A 22-year-old black woman escaped from a nightmare abduction. She told police that she had been forcibly taken from Kansas City, Missouri in September to her captor’s home Excelsior Springs, Missouri, and was hidden in a small basement room. She said she was repeatedly raped and beaten. She believes she was held there for about a month.
The victim was able to escape on Friday when the abductor brought his child to school.
The woman ran about 100 yards, barefoot, from the house and appealed for help at a neighbor’s front porch, at around 7:45 am on Friday morning. She was wearing a latex lingerie, that might have been made out of a plastic bag, a metal dog collar, and a padlock around her neck. She appeared to be malnourished, according to witnesses.
A neighbor, Lisa Johnson, found the woman emaciated and bruised. Scared and whimpering, the victim crouched on the porch, as Johnson was getting ready for work inside the house. Johnson heard her and assisted her.
“It was such a soft, ‘help me,’” Johnson told the press. “And I looked through our clear screen door, and this girl was hunched along the steps. I could immediately see that she was in desperate trouble – she looked like something from a horror movie. She had a homemade metal device tight around her neck; there was duct tape that she had pulled down off her face, which had been covering her mouth.”
The victim panicked when Johnson offered to call the police, fearing that the abductor would retaliate against both of them.
“She said if I called the cops, he would kill both of us,” said Johnson. I said, “who?” She said, “the guy up the street.”
The woman said that he had already killed her two friends.
Johnson did call 911, and when she returned to the porch the woman had moved on to another neighbor’s house, where she was taken in, given food, a blanket, and was comforted until the police came.
Timothy Haslett, Jr, a 39-year-old white male, from Excelsior Springs, Missouri was taken into custody on an unrelated animal control violation, as he pulled up at his home in a gray Dodge Ram pickup. He was later arrested for rape, kidnapping and assault. His hearing is scheduled for December 2.
Police said they have not yet found evidence of other victims. They are investigating the disappearance of other black women in the area, after previously saying that a Kansas City serial killer was “completely unfounded.”