Denver Meteorologist Speaks Out About 'Obsessive' Stalking Case: 'He Believed I Was His Wife' By Christine Pelisek

At first, the messages on her social media didn’t seem to be alarming — but now, Kylie Bearse says things have changed and she’s speaking out because it’s a “matter of safety.”

Bearse, who is a meteorologist at FOX31 Denver, tells PEOPLE she began receiving messages from a 69-year-old man in 2022, which quickly began to escalate.

“There’s commenting on something and then there’s hundreds of comments at a time” she says. “I know that being on the local news, you want people to feel welcome and like you’re a part of their morning routine. It’s just sometimes it goes a little bit too far.”

In one of the messages, Bearse, 36, alleges the man informed her that a microphone cord was showing during one of her broadcasts.

“I love you, my beautiful wife,” he allegedly wrote, adding that “oh, my beautiful wife, you fixed it” after the cord was fixed by her production team.

Over the course of a few years, the man sent her hundreds of similar messages on social media including Instagram and TikTok as well as dozens of emails. She says he also reached out to her family and friends.

“He was reaching out to my sister-in-law about potentially buying a painting that she had made,” she tells PEOPLE. “I remember one time my friend posted a trip, she was in Thailand, and he said, ‘I can’t wait to take Kylie there one day. So, just bizarre. Very odd.”

When Bearse was traveling herself, the man would allegedly comment on every post, saying “can’t wait to go there with you.” She says the comments were never threatening, “just obsessive.”

Over that time, she says, she blocked him multiple times, but he would reach out again on new social media accounts. He also showed up at charity events, including a hike she was leading for the Breckenridge Food and Wine Festival in August 2023.

It was there that the man approached her as she walked off the trail.

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“He had this shoebox for me and said, ‘I have hiking shoes for you,'” she says, adding that she told him she appreciates the gesture but can’t accept the gift or talk to him. Bearse says the man became visibly upset and began to cry, at one point claiming that he thought they were in a relationship for the last year.

“He believed I was his wife,” says Bearse. “It just made me sick to my stomach when I realized that this had gone far beyond ‘I like your stuff on Instagram.'”

An event organizer stepped in that day and deescalated the situation, escorting the man out — but he allegedly kept trying to come back.

The next month, in September 2023, Bearse was able to secure a temporary restraining order against the man which, she says, he violated 53 times. A permanent restraining order was granted in January 2024.

Then 18 months later, on Sept. 11, 2025, Bearse was driving home from work around 11 a.m. when she pulled up to her home and noticed an unfamiliar truck parked out front.

“As soon as I realized who it was, my stomach just dropped,” she says.

Bearse says she quickly closed her garage door and ran inside her home before the man walked to the front door and started ringing her doorbell. At that point, she grabbed her dog and ran outside the back door calling 911.

The man was allegedly sitting in his truck when police arrived and took him into custody.

“I felt very safe,” she says after his arrest, suspecting that he would be charged with felony stalking.

However, that didn’t happen.

The Denver District Attorney’s Office charged him with violating a protection order — a misdemeanor, according to the Denver Post. After spending a few days in jail, he was released on a $1,500 personal recognizance bond, according to court records obtained by the Post.

Frustrated, Bearse says she reached out to the district attorney’s office and was told that “there had been too big of a time gap” between when he had last stalked her and the recent event. She says she pressed the prosecutor on how long the man would have to wait to stalk her again for it to be “wiped clean” and “not count.”

“He could not give me an answer,” says Bearse. “I go, ‘is it a year and a half? Is it a year?’ And finally, he just goes, ‘it’s a judgment call.'”

Bearse, who has been a meteorologist for 15 years and previously worked in Idaho, Utah and Minnesota, says she is livid at the situation.

“I’ve done everything right by the system. I filed the restraining order, I called the police when I was supposed to, and I feel like the system is letting me down even though I followed all the rules. It makes me sad, not just for myself and my safety but knowing how many other women are going through this or have gone through this and will if they don’t change anything.”

Bearse says she has chosen to share her story because she doesn’t want other people to go through the same experience.

“I hope that people start taking stalking seriously,” she says. “I think that you don’t understand it until you’ve been through it. And I think it’s very easy for law enforcement to dismiss it as obsessive behavior and just ignore it. It isn’t a big deal. You’re being dramatic, but it’s your safety at risk. You lose that sense of safety that you don’t realize you had until it’s gone.”

In a statement shared with PEOPLE, a spokesperson for the Denver District Attorney’s Office says they ”don’t comment on open cases,” but confirmed that the man is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 12.