Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: The Ninja in the Attic

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

On a normal Friday morning, Ellen is at home alone when she is brutally attacked by a strange man in all black. Ellen's attacker had been hiding in her home for days, waiting for the right moment to strike.Sponsors: Caraway: Right now, Caraway is offering new members 30 days completely free if you go Caraway.health/ISURVIVED. PDS DEBT is offering free debt analysis to our listeners just for completing the quick and easy debt assessment at www.PDSDebt.com/survived  AMCN: Visit airmedcarenetwork.com and use offer CODE: ISURVIVED when you join.

This episode contains disturbing accounts of extreme violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. Also, just another note about this episode. We interviewed Ellen over Skype, so in parts of her story, the quality drops a little bit. Well, I mean, there's been a lot of bizarre cases since mine. I mean, you know, the ninja in the attic. You don't hear that all the time. In 1986, Ellen lived with her husband and two teenage children in Austin, Texas.

I was in the real estate business. It was a safe place where I lived, and I was really pretty amazed that it all happened. And it was a long hill, but at the same time, it wasn't. Troy Wigley was wandering through her safe neighborhood and would change Ellen's life forever. This is I Survived, the podcast where we talk to women who've lived through the worst things imaginable and all the tragic, messy, and wonderful things that can happen after survival. I'm Caitlin VanMol. Well, now he had attacked his brother-in-law, and so he hitchhiked to Austin and somehow ended up where I live. He took his duffel bag and went over the low water bridge,

and that just kind of leads up to where my house was in the hills. And apparently he was across the street, and he saw everybody leave in the hills. And apparently he was across the street and he saw everybody leave in the morning. And he ended up getting in the house and hiding in my attic. And he stayed there for a couple of days until he thought everybody was gone and then surprised me. On August 29th, he came down from the attic. Ellen's husband was playing golf that day, and her son was at school, so she was all alone in the house. I got up, had a very busy day. I sat around, read the newspaper, drank coffee for a little while, and then I decided I better get moving. So I went upstairs to where my bedroom was and took a shower. Stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and as I was walking from my shower to my closet to get a robe,

I spotted a man hiding in the corner of my bathroom. I couldn't believe what I saw. I saw a man dressed in a ninja suit. He had black things tied around his head. He had a black outfit on and even had gloves on his hands.

The only thing that I could see was just the skin around his eyes and his eyes. He had his right hand held high up in the air and in that hand was a big knife. Life is full of firsts, so whether you're off to college or getting into the job market for the first time,

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but with the left hand, he was pushing on me. And we moved out of the bathroom back into my bedroom. And at that point was when he backhanded me with his left hand and knocked me to the floor. But I got up again and he backhanded me again and knocked me to the floor. But I was not going to stay on that floor. I got up and I went over and sat on the edge, the bottom edge of my bed. I began pulling my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my knees, somehow to kind of hide myself. Ellen had just gotten out of the shower when he attacked, so all she had on was a bath towel. My feet were hanging off the edge of the bed, and he took the big knife that he had in his right hand, and he dragged it across my feet. I didn't know what he meant, but he said, I just want you to know that my knives are a lot sharper than your knives. He bound Ellen's feet together and her hands behind her back.

He said, I want you to put your head down. I want you to look at your knees and don't you raise your eyes up. In fact, you close your eyes and you leave them, leave your head like that until I tell you that you can move. So I did. He took off his mask and he tied his mask on my face so I could not see him. And he said, you know what? It's a shame you can't see me. I'm half black and half white and I am a very handsome man. After he tied his mask on my face, he just began walking, walking and pacing. He began asking me how much money I had. How much money do you have in the bank? How much money do you have at your office?

You have a beautiful house. You must have a lot of money. I offered to drive him to the bank and I could write a check and he could get every single penny out of the bank. I said everything that I could think of at the time to say, to try and not have him so angry with me. And he kept telling me, you're going to have a bad accident, lady, a bad accident. He told me he'd been in my house for two days. He told me about things that had gone on in my house while he was there because he was in the attic and he was listening to everything. He knew my husband was going to play golf and that he wouldn't be back

until the middle of the afternoon. He knew my son was at school that day, and he wouldn't be home until the middle of the afternoon. It was about that time that he told me what he was going to do to me next. He was going to rape me. Those weren't the words he used. But I remember begging him. I remember crying and sobbing and begging him, Please don't do this. I'm a Christian. Please, please, please don't do this. I'm a Christian. Please, please, please don't do this.

He told me that no one would ever catch him. It didn't matter what he did to me. He cut the tape around my ankles and he told me to get back on the bed. I had a hard time doing that. I didn't want to get back on the bed, but he kept yelling at me, get back on the bed, get back on the bed, until my head was near the top of the bed. I was crying, and then he raped me. When the rape was over, he told me how much he had enjoyed it. After that, he bound my ankles together again. My hands were still bound behind my back, and I had on a blindfold. He left me on the bed, and he went and took a shower. While he was taking that shower and I was lying on the bed,

I kept wondering, is there anything I can do? I mean, I could only hop. I didn't have my hands. I was blindfolded. I just, I didn't do anything. I knew I couldn't get away, and I was afraid he would kill me instantly if I tried. The man got out of the shower, put his ninja suit back on, and came back to the bedroom. He cut my hands apart and showed me a check that he had written for $600. And he told me he wanted me to sign it. And then he told me his name so I could write his name in. After she wrote the check to Troy Wigley,

he bound her hands again and made her hop to the bathroom. He still had the knife. Just a warning, this is where it gets pretty graphically violent, so skip ahead about three minutes if you'd rather not hear this part. He told me he wanted me to lie face down on the floor, but he wanted me on my knees with my face against the floor, like a fetal position. I didn't know what was going on. I had no idea what was going to happen. The next thing I knew, I felt a horrendous blow to the right side of my head. I didn't know what had happened.

He hit me with something. He knocked me completely over. And when I was lying on my side, I felt him stab me in my left breast. He straightened me up. And the next thing I knew, there was another blow to the right side of my head, the same as the one before. And he knocked me over again. The man was beating her in the head with a hammer and stabbing her with the knife. And then he stabbed me two times in the back of my neck. Two quick stabs, in and out, in and out. The next thing I knew, he had taken his knife and he was trying to stab it through my skull, but he couldn't. The knife wouldn't go in. So he got his hammer and he hammered his knife into my skull. He may have hit me in the head with a hammer again. I don't know, but I will never forget

when he wanted to get the knife out and he couldn't get it out that he put his foot on the top of my head and he shook my head around like a rag doll as he was trying to get that knife out of the top of my head. Ellen drifted in and out of consciousness. There was some time that passed after that. I didn't know where he was. And I remember that I turned my head to look, but I could see back in my bedroom, and I saw him in there. He was not in his outfit anymore, and he screamed, put your head back down again, and he came in, and he hit me in the head with that hammer one more time. Well, I knew he wanted me dead, and I didn't move after that. He came over to me and pulled my left hand up,

and he was trying to get my wedding rings off. He couldn't get them off, and I remember thinking, oh, my God, oh, my God, he's going to cut my fingers off, and I remember thinking, God help me. And God did. Her wedding rings came off, and he left the room. I was scared to move or even try to move because I didn't know where he was. But I was so cold.

I had lost so much blood, and I knew I was going to die. I knew I was going to die if I didn't get help. I still didn't know if he was there. I didn't know if he was going to pop out any minute with his knives and hammer. I didn't know. I just knew that my instinct for survival was telling me I had to get help. Of course, I couldn't stand up. And I remember that I tried to pull myself along the floor. I actually slithered out of my bathroom, through my bedroom, and I slid down a flight of stairs to the floor below. She managed to get to a phone, but couldn't really see from all the blood and severe beatings to the head.

From muscle memory, she dialed her parents' number. They lived about three minutes away and ran over to Ellen's house. I don't remember anything after I made that telephone call until I heard my father scream when he saw me on the floor. It's hard to imagine getting that distress call from someone you love. It's even harder to imagine finding them covered in blood, naked, and unconscious on the floor. Ellen's dad called 911. I remember hearing the EMS personnel talking, and they said they didn't think I was going to make it.

I couldn't say anything, But I remember thinking to myself, oh, you bet I'm going to make it. That was the first time I knew absolutely I was going to make it. This man was not going to take my life. Before being rushed to the hospital, Ellen managed to tell police the name of her attacker. They caught him that afternoon,

and I was out of it that whole time. They caught him at a local bank trying to cash the check that I'd written him. She had emergency surgery and received more than 600 stitches for the stab wounds. Once she was released from the hospital, she actually had no trouble living in the same house where her attack happened. You know, the house didn't do it to me. He did. It was okay. And once he was gone, I felt safe there again. I did learn how to use the very sophisticated system. What do you call it? Lock up your house? Alarm system. Ellen's sense of safety in her own home wasn't compromised, but that's not to say she wasn't tremendously affected by the attack.

I felt like a throwaway person. I didn't think anybody would ever love me again. I mean, I was hideous. My face was distorted. You know, my head was shaved. I cried a long time. I remember when I was going to see my sister in Houston and I was driving in the car and I was just overwhelmed with grief at what happened to me. I burst into tears. I cried all the way there. I couldn't even wait to be with her. I had great parents, by the way, at the time, and my sister. And they gave me so much support, you know, rubbing lotion and all the scars in my head. I mean, so much support.

My mother is actually still alive and she's 98. She also sought professional help through a counselor and eventually through support groups at her local rape crisis center. And listening to those other survivors really helped me a whole lot. I knew I could do this. You know, I needed to be, I needed to do this for my family, my mother and father. I mean, my gosh, it affected them terribly. Of course, I think the thing that I would like to tell everybody is that no matter what happened to you, talk about it. And if it's a terrible crime, sometimes your parents don't want to hear it or your friends don't want to hear it anymore.

Find avenues to tell your story. Every time you tell it, no matter how many years, you still heal a little bit. And that's why I keep doing it. And I'll probably, I mean, I'm 75, so I'll do it as long as I can. Her attacker was brought to trial in just three months. Ellen still hadn't fully recovered from her injuries when she testified. And I had had a lot of work on my head, and my head was shaved because of all the blows. They had to sew them up, and I was real nervous because it was the first time I'd seen him except in my house. And I remember he kept staring at me. And my sister was alive then, and of course the rest of my family,

and they kept saying, don't look at him. Look at me. Look at me. And so I started doing that. Then they brought somebody in dressed in a ninja suit just to see if I recognized it because he'd had it. When they had arrested him, it was in his backpack or in his duffel bag. It was a powerful position to have the chance to testify and tell your story. I'm going to tell you. I'm Lola Blanc. And I'm Megan Elizabeth.

And we are the hosts of Trust Me. Are you prone to mental shortcuts and errors in your judgment? Find out on our recent episode with Amanda Knox and Christopher Robinson. Those are the most closely examined three seconds of my life. In order to show me as someone who didn't care that her roommate had been murdered. Prior to all that is the media selection bias. Which little chunks of reality get looped and handed to you? Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One or wherever you get your podcasts. Though Ellen had already testified by the time Wigley took the stand, she wasn't allowed to hear his testimony.

What bothered me the most is the fact that, and I didn't even realize this at all, that this would happen, that when they had the trial and they put the defendant on the stand, that I had to leave the room. I had to go sit in the hall. Of course, you know, I had my whole family in there and they were coming out and telling me what he was saying. So it ended up working out. But I just thought, why do that to a victim? Troy Wigley was found guilty of aggravated robbery and sentenced to life in prison on November 20, 1986, just seven days shy of his 20th birthday. The defense attorney asked for moderate sentencing, to which ADA Paul Womack replied, was Ellen treated moderately? There wasn't a reason that he should get the death penalty. And even though I've been involved in the system a long time, I'm not a big believer in the death penalty.

In fact, sometimes I think that the inmates in there that have been in there so long would rather die than spend the rest of their life in prison. So, no, I never wanted that. So I thought it was, yeah, life was real good. I didn't have to be afraid of them anymore. That's what I used to tell other people who I talked to who really didn't want to be afraid of him anymore. That's what I used to tell other people who I talked to who really didn't want to go to trial and all. I didn't tell my story. I just told them that it's really powerful sitting there facing that accuser and knowing that you're going to be part of getting him out of the public and going somewhere where you can't hurt anybody else. It was pretty amazing.

It's just I keep having to fight him being on parole. But he's still in. Wigley was first eligible for parole in 2006. He was last reviewed for parole in February of 2018, and he was denied due to the nature of his offense. His next parole review is currently scheduled for 2021. Ellen had a great support system in her family, but she found that those in her community

didn't really know how to handle what happened to her. Well, to me, avoid telling somebody that's been through what I did, everything happens for a reason. I think that's a terrible thing to say. You know, when I finally got out, I was having to wear a wig, but I could go to a store or a drugstore or anything. People that I knew would avoid me because they didn't know what to say.

I felt like I was walking around this baby with an R on my forehead. And all they needed to say is come in and hug me and say, I'm so sorry. That's all. Ellen started speaking publicly about her attack. This led to volunteering in victim services, which led to Ellen being appointed by Governor Ann Richards to the Board of Criminal Justice. I was the first victim of crime on that board. And I was on it, I guess you'd call it, for six years, a non-paid position, part-time position, then I turned into a non-paid full-time position.

And I went a lot of places. I went to all prisons. I visited programs. I was able to start a program of my own that I thought was important. In 1995, the Ellen Halbert Unit was opened in Burnett, Texas. On the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's website, they call it a substance abuse felony punishment facility, which basically means it's rehab and

prison. I got people to vote on it because there wasn't anything in the area, any kind of facility one way or the other. And also because I knew it was going to be a women's facility and women really needed another treatment facility. Ellen still visits and tells the women there her story. And I tell them my story and I always tell them that I wasn't anything special. That, you know, women can do what they can do. Women can do anything I can do. Because most of those women have been victims of crimes sometimes as as bad as mine, to get in there.

It's usually, you know, something to do with drugs and alcohol, of course, that they have done. And then I'll sit in a group with them, because then they break into groups. And I'll sit in a group with them every time I go. And they can ask me a few more questions then. But most of the time, I just sit there to listen to them. The work she was doing on the Board of Criminal Justice was on a voluntary basis. And her successes there led her to being offered a job as the head of victim services in Travis County. I couldn't do anything about crime, but I could do something about working with victims.

And so it just came when I went off the Board of Criminal Justice. My last year there, I was offered this job as head of victim services it's it was hard work but to see to make somebody happy who'd been through such hell or lost a child or lost anybody it was very healing work for them and for me too even today I still go into prisons as as part of ages to Life program. It's for offenders in prison, and it's where victims come in and tell their story. And they always love my story. The men's prisons, they just come up and shake my hand and hug me. And they ask a lot of questions in the end, like, what did it do to your family if I haven't covered that?

What happened with your marriage? And I said, well, it didn't survive it. And I always tell them, I can come back and spend the whole night talking to you about that and that marriage and how my husband handled it. Well, we tried to go to counseling about it and counselors wouldn't work with us because he's so unbending. It's kind of like he was a pretty narcissistic guy. He was funny and fun to be around, but pretty narcissistic. And he'd say, you know, if you just listen to me, you'd get over this. You know, he just didn't have a clue how to support somebody who'd been through something like that. I ended up leaving him and moving into another house, but I couldn't have him still in my life.

I check on him now and then, but I've been in this marriage 27 years. I married a really nice guy. Ellen met her current husband through a group called People Against Violent Crime. My husband had a friend that he used to play in a band with who was also in the group, and he brought my husband to the group. and he went around and he looked at me and he said this is a ninja lady and uh we kind of connected and then he asked me out and we dated for a year and then lived together for a year and then we got married and and that's been 27 years and he's easy like i am and i think that that's so important. He has kind of the same

goals and the same ways of handling things. And so he's been a treasure to me. He's hearing me say this, you know that. Did you hear me, honey? Yeah, I heard you, babe. Part of her job was to mediate as part of their restorative justice program. It brings victims and offenders together, if they're both willing, to help the victim get some answers and for the offender to see the impact of their actions. I would have them in my office and we would just talk to each other and the victim would ask questions about the crime that they never get, never able to ask on the stand, you know, much more sensitive. Tell them how it made them feel and the offender would say, I'm so sorry I did that to you. And sometimes it would make them cry knowing what they had done to

somebody and just never even realize it because the court system, sometimes they plea these cases. So the victim sometimes doesn't ever have a chance to even say anything. So we just talk about the crime. We go around and talk about the crime and we'd ask the offender and questions and he'd tell the truth. And I'll tell you, some of those victims were ready to take that offender home with them because they were so sweet. It brings healing in a way that a courtroom will never do. Ellen really believes in restorative justice, but both the victim and the offender have to be willing to talk and make it a positive experience. To make sure the meetings don't do more harm than good, a mediator will talk to both

victim and offender beforehand. Ellen started down this road, but hasn't met with her attacker. He wanted me to. He wrote a letter once, and they had it over at Victim Services at the state, and I went over there and they read it to me. And it was kind of like, I'm so sorry I did that to you because it sure caused me a lot of problems. But I thought, well, maybe that's not what he should have said, but I wouldn't mind having the chance to talk to him. But I sent somebody to prison to talk to him first, the mediator that would be using. And there, he never said anything. Like they said, why did you try and kill her?

And he said, because she saw my face. And they said, well, why did and kill her? And he said, because she saw my face. And they said, well, why did you rape her? And he said, because I wanted to. Now, what am I going to learn going to talk to him? So I decided I wasn't going to put myself through that. Ellen is now retired and takes care of her 98-year-old mother. She's still speaking about her attack and says she's doing great. I found out how strong I am.

I found out that I can conquer anything. And I think telling my story to men and women, they just can't believe that I came out of it and I'm talking to them about it. So, yes, good things did come out. I wouldn't want to go through it again for that, but very good things did come out of it. An update since this episode first aired. Troy Wigley was denied parole in May of 2021. His parole will be reviewed again in 2024. And I just think that which does not kill you will make you stronger. I am so much stronger than I was even before. And I've really enjoyed feeling that way. To speak to someone at the National Sexual Assault Hotline,

call 1-800-656-HOPE or 1-800-656-4673. You can also live chat with someone at rainn.org. That's R-A-I-N-N dot O-R-G. The link is right at the top of the page. I'm Caitlin VanMol, host and senior producer. Our audio engineer is Kelly Cromer. Our producer is Scott Brody, and our executive producer is Ted Butler. I Survived was originally produced by

NHNZ. To hear more I Survived, please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. Two sisters, one a respected TV producer, Jill Blackstone, and the other, Wendy. She was disabled, nearly blind and deaf, and Jill had devoted herself to taking care of Wendy. Jill was her best friend, her sister, her everything. But the sister bond was shattered when Wendy and some of the sister's rescue dogs were found dead in a garage next to

a top-lover barbecue grill. Jill says accidental carbon monoxide poisoning killed everyone. Police do not believe her. Police arrested Jill Blackstone for the murder of her sister. Investigators think it was staged to look like an accident. Who will you believe, especially now that a secret source has come forward with evidence never made public before? Jill was a good producer. There's no doubt about that. But would she produce murder is the question. Season two of Bad, Bad Thing, The Blackstone Sisters, available now wherever you get your podcasts. I always say, show me a perfect family. I'll show you a family with secrets.

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