Perfect Victim: The True Story of the Girl in the Box by the D. A. That Prosecuted Her Captor

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Some may find it unbelievable that a 20-year-old Oregon woman could be enslaved by a sexual sadist for seven years--that even after being able to move freely during the day, she would allow him to lock her into a wooden box every night. Perhaps it's a minor failing of this book that the authors do not elaborate on the psychology that made her such a "perfect victim." In other respects, though, the story is well told, with an impressive accumulation of details: the woman's capture, the tortures she endured, the brainwashing techniques, the fiendish contraptions her captor constructed, the slave contract he made her sign, and the increasingly strained relations within the peculiar family that included master, slave, wife, and child, all inside a single-wide trailer. As well-known attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi writes, "A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."


From Publishers Weekly
Hitchhiking from Eugene, Ore., through northern California in 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan thumbed a ride into hell. Her kidnappersa sadistic lumber mill worker, Cameron Hooker, and his battered wife Janicesubjected her to seven years of torture and sensory deprivation. She was made a sex slave, kept locked in a wooden box and brainwashed into believing that an underground network of sadists would recapture her if she attempted to escape. Did Colleen fall in love with Cameron and make herself a willing partner in a love triangle, as the Hookers' defense lawyer asserted? The jury found otherwise, convinced by the evidence marshalled by coauthor McGuire, state prosecutor in the case, a trial that journalist Norton attended in 1984. Not for the squeamish, this harrowing tale shuttles between the courtroom and the grisly doings in the Hookers' basement. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Although outwardly an average young couple, Cameron Hooker, a mild-mannered mill worker who excelled at do-it-yourself projects, and Janice, his submissive wife, kidnapped 20-year-old Colleen Stan in 1977 and literally enslaved her for seven yearsmuch of that time she spent in a coffin-like box beneath the couple's waterbed. Hooker's perversions coupled with both women's submissiveness is reminiscent of Pauline Reage's The Story of O (1965). Written by the prosecutor of the People v. Hooker, who is prompted to question her relationship with her own husband, this book lacks the careful insights of Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry's Helter Skelter (1974). A bizarre story, only for the strong of stomach. Christy Zlatos, Auburn Univ. Lib., Ala.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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In 1977 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime. This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion ... and held her captive in a coffinlike box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Colleen Stan's real-life nightmare...and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind.


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