‘I was stalked by speed-date creep...then I found out he did 38 years in jail for murder’
A TEACHER is living in fear after being stalked by a murderer who wooed her at a speed dating night.
Caroline Anderson, 42, started being bombarded with “creepy” messages by Dempsey Hawkins, 58, even though she never gave him her number.
But a worse shock was to come when she saw his name in a newspaper – and realised he had strangled his girlfriend when he was 16 and served 38 years in a US jail.
British-born Hawkins was deported from America to England in 2017 and found work in a Mexican restaurant in Cambridge near where Caroline lives.
She is now so scared she sleeps with a baseball bat and a hockey stick by her bed and keeps kitchen knives under her pillow.
She said: “I can’t take any chances. I see him on my commute to work and it fills me with fear.
“He took my number without my knowledge. He knows I live in the area so it’s only a matter of time before he knows my address.
“He’s casually walking through the town and works in a busy restaurant. People need to know. I’m completely petrified.”
Caroline met Hawkins when she attended a matchmaking event at the Hidden Rooms Cocktail Lounge in Cambridge with a friend in September.
She first noticed him lingering at the front desk – next to a list of the daters’ names and phone numbers. Caroline said: “When we arrived I noticed his presence because I thought he was in the military – it was just by the way he carried himself.
“But then I noticed his eyes. They are the kind of eyes that look through you, not at you. They were piercing.”
They had a “one-on-one” conversation but she said: “I didn’t even give him my number. I just found him a bit intense and got a weird vibe.”
Next morning, Caroline was shocked to find a text from Hawkins which began: “Sweet Caroline, really great to have met you last night”. He added: “Me as your friend will definitely enhance your life in ways that might surprise you.
“I’ll be thinking about you. You know I will.”
She claims she didn’t respond and screenshots show Hawkins sent her several more unanswered messages over the next two weeks.
One said she was “endlessly attractive” and another said: “You look prettier in each pic I see of you.”
Another showed him in a rural location, with the sinister caption: “Just a reminder, if you want to hang out with me in the middle of nowhere give me the green light.”
A few weeks later she saw his name in the paper after he was
spotted on the dating site Meetup. com. The article revealed Hawkins, originally from London, murdered 14-year-old Susan Jacobson on Staten Island, New York, in May 1976 and stuffed her body in an oil drum.
Hawkins had been dating Susan for about a year at the time of the attack, but she had been ordered to break off the relationship by her parents after she was forced to have an abortion.
He couldn’t bear the thought of Susan being with someone else and decided that if he couldn’t have her, no-one else could either.
It was two years before a boy discovered what he thought were “dog bones” in the barrel and Hawkins was arrested. He was convicted of Susan’s murder and was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
But he didn’t confess for nearly 20 years and finally admitted his guilt in a letter to the Jacobson family.
He wrote: “I’m terribly sorry for what I’ve done and I have been for a long time.”
It is understood he was refused parole nine times, but with help from campaigners secured his freedom on condition that he was returned to England.
At the time of his release in January 2017, Susan’s sister Barbara Reno said: “I think he’s very capable of killing again.
“He has a bad soul. We are concerned about the safety of the people in the community he is released into.”
Caroline was stunned after the truth emerged and went to the police, but she was told there was nothing they could do.
She said: “I feel completely helpless. Say I had been a young 18-year-old who was flattered by the attention? Who knows what could have happened?
“I sleep with a baseball bat and a hockey stick by my bed and I’ve put the kitchen knives under my pillow.
“He shouldn’t be allowed to roam around. He’s a killer!”
Hawkins declined to comment when we approached him.