Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: We're Going To Fight With Everything We Have

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

Two women fight for their lives when an attacker ambushes them on a mountain trail; two men survive 14 hours adrift at sea.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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Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. We're back in the middle of nowhere. This man is dressed in full camouflage. He has a big, sharp, shiny knife at my throat. Real people. It was amazing how fast it happened.

One minute I was laying there listening to Louis Armstrong, and within four minutes, I was in the ocean, fighting for my life. Who faced death? We were surrounded by water. I was scared again, really scared, because I had no clue where we were at and how far away we were from land. And lived to tell how. We're going to die, or we're going to live.

and damned if he's going to take that choice away from us, we're going to fight with everything we have. This is I Survived. It's September 2009 in Signal Mountain, Colorado. Nina and her sister-in-law Kim are staying at Kim's cabin with their families. We headed up there Saturday evening, spent the night up there, and then first thing in the morning, before everybody else woke up, I wanted to go hiking.

There's a trail through the meadow that, It links up with this incredible trail that goes up to signal the mountain. I definitely wanted to take Nina on it. I do it. Every time we were up there, I would do it in the morning before breakfast because it's a nice three miles out, three miles back. I know I can get six miles in and then we can all have breakfast together. I have a bad knee and I had done a lot of running that week before.

So my knee was kind of aching. I went back and forth and I said, you know what, Kim? I'd like to ride my new mountain bike. Why don't you go ahead and start off before I do, and I will catch up with you. And so Kim actually started out about 30 minutes prior to me, and the plan was to meet her somewhere on the trail. So I head out, and I end up at my three and a half mile mark,

and I haven't, she hasn't caught up with me yet. So I'm getting a little concerned. I head back to go find her. And a couple miles down, back down the trail, I find her. And it's just gotten, it's too rocky. It's a little too tough to ride your bike. We decide to ditch my bike. And Kim's been carrying this walking stick

that her husband is adamant about her taking on every single hike. Apparently there's mountain lions up in this area and it's just some type of protection. So she insists that I take this hiking stick because I complained about my knee originally hurting and of course she wants to get rid of it. So I take the walking stick and we continue on together on the hike up to the turnaround spot.

We're talking the entire way. There was absolutely no peace for anyone in the mountains that day at all. And we're hiking along and we finally hit the bridge. And then my stomach starts to grumble and I realize time to head back. We need to cook breakfast for everyone. So we decide we're going to turn around. and go back. We walked maybe about 50 feet,

and all of a sudden, I saw something move, and I turned. Everything went to slow motion because there was something dressed in full camouflage coming at me. When I turn around,

this man is coming at Nina with this knife. So she puts her hands up and he cuts her cuts her with the knife as he's coming at her with it, because she is protecting her neck. Before I knew it, this man had grabbed a hold of me and had the knife at my neck. He rustles me down to the ground, and I start asking him questions. And I don't even know why I remained calm because I was so nervous inside,

but I kept asking him questions, why? Why are you doing this? And he says, because it's fun. And these nasty black eyes are staring out of this balaclava at me, and I realize we are in big trouble. You start to realize this is a very, very serious situation. We're back in the middle of nowhere. This man is dressed in full camouflage. He has a big, sharp, shiny knife at my throat.

He has now taken control of the situation by wrestling me down to the ground. I really started to study his skin in his eyes because I thought, if they ever catch this man, I'm going to have to describe something, and this is all I can see. Nina had dropped the walking stick during the attack. Out of sheer instinct, I pick up the walking stick. And he's yelling at me the whole time. Drop the stick, sit down, back off. And I'm trying to do enough of what he's asking me to do

so that he doesn't hurt her worse. Both Kim and I, we remained fairly calm. We never let out a scream. Deep inside, of course, we're panicking. We're very nervous. Your life feels like it's going to flash by you. And you're thinking, this is not how I wanted die.

Of course, he's yelling the whole time, I'll cut her, I'll kill her, I'll cut her, back off. And I realize that if I back up a little bit, that I can squat against the mountain, but I can stay ready, I can jump up if I need to. He kept telling me, don't struggle, don't struggle, quit resisting me, quit resisting me. And I said very calmly, I'm not resisting. you. I'm just a little stressed here. You've got a knife to my throat. You've got me down on the ground. You've cut me. My hand is bleeding. May I get a band-aid out of my backpack? And I knew in reality I had no band-aid in my backpack. I was just thinking of something to do so I could change up the situation. And he said, no, bitch, you can't get a band-aid out of your backpack.

My initial take on the situation was that we were going to die. I mean, he was absolutely there to kill us. He then started to fondle with my backpack that I had attached to my chest. And I'm thinking, okay, I know what he's after now. He's on top of her, and he's trying to pin her arms down. And oh my gosh, he's going to run. he's going to rape her. I am going to have to sit here and watch Nina get raped.

He's pulling her shirt up. He's pulling her bike shorts down. And as much as I thought that I could wait for the right moment, I can't. He thinks I've dropped the stick because it's laying on the ground, but I still have my arms around it. I jump up, and as soon as I jump up, I have no idea what I'm going to do, because he's still got the knife to her neck, and I can't think of a safe way to attack him.

So I say, our husbands are coming. They left the cabin 20 minutes after us. They're going to be here any moment. You better let us go. That made him nervous enough that he wanted to take us off the trail and across the creek. So he now drags me to my feet and starts to drag me across the trail down to a flat area before we have to cross the creek. All I could think was, oh my God, what have I done?

Now he's going to haul us into the woods where we have no chance. I mean, we go into the woods, we're not coming back out. So I say, no, I'm not going. And he's really adamant that he wants Kim to go first, and Kim does not want to go. She is holding her ground. He's got her around the neck, and he's got the knife up to her neck, and he says, go across the crick, or I'm going to cut her. And she said, I'm not letting you take her.

I'm not letting you take her. And then he slices my arm with the knife to say, I'm going to, you know, I mean business now, quit screwing around. Of course that scares me to death, because now my stubbornness and how I think I'm protecting us gets Nina cut. But I know that if we go into the woods, I don't know the woods. I mean, we've only had this cabin for a few months. I've never been off the trail.

I don't know what's back there. He does. You can see in his eyes he's made a decision, and he knows he can't control two of us. So it occurs to me that he's going to take Nina. And we look into each other's eyes and we know, okay, something has to be done here. We've reached the moment. My eyebrows raise a little bit and she looks at me and I can see it. She's ready.

She does not want me to let him take her into the woods and she's ready to fight. Nina and I make eye contact and she knows that this is it. This is a breaking point. And there's no way that I am going to turn and leave her and let him take her into the woods. He takes her down, and he's trying to drag her down into the crick. And so I have my walking stick, and I take the walking stick, and I swing. I don't see her swing the stick. I just hear this whack.

But it's enough that he loses his grip on me because she's whacked him with the stick. and then I'm able to slip out from his grip underneath his arm and slide through. He now charges at me and I don't have anything to protect myself anymore. The stick is gone. Turns out it had broken and was laying down where we were fighting. And I am stumbling backwards to try to stay away from the knife because he's slashing the knife. And next thing I know, I'm on the ground. I'm on the ground.

And I'm already in motion looking for a rock, and I look down more to my right as I turn around, and there's this one lonely rock. I reach for it, I come back, and I throw it at him as hard as I can. It leaves my hand in slow motion, and then it feels like when it hits him, you know, that it barely does anything. It makes him stop, and I can

get to my feet. All three of us are standing, and there is a standoff. We're all looking at each other, and he doesn't know what to do. So Nina and I, we are screaming at him, all kinds of things that our children should never hear us say. We're out of control, because we know we're going to die or we're going to live. And damned if he's going to take that choice away from us, we're going to fight with everything we have. He's standing there facing off with us and he still has a knife. And there's like

a 15 second period of time where he's trying to decide, what do I do? And he looks back and forth at us and doesn't know what to do. And then he turns and runs away from us. And as he takes off, I'm thinking, oh my God, he is going to get a gun. He's going to finish us off. We have pissed him off. And then Kim yells to me, Nina, come on, let's go. And so we take off for this, you know, run for our lives down the mountain. 25, maybe 30 yards into this sprint, Nina pulls her Achilles tendon. And I said, I just popped my Achilles. And I said, Nina, we either run or we die. You can run. I know she's injured. I mean, she's pulled her Achilles. I know she's cut at least two, three times. I'm just trying to reassure her that if we can just keep running, we're going to be

fine. But inside, I'm scared to death. I said, you know, I feel like he's coming after us. Kim, we need to get off this trail and take a, you know, the unbeaten path. And she says, no, Nina, we got to stay on the trail. And I said, Kim, what if he's coming down the other side of the creek? I'm telling her, Nina, I don't know how to get back. If we go into the mountains and we get off this trail, we're going to get lost. We are running so fast back. And the whole time, we're just, we're scared to death. As we're running down the trail, she'd say, okay, Nina, you know, as soon as we get by the pump house, we have maybe another quarter mile to go, before we get to the footbridge down there.

Kim and Nina approached the pump house near the end of the trail. It's empty and it's unlocked all the time. And it is not four feet off the trail. And in my mind, I'm thinking, he's in there. I'm convinced he's gonna jump out. We're still running. I mean, there's nothing else,

there's nowhere else for us to go. So we run past, we clear the watershed. And as we get to the beginning of the meadow is when we start yelling. Everyone's inclination as they come out on the deck is that we've been attacked by an animal. And then it sinks into them as we're yelling more, a man with a knife. Call 911. Police quickly set roadblocks to close off the area.

This man comes down off the road, and he kind of fits the description of 510, 240 pounds, a scraggly ponytail. And out of everybody that the officer stopped, he is the one that is least cooperative. He says he knows his rights. They can't search his car. They try to get a hold of Nina or I to come. They try to get the deputies to bring us down to look at him. They can't get in touch with us. We're out of range.

So they have to let him go. Nina was released from the hospital after her knife wounds were treated. We're complete wrecks. Because we're positive this man is going to find. find us. We're having nightmares. Can't sleep at night. I can't work because I'm scared to death he's going to find my kids while I'm awake. They bring us in nine days later for a lineup. They tell us that it's just standard procedure. They need to eliminate some suspects. We go to this room and it's not behind one-way glass. It's an actual room and there is a table separating.

you and the men dressed in full camouflage behind the table. And they're all given scripts that they have to read from statements that you've given the officers about what was said in the conversation that went on during the attack. We walk through the door, and I look in, and on my right, our six men lined up against the wall, all dressed exactly how we described.

I scanned the room really quickly, and I looked down at number six. at number six and my heart started to race. And number six, it's him. And I look in his eyes and I am just ready to fall apart and he says, because it's fun. He tried to disguise his voice differently and that's why I said, speak up.

I want you to speak louder. And I realize, oh my gosh, all those fears You always worry, what have I identified the wrong man? What if I picked the wrong person? Absolutely not. No doubt, absolutely no doubt in my mind. The minute he said those words and I saw those eyes again and that same combination, it's him.

We learned that he had attacked other women off his motorcycle and held them at gunpoint and sexually assaulted them. Once they discovered that he had committed these other crimes, they combined our two cases and there was multiple charges against him now, against six women. James Bondsteel was convicted of all six sexual attacks. The judge gave the maximum penalty for each offense, sentencing James Bondsteel to a total of 134 years in prison. I survived because I kept my wits about me.

We stayed calm and we waited for an opportunity to make the escape happen. I survived because there was no other option. As far as we were concerned, we were not going down without a fight. The alternative just was not acceptable. I mean, we have families and we have kids. and we have fantastic husbands, and it just wasn't an option. You know those weeks that just get away from you? You swear you'll meal prep on Sunday, but suddenly it's Wednesday,

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Tempomiles.com slash survived. Rules and restrictions may apply. It's July 2011 on the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. Mike and Charles are on a fishing vacation. My cousin Don Lee, he's a big fisherman, and he puts together an annual trip for his buddies, and usually it's about maybe 20 to 30 people. And I've been on two trips with them previous.

The trip is a six-day, five-night fishing trip out in the Sea of Cortez, on the ship known as the Eric. Well, fishing is my passion, and I've been fishing with this particular group of guys for the past seven years in different parts of Mexico. Now, this is a mother ship type of fishing adventure.

It's where you have the big 115-foot ship, the Eric, and on the back it carries eight to ten little boats called pangas. They're about 20-foot long and hold about three or four people. And the beauty of it is when you get out into the middle, of the ocean, the Eric anchors, and then you fish from a little ponga. It's really exciting to be in the ocean fishing for big fish off of the little boat. From the first time, we brought our own life vests because we realized that there weren't life vests in the pongas. It was a calm, quiet evening. The seas were flat. It's about 85 degrees. It's really warm,

and the sunset was beautiful. It was an orange sun. setting to turn into a hazy purple gray. The dinner bell rang and we had enchiladas and tortillas and a wonderful dinner. After that, it was time for the guys to start assembling their fishing gear because we're going to start fishing in the next morning. It's going to be fish on. After that, we went up to Margaritaville for a few cocktails. At about 10.30, I went to bed.

Mike had retired to his cabin when he felt the boat start to rock. Came outside and I noticed that there was the breeze that now turned into more of a gale, wind gusts for about 15 to 20 miles per hour. Went to the front of the boat, and then that's when I realized that we were heading into a big storm. On the horizon, you can see faint hints of large rolling waves, and waves were crashing into the bow at maybe 20 to 20, 20 feet. I'm like, well, you know, we went through a storm much like this last year, so, you know, it'll pass. So I decided to go back to my cabin. The banging got louder, and the boat just continued to rock. At that point, I was thrown onto the floor.

The wall became the floor, and the boat had listed 90 degrees to the left side or starboard side. And at that point, I knew something bad was happening. And the boat was sinking. I remember listening to Louis Armstrong. When I was awakened by a frantic voice saying, Charles, the ship is sinking. Get out of here. I could hear yelling in Spanish.

I could feel waves hitting the Eric. I got up. Dressed in only my birthday suit, and I got out of there. I walked into the hallway, and I saw a line of people trying to get. out of the area because we're in the belly of the boat. And the ship was listening to the left in such a way that it was very difficult to get out. The stairs became unusable, and so the men helped each other to escape.

They would reach down with one hand and pull you up, and someone behind you would push you from the rear. The guy who pushed me from behind said it wasn't a pretty sight. The back of the boat started to list and slid. and slowly pull downwards. So we had to climb to the third deck, to the bar deck, and then above that, the lights went out.

So the boat's electricity had gone, and everything was pitch black. At this point, I kind of knew that the inevitable was going to take place, which is the boat's going to sink. So if that's going to happen, I have my life fest, but I think we'll need lights. So I climbed back into the cabin, to grab my headlamp, and I pulled myself back out onto the deck.

And I'll never forget the look of terror in the eyes of my fellow fishermen once I reached the deck. They were donned in life vest, and they were braced against the side of the ship and the rail, wondering whether they were going to live or die. As I moved forward, one of the crew members came and gave the guy next to me a life vest. He turned to me and said, We have no more life vests. Sorry, Signor. Just then a wave, a huge wave, hit the ship

and knocked me into the sea of Cortez. Charles is washed overboard without a life jacket. I traded water. There was a lot of confusion. People were yelling. There were a couple of lights. People were saying, over here, over here, help, help me, help me.

And suddenly a cooler. an ice chest, hit me from the back, and I grabbed it with my right hand. It was amazing how fast it happened. One minute I was laying there listening to Louis Armstrong, and within four minutes, I was in the ocean fighting for my life. Mike and his friend Jerry were still on board the sinking ship. We climbed to the top of the communication tower, or the communication antenna, and that was the end of the line.

Right when the water filled the antenna, we decided to just jump off. At this time, the storm was still jostling us left and right, and we had to swim out of position from debris. So the boat had spewed a lot of fuel because at this point you can smell diesel fuel in the air. So we're being burned by diesel fuel. The smell of gasoline and diesel field burned my eyes and skin.

And I looked through the corner of my left eye, and I saw the Eric. She stood straight up and went straight down. We were stuck in the middle of the ocean, pitch black, no ambient light, no moon, no stars. We didn't know where we were and we had nothing. We didn't know if the sharks had us on the breakfast menu as tattelizing tourists. and six other men tied coolers together to stay afloat. There was disbelief that we were on vacation and just went out to catch some fish

and now we were holding on to these coolers trying to survive. Guys were asking questions like, what happened? How could this have happened? They were looking for someone to blame. And we talked to each other and we said, hey, you know, we can't worry about that type of stuff. We have to keep focus on our survival.

Mike was clinging to a cooler with two other men, Jerry and Les. We had no provisions, no water. We actually didn't know where we were at in relation to the shore. The storm left as fast as it came. We were in the water for no more than, I would say, 30 minutes. And the storm subsided and it was calm. So it was myself, Les and Jerry hanging on to a cooler, and we were being burned by diesel fuel.

In our panic, we were yelling for people or for help. Help, help. Is anyone out there? We're over here. It's Mike, Jerry, and Les. Come over here. We heard a few faint whispers of Spanish in the air. The whisper disappeared.

And we were alone. Charles had no life vest and clung to a raft of coolers with six other men. When I was in the ocean and we were fighting for our life holding on to these coolers, I could hear other guys yelling over here and talking, but I couldn't see anyone. So we kind of focused inward on our little group to help these seven people survive. One of the fishermen said, there's a light on the horizon, about seven miles in front of us. He said, let's kick toward the light. I knew exactly what he was doing when he said it.

He was getting us to focus on getting to that light and to work together as a team and not think about our plight, because our plight was bad. Most ships have EPRs, electronic beacons that basically float above the water after a ship sinks. So we're looking for a beacon, a light. So we did see a light in the distance. It was semi-bright, so we started to swim towards it. We swam for, I would imagine, an hour or two in the darkness. My headlamp finally gave out, and it was pitch dark.

The light just never got closer. So at the point, we gave up. We just kind of huddled for maybe an hour's time, and just continued to pray in silence. Four hours after the ship sinks, Mike and Charles are adrift at sea. Mike and his two friends, Jerry and Les, spend the night clinging to a cooler. The sun came up and I noticed that we were surrounded by water, 360 degrees of water. Again, it was a despair set in.

I was scared again, really scared because I had no clue where we were at and how far away we were from land. We kept swimming and swimming, and swimming, and swimming. It's about 85, 90 degrees. There's no cloud cover. There's no canopy of clouds to give us some relief. So we're just being burned right now. And finally, the sun came up.

And when the sun came up, it brought renewed hope. We hoped that a helicopter could see us, that a boat might see us, and also we could see. So we could see an island to the right and a rocky structure to the left. One of the guys in our group said, hey, let's swim for it. I said I wasn't swimming anywhere without a vest. Charles was given help by his friend Glenn. He had a life vests and a flotation device.

He took off his life vests and gave it to me. I felt renewed confidence when I had the life vest. And all of a sudden, of the seven of us, six took off swimming. One guy had no life vests and couldn't swim. He was a crew member, so he stayed with the coolers. I Survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. As we swam toward the islands, we were separated by huge swells and currents. Initially, I could hear the voices saying over here, but I didn't know where here was.

And then I could no longer hear the voices and couldn't see any way. Then I realized I was alone. Mike and his group had been in the water for 10 hours with no sight of land. Lo and behold, we see two seagulls. These seagulls flew right above us for a few minutes. And to me, it was a sign from heaven giving us hope, telling me, yes, you know, Mike, keep going, because there's a chance. We swam in the direction of the seagulls for a few minutes, and we saw a glimmer, slivers of land on the horizon.

We were swimming towards the left landmass, but the current was fighting us so we couldn't make it in. We decided to swim for a smaller island to the right of the channel. So we swam and swam, but ultimately we couldn't fight. the current. So I told Jerry and Les to stay with the cooler, and I would take my chances and swim for shore. If I could make it to shore in the next hour, I could maybe get help before sunset and get someone out to pick them up. It was the scariest decision in my life. I was letting go of my lifeline. Charles was swimming alone after losing his group.

I decided to swim toward the initial island, so I stroked and swam and swam. For a good two and a half hours, but I didn't get any closer. It was frustrating and depressing, and I realized I might not make it. That's when I made peace with God. I said, Lord, if it's your desire to take me, I've lived a good life. But if not, I'm going to fight to survive. And a certain peace came over me, because all I had to do was keep my part of the bargain, fight to survive. I decided to swim toward Big Rock, the big rocky formation. And come hella high water, I was going to swim toward it. I probably swam maybe a quarter mile after an hour.

I closed my eyes and paddled some more. But a half hour later, my position hasn't moved. I thought I was going to die. At that point, I knew I was going to, it was the hope of the situation. a hopeless situation. So I said my prayers, but then God gave me hope and I clarified my mind. He says, you know, don't die alone. Swim back and find Jerry and less. Mike tries to swim alone to shore but makes no progress against the current. He decides to swim back to the cooler and rejoin Jerry and Les.

I figure if I can get back to the cooler, I can survive another night. And hopefully, if we're lucky, we hit landfall. The currents will push us towards the islands. I start to swim towards, it's swim back in the direction I came. And I found Jerry floating towards me. I told Jerry, let's swim back to the cooler. but when we got to the cooler less wasn't on the cooler

so I felt very alone at that point and scared for less you know where was he but he was nowhere to be seen after being in the water for over 14 hours Charles finally made it to an island I could see a beachy area and I looked at it and I said

Lord, if I could just get a little push to get to that island, I'd really appreciate it. And just then, this huge wave came and pushed me toward that island. I knew it would have pulled me out, so I rolled toward it on my side. A second wave came and pushed me closer to the beach, and I rode toward it. When the third wave came, I crawled on my hands and knees, and I could feel the earth touching my body. I managed to take off my vest, and I found a stick.

I posted it on a stick so that a helicopter or a boat driving by would know that someone was on this island because it was an abandoned island, just a big, huge rock formation in the middle of the ocean. I found an area where I could climb underneath, and I collapsed from exhaustion. Another survivor had also made it to the island. I heard a voice, say, hi, neighbor. I say, God, is that you? It turned out to be rich.

My cabin mate just happened to land on the same island. He was walking around looking for food and water, and he found me. Mike and Jerry swam back to the cooler to find that Les was nowhere in sight. We heard a sound horizon that sounded like a motor. And when we looked over, towards the sound, We saw a little speck of a boat.

You could hear the motor. You could hear some people yelling. And at that point, I knew that we were going to make it. And that was probably the happiest moment in my life. Mike and Jerry were rescued by local fishermen. They pulled us out of the water, and I asked him to look for less. or less, you know, because there's one more guy out there, but they said, you know, we don't have enough room.

We got to bring you back, and we'll come back and look. So Rich is kind of running around the island looking for stuff being the caretaker. And he came at one time, he yelled, he said, Charles, look, a panga. So I grabbed my vest from the stick, and I waved it in the air to alert them that there were people on the island.

island. And when I saw them coming to water us, okay, I was happy. They dropped soft and I found both Charles and Rich sitting on the beach. I pulled myself off the boat and helped Jerry off and it was awesome. The men were flown to the hospital at San Felipe. Many men were still missing, including Glenn who had given his life vest to Charles. If he had lost his life by giving me the vest, I don't know how I would have made it through that. But the next day, there was a tearful reunion.

It was so wonderful to see him. And I remember walking up to him and said, ma'am, you saved my life. Thank you. We get news from the Mexican Navy that they found a body. And unfortunately, that body was Les Shea. was Les Yee. Seven other bodies were never recovered, including Mike's two cousins. I think they were still in the cabin asleep when the boat went under.

So my cousin Don and Albert may still be on the boat today to this day. I survived because we worked together as a team, Jerry, myself, and Les. I survived with the help of God and the hope they gave us through hard struggles. It was a terrible feeling in your gut to think that 27 of us had came there for a fishing vacation and that not all of us will be going home. I survived because of the goodness of other people and the grace of God. With all the best movies

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