Samantha was kind to the awkward man at university. He built a storage unit to keep her in.

Samantha Stites met the man who would stalk her for 11 years, and later abduct her, while she was a college student at Grand Valley State University, in Michigan.

It was 2011 and she noticed his awkwardness first. He was the type that would stand alone and miss social cues.

She first remembers seeing him at an event for an on-campus church group she was part of. Samantha offered him kindness.

"He'd joined an outreach event, and we were casually playing Frisbee outside," Samantha told Mamamia.

The first red flags came a few months after that encounter.

That man, Christopher Thomas, sent her a Facebook friend request and started frequently messaging her, asking her out.

Watch: Samantha is also telling her story in a new documentary. You can watch the trailer here. Post continues below.

His interest wasn't reciprocated, there was a substantial age gap between them. Samantha made that clear, or so she thought.

"It wasn't really that I thought things were kind of escalating or becoming an issue until I had to actually ask him to leave me alone, quite bluntly, and blocked him on different media and had this big confrontation at a bus stop," she said.

Over the next few years, Samantha would see Thomas at events. And despite their previous confrontation, he continued to ask her out. She continued to rebuff him.

Samantha met Christopher (pictured above) while she was at college. Image: Supplied.

She thought it was a normal part of being a woman, dealing with this unwanted attention. She didn't know it then, but he was stalking her — sometimes stealthily, sometimes openly, showing up consistently where she went.

"It really kind of escalated over two years … where we'd had enough interactions, and he had kind of asked me on dates, or things, that I had declined that, finally, I was like, 'You know, I don't know how I'm not getting through to this guy'," she recalled.

"I wasn't really thinking that this person was dangerous. I didn't think he necessarily fit the stereotype of, like a stalker or somebody who was creepy or dangerous."

Then Thomas let slip he would follow Samantha "across the country" for a state program she was doing. It was 2014, and she was preparing to move interstate.

She was rattled, and a family friend noticed. She opened up to them, and they convinced her to take out a Personal Protection Order (PPO).

"Really, it was kind of sitting down with him and putting all those little experiences together I've had with Christopher that it dawned on me," she said.

"Hearing me say it all out loud and put it together was really like, 'Oh, he is stalking me, and this isn't necessarily going to stop. It's not that he's just persistent and won't take no for an answer, it's something potentially worse than that.'"

The six-year-long PPO seemed to do the trick; a final message to leave her alone.

The PPO did the trick, Samantha moved interstate and Thomas left her alone - or so she thought. Image: Supplied.

While Samantha was interstate, Thomas became nothing more than an uncomfortable memory. But she would later find out that he had created a fake social media profile to keep tabs on her.

The uncomfortable memory of Thomas solidified into reality when her program ended and she returned to her home state just before the pandemic.

"I was confident the issue was taken care of and, for the most part, I believe it had been until I moved back," she said. "I bought a house. The pandemic happened and all these other things — not even having this on my radar all these years later, you know, I see him again and 'I'm just I'm like, this is not good.'"

Samantha pictured. Image: Supplied

In 2020, Samantha's PPO lapsed, and she started seeing Thomas everywhere; at the gym, while buying groceries, at bars with her friends.

He no longer tried to talk to her, so at first she thought it was a coincidence. But as the encounters continued, she suspected he was tracking her car. However, a search of the vehicle didn't uncover any devices.

Samantha attempted to take out a second PPO, but it was denied on the grounds of insufficient evidence of stalking.

The morning of the abduction.

Thomas' obsession with Samantha took a terrifying turn on October 7, 2022, when he broke into her home early in the morning.

A squeak on the floorboard was Samantha's first sign that something was amiss.

"I'm a light sleeper. I heard a squeak on my floorboard outside my door that was unusual, and it woke me up. I could see like a shadow through my cracked open bedroom door. That wasn't usually there, and I just knew something was deeply wrong," she said.

"I had no idea who this person is on the other side of the door or what they want with me.

"I chose to turn on a light, and as I reach he just rushes into the room and jumps on top of me. Immediately, I just think; 'Of course. Of course, this is who was on the other side of my door.'"

A million thoughts flashed through Samantha's mind.

"This whole life flashes before your eyes. Have I done everything I want to do in life? Like, would my loved ones know that I love them? Just this, like, grim kind of acceptance, 'I'm not going to make it out of this,'" she said, explaining at some point Thomas started to strangle her.

She made a decision to fake passing out. She took a breath and went limp.

"I'm like, okay, what do I do here? You know, this person is clearly prepared and faster and stronger than me," Samantha said.

"He's wrestled me to the ground. He's put handcuffs on me. Now I don't have any options to grab a weapon at this point. You know, I can't really fight back. And I'm like, okay, he's talking about taking me somewhere. I'm thinking like, all these true crime things I've seen where people get moved from one locations to the other is a death sentence. And I'm like, 'Oh no, oh no. Everything I suspected about this guy was this and worse.'"

Samantha tried to remain as calm as she could.

"It felt like it was something of a horror film — like there's no way this is a real thing that's happening," she said. "Like, I need to think this through and try to stay calm because getting frantic isn't going to necessarily help me in this situation," she said.

Thomas took her to a soundproof bunker he had constructed inside a storage unit.

Police bodycam shows the soundproof bunker Samantha was kept inside. Image: ABC News Studios/Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Office.

There, Samantha was able to appeal to Thomas, who confessed he had been tracking her car. He claimed he just wanted to talk.

"It's clear that I'm not physically getting out of this situation, and he has put a lot of thought into this. He's been tracking me," Samantha said, adding she appeased him by saying it's all been a misunderstanding.

"And I'm like, okay, well, maybe he doesn't actually want to kill me. He's just obsessed with me and this is this weird, sick, terrified love story.

"I'm just trying to stay calm and be, like, how can we get out of this? He knows what he did is wrong. He doesn't want to go to prison. He wants to be friends," she said.

Sensing Thomas' hesitation and guilt, Samantha fashioned a deal with him; she wouldn't tell anyone if he let her go. He made a counter-offer; the only way he would buy her co-operation was if she slept with him.

"He wasn't going to let me go, he wasn't going to trust we could be friends, or that I would not go to police if we didn't have sex," Samantha said.

"I was convinced, even if I said no, that he was probably going to chain me up at some point, whether it was that day or, if we couldn't get out of that situation, after.

"The whole thing was traumatic, but after that experience, you know, I'm involuntarily sobbing and shaking and, you know, this is a horrific experience, and I'm like, now I'm like, well, what if he's not going to uphold his end of the bargain?"

'This can happen to anyone'.

Thomas did let her go. About an hour afterwards, when night fell, Thomas walked Samantha out of the bunker to his car.

"I sit in the front seat, and he drives me to where he parked my car, like a mile or so away at this home improvement store and essentially believed me," she said.

Once Samantha arrived home, a friend took her to hospital where she underwent a forensic medical examination after the sexual assault.

"The next day, he went to go get some food, or something, and they arrested him with like a SWAT team," Samantha said.

Christopher Thomas pictured after his arrest. Image: Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Office.

Thomas initially pleaded not guilty. But in December 2023, he took a deal in exchange for having the sexual criminal assault charges dropped and pleaded guilty to kidnapping, torture and aggravated stalking.

The following year he was sentenced to 40 to 60 years in prison.

Samantha is grateful for the fact Thomas is behind bars and the fact the judge essentially delivered a life sentence to the then-39-year-old.

"He'll be like, 80 by the time he's potentially ever released, and he'll always have, like, a GPS tracker, which is, you know, this really wonderful piece of irony for me," she said, explaining she finally feels like she can put this ordeal behind her.

Samantha is moving on with her life. Image: Supplied.

But she added there needs to be more of a community focus on stalking as it's a crime that "doesn't necessarily discriminate."

"This can happen to anyone — any race, any age. I thought, 'I'm 30, I have a master's degree, I'm not gonna get kidnapped and raped,'" Samantha said.

"A lot of it for me is how do we protect ourselves, but also how do we, as humans, raise red flags when we need to, when we think something's off? There's plenty of people that knew of his obsession and obviously underestimated how deep it was and what lengths he would go to.

"How could that story have been different for him? You know, his life is ruined, his family, I'm sure, is devastated. And yeah, he did something awful. He should be behind bars. He is dangerous, but, you know, how does somebody go from being a kid to a college student, to that?

"There's plenty of intervention along the way that could have changed things."

Feature image: ABC News Studio.