Obsessive Ex's Cyberstalking Gets Man Fired, Arrested
Tawny Blazesjowski stalked and harassed Joe Good and others after their breakup.
-- A St. Augustine, Florida, man is at ease now that his scorned ex-lover is behind bars.
“I finally can breathe again,” Joe Good, 51, said in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ “20/20." “Now I don’t feel like every time I see a police car that, ‘Oh, they’re coming for me.’”
Good’s former girlfriend of three years, Tawny Blazejowksi, 41, of St. Augustine would stop at nothing to ruin his life after the two broke up. Her web of lies eventually turned Good’s life into a really bad nightmare.
She succeeded in getting him arrested three times and fired from his job at an insurance company, where he had worked for over 24 years. Blazejowski didn’t stop there. She targeted several others in Good’s life: colleagues, neighbors and even his new girlfriend’s landlord.
Blazejowski was sentenced to nine years in prison last Friday for three counts of threats for extortion, four counts of aggravated stalking and one count of false report of abuse, child neglect or abandonment of 16 people from Florida to Chicago to California.
Life wasn't always bad. Good recalls many times with Blazejowski and their combined six children, all from previous marriages. He says he saw a future with her.
“She was awesome,” Good said. “I mean, I’ve gone on a cruise with her and had a great time. We went to Puerto Rico, had a great time.”
But Good said there were red flags that something might have been off with Blazesjowki. He said she would get upset a lot.
“The timeframe between when she’d get mad got shorter and shorter. It escalated until finally she asked me, ‘Do you want me to just go ahead and cancel the vacation I’ve got planned for you?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I’m tired of this,’” Good recalled. “Immediately, the phone rang and she [said], ‘Are you sure this is what you want? Because I got everything lined up that I’m going to ruin you.’”
Less than an hour later, Good said he received a text message notifying him that his email password had been changed.
Blazejowski hacked Good’s personal email account and sent a pornographic photo of Good to his employer, but it was only the beginning of Blazejowski’s wrath.
Police arrested Good on the night of Oct. 19, 2012, he said. Blazejowski had gone to the sheriff’s office with a bloody face, accusing Good of domestic violence.
“I ended up going to jail that night, because here’s the thing: The girl says a guy hit her. Most people think, ‘Wow, the guy hit her.’ They don’t think the girl’s lying,” Good said.
Blazejowski then called the Florida Abuse Hotline, accusing Good and his teenage son of operating a child pornography ring. Good said it wasn’t true, but investigators didn’t believe him.
“It was total harassment,” Good said. “I did everything I could to stay away from her. She was one step ahead of me the whole time.”
No longer satisfied with ruining Good’s life, Blazejowski began attacking people she didn’t even know.
“She did a Crimestoppers tip to me, accusing me of allegations against my kids,” Jenny Robor, Good’s former colleague at the insurance company, told “20/20.” “The things that are on there I can’t even repeat. They’re so horrible.”
Blazejowski anonymously told Crimestoppers that Robor would deliver her young children to Good’s sex ring, none of which was true. Blazesjowski even threatened Doug Duggan, the landlord to Good's new girlfriend. Duggan received anonymous letters through the U.S. Postal Service.
“It was a big block letter, and it said, ‘If your tenant, Mariela Murphy, is not out of that house within 30 days, I’ll burn down that house and your house,’ and gave the addresses of both of them,” Duggan told “20/20.” “[The houses] were really my entire net worth.”
Good struggled to get investigators and lawyers to believe him. That was when he turned to lawyer Bryan Shorstein for help.
“You never knew who would be the target of what it is she was doing,” Shorstein told “20/20.” “Does anybody want to get involved with this thing?”
Once Shorstein was certain Good was innocent, he went to the sheriff’s office to convince detectives that Good was no victimizer, but he was actually the victim. After seven months, St. Johns County Sheriff's Office Dets. George Harrigan and Shannon Andrews began to finally cut away at Blazejowski’s complicated web of deceit.
“It was hard to keep up with,” Andrews told “20/20.” “She was stalking faster than we could investigate.”
When Good’s new girlfriend, Mariela Murphy, reported an anonymous letter threatening her then-17-year-old daughter, Blazejowski had finally taken it one step too far.
“It said, ‘This is what Erin will look like the next time Mariela sees her if she sees or even talks to Joe Good one more time,” and attached was a picture of … a girl’s mutilated body,” Andrews said.
“She was the stalker at one point, but when this happened, she became the stalked,” Det. Harrigan told “20/20” of Blazejowski.
The detectives made a breakthrough in the case when they found out the anonymous reports sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Crimestoppers originated from Blazejowski’s computer.
Armed with a search warrant, the detectives searched Blazejowski’s home. They discovered more than seven full notebooks containing explicit details of Blazejowski’s acts. Hundreds of pages obtained by ABC News details Blazejowski’s web of lies, extortion and stalking that carried on over the span of seven months.
“This is as thorough as it gets,” Harrigan said. “Dates and times, places, people, locations, and not only did she take these notes, carry these actions out, but she kept the notes.”
Blazejowski was arrested that night, charged with making threats to maim and murder. In the end, she pleaded no contest to the eight felony counts against her.
“Not only did I hurt my own children, I hurt other children,” Blazejowski said in court at her sentencing. “I am pleading with you, your honor, to please grant me forgiveness. I ask my victims for forgiveness, and for mercy, and for you to please not take me away from my children who need me.”
Blazejowski’s lawyers argued that she has obsessive compulsive disorder and bipolar and that the disorders contributed to her crimes.
St. Johns County Criminal Court Judge Michael Traynor acknowledged her disorders, but said her clearly thought-out acts could not be ignored. In addition to nine years in prison, the judge also sentenced her on Oct. 10 to two years of house arrest and 19 years probation.
She is in the county jail for now, until she is sent to prison. Blazejowski decline multiple requests from "20/20" for an interview.
With three arrests still on his record, thanks to Blazesjowski, Good is now making a living with landscaping jobs. He is working toward getting his clean record back.
“[I] just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving,” Good said. “It’s all you can do.”
Asked what he would say to Blazesjowski if he could tell her anything, Good said, “Why couldn’t you just let go?”