[birds calling]
[woman 1] At the beginning, all I was thinking about was hurting her.
Mentally trying to hurt her. That's all I thought about.
I did feel happy that she was…
scared.
[woman 2] I was questioning everyone. Everyone around me.
It's terrifying.
Whoever is doing it doesn't just want to bother you.
They are obsessed with you.
I had no idea what was gonna happen.
I genuinely thought that this would end with me dead.
It just kind of fed my sick need to…
I don't even know what I needed, but it fed something in me.
I would definitely call it revenge.
[chuckles softly]
[man 1] I'd rather be considered a murderer than a stalker,
you know what I mean?
[woman] I wanted the intensity of, like, of her feeling watched.
[man 2] Anybody could be a stalker.
[man 3] It's all boogeyman talk.
[man 4] I'm not still that crazy. Like-- [chuckles]
[birdsong]
[distant siren wailing]
[woman 3] I've dealt with thousands of women who have experienced stalking.
But women stalkers are very rare.
Eighty percent of the time,
men are the perpetrator and women are the victims.
This is a unique case.
It meets all the qualifications of stalking, certainly.
It was a pattern of behavior, it was targeted to one individual,
and it caused fear.
But this particular case is also defined as retaliatory stalking.
"I will get you. You will pay for this."
"You'll be sorry you ever messed with me" kind of thing.
Very, very dangerous.
My name is Jaclyn Feagin.
I was charged with felony stalking.
I grew up all over East Texas.
There's churches and restaurants, and there's not much more to do
than going to church, going to eat, and going to shop.
If you don't believe in the Christian God, you are evil.
It's a very "my way or the highway" type of deal in the Bible Belt.
My childhood definitely was difficult.
My mother was really the only one that was there for me.
So, yeah, it's a pretty unbreakable bond there.
I met my husband through mutual friends.
It was kind of like an intense relationship.
It-- it progressed really fast.
We had our daughter in 2018, and then we were married in 2019.
My husband and his ex, they had a son together,
and once she found out we were dating, she wanted to know who was around her son.
Straight off the bat, she told me that if I ever hurt either one of them
that she would kill me,
and that it was not a threat, that it was a promise.
I think that there were still feelings left for each other,
and seeing a new girl move into your ex's home
and with your ex and your son, I think that can be--
That can be hard. It can be hard to deal with.
[birdsong]
My name is Sandra and I live in Flint, Texas.
Jesse is my ex-boyfriend.
We met when we were teenagers.
We were friends for many years.
And about 2012 is when we decided to develop a relationship.
In about 2015, Jesse and I had a beautiful little boy.
But we didn't always see eye to eye on things.
Uh, like, he was an atheist and I was religious.
So we ended things at the end of 2016.
Just a few months after we ended things, Jesse began a relationship with Jaclyn.
She was kind of in the shadows of things,
so I did not know her very well.
She was very quiet, very meek.
I did not mind him dating someone else.
I did mind how quickly she was brought into my child's life,
and I was always concerned that, because of her…
our son would be put on the back burner.
[birdsong]
[Sandra] I was at work when my cousin called.
The only thing she said was my son's not breathing,
and that I needed to come.
I called Jesse as I was leaving and told him, and Jesse came as well.
We beat the ambulance to the hospital.
We waited for a few minutes for the doctor to come in,
and he told us that my son had not had a heartbeat since…
they had picked him up.
My son passed away April 1st of 2017.
I was in absolute denial that he was dead.
My entire life fell apart.
I turned to drugs and alcohol.
I completely lost who I was.
I struggled every day…
with if I was going to get up and try…
to… live this life
or if I was just going to give up.
And I know that Jesse struggled just the same as I did.
[birdsong]
After their son died, um…
his mother became…
Uh, I don't know. She was grieving, and I can completely understand that.
But there were a lot of messages between her and my husband.
I had my suspicions that they wanted to get back together
or rekindle their relationship.
It definitely put a strain on us.
I became very insecure, and he became very defensive,
and so there was a lot of sneaking around and then a lot of snooping on my part,
and a lot of other things were uncovered.
Our relationship became very volatile after all of this.
I decided that boundaries needed to be set to make our marriage work.
And one of those boundaries was with his ex.
"Talk about your son only, and that's it. Nothing else."
And she did not like that.
[Sandra] After my son passed, Jaclyn and I did not speak.
At my son's funeral,
she was very uncomfortable to see Jesse and I standing together,
and I did hold Jesse's hand as a comfort for our son.
She walked out of the funeral in the middle of it,
because she was so filled with jealousy.
And that should have been a red flag right there.
After the service, weeks went by.
Jaclyn did not want Jesse and I talking.
She felt there were leftover feelings, which, of course,
after so many years together,
and having a son together and then losing your son together,
of course there's leftover feelings.
The way Jesse and I did talk could have definitely made her feel very insecure.
You know, there's just a bond there that you--
that you can't break.
I blocked Sandra on all of my husband's social media,
so there was no way she could get into contact with my, um… my husband.
Sandra had a girlfriend.
She had sent a picture of her girlfriend in her bra and panties to my husband.
And when I said, "Okay, well, if you're only talking about your son,
then why is your girlfriend's pictures in my husband's messages?"
And that's where she got nasty with me. Uh…
I can't remember the choice words she decided to use against me,
but she did.
[Sandra] I sent a picture of another girl to Jesse.
It wasn't of me, it was of another woman.
He-- he did flirt.
And I may have…
flirted back, but not with the intention to get him back.
She did message me.
Um…
She was very aggressive about it.
She was very threatened.
She wanted to fight about it.
Like, she just wanted to argue.
And I didn't really wanna argue with her,
so I said my piece, which was…
"I messed up."
"But I will continue to talk to him as long as he'll talk to me."
Which I think enraged her.
That was the last time I have spoken to Jaclyn to this day.
[Feagin] Messages came in.
Really nasty messages.
And I felt like I snapped.
In that moment, it was like a switch went off.
So I decided to, uh… to get revenge.
[Feagin] The goal was to scare her.
To anonymously leave things, scary items, to her, on her property,
and she would have to wonder, "Who did this? Is someone watching me?"
Just to mess with her mentally.
The first time I made something, it was very simple, very easy.
It was a piece of paper with her picture and her name on it.
And I think-- I'm pretty sure
I drew a pentagram over her face with a red marker.
[Feagin] So the first item, I think it was about one or two o'clock in the morning…
and on the way over, I was nervous, I was definitely nervous.
I knew I was doing something wrong, but I went ahead with it.
Yeah, it was definitely like a… like a high,
like a feeling of…
[sighs]
I-- I don't know exactly how I felt.
I just know I felt good to leave that,
and that she would be waking up the next morning,
trying to figure out who did what to her.
[birdsong]
[Sandra] I woke up to go to work, and I opened my front door,
and there was a paper with a picture of me and a pentagram drawn on my face.
There was a candle that had been burnt,
and it said, "Hi, Sandra."
I saw it laying on the ground.
My stomach sank.
I didn't know who had done it. I didn't know why someone would do it.
I felt very panicky.
I went and woke my husband up and brought him outside to show him.
Our children were there,
so we had to make sure that they did not come to the door to see it,
because I do not want my children exposed.
My husband immediately called the cops.
I was very scared. I felt threatened.
I felt like there was somebody following me that I was not aware of.
I remember driving to work that morning and just shaking
and watching every car that drove past me,
and watching every person that came near me,
and trying to figure out if it was them, or who it could possibly be.
And I was just rattling my brain the whole time I'm trying to work,
and it was just…
It was-- it was pretty terrifying.
[Feagin] Over the next couple of days, it kind of took over my thought process.
That's the only thing I was thinking about, is,
you know, if she was scared.
So yeah, it became, uh, a really…
sick thought process concerning her.
I can't explain how or why the obsession came about.
It just did. I think it was because
I was trying to see what she had that I didn't that my husband wanted.
And then, once that-- that feel-good feeling wore off,
that's when I was planning the… the second attack, or whatever you wanna call it.
I don't exactly remember what I dropped off to her the second time.
I had some twine left over, and I kind of fixed it into a doll.
And I put pins through the head and the heart,
and then I put it in a jar with graveyard dirt,
and then sealed it.
And then put, um… sigils all over the jar.
Honestly, I cannot tell you what most of these things mean.
I know it has to do with the Wiccan belief, I'm pretty sure.
But I also knew that she was Christian,
and so having these things show up on your doorstep would be particularly scary.
[dog barking]
I knew if someone left that on my porch, I would be scared.
[Sandra] They left a jar full of sand,
and a voodoo doll with needles shoved through its face and its heart.
My initials and my birthday were also written on the jar in red paint,
and some other satanic symbols.
It was two days prior to my son's birthday,
so I knew whoever it was knew that,
and I knew that they knew that I would be in a vulnerable state, grieving.
The timing made it so much worse. Um, and it-- it…
[sighs] It's evil.
They wanted to… punish me for something, and I wasn't sure what.
That's what put more fear into me,
because I didn't know who would be so cruel as to do something like that.
[Feagin] I was sitting at home
thinking about how scared she was,
and I didn't think that I had scared her enough.
So, I wanted the intensity of, like…
of her feeling watched,
I wanted to kind of up that.
So I had made a fake Facebook profile of, I think, one of her old work friends,
and I took one of her private photos that no one else could get
unless you were friends with her on social media,
and I printed that off and I tied it to a scroll,
and I Googled some kind of Latin curse…
[scoffs]
And I put it on a scroll, and I put her picture and tied it together,
and I left that on her car.
I remember the Latin curse having something to do
with pestilence and bloodshed.
I don't know much more after that.
I didn't memorize it or anything like that.
[sighing] I… I had an idea that, you know,
what I was doing was criminal.
I didn't take it as seriously as I should have.
[cicadas chirping]
[Sandra] Without hesitation, my husband and I called the cops,
and they immediately came and got the scroll.
They sent me images of what was inside,
and there was a spell written in Latin.
It essentially said that they wanted me dead.
At this point, I thought they were never gonna get caught.
My fear just escalated.
I was so sure that somebody was gonna mess with my car
and that I was gonna be taking my kids to their daycare
and my brakes were gonna give out, or…
anything.
I was so worried somebody was going to try and kill me,
and my children would get harmed in the process.
[man] I've been a police officer for about 13, almost 14 years.
And I've seen quite a broad spectrum of what people are capable of.
And with stalking, you never know how far someone will go.
It'll start off petty, but it can eventually cost someone their life.
My name is Josh Hill, and I was the lead detective on this case.
Before my involvement, I came in, there were, I believe,
five other instances where, uh, the victim had called 911
to report this kind of behavior.
So it was my job to protect Sandra and her family.
Initially we were unable to determine who the suspects were,
but then, when Sandra came to my office and I interviewed her there,
then it just kind of put everything together.
[Hill] Okay, today's date is October the 11th, 2019, around 8:30 a.m.
I'm gonna interview [bleep].
Reference to case number 22280.
[Hill] All right, I wanted to show you what I was lookin' at.
And I was gonna ask you to kind of look at--
Help me look at what I was lookin' at,
just to make sure we're lookin' at the same thing.
This little car, it's a hatchback.
Whose car is that?
-[Sandra] That's Jesse's. [Hill] Jesse's.
[typing]
What's his wife's name?
[Sandra] Oh, Jaclyn.
-[Hill] J-A-C-L-Y-N, Jaclyn? -[Sandra] Mm-hm.
[Hill] I mean, that's their car.
It's their car. I mean, there's no way around it.
[Hill] So the body frame, I don't-- I don't know who your ex is,
but whoever it is walks like a girl.
[Sandra] Mm-hm.
[Hill] You can tell by the way they swing their arms,
the way the hips move when a woman walks, you can just tell.
The arms swaying, that's a female.
[Hill] One thing led to another,
and I'm basically putting this puzzle together,
trying to figure out where the items came from.
And this is what led me to go and interview Jaclyn.
[Hill] Hey. Sorry to wake you up.
[Feagin] It's okay.
[Hill] You work late last night? What time do you get off?
-[Feagin] I got off at 9:30. -[Hill] Okay.
[Hill] It was a very interesting interview.
[Hill] Tell me-- I know you know why we're here.
You deny it, or what?
Because they have game cameras up.
[Feagin] Uh-huh.
Honestly, okay, I'm not gonna to lie to you, like…
It's really stupid now--- -Mm-hm.
…because of all of this…
And, so, yeah, I was messing with her.
So, was it Jesse that was-- that went with you when y'all were doing this?
-My mom. -Okay.
-Is Mom here? -Yes.
Can I chat with Mom, too?
-I'll get her. -Thank you.
For me, that's where I guess my emotional attachment to this case came into play,
because as a father and a husband, I'm all about protecting my family.
And to have a mother of an adult daughter
allow and help culprit this kind of behavior,
I mean, that definitely changed the-- the tone of the game.
Hey, Mom. Did we wake you up, too?
Uh, I was awake, but I was enjoying a quiet time.
-[laughs] -Oh, well, I'm sorry.
-I'm-- I'm Josh. -Hi.
-I'm from the sheriff's office. -Mm-hm.
-I talked with Jesse, and your daughter. -Mm-hm.
-So I kind of know the whole thing. -Mm-hm.
But I'm curious, did she tell you why? Did she tell you what you guys were doin'?
-Yeah, I knew what was goin' on. -Okay.
I explained to her what was goin' on. I explained to her the allegations.
And, you know, she had a smirk on her face.
I'm not trying to tell you to be a parent. I understand there's a bad history.
-Oh, yeah. -I'm not naïve.
-Honestly, I thought it was-- -In a sense--
I thought it was funny,
and I thought maybe it would teach her a lesson and she'd leave them alone.
-Mm-hm. -That's why I went along.
Just like Jaclyn, she downplays it. You know, "Well, it was just a joke."
Well, I'm sorry, it's not just a joke.
This was a prolonged, constant barrage of torture, torment, harassment, annoyance,
and it ultimately put-- put Sandra and her family
in fear of imminent bodily injury or death.
[cicadas chirping]
I am Kristi Ferguson,
and my daughter is Jaclyn Feagin.
When Jaclyn was younger, she would let people run over her.
I would constantly ask her,
"Why are you lettin' that person do you that way?"
It took us years of pushing her to even order her own food,
because she was so shy and timid and quiet.
Now she's a little quicker to anger, thank goodness.
But for the most part, it really takes a lot to get her… upset.
I honestly cannot remember how the whole idea came about.
We may have been watchin' a movie.
But we were talking one night and she's like,
"You know, at some point, this has to be brought out."
She said she was sick of all the lies.
It was just one of those things where it was like, "You know, enough is enough."
And she's all, "Maybe if I push back and mess with her a little bit,
maybe, you know, she'll confront me
and everything can be brought out in the open."
I did suggest just knocking on her door,
but, um… my daughter felt that that would not put an end to things.
[knocking]
[Ferguson] Honestly, when I was arrested, uh…
it ticked me off, it made me angry.
It-- it was kind of a shock of…
"You're goin' through all of this just for us droppin' off a couple of items?"
Honestly, we were not thinking of it in anything more than possible harassment.
Uh, did we go in with intentions to get caught and be arrested?
No. No.
No one was tryin' to harm anyone.
I wasn't, and neither was my daughter.
I just thought that it was funny.
My understanding is that it was put out there
that they were fearing for their lives, they were fearing for their children.
I guess that's what her thing was, is, "Because I'm such a Christian, uh…
you know, this is really scaring me."
You know, the whole… [sighs] The whole situation.
That's why I-- I'm like, "No." They-- they blew things out of proportion.
[man] To meet the elements of stalking in the state of Texas,
you need someone who has a reasonable belief
that they are in some type of danger.
Then you make a determination, "Okay, what was the intent of doing this?"
"Was it done to alarm, threaten, harass that individual?"
This case meets all of the elements.
My name is Heath Chamness.
Uh, I am one of the assistant district attorneys
here in Smith County, Texas,
and this was a case that was assigned to me.
Before this case, I had handled a few stalking cases.
But this case is a little different,
because you've got a mother and a daughter that are co-defendants.
They never denied their, uh… involvement,
but they kind of nonchalantly blew it off,
as if though, "Ah, it was just a prank and we didn't think anything of it."
And, um…
You know, it-- it doesn't change the fact
that the offense of stalking had been committed.
Really, at the end of the day, in talking to my victim,
she wanted to be left alone.
She wanted peace.
So, for both Jaclyn and for Kristina,
I made an offer, a plea offer on the case.
Jaclyn and her mother were both offered either three years in prison
or eight years of deferred adjudicated probation,
and they both elected to take the eight years' deferred adjudicated probation.
I can tell you that being on probation, at least in this county, is not easy.
You have regular drug tests. You have to go through community service.
There are various programs,
depending upon the type of crime that you commit, that you must complete.
Uh, so the idea that probation is just merely a slap on the wrist,
for a normal person, it is not.
It is disruptive. [laughs]
It changes your life.
[Chamness] In this particular case, they were co-defendants,
and so we put in a provision that did not allow them
to have contact with each other or the victim.
I think, had they come in and been truly remorseful,
then maybe our position would have been a little different.
Uh, but at the end of the day,
they still think it was nothin' more than a joke.
And because they don't recognize
the severity and the significance of what they did,
I don't think that they need to be in communication with each other.
It's-- it's that simple.
[birdsong]
With this sentence, my daughter and I cannot have contact.
And you go from being in the same home every day to not being able to speak.
It is very hard. It is very hard.
Do I think the sentence was a statement? [chuckles] Oh, yeah.
I am a spiritual person, but…
I don't believe in organized religion,
and I feel like they wanted to teach me a lesson.
Um…
Show me that if I don't conform to their Christian beliefs,
then I'm gonna be punished.
I personally think it had nothing to do with stalking.
You're not supposed to be anything more
than a "do as you're told" Christian in this area.
[dog barks]
[Feagin] I did not know that the news had covered the story
until I was at work and I went on my break, my lunch break.
I had, like, a whole lot of missed calls on my phone.
They were like, "What is happening? Get on Facebook."
Because we were in the Bible Belt of Texas,
things like witchcraft, voodoo, satanist,
that is one of probably the worst things that you can be called here.
There were people that were saying that we deserved to die,
that we deserved to be thrown in a padded cell.
All of these crazy things.
From outsiders looking in,
I could see how you could make those judgments,
but I just felt that they were unfair.
I definitely feel like it was a very one-sided story,
and it was made to look like…
like a-- like a vicious attack on a innocent girl.
[Langbein] I think that the notoriety of this case came from the fact
that those-- those choices of weapon for Miss Feagin
um, had to do with witchcraft and satanic worship.
And I would say that their choices were strategically planned out
because of who her victim is.
A stalker knows that person.
If my faith is the most important,
that's what an abuser or a stalker will come after.
And that's what I saw in Jaclyn's case,
that she was trying to make her victim, a devout Christian, pay.
There were a couple of comments about how things affected the victim.
But, I mean, the reality is I don't care.
I don't care how it affected her.
I think that she was being overly dramatic
and claiming things that were not really there.
[sighs] And this is gonna sound horrible.
I don't care if she's dead or alive. She is not a significant part of my life.
I think most stalkers minimize their actions.
"Couldn't have been that big of a deal. You're makin' too big a deal out of this."
"You're so hysterical. Why are you…"
"Why'd you call the police? This is so stupid. You're so stupid."
It's that minimization.
It is transferring the blame, that,
"This is obviously your problem, because this is not that big of a deal."
How could she possibly know how the victim felt, Sandra felt?
It's not for the perpetrator of the crime to decide
how it has impacted somebody else's life.
[birdsong]
[Sandra] It's been around two years now,
and I still have trauma from what happened,
and I still have a fear instilled in me that I'm not sure will ever go away.
I don't believe probation was enough.
I believe it would be more fitting for them to sit in prison for a little while
and think about their actions.
The justice system doesn't take stalking as seriously as they should.
Stalking is not a man sittin' in the bushes with binoculars.
It could be anybody. You never know. You never know what people are capable of.
I feel like I had a very lucky escape.
[Feagin] I took it upon myself to look at the news stories,
and that's where I later found that she had checked herself into counseling
because she felt traumatized by the experience.
I thought once she found out that it was me,
that she wouldn't take it very seriously anymore.
And then, you know, it would all kinda… go away.
I didn't think there would be any, like, long-lasting trauma or pain.
But now, I do believe that what I did could have traumatized her, yeah.
I do believe that.
[clicks tongue]
There's not enough apology in the world to make what I did okay.
I deeply affected her life in a negative way.
And I'm going to have to live with what I did,
just like she's going to have to live with what I did to her.
But I am 100% remorseful.