Holly Dunn (19:45)
Before I jump back into what happened that night at the railroad tracks, I'm going to pause for a minute and give you the chance to skip ahead if you need to. To be frank, this next part is the part the content warning warns you about. But it is important, so walk through it with me if you can. Back to the railroad tracks on August 28, 1997, just blocks from the Phi Kappa Psi party, the stranger in front of Holly and Chris ordered them to their knees. They stood frozen. Then he was yanking Chris down by the arm. Chris was larger. He could have fought back, but he was a gentle kid. He wasn't going to escalate the situation. You were never supposed to escalate a mugging. That was how it got dangerous. Chris knelt on the rocky tracks, letting the man pull off his Backpack. Holly did what he did, kneeling beside him. But that's when Holly noticed something. Something in this stranger's hand. It was sharp. Maybe an ice pick or a screwdriver. Chris and Holly both seemed to realize the intensity of the situation. At the same time, they started talking fast. They told the man to take their ATM cards, credit cards, Chris's car keys, whatever he wanted. But once again, he didn't really seem to be listening. Instead, without taking anything out of the backpack, he walked behind Chris. He tied the straps around Chris arms, binding them in a web of nylon. Then he walked towards Holly. He reached toward her waist. Chris started pleading with him, begging him not to hurt her. The man snarled back, commanding him to shut up, and stopped looking at him. Then he grabbed Holly's belt, unbuckled it, pulled it out of her belt loops, and used it to tie up her arms. Holly and Chris kept talking, kept pleading, but by now they knew this was not a mugging. The man dragged Chris across rocks and broken glass into the ditch beside the tracks. Holly scrambled after them on her knees. She didn't want to be dragged. Next. He told them he had a gun and his friend was nearby. He left briefly. They heard the sound of ripping cloth. Holly was trying to get the leather binding off her arms. She whispered with Chris. Then the man was back, tying their legs with new bindings, gagging them. Holly stuck out her tongue as he did so, so it would be loose enough to fall off. It did. After that, she finally got her arms out of the belt. She kept them behind her back so he wouldn't see. The man left again and again. He seemed jittery, pacing. He only walked away for a few moments at a time. But Holly used the moments he turned his back. She moved closer to Chris. She pulled off his gag. She tried to untie his arms from their effective bindings. He urged her to run. She said she wouldn't and put her arms behind her back again. As the man turned towards them once more, he didn't seem to notice them getting closer or Holly's loose arms. Every time he approached them, he just talked. He demanded that they stop looking at him. Kept saying he had a gun, repeated that his friend was waiting nearby, and then paced. He couldn't keep still, like he was trying to decide what was next. Chris begged him not to hurt Holly, told him, do whatever you want to me, but please just let her go. Holly thought to herself, I'm going to remember your face, your scars, your tattoos. And I'm not going to forget, because if I Live through this. I will get you. The man walked away. Chris said to Holly, stay calm. Everything is going to be okay. She'd think about those words many, many times. Because when the man came back next, he moved more slowly. He was carrying something large and heavy, clearly struggling under the weight. He held it over Chris, who was lying face down in the underbrush. And then he dropped it. The sound it made, it seemed to never stop in Holly's mind. The man dropped that massive object again and again and again. Later, she learned he actually only dropped it once. That was all it took. The repetition was in her own mind, repeating that horrible sound. Chris was gone. Holly started to pray, like she might die. Instead of killing her, the man grabbed her and untied her legs, not seeming to care that her arms were already untied. He had the weapons. After all that sharp pick, and as far as Holly knew, a gun. He had the power. He raped her. She tried to dissociate. Still, she dug her hands into the dirt, ripping off her fingernails. She would leave as much DNA as she could for the police. She knew even then that whatever happened to her, he couldn't get away with it. For now, that meant doing what she could to make him see her as human. So that maybe he'd let her live. Marvel with me for a second at Holly's presence of mind. Amazing, really. She told him her name was Megan. She asked his name. He said, james Whitford. Whitby. Something like that. She said, please don't kill me. He said he wouldn't. When he finished, she asked if he would please pull up her pants. He did. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he wouldn't kill her. She told him she'd never breathe a word of this to anyone if he let her go. He reached down to tug at her earring. It wouldn't come out. She told him how to undo the latch. He took a ring from her hand, too. Not the daisy ring that realized later, was gone forever somewhere in the rocks and dirt of those train tracks. Then he covered her and Chris with leaves and twigs. And then she couldn't remember anything else. Holly had no idea how long had passed. When she regained consciousness, she was covered in blood. Everything felt like it was coming apart. She would eventually learn she had a broken eye socket and a cracked jaw and skull. Her body was black and blue. He thought he'd killed her somehow. She stumbled down the tracks toward a house, knocked on the door. The college kid inside laid her on his couch, called an ambulance, thought she wouldn't make it. Tried to keep her awake until the paramedics arrived, so she might survive. She kept repeating, my friend is out there. If she was alive, maybe Chris was alive, too. At the hospital, a nurse asked her if she wanted to take emergency contraception. Yes, she did. They did the rape kit, which is a term you hear a lot, but maybe can't visualize exactly what it means. It's a medical exam, but it's focused on collecting DNA that might identify a sexual attacker. So it involves swabs at the mouth, vagina, under the fingernails, anywhere there might be DNA evidence. It also involves collecting garments that might have that kind of evidence, too, like underwear. And sometimes the medical professionals take photos to document injuries. It'll look a little different, depending on what the assault looked like, but it's never fun. Holly knew she needed to get through it because this man's DNA was all over her, and a rape kit would be the first step in identifying him and bringing him to justice. She was still thinking about that promise she'd made to herself out on the tracks. He wouldn't get away with this. As the hospital staff wrapped up the exam, they assured Holly they'd gotten what they needed. They also told her that she had no fatal injuries. There was a lot of blood and a lot of pain. The man had beaten her unconscious after he raped her, and her body showed the marks, but she would live. Again, the presence of mind she had. I mean, I follow true crime, and I know some of the things you're supposed to do, but knowing you should do it and actually doing it in the moment are two different things, and she did both. A quick reminder that I get the chance to talk to Holly at the end of this episode, so stay tuned for that. But first, back to 1997. The months of physical recovery were obviously extremely difficult. There were so many physical marks of what had happened. Holly's mouth was wired shut for weeks while her jaw healed. Thank God she had incredible support from her family. Her sister and parents flew out to Lexington the second they got the news. Her sorority sisters were at the hospital every day, too. At one point, 16 of them packed into the little space, crowded around the bed, and told Holly the kind of light, fun stories of college life that made her feel like her old self for a little while, at least. And the detective on the case, Detective Craig Sorrell, was as gentle as he could be when it came to taking her statement. He told her they could stop at any time, that he could walk down the hall, come back later, give her whatever space she needed. But Holly wanted to answer Sorrell's questions. She wanted to give him every detail she possibly could, even if that meant reliving that unfathomably horrible night. More than anything, she wanted justice. The thing is, as the weeks dragged into months, despite the dedication of the Lexington Police Department and especially Detective Sorrell, there was no progress on finding the attacker. Not before he killed again.
