Metro stalking case profiled for series

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - An Albuquerque stalking case that ended with a woman dead will soon get national attention, a police sergeant said Friday.

Peggy Klinke's case is just one of six across the country that the Investigation Discovery Channel has chosen to profile for a show that airs in January for Stalking Awareness Month.

"When she was killed there was actually a pending case of stalking," said Albuquerque Police Department Sgt. Paul Szych.

Klinke's ex-boyfriend, Patrick Kennedy, had followed her from Albuquerque to her new home in California in January 2003.

He shot and killed her before turning the gun on himself.

"The department as a whole knew that we needed to take some pretty drastic measures to attempt to combat these types of events from occurring from the future," Szych said.

A lot has changed since then. Szych created an intervention model that predicts stalking behavior. His unit also uses software that can tell them if a stalker is likely to strike again.

"We needed a way to identify those people," Szych said.

Now police have the chance to share what they've learned from the case on a national level. The exact dates for the six-part "Investigation Discovery" series have not been set.

A film crew for the Investigation Discovery Channel interviewed Szych Friday about the Klinke's case.

"It's always easier to wait and react to something than it is to predict and prevent," he said.

For the sergeant, every day is a chance to share what he's learned from Klinke's case to new victims and to prevent what happened to her.

"These are people that are basically not going to stop unless we stop them," Szych said.