Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to a
Speaker 1: special Valentine's Day episode of Criminalia. So this season we're
Speaker 1: exploring the lives and motivations of some of the most
Speaker 1: notorious stalkers throughout history. And in today's episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a form of stocking called erotomania and
Speaker 1: how it's different from being a hopeless romantic. I'm Maria
Speaker 1: Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry and listen, everybody celebrates this
Speaker 1: day differently, or maybe not even at all. I grew
Speaker 1: up in a house where Valentine's Day was like a
Speaker 1: family holiday. It didn't have the baggage of like a
Speaker 1: romantic partner has to demonstrate their love to you, like
Speaker 1: so much pressure. Right, Our parents would get us gifts like,
Speaker 1: you know, a little RB or something when I was
Speaker 1: a kid in like a little box of chocolates that
Speaker 1: was our own. But so I always grew up thinking
Speaker 1: about it as the day when you tell like all
Speaker 1: the people in your life you love them, which has
Speaker 1: served me very well, actually, I'm sure that it has.
Speaker 1: Like shouldn't shouldn't the day be that. Really, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of with you on those. Even with my husband who
Speaker 1: have been in the one time, we've never made a
Speaker 1: big to do about Valentine's Day. Well, maybe go out
Speaker 1: to dinner, but it's just not that loaded weird holiday
Speaker 1: it can become for some people you must have red
Speaker 1: roses or you're going to get worse. Right, So, for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Valentine's Day is celebrated that way
Speaker 1: with flowers and chocolate and these other special and often
Speaker 1: expected items that are gifted to significant others, and it
Speaker 1: is generally, in the best sense, considered a day where
Speaker 1: you celebrate the person you love. So I always think
Speaker 1: it's interesting because, like around Valentine's Day, like romantic comedies
Speaker 1: come out, and it would be fun to look at love.
Speaker 1: But when you boil down the stories of what a
Speaker 1: romantic comedy often is, they don't always help how we
Speaker 1: see stocking behaviors. Instead, they kind of create an image
Speaker 1: of romance that shapes our perceptions and our expectations of
Speaker 1: what love ought to be. Right, a lot of them
Speaker 1: have that grand gesture that is supposed to be demonstrative
Speaker 1: and in fact is often like not cool. We like
Speaker 1: it in the movie, but if it happened to us
Speaker 1: in real life, we'd be terrified. Right, Like Meg Ryan's
Speaker 1: character Annie and Sleepless in Seattle is a good example.
Speaker 1: She behaves in a way that isn't really necessarily so
Speaker 1: much what you might call love struck and charming, but
Speaker 1: rather creepy. I know a lot of people that will
Speaker 1: argue that this is a great romantic story, but if
Speaker 1: you pause and think about it for a minute, this
Speaker 1: is a character who, after hearing a man on the radio,
Speaker 1: decides that she is madly in love with him, flies
Speaker 1: across the country, and then spies on him and his child. Right.
Speaker 1: It's a completely new version of the movie, although it's
Speaker 1: exactly the same version of the movie. If it had
Speaker 1: been pitched that way, it would have been a whole
Speaker 1: different thing, though I know they would have been like,
Speaker 1: I don't think we want to deepen. There's also the
Speaker 1: movie While You Were Sleeping. Sandra Bullocks character Lucy. In
Speaker 1: the movie, she pretends to be the fiance of a
Speaker 1: man that she has never even spoken to. She makes
Speaker 1: really good friends with his family. They know her really well.
Speaker 1: They can't wait for her to become a part of
Speaker 1: it and that she marries his brother at the end,
Speaker 1: which to me seems like some sort of like Victorian
Speaker 1: Gothic like frishmash like some people might argue too, And
Speaker 1: I have seen people discuss this that John cus X
Speaker 1: character Lloyd Dobbler and say anything goes a little too
Speaker 1: far with that boom Box serenade. That has often been
Speaker 1: held as like apex romantic, particularly for people I think
Speaker 1: in our age group that grew up where that hit
Speaker 1: it exactly the right time. I think so too. I
Speaker 1: think every gen X er was, you know at some
Speaker 1: point like say anything in the boom Box scene. But
Speaker 1: if you think about it now that you're like not
Speaker 1: a teenager, yeah, maybe not. But it's it's not just
Speaker 1: in the movies, so I mean, it's it's a real
Speaker 1: life phenomenon. It's not just Meg Ryan. For instance, in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, probably one of the biggest ones that
Speaker 1: we all will know is when John Hinckley Jr. Shop
Speaker 1: President Reagan. If you didn't know, he did it to
Speaker 1: impress actress Jodie foster Um before the shooting, though, he
Speaker 1: asked Jody to give him a chance, and he wrote
Speaker 1: to her quote, Jody, I would abandon this idea of
Speaker 1: getting Reagan in a second, if I could only win
Speaker 1: your heart and live out the rest of my life
Speaker 1: with you. Um we'll just take a pause there for
Speaker 1: a MOUs so obviously taken too far, romantic gestures could
Speaker 1: result in criminal charges, and not for stealing your loved
Speaker 1: one's heart. It is a problem if you start to
Speaker 1: pursue someone who does not want your attention, your time,
Speaker 1: or your energy, and then you keep doing it when
Speaker 1: that has been made clear to you. It is also
Speaker 1: a problem if you're using an aggressive or obsessive tactics
Speaker 1: that make the other person uncomfortable or afraid of you.
Speaker 1: So spotting the difference between a stalker and a romantic partner.
Speaker 1: If you knew how to do that, you could save
Speaker 1: your life. Yeah, for things to be considered stalking, the
Speaker 1: contact made by the stalker has to be unwanted. We're
Speaker 1: talking about non consensual interactions, even if they're fairly benign
Speaker 1: social type interactions. Today, around half of all stalkers in
Speaker 1: the United States are former domestic partners, and up till
Speaker 1: one and four of the entire US population has experienced
Speaker 1: being stalked. That's a huge number. Um, So to the professionals,
Speaker 1: it's stalkers with the most emotional investment who are considered
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous types of stalker. Uh. This
Speaker 1: type of stalker is more likely to have thoughts along
Speaker 1: the lines of, you know, if I can't have you,
Speaker 1: no one else can have you either, And there are
Speaker 1: studies that back this up. The research says that stalking
Speaker 1: is associated with lethal and near lethal violence against women
Speaker 1: and definitely rings true. As many as sevent of internet
Speaker 1: partner female murder is preceded by stalking. So that's all
Speaker 1: a little heavy, and we probably all could use just
Speaker 1: a moment of a break, So we're going to do that,
Speaker 1: and when we return, we're going to draw the line
Speaker 1: between romance and stalking because it can be a little fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to criminalia. So now let's talk about what
Speaker 1: erotomania is. So that question we first posed, how does
Speaker 1: one differentiate between a hopeless romantic and a stalker? We'll
Speaker 1: just start with a short answer and just go from there.
Speaker 1: The real distinction here is that love is selfless, but
Speaker 1: a stalker's let's say, affections aren't selfless, their demand ending,
Speaker 1: and those affections are based on the belief that the
Speaker 1: person who is stalking has an entitlement to the other
Speaker 1: person's affections and in some instances, in entitlement to their lives. So,
Speaker 1: if you have been dumped, it is a really terrible feeling,
Speaker 1: and you might engage in some types of intrusive behaviors.
Speaker 1: You may plead for your partner to return. This is
Speaker 1: an abnormal It's considered a pretty normal behavior, but researchers
Speaker 1: have found that when that behavior continues for more than
Speaker 1: two weeks, it is more likely to transition to becoming abnormal,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes hard to stop it. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: they did studies where they had brain scans of those
Speaker 1: who had been recently jilted, and they found that those
Speaker 1: brains are actually more active in the areas that are
Speaker 1: associated with things like anxiety and anger, and pain and
Speaker 1: addiction and risk taking, an obsession and compulsion. So, whether
Speaker 1: it's a former partner or a complete stranger, this is
Speaker 1: where your internal quote unquote creepy meter comes into play.
Speaker 1: There is an author by the name of Gavin Debecker
Speaker 1: who called it the gift of fear. We all have
Speaker 1: a gut feeling and our internal mechanism for detecting danger.
Speaker 1: The short version of this is like, just always trust
Speaker 1: your gut. Is something feels creepy to you, better safe
Speaker 1: and sorry. So there's this specific type of stocking that
Speaker 1: we keep mentioning but we haven't really gotten into, and
Speaker 1: it's erotomania, which is a mental health problem, and it's
Speaker 1: a form of paranoid delusion. It's usually also linked to
Speaker 1: another mental health condition, such as schizophrenia, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be. With this condition, a person has delusional
Speaker 1: and intense beliefs that another person is in love with them,
Speaker 1: and that person, interestingly, is usually someone who is of
Speaker 1: a higher social status, such as a celebrity or a politician,
Speaker 1: but fixations on random strangers and you know, acquaintances aren't
Speaker 1: unheard of. A stock are suffering from arotomania might act
Speaker 1: perfectly normal in most parts of their life, but as
Speaker 1: this obsession and delusion grows, some stalkers begin to see
Speaker 1: hidden messages and nonverbal cues in everyday things, such as
Speaker 1: the numbers on license plates or the messages on those
Speaker 1: Valentine conversation hearts that they feel like, are you know,
Speaker 1: validating their feelings right, which they are absolutely not. But
Speaker 1: um So. This condition also seems to be a little
Speaker 1: more common in women than in men um and it
Speaker 1: usually happens around midlife, maybe later, And while it might
Speaker 1: last for a few weeks, it could also last for years.
Speaker 1: Stalkers with erotomania may do things like loiter in the
Speaker 1: victim's vicinity, telephone or text their victim, leave gifts, or
Speaker 1: even post information or spread rumors about the victim, either
Speaker 1: on the Internet or in some other public place, or
Speaker 1: even by word of ma else So interestingly, the statistic
Speaker 1: came up in our research about this condition, and it's
Speaker 1: not specifically about stalkers. This statistic is about the whole population.
Speaker 1: Forty six percent of Americans admit to stalking a partner,
Speaker 1: either their current partner or an x by checking in
Speaker 1: on them online without their knowledge or consent. I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty common. I'm not actually surprised by that number,
Speaker 1: but I feel that the number is high, although I
Speaker 1: probably would have guessed higher, right. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that someone
Speaker 1: on a whim, whether it's like someone you were romantically
Speaker 1: involved with or not, but just someone that used to
Speaker 1: be in your life. You'll go, I wonder what they're
Speaker 1: up to, or maybe you even want to see, like
Speaker 1: I wonder how much their life fell apart? Right, give
Speaker 1: them a quick search on a social media network, which
Speaker 1: I actually really personally think is okay. I think if
Speaker 1: you keep going back every day, then you have a
Speaker 1: little rights a one time check in you know what
Speaker 1: up to now pretty normal. It's kind of like it
Speaker 1: grows out of that sense that we all have of
Speaker 1: being so easily connected to information that we want. That
Speaker 1: transition to looking up someone you used to date or
Speaker 1: you used to know pretty normal. In my book, if
Speaker 1: you feel stalked by someone in this manner or in
Speaker 1: any other type of stalking, authorities recommend being forceful and
Speaker 1: direct when confronting the person about their unwanted behavior. Don't
Speaker 1: try to let them down easy or worry about hurting
Speaker 1: their feelings. Stalkers who want your love and attention are
Speaker 1: not in the right frame of mind to really understand
Speaker 1: the idea of being let down easy. You can't leave
Speaker 1: anything open to interpretation. Basically, so when forceful and direct
Speaker 1: communication doesn't work, or if you are super uncomfortable doing
Speaker 1: it yourself, the authorities can intervene and deliver that message
Speaker 1: for you. Welcome back to Criminalia. Now that we have
Speaker 1: talked about Valentine's Day, Holly, um, it's the least romantic
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day show of all top very much. So I'll
Speaker 1: be at your house watching you through your window as
Speaker 1: you put together in this special drink for us, and
Speaker 1: I would invite in and give you one, but you
Speaker 1: have to wear a mask. Well I would, but I
Speaker 1: would prefer to stand outside your Okay. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to make something fun for Valentine's Day. Whether you drink
Speaker 1: it with someone that you love or just on your
Speaker 1: own or both. I'm just going to tell you right
Speaker 1: up front, there's a lot of alcohol. It's called it
Speaker 1: Sneaks Up on You, and it is basically a twist
Speaker 1: on a Long Island iced tea. It's a little tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek and I don't mean to in any way
Speaker 1: like down play the seriousness of stalking. But I just
Speaker 1: thought for a drink that would be a fun name
Speaker 1: because it does, it tastes delicious, and then it's too late.
Speaker 1: It starts with a handful of strawberries. Muddle those strawberries
Speaker 1: in your glass. I used to pint glass. So you know,
Speaker 1: like three or four strawberries in the bottom is great
Speaker 1: if they're medium, too large, and then you're going to
Speaker 1: pour in three quarters of an ounce of vodka, or
Speaker 1: if you're me, just bumped that one up to announce
Speaker 1: because of vodka favorite, just pour it. No, don't pour
Speaker 1: with a bandit. Yeah, I'm sorry, don't follow my instructions.
Speaker 1: Three quarters of an ounce of rum, three quarters of
Speaker 1: an ounce of tequila, three quarters of an ounce of gin.
Speaker 1: I only use a half ounce of triple sec and
Speaker 1: then an ounce of rose syrup, which is really the
Speaker 1: magic trick here. I love when you put rose in
Speaker 1: the but you are definitely not lying when you call
Speaker 1: this a twist on the Long Island. It's basically the
Speaker 1: recipe for a long Island until you get to the
Speaker 1: rose syrup. I also add a few drops of bidders.
Speaker 1: Floral bidders are great for a drink like this. I
Speaker 1: have one that actually has rose as the primary note
Speaker 1: in it. And then after you muddle the strawberry is
Speaker 1: good to throw ice in. But if you've forgotten until now,
Speaker 1: throw the ice in now, and then you just top
Speaker 1: it with either a lemon lime soda or a ginger ale.
Speaker 1: And then I just sliced a couple of additional strawberries
Speaker 1: and put them on the rim as a garnish to
Speaker 1: make it very pretty. It's so pretty. It tastes like roses,
Speaker 1: and you can't taste any of all of those ounces
Speaker 1: of alcohom which is amazing. Like it's a It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful little drink. It's a very pretty color, and it'll
Speaker 1: get you something. Don't like to use um white rum
Speaker 1: and silver tequila in their long islands. I am not
Speaker 1: picky about that. I had a gold tequila and my
Speaker 1: rum was actually a colored drum. It came out a
Speaker 1: beautiful rose gold color. It looks so don't worry about
Speaker 1: the rum color. It comes out looking great. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this might be my favorite drink I've ever. I think
Speaker 1: I've said that a few times before, but I firmly
Speaker 1: say this one for the moment at least wins until
Speaker 1: I come up with something better. Does this displace the
Speaker 1: white toad drink? To me, it's a better drink than
Speaker 1: the white Toad. I will continue to probably favor the
Speaker 1: white Toad because it's easy to make and I can
Speaker 1: just churn those out and have that the limits a
Speaker 1: lovely this there's a lot more work, You've got more pull,
Speaker 1: there's muddling guy ling exactly. You might not have fresh
Speaker 1: strawberries on hand all the time, but I think it's
Speaker 1: a winner. So whether that is your Valentine stay drink
Speaker 1: or just something you want to try any old day
Speaker 1: of the year, it sneaks up on you as well
Speaker 1: every other episode, right, this might be a good time
Speaker 1: to let people know this is a shorter season than
Speaker 1: Poisoner since it is creepier, not not as long. We'll
Speaker 1: move on to a whole other crime to different creepy.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. We hope you have enjoyed this
Speaker 1: bonus episode for Valentine's Day. Uh and mit us right
Speaker 1: back here on our regular publishing day of Tuesdays, and
Speaker 1: we'll have more stalker talk for you next week. Criminalia
Speaker 1: is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
Speaker 1: please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.