Perfect Victim - Christine McGuire and Carla Norton
by Christine McGuire and Carla Norton
WARNING: THE CONTENTS OF THIS REVIEW MAY DISTURB SOME READERS.
Colleen Stan was a careful hitchhiker. So careful, that she had already refused a lift from one car which slowed in response to her waving thumb as she crossed America to visit a friend. To the 20 year old Colleen, getting into a car with two male occupants was just too risky - how relieved she must have felt when a car containing a man, his wife and their baby pulled up and offered her a lift. Little did she know that this was to be the start of a mental and physical ordeal which was to last for seven long years...
The occupants of the car seemed ordinary enough at first glance. Blue collar worker Cameron Hooker, his wife Janice and their infant daughter. People who knew them actually described them as ordinary - a nice, hardworking couple - Mr and Mrs Average. (Look at the photographs in the book - these people were Normal with a capital N.) However, Cameron and Janice had a terrible secret - one that was soon to involve Colleen.
For Cameron was a sexual sadist who's one ambition in life was to torture and dominate women - to own a 'slave'. At first, he practised his fetishes on his young and inexperienced wife until she finally rebelled and they reached a compromise in their marriage. In exchange for being allowed to have a baby, Janice would permit her husband to bring another woman into the marriage and do with her whatever he wanted.
'Perfect Victim', then, is the story of the seven long years in which Colleen was held captive. For much of that time, she was confined in a purpose built, coffin - like box located under the bed in the Hooker's trailer home. Whilst she froze in the winter's cold, and sweltered in the heat of the summer, the Hooker's led a normal life above her. They entertained family and visitors, cooked and ate meals, worked and played - and, when no-one else was around, it was Cameron's turn to play. And, needless to say, Cameron didn't play nicely.
Throughout her years of capture, Colleen was subjected to the most vicious forms of physical torture imaginable. Yet perhaps worse was the mental domination, since, in time, she was released from her tomb-like prison and allowed privileges, such as the opportunity to work outside the home and even a visit to her family. Cameron brainwashed his slave - whom he renamed K - into believing that she was constantly being watched by the 'Organisation' and that she and her family would suffer untold harm if she dared to step out of line.
However, for Cameron, the worm finally turned when his meek and mild wife, who had fluctuated throughout between passive acceptance and bitter jealousy of her husband's 'toy', found herself becoming friends with the cowed and terrified young woman.
The book starts almost immediately with Colleen's abduction and ends with the trial of her abductors, although the tale is not told in chronological order. Written by Christine McGuire (the Prosecutor in the case) and Carla Norton, it is a disturbing read and one that the reader will have a hard time forgetting once the book is finished. It is based on legal evidence and testimony and on interviews done by McGuire as she amassed the evidence for her case and, regrettably, it is a true story.
It is distressing and graphic. It is violent and terrifying. It is definitely not a book for the faint hearted. Yet at the same time, it is strangely uplifting, being a story of strength in adversity, religious faith and, ultimately, triumph over evil. For those reasons alone, it is a book that somehow demands to be read.
"For the most part, K simply endured and prayed"
Publisher: True Crime
ISBN:0352325615
Price: £6.99 p/b
Date Reviewed: October 2002
My Rating: 5/5
