But K knew Cameron would never let her see her family again, and even these shimmering illusions crumpled beneath the weight of reality. Some nights, swept up in nightmares of slavery, torture, and pain, she’d wake with her heart pounding from dreams of her deepest fear: being sold to slave owners even crueler than Cameron Hooker.
Usually, K passively endured being locked inside that loathsome box, but once she succumbed to a fit of temper.
Cameron had left for work, Jan was in the hospital for a knee operation, and K was alone in the house. She knew there was no one to hear, and taking the opportunity to vent her frustration on the box, she began kicking at it. She stomped on the door as hard as she could, kicking with all her strength.
Suddenly, it broke out. To her astonishment, she’d kicked the particle board so hard the bolts pulled clear through.
She could have escaped. She could have climbed out of the box and run away . . . but K’s reaction was not of liberation, but of fear. There was nowhere to go. The Company was everywhere, watching, and she was too afraid to test them.
She knew Cameron would be furious when he saw what she’d done. He would surely beat her. He might even kill her for this, with Jan and the girls gone and no witnesses. The thought must have made her shiver, but she lay there, cowering, until that evening when he got home from work.
He looked at the broken panel and got her out of the box. “What happened?”
She summoned her courage and confessed what she’d done. Amazingly, Hooker wasn’t besieged by a murderous passion—he wasn’t even mad. Instead, he busied himself with repairs. In no time, he’d rigged a board across the broken section, so that instead of bolting the box shut, he slipped the board snugly into its slots, like a barn door.
That done, the box was secure once again, with K shut back inside.
CHAPTER 19
For the most part, K simply endured and prayed, but during her captivity she also gained firsthand experience at a little-known craft. It was hard, demanding work, yet this training was too special to qualify her for much in any job market. Few people have labored at such a peculiar project.
The first year they moved from Oak Street, Hooker had built a small shed out behind the trailer. The second year, he built a second shed abutting the first one, with a common wall and a cement floor. He had poured the cement over the section of ground where he’d had K bury the railroad tie. When the cement had set, he had both a floor and a ceiling.
It was Cameron Hooker’s ambition to build a dungeon, and his slave would be his reluctant helper. They worked on it, off and on, for months, years.
No neighbors were near enough to worry about, but just in case, he took K out to the shed at night, under cover of darkness. Cameron had planned ahead when pouring the cement, leaving a rectangular patch of bare ground twenty-seven by thirty-four inches. This was designed to be the entrance to his dungeon, and this was where he told K to dig.
They dug a little each week, with K shoveling the dirt into buckets that Cameron dumped outside. Over time the hole got bigger, and as K shoveled deeper into the earth, she sank with her work farther and farther below the level of the floor, until Cameron had to rig up a pulley system to lift out the buckets of dirt.
Jan helped a couple of times, but Cameron generally told her to stay in the house with the kids and the phone. He and his slave labored together, silent and intent. A mound of earth appeared to the south of the sheds, steadily growing as the hole got deeper.
Working a couple of hours a night and as much as two or three nights a week over many months, Cameron and K enlarged the hole from the size of a footlocker to the size of a car and, finally, to the size of a small room. At last Cameron decided that, though it would only be a miniature dungeon, it was large enough. Now it was time to put in a floor and build walls.
Cement bricks would do. Cameron borrowed a cement mixer from his father, made a mold, and poured the bricks himself. The bricks had to set for twenty-four hours or so, and he could only make ten at a time, but Hooker was a man with patience. . . .
“You will have to cash your check at Raley’s. K has already been fed today. She doesn’t know I’m gone. Don’t tell her.”
Thus read the note that Jan left on the kitchen table. She didn’t even tell Cameron where she was going.
This was the first time she’d ever left like this, but she needed to get away from Cameron, needed some time alone. She drove south to the San Francisco Bay Area and stayed with one of her older brothers for four days of reprieve.
Cameron’s “sex slave” had done little to ease the physical hardship on Jan, though that had been the reason, initially, that he’d given for kidnapping another woman. Janice detested bondage, and Cameron knew it, but still he hung her up and whipped her on a regular basis. With the exception of the head box and the electrical shocks and burns, Cameron used on her all the devices he used on K, making her sweat and weep with pain. Jan was hung, whipped, tied in various strange ways, blindfolded, gagged, stretched on the stretcher, forced to wear the gas mask, and dunked to the point of near-drowning. And yet she felt powerless to resist.
This strange marriage was all she knew. And she believed she loved her husband, even though she feared him.
Keeping so much of her life secret from outsiders was a constant subconscious struggle, but she pushed the bad parts out of her mind, beyond the reach of even the most confidential conversations with siblings, parents, or friends. Besides having two daughters and a lot of years together, she and Cameron had a strong interest in keeping their marriage together. They were bonded by the conjugal glue of secrecy.
In 1982, in an effort to clear the air and start their marriage afresh, the Hookers had what they dubbed “a confession time.” All the dirty secrets they’d hidden from each other were dusted off and brought out of the closet to be discussed. More glue.
Janice reached all the way back to 1974 and confessed to Cameron that she’d lied about being pregnant so that he would marry her. She even told him about two brief affairs she’d had in 1980. He was unperturbed.
Then he dropped the bomb: He told Jan that he had sex with K while performing bondage on her.
Jan was devastated. All these years she’d foolishly believed that, for all their problems, at least her husband was faithful to her. She’d been lied to, betrayed.
But after the “confession time,” beyond these painful revelations, there began a healing process.
To a couple of souls as lost as Jan and Cameron Hooker, the Bible seemed as likely a key to repairing their marriage as any. It was a do-it-yourself approach, with no third parties asking questions, just the two of them, the Holy Book, and God. At first, Jan read by herself, looking for answers. Then Cameron, who didn’t read well, asked Jan to read the Bible to him, and in time, she had read the entire New Testament aloud, with Cameron sitting and listening carefully for parts he considered significant.
Hard-core pornography fans don’t usually have much interest in the Holy Bible, but Cameron Hooker was nothing if not unusual. To his surprise, much in the Bible spoke directly to him. He paid particular attention to references to husbands and wives or slaves and masters, and there were many, especially in Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. Clearly, he and God were in agreement that a wife should be subservient to her husband in all things.1 He emphasized this to Jan, and she heard him: If she didn’t obey her husband, she would go to hell.
Noting that the Bible indicates that women should pray with their heads covered,2 he gave Jan a “prayer hat” to wear whenever she prayed. Actually, it was just an inexpensive, red, white, and blue knit ski cap, but Cameron instructed her to wear it as a sign of submission. And so she did.
With Cameron’s encouragement, Jan began to read the Bible more often, not just aloud to Cameron but by herself and with friends, including Cathy Deavers, a neighbor who had moved into a house down the lane in 1981. Besides having their locale in common, Jan and Cathy were both mothers of young children
, and Cathy’s little son often played with Jan’s daughters.
One afternoon when Jan was over visiting, their talk turned to a discussion of the Bible.
“Before we start, Cameron wants me to put this beanie on,” Jan said, pulling on her red, white, and blue cap. Cathy thought it queer, especially since it was summer, but she didn’t want to embarrass Jan, and they proceeded with their discussion.
Cameron gave K a prayer hat, too—hers was a solid gray. Sometimes she wouldn’t put it on when in the box; it was too hot. But if she was out and reading the Bible, she pulled it on like an obedient schoolgirl. Occasionally Hooker had her read passages aloud, again lavishing attention on any mention of slaves and masters.3
The Bible had become more than a source of spiritual consolation; now it was a tool in her enslavement.
Cameron also recommended that Jan and K pray together, and toward the end of 1983, these two women with so much in common finally began to spend amiable hours together, without Jan giving orders, without hostilities. About three times a week, Jan would take K out of the box while the girls were at school, and they would read the Bible in the bedroom—their caps on, their Bibles open, their hearts filled with prayer. They reflected on the meaning of those passages, turning them over, discussing them, relating them to their own lives, until, for the first time, they found themselves actually talking with each other. . . .
When the bricks were ready, Cameron and K carried them down a makeshift ladder into the hole. In time, they had laid a floor. Then the walls went up, and the hole was finally beginning to look like a dungeon.
Hooker had big plans for his secret torture chamber. He affixed a hook to the ceiling beam, for hanging, and even put in a drain for an eventual shower. He also put two odd “windows” in the north wall, recessed places about eighteen inches wide and twenty-four inches tall.
Now that Cathy and Dawn were getting older, it was difficult to practice bondage in the house, and Hooker hoped that eventually he could keep his slave and his equipment down here, secure and out of the way. He explained to K that the windows would leave room for expansion. They could dig an adjoining room beneath the other shed, turning the windows into doorways.
“Later,” he boasted, “I’ll enlarge the dungeon so there’ll be room for more slaves.” He told K that it would be her job to prepare the dungeon for them and then to train them, an idea that left her horrified.
Hooker’s plans had an even more critical effect on Janice. Guilt was already growing inside Jan like a tumor, and the idea of another kidnapping seemed a nightmarish possibility. Ignorant of his wife’s increasing disquiet, Cameron confided that, ultimately, he’d like to capture four more women. And these new slaves might even bear his children.
Both Jan and K believed that Cameron was capable of carrying out these plans. Once Cameron Hooker decided on something, he pursued it with a chilling single-mindedness, and slaves were his ultimate obsession.
This called for nothing less than divine intervention. The two women prayed—fervently, with their prayer hats on—that Cameron’s plans would never materialize.
It took until November of 1983—when Hooker had just turned thirty—to complete the hole beneath the shed to the point of usefulness, though it still lacked a few finishing touches. It was cold in the dungeon, so Hooker installed a heat lamp. Now, with both electricity and a ventilation system, the hole was ready for trial occupation.
Cameron gave K some clothes to put on: shoes, socks, jeans, and a sweatshirt. He took her out to the shed, unlocked it, removed the heavy board that covered the entrance to the hole, and said, “Climb down.”
He handed down her Bible and a cheap radio they’d given her the month before. Inside, she found a portable toilet and a lounge chair with the same sleeping bag she’d received for Christmas of 1980—a bit worn, because the family had been using it, but a welcome touch.
Cameron had lingering doubts about keeping K in the hole, since it was possible she might somehow be discovered, so he left her with final instructions. “If anyone happens to find you down here,” he told her, “say that you want to be here because it makes you feel closer to God.”
He placed a sturdy board over the opening to the hole and went away.
To see how secure her new prison was, K climbed up on the ladder and pushed hard against the door. It didn’t budge. Something heavy had been set on top of it.
But after surveying the situation, K found that even this dark, dank dungeon was an improvement over the box. She had room to move around. And sleeping on the lounge chair with the sleeping bag was fairly comfortable. The heat lamp didn’t do much to counter the chill, but the light was a bonus; she could read the Bible or work on macrame or crochet dolls while listening to KVIP, the local Christian station.
It seemed feasible to keep K in the dungeon indefinitely. Her daily meal had to be brought out to the shed and handed down, which was a bit inconvenient, but no real problem. Cameron periodically came to empty the Porta Potti, K awkwardly passing the tank up to him so he could dump it down the toilet inside the mobile home. He told her that he would even get a hot plate so she could cook for herself.
But this new arrangement proceeded smoothly only for about one week.
One afternoon, Jan brought something out to K, went back in the house to fetch something else, and neglected to cover up the hole and lock the shed. This would have been harmless enough—K was far too intimidated to try to escape—except that children tend to find whatever mischief is about.
Cathy, now seven, and Dawn, now five, were exceptionally well-behaved children, and they had been told to stay away from the sheds. But on this particular day, they had company: six-year-old Denise Hooker, their high-spirited cousin. They’d been playing in the backyard, and when Jan came back outside, she found Dawn and Denise in the shed, looking into the hole.
Alarmed, Jan shooed the girls away, scolding them for misbehaving. Once they’d gone, she covered the hole back up and locked the shed.
K had seen the girls; she wasn’t sure if they’d seen her.
When Cameron came home, Jan told him what had happened. They couldn’t be sure what the girls had seen, but they were both worried that Denise would say something to her parents. They decided to take K out of the hole and put her back in the box until this blew over.
They waited nervously. A week or two passed. No one mentioned anything about a woman imprisoned in a dungeon. K was put back out in the hole.
But then the rains came.
Northern California’s fall and winter storms made up for the long, dry months of summer with bone-drenching cloudbursts. The sky turned to ink and for a moment seemed to test the air with a tentative drizzle before the heavens ripped open and anyone with any sense took cover.
The earth turned wet, and water gradually seeped into the dungeon. It went from dampness to puddles, getting K’s feet just a bit wet at first, then inching slowly up the walls, lapping at the legs of her chair, moving up toward her ankles as the hole flooded in earnest. By the time Hooker came out after work to check on her, the cold water had risen up her shins.
He gave her a scoop and bucket and together they tried to bail the water out, but this was only moderately effective. Finally, Hooker went out and bought a water pump—noisy, but more successful. When the water had receded to a manageable level, he left K in control so that she could turn the pump back on when the water level rose again. But, at last, he had to admit it was a losing battle. Winter had arrived, the dungeon flooded badly, and there was nothing to do but take K out and put her back in the box.
PART EIGHT
SCANDAL
March–June 1985
You can’t try a case in a vacuum.
Christine McGuire
CHAPTER 20
Christine McGuire was anxiously awaiting her first extended interview with Colleen. Dr. Hatcher had said that, during his interview with Colleen, she’d impressed him as being cooperative and frank; McGuire hoped this w
as true.
Still, Hatcher had unearthed some worrying surprises in Colleen’s history, and McGuire was concerned that these could be used to besmirch her character and cast suspicion on her testimony.1
She worried about Colleen’s mother, too. Today would be her first meeting with Evelyn Grant, but she already had a vaguely negative impression of the woman. For one thing, she’d read an article in The Globe that Mrs. Grant had supposedly written, and it galled her to think of the possibility of Grant selling her daughter’s story to a tabloid.2 Moreover, it bothered her that when Hatcher asked what kind of “moral outrage” Colleen’s parents had expressed upon her return home, McGuire had to admit she was aware of none.
Now Colleen’s plane had landed, and Colleen and her mother were emerging from the arrival lounge. McGuire’s brow furrowed when she caught sight of Colleen. Here she was again, wearing tight black cords and spike heels. She’d have to advise Colleen to wear something conservative at the trial.
In the car, Colleen seemed quiet, withdrawn. McGuire was starting to wonder whether her star witness had become hostile when Colleen abruptly pulled out a business card and handed it to her: “Here’s the card of my attorney, Marilyn Barrett. You should know she’s representing me.”
Startled by Colleen’s defensiveness, McGuire wondered: Whose side does she think I’m on? As she accepted the card, she said she’d received a phone call from Barrett a few days earlier, adding, “She seemed better informed than the first attorney you thought of retaining.” McGuire hoped this sounded reassuring.
Actually, she was perplexed that Colleen had retained a tax attorney to represent her. While well-meaning, Barrett hadn’t impressed her as particularly knowledgeable about Colleen’s case, and her primary qualification seemed less her legal expertise than her involvement in the California Commission on Assaults Against Women.
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