[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- It was one of those moments where,
Are we dreaming? Is this real?
- When I heard that scream, it scared me.
- Definitely someone is here now.
Like, the door is locked.
- There's a cat with a sweater.
He's still down there.
- It was just horrific.
It was like she was being murdered.
♪ ♪
- Man found hiding between a family's walls...
- Intruder secretly living inside her attic...
- Man slithers out from under home...
- Make sure your crawl spaces are locked.
- I hear footsteps.
I'm vulnerable, naked,
And someone is in my house.
- There was somebody violating my home.
- I want to believe it's in my head.
- It's a giant man's handprint.
- You came into my home. You invaded my privacy.
- [screams]
- We had a phrogger in our house.
♪ ♪
- In 2019, I'm living with my
At the time fiancé in an apartment in portland, oregon.
♪ ♪
I'm working full-time as an administrative coordinator
For a local hospital.
Tim's working as a manager for a french bistro.
- At that point, we were about a year and a half engaged.
Amanda and I met through an online dating service.
- And because our schedules were so completely opposite
And we were both so busy, it actually took us five months
Of just texting each other and having conversations
Before we were actually able to meet in person.
And the day that it happened, it was completely
Just a spontaneous, "I'm off work early."
"I'm also off work early.
Let's go to my favorite dive bar."
♪ ♪
We met up there at 5:30 or so,
And then we ended up closing down the bar,
Just talking and laughing.
♪ ♪
- We hit it off.
We are two peas in a pod.
We're very similar, and she is my better half for sure.
♪ ♪
- We've been house hunting for probably six months
At this point, with no luck.
And one day, our realtor calls, and he says,
"boy, do I have gem for you."
He says, "amanda,
"you need to come look at this house right now.
I've gotten you a showing before it's on the market."
So of course, I call out of work an hour early,
Hop in the car, and I go check out this house.
♪ ♪
When we get there for the first showing,
I'm like, "whoa," blown away, you know?
For our budget, this was way better than I had expected.
♪ ♪
It's just got a really homey,
Nice, comfortable feel.
As soon as you walk in, these beautiful french doors
In the back just let the light pour in.
The living room is just right as soon as
You walk in, flows into the dining room.
The kitchen is directly off the dining room.
And then you go down a hallway,
And down those hallways are the three bedrooms.
The bedroom closest to the front door
Has access to the crawl space.
And in the main hallway is the bathroom.
Our realtor said, "you know, amanda,
You have to write an offer right now."
And unfortunately, I had to make the call
To put in an offer before tim could even look at the house,
So he kind of had to trust my judgment on that one.
♪ ♪
As soon as we get the keys, we decided that we were
Gonna have our wedding shower at the house.
And then in a few months, we were planning
On having our wedding in the backyard.
- We decided to have the wedding reception
At the house instead of a separate location
Because we are now millennials with a mortgage at this point.
So any sort of thing we can afford
Has now all just been put into this home.
♪ ♪
- We go in, and in the junk drawer
Are several of the appliance manuals,
Along with a big bag full of unlabeled keys
That are not connected or attached,
Just completely loose bag of keys.
We basically took a look at this bag of keys and said,
"hmm, this looks like a problem for later us,"
And put it back in the drawer and closed it.
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
So, thankfully, the shower went off without a hitch.
We had everybody who we wanted there.
♪ ♪
My sister comes.
My aunt comes, and she was crocheting an afghan.
And whenever she had a moment of downtime, you know,
She would just pull it out and start working on it.
It was a beer-themed wedding shower--
Cheers and beers to tim and amanda.
People were playing games
And just having a really good time.
We had a hot chocolate station
'cause it was a little chilly in the evenings.
♪ ♪
My sister decides that her gift to us
Will be making her stout triple chocolate cupcakes.
She really put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears
Into this beautiful pastry display
For our shower.
Being able to just have those big french doors open
And seeing all of the people that we loved and treasured
But get to show off as well-- be like, "oh, yeah,
"look at the giant kitchen that I have now.
"look at how much more hot sauce I can make.
"look at this room.
We're gonna turn this into our game room."
It was just really special to be able
To share that with our family.
♪ ♪
[birds chirping]
The next morning, we had a wonderful brunch.
And then we drove back in my sister's car.
We're getting out of the car, and on our car,
We just see this giant box
Just leaning on the windshield.
And then as I look a little closer,
There's a bottle next to it and what looks like a laptop.
♪ ♪
We definitely recognized right off the back that this
Was not anything that we had ever owned.
And from what we knew of our guests and our family,
It wasn't anything that they would have left behind.
And we pick the things off the car and took them
Into the house, because we're like, "oh, you know,
"we don't want anybody passing by
To say, 'ooh, free stuff.'"
♪ ♪
We unlock the front doors, and the dogs are there,
And they're just skittish kind of,
But they're so excited to see us.
And as we're walking in,
I point over to the dining room table,
And I say, "whose vape is that?"
'cause it's just this huge, enormous,
Bright red, chunky piece of equipment.
Nobody that we had invited uses anything like that.
♪ ♪
We notice that things had been disturbed.
Tables had been scooted over.
Things weren't where we had left them.
We walk into the kitchen to look around and we see
Segmented off to the side are the frosting toppings
From three of the cupcakes and then a half-eaten bottom
From one of the other cupcakes.
♪ ♪
So at that point, my sister and my aunt
Are still outside, and I lean through the door,
And I say, "why don't you guys stay outside?
We think there's something going on."
♪ ♪
My aunt says, "do you want me to call the police?"
I said, "not yet.
"we're gonna see what we can see.
"but why don't you guys take the dogs,
Put them in the car with the window rolled down?"
♪ ♪
So we start looking a little bit more intently.
And it appeared that along with the cupcakes,
They had helped themselves to our coffee.
At this point, we've definitely established
That at the very least, someone was here.
And I think, "oh, no, you know, our tv,
Our video games,"
We had left them here from the shower.
So I say to tim--I say, "tim, I'm gonna go check the garage."
♪ ♪
I rush into the garage, and I say,
"tim, the game system's gone."
♪ ♪
That was the first thing I noticed was,
"oh, no, our system is gone."
And then as I look a little closer,
I see this giant black tarp,
Which doesn't belong there, wasn't ours.
♪ ♪
- We've checked the living room,
The dining room, the kitchen, and now we're in the garage.
♪ ♪
- At that point, tim and I regroup in the living room
Because he's clued in to the fact that we're dealing
With something more serious than cupcakes.
♪ ♪
Tim flips open the box that had been on our car,
And inside were these knives.
They were probably supposed to be display use,
'cause they had really pretty engravings on them.
But they were definitely sharp.
And he took one of them out of the box.
- We haven't gone down the hallway yet.
- Tim goes down the hallway,
And when he grabs the doorknob to our room,
It's locked.
He's standing there grabbing at the door handle,
Kind of shaking at it
To make sure that it's locked,
And he's got the knife in one hand.
- And I'm like, "oh, definitely someone is here now.
Like, the door is locked."
[doorknob rattling]
- I see that the ventilation grates
From our furnace are
Pulled out of the floor in the main hallway.
And I look directly to the side
As he's jiggling the doorknob,
And I see that our bathroom is just trashed.
♪ ♪
The mirror has been ripped off the wall.
There's a huge hole.
The electrical sockets have been yanked out of the wall.
The light bulbs have been taken out
And set in the bathtub.
♪ ♪
Tim kind of just barks out at me,
"babe, keys!"
So I run down the hallway, and as I go by the door,
I tell auntie robin and my sister--
I say, "call the cops.
"there has been a break-in.
He might still be here."
♪ ♪
So they back off, and they start calling the cops.
I run into the kitchen.
I grab this stupid bag of keys
That are completely unlabeled,
And I bring them back,
And I actually hold the knife while tim is
Trying each key-- just toss, you know,
Nope, doesn't work-- throws it on the ground.
Getting increasingly frustrated.
♪ ♪
- So I'm banging on the door,
Telling this person to, like,
Make themselves known.
I will let them leave,
But make themselves known,
Because I've got a big bag of keys right here
From the previous owners.
If you don't make yourself known by the time
I get in there, I'm gonna treat it as a threat.
At that point, I don't know, I was just flying on red mist
And just blind theory
Because of the situation that I was in.
[banging on door]
♪ ♪
- Finally he finds the one that fits.
♪ ♪
And he shoves the door open, takes the knife back.
♪ ♪
- This is kind of when stuff got real.
♪ ♪
And there's nobody there.
♪ ♪
We see pieces of drywall,
Tipped-over boxes of our clothing
That have been rummaged through, and then...
The focal piece are these giant holes in the wall,
About the size of a person,
That go through into the next room.
♪ ♪
- I see the hole. I see the window.
I know that's point of entry,
And that's the point of exit.
♪ ♪
- We back out of the room.
And tim has checked the closets.
And he steps back into the hallway,
Moves over into the other room
That had the holes connected to it,
Checks in there, and is about to move
Back down the hallway when I say, "babe, wait.
There's somebody still here."
♪ ♪
- Amanda looks at me, goes,
"there's somebody underneath the floor."
I'm like, "uh, what?"
She goes, "yeah, there's somebody underneath the floor.
I can hear them crawling around down there."
And sure enough, I had everybody stop.
And we, like, listened.
And I heard thump, thump, and I'm like, "oh, yeah, nope,
For sure, there's somebody down there."
♪ ♪
- I heard rustling thumps underneath our feet
Coming from where all of the vents led.
They're in the crawl space.
♪ ♪
There is a person underneath our floor
Who has destroyed our house,
Our home that we had just gotten.
♪ ♪
I did start stomping down the hallway,
Saying, "if you're in here, get out.
Get out of my house."
Tim steps to the front
And makes his way down the hallway
First into the bedroom,
Which is the one where my auntie robin had been staying
That has the access to the crawl space in it.
♪ ♪
We hadn't looked in this bedroom yet.
And as we do, it's complete chaos.
There's unspooled yarn all over the place.
The blanket that my auntie robin had been working on
Was halfway undone.
Her suitcase had been tipped over and spilled out,
There were pills on the floor from her medication.
♪ ♪
There were also christmas lights all over the floor,
And the hatch to the crawl space was askew.
♪ ♪
We get the hatch open, and we see that there are
Christmas lights attached to the bottom of it.
And as he moves the hatch aside,
We can see that it's also tied up with yarn as well.
♪ ♪
He moves the hatch to the side,
Hands me the knife, and he drops down.
And I hand him the knife, and I just wait.
- I went into the crawl space
To see if anybody's down there.
♪ ♪
There's two walls on either side.
One is ventilation and ductwork,
And the other one is, like,
All of the brickwork that's under the foundation.
♪ ♪
And there's about a 25-foot-long
Just hallway, almost, but you're--I'm crouched down.
♪ ♪
- I hear him start moving underneath the crawl space.
♪ ♪
So I grab a large replica video game sword,
And I'm just waiting outside the crawl space
Because I figure if tim flushes this person out,
I'm not gonna let them get away
With destroying this house that I have worked
So hard on and that we had just so recently gotten.
♪ ♪
- I pull out my phone, and I turn on my flashlight.
And sure enough, at the end of this, like,
25-foot extension
Where it becomes two blind corners,
Standing right in the center,
The only space that I can see,
Is a cat. [cat meows]
A cat in one of my dog's sweaters.
Now this has become a joke of, "oh,
It is literally a cat burglar, great."
♪ ♪
I decided I'm not gonna go any further
In this crawl space,
Because now I know for sure somebody's down here.
And the only reason I knew for sure
That somebody was down there
Is because I heard more movement coming from behind,
Like, where that blind corner was.
And I'm not about to go to a blind corner and try
And get in a fight in this little four-foot
Cleared area.
♪ ♪
- So he says, "there's a cat down there,"
And I just, "what?"
He says, "yeah, it's a cat
"with a sweater.
He's still down there."
And I'm like, "okay, definitely, that is
The weirdest sentence I have ever heard in my life."
And we are now going to pile everything we can think of
On top of here, shut the door, and call the cops.
♪ ♪
- I get out of the crawl space,
I close the hatch,
And then I put, like, three suitcases on top of it,
'cause now whoever's down there knows that I know
That they're there.
So I sprint out of the house,
And cara, amanda's sister,
Is on the phone with the police,
Not really knowing what is actually going on,
And I sprint out screaming, like,
"just stop. Someone's here.
"just tell them someone's here.
"someone's broken in the house.
They're here still."
[dog barking]
- The police arrive shortly after,
Once they heard he was still in the house.
Several units along with a k-9.
[dog snarling]
The police officers go inside.
We can kind of see them from the windows
Making sweeps through the house.
♪ ♪
And we can hear the cops yelling, "get out!
Get out! Come out!"
♪ ♪
And then after a while, we can just hear
The distinctive metal click of handcuffs.
And tim turns to me, and he goes, "oh, [bleep],
He really was in there."
- The door swings open, and they bring out
The man who was in our crawl space.
And he is really tall, really dirty,
And wearing my christmas onesie.
[dramatic music]
- My wife is shorter than I am,
And this man is taller than me,
So it stretched out to no end.
Covered in dirt from the crawl space.
- It was just infuriating.
It was just another violation,
Because that onesie had been packed away
Amongst the rest of our clothes that we had brought over.
And it just showed how far he had dug in
To get pieces of us.
And then as he was about to be taken away,
One of the officers came up to us and said,
"by the way,
The cat that's in your house, his name is spaghetti."
♪ ♪
It was it was one of those moments where--
Are we dreaming? Is this real?
You just told me a cat named spaghetti is in my house.
[siren wailing]
♪ ♪
So, walking through, we realized that there was just
A lot of damage that had been done.
Up until this point, it had been a dream come true.
We had gotten our first house,
We had had an amazing wedding shower,
And plans were well underway
To have a wonderful wedding in a few short months.
♪ ♪
It was like seeing all of those things
Just shattered in front of you.
It took all of the really nice things
That had happened so far
And just made it feel gross.
[camera shutter clicks]
♪ ♪
- It felt like my home was no longer my home.
It was just this crime scene that has now occurred
And kind of destroyed any sort of semblance of attachment
That I could have had at that point to the house.
It felt like it was no longer mine.
♪ ♪
- So a couple days later, we find out that the man
Who was in our crawl space was ryan bishop,
A 38-year-old from vancouver, washington,
Which is about a 30-minute drive
And across the river from our house.
- He's arrested and charged with first-degree burglary
And also criminal mischief.
- Using our home as his own to the point
Of eating our food and taking our clothes,
It was just--it was repulsive.
Ryan bishop reached a plea deal
To serve 36 months of probation.
♪ ♪
- When the cops were at the house,
They told us that we needed to contact animal control
To remove the cat.
Upon contacting animal control, they told us that they will
Only come and get the cat if we have the cat in a crate.
♪ ♪
- And now we are tasked with getting a cat
Out of our crawl space.
Tim went into the crawl space to work
On getting spaghetti out.
- So our first attempt was with just a big blanket.
And the cat seemed sweet.
Definitely scared
And was definitely a little skittish.
But I was in the crawl space with this blanket,
Just kind of sneaking up on her,
Like, doing little cat noises
To try and make sure that she knows that I'm, like--
I'm not gonna hurt her or anything.
And I got her wrapped up in the blanket,
And she started to struggle a little bit,
Because now "a stranger is holding me."
So I go over to the crawl space entrance,
And I start pushing it up to amanda.
[cat yowling]
And the cat just got a little bit loose
From the blanket, like, wrecked amanda's arm,
And then disappeared into the crawl space.
We're like, "well, it was a good first try, I guess."
♪ ♪
So at that point, we kind of cut our losses
Because we know we no longer have this cat's trust.
So I put a food dish,
Like, right next to where the hatch is,
And we just kept bringing cat food and seeing if she was
Going to jump out, and the cat food was getting depleted.
She was in the crawl space for, like, two days.
♪ ♪
- So I was at work, and my phone goes off.
And I look at it, and it's a video of this
Stunning, gorgeous long-haired cat.
[cat meows]
- Hello, spaghetti.
Hello, precious kitten.
♪ ♪
- And I message him back-- I said, "oh, my god,
Is that spaghetti?"
Tim says, "yeah, spaghetti's out.
She's in the garage. She's so nice."
♪ ♪
Later on that day, I get more messages from tim.
He says, "oh, I just got a phone call
"from a relative of ryan bishop's.
"they think that this is their cat,
And they want to come pick it up."
I said "okay, awesome. Excellent.
Yeah, let's get spaghetti home."
- So the following day, a family member
Comes to pick up the cat.
And I bring her into the garage
Where we're keeping spaghetti.
Very, very nice woman, not understanding
What's going on with her family member.
So I explained it to her.
She was crying, and I actually felt really bad about it.
And she just goes, "spaghetti, come here."
And spaghetti runs right up to her.
Never seen a cat respond to its name like that.
But immediately it was like, "all right, yup,
"that's the--that is definitely the owner of this cat,
For sure."
And that was the last I saw of spaghetti the cat.
[whimsical music]
[dramatic music]
- Things got a lot better after the wedding.
I think, aside from the crying,
Giving our vows was one of the easiest things
I've ever done because it was like,
"in sickness and in health,
"okay, we've already done that.
"for good times or worse times,
Okay, we've already done that."
No matter what kind of nonsense,
Whether it's a guy living
In our crawl space with his cat
Or anything else life can throw at us, we got it.
We're good.
We had not one but two phroggers:
A man and a cat.
♪ ♪
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
[light guitar music]
♪ ♪
- I'm tim brown.
I work in the oil and gas industry.
In 2016,
I was living in ardmore, oklahoma,
With my wife, monica,
And my 11-year-old daughter, presley.
♪ ♪
- The neighborhood we moved into
Was tuscan vineyards.
It's a small gated community.
- Very safe neighborhood. We never locked our doors.
And we all looked out for one another.
- I knew everyone in that neighborhood.
A bunch of my friends lived there.
We would always go and, like, hang out,
Like, every day after school.
I felt very safe.
[dramatic music]
- Right when you pull into the neighborhood,
We're the first lot on the left.
We lived on a three-acre lot.
We had just completed the building of the home
And have been living there for one month.
- So this is the first house that we built,
And we were just extremely happy to move in
And get acquainted with the neighbors in the neighborhood.
- We knew this is gonna be our forever home,
And we put a lot of heart and soul into this home.
Our home is a tuscan-style two-story home,
4,800 square feet with a detached living area.
We had an entrance into the house through our garage,
But the entry we used all the time was the kitchen entry.
♪ ♪
- Once you walked into the home, to your left
Took you to a guest room, an office,
And then upstairs to a media room.
From the front door once you went to your right,
You had a dining room, a kitchen,
Living room, and then there was a small
Hallway that took you to presley's room.
♪ ♪
- I loved my new room.
I got to paint it the colors I wanted.
I just loved how big it was, especially for a 11-year-old.
I had a big closet 'cause I did competitive cheer and dance.
So I had a bunch of cheer clothes, dance clothes,
Regular clothes, so I needed a lot of space.
- Presley's closet is a large
Oversized closet with clothes racks
On both sides,
And it has a built-in dresser.
- I was also really into makeup,
And at the time, I had a big vanity.
So I would just sit in there
And do my makeup, like, all day.
I loved everything about my room.
♪ ♪
It was just my birthday.
And I got a lot of presents that were everywhere.
And I got money, and I put my money up there on my dresser.
- That morning, I had gone on the neighborhood watch
Community page,
And I had seen two posts:
One about a robbery in the neighborhood,
And the police are looking for a gentlemen that was
Breaking into homes and is on the run.
And then the second post, I've seen a young man missing
In ardmore.
♪ ♪
And it just said to keep an eye out.
So I went about my day.
♪ ♪
Around, like, 2:50, I picked up presley from school,
And we came home.
- I'm just coming home from a business trip, from miami.
I arrived at about 3:00 p.M. That afternoon.
- We had workers in our front yard.
They were doing landscape work.
- One of our gardeners said, "mr. Brown,"
And this frantic gardener
Run up to me with some disturbing news.
♪ ♪
Said, "someone runs in your house,
And he hasn't come out."
♪ ♪
So when the gardener saw a guy running inside,
He was worried about it.
He's worked there for several days,
And I know he knows who belongs there, who lives there.
And he's obviously never seen this guy.
♪ ♪
I live in oklahoma.
For one guy, we don't call 911.
So I was definitely confident that I can handle it on my own.
♪ ♪
When I went in to look for this guy,
I went upstairs first
And looked all through the attic.
♪ ♪
Never saw anything, so I come down,
And I just went in every room in the house,
Every closet...
And never saw anything.
After searching everywhere, I didn't find him.
I was very confident that he had ran out
One of the other doors.
♪ ♪
After that, my wife and I decided
We were gonna go get groceries.
And my daughter didn't want to go with us,
So we left her there and went into town,
Which is approximately five miles away.
I felt safe leaving her there
Because of the town we live in.
There's just not a lot of problems there.
♪ ♪
- When my parents were at the store,
I was just hanging out, playing on my phone.
♪ ♪
- So we were back in an hour.
♪ ♪
We put the groceries up.
Presley's still playing in the house.
♪ ♪
- They came home, and I told them
I was gonna go take a shower.
[water running]
- We went back in the office
And were doing some more business.
♪ ♪
- [screams]
- And that's when we heard the blood-curdling scream.
♪ ♪
When I heard my daughter scream, it scared me.
I knew something was bad.
- [screams]
- It was just horrific.
It was one of those screams that you just--
It was like she was being murdered.
- [screams]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- So I was just gonna go take shower.
♪ ♪
And I was standing, like, right in front of my closet.
♪ ♪
And then all of a sudden,
This guy just, like, falls over in my closet.
♪ ♪
And I'm freaking out.
And he goes, "don't be scared, little girl."
And I'm screaming, and I run out.
♪ ♪
I was so in shock, I really didn't even
See what he looked like.
- [screams]
♪ ♪
- So I sprinted out of my office.
And when I come running into my living room,
My daughter comes rounding her corner
And just a frantic look.
♪ ♪
- You can just see the fear in her face, and she's crying.
- She didn't stop or run to my arms.
She run past me.
♪ ♪
And she screamed, "there's a man in my closet."
♪ ♪
And so then the hair on my neck stood up,
And the mood changed.
♪ ♪
- I think I was in just shock, honestly,
And just trying to figure out, what do you do next?
[line rings]
- And about the time I'm trying to process all this,
I see a young man step out around the corner.
♪ ♪
He was a tall, dark-headed, skinny,
In his probably early 20s.
The only thought going through my head at the moment
Was, "get him."
♪ ♪
I didn't know what happened in my daughter's room.
But I was gonna make sure that whatever did happen
Would never happen to anyone else again.
♪ ♪
I ran to him and got ahold of him.
And the fight was on.
♪ ♪
- Tim grabbed him and was like,
"what are you doing in our house?"
♪ ♪
And they were fighting.
♪ ♪
- As I'm struggling with the intruder,
I'm hitting him,
And he's saying, "stop hitting me.
Don't hurt me."
♪ ♪
And my wife is listening to this, and she says...
- "don't hit him. Just don't hit him."
I said, "I think this is the missing kid
That they were looking for."
♪ ♪
- It took a minute for it to register,
What she was saying,
Because I was caught up in my own moment.
So I go through internal struggle.
I'm sitting here hitting this kid,
And he's struggling, and I start thinking,
"oh, my gosh, am I really hurting someone
That may be just scared and lost?"
♪ ♪
- It was one of those experiences that,
You know, you've got so much going on,
You know, between calling 911,
Stopping him from hurting this kid,
And trying to figure out, why is this kid
In my daughter's closet?
- So I had him by the wrist.
He wanted me to let go of him,
And he acted like he was gonna swing at me,
So I slapped him.
And I said, "stop. Calm down."
And he was trying to jerk away from me,
And he jerked to get loose.
He took off running.
And he ran out.
And we have a barbwire fence out there,
And this guy didn't see that fence.
He ran out there, and he jumped up
And just fell over and took off running.
That was the last I saw of him.
♪ ♪
So after he left,
My wife located my daughter outside.
♪ ♪
The first moment I saw my daughter,
I hugged her and asked her if she was okay.
She said yes and started telling me
Her version of the story.
I wanted to get the details before she
Told the cops what had happened.
♪ ♪
First thing I said, "did he touch you?"
"no, he didn't touch me."
"did he you see without clothes on or anything?"
"no."
She told me she had been in and out of her closet
Multiple times, especially when she
Was getting ready for the shower.
And she turned around and saw him standing.
♪ ♪
It scared her. I mean, it was devastating.
That's when she screamed real loud.
And she says she threw her phone at him
And took off out her door.
And he was right behind her.
So I don't know if he was chasing
Or if he was followed or-- I don't know.
Still to this day, I don't know.
♪ ♪
I looked in the closet afterwards and saw
He had scratches all over his arms,
So there was blood up against the wall
Where he had laid underneath the clothes.
After that, the cops were pulling into my driveway.
We all got together with the police
And give our statement.
♪ ♪
And the officer at that point told us
That he had gotten a call
That this young man and his girlfriend
Were sitting at the end of a driveway, doing drugs.
And when they ran the plates and saw that the young man
Had a warrant, they tried to subdue him,
And he jumped up, wrestled with the cop,
And took off running through the woods.
♪ ♪
And I guess we're the first neighborhood
That he come to coming out of the woods.
♪ ♪
- That night, me and my dad, we went and, like,
Looked around to see if he, like,
Ran through one of our friends' backyards.
- And we let the police know that,
As well as all the neighbors,
Where they would be on the lookout,
Keep their doors locked.
And we never found him, so we were pretty confident
That he had made his way on to another area.
♪ ♪
My daughter, she had several hundred dollars
She got for her birthday sitting on the dresser,
And we didn't find out until later that he had stole it.
- He took my birthday money.
How rude. [laughs]
♪ ♪
- And then things got so crazy.
The cops told us this is not the missing boy
That they're looking for.
♪ ♪
So when the cops tell us who it is,
- The cops told us this young man who had been
In the closet in our home
Is not the missing boy that they're looking for
From the neighborhood social media page.
[dramatic music]
So the next day, we hear from our neighbor.
He says, "well, I was driving down the road
"about 8:00 that morning.
"I see a guy walking,
So I pulled over and asked him if he needed a ride."
♪ ♪
"he was freezing. He jumped in."
And at that point, our neighbor text messaged a cop,
And they pull in behind him and pull him over
And get him.
So when the cops tell us who it is,
I recognize the name.
Police identify him as race cox.
♪ ♪
I know this guy.
This is someone I grew up with's son.
His aunt works for me,
And his first cousin
Babysat my daughter.
♪ ♪
We were very close to the family.
He did not know that that was my house.
It was just a random happening.
I was the first house he come to
When he was running, and it was open.
♪ ♪
I had mixed emotions when I found out
That it was a friend's son.
♪ ♪
I was still angry that this happened to my daughter.
But I was also grateful that I didn't, you know,
Hurt the young man, because I had every intention.
- I was really relieved they got him,
'cause I thought he would come back and, like, hurt me.
♪ ♪
- I know his whole family.
They were sorry it happened.
They weren't upset
That I slapped him around a little bit,
Because they understood that it could have been
A bad situation had it been anybody else.
♪ ♪
At the end of the night, we sit down.
You know, I talk to my daughter,
Make sure that everything is okay with her.
She's scared to death.
Didn't want to sleep in her room ever again.
She wanted to move.
And so we understood
And told her, "you can sleep with us if you want to."
♪ ♪
- The first few nights, I did not--
I did not sleep in my room.
That night, I slept with them,
And then I slept on the couch,
And then I started going back to my room.
♪ ♪
Every night, I would have my mom,
Like, check my whole room,
My closet, like, under my clothes.
I'm definitely scared of closets now,
And I'm scared of the dark.
Every time I go to a friend's house, like,
If I spend the night, like, I literally check their closets.
- Just knowing that you were in the house
With a stranger all day is a little scary.
And then to know that he was in my daughter's closet
And that something could have happened to her
Is nerve-racking.
♪ ♪
- Thinking back on it,
It was hard to process.
♪ ♪
You know, we knew this was gonna be our forever home.
And we put a lot of, you know, heart and soul into this home.
♪ ♪
I hate that we ended up selling it.
We just had some bad memories there.
♪ ♪
I just realized you just never know
When something so crazy could happen to you.
♪ ♪
You think you live in a safe neighborhood, a safe town.
And then this happens.
A young woman at her age should not have to worry about
A strange man in her bedroom/bathroom closet.
♪ ♪
It was a major thing, and it stayed with us for a bit.
But life happens, so since then,
We decided to let it go.
♪ ♪
- My friend said,
"I think maybe you should call the police.
And I said, "and say what,
I can't find the rest of my bottle of wine?"
- I am awakened by noises above me.
I felt that I needed a weapon.
It might be me or them.
- I was perpetually being watched.
♪ ♪