Sign up to get updates from us
Colleen Stan hitchhiked out of Eugene, Oregon on May 19, 1977. She was kidnapped by Cameron and Jan Hooker and held as a sex slave for seven years. She was locked in a small coffin-like wooden box the Hookers kept under their bed. Colleen was forced to sign a slavery contract and she was told about an organized crime group called "The Company" that could harm her or her family if she didn't comply. Colleen is a survivor.
https://www.drinkingthecoolaid.com/
RESOURCES:
This is one of the most horrific nightmarish stories of torture, but it's also a story of survival. In 1977, when Colleen Stan was 20 years old, she moved to Eugene, Oregon with her friends. She had been living in Riverside and wanted to try something new. On May 19th, 1977, her car wouldn't start, so she decided to hitchhike. Colleen Stan left around 11 AM with her roommates, Alice and Bob, who drove her to the freeway. Colleen got out and put her thumb up, waiting for a ride. She planned on heading to Westwood in Northern California to see her friend, Linda for her birthday. It was a Thursday and she was going to be back on Saturday. The first ride she got was from a student who was going a short distance and they drove together for a half hour. A carload of guys offered to give her a ride, but she felt like it was too risky and she turned them down. Another car stopped, but the couple said they were only going a short distance, so she turned them down too. By 4PM, She took her second ride and made it all the way down to Red Bluff.
She needed to exit the freeway, head east, and she had about 100 miles left to go. A blue Dodge Colt pulled over and Colleen saw a young couple inside and the woman was holding a baby in her arms. The couple wore faded clothing and appeared to be about the same age as Colleen. She accepted the offer to get a ride from them and hopped in. Colleen was carrying a jug of grape juice with her and when she went to take a sip, the driver accelerated and she spilled the juice all over herself. The driver gave his wife a look, she frowned and shook her head, but didn't say anything. Colleen did notice that the driver of the car kept glancing at her in the rear view mirror and it was making her nervous. The couple started asking her tons of questions about herself and asked why she was hitchhiking. She told them about going to see her friend Linda and mentioned that it was a surprise, her friend wasn't expecting her. She got a weird tingly feeling up her spine while they questioned her, but brushed it off.
After awhile, the driver stopped for gas and Colleen went to the bathroom to change her blouse. A voice in her head kept telling her to escape and she glanced at a small window, but she thought she must be crazy. When everyone got back in the vehicle, the wife handed out candy bars and they all chatted for awhile about ice caves. There was a wooden box in the backseat that hadn't been there before. It was square and had latches on it. The driver said his brother told him about some ice caves and they should go see them. Colleen said she didn't mind taking a small detour and soon, they were off the highway. The wife got out of the car with the baby and the driver jumped in the back and put a knife to Colleen's throat. The man forced her to put her hands above her head and he put handcuffs on her. He pulled out a piece of cloth and tied it tightly around her eyes and demanded that Colleen do everything he tells her to. He tightened a leather strap around her head and it made it impossible for her to open her jaw. That box that was sitting on the seat next to Colleen had a purpose too. The man had created the box out of plywood and it weighed almost 20 pounds. It was insulated and hinged with metal. There was a hole at the bottom of this carpeted box. He forced Colleen to lie down and he put her head in the box and he closed it. This box shut out all light and muffled the sound. It also pressed tightly around her head, so Colleen's breathing turned to gasps. This contraption became known as the head box. The man covered Colleen with a sleeping bag, then he called for his wife and infant daughter and they continued on their journey.
Colleen wondered why the woman hadn't reacted to the situation when she got in, but she realized that she must be in on this whole thing too. They drove around for a long time and stopped for fast food. They took the head box and sleeping bag off of Colleen while the couple sat in the front and ate. When they were finished, they locked her back up and they waited until it was dark before they headed to their home. Colleen was lead inside the house, through a narrow door, and a down a steep flight of stairs to the basement with her kidnapper. He put her on a Coleman ice chest, which is a small cooler, just big enough for her to stand on and he hooked her arms to a pipe on the ceiling above her head with leather bands, and took her clothes off. As she thrashed around, her kidnapper whipped her.
Her blindfold slipped just a smidge and she could see a magazine that had a naked woman hanging, just like her. At this point, Colleen came to a terrifying realization. Her roommates weren't expecting her back until Saturday and her family had no idea that she hitchhiked anywhere. The man went and got his wife, brought her to the basement and the two of them had sex while Colleen hung from the ceiling above them. She had an ice chest under her, but the man would occasionally move it, and just sit and watch her dangle. Afterwards, he actually took her down and lead her to another contraption he built. It was a square box that he put her in, face first. This left her back open, so he could put cuffs and chains on her and they were locked to the roof of the box. Her head was exposed, so the head box was put on her as well. The man also tied cord around her ankles so she couldn't kick.
The man left her alone for awhile, but came back and yelled because she was making so much noise. He told her if she screamed, he would cut her vocal chords and he's done it before. She told him she couldn't breathe in the head box and begged for him to remove it. Instead, he wrapped a strap around her chest and tightened it, so she couldn't expand her chest while breathing and he put an object between her legs which was an electrical gadget designed to shock her, but luckily, the device didn't work. The kidnappers left Colleen alone and locked up all night, but the man kept stopping by to quietly touch her back. The man's name is Cameron Hooker and this horrifying situation was obviously a fantasy of his. He had planned this whole thing for a LONG time....ever since he told his wife about it two years prior. Colleen didn't know his name until she saw it on his belt through the bottom of her blindfold.
When Cameron was younger, he was described as a happy kid, but he generally kept to himself. He had a game he would play with other kids. He would pretend he had a button in the middle of his back and other kids would press it and he would fall over and pretend he was dead. By the time he was in high school, he was deemed an outcast and didn't have any close friends. He did excel at one thing and that was shop class. He was very good with tools and construction. He kept to himself a lot and had many fantasies in his head about having absolute power over people that were scared. Once he started getting into porn magazines, that just fueled the fire.
After high school, Cameron got a job at the local lumber mill. The work was described as a bit mindless and this gave him tons of free time to let his mind wander and think about how he wanted to dominate women. In 1973, one of Cameron's friends introduced him to Janice. She was 15 years old and very insecure. Cameron was 19 at the time, but they started dating. Growing up, Janice was extremely jealous of her older sister, Lisa because she felt that she was the favorite and always got all of the attention. Janice had epilepsy as a kid and this is why she thought her parent's didn't like her much. She believed that her father thought people who had epilepsy were possessed by demons, so she felt rejected. She says that it didn't matter how a guy treated her, good or bad, she would latch onto them because any attention felt good.
After a year and a half of dating, Jan lied to Cameron and said she was pregnant and she wanted him to marry her. She was 16 years old and her parents weren't in love with the idea of marriage, but they gave their permission because she was pregnant, but Jan figured it was their way of finally getting rid of her. Cameron and Jan got married on January 18th, 1975 in Reno, Nevada. Jan dropped out of high school and the two of them had to get by on very little money. Unfortunately, the experiments ramped up after marriage. Cameron would choke Jan until she would pass out and they started fighting. He put a knife to her throat during one of the arguments and asked her is she wanted to die. He showed her a story in a newspaper about a crucifixion and said that if he killed her, that's how he would do it. Jan tried to be very submissive for the first few years of their marriage and went along with almost every experiment, but the she couldn't do the gas mask.
Cameron got an Army gas mask and he taped over the eye and air-holes. Jan was really scared of this, so he would gag her to stop her from screaming when he would shove it on her head. This is when Cameron started talking about his fantasy to bring another woman home. One who couldn't say no. He told Jan he would go easier on her if he could do his experiments on someone else. Jan worried that it would ruin their marriage if they brought another woman into it. She insisted that if they did this, he couldn't have sex with the other woman. They came to an agreement. Cameron could kidnap someone, but he had to get Jan pregnant, she wanted to be a mother.
The couple moved into a small house that had a basement. Cameron got to work constructing this into a torture house. He built a platform with hooks at each corner so the leather cuffs could be attached. He put hooks in the ceiling for hanging and he started to build the head box. Finding the right person ended up being the task that took the longest. Jan got pregnant and had a baby girl in the fall of 1976. Cameron had all the equipment he needed in his car and he stalked a few women, but he didn't manage to kidnap them.
On May 19th, 1977, Cameron finished his shift and came home from work around 4PM. He picked up his wife and daughter and they went for a drive. They drove around for a half hour and that's when they spotted Colleen. So, we already discussed Colleen's first horrendous night with her abductors. The next morning, Cameron took her out of the box and laid her down on the table he built and chained her up and left the head box on her. She stayed like this for the whole day. That night, she was given her first meal. The head box was removed, but she was still blindfolded and chained while she ate. They started feeding her about once every 24 hours and when she didn't finish her meal, Cameron would whip her until she passed out. And this became the routine. One meal a day, torture, and isolation.
Colleen's roommate did notice her absence and got very worried. She was supposed to be back by May 21st, but it was the 23rd and she still hadn't shown up. Alice called Colleen's mother to see if she had seen her, but she hadn't. The next day, on the 24th, she called the police and they were able to confirm that Colleen never made it to her friend, Linda's house, so a missing person report was filed.
It was really difficult to find Colleen because she had been hitch hiking and there's really no way to trace this. There's no cellphones to track, no social media, people paid with cash, there was nothing to go on. The police believed that she just went off on her own and wasn't telling anyone. Her case was just filed and forgotten. Back at the Hooker house, Jan was throwing all of her attention to her baby. She now feared the basement and didn't want to be around Colleen and would carry a shotgun when she went to check on her. As if Colleen could do anything to her while she's tied up. Cameron went about his normal routine, and went to work everyday. Colleen obviously had LOTS of time to think and she wondered how she could overpower Cameron. Well, she couldn't because he was much bigger and stronger...what if she could persuade him to let her go? She wondered if she could try to understand him and help him, so he'd want to release her.
She thought a lot about her life that she missed so much. She loved poetry and would often write and design cards to show people how much she loved them. She had dropped out of high school when she was 16 and married 22 year old Tom Stan. She had moved to Ohio with her husband, but things didn't work out and within a year, Colleen returned home to Riverside. She took the high school exam and passed, but had trouble figuring out where she belonged until she met Alice and Bob. She got along with them and their 2 year old son so well and that's when she moved to Eugene to live with them. She didn't know how she'd get her old life back, but decided to pray for her freedom. Pray for wisdom to understand her captor. Pray to be rescued. Pray to escape. Pray for survival.
At Cameron's job, the employees often took home lumber or different materials. Cameron grabbed some particle board for his next project. He built a box that was three feet tall, 6 ½ feet long and had a lid. It was double walled so it was very confined and coffin like. Once it was finished, Colleen was placed in the box, naked and blindfolded. Her neck, wrists, and ankles were chained and earplugs were put in her ears. Colleen had been in this home for 5 weeks and still hadn't been bathed, she couldn't brush her teeth or her hair and she just laid in her sweat each day. Cameron installed a device to her coffin that would circulate some air through the holes he drilled in the side. It did nothing to help with the temperature and the motor had a high pitched whining noise.
Cameron did realize that Colleen had dramatically lost weight, so he got a scale and he started tracking it. After three months had gone by Cameron finally decided Colleen needed a bath. He tied her up, tied a broomstick to her legs and put her face down in the bathtub. He took photos of her while she struggled. After he dunked her many times, he had his wife, Jan try to work on the knots in her hair. She ended up having to cut a lot of Colleen's hair off because she just couldn't do anything with it.
Cameron spent a lot of time in the basement with Colleen. He would hang her and put a heat lamp against her skin to burn her, he tried touching her with live electrical wires, he would hang her upside down, strangle her, and he started forcing her to give him blow jobs. When he electrocuted her, he would tell her that he was doing it because he liked her.
Cameron decided that he no longer wanted Colleen to just lay around everyday, he wanted her to work, so he made her sand, but she was still blindfolded and had the head box on. His new design fit under the staircase, so it was triangular shaped and it had a door, ceiling, and light. There was a concrete floor and Cameron carpeted the walls for soundproofing. This worked great because Cameron was starting to get worried about leaving Colleen out too long in the basement in case someone stopped by the house. Or what if a neighbor heard too much noise and tried to look in the windows? Colleen was placed in this new closet, she was blindfolded, but she wasn't chained up. Cameron left walnuts at her feet and said that she could remove the blindfold and shell the nuts once he left. This was the first time in 6 months that she wasn't blindfolded. This was the start of a new routine. Now, Colleen spent all day locked in the coffin box, she would eat at night, be hung from the ceiling, and then she would spend the night in the new contraption called the workshop. At night, she was given projects to do, like macrame or crochet. Jan would take her creations to flea markets to sell them.
In 1978, Cameron was reading an underground newspaper and he saw an article that caught his attention and he read it over and over. It was a slavery contract. He wanted to duplicate the letter, so he rented a typewriter and had Jan type it up. They also used stencils for the calligraphy at the top and put a seal at the bottom that had an S with a cross through it. There were blank spots for signatures and it looked very legit. On January 25th, 1978, Cameron went to the basement and opened the door of the workshop. This was the very first time Colleen had ever seen him without the blindfold on. He handed her a clipboard and pen and told her to practice writing her name, then he handed her the newspaper article and told her to read it. The underground newspapers are produced without official approval.
This was a paper produced around the 60s and 70s. So, he showed her an article about the sex trade industry and it said that slaves that ran away were tortured or killed. Colleen felt that she was never going to escape this and he told her that if she didn't sign it, he would sign it for her and make her wish she had. The contract gave false names for her captors, it said they were Michael and Janet Powers. She asked why his belt said Cameron and he told her that was his name, but they have different names with the company.
The contract changed her name to K Powers. Not KAY, just the letter K. She believed the contract wholeheartedly and was under the impression that the company would harm her family if she tried to leave.
The article said that women are forced to sign contracts totally relinquishing control over their lives, their bodies, their souls. Sold into slavery, these women have no rights and no recourse; their owners can do with them whatever they wish. An underground brotherhood of slave traders, as large and well-oiled as the Mafia, not only controls this traffic in young flesh, but also enforces order, hunting down and punishing runaways. At the end of the article, there was a picture of a naked and bound woman. Cameron said, they know you're here. For a fleeting moment, Colleen thought he meant the police, but Cameron said The Company knows. He said a representative was upstairs waiting for her to sign. In the article, it says that The Company is a network of slave traders who turned captive women into profit. The Company found out about Colleen and wanted her to be registered.
Jan handed the slavery contract to Colleen and Cameron said The Company was going to take her away if she didn't sign. The contract did look exactly like the one it the paper. I'm going to read it, try not to vomit. It read:
THIS INDENTURE, Made the 25th day of January in the yer of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Eight, BETWEEN Colleen Stan, hereafter known as Slave, AND Michael Powers, hereafter known as MASTER, WITNESETH:
That Slave, for and in consideration and in humble appreciated on such care and attention as Master may choose to afford her, has given granted, aliened, enfeoffed (en-feef-ed and conveyed, and by these Presents does give, grant, enfeoff and convey unto Master:
All of Slave's body, and each and every part thereof without reservation, every bit of her will as to all matters and things, and the entirety of her Soul TOGETHER with, all and singular, every privilege, advantage, and appurtenance to the same belonging or in anywise appertaining:
ALSO all the estate, right, title, interest, property, claims, ego and ID of the Slave in, of and to the same and in, of and to every part and parcel thereof;
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, all and singular, the above-described body, will, Soul and premisis, with all appurtenances therof, unto Master and any of His assigns forever.
AND the said Slave does covenant, promise and agree:
AND Slave does hereby irrevocably declare and acknowledge her everlasting unconditional dedication to serving Master to His full satisfaction; AND she ashamedly confesses that prior to indulgence of her untempted conduct by others may have permitted her to become afflicted with inferior habits that may prove unsatisfactory to Master, from which imperfections she implores Master to free her by restraining with corporal punishment or any other means which He, in His unquestionable wisdom, deems effective toward directing her to her sole ambition and life-destiny of perfectly fulfilling His every desire of her.
IN WITNESS Whereof, Slave has hereunto set her hand, and Master has designed to Seal these Presents by permanently affixing His Collar about her neck, on the date first above written.
With tears pouring down her face, Colleen signed the contract on the line that said Forever Slave. Cameron put a collar around her neck and said The Company requires this for identification. He said it cost him $1500 to register her with the company, but now she would be allowed to do things around the house and The Company would provide security, monitor their phones, and watch them. If she tried to run away, The Company would torture her IF she survived. He actually told Colleen that Jan used to be a slave and tried to escape. He said she was hitchhiking and a policeman picked her up. Jan thought she was safe, but the policeman was part of The Company and brought her back to her owners who nailed her up by the hands and she was hung for three days until she had convulsions and they had to bring her down, then they put her on a rack and twisted her legs and now she has permanent knee and hip damage.
He said that Jan had to go back to work for her owners at Rent-a-Dungeon. This was a den of sex workers and members would pay a fee, pick a girl, and take her into the dungeon to torture her. If you killed someone, you have to pay a $10k fine. Cameron said that he saw Jan and felt sorry for her when she worked there, so he offered to help her escape and to get her surgery to fix the nail hole scars on her hands. Colleen knew the torture Cameron was into....what would the torture be like if someone from The Company got her? Maybe it was worse? So, she had to obey the contract. That meant always remembering to address Cameron as Master or sir and Jan was Ma'am. She couldn't cross her legs and she must kneel before her master to ask questions or permission to do anything.
Now that the rules were established, Colleen was allowed to come out of the basement to do chores around the house at night. She also had limited access to the bathroom, but she had to kneel and ask permission first. Cameron came up with a disgusting thing he called the “attention drill.” Whenever he shouted attention, she had to immediately strip off her clothes, stand on her tiptoes, and reach her hands up and touch the top of the arched doorway in the living room and she had to stand like that until he released her. A few weeks after the contract was signed, Cameron casually tossed a plastic card at Colleen and said he received it from The Company. It was a registration card that acknowledged who the slave and master were and she was supposed to keep it.
As time went on, Cameron fed Colleen more and more lies about The Company. He said that he and his brother were actually raised around the slave-trading business and he earned money by tracking down the ones that ran away. His father and brother were no longer active in The Company, but if they found out he had a slave, they would probably want to borrow her. He said that one time, a woman ran away and wrote an article about what happened to her, The Company found her three months later and they pulled her fingers off one at a time, then her toes. A member who was a surgeon, removed her arms and legs without an anesthetic and she was alive and they cut her tongue out and destroyed her hearing and blinded her with a soldering gun. Then, she was hung from her hair on a hook by her master's bed. Obviously this isn't real, but this is the horrific shit that he's telling her to make her fear leaving or telling anyone. He wanted her to know that she was better off staying with him.
When Cameron and Jan planned the kidnapping, she made it clear that he couldn't do anything sexual to someone else. He could torture Colleen, but that's it. She eventually started to wonder if he had broken that promise. One day, she asked him if he wanted to bring Colleen upstairs to have sex and was hoping he would say no, but he ran to the basement and brought her up and tied her to the bed. Colleen didn't even know Jan was in the room because she was blindfolded. That was the first time he raped her.....in his bed, in front of his wife. Jan started crying and threw up.
The house that the Hookers lived in wasn't ideal because they did have close neighbors and they were getting worried. They ended up buying an acre of land and got a single-wide trailer. They had a few neighbors, but they weren't super close. They wouldn't have to worry about a landlord stopping by anymore. Cameron built a waterbed with an elaborate base, so they could fit Colleen in a box underneath. She entered the box at the end of the bed and would crawl inside. Then, Cameron placed a board across the opening, bolted it shut, and covered it with a panel. She had a bedpan inside the box, so she had to lay in there with that. She was let out for about an hour a day and she had to eat, brush her teeth, clean her bedpan, and do chores. She could shower every two weeks.
When Cameron had a day off work, he would put Colleen to work outside. Filling ditches, cleaning pipes, pulling weeds, or gardening. One time, he made her dig a rectangle hole and he didn't offer any explanation for this. Colleen thought she was digging her own grave, but he had her bury a heavy plank. He laid down a cement foundation and started construction. It was going to be an outbuilding to hang and torture her in since they no longer had a basement. When he hung her, if she kicked or cried out in pain, he would whip her. The first time she was hung in the shed, she was flailing and accidentally kicked Jan in the stomach and she was pregnant. She was blindfolded and had no idea what she had done, but Cameron was furious. He ran to the house to get matches and started burning her breasts. She was able to distance herself from the pain and just went completely still and she refused to cry in front of him.
Cameron did start becoming a bit paranoid and decided he couldn't take his pregnant wife to the hospital when their second child was born. He thought someone might switch babies with them. He convinced Jan to have the baby at home and they could call the doctor if there was an emergency. Colleen was under the bed in a box as the baby was born right above her. Once the child was born, the Hookers realized that they needed to make more money, so Jan got a job at a fast food restaurant. Cameron worked during the day and Jan would work a few hours at night. Jan had no idea that Cameron was taking Colleen out of the box every night so she could take care of the children.
During the nights, Colleen worked on macrame projects and apparently didn't follow direction on it. As a punishment, she was strapped down and shocked with electrical wires and this permanently scarred her thighs. Cameron built something called the stretcher. Once Colleen was fastened to it, he would turn the winch and that tightened the chain which stretched her. He would also choke her until she blacked out during this.
One thing I really want to go over is how the Hookers did have people over to their place....often. Jan's parents stopped by weekly and Cameron's brother stopped over a lot too. They tried to be very careful about what times they let Colleen out. They also got a dog so the barking could alert them of visitors. On one occasion, Colleen was on the floor scrubbing and Cameron's father walked inside. She was wearing a nightgown, no underwear per the contract, so Cameron had to shove her in the bedroom to get dressed. She was introduced to Cameron's father as K and said she helped around the house.
In 1979, Jan asked Colleen what she would like for a gift. She didn't know what it was for, but she worked up the courage to ask for a Bible. She did actually receive a Bible January 11th. The front page was signed and dated by Cameron and Jan. The prayers gave Colleen inspiration and she read the Bible whenever she got a chance to be in the light. Colleen refers to a certain timeframe as “the year out” she was out for longer periods of time each day. She worked outside in the vegetable garden, babysat the two kids, and she was allowed to shop in town sometimes. She was proving herself and the Hookers trusted her. When she went out, she obviously couldn't wear a collar around her neck, so Cameron had another idea. He told Colleen that the company still needs her to wear identification, so he took a needle and pierced her....and placed a gold earring through her right labia. He said it was a symbolic wedding ring.
RESOURCES:
SNAPPED S99 E7 Notorious: The Girl in the Box
Perfect Victim by Christine McGuire and Carla Norton
