HE WAS GOING TO KILL ME

How a split-second decision saved an Alaska teen’s life—and led to the capture of a serial killer

- JOHNNY DODD

More than 40 years later Cindy Paulson still isn’t exactly sure how she managed to get the back door of the Buick open—but she clearly remembers thinking that if she didn’t find a way to escape, she’d soon be dead. “I heard voices in my head telling me, ‘Run, bitch. Run,’ ” recalls Paulson. Seconds later the then-17-year-old sex worker from Yakima, Wash., was sprinting barefoot, her wrists shackled and covered in blood, down the gravel runway of Anchorage’s Merrill Field Airport and onto a highway. Not far behind her, clutching a .357 Magnum, was the driver of the Buick, who, hours earlier, had brutally raped and tortured Paulson in the basement of his home. He was now preparing to fly her in his private plane to a remote cabin in the Alaska wilderness on what she realized would be a one-way trip. “Stop! Stop!” Paulson recalls screaming at the driver of a passing pickup truck who pulled over. “This guy is trying to kill me.”