Testimony under way in stalking trial

Testimony began Wednesday in the nonjury trial of a prolific Spokane felon charged with stalking and threatening a woman who spurned his romantic overtures.

Thomas Melvin Crook, 42, is charged with stalking and two counts of felony harassment for what witnesses said were dozens of malicious phone calls, including death threats, last June to Terra Florian, her ex-husband, Steven Florian, her boyfriend at the time, Claudio Mastel, and the packing company where she worked.

Terra Florian testified that the harassment, including threats to kidnap and kill her children, began after she refused flowers and pizza that Crook sent to her workplace in a limousine. She believed he was trying to exchange simple friendship for a romantic relationship, but she wasn’t interested.

Crook’s record of more than three dozen criminal convictions includes a plea to a reduced charge of threatening a San Francisco man with “great bodily harm.” Crook was on probation for that crime when Spokane County authorities caught up with him in San Francisco for parole violations in a case here in which he had been charged with raping a woman and stealing her car.

Crook pleaded guilty to stealing the car and was ordered to stay away from the woman. He followed the woman’s car after his release and eventually was sent back to jail for seven months for that and other probation violations.

Crook’s other Spokane County felonies include burglaries, forgeries, theft and reckless burning during a break-in.

Also, Deputy Prosecutor Rachel Sterett said Crook was investigated in 1989 for allegations that he harassed one of his brothers and the brother’s wife. Sterett told Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke III that the harassment alleged in 1989 involved the same kind of telephone threats and pranks as the current case.

Terra Florian and Mastel described scores of harassing phone calls and misdirected visits from pizza deliverymen, taxi drivers and Roto Rooter workers who were sent to Florian’s home.

In one case, Florian testified, she got home just in time to prevent a city maintenance man from shutting off her water because of a request she said was traced to one of Crook’s cell phone numbers.

The calls stopped while Crook was in jail for two days and resumed when he got out, Florian told Clarke.

She said her mother and ex-husband began receiving harassing phone calls after someone broke into her car and stole documents with personal information. The thief tore up other documents in the car and ripped out the stereo without taking it, Florian said.

Clarke listened to recordings of phone messages Steven Florian received from a caller whom his ex-wife identified as Crook after hearing the tapes. The caller started out by offering defamatory information about Terra Florian as though concerned about the Florians’ children.

“I know my wife,” Steven Florian testified. “I’ve known her for 20 years, and I know none of it’s true.”

Later, the calls degenerated into vicious rants laced with death threats and sexual taunts. Steven Florian said he traced one of the calls to a Spokane Transit Authority telephone, and reported the harassing calls to the STA.

After that, some of the tape-recorded calls warned Florian not to call the STA again or the Spokane Arena.

STA communications manager Molly Myers said late Wednesday that she could find no record of Crook having been a permanent employee, but information wasn’t immediately available on whether he was a temporary transit authority worker.

Assistant Public Defender Steve Horst contended in his opening statement that Crook already had a dating relationship with Florian and didn’t stalk her. Sterett can’t prove Crook was responsible for the harassment, Horst said.

Florian told Clarke she had dinner or drinks with Crook about 10 times and dined several times with his family but wasn’t interested in him romantically. She said she was introduced to Crook by her oldest son, who worked with Crook at a job in which both of them were placed by the Labor Ready temporary employment agency.

Coincidentally, Mastel previously had worked with Crook in the operations crew at the Spokane Arena and the Convention Center for about 10 months. Mastel testified that he “absolutely” recognized Crook’s voice in “a dozen or more” anonymous phone calls he answered while visiting in Florian’s home.