Stalker Christopher Thomas Now: Where He Landed After a Decade of Terrorizing Samantha Stites
She thought she was being kind by making small talk, but the gesture backfired horribly.
Published Aug. 19 2025, 1:33 p.m. ET
In 2011, Samantha Stites, then a college student, met a fellow student named Christopher Blaine Thomas in passing. She didn’t really know him, but because he seemed a bit awkward, she decided to help him feel more included by making small talk. They were part of the same student group, as she explained in an August 2025 ABC interview, but their interactions never went beyond basic casual conversation.
To her, it was nothing. But to him, the kind gesture meant much more.
Over time, it escalated into Thomas stalking her. He continued this behavior for more than a decade before taking it even further — kidnapping and sexually assaulting her. Stites’s harrowing story is depicted in ABC News Studios’s Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror, released on Aug. 19, 2025, where she recounts the horrific details of her years-long nightmare. But what most people really want to know is: where is Thomas, her stalker, now?
Where is Christopher Thomas, Samantha Stites’s stalker, now?
Thankfully, Christopher Blaine Thomas, Samantha Stites’s stalker and kidnapper, is in jail. He is being held at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia, Mich., in a security level II area, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections. Thomas was sentenced to over 40 years in prison on Feb. 5, 2024, for aggravated stalking, torture, and kidnapping. While he was also charged with criminal sexual conduct, that charge was later dropped as part of a plea agreement, per ABC News.
On Oct. 7, 2022, Thomas took his stalking to the extreme by entering Stites’s home during the night while she was sleeping. She says she heard a creak on the floorboard outside her bedroom, but by the time she flicked on the light to see what it was, he was on top of her, strangling her. He then forced her out of her home and used her car to take her to a bunker he had created inside a storage unit, equipped with soundproof walls.
Stites was held captive for about 14 hours in the bunker, which contained a hot plate and some canned goods. Allegedly, Thomas planned to keep her there and potentially fake her death. Using her negotiating skills, Stites convinced him to let her go. She tried reasoning with him, even saying, “If I sleep with you, will you let me go — tonight?” He agreed, and she reportedly told him to shake on it, likely as a tactic to ease the mood and make him believe she was on his side.
Recounting the moment to ABC News, Stites said, “I shook and sobbed after he raped me. I wasn't sure he would stop.” He did keep his end of the bargain and released her, and she immediately went to the police.
Thomas was then taken into custody and faced the charges mentioned above. His earliest release date is Oct. 7, 2062, and his maximum discharge date is Oct. 7, 2082.
Christopher Thomas got the idea for his bunker from the Netflix series 'You'.
During a 2025 interview with Good Morning America, Stites revealed that Thomas got the idea to create the bunker from the Netflix series You. In the show, Joe Goldberg (played by Penn Badgley) kidnaps a woman and holds her in a glass room. Thomas told Stites, however, that the glass room “wasn’t logistically possible” and that he “had looked into it.”
Where is Samantha Stites now?
Since overcoming the stalking and kidnapping, Stites has worked to resume living her life on her own terms. She also uses her experience as a platform to shed light on stalking and help others. Stites founded Beekeepers Advocacy, “a survivor-led initiative dedicated to protecting victims of stalking, domestic violence, and abduction,” according to the official website.
She’s active on social media as well, giving people a glimpse into how she’s overcome everyone’s worst nightmare while advocating for those who have faced similar situations.