WHEN Jennifer Asbenson was asked for her number by a guy she wasn’t interested in, she did what all of us have done, gave him a fake number.
Little did she know that she had pulled this trick with someone you would never want to cross paths with, a serial killer.
Jennifer Absenson was running late for work when she accepted a lift from a stranger[/caption]
She had no idea that it would almost cost her life[/caption]
Andrew Urdiales admitted to killing eight women outside of Jennifer’s kidnapping[/caption]
Jennifer was 19 at the time in 1992, when she was getting ready for her night shift as a carer.
She had been late due to the missing bus on several occasions, leading the woman she worked with to say she would report it if it happened again.
Jennifer headed to the bus stop early, but as luck would have it, she arrived just as the bus was pulling out.
“I was distraught, I was on the verge of tears,” she told LMN news, but soon heard a ‘kind voice’ from behind her.
Without hesitation, Jennifer jumped in, knowing it could save her job.
She said they made a lot of small talk in the car, and when she finally got to work, he asked for her number.
“I wasn’t interested in him but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I thought this will be the perfect chance to just give him the wrong number and I’ll probably never see him again,” she said.
But as she clocked out of work the next morning, he was waiting in the car offering to take her for breakfast.
Jennifer said she couldn’t, but did decide to take a lift home that he offered as she didn’t want to wait for the bus.
While all seemed fine as she got in the car, his attitude soon shifted to a horrific attack as he confronted her about the fake number.
Jennifer gave Andrew a fake number, which made him furious[/caption]
She recalls: “Suddenly he turned into another person and just screamed ‘I called that number and some old b**h answered.’
“I just went into shock, he bashed my head into the dashboard, I saw a knife, I saw a gun, he tied my wrist behind my back.
“I just couldn’t fathom what was happening, that this could be real.”
Andrew Urdiales, who was 32 at the time, drove Jennifer to the most desolate part of Palm Desert, California.
“All I could think of was, I made a bad choice,” she told I survived.
And Jennifer would soon realise this wasn’t the first time he had done this.
As they drove, Andrew pulled her seat all the way back so she couldn’t signal for help to other drivers, with her arms tied, she was left dealing with her fate.
You could see nothing in his eyes, nothing but rage. That’s when I knew he had done this before.
Jennifer Asbenson
“I realised that I was probably never going to come out of that desert,” she says.
As he stopped the car, Andrew swiftly pulled Jennifer’s seat up, reached under her sweatshirt and within seconds had taken her bra and underwear off with his knife.
“You could see nothing in his eyes, nothing but rage,” she said. “That’s when I knew he had done this before.”
The sadistic murderer then began to sexually assault Jennifer, all while pushing her underwear down her throat and used her bra to tie it around her head to keep the underwear in her mouth so she couldn’t breathe.
The monster then told Jennifer to tell him she loved him, although Jennifer couldn’t because the underwear was in her mouth, ‘I thought if I tried to it might save my life.’
She was able to dislodge the underwear and told him she couldn’t with the stuff on her face, which meant he took it off.
Jennifer said it, but it didn’t appease him as he slapped her and told her to say it like she meant it.
Suddenly, all I could see was white, I felt peace and that’s when I believe he killed me.
Jennifer Asbenson
For Jennifer, she had no idea how to make it believable, at 19 years old, she had never said it to anyone in a romantic way.
ESCAPE FROM DEATH
“I said it again, it just wasn’t right, so he started strangling me,” she said.
“I sat there thinking ‘this is going to be the last thing I see before I die.’”
Jennifer decided to close her eyes when she all of a sudden had ringing in her ears and her face became hot.
“Suddenly, all I could see was white, I felt peace and that’s when I believe he killed me. I had no pain, no fear, I felt like I had escaped from it,” she adds.
Jennifer’s peace wouldn’t be long-lived, she came back around to being struck around the head and then her chest.
He had smashed her head against the car multiple times, bringing her back to consciousness as he wasn’t ready to stop.
Jennifer begged him to just kill her, instead he began to suck on her neck when Jennifer felt what she thought was his saliva drip down her body.
When he got up to look at her, she realised it wasn’t saliva, it was her blood as he had taken a bite out of her neck.
After the vicious attack, he dragged her out of the car and opened the boot, where a bag of knives spilled out; he then placed Jennifer inside.
Andrew begins to drive back to the town, and Jennifer realised that if she is taken to a second location, it will mean her death.
She says: “I just got this adrenaline, and hysterical strength and confidence all of a sudden, I started to pull my arms apart and the twine was coming off.”
RUN FOR HER LIFE
She began to rip off the boot roof and saw sunlight; she could hear him muttering to himself when he suddenly got stuck in the sand on a remote road.
Jennifer took it as her chance, she was able to pop open the boot and get out.
She heard his door open, and Jennifer ran.
“I didn’t want to know how close he was behind me so I kept telling myself ‘don’t look back.’”
But curiosity got the better of her and she did, she saw him chasing her with a machete and she realised she needed to flag down a car.
The first car she saw, she grabbed the side mirror and asked for help, but the woman, who had her window rolled down said ‘No, go faster,’ and left her.
Sexual abuse in numbers
669,000 adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales every year
- 1 in 5 women (8m) in the UK have been sexually abused
- 1 in 6 men (5m) in the UK have been sexually abused
- 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused
Sexual abuse has been attributed to:
- 15% of all suicides in the UK
- 11% of all common mental health disorders in the UK
- 7% of alcohol dependence disorders
- 10% of drug dependence disorders
- 15% of eating disorders
- 17% of post-traumatic stress disorders
(Source: Safeline)
She then saw a truck coming her way, and thankfully, this time, they opened the door and got her to safety.
CATCHING A KILLER
Despite the traumatic attack, police had little evidence from Jennifer’s case.
A bulldozer had covered the tire tracks, and police only had his teeth imprint to go off of.
Five years went past, before Jennifer was contacted by police, who said they may have captured her attacker.
She looked through a photo line-up, and she was able to immediately pick him out.
The officer told Jennifer that Andrew had already confessed, knowing her name, what she looked like, where she worked and her home address.
She was then informed that Andrew Urdiales was a serial killer, and had killed eight women, four happened after Jennifer’s attack, she was the only one able to escape.
He was sentenced to death in 2002 but took his own life in 2018.
LIFE NOW
Jennifer, now 51, has since become an advocate and public speaker for survivors of trauma.
He’s nobody that will ever have a hold of my emotions again.
Jennifer Asbenson
She credits the birth of her daughter Geo in 1996 with helping her turn her life around.
She has also written a book, The Girl in the Treehouse, based on her escape and her exploration of dealing with the aftermath.
“He’s nobody that will ever have a hold of my emotions again,” she told People.
