Utah track athlete shot by ex-boyfriend who lied about his name, age, and sex-offender status

I lived next door to this man, and the dark triad warning signs were all there: A bodybuilder, I knew him as “Shawn.” I didn’t discover his first name was Melvin until a piece of his mail was misdelivered to our house, and to tell the truth, I didn’t blame him for wanting to go by his middle name instead. Now, he really was quite a specimen, a bodybuilder, very handsome, he towered over me by a few inches, and I’m 6’2″. The name Melvin seemed about as unsuitable a name as one could get. I hate to admit it, but I was quite taken with him at first. But it soon became obvious he was much less than admirable.

I’m a gay man about 10 years older than him, and once he had me sized up, it became his habit to come over when he knew my partner was gone. Just to ask for favors. A few bucks, a ride—a couple times he wanted to use the sim card out of my cell phone. He wasn’t above leaning in just slightly in a way that could seem either seductive or threatening. With him it was almost the same thing. (Of course, his heterosexuality was well established, and I didn’t for a minute seriously think his interest was anything more than self-absorbed wish-fulfillment. And it is so strange how docile and obedient I become around these types, but it’s happened on more than one occasion. The habit of crushing on every manipulative, amoral spath who comes down the pike was conditioned in me from birth; the therapy and assertiveness training helps, though.)

In fact, second only to my gut at detecting cluster-B-holes, I’d say, is my heart. Does it go pitter-pat? Are there butterflies in my stomach? Well, I must have just encountered another sadistic, good-looking freak of nature.

Even so, there was always something about him that made me uneasy. I soon found myself in thrall, unwillingly at the beck and call of this neighbor who had no hold over me except his hypnotic self-assurance. At times he seemed to amuse himself by saying things that didn’t make sense, and for some reason I would assume I had misheard and feel duty-bound to find out what he was trying to say. It was weird, it made me nervous and in no time, I would find myself babbling, chattering just to fill silence, appeasing in a way that felt at once unnatural and unavoidable. I’m not normally such a fool; I keep things together fairly well; I speak well and have won awards from the SPJ for print journalism. But in the presence of one of these, all it takes is a certain kind of malevolent intent to reduce me to a quivering mass of Jell-O.

Since then, I have learned to my dismay that gay men are considered soft targets by such types. Since many of us may have grown up in situations where we were unjustly made to feel outcast and unwelcome, we often overcompensate in later life and have a difficult time setting boundaries for fear that others will be left out in the cold as we were.

If only I had listened to my gut, which told me he was bad news—if I had alerted authorities or something—that woman might be alive today. (After he shot and killed her, he went into a nearby church, where he lie on the floor and blew himself to Kingdom Come. That’s the trouble with these murder-suicide assholes, they always get the order wrong. Don’t forget, it’s suicide first, then murder, Bozo.)

There were quite a few women coming in and out of his apartment. Sometimes three or more a day. Once or twice a week, we would see one leaving, furious, crying, shouting epithets at him. We were almost certain he was physically abusive to his “girls,” but he was careful never to lay a hand on anyone while they were outside in plain view.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have at least registered a complaint against him. The girls were all too afraid, perhaps, but if one came forth, it could have been the end of his reign of cruelty over these women.

.

With a shock, we discovered one night that one of those women was secretly living in our basement. She had built a little nest down there out of fabric and batting near the water heater, and at night she would creep upstairs while we were asleep and steal objects and papers she found throughout the house, tucking them into little hordes and middens she created in the back yard.

One night, my partner got up to use the bathroom, startling her in the kitchen, and there were a few heated words, but his compassion knows no bounds. All he saw was a hungry young woman who no doubt was abused by “Shawn,” and not only did he forego calling the police, he made her a sandwich and gave her a blanket and a pillow, offering the living room sofa.

In the morning, his laptop was gone. We found it–next door in Shawn’s apartment, which the freshly summoned police had no probable cause to enter until she began babbling that she didn’t mean to steal my partner’s computer. They carted her off in a marked car, and she was still talking as they drove away. She asked for forgiveness.

After that, he seemed to be staying somewhere else, and was maintaining the apartment in the building next door to our house only for the benefit of his probation officer, who visited once or twice per month. This came as a relief, since I had yet to explain the weird authority he had established over me as an adult symptom of repressed childhood abuse, and I had begun to dread his visits. After awhile, somebody else moved into the apartment, and Shawn/Melvin faded into the background of our memory as other daily issues took precedent.

That poor woman who was carted away in the back of a police car wasn’t Lauren. I saw Lauren only once: A couple years after he moved away, it was a sunny day and I was at work in my studio when my partner came in. He was mystified, as was I to hear that Shawn was at the front door, asking for me. A young woman–it could only have been Lauren–accompanied him.

It wasn’t very clear what he wanted. To be honest, it seemed like he wanted to show Lauren how easily he could make me nervous and control me. I felt uncomfortable, in that familiar way I had felt with him many times before. He was speaking in a way that was confusing; I knew he wanted something, and I was trying to be polite, but his words were strangely vague in a way that seemed calculated to push my buttons, and suddenly I was stammering and looking foolish. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t owe him the pleasure of my company, nor my dutiful service, and so I stopped talking mid-stammer, stalked into the house and shut the door, and was relieved when he didn’t try to follow.

Two or three days later, came the two deaths, the first one more tragic perhaps and certainly more sympathetic than the second.

It still puzzles me; I was never of any consequence to either of them, and it was only a coincidence that he decided to play mind games with me a few days before that terrible event. Other narcopaths I’ve known have had the same trick, and seem amused whenever they have been able to provoke my startle response like that.

Often, these types are described as “charming.” Often, it is an apt descriptor.

In Shawn/Melvin’s case, however, he was far too imposing to exude charm. I’d say he was compelling. In a weird way, he liked to come across as helpless sometimes, to a point which triggered my paternal instincts—at Christmas, I found myself baking cookies, wondering if he’d enjoy them. But he never expressed any gratitude; he simply accepted anything provided with the negligent air of a feudal prince, and I was one of his serfs.

One morning, I was late for work and he kept me on the front porch complaining that he couldn’t sleep, to the point found myself in the bizarre situation of describing to him what over-the-counter sleeping pills were, even though I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he was aware of what a sleeping pill is. An hour later, I was in a staff meeting when my phone rang. It was Shawn: He said he was at the pharmacy looking at shelves full of pills with names like Unisom and Sominex. “Which one do I get?” he asked, obviously baiting me, in a strangely wounded, boyish voice, as if I were the mad scientist who had purposely steered him into such an impossible situation.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s all diphenhydramine. Just get whatever one’s cheapest,” I said, and abruptly ended the call.

“Your son?” whispered one new co-worker with a motherly “kids-are-such-a-handful-but-we-love-’em!” twinkle.

“No, Neighbor,” I said, and her twinkle dimmed to puzzlement when she heard the genuine anger and frustration in my voice.

Clearly, he took advantage, I realized that early on. But he was a force of nature, and I found it very difficult not to comply with his orders. I don’t think it would have mattered to him at all had I sensibly tried to implement a “no-contact” policy.

Nothing I did seemed to have any effect on him, to the point where I began questioning why he asked me for anything at all. He would simply speak over me, and his words would flutter around my ears, this way and that, confusing me; any response that might come nervously tumbling out of my mouth might as well have been the sound of crickets chirping in the late summer evening.