of her obsessions and was enjoying a fulfilling life. But it was obvious she was still focused on them when she sent a letter to Melissa at the drugstore where she worked. Prickling with apprehension, Melissa ripped open the envelope and read the enclosed note. She would have been devastated if she’d believed Shanna’s lies. “I didn’t believe a thing that came out of her mouth! Not one thing!” Melissa stresses. “She claimed that Dirk was cheating on me with her. And she sent pictures.” Melissa scrutinized the blurry images, allegedly of Shanna and Dirk in bed together. “It looked like them, but for all I knew, those pictures were from the time they were together.”
The envelopes of photos of “the affair” continued to arrive over the next week. Melissa trusted Dirk. She figured that Shanna was just trying to get between them again, though one of the photographs startled her. “It was a photo of Dirk without his shirt on, and it showed the new tattoos on his arm. He was in bed, but it wasn’t our bed. Dirk was upset when I got all of those pictures. He went into a state of disbelief.” Melissa assured him she didn’t believe the lies. She assumed the photos were altered in Photoshop, with the new tattoo added. “‘This is right up Shanna’s alley,’ I told him. ‘Why are we so surprised? She has no boundaries. She has no limitations. She’s always coming up with something.’”
The stalking rattled them both, though Melissa was far more bothered by it than her husband. The hostility, after all, was focused on her. Shanna had never keyed his car or trapped him in the apartment with a barricade of furniture. Dirk, however, did not like seeing his wife so troubled. He, too, wished Shanna would stay out of their lives, but the fact she was the mother of his son meant that he was forever connected to her. Despite the troubles with Shanna, Melissa and Dirk had some good years together. He was attentive and loving to both his sons, and she was impressed by what a wonderful father he was. She remembers how he patiently tolerated the kids’ TV shows he found so annoying. “Peter loved Barney, the purple dinosaur. Dirk hated that dinosaur, but whenever Barney came on the television screen, Peter would get so happy, and jump up and down, waving his fists in the air with approval, that Dirk couldn’t help but smile.”
When he was a preschooler, Peter helped them ready the room for the new baby. Melissa agreed with her husband that it was important to make the child feel secure. They didn’t want him to be jealous of the new baby, so they did what they could to make Peter feel included. Dirk held Peter up, and one by one, Melissa put the colorful Baby Toons decals in the little boy’s hands. The youngster then “smacked the stickers to the wall to help decorate for his new baby brother.”
Dirk would continue to be a devoted father, but there came a day when he was no longer devoted to Melissa. He asked for a divorce. They’d been together nearly four years, and she’d hoped their union would last a lifetime. “I didn’t want my marriage to end. He did. I remember thinking, ‘Well, at least Shanna will be gone.’ That’s what I thought.” Melissa was wrong.
Dirk moved out and eventually became engaged again. If his new fiancée had problems with Shanna, Melissa never heard about it. While Dirk and Melissa shared custody of their son, it seemed Melissa had gotten full custody of their stalker! Shortly after the split, Melissa took her Eclipse for an oil change. “I think I’m already in your system,” she told the shop’s receptionist.
“Oh, here you are,” said the receptionist, checking the records. “You were in here not too long ago.”
“It’s actually been quite a while,” said Melissa.
“No, you were here recently. You brought in your 2001 Mitsubishi Gallant.”
A Gallant? Her car was a Mitsubishi Eclipse, but Shanna drove a 2001 Gallant, a similar model to the Eclipse. “I’m sorry?” Melissa said, so stunned she wondered if she’d heard right. “What kind of car?”
Someone claiming to be Melissa had the Gallant serviced at the shop. It had to be Shanna—Shanna who’d copied her hairstyle, followed her into the pharmacy field, and purchased a car so similar to hers—was now using her name!
Possibly the most disturbing thing about the incident was the fact that it had