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h them under the bed. Earlier, Cameron had even made Colleen say goodbye to all the neighbors, telling them she was returning to Southern California. The neighbors also thought that K, the in-house nanny, had simply gone home.
But they had no idea that Colleen had never left. Cameron only let Colleen out when his daughters weren’t home. When he did, he subjected her to torture in whatever form his obscene fantasies demanded. Then in early 1984, everything suddenly changed. Cameron allowed Colleen to take a job as a receptionist at a local motel.
The only reason he allowed this was because he was short on money, but to make it more palatable to her, he told her that the extra money would go towards buying a small house for her. Around this time, Janice had started reading the Bible regularly, and that brought her closer to Colleen. The two women developed a spiritual relationship born from shared suffering.
Janice began attending the local church and would sometimes bring Colleen with her. She had even befriended the local pastor there. But around the same time, Cameron had scaled down on his assaults on Colleen. Instead, he intensified his attacks on his own wife. Law enforcement would later find over 500 photographs documenting Janice being tortured.
At times, Cameron even made Colleen keep his daughters away while he assaulted Janice. In Colleen’s own words, “There was one particular time. He was in there. He had her tied down to the bed or something, and he was whipping her, and and she was crying out and and crying and the kids the girls heard her and they said Kay, why is mommy crying and I was so mad.
I thought that bastard, you know, how could he do this? As satisfied as Cameron was to have Colleen, he apparently desired more women. When he discussed this with his wife, Janice was repulsed. She was terrified of what might happen to her two growing daughters. Cameron also allegedly wanted to marry Colleen, which left Janice feeling alarmed and threatened by how far his delusions had gone.
Cameron also had plans to build an underground dungeon system in the yard where he could keep these new women. He forced Colleen to dig a deep hole in 1983, but later rain came and flooded the whole arrangement. Cameron then realized how impractical the entire structure was. On one fortunate day, Janice finally snapped.
She’d reached her breaking point. Years of guilt, fear, and shame had accumulated and she decided to finally tell Colleen the truth. She came to my work one day and she told me we have to get out of here. And she said, um she said Cameron’s not in the the company. I thought my god, how how could I be so stupid? How could I have bought into this lie for all these years? And then also, of course, I was questioning why did you wait so long to come to me with the truth? You know, [music] why didn’t she tell me this way back 7 years ago? Did you ask her that?
No. Then, of course, I had to snap out of it because it was like, okay, now we have to come up with a plan. How are we going to get out of here and, you know, with our lives? >> While Cameron was at work, Colleen called her father back home and asked him to wire her money for a bus ticket. At the bus station, she called Cameron and told him she was leaving and would never come back.
Cameron cried like a baby and begged her to return. But return to what? A life of torture and degradation? She got on the bus and left. When Colleen returned to her parents’ home, she said nothing about her 7 years of captivity. She didn’t go to the authorities. Instead, she kept in touch with Janice. On Janice’s request, Colleen wanted to give Cameron a chance to reform.
Meanwhile, Cameron worked frantically to get rid of any evidence that might expose what he had done to Colleen over those 7 years. Things grew rough between him and Janice. They separated briefly before reuniting again. But then, she decided to leave Cameron for good. Almost 3 months after Colleen’s ordeal ended, Janice went to talk to a receptionist at a doctor’s office.
Receptionist sensed that Janice needed help and encouraged her to tell the truth. Janice confessed everything to her. She didn’t stop there. She went to the pastor of the local church and confessed the entire story to him as well. With Janice’s permission, the pastor called the police. Detective Al Shamblin arrived at the church on that day in November of 1984.
For the first time, someone in authority knew what Cameron Hooker had done. Remember the 19-year-old girl, Marie Elizabeth Spannhake, we mentioned earlier? Janice told Detective Shamblin about her. She could recall Marie’s details accurately and even depicted other information that corresponded perfectly with her disappearance.