Where'd Todd Go?...
On Dealing With Psychopaths and Stalking
Chapter 19 - THE ONE COMMON PERSON TO IT ALL...
ON JEFFREY DONALD CAPEHART / W4UFL
GAINESVILLE AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY
The one commonality among all these people harassing me, in case no one has noticed yet...is Jeff Capehart. He was the key to everything. He was behind everything. He ALWAYS knows the details. He's ALWAYS in the middle of the "know". He had to have information. He cannot survive without it. It is his entire existence; his entire life. It is his tool. He is the Devil's Advocate. He takes information from one person, and hands it to the other side to work them up, and vice-versa. Then he sits back and watches the fireworks fly - because to him it's FUN.
For example, he'd get Scott West upset with me, implying to Scott that I wasn't doing my "proper job" as a SKYWARN Coordinator, and encourage him to do things to harass me. (He was actually successful at making a good, great many people upset with me over this, while at the same time, not a single person could actually point out just exactly what, specifically, it was that I wasn't properly doing.) Then he'd tell me that he knows someone who wants to make my life difficult, while withholding his name, so that I couldn't go to the police with any useful information to try to protect myself, and making me even more angry. Then he'd tell Scott how I want to know who is talking about him. This would just make Scott laugh and get him worked up even more. And Jeff would take that back to me. And this cycle would repeat while they both had a good laugh. Scott, who felt invincible because Jeff was helping him and withholding his name from me, became emboldened and would go too far. He'd email bomb me, pager bomb me, leave so many messages - some of them threatening - that my machine would fill up and would no longer be able to answer calls. I'd get upset and tell Jeff to stop talking to Scott about me and to stop working him up. Jeff would refuse, actually say "NO!, and put the blame on me saying "If only you were a better LEADER, then this wouldn't HAPPEN to you."
He got Jay Lieberman worked up about me in similar fashion. I'd become Jay's new "mission" and now Jay would attack me. Jeff would then torture me with "I know someone who hates you worse than Scott West", and how this individual wanted to attack my best friend's Navy career "...so that Todd will have more time to concentrate on my SKYWARN duties." He withheld his name from me for two months. Jeff had a good laugh while I worried about what this stupid individual was going to do to my friend, much less my friendship with her.
He handed information about me to Paul Eakin, who was running for the position of Northern Florida Section Manager in the ARRL. Paul gave Jeff information about things he's heard about me from other sources in Tallahassee and in Jacksonville. (Word was slowly spreading now of how "the guy who ran the Alachua County SKYWARN program" was a "problem".) Again with the quid pro quo bullshit (he was like Hannibal Lecter with that M.O.), Jeff would share what he knew with Paul, while leaving out how he was actively manipulating much of the problems that I was experiencing. Jeff then took Paul's information back to me (unbeknownst to Paul) and told me how there's this guy who is on this political campaign for the ARRL and taking gossip that he'd heard about me out in public, spreading it all over north Florida. So again, in typical Capehart modus operandi, he withheld Paul's name from me at first while I'd get worked up and upset at how my name is apparently being trashed all around Florida. He watched and laughed while the mayhem happened, out of my control. And when I'd complain about what he was doing, again he'd tell me how this was all my own fault, and how if I'd only done things the way he'd wanted, then things would be just fine for me, right now. And of course, he'd also throw in how I was just being ridiculous to worry about it all because there was nothing that I could do about it and I should just accept it and "move on". That man was a son of a bitch.
I wasn't trained in the psychological profiling of psychopaths back then, so it never occurred to me that - especially near the climax - Jeff was "graduating". He was getting worse and worse the braver he got. With each new thing that he pulled, and got away with, he got more and more confident, and the problems that he caused for me got worse and worse, culminating up to the point where I finally published this blog...where then most of it all stopped quite suddenly. Had I not published this blog, just how far would this have gone? Jeff seemed to be actually getting off on what he was doing to me. The more he saw me suffer, and the more he saw that the people who were supposed to be protecting me (i.e., the police) were actually sabotaging my cases, the things he'd pull were becoming more and more dangerous. He was getting worse and worse, and there wasn't anything I could do about it because even the police were protecting him because dumbasses like Dave Donnelly, and some other people in high places - all of whom had been duped - were telling the police that *I* was the problem, not the people that I was filing the complaints about.
I also never realized this until after...until just now; but now that I think about it, it occurs to me that Jeff never seemed to have any normal friends - that he went out of his way to "hang out" with, that is. Of the people he "hung out" with the most, I can't help but now notice that they were always people who had a hard time finding friends; people who were the outcasts of society; people who were considered "misfits", and who had some form of mental or criminal background, or problems, or who had bullying personalities, or who were narcissistic, or self-serving, or who had some sort of a personal agenda, or, as in my own case...who had very low confidence.
Scott West was just one of those low-browed, low-intelligence bully types who was gullible to gossip and slander and all too easily manipulated into causing someone else problems. He wanted up the ladder in the easiest ways possible. He did favors only if he could get something off of you. He talked about other people behind their backs, made fun of people, and was sometimes manipulated by Jeff into harassment and stalking behavior. He was angered easily, and prone to threats when angered. He loved gossip, always needed more information about people, and chronically complained about everything and everybody around him.
Jay was racist, who hated people who were black. He was paranoid and delusional. He believed that he'd been abducted by aliens - a few times. He believed that the government was watching him, and always out to get him. Jay was always seeing the conspiracies. His phone book entry wasn't under "Jay Leiberman", but rather..."Robert Raven." He was a diabetic. He didn't always take good care of himself. Sometimes when his levels were off he would fly into angry raging tirades in front of club members during meetings of the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society, and threaten to shoot them with a gun he bragged he kept in the glove compartment of his car. He flew into angry tirades, easily. He talked about other people behind their backs, made fun of people, and was sometimes manipulated by Jeff into harassment and stalking behavior. He loved gossip, always needed more information about people, and chronically complained about everything and everyone around him.
Melissa Royce was a self-serving narcissist who had ulterior motives of being a leader and who had delusions of being famous and looked up to and in control of big programs while having little or no real honest experience to back up such wants. She wanted to be in control of the local SKYWARN program, having come from one that she used to run down in West Palm Beach, she said. She pretended to be everyone's friend in order to glean personal information from people, and shared this information with other people, and friended people in high places to help herself get up to the tops of ladders more quickly. And as I said, she forged business cards, gave herself titles she didn't have, and used them to fake out the gullible leaders of the National Weather Service, the local Office of Emergency Management, and the local Red Cross. She used the power that she had in these agencies, at least until she was discovered, to cause problems for others - and especially for me. She talked about other people behind their backs, made fun of people, and was sometimes manipulated by Jeff into harassment and stalking behavior. When angered she was prone to come up with her own ideas about causing harm to others and would actually act them out, rather than simply talk about them, in order to "get them back". She loved gossip, always needed more information about people, and chronically complained about everything and everyone around her.
Her husband Philip Royce, was also extremely narcissistic, overly obsessed with and proud with himself. He bragged about himself, often. He also had a short fuse. He worked for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, and used his relationships there to gather information about, and to cause problems for those that he did not like...especially those, like me, who had told his wife to go to hell and get lost whenever she became a serious problem. He talked about other people behind their backs, made fun of people, and was sometimes manipulated by Jeff into harassment and stalking behavior. He angered easily, and was prone to threats when angered. He loved gossip, and always needed more information about people, and chronically complained about everything and everyone else around him.
Years later, I am finally noticing these...commonalities among everyone. These are the types of people with whom Jeff would surround himself. These are not good types. Everyone in Jeff's circle of more intimate friends was someone that he could use and manipulate in some way to his own benefit or enjoyment. With me however, he humiliated, insulted, made fun, sabotaged projects, friendships, and contacts... Jeff liked keeping me on my toes; keeping me feeling low and down; making me feel like I was worthless, and nothing - while at the same time disguising this by using sentences such as "I'm just doing this to try to help you - to make you see, because others aren't willing to tell you to your face." He tried to keep me..."dependent" upon him. He always kept me thinking that people were constantly talking about me, constantly complaining about me. And they were...because he was telling them that I was a problem, apparently, behind my back, and I didn't know it.
Everything with Jeff is "What do you know?/Here's what I'll give you in return, my gullible little mouse. Well done! You've just been conditioned by me...and you're in my control." Every time someone got upset with me, it was Jeff who had worked someone up, encouraged people to doubt me, and/or to be angry with me, or to take some action against me. It took me a long time to figure it out. ...A very long time. And once I did, he turned on me and got worse.
I had to work SO...VERY...VERY...HARRRRD...to get rid of that man! ...So very hard! (sigh!) He would not go away when told to. I'd tell him to stop bothering me, threaten getting a restraining order against him, and he'd stay away for maybe a couple of weeks, then regain his courage, and then email me again, or try to call me again. Maybe if I was lucky and really mad at him, he'd stay away for two months. But then he'd still try to email me or call me again. I could NOT make him stop. I could not make him go away. And when confronted with it, and finally told to stay away or else I'd get a restraining order against him, he outright refused with a "NO!"
This repetitive cycle went on for years. As he saw it, it was his mission to "fix" the problems that he perceived in me. He was going to "correct" me and make a better person of me. He was going to make me "more responsible" and make me more of a "leader". He was fixated on this. He could not put it down. And he did this by going to my friends, my ham associations, my Emergency Management associations, my Weather Service associations, and pointing out to everyone I personally knew what he considered to be "flaws" in me, so as to try to make people doubt me, paranoid, and to think me stupid, so that I would eventually be forced to "see" how he was right, and then I would be forced to go through him to get these people to like me again. Jeff had a very twisted view of the world, and all I wanted was to get away from this sick, sick man.
But Jeff did a lot of "favors" for a lot of people, and he had volunteered for a lot of public service, and getting people to see him for what he really was just not possible. Everyone believed in him too much. I could not make him leave me alone. And at the same time, I could not convince others of what he was doing to me.
This is a very scary feeling to experience. I don't know how many other people in the world have to go through experiencing people like this, but I'd sure like to know how they cope with it. You have NO idea what it's like to have someone stalking you and to not be able to do anything about it because not only do people believe in the bad guy too much, but they actually believe in him SO much that they end up going out of their way to help the bad guy stay out of trouble, truly being made to believe that the real problem isn't the bad guy, but the stalked victim, instead. To wit: University of Florida's Dr. Jay Garlitz, GPD Detective Joseph Mayo, and UPD Detective Michael Metz...all of whom were led to believe that the bad guy was the good guy, and that the victim was actually the bad guy - and in so doing each and every one of them was convinced to do things to actually erase evidence and/or to otherwise help my stalker.
Jeff had "ins" and contacts everywhere. I couldn't file an official police case without him knowing all of the intimate details, somehow. It appeared that Jeff had deliberately placed himself into all key, important places. Every time I complained to some authority, Jeff would always somehow know and he got off on bringing all of the intimate details right back to me, personally, to torture me. If I complained to Emergency Management, he knew. If I complained to the police, he knew. If I complained to the NWS, he knew. If I complained to the ARRL, they'd contact the local area Section Manager and the SM would take it to Jeff who was the local area Emergency Coordinator, and they'd simply drop it off on him and tell him to handle it, and that's as much effort as the ARRL would put into it. When I complained to the Gator Amateur Radio Club's Faculty Advisor about catching someone hacking in to the AC-EMWIN server, Jeff simply had him contact Dave Donnelly, and Dave would imply that I was just trying to use the law to harass Jeff Capehart. Donnelly of course had no actual evidence of anything like that actually occurring. The Faculty Advisor would then turn around and tell the UPD officers that I was making stuff up, even though he had no actual evidence of that, and that would be the end of the investigation. So in the end, after having made a real, official complaint to UPD about an actual computer crime having occurred involving a server HACKING, UPD then refused to begin an investigation based solely upon the assumptions of the Gator ARC's Faculty Advisor that I was making stuff up. So to this day, that's what UPD has to protect itself...a hacking having occurred, a complaint officially made to them, and NO INVESTIGATIONAL-RELATED PAPERWORK to back themselves up and say that they DID what they were supposed to do. ...All simply because Jeff Capehart SAID he didn't do it. That's pretty much how everyone handled it - all across the board. It was ridiculous. All roads led to Jeff Capehart. Jeff had control of everything. I'd complain. He'd deny. Cops sabotaged cases because Dave Donnelly would tell them that I was just trying to use the law to harass. ..And all he had was just Jeff's word. And I guess that was good enough for them. It was impossible getting any real official investigations started, or completed if started...because Jeff had complete control of everybody involved. Then he would bump into me in Publix and he'd be sure to let me know that, bragging about all of the intimate details that the Emergency Manager had given him, or that he had about my case about Phil and Melissa Royce, or my complaint against Scott West, or Jay Leiberman, etc. He enjoyed that. He got off on that. It was pleasurable for him to see my look of shocked disbelief, of realization that there was nothing that I could do. This huge grin would appear across his face on my reactions. It as the same look he had on his face when we were 165-feet up atop the roof of the Dental Science Building when he admitted to my face that it WAS INDEED him who had hacked into the server, when he bragged that he had been doing it for two years, even repeating four of the passwords back to my face. It was the same sick grin.
I went everywhere and to everyone to try to get help; and everywhere I went, I was blown off...most often in condescension and rudeness. Jeff would intercede, because he knew everyone, and he'd convince them that I was exaggerating things, blowing things way out of proportion, even being outright ridiculous...and he'd be believed. No one ever challenged Jeff's opinion. He was extremely intelligent and charismatic, involved in every public service organization, every government agency - ACFR Reserves, Explorers, CERT, ARRL, GARC, GARS, Red Cross, Emergency Mgmt. He would participate in communications aid for March of Dimes, bike-a-thons, other walk-a-thons, etc. He volunteered for MANY things, knew a lot of people, had friends everywhere. He worked for the UF's Office of Inspector General, was involved in IT security, and in the Auditing Dept. He was quick to come to your aid with a little soldering, perhaps the cutting of a wire here and there, helping to get someone's computer back up and running, fixing a problem with a repeater. When you look at this and then put it next to my complaints...I lost every time. No one challenged him. No one would ever look at his titles and still proceed with an investigation. He was untouchable. And everyone else? ...Conditioned dogs. "We NEED Jeff!" To not turn a blind eye to the things he was doing would mean to lose someone who was...valuable...to every-one. He could make the most intelligent person believe even the most ridiculous stuff. He was good at sounding very confident, very knowledgeable, and very innocent. No one ever acted on my complaints because he would convince them that it was just me being ridiculous.