Faces of Evil. Lois Gibson
the fact that others felt I was turning into something of a beauty.
I wanted to go to college, but there was no way my parents could afford it, especially since they still had three young children at home. After struggling to take classes at Wichita State University and Kansas University while working part-time, I decided that there had to be a better way. Even though I’m an artist, I have a very practical nature and I knew that even entry-level jobs in a city like Los Angeles paid a great deal more than those same jobs did in Kansas City. I figured I could find work out there and, if I lived very frugally and saved my money—something all us Herbert kids knew how to do—I could come back to Kansas after a year or so and be able to afford at least a year or two of college without having to work part-time while going to school.
It was a good plan, actually. I got a job fairly quickly working for Prudential Insurance Company on Wilshire Boulevard and found a nice apartment near the UCLA campus. It was a secure building; you had to have a card to get your car into the garage, a key to get into the front door of the building and then a separate key to get into your own apartment. Young professionals and college professors lived there and I felt very safe.
Of course, I knew that if I ever forgot my key to the building, I could just slip in behind someone else who had just entered, but it never occurred to me that so could anyone else who wanted to get in. As I said, I didn’t know evil. Not then.
A guy I dated suggested I apply at a modeling agency in town, but I didn’t take him very seriously. I’d been to “Career Days” back in high school and modeling representatives there had always said you had to be tall—at least 5’7”—and I was only 5’5”. But I took the dare and gave it a shot and before I knew it I was going out on all kinds of jobs during my off hours from the insurance agency.
I worked part-time as a model and made quite a bit of money doing it. If people don’t know me very well, they assume I was one of those proverbial starry-eyed milk-fed Midwestern girls who get off the bus, big-headed with dreams of fame and fortune on the silver screen. The truth is, I was paid $100 an hour—which, at that time, was real money—and although the guy who ran the agency thought I’d have a big career because of my looks, I was never swayed by that kind of talk. To stake an entire career on looks that were doomed to fade eventually made no sense to me at all. Even worse, I found modeling to be a mind-numbing occupation and I wanted a career that was more challenging than standing in front of a camera all day long. Still, I got to pose for Playboy and that was fun.
The modeling led to a stint as a “go-go girl” on one of the popular L.A. television shows of the day, The Real Don Steal Show. Don Steal was a popular disc jockey who based his show on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. At the beginning of the show, he introduced one other girl and me as “The Real Don Stealers” and we came running out in our hot pants and knee-high go-go boots looking all jazzed and excited to be there. We climbed up on raised platforms above the crowd of mostly high-schoolers and we danced for an hour and a half.
It was like jogging in high heels for an hour and a half, but it was fun. I loved to dance and, I must admit, I loved the attention. The show was filmed at the old Fox studios on Beverly Boulevard, where I met and dated a few celebrities of the time, including the handsome Max Baer, who played “Jethro” on the popular TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies.
With all the fun, there was also an undercurrent of violence. The Vietnam War still raged out of control on the TV evening news and movie heroes like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry and Al Pacino in The Godfather glorified macho, violent manhood. At the Olympic games in Munich, terrorists turned a sporting event into a bloodbath when they murdered eleven Israeli athletes.
I was aware of all those things, of course, but they seemed far away, in places that didn’t affect me. I was having the time of my life, a single girl in L.A., making money, dating successful, good-looking guys and being told all the time how beautiful I was. My life was full and busy and I was saving money to go to college. I missed my family terribly, but I was home (at my apartment) so seldom that I didn’t even own a television set.
The thing is, when you are raised surrounded by love and security, you assume that the world is a good place, full of good people. I always expected the best out of people and I had a loving nature. When I met someone, I usually liked him or her; when I loved, I loved unconditionally. It was what I had known and it was what I expected.
And then one day, my calm, happy life exploded.
Anyone who has ever experienced a tragedy knows that nothing will ever be quite the same again.
It was about six in the evening and I was in my peaceful apartment, lounging around in jeans and a T-shirt. I’d quit my job at the insurance company and had not found a new one yet, but I had plenty of money in savings and was glad to be able to relax at home for a while.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who’s there?” I called.
I heard a man’s soft-spoken voice, “Uh, hi. You don’t know me—my name is Jim Hutchinson. I live right down the hall and I’ve seen you come and go and I thought, hey, we’re neighbors, why don’t we get acquainted?”
As I said, when you’re brought up loved and safe, you expect the best in people. I didn’t know anyone named Jim Hutchinson, but I had met so many nice people in the building. Right away, I trusted him.
I opened the door to see a thin white man with a goatee.
In a heartbeat, powerful hands closed around my throat, thumbs pressing against my larynx and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door to my apartment being kicked closed.
In that one moment, my own home became a torture chamber.
The chokehold on my throat was so tight that I literally went blind. As I was shoved backward onto my sofa, I struggled to breathe.
Did you ever have a nightmare where you strive with all your might to scream, but no sound comes out and you wake up heaving and sweating, too scared to close your eyes again from fear the nightmare will return?
This was my nightmare, only there was no waking up.
He ripped at my jeans with such violence that it felt as if my leg was being torn off. The pain was so intense that, in my oxygen-deprived panic, I thought I might really lose my leg, so I twisted my body to enable the pants to come off and, in so doing, managed to free my throat just enough from his death-grip that I was able to gasp for air. I felt like I was in a swimming pool or lake, under water for far too long and, finally breaking to the surface, I gulped for life. At least I tried to, but as soon as he noticed, he squeezed more tightly again.
Air. Sweet, blessed air. How we take it for granted. How we breathe, in and out, in and out, without giving it a thought.
Air was all I could think about as I fought and pushed against his chest, his arms, his face, fighting for my life, but it was all in vain, because the harder I fought, the tighter he squeezed until finally, I blacked out.
But that was all part of the game. He’d been waiting for me to black out, so that he could loosen his grip and watch for me to regain consciousness. When I came to, I took a couple of ragged gasps for air and as I did he began to choke me again.
Again I fought. Again he squeezed the life out of me. Again I blacked out.
This time, when I came around again, I was weaker and for the first time, the clear thought came to me: He’ll never let me get out of here alive.
When you’re facing death, I learned, time doesn’t have the same properties. A second no longer feels like a second, because seconds are all you have left. So a second seems to last more like a half-hour—everything slows way, way down, as if you are moving through water or slogging through a swamp. I felt myself detach from myself and stand aside, like an observer, watching myself being strangled.
Then I blacked out a third time.
When I woke up, I actually flashed on that old cartoon image of a drowning man going under water; he puts up one finger, comes up for air, goes under