Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Don't Want to Die Like That

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

In September of 1992, 17-year-old Jennifer Asbenson is kidnapped and driven into the most desolate part of Palm Desert, CA. Her attacker, 32-year-old Andrew Urdiales, has already killed multiple women before luring his latest victim into his car. Jennifer recounts in her own words her fight to stay alive and escape the clutches of her would-be killer.Sponsors: PDS Debt: Right now, PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Head over to pdsdebt.com/survived to get your free debt assessment today. Huggies: Get your baby’s butt into Huggies best fitting diaper! Huggies Little Movers. We got you, baby.  

This episode is brought to you by Huggies Little Movers. Get your baby's butt into Huggies' best-fitting diaper. Huggies Little Movers. We got you, baby. An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault, violence, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. And it just blows my mind that you could feel so comfortable with another human being and not know what kind of monster they really are. Jennifer Aspenson grew up in Morongo Valley, California, a small town near Palm Springs. Her dad moved the family to an empty property when she and her brother were young.

We just basically lived on the mountain like we were camping. We rarely bathed. We ate canned foods. We eventually got a double-wide trailer with no electricity. We lived in that while my dad built the house. Growing up out there obviously was not idyllic, and Jennifer's parents weren't making the situation any better. My dad was an alcoholic, a non-violent alcoholic. He was the type that could drink alcohol all day long, still drive home,

still do anything, and you would never even know that he had been drinking. And he didn't want to come home because my mom was very depressed and my brother was handicapped. I think that my mom never liked me. My mom was very abusive. If I could change my family life, I wouldn't, or who my parents were, because my mom, she told me things that weren't true, like I would never be anything in life. You know, she would always say that God cursed her, and that's why she has such terrible children and a handicapped son.

I thought God blessed her with my brother because he's amazing. But anytime she did something to me or said something to me, I knew in my heart that it wasn't true. And it only made my spirit stronger. And it only made me want to not really prove her wrong, but just show her what I was capable of. In 1992, 19-year-old Jennifer was still living on the property with her family. She decided it was time to branch out, but she needed a job first. So when I began to research jobs, I found this place. It was a very large facility in a town away. And within the facility lived a lot of physically and mentally challenged people,

people like my brother, people that I understood. And I applied for a job with them and told them of my experience with my brother and how he needs 24-7 care and how I knew how to care for him, how to watch him, how to give him medication. I knew how to do all of that stuff. Jennifer chose to do the night shift, working from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. She loved her job, and it felt really good to be taking care of people. I had worked there for about a year, and I had never called in sick. I was a really good employee. I just loved that job and those girls and I would do anything for them, of course. I had been there for over a year and I was told that I was going to

get a paid vacation and I just thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing. This is my way out of my parents' house. This two weeks off meant Jennifer would have time to apartment hunt and finally move out on her own. My parents said, well, that's fine, but you know, you can't use our car anymore if you do that. And I just didn't care. I didn't think about that. We moved in together. A couple of girls lived there on and off in this just little tiny apartment. It was like $200 a month. And then when my two-week vacation was almost up, that's when it really hit me that I didn't have a ride to work, that I was really going to have to find out how to get there on my own. Now, you got to remember, this was in 1992. There was no Lyft. There was no Uber.

There was no cell phones. It was a time where you had to rely either on yourself or on another human being. She called friends for a ride to work, but no one could take her. She tried the bus, but didn't realize how much longer it would take with all the stops. She was late three nights in a row, and her boss was not sympathetic. The fourth night, her roommate agreed to give her a ride, but then her car wouldn't start. Jennifer panicked and made her way to the bus stop, knowing she was going to be late again. So when I saw the bus go by and I found out that it was the bus that I was supposed to be getting on, I just felt a sense of despair. The emotions

inside me were just so distraught over this that I still jumped on top of the bench and looked for the bus because I was just in disbelief. I flailed my arms. If somebody was looking at me, they would see that I was in distress. The thing is that I didn't know somebody was looking at me. This is I Survived, the podcast where we talk to people who've lived through the worst things imaginable and all the tragic, messy, and wonderful things that happen after survival. I'm Caitlin VanMol. I started just having a thousand thoughts go through my head.

What am I going to do? How am I going to get to work? I probably just lost my job. I'm such an idiot. I was on the verge of tears but couldn't cry. And then I heard a really kind voice. And the voice just said, hey, do you need a ride? Before I even looked, I thought just real quick, no, no.

So I just turned and I said, no, thank you. And right after I said that, I thought to myself, why did you say that? You do need a ride. Of course, I knew you shouldn't take a ride with a stranger. So as I went to look at him, he wasn't even focused on me anymore. He was going to pull out and leave. And that's when I, in a split second, thought if he were some sort of bad person, he wouldn't just leave like that. He would try harder. And it just,

it wasn't only a ride he was offering. It was a solution. I thought it would be smart of me to look at his license plate before I get in the car. So I walked slowly, act like I was fumbling through my bag and looked at his license plate and begin memorizing it. Then I got in the car, saw him, was still trying to memorize the license plate. He started talking to me and his kindness and his demeanor, his stature, his whole physical presence, everything about him just completely disarmed me. And I actually thought I was silly

for trying to memorize his license plate. I remember letting out a sigh of relief, you know, looked around the car. I didn't see any weapons. I didn't see anything scary. He asked me where I was going, and I told him the town that I was going to. And it just confirmed it all to me that I made the right decision when he said, that's where I'm headed. And I just thought, oh my gosh, this was meant to be. They chatted on the ride and Jennifer began to feel more at ease. She was grateful for the favor and glad her job was going to be saved. When we pulled up to my work, he was mentioning that he wanted to go to breakfast the next morning.

I told him that I couldn't because I had a boyfriend. And he said, oh, so your boyfriend doesn't allow you to eat? You know, he was just, it was funny. He knew how to have a conversation and he knew how to be witty, but I wasn't the type of girl that could just say, look, I'm not interested. So when I got out of the car, he got out of the car too. And he asked for my phone number at work. And even though he knew where I worked and all of that, I thought this will be the perfect chance to just give him the wrong number, so when he calls, he'll just know I'm not interested,

and I'll probably never see him again. So I did. I changed one digit in the phone number, and then he was funny funny and he repeated it back and just scrambled up all these numbers like he was saying three two nine eight four five seven eight six three two one five four okay what's the number again and I knew it because I just changed one number and then he looked at his paper and said okay just checking and then he looked at his paper and said, okay, just checking. And then he got in his car and before he left, he said, see you in the morning. And my heart just dropped because I thought, I don't want to deal with that.

I just want to go home. I'm not interested in him. Jennifer got off work at 6 a.m. the next morning and tried to walk the opposite direction from where the man might be waiting. I heard a car coming. I wasn't sure that it was him until I heard it right alongside of me slowing down. And I just thought to myself, oh gosh, I got to deal with him now. I turned and looked. He rolled the window down. He was bright and cheery. Like he loved mornings. And he just said, good morning, beautiful. How was your night? He just said, come on, let's go to breakfast. And I said, I told you, I don't want to go to

breakfast. I can't. And he said, then I'll at least give you a ride home. Those were the only two things on my mind. Okay, I'll have a ride home. I don't want to go to breakfast. He'll give me a ride home. Okay. So I got in the car. I'm getting situated with my stuff. We're driving, and he brings up the phone number that I gave him.

My heart dropped just for a second and then I thought I'm gonna turn this around on him and make it seem like he wrote down the wrong phone number. When the phone number was brought up the tone of this friendly ride home changed dramatically. He turned into another person and just screamed. I called that number and some old bitch answered. And I just went into shock. The look on his face, his whole demeanor, was nothing I had ever anticipated. He kept screaming and cursing. All I could do was look, look around.

I had no thoughts. My body was numb. The next thing I knew the car pulled over. He bashed my head into the dashboard. I saw a knife. I saw a gun. I don't even really recall what order. The weapons really scared me. I saw him pull twine up from under his seat. He pulled my hands behind my back. All this was happening to me. It was so bizarre because it was like fear just took me over. And all I could do was witness what was going on with my own two eyes.

All I could do was witness it. I couldn't think of what I could do was witness it. I couldn't think of what I could do to get out of the situation. I just became completely docile, completely controllable. He had twined my wrists together behind my back. All I really, really, really remember feeling at that point

is that this is the point where I have completely lost my innocence because I just saw another human being turn into a complete monster. And I really never knew that was possible. And from that moment until now, I have not been able to stop my hands from shaking. The very first thing I asked him was, is this a joke? And I know that may sound crazy, because who would do a joke like that?

But I think that was my mind's way of protecting me. The man started driving, and Jennifer tried to figure out what to do. You may wonder why I didn't get back and use my feet and try to cause a car accident by kicking the steering wheel, by doing anything like that. And the answer to that is because I still had hope. I didn't know what he was going to do to me. She told him she knew a lot of people in the area and they would see her in this strange car and recognize her.

He put a hat and sunglasses on her and reclined her seat all the way back so no one would see her. And I just remember laying there with a hat and sunglasses on and a sweatshirt and my arms tied behind my back just looking at the roof of his car and thinking that I needed to prepare myself

because I was going to be raped. And that's when I thought it would be in my best interest to tell him that he could rape me because I thought if I did that, that maybe he wouldn't hurt me with the knife or the gun. So I decided right then to cooperate. So that's what I told him. I said, it's okay.

If you want to rape me, you can rape me. It's okay. Just let me go. And I could tell he didn't like hearing me talk. He just screamed again. Shut up, bitch, whore, just all kinds of different names. Then I realized we were turning, and I thought to myself, I know where we're turning at. I know my directions. I would know it with my eyes closed.

And I lost a little bit of hope because I knew the way we were turning was away from civilization. At one point, he undid his pants and pulled me by the hair and told me to give him oral sex. And when he couldn't perform, he got very mad and he just hit me back into my seat. And then we turned on another road and that's when I really thought, oh my goodness, this is not, it's not going to be easy. Because we are going to the most desolate, creepy, most abandoned place that has trash in the desert, and growing up that my friends and I would make fun of, and said, imagine if you broke down here. It was that desert that he was going to.

And I could see the telephone poles, and we passed one telephone pole and then the next and everybody knows there's quite a bit of distance in between telephone poles so I kept hoping that he would stop but he didn't he just kept going and going and I just kept watching the telephone poles and the more that passed, the more hope that I lost. And once we passed seven or eight, I tried to tell myself to accept that I was probably never going to come out of that desert. I think over our lifetime, we've all had experience with debt. And back when I was struggling with credit card debt,

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He was very violent. He was striking me, took my shoes off, started beating me with my shoes, put the shoes down, started trying to pull my sweatshirt off and then realized my hands were tied so he couldn't get that off. He took out the knife and he just reached underneath the sweatshirt, just did a flick of his wrist and pulled my bra right out.

He did the same thing with my underwear. He flipped his wrists, cut them, pulled it right out. This whole time I was numb. My mind was numb. My thoughts were numb. My only emotion was get through it. He took the knife and he started cutting my jeans shorts and then he would try to pull them off of me and then cut them. And he eventually just got them off of me. Then he took my underwear and he balled them up. And he started shoving them into my mouth. And then he just grabbed the bra and tied it around my head

to hold the underwear in my mouth. Because I kept trying to dislodge them. And then he climbed onto my lap. And he was sitting towards me, looking right into my eyes. And when I looked at him, I just thought, he's the devil. You could see nothing in his eyes. It looked just like black holes. I couldn't understand it.

To be honest, part of me didn't ever want to leave that desert because I knew I would never be the same. Just so far by what I had seen and experienced, so far. He just sat there staring at me and then he started strangling me. When he was strangling me, he started telling me to tell him that I loved him. And then he let off his hands off my neck

and I didn't say it right away because honestly, I wanted it to sound real. And I grew up in a family that was very unemotional. We never said that to each other. He couldn't wait. He started being forceful, strangling me again, yelling at me, tell me you love me. And so I just tried to say it and he couldn't hear it because I had underwear in my mouth and a bra tied around. So he pulled that off. And the crazy thing was he was so excited to get that out of my mouth,

to get that off of me and out of my mouth so he could hear me say these words. It was mind blowing to see this evilness ask for love. He couldn't wait for me to try to figure out how to say it right, so I just said it. I just said, I love you. And he slapped me, punched me, says, say it. Say it like you mean it it and I just tried to go

within myself very quickly to think say it another way whatever you do say it another way you don't have time to figure it out just so I just said I love you he got more pissed he said no you don't say it like you mean it say it like you mean it, say it like you mean it. Started hitting me more, so I just dug as deep as I could. I looked into his black eyes, and as sincerely as I could, I told him I loved him. He then tried to rape me, and again, he couldn't perform, and that made him really mad.

The violence level started to escalate. He was very frustrated. I started telling him it was okay, it was okay, that that happens. I was trying to say anything that would make him not get angry about that. But then he just started strangling me. I remember trying to breathe in and out, and it was, there was nothing. And it was the most helpless feeling I'd ever had in my life. Jennifer was sure she was going to die out here in the desert and started to mentally prepare herself. And I knew I was going to die. And so I made one attempt with all of my heart and soul to try to just shoot love out to everybody that I knew, even if I didn't like them,

anybody I had ever known in my life, I just thought with all my mind and heart and soul, please know that I love you and that I am okay. And then suddenly there was just nothing. There was nothing. It was just black. I don't know what happened. I don't know how long I passed out for.

But after I passed out, I felt like I had just been born. And all I could see was white. And I could hear something that sounded like really beautiful singing, but it wasn't singing. The next thing I knew, I was out of the car, above the car and I was looking down at the car, at him. I saw myself. I saw him strangling me but all I felt was love.

I knew that was me but I had absolutely no empathetic connection with any of the situation. No hate for him, no sadness for myself. I knew that was how I died, but that was just a fact. It had no emotions attached to it. Wherever I was, I was no longer shaking. I had no questions to anything. I'd never felt so alive and at peace in my whole life.

That's the best I had ever felt, ever, in my whole life. It's then that Jennifer snapped back to reality, just as the man was bashing her head against the side of the car. When I realized that I was back, my whole outlook had changed. I wanted to die because that was my only escape, because it was literally like I went from hell to heaven. And then I was back in hell.

That's when he began to just suck on my neck, like to give me a hickey or something. And I feel his slobber just running down in between my breasts onto my sweatshirt, and I'm just thinking, why did he mention love? What is wrong with this guy? Why is he sucking on my neck? And then he sits up and I look at him

and to my surprise, he has blood and a little piece of skin in his teeth and blood coming down his lip and I have no idea what it's from. And then I realized he wasn't at all sucking my neck. He was biting my neck. He tried to take a chunk, a bite out of my neck, and I didn't feel any of it. He then dragged her out of the car. She realized they were nowhere near any other cars.

She had been under his control for about 45 minutes at this point. Then he got a big paper bag of knives out of the trunk. When I saw it, my heart just dropped and I thought, I do not want to be cut up with knives. So all I was wearing was my long sweatshirt and my hands were still tied behind my back. And I decided to run towards the cars that I knew I'd never reach, but at least I would be shot instead of butchered with the knives. So I just started running. I knew I was going fast. And then suddenly something struck the back of my head and I just fell back onto the ground and I opened my eyes and tried to wonder if I was shot. I couldn't figure it out,

but then he just reached his hand down and grabbed the top of my hair and just started dragging me back to the car through the rocks, cactus, whatever. I don't know, I didn't feel it. He never shot me. He just caught me by my hair as I was running and just ripped me onto the ground,

dragged me all the way back to the car. And then I was on the ground and he was standing there and he opened his pants and he told me to give him oral sex. Then I had another glimpse of hope and and I thought, I could just bite it off. What if I just bite it off? And I got that thought out of my mind because I thought, if I'm going to die, I don't want to have to do something that gross. Honestly, I didn't want to do anything like that.

So I thought I would refuse. So I said no. And he said, do it. And he hit me in the head with the gun. And I said no. And that's when I started calling him names. I called him a moron, a pervert. I told him to F himself.

Not because I was tough, but because I wanted him to kill me. And then I just started telling him, kill me. I'm not afraid of you, kill me. So he got the gun, he grabbed the back of my head and he shoved the gun into my mouth. And again, I just squinted my eyes and I tried to take a deep breath, but I just couldn't stop imagining

the back of my head coming off. Each second seemed like forever, but the longer he kept that gun in my mouth, the more I knew he wasn't going to pull the trigger because he wanted to torture me more. And I was right. He pulled the gun out of her mouth, dragged her to the trunk, and though she was fighting him, he managed to get her inside. I'm laying in there on my back with my hands still tied behind my back. I listened to what he was doing. I could hear him walking, getting in the car.

I heard all the little noises, the beeping when he got in, that the key was in the ignition. And then he started driving. And then my mind just opened up. And I was trying to think what I've ever learned about a trunk. What I've ever learned about being in a situation like this. And then I thought of my grandma, that my grandma told me, Jenny, if you ever need help and you're in a bad situation, pray to God. And I just thought, that's all I can do. And I just started praying out loud and said, God, if there is a God, if you

are there, help me now. I am bound in this car. I didn't know how much information I had to give him, but I just asked to go to the front of the prayer list, to go straight there because I was literally with the devil. I prayed, God, please take me. Please just let me die right now or just let me free. I got like hysterical energy. I could just feel it building up. I knew something was going to happen and I could just hear the twine bursting.

She had broken the twine that was binding her hands. But this created a new problem. With her hands free, she now had to figure out how to fight him. He had weapons. She didn't. So I started panicking again. And I said, God, just please kill me. Just please kill me. And I took the twine and I wound it up and I put it around my neck and held it as tight as I could.

And I tried to strangle myself with it and I just couldn't do it with the twine because he had strangled me so much that the twine did nothing. So I threw the twine and then I just laid there staring at the back of the trunk and I believed. I believed God was going to help me, and then everything just lit up. When I was a kid, I taught myself that I could see in the dark, and I could see that there was a latch inside there. And then I put my hand in, and I felt the lever, and I put my other hand on the top of the trunk. It was like I'd done this a million times.

I was holding the trunk so it wouldn't fly open when I undid it. And then I realized I had another problem. How am I going to get out? Am I just going to jump? But because I was in the dark, all my other senses were really good. My hearing was really good, and I could tell we were on a busy road, so I knew that we were. And I thought, no, I'm not going to jump. I'm going to let him see that the trunk is open, so he'll pull over, and then he'll come back.

And if we get into a fight, other people will see. That's the way that I've got to do it. Now that she had a plan, she let the trunk go and he pulled over. Then he came around to the back of the trunk and tried to shove the gun in. And I pulled it down on his hand. He pulled the gun out. I managed to shut the trunk. Then he bounced on it and lifted on it to make sure that it was shut.

I think he might have thought he didn't shut it accurately. I don't know if he saw my hands were untied. Then he got back in the car, and I just laid there listening, and he pushed on the gas. I could hear the back tires spinning, and I realized he got stuck in the sand. And then he would stop and he'd pay attention to his surroundings to see if anybody saw anything. And I knew this because when he was paying attention to the surroundings, he was also yelling at me And I could hear his voice turning and turning back the other way. But when he was pushing on the gas, he was focusing on getting out of there.

So I started to time it, and I started to think, okay, he's focusing on me right now. Now he's about to focus on pushing on the gas and getting out. He's focusing on me. And then right after he focused on me, when I knew his head was turning and he was getting ready to put his attention into getting out of the soft sand, I flipped the trunk and I jumped out and I tried to run,

but I actually flipped over the trunk and twisted my arm because my hand was still stuck inside the back of the trunk where I'd put my hand to undo the latch. So I'm standing there like this trying to wiggle my hand out and his door flies open and I just think to myself, just run. Who cares if you leave your hand behind? Just run. Her hand yanked free from the trunk. As she was running for her life, a car was approaching. So I just started clawing at it and grabbing and saw the window was down and grabbed the side mirror and was running as fast as the car was going. And they were scared. It was an old couple. And the woman was hitting her husband who was

driving saying, go, go. And she was looking back. And they were scared out of their minds. I was trying to get enough foot leverage to push myself up into the car window as it was going, but they finally just took off. And my first thought was, nobody's going to help me. Nobody's going to help me because I'm half naked and bloody. My second thought was, I just made a lot of leeway. I just got really far because I ran the speed of that car. So he's not gonna catch me. And then I thought again, just look back, look back. And I turned to look, and he was running down the middle of the road with a machete over his head, like in a horror movie.

And that's when I realized why that older couple went faster and left me. It's because that's when I realized why that older couple went faster and left me. It's because that's what they saw. So I just thought to myself, the next car I see, I'm just going to run straight at it and let it either run me over or they can help me. So I saw a truck coming and I just had my arms up and I just ran towards it and when it got closer, I just shut my eyes, thinking it might hit me, but I would rather die like this than him get me.

But then I heard the brakes, and I realized the truck stopped. They let her in the truck. By the time she could tell them what happened, her attacker had driven away. But I started screaming at them, saying he had a knife, he had guns. I was in the trunk, and I saw them silently communicating between their eyes, like, whoa, this is a big deal. So we tried to drive after him, but then I just kept saying more and more and more, like, he strangled me, I died, this and that, and again, they did that silent communication between their eyes,

and I totally understood it, and they were telling each other that this is a job for the cops, this is not something they can handle, because this guy is obviously a whack job, so we watched him get away. Then they brought me up the hill, which just so happened to be the town that I grew up in. And they brought me to the local gas station there to call the cops. The craziest part is the whole time I was with this guy or with these guys

in the truck was thinking that when the world found out about everything I went through and how I survived it, everybody was going to come running to me with open arms and love me and take such good care of me. But after all that she had been through, that's not the reception she received. Police, EMS, and her family came to the gas station. And my mom came over, and everybody was standing around. And I said, Mom, I was kidnapped. I was kidnapped, and he was going to kill me.

And she didn't hold my hand. And she just said, well, that's what you get for hitchhiking. And she walked away. And then in the ambulance, all they cared about were my physical injuries, which were nothing compared to the damage that had been done inside my soul. And the craziest part is so much could have been healed at that time with a single hug. I remember getting to the hospital and having a rape kit performed. And like I said, nothing was going like I planned.

Nobody was proud of me. I felt like I was being victimized all over again. I was asked numerous times if I was sure about what I was talking about. And then by the time I spoke to the police, I'd wished that he would have killed me. Because the police didn't believe me. They never said those words.

They never said, we don't believe you. But these were men, grown men in suits. I was fragile. I was shaken. I was terrified of men. I no longer knew who was a monster, who wasn't. And I was in this room with many men, and they were all giving me different stories. But none of them would go along with the story that I was trying to tell them. They told me one of the scenarios was that my boyfriend picked me up from work and we

got into a fight. And he bit me and he tossed me around and they told me they don't know who picked me up. That wasn't even in the police report. They even asked how I got to the gas station if I was in that town. How did I get a half hour away? And I said, these men gave me a ride. There's no men. Nobody saw any men. They confused me so much that at one point I actually considered just taking one of their stories because their

stories made more sense than mine, but I didn't. I just eventually stopped talking. Having been through this horrific attack, then feeling completely unsupported, led Jennifer through a very rough mental health journey. So the police didn't believe me. My friends didn't know whether to believe me or not. My mom didn't believe me. So I started not to believe myself. I started to think that I just could have been crazy. So because I felt so alone and isolated, I just held everything in. And I guess if you do that, your body and your soul and your mind just can take it up to a point. But then you're just going to lose control.

Something happened to me. I was hanging out with my friends pretending like nothing happened. And suddenly the glass that I was drinking out of just fell out of my hands. I fell on the ground. My friends thought I was having a of just fell out of my hands. I fell on the ground. My friends thought I was having a seizure. The paramedics came. There was a lot of commotion. I overheard people saying that I was the girl that said that I was kidnapped.

I couldn't control my body. And then I just woke up in a mental hospital. I was put on heavy doses of medication. I was told that I was schizophrenic. When I realized where I was, of course, I panicked. But then I realized that if this really was true, and all this did happen to me, that he can't get in here. Because there's security. You can't go out that door.

You can't come in that door. You can't come in that door. And so I started to find comfort in the mental hospitals. And sometimes if I just felt scared, I would go back. I would do whatever it took to go back just so I could sleep, just so I could feel safe. With friends and family doubting her, eventually she started to doubt herself. I debated with myself and there were times where I just told myself that I was crazy, that I was crazy and something snapped and I tried to think it over and make sense of it, even adding in what the police had said, but I knew I didn't have a boyfriend, I more found myself sitting alone being confused,

trying to figure out how I could have made this up. Like, I had the physical evidence. I couldn't have bitten myself on the neck. That's humanly impossible. It's just the thing of you being vulnerable and being on medication, and everybody around you is telling you what you're saying isn't true, you start to believe it. And I would drive by that desert sometimes and I would tell myself, no, that did happen. But there was just nobody I could talk to

about it. The only thing that got me out of the mental hospitals was the birth of my daughter five years later. When I found out I was pregnant with her, I didn't want to lose her, so I told myself I'd never go back to a mental hospital again. And then when she was one, he was caught. And then everybody believed me. Two years after Jennifer's attack, the Chicago area experienced a string of murders. In April of 1996, 25-year-old Laura Ulaki was found stabbed several times, shot in the head once by a.38 caliber handgun,

and dumped naked into a place called Wolf Lake, which is outside of the city of Chicago. Matt Murphy was senior deputy district attorney in the Orange County DA's homicide unit. As investigators looked into who Laura Ulaki was, they learned that she was from Hammond, Indiana, which is about 30 minutes south of Chicago. So three months after the murder of Laura Ulaki, Cassandra Quorum was found floating in a river. She'd also been stabbed multiple times and shot with a.38 caliber handgun. And as police looked into that, it would turn out that Cassandra Quorum was also from Hammond, Indiana, just like Laura Ulaki. In August of 1996, Lynn Huber was also discovered in Wolf Lake. She'd been stabbed dozens of times and shot multiple times with a.38 caliber handgun.

Also found floating naked in the water. All three women were sex workers in the Chicago area. With all the similarities in the murders, police finally realized there was a serial killer. But they couldn't find the owner of the gun until they got a tip from another sex worker. She had just been in an argument with a potential client. Basically, she pulled the police officer aside. Now, she knew about all these other women that had been murdered, and she knew that at least two of them were recovered in Wolf Lake.

And she pulls the cop aside and says, hey, just so you know, he said he wanted to put handcuffs on me, and he said he wanted to take me to Wolf Lake. And that obviously set off huge alarm bells for her, and that wound up being very significant later on because Wolf Lake, that was the break that the police needed in this case. The man was identified as Andrew Urdialis. Here's John Booth, who was a homicide detective for the Palm Springs Police Department.

So now the Chicago Police Department has a name, Andrew Urdialis. They find out that he lives in the city of Chicago. They also find out that he had been the city of Chicago. They also find out that he had been recently arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, a.30-A caliber handgun, the same caliber that was used to kill the three prostitutes. The detectives go and retrieve the gun that Andrew was carrying at the time that he was arrested. The ballistics on the gun that Andrew was carrying at the time that he was arrested. The ballistics on the gun are the exact same ballistics of the three prostitutes

that were killed in the Chicago area in the previous year. Chicago police arrested Andrew Urdialis. During their search of his home, they found evidence related to several additional murders. And the detective told me that as he was walking Andrew Urdialis away from his home, where they had just arrested him, he stops them and he says to them, by the way, you should call Palm Springs Police Department because I've killed a whole bunch of people there too. In January of 1986, Robin Brantley was found stabbed to death in the parking lot of her

college in Orange County, California. She left a play that she had volunteered to be an usher at and was walking to her car in the parking lot and was confronted by this suspect who stabbed her 41 times. Nothing was stolen. Nothing was taken from her. She wasn't sexually assaulted. And that was one of the difficult parts for the investigation is that we didn't know why this happened. And when investigators arrived at the scene of her murder, there was virtually no physical evidence. There was no fingerprints. There was no DNA. There was no blood from the suspect left behind. So they were kind of at a standstill as far as scientifically figuring out who this suspect was.

And we couldn't find anybody who hated her. She was just an all-around really nice person. And that was one of the reasons why this case went unsolved for so long. Her case eventually went cold. But later, in July of 1988, Julie McGee's body was found outside of Palm Springs, California. She was a 29-year-old sex worker. She had been shot, but again, there was nothing missing. There was no easy answer to why this happened. Two months later, in San Diego, California, another prostitute was brutally murdered. She was shot with a.45 caliber handgun,

and evidence at the scene was processed, and they found a condom that had been left behind. Her name was Mary Ann Wells. The state of the criminal investigations back then, remember this is prior to DNA being so prevalent in the world that it is today, they did not have the ability to figure out who the evidence inside the condom belonged to. They could figure out the blood type, but they couldn't figure out from the data banks that we didn't have back then, they couldn't figure out who the

suspect was. In April 1989, a man walking through the desert in Palm Springs found the body of 18 year old Tammy Irwin. When I arrived at the scene of Tammy Irwin's murder, you can see that she had been shot multiple times in the head, in the torso, in the arm. She had fallen face first into the desert dirt and was lying there with blood coming out of several places in her body. You could immediately tell she was a young girl in her late teens, early 20s. And it was sad because it almost looked like she had been discarded, like trash that was thrown out. And that was the sad part for somebody that was as young

as her to have her life taken away at such a young age and then simply just discarded in the desert. Tammy had also been shot with a.45 caliber gun. Though so much evidence in all the cases was the same, the murders were not connected. They were all being investigated by different police departments. In 1995, another sex worker, Denise Maney, was found dead with her hands bound behind her back. She too had been shot and stabbed the part that is the most relevant in the denise maney case is the amount of injuries that she sustained she had her throat slit she was stabbed so many times and then she was also shot with her with a gun in her mouth and shot her and blowing the back of her head off. Evil is the only answer that you could come from that.

Any one of those wounds would have killed her. The ballistics did not match any other homicides in the Palm Springs area and the case went cold. By 1995, five women had been murdered in addition to Jennifer's attack with no suspect. All that changed in April of 1997. I received a phone call at my desk at the police station from the Chicago detectives. They had just arrested Andrew Yerdy-Allis, and as they were discussing the murders that he had taken in Chicago, he told them about some murders that he had committed in the Southern California area, including Palm Springs.

So the detective contacted me that afternoon and told me all about it, and I immediately recognized Denise Maney is who he's talking about. Tammy Irwin is exactly who he's talking about. And I was on a plane about an hour later flying to Chicago to interview him. Andrew Urdialis was a decorated Marine Corps veteran that worked as a security guard while living in Chicago.

In the hour-and-a-half interview with Detective Booth, Urdialis said he would leave his Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, solicit the service of a sex worker, murder her, and return to the base. After he left the Marines, he returned to his home in Chicago, where he continued the pattern. When I sat down with him to interview him, he knew all that. He knew the color of the shoes, the material that the shoes were. These are not Air Jordans. These are cotton shoes that she had on. The color of her underwear was this. The beads, the jewelry beads around her neck were this. I would hear him say that and I would thumb back through the book and see the photograph

of the murdered Denise Maney with these same beads that he talked about on her neck. So he knew everything about the murders, down to the color of the clothing, the jewelry that they're wearing, and the tattoos that they had on their body. It was very surprising that he spoke so freely. He was incriminating himself to the point that I knew with the three murders that he had admitted to in Chicago, and now the three murders and the sexual assault that he's committed in California, that this was going to be a life in prison or a death penalty case. After five years of questioning herself,

the only other person present during Jennifer's attack had corroborated her story. In 1997, the police came to my house one day and told me not to watch the news, not to listen to the radio, just to come down to the police station. So I went down to the police station and sat down and a detective said, thank you for coming. Something happened to you in 1992 and I didn't know what he was talking about because I had told myself that I didn't even know if that was real anymore, if I was crazy and made all that up.

But when he reassured me that something did happen, I just said, yeah. And he says, you were kidnapped in 1992? And I said, yeah. And he said, close your eyes, I'm gonna lay out some photos, and all you have to do is show me the man that did this to you. So I did and when I opened my eyes, he was right there.

And I said, it's that man right there. And I pushed it towards him and he said, are you sure? And I said, I'm positive. And he said, well, this man is a serial killer. He murdered eight women and you're the only one that got away. And that was weird. I'd never had such a mix of emotions. Anger that nobody believed me.

Happiness that people believe me now. Sadness that he murdered other women. Loneliness that I have none of these women to talk to because they're all dead, hurt that I didn't get the right kind of treatment, fear that there are monsters like this, and just thankful that he was caught. The murders of Lori Ulaki and Lynn Huber were prosecuted first. Jennifer testified during the trial.

Testifying in court for me was very powerful. First of all, because I got to tell what happened to me. And by telling that, I was actually speaking for the other women he murdered that didn't get to tell their story. And I was letting the jurors, the family members, and the friends know, in a sense, what they went through. I'm not scared of him. Seeing him didn't scare me. I think he was scared of me because he never looked at me. He would just doodle on a paper. I looked at him often because I wasn't scared of him. Sometimes nearing the end of the trials he tried to have a stare down with me. I think he was trying to make me feel uncomfortable when there was chaos going on and when the courtroom wasn't in order. Him and I would stare

at each other but he would always look away first because I guess he realized how strong I really am. Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. Number one, I'm a huge Jennifer S. Benson fan because she is, she's just, she's heroic. She has a tattoo on her arm. I remember when I first met her and I was trying to read it because it's in kind of stylized writing and it says warrior. You know, and that is a really good, it's a really good description of Jennifer S. Benson. She is, you know, she's a wonderful advocate now for victims' rights. And when she testified, it was as if we were hearing from every one of these other victims

because she gave a voice to every one of these other women. It was incredibly powerful. And, I mean, she was just, she was phenomenal on the stand. Overall, prosecuting the different cases in Illinois and California took 16 years. It took many years going to court, testifying. I was the only witness, so I went to every trial, everywhere. I would still have nightmares of him trying to murder me, and I'd wake up screaming. I met the other family members, and I tried to let them know what their daughters went through

and those last moments and that where they went to was an escape, and a good one. I wanted him to get the death penalty. In 2002, Erdiales was convicted and received the death penalty. However, in 2003, Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of all death row inmates at the time. In 2004, Erdiales was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Lynn Huber, but that sentence was commuted in 2011 when capital punishment was banned in Illinois. He was also facing murder charges in Southern California for the murders of Robin Brantley, Julie McGee, Mary Ann Wells,

Tammy Irwin, and Denise Maney. He was again convicted and sentenced to death in October of 2018. One month after his sentencing, Andrew Erdieles died by suicide in prison. When I found out he killed himself, I had a lot of different emotions. I have PTSD, and my PTSD tells me one story, and that story was, oh, somebody's covering for him, and he's really coming to get you. So I usually know that story's not right. The other thing I thought was maybe somebody else killed him in there. At first, it was just very confusing. But then I didn't like that some of the family members were upset because they didn't want him to get off that easy. So I understood that too. But then I thought, you know, we wanted the death penalty

and he's not here anymore. So I thought about it for a while because it is weird. You want somebody to get the sentence that you wanted them to get. So when they change it like that, I don't see it as them taking control. It's not that at all to me. He was just evil and he got rid of himself. That's how I look at it. That's also when my nightmares stopped, ever since he did that. And I knew that he would never be able to get out and find me or attack me or do anything to me. My nightmares of him just stopped.

And that makes me happy. Today, Jennifer still lives in Southern California, and in 2019, she self-published her memoir called Girl in the Treehouse. I'm doing good now. I am the most positive person I know. Still, I try to find joy and happiness in whatever I can. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't do anything different. I'd get in the car, I'd do it all. I'd suffer and be tortured to know that in the end I'm going to get away and be the voice for all the women that didn't get away. To know that I'm going to be able to come out and speak

and tell people my story and help others. I don't think God gave me anything I couldn't handle. I just, I can't be broken. I mean, I might have lost a little bit of my sanity and turned into sort of a quirky person, but I'm okay with it and people around me are okay with it. And I mean, I had physical things done to me, but my spirit was never broken. And so I think things happen how they were supposed to because much more good came out

of the terrible thing that happened to me than bad. Much more good. To speak to someone at the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network, call 1-800-656-HOPE or 1-800-656-4673. You can also live chat with someone at rainn.org. That's R-A-I-N-N dot O-R-G. To speak to someone at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, you can now dial 988, or you can live chat with someone at 988lifeline.org. I Survived is hosted and produced by Caitlin VanMol and Law & Crime Network.

Audio editing by Brad Mabee. For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher, and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Sean Gottlieb, and Shelley Tatro. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series, I Survived. For more I Survived, visit aetv.com. Hold on to your jingle bells. Pluto TV has all your holiday favorites for free.

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Pluto TV. Stream now. pay never. Sometime in the early 80s, REO Speedwagon's airplane made an unannounced middle-of-the-night landing. This is my friend Kyle McLaughlin, the star of Twin Peaks. And he's telling me about how he discovered a real-life Twin Peaks in rural North Carolina, not far from where

he filmed Blue Velvet. What was on the plane was copious amounts of drugs coming in from South America. Supposedly, Pablo Escobar went looking for other spots, quiet, out-of-the-way places to bring in his cocaine. My name is Joshua Davis, and I'm an investigative reporter. Kyle and I talk all the time about the strange things we come across, but nothing was quite as strange as what we found in Varnumtown, North Carolina.

There's crooked cops, brother against brother. Everyone's got a story to tell, but does the truth even exist? Welcome to Varnumtown. Varnumtown is available wherever you listen to podcasts