Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I've Got Bad News For You, You've Just Been Kidnapped
Episode Date: August 9, 2025Martin is 13-years-old when he is abducted and raped by a serial pedophile who chains him up in a buried box on a hill. Jason, Dave and Joe are on a canyoneering trip when a flash flood launc...hes them over a cliff and intro a fight for survival.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpApartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.BetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month!Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hi, I Survived listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived as well as the A&E Classic podcast's Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation Channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show.
This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is at
I had to get out of it.
I was so afraid.
And then he looks me straight in the eye and he says, I've got bad news for you.
You've just been kidnapped.
Real people.
Wow, I can't believe I'm going to die like this.
And the water went up over my face and I don't have a choice.
I was going to drown.
Who faced death?
We just couldn't hold anymore.
And just in this violent rush, we just got, you know, propelled out the mouth of the
Canyon. And lived to tell how. He had tied me with wire. Within 10 minutes, I was stripped
naked and raped for the first of four times that day. This is I survived.
It's January 1973 in Portsmouth, Virginia. 13-year-old Martin and his family have moved from the country
to the city. When a heavy snowfall closes schools, Martin has to babysit his brothers and sisters.
My parents went to work and the kids were at home, six of us, without milk or provisions
for other things for kids being home. So I went to the store. On the way up the street to the
convenience store, a blue van pulls up beside me. The man inside was very friendly and told me he had
a job to do. And if I could help him, I could earn a few dollars in the process. The man told me
his name was peewee. I later found out that his name was Richard Osley. Richard Peewee Osley told
Martin he lived in the neighborhood. Every kid is warned about strangers. Don't get into cars
with strangers. Be wary of strangers. But growing up out in the country, anyone in your neighborhood
was a friend.
I thought that was a good deal.
I was, you know, a neighbor that needed help going to pay me.
I thought nothing of getting into his van.
Martin did not know that Osley was a convicted pedophile who was out on parole.
Osley was due back in court that day on charges of raping a 14-year-old boy.
We headed off in what I thought was going to be just around the corner,
but we headed towards the interstate.
And we kept going further and further,
and I became more and more nervous.
One point along the trip, we stopped.
He went in to get a few things that I think was a truck stop
of some sort.
At that time, I considered running, leaving.
I was very nervous at the time.
I really wanted to go back home.
What's kept me there was that I was so afraid
to what my parents would say.
I had done something so stupid, had gotten into a van,
gotten myself in this situation.
Of course, I didn't know where I was at.
I would be at in the middle of nowhere.
We traveled another 10 minutes or so,
and he came to a snow-cover road.
We got, oh, I'd say about half a mile down this lane.
Osley told the 13-year-old
he needed him to carry supplies to his hunting hut in the woods.
We came to a clearing, and he stops and he points to a hill, just a little raised area.
And in the ground was a little room built into this hill, four by, four by eight foot plywood box that he had built and buried in that hill.
Osley got down into the box, and I handed him the groceries.
He asked if I could come down to help him straighten out some things.
There were some leaves and things in there.
And so I got down into the box.
We were straightening up a few things that were in there, kind of putting some things away.
And he tells me to stop.
And then he looks me straight in the eye and he says, I've got bad news for you.
You've just been kidnapped.
My blood ran cold.
I became filled with feet.
I was, it was, it was this, this feeling you get like,
when you've been caught in a lie almost,
you, it was just this overcome with fear and adrenaline
and you start to, to sweat and,
and all I could think of was getting out of that box.
Osley was, was not a big guy,
but I was a 13-year-old boy.
He was much, much stronger, much bigger,
much bigger than I was at the time.
I told him that I knew karate and to try and make him
as scared of me as I was of him.
And he said, oh, you're scaring me.
And then he jumped me and attacked me and pulled me to him.
There was this big butcher knife with the old hickory
burn into the handle.
And I went for that knife and after him.
And we struggled and fought.
what seemed like a long time, but it wasn't a lot, but he had the upper hand and he punched
me several times in the face and then subdued me, told me that if I ever touched that
knife again or even looked at it, that he would kill me with it. Within 10 minutes, I was
stripped naked and raped for the first to four times that day. I had no idea that
that things like that could be done to, especially to me.
And him forcing himself on me over and over and over again four times that day was humiliating.
I asked Osley, why me? Why me?
And he said that if it wasn't you, it would have been somebody else.
Osley had already spent a decade in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 10-year-old boy.
So a lot of it in between the times he was raping me that day, we were setting up house.
He had plans to stay there and stay there with me.
The box had been purpose-built by Osley and buried in the isolated clearing.
Ozley that night tied me with wire, bound me, my hands behind my back, and both my feet together, and left me in the box.
I tried to struggle to get away a little bit, but I was bound tight.
I was very fearful that even if I had tried to get away, he told me that he was going to look at my bonds to see if I'd even tried to loosen them.
I was completely under his control.
I knew that I could not get away.
I knew that it would cost me my life if I tried.
I remember lying there, trying to sleep at night
and thinking about the knife, thinking about him,
thinking about trying to get away.
I thought about my family very much.
What was going through my mother's mind?
Would she be worried?
Would she be crying?
I think that bothered me more than anything.
that my mother would be crying about me, you know, that I was gone, and never to know what happened to me.
The next morning I wake up and Osley is kneeling over me with his pants down, wanting me to perform oral sex on him.
I was constantly, you know, gagging and throwing up, and it made him.
infuriated him actually. Well, he stopped because he wasn't getting where he wanted to get,
and then proceeded again to rape me. Over the next two days, Martin endured numerous sexual assaults
by Osley. He would sit and get quiet. That's when I knew things were going to turn bad.
He would be very quiet. He would start thinking and start
rubbing his eyebrow and you knew something was coming.
On the shelf at the back of the box,
there was a big jar of lubricant that Osley kept there.
And whenever he would reach for that,
I always knew what was coming next.
I learned that if I could keep him talking,
if I could keep him engaged, I could keep him
from getting into those moods where he would want to rate me.
Ossley never let Martin outside the box without him.
We would go out at night, and it was much like a camping trip.
We would set fires and cook our meals.
And it was, at those times, he was very friendly.
And it was like being on a camping trip with your uncle or your dad even.
He was very nice.
He was interesting to talk to.
He had a lot of knowledge about carpentry in the woods, about Boy Scouts.
He didn't usually want to rape me or have any sexual relations with me outside of the box.
So being outside of the box was very, very important to me to get out.
We never got very far from each other.
He never got far from me.
It's funny that he always made me walk in his footsteps
so that it would be a single set of footsteps
in the snow as we walked around.
I thought about trying to get away from him,
but I had no idea where I was at.
I was, Osley always kept his knife with him.
Sometimes I think he was fantasizing.
I think he was coming up with different scenarios.
Once he stripped me, I was naked,
And I thought this was going to be another rape session.
But this time he told me that he was going to take me outside and tie me to a tree.
And then he was going to whip me with this chain until I bled.
And that the cold air would freeze my blood and that he would come back and whip me again.
I was so afraid.
And then he looked at me and he said,
Can't you take a joke?
I would pray the prayers of a 13-year-old boy asking God, promising God, anything to return me to my home, to get me out of there, to keep me safe.
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13-year-old Martin
has been kidnapped by convicted pedophile
Richard Osley.
Osley imprisons Martin
inside a wooden box
buried in a remote clearing.
For three days,
Martin is sexually assaulted by Osley.
He began to start talking on the third day
about returning me home.
And different scenarios that could get me there.
And the one that he liked best was that I would,
he would take me home, go back to my mother,
and that I would tell her that I had run away
in exchange for that, you know, for doing that.
he would send me $50.
I didn't really like that plan a lot
because my mother would know that I was lying.
I would never run away.
Osley also said that if I didn't keep my word
and tell her that I had run away,
that he would be watching.
and that I would never be safe, that he would kill me.
His second scenario would be that he would leave me there
and then call my mother and tell her where I was at.
And I chose that scenario.
He, again, bound my hands behind my back
and my feet together.
And just as I thought he was leaving,
He gets over top of me, kneeling, looking me in the face,
and then began to beat me with his fist, back and forth,
you know, punching me, punching me, yelling at me,
calling me a goody two shoes.
And then he began to cry as he's beating me,
beating me over and over again.
Why couldn't lie to my mother?
Why can't you lie?
Why can't you lie?
Over and over and over again.
He never saw the end game.
I don't think he planned for it.
And now he's stuck.
He's stuck with this boy.
He's stuck in a situation where it's going to cost him even more years in prison.
And that's why he was very upset.
He's why he began to cry.
I think he was working himself up to kill me.
And I don't think he could.
I came away with it with two black eyes,
cracked tooth.
My nose was broken.
was broken. I was in, I was hurting very bad. By Martin's fifth day of captivity,
Osley had become sullen and withdrawn. Obviously, we couldn't live out there forever. And I
think he was beginning to understand that his, well, his fantasy might have been good to begin
with. It was not real good in reality. I still prayed that I would go home. I still had hopes
said I would go home, but I couldn't focus on that.
It wasn't so much about going home.
It was staying alive.
On the seventh day, Osley decided on a scenario,
announced in the afternoon that he was now
going to leave me there and to call my mother.
I was very extremely happy that this was going to happen
and very confident that he was going to follow through
with it.
Right before he was.
going to leave. He looked me in the eye and said, I've got to have that one more time. He raped me
for the last time and then put a chain around my ankle, fastening it with a lock, gathered his
things and left. I went to sleep that night thinking that she would be there in the morning
at peace after seven days that he was no longer there.
that I would no longer be tortured by him,
that I would be going home,
that my mother would be there in the morning.
I woke the next morning, and I started to hear an engine
and gear shifting.
And I thought, that's my mother.
My mother is here to come, to get me, to rescue me,
to take me home.
I became so excited.
I could just stretch out with my leg behind me.
I could reach up and open.
the top of the box and got my head just above the edge and what I saw were two pickup trucks
coming through the woods and just entering into the clearing.
I began to yell at them and scream at them and the truck stopped.
One of them opens the window to their truck and lowers a shotgun out the window of the
truck at me and yells for me to come up out of that hole.
I said, I can't.
I've been kidnapped.
I can't come out.
They walked over to where I was at and looked in the hole.
And two of them left to go get to call the police.
The other two stood over me back to back with their shotguns,
not knowing if Osley was still in the area.
So they stood over me as protectors until the police came.
The police tried to pull the chain from the back of the box
to get me out, and they couldn't.
So they waited for the rescue squad to come.
And in the meantime, they decided to take photographs,
photographs of me in that box.
The miracle of this was that those four men
decided not to go with the rest of their hunting club
to another section of woods and another part of the state.
They had not been led to come to that very spot of woods.
I feel that I would probably still be buried in that spot.
My mother, never knowing what happened to her son, still chained inside that box.
Four days after Martin was rescued, Richard Osley surrendered to the police.
The trial really sort of blurry to me almost.
It was, I remember being, I was in the courtroom facing him, and he never looked at me.
I had no fear of Osley.
I feared the things that he could do.
I had no hate for Osley.
I still have no hate for him.
You know, I saw him as someone who was sick.
Richard Osley was found guilty of kidnap and rape.
He spent the next 31 years in prison.
There were times, you know, to cope with the depression,
to cope with the shame that I felt,
the fear that I felt, that I turned to alcohol,
I turned to drugs.
It was a call by the president, President Bush,
to go to church to pray for our soldiers that led me to church one night.
and I began to heal.
I no longer had the depression.
I no longer needed those things to go on with my life.
I was at peace and with what had happened,
at peace with myself, peace with my God,
and at peace with Richard Osley as well.
At Osley's 2002 parole hearing,
Martin told his story publicly for the first time in almost 30 years.
Osley was denied parole, and in 2004 was murdered by a cellmate who had been abused as a child.
Today, Martin is an advocate for rape survivors.
I survived because God gave me the peace to be able to keep my mind, my wits about me.
If there's anything that I could say to children who are being abused or who have been abused,
to adults who were abused as children, is that you,
done nothing wrong, that you have nothing to be ashamed of.
As long as you keep it to yourself, they get away with what they've done,
that they've not paid the price for what they've done to you.
And you can take hope that there can be a life,
that you can live without that fear.
You can live without that pain.
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Hi, everyone. This is Jillian with Court Junkie.
Court Junkie is a true crime podcast that covers court cases and criminal trials
using audio clips and interviews with people close to the cases.
Court Junkie is available on Apple Podcasts and Podcasts and Podcast.com.
It's July 2010 in Zion National Park, Utah.
Jason, Dave, and Joe are all avid outdoorsmen.
One weekend, the three friends decide to go,
canyon nearing. We thought we'd take a weekend trip out to Zion National Park and try an
offshoot sport of rock climbing, which is canyering. What you do in canyering is you would hike to
the top of a canyon, and then you would descend sometimes by hiking, and then when you get to
more extreme edges and cliffs, you would repel down with ropes to a series of repels and then
eventually reach the canyon floor. Repelling is the controlled descent down a rope fixed to a top
anchor point. We all have families, so we're not, you know, we don't consider ourselves
big risk takers. We tend to take it easy and climb, you know, well within our ability level
and make sure that everything we're doing is safe. We rock climb quite a bit together in Las Vegas
and decided that this would be a great fun getaway for us, you know, to go as a little
guy trip to get away and experience Zion National Park. The man hiked to the top of the
canyon to start their descent. It was July in Zion and it was a, you know, when we started, it was a
beautiful, sunny day, blue skies.
And we were taking some pictures.
Spry Canyon is the name of the canyering route.
And you would hike in an open area, you know,
going up steep, slick rock slope.
And from there, you would reach a drop-off.
At that drop-off, there would be drilled anchors on chains.
And you would set you repel, and you would repel down to the next station.
And then you hike for a while, and you know, you repeat the process.
And then in certain sections, you know,
there might be two or three or four repels
that are kind of like back to back
because you're in a very steep section, but it varies.
As you descend down through the valley,
it tends to get more and more narrow
going into what we call a slot canyon.
Imagine a hallway that's about 50 feet long
and about 50 feet shear up on both sides.
We were probably four or five hours
into the descent of this canyon,
really getting to the last,
part of the canyon, which is the, coincidentally, the worst, most narrow part of the canyon
and when we heard thunder in the distance and realized that, wow, we need to speed this up.
The men did not know that the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning.
You know, initially started to hear some rumblings, faint rumblings of thunder, and then some
clouds started to move in, and it happened pretty quickly.
At that point, there would have been no way to go up.
It would have taken a long time to ascend that last repel, the three of us.
The smarter choice was to continue down.
There were only three more rappels down to safety.
It started raining.
The thunder starting.
Now you start to see some lightning.
We're standing there on an edge, maybe three feet wide.
All around us, the canny walls sloped down at probably close to 70 degrees.
Our timing couldn't have been worse.
I mean, we were right at the steepest belly of the canyon
in terms of not being able to easily get out
or have any place to hide.
This is pretty much a drain.
All the water would come down the canyon walls
right to where we were.
They could easily wash us right off the canyon,
off the canyon cliff edge, two hundred foot drop, straight down.
And Jason was right next to me, and Joe was right across from me,
and we're looking at each other, just saying,
and what do we do now?
That's where we were when the rain really started to come down.
We had the choice to make, either stay right there
and take a chance to see where this water runs
or get out of there as fast as we can.
We chose to descend further.
I was the first guy to repel down into this section,
so I lowered myself on the rope,
I unhitched from my harness,
and I walked over to the edge of the canyon.
There was about a 40-foot drop.
I just saw rocks down below and just kind of sized up the situation.
And then I walked back and waited for Jason
and there's the second guy to come down.
Jason unhitched from the rope.
And we were waiting for Dave.
When he was about halfway down, the water started
the funneled down the canyon walls right where we were.
And we were looking up above and saying, wow,
you know, if we stayed right where we are,
we would have easily been washed right off of there.
The thunder and lightning, the sounds echo
going off the walls and whatnot.
I mean, it was really loud and the water sheeting off.
I mean, it was just incredibly noisy,
like violent noisy.
As I turned around, there's Joe and Jason.
They've braced themselves in.
I braced myself in.
We're all holding onto this rope that's going up
to where I had just repelled from.
A group ahead of Jason, Dave, and Joe
had made it to safety.
We were hoping that we'd have enough time to all get down,
pull our rope down, put our rope through the next set of anchors,
and get down to this next spot.
But by the time the three of us got
there, it was all we could do to basically just hang on to this rope.
As Joe went down first, the water was up to about his calf.
When by the time Jason got down in there, it was sort of at his thigh.
By the time I dropped into the canyon, it was now over my waist.
And it's like rushing through and rushing past us.
And then right behind me is this huge waterfall where it's flowing off.
The 40-foot cliff they were about to repel down had become a raging waterfall.
We're looking at each other.
What do we do?
What are the options?
And Joe had said, I've been to the end.
There's nothing there.
It's rocks and dirt.
And Jason said, if we let go of this rope, we're going to die.
It was getting worse and worse as this water's coming harder and harder.
And it started to froth.
There was like this foam, like this brown foam that was kind of building up.
The water started to rise, rise, rise, come above us.
The foam started to build.
to build, it started to come up to our necks.
At that point, we had a choice.
Stay there and drowned because the storm wasn't subsiding,
or we would have to let go of the rope.
As the water came over my head, I took that last breath,
and the water went up over my face, and I didn't have a choice.
I was going to drown if I tried to stay there,
or I was going to let go of that rope.
All three of us almost simultaneously just got swept off the rope.
We just couldn't hold anymore, and just
in this violent rush, we just got, you know,
propelled out the mouth of this canyon.
And I shot off that waterfall, just thinking I was dead.
I remember thinking, wow, I can't believe I'm gonna die like this.
And I went shooting off that first waterfall,
remember free falling, waiting for the big impact.
It was such a huge torn.
I remember going over the edge and shooting through the air.
I remember being tossed around like a rag doll.
We basically went off this 40-foot drop that was a sheer drop,
and the sensation was, when am I going to hit, when am I going to hit,
when am I going to hit, when am I going to hit?
And then finally, you know, I felt the water.
Plummeting over the waterfall, all three men had landed in the flooded canyon below.
The only thing that saved us was that we had held on long enough to allow enough water to accumulate there.
And I remember being amazed that I was still alive.
All I remember is hitting the water.
being under some dark, swirling current.
I knew that I was still alive at that point,
and I came to the surface, and I was elated.
I knew I was uninjured.
My legs worked.
I couldn't believe.
I said, I can't believe.
I survived this.
I'm going to actually get out of this uninjured.
Jason and Dave were washed down the canyon by the roaring torrent.
The current was so strong that was grabbing onto a rock with both hands.
No matter what I did, I could not pull myself out.
I hurried and hurried and just tried to crawl and grab and scratch,
anything it took to get out of that water.
Jason, you know, he was trying to make it to the side, fighting the current.
I was so turned around and upside down.
I didn't have any thought of trying to make it to the side.
As his friends were swept away, Joe was trapped under the waterfall.
I could feel the water from the waterfall just pounding me and keeping me under,
and I didn't know which direction was up.
And I started to run out of air and started thinking, great, you know, I survived the fall.
Now I'm going to drown in this little, you know, water pocket.
Your life flashes in front of your eyes.
And I had this kind of vision or, you know, thought in my head of my wife having to explain to my two small children, you know, that daddy's not coming home.
Jason and Dave were shot down the canyon towards another waterfall.
It had a 60-foot drop.
I knew I had another fall coming, and I figured there was just absolutely no way that I would survive.
I was near the edge of the second fall.
I was holding onto a rock at that point, trying to pull myself out.
But the current was so strong, so fierce that it sucked me off the rock.
And when I went off that second fall, I was in the air long enough to really understand how far I was falling, and it was terrifying.
shot out over that second waterfall.
I was thinking, what more can I possibly endure here?
I was so lucky on that first fall.
How am I going to survive this?
I was flung out in the air.
And I remember going, and taking a breath,
but then instantly thinking, well, that's my last one.
I remember falling through the air,
just, you know, for that second, that free fall.
And then at that point, I just hit with such a huge impact
that I knew at that point I was injured,
but then I was sucked under the water.
I was sucked under the water again, twisting, turning,
swallowing, you know, courts of this brown, you know, muddy water.
I knew this was the bigger fall.
I knew this was a 60-foot drop and thought for sure
I'm landing on a rock this time.
I imagine just getting launched off a six-story building,
you know, cattywampus like a rag doll,
and landing in three feet of water.
I believe I landed on my back.
And I remember putting my feet.
feet down, and I felt sand on my bare feet.
And my shoes and socks had been blown off my feet.
I couldn't breathe at that point.
I felt myself drowning.
And then miraculously, just for some reason,
I popped out of the water.
And then I was able to make my way over to a boulder,
but I kept falling at that point.
And I couldn't understand why I couldn't stand on both feet.
Something was broken, but I didn't know what.
And I look over and I see Jason.
And he's standing on the edge of the water.
bracing himself up against the rock and he's crying out for help and I'm looking for Joe.
I can't see him anywhere, you know, we just thought he was gone.
Joe was still trapped under the waterfall in the canyon above.
I'd been pinned under this water and turned around and it started to feel like I was going to drown.
And then the next thing I knew, I popped up and I could see the sky.
I pushed off the ground and, you know, made my way over to some rocks.
When I started to scramble up a little bit and look around and I didn't see the other guys.
And I imagined that they were, you know, knocked out or pinned under some rock or something
or had, you know, gotten swept further below and then drowned.
And I really felt like I was probably the sole survivor at that point.
In the canyon below, Jason and Dave also thought Joe was dead.
And I made it over to Jason.
He said he's in a lot of pain.
And I said, I'm sorry, buddy, but I got to get you out of here because, um,
I didn't want us to go, you know, get down the river anymore.
And so I hauled him back over to the side of the pool area and hauled him up.
I remember him grabbing onto my shirt and pulling me and tugging me and, you know, clawing
in the dirt, just try to get up this dirt as much as we possibly can.
The last thing I want to do was tumble further down this rapid wash while this water is streaming
down the canyon. If I knew if I went down that wash, I'd be dead.
The water's just roaring over this waterfall. And you could barely see anything. You
could barely hear anything. There's, it's just this mist is being turned up. And we're both
yelling for Joe and can't find him anywhere. And we think Joe's dead. And it was just
horrifying, you know, and to think, what am I going to tell Joe's wife? I'm going to tell
just kids. I couldn't stand. I only had one leg that was working and I had a claw with my
hands through the mud slipping through the branches, grabbing on anything to climb up so
the water wouldn't continue rising and perhaps drowned us. He was in a lot of pain, I could tell.
It was apparent that it was an internal thing, but he was, I mean, the slightest move, he was
in agony. The impact of the 60-foot fall had driven Jason's thigh bone through his pelvis and
broken his hip. He was going into shock. You know, his pupils were huge and we were shivering, we're
freezing, and I knew that he was in a lot of pain. There was unfortunately not a lot I could do
for him. The force of the water had torn the pack off Dave's back. Food, water, emergency GPS locator
signal beacon. I mean, everything you could imagine that you would need for exactly this kind
of situation had gotten washed down the river. We're both now.
crying out for Joe and looking for Joe.
And I'm not in any shape to mount a rescue attempt.
I can't see him anywhere.
And the first thought we had is that he's dead.
We lost our friend and shouting and yelling.
And at that point, just happy to be alive, but so disappointed that Joe wasn't with us.
It was probably 15 or 20 minutes of us sitting there when I heard a voice.
and it was the people that had been ahead of us in the canyon.
They were trying to communicate with us
from the, you know, 70 feet up this cliff.
They were yelling to us, telling us that they had Joe.
And they had seen me or heard me or something,
and they threw a rope down to me and said,
grab the rope, and they helped pull me up
to this little spot on higher ground
where I basically at that point collapsed.
And I felt like I've a pretty good chance,
to getting out of this. I'm probably am going to get out of this, whereas minutes earlier,
I thought that was it. And right there, I mean, that to me was a gift that I was so thankful for
that all three of us survived. The group assisting Joe alerted authorities who launched an air
rescue. They airlifted Joe out, and then they came back and they airlifted Jason out.
Joe was hospitalized with a shattered tailbone, bruises, and puncture wounds.
Jason was rushed into surgery, and his severely broken hip was operated on that evening.
It had just gotten dark, and they were supposed to airlift me out,
but because of the light, they ran out of time, so they gave me a choice of spending the night in the canyon with the ranger or hiking out.
This spend-in-the-night option wasn't going to work for me.
I was freezing, I was miserable, and I just wanted to get out of there.
It took me about two and a half hours to get out of this canyon.
Dave was taken to the hospital where he was treated for minor injuries and discharged.
Two months later, Dave and his wife went back to Sprye Canyon.
I hiked back up to the base of that fall from the bottom.
I'm not going through the canyon again, but I wanted to get some closure as to, you know, this whole experience.
And I took a bunch of pictures of that area and that waterfall,
which was at the time obviously just dry.
I was amazed that three of us, all of us, survived it.
The amount of water, the debris, the drops is just amazing.
I survived because of my two friends and myself,
working together through this extremely emotional,
this extremely terrifying situation.
Under these really tough circumstances, we were able to keep relatively calm and that combined with a little bit of luck really was what did it.
To have all three of us survive this thing, to me, I just, you know, thank God every day for my blessings.
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