14 DAY TRIAL // Waseem Daker was convicted in 1996 in the state of Georgia for stalking Spencer Blatz, and has already served 10 years in prison. The man now faces charges for the murder of Spencer Blatz’s housemate, Karmen Smith, and the attempted murder of her son Nicholas.
Ms. Smith was strangled in October 1996, the Daily Mail reports. She is survived by her son Nicholas, 5 years old at the time. Nickolas will be taking the stand at the trial, after having been stabbed multiples times by the man and facing death.
Now 35-year-old Daker met the women he was convicted of stalking, Loretta Spencer Blatz, on his paintball team. He was enrolled in the Georgia Tech University at the time. He approached Ms. Blatz by seeking her help with emotional issues and coping with a new environment.
She did not see him as a threat, and acted as his friend and advisor.
“I felt like his bigger sister. He was reaching out and needing somebody. He told me he didn’t have anyone to talk to. I was trying to help him,” she said in her testimony.
Blatz had a 10-year-old daughter and was 10 years Waseem's senior. Though the man claims there was a romantic involvement between them, she denies having been more than friends.
He started calling the woman 50 – 100 times a day, threatening to commit suicide if she wouldn't answer.
“He would get extremely irate and say I was the only one he had to talk to and would kill himself if I would not talk to him. I told him he needed to seek professional help,” Ms. Blatz said.
Other incidents followed. When the man felt he wasn't receiving enough attention, he started stalking her and threatened her life and that of her daughter's.
The woman says he first hung underwear on her doorknob, so that she would know he had been there. He proceeded to try and run her over with his car, and even threatened to slit her daughter's throat.
When she moved to another county to escape him, he followed her and broke in to her apartment.
“He was naked and he had a garter belt and garter hose on and was looking at himself in my mirror,” she said.
That is the first time that she went to the police with this issue, but he convinced her he would seek help and she dropped all the charges.
Karmen Smith moved into the basement of the home Spencer was renting, and a few months later she was found dead, and her young son stabbed.
Spencer went to the police again and the man was arrested and tried for stalking her. Evidence to convict him of murder was not sufficient at the time. In 2009, the police reopened the case and performed a DNA test, proving hairs found on the victim's body belonged to him.
There is no telling what other details the trial will reveal, but, in a twisted turn of events, Daker has fired his appointed council and is now representing himself.