In May 2021, the news of the prisoner's death came from the McCormick Correctional Institution in South Carolina, USA, and due to the particularity of the prisoner, the topic quickly exploded in the media.
The prisoner who died suddenly was Vinson Filyaw, who was sentenced to 421 years in prison without suspension for the famous "Bunker Girls Case" for brutally kidnapping, imprisoning, sexually assaulting and abusing underage girls.
He was a bad guy, and even without killing, he was the worst man — that's what the victim's lawyer described Filyaw said.
"He was sentenced to 421 years, and every day was deserved."
In these 421 years, every number reminds people of the ten days of horror spent by the girl who was locked up in a secret tunnel. Therefore, Filyaw only spent 14 years in prison and escaped lifelong punishment, which is really difficult for the victim's family to accept...
This is not a story about a perverted criminal, but a legend about survivors...
In September 2006, 14-year-old Elizabeth Shoaf, as usual, jumped out of the town's trolley and prepared to cross the path home.
A man was already crouching in the bushes beside him, and the man waited for the school bus to go far away, jumping out of the grass to block the girl. The middle-aged man, dressed in a police uniform, showed Elizabeth the badge and told her that you had been arrested for possession of marijuana, follow me back to the police station, and wait for your parents to bail you out.
The officer in front of her was intimidating enough for a little girl, and the frightened Elizabeth was handcuffed by the man and carried through the woods.
She thought their destination was a police station, but the man in uniform wasn't a cop.
Screenshot of the adapted movie
He was Vinson Filyaw, then an unemployed construction worker 36 who was recently wanted for allegedly raping his girlfriend's 12-year-old daughter.
He deliberately took Elizabeth around in circles in the woods, causing the girl to lose her sense of direction in the woods, which was not unfamiliar, and the girl felt that things were not good and turned to escape.
Screenshot of the movie
But the cunning man had already planned every step of the action. He beat Elizabeth and forced her to wear a collar, he intimidated the girl, the collar was stuffed with explosives, and if Elizabeth tried to escape, he would not only blow up Elizabeth, but also go to her house and kill her family.
The 14-year-old girl was so frightened that she had no idea what kind of future she was facing. But Elizabeth still did her best to calm down and analyze what she should do when the tears flowed uncontrollably.
Although her screams were already in her mouth, there was still no call for help. Because the forest in the town is not occupied at night, it is likely that not only will there be no rescue, but it will also irritate the man and cause himself to be killed.
It was getting dark, and Elizabeth was finally taken to a place where there were traces of humans. It was a trailer, and poor Americans would often live in such a trunk. But the bad news is that the owner here is the Filyaw who kidnapped himself.
To make matters worse, Instead of taking the girl into the trailer, Filyaw groped around the grass and lifted a heavy steel plate on the ground with a 5-meter pit underneath. Elizabeth was pushed down by the man and lost consciousness between falls.
The large pit is a "booby-trapped" underground bunker dug out by Filyaw by hand. That said, it is difficult for others to discover the location of these potholes except for the people who make the traps.
Previously, this was used by hunters to catch large beasts, but Filyaw had other plans to dig up this secret passage. The bunker was filled with canned food, stun guns, handcuffs and shotguns, and piles of pornography.
Note on the trailer box "Anyone who crosses the fence will be shot, including the police"
According to Filyaw, he lost his job after being charged by police for sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend's underage daughter, but he firmly felt he had been wronged. He hates the police, so in retaliation, he plans to actually snatch an underage girl as a sex slave.
And he's going to take the girl to a place where the police will never find it, and make her family go crazy so that everyone will scold the police for being incompetent. So he began to dig bunkers, stockpiled guns, and carefully formulated the entire kidnapping plan.
But being wronged and retaliating against the police are all excuses. Filyaw greatly satisfied her perverted sexual desires from the process of plundering teenage sex slaves.
After falling off the bunker, Elizabeth wakes up in pain, sexually assaulted after being viciously stripped naked, beaten if she resists, and shot at the head. When she passed out, she was woken up again, sexually assaulted, beaten, and cycled back and forth for hours.
Elizabeth didn't know what to do, just thought she was going to die, but even more desperate, she wasn't dead here. In the early hours of the next morning, she was still greeted with the same violent rape and beatings that had lasted for a long time.
If you live, will it be like this every day? Elizabeth fainted again in pain.
At the other end of the forest, Elizabeth's parents found that their daughter still hadn't returned home, and they decided to go to the police station to report the crime. But there was no evidence that Elizabeth was in danger, and for a 14-year-old girl, the police concluded that it was just a rebellious child running away from home, and did not mobilize any police force to look for it.
No matter how many times Elizabeth's mother pleaded, saying that her daughter would never run away from home or be a child who would stay home at night, the police still suggested waiting two more days — "she will come back by herself."
But then again, even if the police alert Amber on the spot and carpet search for Elizabeth's tracks, it would not help. Not only is the bunker secretive, but it is also surrounded by various booby-trap bomb devices and even fake doors as a cover.
The lawyer displays the trap device
Elizabeth's fate is entirely on her own. Luckily, she was extremely intelligent and composed. On the way to the forest, she deliberately kicked off one foot's shoe, hoping that this would be a clue for her loved ones to find herself.
After being tortured for two or three days, Elizabeth still hadn't heard from search and rescuers around her. She decided to find a way to change her situation.
Despite the fact that she still had explosives and chains around her neck and all around her was weapons, Elizabeth still had the courage to try to chat with the kidnapper, who deliberately said something that interested him. Talk to him about his life experiences and ask some stories about digging bunkers to get information about his location.
"I think if I want him to trust me, I have to make him think I care about him so that he's willing to let me do what I want to do."
In the eyes of the perverted kidnapper, such an exchange transforms her from a humble hostage into someone who can give him understanding, which greatly reduces the man's vigilance. Although he would still sexually assault Elizabeth countless times a day.
Elizabeth even began to pretend that she enjoyed being sexually assaulted, and she endured nausea and told the pervert that she loved him and wanted to run away with him. Their relationship was almost reversed by Elizabeth, and the pervert began to treat her like a lover.
Sexual assault became less violent, yelling and beatings all but disappeared, and Elizabeth temporarily saved herself from being abused more brutally. He even unshackled her and chained her feet.
Elizabeth climbed onto the ground while the man was asleep. She put a handful of hair that she had tried to cut off in a nearby tree hole, hoping that the search and rescue dog could find her according to the smell.
She had also made an excuse to look for the exit of the forest, following the ruts to the road at the end of the forest. She burst into tears because she recognized at a glance that the road was the side street where her family was located.
In fact, the bunker where she was kidnapped is only 1.6 kilometers from her home. But she could only get there, because this sneaky man could detonate the explosives in her neck at any time, or rush into the house and kill them all, and the police would have a hard time arresting him.
"In the middle of the night, I would stand across the road, just in the dark, and pray for me and my family," Elizabeth decided to hold out for a few more days, trying to get the police to catch him and make sure he got the punishment he deserved.
Gradually, she persuaded Filyaw to let her play the game on his phone. Every time she pretended to finish the game, she returned the phone to Filyaw until the tenth day.
After the man fell asleep, Filyaw quickly typed on his phone, quickly sending his approximate location and the fact of the kidnapping to all the people he could memorize, including a few friends and parents. The soulless mother once again went to the police with a text message, and was almost ignored as a prank.
After all, due to the lack of time, the message in the text message is very concise. It's hard to convince a quiet town that something is happening in their forest.
But after satellite positioning, the police found that the mobile phone positioning was consistent with the forest described in the text. The police made what now seemed unwise, revealing on television news the clue and the man's phone number.
And the news was broadcast while Elizabeth was watching TV with the criminals in the bunker. The man was furious and terrified when he saw the news, and he quickly suspected that Elizabeth had released the message.
"I was scared I was going to die and he was angry. I don't know what to do." Elizabeth tried to calm the prisoner's mood and advised him to flee quickly in a "good for him" tone, or he would be caught by the police. The trust gained from the man for many days left Elizabeth alive, and the man seemed to accept her offer and began to pack his bags.
On the other side, the police rushed around, obviously having reached the location where the mobile phone was located, but there was no trace of humans underneath.
The police did not expect that there was a huge bunker under the forest. Just when she was in danger, Filyaw's ex-girlfriend saw the news, recognized Filyaw's mobile phone number, and hurriedly told the police that the man had a history of sexual assault and had shown her a bunker in the deep forest. The police immediately began a re-search.
Elizabeth and Filyaw sat in the cave, listening to the sound of the helicopter overhead from far and near, and then slowly leaving, but the two of them had completely opposite feelings. The man was gloomy packing his luggage, and Elizabeth could not predict whether it would be hope or rescue that would come first.
It was a grueling night, and Elizabeth didn't dare to sleep for a minute. The next morning, there was no movement in the house, and Elizabeth felt that the man had fled away, but the helicopter had also left.
She frantically crawled out of the dungeon, screaming through the forest, wandering, expecting someone to find her. Finally, she heard someone in the distance repeating her name, and the figure got closer and closer, this time in front of her was the real policeman.
"They took me to the hospital, and I started crying when I saw them, and I cried with joy."
On the same day, the man was also arrested by the police, and Elizabeth finally regained her freedom after 10 days of abuse in the dungeon.
The following year, the trial of the man officially began, and the public learned more terrible facts. The man also built four similar bunkers in the area, a large number of guns and explosives and night vision goggles.
It's hard to say if more girls would have been killed if he hadn't been caught.
In court, the girl was unable to testify live because she was emotionally out of control, but she wrote detailed testimony against the man, eventually hammering him to death a series of incriminating evidence including kidnapping, rape and posing as a police officer.
The girl's mother told the judge: "For 10 days we endured nightmares that we didn't want any other family to suffer. Our innocent child was tortured and abused and treated in a way she should not have been treated".
The judge found his actions to be seriously harmful and inexcusable and unforgivable, and ultimately sentenced him to 421 years in prison, which is actually life imprisonment. But the girl's family believes that his perversion and wickedness deserve a death sentence.
And now, Vinson Filyaw died after only serving 14 years in prison, which makes many righteous netizens think that he has not been punished enough.
"It's too bad, he deserves more pain"
"He should have been stoned to death"
"God bless him to die a painful death"
But some people say that this may also be a good thing in the United States, and if you don't work for a few more years, you may be used by leftist politicians, and you may be released from prison with a commutation.
"It's a pity that after a while, a social worker will have to announce that he is already a normal person and can return to society!"
Elizabeth's bravery and determination allowed her to break out in almost hellish places, but she always had a lot of psychological shadows and PTSDs, and could only frantically learn female self-defense, with a lot of anti-wolf tools to protect herself.
Even so, she actively helps the local youth and actively lives. She became a dental nurse and was invited to campus to teach more girls how to survive in dangerous situations.
The sentence of more than four hundred years may seem long, but many of the victims who live in pain cannot really get out of the cage laid by the perpetrators until they die...
Source: British Newspaper Sister