68: Stalking: Baby Reindeer Fact Vs. Fiction, Inside Venezuela's Nightmare Stalker, and Stories From Listeners
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It's that feeling. When the energy in the room shifts. When the air gets sucked out of a moment and everything starts to feel wrong.

It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I'm your host, Kailin Moore. I want to talk about something that's been on the top of everyone's mind recently. Stalking.

In April, Netflix released a show titled Baby Reindeer, which follows the story of a man named Donnie as he's followed and harassed by a stalker named Martha. Martha believes they are in a relationship and even goes as far as to sit outside his home at a bus stop all day long for weeks, just hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

The show is based on the real life story of the show's creator, Richard Gad, who plays the role of Donnie. And he does a great job of showing the gray areas of stalking. He explores where he believes he was a victim and where he believes he manipulated his stalker into giving him more attention. He also hints at the issues men face when they report stalking and how women aren't always seen as a threat by authorities.

But watching this show opened up a can of worms for me. I mean, this podcast is for those with dark curiosities, and my curiosity was piqued.

As I researched the case of Richard Gadstocker, I found that there is a horrible stalking case that's currently unfolding in Venezuela. One that you guys actually told me about. Women in Venezuela have been stalked by a woman there for up to seven years. And for the longest time, police did not take it seriously.

Then, I asked on Instagram if any of you had stories of stalking that you wanted to share. And I was shocked and honestly heartbroken by how many of you responded. So today we're going to take a dive into the world of stalking. I want to run through the case that inspired the show Baby Reindeer, what we know is true about the adaptation, and what developments have come out after the show was released. Spoiler, the woman who the stalker is based on has come forward.

I also want to take you through the terrifying tale that's developing in Venezuela, where for seven years, dozens of women have been stalked by a woman who became obsessed with them. And then I want to share some of the stories I received from you all, because they're terrifying, but they're also really important. So buckle up. This one is going to get intense. And because of the nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised.

But before we jump in, I wanted to let you know that we are actually off next week, so there's no new regularly scheduled podcast episode. But we actually still have something for you. See, I've been working on a lot of stuff behind the scenes and I'm about ready to roll it out. There's truly something for everyone in this next rollout.

Bye.

Spoiler, you may reconsider teaching some of these to your children. And also, I'll be dropping what I'm calling the first Rogue Detecting Society lore episode as a bonus episode for everyone. It's a little different, and I'm excited for you to check it out as we bring the world of the Rogue Detecting Society to life. Okay, let's take a quick break, and then we're going to get right into it.

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On April 11th of this year, Netflix released "Baby Reindeer," its breakout hit show. People were immediately sucked into the world of Donnie, a late 20s aspiring comedian who becomes the subject of a middle-aged woman's obsession.

Within the first two minutes of the show, a title card comes up on the screen that reads, This is a true story. Not based on a true story, no mention that certain elements were maybe fictionalized for dramatic purposes, just the promise that this story you're about to watch is a true one.

But the show's star and creator, Richard Gad, has come forward and said that the show is actually 100% emotionally true. And that some of the events were dramatized or changed in some way to fit the structure of the show. It's hard to find a rundown of what exactly is true about the show and what's fiction. So let me take you through exactly what Richard has confirmed is true.

In the first episode, we see Martha, a middle-aged woman who appears to be down on her luck, enter the bar where Donnie works. Her hair is disheveled, she's in regular street clothes, and she claims that she can't even afford a cup of tea. Donnie feels generous and he offers her a drink on the house. And that's the moment where Martha's obsession with him starts. Just in that one kind gesture.

And Richard Gadd has come forward and said that, yes, that is how it happened in real life. Soon, she's coming to the bar every day and staying for his entire shift. She gets his email address and sends him about 80 emails a day. Some of them are benign and some are extremely sexually aggressive. Almost all of them have noticeable typos. And even the word iPhone in Sent By My iPhone is misspelled.

She's sunk her teeth in him, all from one small, small interaction they had. It's really scary to think about, but you actually might not have to fear for your safety just yet.

I will say, everything about Richard's stalking was pretty much the most statistically rare form of stalking. He was a man over the age of 24, and his stalker was someone he didn't know at all. Men tend to be stalked less than women, about half as much, actually, and most stalking victims are under the age of 24.

And your chances of being stalked by a complete stranger are relatively low. Over 80% of stalkers are ex-partners or at least acquaintances of their victims. But on the chance that you do become a victim of stalking, help can be really hard to get. In the show, Donnie asks the police for help, but they're confused why it took him so long to come forward.

They also don't think that Martha's messages are threatening enough, even though by that point she has sent him thousands and has spent days camped outside of his house just waiting to catch a glimpse of him.

Richard reported that the real Martha, over the course of four years, sent him over 41,000 emails, tweeted at him hundreds of times, and left him 350 hours of voicemails. Many of the emails displayed in the show are the real ones that Martha sent him. Netflix even confirmed it. Emails like, were you with someone just there? iPhone.

"Just," "There," and "iPhone" all spelled incorrectly, as if she had been watching him. And "Don't think I'll stop, baby reindeer," sent from "Mamai iPhone." Here's where things start to get a little dicey. The show claims it's a true story. So many viewers took everything that Martha did in the show for face value and set out to expose the real woman behind the character.

I know for me, I posted a few videos on social media about the show around a week after it came out. And people started commenting the name of the woman they believed was Martha. I tried to delete as many as I saw. At that point, everything was still just alleged.

And no one knew for certain that the woman was Martha, though a quick search on Twitter showed an account with her name tweeting Richard Gad about needing her curtains hung badly, which is an innuendo that's used between Martha and Donnie in the show. Richard Gad came forward on Instagram and urged fans of the show to not dig into the real identities of the characters portrayed. But that was a plea that fell on deaf ears.

Because earlier this month, a woman named Fiona Harvey came forward. She said that she believed she was the person Martha was based on and that internet sleuths were ruining her life by trying to expose her.

She appeared on Piers Morgan's talk show to speak out about how untrue the allegations made in the show were. And many noticed that the character of Martha had some striking similarities to Fiona. They both had thick Scottish accents, unkempt shoulder-length hair, and had nearly identical body types.

Fiona claimed that she did not contact Richard Gad as many times as he claimed, and that she sent him a few bantery emails and tweets, but nothing more. As I'm writing this, 10 of her tweets to Richard are still up on her account, down from 19 that Dexerto reported finding. One of them reads, "'Did you get my emails, or am I emailing the wrong address? Thanks, you can let me know.'"

One that looked like it had been deleted read, "Did you get my recorded delivery letter sent to the theater? Sent to arrive bank holiday Monday?" Clearly she was emailing him and sending him things.

But Fiona insisted Richard must have written the 41,000 emails to himself. She also said that it was Richard who was obsessed with her, not the other way around. Though, editor's note, he doesn't have any tweets to her asking if she got a letter he sent.

She did say Richard was the one who asked if she wanted her curtains hung, to which she told him she had a boyfriend. Though that does contradict a tweet she still has up to him saying she needs her curtains hung badly.

This is all to say, many people did not believe her side of the story, though many of them agreed that the show could have taken more precautions to conceal her identity. In an interview that Richard did in April with GQ, he said, "We've gone to such lengths to disguise her that I doubt she would recognize herself in the show, but that seems to not be the case."

On top of that, there are reports of people being falsely accused of being the real people the characters in the show were based on. These people also faced harassment from internet sleuths.

And it makes me sad because this conversation is taking away from the actual important conversations we should be having about stalking. Like how in the UK only 1.4% of stalkers are ever convicted. And in America, it's believed stalking may play a part in up to 94% of female homicides.

In the show, Martha is charged with stalking and is given jail time, which she serves. Though in real life, Richard Gad said the situation was over and that he didn't want to send a mentally ill person to jail, suggesting that the real Martha did not serve jail time.

And Fiona proclaimed on TV that she had not been to jail like her character had, though she also said she didn't watch the show. And I believe her. If she was stalking Richard, it would have been incredibly hard for him to get a conviction. Which brings me to my next story. Another terrifying tale of stalking that is still developing.

As Baby Reindeer was gaining popularity worldwide, it seemed to be striking a chord with women in Venezuela. Posts on X, formerly Twitter, started going viral of women sharing their experiences of what they were calling the Venezuelan Baby Reindeer. Like one woman who went ahead and spoke with a reporter about her story and asked to be referred to as Amanda.

She said that seven years ago, in November of 2017, she was at a club in Caracas, Venezuela, surrounded by a group of friends and a little tipsy. At the time, she was 22 years old, and when she wasn't studying for her degree in social communications, she liked to blow off steam. But in hindsight, she wished she had stayed in that night. That night changed everything.

Amanda left her friends to go to the restroom, when all of a sudden she felt the force of another body push her up against a wall. It almost could have been brushed off as some sort of drunken accident, except that Amanda stayed pinned to the wall, as the arms of a girl a few years older than her held her there. What's the matter?

Amanda yelled above the music. She didn't recognize this girl. Her mousy brown hair parted in the middle, her tiny facial features, her dazed brown eyes almost staring through her. "Amanda, don't you know who I am?" The girl shouted back. Clearly, this girl knew who she was, so she did the polite thing and pretended to know her. "Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry."

The girl's grip on her loosened, and Amanda was able to wiggle free and get back to her friends where she told them what happened. They laughed off the encounter. How bizarre. That girl must have been on drugs, they said, and just kept dancing. A little while later, Amanda walked out into a garden area where people were smoking and drinking away from the music.

She wanted to catch her breath before going back in when she felt a cold liquid start running down her back and face and heard a terrifying, cackling laugh from behind her. The mousy girl from before was right there, laughing maniacally, holding an empty drink that had just been dumped all over her head. That's it. Amanda pushed past her and ran back to her friend group.

They were disturbed by the experience, and they said they'd keep an eye out for the stranger, but it became clear quickly that they wouldn't need to do that. The girl returned and hovered around the group, eyes boring into Amanda's skull. What was this girl's problem? Amanda didn't know it at the time, and this is honestly the thing that's the most terrifying to me.

But she actually went to school with this girl, whose name is Rebecca Garcia. Amanda had never seen her, though. They didn't really overlap much since they were a few years apart. But Rebecca had seen Amanda. And the fact that they had never spoken didn't stop her from developing some sort of fixation on her classmate. And after that night at the bar, things only got worse. More after a short break.

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Because everyone deserves an opportunity to save on their education without competing for it. Explore scholarship options at University of Phoenix. Within a few days of their encounter, Amanda's phone was ringing nonstop from a slew of different numbers, all from Rebecca, she said. Each time, she'd block the number. But then texts came in waves.

Some admiring Amanda, some wishing that they were together. Others were violent. Rebecca shared fantasies about wanting to kill her. All of these texts were terrifying. A few weeks after this began, Amanda was at a spin class at her gym when she started feeling woozy and ended up passing out. She awoke to a group of girls around her trying to fan her off and get her water. As she sat up to get her bearings,

She saw Rebecca lurking behind the group and laughing to herself. Amanda bolted up and ran to her car, trying to fight off the wooziness to get back to safety. But when she got to her car, Rebecca was already there. "'Please leave me alone,' Amanda shouted. "'But you're so beautiful. Are you afraid I'll see your car?' Rebecca asked. And according to Amanda, the next thing she said was, "'Don't worry.'"

I'm not going to kill you. Not yet. And then she burst out into a fit of laughter. Next, gifts were delivered to Amanda's address nonstop. There was even graffiti left of an Instagram handle that just led to an account that had photos of the graffiti that was left outside of her home. Clearly, Rebecca was in Amanda's close proximity, even when she didn't see her.

rebecca continued to create new numbers to contact amanda non-stop and harassed her with a barrage of instagram comments and messages from newly made accounts amanda told the interviewer these messages were the same as before one message would read i like you a lot i hope i don't screw it up with you but it's too late for that another would speak of a violent assault rebecca wanted to do to her

When Amanda went to the police, they told her it wasn't a real issue because Rebecca was a woman. They also joked and said that she should give Rebecca their number because they wanted to get gifts. And they would call Amanda beautiful when she came into the station. They were not taking this situation seriously enough. It got to be so overwhelming that Amanda didn't feel safe in Venezuela anymore. And she went to stay with her family in Miami.

The messages continued, but at least she felt safer. While Amanda was being driven out of her home because she feared for her life, other women were also silently suffering harassment from Rebecca after they were told their complaints were not valid. One was a woman I'll call Coco, who shared her story in a Twitter thread. Coco also went to the same school as Rebecca, but said the two never really interacted.

Rebecca became fixated on her nevertheless, and somehow found all of Coco's information, her address, her phone number, her email, and started contacting her nonstop, telling her she loved her, threatening to kill her, the same pattern of texts she had with Amanda. There were days where Coco would look out of her window and see Rebecca standing there, watching her.

One day, she left her apartment to see that the entire street in front of her house was covered in pink chalk. Rebecca had come to her apartment in the dead of night and written out Coco's first and last name as well as her social media usernames all over the street. Police, of course, told her that this was not enough of a reason to consider Rebecca a reasonable threat. So what? It was just chalk.

And with no one to stop her, the stalking just escalated. The emails started becoming more intense. Some telling Coco that she loved her, others threatening to kill her by beating her head in with a drum. And then, one night when Coco was parking her car at her apartment, Rebecca was there, hiding in her building.

Once the car entered the lot, she ran out, jumped on the hood, and started banging on the windshield. Someone in the car with Coco was able to get a video clip of the whole thing, and you can hear Coco screaming for someone to get her her phone. No, no, no! No! Give me the phone, please.

The neighbors were able to get Rebecca off the hood of the car. And once again, when Coco went to report this, the police said there was still nothing they could do. According to her, they told her that there is no law protecting harassment of women against women. After that encounter, Rebecca made her way back into the building again and sent Coco an email. This one read, "'The killer is in the building.'"

But probably the most disturbing discovery Coco made about the situation, she writes, was what Rebecca was doing while she wasn't following her around. See, Coco discovered that Rebecca had self-published a book online full of stories, mostly fantasies, about her victims. The title of the book included Coco's Twitter handle in it,

I'm going to be honest, my Spanish is rusty. And there were parts of the book that I had to put through a translator to get a better idea of what she was trying to say. And I want you guys to know that twice, two times, what I put through the translator got flagged for violating community standards. That's how disturbing the passages from the book are.

One of the stories she wrote is about how she was able to sneak into Coco's building and figure out which door was hers because the doorman told her. She pretended to be a Sheehan delivery because she had read a tweet of Coco's where she talked about Sheehan and thought that that was some sort of secret message to her. Another fantasy was about keeping a girl locked away in torture chamber-like conditions.

watching her as she starved and had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the room. After she left the girl like that for three days, she entered the room with a knife and threatened her. She told the girl that her girlfriend was Coco and then left. The girl being kept in the room was another one of her victims that she mentioned by name in the book.

Other girls named in the book were also victims of Rebecca around the same time, at least according to their social media posts coming forward about the harassment they faced. They had all received hundreds of messages that ranged from obsessive to threatening. They've said the police have told them that there's nothing they can do because another woman is not a real threat.

And, maybe most heartbreaking of all, is some women have expressed sympathy when talking about Rebecca. They seem to understand that she's mentally unwell and have even tried speaking to her family about it to get her to stop. The sad thing is, at least according to these women, is that her family seems to be enabling her.

They have publicly said that Rebecca struggles with borderline personality disorder and have instructed victims to talk to her so she'll go away. Yes, you heard that right. Talk to her, which is not recommended by health professionals at all because even the smallest interaction with a stalker can feed their grand delusions.

Her family has even suggested victims just tell her they have a boyfriend, as if that would magically stop the abuse. One woman wrote that Rebecca's aunt reached out to her and said that if Rebecca were to ever harm herself, everyone who exposed her on social media would be to blame. Amanda eventually was able to come back to Venezuela in 2019.

The messages had started to slow down, and she felt safer being back home. That was around the time that Venezuela suffered from the worst electrical outage in the country's history, leaving millions without any power. On the night of the blackout, Amanda stepped out of her apartment to see if she would get better cell service in her hallway, when at the bottom of the stairs, through the darkness, she saw a figure move.

and heard the soft sound of footsteps start up the stairs. It was Rebecca. She had already found out where she was living and had gotten inside of the building. Amanda started screaming for her mother and running back to her apartment, Rebecca close behind. "'Please, it's just that I love you,' she screamed."

Once again, Amanda left the country, this time to Spain. It was there that she felt empowered enough to come forward with her story and share it these past few months. And recently, so many women have come forward on social media and the posts have gone so viral that the police have finally decided to look into it. But when they went to Rebecca's house, they found that she and her brother had already left for Spain.

But this story may have a happy ending. On May 13th, someone inside of a Spanish grocery store recognized Rebecca and her brother and reported them to police. She and her brother were arrested on May 14th. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to share a few stories that were sent in by you guys.

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Our first story comes from Caleb. He says: During my freshman year of high school, I met a girl. She loved to talk about the latest hip-hop songs from Shawn Mendes and some singing Beaver. I never understood that one. I walked up to her during lunch, and in the most awkward and corny way you could imagine, I asked her if she would be my girlfriend. We had only known each other a couple months, but she said yes.

The relationship did not last long, however. Over the two weeks that we had dated, she never looked up from her phone once to talk to me. She was always scrolling Instagram, Facebook, or playing Roblox. That was a deal-breaker for me. I am all about spending time, and the relationship felt very one-sided. During lunch, we would always sit together in front of my class, and...

After attempting to speak to her for about 30 minutes with no responses, I had enough. I said, ex's name here, I want to break up. Now this is the first time she looked up from her phone. For the first time in two weeks that we had been dating, she stared and then glared. I was very uncomfortable as I expected her to just say, okay, I didn't like you anyways and walk off. But no, she just stared at me.

After what felt like 20 minutes of just silence, she began to yell at me, asking me why I would do such a thing. Classmates were walking by and staring at me as these events took place, and to this day, I don't think I've ever felt so embarrassed. It was awful. One day, probably about four or five months after I had broken up with her, during a night service in my church, I noticed that she had her phone out during worship.

She had it held to her chest in that way that people do when they're trying to hide the fact that they're taking a photo of you. And after that night, I started to notice her around school a little bit more frequently. I noticed that she always had her phone out, camera pointed at me. I wasn't sure if she was filming my every move, taking photos of me, or just trying to scare me, but it genuinely was working. I was terrified, and I was extremely uncomfortable.

After about two years of her following me around, taking photos of me, one of my friends walked up to me with a very concerned look on her face. Now this friend of mine was also a friend of my ex's, and she told me that she had a sleepover with my ex over the weekend.

She told me that during the sleepover, when she got to my ex's house and walked into her room, her closet door was left open. And on the inside of her closet door, in the shape of a heart, were photos that my ex had taken of me walking around campus, in church worshiping, and even a few screenshotted off of my mom's Facebook page.

My friend told me that there were also two used candles on the ground along with some scattered rose petals. She had photos of me that she had been taking for the last two years, and she used those photos to make a shrine of me on the inside of her closet door. I was terrified. I went home that night. I was afraid to talk to my mom about it, and I told my mom everything.

I was terrified, and I cried myself to sleep that night. Thankfully, when COVID hit, school was forced online, and shortly after, so was church. I finally had my space for her. When COVID was over and I went back to classes, I noticed that she wasn't there, and she wasn't at church either. I was told by another friend of mine a few months after COVID was done,

that her mother found out about the shrine during lockdown and took her out of the school and they moved churches as well. I am very happy to report that I haven't seen or heard from her since. Our next story comes from Cora, who called in with a memory from her childhood when her mother and her went through something chilling. So I grew up just me and my mom. She's a single mom. I'm an only child. So we were always like very, very close.

It started, she said, in about 2009, 2010. I was 10. And she would just get like a phone call. It was a blocked number. She would answer it, you know, like we didn't have iPhones. So it was like, you know, less color identification and things like that. So she would answer it and somebody would be on the other line and they would just be breathing like...

Like, really creepy, creepy. And she would be like, who is this? Like, who are you? What do you want? And eventually they would just hang up or she would hang up. And like, she realized that the more she tried to interact with the person, the more frequently they would call her. So if she just like answered, realized it was the breather, we called him and then she would just hang up.

So he called my mom from like 2009 to 2020. About 11 years, it wasn't like it was once a week. It was like sometimes it wouldn't happen for six months, eight months, and then it would happen three times in one week, and then he would take a three-month break. She did try going to the police, and they were like, well, just change your number. Eventually she did go and change her number, but no matter if she changed her number or whatever, the person kept calling and finding her new number.

A changed number was not enough to stop the breather. And as time went on, Cora and her mother started to worry that they were being watched. When the person would call and we'd be maybe home alone, we'd like look out the windows and be like, okay, we don't see anyone outside. We always were checking our surroundings.

My mom is from Sicily. Nobody messes with her. So I think that she like immediately went into like mama bear protector mode and she never wanted me to like see or sense her fear. But I know that deep down we were both kind of, you know, when you just get that pit in your stomach and you're just like, this feels like wrong. Like what can we do about this? And like she had

theories on and off and be like, "Hmm, maybe it's her young cousin playing a joke and he thinks it's funny. Maybe it's an ex-boyfriend of hers or something like that. Maybe it's my ex-husband." But then one time we were with my dad and the breather called. So we answered and my dad was like, "Leave us alone!" Trying to scare off this guy. He doesn't do anything.

But because like no matter if she changed her number or whatever, the person kept calling and finding her new number, we realized like it has to be somebody we know. March 29th, 2020, the breather called two times, but this time they forgot to block their number. So it was just an unknown number, not a contact or anything.

She answered, it was the breather. She goes, "Oh my gosh, the number wasn't blocked for the first time in 10 years." And then she hung up, she called the number back, it went to the person's voicemail, it said, "Hello, you've reached so and so, sorry I can't get to the phone right now." She was just like jaw dropped, realized, "Oh my God, it's my friend's husband."

Cora told me that her mother had a friend named June, who she had once run a daycare with. And June was married to a man named Richard. Now, Cora's mother seemed to think that Richard didn't have much to offer. He spent most of his time drinking rather than being a loving husband or an active father. It wasn't that Cora's mother was mean to him or anything. She just didn't want much to do with him. When they realized who it was though,

They weren't sure why. Was Richard mad that June liked Cora's mom more than Richard? Was it a power thing? Or, God forbid, a sexual thing? Deep down, though, she didn't really want to know. But still, Cora's mom had to let her friend June know what was going on.

So my mom texted her friend. She said, I really need to talk to you. Something has happened and it's very serious. Like, we need to have a phone call. So she responds like a day later or something. So it's like, yeah, what's up? Like, are you okay? Are you healthy? Are you hurt? Something like that. She calls her. She goes, I think you should sit down. This is really, I don't know how to tell you this, but...

Remember how I told you in the past I was like having that creepy stalking situation where someone was like calling me all the time and breathing? She goes, oh my god, yeah. She goes, well, I found out the other night because they forgot to block their number that it was Richard. My mom said she almost like laughed in shock, like she didn't know how to cope with it. And, uh,

She was surprised, she was shocked, but she was like weirdly calm during it all as well. And my mom thinks like, maybe he's like just been a shitty guy and she's not that surprised even. She said, okay, well, we're going to bring it up in couples therapy and we're going to work on it. And like, my mom was like, whoa, come back a bag and come run away, you know, like,

And she, yeah, she decided they're still, they're still together and they still run a daycare in Montana now. Stalking is a true nightmare. It can go on for years, be in person or from afar. Victims can be empowered to talk about it.

or carry the secret due to fear for their own safety. Regardless, if you or anyone you know is a victim of stalking, StalkingAwareness.org recommends you call the police and keep a record of everything that is happening. Save evidence if you're able to. Their website, StalkingAwareness.org, has resources like an incident log and a handbook for victims. You're not alone.

And even though many victims are not taken seriously, it is possible to find help. This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Additional producing by Matt Brown.

Sound design and mix by Peach Tree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart-pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious. But more importantly, stay safe.

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