For many people, being at home should be where you feel the safest from the outside world.
I mean, we have doors with locks, sometimes multiple locks. Our windows can have locks. We have alarm systems that not only notify us if someone is trying to break it, but also makes loud noises to scare them away. The alarm can even call the police for you, if you’re not able to.
We have a roof to protect from the weather, we have a heater or air conditioning to control the indoor temperature, and we can even control the temperature of our bed.
So when we’re in our home, we shouldn’t have to worry about bad things happening.
That’s what Chris thought too. But then a stranger came into his home with a gun. And toward the end of our conversation, you’ll hear where that stranger had been just 10 days earlier.
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/194
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
For many people, being at home should be where you feel the safest from the outside world.
I mean, we have doors with locks, sometimes multiple locks. Our windows can have locks. We have alarm systems that not only notify us if someone is trying to break it, but also makes loud noises to scare them away. The alarm can even call the police for you, if you’re not able to.
We have a roof to protect from the weather, we have a heater or air conditioning to control the indoor temperature, and we can even control the temperature of our bed.
So when we’re in our home, we shouldn’t have to worry about bad things happening.
That’s what Chris thought too. But then a stranger came into his home with a gun. And toward the end of our conversation, you’ll hear where that stranger had been just 10 days earlier.
Scott
Where you were living at the time– would you have called it a relatively safe neighborhood?
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very nice neighborhood. It’s in one of the nicest parts of town here. I checked the demographics. Everyone makes way more money than I do. So it’s a pretty wealthy neighborhood compared to– I’m not wealthy but everyone around me is.
Scott
And here meaning you’re in the Chicago area.
Chris
Yes. Chicago. Yes.
Scott
What were your living arrangements at the time?
Chris
So I live in a basement apartment with myself and two roommates. Basically, it’s just a garden apartment. As soon as you walk in, you walk into the living room and then it’s just almost like a straight down hallway. It’s just basically a hallway with three bedrooms – my bedroom, my roommate’s bedroom, and then my other roommate’s bedroom on the left, and then bathroom on the right, and then kitchen on the right. So it’s basically just a straight hallway down.
Scott
And who were your roommates?
Chris
There’s Jack who lives in the middle bedroom and there’s Ben who lives in the last bedroom.
Scott
What’s your age range? I mean, you’re all kind of the same age, right?
Chris
Yeah. I think the youngest, Jack, might be 26. Ben’s 33. I’m 31. So we’re all in our late twenties, early thirties. We all like arts – like improv acting and things like that.
Scott
And what did you do for work at the time?
Chris
I was a waiter downtown.
Scott
Okay. So that kind of sets the scene. Let’s talk about the day when this happened. Can you just take us through– you were hanging out at some friend’s house with some others watching TV. What happened there?
Chris
It’s Monday. Because I’m a waiter, I have weird hours. I’m off all day on a Monday. My friends are actors, so they have weird hours too. so I’m over there Monday during the day just to decide to watch some TV at their house. So I’m hanging out there for a few hours on a Monday, 5.30-6pm. So I’m like, “Okay, I guess it’s time to go.” So I get an Uber from their place and get right back to my place. It’s raining. I remember it was raining when I got out. Then, as I was walking up to my apartment, there was a woman who I’d never seen before – maybe early to mid 50s – just standing out in the rain, just standing right in front of my apartment on the sidewalk.
I go up to her. I’m like, “Hey, can I help you?”
She says, “I’m just waiting for my sister.”
I go, “Oh, okay. What do you mean?”
She’s like, “Yeah, I’m waiting for a ride. I’m waiting for my sister to come pick me up.”
And I’m like, “Okay.”
And then she’s like, “Can you call her?”
I go, “Oh God. Okay, fine.”
Scott
You didn’t really want to get involved here, right?
Chris
No, I didn’t want anything involved. I didn’t want to have to do anything, but I’ve had to do this before where people are lost and like that. So I’m like, “Well, she’s sitting right in front of my house. It’d be so awkward to say no.” Then, I walked right into my house, take my phone. She’s like, “I don’t have a phone on me.” So I take my phone and I call this number. She starts to give me one number, and then she’s, “Oh, wait, actually. She has a new number.” So then, okay, I call whatever number it is. Somebody picks up but nobody answers. I’m like, “Well, nobody answered.”
She’s like, “Oh, yeah. Nobody answered. I knew that.”
I was like, “Okay, that’s weird.” But I’m like, “You know what? It’s raining. I don’t want to deal with this anymore. It sounds like she’s got somebody coming. I’m going to go inside.” So I take a left and I walk away from her and I walk inside my house.
Scott
Did that interaction seem suspicious to you at the time or just awkward or confusing?
Chris
It was mostly awkward and confusing. It was a little bit suspicious just because I’d never seen her before. I don’t know why she would have been standing right in front of our apartment because she didn’t live in any of them– there’s, like, two apartments on top of us and there’s no way that she– I’d never seen her because it’s all, like, young people. So this older person is definitely not from around there.
Scott
So she was just still standing there, just kind of looking around at the street.
Chris
Yeah. So I went inside. My bedroom is the first bedroom. When you walk inside, the first thing I noticed is that my door is completely open and I’m like, “Well, that’s not how I left it. I don’t know why my roommates would have my door open.” And I was getting ready to be like, “Hey, you guys, this is a big invasion of my privacy.” Little did I know there’d be a much bigger one.
I had some things, so I sat them down in my room and then I shut the door. All the thoughts right through my mind are like, “My roommates are going through my room for some reason.” That’s when, as I turn around, I see a man in a COVID mask with a revolver pointed at me. So then, time just stops right there. So I freeze up. I realized that I’m in the hands of this guy. I didn’t freak out. I was just like, “Okay, well, I got to get through this now. Just do whatever you can to get through this.”
Scott
So he’s standing there and you’ve got a man standing in front of you pointing a gun at you. Had you ever thought about, in advance, how you thought you would react in a situation like this? And was it as calm as you’re describing it to be?
Chris
You always got the, “Oh, what if somebody on the train starts acting up? What are you going to do?” I think, probably, especially men have all these power fantasies maybe, but I’m going to be the hero. Yeah. I’m going to John Wick everything, but it’s very different when it’s in your face and there’s a gun and it’s even more different when there’s really nothing you can do because you got caught essentially. I mean, who thinks when a guy pointed a gun at you in their home? So it’s just a very different feeling when you’re already in the worst possible place.
I think I was very surprised though. How come I was pretty much just calm and okay? Mostly because my bedroom was a little messy, I was like, “Oh man, that’s embarrassing. This guy saw how messy my bedroom was.” That’s really mostly the thought I was running through my head.
Scott
That is so interesting. I mean, he’s got a gun and you’re worried about a little bit of clutter that he’s going to see. But you’re right. You never know what thoughts are going to go through your head.
Chris
I was like, “If I die, everyone’s going to see this guy’s a messy guy.” So I was like, “Okay, I have to live so people don’t see how messy my bedroom was.” I don’t know why that was all running through my head. Then, he’s like, “Shut up, don’t move.” So I just put my hands right up. I just put my hands up and let him know, “Hey, I don’t got anything. I’m not hiding anything.” So he just walks up with that revolver, he puts it right on my head, and then he shifts it around to the back of my head, and he says, “Move, go into that room there.” That’s where I see the middle bedroom – Jack’s bedroom – lights on, the doors open. He walks me in, and I’m like, “Oh my god, if I see that my roommate’s dead, that’s it. That’s, I’m going to have to really start trying to figure something out. I just pray that he’s still alive in there.” Then, we walked in and that’s when I saw Jack. he’s completely hogtied up. His wrists are just really tied shut with a bunch of different cables and he’s on the ground. His legs are tied up.
Scott
When you say hogtied, does that mean he was laying on his stomach?
Chris
Laying on his stomach, yes.
Scott
And his hands were behind his back and tied to his feet at the same time.
Chris
Yeah. So he’s completely immobilized, lying down facing the bedroom door. So a little bit of a relief that he’s alive. I’m like, “Okay, I know this guy is not some kind of serial killer.” At least I’m thinking he’s not. Anyway, my biggest worry is that this guy had already decided, hey, we’re dead. He puts the gun to my head and says, “Get down on the ground.” So I get down on my knees and then I get down with my belly to the ground. Jack’s head is facing towards the bedroom door. I’m facing towards the opposite wall – the window.
Scott
So you weren’t looking at each other then?
Chris
No, We weren’t looking at each other.
Scott
And could you see the gunman or did you get a look at his face? I know you said he was wearing a mask.
Chris
I got to see a little bit because he had these, like, short dreads. So I saw everything above his nose and his eyes and his hair and everything like that. Then I got on the ground. He just asked, “Give me your money. Give me your wallet. Reach into your wallet.” So I take my hand and I reach into my pocket while I’m still on the ground and I take out the wallet. Since I’m a waiter, I had some cash on me – about $200 in cash. So I’m like, “Take whatever you want, man.” He took the cash and then he asked me for my bank cards. So I’m like, “Take the whole wallet.” Starts asking me for pin codes, so I give him pin codes.” He asked me a couple of times for pin codes. I’m like, “Yeah, just take whatever you want, man.”
Scott
Did he ask the pins multiple times because he was trying to remember them? Or do you think he might’ve thought you were giving him wrong codes?
Chris
I think he was trying to remember it because I think, the second time, he actually got out of his phone and wrote it down. I think me coming in just completely threw off his whole plan because he was not expecting me to come in at all.
Scott
But he already had Jack tied up, so I wonder why he was still there. I wonder maybe he was preparing to leave when you got home or something.
Chris
I think he must have been just about to leave. I think I had the worst timing because he was probably about to leave because he had just finished tying him up because he spent a long time tying up. He tied him up with every kind of cable that he could find around his bedroom – Jack’s bedroom – so he really had him down. I think he was there for about 20-30 minutes before I showed up and I think he wanted cash. I think he just really wanted to make cash appear, and I guess it did when I walked in.
Scott
It sounds like you’re doing pretty much the right thing so far. You’re being very cooperative, just in the hope that he’ll leave. Did you feel optimistic at this point that it was going to be okay?
Chris
No, I was still very worried. It was not to the point where he takes my wallet, he takes my cash, and then he’s like, “Okay. Okay.” Then, I just start hearing, like, ripping and tearing. Then, I sort of turned my head and I looked and I saw that he was tearing pieces of bed sheet. Then, he takes the little sheets of the bedsheets, walks over to me, and says, “Put your hands behind your back.” Then, he kind of moves my hands around to where they’re as close together as possible and he starts taking the bits of bedsheets, starts tying my hands. He ties them a few times and he starts going to my feet. He’s ripping off the bed sheet. I’m just hearing this awful tearing sound next to me. So he ties my feet and then he then finishes the hogtie. He ties my hands and then my feet together.
It was at that point that my roommate asked, “What are you going to do to us?” And he says, “I’m not going to kill you all. I just want the money.” That was when I finally felt relief. I was like, “Okay, so this guy just wants the money. He’s not this weird, maybe– I mean, he could be lying still, but I sort of trusted him. I was like, “I don’t think this is some kind of thrill killer, some kind of crazy serial killer. I think he really just wanted the money.” Once I flashed all that cash to him, I think that was like, “Oh, okay. Something was finally working in his brain.” He’s like, “Okay. I can finally get out of here. We’ve got exactly what I need.” So that was really the first time I felt any relief. I cracked a joke. He said, “I just want the money.” I go, “Hey, that’s fair.” And I let out a little chuckle and no one else left but me.
Scott
Tough room.
Chris
Yeah, exactly. Toughest room I’ve ever been in.
Scott
I’m picturing him tearing these bedsheets. Was he holding the gun the whole time?
Chris
I’m just not sure, just because I wasn’t really trying to look too much. I would take little glances and then I would move my head back because I didn’t want him to just look if I was staring at him the whole time while he was doing the crime. I didn’t want him to hit me or something more. I’m just not sure. I think he was doing it with a gun in his hand, from what I can remember.
Scott
Did you ever consider making a move? How do you compare in size to this guy?
Chris
I’m probably much bigger. He might’ve been, like, 5’10 average build. I’m much bigger. I’m 6’2. I’m like 330-340. So, if there was no gun, I think I would have been able to take him pretty easily. I wasn’t going to risk anything bad happening. Really, the whole time he was tying me up, I realized it was a little bit loose just because I think he didn’t have as much time to tie me up and it was with the bedsheet – it’s like this kind of flimsy bedsheet. So, the whole time he’s tying me up, I’m like, “Okay, as long as if anything does happen, I think I can really just slip out of this pretty easily.” So I’m praying to God while he’s tying me up, “Don’t tie me up anymore than this.”
Eventually, he does leave. We hear the front door open and close. That’s when Jack’s like, “Well, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this.” But I think I shocked him because I just completely slipped out immediately and hopped up on my feet. He didn’t take my phone luckily. So I just had my phone and I immediately called 911. I started, like, reading a description of the guy who was just in our house.
911 Operator
Hello, this is the Chicago Emergency.
Chris
Hi, hello.
911 Operator
Hi, does anyone need fire, police or ambulance?
Chris
Yes, please, immediately.
911 Operator
Police or ambulance?
Chris
Okay, go ahead.
911 Operator
Hello, do you need a police or ambulance? What’s going on?
Chris
We were just robbed by a man with a gun.
911 Operator
What’s your name, sir?
Chris
(Silenced)
911 Operator
Is the male white, black, Hispanic?
Chris
He’s black.
911 Operator
What was he wearing?
Chris
it was all black. He had a revolver and he had dreads on.
911 Operator
Okay, which road did he go?
Chris
I don’t know. He tied us up.
911 Operator
Was he on foot or in a vehicle?
Chris
He had a COVID-19 mask on. I don’t know. We didn’t see where he left. We’re in an apartment. We’re in the basement.
911 Operator
Okay. We’ll send the police over.
Scott
But then you hung up and called back. What happened after that first call? There was a little confusion there, right?
Chris
We were saying earlier, you never really know what you’re going to be thinking of in times like this. I had remembered that I just gave that lady outside earlier my phone number. Essentially. I called some number. So when I called 911, I talked to an operator and they said something. I don’t remember exactly what they said but it was like, one second after the 911 phone call ended, this unknown number recalled me back. I think it was the same 911 operator, but I was like, “Okay, no,” For some reason, I was, like, “This seems shady. I don’t know why I’ve never heard of them calling back on an unknown number during an emergency call. Well, she has my phone number. Did I just accidentally activate some kind of weird, crazy thing when I called them?” And I was telling them all the information. Lots of conspiracy stuff entered my head just because I was in such a paranoid, panicked state that I thought 911 was trying to trick me. So I hung up. I was like, “Okay, that wasn’t right.” So I called them again and I just basically gave them the exact same description again and I talked with him. I told him, “A guy with a gun was just in our home.” Give him the description.
911 Operator
Chicago emergency call.
Chris
Hi, I just called earlier. My phone stopped. We were robbed in (silenced).
911 Operator
Okay. Is anyone hurt or in need of an ambulance?
Chris
Do you need an ambulance?
Jack
No, just somebody to cut me off of this.
Chris
Yeah, we need somebody to cut him because his hands were tied.
911 Operator
Okay. So you’re indoors?
Chris
Yes. Don’t send an ambulance, but we do need somebody to cut him off.
911 Operator
EMS refused. Okay. How many robbers were there?
Chris
There were two.
911 Operator
Male or female?
Chris
There were two. There was one in here and I think there was a lookout outside who I talked to.
911 Operator
Okay. One male. One female. One male and one female came into the house?
Chris
No. One male came into the house. One female was out looking.
911 Operator
Okay. Is the male black, white, or Hispanic?
Chris
Black.
911 Operator
Did you see the color of his clothing? You said he was wearing all black?
Chris
Yeah. And dreads and a COVID-19 mask on.
911 Operator
Dreadlocks and COVID-19 mask. Did you see a weapon?
Chris
Yes, he had a gun pointed at us – a revolver.
911 Operator
Okay. Did they utilize the vehicle?
Chris
I don’t know. I’m not sure.
911 Operator
Okay. And did you see what direction they went away in?
Chris
No, I don’t know.
911 Operator
Direction of flight unknown. All right. Watch for the police. I will let them know you’re still waiting. Okay?
Chris
Okay. Thank you.
911 Operator
Thank you. I’ll call back if you need to.
Chris
Okay. Bye.
Scott
How long did it take for the cops to show up?
Chris
It might’ve been 2-3 minutes at most. It was. Very quick. We were very surprised at how quick it was. I remember just immediately afterward. I’m like, “Okay, Jack’s still on the floor. He’s still tied up.” I’m able to pull apart his leg bindings which were just with sheet, but his arms were really tied up with electrical cords. That’s why I couldn’t get it off immediately. All I could do was pick him up and get him back on his feet. But he’s still tied up with his arms. So we just get them up. I closed the bedroom door immediately. After the guy left, I closed and locked it. So we were just kind of waiting until the cops arrived. After a minute or so, I opened back up the bedroom door and I checked and see if there was anybody there. Then, we go into the living room and that’s when I hear people outside say, “Do you live here? Do you have an ID?” And I realized that’s the cops. So I opened up the door. I still have to have the bindings on my right arm and my right leg. So I’m like waving around. I’ve got bed sheet tied to my hand. It looked like a lunatic. So when I see a bunch of cops outside and one of them’s, like, talking to the lady I just talked to who was still there for some reason– I don’t know why she didn’t leave too.
Scott
This is the lady that you saw on the way in.
Chris
Yes.
Scott
And that’s who they were talking to. Man.
Chris
Yeah. She was still standing outside. So I’m like, “Hey, come in here.” And they point to her, “Is she involved?” And I go, “Yes, absolutely. She was the lookout for sure.” So they pull her aside and then they come and see us. And they’re like, “Oh my God.” I point to Jack. I point to my friend. I’m like, “Hey, he’s tied up.” So a cop comes over to him, gets a knife out, and he starts to try to cut through it. That’s when I heard on the radio, “Hey, we got the guy. We think we found him at the train station just a few blocks away.” So, then the cop’s like, “Oh my gosh, I got to go here.” And he gives me the knife. So they go off to chase down the bad guy. I’m just, like, cutting through all this cable and rope.
Scott
But someone stayed with the woman to keep her in custody, right?
Chris
Yeah. Okay. We still had a couple of cops who stayed at our apartment, but they’re all outside with her.
Scott
I’m confused as to why would she remain on the scene if her accomplice left? I wonder. Have you thought about that?
Chris
I’m pretty sure, if those bank cards didn’t line up right, I think he might have just gone back and made us– because as far as he knew, we would have been tied up.
Scott
True. Yeah.
Chris
I don’t think he thought we would get out as quickly. Even Jack really thought we were going to be tied up for hours trying to figure out how to get out. So I think he just did not think that we were going to get out in time. So I think she was still there just to make sure if anyone suspicious– I think probably if another roommate came home and saw us tied up, she’d get out of there. I don’t think she was expecting the cops to show up. I think he really thought we were tied up for a while. I was able to cut him loose and we waited about a minute or two later.
Cop comes in and he’s like, “Hey, we got the guy down just a few blocks away. We need you to identify him.” So we got into a squad car. They bring us just down 3-4 blocks away, and that’s when we see the guy in custody looks bang dead on. We could see from his hair that it was the same guy.
Scott
And obviously you could identify him because of the clothes he was wearing too.
Chris
Yeah, exactly. That was the guy. So we identified him. They caught him. They caught her. They found out he had a tattoo of her name on his body. So they’re pretty much connected.
Scott
So they got this guy within 10 minutes.
Chris
Yeah. I talked to the cop when they brought us down to talk to us. He was like, “This is the craziest case in 18 years.” He said it almost never happens exactly like it went down.
Scott
What occurs to me is that if this guy was a little bit smarter, if he took your phones, you couldn’t call. And if he had tied you up properly– I mean, he’s ripping up bed sheets. He could have brought zip ties with him and you guys would have been there for quite a while trying to get out of that because they’re almost impossible, but they only got him quickly because you were able to get loose and call 911 right away.
Chris
Yeah. Even if he’s just taking our wallets as we’re about to enter the apartment. If he just wanted cash, there would have been just so much easier ways to do it. None of the plans he had in place seemed to make sense to me. It seemed like what he did was designed for maximum terror for minimum payoff. He didn’t even take our things. Like, I had a very expensive laptop. I think when they found him, he had a backpack full of stolen jewelry or things like that, and he had my buddy’s switch on him. I guess the switch and my money were the only things that he even took. So I’m not really sure why exactly his plan was the way it was. It seemed like, even in the best circumstances, he made out with a few hundred bucks in a Nintendo Switch and a home invasion.
We came back home. We stayed with a cop for a little bit while they were dealing with stuff with him. Eventually, we had to go back down to the station because we had to give our statements. We’re there for a couple of hours. They show us the revolver he threw when they were chasing him. It was the exact gun pointed at us. They showed us all five bullets loaded into that gun. So it was a fully loaded gun. So if anything would have gone wrong, that would have been all she wrote for me, so I’m glad it played out the way it did.
I got very lucky at some point in time. It was a very long night. It turns out, when you’re a victim, you have to stay for 10-12 hours at the station here. So at one point in time, detectives bring us in their car and then bring us back to the crime scene, and we’re like, “Okay, let’s see what happened.” They were like, “Yeah, we saw that the third window was open in Ben’s – my third roommate. So when he walked in, it’s my bedroom, Jack’s bedroom, then his bedroom. They saw that the window was open. So the guy had gotten through that window. I think he just pushed up the window and just broke the lock. There’s just these cheap plastic locks and that’s how he got through it.
So we want to go check that out. We’re going to go check the crime scene, all the bindings that we had cut. They would have had fingerprints on them, So they’re like, “Okay, we have the whole crime scene ready to go.” We get there. We’re outside. We’re walking outside. We’re like, “Okay, here’s the window. It’s closed for some reason.” And then, we just see my third bro mate, Ben, playing on his laptop just nonchalantly like nothing had happened. He was just playing video games and the window’s closed. So, immediately, this crime scene is now tampered with – at least that part was.
Scott
Because Ben had no idea anything had happened.
Chris
We had told him, no. We texted him immediately afterward what happened. Like, when you get there– I guess there wasn’t any cop or anything inside waiting to tell him like, “Hey, don’t touch anything. This is an active crime scene.” But no, he just waltzed in. You remember that video of the guy who’s on the call and then the babies come in and he’s, like, scrambling to shut the door or whatever on him. It felt like those babies had come through and just started doing their own thing.
Scott
How much did he mess up the crime scene and the evidence?
Chris
Well, the windows were closed at least, but when we walked in, at least there’s still all the bindings like that… No, everything in the living room had been cleaned up. So all the bindings and all the evidence are bagged up and thrown away just because he was like, “Oh, it’s messy in here. Let’s clean this up.” He’s being a very– again, I don’t want to disparage him. I mean, nobody tells you what to think or what to do when there’s a crime. I think he was a little stunned. I think he was also very stunned too and just didn’t know what to do. So he’s like, “Okay, I can at least clean this up and get everything back to normal.”
Scott
It’s funny. You hear about people that live with roommates about how sloppy and messy their roommates are. Ben just wanted to tidy things up a little bit, but it’s kind of inconvenient in this case.
Chris
I don’t blame him at all. He just didn’t realize, I mean, he just never thinks your own apartment becomes an active crime scene. I think he just wasn’t thinking about all that stuff. But unfortunately, he had tainted all that. Luckily, he had not gone in or touched the middle bedroom at all, so we still had evidence and stuff like that in there. It didn’t completely blow everything. It was just extra evidence that had been tampered with, unfortunately.
Scott
All right. Let’s talk for a minute about who this guy is. The gunman– his name is Kaabar Venson and he’s 30 years old. What did you eventually find out about him?
Chris
I eventually found out that he had been arrested for doing a home invasion just a few blocks away from where my apartment is, like, seven years ago. I think he was arrested. He was prosecuted 15 years for home invasion and witness tampering, which also kind of scares me. Then, he only served 7 years of that sentence. Then, he was out for 10 days on parole before he was in our home. So he’d only been out and free for 10 days on parole. So they had deemed him rehabilitated. They were like, “Yeah, but this guy got to go back to society and then he was in my home with a gun to my head.”
Scott
It almost seems like he wanted to get caught again. Has that occurred to you? Do you think that’s a possibility?
Chris
I definitely think it could be because it was just kind of sloppy. I think he probably didn’t care if he went back. I think I heard from the cops. They said like, “When he got caught, the first thing he said was tell my mom I’m going back to jail.” So I guess he was ready to go back. There’s definitely a strong possibility that he just wanted to go back, although I think he still was surprised that he got caught. I mean, everything just seemed rushed and, for some reason, he really needed this petty cash. So I think the whole thing was just, like, ill-thought-out and ill-conceived at the time.
Scott
And he’s obviously not very good at this at all. He doesn’t plan ahead. I mean, that’s to your benefit, of course.
Chris
Yeah, I mean, hopefully, I don’t run into a home invader who knows what he’s doing.
Scott
When he got caught this time after your home invasion, he pled not guilty in this case, right? So it’s going to trial?
Chris
They told us, “Not really.” Like, our part was done. So nobody’s actually informed me of what’s going on and I need to go down and get the police report number. I had no idea. They told me that there’s a pretty good chance he was just going to plea out, so I had no idea he was actually going to trial.
Scott
I don’t know that either but it seems, if it does go to trial, you and Jack would be called as witnesses. I mean, you were right there witnessing what he was doing.
Chris
Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that.
Scott
You left the station and came back home or did you go back home? Did you feel safe going back to that place?
Chris
Well, unfortunately, we didn’t get out of the station until 5 am. So I looked to get hotels, but there was just nothing available by the time we were done. So I had to come back and I just kind of passed out on my bed in the same home. So no, I didn’t feel safe but, unfortunately, ironically enough, my hands were tied.
Scott
Did you get your cash back that day?
Chris
Yes. I got my cash back in one of my debit cards. He pitched the rest of my wallet away but he had one of my debit cards on him. So I didn’t have a wallet. I just had that cash and that debit card. So I was also kind of hampered by that as well. So I also had to go get a new wallet, ID, and things like that.
Scott
Yeah. That’s such a hassle having to replace all that stuff. It’s bad enough when you lose it and you don’t even know where it is, but when somebody steals it and then they throw it away. I guess that’s a minor inconvenience compared to how it could have turned out.
Chris
Yeah. Like I said, I was more than willing to give him any cash he wanted or anything like that. As long as that gun didn’t go off, I was fine with whatever material stuff he wanted. So I wasn’t super worried about that, but it was very annoying.
Scott
How would you describe how this affected you mentally right after it happened?
Chris
Well, I didn’t really go back to my apartment for a while. I stayed in a bunch of hotels and friends’ places. I may have stayed at my place maybe once or twice after the first few weeks by necessity, but I was pretty paranoid and I wound up spending some time with family. I just left town and I just recently got back. Yeah. It’s got me paranoid and I haven’t really left the house much since then. I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Now, I see crime, like, everywhere.” It could happen at any point in time. So I’m much more, I don’t want to say paranoid, but I’m very much more vigilant Now than I used to be for sure.
Scott
When you say you haven’t left the house, are you back at your place or are you living somewhere else?
Chris
Yes, I’m back. Unfortunately, money wise, I had to come back here to make money again because I was just completely out. So, unfortunately, I’m back here. If it was up to me, I’d still be back with my family but, yeah, I’m back here by necessity, unfortunately,
Scott
As we record this, this just happened in May of 2024. So that was just a few months ago. If you got in therapy, what kind of help have you gotten to process this?
Chris
I see a regular therapist. I’m in the process of doing some more, like, intense therapy, probably, where I have to go to a facility, like, 4-5 times a week. So we’re talking about doing some very intense therapy focused on PTSD essentially. I’m still in the process of getting on, like, much more extreme forms of therapy but, for sure, I’m going to be probably dealing with this for a little while.
Scott
And were you diagnosed with PTSD?
Chris
Yeah, I actually had to get off work for a little bit because of that diagnosis.
Scott
I hope you continue to make progress and thanks for sharing your story.
Chris
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Scott
Okay, you want to see a really crazy picture? Chris took a quick picture of his roommate Jack – while Jack was still hogtied on the floor. You can check that out in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/194.
Have you ever had a really amazing coincidence happen to you? Apparently a lot of people have. That’s the question I asked this past Tuesday in the Facebook group. And I had my own answer, which I posted there too! We’d love to hear what YOUR story is about an unbelievable coincidence – come on over and join the discussion at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And here we are once again, like the end of every episode, about to hear this week’s Listener Story. Any listener – including you – can just record a 5-10 minute personal story and send it in. You can record it right on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This week’s story is about something that happened at work that was kind of a mystery. Then it got really creepy.
Stay safe – and I’ll see you here next time.
(Listener Story)
This was several years ago and I was working for the company for the second time. This time, they had implemented a new employee directory, which required everybody to have their photo taken. In the directory, it had your photo, your name, and the coordinates to where your desk was on whatever floor. That was a decent-sized building – three or four floors, including the basement level, lower level – and it housed the IT department for the entire company. They took up, like, half of a level on one of the floors.
We had been working on one floor in this quadrant, and I started to notice some stains on my chair. I have OCD and anxiety. Germs were a huge trigger for me. I always was very clean and meticulously cleaned my desk and everything was in order and to see a large stain on my chair was disturbing. To me, it looked like maybe the cleaning crew had set a sack of collected cans. on my chair and maybe it had leaked. It was a dark substance. Everybody had red chairs, so you could see the dark outline. At this point, it was pretty dry, but I was still freaked out, so I laid a barrier down for a few days until I knew for sure it was dry and whatever was maybe on there had kind of soaked into the papers that I’d put down.
Fast forward a few months later, and it happens again. Monday morning, there is this dark spot on my chair. So I told my boss and I said, “I really think they’re just setting a sack of cans or something on my chair and it’s leaking. This is disgusting. I’m losing my mind. Please contact that department and let them know to stop doing that.” So they got me a different chair, and swapped it out with another chair. Now we have moved our department to a different floor and to a different quadrant, and we’re in a little cube farm. Right after we moved there, I had a dark spot on my chair. Okay. Well, now this feels pretty targeted. So this is now three times – four times, maybe. It’s not really happening to anybody else around me, just my chair.
So my boss was like, “Well, let’s find another chair, swap it out. She’s like, “I’ve talked to the department. They’ve said that they’ve talked to their people and they’re saying that they haven’t done that. They don’t think it’s them.” And I’m like, “It has to be them. Who else is here on the weekends or at night?” So every month, this happens. There’s times where I’m coming in on the weekend with my daughter. I have to do just a little bit of work. I come in, do some work, and leave.
And then Monday morning, it’s on my chair again. At this point, it doesn’t have a smell. I’m leaning down. It doesn’t have a smell. I touch it and it has just a very mild, oily kind of residue. My coworker, he picks up the chair, puts it right to his face, smells it, and he’s like, “There is no smell.” I’m like, “I don’t smell anything either.” So, laying barriers down until they can get me a new chair. Finally, they started to just clean my chair. So they’re like, “Okay, anytime it happens, let us know right away. We’ll take your chair. We’ll steam clean it. We’ll sanitize it and you’re just going to have to sit on your plastic chair for a couple days and then we’ll give it back.”
I was good with that but still freaked out because I’m so afraid of germs. So I’m cleaning my desk every single day and it started to happen to a couple people around me – women. It never happened to the one guy who was in our cube zone. Then, we start to hear about other women in other areas of the building who have this weird stuff on their chair and it comes up in a meeting. It’s so random. We’re talking about it and they’re like, “Wait, we have this happening to our chair too.”
So it happens again And I finally tell my boss, “This is only happening to women. Something is happening.” Her boss happens to overhear this. They have a meeting. Then, within a week or two, they are doing some maintenance to the smoke alarms in the ceiling, kind of above my desk. At this point, I’m starting to have weird things being left on my desk. The most notable that I remember was a hand-drawn drawing picture that was pinned to my corkboard. It wasn’t there. Nobody I knew did it. I didn’t really know anybody else in the building, because it was such a large building, and nobody did it, and it freaked me out. I have these things happening to my chair every month. Now I’m getting weird things left on my desk, weird drawing photos, pictures pinned to my cube and I’m panicking. So they’re constantly cleaning the chairs and then I come in one morning and it’s there. At this point, I’m so angry.
I tell my boss, “This is unacceptable! What is happening?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And then, they go have a meeting with their boss and, within a couple hours, the police are there. There are detectives there. Lawyers are there. HR is there. They tell us that they had actually installed hidden cameras above my desk and in other areas. They caught an IT person who had been with the company for 20-plus years going and urinating and potentially pleasuring himself on these chairs. When they talked to him, he said that he had to work one weekend a month and he would go to the directory, find the women he thought were most attractive, and he would do this to their desk. They did say the urination was a sexually motivated thing for him. So lawyers are coming in. They’re making a side thing saying, “We’re not going to sue the company because it only happened to women.” I’d been complaining about it for 8-9 months. It was once I said out loud, “This is only happening to women,” that they finally did something.
So he’s terminated. He’s given a severance and allowed to keep his retirement, his pension, which is bizarre. He’s charged with a class D felony and his charges had nothing to do with the personal targeting or the sexual aspect. It was monetary damage to the chairs only, which felt really gross because it was more than just the chair damage.
Ultimately, they gave us counseling and they gave us a victim’s advocate because this was going through the courts process. They talked to all of the victims and said, “Would you like to make a victim impact statement?” I said, “Yes, please. Let me do that.” And out of the whole group, so many people– it was so disturbing that they just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I thought I’m not going to let this guy only get away with just the monetary damage because there was so much more damage done. It was so violating. It was so disgusting. Just to have somebody urinating on your stuff, possibly sexually pleasuring themselves on your stuff but it was targeted, It was, ugh, so gross. In that whole thing, they also allow the victims to confront the person who did this.
I asked everybody else who this happened to. There’s maybe five women, six maybe. They said, “No, we’re not. I’m done with it. I don’t want to think about it. It’s so gross. I’m over it.” And I was so disturbed. He had flipped my world upside down because of my OCD, my germophobia, and my anxiety, and it really affected me. I just did not want to let him get away without knowing what he did. I had so many questions too. I said, “Yes, I want to confront this guy.”
A few months later, we went to this small room at a different location. I have the victim’s advocate. There’s lawyers there, social workers there, and he came in and I said, “Why did you do this?” And he said, “I just don’t know.” Then, he backpedals and says, “It was not sexually motivated. It was not targeted,” even though he had followed me around the building where we had moved. And I said, “Listen, I had food on my desk. Did you do that?” He said, “No.” And I said, “I had chapstick. at my desk. I’m afraid to put chapstick on my lips for fear that you have put this in places that are dangerous for me.” And he said, no. And I said, “I had photos of my child out at my desk. That is terrifying. I went there over the weekend. The building’s empty mostly for the weekend. I went there with my child over the weekend. That is terrifying. This should be a safe place for me.”
I confronted him and told him everything I thought about what he did and the impact that it had on me, and he was crying. I was crying and that was sort of it. I didn’t believe a lot of the things he said, but I did not want to let him walk away with only a monetary charge. He needed to know what he did and how it impacted real humans, and I was the only person who did that.
Unfortunately. It made national news. It was on all the late-night talk shows. They made jokes about it. It was in all the papers across the country and the comment section was awful. Of course, we, the people who he targeted were responsible– how are they dumb enough that they didn’t know? Just every horrible thing you can think of, these people said– even coworkers. When I was talking about it, I mean, it is so jarring. The response I got even from women was, “Oh, boo hoo. I’m so pretty. Somebody targeted me because I’m so pretty. Oh, it must be rough.” Oh my gosh.
Ultimately, I changed desks. This person was banned, never allowed in or near the building. There was a restraining order. All of that has died down but it has stuck with me forever. I no longer leave photos of my family, I no longer leave food or any of the personal items at my desk. And I clean, clean, clean, still. I’m better with my OCD and my anxiety through lots of therapy, but it was a very jarring experience and I hope nobody ever has to go through that. I also never allow my photo to be put in a company directory ever again.