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Woman who escaped from ‘sex dungeon’ in Missouri tells police her captor killed two of her friends

Timothy Haslett Jr arrested after woman escaped house in Excelsior Springs

Graeme Massie
Los Angeles
Saturday 15 October 2022 14:34 EDT
Timothy Haslett Jr
Timothy Haslett Jr (CCSD)

A woman who escaped from a Missouri “sex dungeon” told police that her captor had killed two of her friends, according to a report.

Authorities say that the malnourished woman fled from Timothy Haslett Jr last week after the 39-year-old took his child to school.

The alarm was raised when she ran barefoot to a neighbour’s home in Excelsior Springs wearing a latex dress and a metal dog collar with a padlock around her neck and begged for help.

The woman told police that she had been picked up in Kansas City in early September and been kept in restraints in a small room built in the basement of the house where she had been raped and whipped.

Excelsior Springs Police told DailyMail.com that they were “actively investigating” the woman’s claims.

Lisa Johnson told the news outlet that she had been shocked when the woman arrived at her home in obvious distress.

“She was wearing a very, very short black latex dress, which appeared opened up in places, you could plainly see what she had been through,” Ms Johnson told the outlet.

“And she was clearly dehydrated and very malnourished – super skinny, she was maybe no more than 70lbs. Short hair, although not matted, not dirty.”

She said that when she told the woman she was calling the police she panicked and told her that her captor would kill her.

“She said he had been holding her, wouldn’t let her go. And that he was going to kill her and he had killed her two friends,” she said.

The woman then left and went to the house of another neighbour, Cira Tharp, whose grandmother answered the door to her.

“‘You’ve got to help me, I’ve been held captive, I’ve been raped, you’ve got to help me, he’s going to end up killing me,’” the girl reportedly told Tharp’s grandmother.

“My grandma brought her in, wrapped a blanket around her and went and got her some food and water. She was pretty hungry. And my grandma sat with her and held her until the police came.”

Ms Tharp said the woman also told her that the suspect had allegedly killed her friends. “She told her, ‘my friends didn’t make it, he killed my friends’,” Ms Tharp said.

The suspect has been charged with rape and kidnapping and will be back in court on 18 October.

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