Jacqueline Claire Ades Arrested for Texting a Man 159,000 Times in Less Than a Year

In 2017, a 31-year-old licensed esthetician from Phoenix, Arizona, swiped right for Luxy, a high-end dating app. She was set up on a date in Paradise Valley, an area in an upscale suburb near Phoenix famous for desert homes and star-studded residents. The single date would prove nondescript until Ades bombarded him with an astonishing 159,000 texts in 10 months, an average 530 texts a day. What started as loving gestures turned into a cold, relentless pursuit of obsession, leaving behind a trail in cyberspace that took the world’s collective breath away.

Ades believed that she had met her “soulmate.”

“I felt like I met my soul mate and I figured we would just do what everyone else would do and we would get married,”

Ades said in an interview in May 2018 in jail with CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO-TV. However, the texts soon took on a threatening nature. Threats in texts varied from,

“Don’t ever try to leave me. I’ll kill you. I don’t wanna be a murderer!” to bizarre claims like, “I’m like the new Hitler… man was a genius.”

Another read,

“Oh, what I would do w/your blood… I’d wanna bathe in it.”

The volume and intensity were unprecedented, with police noting up to 500 messages daily in the initial phase alone.

Ades’ fixation wasn’t confined to texts. In July 2017, Paradise Valley police escorted her off the man’s property after finding her parked outside his home. The following April, while the victim was abroad, he spotted Ades on his home surveillance system bathing in his tub. Officers arrested her for first-degree criminal trespassing, discovering a butcher knife in her car. Weeks after, she visited the man at his workplace under the pretense of him being her husband, leading to another visit by the police. The incidents triggered charges involving stalking, harassment, threat, and failure to appear.

Ades pleaded not guilty, but her erratic behavior raised red flags. She rejected a plea deal that would have freed her with time served, insisting a jury would not only acquit her but mandate marriage to her victim.

“They’re going to say, ‘You’re not guilty and on top of it we, like, demand that you two get married,’”

she told The Arizona Republic in 2019. Court-ordered mental health evaluations deemed her incompetent to stand trial, citing severe mental illness. By 2020, stalking and trespassing charges were dropped, and Ades was transferred to Valleywise Behavioral Health Center before moving to Florida for treatment.

The case went viral, spurring talks in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. Social networking groups like Reddit were buzzing about shock at the scope of Ades’ antics, as everyone was speculating about mental problems. Her tenuous charges, such as kidnapping at the hands of Walt Disney and references to the Illuminati, contributed to web intrigue.

“The volume of texts is mind-boggling,”

commented a Reddit user, summarizing public skepticism. The case highlighted web-based relationships’ shadow side and the challenges in treating obsessive impulses.

There are important questions raised in Ades’ case. How can dating services such as Luxy screen their members for unstable personalities more effectively? What recourse are victims of online stalking provided? And where lies the boundary between mental illness and criminal responsibility?

“Such stalking cases indicate that obsessive thinking can be magnified by technology, so effective legal and mental interventions are important,”

said Dr. Joel Dvoskin is a forensic psychologist at the University of Arizona. The case highlights weaknesses in laws on cyberstalking and calls for increased mental health support.