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A Woman's Risky Strategy to End Stalking
Indianapolis Woman Confronts, Chases Peeping Tom

March 31, 2005 -- For several months in 2003, a stalker made Hannah Arbuckle's life a nightmare.

One spring night, a strange man had come to the window of her newly purchased Indianapolis home with video camera in hand. She subsequently woke up countless other times to see him peering in her window.

Each time, he disappeared before the police arrived. "It's very frightening," Arbuckle said. "It happened weekly, multiple times in a week."

Arbuckle, then 28, finally came face to face with him one October evening and got him to stop — but only by doing something most security experts say is extremely dangerous.

She confronted him. "I just didn't want him to get away again," she told ABC News' Cynthia McFadden.

The stalker ran from her, but Arbuckle embarked on a wild chase after him. When police finally caught him, they found out he was a convicted rapist who had been out of prison for two years when he started stalking Arbuckle.

Robert Braun, 57, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of felony voyeurism. And even though he never physically harmed Arbuckle, because of his prior record and the photographs he took, he was given a 20-year sentence, with four years to be served behind bars, another two in home detention and probation for the remaining period.

Arbuckle now recognizes what she did was not safe. But she added: "Everything happens for a reason. And I'm safe, I'm here today, and he's caught."

She Had Enough

Arbuckle, the manager of a physical therapy clinic, says to this day, she has no idea why she chased him. But in her conversation with McFadden, it appears Braun had pushed the fiercely independent single woman too far.

When Braun started taking pictures from the windows, she made sure her blinds were closed.

But then he started taking pictures from a high window in her front door and from beneath the window shades. One night he was even seen sitting on her front porch.

"My biggest fear going through this is that I would wake up one night and he would be in my bedroom or in my house," Arbuckle said. She lived alone.

Arbuckle added that she did not think about running away. "I did not want to be pushed around," she said. "I definitely had enough."

Uncontrollable Situation

Arbuckle got her face-to-face confrontation with Braun when she surprised him on a Wednesday evening as she was walking out to her car.

He reacted, she told McFadden, by putting his hands in his pockets, turning around and walking away quickly. Arbuckle remembers thinking, "If he gets away this time, who knows what'll happen?"

So she chased him down the street, and yelled, "Stop running!" She says when he turned around she asked him, "Why are you looking in my windows?"

Arbuckle says he denied spying on her and said, "I don't know who you are, lady." But she was not willing to back off.

"I said 'You do — I've seen you.' The second I said that, his whole demeanor changed," Arbuckle remembers.

Braun ran to his truck and tried to drive away, but Arbuckle jumped in the back. He tore off, screeching through the streets, while Arbuckle called the police from her cell phone.

Arbuckle recounted what happened next: "He turned down a side street and slammed on the brakes and gets out of the truck, and he's reaching and grabbing at me and I'm kicking at him."

She says she was scared. "I realized I was in a situation where I was out of control."

Prelude to Worse?

The police soon found Arbuckle and arrested Braun. They also found what they call a "rape kit" in his car: duct tape, oil and a leather mask.

"This was not a high school prank," said Carl Brizzi, the county prosecutor in Indianapolis. "This was more than just peeping. He was working himself up. This was foreplay to commit a violent sex act."

When police searched Braun's home, they found dozens of photographs of Arbuckle taken over the course of 11 months, some taken five months before she first saw Braun at her window. In some pictures, Arbuckle is naked.

Arbuckle says she didn't realize the danger she had put herself in until after Braun had been arrested. "I had no idea," she said.

"She acted on instinct," Brizzi said. "She's an incredibly heroic woman, but she's also very, very lucky — and that's the one point about this — jumping into the back of the car was something Hannah had to do out of desperation and fear — certainly not something that we would encourage."