My old stlaker keeps haunting me. She keeps checking out my harassment blog (Main Page, Section About Melissa) - the one I wrote about some stalking and harassment that happened to me from a rogue group of problem ham radio operators back about 2004-2006 that she was a part of. At the moment, she's not "stalking" or "harassing" me now. She's just...repeatedly checking out this blog, over and over, month after month, year after year. It's just kinda...creepy. But then she was kinda creepy. It's as if she's waiting for me to get in some sort of trouble over it and she's hoping that it will be taken down some day. Not going to happen. This thing has been observed by people in local police agencies, and even...the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This blog remains, still. Lawyers don't want to touch it. They're too afraid to. ...Because nothing in my blog is untrue, and no one wants to start anything which might unintentionally begin any SORT of an official investigation into it...which would be mandatory if anyone started a civil or criminal case over it. Moral being, if you're going to stalk someone, don't leave behind an evidence trail, and strange, inexplicable circumstances which call attention to themselves. And those abound...everywhere. Melissa's no genious at stalking. I was able to use that against her, in fact...
Her name is Melissa Shires. She's had other names: "Melissa D Shires" in court records in West Palm Beach, "Melissa Shires-Royce" and "Melissa Royce" in Alachua County court records. People in the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society and the Gator Amateur Radio Club knew her as "Melissa Royce". Online, she always uses the same username: "mesochic".
She must have recently remarried as her name is now "Melissa Shires-DeSantis". So I guess, obviously, she must have divorced Phil Royce and then in recent years moved up to Providence, Rhode Island. Pretty damned quick marriage for someone who just recently moved up there. I guess she fled Alachua County after people down here got wise to her and figured out what she was doing. See my harassment blog for more information about Melissa and the really serious problems that I've had from her. She was such a scary nightmare and I'm so very frightened of that woman and all of the things that she was able to pull with extremely important people in emergency management, NWS, and Red Cross circles. She and her now ex-husband Phil Royce both together tag-team-stalked me and caused these agencies to think that I was a very serious problem without anyone once taking any steps to verify facts first.
If I had to characterize Melissa, I'd have to use the term "sociopath". But then that would be a personal application of the term, and not one that any actual clinical diagnosis has yet come up with. Unfortunately, there have been none. And if it were up to me I'd demand it be done. If they could apply the Hare PCL/R test to her I'm willing to bet, very confident in fact, that she would score pretty high. She's power hungry. She wants glory and fame. She seeks power. She attaches herself to important people to get it. If anyone figures her out or gets in her way, she attempts to destroy them - behind the scenes, under the table, quietly, outside of the normal, mandatory Human Resources means and ways of handling, spreading malicious gossip, encouraging intense ridicule, and disassociation. From West Palm Beach, to Alachua County, to Providence, she seems to consistently and regularly seek it within the circles of Emergency Management, the Red Cross, and the NWS. As well, she seems to have an affinity attachment - where she seeks her first "in" - through the local SKYWARN programs. This initially gives her some public service on her local resume, and those first associative contacts in NWS, EM, and the Red Cross. From there, she usually tries to develop ties to people up the ladder, and seeks friends who can supply her with useful information about people whom she considers to be in her way, and possible threats to her goals. First she acts like a friend to get all sorts of information out of people. Then she graduates to spreading gossip about certain people she targets as possbily detrimental to her goals, and immediately gets to work on causing them problems in their associations with others. They usually end up disassociated and looked down upon after a while. She buddies up with the Emergency Managers and Red Cross Directors. This gives her some power to hide behind and locks her in tight with the agencies and gives her a sort of invulnerability. Then she begins taking classes on becoming an "Emergency Manager". She was actually in that final stage down here in Alachua County when local Emergency Manager, Dave Donnelly, finally fired her after receiving too many complaints from other people in EM, ham radio circles, SERT circles, etc. She may have given up the SKYWARN door, though. If anyone did an online keyword search for Melissa and used the word "SKYWARN" next to it in Google, that would be it for her. My blog and all of its subpages that related to her would pop up. So she probably avoided any attachments to SKYWARN while up in Providence. That would lead to her discovery through my public blogs.
I was the Founder and Coordinator of Alachua County SKYWARN. I'd created it pretty much on my own way back in 1997. Had to. When I asked for volunteers to help, as usual, everyone fled to the four cardinal directions. That's what happens when you ask hams to help. Melissa appeared about 2004, after moving up from West Palm Beach and not long after she arrived, all the animals of Hell began to surface, and she very adeptly caused a great many people in ham radio, emergency management, NWS, ARRL, and even in general public circles to believe that an innocent man was actually someone to be much feared and even hated. She painted me to be a "serious problem" as both local EM and the NWS put it during a meeting about me and ACS. I was not allowed to attend that meeting. And to this day, I STILL DO NOT KNOW just what the hell it was that I did wrong, or what I was being accused of.
So yah. Things in the meantime ended up getting so bad for me at Melissa's hand that I had to actually write a blog about my harrassment experiences with the hams, and make it highly public. ...Because going to the police didn't work. All they did was help the hams, even if it was unwittingly. I don't see that as a validating excuse for what they did...I mean, helping the hams because they thought they were doing the right thing. What would happen is this... The hams would stalk and harass me. I'd call the police and file an official complaint and an investigation would begin. During the ongoing investigations, the emergency manager would inapporpiately interfere with the them by telling the involved officers that I was trying to use the law to harass innocent people. Donnelly being their imperious leader, the officers believed he knew what he was talking about. Dave actually had no evidence of me actually being any SORT of a problem and he was acting solely based upon Melissa's word that that I was a problem. You heard me right. I just accused a government official - an Emergency Manager - of deliberate case sabotage through the inappropriate use of his elevated position within Emergency Management to convince officers who did not know either way that I was the problem and cause them to do things to delay or interfere with the outcome of criminal complaints that I had filed, and with their investigations. In other words...the man asked for "favors" which were intended to circumvent normal due process and my civil rights. ...Including knowing what I was being accused of, who was accusing me, being able to FACE my accusers and answer in my own defense, and to a trial by jury if absolutely necessary. Mr. Donnelly used his power to villainize me and to deny me fair due process. He used the power of the County of Alachua to do it, while in uniform for the County, while on the clock for the County. Unfortunately, this also makes the County responsible for what he did, as well. So now you understand why there has been no official investigations. Dave doesn't want the County to officially know. He'd have to make up stuff in order to explain it. And when you make up stuff, you have to be able to back it up with real evidence and proven facts, which he wouldn't be able to provide. Dave, and the NWS, have both acted solely based upon innuendo. I challenge anyone in the NWS or in EM to prove they even so much as have a signed affidavit from any of their "witnesses". And that's the problem. When they finally get down to asking for that, all of the damage to me and to Alachua County SKYWARN has now already been done, and the hams would ultimately be held responsible for it all and they know it. Melissa and the other hams who caused problems now know they could get into a LOT of trouble. And so the witness base will not pan out. Everyone will run for the hills. None of the witnesses will sign any papers. And when summoned into the courtroom to actually DO that, and push comes to actual shove, those people who were once their best source information against Mr. Sherman and Alachua County SKYWARN will suddenly deny responsibility for their previous statements and claim that they never said those things. They'll also claim that no one held a gun to the heads of EM and/or NWS, and that no one TOLD them they had to take the actions that they did against Mr. Sherman and Alachua County SKYWARN. This is the position that EM and NWS now find themselves in. And they know it. But to continue...
Melissa went to Emergency Management and to the NWS claiming titles and positions that I'd never given her. For example, she claimed that I was stepping down from ACS and handing the Coordinator torch over to her. To back this up, she forged business cards which said "Alachua County SKYWARN" and "Coordinator" on them. She never told me she was doing this. In fact, I found out by accident one day while visiting her house for something and I noticed a huge box of business cards sitting on her desk with "Coordinator" on them. When I asked her what the hell that was about, she feigned that they weren't FOR anybody and that she just wanted to see what some cards would look like with her name and "Coordinator" on them. Right. That's why someone would purchase a thousand cards, not one. ...Just to "see". I got on her ass about that and told her to destroy them.
Then came the day when Melissa callously and deliberately placed my mother's life at risk. I was in the bathroom sitting on the john and not having a good day of it. Mom was in the master bedroom on an O2 machine, struggling to breathe, near the end of her life because she had cancer and was dying. ...And Melissa knew about my mother's condition. I lived at the time in an 80-foot-long single-wide mobile home. My room, and the bathroom, were on the complete opposite end of the home, a good LONG 60-foot walk for someone with cancer to traverse. Melissa calls. I'm on the john. My mother answered. It was Melissa. She said she needed to talk to me and that it was "important". My mother told her that I was on the john, "...Can he call you back?" "No", said Melissa. "It's VERY important and cannot wait and I have to talk to him NOW." My mother then disconnected herself from the O2 machine, and began the trek to reach me in the bathroom.
I started hearing a slap on the walls leading up to the bathroom, followed by severe wheezing. Then another slap, and more wheezing. Then another slap, and more wheezing. Realizing it was my mother, I called out to her. "...Are you alright?" I figured that if she was up and out of bed coming to get me, then something very bad or very serious was happening. Was she having a heart attack?
...What's wrong?!", I said. Then my mother answered....
"...TODD!!! [gasp] ...It's Mel-ISSA!!! [gasp] ...She needs... [gasp] ...to TALK with you... [gasp] ...RIGHT AWAY!!!"
"Didn't you tell her that I was in the bathroom and that I can call her back?"
"I DID!!! [gasp] She said... [gasp] ...that it was VERY important... [gasp] ...and that she needed to talk to you IMMEDIATELY... [gasp] ...and that she wasn't getting off the phone... [gasp] ...until you SPOKE with her!!!
I sat there for a moment, eyes wide and my maw agape, in utter disbelief and shock. I knew damned well that there was no emergency and that Melissa was trying to feign an emergency to get me to answer the phone. I took a breath and gathered myself and quickly cleaned up. I was extremely pissed off, now. I gathered my mother under her arm and escorted her back to the bedroom and reconnected her to the O2 machine and got her a glass of ice water. Then I got on the phone with Melissa.
"WHAT, Melissa!", I said. "What is SO important that putting my mother at RISK like this was so absolutely necessary?!"
"...OH, nothing. I just knew that if I DIDN'T say that it was an emergency then you wouldn't pick up the phone. [giggle]"
I wanted to hit the roof, right there. I listened to what she had to say for a little while, hope against hope that there was something of value in anything that she had to say, and there was none. ...Something to vindicate her for putting my mother through that. She had nothing important to say. There was no real reason for it. She just wanted to bitch...and moan...and whine...and complain about other people, and to try find out information about them from me...which I wouldn't cater to. ...And this was a complaint that many people were making about her. People even in State of Florida EM circles, and in the ARRL hierarchy, were passing around little warning emails about the "little girl who complains a lot", and advising to not to participate in that.
After hanging up the phone with her, I fired off an extremely angry email to her husband begging him for help in getting control of this woman, and letting him know how upset I was for putting my mother's life at risk like that. Maybe Melissa figured...what?...that she's already dying so what's it matter? I was pissed. Instead of understanding, and trying to help, Phil gets angry with me, and now I'm hearing word from Jeff Capehart that Phil is going around on a rampage, talking with people in the NWS and EM circles, and complaining about all the "problems" with Todd and Alachua County SKYWARN. (...Always Mr. Capehart with all the information, you see. ...Always in the know he is. ...Always seeming to have everyone's ear. ...And yet no one ever seems to catch on to that.)
Not long after this, I got an email...actually FROM myself, with my name spelled wrong, from a Yahoo email account, claiming that "...changes are coming real soon for Alachua County SKYWARN." I'd been stalked and harassed and threatened by the hams before and I'd told everyone that if it didn't stop I was going to start calling the police and pressing real charges against people, and to knock it off. Then I got the harassing email. ...And it's from a Yahoo account using my forged name. So I called the police, like every good little victim is supposed to do. In the middle of the investigation, months into the case, Jeff Capehart is bragging to me all of the details about my case...how many emails I'd sent to the officer in charge, how many times I'd even called that officer, what I said to him about meetings I'd had with Chief May, and with Dave Donnelly in complaint of the hams, about what I said about Phil and Melissa, etc. And again, remember...the case was still ongoing. So...like...HOW was a random ham radio operator able to tell me all the intimate details about an ongoing case? ...Because the cop was sharing information with the perpetrators. Why? Because Dave Donnelly had told him that it was more likely that I was the problem and not the people I had filed the case against. This was WRONG. Because of that, the cop developed an attitude against me, and refused to gather IP logs, and he let the expiration dates come and go, and the case died.
...So because of the Emergency Manager's inappropriate interference, the cops would sabotage the still-ongoing cases - refusing to collect evidence, delaying cases I'd file so that expiration times for evidence gathering would expire. In one case, they actually locked me out of the room containing a server that I ran (see the Alachua County EMWIN Project) when I called the police after losing control of my mouse one day while remoting in to make some changes to the EMWIN software. It was later discovered that that incident was actually perpetrated by a friend of Melissa's named Jeff Capehart, W4UFL, who one day, when we were alone, even admitted to me that it WAS INDEED HE who had hacked into the server. I'd logged in to the server remotely to make some updates and changes to the EMWIN sofware. As soon as the screen finished painting I lost control of my mouse. It was February 14th, 2009, at about 12:30am. I could only watch while he went into DOS, through various directories, and eventually went into database files containing names and telephone numers of EMWIN customers! Because of how Dave Donnelly and the GARC Faculty Advisor had presented it to UPD, I ended up locked away from my own computer, while the perpetrator was given full access to it because at the time he was the club's computer administrator. UPD took my key and after that did nothing at all. They didn't even file an official case report! That was completely inapproriate considering that this was a COMPUTER CRIMES INVESTIGATION! I never got my investtigation. Soon on the heels of this, Dave Donnelly fires off an email to Faculty Advisor Jay Garlitz demanding that all of the EMWIN equipment be packed up and handed over to the Alachua County Office of Emergency Management. (It was one of the rare occasions where Dave actually included his official business tagline in an email.) I actually had to threaten a lawsuit against ACOEM, and to involve the Press, to get them to back off. The equipment no longer belonged to Emergency Management. Too many years had gone by and a lot of the equipment had failed and I'd spent too much of my own money on keeping everything going and in replacing equipment and parts to let it all be taken away by some dumbass who didn't understand what was actually going on. I mean, we're talking about by now THOUSANDS of dollars that I had personally put into all of the equipment and software. That was not going to happen. Turns out, according to Mr. Always-In-The-Know-Capehart, Melissa's then husband Phil had eyes on the equipment and wanted it personally for use with the ACOEM's own ham radio club.
It was pretty scary all the things that were happening all around me because Melissa and some other hams had falsely accused me of something. I was actually being attacked now by people in real government agencies with whom I'd never had a previous problem with before. I couldn't even get a proper police complaint filed or have an investigation started - for anything because people in EM were interfering with the cases...deliberately! The cops would feign cooperation, and feign going through the motions, but do nothing - and happen to take a whole lot of time to do it. Melissa had that much control of everyone in all the key places. I wasn't able to make any of the harassments stop, either. There was nothing TO stop the hams...and they all seemed to know it. The Emergency Manager was actually helping them, thinking that I was the problem not they. And the cops were helping them because the Emergency Manager was inappropriately interfering - TELLING them that I was the problem. Hell, when the Emergency Manager found out that our EMWIN server and ground station equipment were going to be kicked off of the rooftop of the Shands Dental Science Building (according to Jeff, the Emergency Manager had implied to the GARC Faculty Advisor that I was making stuff up and that the hacking of the EMWIN server had probably never happened), he sent the Faculty Advisor an email with his official ACOEM taglilne signature attached to it, giving it the appearance of something "official", with the intent of trying to intimidate the Faculty Advisor into turning over all our EMWIN ground station equipment to them - thousands of dollars worth of equipment! - before the Faculty Advisor had any chance to think about it and realize what was actually going on. Neither GARC nor ACOEM owned it and they had no legal CLAIM to it, either! It had actually been signed OVER to Alachua County SKYWARN by John Fleming, of FDEM in Tallahassee. It was ours. So in other words, yet again without any fact-finding done first, the local EMA tried to use coercive intimidation to acquire equipment that did not belong to it - to in turn be given as a gift to the very same hams who were causing so many problems! So yah...I actually had to threaten to file a civil suit against ACOEM before Donnelly finally got scared at the possible attention to what he was doing and let it go! And I had to threaten to file a lawsuit against GARC, too, before they finnally started hearing me. And then, before I could take back possession of the equipment, the UF lawyers even made me sign a document first - stating that I would not turn around and sue anyone. And I couldn't get the equipment back UNTIL I signed it first. That's COERSION! To top it all off, GARC still has our 4-bay Cushcraft transmitting antenna, and 200' feet of RG-8 cable, and 200' of some pretty expensive 9913 hardline cable, and a Polyphasor. They kept it all; TOOK it from us, citing that they "needed it for the club." So when we fianlly got our equipment back, they had stolen more than a few hundred dollars worth of stuff from us that we never got reimbursed for.
All of this (and more)...because some hams called someone a "problem", and were never asked to prove it.
Melissa got a lot of official people to believe that I was such a serious problem that I needed to be "dealt" with. And she had Dave Donnelly wrapped around her finger.
Finally, I wrote the harassment blog - partly as a tool to try to get some control back in my life, to call attention to what Melissa and other hams were doing, and especially, in the hopes that the unwanted public attention would put fear into the hearts of them and make them stop. That blog was a genious move because it actually WORKED...most PERFECTLY. ...Better in fact than I had hoped it would.
Over the years since, Melissa keeps checking my blog. She does it so often in fact that it actually calls attention to itself in my IP logs and I can't help but notice it. She keeps checking it, obsessively. She can't stop. She can't seem to just let go of me. And every time she does, every time she checks again, it's like a red flag...it's very obvious. ...And every time she does, I can see WHERE she's hitting from. It's like...I could WATCH her moving from Alachua County, and fleeing to Rhode Island. My web counters would detect all of this activity and log it each time.
As an excellent smooth-talker who was able to convince public officials in local emergency management and in the National Weather Service that an innocent man was a very serious "problem"...she was a genious. But as for covering her tracks, and hiding her crimes, keeping her mouth shut, etc. - she's sort of an utter moronic, imbesilic failure. She just can't do it right. When Melissa hates, she gets a tunnel-vision focus on causing her enemies pain and suffering. She is UNABLE to put it down and I was able to use it against her to call attention to herself. She's so predictable with this focus that you can bank on it. It's a sick, twisted, sadistic character trait in her. She CAN'T put down the hate - even if putting it down would mean to avoid detection. She gets so focused on "beating up" her enemies that she forgets what's in front of her and what's around her and who can hear the sadistic things she brags about. She consistently fails to watch her peripheral, and her six, and she gets caught. And that was actually what led to her downfall down here. I didn't have to do any real hard work. She was so obsessive in her abuses that she brought herself down, and left evidence in the form of multiple witnesses and a physical trail of vindictive things done that can today still be referenced.
As a result of the IP logs (see example), I was able to recognize that Melissa had apparently fled up to RI - where she is also apparently now attempting to get in with EM and the Red Cross up there, too...just like she did here.
Here, both ACOEM and the Red Cross fired her simultaneously for forging business cards, advertising titles she didn't actually have, being mean and abusive to innocent people, stalking and harassing them when they didn't do things "her" way. You know...your basic power-monger. She also had a nasty bad habit of calling people up at various hours of the day and night and demanding that they talk to her about really inconsequential things. She'd ring their phones off the HOOK. And all she'd do was complain about people, while keeping you from doing more important things. And if you didn't pick up she'd get angry and ring again and again and again until you finally picked up. She used to call me up at home, at work, while I was 200 miles away doing Census work. I'd tell her to stop and she'd just ignore me. She was such a majorly exasperating pain in the ass about her need for gossip and information about other people. She just couldn't put it down. She's preys upon everyone's want to "let the strangeness go" and to "just ignore it"; and unfortunately, that is EXACTLY how she is able to keep getting away with it for as long as she does.
Both agencies sent her their dismissal letters at the exact same time, and neither agency was even aware that the other was doing it! Now she's up in Rhode Island, trying to get in with their EM and Red Cross angncies. Oh my god! Are you kidding me? Are Providence Emergency Management and the Providence Red Cross in for the same thing, themselves? Are there going to be more innocent victims who are going to be treated same as I was? Who's name and career is she going to ruin and destroy, next? I don't know. I fear for those people, though. I worry that no one will do much more than a basic-level background check on her, and won't EVER think to check the internet...
(sigh)
She needs to stop. She knows what she did. Why does she keep coming back? Does she not LIKE that I blogged about what happened to me? Well, you know?...SORRY, Missy. The laws don't prevent me from writing about all the bad things that actually did happen to me. I have a right to talk about it. God. She was so bad that no one down here would work with her anymore. Then she got fired from VOLUNTEER PUBLIC SERVICE angencies! How the hell does THAT happen? So she fled town to someplace where no one knew her, I guess. ...Where innocent people have no clue who she is, or about the power that she needs and has to have and that she hunts for, and the damage that she can do with it.
I think she has this faint hope that someone in the NWS, or local EM, or elsewhere, will "take care of that Todd guy" and make his stupid blogs go away. So she keeps checking in now and then on that very hope. Fact is, the blog HAS been visited by GARS, GARC, the ARRL, Emergency Management, the NWS, GPD, UPD, ASO, the State Attorney's Office, and good lord!...even the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the past few years...and I've got the IP logs to prove it. It's not like no one knows about its existence. They've all been hitting it ever since the blog first went up in 2009. It's been many years now. If they were going to do something they would have by now. Besides... ALL of the Statutes of Limitations have run out for them now, anyway. And yet, no one has ever made attempt to do anything about the blog. My blog still remains! I've been issued no C&D's, no restraining orders, no subpoenas to appear. I've received no emails, no letters, no phone calls from anyone official. No lawyers or agents have knocked at my door. And they won't. It's not going to happen. It'd be political suicide. And she'll get NO ONE to step forward to be a witness to help her out...no one whom she'd duped into helping her in the past. Not gonna happen. Because no one wants to step forward and give me a NAME to even one person who HELPED her cause me so much pain and suffering. I'd either put them in jail for their abuses of power and/or sue them for everything that they had...and they know it. So, how can it be that so MANY agencies of the law have visited my blog on specific REQUEST of some other agencies and yet...in all those years...NOTHING has happened? ...Because their lawyers are all saying the same thing: "If what this guy is saying really did happen and it really is true then our best legal advice to you is to just leave it alone and NOT make any waves!" I know what my blog means to people. My blog is my secret self-defense weapon. Picking up a sword against it just thrusts the sword right back at my attackers, and they know it. It's a serious, SERIOUS can of worms for them.
[pause]
Remember the "Which cup has the poison in it?" scene from The Princess Diaries? Really...The poison only works against THEM, not me. I'm NOT worried about it.
She probably used the same drills that she used with us in convincing people up there to work with her...
"I have lots of previous experience with SKYWARN."
"I was a Coordinator with West Palm Beach SKYWARN for twenty years."
"I've run a net before."
"I've done this before."
"I've done that before."
And yet, she seems to not ever know how to DO things, and always needs you to hold her hand, while doing it, and no one ever thinks all that much about it. Right?
She'll probably claim that she was "Coordinator" of Alachua County SKYWARN, too, even though it's a lie. Well no. I take that back. She won't do that. Not if she's smart. Someone might actually look that up, and then she'd be screwed. So I say that she's more likely to not say a WORD about Alachua County SKYWARN at all, in fact. Heh-heh-heh. ...Not if she's smart.
Meantime, she should just go away and leave me alone. If she doesn't like this, well I'll say it again...she shouldn't have done what she DID then. It's as simple and as complicated as that. Nothing she did was ever necessary. No one held a gun to her head and FORCED her to be mean and vindictive to people. She only has herself to blame for her own actions.
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