Colleen Stan was abducted and then tortured for more than seven years.
Colleen Stan was 20 years old and had hitchhiked from city to city numerous times. The autstop is a way to travel for free, in which you try to stop a car, generally by making a sign with the thumb, to request free transportation from the drivers.
Her boyfriend’s birthday arrived and she decided to use this technique to be able to attend the party. On this occasion, a couple with their baby stopped to take her. They were Cameron and Janice Hooker, 23, but what seemed like a regular thing turned into hell for 7 years.
When they had only been a few miles, Colleen asked to stop the car at a gas station because she had to go to the bathroom. “A voice told me to run and jump through a window and never look back,” he confessed to “People” magazine years later. But, he thought he was exaggerating and that the bad vibes Cameron was giving him made no sense and he returned to the car.
Half an hour later, Cameron left the main road and took a dirt road to some place where no one could find them, actually Cameron had been planning it for years. When he felt “invisible” enough, he stopped the car, tied up Colleen, put a strange device on her head, a very heavy wooden box with a hole in one of the sides, soundproofed by a carpenter so that they would not be heard. their screams. The journey continued for nearly 500 kilometers, the distance that separated the place of the kidnapping from the Hookers’ home in Red Bluff, California.
Upon arrival, Collen was terrified, exhausted from crying. Cameron released her from the box and hung her from the basement rafters with chains and blindfolded. That was the first time he raped and hit her. You were the beginning of a nightmare that lasted 7 years.
They built a one meter by 1.80 meter wooden box and bound Colleen with chains. She couldn’t lie down, so she had to spend most of her time sitting. When the family moved into a caravan, Cameron built a coffin-like box and placed it under his bed.
Colleen would be locked up for 23 hours a day and only let out to rape or torture her. In addition, they forced her to sign a slavery contract that, if she did not comply, could mean her death and that of her own family. She was renamed “K” and had to call Cameron “teacher” and Janice “ma’am.”
Colleen’s ordeal began on May 19, 1977 and has been brought to the big screen in the movie “The Girl In The Box.”
With so long without anyone finding out what he was doing, Cameron felt invincible and came to go with Colleen to visit her parents. She convinced them that it was her boyfriend and that they were happy. The family suspected that he had joined a sect, but they decided to respect what he had told them, took a photo of them and went out to see them off.
As time went by, Janice opened up and confessed that she was also a victim of Cameron, who sexually abused her and mistreated her since she was 15 years old. During their unhealthy sex sessions, he would spank her, hang her handcuffed from trees, and even submerge her head in water to the point of almost drowning her. And if he did not comply with her wishes, he would beat her. Desperate, she signed a contract with her husband that allowed her to kidnap and imprison a sex slave to unleash her sadism. And Colleen was that victim.
Despite everything, Colleen began to have Stockholm Syndrome and fell in love with her captor. I thought it could change. But in August 1984, Janice gathered enough strength to end the nightmare and left home with her two daughters and Colleen, leaving her at a bus station before fleeing.
Interestingly, the one who brought Cameron to justice was Janice, blaming him for the kidnapping, torture and murder of Marie Elizabeth Spannhake, a young woman who disappeared in January 1976. Janice testified against her husband in exchange for immunity. Cameron was sentenced to 104 years in prison.
During the trial, Colleen showed signs of suffering from Stockholm syndrome and recounted how she began to fall in love with Cameron when he began to let her celebrate his birthdays and even when he gave her a bible.
Colleen is now 62 years old and studied accounting to help her get ahead. However, her terrible past has prevented her from returning to a stable and lasting relationship and she has failed in several marriages. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
