Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Felt The Worst Pain You Couldn't Fathom

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

14 year old Reagan's trip to the beach with her friend Lynn takes an unimaginable turn when they are picked up by a pair of cousins on a spree of rape and murder. Gary and Scott are colleagues in the Alaska air national guard. After a mostly unsuccessful hunting trip the pair must survive a crash, third degree burns and the risk of hypothermia.   Rosetta Stone: Don’t put off learning that language - there’s no better time than RIGHT NOW to get started! For a very limited time, I Survived listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s Lifetime Membership for 50% off! Visit rosettastone.com/survived  

He put a knife to my throat and a gun to my head. He told me to shut up, not say a single thing, or he would kill me immediately. The heat was absolutely horrendous. It's the worst pain that you couldn't fathom. I had to think about my family, and I had to make peace with the fact that they probably would not find us alive. I was 14 years old and all I could think about was just do what you need to do to get through this,

do what you need to do to survive. Real people who faced death and lived to tell how. This is I Survive. It's July 1983 in Vero Beach, Florida. 14-year-old Regan has just moved to Vero Beach and started at a new school. She immediately makes friends with 17-year-old Lynn. Vero Beach was a pretty fun place. The beach was right across the street from where we lived. We used to go there all the time. We would swim.

We would surf. I was pretty excited to meet new people and new friends and just have new experiences in this nice, peaceful, beautiful beach town. Reagan and Lynn decided to hitchhike to a different beach. We went out to the road, and we weren't there for very long when a truck pulled over and picked us up. The passenger got out, and Lynn got in first. I got in second, and then the passenger got in next to us.

They introduced themselves. The driver was Freddie. The passenger was David. And Lynn and I introduced ourselves. Freddie was very outgoing and talkative and very friendly, and we got into a conversation with him right away. And David was kind of quiet and just sat there and pretty much listened to our conversation. These guys are older than us.

They were in their probably late 20s. David Gore and Fred Waterfield were cousins. We were in the car, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 minutes. The beach wasn't that far from where we lived. And as we were approaching the car, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 minutes. The beach wasn't that far from where we lived. And as we were approaching our destination, Freddie, the driver, said, hey, do you want to go into the dunes? They're right past the beach, and we'll go drive around the dunes a little bit.

So we decided, we said, sure, let's go. So we're in the dunes, and we're driving. And at some point, we went over a bump, and the glove compartment popped open. And in the glove compartment was a gun. David Gore grabbed the gun and put it to my head and said, wouldn't it be fun to take these girls home and have some fun with them?

Lynn and I just looked at each other, and all of a sudden, we were very scared. And we looked to the driver, and all of a sudden, we were very scared. And we looked to the driver, who seemed to be our buddy and friend. And he was the one who was always nice and outgoing, and said, is he kidding? What's going on?

Put the gun away. You know, this is serious. And Fred Waterfield said, well, I guess he's serious. Immediately when the gun came out, Gore took charge. And then he hadn't really talked much up until that time, but he took over when the gun came out. He told us to be quiet, and then he took handcuffs out of the glove compartment, and he handcuffed Lynn and I together.

You just start thinking, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening to me. What can I do? How can I get out of this? What do I need to do to make sure I'm OK? You start thinking, how can I get out of this? Can I get out of the truck? Can I hit them? Can I scream? What can I need to do to make sure I'm okay? You start thinking, how can I get out of this? Can I get out of the truck?

Can I hit them? Can I scream? What can I do? You know, what can we do to get out of this? Lynn and I looked at each other. We tried to talk. We tried to whisper. And Gore told us to shut up and not to make a sound.

The men began driving the girls out of town. It seemed like a plan because they didn't talk about it. It was like some unspoken agreement that they had. They didn't say, you know, my gosh, we've got these girls. Let's go do something. It was like automatically everything changed. As soon as that gun popped out, everything changed. And the next part of the plan was put in motion.

In my 14-year-old mind, I knew we were probably going to be raped. And I just wanted to make it through alive. And I decided, you know, just do whatever it takes to get through this. We came up to a somewhat busy intersection. There were quite a few people at the intersection, and I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, can I grab the steering wheel? Can I pull it to the side? Maybe if we run off the road, you know, something will happen, and we can get the attention

of some people and get out of this. By this time, the gun was taken off of my temple and placed to my chest. So I had it jammed into the side of my chest, and Lynn and I were handcuffed together. And we were smushed in between the driver and the passenger, and there didn't really seem to be like a lot I could do. I thought about it, but I didn't think I could do it,

and I didn't do it. We didn't know where we were going. We were driving. It seemed like a long time. We were both terrified. A car drove by us on this long highway, and the people in the other car waved. And after that, Fred Waterfield and Gore

were trying to have a conversation. Something monumental happened when this car passed by, but Lynn and I didn't realize what exactly had happened and what was going on. Unknown to Reagan and Lynn, Fred Waterfield's sister was in the other car. But she didn't realize anything was wrong. We drove down a very long driveway

to an isolated house out in the Orange Groves in the middle of nowhere. This is way out west of town in the groves. The homes were probably on 5, 10 acres each. So there weren't any houses around. There was nobody we could scream for. There was nobody that saw anything that was going on. It was a very deserted area. They took us out of the truck, and they

brought us into the house. When we got into the house, Gore said that they were going to keep us there for a few days. So in my mind, I just thought, OK, do whatever you need to do to get through this. And it was terrifying, but I just remember thinking, OK, just do this. Just do this.

Just get through this. They put us in separate bedrooms, and I was thrown on a bed. And they put a blindfold or something over my head to where I couldn't see. And then my ankles were brought up and tied to the handcuffs, basically hog tied. There was a gag in my mouth.

I know there was something over my eyes. I just knew that I was laying face down on a bed. I couldn't hear that much. I couldn't see. I didn't know where I was, and I didn't know where Lynn was. Lynn was also tied up in another bedroom. I could hear things going on in the background. I could hear what sounded like a police scanner.

I could hear a whisper conversation between Gore and Waterfield. I couldn't make out the words or exactly what they were saying, but I knew that they were having a discussion. I was 14 years old, and all I could think about was just do what you need to do to get through this. Do what you need to do to survive. Nothing was ever said to me.

I didn't say anything. I was just trying to be quiet and do what was told to me so that I could get out of there. Gore came into the bedroom and untied my feet. My hands were still handcuffed, and he raped me. After raping Reagan, Gore went into the other room and raped Lynn. He began going back and forth between the rooms,

assaulting both girls repeatedly. He untied my legs, but then when he would leave the room, he would tie my legs and tie them back to my handcuffs so I would be laying on the bed, hog-tied, face down, and I couldn't move. Gorin knew exactly what he was doing. He was a monster. He would go back and forth.

He had no emotion. He was mean. Nothing was said. It was just like business as usual. Just do this, go back and forth, go to the other room, come back, do it again. There was always some sort of weapon. There was always some sort of threat.

I either had a gun on me or a knife to my throat. My hands were always handcuffed behind my back. And when he would leave the room, he made a point of tying up my ankles and tying them back to the handcuffs. And I was laying face down on the bed, and I couldn't really move. This back and forth thing went on, I'm not sure how long,

maybe a couple of hours. I don't remember exactly. At one point, he was in the room with me, and I heard a sound. And he heard the sound also, because he immediately ran out of the room. I was laying on the bed by myself for what seemed like an eternity. I don't know how much time went by.

I was just laying there. I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't see anything. I didn't know what was going on. At one point, I did hear a couple of pops, but it never really occurred to me what it was. Gore came back in the room, and he was sweaty and smelly and dirty and rough and disgusting.

And he picked me up almost like a sack of potatoes. He just picked me up, and he dragged me over to the closet. And in the closet, there was an opening in the ceiling. And he opened the lock in the ceiling. And he basically just threw me through the hole in the ceiling up into the attic. He got in the attic. He closed the hole again.

It was stifling hot. He put a knife to my throat and a gun to my head, both at the same time. And he told me to shut up, not say a single thing, or he would kill me immediately. I don't know how long we were up there. I don't know if I had passed out. It was just I was terrified.

I just know that I had a knife to my throat, a gun to my head, and I couldn't move, and I couldn't do anything. I was extremely uncomfortable. My hands were handcuffed. My legs were tied behind me. I heard voices outside, and I just remember hearing those voices and thinking, oh my gosh, somebody's there.

Somebody's there. Maybe somebody's going to rescue me. The voices were getting closer and closer. I could hear them outside. I couldn't hear exactly what was being said. And then I heard somebody say, David, come down. I think it was his uncle that said, come down. And he went, he crawled down.

The sheriff came through the attic opening with his gun pointed at me. And then I started screaming, and that was pretty much all I remembered. And then he came over, and he unhandcuffed me, and he told me it was OK, everything was going to be OK. He helped me get down from the attic, and he got some clothes out of the closet

to cover me up with. The second abductor, Fred Waterfield, had not been around while Gore was raping the girls. Waterfield didn't seem to be anywhere, and I found out later that he had to leave to go and establish an alibi because his sister had seen us drive by on the road, and he was more concerned about establishing an alibi because his sister had seen us drive by on the road.

And he was more concerned about establishing an alibi and making sure that he wasn't involved. As soon as I was rescued, I kept asking about Lynn and where she was. They told me that we were witnesses and we had to be kept separately and that we were going back to the police station and we would have to tell our stories. So we went back to the police station. we would have to tell our stories. So we went back to the police station.

I told my story again and again and again to many different people. My mother came to the police station. And it wasn't until much later in the evening after I kept asking about Lynn that they told me she had been killed. Apparently, at the one point when Gore ran out of the room, when he was in the room with me, Lynn was not handcuffed. She was tied because the handcuffs were on me.

She had managed to untie her ankles, and she got up, and she ran. And she ran down the driveway. And as she was running down the driveway, at that same time, out in the middle of nowhere, a 14-year-old boy happened to be riding his bike by and saw Lynn stumble and fall and saw Gore shoot her twice in the head. The boy quickly rode his bike home and told his mom,

and they called 911. The little pops that I heard had apparently been Gore shooting Lynn, and he shot her, and then he dragged her body back, and he stuffed it in the trunk of his parents' car. And the police found her there dead when they came to the house after the 911 call. Gore started talking to the police, and he led them to five other bodies. David Gore was charged with the rape and murder of six women between 1981 and 1983. His cousin, Fred Waterfield, had been his accomplice for most of the attacks. They had grown up together, and I'm not sure when they turned so evil,

but apparently they were stalking women and kidnapping and raping and torturing and murdering them. I was the only one out of seven to survive. All the other six had been killed. And if it weren't for Lynn, it could probably still be going on today. David Gore was sentenced to death. Fred Waterfield was given two consecutive life sentences. Gore was executed in 2012.

I think my life was really interrupted, and it took me a long time, probably a good four or five years to get out of the deep, dark hole that I was in. But I got out of it, and I was fine. And eventually, I met my husband. And I have a wonderful husband and two amazing children. I'm very thankful.

I survived because of Lynn Elliott, because she was older and wiser. And she knew that we weren't going to get out of that unless she got us out of it. If she hadn't done what she had done, then I wouldn't be here today. I wish I could remember the French I was taught back in high school, and I've often thought about taking lessons to learn again, but I just don't have the time to find lessons nearby. So for someone like me, Rosetta Stone is a perfect tool to learn a new language in a way that suits me. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app that truly

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all 25 languages for any and all trips and language needs you may have throughout your life. That's lifetime access to all 25 language courses Rosetta Stone offers for 50% off a steal. Don't put off learning that language. There's no better time than right now to get started. For a very limited time, I Survive listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. Visit www.rosettastone.com slash survived. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at www.rosettastone.com slash survived today. It's September 1993 in Tokitna, Alaska. Gary and Scott are colleagues in the Alaska Air National Guard. Gary is an experienced small plane pilot. I've been flying little airplanes

for about nine years. And in the course of Alaska, there's no such thing as a real good runways. If you want to go somewhere, it's usually a sandbar or a grassy plane or you know something like that that you're going to you know that you're going to land on scott was an aircraft mechanic and had worked with gary for seven years he and gary decided to go hunting at a remote cabin to which scott had access the cabin is probably about a 30-minute air flight from a town called Talkeetna. It's on the Talkeetna River. The only way to get out there is by aircraft. My plan was to go out for 15 days.

I knew Scott had to go back to work earlier, so I was going to take him back out of the wilderness, drop him back off, and I was going to go back in there and go hunting again. Gary and Scott landed on a gravel sandbar in the middle of the river and spent two days hunting in the area. The moose hunting wasn't really that great. We didn't see anything at the time. So we decided to go ahead and pack up on a Monday and packed up all of our stuff like that

and locked the cabin up and went down to the airplane. The men loaded all their gear into Gary's small plane. Gary left some clothes and other equipment behind to collect upon his return. I knew the airstrip was short, and the airplane probably weighed a little bit more than what I wanted to do, so we left our bags on the sandbar, and I also drained out about 15 gallons of gas into the jerry cans we had there. With Gary's airplane, you sit right behind each other,

so I had to get in first. We had probably roughly about 600 yards to work with, I believe, for takeoff. I started my aircraft roll at the farthest part of the sandbar that I could get to. And we had to make a little bit of left hand turn getting onto the straight part of the sandbar.

And everything went fine. It was all right there. And then when I finally got to the stake that I put in the ground 2 thirds of the way down the runway, I felt that the airplane was able to fly at the time. So I went ahead and took off. We just started to feel lift.

And after that, I felt the airplane drop. The plane had hit a wind shear. A wind shear is a shift of the wind onto an airplane. Like, if you have a headwind coming into you, then all of a sudden it turns around, and it's a tailwind. So when that happens, it loses the lift of the airplane. Like, if you have a headwind coming into you, and then all of a sudden it turns around, and it's a tailwind. So when that happens, it loses the lift of the airplane. You have no control over the situation. You just long for the right.

And that's what happened with me. We hit the water, bounced back up, and then we hit the sandbar on the other side. And that's when the landing gear ripped off. We pancaked into the ground. It was a huge explosion underneath my feet and that's when the whole plane was engulfed in flames. At the time I was wearing glasses. I shut my eyes because I didn't want my eyes being burnt. All you could just hear is just a

rush. The heat was absolutely horrendous. You could just hear crackling. You're breathing in all the fumes. So you're trying to hold your breath, trying not to inhale too much. And just, it was just thrashing around. It's the worst pain that you can fathom. It's just absolutely horrible.

It was almost like sitting in the middle of a campfire and people are putting more logs and logs on you. It was just horrible screams throughout the whole airplane. The door swings open on Gary's right-hand side, so Gary had access to get out first. Scott could not release his seatbelt and was trapped in the inferno. When I missed my seatbelt, it was just total horror, terror, as the flames was burning the skin. I opened the door and rolled out of the airplane and tried to think about the stop, drop, and roll, which are on fire and stuff. And I did that. But when I did it, I realized I was on rocks and not sand or like that.

So there was air pockets underneath when I rolled. And I knew it wasn't going to put out the fire. So I immediately jumped up, and I ran over and jumped into the river itself to put myself out. I couldn't still get my seat belt on done. So when I would, I just pretty much gave up. I was waiting for the white light or whatever's supposed to happen to you.

I could hear Gary on the outside of the airplane scream and get out, get out, get out. The airplane was in flames, probably about 40 feet high, totally engulfed. And I thought he didn't make it out. I just leaned to the left-hand side of the airplane, counting my blessings. And as fire was burning other portions of my body,

you just couldn't stand the pain anymore. So I started thrashing around. And before you know it, I was outside the airplane. I don't know how I got out the airplane. I seen him standing there, back towards the airplane, just standing there, kind of hunched over, still on fire, but not doing anything. So I ran over to him and grabbed him

and threw him in a puddle that was right next to the airplane. I threw him in the puddle and I put him out. I remember laying in the river and reality started kicking in and I saw Gary and I looked at him and to bring myself totally back to reality I said Gary you're one ugly blank blank blank and he looked at me and we just both chuckling. And then we both realized that we need to start doing something now. The first thing we did is we got away from the airplane, and then we started analyzing our injuries and what we looked like,

how badly we were burned and stuff, you know, and trying to figure out what we're going to do next. Gary and Scott both had serious burns to over half their bodies. We had our rifles and our ammunition in the airplane. And then all of a sudden the bullets started exploding in the airplane. So like that's where we thought, well, we better get farther away because we don't want to get shot along with being burned like this. Gary and Scott changed into some dry clothes they had left to be picked up later.

They decided to cross the freezing river and return to the cabin 600 yards away. What I remember is the smell of burnt skin, skin peeling off as I was taking it. I was in hypothermia because with Gary throwing me into the river, I was quite cold. All my heat was escaping out of, from holes or burnt skin. When they reached the locked cabin, they realized the keys were still in the burning wreckage of the plane. Gary crawled under the cabin to retrieve an axe to break in with.

My hands had been blistered from the fire, so I had to add in all the skin peeled off the inside of my hands. And I thought to myself, I'm not going to be able to do this, let alone I can't even hang onto an ax, let alone chop through this wood. And I looked back to Scott to see him, and he was shaking so violently, I'll never forget it.

He was shaking so violently, I thought he was like a rubber band man. I mean, I don't know how he was even standing up. And right then, I thought, I just got to do this. Every swing of that ax when Gary was chopping in, trying to get ourself back into the cabin, the pain that he'd just yell out as he swung the ax and it hit the plywood.

I don't know how long it actually took me to do it, but I just started whacking away at the plywood until I finally broke through it and got it out of the way. And then got Scott through the window and got him into the cabin. Gary returned to the wreckage of the plane and found the keys to open the cabin door. Scott was pretty weak. I was concerned about his health. He noticed that his hands were bleeding, and the blood was kind of seeping out of his, out of his skin and stuff like that.

So what I did was I wrapped his hands in some dish towels that we had there, because I didn't, we didn't have any first aid kits or anything like that. And all we had was these dish towels. So I wrapped his hands in these dish towels, and I started treating him for shock. I put him in a sleeping bag, and I popped his feet up, stuff like that.

And then I also gave him about half a glass of water, because I knew his throat was also burned, probably like mine was. After about five hours, Scott started to vomit. And I thought, OK, he's in really bad shape now. This is not good I kept drinking water then vomiting drinking more water more vomiting that's when Gary decided we need to go get help because we're not gonna last too much longer I knew a guy named, and he was downriver from us, about five miles.

We have a radio, a two-way radio, but since we hadn't been to the cabin for so long, the batteries were dead. So we couldn't use the two-way radio. The flight plan that Gary had filed was not due to lapse until 4 p.m. the following day. Gary hoped a rescue would be launched then, but didn't think Scott would survive that long. I told Scott that he was getting in pretty bad shape and that I was going to walk down to the person about five or six miles downstream from us to get some help.

And my legs felt good, I was fighting strong, that I thought I could make it. I left about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and started walking down to the other cabin. Gary was, to me, was not going to make it. But it was our last stand for any kind of survival. I would have gave Gary 10%. I was scared, very, very scared when he left.

I didn't know what I was going to do, if more complications. I kept checking my hands. They were still bleeding. I was starting to get uncomfortable, so I pretty much rolled myself out of the bunk, crawled along the floor, make it up to the sink area to get more water. I was just so, so thirsty.

Just the feeling of being abandoned and not knowing what the outcome's going to be. It was just absolutely terrifying. I started walking across sandbars and walking across the different ribbons of river that was going through there from sandbar to sandbar. But then all of a sudden, I came to part of the river where all the ribbons all came together.

It was only about 20 feet across, but it was probably about 10 feet deep. And I thought, well, OK, I'm heavily clothed. I have my coat on. OK, I said, OK, I got to get across this. So I started across the river, and I got about halfway across, and then all of a sudden, it was going so swift that it just swept me off my feet. We'll see you next time. Focus on the brave individuals who have lived through them. I'm Liz Iacuzzi. And I'm Tyler Measom. Your host of Was I in a Cult?

Join us each week as we take you through a heroic roller coaster of someone's journey in and out of a cult. With a little levity thrown in because humor is healing and cults are funny. Listen to and follow Was I in a Cult at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Which for Tyler is at Rite Aid. On tape. So I tried and started to swim, and my clothes got so heavy and the water was so fast that I couldn't hardly make any headway, stuff like that. So I just kept trying to swim, trying to swim as I was going downstream. And I finally got to the other side of the bank and crawled out on the other side of the bank and realized that I didn't have any energy left. I was totally drained. And I realized that it was already getting dark.

So it had already been a couple of hours, and I'd only gone maybe about a mile and a half. And I thought, uh-oh, this is not good. It is Alaska. There is bears out there. Going nighttime. It's in the water. And the first thing I thought like, this is not good. It is Alaska. There is bears out there. It's going nighttime. It's in the water. And the first thing I thought was, I don't want to get attacked by a bear when I'm out here. So I immediately decided I was going to go back over to Scott.

Then the first thing I had to look at was, I've got to cross this river again. Meanwhile, in the cabin, Scott's health was rapidly deteriorating. I didn't know how long I was really going to make it. I just started praying and hoping that some miracle would happen. But I was getting weaker and weaker and weaker as the hours went on. I only could tell time of day by the crack in the door. And as it was getting darker and darker and darker,

I said, no way, Gary's coming back. I didn't want to go to sleep because I didn't think I was going to get, I didn't think I was going to come back to life. I think if I would have went to sleep, then that would have been it. I would have never woke up. So as I sat there and laid in the bed,

as I did, I just prayed, think of good times when I was a kid. My mom and dad, my family, my friends, and all my loved ones, and try to keep positive that something's good that's going to happen out of all this. I thought, well, you got to do it. So I plunged back into the water

and managed to make it back over the side. I sat down there again for another 15 minutes or so to catch my breath. I then made the trip back to the cabin. When I got back to the cabin, it was already pitch black dark. And walking to the cabin, I'm pretty sure that Scott was relieved that I was back. When Gary got back, he just gave me a brief rundown on what happened. And I was just absolutely shocked that he was neck deep in the river to even point of even

survived I thought the when he's that deep I thought he would have been swept away I know Gary was a tough guy and to to have him come back it just, it set that in stone that now I know how tough Gary really was. The fire was out, so I went back, built the fire again, started drying out my clothes, and the recess got, gave him some more water, and settled in for the night. He laid down in the bunk across from me. There was silence, absolute silence. We did grunt or make a noise just to make sure that one of us is still alive. I didn't get any sleep at all through the night.

I kept the fire going and keep an eye on Scott. In the morning, when the morning came around, all the wood had burned out. So I knew that the day was that day that it had to be that was going to be there, because we weren't going to make it any further than that. And that's when I finally decided that I had to think about my family and what they were going to go through,

how they would feel about the situation. I knew that my wife had gone through a experience that was similar to mine. She had a fiance that had crashed and burned and killed himself in his airplane. And I thought, she's going to be really mad at me for doing this. And I had to make peace with the fact that they probably would not find us alive.

I knew that at 4 o'clock, when my flight plan was due to expire, if I didn't check in, they were going to launch a rescue for me. So I knew I had to, and I kept telling Scott, that's when they're going to expire, if I didn't check in, they were going to launch a rescue for me. So I knew I had to, and I kept telling Scott, that's when things are going to start happening. That's when we're going to know whether they are going to rescue us or not. And so I had that goal in my mind

that I was going to last at least until 4 o'clock to see what's going to happen. We heard airplanes in the local area. I did have a emergency mirror. And I remember crawling all the way out onto the deck in front of the cabin and trying to flash them. But I was stuck in the tree, so the sunlight wasn't getting through.

But I had to try something. After I crawled out to the deck and crawled back into the cabin, it was enough for me. I had enough. So I was too weak. I almost didn't get back into my bed. And that was going to be pretty much my final last grasp at trying to save myself. So at that point in time, it's time to pray. My final last grasp at trying to save myself.

So at that point in time, it's time to pray. 4 p.m. came and went. The men heard an airplane flying by, but still didn't know if help was coming. We finally heard the blades of the helicopter. It was the most sweetest sound I've ever heard in my life. And I knew they finally found us. To how long I was going to last, I still didn't know. I was still continuing vomiting, but the hope that I knew that they were almost there kept me going. The helicopter landed and two rescuers came to the cabin.

It was like two angels when they came in, and they said, Yeah, we got him. We got him. Let's get him down to the helo. We ain't got much time. Gary and Scott were flown to the hospital in Anchorage. Both were in critical condition. When I got to the hospital and was unloaded from the ambulance and wheeled into the emergency room, my wife was there. I knew she was going to be upset about the condition I was in

and the fact that she didn't like me flying that well anyways. So to try to relieve her tension, the first thing I'd ask her was, now that I don't have an airplane anymore, could I get a boat? And she thought that was actually kind of funny. Gary and Scott were both badly burned on over 50% of their bodies. Gary nearly died several times as a result of blood clotting. Both men endured months of painful treatments and skin grafts.

Through the healing process, it was nice to have somebody to go through it with me, and I think Scott had the same feeling, because it is such a torturous thing to go through that I wouldn't want anybody to go through it, especially alone. Despite being told it was impossible, Scott returned to working as an air mechanic. I was told by my dad and my mom that the time that we crashed,

and it was about 2 o'clock in the morning in South Dakota, my mother jumped out of bed and just got down on her knees and started praying. And dad goes, what are you doing? She goes, something happened to Scott, and I got to pray. I survived because I had a guardian angel watching over me because there is no explanation why I got out of that airplane. I survived as well because of all the love and support from my family, my friends, the Air National Guard, and everybody at

the burn unit at Providence Hospital. Gary returned to flying for the Alaska Air National Guard. I survived because I knew there was a lot more things I wanted to do in my life, a lot more things I wanted to accomplish, and I just didn't think it was my time. Thank you for listening to I Survived. Pluto TV is TV the way it should be, free, with over 300 channels, thousands of movies and TV shows costing zeros of dollars so if you want to watch shows like ghost the walking dead csi star trek or the price is right well the price is right it's free hit movies like braveheart sonic the hedgehog anchorman the legend of ron

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