When Andrea Hood saw the window, she knew it might be her only chance to survive.
Abducted two days earlier by two men she didn’t know, the 17-year-old had spent most of the previous 48 hours chained to a bed in a room with a barred window. Held captive, she was tortured and raped repeatedly.
But on a trip to the bathroom, she spotted another window, this one without bars.
“That was my first bit of hope, like, ‘Oh, I can maybe get out,'” Hood said of the moment on CNN’s “The Hunt with John Walsh.”
Her captors had wanted her to read a book about subservient women. She told them she would, and they unchained one of her hands to turn the pages. Left alone, she quickly freed her arm and other legs, grabbed one of the many firearms around the house and ran for the window, for freedom.
She smashed the window with the gun, climbed through the broken glass and started running.
“One of the guys was yelling, ‘Get her, get her, she can’t get away!’ ” Hood said. “I ran down the street hysterically crying, and bleeding all over. I was scared that they were literally right behind me.”
CNN’s John Walsh believes Hood’s decisive action that night may be the reason she’s alive today. “Here’s a vulnerable 17-year-old girl that was smart enough, tough enough, had the presence of mind to say, ‘I’m going to stay alive. I’m going to look for that chance,’ and that’s what saved her life,” he said.
Inside the torture house
Hood found her way to the police and learned she was in Hillsboro, Oregon, 17 miles west of Portland, where she had been picked up by the men two days earlier.
It was 1990. Hood had been working as a prostitute on the streets of Portland to pay for her drug habit. It was around 2 or 3 in the morning when the men pulled up in a small pickup truck.
“Before I knew what was even happening, I was in the back of the truck, chained to the bed of the truck, and with a pillowcase on my head and duct tape on my mouth,” Hood told “The Hunt.”
Now she had been treated for her injuries, and was driving around with law enforcement, leading them back to the torture house she had escaped only hours earlier.
There, the police found the broken window with the rifle Hood used to break it outside on the ground. Inside, they discovered more evidence supporting her account, including Polaroid photos of other women in bondage, as well as photos of Hood.
After searching the Hillsboro house, police arrested the home’s owner, Vance Roberts, and his half-brother Paul Jackson. That night, the pair had driven their pickup truck to a hospital, where Roberts received medical attention for a cut on his arm. In his version of events, Hood had been trying to steal from them, which is why she jumped out the window and how Vance got his injury. The photos? Old girlfriends, he claimed.
A previous victim steps forward
To this day, many of the other women in those photos have not been located or identified. One has: Michaelle Dierich. Like Hood, she was a Portland prostitute with a drug habit.
Two years before Hood’s ordeal, Dierich went through almost the same experience: abducted by two men in a pickup truck, chained up in a closet, sexually tortured and brutalized for days.
After a week of this treatment, the younger man threw a hood over her head again and put her back in the truck. Dierich assumed they were planning to kill her. Instead, she was dropped off on a street in Portland.
Dierich went to the hospital and was interviewed by police. She filled out a report and submitted a rape kit. But she could not tell them where she’d been taken, or by whom.
Lacking enough evidence to launch a detailed investigation, the report was filed away and nothing else happened — until Hood’s case came to light.
The Hillsboro police found Dierich with the help of the Portland police. She identified Roberts and Jackson as her abductors from 1988.
Armed with two witnesses and hard evidence, prosecutors charged the brothers with kidnapping and rape. A trial date was set, but in February 1991, Roberts and Jackson, who were free on bond, fled.
Roberts returns to face justice
In September 2006, after 15 years on the run, Vance Roberts unexpectedly walked into the Washington County Jail and turned himself in. He claimed to have been living under bridges in Portland, but police didn’t believe his story. They were unsuccessful in getting any more information from him.
At his trial, Roberts insisted the women had stayed with him voluntarily.
Hillsboro sergeant Bruce Parks recalled the trial: “The defense tried to victimize the two women. They may have committed a small crime by working on the street as a prostitute, but they never agreed to be kidnapped. They’re still human beings.”
The jury didn’t buy it, and after finding Roberts guilty, sentenced him to 108 years in prison.
Hood said she feels vindicated by the verdict. “[H]e gets to spend the rest of his life in a situation of subservience. He’s told when to use the bathroom, when to eat, what he can do, just like they had planned for me, and I felt like that was just.”
On the day of the sentencing, Dierich took the stand and confronted Roberts about the women in the photos whose identities and whereabouts are still unknown.
“You brutalized me; you terrorized me. You left me mentally and emotionally crippled beyond words or expression.
“It wasn’t just me, though. Indeed there were many other victims, more victims than we may know about today.
“Everybody knows about the 10 other victims. So, I’d like to know where their bodies at?”
The hunt for Paul Jackson
Since his return in 2006, Vance Roberts has never turned on his brother, or said anything about Paul Jackson’s whereabouts.
Jackson is still on the run, 23 years since he jumped bail.
Deputy U.S. Marshal John Moody hopes the exposure given to the case by CNN’s “The Hunt” will bring forth new leads. “The biggest thing that we’re looking for is someone to come forward that they’ve, maybe this has happened to them and they escaped from it,” he said. “We’d like to hear from them. They may have a piece to the puzzle to get this creature off the streets.”
Paul Jackson has a scar on his stomach from having his appendix removed. Jackson has lived in both Arizona and Hawaii and has a background in electronic and automotive work.
If you’ve seen Paul Jackson or know anything about his whereabouts, please call 1-866-THE-HUNT or go to our website at CNN.com/TheHunt. You can remain anonymous. We’ll pass your tip on to the proper authorities. And if requested, we will not reveal your name.
