Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 'Guilty as Charged!': Man Creepily Admits To Stalking WNBA's Caitlin Clark

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

A man from Texas is accused of traveling to Indianapolis to stalk WNBA star Caitlin Clark. Police said Michael Lewis sent dozens and dozens of messages to Clark on X from December 16 to January 12 despite being told to stop. The judge presiding over Lewis' initial court appearance had to tell him to stop talking after he said "guilty as charged" when entering the courtroom. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Dr. G about the case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Dr. G https://www.youtube.com/@drgexplainsCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Morning, Mr. Lewis. Guilty as charged. No. A man accused of stalking WNBA star Caitlin Clark appears in court and makes a shocking admission. I'll tell you exactly what this man is accused of doing to women's basketball's most famous star. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann

Jeanette Levy. Caitlin Clark has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years because she's such a good basketball player. But lately, she's gotten a lot of attention from a man that she didn't want. And now he's in jail. Clark was a standout at the University of Iowa. She got people excited about women's college basketball. After that, she joined the Indiana Fever, a women's NBA team. She's probably the best-known women's basketball player in the world, and with all of the good attention she has received, being in the public eye has now brought her some unwanted attention clark plays basketball in indianapolis and according to a lieutenant at the marion county sheriff's office there

a man named michael lewis has been stalking clark since december it all started on x according to an affidavit with messages lewis started sending on december 16th and let me tell you i've looked at these messages and some of them are really, really raunchy and disturbing. Some are sexually explicit and others are not, but the messages start and they don't appear to stop. Here's a small sample. According to the affidavit, one reads at Caitlin Clark 22, I already have one foot on a banana peel and the other on a stocking charge. So I won't be able to wear your hoodie. Won't look good in court.

Another states, at CaitlinClark22, been driving around your house three times a day, but don't call the law just yet. The public is allowed to drive by Gainbridge, a.k.a. Caitlin's Fieldhouse. So you can see why Caitlin Clark was concerned. In the message, the account is saying he drives by her house three times a day. That is not normal when you don't know someone and it's not normal even if you do. So the FBI got involved and sent an emergency request to X. And get this, it's not like Michael Lewis lives in Indianapolis. He's from Texas.

So according to police, Michael Lewis traveled from Texas to Indianapolis for Caitlin Clark. The affidavit goes on. On 1-8-2025, IMPD officers with body-worn cameras went to Michael Lewis's hotel room on a welfare check. After knocking on the door, Lewis willingly came out and talked to the IMPD officers. Lewis confirmed that he was not a resident of Indiana and that he was from Texas and claimed to be in Indianapolis on vacation. When asked why he was making so many posts about Caitlin Clark, Lewis said, just the same reason everybody makes posts. When asked about posts that were threatening in nature, Lewis said it wasn't him.

Lewis claimed that this is just an imaginary relationship. Yikes. I can tell you, any woman who would ever hear that a man was having an imaginary relationship with her would be scared out of her wits. The cops said they told Lewis to stop posting these messages because they could be perceived as threatening lewis according to the police said just a fantasy type thing his imagination and it's nothing to do with threatening but it doesn't matter what michael lewis thinks this is about what caitlyn clark thinks and she was freaked out the affidavit goes on on 111 2025 lieutenant stonehouse interviewed caitlyn clark clark stated that she has been very fearful since learning of the messages and that she has altered her public appearances and patterns of

movement due to fear for her safety. Clark stated that she has become very concerned for her safety after learning that Lewis was in Indianapolis. Clark also stated that she doesn't know Lewis and has never responded to any of his messages or posts. Caitlin Clark, a basketball phenom, is changing her plans and public appearances because she was so afraid of Michael Lewis. And police said Lewis continued to post on X to Clark, even though he was told to knock it off. Lewis was charged with stalking, and when he appeared in court, the judge had to cut him off when he said he did it. Morning, Mr. Lewis. No, sir. This is initial hearing. We are not.

You have a right to remain silent and I expect you to exercise that. Okay. This is just telling you what the charges are. You do not listen. It's I'll give you a chance to talk. Not your dog. Stop talking. I want to tell you about upside. It's a free app that gets you cash back on things like gas and restaurants.

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Exxon, 7-Eleven, and Chipotle. That's just to name a few. To find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside or scan the QR code on your screen and use our promo code CRIMEFIX to get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your fresh tank of gas. That's promo code CRIMEFIX for extra cash back. All right. So to talk about all of this madness going on in Indianapolis, I want to bring in Dr. J.P. Garrison. He's a forensic psychologist, and you probably know him better as Dr. G on YouTube. So Dr. G, thanks so much for coming on. I have to ask you, first

of all, your first thoughts upon watching this guy,ael lewis's initial court appearance my first reaction is how scared caitlyn clark must have been having seen him because he looks very disheveled looks very disorganized when you see him you go this is somebody who doesn't look like they're very connected to reality so it's a scary thing to see somebody like that, that's coming after you basically. Yeah, totally. I mean, and Caitlin Clark, I mean, she's a, she's a young woman. Yes. She has been in the public eye for a few years now because of her basketball skills. When she was at the university of Iowa, she's probably used to having a lot of fans, but this is not really a fan. I mean, this is somebody who was obsessed. I went on the Twitter feed. I mean, the tweets do not stop. And

some of them are so disgusting and crude, sexually crass. She probably, yes, sees him on TV on the on the clip and it was like oh my god I'm totally more freaked out than I already was I'm just wondering how do these Obsessions, you know from your viewpoint as a forensic psychologist. How do these things? Develop how does a Michael Lewis an older guy? in Texas somehow become obsessed with, you know, this young woman who's a basketball star in, you know, first in Iowa and now in Indianapolis? Typically, there are delusions involved. And what I mean by that is a delusion is basically a fixed false belief.

It's not based in reality. So typically people that have these obsessions with celebrities believe there's some relationship that's not there. And I believe that's actually something that Michael Lewis had said, as he said, an imaginary relationship. But how it develops, when you have somebody that's not attached to reality, they can attach to anything. There can be some really obscure reason why. So why it was Caitlin Clark could be anybody's guess. There doesn't tend to be as much predictable rhyme or reason behind who they go after. He traveled some distance.

I mean, this guy is from Texas, you know, and I, you know, he's accused of stalking. He's facing a criminal charge. You know, he is he's, you know, presumed innocent. You know, he enjoys the presumption of innocence. However, this is somebody who went into court for an initial appearance and sits back in his chair and says guilty as charged. And the judge is like, hey, hey, knock it off. You know, stop talking. So, you know, he's he's he's not right up in the you know, up here. There's something very wrong.

So he was very motivated. Somebody to go from Texas to Indianapolis and camp out in a hotel room and tweet her nonstop. For somebody like that, the energy behind it, they do tend to have just relentless energy towards their obsessions. And so somebody like this, when they are delusional, when they do have this detachment from reality, the problem is, is that he's not so detached that he didn't know what he was doing was wrong. Cause when he was confronted by police in his hotel room, he was basically like, Oh, it's all fake. It's a joke. I'm just, it's just an imaginary relationship. This is how it gets so scary for stalkers because some of them, unfortunately, are more charismatic and maybe a little bit cleaner looking than him.

So they can convince people, oh, okay, this person is just joking. So in some ways, it's fortunate that he presents as strangely as he does, because it's very easy to say, okay, this man's got some mental illness and Kalen Clark needs to be protected from it because he seems like he really has a potential to be dangerous and clearly is harassing her online you know I think it is bizarre because I mean you mentioned this encounter he had with Indian Indianapolis Metro Police and you know I'm looking at the affidavit right now and they basically say,

they asked him why he was making so many posts about Caitlin Clark. And Lewis said, just the same reason everybody makes posts. When asked about the posts that were threatening in nature, Lewis said it wasn't him. And then he claimed that it's just an imaginary relationship. So he's like, oh, it's just like why everybody else does it does it then he says it's not him even though that's michael lewis's thing and then he says it's imaginary relationship so it's like he has some kind of it it sounds like to me he realizes what he is doing is not right yeah it seems pretty clear that he knows it's wrong and that he shouldn't admit to it so to speak or that what he's doing is harassment in some way. So he does understand that when police confront him about it, he shouldn't or is unwilling to really acknowledge what he's doing.

So that does show there's some degree of awareness that, you know, the difference between knowing right and wrong. Clearly, he knows that it's wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that he likely is pretty severely mentally ill. I think that that's, that's a pretty fair assumption based on what we've seen so far, obviously haven't evaluated him, but based on, on the, on the history, it sounds like it. So the cops basically tell them, they, they claim in the affidavit, they tell him, knock it off, you know, quit posting this stuff because, you know, it could be looked at as a threat. You know, and I, I'm not going to go through, obviously we'd be sitting here all day if I went through all of these tweets because they started in December and went all the way up until January

12th. And one, he says, they said I was sending threatening texts, but the only, the only thing on my mind, this is a typo, I think, was Caitlin. And he has all these different letters in her name. And then there's another one that says, got banned from Cape Bridge. I'm sorry, but maybe I go to your road games. It's OK, right? So they told him, knock it off. You know, you're doing things that can be deemed as threatening, yet he continued to do it.

He didn't stop. So what does that tell you? There tends to be with issues like this, people that feel grandiose. In other words, they feel important. They feel powerful. So unfortunately, stalkers are rarely dissuaded by something as simple as telling them to stop, whether it's law enforcement or not. So at the time, well, he can try to get out of it, so to speak. He probably feels like the message is too important. The connection's too strong. The way that he probably sees and thinks about the world is so different from the rest of us. It's probably hard to really understand the logic, but stalkers are terrifying. Truly, and the impact that it has on people that are on the receiving end, it's hard to describe the level

of trauma that can be induced just by stalking, even if they never actually interact with her, interact with the person face to face. Yeah, I mean, she was clearly terrified. I mean, she told the police when they interviewed her that she had changed her plans. You know, she had altered her public appearances, things like that, because he was continuing to send all of these tweets. And it just didn't stop. So she was she was genuinely freaked out. And he had traveled, obviously, from Texas to Indianapolis, which really freaked her out, understandably. So you mentioned grandiosity, you know, on his Twitter page. You know, he's got his name, Michael Lewis or whatever. And then there's like a picture of Jesus. So he's very much like, I mean, there probably is some grandiosity there. He, I mean, it sounds like he kind of thinks like he's almost like a godlike

figure. That's extremely common when it comes to some of the more serious mental illness, this belief that someone's a deity or a reincarnation of somebody important, those kinds of things. When somebody is clinically grandiose, that really, it's hard to, once again, it's hard for most of us to connect to that feeling because it's so detached from reality. But there are people that truly believe they're the most important person in the world or that they, you know, are somebody else that's important like Jesus or something like that. I don't know about that with his history, but I wouldn't be, it wouldn't be shocking at all because that's actually very common. So the judge, you know, sets his bail at $50,000. He can post surety, post a little less than that, you know, that type of thing.

You know, the judge said she, Caitlin Clark, had a reason to feel terrified, according to the charge, and a reasonable fear of sexual battery. So this is pretty serious. It's a fifth degree felony. If he's convicted, he faces anywhere from one to six years in prison. He's been ordered to not have contact with her. He said he suffers from mental illness. It was really hard to hear what medication he was on when he said that. He said he's not getting his medication in the jail. How does this stop? How do you stop this guy from engaging in this behavior? Because even if he goes to prison for a year or two, I mean, is this something where you send him to prison and he learns his lesson?

I mean, how do you undo the obsession? Sometimes you don't. Sometimes people just keep going back to prison. I hate the reality of these situations because that's what's so insidious about people who stalk. Sometimes they just don't care about the consequences. Sometimes that delusion is impenetrable. Hopefully after that amount of time, if he does have delusions, it would shift to something else, but there's no guarantee that it will. And that's a scary thing to think about. I hate to even put it out there like that,

but there is some reality to it is that stalkers are terrifying and sometimes they just keep going back to prison over and over again. Unbelievable. Well, he's back in court on March 31st. At the time of this recording, he has not posted his bail, but we will keep an eye on it. He went into court and said guilty as charged. The judge said, hey, we're at the beginning of this process, so quit talking. Tried to save him from himself. Dr. G, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm your agent, Nat Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.