Yarn 25 | The Stalker

Eileen
I had no contact with this man. All I ever said was hello to him. It’s stalking. And it builds and builds.

And it plays with your mind.

Narration
This is my mother, Eileen Byrne.

Eileen
It was gone to the stage where I thought someone was coming to get me.

Narration
She’s going to recount her ordeal with a stalker. I was just a kid at the time. I knew very little about it, until recently when she started talking about the incident…

It was a recent Irish news story that triggered her memory.

Clip

Eileen
And like when this Aisling was killed.

Narration
The murder of Aisling Murphy in broad daylight, by a man, sparked a national conversation not just about violence against women but also about the level of harasment and intimidation women are forced to endure in our society.…

Aisling’s murder added fuel to a prominent campaign to make stalking a criminal offence in Ireland.

Clip

Eileen
and then I thought… Oh yeah, it kind of came back to me then, what had happened to myself.

Narration
It was the late nineties. My parents had recently separated. So my mother, me and my sister moved into a house in a quiet neighborhood in Kilkenny city. I was about 10 and my sister was about 12.

Eileen
I suppose we weren’t all that long there when this started.

Narration
Our new home was part of a line of a dozen or so, 2 story terrace houses. Each house had a long thin garden at the rear that stretched down to an end wall. A common access road ran in a perpendicular direction behind all the gardens.

Eileen
I used to lock the shed when I went away at the weekend.

Narration
We had a small shed right outside the back door of our house.

Eileen
There was nothing in it, only a washing machine and a dryer.

Narration
But Eileen started to notice something strange about this shed. Little did she know this was the start of a two year ordeal..

Eileen
Whatever time we go away when we’d come back the screws had been taken off the lock and the shed left open.

Now, there was never anything taken.

John Roche
Did you just put the screws back?

Eileen
Yeah, I just put it back on then when I’d come back.

Then after a while I noticed that the lock twas like a padlock. The padlock was being lifted off the lock, and left on a chair that was in the backyard.

So this puzzled me, more puzzling than anything and I used to be asking why would someone take a lock of a shed and not take anything. What was the logic behind this? I was just telling people what was happening. And I’m saying why do you think that this was happening?

But nobody had an answer.

Narration
Around the same time other incidents started to occur…
First came reports of trespassers in the back yard…

Eileen
But at the same time there used to be people up in the back garden. According to the man next door,.

I never saw these people but he’d say to me every so often ‘Did you see a man up in your backyard last night? And I’d say no.

Narration
Then my mother’s car was tampered with..

Eileen
So then I had an old car and one night the back window of the car was broken.

Narration
At first she wrote this off as unrelated…

Eileen
Now that could have been youngsters throwing stones from the railway track or something. But then I got a new car. And the car was all scratched.

Narration
But no one else’s car on the street was ever interfered with.

Eileen
It was really starting to play on my mind. I remember there was a female taxi driver killed in Galway. And I thought, well, I’ll probably be next. It’s gone to the stage now that I thought someone is coming to get me and I suppose I’d be a very, very strong person but this was starting to break me down. If someone had told me the story, I’ve said aw sur’ what are they on about?

It’s petty but it wasn’t petty. It’s playing with your mind.

Even though t’was only small things.

So then this thing about the the lock being taken off the shed, this used nearly happen every night then.

The lock was lifted off the padlock and put on a chair. And I’d go out every morning to see if the padlock was taken off.

And then I went out one morning and t’was still on the lock. And I looked out say 10 minutes later. And the lock was on the chair.

How someone was able to do that.? In that short space of time? And I saw nobody. I nearly cracked up and I went to the guards just to tell them the lock was being taken off the shed and dropped on a chair. And this was happening on a more regular basis.

The guards said to me ‘Oh is that fella up to his old tricks again?’ They thought they knew who it was… and then he said have you few good strong brothers?

Narration
So this guard’s first suggestion was vigilante justice, not an investigation..

Eileen
And I said I don’t have any relations living in Kilkenny. I don’t know if I even asked him who they thought it was or I didn’t suggest who it was but they were suggesting someone. It was like as if they knew something. But still the wern’t doing anything.

They expected me to to get some fellas to beat up this lad and sort him out.

Then I used to be watching people passing by thinking, Is it him? Is it him? Who’s doing this?

And I kinda suspected is at one stage it was the fella next door. Because about saying about he saying people being up in the back garden and all this.

He rang the neighbor at the other side to say that there was somebody up in my backyard

This man used to be in the backyard quite often…

Narration
There was an element of this I do remember. One day Eileen got a bucket of grease and started coating the top of the back wall with it. I protested because I needed to climb over the wall whenever I kicked my football out there.

John Roche
I remember you slathering the top of the wall with..

Eileen
With grease and stuff to see did someone go over.

But eventually this man was arrested in my backyard. I heard about it from a neighbor.

Narration
One evening while we were away, A local man from the neighborhood was found in our back yard and he was arrested by the Gardai.

Eileen
Now this man was a bit mentally challenged, I’d say.

Narration
Eileen wasn’t convinced that this was the same person responsible for all the other incidents. She wasn’t even convinced he knew what he was doing in her back yard.

Eileen
It was like he was set up, that man. That was he getting him to come into the backyard? Because he was a bit…

He was actually in the backyard.

John Roche
So there was a guy there…

Eileen
There was a guy there at least once anyway. Yeah. I wondered, was he using this man to come into the backyard to blame him.

Narration
Did her prime suspect, the next door neighbor, coerce this man to go into the backyard. Then call the guards on him in order to take attention away from himself? We’ll never know for sure.

But the incidents didnt stop after that man was arrested. In fact things started to get a lot more alarming…

Eileen
And then I was at work one day, and when I came home, the keys of the back door had been. He took one of the keys of the back door and left the other one on the worktop.

But someone had come. Climbed up that way, climbed up the back of the house in the window. Came down went through my house took one key and left another key, taking the key of the back door. It’s like ‘now I can go into your house at any time.’

So then I rang the guards. I told the guards someone had come into my house.

And they said they’d come out and take fingerprints. But they never came to take fingerprints. Then I had to get the locks changed. Because I didn’t know, someone has a key my house now.

I had a slight suspicion that it was the neighbor next door. But then after that, I thought.. No. It can’t be him. Because what neighbor would chance climbing up the back of your house and coming into your house? So I thought, no was definitely not female has to be somebody else.

John Roche
And he has a family.

Eileen
Yeah, perfect family, man. I didn’t t’was him. That ruled him out then. Because I thought he couldn’t be that cheeky. In the middle of the day. If anybody saw him.

Then I was talking to my sister, and she said, it’s your man next door. And I said, No, it can’t be him now because he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that. And she said, I’m telling you, it’s him. I’m telling you, it’s him. And I said, eventually I said, Okay, so I said, right. I watch him. And I rule him out.

Narration
So Eileen decided to pay closer attention to her neighbor’s movements, for a few days, to ease her anxiety and rule him out as a suspect, as she said. Her daily surveillance started each morning, but what she saw only unnerved her even more…

Eileen
In the morning. I look out the back window, and I checked the front window, I used look out under the blind curtain. I noticed he was getting up every morning. He was going up his back garden. He was bringing down a bucket of coa. As he came back down the back garden. He checked the windows, my windows, and then he went out the front and he went up to the shop. He was buying something in the shop. And as he came back from the shop, he checked the front windows and he went into the house. And he did the same thing every morning. It was all controlling. He was controlling me. And it plays with your mind. Plays with your mind. But if someone had said to me before that sur’ they didn’t do any harm. But he did a lot of harm and I could understand other people now, how would we break you down

John Roche
And then how much did you tell us as kids?

Eileen
Very little. Because I just wanted to keep everything as normal as possible.

Narration
So us kids had no idea what was going on. We didn’t know why our mother was obsessed with closing the curtains or why she stopped my sister from cycling to school.

Eileen
Actually, it was easier when I knew it was him, even though he was still continuing. The not knowing who it was, was the worst part.

I was always waiting for the time to come when I’d catch him. And then it was over. But when I caught him, it wasn’t over.

Eventually, one very frosty morning. I looked out the front window, and he was outside, as I thought, scraping my car but he was writing on the frost.

And I said, What are you doing to my car? And he said, Oh, what’s wrong with you? He said, I’m just scraping the frost off, your car. He was shocked because he went back into the house. So when I went out to check the car and saw what he wrote. And he left a message on the frost for me.

John Roche
Yeah, what was his message?

Eileen
The message said, ‘suck my dick’. I thought, Oh, my God.

And then I ran the Guards. I knew it was him then. Now I could have strung them along. And caught him red handed, but I just wanted it to be over. I thought sure, when I catch him it’ll be over. That’s it. He’s not gonna do anything again.

So he took off in the car up the road, and the Guards came to check the car. So then they sent a detective and the detective spent hours taking a statement and pages and pages and pages of all what had been going on. Then they spoke to him. And he denied it, point blank. And they sent it to the DPP and the DPP said it was my word against his. And it was just thrown out.

Now, the detective was lovely. He spent hours and tried his best, but couldn’t get anywhere. So I thought that’s it, it’s over now. But it wasn’t over.

I was in the kitchen one day, and he used to have a kind of a box outside in his backyard and he used to stand up on that. And he was able to see right in my window. And there he was right up in my face looking in the window again.

John Roche
And did he duck away when he saw you?

Eileen
No, he used to just stand there.

John Roche
So when that happens, do you call the Guards every time you see him?

Eileen
No, I didn’t bother anymore.

John Roche
And he has a wife? Did you have any interaction with her?

Eileen
Now she’s a lovely person, apparently. And she used to be throwing me daggers and llooks every time she passed in and out.

God only knows what she was being told.

John Roche
And did you say any of this to the other neighbors on the street?

Eileen
Yeah, they didn’t believe me.

I suppose there were kind of people that… They didn’t want to see either of this was never… Nothing ever happened in this area. It was the perfect area. And I said yes it did, things did happen. And nobody believed me. People look down on you, if you were a single mother. And I suppose he wouldn’t have done it. He obviously wouldn’t have done it if there was a man in the house. But he thought I was an easy target.

The Guard came back and told me, the detective, that he tried his best and he couldn’t get anywhere.

Narration
Finally the guards did do something. But it wasn’t exactly by the book…

Eileen
Then I heard that the Guards had gone in and told him to get out of there. Or they would get him

John Roche
Get him, what does that mean?

Eileen
I presume they’d get him for something, they’d go further? I mean, I couldn’t understand that because why didn’t they get them in the first place? Why were they not able to do anything.

John Roche
I thought they had gone in and roughed him up a it?

Eileen
They probably did. That’s what I heard from somebody else that they had put pressure on him to leave loads.

John Roche
So he was probably told get out of town?

Eileen
He could have been, yeah.

So he put the house up for sale. And he was gone. He went out the country. And then I heard they had heard the knew somebody that he was living next door to. He was seeing coming out somebody’s window. He had continued it on where he had moved. He was obviously a sick man.

John Roche
Just getting him to move on is not the best solution.

Eileen
No, because he moved on to somewhere else. No. Whether he ended up in a hospital? He should have had a record. And he doesn’t!

John Roche
He doesn’t because he was moved on.

Eileen
Yeah. Then i was talking to a solicitor, just not officially. And he was explaining all this to me.

He said he studied this years back, this kind of behavior. And I said; ‘When was he going to kill me?’

And he said that was way down the line. But he said the could of come to that. He was getting a kick out of, he obviously got a kick out coming through your window. And through your house, he said. And taking your key. And he said in those cases, even if they handled a book belonged to you that they get a kick out of it. And it progresses and progresses, eventually, it could take years and years. But they could, they could kill you. But then it made sense. The way he explained it that made sense. Because before that it made no sense.

I had no contact with this man. All I ever said was hello to him. It’s stalking. And it starts off very, very, very small and builds up and builds up and builds up.

I suppose in hindsight, I should have spoken to the solicitor and I’d have got a lot more information and he’d have advised me what to do.

But I suppose when you’re in the middle of it, and you’re trying to wade your way out, because it’s hard to know what to do and you’re not getting help from anybody.

Narration
At the point of recording Stalking is still not a crime in Ireland, although there is a bill currently in review by the oireachtas. The minister for justice has promised that by Easter 2022 stalking will be a criminal offence.

Stalking.ie is a website created by campaigners Una Ring and Eve McDowell. It features links to help and support information and up to date news about their campaign to criminalise stalking.

This has been a story for Yarn podcast dot com

Thanks to my Mum, Eileen, for her interview

Yarn is produced by John Roche in Dublin Ireland.