A Day Of Play Leads To Kidnapping
From Redditor/u/cheeseshrice1966: I've stalked this sub for a while, and couldn't decide whether or not to post mine but I'm feeling brave on a Monday. It was a very long time ago- back in 1973. I know it was summer, I was 6, and we were living on Monica Lane in Madison, WI. Thing is, I sort of recalled it but never put two-and-two together until a few months ago when I was talking to my mom who went into great detail. I was a very gregarious child; outgoing, extroverted, friends with anyone. It was at the time a middle class neighborhood, and 3 houses down from ours, on the same side of the street, was a huge park. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a salesman, but mom worked 2nd shift at Merriter, while my dad worked days. I rarely had a babysitter, only if they went out for dinner or a movie. But they did go out often and there were always older kids in the neighborhood to babysit. One sitter who I really liked lived a few blocks or so away, and down the street a little bit. Vicky had babysat a few times before that and it was pretty uneventful. She'd play games with me, and do my hair, play dress-up, pretty basic stuff.
So anyhow, one day I had gone with friends down to the park. I remember there was a ball field at the time, and a sandlot next to the field. My friends wanted to play on the monkey bars, but I wanted to play in the sand. I looked at the sand box and my babysitter Vicky was standing there. I told my friends I was going down to to the sandbox and ran off.
We played in the sand, building a castle, and then She asks me if I wanted to go get something cold to drink. It was stifling hot, and I of course said yes. So she takes my hand and we start walking to her place.
She starts telling me about her puppies and asking if I want to play with them. Of course I get giddy and now can't wait to get to her house. This was where my memory had stopped and after my mom told me what happened, the rest of it flooded back.
My mother just happened to be talking to my sister and I about some of the places we lived and we got to Monica Lane. I told her I remembered the park and how big it seemed, and she asks me if I remember being kidnapped.
I immediately thought she was kidding and then the look on her face told me otherwise.
She said it was around 5 in the afternoon and one of my friends had come to the door to ask me to come back outside, sure that I had gotten bored and walked back home. When my mom checked the house, she realized I wasn't there and (7 months pregnant with my sister) sprints to the park, screaming my name.
After asking several kids if they'd seen me with no clue, she went to the ball field and asked the older boys if they'd seen me.
One of the boys (she guessed around 14) said that he'd seen a younger woman playing with a girl that fit my description in the sand and walk off in a general direction and that was all he knew.
My mom ran across the street to one of the houses, and asked to use their phone and called the police. By the time the police got there, my dad had come home and some of the neighbors were trying to help my mom.
So there's this search party out looking for me, screaming my name and knocking on doors. The police had gone back to the park to ask the boys if they knew who had been with me and if they knew who she was.
Between the boys and the neighbors, they had deduced who it was that had led me off, but I have no idea how, honestly.
The police and the entourage go to her home (she lived with her parents but they weren't home) and knock on the door. She came to the door and told them she hadn't seen me, and that she'd been home all day.
The police asked to come in and for some reason she said okay. They went through the house, and went to the basem*nt and found me. That's what my mom knew and then I remembered. It was literally like a flood gate had opened and I started crying.
At 6 you sort of trust everyone, and she'd been in our home. I never got a bad feeling from her and my parents didn't, either. But when we walked into her house I remember that cold, holy f*ck feeling washing over me and getting very worried. I remember starting to cry and saying I wanted to go home, over and over.
She takes me into her kitchen and gets me a glass of water and a tissue. I hear dogs barking, and next to the kitchen is an open stairway the goes down and where the barking was coming from.
She starts trying to cajole me into going downstairs- telling me there's all sorts of toys and games. I reluctantly agree and she grabs my hand to head down the stairs. The dogs are going nuttier and I start screaming.
At this point Vicky is getting f*cking bizarre. She's screaming at me to "SHUT THE F*CK UP!! IF YOU DONT SHUT UP I WILL THROW YOU IN THE CAGE WITH THE DOGS AND THEY WILL EAT YOU!! SHUT UP!!" Dragging me down the stairs and still screaming.
I was scared out of my mind. I remember crying so hard I was hyperventilating, and I am screaming so hard I'm not making sounds. Vicky then flips a switch and starts being syrupy sweet, trying to calm me down. She tells me that she was just playing a game and tells me she wants to play hide and seek.
She must have been relatively skilled at calming me down because the next thing I know, I hear knocking on the door upstairs and I wasn't crying. The houses were all the same sort of tract houses that Sears used to sell, not huge but not small, but you could hear everything at any spot in the house.
I keep hearing the knocking and she tells me that it's her friends. They're coming to play hide and seek!! She convinced me to let her put a piece of masking tape over my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound, and lifted me into this big wooden box next to the kennel. She put a big pile of blankets over me, and told me to be really quiet so they didn't find me.
The whole time the dogs were going batsh*t but when she calmed me down, they calmed down, too. They still looked incredibly mean but they were no longer frothing at the mouth, and only slightly growling. Until the knocking started.
I remember scrunching in there, confused. Still scared and convinced that the dogs were going to get out and eat me. I was crying again and hyperventilating. I remember taking the tape off my mouth because I couldn't breathe, but remembered I needed to be quiet because I was afraid what she'd do if I screamed.
I laid in that smelly box next to a big bag of dog food, sweating to hell, tears rolling down my face. I sort of pushed the blankets to the side but only enough so that I could pull them back over me when someone came. I recall thinking about my dad and wondering if he'd come find me.
All of a sudden I hear what sounds like adults yelling my name. They come down the stairs and the dogs are going batsh*t again. Over and over men are yelling my name and then I hear a man say 'if you don't shut those f*cking dogs up I will!!'
I was in a large storage box (like a carpenters tool box type of thing) with tape hanging off my mouth, when they opened the lid. I remember a very nice man asking me my name and if I was okay. I don't remember answering him in anything other than screams and tears and grabbing his neck so hard my dad had to practically pry me off of him.
I remember my parents taking me to the hospital to be checked out and that's all I really remember.
Mom said that Vicky was found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and last she knew was in prison but couldn't remember when the last time was she had heard anything. We moved from the area shortly thereafter, and I haven't been back since.
I do know that mom said that her parents were odd but that they didn't know them. She had met Vicky from neighbors that had used her as a babysitter, and had never heard of anything bad and that I always seemed happy with her.
She lived in the general neighborhood but it would have been two blocks over and [one]block down. Mom said they never picked her up, she always walked over. When they'd get home they'd drive her home but never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Mom and dad had only met her parents when they came to the door to ask for forgiveness; that Vicky hadn't meant to do anything bad, and was a good girl. Mom said my dad picked up her dad by the shirt and told him that if they ever came on our property again, he'd kill them.
I remember her name and sort of what she looked like, but would have no idea if she walked up to me who she is.
