← This Is Actually Happening
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- [00:00]
Whit Misseldine
Wonder plus subscribers can listen to exclusive episodes of this Is Actually Happening by joining Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi listeners, A reminder that you can now pre order the special this Is Actually Happening book that we've mentioned over the last few weeks. This is a beautifully illustrated book of 10 of the most beloved episodes of the show and includes an introduction by me. This is a limited run of the book and each copy will be hand numbered and personally signed. If you pre order now, we can guarantee shipping by December 8th to arrive in time for the holidays. To to order, please find the link in our Show Notes and you can also find it in our Instagram biotullyhappening. So if you're looking for something meaningful to give this year, one that also helps support the show, this book makes a wonderful gift for a fan or for yourself. And now, onto today's episode. What if you woke up with someone's hands around your neck?
- [01:15]
Amy Benedict
That was something that happened to somebody else. That's something you read about in People magazine. It's not supposed to happen to me. It kind of dawned on me at that point that I thought, oh my God, I'm never going to be the same again.
- [01:35]
Whit Misseldine
From wondery, I'm wit misseldine. You're listening to this is actually happening. Episode 386. What if you woke up with someone's hands around your neck?
- [01:59]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
Hey pod listeners, have we got a fun new game for you.
- [02:02]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
It's called Quick, Quick Quick. A game that has outrageous questions that will keep you playing and laughing for hours. Like this. Quick, Quick, Quick. List three gifts you'd never give a cowboy.
- [02:12]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
And you can say anything.
- [02:13]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
There's no wrong answers, so go get it. Quick, Quick, Quickly. Available now at Target and Amazon.
- [02:19]
Steve Nash
Hey basketball fans, Steve Nash here. Ready to elevate your basketball IQ? I'm teaming up with LeBron James to bring you the latest season of Mind the Game. And we're about to take you deeper into basketball than you've ever gone before. Watch Mind the game now on YouTube prime video or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:53]
Amy Benedict
My dad grew up in Columbia, Missouri, which is a college town in the middle of Missouri. He went to Northwestern and he had a great speaking voice. He would do wnur, which was the radio station there, and when he came back home to Columbia afterwards, he had a radio show. I think he'd always thought that his prospects would be better. I don't know that he really wanted to raise a family in mid Missouri. I think he wanted to be something greater, but I don't think he really had the confidence to do that. He always wanted to play it safe. My mom came from a family. They were very wealthy until my mom was in her teens and her dad lost his company in Springfield, Missouri. Burned to the ground. After that, he started drinking, which was hard. He wasn't a mean drunk or violent drunk at all. Just, my mom used to say, like a sad drunk. This was really hard on my mom and my grandmother and my mom's little sister. And her dad died when she was 18, right before she started college. And that was really, really hard for her. Both my parents were very intelligent. My dad was a great writer, and my mom. Their relationship really blossomed while he was away at Northwestern. He wrote her tons of letters. Very poetic, very beautiful. They really fell in love, and it was the first person my mom ever fell in love with. They married, and then two years later, my sister Nancy was born. Two and a half years after that, I was born. I was a very quiet kid. My mom talked a lot like. My mom is well known for her conversation. And my sister was also very chatty. There wasn't really much room for me to have to talk. They did it for me. I also had a habit of falling a lot. We grew up in this beautiful neighborhood with this huge old house, and it had this great staircase. My mom was upstairs talking on the phone, which she did a lot. My dad and my sister were out in the backyard, and my mom was seven months pregnant with my brother. I fell down the stairs from one landing to another and I cracked my head open. They rushed me to the hospital, and I had six stitches. Then after that, I did it five more times. I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 places on my forehead that I cracked my head open. And then once I fell out of bed and cracked my head open, I fell on the floor of JCPenney. I fell on the front yard of a neighbor driveway of another. I was pretty klutzy, but I think there was a part of me that was just like. And let's see what happens. Because I didn't know how to get attention any other way. I had, for all intents and purposes, a pretty idyllic childhood. But I was quiet and didn't quite know how to express myself. I think I was vying for my place, my important place with my siblings in my family, you know, what am I? You know, what am I going to be? What is my strength? I'm just this little quiet person. Am I supposed to matter? Should I matter? I think too, I didn't know how to communicate that I wanted attention. I do often wonder if this was my way of getting attention. I just wanted to be seen, to be understood. That's always been a big issue for me, is I'm feeling something. I can't really explain it very well, but I want you to understand where I'm coming from. If I'm hurt or I'm sad, I just want to be understood. Being understood was really important to me. When I was in second grade, I did this play for our English class. And I was playing this Tim Conway as old man kind of character from the old Carolina shows. I found that I could imitate him really well. But people often say, in my family we have a knack for imitation from mimicry. And I was on stage and I was getting a response, I was getting laughter. I could get on the stage, I could play somebody else. This entire life that was different from my own, and I was seen, or I was understood, or I was affecting people. The fact that I could affect them, make them happy, make them laugh, when I couldn't do that just by myself, that was a transformative experience for me and I wanted to keep doing it. I was so quiet, like I never really talked at school that much. And all of a sudden I was playing this outrageous character on the stage. It was really like putting on a mask and being somebody else and letting this creative part of me that had always been there come through. I was always nervous before I'd get on stage. But once I'm out there, I can say goodbye to myself before I embody that character. And I do feel so strong. After I was in this play and I had this amazing experience, I realized I didn't have to act to make friends, but I could push myself to just be normal. Because I never felt really normal. I was very gullible and very shy, you know adhd. So I was maybe about two beats behind everyone else. So I was easy to bully. I was picked on quite a bit. I was much younger looking than everybody else. I was a huge tomboy. I felt like an outcast. I did start to form groups of friends, but I was often the one who was picked on and laughed at. I remember talking to a friend much later, asking why people like to pick on me. And she said, because the reaction is so fun, because I have this very expressive face. My Face exaggerates whatever feeling is going on inside my reaction. I was so sensitive, and the reaction was so satisfying. But I remember the line was crossed when I was in sixth grade, my mom was having back surgery. My mom had major back problems after my brother was born. And I think I told some people about it. But the next day at school, I found these little notes on my desk. And they all said things like, your mom's going to die. You know, your mom's never going to wake up. I've always asked myself, why. You know. You know, getting a reaction is one thing, but to really wound someone like that is really beyond the pale. It was in 1976. In seventh grade, I transferred to this public West Junior High School. It was the best year of my life. I was the new girl. Girls wanted to be friends with me. Their boys were noticing me. It was just. Everything changed during all this time. I was still very involved in theater. I had a great theater teacher. My passion for theater grew and grew. We would do these speech tournaments around Missouri, and I was really good at it and, you know, got some awards. And so before my senior year, I really wanted to go to Northwestern like my dad, which had a great theater department. I got a very nice scholarship. I was accepted. So my freshman year, I joined a sorority, too. But I felt kind of like an imposter. I often felt like I was one of the three freak theater majors. You know, I split myself up a lot. I'd have, I want to be accepted by this group, but I also want to be accepted by that group. But I was cast in a graduate play, and when I did that play, it got me some recognition. So the rest of, you know, Northwestern was great. I, you know, did a lot of plays and made some really good friends that I. That are still in my life. Summer before my junior year, I spent the summer there in Evanston and then just went home for a couple of weeks. I remember it was my 20th birthday, and my dad sent me a letter. He said, you know, looking forward to you coming home. I've got something to share with you. And, you know, now that you're an adult and, oh, wow, my dad sees me as adult, you know, wants to share something in confidence. And I felt, you know, really excited to hear what he had to say. I went home and I remember we. He was barbecuing out on the back deck, and the rest of my family was inside. I said, hey, you know, what is it you wanted to tell me? And he told me that he was in love with Another woman. My jaw hit the deck. I mean, my family, we were always the perfect little family. We were always together. My parents were so close, and we were always going to be together. My parents were always going to be together. I think my dad wanted to tell someone. I felt so betrayed because I feel like I was easy to dump on because a week later, I would be in Chicago, I would be at school. I think he wanted to tell my mom, but he was too afraid. And I think it's the first time I saw my dad as kind of a coward. And I said, what about Mom? And he said, oh, I still love your mom, too. You know, I think he was definitely going through a midlife crisis. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. I think he was wrestling with, how am I going to make both happen all the time? I could feel my eyes well up with tears, and I didn't know what to do. He said, don't tell anyone just yet. So I had to go in and sit down and have dinner with my family with this information and act normal. I think this was the first time I noticed this narcissistic tendency of my dad's. He wasn't thinking about my mom. He wasn't thinking about the repercussions. And she was traumatized. I mean, her whole world was crashing down around her. And I think it was even hard for her at that time to see what it was doing to me, you know, Then I felt like a part of my mom kind of leave me at that point. My rock was no longer there because part of her had been shattered. I do want to say, you know, my mom is the rock and still, like, she's still living, and she's amazing. You know, she's one of my heroes. I went back to school kind of in a daze, and I just felt, well, I'm kind of on my own now. And then an agent, a woman who had seen me in a show, worked for a talent agency in downtown Chicago. So she asked me come down and talk to them and work with them. So I signed with them, and I started going on auditions, and I made a national commercial. I got my union SAG and my aftercard, and I started making money and I paid for the rest of my school. My dad, because of this affair, had lost his job, and parents were struggling. And, you know, my dad had moved out, and it was chaos. So I wanted them to know, I got this. I can take care of this. I would be in plays. I was auditioning downtown. I was working as a waitress. And I was making straight A's. Somehow I did it. After graduation, my friends and I decided to move to Los Angeles. I moved in with three other people. I started auditioning right away because I, you know, I already had an agent. My first job was Family Ties. I did a bunch of after school specials. I was successful, you know, and I tried to just focus, focus, focus on my career. Almost, almost too much. I was so lucky. I had great opportunities, but I was still struggling with my sense of identity. Like when people say, just be yourself, I'm like, what does that mean? I was still struggling with the whole confidence thing. Christmas of 86, I went home and a friend of mine, he introduced me to this friend of his who was going to the University of Missouri with him. This guy, I guess had dropped out like a couple of credits shy of graduating and moved to Los Angeles. And he was from Springfield, Missouri, and his name was Brad Pitt. He didn't have an agent yet, but he was super good looking. And just the first thing I thought was, oh, this guy's gonna have no problem. It was kind of fun to have a Missouri kid around because it was a familiarity. And we became really good friends. His living situation was changing and he needed an apartment. So he came in. I mean, I did not realize the trajectory that his career would take because he's going to be extremely successful. But that was, you know, a few years down the road at this point. At the end of 87, beginning of 88, we had to get out of our apartment because they were selling them for condos. Brad went with a couple of guys. We were in acting class with my good friend. She and I went to an apartment in the middle of Hollywood. I took my sister to come out to Los Angeles. So I was living with my sister and we all got along really great. This was about 1989, 1990. About that time I had to go on this medication called dexamethasone. I had amenorrhea, which is the absence of period. I hadn't had my period since Christmas of my freshman year of college. They know now that it's due to stress and, you know, weight fluctuations. And I was on it for like nine months. I gained like 30 pounds. I became very depressed, very self conscious. But eventually I came to accept it and like, okay, who cares about my body? And why don't I get to know and appreciate my mind? And so for the first time, I started appreciating who I was as a person, apart from what I looked like. Now when people say, just be yourself. I think I know what that means now. But I stopped taking the medicine and the pounds just fell off. I just had a new found confidence. So 1991, I think it was February 20th of that year, my mom called us to tell us that my dad had gotten married on Valentine's Day and didn't tell anybody. And for some reason that made me angrier than anything previously. So I wrote him like this 14 page letter of all the things that I had felt, the betrayal, dragging it out, all this stuff, all that frustration and anger, conflict could come out. But was turning out to be a great year. I started dating this guy I had gone to school with. I was getting back to auditioning again. My roommate situation was great. I also, you know, was proud of my skills. I was proud of my talent. It was just the first time that I just really got it. It was like I was starting to like who I was. I was really finding my way.
- [17:34]
Lindsey Graham
In 1993, three 8 year old boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. As the small town local police struggled to solve the crime, rumors soon spread that the killings were the work of a satanic cult. Suspicion landed on three local teenagers, but there was no real evidence linking them to the murders. Still, that would not protect them. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, three teenage boys are falsely accused of a vicious triple homicide. But their story doesn't end with their trials or convictions. Instead, their plight will capture the imagination of the entire country and spark a campaign for justice that will last for almost two decades. Follow American Scandal on the Wondria or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of American Scandal. The West Memphis three early and ad free right now on Wondery.
- [18:33]
Steve Nash
Hey, basketball fans, Steve Nash here. Ready to elevate your basketball IQ? I'm teaming up with LeBron James to bring you the latest season of Mind the Game. And we're about to take you deeper into basketball than you've ever gone before. We're breaking down the real game, the X's and O's that actually matter. In every episode, we'll share elite level strategy, dive into career defining moments and explain the why behind plays that changed a game, a team or a championship. LeBron and I have lived this game at the highest level for decades. We've been in those pressure moments and made those game changing decisions and learned from the greatest basketball minds in history. Now we're pulling back the curtain and sharing that knowledge with you. Time to go beyond the highlights and get into the real heart of basketball. Watch Mind the game now on YouTube, Prime Video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:30]
Amy Benedict
March 2, 1991, was a Saturday night. My boyfriend at the time was visiting friends or something in Arizona. Our roommate Mary, she had a boyfriend as well. She was staying in his apartment. I went out that night, on Saturday night, March 2, with a group of people that I did a play with. And I remember it was fun hanging around them as this new me. Not just because I lost all the weight I had put on, but I had this newfound psychological confidence. I felt comfortable in my own skin, talking to everybody, laughing and. And having a great time. I came home, Nancy and I watched Saturday Night Live. Nancy went to bed. And then I noticed that Asia, these two cats, she was staring at these French doors that we had off the TV room and growling. I laughed because I thought she was growling at her reflection. My bedroom was essentially, I guess what would have been either the dining room or living room. It was the very front room. And then way in the back of the apartment was my sister's bedroom. So there were like 1, 2, 3, 4 doors that were closed between us. It was like maybe 2:30 or something. When I went to bed, the first thing I remember, I was having this dream. You know those dreams where you're falling? It's kind of like sleep paralysis, I guess. You're falling and you're trying to wake yourself up because you can't stop falling. That couldn't breathe or move. And I was like trying desperately to wake up. When I woke up, I realized that I couldn't breathe because there was somebody's hands around my neck. There was somebody sitting on my stomach, straddling me. And immediately my hands went up and I could feel their fingernails and they chewed. They have chewed fingernails like my boyfriend at the time. I said his name and opened my eyes. And as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw this guy with like this dark jacket on and he had a stocking over his head. As soon as he could tell that I was awake, he started squeezing really hard and was trying to hide my face so that I couldn't see him. I just thought, oh, my God, what is happening? I could not breathe. And not being able to breathe is so terrifying. I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker. I was fighting. I was moving my arms everywhere. I was trying to reach the phone. And somehow we ended up off the bed and I was on my stomach, on the floor. My life was literally flashing before my eyes. You think about all the people in your life. What are they going to say when they find me, or I'm never going to see them again. And then I passed out. Whenever people are suffocated or strangled, you lose your bladder control. And so I think I peed on the ground. I thought, that will chasten away, but no. And then I just started panicking and saying, please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't kill me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't. And he said, if you shut up, I'm not going to kill you. And he kept trying to put my pillowcase over my head so I couldn't see. And you know, in these situations, your cortisol is like, through the roof. Your adrenaline is through the roof. He was so strong, and that was his point. He was establishing that he could kill me and that he was really strong. So all I had was my mind, this, like, precious commodity that I just began to appreciate my mind, and that's all I had. I looked at the clock. It was 3 or 3:15. He got a bandana out of my closet and put that around my eyes. He picked me up and put me back on my bed. And I just kept saying, please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. And he said, you've got to shut up and stop saying that. I'm not going to kill you. If you say that one more time, I will kill you. This whole time, I wasn't thinking the word rape. All I thought was, I'm going to die and this person wants to kill me. But, you know, he took my underwear off and he raped me the first time. And I just kept thinking, I'm 26, I can't die yet. I can't die right now. I have made so much progress in the last, like, six months of my life. Everything was going so great. What the hell is this? I could tell that he was really worried about leaving any evidence whatsoever. He had gloves on. He didn't want to leave any DNA. And I didn't know what his end game was going to be. So I immediately just started talking to him and that people pleasing around me came out just because I wanted to survive. The best thing I had was my mind. My weapon was my mind. And all I could think to do was to get him to see my humanity and ask him questions about who he was and how old was he. I said, why are you doing this? Who who are you? What's your name? I think he said his name was Scott, which wasn't his name. Part of me was also thinking, how do I know this person? Do I know this person? Why is he doing.
- [24:23]
Whit Misseldine
Why?
- [24:24]
Amy Benedict
Like, why is huge, like, what is happening? Why is this happening? He couldn't explain any of that. He. He did say, I've been watching you. He started, like, rubbing his hands up and down my body and telling me how beautiful I was. But maybe that means that he's not gonna kill me. I told him at one point I was cold, and I told him to hug me. But what I really wanted to do was feel the back of his jacket, just to see if there were emblems on it or something. And then he could sense what I was doing so he couldn't push me away. At one point, he wanted me to perform oral sex on him. And I said, I am so nervous and scared I could hurt you. I. I don't want to do that. And so then he. He raped me a second time. And then finally, I was just like, okay, this is either gonna end or it's not. I'm a prisoner in my own apartment. The other thing is, I did not want my sister to wake up. I just kept feeling if she comes out here, then he could kill us both. At the beginning, he had said, are you here alone? And I said, yes. You know, I was younger than my sister, but I felt responsible for her. At one point, he wanted to go into the kitchen, and I said, no, you could wake up my sister. And he said, I thought you said you were the only one here. I said, she's there, but please, please, she's different, you know? You don't want to bother her. Please don't hurt her. Don't wake her up. The last thing that we need is for her to wake up. He wanted to go into the kitchen to get some water. I found out later because I was apparently the first of many victims. But I found out later, one of his. Part of his M.O. was to go into the kitchen right before the second time. He waits. He gets a knife from your kitchen and holds it to the victim's deck. I didn't know this. I just didn't want him to wake up my sister. I remember I had a bottle of Evian in my room, and I said, look, there's all that water there. You can have that. He, like, drank the whole thing, you know? I don't know if he was on something or not, but I could sense him kind of coming down from his high. And he was starting to feel guilty because I kept talking to him, I kept trying to reason with him. I don't even remember some of the questions that I asked. But he seemed to feel guilty because I was so nice. You know, hey, if it works, then that's my weapon. I said, my roommate is coming over here at 6 o' clock to get ready for the marathon. That morning was the 8th annual LA Marathon and it was starting blocks from my house and there apparently were cops everywhere writing tickets, told them, the cops are going to be everywhere pretty soon. You, you really should go. My roommate was a chain smoker who in her words, did not have an athletic bone in her body. So she was not going to be in the marathon. She was not coming there at 6:00am you know, some of it was my acting skill too. I was able to like come up with things to say and lie perfectly. So then he said, okay, I saw a pair of shoes in your closet, I want to take those with me. And I was like, oh great. My car had been broken into a couple of weeks previously and my other pair of shoes and all my junk clothes got stolen. Then you're going to take the only other pair of shoes I have. So then he said, fine, I'll just take your TV set. And I said, you're going to jump off a balcony with a 40 pound TV set? And then he said, okay, okay, whatever, just give me some money. I could not see. I was blind during this whole transaction. But my, my brain, I was, you know, especially towards the end where I thought I was going to survive this, it really snapped into high gear. I said, fine, you know, my purse is over there, I've got 10 bucks. So he took 10 bucks. He tucked me into my bed, which was weird. I think he said to count to 100. If the police come, I'm going to come back and kill you. After I heard him jump off the balcony and land below. And it had been raining that week, so I heard this splat, looked up at my clock, it was 6:05am I tore off the bandana, I grabbed my robe, I sort of army crawled up to the front bay windows and looked through the blinds and I could just catch a glimpse of this person running around the corner. I couldn't see what color his hair was. All I saw was that jean jacket, that black jean jacket. And he also had army pants on. You know, it was daylight now. I just thought, please let there be cops somewhere around because I want them to catch him so he doesn't Come back and kill me. I grabbed my robe. I sat down on the couch. My face felt kind of swollen from the strangling. Apparently the petechia were all broken out. I just sat there, and I. I wasn't crying or anything. I was just total shock. And I thought, oh, my God, I've just been raped. Oh, my God, I've just been raped. I couldn't really process that, you know. I mean, that was something that happened to somebody else. And this was, you know, a stranger who broke into my apartment. Like, that's something you read about in, like, People magazine. It's not supposed to happen to me. It kind of dawned on me at that point that I thought, oh, my God, I'm never going to be the same again. After I knew I was going to live, I was so. I don't know if overjoyed is the right word, but this, like, flood of relief that I've never felt in my life, like, whew, I made it. I'm going to live. That, I think, was more impactful even than the thought that I was going to die. And it did occur to me, like, there was this little voice in my head that said, you just saved your own life. For some reason, after I sat down there processing all this, I thought, oh, no, the cats. He killed the cats. For some reason, that was the first thing I thought. He killed the cats. I started frantically searching for the cats because usually they stayed out in the front with me. I opened all the doors and ran back to Nancy and opened up her door, and she kind of groggily woke up and said, what's. What's wrong? All I said was, it's okay. He's gone now. Help me find the cats. And she was like, who's gone? Who. Who was someone here? And I looked under her bed, and the two cats, who really weren't fond of each other, were smushed together underneath my sister's bed, staring at me with these terrified eyes. After I found the cats and Nancy was saying, who was here? What's happening? I said, a guy just broke into our apartment and raped me. Of course she was horrified. I said, he said, if we call the police, he's going to come back and kill me. We got up and went back to the living room where my phone was, and we tried to think it over. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? I called the rape hotline, and I told them what happened to me. And they said, you need to call the police. They rarely, if ever, come back he's not going to come back. And I believed this woman. So I called the police. And then suddenly there were a bunch of cops in our apartment. It was first these two young male cops. And I think they thought that they would find this sort of quivering woman all in a. In a ball on her couch, you know, hiding. But I was like. Like it was invigorated because I knew I was going to live now. And now I had. The solution was standing in front of me, the police. And I really wanted to get this guy because why did he do this? And you have to catch him because I don't want to be afraid of this person for the rest of my life. I remembered every detail, apparently. I gave them nine pages of testimony of all the 18 victims that he ended up having. 18, 19 victims. I gave them the most details. And they. The two cops thought that they would have to comfort me, but they kind of looked like deer in headlights. Finally, the female cop showed up and she was amazing. She told me to get a change of clothes because they would take my clothes at the hospital. And my sister and I got into her squad car and I was in the front seat and my sister was in the back. At the time, I guess it was like 7:30 maybe, and the marathon was underway. They had to stop the marathon so we could cross the street. And as we were driving slowly past, you know, there was just this line of runners jogging in place. And some of them looked pissed and some of them looked curious, but they were all staring at me. All of a sudden I felt like a. I was in a fishbowl or something and they were staring at me. And that was like the first indication that I got that I'm different now. It was the first time that I saw that something had happened to me. That I was sort of a curiosity, that I was not them, that I was damaged. We made it to the hospital. I had to have a rape kit done. And the doctors and the nurses were fantastic. They walked me through it. Then a social worker came in to talk to me. I still hadn't started crying yet. You know, like, I felt like I should be crying. Why am I not crying? You know, you're in shock. It takes a while for your brain to be ready for you to absorb it. And so this social worker told me, she said, what happened to you is the worst crime there is next to murder. I don't know if she was saying that because she wanted to snap me out of my shock or if she was just telling me it was okay. To feel whatever I was feeling. My sister came in and we were both kind of crying, but I still felt like I was crying because I was supposed to. My mom, who has got a sixth sense when it comes to her kids. After we got back from the hospital that day, she had called us. She'd been out talking lunch with some of her friends. And she said in the middle of lunch, she said to her friends, I need to go home and call my girls. And she didn't know why, she just knew she had to call us. I called my dad first and I told my dad what had happened. You know, he said all the right things. He could tell that we were all angry with him because he had remarried without telling us. I told him, you know, don't tell the boys, don't tell my brothers. I want to tell them myself. And then my youngest brother called me. He was really shooken up. And my dad had called him and told him my dad had betrayed me and had told my brothers before I could tell them. And I could see that he was using this tragedy as a way to get back in with everyone, to become the father. All of a sudden that really pissed me off. It was hard for my mom to be the crutch for me. I mean, she was still dealing with the aftermath of my dad divorcing her and remarrying this woman. She was still in a lot of pain, but I felt like there was a part of her that wasn't there, that wasn't seeing me. And that was really painful. And I think it's because she just couldn't deal with it. I remember one day watching the news, and the biggest news in LA at the time was this black man in Simi Valley named Rodney King was attacked by a bunch of policemen. And it was on video. It was hard for me to watch because on the video in the lower Corner it said March 3, 1991. And the date of my rape was March 3, 1991. Why were they engaging in violence unnecessarily and hurting this poor person when there wasn't one cop around in Hollywood at that time to help me? I mean, of course none of them could do anything about it. Cops aren't supposed to be patrolling my street. But I remember that was the first thing that popped into my head. See all these policemen beating this poor man. And it happened at one o' clock in the morning, two hours before the guy broke into my apartment. When someone is victimized by another, anytime you witness something or hear of something that is unjust, it hits you like a gut punch. You really feel it. I just felt like a sensitive live wire. If anyone was mean to me or snapped at me or anything like that, it hurt so deeply. People do treat you differently after going through an experience like this, because no one has a manual. I mean, nobody knows what to say. What do you do? This person has been through this thing that's kind of a taboo subject. I just started to feel comfortable in my body. And I didn't want him to take that from me. I didn't want him to take sexuality, my. My sexuality away from me. I did lose some friends, and that. That was hard. It was too painful for some people, just too enormous to have to address. We tell ourselves that a trauma which could happen to me can't possibly have that big of an impact on a person because it's. It's terrifying to think about, you know, that things that are out of your control can change your life. None of us ever think it's going to happen to us. So my friends tried to separate themselves from that possibility as much as they could. And I get that. I really get that. And then there were other friends who were just great. Like my best friend from my childhood, who's still one of my closest friends to this day, Melissa. She'll listen. And she never saw me any differently. I was home packing one day when the doorbell rang. This is about two weeks after it happened. I think I was the first time I was alone in the apartment. So I was kind of nervous. I didn't go down and answer right away. I ran over to the front window to look down, and it was Brad. I guess he had heard from a mutual friend what had happened to me. And I hadn't seen him in like six months. So I screamed out the window and say, hey, I'm here. And he seemed kind of nervous because he didn't know what to expect. He said, I thought you would be curled up on the couch in a dark room. And I was like, no, I'm okay. I think I said, no, I'm fine. I'm still in shock, so it's fine. How are you? Just so excited to see him, you know? And he told me about this film he had finished that was going to open up in May, called Thelma and Louise. And he had a really big part in it, and he was really excited for that to come out. I was super happy for him and I had a nice chat with him. But he seemed like he was in shock, too, what was happening to him. Every boy that moves to Hollywood dreams of. And what was happening to me is every woman's nightmare. It was great to see Brad in. He was great. But I kind of realized in that moment, his career, his life was taking off in this one trajectory. And before this happened to me, I could see my trajectory, and I felt like it was going up, but now I couldn't see it. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. That May, Thelma and Louise did come out. And I remember seeing it. And it was the first film or television show that I saw that dealt with rape. And the story was also devastating because no one will believe them that this rapist that they shot, that they did it in self defense. So their only solution is to drive off into the Grand Canyon. My boyfriend came back, and he didn't expect our relationship to last very long. You know, I think I was falling in love with him, and he did not see a future in our relationship, that he didn't want to break up with me and leave me hanging. And I kind of clung to him and sort of threw myself into that relationship. But eventually I felt like a shell of my former self. You know, I had to take things externally and use that to fill me up because I couldn't find the substance that was in me. I couldn't find me. I wanted our friends to know what had happened so that I didn't have to tell anybody, but so they would know that I was not gonna be me anymore. So the summer of 1991, the social worker gave us all my sister, my roommate and my boyfriend and I sessions at the rape treatment center in Santa Monica. And unfortunately, I got a woman who was fairly new. In my first session was the first time I was explaining everything that happened. And she cut me off. And she said, I just want you to know I've never been raped, but I know more about it than you do. I was so paralyzed during that time period in terms of helping myself and advocating for myself. I would show up late because I couldn't stand going to see this woman. Because every time she would talk to me about, well, you're pretty much over the rape, but you're depending too much on your boyfriend. I just felt like this woman really does not get me. It was very strange. Finally, at the 11th session, I went to the front desk and I said, I need somebody new. This is what has been going on. The woman recommended that I confront the therapist and tell her what I was going through. And so I did. And I just said, you're talking about my boyfriend. I'm not over the rape. I was almost murdered in my apartment. You're trivializing my experience and focusing on something that is just a symptom of the main event. And I can't come to see you anymore. I got up and I walked out. And it never went back. The following week, I called Los Angeles Council for Assaults against Women, called Lakaw at that time, who then was absorbed by rain. And I went to my first session at lacaw and I got this beautiful woman and they were amazing. They really helped me a lot. And this is not to bash on. The rape treatment center is still around and they're magnificent. I just got a lemon.
- [41:14]
Lindsey Graham
In the fall of 1620, a battered merchant ship called the Mayflower set sail across the Atlantic. It carried 102 men, women and children, risking it all to start again in the new world. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of American Historytellers. Every week we take you through the moments that shaped America. And in our latest season, we explore explore the untold story of the Pilgrims. One that goes far beyond the familiar tale of the first Thanksgiving. After landing at Cape Cod, the Pilgrims forged an unlikely alliance with the Wampanoag people who helped the Pilgrims survive the most brutal winter they'd ever known, laying the foundation for a powerful national myth. But behind that story lies another one of conflict, betrayal, and brutal violence against the very people who helped the Pilgrims survive. Follow American history Historytellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of American Historytellers the Mayflower early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus.
- [42:10]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
Okay, Carrie, you ready? Quick, quick, quick. List three gifts you'd never give a.
- [42:14]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
Cowboy, Lacy bobby socks, a diamond bracelet, and a gift certificate to Sephora.
- [42:21]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
Oh, my God. That's outrageous.
- [42:23]
Amy Benedict
Carrie.
- [42:23]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
Oh, wait, we're recording a commercial right now. We gotta tell them why we're doing this.
- [42:27]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
Oh, yeah, sorry, POD listeners. Okay, so we're five besties who've been friends for five million years. And we love games, so of course we made our own.
- [42:35]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
It's called quick, quick, quick. You just pick a card and have your partner give three answers to an outrageous question. It's fast, fun, fantastic, and a bunch of other funny adjectives anyone can play.
- [42:45]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
Your mom, your dad, your kitten, your kids, your Auntie Edna, and even your butcher.
- [42:50]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
And you know, it's incredible. There are no wrong answers. Just open your brain and say, what's in it. Just quickly.
- [42:55]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
And you're not going to believe this. Well, you Might once you start playing, it's as much fun to watch as it is to play. Seriously.
- [43:03]
D - Quick Quick Quick Host 2
So get up and go grab your copy now at Target and Amazon. Quick, quick, quick.
- [43:07]
C - Quick Quick Quick Host 1
It's the fastest way to.
- [43:17]
Amy Benedict
I had gone on some auditions, but I wasn't working. I think I really wasn't in the right headspace. It was hard to go on auditions and put myself on the line. And it's kind of hard to put yourself back in that world again. But I didn't want him to take that from me. So at the end of August, a friend of ours was an assistant to Robert Altman on this new movie. That morning, I was getting on my black outfit, and Nancy, my sister, called. She said the detective had called our apartment. He said he wanted to see me, wanted to show me pictures of the guy, and he wanted to close my case. I said I would call him when I got there. So the detective was telling me that the rapist had up to. I believe it was like, 19 victims. I guess I was his first victim. And he would go back and forth between Santa Monica and Hollywood, and he loved evading the police. He would brag to all of his victims about evading the police. There was always apartments with women who were on the second floor so he could climb up a balcony. He would jump out of their window. He would take his shoes off. Because when he jumped out of my window, he left a boot print, and they had taken a cast of the boot print, so he didn't want to leave that anymore. His victims were all ages, and he had killed three of them. He was escaping from a woman's apartment in Santa Monica. Police showed up, and they chased him down the block, and he had a shoe in his hand. They thought it was a gun, and they shot him and they killed him. The detective is telling me all this information while I'm on the phone. And the Teamster guy, I asked him, do you think it's okay if this detective needs to talk to me really quick? Can he come on set? He just needs to show me something, and then I'll go right back to my place because they just wanted the extras to be in place. The detective shows up. He's got this huge binder. He flips through and shows this picture. He had spent some time in jail for being a Peeping Tom and for robbery. His crimes escalated, and I guess he was released from prison, like a week before he attacked me, since I was this first victim. That kind of explains why he got really nervous and unsure of himself near the End. So I saw the picture, and even though I never saw his face clearly, something told me that was him. His name was Robert Joseph Kovosh and he was from Willowick, Ohio. After listening to all of the details of the MO and seeing his picture, I said, yeah, pretty sure that's him. But as I was talking to Tim, this young woman, this pa, kept coming over to us and saying, you've got to go sit down now. I said, okay, this will just take one more second. And she was so annoyed with me and tapping her foot and she said, we're making a movie here. I thought that was so funny later when the Player came out, because it is about how Hollywood thinks it's so invincible. Then there's the policemen over here, and they're dealing with real life. They could care less about the studio heads or actors or anything. The teenager knew what was going on. He ushered her away to the same. Thankful for that guy. I went and I took my place in the stands and I was in shock. The guy was dead. It was very surreal that I found out in that way. But my recovery is so interwoven with my career in some ways. In 1991, curiously enough, it was the year that the William Kennedy rape case came out. The Elma Louise came out. The Violence against women Act of 1991 was passed. There was a great deal of, I think, self reflection in the media about identifying victims. I didn't want to have to go to court. You know, I kept dreading that someday I'm going to have to testify. But in my case, he died. And I had a burst of confidence happen after that. The next three auditions that I had, I booked all of them. And the first one was for LA Law. I was playing a woman testifying against a serial killer, and I was one of his near victims. And then at the end, he has me killed. And they had to get a body double for that. And the guy that played the serial killer was Tim Carhart, who played the rapist in Thelma and Louise. The next job I had was a TV movie called Quicksand, and Tim was in that too, playing my boss. It was just coincidence after coincidence in my career. And then the next job I had was Sneakers. It was with Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier and like, all these people, and I was just a lady. I thought, now my career is taking off, now it's happening to me. I'm in this big movie with all these stars, and this is going to be great. And I thought, you know, the rape was behind Me, I'm fine now. But I could tell that as the months went on, I really wasn't fine. I did my, my job. I showed up. It didn't affect my acting at all, but I could feel that I was shrinking. If the director snapped at me or something, or I did something wrong, I would freeze. I was, I felt stabbed, you know, I felt humiliated. Robert Redford was great. There was one scene where I had to jump over the dolly and I had to take an Uzi and line all the actors up against the wall. The DP was so irritated with me because I couldn't see him because he was behind me. Robert Redford like looked at me and said, you know, follow my eyes. And. And I did. And he got me off camera right at that time and then I accidentally stiffed on his toe. And I said, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And he's like squeezed my hand and said, don't worry about it. Like, he was amazing. I had a huge problem with falling asleep. Am I going to fall asleep and wake up again with someone strangling me? So insomnia was a huge thing I had to get over. I was late on the second morning. I think I was supposed to be there at 5:30 and I didn't show up till 6, so they had to move the scene. And I felt so bad. That was the first time that I felt what happened to me was affecting my work. You know, everyone says, oh, you probably had a great time on that movie. I did. But it started to occur to me that maybe I should have taken a year off to get better. I don't know if I was ready for that yet. It really crushed me. On my last night when I was driving over the 405 over the hill. I was just thinking, I wonder if I'm ever going to work again. My boyfriend broke up with me and that was devastating. And I was fighting with my roommates with Mary and Nancy. We'd all been through something and it was. We were getting on each other's nerves. I felt so alone. I thought I was starting to fall apart. And for the next couple of years I had some more jobs. But I struggled every year with the anniversary. Anniversaries are such huge things. And you know, the first anniversary of it was the riots in LA after Rodney King's trial where the officers were all acquitted. It wasn't about me at all. I was just this privileged white girl living in Playa del Rey. But I felt like, you know what was happening to la. I felt like Some of that was happening inside me. February will come around. I'll start to feel kind of funky and think what's happening? And then, oh, yeah, March 3rd's coming up. And then I'd start to see billboards for the LA marathon. Like, you know, black Cloud would come over me, and then I'd get through it. And then it would be March 3rd, 5th or 6th, and then it would go away. It was out of my control. It was almost something supernatural happening. The date really did something to me. And then I had another job where on General Hospital, where my character was strangled and killed. I was on it for six months, and then I knew I was going to be murdered. So I was strangled and killed. And it aired on March 3. The date March 3 always kept popping up in other ways too. Like, I was cast in General Hospital in 1995, and I was the occupational therapist for this prisoner who was a serial killer who was obsessed with the woman that I looked somewhat like. And I help him escape. And now that I have served his purpose, he doesn't need me anymore. So he strangles me, which is off camera. I don't like anyone touching my neck with their hands. Like, I remember once a friend came up and put their hands on my neck. And I tried not to overreact because I didn't want them to feel bad, but I'm very sensitive about anyone touching my neck. But I thought, here I am again. This is mirroring my life in a way. That episode then aired three weeks later, on March 3, 1995, I believe it was. At that point, I'm just like, wow, what is the universe trying to tell me? My husband was trying to rack up my death murder ratio. So I've killed five times and I've died five times. So I think I'm even in different parts that I've done. You know, trying to recover from assault is super hard. But especially in this business, no one really cares what happened to you, you know, And I have had to let that go so that I can earn my place at the table. But something about going through a trauma like that, I felt like my acting was deeper and richer. And those really hard roles in drama, I don't. They don't scare me anymore. I didn't want to run away from those roles, going to those depths of emotion, because I felt really strongly about him not taking my career from me and my love of acting. If I had to play a rape survivor, if I had to play someone who was murdered, or if I had to play a Killer. I tried to separate it from my experience as. As much as I could. And I'd say I was pretty successful because it was a way of getting my power back. And that was one of the things that I held sacred was my career, was my talent, was my skill set. You know, it's one of the few things I have, and I'm not going to let that be taken away. But I did lose some of my ambition, some of my fearlessness in my career, because, you know, you need so much fearlessness. You can't be afraid of anything if you want to succeed in this business. I mean, who knows. Who knows what would have happened? But I do think that it did have an impact on my trajectory. The first big thing in my life that was the most healing, I think, was meeting my husband when I was working on General hospital. It was 1995. He was just like this light. He's pathologically optimistic. He is definitely the glass half full to mine, half empty. My friend and I went out with him. I told him everything that happened to me. And his response was, everything you wanted to be. And he let me talk about it. He didn't think any differently of me. Like, I was still Amy Benedict. This was just something that happened to me. And I just noticed every time I saw him, every time he would walk into a room, my whole body would just relax. And he was the first person I've ever dated that I felt completely myself around other than my family. I felt completely myself around this person. So I was 33 when I got married. I felt like finally, like the universe would give me something positive. Positive. And then my son Jackson was born. And he was beautiful. Three years later, my daughter Ryland was born and got pregnant again. Right away, I had this beautiful little girl. Everything was perfect. I mean, my career was not where I wanted it to be, but I'd done a lot of things that I always wanted to do. You know, I was able to fall in love, and I was able to have children and get married. I will never be that girl that I was on March 2, 1991. But I'm this new person. I was able to live my life, and that was a gift. I had recovered pretty well up to that point. But every year around March 3, I would still have this anniversary thing happen to me. Around 2008, 2009, this woman doing my hair asked me if I wanted to donate to her marathon training. She was working with aids. Marathon la. And you raise money and train for the marathon. And she was about to run her third marathon with them. And the marathon had always been this sort of dark element of my experience. I thought, you know, images and symbolism always have an effect on me. So dates and the Rodney King tape and the marathon and the rainy season, you know, it would take me back to that terrifying place. I thought, well, I'm never going to face the guy in court, so maybe I'll just run in the marathon. Maybe I can turn this date into a moment of triumph, an anniversary of the day I triumphed, because I did triumph on that day. I saved my own life. I saved my sister's life. I got through it and I lived. And I really have to pat myself on the back for that. The fall of 2008, I started training for the LA Marathon. I raised money through AIDS Marathon LA. So I ran the marathon. It's brutal. I will never do that again because it really hurts your body, but it was exhilarating. And then when I hit, like, the 23rd mile, that's when you really start to hit a wall. But I just had. My hands are super swollen. I could barely bend my knees, but I had to finish it. And so the last quarter mile, I turned left onto Figueroa and there were all these people along the side cheering. But this time I was running. I crossed the finish line at six hours and five minutes, which was the exact time that the Rabis left my apartment, 6:05am it was the most amazing moment of my life. Anniversary dates can be very traumatic for people. And I just found that if there's something that I can do, some activity, some process, some action I can take and face an aspect of the experience that scares me or bothers me, then maybe I can leap out of that hole and start walking again the following year. March 5th of 2010, my husband says to me, you missed it. And I was like, miss what? And he said. He said, It's March 5th. And it took me a while to understand what he was talking about. And then I realized, oh, my God, it's gone. That thing, that dark cloud, that lead balloon that I carried around with me for three weeks every year, it was gone. And it has been gone ever since.
- [58:27]
Whit Misseldine
Today's episode featured Amy Benedict. If you'd like to reach out to Amy, you can find her socials in the show. Notes. From Wondery you're listening to this is actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Whit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Kathy Seitz and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westberg. The opening music features the song Sleep Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactually happening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. If you like this Is Actually Happening, you can listen to every episode ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey.