When people think of stalkers, they almost always imagine a dangerously unstable man who is following a female victim. Very few people realize that women can be stalkers, too. In most cases, you would never know a female stalker if you saw one. According to the Academy of Psychiatric Law, the vast majority of female stalkers are single, highly educated women who were diagnosed with a mental illness.
While some of these cases might seem sort of funny and ridiculous, and others are truly terrifying. In some cases, these female stalkers have completely ruined their victim’s lives, and some of them even murdered the object of their obsession.
10. Tinder Terror
An Englishman named Peter Cashmore signed up for a dating app. A woman approached him at his local pub, explaining that she recognized him from his pictures on the app. Cashmore believed that this was a coincidence, and he did not get any creepy vibes from the woman at all. So, they ended up sleeping together. It only started to get weird when she said “I love you,” even though they had just met.
Cashmore stopped responding to this woman’s texts and calls. Instead of taking the hint, she started to follow him down the street while he rode his bike to work, and shouted threats at him. This went on every single day, and he eventually threatened to call the police. She went home and called the the police herself, claiming that he had sexually assaulted her.
For months, he had to live with the possibility that he would go to jail for crimes he never committed. He began to feel depressed, and drank heavily. His stalker even left him voicemails that admitted to her lies, and she continued to threaten to ruin his life. He brought that evidence to the police, and they just laughed at him, and did nothing to help. The police knew that he was innocent, so the charges against him were dropped, but the woman continued to stalk him.
When he realized that the police were not willing to help him, Cashmore eventually had to move far enough away to where she could never find him.
9. Deja-Vu
You may or may not have seen the 1987 horror movie Fatal Attraction. In the film, a woman, played by Glenn Close, has an affair with a married man, played by Michael Douglas. Even though she was aware that he was married all along, she becomes convinced that he should leave his wife for her, and she stalks him. It eventually escalates to violence, and she begins to threaten his wife and child. Even if you have seen this movie, very few people know that Michael Douglas was actually forced to live out the plot of Fatal Attraction in real life.
In 2004, a woman named Dawnette Knight claimed that she had an affair with Michael Douglas, and that he paid her to keep it a secret. Knight claimed that she was in love with him, and needed to get his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, out of the picture. She began stalking Zeta-Jones, and there were 25 separate incidents where Knight threatened her life. She wrote in one of her love letters to Douglas, “We are going to slice her up like meat on the bone and feed her to the dogs.”
Zeta-Jones said that Knight’s stalking had her constantly looking over her shoulder, wondering if she would be attacked. She came close to having a nervous breakdown. Knight was caught, and sentenced to serve three three years in jail.
8. Crazy Ex-Wife
Daniel Broderick was a successful lawyer, and when he started having issues in his marriage, he began having an affair with his office assistant, Linda. When his wife Betty found out, they filed for divorce, and she tried to make his life a living Hell. Betty spray painted the inside of their house to make it incredibly difficult to sell. When Daniel moved to a new home, Betty rammed her car into his front door. Instead of signing the divorce documents, she would write “God” in the place where Daniel’s name should be, and told her children on multiple occasions that she would kill their father. Clearly, Betty Broderick was showing signs of unstable behavior, so it was fairly easy for Daniel to get full custody of their children in 1985.
For four years, Betty continued to stalk and harass Daniel. She left threatening voicemails, especially when he got married to Linda. In 1989, Daniel finally served Betty legal papers to make her stop the harassment. She stole her daughter’s key to Daniel’s house and let herself inside. Then, she shot and killed Linda and Dan while they were lying in bed.
7. Love, Uh, Finds a Way
Long before Jeff Goldblum memes existed on the Internet, there was at least one fan that was willing to go the distance with her obsession in real life. In 2001, a woman named Linda Ransom attended an acting class taught by Goldblum. She followed him home so she could figure out where he lived. When she tried to break into his house, one of Goldblum’s security guards had to detain Ransom. That changed her from a stalker with a crush to one who was hell-bent on revenge.
For over ten years, Linda Random would show up to Jeff Goldblum’s house to scream at the property with threats. In 2012, Goldblum finally had enough, and filed a restraining order against her. She was 49-years-old at the time, and she had to represent herself in court, because every single lawyer in Los Angeles refused to take on her case. During the court proceedings, she would not stop yelling at everyone. When the judge asked her why she wouldn’t leave Goldblum alone, she said, “Mr. Goldblum is being harassed because the legal system is negligently violating my rights.” Needless to say, the judge granted the restraining order.
6. Hell in Paradise
In 2018, 31-year-old Jacqueline Ades was using a dating app called “Luxy,” which promises to filter people based on their income. One of the men she met was a millionaire who lived in Paradise Valley, Arizona. After just one date, she was convinced that this man was going to be her future husband.
Even though they barely knew one another, she began texting him her version of “love” non-stop. She sent 65,000 text messages, and many of them were filled with threats. She wrote, “Don’t ever try to leave me. I’ll kill you. I don’t want to be a murderer,” followed by, “Oh, what I would do with your blood. I want to bathe in it. I’ll wear your body parts.”
Jacqueline showed up to this man’s job, claiming to be his wife. When security would not let her through, she continued to stalk him wherever he went. One day, the man opened the door to his bathroom to find Jacqueline Ades in his bathtub, waiting for him. He called the police, and she was arrested. After her arrest, she asked to speak to the media, claiming that she wanted the world to know that she found the “equation to love.”
4. Mean Girls
In 1993, a Pennsylvania High School student named Lisa Michelle Lambert became incredibly jealous of one of her classmates, a girl named Laurie Show. Lambert’s ex-boyfriend was a high school dropout named Lawrence Yunkin. He went out with Laurie, and he sexually assaulted her on their first date. She told her mother about what happened, but they did not go to the police.
Michelle was pregnant with Lawrence’s baby at the time. When she found out that he went out with Laurie, she began to bully her relentlessly in school. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Michelle began to follow Laurie and her mother whenever they were out in public, cursing them out and threatening to kill her. They decided it was finally time to go to the police, but verbal threats and stalking were not against the law at the time, so there was nothing Laurie or her mother could do to stop it.
One day, Michelle convinced her friend Tabitha Buck to “play a prank” on Laurie. They called Mrs. Show, pretending to be the school counselor, telling her that she needed to come to the school right away to have a meeting about Laurie. Once her mother was out of the house, they went into Laurie’s bedroom, slit her throat with a knife, and left her to die.
Mrs. Show came home to find her Laurie, and she had just enough time and strength left to say that Michelle had killed her. Yunkin, Lambert, and Buck tried to claim it was supposed to be a prank, and her death was an accident. They were all sent to jail as co-conspirators in Show’s murder.
The one and only bright side to this story is that this case helped the state of Pennsylvania wake up to how dangerous verbal threats can be. They changed the laws surrounding stalking in order to protect victims before it’s too late.
3. Old Acquaintances
A Canadian actress named Genevieve Sabourin met Alec Baldwin in 2000 when they were working together in Montreal. She was struggling with her acting career, so in 2010, she asked a mutual friend if they could get in touch with Baldwin for her. She claimed that she just wanted some career advice. According to Baldwin’s version of the story, they had dinner at a hotel in New York, and went their separate ways. According to Sabourin, he paid for them both to stay in a room in an expensive hotel, and they had “a romance.”
Sabourin began to call and email Baldwin non-stop, and showed up to his house in hopes that he would come out to speak to her. She also began showing up to events where she knew he would be. In her voicemails, she left threatening, angry messages. This went on for two years.
Baldwin’s wife is a yoga teacher, and Sabourin began to show up to her classes and harass her, saying that she was having an affair with her husband. She also made her way into Baldwin’s apartment building. She was eventually arrested in 2012. Her original sentence was only supposed to be 30 days in jail, but when she began acting crazy in the courtroom, the judge increased her sentence to six months.
2. Bad Case of Loving You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjFHYqw7spQ
A Canadian woman named Shirley Turner met an American man named Andrew Bagby when they were in medical school together. He was 28-years-old, and eager to start his career as a doctor. Shirley was nine years older than Andrew, and she already had three children of her own. When she told Bagby that she wanted to have his babies, he was shocked, and told her that he wasn’t ready for that kind of relationship. This made Shirley so angry, she began calling him non-stop and showing up to his apartment nearly every day. Andrew was so scared of her, he moved to a different part of Newfoundland, Canada.
Shirley figured out where he lived, and showed up to his new apartment. He decided there was nowhere in Canada for him to hide, so in 1998, he moved back to his family home in Pennsylvania. Shirley found a job in Iowa so she could move to the United States and be closer to him. In November of 2001, she found out where he lived, and showed up at his home. All of Andrew’s family and closest friends knew about his stalker, so he called one of his friends, letting them know that Shirley showed up at his house.
A few days later, Shirley returned to Pennsylvania. She told Andrew that she was pregnant with his baby. They had been broken up for years, so of course, his response was to tell her that he did not believe her. She responded by shooting him five times. She flew back to Canada before the police could arrest her for his murder.
Now here’s where it gets really crazy… Shirley actually was pregnant. And after a paternity test, it was discovered that Andrew was the father. She gave birth to a baby boy in 2002, and named him Zachary. Andrew’s parents fought for custody of the baby, but it was all in vain, because in 2003, when Shirley Turner knew she would be extradited for murdering Andrew Bagby, she jumped off a bridge while holding baby Zachary, killing them both.
1. Too Hot to Handle.
Brad Pitt has so many female fans, it should not be all that surprising that at least one of them became a crazed and delusional stalker. In the 1990s, a 19-year-old named Athena Marie Rolando figured out where Pitt lived. She broke into the property in the middle of the night. Despite the fact that the security alarm was blaring and the guard dogs were barking, Rolando stayed in his house for 10 hours. The police never showed up to the house. She was found by the caretaker the next morning.
During an interview, she said, “First of all, I didn’t break in… There was a open window.” She made a doll of the movie star’s likeness, and hoped that if Pitt saw it, he would fall in love with her. She also believed that he was sending her secret “signs” that he would love her back, even though they had never met. When asked if she had anything she would like to say to Pitt, she responded, “I’m ready to come home, now.” Not surprisingly, Pitt filed a restraining order.