# 1 :17years and still stalking

In today's day and age, it's not unusual to joke around on Facebook about stalking a paramour, and for the most part, casual cyber-stalking is a harmless pursuit. However, there is a line, and certain individuals who may be mentally unbalanced can become fixated on others, often sensing a connection between themselves and the object of their affection which does not actually exist.

Ludeen and Moul

One day in 1994, Tracy Lundeen opened her heart to a socially awkward loner while attending middle school in Renton, Wash. Little did she know her act of kindness would set in motion a nearly two-decade-long campaign of fear and harassment that has changed her life forever.

Lundeen was just 13 when she offered to help schoolmate Shawn Moul after seeing him struggle with his class work in the McKnight Middle School library. Moul began following Lundeen around as they moved onto high school — a problem that became so pronounced he was expelled for stalking her.

But that was only the beginning. Over the years, Moul harassed Lundeen and her family members through repeated phone calls and more than 100 letters.  Even an eight-year prison sentence beginning in 2001 failed to end Moul's obsession with Lundeen — he found ways to get letters to her from his cell, and six months after his 2009 release, he was at it again.

Today Moul is locked away again; on Jan. 24, he was sentenced to a 26 1/2-year prison term that prosecutors called the longest stalking sentence in memory. But is still does little to give Lundeen piece of mind.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it's over," Lundeen, now 32, told Matt Lauer live on TODAY Tuesday. "He won't stop."

Decades-long ordeal Lundeen's case has shined a new light on the U.S. stalking laws, which permit a near-stranger to continue a course of harassment and threats despite a family taking every step the law allows to thwart it. Even now, with Moul serving a long prison sentence, Lundeen's mother told NBC News: "It's not realistically going to be over until one of them passes away."

Over the years, Lundeen has consistently tried to keep Moul from contacting her: She keeps her home address secret, has her mail delivered to a post office box, and has tight privacy controls on her Internet presence.