[ominous music] If he gets this knife away
from me, he's going to kill me. He's going to kill me, then
he's going to rape my daughter. I heard one of them--
one of the guys, you know, say shoot her in the head. The wild dogs and the dingoes
were just waiting for me to-- to collapse so that I
couldn't fight them off. Blood is going everywhere. And I'm shaking. I'm thinking, he
ain't gonna stop. He come here to kill us. [theme music] [ominous music] I was at work, and a friend
of mine from high school showed up that I hadn't
seen in several months, and we exchanged numbers. And I told him, you
know, if he ever needed to talk or anything,
he was more than welcome call me, which he did
later that evening. And I invited him over. Well, he came over and we
just kind of, you know, chit-chatted. Pretty much it was just,
you know, crying the blues that, you know, his whole
life was falling apart. And, you know, he, you
know, proceeded to cry. And I reached over to
give him a hug, you know, a comforting hug. And when I did, he
turned to give me a kiss. Well, I pushed
myself away from him. And I was like, you know, whoa. Wait a minute. You know, we're not going there. He apologized. He seemed really
sincere in his apology. And, you know, he got in
his truck and he left. [ominous music] He says, I want to talk to
you about me and you dating. And I was like, no, Gerald. I said, we discussed
this last night. He's like, no. You need to shut up
and listen to me. And I was like, do what? He says, and I'm the
man you're the woman. He says, and you
will do as I say. And I was just like-- I was stunned. I was-- I didn't
know what to say. I'm thinking, you know,
where is this coming from? I said, you know, I thought we
understood one another that we could only be friends. He's like, oh. So you're saying you don't
want to go out with me. I said, yeah, Gerald. That's exactly what
I'm telling you. You know, we hung up
the phone and I just had this weird, eerie feeling
come over me like, you know, this ain't going to go away. [ominous music] It was 8:15. I was cleaning up dishes
from earlier that afternoon. I'd just put on a pot of tea
and was filling up a water jug. And my daughter, she was
on her favorite website. And, as I turned to walk
into the computer room, I started hearing all this
smashing of glass breaking. [suspenseful music] Before I could do anything,
he come-- you know, he unlocked the door and
he came charging at me. He had a ski mask on, no shirt,
and was pointing a rifle at me. I knew immediately who it was. And I started begging
him, you know, Gerald, what are you doing. Why are you doing this? And he smacked me. Then he kept screaming at
me, my name's not Gerald. My name's not Gerald. At one point, he even
turned around and looked at my daughter and
said, you got that? My name's not Gerald. [ominous music] If you've never been
to Western Australia, that place is absolutely huge. You could go for 200, 300
miles and not pass a soul. The place is a death trap
just waiting to get you, if you're not prepared for it. [ominous music] And we were only going to go
out for a couple of hours. There was no need to take
any safety gear or radios and whatnot, even though every
other time we'd gone out we had walkie talkies. The only things I had on me was
my detector, pick, my pocket knife. The sun was basically
directly in front of me. So I knew that when
I came back, the sun would have to be behind me. [ominous music] I looked up at the
sky and it had become very overcast to the point
where you just couldn't work out where the sun was. And I thought to
myself, oh, well this is going to be
slightly difficult. So I took my bearings
again and walked off again, thinking I was going
in the right direction. Basically, the trees
were just like a blanket. You're not tall enough to
actually see over the trees. And if you got down on
your hands and knees you could see
underneath the trees, but you wouldn't be able to say
for any great deal of distance. [ominous music] You think, well, I've
got to follow that sound. And I did that for 20 minutes,
just following this thumping sound until I realized that
it was the heart thumping that loud in my chest that
it was coming through my ears as though somebody was
thumping a piece of wood. I'd had a heart operation
12 months earlier, and I had to take tablets to
keep my heart going in rhythm. And-- and because I
didn't have the tablets, my heart was starting
to go a bit wonky. I came across this track and I
thought to myself, well OK, do I follow it or do I sit here. If I sat there, I'd have to stay
there for basically the night. And I wasn't looking
forward to that at all. I followed the track
for probably two hours, and it became that dark that I
just couldn't follow the track any longer. [ominous music] I saw a lot of car
lights driving around, trying to find me. So I basically packed
up what I had and went walking towards the lights
to try and catch them before they took off. But they didn't see me. I'd be waving my arms,
and yelling, and trying to get their attention, but they
put it in reverse and took off. And then I basically
just stopped. And I thought to
myself, oh hell, what am I going to do now? [ominous music] It's a lit parking lot. I mean, it's fairly big. My car, you know, was
the only car out there, because I was the
last one to leave. I noticed, out of the corner
of my eye, these individuals. There all were fairly young. They were somewhere in
their early 20s, late teens. And, as I'm walking
towards to my car, they're walking towards me. Before I can even get into my
car, one of the individuals was up, you know, right next
to me with the gun to my head. He instructed the other-- there were two females with
him, to get into the car. And they put me into the
back seat of the car. [ominous music] They didn't want
money or anything. They didn't take jewelry. You know, so I'm just
thinking what is their-- what do they want? From listening to
their conversation, they had instructions. If they were to
get someone, they need to put them into
the trunk of the car before they bring them back to
wherever it is they were going. And this dawned on them
that they didn't put me in the trunk of a car. I was still in the
back seat of the car. So they pulled over. I still can hear muffled voices. You know, they were
going through my purse. And, of course, I had my--
my driver's license and-- and they were saying my name. And my last name is
not a common name. And that's what I heard when one
of them say, I know this name. You know, we have
to get rid of her. [ominous music] I'd seen him take the battery
pack out of the back of the-- the cordless. He threw the phone one
way and the battery pack went the other. And he proceeded to tell me
start taking off my clothes. And, again, you know, I
start pleading with him, you know, please don't do this. I'll do anything you
want, but just don't do it in front of my daughter. [suspenseful music] He says, I want you to
get in that bathtub, he says, and I
want to stay there till I tell you to come out. Then he turns around
and looks at me, and tells me start
taking off my clothes. And, you know, I'm
begging him, you know, why are you doing this? You know-- you know,
what have I done? And, you know, so I start
taking off my clothes and he rapes me
for the first time. I'm playing with him, you know--
you know, please, you know, don't do this. You know, why are
you doing this? And he's smacking me. And he says, you know. What did I tell you, bitch? He says, I'm the man. You're the woman. He says, did I
tell you to speak? He's snatching me up by my
hair and he starts dragging me to the living room. I'm thinking, you know, if I
just give him what he wants, you know, maybe
he'll just go away. We go to the living room. He sits down on the
couch and he tells me, you know, to perform
oral sex on him. And I did. And he smacks me and he tells
me that wasn't good enough. So it tells me to get on top. And I did. And the whole time I'm thinking,
you know, he ain't gonna stop. He come here to kill us. And we go back into the
bedroom, and he tells me to get back up on the bed. And, at that point,
I'm like, I'm not going to let you do
this to me anymore. And he's like, you
heard what I said. He says, get up there now. And I was like, no. I said, you're going to
have to kill me first. And he was like, well, if
that's the way you want it, then that's why it's going to be. And he picked up the rifle. He pointed it at me. And I'm thinking, oh, my god. I'm fixing to die. [ominous music] When you're wearing
nothing other than a, you know, cotton shirt,
it's bloody cold. Couldn't sleep. You're too cold. And I spent my
night basically just shivering, and just getting
up and walking around, just to try and keep warm. [ominous music] The maximum distance I would
have been away from my camp, I would have thought, would have
been about eight, nine miles. Eight or nine miles
doesn't sound a lot. But, in Western Australia,
eight or nine miles might as well be 1,000 miles. I'd taken my shirt off,
waving the shirt at him, waving my detector at
them, yelling, screaming-- anything to help try
and get his attention. But after a couple of days
of sleeping in the dirt and lying around under
trees, the yellow shirt became rather reddish and
melded into the background quite easily. So I was very hard to spot. [ominous music] I decided that if
I was to be found, the one thing I needed to do
was get up high off the ground. I saw this large
outcrop of rock, and I knew I had to
get up to a high area. So I walked to that area. And whatever I had at my
disposal, I was trying. I'd scraped a big help
sign on a flat bit of earth that I was on. I'd broken off
branches of leaves so that it was contrast to the-- the ground, and
laid them into the-- the help sign that I'd dug out. [ominous music] The first time he didn't
spot me I said, well, OK. The next time I'll get him. By the time he came over the
next time and didn't see me, I was starting to say a few
choice words as he flew over. By the third or fourth time,
I was praying to God that he's got to be able to see me. You've got to find me. I don't want to be here anymore. [ominous music] I'm still in the
trunk and we're driving. It's about, maybe, 10,
15 minutes was the drive. And the car came-- came to a stop. More people start
to pile into my car. And I can feel just the
weight, you know, on the car. Then they take off. We're driving in, and I
could feel it was like, all these bumps and potholes. And it didn't feel like a road. So I thought I had to be some
kind of wooded area or dirt road or something. And when he came
to a stop, they-- they popped the trunk. And it was dark,
but it wasn't dark that I couldn't see other faces. I'm thinking, OK, they-- they're going to let me go. They're just going to leave
me out here and take my car. I'm not thinking that they're
going to do me any harm. One of the guys
that was with them, he helps me out of
the truck, you know, like he was this
perfect gentleman. I'm just looking there and
I'm thinking, OK, what now? One female, she has a gun. I heard job one of them--
one of the guys say, shoot her in the head. [ominous music] And he picked up the rifle. He pointed it at me, and
he pulled the triggered. By the grace of
God, the gun jammed. And he got mad, and he
started shaking his rifle. And he come charging
at me, and he hit me right across my forehead
with the butt of the gun. I feel, you know,
my head split open. Blood's going everywhere. And I'm still shaking. I'm thinking, you
know, oh, my god. I'm fixing to die. Well then, you know, he
throws me down on the ground and he starts stomping on me. And I throw my arms
up to protect my head. You know, I'm
bleeding everywhere. And I'm thinking to myself,
Lord, if it's my time, I'm ready to go. But please don't let
him hurt my daughter. Don't let him hurt my baby girl. Just make him stop. I mean, it's like he heard me. And I'm thinking I'm-- you
know, I'm praying to myself. And he's like, what's
the matter, Verna? Do you feel like you're dying? And I didn't say nothing. I just laid there. I seen him start
walking towards me, and I clenched up
thinking, you know, he's going to start
stomping on me again. But instead he's like, Verna,
call your daughter out here. Go ahead and call
your daughter out here so I can have my way with
her before I finish this job. [ominous music] The body was
starting to shut down. So, you know, kidney pains
and coughing, and the heart wasn't doing too well. You were thirsty as hell. You weren't hungry
because your stomach had shrunk to the
point where, you know, you just didn't want food. But you certainly
wanted to drink. [ominous music] I was basically going around
looking at certain plants, to see which ones would have
moisture in leaves and-- and that sort of stuff. And if I came across a
plant that had a little bit of moisture, I'd chew on it. My mouth was getting
very, very dry. I knew that I could
suck on a pebble and that it would create a bit
more saliva, so I did that. [ominous music] I knew that certain insects
and other type of animals, if I ate them, would
give me protein. I come across a termite nest
and I just bashed the top of it open. Basically, what
you do is you grab a little bit of grassy root
and you put it in your mouth and wet it. And when you open the
top of the termite nest, when they're crawling around
there, you just get the root and tap on the termites
and they stick to the root. They're not sour or anything of
that nature, but very flowery once they're in the mouth. And you start
chomping down on them. [suspenseful music] In between scavenging
for food, I was also trying to keep
an eye on the plane and try and get a
signal to the pilot as he is flying over
that, you know, I'm here. Come and-- come and get me. I was-- just totally dejected. He'd gone over me eight times
by that-- by that stage. I thought, well, what
have I got at my disposal? I've got a metal detector. And I knew there was
still life in the battery. And I knew that if I-- if I
could I arc it up big enough I could start a fire. And once I knew I could
get a fire started, there was only a matter of
time that I'd come and find me. I pulled the detector coil
apart and grabbed the wires out of that, and was
trying to arc the-- the batteries across so that
I'd get some sort of a spark. It did arc, and arc quite well. But the stuff that I was
trying to burn just didn't-- just didn't ignite. I basically cried like a baby. You-- you're just yelling
out to say, for God's sake, somebody do something
to come and find me. I'm here, you know. I'm not going anywhere. What else can I do? And you think to yourself,
my God, you know, I'm-- I stay here another-- another
day, I'm not going to survive. Sunday afternoon, about
5:30, just on dusk, I was on top of the ridge and
I could see some sort of lights way, way out in the distance,
and I would say probably around eight mile away. [suspenseful music] And I thought to myself,
well, I either sit here and wait to be found, but if I
do, I think I was going to die. You know, you've had the
plane go over you eight times, and they haven't spotted you. And I thought to
myself, well, all I can do is basically
head for these lights. [ominous music] She's pointing the gun at
me, and I'm looking at her. And she tells me to
get down on my knees. Something inside
of me told me no. I told her no. I was not getting on my knees. I knew by going to my knees, she
wanted to shoot me in the head, you know, and that was
not going to happen. My mom died a year before this. And that was still
pretty much on my mind. And I knew what her death
had done to my family. And I couldn't let that
happen to me, you know? Not so soon, you know? That was on my mind, you
know, that if this was-- if I was to die out
there, that that would just devastate my family. I looked at her
and I told her no. I was, you know, just as
strong and brave as I could. No, I'm not getting
down on my knees. If you're going to
shoot me, you're just going to have to do
me standing right here. [ominous music] And he stepped over me. He went into the bathroom,
where my daughter was. And, at that point, I know
he had his back towards me. And I thought, OK, I'm going
to get up and I'm going to run. As soon as he notices I'm gone,
he's going to come after me. So I did. I jumped up. I grabbed his gun. I ran to the kitchen,
and I took the gun and I hid it beside some boxes. And he's like, where
did you go, bitch? Where the hell did you go? He's like, I knew you'd do
this to me as soon as I turned my back. And, the same time, I was
coming out with a butcher knife in my left hand. He comes around the
corner, and I just started swinging with the knife. And I stabbed him
first time right here, and he starts backing up. And he's, like, mocking me. He looks at me and
he's like, ooh. And, you know, and I'm
steadily going at him. And he slips on the floor. And gets up and he grabs
a handful of glass, and he throws it at me. And I'm thinking, oh, my god. You know, I'm really
fixing to die here. We're rolling around on
the floor, and he's-- he's using my hands and
the knife jabbing at me, you know, and I'm trying
to dodge the knife. You know, and he's
a pretty big man. He's, like, you know, I would
say about 6'2", probably weighs about 210, 22. And, you know, I still
have control of the knife and everything, but I
feel him take the knife. And he starts sliding
it through my hand. And at that point I'm
thinking, oh, my god. If he gets this knife away
from me, he's going to kill me. He's going to kill me, and then
he's going to rape my daughter. [ominous music] I walked all Sunday night
to try and get in to where I thought the lights were. I had no torch or
anything of that nature. So I'm doing everything
in the pitch black. And, yeah, you're
tripping over logs. You're falling down creek beds. You're bashing through--
through the bush. The only thing that got me
through was the fact that I was using my-- my detector as a-- as a
walking stick, basically. But, by that time, my energy
level was getting to the point where any more walking was-- it was getting very,
very difficult. I could only walk
a couple of feet and I'd have to stop
and have a rest. [ominous music] I just had no energy left. And I started to hear-- hearing
dingoes and dogs barking. And I would hear some sort
of a rustle out in the bush, but I just thought it'd be a
kangaroo or something else. But they would have been just
sitting there watching me, and just waiting for me to
collapse so that I couldn't fight them off. And-- and then that's
when they would have come in for the kill. [ominous music] I knew I wasn't going to survive
any longer than one more night. You have tried everything
that you know that you can do. You haven't got any energy left. You're in pain. You know, this is it. I'm not going to survive this. And the dingoes were
very, very close to me. And I didn't want to be a meal. And I certainly didn't
want anyone to find me, you know, half eaten. I'd found this basically hole
in the side of a-- of the-- the rocks. And the opening was probably
three feet in diameter, and-- and it went in about five feet. And I looked at that
and I thought, well, that's a perfect place to die. [ominous music] She didn't-- she
didn't say anything. When she went to pull the
trigger on the gun, it jammed. And I told her, this is wrong. But as soon as that thought
went out-- went out my head, she pulled the trigger again. And that's the one that-- that hit me. It hit my right side
and it knocked me down. You know, I'd never
been shot before. You know, I don't know
what I was expecting. You know, but it was
more like someone just pushed you real hard. The first shot, like,
knocked me down. And after that, I
was just continuous. [ominous music] Yeah. I could feel the blood
just oozing out of my body. After the last shot I-- I didn't move, period. I'm thinking with
all those bullets, I'm pretty sure they
probably did thought I was-- I was dead. So I listened to them get into
my car and I did not move. And, you know, I
hear them drive off. After that, I think
OK, I have to-- I have to move. As I'm looking
around, you know, I noticed that there was this
tree stump that was not too far from me. It was maybe about
1,500 feet from me. I'm thinking, well, if
I can crawl over there and just, you know, hoist myself
up, maybe someone will see me. As I'm trying to get to this
stump, it's not happening. That first bullet broke my
femur bone, so I couldn't-- I couldn't get up. We're rolling around on the
floor, and he's on top of me. And he's, you know,
stabbing me with a knife. He stabbed me several
times in the head, on each side of my head. And I'm-- and I'm trying
to get-- you know, fighting to get him off of me. Then I started praying again. I'm like, please, make him stop. Make him stop. Don't let him hurt my baby girl. You know, I'm thinking
I'm praying to myself. And, again, it's like he
heard me and he asked me. He's like, so do you
still believe in your god? And I said, yes, I do. He's like, well,
where's your god at now? I said, he's here with me. And it was like, at that moment
something lifted him up off of me. Seriously, I mean, I cannot
stress to you enough, it was like-- almost
like my guardian angel. Almost, like, lifted
him up to his knees. [ominous music] And I stabbed him a couple times
in the chest with the knife. We had our contact
for just a minute, and he had that look
of fear in his eyes. And I took the knife and
I held it right here, holding with all I had, and
my blood going everywhere. My hands are killing me. My head's killing me. And then it was like
someone just let him go and he came down on
top of the knife. And he started, you
know, flopping around on the floor like
a fish, you know, going from his backside
to his front side. [ominous music] I ran to the bathroom. I'm totally naked, covered
with blood, head to toe. But I sat down on the
toilet and I'm, you know, trying to cover myself up. My little girl,
she's in the bathtub hidden behind the curtain. And I started talking to her. And I was like, baby, I said,
I want you to listen to me. She's like, yeah, Mommy? I said, I want you
to listen to me. I want you to do what I'm
telling-- tell you to do. I said, Mommy's going
to try to find a phone. I said, but for now, I said,
I want you to run upstairs. And, I said, I want
to lock the door, get up underneath the bed. I said, and I want
you to hide there. I said, if Gerald
comes looking for you, I said, I want you
to be very quiet. She said, OK, Mommy. And she pulled
back that curtain. She looked at me and she
said, oh, my god, Mommy. You're bleeding. You're bleeding bad. I said, it's OK, baby. I said, Mommy's going to be OK. I said, but I want you to go
do what I say, and do it now. So she started running,
you know, for the stairs. And I followed
behind her to make sure she made it to the
stairs OK-- you know, made it upstairs. And I went looking for him. My-- my thought at
that point was not knowing where he was at, what he
was capable of-- if he had went to his truck to get another,
you know, rifle or gun. I followed his trail and I-- you know, you can
tell where he had, you know, kind of, like,
slithered across the blood on the floor. I mean, 'cause there
was a lot of blood. I mean, there was blood on
the ceiling, the cabinets, the walls. And, you know, when I found him
he was crawling on his belly on-- on the back deck. I was so mad at that point
I wanted to kill him. I did. I just-- you know, I want to
tear him up at that point. And I'm like, come on. Get up. Get up, you son of a bitch. And he turned around
and he looked at me. And he just did like this. And I was like, yeah,
that's what I thought. You're done. I turned around, walked away. It took me about 10 minutes
to find the battery pack to my phone. And I finally was
able to call 911. [ominous music] And just as they
were putting me in, I heard them pronounce
him dead on scene. And I thought, oh, my god. Oh, my god. If I live to see tomorrow I'm
going to go to jail for murder. But that was OK because
I knew, at that point, my little girl was
going to be OK. And that's all that mattered. If I didn't live to see the next
day, I was OK with that, too. [ominous music] When I found this actual
cave, there's a few rocks nearby and I collected a few more. And I was basically just going
to go in there and brick this front of this bit of a cave
in and wait to die in there, and hope that what
I did wouldn't-- would keep the dogs
and the dingoes out. [ominous music] I'll miss you all, but I
haven't got any energy left. You know that I love you and
I wish I was there with you. [suspenseful music] I heard a gunshot. And I knew-- well, I thought
to myself I was hearing things, to start off with. I heard another gunshot, and
that followed by a loud yell. I didn't have any energy
or I couldn't yell. But I could whistle. [whistles] He'd yell, I'd whistle. He'd yell, I'd whistle. And I realized every
time he yelled, the yell was getting
actually closer and closer. When they pulled up, they--
they basically all jumped out of the back to the Ute utility,
and one of the Aboriginals had a bottle of water and-- and he basically
just threw it at me. That first mouthful
was like liquid gold. All that-- all that
searching for gold was nothing compared to that
first mouthful of water. [ominous music] Once I was able to-- to-- to get to the tree, I could
see the-- could see the road. The sun began to come up and
it started to get warmer. I'm yelling for help. And I'm thinking, why
doesn't anybody hear me? And just as this was going-- rattling on in my
mind, a car came-- came bye. As he was passing
by, I raised my head. And that's when
he turned around. And when he turned around
and he got out the car, there was a sense of relief. I-- I knew I wasn't
going to die. [ominous music] One of them was near my heart. One of them damaged my liver. I have extensive nerve
damage on my right side. And I still have two bullets
that I carry around with me now, that weren't
able to be removed. You know, they had kidnapped
two-- two other women that night. Same thing they did to me-- put
them in the trunk of their car. And they killed these two women. They shot them in the head. [ominous music] I was not going to die
that night, you know? I was not going to have my
family attend another funeral. That was not going to happen. I survived because I
was not my time to die. [ominous music] They'd been out there tracking
me for-- since the night I got lost. But I was
criss-crossing my areas and getting further away from
where I was to start off with. So the Aboriginals had a-- a hell of a time trying
to keep up with me. [hopeful music] The tears certainly
started flowing. All you want to basically
do is just give her a hug and not let go. The only thing that
basically keeps you going is the fact that you want to
survive to see your family. Nothing else is-- is important. I survived basically because
of the Aboriginal trackers, and such a big effort
from everybody else. I owe life to this
Aboriginal tracker. If it wasn't for him,
I wouldn't be here. [ominous music] I didn't think he
was going to die. You know, I'm-- that's
not what I wanted. I just wanted him to stop. I ended up with 300
stitches in my forehead, had to sew my eye-- my
left eye back together where he threw the glass
and it ripped my eye. It took about six
months for them to close the investigations,
but no charges were brought up against me. Self-defense. My daughter's-- you know, we
went through some intensive therapy for about
a year and a half. Considering what she
witnessed that night, she's-- she's a tough little cookie. She's doing pretty good. If it wasn't for her,
there's no doubt in my mind I wouldn't be here today. I survived because of
my faith, and the will to survive to keep
my daughter alive.
