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Hi, I Survive listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived, as well as the A&E Classic podcast, Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice, are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just 4.99 a month or 39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised.

I know at that point that it's going to be... It's life. I'm going to be fighting for my life.

Real people.

He says, Say your prayers. And I say my prayers as he takes out a knife, and he begins to cut my throat over and over again.

Who faced death.

And he just kept tugging, kept ripping, kept And then finally, it was off. He had removed my scalp.

And lived to tell how.

I remember thinking, I'm not going like this. I'm not going like this.

This is I survived. It's August 1994 in British Columbia, Canada. Louis and Wade are consultants for a timber company. They are flown into a mountain in this area to assess its potential for logging.

You're out in the wilderness. You're out in the middle of nowhere. You have the birds, you have the wind whistling through the trees. You're remote.

When we fly into a remote area, we make sure we have a radio and bear mace. The bear mace we carry with us, it comes with a safety clip on it. But to ensure that that safety clip doesn't come off and If the mace accidentally goes off in the back, we tie the safety clip on with a heavy duty flagging tape.

Louis and Wade went to work moving slowly through the forest.

We heard it was like a deep wolf or bark or a huff, and it's the depth of the sound. It was so unfamiliar to me at the time. And this idea, Well, this is probably a bear. It's close to us.

When we first heard it, it wasn't anything that we were really concerned about because I'd heard it before. We did realize that it was moving towards us.

The plan that we thought, first of all, was let them not think that we're a bear as well and not be territorial. So the idea was yell out, let them know where we are, back out of the area, and get to a safe distance. And we gave a couple of short gels. The bear just started coming, and you could hear the crunching through the brush. It was a scary thought because you couldn't see it.

We, at that time, decided to take our bear mace out of our vests and put it in the inside pocket.

Louis and Wade begin to climb trees to get out of reach of the bear.

Grizzlies aren't known to, or generally not known to climb trees, especially the larger bears, just because of their mass and their size and the configuration of their claws. They don't have a retractable claws like a cat, like a black bear does.

The first tree that I picked, and this was probably fighting those feelings of panic and stuff, probably wasn't the best choice. I picked a smaller tree, smaller branches, and when trying to climb up it, the branches actually just kept breaking under my weight.

When I got to the base of my tree, I took off my vest, and I'd left the at the bottom of the tree.

The vest weighed 60 pounds and had Wade's radio and bear mace in it.

You only think that this is something that the bear might be interested in, and that would be all he would be interested in. And not come after you.

Wade began climbing the tree.

The bear come out of the brush, and we could see it at this point, and it's like, Oh, man, it's a grizzly. There's nothing in between. There's no cage. There's no bars, there's You're there. You're alone. You're out there in its territory, in its elements, and you don't know what it's going to do.

When I saw that bear, and he breaks through the brush, That's one of the images that's imprinted in my mind. I knew at that point that I couldn't get up the tree high enough or fast enough. Right at that moment, there is a complete feeling of panic. I have a hard time with that because I know I'm in trouble. I know at that point that it's going to be It's life. I'm going to be fighting for my life. I'll never forget the image of the bear when he does come out of the brush. But it's at that It's a time where you decide, are you going to fight it? Because you know you're not going to get up high enough fast enough. So you got to fight it. You got to try to fight it. So the decision I made was to jump out of the tree with my mace in hand and basically fight the bear off with the bear bear mace.

The trigger on Louis' can of bear mace had been taped up for safety reasons. He could not get the tape undone.

You're sitting there and you're fumbling with the trigger, and the bear is on his haunches, ears back, jaw his claws snapping. And you know at that point that you're in trouble. You're in real trouble.

Louis' friend, Wade, was watching from a tree, helpless to do anything.

I could see him fumbling with the cap, and my thoughts were like, Mace it. And I remember saying, Mace it, Louis, mace it. And it proceeded to come at him, and he backed up still, trying not understanding why he's not macing this bear.

I think at that point when he was sitting just three feet from me and ears back, and he was sizing me up, he didn't really know. I I think, how to proceed either. All of a sudden, the bear stood up on his haunches or on his hind legs. It's towering over you. It's not like it's eye level. You're looking up. It's huge. The bear is It's like a growling. And the sound, it almost reverberates it. You can hear it to your core, and it's a growling, and it's deep. So so deep and just took his paws nice and flat like this. And just like a person would, just pushed me. And I basically fall down the slope. And when the bear saw me fall and go down, I think at that point it turned not to, what is this? What's going on? Right at that point, it It turned predatory. And now it actually saw me as a food source. What do you do? What do you do? I make the decision to curl up into a ball, put my hands in behind my neck, trying to protect my vital organs. And he just swotted me.

And I've never been hit like that. I was being hit by a truck. He almost took off my left arm. That's how intense of a contact it was.

Wade was watching from a nearby tree.

It was almost a feeling of helplessness at that point because I realized that if I got down and without any ability to do anything, that we would both be mauled. It proceeded to attack Louis very aggressively.

His My mouth was totally wrapped in my inside thigh. And at that point, I have this bear, and now I'm trying to fight him off. And I have the bear by the ears trying to rip off this grip that he has on my leg. You come to this understanding that this creature is too powerful, and he picks me up over his head. And then when he goes to slam me down, he takes his paws and sweeps my left leg, the one that I've been hopping on, takes my left leg and just sweeps it from underneath me and sticks me to the ground.

Louis is not a small man. It picked him up quite easily and threw him on the ground and proceeded to maul him.

He bites into my left ham string, all the muscle, the tissue, and he's pulling it up through my jeans and right out. And you'd think at that moment that, yeah, this would be extremely painful. But your body's an amazing system because the pain receptors are basically just shut right off. He moves from my ham string and he moves up towards my head. He basically bites into my neck and I lose a tip of a finger. He breaks my left hand, and he bites on my skull.

I could hear a ripping. It was awful, awful, awful sound. Wet, tearing, like wet burlap being shredded. And I remember hearing that. And Louis was still screaming.

And he just kept, kept tugging, kept ripping, kept... And then finally, it was off, right? He had removed my scalp, and I was up in a seal position. And when it came off, I and slam back down to the ground.

Louis was still screaming to a point, and then he did become quiet.

You come to this place and you know at that point, You might not make it out of this. You watch programs on TV, and there's those wildlife programs, and you can see the zebra, the wilder beast, whatever it is. And there's a point there where you see this animal fighting, fighting for life, fighting, fighting, trying to get away, fighting. And then there's a moment where all of a sudden it just relaxes. It's not in control of its own fate. It's controlled by other things. And I'm very similar feeling at that point. This piece is out of my control. I can't control my feet at this point.

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Forest workers Louis and Wade are being attacked by a grizzly bear. The bear badly mauls Louis, ripping his scalp off. Wade is up a tree, powerless to help his friend.

I continued to yell, and I continued to try to make noise to get the bear away from him to attract it to myself.

When the bear has removed my scalp, it seems it realizes that maybe my own energy is diminished, and things start to slow down.

And that's when the bear started He didn't pay attention to me. It looked at me. It left Louis' body. He was laying there on his stomach, their face down, and it went over to the other side of him and started scratching out the dirt and pushing dirt and some debris and sticks over top of him.

The bear at that point defecates on me and marks me as his territory and basically says I'm his food supply now.

And then it ran over to the base of my tree. I saw the bear's face was just blood. It was red with blood. It was a very sickening feeling to see how much blood was on this bear's face thing. And I knew the attack on Louis was pretty bad.

Wade didn't expect the bear to be able to climb the tree. He began climbing as high as he could.

When I got to about 20 feet off the ground or 25 feet, that's when the bear grabbed onto the tree and started to climb up behind me. I couldn't I believe it. Here it comes. It's coming up the tree, and I didn't have bear mace or anything. There was nothing that prepared me for the fact that this bear would be able to climb this tree.

Wade had dropped his vest containing his bear mace and the radio in it at the bottom of the tree.

I can hear him coming up the tree below me, and I hear branches snapping. I hear... And I looked down at the time, and I actually see him biting at some of the branches to break them off so that he could get through. It grabbed me by the heel of the boot. I'd had both arms wrapped around the tree and walked in. He had to hold my foot and hold my boot, and he let go. He was basically dangling from the tree on my foot, and I was carrying the full weight of him on my arms, trying to hold myself in that tree. So I was wearing two long sleeve shirts, and both of them started to separate at the shoulders. I was holding on so tight. And I realized right away that there wasn't a way I could hold on, that I could not carry the weight of this bear, and I was going down. Everything changed at that point from fear to, I'd say, anger. And I thought about my young son who had just... He wasn't a year old. I remember thinking, I'm not going like this. I'm not... This isn't I'm not going like this.

We were a long ways up, like 30, 40 feet. I don't remember falling. I don't even know whether I landed on the bear. I didn't break a bone. The bear was standing there facing me, wasn't approaching me. I ran over to the base of my tree where my mace was, and I pulled the mace out of my pocket.

The trigger of Wade's bear mace had been taped up for safety reasons.

I had to tear that off, and I think I actually bit the vinyl tape off with my teeth because it's very hard to pull off. And I turned around, the bear started to walk towards me, and I waited until the bear got within 5 or 6 feet, and I sprayed it. It didn't like it, immediately turned away, and I ran back over to the tree and started to climb it again. And then I got up, I'd say 10 or 15 feet up the tree, and it ran back over to the base of the tree and proceeded to come up after me again.

The bear had covered Louis in dirt and branches and left him for dead.

I can't see anything because my face is in the dirt. I can't really move, but I can hear things. I knew at that point that Wade was in a fight for his life. And in effect, he was in a fight for our lives.

I didn't climb any further. I stayed there and I waited for it. It tried to grab my feet again. And when it did, I pulled my foot up. And as its mouth opened to bite me, I put my hand right down basically into its mouth and sprayed the mace can in its nose and mouth directly, and the bear dropped. And it didn't move. It really struggled to get a breath. It would take a deep breath. Eventually, Eventually, it did manage to get up, and the bear started to walk off, basically, back the way it had come.

Wade climbed down the tree and ran over to Louis.

I then realized how badly or severely he'd been mauled. There was an immediate sense of, how did he survive this? He couldn't walk, he couldn't get up. He was thinking uncapacitated. I did what I could to comfort him at that time, the brief time. I made sure he was okay, he was stable, he was talking to me. I went back and got the radio, went up the tree to call for help. The area we were in was just... It just happened that we had reception there. It wasn't like you had reception everywhere in the valley. This was just one of those places, and he was lucky. And I got a hold of an operator There was a conversation going on, but I didn't know if I was cutting into it or not. I just did the mic and I said, I have an emergency, I need help. I could hear Louis making noises over there, moans and stuff. He told me he quit. And I thought, Louis, don't quit. Don't give up.

He's being comforting. He's like, Don't quit. Give it everything you got. Stay with us. And I'm like, No, no. I quit. I'm not working anymore.

And at that point, I was like, okay, I understood he was actually with it. He wasn't dead. He was communicating. That was a huge sigh of relief at that point.

But there's still a sense of danger, of course, because I'm still on the ground. The bear is still in the area.

You can hear things. There's sounds in the bush. Every one of those minute sounds was the sound of a bear coming back.

You're talking about an hour, 15 minutes, hour and a half. And that's a long time be lying there in We'll not be able to move. And after that time and listening in that silence and all of a sudden hearing that womp, womp of the helicopter coming in, just the happiness. You knew it at that point that we were going to be saved. Our pickup time for the helicopter was 4:30 in the afternoon, and this incident happened at 11:11:30. If I'm to be honest with myself, I know that if we were to wait till the pickup time, I wouldn't be here today. So having that radio, it was a lifeline for sure.

Louis was airlifted to the local hospital. He was transferred to Vancouver Hospital, where he stayed for three months. After recovering from his torn leg, Wade returned to work in the forest.

I survived because of thinking of my young son at a critical point in the attack, just to think I'm not going to go like this. It changed the way I thought, turned from fear to the anger I felt. It enabled me, my body, my mind, to make the necessary decisions to protect us.

Louis has had 16 surgeries over two and a half years to repair his scalp and body. He now teaches physical education and has completed a master's of education in counseling.

I survived I guess first because of my determination to get through this situation, not to give up on myself and the hope of coming out, the hope of living through it. I survived because of Wade.

This guy was as cold and calculated as they come.

Maybe we weren't going to get it solved.

It was like the epitome of innocence that had been prayed upon.

This is a case that has no evidence.

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September 1988 in Pensacola, Florida. Eight-year-old Seya is the eldest of three children. She and her brother and sister live with their mother.

My mother was a heavy drinker, and she abused drugs, and so she went out a lot. She had a lot of male friends in and out of the house. My sister and my brother are my world. And because of who my mother was, I felt like I was the mother in this family. When I was seven years old, my mother had met this man named Ray. Ray had scraggly hair, beard. He's hunched over. He He was out of shape. And I would say that at least half of the places and things that we did with him, I was molested by him. It was a secret between him and I, he had said, and that if I had told anybody that he would kill my family.

Saia's mother broke up with Ray and found a new boyfriend. One night, she went out, leaving the three children in the care of her new boyfriend.

September 21st, it was a school night, and my sister and I had a bedtime of eight o'clock. And so my brother was already asleep. He had his own room. My sister and I had shared a room.

After the children were asleep, the boyfriend got news of a disturbance caused by Ray. Ray had threatened the children's mother in a bar. When the boyfriend left the house to go help her, Ray broke in using a crowbar.

In the middle of the night, I woke up, and all of a sudden, I was being carried throughout the apartment. And I looked up, I saw that it was Ray, and I saw the clock, and it was almost one o'clock in the morning. And I asked him where we were going, and he had said, We're going to see your mother.

Ray put eight-year-old Seya and her six-year-old sister, Sarah, in his car. He drove them down a remote back road.

He stops the car and he goes to the back of the car to the trunk, grabs a couple of things, and then opens up the back door to where Sarah is and starts to tie her up. He ties her hands up and her legs up. And at that point, we started to cry. He got back to his car and drove down the dirt road a little bit more. He pulls me out of the car and brings me back to the trunk and changes into a pair of white shorts. At that time, He asks me to take off my pants and then tells me to do horrible things that no child should ever have to experience to him. And then he places me on the trunk and starts to rape me. I'm screaming in pain. I am crying It hurts so bad. And he tells me that I need to shut up or he's going to cut my throat. I asked Ray when he was raping me if He was done yet. Asked him, When is it going to be over? And he would just tell me, Soon. It was very short and the answers weren't anything that was satisfying.

All I know is that the pain had gone away, and so at that point, I was just waiting for it to be over with. Soon after what felt like hours, I didn't feel anything anymore, and I felt numb. And all of a sudden, we see a... Headlights come down the dirt road, and he tells me to hurry up and get into the car and to keep our heads down while he goes and talks to this person in this truck. I didn't think I didn't want anything of it to scream or make noise or honk the horn because Ray had already threatened that if we weren't good, we weren't going to see our mother. And So I know we tried to listen and do whatever we had to do to get out of there. Ray White tied Sarah up because he knew that if there was a chance that we could run, we would. I wasn't tied up because it wasn't necessary. I wouldn't leave Sarah behind.

The rape was interrupted by a truck arriving, and Ray went to talk to the driver.

I was hoping that man And noticed the blood on Ray White's shorts and knew that something was wrong and called the police, even if he didn't come up to the car to see that there were two little girls in the car. And he talks to this person and says, I'm just having car trouble. We're all set. And the man in truck takes off. Ray gets back into the car and drives further down the dirt road and then stops. It's then he just opens up the front door and starts raping me again. Sarah sees what he's doing and asks, Why are you doing this? What is he doing to you? And crying. And I told her, It's okay, Sarah. It's almost over. Day broke, and he tells me to put my pants back on and to stand outside his car. And he goes and picks up Sarah because she's still tied up. And he carries her right behind me and tells me to walk into the woods. He tells me to stop where there's this big tree in a cleared area. And he sets my sister down on the side of the tree, and I stand in front and face him.

And He says, Say your prayers. And I say my prayers as he takes at a knife, and he begins to cut my throat over and over again. I touch my neck, I see the blood, and I drop down. I close my eyes, and I just think to myself, I have to play dead. Otherwise, he's going to come back and kill me indefinitely.

Seya's six-year-old sister, Sarah, was tied up nearby.

I hear Sara screaming in crime because I know she just saw what happened, and I couldn't do anything except for lay there and play dead.

Ray walked over to Sarah and started to cut her throat as well.

I felt the vibrations of the ground of her kicking and hearing her screaming and crying. But all of a sudden, it stopped. And I felt him jump over me, and I hear him run out of the woods, and then I hear his car take off. It was then I got up and knew that I was safe to go check up on Sarah. And I look at her, and I call out her name over and over again, but I know that she's not going to answer me. The look of her, she wasn't going to answer me back, and I was going to have to leave her and walk out those woods without her. So I'm walking out towards the dirt road with one hand on my throat. At that point, I felt so numb that all I could think about is getting help for Sarah and I. I was so stunned by what had just happened that just tears were rolling down my cheeks and just holding my hand up to stop the blood and get help was all that I was feeling and that I could do. I was covered in blood. My pants from being raped were covered in blood, and my neck was bleeding perfusely.

All of a sudden, I see a blue truck pass from the dirt road, and I'm waving it, trying to wave it down. And thankfully, it stopped, and I walked up to it, and it was a couple. They didn't know what fell into their hands, except for knowing that they needed to get me help. Immediately, I told them that Ray killed my sister. And they said, Are you sure? And I said, Yes. And they immediately got a sweater for the bleeding of my neck and rushed me to this nearby store.

The couple called 911.

All I could think about is that Ray White is somewhere waiting to the next little girl that he could take advantage of, and I wanted to make sure that was stopped.

Seya was suffering massive blood loss from her lacerated throat. Her heart stopped during the ambulance trip to the hospital.

The next thing I knew, I woke up and I was in the hospital. I was getting everything cut off of me. There was so many nurses surrounding me in this big room, and they were throwing all my clothes into paper bags.

Seya's heart stopped twice more on the operating table.

I woke up from surgery in a hospital room with a window, remembering my nightmares that I thought Ray was going to jump through the hospital window because I survived.

Police police arrested Ray White at his home. He was convicted of murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery, and sentenced to death. Seya and her younger brother went to live with their father after the attack.

It took a lot of counseling and a lot of time for me to be able to feel totally safe. Even when Ray was in prison, he wrote me a 15-page disgusting, threatening letter. So he sent this to his family from prison to Pennsylvania, and from Pennsylvania, they sent it to me in New York. It includes I did threats like, no matter where you go, I'll find you. You can't hide. Yet I'm still innocent. You know that I didn't do this.

Ray White died of natural causes after 16 years on death row.

A family member found out that he had died from lung cancer. That was a mixed emotion. It was the justice in that was weak. But at the same time, I was like, Well, he can no longer hurt us.

After leaving school, Seya became a police officer.

I love my job. I love the fact that I am able to put the handcuffs on the monsters out there, just like Ray Wike. I survived because I wanted to make sure that my sister was not murdered in vain and that the man who did this to her was going to be held responsible. She was my strength, and she is my guardian angel. And by the grace of God, I survived because I wanted to make sure that that man, that monster, never hurt anybody else again.

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