A Woman's Risky Strategy to End Stalking

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."

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.