Twisted stalker brought a deadly kit to my home to kidnap, torture and kill me
Switching on my computer, I sat on my chair, plugged in my headphones and fired up my favourite online game.
‘Time to win this,’ I giggled to myself, excited.
All through my teens, I had been into video games.
I loved nothing more than plugging myself into the latest hit and playing for hours.
It started out as a hobby, but as I got older, I realised I could make a career out of it.
In 2015, I set up my own Youtube channel and started reviewing games and getting sponsorship money.
I recorded myself playing and uploading daily videos to my followers.
‘I’m excited to play this one,’ I announced, hitting ‘record’ on my webcam.
I’d often get flattering emails from fans and comments from strangers – I never thought anything of it.
Not until I started getting messages from someone with the nickname ‘Cavin’.
In January 2017, I had logged into my favourite online game called ‘Runescape’.
It was a fantasy multiplayer role-playing game based in a medieval town.
You completed quests and people from all over the world played together.
While playing one evening, I suddenly saw a private message pop up on my computer.
‘I know who you are,’ I said, as I read the message from Cavin aloud to my online viewers.
I didn’t recognise the character, and I tried to ignore it, but he kept reappearing.
I thought someone was just trolling me, and didn’t take it seriously.
Over the next couple of weeks, though, the persistent player kept finding me. I know you, his messages read again.
In the end I tried blocking him, but he kept tracking me down.
Soon, a friend of mine on the game told me how.
He’s been trying to buy information about you from other players,
my Australian friend
Talia explained in a message.
Talia and I had met through the game months before, and I knew she’d have my back.
Cavin had tried to buy my contact details from her, and she’d refused.
That March, things went a step further.
Cavin had dug around, found my email address on my Youtube channel.
That evening, I opened my inbox to a flood of messages from someone called Keio Nei, the true identity of Cavin.
He kept calling me ‘sweetheart’ and saying he had been thinking about ‘our future together.’
He told me he had a ‘great body’ and ‘suffered deep inside’ because of me.
He’d sent me pictures of himself wearing an oversized suit – in one, he was holding a bunch of plastic flowers.
He had dark messy hair, and looked roughly my age.
It was odd to see him in the flesh, but I still wasn’t worried.
He didn’t seem too threatening – not at first.
Every day, I was getting more and more messages, but I never replied to any.
They’d flit between threatening to apologetic.
In one message, he said;
I just can’t stop thinking about you. This truly shows how much I care about you and how much I love you. I can’t give up.
Then he asked for ‘one more chance’ before saying he’d ruin my ‘pathetic little life.’
The emails were getting increasingly sexual and downright disturbing.
He kept sending me pictures of himself, too – sometimes wearing scary masks.
Keio said he would make it
his life goal to ‘find’ me and ‘kill’ me.
He said;
I will locate your house, I will sneak in and drug you and kidnap you.
I will shave you bald and strip you naked.
I will rape you and make you pregnant and then I will tie you up and will torture you for hours.
I’ll stab you in the chest with a kitchen knife – one less whore in this world.
It was intimidating to read, but still, I didn’t feel too worried about it.
He was just someone on the other end of the computer.
‘What’s he going to do from behind his computer?’ I scoffed to myself, switching off my screen.
By April 2017, the messages continued coming in thick and fast, and one in particular freaked me out.
His email suggested that he wasn’t coming for me, but that ‘someone else’ was.
I felt a shiver down my spine as I read the words.
I worried he might have tracked me down and was sending someone to get me.
I couldn’t keep ignoring his messages, and finally confided in my parents – Fran, 57, and Ged, 63 – who I was living with in Liverpool at the time.
‘I’m really worried,’ I confessed, breaking down.
I told them everything and they looked horrified.
‘I’ll call the police,’ Dad suggested with concern.
The next day, officers from Merseyside Police came over to take a statement, and I showed them all of the emails that Keio had sent to me.
They contacted Runescape and found the IP address of the mystery messenger.
‘He lives in Estonia,’ one of the officers explained.
He wasn’t based in the UK, so it felt like there wasn’t much they could do.
They contacted the Estonian police force, who found his home address.
They went to visit and we hoped it would make him stop.
It had for a while – until that July, when I got another email from him entitled
‘UK. The Plan’.
Keio said he was attending the Runescape Festival in London that September, suggesting we could meet up there.
I had been planning on going to the festival, but after that message, there was no way.
I ignored the email, and after that, I didn’t hear from him for a few months.
‘Maybe that’s the end of it,’ I said to Mum, breathing a sigh of relief.
Then, 10 months later, in May 2018, I was lying in bed when a message popped up on my phone.
It was from one of my best
friends Rose.
She’d sent me a link to a tweet. Is this that guy? her message read. The one that’s stalking you?
When I opened it, I felt my stomach drop.
‘He’s here,’ I gasped in horror, flicking through the images.
Not only was Keio in the UK, but he was taking photos at various locations in Liverpool – my hometown.
In the tweet that he’d tagged me in, he’d asked to ‘take me out for dinner’ with ‘no police’, and if I declined, I’d see what he was ‘capable’ of. I felt sick.
I dashed downstairs and showed my parents, who called the police right away.
‘We’ll come over tomorrow morning with alarms for your house,’ an officer explained.
I barely slept that night, constantly thinking about where he could be. Is he coming for me? I wondered, terrified.
The next morning, I woke up and plugged my phone in to charge next to the window.
I was half asleep, but through the window, I spotted someone walking towards our house.
He was carrying a backpack and wearing an oversized suit, and I knew right away it was Keio. Only now, his hair had been dyed bright green – he looked like the Joker.
Panic rising inside me, I jumped away from the window before he saw me. What’s he going to do to me? I thought, terrified.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door.
Keio was here…
What was he going to do to me?