Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Woman fights for her life, brutal attack recorded by FITBIT!

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

Kelly Herron was viciously attacked while jogging in a park on a Sunday afternoon, but she survived. Her FitBit bracelet tracked Herron's ordeal. Nancy Grace visits with the marathon runner to discuss how women can protect themselves while exercising. They are joined by Atlanta juvenile judge and lawyer Ashley Willcott and New York psychologist Caryn Stark. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Find out how to protect your child when you're out at the mall or the store, the grocery, in the parking lot, at home. Find out about protection regarding babysitters and daycare, even online. I'd rather have that any day of the week than a plastic toy or, God forbid, a toy gun. Join Justice Nation. Go to crimestopshere.com. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Today, how new fitness tracker technology is helping police catch criminals. Kelly Herron was viciously attacked while running

last year in Seattle. Luckily, she survived. Her story spread around the world when she posted this map from her GPS fitness tracker that shows the intensity of her struggle during the attack. I mean, look what happened here. It took eight minutes, by the way. Look how she was struggling. She runs in here to go to the bathroom. This is the struggle for eight minutes that could have You are hearing our friend Dr. Oz talking about my new hero, Kelly Heron, a marathon runner who was attacked in a bathroom, a lady's bathroom, as she is practicing, as she is training for her marathon and her fitness tracker, man, you should see it. Oz put it up on a screen. You can see that screen at crimeonline.com and you see her fitness tracker. It's like somebody took a magic marker and just like a little kid and just scribbled violently all over the page. That's Kelly fighting for her life. And thanks to Dr. Oz, I got to meet the runner who fought back

and lived to tell the tale, Kelly Herron, who is with me right now. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us, with me, Ashley Wilcott, judge, lawyer, advocate. You can find her at ashleywilcott.com. Karen Stark, renowned New York psychologist, joining me from Manhattan. She's at karenstark.com. And with me, my new hero, Kelly Herron. Kelly, it was such a great privilege to get to meet you at Dr. Oz. And I was just riveted on every single thing you said. In fact, in my new book, I am writing an entire chapter about women exercising and how to be safe. And researching for that has really brought back so many cases I've covered that I prosecuted as the prosecutor of women out minding their own business, exercising when they are attacked and murdered. Names that we can all remember, like Molly Tibbetts,

Karina Vetrano. There's so many. It just goes on and on and on. Kelly Herron somehow managed not to become a statistic. And I gotta, excuse me, Kelly, I'm kind of choking up here because sitting beside you on Oz's couch and looking at you, listening to you tell your story, the thought that you almost lost your life that day is very upsetting to me. And I want you to start at the beginning and tell everyone what happened and how you managed to be with me today. Thank you so much, Nancy. I was training for my first marathon in March of 2017. I was running along a public park in Seattle. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday.

Not a lot of people at the park. I was about four and a half miles in. Stopped to use the restroom. Unbeknownst to me, there was a transient level three sex offender hiding in a stall. Karen Stark, a New York psychologist. That is a recurring dream I have. I have a dream, and I don't know if it's from all the years I prosecuted cases of joggers, of women being attacked, or cases that are prosecuted that occurred in bathrooms.

But this dream, I go into a bathroom and I open up a stall and there's a dead body in there. It's a horrible dream. Horrible. And I have it over and over and over. That's exactly what happened to Kelly. She goes in and in one of the other stalls is a sex offender just waiting, probably, you know, with his feet up on the commode in the next stall so she can't see feet in there, Karen.

You know, none of this surprises me, Nancy. You were a runner. I was a runner. And I don't know if you're still running, but there have been times in Central Park where I would stop to go to the bathroom. And what a story. It's everybody's worst fear. And I think of you and the fact that you actually had a fiance who was murdered in a phone booth

in a tight space like that. Your reoccurring dream makes perfect sense to me. But Kelly, how terrific that you were able to be smart enough and alert enough to fight back that you took that course. And women need to know about this. It's so important. You know, that reminds me, when I finish her story, Karen, I want to double back with you about post-traumatic stress disorder and how that affects people. Hey, Kelly, you said something on Dr. Oz that really stuck in my mind. When you went in there, did you get a sixth sense of foreboding? I did not. However, when I was drying my hands, which is when he crept out of the stall behind me, I got a chill right up my spine, up the back of my neck.

Was that before you saw him? It was. Okay. Back to you, Karen Stark. And then I'll follow up with Ashley. Karen, I have said a million times and I write about it as well in this new book, don't be a victim fighting back against America's crime wave. That don't ignore these hunches, these feelings. They're not hunches. They're not, you know, people mock women's intuition. That's BS. It's real. And it is born of thousands of years of evolution, of things that you see, that you hear, that you smell something. You know, we have our senses, but there's also a sense that's now being studied, and it's the sense within you, inside your body, physically, a sense within your body where your body's processing a, quote, feeling or a hunch. So Karen Stark, before she sees this guy, she gets a feeling and a chill literally went up her spine. Nancy, it's so true. And I must tell you very quickly about an incident that happened to me

and a very similar type of situation where I was doing the very thing you're not supposed to do, carrying a whole bunch of groceries, walking down a dark alley to my apartment. And all of a sudden, up my spine, I got very frightened. I felt like something must be there. I just had a sense of something. And I turned around and saw a man following me. And I had no idea if he was just somebody, you know, strolling down there. But I said, as he got closer to me, stay away from me. I started screaming, just like Kelly's talking about. And he had his hand in his pocket. He said,

I want your wallet. And I just kept screaming that I lived in the building and people knew me and they were going to hear me. And eventually he ran away. Okay. So that feeling, Ashley Wilcott, trial lawyer and judge, what about, I've had so many crime victims tell me I had this feeling before anything ever happened. Nancy, you know, I've said on your show so many times, trust your gut and the feeling, the women's intuition, the intuition that men can have as well. Absolutely. I believe in that a hundred percent. And as a judge, I see cases in front of me where survivors will say, I knew something. I felt something. You can feel evil, I think. To Kelly Herron joining me, Kelly, so you're out training for a marathon.

You stop in a lady's bathroom, a public bathroom, and I want you to describe it. And you use the bathroom, you're washing your hands, and a chill goes up your spine. Then what happened? I turn around and it is my worst nightmare standing right in front of me, right out of the movies. Bad guy has a hat, has his hoodie pulled up. And my first instinct was almost to say, oh, I'm sorry. I think as oh, this isn't a woman. This is a man. This is a crazy man. And then the smell hit me. He had been living on the beach, and I knew that I was in big trouble. Guys, you've got to go to CrimeOnline.com and see the mugshot of this guy. This guy, want to look at him? And you know something is way wrong.

We're talking to Kelly Heron, the female marathon runner who innocently darts into a public bathroom, and her worst dreams come true. Kelly joins us in person now. And I want to be loud and clear in congratulating you. I'm very happy you survived. Thank you. I know the tracker don't just track your steps, they track your heart rate. What happened in addition to your steps? around 86 and I can see the moment of the attack. It went up into the 140s and then I had a huge adrenaline surge at the end and it spiked up to 160. A shocking Instagram post sending chills

and inspiration to women everywhere. It shows jogger Kelly Heron safe but battered after a brutal attack while she was out for a run. As he was holding me down, see my... It was all like that. Kelly Herron was four miles into a 10-mile run in his popular Seattle park when she stopped to use a public restroom. As I was drying my hands, um, I became aware that something was wrong.

That's when police say a 40-year-old known sex offender assaulted her. And it was a fight on the bathroom floor. All I could think was, not today. Expletive. And joining me right now, that woman, Kelly Herron, the marathon runner who fought off a brutal attack. If you go to crimeonline.com, you will see the photos of Kelly's beaten and bruised face. Her fitness tracker, looking, if you look at it on a chart, it looks like a kid just scribbled all over the page as

her pulse raced up near 200, fighting this guy off. Kelly Herron, tell me about the public bathroom you darted into during your training. It was a typical beach bathroom. It was concrete, you know, concrete and steel, as a result of which I suffered some major injuries to my body and my lumbar spine. There's a reason boxing isn't done on concrete. Was it the kind that has doors or the kind that are doorless? Yeah, there were three stalls. There were two small stalls and then a large like handicap stall. And that's where the perpetrator was hiding. Let me ask you when you would walk into the bathroom, was there a door going in?

Because, you know, sometimes you just walk in and then you turn a corner and then there's stalls, doors. But to get in the bathroom, there's not a door. There was a door on the outside. And thankfully, it had one of those latches, which ultimately allowed me to lock him in after. Which was brilliant. Okay, you dropped off talking about how you're washing your hands, you feel a chill go up your spine, and then you turn around and there is this guy who has been hiding,

I guess, perched up on that third commode in the handicap stall waiting for a woman to come in. And then you walk in. What happened then? You say, oh, I'm sorry. Then what happens? He threw me to the ground. And now, thankfully, Nancy, I had just taken a self-defense class only three weeks before this. And one of the things that we learned was to project as though you're not afraid. And that can sometimes be enough to deter your attacker if you show them that you're going to fight. So the first thing out of my mouth to him was not today, mother effer. I wanted to pretend like I wasn't afraid, even

though I was terrified. And it just turned into an all out brawl. I tried throwing elbows back at him. They weren't really landing. The fight progressed underneath the walls of the bathroom stalls. And I finally, when I saw his face, was able to claw at his eyes. And also in self-defense, we learned to hit with an open hand. You don't have to throw the perfect punch. So I just started beating him in the head with my one free arm, like my forearm.

And I kicked the lock of the stall in an attempt to kind of trap myself in one of the little stalls. But he came in right after me and got on top of me and started beating me in the face. And when I had kicked that stall door, I kicked it so hard that I jammed it into the frame so it wouldn't open or close. I'm on my back. He's on top of me. I reached my arms up behind me on the other side of that stall door

and pulled myself out from under him. Thought I was going to lose consciousness. Got one more surge of adrenaline and just the survival instinct kicked in. I jumped to my feet and was able to lunge for that front door and get out. And he never got out of that jam-stalled door. What was he trying to rob you or rape you? Rape me. He was trying to rape me. He had been pulling at my, initially he had been trying to grab at my compression pants. Thankfully, they weren't going anywhere. Kelly Heron was four miles into a 10-mile-long run there in Seattle when a man jumped her brutally in a public bathroom along her trail.

She fought back. And this experience, this life-changing experience, caused her to start Not Today Mother Effer, NTMF. And she created it. Why, Kelly? Why did you create NTMF? I thought it was really important for women to know that this was my biggest nightmare too. So I took that self-defense class and I wanted to encourage other women to prepare themselves

for a worst case scenario. As I said on Dr. Oz, your body cannot go where your mind has not been. So we have to mentally put ourselves in those worst case scenarios and think about how we would react and what we would do. I wanted to encourage other women to do that and to let them know that we don't have to be polite. It is okay to fight back and we have to fight back. Kelly, when I look at the photo of your injuries, what happened to you?

What did he do to you? He beat me badly in the face. Now you should see his mugshot, his booking shot because I did a pretty good job on him too, I must say. He beat me in the face. Now you should see his mugshot, his booking shot, because I did a pretty good job on him too, I must say. And all of that thrashing around on that cement floor, I was bruised, just black and blue on the whole left side of my body. I had a lumbar spine injury that took four months of physical therapy to work through so I could walk properly again. You know, the photo, and you can see this at CrimeOnline.com.

She's right. He got the bad end of that stick. Three years, that is how long this already convicted sex offender was sentenced to in an attempted rape at Seattle's Golden Gardens Park. Kelly Heron, with us right now, fought off her attacker, but she is still feeling the reverberations and the ripples of this attack. Nightmares, waking up screaming. What did you tell the judge during your victim's impact statement kelly i told him that the last time that i saw steiner i locked him in a concrete room with a sink and a toilet and i was there to ask him to do the same and he did he was given the maximum sentence um i told him about the impact that it had on me financially, mentally, emotionally.

I had serious PTSD. I woke up screaming every single night. It took a lot of therapy. I did EMDR therapy. And it took me a long time to feel safe again, especially, you know, running. Hi, Nancy Grace here. Have you ever Googled yourself, your neighbors, somebody at work, a crush? 57% of Americans admit to keeping an eye on their own online reputation.

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Go to truthfinder.com forward slash Nancy right away to start searching. Truthfinder.com forward slash Nancy. Truthfinder.com forward slash Nancy. Find the truth. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. It took me a long time to feel safe again, especially, you know, running. I'm strong-willed and stubborn, so I continued my training and went on to run that marathon. But even now it's taken away kind of that sense of freedom that people are looking for when they run. But it was the

most healing thing to give that impact statement and to just be able to say everything that had been, every way that my life had been impacted. Kelly Herron, who is with me right now, a marathon runner who was attacked in a bathroom, a lady's bathroom, as she is practicing, as she is training for her marathon. Kelly, I love what you told the judge. I love it. You say, and I'm quoting because I've read your victim impact statement. This moment is burning in my mind and I have flashbacks on a daily basis. I fought for my life as I was slammed into the ground, repeatedly punched in the face and saw my life flash before my eyes. Our encounter ended with me locking him, Mr. Steiner, in that concrete room with a sink and a toilet. And today, I am here to

ask you to do the same thing. That's what she told the judge. And of course, he, Steiner, the perp, breaks down crying and sobbing in front of the judge. But that certainly did not convince me that he was sorry. This was not his first time at the rodeo. He is a registered sex offender. So if he's sorry, he sure isn't repenting very much. To Karen Stark, explain why do people have flashbacks? Well, when an incident is that traumatic, Nancy, it gets stuck in your brain. And that's just how we work biologically, physically, you can't do anything about that. It keeps reoccurring. So anytime that you're in a situation that remotely reminds you of that incident, it keeps reoccurring. You have nightmares. You're very afraid to be in the world. And what Kelly mentioned, EMDR is a terrific therapy for that. EMDR is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. What it is

exactly is a type of therapy. It's fairly new. It's non-traditional. It's psychotherapy and it's growing in popularity in treating PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Research is going on, but a session can last up to 90 minutes, and your therapist moves their finger back and forth in front of your face. You follow the hand motions with your eyes, and at the same time, the therapist has you recall the disturbing event and it will include the emotions and the body sensations that went along with that event and gradually you shift your thoughts to more pleasant ones and by doing this it helps train you automatically to get off the bad, disturbing thoughts and to something pleasant. I recall distinctly Ashley Wilcott after Keith's murder, which nearly, you know, put me under.

I would get intense. Every time I would start thinking about Keith's murder, it took me about a year to do this. I try to force myself not to think about it because I would suddenly get horrible headaches when I would think about Keith's murder. I would immediately start a horrible headache. And that would keep me, I guess, I don't know how it happened, but it would keep me from thinking about it, Ashley. And so, yeah, absolutely, Nancy.

And let me just say this therapy, although new, is also common now to be used with children who are victims of severe trauma. And it's proven very effective. But I think the lesson in all of this that you just made clear with that example is even if you survive and you're not raped or you're not killed, even if you are fortunate enough to fight back like Kelly did with vengeance, there are still effects. You still have been traumatized and injured in ways that most cannot even imagine. A woman says she was able to fight off a man who was trying to rape her just weeks after she took a class in self-defense. 36-year-old Kelly Herron says she was out running in Golden Gardens Park in Washington state when she stopped to use a restroom. She says that's

where a masked man attacked her, throwing her to the ground and trying to take her pants off. And she says that's when she went into attack mode, hitting him in the face with the hard part of her hand, clawing at him and screaming at the top of her lungs. All things she learned during a two-hour self-defense class she took just a few weeks prior to this incident.

She says she was able to get away and passersby helped her lock him in the bathroom until police could come. They arrested Gary Steiner, a registered sex offender. He's been charged with attempted second degree rape and second degree assault with sexual motivation. While the bruises and scrapes Herron sustained in the attack will heal, she says she feels empowered knowing she won this fight. For InsideEdition.com, I'm Matt Ramazubano. You are hearing our friends at Inside Edition talking about the ordeal that Kelly Herron lived through. And right

now, Kelly is with us. Kelly, explain to me how you use those defense techniques you learned just three weeks before to fight this registered sex offender off. There was nobody there to help you. In the chilling words, no one could hear you scream. It was all you. Yes. The key takeaways from that class were one we've already talked about today, which is trusting your instincts. When I got that chill up my spine, I knew something was wrong. Every idea I had during that fight I went with when I locked that door, when I hit him in the head. Number two, be loud and fight hard.

Show your assailant that you're not afraid, even though you're terrified. Pretend like you're not. It's just as good as not being afraid. So that's why I was screaming and cussing at him and telling him that I was going to kill him. I wanted him to know that I was not going down easily. And then hitting with an open hand. Don't worry about having great self-defense moves or throwing the perfect punch. You can use just hard bones on soft, fleshy places. So anything that's hard on your body, hit them somewhere soft on their body. Hit them in the face, in the neck, in the head, in the groin, and just fight like a savage. Fight like a savage. I'm looking at your awesome new site

and your podcast. Tell me about that. It's called Not Today. Not Today is, it's still in process. Really, I received so much praise for what I did. And I have met so many women who I think are just as badass, more badass. I think we all have that in us. And I really want to surface other stories of women who, um, who fought back and, you know, it's, it's not, there is no winning or not winning, but it's just about being aware, being prepared, giving it all of your effort. And then after going through something traumatic, what that looks like and what we can go on to do. Some people bounce back. I believe that people can also bounce forward and that their lives, and I think in my case, you know, when you go through something this traumatic, you can go on

to do incredible things because you realize what you're made of. And we have so much more potential than we even know. We are so much stronger than we know. And sometimes it does take that near-death experience to see what we're made of. Okay, I'm not doing a plug, but I'm totally getting your t-shirt, Not Today, Mother Effer. And on it, it's so awesome. It says, make a statement without saying a word. The GPS lines from Kelly's attacks, survival, and her battle cry heard around the world. And it has the lines, like I was telling about, I saw on Dr. Oz. It's so incredible. I'm totally getting that t-shirt. Although my twins are not allowed to say the F word. Of course, Karen Stark, as you know, for so long, they would say, Mom, so-and-so said the F word. I'm like, really? What did they say?

They said, Johnny's fat. Fat was the F word, okay, in our home. And sadly, they learned the hard way what the real F word was. To Karen Stark, New York psychologist joining us, you have actually used that type of therapy on September 11 victims, right? I have, yes. I volunteered to do it and had a lot of people whom I worked with. And Nancy, it's incredible how well it works. It really does make a difference. And you learn to realize that right now at this moment, you're safe and to let

go of any kind of a traumatic experience you went through. Francine Shapiro is the person who started it when she was working with veterans. And they would come back. She didn't know what to do with them, and she just had this idea. And it's not just let go. Kelly Herron, how long did it take for your body to heal and all those bruises to go away that I'm looking at right now? The bruises lasted probably close to a month. It took four months of physical therapy for me to repair the impact to my lumbar spine. And it still does flare up.

So, and therapy, I was in therapy for four months as well, four or five months. Now, with an incredible survival story, so many are sharing. A jogger using moves she just learned in self-defense class to save her own life when she was attacked on a run. ABC's Kena Whitworth spoke with her and joins us now from Seattle with details. Good morning, Kena. Larry, good morning. Her story has a lot of women wondering what they would do if they found themselves in a similar situation. And that's what she wants, to encourage women to take control so you

can defend yourself if you have to this morning a shocking Instagram post sending chills and inspiration to women everywhere it shows 36 year old jogger Kelly Heron safe but battered after a brutal attack while she was out for a run. As he was holding me down, see my... Kelly Herron was four miles into a 10-mile run in his popular Seattle park when she stopped to use a public restroom. As I was drying my hands, I became aware that something was wrong. That's when police say this man, Gary Steiner, a 40-year-old known sex offender, assaulted her. It was a fight on the bathroom floor. All I could think was, not today. Not today, MF.

With me, Kelly Herron, my new hero, Karen Stark, New York psychologist, and Ashley Wilcott, judge and lawyer advocate. You can find Ashley Wilcott dot com. Ashley, when you hear this story, it really speaks to women all over the world. It does, Nancy. And here's what I think one of the most important parts that Kelly is making by advocating, and that is be prepared, be aware. Unfortunately, the world we live in, be prepared so that if this horrific nightmare happens to you, you know what to do. Here's my other question to you, Ashley. Why was this registered sex offender out walking free to start with? What was he doing out so he could prey on Kelly? Well, you know, that unfortunately is something that I see sentences that aren't long enough for sex offenders and they are back out. And so there are laws to protect in terms of they can't live too close to a school. Right. They can't be around kids.

But that does not prevent at all or protect the public from them being out from behind bars. He got three years behind bars, Kelly Heron. That really doesn't seem like enough for an already convicted sex offender who tried to rape somebody else in a public bathroom. That doesn't seem like enough to me, Kelly. I totally agree. And sadly, that was the maximum sentence. It was an indeterminate sentence, which meant I was going to have to go back every three years and plead to the board to extend his sentence until basically he died. We are talking about Gary Steiner,

the convicted sex offender who was walking free and attacked Kelly Heron as she went into a public bathroom. You know, Karen Stark, it's a phenomenon that I write about in my new book, Don't Be a Victim, Fighting Back Against America's Crime Wave, the number of attacks that occur in public bathrooms. That's part of why you had that dream, Nancy, and that's why it's reoccurring, because you have to be really careful. But the thing I think that women should take away from this more than anything is to trust your instincts. If you think it's not safe, if you have a feeling, if you have a hunch to really pay attention and understand that if you scream out and defend yourself, if you're not polite, if you take that risk, you can save yourself. To Kelly Heron with me right now, now an icon and founder of a new

podcast and website, Not Today MF. Kelly, what's your message today? Not only to women all around, but to girls. It's scary to think about the worst case scenario, but we cannot turn a blind eye to it. We have to keep our head on a swivel. We have to know what we would do in a worst case situation. And if you find yourself in that situation, never give up. You have to just keep going and believe in yourself and just give it everything you have and just do not stop fighting. Get out of that situation no matter what it takes. I guess you have to be ready to fight. Listen. This happened to me in the middle of the day. It was a Sunday afternoon. So you always need

to be aware of your surroundings and be prepared but not live in fear. I didn't think about you know what I was going to say when I said that it just came out of me and I meant it and through those words I was able to manifest that courage. You can't put a timeline on recovery. I was like I'm going to go outside I'm going to take care of myself. I did all those things and I still wasn't feeling it. It's not supposed to feel like homework or like chores. You know, it's supposed to be freeing. I don't think that fear should hold anyone back from doing the things that they love and running where and when and with whom they want.

The reason that people are drawn to my story is because they want to believe if they were in the situation that I was in, that they could have survived. And I believe that they could have as well. Kelly Herron, thank you so much for being with us, along with Karen Stark and Ashley Wilcott. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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