Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Couldn't Sit Up, I Couldn't Check to See Where They Were

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Dawn and her two daughters are at a friend's beach house when four armed men break in looking for money. Jens and Jim are flying with their fathers on the way to a fishing trip when their plane crashes in the ocean miles from shore. Agnes is working a night shift when she is abducted by an armed man who has another victim in his trunk.

Hi, iSurvive listeners. I'm Marisa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of iSurvived as well as the A&E Classic podcast Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month 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. He put the gun to my head and he said,

if you don't go upstairs with me, I'm gonna shoot you in front of your children. Real people. If we hit the water, we were gonna cartwheel, the plane was gonna come apart and I was gonna bounce around and kill everybody inside the cockpit. Who faced death?

There's snakes, there's alligators, everything you can think of they will eat you, smelling fresh blood. And lived to tell how. I remember looking back at my children, and their faces were just, I mean, frightened, just terror. This is I Survived. It's May 2007 in Norfolk, Virginia. Dawn is minding a beach house for friends who are away. She is there with her six and nine-year-old daughters when the doorbell rings. I looked up and the door opened and I saw four individuals walk in.

They kind of reminded me of young teenagers. They all had guns and they were pointing them at me and said, we're here to rob you. I just said the first thing that came to my mind was you can have anything you want. Just don't hurt my kids. The men told Dawn and her daughters to sit on the couch. They proceeded to ask me where the safe was, where the money was. I just told them I didn't live here and I didn't know where anything was.

They grabbed my purse, emptied my purse out on the table, grabbed the cell phones, anything that they could literally get their hands on and put in their pockets. I was really scared. I was shaking, but I was trying not to show that. My girls were really quiet. They were scared. They were sitting one on each side of me and I just held their hands really closely. One of the individuals, once I sat on the couch, had directed me to go upstairs and at first I refused. That's when both my girls, I could just, their hands just tensed up and I just started

gently rubbing their hands in hopes that it would comfort them a little bit more. I said no two times and he put the gun to my head and he said, if you don't go upstairs with me, I'm gonna shoot you in front of your children. I had no choice and I kind of whispered to my girls, I said, just stay here on the couch, don't say anything and don't move

and mommy will be back as soon as I can. The other men were still searching the room for things to steal. I heard my youngest daughter ask my oldest daughter, is mommy gonna come back? Is mommy gonna be okay? And she whispered yes. And she just kind of comforted her.

And I remember walking up the stairs and looking back at my children. And their faces were just, I mean, frightened, just terror. The only thing that was going through my mind was trying to get back down to them, what I was gonna do to get back down to them. And at that point, I didn't know, was trying to get back down to them, what I was going to do to get back down to them. And at that point, I didn't know,

as I knew that this guy had a hold of my arm, and he was pretty much walking me upstairs with the gun behind my head, and directed me to go into the bedroom. And he had asked me to get undressed. And I still was scared. I was shaky. But the first thing out of my mouth was, no, I wasn't going to get undressed.

And he got upset. He got really agitated. He was like shaking the gun. He said, you're pissing me off. And if you don't get undressed, I'm going to kill you. At that point, I just said, you know, I can take you to go get money. You don't need to do this to me.

This isn't my house and I can take you to where I can, I can take you back to my house and I can get you more than what they have here. And he started thinking about it. I mean, I could see him actually thinking. And then as I saw him actually going along with what I was saying, I just started speaking more. I was very stern with my words. My voice wasn't shaky. I can take you to the bank,

and I have lots of money in the bank. You're not gonna be able to get it if you do this to me here. And he just said, okay. As I was walking downstairs, he put the gun to my head. I just saw my girls, and they were still sitting there on the couch. My oldest daughter had her arms wrapped around my youngest daughter.

And she was very, very scared looking, just crying. I could just see the tears going down their faces. And the other three gentlemen were in the kitchen area. And the individual who had taken me upstairs, I heard him say, we're gonna go get money and that the two kids are gonna stay with a couple, two of them there and two of them was gonna go with me. I just froze and I realized they're gonna make me separate from my kids again. I just started screaming. I thought that if I offered them my ATM number,

that one of them would go get the money and then they would have what they needed and that they would end up shooting us because we had saw their faces. The gunmen agreed to go with Dawn to the bank. They tell her to leave her daughters behind with two of the men. I started screaming that I wasn't going to leave my girls behind. I just knew that if

I left without them, I didn't think that they would be there when I got back. And I just said every mean word I could think of in the book. And they kind of just like froze at first and they were very stunned that I was fighting back. When I was screaming, I hoped that neighbors would hear me. But again, it was raining that night and it was thundering. I heard one of them tell me that, I can't believe that you're fighting with us. We're the ones who have the guns. I just told them, I said, either I go with you with my kids,

or I'm not going at all. And they started talking amongst themselves and directed me to go back on the couch to sit where my kids were. They were deciding on who was gonna go with who, who was gonna stay behind, and who was gonna come. They didn't really seem like have a plan. All I heard was that, okay, we're all going to go,

and, you know, go in the car with her. The gunmen didn't have a car of their own. I had a four-door car at the time, and I guess they assumed that they all could fit into my car. And that's when, you know, I was thinking that I could get away with this. I could get my kids out, and I could get them to safety. I was kneeling down next to my girls and I could just feel them, their bodies were just shaking.

I whispered kind of like in between both of their heads. I said, as soon as that door opens, run to the car and lock the doors and wait for me to come in. I didn't have a plan as to door opens, run to the car and lock the doors and wait for me to come in. I didn't have a plan as to what I was gonna do next. I just knew that I needed to get in that front seat of the car. I didn't know how I was gonna do it. I just knew that as soon as I had the chance,

I was gonna go for it. We were on the couch waiting while they were talking and they said, you know, let the girls go get in the car. And they opened the door and I whispered him, just lock the doors and wait for me. The children ran to the unlocked car in the driveway. So I was kind of looking around for the keys and I saw them on the counter. And I slowly kind of walked over there and I put my hands on the keys and kind of just like stood there. And that's when I said, you know, I'm gonna walk out the door and get in the car.

I didn't want to go unless they said okay and I didn't want them to think that I was trying to get away. And they had all their guns pointing at me, and I slowly walked out the door. The men followed Dawn as she walked to the car. The girls were sitting in the front passenger seat. My girls had locked all the doors except for the driver's door. I opened the car door and they were still right behind me. They didn't realize all the other doors were locked, and they just saw me, you know, watched me get in,

and I just reached up and locked it really quickly. And I turned on the car. And as I was turning on the car, that's when they were realizing all the doors were locked. And that's when they started pounding on the car window. They were all on my side of the car. So all four of them were standing right beside me. That's when I looked over my shoulder and I saw the barrel of guns.

I quickly looked over my other shoulder to the back up because I had the car already in reverse at that time. I heard this big, loud pop, pop, pop sound several times and I fell over on top of my girls and I couldn't move. And that's when I knew that I'd been shot. Five bullets hit Dawn, puncturing her spleen and kidney. The bullets broke both her arms and shattered two vertebrae. I was paralyzed and I couldn't sit up and the car just coasted back into one of the

neighbor's cars. As soon as they heard the gun shot, just this overwhelming screaming noise my daughter had just, the scream that she had screamed, I just, a piercing scream that I just never want to hear again. Mommy, please don't die. Mommy, you know, just don't die. And she didn't know what to do. I was paralyzed and I couldn't sit up.

I couldn't check to see where they were. I asked my daughter to honk the horn. I wanted to scare them off and I wanted to get help at the same time. I passed out and I came to and it was pitch dark. I couldn't see anything. All I could hear was just the rain pounding on the car and thunder, and then just the horn honking,

the horn blaring. The gunman had run away. And then the next thing I knew, I heard a voice. I couldn't see it. It was a man's voice, and I couldn't see him. He asked if he could help. And I said I'd been robbed and we'd been shot. And I asked him to dial 911.

Dawn's daughters were still in the car, unhurt. Another neighbor came out and they had took my girls out of the car and called 911. Dawn was on life support for three days. Her husband was in the military and returned from Iraq. And he just kept giving me encouragement words that the girls were okay, that they were safe, and that I was going to be okay, that I was strong, and that I was going to fight through this. It took 36 hours for the individuals to be caught,

for all four of them to be in jail. They all pled guilty. There wasn't a trial. There was a sentence hearing. Three of the gunmen were sentenced to life imprisonment, and one received 20 years. Dawn is paralyzed from the chest down. We still do the same things we did before.

It's just a little different. And I realized that I can be a mom, and you know what? I can even be a better mom because I can teach my girls. When things happen, you just got to keep going. You just got to keep getting on that horse and go because if you don't, then one, you let the people who did this to you win. And two, you just, your life, you know, you don't live. And that's not what life's about. You just got to keep going.

I survived because of my girls. I had to keep fighting. I had to keep breathing and just keep going and just survive for them. people close to the cases. Court Junkie is available on Apple Podcasts and podcastone.com. It's September, 1997 in the Sea of Cortez. Jens reads a magazine article about fly fishing in Laredo, Mexico and shows it to his friend, Jim. I started talking to Jim about going there and how far would it be for him to fly a private plane there. And it kind of developed from that.

We just decided to include our dads to make it a father-son trip. Both fathers agreed to join them. On our way to the airport, I stopped at a store and just right inside the door of the store there happened to be a box of life jackets. On our way to the airport, I stopped at a store, and just right inside the door of the store, there happened to be a box of life jackets. And they were four bucks a piece. So I grabbed four of them. Jim was piloting the hired plane.

We were about 50 miles north of Loretto when we began to see signs that there was some weather building. It's a thunderstorm activity. Jim tried to avoid the storm by flying below the clouds. As we were getting lower and lower and lower, finally we just punched right into the edge of the cloud. And that's when it just got really bad. We started bumping around really hard.

I felt the seat belt pull on my lap because I got lifted up out of the seat. Jim turned back and radioed Loretto Airport 35 miles away. I told them we've just turned around, we can't continue on, there's too much rain, there's too much turbulence. So they responded with, okay, no problem. The first indication that something was wrong was the power, what's it called, the power sagged off, or there was a reduction of power very abrupt and a lot of shaking and vibration so I leveled the airplane off and reduced power as

soon as I reduced power the engine just quit completely he said I can't get it restarted and I said what do you mean you can't get a restart he said it's just it's not gonna start and I remember my dad of course having an extreme look of concern on his face said what's going on going on? And all I could say, I don't know. And I think I actually said, I'm sorry, guys, but we're going in. We're going to go swimming. And he said, I'm going to turn around so that we go back

into the storm. That way we'll have a headwind. It'll slow us down. That way when we hit the water, we'll be going slower. That part was real frightening to me, because you couldn't see up or down. You just kind of of getting bumped around. And I, at that point, I decided that it was time to get the life jackets out.

As we got lower, I began to realize just how furious the surface of the ocean was. And the waves were huge. Trough to crest was probably 15 feet. Jens had taken his seatbelt off to retrieve the life jackets. And so I was sure that if we hit the water, we were going to cartwheel, the plane was going to come apart, and I was going to bounce around and kill everybody inside the cockpit. So I just grabbed a hold of Jim's headrest and stared out the windshield because I wanted to see the water coming. If that was the last thing I ever saw, that's what I wanted to see.

I keyed the microphone and I repeated May Day two or three times. And I got that communication out just moments, possibly a minute, before we went in. It's just humongous noise, and I remember staring through the windshield and seeing the water go from foamy white at the top to green to dark as it just went up over the top of the plane and I was looking through a wall of water. At 1.30 p.m., the plane hit the water 10 miles from shore. John had propped the door open so immediately when we hit the water there was a taste and

a smell of sea spray. But the airplane was staying right side up. Of course it was quickly sinking. No one was injured, so the four men climbed out onto the wing. As Jim climbed out, I went and started taking stuff out. And I got the cooler part way out, but I got stuck. And my dad just reached with one hand and just ripped it out.

And the top just broke off. The engine of the plane started pulling the nose down farther and farther. So we walked out to the end of the wing and stepped off into the ocean. Immediately was stunned by how warm it was. It was in the 90s in the water. The man watched the plane sink beside them. The water's so clear there that we could see the strobes still on as it got deeper and deeper. There was four of us there, but that's the loneliest I've ever been. It just, that was it. It was gone. In the high seas, Jim's father accidentally gulped seawater. He's kind of a big guy. And something happened where he wasn't able to take a good breath or he

where he wasn't able to take a good breath or he somehow ingested enough seawater that made him violently ill. As my father continued to vomit and lose more and more of his fluids and he seemed to struggle more and more to even breathe and eventually became not very responsive. I began to get really, really concerned. Severe dehydration can cause delirium and loss of consciousness. I was trying to catch rainwater in the cooler, but the waves were huge.

And so I'd get a quarter of an inch of water in the bottom of the cooler, and then the wave would roll over the top of the cooler and just fill it. Jim had sent a distress call before the plane went down. About two hours after we went in the water, a helicopter arrived on the scene. We could hear it before we could see it because of the heavy rain and the heavy wind.

We did have a pair of swim fins that were sort of a neon yellow color, and I remember we were waving them around. As the minutes rolled on to five minutes and then 10 minutes and then 15 minutes, and he's flying all over the place, the realization that the despair of the doom was already starting to set in, even as he was still flying around.

He just can't see us. By about six, 630, the sun was getting ready to go down. And it was obvious to me that no one was going to come get us. Jim's dad was still vomiting. I was concerned that John was going to die from throwing up so much and dehydrating. Yens and I were treading water on our own and we were without earshot of our dads and trying to come up with a plan.

And I said to Jim, one of us needs, somebody needs to go get help for your dad. He said, I don't know that I can swim that far, but you know, if you're willing to go, let's go. And I said, no, no, no, somebody needs to go get help. One of us needs to go. You need to stay here and you need to take care of your dad and my dad. And if something happens to your dad and he dies, you need to take care of my dad and yourself. It was a real selfish thing for me to do because I didn't think that I could handle watching John die. And I didn't want anybody to watch me die

either. I figured it would be better to do that by myself. Yanz was wearing swim fins for the 10-mile swim. The weather was calming down a little bit. We could see a silhouette, a gray silhouette of the mountains against the sky. So Yanz actually took off swimming. And I remember watching him crest a swell and then disappear. And then crest a swell and then disappear. And to find that, I couldn't see my friend anymore. And Bill said, you know, looking around, he says,

hey, where's Jens at? And I just said very matter-of-factly, I said, I said, he's going to try and reach shore. See that peak on the mountain there? That's the direction he's swimming. He's heading that same direction. So let's just stay focused on that and swim in that direction. Pushing the ice chest, the three men began to swim after Jens.

As the sun went down and it got dark, the storm wasn't letting up and the lightning at that point got even more vivid because it was so dark. If you'd stop for a minute, you could hear the waves and know where you were at, but you couldn't tell the difference between where the water ended and the sky started. Over a mile away, Jim and the two fathers swam slowly after Jens. Bill and my dad seemed fairly stable throughout the night.

I got a little bit hypothermic. I was shivering. And of course, involuntary shivering is your body trying to keep its core temperature warm. Hypothermia is a severe drop in body temperature. It can cause organ failure, leading to death. And I was thirsty and I remember wondering, at what point does the body just finally shut down? I couldn't swim anymore. I just needed to take a break. And so I would take my life jacket off and kind of tie it around my head to keep my head above water and fall asleep. Really for

just micro sleep, just fractions of a second, wake back up because the waves were still pretty bad. The three other men were slowly swimming after Jens. Bill and my dad hung onto the ice chest and I remember I would hang on to my dad's arm. And there was times where the logic part of my brain would say, your odds are not real good. I remember looking at my watch and it was like 1 30 in the morning. I remember thinking, OK, we've been in the water 12 hours now. Every now and then the subject of Jens would come up. I hope he made it. I hope he's all right.

And I just kind of was at the end of my rope, and I decided that I couldn't do it all on my own. And that was the first time that I prayed. And I prayed out loud, and I yelled, God, if you can give me something, anything. And a little while later, the storm started to clear up, and the clouds started to go away, and I could see stars. Maybe a couple hours after the storm stopped I started hearing a noise. 15 or 20 minutes later realized that what I

was hearing was waves breaking on something. Swam for probably another half hour and all of a sudden something hit me in the knee really hard and I started feeling around and it was a rock. I grabbed a hold of it and as I did there were sea urchins just covering it and they, all their spines went into my hands and just broke off. And I couldn't even really feel that at first and I stood up and that's when I felt because they went through the bottom of the flippers right into my feet. And as I stood up on the rock, I realized that the waves that I was hearing were breaking on a reef,

and that I was swimming into this reef that was full of these sharp rocks covered in sea urchins. I was just going into a washing machine. I mean, I was going to be shredded. It was the hardest thing that I ever did, was to step off of that rock and have to swim back out where I was, where I'd just come from. And I swam back out and then I turned, swam parallel to the shore. And as I did, the shoreline cut back away from me a long ways. And I could see a light on shore. It was probably, probably close to a mile at that point to shore. And I started swimming directly at this light. The light was a fire. There were some fishermen sitting around a campfire.

And as I climbed out and went over towards where their fire was, I tried to explain to them with very broken Spanish what had happened, that there were still people out there and that we needed to go look for them. And they told me we couldn't. The fishermen didn't want to take the boat out in the dark. I was just so tired at that point that I just kind of collapsed on the beach. 10 miles away in the ocean, the other three men were still clinging to the ice chest.

We never slept. There'd be moments where everybody'd be quiet for a while and we'd just sort of rest. I'd rest my head on my dad's shoulder. As the sun began to come up and our vision of the shore came into view, it was a little discouraging because it was apparent that we were still a long, long ways out, long ways offshore. Clear blue day, scorching hot sun.

That morning, the fishermen took Jans to Loretto. We pulled up to this building and I knew the word jail and I knew what that meant. And I couldn't figure out why I was going to jail, what I had done. And we walked through the front doors of this jail and I'm in shorts and nothing else. And it's an old style Mexican jail with the jail cells right there. And there's a guy in there, you know, just kind of looking at me and there's a guy sitting behind a desk and they had a radio. And so they called the airport with this radio and said, we have one that survived.

You need to go back out and look. It was over 24 hours since the plane had gone down. I could hear it, you know, sort of a sound like somebody banging on drums. So I called out to my dad, I said, Dad, I can hear a helicopter. And so I held still and sure enough I could hear the pop pop pop pop pop pop. I could hear a helicopter. The rescue helicopter saw the men in the ocean. They alerted a Mexican Navy vessel which picked the group up.

There's this guy's pulling me out of the water. I said, we got one more. There's one more. And he just sort of puts his arm around me and says, hey, don't, we have your friend. He's okay. And I was just, oh, that's all I wanted to hear. All I wanted to hear was that Jens was okay. The Navy boat took Jim and their fathers to the marina at Loretto. So there's an ambulance waiting at the marina. Jens was sitting in the ambulance. I think he stepped out of the ambulance. We all kind of gave each other hugs and kind of laughed about

it. And again, I thought, man, this is, nobody's going to believe this, you know. I remember hugging Jim and Jim said, I didn't think you were going to make it. He said that he was proud of me, which was pretty cool. They were all exhausted and dehydrated, but no one was badly injured. A lot of people say that we were lucky. Oh my gosh, you guys were so lucky. And I don't ascribe to that definition of what happened. Somebody was watching out for me.

There were just too many things that happened just exactly the right way. For that to be just pure luck. I survived because we had warm water. We kept our heads together. We had a strong will to survive. It's gonna be just pure luck. I survived because we had warm water. We kept our heads together. We had a strong will to survive. I survived because it wasn't my time. free. You can binge laugh out loud sitcoms like Frasier and re-watch cult classics like Higher Learning. Whether you're in the mood to solve a little crime before bedtime with

NCIS or Tracker or curl up with a surefire hit like Forrest Gump, Pluto TV has thousands of movies and shows all for free. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. It's October 1985 in Winnie, Texas. Agnes worked the night shift alone at a local convenience store. I would stay busy between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock. Between 1 and 6 was, you can count the people that would come in. I'd work all night and maybe see three people. About 12 o'clock, about midnight, the guy comes in. Well, average white guy, you know, country, you know, well, we're from the country, so a cowboy.

There were no other customers in the store. I asked him, can I help him, and of course he tells me yes, and first thing he does is reaches behind his back pulls out a gun. Oh, I panicked automatically You know, I forgot how to open the cash register. I forgot my name. I was just I was a mess Well, I bound every key I could find and it finally opened Dumped it all in a bag. I'll hand him the bag, you know, and I say that's all I have The gunman ordered Agnes to go with him. And he's holding the gun at me pointing with his finger on the trigger. So I jump across the counter.

I don't even walk around it. I flew across the counter. I left my purse, my everything. I just left the store wide open. Agnes is forced into the man's car at gunpoint and he drives away. We go maybe five miles down the road. But I know the area because I got an uncle lives on the road where he took me. The gunman parked in a remote field.

It was after midnight and where I live at, there are no lights in Ricefield. You know, it's on a shell road. You're in the middle of the country, and all you hear are wolves. I got so scared to where I wasn't scared. I don't know if that sounds crazy, but I was so scared to where I was calm. Then he handed me the car keys and told me to get out and open the trunk of the car.

So I did what he asked me to do. I get out and open the trunk, and there's this lady bleeding in the trunk of the car. She's lying there, crying, panicked. She's trying to get out, but she's hurt. 47-year-old Barbara Harrington Mayfield had been shot in the foot. I help her out. He's pulling the gun on both of us. And I look down at her foot, and it's wrapped in a white sheet that's red now.

She wanted to say something, I could see it in her eyes, but she wouldn't. He puts her in the passenger seat, puts me behind the wheel. Car's a standard. I have no clue how to drive a standard car. And that really made him very, very angry. The lady that was shot, he made her get behind the wheel. Even though her foot was shot, he made her drive.

He stayed in the back, pointing the gun at both of us. While she was driving and she had to use her foot, each time she hit the clutch and the gas, she screamed. We don't go very far, maybe a quarter of a mile down the road and then we turn down a second side road, still in the rice field though. The gunman told the woman to park the car. He gets in the front of the driver's side

and she and I both get in the back. He says he's never seen a white and a black lady make out and he wants us to make out in the backseat while he watches at gunpoint. She cries and so do I. Because neither one of us wants to do this. He wants us to take our clothes off. So we do that. We both take off our clothes.

And then he wants us to rub each other's breasts and fondle each other while he watches. The gunman had more than one gun in the car. He bent down to switch guns and we were whispering in each other's ear. And she told me she was so sorry and she didn't want this to happen. And I said, do you think we can get out of here? And she told me, no, there's no way. Just the only way we can get out of this is just do whatever he asks you to do. That's the only way.

She cries and so do I, because neither one of us wants to do this. And we were all in such a small car. There's no way. There's no way you could run without something bad happening. And if we don't do exactly what he says, he's gonna pull the trigger. Nobody's gonna make it out of that car.

After an hour, the gunman ordered the women to change seats. He makes her get in the front, and he gets in the back with me. And I have to perform oral sex on him. And he holds the gun to the back of my neck and tells me if I hurt him in any kind of way, he's going to pull the trigger. After I performed oral sex, then he raped me. — Barbara remained in the front seat. — The reason why I think she didn't run, she couldn't run. She was shot in the foot,

and there was no way she could go anywhere without him shooting her down. He tells me to get up off of him, and I asked him, was he gonna let me go? He really didn't answer. He just told me to, both of us, to get out of the car. So we're scrambling, trying to grab our clothes, and he and her, they walk to the back of the car.

I'm on the side, and I was bending over to put on my shoes, and I hear him and her, they're, you know, around the back of the trunk, and she's screaming. I raise up just, you know, and turn to see. I see the gun, and you know, I see what was happening between him and the lady. She's trying, she's fighting with him back there,

asking him, begging him not to do this. As soon as I turned around, all I saw was blue flames. I grabbed, you know, my head and got shot. When I grabbed my head, the bullets went between my fingers. So all of my fingers got shot, and I got shot right in the back of my ear. And I felt the worst stinging and the ringing in my ears. It's so indescribable.

Agnes didn't realize she had been shot in the head three times. I dropped down and I was still conscious at that time. I remember him walking around kicking me and I didn't move. I didn't move at all. Agnes was unaware the gunman had shot and killed the other woman. I said, well, maybe if I just lie here, you know, and he'll kick me a little bit, and then he'll think I'm dead. She heard him get in the car and drive away.

I remember crawling in the grass because I couldn't see anymore. And I passed my hand in front of my eyes. I knew I could see it before, even though it was dark, but I'd come to find out I was blind. And so that's why I couldn't see my hands anymore. And then I couldn't stand up because I lost my balance. So that's why I crawl. Agnes was bleeding heavily and barely conscious. And you can hear them coyotes getting closer and closer to me.

And you can, and it seems like I heard everything in the world in them grass. Because there's snakes, there's mosquitoes, there's alligators, there's raccoons. Everything you can think of they will eat you smelling fresh blood. I had to get out of the grass because coyotes and some wildlife, alligators, there's a number of wildlife back there. I crawled and I waved my hand. One hand stayed on the road and one hand stayed in the grass. Heavy blood loss caused Agnes to pass out. The next thing I heard was my brother's voice calling my name.

Agnes's family had been searching for her. There's a newspaper guy that comes and deliver the newspaper by one o'clock in the morning. He's the one that discovered the store was opening that I was missing. And that's who called the police. Police wanted to delay the search until light. But Agnes's brother kept searching. He found me. It was about six in the morning. He asked me, where do I get shot? I told him, shot me in my head and I can't see.

He was panicking. We had another guy friend with us. He was panicking. You know, we got to the hospital and everything and man, we flew. But I couldn't see, I couldn't see any, I don't know. It was a mess. At the hospital, the police interviewed Agnes. I described to the police,

I can see this guy facing my head, you know, to the tee. And then, but the first thing I told them that there's another lady back there, you gotta go find her. So I told them exactly where to go at and find her. And they did. And she was dead. She had sold him the car and they had some kind of disagreement. So that's how they ended up finding him. Agnes had extensive surgery but didn't regain her sight. I was still in the hospital. I think I was missing one of the nuns.

She was making me laugh and a few colors started coming back. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I just couldn't make out a face, but I could see what she was wearing. I have tunnel vision. My eyesight is, I'll say like iffy. Sometimes I can see, and sometimes I can't see anything. So I'm blessed when I can, and I don't worry about it when I can't.

Johnny James was convicted of the murder of Barbara Harrington Mayfield and executed in 1990. I survived because of my brother, my daughter, my mother, my friends, and me. I have a strong will to live, and I'm not going anywhere, and I have a long ways to go.