Tracing a stalker

Rob Stafford Correspondent • Profile

“He's watching me,” said Sherri Peak. “I lived like a hostage.”

Everywhere she went -- along the highway to work, in the driver's seat of her SUV, even behind the locked doors of her home -- Sherri Peak was convinced that someone was watching.

Rob Stafford [Dateline Correspondent]: Do you know how this sounds?
Sherri Peak: Yeah, it sounds crazy.

On the surface, Sherri Peak's story was hard to believe. She feared the kind of surveillance you'd expect on a terror suspect, not a suburban mom.

But this is a cautionary tale. It’s an old-fashioned story of a man obsessed with a beautiful woman but armed with all the high-tech tools anyone has access to today.

Peak: I think that this person believed that if I left him, that I deserved to die. I completely underestimated this man. Tremendously.

Sherri's story began in Seattle in 1994 when she met a guy who looked like the man of her dreams. His name was Rob Peak.

Peak: He was very handsome. Charming, funny, witty. He seemed successful, well-dressed, well-manicured. He looked like the ideal kind of guy. And he likes to have a good time, so it was very easy in the beginning.

Rob seemed to be successful, too, as the manager of auto repair shops across the state. The following year, they were married and soon started a family with two beautiful little girls.

Peak: We'd go to Disneyland and take the kids and go on all the rides. That's when I had imagined the family being like. That's what I had dreamed and hoped for. But come back home, it was a different reality.

Sherri says over the years another side of Rob emerged.

He had a hair-trigger temper that would explode over even little things. One time she wanted to have dinner with girlfriends and he said no. Sherri then pouted as they walked through a mall, and Rob grew very angry.

Peak: He grabbed my arm, jerked me around to face him, and said, "Don't fuck with me." And I was completely caught off-guard and frightened and disturbed that -- where did this side of him come from?

Stafford:That was a different Rob Peak than you had ever seen before?

Peak: Yes, yeah, yeah. I didn't like the look in his eye.

Stafford:What did you see his eyes?

Peak: Someone who looked scary.

Sherri says Rob became incredibly possessive and demanded she account for everything she did during the day. She recalls one confrontation when she came home from Christmas shopping.

Peak: The minute I walked in the door, I had bags in my arms. He says, "Where have you been?" I told him, "I've been shopping. I had bags." He says, "Well, I want to see the receipts." … I had to lay them out on the counter. And he says, "Well, where were you from 7 o'clock to 8:30?" And I said, "Well, I was looking for things to buy." And he started just going off on this rampage.

Sherri says she took their daughters upstairs but Rob came after Sherri and continued the fight in front of them.

Peak: And grabbed me by the shoulders and he started shaking me and he put his forearm over my neck and he said, "Who the f--- do you think you are?" And that look in his eye told me that I was in trouble with this guy.

They went into counseling for a while and Rob's behavior improved. As a mother of young children, Sherri wanted to make the marriage work, but she says Rob began to slowly regress.

Finally in July 2005, she'd had enough and told Rob to move out as she prepared to file for divorce. Still, she says her problems with Rob were far from over. In fact they were just beginning.

Peak: I had taken a new job; I hadn't told him where I was working. On the third day of the start of this new job he shows up and standing outside.

Stafford: Is it possible he was just in that neighborhood?

Peak: No. No, because this is an office park where you have to get off the main drag and drive up through the parking lot to get to it.

Stafford:You thought you were out of this marriage and here he is in the parking lot of where you're working?

Peak: Yes.

Stafford: What does that feel like?

Peak: It's sickening. I called him right away on the cell phone and said “You need to stay away. I don't want you here. This isn't right. I'm telling you, leave and I'm asking you to stop."

Stafford:Was that the end of it?

Peak: No, that was the beginning.

Stafford: What happened next?

Peak: Within two weeks, my sister had a birthday party and we went with friends and family to celebrate and we're in downtown Seattle. It's late; we're saying our good-byes and I turn around and there's Rob by himself walking down the street right towards us. And the minute he sees me looking at him, he ducks behind a building.

Sherri says the stalking didn't end there. Three weeks later, she was driving to the airport.

Peak: I pull into the parking garage and see a familiar car behind me. It's visibly Rob's car.

In the car was an employee of Rob's.

Stafford:Did you tell Rob that you were going to the airport that day?

Peak: This isn't just a coincidence. This is perfect timing. How does he know where I'm at?

Police would soon be asking that very same question. The answer would be something right out of a James Bond movie.

Stafford:Had you ever seen anyone do anything like this?

Det. Liz Faith: I had not. I had never seen anything like that.

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