Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Was Living on Borrowed Time

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

Brent is pursued and attacked by Mark Barton, a coworker who was an unknown schizophrenic, while working at a stock trading company together in Atlanta Georgia. Sisters Hannah and Miranda are stranded on a boat with their father while on vacation in Lake Tustumena, Alaska. Karen and her husband are mauled by a black bear while at home in Morristown, New Jersey.  Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/survived and take your retail business to the next level today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some viewers. Listener discretion is advised. I see the blood and I'm thinking, that's my blood. Those are shell casings that just hit me. I'm going to die today. I sort of crouched down on the ground and waited to be shot. We could see the fear in his eyes. After that, we just knew it wasn't going to be okay.

I knew that he was still after me and I was living unborrowed time. Real people who faced death and lived to tell how. This is I survived. It's July 1999. 25-year-old Brent runs a day trading company in Atlanta, Georgia. The late 90s were a very interesting time. The stock market was fluctuating several hundred points a day. We basically tried to take advantage of the short-term fluctuations in a stock price.

Our office was set up basically as just an open trading floor. Our clients would come in, have their assigned station, if you will, and they would just buy and sell stocks using our technology. Clients could borrow against the company's capital to speculate on the market. Mark Barton was one of their regular clients. Mark was a very happy, jovial big teddy bear type of person. Everybody liked him. In fact, we called him Rocket Man because his attitude was just having.

happy, go lucky, and fire at the world. He was just one of those type of people. He was very, very aggressive. He would have days where he would make a lot of money and days where he would lose a lot of money. After a string of bad trades, Barton owed the company $30,000. I went to him and basically said, you know what, Mark, this is not working.

You've gone way too far. You owe us way too much money. And we're going to have to discontinue our relationship. There was really no anger with him. He was still, he understood what had happened, he understood when he did it, what he was doing, and it was basically a handshake, and I will be back to repay my debt.

Three months later, Mark Barton returned. The office was packed with traders and staff. I was sitting in the conference room, giving a system demonstration to a potential client when Mark came to the door and knocked on the window and said, hey, you know, I need to see you. And I said, you know what, Mark, I'll be with you in just a second.

And he opens up the door, smile on his face, and he says, Brent, really, you have to come with me. You're going to love this. Brent followed Barton to the main office. I thought he was there to possibly repay his debt with a smile on his face and saying, come here, you're going to love this? I thought it was my old friend.

When they walked into the office, Brent noticed that the blinds were down. They were all closed, which was very odd for me. At first, I didn't think anything of it because he was smiling and telling me that I was going to love this. But I just had that odd feeling. He closed the door, he turned around, and the happy, jovial dumb, dumb guy is gone. He is just this total blank, stunt. looking right at me, saying, today is going to be visual. I'm thinking, okay, where are we going with this?

And he pulls out, he gets under his shirt and pulls out two handguns. He cross fists and he pulls them out. And the first thing I could think of was he's got some cap guns or something because he was telling me that I'm going to love this. And by the time I'm trying to process what he's doing, he's already shooting me. The shot that came through my chest was a 45 caliber handgun.

It hit me so hard. It was like somebody just completely knocked my feet out from under me and just face planted me. The second bullet hit Brent in the arm as he went down. I see the blood and I'm thinking, that's my blood. Those are shell casings that just hit me. I'm going to die today. Mark Barton then turned his guns on the traitors out on the trade. floor.

And I could just continually hear the shots one after another over and over. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, he's here. This is one of those office shootings, and I'm in the middle of it. It was very terrifying. I was laying there, and my stomach hurt so bad that I could hardly move. I just could smell the gunfire in the air. I was in an extreme amount of pain. And I decided that regardless, I was going to do my part and just try to get out of there.

Brent struggled to get to his feet. I wasn't sure exactly where he was at. I could just hear the continual gunfire. And I just assumed that he was out on the trading floor. I turned around, and I started to make my move. And he was still three to four feet away from me standing in the middle of the doorway where I was trying to exit. His back was towards me. And he was just randomly taking aim.

at traitors. One, he just shot right there in the back, right by his computer, and the other one was running, and he shot them. I watched them both fall. I knew that I didn't have an option at that point. If he turned around, I was surely going to be dead. I decided that in a split instant,

I would try to take him out. I knew that this had to end, and that I had to try to get out of there to get to help to where all of the violence would stop. I was 25 years old. I was a former wrestling champion. I gave it everything I could and rammed him right in the back,

knocked him off balance just enough for me to get out of the doorway. Before Brent could escape, Barton regained his balance. As I'm running out of the conference room, he shoots me in the back, he shoots me in the left arm, and a last one as I was turning the corner

was the fifth bullet was a grazer across my cheek. Once I got out into the hall, I could still hear the sound of gunshots. I knew that he wasn't right behind me, but I didn't know where he was. I feared that he would possibly go towards the exit of the building, expecting that that's where I would be going. Brent decided to head in the opposite direction

toward the parking garage. The walls felt like they were caving in. The hallway felt like it was gray. I felt like I was just living in somebody's nightmare, if you were. I got about three quarters of the way down the hallway and saw a little service elevator area, so I ducked into that room. When I pushed the elevator button,

it felt like an eternity as I was waiting for the elevator to come get me. I finally decided, you know, I need some peace of mind. I need to know whether he's still after me or not. So I went over and I cracked the door open just enough to take a look. And there was a female coming down the hallway. Mark raised his gun.

his gun and shot her in the head. Martin was less than 15 feet from Brent's hiding place. The elevator doors finally open and I get in there and I am frantically just pushing buttons, trying to get the door to close and to get going. I was terrified. I knew that he was right down the hallway, and I knew that he was still after me. And it slowly started to close, and as it was closing, the doorway to that room opened and Barton came in. He raises his gun right at me, and I thought,

oh God, I'm going to die right here. It's like a scene from a really bad horror movie. It's this guy, this monster that just won't go away, and it's this person that's living in the middle of a nightmare just saying, please leave me alone. Enough, enough. The elevator door closed before Barton could get off a shot. I was running out of steam, and I didn't want to go completely down, so I just stayed on all fours.

I knew that, without a doubt, he was still after me, and I was living unborrowed time. When the elevator stopped, I didn't know what floor I was on. I just knew it was a different floor, and that I had gone up. So I exited the elevator. Things are getting very surreal. I'm losing my... energy and I'm having to use the walls to maintain my balance. I made a few steps and decided that there was no way I could make it to the end.

So I turned around and took a few steps back the other way and found an office. I walked in and I said, please help me. I've been shot and I fell to the ground. I hear one of the gals in the office say, is this a joke? And I said, no, no, it's no joke. I've been shot multiple times. My shirt was completely covered in blood. They opened my shirt, and they took a look, and I could see the fear on all of their faces.

And I thought, oh my God, this is not good. Everybody started panicking. The first thought was, no, we can't move him. And I said, guys, you don't have to worry about a lawsuit. You just need to get me out of the doorway, and you need to get it locked or we're all going to die. They took me in the conference room, and all of the office staff came into the conference room

we closed and locked that door too. There was a lot of confusion at that point when the first person called 911. I could hear the conversation going back and forth. The 911 operator said, ma'am, there's already police and paramedics there. And she said, no, this guy is the first to be shot. There is nobody here.

Unknown to everyone except Mark Barton, this was his second shooting spree of the day. The first had been at another trading office. across the street. It took them a while to determine that there were actually two separate workplace shootings that had occurred within a few minutes of each other. The weight was excruciating. I'm laying there, and at first I think, okay, if I can make it five minutes,

surely somebody would be here in five minutes. Then it went to 10, and then it went to 15, and then we started praying. After about 30 minutes of laying there, my lungs had collected so much blood that I couldn't speak anymore. And it was just, hang on, keep your eyes open until the paramedics get there, and you've got a fighting chance. I was just laying there praying in my mind, please God, don't let me die.

And it was almost an hour by the time help finally arrived. By then, Brent had almost bled out. A man leaned over me and he says, I am a trauma surgeon. If you keep your eyes open and on me, you're going to live today. If you close your eyes, you're going to die. Do you understand? At that point, it was very clear that I keep my eyes open and I have a fighting chance. If not, I'm done.

Brent's attacker, Mark Barton, was still at large. I was surrounded by SWAT team. members with M15s or M16s and they just hustled me down the hallway and into the elevator. Brent was rushed to the hospital. I had no way to communicate. I was just living in this zone of medical staff that were literally two people deep all the way around my table and they put the mask on me to make me to put me under. I just remember when that mask went on thinking, thank God, at least I can go to sleep now.

Brent spent four hours in surgery and received over 30 pints of blood. The first shot with the 45 hit me right in the chest, and it missed my heart by a millimeter and then missed my spine by about an inch when it exited. There was one bullet in my right arm that they had to remove, but the rest of the bullets were clean shots, and they did extensive. internal damage. After the attack, Barton shot himself before he could be apprehended. It took several days for me to really understand the totality of what had happened.

I didn't believe that he was actually dead. I was fearful that he was still going to come after me. I asked every one of my family members independently trying to get somebody to slip up and tell me that he was, in fact, still alive when he wasn't. Brent discovered after the attack the full extent of what Mark Barton did that day. He went across the street to our competing firm where he had been day trading for approximately three months. And he started in shooting all of the traders, office manager, receptionist prior to coming into our office and doing the same thing. He, I believe, shot 30-some rounds in our office and he never hit a window.

They were all shots on people. He hit one stray shot that hit the wall and one into a computer screen. Other than that, he was a perfect aim. Mark Barton killed his wife and two children before going on his shooting rampage. I believe in total he killed 12 people that day. That includes his wife and two children, and he wounded another 12. I survived because I decided very early. on in the shooting as soon as I realized what had happened and that this guy is after me,

I'm laying there thinking, I'm a 25-year-old guy, I am way too young to die, I don't want to die, and it is my responsibility to try to take myself out of that situation. If you've been sitting on a business idea for a while, Shopify makes it a lot easier to actually move on it. Everything you need to start selling is there from day one, so you're not piecing things together or getting stuck before you even begin. One thing I really really like is how Shopify handles checkout. When someone's ready to buy, it's fast and frictionless. When they come back, their information is already saved. So it's just one tap and done. So if you've ever worried about losing a sale at the last second, Shopify has that figured out for you.

And because Shopify takes care of the setup and the payments, you get your time back to focus on actually growing the business, building your product, connecting with your audience, improving what you're offering. Instead of getting buried in logistics, Shopify powers millions of businesses from huge global brands to people just starting out. So whatever stage you're at, you're building on something that's already proven to work. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash survived. That's a free trial at Shopify.com slash survived. It's June 2011. Sisters Hannah and Miranda and their father are heading to a cabin on Lake Tustamina in Alaska by boat. Lake Tustamina is long and narrow and

fed by a glacier at one end. Tasmania Lake is a very special place for me and my family. Me and my sister and my dad all grew up on it and we used to go on family trips there. My dad had been going up there since about the time he was 12. So about 30 plus years. This was the first trip of that year. Me and my sister each invited a friend. My friend's name was Athena and my sister's friend's name was Katarina.

The girls ranged in age from 12 to 15 years. Our plan for that weekend was to go up on a Friday after my dad got home from work and we would stay Friday night and Saturday night and then come back Sunday. My dad did tell their parents, though, that if the weather was bad, we would stay over an extra night and to not be worried if we came back a day late. We had planned to leave around 3 p.m., but due to the fact that my dad didn't get off work till late, we ended up not leaving to about 6. We didn't get the boat loaded and launched to about 9.45 p.m. It was summer in Alaska. so the sun was still up when they left the dock. In Alaska during the summer,

it's light almost 24-7. It almost never got dark. It would dig it dark. It was just twilight-ish. They were all wearing life vests. The water was like glass. There was not one little wave in it, and it was a really, really good night

to go out for a boat ride. Katerina was describing to me how she loved to go boating and how excited she was because she had not been boating since she was a little kid with her grandpa. Hannah and Athena were sitting back there talking about the latest drama in their class, and my dad was sitting in the back of the boat, driving the boat.

My dad was laughing pretty much the whole time along with everybody else, and we were all just having a lot of fun. The cabin we were going to stay at was called Pipe Creek Cabin. It takes about three hours by boat, once you get onto the lake, to reach the cabin. People usually hug the side of the lake because the one can get picked up really quickly off the glacier. the glacier. It was getting late, it was me to do it the temperature had dropped considerably.

My dad asked my sister and I, especially me, if we wanted to cut across the lake, he asked, is Katerina cold? Are you cold? Do you think the other girls are cold? I was too busy taking pictures of everybody smiling, really to listen, so I just kind of muttered, yeah, it's cut across the lake without really thinking about it.

My dad rarely ever cut it across the lake just because he knew it could be dangerous. He had only done it one other time in his lifetime, and I don't know what made that night any different. For the first mile, it was very calm and easy going, and then about half a mile later, it started to get a little breezy and a little windy. We started getting little white caps on the lake,

and I saw it, but I wasn't really nervous because I'd seen that before. About halfway across the lake, the water started to pick up even more, and the wind picked up more, and we started getting a little gentle swell. gentle swell, but I had experienced that before, too, in my life. It wasn't anything new. And we kept on going, kept on going.

And I'd probably say a bit past halfway, we got some really bad swells. By the time the waves had gotten really bad, it was already too late to go back. So we just had to keep riding them and going forward. The waves were now nine feet high in breaking. My dad was a very experienced boat driver, so we knew you had to hit the waves head on. but still water came in the boat.

The water was about 30 to 35 degrees, and so when it touched your skin, it kind of, it was just like a really sharp pain. My dad told us to bail, so we found these tin foil things you cooked turkey in. I gave one to Athena, one to myself, and we just started bailing. My dad was screaming if this engine quits were screwed.

Me and Catarina went back and forth between bailing water and sitting on the front of the boat to help hopefully get less water in it. The boat was filling faster than the girls could bail. I dug deeper down to this tote we had, and I found these plastic containers, these big plastic containers. And me, you know, I started using those. By this time, the boat was starting to do a Titanic, sink on its ends. Moments later, the engine died.

All I remember, if my dad just yelling, jump and get away from the boat so it wouldn't suck us down with it. We could see the fear in his eyes. After that, we just knew it wasn't going to be okay. My dad grabbed a cooler that was passing by, and he emptied all of the food out of it so we could all have a place to hang on to. My dad said once we all got around the cooler, we were all going to kick towards this point

that we could see across the lake. It was the closest to us. We had 45 minutes to an hour to make it before hypothermia killed us. Hypothermia occurs when the internal body temperature drops below 95 degrees. The first signs are intense shivering, followed by loss of coordination, confusion, and eventually death.

Even though my dad was scared and I could see the fear, he kept trying to keep us calm. He kept telling us that there was just a little bit more to go. Me and my sister normally didn't see my dad like that, though, so it was mainly keeping the other girls calm, even though me and my sister knew that the situation was a lot worse, and we thought. After 30 minutes of kicking, they were still a mile from shore.

Couldn't feel my feet. My toes were curling underneath them because they were trying to, you know, save body heat. Katerina had gone silent pretty much. She was just kind of whimpering. My dad was dragging her by her coat. And at that point, all I was really thinking was, well, I'm okay with dying.

Kind of thought about what I had accomplished and what I had accomplished in life. I was so young. I was only 15. I had never even been kissed by a boy yet. yet. It's kind of regretting that. On the opposite side of the cooler, Hannah was struggling to stay awake. We all yelled at Hannah to get her to wake up.

She's like, what? I just need a rest. I'm not tired. But then I was just kind of accepting the fact that I might just die out there and that I might never see my mom again or my friends. Their father is dragging one of the girl's friends, Katarina, who is now in the early stages of hypothermia. The wind had died down, he'd kind of gone silent and eerie. My dad realized that Catarina hadn't been responding to us for about an hour, and he looked at us,

and he was like, girls, I have to let her go. He asked my sister first, since it was her best friend if he could let go of her, and Miranda started tearing up a little, and we all kind of agree that it was okay. We knew Catarina was gone, and we all knew she had been gone for a long time. And with that, he let go of Catarina. We all just kind of stopped right there, and it was really silent for a few minutes.

We just looked around at each other, and it was kind of a shocking moment for all of us that she wasn't there anymore. Hannah and Miranda's dad knew he was also running out of time. His hypothermic stage was definitely a lot worse than ours. He had started to get a lisp, and that's one of the last few stages of it. He looked at us, he said, okay, my mind's going to start to go. He said your grandfathers get to shore, started a fire. He pretty just told us all the information he could why he could still think clearly.

And within the hour, he digressed from being able to tell us to turning into a little toddler, pretty much. He didn't really know what was going on. It kind of seemed like his age was just going back in time. He started talking like a little two-year-old again. He started just slowly getting worse and worse. We pushed him to the front of the cooler so he wouldn't have to kick because he just just

given up moving. We figured we could at least all three push him to shore. We couldn't even really remember our names at that point. It was hard to see my dad's condition getting worse. I was really close to him. Hannah Miranda and their friend Athena were now just 100 yards from the shore. 15-year-old Miranda now took charge. Eventually my dad quit talking.

His head synced under the water a little bit, and Athena grabbed his head and we put it and rested on the cooler lid. I'm like, we're almost there. We're going to get down shore, get something going, get him warm. And the next thing we know, he's just kind of had a seizure. He seized up, and he flopped over. His eyes rolled back out of the side, and he looked straight at me. I could hear him gasp for air.

And then he was just gone. I couldn't drag a body to shore. It just wouldn't work. And so we grabbed his watch off his body. We grabbed our phone. our iPods, anything we could find that might be useful, his pocket knife, and we just left him there, and we kicked ashore.

Hannah started crying because she missed Dad, but I still had my emotions put to the side, and they were going to stay put to the side until we got out of there. Me and my sister knew what to do. My dad had taught us really well in case the situation ever happened. I wasn't scared about not making it out.

I was just scared that. that it would have to do it alone. 30 minutes after losing their father to hypothermia, Hannah Miranda and their friend Athena make it to shore. Hannah was the first one to hit shore because she's taller, and she was like, guys, I feel ground underneath my feet. It was a really good moment for me. It was good and bad.

It was good because me and my sister and my best friend were there. It was just sad because Katerina and my dad couldn't be there. with us. We checked the watch time and it said 4.37 a.m. in the morning, which means we had been kicking for about four and a half hours. We were only supposed to survive 45 minutes to an hour in that water, and we survived nearly five hours. Miranda knew they needed to get warm, or they could still die. In the distance, I saw these white cliffs that stood out from the rest of the lake, and I knew from my previous experiences before that a public cabin was right. But before that, I knew it had firewood, it had a stove.

And if we could get to that, we could spend the night there and get warm. My sister got up and was like, we just need to go and we need to keep going. We talked about food most of the time. We were starving. We talked about what we were going to do when we'd get back and how our lives would be changed. Finally, after hours of hiking, the girls made it to the cabin. We found the axe outside. and I just chopped some wood up, and we got the fire going.

We put all our wet clothes up on some nails that were in the beams above us, and we all sat there and discussed what we were going to do for up to a week if we had to. At 10 p.m. that evening, the girls heard airplanes flying overhead. They ran to the beach and started waving. Athena looked over to her left, and she was like, it's at a boat, and then we didn't hear any engine or anything, and so we were just like it's probably just a big rock or something.

The object started moving towards our direction. It got about 30 feet away from us, and there was a police officer inside the boat. I was just glad that we weren't in danger anymore, that somebody knew where we were. A search had begun after a lakeside resident found part of their boat washed up in front of his cabin. We found out later that they had found Katerina and Dad's body

about 7 p.m., which is about three hours. before we were rescued. They thought they were looking for three more dead bodies. They didn't know that we had survived and found a way to the cabin. I think we survived this because we all worked together. We kept our heads straight, and my dad taught us everything we needed to know.

I also thank God had a part to play in it. It's not normal for that. Why did a older man and a vivacious young teenager die when three kids survived? Finding the one can feel impossible. And in today's world, it's even harder. False 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 stage 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 November 2005 in Morristown, New Jersey. Karen is home alone in the early morning. I live in a very rural area, mostly a state area. So the The next house is, you know, five acres away on 10 acres,

so it's very secluded. You never think of any crime or anything that would ever happen there. We always left the garage door open, never locked the doors, kept the car in the driveway with the keys in it. It was like every other morning, I got up, worked out with my trainer, came upstairs to take a shower. I happened to be on the phone with my mother-in-law telling her,

My son was giving us problems. He wasn't working. He didn't show for work. And it was kind of a crazy time in my life. And I said, if I don't crack up from this, nothing will ever make me crack up. I put on my makeup and I walked downstairs with my laundry. And when I got to the bottom of the steps,

there was a figure that came out. First, I thought it was my son. I thought he was just lurking around to say, you know, I'm sorry, Mom. And then he pulled out a gun. And I knew it wasn't my son. He was wearing a black, big black jacket, and he had a turtleneck up to right above his nose

and a hat that covered to hear, so I could just see his eyes looking at me. And the gun. I saw the end of the gun staring. I was staring down the end of the gun. I was telling him, please, please, don't hurt me. I have babies, please, I'll give you whatever you want. I have jewelry, I have money, whatever you want.

whatever you want, please, please, you don't have to do this. And he said, shut up, bitch. He pointed the gun to the ground for me to lie down on the ground. And I sort of crouched down on the ground and waited to be shot. I'm on the ground thinking, this is really happening. Like, I wasn't even sure. It took a while to say, wait, this is happening to me. This is real.

He started to duct tape my legs and my ankles, and he duct tape my hands behind my back, and then he duct tape me around the mouth. And I'm thinking, all right, how's this movie going to end? Am I going to be alive? How am I going to die? The man forced Karen at gunpoint into the back of her car and drove away from her home.

Where is he going to take me? What's he planning to do with me? I had no idea. what he wanted with me. He stops the car. Seems like to me I'm in the middle of the woods, and he gets out and comes around to open the door, and I shuffle my body because I'm all tied up

to the edge, and he grabs my arm and starts walking me. I thought he was taking me into the woods until I saw this shed. We walk in the door, and on the left, And on the left, there's like a, I don't know, it looks like a bench. And he starts taking stuff off the bench. And I'm thinking, what the heck? And then I see he's got a big knife in his back pocket,

and I'm thinking, he's going to cut me up. What's he going to do with the knife? It was scary. The knife was very scary. He drags her to an abandoned shed in the woods. I knew that whatever he had planned for me, He was going to get done. And I just didn't know what that was.

And I'm saying the same thing, please, please, you don't have to do this. You don't have to do this. Whatever you want. I'll go to the bank right now. I'll get you money. Whatever you want, please, please. You can get the money and everything will be okay. And he said, 200,000 for your life.

The man then forced Karen to a feed box that was against the side of the shed. He pointed the gun and he told him. Let me get in. And it was a box, like three by three, I guess. And it was up high. I had my ankles tied and my hands tied behind my back, and there was no way that I could get into this box. And I just told them, I can't, you know, no, can't do it.

So he pointed the gun to the other side, and he said, you know, he didn't say anything because he didn't talk about it. He pointed the gun. I knew what he meant. Get down on the ground. He took out the duct tape. And he started at my ankles, and he just started wrapping up my legs, up my, past my knees as far as he could go and stopped.

And then he started again, you know, at my waist and taped me up like I was in a cocoon all the way up. And I remember him going around my neck thinking I'm not going to be able to breathe. You know, he's going to suffocate me. Only Karen's eyes and nose were left uncovered. I'm just looking at him and I'm just, You know, like, whatever you need, whatever you want, I'm going to be good, you know, just don't hurt me. Then he took the hat off of his head, and I remember thinking,

I'm like, I'm not going home. I can identify him. He's, he's, I'm dead. He's not letting me go. I'm looking at him with these eyes that are saying, I'm not, I'm not doing anything. I'm scared, you know, please don't hurt me. I'm going to be good.

He walked around me for a little bit, and then he left. There was a cut-out notch on a board that I was on. And I got the duct tape underneath the board. And I just kept doing those sit-ups and pulling, and pulling, just nonstop, pulling. I'm thinking through this whole thing, what I get at? If I break free, what if he's at the car? What if he's out there?

What am I going to do? I'm saying, well, you've been working out. You know you can run two miles. Just run and run in a zigzag so that if he's shooting at you, it's harder to hit you. Take the knife and you got to stab him in the neck, because you can't let him shoot you after you take, you got to kill him.

And I'm laying there thinking this while I'm trying to break free. And then I start to have the low sugar from, I guess, all the exertion and not having eaten and I start to sweat and I know I'm having low sugar because I'm familiar with it. Karen is a diabetic. I could maybe go a day without insulin and then I'd probably go into a coma and die. After being kidnapped, Karen is now alone in a shed and cocooned in duct tape, a diabetic with her sugar levels plummeting, she tries to break the tape.

I was thinking I just can't do it. I'm not going to do it. And then I had a vision. At that moment, it's so weird, of a man in a suit walking to my daughters. He starts to say, I'm sorry, and he's going to tell them that your mom didn't make it. And I said, it's not going to happen.

I can't let this happen. I try again, and I try with my hardest. And I don't know if it was adrenaline. I don't know if it was my mind. It was my dad up there helping me, but the tape's broke. So I break my hands free, and I just grab the duct tape from my face, and I rip it, and I'm ripping, ripping, ripping, all the way down.

It just splits right open, straight down the middle. And my feet are free, everything's free, and I jump up, and I open the door, and I'm looking for him. And then I hear a car and a road. So I run to the road, and there's a sports car coming down the road. Karen waved the car down and asked the driver to call 911. Then as soon as I met the police, I just fell apart.

I started crying. You know, it was, I was safe. My husband, in the meantime, was down in the police station, and he got a phone call from me, from my cell phone, and he picked it up, and it was a kidnapper saying, a million dollars or I kill your wife. The police received a tip-off. regarding Karen's abductor from her neighbor.

Apparently, he came to my house the night before, and he got driven there by a friend, and the friend pulled in the wrong driveway. He pulled into my neighbor's driveway. And my neighbor thought that was odd, that a car pulled in his driveway, and he jotted down the license plate of the car. The police contacted the owner of the car,

and the driver said he had dropped the kidnapper off, the kidnapper off at my house and gave him the address of where he lived. And then when the police went to his house and dialed my phone number, they heard my phone ring and Perez was there with the phone, the duct tape, the knife, and the gun. Edgar Del Sid Perez had worked for her husband's landscaping company for six weeks over the summer. There was a drought, and my husband had let him go and said,

you know, when things pick up, you'll come back. My husband had no idea that this guy was angry for any reason or would have any reason to hurt me or him. Perez pleaded guilty to kidnapping, burglary, and weapons possession. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. I survived because I wanted to be with my children and my husband and my family. I wanted the movie to end with me surviving. and I made it happen.

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