Online flirt turned into gore, threat

Bloody man: I’ll kidnap, kill

It began as an online flirtation between a young woman who lives in Palm Beach County and a man who lives more than 5,000 miles away in the Republic of Macedonia.

He invited her to come live with him and suggested she could become his wife. But their communications quickly took a very dark and disturbing turn, according to the FBI.

The 18-year-old, identified only as Emily in federal court records, tried to cut off all contact with Aleksandar Pavlovski when she found out he was secretly tracking down personal information about her, including her home address, which she had chosen not to share.

In response, the Macedonian man launched an

alarming campaign of harassment and intimidation that went on for months and included threats to kidnap and kill the young woman and her mother, FBI agents wrote in court records.

Pavlovski sent the woman chilling messages and photographs, they said.

“Some of these images featured Pavlovski covered in a substance … appearing to be blood he had smeared on his face, including one with a knife to his own throat,” FBI Agent Gregory Hoffman wrote.

The young woman first encountered Pavlovski when they communicated online via the MeetMe app on Sept. 23, 2015, according to court records.

After a short period of pleasant interactions on various social media websites, including MeetMe, Kik, Snapchat, and Facebook, the woman became “increasingly uncomfortable” with the tone of Pavlovski’s communications and told him to stop contacting her, investigators said. She tried to block all contact from him.

Pavlovski then bombarded the woman with messages on a range of social media, including poorly spelled threats that he would physically harm the young woman and her mom, court records show.

Some of the decipherable phrases mentioned that he would be “creepy” and that the victim might be able to run, but her mother wouldn’t be able to escape.

One message included a photograph of the victim’s mother and text messaging shorthand for the words “you will shed tears for your mother,” agents wrote. In another message, agents said Pavlovski threatened “I’ll kidnap u and take u.”

Other messages the woman received referred to the Shakespearean tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, starcrossed lovers who died in a double suicide.

Nearly a year after they “met” online, Pavlovski also contacted the young woman’s friend on Facebook. He tried to get the friend, who also lives in Palm Beach County, to relay messages to her in August of 2016, investigators said.

In those messages, Pavlovski threatened to send his mother to kill the young woman, so that he could remain free, agents said.

On Aug. 24, Pavlovski forwarded a photograph of paperwork he was apparently filling out to apply for a travel visa to enter the U.S. and wrote: “ln 2 months I could be yours if you just take me.”

The next day, he sent another message that read: “I’ll be your new neighbor in 8 w[ee]ks.” He also threatened to shoot her in her genital area and to hit her in the face with his fist, according to court records.

Investigators took the long-distance cyber threats very seriously. Federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint, which accuses Pavlovski of making threats of violence and threatening to kidnap the woman, in federal court in West Palm Beach earlier this week.

Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case on Friday. FBI officials only confirmed that Pavlovski, whose age was not released, has not been arrested.

Legal experts told the Sun Sentinel that Macedonia, a republic that was formed in the Balkan region after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, rarely extradites its own citizens. They said the case was likely filed to ensure that Pavlovski would be arrested if he attempted to enter the U.S.

On Dec. 20, Pavlovski was “voluntarily interviewed” at the U.S embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, apparently in connection with his travel visa application. He told officials there that he had never left Europe and had lived in Macedonia his whole life, except for a brief period when he worked in Bulgaria in 2014. Agents wrote that he admitted some of the alleged misconduct and acknowledged using some of the online screen names linked to some of the messages.