Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Woman fights for her life, brutal attack recorded by FITBIT!
Transcript
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- 1:19Speaker 1: Join Justice Nation. Go to crimestops here dot com Crime
- 1:29Speaker 1: Stories with Nancy Grace today how you fitness tracker technologies
- 1:36Speaker 1: helping police catch criminals. Kelly Heron was viciously attacked while
- 1:41Speaker 1: running last year in Seattle. Luckily she survived. Her story
- 1:45Speaker 1: spread around the world when she posted this map from
- 1:48Speaker 1: her cheapest fitness tracker that shows the intensity of her
- 1:52Speaker 1: struggle during the attack. And we look what happened here right.
- 1:54Speaker 1: We took eight minutes, by the way, because she was struggling.
- 1:57Speaker 1: She runs in here to go to the bathroom. This
- 2:00Speaker 1: is the struggle for eight minutes that could have cost
- 2:03Speaker 1: her her life. You are hearing our friend doctor Oz
- 2:07Speaker 1: talking about my new hero, Kelly Herron, a marathon runner
- 2:12Speaker 1: who was attacked in a bathroom, a lady's bathroom as
- 2:17Speaker 1: she is practicing, as she is training for her marathon
- 2:21Speaker 1: and her fitness triker Man. You should see it. Oz
- 2:25Speaker 1: put it up on a screen. You can see that
- 2:28Speaker 1: screen at crime online dot com and you see her
- 2:33Speaker 1: fitness triker. It's like somebody took a magic marker and
- 2:36Speaker 1: just like a little kid and just scribbled violently all
- 2:40Speaker 1: over the page. That's Kelly fighting for her life and
- 2:47Speaker 1: Thanks to Doctor Oz, I got to meet the runner
- 2:52Speaker 1: who fought back and lived to tell the tale. Kelly Herron,
- 2:56Speaker 1: who is with me right now. I mean, see Grace,
- 3:00Speaker 1: this is crime Stories. Thank you for being with us,
- 3:02Speaker 1: with me. Ashley Wilcot, judge, lawyer advocate. You can find
- 3:08Speaker 1: her at Ashley Wilcott dot com. Karen Stark, renowned to
- 3:12Speaker 1: New York psychologists, joining me from Manhattan. She's at Karen
- 3:15Speaker 1: Stark dot com. And with me my new hero, Kelly Harron. Kelly,
- 3:22Speaker 1: it was such a great privilege to get to meet
- 3:25Speaker 1: you at Doctor Oz and I was just riveted on
- 3:30Speaker 1: every single thing you said. You know, I've covered Kelly
- 3:35Speaker 1: so many cases. In fact, in my new book, I
- 3:42Speaker 1: am writing an entire chapter about women exercising and how
- 3:48Speaker 1: to be safe and researching for that has really brought
- 3:53Speaker 1: back so many cases I've covered that I prosecuted as
- 3:58Speaker 1: a prosecutor of women out minding their own business exercising
- 4:03Speaker 1: when they are attacked and murdered. Names that we can
- 4:08Speaker 1: all remember, like Molly Tibbitts, Karina Vitrano, There's so many.
- 4:14Speaker 1: It just goes on and on and on. Kelly Heron
- 4:18Speaker 1: somehow managed not to become a statistic and I gotta
- 4:24Speaker 1: excuse me, Kelly, I'm kind of cherry choking up here
- 4:28Speaker 1: because sitting beside you on Oz's couch and looking at you,
- 4:33Speaker 1: listening to you tell your story, the thought that you
- 4:37Speaker 1: almost lost your life that day is very upsetting to me.
- 4:44Speaker 1: And I want you to start at the beginning and
- 4:47Speaker 1: tell everyone what happened and how you managed to be
- 4:51Speaker 1: with me today. Thank you so much, Nancy. I was
- 4:56Speaker 1: training for my first marathon in March of twenty seventeen.
- 5:01Speaker 1: I was running along a public park in Seattle. It
- 5:05Speaker 1: was the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday. Not
- 5:09Speaker 1: a lot of people at the park. I was about
- 5:11Speaker 1: four and a half miles in stopped to use the restroom.
- 5:16Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to me, there was a transient Level three sex
- 5:19Speaker 1: defender hiding in a stall. Karen Stark, New York psychologist,
- 5:25Speaker 1: that is a recurring dream I have. I have a dream,
- 5:29Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's from all the years
- 5:32Speaker 1: I prosecuted cases of joggers women being attacked, or cases
- 5:39Speaker 1: that I prosecuted that occurred in bathrooms. But this dream,
- 5:43Speaker 1: I go into a bathroom and I opened up a
- 5:46Speaker 1: stall and there's a dead body in there. It's a
- 5:50Speaker 1: horrible dream, horrible and I have it over and over
- 5:54Speaker 1: and over. That's exactly what happened to Kelly. She goes
- 5:59Speaker 1: in and in one of the other stalls is a
- 6:04Speaker 1: sex offender just waiting, probably you know, with his feet
- 6:09Speaker 1: up on the commode in the next stall, so she
- 6:12Speaker 1: can't see feet in their Karen, you know none of
- 6:16Speaker 1: the surprises me. Nancy. You were a runner. I was
- 6:19Speaker 1: a runner, and I don't know if you're still running,
- 6:22Speaker 1: but there have been times in Central Park where I
- 6:25Speaker 1: would stop to go to the bathroom. And what a
- 6:29Speaker 1: story to everybody's worst fear. And I think of you
- 6:33Speaker 1: and the fact that you actually had a fiance who
- 6:35Speaker 1: is murdered in the phone booth in a type space
- 6:39Speaker 1: like that, Your recurring dream makes perfect sense to me.
- 6:43Speaker 1: But Kelly, how terrific that you were able to be
- 6:48Speaker 1: smart enough and a learn enough to fight back that
- 6:51Speaker 1: you took that course. And women need to know about this.
- 6:55Speaker 1: It's so important, you know. That reminds me. When I
- 6:59Speaker 1: finished her story, Karen, I want to double back with
- 7:01Speaker 1: you about post traumatic stress disorder and how that affects people. Hey, Kelly,
- 7:07Speaker 1: you said something on Doctor Oz it really stuck in
- 7:09Speaker 1: my mind. When you went in there, did you get
- 7:16Speaker 1: a sixth sense of foreboding? I did not. However, when
- 7:22Speaker 1: I was drying my hands, which is when he crept
- 7:26Speaker 1: out of the stall behind me, I got a chill
- 7:30Speaker 1: right up my spine at the back of my neck.
- 7:33Speaker 1: Was that before you saw him? Before you saw him?
- 7:37Speaker 1: It was okay? Back to you, Karen Stark, and then
- 7:40Speaker 1: I'll follow it with Ashley. Karen, I have said a
- 7:43Speaker 1: million times and a right about it as well in
- 7:46Speaker 1: this new book, don't be a victim fighting back against
- 7:51Speaker 1: America's crime wave that don't ignore these hunches, these feelings.
- 7:57Speaker 1: They're not hunches. They're not people mock women's intuition. That's bs.
- 8:04Speaker 1: It's real, and it is born of thousands of years
- 8:09Speaker 1: of evolution of things that you see, that you hear,
- 8:13Speaker 1: that you smell something. You know. We have our senses,
- 8:19Speaker 1: but there's also a sense that's now being studied, and
- 8:24Speaker 1: it's the sense within you inside your body physically, a
- 8:30Speaker 1: sense within your body where your body's processing a quote, feeling,
- 8:37Speaker 1: or a hunch. So Karen Stark, before she sees this guy,
- 8:43Speaker 1: she gets a feeling and a chill literally went up
- 8:47Speaker 1: her spine. Nancy, It's so true, and I must tell
- 8:51Speaker 1: you very quickly about an incident that happened to me,
- 8:55Speaker 1: a very similar type of situation where I was doing
- 8:59Speaker 1: the very thing you're not supposed to do, carrying a
- 9:01Speaker 1: whole bunch of groceries, walking down a dark alley to
- 9:05Speaker 1: my apartment, and all of a sudden of my spying,
- 9:10Speaker 1: I got very frightened. I felt like something must be there.
- 9:14Speaker 1: I just had a sense of something, and I turned
- 9:17Speaker 1: around and saw a man following me, and I had
- 9:22Speaker 1: no idea if he was just somebody you strolling down there,
- 9:26Speaker 1: but I said, as she got closer to me, stay
- 9:29Speaker 1: away from me. I started screaming, just like Kelly's talking about,
- 9:34Speaker 1: and he had his hand in his pocket. He said,
- 9:37Speaker 1: I want your wallet, and I just kept screaming that
- 9:40Speaker 1: I lived in the building and people knew me and
- 9:42Speaker 1: they were going to hear me, and eventually ran away. Okay,
- 9:45Speaker 1: So that feeling askey Willcott trial lawyer and judge, what
- 9:50Speaker 1: about it. I've had so many crime victims tell me
- 9:53Speaker 1: I had this feeling before anything ever happened. Nancy. You
- 9:58Speaker 1: know I've said on your show so many times. Trust
- 10:00Speaker 1: your gut and the feeling, the women's intuition, the intuition
- 10:04Speaker 1: that men can have as well. Absolutely, I believe in that.
- 10:08Speaker 1: As a judge, I see cases in front of me
- 10:12Speaker 1: where survivors will say I knew something, I felt something.
- 10:17Speaker 1: You can feel evil. I think to Kelly Haren joining me. Kelly,
- 10:21Speaker 1: so you're out training for a marathon. You stop in
- 10:25Speaker 1: a ladies bathroom, a public bathroom, and I want you
- 10:28Speaker 1: to describe it. And you use the bathroom, you're washing
- 10:32Speaker 1: your hands, and a chill goes up your spine. Then
- 10:35Speaker 1: what happened? I turn around and it is my worst nightmare.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Standing right in front of me, right out of the movies.
- 10:42Speaker 1: Bad guy has a hat, has his hoodie pulled up.
- 10:48Speaker 1: And my first instinct was almost to say, oh, I'm sorry.
- 10:52Speaker 1: I think as women we just apologize for everything. But
- 10:56Speaker 1: then my brain kind of realized, oh, this isn't a woman,
- 10:59Speaker 1: this a man. This is a crazy man. And then
- 11:02Speaker 1: the smell hit me. He had been living in on
- 11:07Speaker 1: the beach, and I knew that I was in big trouble. Guys,
- 11:13Speaker 1: you've got to go to crime online dot Com and
- 11:15Speaker 1: see the mug shot of this guy. This guy want
- 11:20Speaker 1: to look at him and you know something is way wrong.
- 11:25Speaker 1: We're talking to Kelly Hearing, the female marathon runner who
- 11:30Speaker 1: innocently darts into a public bathroom and her worst dreams
- 11:34Speaker 1: come true. Kelly joined us in person now and I
- 11:38Speaker 1: want to be is weird and congraduating you. I'm very
- 11:43Speaker 1: happy you survived. Thank you. I know the track that
- 11:47Speaker 1: don't just track your steps, to track your heart rate.
- 11:50Speaker 1: What happened in addition to your steps. Yeah, it was
- 11:52Speaker 1: really interesting to look at the data. My resting heart
- 11:55Speaker 1: rate was around eighty six and I can see the
- 11:58Speaker 1: moment of the attack. It went up in to the
- 12:00Speaker 1: one forties, and then I had a huge try to
- 12:03Speaker 1: adrenaline surge at the end and it spiked up to
- 12:06Speaker 1: one sixteen. A shocking Instagram posts sending chills and inspiration
- 12:10Speaker 1: to women everywhere. It shows jogger Kelly Herron safe but
- 12:15Speaker 1: battered after a brutal attack while she was out for
- 12:18Speaker 1: a run. As he was holding me down. Reflected that
- 12:25Speaker 1: Kelly Herron was four miles into a ten mile run
- 12:28Speaker 1: in his popular Seattle park when she stopped to use
- 12:31Speaker 1: a public restroom. As I was drying my hands. I
- 12:37Speaker 1: became aware that something was wrong. That's when police say
- 12:41Speaker 1: a forty year old known sex offender assaulted her and
- 12:44Speaker 1: it was a fight on the bathroom floor. All I
- 12:48Speaker 1: could think was not today expletive in joining me right now?
- 12:54Speaker 1: That woman Kelly Herron, the marathon runner who fought off
- 12:59Speaker 1: a brutal attack. If you go to crime online dot com,
- 13:04Speaker 1: you will see the photos of Kelly's beaten and bruised face,
- 13:09Speaker 1: her fitness track or looking like if you look at
- 13:12Speaker 1: it on a chart, it looks like a kid just
- 13:15Speaker 1: scribbled all over the page as her pulse raced up
- 13:19Speaker 1: near two hundred fighting this guy off. Kelly Herron, tell
- 13:23Speaker 1: me about the public bathroom you darted into during your training.
- 13:27Speaker 1: It was a typical beach bathroom. It was concrete, um,
- 13:32Speaker 1: you know when concrete and steel, as a result of
- 13:35Speaker 1: which I suffered some major injuries to my body in
- 13:39Speaker 1: my lumbar spine. There's there's a reason boxing isn't done
- 13:42Speaker 1: on concrete. Was it the kind that has doors or
- 13:45Speaker 1: the kind that are doorless? Yeah, there's There were three stalls.
- 13:48Speaker 1: There were two small stalls and then a large like
- 13:51Speaker 1: handicap stall and that's where the perpetrator was hiding. Let
- 13:56Speaker 1: me ask you, when you would walk into the bathroom,
- 13:58Speaker 1: was there a door going in, because you know, sometimes
- 14:02Speaker 1: you just walk in and then you turn a corner
- 14:05Speaker 1: and then there's stalls doors. But to get in the bathroom,
- 14:09Speaker 1: there's not a door. There was a door on the outside,
- 14:11Speaker 1: and thankfully it had one of those latches, which ultimately
- 14:17Speaker 1: allowed me to lock him in after which was brilliant. Okay,
- 14:24Speaker 1: you dropped off talking about how you're washing your hands.
- 14:28Speaker 1: You feel a chill go up your spine, and then
- 14:31Speaker 1: you turn around and there is this guy who has
- 14:35Speaker 1: been hiding I guess perched up on that third commode
- 14:39Speaker 1: in the handicap stall, waiting for a woman to come in.
- 14:42Speaker 1: And then you walk in. What happened? Then you say, oh,
- 14:45Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Then what happens? He threw me to the ground.
- 14:49Speaker 1: And now, thankfully, Nancy, I had just taken a self
- 14:52Speaker 1: defense class only three weeks before this, and one of
- 14:55Speaker 1: the things that we learned was to project as though
- 15:00Speaker 1: you're not afraid, and that can sometimes be enough to
- 15:03Speaker 1: deter your attacker if you show them that you're going
- 15:06Speaker 1: to fight. So the first thing out of my mouth
- 15:08Speaker 1: to him was not today mother effort. I wanted to
- 15:15Speaker 1: pretend like I wasn't afraid, even though I was terrified,
- 15:18Speaker 1: and it just turned into an all out brawl. I
- 15:24Speaker 1: tried throwing elbows back at him, they weren't really landing.
- 15:27Speaker 1: The fight progressed underneath the walls of the bathroom stalls.
- 15:33Speaker 1: I finally, when I saw his face, was able to
- 15:37Speaker 1: claw at his eyes. And also in self defense, we
- 15:41Speaker 1: learned to hit with an open hand. You don't have
- 15:43Speaker 1: to throw the perfect punch. So I just started beating
- 15:46Speaker 1: him in the head with my one free arm like
- 15:49Speaker 1: my forearm, and I kicked the lock of the stall
- 15:56Speaker 1: in an attempt to kind of trap myself in one
- 15:58Speaker 1: of the little stalls. But he came in right after
- 16:01Speaker 1: me and got on top of me and started beating
- 16:04Speaker 1: me the case. And when I had kicked that stall door,
- 16:10Speaker 1: I keeped it so hard that I jammed it into
- 16:12Speaker 1: the frame so it wouldn't open or close. I'm on
- 16:15Speaker 1: my back, he's on top of me. I reached my
- 16:18Speaker 1: arms up behind me on the other side of that
- 16:20Speaker 1: stall door and pulled myself out from under him. Thought
- 16:24Speaker 1: I was going to lose consciousness, got one more surge
- 16:27Speaker 1: of adrenaline and just the survival instinct kicked in. I
- 16:33Speaker 1: jumped to my feet and was able to lunch for
- 16:36Speaker 1: that front door and get out. And he never got
- 16:40Speaker 1: out of that jam stall door. What was he trying
- 16:44Speaker 1: to rob you? Or rape you? Rape me? He was
- 16:46Speaker 1: trying to rape me. He had been pulling up my initially,
- 16:50Speaker 1: he had been trying to grab at my compression pants.
- 16:54Speaker 1: Thankfully they weren't going anywhere. Kelly Heron was four months
- 17:00Speaker 1: miles into a ten mile long run there in Seattle
- 17:05Speaker 1: when a man jumped her brutally in a public bathroom
- 17:10Speaker 1: along her trail. She fought back, and this experience, this
- 17:15Speaker 1: life changing experience, caused her to start not today, mother
- 17:22Speaker 1: effer intm F, and she created it. Why Kelly, why
- 17:28Speaker 1: did you create int MF? I thought it was really
- 17:32Speaker 1: important for women to know that this was my biggest
- 17:37Speaker 1: nightmare too, So I took that self defense class, and
- 17:39Speaker 1: I wanted to encourage other women to prepare themselves for
- 17:43Speaker 1: a worst case scenario. As I said on Doctor Oz,
- 17:46Speaker 1: your body cannot go where your mind has not been,
- 17:50Speaker 1: so we have to mentally put ourselves in those worst
- 17:53Speaker 1: case scenarios and think about how we would react in
- 17:55Speaker 1: what we would do. I wanted to encourage other women
- 17:58Speaker 1: to do that and to let them know that we
- 18:00Speaker 1: don't have to be polite. It is okay to fight back,
- 18:03Speaker 1: and we have to fight back. Kelly. When I look
- 18:06Speaker 1: at the photo of your injuries, what happened to you?
- 18:10Speaker 1: What did he do to you? He beat me badly
- 18:16Speaker 1: in the face. Now you should see his mouth shot,
- 18:19Speaker 1: his booking shot, because I did a pretty good job
- 18:21Speaker 1: on him too, I must say. And all that's thrashing
- 18:28Speaker 1: around on that cement floor. I was bruised, just black
- 18:32Speaker 1: and blue on the whole left side of my body.
- 18:35Speaker 1: I had a lumbar spine injury that took four months
- 18:38Speaker 1: of physical therapy to work through so I could walk
- 18:40Speaker 1: properly again. You know the photo and you can see
- 18:44Speaker 1: this at crime online dot com. She's right, he got
- 18:48Speaker 1: the bat into that stick. Three years. That is how
- 18:52Speaker 1: long this already conveyd sex offender was a fender was
- 18:56Speaker 1: sentenced too in an attempted race at Seattle's Golden Gardens Park.
- 19:04Speaker 1: Kelly here and with us right now, fought off or
- 19:08Speaker 1: attack her. But she is still feeling the reverberations and
- 19:13Speaker 1: the ripples of this attack, nightmares, waking up screaming. What
- 19:20Speaker 1: did you tell the judge during your victim's impact statement, Kelly,
- 19:25Speaker 1: I told him that the last time that I saw Steiner,
- 19:28Speaker 1: I locked him in a concrete room with a sink
- 19:30Speaker 1: and a toilet, and I was there to ask him
- 19:32Speaker 1: to do the same, and he did. He was given
- 19:34Speaker 1: the maximum sentence. I told him about the impact that
- 19:39Speaker 1: it had on me financially, mentally, emotionally. I had serious PTSD.
- 19:44Speaker 1: I woke up screaming every single night. It took a
- 19:48Speaker 1: lot of therapy, id e edmr MVR therapy, and it
- 19:56Speaker 1: took me a long time to feel safe again, especially
- 20:00Speaker 1: you know running Hi Nancy Grace here. Have you ever
- 20:11Speaker 1: Googled yourself, your neighbors, somebody at work? A crush? Fifty
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- 20:19Speaker 1: own online reputation. Forty six admit to using the Internet
- 20:23Speaker 1: to look up somebody from their past. But Google and
- 20:26Speaker 1: Facebook the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
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- 20:46Speaker 1: begin searching in seconds for sensitive data like criminal traffic
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- 20:54Speaker 1: and around the people you care for your children, consider
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- 21:03Speaker 1: Get a Truthfinder dot com forward slash Nancy right away
- 21:07Speaker 1: to start searching Truthfinder dot com forward slash Nancy Truthfinder
- 21:13Speaker 1: dot com forward slash Nancy. Find the truth crime stories
- 21:23Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace. It took me a long time to
- 21:28Speaker 1: feel safe again, especially you know running. Um. I'm I'm
- 21:35Speaker 1: strong willed and stubborn. So I continued my training and
- 21:37Speaker 1: went on to run that marathon. Um. But even now
- 21:41Speaker 1: it's it's taken away. UM. Kind of that that sense
- 21:45Speaker 1: of freedom that people are looking for when they when
- 21:48Speaker 1: they run. UM. But it was the most healing thing
- 21:52Speaker 1: to give that the him impact statements, to just be
- 21:55Speaker 1: able to say everything that had been um, every way
- 22:00Speaker 1: that my life had bridden impacted. Kelly Herron, who is
- 22:06Speaker 1: with me right now, a marathon runner who was attacked
- 22:11Speaker 1: in a bathroom, a lady's bathroom as she is practicing
- 22:16Speaker 1: as she is training for a marathon. Kelly, I love
- 22:20Speaker 1: what you told the judge. I love it you say,
- 22:24Speaker 1: and I'm quoting because I've read your victim impact statement.
- 22:27Speaker 1: This moment is burning into my mind and I have
- 22:30Speaker 1: flashbacks on a daily basis. I fought for my life
- 22:34Speaker 1: as I was slammed into the ground, repeatedly punched in
- 22:37Speaker 1: the face, and saw my life flashed before my eyes.
- 22:42Speaker 1: Our encounter ended with me locking him, mister Steiner, in
- 22:48Speaker 1: that concrete room with a sinking a toilet, and today
- 22:52Speaker 1: I am here to ask you to do the same thing.
- 22:58Speaker 1: That's what she told the judge. Of course, he stein
- 23:01Speaker 1: are the perp breaks down crying and sobbing and in
- 23:07Speaker 1: front of the judge. That certainly does not convince me
- 23:11Speaker 1: that he was sorry. This was not his first time
- 23:13Speaker 1: at the rodeo. He is a registered sex offender, so
- 23:18Speaker 1: if he's sorry, he's sure isn't repenting very much. To Karen,
- 23:22Speaker 1: start explain why do people have flashbacks? But when an
- 23:26Speaker 1: incident is that dramatic, Nancy, it gets stuck in your
- 23:29Speaker 1: brain and that's just how we work biologically. Physically, you
- 23:35Speaker 1: can't do anything about that. It keeps reoccurring. So any
- 23:39Speaker 1: time that you're in a situation that remotely reminds you
- 23:43Speaker 1: of that incident, it keeps reoccurring. You have nightmares, you're
- 23:48Speaker 1: very afraid to be in the world, and what Kelly mentioned,
- 23:53Speaker 1: m DR is a terrific therapy for that. EMDR is
- 23:57Speaker 1: eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. What it is exactly is
- 24:06Speaker 1: a type of therapy. It's fairly new, it's nontraditional, it's psychotherapy,
- 24:12Speaker 1: and it's growing in popularity in treating PTSD post traumatic
- 24:18Speaker 1: stress disorder. Research is going on, but a session can
- 24:24Speaker 1: last up to ninety minutes, and your therapist moves their
- 24:29Speaker 1: finger back and forth in front of your face. You
- 24:32Speaker 1: follow the hand emotions with your eyes and at the
- 24:35Speaker 1: same time the therapist as you recall the disturbing event,
- 24:40Speaker 1: and it will include the emotions and the body sensations
- 24:46Speaker 1: that went along with that event, and gradually you shift
- 24:51Speaker 1: your thoughts to more pleasant ones. And by doing this
- 24:54Speaker 1: it helps train you automatically to get off the bad,
- 24:59Speaker 1: distru ring thoughts into something pleasant. I recall distinctly Ashley
- 25:04Speaker 1: Wilcot after Keith's murder, which nearly put me under I
- 25:10Speaker 1: would get intense every time I would start thinking about
- 25:14Speaker 1: Keith's murderer. Took me about a year to do this.
- 25:17Speaker 1: I try to force myself not to think about it
- 25:20Speaker 1: because I would suddenly get horrible headaches. When I would
- 25:25Speaker 1: think about Keith's murder, I would immediately start a horrible headache,
- 25:31Speaker 1: and that would keep me. I guess, I don't know
- 25:35Speaker 1: how it happened, but it would keep me from thinking
- 25:37Speaker 1: about it, Ashley, And so yeah, absolutely, Nancy, And let
- 25:41Speaker 1: me just say this, therapy, although new, is also common
- 25:44Speaker 1: now to be used with children who are victims of
- 25:47Speaker 1: severe trauma, and it's proven very effective. But I think
- 25:50Speaker 1: the lesson in all of this that you just made
- 25:53Speaker 1: clear with that example is even if you survive and
- 25:58Speaker 1: you're not raped or you're not killed, even if you
- 26:03Speaker 1: are fortunate enough to fight back like Kelly dead with vengeance,
- 26:08Speaker 1: there are still effects. You still have been traumatized and
- 26:13Speaker 1: injured in ways that most cannot even imagine. A woman
- 26:19Speaker 1: says she was able to fight off a man who
- 26:22Speaker 1: was trying to grape her just weeks after she took
- 26:26Speaker 1: a class in felt offence. Thirty six year old Kelly
- 26:30Speaker 1: Herron says she was out running in Golden Gardens Park
- 26:34Speaker 1: in Washington State when she stopped to use a restroom.
- 26:38Speaker 1: She says that's where a masked man attacked her, throwing
- 26:42Speaker 1: her to the ground and trying to take her pants off.
- 26:45Speaker 1: And she says that's when she went into attack mode,
- 26:49Speaker 1: hitting him in the face with a hard part of
- 26:51Speaker 1: her hand, clawing at him, and screaming at the top
- 26:55Speaker 1: of her lungs, all things she learned during a two
- 26:58Speaker 1: hour self defense class she took just a few weeks
- 27:02Speaker 1: prior to this incident. She says she was able to
- 27:05Speaker 1: get away and passers by helped her block him in
- 27:08Speaker 1: the bathroom until police could come. They arrested Gary Steiner,
- 27:13Speaker 1: a registered sex offender. He's been charged with attempted second
- 27:17Speaker 1: degree raith and second degree assault with sexual motivation. While
- 27:22Speaker 1: the bruises and scrapes Herron sustained in the attack will heal,
- 27:26Speaker 1: she says she feels empowered knowing she won this fight.
- 27:30Speaker 1: For Inside Edition dot Com, I'm Matt Ramasbano. You were
- 27:35Speaker 1: hearing our friends an Inside Edition talking about the ordeal
- 27:38Speaker 1: that Kelly Herron lived through, and right now Kelly is
- 27:43Speaker 1: with us. Kelly, explain to me how you use those
- 27:47Speaker 1: defense techniques you learned just three weeks before to fight
- 27:51Speaker 1: this registered sex offender off There was nobody there to
- 27:54Speaker 1: help you in the chilling words. No one could hear
- 27:58Speaker 1: you scream. It was all all you. Yes. The key
- 28:03Speaker 1: takeaways from that class where one we've already talked about today,
- 28:06Speaker 1: which is trusting your instincts. When I got that chill
- 28:09Speaker 1: up my spine, I knew something was wrong. Every idea
- 28:13Speaker 1: I had during that fight I went with when I
- 28:17Speaker 1: locked that door, when I hit him in the head.
- 28:20Speaker 1: Number two, be loud and fight hard. To show your
- 28:23Speaker 1: assailant that you're not afraid even though you're terrified. Pretend
- 28:26Speaker 1: like you're not. It's just as good as not being afraid.
- 28:30Speaker 1: So that's why I was screaming and cussing at him
- 28:32Speaker 1: and telling him that I was going to kill him.
- 28:35Speaker 1: I wanted him to know that I was not going
- 28:38Speaker 1: down easily, and then hitting with an open hand. Don't
- 28:42Speaker 1: worry about having great self defense moves or throwing the
- 28:46Speaker 1: perfect punch. You can use just hard bones on soft,
- 28:50Speaker 1: fleshy places. So anything that's hard on your body, hit
- 28:54Speaker 1: them somewhere soft on their body, hit them in the face,
- 28:57Speaker 1: and the neck, in the head, in the groin, um,
- 29:02Speaker 1: and just fight like a savage, Fight like a savage.
- 29:06Speaker 1: I'm looking at your awesome news site and your podcast
- 29:11Speaker 1: tell me about that. It's called not today, Not today
- 29:14Speaker 1: is um, It's it's still in in process. Really, I
- 29:19Speaker 1: you know, I've I've received so many so much praise
- 29:24Speaker 1: for what I did, and I have met so many
- 29:27Speaker 1: women who I think are just as bad ass. More
- 29:30Speaker 1: about us. I think we all have that in us,
- 29:33Speaker 1: and I really want to surface other stories of women
- 29:36Speaker 1: who who flat back. And you know, it's it's not
- 29:41Speaker 1: there is no winning or not winning, but it's just
- 29:44Speaker 1: about being where, being prepared, giving it all of your effort,
- 29:49Speaker 1: and then after going through something traumatic, what that looks
- 29:53Speaker 1: like and what we can go on to do. Some
- 29:55Speaker 1: people bounce back. I believe that people can also bounce
- 29:59Speaker 1: forward and that their lives and I think in my case,
- 30:04Speaker 1: you know, when you go through something this traumatic, you
- 30:06Speaker 1: can go on to do incredible things because you realize
- 30:09Speaker 1: what you're made of and we have so much more
- 30:12Speaker 1: potential than we even though we are so much stronger
- 30:16Speaker 1: than we know. And sometimes it does see that near
- 30:19Speaker 1: death experience to see what we're made of Okay, I'm
- 30:23Speaker 1: not doing a plug, but I'm totally getting your T
- 30:26Speaker 1: shirt not today, mother effort and on it. It's so awesome.
- 30:30Speaker 1: It says make a statement without saying a word. The
- 30:33Speaker 1: GPS lines from Kelly's attacks, survival and her battle cry
- 30:38Speaker 1: heard around the world, and it has the lines like
- 30:43Speaker 1: I was telling about I saw on Doctor Oz. It's
- 30:45Speaker 1: so incredible. I'm totally getting that T shirt. Although my
- 30:50Speaker 1: twins are not allowed to say the effort of of course,
- 30:53Speaker 1: Karen Stark is you never so long? They would say, mom,
- 30:57Speaker 1: so and so said the F word. I'm like, really
- 31:00Speaker 1: what they say? They said, Johnny's fat fat was the
- 31:04Speaker 1: F word, okay in our home, and sadly they learned
- 31:07Speaker 1: the hard way what the real F word was. To
- 31:10Speaker 1: Karen Stark, New York psychologists joining us, you have actually
- 31:14Speaker 1: used that type of therapy on September eleven victims, right,
- 31:19Speaker 1: I have. Yes. I volunteered to do it and had
- 31:23Speaker 1: a lot of people whom I worked with and Nancy.
- 31:26Speaker 1: It's an incredible how well it works. It really does
- 31:31Speaker 1: make a difference, and you learn to realize that right now,
- 31:36Speaker 1: at this moment, you're safe and to let go of
- 31:39Speaker 1: any kind of a traumatic experience you went through. Francine
- 31:43Speaker 1: Shapiro is the person who started it. When she was
- 31:46Speaker 1: working with veterans and they would come back. She didn't
- 31:50Speaker 1: know what to do with them, and she just had
- 31:52Speaker 1: this idea. And it's not just waving hands. You can
- 31:56Speaker 1: also flash lights, do taps, any kind of moved like
- 32:00Speaker 1: that that puts a person into a place where they
- 32:04Speaker 1: can just let go. Kelly heron how long did it
- 32:08Speaker 1: take for your body to heal and all those bruises
- 32:12Speaker 1: to go away that I'm looking at right now, the
- 32:15Speaker 1: bruisers lasted. Oh, she's probably close to a month. It
- 32:19Speaker 1: took four months of physical therapy for me to repair
- 32:23Speaker 1: the impact to my lumbar sparing and it still does
- 32:26Speaker 1: flare up so and therapy. I was in therapy for
- 32:31Speaker 1: four months. It's all four or five months now with
- 32:33Speaker 1: an incredible survival story. Somebody are sharing a jobber using you.
- 32:37Speaker 1: If she'd just learned himself to the men's class to
- 32:39Speaker 1: save her own life when she was attacked on a run.
- 32:42Speaker 1: He was He's Kina Witworth spoke with her and joins
- 32:45Speaker 1: us now from Seattle with details. Good morning, gain Larry,
- 32:50Speaker 1: Good morning Her story has a lot of women wondering
- 32:52Speaker 1: what they would do if they found themselves in a
- 32:55Speaker 1: similar situation, and that's what she wants to encourage women
- 32:59Speaker 1: to take roll so you can defend yourself if you
- 33:02Speaker 1: have to. This morning, a shocking Instagram post sending chills
- 33:07Speaker 1: and inspiration to women everywhere. It shows thirty six year
- 33:11Speaker 1: old jogger Kelly Herron safe but battered after a brutal
- 33:15Speaker 1: attack while she was out for a run. As he
- 33:18Speaker 1: was holding me down. See that. Kelly Herron was four
- 33:26Speaker 1: miles into a ten mile run in his popular Seattle
- 33:29Speaker 1: park when she stopped to use a public restaurant. As
- 33:32Speaker 1: I was drying my hands, I became aware that something
- 33:39Speaker 1: was wrong. That's why police say this man, Gary Steiner,
- 33:43Speaker 1: a forty year old known sex offender, assaulted her and
- 33:46Speaker 1: it was a fight on the bathroom floor. All I
- 33:50Speaker 1: could think was not today, Not today. M f with me.
- 33:57Speaker 1: Kelly Herron my new hero, Care and Starting York psychologist
- 34:01Speaker 1: and Ashley Wilcot, judge and lawyer advocate. You can find
- 34:06Speaker 1: Ashley Wilcot dot com. Ashley. When you hear this story,
- 34:12Speaker 1: it really speaks to women all over the world. It
- 34:17Speaker 1: does Nancy. And here's what I think one of the
- 34:20Speaker 1: most important parts that Kelly is making by advocating, and
- 34:23Speaker 1: that is be prepared, be aware unfortunately the world we
- 34:29Speaker 1: live in. Be prepared so that if this horrific nightmare
- 34:34Speaker 1: happens to you, you know what to do. Here's my
- 34:37Speaker 1: other question to you, Ashley. Why was this registered sex
- 34:41Speaker 1: offender out walking free to start with? What was he
- 34:45Speaker 1: doing out so he could pray on? Kelly? Well, you
- 34:48Speaker 1: know that, unfortunately is something that I see sentences that
- 34:51Speaker 1: aren't long enough for sex offenders and they are back
- 34:54Speaker 1: out and so there are laws to protect in terms
- 34:57Speaker 1: of they can't live too close to a school, right,
- 35:00Speaker 1: they can't be around kids, but that does not prevent
- 35:03Speaker 1: at all or protect the public from them being out
- 35:08Speaker 1: from behind bars. He got three years behind bars, Kelly here,
- 35:12Speaker 1: and that really doesn't seem like enough for an already
- 35:15Speaker 1: convicted sex offender who tried to rape somebody else in
- 35:19Speaker 1: a public bathroom. That doesn't seem like enough to me. Kelly.
- 35:23Speaker 1: I totally agree, and sadly that was the maximum. That
- 35:28Speaker 1: was the maximum sentence. It was an indeterminate sentence, which
- 35:31Speaker 1: meant I was going to have to go back every
- 35:33Speaker 1: three years and plead to the board to extend his
- 35:37Speaker 1: sentence until basically he died. We were talking about Gary Steiner,
- 35:44Speaker 1: the convicted sex offender who was walking free and attacked
- 35:50Speaker 1: Kelly Heron as she went into a public bathroom. You know,
- 35:55Speaker 1: Karen Starr, It's a phenomena that I write about in
- 35:58Speaker 1: my new book, Don't Be a Victim, finding back against
- 36:01Speaker 1: America's crime wave. The number of attacks that occur in
- 36:05Speaker 1: public bathrooms. That's part of why you had that dream, Nancy,
- 36:09Speaker 1: and that why it's reoccurring, because you have to be
- 36:12Speaker 1: really careful. But the thing I think that women should
- 36:15Speaker 1: take away from this more than anything is to trust
- 36:19Speaker 1: your instincts. If you think it's not safe, if you
- 36:23Speaker 1: have a feeling, if you have a hunch, to really
- 36:26Speaker 1: pay attention and understand that if you scream out and
- 36:31Speaker 1: defend yourself, if you're not polite, if you take that risk,
- 36:35Speaker 1: you can save yourself. To Kelly Heron with me right
- 36:39Speaker 1: now now, an icon and founder of a new podcast
- 36:44Speaker 1: and website, Not Today, m F. Kelly, what's your message today,
- 36:49Speaker 1: not only to women all around, but to girls. It's
- 36:53Speaker 1: scary to think about the worst case scenario, but we
- 36:56Speaker 1: cannot turn a blind eye to it. We have to
- 36:59Speaker 1: keep our head on a swivel. We have to know
- 37:01Speaker 1: what we would do in a worst case situation. And
- 37:04Speaker 1: if you find yourself in that situation, never give up.
- 37:08Speaker 1: You have to just keep going and believing yourself and
- 37:12Speaker 1: just give it everything you have and just do not
- 37:15Speaker 1: stop fighting. Get out of that situation no matter what
- 37:18Speaker 1: it cakes. I guess you have to be ready to fight. Listen,
- 37:25Speaker 1: this happened to me in the middle of the day.
- 37:27Speaker 1: It was a Sunday afternoon. So you always need to
- 37:30Speaker 1: be aware of your surroundings and be prepared, but not
- 37:35Speaker 1: live in fear. Yeah, so I didn't think about you
- 37:41Speaker 1: know what I was going to say. When I said that,
- 37:44Speaker 1: It just came out of me and I meant it,
- 37:46Speaker 1: and through those words, I was able to manifest that curse.
- 37:50Speaker 1: You can't put a timeline on recovery. I was like,
- 37:54Speaker 1: I'm going to go outside, I'm going to take care
- 37:57Speaker 1: of myself, did all those things, and I still wasn't
- 37:59Speaker 1: feeling it. It's not supposed to feel like homework or
- 38:02Speaker 1: like chores, you know, it's supposed to be freeing. I
- 38:06Speaker 1: don't think that fear should hold anyone back from doing
- 38:09Speaker 1: the things that they love and running where and when
- 38:12Speaker 1: and with whom they want. The reason that people are
- 38:14Speaker 1: drawn to my story is because they want to believe
- 38:19Speaker 1: if they were in a situation that I was in,
- 38:21Speaker 1: that they could have survived. And I believe that they
- 38:24Speaker 1: could have as well. Killy here and thank you so
- 38:27Speaker 1: much for being with us, along with Karen Starr and
- 38:29Speaker 1: Ashley Willcott Nancy Grace Crime Stories, signing off Goodbye friend.