can be gang stalked because of it's size.  You notice strangers.

click for larger view

What I wanted to show you with this overhead is the tightness of that federal complex.  I am a very observant person so when these people that were following me on the freeway started showing up here, I noticed.  I am a sensitive.  I can feel energy and when it turned negative in an area that I was use to feeling nothing but love and friendship, something felt wrong, very wrong.

I would go home and write about it in my journals.  Maybe I was just imagining it, but it sure didn't feel like it.  I took the bus to work or carpooled with a friend, but I noticed that these people were everywhere.  From the time I walked out the door and heard a car horn honk until I went to sleep, someone was having me stalked.

I don't want to give you the impression that this was when this stalking began either, I just wanted to start in San Diego because that is when the stalking became something else.  It was aggressive and it was everywhere. 

Eventually some of these people would come into the courthouse and sit in my courtroom and stink eye me, with all of my friends and co-workers around.

So this is the beginning of taking down the urban legend.  I want everyone to understand that I was stalked from the moment I found out I had HIV and went back to school at U.C. Riverside after my conversion.  I lived in Moreno Valley, but the cars and stalkers started way back in 1988...San Diego was 1993 or so.

I hope this gives perspective to my journals.

Tomorrow I will explain more about how I learned that this was mind based...and how I came up with an idea to use my own mind to see if it was true.