|
|
|
|
|
Richard FarleyRichard Wade Farley (b. 1948) is a former employee of Electromagnetic Systems Labs (ESL) in California. He stalked a woman named Laura Black until his violence and frustration escalated into the murder of seven employees of his former company. Richard Farley first met a woman named Laura Black in April 1984. Farley began stalking Black when she did not accept his advances. When Laura Black refused to go on dates with Farley, he began to attend Black's aerobics classes whenever she was present, and waited near her house constantly. According to Black, Farley was sending her 1-2 threatening/disturbing letters per week. Although there were periods of times when the letters would cease, Farley managed to send some 200 letters over four years. Farley, who had been working for ESL for 10 years, was terminated after Black provided copies of the letters to her employer. Farley would also leave "strange gifts on her desk" and would harass her over the phone until she changed her number to an unlisted one. He would also constantly call her at work, even after he was terminated. Laura Black also claims that Farley would wait near her workplace and follow her. Black felt changed her residence three times within the four years that he was stalking her. By fall of 1985, Laura Black asked the Human Resources Department at ESL for help. ESL responded by telling Farley that he must attend psychological counselling sessions if he wanted to keep his job. Although he would attend this sessions, his harassment did not decline. Rather, it escalated: while attending counselling, Farley found that Black had inadvertently left her house keys in her workplace. Farley made a duplicate copy of the keys, and left a copy of the key on her dashboard with a handwritten note, presumably to let her know that he had access to her house. In 1986, Richard Farley began to publicly threaten to kill Black if she wouldn't date him. Farley also threatened other employees of the company, which ultimately result in him being terminated in May 1986 after working for them for ten years. In one of Farley's letters to Black, he ominously warned: "You'd better tell him, I'd better never see any police around me." Nonetheless, Black filed for a temporary restraining order against Richard Farley 6 days after receiving that letter, on January 29 1986. Farley owned many weapons, including (inter alia) a .38 automatic, a .357 Magnum, a .22 rifle, and two shotguns. He returned there on February 16 1988 with explosives, and killed seven people. He also injured three others, including Laura Black herself, before surrendering to the police SWAT team after a five hour siege. Farley's first shot at Black missed, but the second hit her shoulder, critically wounding her. Laura Black survived, and Richard Farley has been given the death penalty (by gas chamber). Farley had no previous criminal record. In wake of Farley's murders, California passed its first "anti-stalking" law. A movie, I Can Make You Love Me was made in 1993 about this. External links *A copy of the temporary restraining order against Farley
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|