A true story of riveting psychological intensity by the assistant D.A. who prosecuted the captor of "the girl in the box".
Called the "sex slave," and "the girl in the box" case, this is the story behind Colleen Stan's terrifying, seven-year-long imprisonment by Cameron Hooker as told by the district attorney who tried the case. Too bizarre to be anything but true, it is a tale of riveting intensity and gripping courtroom drama.
July 1, 1988
Hitchhiking from Eugene, Ore., through northern California in 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan thumbed a ride into hell. Her kidnappersa sadistic lumber mill worker, Cameron Hooker, and his battered wife Janicesubjected her to seven years of torture and sensory deprivation. She was made a sex slave, kept locked in a wooden box and brainwashed into believing that an underground network of sadists would recapture her if she attempted to escape. Did Colleen fall in love with Cameron and make herself a willing partner in a love triangle, as the Hookers' defense lawyer asserted? The jury found otherwise, convinced by the evidence marshalled by coauthor McGuire, state prosecutor in the case, a trial that journalist Norton attended in 1984. Not for the squeamish, this harrowing tale shuttles between the courtroom and the grisly doings in the Hookers' basement.
October 1, 1988
Although outwardly an average young couple, Cameron Hooker, a mild-mannered mill worker who excelled at do-it-yourself projects, and Janice, his submissive wife, kidnapped 20-year-old Colleen Stan in 1977 and literally enslaved her for seven yearsmuch of that time she spent in a coffin-like box beneath the couple's waterbed. Hooker's perversions coupled with both women's submissiveness is reminiscent of Pauline Reage's The Story of O (1965). Written by the prosecutor of the People v. Hooker, who is prompted to question her relationship with her own husband, this book lacks the careful insights of Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry's Helter Skelter (1974). A bizarre story, only for the strong of stomach. Christy Zlatos, Auburn Univ. Lib., Ala.
Copyright 1988 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.