...Psychopaths. THAT'S what.

WHY...in the world did Todd "disappear?"

...Three words: "stalking", "harassment", and "psychopaths".

Local area hams have ALWAYS been a CONSISTENT problem for me. I've ALWAYS had to stand up for myself, to do it all myself, to ask for help and watch while everyone stares off into space hoping not to catch my gaze.

Every time I tried to start something, it was always like this:

• Nobody wanted to do it themselves;
• Nobody wanted to help out when you did it;
• But they always encouraged YOU to do it;
• Nobody had the time to help you when you needed them;
• Everyone was always busy doing something else to keep them away;
• Nobody wanted to be tied down to the job if you asked them for help;
• But EVERYBODY knew exactly how it could be done better;
• And when you finally got it together, nobody EVER liked the efforts you made, or the work that you did.

This is the BASIS for all of the problems that I have had. It was perfect setup for some psychopaths to come in and make my life a living hell. Had I KNOWN what was going to happen to me ten years in the future, I would have NEVER, not on your LIFE, taken on the task of getting a local SKYWARN program going in this god-forsaken town.

The local hams here could never be satisfied. They were always jealous of the work that I did. They never wanted to help, but they were sure to always criticize, and to complain.

For a long time, I believed these stupid people. I actually criticized myself. They kept me in this low confidence, self-loathing atmosphere - disguised in "helping" me. It took me a LONG time to realize what was happening. And when I did, the spell was broken. When that happened, suddenly some of those hams began to ATTACK me. ...People I used to work side-by-side with! I begged people to stop it. I begged people to leave me alone. I begged these people to stop treating me badly. Finally, I told people that I wasn't going to be the victim anymore - that I was going to start calling the police every time people harassed me; and once that happened, and they realized that they had no more control over me, they acted desperately. They tried everything in their power to get me to comply. And when it didn't work, they resorted to destruction of my name, my credibility, my good standing, and of the YEARS of hard work that I had done for SKYWARN. In the end, an ENTIRE COUNTY WARNING AREA'S civilian storm spotter groups ended up utterly DESTROYED. These people were INNOCENT of any wrong doing, and in the end the NWS took it out on the CIVILIANS. The CIVLIAN agencies were not the problem. The HAMS were! Now Alachua County no longer has any spotter training classes. The spotter program that ACOEM tried to get going under Melissa Royce...is failed and not going anywhere fast, and is WAY too complicated and WAY too complicated and WAY too complicated - to the point of non-functionality. (Did I just repeat myself, there?)

I've been harassed by complaining people for years; but in the last SIX years, some of the crazier hams began to do more than just criticize. They threatened me. They tried to encourage...no, PUSH me...to do illegal things. They tried to strongarm me into doing things their way. They tried to humiliate and embarass me in front of my friends and associations. They tried to destroy my friendships, my relationships, my associations - by going after them, attacking them, making them afraid, making them wonder about me. One ham was going to attempt to attack my best friend's NAVY career! One put my mother's life at risk. Another ham wrote NWS employees condescending emails about me and tried to make NWS, FDEM, and ACOEM employees think that I was irresponsible, and overbearing. In every case it was someone whom Jeff Capehart had complained to about me. In every case my attackers were one of the more volatile and stupid hams...people who were gullible and brainless, and anxious to find someone to blame for...anything. And these people would pick up phones and leave threatening messages, pager bomb me, email bomb me, attack my friends, family, associations...thinking that they were doing the right thing...because they thought this would impress Jeff, and the rest of ham radio society, whose favor they thought they would curry, and whom they envisioned would be cheering and clapping over their "noble" efforts to "get Todd on the ball"...whatever that was. But it took me SO long to figure out that it was actually Jeff who was behind all of it...SO long...SO, so very long. And as I'm slowly finding out as I do more research into people who are like this, that's apparently how it usually goes. Users, and abusers. Bullies, and victims. Disbelief that someone you respected for so long could actually be something dark hidden deep inside. It's the same way for everybody else. Everyone else believes Jeff to be this great guy because he volunteers for everything, is involved in so many ham radio and Emergency Management and other public service efforts. But really, Jeff hides behind these things as cover to allay everyone's suspicions about him. He encourages gullible, stupid people - gullible, stupid hams - to attack people, meanwhile leaving his own hands bloodless. For so long I couldn't understand why these whacko hams were attacking me so often and so very hard. And it took me a while to break down and admit to myself that it was Jeff. You have to nail him to the wall on everything, dig deeper into everything he says, force him to answer on every little seemingly unimpportant thing, and after 15 minutes of back and forth with him, after you've forced him into that corner and he has no other place to go, he admits the things he did...because you've logic'd him out, you've Sherlock Holmes'ed him into the light. It is not wise to take Jeff at his word. It is not wise to assume Jeff is telling you everything. There is always something extremely important to any story that Jeff is always leaving out and which answers the puzzle; but to actually answer it would point to him, and point out his involvement... and he doesn't want that. When Jeff leaves things out, other innocent people get blamed. Jeff is always "implication", misdirection; never direct blame. He leaves YOU to make the wrong assumption. Then it's YOUR fault. And he'll actually use that against you when you end up getting in trouble. "You shouldn't have ASSUMED! That's YOUR fault! I didn't (SAY/DO) (this or that)! You ASSUMED that! It's YOUR fault! You shouldn't have listened to me! You got YOURSELF in trouble! It's not my fault!" He can't be blamed then for your stupid mistake. See? It's always your own fault. If you don't ask the right questions with Jeff; if you don't NAIL him to the wall about everything...then you will only end up misdirected into assuming something happened a different way than it actually did, or that someone innocent was guilty of something, when it was actually him. Assumption, confusion and doubt are Jeff's best friends. Never let Jeff get away with just a shrug. There's more there, and he knows about ALL about it. NAIL him. MAKE him answer. It sucks that you have to do that with him and that he makes you have to go so far to get things out of him, but that's how it is. That's Jeff. If you don't do it, YOU could end up the one to blame and the one in trouble, and everyone will assume you are the culprit in everything, or that you were responsible. ...And this has happened to me repeatedly over the years with Jeff. After finally nailing to the wall, and getting your answers, you'll discover the next shocking thing about Jeff. His denial. Even after ADMITTING what he did to you, he'll STILL blame it on you. He claims true belief in what he did. He makes himself the god and attempts to tell you that he did FOR you, for your own GOOD, because you just weren't "seeing." He CANNOT see the wrong in what he did no matter what you say or how long you argue with him. The argument will go on for years and you'll NEVER win. He is too far gone. He can only see his way. In his eyes, his actions were just. His actions were correct. His actions were for your own good. His actions were justifiable in his eyes. He sees nothing else, and you CAN'T convince him of the wrongness of the things that he does. He can't see it. You CANNOT convince him of the dangeroud situation that he puts you in. He won't see it. And THAT...is psychopathic. Jeff sees means to and end in what he does. He sees real logic and reaon in what he does. There's not emotion. Just logical actions to get you to "see". Evvery action he takes, to him, is reasonable and justified. ...A means to an end...HIS desired end. Asking him to stop never works for more than a few months, and then he starts trying to weasel his way back into your life again, or he tries to interfere in some way again, or he tries to find out information about you. And that - this inability to see your point of view, and his inability to put you down and to leave you alone - scares the HELL out of me.

But Everything with Jeff is pulling teeth. Everything. But once I started getting smart about him and I realized what he really was and what he was really doing, and - especially after demanding repeatedly that he stop - Jeff changed personality like a CAT, and things just got worse and worse.

[ insert story about Jammer Incident and the chase ]
[ insert story about GARS blaming me due to things left out by Jeff and Jim, and the club making assumptions ]

One particular female NWS employee followed me out to my car one day, helping me pack up after a spotter training class at the Alachua County Library back in 2005, and she was...being extremely complimentary towards me. I felt honored, and proud. Here was this woman so smart and so into the SKYWARN program in with the same energy that I was. She stayed for almost three hours into the dark night in the parking lot talking to me, telling me how cool she thought I was, how impressed she was with all of my efforts with SKYWARN. You have to underrstand, people were always putting me DOWN over the efforts I was making. I was never good enough. I had such low confidence because of these jerks. This was before I began to realize that much of my problems were there because Jeff was out there putting me down to others behind my back. I was only then beginning to put pieces together, to figure out things. I told Jeff Capehart about what happened, and instead of being a friend and keeping a confidence, he actually betrayed me and tried to use the situation and sent this employee a very uncomplimentary and condescending email about me, attempting to get her to make me "come to (my) senses" about a disagreement he'd had with me a year-and-a-half before! This email, and everything else going on, scared her, and made her question why so MANY people were attacking me all of the time. I remember during our conversation, it was a consistently repeated question: "Why ARE they attacking you so much?" I didn't know how to answer that. She wanted SIMPLE answers. She wanted SIMPLE logic. She wanted an immediate answer. And when I wasn't able to produce that, all it did was make her doubt who was good and who was bad. (This is actually the thinking most people use in dealing with this. "It CAN'T be them; it HAS to be you." It's such an easier logic to deal with than (god forbid!) actually going through the steps of doing an ACTUAL INVESTIGATION. Pfbt! Who does THAT anymore? We've got "gut feelings!") ...She wanted nothing to do with it. She backed off as quickly as she had flirted. I really hoped for a friendship with her because at the time I really thought she was cool. I wanted her on the SKYWARN team. But that scared her. It was attention, ties to me that she didn't want out there - knowing now what was out there attacking me. Instead of a friendship, I got humilation, and disappointment, and was filled with rage and SHOCK that someone who supposedly claimed to be my friend could INTERFERE in such a way as to DELIBERATELY cause someone - especially someone he KNEW I looked up to and admired for her efforts and attitude with regards to SKYWARN and what we were all trying to do - to doubt me, to think of me lowly now, and questionable, and to DESTROY any CHANCE at a friendship. It worked extremely well. AGAIN...interference in my life. The email also made her realize that now SHE was being focused upon. She became frightened, and wanted only to disassociate; and what used to be an open, always friendly interaction for years, now ended up becoming "business only". She even admitted that the reason why she could not be friends was because she was afraid of becoming targetted, and because she didn't want to show "favoratism." I still have those emails. Actually I got constantly changing excuses in the beginning; but that was the one that was repeated the most. I was extremly upset with Jeff for pulling that. I couldn't believe he'd just done that. He had NO right. He had NO place. It served NO good purpose! It just wasn't LOGICAL - to a normal person who had CONSCIENCE, anyway. He crossed the LINE, and he INTERFERED with my personal life! My GOD! AGAIN! ...INTERFERENCE! What IS it with these hams and their insistence on interfering with my personal and professional LIFE like that?! I still to this DAY cannot BELIEVE that he PULLED that! To this day, the man CONTINUES to try to justify his actions, claiming that he had done it "to help (me)", "for (my) own good." The man has proven himself to be a MENACE, a STALKER, and he has even directly AND indirectly put me, my family, and my friends in the way of danger over and OVER again, and sees NO wrong in what he does. He REFUSES to acknowledge the dangers that he has put me in, and even thinks me rediculous and accuses me of worrying too much, COMPLETELY blowing off the things he has done! As he put it to me once: "Do you have reason to believe they (Scott and Jay) might harm you? HAVE they threatened to stab you or shoot you yet? You worry too much! When somebody attempts to shoot or stab you, THEN you have reason to worry." What he was doing was excusing himself into continuing to do what he was doing - working people up and making them attack me - until such time as something REALLY HAPPENED to me and THEN he'd CONSIDER stopping. You see, you have to be able to read between the lines with Jeff. (Jeff can't stand people who are able to think for themselves and who can figure him out because it means he can't play his games with you anymore.) Considering how volatile Scott West and Jay Lieberman were, Jeff actually thought me rediculous to wonder how far they might go if they got pissed off at me, or if Jay went into one of his diabetic frenzies again. Both own guns. Both have gotten in trouble for using them to threaten other people, before. Jay has threatened club members before - AT MEETINGS! Scott was fired from the Gainesville Regional Airport as a security guard for withdrawing his gun from his holster and pointing it at some people - not because they were breaking some law, but because they didn't do what he asked. You can't do that. So Scott isn't of right mind and isn't capable of keeping a cool head and is prone to rash actions, too. ...But I'm just..."rediculous". And this is the attitude that GARS, GARC, the ARRL, GPD, UPD, the State Atty's Office, Alachua Co. Office of Emergency Mgmt, the Florida Division of Emergency Mgmt, and the National Weather Service have taken whenever I'd complain to them about these people. In specific, I've complained to:

• The GARS Executive Board about Scott, Jay AND Jeff - and GARS Executive Board members decided instead NOT to tell the regular membership about my complaints and to instead keep everything QUIET in the hopes that it would all die down and my harassers would just "go away",
• Jay Garlitz, Faculty Advisor of the Gator Amateur Radio Club, and have even admitted to him that at one point these people were SO bad at times that I was EVEN contemplating suicide; and rather than get involved and take me seriously and investigate or ask his club members questions or to APPEAR that he was trying to help, his response instead was an implied threat that if he actually reported it that it I would be carted away by psychiatrists - which was irreponsible and puts him and the club and even the University of Florida now at risk of lawsuit - especially if something ever happens to me,
• John Fleming and Steve Abrams of FDEM,
• Paul Eakin of the ARRL actually USED my situation - rumors, my personal pain and suffering, to gain him his current political position as ARRL NFL Section Manager, and he refuses to share with me the names of the people and agencies which shared that information with him - so that I am unable to make it stop, and in so using it, he helped to spread the misinformation and slander HIMSELF, while ON THE CLOCK for the ARRL, which brings the ARRL into the firing range, too,
• Dave Donnelly, (then) Asst. Emergency Mgr of ACOEM.
• (then) Chief William May, ACOEM,
• I've written emails to City and County Commissioners,
• Al Sandrik, Steve Letro, Angie Enyedi, of NWS-JAX,
• Detective Joesph Mayo of GPD - who I am told apparently deliberately sabotaged a harassment case because Dave Donnelly and Chief May suggested that I was a "problem"...based only on rumors they had heard from NWS, which was based on rumors THEY had heard from the hams, and in fact Det. Mayo blew it off as a "power struggle" and a "organizational war" rather than acknowledge the statements I'd made about hams actually stalking and harassing me,
• I complained to UPD about the EMWIN system break-in by Jeff Capehart, and Dr. Garlitz vouched for Jeff and and implied to them that I was a problem and I was again ignored by a police department; they also used "jurisdiction" as an excuse not taking any action,
• Det. Mann at the State Attorney's Office, a conversation on the phone where he talked to me in a condescending voice and basically treated me like I was being stupid and ridiculous.

I exhausted EVERY avenue. I went to everyone possible to try to get help. Nobody took me seriously. Everybody blew me off. Evveryone I talked to treated me with disrespect and disbelief. Jeff's friends vouched for him in every case - Dr. Garlitz, Chief May, Dave Donnelly, etc., and so no one would even do so much as INVESTIGATE him or QUESTION him. In every case, I was treated like *I* was the bad guy...and NO one...did any investigating to justify that attitude. But I'm just being rediculous. It used to be that the police would tell you that if you were being stalked, to go to the police; to file a complaint IMMEDIATELY. TODAY, the police ask you what tangible PROOF you have; and if it's not difinite, not an EASY case for them, not CUT AND DRY, not LAID OUT FOR THEM from filing all the way to prosecution, they will NOT take it, or even so much as investigate...if you're male. If you're FEMALE on the other hand, why they'll go OUT OF THEIR WAY to listen to you and to help you, to sabotage other people's cases for you. They'll do favors under the table for you, ignore the other guy's complaints, make the other guy think they're listening and make the other person think they're doing something when in fact they're not, and they'll put the wrong, innocent people in harms way or in jail for you. They'll do things which put their jobs and their agencies at risk of possible lawsuit...based soley on a tear shed for them by a female...like that GPD cop did for Melissa.

Jeff had gone too far this time. This was the last straw. I rescinded his Asst. Coordinator status. I told the NWS that he was no longer involved wiht Alachua County SKYWARN. I told him never to contact me again. I told him that if he did I would have a restraining order issued against him. I told him that he was to stay out of my life, out of my business, and never to discuss me ***OR*** Alachua County SKYWARN with other people ever again because all he seems able to do is cause trouble and work up the more volatile hams into attacking me. And even as soon as three months ago (March 2009), he's deliberately taken action to cause more problems in my life. He just refuses to go away, and refuses to stay away for long.

Let's bring one thing right out into the open here. Jeff is an extremely intelligent individual and he knows exactly what he is doing to people. He's not in any way a dumbass. He likes to feign inability to see anything wrong that he is doing but I PROMISE you the man is very aware of everything that he says to others and what those words might cause other people to DO, or THINK. But always, people want to believe in him - like to realize he is bad would be to break the heart of a LOVER in a ROMANCE or something. I am continually blown away by this effect that is going ON with him. People forgive him for everything, or they know what he does but they turn a deliberate blind eye to it...and it's because they don't want to lose their source of FAVORS - and that is a very important thing to underrstand. They don't want to lose their source of someone who will do something where everyone else is too lazy to. And Jeff DOES get involved. They make him indispensible in their minds, and so everything bad that he does is forgotten. If they didn't do this, then they would not get anything done, they'd have no one to do them favors, to help them fix their computers, to put things together for them, to be stand in for them, etc., etc., etc. Long time ago, back before I knew what she really was, Melissa Royce once told me about a conversation that her husband Phil had had with ham and ACSO Officer Randy Kerr, where Phil had asked what the deal was between Jeff and Todd. Randy apparently had said, "DON'T rock the boat between those two...Jeff DOES things." ...And right there you have it, in a nutshell. ...A COP, told Phil not to interfere with the stuff going on between Jeff and Todd, because whatever was happening to Todd didn't matter. What Jeff DOES for everybody...DOES. Nobody EVER knows anything, and nobody wants to "get involved." And to make themselves feel better about not helping, they blow these things off usually with things like "WHY can't those people just GET along?" Read another way, that's "I know all the bad stuff that is going on, I see it, but I don't want to acknowledge it either because I don't want to be blamed for not bringing it to the attention of the authorities before, or, I don't want those guys coming after ME...so Todd is sacrifice." Honestly? It boils down to everyone knowing what's going on and no one giving a damn because that's just the way that today's human beings are. "It's not my problem!, or, "It's not my duty to report anything!", or, "If I report, I'm just gonna end up being attacked by the bad guys anyway."

I went into HIDING to get away from these hams! I thought "out of sight, out of mind" and maybe they'd leave me alone if I wasn't seen. But that didn't work. They chased AFTER me. They continued to work their destruction STILL...for YEARS. They took advantage of my disappearance, telling people that I didn't CARE, that I had abandoned Alachua County SKYWARN. That wasn't quite true, either. I was still there. Just that we were rendered to very limited capability because NWS now refused to acknowledge or to cooperate with us anymore, now believing me and ACS to be the problem. I was requesting classes; they were ignoring me - because of the things that the hams were saying, and because of the incident with the NWS employee. But for a long while, I was unaware that the hams were doing this. I was keeping the web pages updated. I was keeping the EMWIN system going. I was there. I was just...not as visible...because I was trying to get away from some people who were acting like the very definition of a psychopath. To try to understand what was happening to me, why these people were doing this to me, and to understand the psychology of their behavior, I purchased books like Nasty People, the sociopath next door, Without Conscience, and Snakes In Suits. They were very enlightening. I wanted to try to gather some understanding of what the hell has been going ON and what kind of PEOPLE that I seem to be dealing with, here. I just cannot believe how FAR these particular hams have gone, and just how easily they were able to sway ALL FOUR POSSIBLE LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT, now, into believing that I am some sort of a serious problem. They all seem to have this unbelievable charisma that seems to be just unchallengeable. NOBODY EVER questions these people! But in my personal opinion, what these people have been doing fits all too perfectly well with the definition psychopath or some form of very similar type of "antisocial personality disorder". I am not a psychologist so as a result I cannot officially "diagnose" these people with such a label; but if it had to be left to a guess, mine is probably more educated on the subject of psychopathy than most people in this county by now, and I would say I'm 99-percent sure. But to "assume" is to play to their game, and I'm not going to assume. I can only say that I have the suspicion. There is only one real way to find out, and that is by administering the "Hare PCL/R" test to Jeff and these other people. It is the official, definitive test for psychopathy. But fat chance getting any of these assholes to agree to take it. In the case of Jeff, I've often asked myself if his parents didn't already KNOW, if he was already tested at some point in the past, and if the results were being withheld from people, where actually, as evidenced by the things that he has caused to happen to me - without care - the man is in my opinion DANGEROUS, and we all have a right to KNOW that. I wonder the same about Susan, too. If I do find out that people knew, and it was known that they were dangerous or could have become dangerous, and that information was withheld, I WILL be sueing whoever withheld it.

The hams told NWS and ACOEM that I was trying to take over and control all of the SKYWARN operations in northern Florida, and preventing other spotter organizations from forming. Forgetting that there is no way to actually EFFECT that kind of power, and that there is no evidence out there either in paper form or witness form to prove that, I'd like to know how so many gullible people actually BELIEVED that? They claimed that I wasn't doing my job (whatever my "yob" was, considering it's all volunteer and no one else wanted to help), that I refused to hold spotter nets.

...Which wasn't true. GARS prevented us from running spotter nets, accusing us of being storm chasers - which was an incredibly uneducated accusation that came from the late John Warne's wife. GARS even tried to charge us "double tax" to prevent us from operating. That was a charge led by the late Bill Wells, who tried to pass a vote to make anyone who participates in a spotter net under Alachua County SKYWARN to be assessed a dues charge - even if they were already paying dues members of GARS! The vote did not pass. I made sure of it. It was an unbelievable suggestion, and completely unfair to people attempting to do something good. Bill Wells was a very exasperating man who believed in the use of subterfuge, sabotage, gossip, rumor, slander, and preying upon everyone's fears and lack of knowledge to get his way. As well, GARS was a very egotistical, selfish organization and they often went after me because people like Bill and Jeff would imply that I was actually a problem rather than someone who was doing good things, and attempting to do what everyone else was too lazy to do and I was getting farther than others did at getting things done. I always got things done. I always ended up doing what nobody else wanted to do. And I was always alone. But I always not only got the minimum job done, I made it fantastic. I always put my whole heart into the things that I started. Sometimes the elders hated that. Sometimes EVERYBODY hated that. It took me a LONG time to realize WHY people seemed to HATE me so much. And I DO mean HATE...with screaming voices and pointing fingers kind of hatred. It was because people who were claiming to my face to be my friend, were my detractors behind my back. We TRIED - many TIMES - to get spotter nets going. But the OTHER side of the problem was that quite frankly, the hams wanted to be the CHASERS out in the FIELD. They didn't want to be the people stuck running or participating in the net, or sharing important, helpful information. I was CONSTANTLY running the nets. And I could NEVER find people willing to be NCS. I didn't have that kind of TIME. I had other things in my life, too. So the nets stopped. I was tired of the criticism. I was tired of people accusing me of encouraging storm chasing. The hams didn't WANT spotter nets - especially run by people under the age of 50. Other hams saw the nets as a pain in the ass, and they began to time thier ragchews to coincide with the time that storms were approaching, and the weather radios were going off. "Get on the air quick or those damned SPOTTERS are going to hog all of the AIR time!" I've had a NUMBER of hams admit this to me. I gave up on nets. GARS didn't want them. They didn't support them. And all they ever did was try to label me as irresponsible anyway. So I figured, "This isn't worth it." It was interesting that as much as people complained about the nets being gone, NO ONE stepped up to take my place...for YEARS. SOMEONE could have done that. But no one wanted to. There just wasn't any interest. But when the time came to criticize, Phil and Melissa took this to ACOEM and to the NWS and they used this and made it sound as if I was PREVENTING people from holding spotter nets, and spread doubt about me, making public officials think I was a horrid dictator who was trying to "take over" everything, and there was no evidence out there to back it up.

The hams preyed upon ACOEM and NWS too with the claim that I was refusing to involve or cooperate with Emergency Management (a critical blow that especially worked and that worked up both agencies). They also claimed that I was trying to claim copyright on the SKYWARN logo. That has NEVER been the case. I've always tried to cooperate with EM, just that they didn't WANT involvement in SKYWARN. At the time that I asked (and I asked on at least three different occasions if there was anything Alachua County SKYWARN could do to get involved with ACOEM), I was told that they didn't have the time, or the manpower, or the resources, or the money. That came straight from Dave DONNELLY! I HAVE THE EMAILS!!! Although really, I don't see what kind of "cooperation" there was to be had, ANYWAY. I mean, what did they want me to DO??? GARS wouldn't allow us to do nets, so there weren't any net reports to be shared. I did the Get Ready expos. I did the Engineering Fairs. I did the hamfests. I did the spotter training classes. And you know what? I always did it pretty much by MYSELF! No one would ever volunteer to help. So I'm asking...WHAT???

The basic M.O. was this: They tried to instill fear and paranoia in all possible civilian and government associations that I had, and they attempted to deliberately exaggerate things and play them up to government agencies as if they were things they should be GREATLY CONCERNED about.. Then they tried to get those agencies to take ACTIONS against me, citing "the problems with Todd and Alachua County SKYWARN." (That's not made up. That's a real quote from Steve Letro, NWS Field Office, Jacksonville, Florida, as personally witnessed during a phone conversation with my then Asst. Coordinator, Alisa Marchionno, whom I had assigned the task of calling up and using her pretty voice to get information out of NWS because they were ignoring me. It worked VERY well, and I got a witnessed confirmation of what I wanted to know and suspected out of them. ...It WAS about me and Alachua County SKYWARN specifically...as much as they had tried to hide and deny it.)

At any rate....The hams were extremely successful in their attempts.

The local hams here caused me so much pain and suffering that I actually went into hiding to try to make it all stop. But that was a wrong move, itself, because all that THAT did was make them feel empowered and they then began to track me down. The worst of them all especially were Phil and Melissa Royce. Mostly Melissa. That woman caused a HECK of a lot of problems - for everybody, and a heck of a lot of unnecessary fear and paranoia in the NWS, FDEM, ACOEM, GPD, the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society, the Gator Amateur Radio Club, and now has all of those agencies and groups at risk of lawsuits for the actions that they have taken against "the problems with Todd and Alachua County SKYWARN" that she and her husband campaigned around to everyone. Governments took real actions against me and ACS based SOLELY upon the paranoid gossip and rumor and slander that these people purported around. Even the American Radio Relay League is in the line of possible fire because one ARRL member, Phil Eakin, campaigning for ARRL Northern Florida Section Manager, actually made use of this gossip and slander he'd heard about my situation (wihtout first verifying facts or without any hearings having been had or any judgements been handed down before hand) for his own personal/political endeavors - gossip that he had apparently heard from NWS and FDEM circles in both Jacksonville and Tallahasse (yes, it spread far and wide), He never attempted to veryfy anything, never asked for any proof before he used the information, and he took it to the public. That's an official slander case. Since he did it on the clock for the ARRL, efffectively, and as a member of the ARRL, campaigning for a POSITION within the ARRL, that makes the ARRL responsible. In this case, the ARRL had no idea what this absolute clusterfuck of a man was doing; but because he did it in the NAME of the ARRL in a CAMPAIGN for the ARRL, that makes the ARRL responsible and placed in the way of legal attack without their knowledge or forementiion or agreement, and that is going to upset the ARRL to high hell when they find out, and Phil is going to get into a lof of trouble, and quite probably lose his position in disgrace for handling myh situation the way that he did. The ARRL will NOT back him up and will NOT take responsibility for spreading my name around in such a defamatory way. I'm sure of this. Phil took no steps to make sure that what he was hearing and what he was using in his campaign were true. He instead took it as fact, PRESENTED it as fact to the public, and my name and reputation - my personal pain and suffering - was dragged in view of the public like some deformed circus mutant, and it was actually used as fodder to help further someone's political campaign. And he even won, too. This guy won't return phone calls, he won't explain himself. I want ANSWERS out of that man. He USED someone he didn't even know - someone else's peraonal pain and suffering - to boost his popularity. He did it callously, he did it with aforethought and calculation, and being an intelligent man with knowledge of right and wrong, and having a conscience mind. I asked for his help and he refused. I asked him for the names of the peolpe he had gotten this information from. He refused to give me those names, citing that he was "protecting" them. (What about ME?) He got what he wanted and I guess that'a all that matters. He's a forensics cop, too. That's what really chaps my butt and blows me away. He should KNOW better. :( And his forensics handling of this whole thing leaves me wondering what kind of a "forensics" cop this man really IS, and how many innocent people this asshole put away because of his lax work and lax handling of information. This is not a good guy. This man is a legal problem for some people.

I once filed a harassment complaint with GPD. The case originally was open-ended. We didn't know who the perpetrator was, at first. Someone sent an anonymous harassing email to me using my forged name in a fake Yahoo account. After they sent the email, they deleted the account, thinking that the deletion would remove all evidence of it. So the case was originally filed against no one specific. At first I thought it was Scott West, because Scott had pulled something similar with me, in the past. Scott wanted me to run AC-SKYWARN *his* way, and he wanted me to make him President and his wife Treasurer "because she was good with Excel and 'the books'", so that he could use the funds gleaned from ACS to purchase for himself an d his favorite buddies "equipment that (we) could keep on a sort of permanent personal loan basis" as he put it, word-for-word. When I didn't comply, he began email-bombing me and pager-bombing me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this is, "bombing" is when someone sends lots and LOTS of back-to-back emails and/or pages to your pager, cellphone and/or email account, that they become a serious bother. It is a form of harassment using a computer. They clutter up your inbox. They eat up your minutes. They eat up your text costs. And it's done beligerently, knowing that it does this to people. In Scott's case, he was doing this during random times during the day, sometimes 1am, 2am, 3 am., 4am. He sent insults. He sent threats, always vaguely worded and open-ended: "KMS - means keep mouth shut." Or else...what? He'd threaten to keep doing these things "until you talk to me." He'd call my home phone and leave messages, some threatening, at all hours of the day and night. This was a man whom many people in various public service organizations - ham radio, Red Cross, CERT - had complained about for staring at women's breasts even while talking straight to them, having temper tantrums during training classes, making threats to various public officials. I was unaware of much of this and slowly people began to bring it to my attention. This was a man whom I had made Asst. Coordinator! He became SO emboldened and confident in his harassments that one day he wrote a VERY insulting, rude, and even threatening email to me and at that point I canned him. It was after that that he began harassing me. He was a VERY scary person. I did that man SO much kindness. Actually, I wasn't kind for HIS sake, but for his family's. He had a wife and a 6-year-old son (at the time). I kept envisioning his son being ridiculed and picked on as the kid with "that guy on TV who was arrested". So I never called the police. I knew his wife, and she was always nice to me. If I filed charges against Scott, she'd have to take care of her son by herself. This made me feel guilty. I shouldn't have been so nice. So when this recent email stuff was sent to me, complete with typo's similar in fashion to Scott's MO, I called the police and told them what I knew. The keystone cop that was sent to me used verbiage that made me sound rediculous to every future officer of the law who would read the report. Finally it was handed officially over to a detective, and long story short, that detective deliberately sabotaged my case.

Upon closer examination of the header information in the email, it became apparent that the originating IP address of the sender pointed straight back to - Phil Royce's personal ham radio web page. So it was the Royces who had sent the email. I gave this information to the detective assigned to my case. He had six months to do nothing more than subpoena the IP logs from Bellsouth and Yahoo to prove who had sent it. He hemmed and hawwed, egged me on, said what I wanted to hear, excused himself for not getting on it right away because he was on vacation, or he had a seminar to go to, or this or that. He finally pretended that he had received the logs. He said that he was seeing "anonymizing and spoofing going, and that it might be hard to prove who was doing it." I asked him for copies of the logs so I could present it to some experts of my own to examine. A half hour later, he called me back and said that he had been looking up the wrong case file for the entire past six months, that he HADN'T subpoenaed the IP logs, that he had accidentally been pulling someone ELSE'S file the whole time, over and over and over again, that he believed that it was a civil and not a criminal case, that he had presented it to the SAO's office in that manner, and that they agreed that it was a civil case. I sat there wondering what the HECK this man was talking about. I asked him what that had to do with sobpoeaning the IP logs and he had no answer. I asked him when he had counselled the SAO's office, and he said that he had only done it in the past few days, AFTER it was already too late to grab the logs, now. The man DELIBEATELY IGNORED my case for six months and didn't REALLY act on it until the very end, and LET the expiration dates pass so that I couldn't do anything at ALL to protect myself in the end. ...That son of a BITCH! Meanwhile, Phil and Melissa got off with what they did, scott-free. GPD had deliberately destroyed my chances for justice, for possibly obtaining a key that could have been used to help STOP all of this...because a clown cop thought he was doing a "favor" for other people who said I was harassing them. Thank you Detective Joseph Mayo. You're an asshole.

But there were more harassers whom Jeff Capehart had "encouraged" my way. Jay Lieberman was a diabetic who didn't take care of himself, and he was always having some diabetic episode and would fly into crazed, raging fits and threaten harm to people. He was a racist who hated blacks and was not afraid to openly make it known. You know the type...they talk loudly and openly in almost violently and unabashedly disrespecful verbiage about the "plague" that is the black man, and they have NO CLUE that no one else around them is agreeing with them - and if they knew, they really wouldn't care. They are the type that you cannot convince to shut up, either, without threat of some form or another, or some form of really loud, offensive, and insulting verbiage thrown your way. He was paranoid. He openly believed the government was following him, that he had been abducted by aliens in his past. Stuff like that. He's threatened people at GARS meetings with being shot with the gun that he said he kept in his glove compartment. He had a rap sheet three pages long - where MOST were arms-related violations! He's even threatened police officers. He had a history of countless misdemeanor and felony violations relating to worthless and forged checks. (All of this is actually verifiable and FREELY available online on the public records of the Alachua County Clerk of the Court which I seriously recommend that everyone now check before you make any arrangements with ANY local ham radio operators. Had just one person in the NWS, ACOEM, GPD or either of the local ham clubs done this, then maybe the story about what happened to me might be something very different, today.) There was a rumor that at some time in his past when he was involved with the Air Force he was caught starting brush fires so that he could call them in. Jeff would AIM this man at me and he used to tell me that I was being rediculous to worry about Jay OR Scott if they hadn't actually shot or stabbed me! Jeff enjoyed watching people like this harass me and when I'd ask him to stop working these people up, he'd flat out REFUSE, citing that if only I'd be a better LEADER, that I wouldn't be going through all of this. Jeff ALWAYS had some excuse which left him out of any responsibility for what would happen to me as a result of his aggitations of the more whacko and dangerous hams out there.

And people wanted to know what HAPPENED to me??? Yes, I went into HIDING because Jeff and Susan were deliberately working the scarier hams up into actively attacking me...mostly Jeff - but Susan was there.

Susan is always there in the background, pushing Jeff, encouraging him. Susan might be able to feign foul play from me here except for the fact that she has in the past openly BRAGGED LOUDLY to people - even in club meetings - that she dislikes me and deliberately tries to harass me. So this woman who so loudly brags about her high I.Q. all of the time, wasn't smart enough to stay quiet enough to remain safe from blame. I NEVER had any peace. If I didn't do things the way that Jeff Capehart wanted, then he'd try to FORCE me to do what he wanted by getting others upset with me, publicly embarrassing me, putting me down in front of people I had active agreements and projects going with, causing them to doubt me and disbelieve in my ability to be responsible and to handle things. But his most favorite means of harrassing me was working up the more volatile and dangerous of the hams and then sitting back and watching the fireworks fly. He'd let them do all the really bad stuff and he'd just sit back and watch, chuckling, whilst claiming innocense and non-involvement, and holding up his clean, unbloodied hands, showing off the lack of existence of the knife. Always, it was Jeff Capehart behind these people, working them up, talking with them about me when he KNEW that talking about me worked these idiots up, and I'd even TOLD him, REPEATEDLY, to STOP it, and in one email from him he actually refused outright, saying "NO!" His wife Susan always encouraged him, and she was always EXTREMELY mean and cruel. Susan was always rude to me and she was one of those totally oblivious souls that just didn't "get" it. She'd be mean to people, and then act totally taken aback when people would tell her to knock it off. To her, she truly believes that what she is doing is for your own good. And when you're rude right back to her, and tell her to knock it off, and to leave you alone, she pretends not to understand, acts HURT and as if your rebuking came TOTALLY out of nowhere and like it was totally unwarrranted, and like you're picking on her. She harps that reaction, in fact. Her reactions are always unnatural, as if practiced. Her shocked look becomes frozen for an uncomfortable number of seconds, as if copied straight out of some magazine she read or something. Instead of apologizing in a mature manner, and recognizing what she does to people, she instead gets angry, and meaner, and ruder, and she puts you in her hate list. She can't stand people who are strong and who stand up for themselves and who aren't afraid to tell her where to go. Jeff has told me many repeated stories about how she actually sits in bed and RANTS about me and how everything that I do "takes away from (his) popularity and publicity, and makes (me) look so much better than (him)." I mean...that's just psychopathic, right there. I thought this stuff only happens in the movies. She has numerous complaints about her rudeness and meanness at her place of work. (That comes from Jeff, himself.) According to Jeff, she came home upset one day because even the UF's DEAN OF VETERINARY MEDICINE has given her an ultimatum: STOP being mean and rude and vindictive with people or she'll be banned from attending the Livestock Pavillion and being able to attend the dog shows anymore. Anyone who has known Susan for a long time knows what Susan is like and has SOME nightmare story about her or complaint about her. This woman's character is not one of a good person, but of one more seemingly psychopathic. She encourages Jeff to be mean to me and brainwahses him into believing that I'm some sort of low-life who should be attacked, and that it's okay to attack me - as if it's something that needs to be done. I have actual emails from Jeff where he tells me this stuff. Jeff fully and truly believes that every action that he has taken against me is justified and deserved. Jeff then works up the other hams, who actually DO attack me. Jeff and Susan always hide in the shadows, trying hard to keep all eyes off of them while other people do all of the real dirty work. Meanwhile, they volunteer for everything, and make themselves invaluable to everyone and even endeared, and try to put up a public front of being very good citizens. I have repeatedly asked Jeff to stop and he has repeatedly refused and repeatedly - and even recently - worked people up to attack me - even now, years later. I have tried to make official complaint to the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society, to the UF's Gator Amateur Radio Club, to the NWS Field Office in Jacksonville, to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, to the Alachua County Office of Emergency Management, to the State Attorney's Office, and even filed two different REAL CASE complaints with the Gainesville Police Department, to the University Police Department...and in EVERY case...these organizations and agencies blew me off, treated me like I was being rediculous and/or harassing good people, or outright ignored me. In some cases, they even AIDED the very people that I was complaining about. It has been abundantly made apparent to me that I have NO PROTECTION from these people at this time, and NO ONE will help. I do NOT know what to do, or how to make these people stop. Even as recently as two months ago, Jeff Capehert made effort to work Phil and Melissa Royce up into campaigning to try to take the Alachua County EMWIN Project equipment away from Alachua County SKYWARN. He admitted that to me while we were taking the satellite dish down from the Dental Science Building rooftop. He admitted that he did it KNOWING that it would cause me problems but he did it anyway, supposedly to "test" Melissa, to "see what would happen". He gave me no notice that he was doing this, and my approval of the idea wasn't sought after. Phil and Melissa immediately took to the idea and campaigned to Dave Donnelly for the systems removal from the rooftop and that possession be given to ACOEM. Much to Dave Donnelly's total embarrassment, that effort failed miserably because I fought back with threats of lawsuits this time. I'd FINALLY had a win, someplace; but not the kind of win that is important.

I CAN tell people that I've had it with the local area hams, though, and I am LOOKING for that one mistake that allows me to begin real legal proceedings against people. I've had it. I'm not going away, and I'm gonna start defending myself now - even if it means completely destroying both local ham radio organizations and destroying the careers of some up-until-now endeared public officials who have been hiding all of this for a very long time. Regardless of the fact that these people may heve been duped, they still had obligation to INVESTIGATE FULLY before they took ACTIONS. They did NOT, and they instead took gossip and rumor and slander as fact, did NOT call for proof of anything, relied on GUT FEELING, and they took ACTIONS...actions which brought a great deal of wholly unnecessary harm to me.

I'm NOT letting this go. I will want recompense...from SOMEbody. I WILL have my name back.

(More later...I'm tired.)