I Survived... - Extraordinary Acts of Courage - Full Episode MARATHON | A&E

[Music] it was chaos bodies being thrown about um some still strapped in their chairs others thrown from their chairs smoke fire he bit me and I lost feeling in my left side of my face and it was like I was some piece of meat that they analed on we're at 37,000 ft and I think the possibility is that we could go straight down there is that it was pure Terror it was pure Terror we had no flight controls at all they were all absolutely useless it's something that can't happen so it's something we didn't practice or train for and the first thing is how do we keep this thing in the sky [Music] [Music] I've been waiting for 6 hours to get on the plane and immediately after they handed me my ticket they said we have no more seats available uh we need everyone to get on the plane because they're running late so I just felt relieved more than anything to get that last ticket beautiful day I think it was cloudless day all the way to Chicago uh we had taken off about an hour into the flight had uh 296 what they call Souls on board there were uh eight 11 crew members and the rest were passengers Al came back into the galley to brief with me and I remember thinking oh I've flown with him before he's really U you know he's really a good cap and it was just like it'll be a good [Music] trip and the captain told us there would be very little turbulence if any so I expected a a smooth 2-hour ride to Chicago we were being vectored by Minneapolis to get behind traffic going to Chicago they turned us back to head to Mason City and right after we leveled out from the turn there's this loud explosion and followed by vibration and I thought a bomb had gone off it was that loud and then he could feel the the reverberation from it as well he could feel the shaking and shuttering the vibrating inside the cabin for a good five or six seconds and then we started to go into a drop not a freef fall drop you could feel the plane start to go down ease down and the thought hit me that a terrorist has planted a bomb it's been detonated and that's it for everybody people don't survive bombs going off in Planes we're going to hit the ground sometime very soon and we'll all be gone at that [Music] point about that time Dudley our second offic he called my attention to his hydraulic panel and we'd lost all the Hydraulics which is something that cannot happen we had no flight controls at all they were all absolutely useless and that didn't make any sense to us it's something that can't happen so it's something didn't practice or train for and the first thing is how do we keep this thing in the sky I it was really really complete Panic inside the cabin I heard a lot of screaming they were there were plates and dishes and silverware being kind of tossed about because of our drop and U people who were on their feet including flight attendants were kind of thrown from their feet a little bit didn't hit the ground but kind of lost balance so it was um it it was the start of of a lot of chaos at that point when you have no Hydraulics the only way you can steer the airplane is by power now if you have anything that has an engine on each side like a boat or a plane or something that you have to keep your two power outputs together to go straight that we know uh if you put more power on one side you can skid the airplane one way our biggest problem was how do we do that and also control the altitude if you suddenly throw the throttles forward it's like a quick step on the accelerator you know pitches your back and your seat Well that pitches the nose of the airplane up and as the airplane starts up if you'd close both throttles that's like stepping on the brakes it pushes and those down but our problem was the airplane wanted to turn right and roll [Music] over we're making a series of circles to the right cuz the airplane would turn start to the right so if we drifted off our heading we just do a 360° turn and C the heading on the way back with the throttles and then fly that heading for a while until it starts to roll again I think we made four or five complete right hand circles I did feel it's taking a right turn which um I thought was very unusual you take a right turn to get on a heading and then you stay on that heading we just kept going around in circles I thought that was very strange and while all this is going on our Second Officer is calling our maintenance Bas in San Francisco for information on what to do but they didn't know what to do either and they actually called our our crisis center they didn't know what to do uh they call McDonald Douglas a manufacturer they didn't know what to do they call General Electric the manufacture they didn't know what to do so we're all kind of on their own up there I could feel that all eyes are on the flight attendance when something happens to see how we're reacting so the passengers know how to react and I just always had a very uh Poker Face in situations like that like there's absolutely nothing wrong um but because the priority is to maintain calm with the passengers and then I just went back to picking up trays as if nothing had happened as soon as we could we called our senior flight attendant up to the cockpit and told her what was going on so I did a very casual walk up um and knocked on the door like everything we're supposed to do and when the door opened I I just as I was walking up I was telling myself well we have an emergency here but when I open the door it just to this day it makes my skin crawl because it was like I just thought to myself oh my gosh this isn't an emergency it's it's the worst possible crisis it had to be 1 1452 and in the morning cuz it was a all night skating in so um basically I was just walking [Music] home my house is like maybe half a mile away so and I'm approached and accosted by somebody he kind of um like grabbed my arm like and I kind of just snatched it away and was like go away and I after I picked up the pace he didn't say anything he just grabbed me he I think he might have said something in Spanish but it was so gbed cuz he was like really really drunk like you can smell it was like a cloud of alcohol I wasn't scared I was more like peeved like annoyed like it's a bug that won't go away that's how I felt so I was walking and he continued to walk behind me but he was I don't know he maybe was a car length behind me so it wasn't like he was ride on me so I decided to cross the streets to try to I guess Shake him cuz I thought maybe he was walking the direction I was walking in cuz I've already told him no so maybe he got the message and he understood he crossed the street right behind me so I didn't think anything of it cuz I was almost home and I knew you know once I get through that the first door it locks so he's not going to be following [Music] me that was when I had enough of him following me and I wanted him to go cuz I didn't want him to know where I lived so that when I turned around to tell him to go away but I wouldn't have said that and I would have said something else I can't say it and he stopped he just kind of looked at me but felt weird like why didn't he why did he stop but when I'm talking to him I didn't know there was somebody else waiting in the shadows behind me [Music] I just thought to myself oh my gosh this isn't an emergency it's it's the worst possible crisis and it was nothing unusual there was no um erratic movements or or a hectic sense it was just what was hanging in the air that it was the worst possible crisis I just I could feel it it just hit me full force when I opened that door the only thing that stood out outside of what was hanging in the air that was so palpable was that both Al and Bill the co-pilot were in the same position gripping the Yoke and to just sense the strength that that was that was what what hit me so strongly is they were both in that position and the strength that that they were putting into that to try to control try to control the [Music] plane and all I remember is distinctly thinking we're at 37,000 ft and I think this the possibility is that we could go straight down there is that it was pure Terror it was pure Terror I said we are going to be as a crew we are going to be calm and these passengers are going to be calm I just absolutely will not even consider that we're going to lose control of this situation whatever it takes it was probably a good 3 or 4 minutes after the explosion and us going into a drop and coming out of a drop that we got our first exchange from the cockpit and that came from Captain Al Haynes and he told us it was not a bomb it was an engine exploding and I'm having a lot of trouble controlling the plane and he said I'm not going to kid anybody this is going to be bad uh you need to be ready for a crash [Music] landing I think after we had briefed the passengers demonstrating checking seat belts checking brace positions um that I stopped to think had I was there anything I had missed I realized that we had several lap children I think we had four lap children under two sitting on their parents' [Music] [Music] lap I just said that um they should place them on the floor and hold them and when I was saying that I thought this is got to be the most ludicrous insane thing I have ever said in my life I mean it sounds great in a classroom experience but in a real life experience I thought I am telling parents to put their most prized treasured possession on the floor and it's sort of like well let's hope for the best uh it was absurd I just thought I I cannot believe I am saying this but that's that's what I had we went to Sous City because that's where the airplane went we didn't have enough control of the airplane to put it down any place in particular we just had to keep going till it got to the ground and the idea was to keep it in the air hoping we could make the airport because there's facilities there there's emergency vehicles there there's Hospital people there if we could make the airport that's what we wanted to do the controller told us we were clear the land on any Runway and for some reason and I don't know why I don't remember saying it I laughed and said you want to be particular and make it a Runway I said it kind of struck me as funny we'll take Iowa just anywhere in Iowa get us down you know when you say you know your life flashes before your eyes on we never thought we're going to die we didn't think we're going to crash we thought you know if we can just get this thing to the ground and keep it flying we'll be okay and as long as it was flying there was no no Panic if we had rolled over and started that nose dive then maybe we would have panicked but uh we we're so busy you don't have time to think about anything else I never thought about my family at all it's just the job is just all consuming it that's and the responsibility it's probably one of the loneliest times of my life I call it a controlled Panic you could hear people crying you could hear people some people sort of crying out loudly but for the most part people kept calm I think we were all trying to figure out how we're going to survive this [Music] thing I was thinking we have a chance of making it and then then when they said brace from the cockpit over the PA and we all started yelling brace and it was like a a wind blowing over the Prairie and just everybody disappeared from sight when we got the command to brace which was about 30 seconds before we hit everybody went in that position and the only thing that I could hear were some kids either laughing or talking or crying otherwise it was pretty still there was nothing we could do now to get ourselves more ready for a crash landing we put ourselves in the mercy landing position and we just had to react to what was going to happen at that point um I just felt like it was my time to go and I guess the thought that people don't survive plane crashes kept coming into my head and I thought get that thought out of your head because you may survive this thing and if you're if you're dead or hurt seriously you can't do much but if you're not Don't Panic don't flee the plane help other people so then I felt somebody grab me from behind like really really hard and I just remember thinking what what is this about and I tried to jerk but the shorter the guy that was in front of me that I stopped to say go away too is right there and he kind of like I guess he kind of grabbed me by my waist because I was like kicking and screaming and saying no it was so close my mother could have looked out my window and saw it happening that's how close it was from the point where they when the guy grabbed me by my shoulders to the stir were it's only about um 6 or seven feet so it's not that long to it's not that far so he kind they kind of like carried me but I I was managed to grab a hold of the railing and I tried to I tried to hold on but my hand was slipping and it kept trying to grab my hand off and I'm just like if I let go then you know then then I'm done but I knew I couldn't hold on forever I'm not that strong of a person and besides you know it's two against one you know So eventually um they got my hands loose and so they just they dragged me down there the first one the shorter of the two he first he would he would get behind me and choke me and the one who was behind me the one I didn't know about was taking off my pants and at first he tried to penetrate me but I kind of fought him off and while I was fighting him off the other one would either choke me or he would bite me on my shoulder or my ear or my cheek and anywhere he could bite me um So eventually this is really weird and this is going to sound weird convinced them to use a condom I kind of begged like just please use one it'll be easier for all of us this please you know what you're doing as a crime and it'll be easier for you to get away that's basically what I said which is really sick when you think of it and he stopped and he took one out of his back pocket and I was thankful for that because things could have been a lot worse I guess at that point I knew I was going to get raped I just knew me against them I wasn't going to wasn't going to make it so I was going to just try to minimize the damage after if I was to live you know when you're 16 you think you're invisible and you're Immortal and nothing like that really happens there just stories that you read in Cosmo magazines and but when they dragged me down there is like I couldn't believe this is happening I just I just thought I was really like this cannot be happening to me about 300 ft the nose started down again and we started to go too fast the only thing is it was only 4 seconds before we hit the ground we were going twice as speed almost twice as speed we should have been and probably eight or 10 times the rate of descent that we should have had and it just hit way too hard we just smashed into the Earth it was just incredible I couldn't believe we could hit that hard and and still have all of our parts connected it was just unbelievable just I and even smashing into the Earth doesn't adequately describe how hard we hit the noise is incredible I mean it's it's louder than anything that I've ever heard in my life I tell people times 10 when we hit the ground that that sound of Steel on steel that meshing of Steel just it it just reverberated through the cabin and uh I wasn't ready for the impact I wasn't ready for the sound either there isn't anything I could do now I just said I think I'm going to just check out for a few minutes it was this the because the stress had been so great it was the last straw I just I blacked out when the airplane hit the ground I know we were going way too fast and too hard I was knocked out I don't know what I hit but whatever my head hit it knocked me out I could feel as hit down and and bounce a couple of times was the feeling I had and then I thought to myself as all this is happening inside the cabin all right there's probably some people dead already there's probably a lot of people hurt but when now we're going to Coast to a stop and about the time I had that thought we flipped over frontwards I could feel us kind of moving up in the air it almost felt like we were taking off in a flight where you leave the ground your wheels leave the ground but we just continued to go instead of the nose going up the nose goes down and the tail comes up we flipped over that way and I the thought hit me about uh cartwheeling uh I done I had some you growing up done cartwheels With Buddies you know and it just felt like I was up on my hands and just kind of flipping over onto my feet and that's exactly what we did people were thr thrown all about the cabin I mean still some still strapped in their chairs um some thrown from their chairs some just kind of moving around the cabin they were out of their seats whether their seat belts had given or the rivets in their chairs had given there were a lot of people moving about the cabin after we hit down and then debris and smoke and fire at the same time we flipped over once and then broke off in the rest of the aircraft and slid upside down and backwards for another 4,000 ft so we slid a long way after we flipped over and then we came to a very sudden stop literally the only light inside the plane was fire um the windows had dug in so far there was no light coming through the windows even though it was 4:00 in the in the afternoon uh the the overhead lights were out the the carpet lights were out and I couldn't see uh and smoke was filling up the cabin there there are a few bodies in our area most of them seem to be kind of piled up in one area for lack of a better term I guess uh but there were some people that that weren't moving at all and with the fire and the smoke I kind of found myself moving toward the people who were also moving knowing that right away after impact a lot of people in our area were not survivors I think about half of us survived half of us didn't it turned [Music] out maybe 50% of my mind was blocked off to contain the sheer Terror of you can't say it to yourself but it's life or death and now I realize I'm in fire it was just um if you've ever seen the sun in the morning come up over the horizon and it's this huge orange ball that was what I envisioned in my mind's eye that I was hanging in this and very specifically that it was this 2third of my body that was hanging in this fire and I just very calmly as calmly as I'm saying it now thought well this is it this is this is how I'm going to [Music] [Music] go the first one who approached me he was a shorter of the two he would get behind me and put me in a choke C so every time I would screen I would get choked out like I would it would be choked out to the point that I start seeing the black spots in front of my so I would I would you know calm down and I pretty much kind of cooperated because if I didn't then I would have you know either been killed or I would have been passed out and I wouldn't have the opportunity to get away when that opportunity presented itself so I just kind of um became passive well after the first one got done I got push further down the stairs so I kind of fell down a couple stairs ended up at the bottom and then the shorter one he had his turn so every time I would try to resist him he would sodomize me and I remember thinking like when he was going I just was numb I didn't move I didn't touch him I didn't do anything and I remember him like being mad at that that I didn't respond and he bit me on my breast and it hurt so bad he um he bit me and I lost like feeling in my left side of my face cuz I think he bit through a nerve and he bit me on my shoulder which left a nice Scar and he bit me on my my butt and it was like I was some piece of meat that they analed on and that's how I felt and it made me feel disgusting they would get violent when I would resist or I wouldn't respond like sexually to whatever it is that they were doing even when they were raping me it really sick to say this but they were gentle but if I resisted them then it then it would become violent but other than that it was kind of sick because it was like they were making an attempt to be actually intimate with me like gently which really is sick to me you know you're forcing me to do something but you're trying to put a Band-Aid on it by being gentle when you're doing it I just remember just looking up at the sky and the weird thing I remembered it was a spider web and usually I I don't like spider but I thought to myself you know if I'm going to die here tonight just let me look at one more thing even if it is a spider it's better than having to look at nothing even though I I clearly hate spiders so I just stood there and I looked up and I just looked at the spider web I just thought that I'm not going to live somebody's going to come in the morning and find my body here my mother's going to have to bury me and it just broke me I was knocked out I don't know what I hit but what ever my head hit it knocked me out and I just very calmly as calmly as I'm saying it now thought well this is it this is this is how I'm going to go it was very it was the most Serene moment I've had in a lifetime and I realized oh my gosh I'm still thinking I was just amazed I thought if I'm thinking I'm still alive so the job just kicked right in right after that thought it was like well we're out of here and I knew that airplane backwards and forwards in the dark because I worked it so much and yet there was it was like waking up on another planet I I was instinct instinctively looking for some light and in the darkness I thought I saw somebody hanging at a 45° upside down angle and as I pulled him free I heard somebody back behind me say there's an opening so I immediately went back and uh sure enough there there was this big open hole where where the first class Galley had been well we found ourselves kind of hurting people literally to the back of the plane away from that wall of smoke and after about what I'm guessing 2 or 3 minutes inside the cabin after we came to a hole I saw an opening I saw sunlight behind me cuz I saw people merging through that hole to the outside and I thought well that's my way to get out that's our opening I I saw sunlight and cornstalks out there and I thought stay in as long as you can and try to help people and then get out that hole I was focused on get these people out get people out and they were I was holding this debris back and they were walking by me and it felt like I could have been saying thank you for flying with us today it was so calm and and I guess because we're all in shock in in the back of my mind I thought this could blow up any minute and I probably should be going further in Into the Darkness to look for people but this smoke was coming towards my position it was I have never seen anything so dark and so lethal this dark gray and like like you would see a tornado except it was coming what was now the ceiling had been the floor just roing towards my position that uh were trained when the the fire is too hot the water's too deep and the Smoke's too thick that you leave so that's when I left well I was standing at the edge of the opening there and just trying to help people out the back I was choking and I thought I got to get out of this plane myself so I thought look around see if you can grab somebody else on the way out I didn't see anybody else I thought was in a position where I could get them and so I just took a couple steps out in the cornfield it seemed like there were people going in every direction when I did get far enough uh the first person that I ran into was the mother of this 22-month old boy and I knew she was headed back to the wreckage and I just stood in her way and she said I have to go back and get my son and I just told her what I thought would stop her uh I said there are men who who will go and get him and I continued to block her and she said then she looked up up at me and she said you told me to put him on the floor and it would be all right and he's gone I thought about an explosion I thought the the wreckage might explode it always does on television so I started uh thinking about sprinting away from the the wreckage and about the time I thought thought I heard crying back inside the wreckage and I didn't I didn't think about it I didn't weigh a risk I I didn't think if I go back in the plane I might not find my way back out or I might I might find a child I just heard it and reacted the next thing know I'm back inside the plane it was so close my mother could have looked out my window and saw it happening that's how close it [Music] was the one who was behind me would either choke me or he would bite me on my shoulder or my ear or my cheek and anywhere he could bite me for 45 minutes they took turns raping me I definitely thought I was going to die like if I had to Shadow over doubt I thought that was my last night on Earth at first I was thinking you know I just resign myself but after a while I thought do I really want my family to have to bury me at 16 no so that was when I got up and I was like this is not going to happen this is where it stops I remember clearly what they were doing one of them picked up the condom and I remember looking at it and it had like grd and dirt on it and I was like can't use that again so he turned around to find his pants cuz everything was scattered all over the place my clothes and everything were ripped and I didn't have anything on from the waist down one of them was looking for the condom and the other one was a lookout so I when I saw my my opportunity to leave and I remember just standing up and said tell me just get your keys and run and I looked around and I saw something I saw like it was like the moon shining on my keys and I grabbed them and I ran and I don't even know how fast I was running and I jumped over anything that was in my way but I just red I didn't look [Music] bad I didn't think about it I didn't weigh a risk I I didn't think if I go back in the plane I might not find my way back out or I might I might find a child I just heard it and reacted the next thing you know I'm back and inside the plane through the smoke just uh honing in on the cries is how I I found the baby I I couldn't see anything at this point it was completely full of smoke and the baby somehow was just a couple feet back inside the wreckage not very far back in I didn't have to go very far at all it sort of was she was just sort of there and um was able to get her out of what I believe today I'm not positive I think was an overhead bin I think the baby was thrown into an overhead bin which amazingly had closed and locked on her and I had to actually lift a latch and lift the lid up to get her out and as soon as I grabbed her I just sort of scooped her out of this hole with with one arm and as soon as I touched her and put her in my arm she stopped crying and the conscious thought hit me that maybe she wasn't even alive maybe she had died in this this interim and so I held her out in front of me and she was fine she was alert and conscious and she had a little scrape on her face she had a cut just below her left eye and I I wiped that blood away that was coming down her cheek with my sleeve and and that was it that turned out the extent of her injuries thrown we're told later about 20 rows inside that plane into an overhead bin and comes out with a scrape on her [Music] face and I just stood in her way and she said I have to go back and get my son you told me to put him on the floor and it would be all right and he's gone and I really started to get some feeling back at that moment because as a mother uh you can certainly relate that I just thought to myself I'll live with this for the rest of my life but I just looked down at her and I said it was the best thing to do it was all we had but I think at that moment I knew that there had to be something else that this was just as I said when I was making the announcement it was it was so absurd to tell people to put the children on the floor I came to in the cockpit after the crash and Dudley was talking to me the Second Officer he was talking to me and I vaguely remember that and from that time until the next day they just bits and pieces of things that I remember we were separated from the airplane about maybe 40 50 yards just our little section of of the cockpit uh we were upside down of course and crammed in the cockpit very tight my I was actually my face was on the floor of the cockpit goes we upside down and so was everybody else's uh and I didn't know what was going on I just suddenly found somebody looking at us through a window up there and then that's the things that I remembered first of all they didn't see us for half an hour they didn't know that iron Mass was a cockpit and then they uh they had to use cranes and chains to break the cockpit apart to get us [Music] [Music] out almost everybody around me died in the crash um the woman across the aisle for me died the guy behind me died it was a one-year-old boy sitting the seat right in front of me he was on the floor between his mom feet she survived the crash and he died so I'm in a middle of a group of people who perished in the crash and the section of the planet we were in about half of us lived half of us [Music] didn't we turned out 185 survived one died later on and 111 were died at the crash or because of the crash and then one the one died so 112 uh perished and 184 survived I think kept a a pretty Stern face for about an hour and a half after the crash uh because I was with a lot of survivors who were waiting to go to a hospital and we had to kind of I think keep keep he for each other and when I finally broke down is right before I went to the hospital in the ambulance I got a hold of my dad and I just told him I was in this crash in Sous City a lot of people died but I'm alive I was crying the whole time I couldn't speak I couldn't talk to my dad which is amazing we're extremely close and I thought if you're able to talk to anybody after this it should be your father and I just I couldn't get anything out for 3 days I would not let TV or newspapers or anything into the room because I needed to talk to the National Transportation safety board once they came in and did their interview I said okay now we can turn the television on my wife was standing by the bed they turned the television set on and it was just as if you queued up that video of the crash and when I saw the crash I said who was that and she said that was you and I said no it couldn't have been cuz no one's going to survive it it was just incredible it's you just couldn't believe that anybody would have survived that to have broken up into to three different sections and uh and flipped over and and yet I believe that was the most survival survivable section and probably it all happened in about 15 seconds [Music] and one of them was looking for the condom and the other one was a lookout so that's when I saw my my opportunity to leave and I I I never dashed up a flight of stairs so fast in my life and I don't know it was like one fluid movement and I know they scur I could hear them like scurrying in background to get their stuff and leave but I didn't care I just wanted to get [Music] home I just ran I didn't scream or anything I just ran so I just ran home like just ran straight to the door I was like naked and bleeding and bruised but at the time when I was running I didn't think about any of that it was just like sheer adrenaline like I didn't feel any pain or anything so I guess when I got through the first door I ran upstairs to and I opened my second door and I just ran up the stairs to my mother's room and just say they raped me and it I just scamed it and she jumped out of bed and my step father jumped out of bed my sister and brother jumped out of bed too and my mother called the police cuz the way the um the witness stand is and the way the um I guess um the defense table was it was right across right across each other but what really what really like killed me was that he just there was times he didn't even look at me he would just look down and there was sometimes he would just look at me and just would just stare blindly like like he had no idea why he was here like he had came through my life and wrecked my world and didn't have a clue about who I was and that would burn me up [Music] inside I figur you know rape is not about sex it's not about desire and wanting somebody is about control if I wake up every morning and think about what has happened to me then they are controll in my life and no matter how many years in prison they get they can be put under the jail they've won they've done set out and did what they had to do and I can't live with that I'm not really a one to hold a grudge I've already forgiven them but I've never [Music] forgotten one of the biggest problems with an accent like this is not only you know is the guilt of survival the fact that you survived and someone didn't I I didn't realize how serious that is that was one of my biggest problems was why was I allowed to survive when so many people did not the post-trauma stress was that was tougher than the crash itself in in many ways uh the survivor's guilt hit me like a a ton of bricks I never saw it coming I felt like I should have been the luckiest guy in the world I survived this crash and everybody around me died and I couldn't feel that I just felt guil guilty because all these people were were gone including a one-year-old boy in front of me I survived because I honestly feel there was still work for me to do here and uh it it didn't take me long to uh discover exactly what it was [Music] people ask me why I survived I have no idea I was just one of the fortunate ones like 183 others I survived because I didn't want my families to have to bury me I didn't want that to be the last day I wanted to see the sunrise again I want to I want to get married I want to have kids and I don't want my life to end like that I want to live to be 100 you know I want to live to see a whole Century of the world but I knew if I gave up that day that was not going to happen and I just couldn't live with myself if that was if I gave [Music] up the blood was just pouring out of my neck I felt the Bullet Hole and I just stuck my finger in the hole and plugged it the skin on my head was de gloved and pulled forward from ear to ear basically like being scalped I mean this guy was Psycho he had like female undergarments 20 knives and a hatchet he had Satanic ritual stuff he said if you move move while you scream I'm going to take this knife and cut you up into lots of pieces [Music] he uh said that you know he had met Scott you know fishing and they had caught some trout and Scott had told him to meet him back at Camp my impression of that man wasn't nothing out of the ordinary he was really thin um his dog was really thin too it was very thin you could see Its Ribs Scott showed up right after he did here's the guy that I had met that day talking to Shawn and the dog sitting there they had built a fire already they were sitting around the fire talking he had a big beard sort of straggly looking um I mean he had on clean clothes and he had on nice like fatigues are camouflage clothing real expensive hunting boots you know and um I mean he didn't look like you know just some bum but he looked like he'd been out in the woods for a few days and he sort of had to look to me he was sort of frail looking so he had to look of maybe he was an alcoholic I said well you know we're going to grill some hamburgers and and some of the trout we had caught and I said would you like to just stay and have dinner with us and he says well sure and we all sat and ate together I even grilled a couple of trout and fed it to the dog it started getting up toward the edge of dark he stood up and walked around between sea and I walked behind me went over to the dog said oh boy we better go slaps his leg for the dog to get up next thing I know bam my head is just ringing my left ears ringing like crazy I hear just boom you know [Music] where we live is the North End of Teton Valley which is a horseshoe shaped Valley um and the Horseshoe opens to the north up to Yellowstone uh nice area in our area predominantly is more black bear but there are grizzly bear around that uh stay high in the mountains typically a bear doesn't want to mess with you as much as you don't want to mess with a bear it's right at dusk of where when you're walking out in the woods you can just barely see the the trunk of trees when you look up to the sky you can see the uh branches of the trees kind of silhouetted against a a real you know dark blue sky this time of year still pretty cold in ton Valley probably about in the evenings probably about 30° 25 30° so I had on a big down jacket and uh my pj bottoms the only lights that we had on the cabin which I could just make out from where I was were Christmas lights that we still had up so I could just see those through the woods I walked about 150 yard maybe and uh got down at trees ladybug stopped barking at that point I kept calling for her looking around and that's when I saw the bear on the snow pads charging me from about 50 ft away [Music] [Music] right after we moved in my roommate's father came over for brunch and he made a comment to my roommate and said the next time I come I'm getting you bars on your windows my treat and my roommate said why because I guess we were kind of naive and young and he said because you're on the ground floor outside the living room window there was a small playground and a lot of trees and it was quite dark I'm in this beautiful apartment with my best friend and I have this job that I love and it was just that peaceful Sunday night kind of drifting off to sleep feeling and all of a sudden I heard a really loud jolting noise and I didn't see anything and the noise stopped so I quickly recovered and I thought in my head don't be paranoid that must just be a car door outside or something happening because you're on the ground floor and you're going to hear noises so I started to drift back off to sleep this presence this feeling something made me open my eyes and there he was I could see his eyes very close to my face and I could see the tip and The Shining of a knife [Music] I hear just boom you know and that's when he shot me right here in the side of the face um he shot me so close I had powder Burns all over the side of my face and I you know stood up really quick and turned and when I turned towards him and Scott I hear another pop and I see like fire coming from his hand um you know toward Scott I I never saw the gun I I it was a small caliber 22 and I mean it was just as big as his hand I you know and that's all I saw was his arm pointed out and I just heard the shots you know we were face to face at that time and I I guess it was a moment of just being frozen I was frozen I was cussing at him and screaming and he was totally silent no expression he just looked like just someone who was going you know out for murder he wanted to kill me and it was going to do it this guy was out for blood and then scottt ran he turned and ran through the woods I ran for cover I knew behind my tent there was a clump of cedar trees and a little dirt Mound and I knew if I got back behind there that that he couldn't shoot me you know he'd have to come after me to shoot me I got behind the trees and that's when I realized I was shot I I never felt the the shot I never felt anything and like the blood was just pouring out of my neck every time my heart beat the blood would squirt like 6 inches out of out of the side of my neck and I went and I stuck my finger I felt the Bullet Hole and I just stuck my finger in the hole and plugged it and then I saw him shoot sea in the chest [Music] I could tell it was a Grizzly uh a big part of it was the size of the bear but also uh the way the bear loped and um grizzly bears have a large uh mass of muscle over their front shoulders at that point the bear was probably uh 50 ft away or so which uh startled me to the point of I didn't think of the correct thing to do which might have been to Stand My Ground instead I I turned on my heel and uh maybe took one or two steps and that's when the bear toppled me the bear was approximately between 350 and 400 lb so it was it was a reasonably sizable bear and it didn't it didn't have any problem picking me up the first place the bear uh grabbed me was on my back um it picked me up and kind of flopped me around a little bit like a rag doll bang me on the ground a little bit uh it released me snapped me a couple more times on my butt and then it grabbed the hold of my head [Music] [Music] he was about 5'8 clean cut medium build kind of stocky nice build he had an unusually calm soft voice and he said if you move or you scre scream I'm going to take this knife and cut you up into lots of pieces I didn't scream because I knew that if I screamed I would die I immediately felt myself detached from my body because I became so paralyzed with fear I couldn't believe that this was happening this couldn't be happening he proceeded to rape me and sodomize me and every few minutes it seemed like he would take the knife and make it apparent that it could easily go into my throat and slice me up and kill me at that point I knew what I was dealing with and I knew that if I didn't feed this sick twisted mind and give him what he needed I was is going to die I needed to keep him calm and to keep him calm I had to tell him he was great he repeatedly said to me you like this don't you you think I'm good and I kept feeding him answers like you're great it's great that you chose me he was thrilled he was like really am I that great are you glad I came he was almost like a little kid getting approval from a parent like he was thrilled he loved these comments lights were coming through every once in a while hitting his face while he was raping me and I remember thinking if only the people on the passbys outside knew what was happening to me and it was a very intense feeling of helplessness and frustration I felt all alone because nobody knew he said now I want your money and I remember him taking me by the hair with the knife in my throat and bending down and I was using this old trunk that I had had for Sleepaway Camp years prior and in the trunk was an envelope with like $12 and I remember giving that to him and thinking when he finds out it's only $12 is he going to get mad and kill me after all this and he then said to me I know you're not here alone and if you lie to me I will kill you and at that point he said take me to your friend [Music] and I ran maybe took a step or two towards the Killer and when I did he turned back and shot me in the chest and at that time I'm probably still maybe 10 ft away from him so I ran from my car and um when I did that he ran after me he actually circled around Scott's truck and came at me from the front of my car and this guy didn't say a word he's doing this cold blooded like no word no expression I started my Jeep peeled out and as I'm driving away he's right by the window when I saw Shawn pull out I knew I had to get down to the road to to get in there so so we could get out of there and get to somewhere where we were safe um you know at at the time I didn't know I was shot in the back I just knew I was shot in the neck I knew if I didn't get help that that we were going to bleed to death and die up there my window was down I actually put my hand out and blocked the gun at that point I don't know if his gun locked up or ran out of bullets or what but the shooting stopped and that's when I jumped down got my head down you know and just fored the fored the gas and I knew if I got to the road Sean would find me there and um so I mean I just took off I mean it it was right at dark and the brush there is really heavy and dense so I mean you're you know pushing bra branches out of your way and trying to climb through everything and I mean I just did what I had to do I knew I had to get to that point and and it was life or death if I didn't and as soon as I got around the corner he was standing there by the side of the road so I lock the brakes up he jumps in he's bleeding like crazy he was probably worried about me cuz I couldn't talk cuz my when the bullet went in here it made my mouth swell up my face swell up my jaws swell up like I couldn't say anything I was just lucky to breathe really so you know Scott's like we've been shot let's go I just knew when I jumped in that we had to get to the bottom of the mountain it's about 5 to 6 miles to even to a house and then it's another 40 mil to a hospital so I mean we're 40 to 50 mil from from any help whatsoever and uh when I jumped in I looked over it on and I could see he was shot in the face you know and I and uh I I was like oh man you know he he shot in the head I I couldn't believe he was even driving but I punched it I was going 3540 off the get-go and um as soon as I picked him up we're on there a straight stretch there before you get out to the main road and that's when I realized you know my vision and my right eyes is going [Music] [Music] he grabbed hold of me and you know whipped me Whipped me around kind of like a ragd doll and then it grabbed a hold of my head um at that point and uh and gave it a pretty good squeeze I could hear my skull kind of uh pop that happened over a period of maybe oh two to three minutes I definitely thought about my wife and my boy Henry of uh you know that it wasn't really time for me to to go I thought you know gez this bear might want to pull me further down into the woods and and use me as a a food source I used to have this perception of um being killed by an animal was somehow a uh Noble way to go and when that was going on I was thinking to myself that's one of the dumbest thoughts I've ever had the bear picked me up thumped me against the ground a few times um as he took my head and and had a hold of my head he did kind of a uh shaking it into the ground at that point I did realize that I needed to play dead [Music] [Music] I kind of knew I had to comply and in a way way there was like Comfort because I knew that maybe the burden would be off me for a few minutes as he was taking me from my bedroom to my roommates he took me and was kind of pulling me I had a lot of hair pulling me by my hair in the dark with a knife kind of playing games like poking it a little bit never all the way in but there was a real sensation of the knife back and forth on my my throat and I was totally numb I didn't feel any bodily sensation and that was my way of protecting myself obviously but just the nature of his mental illness and his craziness I realized that at any moment I could die he asked me if I was married and I told him no I wasn't and I said are you and he said said yeah I just got married about a year ago then I said does she know where you are right now and I think he said no and I said well you know you're going to go home to her soon because I'm sure she misses you because look how great you are and like those comments did so much for him it made it even more apparent how dangerous he was and how sick something wasn't right I knew instinctively when he and I were about to enter her room and I was going to tap her gently to wake her up that she was going to scream and freak out and be horrified and I knew that she wasn't going to be able to contain her emotions the way I had and I knew my job now was to keep her calm and composed and to keep him to continue to keep him calm we entered the bedroom and I tapped her and in a really composed calm voice I said you need to wake up you need to wake up there's a nice man here that needs to R wants to rape you and I'm fine and you're going to be fine and he just finished with me you just need to cooperate is [Music] it's a small small dirt road in the mountains it winds down you know there's there's embankments and and on the other side it's just a drop off scott screaming at me to hit the brakes and I'm locked it up sideways in the road we came in too fast into the curve and we slid and almost went over over the bank the the wheels were about 6 Ines from going over just I mean like a 30ft drop off you know wrecking the car I mean that was the least of my worries I thought we were just going to die we didn't know if he was behind us and we knew there was another vehicle there with keys in it because you know the music was playing it was turned on so we didn't know if he was coming after us or not um to tell you the truth I just had to focus on getting help we we make it about a half a mile and and we have to make this sharp left hand curve Shawn drives up on the embankment and we almost flip there's rocks flying in into the windshield it busted the windshield that's when I guess I blacked out or you know everything went haywire and I grabbed the steering wheel and I'm holding my neck at the same time I grabbed the steering wheel and I'm like Sean Sean and I said well let me drive let me steer and I'll tell you when the to work the gas and the break Sean couldn't talk where he was shot in the face and so he wasn't really saying anything and I I was really concerned about him we are doing like 40 to 50 m hour on a road that you could normally do 20 you know I thought hey I'm going to just die right here I'm not even going to make it down the mountain you know we're they're going to find us in this car dead [Music] I had to convince this bear that I was no longer a threat you know whether or not the bear truly believed was dead as long as the bear believed that I was submissive I could hear ladybug barking in that area uh and she was definitely trying to pull the bear off of me or or distract the bear and then the bear uh released me and started to walk away I think at that point too the bear felt that it had to uh deal with ladybug it felt that I had been dealt with and it wanted to um try to deal deal with ladybug and and push her out of the area so that's kind of why it left me alone I could hear the bear uh starting to walk away in the woods and I made the assumption that uh the bear had no longer interest in me it assumed that it had thought it had done its job and it was leaving the area so I laid there for about 30 seconds to a minute and uh that's when I uh made the the move to stand up I could just see those through the woods and that's kind of uh what I keyed in on but yeah the the adrenaline had definitely kicked in of where I was um knew I had to get back to the cabin soon as I stood up I heard the bear approaching again through the woods [Music] and at that point she absolutely lost her mind she just started wailing and I saw he started to become agitated and I knew that him becoming agitated was going to probably be the death of us we were on the edge of that knife going into our throats and killing us and he had the knife on my throat and a hand over her mouth and he proceeded to rape her and he was getting pleasure out of me watching and saying things to me like do you think it's good do you think I look good eventually eventually after what seemed like hours when he was finished with her there seemed to be like a stopping point and maybe he was tired at after all this I said to him you know this was great but why don't you go now so we could get some rest he said to me it was great I said was it great of course it was great but we all need to rest now don't you think [Music] when we got to the bottom of the Mountain uh there's only about five houses there and the the house we stopped at it just had the lights on when I said stop here these people will help us and that's exact my exact words to Sean well he just stops in the road I jump out and I go up and I bang on the door as hard as I can and uh I said call 911 call 911 me and my friend have been shot and they come to the door and and they see me standing there and I am covered in blood and they sat me down on the porch and then they went out and got sha out of his Jeep and walked him back over to the porch and sat him down and we sat there and they called 911 uh they got us some towels and some you know some I think water um and just tried to you know be there with us and try to you know hold pressure on our wounds I was like man you know my my friend is going to die right here on this porch in front of me um I thought I was okay okay and I looking over and Scott's got his hand like this like you know one finger here one finger there holding the holes no I said if I pull my finger out of here I said I'm going to bleed to death right here um so I I waited till the ambulance got there and there was two helicopters there and uh they loaded me into one of them well then I was laying there and I was watching them work on me the two women over top of me and um I heard one of them say I don't think he's going to make it to the hospital and I'm sitting there thinking to myself man maybe I'm I'm getting ready to die in this helicopter you know I I that's then I started thinking maybe that's why I can't feel my body may maybe I am dead well then I hear her say that like I don't have a [Music] pulse I heard the bear approaching again through the woods um kind of crash through the woods and immediately Dro back down into a uh into a ball uh the bear got on me again and uh snapped at my back I was essentially scalped from uh one ear to the other my skin was Del gloved and pulled back up over my head um had large lacerations that went down to my uh rib cage from my shoulder down and around my back I had blood trickling down my face uh my back left side was you know kind of numb and and not working quite as well as I wanted it to after the bear left the second time I laid there for maybe two to 3 minutes but there was that concern of I'm bleeding uh fairly heavily so I do I need to work my way back and I I kind of understood at that point that I was probably going into shock so what I decided to do was uh get on my hands and knees and crawl as I was crawling towards the cabin ladybug I could tell was not far off in the woods and paralleling me uh up through the woods barking she was just kind of uh acting as a as a you know a bodyguard at that point Jenny heard the dog heard ladybug barking and she thought it was kind of unusual that the dog was barking right outside the cabin as soon as I got onto the porch and was going to go in she opened the door by the time I got to the cabin I was definitely laded from loss of blood and I started getting real cold she got me a pillow and a blanket to cover up with and she called 911 [Music] I said to him you know this was great but why don't you go now so we could get some rest and maybe we'll see you know about another time because it was really great having you and I'm I'm saying this to him and knowing how twisted and bizarre that is that I'm saying that but knowing that that's how I'm going to live through this and that's what's going to save my roommate and myself and it worked and he bought into that like a little kid in a candy store and he backed out of the room and he got a little violent and said don't get up yet though until I'm out and he backed out of the room with the knife and I remember hearing the front door shut my roommate's reaction was like let's get up and I was like no I just didn't feel safe yet and after a few minutes I said now we could get up and call the cops the next thing I remember we were in the ER being examined we never went back to that was it for the apartment although the next day we did have to go and meet with detectives and police officers and they had to dust the window sills and and all the logistics of that but my stuff was immediately moved out of the apartment I never slept there again and I moved back in with my parents that lived nearby when the cops came to our apartment and did fingerprints and dusting we did find out that he entered our apartment by taking a bar or a crowbar and jamming on the living room window we later found out that he his apartment shared that same Courtyard as us and that was really eerie knowing that this is a man that was my neighbor and has been watching us stalking us he a few weeks later wound up raping another young woman that shared the same Courtyard and he said to her I've just raped two others I identified him at the lineup and then this woman who was raped a week or two later identified him so both of us had a positive ID on him and I guess the fingerprints at some point matched I think I survived because of my composure my faith and this sick sense of intuitiveness and instinct which took over my life has been permanently altered because of this but it did give me a sense of well maybe there's a purpose that this happened to me maybe it's so I could share my story with other people it seems to help other people knowing that there are other ways to survive other than fighting back because a lot of times for women fighting back physically is not even an alternative [Music] the skin on my head was de gloved and pulled forward from ear to ear basically like being scalped uh there was laceration coming down from my left shoulder all the way down and around my rib cage and then another large uh laceration that travel from the same side and then down across my my buttocks total in for about 300 stitches or so I survived because of having some knowledge on what to do in a bear encounter uh my dog uh even though she got me into the encounter in the first place she certainly help me out this was just a a natural event the bear had no Mal intent whatsoever you know it was uh it was just defending its territory it was more uh working me over and trying to State the fact of this is this is my kill this my territory you know lick your wounds and go home [Music] it was I feel uh to some degree unfortunate that the that the bear had to be destroyed we you know kind of petitioned to have it moved if they could but uh they felt that that uh for safety the best thing to do was to put the bear down I don't think bears just kill things for killing things and be quite honest I still probably feel safer in an area in the woods where it's dark than I would uh you know maybe in a large urban area [Music] I knew that you he was a lot worse than I was especially once he had to have surgery and I didn't miraculously they told me they're like look you know you had a lot of muscle mass in your chest it pushed the bullet over to the side it's in your ribs it didn't penetrate anything he said the bullet in your face went into your nasal passages and just ricocheted around I was in in recovery room by 4:00 in the morning and the uh police officers come in to interview me and they told me they said well from what we understand he saw the police and he just shot the truck up a bank and flipped it over on his hood basically you know I guess trying to kill himself or whatever and then they also said that he did live and they've got him in custody in the hospital the same Hospital we're in the day after I got out of surgery I um I one of my family members brought the newspaper into my room the headlines of the paper said the at killer strikes again uh the the at would be the Appalachian Trail and that's when I really say oh man this guy you know he was a serial killer [Music] [Music] he was found with you know like six pairs of eyeglasses dirt uh bloody clothes uh female undergarments he had like 20 knives and a hatchet he had Satanic rituals stuff he had Wicked religion stuff based on what they found I mean I would assume that he had done that to some other people and that's a huge area and very mountainous I mean it's it they may never find them you know if they're up there and I sort of thought well maybe this is like Karma you know this was Karma this guy had had it coming to him uh for doing all this stuff to these [Music] people it's a beautiful area I mean I've been going there for years um and I have I've been fishing over there since then all the people you meet on the Appalachian Trail I me they're sort of the same type of of characteristics in everybody they're you know they're usually trustworthy people I I guess I just ran across the wrong one at the wrong time I mean this guy was Psycho so I'm just glad he's dead and you know glad it worked out great for Scott and I I mean we other than a few scars you know we're fine

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Id: KTbHIaOUwEk

Length: 89min 56sec (5396 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024