00:05In June of 2002, I had spent the night with a friend and we were getting ready to go out for the day.
00:12Her mom asked us to water the plants before we left, so I volunteered to do that.
00:17So I was outside when a car pulled into the driveway that I didn't recognize and a man got out.
00:23He had some pamphlets that he was giving out and wanted to know if my parents were home.
00:27I told him it was my friend's house, but her mom wasn't home.
00:31He said, okay, I'll just give these to you.
00:33And at the same time that he was handing them to me with one hand, he put it to the side of my neck with his other hand and he said, you're going to come with me.
00:41So I did.
00:42So he walked me around to the driver's side of his car and told me to get into the back seat.
00:47When I looked into the back seat, I saw a plastic, a large plastic storage container and he said, get in the container.
00:55Pretty much immediately from the time they pressed to the side of my neck, I knew that I was going to have to escape this person in some way, shape or form.
01:07And this supernatural calm came over me.
01:10He eventually pulled over, picked up the container with me in it and carried it a short way into his apartment.
01:17For the entire 18 hours that I was with him, I was with multiple times, but in the times in between, he would talk to me like he would talk to anyone.
01:30Then there were other times when he would say things like, let's watch the news and see if you're on there and let's see if anyone misses you.
01:38So he told me that when he was, quote, done with me, he was going to let me go somewhere where I wouldn't know where I was.
01:45And it was my choice if I wanted to go to law enforcement and always be known as the girl who was.
01:50For the most part, I wasn't restrained the entire time I was there.
01:54I was moving around, but I was very much under his control.
01:59At the end of the day, I was restrained for bed.
02:03So my captor put handcuffs on both of my wrists.
02:07They were connected with a quick link that was around the handcuffs and it was tied to a rope that was tied to kind of the frame of the bed.
02:15I had a restraint on my left leg that was tied to the foot of the bed and he laid down next to me and he went to sleep.
02:21When I woke up early the next morning and he was still asleep, I realized that this was my moment.
02:29I knew the first thing that I had to do was get my hands free.
02:33So I tried to use my hands to kind of reach the screw and unscrew the quick link and I wasn't able to do that.
02:41So I had to actually use my teeth.
02:43I was able to lift the handcuffs out of the quick link.
02:46Then I had to slide my hands down to my leg and disconnect the leg restraint there from the bed.
02:52I slid out of the bed, went to the door, which was more or less barricaded with just things.
03:00It's a fairly small apartment.
03:04He's essentially on the other side of the wall from the front door.
03:07Eventually, I'm able to move the things out of the way, unlock the door, and I just threw it open and I ran.
03:13And that was probably the most terrifying moment because he was asleep in a bed that was next to a window that looked out on his front door.
03:26And so I just thought in that moment, he's going to wake up.
03:28He's going to grab the keys right next to him and he's going to take me through the window.
03:33I just ran.
03:34I saw a car driving across the parking lot and kind of ran out in front of it and flagged it down.
03:39There were two men inside and I told them that I had been killed and asked them to take me to law enforcement.
03:45And so that's what they did.
03:46When I got to the police department, there was a police officer in there and he said, you know, can I help you?
03:55I said, my name is Kara Robinson and I was a kid and I held up my handcuffs.
03:59It felt a little bit in that moment to me like I wasn't believed.
04:04I've come to learn from speaking with that officer and he was in a sense of disbelief.
04:11Stranger things are honestly relatively rare.
04:15He asked if I would be okay going back to the apartment.
04:18I said I would do that.
04:19As I expected, they all looked the same to me.
04:22When we were driving around, we saw a man that worked at the apartment complex and we stopped him.
04:27And I told him everything that I knew about this man that had taken me and the inside of his apartment.
04:34I told him he drives a green Trans Am.
04:38This is what he looks like.
04:39He's in his late 30s, maybe 5'10", around 200 pounds.
04:46He has a, had a goatee.
04:49He pretty much immediately said, I'm pretty sure I know what apartment that is.
04:53So that was, that was good enough for the investigator.
04:55So at that point, he took me back to the region.
04:59My mom was waiting and then she took me to the hospital for a nurse examiner.
05:04So when I was actually waiting, law enforcement brought in a photo lineup.
05:09I immediately recognized my captor.
05:11But when they responded to his apartment, he was obviously gone.
05:16He was on the run, more or less, for about two and a half days.
05:21Law enforcement thought that they had a really good lead.
05:23His sister told them that he was supposed to be meeting him.
05:26And so they set up an operation.
05:29Unfortunately, he noticed something was off.
05:32He drove off and there was a short police chase.
05:36His car spun out of control and he actually shot himself.
05:40I found out the morning after that they had located him and that he had killed himself.
05:46And quite honestly, I was just, I was, I was more angry than I think I've ever been.
05:52I wanted to sit across from him in a courtroom and for him to look me in the eyes and to know
05:56that I was the biggest mistake that he ever made.
05:59That he was outwitted by a 15 year old.
06:01Whenever they went into his apartment, they found a locked foot locker that was a little suspicious.
06:07They opened it and they found some newspaper clippings.
06:11Eventually, about a month and a half later, was positively identified as the person responsible
06:16for the deaths of three girls in Virginia in 1996 and 1997.
06:21It took a while for me to process what that meant to have escaped a serial.
06:27Because he told me he was going to let me go.
06:29So I thought, well, he was going to let me go.
06:31Over the years, I've realized that I very probably would have been another victim of this person.
06:41There are probably other cases that he committed that we just don't know about yet.
06:46It's really only the last five years where I have begun to heal and begun to realize what
06:54it means to be a survivor and how you can be impacted, how you can be vulnerable, how you
06:59can be authentic, but you can also be strong and brave.
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