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85 – Samantha Stites: Stalking, Survival & System Failures
55 Plays2 months ago
Sam shares the harrowing true story of Samantha Stites, a Michigan woman who endured more than a decade of obsessive stalking before being violently kidnapped and held in a soundproof bunker by her stalker in October 2022. The case, now featured in the docuseries Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror, reveals how stalking escalated despite legal protections, how Samantha survived by staying mentally sharp under terrifying conditions, and how her bravery and quick thinking helped bring her captor to justice after years of relentless terror.
Trigger Warning: Discussion of long-term stalking, abduction, torture, and non-consensual confinement.
Visit us on Linktree for the collection of links, Instagram, or email us at jeffandsamshow@gmail.com.
Sources
- Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror — docuseries (Hulu/Disney+) about Samantha Stites’ ordeal and survival.
- TV show “You” inspired true crime case highlighted in ABC News Studios’ docu-series ‘Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror’ — ABC News report on how her case unfolded.
- Michigan Woman Shares Story of Survival After Being Kidnapped — local Michigan news coverage of her escape and stalker’s conviction.
- Hulu’s Stalking Samantha: Where Is Christopher Thomas Now? — overview of the case, prosecution, sentence, and aftermath, including advocacy and systemic concerns.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:00:00
Jeff Rogers
Hello, Sam. Hi, Jeffrey.
00:00:25
Jeff Rogers
Hi, Sam. Welcome to the Jeff and Sam show. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. Hello, hello, hello. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio. And you should probably tell somebody about us.
00:00:38
Jeff Rogers
Come on, people. rate us. And review us. Indeed. Reach out to us if you want. Yeah, somebody left us a bad star recently. It brought our thing down from five stars to 4.9.
Creative Playlist Inspirations
00:00:52
Jeff Rogers
I'll find them. Whatever.
00:00:54
Jeff Rogers
Did you know, and just found this out.
00:00:58
Jeff Rogers
Artists on Spotify can see every single playlist that their songs are added to. So this, uh, Canadian singer, um,
00:01:12
Jeff Rogers
made a whole song about like with just the titles of the playlists that he was on. Oh shit. It's so good. Yeah. But it's like, it's, it makes you think about like what you title your playlist. Yeah.
00:01:26
Jeff Rogers
Interesting. I have two playlists on my phone and um I use Apple Music. yeah You're a Spotify girl. yeah I'm an Apple Music. To the core. So I have a playlist. It's like dance, right? Like when I'm cleaning, I'll turn that on. And then another one that I use a lot is don't know. That's literally the name of my plate my playlist is don't know.
00:01:51
Jeff Rogers
Because um i just pull those songs. If I hear a song on TV on a show watching and I like it, immediately put that shit into that playlist. And so it's like a really good playlist.
00:02:04
Jeff Rogers
You listened to one from it last week that you really liked. Yes. Fletcher? My playlists are...
00:02:12
Jeff Rogers
First of all, just a perfect expression of my ADHDness. Witchy Pagan music. All out 80s. Broadway ballads.
00:02:23
Jeff Rogers
EDM hits. Tropical house covers. Bedtime relaxation. Relaxing Viking shit. Country mix. Nordic sisterhood. Aggressive Viking battle music.
00:02:36
Jeff Rogers
Oh, shit. Country summertime. ah Country Kind of Love. Lesbian Top Energy.
00:02:48
Jeff Rogers
out Lesbian Top Energy? huh ah Ultimate Boy Bands. Rage Megs. You've created these? No, they're like, some of them I have created, but some of them are like ones that I have saved into my playlist. Oh, gotcha. Monster Jams.
00:03:08
Jeff Rogers
Monster Jams. Opera classics. Motivational shit. But the shit part is start out. Like I made that playlist and it says motivational S and then star star. That's funny.
00:03:23
Jeff Rogers
Random car adventures. 90s rock anthems. I'm here for that one. Do it like that. Oh shit, shake that ass.
00:03:36
Jeff Rogers
Oh shit, shake that ass. Yeah. Big butt songs.
00:03:44
Jeff Rogers
These are fucking and some of these are like from so long ago that you literally take me back to like 1992 with. Oh, Becky. with um o my god becky Look at that. but I love that song. yeah Takes me back. Well. To a time and a place. To a time and a place. Yeah, these are these are crazy. That
Music and Memories
00:04:10
Jeff Rogers
and the song. Oh, my God. The song when Casey was born. You know, you met my cousin Casey when you went home with me this summer. When she was born and when she was a little girl, we all danced our asses off to Way Down Yonder on the Chattahoochee.
00:04:27
Jeff Rogers
It gets hotter than a hoochie-coochie. A fucking man. That's such a good song. That's wild. Good memories of that song. that is It is a good song. It's a very good song. And that's on my like old country playlist. like The good like classic country... like If you had like to think about a song that you've played a lot in your life that you kept coming back to, an artist that you... Like, 20 years ago and now.
00:04:58
Jeff Rogers
Is there one that you kept coming back to over and over again? Like, an artist that you just... That that you love to your core?
00:05:05
Jeff Rogers
It would be the original, like... um No, I don't have one, you know, because I'm all over our place. Or three or whatever. i mean, I'm not asking for like a favorite, a top, anything like that because those questions freak me out a little bit.
00:05:22
Jeff Rogers
How do you pick? um I'll tell you. For me, i always go back to Alanis Morissette. There you go. Always go back. 1995, high school, her first album came out.
00:05:35
Jeff Rogers
Such a fucking amazing album. Dolly Parton, always go back to Dolly. One song by her in particular, not one many people know, a lot of people know.
00:05:46
Jeff Rogers
Two Doors Down, that's one of my favorites by Dolly. The Chicks, I will go back to, um i love Melissa Etheridge and I love Sinead O'Connor.
00:05:57
Jeff Rogers
And Sinead O'Connor, so when I worked in California a long time ago, did like a part-time job in a um diamond store, flower shop, and an art gallery. It was all in one, and it had a two-story water fountain, waterfall, from the art gallery
Elder Emo Culture and Family Music Bonds
00:06:13
Jeff Rogers
down to the first floor. There was a two-story waterfall. that's some fancy ass and when the owner wasn't there i would play my music which was like oh alantis and melissa etheridge and you know not your typical gay man music and uh so my friend brian came in fabulous you would love adore brian fabulous from hollywood and he we would say wow are you always listening to your lesbian music
00:06:46
Jeff Rogers
What's his thing? Why are you listening to your lesbian music? I don't know. I just like it. You're listen, you add Brandi Carlile to that and you've got a lesbian playlist. I love Brandi Carlile. Yep. But Sinead O'Connor does this, Sinead O'Connor does this song called Daddy I'm Fine. Yep. One of the best fucking songs ever. Oh, so good. Yeah.
00:07:07
Jeff Rogers
Um, yeah, no, I mean, mine would be, don't know what was 20 years ago. Um,
00:07:16
Jeff Rogers
I don't know, I think it would range like the the gold school country again. So like, um the whole Reba, that whole era.
00:07:27
Jeff Rogers
um And then of course, like Celine, she's always, always good to play. Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson. And then you go into like, depending on the mood, I can always go back to like Green Day, Good Charlotte, Blink, anything like all that whole which apparently is now called Elder Emo. oh shut up.
00:07:51
Jeff Rogers
So, yeah. Did my sister Kim just hear Kim, did you just hear that? I've been thrown into the elder category. Elder emo. Yeah. Kimberly. Kimberly. But, you know, it raised us. it raised a whole generation of people who
Samantha Stites' Abduction Story
00:08:05
Jeff Rogers
girls that had to get through all of their feelings. And it was there. Kim takes Landon to those concerts That's because they're amazing. Which I'm sure you know that because you sat outside and talked to Landon. For hours. For hours that night at the pool. hey That's why he has a Spotify account for me. Hello. That's great. Yeah. um
00:08:25
Jeff Rogers
But no, I mean, yeah, those would. ah Obviously, once Adele popped up, I can always listen to her. Same. Oh. Cher.
00:08:37
Jeff Rogers
I can't believe you didn't say her, Armini. I mean, she's just a given. Duh. I am a gay man. What you like Cher? Emma Donna. Wait, who's Cher? Right. um She's the woman, according to Dan, that's had too much work done on her face. Dan.
00:08:50
Jeff Rogers
Daniel. Dan. Blythe. Blythe. I'm just saying, Blythe. You better hold me back. oh i don't i don't think she'd hold me back you just didn't rate no she wouldn't she would never dare disobey you like that she defended disrespect share she defended me of course because she's a lady yes um yeah no yeah my music i don't know my music's all over the place um yeah same mine is too and i like it all typically i like something from all the genres yeah but i may not know who sings it i may not know much about music the chicks that's another good one that i always go back to already said them oh their cover of a prince song um
00:09:37
Jeff Rogers
since i've been what's the name of the prince song that they covered
00:09:42
Jeff Rogers
since i Since you've been gone, I can do whatever I choose. Nothing compares to you. fuck Wow. That is such a good song. It's that little file in my brain that I can pull stuff from sometimes. Oh, yeah.
00:09:58
Jeff Rogers
Let's talk about that for a second. so Jeff made a statement like that earlier. And I said, oh, well, you have a mind palace. And I definitely do not. And he goes, I don't even know what that is. So Jeff, I have to say. Tell me what this is. So.
00:10:13
Jeff Rogers
I need you to watch Sherlock on BBC. I love Sherlock. Have you seen that? The one with Benedict Cumberbatch? Absolutely. His mind palace. Oh, I'm nowhere like that, though. I can feel... Well, I mean... yeah, yeah. But that's the mind palace. He he has organized everything in the in into a place that is a place of comfort, and he recognizes it. And so it's reportedly easier to find information if you build this organized... and That makes perfect sense to me....consciously build a...
00:10:45
Jeff Rogers
What did I just pull from my brain before this? Whatever it was, i said, oh, hold on. Let me work it to the top there, and I got it. I don't do that. My mind palace is basically a landfill that somebody has shaken up, spun around,
00:11:06
Jeff Rogers
It's like when you see the aftermath of like a Category 5 twister or something. But you guys, the thing is, like when we're sitting here and we're doing this show, this is very much... We're we we're not like trying to edit anything out. We're not trying to be someone we're not. We're just shooting the shit with each other. That's the point of this show. And that will forever be the point of this show.
00:11:26
Jeff Rogers
for We're having fun with this. In all our cosmic fabulosity. Right. And Alan said something to me last week that really made me think... Fuck, that's it. That's why like, and when we're doing the show, and we suddenly try to think of the name of somebody or a song or it is only because we are in the moment doing this show, that we don't recall names. And those things are harder to come up with because we're only in the moment. You know what I mean?
00:11:55
Jeff Rogers
Well, that's my entire life. Well, I mean, I guess it is mine too, but specifically as we're doing this, yeah we're not, we can't step outside of a box that isn't recording and, oh, go look that up. Yeah. We're just in here doing it, you know? Doing that thing. We're living in the moment, Alan. Alan's a big proponent of living in the moment. And we do. We do indeed.
00:12:14
Jeff Rogers
All right. To which Alan just texted me yesterday and said, Oh, no, I'm not going to say that. Okay. Yeah. About the book, the dude. oh Yeah. yeah Yeah. Alan, I got it. I got to call you out for that one. My man, I adore you so much. You know, I do. But when Jeff told me that I was like, I mean, it's been a solid, what, two years of this and you didn't know.
00:12:45
Jeff Rogers
He does not live in that world anymore. That's good. Yeah. He said. No one wants to live in that world. Nope. And he. That's good. That made him so happy that he didn't know that. Joy. Yeah.
00:12:57
Jeff Rogers
That's awesome. We're still in Egypt, people. We are. We're still in Egypt. We are. And we won't have to get back on our empty flight for another like day and a half, right? Mm-mm. It'll be grand. It'll be grand.
00:13:08
Jeff Rogers
And oh, you will have seen me in some pretty ugly shorts. Yeah.
00:13:13
Jeff Rogers
Jorts. Jorts. Jorts. Jeans shorts. You will have seen me in some jean shorts. And I'll tell you the origin story of these shorts because people will be like, what the fuck were those shorts, Jeff? Why were you in those shorts?
00:13:27
Jeff Rogers
So many, many years ago, after mom passed away, dad Obviously, was grieving, and it was pretty hard on him. And eventually, i got to stay down there for about a month after she passed away. And when I came back up here, i would get these phone calls, and I would, it was twenty twenty and they'd be like, your dad is just not doing well. And I would say, dont ah I don't know what to do from here, you know. I just don't know how to make that better from here, because I was also not doing good.
00:13:56
Jeff Rogers
And um then it got to be, oh, Jeff, your dad is wearing these god-awful shorts. That's how we know he's not doing good. He's wearing these god-awful shorts.
00:14:09
Jeff Rogers
Jorts. Jorts. And so then i made it a point the next time I went down there. or soon after to get those shorts okay i was like please call them as they are they're jorts to get those jorts i don't know what i'm gonna do with them but i'm taking them so he can't wear them because people text me and they worry about him because he's about the jorts and so um i took those shorts and then i had this idea what can i do with these shorts because that whole
00:14:41
Jeff Rogers
ah The shorts represented something so tragic and horrible and sad. And I wanted to take the shorts and make them happy. In some way, make them bring us so like smiles to our face. You know what i mean? So I took the shorts and I have a pink marker and a black, like a pink shirt.
00:15:00
Jeff Rogers
Yeah, marker and a black permanent marker in the pocket of those shorts that's in a Ziploc bag. And I have taken those motherfucking shorts around the world. They have gone from country to country to north and south and from Alcatraz to the Taj Mahal. And every time I'm at one of these places,
00:15:20
Jeff Rogers
I write where we are that day on the shorts. So Taj Mahal, 2024, February 2nd, whatever. Norway, Paris. Did you see the picture of Elizabeth in Paris?
00:15:34
Jeff Rogers
There's a picture of Elizabeth wearing the shorts in Paris. oh So good. So that, I swear to God, it just makes my dad laugh and smile so hard when he sees those shorts.
00:15:46
Jeff Rogers
in front of the pyramids in Cairo or the Eiffel Tower. Oh, that's so wild. So i will be wearing, if you see me in jorts, or if you've seen me in jorts, just know that that is the story of the jorts.
00:16:03
Jeff Rogers
I will be wearing them. Yes, you will be wearing them. Because it will, when it gets back to my dad, just make him chuckle. Good. And I'll live for that. Live for that. I do love making him laugh. Are you ready? i am. Are you ready? I'm ready.
00:16:17
Jeff Rogers
What are you drinking? I was born ready, motherfucker. I'm sorry. Every time. Blade. I'm drinking ah classic cola poppy. Poppy classic cola. Cheers, Chris.
00:16:29
Jeff Rogers
Let's do it to it. Hey, Sam, tell me a story.
00:16:33
Jeff Rogers
Okay. I ah love this. October 8th, 2022. Traverse City Police and a SWAT unit pin down a vehicle to detain a suspect. Traverse City.
00:16:45
Jeff Rogers
Michigan. Michigan. Michigan. They all jump out of the vehicle shouting orders to the driver. The individual hesitates and doesn't respond. The officers move forward, all pointing weapons at the driver.
00:16:59
Jeff Rogers
36 hours before this, a young woman sits chained to a wall in a small, silent room. She prepares herself for the fight of her life. She can't hear anything around her and her throat is raw from screaming.
00:17:12
Jeff Rogers
Eight years before this, 20-year-old Samantha Stites was a senior student at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. She kept herself busy with classes, a job and an internship, socializing. She was like the center of a lot of people's worlds.
00:17:28
Jeff Rogers
Her childhood friends, Robin and Patrick, described her as extremely funny with a dark sense of humor. Love that. Playful and incredibly kind to the point of giving anybody a chance regardless of their lifestyle or behavior.
00:17:41
Jeff Rogers
Growing up, her family was not well off. Her father abandoned them when she was only five years old. Her mom worked multiple jobs just to stay above water. But Sam made the best of it.
00:17:53
Jeff Rogers
In March 2014, Samantha was just getting off or just getting settled at her job. Shifted like just a few minutes when you first walk in. right And a man walked through the door holding flowers.
00:18:06
Jeff Rogers
He approached her as if they were old friends. And he said that he brought the flowers for her because he had heard that her grandfather had passed away. Sam was enraged by him.
00:18:17
Jeff Rogers
She told him to leave. She said she didn't want any flowers. She didn't want to see him. she didn't want to talk to him. He looked shocked and hurt, but he walked away. And then she left her shift that night She was waiting for a bus and he approached her again.
00:18:31
Jeff Rogers
He says, i just want to talk. He doesn't understand her attitude or why she just won't allow him some sort of closure. And when I hear the term closure, you know, I think like there, there was a relationship in any kind, any spectrum on that, right? Some sort of relationship that is now over. Right.
00:18:51
Jeff Rogers
They did not have any type of relationship that needed closure. Okay. So she said, nothing needs closure. Get the fuck out of here. I'm sick of telling you
Investigation and Justice
00:19:01
Jeff Rogers
repeatedly to leave me alone. At this point, he's blocked on her phone and she had made it perfectly clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.
00:19:09
Jeff Rogers
She walked away, but she had this unsettling feeling that for the first time ever, she was experiencing a human being that very clearly knows exactly what her wishes are and is actively choosing not to honor them.
00:19:25
Jeff Rogers
Sam had met Christopher Thomas a few years earlier in 2011 when he joined the Christian group that she was already a part of. She acknowledged that he was like a bit so funky, goofy, shy. So she reached out a friendly hand and he latched onto it.
00:19:44
Jeff Rogers
She interacted with him briefly just a few times, trying to be friendly and kind. He then friended her on Facebook and initially it just seemed that he was lonely. And so she said, okay, I can be friends. You know, it's a Christian thing to do.
00:19:58
Jeff Rogers
He was described by many, many people as a nobody, a sad, lonely guy who was socially awkward, soft, and chubby. Things progressed. Christopher started asking her out on dates and to meet up in between classes.
00:20:14
Jeff Rogers
She continued to politely refuse and like very gently reject him again. She's not trying to be mean. He didn't get the message. Shortly before her birthday that year, Christopher approached her and told her that he had bought them tickets to go see a hockey game together.
00:20:28
Jeff Rogers
She told him very directly that she was not interested in him. He still did not get the point.
00:20:34
Jeff Rogers
Thank you. Get those demons out, girl. Get those demons out. Um, he continued to reach out to her and then randomly just started like giving her nicknames. One of them, he called her jelly bean, which like god weird, right? Like I'm not sure jelly bean. I'm not sure nothing.
00:20:52
Jeff Rogers
He sent more and more messages that started getting longer and longer and more emotional. He started sending Bible verses to her claiming that their relationship was God's plan. He left red roses under her windshield wipers and on her doorstep. He left her love notes and her continued attempts to tell him that she was not interested kept falling short.
00:21:13
Jeff Rogers
She then stepped it up and told him flat out, you need to back off and leave me alone. He still did not stop. He continued following her to work and the internship, like just following her.
00:21:27
Jeff Rogers
After one prayer meeting Sam led, Christopher approached her and randomly told her that he had beaten somebody up. He said, I just saw Red and I beat them up. And so now she's like, he's not just a little weird. He's a lot fucking weird.
00:21:42
Jeff Rogers
And he's got a temper and he's violent. So he continues to send countless messages to her. Like, horrible. They are all showing increasingly more intense infatuation and obsession.
00:21:56
Jeff Rogers
He began showing up at her recreational Frisbee games, and the first time she noticed him like walking alone on the track or on the field. And then she started seeing him every single week at the practices, sitting alone in the stands watching her.
00:22:10
Jeff Rogers
As the school year came closer to an end, she began noticing her him following her literally everywhere. But he never approached her or talked to her after the time that she told him to fuck off.
00:22:21
Jeff Rogers
He was always just wherever she was. She wanted to pretend like it wasn't happening and focus on just like getting to the end of her school year, right? She's a senior. She wants to graduate. She has plans for afterwards. She just needs to make it through.
00:22:32
Jeff Rogers
She told her friends of her worries and to their frustration, she was like, i don't need to involve the police. Like he's just a weirdo. This is fine. So in April, 2014, Sam graduated. Her mom and grandma got to watch. And she was planning on taking some time off before going back to grad school.
00:22:51
Jeff Rogers
She moved back home to Elk Rapids, which was a very small, close-knit community where everybody knew everybody. And she was a few hours north of where her school was, so she felt a sense of relief moving back there, and she said that she finally felt like she could close the book on the Christopher situation.
00:23:09
Jeff Rogers
She spent that summer catching up with her friends, enjoying the Michigan, like beautiful Michigan summer. She moved into an apartment with her friend Carissa that was right downtown. was across from the local bar. Over the months, Christopher did reach out by text messages and he begged for her attention. He asked like if he could come visit her.
00:23:27
Jeff Rogers
um She never responded. Or if she did, it was a very, again, like, nope, thank you. So when he would reach out, she and her friends kind of just all brushed it off and laughed about it. Again, they're distant from school. He's not there.
00:23:40
Jeff Rogers
This is just weird, right? It's creepy, but that's Carissa said, there wasn't any room for a vian villain. It didn't fit the plot of the story that I had written about our situation in paradise.
00:23:53
Jeff Rogers
So Sam continued to ignore him and made her own plans for her time off between school. She applied for a ministry internship in Kansas City. Craig Mosher had known Sam for 25 years and was like a father figure to her because she grew up with his daughter.
00:24:09
Jeff Rogers
In September, just two days before she was supposed to leave for the Kansas City internship, Sam and Craig were driving through town running errands, and they had both noticed a red motorcycle multiple times, and then they realized that it was following them.
00:24:23
Jeff Rogers
Sam immediately knew that it was Christopher. She had a horrible feeling, so Craig pulls over into an um like empty parking lot, He's ready to fight. Sam says, no, no, no, I got this. She goes out and confronts him. She's like, what the fuck are you doing in my hometown? Right?
00:24:38
Jeff Rogers
Guess what Christopher says. Can you guess? He lives there now. He had gotten accepted to the same Kansas City internship and he just wanted to know if they could ride together. Oh, hell no.
00:24:51
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. so she says, fuck off. She tells him to leave her alone, left him right there in the parking lot. She was scared. She was lost. So Craig sits down with her and says, let's make a plan on how to deal with this. They're sitting in the kitchen talking about everything that had been going on. And Craig's son, Josh, walks in and says, hey, Sam, there's somebody like looking for you. And she asks who and describes Christopher and then shows him a picture. And he goes, that's the guy, but...
00:25:20
Jeff Rogers
i I saw him coming out of your apartment. Oh, hell no. Carissa and Sam. so creepy. Yeah. So Carissa and Sam now realize, like, this is fucking serious. He was inside their home.
00:25:35
Jeff Rogers
Robin and Pat are both feeling the same way. And they're like, this is dangerous. This is getting to the point where it's not just weird. It's dangerous. So Craig suggests filing for a restraining order or a personal protective order.
00:25:48
Jeff Rogers
He encouraged Sam to sit down and write down every single interaction and every place that he had shown up over the past couple years. She wrote out her list, and as she wrote more and more and more, she began to finally see the pattern and the extent of what he was doing.
00:26:04
Jeff Rogers
Christopher was stalking her.
00:26:06
Jeff Rogers
Just a few days later, on September 18, 2014, she filed the petition for the personal protective order. The judge who received it noted that her case was in fact terrifying and he agreed that Christopher was truly dangerous.
00:26:20
Jeff Rogers
He said that at the time, he had never seen a stalking case as extreme as this. He easily decided to grant the PPO, and he granted it for the longest time period ever done, six years.
00:26:31
Jeff Rogers
After the order was granted, Craig reached out to the Kansas City prayer manager in charge of the internship, told them of the PPO, and they removed Christopher christopher from the program. Again, Sam's kind of relieved. She starts living her life normally. Ministry goes and comes and goes. Nothing exciting happens. She goes back to grad school to become a private practice therapist.
00:26:53
Jeff Rogers
She decided that she wanted to take some time to like travel and explore um to move on from the Christopher myth. she wanted to keep her friends up to date on her adventures. So she started a small blog online and they got to stay ah like up to date on what she was doing. And then she started having like strangers follow her. And like, she was really excited by it. You know, one of these people was a woman named Sarah Mott who said that she had just stumbled upon the post and like loved what she was doing. And it seemed like she was having the best time.
00:27:24
Jeff Rogers
They chatted every once in a while. Um, After a few years of being out there and living her life, um she she had lost her only remaining family. So her mom and grandma both passed away and she was feeling homesick and ready to return. So she moved to Traverse City to be in a place where she had friends, memories, and like a familiarity.
00:27:48
Jeff Rogers
She bought a home and she dedicated her time to house projects and renovations. She found a recreational adult soccer league to join where she met Devin Roberts um and they became fast friends.
00:28:00
Jeff Rogers
On September 18th, 2020, six years to the day from when Sam was granted her PPO and the exact day that it expired, Sam arrived to her soccer practice and saw Christopher dressed to play.
00:28:14
Jeff Rogers
He had lost a ton of weight, changed his look, and he looked really fit. So she hesitated, kind of like stopped in her tracks, and then she ignored him. And he ignored her. God damn it He ignored her. He didn't even acknowledge her, like didn't look at her or anything like that. So she didn't want to be hasty and freak out. She collected herself, pushed through the game. And again, Sam is a kind, lovely person. So she wanted to believe that like over the past six years, maybe he had changed like, and he wasn't there for her.
00:28:42
Jeff Rogers
She was shaken up, but she was like, well, he didn't approach me. So I feel better. She told her friends about him showing up and like the timing. And they were like, what the fuck? This is not a coincidence. They probably realized what she didn't. like she's She's so sweet.
00:29:00
Jeff Rogers
yeah Given the benefit of a doubt. And they're like, no, no, no, no. no Yeah. So as much as she wanted to believe the best and and not worry about it, she wasn't an idiot. She wasn't oblivious. And she had enough of that like little voice in her head saying, morning. So on her way to soccer, she would change up her routine. She would leave at different times. She would park in different places. She would walk from farther distances. She would like call friends and and carpool with them so that she never showed up in her own vehicle, all that kind of stuff.
00:29:34
Jeff Rogers
So there was no so like consistency at all. And she felt a little bit more comfortable with that, like she was doing something to prevent this. um And Devin recalled thinking, ah Christopher didn't scream soccer player. He was kind of awkward with his body. he didn't really know how to play. he didn't know how to move his legs and feet.
00:29:55
Jeff Rogers
And so over the weeks, he managed to always try and play with Sam's team, even though he wasn't on the team. Sam approached the league organizer and said, um'm i don't know. I think that this is weird. And I think that Chris is following me.
00:30:09
Jeff Rogers
They were like, okay. So they consulted an attorney. And unfortunately, they found out that they couldn't kick him out of the league because he hadn't officially done anything wrong or were broken the law. So next thing you know, Sam's like, okay, whatever. This is just soccer. It's fine.
00:30:24
Jeff Rogers
However, she then sees him one day at the grocery store. And then she sees him at her gym and she told her friends, but she kind of still minimized the seriousness. She said, well, Traverse City iss a small place. The soccer league is the only one in town.
00:30:41
Jeff Rogers
so what are the options does you have? The gym is the most popular one in town. The grocery store, it's the most well stocked. Like it's weird, but like he has reasons to be at all of these places.
00:30:53
Jeff Rogers
She felt and her friends saw that the stress was beginning to get to her. She felt like she was losing her mind. And she and they worked really hard to just ignore him while he was around because he wasn't approaching her.
00:31:07
Jeff Rogers
So they would go and do their things, live their lives, and he would be everywhere, but she would try her best to pretend like he wasn't. Everything he's doing is so intentional.
00:31:18
Jeff Rogers
Everything. And he's going to be fucking crazy. mean, he is, but he's, but I don't know. I feel kind of nervous for her. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So one day during a soccer game between Sam's team and Christopher's, they were both like the ball got kicked to open space. that Both of them started running at it. And when they ah got to the ball, Christopher seemed, from Devin's perspective, she watched the whole thing and she was like, that's fucking weird. Like he was overly aggressive. he He wasn't going for the ball and he was doing everything he could to like put his body on hers.
00:31:51
Jeff Rogers
Sam was so shaken up and she was so pissed that she subbed out of the game. She was done. Carissa came to visit Sam and they decided to go to a Pride event, see a drag show.
00:32:02
Jeff Rogers
And the moment they sat down at the table, Sam saw Christopher leaning against a light pole just directly across from them. Of that night, Carissa remembers saying... Carissa, remember saying, Christopher is not gay. He doesn't have any friends, let alone any friends who are gay. So there was no reason why he should be at the exact same place as us right now.
00:32:22
Jeff Rogers
She suggested they leave, but Sam like got but like frustrated and like upset and said, no, I refuse. I don't want to let him dictate my life. So they sat, they finished their beer, and then they decided to go back Carissa's apartment.
00:32:36
Jeff Rogers
And they were like, yeah, let's go up to the rooftop patio. And they joked that if he was really following them, fuck they'd be able to see him coming from their spot on the roof. And they both kind of expected, but neither of them really wanted to see him a few minutes later.
00:32:54
Jeff Rogers
walking down the alley next to Carissa's apartment. Carissa loses it. She runs down the stairs across the alley, starts screaming at him, tells him, stop following Sam, i'll leave her alone. If I see you again, I'll call the police.
00:33:09
Jeff Rogers
She walks away and then she starts calling all of like Sam's friends, telling them, and she's like, this is fucking bad. This is bad. We need to be worried. So, um continues to see him more and more frequently and the friends notice that she is like obviously anxious and agitated. She doesn't want to talk about it when they bring it up.
00:33:29
Jeff Rogers
ah They encouraged her to file another PPO and she was frustrated because she was like, I don't have evidence to support a PPO, right? What has he done? he's He's just here. Well, so he had the first PPO already. Yes. That's evidence enough, right? Yes.
00:33:46
Jeff Rogers
I would think. That alone. And then you're still doing the same shit. ah so Robin like brings up, well, okay, if you're not gonna file for the PPO, what, like, do you have a way to protect yourself? Do you have a firearm? Do you have anything? And one of the friends had given her ah the ring camera doorbell thing.
00:34:08
Jeff Rogers
um So she was like, okay, well, I have that. And then she got a really, really sharp hatchet that she said, like, you couldn't even touch it without it cutting, know, that she slept with under her mattress.
00:34:19
Jeff Rogers
She felt mostly safe in her home because he didn't know where she lived and he had never been around there. Oh, but I bet he does, though, you know? i bet he does. And I don't know your story. I don't know.
00:34:31
Jeff Rogers
But it's, I mean, you see it. Yeah. He knows where she lives. He knows the the combination to her garage. I don't know. I'm just guessing.
00:34:42
Jeff Rogers
Some crazy shit like that. right? So for a couple more years, she, she was safe, you know, windows and doors locked all the time, slept with the hatchet, the ring doorbell, she was fine. And so, i mean, she kept seeing him, but he never approached her, never did anything.
00:34:59
Jeff Rogers
So July 4th, 2022, Pat comes up to visit Sam. They're out with Carissa, just having a drink and they're updating Pat on Like, all this stuff that's going on Christopher, what's been going on over the past whatever. um And moments after they start talking, Chris walks into the bar.
00:35:22
Jeff Rogers
Pat's like, what the fuck? there They have got to be tracking. He's tracking her some There has got to be some way that he's tracking her because he's everywhere she is. Within minutes of her arriving, he shows up. Did you put some shit on her car?
00:35:35
Jeff Rogers
So... He walks up to Chris and he's like, fuck all the way off. This is not funny. You need to leave Sam alone. So and her friends are like, let's get the fuck out of here.
00:35:48
Jeff Rogers
They leave, they get back to her house and they spent hours searching Sam's entire car inside and out looking for a tracking device. And like none of them really knew what they were looking for, but they were expecting to see something that like you would see on the show. Right. But there was nothing there.
00:36:05
Jeff Rogers
So Sam's like, okay, I'm going file for another PPO. She's gathering evidence. Her friends are like, every single one of us will write letters in support of this. Okay. Devin from her soccer league was actually an assistant prosecutor. So she asked her for help with PPO.
00:36:21
Jeff Rogers
And she realized that Chris had changed up his tactics since the last time, you know, he was everywhere, but because he wasn't interacting with her, like what was he doing wrong?
00:36:33
Jeff Rogers
Devin helped her fill out the paperwork and attach the previous PPO as additional evidence because she was like, this is a very powerful piece of evidence because of the length of time for which it was granted. Like that says enough.
00:37:02
Jeff Rogers
didn't stop Christopher from minutes after the ladies left going into the courthouse and trying to find that out. Sam felt kind of hopeful. Like, Devin was confident. She's an assistant prosecutor. Like, this is good.
00:37:15
Jeff Rogers
But a few days later, the rejection came in the mail. The reasoning listed, quote, Samantha and Christopher appear to have a complicated relationship. Oh, come on. You just fucked up.
00:37:29
Jeff Rogers
God damn it. they did offer her a hearing and said, you know, we will hear this in court to determine if it's actually appropriate. But Sam was like, if we call a hearing, he's going to be...
00:37:41
Jeff Rogers
angry. He's going to be enraged. No, I don't want hear anything. Right? So she's defeated. On Friday morning, October 7th. Oh, that's just so frustrating. Like there is no relationship in her eyes. There's no fucking relationship. Never has been. Never has been. Never will They were not friends. This is not, no. That judge fucked up.
00:38:02
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. So we moved to October 7th, 2022. Friday morning, it's like 7am. Sam's just waking up and she heard a sound just outside her door. Her heart stops and then starts hammering, and it's the sound of a floorboard creak.
00:38:17
Jeff Rogers
She looked towards her bedroom door and saw a shadow move across the underside. She's reaching down to grab her hatchet from under her mattress and a man barges through the door, lunges on top of her on bed. She immediately starts screaming, but he wrapped his hands around her throat and started to choke her.
00:38:33
Jeff Rogers
She looked up into his face and was completely unsurprised to see the face of Christopher Thomas. Her breathing became more difficult as he continued to strangle her. Her mind was racing through options of what to do. He was so much bigger than her.
00:38:45
Jeff Rogers
Strong than her and faster than her. She knew she couldn't fight him off and she couldn't scream anymore. So she had worries about like, when I lose consciousness, what's going to happen to me? So she's thinking of everything that she can do. She's keeping a cool head.
00:38:57
Jeff Rogers
And she decides to fake passing out to make him stop. So she holds her breath and then she goes limp. He immediately lets go. He put her hands into handcuffs and he bound her feet. And then she looked up at him and she said, if you want to rape me, just do it.
00:39:12
Jeff Rogers
Like, don't drag this out, right? Just get it over with. And he said, i don't want to do that. I just want to talk. So she says, talk like you have me. I'm um where am I going? He said, no, we need to go somewhere more private not to a second location.
00:39:27
Jeff Rogers
He forced a ball gagging in her mouth and then wrapped black gorilla tape around the ball gag multiple times. She was like, he picks her up and he starts walking out the door and she's in just like a nightshirt and underwear. So she's like ah trying to explain to him that she needs shoes and pants. And he says, you won't need them where we're going.
00:39:48
Jeff Rogers
So he takes her to her own fucking car and puts her in the backseat. And because it was 7 a.m. m on a Friday, Sam was like, please, please, somebody be out. Somebody be going to work. Somebody somebody see this and like see it for being fucking weird.
00:40:03
Jeff Rogers
But there was no one. In the car, he tied a bandana around her eyes to stop her from seeing anything. Again, she tried to keep her wits about her, so as they drove, she counted the turns through the neighborhood.
00:40:14
Jeff Rogers
She tried to move and, like, lean in ways allowed her to catch glimpses of her surroundings. And then they parked. He opens the door. he beat He bends down and picks her up to carry out of the car. And she took note of his movements and how after walking for a few steps, he ducked as if like going under something. and then he did it a second time. And she's like keeping all of this in her mind palace.
00:40:41
Jeff Rogers
She smelled like fresh cut lumber. And then the sounds changed from clearly being outside to being in an enclosed space to then being in in an even smaller space.
00:40:52
Jeff Rogers
He sets her down and removes the blindfold. She's sitting on a mattress on the floor in a box that was seven by seven with soundproof panels on the walls. Christopher sat down next to her and he ripped the tape off from her mouth and then he cut the ball gag off.
00:41:09
Jeff Rogers
She continued to stay grounded and said, let's talk. And then he said, well, it's not just today. Like I took two weeks of vacation from work and so we're going to stay here and we're going to talk.
00:41:22
Jeff Rogers
Sam's like, how are we going to stay entertained, fed, hydrated, clean? How are we going to go to the bathroom? And he had a solution for everything. He had a deck of cards. He had canned goods, crackers, peanut butter and jelly, a hot plate, a large jug of water, and what he called a bathroom that consisted of a bucket in the corner.
00:41:40
Jeff Rogers
He also had clothes for her to change into. She told him that they couldn't that she couldn't just disappear for two weeks. People were going to notice that she was gone. He had a solution for that as well. He planned to take her paddleboard out onto the lake and leave it floating there as if she had fallen in and drowned.
00:41:57
Jeff Rogers
He said it would keep people busy for long enough. Her mind was racing and full of questions and she just kept like rapid firing. He times out and says, I need to take a minute to think and process.
00:42:09
Jeff Rogers
So he chained her to a wall and left her. And while she was gone, she panicked about being left there. She's like, what if he never comes back? No one can hear me. No one knows I'm here. This could be the end and I die alone in a box somewhere.
00:42:21
Jeff Rogers
So she's praying, she's angry, and then she like calms herself. um Christopher comes back and she resigned herself to talk with him. And because she's a therapist, she's like, I can do this.
00:42:34
Jeff Rogers
I can talk to this guy. can keep him engaged. can keep calm. She starts asking, or he starts asking her very detailed questions about her activities and who she was spending time with on very specific dates and trips.
00:42:49
Jeff Rogers
So she's like, this was so much worse than I realized. She also kind of gets the vibe that he obviously knows the answers to the questions already. So she's not going lie to because she doesn't make want to make him mad.
00:43:01
Jeff Rogers
So she tells him the truth. Then Christopher revealed to her that he did in fact have a tracker on her car. He also told her that he had trackers on the cars of her close friends and her roommates.
00:43:13
Jeff Rogers
The trackers were all connected to an app on his phone and he showed her that he would get alerts anytime she moved. She asked how long he'd been tracking her and he was like, about a year. He told her that he had to change up his methods and get smart about it.
00:43:28
Jeff Rogers
She repressed like the horror and she decided to stroke his ego by telling him that he was clever. You know, way to go. She started trying to ask details about what was going on.
00:43:39
Jeff Rogers
Where was she? What? was this soundproof box that she was in So he proudly tells her that he built the box by himself and he was inspired by the TV show, You.
00:43:52
Jeff Rogers
oh shit. He said that he obviously couldn't make the box out of glass because that wasn't logistically possible. He had researched it. So he decided on the lumber.
00:44:05
Jeff Rogers
Again, she hides her disgust, continues to engage him and ask him questions and flatter him. ah So she's stuck in an insulated and isolated tiny box with a man who relates himself to a TV show character who is literally a psychopath and murderer who kidnaps the woman of his obsession. Mm-hmm.
00:44:23
Jeff Rogers
She tries to convince him that they could be friends and that everything would be okay. He takes out his shirt and hands it to her. And he said that he had been holding onto it for years. It was a Red Wings jersey from the game that he had bought tickets for. A fucking psychopath. So many years before.
00:44:41
Jeff Rogers
On the back of the jersey, it had her name. um so So he bought that in 2013. Like, what the fuck? So she thanked him for it. She puts the jersey on. And then he starts to open up and he's seeming to be vulnerable. And so she decided to continue giving him the lies that she that he needed to hear.
00:45:01
Jeff Rogers
He then apologized for what he had done to her and starts like almost you can see him freaking out. And he says that he's afraid to go to jail. and he goes, i wouldn't survive. So he starts to panic. And she's like, let me use this against him. And she said, you know what?
00:45:15
Jeff Rogers
You could probably avoid going to jail if you just let me go like tonight. You know, I haven't been gone for very long and I won't go to the cops if you just let me leave. Anything you can do. Just say anything you can do to get home safe.
00:45:30
Jeff Rogers
You know, because these people don't think logically. So like it could click with him and he could be like, okay, as long as she doesn't go to the cops, I'll be fine. Right. ah So he then responds with the fact that he could never believe that she was telling the truth unless she slept with him.
00:45:48
Jeff Rogers
She was fucking repulsed, okay? Calmly though, she reminds him that she has no romantic or intimate interest in him. And he said, well, that's the only way I can trust you. And then he steps back and he goes, I need some space.
00:46:03
Jeff Rogers
So he leaves again and she's thinking, well, fuck. One, he's 100% capable of killing me. He's already shown that he's been able to be violent. But also with him leaving now,
00:46:14
Jeff Rogers
What if he like decides, no, i'm i'm just I'm going to get sex out of her and that's it. like And I'm going to keep her here as long as I want. So she starts frantically looking for anything sharp, anything that she can use to harm him, get herself out of the hand, like anything.
00:46:30
Jeff Rogers
There is nothing in sight. So she's like, I'm going to try again to tell him to let me go. And then she says,
00:46:41
Jeff Rogers
If the only way that I'm going to be released is if I allow him to rape me, then that's what I almost have to do because i either allow him to do it and try and like disassociate or he's going to do it anyway and it's going to be worse.
00:47:03
Jeff Rogers
But she was going to try first. So she avoids that. when he comes back and just says, please just let me go. You know, I won't tell anyone. You can still come back from this. It'll be okay. And he still said, no, the only way you can do it is to sleep with me.
00:47:16
Jeff Rogers
So she swallows her horror and disgust. And then she kind of uses like what she knew of him and like what he claimed to be his honor and his like, whatever.
00:47:31
Jeff Rogers
And so she makes him promise and shake on it that if she sleeps with him, that he will release her that night. They shake hands and then he leans down to kiss her and she shut down.
00:47:42
Jeff Rogers
She said later, i felt myself go dead on the inside. And realistically, she was kind of thinking, he hasn't had a girlfriend forever. Like, how long could this take? You know, trying to think of the the only bright spot at the end of this tunnel.
00:47:58
Jeff Rogers
Unfortunately, it took a very long time because Christopher apparently masturbated 12 times a day. the fact that So she tried to keep her, like, disgust and pain and shame and all of that hidden. But it kept going on. And she It was horrible and the pain was bad and the shame again, it overwhelmed her. So she began to cry. She was shaking violently.
00:48:21
Jeff Rogers
And he goes, are you okay? And she didn't want to anger him. i mean, ah he could easily just find her again and do it again. Like there was nothing stopping him from doing that.
00:48:32
Jeff Rogers
So she just ignores the question. Afterwards, he is like gushing about how this was all I've ever wanted. This is amazing. Thank you. Like now you see it. Like this is meant to be. You're supposed to be my wife.
00:48:50
Jeff Rogers
Again, she's fucking mortified, disgusted. She simply says, i held up my part of the agreement. Now you do yours. And sure as shit, he opens the door.
00:49:02
Jeff Rogers
She walked out of her own personal hell after 13 hours. She took in every single detail around her. Again, keeping a fucking level head, okay? He took her back to where he had parked her car in a parking lot a short drive away.
00:49:16
Jeff Rogers
He hugged her and she was like, as repulsed as I was, it felt like a victory. Like I was walking away from this. She got in her car, disbelieving that she was free, but also knowing that she maybe wasn't because he was still out there and He could change his mind at any moment.
00:49:33
Jeff Rogers
She drove home because if she had gone to the hospital, she knew that he would see it, obviously. So she drives home and she calls her friend, Melissa, frantically asks her to come pick her up and take her to the hospital.
00:49:44
Jeff Rogers
She says, but when you get here, park in the neighbor's driveway. So Melissa gets there, Sam gets in the car and she's still freaking out that Christopher is still following her, that he'll show up, everything like that.
00:49:55
Jeff Rogers
um And so Melissa's like, You're acting squirrely. She's looking all over the place and then she tells the whole story and Melissa's fucking mortified. They make it to the hospital and again, even though she's calmly talking to the intake nurse and saying that she needs a rape kit, she's like looking over her shoulder because her back's to the door.
00:50:13
Jeff Rogers
The hospital staff reaches out to the sexual crimes officer, Detective Mike Mattucci. He got the call. it was 2 o'clock in the morning and he was like, I've been a cop for 19 years and like I've heard some shit, but this is kind of wild. And he said that
00:50:28
Jeff Rogers
frequently things are not what they appeared, but sometimes they are. He was like, it's kind of unbelievable. So let me get, like figure this out. But when he arrived to Sam's room, he said the moment he saw her and looked in her eyes, he knew that every moment of it was true.
00:50:45
Jeff Rogers
He said the interview with her was one of the hardest and yet the easiest he had ever done. He started the wheels in motion to find Christopher. And as she continued to give specific details of the situation, he was in awe of her.
00:50:57
Jeff Rogers
She informed the police that Chris said he didn't want to go to jail and he would rather that he die. She told him that Chris had rifles and a crossbow and loved to hunt. The officer relayed that information to his team and they started to try and gather information about him.
00:51:10
Jeff Rogers
Additionally, Chris had told Sam that he had removed all the hair from his body to be able to avoid DNA detection if it came to it. He had tried like that chemical like hair removal stuff and and had a bad allergic reaction to it. So he was telling her this like,
00:51:25
Jeff Rogers
Look at how smart I am, but also like, look at what I've done to be with you. The police took it and ran with it. They wrote up multiple warrants immediately for phone records, pings on his location, the storage unit, et cetera. um And meanwhile, Sam needs to be somewhere safe. So she got medically cleared and Devin came to pick her up and they went back to Devin's house. She said that Sam was clearly in shock and like really hadn't processed or let herself feel any of what had happened.
00:51:54
Jeff Rogers
So Sam again realizes that she's still in danger, but she also needed to like tell her friends because what would Christopher do to use them to get to her? So she starts calling all of her friends and telling them the update to what had happened and telling them that they need to be on the lookout. And all of them are like, here you are worrying about us. Like they're crying on the phone. They're blaming themselves. They're angry with themselves. They're angry with the whole situation.
00:52:22
Jeff Rogers
The police arrived at the storage units, didn't know that he was there, so they opened up the double doors and they sent the police dog in. He's not there, but they did find the box. In the worst way possible, they were impressed with the extent to which he had gone.
00:52:36
Jeff Rogers
They saw how more and more dangerous Chris was because of his dedication and attention to detail. After searching the storage units and gathering evidence, the police regrouped. The officer in charge of following up with the cell phone pings was Detective Sergeant Jared Lackett.
00:52:49
Jeff Rogers
Billis, Billis something. ah He got hits on Christopher's location. um They narrowed it down and they sent out like multiple different teams coming in from different angles. and detective Jared got fucking absurdly lucky to the point that he didn't believe it. As he's driving by the location, he sees a car down alley and it's the one that Sam identified as Christopher's car. He notifies the other teams and they were prepared for every possible outcome.
00:53:17
Jeff Rogers
He scored really high on the threat assessment list, so the SWAT team was called in. And they're watching the house. He lives in an upper apartment, and there's like an old lady, so they're trying to figure out how they're going to go in there without killing this old woman.
00:53:30
Jeff Rogers
But another stroke of luck. One of the surveillance detectives sees the lights flash on Christopher's car, like it's the unlock lights. And then they see Christopher coming out of his home, getting into his car, and starting to drive away.
00:53:46
Jeff Rogers
So we get back to October 8th, Christopher in his car surrounded by police officers pointing guns at him. 36 hours after being kidnapped from her own home, Samantha Stites received a call from the police that Christopher Thomas had been apprehended and it was safe safe for her to go home.
00:54:01
Jeff Rogers
Robin picks up Sam from Devin's house and takes her back to her house. She was excited. She was relieved. And Chris was arrested. That's great. But she walks into her home and she sees the fingerprint dust all over every surface. And she got thrust right back into the crime. She realized that she would never feel the same in her own home.
00:54:20
Jeff Rogers
She and Robin spent hours and hours cleaning up the dust as Sam relived the entire experience. Meanwhile, the police searched Christopher's home. He hadn't gotten rid of anything. they found but They found the sheets from the bed in the box, the ball gag, the tape, the handcuffs, receipts and boxes for trackers.
00:54:41
Jeff Rogers
Detectives Matucci Bilicic interviewed Christopher. They needed to find a way to get him to admit to everything they knew to be true so that they could corroborate Sam's version of the story.
00:54:52
Jeff Rogers
and one of the big things that they mentioned about this was it's technically a he said she said situation right because who knows what happened and so now they have to kind of really double down on this and try and prove that it's Sam's version of the story because it could go either way in a jury right So, Matucci said that when they walked in the room, like, Christopher just seemed completely unfazed, unfeeling, uncaring, cold.
00:55:26
Jeff Rogers
And they asked him why he's under arrest. He was like, I have no idea why I'm under arrest. And then they say, well, you're here because of Sam. And then he starts to play dumb even more. And he's like, Sam who? You're going to have to be more specific, right? Right.
00:55:40
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. So he claimed that on the day of the kidnapping, he was off of work and he was out hunting. At this point, both detectives said that Chris kind of started looking mad as he realized that Sam had gone to the police. And they were like, it's almost as if he genuinely believed that they were friends now and that they had this relationship and that Sam had betrayed him by going to the police. Yeah.
00:56:08
Jeff Rogers
So they confronted him with the truth of the surveillance footage they had obtained um and the search warrant for the storage units. Everything that they had found. And he began making up the most amazing story about how um he had never seen the show You. he He didn't even have a Netflix account. And...
00:56:30
Jeff Rogers
and This whole situation was just a role-playing event gone wrong. They had planned to do role-playing, and then when he surprised her, he accidentally went too far. And so there's just a big miscommunication.
00:56:45
Jeff Rogers
His bunker or the box, which he called his bunker, was a prepper bunker for end of the world shit. And like they point out things like you don't have any like there's nothing in there. You like you were just that's just not as a really bad prepper bunker. And he was like, no, but it is.
00:57:00
Jeff Rogers
So he leaned into the role playing excuse And they directly said, quote, there's no role play. There's role playing. And then there is breaking into someone's house, kidnapping them, binding and gagging them, putting them a car, driving them to a storage unit that you have staged with a soundproof room, hooking them to a metal bracket on the wall, making them shit in a bucket and then raping them.
00:57:22
Jeff Rogers
And at this point, Chris immediately jumps in and is like, whoa, I didn't rape Sam. So he latches onto that aspect and they explain that she didn't willingly accept any of the things that had been done to her, which he had already admitted by saying that she was unhappy with this surprise role playing.
00:57:42
Jeff Rogers
So that in itself, like he had already said she didn't want to do this. It went too far. Like, you know, that in itself makes it rape. Okay. They asked him about the trackers on her car.
00:57:54
Jeff Rogers
He's like, I don't have any, any trackers, none. And they're like, but what about these boxes? And he's like, I don't know what those are. He claimed that Sam put the tracker on her own car because tracking somebody without their own consent is a misdemeanor. And he was worried about admitting to it.
00:58:13
Jeff Rogers
Dumbass. He may be a psychopath, but he's stupid. So dumb. So he began a pity party for himself and started pointing fingers at Sam and claiming that the police were backing him into a corner by taking everything that she said as truth and already having made up their minds before even hearing him. So like just now he's turning in and he's like, oh, woe is me. Like this, I'm been so misunderstood. And again, trying to really lean on that. He said, she said.
00:58:37
Jeff Rogers
So detective Matucci pointed out that people expect rape victims to be like acting a certain way. You know, he says, When juries hear about someone who's being sexually assaulted, they they want to hear that they fought, they ran, they bit, they punched, they kicked, they screamed, they did everything. And they said that if they're not seen as having done any of that, then they're not always believed as having been sexually assaulted.
00:59:03
Jeff Rogers
She was doing anything she had to do to stay alive. alive Right. And yeah, not everything is black and white. Right.
00:59:15
Jeff Rogers
i mean She wanted to stay alive. She didn't want It's plain and simple. She didn't consent.
00:59:21
Jeff Rogers
The police had their work cut cut out for them. They needed physical evidence and proof. They took swabs of everything, nail scrapings. They had him remove his clothing. And when he took off his shirt, they noted chemical burns on multiple areas of his body, which lined up with what Sam had previously told them. So everything that Sam has said has been fucking fact.
00:59:44
Jeff Rogers
Verifiable truth that she had stated. Matucci reached out to an old colleague of his, the head prosecuting attorney, for help. They had to make this a solid case so that a jury couldn't possibly believe Chris's stupid roleplay bullshit and say that she consented it anyway.
01:00:04
Jeff Rogers
Three days after the day, Christopher was charged with kidnapping, home invasion, torture, aggravated stalking, and four counts of criminal sexual conduct first degree. He pleaded not guilty to every charge because he didn't do anything wrong. He just loves her.
01:00:20
Jeff Rogers
sick twisted mind.
01:00:22
Jeff Rogers
The judge heard all of it and agreed that he should be denied bail because this was a lot. And so he said that there would be no safety for Sam if Christopher was released. So bail was denied.
01:00:36
Jeff Rogers
Cops continue building their case. They searched the cars for the trackers like so long. They spent so long searching these cars. They ended up having to put them up on like the um like the body shop, but those big lifts.
01:00:49
Jeff Rogers
And they finally found the trackers, like, hidden so well that it took them that long to find. They even believed that they were like, well, fuck, maybe the trackers aren't there, right?
01:01:03
Jeff Rogers
The types of trackers that Christopher was using were battery operated and only lasted a few weeks at a time, which meant that frequently throughout the year that he was tracking them, he had to go to every location of all of those cars that he was tracking, replace the batteries with the newly charged ones, and then replace them as well as he had.
01:01:25
Jeff Rogers
So again, fucking extensive trackers. Using the data from the tracking company databases and the information obtained from Chris's cell phone trackers, they were able to overlay the data and match up his movements to hers.
01:01:38
Jeff Rogers
And he was. Every single time that Sam left to go anywhere, Christopher left moments later and was just a few minutes behind her. After his arrest, the police confiscated his phone and they found...
01:01:52
Jeff Rogers
ah Like, i unbelievable amounts of photos and videos of Sam on the phone. Again, ah fucking everywhere. In all situations, doing nothing, doing everything. For 10 years, they had photos of Sam and videos of her.
01:02:09
Jeff Rogers
One of the things the prosecutor pointed out was that stalkers can't let go of things or images of their obsession. So after the 2014 PPO was issued, even though Sam had moved on with her life, Christopher was, like, physically and emotionally incapable of doing the same.
01:02:22
Jeff Rogers
Turns out that Sarah Mott, one of the strangers on her blog, was actually Christopher. He, on his phone, had multiple like Instagram, Facebook, all like accounts where he would follow Sam and then the blog. And then they found another Facebook account, which was Sam's actual Facebook account. He had found her password and had access to it. So he knew everything.
01:02:50
Jeff Rogers
yeah. She wasn't safe anywhere. Receipts found during the search of his home led police to, like, the stores they yeah they had been purchased at.
01:03:02
Jeff Rogers
all the surveillance tapes they got and the cctv footage obtained after christopher's arrest showed him at a place called menards hardware on the exact same day that sam filed for her ppo over the following weeks he made many trips back to menards and spent up to i think five thousand dollars on god almighty on this stuff the lumber the soundproofing shit all of that stuff to build his little kidnap box And then additional footage from the storage facility had plenty of evidence of Christopher coming and going, taking that stuff that he had bought from Menards, taking it into the storage unit, and then him taking Sam, carrying her in, carry that kind of stuff. So there's a lot here.
01:03:45
Jeff Rogers
The terrifying thing was that Christopher had a regular normal job. He had a regular normal life and to other people appeared to be normal and productive. But they always do. Like that's part of it.
01:03:59
Jeff Rogers
So the level of planning, as we know, has ah it's been extreme. This is a decades-long thing that he has been doing. The lengths to which he he went to made the lengths he went to which made the detectives and the prosecutor believe that he fully intended to keep her there forever and likely eventually kill her.
01:04:19
Jeff Rogers
They had no doubt. I mean, neither do we, right? Like he wasn't going to just let her go. Yeah. Detective Matucci reviewed the prison prison phone calls, all of which are recorded.
01:04:30
Jeff Rogers
Duh. And he starts to reach out to the friends that Christopher called. Without prompting, every single fucking friend instantly knew that Sam was the woman he had done these things to.
01:04:43
Jeff Rogers
They admitted, one of the guys admitted to Matucci that before Sam, there had been another woman. So... Matucci digs into that, and it turns out that Christopher had been arrested previously for harassment and stalking.
01:04:59
Jeff Rogers
He claims during his interview that it was just like a, you know, a mis miscommunication, a mistake. He had reached out to his ex-girlfriend too many times, right? So Matucci gets those records, and he reached out to a woman named Kelly, who Christopher had known in 2009. They worked together.
01:05:17
Jeff Rogers
his interactions with Kelly appeared to have the exact same pattern to his interactions with Sam. It started small, just being like a friendly person saying, yeah, like I'll be kind to you. And Christopher just sinking his teeth into it.
01:05:34
Jeff Rogers
She too had filed a PPO against him in March, 2010. In October that year, Because he continued to violate the PPO, he was put on trial and found guilty of stalking. He served a handful of days in jail and then 24 months of probation.
01:05:50
Jeff Rogers
He didn't learn, obviously. He just moved on to his next victim. Also, I just go back. Because that was 2010 and he met Sam in 2011. And I just go back to that second judge that refused the PPO. Just wait.
01:06:05
Jeff Rogers
Okay. Just wait. god man just wait there's a big fuck you in the face christopher hired attorney jesse williams to be his defense lawyer the detectives and the prosecutor knew that jesse williams was ruthless and always managed to take the smallest thing and get his clients off so they're kind of like oh what's this what's this fucking weasel gonna do right Noelle Mogenberg was the prosecuting attorney. She found out that Williams was trying to have Christopher assessed for criminal responsibility to determine if at the time of the offense, he was able to distinguish distinguish between right and wrong.
01:06:46
Jeff Rogers
The insanity plea. That's what they're going for. Okay. Okay. Sam and her friends were horrified. Like, this fucking possible? This has been going on for over 10 years. Like, this dude is not fucking insane. He's fully capable of making decisions. He had a good job. He had a good job. People in his life liked him. m But they couldn't do anything. But wait.
01:07:08
Jeff Rogers
He underwent multiple competency evaluations. When the state provided one ruled that he was not insane, they were like, we're going to get our own. So every single one found him competent and responsible for his actions.
01:07:24
Jeff Rogers
In November 2023, Christopher's attorney starts reaching out to Noel to discuss possible plea deals. ah He takes some of those deals back to Christopher and then he returns to Noel and says, well Chris is flat out refusing to plead guilty to the sexual assault charges.
01:07:38
Jeff Rogers
Despite being repeatedly reeducated on the concept and definition of consent, Christopher still insisted that the sex was consensual. Noelle told Sam that she didn't have to agree to any of the pleas, and she said the case is a slam dunk.
01:07:52
Jeff Rogers
But she also admitted that if they went to trial, Sam would be dragged through the mud. she would have to relive this whole thing, like, in a worse way. So by December, Sam agrees to the plea deal because although she didn't believe it was full justice, there was enough unease from Noelle and the cops about putting this in the hands of the jury. Because, again, who's going to say that they're not going to side with Chris? Mm-hmm.
01:08:13
Jeff Rogers
Shortly after agreeing to this, Sam found out that the judge assigned to her case was the same judge who had previously denied her PPO request. She was worried.
01:08:25
Jeff Rogers
She had no idea how it was possible that somebody who already had an association with this case could possibly be in charge of deciding the fate. She was angry. She was worried. But she thought, maybe this could be a good thing. Maybe he'll feel awful for denying the PPO and everything that happened afterwards. Or he could be just as much of a dick as he was before, claiming that Sam and Christopher had a complicated relationship.
01:08:48
Jeff Rogers
If he thought it once, he might think it again. Mm-hmm. The sentencing hearing happened February 2024. It was the first time Sam was in the same room as Christopher since the day he kidnapped and raped her. Although the prosecution had officially dropped the rape charges as part of the plea deal, Noel thought that they might be able to sway the judge into a harsher sentencing outside what the normal guidelines were if he heard the full extent of the story.
01:09:11
Jeff Rogers
I need this judge to do the right thing. So Sam stood up in front of the court and the judge who had denied her a PPO and retold her horror story in an emotionally charged and tearful speech directed only at the judge.
01:09:26
Jeff Rogers
She said she wouldn't speak to Christopher because he had repeatedly and entirely ignored her requests and feelings over for over a decade. She spoke of everything Chris had made her endure and and shared her thoughts, feelings, and fears throughout that horrible day and just how she knew she wasn't going to survive.
01:09:44
Jeff Rogers
Sam, who had repeatedly been described as strong and unshakable, was breaking down. After she said her piece, Christopher was allowed to stand up and speak for himself. He had apparently written out pages and pages of things to say, but as he got up to speak, he folded the papers, put them away, apologized, and stood there awaiting a sentence.
01:10:05
Jeff Rogers
Weird, right? Everybody in the courtroom was silent and breathless as the judge began to speak. He spoke directly to Christopher and he told the court of the successful life that Christopher had lived and the things that he had accomplished for himself.
01:10:18
Jeff Rogers
Sam's side the courtroom is like, fuck. Sam could only think again about the fact that this court and this judge had already failed her before. That's the reason why they're here.
01:10:29
Jeff Rogers
Part of it. The judge then said that although Christopher only had one misdemeanor on his record, he had been through this exact situation before.
01:10:41
Jeff Rogers
He had beend behaved in almost the exact same way when he stalked and terrorized Kelly in 2010, and he pointed out that Christopher had been told then of the consequences of his actions, and yet, instead of learning from the punishment he received, he went on to behave in the exact same manner and cross even more lines.
01:10:58
Jeff Rogers
The judge brought up a phone call that had been recorded while Chris was in jail. He had been on the phone with his tearful mother who was apologizing for failing him and not helping him and not stopping this. And then Christopher responded boldly with, nothing anybody could have done would have ever stopped this.
01:11:13
Jeff Rogers
The judge said that with that statement alone and all the evidence, a sentence within the guidelines would not be appropriate and Christopher was incapable of rehabilitation He paused and then he began began discussing like, what's the reasonable life expectancy for somebody Christopher's age?
01:11:33
Jeff Rogers
Noelle said that at this moment in time, that's when the prosecution was very excited because they start talking about life expectancies. You know, something good is going to come for the, the victim. For the charge of kidnapping, he was sentenced to 40 to 60 years in the Michigan Department of Corrections. At the age of 39, Christopher would not be released until he was at the very least almost 80. And then the judge went on to say that, quote, if somehow you are released at some point in your future, then it is a requirement that you will have a lifetime GPS so that we will know where you are all the time for the rest of your days.
01:12:08
Jeff Rogers
Sam said, quote, justice is a funny thing. It doesn't necessarily come in the form of prison years. I can't ever go back to who I was before being kidnapped. And that's something I had to grieve.
01:12:19
Jeff Rogers
But knowing that I'm finally turning the page of this and that I should feel safe with him off the street and that I'm protected meant a lot. I felt free. Sam has gone on. I mean, this is just last year, right? Sam has gone on to live her life. Her friends are still there. She's still in Michigan. And Chris remains behind bars.
01:12:39
Jeff Rogers
But a fun fact, as of 2024, twenty twenty four Statistically, one in three women will be stalked at some point in their lifetime. Goddamn.
01:12:52
Jeff Rogers
One in three.
01:12:54
Jeff Rogers
but Sam is a fucking hero. She's a badass. She's a badass. And she's obviously a very nice person. She kept giving the dude the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of the doubt.
01:13:09
Jeff Rogers
she she like She mentioned how
01:13:13
Jeff Rogers
part of her like didn't ever want to talk about it again, didn't want to have to mention it, that kind of thing. But she was like, but people need to hear my story. People need to hear the the women who are not believed, the women who are afraid, they need to hear that things can change.
01:13:28
Jeff Rogers
Good for you, Sam. I hope you share that story as much as you can. She, ugh, such a hero. Like, she just kept such a cool fucking level head. and like
01:13:39
Jeff Rogers
Badass woman. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Fuck that guy. That is a great story. Fuck that guy. Good for Sam. Good for Sam. yeah That it didn't end in something worse. Yes.
01:13:53
Jeff Rogers
Because that was so, like, Well, and the thing is, is that like he never would have stopped. You know, he he admitted that he never would have stopped, that nothing would have stopped him. So like, yeah, he released her that night, but he wouldn't leave her alone after that.
01:14:08
Jeff Rogers
That's not
TV Show 'You' and Stalking Awareness
01:14:09
Jeff Rogers
what he wanted. He wanted her to be his and he would have made it. he would have taken it. yeah That is a lot like that show You. I've tried to watch that show like two times, but I can't. It's so fucked. That one is like a certain level.
01:14:26
Jeff Rogers
I can watch horror. I can watch suspense, psychological thrillers. There's something about that show You that makes me so uncomfortable that I just can't get past like three shows in it.
01:14:37
Jeff Rogers
I mean, I've watched all of it, obviously, but there is... Oh my God, it just gets so much worse. It just wigs me out. So much worse.
01:14:49
Jeff Rogers
It's... it's it's lu So how many people stalkers now, you said? One in three women.
01:14:57
Jeff Rogers
I've been stalked. Maybe we should put... on our in our show notes like a website that talks about it okay like what it is what to look for what are the signs okay Yes. because That requires us to find that website, though. We can do it. That's worth it. Okay. That's all that's a very well worth it, you know?
01:15:20
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. Okay. Good job. That was a good story. know it was long. Damn, i wasn't expecting that. no No, no, no, I was thinking it was going to be short and tidy, and I just bent your spoon.
01:15:32
Jeff Rogers
I was so nervous. Yeah. your Your spoon, it's it's back to normal now, but your spoon was like... Yeah. And then I was like, oh. And I bent it back.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:15:42
Jeff Rogers
And then I thought you were going to tell me, like, something was seen on the ring video. That shit wigs me out, too. Like, i can't stand a ring video. I don't want to see no crazy person on the ring video.
01:15:52
Jeff Rogers
Listen... Goddamn. Goddamn. All right. So if you listened this long, thank you. um Next time you hear from us, we will be back in the States, back in this place. Back in America. Back in a America. Back in America. If they let me back. I don't know. I might have a tan at that time.
01:16:11
Jeff Rogers
Who knows? We will have a tan. Oh, bless. um So thank you guys for listening. we appreciate you. ah Follow us, rate us, review us, and share us with your friends and family.
01:16:22
Jeff Rogers
And remember... We're here for a good time. Not a long time. Hey, hey, hey. Bye.