On this day, Sept. 24, in 1985, Cameron Hooker went on trial for keeping a woman as a sex slave for seven years, chained and blindfolded, in a ventilated box under his bed. The case has been described as unparalleled in FBI history.
Hooker and his wife picked up the 20-year-old woman, “Carol Smith,” at a freeway overpass near Red Bluff, Calif. Hooker told Smith he belonged to a slave-holders’ group called “The Company” that would kill her family if she escaped.
Hooker once took her to visit her parents’ home, warning that it was bugged by “The Company.”
Smith escaped with Hooker’s wife and two children and went to police.
Hooker was sentenced to 135 years.
– Scott McCabe
