"I never dreamed anything so horrible would happen to my family," says Donna. Nor did she have reason to. For seven years, she lived with her two daughters, Caitlin and Amanda, in the peaceful community of Ada, Oklahoma.
She looks back to life with her boyfriend, Jerry Savage. "Jerry and I dated for about five years. The first year was pretty good and then he started trying to control things, telling me how to raise my children, how to spend my money, what friends I could see, where I could go."
Donna's mother, Joann, didn't like her daughter's boyfriend from the start. "Jerry was manipulative, and controlling and possessive, and I think my daughter, Donna, was brainwashed by him," she says. "We did not get to see our granddaughters, Caitlin and Amanda. They were isolated from us."
"Jerry seemed to want things his way and only his way," Donna's father, Andy, adds.
"Jerry and I broke up about every two months," Donna recounts. "He would always end up talking me into going back with him. When we broke up the final time he threatened to kill himself, but he kept calling me at work. He left me notes on my car and I told him that he needed to get help. Jerry checked into a mental hospital. After he got out of the hospital he kept bothering me at work. I left him an e-mail. It was pretty straight forward, and it said, 'Leave me alone. Don't call me. Don't leave me notes. Stay away from me.'
"On the morning of August 29th, I pulled into my garage and walked into the kitchen, and he grabbed me. Jerry had my garage door opener and he used that to break into my house. He said, 'I just want to talk to you, and this is the only way I can get you to talk to me.' He said, 'You've got to go back with me, because now I'm better.' I said, 'No,' and he got very angry, and he said, 'Well, I really didn't want to do it this way,' and he pulled a gun out of his pocket. He had this awful look on his face. It didn't even look like his face. It was just an evil look, and he was so angry at me. I was scared to death.
"I just kept thinking, 'I can't let my kids grow up without a mother.' Jerry told me to call my work and tell them that my kids were sick and that I was going to be late. I know that my co-worker knew something was wrong because I never do that."
Joan was at home listening to the police scanner, when she heard that a policeman was going over to Donna's house. She called the police and told them, "Jerry's got Donna and he's got a weapon. She's my daughter, and Jerry Savage used to be her boyfriend." She also called Donna's brother Kevin, a police officer. "I just felt terrified. I was just thinking that she would not get out of it alive," she says.
And she wasn't alone. "I was scared to death," says Kevin. "I could see that I had underestimated what characteristics I had seen in Jerry."
Meanwhile, Donna was contending with her intruder. "I had no doubt he was going to kill me, and I didn't want my kids to come home from school and find me there, so we went to his house.
I continued to try to talk to him about, 'Let's get back together,' and I just told him whatever he wanted to hear just to get out of this alive," she says. "My co-worker, Kristi, called me, and she started asking me yes and no questions. She asked me, 'Are you in Ada?' and I said, 'No.' She said, 'Are you alone?' I said, 'No.' She said, 'Does he have a gun?' I said, 'Yes.'"
Jerry held a gun to Donna's head for nearly three-and-a-half hours.
She continues, "After I got off the phone we heard a police radio and Jerry said, 'Oh, look what you've done. You've gotten the police here,' and he laid the gun down on the couch on top of his little blue bag that he'd brought over to my house. I went to the back of the house. I was afraid there was going to be gunfire. When I saw Jerry was being arrested, I was so glad that I was going to get to see my girls again, and that I had made it through it alive."
When police took Jerry into custody, they learned that his little blue sports bag was in fact a "kidnap kit," containing two rolls of duct tape, zip ties which could double as hand-cuffs, a pair of pliers, extra ammunition and a loaded 9-mm. pistol.
To Donna's surprise, Jerry was able to quickly post bail. She says, "I went up to the courthouse and got a protective order against him. The under-sheriff said that he would give me a two-hour notice before he got out. So, about 5:00 that evening, the under-sheriff called me and he said, 'Initiate the evacuation plan now.' At that time, I was so
scared, and everything was happening so fast, and I had to get out of town really, really quick. I was on the road to Tulsa before Jerry was released."
Less than 30 hours after he put a gun to her head, Jerry was back on the streets. Donna was on the run from him, and terrified.
