Colleen Stan lived in a box under her captor's bed, was the target of his sadistic fantasies and psychologically tortured by a contract she was forced to sign giving him all rights to her body. A movie based on her experiences will air on Lifetime this Saturday.
“Girl in the Box” stars Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late Robin Williams and Addison Timlin as Colleen Stan. I traveled to Red Bluff to talk to Stan about the movie and life after her captivity.
The case is decades old but the horror of what happened to Colleen Stan has not diminished.
In 1977, Colleen Stan was 20 years old. She was hitchhiking up I-5 and was picked up by a young couple, they had a baby with them. Colleen thought they looked safe.
"The husband looked dirty, like he had just gotten off work, the wife was holding their 7-month-old baby," Colleen remembered.
Once in the car, the couple drove into the country. Colleen was overpowered, handcuffed and a homemade box was put over her head. She was taken to this home in Red Bluff where she was led to the basement. Instruments of torture were waiting.
I first heard of Colleen Stan's story when I was a reporter at the ABC affiliate in Redding, I tried to find her, but she didn't want to be found and people didn't leave digital footprints like they do today. Flash forward 20 years after Jaycee Dugard was found, I started to look for Colleen again. I found a posting on an obscure website under a pseudonym. There was just enough detail to lead me to believe it might be her. I reached out, she reached back and after talking for about a week, she agreed to an interview. That was 2009.
"I have it set up to record," Colleen said when I asked her if she was going to watch the movie. "I may watch it that night, a couple of my friends have said they'll come over and watch it with me. One is my psychiatrist and he said he'd come over and watch it with me. I'll probably cry when I watch it. It looks pretty intense.
Addison Timlin plays Colleen and when Colleen visited the set, the young actress talked about the vulnerability she felt while shooting the torture scenes.
"She was in the basement, naked and blindfolded and gagged and handcuffed and they couldn't take these things off in between takes because it would take too much time," Colleen said. "So she had to stay like this for several hours."
Colleen lived the nightmare for 8 years, much of it in a box under Cameron Hooker's bed, something that most people find to be just as shocking as the torture and sexual abuse.
"In your mind, you can go anywhere and you can do anything," Colleen said."I've heard a lot of POWs say they've done the same thing I did. You just have to go someplace else in your mind. You have nice thoughts. I thought of my family, I went on picnics, I went on holidays with my family. I went to good and nice places."
Colleen says she isn't religious but she truly feels God spoke to her during those dark times in t
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