Secret Meetings | Trained to Kill | Forensic Files

Trigger warning. The following episode contains references to harassment, stalking, and physical violence. Listen
with care. [Music] Dispatch, can I help you? In August 2009, an anonymous man called the
Scadget County Sheriff's Office 911 hotline. There's a crime that's going to take place in the morning.
It involved a dangerous drug dealer. There's going to be a a van transporting some drugs from uh the Anacortis area to
I5 and then to Seattle. The dispatcher then asked the caller for the person's name. And do you know the name?
The last name is Stove. S O E R. Stove as in Mark Stove. the dog trainer to the stars who had moved to Anacortis,
Washington. Okay. And is somebody there with you or why are you whispering? Uh yeah, this is something that's very
delicate. I have I have to not be found out about this. He's very dangerous. Perpetually carries a gun. It's a little
tough to hear, but he's warning them that Mark carries a gun. He said this is very dangerous. I wish you guys would do
something before it kills somebody. He says, I wish you guys would do something before he kills somebody. All
righty. Well, I've got the call in and we'll pass it along to the deputies for you. Thank you.
The following day, Mark Stove was pulled over by sheriff's deputies. He was asked
if they could search his car. He refused. This is Lee Herren. She's a private investigator Mark hired after the
incident. Lee said when Mark refused to cooperate, the officers wouldn't let him
leave. A search warrant was obtained. A canine was brought to the scene and there was a positive hit. The dog
detected some drugs. The police found a small metallic box on the undercarriage of Mark's vehicle which contained a
couple of marijuana cigarettes and some very lowgrade cocaine. Mark told the deputies the box had been
planted. They let him go, but from then on, Mark watched his back. It was such a
deliberate act. It said, "We're setting you up. We want you to go to jail." I think Mark
had a very real fear of what Linda was capable of doing to him. I'm Peter Vans from 48 Hours. This is Train to Kill.
The dog trainer, the ays, and the bodyguard. Episode 3, Secret Meetings. [Music]
At the time Mark Stove was pulled over by police, Linda Updike said she had moved on from her ex-husband. I just
wanted to go on with my life with Michael and I wanted Mark to go on with his life. Michael was Michael Oaks, a
security expert. We spoke back in 2010. I remember at that time thinking this can't be real
because no woman alone could go through this amount of harassment. Michael said they met at a Starbucks and quickly
connected over their love of books. By the fall of 2008, Michael said their business relationship turned romantic. I
said to her, I think we have a connection that that could go beyond friendship and is that something that
you're open to? And I think she, as you may know, she's um almost 6 feet tall and I'm 5' 6. She's never had children.
I have four children, so it was an unlikely romance, but she said, "You know, I have gone through a lot of
things in my life, and I'm open to considering that." Linda was impressed by how dedicated Michael was to his
family. After getting a divorce from his first wife, Michael took full custody of
their kids. He even treated the kids of his second wife as his own. Everything he did took into account of his
children. He worked at home so he could be there for them. He was a full-time single parent. He drove them to school
every morning. He made sure he had Friday night movies time with them or game evenings. The family was a priority
to him. Michael described himself as a self-taught security specialist skilled in firearms. I ended up training with uh
a lot of the alphabet soup of of government agencies and SWAT teams and so on. And it's uh what we call force on
force training. I owned a small company in in Seattle here and uh I managed to get some training equipment and figure
out how to use it. People have said that you are a gun enthusiast. Is that true?
Yes, I am a gun enthusiast. I've taught all my kids from the earliest age that they I felt they were safe. Gun safety.
Uh, and I have shot competitively for some years. You've been described as Linda Updike's bodyguard as well as
boyfriend, right? Is that accurate? I don't believe it's accurate. Let's put it that way. She never paid me to be a
bodyguard. I did a little bit of research and I did an analysis of sort of her home security situation and what
the steps she was taking. looked into the people that she was working with and made some
uh suggestions on that front and that was the extent of what I would consider my professional interaction with her.
And did she pay you for that consulting? You know, she paid me. She wrote me a check, but it was just for my expenses
and it was a minimal amount of money. I don't even remember now what it was, but
less than $1,000. So, I mean, it was minimal. Michael said that by the spring of 2009,
he and his kids started spending a lot of time at Linda's house in Winthrop, which was more than 200 miles north from
Michael's place in Kenowick, Washington. It's a beautiful love. It's uh in my opinion, it's it's legendary. It's
something that you read about in uh romance novels or movies. Their relationship deepened. What seemed to
make it even better was that Linda said she hadn't heard from Mark since he had been arrested for stalking and theft. I
was believing and hoping that that had enough impact and he recognized that this behavior was unacceptable and that
he would be moving on with his life. And we went for many months where nothing happened. To her, the nightmare finally
felt over. I really started feeling more at peace in my life and more at ease and
really felt that he was moving on and I was able to move on into a new relationship with nothing from the past
hampering that. But according to Michael, the past roared back into the present when Mark Stove unexpectedly
re-entered their lives. Mark Stove sought me out one day out of the blue and told me that I would do what he
wanted. And from that point for almost 6 months, I lived in constant fear. Michael said that Mark hadn't stopped
stalking. He just found a new target. The Mark Stove you got to know. Was he a frightening man? Very intimidating. very
much so threatening constantly with [Music] me. Michael Oak said the first time he
encountered Mark Stove was a real shock. It was around Memorial Day 2009. Michael
and Linda had been in a romantic relationship for about 9 months. I think it was a it was a weekday morning. I had
just dropped my kids off at school. Michael said he then made a stop at Costco and went in the store. When I
came out, he was standing by my car and because I had done research for Linda Optic some months previously, I had seen
a picture of him. I immediately recognized him. Mark Stove is standing next to your car. Next to my car in the
park, Washington, which is on the other side of the mountains from from where we
are now. Yes. The drive from Mark's home in Anacortis to this Costco in Kenowick, Washington
would have taken about 5 hours. Yet there he was, according to Michael, menacingly standing by Michael's car.
He's very icy, actually. He said that he had been listening to our calls and he knew all about me. And he knew that I
was in a relationship with Linda. He said his wife. He didn't say his ex-wife, he said his wife. and he said
that there was something of his that she wouldn't give back and that I was going
to get it for him. Michael couldn't remember if he said anything to Mark or if he just gave
him a confused look as he waited to hear Mark's demand. He said that Miss Odike would not give back their uh wedding
photo albums and he said I was going to get them back for him. And then he went on to
uh he went on to describe what my daughters were wearing that morning, what they'd worn to school. And there's
no way he could have seen. But what did you realize at that moment? He had had been following us whole time. And
uh he said that uh he he told me the details what they're wearing, their backpack colors, everything.
Michael said that Mark told him to bring the wedding photos to the Northgate Mall
in Seattle on July 14th, 2009. He said he agreed. Why didn't you at that moment simply look him in the
eye and say, "Mark Stove or whoever you are, get away from me. I don't ever want to speak
to you again. If you get anywhere near my children, I'll call the police." I'm not a confrontational person at all.
That's not my mode. I felt very much offbalance in that meeting. And I think it's one of those things where once I'm
driving away thinking I should have said this or I should have done that. There was something about him that was
chilling to me and I felt I kept trying to talk myself out of it. He can't be real. It can't be real. He has to be
fooling. Michael said at first he was going to call the police, but then decided against it, worried about
getting Linda involved. Did Michael tell you that Mark Stove approached him and demanded wedding
photos? No. Why wouldn't he share this vitally important information with you? My guess in knowing Michael is he really
did not want to stress me out more. Michael said that when July 14th rolled around, he went to meet Mark at the
Nordstrom store at the Northgate Mall, just as he said Mark demanded. Michael said that since he
didn't tell Linda about this meeting, he arrived empty-handed. No wedding photos.
Michael said Mark got angry and scolded him. What was his obsession with these wedding photos?
Well, I I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. It enraged him. I believe in retrospect that she chose not
to continue the marriage with Mark Stove to continue to do what he wanted and yet
she retained something that he felt was part of him. A couple of weeks later, Michael
suggested to Linda that they leave and go on a trip out to Whitefish, Montana. That's where Linda's father, Wall-E
Updike, had a house. We were going to stay there and stayed at their vacation home.
In route to White Fish, Michael remembered making a stop so Linda could take her dog for some exercise and he
could pick up some snacks. But Michael said when he got in line to check out, he spotted a familiar face standing near
the front door. And I I'm in line minding my own business and look across the way and I see Mr. Stover standing by
the entrance to the store staring at me. And what was that moment like for you? Very similar to the first time that I
saw him. It's just a shock of recognition in a place you don't expect to see somebody.
Michael, why didn't you just say to him, "You get away from me. If you get anywhere near me and Linda again, I'm
calling the cops." There's at least two reasons. One of them is I do know enough
about protection to know that there's no way for me to I mean this is why the president has so many people that
protects him from potential threats. One man cannot protect three children 24/7. And for any time that I could
enrage or outrage Stover, it was putting a gun to the head of my children in my opinion. You felt if you confronted Mark
Stove, you'd be putting yourself in more danger instead of dealing with the threat that he posed to you. Absolutely.
And I'm certainly not the first person to feel that way. By now, Michael said Mark's uncanny ability to find him and
Linda wherever they went made him realize Mark posed a real danger to his family. Mark Stove was remarkably
sophisticated in some ways. He had managed to penetrate Linda's computer prior to meeting me. He managed to tap a
phone. Uh follow finding us in Montana was impossible and I took tremendous steps not to be followed and yet there
he was. How did he find us? By late September of 2009, Michael said that Mark demanded that they set up
another meeting after he and Linda were back from Montana. He was getting progressively less patient with me. this
time at a church in Anacortis. By now, Michael decided to wear his Kevlar vest to the meetings. He said that he drove
west across the state to the church parking lot not far from Mark's house and waited. Still unable to find the
wedding photos, Michael said he brought two pictures of Linda with her horse so Mark would have something to look at.
But Michael said he didn't show up and Michael felt helpless. And the thought of just at any given one of these
meetings that we had just telling him, I'm done. Take a hike and don't come looking for me. You know, and every time
the reality of knowing that there's no way I can keep my kids, myself, and Miss Optike safe if he decides he's going to
go for it, pulled me back from that brink. But were all these stories Michael was
telling me true? Some people who knew Michael well said he had a darker side to his personality, a potentially
violent side. During the course of our marriage, he told me that he was capable of killing without
[Music] remorse. Michael looks had a dual personality. He was a family man by day
and tried to live up his action hero persona in the background. That's Jennifer Thompson. She knows Michael
Oaks as well as anyone. Jennifer was his second wife. I talked to her in 2010. You know, we
eloped. It wasn't a wedding. She said they were married when Michael first met Linda. Jennifer said that she loved him,
but that Michael had an insecure side. Is he a tough guy? Well, no. An action hero kind of guy? No. He
thinks he is. He he wanted to be he wanted to be he idealized that he he read about it. He aspired to be that.
According to Jennifer, Michael thought part of being tough meant being armed. Michael Oaks was very infatuated with
guns, weapons, and I think they made him feel powerful, strong, capable. There was one book Jennifer said Michael
referenced a lot. It's called Onkilling and it's a book about the psychology of killing.
The book examines how people learn to kill in war. Jennifer said that Michael zeroed in on a part that described how
one small sliver of the population could be vicious. Michael Oaks told me that he
was in the small percentage of people who could kill without remorse. She said that over time, Michael's
fascination with killing and his tough guy persona rotted out their marriage. Michael had a really strong
sense of righteousness and he believed that bad people should be taken out so that the good people can
not be harmed. Um, the problem is he decided who was bad and who wasn't. And he felt that he
had the right to just take a bad man out. And we would argue about that. We argued about that for years. Uh, right
and wrong. Can you kill? Can you not kill? And it was a it was a point of contention in our marriage. Jennifer
told me that the final straw came when verbal tensions between them turned physically abusive. I remember his hand
coming up and slapping me across the face and I remember it very clearly and I was
expecting after feeling it. I was expecting the oh my god I'm sorry. Oh my god. And he didn't. He said, "Get the
out of my house." And he chased me down the stairs. And I could feel his breath on my neck and his body behind me. It
was horrible. It was horrible because I trusted him. I trusted him. And he had never he
had been angry before. He had shown aggression before. Never at me. Michael told us no one should
believe Jennifer's allegations against him. In July of 2008, a year after they tied the knot, Jennifer left with her
two biological kids. and I went to my mom's and I spent two weeks just took my kids at Disneyland,
went to the beach, just got away from it and then decided that I needed to get an
apartment somewhere cuz I couldn't go back to the house. On August 15th, he said, "If you can't give me a date that
you're coming back, we're done." And so he told me he wanted a divorce. Soon after, Michael
Oaks and Linda Updike set up their first in-person meeting. I think he's a very insecure man, and I think that he
musters up confidence really well. He's an excellent salesman. He's an excellent
presenter of images. As the fall of 2008 began, Jennifer faded from his life. As Michael, the
action hero wannabe, now had a new woman in his sights. And as Michael's relationship with Linda grew deeper, he
said Linda's ex-husband, Mark, became obsessed, constantly calling him on the phone, asking for meetings. By October
2009, it's become very very clear to me that in my mistaken belief that I could appease or
satisfy Mark Stove, I did become yet another person who was doing exactly what Mark Stover wanted. He had reached
a fateful breaking point. I kept thinking if I can just this is the one thing he wants that Linda Opdike won't
give him. and if she just gives him what he wants, he'll leave us alone. Michael
said the two men finally agreed to meet again on October 24th, 2009 at that same
church in Anacortis. There is surveillance video from Linda's house showing Michael
packing up his car to head out that day. It appeared that he was taking off for a
fairly serious journey. That's Lee Herren again, Mark's former private investigator. She examined the video
herself. He was loading a number of items into his car, including a rifle bag. As Michael is packing, you can see Linda
come out onto their deck. They touch hands and then Linda wraps her arms around Michael. They share a long
heartfelt embrace, the kind that suggested to me that something important lay ahead, something
serious. Here's Lee again. The long passionate embrace that was captured on Linda's surveillance cameras indicates
that Michael Oaks thought of himself as a prince who was out to slay the dragon,
his perceived dragon for the damsel in distress. and his perceived dragon was Mark Stove. Michael and Linda kissed and
he drove away. Hours later, Michael claimed he came face to face with Mark Stove in that church parking lot. He was
extremely agitated, not cold and calculating, not controlled like that first meeting. He
was erratic. Michael said Stove once again demanded those wedding pictures. So, did you give him those photo albums
that he wanted? I never found them. Late that night, Michael is seen returning to
Linda's home. But is it possible this entire story was Ola Ruse for a failed murder attempt? Because 4 days later, at
2:30 a.m. on October 28th, Michael is again seen on surveillance video driving away from Linda's house. This time,
Michael said the two men would meet in private at Mark Stover's house in Anacortis. Michael claimed that Mark had
told him this was his last chance to turn over those damn wedding pictures. It was put up or shut up time. But what
really happened when they met remains a mystery. Only those who saw the bloody aftermath can express what they felt.
I can only describe it as evil, something horrible, something terrible from 48 hours. This is Train to
Kill the Dog Trainer, the Aerys, and the Bodyguard, produced by Sony Music Entertainment. I'm your host, Peter
Vans. Judy Tiger is the executive producer of 48 Hours. Original reporting by 48 Hours
producers Ryan Smith and Liza Finley. Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount Audio and Mora
Waltz is the senior story editor. Recording assistance from Alan Pang and Regginald
Bazil. Special thanks to Paramont podcast vice president Megan Marcus. It is written and produced by Alex
Schuman. Stephanie Serrano is our editor. Our executive producer is Sher Morris. Our associate producer is Zoe
Kulkin. Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shei. Cedric Wilson is our sound
designer and mixed the episodes. We also use music from APM and Epidemic Sounds. Fendle Fulton is our fact
checker. Our production manager is Tamika Balance Kolassni. I'm Peter Vans. If you're
enjoying the show, be sure to rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. You can listen to
Train to Kill early and adree right now by subscribing to 48 Hours Plus on Apple
Podcasts. Thanks for listening.

After police got an anonymous tip that Mark Stover was transporting drugs, he became paranoid that Linda Opdycke was out to get him. In a battle between exes, each side claimed the other was escalating the situation to a deadly point of no return. That’s when Linda’s new boyfriend Michiel Oakes said Mark found a new target.

Listen to Trained to Kill and other 48 Hours podcasts wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.podtrac.com/jy7x633x

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Mark Stove's stalking of ex-wife Linda Updike escalates, threatening her new partner Michael Oaks and leading to a violent confrontation.

Key points

A Dangerous Call to 911. An anonymous caller warns police about a dangerous drug dealer named Mark Stove.
The Intimidating Encounter. Michael Oaks recounts a chilling meeting with Mark Stove, who had been stalking him.
A Tense Meeting. Michael meets Mark Stove again, leading to a confrontation over wedding photos.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I wish you guys would do something before he kills somebody.

Caller warning about Mark Stove's dangerous behavior.

1:24WatchMay 30, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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