LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: What Would You Do?

Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following letter from the reader who posts as “SocioSibs.” She asks, “what would you do?”

What if you have reason to believe that someone you know is a serious danger to others?  You’ve known this person almost all your life, grew up together in the same family.

Until recently, this person had a huge menagerie of animals housed on an acre of land, including a horse, 13 dogs, 5 cats, turkeys & peacocks and possibly a parrot or 2.  Yet when she abandoned the property, all but 2 dogs she took with her disappeared in a span of just weeks. 

Subsequent to this person’s latest move (one of 25 or so over a half-century), you found a couple of canine carcasses hidden behind a barn and miscellaneous skeletal remains strewn about the former property, which conjured a memory of walking in on this person during very early puberty as she was holding a live wild bird over the bathroom sink with a knife to decapitate it, exclaiming upon the surprise encounter that she couldn’t cure it so was putting the poor creature out of its misery.

Then you locate childhood friends and others from this person’s past, learning that one witnessed her strangling or drowning numerous animals, with that same explanation, since age 12.  Another witness tells of repeated torture of animals, including punching & kicking her horse (one of 2 that a boyfriend bought her), savagely beating her dog daily, and crushing the skulls of kittens between her fingers and tossing them out of her car onto the ground, all during her mid-teen years.

You recall visions of her often hitting & kicking family pets, to the horror and pain of her parent and sibling, who tried but never could completely curtail it.  And then you find a multitude of accounts from witnesses and public records of this person accusing multiple people of stalking her from age 13 through recent years, along with reports this person has made of others poisoning her plants & pets, some of whom died as a result, which stirs memories of childhood pets that died mysteriously, healthy pets whom this person hypothesized at the time must have been poisoned by neighbors or stalkers.

An ex-spouse reports that when divorce became imminent she cooked him a “special” meal, after which he became quite ill and came down with a severe rash all over his body, never experienced before or since.  Concurrently this person was attempting to entice a former lover to relocate half-way across the country, unbeknownst to the would-be-again lover that this person was also accusing him of stalking and threatening to kill her due to his mad obsession.

This person has a now-young-adult offspring who has been plagued by mysterious illnesses since infancy, and ended up in hospital emergency rooms more often than most people who live to ripe old ages.  One disease that was actually diagnosed was touted to some as the first case in the state, but she may have had access to the bacteria while a biological science student at a major university in the early 90s (for which someone else paid and from which she did not graduate), prior to the meticulous tracking these days of contagious pathogens.  And you hear that her ex-spouse independently came to the same conclusion as you as to how your niece contracted it.

You recollect a tale she told of a male roommate brandishing a knife with the person’s then 10-year-old child present, and another when the child was 12 and sexually molested by someone’s 15-year-old son right in the next room.

You are aware of at least 2 occasions when Child Protective Services were called on this person, but in each case she wriggled out of charges.  Then, when you contact CPS yourself to inquire, the intake worker on the other end can’t tell you what, if any, reports there may be that have not resulted in convictions.  However, seeing it for himself on the computer screen, he urges you to call protective services in the state where this person’s child now resides, even asking you to hold on while he looks up the phone number for you and stresses that you speak with a supervisor there if you don’t get results during the initial call.

Indeed, other authorities whom you contact say they can’t do anything now that this person is no longer within their jurisdiction, while provoking guilt for your not having done something about her sooner.  Some suggest you at least try to do something where she is now, recommending entities to contact, even if it’s too little too late.

This person has vilified anyone who could threaten to expose her, portrays herself as a persecuted, sweet, innocent victim of her targeted victims, has been abusing & killing animals since childhood but has come to be known as an “animal whisperer.”  You have evidence that she’s been poisoning animals and possibly humans for years, has been lying & stealing and casting blame on others since early childhood, with a criminal record for larceny since at least turning 18 (juvenile records are sealed), and a felony arson record.

Then you find out that this person has fled to another state, welcomed with open arms by family into a home where a young relative resides, knowing that they implicitly trust and feel very sorry for her, for “all she’s been through.”

What if you, too, have defended, protected, and advocated for this person all through the years, because you, too, have been blinded by the bizarre stories she fabricates and sympathy she so ably elicits?  And you staunchly held onto the lifelong belief that every person has a heart.  But now you can no longer ignore that truly innocent people actually are, and always have been, in danger.

What if this person, knowing you could blow her cover, preemptively already got deep into the heads of the rest of your family and convinced them that you are crazy and evil and out to get her, even though there’s not a shred of substantiation of her claims, but she’s mastered the art of manipulation and has skillfully succeeded in obliterating your credibility & character?

What if you knew all this and so much more, and this person were still on the loose seriously harming others and getting away with it, invited and naively trusted to be alone around those most vulnerable, such as children and animals?  What if, having been the most consistently present over this person’s lifetime, with nobody else recognizing the danger or mustering the courage or possessing comprehensive information, you find you’re probably the best candidate to piece together the puzzle so that others might see the whole picture, thereby alerting & enabling them to protect themselves, too?  Would you speak up?

Now add that what got your investigative ball rolling was the death of the parent that resulted in the threat of losing your home. Because of a fluke when the parent helped save the sibling from losing her home several years ago as aftermath of a divorce, the deed ended up in the parent’s name, so that now both siblings own it 50-50 because there was no will.  The sibling can file a legal claim by which she may possibly regain title to her house, but with the family turned against her, they will likely help this person fight the sibling in court, viewing this person as the tragic victim of a greedy sibling.

Suppose this person attempted to get a sizeable advance of her presumed inheritance, prior to creditors being paid, and prior to the estate administrator discovering that she destroyed what she had been deceiving the family as being the largest asset — the house she lived in that the parent bought her and made all the monthly mortgage payments on (in addition to paying most or all her other bills, even restitution & probation fees), so that now it’s worth less than the remaining note due on it. Third consecutive house that she irreparably demolished—the first being the one she burned down; as opposed to the sibling who originally purchased her own house, for the most part paid her own mortgage, whose house appreciated in value, and who certainly never caused destruction to anyone’s property.

Then it turned out that there will be no inheritance because this person depleted or destroyed all the parent’s financial resources already.  The only asset left of any value is the sibling’s house (a small cottage with 50K equity in a low-middle income subdivision, compared to her 4-bedroom 2 bath on an acre that she ruined), while outstanding debts leave the entire estate at a deficit that can force a sale by creditors, debts that can be traced back primarily to this person.  Despite these irrefutable facts, this person has convinced the family that the sibling is just trying to take everything, even though there is nothing to take.  All the sibling wanted was to keep her own house that she bought herself 2 decades ago and has been inhabiting, maintaining & improving, and caring for ever since.

This all started as a pursuit of the sibling to rightfully keep her home, make it a fair fight, sibling vs. sibling, without the whole family against the one sibling.  Now that so much devastating new evidence has since come to light, it has grown into a pursuit to enlighten family members so that they can protect themselves, including the sibling’s own life and that of her child, from this person.

At least one family member admonished that, under the circumstances, that makes you, the sibling, the worst candidate to speak up, condemnable for even considering it, no matter how much you’ve discovered that’s led you to acknowledge that this person is very dangerous and that people — including you and your child — are in harm’s way, because it only makes you appear to have a less than noble motive.

What, if anything, would you do?

Learn more: How to report your abuser’s crimes so the police take you seriously

Lovefraud originally posted this article on Oct. 27, 2010.