PERFECT VICTIM-Carla Norton

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slash True Murder Today and experience Audible audiobooks. Hitchhiking from Eugene, Oregon, through northern California nineteen seventy seven, twenty year old Colleen stan thumbed to ride into Hell. Her kidnappers, a sadistic lumber mill worker Cameron Hooker and his battered wife Janice, subjected her to seven years of torture and sensory deprivation.

She was made a sex slave, kept locked in a wooden box and brain washed into believing that an underground network of sadists would recapture her if she attempted to escape. Did Colleen fall in love with Cameron and make herself a willing partner in a love triangle? As the hooker's defense lawyer asserted, The jury found otherwise convinced by the evidence marshaled by co author Maguire, state prosecutor in the case, a trial that journalist Carlin Norton attended in nineteen eighty four.

The book not for the squeamish. This harrowing tale shuttles between the courtroom and the grizzly doings in the hooker's basement. The book that we're featuring this evening is Perfect Victim, the true story of the Girl in the Box by the district attorney who prosecuted her captor. With my special guest, journalist and author Carlin Norton. Welcome back to the program and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Carla Norton, Thank.

this is virtually my backyard. And when I first saw the headlines that this woman claimed have been held captive for seven years, I just didn't believe the story. I thought that's ridiculous, that couldn't possibly happen in Red Bluff, and the AP Wire Service kept running stories about it,

and I was fascinated. And it just happened that this broke shortly before I was going on vacation back to visit my family in California, and while I was there, I learned more about the case, and it was just one of those cases that I and stop asking questions because of the mind control issues, the slavery contract, the wife that was involved, the just the bizarreness of this

case was outside of anything I'd ever heard of. I'd never heard of Stockholm syndrome, I didn't know about abusive relationships to this extent, and I thought, this is just an extraordinary case, and somebody's going to write about it. And I had, just, like I say, just finished working on a book as an editor of a book by a KGB agent who spied in Japan and then defected to the United States, and so I had never thought that I would write true crime, but I just became

kind of fixated on this case. So I did what you're not supposed to do. I could call an agent in New York. I told him the story and he said, you're living where in Tokyo. I see. And if he had said, well, I'm sorry, but there's no way you can write the story, I probably wouldn't have pursued it. He said, well, quit your job with Reader's Digest, come back to the States, cover the trial. This is what you need to do. And he laid it out for me, and so, not knowing what I was getting into at all,

that's what I did. I quit my job. They came back to the States, and I attended the trial and then ended up co authoring Perfect Victim with Christie MacGuire, the prosecutor.

lumber mill and cattle ranchers. You know, an annual rodeo, one high school, and you know, a few older Victorian homes, but nothing fancy. I mean, it wasn't a place where there were a lot of tourists. Uh, you know, it's more kind of the hunting fishing community that that sort of mill.

That it was. And everybody said, if you you know, if you lined up ten guys, Cameron would be the last one you would pick for this kind of thing because he was very quiet and kept to himself. And what came out in the trial is that he became fixated as a teenager on this idea of kidnapping a girl and holding her captive. That was his teenage fantasy. And he collected pornography and that was like some boys now might you know, get obsessed about computers or some sports.

That was his obsession, was this idea of holding someone captive, and he dedicated a lot of his daydreaming life apparently to that idea. Then he when he was a young man, that's when he or he met Janice. I think he was let's see, she was fifteen when she was introduced to him, and I think he was then nineteen eighteen nineteen, yeah, okay, And so Janice is the one who in all of this is the is the most perplexing and and she's the one who changes and actually finally set Coin free.

So when you think about her, she was fifteen when she met him, and they dated for a year and a half I think before they were married. So he was her whole world. She went from being a child to being his wife. And he introduced her to sex as being strung up between the trees and the woods and whipped. I mean he said that's what everybody did. So that that was her education and her own indoctrination into an abusive relationship.

hung her. She found it these things peculiar, but she had no sexual experience, but he was so affectionate, so nice, and she really hadn't received any attention, and when she went to her parents for permission to get married, and there was a threat that she wanted to keep them so badly that she said that she was pregnant and

then promised him to marry. So you could see, from as you outlined in the book, a very pathetic, very very needy character entering into partnership with Cameron Hooker wittingly and unwittingly to a certain degree.

everybody seemed to like him. You know, he was someone that people got along with. He didn't cause a ruckus, He wasn't someone who was outwardly violent. He wouldn't, you know, get drunk and cause problems. And that was part of the reason that it was so hard to believe this had gone on for so many years because he did not draw attention to himself. He was always busy, you know, he worked in the lumber mill, and he had projects. He would build fences and whatnot. So he seemed like

he was a fairly industrious young man. And the two of them rented a place from an older couple who lived next door, mister and missus Letty, who thought they were just just, you know, a nice, young, wholesome couple.

and I lecture them that that'shuld hitchhike. So but Coleen was not being, you know, completely ludicrous in her actions. She turned down a ride with a bunch of guys. She was careful about who she would accept a ride with. And when she got down to Red Bluff here was a man, his wife and their infant. And let me

backtrack a little bit. That Cameron had his abuse, his sato masochistic experiments with his wife, Janice became more and more extreme, and they were frightening to her, and so finally they cut a deal, which is hard to fathom, but if she could have a child, then he could

have a slave. Was the deal they cut. And so she had a child, and he was looking and he had his preparation ready, and there was Colleen, who accepted a ride with them, which looked quite safe, and they I think she was going to Westwood, and if I recall correctly, it's about an hour an hour and a half east of Red Bluff. So they headed off in

that direction. And then at one point, and I think this is interesting, they stopped at a gas station and she went and used the restroom, and Collen recalls that she she had an intuition or heard a voice as she put it, telling her to run away, that she should jump out the window and run away, that there was still time, and she thought, why am I thinking this? This is you know, this is doesn't make sense, But that was her instinct and you can see that her

She knew something was wrong with this couple. The way he kept looking at her in the mirror. There was just something off about them. But she talked herself out of it and got back in the car. And when she got back in the car, there was a box on the seat next to her, which she would learn and later what that was. But in the meantime they said, well, we want to go down this road and look at some ice case we hear is there are some ice caves. Do you mind? We're going to take a detour and

say They took her down a dirt road. Janice got out of the car with the baby and walked down to a stream and Cameron came around and put a knife to her throat and told her she better do what he told her to do, and he had everything ready. He gagged her, he blindfolded her, and then he put this headbox on. And I've tried on that headbox. I have a photograph of it in the book. It was

introduced as evidence. It's a double walled, very heavy insulated head box, which is it latches around your throat and it sits on your head. I think it weighs about twenty pounds. It's got heavy latches and it's a sensory deprivation device. I mean basic for one thing. You can scream on that and it would muffle your screams, but it's also just a terrifying thing to have latched onto you.

Then he tied her up, he covered her with a blanket, and he laid her down in the back of the car and then signaled Janie back and they drove into Red Bluff and smuggled her into the basement. And that became a nightmare beyond. I mean, I can't even fathom being locked in a closet for three days, and to be locked in the kind of bizarre situation she was in. Should I just keep talking? I feel like I'm going.

get out? What's wrong with these people? They would he would let her out and whip her hang her by the wrists and whipper abuse her in various ways and then put her back in the box, and she didn't know if she was going to be killed. Sometimes she'd be let out to go to the bathroom or to eat something, but he wouldn't answer questions. She lost track of time. The days turned into weeks, turned into months. She lost forty pounds, she stopped menstruating, I mean try to.

I mean just a simple thing of you know, daylight, fresh air. That was all completely outside of her experience for that period of time. She wasn't allowed to bathe, you know, there was no personal grooming. He would bring down, you know, basically a bucket for her to use for her waist. At one point they did take her upstairs blindfolded. Always blindfolded. She didn't see his face. She was constantly blindfolded.

She was brought upstairs to bathe, and basically he experimented with drowning her in the tub.

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would do. But that first for nine months, I want to now say that these she was kidnapped in May of nineteen seventy seven. So for the next nine months, she whenever she was led out of the box, she had to have her blindfold on. They did give her some jobs to do. They would he built a workroom under the stairs, and he would you take her into this workroom, which I imagine was just a couple of steps, It's a very small basement, and give her Macroma projects

to do. So she could take the blindfold off and do these Macroma projects. And then she had to put the blindfold back on when she was let out again, so that she wasn't supposed to look at him, she wasn't supposed to ask any questions. She didn't know his name. And then finally one day he takes the blindfold off and in front of her is a slavery contract which he and Janice had created. He'd actually taken the wording out of a hardcore pornography magazine apparently and recreated it,

and he gave her a slave name. He told her that from now on, your name is Kay, and that he belonged to a company of slave traders who were watching the house and had members in the police and some neighbors were involved in if she ever tried to escape, that she anyone who tried to help her would be killed, and that she would be crucified and hung I think

for three days or something. I mean, just these horrible, horrible stories that he would weave in with the truth so that she I mean, at that point she had completely been brainwashed. And I have to make a comparison here with Patty Hurst. Patty Hurst was locked in a closet for forty five days. Her life was threatened. To remember, she was, you know, stolen out of her dormitory room by the sla Her life is threatened, she's raped, she's kept locked in this closet, and after forty five days

she becomes Tanya. I mean, they gave her a slave name, essentially in a slave identity, and that was just forty five days. I mean, that sounds pretty horrific to me, but compared to what Colin stand went through, it's what Colin went through was just unfathomable. The amazing thing is that she survived, and we can talk later about another woman that resisted, and I believe he murdered. But she signed the slavery. He said, if you don't sign it for you, I'll make you. I'll sign it for you

and make you wish you had. So she signs this slavery conduct with her shaking hand, and then they led her upstairs to do chores after the babies asleep, and she would wash dishes or you know, clean the bathroom, whatever jobs they would give her. She became quite literally their slave, but also a sex slave. I mean he would abuse her. And at some point this became too much for Janice, and she kind of tried to flee

the relationships. She took a job down in Silicon Valley, which is about two hundred miles south of there, south of San Francisco as Silicon Valley the San Jose area, and she would work during the week and stay with her sister, and then she'd go back home for the weekend. And that only lasted for a while. They had kind of a sketchy, you know, financial arrangement. They would also take these macro mas that Colleen made for them and

sell them a flea market down there. Meanwhile, he was working at the lumber mill and a very hard worker. But people noticed that boy. As soon as his shift was up, he was out of there, you know, and he went home because he had more interesting things planned for his evening hours. But they both were extremely secretive. No word was ever uttered about the true situation in that house.

in the coercion of these two. And over time this relationship evolved. And there's a story in the Bible about Sarah and Hagar, and Sarah is the wife and Hagar is the slave, and this is in the Old Testament. And he would have Colleen read the Bible allowed, and he told her that it was a biblical relationship, and so he used he was so insidious, he used the Bible as part of his you know, coercive arsenal, and so they that was a brainwashing technique that he used.

But it became so overwhelming to Jan. At one point, Jan asked Cameron to kill her. She wanted him to strangle her. She didn't want to live anymore. And he put his hands around her neck and and choked her, but then did not clearly did not kill her. So there was there was a you know, periods of extreme intensity. And then also during this time, it's important that Jan had another child. Now both these children are girls, and so now Colleen is let out and she's a babysitter.

And they moved from the first house, which is right downtown on Oak Street, in a small house in downtown Red Bluff, and they moved to a mobile home and you would think, Okay, now what's he going to do because there's no basement there. Well, he was quite inventive and he built a large pedestal for the bed, and then underneath that was a compartment which was roughly again the size of a coffin. And so then Colleen slept underneath the bed and it was quite stuffy and hot

down there. The ventilation was awful. And what she had for company was he gave her a radio so she would listen to the religious station. And now this is Colleen's story that has never really been told. But she had a religious epiphany at some point, and I'm hoping that she will right about that. I know she's working on her memoirs. But she became quite religious and has

told me that she feels that God saved her. So during that time then she would be let out and she would even go out into the yard and meet neighbors. But they knew her as the living babysitter, and her she was Kay and she didn't, you know, engage in conversation beyond you know, looks like it's going to rain or something like that. Because she was afraid of the neighbors. She thought they were part of the company and Cameron, as part of his indoctrination, she had to ask permission

for anything that she would do. She all of her activities were very controlled. And uh, then I think we have to come up to a really phenomenal event, and that was that in the in the middle of this seven year period, Cameron did something extraordinary and he decided to let Colleen visit her family, and this became a

real sticking point in the in the trial. But he actually drove her down to southern California to her riverside, California, and out of the blue, Colleen appears visits her family and he tells her that I think he told her they were going to stay for three days, and of course that didn't happen. He he just wanted to kind of test her, test his slave by that he had such confidence in her control, in the control of her

at that point. And this is not unlike, for example, what happened with Patty Hurst, or with Elizabeth Smart or j. C. Du Garde, you know other these are and those I think are especially interesting cases because Elizabeth Smart and jac d Guard were also kidnapped by a at a wife team and also had interactions with the public, but were too afraid to tell anyone who they really were. So

there are real similarities between these cases. But anyway, so she was she was let to visit her family, but then Cameron abruptly cut that visit short and took her away. He was introduced as her boyfriend, and Colleen could have said something in retrospect, but she was so afraid that he would hurt her family, that the company would come and you know, make good on these terrible promises, and

it had happened to her. I mean, this is her life experience now for I think it was three years at that point, so she knew if this could happen, this horrible, unthinkable thing could happen. So it wasn't outside the realm of plausibility that the company could do something

horrible to her family. So he took her back up to Red Bluff, and at that point I think he had misgivings that maybe he had overstepped his bounds or was afraid that they might come looking for her, and he shut her back in the box for a really extensive period of time where she was only let out at night. For about the next three years, the girls, the girls didn't know where she'd gone. She had this she was this living babysitter, and now suddenly she's gone,

and yet she was living in the house. That's how intense her isolation was and that kind of control. And you can see now why it's so unfathomable that you know, until you see the evidence, you see the photographs of him, you know, hanging her up with the wrists, and you and you hear the corroboration between Janice and Colleen about all of this and a lot of us he admitted to. That was what was really astonishing that he up the stance. So I'm kind of jumping ahead to the trial at this point, but.

the savior of Colleen. Again. We talked a little bit about the Bible, but the thing that Colleen that Cameron really uh miscalculated was was that he allowed these women even to go to church and did have a relationship and and to and to form a bond between them, which at one time, because you know, jan was jealous somewhat, you know, you know, afraid of the consequences and also shameful, but then also jealous that she was a competing woman

in the household. So it had this complex situation psychologically for her. So tell us a little bit more about the bonding process, because at one time he shot her away because there was so much tension in the house between the two women.

had been giving them. And then that summer, the summer of eighty four, he also let Colleen get a job and she worked as a motel maate. She would ride her bike to the motel, she'd clean the rooms, she would home, and she would give her money to Cameron and that's all she did. She didn't really one woman tried to befriend her and brought her home from work once. I can't remember it was raining, yeah, I think it was raining, And so she took took her home in

her car and Colleen invited her inside. And Cameron did not like that. He didn't he wouldn't even speak to her, just glared at her. And so she had really overstepped her bounds. But if he had seen then he was losing control by then in a sense, because Colleen was starting to go out and Janice was starting to go out, and Janice was having what she called a nervous breakdown.

She and I think the underlying thing besides the tension and also friendship between the two of them, because they were both they were both, you know, victims of Cameron Hookers. You know, he was a dominant one, and they were both his told his you know, his submissive of slaves essentially.

But Jane's had the additional burden of having two daughters and now they're getting a little bit older, and it begins to dawn on her that it's not a good thing to be a female in this household with Cameron Hooker. Around how long can this go on before they become victims? Also? And I think this became a real crisis for her

and past her. Damney started to give them a more loving, more modern interpretation, not this old testament, you know, slaves obey your master's stuff, but you know, about a loving relationship between husband and wife. And finally that the two of them confided in him to some degree, to some limited degree, he didn't really understand what all had gone on that he, you know, told them they needed to

get away. And so this was the dramatic moment because Colleen all this time had believed in the company, and Janice at some point had told her, you know, we need to get away or and she would say no because the company would come after us. And Janie felt this burden that she was continuing this lie to now her only friend. I mean, who else understood the situation they were in that only the two of them understood. And so finally she had to tell her carefully that

it was all a lie. She went and you know, while Colline was working, she said, I have to tell you there is no company of slave Travis. This is all a lie. And you know, the two of them just kind of broke down and hugged each other. And then it was getting late and Cameron was coming home at four o'clock from work, and the only thing that they could do was pretend for that night, pretend that everything was normal, so that they could escape the next day.

And so he came home. Jana said she wasn't feeling well. She slept on the floor with Colleen that night, and then the next day he went to work, and while he was gone, they gathered up the things. They gathered up the things for children, and the two of them

fled together. Colleen had contacted her father again out of the blue, you know, he hadn't heard from hervan three years, and asked him to wire her dollars to buy a bus ticket, and she took the bus home, but Janice pleaded with her not to tell the police, not to tell anyone what had happened. And so that's what Coline did. She didn't tell anyone. It was finally Janice who told the police. And so she is the first victim. She is an accomplice during Coleen's captivity's she mother's two children,

and then she's the one who sets Colin free. I never met the girls. The girls did not testify, they didn't come to court, but I talked to Janice after the trial, and what struck me was that she seemed so washed out and so much older than she was, very lined, her hands looked old, her face was lined, her hair was dingy. And Colleen at that point had endured so much of you. She had very thin hair, you could see through to her scalp. She hadn't been to a dentist all this time. Her teeth were bad.

I mean, she has chronic back problems to this day, not to mention the scars from the handcuffs and the whippings. So I mean, what she endured was horrible. What Jance endured also was terrible. And the two of them finally talked to the police together and at the preliminary hearing

they were kind of a team. But by the time the trial had come around, I think Colleen had regained more of her self esteem and kind of a sense of self preservation, and she was very stand offish to Janice because then she recognized that she had been an accomplice, and had she could have told her years ago that there was no company of slave traders. Two of them could have escaped together, you know, in the first week

for that matter. So I know that that Coline is still very religious, and she is a very forgiving and kind person, but at that point I think she had to kind of reclaim her identity. I know it took her a long time to do that. So but the other thing that happened is that the story was so outlantish when it did hit headlines. There was this whole thing of blaming the victim. And there's a quote that I have in the book from Patty Hurst that I

want to read. She said, when you are held captive, people somehow expect you to spit in your captor's face and get killed. And that's the truth. I mean, people thought, well, why didn't she just beat him up? Why didn't she run away? Especially men, They'd say, well, I would have just punched him in the face and run off. Well, first of all, he was much bigger than she was, much stronger. I mean, Colleen's only about five four and he's six four. And that's besides the mental coercion, which

was just such an enlightening part of that trial. Doctor Chris Hancher is the captivity expert who testified, and that whole aspect just to see how systematic her coersion was, or brainwashing in layperson's terms. So he used every tool that he could to disorient her, to threaten her, to isolate her, to take away her sense of privacy, to alternate reward and punishment for no reason, to force her to do different behaviors, to reduce her food and water,

starve her, abuse her, shame her. I mean, he did every aspect of control because again, that was his passion, and he had studied that, that's what that was his hobby, his vocation basically, and he's such a psychopath. And now I didn't really understand psychopaths when I was attending this trial, but doctor Knight, I'm sorry, Judge Knight, who's the judge. When he sentenced Cameron Hooker mentioned his high degree of cruelty and callousness, and that is so characteristic of psychopaths

that they don't have remorse. He's an utterly remorsefuls human being. He sees nothing wrong with what he did, which is why he took the stand in his own defense.

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podcast one word dot com slash true Murder. When we last left off, Carla, we were talking about the trial, we kind of skipped over the actual arrest Cameron Hooker, the kind of lawyer that he obtained and of course retained, i should say, and also the various challenges that this

case encountered, including right from the very beginning. So tell us a little bit about Christine Maguire and her fight to have this case, for her to prosecute it, and for this case to be prosecuted, because at one time it was it didn't look like it was going to happen.

legal reason to not have a trial. And so luckily they did try the case and what was interesting was that there are no except for assault and mayhem, there really are no charges for torture, and so well, what what Christine had to do was was focused instead on the sex charges, on the sexual assaults and because those could be those had the highest sentence sentencing rate, and that those could be charged and then the terms served consecutively.

But the tough thing was this kidnapping. Now, Cameron Hooker's point of view and his attorney, doctor Roland Packet Pappendick Uh the attorney representing their Their point of view was that the statute of limitations had lapsed, and then she

stayed because she wanted to. And what was interesting was that they brought forth something no one knew they had, and that was love letters that Colleen had written to Cameron Hooker and they put forth in his defense this was proof that she was in love with him and

she stayed because she wanted to. Uh. And it was only in the cross examination when when Christy maguire was able to on her expert witness, doctor Chris Hancher, that they went through those love letters line by line and she pointed, he pointed out that they're addressed to dear master, I'm writing you this letter because you you told me to and what would be sign your slaves, So it wasn't her own volition that she just decided, you know, from Colleen to Cameron, my sweetheart, it was from slave

to master, because this is what you told me to do, and so and so it was pretty clear that those were instruments again of coercion. But again the problem was that the kidnapping charge had happened before the statute of limitations, and so he freely admitted right off the bat that he kidnapped her. But what Christine did was that she looked at another case that had happened a young boy. I'm going to forget his name now. It starts with an s. Gosh, a young boy had been kidnapped and

held captive. I think he was kidnapped when he was seven or eight and held for many years. And in that case they were able to prove continuous kidnapping. And in that case, then it's not it can't lapse because the kidnapping never ended. It's it's a perpetual state. And so she was able to prove that this was continual kidnapping. But all of this was so iffy. I mean, it seems strange to us now because after Elizabeth Smart and

JC Degard and those three women held in Ohio. I mean, we've become educated now as a population to Stockholm syndrome and these terrible, horrible crimes. But at that point people

just couldn't fathom this. And even after all the whole case had been presented, because of course there was an expert witness also from Stanford on the defense side, testifying that, you know, what Colleen said happened couldn't be technically true, and that he didn't really believe in this, you know, brainwashing aspect, and on and on, so that you have the two experts, you know, sounding off it against each other.

And when the jury went out, the press corps actually was wagering whether or not he would be set free. And Cameron even at the conclusion of closing arguments, he turned to the bailiff and said, he smiled and said, I know I'm going home tomorrow. He was that confident. So it was it was a huge relief to everyone when they came back and found him guilty. They were actually hung on one or two counts, I think, but they did find let's find him guilty.

being totally again yes, doctor London. So the other thing was the other thing was is that the other thing is that Colleen took the stand. First, Janice took the stand, Colleen takes the stand, and then very very very unusual Cameron takes the stand. So we got to go to what Let's go back to when Janice first approached police. She had a story that was even more bizarre than the Colleen stan abduction and torture story. There was another

one about Marie Elizabeth Spanickey. So tell us what she told police and why the police were unable to act upon what she had witnessed.

with her boyfriend. So she was walking at walking home and Cameron and Janice drive up, and Cameron offers her a ride, and so she gets in the car and they take her, you know, to where she's going, and she starts to get out, and he grabs her and subdues her and takes her back to the house. So very much like what happened with Colleen, you know, she picks a woman off the side of the street and rushes back to the house. But in this case, Marls didn't behave as he wanted her to behave, and he

cut her throat. First of all, he tried to cut out her voice box, and then she asked for a pen and paper and wrote down, you know, please let me go. My boyfriend will pay a ransom and he refused, and he I believe he shot her with a pellet gun and then ultimately strangled her and murdered her. And so he had they take her. Yeah, they load her in the car, they drove out at night into the woods,

and they buried her. And so Janice confessed this to the police and they read her rights, you know, immediately she confessed this before she told him about Colleen. And they looked for the body, but they could not find her body. And Marla's spanickey did disappear on the night she said she was wearing what Janice described. I mean, there's no way Janis would have known the things about her that she knew unless that was true. But that

is legally not enough to prosecute someone. Now, I believe down to my toes that Cameron hook Her murdered that girl. And I've also believed that if coin Stan had resisted that he would have murdered her too. And it is because she did what she was told and didn't fight back that she's alive today.

it became Stockholm Center. I mean, you see the same kind of bonding in a sense between captor and captive in pow situations, prison guards who were taken hostage during riot, to all kinds of those kinds of situations. But remind me again, why am I giving you this background? Whoops, I'll off my train of thought. I'm telling you about Stockholm syndrome because.

even though you know, Stockholm syndrome wasn't widely understood. He has just an an erring sense for what that relationship is like, how you try to identify what makes your captor tick and please him because he can kill you if you don't. And so I do quote him in the book, and I recommend that that book frequently, even though it's not well known, but it's not well known anymore, but it's a really really terrific fictionalized version of what really did happen in this case.

escaped and yet could have escaped yet didn't. So he explained psychologically and very easy to relate terms for the jury exactly what coercion, what these coursive techniques were, and he outlined them and also pointed out Cameron obviously got his inspiration from from some of the material and the newspapers and the literature that Cameron had and where exhibits at trial.

Sereni les Go and and his credentials. I mean it took him ten minutes just to explain his credentials, but he was fascinating and explaining how coercion exists on a continuum that you can think about, you know, someone being dominant in a relationship, like they're the one who says when you go shopping by this by that this is what we're having for dinner, or then you know, a more overt kind of domination to the point where you have at the extreme extreme end what Cameron Hooker subjected

coin stand to. So and also this idea of you know that yes there are people that participate willingly in bondage as sex play, but that that is a consensual relationship. Again on a continuum, so you know, you might you know, there's one thing to have a little bit of you know, biting or pulling of hair might be stimulating in a playful way, but that's not the same as torturing someone for your pleasure. That if you like to inflict pain on someone else as as a stimulation, you know, that's

completely at the other end of the continuum. So it was really interesting to listen to him talk about how this kind of prolonged captivity breaks down your will, that you're reduced to the state of an infant, and that you're so dependent on this other person for your you know, basic human functions that you haven't since you were an infant.

You haven't had to, you know, soil yourself because they wouldn't let you go to the bathroom, or you know, that you were so dependent on someone just simply for some food and water, and it just breaks you down psychologically. And you know, soldiers are trained to resist this. Ordinary people are not trained to resist us. And even someone trained can be broken down and made to do what their captor wants them to do. The other thing I want to talk about too a little bit, is just

a difference between kidnapping situations. You know, there's it's something different if you're in if you're held captive and there is some negotiation for your release, and you know, that if someone pays the ransom, that you will be set free. There's the hope there that you can get out. But what she was subjected to was utterly hopeless. There was no negotiation, no one knew she was there, There was

no way that he would ever let her go. Her only hope was to a and so Janice really was the key to that.

having an easy time. So he explained the flat, unemotional effect that she had that seemed very foreign to everybody, including the media and everybody because it's foreign to them, it's totally unexperienced in this unprecedented case. So what he also explained is how on earth she could have written those letters, And like you say, line by line, he explained the phone calls and the letters and her expression of love for Cameron Hooker.

of pervades your whole personality. So you know, when you talk about what happened to you, you're not going to sitting on a stand. Talking is not frightening, you know, talk being closed in front of front of people. Might you know, you might have some stage fright, you might be nervous, but it's not anything like you know, someone holding you underwater. I mean, this is pre the term, before I ever heard the term waterboarding. I mean, they,

you know, almost drowned her. And he taped electrical wires to her breasts and her thighs an electrocuted her. I mean, after that kind of extreme horror, she was not an emotional person. And even today she's she's fairly soft spoken. I mean she does I'll laugh, which is refreshing to hear. And she does have hope and love in her life, thank god. But at that time, yeah, it was I know that Christine was concerned that the jury wouldn't believe her,

partly because she wasn't histrionic. But she wasn't histrionic because of what she'd gone through.

a witness. So tell us about Cameron Hooker's testimony and Christine Maguire's cross examination.

as kind of this wholesome guy. And then when she she really was brilliant in the way she grilled him and caught him inconsistencies and and just brought up the facts and showed how he, you know, how callous he had been, and they about these things that he had done. I mean, here here in the courtroom was the box. They Christ team brought in the box that he'd kept her locked in under the bed. There's a picture of

it in the book. And I know some of the jurors actually tried on the headbox and laid down in the box during their deliberations. And that was such a testament. And then she brought in a huge photograph that he had taken of Colleen blindfolded and quite thin as suspended by her wrists, naked, and that kind of evidence was just so glaring in contrast to the sort of wholesome, loving relationship. He was he was hoping to pretend that they had, so I don't remember him getting upset or

you know, ever raising his voice or anything. I think that he honestly thought that Chris, that the prosecution had no case. I think he really genuinely believed that. And I need to bring up also, or I'd like to bring up now that he was sentenced to one hundred and four years, and we thought he would never be

set free, even with time off for good behavior. But recently California changed the law and they have made it mandatory that anyone over the age of sixty who has served twenty five years of their sentence is up for early release. And so Coin contacted me in January very upset that he was going to be having a hearing right and that he was going to have to face him. And so there was a hearing April sixteenth, and Colleen

rallied her courage and she testified against him. We had a letter writing campaign to people to protest his release, because clearly this is the kind of person who sees that he did nothing wrong. He's never expressed any remorse, and I believe strongly that psychopaths can't be rehabilitated. I've researched that somewhat and wrote about that for The Atlantic. And part of the thing is that they don't see anything wrong with themselves, so why should they change, right,

And psychopathy actually exists also on a continuum. I mean they some psychopaths run corporations or you know, you might The likelihood is that all of us have met someone during our lives who basically lacks empathy, but to be a sadist and a psychopath to the extreme level that he is is again on an at the far end of the spectrum. But luckily the parole board recognized what a cruel person he is and that he has no remorse, and so he's still in prison.

this guy is okay? Now? So and to just to talk about his lack of remorse, because I don't think these people, really, I don't think, you know, truthfully ever have any remorse. But to show you how he really thought about things is that he said he had a computer and some games and three squares and and at least it was better than living with those two women.

with my life. But every time, of course, there was any kind of case like this, Elizabeth Smart or JC de Garde, you know, it all came back to me. And you know, I maintained contact with Colleen over the years, and what I wanted to do was write fiction about a survivor of kidnapping and captivity as a way of kind of almost a cathartic way of dealing with that crime. And so I wrote a crime novel. The title is The Edge of Normal, and the protagonist is twenty two.

She was kidnapped when she was twelve and held for four years. Not as extreme as what Colleen went through, but more extreme than what Elizabeth Smart went through. And so she's my heroine in a way, you know, perfect victim is talking about the crime and the victimization, and then The Edge of Normal is my way of talking about the survivor. And she is called upon to help

another girl who's survived that kind of case. And there's a character, doctor Lerner, who's roughly patterned after doctor Chris Hatcher, who's the forensic psychiatrist, the expert on captivity syndromes, who's her psychiatrist and when I wrote The Edge of Normal, I was really nervous about what Colleen would think, so of course I sent her a copy, and a few days after she received it, she called me up and I steeled myself because I was really afraid she was

going to be upset about it. And she said, I want to thank you because I feel like you really listened to me, that you really understand, and it just gave me chills. And then that i've just recently well actually, the sequel is coming out at the end of this month, is called What Doesn't Kill Her, And in a way that's inspired by this possibility of Cameron Hooker being released, because of course my first thought was if he is released, I hope somebody just shoots him, which I know is

a terrible thing to say. I don't really mean that, you know, don't call the police, but that's the you know, that's viscerally what what you feel is that you know he should not be ever set free. And so that inspired the idea of the second book, in which the the captor the kidnapper breaks out of prison and and how do you deal with that person being back on the street. So in a way, you know, I'm still trying to grapple with the emotional issues. I'm still obsessed

with evil. I'm you know, interviewing experts about about psychopaths and talking to the FBI and kind of fixated on those cases. And it's fascinating to be the resilience of someone who's gone through that sort of thing. And also

there's a bonding between survivors. I hadn't realized this, but after Jasu de Garde escaped or was rescued, I started looking at some of the publications that survivors have written, and actually, if you do enough research, there is a publication that I think it's put out by the National Center for I'm trying to think of the group anyway.

It's it's a governmental agency and it's a collection of stories by survivors, and Elizabeth Smart contributed to that and some others, and they really do try to help each other survivors of kidnapping, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, That's what I'm trying to think of. They there are techniques actually for you know, reclaiming your life and beginning to feel safe again after you've been through that kind of horrific situation.

absorbed her life for months, that this this fear. Although I have to give her credit at how she has dealt with it, she's been phenomenal. She spoke to a victims group in Northern California and shared her story. It was the first time she'd publicly come out, and she I think this was videotaped. It might have been on television. I think I saw, I got some glimpses on my computer. And she's put together a very cohesive case for putting

him away. And I'm hoping that in a way that that was cathartic for her, that she again faced him and had that affirmation that he's you know, not going anywhere, and that she's able now to reach out to others. She's had such a hard and amazing life, i mean, even beyond this trial. And I've been encouraging her to work on her memoir, although I'm sure that that's quite stressful for her.

have a religious experience or a spiritual experience. It's incredible. Resilience under resilience in the dictionary. Should have a photo of her. And then when you see her in the book, her eyes are so compassionate, and yet you can't imagine anybody living and enduring what she did for those seven years and then not being vengeful and bitter and hateful. It's it's incredible.

she's she's just a dear, wonderful person. And thank god, she did have some religion in her life, and she prayed, and she you know, would would relive in her mind her favorite memories with her family and her childhood and places that she had been and I, you know, to try to imagine being, you know, locked in a box. I mean, it really is. It's solitary confinement. It's in human kind of treatment that she endured. But thankfully she did survive it, and you know, she's she's gone on

to live her life. And she said that one thing that surprised her is that people would complain about They're always complaining about things, and she realizes how lucky we all are, you know, every day, and that makes her appreciate all the wonderful experience every day if we just you know, look at them, look at the real situation.

and talking about this. For those that might be interested in contacting you, do you have a website or do you Facebook? Tell us how people might be able to contact you or learn more about your work.