Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: If I Play Dead He Wouldn't Shoot Me Again

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Lonnie rekindles an old relationship only for her beau to take credit cards out in her name and when she confronts him about it he shoots her in the head. Rulon is an olympic wrestler and gold medalist out or a day of snowmobiling with friends when he gets lost and submerged in freezing water. Now his greatest adversary is the hypothermia looking to end his career and his life. Stanley is on a night out in Manhattan when he is abducted and held at gunpoint. Over the next couple days the abductors attempt to remove $50,000 using Stanley’s ATM card. Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Rosetta Stone: Don’t put off learning that language - there’s no better time than RIGHT NOW to get started! For a very limited time, I Survived listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s Lifetime Membership for 50% off! Visit rosettastone.com/survived  

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I'll play dead. If I play dead, he wouldn't shoot me again. Real people. You don't have the right gear on. You don't have a cell phone that'll work. You don't have any of these things that you need to survive.

What are you going to do? Who faced death? My life no longer belonged to me. Now someone else owned it. Someone else could choose whether to keep it or throw it away. And lived to tell how. I was gonna live. I did not want them planning a funeral. This is I Survived. It's 2001 in Portland, Oregon. Lonnie reunites with an old friend, Michael. I met Michael 20 years ago. We were both in the same business. I owned a stained glass business, and he sold me glass. And I got a phone call, and it was him. And we reacquainted ourselves with each other. We had been friends.

It was good to hear from him. I was feeling lonely. And it comforted me to know that I had this friend and that it might be possible that we could see each other. I think his interests were romantic. He was clearly wooing me. And we decided that it would be OK if he came to Portland and that he could park his motor home in my driveway.

He seemed successful, and he had that air about him, too, that confidence. So I believed it. Michael was wanted for fraud in Texas. On my way home from work, I had stopped to see my loan officer. And we talked and had a great conversation about how we could get a little extra money and take care of a few things. And he pulled up my credit report. And he looked at my credit report,

and he says, oh my, what is this? And there were a list of 14 credit cards that I knew nothing about and $30,000 on these credit cards. My head is whirling. I'm shocked. I'm thinking, this, wow. But for some reason, I immediately thought, Michael. Lani returned home to confront Michael.

And he said, oh, no, no, no. That it's, we talked about it. We, these are credit cards that you applied for. And so he was talking about these as if we had an arrangement about them. And we hadn't. And he got up, and he went out the front door. And he was in his motor home for probably, oh, 10 minutes or so, 10, 15 minutes. He paused at the steps and then came in the front door. And I thought we were going to resume the conversation. He walked over to me. And I was expecting him to sit down, but he actually reached over to my neck.

He put pressure on my neck, and I was noticing that I was starting to pass out. Michael restricted blood flow to Lonnie's carotid artery. His demeanor was cold. I think at that point I thought, oh, this is a monster I'm looking at. The next thing I knew was I was waking up, and I was on the floor, and he was standing there. He said to me, you must not be feeling well.

And I'm thinking, not feeling well? You just, you know, you pinched my neck. You caused me to black out. And so I remember rising up and kind of steadying myself on the couch and moving myself towards the back of the house. But he wouldn't let me go. And I see the gun raise up to my head. And I hear a shot being fired and it was just it was just this

enormously loud noise and I heard a second shot go off didn't feel it but had heard it Lonnie was shot twice in the head. At this point, my head is just, it's ringing. I can't feel anything. I have no sensation. But it seems that my brain is still working, functioning. The first thing that I had to figure out was, was I alive? And I wasn't sure that I was alive,

because I knew that the gun was aimed at my head. I knew that I had been injured. And my thought was that somebody gets shot in the head and you're dead. There's just no way around it. You die. I was looking out into the space of my living room. Was the white light there?

I also thought that maybe I would see my father, who had died the year earlier, and that he would be there with me. But I didn't see him. So I'm beginning to conclude that I am alive. So I remember that must have very quickly gone through my mind and had decided that I'll play dead. If I play dead, he wouldn't shoot me again. I do have a chance.

I could survive this. He's going to make a chance. I could survive this. He's going to make a mistake. I'll be able to jump in in whatever manner. I was putting scenarios together where I could, some way that I could get out of this. So I was ready. I don't think, I couldn't tell how wounded I was. I was afraid to test that. I knew that I couldn't fight him. I knew he would just kill me. I was laying sideways on the couch. So when I opened my eyes, I could see a sideways slit. I could see him

walking through the living room. He actually picked up a pillow off of the couch and put it over my head and fired two more times. And my head was just this tremendous amount of noise ringing in my ears. Or it felt like something just was enveloping my head. I didn't notice any pain. There wasn't any pain. There wasn't any pain.

Every once in a while, he would come over to the couch and lift up the pillow and look at me. And I could sense that enough, I think, that I was able to, you know, my eyes were shut. I knew he was doing it. I especially held my breath. I am about 15 feet from the front door. I would have to go through the living room and the hallway

to get to the front door. But I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do that. And I knew he always carried a pocket knife. I was afraid he was going't be able to do that. And I knew he always carried a pocket knife. I was afraid he was going to use that on me next. He sat down at the desk. He had the computer on. He was playing a game at the computer. The TV was on, and it seemed pretty loud to me.

I had to concentrate so carefully on what was going on. Lani did not move or speak for four hours. I could tell that it was getting a little later. If it got dark, my chances were diminishing. I really thought, I could die. I could die here. This was a long time that I was laying there, so there were a lot of things going through my head. Not only how was I going to get out of this,

but my family and my friends. And they actually visited me. You know, I had very vivid images of them. As one by one, they came to to me and I could talk with them. And somehow I knew my father was with me too. I felt comforted by that, that I didn't see him but he was there with me. My mom came to me. I promised her that there would not be a funeral that she would have to go to.

You know, it was just the year before that we had a funeral for my father. And I didn't want her to do that. I was going to live. I did not want them planning a funeral. A neighbor knocked on the door. I think I noticed that he gets up from the desk and walks over to the front door.

At this point, I'm thinking about the phone. Where is the phone? And I'm praying that it's there, because it's a cordless phone. It could be anywhere in the house. It's very often anywhere in the house. But I reach for it, and it's there, because it's a cordless phone. It could be anywhere in the house. It's very often anywhere in the house. But I reach for it, and it's there, miraculously. I dialed 911, reached the dispatch, and I said, I remember saying just very quickly, I've been shot.

I'm at my address. I gave my address to her. And I hung up. I disconnected. With a hang up call, 911 has to call back. So the phone is ringing. And he is walking in the front door. He was talking to the dispatch operator. I couldn't tell what he was saying or what they were saying.

Maybe I was disconnecting from that. That had nothing to do with me. I had to really concentrate on staying alive. I could see him passing in front of me with the gun in his hand. I was getting tired. I was worried that I would lose consciousness. I was worried that I would die. And it seemed like the conversation on the phone

was going on and on and on and on. And what is this? Like, whoa, wait a minute. Where are the police? They should be coming in right now they should um they should be breaking the windows they should be doing something they should be shooting this guy wrestling into the ground i was i was really um i and i just wasn't sure how long i could hang on michael tried to convince dispatchers that they had a minor argument.

There were a few moments I do remember when he would kind of hold out the phone and say, Lonnie, they want to talk to you. And I wasn't going to fall for that. I did not want to give him any indication that I was alive or alert or anything. It was that just seemed so important to me, that I stay as silent and calm and unmoving as possible. Doubting Michael's story, police negotiators intercepted the call, declaring it a hostage situation.

I had been there for four hours bleeding, and I wanted to stay alive. And I had to keep talking to myself in order for me to believe that that was going to happen. I'm fighting for my life at this point. I'm trying to stay conscious. Michael's on the phone, and he's calm enough. It doesn't seem that he's very upset.

And it's like he's trying to charm them, too. Michael had been talking to negotiators for over three hours. I knew that the police were outside, because through the front window there was a bright light that was coming through. I was getting frustrated. It was just taking too long and I was debating. You know, I had a little conversation in my head going, another conversation, you know, should I say something? Can I say something to him? Would he attack me if I said something to him?

Lani decided to act. I do remember halfway sitting up and saying to him, I'm not going to make it. You need to let them come in and get me. I must have noticed a pause. And then he continued his conversation. It was like I had never even said it, that it didn't even matter. But he must have been making a decision about giving himself up.

He was saying something like, you know, I'm going to take my shirt off, I'm putting my gun down, I'm going to walk out the front door. And I'm not sure that I actually saw him walk out the door, but I sensed that he did go out the front door. And I'm not sure that I actually saw him walk out the door, but I sensed that he did go out the front door. Michael was taken into custody by the police SWAT team. An officer entered the house. It's this person, totally dressed in black, goggles, big machine gun kind of looking thing. And I knew it was the police. And it was just, thank God.

And I locked eyes with this man. And this was, I'm saved. I'm saved. I think back, and he was my angel in black. It was the first person that I could see and know that I was safe at that point. So it was the most amazing thing that I thought I was going to die. And him walking in was just, you know, just this thing from heaven. You know, there's all these little miracles that happened through this whole thing.

Any one of those shots could have killed me. Three bullets had entered Lonnie's jaw, the back of her neck, and grazed the top of her skull. The fourth bullet missed me. It ended up in the wall of my living room. Michael was jailed for 15 years in Oregon and will serve 20 years in Texas. Lonnie made a full recovery. I think that it was a miracle that I survived. I could have died, or that just would have been it. And I knew that was a possibility, but my will to live was so strong,

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It's warm. I'm already sweating before I even put my coat on. And I'm going to be up there sledding all day with this coat. And then probably what I'll do is eventually leave it somewhere. And I may misplace it. Something may happen to it. So you know what?

I'm not going to get stuck or anything, so I'll just leave everything here. We actually went up Cottonwood Canyon, and then there's a lake bed. And most of the time, it's frozen over. And we actually crossed the lake bed and got to play a little bit on the snow and a little bit on the ice before we went up to shoot.

At 2 PM, Rulon climbed Mount Wagner on his snowmobile. RULON MCDONALD JR.: And I looked around. And in the process of climbing the mountain, you put stress on your belts and on the snowmobile. And actually, I did what was called burning a belt. My belt had actually been destroyed. So what I did is I actually pulled the belt off,

and I actually replaced it. And in this process, it was about 10 or 15 minutes, and I didn't see Trent anywhere to be seen. So at that point, I'm kind of wondering, where's Trent at? Thinking Roulon had left, Danny and Trent returned to Star Valley. Instead of preparing myself for what could happen, I thought about what was going to happen in my mind, and that was a mistake on my part.

Because it's not a matter if you get stuck, it's a matter of when you get stuck. Not seeing Trent there, I started thinking, well, maybe he's stuck somewhere, Maybe I need to go help him. But the snow was so nice that when I went out to look for him, I was just enjoying it. I went back over to Wagner Mountain, couldn't see him there, so I went back over, and I couldn't find him. And in the process, I started getting a little bit nervous. Roulon dropped into a steep gully to look for Trent.

I realized that down in these gullies and kind of in the crevices, you can't get a cell phone signal. The only place I could get a signal was back up on top of the mountain. And so at this time, knowing that I couldn't see him, that I didn't have any knowledge of where he was at, I had to go out there and start my snowmobile and start back up the hill. But as I actually stood off my snowmobile,

I sunk up past my hips in the snow. And as I kind of struggled to get back on top of my snowmobile, I'm like, wow, this is some deep snow. You know, it's cool, but it's dangerous because I'm down now probably about a thousand feet from top of the mountain and it's all powder. And at this point, I'm like, I don't know if I have enough power in my snowmobile to get me out. Rulon was forced further into the gully to find a way out.

And it got slower and slower and steeper and steeper. As I got down in there, I realized that it was kind of the start of the salt river that runs through the valley that I'm from. And so I knew that there was going to be some water at some point. As I got to the flat area, I realized that there was open water. And at this point, I decided to try to gun it,

go across the water before the snowmobile actually sunk in the water. And as I gunned it, I hit the throttle, and I hit the accelerator, and the snowmobile started going across, and it sunk into the water. As it sunk in the water, I jumped off my snowmobile, and I watched it sit there and kind of sink in about three to four feet of water

and I was standing on the side and I'm like okay I'm dry snowmobile's wet now what well as I was standing there waiting to be rescued and waiting to figure out what I should do either get in the water or wait I thought you know what I just won the world championships I can do anything I don't need to be rescued. I can do it myself. And I chose to get in the water. Rulon was submerged to mid-thigh in freezing water. Hypothermia and frostbite were imminent.

And the snowmobile was more than twice Rulon's body weight. As I picked it up, I got it here. Now what? And you physically cannot push the 600-pound snowmobile with this type of strength. You have to make the track go. You have to slide the skis and the undercarriage of the belly of the snowmobile through the snow

till it actually moves. And then I had to keep it up and then actually push the 600-pound snowmobile out of the water as I was submerged up to my mid-thigh and up to my shoulders in ice cold water. I knew I had to get out of there, and I had to do it now. At this point, I have to push and also accelerate the snow to hopefully get the track, to get some traction,

and actually get it back moving and get it on top of the ice or the snow whatever was there and as soon as I started moving the snowmobile forward it went out pretty effortless after I'd done all the work to pick it up and get it on that straight and level path well as I crawled out of the water, I got up to the edge. I'm like, OK, well, now what? There was a second ice hole to cross. If Roulon was unsuccessful, he risked freezing to death. And now I knew I was in a time crunch that I had to save myself.

And I got on my snowmobile, and I accelerated it and did almost the exact same thing. But right in the middle, my snowmobile kind of bogged, and it went right back in the water. I was so frustrated that same thing, but right in the middle, my snowmobile kind of bogged, and it went right back in the water. I was so frustrated that I actually jumped off right into the water. I was upset, and I let emotion actually drive me.

And now I actually picked up the snowmobile again, and I pulled it, and I accelerated, and I got it out of there probably within a matter of a minute or two minutes, because I was now angry that this had happened twice, and my stone bill wasn't able to perform, and then I let this happen. Being wet in freezing conditions speeds up the effects of hypothermia 25 times.

Roulon was losing muscle function, rational thought, and the use of his extremities. You know, some people say, oh, I would have died out there. I wouldn't have been able to pick that up. Death is a great motivator. Death will motivate you to do things that you never thought you could possibly do. But that day, I didn't have a choice.

Rulon followed a riverbank, hoping it would lead back to Star Valley. I was following the river back to Star Valley. You know, I would actually have a chance to sit back and go, OK, no lights. I can't see anybody. I don't know where my friends are at. I don't know where Trent ever went.

And I hope they know I'm lost. And so I hope they actually have started looking for me. I hope that her car actually started to come up here and track me down. Because by the time they got to me, I was going to be in severe hypothermia and possibly have severe frostbite. Rulon was traveling dangerously close to the water. I was going to be in severe hypothermia and possibly have severe frostbite. Roulon was traveling dangerously close to the water. And as I came through, I got to a point after about 100 yards where my snowmobile got stuck between two big boulders.

As I got stuck, I crawled over the boulders, and I got in front of my snowmobile. I was very close to getting it through. And as I got on the front of it, I started pulling my snowmobile backwards. And as I started pulling it, my hand slipped. As my hand slipped, I fell into the river on my back. I was in panic mode. And I'm like, I got to get over. I got to turn over.

And I turned over and I stood up. So what I'd done is I actually turned my body and completely made everything wet now. And this was about 7.30 at night when I actually got wet. And I stood up and I said, OK, what are you going to do? And that's when I realized, you know what? You don't have the right gear on. You don't have a fire starter.

You don't have a cell phone that'll work. You don't have any of these things that you need to survive. What are you going to do? I knew I had to walk to find some trees. And I knew I needed to head westbound and follow the river. And as I started walking, I made it probably about 20 to 30 yards, and I found an area there wasn't snow.

And not having snow, I thought, you know what, just lay down. You know, just you need to conserve some heat. You need to try to create some heat, because you've been pushing yourself. As I laid down there, as I went to the fetal position, I remember sitting there shivering, my body, and just thinking, you're so cold. You're in so bad of trouble.

And you don't have any plan here. What are you doing? What I thought about with the Olympic finals was winning the World Championships, that I was the Olympic finals was winning the world championships, that I was the best. It was such a positive, uplifting moment. It was such a good thought. And I want to come back,

and I want to go back and wrestle in 2002. I want to wrestle in 2003, 2004, and I want to make the team, and I want to win another Olympic gold medal. I want to be the best again. If I could see the sun come up, I would make it. Because I knew that they would find me before sunrise, because I knew they were looking for me. I knew that they would be close. Rulon had been missing for 17 hours. It was 35 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. End-stage

hypothermia had affected his breathing and ability to think rationally. I remember sitting back and kind of watching all the stars disappear. One by one they were leaving. And I thought to myself, you know what? You're probably going to die. This is probably the last few minutes of your lifetime. You did your best. You accomplished your goal and that was to make it till morning. And about, you know, when I was thinking that process, within a few minutes, I heard an airplane.

And as he came up there, he saw me for the first time. You know, as I saw him, I kind of waved at him like, hey, it's the airplane. He signaled by, you know, kind of tilting his wings to say he saw me. And he turned around and he went out and he called search and rescue. Three hours later, Rulon was airlifted to the hospital. But when I got to the hospital and when we went in there, I started laughing. And my friend said, why are you laughing?

I said, because I made it. I did it. And another person who hasn't been through something like that, they can't understand. You know, it's a whole other world. The doctor, when I arrived there, said, Rulon, your feet are frozen solid. You'll probably never walk. You know, it's a whole nother world. The doctor, when I arrived there, said, Rulan, your feet are frozen solid.

You'll probably never walk. You'll probably lose them at the ankle within the week. You need to think about the rest of your life, your wrestling future, your wrestling career's over. And you need to think about it. Rulan lost only one toe and planned his comeback. But within eight months of training hard every day and working hard every day, I came back to beat the reigning world champion to make the 2003 and the 2004 Olympic team,

where I eventually won a 2004 Olympic bronze medal. I Survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming. Like when your favorite podcast is playing and the person next to you is talking and your car fan is blasting, all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive Insurance. They do the hard work of comparing rates so you can find a great rate that works for you, even if it's not with them. Give their nifty comparison tool a try and you might just find getting the rate and coverage you deserve is easy.

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and she was lovely, and we both got off at the same stop. And after we left, I said, do you mind, just wait a moment while I go in this deli to try to get my favorite chocolate chip cookies? And she didn't mind, but they didn't have them. So she says, well, come walk over towards where I live. Maybe they have them there so we walked further towards very close to where she lived and found an open supermarket where we

bought i bought the cookies for myself she preferred a different brand so she got her own bag of cookies and then i walked her to her building said good. She went up the stairs and I was feeling great. Been a perfectly nice night out in Manhattan. And then I walked down the street towards Fifth Avenue and as I approached the corner, I felt the tug on my elbow from behind and an automatic machine gun was sticking in my gut. Two guys were behind me.

Move, move, they screamed. They shoved me into the street where there was a brand new black Lexus waiting. And they pushed me there and put me into the back seat of the car where there was a third man sitting in the front passenger seat. And he put a pistol in my face when I got in the car. Absolutely absurd feeling,

the thought that I was just walking home and suddenly I'm a prisoner in a car. I can see outside to what are the normal streets that I'm used to and feel comfortable in, with three men who have guns and apparently have no, you know, would have no hesitation in using them. And suddenly I'm trapped.

Sitting directly in front of me was what immediately emerged as the leader of the gang. And he began to announce their plan. First of all, he told his main henchman sitting to his right to get my wallet. And then he demanded my pin number for my ATM card. Stanley had $110,000 in his savings account. And when they heard that that amount of money

was sitting in my savings, they practically bugged out. I mean, their first reaction was, what do you do for a living, Stanley? And sheepishly, I said, well, you really kind of picked up the wrong guy because I'm an assistant US attorney. They asked me how old I am, 38. You got a wife? No.

But you got kids? No. You got a wife? No. You got kids? No. You got a girlfriend? No. And one of them said, Stanley, what have you been doing, man? You're 38 years old. You got no wife. You got no kids. What the heck's going on?

To which I just naturally responded, you should ask my parents. They've been wondering the same thing. And right in the middle of the kidnapping, my kidnappers actually laughed. When I first arrived, a couple of times, they called me Steven. I had the feeling that if I wanted to survive,

one thing that ought to be kept straight was my name, because my name is my identity, and that was important. So I kept saying, my name isn't Steven, it's Stanley. And they laughed. They thought that was funny. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Steven's the guy we did this to the other night. The kidnappers withdrew Stanley's money from an ATM. There was a $1,000 limit on cash machine withdrawals every 24 hours. So they were a bit stymied, and they explained to me that their plan was now to keep me,

that they were going to take me to an apartment and hold me overnight. In the morning, they would take me to the bank and I would withdraw $50,000. If I failed to cooperate, they would kill me. They also said that they would kill my father if I didn't cooperate. Unfortunately, his business card, which had his home address on it, was in my wallet. They said they would break every bone in his body.

This was perhaps the worst moment of the entire thing, because you can kill me, you can hurt me, you can do whatever you want to me, but don't do something to someone that I love. So the leader of the gang instructed the guy sitting next to me to use my scarf as a blindfold. They shoved me down in the seat next to him so that I was lying sort of in a fetal position sideways and with my head pressing up against his leg.

I mean, it was bizarrely intimate and obviously just as frightening as could be. Although to some extent your body goes into survival mode and sort of your adrenaline and your instinct to try to survive take over, but the entire experience was absolutely petrifying. My life, which had belonged to me just a few minutes earlier, no longer belonged to me. Now someone else owned it. Someone else could choose whether to keep it or throw it away. That was an absolutely unbearable feeling. You could hear him cocking and uncocking the guns,

you know, in order to intimidate me. One of the guys says, have you ever seen one of these things, Stanley? All you got to do is squeeze this trigger, give off, you know, 10 shots, and bam, bam, bam, and your brains will be all over that wall. And there were mattresses on the floor, and they shoved me down on one of the mattresses.

Three prostitutes arrived at the apartment. So the girls show up, and they walk into the apartment, and they're shocked. What... What are you guys doing here? What have you dragged home? And the boys are like, oh, don't worry. We're just using this to get some money.

You don't have to worry yourselves about it. So they also smoked marijuana, and then they had sex with the girls. It was a godsend at that point that I was blindfolded, but I could hear sexual acts going on around me in the room. And they started asking me questions. Stanley, what would you be doing right now if we hadn't grabbed you on the street?

And I said, actually, later on today, my friends would be meeting me, because it's my birthday. And they thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. Oh, my God, we kidnapped the guy on his birthday. They thought that was hysterical. And then they said, oh, well, it's your birthday. You deserve something nice for your birthday. Stanley was offered the services of a prostitute. You know, that may sound funny, but at the time, it wasn't funny in the least. I could not afford, under those circumstances, being held at gunpoint, where my life was right on the line.

I could not afford to be violated in that fashion. So what I did was I just sort of tried to smoothly sidestep it and say, well, you know, I'm sure the girls are lovely, but given my circumstances, I'd really rather not. Even though I'm being terrorized at gunpoint, there was the feeling that I was remaining calm and polite. And my thought was that if I took it, I would be just another John.

And that it's a lot easier psychologically to kill a guy who's just another John than somebody who says no. There was also a discussion between the thugs that had grabbed me on the street about this plan of theirs. They were going to take me to the bank in the morning and withdraw $50,000 at gunpoint and kill me and kill my father if I didn't do it.

And they were getting cold feet. They said, look, this isn't really going to work. It's not going to look right. You can't just pull up to a bank like that and take out a huge sum of cash. It's not going to work. In the midst of that conversation, he pops, the leader pops his head back in to the room. And he says, what did you say you'd do for a living again, Stanley? And I said, I'm an assistant US attorney.

And he said, oh, no, US. The FBI is going to be after us. So then they finish their conversation, and they come back in, and the leader tells me, Stanley, we've changed the plan. I'm going to come back again later on this morning, and I'm gonna take you back. And then he left.

At 6 p.m., the leader had still not returned to release Stanley. Stanley remained blindfolded, face down on the mattress. So now we go into round two of smoking marijuana and sexual acts with the girls. And this was really the point at which they really started playing with me in a humorous way. You know, they said, well, you know, Stanley, it's a shame we had to meet under these circumstances. We could have been friends. And I just smiled. And then

they said, actually you should join our gang. They said I could make more money being part of their criminal gang than I was making as a lawyer. But no matter how much joking, bonding went on, I knew that people who were like this, people who are willing to grab a guy off the street, for them to pull the trigger, it's not a big leap. There's a perversity, I think, to the spirit that would allow someone who's joking with you one minute to pull the trigger in your face the next minute. So I never really felt relief. The lead kidnapper returned with a new plan to steal more of Stanley's money. The new plan is to hold me until midnight

so that they can get one last hit on my cash machine card. He says he's going to take the girls back out on the street and then he'll come back and let me go. And he starts to leave. But as he's on his way out, you can hear his feet stop. And he turns around and he says, Stanley, let me ask you a question. If you had the chance to put me away for life, would you do it?

So I said, look, you've already told me you know where I live. You've told me you know where my father lives. I don't know who you are. I don't know where we are. You haven't hurt me so far, and you say you're going to release me unharmed. I don't think this has to go any further. And he said, well, okay, and he stormed out with the girls.

The kidnapper did not withdraw any more of Stanley's money. Stanley was put into a car and driven ten minutes away from the apartment. The car stopped, and the leader got out. I hear the sound of duct tape being pulled off of a roll. And that was the most frightening moment of my entire life

and of this incident. Because I was positive that they were going to tape my mouth shut, take me outside, and murder me. But I was mistaken. Someone had broken into the car overnight and smashed the glass. Well, the glass hadn't been fixed yet.

It was covered with plastic, and it was flapping and making noise in the wind. So all he was doing was using the duct tape to fix the plastic. Then he opens the door. He tells me to get out beside him. They say, put your hands up in the air and walk. I thought I could hear the gentle sound

of the Lexus pulling away, but I had never heard the door shut. So I thought it was very possible that the guy was still behind me with the gun. So finally, with my hands raised, I said, are you there? And I didn't hear any answer. So I ripped the blindfold off, I spun around, and they were gone.

And that was the happiest moment of my entire life. People who've been beaten down their whole lives, they understand anger, but they can't deal with kindness. When given the chance, I humanized myself, and I showed them great respect. An assistant U.S. attorney is trained to gather evidence and link the evidence together. So the whole time I sat there, I was gathering clues and skilled investigators can use those clues to

find people. And that's exactly what happened. Stanley overheard conversations that identified the location of the apartment. His evidence enabled police to make arrests within 48 hours. His abductors were charged with kidnapping, robbery, and possession of firearms, and will spend 17 years to life in prison. At the end of the day, they didn't feel like killing me. Thank you for listening to I Survived. He gave me a book on art forgery. I found myself drawn to these old masters.

How did these artists take paint from a palette, arrange it on a canvas? I began to unlock the secrets. I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion, present it to an experienced expert, manipulate his mind, and convince him and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine. We flooded the market with my paintings, and I couldn't believe what I did.

I couldn't believe it. Then the dominoes started falling, and eventually the FBI were led to my door. They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me. But they never actually got you. At this point, you've sold a lot. You've got like a million dollars in cash. You sold one painting for $717,000. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? How are we having this conversation? I guess that's the greatest story of all. To hear how Ken Pereni made millions in art forgery, dodged the mafia and the FBI,

subscribe to The Jordan Harbinger Show and check out episode 282 in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now.