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36 - Hannah Cornelius and Judith Tebbutt
49 Plays2 months ago
Jeff shares the tragic story of the murder of Hannah Cornelius from South Africa. Sam shares the survivor story of Judith Tebbutt.
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Jeff's Sources
- 9News - Hannah Cornelius case
- YouTube - Hannah Cornelius
- Wikipedia - Murder of Hannah Cornelius
- South African Legal Information Institute - Case ZAWCHC/2018/148
- News24 - Hannah Cornelius' mother found dead
- Bang to Rights Podcast
- Statista - Violent Crime in South Africa
- National Cancer Institute - Coping with Stress
- TimesLive - Hannah Cornelius case
- Daily Mail - Unrelated Dog Story
Sam's Sources
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:00
Jeff Rogers
Hello, Sam. Hi, Jeffrey.
00:00:24
Jeff Rogers
Well, hello. Hi. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Down the Rabbit Hole with Jeff and Sam. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. And you're you. How are you doing? Me or them? Everybody. But I'm looking at you, so how are you? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good. We just did our little dance before we hit record. We did. We shake it out. Yeah, we did. What did we shake it out to?
00:00:53
Jeff Rogers
What was it? A little pink pony club. ah Yes. It always hits and never fails. Never fails. So
Podcast Availability and Contact Information
00:01:00
Jeff Rogers
welcome to the show. Look, you can find us on Spotify, Apple podcast, our heart radio. You can find us on Amazon and where else? Like if you want to send us a message.
00:01:10
Jeff Rogers
you can reach out to us on Instagram at down the rabbit hole the pod, or you can ah find us at down the rabbit hole the pod at gmail dot.com and send us your thoughts, your feelings, tell us stories that you want us to talk about, um or just tell us that we're amazing and you're really enjoying us. Exactly. Follow, rate, review, subscribe, and that's business. And share, share us with your friends, maybe not your family.
00:01:37
Jeff Rogers
they're Probably not appropriate for them. What's new with you? ah You know, I don't I have to admit my brain is Not been here for the past. I would say two weeks probably so I don't know. I don't know. It's new um I Don't know, you know, I'm doing the book thing and i I have spent the last week I think I've now read eight novels in the past week I Feel like that's a lot And yeah, but it's, you know, it's not, it's been good. I have been doing nothing but work and then going home and reading or reading before work and my days off, I'm doing just like laundry and cleaning and reading. And it's been great. Perfect. Sometimes we need to like just chill the hell out. Yeah. And that's what I've been doing last week.
00:02:25
Jeff Rogers
Um,
Historical Events on February 6th
00:02:26
Jeff Rogers
so this show is going to come out on the 6th of February, right Sam? It is. Yeah. So like, did you know Sam? Just, we're going to do a little side note real quick and then we'll keep talking. But like, side note, the first appearance of cholera On February 6th, 1832 was in Edinburgh, Scotland. Like we said, we do love some cholera. Mm-hmm. Love in the time. I do love Scotland though. In 1867, American financier and philanthropist George Peabody, you recognize that name? Yes. Established the Peabody Education Fund to provide improvements to existing schools in poor areas.
00:03:06
Jeff Rogers
February 6, 1921, Charlie Chaplin releases his first full-length feature, The Kid, silent film starring Charlie Chaplin. That's pretty big. That's awesome. um What about in 1935 on February 6, when Monopoly, the board game, what went on sale for the first time?
00:03:27
Jeff Rogers
1943 from singer Frank Sinatra debuts on radios your hit parade. Oh, and then 1952. Sorry, this is one of the biggest ones. It's a big one. Queen Elizabeth the second QE2 succeeds George the six to the British throne and proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And on the 6th of February, 1974, the U.S. House of Representatives, they were like, huh, let's look at Impeaching Nixon. Whoo. Yeah. Oh, 1980. This one's a little dark.
00:04:20
Jeff Rogers
The infamous John Wayne Gacy goes on trial for the murder of 33 young men in Cook County, Illinois. ah February 6, 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur sentenced to four and a half years in prison for a sexual assault conviction. Way to go, Tupac. In 1998, Washington National Airport was renamed to Ronald Reagan National Airport.
00:04:49
Jeff Rogers
But you know what, Sam, I think like the biggest one for us, because, you know, just for us personally, is on September, sorry, February 6th, 19, we don't say years on the show, in a very cold Illinois, um a Caitlin was born.
00:05:11
Jeff Rogers
A star was born. Caitlin, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening and continuing to just listen and actually engage with us about it. Yes. And February 6th, man, you got a lot of stuff happening on your birthday that happened on your birthday. Some pretty big ones, yeah.
Snowy Nights and Personal Preferences
00:05:31
Jeff Rogers
So I went to the store before I came back home so we could record and I got firewood.
00:05:40
Jeff Rogers
because my favorite thing to do like it's gonna snow tonight and my favorite thing to do is be home by nine the door is locked the tv on and a fire in the fireplace no promises you'll be home by nine ish okay you know okay yeah ish but that's my favorite thing to to do and i said when i moved here from hawaii i was like okay i'm gonna leave hawaii which you don't ever need a fireplace in hawaii some people do like on the big island maybe they have like it gets into the 50s and you oh not the 50s carla the 50s and so i was like when i move here i'm gonna get a place with a fireplace
00:06:21
Jeff Rogers
and that's my favorite thing to do so tonight fire fireplace going it's like cold enough to have a fireplace but not so cold that i will need the central heat at 4 am you know what i mean because on those nights when it gets down to 10 degrees if i have a fireplace going and like the fireplace going when it goes out at 3 am it gets really cold so tonight it's going to be like snowy and cold but I'm okay when the fireplace goes out at three. Okay. Wow. ah I'm excited. I'm excited for you. That sounds lovely. That's my plan for the night. I just, I can't really get excited about the fact that it's going to snow again. I mean, we had that big dump a couple of weeks ago. Yay for snow. Now I'm done.
00:07:07
Jeff Rogers
But not only tonight, like, did you see the next seven days? I don't want to talk about it. Yo, I will not tell you that it's going to snow like five out of those seven days. I didn't just tell you that. I mean, I'm not I'm not going to say that, that it's going to snow like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I'm not saying that as long as it doesn't interrupt my travel plans. I'm golden for real. We've got a trip coming up. We do.
00:07:33
Jeff Rogers
Like very soon, next week. Yeah. And we're getting on that plane. And we're leaving. We're gonna make our way to London, dammit. Yes. Snow or no
Discussion on Recent Plane Crashes
00:07:42
Jeff Rogers
snow. Speaking of plane, yo, this has been a bad week. This has been a real bad week. You know, there's been like several plane crashes. And the first one that I was aware of happened last week.
00:07:58
Jeff Rogers
It was close to home for us. It was very close to home for us. And it's nothing but sadness. It was a Black Hawk helicopter in the plane over the Potomac at Reagan Airport. And it's just horrific. And everything that I saw, it was just devastating. like So many young people, so many people of all ages,
00:08:22
Jeff Rogers
You know, active duty people, our service members. I don't know. It was just it horrific. And I'm thinking about the families of those people. Just a horrific situation. Yeah. So I wanted to say that. um Well said. What else?
00:08:42
Jeff Rogers
um
00:08:45
Jeff Rogers
What anything new with you? Oh, we
Review of 'Wolfman' Movie
00:08:48
Jeff Rogers
saw Wolfman. Oh, we did. What did you think about it? Um, I thought it was very interesting. I thought it was good. Um, a good little jump scare, jump scare fun. Um, and you know, the, the lead female is the, the, the girl from Ozarks. I told you that. Um, so that was cool. Uh, they did an interesting thing with it. So first of all, it was gorgeous out like the scenery, just stunning Oregon.
00:09:19
Jeff Rogers
Love it. Love it. So green. Um, but yeah, it was good. It was good. I don't think I would read it in the top. yeah It's a good horror movie though. It's a fun horror movie. But they did. They did some good stuff for it. So that's it. Should we get this party started? Let's get this party started. What are we drinking today? We are drinking prebiotic soda. Poppy.
Tasting Poppy Prebiotic Soda
00:09:40
Jeff Rogers
Poppy. And ah my flavor is strawberry rose. And mine is strawberry lemon. oh I've never had a puppy, so would I have you? No, I've not. Let's figure this out. Let's see if we like it. Seems kind of healthy. I don't know about that. Well, it does say no fake stuff. OK, let's give it a taste here. Excuse me. I didn't drink any yet. Cheers, queers. Cheers, queers. And happy birthday again, Caitlin.
00:10:15
Jeff Rogers
um
00:10:20
Jeff Rogers
I'm not mad about it. I'm not either. I mean it definitely. That's good. It's light. It is. It's busy. And even the aftertaste is like even better than the actual. Oh, okay. Way to go puppy. I like their little commercial too. And now is the part of the show where we flip a coin.
00:10:43
Jeff Rogers
and we determine who
Coin Toss and Story Prelude
00:10:44
Jeff Rogers
goes first. And if you look on that first row, Samantha, we have our four coins from Sierra Leone. We now have gone into Africa with our coins here. All right, so we do it. um You are going to be, I don't even know what's on here. um I'm gonna make you the man. Okay. Just probably some sort of important person. Yes it is. I think it is the head of Sierra Leone. Okay and I'm gonna be the cup maybe is what that is or a cake? I don't really know. A cup or a cake?
00:11:25
Jeff Rogers
Okay it is you sir. Oh no I go first. You do. Okay we don't know the story that each other has but I will say that I did prepare Sam that this story is
00:11:39
Jeff Rogers
uh pretty bad that's awful uh it's a story worth telling though um trigger warnings if okay this story involves violence murder sexual assault and possible suicide so if anyone doesn't want to hear it skip ahead you know skip to sam's story come back next week we got you we'll be here i don't know that next week's is going to be much better but my next week is real bad Okay, so do what you gotta do, okay? So this ah this is kind of a story about the ripple effect of a murder, okay? And today I'm gonna tell you the story of Hannah Cornelius. She is from South Africa. She was
The Tragic Story of Hannah Cornelius
00:12:27
Jeff Rogers
born on the 12th of night ah February, 1996, not far from now. Her parents were Anna and Willem Cornelius, and they went on to have a second child named Andres.
00:12:39
Jeff Rogers
That's Hannah's younger brother. And Andres is on the spectrum. And anna Hannah is very protective of him. Like she's even considered part of his care team. Okay? It's a protective older sister.
00:12:54
Jeff Rogers
So Hannah's dead Willem was a magistrate and her mom was a lawyer. And Hannah was, ah of course, man, every one of these stories, like you watch the YouTube videos and she was a lovely person. Nobody said anything bad about her. Everyone liked her, of course. um Hannah was also the kind of person who stopped going to church in her teenage teenage years, not because of the lack of faith, but because the church alienated certain people or groups of people.
00:13:21
Jeff Rogers
So and in her teenage years, that was her, like, stand, right? ah She also excelled at school. She had good grades. She played the piano. She played the violin. She wasn't all around her. ah One of her teachers said that Hannah made the world a better place. So Hannah was in her second year of college. She was studying humanities. um It was in her second year of college that this crime happened against her.
00:13:50
Jeff Rogers
Also, violent crime in South Africa, really, really high, extremely high. In the show notes, I'll have what I used, the reference that I used. It ranks as the fifth most dangerous country in the world. ah There is a very high violent crime rate, particularly violent crimes against women. South Africa has one of the highest sexual assault statistics in the world.
00:14:14
Jeff Rogers
So it's a common thing for women to walk in groups, to have security, to constantly be with their friends, because it's just a well-known fact that they're at an increased risk. So Hannah was out for a fun evening with friends, and she didn't go home. ah Well, she's about to go home, but she's going to take her friend, Cheslyn, home. He needs a ride home, so she's like, I'll take you home. um And they arrived to his apartment at 3.27 AM on the 27th of May, 2017.
00:14:44
Jeff Rogers
So when she parks the car, immediately four men force their way into Hannah's car, and they use a screwdriver to get in. And the window was slightly open, so that's where they go to get into the car. But let me just say this, as I'm thinking about it right now, like if they wanted to get into that car, they'd just bust the window out. It doesn't matter that the window was open. So they hold the screwdriver to Hannah's neck.
00:15:08
Jeff Rogers
And the four guys, they're armed, so they force Hannah and Cheslyn out of the car, and now they force Cheslyn into the trunk of the car. And Hannah is just saying, take what you want, just leave us alone. But the four men, they're ignoring Hannah's pleas. And now with Cheslyn in the trunk of the car, Hannah is alone with them, and the four men are in control of the situation.
00:15:30
Jeff Rogers
and they're all in the car now and according to cheslin he remembers that the car came to a stop and he could hear from the trunk of the car hannah saying what are you going to do and now cheslin is trying to kick open the trunk of the car because he's afraid of what they're going to do to her At 4.34am, the ccf ah CCTV footage shows that Hannah's car pulls up to a gas station. now One of the men goes inside and he tries to withdraw money using Cheslyn's card, but Cheslyn had given him the wrong PIN number.
00:16:01
Jeff Rogers
So now the four men are really just fucking horrible excuses for men. They're pissed at Cheslyn because he gave them the wrong PIN number. um So at 5 30 a.m. they stop the car. They take Cheslyn from the trunk. They walk him away from the car. He's told to lie on the floor.
00:16:21
Jeff Rogers
They beat him, they attack him with bricks, they stab him, and they leave him for dead. And Hannah, mind you, because they've walked far away from the car, they have she has no idea what's happened to Cheslyn. So they drive out to a paintball course. It just so happens to be that that's secluded. Nobody's going to be there. And the four men, they know this. They know it's secluded.
00:16:43
Jeff Rogers
And according to the men in their own testimony, um, they take turns sexually assaulting Hannah. Then they drive to another location where they pull Hannah from the car, where she was like grabbing onto the car to not get out of the car, but they pull her from the car. They physically drag her out of the car and they stab Hannah in the neck, but this isn't enough for them. So they take what is about a 90 pound rock.
00:17:13
Jeff Rogers
and they drop it on her head. Then they just leave. um Also, it's worth noting that a 90-pound rock is really, really heavy. Like, it would take me and another, typically ah another person to lift a 90-pound rock, right? So that's not just a one-person thing.
00:17:33
Jeff Rogers
um So they drop the rock on her head, and they don't even give a shit, like they just leave. Then they go rob another woman named Nikina. They passed her as she was walking.
00:17:46
Jeff Rogers
So, and they were in Hannah's car. Like they've left Cheslyn for dead. They've murdered Hannah. They took her car, and now they pass Nikina, and they're like, let's rob her. But thankfully, Nikina runs, and she escapes. And Nikina is able to later identify the two two of the men, and she says at least one of them had a weapon. But they head in another direction, then they come across another woman named Mimi. And they force her into the car, they get her bank card, and that actually she provided them with the correct pin, so they let her go.
00:18:20
Jeff Rogers
So back to Hannah. Hannah died alone. and She was probably terrified. The next day, two men, Conrad and Felipe, were working when they discovered Hannah's body. They were absolutely traumatized by it. And the men later say they that the rock they found on Hannah they had previously used to cover a well to prevent anyone or any animal from falling into it. That's how big the rock was. And it took both of them to move the rock, they said.
00:18:48
Jeff Rogers
As for Cheslyn, he survived. He had severe injuries, but he lived. He goes on to find help after he regains consciousness. He woke up and he ran. He ran to find help. He jumped over a high wall, knocked on the door of a home nearby.
00:19:04
Jeff Rogers
and the people in the home are the ones who called the cops. He tells the police that his priority is finding Hannah, like he wants to help Hannah. That's his best friend. And he doesn't know at this time that she was murdered. So he's taken to the hospital and the police go in a search for Hannah.
00:19:23
Jeff Rogers
The murderers were caught soon after and the four guys who did this to Hannah, they had a very extensive criminal history. I don't even have their names in here because they're not even worth it. They were part of a prison gang actually. Altogether they were part of a prison gang. Before the case goes to trial though, one really Another tragic thing happens. Hannah's mom, Anna, sort of just walked out into the ocean um near Cape Town. It's believed that she walked out into the ocean to never come back because this was 10 months after Hannah died. So we can imagine that the grief could have been too heavy for her that she just walked out into the ocean.
00:20:08
Jeff Rogers
um for that reason. It's less than a year since Hannah had been murdered. A family member said Anna was an avid swimmer who swam every morning. We can't really know for sure if Anna decided for this to be her fate, but we can assume or we can imagine that it would be so hard, you know. So now Willem and his son and Andres are the only two family members left.
00:20:34
Jeff Rogers
and top The trial takes place in October two october of 2018. The four men decided to plead not guilty. So they're going to make Andres and Willem go through a trial because they decided to plead not guilty, which I think is another insult to an already horrible situation. So during the trial, um one of the four weeps, as he admitted to what they did to Hannah, something I read, said it was probably like a manipulation tactic. like He's admitting it. He looks remorseful.
00:21:04
Jeff Rogers
ah cry Maybe we'll get a lesser sentence. It could be. And one of the guys said that Hannah had said they could have sex with her. He actually said that. She said, oh, she said we could have sex with her. She didn't want to die, you know? It was never given permission. She never gave permission. She just didn't want to die. One of the guys said, I did have sex with her, but it didn't feel right. I have a wife and a child at home.
00:21:34
Jeff Rogers
So suddenly he has a conscience, right? One of them said that when they opened the trunk, she was hanging onto the car and she was terrified. And this is when she was stabbed in the neck. Blood pours out of the wound, then she lets go of the car. And this is when they grab a rock. And one of them says something like, don't kill her. We already killed the guy talking about Cheslyn. So they thought they killed the guy. So you can imagine that in Hannah's final moments before they murder her, if she's not already she's thinking about Cheslyn and how he's already died and that's when they dropped the heavy rock on her twice on her head. Cheslyn's mom who stayed with him for two weeks in the hospital testified at court. She said to the murderers that Cheslyn did nothing to you. She also said Hannah was the kind of person who stuck out to you because of her friendliness. It was next level his mom said.
00:22:29
Jeff Rogers
All the while the murderers were in court smirking and smiling. So the four men were found guilty on every single charge, and a month later the sentence happened. At the sentence, Hannah's father Willem said, quote, Hannah's murder had devastated him. He had no real joy or anticipation in his life now. No goals to strive for. And about his wife, Anna, he said he didn't believe his wife intended to kill herself, but she talked about her struggles and how she became a shadow of herself.
00:23:01
Jeff Rogers
He said that his son Andres didn't understand the loss of his family members. Andres often asked if Hannah was coming home or if his mom was coming home. And Willem added that his family died with Hannah. The murderers all went to prison. Between the four of them, they received 358 years.
00:23:21
Jeff Rogers
um several times in this story I almost called these men animals but the crazy the thing is animals don't do this kind of shit to other animals right yeah so I corrected myself And then, sadly, in 2022, Hannah's father, Willem, died from cancer. And it's really, you know, the link between stress and cancer is something really powerful. So there's no doubt, like in everything that I read, there's no doubt that the stress from this kind of exacerbated the cancer. And in 2022, he died.
00:24:01
Jeff Rogers
um This meant that Andres, Hannah's little brother, is left alone and he's now being looked for in a nursing facility. So he lost his sister, his mom, and his dad. And it doesn't matter how good the facility is. like He went from a beautiful life to a facility, even if it's the best facility in the world. It's sort of the the the one kind of bright spot in this horrible story is that you can see interviews with Cheslyn. And this changed his path. And he is now like going to law school to hopefully do something
00:24:41
Jeff Rogers
you know, positive with his life. And that is the horrific story of the murder of Hannah Cornelius and its ripple effect. It really does. It just, it just worlds crumble, you know? Worlds crumble. I mean, that just the thought of it from Andres's perspective, right? What he does understand is there's nobody around them any anymore.
00:25:09
Jeff Rogers
I don't know. And then also the thing that I read that was just as heartbreaking was that in Willem's last days or maybe last weeks when he had cancer, um he would know that there's nobody to take care of Andres. That there's, you know, nobody capable maybe. And he would know the future for Andres. I don't know. That's dark. Look, story worth telling though. I think Hannah was an amazing person and i Have to say that there's this really silly posts that float around about how like the people who get targeted or are targeted because of like they light up the room when they walk in and they're so beautiful and they're just Wonderful spirits and the only hope I have of never being murdered is that that is not me at all like i am not that i'm so you No, please don't say that no not the
00:26:09
Jeff Rogers
I'm good. and I'm good. I'm great being my dark cloud self. Dark
Judith's Survival and Resilience
00:26:15
Jeff Rogers
and twisty. Thank you. So that one, that one was for Hannah. oh Beautiful soul. That whole family. Yeah. Oof. Okay. Cheer me up. I'm sitting here with my poppy. and i I'm a straw. I need some light in my life.
00:26:33
Jeff Rogers
Okay, well, this is one of your like strong woman survival stories. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Oh my God. So, um I mean, there is so gay. Did you hear this? like like The gayness just felt right out of my mouth.
00:26:53
Jeff Rogers
oh I don't know. It's still happening too. It is. What are you looking for? Nothing. Okay. um So, this is a story about Judith, okay? I love Judith. I don't even know Judith, but I'm here for it. So Judith faces some struggles in the story we're about to say, but remember, there's there's a bright light at the end of this. Okay, I'm here for it.
00:27:16
Jeff Rogers
So born 1954, Judith grew up in Alverston, Cumbria, where she met her first husband, Peter. okay They married quickly and young. Peter's job as an electrician had them moving to zamb Zambia in 1976. While there, Judith met David, who had been working there as a hospital administrator. She fell instantly in love. She described him as the light of her life, and she knew the moment they met that she'd spend her forever with him.
00:27:46
Jeff Rogers
Her husband Peter agreed to an amicable divorce, sweet, right? And cleared the way for David and Judith to begin building a life together by the late 1970s. In 1985, they got married and then had their only child, Ollie, one year later.
00:28:03
Jeff Rogers
They lived in Bishops, Stortford, Hertfordshire, and they both worked demanding jobs. In 1999, Judith, who at this time now goes by Jude, finished her training to become a mental health social worker and began working on a community drug and alcohol team at a women's medium secure psychiatric hospital. She had spent plenty of time trying to build rapport with volatile and sick individuals.
00:28:30
Jeff Rogers
There was a patient at one point with a personality disorder who held her at knife point for hours while she worked to talk him down. okay judith right okay Another time she was violently attacked and stabbed repeatedly in the head with a pair of scissors by one of her patients. yeah Needless to say, she could always use a break when the opportunity arrived.
00:28:53
Jeff Rogers
So David and Judith love to travel. They booked a trip in September of 2011 to kind of, it's like a two-fer. The first week was supposed to be a safari in Masai Mara, followed by a week at a family resort on the island of Kiwayu, which is off the Kenyan coast and about 40 kilometers from the Somali border. The first week went perfectly.
00:29:22
Jeff Rogers
They got to see zebras, a wildebeest, and a cheetah with her cub. Judith recalled, David had such a brilliant time. He was thrilled and you could feel it. The second week, when the 10 seater plane set down on the island for their second week, there were no sounds of family fun or vacation. Upon arriving at the utterly empty restaurant, the manager told them that there would be no other guests for a few days.
00:29:51
Jeff Rogers
Judith said that David was completely relaxed and looking forward to their own Robinson Crusoe experience, but she felt unnerved. You're telling me a story about a badass woman that I do not know, just for the record. Okay. I'm so excited for this. I'm also a little terrified. A little terrified, yeah. The couple had some vacation drinks and then headed up to their Banda, which is just a large furnished tent with no doors or windows, and they went to sleep.
00:30:23
Jeff Rogers
Okay. With no doors or windows. It's a tent. the banda yeah See, this is why I don't tent. Do you know what I mean? This is why? Yeah. Okay. Some hours later, Judith awoke to the light from David's side of the room and saw her husband standing across the tent with his hands raised above his head. It took her a moment to process what she was seeing. Initially she was confused and then thought it was the resort security moving them because of some sort of safety concern.
00:30:52
Jeff Rogers
When she got forcibly pushed from the bed, she became terrified. She started to comprehend the fear in his eyes when she saw saw the guns pointed at him and the one that had been used to push her from the bed. Staring into David's horrified face, she screamed as she was dragged out of the tent and across sand. She tried to make it as hard as possible. In interviews, she kind of recalls saying, I wasn't just going to let them take me. Hell yeah.
00:31:22
Jeff Rogers
She said that the people that were taking her, some of them appeared to be just teenagers. So she fought. She kicked and she dug her heels into the sand. She attempted to make herself as heavy as possible to make them drop her. For her struggles, she received a rifle butt to the back and two slaps to the face. She was dragged off into the water and forced into a skiff that had approached at a very high speed. As they took off into the ocean,
00:31:51
Jeff Rogers
the one English speaking man explained that they were going to Somalia and she was to be ransomed.
00:31:59
Jeff Rogers
She had grand ideas on fighting her way out or escaping until she arrived a few days later at a home in Somalia in a gated compound in a place that was 15 square feet with no windows and a small sliver of light seeping in. Her captors made a, quote, bed that was pieced together from bits of wood and only large enough to fit a small child. She was covered in inset bites and scratches of all sorts. She was worried about her physical health, so she challenged herself to maintain some form of control by taking care of herself. She had no idea how long she was going to be there, but she wouldn't give up. She created a version of her own exercise plan to keep herself calm and prevent herself from spiraling. So every day,
00:32:47
Jeff Rogers
She did like a small Pilates lesson and then she pasted her cell for 20 minutes every hour to keep herself active.
00:32:59
Jeff Rogers
Mentally, being alone wasn't that bad for her. She'd grown up with four brothers and a sister and would frequently seek the solitude to escape chaos. So she was used to it. She created as much routine and discipline as she could. She received a small helping of rotten potatoes every morning and learned quickly to ration them.
00:33:17
Jeff Rogers
So she's keeping her wits about her, you know, she's not panicking, she's not, you know. She visualized herself sitting down and eating breakfast with her son, Ollie, and his girlfriend, and she timed her meals to coincide with when Sa's, Ollie's girlfriend, would be eating her own breakfast. She forced human interaction whenever she could.
00:33:41
Jeff Rogers
She would hoard her empty water bottles inside the cell, forcing the captors to enter and interact with her so that they could retrieve them. She used some of her experience from work to hold on to a semblance of control. After spending some time sharing a toilet with 20 men, she started refusing to accept the squalor. So she also demanded they clean that and clean up their cigarette butts and provide her with a bag for trash. Judith, what? right Yes.
00:34:09
Jeff Rogers
She struggled a few times with being violently ill, but she stuck through it. Because men are nasty. ah and yeah Yeah. She kept hope alive and dreamed of reuniting with her family. After one month in captivity in a 15 square foot cell, they allowed her two brief phone calls. During the second of the phone calls, she received received news that shattered her.
00:34:37
Jeff Rogers
After three decades of marriage, David was dead. ah He had tried to fight the captors the night she had been taken. They had wrestled and fought for the gun, but he was shot clean through the chest and died instantly. Do we know who that phone call was from? Her son. Oh, damn. Yeah. She spent some time grieving and shaking and crying, but she quickly realized that her captors reacted poorly to this.
00:35:01
Jeff Rogers
so she had to snap herself out of the despair. She forced herself to apply some of her psychotherapeutic techniques from work. She realized that she was just a source of revenue for them, and not once did she actually feel any threat of sexual assault or physical harm, other than the squalor that she was living in. She she knew that they wouldn't risk her dying, so she kind of had it that small bit of hope.
00:35:27
Jeff Rogers
However, many times she was told that without a payout, she would be shot. So she would go to bed that night thinking, man, if somebody doesn't pay for me, then today's the day that she's gonna die. So there was that psychological trauma that she was dealing with. she shuffered She suffered from bouts of sleep deprivation and extreme exhaustion that led to episodes of hallucinations. One such hallucination was that she was being eaten alive and picked apart by vultures.
00:35:56
Jeff Rogers
She broke herself from that hallucination by digging her hands into the ground until they bled, and the pain brought her back to reality. Throughout many interactions with the captors, she discovered that they had no real sense of what they had done. They were completely oblivious to the fact that what they had done was bad. They didn't seem to grasp the enormity of killing David or taking her. In March of 2012, Ali told her
00:36:26
Jeff Rogers
Oh, yeah. Son is alone. Dad's been killed. Mom's been captive and this is the son, you know? So she gets another phone call um and Ollie tells her that she's getting released. So her release in the ransom had been negotiated with a private security firm. The British government decided that they would not let the terrorists or the captors dictate what they do. So they said, hey, sorry, Ali, we can't do this. Ali goes to a private security firm and manages this. Until she arrived at the airstrip and saw the pilot walking towards her, she was not convinced that she was going home. She returned home a changed woman. She had lost so much. Physically, she was emaciated. She was only 32 kilograms. That's like 70 pounds.
00:37:23
Jeff Rogers
With all of her bones visible, skin that hung over her bones in a flat way, and missing hair in clumps, she was so weak and fragile that she could barely lift the glass the first night at dinner at the government building in Nairobi. A year later, she still struggled to gain weight, but she was healthy. She worked so hard to become better than she had been. Although her job position had been held for her, she couldn't bring herself to go back immediately.
00:37:51
Jeff Rogers
One, she was dealing with the trauma that she had experienced, but she was also not sure that she could maintain composure and was worried that her patients would use the information against her. Judith was quoted saying, I kept expecting to feel like I used to feel and waiting for that person to come back. That person is never going to come back because part of that person was David. I was thinking about this the other day and it must be similar to losing a limb.
00:38:18
Jeff Rogers
You have to learn to adapt without this other part of you that you relied on, depended on that was part of you. So that Jude has gone, but there will be a life for me. I'm not letting those bloody horrible criminals win. They've taken David. They've taken enough. And now Jude is thriving and Ali as well. And although she misses David every day, she uses it to fuel her forward.
00:38:45
Jeff Rogers
My kind of story. That was good.
Episode Conclusion and Future Content
00:38:49
Jeff Rogers
She's just such a, I mean, she was held captive for six months. Six months. Can you like find her on YouTube? Yeah. Yeah. We'll add that. We're going to add that YouTube in the show. Yes. And there's a book about it. It's called The Long Walk Home. It's just wild. It's wild. It's a horrific story, but dude.
00:39:15
Jeff Rogers
Right? Yeah, I just hate that she was told that he died on the phone while she was still. Captive, you know what I mean? But it's one of those things where it's like, is it better to have known then or wait six months and be expecting to see your husband? And yeah, OK, that's fair. I think I think it would have been better to hear it then.
00:39:42
Jeff Rogers
Well, but yeah, don't ever tell me like if I'm kept, you're going to be one of the people I call number one. What if I'm dead? Probably not going to make it. Look, um I'll just fold. Cause here's my thing is they'll come and try and kidnap you and I'll be the one that gets shot. respect you oh And then I'll just know you can't be the one. Nobody. Ashley Allen. We both need help. We're both fucked. Can you guys both come and help? Then Alan will show up with his big smile. yeah like charm them away the universe will allow us to save you it's very allen i accept it uh-huh that was a good story that's good yours was good and horrible right but you know i just yeah
00:40:29
Jeff Rogers
Hannah, what a beautiful soul. So what else do we have? Do we have anything else? This show is on the 6th of February. It is. On Monday, we have a amazing sticky note story coming out for you. Oh, it's really good. One of my favorite people that you've never heard of, probably, um ah for a Black History Month. And then that's it folks do you have anything else um i would like to thank allen who we just begged to save us if we ever get kidnapped are overqualified underpaid master publisher extraordinaire and ashley the ultimate and
00:41:15
Jeff Rogers
ethically unmatched high Queen editor and my computer's right in the way. So that's why I'm backing out and I'm coming in. And together they're our first and forever fans. That's it, guys. Thank you.