7.20- Cameron & Janice Hooker

¨The Company¨ was based on the real kidnapping of Colleen Stan. Stan was twenty years old when she was abducted by Janice and Cameron Hooker while hitchhiking from her home in Oregon to a friend’s birthday party in North Carolina. The couple offered her a ride to her desired location but instead took her to the home they owned, there they would keep her locked in a coffin-like box under their bed for twenty-three hours a day and for the hour she was let out she was repeatedly sexually abused and tortured. She was beaten, electrocuted and even stretched on a rack by sadist Hooker and over time the couple wore her down both physically and mentally enough to convince her to agree to sign a slave contract. The couple brainwashed Stan to believe that a secret organization called ¨The Company¨ would kill her family if she didn’t agree. Of course the organization they were referring to was completely made up, in the episode they portuaded it as something that really did exist. Colleen was held captive for seven years. During those seven years the Hookers continued to brainwash Stan into thinking she was in a happy relationship with Cameron, they even took her to meet her family. In later interviews we found that Colleen knew what they were doing but was still too afraid to do anything, she truly believed the company would hurt her family. Colleen was able to escape in 1984. Cameron Hooker was charged with kidnapping, rape, torture and was sentenced to 104 years in prison. Janice however agreed to testify against Cameron (because apparently he was in charge of the whole operation) in exchange for immunity, she currently lives in California raising her two daughters. Since then there’s been a movie called ¨Girl In The Box¨ that tells Stan’s story and everything she went through.