As everything fell into place I realised just how clever Vic had been – and just how foolish I was. He was the one who had been threatening me all this time. The man I had loved, the father of my child, had turned my life into some sick, twisted joke for his own amusement. When I had thought Willow was threatening me and my baby – it was him. When I thought he needed me to be considerate despite it all because he had lost his niece Dina – it was all made up.
He was the one who had been telling psychiatrists and counsellors about his mental health problems – it was all self-reported. He had moved around the country so much and always had a reason for lost medical files, and they had all just accepted his acting and put-on ways.
He played everyone. He had played me from the first moment I had looked out for him when ‘Dina’ was killed due to the negligence of ‘Kat’ – all figments of his imagination, all deliberate ploys to reel me in.
I had read about things like this.
I had read about women falling for people online who turn out to be married, or penniless, or perverted.
I had watched programmes like ‘Catfish’ and thought how daft the participants were that they had fallen for such obvious lies.
But I had never thought it would happen to me.
I turned on my laptop and Googled Catfish – meaning. The definition was: lure someone into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona. That was me. I’d been lured. A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they’re not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.
I searched a bit more – how had the term come about?
They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh.
That was me. I was the dull, flat fish who had been so lifeless, so ground down by the mundane repetition of my day-to-day life that I had fallen for the one who had pushed me into a life full of activity and threat.
There was some dispute online as to whether the origin of the term was genuine. Some people said that there was never really a market for fresh cod, as it was usually processed before being moved; others said that there was nothing to support the idea that a catfish would be a natural enemy of a cod; and that catfish weren’t predators anyway. I wasn’t really bothered about any of that. All I could hear from every link was that I was the prey and I had been chosen because my life was so dreary that I would fall for any story just to have a bit of colour in my world.
It may seem incredible that I fell for all this, but the way in which Vic Morana created depth and substance to his stories, the messages from his various characters, the public posts on his Facebook page, the bandages on his injuries, the gunshots being fired in my back yard, and a million other things – it all shows just how much effort he put into ruining my life. The events on the night of my thirtieth birthday are a good example of just how far he was willing to go, with the passage torn out of the book and the screws having been taken from the back door and then replaced.
His stories started off plausible and got more and more extreme as time went on. Also, the fact that he claimed to be a Romany gypsy meant that I was dealing with a culture that I knew nothing about – a very secretive culture that non-gypsies in general have no idea of. It was easy for him to explain anything which didn’t make sense as just being the way that gypsies operated. How was I to know any different? It was terrifying living my life believing the things he said about people wanting to hurt me and/or Lily; but the actual reality, that none of this was true, it was all just a massively drawn-out and incredibly intricate way of controlling my life, is even scarier. I doubt very much that he is, or ever has been, a contract killer, but to me someone who likes to believe that they are one has no place in an innocent child’s life. I still have no idea why he did any of this; I can only assume that he gets some kind of kick out of it and that it means he is more deranged than any doctor has ever realised.
I have been contacted by other people, women he has lied to in the past, and I know now that I’m not the only one. He keeps reeling them in, making himself younger as time goes by so that he has a chance with younger women too. He told one woman that he had terminal cancer, and during their relationship would get her to drop him off for chemotherapy appointments. He would bravely tell her that he didn’t want her to get bogged down in the misery of it all, so she was never allowed into the hospital. The relationship ended when he said that she deserved to live her life without looking after a dying man.
He has a long history of making up fantasy situations to gain attention and sympathy from people. Two of his ex-girlfriends – Jeri and Sandra – gave me a lot of support when they found out what Vic had put me through.
Just wanted to say nice one for trying to let folk know the truth, said Jeri, who knew about the cancer lie. Have known him for years and years now and had hoped he had sorted out all the bullshit but it seems not. About 12 or so years ago he told everyone he had cancer and a lot of folk were seriously worried about him and it all turned out to be bollocks, shame cos he can be a nice bloke and I seriously do hope that he is OK. Anyway just wanted to say nice one xxx
It was all falling apart for Vic. He had posted on the Hippy69 page, under another name, that he (Vic) had taken an overdose while in Spain at a festival. This backfired spectacularly.
It was obviously just another attention-seeking effort, but people were getting wise to him. Things were getting out about what had happened with me, and I think the fact that there was a child involved now changed everything. People weren’t as willing to indulge him – they were putting two and two together and finally getting four. Several of Vic’s long-term staunch supporters, or what he had left of them after the kidnapping episode, came to realise what he was really about, and the Hippy69 FB thread became a place where Vic’s former friends revealed an awful lot about what they had come to realise about him.
Vic started it all by saying this, under another false profile identity:
Swedish police found Vic in Malmo at around 11.45pm UK time. According to the police officer who came to the hotel to inform us, Vic had taken an overdose of various drugs. Sorry that is the only information we have at the moment. Family and close friends are been informed by the Swedish authorities.
This was followed by a batch of people asking WTF has he done now? before Sandra, one of his ex-girlfriends, blew the whole thing wide open:
There is no StreetBeats, there is no sound system. It’s all been proven to be lies. Vic was one of my really good mates and he fooled me too – be aware people, PLEASE! she wrote.
Naturally, Vic couldn’t allow that, so he came onto the page pretending to be someone else.
StreetBeats does exist. Vic travelled abroad all the time with them DJing. He used to post up and share new beat mixes he was working on regularly. I really hope he’s alright, last time I spoke to him, he wasn’t coping very well at all.
This was quite typical of his fake identities. They would back him up, say how talented he was, throw in some concern about how he was managing/coping/feeling, and generally try to show that they were a real human with real human feelings for him. I recognised it all too well now.
Sandra did too: StreetBeats is meant to be a charity – call up the Charities Commission. There’s no record of StreetBeats, no charity number. On