Busy looking forward to the visit and planning the day’s activities in her head, Erin paid little attention to what was happening around her at about 10 P.M. as she checked into the room she had rented at a motel in Huntsville. The overhead lights flickered as she hurriedly unloaded several bags from her vehicle and then went to the icemaker to retrieve some ice for her soda. Just as she settled into her room for the evening, a harsh knock at the door caused her to sit upright.3
Erin pulled the heavy acrylic curtains slowly to the side and peered out the window. Her eyes rested on a woman with long, dark hair and she hesitantly turned the heavy deadbolt on the door and, against her better judgment, opened it slightly. Running a hand through her hair, the woman introduced herself as “Jennifer” and explained that she and her son were caught in a domestic violence situation. As she ran through the specifics, she nodded toward a teenage boy standing off to her side in the shadows of the stairwell.
Appearing nervous, Erin stared at the teenager who seemed near the age of her own son. He was quiet and kept his eyes downward, only peeking up at her in brief glimpses as the woman spoke to her. She explained that they had bus tickets but no way to reach the local bus station the following morning. Erin must have felt sorry for the woman and her son. How would she feel if her own boy was stranded in a motel, fleeing a desperate situation? She probably hoped that someone would feel sympathetic enough to help him. In that moment, she decided that she would not leave the boy and his mother alone since she could easily take them to the bus station the next day.4
She quickly nodded her agreement and instructed Jennifer to meet her at the door in the morning. No sooner had Erin flipped on the television and pulled back the stiff floral comforter on the bed than she heard knocking at the door. Jennifer stood outside once again. Erin opened the door a second time to the woman and her son.
“I am so sorry, but I just realized I gave you the wrong room number for us,” Jennifer blurted out quickly. After correcting the information, she gushed her thanks and let Erin know that she really was desperate and that she greatly appreciated her willingness to help. As the two women spoke briefly, Erin noticed the young man again, hovering to the left and staring at his feet. What had she gotten herself into? After they left, Erin retired to her room for the evening.
Before 9 A.M. the next morning, loud rapping on her door woke Erin from a deep sleep. Jennifer stood right outside holding several plastic grocery bags stuffed with various items of clothing and tapping her foot. She was clearly ready to go. Erin explained that she was still tired from traveling the previous day and that she needed more time to get ready before they left. Nevertheless, within the hour, Jennifer reappeared at her door with her belongings stacked next to Erin’s vehicle. Erin again informed her that she was not ready and asked that the woman wait another hour before coming back to the room.
Eventually Erin walked out to the car where Jennifer was waiting for her. Jennifer retrieved her son; the teenager climbed into the back seat and Jennifer situated herself in the front, quickly asking if Erin would drive to the motel’s office so that she could turn in her key. Thinking nothing of the request, Erin maneuvered her vehicle to the front of the parking lot and parked in front of the rental office as Jennifer dashed inside. She emerged from the lobby almost immediately and jumped back into the car’s front seat.
Before Erin could pull away, the back passenger door swung open and a man slid into the back seat. Grinning broadly, he nodded toward Jennifer, “She said you might be able to give me a ride to the bus station as well.” It was like he came out of nowhere. Erin had not seen the man as she watched Jennifer walk to and from the motel lobby, yet here he was in her vehicle. Something wasn’t right. It was unpleasantly surprising that Jennifer, a total stranger, would volunteer her as a taxi service for this man. It was one thing to help out a single woman and her child; it was quite another to provide a ride to a tattooed man she’d never met.5
At that moment, Erin had no indication that her initial passengers knew the man other than through incidental contact by staying in the same motel. She was under the impression that they too had met just like she and Jennifer had, by the chance of staying in neighboring rooms. Although the feeling that something wasn’t right continued to creep up her spine, she willed herself to calm down and just drive. She only had to get the passengers a few miles down the road and then she could finally pick up her son.
Although a visitor on this occasion, Erin was actually a former resident of Huntsville and was familiar with the location of the bus station. Downtown Huntsville housed the main bus depot for the city. When the man informed her that they needed a ride to a substation approximately eight miles down the road, she hesitated. As far as she could recall, there was no station in that direction. Her suspicion seemed to intensify when Jennifer pointed out the window as they passed a street sign. “Oh, honey, look,” she exclaimed, twisting her body to face the backseat and locking eyes with the man. They had told Erin an untrue story about their relationship and the reason they were in Huntsville. They clearly knew each other. She was in a bad situation, trapped in the car with three strangers, two of whom were adults who had lied to her. Her increased discomfort must have been apparent to her passengers as she pulled the car quickly into a gas station in Madison City and threw the transmission into park.
“Please,” she asked, turning to the two adults, “go into this gas station and ask for directions to the bus substation. I don’t remember a station in the direction you’re asking me to go.” She watched as Jennifer and the man exited the vehicle and sauntered toward the automatic doors of the station, Jennifer grabbing snacks and standing briefly at the cash register while the man appeared to retrieve cash from the ATM. The teen remained quietly in the vehicle with his eyes downcast.6
As the two reentered the car, Jennifer explained that they needed to turn left on the main road and drive for several minutes to reach the substation. By this point, Erin was frantic. She squeezed the steering wheel, willing herself to stay calm so that the already uncomfortable situation would not intensify. She needed to get these people where they needed to go and out of her car.
“I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I can’t go in that direction. I will take you to the downtown station. I know where that one is located. I don’t have time to take you where you are asking me to go,” she said, steadying herself against the driver’s seat.
“That’s fine,” Jennifer spoke up. “If you could just run me to that store over there?” she asked, gesturing toward the building across the parking lot, “I just need to pick up some toothpaste and then if you can take us downtown to the station that will be fine.”7
Erin parked the car in front of the store; Jennifer hopped out and went inside. The man too slid from his seat and lit a cigarette as he stood off to the left of the car. As Jennifer emerged from the store, she headed toward the vehicle, speaking briefly with the man before they both reentered Erin’s car. This time, Jennifer climbed into the back with the teenager and the man situated himself in the front passenger seat. In one fluid motion he turned to Jennifer and held out his hand. “Pass it up,” he barked to Jennifer in the back seat.
With those three words, Erin began to quiver as she watched the woman in the rear of her vehicle slide a shiny pistol out of her purse and into the hands of the man next to her. Her eyes widened and she became pale as he turned to her, a slight smirk playing at the left corner of his lips. He laid the gun in his lap, barrel facing Erin. “Drive,” he commanded, his eyes facing forward.8
Erin reacted to the command, but she seemed almost frozen in fear. How had she gotten into this situation and, more importantly, was there a way out of it?
She focused on the road ahead as the man began to drone on about his situation. Calling himself “a wanted man,” he wove a story that seemed ripped from the script of a movie. He wasn’t a bad person, he said. No, he was saving his son, he claimed. The boy’s mother had kidnapped his son whom Erin now
knew as Joshua. It took the man over eleven months to find them and when he did, he had attempted to take back Joshua. When a man intervened, he accidentally shot the man and it was for that reason that he was on the run with his son. The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a Kentucky State ID, demanding that Erin look at it. She kept her eyes straight ahead, too scared to see who this monster holding her captive truly was. She was too terrified to take her eyes off the road.9
The man told Erin the direction she needed to drive and she was quick to follow his orders even though she had to realize that he was taking her away from civilization. At that moment, instinct kicked in and she must have become aware that the only way out of the situation was to convince the man that she was completely sympathetic to his plight. She would play the most empathetic, supportive and caring role that she could muster in the hopes of gaining his trust and saving her life. Nearly twenty years his senior, Erin took on a motherly role, beginning to ply Gouker with advice about his situation, instructing him the way she would her own son.
Willing herself to briefly take her eyes off the road, Erin looked to her right and made eye contact with her captor. She took it all in, forcing her gaze away from the teardrop inked below one eye and concentrating on his eyes, “It’s unfortunate that someone was hurt, but as parents we must do what is best to protect our children, so I understand why you did what you did. Look, the way I see it is that you made a mistake. We all do sometimes. The best thing that you can do is stop making mistakes, stop being violent. That’s the way people get caught.”
Tilting his head slightly, he looked at her, almost as though he was looking through her. Erin watched as he fingered the shiny handgun in his lap, aimlessly running his hand up and down the barrel and around the trigger, seemingly lost in his thoughts.
For the next three hours she followed the man’s directions, navigating her car through the highways and streets of Alabama. She was keenly aware that even the slightest movement on her part could set him off. As she drove, Erin must have worried about her fate and more importantly about her own children. Surely by now her son was anxious about where she was. Hours had passed since the designated time she had planned to pick him up. He was probably worried sick. The thought of his disappointment that she was not there with him and his uncertainty regarding her whereabouts was almost too much to bear. She wondered if she would ever see him again; she was terrified that unless she kept her wits about her, the next time they were in the same room would be at her funeral.
She flinched with each movement. Even looking in the rear view mirror caused her captor to lash out at her. If she looked out the window the wrong way, he threatened her and accused her of trying to escape. In the past few weeks, Erin had begun having trouble with her vehicle. Despite having paid a mechanic to fix it, there were still issues. The car was older and occasionally the clutch would slip out of gear. Each time this occurred, she tensed as she felt the man’s eyes cut to her. He was evidently suspicious that she was manipulating the car into stalling so that she could attract attention.10
It was a maddening tug of war. The man scrutinized every move she made and she was never quite sure which move might be her last. As they sped toward Birmingham, the back seat passengers remained quiet and, despite her intense fear, Erin did her best to keep the man talking. As long as he was speaking with her and engaged with her she felt that she had a chance to escape the situation.
Eventually he directed her into a rest stop off the highway. Erin remembered the prescription that she always kept in her purse. The medication was prescribed to her for anxiety and she knew all too well that in addition to its relaxing effects, it could make the user sleepy. She took a chance and pulled the bottle from her purse and held it out to the man. She offered some of the pills to her captor, hoping he would accept and then fall asleep, giving her a chance to flee the vehicle.11
She watched as he took several and downed them. At the very least, she had to be hoping the medication would mellow him and keep him from doing anything more drastic than the earlier events of the day. They sat quietly in the car until he eventually turned to her and instructed her to get back onto the highway. After that short respite, the group continued toward Birmingham and ultimately arrived at a motel where the man wanted to stay.
“Pull the car around to the back of the building,” he directed, gesturing toward a parking area far from the front of the lobby. Pulling a wad of bills from his pocket, the man quickly peeled off one hundred dollars and handed them to Erin. “I need you to go get a room for two nights, okay. Don’t try anything. I am still deciding what to do with you. Josh!” he barked toward his son who had just exited the back seat, “you go with her.”
The boy nodded and moved toward Erin and silently they walked around the building toward the check-in area. As they entered through the front door, they were promptly greeted by the staff. Although it was not a high-end motel chain, it was obvious that this particular location was semi-new construction. The building was clean and smelled of fresh paint. Erin explained to the clerk that she only had one hundred dollars and stated that she needed a room for two nights. The sympathetic employee nodded, explaining that they were new and had plenty of available rooms. The company was willing to adjust the room cost to accommodate them. It likely didn’t hurt that the grandmotherly Erin and the young boy appeared nice and normal. This was likely the man’s plan in sending Josh along with her to purchase the room. No one would turn away a grandmother and her grandson if they could accommodate them at all, especially with the amount of vacancies the newly-opened motel had.
As the clerk checked them in, when asked, Josh politely requested a smoking room. That was only the second time Erin had heard the boy speak all day.12
The clerk assigned the group to a room in the back of the motel that was accessible through a rear door. When Erin explained the location of the room to her captor, this pleased him immensely as the room afforded a great sense of privacy. Before allowing the group to enter the room, he ordered everyone back into the vehicle, only this time he positioned himself in the driver’s seat. Erin reluctantly slid into the front passenger seat as he started the vehicle. Without a word, he exited the parking lot and began traveling away from the nearby buildings. After several minutes, the car reached a desolate area and Erin must have known that they were likely miles from any type of civilization. There were no cars or people in sight.
The man eased the car to a stop and off to the right was a grove of leafy trees that surrounded a green, grassy clearing. In any other situation, the natural beauty of the location would have beckoned passersby to a picnic, but Erin was trapped by her kidnapper and other possibilities had to be in Erin’s mind. He looked toward her, raising an eyebrow. “That looks like a good place to die,” he said, nodding toward the grassy grove.
Erin appeared numb. Although she didn’t know the man well, she had seen enough to realize that he thrived on instilling fear in others. She probably felt that the only way to gain this man’s respect was to hide her fear. Erin’s knees begin to shake. She mustered every bit of courage that she had and looked him straight in the eye. “Now I’m nervous,” she said flippantly, giving the impression that she assumed he was making a joke. He tilted his head slightly and cracked a smile. She willed herself to smile back.13
The tension was broken. She had passed his test. He started the car and drove back into town.
By then Erin could sense that the man could not decide what to do with her and she felt him evaluating her to see whether he could trust her not to go to the police if he released her. She took every opportunity that she could to get into his good graces and she spoke with him and interacted with him as if she were his mother, giving him advice on how to flee the country successfully with his son. Everyone was beginning to get hungry, so he drove to a restaurant near the motel. He ordered Jennifer and Josh to go inside and order food while he instructed Erin to remain in the vehicle with him. In an attempt to gauge her l
oyalty to him, the man coached Erin that if he released her, she could not go to the police. For several minutes she assured him that she had no plans to do so.
Eventually he allowed her to walk into the restaurant with him. This was the first real chance that Erin had to escape or alert someone that she was being held against her will. She must have wanted desperately to convey to the employees and patrons that she needed help. However, as she looked around the restaurant, there were several children playing and eating with their families and Erin just could not risk someone else getting hurt. After all, her captor was armed with a gun.
As she tried not to be obvious and her eyes darted around the fast-food joint, the man steered her toward a booth where they sat with Josh and Jennifer. As they ate their meal, the man continued to pressure Erin that he was considering letting her go but that she could not go to the police. He barked at Josh and ordered him to look at Erin. Her captor then turned to Erin and told her to look into Josh’s eyes and promise him that she would not go to the police. He emphasized that Josh’s life depended on her continued silence. She watched as Josh’s face changed. He bit his lip and seemed very disturbed by what his father was doing. It was clear that he wanted no part of the ordeal and yet he was stuck in the situation. He was probably also there against his will.
As they finished their meal, the man again forced Erin to go outside with him alone and he reiterated that she could not go to the police. She could sense the internal struggle in him and she did everything she could to reassure him that she would be loyal to him: she would not alert the authorities. Erin was in survival mode and she could see that her constant reassurance and support were working. The man was beginning to trust her; he was starting to feel confident that he did not need to kill her. He could let her go.
Minutes later, Josh and Jennifer emerged from the restaurant and reentered the car. The man drove to the hotel and everyone filed into their room. The man’s unease was apparent. He seemed to be leaning toward releasing her, but she could tell that his mood could change instantly. As a sign of good faith, she reached into her purse and pulled out all of the cash she had, about one hundred dollars. Then she gave him the rest of her anxiety prescription. If he set her free she could call the police; perhaps the medication would cause him to pass out so that no one would be harmed when the police attempted to apprehend him. She did not want anyone to get hurt. What was this man capable of doing? If the events of the day were any indication, he was likely capable of very bad things.
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