I should’ve never asked for my crockpot

 

In September 2021, Luke Wenke and I got back in touch after nearly a year of no contact due to his increasingly volatile and verbally abusive behaviour. I made the regrettable mistake of texting him during a visit to Western New York and asking if I could retrieve my crockpot, which I had left at his house more than a year earlier. Wenke left the crockpot along a creepy nature trail behind a school in Salamanca and it was full of rat terds when I went to pick it up, so I just left it there. The crockpot had only been there for an hour or less, so I’m guessing the droppings were already inside of it when Wenke removed it from his home.
 

Not only did I waste my time and energy arranging for the retrieval of a filth-covered cooking appliance (I should’ve known), Wenke seemed to perceive my correspondence as me reopening the door to our friendship. By then, I was tired. Interacting with him, even in the most positive of circumstances (which weren’t very positive), had become exhausting. And while Wenke hid the true extent of his stalking and harassment of others throughout most of our friendship, I knew enough to know that I did not want to become his next target.
 

For the first time in my life, I stayed in a friendship I didn’t want to be in because I feared the “consequences” of walking away.

 

For at least three years leading up to that point, Wenke had shown an increasingly sinister side of himself (which only worsened as his Ryan obsession intensified). His anger and self-pity had spiralled out-of-control. I was afraid to piss him off because deep down, I knew he was the Topix poster who had severely damaged my psyche years earlier. So, I remained cordial but somewhat distant.
 

Don’t get me wrong, I missed my friend. During a happier time in our friendship, Wenke and I had a lot of fun hanging out and travelling together. It made me sad that we no longer laughed and that the once-carefree environment had grown tense. But after finally accepting that he was the Topix poster, I couldn’t shake my belief that he was an inherently bad person, because that individual got an absolute kick out of wrecking lives. I knew that our friendship wasn’t as genuine as I had once considered it to be.
 

There were occasional, fleeting moments of hope that the “Old Luke” was still in there somewhere. But deep down, I knew that that person had never truly existed to begin with, and by the fall of 2021, I had finished mourning the person I had mistook Wenke for years earlier thanks to my extremely poor judgment.
 

I sensed Luke Wenke’s arrest coming

 

This is probably going to sound terrible, but I had a strong feeling that Luke Wenke was going to be arrested in the near future due to his refusal to leave Ryan’s lawyer and family alone. My tentative plan was to wait until he was in custody and then quietly slip out of the friendship, hoping it would seem like the type of natural distancing that occurs when a friend moves far away or becomes too busy to socialise much.
 

Wishful thinking, to say the least. “Luke Wenke” and words like “quiet” and “peaceful” simply don’t go together, and the end of our friendship would turn out to be much more complicated than I had hoped. Information fell into my hands, I was worried that Wenke was going to hurt someone, and I really wasn’t thrilled about getting sucked into the case. But the decision to report what I knew was a no-brainer, because I would have never forgiven myself in the event of a preventable act of violence.
 

By late 2021, the Ryan obsession had been in full effect for at least a year-and-a-half. As you’ll see, I made a few last-ditch efforts to talk some sense into Wenke. I feel extremely guilty saying this, but I was so relieved when he was arrested — not only because I thought I would no longer feel obligated to deal with him, but because I could take a break from worrying that he was going to harm someone or perhaps even take his unchecked rage out on me.
 

Why am I sharing screenshots of my conversations with Luke Wenke?

 

For years now, Luke Wenke has made a protracted effort to convince anyone who will listen that I’m bad. That I’m a morally bankrupt, drug-addled prostitute, a raging drunk, a habitual criminal, a homewrecking floozie, a lazy freeloader, and a crappy friend. I’m not too worried that anyone who actually matters will believe him, but there’s a certain sense of closure to be gained from just putting the receipts on the record. I want it here and available for viewing, whether it piques the interest of nobody or 100 people.
 

It feels good to have nothing to hide and to say that I genuinely tried to be a good friend to someone who perpetually shat on me until I finally grew a backbone. I’m a flawed person who has caused no shortage of pain to others throughout my life (especially earlier on in my adulthood), but I was never inherently mean-spirited, and at some point, I finally grew up. I don’t know what to call Wenke’s malfunction, nor do I think slapping a clinical term on it will help. I just know that I want to be as far away as humanly possible from whatever it is.
 

I’m also sharing these screenshots because I think it’s alarming that the people involved in Luke Wenke’s case actually saw and read these but believed he would refrain from picking up right where he left off after his release from prison. I’m no expert, but in my opinion, the mindset that a bona fide stalker can or will just stop is foolish optimism at best and sheer recklessness at worst.
 

To expect a stalker to stop is like asking someone to sacrifice a defining component of their lifestyle. When I think about how much worse Wenke’s behaviour has gotten even since these conversations, it seems outright naïve to hope that the mental healthcare system can fix him. There’s no cure for evil.
 

I unfortunately do not see this cycle ever ending. It didn’t start with this case or the current victims, and given the trajectory of the situation, I see no reason to believe that any amount of discipline or “mental treatment” will finally put a stop to it.
 

The Screenshots

 

 

 

 

You’ll see statements like this (“They haven’t heard the last of me”) peppered throughout the conversations. I told the authorities during my first conversation with them that this was not going to end with a one-time arrest, and I was unfortunately correct.

 

Good people don’t say things like this. Bottom line.

 

I’d love to know who was behind this mystery profile, because I have a strong feeling it was a troll. And I’m extremely curious to see some of the conversations. Please don’t be shy!!

 

I do not have any friends that are hackers. I was just trying to extract information about the mystery individual, who Wenke seemed oddly uninterested in discussing despite their alleged connections to Ryan.

 

 

I encouraged him to drop the Ryan obsession and move on over and over and over and over and over. It was a huge waste of energy to even try.

 

Notice how Wenke won’t answer any of my questions about what he would do if Ryan didn’t want to associate with him? That’s how determined he was not to even entertain the prospect of “no” for an answer.

 

Sounds like the FBI also tried encouraging Wenke to move on and look for someone who actually desired his company. Again, it was no use.

 

If you’re one of the people who think Wenke can be trained to accept rejection and respect boundaries, I humbly urge you to read these screenshots as many times as you need in order for reality to sink in.

 

 

In addition to blaming his OG victim for supposedly “keeping him and Ryan apart,” Wenke also blames the victim for his cyberstalking case. And he seemed angrier than ever in his most recent letters to the court.

 

Well, that didn’t age well. Lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luke Wenke was obsessed with trying to get me paid work with his OG victim. I never sought employment with the victim, but Wenke remains convinced, to this day, that I work for him as a paralegal and is very angry about it. I’ve never trained as a paralegal. It’s 100 percent in Wenke’s head. A complete product of his imagination. And I do NOT deserve to suffer just because he’s delusional. Pardon my French, but fuck Luke Wenke’s mental health. I’m more worried about my own, at this point.