Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's a DANGEROUS Man // The Colleen Stan Story

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Colleen Stan, famously known as the "Girl in the Box," was abducted at knifepoint in May 1977 by Cameron and Janice Hooker while hitchhiking. Held captive in a remote Red Bluff, CA home for seven years, she was often confined to a coffin-like wooden box beneath a waterbed.

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. So this woman is about to get kidnapped and forced to live in a box for seven years. Now, the woman's name is Colleen, and Colleen is 20 when the story starts, and she's living in Eugene, Oregon. And Colleen has a minor problem. It's her friend's birthday, and she really wants to get to her friend's birthday party, but it's hundreds of miles away in California, and she doesn't have any way to get there. So one day in 1977, she decided.

to start hitchhiking. And it's the 70s, so it's totally normal to hitchhike around. No big deal. So she's hitchhiking, catching rides here and there, and that is when this nice looking couple pulls up. Their names are Cameron and Janice, and Cameron and Janice offer Colleen a ride. And they seem chill, they have a baby with them, so they should be fine. So she goes with them. But then, at some point, they're on the road, and things start to get weird. Because kind of suddenly Cameron pulls off the road and he goes into the back seat and boom he pulls a knife on Colleen. Then he ties her up and he places this crazy like box over her head so that she can't see what's going on. After that Cameron and Janice drive Colleen all the way to their house in Red Bluff

California. That night Cameron takes her down to the basement and he blindfolds her and he tortures her. And from here it doesn't get any better. For the next, few months, Cameron forces Colleen to live in the basement in this crate-like box that he built that sort of forces her into a sitting position. And he only lets her out to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. And in order to keep her from running away, he warns her that if she ever tries to escape, there is a super secret underground organization called The Company that buys and sells slaves and that they will hunt her down and they will find her and they will torture her and her family. And Cameron's wife Janice totally backs this up. She's like, yeah, it's true. I was a slave

once and I tried to escape and they caught me and punished me. So Colleen believes this, that there's this evil underground company out there and she chooses not to try and escape. And so now that Cameron has her believing him, he forces Colleen to sign this crazy slave contract where she basically pledges her soul to him, which is just weird. And to make it worse, around this time, Cameron also starts essay Colleen. So this is absolute hell for her. Now at some point during all this, Cameron builds her a new box to live in, and it's about the size of a coffin, and it remains underneath his and Janice's waterbed. So for 22 hours out of every day, Colleen is locked in this coffin-like box underneath Cameron and Janice's waterbed where they sleep every night. And they only let her out to eat and go to

the bathroom. Then they throw her back in there. So all this torture and abuse keeps going. And a few years pass. And it's now 1979. And it's still going on. She's still living at the house with Cameron and Janice. She's still locked up in this coffin-like box most of the day. She's still being essayed and tortured. But over time, Cameron has started to be. granting her more and more small freedoms, like he allows her to come out of the box to perform various household chores for them. They allow her out to cook for them, to clean the house,

they allow her out to babysit Cameron and Janice's kids, because, yes, of course, Cameron and Janice have two daughters who also live in the house during this time. And they don't know Colleen is a slave. They're told that she is a live-in babysitter. Anyway, Colleen is also allowed to go jogging a little for exercise. And of course, Colleen doesn't try to escape because she believes this mysterious The Company will come for her and her family if she does.

And so more time goes by, and it's now 1981. And Cameron agrees to allow Colleen to visit some of her family who live in Riverside, California. So they go to Riverside where her family is staying, and Cameron goes with her. He's not about to allow her to go off on her own. I mean, she might try and escape. So the two of them go and go. they meet her family at their place. And to explain why Cameron is there with her, they pretend he and Colleen are a couple, dating.

And Colleen desperately wants to alert her family about everything that's been going on, but she still believes this underground slave-owning organization, the company, is still out there. So she doesn't say anything, and when the visit is over, she returns back to Cameron's place with him and she goes back to live in her little coffin-like, box under the waterbed. And more time goes by, and it's now 1984. And so Colleen has been held captive for seven years total at this point. And during this time, it seems like maybe Cameron is either running out of money or he's saving up for something, because he allows Colleen to get a part-time job outside of the home. So suddenly, she's working as a maid at a nearby hotel. And

he doesn't let her keep the money she makes. No, no, he forces her to sign all of her paychecks over to him. And around this time, he starts building a pit underneath his storage shed out back. And this pit, it's like shallow and the walls are lined with concrete cinder blocks. Because his plan is to move Colleen's coffin-like box that she lives in and put it in this pit underneath the shed. And Colleen will now live there most of the day. He also plans to kidnap even more women and make them his slaves,

and keep them all in coffin-sized boxes in that pit. So eventually he informs his wife Janice of this plan, and she gets pissed. I mean, the dude already has one slave he essays all the time. Now he's going to get more, and the house is going to be full of him? For some reason, this becomes her breaking point. But she doesn't want to leave.

I guess Cameron is just very controlling with her, too. Instead, she starts to be kind of nice to Colleen, like she starts warming up to her, and Janice starts taking Colleen to church with her, and they begin to bond a little bit as they hang out. And at one point, Janice feels guilty for all the stuff she and Cameron have done. So she ends up meeting with her pastor, and she tells him what's been going on for the last seven years. And the pastor straight up tells her, like, she needs to leave her crazy-ass husband and help Colleen escape. So now, Janice, who has completely changed, is determined to help Colleen.

Colleen get free. So she goes over to the hotel where Colleen works, and she drops a bomb on her. She confesses to her that the company, that evil organization, actually doesn't exist. It never existed. And if Colleen were to just run away, there wouldn't be this evil legion of slave owners trying to chase her down. That's ridiculous. But strangely, she also begs Colleen not to go to the police, because she believed,

that she can fix Cameron and rehabilitate him so that he doesn't kidnap or essay any more women. Regardless, Colleen immediately runs away and flees and she catches a bus and she goes back to be with her family in Riverside, but she doesn't go to the police. Meanwhile, Janice doesn't leave her husband Cameron or report him to the police either. Like I said, she's hoping she can change him. And after about three months, she finally realizes that she actually has to be. actually can't change him because he's a psychopath and she starts getting worried that he's going to target more women or worse he'll target their daughters. So she finally goes and reports him to the

police. And so bam, the police come and they arrest Cameron. And I don't have his mugshot, but here is a picture of him in handcuffs. And ultimately Cameron goes to trial and he's found guilty and he gets sentenced to 104 years in prison while Janice does take a plea deal and she gets no prison time in exchange for testifying against her husband.