I spent a day with KIDNAPPING SURVIVORS: "Kidnapped By a Serial Killer"

i'm anthony padilla and i spent a day with kidnapping survivors to uncover the truth about the life-altering effects of vastly different kidnapping experiences we'll learn the earth-shattering devastation of being kidnapped by a family member and what that does to a child's psyche and will discover the horrifying struggle of escaping a serial killer and the way this tormenting knife impacts every element of one's life hello hey natalia by the way this episode is sponsored by better help online therapy visit betterhelp.com padilla because sometimes existing is exhausting now before we get into your full story can you give us a brief synopsis of your kidnapping in 2002 when i was 15 years old i was kidnapped from my best friend's front yard by a stranger i was held for 18 hours until i escaped and i found out later that he was a serial killer 18 years ago on this day what weird right that's very weird i was gonna wait to tell you until we were filming i was abducted by my biological father i was seven years old when i was abducted my parents were going through a divorce a really nasty custody bottle and my uncle and my aunt are babysitting me my dad shows up he burst in and basically said i'm going to take my daughter i'm going to take her to heaven and you're never going to see us again that's when we basically just started driving to a theme park my mom has called the police and there is an active amber alert out for me the moment happened where i realized that this wasn't a normal day with my dad while we were on this roller coaster my dad had lost the necklace that he was wearing and he just snapped he started like pushing things over at the theme park and he was like spitting on windows that's when he grabbed me and he put me back in the truck he just started driving the opposite way from home [Music] i was at a friend's house i had spent the night and her mom asked us to water the plants went outside was watering the plants and a car passed on the way out of the neighborhood the car pulled back into the driveway that's kind of weird but maybe it's someone who knows my friend's mom guy gets out of the car he is very average looking white male comes straight over to me he said i have these pamphlets today i saw you out here and i wanted to give them to you so he was at least as far apart as we are through this entire conversation and so when he reaches in to hand me the pamphlets he put a gun to the right side of my neck and he said come with me and i kind of went stop and he goes no you're going to come with me he walks me around to the driver's side of his car opens the door and he says get in i look in the back seat and there's one of those big plastic containers back there and i said where do i go and he said get in the container so i got in the container yeah you know like this he like kind of set the lid on top got in the car and backed out of the driveway my brain immediately went into like this analytical mode and all my emotions shut off i was memorizing you know the songs on the radio there was a serial number on the inside of the container so i memorized that there were many things that i memorized and that was just kind of the beginning of me locking in as much information as i could about this person and so he drove for about 15 minutes pulled over to the side of the road and at that point he put a ball gag in my mouth and uh put restraints on my wrists and my ankles he told me to scream as well as i could and he said okay good and then put the lid all the way on the container drove for another minute or two before he stopped the car and then lifted the container with me in it carried it a short way set it down and drug it and i could feel it being drug over concrete and then over a threshold into what i found out was his apartment he comes to me he says okay i'm gonna take the the gag out of your mouth you have to promise not to scream and you have to remember i will always have a gun or a weapon of some type pretty quickly after i'm there begin to notice that there's some things in the apartment that maybe a man wouldn't have so i'm there for 18 hours and while i'm there i at one point was in the bathroom and i noticed a hairbrush it had long red hair in it and i noticed like some feminine hygiene products so i realized okay a woman spends a decent amount of time here and she has red hair right so i'm just kind of cataloging all this information and he said you're going to be here for a while and at some point you're going to have to eat and i said okay well i'm not going to eat right now so is there anything that i can do for you and he says yeah sure you can sweep the kitchen so i'm like sweeping the kitchen right and i use this as like an opportunity to get close to its refrigerator where there's some magnets for like his dentist and his doctor and so now i know who his dentist and his doctor are and i memorized those things as well so i'm there for 18 hours he sexually assaulted me multiple times while i was there he made me watch the news to see if i was on the news and if anyone missed me of course there was nothing there i had been missing for 11 hours and i was listed as a runaway and eventually he restrained me to go to sleep so i had handcuffs on my wrists and then i had a leg restraint on my right leg that was tied to the foot of the bed and i always expected that while he was sleeping would be my opportunity to escape yeah but at that point he had also made me smoke marijuana with him and then i had a valium and i was you know 15 years old and i think i was probably like 105 pounds this is the first time you felt any of these right so obviously i fell asleep and then i woke up maybe seven and he was still asleep he was next to me he's in the bed next to me and i realized that that was my opportunity [Music] my dad was just driving really really recklessly he was running red lights he was running stop signs he just started speaking in tongues i look back and i see police lights behind us part of me was like kind of confused cause i always thought that like police were good like i didn't understand that they were after my dad he wouldn't pull over and one of the police officers rammed the cop car into his truck and caused an accident the police surrounded the vehicle they opened his door and pulled him out he was still speaking in tongues and just completely out of reality the last thing that happened was the police opening my driver's side door i was sitting in the front seat they pulled me out of the front seat with my seat belt on and i was like yeah they're getting choked out and i'm like my seat belt's on my seatbelt's on and they're just trying you know to like rescue you right yeah the first thing that i had to do was get my hands out of the handcuffs so i tried to twist my hands you know kind of squeeze him out of the handcuffs he's right next to you right and couldn't squeeze my hands out of the handcuffs so i tried to unscrew it with my fingers and couldn't so i had to kind of shimmy my hands up to my mouth and then unscrew it with my teeth so i unscrewed the quick link kind of pulled the handcuffs out and then had to get down to my right leg had to disconnect that restraint from the bed got out of bed and then i was able to get one of my wrists out of the handcuffs i went to the front door it was more or less barricaded every single sound probably sounded like it was the loudest thing in the world absolutely and it's a very small apartment and his bedroom where he's asleep is like looks out at the front door so it's literally on the other side of the wall from where i'm trying to escape you made it this far right now you have to be committed because if you get found being out you can't put yourself back in right i somehow am able to kind of shove everything in open the doors the rest of the way unlock like you know the multiple locks that are on the door and throw the door open and i know that it's going to wake him up right so i know i have exactly one shot at this and i think he's going to wake up he's going to see that i'm not there he's going to look out he's going to hear this look out the window and see me running and shoot me in the back that's all i could think and i just thought you know what it doesn't matter because i'm out and someone will find me and someone will find him so it doesn't matter and so i saw a car driving across the parking lot ran to the driver's side there were two men inside and i said i was kidnapped and i escaped from that apartment and turned around and and pointed to it and i said remember that apartment they said okay well what do you want us to do where do you want to go and i said take me to the police the officer that was the one that rescued me he didn't give me any indication that something traumatic had just happened to me i really liked that he just started asking me normal questions as a seven-year-old kid it wasn't like i just saved you yeah it was like so what are you learning in school right now and they took me back to my mom and i'll never forget the look on my mom's face she was just crying and so happy that i was okay i was just like so happy to see her they take me to law enforcement i'm running through looking for someone i see no one and then i hear a voice say ma'am can i help you i tell him my name's cara robinson i was kidnapped and i escaped and you still have a handcuff on you yes and i do for quite some time he'd called my mom and said you know miss robinson we have your daughter here and she said you know i'm coming i'll be there as soon as i can and the investigator arrives he takes the handcuff off and he says well the two gentlemen that brought you in don't remember the apartment you ran out of i was like come on you had one job we go back to the apartment complex and we see a man like works the apartment complex and i tell him it's a man he looks like this there's a woman that lives there that has long red hair this is the car that he drives and he goes yeah i'm pretty sure i know what a apartment that is he doesn't know why you're asking at that point right at that point we go to the hospital to get a sexual assault exam done and while i'm there waiting for that to be done is uh when they actually bring me the photo lineup they used the um the description of the car the doctor and the dentist and they cross-referenced all of those and were able to identify my captor from the information that i gave them i immediately identify him my captor's name is richard mark of onits and he is nowhere to be found his sister more or less sets him up his sister supposed to meet him in florida lets law enforcement know that she's supposed to meet him and they set up a cover operation to kind of intercede and he sees law enforcement leads them on a short police chase his car wrecks out of control basically they send in a police canine and the canine invites him on the leg and either before during or after he puts a gun in his mouth and shoots himself so i found out the next morning that he had killed himself and quite honestly i was pissed off it didn't give you the relief that some people might i was pretty angry because i thought he got the easy way out i wanted to sit across from him in a courtroom and i wanted him to know that choosing me was the biggest mistake he ever made and that he was outsmarted by a 15 year old you thought your story was ending when you escaped so you thought you thought okay this is it i'm done i'm gonna be rescued he's gonna be captured and then that's gonna be it like i thought when i got out of the bed okay great it's over i thought when i got in the car okay they're gonna remember the apartment it's over right there's so many times when i thought it was going to be over whenever law enforcement went into his apartment they found a locked foot locker that had some newspaper clippings and some other things that they thought a little weird and some of those clippings were from three murders in virginia from 1996 and 1997. they immediately look into these cases there's a task force they're unsolved homicides and eventually he is linked positively to the deaths of those three girls what was going on through your head when he found out that he had not only done this before but the others did not escape it has taken me a very long time to come to terms with what that means he told me that he was going to let me go and i honestly believed that because he wasn't violent and he wasn't aggressive with me right so i didn't have any reason to believe that he was going to kill me but the logical side of my brain says no he would have killed you i have a hard time with assigning emotions to how i felt through this process partially because my primary stress coping mechanism was compartmentalization and shutting off those emotions that was how i survived and so for me to think about how i felt i'm like you didn't feel i didn't feel i didn't feel anything that remained true for 15 years [Music] did the police immediately believe you when you told them your story about what just happened i felt at the time like i wasn't believed i didn't get to call my mom immediately and like the handcuff is left on but years later i went to work in law enforcement and so i learned a lot about law enforcement it helped me to understand what i've come to realize is he had a sense of disbelief it's not that i don't believe you it's that i can't believe this is happening it's i don't i i can't fathom this exactly my brain cannot comprehend what's going on i've actually spoken to him since and you know he vividly recalls it and there was never a sense of disbelief on his he never doubted my story he just was shocked so that's why i say it's important to convey a sense of belief that's very often the first step right in someone's healing journey what happened to your father everyone likes to think that at the end of a story like the bad guy gets put away forever that's not what happened he got out on you know mental illness stuff ever since then he has been living you know on the streets and he's still out there and he's not in jail does any part of you wish that he were in jail i don't know yeah i don't know we like to think sometimes that there's good people and bad people mm-hmm but everybody's gray when he said i'm gonna take her to heaven we're both going to heaven it's implied you know initially that's what i assumed everyone assumed that that meant like we're going to you know take lives here but then you know there's been times where i've like reconsidered what if he was talking about the theme park some people would consider that heaven what if he just wanted to give me like the best day ever uh-huh like i i don't really know but i mean that's definitely not how you go to go about it but i don't know i i can't seem to get to the point where i'm like okay that's exactly what he was thinking that's exactly why he did it i mean i still don't have those answers for a long time i would call my dad things like crazy insane psycho because of his mental illness and because of how it played out and it wasn't until i actually fell into a drug-induced psychosis when i fell into addiction and drugs and i felt for the first time in my life what it felt like to not know the difference between reality and fantasy i have a choice to make do i go get help for myself or do i just continue with the choices that i'm making and i made the right choice which was to go into recovery get help for what i was experiencing talk to professionals get spiritual help and it saved my life and now i don't look at him as crazy cause i've been there has your father tried to contact you since then yeah he still tries to contact me but ominously through riddles through riddles like the joker yeah [Laughter] he sends me puzzles in the mail but almost every single time it doesn't make sense he'll draw a little telescope on the postcard he'll just have like like the fill in the blanks with the letters the telescope may be a representation of the thing that you were into at that time maybe it seems like it does get spark a little bit of like excitement i mean i'm still related to him like i have the same curiosity for like the mystery that he always had so would you say that you've forgiven i don't feel like i was ever honestly angry enough that i feel the need to forgive people hurt people it's because they're broken and i to a pretty pretty large degree never allowed him to have enough control over me that i felt angry i think i forgave him in 2017 when i went through my experience and i understood the importance of forgiveness because forgiveness isn't for the other person forgiveness is for you and it isn't until we recognize the faults within ourself that we're able to forgive fully the faults in other people what do you think is the biggest way that that event impacted your life going forward for me i identified as being strong and that meant that i was not affected by my trauma so it didn't make me sad i didn't think about it i didn't have ptsd but it became this mantle that i put on that protected me but it also kind of hid who i was right it didn't allow me to feel and so something that was a positive label became um a weapon against me but the one thing that i was feeling was very very very angry at the world at my kids at my husband and i just kind of peeled it back peeled it back like why am i so angry onions yeah layers of the onions are all big beautiful stinky onions as the donkey says compartmentalization and emotional dissociation like shutting down those emotions that was my coping mechanism that was it i was aware enough of what i was doing that i slowly began to stop it if i felt like i was going to cry i'd be like no i'm not going to cry instead of just right instead of just allowing it let me tell you i'm a dadgum crybaby now i was like i cry about everything why do i cry so much like no wonder i was suppressing guys just we cried all over the place and i can't go without thanking dipsy for sponsoring this episode dipsy is an app full of short audio stories designed by women for women they bring scenarios to life with immersive soundscapes and characters and new content is released every week so in between listening to your favorite stories you can always find something new to explore dipsy also has sleep stories wellness sessions and now they also offer written stories so no matter what mood you're in or how you like to consume these delectable morsels you're in luck before i spend today with viewers and listeners of the podcast dipsy is offering an extended 30-day free trial when you go to dipsystories.com padilla that's 30 days of full access for free when you go to d-i-p-s-e-a stories dot com slash p-a-d-i-l-l-a and no i won't apologize for that rhyme it was brilliant now back to the world of surviving a kidnapping what do you think it is that's drawn you to want to talk about your traumatic experiences publicly it's really just like wanting to help people that are looking for something to relate to themselves and their experiences circumstances might look different but everyone can relate to a struggle or joy or you know any emotion and so i really like being a person that makes those connections what we all want to do is just connect and and know that we're not alone you started working in law enforcement you were offered a job there by one of the police officers that helped you what was it that got you into wanting to do that i started working there this summer after my kidnapping i worked there for 12 years i went on to work with um sexual assault survivors and investigated sexual assault cases and i think it probably made me a better investigator because i was less likely to let go of cases because you knew that if your case had been let go then right you're doing a very different outcome yes and then i went into victim services and then i was actually really helping people where you know someone's been a victim and i get them counseling so you were able to give them the support that you knew that you needed correct what do you hope other people take from your experience so often in life we have things that happen to us you can kind of get taken under or you can rise above right like think about it like surfing the waves are coming what are your options you can try to fight them you can't do that but their ways they're right right like they're just gonna keep coming right so like that's kind of the hits in life like stuff just kind of it's going to happen but what if you grab your surfboard and you rise above and you surf it the fact of the matter is that you're gonna have hard moments you're gonna have great moments and if it weren't for the hard things that you go through you can't appreciate the good things what is a general response to your kidnapping story this is how it always goes okay okay say like hey i've been kidnapped okay i'll be you am i you okay hey i've been kidnapped oh my god i am so so sorry i had no idea people just don't know how to react in person it's immediately just like wow that's heavy and that's why i don't just walk up to people on the street and be like hey i've been kidnapped oh really you don't have a sign on your chest that says hi i'm kidnapped you know i don't say that to people in person you know every day yeah but i tell millions of people on the internet the connection is a little bit more from a safe distance people don't like they're not in the room with me and not looking at me and the actual eyes when i tell them i've been kidnapped it's like less pressure and they feel more like okay now i want to hear the whole story so online they're they're curious they want to know the story yeah i think it's cool that people are curious about experiences experiences that we normally label as traumatic the number one response i get is i'm so sorry i hated that that was the number one reason why i didn't tell people you don't want people to feel sorry for you right when someone says i'm so sorry that happened what's your automatic response i'm like oh it's yeah it was fine it's fine it's fine right it wasn't that big with you so it takes the burden and puts it back on the person puts you in this awkward position of having to like validate that you're okay and like what if you're not okay there's no good response from the person who is sharing the vulnerable thing to i'm sorry versus wow thank you for sharing that with me you should be really proud of what you did like you're really amazing that you got through that and so that's kind of become a platform of one of the things that i help to people to understand is yeah you know i understand that you do that because you want to convey affection and love for that person but there are other ways to do it they can also empower what are some of the wildest comments that you get in response to your story there's been a lot of people that tell me i'm lying about my own story they tell you they've commented on my videos they haven't like told me to my face i mean it might as well you have to read it it's there in your comments you have to read your comments because i have a different name on my amber alert yeah they're like that wasn't you you're just using someone else because it was a parent and it's not what their idea of kidnapping is they assume that it wasn't a real kidnapping that there was no danger involved because it was my dad and you went to an amusement park and that's the kind of the biggest thing it used to really bother me yeah and i've had to accept it when people would say i wish my dad would kidnap me and take me to an amusement park that's one that i've actually heard a lot it's like you don't you don't say that and i've never forgotten it 98 are just positive yeah amazing but you know i got one today that said just die in response to hearing about your kidnapping story correct yeah i don't know i got another one recently that said oh it's always the annoying ones that survive and my immediate responsibilities well you must have survived something terrible then um i don't remember them because i see them and i just kind of go what an idiot and then i report though and then you walk them and you're like you're on my account right exactly you came here yeah it's like if you walk into someone's house you're like i hate everything it's like you came here like i just i see these comments and i feel sorry for them if there's anyone watching who has experienced being kidnapped themselves is there anything that you want to say to them forgiveness is going to set you free if you continue to replay a memory or an experience or something that happened to you or something that's happening between you and someone else and it feels like there is unrest with that situation please please pursue forgiveness you have done absolutely the best that you could with a terrible situation just give yourself the grace and the space to heal and rest and do the best that you can healing is not a linear journey you don't just go from point a to point b and there's really no destination like you don't ever arrive you're not ever like i'm healed oh i feel so good to be here right like i have no more problems it's a lifelong journey do the best you can and you just keep going i spent a day with kidnapping survivors and one thing that really sits with me is the idea that our traumatic experiences from our past don't have to hold us captive forever and while my experiences are entirely different accepting the painful memories from my past as just that things that only exist in the past i've been able to disconnect from those memories and instead live life more fully in the present [Music] i watched your smosh pokemon videos so the pokemon realized it yeah so you know that they are amazing and then my acting is great yeah who's your favorite pokemon blastoise because he had bazookas on his back i mean how sick is that zapdos yeah because i mean and why choose one of them one when you can have them all got to catch them all you gotta catch all of them you must catch all of them no matter how expensive no matter how deep you need to get your wallet you need to catch all of them when you catch a pokemon it's kind of like kidnapping true

Channel: AnthonyPadilla

Views: 1,358,145

Keywords: anthony padilla, padilla, anthony, i spent a day with, interview

Id: GFWn-qv07_A

Length: 27min 23sec (1643 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Madridgal1510]

The two women are super inspirational (I already followed Kara on Insta), I just can’t tell if Anthony is genuine or in it for the views, some of his comments seemed a lil off. Keen to hear from anyone who has listened to more of his videos