She Survived: Jane Read online

  Highest Praise for M. William Phelps

  THE KILLING IND

  “In this true crime book, Phelps focuses on unrepentant killer Danny Hembree . . . [who] seizes the chance to take center stage with lurid confessions of a decades-long career of violent robbery, assault, rape, and murder. . . . Fans of the author’s Discovery TV series, Dark Minds, will be rewarded.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  OBSESSED

  “True-crime junkies will be sated by the latest thriller from Phelps, which focuses on a fatal love triangle that definitely proved to be stranger than fiction. The police work undertaken to solve the case is recounted with the right amount of detail, and readers will be rewarded with shocking television-worthy twists in a story with inherent drama.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  BAD GIRLS

  “Fascinating, gripping ... Phelps’s sharp investigative skills and questioning mind resonate. Whether or not you agree with the author’s suspicions that an innocent is behind bars, you won’t regret going along for the ride with such an accomplished reporter.”

  —Sue Russell

  NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN

  “This riveting book examines one of the most horrific murders in recent American history.”

  —New York Post

  “Phelps clearly shows how the ugliest crimes can take place in the quietest of suburbs.”

  —Library Journal

  “Thoroughly reported . . . The book is primarily a police procedural, but it is also a tribute to the four murder victims.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  TOO YOUNG TO KILL

  “Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.”

  —Allison Brennan

  LOVE HER TO DEATH

  “Reading anything by Phelps is always an eye opening experience. The characters are well researched and well written. We have murder, adultery, obsession, lies and so much more.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “You don’t want to miss Love Her To Death by M. William Phelps, a book destined to be one of 2011’s top true crimes!”

  —True Crime Book Reviews

  “A chilling crime . . . award-winning author Phelps goes into lustrous and painstaking detail, bringing all the players vividly to life.”

  —Crime Magazine

  KILL FOR ME

  “Phelps gets into the blood and guts of the story.”

  —Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author of Fear Collector

  “Phelps infuses his investigative journalism with plenty of energized descriptions.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  DEATH TRAP

  “A chilling tale of a sociopathic wife and mother . . . a compelling journey from the inside of this woman’s mind to final justice in a court of law. For three days I did little else but read this book.”

  —Harry N. MacLean, New York Times best-selling author of In Broad Daylight

  I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

  “Phelps has an unrelenting sense for detail that affirms his place, book by book, as one of our most engaging crime journalists.”

  —Katherine Ramsland

  IF LOOKS COULD KILL

  “M. William Phelps, one of America’s finest true-crime writers, has written a compelling and gripping book about an intriguing murder mystery. Readers of this genre will thoroughly enjoy this book.”

  —Vincent Bugliosi

  “Starts quickly and doesn’t slow down. . . . Phelps consistently ratchets up the dramatic tension, hooking readers. His thorough research and interviews give the book complexity, richness of character, and urgency.”

  —Stephen Singular

  MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND

  “Drawing on interviews with law officers and relatives, the author has done significant research. His facile writing pulls the reader along.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Phelps expertly reminds us that when the darkest form of evil invades the quiet and safe outposts of rural America, the tragedy is greatly magnified. Get ready for some sleepless nights.”

  —Carlton Stowers

  “This is the most disturbing and moving look at murder in rural America since Capote’s In Cold Blood.”

  —Gregg Olsen

  SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE

  “An exceptional book by an exceptional true crime writer. Phelps exposes long-hidden secrets and reveals disquieting truths.”

  —Kathryn Casey

  EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE

  “An insightful and fast-paced examination of the inner workings of a good cop and his bad informant, culminating in an unforgettable truth-is-stranger-than-fiction climax.”

  —Michael M. Baden, M.D.

  “M. William Phelps is the rising star of the nonfiction crime genre, and his true tales of murder are scary-as-hell thrill rides into the dark heart of the inhuman condition.”

  —Douglas Clegg

  LETHAL GUARDIAN

  “An intense roller-coaster of a crime story . . . complex, with twists and turns worthy of any great detective mystery . . . reads more like a novel than your standard non-fiction crime book.”

  —Steve Jackson

  PERFECT POISON

  “True crime at its best—compelling, gripping, an edge-of-the-seat thriller. Phelps packs wallops of delight with his skillful ability to narrate a suspenseful story.”

  —Harvey Rachlin

  “A compelling account of terror . . . the author dedicates himself to unmasking the psychopath with facts, insight and the other proven methods of journalistic leg work.”

  —Lowell Cauffiel

  Also By M. William Phelps

  Perfect Poison

  Lethal Guardian

  Every Move You Make

  Sleep in Heavenly Peace

  Murder in the Heartland

  Because You Loved Me

  If Looks Could Kill

  I’ll Be Watching You

  Deadly Secrets

  Cruel Death

  Death Trap

  Kill For Me

  Love Her to Death

  Too Young to Kill

  Never See Them Again

  Murder, New England

  Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy

  The Devil’s Rooming House: The True Story of

  America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer

  The Devil’s Right Hand: The Tragic Story of the

  Colt Family Curse

  The Dead Soul: A Thriller (available as eBook only)

  Kiss of the She-Devil

  Bad Girls

  Obsessed

  The Killing Kind

  She Survived: Melissa (eBook)

  SHE SURVIVED: JANE

  M. WILLIAM PHELPS

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Highest Praise for M. William Phelps

  Also By M. William Phelps

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER 1 - TERROR

  CHAPTER 2 - PARADISE

  CHAPTER 3 - DEFENSELESS

  CHAPTER 4 - HABITS

  CHAPTER 5 - MONSTER

  CHAPTER 6 - THE EAR

  CHAPTER 7 - AFTERMATH

  CHAPTER 8 - A TOWN HELD HOSTAGE

  CHAPTER 9 - WHERE IS HE?

  CHAPTER 10 - MEMORIES

  CHAPTER 11 - BRITTLE EMOTIONS AND A NEW THREAT

  CHAPTER 12 - CALM BEFORE THE STORM

  CHAPTER 13 - THE INVISIBLE MAN

  CHAPTER 14 - HELLO?

  CHAPTER 15 - GOING BACK

  CHAPTER 16 - BIGGER AND BOLDER


  CHAPTER 17 - A DIFFERENT LIFE

  CHAPTER 18 - DARKNESS SETTLES—THEN FIZZLES

  CHAPTER 19 - TRAGEDY AND DESTINY

  CHAPTER 20 - BLOODSHED ENDS, THE SEARCH BEGINS

  CHAPTER 21 - WEDDING BELLS

  CHAPTER 22 - ONS ON HIATUS?

  CHAPTER 23 - FAITH IN THE FACE OF FEAR

  CHAPTER 24 - THE POET

  CHAPTER 25 - DOWNWARD SPIRAL

  CHAPTER 26 - THE LIGHT

  CHAPTER 27 - FIRST TASTE

  CHAPTER 28 - A DEEPER RELATIONSHIP

  CHAPTER 29 - BOOZE AND CANCER—A DEADLY COCKTAIL

  CHAPTER 30 - DESPERATION AND DENIAL

  CHAPTER 31 - OBSESSION

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  Teaser chapter

  About the Authors

  Copyright Page

  Author’s Note

  What you are about to read is a true story of intense, brutal violence, how the victim in this story survived, and how she went on to overcome the obstacles and challenges left behind after the attack, albeit medical and emotional. This short e-book will be, at times, written in the first-person voice of the survivor, but also built around the context of a third-person narrative I have constructed to give context and foundation to the overall story. If you are familiar with my work on television or in print, you’ll know I am an investigative journalist by trade and will often dig deep into the stories I cover, interviewing hundreds of sources and sifting through thousands of pages of documents in search of exclusive, new information connected to those cases. This “She Survived” series I have developed for Kensington Books, with my longtime editor Michaela Hamilton (who had the original idea for the series), is in no way meant to be perceived as one of those detailed, investigative pieces of journalism for which I have become known. In this new series of exclusive e-books, I aim to showcase survivors’ stories from their point of view. Even the perpetrator will play a smaller-than-usual role in what you’ll see are truly inspiring and empowering stories of emotional and physical endurance. Law enforcement, as well, will have a much smaller role than normally speaking. My goal is to allow surviving victims of brutal sexual assaults and rapes and attempted murders the space and the opportunity to tell their stories in an unencumbered fashion, without judgment and/or hindrance. This space is here for victims to explain how they were able to overcome adversity and horrible life-changing injuries in the face of great evil. Their stories will be moving. You will hear testimony of great strength at times when many of us might otherwise curl up into a fetal ball and descend into the clutches of the demons plaguing many post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) survivors. I am humbled by these stories—and especially by these strong women who have entrusted me to tell their stories. I have a great amount of respect and admiration for crime victim survivors and consider myself as a staunch victims’ advocate. This series is one more way for me to explore that role and bring readers and viewers of my televisions series more in-depth stories of survival. It is these survival stories that prove there can be sunshine on the other side of the mountain; people can come back from a harrowing, violent experience and not allow the crime to consume their lives, thus taking the power back from the perpetrators.

  —M. William Phelps

  CHAPTER 1

  TERROR

  Jane Carson-Sandler was half-asleep. It was approximately six-thirty in the morning. She’d just heard her husband, Bill, leave for work—that familiar sound of the garage door opening and closing. Paul, their son, was three years old. Just as the garage door was closing and Bill backed out of the driveway, Paul came running down the hallway, with his little pit-pat footsteps, and jumped into his mother’s bed to cuddle.

  “My early-morning time with Paul was very special to me,” Jane said of this daily routine, “as I wouldn’t see him all day.”

  Opening her eyes, feeling the warmth and love of Paul next to her, Jane saw a slight flash of light down the hallway that led to her bedroom. She wondered what it was.

  It was just after this when Jane heard an additional set of footsteps. It sounded as though someone was running down that same hallway toward her bedroom.

  What did Bill forget now? Jane thought. Why turn on the light? Why in the heck is Bill running?

  With Paul by her side, Jane jumped up and looked down the hallway, still wondering why her husband had come back into the house.

  It wasn’t Bill, however. Within a moment Jane realized why the light was on and why she had heard those footsteps. Bill was long gone, driving out of the neighborhood, on his way to work. Jane now stared at a man in front of her. He was fairly average in size and stature, wearing a ski mask, holding a butcher knife, which he pointed directly at her.

  Jane’s first reaction was to scream.

  The masked man walked closer to Jane as she pleaded for help, which was never going to come.

  Then the masked man placed the blade of the knife to her chest, just hard enough to break the skin and drawn a modicum of blood.

  This was not a dream. A hallucination. Right now, inside her bedroom, a masked man held a knife to Jane’s chest. She could hear the home invader breathing heavily through the ski mask.

  “Shut up or I will kill you . . . ,” he finally said through clenched teeth.

  Jane was paralyzed by fear, to say the least. She believed what he said.

  But Jane’s terror was not for herself, of course. It was for Paul, who was by her side, looking on, wondering what was happening.

  CHAPTER 2

  PARADISE

  That August 1976, Jane Carson-Sandler had been enjoying her life with Paul and Bill. Things were simple and fulfilling. Jane never had an inclination that within the scope of two months her life would be devastated and changed—literally—forever. Nor did she know there was a good chance while she and Bill went through their days that summer and early fall—eating out, spending time at home, the park, movies, enjoying the routines of life—that a budding serial killer was watching them, stalking the neighborhood in which they lived, searching for his next victim.

  “I was performing the usual household duties and attending classes at California State University in Sacramento,” Jane told me. “I was pursuing a bachelor of nursing degree (BSN) in a new, one-year, intense program.”

  Because of the enormously difficult demands of class, Jane was not employed at the time. Whenever she wasn’t busy studying, she was at home with Paul, who had just turned three. At thirty years old, this was a special moment in Jane’s life: this time with her son and husband.

  Jane’s son, Paul, was just a boy when the East Area Rapist broke into their home, attacked Jane, and tied Paul up.

  (Photo courtesy of Jane Sandler)

  “I did spend one weekend per month at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, at the Sixty-fifth Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron. Being part of the Air Force Reserve Nurse Corps, I was required to attend inactive duty training one weekend per month and two weeks of active duty each year.”

  Jane Sandler was a thirty-year-old married nurse and mother with a career in the military when the East Area Rapist disrupted her life.

  (Photo courtesy of Roger Sandler)

  Jane and Bill had a happy, content life together at this time. California was not a bad place to raise a family.

  “I had been married five years to an air force captain who was stationed at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento. Except for an occasional Friday-night trip to the officers’ club for happy hour, our social life was pretty bland.”

  The thing is, you drive around some neighborhoods in Northern California, in and out of the suburban sprawls (one of which where Jane and Bill lived), staring at those carefully and meticulously manicured lawns and parks, the state-sponsored gardens and reflecting pools, rivers and streams and bike paths, and you can’t help but think: This is the life. Year-round weather that is nearly perfect. The palms. The good-looking people. The produce. The Mexican food. The wine. The graceful, luxurio
us, salty goodness of that Pacific Ocean water, to the west, lapping casually up against the soft sand, constantly pushing, constantly keeping a rhythm to your life.

  You look at all this and think: What could go wrong?

  Not that the Sacramento area, during the 1970s, when this horror began, was exclusive or just for the rich. Or there wasn’t occasional crime here and there. It wasn’t like that.

  “Fairly nice, I would say,” Jane later noted. “Nothing necessarily fancy. It wasn’t a gated community, and it was definitely not a city, either.”

  Right. It was home. A place to raise a family and not worry about much.

  Jane and her husband were military people. This area was bustling with military subculture and substations and bases. Camouflage dark green and tan had a huge presence. They lived in a nice, cute little one-level ranch-style home. The future seemed boundless and carefree; anything was possible for Jane and Bill.