The Terrifying Story Of Elizabeth Shoaf, The 14-Year-Old Who Was Kidnapped And Held In A Bunker For 10 Days

After Elizabeth Shoaf was kidnapped by 36-calendar year-aged Vinson Filyaw, she did all the things she could to escape — and finally succeeded when she stole his telephone to ship a text to her mother.

For 10 harrowing times in September 2006, 14-12 months-aged Elizabeth Shoaf was held in an underground bunker by a rapist named Vinson Filyaw.

Filyaw had posed as a law enforcement officer and “arrested” Shoaf just soon after she had gotten off the faculty bus. Then, he led her by way of the woods to a dank bunker, the place he sexually assaulted her frequently for times.

Even with the perilous scenario she observed herself in, on the other hand, Shoaf managed to switch the tables on her captor. She won his have confidence in by pretending to be in love with him, and when he allow his guard down, she employed it to her benefit.

1 night, even though he was sleeping, Shoaf utilised Filyaw’s cellular phone to text her mom, producing, “Hi mother. I’m in a hole across from Charm Hill where by the large vehicles go in and out. There is a bomb. Phone police.”

She led police straight to the bunker — and saved herself.

Vinson Filyaw Was “A Human being That Retains A Grudge”

Vinson Filyaw was a troubled guy. His father died when he was an infant, and his mom remarried, but as he spelled out to NBC’s Dateline, he had “pretty significantly a typical family” following his mom remarried.

“I mean, almost nothing traumatic. Nothing at all you would imagine would make a particular person go out and do some thing crazy or psychotic or anything at all like that,” he reported.

As a teen, Filyaw was a Boy Scout who relished the outdoor and tenting. He had fallen in appreciate with the Rambo movies and savored martial arts, but he fell in adore with one thing else as well, some thing that doctors afterwards claimed broken his brain: liquor.

Filyaw was effectively in the throes of alcoholism just before he achieved full adulthood, so when he later on started seeing a woman named Cindy Corridor, he considered their marriage as his redemption from alcoholism. Corridor was a solitary mom of 3, and Filyaw started doing the job design to provide for her and the children, with whom he claims he had turn out to be close — specially with the little one he referred to as Peanut.

“Me and her grew serious shut,” he stated. “I suggest, we ended up inseparable you know? She pretty substantially felt like she was my little, second housewife if you know what I necessarily mean.”

Then, to the finish of 2005, Peanut informed her trainer that Filyaw experienced been sexually assaulting her. In November of that 12 months, a choose issued a research warrant for Filyaw. Police collected information, talked to men and women who labored with Filyaw, and corroborated Peanut’s tale. All symptoms pointed to Filyaw likely to jail.

From his Dateline interview, it was apparent that Filyaw resented equally Peanut and the police.

“Kershaw County [Police] never ever came and questioned me,” he explained. “Instead they questioned anyone I worked with. You know, they never arrived in the household. Why not talk to me no matter whether I did a little something or not?”

Filyaw actually did not want to go to jail — so he resolved to get started living in the woods. At 1st, he camped out in a tent, but then he commenced creating designs for a bunker, and he started digging.

In accordance to Filyaw, this bunker experienced “all the furnishings of house,” including a solar shower, a propane gasoline stove, a fireplace, and a collapsible leading. He saved a cell telephone in the bunker and powered every thing by using a 12-volt process.

In spite of all of his problems retaining this location a mystery, it was shockingly shut to his backyard, and at evening he would often sneak out to see Hall.

But Peanut was gone. She experienced been placed into foster care. And Filyaw could not let the perceived sleight against him go unpunished.

“I guess you could say I’m a human being that holds a grudge,” he admitted.

He went to a close by Wal-Mart and picked up handcuffs, night time eyesight goggles, a taser, and a gun. He experienced intended to kidnap and abuse Peanut, but with her properly with an additional household, Filyaw experienced to make a new system.

“The next system was to kidnap somebody else,” Filyaw stated, “and to generally, to attract all of Kershaw County into one common area and then just blow them all up.”

By pure probability, that any person ended up currently being Elizabeth Shoaf.

The Kidnapping Of Elizabeth Shoaf

Filyaw ongoing to skulk about the woods on the lookout for his up coming target — and he observed her on Sept. 6, 2006, when he saw Elizabeth Shoaf stage off her school bus.

According to an A&E report, Filyaw experienced crafted himself a bogus cop costume and badge. Disguising himself as a police officer, he approached Shoaf, made up a story about a marijuana charge, and positioned the 14-calendar year-outdated in handcuffs.

He did not preserve the masquerade up for extensive, while, as he led Shoaf as a result of the woods and again to his bunker. There, he purchased her to strip naked, chained her by the neck, and raped her.

He ongoing to sexually assault her over her 10 times in the bunker. Even now, this abduction was under no circumstances really about Shoaf — or so Filyaw later claimed.

“I was in a recreation manner,” the abductor reported. “My a person and only intent was to get back at Kershaw County, at all value. It all fell collectively like clockwork. I imply, I didn’t have to do nearly anything.”

Shoaf soon recognized that if she at any time hoped to escape from this underground jail, then her only hope was to make Filyaw like her.

“I normally would do what he informed me to do,” she later explained. “And like he’d generally connect with me child. So I’d connect with him that back. And he’d convey to me he liked me, and I told him I love him. Which is — I’d act like I genuinely liked him and I required to be with him.”

Shoaf’s ploy worked. An odd marriage produced between them, and Filyaw quickly commenced to present his victim some semblance of pity. He unchained her, allow her go outside, and sometimes permitted her to perform games on his telephone.

Then, a single night though Filyaw was sleeping, Shoaf adopted through on her approach — and despatched a text that would save her lifestyle.

How Elizabeth Shoaf Saved Herself

“Hi mother,” the textual content read. “I’m in a gap across from Allure Hill exactly where the big vans go in and out. There’s a bomb. Contact law enforcement.”

Detectives were being skeptical at first. This was either a person of the most unbelievable breakthroughs in a missing folks scenario they had ever observed or it was almost nothing a lot more than a cruel prank. Fortunately, investigators recognized the textual content was, in simple fact, from Shoaf and moved into motion.

Filyaw, meanwhile, experienced been preserving a shut eye on news reviews about him. The U.S. Marshal’s Office traced the phone’s spot and law enforcement and helicopters speedily surrounded the bunker.

Filyaw observed the report on how police acquired of the bunker’s location through a text and flew into a rage — but he was fearful and panicked, far too.

“I instructed him he necessary to depart due to the fact if they’d catch him, he would go to jail,” Shoaf recalled.

Filyaw’s approach was coming to fruition he experienced the Kershaw County Law enforcement specifically where he needed them — and then he fled. He would afterwards explain to investigators that he didn’t actually want to die. He experienced planned to steal a car and make his escape, but he was entirely surrounded.

“There was cops everywhere you go,” he mentioned. “So I bought down on my knees and place my arms up in the air… I suggest, all three of [the cops] just jumped on me and beat the crap out of me. Truthfully, I believed they ended up likely to kill me just after they started off beating me like that.”

Immediately after his arrest, Filyaw tried out to choose edge to the morbid notoriety he’d earned with his cruelty towards Shoaf.

He wrote a 120-page manuscript about his crime, which includes various references to the reality that persons utilised to get married at 12, which he observed as justification for his actions.

Shoaf, on the other hand, moved on with her existence. Detectives read her screaming and discovered her, but they refused to just take any credit history for her rescue.

“I been given credit history numerous instances for conserving her and I did not,” recalled previous main investigator David Thomley. “That youngster saved herself.”

Shoaf at some point graduated from school and began performing as a dental assistant. In 2013, she spoke about her encounter and how she moved on from it, indicating, “You can be a survivor just like I am. It simply will take religion, it can take conversing to an individual and encouragement that it is not the conclude of the globe.”

---

Right after studying about Elizabeth Shoaf’s remarkable survival, study the story of Mary Vincent, the woman who survived getting kidnapped and maimed by killer Lawrence Singleton. Then, find out about Brian David Mitchell, the deranged street preacher who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart.