Speaker 1: I've been in prison for forty eight years, charged with
the kidnapping and murder of the woman I loved. The
hardest part hasn't been sitting behind bars all this time.
It's been the constant, gut wrenching memory of seeing the
look on my beloved girlfriend's face. She was stolen from
my arms, taken away by the beast of the woods,
and disappeared forever. My name is Robin. My sister's name
is Sparrow. Our mother and father were hippies. I was
born in the late nineteen fifties. My father was an
art professor and my mother a graduate student, and we
moved our family to a farm owned by one of
their friends, who had inherited a property of over five
hundred acres. Twenty other families lived on the property, with
us housed in campers and tents and buses, and the
farms out buildings. We survived on what was grown on
the land, little elks. We didn't eat meat or use
materials from animals, such as leather or hides. We produced
a variety of items from hemp, which we cultivated on
the farm, along with several other plants not native to
the state. I can remember the police visiting us several
times a week for many years. They would be looking
for a runaway or had heard complaints that we were
smoking pot. They found just about any reason they could
to walk around the property and look in the buildings
and campers. They never found anything, and life went on
as usual once they left. One September morning, when I
was eleven years old, the police arrived with a bus
and took all the children to school. That was difficult
for as you can imagine being a hippie going to
class with a bunch of red blood and Americans who
all seemed to have loved all the fighting in Vietnam.
They would make fun of our clothes and our hair,
and even what we ate for lunch, which consisted of
only fruit and vegetables. I had long hair that came
down to the middle of my back. One time, the
older boys in high school held me down and cut
it off with their pocket knives. I had a thousand
reasons not to go back, but one good reason to stay.
Her name was Sky. I couldn't think of a better
pair than a bird and the sky. She was the
only thing keeping me at school that year. Sky's father
was a car dealer, and a city councilman, and he
hated me with a passion, but that didn't stop us
from seeing each other. We wound up spending time together
at school, and we'd hang out afterwards and even sneak
out of the house night. We would go to the
park and line the grass among the flowers, and we
watched the heavens pass through the night, and I'd sneak
her back into her house before her parents woke up.
The summer after we graduated, and we knew our time
together was limited, I had to register for the draft,
and Sky's parents had enrolled her in a university on
the East coast, mainly to get her away from me
and all the other bad influences in California. So before
we went our separate ways, Sky and I took off
for a few days north into the mountains to go camping.
Sky had a Volkswagen Thing, which was a hell of
an ugly car, but we could go almost anywhere in it.
The first night and day passed uneventfully. We made fires
and stayed up late watching the stars, and we fell
asleep in the warmth of each other's arms. When the
morning came, we would rebuild the fire hang around the
camp and enjoy the peacefulness of the nature around us.
On the second night, I was awoken by the sound
of nuts falling on the tent, the cause of an
unusually loud night bird. I asked Guy about it the
next morning, but she hadn't heard anything. We sat around
again that day for a few hours and I did
some drawings of Sky. I inherited my parents' talent for art,
and I figured if I had some pictures of her
to take with me to Vietnam might ease the pain
while we were apart. A few days later, we left
our camp to take a stroll through the woods. We
were only gone for a couple of hours, and when
we returned we found that our food had been taken.
I suspected an animal had visited our camp while we
were away, and was a little on edge that night,
and I was worried that it might be a bear.
That night, we were awakened by a pack of coat
he's up on the top of a ridge. Some owls
joined in on the noise, and the strange night birds
were calling again louder than before. The nuts were falling
all around us, but it seemed to be hitting everything
except for the tent. So the next day we took
another walk, and this time to a small mountain lake
that we had seen on our drive up. As we
strolled down the dirt road, we could hear something pacing
us inside the woods. I was afraid it was Sky's father,
that he had found our hiding spot, brought a friend
with him, and was going to kill me up there. Well,
we picked up our pace when we saw our camp
decided that even though it was late, it was time
to leave. We were almost to the car when I
heard a growl. It was so intense and forceful that
I could feel it in my soul. We heard pounding
and thundering steps and shook the ground and through the
trees we watched a giant ape like creature run straight
at us. It's teeth bared and its arms extended. It
switched from all fours to two feet, and it gathered
momentum as it plowed toward use. I pushed my arms
out around Sky in an attempt to protect her and
brace for the impact. But the beast swept me into
a tree like it was nothing, and he scooped Sky.
I knew his massive arms without even slowing down. Well,
I was shaken and my head was pounding, one of
my ribs seared with pain. I finally got to my
feet and started to chase after them, and I heard
Sky screaming as she was carried away. But no matter
how fast I ran, Sky's screams got further and further
away from me, traveling at a pace that I couldn't
keep up with, and within a few minutes she was
out of earshot, and there was nothing but silence that
surrounded me. I followed a large game trail for some time,
but I never heard another hint of life from her.
I came to a stream at the bottom of a gorge,
and I knew I was lost. I wandered along the
flowing water until it was too dark to move, and
I sat down against the cliff that night, and I
shook in fear and rocked myself into an agitated, restless sleep.
Throughout the night, I could hear the noises again. Large
rocks fell off the cliff above me, then logs and
even a tree, and I huddled against the rock, tormented
in shame that I didn't have any fight left in me.
Once I could see, I was up and running as
fast as I could down the stream. I stumbled out
onto a road and I felt unconscious at the edge
of traffic. I woke to a police officer shaking me away,
and I began to frantically tell him what happened. It
took the better part of the afternoon for us to
find my camp. I was heartbroken to see the state
of things. Heartbroken there was no sign of Sky. I
spent the night in a jail cell, and the next
morning I was taken back to the camp. Sky's father
was there with the police. They had discovered the drawings
I had made of Sky, then stood by as her
father went berserk and beat me with his fists. The
police searched for days, using horseback and dogs, but they
never found Sky. I even drew a sketch of what
I had seen running at us, but nobody had really
heard of a bigfoot back then, and if they had,
they called those who believed in it crazy. I had
been in jail for a week and when I was
charged with the kidnapping and murder of Sky, and I
was on trial within less than two months. I had
a public defender that was a relative of the sheriff,
and I told the judge that I'd rather defend myself
than to have him do, knowing I would have a
better chance of turning into a bird and flying away
than getting off. That ended up being a mistake. After that,
I couldn't appeal the courts ruling if I defended myself,
and I was found guilty and sent to a mental
health hospital, where I was constantly sedated for two years.
After that, I was sent to a federal prison, and
that's where I've been for the last forty eight years.
Every now and then I have some visitors. It's mainly
my family. Several times Sky's parents have come begging me
to tell them what I had done with her. I
felt so much pain for her parents, who had no
closure whatever. I told them the same story over and
over until everyone finally stopped coming. I was able to
keep myself busy in prison with my drawing skills. I
can't tell you how many convicts are walking around with
tattoos of Sky on their arms or backs. This was
the only way that I could keep her memory alive.
I don't know how many more years I can walk
these barred concrete walls with the high barbed wire fences.
A cage bird in mourning my sky keep saying your prayers.
I just hope that she didn't suffer