Bieber's ex-lover tells her story
THE former live-in-lover of cop killer David Bieber today relives the terrifying day the crazed monster sent a hitman to gun her down.
American beauty Michelle Stanforth—the person who knows him best—miraculously survived a hail of bullets after making the near deadly mistake of dumping the steroid-pumping bodybuilder.
And as she recovered from her ordeal she chillingly discovered her FATHER was also on Bieber's death list—because he dared to help move her possessions out of the fiend's flat.
"David is crazy—the vilest man on earth. When he can't get his own way, he is pure evil," said the blonde, who moved states after the attempt on her life.
"He killed that policeman —and he ordered my murder just because I was the first girl to break up with him. He deserves nothing less than the death penalty."
Today Michelle speaks for the first time of her life of hell with the ex-US marine— caged last week for the murder of British PC Ian Broadhurst .
She tells how the gentle giant she fell for revealed himself as a dangerous, obsessive nut who:
TURNED into such a control freak he strapped a pager to her waist so he always knew where she was.
FLEW into screaming, steroid-fuelled rages if she tried to wear anything remotely revealing.
BANNED her from seeing her family, going out with her friends or even talking to other men.
DOWNED cocktail after cocktail of illegal steriods as he strove for the perfect body—even though they made him become a paranoid, ranting monster. Michelle, 30, finally walked out on him when she caught him in bed with female bodybuilder Danielle LaBelle—whose own boyfriend was destined to become the first on jealous Bieber's hit list to die.
After unsuccessfully pleading for forgiveness, Bieber turned nasty—following Michelle to work in Fort Myers, Florida.
He burst into her office, grabbing hold of her and screaming: "Girls don't break up with me. I break up with them! You f****d up now, bitch. You'll be sorry."
Frightened staff called police who arrested him. He was given a restraining order to keep him away from terrified Michelle.
But his final words to her were to come back to haunt her one bright sunny morning in August 1995, nine months after their break-up.
"I was loading up my car outside my new apartment ready for work," says Michelle. "I remember seeing this skinny young guy in the parking lot, kind of sneaking between the cars-but thought nothing more about him.
"Then suddenly he was just in front of me. His hand went inside his shirt and he pulled out a gun. He took aim and started firing.
"I had been half in the car when the first shot went off and, then, as I hit the ground, two more shots whizzed past me. Bam, bam, bam. I'll never forget those sounds.
"I was absolutely petrified, panicking like crazy, unable to even breathe, and scrambling around on my belly trying to work out where the shooter was going next.
"My mind was racing. I remember thinking: ‘This is it, I'm going to die'. Even though he missed me, I figured he would just walk around the car and finish the job off.
"I stayed on the ground, screaming at the top of my voice, waiting for it. Then I heard him running away. I darted into my car and just took off. I can't remember calling the cops. I remember my dad showing up at the police HQ and just hugging him.
"I didn't immediately think, ‘This is David's doing'. But it was soon afterwards that I put him in the picture."
And Michelle was to be proved right. A month later 17-year-old David Snipes was arrested for the contract killing of Markus Mueller—the boyfriend of Bieber's lover Danielle—in February 1995.
Snipes confessed to shooting Mueller and to the attempt on Michelle's life—and revealed that the mastermind in both cases was Bieber. "He told the cops that I was too pretty to kill," says Michelle. "I guess that saved my life."
Snipes also confessed that Bieber had instructed him to kill Michelle's father too—but the hit had been a problem because her dad's job meant he worked different hours from day to day and didn't have a set routine.
The teenage hitman was sentenced to death in the electric chair—later commuted to life imprisonment. But Bieber fled Florida before he could be arrested and was considered so dangerous he was put on America's Most Wanted list. He eventually headed for Britain under a false identity.
Michelle—now married with two children—had no idea of the nightmare in store for her when she first met Bieber, then working as a personal trainer at a gym and taking part in bodybuilding contests.
"I loved him—he was my dream guy. And he told me he loved me and called me his baby," she says. "There was absolutely no hint of the beast within—not even in the bedroom. David wasn't into rough or kinky sex. He never tried to dominate me in bed. He was a gentle lover.
"Although I knew he was taking steroids, it never seemed to have any effect on our love life. I never noticed him having shrunken testicles, which is a common side-effect. Everything in that department was normal."
But within a month of living together, Bieber turned into a jealous and controlling lover.
"He gave me a pager and told me I had to strap it to me and wear it at all times so that he could contact me whenever he needed to," she says. "At first I thought it was because he loved me so much. But he would be bleeping and bleeping me, telling me to come home— especially when I was visiting my family. It was freaky."
Then Bieber started trying to control what she wore. "If I arranged a night out with my girlfriends, he would follow me round as I was getting ready, telling me what I could or couldn't wear.
"If he didn't like the dress I had on, he'd scream that I was going against him and looking for someone else. Once he threw a bottle at me that smashed against the wall.
"Then David actually started banning me from going out. He would tell me there were guys out there just wanting one thing.
"He seemed to want to turn me into some sort of trophy girlfriend he could control." As Bieber's behaviour became more bizarre, Michelle became more and more concerned about his steroid abuse.
"David was already using them when I met him—but it was only much later I discovered he was illegally importing them," she says. "There were steroids all over our apartment.
"Every morning David would mix up weird cocktails with protein shakes, steroids, insulin and ephedrine and wash them down with coffee. He would inject himself with them too. He was a virtual pincushion!
"As a result, he would have the most severe anxiety attacks He'd start sweating heavily, pacing up and down the room. He would complain that he couldn't breathe and that his heart was pounding. I used to beg him to stop messing with his body—but his vanity was the most important thing to him. He'd spend all his time in front of the mirror, posing in a thong. He'd always be flexing his muscles. And he'd spend 30 minutes every morning doing his hair."
The end for Michelle came when she arrived home to find him with Danielle. "She was lying there in our bed looking really slutty—I knew it was over," she says.
"I left the apartment and my dad came to move the rest of my stuff out while David sat on the couch glaring at him. Later he turned up at the doctor's practice where I worked.
"He was very abusive and aggressive and he grappled with me as I tried to pick up the phone to dial 911. The police were called. I was so frightened of him I got a restraint order against him." Barely three months after Michelle dumped him, Bieber married Danielle, who was still secretly seeing her lover, Markus Mueller.
The day after she tied the knot, Danielle realised she had made a terrible mistake, left Bieber and ran back to Mueller. Six days later Mueller was shot dead.
"When I heard Markus was dead, I instinctively knew David had something to do with it," says Michelle.
Nine days after the murder, Bieber broke his restraining order and went to see Michelle at her parents' house. "He was stood outside. I was completely terrified. The police turned up and took him away. They told me he didn't have a gun—but it made no difference. Later he just sent someone else to kill me instead."
Michelle admits to being relieved when Bieber went on the run— but devastated when news broke that he had murdered British PC Broadhurst in cold blood.
"It brought everything back—I feel so sorry for the policeman's family," says Michelle. "But now at least he's behind bars where he belongs.
"I will never get over the horror of having a hitman firing bullets at me. I live with the nightmare every day—and will for the rest of my life."
