In fact, she’d already talked to the local authorities and made sure that both Sally’s mother’s and brother’s houses were being guarded, though the family members didn’t know it at this point.

Sally struggled for breath. “Please. I’m sorry. I lied. He told me I had to. He told me if anybody asked, I was supposed to tell them that he was the greatest guy and never stalked me or anybody and he broke up with me, not the other way around. I’m sorry but I was scared. Send the police to my mother’s. And my brother. He’s got the babies! Please! I’ll give you the addresses.”

“First, tell me the truth, Sally. Then we’ll see about the police. What’s the real story between Edwin and you?”

“Okay,” the woman said, wiping her face with tissues one of the agents behind her provided. “Last year Edwin was a security guard in the mall where I was working and he saw me and it was like, bang, he got totally obsessed with me.”

Because she looked like Kayleigh Towne.

“He started this campaign to win me over. And one thing led to another and we started going out. Only he got weird. I wasn’t allowed to do this, couldn’t do that…. Sometimes he just wanted to sit and look at me. He’d just stare or lie in bed and stroke my hair. It was so fucking creepy! He’d tell me how beautiful I was, over and over. The fact is he thought I looked like this singer—the one he liked. I think I mentioned her before. Kayleigh Towne.”

Sally scoffed, “We had to play her music all the time. He talked about her every day. Mostly it was ‘poor Kayleigh this, poor Kayleigh that.’ Nobody understood her, her father sold the family house she loved, her mother died, the fans don’t treat her right, the label doesn’t record her right. He went on and on. I couldn’t take it. I just left one night. It was sort of okay for a month. He stalked me, yeah, but it wasn’t terrible. But then his mother died and he freaked out. I mean totally.”

The stressor event that had pushed him over the edge.

“He came over, crying and acting all weird, like his life was over with. I felt bad for him—and I was scared—so we got back together. But he just got stranger and stranger. He wouldn’t go out at all, he made me drop all my friends, he got jealous of men at work. He thought I was sleeping with every one of them there. As if … All he wanted was for me to be at home with him. Look at me and watch TV and have sex. He’d play her music when we did that. It was horrible! Finally …” Sally debated and pulled her sleeve up and displayed a scar on her wrist. “It was the only way I could get free. But he found me and got me to the emergency room. I think that convinced him to back off.”