Stalked: Someone's Watching

Narrator: She was attracted to his brilliant mind.

Hillyer: He was incredibly smart.

He probably is at a genius level.

Narrator: But all too soon, she discovers his dark side.

Bandor: When you take somebody who's evil,

and they're that smart, and you combine them, it's deadly.

Narrator: This is dawn hillyer's story,

when a mastermind makes revenge his life's work.

Come on!

I'm Dr. Michelle ward,

and I'm a criminal psychologist.

I was stalked, and I'm not alone.

Over 3 million people

are stalked every year in this country.

Although many survive their ordeal, others don't.

These are their terrifying stories.

captions paid for by discovery communications

saved message. Saturday, 4:23 P.M.

I lived with fear every moment of every day.

He literally tried to ruin my life.

Narrator: Dawn krohn is born in 1972

and grows up near fort Wayne, Indiana.

From a young age, she's friendly and popular.

In high school, I was very social.

I was a cheerleader and very outgoing.

Always had a great time.

Tobin: She's very bright and very sweet.

Always... she made anyone she was talking to

feel like the most important person in the room.

Narrator: Soon after she graduates from college in 1995,

she lands a job as an executive recruiter.

I was very interactive with the community.

I was very in the public.

Narrator: Two years later,

she marries her college boyfriend.

They have three kids together,

but after five years, the marriage ends in divorce.

I mean, I'm a single mom. Three kids.

I'm working a full-time job.

Narrator: Dawn's busy life leads her to date online.

And in July 2004,

35-year-old stockbroker Michael mcclellan

sends her a message.

Mike was confident. He was successful.

He represented himself well.

He probably is at a genius level,

as far as the stock brokerage stuff that he was doing.

Narrator: Dawn and Mike start dating casually.

I wasn't looking for a husband.

I wasn't looking for baby daddy.

He never even met my family.

It was a very, very casual dating relationship.

Narrator: After a year passes,

dawn realizes Mike is not the one.

In July 2005,

she breaks things off on friendly terms.

It was very amicable. He just went away.

It was easy.

Narrator: Another year passes, and dawn is dating again.

But, out of the blue, in October 2006,

she gets a surprise call.

I was on my way home from a rolling stones concert,

and all of a sudden my phone just started blowing up.

It rang and rang and rang back to back,

all these text messages,

all from Mike, demanding to see me,

telling me that I had explaining to do,

and I had no idea what he was talking about.

Narrator: Dawn tells Mike to leave her alone...

So she's shocked when she gets a knock on her door

later that day.

She's taken aback when Mike barges into her house

and heads straight to her computer.

He was just pacing around and rambling,

telling me I had this explaining to do.

Narrator: Mike claims he has a background check on dawn

that proves she'd lied to him about her past.

But when he pulls up the document on dawn's computer,

she sees a woman of the same name but much older

and married four times...

Clearly not her.

That's not me, Mike.

Mike sheepishly admits the background check

was really just an excuse to see her.

And then it turned into, "okay, you know what, dawn?

I love you. I want to be with you."

Narrator: Dawn is floored.

We have never said the l-word to each other.

Not one time ever in our relationship.

Narrator: Dawn tells Mike to get out,

and he leaves without incident,

but his erratic behavior has her worried,

and for good reason.

Something triggered Mike to think of dawn

and led him to her doorstep.

It wasn't that he just woke up one day

and said, "I'm gonna go harass this woman."

I think the fact that he goes and readily pulls up a profile

of another dawn hillyer indicates that he's been doing

a lot of Internet research about her.

This isn't the beginning point.

It's just when dawn is let in on the secret

that she's actually being stalked.

Hillyer: Over the course of a couple weeks,

I had well over 500 phone calls.

I don't think people can really imagine what it's like

to have your phone ringing back to back to back to back.

Narrator: The onslaught of messages is exhausting.

Tobin: At the job we had,

it's impossible to not have your phone by you,

so she had no break from it.

It was constant.

And then I started getting e-mails,

just long, rambling e-mails about how much he loved me,

and he was gonna save me,

and we were going to be together.

Narrator: When dawn ignores the calls and messages,

she receives this long and twisted video diary in the mail.

I want to set the world on fire, and I want a lifelong partner,

and dawn is absolutely the person that I pick for me.

So, my obstacle right now is,

how can I... How can I convince her?

It was so just delusional, and it really creeped me out.

Narrator: Alarmed by the relentless harassment,

dawn goes to the police.

He won't stop calling me.

She applies for a temporary order of protection,

which is granted.

But to dawn's shock, instead of backing off,

Mike decides to fight fire with fire.

He sends himself text messages

and e-mails that look like they're coming from dawn.

Bandor: Some of them were dawn pleading for him to come back,

dawn asking him to call.

Some of them were dawn actually threatening him.

Narrator: Then he reports dawn to the police,

accusing her of harassing him.

Assuming they are caught in a lover's quarrel,

the police back off.

Hillyer: They didn't know who to believe.

They didn't know which one of us was crazy.

They don't know us at all.

It just... it really muddied the water.

It really made it a he-said-she-said.

There are sloppy stalkers, and there are clever stalkers,

and Mike is a clever stalker.

Mike knows if he wants

to continue this game of chasing her,

he has to combat the protective order.

And the way to do that is to invalidate the one she has.

If police don't believe

that dawn is a real victim of stalking,

her protective order isn't going to last.

So Mike is really one step ahead of her.

Narrator: Now, with police off his trail,

there's no telling how far Mike will go.

Hillyer: He's mad.

And you can't predict crazy,

and I didn't see the rest of it coming.

I had no idea what he was capable of.

Bandor: When you take somebody who's evil,

and they're that smart, and you combine them,

it's deadly.

Come on!

Narrator: Dawn krohn's ex-boyfriend, Mike mcclellan,

is harassing her around the clock.

Now he's destroying her credibility

by filing police reports that claim dawn is harassing him.

I'm confused and I'm frustrated.

I felt very alone, actually,

like I was just kind of out there by myself and just,

"what am I gonna do?"

Narrator: Dawn starts staying in more, and friends take note.

Dawn went from being the life of the party

to not being at the party.

Narrator: On Thanksgiving weekend 2006,

her friend Jamie has tickets to a concert,

and she begs dawn to come.

Tobin: It was a group of her closest friends.

She would be safe.

We still had to convince her to go.

We were having a good time.

She was starting to loosen up. She was smiling.

Narrator: Then suddenly,

dawn feels a chill run down her spine.

They turned around, and Mike was right there.

And as soon as I saw him,

I turned around and went to the bar to get security.

Tobin: He walked up to me, he said,

"I hope you enjoyed your time with dawn."

And I said, "what do you mean?"

He goes, "'cause I'm gonna kill her tonight."

He was serious. He wasn't yelling.

He wasn't upset at that point. He was dead serious.

Looked right at me.

Narrator: But security guards grab Mike

before he can get to dawn, and they escort him out.

The next day, dawn goes to police,

and the Allen county sheriff

finally opens a stalking investigation.