![]() “Vinson is as tragic a person as I’ll ever see,” his defense attorney Jack Duncan said at Filyaw’s sentencing. That deprived him of canteen privileges, visits and telephone use for 226 days. On April 7, 2011, he threatened to harm an employee, according to the South Carolina Bureau of Prisons. No longer king of the bunker, Filyaw is Inmate 324082 at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. Shoaf “humanized herself to (Filyaw), and instead of being a random victim…she became more of a human being,” explains Jeglic, a sexual violence prevention expert at John Jay College. “The good news is, these types of crimes are statistically rare,” psychology professor Elizabeth L. In 2018, Lifetime aired a movie “Girl in the Bunker” about Shoaf’s ordeal. “It simply takes faith, it takes talking to someone and encouragement that it’s not the end of the world.” “You can be a survivor just like I am,” she said in 2013. Shoaf, now in her late 20s, graduated from college, works as a dental assistant and counts her blessings. ![]() I can only hope one day they will be able to forgive me, because I cannot forgive myself,” Filyaw said at his September 2007 sentencing. “I used an innocent young lady as a pawn. Police arrested Filyaw on September 17, 2006, walking along a highway with a pellet gun, knife and night-vision goggles several miles from the bunker. Shoaf was rushed to hospital and reunited with her family. “I received credit many times for saving her and I did not. I ran through the woods, and when I broke through the woodline, I could see her standing by the top of the bunker. “I was just walking the line and I heard someone yelling for help. The morning of September 16, 2006, “we had set up a line search and I was on the end of the line with officers in sight of each other,” Thomley remembers. After she sagely advised her captor, he fled into the night. “I told him he needed to leave because if they’d catch him, he would go to jail,” Shoaf said. Marshal’s Office experts who traced the phone’s location.ĭown in the bunker, Filyaw and Shoaf heard helicopters and watched local news reports about the intercepted text.įilyaw was rabid with rage, yet panicky at the same time. “Initially after a bit of investigation, we discovered we were on to something.”ĭetectives intensified the manhunt, enlisting aid from U.S. “It was either one of the greatest breaks we could hope to have-or a prank by someone trying to be funny or throw a wrench in the way of us finding this girl,” recalls Thomley, who teaches criminology at Camden Military Academy in South Carolina. Kershaw County sheriff’s detectives weren’t sure what to think. “I’m in a hole across from Charm Hill where the big trucks go in and out. While he slept one night, Shoaf texted her mother: “Hi mom,” the message read. Filyaw unchained Shoaf, allowed her outside and let the teen use his phone to play games. Which is-I’d act like I really liked him and I wanted to be with him,” Shoaf told NBC.Īn odd relationship struck up between captor and captive. So I’d call him that back.Īnd he’d tell me he loved me, and I told him I love him. “I always would do what he told me to do. Through the ordeal, Shoaf conceived an idea to turn the tables on her tormentor. Filyaw placed a chain around Elizabeth’s neck and threatened to hurt her brother if she escaped. The sexual assaults were continual and excruciating. The dank enclosure was a torture chamber where Shoaf was ordered to remove her clothes and was raped. Wearing a homemade uniform and badge, he masqueraded as a police officer, concocted a phony marijuana charge and handcuffed the bewildered girl.įilyaw led Elizabeth into the woods, weaving a circuitous path until she lost all sense of direction and found herself at the mouth of a bunker. On September 6, 2006, Filyaw approached Elizabeth, who had just gotten off the school bus and was walking to her door. He built a bunker in the side of a hill and stocked it with food, guns and crude explosive devices. In the following months, Filyaw, then 36, lurked in the woods near Shoaf’s neighborhood, hunting for a likely victim. When he couldn’t get back at his 12-year-old victim, who was moved to foster care, “the second plan was to kidnap somebody else…draw all of Kershaw County into one general area and then just blow them all up.” “I guess you could say I’m a person that holds a grudge,” Filyaw told NBC’s Dateline in 2008. In November 2005, a judge issued a search warrant for Filyaw for sexual assault of his girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter.Īnd that led him on a bizarre quest for payback against the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Department. A&E Crime Central Free Trial: Subscribe on your favorite platform to stream hundreds of episodes of A&E’s classic crime series and specials, like 60 Days In, After the First 48 and more, with no commercials.
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