#355: Man Kept A 9-Year-Old Girl In His Room For 10 Years Without His Mom Noticing

0:01Let me collect my thoughts please. and the staff members look over at nate's mom who you know had called them to do the mental health check on nate in the first place and they look at her like hello do you know this girl why is she in your house and nate's mom just kind of shrugs she's like i don't know i have never seen her before so the staff members they assume it had to have been nate's girlfriend maybe he had like snuck her into the room even though he clearly looked 25 years older than her it didn't matter to them you know love is love right what is age nate is like in his 40s this girl looked like she was maybe 18 what so they're like love is love but why is she behaving so weird maybe we should just take her to the hospital because what's going on what's your name and she's not responding to that she just looks so panicked and she keeps looking around and she asks nate's mom can i just stay here till he gets back this part is so pertinent and so heartbreaking later but that's what she asks so she's refusing to go home and even the staff is like what's your name where's your home we can take you home she's like i don't have a home so like just take her to the hospital we don't want to take care of this situation like let the hospital do it so they rush her to the hospital and finally she gets comfortable enough and she says that her name is fusaka sano we're going to call her Sano.

1:21And listen, this name might not mean anything to you right now, but it meant something to everyone at the hospital because Fusako Sano was a very well-known missing persons case in the area. She vanished when she was nine years old and she had been missing for the past nine years. And like, okay, I just like to put things in perspective. Nine years is a really long time. Nine years is three years longer than World War II. Nine years is actually the first walk around the entire earth took someone four years. So nine years, you could technically walk around the earth, the whole planet, two full times and have some time left over to sightsee.

2:00Nine years was half of Sano's life. She had been missing for half of her life. And it wasn't an easy nine years. I mean, it was a torturous nine years. Throughout her captivity, Sano was forced to tase herself with a stun gun, like a taser, over and over and over again. And eventually she started willingly doing it to herself. And you're like, why does she have Stockholm syndrome? Well, let's backtrack a bit first to who the hell this Nate guy is because we hate Nate, which by the way, the warning signs were there. Nate was a problem child. This was not a situation where everyone's like, our good neighbor, Nate, we would have never guessed.

2:37He's so nice. No, everybody kind of hated Nate. Nate's dad, let's call him James because I couldn't find his name online. But James is an interesting person. He got married, had five kids. And when James was 60, his wife passed away. Now, I guess James decided that there was still some fuel in his good old crusty tank. So he puts himself back in the market. He's trying to date again. And listen, I don't know if it's the raising gas prices, but it worked out. James manages to marry a beautiful 30-year-old woman, half his age, and the two go on to have a kid, Nate. Now the family dynamic was interesting James the dad is the breadwinner He makes good money He likes the finer things in life He purchased this big old western style house With a huge second floor That's super fancy back then So he built this beautiful nursery You know he has a child Nate It's ironic because this room This nursery that Nate used as a child Would later be hell on earth for another kid Decades later So with this lavish house and nursery Nate did not have a good relationship with his parents At all I don't know if it was the fact that James Was old so James was like I've already Been there done that with all my other kids Am I really trying to do it again with this new one I don't know if he was just tired I don't know right but he Just listen James And his mom were the type That they would throw Him into the nursery and say oh look over there At your shiny new toy hurry close that door So he doesn't see and then the Kid would walk to the shiny new toy and then look behind and his parents are gone because they don't want to spend time with you like that's kind of the life that he was living and also both of his parents seem to be struggling with some sort of undisclosed unaddressed mental health issue and eventually nate starts exhibiting his own symptoms now it's reported that he had some sort of germophobia or ocd i don't know the germophobia diagnosis gets a little weird later neighbors also reported that nate would obsessively wash his car nonstop all day long.

4:36Like it didn't even matter if it was dirty. He would just wake up in the morning and wash it all day. Next day, wake up, wash it all day. It was so bad that it caused him to drop out of school. He was getting bullied. He was so stressed all the time. He would come home and throw the world's biggest tantrum if his dad came home in slightly dirty clothes or slightly dirty hands, which honestly the parents did try to help Nate. Good for the parents. I think a lot of parents, especially in Eastern cultures, would never have taken him to like a psychiatrist. especially during this time but his parents did it was actually the hospitals that were at fault the hospital sat down the parents and were like i don't get it what seems to be the problem here they're like he's freaking out because if someone around him hasn't washed their hands like he'll have a psychotic breakdown for the rest of the day the hospital is like but is that the worst thing in the world he's just a clean kid shit i wish my kid had germophobia am i right doctors am I right?

5:30So the hospitals pretty much just ignored the family. Like no matter how many times the family brought Nate, they'd just be like, what's the big deal? He's a clean kid. And they would just release him. I mean, yeah, the warning signs were all there. So he drops out of high school and he decides he needs a job, right? He starts working at a factory, which I mean, that's super messy work, but that wasn't even the thing that he had a problem with. One day while he's at work, he's walking. And you know, sometimes when you're walking and you run into like what feels like a hair, but you know, it's not a hair.

6:00It's not like full on web in your face. It's not like in Charlotte's web right there, but you know, yeah, like one of the webs, right. And you walk into it and it's like that cotton candy hair feeling and you just get so agitated because you can't see it. You can't like pull it out. Right. Well, that happened to him and he ran all the way home, scrubbed himself clean until his skin was raw and he never went back to work. He was so traumatized. So you're like, well, how does he make money then? Well, he just essentially was like, I'm going to move out. Yeah, he was making no money. He can't take care of himself, but he's like, I'm going to move out.

6:35And his parents are looking at him like he's crazy. Like you can't move out. You can't even take care of yourself. No, we're not going to allow it. So what does Nate do? He takes it all in and he's like, OK, if you say so. And then he tries to set the house on fire. I don't know why he would think that suddenly an arsonist is fit to live alone. It just doesn't make sense, but he tried to light the house on fire. Thankfully, he was unsuccessful and nobody was hurt, but he was diagnosed with severe OCD and severe anxiety disorders. Basically, this guy was bubbling with anxiety. He spent months in a mental health facility, which is like the most help he's ever gotten in his entire life, but nothing happened when he got out.

7:14It was just, he was waiting for another mental breakdown. He spent all of his time upstairs watching horse races and obsessing over idols. And he convinced his parents to remodel the upstairs second floor to make it into his own apartment with his own entrance. So yeah, there would still be that staircase connecting the first and second floors, but he made his parents promise that they would never come back upstairs unless he invited them. So technically he's making it seem like it's his own apartment. And of course the parents are trying to compromise. So they're like, okay, that sounds good.

7:43When construction started, it caused such a mess because that's kind of how construction is. There was dirt. There was like pieces of wall everywhere. And he was so stressed by this that he called off the renovations. So like half of the upstairs was just bare wooden sticks, like inside the wall, like the drywall wasn't even there. Now, eventually Nate's old dad ends up passing away. And now it's just Nate and his mom in the house. And Nate's mom literally never went upstairs. Like not even a fingerprint of hers could have been found upstairs. And neighbors reported seeing Nate's mom with bruises everywhere.

8:16black eyes and they would even see nate going around punching through the windows and breaking down doors in the house which yeah that's alarming but i don't know if that's more alarming or less alarming that nobody called the police like nobody did he was just blatantly doing this so imagine how scary he was behind closed doors i mean what and one of the things that none of the neighbors suspected was that nate had big plans he wanted to kidnap a little girl nate starts stalking the local schools for the past, I don't know, maybe like a couple of years. And he's like working up the courage to find the perfect victim.

8:52He thought that they would be around nine years old and he could just snatch them from like the school parking lot. So one day he sees a group of four nine-year-olds walking around the school parking lot and one of them had separated from the group. So he just pounces on her and he tries to drag her into the car. But thankfully one of her friends starts screaming and it's like, Hey, put her down. And he puts her down, freaks out, drives away in the car. Now, this is like an elementary school parking lot. I mean, they're going to call the police and the police are going to find out who Nate is.

9:21And they do. Now, this is the confusing part. The police arrest Nate and they say, we looked up your records. This is actually your first time trying to kidnap a nine year old. So what that tells us, the police officers, is that you're probably never going to do it again. I don't even understand the logic there. You're saying that he tried once and failed and you're going to give him practically no consequences and then you still think that he's not going to try again yeah how do you even know that's his first time exactly first time getting caught exactly so it's it's the it's crazy he's almost treated better than someone who's never done it before and you and i both know that the mother forker is going to try again and he does so 27 year old nate starts prowling the outskirts of a town in his car and he realizes that his mistake the first time was that he went to a school zone, which of course there's going to be a lot of people, a lot of witnesses.

10:11This time he's prowling the quiet farm roads to see if any young girl was walking home. He lives in like a really small town in Japan. So a lot of girls would be walking home. Now he sees this little nine-year-old Sano walking alone. He pulls up behind her and sticks a six inch knife up to her and starts threatening her. And he tells her, be good and don't say a word. Sano was so scared to scream. so she didn't say anything nate opens up his trunk throws her in there and just starts doing circles he starts driving for like hours in circles to throw her off right because they lived in the same town and she's confused lost in you know complete pitch blackness and when you're nine a car ride like that in the trunk it's gonna feel like centuries you're gonna feel like you're on the other side of the world at this point and in the middle of the car ride nate would park the car and tie his sando up and blindfold her.

11:03So when he got to the house, he would sneak her up to the second floor and he told her, you don't want to end up killed like all those other kidnapped girls do you. You are never going to leave this room. You're going to live here forever. And if you break that promise and if you try to do something to change it, I'm not going to need you anymore. I have no problem burying you in the mountains or sending you floating away in the ocean. So you better just stay quiet. And this was the beginning of nearly a decade of captivity. Obviously, Sano's family realizes that she's missing And that night, this huge search party of like 200-something police officers Volunteers, they had helicopters They searched vacant homes, shipping containers They put up close to 20 ,000 missing posters But there was no sign of Sano Now, this is the infuriating part You're thinking, okay, well Nate was on the police record less than a year ago For trying to kidnap an essentially 9-year-old girl so surely the cops are going to interview him right with the other sex offenders no the cops were like well he's probably doing a really good job in life now because you know he got caught last year so why would he do it again this year i mean that doesn't make sense he's probably still shaken up from being caught that he's a good law-abiding citizen he probably doesn't even want to kidnap little girls anymore instead the police put all their resources in trying to find Sano and started investigating a potential North Korean rogue operation.

12:30They were like North Korea took her. Yeah. Cause the down the street is an absurd suspect, but North Korea, that's a good one. That's like a, I think that's the one. So for the next nine years and two months, Sano is held captive. Most of the time, her legs and arms were tied up 24 seven, which is literal hell. Like the CIA doesn't even do this in their stress positions. So do you know the CIA stress positions? We've talked about it before briefly, but essentially they put you in this box where you can't sit, you can't lay down, you can't crouch and you can't stand up. So you're putting stress on all of your muscles for hours at a time.

13:08And imagine the cramps, imagine the misery, like the CIA loves a good stress position, but this is worse because she couldn't even move a single muscle.

13:29Nate would make superficial stab wounds on Sano dozens of times to scare her like, hey, this is going to be worse if you ever try to escape or if you even scream. Nate would beat her relentlessly, most of the time for no reason at all. She had no idea why she was being beat. Nate's favorite thing to do was beat Sano near her eyes So that her eyes would swell up and she wouldn't even be able to open them And he would always say this is two birds one stone I beat you up and now you can't run away because you can't see Now the part where I question Nate's germophobia is because It's said that Sano showered maybe once during her entire nine years of captivity They also peed and pooped in plastic bags And they would just leave the poop bags in the hallway of his makeshift second floor apartment Which listen I don't know how often he cleaned them but I just can't imagine the smell.

14:13I genuinely can't imagine a germaphobe doing that. Now, the other torture, at first, Nate fed Sano really well, three times a day. It was like a mix of instant foods, breads, sugars. But then he saw this bruise on her leg, which I mean, he had beaten her a ton. So I don't see why he was so damn shocked over a bruise because you just beat her like yesterday. There's going to be bruises. But he accused her of having diabetes. Like that bruise is from diabetes. So he starts restricting her food intake in a way to help her diabetes. He cut out all carbs and sugars. Sano is nine. She's supposed to be growing, but she was a dangerous 84 pounds pretty much until she was 19 years old.

14:54Coupled with the fact that 99 % of the next nine years in captivity, Sano was chained in the dark with no exercise onto the bed. Her muscles started atrophying. She could barely walk. Her leg muscles were so weak. At this point, Sano couldn't even escape if she wanted to. She physically could not. And that's just the physical aspect. Nate would mentally abuse her heavily. He had this game where he bought a stun gun, like one of those tasers. And he would tase her over and over again while she bit down on a towel. And this is the weird part. This is the weird part, right? So he would say, I'm going to stop when you stop screaming.

15:30So, of course, in the beginning, as he's tasing her, she's screaming, right? So he's saying, I'm going to stop when you stop screaming. So she practiced and clenched every muscle in her body to stop the scream. But then as he progressed with this, the more she could do that on the first tase. But if she didn't scream at all, he would do it until she screamed. So he would tase her until she screamed and was like, OK, now I'm going to stop when you stop screaming. So there was really no winning with it. And because there was no winning, Sano was so desperate of all the pain that she asked to tase herself under Nate's supervision because she thought that if she got comfortable enough, she could desensitize herself to the pain which is just so freaking heartbreaking and infuriating and you're like okay well now with all this screaming there's no way that Nate's mom has no idea that he's just holding a woman captive like what do you mean she's just downstairs watching QVC I don't think so it's hard to say if his mom knew I'm gonna gear towards the fact that she probably knew but this guy is also beating his mom and yeah tasing his mom at one point so she is a victim as well to be fair i do feel for his mom she did try to get her help for her son she is also battling mental illness herself but at this point she still should have done something yeah like like the fact that she coughed someone right to take him away yeah but that was nine years later and she could have done that exactly the first day exactly and nine years later but i yeah nobody is disagreeing that he doesn't need mental health evaluation but you should call the cops first like if my son had someone held captive i wouldn't be calling the mental hospital i would be calling for an arrest warrant to me it doesn't make sense right i don't know how this mom lived with it and in order for sano to survive in captivity she developed a strong disassociative disorder she was just super disconnected to everything her mental development did not pass the age of nine the day that she was kidnapped the whole time she was bored and understimulated this is very different from a lot of the other cases that we cover where a lot of people will be a lot of victims will be held captive and within a year or so maybe a couple of months they'll get a book or a newspaper or a radio right sano for eight something years of her captivity never was allowed to read newspapers or listen to the radio so she was left incredibly understimulated and bored and i heard from a lot of victims like if you read their books and their testimonies they always say that boredom is worse than the torture sometimes and it's all made even more heartbreaking when you realize that when nate was caught sano begged to stay in his house because she was there for nine years and she she didn't even know what to do like this was what she thought life was so she's like too scared to even yeah like i'm gonna go out there and then what?

18:19Nate would later say that Sano was just his friend, not his victim. He said, I thought that I would want to keep her forever because we would talk about horses and races and cars. And I genuinely did like her. I felt like she was actually a girl my age. She was irreplaceable to me. So I was never going to let her go. Side note, this is not a defense for Nate, but he did not sexually assault Sano. He literally kept her there as a hostage and tortured her physically and mentally and emotionally so this is where it's weird what yes i've never heard of a case like this because let's say nate really wanted a friend right this is really sick and twisted but let's say he wanted a friend i don't think that he would torture her physically torture physically is almost like a power thing and rape is a power thing so i don't it's weird to me like and yeah that's really yeah but it's not like he was torturing her as like i need to do this so you don't run away but i don't really want to do this he was getting off on the torture yeah like tasing her that is so weird yeah never heard that before yeah some people suspect that he had something for watching people kind of decline i don't know if that's true that's like what i've a theory that i've seen on the internet it's like watching someone become more pale and more atrophied and i don't know because people are confused by this.

19:41Like, what do you mean? Like, what is, what is he really getting out of this? So Nate gets caught and he's arrested and charged with kidnapping. Now the maximum sentence is 10 years, literally an eye for an eye, which is just so sick considering how long he kept Sano captive. I don't really believe in this because you made the choice to kidnap Sano. So an eye for an eye doesn't even make sense. I don't like when people argue an eye for an eye, because if you made the choice to do something bad to me, it should be worse than an eye for an eye for you. So it's only 10 years for his case? Yeah, maximum would be 10 years.

20:14For kidnapping? Yeah, and holding her hostage for nine years. Nine and a half years. What? What if someone kidnapped someone for 20 years? I guess just 10 years. It's not even an eye for an eye. It's like an eye for a punch in the face. So the prosecutors, they tried to add on any more charges they could justify to increase his prison sentence. And in the end, it didn't work. Nate was sentenced to a maximum of 11 years. But this caused so much outrage online. even in prison i mean people were upset this guy is going to have a better time in prison than sano sano is kept captive for nine years she didn't ask for this he essentially asked for this when he decided to break the law yeah and she was a kid yeah no this made sense now there was so much outrage that the penalty for confinement for um kidnapping was increased from 10 to 15 years which is nothing but it was too late for freaking nate because he was released in 2015 at just 52 years old he's dead now he moved into like a government housing he was on welfare so that's great still getting support from the government and within two years he ended up passing away his cause of death is undetermined but he was just found dead in his apartment meanwhile sano tries to live a normal life and she's trying to put on weight she has to learn to walk again.

21:34She has severe PTSD. She has social anxiety. The only people that she felt comfortable with in her entire life after this point were her family. And one day on a beach trip with her dad, he ends up drowning in front of her eyes and she was unable to rescue him. So she watched her dad die in front of her face. And it was just this other added layer of trauma. And here is the infuriating part there was a lot of online discourse that included a conversation of well what if sono wanted it what who said this yeah they were saying that nate had mentioned in interviews that he had sometimes left the front door of his house unlocked so does that mean that she could have just walked out but she didn't coupled with the fact that she asked if she could stay what if she wanted it to which that i say first of all she couldn't even walk because her leg muscles were atrophied and second of all how would she freaking know that the front door was unlocked and third of all how does she like like how have any one of these people been kidnapped for nine days yes this is the same energy of well i would never be kidnapped because i would karate chop black belt shoot my potential kidnapper it's like or people say i would never be in that shoot in that position yes you don't know until you know listen we all want to pretend to be like, we're so brave and stuff.

22:59And like, sometimes I say that too, but like, let's be real, it happens to everyone. And like, when you are in a stressful situation, freezer, freezer, flight, flight or flight, like you, are you kidding? So like, yeah, put your eyeballs on the table before you talk about Sano like that. What are you even saying? But this was discourse online. Like she didn't want to leave. So that must mean that she wanted it. And this was in 2015. This wasn't even in like the 1900s. This wasn't even like in the 80s where you're like, oh, well, we've evolved 2015.

23:35I want to talk to you guys about today's case because it's so freaking mind boggling that this even happened, that this took place, that this is a crime that someone committed. So this is the most what the fork plot twist kidnapping case that we've covered in a while. And yes, again, nobody fakes their own kidnapping. It's not bizarre in that sense. It's even more bizarre and unexpected. let's talk about julian bushwald and carolyn watson from australia i'm not gonna lie to you their relationship was questionable from the get-go so julian was 25 years old carolyn was 17 years old and they had been dating for two years yeah so that means she would have been 15 and he was 23 years old yeah so side note very questionable on julian's part uh carolyn did nothing wrong i'm just saying okay now it's not clear where they met some sources say that they met at church which Which would kind of make sense.

24:25It seemed like the two of them spent a lot of time at church. They were devout Christians. They took their faith super seriously. To the point where they had been dating for two years. Never even kissed each other. They had never done anything more than just hold hands. Which is saying a lot. Because you know when you're 17 and 25. That's you know you get it. Both of them just wanted to save everything. Until they got married. Even their first kiss. Definitely their first time. And it was fine. because, you know, they were planning on getting married very, very soon. The minute that Carolyn turned 18 and she graduated high school, they were going to get married.

24:59So until then, all they had to do is keep it in their pants. You know, keep busy, keep busy studying, praise the Lord, go on dates, and that's it. No, really. That's like all they could do because they both came from a super small rural town where literally nothing happened. Like nothing was going on. There was not much to do in the area. There was no crazy dates for them to go on. So they would just spend most of their time in nature, hiking, picnics, driving around in Julian's car. So March 4th was going to be one of those uneventful dates, right? Julian comes, picks up Caroline, and his plan is to take her to a part of his family's really big property.

25:34And they were going to picnic next to this waterfall and just enjoy each other's presence. I mean, it sounds like a really cute date. They live in Australia, by the way. So it's going to be really picturesque. But the thing about Australia is that when nighttime comes, it doesn't matter how nice it was during the day. Once nighttime comes, freezing cold, freezing cold. There's so many animals. There's so much wildlife. It's just scary. Like a kangaroo could pop out of nowhere, punch you in the face. You could get bitten by a venomous spider. I'm not even exaggerating. It's crazy. Like kangaroos are jacked up chads.

26:08So you have to be careful. So they were smart. They're like, we're not going to even wait till nightfall. We're gonna come home by 3 p.m. That's what Carolyn told her parents. So they start driving and on the way to the waterfall Julian spots some roadkill on the side of the road. It's not even on the road. It's like in the woods on the side. He's like oh it's my lucky day. Okay so this part is interesting. But Julian really likes roadkill. He would stop driving anytime he saw roadkill or a dead animal on the side of the road and he would just start investigating. Which I think is interesting.

26:38I'm assuming that there was a really good reason for it. Okay so he's not trying to bring home and eat it. Eat it? No. Have you guys seen that show, like Roadkill? Yeah, yeah. They make food out of Roadkill. So he's just investigating. He completely stops the car, middle of nowhere road, and he goes to study the jigsaw puzzle remains of whatever animal was on the side. And Carolyn didn't think it was strange. He did this a lot. She didn't really care for the Roadkill, so she just stayed in the passenger seat, and she couldn't actually see the animal. The animal was in the woods. It was off near the trees.

27:09So she's keeping herself entertained in the car and just to draw you a picture of it from where Carolyn was sitting in the car she could not see Julian anymore but that's not really a big deal right because they're in rural Australia countryside she knew it was safe nobody was going to be here or was it? Julian said while he was bent over studying the roadkill he heard like the crunching of leaves behind him like the crumpling and it was footsteps but it was heavy footsteps it definitely wasn't Carolyn it sounded like a larger person like a man Someone with a bigger stature, a figure. Someone was loudly stomping up and it was getting closer and closer and louder to him.

27:48And he went to turn around to see who was walking up behind him. And before he knew it, he got bonked on the side of the head and knocked out cold. He couldn't even register what the hell was going on. So he couldn't even scream for Carolyn to run. Nothing. So Carolyn is blissfully unaware in the car. It's not like Julian screamed, alerted her. Nothing. She's in the car and she looks up and sees a man dressed in all black with a balaclava over his head. And she's like, oh my God, I don't know who this man is, but something is definitely wrong. This is not normal. And he's looking straight at her.

28:23She can see from the holes where his eyes are cut out. So a balaclava is just holes in the eyes and everything else is like a ski mask. He's headed straight to her, like power walking to the car. She opens the passenger side door and she tries to run out before he gets to her. But he's so fast, he drags her out of the car, shoves her face down onto the ground, hog ties her. So do you know what that is? It's like when you're on your stomach and your arms and your legs are tied behind your back but together. And he duct tapes her mouth shut and stuffs her in the trunk of Julian's car. She's desperately trying to listen to what the hell is going on.

28:59Her heart probably sank when she heard the door to the car slam shut and the engine starts revving. so now the kidnapper is driving off with her in the trunk. They were leaving Julian. She doesn't even know where he is. They were in the car for a really, really long time before they finally stopped and Carolyn felt like, you know, she knew her fate. Whoever this was was going to R-word her and then unalive her and leave her for dead in the Australian countryside. If not, she would freeze, starve to death, be attacked by wild animals, bitten by venomous insects. Honestly, what's worse? Like, it's hard to say.

29:32Either way, she felt like she was going to be R-worded and unalived. The car stopped and the kidnapper drags her out of the trunk, throws her onto the ground, and she closes her eyes while he starts approaching her with this shiny knife. But instead of killing her like she thought he was going to, he cut off all her clothes. He pulled the duct tape off her mouth so now she's naked and still hogtied. And she's confused, you know, is she going to get assaulted? She didn't really know. but he vanished for a second and he comes back with a shovel and right next door he starts digging a grave oh my god and i mean can you imagine like the emotions that you're feeling when you're experiencing someone dig you're on the ground you see them digging right next to you and you know it's your grave like it's big enough to be a grave she's thinking am i going to be buried alive here like am i going to be r-worded and then buried alive i mean either way it was not looking good since the duct tape is off her mouth she's begging him you know please let me go I'm not going to tell anybody, please.

30:29Like I have family that love me. Like I promise I won't. She's begging, begging. She's saying she'll do anything. She's trying to appeal to his humanity. Nothing. He won't even respond to her. He was just grunting away, digging the grave. Caroline felt like all she could do now was pray. So she prayed and prayed and prayed. She prayed that her faith would save her from whatever this man had planned for her. And then her prayers came true literally it was like an act of god the man stopped digging and just disappeared into the bushland i mean she was so relieved momentarily but she realized i mean she was still left helpless hogtied naked and it was going to be nighttime soon where the temperatures were going to be dropping below freezing the situation was only going to get worse when the sun set plus she had no idea if the kidnapper was going to come back and if he was even going to come back alone what if he had come back with other people what if he had bigger plans so she's freaking out but all she could do was literally lie there like bait and wait and eventually she heard a voice and she recognized the voice it's a boyfriend julian what he's like caroline and she hears him calling her name and it's getting closer and closer and he emerges from the trees completely naked tied up he's not hog tied but his legs and his arms are tied together so he's like hopping he's hopping around and he looks like he's been through it okay he looks like he's seen some and the two they hop towards each other and they come up with a plan the knife that the kidnapper had used to take off all of carolyn's clothes was left behind so they were going to use it to free each other and then get out of there before the kidnapper comes back because i mean it felt like he was going to come back why else would he go through all this trouble to leave them naked and tied up like he didn't get anything out of it yet so he's gonna come back so they free each other and they start to make their way through the woods Julian manages to find some supplies around where the kidnapper had left the car so they had a sleeping bag in the car a few things to eat some extra clothes and that was about it like they were still hours away from home even if they drove like think about it like they were semi-naked they have to walk because the keys are not in the car they're sore it was gonna be a long time till they get home if they make it home that is meanwhile at home julian's mom is getting worried about where the hell he is julian is not the type to come home late especially without calling so she starts pacing the room she has no way to contact him he's not picking up the phone carolyn's not picking up the phone so she starts walking around her property hoping that she would see julian's car coming in the distance somewhere but all she found was a little bottle like one of those messages in a bottle like those glass bottles you know what I'm talking about?

33:11It was like wish bottles? Yeah, it was really weird. Like it looked like it had been stuffed through their fence for them to find and like a piece of paper was stuffed into the bottle like a message in a bottle. And she's like, okay, this is really weird because nobody litters around here. I mean, like I told you, they live in rural Australia. Nobody comes onto their property this deep. So she carefully gets the bottle, takes the letter out and she was even more worried and confused when she read the letter. It said, you bloody can't leave us alone. So now your son and girl have gone walkabouts, meaning like they're gone.

33:43You'll get Julie and Carolyn back after we finished our business in the area, but only if you behave yourselves. And don't shit us around again. Tell everyone that you're on holiday. Don't you dare talk to the cops again, and you'll get your kids back. Shit us again, and you'll never see your kids, because we will fuck the girl to death, and your son will really enjoy the torture and the sacrifice to our God to pay him back 180 times. the hurt he did to us when we pick them up. This is your last warning. Do what we say and you'll get your kids back alive. What? Does she know what they're talking about?