Three months after Colleen returned home, she got a call from Janice. She’d gone to the police and told them everything. After Colleen had left, Janice had returned to Hooker. He had gone into counseling with the pastor and had burned most of his bondage gear, his collection of pornography, and the pictures he had taken of Colleen being tortured. But Janice began to suspect that Cameron had not really changed his ways. She left again and, fearing for the safety of the children, gave the pastor her permission to call the police. Janice was given immunity from prosecution for her testimony against her husband. He was arrested.
Soon after, Colleen got a call from the Red Bluff Police Department. They visited her in Riverside, interviewing her for three hours and taking pictures of her scars.
The police found that Colleen’s story matched what Janice had told them—except in one detail that Colleen couldn’t have known about. More than a year before Colleen had been kidnapped, the Hookers had picked up another girl named Marie Elizabeth “Marliz” Spannhake. But when Hooker got her down into the basement, she would not stop screaming, so he got a kitchen knife and cut her vocal cords—exactly as he had threatened to do to Colleen.
They could not stop the bleeding, or take Marliz to the hospital. Hooker then tried to kill her with a pellet gun. When that only wounded her further, he finished her off with his bare hands, choking her to death. Without a trace of remorse, Hooker buried Marliz in a shallow grave. Marliz was the girl whose picture Colleen had seen in the box under the Hookers’ water bed.
The police could not find Marliz’s body, so they did not charge Hooker with murder. Instead, he was charged with the kidnapping of Colleen and seven counts of rape. Apparently, the other tortures he had inflicted on her and keeping her in a box were not against the law in California at the time. However, other felony charges followed. There were three counts of false imprisonment, two counts of abduction to live in an illicit relationship, one forced oral copulation, one sodomy, and one penetration with a foreign object—the whip handle.
Hooker’s friends and family could scarcely believe the charges. Meanwhile, Colleen’s home was besieged by the media, who were calling her “The Sex Slave” and “The Girl in the Box.” She moved out to live with a new boyfriend, though her father smuggled her into the house so that they could enjoy Thanksgiving together as a family.
Colleen was eager to return to normal life and she got a job in a store. But there was still the trial to go through. First she had to undergo a thorough medical examination. It was important for the prosecution to get a detailed record of the electrical burns on her body, the scarring from straps and whips, the damage to her shoulder from stretching, her inexpertly pierced labia, and her general poor state of health from years of malnutrition and confinement. Every mark on her body backed up her story.
When Colleen turned up to court, the district attorney thought she was dressed far too sexy to pass for a victim and bought her a whole new outfit—a white dress and flat shoes. Hooker pleaded not guilty. However, after Colleen had testified at a preliminary hearing, the case went to trial.
Due to a shortage of funds in California—and the fact that this was not a murder case—the DA was forced to plea bargain. Colleen’s advocates began a political campaign to prevent this. When it appeared that Hooker might serve less time in captivity that Colleen had, the state granted additional funds and the plea bargain was dropped.
At the Superior Court of California, the defense argued that the statute of limitations had run out on the 1977 kidnapping and that she was free to leave at any time after early 1978, so she was a “willing participant” in what had gone on from them on. The prosecution countered that the kidnapping had been continuous up until she left in 1984.
The box and many of the instruments Hooker had used to torture her were brought into court. Nevertheless, conviction was not a forgone conclusion. The defense would argue that these instruments were used in a consensual relationship between two adults and, consequently, no laws had been broken.
Janice was the first witness to take the stand. She outlined her bizarre relationship with Cameron and detailed his aberrant sexual interests. Her husband had dyslexia, she said, and she had to read him articles on brainwashing techniques that he had then employed on Colleen.
She explained the pact they had made: she could have a baby, if he could have a slave girl. After Cameron first suspended Colleen by the arms in the basement, Janice claimed she was terrified that he might do her some permanent damage. After a few weeks, Janice said she asked Cameron to let Colleen go. He refused. She admitted that she was the one who found the slave contract in one of Cameron’s magazines and typed it out to make it look official. Colleen had signed it unwillingly, she said.
Janice told the court about The Company. She had been suffering from arthritis and, at the time the slave contract had been signed, she’d recently had an operation on her knees. Cameron had promised not to have sex with his slave girl. To test him, she had given him her permission to see if he would really go ahead with it. But when he had actually started raping Colleen, Janice had run from the room. However, she admitted whipping Colleen while her husband watched and fueling his fantasies by reading S&M magazines to him.
Colleen was sometimes confined in the box, Janice admitted, because Janice felt jealous. But Janice said Hooker’s abuse of Colleen had not brought her the respite from pain that she had hoped for. He continued to torture Janice in the same fashion as Colleen. She was only spared the electric shocks and the box.
Janice said that Cameron had read passages from the Bible to her, showing that both his wife and his slave owed him absolute obedience. Despite everything, she said she still loved him. He had been a good provider. Without him, she would not have been able to afford to take care of her children. However, she was frightened that, if what he did became public, she might go to prison and lose her daughters.
Then when Cameron wanted to make Colleen his co-wife, Janice explained, and sleep with them alternately—and even have a baby with Colleen—it all became too much and Janice decided to confide in the pastor. He told her that they must send Colleen home. Hooker would never have agreed to this, so Janice contrived to get rid of Colleen by telling her that Cameron was not a member of The Company. The pastor then told her to forgive her husband. She tried to do that, but she began to fear that he might harm their children, so she gave the pastor her permission to call the police.
Janice maintained that, like Colleen, she was one of Cameron’s victims, not his accomplice. Even though he had Colleen as his slave, he had continued to torture her.
Then it was Colleen’s turn. She found it intimidating to testify in the courtroom just a few feet from Hooker. She was also afraid that he might get off and come after her. The defense maintained that, after the initial abduction, the relationship had been consensual. She had told Cameron that she loved him and had written him love letters. She had even been photographed with her arms around him. Colleen insisted that she had done all these things so that he would not hurt her. During her first six months of captivity alone, she had been hung up naked ninety or a hundred times and whipped savagely. It took her three and a half days in court to detail the barbarity that he had inflicted on her.
The Hookers’ neighbors testified that they thought that something odd was going on in their trailer. They thought it strange that, while the woman they knew as “Kay” worked in the garden, she did not have a suntan. Even the Hookers’ two daughters—now nine and seven—were called to testify. The most damning evidence was pictures of both Janice and Colleen being hung up, and a photographic negative of Colleen’s slave contract that had been found among Hooker’s papers.
Cameron Hooker took the stand in his own defense. He said that he had long been fascinated with bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism. Between consenting adults, these things were legal and, he believed, normal. Janice shared his interests and let him practice such things on her.
Many peop
le kept slaves, he said, and many other people willingly became slaves. He had a fantasy about practicing bondage on a girl who could not say “no.” Having his own slave girl was part of the pact that he struck with Janice when she had a baby. They considered putting a classified advertisement in a paper, asking for some girl who would consent to bondage, but did not have the money.
He said that on the day they first saw Colleen, he and his wife were on their way to the mountains to practice bondage outdoors. When they gave Colleen a lift, she appeared to be spaced out on illegal drugs and the idea of kidnapping her came to him. He admitted to the initial kidnapping, but as the statute of limitations had run out, he could not be charged with that.
In the basement, he said he hung her up for just five minutes. Then, after he and his wife had had sex, he lost interest in bondage. He only put Colleen in a crate with a box over her head, not as torture, but to keep her quiet.
The next day, he felt bad, but he did not know what to do, so he tied her to the rack. After three days, they decided to let her get dressed and to take her where she wanted to go. But when Janice asked Colleen what she would do if they let her go, she said that she would go to the police. When Hooker went to talk to her, he said that she appeared to be suffering from withdrawal symptoms and asked for pills from her purse. Colleen maintained that they were contraceptive pills, as she feared she was going to be raped.
The withdrawal symptoms subsided, he said. He still wanted to let her go, but he was afraid that she would go to the police, so he built a double-skinned box to keep her in as they could not afford to soundproof the basement. She was allowed out of the box each night and they talked. There was no bondage or sex, he said.
After three months, he said Colleen asked him about bondage. On the first occasion she had started to cry after being hung up for just five minutes. Janice, he said, could stand twenty minutes. Colleen wanted to try again, he maintained. She managed fifteen minutes without crying.
He admitted the other things that they had done to her—dunking her in the bath, cutting off her hair, forcing her to work—but put a different light on them. She liked doing macramé and Janice taught her to crochet. Colleen kept asking why they were not having sex, he said, but he had promised Janice that he would not. They talked and Colleen, he said, displayed affection for him.
Janice found the slave contract and said that the story about the all-powerful Company might allow them to let her go. Colleen believed the story and was terrified. But then, once the contract was signed, Janice began to treat Colleen like a slave.
During her second pregnancy, Janice wasn’t interested in sex. To turn her on, he tied Colleen, with her consent, spread-eagle on the bed. He was kissing Janice while touching Colleen. Then he started having sex with Colleen, but Janice could not handle it. So Colleen was returned to the basement, apparently disappointed that the sex was over so soon, according to Hooker.
They then decided to release Colleen by pretending that they were buying her freedom from The Company. She was told that she could go anywhere, but The Company would punish her if she went to the police. But first they wanted her to help them move into their mobile home.
Colleen was very helpful during the move. She slept in the box, or the bathroom, but did not need to be restrained. She had turned herself into a slave voluntarily and did not try to escape. She helped Hooker dig trenches to run the utilities to the trailer and worked with him cutting fence posts. When he tied her to a tree, they spent time talking and kissing. However, he did tell her that when they released her, she must never talk about The Company, or The Company would make her someone else’s slave. He said he never threatened her family.
Hooker maintained that he treated Colleen well, but Janice treated her like a slave and that depressed her. When he offered to take her back to her family, she said she did not want to go back to taking drugs. Her family was abusive. She said she wanted to stay where were she was. She needed the stability of having Hooker’s loving family around her.
According to Hooker, Colleen was happy to stay as a slave, but Janice wanted her to go because she feared he and Colleen were falling in love. She wanted Colleen punished. When he hung Colleen up, he went to look for more straps and came back to find Janice giving Colleen electric shocks.
After that, he and Colleen began indulging in sex and a little light bondage, then some heavy bondage. Although she cried when Janice told her off, Colleen didn’t cry when he put her on the stretcher. She could take more pain than he could dish out, he said. They dug the dungeon under the shed because the children were getting older and they could not continue their bondage sessions in the trailer. Again, Colleen cooperated in its construction. The whips, he said, were used as toys. They were never meant to hurt anyone. But during one of these sessions, Colleen kicked Janice in the stomach. It was Janice who went to get the matches and burned Colleen’s breasts, he said.
When Janice went out to work, he and Colleen had sex. It was her idea, he said. She talked about getting married and having a baby. When Janice went with other men, he was not bothered because he was in love with Colleen.
They took her out shopping and waterskiing, and bought her a Bible. He was a poor reader, so he got her to read out passages to him.
Colleen had wanted to go gambling, so he took her to Reno where she panhandled to get a stake. She also panhandled in Red Bluff to get the fare to visit her family. He took her to his father’s farm to have another backdrop for their bondage.
At Colleen’s home, he had introduced himself as “Mike” because he did not want more troublesome in-laws tracking them down. Colleen had returned to Red Bluff with him because she loved him. She said so. And she went back in the box to save his marriage. Otherwise, Janice would have left him.
When he got things sorted out in his marriage, Colleen came out of the box again. She and Janice grew friendly. Colleen then wanted to go back to work. He took most of her wages because she wanted to contribute to the household finances. The bondage and sex began again. Colleen and Janice also began having lesbian sex together. The idea of Colleen becoming a co-wife came from the Bible, where Abraham took the slave girl Hagar as his second wife after Sarah, his first wife, proved barren.
Then Colleen discovered that The Company was not real. She phoned to say that she was going back to her family so that she would not come between him and Janice. She was doing it for the sake of their two daughters. He told her he loved her.
When she got home, Colleen called him to say that she still loved him, he said. Janice had returned to him and they resumed bondage. Colleen bombarded him with letters and phone calls. He did not write back.
He maintained they had the perfect love triangle with each of them loving the other two. But in the end, the two women ganged up on him and had him arrested, so that the two of them could get back together.
According to Hooker, both Janice and Colleen participated willingly in bondage. After the initial kidnapping, he never held her against her will and he never raped her. She loved him. Her letters proved that. She could have left at any time. People saw her out jogging, and she went out on dates with other men. It was only when he found himself the odd one out in a love triangle that they tried to get rid of him by sending him to prison.
Hooker’s family and friends testified that they had seen “Kay” on numerous occasions. She was their housekeeper and babysitter, but seemed very much part of the family. The defense even called a psychiatrist who had testified in the trial of Patty Hearst to counter the prosecution’s assertion that Colleen had been brainwashed. He said that, although she had been coerced during the first six months of her captivity, after that, the coercion stopped. From then on, she participated willingly.
The prosecution then dropped the charges of false imprisonment and abduction to an illicit relationship. The jury took two and a half days to find Hooker guilty on all the other counts, except one final rape where the jury was divided. It seems that, after seven years of
brutal mistreatment, Colleen might have tacitly accepted her tormentor’s advances.
The day after the verdict, Colleen got a phone call at home. It was Hooker calling from jail. After that, he was not allowed to make unsupervised calls.
Hooker was sentenced to 104 years. The judge said: “I consider the defendant the most dangerous psychopath I have ever dealt with, in that he is the opposite of what he seems. He will be a danger to women as long as he is alive.”
Given time served, time off for good behavior, and other sentence reductions, Hooker will be eligible for parole in 2022 when he will be sixty-nine. However, by that time, the authorities might have been able to put together a case against him for the murder of Marliz Spannhake.
Chapter 4
Gary Heidnik and the Basement Baby Farm
JOSEFINA RIVERA HAD BEEN ON THE STREETS for much of her twenty-five years. Of mixed African-American and Puerto Rican descent, she had been educated in a Catholic school. But she had dropped out as a teenager and turned to prostitution. The children she bore had been taken away by the welfare authorities and put up for adoption. Life on the streets of Philadelphia had made her tough—tough enough to survive an ordeal that killed at least two others.
Josefina used the professional name “Nicole” when she approached johns in the street. And there were plenty of them. She was a good-looking woman with fine features inherited from her Hispanic father
On the night of November 25, 1986, Josefina was working the corner of Girard and Third in Philly’s run-down north side. She had argued with her boyfriend, Vincent Nelson, that night and walked out on him. Clad in skin-tight jeans and sneakers, she was cold and business was slow. The following day would be Thanksgiving. It was already eleven o’clock, but she did not want to go home without turning a least one trick. She needed the money for a hot turkey dinner.
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