Influencer Jazz Thornton from New Zealand thought he was safe from a stalker because he lived on the other side of the world. But suddenly the Dutchman stood in front of her house. “I saw through Instagram that he had flown to New Zealand with one goal: to find me.” Thornton shares her story to draw attention to stalking.
The ticker tells the story The New Zealand Herald about the anxious period she experienced in 2024 by a stalker from the Netherlands. Thornton, who is very well known in New Zealand and has 2.4 million followers on TikTok, says her housemate pointed her out to messages from the man. A Dutchman named Pieter had said via Instagram that he would like to meet Thornton.
“I looked him up briefly, saw that he had sent me a lot of messages and put my phone away again,” says Thornton in The New Zealand Herald. “The distance of more than 18,000 kilometers between me and this stranger gave me a feeling of security.”
Dutch sweets
That feeling disappeared when Thornton saw via Instagram a few days later that the man had flown to New Zealand. “Through a story I saw that he had traveled to Auckland with one goal: to find me. The world, which had always felt so big, suddenly became very small. Yet I told myself that it would not be so bad,” she says.
The next morning, Thornton got the fright of her life. “I saw that there was a paper bag in front of my house. In the bag was a letter signed with the name Pieter.” The bag contained, among other things, Dutch sweets, as can be seen in a video that Thornton shared on TikTok.
What she discovered next was even more terrifying for the 31-year-old. “I ran inside and saw him sitting outside on the beach in front of our house. He was looking straight at our window.”
Thornton called the police. Ultimately it was decided that she could not stay home that night. “In the hotel I hoped that the nightmare was over. That turned out not to be the case,” she says The New Zealand Herald.
“The police had analyzed the messages from my stalker and were shocked by a sentence that I had overlooked: ‘I hope to meet you soon in the next life.’ The police feared that he wanted to harm not only himself, but also me.”
Stalking is not punishable
The man was arrested, but released after a warning for criminal intimidation and an area ban. “In New Zealand at the time, stalking was not a criminal offense,” says Thornton.
The Dutchman left New Zealand again a few days later. “But even though he was gone, the impact remained,” says Thornton. “My life has never been the same. The fear and tension of that week are still in my body. When I leave the house, I feel tension. I pay attention to every person, every car, every movement.”
According to Thornton, the hardest part was not only what happened to her, but also the impact on those around her. “My housemates barricaded their bedroom doors with furniture at night to feel safe. I was even advised not to go to my therapist temporarily, because he may have known where that practice was.”
Thornton has made a documentary about her experiences with her stalker. The documentary, Stalkedairs on Sky New Zealand and consists of three episodes. Since May, a change in the law has come into effect in New Zealand, making stalking a criminal offence.
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