Michael Oakes
Appearances
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
In my mistaken belief that I could appease or satisfy Mark Stover, I did become yet another person who was doing exactly what Mark Stover wanted.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
I kept thinking, if I can just, this is the one thing he wants that Linda Opdyke won't give him, and if she just gives him what he wants, he'll leave us alone.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
He was extremely agitated, not cold and calculating, not controlled like that first meeting. He was erratic.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
It was put up or shut up time.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
I remember at that time thinking, this can't be real, because no woman alone could go through this amount of harassment.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
I said to her, I think we have a connection that could go beyond friendship, and is that something that you're open to? And I think she, as you may know, she's almost six feet tall, and I'm five foot six. She's never had children. I have four children. So it was an unlikely romance. But she said, you know, I have gone through a lot of things in my life, and I'm open to considering that.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
I ended up training with a lot of the alphabet soup of government agencies and SWAT teams and so on, and it's what we call force-on-force training. I owned a small company in Seattle here, and I managed to get some training equipment and figure out how to use it.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Yes, I am a gun enthusiast. I've taught all my kids from the earliest age that I felt they were safe, gun safety, and I have shot competitively for some years.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Right. Is that accurate? I don't believe it's accurate. Let's put it that way. She never paid me to be a bodyguard. I did a little bit of research, and I did an analysis of sort of her home security situation and the steps she was taking, looked into the people that she was working with, and made some suggestions on that front.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
And that was the extent of what I would consider my professional interaction with her.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
You know, she paid me, she wrote me a check, but it was just for my expenses. And it was a minimal amount of money. I don't even remember now what it was, but less than $1,000. So, I mean, it was minimal.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Mark Stover sought me out one day out of the blue and told me that I would do what he wanted. And from that point for almost six months, I lived in constant fear.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Very much so. Threatening? Constantly with me.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
I think it was a weekday morning. I had just dropped my kids off at school.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
And went to the store. When I came out, he was standing by my car. And because I had done research for Linda Optics some months previously... I'd seen a picture of him. I immediately recognized him.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
He's very icy, actually. He said that he had been listening to our calls and he knew all about me. And he knew that I was in a relationship with Linda. He said his wife. He didn't say his ex-wife. He said his wife. And he said that there was something of his that she wouldn't give back and that I was going to get it for him.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
He said that Miss Opdyke would not give back their wedding photo albums. And he said I was going to get them back for him. And then he went on to... He went on to describe what my daughters were wearing that morning. What they'd worn to school. And there's no way he could have seen. What did you realize at that moment? He had been following us a whole time.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
And he said that he told me the details of what they were wearing, their backpack colors, everything.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
I'm not a confrontational person at all. That's not my mode. I felt very much off balance in that meeting. And I think it's one of those things where once I'm driving away thinking I should have said this or I should have done that, there was something about him that was chilling to me. And I felt, I kept trying to talk myself out of it. It can't be real. It can't be real. He has to be fooling.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Well, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. It enraged him, I believe, in retrospect, that she chose not to continue the marriage with Mark Stover, to continue to do what he wanted, and yet she retained something that he felt was part of him.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
We were going to stay there and stayed at their vacation home.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
And I'm in line minding my own business and look across the way and I see Mr. Stover standing by the entrance to the store staring at me.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Very similar to the first time that I saw him. It's just a shock of recognition in a place you don't expect to see somebody.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
There's at least two reasons. One of them is I do know enough about protection to know that there's no way for me to... I mean, this is why the president has so many people that protects him from potential threats. One man cannot protect three children 24-7. And for any time that I could enrage or outrage Stover, it was putting a gun to the head of my children, in my opinion.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Absolutely. And I'm certainly not the first person to feel that way.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
Mark Stover was remarkably sophisticated in some ways. He had managed to penetrate Linda's computer prior to meeting me. He managed to tap a phone. Finding us in Montana was impossible, and I took tremendous steps not to be followed, and yet there he was. How did he find us?
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
He was getting progressively less patient with me.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
Secret Meetings
And the thought of just at any given one of these meetings that we had, just telling him, I'm done. Take a hike and don't come looking for me. And every time, the reality of knowing that there's no way I can keep my kids, myself, and Ms. Opdyke safe if he decides he's going to go for it pulled me back from that brink.
Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard
The Hunter
I did an analysis of sort of her home security situation and the steps she was taking. I looked into the people that she was working with and made some suggestions on that front.