(NEWS YORK) — A Michigan man was sentenced to 40 to 60 years in prison for kidnapping and torturing a woman he stalked for more than a decade, in a case that highlighted the potentially devastating impact of stalking.

Christopher Thomas, 39, pleaded guilty to kidnapping, torture and aggravated stalking in December 2023, and was sentenced in 2024. The charges stemmed from a horrific October 2022 incident in which he kidnapped Samantha Stites and held her in a soundproof bunker he had constructed inside a storage unit.

“I wondered if I would see daylight again,” Stites said in her victim impact statement during sentencing. “I shook and sobbed after he raped me, I wasn’t sure he would stop.”

ABC News Studios’ “Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror,” a three-part series, is streaming in its

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