The Enigmatic Life and Mysterious Death of Teleka Patrick

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Finding a missing person sometimes leads to more questions than answers. Such was the case when 30-year-old doctor Teleka Patrick accidentally drowned in a lake 100 miles from her home. Teleka’s social media posts revealed a shocking secret side to her life – she was stalking a popular gospel singer and experiencing serious mental health problems, even as she successfully pursued a career in psychiatry. Though her case is officially closed, some believe her death wasn’t accidental, but one thing is indisputable – whatever happened to Teleka is both terrifying and tragic.

Promising start

Teleka Patrick was born to parents Irene and Matthias, a reverend, on September 18, 1983. The Patricks lived in Hyattsville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC, until about 1985, when they relocated to Queens, New York. Teleka’s parents had another daughter, Tenesha, and a son, also named Matthias. Young Teleka was an “avid reader,” outstanding student, and talented violinist.

Teleka grew into a “caring” young woman who “loved people” and “uplifted” everyone she met. Her academic accomplishments were so impressive that she was accepted into the Bronx High School of Science, which counts nine Nobel Prize-winners among its alumni. Teleka graduated with high honors and multiple achievement awards.  

The Patricks are active members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Christian denomination that believes the week begins on a Sunday and ends on Saturday, the Sabbath, a day of rest, mirroring the Bible’s description of creation. Adventists are also known for their health-consciousness, and Teleka followed those lifestyle choices by, for example, being a vegetarian and studying for a career in healthcare.

In 2004, Teleka graduated from Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, an Adventist college, with a bachelor’s degree in theology and biology. That summer, Teleka enrolled in California’s Loma Linda University, another Adventist college located in an area where about half of the population are also Adventists. She earned her master’s and PhD degrees in biochemistry there. Her research focus was Survival Disparity among African American Women with Breast Cancer. One of Teleka’s professors said, “She’s not just intelligent, she’s brilliant.” Teleka’s performance consistently impressed her classmates, colleagues, and educators, who called her “bright,” “talented,” and “goal oriented.”

Trouble brewing

In 2006, while Teleka Patrick was attending Loma Linda University, she married a man named Ismael Calderon. Ismael would later reveal to the media that Teleka heard voices and attributed them to God. He said he “begged” her to seek treatment for auditory hallucinations. According to Ismael, Teleka refused to get help, believing that it would “ruin” her career prospects. He said these arguments about Teleka’s recurring “paranoia” and “delusions” eventually resulted in the couple’s divorce in 2012. The lawyer who handled their divorce proceedings said that mental health issues were never mentioned.

After graduating from Loma Linda in the spring of 2013, Teleka was accepted to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan where she planned to study child psychiatry. She told university staff that she relocated “for her fiancé in Grand Rapids.” Teleka was referring to Marvin Sapp, a Grammy-nominated gospel singer she had never met but had started contacting after her divorce. Marvin was the pastor at Lighthouse Full Life Center Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was born and raised.

Teleka’s sister remembered she mentioned Marvin to family members, saying that she planned to marry him, but not everyone took her seriously. It’s not clear if any of Teleka’s family found her infatuation concerning, or if they knew about the mental health problems that her ex-husband said led to their divorce. Teleka’s mother firmly denies “allegations of mental instability.” She insists that, if she had known Teleka needed help, “I would have sought care for her.” Teleka’s online activities painted a different and far more worrying portrait than what she presented to her family.

Telepathic tweeting

From April 2013 until her disappearance that December, Teleka Patrick created five Twitter accounts and posted more than 20,000 tweets from them, dozens every day. Virtually all of them are addressed to a singular, unnamed love interest, presumably Marvin Sapp. In some, Teleka talked about her daily life or promoted Marvin’s work. She often referred to the “telepathic” or “psychic” connection she had with her “love,” tweeting messages like “I started hearing/feeling you again around 10am … The signals went haywire for a while then they reset themselves.” But Teleka would also post about her doubts, questioning whether the relationship was real or imagined.

On April 15, Teleka tweeted that “When I get to you, things will start to make a lot more sense. I promise.” She moved to Kalamazoo and started her four-year residency of psychiatry at Borgess Medical Center that summer. Teleka moved over 2,000 miles from California to be in the same state as Marvin Sapp, just 50 miles south of his church and home. On June 2, she tweeted “I have just relocated to be with you … So I really hope you want me!”

Escalating tension

Aside from her previous marriage, it seems that Teleka was successful keeping her intensifying mental and emotional problems private, or at least confined to social media. But on July 7, a month after moving, Teleka flagged down an officer on campus, claiming that someone was after her. That officer reported Teleka’s behavior to university staff, concerned that she was suffering from mental health issues. She agreed to take a drug test, which came back negative. Otherwise, by all accounts, it seemed like Teleka was “happy” with school and work, earning praise from her peers and educators just as she always had.

Two weeks later, on July 21, Teleka posted a series of tweets showing how she questioned her actions and state of mind: “If I am not directly, personally, and explicitly invited into your life, I will assume that I am unwanted. … I need to deal in realities. Understand? Or else I won’t be sure if what I’m thinking is correct or not. How will I know if I’m right if nothing I’ve communicated to you has ever been validated? Ever? Exactly. This makes no sense.”

On August 4, Teleka tweeted: “I began to think that this entire time that I had been messaging you, that it was all in my head. The entire seven months. That you never cared about me. That the experiences I thought we were sharing, we never did. After all I could not prove any of it. You never messaged me back directly. You only sent these nonspecific messages. And there was no way that I could be sure that any of it was ever intended for me.”

By “nonspecific messages,” Teleka meant secret messages and codes that she believed Marvin Sapp directed to her through his sermons and social media posts. Later that same day, Teleka added: “I can’t be believing things that aren’t true. I’m trying to become a psychiatrist, not be in need of one.”

Stalking charges

Attendees at Marvin Sapp’s August 25 service recalled him admonishing a woman in the congregation who had entered his home uninvited when he was out of town. Marvin’s three children – ages 19-22 at the time – were home and talked to the woman until she left. It’s not been officially confirmed that this woman was Teleka Patrick, but Teleka had reached out to his children on social media and shown up at his home before. Teleka tweeted later that day about Marvin’s strange sermon, acting like he was talking about someone else, and referring to “the rest of them…those other women.”

A week later, Teleka took to Twitter to complain that “I’m tired of hoping and imagining. Please baby I want it to be real … This town is as small as hell. Not much happens here. It’s boring and when I have free time I get depressed and lonely.” On September 17, Marvin Sapp obtained a Personal Protection Order (PPO) against Teleka, producing more than 400 pages of unsolicited correspondence Teleka sent him that he never answered.

On the same day she was served the PPO from Marvin Sapp, Teleka tweeted: “When God told me about you, I thought about it for a quick minute. Then I jumped on it mad quick. You know why? Because when you don’t hear a word from God for eight long years, you start to get desperate … So yeah. I hopped on it mad quick. No questions asked. God said jump I said how high? So love. Tell me. Why are you scared of us being together?”

Higher highs, lower lows

Teleka’s cycle of questioning and confirming the relationship continued over Twitter. On October 2 she posted “Why do I carry you in my heart every day? … And how do I know for a fact that you carry me in your heart every day? … You long for me so much that it is palpable … Everything within you cries out. And somehow, I can feel it.” Two days later, Teleka tweeted “You’ve made it abundantly clear that for whatever reason, you are not ready to pursue a love relationship.”

Teleka’s tweets from October 24 show how much she was suffering: “I have to leave you alone so you don’t hurt me anymore. I have spent the last 10 months like that. It’s not healthy. I am not eating right, I am not sleeping right, I am not taking care of myself the way I am supposed to, and my excitement about life is way down. I feel emotionally, spiritually and mentally drained. And I am a fun-loving and sociable person. I am not supposed to be like this. I don’t like it.”

Puzzling video posts

On November 6, Teleka created a YouTube channel and posted the first of nine videos, all addressed to an unnamed love interest, just like her tweets. She dressed up for the videos like she was going on a date, even cooking meals for two. In one video, Teleka points her camera to the food while saying “If you were here, this would be your plate.” In another video, as Teleka pans her camera along the ingredients on her counter, including a large pack of chicken breasts, she explains “I don’t even eat chicken, I’m a vegetarian…but I want that for you.”

One video is several minutes of Teleka sitting in front of the camera while talking and singing along to background music. At one point in the video, she suddenly pauses, touches her chest, and smiles, saying “baby…I felt that.” She posted her last YouTube video on November 10. Like her tweets, Teleka’s videos didn’t receive any views or engagement at the time.

Dark turn

That same month, Teleka tweeted that she was going to stop taking Invega, a prescription drug used to treat schizophrenia, however, there is no publicly available information about Teleka seeking or receiving treatment. Her tweets reveal rapidly changing and intensifying emotions.

On November 16, she tweeted: “I hate that I still have feelings for you. I hate it.” Five days later: “I am going to marry you! And you want to marry me too! … I have to be with you, I neeeedddd yooouuu!!!!!!” Two days after that: “I changed my life for what I thought it would be. Since then I have had painful surprise after painful surprise … Are you a demon possessed?”

The next day, November 24, Teleka tweeted: “You are not being rushed. I have been messaging you for almost a year … I think we should at least give a chance … You already know I’m not vindictive and irrational … I basically got papers in the mail which were a whole bunch of lies. I chose not to fight anything. If I was really gully, I would have just started spreading lies about you. Or the truth. That’s just as bad. But I’m not that type of person. I answer to God. That is why I protect you.”

Throughout several posts during the fall of 2013, Teleka indicated that her love interest was sharing his “dark secrets,” although she never mentioned specific details. Through her tweets, Teleka was actively counseling him through these troubles. At some point, she started believing that these “confessions” were from manipulative and demonic energies, not the real person with whom she thought she had been communicating.  

Last calls for help

The Thanksgiving holiday was the last time that Teleka’s parents talked with her. Less than a week later, on December 4, Teleka called her friend James Davis, who was living in Saint Louis, Missouri. James said she sounded “distraught” and that she “feared for her life,” believing someone connected to Marvin Sapp or his security team was after her. “I don’t think she was delusional,” James said of her fears. Teleka asked James to visit her – he promised he would in a few days, but he couldn’t make the 400-mile trip right away.

That same day, Teleka tweeted: “Love. You are hurting me … Stop reaching out to me in that manner. Stop it. Please leave me alone. I want to be a pure vessel for God … Until you can pick up the phone and call me my twitter goes down and you do not exist to me. If I don’t protect myself spiritually then I can’t even help you.”

The next day, a Thursday, December 5, Teleka tweeted: “I can’t take much more of this … There are normal ways to contact people you know … You reach me through a demonic power. That gives demons power over me and dilutes my spiritual authority … Because you are using a demon to contact me, when I turn my heart towards you, it passes through a demonic power. When I say I love you, I am also saying I love you to a demon because that is how you made me fall for you.”

Teleka posted her final tweets later that same day: “My authority in the spirit realm and my ability to cover will be markedly decreased. Please understand I must protect myself spiritually … I just activated @Tweet_Delete on my account to automatically delete my old tweets.” We can only speculate what the finality of Teleka’s tweets meant to her.

Final hours

That day at work, Teleka told some of her coworkers that she was going to visit a relative in Chicago, where she did have a cousin. After her shift ended, around 7:30pm, Teleka asked a coworker to give her a ride to a nearby hotel in downtown Kalamazoo, telling him that she was a meeting a man there. The coworker, a fellow doctor in residency, said that Teleka spoke in a “high-pitched” voice and her “eyes [were] blinking rapidly.”

The coworker said Teleka was acting scared, nervous, and “off,” but he agreed to help her, even giving her $100 cash when she realized she forgot her wallet. Although Teleka appeared “confused” and asked her coworker if he believed in demons on the ride there, he simply dropped her off outside the hotel lobby and drove away.  

Teleka tried to get a hotel room, but she couldn’t without a credit card for incidentals. A hotel shuttle returned her to Borgess Medical Center at about 8:00pm. She told the driver “not to tell anyone we did this,” and then Teleka disappeared between cars in the parking lot. The shuttle driver is the last known person to see Teleka Patrick alive.

Missing

Less than two hours later, Indiana State Police received reports of an erratic driver in a gold Lexus traveling westbound on Interstate 94. At 10:02pm, Teleka’s vehicle – a light gold Lexus – was reported abandoned in a ditch along the same roadway in Porter, Indiana, about 100 miles southwest of Kalamazoo.

Police arrived on the scene by 10:20pm. The front left tire of Teleka’s car had burst and gone flat. A receipt from a repair shop found inside the car listed it as “unsafe to drive,” citing a nail in the tire. The car’s keys were gone, but Teleka’s wallet and some of her clothing were still inside the vehicle.

The next day, Teleka’s residency program coordinator filed a missing person’s report after Teleka didn’t show up for her scheduled work shift. Her cell phone and some other personal belongings were still on campus.

On the ground search efforts began that same day, focusing on the wooded area between the highway and nearby Lake Charles, which had already started freezing over. Teleka’s family was frustrated because police were quick to state that there were no signs of foul play, so they hired a private investigator. Police said they activated and exhausted all their resources searching for Teleka early on because she had “no reason to be missing.”

Clues, but no answers

Within the first few days of Teleka’s disappearance, police interviewed and cleared Marvin Sapp, calling him “an innocent victim of an apparent stalking.” Her ex-husband, Ismael Calderon, was also cleared. Teleka’s friend, James Davis, had a solid alibi, and police considered him just a “concerned friend.”

Investigators discovered that Teleka would sometimes “check into motels for short stints,” a claim that her family denied as “assumptions” made without proof. Teleka’s computer and other “communication devices” were searched, revealing her concerning social media posts. Teleka’s family said they had no idea who she was trying to communicate with – as far as they knew, she was single.

A week after she disappeared, a bloodhound tracked Teleka’s scent from the ditch where her car was found back up to the highway, leading to theories that she was abducted along the road or got into another vehicle. Several weeks later, on January 29, police drilled several holes in the ice covering the lake that was just a few yards from her abandoned vehicle. They placed sonar over the holes, but there was no indication of a body in the freezing water below.

On April 1, once most of the snow had melted, investigators returned to the area to conduct more searches. They had to skip the lake, though, since it was still iced over. In the entire time she had been missing, Teleka never accessed her bank accounts, credit cards, or social media.

Devastating discovery

After a “four-month, multi-state search,” a fisherman finally recovered Teleka Patrick’s body from Lake Charles on April 6, 2014. When dental records confirmed Teleka’s identity, her family was devastated. They thanked supporters from around the world who had prayed for her safe return and asked them to continue helping them in their fight for answers.

An autopsy determined that Teleka asphyxiated by drowning, and once again, there was no evidence of foul play. The keys to her broken down Lexus were still in her pocket. Her toxicology report took four more long months to come back, but when it did, it indicated nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary.

With these results, police announced that Teleka’s death was an accidental drowning. They theorized that she was suffering from a “manic episode” on the night she disappeared and inadvertently fell into the freezing lake while she was running, believing that she was being followed by someone who meant to harm her.

Teleka’s family was unsatisfied with the investigators’ conclusion and demanded a second autopsy, insisting that “she can’t speak, and most of these things [the police are reporting] are unfounded.” A second autopsy found water in Teleka’s nasal cavity and confirmed that she died of accidental drowning.

Destination unknown

It’s still unclear where Teleka was headed in her final moments, why she was on the move, and exactly what happened to her before she drowned. Teleka travelled almost all of the 100 or so miles of her journey – from her work to the ditch where she abandoned her car – on the same highway, in the same direction.

If Teleka had made it just a little farther, she could have connected with Interstate 90 and drove about 50 more miles northwest to Chicago, like she told her coworkers she planned to earlier that day. Teleka’s friend James Davis believes that she was going to head south instead, travelling another 300 miles to Saint Louis to see him since he couldn’t visit her as she requested the day before. We do know that Teleka couldn’t drive her vehicle any farther on the blown-out tire.

Investigators believe Teleka fell into semi-frozen Lake Charles while she ran away from her vehicle in a manic state, fleeing an imaginary pursuer. It could have also happened if she was trying to get help for her flat tire. Teleka might have seen the lights of a nearby truck stop and took the shorter, direct path through the wooded area by her car rather than walking back up to and along the busy interstate. The lake froze over that night – perhaps Teleka stepped on ice thinking that it was more snow-covered, solid ground. The water was cold enough to shock her system and prevent her from swimming to safety, regardless of how she ended up in it.

Alternative theories

Teleka’s parents and others who were close to her, like her friend James Davis, believe there is more to her case than what police concluded, and they have many supporters. Teleka’s tragic death, no matter how or why it occurred, is even harder to accept considering how hard she worked, how talented she was, and the bright future she had ahead of her.

Although he was officially cleared, some are still suspicious of pastor and gospel singer Marvin Sapp, the apparent object of Teleka’s obsession. To begin with, Teleka wasn’t his only stalker. In 2014, 45-year-old Gladys Gaines stole an SUV from a dealership in Florida claiming that Marvin told her she could have it as a birthday present. In 2016, Marvin publicly denounced another woman claiming to be his wife on Facebook.

However, churchgoers stalking their pastors is a common enough occurrence that they even have a moniker: “biting sheep.” It’s not hard to find recent cases following similar patterns to Teleka Patrick and Marvin Sapp’s experience. In 2012, 55-year-old Lidia Kuzniar was arrested for stalking her pastor in Chicago, claiming it was “God’s plan” for them to be together. In 2014, Keegan Forge, a Texas teacher in her early 30s, was arrested after stalking her pastor for more than four years. That same year, also in Texas, 31-year-old Karleisha Tarver was arrested after stalking her pastor for three years, but charges were dropped after she was deemed not competent to stand trial.

Taking action

Bob Carolla, a spokesman for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, when interviewed about Teleka Patrick’s case, said that “it’s not unusual for a person not to be aware of their own disorders or symptoms, and equally, until there’s a crisis, people around them don’t pick up on symptoms. Not everyone knows enough about mental illness, knows what to look for. So they think everything is fine until everything falls apart.”

It’s remarkable that Teleka managed to be the woman she was considering what she must have been struggling with, almost entirely by herself. By all accounts, she protected her friends and family from whatever she was experiencing as much as she could. But sometime after her divorce in 2012, it appears that Teleka experienced her “crisis.” In about a year, she fell in love with a celebrity, sent him hundreds of messages, moved thousands of miles to stalk him, and spent her free time on social media documenting the relationship that appeared to only exist within her mind. Just as her psychological and emotional tension reached a breaking point, Teleka made a run for parts unknown and tragically drowned under what some still believe are mysterious circumstances.

Unfortunately, there may never be answers to all the questions in Teleka Patrick’s case, but there’s still a lot to learn from it. We can’t say whether someone should have seen the warning signs sooner, and we can’t reverse time and make Teleka take her symptoms more seriously. But if you or someone you know needs help or more information right now, you can start by visiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s website (nami.org) or reaching out to someone you trust to talk about it.  

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