I think my evil ex is haunting me.

Final Verification

Sebastian called me right after and said this was enough to move forward, that between the cameras, the technical evidence, and the witness statement, we had a solid case against Annie Maloney. I drove to the funeral home the next day because I needed to see proof with my own eyes that my ex was actually dead.

The funeral director looked at me weird when I walked in and asked for copies of all the paperwork related to my ex’s death and cremation. He asked why I needed it and I just said it was for legal purposes, which wasn’t exactly a lie.

He went into the back office and came out with certified copies of the death certificate, the cremation authorization, and the medical examiner’s report. I paid for the copies and sat in my car reading through every page, checking dates and signatures and official seals.

Confirming the End

Reading those documents brought this strange feeling that was part relief and part anger mixing together in my chest. The death certificate had the medical examiner’s signature and the official seal, and the cause of death listed was cancer, which meant he really was gone.

He wasn’t faking it, wasn’t hiding somewhere planning to come back; he was actually dead and cremated and never coming back. But someone who loved him enough to worship his memory was trying to continue torturing me, and that felt even more sick than if he’d somehow faked his death.

Annie had turned her grief into a mission to carry out his threats to make sure I never got away from him even after he died. I sat there holding those papers and realized the haunting was real, just not supernatural.

Doxing and Digital Attacks

It was a living person who couldn’t let go of a dead abuser’s control. Two days later, I opened my laptop to find my personal address posted on three different local message boards with comments calling me a liar who destroyed a good man.

My work email got flooded with anonymous messages. One said: “Finish what he started and you deserve everything coming to you.” Each one made my hands shake worse than the last one.

I forwarded everything to Raymond and Sebastian immediately, copying the headers and screenshots like they taught me. Raymond called me that same afternoon and told me to stop opening the emails, as he needed to preserve the digital evidence exactly as it came in.

IP Leaks

He walked me through setting up filters that would save everything to a separate folder without me having to read the threats, which helped me breathe a little easier. Three days later, Raymond sent me a report showing he’d traced the email headers and found a mistake in whoever was sending them.

They were using a VPN to hide their location, but one of the emails had a leak that pinged to an IP address near Annie’s workplace downtown. He explained how the technical evidence was piling up, connecting Annie to both breaking into my apartment and running the whole digital harassment thing.

I met with Cecilia the next day to go over safety plans because the doxing meant anyone could find me now. She had me write down my daily routine and then we went through changing everything.

Safety Reinforcements

I started taking three different routes to work depending on the day, never the same pattern twice in a row. Clare agreed to be my grocery store buddy so I wouldn’t go to public places alone.

Hope said she’d walk me to my car after work shifts. We set up code words that meant I need help right now without actually saying it, like if I texted the word coffee to either of them, they’d call the police to my location.

Living this way felt crazy and paranoid, but Cecilia kept reminding me that I wasn’t being paranoid when someone was actually stalking me. Sebastian called me into the station during week five of building evidence and said he was ready to request a search warrant.

The Warrant Application

He’d put together everything we had: the camera footage, Raymond’s digital traces showing the remote access and email harassment, the neighbor’s statement about seeing someone in the stairwell, and the GPS tracker we’d left in place to document the pattern. The judge would need to see that we had probable cause to search Annie’s apartment and seize her devices.

I sat in Sebastian’s office while he typed up the warrant request, laying out six weeks of documented incidents in careful legal language. He submitted it to the judge that afternoon and told me it usually took a few days to get approval.

I spent those next few days at Cecilia’s office practicing my impact statement in case this went to trial. She had me write out what happened in the most factual way possible, stripping out the emotional words that would make me sound unstable.

Rehearsing the Truth

We practiced me saying I woke up to hands around my throat and discovered scratches on my neck instead of invisible hands choked me and left marks. I had to describe the fear without sounding scared, the violation without sounding like a victim, and the whole nightmare without sounding like I was having a breakdown.

Cecilia recorded me on her phone so I could watch myself and see where I started crying or where my voice got too high and panicked. By the third practice session, I could get through the whole thing in a steady voice, sticking to facts and evidence instead of feelings.

The judge approved the search warrant on a Friday, and Sebastian called to say we were setting up another bait night for Monday. This time we used the exact same pattern as before, with me staying at Hope’s apartment and my lights on timers to show I was gone.

The Unmasked Face

I sat on Hope’s couch with my phone showing the camera feeds, watching my empty apartment and waiting. Annie showed up at 2:30 in the morning, later than last time but following her same routine.

She let herself in with those bump keys, moved straight to the thermostat, and then lined up my shoes by the door. When she reached for my coffee mug, she paused and looked around like maybe she sensed something was different.

Then she pulled off her hood to wipe sweat from her face and the camera caught her full face in perfect clarity, with no shadows or angles to hide behind. I took screenshots immediately and texted them to Sebastian, who was parked three blocks away.

Denial is Impossible

He responded that he had what he needed and I should stay at Hope’s for the rest of the night. Sebastian spent the next two days running the clear footage through facial recognition and matching it against Annie’s driver’s license photo and her social media pictures.

He sent me a comparison image showing Annie’s face from the camera next to her Facebook profile photo. The same nose and chin and eyebrows were completely undeniable.

He told me he was moving forward with executing the search warrant and I should prepare myself for things to get intense. Tuesday morning came and I sat in the police station with Cecilia while Sebastian and three other officers went to Annie’s apartment with the warrant.

Seizing the Toolkit

My phone buzzed with updates every 20 minutes: they’re inside, they found devices, they’re seizing evidence, they’re photographing everything. Two hours later, Sebastian came back to the station carrying boxes of evidence bags, and his face told me they’d hit the target.

They’d seized Annie’s laptop and phone and tablet, three bottles of Dior Sauvage cologne, a set of bump keys for picking locks, some kind of relay device for starting cars remotely, and the packaging from the GPS tracker that matched the serial number on the one under my car. Sebastian laid it all out on a table in the evidence room and I stared at the physical proof that this was real.

Someone had bought these things specifically to torture me. Annie got arrested that same afternoon and I stood at the station window watching them bring her in.