No Other Choice - Dasia's Story

[Shaun]

People go on dates all the time. Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don't. That’s pretty normal, and most people accept that and can just move on. That is unless you’re Douglas Eugene Jackson.

[John] 

Dasia Washington found this out the hard way after she spent over 6 months of her life in 2014 living in constant terror that she was going to be murdered. Jackson’s escalating campaign of terror has permanently affected Dasia and how she lives her life. Today we’re going to tell you all about her experience.

[Shaun] 

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence. I’m your host, Shaun, and with me as always, is the one and only John.

[John] 

I am the only John in the room.

[Shaun]

Before we get into the episode, we want to thank our friends at Killer Conspiracies for promoting our podcast on their recent episode - Koby and Bryan focus on Utah True Crime, which true crime fans will know includes some well-known cases like Ted Bundy, Israel Keyes, and Ted Kazinski. They do a little bit of everything on their podcast. 

We’re going to go ahead and play their trailer - and if you like what you hear we hope you’ll go give them a listen, and follow them on all the socials. We’ll share those links in our show notes.

(Killer Conspiracies Pod Trailer) 

[John]

Alright, welcome back. As we mentioned, today we’re going to be talking about another stalking case. Stalking and domestic violence are unholy bedfellows. They’re not the same of course, but they’re related phenomena, and they often overlap. While domestic violence is always perpetrated by someone close to the victim, with stalking that's not always the case.

[Shaun]

There’s a lot to Dasia’s story and her experience with Douglas Jackson. She’s been interviewed quite a few times since the events, and there's no one better to tell her story than her. We recommend after you’re done here, that you go and check out Simply Stalking’s extensive interview with Dasia. There’s nothing like hearing about her experience from her. We'll talk about her a bit later in the episode but for now, we’ll just say that she’s an amazing resilient self-aware young woman - a survivor. Lots to admire about her. So before we get into the stalking, let's talk about Dasia. 

[John]

Yep, she’s as cool as they come. If you follow her on social media you'll see this right away. She’s on the networks you’d expect, like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Back when this happened in 2014, she was posting about it on Imgur and Reddit. We’re going to share links to all of her socials in the show notes, and you should go check them out. She's an excellent content creator.

[Shaun]

From her interviews, it's clear that she’s a bold and resilient person. She believes in living life to its fullest and trying everything. She says she overcame her fear of traveling solo by taking a trip alone when travel plans with a friend fell through. She worked through being shy and a bit introverted by hosting bar trivia, doing stand-up comedy, and participating in open mic poetry nights.

She said  “It was just to prove to myself that If I do something and fail, even if it’s in front of a room full of people, that the world isn’t going to end. No one is going to care or even remember so you might as well do the thing, get a great story out of it, and grow.”

[John]

Okay, on to her experience. In 2014, Dasia Washington was only 21 years old. She had just moved to Las Vegas, where a lot of people move every month.. because.. Well, it’s Las Vegas, and it’s a great place to live. 

Being in her early 20’s she was doing a lot of dating of course, as one does, and in February she started dating Douglas Eugene Jackson. Interestingly, she doesn't remember how they met, but they dated for about 3 weeks. 

It's interesting to hear her break down their experience dating and how she started seeing red flags, she mentioned that he often seemed like he was more “gathering intel” on her as they talked and got to know each other rather than having a more standard back and forth. She also said that he made some pretty unbelievable claims about his past.

He claimed to have had a lot of experiences (like being a former firefighter) that seemed really like b.s. Given that he was also about 22 at the time. 

[Shaun]

Jackson was also exhibiting weird behavior even in the context of dating. For example, he would call, and when she didn't pick up, he would have someone else call just a minute later. She’d see a number that she didn't recognize, pick up, and she'd hear him in the background saying things like “She picked up for you? Thats effed up man”

After only about 3 weeks and about two dates, as you mentioned, Dasia ended it, by saying that it wasn't a good time, and she had a lot going on, etc. In the beginning, it seemed like Jackson was okay, initially saying he had a lot going on too. Initially, she didn't think much of it.

[John]

All that was short-lived. Shortly after, around the March timeframe he contacted her again and told her that he’d changed his mind and that he had decided that he deserved (note that word, “deserved” a second chance). It seems very much a part of this person’s personality, he continually comes back to talking about things that he is “owed”, whether it's her owing him a second chance or something else.

She initially reacted like a lot of people would, I think. Her initial reaction was “screw you dude. Who do you think you are? I don't owe you anything”, and I think that's a very reasonable reaction. It's EXACTLY what I thought when I heard what he said when he contacted her. 

In her interview, Dasia also talks about how her feelings as this went on mapped pretty well to the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It doesn't seem like she ever touched the acceptance phase, but you can clearly hear that she went through the others. 

Initially, she played off his initial re-contacting of her (more on that later!) she must have assumed that it was a one-off that he was calling her again and that he wouldn't persist. Bad news, he persisted.

Dasia was very forthcoming about what has been described as an escalating campaign of terror that she went through. This isn't an extensive list of incidents for sure, but it's long and scary and gives you a flavor of what we’re talking about here. 

We haven't said too much about Jackson here as far as his personality, mental health, state of mind, etc, and of course, we aren't here to diagnose him for any mental disorders, but it seems clear that there is something fundamentally broken about Douglas Jackson, and it very much seems like he could benefit from seeking professional psychiatric help, and of course we hope he gets that help, though for reasons that will become clear, i'm not sure that I hold out a lot of hope in for that.

[Shaun]

I want to stress again that all of these threats, all of this harassment happens over the course of 6 months. 

There were a shocking 4 separate occasions when Jackson tried to break into Dasia’s apartment. One time he tried to break in with someone else, but luckily a friend of Dasia’s was able to chase them away.

On April 25th 2014, he tried to break in again and was again chased away. This time, Dasia’s friend fired a warning shot with a firearm. Unbelievably, he tried to break in AGAIN, later that same day, and we met with TWO MORE warning shots.

We don’t know why Jackson wasn't arrested after his breaking-and-entering attempts. Police will tell you, as they told her, that they can't arrest someone for stalking unless there’s a pattern. Beyond the fact the B&E is a whole separate crime, this does seem to be a pretty obvious pattern.

Each time, he fled the scene and hid from the police. It's still hard to believe that's all he needed to do to keep from being arrested.

[John]

He also had an unnerving and almost savant-like ability to find and harass her on social media. She has described experiences where Jackson would contact her on a platform and say that she needed to let him see her, or that they should work it out, or whatever unhinged crap he was going to say, and she would block him… only to have 10 (TEN!) new social media accounts pop up shortly after and re-contact her, admonishing her for blocking him. 

It's honestly hard to imagine how disturbing and unsettling that would be when you think about it.

[Shaun]

As if this isn't bad enough, of course, it gets so much worse. Because of Jackson's intimidation and terror campaign, Dasia was essentially evicted from her apartment. The management company “let her out of her lease” but the reason was that her neighbors were afraid of Jackson and what he might do.

She moved out on May 31st, and her next apartment wasn't ready yet so she had to stay in her U-haul in the meantime, which is a whole other level of nightmare. His stalking had essentially made her temporarily homeless, which is extremely common for survivors of domestic violence and stalking. 

[John]

In June, however, things started escalating even more. She has said that he was never afraid to make threats against her that he would physically harm her, but in June he told her he was going to “shoot her in the face” Her reaction to this was about what you might expect. She was terrified and realized that this wasn't going to stop.

Later he told her that he planned to kill her, and then kill himself, and even threatened to go after her family if he couldn't get to her.

You might think that she was pretty thorough in erasing her online presence by recreating and sometimes removing social media accounts, and even moving, and you’d be right... She WAS very thorough, but somehow this unhinged man kept finding ways to contact her.

[Shaun]

In one of the previously deleted Reddit threads that we unearthed, as you can imagine there was a lot of second-guessing and armchair quarterbacking going on. People were quick to tell her to do things like “delete all your social media”, “change your appearance”, “have your family delete all their social media accounts”, and on and on. As she pointed out, she did everything possible, and he just kept finding her. 

She thought that moving would make her safe because at least he couldn't locate her physically, but unfortunately… she registered to vote. In 2014  he had enough information to get her new updated address, and he knew where she lived.. Again.

[John]

In case you’re wondering which platforms he stalked her on, the list is surprisingly long. He harassed her on the platforms you might expect like Facebook.. But he also located her on Imgur, Reddit, and even, if you can believe it, DuoLingo, the language learning app. We use Duolingo and I had no idea that you could ever just randomly message people in there.

The other thing that's crazy is that she created usernames on these platforms that had nothing to do with her name, and he was STILL able to find her. It seems like at least part of the problem was that when this happened in 2014 protections were a lot looser. Not that they’re great now, but it was definitely less secure then.

[Shaun]

Dasia applied for a restraining order in May, and it wasn't granted until September 23rd. In the order, she provided some quotes of things he had said to her over the course of the ordeal. He said things like “Hey b——, we are coming for you… The police won’t find me. I’m planning a raid. I am tracking you.”. 

He avoided the police, and the people serving the restraining order. She said at one point sent her photos of the note left by the sheriff attempting to serve him and said What you are trying to do is stupid … a restraining order is just a piece of paper." 

We talked a lot about restraining orders in the episode where we covered the family annihilation of the Dej’Oudom family. In that case, Phoukeo was not granted a restraining order because of an arcane procedural point, and it cost her, and her children’s lives. In Dasia’s case, the order was granted, but it was functionally useless since it couldn't be served.

[John]

His tactics when stalking her got scarier and scarier over time too. At one point Jackson contacted Dasia’s mother and attempted to manipulate her into giving him information about Dasia. One of the things she said about him more than once is that he can be very charming and manipulative, often getting strangers to “do his dirty work” and enabling his behavior. After he was in contact with her mother, he sent a map of her house and suggested he might “pay them a visit”

At one point he attempted to mail her an empty package with “do not forward” on it.. His goal with that was to get the post office to document her new address and send it back to him. The post office DID forward it, so in that case he failed to find her address.

[Shaun]

After she moved out of her apartment in May, she got a text stating it was from her former landlord. The message claimed there were some damages to her former apartment and that she should click on an attached link to see the itemized list.  It turns out the link was an IP grabber. He was attempting to get her to give him her IP address so he could do a location lookup based on it. 

He also created a Facebook profile at one point, entering her hometown as the location, and added everyone from her high school class in an attempt to get information on her.

He also took a picture of her moped which was her main method of transportation, just to let her know that he was following her.

***He texted her at one point she’d “wake up to gunshots” and that if she didnt meet him he could find her and he made some incredibly disturbing threats about sexual assault that we arent going to repeat here because they’re just too disturbing.

[John]

Something he would do repeatedly is demand that she meet him. At one point he went quiet for a period of time, which she found even more disturbing. She compared it to being on a boat and seeing sharks circling the boat. That's scary but at least you can SEE the sharks. When you can't see them anymore.. You have no idea when they’re coming back.

If you’re wondering why she didn't share all of this with the police, well we’re here to assure you that the VERY much did repeatedly share all of this information with the police. She was documenting it very thoroughly.

She found it extremely hard to get law enforcement to help her and even to take the situation seriously. Its obvious based on everything we’ve shared here that Dasia was in legitimate physical danger over a long period of time.. So why was it so difficult to be taken seriously by metro?

[Shaun]

In mid-August, she woke up to Jackson pounding on her door and ringing her doorbell incessantly. She again called the police and made a video of what was happening. As she described it QUOTE “I was hit with the same hoopla from law enforcement – "Well we can't really do much because technically at this point he's not doing anything wrong." UNQUOTE

Metro did finally assign a detective to her case, but at this point, it will come as little surprise that he was of little help. At one point he told her that she must have gotten the wrong idea.. Because he spoke to Jackson on the phone and he “seemed like a really nice guy”

[John]

Another thing we want to mention here that absolutely epitomized the goat rodeo that was her experience dealing with the legal system is that when she went to get her restraining order, she was told that she had to go to family court because she had gone on dates with him.

If you take even a moment to think about that logically, you'll know how absurd that is. Think about the people who are in family court seeking orders of protection. It’s people like Phoukeo who are married to their stalker or abuser.. And the idea that she needed to be in family court is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

What's the cut-off? They went on two dates! What if they had just had lunch? What if they went to Applebees and split a burger and she decided it wasn't going to work out?  Would they still belong in the family court? You can see why people have no faith in the system that is ostensibly there to protect them.

[John]

Jackson’s relentless stalking had a devastating effect on Dasia’s life. As we mentioned earlier, Dasia had to move. Her neighbors were unsettled by Jackson’s behavior and his actions were making them feel unsafe in their homes too.

[Shaun] 

I’m sure the calls to the police added to that uneasiness. Dasia ended up relocating and Jackson’s behavior resulted in her need to become hypervigilant. When she chose a new apartment, she didn’t choose it based on aesthetics – the color of the appliances, or the view… she chose it based on the layout from a safety perspective. How much protection could this new apartment provide? Her new apartment had the door on the ground floor that opened to a staircase that led up to the main living area. Dasia has said that she made that choice to give herself the most time to react if he were to break into her place. 

She would lock that door, and immediately wedge a chair under the doorknob to give herself even more time if she needed it. 

[John] 

Working became a challenge as well. She wasn’t sleeping at night so getting up and getting to work became nearly impossible. Dasia has shared that she once lost a job after she literally fell asleep on her feet during a shift. She also was at that time carrying her gun with her everywhere. She had at least one employer tell her that she can’t carry while she was at work.. So she stopped working there.

She also became incredibly isolated. During the later parts of her stalking experience she really hit the depression phase of her grief process, and the isolation this was causing didnt help.

Any social media accounts she was using to connect with people - Instagram, Facebook – she ended up having to delete because every time she blocked Jackson – he would just make another account or 10 to continue to harass and threaten her. 

[Shaun]

And, like many other survivors of domestic violence and stalking, she experienced trauma, that led to her having phobias and triggers, such as the sound of a doorbell – as a result of Jackson ringing her doorbell over and over again for 15 minutes straight. She also would be affected by even hearing his name – encountering people with the same name as him had caused her to experience acute anxiety, crying, and shaking. Jackson’s behavior resulted in Dasia being slower to trust people, and being less spontaneous. She has stated she became a perfectionist and an extremely detailed planner to try to feel like she had some control.

[John]

In early September of 2014, because the police were unwilling or unable to help (or both, actually), Dasia posted on Reddit asking for advice about using private investigators (we’ll share this post in the show notes, but note that both the post and her userID have been deleted so you can't just go out and find it on Reddit today)

She was looking for help because she had been granted a temporary protective order or TPO against Jackson (finally) but of course, she didn't have an address for him, so he couldn't be served. As before, some of the replies were helpful, but some of them were very cavalier about what she might have to do to protect herself. 

[Shaun]

Yes - One of the most profound changes to Dasia was her decision to obtain her concealed carry permit and become a gun owner. Dasia’s parents had survived a shooting when Dasia was young, but her father was paralyzed as a result of the shooting. Dasia has a fear and a healthy level of respect for guns, but since the police didn’t seem to be willing or able to help her, Dasia reached the point where she believed she needed to be ready for that possibility that Jackson would carry out his threats against her. 

Dasia took shooting classes, carried her pistol with her everywhere, and practiced with it at a firing range often. And you can tell from the tone and content of her reddit post that she really didn’t want it to come to that. What I think she was asking, was for the system to work. For better protection for victims experiencing what she was experiencing. 

[John]

On September 26, 2014, around 1 a.m., just three days after her order of protection had finally been approved, Dasia was up watching TV because she couldn't sleep. 

Insomnia was pretty common for her because of this ordeal, so she was already up when she heard Jackson kick in her apartment door.  

She realized that he’d broken in, and was trying to get the chair out from under the door handle.

It's a good thing that chair was there because it gave her time to run upstairs to get her gun. She went back to the top of the stairs and could see Jackson’s forcing his way into the apartment, his head, and shoulder already inside.

From the top of the stairway, Dasia fired two shots at Jackson. 

He screamed out “Oh Fuck Dasia, you shot me” and ran off. 

[Shaun]

Dasia got her phone and called 911 immediately and told them she had shot the man who had been stalking her. Dasia has explained by this time, after 10 police reports, the police were well aware of who she was. 

Dasia waited in her house for the police to arrive. When they got to her place, they couldn’t find Jackson. She had no idea if he was alive or dead or where he was. The police used K9s to track him and he was found hiding in some bushes nearby. He had been hit once in the chest. 

Dasia was of course, afraid that she might not be believed by the police again and that she might end up getting arrested. 

One of the things Dasia has shared is that earlier in the day, she had gone to the firing range. She checked her gun quickly before she ran to the top of the stairs, and a bullet was already chambered. 

Lucky for Jackson, I guess, that bullet was ammunition that Dasia only used at the firing range. Smooth bullets, for target practice. Normally her gun would have been loaded with home defense ammunition that would have broken up upon impact and undoubtedly caused Jackson to suffer greater injuries.

As it was, Jackson spent several months in the hospital recovering from his injuries.

Dasia was never arrested or charged with any crime. 

[John]

Jackson was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking and home invasion which are both felonies. 

Jackson agreed to plead guilty to the aggravated stalking charge 

You wont be surprised to learn that according to Dasia and the City of Las Vegas court records, Jackson was a very difficult defendant. There are notes in requests for continuances that state that Jackson is to be transported to court “by any means” and notes that the defendant refused to be transported to court. Dasia has said that he refused to eat while in custody.. Resulting in him becoming too sick to appear in court. 

By December 15, 2014 Jackson accepted the plea deal, but the sentencing didn’t happen until July 2015. Jackson asked for repeated continuances in the case and switched attorneys multiple times.

At one point right before sentencing, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea. The judge would not permit that.

I’m not sure if the judge just lost patience with him with the excuses and the refusals and the new attorneys – the record states that the judge said he had had ample time to withdraw the guilty plea prior and he wasn’t allowed to withdraw it.

He was sentenced to 48 months min, 120 months max — and he had credit for 300 days of time served.. That’s how long he dragged this out. 

[Shaun]

Dasia has shared that she felt pressured to go along with this plea agreement. That the attorneys made her feel that it was in her best interests for there not to be a trial– because at a trial she would be under scrutiny – did she lead him on, did she send him mixed signals, what should she have done differently — and to avoid having Jackson appear to be a victim of HER. 

When Jackson got out in September 2019 after serving around 4 years – he immediately reached out to her on Reddit. Dasia contacted his parole officer and was told there was nothing they can do because ‘he has repaid his debt to society.”

[John]

It turns out that Dasia was Jackson’s second stalking victim but not his last. 

Only one month after he was paroled  – he began stalking another woman in Northern Nevada. He made threats against the woman, her family, and even her dog. 

He was arrested in September 2019 for Aggravated Stalking and he pled guilty to the charge in July 2020. In September 2020, he was sentenced to a minimum of 6 years and a max of 15 years.

He’s currently serving his time in Clark County in a minimum security facility and he will be eligible for parole in early 2026. 

[Shaun]

Dasia of course is so much more than what happened to her. She is an engaging content creator – her content is calming and inspiring, and full of so much joy, self-love, and honesty. I know if you find her on Instagram you will feel a sense of serenity and I think her determination is contagious. 

She teaches an adult roller skating course so please go check out her store and sign up for that. 

She has shared that she was very scared to talk about what had happened for a long time. But she says anyone who has experienced stalking needs to know that it isn’t your fault. “You’re not breaking the law because you said no” 

She also said this about victim blaming – specifically when people say things like  “why don’t you just move” 

Dasia said, “Most people can’t even stay off social media to WORK so it’s unreasonable to ask someone to uproot their whole life.”  

And I think that’s just an excellent way to put that. There are a lot of people who talk about what they would have done differently than Dasia or other victims and survivors of violence. As I’ve said before, a lot of victim blaming comes from deep internal fears & us believing that if we make different choices, we will get different outcomes & stay safer. And imaging all your problems will go away if you move to a new house and delete facebook seems far fetched, and thinking it would be easy to do that when you can’t wait at a red light without looking at your phone is pretty ridiculous. 

And another thing about language - we shouldn’t ever use phrases like “her stalker” or “his stalker” or.. If it’s happening to you, don’t say “my stalker” – I agree with Dasia, that It’s weird that we say that. Like the same way you’d say “My husband” or “her brother” 

As Dasia has said, you didn’t choose this person. So moving forward we are going to say “the person who stalked (him/her/me). 

And I think my favorite quote from her that i've heard so far is this one

“Don’t waste your life owning shit that isn’t yours to own.”

Those are true words to live by. 

[John]

We also want to remind everyone that January is National Stalking Awareness Month & on our social media we are sharing links and information about stalking. 

If you’re not following us on Instagram please give us a follow so we can all work together to increase awareness around stalking and raise awareness about available resources. 

And with that, we want to thank you for listening and make sure you subscribe & tell a friend about our podcast because 

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