The attempted kidnapping at my house
I suspect he intended to get murdery
A year ago I was sleeping in late, and woke up to firm knocking at my door. I stumbled out of bed, assuming it was logistical - people trying to mow my lawn, maybe?
It was a man who asked me if I was [my full legal name]. I said yes. He then said he was the FBI, and showed me a badge, told me I was under arrest for “prostitution and drug dealing”, and to come with him. I had just woken up, said “what” a lot of times. I asked if I could verify his identity by calling the cops, and he said no. I asked if there was an FBI number I could call, and he said yes, he’d give me one.
I went back inside to put on a shirt (I was wearing just a bralette and a wrapped blanket) and to grab my phone and… I don’t know what. I was pumped with adrenaline.
If I’d had more time to think, I probably would have realized it was suspicious that he’d shown up as one person, not two, and that he’d allowed me to go back into my house to do who-knows-what, and that it was weird to get arrested for things I wasn’t doing - I hadn’t been escorting lately, and despite writing about doing psychedelics many years ago, I’d never dealt drugs. But it all happened so fast. And “someone impersonating an FBI agent trying to kidnap you” was way lower on my list of probabilities than “you’re actually getting arrested for some dumbass reason.”
But I’d practiced this kind of scenario in my mind beforehand, because stalkers were not new to me. In past years I’ve had to evacuate my house, hire bodyguards, and at one point a private investigator. I’d already spent a few years paranoid, and had practiced things like “make sure you’re not being followed when you go home from a public event” and “if a law enforcement officer ever tries to arrest you, make sure you verify their identity first”
So despite believing him, I asked him to verify his identity as a formality. I was planning to take the phone number he gave me and google to see if it was in fact for the FBI, but that’s as far as I’d gotten.
When I came back to the door, he was gone - most likely spooked by my intent to call the police.
My first thought was that it was a prank. Of course, there was some more sinister stuff online. There were threads on forums dedicated to doxing me, posting my own address and addresses of my family members. I’d seen people posting my address, encouraging others to show up and kill me. (People really hate sex workers.)
But I thought actual murder attempts were probably unlikely. My insane stalkers seemed generally incompetent, and base rates of targeted homicide from strangers is pretty low, right?
But in the following months of the (real) FBI investigation, and after a search warrant, I learned:
He’d been silently tracking me for years
This wasn’t the first time he’d flown to Texas to visit my house; he had come some months ago to stake out the place.
At which point he’d stolen some jewelry belonging to my sister
When they searched his house they found a garrote, fake license plates, a hunting knife, duct tape, and rope. He’d ordered the garrote it a week after he discovered my new address.
He’d also made a shopping list where “garrote/clay cutter” and '“knife” was included with things like “FBI badge”, “FBI jacket”, which indicated the weapons were intended for me
They found names and personal information of two other sex workers in his house
Based on these facts, I currently think the most likely explanation for his actions is that he was intending to get me into his car and then strangle me to death.
Because he was also collecting info on other sex workers, my guess is that the motivation for him doing this was that I was a sex worker.
After it happened I delayed in going to the police because I’m a sex worker, and Texas has historically been pretty arrest-y towards people like me.