Obsession (38 page)

Heroically, just two weeks after the vicious assault, Saldana showed up in court for a preliminary hearing, wheeled into the room with IV attached, bandaged and ready to testify against Jackson. He was convicted of attempted murder and of inflicting great bodily injury and was sentenced to twelve years—the maximum penalty available at the time. After serving his time in California, he was extradited to Britain, where he was wanted for murder in connection with a bank robbery in 1966. As of this writing, that trial is still pending.

At the time of her attack, Theresa Saldana’s talent was being recognized and her career was gaining momentum, but she was certainly not the most popular or well-known actress in the movies or on television. She had never met Arthur Jackson before he showed up at her apartment. What made her the focus of his dangerous obsession seems to be that when he was ready to throw his energies and identity into the life of another, more successful human being, her image was there. Because movie, television, music, and even sports stars make their living putting their image out before the public, they seem ready targets for the emotional attachment of lost souls.

In fact, many love-obsession stalkings involve ordinary citizens, including a case that resulted in one of California’s largest mass killings, bringing the issue—as well as workplace harassment and violence—to the nation’s attention.

In 1984, Laura Black was a twenty-two-year-old engineer and relatively new hire at ESL Inc. when she was introduced to Richard Wade Parley, a computer technician who worked in another department at the defense contractor. The petite, dark-haired Black was not only pretty but smart, pursuing an advanced degree
while working at ESL. She was also athletic, a former award-winning gymnast who played on the company softball team. They had met when Farley visited a colleague in Black’s department. The three went out to lunch, which meant little more to Black than expanding the number of faces she recognized at work, but apparently held much more significance to Farley. The lunch was certainly not a date—especially since they all paid for their own meal—and Laura Black couldn’t have known that years later Farley would testify that “I fell instantly in love with her.”

He began showing up at her desk regularly, inviting her on dates ranging from music concerts to comedy shows, even a tractor pull. She wasn’t interested in him and, as she put it, “It made me uncomfortable. I don’t like to deal with that type of situation at work.” She politely tried to make the point that she was only interested in him as “a work friend.” Still, Parley persisted, giving her gifts that were inappropriate for a casual acquaintance at the office, as well as just plain odd: a mirror shaped like a heart and a power shovel.

About a month after they’d been introduced, Farley demanded Black’s home address and phone number, which she refused to give him. He became more and more persistent and she grew more concerned about his unwanted attention. The frustration level was increasing on both sides.

To point out just how difficult these cases can be, even experts who’ve studied stalking offenders offer different advice on how to deal with someone like Farley, which we’ll get into more in the next chapter. Laura Black hoped that by being polite, honest, and firm in rejecting Farley’s romantic pursuit, she would be able to defuse the uncomfortable situation. Unfortunately, Farley was not someone with whom she could negotiate rationally.

The people at the National Victim Center have outlined
the patterns of behavior most stalkers like this follow, and it is almost eerie how well Farley’s match their description. According to their model, many stalkers first try to win over the object of their affection with gifts, love letters, flowers, and the like. At this stage, the stalker desperately hopes he just has to show the person he’s pursuing how much he loves her and that will be enough to win her. This is the motivation in cases where the offender has had a previous personal relationship with his victim, as well as in domestic violence situations, where his hope is to reestablish a relationship that existed previously. In either case, when they realize the gifts and invitations aren’t working, they tend to resort to intimidation to pry their way into their victim’s life. They may act possessive, jealous of the victim’s other relationships, romantic or otherwise, however unjustified that reaction may be. Harassment turns to threats, either direct or indirect, that are communicated by the offender’s words and/or actions. And when the threats don’t work—after nothing else has worked—the stalker may grow violent. He may grow homicidal (and/or suicidal) either out of desperation, willing to try anything to prove his love and get his victim’s attention, or out of anger and jealousy, determined that “if I can’t have her, nobody will.”

While it is predictable that a certain number of stalkers will follow this pattern to a violent end, nobody can say exactly what a given offender will do or when he will do it. Some may back off from threats and begin with flowers and love cards all over again. Others will jump through all the stages to violent or even deadly behavior within days. For some, it could take years before they grow violent. Still others may make threats, even confront their victim, then back off and stop their disturbing behavior for years, only to return when the victim least expects it. Experts may
differ on their advice about how to treat stalkers, but the one thing upon which everyone agrees is that the unpredictability and the individuality of each case means that every one must be taken seriously.

Laura Black could not have known how serious the situation would grow. And to an outsider, before Farley grew threatening, his actions may have seemed sweet, if a bit odd. One of the most insidious aspects of the crime is that in the early stages, when only the victim realizes how inappropriate the stalker’s behavior is, others (even some in law enforcement, I’m afraid) may react with confusion over the victim’s alarm.

“You should be flattered by this attention,” people say, thinking the man is merely smitten and will either give up when he realizes the woman is not interested or will eventually succeed and win her affection. That’s the way it may have seemed to people around Laura Black, who saw that Richard Farley baked her blueberry bread, leaving it on her desk all buttered and ready to eat every Monday morning for seven weeks in a row. However, that bread was a sign to Black that something was not right with this man. This behavior was actually narcissistic: the antithesis of generous and caring. He was making it clear that he didn’t care what she wanted, his will was going to prevail. For him, pursuit of Black was a power struggle that he could not afford to lose once he invested so much emotional energy.

At first, many people, possibly including his victim, may have thought he was just pathetic. In this, he fits the classic profile of other types of offenders, including both rapists and murderers who get their satisfaction from manipulating, dominating, and controlling another human being. It is also highly telling that Farley chose as his victim someone fourteen years younger than he was, a common practice with offenders who
feel more comfortable and in control of the situation with a victim younger than themselves. Many serial killers select younger victims in early crimes, intimidated by people their own age.

After Black made it clear that Farley’s feelings were not mutually shared, turning down dates, refusing to give him her phone number and address, even telling him in desperation that she wouldn’t date him if he “were the last man on earth,” he grew increasingly more harassing. As he would explain, “I had the right to ask her out…. When she did not refuse in a cordial way, I felt I had the right to bother her.” And bother her he did, showing up in her office when she was there alone putting in overtime on weekends or at night. Like Arthur Jackson, he had a mission and was able to call up tremendous resourcefulness in its pursuit. He lied to a colleague in the personnel office at ESL just weeks after meeting Black and said he wanted to surprise her for her birthday. When the coworker called up Black’s file on the computer, Farley memorized her address from the screen. He broke into Black’s desk and traced her keys so he could make copies. When he learned she was going to visit her parents for Christmas, he again gained access to her desk by telling corporate security he lost his desk key and giving them the number of her desk instead. Searching through her belongings, he found the address for her parents’ place and sent one of the nearly two hundred letters she would receive from him—this one eight single-spaced pages long.

All these efforts served two purposes. First, like a rapist who breaks into women’s homes when they’re not there, stealing panties so he has a physical object to build his fantasies around before actually assaulting his victim, Farley was fueling his fantasy of possessing Laura Black. Sure, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him by choice, but he was gathering intelligence,
collecting details and snippets of her real personal life. As a star stalker painstakingly collects videos of every movie ever made by his love object, clipping magazine and newspaper articles and compiling a scrapbook, Farley was building an inventory of items and information that made him feel closer to Black. By copying down the license plate numbers of cars belonging to men who spent time with her and memorizing other details about her, he created in his mind the illusion of intimacy. This false sense later led him to the feeling, after he’d continued his stalking of Black for years, that they should go to a marriage counselor.

He stated, “We fight like an old married couple,” revealing the degree to which his fantasy redefined their interaction, allowing him to fill in her side of the relationship he imagined them to have. Although not deluded like Hinckley, who was so adept at finding secret messages for him in Jodie Foster’s every action that he wrote to her in 1980, “You didn’t wear your plaid skirt today…. You have no right to disrupt our relationship in such a manner,” Farley played the stalker’s mind game fully, rationalizing his behavior with his belief that he could win Laura Black’s attention. He didn’t necessarily want her as his wife or girlfriend, but he wanted to know he could have her, that he wasn’t the loser he and so many others took him to be.

With his intelligence-gathering and other stalking behavior, Farley also controlled how much privacy she had, taking that basic right away from her. And therein lies the second part of his motivation. Every piece of information he gathered, every intrusion he made into her life that she would have prevented, allowed him to reassert his control over the situation. She didn’t want a relationship with him, but he was finding ways to make sure she thought of him day
and night. There was no place she could go that he wouldn’t be.

Farley revealed his need to control Black in 1985 when, frustrated that she had switched tactics from firmly refusing his advances to ignoring him altogether, he wrote, “I see you as much as six times a week, which doesn’t give you much freedom, so I thought it would be nice to call when I wanted to see you, and the rest of the time is yours. But you don’t seem to appreciate that. Now I’m thinking of changing the rules.”

Much as other criminals find ways to rationalize and project the blame for their actions onto their victims, Farley was trying to justify his behavior, while at the same time intimating that he would step up his abuse. He would have her believe he’d tried to be accommodating, but that she had made things difficult—as though an adult in a normal, healthy relationship would have the inclination, let alone the right, to set up such “rules” for his or her partner.

It wasn’t enough for him simply to observe her or learn personal details about her, he needed to make sure she was aware of his surveillance. He joined her gym, photographed her doing aerobics (and even including drawings of her in a leotard in one of his letters). He went to company softball games to watch her play and insinuated himself into after-game celebrations over pizza. He called her at home, often late in the evening, and would drive by when he was unable to get her on the phone.

Still, at times he would back off for a while, as though this might work where his campaign of intimidation had failed. Before too long, however, he would be following her again. In desperation, Black turned to the human resources department at ESL for assistance. Farley was told in no uncertain terms that if he
wanted to keep his job, he had to leave her alone, as well as get psychiatric counseling.

We often find that when victims seek intervention from authorities one of two things happens: their situation either gets better or it gets worse. I know this statement sounds like hedging a bet, but the sad fact is that it’s exactly true. As in all other aspects of their behavior, stalkers’ reactions to their victims’ seeking help from the authorities can be unpredictable. Both Linda Fairstein and David Beatty observe that sometimes a stalker can be persuaded to back off—although both add that this has to happen in the early stages of the stalker’s career.

Fairstein notes, “I’ve seen when the guys have some tether to reality—family, job, something—and no criminal record and realize after the first law enforcement contact that they’re likely to lose it all, some of them respond appropriately and it really stops the behavior.” Of course, we always have to wonder with this type of obsessive personality if he hasn’t simply moved on to a new victim. But it does appear that a percentage of stalking offenders will change their ways—again, depending on how much else they have going on in their lives, how well they recognize the consequences of getting in trouble with the law, and what was motivating their behavior to begin with. If they are mentally ill or simply stalk because they like it—much as a serial rapist enjoys overpowering and dominating his victims—they won’t be deterred easily.

In some cases, actions on the part of the victim to get an offender punished (or simply to cut off his access to her, as when a victim seeks a restraining order against her stalker) can make things worse. Beatty notes that in many a stalker’s mind, he’s done nothing wrong.