Gaslight – verb – manipulate (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning.
By Mike Weland
It takes very little to rattle Kim Eccles these days. Her sleep is fitful, she’s always on edge. She breaks into tears for no obvious reason. She wasn’t always this way. She and her husband, David, enjoyed several almost idyllic years after moving to their little piece of heaven on Old Addie Road near Good Grief. But then Daniel “Danny” Peter Floyd moved in, and with him came the Water Wars of 2018 and 2023. In a world that made sense, those wars should be long over, but they aren’t. They’ve only gotten worse.
David and Kim have been married 38 years, not all of them easy, but they pulled together when the waters got rough, held tighter when the rapids tried to rip them apart. After one particularly rough go, they had a portrait made of the two of them. Dave found two ceramic doves in a thrift store, a rose in a glass dome.
A tradition began. The doves would face each other when their marriage was good, but when times got tough, David would turn them facing away from each other. ln the 30 years they’ve had them, the doves gazed at each other almost constantly, seldom turned away from each other and never for long. Even through the early years of the water wars, through COVID. In 2020, she hit a patch of slush driving home and slid into the path of a Mercedes Benz, hitting it head-on and shattering her ankle so badly she eventually lost her foot.
Even through all that, the doves’ eyes were locked. Then came 2024.
Dave and Kim moved to Old Addie Road in 2007, sharing a well with their neighbor, contributing an equal share to a fund for well maintenance and repairs.
They soon had raised bed gardens that kept them busy in their off hours through the summer and filled their larder for winter. When the home next door fell vacant, Danny and Kim kept up the maintenance payment for the three years it sat empty.
Daniel “Danny” Peter Floyd, born in 1966, bought the property and the well in 2014, and it didn’t take long for Dave and Kim to see he was hewn from different wood than any that grew around here. Danny, Dave said, never paid into the well fund, yet he had a wealth of excuses, the blame never his. After running with few troubles since their arrival seven years earlier, the well grew cranky, needing repair after repair. Danny never seemed to have money on hand, Dave and Kim, wanting to be good neighbors, gave him the benefit of the doubt and paid for the repairs.
By 2018, the Eccles had put over $3,500 into well repairs. Floyd complained the monthly fee for electricity for the well wasn’t enough, Dave told him to put a meter on it and he’d be glad to pay half.
Danny Floyd is a rooster of a man. He doesn’t walk, he struts, typically wearing more weaponry than you can hang from an A10 Warthog. He not only thinks he’s a lady’s man, he truly is, but in the worst way.
By the accounts of those who know him, he is a conman who can exude charm. A compulsive liar, he is adept at playing the victim, of being sick. He has an uncanny knack for identifying women with below normal self-esteem, women who haven’t been treated well, but who have a propensity to nurture. Women who are vulnerable. Like any good conman, he’s adept at spotting a mark.
During the Old Addie Road Water Wars, still ongoing, many you talk to tell of “his” women, women who gave all he asked and lost almost everything. Not even the women who did or came close to saying “I do” seem able to keep track of all the other women and girls in his orbit … and at least two who escaped his unnatural attraction are convinced their demise was his intention.
According to those aware of the Old Addie Water Wars, Floyd also possesses the second essential attribute of a successful conman — the ability, maddening to those being conned, of playing the victim for those he’s not conning while casting his victims as the culprits who conned him.
It’s called gaslighting after the 1938 play and 1944 movie, “Gaslight,” in which an abusive husband abuses his wife psychologically, patiently manipulating her over time until she questions her own perception of reality.
In 2018, Dave and Kim, by demanding reasonable quid pro quo, showed Danny he no longer held sway. In so doing, they disrespected him. They were from then on the enemy.
Danny shut off their water. Knowing Dave’s schedule and being a ladies man, he’d wait until Dave was at work and he’d “legally” harass Kim, standing at the foot of the drive, two toes off the property line, and stare. Walking the property line day after day, firing random shots in the air, laughing when she cringed.
Day after day, obsessive, but always on the edge of legality, deviously knowing reasonable people would be hard pressed to believe such a farfetched tale — “Oh, me! Do I look like someone who would do that? I love my neighbors!”
But the ceramic doves stayed eye to eye, as did Dave and Kim.
And then their faucets went dry. Dave offered to bring in local professionals to effect repairs, he was told he was not welcome — do not set foot on my property. But then he’d capitulate. They could come onto his property, but not David. David was paying, of course.
Kim’s garden dried. Dave hauled water in and Kim lugged six-gallon water jugs, watering where she could, often as Floyd stood on his side of the property line, watching.
The water stayed off for 47 days. Dave and Kim filed civil suit for breach of contract April 2, 2018, against Danny and his wife, Kandy. According to David, relief didn’t come from the court, the judge signed no order. It was Danny’s attorney who convinced him to do the right thing and turn the water back on.
Amid allegations that Floyd had seriously injured her by running her off the road while they rode four-wheelers in backcountry, Kandy had filed for divorce January 9, 2019. It was granted that May. She was certain it had been a deliberate attempt by Danny to murder her. She told friends she’d seen the look in his eyes when he rammed her off the road.
The judgment in the Eccles civil case came May 1, 2019, and it was a sweetheart deal for Floyd. The original complaint was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled if either party reneged on a new well-sharing agreement and staying up on equal payments by both parties to a new well maintenance fund. It would have cost him a bit over $3,000 and attorney’s fees.
Floyd reneged, never paying a dime. On March 12, 2020, the firm that had represented him sued and on June 9, 2020, was awarded $6,886.13. On December 30, 2022, round two of the Eccles vs. Floyd was filed.
At about 2:45 p.m. Sunday, January 22, 2023, Danny was served notice that he was again being sued. Within an hour, the water was shut off and David was yet again on the phone to the sheriff’s office.
A deputy arrived and Danny told him the pump broke down and he wouldn’t be able to fix it until he got paid February 3. The deputy recommended David fix it. Danny refused to let him on the property. They agreed on having a local well man come out. When he showed up January 25, Danny refused to answer the door. The pump house was locked.
A girlfriend staying with Danny later told Kim the pump worked fine. Her name is deliberately withheld.
She had known Danny for about nine years, had escaped him twice before but let him talk her into coming back both times, despite his cheating, his lying, his prodigious abuse of pain medications.
He could, she said, be charming and persuasive that he was doing his best but just kept getting knocked down, that he needed the love and care only she could provide. She didn’t forget the many lies, the many women he cheated with, the money he conned her out of. But she felt sorry for him.
And for him to cry his need broke down the barriers she’d put up — he needed her … her … of course she’d be there for him. A helper, a nurturer … it’s who she is, what defined her.
A user, he only wanted everything of hers he could take, steal or coerce her to give him.
After the summons was served, she began seeing the real Danny Floyd, the paranoia, the anger he exhibited, especially when he felt pressured. And nothing got his ire more completely than the thought of being swindled. He railed at her about it, texted her often.
“The cops won’t do anything to them,” Floyd wrote her, referring to David and Kim Eccles, “so I said ok they get away with all kinds of stuff well now I’m torchering them Maizy goes over there and gives them hell he came over pounding on my front door I was waiting for him to come in with my 44 magnum pointing at his head and he didn’t even know it now I’ve got evidence against them and the judge is not going to be happy with them” and on and on.
He concluded, “Plus I’m not paying extortion money bottom line is I have everything I need to take to the judge and prove this is fraud and anyone else who might be a part of this will be answering for this crime against a disabled person.”
It turned out it wasn’t Dave in the sights of the .44, it was an Allstate agent there to do a surprise inspection.
For the ensuing year it took to resolve the case, Danny became meaner, ever more unpredictable. Danny, the ladies man, could intimidate as well as charm, and he turned his full malevolent attention to “torchering” Kim.
With David working 50 to 60 hours a week, Danny would wait until Dave left and watch for Kim to come settle into her work in the garden or yard, put Maizy on a leash and quietly slip up to the nearest property line and sic the dog, drive his four-wheeler up and down their property line, walk the property line, watching her, firing rounds into the air for the sole purpose of startling her.
That Dave never doubted her helped, but having lost her foot and transitioned to a prosthetic, having filed report after report only to be told no laws had been broken, there is nothing we can do, left her vulnerable. She began losing weight, not sleeping. Her forays into the garden slowed and she began staying inside, a prisoner in her own home. The helplessness of being the object of an obsessive and cruel tormenter for over five years … she was almost sure her mind actually was slipping.
They began putting up outdoor security cameras around the property. Danny took to staring into them when Kim wasn’t outside.
Tensions in Danny’s house were ratcheting up as well. He was continuously making comments about the Eccles, “They won’t get my house,” “they won’t find the bodies.” His girlfriend began fearing for their lives. She was surprised, too, at how active he was for somebody so sick – PTSD, a terribly painful leg condition and more. She watched him drive when he wasn’t supposed to be able, including jouncing about at stupidity speeds on the four-wheeler.
Toward Thanksgiving, Danny brought in another girlfriend he’d known for a few years, proposing they’d all be happy together. The girlfriend already there demurred and began packing yet again. He pulled a gun, she said, and threatened to kill her. She kept packing and in his rage he allegedly grabbed a drum practice pad and hit her in the face. With Danny and girl two looking on, she strode out and drove away, returning to a house she owned in another state.
Before long he was calling her, begging her to come back. He’d been diagnosed with cancer, something she’d survived. He truly needed her, he begged. He would kick the other woman out — she didn’t know anything about cancer and was no help to him.
He was so persuasive, she not only returned to Old Addie Road, she sold her house, convinced this time she would be with him forever. When she came back in mid-December, he was worse than when she left.
“He was prescribed huge amounts of pain pills and he’d go through a 30-day supply in as little as 10 days and get more,” she said. “He was growing more erratic, telling anyone who’d stand still long enough how he’d been cheated, how he was taking care of it. How nobody would find the body parts.”
“He had pretty much the whole Eastport community rattled,” David said.
Growing evermore worried, Danny’s girlfriend began surreptitiously messaging Kim, warning her and David.
“I really worry about you guys,” she wrote in one. “Danny can be really crazy. Made a comment that if he lost this lawsuit he would ‘take care of it.’ That’s why I told you.”
“I got a question for you,” Kim wrote her in another. “Do you think David and I are in physical danger from Danny?”
“Hun yes. I don’t think you, but David I fear.”
Then, on February 4, she joined the Eccles on Danny’s enemies list.
“You double crossed me and now I’ve got proof,” he texted her. “This is exactly what me and a few people thought so you were tested and we were right.”
The “few people,” she said, was the younger girlfriend he’d kicked out to get her to come back and take care of him.
Despite being kept under a microscope and fearing for her life over the next month, she at last did what no one else had been able — providing the evidence necessary for the criminal charges that put him in jail.
After her “failed test,” Danny took her with him whenever he left, keeping a close rein. One trip as April approached was to North 40 and another store in Ponderay, where she watched him buy fuses and black powder.
It didn’t cross her mind what the items were for until April 2 , when she went out to his workshop and saw him with a big bag of canisters and a few on his workbench that she realized what was going on. She ran into the house, grabbed up his guns, jumped in the car and raced out, turning north to Eastport instead of south to Bonners Ferry. Dave saw her leave, followed moments later by Danny in his pickup. Dave saw him turn south on Highway 95.
A short time later, having called 911 and received the usual, she called Dave from Eastport and told him what she’d seen in Danny’s shop. She stopped by to leave Danny’s guns with Dave, and even with no home to go to, she left Bonners Ferry.
David also called the sheriff’s office.
Another woman, one not enamored of Danny but a professional in-home caretaker provided him due to his handicap, and who will also remain unnamed, was in the home regularly during this time.
“He is a very dangerous man I don’t think you should have around,” she said. “He plotted to kill his neighbors. He would have done it.”
She saw the string of girlfriends, the piles of drugs he wasn’t just using, she said, but selling. Worse, he was coercing women to sell for him. She described how he routinely had several cell phones and have calls going one to the next, along with multiple messenger chats on the computer, preying, arranging women to do his deals for him.
“He is a liar, full of sob stories, playing on sympathies — basically a con man who preyed on women,” she said. “He fancies himself a ladies man, but it’s always about money, manipulation, what he can get.”
On April 4, a search by Boundary County Sheriff’s deputies and bomb technicians from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms turned up three metal canisters with fuses. They were taken outside by the bomb technicians and found to contain gunpowder and half-inch steel balls.
Also in the shop was a garbage bag filled with the same type canisters, marbles and additional steel shot.
Daniel P. Floyd, was charged with unlawful possession of destructive devices or bombs, a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Dave and Kim rested easy at last.
Until Floyd’s initial appearance on April 5, when Judge Justin Julian gave Floyd a choice on bond — $100,000 with a no contact order to protect David and Kim Eccles and an order not to go on their property, or $10,000 and an order to stay away from Old Addie Road altogether. On June 7 Floyd bonded out on the latter.
“Danny could not have made the higher bond,” Dave said, “and he didn’t care about the restrictions or the orders. The judge handed him a get out of jail card at our expense.”
“He’s Teflon,” his caregiver said. “Everything slides off him.”
On February 13, 2024, just before his arrest, she showed up for work and knocked. She said he was sitting at the table with a pistol and he threatened kill her if she didn’t leave. She got off his property and called to report the threat. As seemed typical with Danny, there was no one available. She called her employer and reported she would not be going back … he was too dangerous.
While she worked there, she helped get his bills and paperwork in order and she came across documents related to the original well agreement that he’d signed five years earlier.
“He said he never got a copy,” she said. “He changes his email every three months, and I found out it had been emailed and it was assumed it had been delivered. I tried explaining that not getting a copy didn’t void the agreement — he insisted he’d been swindled. I gave up.’ You couldn’t reason with him.”
Danny wasn’t around 114 Old Addie Road much in 2024, but that didn’t matter to Kim … he could be lurking anywhere, every tree she once cherished could hide him.
It wasn’t like he’d gone away. The summonses, the hearings she and Dave had to attend, in person or by Zoom … the courts gave demands , but little justice, no respite, no relief.
Buffeted about by court dates held, purged or cancelled, fearful of when, not if Danny would suddenly appear, the pressure on Kim grew greater with each passing day he was free that she didn’t know where he was.
He was seldom far, seen walking in Bonners Ferry in the company of a young woman described by some who saw her as a girl. Signs seeking a roommate, proclaiming himself “honest and trustworthy” went up around town. Despite terms of release requiring he stay in state, he was seen out of state in the neighborhood of the woman who’d left him, driving by the home she sold to be with him, stopping by the place she once worked.
She hadn’t escaped him … there was no escape. He had her number, he used it. Begging her again, incessantly, to come back. He eventually put the property in her name. Instead of taking it as a gesture of reconciliation, she is certain that it was instead an insurance policy to hang on to his house and land no matter what happened in court.
“I honestly think he saw me as a way to not lose his house,” she said. “Even if he had to kill me and get it back as my estate. His focus was on not losing face … he couldn’t face losing. The place actually didn’t mean a lot to him. He said he’d burn it down before he lost it to his enemies David and Kim. And I finally realized I meant nothing to him at all.”
She did her best to keep track of Danny so she could keep Kim informed. But the thought of him lurking, ready to show up out of nowhere and finish the job ate at Kim. With Dave gone long hours working, she felt alone and isolated. By August she needed a place where she could escape Old Addie Road.
The Doves were turned away from each other.
She went and stayed with a friend for a week, and came home, but any relief was short lived. In September, not certain she wanted to live at all, she rented an apartment in town she could escape to.
On September 4, Danny missed a court date and a warrant was issued for his arrest. By the end of the month, Danny was back in jail, the $100,000 bond reinstated.
In all the years they’d had the doves, they were David’s tradition. He wasn’t even sure if she noticed them, let alone know his meaning. But after Danny’s arrest, she was able to relax and she surprised him.
“Are you going to turn the doves?” she asked.
“No, he said, “this time I think it’s your turn.”
She climbed on the couch and turned the birds toward one another.
Again, the respite was brief.
On November 12, Judge Lamont Berecz ruled in favor of plaintiffs David and Kimberly Eccles in the civil case, awarding them $52,223.93 and attorney’s fees, the obligation secured by Floyd’s property. On December 12, Berecz issued an amended judgment, raising the amount awarded to $66,807.20 and an order that the property be sold to satisfy the obligation.
In September, the court received hospital records indicating than Danny had cancer.
On November 20, Danny changed his plea to guilty on the felony charge. On the same day, his estranged girlfriend said she answered an unexpected call. Unable to reach Danny, the hospital called the person he had authorized to be notified if he were unavailable … his former girlfriend. They were happy to inform her that Danny was cancer-free.
Back in the courtroom, Judge Barbara Buchanan accepted his guilty plea, and largely in light of his having cancer and the extensive treatment that entailed, began working on the terms and conditions of his release, bond exonerated … released now on his own recognizance.
He was to have no contact with David or Kim. Commit no more crimes, show up for hearings sober.
He was allowed to come back to his home at 114 Old Addie Road accompanied by a deputy to collect his personal belongings. He stayed five hours, gutting the cabin, taking fixtures, pulling plumbing components out from behind the walls. He had no use for most of it, much of it left on the ground.
On November 30, David and Kim’s German Shepherd, Ruger, fell sick. Kim’s rescue dog, she didn’t leave his side, but his condition worsened. They took him to the vet and learned Ruger had been poisoned. They held him while he was put down. Wrapped his body in a blanket and drove him home. They laid Kim’s rescue dog, her companion all those long hours David was away at work, her protector, her alarm, her friend, to rest in the front yard.
Kim was devastated, numb. So much so she felt no real shock when Danny Floyd appeared in front of her two days later, but a different Danny … more kind, apologetic. He was sorry, he said, that he had accidentally poisoned Ruger. He hadn’t meant to. He intimated they should be friends, she told David when he came home that night. He even asked if she could clean his cabin.
Had David not reminded her what he’d put her through all those years, she agrees, she would have walked straight into Danny’s trap, whatever his trap may have been. When she didn’t, he went right back to being the malevolent Danny she had grown familiar with.
Dave took a leave of absence from work so she wouldn’t be there alone as they awaited Danny’s sentencing, which takes place this week. He and Kim got away on a whirlwind trip last week to visit family in California and Arizona, arriving back on Friday. Seeing her mom and her sisters, Kim’s smile shone with near the same brilliance Dave hadn’t seen since the onset of the Old Addie Road Water Wars seven long, painful years ago, so terrible, so senseless.
Originally set for Wednesday, Danny Floyd’s sentencing on the charge of unlawfully possessing destructive devices or bombs he made for the express purpose of ridding himself of his neighbors so “nobody would find the body parts” will now take place before First District Judge Susie Jensen at 9:30 a.m. Friday.
Dave will likely sleep very little in the week ahead out of concern that Danny will attempt to exact the retribution that’s obsessed him, a crisis of his own making. And even if they to make it to the courtroom on Friday, none of the people I spoke to for this book-length article has any confidence that justice will be done.
“He’s Teflon, nothing sticks to him.” “They’ll let him walk. They don’t see the Danny we see, they see the good guy he wants them to see, and somehow he convinces them that he’s the victim.”
If Danny does make it to court Friday without incident and avoids prison or remains free, a second event sure to bruise his ego takes place at 10 a.m. Tuesday, February 25, in the county annex at 6566 Main Street, Bonners Ferry, where our sheriff is obligated to sell at public auction the real property described in said Amended Judgment and Order for foreclosure and Decree of Sale, and said Writ of Execution, and to apply the proceeds of such sale to the satisfaction of said Judgment and Decree of foreclosure and Sale with interest thereon, including my fees and costs, all payable in lawful U.S. currency at the time of sale to the highest bidder, for the following described real property, situated in Boundary County, Idaho, to-wit: 114 Old Addie Road, Bonners Ferry.