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Stalking suspect lived upstairs

ELKHORN — David Duvair lived upstairs the whole time.

Police say a Whitewater woman received the first threatening letter from a stalker April 24, 2009.

In the letter, the stalker threatened to stab the woman with a butcher knife so he could be sent to prison and be raped by male inmates. He asked to meet with the woman, according to court documents.

The woman, mother of a 5-month-old son, called Whitewater police.

As part of the investigation, a Whitewater detective asked the woman to agree to meet the stalker.

As requested in the stalker’s letter, the woman posted a specifically worded note on a bulletin board above her mailbox. Two days later, the note was gone.

The woman told police she was scared.

A second letter arrived June 7, 2009.

Like the first, the second letter was typewritten and contained no return address. The author thanked the woman for answering his original communication. He noted he still might need to stab her so he can be sodomized in prison, according to court documents.

Police dusted the letters for fingerprints but found none.

Investigators were stumped.

But on March 4 this year, a Whitewater police detective came across notes from a fellow officer about an encounter with a suspect in another case. The detective noticed that the thoughts expressed by the suspect in the other case seemed similar to feelings the stalker expressed in letters to the woman.

The suspect in the other case was Duvair.

The detective went to Duvair's apartment. The Whitewater man confessed to the crime, according to the criminal complaint. Duvair, 49, told police he typed both letters on a typewriter while wearing gloves and used self-adhesive stamps and envelopes, so as to not leave any DNA evidence.

According to the complaint, Duvair told police he “has fantasies of stabbing women and then becomes aroused thinking of those women thinking about him being raped in prison.”

Duvair, who appeared in court Thursday, is charged with a felony count of stalking and two counts of disorderly conduct. If convicted, he could get four years in prison and $12,000 in fines.

Nobody was hurt, but stalking experts say that’s not always the case.

“Stalking can escalate pretty severely,” said Gen Krahn-Reed, executive director of the Walworth County-based Association for the Prevention of Family Violence. “There have been a few homicides across the state due to stalking incidents that escalated to the eventual killing of the victim.”

Noticing stalking isn't always similar to what happened to the woman in Duvair's case. Some forms of the crime are very subtle, Krahn-Reed said.

“There are times that a person doesn't know he or she is being stalked,” she said.

Warning signs could be a car driving by several times, text messages or e-mails coming from an unknown person, or callers who hang up without saying anything.

Krahn-Reed also advises people to be cautious about what kind of personal information is available about them on the Internet. Whenever possible, she said, people should remove their addresses from web postings or other widely available information sources. Stalkers can take advantage of that to find a potential victim's home.

“Just to be safe, keep records in a safe deposit box and even shred things,” she said. “People go through garbage sometimes to get information.”

Being paranoid isn't healthy, Krahn-Reed said. So where does one draw the line between being careful and over-reacting?

“If you're noticing a consistent pattern, then that is not right,” Krahn-Reed said. “If it becomes more than just a couple of coincidental things, you should report that to the police.”