[man] When you go to prison,
everybody has their titles and stuff for themselves or other people.
People look at, like, an aggravated stalking charge and they laugh about it.
They're like, "Oh, you're a stalker? Like, pfft! What kind of shit is that?"
"You're in the bushes with the binoculars?"
"No, like..."
And I could see where some people, that is the case, you know, but...
Everybody's situation is different.
So, to people I don't know, I just...
I... I try to laugh it off.
Because for me, it brings up a lot of hurt and hard feelings,
and it brings up all the trauma that Rachel and I went through.
[woman] The only thing that I want clear is...
I might have empathy for John,
but what he did to me, I will never forgive him for.
Just because I understand it, doesn't mean I have to accept it.
I don't accept it.
[sniffles]
[man 1] I'd rather be considered a murderer than a stalker,
you know what I mean?
[woman] I wanted the intensity of, like, of her feeling watched.
[man 2] Anybody could be a stalker.
[man 3] It's all boogeyman talk.
[man 4] I'm not still that crazy. Like...[chuckles]
[Anderson] The stalking thing kind of boils down for me as an abandonment issue.
I get hung up on a person because I felt abandoned by them.
It makes me just want to cling on to them more.
Then I get angry about it and it's like, "Well, you love me, you should be here."
It's anger from being hurt.
And looking back, I can say that was the start of problems
that led me to the situation I'm in now.
I'm John R. Anderson III.
I'm incarcerated at Hill Correction Facility.
I've been charged with aggravated stalking.
[gentle guitar music playing]
I grew up in the country.
My dad taught me how to hunt, fish.
I was good in school, played sports, played baseball a lot.
I think I've always steered towards having a serious relationship.
Even when I first started having girlfriends in middle school
and early years in high school,
I was always gettin' flowers or makin' little mix tapes.
I was always more... serious. It wasn't like, "We're just hanging out for fun."
It was like, "Is there a connection? Some kind of little intimacy?"
I'm one of those people. From the start, I can tell if I'm gonna like you or not,
and Rachel and I, we just clicked.
Like, I don't know. We were two peas in a pod.
My name is Rachel.
I met John in 2015. On a blind date.
I was working, like, three jobs at the time
and I was raising my son by myself.
So I wasn't interested in
any kind of relationship, really.
John's very funny and very witty, and...
at that point in time, he had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
He was, like, my type of man.
And I always told him that it was his green eyes that...
got me that very first night.
It's not something that we just jumped into.
We were gonna take this slow,
because I wanted to get to know the person before,
like, bringing my son into the situation.
There was a lot of give and take in the beginning,
because he's a diesel mechanic,
so he worked six days a week, ten-hour days.
He was always going out with his friends, and was always around girls,
and his friends were always trying to get him to party all the time.
I didn't know that he was drinking all the time.
I just thought that it was a weekend type of thing.
I didn't do that. I worked and went home to my kid.
But he was always good with Gauge.
Like, Gauge looked at him like he was his father.
Gauge was just an infectious child. Like, he...
He was my little rock star, you know?
He... I gave him a little Mohawk, and he'd throw up the little rock horns
and he'd ride on my Harley with me.
And it was great, but...
I'd have Gauge with me, and people would say things to me.
"Who's that kid you got with you, John?"
For me, at first, it mattered.
But the more that I fell in love with Gauge, like,
the more it became irritating.
Like, "This is my kid. What are you talking about?"
[Rachel] It was one of those relationships where if I was chasing John,
he was backing off.
And if he was chasing me, I was backing off.
So as soon as I'd tell him, "Okay, I'm done,"
he'd be at my door at 11 o'clock at night, telling me how sorry he was.
But we were just so...
I don't know, in...
dumb love, I guess.
We stayed together through all of that and then...
I found out I was pregnant.
[birdsong]
At that time, we were looking at moving to Arkansas.
His uncle lives in Arkansas, so we went to go visit him.
It is just a beautiful place,
and so we started looking for houses down there.
[Rachel] After Jax was born, we were going down to Arkansas,
staying there at his uncle's house,
just trying to complete the contract with the lady that was selling us the house.
And Jax was only four months old when Gauge died.
[birdsong]
[Anderson] To this day, I don't have an answer what happened.
There was a storm, and some trees had blown over.
We were usin' the loader tractor to move the trees
off the fence on the horse pasture.
Gauge was helpin' me.
He, um... he fell off the tractor, and I accidentally ran him over.
Uh...
Rachel was there when it happened.
She was just up at the house, and she came down and she was holding him.
She could still feel his heartbeat and stuff.
We just couldn't get the ambulance there fast enough
and we couldn't get him to the hospital fast enough.
Uh...
So Gauge... Gauge isn't no more with us.
She knows I'm a very careful, safe kind of person. Um...
I've been a diesel mechanic my whole life. I've been around tractors, ag equipment,
combines, construction equipment.
So, like, she knows it wasn't a matter of me bein' reckless or... or doin' anything...
unsafe with him on the tractor.
But instantly...
I... I felt responsible and guilty,
and, you know, I felt like I just killed my son.
We, uh...
We lost our child.
And...
[sniffles]
And both of us became different people.
After Gauge died, I, um...
I turned into, like, a shell of a person.
It's very difficult to explain, I guess. Um...
[sniffles]
I didn't wanna do anything. I didn't wanna eat, I didn't wanna...
I couldn't hold Jax at all.
I think he could just feel how heartbroken I was.
[sniffles]
Because he would scream, I mean...
So John had to take on all of that responsibility
for a four-month-old child and me,
because I couldn't do it.
[sniffles]
He really did try before he fell apart.
[Rachel] John was working for the first, I think, year.
And it got to a point where he wasn't getting enough jobs
to be able to support us.
So I had to go get a job.
John then started to find friends,
and those friends were doing drugs.
He was starting to smoke...
I don't know if it was crack first or meth.
And I'd sit there and watch him do it.
I understood why he was trying to numb the pain.
The guilt of... he could have prevented the accident.
That's a lot for somebody to have to...
deal with.
[Anderson] My addiction really kicked into overdrive.
I was usin' meth, and I was... I was bad on meth.
I'd never experienced nothin' like it. I...
I, uh...
I was hallucinating things, and...
I couldn't... I couldn't close my eyes without seeing his face.
[breathing shakily] Um...
Poor Rachel, she just... she shut down.
She didn't... She just... She shut down.
And we went on like this for about a year and a half.
Neither one of us took time to seek out help, or counseling, or...
or anything to help work through it.
And...
as much as we needed each other,
I feel like we just pushed each other apart.
[Rachel] When they say things can't get worse in your life,
well, they really can.
With me not being able to function,
I guess I wasn't giving him what he needed.
So he found a girl that worked at the docks on the lake.
And...
cheated on me with her.
I think she was 19 years old.
And at that time, John was 35.
She was very young.
And I told him that he wasn't gonna ruin our family, that we can fix it.
And that was the first time he hit me.
He hit me across the face so hard that I hit the floor,
and then he took my keys and left for the night.
At this point, John was seeing and hearing people
because he was strung out on meth.
He'd go to the bathroom or something, and he would leave his phone on record.
And he would listen to the recordings,
and scream at me and yell at me that I was cheating on him
when it was the TV that was talking.
After that, it just got worse.
[heavy string music playing]
[Rachel] It was my birthday that he swore he heard a man's voice in the garage.
He picked me up in the kitchen by my neck,
drug me down the hall, and threw me on the bed...
and proceeded to hit me in my ribs, my chest, my legs, and my head.
And choked me to the point where I threw up.
It was that moment where I knew that I just had to get away from him.
That he wasn't gonna change. He wasn't gonna get any better.
I just made my mind up, and I couldn't stay another second.
[ethereal music playing]
[Rachel] I felt a sense of relief on the eight-hour drive to Illinois...
knowing that I wasn't gonna have to deal with him.
[Anderson] Everything that I was doin' to Rachel after I started doin' meth,
I felt like she was doin' it back to me, and it wasn't true at all.
Like, it was just my own mind playing tricks on me.
And...
it ended up bringing a lot of violence in between with Rachel and I.
But when she left,
I felt that I had just lost another child and my wife.
It was like, with all the hurt and pain that I was carryin', that just hurt more.
And it just... it was so overwhelming, I don't even know how to explain it.
I felt betrayed, really.
And then I became so obsessed with, "Where's my son?"
I would try to ask friends and family where she went. Nobody would tell me.
They would lie to me and tell me, "Oh, she's... she's somewhere down there."
"She's safe," or whatever. So I'm gettin' aggravated.
Rachel won't talk to me. I'm aggravated.
Like, she was doin' it just to take my son from me and hurt me.
[uneasy music playing]
[Rachel] By that time, John had figured out that I wasn't in Arkansas anymore.
So he started sending me text messages.
He was telling me that he was gonna pour my son down the toilet
if I didn't tell him where I was and bring his family back to him.
He started sending me videos of him
pouring white ashes down the toilet.
And of course, I freaked out and had a panic attack.
After he did that, I just... There was...
That was the end. That was it. I got a restraining order.
[man] For most stalking cases, before they're called a crime,
there has to be a protection order in place.
It's the first step from going from a non-criminal behavior
to a criminal behavior.
My name is Ryan Williams.
I'm an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice
at the University of Illinois in Springfield.
[Williams] Orders of protection can be very helpful.
It escalates the seriousness of the offense.
A small misdemeanor to now automatic felony.
So before when you drove by their work, it was mischievous, it was problematic.
Now it's a felony.
But protection orders are based on a deterrent model of behavior.
Unfortunately, a lot of stalking behavior is done by people
who aren't acting rationally, who don't have much to lose.
Like in John's case, you can just ignore the orders completely,
and feel that they don't apply to you whatsoever.
[Williams] John exhibited very serious behaviors
prior, with his other relationships.
It's someone who just won't accept
that their behavior is harmful.
To the point where I'm surprised
that there weren't worse outcomes in all of these cases.
[man] If John can't control women,
then anger and aggression and all that stuff comes out.
Each time it's escalated, and that scares me.
There's always a stick of dynamite in there somewhere.
My name is Rick Anderson, and I'm John's uncle.
And, as of this date, I am the only relative that'll talk to John.
[Rick] When John was younger, John and his first wife were married.
But John cheated on her during the wedding.
His wife just said enough's enough.
She moved out.
John kind of snapped.
And back then, when he got mad, he would show up at your house.
Or just sit in a car and wait for you to come out of work.
Kind of like the beginning of stalking.
[Rick] He broke into her house, hid in the closet,
and at two o'clock in the mornin',
was standin' at the end of the bed of the girl.
So all relationships with his first wife and his second girlfriend
just broke and fractured.
If I was Rachel even now,
I would be worried about John.
[Judi] John wanted Rachel back,
and he would do anything and anything to get her back.
He knew how much Rachel and I had a bond together.
And if he couldn't have her, no one would.
[dog barking]
[Judi] When he first got up here, he called repetitively.
But it comes up as somebody else on the phone.
This is how freakin' smart this idiot is.
He'd call me, "Let me talk to her. Just let me talk to her."
"I love her. I want to talk to her."
And then he'd curse. "I know she's there. Let me talk to her."
"You're a fuckin' bitch. Let me talk to her now."
I mean, it's scary. It's totally scary.
He's stalking the house.
He'd pull up in the driveway, it was winter, in his big-ass truck.
Sits there, spins the tires.
We're freakin' out, cryin', callin' the cops.
I'm lookin' for Jax. He's under the table.
He said, "Grandma, I did what Mommy told me. I hid."
"I hid like Mommy tells me."
It broke my heart.
That my grandson has to hide
'cause Mommy's tellin' him to hide from him,
because he's gonna hurt and kill his mother. [sniffles]
It's painful to watch your daughter go through that.
[Rachel] It was just an always constant, like, "He's watching me."
Like, "He knows when I'm home, he knows when I'm not home."
It's a lot of mind control and a lot of... fear.
I mean, it's always continuous, non-stop calling, texting.
He would, um... leave me voicemails telling me he's gonna kill himself.
He would send me pictures of, uh... nooses
that he had hanging from the rafters in his mom's basement.
He told me that when we die, we die together,
and it doesn't matter if he has to shoot me in the head first,
that he will, we will die together.
I always felt like he was right around the corner,
like I'm on my toes waiting for him to just jump out of the bushes.
And that's basically what happened.
She wouldn't answer her phone. I...
I'd get to the point where I'd go online,
there's apps online where you can use different caller numbers,
this and that, different phone numbers.
And I was doin' all that crazy shit.
But she wouldn't talk to me. So I went to her work.
When she pulled up into her work, I was sittin' there.
I'd got there, like, two minutes before she did,
and, uh... I'd walked up to the vehicle,
and as soon as she'd seen me, she was just instantly scared.
And for whatever reason, that just triggered, like, anger in me.
And it was just a bad scene at her work, and the cops ended up comin'.
The warehouse I was working at, there wasn't a gate.
Anybody could just go in and out.
I had pulled into the parking lot
and was grabbing my stuff to go inside the building.
There's a car, and it's just sitting there...
and he's running full force at my vehicle.
So I'm trying to lock my truck and call 911 at the same time.
By that point, he's trying to break my driver side window,
screaming at the top of his voice,
basically that he was gonna fucking kill me.
He goes back to the back passenger door and gets it open.
I jump out of the vehicle, screaming for somebody to help me,
and I saw a man in his car.
And I'm running to him.
He's getting out of the vehicle, you know, calmly asking me what's wrong,
and I'm like, "He's gonna... he's gonna kill me."
At that point, John figured out that I left the keys in the truck.
So he's trying to come run me over.
He figured out he couldn't get to me without running into other vehicles.
So he got back out of the vehicle,
still screaming at me that he was gonna kill me.
The guy tackled him to the ground and held him there.
[Rachel] After the police came and arrested him,
I felt relief like I've never felt it before.
He... finally wasn't able to come and hurt me.
Oh... I was free.
I was free from him.
I was free from all of it.
[woman] Stalking, especially in domestic violence in relationships,
does not necessarily get the attention that it should get.
It's overlooked in the law and how it's treated.
It's a matter of "What are we going to do to make sure that this behavior stops?"
My name is Ali Friend.
I was the lead prosecutor in the domestic violence unit
in DeKalb County.
[Friend] It's hard for me to know what was going through John's mind,
as far as why he did what he did.
But I think he was just wanting to do anything possible
to regain control over Rachel's life.
And if that meant taking her life, then that's what was gonna happen.
He brought a nylon strap
that was fashioned in a way that looked like a noose.
There was several acts of strangulation that had occurred
while they were living in Arkansas.
It seemed as though he was going to finally follow through
on his original threats when he used to strangle her in the past.
[Friend] Aggravated stalking is punishable by up to two to five years
in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Or a period of probation.
I believed that probation was not an appropriate outcome for him,
and I believed that he needed to be removed and punished and sent to prison.
So he was also charged with aggravated driving under the influence.
Because aggravated DUI, in our state, carries the most serious penalty,
It is hard to believe that stalking is a lower felony offense than a DUI.
I just think that nobody wants to believe that it's that bad.
But for a victim or a survivor who's in that relationship,
it is that bad and one day could lead to death.
[birdsong]
[Rachel] I get letters from John every day
to the point where it is very odd if I don't get a letter a day.
We are not talking.
I don't respond to him, and I just continue to get pictures and letters,
and it's just never-ending.
It is very conflicting to get the letters
and to decide whether I'm gonna open them or not.
But now, with him being in prison, reading the letters,
I know what's going on inside of his head.
and it's easier for me to, I guess, sleep at night
knowing that he is apologetic instead of... still angry with me.
[Anderson] I've always wrote Rachel letters.
2020, I wrote her a letter, like, every day, like...
Or not every day. Every week, I mean.
I'm not still that crazy. [chuckles] Like, every week.
Just to stay in contact. And I know she reads 'em.
I know she gets 'em.
I figure, you know, if she... if she wants to turn 'em in and get me in trouble,
then... then so be it, you know?
If that's her prerogative and what she feels she needs to do, then so be it.
[Anderson] I didn't go to prison and forget about my son.
I get to talk to him on the phone, and he... he's funny, 'cause he's like,
"I don't know you. I don't... I don't know what you look like."
I gotta remind him, like, "You do know. Like, I was there raising you."
"You know, you were... you were two when I last seen you."
"I'm sorry that you don't remember that, but trust me, I remember."
My goal was to be home by Jax's fifth birthday, which was last Sunday.
And, you know, I made it a week later.
I go home next... Today's Friday, I go home Monday.
[birdsong]
[Rachel] John's release day is coming, and he wants to see his son.
When John finally sees Jax
and is able to, like, keep him overnight or for the weekend,
it is a concern that he will just run away with my child,
and I won't ever find him.
That's always in the back of my mind.
I'm hoping he can turn over a new leaf.
But I'm worried about him going back to the old John
and coming to try to hurt me again.
I feel that if he reverts back to the drugs,
that he'll feel that he doesn't have a reason to live anymore,
and then that means that he would be coming for me also.
I did obtain security cameras.
I have cameras around my house
to make sure that he is not stalking me again
or trying to tamper with my vehicle.
He gets one chance.
If he steps out of line one more time, he'll end up going back to jail.
That'll be that.
[plaintive piano music playing]
[birdsong]
[Anderson] You know, a lot of people like to say that people don't really change.
But if you're a person that's went through some traumatic events,
those shouldn't determine who you are forever.
I'm not the same person that I used to be.
I just... I'm ready to see my family.
[Anderson] It's been two weeks since I've been released and, honestly,
I don't have a solid plan yet.
Uh, I'm still working on that.
My biggest plan is, right now...
is just to get back into bein' a part of my son's life.
[Anderson] I'm ecstatic to be able to spend time with my son.
He's five years old.
He's, um... he's full of spit and vinegar.
It's just... it's heartwarming, you know, to see my son again.
It gives me... gives me somethin' to look forward to.
With that being said, on the days I don't see him,
I get sad because I don't have him.
Before all this started, we were all one family.
I had my son in the house with me all the time.
And now, here I am, a few years later,
and I just get to see my son a couple times a week.
I wanna make sure that Rachel and I are there raisin' him together.
I don't think it's far-fetched that, at some point,
I would like to have my family back together all in one household again,
as a family.
It's just, I think that it'll take proof of action on my part
to show that people can grow and change throughout their life.
[birdsong]
[Rachel] Having John out of prison is definitely... different.
It's been a little over 90 days now, I think.
I know that John wants us to be a family again...
but you can't go back to the past.
There's just too much scars and everything's broken.
Hopefully, John can stay sober and stay wanting to better his life.
And if John is willing to step up to the plate,
then he can be a father to Jax.
I hope that me and him can become friends for our son's sake,
because every child needs their father.
But he will have to change a lot about himself
and his addictions in order to do so.
Only time will tell.
[somber string music playing]