Unseen - The Boy in the Deer Box | The Case of Paul Martin Andrews | UNSEEN

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

"What happened in that box?" January 11th 1973, on his way to buy milk for his siblings, 13 year old Paul Martin Andrews doesn’t notice a blue van is following him. Sitting in it is Richard Ausley, a dangerous outlaw on the run, and as Richard usually does, he simply asks Paul for help and offers him a ride. His story would end up becoming infamously known as “The Boy in the Box”, and 30 years later, Paul speaks up about it for the first time, as his captor begs for freedom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My life is over. He's sort of that. I will be his victim for the rest of my wife or his. This man is not a victim. He has been convicted of multiple charges of assault and kidnapping, and he has been locked up for 30 years. And in three seconds, he is about to speak directly to his real victim. What can I do, man?

Just tell me, what do you want? If you want me to spend the rest of my life in here, fine. If you want me to get out and be a personal slave for the rest of my life, Hey, I'll do that. If you want me to lick your shoes every night, I'll do that. Just tell me what you want, man. Did something happen in that box? I'm not going to answer them.

13-year-old Paul Martin Andrews kidnapped, assaulted, and trapped inside a box in the ground for eight days. But he escaped, and when he got out, he did everything in his power to ensure Richard Osley would never terrorize another little boy again. But unfortunately, that would be a lot harder than he thought. This man is a monster. This man cannot be released. In the small town of Portsmouth, Virginia, 13-year-old Paul Martin Andrews has recently moved to the area with his family, including his younger sister, Jennifer. January 11, 1973. It's a snowy day, and Martin walks to a local convenience store just two blocks away from his home to buy some milk for him and his sister. But Jennifer starts to worry when Martin doesn't return home. It's my fault. I sent him out for milk. It was the longest night of my childhood thinking,

that he wasn't going to combat. With no sign of Martin, his family calls the police. Police begin their search. A local fireman searches for Martin using a helicopter, but no trace of him is found. January 12th, a day passes, with still no leads. Martin's family anxiously awaits as one day turns into two. Then three, they fear the worst has happened, that Martin has died. Worrying he might have drowned, the Coast Guard drags a local waterway,

looking for Martin's body, but nothing comes up. One full week has passed since Martin disappeared. are starting to lose hope. Eight days of torture for your family. January 19th, 1973, there is a glimmer of hope. Deep in the woods, hunters come up a hill and discover a door in the ground. They open it and find little Martin chained inside the box. Martin's mother is at work when she gets the call.

She doesn't know if he is dead or alive. He has just arrived at the hospital with police. Martin is badly beaten, with two black eyes and a broken nose, but he's alive. Martin and his family are finally reunited, but his abductor is still on the loose, nowhere to be found. The police bring Martin's suspect photos, and he quickly identifies his abductor, Richard Osley. The police look into Osley and learn that he is one of Virginia's most notorious child molesters. He's been convicted of kidnapping and sexual assaulting minors many times before. When Buck Miller was 14 years old, he was befriended and then sexually assaulted by Richard Osley.

The very same day Osley kidnapped Martin. He skipped his court appearance for abducting Buck. He was out on bail for raping another child and was forced to live with his father, who lived just down the street from where my mother lives. As police and FBI scrambled to find Osley before he takes another victim, Martin returns home.

But his sister sees that his nightmare isn't over yet. When I saw his face, turned to look at me, and that's when the nightmare came true. his office were empty. He wasn't there. My strong older brother is somebody else.

The search for Osley extends into neighboring North Carolina until finally, on the fourth day of the search, at 2.30 a.m. The FBI gets a phone call from Osley's father. Osley has returned home. The FBI moved quickly, and Osley is arrested on September 27, 1973. 13-year-old Martin is scheduled to testify

against his abductor in court. The trial will be the first time Martin speaks about what happened to him in the box. The prosecution is worried about Martin having to relive the abuse. One of my biggest concerns was that he was just a young fellow 13 years of age and had been horribly abused by Osley. And to have to put him on the stand to testify as to what happened to him, concern me greatly. I remember seeing Richard Osley over to the side. I remember him staring at me.

His eyes never really left me. Despite Osley's eyes watching him the entire time, Martin tells the police what happened to him the day of his abduction. My story starts on a snow day. I decided to walk up to the convenience store. While walking, a blue minivan pulls up next to him. Richard Osley rolls down the window. He rolled down his window and he said,

I'm in trouble. I need help. I have to move some furniture from my room. brother and I can't do it by myself. Could you help me? I'll give you a few dollars. Not knowing that there is a predator lurking in his small community, Martin agrees. They drive off together. Osley drives Martin 20 miles from his home into a forest. My concern began to grow about how long this was going to take. I started asking him, I said, you know, where are we going? He kept saying, oh, you know, no more, he's not much further shifts up the road. Osley stops the van in the middle of the snow-covered woods and gets out.

He tells Martin they need to take some supplies to his brother's deer box. So he goes back to the van and I see him sort of rumbling around and he pulled out big sort of butcher nightland and then closed his jacket around it. At that moment, every bell and whistle was going off in my head and yet continued to follow him down. This path would come upon a clearing. And he points over these mounds of Dirk, and he says, his deer box is over there. There was a piece of metal, like a pan, and then he grabbed a hold of it, and he lifted it up.

Osley reveals a box hidden in the ground. Just from the opening, you can see some sleeping bags, and there's a blue plastic sheet that covered the floor. Osley jumps down into the box and tells Martin to do the same. So I lowered myself into the box, and he said, I've got bad news. for you. You've just been kidnapped. My blood ran cold. I was consumed with this instinct to flee and get out of there. I started to fight to get out, and then he grabbed me. I'm fighting. My thought was about getting to hold my hands onto that knife, and I started reaching for it. We're wrestling. As I'm reaching for that knife, you know, he hits me in the face. At that point, I stopped fighting.

He had me under control. Osley binds Martin's hands and feet and attaches a chain around his ankle, making sure he can't escape. What happens next may be disturbing to some people. Almost immediately, he had any strip out of my clothes. He told me, said, what's going to happen? You're not going to like. He assaulted me. Always brutal, always at the point of that knife, always with the threat of death,

God didn't cooperate. The knife has been the one thing that haunts me more than anything. It was what he used to intimidate me the entire time. It was what kept me from running. Out of respect for Martin, we won't be covering the assault past this point, but note that Osley stays with Martin in the box, keeping him hostage for days, until Martin sees something change in Osley. He was working himself up to kill me, and I don't think he could.

He never saw the end game. I don't think he planned for it. And now he's stuck. He's stuck with this boy. It's going to cost him even more years in prison. Unable to bring himself to kill Martin just yet. Oslie viciously attacks him. And just as I thought he was leaving, he gets over top of me, kneeling, looking me in the face, and then began to beat me with his fist back and forth, punching me, punching me, yelling at me. I came away with it with two black eyes, cracked tooth, my nose was broken. I was hurting very bad. Martin knows his time is running out. As he lays in the box at night, he thinks about what his mother is going through. What was going through my mother's mind? Would she be

worried? Would she be crying? I think that bothered me more than anything that my mother would be crying about me, that I was gone, and never to know what happened to me. It wasn't so much about going home. It was staying alive. January 19, 1973, the eighth day of Martin's captivity, Osley makes a mistake that will change the course of this case forever.

He leaves Martin alone in the box. 8 a.m. for the first time, Martin hears something outside. As I sat there hoping that my mom would come soon to pick me up, I heard the sound of gear shifting. And I said, this got to be my mom. My leg chained behind me. I could just stretch out enough that I could open up the top of the box and just get the top of my head out. And I saw it wasn't my mom, but these two trucks coming through the woods. I started screaming at them. I screamed and I hollered and I said,

please stop, please stop them. They walked over to where I was at and looked in the hole and I said, I've been kidnapped. Hunters find Martin beaten and chained inside the box. For one of the hunters, the sight of 13-year-old Martin is too much to handle and he has to step away.

The police are called. The police arrived. They decided to take pictures while I was still chained in the box. Those pictures show the brutality of what goes on there. The police free Martin, put him in a patrol car and rush him to the hospital where he's reunited with his mother.

Because of Martin's testimony, Osley is sentenced to more than 40 years in prison, but Osley could be released after serving his time. He has the possibility of getting out and hurting another child. After bravely coming forward, Martin thinks he is finally done with his nightmare. But the circumstances of his abduction are so shocking

that a professional psychiatrist calls Martin, quote, a liar, and told my parents that I should be institutionalized. He didn't believe my story. The psychiatrist tells his parents that he shouldn't talk about his experience. My parents were told, though, that if I wasn't allowed to speak about it, that I would forget about it, that it would just go away. And what happened over time, though, was that everyone forgot about it, everyone except for me. Martin never talks about what happened with anyone again and falls into a depression.

It was difficult, still keeping my secret all the time. My spouse never knew those things. I never spoke to him about them. Friends I had known for years never knew that. that part of my life. While the outside looked great, the inside was being torn apart. June 2002, 30 years later, Martin thinks he has finally moved on when he receives a call he thought he'd never get.

I was at my job and the phone rings and it's my mom. She told me that Richard Osley's about to be released. To hear that this man, this man who had done such horrible things to be released, to hear that this man who had done such horrible things to me, this man that I thought would be in prison for the rest of his life, that I would never have to deal with him was now being released. I was horrified. I was horrified. Martin doesn't know what to do until he discovers that Osley is trying to convince everyone

he's a changed man in order to be released. Osley's been serving the last 30 years in prison for kidnapping Martin Andrews. He says every day behind this barbed wire he fights the temptation, warns others about the dangers of sexual predators. I tried to educate them about people like me. I look at that picture of Marty, and I asked myself, how in the hell could I have done that? I would never hurt another child.

Although he hasn't spoken about what Oslet did to him in 30 years, Martin knows he has to come forward to ensure another child is never hurt by him again. For 30 years, I had kept silent about, what had happened to me. It had been a secret. I knew that if Richard Osley was ever released, that it would mean that another child would have to suffer through what I did. This man is a monster. This man cannot be released. And so I stepped out. So I started emailing every one of the delegates and the senators, Attorney General and the parole board. But Osley fights back.

What can I do, man? Just tell me what do you want? If you want me to spend the rest of my life in here Fine. If you want me to get out and be a personal slave for the rest of my life, I'll do that if you want me to lick your shoes every night. I'll do that Just tell me what you want man. My life is over. He saw the back. I will be his victim for the rest of my life or his This thing about eight days of beating the rape, that's a bunch of bull. He knows him. He lied to me to get me in there. He lied to get me into that box. And once I was in there, he was not letting me go.

What can I ask him? All I can ask is that the state makes sure that he never does it to another child. By speaking out, Martin inspires Buck Miller, another of Osley's victims, to come forward. I think he needs to remain in custody. Martin is able to track down another victim of Osley's, Gary founds, and discovers he never came forward to police when Osley assaulted him in 1972 out of shame. Being attacked and assaulted violently, and the man's already proved he's a danger to society. Inspired by Martin, Gary speaks out after 30 years and files charges against Osley, forcing

him to serve more time in prison. Two years later, in January 2004, Osley suddenly dies in prison. Although Osley tried to play the victim, Martin came out on top, showing that he is a true survivor. Martin is no longer a 13-year-old boy trapped inside a box with hollow eyes. He got married, became a loving husband, and is closer to his family now after speaking out. It's like having him back. We're closer now than we have been in 30 years.

Today, he is an advocate for survivors. He dedicated himself to help pass laws to protect victims of sexual violence. He understands that in order to heal your pain, you have to talk about it. If there's anything that I could say to children who are being abused or who have been abused, to adults who are abused as children, is that as long as you keep it to yourself, they get away with what they've done. You've done nothing wrong, that you have nothing to be ashamed of. And you can take hope that there can be a life, that you can live without that fear. You can live without that pain.