Stalking Samantha: 13 Years Of Terror is a 3-part docuseries, directed by Sara Mast, that discusses the case of Samantha Stites, who was stalked by Christopher Thomas starting in her freshman year in college in 2011. His obsession with her culminated in him abducting her in 2022, keeping her in a soundproof bunker that she had to figure out how to escape.
Opening Shot: A reenactment of a woman finding herself handcuffed to a wall in a soundproof bunker.
The Gist: Samantha Stites is telling her story for the first time in this docuseries, along with the close friends who rallied around her as Thomas kept his relentless pursuit of her going for over a decade. These friends also encouraged Stites to turn to law enforcement for help, though Stites was continually downplaying how dangerous Thomas was.
They met in a college church group, and Thomas mistook Stites’ kindness towards him as some sort of sign that there was something there. He kept texting and following her, asking her out on dates, and kept going after she turned him down flat. After a number of encounters during her college years in Michigan, as well as encounters in her hometown hours north of where she went to college, Stites finally got a personal protection order against Thomas. The judge who issued the order says in his interviewed that the number and nature of the encounters led him to issue the PPO to last for six years, the longest order of that type he ever issued.
But as soon as those six years were up, Thomas was back in Stites’ orbit, having joined the same soccer club she had after she moved to Traverse City, Michigan. He never spoke to her directly, but always seemed to be where she was. Also, his previously-doughy physique was gone, as if “he was training for something,” as one of Stites’ friends put it. They strongly encouraged her to file another PPO, but Stites didn’t think there was enough evidence this time around, which was crushingly confirmed when she finally did file for one and it was denied.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Stalking Samantha: 13 Years Of Terror has the feel of other ABC News Studios docuseries, like Little Miss Innocent.
Our Take: It’s rare to come across a true crime docuseries that examines a story that you can’t find information on elsewhere, but the Samantha Stites case is one of them. Because Stites is the centerpiece of Stalking Samantha: 13 Years Of Terror, the series is going to have a detailed account of everything she went through, from Thomas’ stalking of her to her abduction to the trial after she escaped.
Granted, this is told from the perspective of Stites and her friends, but in this case, that’s what you want. There’s no way that Thomas could explain away his behavior towards Stites and have it sound anything but the ravings of a psychopath. We were extraordinarily impressed with how calm and collected Stites was as she recalled the years of stalking and her captivity at the hands of Thomas.
What we would have wanted to hear more of was the reasoning behind Stites downplaying just how dangerous Thomas was, especially before the first PPO was filed. It could be her religious upbringing, or just a personality that tries to find some semblance of good in everyone. But she tried to deal with Thomas herself for far too long before getting law enforcement and the courts involved. During the post-PPO rounds of stalking, her friends confronted Thomas, naively thinking that telling him to stop following her — even threatening him with police intervention and/or physical harm — would keep him away. Again, this could have been examined with a bit more depth, with some insight from Stites or her friends that they were at a loss to figure out what else to do.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: “It’s just this ticking time bomb that I couldn’t do anything about,” Stites says about what Thomas’ intentions were with her after the second PPO was denied.
Sleeper Star: Stites’ former roommate, Charissa Hayden, actually is one of the friends who personally confronts Thomas during his second, more sinister round of stalking. Given that Thomas has a violent past, confronting him in person was either brave, foolhardy or both.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not fans of reenactments in these shows, and the ones used here are particularly annoying, especially as they keep showing the back of the bald head of the actor playing Thomas. It’s as if the stories of him stalking her, and the constant texts to her, weren’t creepy enough.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Stalking Samantha: 13 Years Of Terror works because Samantha Stites tells her own story, with an astonishingly calm demeanor that makes the story of Christopher Thomas’ history with her all the more chilling.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.