Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Can't Even Explain The Type Of Fear That I Felt
Episode Date: September 20, 2025A gun-wielding man carjacks and sexually assaults Lisa and her friend. Chris is with his dogs when a tornado sweeps through his house. Jeannette is 9-years-old when she is kidnapped and sexua...lly assaulted for three days.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Mint - To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to Mintmobile.com/survivedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hi, I Survived listeners.
I'm Marissa Pinson.
And before we get into this week's episode,
I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived
as well as the A&E Classic podcast's Cold Case Files,
City Confidential, and American Justice
are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation Channel
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or $39.99 a year.
And now onto the show.
This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners.
Listener discretion is advised.
Right when I opened the door, this person would grab me around the neck and put a gun to my head and said,
you do anything stupid, I'm going to blow your head off.
Real people.
Just imagine a car coming at you, a pickup truck coming at you on the highway.
Now I just imagine that to be the size of Mount Everest.
Who faced death?
He turned around with a screwdriver and he started to stab me.
He stabbed me once in my forehead.
He stabbed me once in my chest and he tried stabbing me again in my neck.
And lived to tell how.
He had an evil grin on his face and he looked at me and said,
What would you do if I pulled this trigger?
This is I survived.
It's June 19.
in Lake Havasu, Arizona.
19-year-old Lisa and her best friend are at a dance club.
My roommate and I were best friends, inseparable,
lived together for a year and a half.
Our plans were to drive to Lake Havasu
and go out to a club.
We left the club about 11 o'clock in the evening
and decided to go to walk down the street to another bar,
and they were doing karaoke.
karaoke. So we were seeing karaoke, having a great time.
At 2 a.m., Lisa and her friend got a ride back to their car.
We were dropped off at her car in the parking lot. The parking lot was
fairly, fairly big, and there was
not very many cars there. I was standing outside the car,
waiting for my friend to unlock the door from the inside.
And I happened to glance over, and about 20 feet away from me,
I noticed a man walking our direction.
But there were other vehicles in the lot,
so I assumed that he was going to his car.
So I turned my head back to the car and open the door.
And right when I opened the door,
this person would grab me around the neck
and put a gun to my head and said,
do anything stupid, I'm going to blow your head off.
The second that I felt the gun pressed to my head, I was in shock, I was numb.
He shoved me in the front seat and he forced himself into the back seat.
He told my friend to drive exactly where he tells her to drive,
not do anything stupid, do not make any harsh turns,
do not do anything erratic, or he will pull the trigger and he will kill me.
me. So with absolute terror and fear in myself and her as well, I'm sure, she began to
drive. We pulled up to the stoplight and there was a police officer that actually pulled
up right next to us. And I remember glancing at the police officer and he didn't even
look our direction. But I wished so much that we would have been pulled over at that moment.
I looked in the side view mirror and noticed the lights from the city getting more dim and
more dim and pretty soon, non-existent, and the fear set in.
I can't even explain the type of fear that I felt at that moment.
I know that I contemplated jumping out at the moment many times, but in fear for what
would happen to her, one can feel absolutely helpless.
I saw the last streetlight and the last light turned into nothing.
Lisa tried to talk to her kidnapper.
I wanted to gain his trust, because I felt that if I could gain his trust, that I could
live, that he'd let us go, that he'd have a heart.
But he shut off, instantly shut off when I was getting too close and turned, ice-cooled
all over again.
At that moment, he had taken the gun off of my head.
and had told me to remove all my clothing.
We kept driving.
My friend still face forward while I was removing my clothes.
And at that moment is when he began
to sexually assault me with his gun.
He had an evil grin on his face.
And he looked at me and said, what would you do
if I pulled this trigger?
I just, I sat there shaking, scared to death,
not knowing if he was going to pull the trigger.
or not. But I had no choice. I was numb and waited till he was finished with his game.
You see your life flashing before your eyes. You see everything in your life. Played out like a movie in front of your eyes.
Feels like it goes on for a half hour and it's only flashing in your mind for a second.
I can't explain the type of fear that I felt because if nobody's better,
through it, you don't know.
But it's a type of fear that I never want to feel again.
He took the gun away for me.
He sat back in the seat, and he had told my friend
to pull the car over.
He had me get out the passenger side, outside the vehicle,
to go around the front of the vehicle
to the driver's side.
And she was to switch over from the driver's side
into the passenger side and proceed to take her clothes off.
So when I got out and went slowly in front of the vehicle
and I'm shaking to death, I stood outside the driver's side door
trying to get in but the door was locked.
And then the gunman was in the back seat
and he was shuffling trying to unlock the door with his hand
while I was pulling on the handle trying to get in.
And that's right when I had three seconds, three seconds to think.
to think, am I going to stay here?
And who knows what's going to happen, or I'm going to run.
And within that three seconds, I ran faster
than I've ever ran in my life.
No direction, not knowing where I was or where I was going,
but I just ran.
I heard the gunshot.
And I just instantly started crying
because I thought that he had just shot my friend.
I wasn't sure if my friend was shot.
I wasn't sure if she was even alive,
but I knew I had to get help one way or another.
I had to get help.
I kept running so fast.
And all of a sudden, my right foot had hit really hard
into what felt like a cement barrier,
and I fell over it right onto my face.
But I got up after two seconds, and I kept running.
I saw some lights in the distance and I kept running for him.
I kept running in that direction.
The first house that I came to, it was exhilarating.
It was such a rush of relief that I felt.
I hurried over to the sliding glass door, which is by the pool area,
and I started banging on the sliding glass door with all my force and all my might,
and I was screaming.
Please help me.
Please help me.
We've been kidnapped.
I panicked.
I just wanted somebody to answer that door.
And the sign glass door came open,
probably about three inches,
enough to get a hand through.
And it was at that very second
that the hand that reached through was holding a handgun
pointed right in my face
and just beg for my life, please don't shoot.
Please don't shoot.
I need help.
My friend's been kidnapped.
Please don't shoot.
And I'd dream.
dropped onto my knees and just cried.
And that's when a gentleman that was at the door,
an older man opened up the door
and saw me naked and bleeding.
And he called out to his wife,
please call 911 and hurry.
And he picked me up and held me in his arms
and just said, you're gonna be okay.
I collapsed in his arms, so grateful and so relieved.
And I knew at that moment I was going to be OK.
Police were on scene within five minutes of the phone call.
And I was transported into an ambulance.
I wasn't questioned about anything right away
because I needed medical attention.
I had big pieces of rock, big chunks of rock removed
from my knee.
My right foot was broken.
The toe was shoved back.
into the middle of my foot and I had to get stitches in my chin.
The police had come in and questioned me.
I gave him the best description of the car that I could
and they sent out a team to our location
and did a search in the area for a vehicle and for my friend
and but seemed like hours went by.
One of the policemen came in and said,
we found your friend, and she's okay,
and she's being transported to the hospital.
Lisa's friend was released by the attacker
after being sexually assaulted.
And it was the best feeling to be able to hold her
and to know that she was okay.
And I kept apologizing, saying,
I'm so sorry I left you, I'm so sorry I left you.
And she had told me not to be sorry.
It wasn't until the next day that the law enforcement got a hold of us.
The car was located about a block and a half away from an elderly lady's house
who was beaten, bound, and raped.
They're assuming it was the same person because our car was found near her location.
Lisa's attacker was never found.
I survived because I'm a fighter.
I was 19.
I had a life to live.
I had a future of having children to love.
I had a husband to adore,
and I had friends and family to laugh with still
the whole life ahead of me.
I came into this world swinging and I'll leave this world swinging.
And no one's ever going to take my life from me.
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It's April 2011 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Chris and his wife have just moved to Alabama.
I'm from New York, and my wife decided she wanted to go back to school.
And she got accepted to University of Alabama, and we moved to Tuscaloosa.
I became a commercial artist again freelancing, so I'm working from home every day.
Chris's wife was at school, half a mind.
away from home. That day my wife called you know and let me know there's bad
weather coming. I put the TV on to follow the weather and you know there were
storms everywhere and it seemed like you know clearly there was some big
big front coming you know in our general direction. You know what are you
gonna do? I mean the whole storm is like you know half a statewide so there's no
reason where you're gonna go. But you just you know just kind of waited on it all
day and the weather got progressively worse you know as a day went on but you
You know, it didn't seem dramatic.
You know, it was just on the phone with my brother.
You know, just telling him, like, you know,
it looks like there's a, you know,
some bad weather coming our way,
and, you know, power's probably going to be out.
On the TV, pops up this graphic.
There's a huge tornado outside of Tuscaloosa.
And, you know, there's a graphic of overlaying the streets.
Giant tornado, big arrow,
pointing to 15th and McFarland,
which is the corner I live on.
So I'm on the phone with my brother,
and, you know, I step outside.
to look in the direction that the graphic indicates
the tornadoes coming from.
And I realized it's right there in front of me.
I told him, I said, this huge tornado
coming right at me, and I dropped the phone.
And that was the last my brother heard from me.
Immediately there's just a sinking feeling
that this is going to go poorly.
You know, just imagine a car coming at you,
a pickup truck coming at you on the highway.
Now I just imagine that to be the size of Mount Everest.
Split second I saw it, I started making decisions about what to do.
about what to do.
The first thing I did was I picked up the dogs
and tied them to me, tied them around my waist.
I grabbed a motorcycle helmet and, you know,
I threw it on and grabbed the sofa cushion
because they say, you know, get a mattress over you
if you can, and there was no time for that.
Already at that point, the ground started to shake
and it wasn't like shaking, it was violent.
It just started to like shake, like the whole world.
And, you know, at that point, I knew we were going to get hit, you know, because the house just started to rattle.
And it was immediate.
You know, it was just like everything just was vibrating and shaking violently.
And I just knew we were in for it.
Chris jumped into his bathtub with the dogs.
My dogs were just completely freaking out, you know.
And I had held both of them by their shoulder harnesses.
And I was trying to just keep them pushed down into the tub because I know you're supposed to stay low.
It suddenly occurred to me, I'm in this bathroom, you know, with no windows, you know,
and I mean, the room had no windows whatsoever, and it had this inkling that, you know, I'm going to get trapped in this room.
The idea of being trapped, you know, just really freaked me out, and I leaned back out of the tub,
and I pushed open the bathroom door.
And as soon as I did that, the whole front of the house flew away right in front of me.
The roof flew away, the living room flew away, the porch flew away.
The house just absolutely just disappeared up into the right.
A semi-truck, cartwheels, through my living room.
Like a big 16-wheel white truck, you know,
they would use to make deliveries, you know, like a big, big truck.
You know, to see that, like, tumbling through,
like a matchbox car that somebody just chucked.
You think of a tornado as wind, you know, and it's just not.
It's, you know, it's dirt and it's glass,
and it's twisted metal and it's broken trees
and it's parts of cars.
and it's in signs.
And just like in the Wizard of Oz,
I'm seeing everything just fly by.
The dogs who were, you know, I was hanging on to them,
but they, you know, I just couldn't.
They just would just ripped right out of my hands
and they were flying like kites on their chains.
The bathtub, which was the only thing standing,
you know, it started to buck.
It tried to take off like three times.
It just violently bucked, and like I was trying to lift off.
So, yeah, at that point, I thought,
you know, we're gonna lift off, we're gonna go flying.
I just thought this is the most ridiculous way to go.
You know, it's just so stupid.
You know, it just seemed point.
I moved, you know, 1,200 miles to pick this house.
You know, it just seems, it was totally surreal, you know.
And that, you know, that was my lingering thought right there
is that this is just a stupid, stupid way to die.
All of a sudden, you know, the wind, you know, stopped.
It was immediate.
You know, as soon as I'd come, you know, all of this went on in six seconds maybe.
And then like it was over.
At that point, the dogs fell to the ground and the house fell on me.
I was buried at that point.
The dogs were out in the yard, but my head and my right arm were out on the grass.
And so I was literally able to crawl out from the rubble in, you know, just a few seconds.
I occupied the one square foot of my home that were survivable.
You know, everything else was gone.
360 degrees, there was nothing left.
You know, the houses were gone, the trees were gone,
the gas station was gone.
You know, I couldn't see anything standing in any direction.
It was just, you know, it was just rubble.
You know, my whole neighborhood disappeared.
This is the point that I really thought that we were going to die.
Because in my mind, we're now in the eye,
and we're going to catch the back half
but now there's nothing to protect us
we're just in rubble
you know there's debris everywhere
there's nothing structurally left
and now what we just went through
we're going to we're going to catch all over again
you know there's no discernible sound
it's just you know it's not even sound anymore
it's it's it's like a tangible thing
that passes over you
you know and then when when that stopped
straight out of the sky
like flat on
A pickup truck, just a white pickup truck,
just falls flat out of the sky
and lands about eight feet to my right,
and lands on all four wheels.
It just, damn, and bounces and sits right there.
You know, my dogs must have been missed by three feet.
Maybe 15, 20 feet ahead, some kind of sedan fell
and just plumped into the yard.
And so looking up in that direction,
you know, directly in front, out into the backyard,
I could see the wall of a tornado crossing the street
and then moving into the yard,
moving it to the mall across the street.
To see it that close, literally, to see the inside of it,
to see it pass, to see it go across the street,
take out everything and watch what it's doing.
You know, buildings, just flying away.
There was a burger joint there, just, you know,
it picked it up, flew away.
You know, parking lot was full of cars,
and it would just, they shot into the air,
like, you know, like when a kid flings a rubber band.
When you see the homes and everything,
you know, you know there's probably people in there,
and they're just disappearing.
It just, it didn't seem right that we were still there.
The National Guard arrived and Chris helped them search for survivors.
We're all standing out in this rubble and there's no clear idea where the street is or where
the yards are.
It's just rubble.
It's everywhere.
It's trucks.
It's boats.
We're nowhere near water.
I was just trying to give them directions of, don't waste your time with this.
There's no one in this house.
I know it.
You know, there's a young couple here.
There's four college students sharing that house and every house is demolished.
you know. But, you know, also at the same time, I know there's another tornado coming.
And I was like, you know, you got to look quick, but then you've got to go. We have to get out of here.
I wanted to get inside again. And, you know, at that point, there was a steakhouse that was just calling people over.
Everybody come here. Everybody come in. They took in 40 or 50 people.
And we just all crowded into the kitchen area in the back and then put the emergency radio on and, you know, waited.
we're just waiting for something to hit
or we're waiting for word that things are okay
and you know and kind of I think we waited around for maybe 20 minutes
and you know but nobody really had an idea if this was long enough
should we go out you know and it was just kind of people just started to trickle out
kind of look around and think well maybe it's okay to leave
Chris took a risk and ventured outside to look for his wife
You know, I started hiking to my friend's house, you know, and when I got there, his place
actually had been hit, too, but it was structurally sound.
And, you know, when he saw me, you know, I'm walking up to him.
I got too many dogs, bloody dogs.
I'm covered in mud, you know, grit, gristle, and I'm bleeding.
And I didn't have any of words to say.
I just kind of looked at him wide-eyed.
And you're going to keep in mind, after a tornado like that passes through, there's no
electricity. You know, there's no phones. And there's no phone service for anyone.
Cell phones, you know, there's no internet. You know, it's getting dark now. There are gas leaks
everywhere. You smell them every 15, 20 feet. He doesn't know where his wife is. I don't
know where my wife is. And so we make a decision to lock up our pets and then let's go venture
out, you know, into the rain and look for our wives. I couldn't find my wife what's, you know,
We couldn't find anyone that even had phone or internet,
you know, and there was no word of, you know,
where she was, if she was okay.
You know, a day and a half later,
I still hadn't heard where she was.
Eventually, I found a stranger, you know,
and I gave them, I think gave them my Facebook password
because he said he had, you know,
had internet access, and I asked him if he could log in
and just post it, I was okay,
and then I was out looking for her.
I got word.
that, you know, some kind of firm confirmation
that she was, you know, at her professor's house,
and they were okay.
I survived because I did everything right.
You know, I made the right decisions.
I did them in the right order.
I didn't do anything wrong, and I got tremendously lucky.
The tornadoes killed over 200 people in Alabama.
We're in Alabama for two more years,
until my wife gets her PhD, and then we're moving
to the most trouble-free city in this country.
And I don't know where that is,
but that's the criteria for moving.
It's where there's no earthquakes,
there's no mudslides, there's no floods.
That's where we're going.
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It's June 2003 in San Jose, California.
Nine-year-old Jeanette is on her way home from school.
It wasn't in a good mood.
And as soon as I got off the bus, I started walking home,
and I remember just looking at the ground the whole time,
I was just frustrated.
I was just not having a very good day.
So I wasn't really noticing my same.
surroundings. I was just thinking to myself.
Jeanette's mother and brother would not be home for another hour.
When I came home, I noticed that the screen door was open, like three to four inches,
and I didn't think much of it. I was like, my mom probably left it open. She was probably
watering the plants or doing something outside, and she probably didn't close it all the way.
And so as I stepped inside and walked into my room, I noticed that my window was broken,
like somebody had shattered it. And so that
made me feel like something's wrong, something's a little off.
There was a man knocking on the door,
and I don't know what he was doing there.
What could he want?
And when he was asking me questions,
he was kind of peeking inside, trying to see who was in there with me.
And that started making me feel really uncomfortable,
and I started slowly closing the sliding door.
And he put his hand in the way, slid it open,
grabbed me and took me to my brother's room.
He started to rape me.
I was trying to get away.
I started kicking him.
He kept grabbing me, but I couldn't do anything,
and I was just scared, and as soon as he was doing
what he was doing to me, I started to cry.
I was in pain, I was scared, and it was just
the most horrific feeling I could have felt.
After he had raped me, he had gotten up,
and I was crying, and he told me to stay in the room not to move,
and if I moved that he was going to hurt me,
and I remember just sitting at the corner
the bed and I was just crying and I was thinking of myself I don't even know what I'm going to do.
He was gone for probably like five minutes and in those five minutes I didn't even try to run.
I didn't even try to do anything. I was scared. He told me if I had tried to run. He was going to
hurt me. He was threatening me and I was just in pain. I couldn't even move and I didn't know
what to do was just crying. He started to tie my feet together and he handcuffed me and he had
picked me up and taken me into the garage. Jeanette was stuffed into a
box and thrown into the back seat of his car.
When I was in the back of the seat, he was trying to open the garage door.
And when he was pushing the button, the garage door would only go up and down, up and down,
but it would only go up like three or four feet.
I seen the tire to my mom's truck, and that's when I had known that they were home.
And I immediately started to panic, and I started yelling and screaming, but I guess they couldn't
hear me.
And as soon as he was trying to open the garage door, my brother,
went under the garage door, and he looked at me.
He saw me in the back car.
He was smiling, and as soon as he seen me in the back seat,
and I was yelling, his smile just immediately disappeared.
He had, like, a question mark face, like, who, what's wrong?
And the man walked towards my brother,
and my brother walked towards the man,
and the man started beating my brother, hitting him.
And my brother was only, like, 15 or 16 at that time.
And when I was watching my brother get beat,
I immediately, like, I lost it.
I was like he's going to kill him.
I told the man, and I was screaming at him.
I was like, please don't kill him.
Take me, let him live.
He picked up my brother and took him into the kitchen.
And all I heard was fighting.
I heard pans flying and my mom screaming
and my brother yelling out to my mom to run.
And it was like a big commotion in less than one minute.
And after that, it got quiet.
And I see the man rush out of the kitchen into the car.
And when I seen blood on his face, I was
like, did you kill them?
And he just started laughing, and I just started to cry.
I was like, I didn't know if he had killed them
or if they were OK.
I just didn't know what was wrong with them.
And I started to cry, and he fled off with me in the backseat.
When I was in the back seat, I was trying to figure a way
to get out, wiggle my feet out of the rope
that he had tied me in.
But I couldn't.
He had knotted it really tight, and he had wrapped it
around my feet so many times.
I just couldn't possibly get out, and I was handcuffed.
I seen my mom rush outside.
She was screaming, and that's the last time I had seen her.
The man drove off with Jeanette in the back seat.
I don't know where he was headed to,
but he was like dodging cars, swerving.
And I was screaming, trying to yell out to the cars behind me.
And when I was trying to yell at the cars,
he turned around with a screwdriver,
and he started to stab me.
He stabbed me once in my forehead.
He stabbed me once in my chest,
and he tried stabbing me again.
in my neck.
I immediately after I felt like warmth going through my body
and like blood coming out, I just like slid down the box.
And when I was laying down there, I was like,
I'm never going to make it out of here.
I'm going to die.
The man pulled up to a house and drove into the garage.
He took me out when I was like leaning against the car
and I was trying to hop my way out.
And as soon as I was like hopping away, he grabbed me
and had picked me up, had thrown me over his shoulder,
and he had taken me into the house
and upstairs to a room where you needed a key.
The man threw Jeanette onto the bed,
turned on the TV, and watched the news.
I was just seeing that they were looking for me
that had said that there was an abduction
that I had been kidnapped,
and that's when I got hope.
I was like, okay, they know that I'm gone.
They know that I'm missing.
He started raping me again.
And I was crying at the time I couldn't even fight it.
I just, I felt hopeless.
I was just like, I'm not going to make it out of here.
He's going to hurt me.
After he had raped me, he had asked me if I wanted to take a shower
and I had said yes.
And I was, when he walked me into the shower,
he left the door open and he was telling me that
I could take a shower and he watched me change out of my clothes.
Like I started to break down and cry and that was my only safe place was the shower because
every time he left me in the shower was when he didn't touch me.
He wouldn't hurt me or he wouldn't rape me.
After the first night, I remember I couldn't even sleep.
He slept right next to me and he had his hand on me.
And every time I'd move, he'd immediately wake up.
It didn't even take him, like, two seconds to, like, roll around and just, like, he would wake completely up and look at me.
The man threatened to kill Jeanette if she tried to escape.
In the morning, he was watching the news again.
He had turned on the TV, and my cousin was talking to me, like, through the news.
She was saying, Jeanette, if you can hear us, just know that we're looking for you, be strong, girl.
Wherever you are, just know that we're trying our best to find you.
She was like, just don't give up.
That gave me hope.
That gave me the strength.
Either I'm going to fight to get out of here or die trying.
A fan of forensic crime shows, Jeanette collected evidence.
He would put the handcuffs on me only when he would step out of the room.
Like when I asked him for water and he'd go downstairs.
But you could take the handcuffs off.
There was like this little switch that you would slide to one side.
And I had a little button.
And when you click the button, it just unlocked.
the handcuffs, and I would take the handcuffs off, collect anything that he had touched,
put it in my pockets. And as soon as I put it in my pocket, I put the handcuffs back on
before he had time to see what I was doing. Honestly, why I was doing it was to grab whatever
I could and put it in a safe area where I knew, like, the cops or someone could find it to know
that I was there. At some point in that day, I had told him that I was hungry, and he
gave me his cell phone, he had a cell phone with him,
and he made me call for pizza.
The pizza guy had asked me for the address,
and when I asked the guy for the address,
he gave it to me, he asked me,
the pizza guy asked me for a phone number.
He gave me his phone number.
I wasn't even hungry at that point.
I didn't even eat the pizza.
It was just there, and after that,
he had raped me, and after he had raped me,
He asked me again if I wanted to take a shower, and I told him yes, and when I was in the shower,
that's when I was thinking of myself, how am I going to get out of here?
Jeanette had been held captive for three days.
He told me, I have to get rid of you, and as soon as he said that, I remember turning towards him,
and I asked him, what do you mean?
And I started getting scared.
I was like, I knew what he meant.
That whole afternoon and morning, I was trying to gain his stress.
I thought, okay, maybe this could work.
So when he had told me that, I got scared.
I was like, now he's going to kill me.
He started to smother me with the pillow, and I was kicking.
I was trying to scream.
And I was trying to get an air, and I kept turning my face, and I couldn't.
It was hard for me because how tight he had the pillow over my head.
And I finally got the chance to turn my head and get some air.
And as soon as five seconds later, after I got some air,
he pulled the pillow off, and he asked me, do you want to take a shower?
I was just basically thinking to myself, like, as soon as I get out of the shower, he's going to kill me.
I had, like, lost hope.
I thought to myself, this is it.
I tried all I could, and I'm not even going to get out.
But as soon as I had gotten out, like, his mood had changed once again.
He wasn't trying to kill me.
I didn't even bring it up.
I didn't even ask, like, anything yet just sat back on the bed where he was watching the news again.
And he was quiet.
He was just into the news.
And he wasn't trying to kill me and nothing.
So to me it was just like, I don't know if he's going to kill me today.
I don't know what's going to happen just to me.
I was scared.
I lost hope.
As soon as it got dark, it was late and he was watching TV again.
And he heard someone come and he turned off the TV and he told me to be quiet.
Someone knocked on the door.
He put his hand over my mouth and he was like, be quiet.
sitting in the room for a while and afterwards when he heard that it was all quiet that's when
he took me downstairs into the garage it was all dark i just remember like everything was dark nobody
i don't know if there was people home or not i just remember that everything was pitch black
jeanette's kidnapper forced her back into the car and drove away i was just crying i was thinking
to myself maybe this is it maybe this is what he meant but he had to get rid of me
it was like a long drive
and the car has stopped
and as soon as he stopped the car
I got up and I looked around
I was like where are we and he was like
I'm letting you go
and as soon as he said I'm letting you go
I was like I was just like
surprised and
he grabbed me by my hair
and when he grabbed me by the back of my head
by my hair he pulled me towards him
he was like if you ever tell anybody
what I did or who I am
or anything about me I will come
back for you and I will kill you and I will kill your family too.
Jeanette jumped out of the car and ran to a nearby store.
The owner recognized her from television newscasts and called 911.
The police arrived five minutes later.
They gave me a blank sheet of paper and they asked me to draw the house and
anything that I had to remember, they just told me to, like, draw it out.
I wrote the number of the house on the picture and at the very bottom,
I put his phone number and gave the office to the picture.
He was like, what's this?
And he pointed at the number at the bottom.
And I told him that's his phone number.
He was like, you remember his phone number?
You know it?
And they just all looked at each other.
Like, they were amazed and they were just shocked.
And he took the drawing, and he showed it to someone else.
And he was like, okay, you're very smart.
A female officer looked after Jeanette until her family.
I told her I have evidence and I got up and I started taking everything out of my pocket and she was just like what what is what's all this and I told her it's everything that he touched everything that was in the house
she just told me you did a good job they took me to a car and they said are you ready to see your family and I said yes I want to see my mom and when they opened the door I seen that my brother and my mom were in the car and I immediately like sat in the car and I hugged me
My mom and I hugged my brother, and they were crying, and they were just, like, happy.
And I seemed like my brother's face.
He had bruises on his face.
Like, his face looked swollen, and my mom was wearing glasses, and it seemed weird to me
while she was wearing glasses, and he had beaten my mom so bad that her forehead split open.
And her face was so bad, like, she didn't even look like my mom.
With the evidence Jeanette provided, police arrested her attacker at his same.
home. Enrique Sosa Alvarez dated the mother of Jeanette's friend. He was convicted of multiple crimes,
including kidnapping and sexual assault. He was sentenced to 102 years in prison. It was a long
process for me to get better, but I healed throughout the years. I didn't hear within a month.
I ain't here within a week. It took years, and so it took years for my family as well.
I survived because of my family and the hope
and just watching them on TV
and I survived because I helped myself out with him.
This September, CBS hits are streaming free on Pluto TV.
For this month only, streamful episodes of Madlock.
I'm a lawyer like the old TV show.
Fire Country, Ellsbeck.
I do love a mystery.
NCIS Origins, Watson, and Ghosts.
What the hell?
This is the most amazing sight I've never seen.
All for free.
The CBS shows you love this month only on Pluto TV.
Stream now, Payne Never.
