Angela
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I met my ex in December of 2006 on Yahoo personals, and we agreed to meet at a sport function in Raleigh, NC. First red flag should have been that he looked nothing like his picture and showed up by himself, when he said he was coming with friends. But, I was completely naive. He talked a lot about his family, and his four nieces and nephews. We started dating and he told me he was sterile. I didn't question it, because I had never known a guy to risk a pregnancy - all the guys I knew would have run from any possibility of a pregnancy, never towards it. By March I realized I was pregnant. I hadn't even thought about it because he told me he was sterile. Once I was pregnant, that's when the emotional and mental abuse started. But it was not something I had ever experienced, to that degree, and I didn't recognize it as manipulation and coercion. Because of the pregnancy, we decided to move in together, in my house which I owned and was paying for. And I continued paying for darn near everything until I had him removed from the house.
Over time, he told me that he was an Army Ranger, Airborne, and Special Ops. I had no real exposure to anyone in the Armed Forces, so again, I had no perspective or background to know any better. He told me when he got out of the Army he went to work for a private contractor and he had a handler in the US. He told me that they were monitoring all communications into and out of the house, all computers, everything. Told me that he had tortured people overseas and how he tortured them - including children in front of their parents and that women were harder to torture because they had a higher pain tolerance. Told me how he loved to use knives and exactly how he did it. Built this whole persona of himself as an extremely dangerous killer. He told me his handler and the "agency" were watching him because they were worried that he might do something. Oh, and that they had wiped his Army record because he was such a dangerous asset. All kinds of crazy stuff - I was terrified of him because of what he made it seem like he could do. He also built up the story that there were people looking for him, and if they found him they would use me and children to get to him. He told me that his agency had given him a new identity and he was living under a false name. All the stories and "surveillance" effectively isolated me. I told no one anything. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn't go to the police because I was afraid the agency would see his name run in the system. He even said if I said his name on the phone, it would be flagged by the agency and he would know exactly what I said. And he told me if I blew his cover, the agency would move us and I would never be able to talk to or see my family again.
Our first child was born in 2007, then I had a miscarriage in 2008, and then our second child was born in 2010. At this point, I questioned him again on being sterile - I asked "Exactly when did a doctor tell you that you were sterile?" And he said "20 years ago". During the whole time from my first pregnancy on, I realized that he was having sex outside the relationship - there were many signs. If I questioned him about anything, he said he was just following a lead that someone was looking for him. Any communications with women were to protect us from "the bad guys" that were looking for him. I started to realize that he had a LOT of porn on all his devices. He said it helped with his memories of all the killings he did overseas. I started to really avoid sex with him and when we got to a point where it had been six months, he threatened to kill me. Said he thought I was cheating and he had a plan at the ready. That he would "kill me, kill my parents, and disappear our bodies". Over time, this became his go to coercion - he would insinuate that he thought I was cheating and I would comply with sex. Because if I refused, that meant I was cheating and therefore he would kill me. It was understood and I believed him enough that he didn't have to threaten every time. He had many stories on how to disappear bodies, as well, from his Army days, overseas. And he would tell these stories often and graphically. One of his sayings, to remind me to stay complacent, was "Never forget who I am". Which is funny looking back, because I had no idea who he actually was at that point.
In 2015ish, his doctor called me at work to come and pick him up, because he was disoriented and couldn't drive home from the doctor's office. They did a lot of testing. The results came back that he had HIV, syphilis, and mono. He blamed me and said his brother wanted to come from Texas to kill me, but that they would wait for my results. When mine came back clean, he said that the "agency" had given it to him because he had tried to arrange an arms deal with his Russian cousins and they had caught him. They gave him the diseases to punish him. Many times after that, he refused to wear a condom with me. I was so terrified, I complied, because I figured if I refused he would kill me, but if I got one of the diseases at least it could be treated by a doctor.
We moved into a new house in 2016, near my parents. At some point after that he informed me in our kitchen that those nieces and nephews were actually his children - born in the 20 years that he was supposed to have been sterile. It was kind of strange because he started wanting to meet with his family members (out of state), and at the same time he got more and more paranoid. He started installing cameras inside our house in addition to the outside. He left open knives in every room of the house. He tried to talk me into buying an AK-47, which by this point I said "Hell no!" - told me he wasn't allowed to buy guns because of his background. He got more concerned about where I was going and what I was doing. He started talking more about mafias and cartels and telling me stories of his "childhood friends" and how they met up with some of these guys. Told me he had met "El Chapo". I assumed, wrongly, that his family was the bad element and that's why he stayed away from them. He also said he had tried to become a cop at some point. But, when it really dawned on me that something really bad was going on was when I was on a FB narcissist recovery group and someone on there said that their ex spun a very similar story about being in the Armed Forces, Special Ops, secret agency. This scared the hell out of me - I had no way of knowing what was real and what wasn't.
During this period he accused me more often of "cheating", though I knew he was having sex outside our house. He was bringing home what I called "trophies" and leaving them different places in the house. Things like a pair of earrings, sunglasses, a hair tie, etc. When I would ask whose it was, he would say "That's yours". It felt like he got off on it, like it was a game. When the times between sex for us became too long, he would get very quiet over days worth of time. And many times he would sit in his office and start sharpening his knives. It was like he was expecting that I come to him for sex, and I tried to as little as possible. And the longer it took, the quieter he got. I sometimes would initiate, thinking "If I go get it over with now, then I have maybe a couple weeks before I have to do it again." I would drink wine so that I could deal with it. I started showering less, hoping that it would keep him away from me. I wore baggy clothes, I wore no makeup, I let my hair go, I stopped shaving. At night when I went to bed I started having heart palpitations and sweating. I thought it was menopause, but now I look back and realize it was anxiety because of him. I generally went to bed earlier than him. When he would get ready to come to bed, he would be very loud to wake me up, and I knew he wanted sex if he put his hand on my shoulder. He would do what he wanted while I laid there, then he would roll over and go to sleep.I figured out some ways to make it quicker. I learned that if I slept facing him, I had less of chance of him initiating sex, than if I kept my back to him. I also figured out a bit of a "pattern" of behavior to try to keep him in a good mood on most days, things as simple as a kiss in the morning and a kiss in the evening when I got home from work. There was never any affection initiated from him - no hug, no kiss, no hand holding, no cuddling. I was the one that had to do that, if I wanted it, and in order to keep him in a good mood. All he ever did to me was squeeze my breasts whenever he felt like it. It made me want to scream or vomit. I had given up on myself and was just biding my time. I would have screaming sessions alone in my car to get out the rage and frustration. I felt like I was going insane and hanging on by a thread.
What allowed me and my children to escape was that he made a big mistake on a cruise in February of 2023. I had expected to stay with him until the kids were grown and out of the house, at that point. I was protecting my children. I had no plan to escape until it was just me. On this cruise he got picked up by security for taking pictures of women and children - some husbands complained. They searched our room, with me and the kids sitting there. It was scary and humiliating. When we got back to port in Florida, they handed us and all his electronics over the Department of Homeland Security. Who then promptly let him and us go after searching our luggage and questioning us. But, they kept all his electronics. I thought when we pulled into our driveway from the 8 hour ride home, that the cops would be there with a search warrant. I was praying for it. But, nothing. He spent the next three days clearing paperwork and hard drives out of the house. Found out later that he had told my youngest son that if the police arrested him. that my son should go home and destroy evidence. On the third day after we were back, he decided to go to Texas and see his kids - he was sure he would be arrested. I was hoping he would run and never come back, and I was also scared he was going to kill me and the kids. There was a time early on that he had given me a code phrase - "Nothing could be as bad as Mesa Company". He would talk about soldiers killing their whole families and suiciding, and that if he ever seemed like he was going to do something like that, I was supposed to say that phrase to him to snap him out of it. So, I was relieved when he actually left town on a bus to Texas. Right before he left he told me he had two Felonies in the Army. While he was gone, I told some friends what was going on, and luckily for me I had really good friends. They told me to go to the cops. The cops told me to file for a 50B, and then I got a lawyer. The whole time I was doing all that, me and the kids were moving from hotel to hotel - different one every night - and I was doing everything on a burner phone. I had my car checked at two different places for trackers - which there were none. And he was served with eviction from the property by the Sheriff because of the 50B. While I didn't end up getting an official Restraining Order, it did get him out of the property. I changed the locks and the security system before the kids and I felt safe enough to be back in the house.
It was about a year later when I got the courage up to start researching him online - under his real name, that he had told me at some point. I started with Intelius and found a drug charge and a weapons charge. Then I looked online and found news articles that mentioned him in a case against a small cartel faction - there was a DEA/FBI/multi-agency sting operation and his name was a part of it. I started looking on county records sites and legal case sites online and found case numbers, etc. So apparently, in 2002 he was indicted in a cartel sting and subsequently flipped on the 4 guys who were running the operation. He was originally given a 25 year sentence (in 2000 from his original separate charges), but I met him in 2006 in North Carolina. I'm assuming he was given a deal and was placed in the WITSEC program, but have not been able to confirm this, obviously. Also, in those case files he has a rape charge mentioned. I have not been able to find a separate case file on that charge, yet. So after all that abuse and terror, me and the kids were just cover for him. His handler was apparently his parole officer? I haven't been able to confirm that, but it's my guess. None of the agencies would speak to me, let alone help me. I showed everything I have to a detective and he said I had nothing chargeable. He is now trying to take 1/2 the money from the sale of the house, because his name is on the deed, even though I paid for everything the whole time. Worked myself into the ground to pay for it and take care of the kids - he did basically nothing. And I will never see a dime from him to take care of his children, I'm sure. He is now only concerned with getting the money from the house.
