Extraordinary Lives | Tere Jo Duperrault

i can't imagine anything more horrific than the two things she went through of that sudden horror and then that absolute isolation that is many stories all in one it is a murder mystery and it is a survival story of the first order [Music] i remember that we had a very happy family my dad taught us a lot about the outdoors terri and her father are very close because she liked the things that he liked to do and she had an older brother brian and then she had a younger sister renee it was my dad's dream he always liked boats his dream was to live on a boat and go around the world he came up with the idea that we were going to charter a boat to see if we could handle you know being on the water they went down to fort lauderdale florida in the in the fall of 1961. they chartered this boat called the blue bell and it was skippered by a former air force fighter pilot named julian harvey and his wife they had spent several days out on the atlantic spent an afternoon on one of the islands in the bahamas and for some reason that isn't clear to anyone at this point decided that they were going to sail at night we were all excited because we thought wow sailing at night we hadn't done that and it would seem like a very nice you know friendly evening and everyone was fine and she goes to sleep surrounded by her family in this beautiful place on this great adventure and then all of a sudden just like that in an instant she's in the most unimaginable nightmare then i woke up to my brother screaming and he was screaming help daddy help it was one of those screams that you knew something bad was happening you knew that he was in danger i decided to go up on deck and find out what was happening as i came out here this would have been the kitchen my brother and brother were lying there and there was a big pool of blood i don't know if i knew they were dead i thought i saw blood in one area of the cockpit i also thought that i saw a rifle she went up onto the deck and was met by a wild-eyed julian harvey who rushed up to her and shoved her back down the ladder and said get get back down there i went back down and i got back in my bed i just laid there and then water started coming into my cabin then he came in my cabin and he had a gun in his hand and he just stared at me we made eye contact he didn't say anything and he backed out he didn't kill terry joe because he knew the boat was sinking and she was a goner i decided that i couldn't stay there any longer because the water was making my mattress float so i waded through and i went on top of the deck again the captain dove overboard into the night and he swam after the dinghy and disappeared meanwhile the boat's sinking and terri joel somehow had the presence of mine to remember that there was a life float lashed to the to the deck i knew the boat was going down and it was do this or die i scrambled over the sails to the top of the deck where i knew a cork raft was untied and threw it over the side and got in it the line on the float actually snagged on the bluebell for a moment and pulled her and the float underwater but it freed itself and she came back up that was the first time i really was afraid because the way harvey left me there i knew that something bad had happened and i was afraid of him and that's why i i didn't say anything i didn't call out i stayed you know perfectly still it was like i was trying to hide and here you are in the middle of the ocean and a little raft how can you hide the boat was gone no lights nothing she was thrust almost immediately from that horror of the family massacre to being alone in this survival situation to have that happen to see the bodies of her brother and her mother and then to be all of a sudden alone on the sea i was just alone i i don't know how to explain it i just sat there and just coped she floated the 200 miles out into the ocean there were a number of ships that came past the name seer [Music] a few days later julian harvey was picked up in the blue bell's dinghy and he told a story about how the the night before there had been a squall that had come along dismasted the bluebell and the bluebells main mast plunged all the way down through the decks of the blue bell and hold it and he said basically that he was the only survivor he wasn't able to rescue anybody else off the boat search planes spent literally days out there looking for her or looking for survivors the life raft that she was able to get off of the blue bell was white wave caps are white and it was just impossible to see this little white oval thing bouncing around on the ocean surrounded by these white waves the cold was just terribly miserable and the waves would be a blackish blackish color and i would be on the top of this black wave that which was quite high submerged to the waist all of the time she spent four days floating just floating on the ocean and was very near death when she was picked up a greek freighter was going through the providence channel in the bahamas and one of the men on deck he was looking out across the sea that was covered with white caps but he noticed in the distance one white cap that didn't seem to disappear and it was terry duperrault it must have seemed like something completely unreal because she was she was almost in a coma at that point in time nobody knew what the story was [Music] when i was in the hospital captain harvey was being interrogated by the coast guard and they interrupted whatever was happening to say that a survivor was found and as soon as captain harvey heard that news he has to be excused from the hearing and he walked out the next morning a maid went into a room in a motel in miami she found julian harvey in a pool of blood and he had evidently slashed himself and bled to death the coast guard concluded that harvey killed everybody based on her testimony and the implausibility of the things that he said plus his past history devious behavior and insurance fraud and both sinking boats burning airplanes crashing wives being killed in automobile accidents and it is a fact he had taken out a fairly large insurance policy on his life it's hard to even imagine for an eleven-year-old she would just witnessed her family die and now she's all alone and shouldn't know what the future is i was the first one that could go in to see her it gave her a nice big hug and then we were just to try to be as normal as we could be all the time she didn't have her immediate family but she had the um necks closest to her i love my aunt and uncle dearly and i to the to this day they're my parents but at that time i never wanted to let go of my mom and dad and so growing up it was very difficult i didn't believe my father was dead because i had not seen him i would just pick up and leave on a whim i would drive to like north carolina beach or florida the beach looking for my dad i was always searching i did that for many many years until i was about 35 then i accepted it finally throughout the years i had a lot of ups and downs and i've worked with that and i think it's to be expected of someone who's gone through what i went through as i became an adult i really did realize that that my mother was a survivor i think her her strong will and everything panned out throughout all of her life [Music] it's a testimony to the the strength of the human will in the human spirit it's a story of more than surviving it's a morality tale it's a story of in you know that the power of evil but the refusal of the human spirit to be dominated by evil i'm so fortunate that i had my family i hope that i can just continue to be healthy and happy and you know have the wonderful love that i share with my family and and friends and that i hope that that can be always that way [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DoxNM

Views: 57,010

Rating: 4.9261365 out of 5

Keywords: DoxNM, Entertainment, Documentary, boat, lifestyle, Heroes, bad day, Tere Jo Duperrault, Docs in Motion, HQ, health, Extraordinary lives, good day, History, Extraordinary Lives, Making history, Historical, reality, Hero, Interesting people

Id: lf4ICs4my2E

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 25 2019