I Escaped an Ex-Navy Serial Killer: The Mysterious California Highway Hitchhiker Murders | The Case of Jennifer Asbenson | UNSEEN

This man is the ex-marine who became a serial killer. What you're about to hear is extremely disturbing, as he calmly describes kidnapping 19-year-old Jennifer Aspinson. Jennifer Aspinson, 19-year-old. Jennifer Aspinson, 19-years-old, attacked, kidnapped, taken to the middle of a desert, but she escaped, twice, before finally making it out alive. When she told the police, no one believed her story was true. It took five more years for Andrew Erdialis to be brought to justice, where he confessed to having murdered eight women. During the trial, Jennifer finally got her chance to face him and put an end to his 10-year-long rampage. It's September 27, 1992, and the city of Palm Springs, California, two men stop in the middle of the desert, intercepted by a woman, half naked, with bite marks on her neck. She tells them that a man has been trying to kill her. The two men escort her to the closest gas station, where they contact the Palm Springs Police Department. When police arrive, the woman named Jennifer Aspinson tells them how the man who calls himself Andrew, kidnapped her, threatened her with a gun before trapping her inside the trunk of his car. The police tell Jennifer they have a reason to believe she might be lying, but it's more likely she'd just had a fight with her boyfriend, dismissing her story completely. They take pictures of the marks on her neck and send her home. Jennifer is destroyed. She goes back to her life in constant fear that one day, Andrew will turn up at her house. After years of dealing with her own trauma, someone knocks at Jennifer's door. It's the California State Police. They ask Jennifer to follow them to the police department, as she's sitting across from an investigator. He shows her pictures of potential suspects, asking Jennifer to identify the man, who she claims abducted her five years prior. Without looking at the others, she pushes his picture forward, with absolute certainty. That's when the officer tells her the shocking truth about the man called Andrew. When he said this guy is a serial killer, he killed eight women and you're the only one that got away. The day before her abduction, Jennifer is on her way to work in night shift, where she attends to children with special needs. I would work from 10 at night till 6 in the morning, but I was young. I was 19. I had a wonderful job. She misses the late bus, worried that if she's late, she might lose her job. A car drives by, and slows down next to her. The man inside looks kind, and asks Jennifer if she needs a ride. She refuses out of instinct, even though she doesn't feel threatened by this stranger. As the man drives away, Jennifer changes her mind. I did think he's a stranger, but he looks small, glasses on, just harmless. She gets in, and they drive off. During the car ride, they talk about random things, and she starts to get comfortable with him, feeling silly for even worrying about taking the ride. As he drops her off, he asks her if she wants to go to breakfast when she gets off work. She declines, saying she has a boyfriend. The man insists, he asks for her phone number. And I thought, I'm just gonna make up a number and get away from him. During her night shift, Jennifer forgets all about the man she probably won't see again. On September 27, 1992, around 6am, as Jennifer is leaving work and heading toward the bus stop, she notices a car similar to the one she got in the night before. It's Andrew again. He rolls down his window and offers her to go get breakfast. I was already laughing, like, you just don't give up. And I just thought, okay, he's obviously nice. He didn't do anything to hurt me the night before, and so I got in the car. Once she's inside, something switches in the man's face. He brings up the phone number that I gave him, and just screamed. I called that number and some old ******* answered. Before she can make sense of what's happening, her head is smashed against the glove box. The man takes out a gun and rope. Orders Jennifer to turn around and binds her hands together. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mavily. He was screaming at me calling me names. I didn't know if he was going to slip my throat, I didn't know what he was going to do. He pulls her seat down to keep her out of sight and drives off. After only a few minutes, the car turns onto a road, leading far into the desert. Jennifer can only imagine what's going to happen to her. I could see the telephone poles, and we passed one telephone pole, and then the next and the more that passed, the more hope that I lost. The man pulls over and he pulls out a large knife and starts cutting Jennifer's clothes off. She can see he's done this before. She tries to fight him off, but the man is too strong and aggressive. Every time she fights back, she only gets hurt. Then he forces himself on her. As something happens, Andrew sees that he can't perform. This only makes him angrier. For a brief moment, she loses consciousness. Only to wake up as he's biting at her neck, screaming like a madman. That's when he got out of the car, and he went to the trunk, and he pulled out a brown shopping bag full of knives. I finally realized he's going to murder me. She gets out of the car and starts running through the desert. I just ran, and I imagine he was going to shoot me. Suddenly, she feels a sharp pain on the back of her head. Jennifer falls to the ground as the man is dragging her back to the car. He puts her in the trunk of the car, slamming its shut, telling her he's going to kill her. Jennifer is terrified. She can't see anything. Her hands tied behind her back, locked inside a moving car. Her hope of escape is gone. "My first thought was panic, and I just started praying out loud." At that moment, she feels a surge of strength overwhelm her. She pulls her hands apart, breaking the twine that binds them together. She can't believe her hands are free, but there's no time to wait. Andrew is driving her to her grave. In the dark, she can't see anything, but uses her hands to feel her surroundings. She tears the interior of the trunk apart, searching for some way to open it. She pulls on a handle, releasing the cover, but Andrew notices and pulls the car over. "Then he came around to the back of the trunk, and he bounced on it." With the trunk barely open, he doesn't see Jennifer's hands are untied, so he slams its shut and gets back in the car. Jennifer can hear the tires or spinning in the sand. She knows he got stuck, and this might be her only chance to escape. She pulls the trunk open and starts to run, and to run. "I turned around, and he was chasing me with a machete." But she doesn't stop. On the road, a car passes by, she begs for their help. The driver locks the door, seeing Andrew project the weapon, the car drives off, so she continues to run, and run. She sees the trunk getting close. This time, she doesn't take any chances. She stands up, half naked, in the middle of the road, forcing the driver to stop. The two men in the truck get out and take Jennifer in. When she looks back, Andrew is nowhere to be found. "And the passenger came and put me in the back seat, they brought me to the local gas station. The police were called, ambulance came, my mom was called." But Jennifer never had the best of relationships with her mother, and so instead of having the support she needs, Jennifer hears her mother yell out that her daughter likes to make up stories, that she does it for attention, so no one believes Jennifer, not even the cops. "When you get out of a situation like that, it doesn't always go up hell from there." Year after year, she lives in fear, terrified because the man has her ID cards with her address on it. One nights, she even sleeps on the roof of her house, afraid that Andrew will turn up to finish the job. She feels unprepared, unable to defend herself, but everything changes when she meets a woman named Mika Molten. Mika understands what Jennifer went through better than anyone. She lost her son, in the worst possible way. "It is a very shallow grave, and that it appears to be the outline of a very small torso." a child is something you can never imagine. There's just this incredible need to wake up, and you can't. Then she hears the news, no parent is ever prepared to hear. "There's evidence of exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior and they could ever want cruelty." Christopher suffered. He tried to shield himself, he tried to fight but he didn't know how, and that hurt really bad for me. He could never knew she needed to teach her son defensive measures. But after what happened to him, she wanted to make sure that no other children would go through what Christopher did. She then creates a workshop that teaches kids how to defend themselves against potential attackers. She calls it "Christopher's Clubhouse." Mika also finds ways to help survivors, like Jennifer, who goes to Mika hoping to lose her fear. With each day, Jennifer's fear grows smaller and smaller, and her power soon takes over. "It's very close to the end, don't open them unless you're grabbed, okay?" "Yeah, look at fine, yeah, you know, party's hard and nothing." She learns new ways to defend herself and builds a confidence no one can break. In her mind, she's preparing for the day she'll come face to face with her attacker, to be ready. The year is 1997. Five years after she was kidnapped, Jennifer is sitting at the police office and has just identified him out of a line-up. The investigator tells Jennifer that Andrew Erdie-Ellis has been arrested, and that he confessed to everything, to all eight murders, but also to Jennifer's kidnapping. I told her to turn around and tie her hands behind her back. I just had my hand out throat and I just kept choking and she kept kicking and, you know, her slap was coming out of my mouth and she could face what she was doing and read. Jennifer can't believe it. After all these years, her monster is finally behind bars. She learns that there will be a trial and that her testimony will be crucial to the case, for all the other women who didn't make it out alive and for the world to know what they went through. Jennifer didn't expect her face off would be like this. For years, she's been building her strength, her barrier, but now she's back in the same situation as before. Unprepared. I knew I had to go back there and I had to be so vulnerable. I did not want to do that in front of him. I asked if they could get him out of the room, but they couldn't. The very first time seeing him, my whole body kind of froze when I looked at him because I hadn't seen him in so long and he was there in front of me now and I kind of just wanted to tell myself he's going to pay for what he did. Through her own bravery, Jennifer is meant to spoke for all these women that didn't get away. She was a hero. Despite pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, Andrew Erdy-Ellis is found guilty of all eight murders in three separate trials. The penalty to be imposed upon defendant Andrew Erdy-Ellis to be death. I just felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Jennifer came face to face with a monster and won. She was thrown back into a dangerous world and found strength. And just like Mika Molten, she became a force to be reckoned way. I ride on shopping carts. I don't want to miss a moment of fun because I know my life is almost taken away. I will find joy. I will, I will skip. I will. Even after everything she went through, Jennifer was able to turn her life around demanding for something better. I still can live an amazing life and find beauty, enjoy, and happiness and everything. Especially letting other people know that they are not victims, they're survivors. Jennifer Aspinson is living proof that no matter what the world throws at you, there is a power inside you, waiting to be unleashed. 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