Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: She absolutely lost her mind

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Scott and Sean are fishing on the Appalachian Trail when they meet a stranger who ends up attacking them with a gun after sharing dinner. Stacey and her best friend move into their first apartment when only two weeks later a man breaks in and proceeds to sexually assault them both. Timothy is walking his dog near his cabin in the woods when a grizzly bear attacks them. BBC Extreme Peak Danger - Listen to the teaser here and find Extreme Peak Danger, from the BBC wherever you get your podcasts! This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp Better Help - Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month! PDS Debt - Get started with your free debt analysis in just 30 seconds at PDSDebt.com/survived! Upside - Download the FREE Upside app and use promo code isurvived to get an extra $.25 back for every gallon on your first tank of gas! 

Hi, iSurvived listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of iSurvived, as well as the A&E Classic podcast, Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This program contains subject matter

that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. The blood was just pouring out of my neck. I felt the bullet hole, and I just stuck my finger in the hole and plugged it. Real people... The skin on my head was de-gloved and pulled forward from ear to ear,

basically like being scalped. Who faced death. I mean, this guy was psycho. He had like female undergarments, 20 knives and a hatchet. He had satanic ritual stuff. And lived to tell how. He said,

if you move while you scream, I'm going to take this knife and cut you up into lots of pieces. This is I Survived. It's May 2008 in Dismal Creek, Virginia. Scott and Sean are camping on the Appalachian Trail on a two-day fishing trip. Sean is alone at the campsite when a drifter arrives. He said that he had met Scott fishing and they had caught some trout and Scott had told him to meet him back at camp.

My impression of that man wasn't nothing out of the ordinary. He was really thin. His dog was really thin too. My impression of that man wasn't nothing out of the ordinary. He was really thin. His dog was really thin, too. It was very thin. You could see its ribs. Scott showed up right after he did. Here's the guy that I had met that day talking to Sean

and the dog sitting there. They had built a fire already. They were sitting around the fire talking. He had a big beard, sort of straggly looking. I mean, he had on clean clothes, and he had on nice, like, fatigues or camouflage clothing, real expensive hunting boots, you know. And I mean, he didn't look like, you know, just some bum.

But he looked like he'd been out in the woods for a few days. And he sort of had to look to me. He was sort of frail looking. So he had to look. Maybe he was an alcoholic. I said, well, you know, we're going to grill some hamburgers and some of the trout we had caught.

And I said, would you like to just stay and have dinner with us? And he says, well, sure. And we all sat and ate together. I even grilled a couple of trout and fed it to the dog. It started getting up toward the edge of dark. He stood up and walked around between Sean and I. Walked behind me, went over to the dog, said, oh, boy,

we better go, slaps his leg for the dog to get up. Next thing I know, bam, my head is just ringing. My left ear's ringing like crazy. I hear just boom, you know? And that's when he shot me right here in the side of the face. He shot me so close, I had powder burns all over the side of my face.

And I, you know, stood up really quick and turned. And when I turned towards him and Scott, I hear another pop. And I see fire coming from his hand towards Scott. I never saw the gun. It was a small caliber,.22. And I mean, it was just as big as his hand. And that's all I saw was his arm pointed out. And I just heard the shots.

We were face to face at that time. And I guess it was a moment of just being frozen. I was frozen. I was cussing at him and screaming. And he was totally silent, no expression. He just looked like just someone who was going out for murder. He wanted to kill me, and it was going to do it. This guy was out for blood.

And then Scott ran. He turned and ran through the woods. I ran for cover. I knew behind my tent there was a clump of cedar trees and a little dirt mound. And I knew if I got back behind there, that he couldn't shoot me. You know, he'd have to come after me to shoot me.

I got behind the trees, and that's when I realized I was shot. I never felt the shot. I never felt anything. And like the blood was just pouring out of my neck. Every time my heart beat, the blood would squirt like six inches out of the side of my neck. And I went and I stuck my finger.

I felt the bullet hole. And I just stuck my finger in the hole and plugged it. And then I saw him shoot Sean in the chest. And I ran, maybe took a step or two towards the killer. And when I did, he turned back and shot me in the chest. And at that time, I'm probably still maybe 10 feet away from him. So I ran for my car.

And when I did that, he ran after me. He actually circled around Scott's truck and came at me from the front of my car. And this guy didn't say a word. He's doing this cold-blooded, like no word, no expression. I started my Jeep, peeled out, and as I'm driving away, he's right by the window. When I saw Sean pull out, I knew I had to get down to the road

to get in there so we could get out of there and get to somewhere where we were safe. You know, at the time, I didn't know I was shot in the back. I just knew I was shot in the neck. I knew if I didn't get help that we were going to bleed to death and die up there. My window was down. I actually put my hand out and blocked the gun at that point.

I don't know if his gun locked up, or he ran out of bullets, or what. But the shooting stopped. And that's when I jumped down, got my head down, you know, and just floored the gas. And I knew if I got to the road, Sean would find me there. And so, I mean, I just took off. I mean, it was right at dark.

And the brush there is really heavy and dense. So I mean, you're pushing branches out of your way and trying to climb through everything. And I mean, I just did what I had to do. I knew I had to get to that point. And it was life or death if I didn't. And as soon as I got around the corner, he was standing there by the side of the road.

So I locked the brakes up. He jumps in. He's bleeding like crazy. He was probably worried about me because I couldn't talk. Because when the bullet went in here, it made my mouth swell up, my face swell up, my jaw swell up. Like, I couldn't talk, because when the bullet went in here, it made my mouth swell up, my face swell up, my jaws swell up. I couldn't say anything. I was just lucky to breathe, really.

So Scott's like, we've been shot. Let's go. I just knew when I jumped in that we had to get to the bottom of the mountain. It's about five to six miles, even to a house. And then it's another 40 miles to a hospital. So we're 40 to 50 miles from any health whatsoever. And when I jumped in, I looked over at Sean,

and I could see he was shot in the face. And I was like, oh man, he's shot in the face. And I was like, oh, man. He shot in the head. I couldn't believe he was even driving. I punched it. I was going 35, 40 off the get-go. And as soon as I picked him up, we're on the straight stretch there before you get out to the main road.

And that's when I realized, you know, my vision and my right eye is going. It's a small, small dirt road in the mountains. It winds down. You know, there's embankments. And on the other side, it's just a drop off. Scott's screaming at me to hit the brakes. And I'm locked it up sideways in the road.

We came in too fast into the curve, and we slid and almost went over the bank. The wheels were about six inches from going over, just, I mean, like a 30-foot drop off. You know, wrecking the car, I mean, that was the least of my worries. I thought we were just going to die. We didn't know if he was behind us,

and we knew there was another vehicle there with keys in it because the music was playing and it was turned on. So we didn't know if he was coming after us or not. To tell you the truth, I just had to focus on getting help. We make it about a half a mile, and we have to make this sharp left-hand curve. Sean drives up on the embankment, and we almost flip. There's rocks flying into the windshield.

It busted the windshield. That's when I guess I blacked out or, you know, everything went haywire. And I grabbed the steering wheel, and I'm holding my neck at the same time. I grabbed the steering wheel. And I'm like, Sean, Sean. And I said, well, let me drive. Let me steer. And I'll tell you when to work the gas and the brake.

Sean couldn't talk where he was shot in the face. And so he wasn't really saying anything. And I was really concerned about him. We are doing like 40 to 50 miles an hour on a road that you can normally do 20. I thought, hey, I'm going to just die right here. I'm not even going to make it down the mountain. They're going to find us in this car dead.

When we got to the bottom of the mountain, there's only about five houses there. And the house we stopped at, it just had the lights on. When I said, stop here, these people will help us. That's my exact words to Sean. Well, he just stops in the road. I jump out. And I go up and I bang on the door as hard as I can.

And I said, call 911. Call 911. Me and my friend had been shot. And they come to the door. And they see me standing there. And I am covered in blood. And they sat me down on the porch. And then they went out and got Sean out of his Jeep and walked him back over to the porch, and then they went out and got Sean out of his

Jeep and walked him back over to the porch and sat him down. And we sat there, and they called 911. They got us some towels and some, you know, some, I think, water and just tried to, you know, be there with us and try to, you know to hold pressure on our wounds. I was like, man, you know, my friend's going to die right here on this porch in front of me. I thought I was OK.

And I'm looking over, and Scott's got his hand like this, like, you know, one finger here, one finger there, holding the holes. No, I said, if I pull my finger out of here, I said, I'm going to bleed to death right here. So I waited till the ambulance got there, and there was two helicopters there. And they loaded me into one of them.

Well, then I was laying there, and I was watching them work on me, the two women over top of me, and I heard one of them say, I don't think he's going to make it to the hospital. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, man, maybe I'm getting ready to die in this helicopter, you know? Then I started thinking, maybe that's why I can't feel my body. Maybe I am dead. Well, then I hear her say that, like, I don't have a pulse.

I knew that he was a lot worse than I was, especially once he had to have surgery and I didn't. Miraculously, they told me, they were like, look, you know, you had a lot of muscle mass in your chest. It pushed the bullet over to the side. It's in your ribs. It didn't penetrate anything. He said the bullet in your face went into your nasal passages

and just ricocheted around. I was in recovery room by 4 o'clock in the morning. And the police officers come in to interview me. And they told me, they said, well, from what we understand, he saw the police and he just shot the truck up a bank and flipped it over on its hood. Basically, you know, I guess trying to kill himself or whatever. And then they also said that he did live

and they've got him in custody in the hospital, the same hospital we're in. The day after I got out of surgery, one of my family members brought the newspaper into my room. The headlines of the paper said said the AT killer strikes again. The AT would be the Appalachian Trail. And that's when I really said, man, this guy, you know, he was a serial killer. In 1981, Randall Smith had killed two hikers on the trail. He had served 15 years in prison

for the crime. The murder scene was just a mile from where he attacked Scott and Sean. He was found with, you know, like six pairs of eyeglasses, dirty, bloody clothes, female undergarments. He had like 20 knives and a hatchet. He had satanic ritual stuff. He had wicked religion stuff. Based on what they found, I mean, I would assume that he had done that to some other people. And that's a huge area and very mountainous. I mean, they may never find them, you know,

if they're up there. Four days after being arrested, Randall Smith died in jail from natural causes. And I sort of thought, well, maybe this is like karma, you know? being arrested, Randall Smith died in jail from natural causes. And I sort of thought, well, maybe this is like karma, you know? This was karma. This guy had it coming to him for doing all this stuff to these people. Scott and Sean still fish together at Dismal Creek.

It's a beautiful area. I mean, I've been going there for years. And I have. I've been fishing over there since then. All the people you meet on the Appalachian Trail, I mean, they're sort of the same type of characteristics in everybody. They're usually trustworthy people.

I guess I just ran across the wrong one at the wrong time. I mean, this guy was psycho. So I'm just glad he's dead. And, you know, glad it worked out great for Scott and I. I mean, we, other than a few scars, you know, we're fine. Are you feeling buried under credit card bills, personal loans, or medical debt? It's like your money is working harder for your lenders than it is for you, but it doesn't have to be that way. With PDS Debt, you can take control of your financial future. PDS Debt goes beyond just managing your debt. They empower you to take control. Their platform dives deep into your unique financial situation,

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In their early 20s, they have just moved into their first apartment. Right after we moved in, my roommate's father came over for brunch, and he made a comment to my roommate and said, the next time I come, I'm getting you bars on your windows, my treat. My roommate said, why? Because I guess we were kind of naive and young.

And he said, because you're on the ground floor. Outside the living room window, there was a small playground and a lot of trees, and it was quite dark. Two weeks later, I'm in this beautiful apartment with my best friend, and I have this job that I love. And it was just that peaceful Sunday night kind of drifting off to sleep feeling.

And all of a sudden, I heard a really loud jolting noise. And I didn't see anything, and the noise stopped. So I quickly recovered, and I thought in my head, don't be paranoid. That must just be a car door outside or something happening because you're on the ground floor, and you're going to hear noises. So I started to drift back off to sleep.

This presence, this feeling, something made me open my eyes. And there he was. I could see his eyes very close to my face. And I could see the tip and the shining of a knife. He was about 5'8", clean cut, medium build, kind of stocky, nice build. He had an unusually calm, soft voice. And he said, if you move or you scream, I'm going to take this knife and cut you up into lots of pieces. I didn't scream because I knew that if I screamed,

I would die. I immediately felt myself detach from my body because I became so paralyzed with fear. I couldn't believe that this was happening. This couldn't be happening. He proceeded to rape me and sodomize me. And every few minutes, it seemed like he would take the knife and make it apparent that it could easily go into my throat

and slice me up and kill me. At that point, I knew what I was dealing with, and I knew that if I didn't feed this sick, twisted mind and give him what he needed, I was going to die. I needed to keep him calm. And to keep him calm, I had to tell him he was great. He repeatedly said to me, you like this, don't you? You think I'm good? And I kept feeding him answers like, you're great.

It's great that you chose me. He was thrilled. He was like, really? Am I that great? Are you glad I came? He was almost like a little kid getting approval from a parent. Like, he was thrilled. He loved these comments. Are you glad I came? He was almost like a little kid getting approval from a parent.

Like, he was thrilled. He loved these comments. Lights were coming through every once in a while, hitting his face while he was raping me. And I remember thinking, if only the people in the passerby's outside knew what was happening to me. And it was a very intense feeling of helplessness and frustration.

I felt all alone because nobody knew. He said, now I want your money. And I remember him taking me by the hair with a knife in my throat and bending down. And I was using this old trunk that I had had for sleepaway camp years prior. And in the trunk was an envelope with like $12. And I remember giving that to him and thinking,

when he finds out it's only $12, is he going to get mad and kill me after all this? And he then said to me, I know you're not here alone. And if you lie to me, I will kill you. And at that point, he said, take me to your friends. I kind of knew I had to comply, and in a way, there was like comfort, because I knew that maybe the burden would be off me for a few minutes.

As he was taking me from my bedroom to my roommates, he took me and was kind of pulling me. minutes. As he was taking me from my bedroom to my roommates, he took me and was kind of pulling me. I had a lot of hair, pulling me by my hair in the dark with a knife, kind of playing games like poking it a little bit. Never all the way in, but there was a real sensation of the knife back and forth on my throat.

And I was totally numb. I didn't feel any bodily sensation. And that was my way of protecting myself, obviously. But just the nature of his mental illness and his craziness, I realized that at any moment I could die. He asked me if I was married, and I told him, no, I wasn't. And I said, are you? And he said, yeah, I just got married about a year ago. Then I said, does she know where you are right now?

And I think he said, no. And I said, well, you know, you're going to go home to her soon, because I'm sure she misses you, because look how great you are. And like those comments did so much for him. It made it even more apparent how dangerous he was and how sick. Something wasn't right. I knew instinctively when he and I were about to enter her room, and I was going to tap her gently to wake her up, that she was going to scream and freak out and be horrified. And I knew that she wasn't going to be able to contain

her emotions the way I had. her emotions the way I had. And I knew my job now was to keep her calm and composed and to keep him, to continue to keep him calm. We entered the bedroom and I tapped her. And in a really composed, calm voice, I said, you need to wake up. You need to wake up.

There's a nice man here that needs to rape, wants to rape you. And I'm fine, and you're going to be fine. And he just finished with me. You just need to cooperate. And at that point, she absolutely lost her mind. She just started wailing. And I saw he started to become agitated. And I knew that him becoming agitated was going to probably

be the death of us. We were on the edge of that knife going into our throats and killing us. And he had the knife on my throat and a hand over her mouth, and he hand over her mouth. And he proceeded to rape her. And he was getting pleasure out of me watching and saying things to me like, do you think it's good?

Do you think I look good? Eventually, eventually, after what seemed like hours, when he was finished with her, there seemed to be like a stopping point. Maybe he was tired after all this. I said to him, you know, this was great, but why don't you go now so we could get some rest? And maybe we'll see, you know, about another time,

because it was really great having you. And I'm saying this to him, and knowing how twisted and bizarre that is, that I'm saying that, but knowing that that's how I'm saying this to him and knowing how twisted and bizarre that is that I'm saying that, but knowing that that's how I'm going to live through this. And that's what's going to save my roommate and myself. And it worked. He said to me, it was great.

I said, was it great? Of course it was great. But we all need to rest now, don't you think? And he bought into that like a little kid in a candy store. He backed out of the room, and he got a little violent and said, don't get up yet, though, until I'm out. And he backed out of the room with the knife, and I remember hearing the front door shut.

My roommate's reaction was like, let's get up. And I was like, no. I just didn't feel safe yet. And after a few minutes, I said, now we could get up and call the cops. The next thing I remember, we were in the ER being examined. We never went back to that was it for the apartment, although the next day we did have to go and meet

with detectives and police officers, and they had to dust the windowsills and all the logistics of that. But my stuff was immediately moved out of the apartment. I never slept there again, and I moved back in with my parents that lived nearby. When the cops came to our apartment and did fingerprints and dusting,

we did find out that he entered our apartment by taking a bar or a crowbar and jamming on the living room window. We later found out that his apartment shared that same courtyard as us. And that was really eerie, knowing that this is a man that was my neighbor and has been watching us, stalking us. He, a few weeks later, wound up raping another young woman that

shared the same courtyard. And he said to her, I've just raped two others. Stacey's attacker was arrested soon after. I identified him at the lineup. And then this woman who was raped a week or two later, identified him. So both of us had a positive ID on him. And I guess the fingerprints at some point matched.

Eric Barnes, age 23, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. I think I survived because of my composure, my faith, and this sixth sense of intuitiveness and instinct, which took over. My life has been permanently altered because of this. But it did give me a sense of, well, maybe there's a purpose that this happened to me. Maybe it's so I could share my story with other people.

It seems to help other people knowing that there are other ways to survive other than fighting back. Because a lot of times for women, fighting back physically is not even an alternative. Hey, iSurvive listeners, the BBC have asked me to share a podcast recommendation with you. This is Extreme Peak Danger. Let me ask you a question. How much would you be prepared to push your mind and body to feel truly alive? In August 2008, around 30 climbers took on K2, but 11 of them would never return home. Presented by historian Natalia Melman-Patrizella, extreme peak danger hears from survivors of one

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Where we live is the north end of Titon Valley, which is a horseshoe-shaped valley. And the horseshoe opens to the north up to Yellowstone. Nice area. In our area, predominantly, is more black bear, but there are grizzly bear around that stay high in the mountains. Typically a bear doesn't want to mess with you as much as you don't want to mess with a bear. At dusk, Tim let their dog Ladybug out for a run. It's great at dusk of where when you're walking down the woods you can just barely see the trunk of trees when you look up to the sky you can see the branches of trees kind of

silhouetted against a real you know dark blue sky. Tim heard Ladybug barking and went to get her. This time of year is still pretty cold in Teetown Valley probably about in the evenings probably about 30 degrees 25 30 degrees so I had on a big down jacket and my PJ bottoms. The only lights that we had on the cabin, which I could just make out from where I was, were Christmas lights that we still had up. So I could just see those through the woods.

I walked about 150 yards, maybe, and got down into the trees. Ladybugs stopped barking at that point. I kept calling for her, looking around. And that's when I saw the bear on the snow patch charging me from about 50 feet away. I could tell it was a grizzly. A big part of it was the size of the bear, but also the way the bear loped.

And grizzly bears have a large mass of muscle over their front shoulders. At that point, the bear was probably 50 feet away or so, which startled me to the point of I didn't think of the correct thing to do, which might have been to stand my ground. And then instead, I turned on my heel and maybe took one or two steps,

and that's when the bear toppled me. The bear was approximately between 350 and 400 pounds. So it was a reasonably sizable bear, and it didn't have any problem picking me up. The first place the bear grabbed me was on my back. It picked me up and kind of flopped me around a little bit, like a ragdoll, banged flopped me around a little bit like a rag doll, banged me on the ground a little bit.

It released me, snapped me a couple more times on my butt, and then it grabbed a hold of my head at that point and gave it a pretty good squeeze. I could hear my skull kind of pop. That happened over a period of maybe two to three minutes. I definitely thought about my wife and my boy, Henry, of that it wasn't really time for me to go. I thought, jeez, this bear might want to pull me further down into the woods and use me as a food source. I used to have this perception of being killed by an animal

was somehow a noble way to go. And when that was going on, I was thinking to myself, that's one of the dumbest thoughts I've ever had. The bear picked me up, thumped me against the ground a few times. As he took my head and had a hold of my head, he did kind of a shaking it into the ground. At that point, I did realize that I needed to play dead.

I had to convince this bear that I was no longer a threat, whether or not the bear truly believed I was dead, as long as the bear believed that I was submissive. I could hear Ladybug barking in that area, and she was definitely trying to pull the bear off of me or distract the bear. And then the bear released me and started to walk away. I think at that point, too, the bear felt that it had to deal

with Ladybug. It felt that I had been dealt with, and it wanted to try to deal with Ladybug and push her out of the area. So that's kind of why it left me alone. I could hear the bear starting to walk away in the woods. And I made the assumption that the bear had no longer interest in me.

I assumed that it had thought it had done its job, and it was leaving the area. So I laid there for about 30 seconds to a minute. So I laid there for about 30 seconds to a minute and that's when I made the move to stand up. Through the trees, Tim could see the Christmas lights on his cabin. I could just see those through the woods and that's kind of what I keyed in on. But yeah, the adrenaline had definitely kicked in where I knew I had to get back to the cabin. As soon as I stood up, I heard the bear approaching again

through the woods, kind of crashing through the woods. And I immediately dropped back down into a ball. The bear got on me again and snapped at my back. I was essentially scalped from one ear to the other. My skin was de-gloved and pulled back up over my head. I had large lacerations that went down to my rib cage from my shoulder down and around my back. I had blood trickling down my face.

My back left side was kind of numb and not working quite as well as I wanted it to. After the bear left the second time, I laid there for maybe two to three minutes. But there was that concern of I'm bleeding fairly heavily, so I need to work my way back. And I kind of understood at that point that I was probably going into shock.

So what I decided to do was get on my hands and knees and crawl. As I was crawling towards the cabin, Ladybug, I could tell, was not far off in the woods and paralleling me up through the woods, barking. She was just kind of acting as a bodyguard at that point. Jenny heard the dog, heard Ladybug barking, and she thought it was kind of unusual that the dog was barking right outside the cabin.

As soon as I got onto the porch and was going to go in, she opened the door. By the time I got to the cabin, I was definitely lightheaded from loss of blood, and I started getting real cold. She got me a pillow and a blanket to cover up with, and she called 911. The skin on my head was de-gloved and pulled forward

from ear to ear, basically like being scalped. There was laceration coming down from my left shoulder, all the way down and around my rib cage, and then a large laceration that traveled from the same side and then down across my buttocks, totaling for about 300 stitches or so. I survived because of having some knowledge on what to do in a bear encounter. My dog, even though she got me into the encounter in the first place, she certainly helped me

out. Tim later found out that the bear had stashed a moose carcass nearby. This was just a natural event. The bear had no mal intent whatsoever. It was just defending its territory. It was more work me over and trying to state the fact of this is my kill, this is my territory. Lick your wounds and go home.

Six days after the attack, the bear was caught and destroyed by wildlife officers. It was captured 100 yards from the cabin. It was, I feel, to some degree unfortunate that the bear had to be destroyed. We kind of petitioned to have it moved if they could, but they felt that for safety the best thing to do was to put the bear down. I don't think bears just kill things for killing things. And to be quite honest, I still probably

feel safer in an area in the woods where it's dark than I would maybe in a large urban area. Pluto TV is the place for movie fans like me. for you. Have a little crime before bedtime with NCIS or Tracker. Or curl up with a surefire hit like Forrest Gump. Run, Forrest! Pluto TV has thousands of movies and shows all for free. Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.