I Closed My Eyes and He Popped A Round Off

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He's going to kill us both. Real people. There's a man-sized pit dug, which at this point I'm assuming is my grave. Who faced death. He let his AK-47 dangle around his neck and he pulled out a 9mm and chambered around and pointed at my face. And lived to tell how. He saw it across my throat three times. And I laid there and I waited to die. I figured, you know, once somebody cuts your throat, you're not going to survive that. This is I Survived.

It's September 1977 in Spring Lake, North Carolina. For 16-year-old Barbara and her best friend Nancy, it is the second day of high school. After school, the two girls take a shortcut home through the woods. The shortcut leads to a small, deserted clearing. Nancy and I sat there on the bank to talk for a little while, smoke a couple of cigarettes. She was telling me about her classes.

She was just, oh God, she was in high spirits. She loved being in high school. She just thought it was so cool. Nancy, a freshman, would be 15 in two weeks' time. Nancy was a typical teenage girl. She was boy crazy. She was just fun to hang with. You know, we talked about boys. We talked about, oh gosh, Sean Cassidy is so cute. You know, just typical teenage stuff.

All of a sudden, Nancy says, somebody's spying on us. And she points toward the path. My first thought was, it's my little sister. She's come to snitch on us. So I got up from the embankment and I walked over to where I saw the person standing. The closer I got, I realized it's not my sister. It's some man. He was wearing army fatigues. He was wearing a fatigue hat.

and he was wearing sunglasses. And when I got about halfway toward where he was, he turned around and started walking back the way he had come. So I walked back over to the embankment, and I sat down beside Nancy, and I said, It was just a man. And we start back toward the path. We're about halfway down the path when I see this same man approaching us again. When he passed me, he kind of nodded hello, and I nodded back. And then I heard a noise behind me. I stopped, and I turned around.

And he had Nancy on the ground, and he was kneeling behind her. And he had this huge knife up to her throat. And this was the biggest knife I had ever seen. The blade was at least a foot long. I mean, it went all the way across her throat and then some. So I'm standing there kind of in shock, and I'm asking him, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And he kept saying, just do what I say, or I'm going to kill her.

He said, I want you to lay face down on the path. Using his boot laces, the man tied the girls' hands behind their backs. When he stood up, he was very tall, he was very slender, and I remember he just... He smelled. He smelled very strongly of body odor. He was obviously young, but definitely older than me. Dark hair. almost black hair. He was wearing sunglasses the whole time. He grabbed me by my elbow, and he grabbed Nancy by her elbow, and he pulled us both to our feet.

And I'm still asking him, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Are you going to rape us? Are you going to kill us? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? He turns us around. He faces us toward the woods. And as he's taking us toward the woods, he's saying, oh, don't worry, I'm on Army maneuvers. This is part of my training. There was a barbed wire fence separating the path from the woods.

He stepped down on it so that we could walk over it. And I remember telling him, I'm only 16. I want to live my life. And, you know, he's still saying, oh, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt you. Just do what I say. A little voice in my head said, he's gonna kill you. He's gonna kill us both. He walks us into the woods a little ways. He laid Nancy down first.

Then he walked me a few feet ahead of her and made me lay down again. He went back over to Nancy. I couldn't see what was going on at that point, but I heard Nancy saying no. over and over again. And then I heard him say, did you like that? He came over to me. He pulled me to my knees. He was behind me. He reached up under my shirt and he started fondling me.

I'm trying to pull away from him and I'm telling him no. He said, I'm going to have to gag you two. He reached under my shirt. He used the knife to cut my bra off. He stuffed it in my mouth and tied it behind my head. He got us both to our feet again, walked us further into the woods, and at that point I had worked the gag loose and spit it out.

And I remember saying, my sister's going to be walking by out there on the road any minute. All I have to do is scream and she'll go for help. He comes back over to me, reties the gag, telling me, I told you to keep quiet. His voice was just kind of flat and matter of fact. I really didn't hear any anger in his voice. Then he goes back over to Nancy.

Lying face down with her hands tied behind her, Barbara was unable to see Nancy. I heard a pair of pants being unzipped, and then I heard, it was like a... They were being tossed aside. I could hear the change in the pocket when it hit the ground. And then I heard Nancy screaming. Even though she was gagged, I could hear her screaming through her gag.

And then when Nancy finally stopped screaming, I heard him say, there, I didn't even break you, did I? I had spit my gag out again, and I hollered at him. I said, I thought you weren't going to rape us. He came back over to me. And this time he was a little bit angrier. He shoved my head down to the ground. He tied the gag tighter, and he went back over to Nancy.

And at that point, I couldn't hear anything except sounds like she was being hit. It sounded like somebody was punching her. There was like a flesh-on-flesh sound like somebody was... physically punching someone. And every time I heard that flesh on flesh sound, I heard Nancy kind of let out a little grunt. Then he came back over to me. And he started pounding me on the back, right between my shoulder blades, right on my spine. Barbara's attacker was attempting to snap her spinal cord.

Periodically he would stop and he would grab both my shoulders and kind of rotate them. And it was like I could feel stuff moving around in my back that wasn't supposed to be moving. And then he would start hitting me again. Finally, he brought his left hand around. He lifted my head off the ground. He brought the knife around. He sawed across my throat three times. He let my head drop back down to the ground.

Then I felt the knife go into my back. When I felt the knife go into my back the second time, this voice in my head told me, if you don't play dead, he's going to keep stabbing you until you are dead. And he bought it. He got up to his feet and then he left. And I laid there and I waited to die. I figured, you know, once somebody cuts your throat, you're not going to survive that. I figured I only had a couple of minutes.

I started thinking about my mom and dad and my brothers and sisters, all the people I was never going to see again. And I laid there and I waited to die.

After a while, I realized I was still breathing through my throat. He had cut my throat so deeply. It had kind of collapsed in on itself and I was breathing through the wound in my throat. So then I start thinking, okay, maybe I'm not going to die just yet. So I managed to get to my feet and I saw Nancy laying there. She was face down. She was nude from the waist down. There was blood all over her back. I walked over to her and I wound up stumbling against her leg.

And when I did that, I heard her groan. So I thought, okay, she's still alive. I got to take her out with me. She's still alive. And I stood there and I tried to get my hands apart. I tried to stretch. the laces any way I could to get them loose, to get them off, and I couldn't. So when I couldn't get the laces off, I thought, okay, all I can do is go get help. I've got to go get her help.

I made it back to where he had brought us into the woods. I started walking to the road. I got to the road, and I stood there, hoping that a car would come by. And one did. And I remember seeing them slow down, and then I remember the look of horror on the driver's face. And I looked down, and I was absolutely drenched in blood all the way to my knees. I said,

Please help me. God, please help me. Only the voice wasn't coming out of my mouth. It was coming out of my throat. It was this teeny tiny little voice coming out of my throat. And then he floored it. Barbara, having collapsed on the road through blood loss, hears another car approaching. When they came around that curve, they saw me at the last possible second.

And I remember seeing the tires of their car come within about an inch of my head. And they wound up losing control and crashing into the ditch. Next thing I know, there were people everywhere. I mean, just people everywhere. And I'm trying to tell them my friend is in the woods. But I'm having to mouth the words and hope that they can read my lips. My friend is in the woods.

Next thing I know, there's a helicopter landing in the field next to us, and they're loading me onto a stretcher. And just as they're putting me on the helicopter... And we're about to take off. I hear somebody holler out. We found her. And I see everybody running for the woods. Barbara was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery.

I was in surgery for I guess about six hours. They kind of had to put everything back together. He had cut through my voice box, my vocal cords, my trachea, esophagus, I mean everything in there. Everything in there had been cut through. I remember waking up in intensive care. They had brought me like a notepad and a pen. Anytime somebody came in the room.

My first question was, how's Nancy? Where is she? And the response to that question was pretty much always the same. Nancy's fine. She's in good hands. She's being very well taken care of. It wasn't until after I was taken out of intensive care that my mother finally told me. She said, honey, that wasn't exactly a lie. She is in good hands.

She's in God's hands. I remember feeling like I'd been punched in the stomach. 14-year-old Mary Jo, Nancy Coates, died from stab wounds to the chest and back. I wanted to say goodbye to her. But there was just absolutely no way they were going to let me out of the hospital for that. So I didn't get to go to the funeral. So I never really got to say goodbye to her. I told my mother.

go get her a dozen roses and put them on her grave and let her know they're from me and that I miss her. And after I found out she was dead, I think that made my will to live even stronger because I had to make sure the man who did it paid. I wrote down blow by blow what happened. What he said, what he did, what he looked like, what he smelled like. They brought me a photographic lineup. I never even saw picture number six, because once I got to picture number five, I knew it was him.

Barbara identified their attacker as Sergeant Stephen Silen, a soldier at nearby Fort Bragg. He was charged with kidnapping, rape, attempted murder, and first-degree murder. It went to trial. This was all very scary for me. I mean I was only 16 years old. I didn't understand the court process. I was scared to death to be in the same room with him.

In 1979, Stephen Silen was found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1981, the verdict was overturned, and after a second trial, Silen was sentenced to life in prison. For the last nine years of my life I've been going in front of the parole board once a year to fight his parole. After surviving the attack that killed her friend, Barbara graduated and began a career in law enforcement.

Barbara is now a retired sheriff's detective. I think what happened to me had everything to do with why I became a law enforcement officer. It had to do with me wanting to feel safe. It had to do with me wanting to feel in control. It had to do with me wanting to feel like I didn't have to rely on anybody else to help me if I was in a bad situation. I survived because I come from a very strong, very determined family. Initially my goal was to save Nancy's life. I couldn't die.

I had to save Nancy. Ultimately my goal became making sure that her killer was brought to justice. And I've spent these last... 33 years trying to make sure he never gets out. Almost too easy to create a website that's perfectly yours. Just tell AI what kind of site you want to build or choose from thousands of templates. Change whatever you want, whenever you want, and get everything you need to start running your business your way.

No matter what you sell or what you aspire to be, you can do it all yourself on Wix. It's November 2001 in Columbia, South America. Glenn is a judo master and motorcycle enthusiast. He has just retired from competing in top-level martial arts. Once I stopped, there was sort of this big gap. And I needed something to fill that. And I decided to organize a trip, a one-man expedition, to ride a motorcycle to the tip of South America and back.

In October, Glenn began the 20,000-mile motorcycle trip. A month after leaving California, he arrived in Columbia. It's a steep, steep jungle terrain. I mean, it'll shoot up one side, straight up, and then straight down the other. It's like a roller coaster up and down and corkscrewing through the mountains. It's probably some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet. I was probably about 150 miles.

outside of Bogota and with another 50 miles left to Medellin. And it got quieter and quieter and pretty soon there's almost no traffic and these little hairpin turns so you couldn't get out of first gear. and I had just cleared a hairpin turn. As I came around, I saw a number of armed men standing in the roadway wearing black sweatpants and black long sleeve shirts with automatic weapons.

ammunition belts across their chest. And they were screaming and hollering for me to stop and all aiming these AK-47s at me. And I get off the bike and I've got my hams up and there's an old dilapidated... a broken-down shack by the side of the road, and they kept pointing to the back of the shack for me to go back there. I don't want to go. I'm pretty well convinced I'm going to get shot back there. And by this time they had stopped a bus, a Campesino bus coming through the mountains.

The bus driver wasn't really sure what he was supposed to do, and the gorillas were yelling and screaming for him to move on. And he was afraid. Nobody was really understanding. It was total pandemonium. I look over at people on the bus and... They're panic-stricken. They don't know what's in store for them. People are screaming and crying. Some people are intentionally looking away as though they don't want to see what's happening.

I can't remember ever being that scared in my life. Cottonmouth fear would be a good description. And I thought, well, at least if I'm going to die, these people will see what happened. Glenn, who spoke Spanish, was able to speak with the gang leader.

I just said, you know, I'm not going. And he let his AK-47 dangle around his neck and he pulled out a 9mm and pointed at my face. and said, vamos. And I was looking down the gun barrel. All I could think of was my daughter. And I wouldn't see her again. I cursed him in Spanish, and I had to make a decision at that point. And I said, basically, after cursing him, if you've got something to do, do it here. And he chambered around with a 9mm and pointed at my head.

I close my eyes and he popped a round off and I mean, it was like, you know, it's like a slap against my eardrums. And I open my eyes and I look around and I don't really know, I'm sort of... in a state of shock, and I don't know if I'm dead or alive. And then he points his gun at my arm, and I realize at this point he's gonna wound me. And it looks like if I'm gonna get shot in the arm,

I assumed that at least they want me to walk. If they want me to walk, they want me alive. And I walked toward the jungle. It's like a robot. I could barely, you know, really move. I just had to force myself to... to make my legs move. I had no idea what was coming and I got to the edge of the jungle and it was a straight drop down below. And they came up behind me, a couple guys, and they gave me a push and there was no alternative but to sprint.

He literally sprint downhill for about 15 minutes and then they stopped to do a radio check, I guess announcing to their commander that they had grabbed an American. And that was the big surprise. Very few people actually traveled at that time in the countryside, the least of all an American on a motorcycle. Glenn had been captured by the ELN, Marxist rebels, fighting to overthrow the Colombian government. Off we went.

And it was just hours and hours and hours up and down, up and down the mountains and to the point where you just physically can't go anymore.

The first night we marched till, I can only estimate, till well past midnight. That's when I was summoned to interrogation with a commandante. He started out kind of... Not nice, but very, very calm. Who was I? What was I doing? And then he started asking about my family. I said, I don't have a family. I live alone. To prevent any ransom demand, Glenn refused to give them details about his family.

He was getting more and more upset. He goes, well, I know you got kids. And I said, no, I don't have kids. And I don't want him to know about my daughter. I don't want him to know about anybody in my family because I don't want him sending body parts off to them. to shake him up. To make himself less valuable as a hostage, Glenn lied that he had a terminal illness. I told him that I had prostate cancer and that I was actually dying and I needed certain medicines to keep me alive.

And the supply is back in my motorcycle, hidden on my motorcycle. So if we could just go back there, we'll get it. And that was the focus of... my escape plan all along was just to get back somehow to get back to the highway they just laughed they said no no we won't be going back to the highway and he escalates the intensity of of the interview of the interrogation

And then he starts screaming at me. I have no idea what's going on. And so they start with the boots. And they kicked on me for a while. And the commandante... I kept screaming. In the morning after the first evening there, we packed up and we were off in the jungle again to another camp. They kept marching me deeper.

deeper and deeper and longer marches into the mountains. I was handed off to a new group approximately every two days. We'd march up and down at the end of a day's march, camp out usually on a top of a ridge. Every once in a while we do an all-night march and of course it rains every night. So I'd had a fever. I was sick with some kind of bug. I had a fever and we're marching and marching and it's in the middle of this thunderstorm and they had kept prodding me along.

I was burning with fever and there was really nothing left inside. And I was down at telling myself if I could go a hundred steps more. And I was counting a hundred steps, I go a hundred steps and bam. I'd fall down and his mom was back with the gun barrels and the ribs back, dragging me to my feet. And they were getting tired of me doing this. They had plenty of energy, but I was in a weakened physical state with a fever and I...

I remember when I trained nationally to compete in judo at Tenry, it was one of the toughest programs you could ever imagine training. And that's where you learned about second wind, third wind, fourth wind. And I just... put myself back in that moment when I was training and my old coach, Tony Mojica, screaming in my ear, pick up the pace, Hague's dead, when my lungs were on fire and I didn't feel like I could go any further. And I just...

Looked the rebels at the meanest one and I saw Tony Mojica and I said no sweat coach And I finally we're crossing the stream and I fall down in the stream and that's where they come up behind me and and for fun, for laughs, holding my head underwater. I have no strength left in me. I don't have the strength to turn my head. And so I'm naturally starting to suck in water.

And it's like I'm going into this long tunnel, this long black tunnel, and saying, I guess this is where it ends. And then they let me up. And I'm gagging and throwing up. And they jerk me to my feet. This whole time that I'd been marching on this horrible march, I kept chanting to myself, I will survive, I will survive, I will survive. Because we keep marching further and further away.

I realized I'm going to be with him for a while and I began just trying to focus on staying alive. Every morning and every evening I would get un vasito de arroz, a very, very small. teacup of rice. They were just giving me enough to keep me alive. And I realized that on these continuous marches, 18 hours a day, with two cups of rice, I wasn't going to last very long.

As the days turned into weeks, I could actually see my bones, my hip bones beginning to poke out. I realized that I was losing a tremendous amount of weight. There was nothing to eat. There was nothing, no food. There was no animal life. It was completely devoid, other than insects, by the billions. I mean, you put your hand down to rest against a tree and the bugs would be up your arm. Every morning I'd wake up and I'd just be covered in insects.

night after night with little or no sleep and long marches and constantly trying to evaluate everything that they say and do. They had threatened to kill me a number of times. They told me that mine was coming in the morning. Of course it scares you, scares me, scared me beyond belief. They had one morning come to take me off into the jungle by myself. They've got my hands bound behind me.

And I'm wondering what kind of hell awaits this morning. And there's a man-sized pit dug, which they ordered me over to the corner of. which at this point I'm assuming is my grave. On a solo motorcycle trip through Colombia, Glenn is taken hostage by a rebel army. For three weeks, he endures interrogation, starvation, and daily marches.

One day, he is marched to a clearing and made to stand in front of an open grave. They're standing behind me. And there's some sounds that you never forget. And I could hear the... The bullet being chambered into his AK-47, this just clackety-clack. I hear this crack, you know, and a loud explosion ringing in my ears. Once again, I don't know am I shot or what, but my knees buckled. And then I hear them laughing like it was a big joke. And they came over and helped me up. And then...

They basically tell me that a decision's been made. The rebels tell Glenn he is being released and that a helicopter is coming to rescue him. They said, well, just wait in the clearing and keep your eye out for the helicopter. So I'm running around the clearing. and I'm looking in the skies and looking in the skies, you know, and my eyes are sunk back in my head and I'm staring around like a wild man and I'm scanning the sky and I'm listening and I just stay out there until...

just standing there looking up. And of course, there is no helicopter. And I looked over and they were mocking me and the look on my face and whatnot and getting a big laugh out of it. And I said, okay, this is coming to... to a head here and i could deal with everything where they were finally getting me was telling me that i had been freed and jerking that back from me and i realized that the only way

for me to take control of this situation was to sabotage my own health. And at this point, I'm tired of being threatened. I'm tired of ranting about my government, about my country. This is it. We're going to throw down the gauntlet. put up or shut up and i told him i'm not eating anymore weeks earlier glenn had lied to the rebels telling them he was dying of cancer i said you know what i can't eat now prostate cancer i was telling you about

I'm dying. Can't eat. So the next morning, same thing. Nope, not eating. And so they're starting to get a little concerned. And I thought, well, I'm going to accelerate this. And the whole time I'd had my motorcycle keys in my pocket. I realized that I need some of my own blood. And if I cut a vein, they'll see it. So the only way I think of to get it is to take this motorcycle key and ram it into my sinuses.

to cause myself to bleed. I took the key and I rammed it up as far as I could into my sinuses and took my fist and, bam, smacked myself in the face. Blood started to flow so I took it and I scored it all around my my crotch and my pants and all over this little room that I was in and then in the morning

I let him see when I got up to relieve myself. And they go, what's the blood from? I said, real casually, I said, I told you. Can't eat. Now I'm peeing blood, urinating blood. I'm dying. I told you guys that. And by this point, I'd been without food and actually even stopped taking fluids. It had been over a week. And so I physically couldn't, couldn't, could hardly move at all.

The rebels brought in one of their doctors to treat Glenn. He comes in and he's screaming at me. I gotta take this IV or I'm gonna die. And that's when I looked up at him and I smiled. I said, no, it's mi problema, it's suyo, which means that's not my problem, that's yours. I'm going out of here one way or another, and I'm either going to starve myself to death and die, or they were...

They were letting me out of here. Once again, I took the key and I rammed it up as far as I could into my nose and smacked myself as hard as I could. This is it. This is going to end one way or another. I'm not going through another day of captivity.

I mean, I had a gusher. Blood was just gushing out of my nose. And I slung it around the room, and I slung it all over me. It looked like they'd been slaughtering hogs in this room. And they came in the morning, they looked at that, and they just went into a panic. that hated me the most, he comes in and he's screaming, he's going, get up. And I said, no puedo, no puedo moverme, I can't move. And he had to pick me up. And there's a mule outside.

and they throw me over the side of this mule. The commandante's leading the mule. And as we're leaving the camp, I realize it's just me and him. But I'm thinking, well, he's probably taking me out to shoot me. And I go... I lost my shot all for naught. None of this has worked. It's everything that I'd been through for the last couple weeks was failed. They were taking me deeper in the mountains.

And then another hour later, we come around the corner, we look down to a clearing, there's a big white four-wheel drive, like a four-by-four Toyota wagon with red cross emblems on the door and a big red cross on the roof. And I looked down and I couldn't believe it. This little Italian woman walks up to me with these little wireframe glasses. She went clutching a clipboard.

to her chest, and she walks up and holds out her hand. She said, Hello, Mr. Higstead. I'm Anna DiPaola. I'm a delegate from the Committee of the International Red Cross, and I'm here to take you to a representative of your government.

We're going to take you out of here. We're going to take you to the hospital in Medellin. And I just, I refused to believe it. It was a long ride back. It was probably another hour or two going back into Medellin. And I still was mumbling the whole time. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

I don't believe it, cannot believe it. And then we pulled up to the Red Cross Center and even the Red Cross Center was like a prison. There's steel bars and steel grating around it. And we got inside the Red Cross Center and... I realized, okay, maybe, maybe this is true. Glenn was treated for dehydration and advanced malnutrition. He had endured five weeks in captivity.

I had gone into that jungle weighing 220 pounds in shape, and I came out at 170. An FBI hostage rescue team collected Glenn from the Colombian Red Cross. And we're in the airport, and they said, we want to debrief you and show you some photographs, and then we've got a plane to take you back to California and put you in the hospital. And I said, okay, I'll go for that, but I'm not going back to California. And they said, really, where do you think you're going? And I said, well, I'm...

getting on another motorcycle and heading back for Argentina. And they were going, yeah, that's right. Well, we got news for you. You're going on a plane. And I said, no, I got news for you. I'm going to Argentina and it's getting combative, you know. And finally, I got this big old beard, and I'm scrawny, and I still got this walking stick I'm holding on to. And they said, no, you're going to California. I said, you know what? I'm tired of guys with guns telling me what to do.

I'm going to walk out of here right now. If you don't like it, then you can shoot me in the back. And so... I go hobbling out. These four guys in business suits come running up after me. Oh, Mr. Hengstead, we're sorry. We're sorry. We just thought you were crazy and didn't know what you want. I said, I am crazy, but I know what I want to do, and I have to keep going.

Glenn completed his 20,000-mile trip around South America before returning home to California. I survived this ordeal because I set out with a goal. And being committed to a goal as a martial artist is everything. You never turn around. An obstacle is something you see when you lose sight of your goal. And as long as we stay focused on our goals, no matter what the challenge, we're going to prevail. And to me, I had the whole eyes of the world focused on me when I came out of that jungle.

and was like, what's this guy gonna do now? And I said, keep on going.