Chapter 2: The Predator

During the trial, I thought to myself: this man deserves to die a thousand deaths.

Sitting at the prosecution’s table, I tried to keep my poker face, but inside, my anger burned hot. I watched as Tyler Grant shuffled into the courtroom, his orange jumpsuit hanging awkwardly from his stocky frame. Every time I looked at him, I thought about Natalie’s father, sitting stiff and silent in the back row.

The defendant’s name was Tyler Grant, a college student. He barely cleared five-three, but he was built like a linebacker gone to seed—broad, heavy, his face cratered with old acne.

He looked nothing like the smooth-talking suspects you see on TV crime dramas. His heavyset build and the nervous flick of his eyes across the room told a story of their own. The courtroom smelled faintly of Lysol and sweat.

Because of his appearance, Tyler was unhappy at school. In his own words: “I feel like all the girls look down on me.”

He’d said this during our first interview, hunched over, picking at a pimple on his chin, barely meeting my gaze. His voice wavered between resentment and self-pity, filling the stale air of the county jail’s visitor room.

He came from a wealthy family—both his parents were high-ranking city officials. That privilege had made him arrogant.

Their names were plastered all over the city’s foundation plaques and gala invitations. Growing up with that kind of safety net, Tyler always expected to land on his feet. He carried himself with a smugness that made you want to shake him.

But the girls at college were often more idealistic, not so obsessed with material things, and this troubled Tyler.

At orientation, these girls talked about change, about art and activism, not about cars or club memberships. They saw right through him, or so he thought, and it made him angrier than he’d ever admit.

Honestly, if Tyler had been willing to spend money, I’m sure some girls would have responded. But he especially despised materialistic girls; he said he was after “real love.”

His words were bitter: “Those girls who only care about money? I want nothing to do with them.” He spoke like he was above it all, but the truth was, he was just as lost and desperate as anyone else. Maybe more so.

So, he set his sights on the female students at school.

His obsession brewed in silence. Late at night, he’d scroll through social media profiles, looking for someone to fixate on, convinced that somewhere in those carefully curated feeds was his soulmate—or his next target.

And he only targeted “virgins.”

It sounded grotesque, almost cartoonishly villainous, but there was a calculated coldness to it. Like he was shopping for a used car, not seeing people at all.

“How do you know the victims were virgins?”

I asked the question during our first jailhouse meeting, trying not to let my disgust show. My voice cracked a little, betraying my unease.

Tyler replied, a little smugly, “I have a skill. Just by smelling, I can tell if a girl’s a virgin.”

He grinned, like a kid showing off a cheap magic trick—except this was real, and it was horrifying. The guard standing nearby snorted in disbelief, but Tyler didn’t seem to notice. The arrogance in his tone sent chills down my spine.

There’s no scientific basis for this, of course, but as it turned out, all three of the girls he assaulted were indeed virgins.

I read the reports twice, hoping to find a contradiction, but the details lined up in ways I hated to admit. Sometimes the world makes no sense at all.

I asked him why he specifically targeted virgins.

It was a question I dreaded. The words tasted like acid, but I needed to understand. I needed to know what kind of person I was dealing with.

Tyler said, first, that defiling virgins satisfied his psychological obsession with cleanliness, and second, that virgins cared more about their reputations—if assaulted, they’d be less likely to report it to the police.

He spat out the answer with cold logic, as if it were common sense. I wanted to scream at him. Instead, I wrote it down, my hand trembling.

At first, Tyler didn’t dare to commit rape; he started with molestation.

It started small, the way these stories always do. A brush of the hand, a whispered threat, testing the boundaries of fear. The police reports were full of little horrors that added up to something monstrous.

He would follow girls who were studying for the SATs and GRE. These tests required memorizing vocabulary, so girls would often pick quiet, secluded places to study—perfect for him to commit his crimes.

He lurked in the back corners of empty libraries, behind stacks of books. Sometimes he waited by vending machines, pretending to scroll on his phone while watching his victims out of the corner of his eye. The campus at night could feel like a ghost town, silent and vulnerable.

The only problem was, Tyler’s physique was distinctive; even with his face covered, if a victim saw him, he’d be easy to identify. He didn’t want to go to jail.

He was smart enough to know the risks. His broad build made him stand out. The campus cops already had a file on him for petty vandalism and trespassing.

So every time, he blindfolded the victims. He even bought a special hood—the kind that only leaves the mouth exposed.

He ordered it online, the kind you’d find buried in the dark corners of Amazon. He bragged about his resourcefulness, as if it were a point of pride.

The first victim was a freshman. Tyler attacked her from behind, dragged her into the woods, and molested her.

The path to the woods was a shortcut students used after night class. He knew the routine, waited for the perfect moment, then struck. The sound of snapping twigs and her muffled screams haunted my dreams for weeks after reading the file.

Since it was his first time, Tyler was extremely nervous. He only groped the girl’s chest and buttocks before running off. The whole thing took less than a minute.

He recounted it like he was talking about a prank, not a crime. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his hands shook with adrenaline.

But just as Tyler expected, the victim chose to swallow her humiliation, which only made him feel invincible.

She never reported the assault. Instead, she transferred to another dorm, started skipping classes, and eventually dropped out of school altogether. I wondered if her parents ever found out why.

The next day, Tyler molested another girl, a junior, less than fifty yards from the previous spot.

He stalked her for days before making his move. Security footage caught his shadow in the background, always just out of frame.

This time, he used his tongue to assault the victim.

He described it in chilling detail, his tone flat and emotionless. The clinical way he spoke about his actions made me want to throw up.

But the victim was in the middle of breaking up with her boyfriend. She was afraid that being molested would make her boyfriend leave her, so she, too, chose to remain silent.

In her statement, she said she’d never felt so alone. The shame was too much to bear. She never even told her roommate.

These two successful attempts gave Tyler an illusion.

He grew more confident, believing the world would always turn the other way. Every time he got away with it, his sense of power swelled.

“Girls are all timid. As long as you scare them, these proud girls will let me do whatever I want.”

His words crawled under my skin. That smugness, that icy logic—it made me want to smash something, just to feel real again.