Man accused of stalking women over the phone

INDIANAPOLIS (Daily Journal) - An Indianapolis man made repeated phone calls to random women late at night, breathing heavily and moaning before hanging up, police said.

Brandon M. Combs, 26, has been arrested on charges of stalking, a Class D felony, and harassment, a Class A misdemeanor.

• One of the victims says the threatening calls have started up again since Combs has bonded out of jail. Hear from her by clicking on the video link in the left margin of the story.

The caller told one Johnson County woman that he was going to come and get her, Detective Andrew Barnhart with the Johnson County Sheriff's Office said.

The man made nearly 4,000 phone calls in a six-month period, mostly to women in Johnson, Marion, Hendricks and Hamilton counties, Barnhart said.

Deputies have located six victims in Johnson County and 12 others in nearby counties. The women said they felt threatened and were fearful for their lives after receiving the calls, according to a sheriff's office report.

"We don't know for sure that this is going to escalate into something else, but we wanted to make sure that didn't happen," Barnhart said. "It's already serious enough as it is."

The caller did not know any of the women but would call the same number nightly for weeks or months if he liked how the woman's voice sounded, Barnhart said.

One of the women told deputies that she thought the caller might know where she lives and feared that she was being followed. Another woman also worried that someone was following her and was afraid for her son's safety, the report said.

Deputies found scraps of paper with phone numbers written on them when they searched the home Combs shares with his mother Wednesday, the report said.

Combs wrote "very good" next to some phone numbers, Barnhart said.

Police were tipped off about Combs when a Greenwood area woman contacted authorities in mid-August, saying she had been receiving phone calls in the middle of the night from a blocked number, the report said.

The person who called her would breathe heavily and moan. Over a series of phone calls that lasted about four months, the caller also told the woman that he was going to get her, the report said.

Police were able to trace the blocked number back to Combs and also subpoenaed his phone records from February to August, Barnhart said.

They discovered that Combs had made nearly 3,800 calls in that time, most between midnight and 7 a.m., Barnhart said.

The calls lasted about 30 seconds each, and some of the numbers were dialed 50 times or more, the report said.

Deputies contacted some of the numbers that Combs called repeatedly and found that all of the calls were answered by women or picked up by a voice mail that belonged to a woman, the report said.

"It just seemed to be completely random," Barnhart said. "He would just dial until he heard a girl's voice, and then circle it or put a check mark by it and then call it again."

Combs told deputies that he started calling random numbers in the area to locate an old girlfriend but that making the calls "became a habit," the report said.

He had been making the calls for a couple years, he told police.

Combs was taken to the Johnson County jail Wednesday, where he was released on $4,000 bond.

Thanks to the Johnson County Daily Journal for this story.