In An Instant (2015) s01e04 Episode Script
Left for Dead
1 On the day of our divorce, when we were leaving the courtroom, he said, "You're gonna regret this.
" She finally had had enough, and she finally left - Where are you? - .
.
But he couldn't accept that, and he was gonna make her pay for it.
The date that he tried to kill me was the exact anniversary of our divorce.
Amanda! I never met anybody like that before.
You looked in his eyes, and I see nothing.
He is just a cold-hearted animal.
I think he thought she was dead already, but she wasn't.
I was terrified, but in that same moment, my survival instincts kicked in, and I just started thinking, "How do I control this situation so I don't die here today?" In An Instant 1x04 "Left of Dead" Well, I grew up, uh, you know, in a suburb of Milwaukee, uh, had a wonderful family.
My parents were married for 52 years.
I have three siblings, um, enjoyed high school, had a lot of friends, and I was in a hurry to just get married and settle down and have a family.
Actually, I met David Larsen back in college.
Years later, he kind of surfaced again in our circle of friends.
And we talked, and we got along, and he was hardworking.
He had a nice home.
He wanted a lot of the same things that I wanted.
He told me that he was ready to have a family.
He was very active in his church.
On paper, it just looked very good.
It was everything that I wanted to hear.
Teri and Dave's relationship at that time seemed very healthy, happy, loving.
You would not have gotten any glimpse of anything.
They looked like the perfect couple.
- I'm gonna have one.
- Oh, look at that! - Isn't it beautiful? - Oh, it's beautiful! I absolutely thought that it was this fairy-tale wedding and it was gonna be this fairy-tale marriage.
I think the invitations even said "Dreams do come true.
" Little did I know it would turn out the way it did.
We were married in April of 1996, went on this beautiful honeymoon to Hawaii, was having a very good time until we -- we argued one night about what I was gonna wear.
It was a-a really dumb argument about he wanted me to wear one thing and I wanted to wear something else, and it was very trivial to me.
I told you what I want.
No.
I'm gonna wear what any normal person wears on a hike.
The bikini.
No.
Now, are you coming with me or not? I had seen his anger and his temper before, but it never was really directed at me.
I mean, my first thought was, "I'm -- I'm g-- I'm out of here.
I'm getting on a plane.
I'm going back home.
I'm not putting up with this.
" But I felt kind of trapped there.
You are bought and paid for.
A wife is to obey her husband.
You do what I say.
It's in the Bible.
It's law.
He had the tickets, he had, you know, all the credit cards, everything in his name.
I felt guilty, like, "How could I possibly get married and just a couple weeks later want a divorce or, you know, want to be separated? It would make me look like a fool.
" We were married for three years -- Um, three years too long.
Uh, we had two beautiful daughters in the meantime.
And when my second daughter was about 2 months old, I left, 'cause I knew that that's not the life that I wanted for them.
That was the longest divorce I have ever seen happen, because Dave Larsen fought it every step of the way.
Teri was fighting to prove to the court that he was not fit to have a joint custodial relationship.
What does that mean? Equal parental decision-making.
When Teri got divorced, she did not think he was fit to be a joint parent, but the placement schedule got put in, and he had plenty of time with those kids, unsupervised, despite her saying he's not healthy.
After I left David in 1999, a couple months after that, I had joined a-a, uh, professional choir.
I met some really wonderful people, and one of those people was, um, Nick.
She, uh, explained about her ex-husband, David Larsen.
Very controlling and wasn't -- wasn't right.
Do you have any 4's? Go fish.
This is just not my day, is it? I was married to Nick in -- in October 2003.
We decided that we're a good team and we would make good parents, and I was looking for a good, positive male role model for my daughters.
The sleeping angel is awake.
Good morning, sweetheart.
Come here.
I want waffles for breakfast.
Waffles?! Coming right up.
- Coffee? - Yes.
Thank you.
And the night of January 30, 2004, we had gone out and bought a pregnancy test, and it was positive.
And we were elated about this.
And the girls had an inkling that they were gonna have probably a little brother or sister, and they were all excited for it, and I couldn't wait to tell them that.
- Hey, no fair! - Uh They have three 7's.
The morning of January 31, 2004, I was ready to pick them up from their father's home and, you know, take them shopping for a gift and take them to a -- to a birthday party.
It was gonna be a good day.
Dave, I'm gonna be there at 10:00.
That morning, I specifically called my ex to say, "You know, I'm gonna be there at 10:00.
Please don't be late.
" Okay, please, please, don't be late again.
Just have the girls ready to go, okay? Goodbye.
I should go with you.
I-it's right on the way to the party.
I don't know.
Before Teri left the house, we had a discussion of whether I should go along with her to pick up the girls or not.
I don't know.
He'll just freak out again, you know? I know.
Two weeks before that, he did come with me to pick up the girls.
All right.
And that just seemed to make things worse.
Get the hell off of my property, and take your whore with you! Dave, just give us the girls, and we'll leave, okay? It's okay, girls.
Daddy has everything under control.
I'll take care of you both.
Hey, I'm just here to help pick up the girls.
I'll come out there with my .
38 and finish both of you! Girls, come on.
I got my cellphone out, ready to -- to dial 911 if, you know, I had to.
It seemed like, you know, five minutes.
It might have only been one minute.
But it was very tense.
Dave, this has got to stop.
Every time -- - Do I bring my girlfriend to your house? - Every time.
Why do you have to be like this? Do I bring my girlfriend to your house?! - Do I bring my girlfriend -- - This needs to stop.
It needs to be done now.
Do I bring my girlfriend to your house?! So it was this big ordeal, so I told him that morning, I'm like, "You know, just -- Just don't even go, Nick.
It's just gonna make things worse.
I'm just gonna go get the girls and just leave and not create any problems.
" And, uh, that's why I went alone.
You said I was abusive.
Well, now you're really gonna see how abusive I can be.
Amanda! No, no, no, no! Dave was extremely angry about the divorce, and I told Teri, since it was just ugly from the get-go, just continue on with your life, and when he disobeys the orders and he doesn't bring the kids back, just document, document, document.
But I told Teri, "You need to watch your back.
He is that angry, Teri, and I am afraid for you.
" It was only about a five-minute drive to his house.
It was a very cold day, snowing.
Um, I think I remember it was like 17 degrees.
Very cold Wisconsin winter day.
They're not ready.
I was aggravated, so I just walked back to my car, and I turned on the radio, and I'm waiting and waiting.
You know, 5, 10 minutes go by.
So I walked back up to the door, and I said, "I really need to get going now.
" The girls want to play a game.
What? A game? Yeah.
They want you to come in and find them.
Right away, something just didn't feel right, because he never even allowed me in his home since the day that I was allowed to go in and -- and get my belongings.
I mean, it had been five years since the day that I actually walked out and left him, and something just seemed weird, like, "Why would he let me in?" But I was in a hurry.
I was excited to tell the girls the news that I was pregnant, and we had a birthday party to get to.
It was cold outside.
So I thought, you know, I'll just walk in and say, "Okay! Peekaboo! I found you! Whatever.
Let's go.
" Girls, where are you? Girls, hello? Amanda? Holly? Where are you hiding? Holly! Amanda! Teri left the house at about 10 minutes to 10:00 to pick up her girls at David Larsen's house.
Expected her to be gone maybe 15 minutes, 30 minutes, depending on if the girls were ready, um, how long it would take to get in the car, that sort of thing.
Mm.
When I came to, I was on my stomach, and the first thing I saw was a wooden, black, louisville slugger baseball bat.
And he had it.
He was holding it, and it was kind of above my head.
And at that moment, I knew.
You know, after all these years of abuse, all these years of trying to get away from him, divorcing him, leaving him, he's really going to extremes.
I mean, he's really bent on -- on -- on killing me.
Shut up! I don't want the girls to hear you.
At that moment, it just seemed strange to me that he has the girls in the house.
I mean, you're -- you're planning to kill somebody, and the girls are in the house? You are not taking my girls away from me, and I'm not going to jail.
Those two girls were in the bedroom, just playing, unknowing that their mother is just being beaten by their father.
You said I was abusive.
Well, now you're really gonna see how abusive I can be.
No, no, no, no! No, no! Aah! Aah! No! I'm glad they were locked into the bedroom.
I mean, if you had come out and seen something like that, I-I just can't think what psychological effects that would have on those two small, impressionable girls.
Please.
Please don't.
You -- you don't have to pay child support.
Please -- please don't.
Please stop.
Uh, uh, I won't -- I won't take you to court.
You know, I tried anything that he wanted to hear.
He just looked at me and said, "Oh, yeah " and, you know, um, kept hitting me.
I was laying on the floor, pretty much lifeless.
I-I felt like -- I felt like what it would maybe feel like to have a stroke.
My body was just, like, numb, like I-I could -- I could hardly move it.
I wasn't in control of it.
Stop breathing.
Stop breathing.
And he kept telling me just to stop breathing -- Just stop breathing.
And it felt like when I was married to him and he would just tell me what to do.
Like, he expected me to do it.
It was like he was giving me a command.
He then took some duct tape and started taping my wrists together.
Because of the commotion and the way I was being moved around, my -- my jogging pants started slipping down.
And I always remember him saying, "Don't make this look like something it's not.
" Why'd you make those come off? Don't make this look like something it's not.
It just seemed so weird to me, like, okay, you're worried that it's gonna look like a rape 'cause you're just killing me? I mean, it just was weird.
He then, um, took duct tape and started taping me from my -- All the way from my forehead, all the way around my head, all the way around my head -- My nose, my mouth.
And at that moment, I was just -- I was literally talking to God, saying, "Don't let this be it.
This can't be it.
I can't suffocate on his floor, in his home when my girls are who knows where.
" And who knows if he did something to them? Who knows if he killed them already? I don't know.
And I had this strong sense of, "I have to help my girls.
" I can't -- I can't give up and say, "Oh, my gosh, I'm just -- I'm just gonna die here.
" Before we were married, he treated me really well.
He treated me like I was something very special.
But I saw things that he did to other people that didn't sit well with me.
I remember the very first time that I just got that gut feeling that this is not right.
What is this? This is ridiculous.
We're already late.
Dave, it's okay.
It'll be okay.
I'm not stopping! I have somewhere to go.
Dave, it's okay.
It's not a big deal.
- Dave! - Shut up.
Dave! Sir, you have to stop.
Stop for what? You -- you have to stop! What am I stopping for? Sir -- For what?! This?! You have to stop.
Sir! Get out of the way, or I'm running you over.
- Oh, my God, Dave.
- Shut up.
I was like, "What's wrong with him?" He just gave me a whole list of reasons why he was stressed out and all these things on his mind.
And he was an air traffic controller.
His job was so stressful.
And so I just dismissed it as, you know, "He's just having a bad day.
He would never do anything like that to me.
I'm special to him.
" And I-I fooled myself.
Are you coming with me or not? On our honeymoon, I realized I was not immune to his anger and his control.
There were some good times.
I mean, there were times when a couple months would go by and things were peaceful.
The new normal was, "If things are quiet, it's good.
" You know, so I-it's a good day if he's not yelling.
It's a good day if he's not complaining about something.
Um, it's a good day if he's not hitting me.
It's almost like I didn't expect the happy times anymore.
I was just happy when things were quiet.
That was a good day.
My oldest daughter was 2, and now I have this new baby.
And he came home one night, just ranting and raving about something.
I don't even remember what.
And I remember my 2-year-old daughter just screaming and crying and putting her hands over her ears and going underneath the table, and she was telling him, "Shut up, shut up!" And he started going toward her, saying, "You don't tell me to shut up!" And I thought in that moment, "I have to get him out of here.
" I have to, if not for me -- If I don't have enough self-respect for me to get myself out of here, I have to get these two innocent children out of here, because this is not what I want for them.
Teri called me and said, "Could you take me to a woman's shelter?" And I said, "Teri, I'll be there in five minutes.
Pack up what you need.
I will be there in five minutes.
I'll take you wherever you want to go.
" When Dave found out that I was the person who took Teri to the shelter and to the lawyer's office, he came, and he actually made an appearance at my house.
Where's my wife? To tell you the truth, Dave, I really don't know where they are, but she is leaving you.
She's never leaving me.
And he was literally in my face, and I mean in my face, within six inches of my face, screaming at me, "Well, where are they?" I go, "To tell you the truth, Dave, I really don't know where they are, but she is leaving you.
" I took a vow, till death do us part, and I mean to keep my vows.
I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your husband, but that's how my vows go.
When he said that to me, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew he was very serious about this.
When I left my home that morning, I thought I'd be gone for maybe 15 minutes, and, uh, I ended up being gone for a lot longer than that.
I remember hearing his breath.
You know, he was -- He was getting tired.
I mean, it was almost like he just was putting so much into it and his breathing was just so hard that I remember thinking, "Oh, my God.
You know, I just hope he just falls over and has a heart attack right now.
" The duct tape was put on in a way where I was still getting some air, and then I heard some scooting around.
He was taking me and, like, pushing me into this rubbermaid garbage barrel.
And, again, it was -- It was amazing, because I even thought to myself, "After being hit on the head so many times, I can't believe I'm thinking.
I mean, this is weird that I'm -- That I'm still thinking and I have my wits about me.
" And I was going in headfirst, and I remember using all the strength I could just to turn my body around, because I thought, "If I'm in here headfirst and he puts the garbage can up, I'm gonna be upside down.
I'm not gonna make it.
" He then took the garbage can, and I knew we were going outside, because I could hear the door open.
I felt the cold.
He started turning me around in circles, and I thought, "Is he just trying to disorient me? Is he trying to make me dizzy?" Here I am with no socks, no shoes, no pants, just my underwear and a-a light jacket that I was wearing, and he was filling up the can with snow.
I even remember at one point, when he was putting me up in back of the truck, saying, "I'm cold," and he said, "I know.
" He then hoisted the can up to the back of his truck, and I-I could feel that that's what he was doing and hear that that's what he was doing, and then I felt just a whole bunch of bumping and bumping.
I heard him walk toward his door, and I heard him go in.
And I remember to myself, "I have my cellphone in my pocket of my jacket.
" Thank God, because I reached for my phone, and even though my hands were duct-taped, I could get in and get my phone.
And my face was duct-taped, but I had the old phone at the time, where the numbers were raised, so I could feel where the numbers were, and I dialed 911.
Now, my whole face was taped, and I knew that she wouldn't be able to hear what I was saying.
But I just kept yelling out his address the best I could.
And they got it.
They understood.
And I remember her saying, "Are you having trouble breathing?" And I was just like, "Uh-huh," you know? Um, a few minutes later, I heard squad cars and rescue sirens, but we were on the road.
And what I think happened is they just passed us right up.
We just passed each other.
Started out as a very simple, basic call.
It was a rescue call.
We started talking to the neighbors.
We recognized quickly that this was not a typical rescue call.
I was literally, like, squashed down in this garbage can, almost like a fetal position.
There was, like, really no room for me to -- to move my knees.
I thought that I was never gonna be found and if I was gonna get out, I had to get myself out of there.
What kept me alive was my daughters and knowing that I had to fight to stay here to save them from whatever was gonna transpire next, to save them the hurt and the trauma of losing their mom at such a young age.
That's -- that's the fire that kept me going.
It started out as a very simple, basic call.
It was a rescue call.
Uh, the rescue call was for a woman, uh, in distress.
The home was locked up, and there was no one there.
Um, naturally, deputies were very concerned that the person may not have the energy or strength or the physical ability to unlock the door for us, so they literally kicked the door down looking for a human being, somebody who was having problems breathing, um, to no avail.
We couldn't find this person.
We started talking to the neighbors.
Um, we recognized quickly that this was not a typical rescue call.
The neighbors started to tell us that this is actually the home of David Larsen and that his ex-wife arrived to pick up the children and that they noticed that Larsen had, uh, towed Teri's vehicle away.
The deputies are really starting to think to themselves, "We have something much larger here.
" Later that morning, I received a call from a friend who lived down the street from David Larsen.
Hello? Hi, John.
How are you? Uh, what, the -- The police are over there? I knew something was wrong, something had happened.
I got a phone call at about 11:00 from Teri's new husband, Nick.
Something inside of me just dropped.
I just had this sinking feeling that something bad had happened.
While I was in the garbage can and after I had called 911, sometime after I had dialed 911, I called my new husband, Nick.
Hello? Teri? Nick Teri, are -- Are you okay? He's -- he's trying to kill me, Nick.
He's He's really -- He's trying to kill me.
Uh, Teri -- Teri, c-can you tell me where you are? Um, no.
I-I can't really see.
Um, I'm in a tarp.
A-a tarp? Teri, it sounds like you're driving.
Are you driving? Um, yes, I think so.
I'm I'm in a container.
Do you know where he's taking you? He's trying to kill me, Nick.
He's trying to -- He's trying to kill me.
Teri, you have to hang up.
Hang up right now and call 911 again.
Okay.
I called 911 again, and at this time, it hit their, uh, Milwaukee dispatch, about half an hour north of where my ex's home was.
And I remember saying, "I'm Teri Jendusa.
Um, you know, my -- My ex-husband has me.
He's trying to kill me.
" And I think she thought it was a prank call.
I was just so frustrated, because she kept asking my name over and over.
"Listen, this is who I am.
You know, this is David Larsen.
This is where he lives.
" I think I-I just started blacking out, and I must have been breathing on the phone, and I remember her saying, "Are you just gonna deep breathe, or are you gonna talk to me? And I think I blacked out after that, because I don't remember anything after that.
January 31, 2004.
I was assigned to criminal investigations for the Racine Sheriff's Office, uh, working second shift.
My shift started at 2:00 p.
m.
Uh, and this particular day, I remember parking my vehicle in the parking lot and running into the building, because it literally hurt to breathe in.
It was just that bitter cold.
I was getting just bits and pieces of information.
Um, I was hearing that we were missing an adult female and her two children.
At that time, I didn't even know their names.
The, uh, woman's ex-husband, um, who we've had contact with in the past, um, presumably had taken them against their will.
What do we have on this missing persons? Amber alert's going out now.
The Amber alert became a big issue at that point.
This is a vehicle that we're looking for.
Uh, this is a description of the, uh -- the woman named Teri Jendusa.
This is the description of her two children, Amanda and Holly.
Um, that information needed to get out right away.
We needed the community's help.
It was extraordinarily cold, um, and not knowing where they were, um, created a-a whole new level of urgency.
Mom didn't show up because she doesn't care about you.
Teri is nowhere to be found, the children are nowhere to be found.
It's freezing outside.
What did he do with them? "My worst fears have come true.
" Mom didn't show up because she doesn't care about you, okay? But Daddy's gonna make everything better, okay? Watch the door, honey.
Let me put your sister in first.
Here you go, honey.
Okay, get back in the car.
Ah, I got ya.
The kids were so young, and I was asked, "Well, has he abused them?" And my -- my answer was, "Not yet.
" Um, but because I couldn't prove past abuse on this, you know, 6-month-old and then the 21/2-year-old, they just gave joint custody.
So I still had this connection with him that I could -- That I could never break free from, so we were always together twice a week Dave, this has got to stop.
Every time -- doing exchanges of the children, where he would scream and yell and swear.
Do I bring my girlfriend Um, there was one time when he punched me in the face, and I-I called the police.
They came and took pictures.
They did, you know, this wonderful report, sent it into the D.
A.
, and the D.
A.
just decided not to charge 'cause he didn't think he had enough evidence.
So it was things like this that just went on and on and on that nothing was done about, and I truly believe that that's what gave him the gall to think that he could escalate his behavior and get away with something like murder.
She was afraid of him.
She had tried unsuccessfully to get him served with papers.
She finally got the restraining order January 22nd.
January 31st, he tried to kill her.
I respond to the house, um, of David Larsen.
Uh, when I arrive, I notice the house is just -- it's a pigsty.
I mean, it is a mess.
Last night's dinner is on the table.
Uh, dishes are mounted in the sink.
Uh, laundry in the corners.
It -- it stinks.
It's -- There's clutter everywhere.
I couldn't even tell you what color the kitchen countertops were, that's how -- It was just a mess.
Uh, but I noticed something very quickly.
In the midst of all that mess, there was a large, red -- Presumably blood -- uh, piece of carpet in the dining area.
Uh, and, then, I took a look a little further.
I noticed there was a garbage can, uh, that had a pant leg, uh, hanging out of the garbage can.
I noticed there was duct tape that was stuck to these sort of black wind pants.
These were adult, uh, wind pants for a woman.
And I looked closer at the duct tape, which was sort of stuck with each other.
It looked like someone tried to pull it off, and it just had this sort of struggle feel to it and look to it.
Uh, and I also noticed what appeared to be blood on that duct tape.
Teri is nowhere to be found.
The children are nowhere to be found.
It's freezing outside.
What did he do with them? I knew I had blood at the house.
There was clearly a struggle.
Um, I'm fearing the worst.
I-I-I'm really fearing that, um, we were going to be dealing with a potential triple homicide is what I was thinking.
Uh, I was hoping to disprove that, um, but that was in my heart.
That's what I was thinking.
We sat down with the -- the sheriff, and they asked me, "Well, where do you think Dave would have gone?" Uh, he works at an airport in Illinois.
He might have gone there.
And, um, I think he has, uh, some rental property in Milwaukee.
Where do you start when you don't know where he's taken her? You're looking at all the obvious places, but, you know, I-it could be a million and one places.
That's a long place that you could just dump a body if she was really gone, and I was thinking that she was gone.
I said, "My worst fears have come true.
" I do remember coming to.
I could hear the tarp flapping in the cold wind.
And I thought, "If I can get my arm out there and maybe some motorist passing by will see my arm sticking out and he'll get stopped.
" So I scratched the duct tape off with one of my thumbnails and got one hand free, and I remember sticking it out as far as I could out the side of his truck.
It was freezing.
this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine His truck stopped, and he came back there, hit me with the bat, and he said, "One more stunt like that, I'll get out my .
38.
" Girls, who's ready for lunch? Yay.
Let's go, honey.
I knew he had guns, and I thought, "At least I'm still alive.
I still have a chance.
So I better just stop, because I'll be shot, and it'll be all over with.
" When I left my home the morning of January 31st, I just thought that I was going to pick up my daughters from their father's home, go shopping, get a birthday present, go to a party, and, uh, just have a good day.
I had no idea what laid in --in wait for me.
Girls? Amanda! When I was in the garbage can, I was thinking to myself, you know, "What is he gonna do with me? Is he gonna take the garbage can and drop it in Lake Michigan? What are his plans? What, is he gonna leave me in a forest preserve? Um, and, then, w-what's he gonna do with -- with our daughters?" And I knew instinctively that he did have something planned, because he had told me years before, uh, when we were divorced, I was gonna regret this, I was gonna regret the divorce.
"Whether it's months from now or years from now, you'll regret this.
" I know that I blacked out numerous times after that, because I don't remember a lot of the pieces.
I know my phone rang at some point, and he took it.
Girls, front of the truck.
I do remember the garbage can that I was in being dragged off the truck.
I heard my daughters in the background, like, laughing or something.
I-I knew that he had them.
At least I knew that they were alive.
I thought maybe it was a hangar at the airport, 'cause he was an air traffic controller.
Um, but I just heard boxes and crates and things being scooted around the floor.
He didn't say anything.
I didn't say anything.
I wanted him to think that I was dead.
After all this stuff was being piled on top of the garbage can, I heard this door shut, and I thought, "He's gone.
I need to start yelling for help.
" But I didn't want to start yelling right away, because if he was still in the area, I didn't want him to hear me.
So I waited and waited.
And, then, when I first yelled out, instead of saying "Help," I remember yelling his name, because I thought if I would yell "Help," he would get mad and just come shoot me.
If I would say "Dave," maybe, you know, that would open some communication.
Dave? Dave? And when I yelled out his name a few times and I didn't hear anything, that's when I just started screaming.
Help me! Help! Help! Somebody help me! Help! Help! Help me! Somebody help me! We put out an attempt to locate for Teri's vehicle.
Uh, Milwaukee Police Department found her vehicle next to or near, uh, David Larsen's rental properties.
So our search began in Milwaukee, um, and I'm thinking to myself that she's gonna be in Milwaukee someplace.
He put her vehicle there, that maybe Teri and the children are in one of these rental properties.
I need you knocking on all these doors.
Find out if anybody saw anything at all.
So, with the assistance of the Milwaukee Police Department, we went there, and -- And we started knocking on doors and literally kicking down doors, trying to find Teri and Amanda and Holly.
When I went over by Nick, um, we prayed a lot.
Authorities are looking for two missing girls, their mother, and the father.
We racked our brains a lot.
We just kept thinking and thinking and praying and thinking.
And a lot of people are calling because, okay, now this Amber alert had gone out.
We sat around with the sheriff, "What can we do?" He said, "Start praying.
That's all you can do.
Start praying that she's gonna be okay.
" searching for the Wisconsin man who reportedly abducted his ex-wife and two kids.
Racine county sheriff's deputies are searching for It seemed like three years that I was trapped in -- in that garbage can.
I felt like there was something compressing the can that I was in, because the can seemed like to be getting smaller and smaller as my head was swelling.
I was doing everything I could to try to get the lid off that garbage can, but what I didn't know is that he had it duct-taped shut.
Help! He had boxes on top.
He had a 2x4 running across the top.
I was doing everything I could to try to get the lid off that garbage can, but I was freezing-cold.
I was badly injured.
I mean, there was no way Houdini was getting out of there.
Help me! We get a call from the Wheeling Police Department in Illinois.
They just located David Larsen.
Someone needs to go talk to David.
When's the last time you saw your ex-wife? Help! On the day of our divorce, he came up to me when we were leaving the courtroom and said, "You're gonna regret this.
Whether it's months from now or years from now, you'll regret this.
" And I just looked at him and said, "The only thing I regret is marrying you," and I walked off.
But when I was in the garbage can, I remembered that, so I knew instinctively it wasn't just something at the spur of the moment.
He had a plan.
All we found was her vehicle, um, with some identification, and that was it.
While we're learning about this vehicle and we're kicking down doors in Milwaukee, looking, uh, frantically for them, um, we get a call from the Wheeling Police Department in Illinois.
They indicated that they just located David Larsen, uh, in his pickup truck when he pulled into the parking lot at the, uh, airport in Wheeling, where he is an air traffic controller.
Teri is nowhere to be found, the children are nowhere to be found.
It's freezing outside.
What did he do with them? I knew I had blood at the house.
There was clearly a struggle.
Uh, I'm fearing the worst.
Someone needs to go talk to David Larsen.
Um, I was dispatched there, along with a, uh, fellow coworker of mine, a criminal investigator named Tom Knaus.
Hi, Dave.
I'm Detective Schmaling from Racine.
Have a seat.
David Larsen was escorted into the room.
He walked into the room with a sort of, uh, arrogance about himself, uh, that there was gonna be some reasonable explanation as to why he was stopped and as to why he was here and as to why there were two criminal investigators from Racine, Wisconsin, that wanted to talk to him.
As you already know, we're looking for your children.
When's the last time you saw them? They're at my girlfriend's house.
She's babysitting.
I'm supposed to be at work.
I can give you her number if you'd like.
When's the last time you saw your ex-wife? That bitch was supposed to pick up my girls at 11:00 this morning.
She never showed up.
This is exactly what I've been dealing with for years.
He went on this tirade.
I-I could see I struck a chord with him right away.
And he just went on and on and on about how terrible, how terrible Teri was in his life.
Every Saturday ever since the divorce.
We have an agreement.
I can't get custody, so I only get my girls once a month.
I get them late Friday, and then she comes by on Saturday, so I don't want to let them go.
I don't want to just let them walk out the door.
And she breaks my balls over it, about me being a bad father and all.
And then I get pulled over by the cops, and now I want to know why.
Actually, Dave, she's missing.
We're hoping you can help us out with that.
He explained that, uh, after dropping off the children that he went to work and -- And that, uh, next thing you know, he said he was being stopped by law enforcement, and he wanted to know why.
"There's got to be some explanation to this.
What, did she call the police on me and say I did something wrong again?" When's the last time Teri was at your house? I'll never forget this.
He said, "We have an unwritten rule in my house.
" We have an unwritten rule.
She never comes into my house.
I never go into her house.
And we never break that rule.
Well, Dave, I got to take issue with that, 'cause I was at your house today.
Help! Help me! I didn't know if it was night or day.
It was just pitch dark.
My eyes were starting to swell shut.
I started getting some of the tape off my face, but it hurt.
I couldn't get it all off.
Just screaming and bleeding and frozen and just praying to God that somebody would find me.
And at this point, I had no phone, no means to -- to -- To get ahold of anyone.
They couldn't trace where I was.
And I really thought that this frozen garbage can was gonna be my grave.
Okay, girls, let's go! There you go.
All right, honey.
Okay? How were cartoons? Sorry I had to put you in there for so long.
Oh, good job there.
All right.
- What is that? - Here you go.
Oh, that's just a juice stain, honey.
Daddy spilled some.
Here you go.
All right.
Now, what do we do before we go outside? Put your gloves on.
That's right.
All right.
My daughters had no idea what was happening when he was trying to murder me and putting me and leaving me for dead in that storage locker.
They were in his vehicle as he was driving around.
He stopped and dropped them off at a babysitter's house, which happened to be some woman he was dating or whatever at the time, and that's where the detectives found them.
It was late -- I want to say 9:30, 10:00 that night, Saturday night -- So, you know, over 12 hours have now gone by that these kids were missing, but now they're found.
They still don't know anything about what -- that their mom is still missing.
It never occurred to me that the kids wouldn't be found.
He loved his kids in his own warped, narcissistic way.
They were his possessions, not hers.
When they were found, my first thought was, "Great.
Go find Teri.
" Help! Help! Somebody help me! Help! I was just punching and scraping my hand through the lid just trying to get it off and yelling and crying and praying.
I know that there were times that I blacked out, because I-I would remember coming to, thinking, "Oh, my God, I'm still alive.
I can't fall asleep.
I can't fall asleep.
I have to keep yelling.
I have to keep trying to get out.
" Those hours were probably worse than actually being beat over the head with a baseball bat.
We have an unwritten rule.
She never comes into my house.
I never go into her house.
And we never break that rule.
Well, Dave, I got to take issue with that, 'cause I was at your house today.
When I was there, I saw a sizable pool of blood on your carpet.
"Was there a fight or something between you, or did you cut yourself, you and another person?" And he assured me that, no, he wasn't injured recently and that no one was in a fight.
I said, "Well, I-I-I found blood, Dave, a sizable puddle of blood in your -- In your living room/ dining room area.
" And, uh, he sort of gave me a very blank stare.
I saw a garbage can.
In that garbage can, there was some duct tape, and that had blood on it, too.
I have her pants and socks.
He started to look down, and I discovered something I hadn't seen before.
I'm looking at his wrangler blue jeans that he was wearing.
They had deep-red stains on them on the thigh area.
And I looked down -- I-I was rather shocked -- And I said, "And, in fact, you have Teri's blood on your pants.
" And at that point, he started to rub his -- Rub his thighs, as almost as if he was trying to rub it away.
He'd just gotten caught.
He just -- He didn't know what to say.
Dave, look, she came into your house and you defended yourself, and maybe you overreacted a little bit.
Now's the time to tell me that.
Teri did come into my house this morning.
He said he was busy putting the homework for Amanda and Holly in their backpacks.
He said he looked up, and there Teri was standing over him with a hammer raised in -- in her -- in her hand, and her pants were around her ankles.
Out of fear of being assaulted, he told me he grabbed a baseball bat that just happened to be in the dining room area, and out of fear, uh, for his own safety, he swung the bat and struck Teri in the head.
And at that point, he said that she had fallen down and that he remembers grabbing duct tape but he doesn't know why.
I don't know.
I remember grabbing duct tape.
Where is she, Dave? I remember grabbing duct tape.
We know the girls are -- are safe.
That's great.
But we're still concerned -- Highly concerned -- About Teri's safety.
There are no suspects yet.
Later that night, Nick comes up to me.
He goes, "You got a minute?" I go, "I got all the time in the world, because we're not going anywhere.
" And that's when I found out that she had just taken a pregnancy test earlier that day and that Teri was pregnant.
We just hugged and cried, and I said, "All we can do is keep praying that she's okay and that little baby's okay.
" The good news, according to the sheriffs -- The daughters have been found okay.
He apparently dropped them off at a babysitter.
The bad news is still no sign of the ex-wife.
That's right.
Her car She's going to be found.
Until they tell me otherwise, that's what I believe.
When we would start to think really, really negative, he says, "No, I don't want you to think negative.
We are going to think positive.
Until they tell me that they find a body and it's her and she's dead, I'm going to believe she's alive.
" He's like a rock.
Great husband, so much not like her first.
Where were you driving? Did you stop anywhere? Dave, you got to give me something, anything.
Honestly, I-I just don't remember.
I-I grabbed duct tape, and then I don't know.
I think it's well-established that you grabbed the duct tape, all right? Think.
Think for me, Dave.
I just don't know.
All I know is that I grabbed some duct tape.
I am about 41/2 hours into this interview.
"Okay, Dave, what did you do with her? Where is she at? She might still be with us.
She might still be alive.
" Um, and he said, "I just can't remember.
" And he just kept repeating the same thing -- "I remember grabbing duct tape, and I don't know why.
" Let me get this straight.
You remember where you were going this morning.
You remember what you had for breakfast.
You remember being with the girls.
But you don't know where Teri is? You don't remember what happened at your house? You see, it's kind of hard to believe that you don't remember this one little detail.
It's escaping your mind, huh? I said, "Dave, listen.
You told me what you had for breakfast.
You told me about the phone calls you made today.
You told me that she wasn't there at 11:00, which, by the way, we had squads there at 11:00 in the morning for a 911 call.
" And he looked at me rather surprised.
I said, "Yeah, that's right.
" I said, "Teri called 911.
She told us what happened.
" Dave, Teri called 911.
She told us what happened.
If she's still alive, you need to tell me where she is.
Dave, this is the mother of your children.
I said, "David, it is cold, and we know that you had injured her.
She's bleeding.
This is the mother of your children.
If she's still alive, you owe it to your children, uh, you owe it to everybody to -- To at least tell us where she's at so we could try to help her if at all possible.
" I'm tired.
I want to take a nap.
He's holding a human being's life in the balance, and there's nothing I can do.
It angered me.
I-I just wanted to -- To reach in him and pull out this information.
But the legalities call for when someone's under arrest, that if they ask for a break in the interrogation, I have to give it to them.
Help me! Help! Call 911 right now.
Report of a possible woman inside a storage unit.
This is the police! Where are you? Holly, where are you hiding? Amanda! It was like something from a horror movie.
I mean, who takes a human being and locks them in a -- in a -- In a storage unit to die? Um, it was just -- It was unbelievable.
He definitely left me to die there.
Uh, we dropped off the evidence, and at this point, it's about 4:00 in the morning.
My supervisor said that we were going to be reconvening at 7:00 a.
m.
to strategize what we're going to be doing.
Third-shift staff were out looking.
And I remember going home, and, um, I got into bed, and my wife said, um, "I know what you were working on.
" Um, she said, um, "Did you guys find her?" And I said, "No.
" And she said, "Then what are you doing here?" I couldn't sleep, and I took a quick shower.
I got back in, and, um, I started going through the evidence and just start seeing if there's something I missed here and bouncing ideas off of the other law-enforcement officers in the room, and we're sort of strategizing.
"If you were Dave, uh, given the facts, what do you think he did?" Hey, if Larsen will still talk, go talk to him.
I will.
I'm just gonna go through his wallet first.
I'll look through his wallet.
You just go.
All I could do was pray and think about my daughters, and my daughters gave me the strength to just keep fighting, because I knew that they were still alive, but I didn't know if he was gonna physically harm them.
I didn't know what he was gonna do with them or how he was gonna parent them or be abusive toward them or say, "Oh, your mom didn't care about you.
She never came and got you.
" Or I didn't know what he was gonna do, and that was my driving force to just keep fighting.
Good morning, Dave.
Detective Schmaling.
Are you willing to speak with me again? He came back in the interview room.
He went right back to the assault.
He remembers grabbing duct tape, and he doesn't know and remember why.
If only I could remember, but I-I just don't know.
All I remember is grabbing duct tape.
The investigator who had Dave Larsen's wallet, he said, "Listen, I went through that wallet, and unbeknownst to me, there was a business card in there for a storage facility.
" He goes, "Yeah, I thought to myself, 'you know, why would a guy who lives in Wind Lake, Wisconsin, have a storage facility in Wheeling, Illinois?' it just didn't make sense to me.
" Hi.
This is Detective Keith Dobesh with the Racine Sheriff's Office.
Dobesh called the storage facility and said, "Hey, do you have a-a renter there by the name of Dave Larsen?" Uh, and the gentleman quickly checked his records and said, "In fact, we do.
" And he said, "Well, can you look at Dave Larsen's code and find out if he was in there today?" And he checks -- "Yes, he was.
" Well, at least someone entered that code, and then you have to enter the code to get back out.
And it was about a 20-minute time period.
And Keith was just thinking, "All right, this has got to be it.
Why would he go there? He dropped something off there.
" He said, "Well, I'll tell you what.
Put me on hold, and I want you to go to that locker, and I want you to see what you can see and hear what you can hear.
" Please! Please help! Please help me! Dobesh was sitting on the other end of the phone, just patiently waiting and waiting and waiting.
And finally, the guy comes back with a very urgent voice and said, "Listen, th-there's some faint cries for help in there.
It sounds like someone's crying in there.
" Hang up.
Hang up and call 911 right now.
Come on, Dave.
At the very least, she deserves a proper burial.
All I remember is grabbing duct tape.
In the middle of this, there was a knock at the door, interview room door.
Um, and initially, that bothers me, 'cause I felt like at any moment, David Larsen's gonna tell me where he put Teri.
And now there's a knock at the door, and it sort of broke the -- it broke the emotions in the room.
Um, so I answered it with a little bit of force.
What? It was a sergeant from the Wheeling Police Department, and he said, "I need to talk to you.
" And I stepped out of the room, I shut the door, and he said, "Listen.
Uh, we're taking a 911 call, uh, from somebody, uh, screaming in a storage locker.
" All available units, report of a possible woman inside a storage unit.
10-4 dispatch.
Responding now.
On February 1, 2004, uh, I was working, uh, as a patrol officer with the Wheeling, Illinois, Police Department.
We got a call of something going on in the public storage facility in Wheeling.
I just -- I had a feeling.
I'm like, "That's her.
It's gonna be Teri Jendusa-Nicolai in that storage unit.
" It was really, really cold.
Uh, I think the high temperature may have reached 20 degrees that day.
So it was very cold inside the storage facility.
It's not a heated facility.
This is the police! We're gonna get you out of there, ma'am! Hold on! We were calling out, saying, "It's the police.
We're here.
We're gonna get you out of there.
" It probably took seconds for us to get inside, but it seemed like minutes for us to get that door open.
Hello? Ma'am, where are you? We walked inside the storage unit, and we didn't see anybody.
So I was shocked, 'cause we expected to see a person in there, from what we heard and what the employee heard of this woman's voice.
So initially I thought, "You know what? Maybe we're in the wrong storage unit.
" Hello, ma'am.
Where are you? I finally heard somebody coming in the door, and I got very anxious, like, "Oh, my God, he's back.
He's gonna see that I'm not dead yet.
He's just gonna shoot me.
" So I was very quiet.
Ma'am, where are you? We continued to call out, you know, "We're here.
It's the police.
Where are you?" And at that point, my sergeant had noticed this garbage can in the corner and said, "She's in there.
" So we removed the plastic containers and the box from on top of the, uh, garbage can.
My sergeant opened up the lid on the garbage can, I looked in, and, then, there she was.
I had seen photographs of her before, and the condition she was in inside of that garbage can, y-you couldn't tell who she was.
I had seen photographs of her before, and the condition she was in inside of that garbage can, y-you couldn't tell who she was.
Other than having long hair and having a-a soft-spoken female voice, you couldn't even tell whether it was a male or a female initially.
You just saw this person's swollen face, swollen eyes completely shut, just severely beaten, blood.
You couldn't tell who she was.
Her first thing she said to me was, "Are my kids okay?" And I said, "Your kids are fine.
" The paramedics loaded Teri onto a backboard.
That's when I could see her entire body.
Not only was she beaten about the head, she was beaten about her entire body with this baseball bat -- Head to toe, head to toe.
It was horrible.
At that point, I was still worried about, is she gonna be okay? Is she gonna make it through this? Is she gonna live? Next to the entrance door, I saw a two-tone baseball bat.
And when I saw that baseball bat, I knew.
I'm like, "That had to be what was used to beat this poor woman.
" It had to be.
I can't imagine why somebody would do this to another human being.
Something that you never forget.
Something that'll stay in your mind for the rest of your life.
That's for sure.
We arrive, and I see a gurney coming out.
Her feet were, uh, sticking out at the end of the gurney.
And I thought to myself -- I thought, "They're black socks.
I -- wait a minute.
I've seen black socks with those sweat pants at Larsen's house.
He must -- I thought he ripped those off of her.
" And I quickly looked, and I-I recognized those weren't black socks.
Those were her feet.
I was being taken out on a stretcher, and I remember the voice of one person saying, "What's your name?" And I said, "Teri from Racine.
" And I just heard this sigh, and all I remember next is somebody holding my hand and riding in a, you know, an ambulance and just saying, "just hold on.
" And That's the last thing I remember.
Hello, Nick's phone.
Yeah.
H-he's right here.
Hello.
This is Nick.
It was around 1:30 when I received a phone call from the Racine County Sheriff.
Thank God, thank God.
So they brought me back to the Wheeling Police Department, and I-I'm just -- I'm on cloud nine that we found her.
I walk into the interview room door.
He had sort of a troubled look to his face, like I had some news for him.
And, uh, I looked at him, and I said, "You can relax, Dave.
" I said, "We found her.
" I don't know what you're talking about.
Sure you do, Dave.
The best part -- she's alive, so she can testify.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Teri shouldn't have survived, for a lot of reasons.
It's freezing-cold in Illinois in January, and that January was single digits.
She was beaten nearly to death with a baseball bat.
And she survived because she had the presence of mind while she was being beaten to play dead.
From a systemic perspective, she had a very low blood pressure, a very low heart rate, a very low respiratory rate, and her core temperature was 84 degrees.
She was hanging on for life.
I don't know if there are medical miracles.
I know that things happen in medicine that amaze physicians and we can't always explain how and why patients survive.
Call it randomness, luck, God, whatever it is, them willing themselves on to live.
There are other things that we just can't control, and in this case, I think that had a lot to do with it.
A lot of it was just Teri -- Teri pushing through.
I was assigned to follow the ambulance to the hospital.
It was also my job to stand by at the hospital and provide security outside of her emergency room.
That's when a nurse came up and -- and started talking to me and said, "You know, she's really worried, and she's afraid that this guy is gonna come to the hospital and beat her again.
" That's when I walked into the exam room.
I walked over to the side of the bed, and I said, "You know, the nurse told me that you're worried that, you know, David's gonna come and beat you, he's gonna hurt you.
" Teri, Teri, your kids are okay.
He's behind bars.
And I held her hand, and I remember her squeezing my hand pretty tight, and I told her, I said, "Your kids are fine.
He's behind bars.
He's not gonna come and hurt you anymore.
" I said, "And I'm gonna make sure nobody's gonna hurt you.
I'm here for you.
" Okay? After talking with the doctor, I was escorted in to see Teri.
What I saw shocked me.
I knew that she had gone through something horrible.
I knew that she would have sustained injuries.
But I had no, uh, idea the shape that she was in.
I woke up in the hospital, and I woke up to a nurse saying, "I have to cut your hair, okay?" And at that point, it just seemed almost comical to me that y-you're worried about -- Who cares about my hair?! Are you kidding me? You're, like, asking me if you can cut my hair like it matters? I just relaxed a-a-and went to sleep for a while after that, because I knew that we were gonna be okay.
And I heard somebody else say, "And David Larsen's in jail.
" And at that moment, the condition of my feet didn't matter.
The condition of my body didn't matter.
Getting my hair cut didn't matter.
Nothing mattered but those three things -- He was in jail, I was alive, my girls were safe with my sisters.
That's it.
That's all that mattered.
Do you have any 8's? How does she keep winning? Just lucky, I guess.
Life is a gift, and life is a gift that I think we take for granted on a daily basis.
We don't really have that thankfulness and that gratefulness in our hearts that we should.
We need to step back and say, "You know, I am grateful just to have this day.
I am grateful to have my children.
I am grateful to have my family and my friends and treat them as such.
" Um, because it can all be gone in an instant.
I believe I helped.
I helped myself survive.
I made myself stay awake.
I did everything that I could do Amanda! like going in feetfirst instead of headfirst in the garbage can or continuing to try to claw my way out of the garbage can.
I never just sat and said, "Oh, well.
I guess I'm done for.
This is -- this is over.
" I fought and fought until the very last moment, when I was finally rescued.
My legs from my knees down and my arms were absolutely frostbit.
My toes were frostbitten so badly that I had them all amputated.
They were just -- They were just beyond repair.
I actually don't even feel like I walk with a limp.
I just -- I walk, and I get places, and that's what's important.
When I was in the hospital, there was a pen mark drawn on my right arm where they really thought that they would have to amputate, because my arm and my hand was just so frostbitten, they didn't think that it was gonna come back.
We always wait to see what tissue will survive and which will not survive.
We never, early on, amputate anything, because sometimes what looks really bad day one looks pretty good a week later.
The doctors in charge said, "just wait.
You know, she's young.
She's healthy.
J-just wait.
" And, um, thank God, because it all came back.
I lost the baby that I was carrying.
Um, my daughters had a hard time with that.
David Larsen didn't just do it to me.
He did it to my daughters, he did it to my parents, my sisters, my family, and my friends.
He -- he affected all of us by his actions.
I had the best thing in the world.
I had a victim that's alive that can tell the whole story to the judge, to the jury, to the world, if need be, about what this maniac did to her.
He tried using the amnesia claim in court, and it didn't work.
It didn't go over very well.
He knows what he did.
He just doesn't want face what he did.
Someday, he'll meet his maker, and they'll have some talking to do.
Because of the federal kidnapping, 'cause he drove me across state lines and left me in a storage locker in Illinois, he was sentenced to life in prison.
He will never see the light of day outside of prison walls.
Actually, in 2010, he tried escaping, and he is now serving time in a super-maximum-security prison, and he's going to be there until he can prove that he's worthy enough to go back into the regular maximum-security prison in Wisconsin.
Today, I-I am still married t-to Nick, and my daughters are teenagers, and we have a son who's 7.
Uh, my son, Ben, does not even know that his sisters are half-sisters.
They're just his sisters, and we're just a family.
And I travel, and I give talks to raise awareness and understanding about domestic violence.
I should have died after I was beat in the head with a baseball bat.
I should have died just for the pure fact that my body was absolutely frozen and my kidneys were shutting down.
You know, I should have died, you know, from the fact -- From -- from the loss of blood.
Th-there's so many reasons why I shouldn't be here.
But I feel like there is some reason why I was spared, and that is exactly why I do the work I do today.
I feel like I am supposed to get out there a-and warn people, uh, about bad relationships.
And if I can spare one person from being killed and one family From going through that pain, it's worth it.
" She finally had had enough, and she finally left - Where are you? - .
.
But he couldn't accept that, and he was gonna make her pay for it.
The date that he tried to kill me was the exact anniversary of our divorce.
Amanda! I never met anybody like that before.
You looked in his eyes, and I see nothing.
He is just a cold-hearted animal.
I think he thought she was dead already, but she wasn't.
I was terrified, but in that same moment, my survival instincts kicked in, and I just started thinking, "How do I control this situation so I don't die here today?" In An Instant 1x04 "Left of Dead" Well, I grew up, uh, you know, in a suburb of Milwaukee, uh, had a wonderful family.
My parents were married for 52 years.
I have three siblings, um, enjoyed high school, had a lot of friends, and I was in a hurry to just get married and settle down and have a family.
Actually, I met David Larsen back in college.
Years later, he kind of surfaced again in our circle of friends.
And we talked, and we got along, and he was hardworking.
He had a nice home.
He wanted a lot of the same things that I wanted.
He told me that he was ready to have a family.
He was very active in his church.
On paper, it just looked very good.
It was everything that I wanted to hear.
Teri and Dave's relationship at that time seemed very healthy, happy, loving.
You would not have gotten any glimpse of anything.
They looked like the perfect couple.
- I'm gonna have one.
- Oh, look at that! - Isn't it beautiful? - Oh, it's beautiful! I absolutely thought that it was this fairy-tale wedding and it was gonna be this fairy-tale marriage.
I think the invitations even said "Dreams do come true.
" Little did I know it would turn out the way it did.
We were married in April of 1996, went on this beautiful honeymoon to Hawaii, was having a very good time until we -- we argued one night about what I was gonna wear.
It was a-a really dumb argument about he wanted me to wear one thing and I wanted to wear something else, and it was very trivial to me.
I told you what I want.
No.
I'm gonna wear what any normal person wears on a hike.
The bikini.
No.
Now, are you coming with me or not? I had seen his anger and his temper before, but it never was really directed at me.
I mean, my first thought was, "I'm -- I'm g-- I'm out of here.
I'm getting on a plane.
I'm going back home.
I'm not putting up with this.
" But I felt kind of trapped there.
You are bought and paid for.
A wife is to obey her husband.
You do what I say.
It's in the Bible.
It's law.
He had the tickets, he had, you know, all the credit cards, everything in his name.
I felt guilty, like, "How could I possibly get married and just a couple weeks later want a divorce or, you know, want to be separated? It would make me look like a fool.
" We were married for three years -- Um, three years too long.
Uh, we had two beautiful daughters in the meantime.
And when my second daughter was about 2 months old, I left, 'cause I knew that that's not the life that I wanted for them.
That was the longest divorce I have ever seen happen, because Dave Larsen fought it every step of the way.
Teri was fighting to prove to the court that he was not fit to have a joint custodial relationship.
What does that mean? Equal parental decision-making.
When Teri got divorced, she did not think he was fit to be a joint parent, but the placement schedule got put in, and he had plenty of time with those kids, unsupervised, despite her saying he's not healthy.
After I left David in 1999, a couple months after that, I had joined a-a, uh, professional choir.
I met some really wonderful people, and one of those people was, um, Nick.
She, uh, explained about her ex-husband, David Larsen.
Very controlling and wasn't -- wasn't right.
Do you have any 4's? Go fish.
This is just not my day, is it? I was married to Nick in -- in October 2003.
We decided that we're a good team and we would make good parents, and I was looking for a good, positive male role model for my daughters.
The sleeping angel is awake.
Good morning, sweetheart.
Come here.
I want waffles for breakfast.
Waffles?! Coming right up.
- Coffee? - Yes.
Thank you.
And the night of January 30, 2004, we had gone out and bought a pregnancy test, and it was positive.
And we were elated about this.
And the girls had an inkling that they were gonna have probably a little brother or sister, and they were all excited for it, and I couldn't wait to tell them that.
- Hey, no fair! - Uh They have three 7's.
The morning of January 31, 2004, I was ready to pick them up from their father's home and, you know, take them shopping for a gift and take them to a -- to a birthday party.
It was gonna be a good day.
Dave, I'm gonna be there at 10:00.
That morning, I specifically called my ex to say, "You know, I'm gonna be there at 10:00.
Please don't be late.
" Okay, please, please, don't be late again.
Just have the girls ready to go, okay? Goodbye.
I should go with you.
I-it's right on the way to the party.
I don't know.
Before Teri left the house, we had a discussion of whether I should go along with her to pick up the girls or not.
I don't know.
He'll just freak out again, you know? I know.
Two weeks before that, he did come with me to pick up the girls.
All right.
And that just seemed to make things worse.
Get the hell off of my property, and take your whore with you! Dave, just give us the girls, and we'll leave, okay? It's okay, girls.
Daddy has everything under control.
I'll take care of you both.
Hey, I'm just here to help pick up the girls.
I'll come out there with my .
38 and finish both of you! Girls, come on.
I got my cellphone out, ready to -- to dial 911 if, you know, I had to.
It seemed like, you know, five minutes.
It might have only been one minute.
But it was very tense.
Dave, this has got to stop.
Every time -- - Do I bring my girlfriend to your house? - Every time.
Why do you have to be like this? Do I bring my girlfriend to your house?! - Do I bring my girlfriend -- - This needs to stop.
It needs to be done now.
Do I bring my girlfriend to your house?! So it was this big ordeal, so I told him that morning, I'm like, "You know, just -- Just don't even go, Nick.
It's just gonna make things worse.
I'm just gonna go get the girls and just leave and not create any problems.
" And, uh, that's why I went alone.
You said I was abusive.
Well, now you're really gonna see how abusive I can be.
Amanda! No, no, no, no! Dave was extremely angry about the divorce, and I told Teri, since it was just ugly from the get-go, just continue on with your life, and when he disobeys the orders and he doesn't bring the kids back, just document, document, document.
But I told Teri, "You need to watch your back.
He is that angry, Teri, and I am afraid for you.
" It was only about a five-minute drive to his house.
It was a very cold day, snowing.
Um, I think I remember it was like 17 degrees.
Very cold Wisconsin winter day.
They're not ready.
I was aggravated, so I just walked back to my car, and I turned on the radio, and I'm waiting and waiting.
You know, 5, 10 minutes go by.
So I walked back up to the door, and I said, "I really need to get going now.
" The girls want to play a game.
What? A game? Yeah.
They want you to come in and find them.
Right away, something just didn't feel right, because he never even allowed me in his home since the day that I was allowed to go in and -- and get my belongings.
I mean, it had been five years since the day that I actually walked out and left him, and something just seemed weird, like, "Why would he let me in?" But I was in a hurry.
I was excited to tell the girls the news that I was pregnant, and we had a birthday party to get to.
It was cold outside.
So I thought, you know, I'll just walk in and say, "Okay! Peekaboo! I found you! Whatever.
Let's go.
" Girls, where are you? Girls, hello? Amanda? Holly? Where are you hiding? Holly! Amanda! Teri left the house at about 10 minutes to 10:00 to pick up her girls at David Larsen's house.
Expected her to be gone maybe 15 minutes, 30 minutes, depending on if the girls were ready, um, how long it would take to get in the car, that sort of thing.
Mm.
When I came to, I was on my stomach, and the first thing I saw was a wooden, black, louisville slugger baseball bat.
And he had it.
He was holding it, and it was kind of above my head.
And at that moment, I knew.
You know, after all these years of abuse, all these years of trying to get away from him, divorcing him, leaving him, he's really going to extremes.
I mean, he's really bent on -- on -- on killing me.
Shut up! I don't want the girls to hear you.
At that moment, it just seemed strange to me that he has the girls in the house.
I mean, you're -- you're planning to kill somebody, and the girls are in the house? You are not taking my girls away from me, and I'm not going to jail.
Those two girls were in the bedroom, just playing, unknowing that their mother is just being beaten by their father.
You said I was abusive.
Well, now you're really gonna see how abusive I can be.
No, no, no, no! No, no! Aah! Aah! No! I'm glad they were locked into the bedroom.
I mean, if you had come out and seen something like that, I-I just can't think what psychological effects that would have on those two small, impressionable girls.
Please.
Please don't.
You -- you don't have to pay child support.
Please -- please don't.
Please stop.
Uh, uh, I won't -- I won't take you to court.
You know, I tried anything that he wanted to hear.
He just looked at me and said, "Oh, yeah " and, you know, um, kept hitting me.
I was laying on the floor, pretty much lifeless.
I-I felt like -- I felt like what it would maybe feel like to have a stroke.
My body was just, like, numb, like I-I could -- I could hardly move it.
I wasn't in control of it.
Stop breathing.
Stop breathing.
And he kept telling me just to stop breathing -- Just stop breathing.
And it felt like when I was married to him and he would just tell me what to do.
Like, he expected me to do it.
It was like he was giving me a command.
He then took some duct tape and started taping my wrists together.
Because of the commotion and the way I was being moved around, my -- my jogging pants started slipping down.
And I always remember him saying, "Don't make this look like something it's not.
" Why'd you make those come off? Don't make this look like something it's not.
It just seemed so weird to me, like, okay, you're worried that it's gonna look like a rape 'cause you're just killing me? I mean, it just was weird.
He then, um, took duct tape and started taping me from my -- All the way from my forehead, all the way around my head, all the way around my head -- My nose, my mouth.
And at that moment, I was just -- I was literally talking to God, saying, "Don't let this be it.
This can't be it.
I can't suffocate on his floor, in his home when my girls are who knows where.
" And who knows if he did something to them? Who knows if he killed them already? I don't know.
And I had this strong sense of, "I have to help my girls.
" I can't -- I can't give up and say, "Oh, my gosh, I'm just -- I'm just gonna die here.
" Before we were married, he treated me really well.
He treated me like I was something very special.
But I saw things that he did to other people that didn't sit well with me.
I remember the very first time that I just got that gut feeling that this is not right.
What is this? This is ridiculous.
We're already late.
Dave, it's okay.
It'll be okay.
I'm not stopping! I have somewhere to go.
Dave, it's okay.
It's not a big deal.
- Dave! - Shut up.
Dave! Sir, you have to stop.
Stop for what? You -- you have to stop! What am I stopping for? Sir -- For what?! This?! You have to stop.
Sir! Get out of the way, or I'm running you over.
- Oh, my God, Dave.
- Shut up.
I was like, "What's wrong with him?" He just gave me a whole list of reasons why he was stressed out and all these things on his mind.
And he was an air traffic controller.
His job was so stressful.
And so I just dismissed it as, you know, "He's just having a bad day.
He would never do anything like that to me.
I'm special to him.
" And I-I fooled myself.
Are you coming with me or not? On our honeymoon, I realized I was not immune to his anger and his control.
There were some good times.
I mean, there were times when a couple months would go by and things were peaceful.
The new normal was, "If things are quiet, it's good.
" You know, so I-it's a good day if he's not yelling.
It's a good day if he's not complaining about something.
Um, it's a good day if he's not hitting me.
It's almost like I didn't expect the happy times anymore.
I was just happy when things were quiet.
That was a good day.
My oldest daughter was 2, and now I have this new baby.
And he came home one night, just ranting and raving about something.
I don't even remember what.
And I remember my 2-year-old daughter just screaming and crying and putting her hands over her ears and going underneath the table, and she was telling him, "Shut up, shut up!" And he started going toward her, saying, "You don't tell me to shut up!" And I thought in that moment, "I have to get him out of here.
" I have to, if not for me -- If I don't have enough self-respect for me to get myself out of here, I have to get these two innocent children out of here, because this is not what I want for them.
Teri called me and said, "Could you take me to a woman's shelter?" And I said, "Teri, I'll be there in five minutes.
Pack up what you need.
I will be there in five minutes.
I'll take you wherever you want to go.
" When Dave found out that I was the person who took Teri to the shelter and to the lawyer's office, he came, and he actually made an appearance at my house.
Where's my wife? To tell you the truth, Dave, I really don't know where they are, but she is leaving you.
She's never leaving me.
And he was literally in my face, and I mean in my face, within six inches of my face, screaming at me, "Well, where are they?" I go, "To tell you the truth, Dave, I really don't know where they are, but she is leaving you.
" I took a vow, till death do us part, and I mean to keep my vows.
I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your husband, but that's how my vows go.
When he said that to me, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew he was very serious about this.
When I left my home that morning, I thought I'd be gone for maybe 15 minutes, and, uh, I ended up being gone for a lot longer than that.
I remember hearing his breath.
You know, he was -- He was getting tired.
I mean, it was almost like he just was putting so much into it and his breathing was just so hard that I remember thinking, "Oh, my God.
You know, I just hope he just falls over and has a heart attack right now.
" The duct tape was put on in a way where I was still getting some air, and then I heard some scooting around.
He was taking me and, like, pushing me into this rubbermaid garbage barrel.
And, again, it was -- It was amazing, because I even thought to myself, "After being hit on the head so many times, I can't believe I'm thinking.
I mean, this is weird that I'm -- That I'm still thinking and I have my wits about me.
" And I was going in headfirst, and I remember using all the strength I could just to turn my body around, because I thought, "If I'm in here headfirst and he puts the garbage can up, I'm gonna be upside down.
I'm not gonna make it.
" He then took the garbage can, and I knew we were going outside, because I could hear the door open.
I felt the cold.
He started turning me around in circles, and I thought, "Is he just trying to disorient me? Is he trying to make me dizzy?" Here I am with no socks, no shoes, no pants, just my underwear and a-a light jacket that I was wearing, and he was filling up the can with snow.
I even remember at one point, when he was putting me up in back of the truck, saying, "I'm cold," and he said, "I know.
" He then hoisted the can up to the back of his truck, and I-I could feel that that's what he was doing and hear that that's what he was doing, and then I felt just a whole bunch of bumping and bumping.
I heard him walk toward his door, and I heard him go in.
And I remember to myself, "I have my cellphone in my pocket of my jacket.
" Thank God, because I reached for my phone, and even though my hands were duct-taped, I could get in and get my phone.
And my face was duct-taped, but I had the old phone at the time, where the numbers were raised, so I could feel where the numbers were, and I dialed 911.
Now, my whole face was taped, and I knew that she wouldn't be able to hear what I was saying.
But I just kept yelling out his address the best I could.
And they got it.
They understood.
And I remember her saying, "Are you having trouble breathing?" And I was just like, "Uh-huh," you know? Um, a few minutes later, I heard squad cars and rescue sirens, but we were on the road.
And what I think happened is they just passed us right up.
We just passed each other.
Started out as a very simple, basic call.
It was a rescue call.
We started talking to the neighbors.
We recognized quickly that this was not a typical rescue call.
I was literally, like, squashed down in this garbage can, almost like a fetal position.
There was, like, really no room for me to -- to move my knees.
I thought that I was never gonna be found and if I was gonna get out, I had to get myself out of there.
What kept me alive was my daughters and knowing that I had to fight to stay here to save them from whatever was gonna transpire next, to save them the hurt and the trauma of losing their mom at such a young age.
That's -- that's the fire that kept me going.
It started out as a very simple, basic call.
It was a rescue call.
Uh, the rescue call was for a woman, uh, in distress.
The home was locked up, and there was no one there.
Um, naturally, deputies were very concerned that the person may not have the energy or strength or the physical ability to unlock the door for us, so they literally kicked the door down looking for a human being, somebody who was having problems breathing, um, to no avail.
We couldn't find this person.
We started talking to the neighbors.
Um, we recognized quickly that this was not a typical rescue call.
The neighbors started to tell us that this is actually the home of David Larsen and that his ex-wife arrived to pick up the children and that they noticed that Larsen had, uh, towed Teri's vehicle away.
The deputies are really starting to think to themselves, "We have something much larger here.
" Later that morning, I received a call from a friend who lived down the street from David Larsen.
Hello? Hi, John.
How are you? Uh, what, the -- The police are over there? I knew something was wrong, something had happened.
I got a phone call at about 11:00 from Teri's new husband, Nick.
Something inside of me just dropped.
I just had this sinking feeling that something bad had happened.
While I was in the garbage can and after I had called 911, sometime after I had dialed 911, I called my new husband, Nick.
Hello? Teri? Nick Teri, are -- Are you okay? He's -- he's trying to kill me, Nick.
He's He's really -- He's trying to kill me.
Uh, Teri -- Teri, c-can you tell me where you are? Um, no.
I-I can't really see.
Um, I'm in a tarp.
A-a tarp? Teri, it sounds like you're driving.
Are you driving? Um, yes, I think so.
I'm I'm in a container.
Do you know where he's taking you? He's trying to kill me, Nick.
He's trying to -- He's trying to kill me.
Teri, you have to hang up.
Hang up right now and call 911 again.
Okay.
I called 911 again, and at this time, it hit their, uh, Milwaukee dispatch, about half an hour north of where my ex's home was.
And I remember saying, "I'm Teri Jendusa.
Um, you know, my -- My ex-husband has me.
He's trying to kill me.
" And I think she thought it was a prank call.
I was just so frustrated, because she kept asking my name over and over.
"Listen, this is who I am.
You know, this is David Larsen.
This is where he lives.
" I think I-I just started blacking out, and I must have been breathing on the phone, and I remember her saying, "Are you just gonna deep breathe, or are you gonna talk to me? And I think I blacked out after that, because I don't remember anything after that.
January 31, 2004.
I was assigned to criminal investigations for the Racine Sheriff's Office, uh, working second shift.
My shift started at 2:00 p.
m.
Uh, and this particular day, I remember parking my vehicle in the parking lot and running into the building, because it literally hurt to breathe in.
It was just that bitter cold.
I was getting just bits and pieces of information.
Um, I was hearing that we were missing an adult female and her two children.
At that time, I didn't even know their names.
The, uh, woman's ex-husband, um, who we've had contact with in the past, um, presumably had taken them against their will.
What do we have on this missing persons? Amber alert's going out now.
The Amber alert became a big issue at that point.
This is a vehicle that we're looking for.
Uh, this is a description of the, uh -- the woman named Teri Jendusa.
This is the description of her two children, Amanda and Holly.
Um, that information needed to get out right away.
We needed the community's help.
It was extraordinarily cold, um, and not knowing where they were, um, created a-a whole new level of urgency.
Mom didn't show up because she doesn't care about you.
Teri is nowhere to be found, the children are nowhere to be found.
It's freezing outside.
What did he do with them? "My worst fears have come true.
" Mom didn't show up because she doesn't care about you, okay? But Daddy's gonna make everything better, okay? Watch the door, honey.
Let me put your sister in first.
Here you go, honey.
Okay, get back in the car.
Ah, I got ya.
The kids were so young, and I was asked, "Well, has he abused them?" And my -- my answer was, "Not yet.
" Um, but because I couldn't prove past abuse on this, you know, 6-month-old and then the 21/2-year-old, they just gave joint custody.
So I still had this connection with him that I could -- That I could never break free from, so we were always together twice a week Dave, this has got to stop.
Every time -- doing exchanges of the children, where he would scream and yell and swear.
Do I bring my girlfriend Um, there was one time when he punched me in the face, and I-I called the police.
They came and took pictures.
They did, you know, this wonderful report, sent it into the D.
A.
, and the D.
A.
just decided not to charge 'cause he didn't think he had enough evidence.
So it was things like this that just went on and on and on that nothing was done about, and I truly believe that that's what gave him the gall to think that he could escalate his behavior and get away with something like murder.
She was afraid of him.
She had tried unsuccessfully to get him served with papers.
She finally got the restraining order January 22nd.
January 31st, he tried to kill her.
I respond to the house, um, of David Larsen.
Uh, when I arrive, I notice the house is just -- it's a pigsty.
I mean, it is a mess.
Last night's dinner is on the table.
Uh, dishes are mounted in the sink.
Uh, laundry in the corners.
It -- it stinks.
It's -- There's clutter everywhere.
I couldn't even tell you what color the kitchen countertops were, that's how -- It was just a mess.
Uh, but I noticed something very quickly.
In the midst of all that mess, there was a large, red -- Presumably blood -- uh, piece of carpet in the dining area.
Uh, and, then, I took a look a little further.
I noticed there was a garbage can, uh, that had a pant leg, uh, hanging out of the garbage can.
I noticed there was duct tape that was stuck to these sort of black wind pants.
These were adult, uh, wind pants for a woman.
And I looked closer at the duct tape, which was sort of stuck with each other.
It looked like someone tried to pull it off, and it just had this sort of struggle feel to it and look to it.
Uh, and I also noticed what appeared to be blood on that duct tape.
Teri is nowhere to be found.
The children are nowhere to be found.
It's freezing outside.
What did he do with them? I knew I had blood at the house.
There was clearly a struggle.
Um, I'm fearing the worst.
I-I-I'm really fearing that, um, we were going to be dealing with a potential triple homicide is what I was thinking.
Uh, I was hoping to disprove that, um, but that was in my heart.
That's what I was thinking.
We sat down with the -- the sheriff, and they asked me, "Well, where do you think Dave would have gone?" Uh, he works at an airport in Illinois.
He might have gone there.
And, um, I think he has, uh, some rental property in Milwaukee.
Where do you start when you don't know where he's taken her? You're looking at all the obvious places, but, you know, I-it could be a million and one places.
That's a long place that you could just dump a body if she was really gone, and I was thinking that she was gone.
I said, "My worst fears have come true.
" I do remember coming to.
I could hear the tarp flapping in the cold wind.
And I thought, "If I can get my arm out there and maybe some motorist passing by will see my arm sticking out and he'll get stopped.
" So I scratched the duct tape off with one of my thumbnails and got one hand free, and I remember sticking it out as far as I could out the side of his truck.
It was freezing.
this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine His truck stopped, and he came back there, hit me with the bat, and he said, "One more stunt like that, I'll get out my .
38.
" Girls, who's ready for lunch? Yay.
Let's go, honey.
I knew he had guns, and I thought, "At least I'm still alive.
I still have a chance.
So I better just stop, because I'll be shot, and it'll be all over with.
" When I left my home the morning of January 31st, I just thought that I was going to pick up my daughters from their father's home, go shopping, get a birthday present, go to a party, and, uh, just have a good day.
I had no idea what laid in --in wait for me.
Girls? Amanda! When I was in the garbage can, I was thinking to myself, you know, "What is he gonna do with me? Is he gonna take the garbage can and drop it in Lake Michigan? What are his plans? What, is he gonna leave me in a forest preserve? Um, and, then, w-what's he gonna do with -- with our daughters?" And I knew instinctively that he did have something planned, because he had told me years before, uh, when we were divorced, I was gonna regret this, I was gonna regret the divorce.
"Whether it's months from now or years from now, you'll regret this.
" I know that I blacked out numerous times after that, because I don't remember a lot of the pieces.
I know my phone rang at some point, and he took it.
Girls, front of the truck.
I do remember the garbage can that I was in being dragged off the truck.
I heard my daughters in the background, like, laughing or something.
I-I knew that he had them.
At least I knew that they were alive.
I thought maybe it was a hangar at the airport, 'cause he was an air traffic controller.
Um, but I just heard boxes and crates and things being scooted around the floor.
He didn't say anything.
I didn't say anything.
I wanted him to think that I was dead.
After all this stuff was being piled on top of the garbage can, I heard this door shut, and I thought, "He's gone.
I need to start yelling for help.
" But I didn't want to start yelling right away, because if he was still in the area, I didn't want him to hear me.
So I waited and waited.
And, then, when I first yelled out, instead of saying "Help," I remember yelling his name, because I thought if I would yell "Help," he would get mad and just come shoot me.
If I would say "Dave," maybe, you know, that would open some communication.
Dave? Dave? And when I yelled out his name a few times and I didn't hear anything, that's when I just started screaming.
Help me! Help! Help! Somebody help me! Help! Help! Help me! Somebody help me! We put out an attempt to locate for Teri's vehicle.
Uh, Milwaukee Police Department found her vehicle next to or near, uh, David Larsen's rental properties.
So our search began in Milwaukee, um, and I'm thinking to myself that she's gonna be in Milwaukee someplace.
He put her vehicle there, that maybe Teri and the children are in one of these rental properties.
I need you knocking on all these doors.
Find out if anybody saw anything at all.
So, with the assistance of the Milwaukee Police Department, we went there, and -- And we started knocking on doors and literally kicking down doors, trying to find Teri and Amanda and Holly.
When I went over by Nick, um, we prayed a lot.
Authorities are looking for two missing girls, their mother, and the father.
We racked our brains a lot.
We just kept thinking and thinking and praying and thinking.
And a lot of people are calling because, okay, now this Amber alert had gone out.
We sat around with the sheriff, "What can we do?" He said, "Start praying.
That's all you can do.
Start praying that she's gonna be okay.
" searching for the Wisconsin man who reportedly abducted his ex-wife and two kids.
Racine county sheriff's deputies are searching for It seemed like three years that I was trapped in -- in that garbage can.
I felt like there was something compressing the can that I was in, because the can seemed like to be getting smaller and smaller as my head was swelling.
I was doing everything I could to try to get the lid off that garbage can, but what I didn't know is that he had it duct-taped shut.
Help! He had boxes on top.
He had a 2x4 running across the top.
I was doing everything I could to try to get the lid off that garbage can, but I was freezing-cold.
I was badly injured.
I mean, there was no way Houdini was getting out of there.
Help me! We get a call from the Wheeling Police Department in Illinois.
They just located David Larsen.
Someone needs to go talk to David.
When's the last time you saw your ex-wife? Help! On the day of our divorce, he came up to me when we were leaving the courtroom and said, "You're gonna regret this.
Whether it's months from now or years from now, you'll regret this.
" And I just looked at him and said, "The only thing I regret is marrying you," and I walked off.
But when I was in the garbage can, I remembered that, so I knew instinctively it wasn't just something at the spur of the moment.
He had a plan.
All we found was her vehicle, um, with some identification, and that was it.
While we're learning about this vehicle and we're kicking down doors in Milwaukee, looking, uh, frantically for them, um, we get a call from the Wheeling Police Department in Illinois.
They indicated that they just located David Larsen, uh, in his pickup truck when he pulled into the parking lot at the, uh, airport in Wheeling, where he is an air traffic controller.
Teri is nowhere to be found, the children are nowhere to be found.
It's freezing outside.
What did he do with them? I knew I had blood at the house.
There was clearly a struggle.
Uh, I'm fearing the worst.
Someone needs to go talk to David Larsen.
Um, I was dispatched there, along with a, uh, fellow coworker of mine, a criminal investigator named Tom Knaus.
Hi, Dave.
I'm Detective Schmaling from Racine.
Have a seat.
David Larsen was escorted into the room.
He walked into the room with a sort of, uh, arrogance about himself, uh, that there was gonna be some reasonable explanation as to why he was stopped and as to why he was here and as to why there were two criminal investigators from Racine, Wisconsin, that wanted to talk to him.
As you already know, we're looking for your children.
When's the last time you saw them? They're at my girlfriend's house.
She's babysitting.
I'm supposed to be at work.
I can give you her number if you'd like.
When's the last time you saw your ex-wife? That bitch was supposed to pick up my girls at 11:00 this morning.
She never showed up.
This is exactly what I've been dealing with for years.
He went on this tirade.
I-I could see I struck a chord with him right away.
And he just went on and on and on about how terrible, how terrible Teri was in his life.
Every Saturday ever since the divorce.
We have an agreement.
I can't get custody, so I only get my girls once a month.
I get them late Friday, and then she comes by on Saturday, so I don't want to let them go.
I don't want to just let them walk out the door.
And she breaks my balls over it, about me being a bad father and all.
And then I get pulled over by the cops, and now I want to know why.
Actually, Dave, she's missing.
We're hoping you can help us out with that.
He explained that, uh, after dropping off the children that he went to work and -- And that, uh, next thing you know, he said he was being stopped by law enforcement, and he wanted to know why.
"There's got to be some explanation to this.
What, did she call the police on me and say I did something wrong again?" When's the last time Teri was at your house? I'll never forget this.
He said, "We have an unwritten rule in my house.
" We have an unwritten rule.
She never comes into my house.
I never go into her house.
And we never break that rule.
Well, Dave, I got to take issue with that, 'cause I was at your house today.
Help! Help me! I didn't know if it was night or day.
It was just pitch dark.
My eyes were starting to swell shut.
I started getting some of the tape off my face, but it hurt.
I couldn't get it all off.
Just screaming and bleeding and frozen and just praying to God that somebody would find me.
And at this point, I had no phone, no means to -- to -- To get ahold of anyone.
They couldn't trace where I was.
And I really thought that this frozen garbage can was gonna be my grave.
Okay, girls, let's go! There you go.
All right, honey.
Okay? How were cartoons? Sorry I had to put you in there for so long.
Oh, good job there.
All right.
- What is that? - Here you go.
Oh, that's just a juice stain, honey.
Daddy spilled some.
Here you go.
All right.
Now, what do we do before we go outside? Put your gloves on.
That's right.
All right.
My daughters had no idea what was happening when he was trying to murder me and putting me and leaving me for dead in that storage locker.
They were in his vehicle as he was driving around.
He stopped and dropped them off at a babysitter's house, which happened to be some woman he was dating or whatever at the time, and that's where the detectives found them.
It was late -- I want to say 9:30, 10:00 that night, Saturday night -- So, you know, over 12 hours have now gone by that these kids were missing, but now they're found.
They still don't know anything about what -- that their mom is still missing.
It never occurred to me that the kids wouldn't be found.
He loved his kids in his own warped, narcissistic way.
They were his possessions, not hers.
When they were found, my first thought was, "Great.
Go find Teri.
" Help! Help! Somebody help me! Help! I was just punching and scraping my hand through the lid just trying to get it off and yelling and crying and praying.
I know that there were times that I blacked out, because I-I would remember coming to, thinking, "Oh, my God, I'm still alive.
I can't fall asleep.
I can't fall asleep.
I have to keep yelling.
I have to keep trying to get out.
" Those hours were probably worse than actually being beat over the head with a baseball bat.
We have an unwritten rule.
She never comes into my house.
I never go into her house.
And we never break that rule.
Well, Dave, I got to take issue with that, 'cause I was at your house today.
When I was there, I saw a sizable pool of blood on your carpet.
"Was there a fight or something between you, or did you cut yourself, you and another person?" And he assured me that, no, he wasn't injured recently and that no one was in a fight.
I said, "Well, I-I-I found blood, Dave, a sizable puddle of blood in your -- In your living room/ dining room area.
" And, uh, he sort of gave me a very blank stare.
I saw a garbage can.
In that garbage can, there was some duct tape, and that had blood on it, too.
I have her pants and socks.
He started to look down, and I discovered something I hadn't seen before.
I'm looking at his wrangler blue jeans that he was wearing.
They had deep-red stains on them on the thigh area.
And I looked down -- I-I was rather shocked -- And I said, "And, in fact, you have Teri's blood on your pants.
" And at that point, he started to rub his -- Rub his thighs, as almost as if he was trying to rub it away.
He'd just gotten caught.
He just -- He didn't know what to say.
Dave, look, she came into your house and you defended yourself, and maybe you overreacted a little bit.
Now's the time to tell me that.
Teri did come into my house this morning.
He said he was busy putting the homework for Amanda and Holly in their backpacks.
He said he looked up, and there Teri was standing over him with a hammer raised in -- in her -- in her hand, and her pants were around her ankles.
Out of fear of being assaulted, he told me he grabbed a baseball bat that just happened to be in the dining room area, and out of fear, uh, for his own safety, he swung the bat and struck Teri in the head.
And at that point, he said that she had fallen down and that he remembers grabbing duct tape but he doesn't know why.
I don't know.
I remember grabbing duct tape.
Where is she, Dave? I remember grabbing duct tape.
We know the girls are -- are safe.
That's great.
But we're still concerned -- Highly concerned -- About Teri's safety.
There are no suspects yet.
Later that night, Nick comes up to me.
He goes, "You got a minute?" I go, "I got all the time in the world, because we're not going anywhere.
" And that's when I found out that she had just taken a pregnancy test earlier that day and that Teri was pregnant.
We just hugged and cried, and I said, "All we can do is keep praying that she's okay and that little baby's okay.
" The good news, according to the sheriffs -- The daughters have been found okay.
He apparently dropped them off at a babysitter.
The bad news is still no sign of the ex-wife.
That's right.
Her car She's going to be found.
Until they tell me otherwise, that's what I believe.
When we would start to think really, really negative, he says, "No, I don't want you to think negative.
We are going to think positive.
Until they tell me that they find a body and it's her and she's dead, I'm going to believe she's alive.
" He's like a rock.
Great husband, so much not like her first.
Where were you driving? Did you stop anywhere? Dave, you got to give me something, anything.
Honestly, I-I just don't remember.
I-I grabbed duct tape, and then I don't know.
I think it's well-established that you grabbed the duct tape, all right? Think.
Think for me, Dave.
I just don't know.
All I know is that I grabbed some duct tape.
I am about 41/2 hours into this interview.
"Okay, Dave, what did you do with her? Where is she at? She might still be with us.
She might still be alive.
" Um, and he said, "I just can't remember.
" And he just kept repeating the same thing -- "I remember grabbing duct tape, and I don't know why.
" Let me get this straight.
You remember where you were going this morning.
You remember what you had for breakfast.
You remember being with the girls.
But you don't know where Teri is? You don't remember what happened at your house? You see, it's kind of hard to believe that you don't remember this one little detail.
It's escaping your mind, huh? I said, "Dave, listen.
You told me what you had for breakfast.
You told me about the phone calls you made today.
You told me that she wasn't there at 11:00, which, by the way, we had squads there at 11:00 in the morning for a 911 call.
" And he looked at me rather surprised.
I said, "Yeah, that's right.
" I said, "Teri called 911.
She told us what happened.
" Dave, Teri called 911.
She told us what happened.
If she's still alive, you need to tell me where she is.
Dave, this is the mother of your children.
I said, "David, it is cold, and we know that you had injured her.
She's bleeding.
This is the mother of your children.
If she's still alive, you owe it to your children, uh, you owe it to everybody to -- To at least tell us where she's at so we could try to help her if at all possible.
" I'm tired.
I want to take a nap.
He's holding a human being's life in the balance, and there's nothing I can do.
It angered me.
I-I just wanted to -- To reach in him and pull out this information.
But the legalities call for when someone's under arrest, that if they ask for a break in the interrogation, I have to give it to them.
Help me! Help! Call 911 right now.
Report of a possible woman inside a storage unit.
This is the police! Where are you? Holly, where are you hiding? Amanda! It was like something from a horror movie.
I mean, who takes a human being and locks them in a -- in a -- In a storage unit to die? Um, it was just -- It was unbelievable.
He definitely left me to die there.
Uh, we dropped off the evidence, and at this point, it's about 4:00 in the morning.
My supervisor said that we were going to be reconvening at 7:00 a.
m.
to strategize what we're going to be doing.
Third-shift staff were out looking.
And I remember going home, and, um, I got into bed, and my wife said, um, "I know what you were working on.
" Um, she said, um, "Did you guys find her?" And I said, "No.
" And she said, "Then what are you doing here?" I couldn't sleep, and I took a quick shower.
I got back in, and, um, I started going through the evidence and just start seeing if there's something I missed here and bouncing ideas off of the other law-enforcement officers in the room, and we're sort of strategizing.
"If you were Dave, uh, given the facts, what do you think he did?" Hey, if Larsen will still talk, go talk to him.
I will.
I'm just gonna go through his wallet first.
I'll look through his wallet.
You just go.
All I could do was pray and think about my daughters, and my daughters gave me the strength to just keep fighting, because I knew that they were still alive, but I didn't know if he was gonna physically harm them.
I didn't know what he was gonna do with them or how he was gonna parent them or be abusive toward them or say, "Oh, your mom didn't care about you.
She never came and got you.
" Or I didn't know what he was gonna do, and that was my driving force to just keep fighting.
Good morning, Dave.
Detective Schmaling.
Are you willing to speak with me again? He came back in the interview room.
He went right back to the assault.
He remembers grabbing duct tape, and he doesn't know and remember why.
If only I could remember, but I-I just don't know.
All I remember is grabbing duct tape.
The investigator who had Dave Larsen's wallet, he said, "Listen, I went through that wallet, and unbeknownst to me, there was a business card in there for a storage facility.
" He goes, "Yeah, I thought to myself, 'you know, why would a guy who lives in Wind Lake, Wisconsin, have a storage facility in Wheeling, Illinois?' it just didn't make sense to me.
" Hi.
This is Detective Keith Dobesh with the Racine Sheriff's Office.
Dobesh called the storage facility and said, "Hey, do you have a-a renter there by the name of Dave Larsen?" Uh, and the gentleman quickly checked his records and said, "In fact, we do.
" And he said, "Well, can you look at Dave Larsen's code and find out if he was in there today?" And he checks -- "Yes, he was.
" Well, at least someone entered that code, and then you have to enter the code to get back out.
And it was about a 20-minute time period.
And Keith was just thinking, "All right, this has got to be it.
Why would he go there? He dropped something off there.
" He said, "Well, I'll tell you what.
Put me on hold, and I want you to go to that locker, and I want you to see what you can see and hear what you can hear.
" Please! Please help! Please help me! Dobesh was sitting on the other end of the phone, just patiently waiting and waiting and waiting.
And finally, the guy comes back with a very urgent voice and said, "Listen, th-there's some faint cries for help in there.
It sounds like someone's crying in there.
" Hang up.
Hang up and call 911 right now.
Come on, Dave.
At the very least, she deserves a proper burial.
All I remember is grabbing duct tape.
In the middle of this, there was a knock at the door, interview room door.
Um, and initially, that bothers me, 'cause I felt like at any moment, David Larsen's gonna tell me where he put Teri.
And now there's a knock at the door, and it sort of broke the -- it broke the emotions in the room.
Um, so I answered it with a little bit of force.
What? It was a sergeant from the Wheeling Police Department, and he said, "I need to talk to you.
" And I stepped out of the room, I shut the door, and he said, "Listen.
Uh, we're taking a 911 call, uh, from somebody, uh, screaming in a storage locker.
" All available units, report of a possible woman inside a storage unit.
10-4 dispatch.
Responding now.
On February 1, 2004, uh, I was working, uh, as a patrol officer with the Wheeling, Illinois, Police Department.
We got a call of something going on in the public storage facility in Wheeling.
I just -- I had a feeling.
I'm like, "That's her.
It's gonna be Teri Jendusa-Nicolai in that storage unit.
" It was really, really cold.
Uh, I think the high temperature may have reached 20 degrees that day.
So it was very cold inside the storage facility.
It's not a heated facility.
This is the police! We're gonna get you out of there, ma'am! Hold on! We were calling out, saying, "It's the police.
We're here.
We're gonna get you out of there.
" It probably took seconds for us to get inside, but it seemed like minutes for us to get that door open.
Hello? Ma'am, where are you? We walked inside the storage unit, and we didn't see anybody.
So I was shocked, 'cause we expected to see a person in there, from what we heard and what the employee heard of this woman's voice.
So initially I thought, "You know what? Maybe we're in the wrong storage unit.
" Hello, ma'am.
Where are you? I finally heard somebody coming in the door, and I got very anxious, like, "Oh, my God, he's back.
He's gonna see that I'm not dead yet.
He's just gonna shoot me.
" So I was very quiet.
Ma'am, where are you? We continued to call out, you know, "We're here.
It's the police.
Where are you?" And at that point, my sergeant had noticed this garbage can in the corner and said, "She's in there.
" So we removed the plastic containers and the box from on top of the, uh, garbage can.
My sergeant opened up the lid on the garbage can, I looked in, and, then, there she was.
I had seen photographs of her before, and the condition she was in inside of that garbage can, y-you couldn't tell who she was.
I had seen photographs of her before, and the condition she was in inside of that garbage can, y-you couldn't tell who she was.
Other than having long hair and having a-a soft-spoken female voice, you couldn't even tell whether it was a male or a female initially.
You just saw this person's swollen face, swollen eyes completely shut, just severely beaten, blood.
You couldn't tell who she was.
Her first thing she said to me was, "Are my kids okay?" And I said, "Your kids are fine.
" The paramedics loaded Teri onto a backboard.
That's when I could see her entire body.
Not only was she beaten about the head, she was beaten about her entire body with this baseball bat -- Head to toe, head to toe.
It was horrible.
At that point, I was still worried about, is she gonna be okay? Is she gonna make it through this? Is she gonna live? Next to the entrance door, I saw a two-tone baseball bat.
And when I saw that baseball bat, I knew.
I'm like, "That had to be what was used to beat this poor woman.
" It had to be.
I can't imagine why somebody would do this to another human being.
Something that you never forget.
Something that'll stay in your mind for the rest of your life.
That's for sure.
We arrive, and I see a gurney coming out.
Her feet were, uh, sticking out at the end of the gurney.
And I thought to myself -- I thought, "They're black socks.
I -- wait a minute.
I've seen black socks with those sweat pants at Larsen's house.
He must -- I thought he ripped those off of her.
" And I quickly looked, and I-I recognized those weren't black socks.
Those were her feet.
I was being taken out on a stretcher, and I remember the voice of one person saying, "What's your name?" And I said, "Teri from Racine.
" And I just heard this sigh, and all I remember next is somebody holding my hand and riding in a, you know, an ambulance and just saying, "just hold on.
" And That's the last thing I remember.
Hello, Nick's phone.
Yeah.
H-he's right here.
Hello.
This is Nick.
It was around 1:30 when I received a phone call from the Racine County Sheriff.
Thank God, thank God.
So they brought me back to the Wheeling Police Department, and I-I'm just -- I'm on cloud nine that we found her.
I walk into the interview room door.
He had sort of a troubled look to his face, like I had some news for him.
And, uh, I looked at him, and I said, "You can relax, Dave.
" I said, "We found her.
" I don't know what you're talking about.
Sure you do, Dave.
The best part -- she's alive, so she can testify.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Teri shouldn't have survived, for a lot of reasons.
It's freezing-cold in Illinois in January, and that January was single digits.
She was beaten nearly to death with a baseball bat.
And she survived because she had the presence of mind while she was being beaten to play dead.
From a systemic perspective, she had a very low blood pressure, a very low heart rate, a very low respiratory rate, and her core temperature was 84 degrees.
She was hanging on for life.
I don't know if there are medical miracles.
I know that things happen in medicine that amaze physicians and we can't always explain how and why patients survive.
Call it randomness, luck, God, whatever it is, them willing themselves on to live.
There are other things that we just can't control, and in this case, I think that had a lot to do with it.
A lot of it was just Teri -- Teri pushing through.
I was assigned to follow the ambulance to the hospital.
It was also my job to stand by at the hospital and provide security outside of her emergency room.
That's when a nurse came up and -- and started talking to me and said, "You know, she's really worried, and she's afraid that this guy is gonna come to the hospital and beat her again.
" That's when I walked into the exam room.
I walked over to the side of the bed, and I said, "You know, the nurse told me that you're worried that, you know, David's gonna come and beat you, he's gonna hurt you.
" Teri, Teri, your kids are okay.
He's behind bars.
And I held her hand, and I remember her squeezing my hand pretty tight, and I told her, I said, "Your kids are fine.
He's behind bars.
He's not gonna come and hurt you anymore.
" I said, "And I'm gonna make sure nobody's gonna hurt you.
I'm here for you.
" Okay? After talking with the doctor, I was escorted in to see Teri.
What I saw shocked me.
I knew that she had gone through something horrible.
I knew that she would have sustained injuries.
But I had no, uh, idea the shape that she was in.
I woke up in the hospital, and I woke up to a nurse saying, "I have to cut your hair, okay?" And at that point, it just seemed almost comical to me that y-you're worried about -- Who cares about my hair?! Are you kidding me? You're, like, asking me if you can cut my hair like it matters? I just relaxed a-a-and went to sleep for a while after that, because I knew that we were gonna be okay.
And I heard somebody else say, "And David Larsen's in jail.
" And at that moment, the condition of my feet didn't matter.
The condition of my body didn't matter.
Getting my hair cut didn't matter.
Nothing mattered but those three things -- He was in jail, I was alive, my girls were safe with my sisters.
That's it.
That's all that mattered.
Do you have any 8's? How does she keep winning? Just lucky, I guess.
Life is a gift, and life is a gift that I think we take for granted on a daily basis.
We don't really have that thankfulness and that gratefulness in our hearts that we should.
We need to step back and say, "You know, I am grateful just to have this day.
I am grateful to have my children.
I am grateful to have my family and my friends and treat them as such.
" Um, because it can all be gone in an instant.
I believe I helped.
I helped myself survive.
I made myself stay awake.
I did everything that I could do Amanda! like going in feetfirst instead of headfirst in the garbage can or continuing to try to claw my way out of the garbage can.
I never just sat and said, "Oh, well.
I guess I'm done for.
This is -- this is over.
" I fought and fought until the very last moment, when I was finally rescued.
My legs from my knees down and my arms were absolutely frostbit.
My toes were frostbitten so badly that I had them all amputated.
They were just -- They were just beyond repair.
I actually don't even feel like I walk with a limp.
I just -- I walk, and I get places, and that's what's important.
When I was in the hospital, there was a pen mark drawn on my right arm where they really thought that they would have to amputate, because my arm and my hand was just so frostbitten, they didn't think that it was gonna come back.
We always wait to see what tissue will survive and which will not survive.
We never, early on, amputate anything, because sometimes what looks really bad day one looks pretty good a week later.
The doctors in charge said, "just wait.
You know, she's young.
She's healthy.
J-just wait.
" And, um, thank God, because it all came back.
I lost the baby that I was carrying.
Um, my daughters had a hard time with that.
David Larsen didn't just do it to me.
He did it to my daughters, he did it to my parents, my sisters, my family, and my friends.
He -- he affected all of us by his actions.
I had the best thing in the world.
I had a victim that's alive that can tell the whole story to the judge, to the jury, to the world, if need be, about what this maniac did to her.
He tried using the amnesia claim in court, and it didn't work.
It didn't go over very well.
He knows what he did.
He just doesn't want face what he did.
Someday, he'll meet his maker, and they'll have some talking to do.
Because of the federal kidnapping, 'cause he drove me across state lines and left me in a storage locker in Illinois, he was sentenced to life in prison.
He will never see the light of day outside of prison walls.
Actually, in 2010, he tried escaping, and he is now serving time in a super-maximum-security prison, and he's going to be there until he can prove that he's worthy enough to go back into the regular maximum-security prison in Wisconsin.
Today, I-I am still married t-to Nick, and my daughters are teenagers, and we have a son who's 7.
Uh, my son, Ben, does not even know that his sisters are half-sisters.
They're just his sisters, and we're just a family.
And I travel, and I give talks to raise awareness and understanding about domestic violence.
I should have died after I was beat in the head with a baseball bat.
I should have died just for the pure fact that my body was absolutely frozen and my kidneys were shutting down.
You know, I should have died, you know, from the fact -- From -- from the loss of blood.
Th-there's so many reasons why I shouldn't be here.
But I feel like there is some reason why I was spared, and that is exactly why I do the work I do today.
I feel like I am supposed to get out there a-and warn people, uh, about bad relationships.
And if I can spare one person from being killed and one family From going through that pain, it's worth it.