Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Could Feel The Barrel On The Back Of My Head
Episode Date: June 29, 2024Kim is an aspiring model at 20 years old when she is attacked by her friend and neighbor. After sexually assaulting her, the attacker stabs her and pours bleach on her body. John was on a guided trek ...in the jungle of Ecuador with his daughter when he is kidnapped and held hostage along with the guide. Over the course of 5 weeks John endures ransom negotiations and even attempts to escape as the camp in the wilderness. Charlene is spending time watching a movie with her husband and two sons when a couple, looking to buy a ring they were selling online, stops by. The sale, however, was a ruse as the couple instead hold the family at gunpoint and bring in two more armed assailants to rob the home. Trade Coffee - Visit drinktrade.com/SURVIVED to enjoy 30% off your first order when you subscribe!
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This episode contains stories involving violence against children.
Listener discretion is advised.
I can feel the life sucking from my body.
And all I'm thinking about is, he's going to kill me.
He's going to kill me.
Real people.
It was frightening.
These guys had killed people in the past.
Who faced death.
I was so scared, so terrified.
I just thought, we're dead. This is how we're going out.
We are dead. And lived to tell how. Blood started gashing out my neck and out of my side. I was just
shaking. I was like, oh my gosh. This is I Survived.
It's November 1998 in Memphis, Tennessee.
20-year-old Kim is an aspiring model.
I lived in Memphis, Tennessee with my mother and my little brother.
I lived in the Projects low-income apartment.
And I lived, I knew everybody in the apartment complex.
I was very popular.
And everybody knew that I wanted to be a model.
Kim's friend Carlos lived in the apartment above.
He was a really nice guy.
He lived with his girlfriend and their three children.
And she was like eight months pregnant at the time.
And they was really nice people.
We would hang out like every day.
We would play cards, listen to music, sit on the porch.
We just had a great relationship.
They called me their little sister.
I called him my big brother.
I called her my big sister.
Their daughter was my goddaughter.
They called my mom, mom.
We was so close.
When Kim completed her modeling portfolio, she couldn't wait to share it.
I was so excited.
I ran upstairs and I showed it to him and his girlfriend.
His girlfriend was excited because it was really nice, you know, pictures.
And he was like, ugh, like, look at Kim.
Like, he didn't want to look at him like a brother would do his sister.
A few days later, Kim was home alone.
I wasn't feeling well, so I decided not to go to work.
I went, got back in bed, and maybe I dozed off.
And I say maybe about 15 minutes, I heard a tap on my window,
and I opened the blinds, and I saw that it was Carlos.
I immediately thought that he wanted to use the phone
or tell me his girlfriend wanted something, as they always did.
He said, Kim, open the door.
So I got up.
I went to the front door.
I opened the door, and he walked right past me.
He was walking, like, really fast.
And he went straight to the telephone and picked the receiver up and put it back down.
The phone was dead.
I said, our phone is off.
That's why I forgot, because I forgot to pay
the bill. He walks, he walks towards me and he said, what's wrong with you? Because I was like,
I don't feel well like that. And I said, I don't feel well. And he grabbed me. He just grabbed me
around my neck. I'm thinking, wait, is this really happening? Am I still asleep? Because I was asleep, so I didn't know really what was going on.
And he just grabbed me and dragged me to my bedroom.
He throws me down on the bed.
He rips my pajama pants off, and he raped me.
Colors never show any liking towards me, never came on to me.
So this was a shock to me.
My whole body was numb.
Couldn't make sense of what was happening.
Like, is this really happening?
Am I dreaming?
Is this some sort of sick joke?
Carlos didn't say anything the entire time he was assaulting Kim.
After he finished raping me, he grabbed my bed pillows and began smothering me.
I'm trying to, you know, like, fight him, and it angered him.
And he threw the pillows on the floor and grabbed me up by my neck and began strangling me.
I was, like, sitting up like this. He was behind me, and he was strangling me. I was like sitting up like this.
He was behind me, and he was strangling me.
He was choking me so hard.
I knew I was going to die, and I was trying so hard to fight him.
I was elbowing him, trying to scratch him.
I was doing everything that I could do,
but I can feel the life sucking from my body,
and all I'm thinking about is he's going to kill me.
He's going to kill me.
And no one's going to know who did it.
I don't know how long I was passed out.
But when I came to, I woke up lying in blood.
Carlos was sitting on the end of Kim's bed.
I tried to lift my head.
And he said, lay down.
I turned to look at him.
He said, don't look at me.
I said, all I want to do is get up, take a hot bath, and go to bed.
He said, no, you have to go to the hospital.
I didn't know what he had did to me.
All I know is blood was everywhere.
I wasn't hurting. I wasn't in pain. So I didn't know.
He started to say, Kim, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do this to you. You're like a little sister to me. And I'm like, okay, well, why are you doing this to me? He was like, shut up. You know why?
If you tell anybody, I will come back and kill your mother. He was going in and out. First,
he would be real nice and then he would get
angry. Carlos stood up and walked towards Kim. He said, Kim I have to kill you
because I can't go to jail. Like I'm gonna either have to shoot you or beat
you to death. That's when I kicked in survivor mode. I was like, no I'm not about to
die. I have too many goals and dreams that I want to accomplish and I'm
not gonna let him take that away from me." I said, if you let me live, I promise I
won't tell on you. And he said, well how do I know I can trust you? I was like, if
you let me live, no one will believe you did it. He said, well let me take your TV
and VCR to make it appear as if someone broke into your house. He begins to unhook my TV and VCR,
and I look down, and I see a steak knife stuck in my ribs.
And I tried to pull it out.
He said, leave it in there. I'm going to get help.
So he crosses over me, and he goes out the door.
Once I hear him shut the door, I said, this is your chance.
Get out.
I rise up, and I look directly in the mirror.
I had a long mirror on my bedroom door, and I couldn't believe it.
I was like, what the hell?
I didn't even recognize myself.
I was bloody from head to toe.
I had telephone cords wrapped around my neck,. I had telephone cords wrapped around my neck
and I had a sheet wrapped around my neck. I untangled it. I don't know how I did it. I don't
know how I had the strength to do that. I opened my closet door, put on clothes and struggled
down my hallway. The knife was still in Kim's ribs,
and she was bleeding from a large gash in her neck.
And all I was thinking is, get out.
He's gone, just get out.
So as I'm stumbling,
I'm leaving my bloody fingerprints down the hallway.
Somehow, I don't know how I did it,
but I had the strength to make it to the front door,
lock the door he went out of, and I struggled to get out the back door.
Before Kim could escape, Carlos returned.
I heard him twisting on a knob, trying to get back in.
By the time I opened up the back door and I took maybe two steps,
he had kicked the front door in.
I was just stumbling.
In the middle of November, no shoes, no socks.
I didn't know where I was going.
I was literally about to fall on my face.
And the neighbor was walking past, and she said,
Oh, my God, Kim, is that you?
I said, Help me, help me.
She carried me two doors down to another neighbor's house,
and everybody was so, everybody was panicking.
One person was calling 911.
Another person was holding the towel against my neck because I was bleeding.
Somebody else was holding the towel on my side because I was bleeding from my side.
And I was really, really calm.
I felt like it's over.
You know, the paramedics is on his way.
My mom has been notified.
So I felt safe.
Kim heard people outside the apartment.
I heard my cousin was like, where is my cousin?
So I said, open the door and let my cousin in.
And when they opened the door, everybody rushed in from their apartments.
Everybody.
They was like, oh my God, what happened?
Who did this to you?
As the people rushed in, Kim's attacker, Carlos, was amongst them.
He was pushing people out of the way.
He was trying to get to me.
And he sat right next to me.
Blood started gashing out my neck and out of my side.
I was just shaking.
I was like, oh my God.
I was like, keep him away from me, keep him away from me.
And they was like, move.
They didn't know what was going on,
but they was saying, move, Carlos, back, back,
give her a space.
And he was like, no, I'm not going anywhere.
She's like a little sister to me.
So he stayed by my side.
He would not move.
I started shaking. I was so, I was just like, oh my God, I just escaped from him.
I felt safe, but at that moment, I was terrified all over again.
My cousin, she was over me.
She was like, because I was like lying on the couch and she was over me like,
who did this to you?
Who did this to you?
And I didn't say anything because Carlos was sitting right next to me.
Kim still had a knife wedged in her ribs.
My cousin yanked it out because I was complaining that it was hurting me.
And she threw it on the floor.
Carlos wondered, picked the knife up, hid it in the sink.
I guess he tried to, you know, hide it so the police wouldn't find it.
Moments later, the police and ambulance arrived.
They put me on a stretcher, and they rolled me out.
And as they was rolling me out of the apartment,
I just so happened to turn my head to the right,
and I saw Kahlo's girlfriend standing in the door.
And we both just locked eyes.
I wanted so badly to tell her,
Carlos is the reason why I'm on this stretcher.
They put me in the truck.
A police lady opened the door, and she said,
did Carlos Thomas do this to you?
I said, yes.
The police immediately picked him up,
because he had blood and bleach all over him
and he was still on the scene.
He stabbed me in my neck and my side
and poured bleach all over my body,
leaving me with second-degree burns.
Kim was left with permanent scarring to 50% of her body.
They charged him with criminal attempt murder
in the first degree, 15 years, and aggravated rape, 15 years.
They said because it happened the same day that they can charge him separately.
So they ran both of the charges concurrent, and he only got 15 years without parole, and he pled guilty the day before the trial.
Looking back on it, right after I showed him my modeling pictures, that's when the attack
happened. Later, people said that he was obsessed with me, but he kept it hidden the whole entire
time. That way, he got to be around me. Carlos Turner, also known as Carlos Thomas,
served only 12 years behind bars. He was released three years early for good behavior.
That's when my fight began.
I felt that it wasn't right.
No one notified me.
I began writing letters to the government, the congressmen, the parole board,
doing news interviews, and I was able to tell my story
and how the justice system failed me and what we could do to make it better.
In May 2012, a law was passed in Tennessee eliminating good behavior credits for violent
offenders. It is called Kimberly's Law. I survived because I had a will to live.
I had dreams and goals that I wanted to pursue. I was a young girl and I hadn't lived my life yet. I was only 20 years
old. I still had my whole life ahead of me and I'd be damned if I was going to let him take away my
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It's July 1996 in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador.
John and his daughter, Sarah,
are on a guided trek in the Ecuadorian jungle.
My daughter had just graduated from high school,
and a graduation present was appropriate,
particularly since she just also got accepted into college.
Both John and Sarah were avid bird watchers.
My birding guides had suggested there were about 550 different bird species
in the Coyabano Preserve.
It attracted both my daughter and I. I was aware that Colombia,
30 miles to the north, was not a safe place. A lot of history of violence, counter-revolutionary
groups, but as I looked at Ecuador, it seemed relatively safe.
It was the third day of the trip, and they were on a half-day hike.
There were 10 tourists, a machete man, boy, 17-ish, and the guide.
We needed a machete man around because if you weren't on that trail for a week or 10 days, you needed to clear it again.
We were out there about three hours and beginning our way back, planning to get back around 12.30 or 1 o'clock.
I'm birdwatching near the back.
One other lady from California is camera doing near the back.
We got two teenagers, including my daughter,
who are far to the front.
And behind us, pops out of the jungle, three guys.
Kind of semi-military looking.
They had long pants, but they were bare chested
and they carried weapons.
Two with rifles, one with a fairly nasty looking pistol.
They walked right by me, the first two, and I said, oh, well, they just want to talk to the guy and we'll manage this.
But the third guy came up behind us with a pistol and looked at us and said, kind of waved and said, get up there with the rest of them.
And we realized, uh-oh, this wasn't looking too good.
The lead gunman was yelling at the guide in Spanish.
His knees are beginning to shake.
He understands Spanish.
I don't. It doesn't look good.
Everybody was pushed over to the side.
There was a high end of the trail,
and they were pushed up on the high end and told to sit down.
They were told to throw their duffel bags
and anything in their pockets.
They thought, well, maybe this is a robbery.
Finally, about 15 minutes later, our guide Pablo comes back
and said, you know, folks, we have here
a kidnapping happening.
It doesn't look pleasant at all.
They're going to take me as a hostage and one
other person. And he looked at me and he said, and sir, I'm sorry to tell you, the other person
is your daughter, Sarah. Within 20 seconds, Sarah kind of fell to her knees and began choking and coughing and grabbing her throat.
And somebody said,
looks like she's got an asthma problem or something.
And my initial thoughts were to try to calm her down.
We can manage this. You can manage this.
She growled at me under her breath,
shut up, I know what I'm doing.
And she continued with this act.
And it was at that stage that the guide says,
Sarah's got a medical problem here, asthma problem.
It doesn't look like she's an appropriate choice here.
We've got to find someone else.
He looked around the group and said,
I don't want to make this choice,
so I would like to have a volunteer.
That's not the kind of thing everybody wants to volunteer for.
There were 10 adults there, all but two of them women,
most of them between 30 and 45.
A man about my age from southern New Jersey with his wife.
That was it.
John was worried the hostage takers would change their mind and take Sarah.
I thought, if he doesn't get another volunteer when he comes back again, I will indicate that I could do this.
He looked down the group slowly at everybody, and people were nodding, ducking, and averting their eyes.
I kind of looked at him, he looked at me and I and
Cheryl's in front of me she didn't see me and I nodded my head. He made a deep
sigh and he said okay John I guess you're it and he reached out his hand
and pulled me up and I was it. The kidnappers found a towel which they
thought distinctive and they said use this as a signal. Don't have any any law
enforcement folks with you, no police.
The group had five days to get the ransom money to the rendezvous site.
$30 million was an outrageous, completely unacceptable number.
I didn't know what was going to happen, but it wasn't promising, no.
It was frightening, as were several other aspects of what was happening at this stage.
There were a lot of frightful goodbyes and hugging, and we went down the trail around
the bend about 100 feet, and then we cut right into the woods, into the jungle.
We had no trails.
We walked at a very fast pace, essentially at a run, especially downhill,
blasting through these jungle underbrush.
You're grabbing things to not fall down and to swing around to bend.
We just kept moving.
The kidnappers were cutting across virgin jungle to get to the rendezvous site.
At night, they slept on the jungle floor.
Basically, we were in a completely wild jungle.
No civilization there.
We weren't tied up, but we had nowhere we could go.
You can't run away in a jungle like that.
Food was scarce when we started.
These guys had nothing but water and a couple of big chunks of raw brown cane sugar type stuff.
One of the first things they did is shot about a 45-pound monkey.
I'm never going to cook that and put it in soup.
It's not an experience one looks forward to or one ever anticipates being involved in.
Meanwhile, the release trekkers had made it to the nearest town.
They immediately informed the police that John
and Pablo had been taken hostage.
In the United States, John's wife
and the FBI were also alerted.
Back in the jungle, Pablo
shared with John what he overheard from the
bandits. These guys had
killed people in the past
and he gave me a vivid description
of basically strung him up on a tree and killed people in the past. And he gave me a vivid description.
Basically strung him up on a tree
and give him a push and let him swing
because his family hadn't come up with $40,000 or something.
After five days trekking, they made camp
and the leader left to negotiate the ransom.
While he was away, Pablo convinced the other kidnappers
to release him.
About an hour after Pablo left,
about 7 p.m.,
very dark dusky, this first kidnapper, the leader, came back.
My Spanish was, at that stage, 43 uncertain words
and some gestures.
But I understood what was going on.
They're talking about me, and they're basically discussing
what they're going
to do with me. And if they made a decision that they needed to get rid of me, could you kill John?
He had seen people who wanted to negotiate, but there were police among them. The towel was there.
He didn't want to, he didn't trust making contact under those circumstances. So they
realized they would have to wait and try again later. Unknown to the police, John and his
kidnappers were camped close to town. At that stage, we left that area and began hiking and
looking for a new area. The area they selected was down a ravine and under a lot of brush that
was almost impossible to pass through.
The bandits forced John to write a ransom note.
They wanted to put the number one and a half million dollars
in, US dollars.
I put that in.
I put a little note in there to my wife and daughter
in there, but basically I wrote what they wanted me to write.
But after several days, nothing seemed to come of that.
And that was frustrating.
The note never made it out of the jungle.
I was losing confidence
in whether this could ever end in a reasonable negotiation.
Maybe somebody could come up with $200,000
and get me out of here, I don't know.
But it wasn't happening.
It didn't look good.
When a huge rainstorm started up, John decided to escape.
I took the little rain jacket I had been given by somebody
and wrapped a log in it about four feet long and put it in the hammock.
I set it up, made it look like I was there.
They were far enough away they couldn't hear because of the rain. I got down on my knees
and on my belly and I used my elbows and I worked my way through that shrubbery and brambles
and got into a clearing where I could see the top of this rise where I knew we'd come
five days before. I ran up the rise to the top,
and I'm heading out, and I hear a yell.
I dive down into the shrubbery someplace about 50 feet away,
hoping that I will not be detected
and know somebody's found me and detected me
and came up to me.
He's not somebody I recognize.
Turns out he was a trail guard watching the trail
for other people coming through. John was forced at gunpoint into the back of the jeep.
They put me down near the floorboards and put a blanket over me and they drove me a long distance.
I was told they were taking me to Columbia. It's not very promising to look at the situation right now.
And it frankly began to look worse as it progressed.
They definitely discussed killing me.
They decided that I was still worth considerable money
and negotiations could proceed.
They moved me around in two or three locations and finally to a house
in an obviously wet area on stilts at the second
story level and I was left, I was kept there
for some time near the outskirts of a town. People came in and gave me food
occasionally,
had a pot for me to use and
but I couldn't leave.
I did have a window I could look out on in the daytime.
Couldn't see very well.
Not a pleasant situation.
It was now over three weeks since John was kidnapped.
A special unit of the Ecuadorian police
was tracking his kidnappers' phone calls.
I had no idea where people were.
I knew Sarah should be in college by now,
starting college.
Maggie would be, my younger daughter would be going
to high school within a few days.
The negotiations didn't seem to be working.
No real obvious progress to talk about.
I'm thinking, is anything going to happen here?
Are we going to go on forever with this?
Despair is a feeling one naturally comes to under those circumstances.
It is five and a half weeks since John was taken hostage in the Ecuadorian jungle.
I was sleeping.
The people in the other room were sleeping.
All of a sudden I'm hearing yelling and stomping and screaming and somebody's running up the stairs to the second story of this shack. Then I hear gunfire
and there's a lot of gunfire. It goes on for about rapidly for a minute and then it tails
off and there's a couple of stray shots. It appears some military types are out there.
And somebody comes into my room in a military outfit with camouflage things on
and says, John?
I said, yes.
And he says, basically, he says,
we're here to take you away.
Congratulations.
And he gives me a hug and I'm happy.
John's rescuers were a special unit
of the Ecuadorian police.
There wasn't a ransom paid.
They had successfully figured out where I was being held
and performed a precision assault to get me out.
Last Friday, I was on a plane out of Ecuador,
and I'm home.
I've lost 20 pounds.
Not perfectly well, but you can see I'm standing and moving.
It's been probably a psychologically tough experience.
I have yet to understand that fully, of course.
John's three kidnappers were all killed during the rescue mission.
I survived because I was lucky.
Because despite the fact that there was gunfire and danger there,
most of those people were not interested in my death.
They were interested in what I was worth.
Cults are everywhere.
They don't just live in the walls of NXIVM and Scientology.
There are sex cults.
Self-help cults.
Workout cults.
Political cults.
Even legging cults.
And on the podcast, Was I in a Cult?
we focus on the brave individuals who have lived through them. I'm Liz Iacuzzi. And I'm Tyler Measom. Your host
of Was I in a Cult? Join us each week as we take you through a heroic roller coaster of someone's
journey in and out of a cult. With a little levity thrown in because humor is healing and cults are
funny. Listen to and follow Was I in a Cult at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Which for Tyler,
is at Rite Aid.
On tape.
It's April 2010
in Edgewood, Washington.
It's 8 p.m.
and Charlene has just arrived
home from work.
She and her husband Jim
plan to watch a movie
with their two sons.
It was a Wednesday night and my husband and I were going to go on a vacation with his cousins,
and we were leaving in 36 hours.
In 36 hours, we were going to be on vacation,
so we wanted to spend time with the kids, sitting together, watching a movie.
It was one of our favorite things to do together.
Jim told her a woman was coming over to buy a ring they had advertised on the internet.
They were asking $1,000 for the ring.
I said, they're just going to get it?
And he said, yeah.
I was shocked because they were driving from a distance
or so what they said they were to get this ring.
Jim was not concerned.
My husband had sold other things like bikes and bunk beds,
so I think when he heard her voice and that she wanted to buy it for Mother's Day
and we were going out of town shortly,
I think his heart just melted
and he wanted to get it to her before Mother's Day.
We went up to watch a movie
and we were watching it for a
little while and Jim got up a couple times and looked out the window to see if they were there
and then at one point he said they're here. So he went downstairs to greet them and I just stayed up
with the boys and I watched the movie with them. A couple minutes later, he calls me out, and he says,
Char, he goes, come down here.
They have a couple questions about the ring.
So I went downstairs, and I came into the kitchen where the island is,
and I looked, and there was a younger couple there.
She wanted to know what the extra diamonds were on the sides
that looked like they had been added, and I said, yeah,
they were two of my grandmother's diamonds.
I handed it back to her.
And then I walked over to the sink with my back to him.
And I heard the man say to her, so do you want the ring?
And she said, yes.
They were across from us.
And he said, how about this?
And he rolled out a wad of cash.
And my husband and I looked at each other
and we said, well, yeah, I guess.
And then he said, how about this?
And then he pulled out a gun on us.
And then at that point, we were just, you know,
there's just no words to describe what you feel like.
When we saw that gun everything changed everything changed the man tied up my husband zip tied him put him face down
on the floor and then the women put me on the floor and i remember looking at her saying
thinking why why is she doing this all of a a sudden, I heard more people coming in the house.
Two armed accomplices entered their home.
We just started screaming at them, just take everything, take everything.
We were screaming that when we saw the gun, just take it.
We thought if they could just take this, they could leave right now.
The two accomplices ran upstairs.
Charlene and Jim's young sons were on the second floor watching a movie.
I won't forget that look on my husband's face ever.
I can't even put it into words what that feeling is like
because there's not any words intense enough to describe the terror,
the horror that we felt.
These people are in our home right now and they have a gun on us and we can't do anything.
Charlene and Jim's sons were forced downstairs at gunpoint.
At first they thought, oh, is this a little joke, you know?
But then they soon realized as they're being drugged down the stairs, get down the stairs, get down the stairs.
They were scared. They didn't know what was going on.
And then they came around the corner
and saw us on the floor.
I just thought, we're dead.
This is how we're going out.
We are dead, all four of us.
I was so scared, so terrified, so in shock.
I couldn't even believe what I was seeing in my home.
The intruders began ransacking the family's home.
I turned my head probably five times at least looking up at these people that were in my home.
And they kept coming over to me and said, she's looking, she's looking.
And I say, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. But I was looking because I want to see who's in my home.
Then one of the guys that had taken our sons downstairs came over to me and he started just screaming at me and calling me names and saying, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill them.
And he kept asking me, where's the safe? Where's the safe? I said, we don't have a safe.
I knew we had one, but I didn't want to tell him at that point. He came around and with his foot, I could see his leg and he took his foot
and he swung and he kicked me right in the head. And he kicked me so hard and he kicked me so close
to my temple. My head came up and then slammed back down on the floor. Then he pulled out his gun, and he put it on the back of my head,
and I could feel the barrel in the back of my head.
My husband was screaming even louder at that point
because I knew he said he'd always protect us,
and now there's these people in our house,
and they're doing what they're doing to us.
Then he started counting down, three, two,
and I knew when he got to one, I was going to be dead. In front of my
husband and my kids and standing right there to see my head get blown off. Charlene's 10-year-old
son and 14-year-old stepson were lying just a few feet away. My husband was screaming louder at that
point when he's saying, man, man, don't kill her, don't kill her, just go, just go. And when he got
to one, I said, we have a safe.
They came around and picked up my husband,
and he told them that it was in the garage,
so they started heading to the garage.
They passed by the two boys,
and at that point, the boys stood up,
and a fight broke out.
And I look over, and I see the mean guy
pistol-whipping my stepson.
Charlene's husband Jim started fighting back.
After just seeing a gun poke to my head and then his son get pistol whipped,
I can't imagine what's going through his head except horror.
He wasn't going to let anybody hurt his family.
Suddenly, Charlene heard gunshots.
I didn't know if my stepson got shot or what was happening because I could hear bolts flying.
Then it just escalated even more, a lot of screaming.
I could hear a commotion.
And then it moved to behind me where I couldn't see anything.
I could just hear, I could hear fighting.
And I knew my husband was fighting back.
He was defending his family. He was mad. He was angry. There's no words to
describe what he felt because he always said he'd protect us, always. And now he's got four people
in his house whom he trusted and now we're all at stake of dying. I heard my stepson say, come on, get up.
They're gone, they're gone.
I didn't hear my husband's voice.
And I went around the corner into the living room
and I saw him laying there gasping for air.
He was all white and part of his ear was gone.
Charlene ran to the phone and dialed 911.
I need you to have your address.
I don't know if I can make it.
I can't.
I went back to my husband, and I said, honey, stay with us.
Stay with us.
I kept just saying, stay with us,
because he was gasping for air.
Jim's son tried to do CPR on him,
and I was still screaming at them to hurry up and get aid
here.
The police arrived and moved Charlene and her sons outside.
There was a chaplain, and when he approached me, I said, is my husband dead?
And he said no.
And I was worried because I knew what my husband looked like.
And he came over about four or five times.
And he kept saying, don't worry.
And on the fifth time or so when he came over, I said, is he dead?
And he didn't say anything.
And then that's when I fell to the ground and found out he died.
They got our PlayStation that we were watching our movie on with our family.
And they got a couple rings.
And they got a cell phone.
They got nothing.
They got nothing.
And they took everything.
Amanda Knight, Kiyoshi Hagashi, Claiborne Bernard, and Joshua Reese were caught after a week-long manhunt.
They were charged with assault, robbery, and Joshua Reese were caught after a week-long manhunt.
They were charged with assault, robbery, and first-degree murder.
The girl got 71 years, and I say,
you're just as guilty as the one that pulled the trigger because you got entrance to my home.
The other ones got 100 years, up to 123 years.
They're going to be in there the rest of their life.
I've been with my husband for seven and a half years and I was so happy that I'd finally found my soulmate finally and then I made it past that five-year mark and
and now I'm a widow. I survived because that night my husband fought to the
death. He sacrificed himself for us.
And I survived today only because of my faith. Stream hundreds of free movies on all your favorite devices all summer long. Chill out poolside with Mission Impossible and Transformers.
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