Escaping the Candy Man: How One Girl Survived the Unthinkable | The Case of Lori Poland | UNSEEN

I'm Harvey Ghien and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday, I'm cutting the lights. I'm telling you a bedtime story. Except, these stories are all real. We're talking brazen heist, devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Ghien every Monday. On August 25, 1983, missing three-year-old Lori Poland is found alive at the bottom of a 10-foot deep sewage pit under an abandoned outhouse in the Colorado foothills. Just three days earlier, Lori disappeared from her home without a trace, except for her pants, found discarded on the sidewalk. When rescuers pull her from the hole and ask what she was doing down there, the little girl simply replies, "I live here," to traumatize to remember how she'd been kidnapped and broad daylight. Then, as they investigate the case of the girl in the hole, police discover multiple children claim to have been approached by the same strange man only days before the kidnapping. At just three years old, Lori is the only one who knows who this man is and what he's truly capable of. The problem is, Lori can't remember anything and unless those memories return, there's nothing stopping the predator from taking another child. In the small town of Sheridan, Colorado, a close knit community where everyone knows each other, three-year-old Lori Poland is playing in her family's front yard with her five-year-old brother. Their father, Richard, is painting the house nearby as the afternoon heat sets in. Lori asks for a popsicle. There are lots of neighbors around and Lori's with her big brother. So, Richard Poland, her father, leaves them alone for a minute to get her one. Inside, he can still see them through the window until he turns his back and reaches into the freezer. Seconds later, Richard walks back outside to find Lori's brother alone. Next to him, on the curb, are Lori's pants. In a panic, Richard starts calling out for his daughter to no avail until one of the neighbors tells him a car stopped briefly in front of the house before speeding away moments later. Without wasting a second, Richard calls the police. They launch a massive manhunt going door-to-door in the neighborhood and interviewing anyone who has seen something, starting with Richard and Diane. I just want who he has her to bring her back. And not her to her, please. She's my baby. Just bring her back. I really love her and I wonder, home. At three years old, Lori was taken while she was playing outside her home in Sheridan. The parents turned to mainstream media to try and locate their daughter. On the first day of her disappearance, both Diane and Richard appear on TV, pleading for anyone with information to come forward. Luckily, many neighbors contact the police. One eyewitness, Paul Weaver, is particularly observant, recalling crucial details about the car involved in Lori's kidnapping. I saw an orange dance incident with black letters and strips at the bottom. It was a double parked in front of my house in about two minutes later. I came out of my house and the children were coming down the street saying that Lori was in that car. As I left off, I noticed the first part of the license plate number was ADV, followed by three numbers. On the same day, another witness, Michael R. Fisher, also comes forward with important information. His children reportedly had a concerning encounter with a suspicious man a week prior. This came up a week before instead of maddening them home from school, and I was trying to give them candy if they agreed to take their pants off. So I drove over to their school and I saw a man with shoulder-length hair and a beard. I got out of the car and said, "Hey, you." And he took off running towards Bear Creek. I tried to follow him the last amount for a while. It was about 5'8", 155 pounds, and his hair was dirty, like dishwater brown. Even though the police have a description of the car and details regarding the kidnapper's physical appearance, it doesn't answer the one question that matters. Where is Lori? And considering that the man who kidnapped her seems extremely dangerous, is she even alive? The following day, the police still have nothing concerning Lori, but are closing in on the culprits identity. Investigators from the FBI join the local police and start going door to door all around Denver in hopes of finding more information about the mysterious missing letters on the kidnapper's license plate. And against all odds, they strike gold when they bump into Juanita's office, a grandmother living in an adjacent town. I saw the TV report and I recognized the car. I saw a part in front of my daughter's house on spotwood street in Denver. The driver was bothering my granddaughter when she was playing outside in broad daylight. My son-in-law jotted down the license plate number and I reported it to the little town police a month ago. And just in case, I've written down the plate number here. A-D-V-6-2-7. After running the plate, they magic to Robert Paul Thorette, a local golf club groundskeeper with no criminal record. Somehow, a man suspected of targeting multiple children in the span of just a few days has never been arrested before. Either Thorette's rampage has only just begun or something happened to the children who came before Lori. In any case, the police can't arrest him due to lack of evidence. So they try to learn more about his past by talking to his family, starting with Betty and Thorette, his mother. - My son is a good man now. But when he was a teenager, he had some issues. The police once looked into an accusation of him inappropriately touching a young boy. But nothing was proven. I also found women's underwear in his room a few years ago. I think this kind of behavior is common for teens and it doesn't connect him to the polling girl in any way. - Police explained that Robert and his car have been identified in three separate incidents. And in all of them, he offered children candies before asking them to take their pants off. - I never saw any signs of this kind of behavior from him, but maybe he has like a mental problem. I'm trying to think of something I did wrong and raising him that could have caused this. Something happened when he was very young, but I can barely remember. Maybe I failed him in some way, but I can't recall. - Three days into the search for Lori and the police and some of the people surrounding the polins are slowly beginning to lose hope, but they themselves are still reaching out to the public, asking for help anytime a reporter points a camera in their direction. - Oh, the family agonizes helpless, not knowing what to do. It's not fair her mother says, especially to their little girl. She'll be afraid and won't know what's happening. Diane Polin says, "Please, if all of you can help "look for her little girl, please," she says. - Please bring her there. You can't do this to people. - But the general air of desperation surrounding the case isn't coming out of nowhere. The police have found Robert Paul Thorett, searched his home, his workplace. They have questioned his family, his fiance, his mother, and yet they simply can't find Lori or anything that incriminates him. Shared in is surrounded by dense forests and miles of mountain trails. If Thorett wanted the little girl to disappear, he has a thousand places to hide her. And what could this mean for Lori? Keeping a kidnapped three-year-old hidden from the FBI and every police department in the Denver area seems almost impossible. Every hour Lori's kidnapper remains free, decreases her chances of being found alive. Investigators know they have the right man, but without Lori, there's nothing they can do. Later that morning, miles away in the Colorado foothills, Cynthia and Stephen Gollan, a couple out birdwatching, head to the mountains for a picnic. On their way, Cynthia says she needs to go to the bathroom, so her husband turns toward the beaver hook trailhead, remembering the old Canberra amenities there. As she walks in, Cynthia hears an unexpected sound. It's hard to imagine the horror she must have felt upon hearing the desperate cries of a little girl coming from the latrine. Cynthia looks down into the hole, only to see the reflection of the dim light in the tearful eyes of a child. Neighbors in the area stop to watch and ask questions, could it be Lori? A couple from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on a birdwatching expedition found the little girl by sheer accident. Don shook of Jefferson County Sheriff's, read a statement from Stephen Cynthia Gollan. I heard a crying, it continued. My husband also heard it from outside the outhouse. The crying continued. We searched the area around, then the child started calling for mommy. I want some Kool-Aid. My husband saw her and asked what she was doing down there. He said, do you want to get out and she answered, yes. Stephen Baker, a volunteer firefighter, is called to the scene. Once he reaches the bottom, he locates the girl and checks her condition, despite being trapped in the pit for several days without food or water. Lori's still conscious, but her legs are in very bad shape. Stephen gently lifts her off the mound and secures her onto his harness. When they reach the top, Lori is immediately sent to the hospital. Diane, Lori's overjoyed mother, follows right behind. Once there, the situation is dire. As her mental state goes from bad to worse, she is stuck in a disassociative state, suffers insomnia-induced waking nightmares and is absolutely terrified of everyone, even her own parents. the terror. And relief, only her parents could feel. (children shouting) But sadly, their ordeal is far from being over. As doctors are faced with a difficult decision, Lori's legs became deeply infected during her time underground. The infection is spreading so fast that amputation seems to be the only option to save Lori's life. On top of that, investigators are also racing against time. They have to stop Robert Paul Thoret before he strikes again. Their only way out is for the traumatized Lori to somehow testify against Thoret. Something easier said than done since a little girl has already begun to repress and forget the events. But against all odds, Lori manages to piece together her terrifying ordeal in less than two weeks. - Dr. Richard Krugman was Lori's pediatrician at the time at the Kemp Center and shot video of this interview. - This is how it all happened from Lori's perspective. Robert Paul Thoret parks in front of the house in a hurry and opens his passenger door. He offers her some candy and she, being only three years old, is easily lured by the treat. He then forces her to take her pants off and is gone in a hurry. Thoret is well aware of the danger he has placed himself in by committing such a brazen crime in a well-populated area. He knows that he has to put as much distance as possible between himself and the town in order to evade the police. Finally, he arrives at an old abandoned outhouse set back into the deep woods. Inside, the three-year-old will suffer an ordeal no child should ever have to experience. Out of respect for Lori, who is only a toddler at the time, we won't cover any more of the assault as it is extremely graphic. When he's done, Thoret lifts her up and drops her down the outhouse's 10-foot deep toilet right into the latrine pit. There is no way for her to see, but she can feel something is wrong with her foot after crashing down at the bottom. There, she is trapped in the dark, surrounded by filth and ice-cold water. The sound of the door slamming shut echoes in her mind as she starts to cry in fear and pain. She has just been left to die underground. Down the hall, Lori somehow knows there is something wrong with the water. In total darkness, she can only rely on her sense of touch and smell to teleport her surroundings, but these two are enough for her to understand that she should stay as far away as she can from the sludge. There is some sort of mound of wood and rubble over the murky water, so she sticks to it, flattening it with her arms and turning it into some kind of seat. For a brief moment, Lori recalls a memory of her mother. - And I had just turned three and I had just gotten potty-trained and I had to go to the bathroom and I was so worried that I was gonna let my mom down. - Lori's worries may seem trivial now, but what she doesn't know is that right above her head, years of untreated methane gas and hydrogen sulfide have accumulated in the upper layer of the pit. If she stands up, even for a minute, she'll probably pass out, fall off the mound and drown in the water. The same is true for the underlying sludge. She'll risk severe infection if her wounded legs come into contact with it, but even if the little girl knows better, the mound is very small and there's no way she can fit her entire body onto it. And so Lori lets her legs hang with her wounded toes sometimes coming into contact with the surface of the water. And he left me there. And he left me there to starve to death. He left me there for dead. - An unknown amount of time later, Lori's young mind starts to fail her. She can't discern night from day as a minute's less like hours while the pain from her now heavily infected legs keep her awake at all times. - The chemicals that were in this toilet made it up into my pelvis. My legs were completely black all the way up to my other thigh. - But as much as the underground seems oppressive to her, it is also her salvation. The biting cold of the latrine is nothing compared to the nighttime temperature in the Colorado mountains. If she had been left in the forest, she wouldn't have lasted more than a night. But down in the pit, she has managed to survive for four days straight without food or water. - I was starving to death. Like, that's torture. - She can't see them, but her legs are almost black with infection and her time is running out. With only a few hours left to live, Laurie tries to reminisce about her mother, but her memory is blurry at best. How long has she been down there? Days, weeks, months, and suddenly one clear memory comes back. She remembers her mother's face, congratulating her for something she did only a few days back. But the recollection slips from her mind almost as fast as it came. Now all she can hear is the echoes of her own cries amplified by her buzzing fever and nothing else. Not even the door slamming up top nor the screams of the disturbed couple who happened to find her down at the bottom of the pit. - I was crying, crying for my mom and bird watchers happened to be driving by and the wife had to use the bathroom. They looked at the outhouse that I was in and the husband's like, mm-hmm, we're gonna keep looking, where we'll find something else. And so like a mile down the road, she says, you need to turn around and go back. And like any good husband, he listened and turned around and they heard me crying. And so eventually they looked down and they said, what are you doing here? And I told them that I lived there. And so for me, it was my new normal. Like I just, I literally thought I lived in the bottom of a toilet. And so I was rescued and reunited with my family. And you can imagine the trauma that my family went through. Like it just goes on and on and on and on. - It takes Dr. Krugman two weeks to piece together Lori's terrifying ordeal. He knows there is no way a jury will rely on the words of a three year old, but her memories help investigators understand what happened inside the outhouse and they reveal something police didn't know before. The ret didn't just kidnap Lori. He assaulted and tried to kill her. And he almost succeeded. Even though every expert agrees that Lori needs both of her legs amputated to survive the extreme infection she caught in the pit, the little girl somehow finds it in her to fight back and miraculously heals without the need for any surgeries. When she is better, Lori is finally reunited with her parents for good. While this is happening, the ret is eventually forced to give himself up. Investigators then task young Lori with identifying the man who hurt her out of a police line-up. - She was rock solid in her identification. Her body line was said, "Mommy, that's him." And she sort of reeled back. She was a little scared. - Closing in on the trial, Robert's wife provides him with a fake alibi. This leads the prosecution to believe that Robert might get away with it if he sticks to his not guilty plea. This forces the judge to make a controversial decision. He offers Robert a plea deal. Instead of being charged with kidnapping, attempted murder, child abuse, battery, and sexual abuse, all charges are dropped except attempted murder and sexual abuse. This reduces his sentence from 80 years to only 10 years. - He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and then was released after six for good behavior. - The impacts of the events on Lori's life are long lasting and profound. As a child, she experienced a range of psychological and emotional problems, such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. As she grew up, she started struggling with trust and self-esteem issues. But proper support and care, like counseling and therapy, helped her cope with the trauma and heal from the abuse in the long run. And now that she's an adult, Lori sees the red sentencing from a completely different perspective. - Do you feel like justice was served? - For me, it's not really about justice. It's more about being impactful. And every day I wake up and I just try and be impactful and try and be good in the world and prevent people from growing up and causing harm. - 20 years after her kidnapping, Lori finally realizes her ambition in 2003 when she graduates from college. She is the first member of her extended family ever to do so. - At a caregiver's award luncheon, she's honored for the work she does outside of school, counseling abused children. - As a survivor of childhood trauma herself, Lori is able to show residents that their past does not have to be their future. - I look back at all the things that I've been through and a lot of them have been hard and very unfortunate and disgusting. But at the same time, they are a part of me and I'm grateful for experiencing those things. - Poland knows that her past will always be a part of her, but she's determined that it will never define her. - Lori Poland. - Hi, thank you very much. - Her parents have watched a little girl endure, overcome and blossom into an extraordinary woman. Lori Poland describes her family and friends as a life preserver of strength around her, there for support and dark times here to celebrate the brightest yet. - I'm done and I did it and I set my mind to it and I accomplished it. So that's why I'm happy. - To this day, the ripple effects of what happened continue. But Lori Poland, now a mother of three, has never backed away from a fight not only for herself, but now for all children who have been abused. - Today, she operates her own therapy practice and works alongside pediatrician Dr. Richard Krugman, who helped her through her own trauma decades ago as the co-founder of the end child abuse and neglect association or NKAN. Lori's work with the association has shown her that abuse is often part of a cycle of violence with victims on both sides, as most sex offenders have a history of being abused in their own childhood. Robert Paul Thorett's past demonstrates this as he was abused as a child starting at age three. The same age Lori was when he kidnapped her. - Imagine, I sat there. a room with 250 sex offenders who shared for the first time in their lives their own lived experience of being harmed and how that created this anger inside of them to then amplify them causing harm again not to excuse it not to justify it but to understand it. Instead of seeking punishment and justice Lori's mission is to promote healing and understanding recognizing that every person involved in abuse needs support and care to heal and move forward. Her story is truly a beacon of hope, inspiring others to turn their suffering into strength and to use their experiences to make a positive impact on the world. She wants all victims of abuse and neglect to know that their voices will always be louder than silence. I've never met a human no matter how atrocious they're crime that their primary need is not to matter. It's up to us to do the right thing if we instead of getting angry have some semblance of understanding not excusing but understanding that those people matter. Imagine the changes if we ensure that every human felt like they mattered.