15 Survivor Accounts of Gruesome Crimes
Crime survivors come from all walks of life. An affluent white businessman
could be assaulted. An infant could be shaken. A teacher could be attacked by a
student. The only thing that binds them all is that they were victimized, and
they survived it.
1) Elizabeth Smart
On June 5, 2002, Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her
home in Salt Lake City, only fourteen years old at the time. She was held
captive for nine months before finally being found on March 12, 2003, in Sandy,
Utah. Her abductors, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, though initially
found incompetent to stand trial, were eventually convicted of this crime,
Barzee in 2009 and Mitchell in 2010.
During the trial, Smart testified to the fact that Brian Mitchell had entered
her bedroom and “placed his hand on my chest and then put the knife up to my
neck. He told me to get up quietly, and if I didn't then he would kill me and my
family. He was whispering, but it was still loud enough it could wake someone.
He was dressed in sweats, sweatshirt, stocking cap, tennis shoes.”
Smart also gave several interviews about her experience. One of these was
with Katie Couric on a special segment for Dateline NBC, for which her parents
were also present. She mentioned being repeatedly told she was “evil” and
“wicked” by the people who had kidnapped her, and that for the many months she
was in captivity, how she had often felt cold and hungry. She did also talk
about, somewhat surprisingly, still feeling like herself after the ordeal, and
how she felt about being reunited with her family. She was also adamant that
what she experienced would not be something to define her, and that she would
continue to live her life to the fullest.
2) Holly Dunn
In 1997, on Labor Day Weekend, Holly Dunn and her boyfriend
were accosted by a man carrying an ice pick. The man, later identified as Angel Resendiz or, as he was also known, “the Railroad Killer,” killed her boyfriend
by smashing a rock into his skull. He then proceeded to rape and torture her,
hitting her with a wooden board, which broke her jaw and eye socket.
Holly Dunn:
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Angel Resendiz:
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She recounted, “I was screaming in my head. Then I was unconscious—I don't
know how long. I just remember appearing in someone's front yard,” according to
People.com.
The attack left her vulnerable, though she tried to get right back into the
swing of things, picking up with school right where she left off. Unfortunately,
as the first anniversary of her attack grew closer, she began having panic
attacks and became unable to keep up with her grades. Despite her ordeal, she
wanted to live her life her own way, which included testifying at Resendiz’s
trial, facing him for the first time after what had happened to her and her
boyfriend. She mentioned, “I got this close to fainting. But it was my time to
take back control.”
Along with volunteering at rape-crisis hotlines and traveling to speak about
her experiences on behalf of RAINN, Holly also opened a nonprofit called Holly’s
House, which sought to provide a neutral, non-traumatic place for police to
interview victims after they have been assaulted. She spoke on how it felt like
fulfilling her purpose, and that she was finally “doing what I’m supposed to
do.”
3) Elisabeth Fritzl
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Elisabeth Fritzl and her Father:
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In April of 2008, Elisabeth Fritzl came forward, telling
police in Amstetten, Austria, about how she had been held prisoner in a hidden
part of the basement by her father, Josef Fritzl, and how he had physically and
sexually assaulted her over the course of 24 years. She also explained how this
resulted in seven children, four of which were also held captive, like
Elisabeth.
On April 26, 2008, Elisabeth was released to the hospital where her daughter
was being treated for kidney failure. After getting assurances that she would
not have to see her father ever again, she revealed to police what had happened
to her in her 24 years of being held prisoner. She explained that, at first, she
yelled for help, banging on the walls and ceiling. She also told them how he
visited her every day, and if she refused to have sex, she said, her father
would harm her children. “When he went away we led our own lives. When he was
down here it was all silence. When he came down to the cellar, we just tried to
survive.” As the kids aged, she also mentioned how her father did not want to
let them “have their own will,” she reported.
Shortly after midnight on April 27, Josef Fritzl was arrested, and on April
28, he confessed to the crimes he had been charged with, which included false
imprisonment, manslaughter, rape, and incest.
4) Amy Lewis
Amy Lewis, a resident of Astoria, Oregon, met Mark Daniel Beebout in Godfather’s Books, where he often met people and spent time. He
seemed charming, and he was friends with her mother. He worked at the Warrenton
Mini Mart and enjoyed a nightly Jameson at the local bars. Lewis went into
Godfather’s Books one day to pick up her mother, and there, she met Beebout.
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Mark Daniel Beebout & Amy Lewis:
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In a DailyAstorian.com article, Amy says, “He was very charming, very
talkative, a very accomplished liar. When I met him, I honestly thought he had
been here forever. He knew all the names to drop.” As she would soon learn,
though, just because Beebout claimed to know a lot of Astorians didn’t speak for
his past. Amy admits, “We were together for 14 months and I couldn’t possibly
put together a timeline for him.”
There was, as Amy would learn, a reason for that. But before she found out
the reason, her relationship with Beebout mutated. He quit his job and became
homeless, which left Amy paying the bills. Then Beebout convinced her to move to
Portland so she could go back to school. He isolated her by taking her from her
children. He began physically abusing her, and, once they moved back to the
Astoria area, he often threatened to hurt her mother, her children, or the dog.
In the DailyAstorian.com article, she admits, “I did the typical leaving at
least five times before I finally had him arrested because,” she paused, noting
how difficult it was to talk about, “he had raped me.”
And Amy, as it turned out, was the lucky one.
On July 19, 2012, a few months after she last saw Beebout, he was arrested
for the murder of Nikayla Jaedon Powell. A month later, he was also charged in
the death of Mayra Sophia Cruz Rodriguez. Powell was 32; Rodriguez was just 15.
5) Leslie Wagner Wilson and the Other Survivors of the Jonestown Massacre
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Photo from the Jonestown Massacre:
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Leslie Wagner Wilson had been indoctrinated into the beliefs and ways of
thinking of the People’s Temple from the time she was 13. As of when she and the
other survivors escaped Jonestown, Guyana, that meant seven years of thinking in
those patterns and believing everything Jim Jones said. She had to leave behind
nine members of her family, all of whom drank the Flavor Aid laced with Valium, Phenergan, chloral hydrate, and cyanide. When she escaped, she took her
three-year-old son, strapped to her back, through thirty miles of Guyanese
jungle.
In an interview with ABC News, Leslie said, “I was so scared. We exchanged
phone numbers in case we died. I was prepared to die. I never thought I would
see my 21st birthday.” In 2009, she published a book about what it was like when
she got back to the United States. To put it simply, she said, “I went through
hell.” About the church, Leslie says, “It was a cult, total mind control. The
church would humiliate you and take away any ego you had. Everything centered on
the cause.”
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Leslie Wagner Wilson:
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Mike Touchette, another survivor, was one of the first six to go to the site
in the Guyanese jungle. As a healthy, 21-year-old man, he “did things I never
imagined I would do. I cleared trees, I made the roads that make up Jonestown, I
helped build housing.” At that point, Mike had been part of the movement for 11
years; his parents and grandparents joined when he was 10. Mike added, “I loved
Jonestown. I miss it. Other than the birth of my children and grandchildren,
Jonestown was the greatest time in my life.” And yet he ran from the greatest
time in his life so that he might live; he lost five family members in the mass
suicide. “When I found out what happened, it was tragic to lose close family
like that. But when I when I learned that Jonestown would never be what it was
to me—that was hard.”
Laura Kohl joined the People’s Temple after she graduated college and moved
to San Francisco to be closer to her sister. She caught Jim Jones’ personal
attention due to how hard she worked and her enthusiasm; he asked her to go to
Guyana and manage the shipments of bread, cheese, and rice from Georgetown to
Jonestown. For the first ten months, Laura said, Jonestown was a “thriving,
bustling community.” She worked on the agricultural crew, managing crops and
growing produce, during the day; at night, she taught Spanish and typed in the
law office. She noticed when Jones grew more ill. “There was no forum for us to
do any kind of questioning on decisions Jim made,” Laura said. “He was in
charge. It was either Jim or his mistresses or secretaries who made decisions.”
Now, she has regrets: “I regret not stopping it, not stepping forward, not
understanding what was going on with Jim.”
6) Jaycee Lee Dugard
At the age of eleven, Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped
from the street as she walked to her school bus stop. Phillip Craig Garrido, a
convicted sex offender, and his wife, Nancy Garrido, held Jaycee in a tent
complex in their backyard for more than eighteen years. During that time, Jaycee
gave birth to two daughters. Garrido took her daughters with him when he visited
the UC Berkeley campus. Their behavior led to the investigation that caused
Garrido to bring the girls and Jaycee, along with his wife, to a parole office.
Garrido referred to Jaycee as “Allissa.” Even when separated from him, Jaycee
did not identify herself until Garrido admitted to a police sergeant that he had
kidnapped and raped her.
Nancy Garrido & Phillip Craig Garrido:
After three women escaped years of captivity in Cleveland, Jaycee issued a
statement that clearly applied as much to herself when she was finally free of
Garrido as it does to the three women in Cleveland. She said, “These individuals
need the opportunity to heal and connect back into the world. This isn’t who
they are. It is only what happened to them.”
When asked how she stayed sane, Jaycee laughed and admitted, “I don’t know.”
After a moment, she continued, “I was still alive. There was still hope. Still
hope.”
She said of when her daughters were born, “I felt like I wasn’t alone
anymore. I had somebody that was mine. I wasn’t alone.” That, it seems, may have
been one of the biggest things that kept Jaycee going.
7) Carol DaRonch
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Carol DaRonch:
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On a November evening in Murray, Utah, a pretty, dark-haired
young woman was approached by a tall, good-looking man who identified himself as
a police officer, Officer Roseland. He asked if her license plate was a
particular sequence and, when she said yes, told her someone had tried to break
into her car and asked her to come with him to the station to file a complaint.
The young woman, Carol DaRonch, complied, but soon pointed out the police
officer that he wasn’t driving on a road that led to the station. He pulled over
and attempted to handcuff her, but she struggled. In the struggle, he fastened
both cuffs to the same wrist. DaRonch managed to open the door and escape,
running toward another car. Later, she learned she had escaped from Ted Bundy.
In a video of her posted to YouTube, she said that, when she heard about
Debbie Kent’s abduction, “I just knew it was the same person. That this person
immediately drove away from me and had to find another victim. That was probably
my first reaction. I was… very lucky. In pictures, [Bundy had] gained weight or
lost weight, but the eyes were the same. Just… cold, no expression to them, no
feeling to them.”
8) Mrs. Wisken
 A man named Samuel Herbert Dougal spent twenty years in the
English army, reaching the rank of sergeant. When he was found out as a forger,
he lost his position and went to prison. Sometime after he was released, he met
Miss Camille Cecile Holland, who fell in love with him. As Mr. and Mrs. Dougal,
they went to live at Moat Farm in Essex. Camille vanished; her remains wouldn’t
be found for four years. Dougal was hanged for her murder in 1903. Before Dougal
and Camille went to live at Moat Farm, they stayed with Mrs. Wisken, a widow who
lived at Saffron Walden. Mrs. Walden’s thoughts about the murder can be found in
the book "Survivor’s Tales of Famous Crimes."
Mrs. Wisken said of Dougal and Camille, “I had not the slightest suspicion
that there was anything amiss all the time—three months they were with me—and,
of course, I had not the remotest idea that they were not married.”
Of Dougal himself, she said, “ He was remarkably pleasant spoken, and often
enough he would come down in the cold winter mornings and warm his hands at the
fire there and chat away as I did my duties; and often enough, too, he would go
to the window and talk to a canary which I had in a cage at the time.” In other
words, Dougal was one of the most frightening of killers: everything about him
seemed kind and normal, and he killed someone who loved him.
9) Tim Crane and Stacy Fesler
 Tim Crane and Stacy Fesler, who were dating at
the time, were out running errands on April 21, 2012. When they got back home,
it was to something they wouldn’t have ever expected to have happen right in
front of their own home. Before they reached the front door, a white Nissan
stopped, and the two men inside asked for help. According to Fesler, “The
passenger rolled down his window, asked him for directions, so he went toward
the car.” Nothing could seem more normal.
That is, until a few seconds later. The men in the Nissan jumped out. Fesler
threw her purse into the bushes, and that was when the driver took out a weapon.
“He pulled the gun out and aimed it at my head,” she said, “and I said,
‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’”
Fortunately for Fesler, the driver was either a terrible shot or missing
intentionally. He fired three times. All three bullets missed her. The robbers
took advantage of Fesler and Crane’s shock to take Fesler’s purse out of the
bushes and demand Crane’s cell phone, and then they drove off.
“I had a real hard time eating, sleeping,” Fesler said. “I just want safety.”
10) The anonymous woman behind crimesurvivor.blogspot.com
The 34-year-old
woman who started crimesurvivor.blogspot.com in April of 2007 chose to remain
anonymous, but she didn’t keep the crimes committed against her that way. In the
second post on the blog, she began to tell her story in detail. Even before she
was victimized as a child, she felt isolated; her hair was cut so short because
of a lice infestation over the summer that she was mistaken as a boy; her family
was broke; her mother didn’t live with the family, but instead was hospitalized
for mental illness. Looking back, she believes the isolation made her vulnerable
to grooming and victimization. And one man picked up on that and sexually
assaulted her when she was nine years old.
In her first post, she said that telling her story was powerful. Every time
she tells it, she feels a little more whole. She started the blog after her
friend confided that she, too, had been sexually abused as a child—and her
friend had never told anyone before. It reminded the blog owner of how it felt
to tell her story of abuse for the first time, and so she decided to create a
site where she could help others tell their story without being as vulnerable.
The blog ran from 2007 to 2011; it seems to have been a success.
11) Jennifer Schuett
At the age of eight, Jennifer Schuett was kidnapped,
raped, and nearly killed. She refused to forget her attacker’s face, even when
it came to her in nightmares most nights for almost 20 years. But the fact that
she refused to forget meant that her attacker faced justice. He was arrested
when Jennifer was 27 and committed suicide in his cell rather than face a jury.
Last year, an article about Jennifer sharing her story at the Crimes Against
Children Conference ran in the Dallas News. Jennifer spoke to three thousand law
enforcement officers, children’s advocates, and attorneys, all of whom were at
the conference to learn more about preventing, prosecuting and treating child
abuse.
Jennifer’s kidnapper took her out of her bedroom. He told her he was an
undercover police officer and that they were waiting in his car at the
elementary school for her mom to pick her up. Then he laid her across the front
seat and began to molest her. Jennifer did everything right. She asked where his
gun was. She asked where his badge was. That didn’t stop her kidnapper from
raping her. It didn’t stop him from slitting her throat from ear to ear. When he
left her to die in the woods, Jennifer played dead until she couldn’t see him
anymore. Then she tried to scream, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t run, either.
Instead, she laid in the woods for roughly 14 hours. Children playing tag found
her. She thinks she survived because fire ant bites allowed the blood from her
neck to clot.
Doctors told her she wouldn’t speak again. They told her she wouldn’t be able
to have children.
Last year, Jennifer spoke to three thousand protectors of children, and she
was pregnant when she gave her speech.
12) Violette Mutegwamaso
When civil war ripped this Rwandan woman's country apart in 1994, Violette was alone with her children. Her husband had a job in a village three
hours away, where he could earn better pay, and the Hutu vs. Tutsi violence kept
getting nearer. Violette carried her two children in her arms and fled to the
church. She thought it would be a sanctuary. Instead, she walked straight into
the violence.
A militia was attacking the church. They were shooting unarmed people. To
survive, Violette fell to the floor and smeared blood on herself and her
children. They hid among corpses and played dead for a week, until the Rwandan
army came to liberate the area.
Violette’s husband was murdered. She had to raise a five-year-old son and
four-year-old daughter on her own. Because so many children no longer had
parents, she also took in an orphan. And she did her best to keep going.
13) Kim Young Soon
 Kim Young Soon’s only crime was her friendship with Sung
Hye-rim. Before she was sent to the Yodeok Prison Camp, she was a celebrated
dancer in North Korea. But Kim Jong Il sent her to Yodeok because she knew about
his relationship with Sung. As she put it in her book, "I Was Sung Hye-rim’s
Friend," “Kim Jong Il, a would-be No. 1 leader of the republic, was in a
relationship with a (once) married woman would be a huge scandal, and Kim Jong
Il tried to keep the highest security.” Evidently, that included sending his
consort’s friends to prison.
An article on
PolicyMic.com discussed Kim Young Soon’s ordeal. Her entire
family was sentenced to imprisonment in Yodeok. Another prisoner informed on her
husband for an alleged crime; her husband was taken to the total-control zone of
the prison. Her entire family—parents, four children, and husband—died inside
Yodeok. She had no idea of what her crime was, if she’d even committed one. She
wouldn’t be told until 10 years after she was released. While in Yodeok, she
watched mothers try desperately to feed their emaciated children, resorting to
roasted rat fetuses to try to get calories into them. Political prisoners would
eat whatever they could get their hands on. On multiple occasions, the entire
camp was forced to watch executions of prisoners who tried to escape. Even after
she was released, she was still a prisoner of the North Korean political system,
but at least she no longer had to eat rat fetuses.
14) Margaret E. Smith
On March 18, 2013, Margaret E. Smith, an 89-year-old woman, gave two teenage
girls a ride from a convenience store. Those same teens forced her into her
trunk and drove around for nearly two days without letting her out. They finally
dropped her at a cemetery. On May 1, 2013, Margaret was honored at the Delaware
Victims’ Rights Task Force’s 22nd Annual Tribute to Crime Victims and Survivors. Four teenagers have
been charged as adults in the carjacking.
15) Evan Todd
Evan Todd survived the Columbine school shooting. And on Feb.
19, 2013, he offered a point-by-point analysis and rejection of the gun control
policies proposed after the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Evan Todd:
Evan Todd has done perhaps the most important thing a survivor can do: he has
looked what happened in the face and told it that it is not changing his
thoughts and opinions solely because he was directly affected. No matter what
any other person thinks about Evan’s position on gun control, or about any
position that a survivor takes after living through a horrific ordeal, having
the courage to make something positive out of devastating circumstances is
something to admire.
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