Six kidnapping victims who refused to wait quietly for someone else to save them.
Here at ListImmerse, we cover plenty of escapes that sound impossible. These six are different because the victims did more than survive until help arrived.
They watched, remembered, left trails, and took risks while trying not to reveal what they were doing. Sometimes the difference between captivity and freedom was nothing more than a phone left in the right place.
#6 Carlesha Freeland-Gaither Left a Trail
On the night of November 2, 2014, Carlesha Freeland-Gaither was walking home in Philadelphia when a man forced her into a car. Part of the abduction was captured by a security camera, but investigators still had to figure out where she had been taken.
Carlesha quietly helped them.
Her phone was found near the scene. Police believed she may have deliberately dropped it during the struggle, giving them immediate confirmation of her identity. Later, when her captor demanded the PIN for her bank card, she gave him the correct number.
That might sound like cooperation, but it created another clue. When he used the card at an ATM in Maryland, the transaction gave investigators a new location and helped them follow his movements.
Police eventually identified the suspect as Delvin Barnes and tracked his vehicle to Jessup, Maryland. Three days after the kidnapping, federal agents found Carlesha alive inside the car and arrested Barnes.
She could not contact the police directly or know which clues they would find. She simply kept leaving them something to work with.
#5 Elizabeth Shoaf Sent One Message From Underground
Elizabeth Shoaf was fourteen when she disappeared after stepping off her school bus near Lugoff, South Carolina, on September 6, 2006.
Her kidnapper, Vinson Filyaw, approached her wearing what looked like a police uniform. He threatened to arrest her, placed her in handcuffs, and led her into the woods. There, he held her inside a concealed underground bunker roughly a mile from her home.
Elizabeth remained captive for ten days.
During that time, she worked to gain Filyaw’s trust and paid attention to every detail she could. When he eventually fell asleep with his phone nearby, she took it and sent a text message to her mother.
The message confirmed that Elizabeth was alive. It also identified Filyaw and gave investigators enough information to begin narrowing down her location. Authorities used signals from nearby cell towers to search the surrounding woodland.
When officers approached the bunker on September 16, Elizabeth called out to them. They found her alive near its entrance. Filyaw had fled but was arrested the following morning.
After ten days underground, one carefully timed message gave police the break they had been waiting for.
#4 Jayme Closs Waited Until the House Was Empty
Jayme Closs was thirteen when Jake Patterson entered her family’s home near Barron, Wisconsin, on October 15, 2018. He killed her parents and forced Jayme into his car before taking her to a remote cabin about seventy miles away.
She was held there for 88 days.
Patterson controlled where she could move and sometimes forced her beneath his bed, blocking the surrounding space with heavy objects so she could not get out. Jayme later told investigators that he warned her terrible things would happen if she tried to escape.
On January 10, 2019, Patterson left the cabin for several hours. Jayme pushed aside the objects around the bed, put on a pair of his oversized shoes, and ran outside.
She soon encountered Jeanne Nutter, who was walking nearby. Nutter recognized Jayme from the missing-person posters that had circulated across Wisconsin and brought her to a neighbor’s house, where they called 911.
Jayme immediately identified Patterson and described his vehicle. Deputies spotted and arrested him while he was driving back toward the cabin.
For nearly three months, Jayme had been waiting for the house to be empty. When it finally was, she did not hesitate.
#3 Mary Stauffer Removed the Hinge Pin
On May 16, 1980, Mary Stauffer and her eight-year-old daughter, Beth, were abducted from a parking lot in Roseville, Minnesota.
The kidnapper was Ming Sen Shiue, a former algebra student of Mary’s who had spent years obsessing over her. He held them inside his home for 53 days, keeping them bound and confined in a closet for much of that time.
Mary made several attempts to leave clues and get help, but Shiue was careful. Then, on July 7, he left for work after securing Mary and Beth with a cable looped through the top hinge of the closet door.
Mary remembered watching her father remove door hinges when she was younger. Without a hammer or tools, she pushed at the hinge pin until it lifted free. Once the pin was out, she slipped the cable loose and freed herself and Beth.
Mary had also found a dry-cleaning tag inside the closet bearing the house’s address. She used an upstairs telephone to call the authorities and tell them exactly where to find them.
Police rescued Mary and Beth and arrested Shiue at his business later that day.
After 53 days, their escape came down to one loose hinge pin and Mary recognizing what she could do with it.
#2 The Colleyville Hostages Created Their Own Opening
On January 15, 2022, a gunman entered Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, during a Sabbath service. He took four people hostage, including Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker.
The standoff lasted for hours.
One hostage was eventually released, but the remaining three stayed inside as negotiators tried to keep the situation from escalating. Cytron-Walker watched the gunman closely and looked for an opportunity to move. Security training he had received before the attack helped him understand that waiting quietly might not remain the safest option.
After roughly eleven hours, the gunman became increasingly agitated. Cytron-Walker noticed that he was no longer positioned well and appeared distracted.
That was the opening.
The rabbi told the other hostages to run and threw a chair toward the gunman. All three rushed for an exit and made it outside. Members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team entered the building immediately afterward and killed the hostage-taker during the confrontation.
None of the hostages suffered serious physical injuries.
The rescue teams were already waiting outside, but the final chance to reach them began with the people trapped in the room recognizing that it was time to move.
#1 The Chowchilla Kidnapping
On July 15, 1976, a school bus carrying twenty-six children was traveling through Chowchilla, California, when three armed men blocked the road.
The kidnappers forced driver Ed Ray and the children into two vans. They were driven around for hours with the windows covered, then taken to a quarry near Livermore more than one hundred miles away.
There, the group was ordered down a ladder into a moving van that had been buried underground. The kidnappers sealed the opening with a heavy steel plate, covered it with dirt, and placed industrial batteries on top.
Inside, the air was getting worse. The roof began to buckle beneath the weight above them.
Ray and some of the older children stacked mattresses until they could reach the ceiling. Fourteen-year-old Michael Marshall began digging through the dirt while Ray worked to shift the plate blocking the opening. After hours of effort, they finally created enough space for Marshall to climb through.
He moved the batteries and helped open a path for everyone else.
All twenty-six children and Ed Ray escaped alive. They had spent about sixteen hours beneath the ground.
The Chowchilla kidnapping takes the number one spot because this was not one person finding an unlocked door. It was twenty-seven people trapped inside a buried vehicle, working together before the ceiling gave way.
Sources & Image Credits
CBS Philadelphia: Carlesha Freeland-Gaither’s Abduction and Rescue
CNN: Elizabeth Shoaf’s Rescue After Ten Days Underground
CBS News: Criminal Complaint in the Jayme Closs Case
Fox News: Mary Stauffer Describes Her Escape
FBI: The Colleyville Synagogue Hostage Crisis
CBS News: The Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping
Image Credits
The images in this article are AI-assisted visual reenactments. The Chowchilla illustration also incorporates a genuine archival photograph of the buried trailer’s interior.
Chowchilla trailer interior photograph, Joe Kennedy, Los Angeles Times Archive at UCLA
AI-assisted scenes are illustrations and should not be interpreted as original photographs.
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