Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Was Drowning and I Never Thought I'd Make It Out

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

Singer is an experienced rock climber on an expedition in Kyrgyzstan with his three partners when they are taken hostage by rebels. After another hostage gets executed the group looks for their opportunity to escape. Romina and John are on vacation in Thailand for Christmas week when a tsunami hits separating the couple and devastating the region. Huggies: Head to Huggies.com to learn more! Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Ro - Go to Ro.co/Survived to start your weight loss journey Today! 

This episode of I Survived is brought to you by Huggies. Baby butts rejoice! New Huggies skin essentials are here. A brand new dermatologist-approved line of diapers, wipes, and pull-ups training pants, all designed with baby's sensitive skin in mind. 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 podcast, Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice, are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year.

And now, on to the show. This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. He said, we're hostages. And he looked at me and he went like this. Real people. I'm underwater. No idea of which way is up.

You can't see your air bubbles. It's black. Who faced death. All I see is this massive wall of water. I really thought I was dying. I was drowning and I never thought I was going to make it out of it. And lived to tell how. And he said, don't cry.

I'm the one that's going to die and I'm not crying. This is I Survived. It's August 2000 in Karasu Valley, Kyrgyzstan. Singer and three friends are on a rock climbing expedition in Kyrgyzstan. Singer has completed many of the world's toughest climbs. My three partners were John Dickey and Beth Rodden and Tommy Caldwell. They were, you know, two of the best rock climbers on the planet. We didn't have any concerns about safety in the area. It's a fairly popular destination. Climbers would climb there every year for probably 20 years or more. We were, you know, looking forward to having a good climb over the next four or five days. They set up their base camp in the valley below the 2,500-foot rock face.

By the end of the first day, they had climbed 1,000 feet up the side of the mountain. We were camped out at our high point, at an exposed point on the wall, that we sleep in things called portal edges, which are basically a cot that you clip on the side of the cliff. We had two portal edges right next to each other. Things were about as good as they could be. We were four of us for having the time of our lives, and we had our stereo going and having chocolate pudding, and I think it was Tommy's birthday maybe the next day or something.

At about 6.15 in the morning as the first rays of light were starting to come over the mountains, a gunshot rang out, and I bolted upright. I wasn't able to believe that somebody was actually shooting at us. So we couldn't see anything, and then a second shot rang out. We couldn't see who was there, we could just see that there was people at the base and that they wanted us to come down. So we kind of, you know, tried to politely decline that request. So a third shot came right between the two portal edges. Close enough that, like, all the sand from the impact and the ricochet kind of hit us all. It was disconcerting.

So John volunteered to go down first. John made the two-hour climb to the base. John radioed up to me and he said, Singer, there's these guys here and they want to go to our base camp and have some breakfast. I could tell that John wasn't saying everything on the radio. The group climbed down to where John was waiting with the two armed men. There was, you know, functionally zero common language between all of us. They spoke not a single word of English,

and we spoke maybe five words of Kyrgyz or Russian. We're thinking that these guys are almost certainly bandits. We're going to lose a lot of our stuff, but we might salvage our trip. And they indicated that they wanted to go down to our base camp. It was clear we had no choice, and they are the guys standing there with guns. So we all headed back down the valley, and John turned and looked at me, and he said, we're hostages.

We came walking into our base camp, and this would have been the first sign that something was really wrong, because all of our tents were cut open, and lots of our things were displayed out in the meadow. A third rebel was guarding another hostage, a Kyrgyz soldier named Turat. His pants were covered in blood, and he looked very angry. And I walked up to him, and he looked at me, and he went like this. And I thought that he was saying that they were going to kill the three of us and keep Beth. And then he indicated that it was his three friends that had been killed, which is why he was all covered in blood. The rebels had attacked Turat's platoon, and he was the only survivor. Abdul, the rebel leader, told the hostages to take down the tents.

I could tell that Turat, he was just watching everybody out of the corner of his eye. And he pulls this big tent stake out of the ground, and he catches my eye. And he gives me this just wild look, and he's like, come on, it's me and you right now. Come on, let's take these guys. And there's two guys standing across the meadow with their rifles looking at us. And that was the moment that I realized really how bad things were because if Tarrac considered this to be the best possible opportunity, it was bad. I shook him off. And that was the moment that psychologically he passed from living to dead. He knew that it was over for him. And the way that his face changed is something that's seared on my brain and

I'll never forget. Then the commander, who we knew as Abdul, came out of the big tent and pointed to me and John and told us to come in the tent, and we thought he was going to kill us. My heart was racing, and I was starting to feel a bit sick because it was, you know, things were going from bad to worse. He started telling us to put certain items into backpacks, and then he made us change clothes and put on more sturdy boots and pants, and then he told us to make sure that we had our papers or our passport.

We never knew exactly what their intent was in kidnapping us, although we can assume that they're going to try and get money for us later. Hearing an army helicopter, the rebels forced the hostages to hide. It flew right up to the wall where we had been camped, and it flew right up in front of our portal edges, and it hovered there for a minute. And we were all hiding in the trees, and then it turned around and flew out of the valley. So we knew at that point that the army knew that we were there

and knew that we had been captured. Abdul turned around, and he indicated, when those things fly in here, you guys get in the bushes and hide, and if you don't, I'm going to shoot you on the spot. So we had to run from tree to tree the side of this hill and evade these soldiers. And John started running across the hillside, and all the soldiers just took a bead

and started shooting at him. Bullets are coming in right at right at his heels and then they came to me and they're like, all right, go. And you know, what do you do? You run as fast as you can. We came over the rise to where they wouldn't be able to see us anymore and we came across a small plateau and it was obvious to them that I needed a break. Turat sat down next to me and he put his hand on my knee and very solemnly he said,

they're gonna shoot me over there. And you know, what do you say to that? Our value only exists in the minds of our captors, right? As soon as they rate something else above having us as hostages, then they can get rid of us, right? Like maybe they decide that they now rate escaping the army that they're surrounded by and they don't need us anymore. Then what happens?

Kirga's soldiers appeared on the other side of the valley. And then suddenly shooting started. And through the bushes, we could see guys running around on the opposite hillside. And Abdul and Sue, the other guy that was with us, started discharging their guns right over our heads. And, you know, bullets are coming through the tops of the trees and stuff. The soldiers must have been moving up the hillsides because the bullets started to come in at a more acute angle.

And they're coming in right here just two feet away. And then at one point, they started shooting mortars at us. And you can feel when the first one goes off because this big whomp comes to the ground. And then there's this really high-pitched descending whistle as the thing comes in, and you can tell it's kind of right for you. That's when they came down and got Tarot. Beth started to cry, and Tarot told her,

don't cry, I'm the one that's going to die, and I'm not crying. And they took Tarot up the hillside, and they shot him. And then they came down and they got me and John, and I thought that we were going to die. Life can get pretty busy at times, and when it does, one of the first things we often sacrifice is our diet and exercise routines, which can have a big impact on our waistline. But what if you could take a weekly shot to lose weight and keep it off? You've probably

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The rebels drag the remaining hostages to the place where Tarat lies dead. Seeing Tarat's body there on the ground was, you know, it's obviously a big shock. Again, things are shifting gears again in this whole situation, and we need to really, you know, wrap our head around the fact that people are obviously dying here. Like, it's not just Tarat's friends. Now it's Tarat. And how do we make it not us? A helicopter started to fly in. We thought it was gonna fly right over us,

so they got us to get up and run to this tree. And now, right in the middle of this intense firefight, we left the safety of the boulder we're behind, and we ran out into this tree, which is basically in the open. We can see bullets splintering the top of the tree, and branches are splintering and stuff. And they started to pin down our position there,

and so they got us up and we ran back to the boulder. And then they dropped another mortar just uphill from us. And then the third mortar they put right into the tree that we had just been in, and all the rocks and dirt came over us. Just kind of went on like that for hours and hours. And we were just waiting for it to get dark. And so finally it got dark enough

that we could escape uphill without being seen. The rebels split up, leaving the hostages guarded by two men, Abdul and Sue. We headed off over a ridge and we dropped down to a creek, hiking most of the night. They had us walking off the side of the trail, so we wouldn't leave footprints. And what we would do is, you know, every fourth or fifth stride, we would all just reach over and stick one foot on the trail. Because the soldiers would be able to tell in five seconds that those were

foreigners shoes in which direction they were heading so we were trying to give the soldiers if they were looking for us an indication of where we were we got down next to this creek and just kind of hunkered down in some ferns and bushes and then we sat there all day long you know for 17 hours helicopters flying aroundters flying around, kind of nearby, they're obviously looking for us. Abdul and Sue hid the hostages during the day and marched them at night. We would hike around all night long.

We would usually get water once. And then when the sun would start to come up, or before the sun would start to come up, Abdul would pick the, pretty much the last place you would look for people to be sleeping. The deadly game of cat and mouse continued for six days. I was scheming the whole time about different ways that we could potentially escape. Obviously since we were rock climbers, the best opportunity was going to be if we could somehow use a cliff and heights to our advantage.

Lots of situations came up that we had to use our hands and feet to climb up or down. They would call me up to the front and they would go, what do we do? I would show them where to go and I would coach them through the climbing. I'd place their hands, I'd put my hand on their back and hold them on, I'd show them where to put their feet. If we're going to get close enough to these guys to escape, they've got to trust us. They've got to feel comfortable with us being in their personal space. One night, Abdul went to find food, leaving Sue as the sole guard. And he indicated that he was going to send the four of us with Sue up the side of this mountain

where there's a plateau on top and that he was going to meet us up there. Deep down, we all knew that if he was going to send us out alone with Sue, something was going to happen. So we all started heading up the mountain, the five of us. We're talking about like a 3,000-foot

steep hillside with like broken cliffs. So occasionally you're going to be scrambling up rocks and scree and boulders. And sometimes you'll just be walking back and forth on ledges. And we're just constantly looking up and down and looking for that spot that if we push him off, that he's, you know, he's not just going to fall 20 feet and fracture his wrist and start shooting at us. We were at the top of the ridge, and I could see that it was the best chance we had seen the whole time. And I turned, and I said over my shoulder,

this is it. And Tommy just came running past me in a flash, and he went charging up there, and Sue had his gun on his back. And Tommy just climbed up and grabbed his gun and just pulled on him as hard as he could sue just went just sailing in an arc through the air right in front of me and he turned over his shoulder and he looked at me the whole way down you know we spent six days hanging out together all the time. And he trusted me. He hit the ledge right in front of me. And his body let out this awful, horribly loud cracking sound.

Then he just disappeared into the darkness. And we all thought that he probably fell to his death. But we don't know. We didn't actually see it. We don't know. Tommy was fairly emotional about what just happened. And I said to Tommy, there's going to be a lot of time for us later to sit down and cry about this, and we're going to. But it's not right now. We don't know where Abdul is.

He's out in the darkness somewhere, and he's going to be desperate. He's now alone. He's lost his hostages. We were afraid that he might just pop up anywhere, particularly because he knew exactly where we'd be headed. There's one way out of this valley, and it leads to an army base. Singer knew they had to find the Kyrgyz army base before Abdul found them. We all got up and started running. And we were moving along really steep cliff faces, and it was a series of gullies. And we were kind of half climbing, half descending, half running, half falling, just moving across rock. I heard a rock fall that wasn't from us. And I stopped everybody and I said,

did anybody else hear that? And Beth said, I heard that. And one other person hearing the same thing I heard is enough. We all just started running and just wildly descending the mountain. After a four-hour descent in the dark, Singer and the group saw a hut. We knew that this hut was almost certainly occupied by somebody.

Rebels or soldiers, we don't know, but we have no other option but to move right past it. I stood up, and as soon as I stood up, somebody started yelling, and Kyrgyz or Russian, from behind me in the bushes. And I yelled, run. And I remember flying through the air as they opened fire. There was tracer fire everywhere. And then I panicked because I knew that there was four of us. And I could look around and only count three people.

And I started screaming, where's the fourth person? And Beth said, you're the fourth person, run. This guy had his rifle raised and he came running right towards me. And he grabbed me and he threw me down on the ground and pressed my face into the dirt with the barrel of his gun quite firmly. Then they sat us up, and they stuck us against this wall,

and they're trying to figure out who we were. And then they decided that we were safe, and they took us in the hut. It was 4 o'clock in the morning, and we waited there for another two hours until the sun came out. And then they walked us down to the Army base. And I knew at that moment that we were okay and um i think all of us wanted to sit down and have a cry on the return home the climbers learned that sue the rebel they pushed off the cliff had survived the other rebels were never captured we're told they were a part of the IMU, which is the Islamic

Movement of Uzbekistan, who in the larger picture were alleged to be the drug runners for the Taliban. Six months later, Singer returned to meet the family of Turat, the army hostage executed by the rebels. We met with Turat's family and visited his grave. And if there were times in the experience that I considered unpleasant or that I wouldn't want to have to do again. Nothing compared to meeting his family and his mother. She wanted to know everything about how her son died. She wanted to know how many holes were in him, where they were, what they looked like, how everything happened. And I'll never forget the moment when Tarot wanted me to help him,

and he felt like I was his best chance, and his last chance for an escape. And I didn't take that chance. And I had to sit down and tell his family about it. You know, in hindsight, a lot of people will say, like, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? The why is because the one thing that we needed to achieve with 100 percent probability is that all four of us have to live. I would say I survived because I had good partners. I think as climbers we're a bit

more accustomed to relying completely on our friends. Like every time you go climbing and you hand somebody the other end of the rope, you're putting your life into their hands. And I think that in a lot of other hostage situations, like say if you were just on a plane that got captured, there's 60 people you've never met in your life. But we're all people who had already a pretty deep attachment to each other. And it wasn't at any point in every person for themselves kind of thing. It was a hundred percent of us have to live. Otherwise it's not worth it.

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He was the face of Operation Underground Railroad, a movement that inspired hope around the world by rescuing children from human traffickers. However, Ballard's crusade to save innocent lives has always hidden a darker secret. Oh, I think he's a pathological liar. Beneath the accolades and the applause, a dark storm has been brewing.

I mean, I can't find a time that he's told the truth about anything. Shocking allegations of sexual misconduct have surfaced, casting a shadow over his once unquestioned reputation. I am host Sarah James McLaughlin, and in this new season of The Opportunist, we explore the rise and the fall of Tim Ballard. Join us this October for Tim Ballard, Unmasking a Hero. Subscribe to a new season of The Opportunist now, wherever you get your podcasts. It's December 2004 in Khao Lak, Thailand. Newlyweds Romina and John are on vacation in Thailand. It is Argentinian-born Romina's first visit to the country.

John had lived in Thailand. He had done his dive master course. He lived there for three months. And we decided we wanted to be with some people we knew. He knew people there and we ended up in Khao Lak, Thailand during the Christmas week of 2004. And luckily we found a place right on the beach. We couldn't have asked for really a better location. It was inexpensive. I was familiar with the area because I had actually done diving out

of that out of that little resort. The couple celebrated Christmas Day on the beach with friends. John and I left and had a small argument. So that night after Christmas we actually went to sleep without talking to each other and we woke up without talking to each other. She went and did her thing, I went and did my thing. I went out on the porch, had some fruit for breakfast. Romina goes to take a shower, I'm fiddling around with my bags, she opens the door and the lights cut off.

She looks at me, I look at her. Suddenly we heard people screaming, which wasn't out of the ordinary. It was a family resort. There were a lot of families playing around, but it was weird. And we kind of knew something was happening, but we didn't know what. We were inside. We haven't really been outside. A magnitude 9.1 earthquake in the Indian Ocean had triggered a tsunami, and the massive wave was bearing down on the coast of Thailand. Seconds later, we hear, I hear this noise. It sounded like a helicopter landing right next to you. The next thing I know, water starts squirting through the cracks between the floorboards. There's water coming from underneath the planks and they're just filling the

cabin and the wood planks are kind of shaking and moving and in seconds the place is filled with water. My last recollection or visual of that moment is looking at John and seeing him looking at me and screaming my name. And she's getting sucked out. I remember yelling her name. I scream out, Romina. There's so much water and so much pressure that that back wall on the window just exploded and took me with it. The back wall collapses. Romina's carried out. I go through the roof, pressing my arm through the roof, and coming out into madness.

The feeling is just this stumbling. You don't know if you're whitewater rafting. You don't know if you're in a washing machine. There's trees snapping. The sound is unbelievable, so loud. You can't really, it's hard to see what's around you because you're moving at a really high, rapid pace. The first solid thing I hit was a palm tree.

I hugged it. I did hug the palm tree thinking I need to hold on to these. But the water is so fast and so strong. You can't keep yourself above water. You're gasping for breath. You don't know how long you're underwater and you're getting twirled around and you're getting slammed into rocks

and you're just hoping that you're gonna get your next breath. I'm underwater. No idea of which way is up. You can't see your air bubbles. It's black. It's like being in, yeah, just brown chocolate milk. Destroying everything in its path, the waves swept Romina half a mile inland.

The water kept on taking me and somehow at some point it just all calmed down. It's quiet, and there's debris everywhere. It's... think about the feeling of a beach town being destroyed, and now all that is floating. There was a freezer cooler top, so I decided that was going to be my floating device. So I grabbed that. I got myself on top of it, and suddenly I realized I was completely naked.

So I decided that no, I was not going to float on top of it, I was just going to lay my body half across it. And then I started looking for people around me. There had to be people. John had to be around me. All there was in my mind at that point was, I need to find John. He needs to know I'm alive. I need to tell him that I love him. I haven't talked to him since last night, and the last words to each other were really not that nice. So in my mind was,

I'm going to survive this. I'm not dying today, and I need to find John. Unable to locate Romina, John had also been swept inland by the wall of water. And all you care about is staying above the water and hoping that you're not going to get impinged or pinned under something or under this debris or cut by something or smashed into a tree or whatever. And I remember, I think of the thoughts going through my head that this water is going to go back. That it's not just going to come in and then not return. The water had reached its peak and stopped. Well now it needed to go back to the ocean.

It needed to go back to the sea. So I started feeling that pull but I was thinking no I'm not going back. I'm going to just stand here and fight it. But it's just that feeling and there's too much water that you can't really fight it. I needed to grab onto something or I was gonna get carried out to sea and I said you got to grab onto something. You have to grab onto something or I was going to get carried out to sea. And I said, you got to grab onto something. You have to grab onto something now or you're going to get sucked out. The water is going back to the ocean pretty fast. It has a really fast pace of going back. So I kept looking and knowing that every second I'm further and further away from safety.

And all I can think about is, how am I going to make it back to the shore? If this keeps going to the ocean, how far am I going to go? I'm not going to make it. When the water took me back into the ocean, it's like being on a riptide. You don't know where you're going to end up.

You don't know where it's going to take you. I knew I could not fight the riptide and I knew that I had to go back to the shore somehow, but I didn't know how. John was fighting the water's pull. The water would swirl around and you'd have like a funnel where it would be pulling you underwater, so you're just trying to stay above it. So I'm lucky enough to see a tree that's close by, and I climb up it, I would say, just a small way. I was maybe up to my chest. I've got my arms wrapped around the tree, and I can feel the pressure of the water pulling below me, and it's really, really hard.

And I'm bear-hugging this tree, and I'm like, there's no way. There is no way And I'm bear hugging this tree. And I'm like, there's no way. There is no way I'm letting go of this tree. Because if I let go of this tree, I'm going to get taken out to sea. The wave had already sucked Romina far out to sea. Suddenly, I realized that I'm around more people. And there's this girl. And she looked completely like a fighter. And we kept trying to talk to each other to keep us going.

Her name was Amanda. We talked about where we were from. We also talked about who we were missing. She was missing her fiancé and I was missing my husband. And we were just trying to figure out how to make it back to the shore. And I knew how far away it was, and I knew I was not going to be able to swim back. Romina realized they were no longer being dragged by the current.

The water is receding again. I can probably stand up. So I remember stopping and looking back to Amanda and said, I can touch the sand. I can stand up. At the same time, I looked at her again and I tried to grab her. And I said, grab my hand. Well, what we didn't know is that a tsunami brings a series of waves. It's not just one, there's usually multiple waves. And when I turn around,

all I see is this massive wall of water coming our way. And I saw Amanda's face and she said, I can't grab your hand. And that was the last thing I remember seeing was Amanda's face and just going under, closing my eyes and going under and letting this wall of water take me wherever it is that it's going. As the water receded, I started to climb out of the tree. Water was up to about my waist at this time, and it's slowly still going out. I see fish flopping. I see all kinds of different things that shouldn't be there. There's concrete foundations and cars overturned. Just the building's gone. This was a busy kind of resort area with lots of small bungalows that were gone.

You look out and it's a total wasteland. Romina had been dragged out to sea and was being hit by a second wave. It's a wall of murky water with white crest and it's scary and it's huge. You don't know what's up, and you don't know what's down. And I panicked. I knew I was running out of air.

I really thought I was dying. I was drowning, and I never thought I was going to make it out of it. And suddenly, the same way I just went under, I was up. I opened my mouth, and I took the biggest gulp of air I could get. But you're in this super fast wave going all the way back in. And I looked to the shore, towards the shore.

There's two concrete buildings. There's one building here and one building here, and just one space in between. And that was all that was left from the initial wave. And I was thinking, I survived these other waves, and now I'm going to get crashed against a concrete building. Half a mile inland, John was searching for Romina. I was like, she has to be here. She has to be here. And I start yelling her name and I start looking around for her.

I honestly didn't know what to do. I looked down at my hand and I realized my wedding band is gone. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, this is a sign that she's gone. And I'm like, she can't be gone. I made it in between the buildings. I was still going forward, and I had passed those two concrete buildings, and I started being able to see people on the water slowing down.

It was still up to probably above my knees, but that was it. I knew I had to get out. I needed to do something and go and find John. I'm safe. I'm not in the water anymore. Well, now it's time to find my husband. John was still searching for Romina in the debris. You're walking around. you are walking around in a daze. I'm yelling her name. I'm just hoping to hear a response back from her. And I can hear other people doing the same. I don't know what to do.

I want to find her. I want to help other people. There was a young girl, probably 13 years old, and she's telling me, I'm missing nine people out of my family. It's just me. I don't wanna come out of the tree. And I convince her that, you know, you can come out. I'll take you up to this clinic.

We'll find your family, you know. Romina was taken to a triage area where a doctor checked her injuries. His assessment was broken nose, broken ribs, broken foot. Who knows, maybe internal bleeding. I don't know. And then leaving. That was it.

At that point, it's chaos. There's people coming, and there's people leaving, and there's people trying to get organized, and they're asking you where you're from, and who are you missing. And it's pure chaos. Every time I lifted up my head because somebody was coming to ask me a question,

I kept hoping and wishing that that person was John. I look over and I see a woman. And I'm like, you know, the anticipation is so hard to contain and it's like it could be her. It could be her. I saw him. It was John. And he was coming to get me. The first thing he said to me was, I'm sorry. And I asked him why. And he shows me his hand and he's like, I lost my wedding ring. And I said, we'll get another one. And that was it. I was safe. He was safe. We made it. Three days later, the couple was evacuated to Romina's home in Argentina.

Romina was haunted by thoughts of Amanda, the girl she had lost in the tsunami. There was a special on TV called Voices of the Tsunami. And they were showing these different images of survivors and they're getting back home. They're interviewing this girl at the Heathrow Airport. And she's crying about how this Argentinian girl had not made it. She said, take my hand.

And I said, no, I can't, because I knew you can't hold onto someone. You've got to be strong and be on your own. And I didn't take her hand. And when the next wave came, she didn't come back up. And she's crying, and I'm jumping in bed. And I was like, John, that's my Amanda. She survived. Because at that point, I didn't know her last name.

All I knew, her name was Amanda. Having discovered Amanda's last name, Romina was able to contact her. So the next day at about 1 p.m. Argentinian time, I was talking on the phone with her. We have been in contact ever since. The Indian Ocean tsunami was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. It claimed the lives of 250,000 people in 14 countries. Out of a quarter of a million people that died in the tsunami, about 9,000 died in the beach where we were.

I survived because I'm lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. I survived because I'm a fighter. Wrong place, wrong time. I'm still a fighter.