Hitchhiking is rarely a good idea. I’d venture so far as to say never a good idea. We see examples of this when we look at serial killers, Ed Kemper and Ivan Milat. We see this in movies, such as The Hitcher. Unfortunately, in 1977, people weren’t as aware of the dangers of hitchhiking. So when Colleen Stan set out to travel from Oregon to California, she didn’t expect what happened next.
On May 19, 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan left her home in Eugene, Oregon with plans to hitchhike to her friends’ home in Northern California, where she would be attending a birthday party. As an “experienced” hitchhiker, she was critical about the cars she would willingly climb into. On this particular day, she passed on two separate rides before finally climbing into a blue van.
23-year-old Cameron Hooker had been using his wife, Janice, to act out sexual bondage. The pair came to an agreement that he could capture a “slave” to take her place, so long as no sexual pentration took place. That night, Hooker was driving a blue van when he came upon Colleen Stan. He offered her a ride, and she reportedly “felt confident climbing into the blue van,” because his wife and their baby were also present, which added to Colleen’s comfort level – but something about them nagged at her.
They stopped at a gas station, and Colleen got out and went to use the restroom. That nagging feeling perked back up, “A voice told me to run and jump out a window and never look back,” she later recalled. But rather than letting her nerves get to her, she calmed herself and went back to the van.
She should have listened to the voice.
Back on the highway, Hooker pulled off and into an isolated area. He got out of the van and quickly put a knife to Colleen’s throat. He tied her up and gagged her before placing a heavy, 20lb wooden box over her head, a box designed to prevent light, sound, and fresh air from entering.
They continued their drive, back to the Hooker home. Colleen was taken to the basement where she was strung up by her hands and physically attacked by Cameron. She was blindfolded and left suspended in the air, only able to make out the sounds of Cameron and Janice having sex just below her. That night, she was chained up and left inside of a crate. That crate would come to be her home, for 23 hours of every day.
Every day she would be pulled from the crate, tied to the ceiling, then whipped, beat, burned, or electrocuted.
Cameron Hooker convinced Colleen that he was a member of a powerful organization called “The Company”. This company was watching their every move, and would not hesitate to kill or torture her and her family if she tried to escape. She was terrified.
Soon, Colleen was being referred to as “K” and she was told to address Cameron and Janice as “Master” and “Ma’am”. She was not allowed to talk without permission. In January, she agreed to sign a contract. The contract made her a slave to Cameron Hooker for the rest of her life.
The torture continued, with Cameron coming up with new methods to hurt her. He created a device, a stretcher, that inflicted such damage on her that she was left with permanent damage to her back and shoulder.
According to the agreement Cameron made with his wife prior to kidnapping Colleen, there was to be no penetrative sex with her. And for a while, he kept that agreement. He reportedly wanted Colleen to be like the female character in the 1954 French erotic novel, Story of O. He began raping her, orally at first, since he didn’t consider that a breach of his agreement with his wife.
Oral rape wasn’t enough though, soon he wanted more. He began to vaginally and anally rape Colleen with implements, still keeping his deal with Janice.
Then the family moved into a mobile home in Red Bluff. They took Colleen with them and kept her locked in a wooden box underneath their water bed. Within view of the box, she could see a photo propped up against her purse under the bed. The photo was of Marie Elizabeth Spannhake – a previous victim of Cameron and Janice Hooker. Her body was never found.
As time went on, Colleen earned a small degree of trust from her captors. She followed their commands and orders, afraid of any repercussions. This trust led to her being left to care for the family’s children, by this time they had 2. She was allowed to do housework and yard work.
Her continued obedience earned her the privilege of going out jogging, and after two and a half years of captivity she was allowed to call her own family. Four years after her disappearance, in 1981, she was allowed to return home to visit her family, with Cameron accompanying her as her “boyfriend”.
During their visit, Colleen made no attempt to escape or alert her family to her captivity. At the same time, her family was careful in how they treated her, not wanting to pry. They feared that since she had left without warning four years prior, and they had only had the one phone call before this visit, any inquiry would push her further away.
Despite her not tipping anyone off to the danger she was really in, Cameron began to fear that he had given her too much freedom. Back home, he returned Colleen to the wooden box underneath his waterbed. For the next three years, she would spend 23 hours per day in the box. If she needed to use the restroom, she was given a bedpan, which she had to position underneath herself using her feet. She was only given scraps of food.
The children, who had come to know “K”, were told that she had gone home. Then once they had gone to bed, Cameron would pull her out of the box and resume torturing her – demanding her silence throughout.
Temperatures in her box would reach over 100 °F (38 °C) in the summer.
But things took another turn in 1983, when Colleen was allowed to get a part-time job as a cleaner in a nearby motel. She was also reintroduced to the children.
While Cameron was giving Colleen more freedoms in return for her “services”, Janice had grown resentful of the woman. Janice either discovered, or realized, that her husband had been having penetrative sex with Colleen at least once a month over the years. Her frustrations were made worse when he came out and told her that he wanted to marry Colleen too. She snapped.
Janice went to a priest where she confessed that, starting with her first date with Cameron, she had been tortured, brainwashed, and referred to as a “whore”. She only survived the relationship by compartmentalizing all the problems. She decided to confess a few things to Colleen too.
Janice admitted that Cameron wasn’t part of “The Company”, though she maintained that the organization did exist.
Janice took charge of her life. She went to a bus station where she used a phone to call Cameron and informed him that she was done, she was leaving him. He reportedly reacted by bursting into tears.
Over the next couple of months, Janice called Cameron regularly. Instead of calling the police, she wanted to give Cameron time to change, to get better. But after three months, she went to the police. She informed Lt. Jerry D. Brown of the Red Bluff Police that Cameron had kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Marie Elizabeth Spannhake, who had disappeared on January 31, 1976. Her body was never located
Cameron Hooker was arrested and charged with eight felony counts of rape, sodomy, kidnappng, and forced oral copulation. In exchange for immunity, Janice agreed to testify against him.
Colleen Stan also testified, recounting the trauma she had sustained over the past seven years. Cameron’s defense argued that due to her compliance, the rape should not be considered criminal – especially since she chose to stay. The judge interrupted the psychiatrist’s argument – Colleen was not a willing participant, despite the image the defense was trying to paint.
Cameron’s defense had a psychiatrist argue that the abuse he inflicted was akin to Marine recruit drills.
During his testimony, Cameron tried to convince the jury that Colleen had fallen in love with him and stayed of her own volition. He argued that the sex was consentual.
The jury found him guilty and sentenced to consecutive prison terms totaling 104 years for the sexual assaults, kidnapping, and using a knife in the process. While he was originally ineligible for parole until 2023, he had his earring date moved up seven years to 2015 by California’s Elderly Parole Program.
On April 16, 2016, his request for parole was denied.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, California officials notified Colleen that they were looking into possibly granting him parole in March 2021. A hearing was scheduled for September 2021 to determine if he should be classified as a Sexually Violent Predator, which would result in his civil commitment to a state hospital.
As of June 2022, a San Mateo County Superior Court Judge determined that there was enough evidence to have a jury decide if he should receive that Sexually Violent Predator label.
Today, both Janice Hooker and Colleen Stan have new identities. Janice became a registered associate social worker and has worked as a mental health professional.
Colleen continues to suffer chronic pain in her shoulders and back, and has gone through years of therapy. According to Mara Bovsun in a March 9, 2014 New York Daily News article, she “tried to move on to a normal life, but misery followed her — a string of failed marriages and a troubled child, now in jail.” Her experience changed her in ways we can only imagine.
She has taken her pain and suffering and turned it into something beautiful. Over the years she has worked with charities for abused women including Redding Women’s Refuge Center.
In September 2016, a TV movie based on her story premiered on Lifetime. The movie, Girl in the Box, stars Addison Timlin as Colleen Stan, Zane Holtz as Cameron Hooker, and Zelda Williams as Janice Hooker.
On July 17, 2021, Colleen Stan recounted her story in the Snapped: Notorious episode “The Girl In The Box.”
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