BTW, you looked nice when you left for work at 6:38 pst this morning, new pants?
Posted on 06/12/2007 7:20:50 AM PDT by Millee
R obert Vinyard has been in jail and in prison for crimes related to stalking. Now he's in the state hospital for insane criminals. None of those institutions stopped him from stalking the woman he's hounded, harassed and threatened for nearly three decades.
Vinyard, 52, has been stalking the same woman since 1979. They met while students at the University of Colorado. She befriended him because she felt sorry for him. They were never intimate partners. But he became obsessed with her.
Two years ago, Vinyard was found by a judge to be not guilty by reason of insanity on 13 counts of stalking, harassment and violating a restraining order during 2002-04. During this time, Vinyard emerged from four years in prison and immediately began hunting his prey again. Vinyard had been in prison for assaulting a police officer who was trying to arrest him for stalking.
As the court found, Vinyard has spent decades tirelessly stalking the woman, even though he's been arrested, jailed and imprisoned for the crimes, even though he's been under a permanent restraining order since 1997. Even in the courtroom — in front of a judge and armed guards — Vinyard repeatedly tried to make contact with the victim.
At times, Vinyard can seem like a petulant child, pouting over a judge's order that he stop talking. In an instant, though, Vinyard's tone can change from plaintive to menacing and certifiably unhinged.
Vinyard is the primary reason that Colorado law now recognizes a felony-level crime of stalking. That crime is defined, in part, as repeated contact that "would cause a reaonable person to suffer serious emotional distress," and which does cause such distress.
The law does not require that the stalker cause the victim physical harm. This is key, because Vinyard has never attacked the woman physically. The scars she bears are emotional. Stalking, she has noted, is an "act of terrorism," a form of "psychological rape."
She is right. But Vinyard may be a physical threat as well. He has called and written from jail and from prison, despite the permanent restraining order.
After his release from prison, he continued sending letters, which began to get more violent (in one case, Vinyard dubbed himself a "warrior in the last battle on earth"). His letters became more explicitly sexual, then more sexually violent. Ultimately, the letters became, as a forensic psychiatrist testified, "rape fantasies." That physician testified that if Vinyard were ever allowed to have contact with Anderson, it would probably "end up being a rape situation."
The victim has changed her name and gotten an unlisted number, but he found them anyway. When Vinyard was committed to the state mental hospital, she said she hoped the ordeal would be over. But she didn't expect it would be.
And it hasn't been. From the mental hospital, Vinyard has continued to stalk her. As the Camera reported last week, he's even managed to send her a letter on the state's dime — with in an official hospital envelope and a metered 63-cent stamp paid for by the state. Also since being committed, Vinyard has sent three other letters and made two phone calls.
Cops and prosecutors who urge the hospital to control Vinyard say they've encountered a stone wall. The hospital, citing privacy laws, won't even confirm that Vinyard is there. And one hospital staffer told Longmont Detective Greg Malsam that Vinyard has rights, too.
"Since when do their rights supersede the rights of the innocent victims?" Malsam asked, perhaps rhetorically. If the state mental hospital won't restrain such inveterate stalkers, the Legislature must. As the woman once observed, "When he is free, we are imprisoned." Even when confined, Vinyard enjoys too much freedom.
I hope this woman has a gun, and knows how to use it.
I’d say she needs to introduce Mr Vinyard to Mr Glock and his friends Smith and Wesson...
BTW, you looked nice when you left for work at 6:38 pst this morning, new pants?
I don’t remember the entire quote, but something like:
God created all men equal. Mr. Colt helps them keep it that way.
This dude needs a buckshot lobotomy.
Give his victime some firearm training, a carry permit, and a nice LadySmith revolver.
Then let the scumbag go.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
BOING
“I charge you with stalking.”
“But I plead insanity, your honor. I’m just crazy about that gal!”
Millee, you-know-who just got out of the hosp, exhibited stalking behavior and then threatened to come over and commit suicide in the front yard in front of the kids’ windows. “they PROBABLY wouldn’t have seen” he says. Sick, sick, sick.
She needs to be armed and willing to shoot and after 30 years, I’ll bet she is.
I can’t help but wonder who else has been a victim of his. It doesn’t seem likely that she’s the only one he’s ever had issues over. Anyone with those kinds of problems doesn’t usually contain it.
The victim has changed her name and gotten an unlisted number, but he found them anyway
They always do.
I know exactly where you're coming from. Mine lasted 11 yrs from across the country, and I didn't realize for perhaps the first half of it what was really going on. For all I know he's still looking for me. I occasionally enter my name into the search engines to see if he's still crazed. The list of things he did as a "mere stalker" was so long and horrifying it caused him to be considered a suspect in a spate of serial murders.
Even years after you think it's over, the slightest little thing makes you wonder. I hear stories of stalkers restarting their behavior years later. Once a victim a person is always looking over his or her shoulder. I do.
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