Sickened, saddened, but not surprised.
These were the emotions of a Peoria woman who saw headlines in April that her former partner, Joshua Livingston, faced murder charges in connection with the death of 39-year-old Melissa Ostrom in Bloomington. Livingston, 41, is accused of strangling Ostrom after her family reported her missing April 17.
She is one of at least five women in central Illinois who sought protective orders from the courts after a relationship with Livingston turned violent or abusive. For confidentiality purposes, she was granted anonymity by WGLT.
In an interview with WGLT, she said she wanted to tell her story publicly because she feels her reports of Livingston's behavior were not taken seriously enough by law enforcement. Her struggles reveal the challenges facing people who attempt to leave abusive relationships behind them.
So, when she saw the news of Ostrom's death, she said, her initial reaction was to think: "I'm that girl."
"I was just lucky enough to get out in time. I think had I persisted and gone back to try it again, that would be me, 100%," she said. "I think it was just a matter of time."
Livingston, of Danvers, met the Peoria woman on an internet dating app in September 2016. Their first date was a shopping trip to a home improvement store: Livingston had told the woman he intended to build a zoo for her young son's stuffed animal collection.
"That was our first date, so I mean you're like, 'Oh my. Dream guy! How kind.'"
The woman described the first six months of their relationship as largely "uneventful."
But something shifted.
In March 2017, the woman said she attempted to cancel plans to go out with him. When she arrived at her home later that evening, Livingston was there.
"He was sitting on my porch with a flowerpot full of beer cans and was obviously drunk, which made me even more upset. So I walked into my house and he followed me in. I went about my normal routine, washing dishes and stuff like that, and he's kind of standing next to me," she said.
When she finally told him to leave, Livingston did go — taking her cellphone and her 12-year-old bulldog with him, she said. (In a court appearance later, a neighbor reported seeing Livingston leave with the dog.)
The dog was left several days later at the local animal shelter, presumably by Livingston. The theft was reported to Peoria police and misdemeanor theft and property damage charges were filed against him. The state dismissed one of the theft counts, and a jury acquitted Livingston of stealing the dog after he testified that the dog had jumped into his car, and it ran away when he stopped in an alley near her home.
Seeking an order of protection
This experience led the woman to request an order of protection barring her ex-boyfriend from being near her or her home. But the contact did not stop.
In the summer of 2017, the woman found evidence — and a neighbor bore witness — to Livingston entering her home and remaining there for several hours. The woman was alerted to his presence only after hearing an outside door slam shut after she had gone to bed.
“I immediately texted my mom and a friend and said, ‘Something’s wrong, I don’t know if he’s here or what's going on, but I know something’s up — check on me,’” the woman told WGLT.
In a search of her home the following morning, she noticed two electronic tablets were missing from her kitchen counter. A check of the basement turned up a pillow from her living room couch, empty beer cans and a jug of urine. Livingston had been seen by a neighbor earlier in the day entering her home with a key. The woman believes Livingston made a copy of her house key for himself before returning the one she gave him after they broke up.
Felony residential burglary charges were filed against Livingston, but dismissed in a plea deal that included a one-year no-contact order in exchange for Livingston’s guilty plea to violation of the order of protection.
"My opinion is that this was just not an important case to them. It was a mild felony trial, it (wasn't) murder — yet," she said. Learning that Livingston "agreed not to contact (me) for a year — we've all learned that's worthless."
The decision by the Peoria prosecutor to wrap up the case without input from the victim was part of a pattern by authorities, she said, that allowed Livingston’s threatening behavior to continue — even after he was ordered to end it.
"That was a success to them. It was a failure to me," she said.
Fear after the break-in
But the break-in at her home had consequences for the woman and her son.
“We had already been living in fear, but that just perpetuated it even more. I slept with my bed pushed in front of my bedroom door, with my son sleeping with me and my dogs. I figured if he came in, we’d have time to get out the window and down the street before he could push the door all the way,” she said.
The family and pets slept that way for months. The thought of moving the bed to let the dogs out at night terrified her. “I know maybe that seems irrational, but I didn’t know what he was going to do next. I had told the state’s attorney, 'He’s going to kill me.' I have said those words to them more than once.”
As her son started school in September 2017, Livingston’s former girlfriend was still looking over her shoulder. When she went to pick up her child one afternoon, he asked why he would not be returning to the school and said a teacher told him that his father had called the school to tell staff the boy would no longer be attending school — starting the following day.
The child’s father had not placed the call and filed a police report. The woman said police declined to follow up on the call, citing the time it would take to listen to all the recorded messages left with the school. In an emailed statement to WGLT, a spokesperson for the Peoria Police Department said it would be "very difficult" to comment on cases that are not current.
"The Peoria Police Department takes every incident seriously. Our offices are committed to keeping our communities safe and treat our community members with the utmost respect," the statement read.
Reflecting recently on the incident, the woman said, “If there’s anything more terrifying than your child being threatened, I don’t know what it is.”
Livingston was aware, said his ex-girlfriend, of the three things she cared about most in her life: her child, her pets and her car.
On a day off from work in November 2017, Livingston struck again, this time taking her 2008 Dodge Charger from her home. Peoria police did not pursue information from her that the car could be located in a building at Livingston’s home in Danvers where he repaired and sold vehicles.
With no other options, the Peoria woman filed a civil case against Livingston for stealing her car and calling her son’s school. She served as her own lawyer. The judge found Livingston guilty of both offenses and ordered him to pay $1,000 for the car; an insurance company had valued the car at $10,000.
Livingston settled the $1,000 debt in a court appearance after the trial where his ex-girlfriend had to sit across from him as he counted out the money.
Although the order of protection was supposed to bar him from contacting the woman, they sometimes exchanged text messages. The woman acknowledged that she would respond to him, sometimes because she had been moved to feel badly for his situation, sometimes because she missed the companionship.
"I did feel bad. Like: How dare I get this order of protection. Maybe I overreacted and maybe I do miss him a little bit," the woman remembers thinking at the time. "I think there was a part of me that wanted things to work."
The order of protection ended in April 2019. Livingston moved on to date other women, including Ostrom.
Before he was jailed in Ostrom's death, the woman said she would monitor social media out of a desire to keep tabs on him and protect her home and family from Livingston.
“I’ve never let him off my radar,” she said.
Since his arrest related to Ostrom's strangulation death, Livingston has reached out to the Peoria woman repeatedly, via letters and a call from the McLean County jail, in which he denied killing Ostrom.
In one of two letters, Livingston blamed his ex-girlfriend for him being behind bars, saying he had “never been in a relationship so passionate and toxic.” Their relationship, he said, “put him in a downward spiral."
The woman said a reference in the letter to efforts by his brother to confirm her address could be considered “a very veiled threat, just letting me know he’s got people out there and they’re going to find out where I live.”
For the former girlfriend, the fear and frustration of dealing with Livingston and the criminal justice system did not end with his arrest.
More needs to be done, she said, to help victims of domestic abuse.
“I want people to know, just by speaking about my case, how many times I was failed by the system, how many times I was victimized by the system and how many times I was humiliated by the system, how nothing was taken seriously,” said the woman.
Coming Thursday: In Part 2 of the WGLT series on the Joshua Livingston case, reporter Lyndsay Jones and correspondent Edith Brady-Lunny uncover multiple protective orders sought by other women who claim the Danvers man threatened them before he was arrested in the death of Melissa Ostrom. Our story details how the women, including Ostrom, shared their fears about Livingston with each other as the string of accusations followed him across several counties in central Illinois.
