Tinder Horror Story Leaves Minnesota Woman Living In Fear After Boyfriend-Turned-Stalker Burned Her House Down

Tinder Horror Story Leaves Minnesota Woman Living In Fear After Boyfriend-Turned-Stalker Burned Her House Down

Katie Cederberg was looking for love, so when she saw a good looking guy with the perfect profile on Tinder she had no hesitation swiping right.

Who knows what Mark Lacek was looking for when he swiped in the same direction – but whatever it was it turned into four years of sheer hell for Katie.

Even today, nearly half a decade after that fateful decision to seek a Prince Charming and although Lacek will spend six more years behind bars, Katie still lives in fear for the day he will be released.

'I'm going to have to change my name and move, create a game plan so there's no way he can track me down,' she told DailyMail.com in a exclusive interview.

'He's a danger to society, a crazy f**king monster.

'I still fear him, and there's never going to be a time in my life I won't fear him.'

She has decided to speak out in hopes that her horror story will serve as a cautionary tale for others who are considering diving into a relationship with a stranger.

Katie, a personal banker at a credit union, met Lacek in summer 2020. He invited her to meet up for dinner.

'Our first date went great,' the 26-year-old who was living in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, told DailyMail.com. 'He seemed normal, like he had a good head on his shoulders.

'He had family problems, but I guess we all do.'

Over the next couple weeks, he showered her with affection and gifts.

'It was kind of a love bomb thing where he gave me everything he thought I wanted, bottles of wine, gift cards, cash, flowers,' she said.

Lacek, 31, was out of work but living off loans from his divorced dad – a lawyer who told DailyMail.com that he kicked his son out of his home a year earlier due to his erratic behavior.

The son was renting a room in Mounds View, just a 30 minute drive from where Katie lived when the two met online. She said it soon became evident that he was a controlling narcissist with a drug problem.

Katie admits she too had a drinking problem. 'He was able to take my weaknesses and use them against me,' she explained. 'As we started talking more, he started to become demanding.

'Like if I wanted to go out with certain male friends, I wasn't allowed to. If I was with somebody, he would need to talk to them.'

They'd meet almost every night, a period she described as 'a hazy time.' She said he'd take cocaine, mushrooms, Xanax and Adderall, and that 'I started doing some of that with him too.'

Just two weeks in, he basically popped the question – presenting her with a fake diamond ring while drinking wine with her in his apartment.

'This ring is to symbolize I will marry you some day,' she recalled him telling her. 'I will buy you a nicer one down the road.'

She accepted the ring, but said she didn't know how to react to his non-proposal.

'I didn't really answer, but he just handed it to me and wouldn't take it back,' she said.

But it didn't take long for her to realize this was no dream romance.

Days later a cop came knocking on his door and served a restraining order filed against him by another woman.

'I was at his house, and he woke me up and he was freaking out,' she recalled. 'He was being accused of harassment but said it was all a lie.'

Cederberg stormed out, and decided to end it. But Lacek wouldn't take no for an answer and started showing up at her workplace,

'He would just sit outside and wait for me to get out to my car.'

She said he also hacked into her social media and made further threats if she wouldn't get back together with him.

'He was blackmailing me, saying he was going to release intimate pictures.'

This went on for nearly two months. He bombarded her with disgusting messages, later shared with detectives.

'I'll chop your head off and f**k your dead corpse and stick my d**k through your neck hole,' one Snapchat posting states, with Lacek staring menacingly ahead.

In other messages, he accused her of cheating, tells her to 'jump off a f**king bridge' and 'kill yourself b**ch,' and adds, 'I hope you get killed or raped or beat the f**k up you're a dumb b**ch.'

'I gave you my everything and it wasn't good enough I hope you fu**ing rot you selfish piece of….'

She reported Lacek to police and obtained a restraining order. But she said nearly a week passed with police failing to serve the papers.

On September 16, 2020, she said, Lacek followed her home from work and knocked on her door. She didn't answer. He sped off but not before leaving her a chilling note.

'He used a chewed-up piece of gum to stick it to the door,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I opened it and it said something like 'please don't be mad at me, I love you.'

He'd also inserted two Xanax in the envelope, hoping she'd take them to help her fall asleep, she said.

But she called police and turned the pills over. A detective told her to sleep elsewhere that night. She did.

Then a few hours later, Lacek showed up to the house again. Her housemate, who was still home, refused to answer. Lacek went around to the backyard and threw her lawn furniture against a tree. He cracked open the back kitchen window, poured gasoline through it, and set a fire.

As flames tore through the townhouse, emergency crews rescued the roommate from upstairs.

Cederberg was sleeping at a friend's house several miles away when a cat woke her. She looked down at her phone noticing a dozen missed calls, one from her housemate and others from random numbers.

'I called back and it was a detective saying my house was on fire,' she recalled.

Responding officers saw a car speeding away at about 100 miles per hour.

'They asked me who did it, and I said that would be Mark Allen Lacek. The detective asked me how do I know?

'I said because he told me he was going to do it and even made a map of how he was going to do it.'

Katie gave investigators Lacek's address, and officers arrested him there early the next morning, she said.

He was ordered held on $1 million bail. He'd call her from jail, asking why she 'lied' to the cops, adamant he didn't set the fire. She alerted investigators, and Lacek was barred from calling her.

He then had other inmates call on his behalf. He even had one fellow prisoner's girlfriend contact her.

'The girlfriend said Mark wants to apologize for what he did, so I should contact him,' Katie recalled. 'The girlfriend said I should use the name Rose so that way I could get through.'

Again and again, she alerted police.

She attended nearly all of the court hearings as the case headed to trial. Lacek ended up taking a last-minute deal and pleaded guilty to attempted murder was sentenced to 15 years in prison, of which he'd have to serve eight.

In a letter to the court Lacek said he was in a 'drug induced and unhealthy mental state that night.

'I know I started the fire, but I wasn't fully aware of how dangerous it was or how out of control it could have gotten,' he added.

Katie thought her nightmare was over. But just as she was hoping to put him out of her mind, Lacek, now Minnesota state inmate #264569, called from prison.

'I answered the first call and he called me, pardon my French, a f**king b**ch and a f**king liar and the town wh*re,' she told DailyMail.com. 'And he was still saying he didn't do it.'

Lacek called her three dozen times over the next 42 days, and wrote her five letters, leveling more threats even as he declared himself a newly born-again Christian, she said.

She reported all of these contacts to police and the Anoka County attorney's office, which brought Lacek up on a new felony stalking charge in early 2023 that seeks to get Katie a 50-year restraining order against him.

Lacek, now serving time in state prison in Faribault, Minnesota, will be eligible for release in September 2030.

His father called his son a changed man. He acknowledged that 'his son was off his rocker in his behavior in that part of his life,' but blamed it mostly on drug abuse.

'Now, I talk to him and tell him 'Mark you're doing time for something that happened in the past, but that's not who you are now.'

He said his son is remorseful and that, 'I hope when he gets out, he'll continue to be a transformed person and never go back to the person he was.'

But Katie doesn't believe it.

'I've spent the last four years fighting him,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I have PTSD, and I suffer from anxiety and depression.

'But I'm going to continue to fight and part of that is sharing my story.'

She said she's been attending therapy and is nine months sober. The only drug she uses now is medical marijuana. Overall, she feels a renewed sense of control over her life.

'Everyone always says my life's a bit like a movie, but it's kind of a crazy movie,' she said.

'Honestly, I never thought I'd find myself stuck in an abusive relationship. It sucks, but if I can help other people who are going through similar experiences with domestic violence, I want to be able to do that.

'You've just got to persevere,' she offered. 'You've got to find the people you trust, and you've got to be willing to ask for the help.'

SOURCE: DAILY MAIL UK