True Crime Campfire - U Be Dead: The Stalking of Dr. Falkowski

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Cell phones are amazing, aren't they? You have this little magic box in your pocket that you can look at and use to call halfway across the world. New parents can send photos of their babies to their loved ones that live hours away. Best friends can start a podcast even though they don't live in the same state. And soulmates can meet even from entirely different countries. Of course, we can't have good things without someone

Starting point is 00:00:48 using it for evil. Some people use phones as a means of harassment, of control. In today's case, a stalker uses their phone as a weapon of mass destruction. in order to try to get the attention of one man. This is You Be Dead, the stalking of Dr. Jan Falkowski. So, campers, today we're in London in the United Kingdom. Dr. Jan Falkowski and Debbie Pemberton are about to embark on one of the happiest journeys of their lives. Mowage. The couple had met in December of 2001, and two weeks later, Jan proposed on New Year's Eve.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Now, we know we usually poke fun at people for these types of speedy engagements and, you know, deservedly, but these two seemed like the real deal. They quickly started to plan their dream wedding and decided to take their time and have a long engagement, which I would say is definitely the way to go if you just met. Dr. Jan Falcowski is a respected psychiatrist, as well as a professional powerboat racer. Debbie worked as a financial analyst. Together, they were quite the power couple. Their engagement was announced in a National Health Service magazine, which is distributed in NHS offices as reading, which is funny to me as an American because we have, you know,

Starting point is 00:02:13 cripplingly expensive private health care. And I feel like if we had like cheery little magazines announcing our doctor's engagements in the waiting rooms, they'd have to add new Geneva conventions. Like, oh, how nice for you, you're getting married on a yacht, are you? Anyway, so one day in the fall of 2002, Debbie got a call from the phone company to confirm her information, just general housekeeping stuff, emails, workplace, that sort of thing. That same week, a female friend of Yons called her to confirm Yon's phone number. Thinking nothing of it, they headed to their normal weekend getaway, the Dorset coast to spend time at Debbie's flat in pool.

Starting point is 00:02:54 As the couple drove down to the coast, watching the scenery slide by, Debbie's phone dinged, signaling a text message, followed shortly by Yon's. When Debbie read the words on her screen, she could barely comprehend them. They were wrathful, violent, a bullet waiting for you, a present for stopping Yon talking to me, you can't escape. Yon's read, I'll get you. The messages continued, sometimes accompanied by calls made by both a man and a woman. The messages toward Debbie were obviously far more vitriolic.

Starting point is 00:03:33 Some examples, prepare for a funeral, not a wedding. Tart, you're going to die. Bang, bang, that's all you deserve. Deborah Tart, your last days are counted up. Yikes. Meanwhile, Yon's text says stuff like, You will never know how much I feel for you in the last four years. We should be together.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Now, in his book, The Gift of Fear, Gavin DeBecker says that when you're trying to narrow down who could be sending this type of message, your first instinct is usually spot on. To Debbie and Yon, it seemed like it could be a scorned lover, but none of Yon's exes seemed like the type to get so angry. They reported the messages and calls to the Dorset police, who said there really wasn't much they could do. Stalking laws were quite a bit crappier than than they are now,

Starting point is 00:04:21 but they recommended that they keep a record of the calls and messages, you know, just to document. The following Monday, October 28th, the couple was back in London and visited Jan's boat, but they immediately sensed that something was off. They were sure they'd turned the lights off when they left the last time they were there, but they were on now. A couple days later, they got back and smelled the distinct scent of cooking gas. They immediately went and checked the stove, which had been left on. The lockkeeper at the marina told police that a woman with orange hair and olive-toned skin

Starting point is 00:04:55 had attempted to enter the dock area, telling her that she was invited there to have dinner with Dr. Falcowski. The caller indicated to Jan that they knew Debbie's address in Poole, and he truly had no idea how on earth they got a hold of this information until he was talking with his mother about it. His poor mom was horrified. She'd been contacted by the wedding florist in Poole, telling her that Yon had ordered Debbie some flowers, but had forgotten to send her other address. Now, if you've ever sat through any sort of cyber security training at your job, this might

Starting point is 00:05:28 sound familiar to you. It's called social engineering. It's a way to use psychological manipulation to create security weaknesses or leak sensitive information. Fishing is one example. Another is walking close behind somebody when they use their key card to get into a secure building. Or calling an older woman whose son is getting married and making it seem like he's doing

Starting point is 00:05:51 something nice for his fiance and getting her to divulge some super sensitive information. Yeah, exactly. Now, it's not nearly as sexy. It's typing really fast on the computer and going, I'm in. But it probably requires a lot more social aptitude. So the stalker knew their venue, a hotel called Salterns in Dorset. She sent Jan a message that read tragedy at Salterns. Yon, I am a genuine invited guest. How are you going to avoid me? It was clear the stalker knew the date of the wedding as well. It was a common feature of the messages, September 9th, 2003. It was mentioned often, constantly.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Often as a date of someone's death. As the months wore on, Jan and Debbie kept getting messages almost constantly, and the messages always had little clues that indicated that the person sending them knew exactly what they were up to in their daily life. Like they were being followed. Really, really unsettling. Like they couldn't let their guard down for a single moment. Debbie paid a visit to the dentist to get her teeth whitened, and while she was in the chair,

Starting point is 00:07:04 she heard a sound she'd grown to be apprehensive of over the months, the ping of an incoming text. When she checked her messages after the procedure, she felt the floor dropped out from under her. The message read, Deborah Tart fancied whitening her teeth. teeth. Her mouth could burn. Oh, my God. How on earth this person knew the date of Debbie's teeth whitening appointment was beyond anyone's grasp. It's still not super clear how she got this

Starting point is 00:07:35 info now. It's possible she did more social engineering or maybe the stalker just broke into Debbie's flat and had a look in her calendar. I'm not sure which is creepier, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, obviously, option A and option B are both horrifying. I don't know. I think I'd probably be a little more terrified if she broke into my house, but I wouldn't be happy about either one. It's very creepy to think of these people worming their way into the people in your orbit and like getting information out of them. And so they're both horrendously creepy. Yeah. The police told Yon and Debbie to start really thinking about the people in their lives to contemplate if any of them could be the culprit. On the British show Stalker, Debbie talked about

Starting point is 00:08:16 how this was really the most difficult part of the whole ordeal, having to look at the people closest to her and wonder if they would try to hurt her in such an invasive and cruel way. Meanwhile, the police were pretty confident that they were going to run the phone number through their system, find yon spurned lover, and bing bang bosh, they'd be done in time for tea. Unfortunately for them, their stalker had covered their tracks. They were using an internet number and withheld calls. Looks like the cops Earl Gray was going to go cold because it was time for some real police work. Oh, damn it.

Starting point is 00:08:53 Pain in the ass. We had hobnoms and everything. I know. Their crumpets are going to go stale. To the police, this was basically the perfect crime. Internet numbers were basically untraceable. It was like a Google Voice number before Google Voice was a thing. The police asked Jan to get his phone company to block with health numbers to see what the

Starting point is 00:09:16 stalker would do if she couldn't call her message. Anyone who's been stalked knows that the worst time, aside from when the stalker is harassing you, is when they become silent. Because what are they up to? I can't imagine what Yon and Debbie were thinking in the silence. Was it relief at first? Did they still jump at every ping, at every ring? Did it feel like victory? Was there a certainty that the problem would be back, like a landlord painting of her mold before the next tenant moved in?

Starting point is 00:09:48 When the stalker reached out again, did it feel worse? Yeah, and I'd be really interested to hear listeners' stories about that, because I'm sure some of you have experienced stalking. I mean, just statistically, the likelihood is that multiple people listening have been stalked, and I'd be interested to hear about it. In the UK in the early 2000s, British Telecom had a series of phone boxes where you could email, call, and text, BT, multimedia boxes. The stalker started using those to contact Debbie and Jan.

Starting point is 00:10:16 The great thing for the investigation was that these were traceable, and they could start monitoring this person's movements. Every weekend, Debbie and Jan would drive from London to Dorset. Each Saturday, right before they'd leave, a silent phone call would be made from a railway station in London, either from Liverpool Street or Waterloo. Then silence for two hours, coincidentally, the amount of time a train ride takes to get to Dorset, and then the silent calls would start up again in Dorset. Then quiet again for two hours, and then a flurry of activity back in London. There was some cooperation between the London police and the Dorset police.

Starting point is 00:10:55 D.I. Steve Thorpe decided to begin surveillance on the pay phones that were being used the most frequently around Dorset every Saturday. A brilliant idea that unfortunately turned over no leads. As the wedding got nearer, the text got more frightening. One read, you're going to be burnt down in your wedding dress. another said you tart you can't marry yon s as a man will send you to heaven i think s as a s means special air service but i'm not sure let us know if you know for sure a series of texts in the weeks leading to the wedding read please don't marry fd t which we later found out stood for fucking debby tart that's her little affectionate nickname for debby you can do better look at you your life is in danger give Pembertos up now before we enter Marina Yacht, we'll do well to bullet you down.

Starting point is 00:11:50 Boats have been tamper. Get them out of water before explode. Yon can't go out on race, take R4-7 out of Hamsworth Trophy. We could have met how many opportunities we lost. Now it will all end in tragedy. One last chance. Let D.T. go, or you are going to. I make sure it will not be a wedding on 9603. You had your last chance. It's all an SAS man's hand. Cancel wedding. Gunmen work at Salterns. Gun and ready for big feast. And they said they were invited guests, which has got to be creepy like you're thinking, we invited this person to the wedding? Who is it? Who is it? You've got to be going through your whole guest list looking and you're getting these texts all the time. One said, hope you spoke to the wedding coordinator. Cancel it or I'm ready.

Starting point is 00:12:42 gunmen, work at Salterns, gun inside hotel, what else can I ask for? If you've ever worked with people for whom English is a second or third language, you probably already notice that these texts sound like they came from somebody who did not grow up speaking English, which could be a small help to the investigators if they could narrow down some suspects, right? And more frightening than the text, the chef at the hotel was approached one day by a dark-haired woman who asked about the wedding couple's cake. this wedding had to be password protected

Starting point is 00:13:12 because a stalker had tried to cancel it four separate times so they had to sign a friggin password to them four times like bitch chill you're like a jealous mother-in-law at this point hashtag boy mom hashtag boy mom

Starting point is 00:13:29 and on top of everything else somebody had left a threatening note under Debbie's door for poor Debbie it was almost too much In an interview, she later said that all this made her contemplate taking her own life, which is so sad. She said, to me, that was the only way out, and it was the only way I could actually stop this from hurting everybody as well as me. With no end in sight and pressure mounting from the stalker, Debbie Pemberton and Dr. Jan Falcowski's relationship was pretty much in tatters. A time that was supposed to be full of love and magic and beauty was instead marred with fear and suspicious.

Starting point is 00:14:07 and rage. And this included Dr. Falcowski having an affair. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think that this is an excuse for what he did because it certainly hurt Debbie. She'd been hurt more than enough already. But pain and trauma like this can put people in a bad headspace where they might be more likely to make a bad decision. And like, except for children, obviously, there's no such thing as a perfect victim. Jan Falcowski is a victim, just as Debbie is a victim. And He did something bad. We aren't here to judge his behavior because, frankly, that is not our job. If this was Random Guy Campfire, maybe, but I don't really think that podcast would get any traction.

Starting point is 00:14:48 So we'll leave the facts where they lie. He cheated. It was bad. It's not really relevant for our purposes. To be honest, I would totally listen to Random Guy Campfire. Yeah, I would too. But that's what Reddit is for. Reddit is for.

Starting point is 00:15:06 Reddit is Random Guy Campfire. we tackle that on the post show Yeah Subscribe to our Patreon for Random Guy Campfire In her interview with the show Stalker Debbie talks about how This experience affected their relationship

Starting point is 00:15:21 I was a shell Devoid of Life Just a kind of almost like a skeleton Sick, pale I just wanted to fade into the shadows In the background If you said boo to me I'd have jumped out of my skin

Starting point is 00:15:36 I didn't want to be noticed. The phone, the mobile phone actually became a sort of instrument of torture and terror. It sort of drove a wedge between us. The couple had come to a mutual decision to call their engagement off, and they let the police know. The police, however, wanted to ask them not to announce it publicly. Their best bet to catch the stalker was in the act, and they knew that whoever it was would absolutely take a risk to show up at the wedding. The day of the wedding, police officers were posted at Debbie's parents' house, at Debbie's flat, at telephone boxes all around town.

Starting point is 00:16:39 In fact, time off was canceled that weekend for police to ensure that they had enough officers to cover the amount of work to be done. At 8.30, on the day they were supposed to be married, Jan and Debbie got a bunch of messages, one after the other. One of which is the most infamous in the entire case. It said, you be dead. That message would go on to be the title of the Made for TV movie about this case. that premiered in New Zealand. That's my least favorite reggae band. You be dead.

Starting point is 00:17:12 You be 40, awesome. You be dead. That's so much. The police were able to trace the text to Bournemouth. Just as they arrived to Bournemouth, they got a trace from a call from Poole and Dorset. They re-centered their base of operations around the hotel. The calls kept coming in, all over Poole.

Starting point is 00:17:34 At 1149, the stalker placed. a call to Debbie's parents from outside the pool key. An officer saw a woman leaving the phone box right after that call, and they made the arrest right away. So who was this terrifying, looming stalker that had ruined two lives and sent two police departments scrambling? Well, she was a small, stringy-haired woman in her 40s. Her name was Maria Marchezy. She was born in Argentina, and she worked as a cashier in a shop at the time of her arrest. When they searched her home, they found scraps of paper with the names of Jan's boats,

Starting point is 00:18:12 the wedding venue's brochure, the hotel chef's number, and a planner with a note from August of 2002 with a note that read, G to make appointment with Falkowski? It turned out that Maria had been in a relationship with a man named George, who was a patient of Dr. Falkowski's. Maria sometimes went with George to his appointments, which is how she became acquainted with Jan. Jan, for his part, had no idea who Maria was when the police told him and Debbie who they'd arrested.

Starting point is 00:18:41 God, it's not even his patient. It's his patient's weirdo girlfriend that he probably said three words to. This is just absolutely bonkers to me. And this was far and away enough evidence to charge her with harassment. After she was in jail, Jan and Debbie received no further contact. In extended interrogation, Maria said she had nothing to do with the stalking, and because the evidence in her apartment was so meager, the prosecutor wasn't feeling super great about conviction. Personally, I think it's a pretty damn good circumstantial case, especially if you can get some witnesses to pick her out of a lineup, but that's just me. Yeah, one witness, the girl at the marina couldn't pull her out of a lineup,

Starting point is 00:19:21 but that's because she was wearing a wig when she was sneaking onto the boat. Like, she showed up at the hotel a bunch. She showed up at a boating event that Jan was at once and was notably creepy, and the description matched her to a tea, short lady, Spanish, all of, skin tone. The chef at the hotel did, in fact, pick her out of a lineup, by the way. So this was a rock-solid case, in my opinion. Well, and he was the one that spoke to her face-to-face, right? Like, she came right up to him. So, I mean, the chef would be a good witness, in my opinion. Yeah. Our prosecution rate would be either like 12% or 200%.

Starting point is 00:19:55 True. Either way, it'd be interesting, you know, for us to give it a try. Either way, the prosecutors dropped the case because all they could conclusively link her to, was one call. Naturally, when Maria was released, Debbie was pissed and scared, but I think her main emotion was anger, which I completely get. I'm an anger-forward kind of gal myself. Jan was confused and upset.

Starting point is 00:20:22 Maria wasn't going to face any consequences for her actions. Imagine how infuriating. Like, this woman ruined your life, ruined your relationship. You were getting ready to get married and nothing. Almost as soon as Maria set her diminutive little feet on free soil, the silent calls and the harassing text started up again. Who's surprised? Raise your hand. Nobody? Yeah, didn't think so. Debbie, for her part, decided to move to France. She just wanted peace. She wanted safety. She wanted to be done with it. So she left and I do not blame her.

Starting point is 00:21:00 For her part, Maria's ire was about to focus entirely on Jan. The police arrested her again for stalking, and were interviewing her again for stalking and trying to get her to confess yet again to stalking, when she up and told them one hell of a story. She said that in 2002, Jan Falcowski had raped her, and she could prove it to them. She gave them a pair of her underwear that she'd saved in a plastic baggie ever since that day, and when the panties were sent for DNA, analysis, they found semen from Jan Falcowski, as well as Maria's DNA. Senior Crown prosecutor Kay Scudder decided to pursue the case. To her, it seemed pretty open and shut. Dr. Falcowski, who's a psychiatrist, had drugged her with a glass of soda in his office, moved her unconscious body to her flat, and raped her. She came too with Dr. Falcowski on

Starting point is 00:22:01 top of her. So they pulled Jan in for an interview, but some Something about the way they asked him struck him as odd, so very wisely he brought in a lawyer. He was completely gobsmacked when they told him what Maria had alleged. Obviously, he denied everything, but they had DNA evidence. And in February of 2004, Dr. Falkowski was arrested. Jan was suspended from work and forbidden from contacting any of his colleagues at the hospital he worked for. He had his passport taken away and was forbidden from going abroad, news articles. were published about the allegation with his face and name printed.

Starting point is 00:22:40 When the police questioned him, he resolutely denied the accusation. I did not do this. I don't know what the hell she's talking about. But there was that DNA evidence, so the case just kept on moving forward. There was one detective with some doubts, though. DCI Malcolm Davis said he took Maria's allegation incredibly seriously, but there were just some details that were hard to swallow. It seems strange to him, first of all, that she'd been, through several interviews with detectives before she'd come forward with this info.

Starting point is 00:23:10 Then there were the details of her story. Dr. Falcowski's office was on the upper floor of a Victorian building, so he'd have had to carry her unconscious body down a bunch of stairs and get her into his flashy sports car in broad daylight without anybody seeing. Then take her to her apartment, carry her up three flights of stairs again without being seen. Now, we have said this before, but it bears repeating every time that most reported sex assaults are genuine, okay? People do not generally make this stuff up for funsies. Right. We happen to host a show where bad people do bad things, and sometimes those bad

Starting point is 00:23:51 things are making up false rape allegations. It is never our intention to pick apart a victim statement, but Maria was absolutely lying and doing her part to make it much, much harder for real survivors to be taken seriously. So, you know, fuck her for that. Absolutely. That's what's so infuriating to me about it. It's like, you know, we have enough problems already being believed and people do this kind of shit. It's just unconscionable. Not to mention the damage it does to the person they're accusing. Jesus. Yeah, 100%. The woman that Dr. Falkowski was, currently dating was named Bethan Ansel. In her mind, this was obviously just one of Maria's ploys to get Yon's attention, and the

Starting point is 00:24:36 police had to do their due diligence to protect the victims that came forward. It was going to be over soon, right? And Yon's frustration was that while they were pursuing him on this charge, the police were no longer investigating the stalking charge at all. Like, it's like they couldn't, like, you know, pat their head and rub their belly at the same time. If all that wasn't bad enough, Maria had a summons sent to Debbie Pemberton, who had settled in France by now to give evidence against her ex at a trial. Great.

Starting point is 00:25:09 Sent her a subpoena. Like, Jesus. Debbie said that this letter sent her into another, like, suicidal spiral. Like, what an evil fucking thing to do. How is that allowed? Like, did the prosecution do that? Like, what the fuck? I don't know, but I feel, I think, honestly, I think, honestly,

Starting point is 00:25:25 Honestly, of all the people in the story, Debbie is the one that I had the most, like, visceral, like, reaction. Like, oh, my God, that poor woman. She just went through Absolute Hill. Yeah. And I'm so curious if that means that Maria got access to Debbie's address again. Yeah, I think it has to, right? Or somebody did. Her defense team. Somebody. It's awful. It was looking pretty grim for the doctor until about three weeks before the trial when his defense team did additional testing on the underwear. because a third person's DNA was found on the underwear. The third person's DNA belonged to Bethann Ansel, his current girlfriend.

Starting point is 00:26:09 Bethann and Jan hadn't started seeing each other until after Maria said Dr. Falkowski had attacked her. Oh, my God. Maria had gone through Dr. Falkowski's trash and stole a condom and put it in. her underwear. Wow. And do you think she tried to inseminate herself? Like, okay, don't answer that. I hate myself for asking.

Starting point is 00:26:36 Don't do it. I hope not. I mean, I kind of feel like, I feel like she might have had a dual motive. She might have just taken it thinking, this will be my ace in the hole if I get caught because I can accuse him of doing something to me sexually. But yeah, there might have also been a thought of the other thing, because then she can trap him, you know. into being with her because she's having his baby. Or maybe you just make Debbie mad enough to leave. Who knows? But yeah, this woman is obviously not stable. So who knows what she was thinking.

Starting point is 00:27:06 So that's it, right? Couldn't have possibly been him. They have to drop the case. You think? Well, no. It took the prosecution almost the entire remaining three weeks to drop the case. The justice system had let Dr. Jan Falcowski down. He'd been tarred. and feathered in the press for months, and now his stalking case was ice cold. So Jan's reputation was still demolished, even with his name cleared, and Maria was still out there, probably still plotting, waiting, like a terrifying little hobgoblin. The thing that galls me as well is that Maria got everything she wanted from her scheming. I know. Jan's relationship was... Yeah, Jan's relationship was destroyed. He didn't get married.

Starting point is 00:27:51 And also, like, when you make a false allegation like that, and it's... It's especially of a prominent person, and he was a prominent person. He was a, you know, very well-known doctor. So his face and namer plastered all over the media with this horrible allegation. And then they find out it's not him, but that's not going to be splashed all over the media, right? People are just going to remember the initial allegation. So that's going to stick to him. Now, in this case, probably not because now we know all this stuff about Maria.

Starting point is 00:28:19 And it's a fascinating story. So it got out there big time. But at the time, that was probably just. infuriating for him, that he couldn't just go around with a megaphone saying, hey, I was exonerated, you know. Well, and how often do you hear like, oh, well, so-and-so is a pervert? And then you look at, look it up and like, oh, no, they're not. They got proven, you know, not a pervert. Yeah. People just remember the initial allegation. That's the sad thing about a false allegation. Maria wasn't one to take the indignity of being called a liar in the press lying down.

Starting point is 00:28:53 When she found out that the case was being dropped, DCI Malcolm Davis got a furious phone call from her. And then, Prosecutter started getting repeated calls over an hour long each, saying she'd made the worst decision in the history of the Crown Prosecution Service, and she had to reverse the decision and asking why the case had been dropped. The switchboard had to start taking her calls rather than her taking her direct line. When stalkers no longer have access to their victims, they will often up the ante. That's when Maria showed up at Kay's office, telling the reception desk that she had an appointment and needed to see Kay right away. When she talked to the police about this, they were like, oh, yeah, this lady is knuck and futs, dude. One of them said, she was the most dangerous woman he'd ever dealt with and that there was a risk to me and other people involved in the case. Oh, yeah, now you get it?

Starting point is 00:29:48 It reminds me so much of Diane Schaefer. If you haven't listened to that episode, you absolutely need to. It's another stalking case, complete bananas. And she, like, during all the frustrating time of her victim trying to get taken seriously, there was some kind of court hearing, and the judge, like, clearly didn't think it was that big of a deal until she started stalking him. And then he finally realized that she was a scary Mary. But it took that. Kay changed her routes to work every day

Starting point is 00:30:19 and didn't come in at the same time. She wore casual clothes to the office. The Crown Prosecution Service actually paid to put a panic room in her house with a button to call the police in her bedroom. They put a security door in the front and added CCTV. And I'm glad that they were taken this seriously,

Starting point is 00:30:37 but it's incredibly frustrating that these are the same people that threw their hands up when Yon and Debbie were going through the same thing, right? Just... Dorset Prosecution refused to pick up the charges, and London prosecution just let the stalking case sit there while they were chasing their tails over a false allegation that really didn't make a lot of sense from Jump. They knew perfectly well what Maria Marchese was capable of before she started stalking case gutter. Nobody was paying for Yon and Debbie to have a panic room. DCI Malcolm Davis decided that he was going to get justice for Yon and Debbie, though.

Starting point is 00:31:11 He'd need to get Yon on his side, and unsurprisingly, the good doctor wasn't feeling especially keen on helping out the police at that moment. Along with the team of four officers, D.C.I. Davis started putting in overtime to put together a case against Maria. They needed a fast arrest because they kind of shot themselves in the foot with the whole Yon-Falkowski prosecution. CPS said that due to the notoriety of the case, any publicity could be prejudicial and rule out a trial. Prosecution had to ask if Maria was even fit to stand trial. Now, it's obvious that she's unwell from a civilians' perspective, but from a legal perspective, no way. She's crazy like a fox.

Starting point is 00:31:54 She took so many countermeasures to prevent herself from being caught that she was definitely, definitely aware of the difference between right and wrong, and that, as you all probably know, is the standard in the courtroom. It's not whether you have mental health issues, it's whether you know right from wrong. So, finally, finally, it was Grabas time. Maria Marchese was charged with harassment, threatening to kill, and perverting the course of justice. I think that's what we call obstruction over here.

Starting point is 00:32:25 She was sentenced to nine years in prison. Now, this was after five years of stalking. As you may know, campers, stalkers can have unbelievable staying powder. I have actually seen cases where stalkers have gone on for decades. There's a crazy case we might end up covering at some point where an attorney represented a woman one time, and she stalked him for the next 30-some years. Unbelievable. Dr. Jan Falcowski is still working as a psychiatrist and seems to have a very successful practice as well as work as an expert witness, which is kind of cool. As of the last show about his case, he and Bethann were still together.

Starting point is 00:33:06 But obviously that's not really any of our business, but, you know, we really hope that he has found peace and also some really, really fast boats, because he's a boat racer, remember? The last info I could find about Debbie is that she's settled in France and she's happy with a new partner. So glad to hear that. About her ordeal, she said, I'm a different person. I'm no longer so open with people. She took away 11 months of my life and destroyed a relationship. But ironically, on one level, it did me. a favor. If I had married Yon, it would not have worked, and I would be divorced by now. I'm convinced now that he was the wrong man for me. As for Maria, well, she's definitely out of prison by now. Police, in the course of their investigation, discovered that she'd stalked at least one other man prior to Yon and Debbie. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Stalkers are one of the more terrifying

Starting point is 00:34:00 human creatures in our world. They will stop at nothing to get in contact with their victims. They blow hot and cold. They're both furious with and have deep adoration for their targets. And the legal system has no real way of stopping them until they actually make threats or even actually do something, which is the terrifying thing. Thank God this case has a happy ending. And we're so relieved that we don't have more news about Maria now that she's out. Hope it stays that way. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. If you haven't booked your spot yet on the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise from November 3rd

Starting point is 00:34:44 through November 7th, you better get on it because there's only a handful of rooms left. Join Katie and me, plus last podcast on the left, scared to death and sinisterhood for a rocking good time at sea. Going to the Bahamas, I'm so excited. You can pay all at once or set up a payment plan, but you've got to have a fan code to book a ticket. So go to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and take it from there. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Holly, Autumn, Rose, Jill, and Lee. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back.

Starting point is 00:35:17 And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. Thank you. Thank you.

True Crime Campfire - U Be Dead: The Stalking of Dr. Falkowski

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