Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Fell Into a Deep Dark Place

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

12 year old Thadius is carried outside of his home while asleep, by a man who turns out to be his captor, rather than his father. Kristen is kidnapped, led into a stranger's car at gunpoint & taken to his home while in her freshman year at the University of Delaware. Kimball, his brother, sister in law, & friend Mike are stranded on a boat 2 miles away from shore, surrounded by 43 degree water.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpApartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.BetterHelp - Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month!Mint - To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to Mintmobile.com/survivedProgressive - Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some viewers. Listener discretion is advised. I was being tortured, and if I tried to breathe, he would just pull harder. One, two, three waves hit us right in a row, and the boat just disappeared. He kept twisting and twisting his skin looked like a twisted rubber band. My feet were backwards. And every time he told me to stop, he would make me respond, yes, master. Real people who faced death and lived to tell how.

This is I survived. It's May 2003 in Newark, Delaware. 19-year-old Kristen has just finished her freshman year at the University of Delaware. My friends in my dorm, everyone was getting ready to go out. Just having a good time. And it was around 11 o'clock that we left the dorm. It was only maybe an hour that I was out with them. And I just decided that I didn't really want to be out anymore.

So I decided to walk home. I called my friend Collette, who was still at the dorm at the time, she still hadn't left. And I asked her to meet me halfway because I didn't want to walk the whole way by myself. Kristen arranged to meet her friend outside a convenience store. I got there before she did. And so I decided to sit down on a curb that was in a fire lane,

It was a Wella area, and there's cars driving by, there's people walking down the sidewalks. It was around midnight. This black sedan comes up and rolls down his window and says, if I give you $100, will you put on these handcuffs? He was in his mid-20s and had really, really, really long hair, like down in the middle of his back. and was just really grungy-looking.

And I, in my head, thought, freak? Like, what are you talking about? And got up to walk away, but before I could even get up, he opened the door, had me at gunpoint, and was pulling me in across his seat into the passenger seat. Within seconds, he had duct tape covering my eyes, had handcuffed me behind my back, me behind my back, put my head down in between my legs,

and handcuffed my feet together as well. And I just 100% didn't think I was making it out alive. I didn't have time to even realize what was going on when I was pulled into the car. I didn't scream. All he said to me was, you should have taken the money. And he said, did he said, don't. don't say a word, stay down, and he had what I thought

was the gun on my shoulder and his hand on my back, keeping me down. And I didn't want to say a word thinking that he would shoot my brains out right then and there. He asked me my name. I made up a name, and I said I was 17, because I felt that he wouldn't hurt me if he thought I was minor. I wanted to cooperate with him because,

I didn't want to make him angry to hurt me even more. After driving for 20 minutes, the man pulled off the main road. I heard the tires pull onto a gravel driveway. As soon as the car stopped, he got out, and I could hear him walking around the front of the car, and immediately he was at my door. Drug me out. We were going down steps.

I still couldn't see. I was still handcuffed behind my back. He started touching me and kissing me, and at that point I knew what was going to happen. And he sexually assaulted me after that. He kept telling me that everything was going to be okay. And that if I just cooperated, cooperated, everything would be okay.

But I didn't believe it. When he was done, he left me sitting there. I heard him go all the way up the steps and then have a door shut. And I heard the sound of dogs walking around. I heard the sounds of chains being moved around. And I didn't know if they were. for the dogs or what was to come of me.

Should I try and leave? I had, I mean, I knew I was alone, but I couldn't see anything, and I knew that he had had a gun. That in my head made me stay where I was. And he came back downstairs, and he sexually assaulted me again, and then drugged me over to... this table where he laid me face down. I could hear him moving chains around next to me,

and I can hear them above me too. At that point, he came over and put a ball gag in my mouth. Kristen was hog-tied, her hands and feet chained together and pulled up toward the ceiling. I couldn't breathe because the ball gag was choking me. And I could hear him sitting to the left of me, holding the chain, pulling me farther and farther up. And I could hear him masturbating at the same time.

I was being tortured, and if I tried to breathe, he would just pull harder. I kept trying to get air. I kept trying to fight for my life. He was yelling to stop. to stop trying to get out of it. I could barely even speak because I was being choked, and every time he told me to stop,

he would make me respond, yes, Master. And he finally decided to let go of the chains. I dropped down to the table and just gas for error. And at that point, I had no idea what was coming next, but all I thought was that it was going to be the worst. I just, I kept thinking of my brothers and my parents and my grandparents and them having to say goodbye to me and not ever really knowing the truth of what happened.

He took the ball gag out, drug me off the table, and back up the steps, back outside, and put me back in the car. He took off the handcuffs behind my back and replaced it with duct tape and took off the chains around my feet and replaced that with duct tape as well. We pulled out of the driveway and started driving again. I'd have no idea what was coming next, but he kept saying,

you're not going to tell anyone, are you? I did my best to make him believe that there was no way I would say a word to my parents or my friends. And whatever it was, I said he believed. The man pushed Kristen out of the car, still blindfolded and bound with tape. I heard the door slam, and I waited until I heard him drive off. I started struggling with my hands behind my back,

and the tape let go, and I was free. Kristen was near her college dorm. She frees herself, but realizes the man has her cell phone and ID card. He knew my name, where I lived, had access to my building, and my cell phone in his car. So he had access to my building. He knew my full first and last name, and he had my cell phone.

I turned around and started running back to my dorm in hopes that someone was still awake and could let me in. Kristen got into her dormitory and immediately called the police. The only piece of evidence that they found was one fingerprint in between the two pieces of tape that covered my eyes. But that fingerprint didn't match any of the records

that they had on file with anyone in the state. They didn't know a name. They knew that he drove a black sedan. They still had nothing. And it became a cold case quickly. I didn't want to let this person ruin my life in fear. I wanted to move on with life. And I went back to school the next semester.

I had two jobs. Went to school full-time. I kept myself as busy, as busy as possible, to avoid. ever thinking about this and to keep myself sane. Exactly three years later, I sat down to breakfast with one of the girls I work with, and she started talking about her boyfriend

and all of the things that he liked to do to her sexually and asked our opinion on if we had ever used a ball gag during sex before. Well, immediately, I parked up, sat up, and screamed out, what does he look like? And I was like, does he have long hair? And she said, yeah, why? He had a long gravel driveway, that he had dogs.

His studio was in the basement. He was also her guitar teacher, and he made her call him master whenever she was being taught by him. Kristen convinced the woman to go to the police with this information. Three months later, Kristen was visited by detectives. They sat me down at my kitchen table, and they said that they had arrested my abductor

and that they got him to confess on tape and that it was that one fingerprint that matched his from the duct tape. Ernie Carletti was a guitarist in a heavy metal He was convicted of rape and sentenced to 33 years imprisonment. I survived because I didn't let him make me live my life in fear. I didn't let him make me feel that I was defeated. And it was because I decided to live my life that he's behind bars right now.

95% of rapes that happen on a college campus go unreported and I am not a part of that 95%. And I go out to speak to universities to let people know that this happened to me and if it's happened to them to not be a part of that percentage as well. When we were kids, summer meant freedom, no homework, no teachers, no school. And as adults, some are still.

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Kimball is suffering from depression. I'm not quite sure why or what happened, but shortly after my wife and I got married, I fell into a really deep, dark place in my life. In fact, it got so bad. My poor wife, I asked her to shoot me in the head every day. A lot of people in my family would sort of reach out. And one of the things that we love to do was to go fishing.

Kimball's brother, Stephen, suggested going fishing with his wife, Catherine, and their friend Mike. It was going to be the last fish. This was mid-November, early November. We got up there, I think it was around like 7 a.m. The sun was just barely coming up. The weather was great, other than being freezing, but we're all bundled up and essentially wearing snow clothes. The water was like crystal smooth as glass.

There was not a cloud in the sky. It was totally clear. Just a perfect day for fishing. It was going to be the best fishing trip of the year. And we were in this time. this tiny fishing boat, maybe a 16-foot little aluminum boat that normally would have been like a rowboat. We have four adults in it.

We only had three life vests in the boat for four people. We were using the life vests as seat cushions because it was a small aluminum boat and then the seats were cold and hard. We start fishing and it was not the perfect day for fishing. I don't know if we caught a single fish. After three hours, the weather started to change. Waves were picking up a little, a little bit of wind, not a big deal.

All of a sudden, we just started catching fish, one after another. It's like at least someone in the boat, always had a fish on at any given moment. Somebody was bringing a fish in. It was just complete shift and we're having a blast and everything is just amazing. I was in the front of the boat and I was in the front of the boat and I was just, I was over 280 pounds, and I'm constantly getting this spray coming on me, but I'm pulling in one fish after another, and just don't even notice. I'm reeling in this fish, and I pull the fish into the boat.

The fish was swimming in the boat, and that was alarm bells, red flag. There's enough water in this boat for a fish to swim. This is a big deal. They're over two miles from shore, and the boat is filling up with water. The waves were splashing and coming over the front of the boat. I stood up and I tried to move towards the back of the boat to get the front of the boat to come up. We turned the boat and we try and get back to the marina, but turning the boat in that direction turned us right into the waves.

one, two, three waves hit us right in a row and the boat just disappeared. It didn't, we didn't capsize, it wasn't like we were, you know, rocking too much. It literally just filled with water and it was gone right out from underneath us. And we're all in the water. We're smacked out in the middle of the biggest part of the lake,

about two and a half miles from any shoreline. And the water was so cold It burns. The life vest they had been sitting on floated to the surface. I ended up with a life vest. My brother, Steve, and his wife, Catherine, both ended up with a life vest. And Mike grabbed onto the only thing he could really hold on to, which was this red, stinky, smelly gas can.

We all had heavy, you know, clothes on, snow clothes, you know, jackets, these big snow boots that I have on there, I cannot swim with these. So luckily, I hadn't tied him. I just kicked him off, and I was able to start swimming. My brother growing up was major into scouting, ended up being an Eagle Scout. He understood the predicament that we were in. He understood that in water that's 40 degrees,

you have 30 minutes before you're dead. Before your organ shut down, you get in severe hypothermia, and you're gone. I remember my brother saying, OK, let's stay together. Let's get to the marina. Everybody pray. We decided to head toward the one place where people would be, and that's at the marina.

But that was the direction that the wind and the waves were coming from. The waves were three-foot swells. The wind was blowing hard, and so it was like trying to swim up a river. My friend Mike had big, heavy steel-toed boots on, and they were tight, tight. And so he's stock behind us, as we're all trying to swim to the marina,

trying to get his shoes off. And there's no way that he can get his hands down to untie these heavy boots. So my brother swims back to him to help him. Stephen had to get all the way into the water, under the water to help untie these boots. Or they finally get them off. And it was at that moment that I realized we need to turn around and swim in the other direction.

I told Steve, we've got to turn around. We've got to go with the waves. Kimball's brother, Stephen, kept swimming toward his wife, Catherine, and the marina. At first I was thinking, you know, he was just going to catch up to her and have her turn around. They kept going that way. And so then it was, you know, why would they do that? Well, okay, maybe it's, best to split up. If they make it to the marina, they can get help and come get us. If we find someone, you know, maybe they'll find a boat, something. So as I'm swimming towards the east, we're looking and trying to judge, you know, how far the shoreline is, and we can see the shore. We start heading towards this, the closest point.

At that moment, Mike turns to me and asks the question, are we going to live? To me, it wasn't a question coming from Mike. To me, it was this moment of decision. It was a question coming from God, saying, you've been asking your wife to shoot you in the head every day for a year. Do you really want to die? Or do you want to live?

And it was at that moment that all doubt was gone. I knew I had made this choice. I wanted to live, and I turned to Mike and said, we're going to live. We just got to keep swimming. All we got to do is just keep swimming and we'll make it. We're swimming towards the shoreline and more letting the wind and the waves carry us in that direction.

We start to see a change in the shoreline, and so we know we're making some progress We're making some good progress. We're going to make it. After two and a half hours in 43 degree water, Kimball made it to the shore. You know, in my mind, I'm going to climb out onto the shoreline. I'm just going to lay there and just get warmed up in the sun.

As I get out of the water, it's the complete opposite. The wind is whipping through, and as I get out of the water and lay on the, on these rocks, I just start shaking uncontrollably. Kimball's brother, Stephen, and a sister-in-law Catherine, had swam in the other direction. If they had made it to the marina, obviously, they're telling people, hey, some get a boat,

let's my brother's out there, let's go get my brother, and I'm looking back out of the water and realizing there's no boats looking for me. I understand it's up to me, It's up to me to go find help for my brother. We're on the east side of the lake, and there's desert in every direction. There is nothing over there, and it's a long way away, but I see these cars driving past. We got up and started hiking over these big rocks, you know, cliffs and thistle and cactus.

And as, you know, obviously we had both kicked our shoes off, so we're trying to, trying to get to this road. And all this time, I keep looking back, thinking maybe he made it, maybe there's gonna be a boat. So I keep looking for a boat, hoping that there's one coming, realizing there's not, we really gotta make it. Eventually we get up to the road and, you know, car passes and it happened to be a forest ranger.

The ranger called for an ambulance to meet them at the In water that cold, you know, you have 30 minutes. Max is what you're supposed to have to live. But we were in the water for over two and a half hours. Not only did I not have any major hypothermia, I didn't have any frostbite, there was, there was like nothing wrong with me. Search and rescue teams arrived to look for Stephen and Catherine.

They found the life vests on the other side of the lake. the lake. And so part of that was they made it. Rescuers have been searching for Kimball's brother and sister-in-law for over five hours. You know, there's helicopters flying with infrared, so they're looking for any sort of body heat around the lake, and they're searching every inch of that lake, and they're not seeing anything. So as the night progresses on, the search and rescue was officially changed to a recovery effort. The next day, recovery team searched the lake using new sonar equipment. We get news that they found a body, and we're like, oh, thank goodness.

We found one of them, and then they pull the body up, and it's not them. And they find another body, and they pull the body up, and it's not them. And they find everybody else who had ever drowned in this lake, bringing this sense of closure to all. of these other families, some of them back to 15 years or 20, or maybe back to the 1980s or something. It was nine days before the bodies of Stephen and Catherine were found. They were virtually right by the boat, right where the boat went down. So obviously they continued to swim in the direction of the marina, continued to swim right into the waves until they succumbed.

That night, had this sort of a dream or a vision of my brother and his wife in their wedding clothes of all things. And they were happy. It was a really hard situation, but I was able to pull from it this power that came from my choice to live. to live. And so as hard as it was to lose my brother and his wife, I was a different person.

I survived because I got a long way to swim, made the choice that I want to live. I'm going to live. And that is a principle that has governed my life ever since then. Every minute of every day in every situation, I have a choice. episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me bring up BetterHelp before, but something we don't always give enough attention to is just how positive the feedback is from people who actually use it. If you want to explore that yourself, you can head to BetterHelp.com slash reviews and see what people are saying in real time. It's updated every day with hundreds of new responses from users sharing their experiences. BetterHelp has an average therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5,

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12-year-old Thaddeus lives with his parents and three younger siblings. Earlier that evening, we'd gone out for dinner. We came back home and we sat around for a little bit. My parents went to bed. Me and my youngest sister were on the coach watching TV, and we'd both fallen asleep. I woke up and I was being carried through my house. I really didn't think nothing of it because my dad would carry me to bed a lot of times when I'd fall asleep in the living room.

Half asleep, Faddeus realized it wasn't his father carrying him outside. I just assumed that it was the family friend and he was having car trouble and you wanted, needed some help or something. And my dad probably wouldn't get up to help him so he thought maybe I could. I could. I asked him where his car was at, and he told me it was just right up over the hill. It was dark. I didn't really know what was going on. I just moved there.

I only lived there two weeks. I wasn't scared. I didn't know I should be scared. The 17-year-old stranger took Thaddeus to his house, half a mile away. This place is a real dump. There's trash everywhere. It's garbage. old food, old dishes.

I realized it wasn't a friend of the family. He told me that he was going to be having a little party, and he started naming off people that I knew from school. And he said that they were going to be coming any time, and we're just going to hang out and have a good time. And he asked me if I was into model cars and trucks. So he went upstairs, and I looked at some of his model cars and trucks. I didn't know I had anything to worry about.

worry about. I've never been in a situation like that before. And the next thing I knew, he freaked out. He threw me back on his bed onto my back, and he grabbed my right ankle and twisted it around until it snapped. He just sat up on the bed beside me and put his hands on his head. And as soon as he did that, I made a run for it. I was so scared and confused at the time.

I didn't feel much pain in my ankle, but I did feel the bones slipping past my footbone when I was trying to run on it. It was a really strange feeling. I made it down his stairs out of his bedroom, down the stairs, through the living room, and halfway through the kitchen when he caught up to me. And he got me from behind and put me in a choke hold, drug me back into his living room, threw me up against his couch,

and forced my right leg up over my head until my thigh broke. So I just heard the pop. I just heard my leg pop. It didn't really hurt at that time. After that, he became a normal person, again, acting like he was my friend wanting to have conversation. He told me that he lived there with his brothers. He told me that his name was Joe.

I was trying to have conversations with him, so he'd leave me alone. And I'd asked him why he was doing this. And he told me he was fascinated with the sound of breaking bones. And I asked him, well, then why don't you just do it to your And he told me that he's tried, but he can never get the angles right. And I asked him if he's ever done it to anybody else, and he told me yes. In the morning, Thaddeus asked Joe if he could call his parents.

He agreed that he'd let me. And he gave me the phone and everything, but the phone wasn't connected. He was kind of like a joke to him. I tried to plea with him and bargain with him. I told him that I wouldn't tell anybody what happened. What'd say I tripped over a coffee table or something like that? And he said, nobody would ever believe me.

I spent about half the day in the living room watching TV with him until he took me back upstairs, decided that he was ready to do some more damage. He takes me upstairs, puts me on his bed again. This time he grabs my left ankle and twist it around until it breaks. He kept twisting and twisting his skin look like a twist the rubber band.

My feet were backwards. I did fight back. You know, I'd hit him, and I'd hit him in the back of the head. I'd hit him in his back, because he'd have his back to me while he was doing this sitting on top of me. And it'd just make him matter. And he'd put a pillow over my face, or he'd tell me to hold it there, not to yell, not to fight back, or he'd break my neck

or break my back. I believed him 100%. He'd already broken both my ankles and my thigh bone. I had no reason not to believe him. I never cried the whole time. I never let him know how scared I was or nothing like that. Throughout the day, Joe kept going outside trying to start his car. He would come in and complain about the car not starting,

and then that's when it seemed like he'd want to do damage again. He'd put leg braces on me for people with broken legs and stuff like that and try to make me walk. And at one point, we were standing over his stairs on this board, and either he kicked it out or it just gave way, but I went all the way down. A flight of stairs landed on my back. Well, at this point, I'm starting to swell up,

and it's extremely painful, almost unbearable. My right ankle was swelled pretty big. It was about the size of a softball, and my thigh was about the size of a basketball and black and blue. Blue. Later that night, Joe left the house, leaving Thaddeus alone upstairs. Heard the door shut. I heard a car leave, so I knew he was gone, and this was my chance to make a break for it. So I crawled to his top of his stairs, and I threw myself down there head first. It was the only

way to go. I couldn't do it any other way. And when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I had passed out for a little while. I tried crawling through the living room and I'd pass out. I don't know how many times I passed out and woke up. I didn't even make it to the kitchen when he came home. And he came walking in the living room and seen me laying there. And he was totally surprised. He drugged me upstairs after that and would twist my ankles around some more, jump on me.

Just took all of his anger out on me. After each torture session, Joe would put layers of socks on Thaddeus' feet. They had to be just perfect. He'd move them around, so all the seams were the same and everything was lined up. They were brand new white socks, and he had hundreds of pairs of them. He would settle down after he'd put the socks on. I guess that was his way of saying he's done for now. He's not going to hurt me no more for a little while.

At that point, he drags me downstairs, puts me to go. back on the couch and we watched a couple movies. I just wanted to get out of there and be with my family. That's all I could think about was my family. That's what kept me going. Faddeus eventually passed out and slept until the next morning. Sunday morning when I woke up, my legs looked like they weren't even human legs. They were bruised and yellow and swelled.

The pain was excruciating. I was, I can't explain the pain. It was my brother's birthday that day. I really wanted to be there. And it seemed like every couple hours is when he'd want to inflict damage. I'm upstairs laying on his bedroom floor, and he's running and jumping on me with his knees

over and over and over again. He broke my left knee, turned it completely around. Now both my legs are just. mangled really bad. There's no way I was going to walk out of there. That night, he's going out again. This time he doesn't want to take any chances. He puts me in his bedroom closet upstairs and locks the door.

I heard the front door shut on the house and a car leave, so I knew he was gone. And I started digging around in this closet. And I found an old wooden guitar, heavy-duty guitar. And I beat the door open with that, and I unlocked it. and I unlocked it. Again, I threw myself down the stairs head first. I passed out.

I came to at the bottom of the stairs. I drugged myself into the kitchen. It was really dark. And I found the phone hanging on the wall. Luckily for me, the cord hung low enough where I could grab it and jiggle the phone down. Another lucky thing was the buttons were on the handset part of the phone.

And I dialed 911. I told them his name about where I was at, and they knew right away. They said, we know where you're at, Thad, we're on our way. Guys got a criminal record. We've dealt with him before. When the police came in, my left knee was totally backwards. My feet were sideways.

I think they were pretty much in shock when they seen the condition that I was in. They put me on a stretcher and put me in an ambulance, ambulance and the next thing I know I was waking up in the hospital. The doctor said I was two hours away from dying from internal bleeding. Joseph Clark was arrested later that night at a party. The first words out of his mouth was, oh, he's still alive. I think Joe thought that I was going to die that night.

He'd come home and I'd be dead. Thaddeus informed police that Joe had also bragged about torturing another. their boy. Supposedly, he drowned in the Wisconsin River. They dug his body up and exhumed his bones, and his legs were broken, almost identical to mine. Joseph Clark was given a life sentence for murder, and 100 years for the attack on Faddeus. I survived because I wanted to be with my family. I didn't want to leave my family, and I know they wouldn't want to lose me. Thank you for listening to I survived. If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free. free on Pluto TV, where all your blockbuster favorites are landing all summer long.

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