Apr 18, 2010 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Three years before her estranged husband killed her, Sandra Bentley told friends that her computer was doing things she did not want.
The cursor would highlight words by itself. It floated over them and even changed them spontaneously. Documents she created and saved disappeared from memory. Folders stored in one file were altered and saved somewhere else, Sandra's friend Charma Meek said.
Sandra, 50, of Grapevine, told friends that she feared her reality was imploding, just like her mother's mind disintegrated just before schizophrenia was diagnosed.
But Sandra wasn't hallucinating or losing her mind, said her attorney, V. Wayne Ward. "Takeover" software had been planted in her computer.
Meek and another of Sandra's friends, Marinda Stankiewicz, said they believe that Curtis Bentley planted it.
"He had established a ghost on her computer," Meek said.
Now when domestic abuse counselors gather with victims, they tell Sandra's story as a cautionary tale. Technology marketed to parents to let them control and monitor their children, they warn, can also be misused to manipulate or track others.
"Used to be, if a spouse ran away in the night, it was quite a bit of work to find her," said Aaron Hughes, a computer forensics expert based in Houston. "Now a lot of people have access to things that they never even thought about before."GPS in cellphones, tracking devices hidden in vehicles and intercepted text messages sent to friends and relatives can help abusers find their victims. And as lawyers, private detectives, police agencies and women's advocates scramble to catch up with these emerging technologies, new and smarter devices are being developed and deployed.
"For a while, we've been telling clients to disconnect the GPS units to their phones," said Mary Lee Hafley, president and CEO of SafeHaven of Tarrant County, where Sandra once stayed after leaving her husband.
"But I feel there's a bit of a vacuum for us. I'm not sure that what we understand today is applicable tomorrow. The field is changing so rapidly, it's a little overwhelming. It is our intent, particularly as a result of the Bentley case, to shore up that training and get some more training immediately."Often, people are not aware that they are being electronically monitored, said Kristine Soule, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney.
"Unless the abuser does something to let the victim know, the victim may not know," Soule said.
That was the case with Sandra for a long time, friends say.
Learning the truthSandra spent hours on the phone with Microsoft technicians who could never find out exactly what was wrong with her computer, Meek said. Then she took it to the FBI, which never investigated her case, Meek said.
Her cellphone was equally inconsistent, Meek said. Text messages and contacts disappeared. Calls that she remembered making were not recorded in her call history.
In June 2007, at the insistence of her husband, Sandra checked into Millwood Hospital, a psychiatric facility, and complained to medical personnel that someone had been hacking into her computer and her cellphone and that she was suffering severe headaches, stress, insomnia, anxiety and loss of appetite.
Sandra spent three days at Millwood and seven more in the psychiatric unit at Parkland Memorial Hospital, telling staffers that she was sleeping only four hours a night, according to medical records provided to the Star-Telegram by her friends. Her husband told the staff that his wife was obsessed with her computer, spending eight to 10 hours a day with Microsoft technicians trying to diagnose the problem, her medical records say.
Finally, Sandra took her hardware to Houston to be tested by a computer forensics expert, and three key-logging and remote-access programs were detected, Meek said.
Key-logging software allows a third party to read the keystrokes made on a computer, and remote-access software lets someone control a computer from another computer.
Ward, Sandra's attorney, said that when she was in his office, he never saw any indication that she was mentally ill. And he recalled how her eyes brightened when he demonstrated how someone could commandeer another computer with remote software.
"The smile on her face when she found out that she was not insane was something that I will remember the rest of my life," he said.
Tainted giftsDallas County Assistant District Attorney Bobbie Villareal, chief prosecutor in the Family Violence Division, said that because cellphones and computers can be corrupted and turned against the owner in a matter of seconds, and accounts and contacts can be quickly copied, she tells teenage girls not to let boys use their cellphones or computers.
People accept cellphones and other personal electronics as gifts from those they are dating without knowing what software is on those devices, she said.
Sometimes the gift is a Trojan horse, Villareal said.
"Many times, they give you a phone for Christmas, and then they know your every move. He can see every phone call that's made," she said.
"We've seen people that make it impossible for their former partner to get a new job. Every time they agree to an interview, discrediting information arrives there before them. We had one woman here in the interview room and her boyfriend called her. He told her that he knew where she was and why she was there and that she had better get out of there before saying anything."Once the tracking software is loaded and an abuser has control of the device, it's very difficult to wrest that control away, Villareal said. Protective orders normally deal with proximity, a nonissue when it comes to wireless devices. The perpetrator will normally violate a protective order three times before he or she is hauled into court, Villareal said. That's why it is better to be vigilant from the beginning of a relationship, she said.
"When you're trying to break up, it's really too late," she said. "The only reason we're still in business is because people don't know how to break up. And we will always be a step behind. A legal remedy is not going to keep up with the technology that's available."Once Sandra found out that her electronics had been bugged and that she wasn't losing her mind, Hafley said, her husband lost control. She had escaped their 27-year marriage, rented an apartment, found a job at Walmart and squirreled away financial records to use during the divorce proceedings, Meek said.
"As long as she was caught up in his fantasy, as long as she was a player in his game, he didn't have a need to pursue her that way," Hafley said. "It's when she stepped off the game board and he realized he could no longer contain her, that was when he had to change the game. Ultimately, the eventual control for him was to commit murder."Fatal endingIn the end, he used a low-tech method to kill her.
About 11:30 a.m. Oct. 22, Curtis Bentley staked out the Hurst Walmart where his wife worked and drove to the east end of the parking lot. When he saw his wife come out of the store on her break, he turned the car around and accelerated, slamming into her , a police report said.
The impact sent Sandra airborne, flipping her over the black Chrysler 300 that her husband drove. The car continued west for about 350 feet. Curtis Bentley then put a .32-caliber slug into his head.
Curtis Bentley's divorce lawyer declined to comment for this article. One of the couple's sons, Cody Bentley, said that none of the children wanted to take sides against their mother or father. They are still trying to get past the tragedy, he said, and anything that rehashes the past would not be constructive.
"They were both very loving parents who provided exceptional lives for the children that they raised," he said.
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