Surviving Kidnapping and Escaping the Clutches of a Narcissistic Sociopath, Part 1 with Kristi Christensen

Imagine being abducted at the tender age of two, only to be thrust into an intense six-year escape with your father and brother. This was the reality for our guest, Kristi Christensen, who unveils her chilling tale of life on the run, including survival in the remote Ozark Mountains. She provides an intimate glimpse into the manipulative tactics employed by her mother - a diagnosed sociopath  and narcissist- and how her father became her unwavering protector amidst the chaos.

As we delve deeper into her life, Kristi courageously shares her experiences with abuse and the terror she endured at the hands of her mother. The resilience she demonstrates in breaking free from her mother's clutches is both moving and inspirational. She opens up about struggling with complex PTSD and how her challenging childhood shaped her future. Listening to Kristi's journey not only paints a vivid picture of her past but also offers a beacon of hope for others who have endured similar hardships. This episode is a testament to the indomitable spirit of survival and resilience that resides within us all. Tune in to be inspired and moved by Part 1 of Kristi's extraordinary journey from victim to survivor.

Kristi and I would love to hear your thoughts!  If you'd like to support the podcast, please follow/subscribe to be alerted to upcoming episodes and also, leave a review.

Wishing you lots of love on your own hero’s journey,
xoxo, Karen

Thanks so much for listening!  Please share this episode with your loved ones and spread the love to bless others!
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Connect with Karen Hall

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Podcast: The Hero Within Podcast

Connect with Kristi Christensen

Kristi states, "I was born to an empath and a narcissist/sociopath, and my mother tried to kill my dad and he had my mom committed.  They both lost custody and I lived in a foster home for a year.  Then my mother won custody and was going to move to Japan so my dad kidnapped me and my brother for 6 years.  The FBI found us in the Ozarks in 1995 in a survivalist situation and returned us to our mother. Eight years later, the cops removed me from the home when my mom attacked me viciously and I was homeless for a year.  I married and divorced 4 times from age 18-24 and the last marriage was super abusive.  He is a super rich rancher in a small town in Utah."  She  divorced and is in the middle of legal battles for custody of her 2 children.

Books Kristi discusses in the podcast:
 
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
Attached by Amir Levine
Scream-Free Parenting by Hal Runkel
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Instagram: @fairybrowmother

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey there, welcome back. I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you too can find hope and healing to return to love.

Speaker 1: 0:28

My new friend, christy Christensen, was kidnapped at the age of two. She didn't know it, but stories about her mother pleading for her return aired on TV shows, including America's Most Wanted and Oprah. The FBI searched for her for six years, but she was in a very remote location and they almost didn't find her. Listen to part one to hear her story of survival during these formative years and how she was ultimately found. Sadly, being released from her captor didn't have the silver lining one would hope for. You'll want to hear the ray of hope she found in the midst of all her pain. Today, we are happy to have our guest, christy Christensen, with us, and I am so happy to have all of you hear her story. Her story is absolutely amazing and so, christy, I'm going to let you start with introducing yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:23

I'm Christy. Hey y'all, I'm from the South. I live in Utah. When I was one, my mother which is a term I use very loosely tried to poison my dad with rat poison in his food, and he was LDS, didn't believe in divorce, and so, instead of having her arrested, he had her committed. And the moment he had her committed, the state removed my brother and I from the home and put it in a foster home. And as soon as they did that, my dad realized it was her or us, and so he divorced her, and then they got into a custody battle that lasted a year and she was awarded custody. Now my mom is a diagnosed sociopath, which is why we were removed from the home.

Speaker 2: 2:07

But I have seen this woman attack people in front of police officers and get away with it. She's very manipulative, very clever, very good at seeming innocent, and she can pull the wool over pretty much anybody's eyes. So apparently she convinced the court system she's not really a sociopath, as she was diagnosed when she was committed. She's a victim and he was abusing her and she was just fighting back. My dad does not abuse people. I mean, he is a little out there himself, but he's not going to hit a woman. He's a Southern gentleman, so she basically pushed the court system, convinced him she was a victim and he's this horrible person. She has every social capability and my dad has very little, so he wasn't able to like win against her Actually, no one ever wins against her so she won custody and she's going to move to Japan because she married somebody in the military.

Speaker 2: 2:59

So my dad was never going to see us again. So one night he packed us up and he just took off with us and so he kidnapped us and we were kidnapped for six years and we lived in a Dotson pickup for the for four years and we just traveled from state to state and we had different hair colors and different names. My older brother, jeff, was kidnapped with me, so we were kidnapped when I was two, he was five and we just ate, roadkill and dumpster dove and we were always in different states and had different hair colors and names. It's not ideal during the formative years. You know all that chaos and change. Chaos tends to, to this day, feel stable to me. And then the last two years he bought some land in Missouri, in the Ozark Mountains, and we lived in a survivalist situation and that's where the FBI found us. So he had married himself to someone during this whole thing. Some people get parents and some people get trials. I got trials instead of parents, but that's fine.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Oh my goodness. Laugh at the pain but you probably laugh.

Speaker 2: 4:00

If you don't have the ability to laugh or see the silver lining in things, life will kill you and for some of us I don't know why. Life is just hard. It just never stops.

Speaker 1: 4:10

It was, like you said, hard from the very beginning to start your life in such a tumultuous situation where your mom is trying to poison your dad. It's the stability emotionally in the home. You know, ever since you were a baby. It was probably very difficult and talk about hard yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:28

It's so hard, especially trauma that goes on through the formative years from two to eight, sustained trauma. You usually get CPTSD, complex PTSD, and back then nobody understood this and nobody knew you have CPTSD. You had a hard life, get over it. You can't just get over it. You're neurologically wired for chaos. You're neurologically wired for a lot of problems and you don't emotionally understand what a normal bond or attachment style is. So then your twenties. A lot of people with like chaotic childhoods and CPTSD, their twenties are just chaotic. Mine was very chaotic. Those beginnings don't set you up for success.

Speaker 2: 5:04

My dad had successfully eluded the FBI for six years because he was like very good at hiding and he's overly careful. And so the lady he married himself to took a gray hound to see her family six years into the abduction. But he didn't want her to take this gray hound to go see her parent in Kentucky and the woman who took her ticket at the gray hounds station recognized her off. America's Most Wanted called the police, who called the FBI, and so my dad had a very strong impression that the moment she left we needed to leave. So I was actually really happy. We lived in this beautiful land in the Ozarks, probably like 20 acres in the Ozark Mountains, no electricity or running water, but my dad hunted. I was a gathering expert and it's really nice every day to wake up and meet all your immediate needs. Nothing as simple as it is now Like I find this Amazon lifestyle where you click and you get things. It's kind of depressing a little bit. It was nice to wake up every day and have to go fetch water and have to go gather plants. Your meals mean more to you, everything means more to you. You make your own clothes so you put a lot of care into them. It's just like a very special way to live. I loved it Anyway. So he had an inkling the moment she left. We needed to leave.

Speaker 2: 6:22

So the moment she left we started packing up and we lived up on a foothill and then down in the valley was our barn. So my dad was selling the last of the hay out of our barn in the valley and buyers would just come and beep. He would go down and take care of it. Well, so many beeps. My dad goes down and we just start here. Gunfire everywhere. Dad had instructed us to shoot the bad men if they ever came.

Speaker 2: 6:50

We were excellent marksmen because we hunted. I was eight at the time, my brother was 11. And I'm so very lucky that he went down and I have had nightmares my whole life of his face. When he saw what was going on, he turned around and looked at me and he said Nancy run. You know, my name is Nancy at the time I got to choose it. So he said Nancy run. And I was really lucky. He said that because I would have done whatever he said. I'm very blessed that he said run.

Speaker 2: 7:17

And so we ran up the mountain and the FBI tried to find us and they couldn't, because we were very familiar with the surroundings and we were probably gone two hours. And then we decided we were going to go save my dad. And so we had to back down this mountain and I have this big rock and this big stick and I'm so tough and I'm going to beat up these bad guys and save my dad. And we go down to the end of the hill and we know how to padfoot hunt. The Cherokee taught us how Because we lived in a reservation for a while.

Speaker 2: 7:45

We just had a crazy upbringing. We lived in crazy places with the Amish for a while. They taught us how to walk soft. So we like crapped up like very close, probably within 30 feet of this FBI guy. But he had the same hair as my dad and he had put on one of my dad's shirts and he was standing at the base of the hill facing away, very smart, trying to lure us in. And it worked Because we got close and we're like dad and I went dad, and then all of a sudden all these agents descended on us and I just remember I threw the rock and I just remember closing my eyes and swinging the stick and they took us from there. I didn't see my dad again until I was 16.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Oh, my word Eight more years.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Yeah, it was heartbreaking. Both of my parents have really bad mental health issues, but at least he loved us. My mom hated us, I mean just hated us.

Speaker 1: 8:34

That one parent that loved you to be gone, yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:40

Oh, the eight years we lived with her were the most horrible years in my life. My mom is a diagnosed sociopath. She loves attention. She loves that we were kidnapped. She actually hated when we were returned to her but she made a huge spectacle of I miss my children and she went on tours and she got all of this media attention and she loved it. And the moment we were returned to her, oh my gosh, she took it out on us so bad that this media attention had ended. She just hated us. It was horrible, oh my. So that's how she roped everybody in. Like at that point I think she'd been on Oprah about it 48 hours. She had been on all these shows. But she loves the attention. People with that mental illness they tend to trauma bond to people because they can't emotionally bond, because they're not very nice, so she would always be a victim. She loved victimhood because it gets everybody on your side.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Yeah, so even on Oprah and on the TV shows. That was probably the perfect victim thing, because her children had been stolen from her.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Oh yeah, and she was crying and all these things. And when the FBI recovered us they couldn't take us straight back to her because my dad had told us how evil and abusive she was. We were terrified. So they had us live with the owner of Child Watch. It was an organization that helped her all these years, try to help her find us, and they reintroduced this gradually to the idea of this woman, trying to convince us that she was good by showing us videos of her, like these videos of her crying on all these TV shows.

Speaker 2: 10:13

And so I'm little, I'm terrified. I've just lost a parent and on one of the 48 hours they showed my first phone call with her and I'm like I do still love you. I was two when I left. I don't remember her. I'm just like traumatized child trying to bond to this woman. That seems so nice. So you can imagine my alarm and just what is worse than heartbreak, I don't know Just like crestfallen, like loss of hope.

Speaker 2: 10:39

When, like a week into living with her, she showed her true colors. Like 48 hours was gonna come film us. She told us to clean our room. We had never had a room and we had never really had toys Like we would make ourselves toys out of, like branches and stuff like that. But we didn't have toys in the whole nation that send us all these toys, and so we literally didn't know what to do. So we stepped the toys up along the wall like on top of each other, and this was a week into knowing her. She came in and loses her mind, starts breaking stuff, throwing stuff, screaming in our faces, shaking us horrible stuff Because we hadn't cleaned the room. And then got a trash bag and threw it all away.

Speaker 2: 11:20

And I was very protective of my brother he was older than me, but I remember having him in the corner trying to protect him, like I literally physically like had my arms out and had him in the corner behind me and when she left I was like we have to run away. I was like she's gonna kill us. She's like really horrible, like we need to run away. And she comes in and she says what are you saying? And I was like so scared and I was just I looked at the floor and I remember saying I just said we're scared of you and I think like I think maybe we should go. And she's like oh, you want to go. And she grabbed my arm, she tore me out of the front door, threw me on the ground. I lost all the skin on my leg because I was like in a little nightgown. It's the middle of the night and it's cold because I'm North Florida, in the winters, it's probably like in the mid 40s. And this little girl out in her nightgown. I go down to the first floor and I'm like hiding under the stairs because we're in a three story apartment building and I'm like shivering and I'm crying and I was trying to figure out how to get back in there to save my brother, you know. And then the neighbors came out because they heard me crying and they were like, oh my gosh, what is wrong? And I told them what had happened and they were ready to call the police. And there's a knock on the door and so they open the door and she goes ahead and tells them that oh, I'm mentally ill and I ran away Now that she threw me out, and tells them that I injured my leg on purpose to make her look bad.

Speaker 2: 12:47

And that was the pattern for the eight years that I lived with her. I lived with her from eight to 16. It was horrible. She would abuse us like mercilessly and then if we ever tried to anybody ever tried to call like child services or the police, they would come and she would just convince them that we had injured ourselves or that we had actually attacked her. A lot of times she would hurt us and if she hurt us bad enough that they were marked, she'd injure herself and then preemptively call the police, be like, oh, my children attacked me, and then show them the footage of the kidnapping. And then people are just like, oh yeah, of course they're crazy. Nobody could be normal after going through that. And so it was just.

Speaker 1: 13:26

It was hell, it was so bad, it was so scary and so terrifying because now you're so vulnerable and dependent on her your dad isn't in the picture anymore yeah, and then to feel so unsafe and so invalidated when you would try to share and tell the neighbor, and then she-.

Speaker 2: 13:44

Try to get help yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:45

And she turns it all around. I don't know how many times you told people, but I would imagine that after telling the story a couple of times and having people not believe you, it would cause you to start to have a very unsafe feeling about the world.

Speaker 2: 13:59

Well, you start internalizing it like you're the problem, especially when the mother kid or abuse you and then say that you made her do it and that you are so unlovable. And I was such a nice person before you came along and so I went into like the beginning of my life Sorry, so painful Thinking I was completely unlovable and so I bonded to all these abusive people because that feels normal and your mother taught you that you're so repugnant and unlovable and so you'll take anything that anybody can give you and you just feel lucky, even if it's abusive. You're getting, you know, you just feel lucky to have whatever it is Right.

Speaker 1: 14:42

Oh, that is so painful. So painful because you hear that message over and over again and it becomes your identity.

Speaker 2: 14:49

I know I'm 35 and I just got over it, like three years ago, like I. It just you know. Oh, it's such a hard thing to untangle yourself from. Isolated incidents of trauma are very different than growing up, and your formative years are wrought with all this trauma and then it becomes an inherent part of who you are, it becomes part of your core beliefs, like nothing is okay or good, you never feel safe, you never know what you're doing or who you're bonding to.

Speaker 2: 15:20

And then the last incident with her was when I was 16 and I said no to her for the first time. She always made us work, since we were little, and she'd take all of our money. So finally, when I was 16, I said no and I remember I cashed the check, got back in the car, she told me to give her the money and I said no and I remember my whole body started just shaking, like I was so terrified which is PTSD, which I didn't know at the time and she was like you're going to give it to me or I'll take it. And so it was crazy. But it's how I got away finally, because I never said no to her, not ever and I was like you didn't say no, you didn't say anything. She could go up to you and tell you you murdered somebody and you just say okay, because saying I didn't murder anybody like would not go so well for you.

Speaker 2: 16:05

But that day I was in the passenger seat, she was in the driver and I had the money in my hand and she grabbed my hand and pulled it over to the driver seat and just started chewing on it, trying to get the wallet out of my hand. But that is what got me away, because when the police came, because I had said no and she was so shaken she forgot to injure herself. Wow. So she called the police and said my daughter attacked me like she always did. But when they came, finally they believed me.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Like finally, when they came, I literally was in such shock that I didn't even know. I put my arms out to them and I was like take me. And they asked for my side of the story. I was like there's no point. I remember saying there's no point. Then the officer saw my arm and it was bleeding and there was teeth marks and there was like flesh everywhere and she had no marks and they finally believed me and then I got away and then I was homeless for a year, but it was way better living in my car.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Oh my goodness. And what about your brother? Did he escape with you?

Speaker 2: 17:02

No. So two years before that she had attacked him and then called the police and said he attacked her and they took my brother away and took him to jail and that was the last time he lived with us. He was homeless for a while, just like I was. He lived in his car and then a family in the church took him in my family. Like nobody's really close. Nobody talks.

Speaker 2: 17:24

I think it's just too much drama all around. Like nobody was able to like form secure attachments with each other and the people in my family have issues still you know what I mean. Like when I got pregnant, their father was like really abusive to me. That was like the thing that made me realize, okay, I bonded to like another abusive person, but the thing is I didn't even know I had been abused until I had my kid. So here's the thing my mom had always blamed it on me.

Speaker 2: 17:54

So I thought that I was literally so horrible that I made people hurt me like I was so unlovable. And so I have my baby in my arms and I look at him and my first thought is oh my god, I have never loved anything so much. I think I'm gonna die. And my second thought was if anybody freaking touches him, I will rip their face off, followed by oh my gosh, a child can never do anything that would make a parent hurt it. That was my third thought like, wait a second, this is like what love is Like. I would never hurt this child, I don't care what this child does, I'm never gonna yell at this child and I don't.

Speaker 2: 18:31

I'm very careful about repeating abusive patterns and very hyper vigilant, being like a really emotionally intelligent mother and making sure I don't traumatize them. So it was clear in that moment I would never hurt this child and there's no excuse for it. And so then I realized, like, how abused I was. I had no idea until then. I just walked around thinking I was a piece of crap. We bonded terrible people and then, after I realized that I had been abused, I realized how bad it was with the man I was married to at the time and how scary that situation was. And in that moment I was like I will leave. And so I started doing stuff to make money and just started saving it save for four years.

Speaker 1: 19:12

You know what so fascinating is that awareness that came with your baby. Your baby saved your life, because so many times, even when a person has a child, they still don't have that awareness. But you recognized that thought as true and it was like it took hold within you and the courage within you grew because of that thought.

Speaker 2: 19:34

He's just the most I don't know. Like having children is the most amazing thing in the world. Like I love them more than anything. Like I didn't even know what love was. I literally had no idea what love was. Like oh, it's the most amazing responsibility. Like being a parent and take it very seriously. I never thought I'd have kids because I was so afraid, because childhood wasn't fun for me. I didn't have one, right, but why would I want to do that to another human? And so the pregnancy wasn't planned. So the moment I found out I was pregnant, I read all these parenting books just to try to make sure that this child would have a really nice childhood.

Speaker 1: 20:11

And I think that's another thing that's so fascinating about your story is that many times people are mindlessly repeating the cycle, but you, because of that awareness, were conscious and you said I am not going to repeat this and I am going to be better because of what I went through, I am going to create a better environment for my child, and that motivated you so strongly to overcome those things that you experienced in your past so that you didn't repeat that with your child.

Speaker 2: 20:41

And just so if anybody is like listening to this and they're struggling with it. I don't want anybody to feel alienated. I want to be very clear. My knee jerk and it gets less every year. My kids are only five and eight. When you're raised like that, when your kid acts out, your knee jerk is control and your knee jerk is to terrorize them into acting right to like scream at them or intimidate them. It is a knee jerk because it's literally in there. I mean that is how your parent, that it's in there. But you can change it and it is so important that we don't use that as an excuse to perpetuate cycles of abuse and that we do change it and you can change it. I read a lot of books about tools to like remove myself from situations I couldn't handle, like breathe deeply. I'm eight years in now and it is just about second nature.

Speaker 2: 21:29

It's not really something I struggle with. But oh my gosh, in the first two years when you have PTSD, crying baby, even that like triggers you and you just get like really fight or flighty, and if you're more fight than flight, not good. Actually, if you're more flight than fight, not good for a child. But there is a book called Scream Free Parenting that I recommend to anyone who had an abuse of childhood who wants to be the kind of parent the title's a little misleading Screaming can be abandoning your child too. What it should be titled is Reaction Free Parenting. It teaches you to like not internalize children's behavior or relate it back to yourself and have them experience the natural consequences of their own actions instead of you trying to like micromanage. Anyways, it's an amazing book. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1: 22:15

You know. First of all, I want to say thank you for validating that this is not easy and that if you are having that knee jerk reaction because of the trauma that you've gone through in your own past, that that's normal and yet that doesn't have to be where it ends. And so, first of all, I really appreciate you saying that, because that is a very important part of the process is to know that this is understandable, why a person would have these reactions and, second of all, how beautiful that you can say but yeah, you can still work on that and don't leave it there. Recognize it, acknowledge it, but then move forward. And that book sounds absolutely phenomenal because when you're triggered, like you said, by the crying baby, or when children naturally assert their independence and they'll protest and they'll be argumentative at times, a parent could react to that and make it mean something, but it doesn't necessarily mean in the child, whereas if you step back for a minute and breathe, like you said, I think you've probably learned some really great tools for parents that are dealing with some of this past trauma in their own life.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Takeaways for today Were you surprised to hear how Christie lived on the run with her brother and captor for six years and how they had a survivalist lifestyle. Her mother went to great lengths to publicize Christie's kidnapping and what an ironic twist to find out that when Christie was returned to her mother, it was not happily ever after. Christie shares how she went from being a fugitive and had to learn new survival skills in her new life as she endured her mother's abuse after she was ripped away from the care of her father, the only parent she could remember. Thanks for listening. I know you're busy. Did you know that you help spread the love by leaving your review and following? This helps increase our visibility so people can find us online. I really appreciate your help. I'm wishing you lots of love in your own hero's journey.