Landon. It’s hard not to say that I truly loved this kid. I first met him actually before I was a police officer. Before I became a cop I was a Loss Prevention Manager for a local Wal-Mart. His mother worked at the store, and quite often her husband would bring their son, Landon, in. Landon was the all-American kid when I first met him at age ten. He loved his country, he loved God, he loved his family, and he was retarded. Unfortunately not in the “boyyy that kid is dope” retarded that kids talk about today, but actual Down syndrome. He was such a nice kid though. But the one normal thing on that kid that aged like it did with normal kids was puberty. Not so much in a physical way, but defiantly in a “RAWRRR Emotions!!!” type of way.

The first time I was called out to his house I nearly had to mace him. He had started to lift weights, and did not understand what was going on with his body. The testosterone just raged through him. Remember Warren from “Something About Mary”, it was that times ten. And understand that I don’t mean to demean those with Down syndrome from my descriptions, I’m just really too tired to tip-toe around how to properly describe it at this hour. Anyways, this kid was going nuts. He had already thrown a 32 inch television through the wall. As me and my partner show up he’s got one of those barbells, and is running towards us like a javelin thrower. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and was incredibly ripped. Christ it was terrifying. With a launch he throws the weighted spear through the wall, THROUGH THE FUCKING WALL. I knew we were absolutely hosed, so I reached for the only thing on my belt that wasn’t a gun or cuffs (I was in plain clothes at the time, during my detective days) my mace. Right when I pull it out, he cowers like a three year old girl, and rolls around on the floor. Jesus, I’d swear his own father was giving him steroids. Anyways after an hour long “Your okay Landon, don’t be upset. We love you, have a plastic badge honorary detective” session we had a long talk with his parents about what was going to happen if we had to return again, this was the 12th visit by my department in the last year. Things were quiet for awhile, which was reassuring, but then we learned that Landon had a girlfriend.

Stephanie was definitely an attractive girl. Even though she was seventeen I don’t mind calling her that—she was just pretty. Four year member of the cheer leading squad, and the video store rental girl near the Corner Store, the entire town had actually fallen for this girl. She was active in the community, a track runner, and could even play the Tuba. She was a very nice girl. Still, it seemed odd that she was with Landon all of the sudden. It wasn’t that it felt wrong that she wasn’t mentally handicap, despite her grades, but it felt so off. She was getting a ton of attention. That’s exactly what she wanted.

So she’s with Landon for a few months. Rumors about her taking his virginity circle the small town. People aren’t sure whether to reprimand her or applaud her. This was as close to a philosophical conundrum the town would ever get. Stephanie was nominated prom queen, and Landon is nominated prom king. Then suddenly she dumps him. Right in the middle of lunch at the high school, in a public confession that pulled the curtain back on an incredibly devious and down-right fucked up plan. She dated him to get more popular so she would get elected Prom Queen. Her original goal called for her secret love, on and off boyfriend Kegan, to win the rivalry football game just before prom voting. That way she will always have the memory of the perfect Senior year, complete with the icing on top. Only Kegan and his team got spanked by Douglas County 54-0. This caused a massive influx of Kegan votes to go to Landon.

My contacts in the school told me that Landon just stood there, unable to process what just happened. The lunch lady told me you could hear a pin drop. Then Stephanie and Kegan get the shit kicked out of them by everyone else, while Landon just walks away dumbfounded. We got a call from the school as he walked out the front doors alone right after that. The two day shift officers who contacted him said he simply asked for a ride home, which they gave to him. A week had gone by and no one had seen him. His parents were keeping him at home.

I was just coming into service when Stephanie’s 911 call came in. It was 10:45 at night, and she said she can see Landon outside of her window. He’s hiding in her bushes just looking in and smiling. Thankfully I was on the edge of the county just about six miles away from Stephanie’s house. I wasn’t the only one on my way, but I was the first one to arrive. Landon was there in the bushes right where she said he was, but Stephanie was screaming. We later learned that she was trying a technique to keep him away that her mother had taught her to deal with mountain lions. She was trying to scare him away.

As I am walking up to him I see a gun in his hand. I don’t want to shoot him, I can’t. He already hears me so he turns around slowly, and I grab my mace. Right when I pull it out, he cowers like a three year old girl, and rolls around on the ground. Thank god for those mood balancing steroids. Anyways after an hour long “You’re okay Landon, don’t be upset. We love you, have a plastic badge honorary detective” session we had a long talk with his parents about how hosed up this whole thing is, and how they have to do something…NOW. My Under-sheriff actually made a really offensive joke: “well I guess it’s about time to put ol’ Landon down.”

Anyways his parents solved the problem easily, they moved. Last I heard Landon is living it up in Puerto Rico, hopefully meeting a retarded Puerto Rican—hopefully there are such things. He sent the department a photo last year for Christmas. I had already been gone for a few years at that point, but the guys sent me a copy. It’s Landon on a beach wearing a Santa hat, and it’s the most drat adorable thing in the world. On the back it reads “Thankes (first name misspelled…twice), you are the sand shore!” That boy is going to be alright.

While that might not have been a stalking story in the sense of the word, it was always one of my most memorable experiences as a police officer, and was definitely stalking the by Colorado State Statute. Relationship + (Intended) Violence + Trespassing = Stalking.

Oh, but I should point out that he wasn’t actually carrying a gun. It was a toy Flintlock pistol from Pirates of the Caribbean. He was going to shoot her with a sound effect…

Landon truly was awesome.

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bonus story!

During the summer of 2003 I was stuck on the graveyard shift in patrol. I used to pull into this park that was just outside of one of the larger townships in the county to work on reports during downtime. It was a pretty good location for a few reasons, but my favorite thing about it was that it was always good for random three in the morning “insert crime here” busts.

So one night in July I pull into the parking lot with a shitload of paperwork sitting on the passenger side seat waiting for my completion. I always found that driving into an inconspicuous parking lot at dark to be the perfect time to turn off all the lights in my car (we could even turn off our brake lights) so I could sneak up on unsuspecting teenagers. Sure as shit I see a low rider pickup truck, with two naked bodies pressed against the hood. Imagine their surprise when I hit them with the spotlight.

So I stepped out of the car to investigate. The boy was Cliff. His real name was John, but he decided that John wasn’t edgy enough so he invented the nickname Cliff for himself. He was seventeen years old, one of those white guys who likes to copy whatever his favorite rap star is wearing at the current time, oh and he likes to use the same mannerisms, he once called the Under-sheriff a nigger, which was funny because the Under-sheriff was the whitest guy I’ve ever met in my life. The girl, Tammy, was one of those “Village Bicycles”, the girl who has pretty much slept with every guy between the ages of 12-40 in the town. Tammy had been dating Cliff for a few months, and it was pretty obvious that they had been sleeping together from day one.

So I tell Tammy to grab some clothes out of the truck and some pants for Cliff, just because I don’t trust Cliff enough digging around in his truck. She throws on her dress, and hands Cliff some jeans. Now normally, I would’ve just let sleeping dogs lie because I really didn’t feel like calling up this girl’s (she was 15) parents and telling them I’ve caught their daughter sexing it up in public for the fifth time, but I knew that Cliff had a warrant for his arrest and that I didn’t have much choice than to call it in. So I went ahead and put Cliff in cuffs, and asked if I could search his truck. I really didn’t have to ask, since he was already under arrest, and just did so as a courtesy.

I knew that my request to search was justified when Cliff said “I don’t want you searching my car, but anything you find in there isn’t mine.” Ok then, so on with the search. The first odd thing I noticed was a large unsealed manila envelope. Upon opening the contents I find several pictures of Tammy. But these obviously weren’t pictures taken with her consent. Most of them looked like they were taken from a car that would’ve been parked on the street outside of her house. There were pictures of her in her room, pictures of her bathroom window with the lights on, and pictures of her doing various things throughout the town. Honestly at first “stalker” didn’t come into my mind. I thought there was another explanation, so I asked him.

Cliff didn’t answer me at all, so it became pretty obvious at that point that he was hiding something more. Tammy was sitting in the back of my patrol car and I decided it would be a good idea to ask her about the pictures. “Are you following me?” she asked as she looked at the contents of the envelope. “No. I pulled these out of your boy’s truck.” This girl was small, like 4′11′ standing on her tiptoes, but she managed to throw me aside as she jumped out of the patrol car running towards Cliff. “What the fuck Cliff!??! What the fuck is this shit, you sick fucking prick!” She then sent a right fist across his jaw; Cliff was pretty much unfazed and wouldn’t look at her. He kept his head down as I put her in handcuffs until I got everything sorted out. After I put her back in the patrol car I went back to search the truck.

During the following half hour I found several more questionable things. A digital camera with more pictures of Tammy, one of her in various states of undress through her bathroom window, which only could’ve been taken if he was sitting up on her neighbor’s roof, which worked out perfectly because we were called out to investigate a prowler at that same neighbor’s house the previous week (case closed!). A small notebook with drawn pictures of people being stabbed with crucifixes, and what I could only guess was Tammy being raped with one….in the rear end. And a pair of underwear, which Tammy immediately identified as hers that she had thrown out during the previous week as they were now “stanky”.

I called Tammy’s parents and they came to pick her up. Typical rural white trash if you ask me. Tammy’s Mom had just turned 30, and her Dad was actually her step-Dad, but he was her Uncle too. Her original Dad walked out, so his brother came to be her father somehow. Anyways, it was pretty evident after that point that Tammy would not be talking to Cliff, and her mother requested a restraining order. So I pretty much thought the night was done after that. It wasn’t.

After taking Cliff to holding at the county facility I called his Mother to explain the issue. His Mom was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met; she would quite frequently bring cookies down to the Sheriff’s department on the weekends, and volunteered during the week to work with at risk elderly. I hated telling his Mother that her son was sick in the head. After explaining everything there was a long pause, and after asking “are you still there?” she quietly asked me to meet her at her house.

When I arrived she was sitting on the porch, noticeably disturbed as she was smoking a cigarette, she had quit three months prior. She explained to me that Cliff was acting really weird during the last month, and had even put a lock on his room. She was a small woman, and a single mother and Cliff was actually a good son to her, he did was he was told and didn’t talk back, so she didn’t want to worry about the lock and disrupt their relationship. She asked me to break it off, and look around his room with her.

Upon entering Cliff’s room the first thing we noticed was the stench. I can only describe it as what piss would smell like if it was collected in a jar and left out in the sun for a week, and guess what, that’s exactly what it was. We later determined that Cliff had collected it when Tammy was over the previous week. He had told his mother that the toilet was broken, but didn’t tell Tammy until after she used it. After that he collected what was sitting in the toilet bowl in a jar and kept it out. We also found more photos of Tammy, and some other girls too. We found shopping bags filled with panties, bras, and soiled toilet paper. One could only imagine who this crap belonged to, literally. We found pornography, knives, half of a rifle, but none of that compared to what we found under his pillow, a dog collar.

Three weeks prior to that Tammy’s parents had their car broken into in the parking lot of the local Safeway. This kind of thing wasn’t incredibly unusual for the area, but they were understandably upset as their small Chihuahua “Beefaroo” (yeah I know) was in the car and missing after the break in. We did have a lot of hippies and PETA freaks in our county, so it was possible that one of them liberated the dog since nothing else was missing, but for all intents and purposes the case went unsolved until now. I was looking at Beefaroo’s collar. Cliff’s Mom turned pale white, and pointed towards the back yard. She explained to me that Cliff was digging for no reason in the back a few weeks prior and said he was working on a school project. Later that night we found a dismembered and decayed Beefaroo in a shallow grave in the back. The dog had been tortured, his eyes had been poked in with a finger, and it looked like a M80 had been inserted into his anal cavity. I’ve got to be honest–being a dog lover–this brought a tear to my eye.

Cliff was later charged with a dozen different crimes ranging from “Domestic Violence”, to “Animal Cruelty”. Cliff later confessed to a psychologist that he killed Tammy’s dog so he could jump in and be a hero for her. She confirmed his story as apparently she fell for him after he was so comforting to her after losing her dog. He didn’t explain why he tortured the dog so. In addition Cliff later admitted to stalking other girls, and going through their garbage. Cliff said that Tammy was his life and without her he was as good as dead. But in the end Cliff would have the last laugh.

There was something else we found in his bedroom. In a desk drawer he had a roll of condoms, and one of his moms sowing kits, the needles noticeably absent. Tammy found out she was pregnant with Cliff’s baby about a month after that summer night. She estimated that it happened just a few days prior to that. Her parents being pro-life made her keep the baby, adoption wasn’t even an option for them. So now there she is stuck with a baby of a lunatic.

I saw Cliff a few months ago at Red Robin where he waited on my wife and me. He seemed to be cured, I guess. I really didn’t stick around to find out; we decided that we would be eating at home that night instead.

Credit: essaywhutman @ The Something Awful Forums