Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Had Blood Shooting Out Both Sides of Me

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Harold, store manager, and his staff are held up and shot by two killers. John is 18-years-old when he has both his arms torn off in an accident on the family farm. At 17-years-olds Lisa is kidnapped and assaulted by a serial killer.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Progressive: 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.

Hi, I Survived Listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived as well as the A&E Classic Podcasts, Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice, are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation Channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I can see the gun barrel come right across my eye Real people I just had blood shooting out both sides of me and then I knew that I had no arms at all Who faced death I stood there shaken I had no clothes on

And I could just feel a gun pointing at my back And live to tell how The emotion I felt was fear There was no rush of adrenaline It was strictly fear This is I survived It's September 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri. Harold is managing a grocery store and is working late.

The store had, at all times, two armed guards while the store was open. At 10 o'clock, when the store closed, one of the armed guards went home. The other security guard locked up after the customers left. And then he stayed in the store with us until we all left at 11 o'clock. I was in my office, which was set a little bit off of the customer service office. It was a little bit elevated. Harold heard someone trying to open his office door. This person was yanking on this door, so I stood up and looked down.

That's when I saw a black male with a gun in his hand. And as soon as I looked down and saw that, that's when he forced the door open, took two steps up in the office, put the gun in my head, put it right on my forehead and said, I'm going to blow your head off. This is a robbery. Open your safe. The motion I felt was fear. There was no rush of adrenaline.

It was strictly fear. I said, okay, calm down. We're going to get the safe open. I walked down, a couple of steps, into this hallway, small hallway back to customer service. Outside the office containing the safe, Harold saw three of his staff. I told him.

I said, hey guys, turn around. We're being held up here. It's a robbery. We got back to the safe. and at that point he told us all to kneel down on the ground. The gunman ordered Harold to open the safe. I went over to the safe. I started spinning the dial.

I don't know the combination to the safe. That's when the gunman came up to me, put the gun barrel in my ear, pulled the hammer back, and I could tell he was nervous. The gun was rattling around in my ear. I'm spinning the dial on the safe, trying to buy some time because I knew I couldn't open the safe. the safe. Well, when I started messing with the tumblers, they opened the safe, that's when

the gunman came up to me, put the gun barrel in my ear, in my right ear. I knew he was nervous. I could feel it rattling around in my ear, and I knew I was nervous, but I was scared that he might shoot me on accident because he was so nervous. He got mad because I was taken too long. He pulled the gun out of my ear and hit me right over the head with the gun. He hit me pretty hard, split my head open, but it wasn't hard enough to drop me. I just kind of staggered and held on to the counter. My grocery manager stood up and tried to open the safe. But Mike was nervous, and trying to do the tumblers on that safe

when he was nervous, he couldn't do it. Gunman got mad at Mike, punched him in the face, and knocked him down. Another staff member offered to open the safe. Rose stood up and says, I'll get the safe open. She did it all the time every day. she got up, opened the safe for the guy. He grabbed some money. Bricks, we call them bricks of 1,000 to $1 bills.

Grab three of those. There was a trash bag, a bag hanging on a counter right behind him. I told him, I said, there's a bag back there. Use the bag to put your money in. Because the whole time I want to get this man out of here. That's what I was thinking. He took the bag, put the money in the bag, and then told us all to stand up,

Let's go. Harold and his staff were forced at gunpoint to walk to another area of the store. That's when I saw gunman number two. He was holding a gun on the security guard and my overnight janitor. They were both sitting cross-legged on the floor. I was surprised to see a second gunman. And then I was even more surprised to see the security guard with an empty holster and the second gunman had his gun.

So they told us at that point, lie down on the floor. All of you get close together, put your heads up against the wall, and lie on your stomach. Well, I knew that wasn't right. So when I went up against the wall, I laid on my left side. And by laying on my left side, I could look across all my people laying there, and I could watch the gunmen. And I told Rose, Rose was my office girl, and she was right next to me. I told her. I said, Rose, this isn't right.

She says, no, honey, it'll be okay. I said, no rose. They wouldn't make us do this in a normal robbery. And no sooner I said that to her, the two guys opened fire on us. From what I saw, they were just cross-firing, just emptying two guns as fast as they could. When I got shot, I felt a lot of pain. It felt like a very hard punch. It was a very deep-seated burning in my chest.

So I knew I got shot in a chest. Harold was lying next to his co-worker, Rose. My face was right next to Roses, and I heard her go, and I felt that she got shot, and that was it for Rose. She never moved, she never set a sound, nothing. One of the gunmen had stolen the security guard's gun. Gunman number two walked up to the security guard, who was laying on his stomach and already been shot once,

rolled him over on his back, and said, give me some bullets. I know you have more bullets. And the security guard said, no, I don't have any. I'm thinking this whole time, don't give him any bullets. But he said, give me your bullets. He says, okay, they're in my top pocket, but I can't get them. The gunman took the bullets out of the security guard's pocket and reloaded the gun.

He put the gun on Mike, my grocery manager's head. Mike's alive still. And Mike's looking at me. And I was looking at him like, I can't help you, Mike. I'm hurt too. Pulls the trigger and it clicked. And I thought, okay, pulled the trigger the second time, it clicked again.

Now I'm thinking, okay, good, those bullets that the security guard gave them were bad. He pulled the trigger the third time. The gun went off and he shot Mike from about two inches away, right in the head. At that point, I was fear. I was scared. I knew I was hurt bad, but I was alive.

And I didn't want to get shot again. Didn't think I could make it if I got shot again. I was very scared. I was bleeding very bad, both from my head and from my chest. He then at that point stepped over the guard, put the gun on the janitor, pulled the trigger, boom. Steps over him, put the gun on Rose, pulled the trigger, boom. Steps over Rose. Now, I'm watching this, and I've got my head on the side, my hands up against my head, and I'm watching. I can see the gun barrel come right across my eye, and right when I'm watching.

I felt boom was coming. I jerked my head back out of the way, and he pulled the trigger at that exact moment. Bullet hit the floor, came up, hit me right on the side of the face. Well, I flopped over on top of rows, just to make it look like I was dead. Gunman number two said to gunman number one, that guy moved, and gunman number one said,

it doesn't matter, he's gonna die anyway. Maybe two or three minutes went by, and I was feeling really faint that I was gonna pass out. So I thought I better sit up. I didn't know if the gunmen were still right next to me. I had my eyes closed. I just sat up, looked around, did not see the gunman, saw all the people, my fellow workers,

and saw how bad they were and knew that they couldn't help me. So I knew if I wanted to get some help, I'd have to do it myself. Harold did not know if the gunmen were still in the building. Bleeding heavily, he crawled 30 feet to a phone. We had a phone that was about four feet off the ground, which was perfect because I was sitting, it was right about at my head.

When I called 911, the operator told me to speak up. She said, I can't hardly hear you. I said, I can't talk any louder. I don't know if the gunmen are still in here. I've been shot in the chest. I can't breathe. This is as loud as I can talk. She said, if you don't talk any louder,

if you don't speak up, I don't think I can help you, or I can't help you. I said, this is as loud as I can talk. You're going to have to send help. After I hung up the phone with the 911 operator, I wasn't sure that she was even going to get me any help. So I called home and talked to my wife. I told my wife that we'd been robbed, we'd all been shot, were hurt. I said, call 911, the operator didn't believe me.

At that point, too, I had two little girls. I had a three-and-a-half-year-old and 11-month-old. I told her to give the girls a kiss for me. I was bleeding so bad at that point, I really didn't think I was going to make it. A few minutes later, he hears sirens. The paramedics and all that came in to the store. I was behind a customer service counter. Nobody could see me back there.

The staff who had been shot were lying in a back room nearby. I can hear the police in there. I can hear the paramedics. I can hear them kind of crying and screaming the paramedics because it was a mess in there. Well, at that point, I couldn't even talk. So I was making groaning sounds and moaning real loud. And I just kept doing that hoping to get.

somebody's attention. Lo and behold, I think it was a police officer, said, everybody be quiet. So when everybody got quiet, I started moaning even louder. And then he came around through the office, through the doorway, through the hallway, and saw me back there and says, oh my God, Stormanger's back here. Harold was taken to the hospital. Surgeons were unable to remove the bullet in his chest. The bullet traveled across my chest and it's lodged right here on my artery right above my heart. Five of the six staff shot by the gunmen died. Two months later, the perpetrators were arrested and convicted of murder. Marvin Jennings and Donnie Blankenship are both currently serving life sentences. At first, it was very hard to deal with this because I ran this

robbery through my head a thousand times. What could I have done different so nobody got hurt? I talked to the police. I talked to everybody that I could talk to. And they all assured me I did everything I was supposed to do, that it wasn't my fault, that it was predetermined that they were going to kill all the witnesses. And I've been able to live with that now. I survived because I wasn't paralyzed by the fear. I was trying very hard to stay alive. And that was my driving force.

Finding the one can feel impossible. And in today's world, it's even harder. profiles, inaccurate pictures, incompatibilities, ghosting on dates. Is this sounding familiar? But if you're ready to make your move to a new place, it doesn't have to feel like dating. All it takes is a simple search on Apartments.com to find your perfect match. Whether you're looking for a three-bedroom condo downtown, a two-bedroom duplex in a quiet neighborhood, a cozy studio in a walkable city, or even a single-family home in a cul-de-sac, you can find a place that checks all the right boxes. So whichever state,

of life you're in, settle down in your perfect home by using Apartments.com. No more swiping and awkward first dates. Make it easier to get a place that gets you. Visit Apartments.com, the place to find a place. It's January 1992 in Minot, North Dakota. I was an 18-year-old senior in high school, leaving on a farm, rural, very rural area. You're alone a lot of the time, and that's just pretty much how it I wasn't growing up there. It's Saturday, and John had work to do on the farm. And my parents had left for Bismarck to see my cousin who's in the hospital. And my brother's sister had already moved off the farm, so it was home by myself,

just me and my dog. John's dog, Tuffy, was his constant companion. And my tour for the day was unload barley from a grain truck into a grain auger, into the grain bin. I'm using the power takeoff shaft off the tractor. The shaft was four feet long and two feet off the ground. It spun at 2,500 RPM. I was just standing there watching the grain come out of the truck into the hopper and into the grain bin,

and I must have got too close to the shaft, and it grabbed my shirt tails because I didn't have him tucked in, and it started wrapping my shirt up, and I reached down to pull my shirt out, and then my arms got caught in my shirt, and got wrapped in with this power shaft. As his shirt tail was caught by the machinery, John's arms were pulled into the shaft.

The next thing I know, everything is just dark and I'm just feeling funny. I opened my eyes and my dog is licking my face and I'm laying on my left side and I didn't know what was going on. I knew something was wrong because my right arm felt really weird. And I looked over my right arm

to see what was wrong with it and I couldn't see it and I thought it was broken behind my back. And while I was looking at it, I was trying to push myself up with my left arm and I wasn't moving. And I looked back to my left arm and I could see where my left arm

was ripped off from right below the shoulder. And I looked back at my right arm, and I noticed the right arm was missing right below the shoulder. And then I knew that I had no arms at all. I never felt any pain. I had no clue that anything was wrong until I really looked at myself. I knew I had to get up and get to the house,

and I couldn't lift myself up because I had no arms to do that with. And I eventually got myself to sit up, And then I just kind of bounced over to the tractor tire and put my back against the tire and pushed myself up that way. He used the tire to support me. And I stood up and took a couple steps and looked at myself again

and just screamed for a few seconds or a split second and looked at my dog and just calmed down right away. He just sat the look at me and his head cocked to the side and his ear sticking up and just kind of telling me, you know, we're going to get to the house

and I just kept looking at him and kind of concentrated on him and him and I walked up to the house together. John's parents were away and the main door was closed. I just got down on my knees and bit the doorknop with my mouth and turned it with my head to get the main door open. And once I was inside, I just stood there and looked down and realized how much I was still bleeding everywhere. The walls on both sides of the hallway were just covering blood

because when I walked down, I just had blood shooting out both sides of me. So I just kind of quickly went across the room to get to our office where it was the only place we had a touchtone phone. Knocked the phone off the hook with my nose. And I was trying to dial at first using my nose and I kept hitting the wrong numbers. So then I grabbed a pencil with my teeth. So it would be easier to punch out the numbers.

And then I done it that way and called my cousin. I never once thought about dialing the ambulance myself. I just thought about calling somebody else. John told his cousin what had happened and to call an ambulance. And she thought I was joking with her and really wasn't taking me serious. And I'm like, Tammy, I'm not joking here. This is serious. I need an ambulance right away.

I don't have any arms. And then she's like, okay, I'll call an ambulance to get out there right away. I was sitting in the office and I saw the blood that was collecting around on the chair and stuff. And then I went to sit in the bathtub so the blood would just be in the bathroom. It had blood pretty much everywhere. And then I slowly started to quit bleeding because I was running out of blood. After calling an ambulance, John's cousin and aunt rushed to the farm. By the time they got to the farm, I was sitting in the bathtub because I was still bleeding quite a bit.

I heard my Aunt Renee come in and heard yelling, John, where are you, John, where are you? I said, I'm in the bathroom. Do not come in here. Stay out. You can't see me. Don't come in here. And she just came running into the bathroom. But luckily, the shower curtain was closed in the bathtub so she couldn't see me. And I said, don't open the shower curtains, keep the curtains closed. You can't. cannot see me. Don't look at me. And I was just afraid of her seeing me and her panicking. And she asked me numerous times if she could look in. And I just said, no, you cannot see me this way. I won't let you. And I could hear Tammy outside yelling what's going on. And Mount Renee telling her to stay out of the bathroom and wait for the ambulance.

The enormous loss of blood caused John to feel dizzy. Without urgent blood transfusions, he will die. And then when I started getting really dizzy, and I was afraid I was in a fall. over. She said, I really need to look at you, John. I said, okay, but just, I'm warning you, I have absolutely no arms. And she opened up the shower curtain and looked at me and took her breath. She said, okay, let's sit you on the stool here and I'll hold you up and we'll wait for the ambulance together. And she picked me up out of the bathtub, sat me on the stool. And then I just kind of leaned in against her chest and rested my head on her shoulder. And she said that don't worry about it. We can reattach your arms and everything will be fine and she just kept

reassuring me of everything. I started saying how I'm getting really, really tired. She said, just close your eyes and relax. I said, I can't go to sleep. If I close my eyes, I'm going to die. I said, I got to stay awake. If I fall asleep, I'm dead. We just sat there and she just kept me talking the whole time because I just kept saying if I fall asleep, I'm dead. I said, I got to stay awake. So I got to keep talking. And we were telling jokes back and forth and just talking like, having a normal conversation. I was so calm and relaxed that my brain basically shut down. John has lost so much blood.

He is now in deep shock. His blood pressure has plummeted, and he needs an urgent blood transfusion. Me and Ma were sitting in the bathroom, and then I heard my cousins start yelling to me outside, and so I knew the ambulance was there. And the ambulance crew walked in the bathroom. They took one look at me,

and they were just eyeballs were just huge and they turned around and walked out and I was just like, where are you going? And it was just such an enormous shock to them because they thought I just had a broken arm. They had no clue to extent of my injuries. And they went outside and they recollected themselves very quickly

and they came back in and said, Rick's going to go down and get your arms and we need plastic bags and we need ice and we're going to take you to Harvey Hospital. The paramedic looked for John's arms beside the power shaft. The one arm was laying right underneath the PTO shaft where I was knocked unconscious at it where it happened. And the other arm he couldn't find. And then he started walking back towards the house.

My dog was barking at him. And he turned around and my dog, Tuffy, was standing over my other arm. And Rick was kind of nervous my dog biting him because he said when he was walking up there that my dog was right on his heels the whole time. And just watching him with my arms. John has taken to the hospital. By the time I reached the Harvey Hospital, I had lost so much blood that there was no medical reason I should be alive. Doctors tried to insert an IV for blood transfusions.

Starting an IV started in my foot, but I completely bled out and all my veins had collapsed. And the pain from that was just unreal because up until then I never felt any pain at all. After the transfusions, John was flown to a Minneapolis hospital. hospital for surgery. They wheeled me into the emergency room there. And I'm just laying there like, what am I doing?

What's going to happen to me? I said, what's going on? I'm here by myself. I don't know anybody. I'm just terrified. And my doctor walked in. He said, John, I'm Dr. Van Bique. And I'm here to help you out and see what we can do for you.

He's like, I've been sent the x-rays that we know what's going to happen. You have two options. We can put your arms on or we can leave them off. And I said, I'm already here. Let's put them on. He explains me that if I had my arms reattached, there's a chance of me getting an infection and dying from it. And it's going to be a major shock to my system. And the survival rate isn't as good if I just leave him off.

And then again, I said, I'm here, put him on. And he's like, okay, we'll get you prepped and get you in surgery right away. John's parents were contacted and his father arrived at the hospital. We just sat there for about five minutes and talked back and forth. And he's told me not to worry about it and go ahead of the surgery. you'll see me back when I get out. John had eight hours of surgery to reattach his arms. I just kept being every odd they gave at me

because even after they reattached the arms, they want to take the one arm off because it was dead. And they could get the blood circulating. It was just dead tissue. And I said, no, you're leaving it on there. And then miraculously, it just started turning pink and warming up and the blood starts circulating through. And then when that happened, it flushed all those toxins in my body.

of dead blood cells and dead tissue, got flushed to my system, and that pretty much almost killed me. Six weeks later, John left the hospital with only limited shoulder movement. For the next three years, John fought to regain the use of his arms. I can move my arms back and forth, and my wrists both work. I can grab stuff with my thumb for writing or I grab a pencil I type with my thumb. My doctor Van Beek is really amazed with what I can do. And obviously, I owed all to him and a lot to my own stubbornness.

John also pays tribute to his dog Tuffy, who died a year after the accident. The one main reason I survived was because of my dog Tuffy, because he's the one that woke me up. You just remember when I stood up and looked in his eyes. And he just said, we're going to do this. And this dog was never allowed in the house. And they brought me home from the hospital. They sat me down on the floor in the living room and over the patio door.

and that dog ran and leaving him right away and sat right in my lap and just laid there with me. And he's pretty much the reason I survived. I survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there,

and hoping it all works out? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage matched limited by state law, not available in all states. It's September 1984 in Tampa, Florida. 17-year-old Lisa lives in an abusive household.

My childhood consisted of physical, emotional, and sexual. abuse. When I was 14, I went to go to my grandmother to get away from the abuse at home. And for the next three years, my grandmother's boyfriend sexually abused me. I was tired of living. I decided one day I wanted to commit suicide. I was tired of being abused. I didn't think I was worth anything. And I sat down and wrote my suicide note. As well as being in high school, Lisa had a night job at a donut shop. I put the suicide note aside. And I, I put the suicide note aside. I went to work. My boss came to me, asked if I could work a double shift, which was late into the early mornings.

At 2 a.m., Lisa finished her double shift and rode home on her bicycle. Halfway home, Lisa passed the parking lot of a church. But I noticed a car in the middle of the church parking lot. It kind of seemed odd to me. I, at that point, felt scared. Something was wrong. And the next day, I know, it felt like someone just knocked me in my throat and knocked me to the ground. And I felt the barrel of a gun to the left side of my temple.

At that point, it was so dark, I really couldn't see him. I just felt his arm around my throat. And he drug me to his car from behind. I knew it was red, a maroon color. And I noticed the wheels had, like, spoke wheels in them. And then he threw me to the passionate side and told me to undress. My attacker demanded that I perform sexual act on him.

I was shaken with fear. I was deathly afraid that he was going to kill me. Here, I was thinking about killing myself, and now I'm going to be fighting for my life. After the sexual act was completed, he told him I was going to continue to show him a good time tonight. If I did what he said, I'm going to be okay. Lisa still has not seen the gunman's face.

He put a blindfold on me. He bound my legs and my arms, and then he drove off. When I was in the front seat and the seat was back, I could see beneath my blindfold. And I kept seeing a bright light on the dashboard and I finally got to read it

and it was magnum, the word magnum. I believe that when you are blindfolded, all your other senses come into play. I remember hearing the sounds of the car needed a tune-up. The different wind change once got into an interstate. We drove down the interstate for a few minutes, and he drove off the interstate until he pulled up into some wooded area, and I had no clue where I was at. I was scared then.

The gunman stopped at a house surrounded by trees. He ordered me out of the car, walked to a door. I was blinded, so I remember having to feel, I felt this door, it felt like a wooden door with glass pain. The gunman walked Lisa upstairs and into a bus. bathroom. He removed my blindfold and my bindings from my wrists and my ankles. Put me in a shower and ordered me not to look at him. He held me close and he gave me a shower. He just felt like the boy next door. First he attacks me and now he's giving me a shower. It just felt odd.

Almost like he was playing out a romantic relationship. He ordered me to the floor and I wouldn't go to the floor and he threw me to the floor and he raped me. I was not able to see what he looked like at this time because he was righting me from behind. I was screaming. He ordered me to shut up, and I did. Whatever he told me to do, I did. I stood there, shaken, I had no clothes on, and I could just feel a gun pointing at my back. I was just embarrassed because I told a stranger seeing me naked. I just, it was awful.

He ordered me to the bed, told me laid it out on the bed, and he bailed it on the bed. bound me again, tied my legs and my arms, and he blindfolded me again. He gets in the bed. I'm on my back. He slides the gun over my stomach saying, I still have this. And it must spend some type of headboard

because he put it on the headboard. And then he repeatedly raced me throughout the night. There was a point during my attack. He had fallen asleep and woke back up and reached over. And he took my hands. my hands and place him on his face. And I'm thinking to myself, what is he doing? I can feel his eyebrows.

They were thin, he had thin mustache. He had small ears. I could feel his hair line, short haircut. He had a pockmark face, almost like he had bad acne at one time or another. But it helped me to see his face. I didn't stop touching his face in fear of he might hit me or get angry. I wanted him to play out whatever he was playing out, a romantic love dating

girlfriend scenario, whatever it took I was going to do. So I had to use my mind and outwit him. He let me go to the bathroom, but get the door open. And I couldn't go. And I told him, I said, I can't go. He's standing there. You got to have to close the door. And he did. He closed the door. And as soon as he closed the door, I decided to start putting my fingerprints everywhere. Shower curtain, walls, picture frames, mirrors, toilet seat, anything to show that I was in that room. I never heard any noises, never heard any of the people, cars. I heard nothing. I just felt like I was all alone in a black box. I decided, during my attack to treat my attacker as a normal person. Even though he was raping me, brutally

raping me, I want him to think that he was still a good person. Instead of a monster that he really was, I had lied to him, make things up. I told him that I was an only child and I had a father that was very ill. If something was to happen to me, no one would be able to take care of him. He asked me to, if he asked me to, if I was If I went to school, I said yes, he was asking me to describe girlfriends who I changed with in locker rooms and described their bodies to him of what they looked like. I never got dressed or undressed for anybody. I always changed in the bathroom.

I was very shy and embarrassed because I was always being abused and that last thing I want to do is be changing for somebody. So I lied. Whatever he wanted to hear, I gave it to him. It was probably the next day. He asked me, what am I going to do with you? He clothed me and told me to sit on the edge of the bed. And I did.

And a general conversation, what do I do with you now? And I played on that. And I told him, I am willing to be your girlfriend. I'll do whatever it takes. I won't tell anybody what happened. You seem like a nice person. And he goes, no, no, no, no. Can't do that.

I was like, OK, where do you live at? I told him right in the area I lived at, he was okay, let's go. And he reminded me he still had the gun, and he took him into the car. As we got in the car, I was shaking. I was nervous thinking, don't give her any reason to shoot you in the car and dump your body off somewhere. No matter what it took, I was going to fight for my life. The gunman puts Lisa in the car saying he will take her home.

I give him directions to where to take me at, you know, blow by blow, and he starts driving. And beneath my blindfold, I could see two hotels in the area. I remember the names of the hotel because it gave us a general idea of where he had me at. He jumps on the interstate, goes back the way I'm telling him to. He tells him where he's at. He's one block away from where he's supposed to drop me off.

The gunman drove into a parking lot and stopped. He becomes nice. He hugs me. tells me to get out of the car. He also told me he was sorry for what he did to me. He actually said sorry. He told me to stand there away from the street until he drove off.

I did exactly that, blindfold and all. I heard the car drive off, fell to my knees, took the blindfold off. And I saw an amazing, an amazing oak tree. An amazing oak tree. And it just reminded me of life. Incredible how I wanted to kill myself. And now I'm wanting to live.

And I thought, my God, he may change his mind come after me. And I started running to my house. And I ran every car that drove by me. I hit the ground. I'm sure people that went by me thought I was a crazy nut. I finally got back to my house. I knew my grandmother would be there. And for the next five hours, when my grandma's boyfriend opened the door,

he beat me for five hours. asked me where I was at, where I'd been, who was I with? And my grandmother finally took a stand and said, you know what? Enough's enough. And she called the police. Lisa was interviewed about her ordeal by a police officer. I gave him some information about where he may have taken me, just by my central direction. I gave him clues of, I saw the word, Magnum, and the car.

And he asked me anything else you can remember. I said, yeah, I remember two hotels. Equality Inn and Howard's Johnson, and that's what broke the case wide open. There had been 10 unsolved murders of women in the same area. They started searching down in the area where the hotels were, and one name stood out, Robert Joe Long. He was registered a Dodge Magnum, red, spoked wheels. Two weeks later, Robert Joe Long was arrested. I learned that he had raped over 50 women in Miami.

me. I learned that he trying to be the serial killer and killed 10 women in the Bay Area. And that's when I started thinking, why me? Why was I the only one he let go? I was so close to death and didn't realize it. Robert Joe Long was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on May 23rd, 2019. Lisa is now a police officer with the Hillsborough County. sheriff's office. Every since I was a little girl, all the abuse I went through up to my attack with Robert Long, I just want to be a police officer because I want to genuinely help other people who become victims for whatever reason it may be.

I survived because as a child, I learned coping skills to deal with my abuse. I also survived because I outwitted it and outsmart it, Robert Jolong. Thank you.