Day 1: Kidnapped in Haiti
Wednesday began a bit bumpy. When we woke up around 7 a.m. and went out to the truck, we discovered we had a flat tire. DJ began the work to repair it. I grabbed us some breakfast.
All I could find was a Haitian breakfast staple of spaghetti with hot dogs and catsup. I took a photo of it and sent it to my family. I ate a few bites and left the rest, having no idea how precious food was about to become.
By 9 a.m. we were on the road heading toward PaP. I remember enjoying the beauty of Léogâne as we descended the mountain that overlooks its. We bought two bags of beautiful mangos on our way through. I never got to eat any of them.
We pulled into Carrefour at about 11:30 and pulled over to pick up Reggie again to escort us back through Martissant. Because of the ease of our crossing two days prior, I was less concerned this time. So when Reggie and DJ were chatting outside the truck, it didn’t raise any red flags. However, in retrospect, I believe they were discussing the fact that Reggies gang contact that got us through the first time wasn’t around today. We were two days early and his guy wasn’t around. I speculate that they reasoned they would be able to get through without him and if in the unlikely event that they had any issues then they would be able to reach out to their contact and easily solve the situation. Nevertheless, we began down the road from Carrefour to PaP, through Martissant.
Martissant Haiti 2021. Photo Credit: Dominican Today
I texted Bill at 11:32 to send his team to the warehouse to meet us. We would receive the food delivery truck there around 12:30.
We entered Martissant like before, front windows down, tinted back windows up, rum bottles out the windows, thug faces on. We passed the gang ‘toll booth’ without incident. A mile or so later I actually began to imagine what it would be like if I were ever attacked in Haiti. I thought about how it would actually go down. When we were just a few hundred meters from safety I actually happened to be thinking deeply about that very idea when three motorcycles, each carrying two gang soldiers pulled up along each side of our truck. One moto on the right and two on the left. They were all armed with assault rifles. It was loud because of all the motorcycles and my Kreyol was weak so it was hard for me to figure out what was going on. Were these friends of ours here to escort us? Were these the guys from the toll booth here to make sure we had paid? I couldn’t tell. They quickly looked inside the truck and spotted me in the back seat on the right side of the truck along with my roller bag luggage (a clear sign of a foreigner) sitting on the seat to my left. One of them motioned to the others and they open the two left doors of the truck. They told DJ to scoot over. He quickly did so, ducking his head and shoulders down to fit between the center console and the roof. A soldier got behind the wheel. Another soldier climbed in the back seat with his well worn but strangely clean AR-15. He stacked DJ’s roller bag on top of mine in between us to make room for himself. It was all unexpectedly calm. No yelling. No pointing of guns. They closed the doors and began to drive away. The motorcycles all followed closely. We quickly made a U turn back toward Martissant. Up to this point, I hoped that we were heading back to the toll booth. Maybe someone was upset and we would need to pay some large sum. I had about $4k US in various places in my bags (always separated so that I could tell any would be thief “here, that’s all I have”) so I was thinking I could likely buy my way out of any real trouble. When we made a left and turned off the main road and headed up the hill I new that we were in more serious trouble than I’d hoped.
Martissant sits on the ocean front. The coast runs east and west with the water to the north of the city. The streets are often muddy and flooded because the rain water flows down the foothills toward the ocean. Any drainage related infrastructure has long since been destroyed. The main road through Martissant also runs east and west. When we turned left off of the main road, south, we were heading up into the foothills, a densely populated area of 2-3 story buildings, mostly businesses, giving way to even more densely populated slum. The slum is an impossibly complex labyrinth of tin roofs, concrete, cinderblock and not enough steele, fashioned into a chaotic mess of thousands of dwellings that a stout few continue to call home - many having long since escaped.
Shortly after we turned left, the soldier in the back seat demanded our phones. The luggage would piled shoulder high between us obscuring his view. I told him I had dropped it on the floor and couldn’t reach it. I was trying to send a text to Bill to alert him of our situation.
A few months prior, I was introduced to Bill as a guy who knows and loves Haiti. I needed someone who could get me into Cite Soleil safely in order to serve the starving residents there and Bill was my guy. I saw with my own eyes how deeply he loved those people. It was clear how long he’d been serving them and that he had earned their trust. He had also earned the trust of each of the gang leaders that ruled those neighborhoods. Most gangs in Haiti have entered into one a two large alliances in the last couple years, not dissimilar to The Allies and Axis of WWII. They are called The G-9 (nine large gangs) and G Pép (the people). They are fierce adversaries. Bill seemed to know leaders within each and even showed me a text thread he claimed to be between he and Ti Gabriel, the top chief of G Pèp that he had known since Ti Gabriel was ‘a kid’.
So when I was trying to text Bill from the back seat of the truck, I was hoping he’d be my ‘get out of jail free card’. The soldier bought my story about my phone on the floor but only for a few seconds. He began to adjust the luggage to allow him to see what I was up to. I feined recovering the phone and handed it to him without successfully sending any message to anyone. I conceded that at least Bills team would be expecting me at the warehouse, would eventually notify him that I was missing. Bill knew I was traveling through Martissant and could certainly guess what had likely happened to me. He could then make a few calls to secure my release. No need to panic.
The soldier reached over to my side of the truck and grabbed my hat and covered my eyes with it and pushed my head down in an effort to keep me from seeing where we were going. I was able to turn my head to the right enough to look out the window and did my best to remember the route. I counted the number of lefts and rights as we ascended the hill in hope of providing valuable intel to someone at sometime. I wouldn’t remember any of it.
We eventually pulled into a compound that I would later learn was a seminary campus called Séminaire de Théologie Evangélique de Port-au-Prince that was taken over by the gangs a little over a year prior to my arrival. Once we drove through the gate and passed the tall block walls topped with razor wire I noticed how comparatively pleasant looking it was inside the walls. We kept driving quickly up a steep concrete road. We passed several other small buildings and many tall trees. Compared to the world just outside the walls this place was remarkably spacious with most buildings stood at least 100ft from its nearest neighbor. We drove about 1/4 miles to the top of the compound and stopped in front of a small building, approximately 1500sqft. Weeks later I would learn that it was painted blue but I didn’t notice it’s color on this day.
Our truck was surrounded by a new group of soldiers, most of them wearing masks of various types. The soldier to my left quickly disappeared along with the soldier that had been driving the truck, seemingly into thin air. The new soldiers began pulling us out of the truck, forcing our heads down as if to obscure our vision of the area and those soldiers present that weren’t masked. We were each walked into what we would later refer to as “Room Two”. Room two was a small dark bedroom with an attached bathroom, likely the former dorm room of a seminary professor. It was about 14’ x 10’ with the bathroom on the opposite side from the entrance to the room.
I wouldn’t notice any of that as I was patted down for valuables on my way into the room. A small unmasked soldier took my Apple watch, found my passport, credit card, atm card and drivers license. He kept my watch but gave the rest back to me and then directed me into the room to sit on the concrete floor with DJ and Reggie. There we joined two other men sitting on an old mattress with their shoes off and placed by the wall.
The soldiers left us in the room and locked the door. We whispered to each other various things. We learned that the other two men were taken earlier that day. I looked to DJ as though he and Reggie might have a plan to tell these soldiers that there must have been a mistake. DJ assured me that Reggie was tight with one of the soldiers that took us and that we’d be out shortly. That assured me a tad but I still flinched when a mouse darted across the floor from behind me.
Moments later a new masked soldier stormed into the room with a pistol. We would later nickname him “Bad Cop”. Bad Cop shouted and motioned to an additional mattress that was tipped up against the wall ordered us to put it on the floor, remove our shoes and sit on the mattress. We did so. When Reggie sat down next to me and removed his shoes, Bad Cop noticed that Reggie had hidden two apparently gold rings in his shoes. Bad Cop began to rage and beat Reggie with his pistol for quite some time. Then he left and locked the door.
The look on DJ’s face said it all. Reggies contact wasn’t going to be of any use to us.
A few minutes later a new masked soldier came storming in. He was well dressed for a soldier. Most wear slides, shorts and a tank top, T-shirt or no shirt. This guy was clean, wearing a counterfeit Gucci T-shirt, white jeans, lots of jewelry, a watch and clean shoes. As he came into the room he yelled one word, “Blan”! That word literally translates to “white” but it really mean something like foreigner. It can also be used to refer to light skinned French Haitians. In this case he was most certainly referring to me. He was celebrating his “catch”. He was gloating. He began speaking Kreyol to me but I understood none of it. He was speaking quickly, with heavy slang and his voice was muffled by his mask. I had no chance of catching much. I looked to DJ to translate for me. He pretended not to speak english. DJ was already positioning himself as a poor Haitian, unable to pay a large ransom. Speaking English would be a clear sign of presumed wealth. The solider then asked if I spoke Kreyol. I told him the truth, that I speak some but wasn’t understanding him. In order to test me he squatted down and put his face in mine and began cursing and insulting me and my family. He was trying to get a reaction.
He asked the others a couple questions and then left. He returned a few minutes later and told me to stand up, grab my shoes and follow him. I did. When I stood up next to him he said “woah, yon gwo blan” (wow, a big white guy). I was 6’2” 245lbs and he was likely 5’10” 155lbs. Yet, as we walked out of the room he still turned his back on me when I was standing right behind him. He had no fear of me at all. We exited the room and made an immediate right turn through the door of an adjacent room, “Room One”.
As I walked into Room One I saw that there were three other captives in the room sitting on mattresses. A man and a woman sitting straight ahead of me and another man seated to my right. I was told to sit between them in the far corner of the room. I walk to the corner, turned around and sat down on the old greasy mattress in time to see the soldier leave the room and locked the door. The male and female began speaking to me in perfect english. They were Americans. I was shocked. As soon as they told me they were kidnapped while on the bus from the airport to Leogane I immediately remembered reading about them online. They were Jean and Abby Toussaint. They had been there for a month! I couldn’t conceive of being in such a hell for so long. They had a two year old son at home in Ft Lauderdale. They were distraught but still kind to me. To my left was a Haitian man named Kervin who also spoke english to me. He had been there 22 days.
I was deeply sympathetic that they had been enduring this for so long. However, I was not worried at all that I would ever be held that long. I was still planning be out that same day. If I could just get a phone call to Bill, I’d be good.
The well dressed soldier came back in the room and sat down on a bucket, with DJ’s bottle of rum in one hand and a 9mm pistol in the other. The pistol also had an extended 30 round clip making the pistol awkwardly tall but also somehow more menacing when he would wave it around. The others called him “Chef” (means Chief, the title of a gang leader). All of his attention was on me. He spoke only Kreyol to me. Jean, the American translated. He demanded $2,000,000US or he would kill me. I scoffed at the amount and told him I’d much rather partner with him to lift his community. Other gang leaders loved the food distributions we were doing, certainly he would have interest in that. I had the shipment ready. He agreed, as long as I pay the $2,000,000 first. He would only talk about the money and how quickly I would get it for him or he would kill me. He frequently mentioned killing me. I knew that I was of significant monetary value to him and that it was unlikely that he would ever kill me, it is still jarring to hear someone threaten you repeatedly in that way. Haiti is a dangerous place. Gangs kill people everyday. The mattress in front of me was covered in blood stains. My certainty regarding my safety was diminishing.
It helped me calm down to see the way the other long time captives in the room were acting around him. They weren’t panicked. I tried to follow suit. The Chef asked my name. I said Jeff. He seemed surprised. He wrote it on a piece of trash he found nearby and pointed to it to confirm he had it right. I nodded yes. I would later learn from over hearing soldiers outside that he was named Jeff as well. Chef Jeff. He ignored me for a few minutes and chatted with the others. I couldn’t follow it. Mostly small talk, the Toussiants also tried to get an update on the negotiations for their release. Then Chef Jeff handed them his bottle of rum. They each took a sip and handed it back to the chef. He then handed the bottle to Kervin who took a sip.
Its important to know at this point that I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and as such have promised God that I would follow an inspired health code of sorts from the 1830’s that we call The Word of Wisdom. As part of that code, I have never had a sip of alcohol in my life. I am a devout Christian now but in my late teens and early twenties I strayed for a few years. I succumbed to many temptations but as some sort of last straw, I kept my promise to abstain from drinking alcohol.
I was proud of the discipline it took. That small bit of discipline ended up becoming a key building block by which I was able to rebuild my life and get back on track.
As the Rum was being passed around, I was hopeful that my status as the new guy would exclude me from the drinking list. It didn’t. When Kervin finished his sip Chef Jeff motioned to me. Kervin tried to hand the rum to me. “Non Merci”, I responded. Chef Jeff sat up threateningly and insisted. “No thank you”, I said again. He then began to rage. He stood up, waving his gun around, threatening to kill me if I didn’t drink the rum. I try to explain that it was for religious reasons and that only seamed to make it worse. In response Kervin counseled “there’s no religion here”. I didn’t know what to do. I had only been in this place for under an hour and I’m already facing some kind of moral stand off.
We have a thing that we teach in our family called “decide once”. It’s a tool we use to make it easier to avoid temptations. If you ‘decide once’ to never cheat on an exam then you won’t need to make the decision when you are in school, taking a test, don’t know the answer and a friends answers are in sight. You’ve already decided. I had already decided not to drink alcohol, ever. However, In that moment, I was reevaluating my decision. It was all happening so fast but I remember realizing that when I had made that decision decades ago not to drink, I certainly had not consider a scenario such as this one. Would I give my life for this? Should I? As these and other thoughts swirled in my head and my eyes went back and forth from Chef Jeff’s eyes and his pistol, I heard a voice stand out amongst all the shouting. It was one of my fellow captives. I’m not sure who said it first but one them said something in english like “just put the bottle up to your mouth”! My mind latched onto this idea as a possible way out. I decided to try it. Chef Jeff hadn’t heard the suggestion, perhaps I could fool him into thinking I was actually drinking it. This whole stand-off was simply a power struggle anyway. I just needed him to feel like he had won. It worked. As soon as I lowered the bottle everyone seemed to relax. Chef Jeff threw a few more insults at me and then left the room. A guard then poked his head in, looked at me and made a throat slicing gesture then left and locked the door. I thanked the others for having my back and apologized for bringing drama to their day.
The others began to tell me about how things worked. They told me that I’d get a phone call at some point - perhaps that same day. I’d need to appoint a negotiator to represent me and my family. I might be able to talk with my family as well. They told me a bit about the guards, their nick names, which are cruel and which are helpful. They said they had been fed most days and had enough water to drink ‘when you’re thirsty’. I was hearing their words and taking in the information they were sharing but mostly out of curiosity because I had yet to accept that I would be staying there. I was still convinced I had a get out of jail free card, Bill.If I could just get a chance to make one phone call, I was certain things would start moving quickly.
Around 3pm sometime, we heard the rattle of the latch on our door. It was Chef Jeff returning. He didn’t pay any attention to me. He was there to talk with Kervin and the Toussiants. I was hoping that he was coming to give me my phone call. When he stood up from his seat on the bucket to leave, I asked to use my phone he said “soon”. Not thinking I’d need to pay a ransom but trying to motivate him, I mentioned that maybe I could get him some quick cash. He kept walking out but not before he looked at the Toussiants and cruelly remarked “I hope the blan gets out before you”.
Surprisingly, the other three captives knew so much about what was happening outside our “cell”. There were two louvered glass windows in the room. The one on the west side of the room was covered by a thick red curtain on the inside and with a thin white sheet on the outside. The other window was on the north side and was not covered, however the louvers were closed and the glass was frosted, obscuring any view to the outside. There was an exterior door also on the north wall. The door and windows were all covered with iron bars preventing passage of anything larger than a grapefruit. The eastern wall of the room was broken up by the door to the bathroom and then a short 4’ hallway that led to the interior door that the kidnappers had been coming in and out of. The southern wall also included an interior door that led to the bedroom of Chef Jeff.
While we had little visibility of anything going on outside our cell, the long timers had clearly become experts at the many sounds that seemed to be constantly giving them clues into all that was going on outside. They knew voices, car sounds, motorcycle sounds, doors, gun fire (throughout the day most days), pots and pans, water buckets, footsteps, where the they were going and to whom they all belonged. It was remarkable to me at the time, what they were able to deduce.
I was both startled and a bit disbelieving when around 5pm Abby and Jean looked at me with raised eyebrows in response to some car sounds they were hearing approach the building. “What is it”?, I asked. “More people”, Abby responded. She meant, more victims. The loud car sounds turned into loud machine-gun fire and loud yelling. At this point, I was depending on Kervin and the Toussaints for guidance on nearly all things. So when I saw them all drop from their seated positions on the mattresses to lying with their heads down, I did as they did. The gun fire and shouting got louder and closer. It was in the building now. It was utter chaos as the door to our room flew open a people started flooding into the room. As many as six gunmen with assault rifles and five terrified new captives came into the room. Two thirty-something females and three twenty-something males. The gunmen patted each one down for valuables and ID, then sat them down on the mattresses. More shouting and banging on the doors for effect. After a while, the gunmen walked out of the room.
They had been taken in a similar manner that we were but for them it was two SUVs that surrounded them, and they were in upper Delmas, an area not controlled by gangs. They were carpooling home from work. The Toyota Prado SUV they were driving in belonged to Stefanie, a French, Kreyol and English speaking Haitian in her late 30s. She was accompanied by her workmate Sara, Kreyol speaking, early 30s, and three other men from their same office building.
About 30 minutes after they arrived, a few guards came in and and took the three new men from our room and put them in Room Two with DJ, Reggie and the two men who preceded us. Making it seven men in Room Two and the six of us in Room One.
As time went by I began to confront the reality that I might be staying overnight in this place. As best I could tell, it was around 6pm and I hadn’t been allowed to make a phone call yet. I imagined that by this time, and handful of people would have been worried about me. We were expected at Bill’s warehouse around 12:30. A friend and businessman named Paul was supplying us with the truckload of rice. He and Bill would have received word of my no show from their staff hours ago and both knew I was heading through Martissant. They were not in direct contact with each other but , I surmised that both would have been presuming my capture by now. It was not unusual for me to go severals hours without contact with my wife given the connection issues that often occur in Haiti but I knew she’d be getting nervous at this point. If Bill or Paul had somehow gotten ahold of her and shared what they knew then she’d be a wreck by this time. I hated all of these thoughts. I was frustrated, hopeful, frightened and embarrassed. I should have known better than to let this happen.
At 6:47pm Chef Jeff brought my phone to me to make a call. I grabbed my phone eagerly, excited to get a hold of Bill, my ticket out of this hell hole. I had signal but just barely.
American phones in Haiti typically go back and forth between the two major carriers in Haiti (Digicel and Natcom). Each once boasted 4G LTE speeds in most of PaP but for the last year or so I’ve only ever seen 3G speeds at best. When I looked at my signal strength it displayed one bar on “E” that stands for the Edge network. It is the worst network speed and only permits phone calls. This would make it impossible to make calls through WhatsApp. My heart sank. After a moment, I saw the phone switch to 3G. I dialed Bill. When he picked up I made it clear that I had been kidnapped and tried to send him clues as to where I was being held. I hoped that my location would be useful for him to know which gang leader to call in order to secure my release. I told him that he was my one phone call. He was a bit caught off guard when I told him that. That surprised me. He was always so cavalier about his tight relationships with the gangs that I presumed that this ask would be a no brainer for Bill. I expected something like “All right dude. Stand by. Let me make a call and get you out of there”.
My relationship with Bill was not a close one but I believed that I had earned his respect and at least some degree of loyalty. His uncertainty on the phone left me wondering if he had misrepresented his influence with the gangs or did I misunderstand relationship with Bill? It was all happening quickly and with Chef Jeff standing over me as I kneeled on the mattress. I was on speaker phone but Chef Jeff couldn’t understand any of it. Kervin, Stefanie and the Toussaints could understand. As I gave Bill clues to my location, I hoped that the other captives would not say anything to Chef Jeff.
I closed my conversation with Bill by asking him to call my friend and colleague Diego. Diego and I had worked closely together with a nonprofit called OUR Rescue (formerly Operation Underground Railroad).
Sidebar: Back in 2014, my family and I went over to the home of my brother and sister-in-law for dinner. They told my about a nonprofit that was just getting started. They were trying to combat child sex trafficking around the world. I had never even heard of such a terrible thing. As our hosts educated my wife and I about the significance of this global issue, we were both stunned. I remember walking around that night in a bit of a daze. I was there at the dinner but my mind raced elsewhere. How could this be happening to children in this day and age?
Shortly thereafter, Mary and I met Tim Ballard, it’s founder and got involved immediately. We didn’t have any money to contribute but I had a small advertising agency at the time and volunteered to start representing them pro bono. Over time we learned more and more about the complexities and challenges surrounding child trafficking. One of those issues is aftercare. Often, the children who we rescue have no where safe to go after the are freed. In 2018, Mary and I decided to grow our family through adoption in order to try to assist one or more rescued children. When I called Tim to ask him from which country he thought we should adopt, he didn’t hesitate. Haiti. He was right. There is no country on Earth that does not have child sex slavery. Rich countries and poor countries alike. All of them have child slaves by the thousands, tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands. However, in Haiti, the situation is particularly acute. Haiti has a cultural dynamic that has normalized child sex slavery. It’s called Restavek. Learn more about this scourge here: restavekfreedom.org
Mary and I decided to travel to Haiti to see the situation for ourselves. As we toured various slums and several orphanages, we saw the devastation and desolation. We met the children. We met the dedicated people trying to make a difference. Most importantly, we saw opportunities to help the individual children of Haiti. We were hooked. We began the years long process of adoption. We also began working to help aftercare efforts in Haiti directly. By late 2019, we had moved our family from California to South Florida in order to be close to Haiti and began traveling down about twice per month. My primary efforts were to combat the child sex trade. Unfortunately it doesn’t take long to realize that for every recused slave child, there is another child available to fill that demand. As long as there are desperate families in Haiti that are unable to feed their children or themselves, there will be children for sale. Evil creates the demand for sex slaves but poverty supplies it. If we were going to address child sex slavery, we were going to need to lift all of Haiti out of extreme poverty.
We began to build Haitian organizations to take advantage of points of leverage in Haiti like planting tens of thousands of fruit trees, building roads, starting small businesses, starting rabbit farms and many other projects. We also began to get involved in Washington D.C. in an effort to influence aid in Haiti, observing that some of the aid dollars could be better utilized. All along the way, we had an eye toward addressing child exploitation. Every vulnerable community we targeted was assessed for potential Resavek children and children vulnerable to trafficking recruitment. Our economic development and food security initiatives were always designed to increase the safety of these children. Operation Underground Railroad was by my side throughout this time and often funded many of our projects.
I met Diego in 2021. He was the new O.U.R. operations director over the Caribbean. He would be my new point of contact. We began doing operations together in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (where traffickers often take Haitian slaves). Diego had a deep resume in American military special ops as well as private security. He and I hit it off immediately and I knew I could trust him. That trust had only increased over time.
So when I got my first phone call after being kidnapped, I asked Bill to call Diego, I knew that Diego would send up ‘the bat signal’ to my people immediately. I knew he would start working on putting a team together to get me out as well as contact my wife Mary. I gave Bill his phone number and then had to hang up. I handed my phone back to Chef Jeff and he walked away content. The kidnappers know that it takes some time to collect any ransom, so they are content once that scramble process has begun. They seem to delight in the terror happening on the other end of the phone line.
It was only after that phonemail that I began to finally accept the fact that I would be staying the night in this place.
I would later learn that Bill called the U.S. Embassy and never called Diego. He somehow misunderstood me and thought that Diego was the name of one of the kidnappers and simply provided that number to the embassy as a lead. The embassy would eventually contact Mary at around 9:30pm that night to give her the news.
A bit from Mary:
“Jeff had left for another Haiti trip, like he had done dozens of times before…however the last few trips had felt different, maybe in part because of the growing unrest in haiti, so we had been increasingly diligent with our prayers surrounding the necessity of these trips. People were starving though, and we both kept feeling very peaceful about moving forward with the mission trips. Jeff arrived in Haiti on the 10th and the morning of the 12th we were still communicating as we normally would.
Around noon that day as I was driving around running errands by myself I had a clear prompting run through my head. The undeniable thought was, “if things are ever go bad for Jeff you need to call Doug”. I remember thinking that was weird because although we knew and really liked Doug, we were not super close friends yet. I knew some of his impressive resume (I still to this day don’t think I know most of his extensive accomplishments) and was nodding to myself that “ya that would be a good idea”. I left that thought and moved on with my day. I would eventually find out that same moment I was prompted with that thought may have been precisely the very moments Jeff was being taken.
God is good!
As evening approached and I hadn’t heard from Jeff I was beginning to get annoyed, mostly because we had many times that he was out of range or his phone would die on trips like this and I would worry without cause for hours at a time. I was trying not to do that. As I was getting ready for bed I was worried but still not overly so, like I should have been. Around 9:30pm after I had gotten our 4 youngest children to bed I went in my room to wind down and my phone rang with a strange Haiti number, I remember thinking maybe Jeff had to borrow one of his security guys phone and was calling me from that. Boy was I wrong!
The man on the phone told me he was calling me from the embassy in Haiti with news about my husband. He had strong evidence that Jeff had been kidnapped that day and was working on getting me more information. I’m not sure what else he said. He had me write down his name and number and another name and number of another man from the FBI that would be calling me. He said a lot but I couldn’t focus on anything he said. My brain kept repeating the message I had received earlier that day, “You need to call Doug”! As soon as I hung up the phone i called Doug. He was in California on business and happened to be having dinner with a buddy that would also prove helpful. Doug acted immediately with complete devotion and willingness to do any and all things necessary to help get my husband home. As he calls it, Doug sent out the “bat signal” to all his networks to find out all he could about Haiti and what his available assets were. He gave me a few assignments to start shutting down all Jeff’s social media and business media and banking accounts and to keep my family as quiet as possible. I remember having my older girls help me with this. He asked for the names of the FBI guys i had been given so he could check up on them as well through his contacts.
After that first phone call to Doug and once I felt like I had someone on the job, I broke down. I fell to the floor and started balling. My oldest daughter walked in my room. She had heard me. She was then followed by my next two oldest. I couldn’t not tell them, it was all too real and raw. They were in it with me. We all sat there stunned not knowing what to think. They mostly had their hands over their mouths and didn’t know what to say,. They kept just looking to me to know what to say and what to do…and I was clueless! None of us slept that first night.
I called Jeff’s parents and my two sisters I was closest to and spent most of the night talking to Doug on and off. I had no idea what was coming…and that is probably a good thing.”
Meanwhile I was in my cell with the other captives. The city power cut out at around 10pm and the kidnappers started a generator that sat just outside the bathroom window along the north wall. It was loud. The only light we had in our room was an eight foot long string of red and blue twinkling LED lights that ran from the door jam of Chef Jeffs room, across the hallway the kidnappers entered through and down the eastern wall. The lights hung low enough to cause most entrants to duck under them when entering or exiting the room. There were three mattresses that covered the floor other than a small path of exposed concrete on the south wall near Chef Jeffs door and along the eastern wall by the bathroom door. The Toussaints laid on the twin mattress under the western wall window. Stefanie and Sara were on the twin parallel to them. Kervin and I shared the bed that lay perpendicular to the others. Kervin claimed the spot under the north window. I was next to Kervin on what was likely a pretty nice mattress some time ago but at this point had so much filth, grease, skin and nearly infinite generations of bed bugs that it was well past its prime. The heat was predictably uncomfortable. There was a small fan on the ground near the hallway entrance swiveling from side to side. It didn’t help much. It was a very long night. The kidnappers played dance music incredibly loud all night. The LED lights stayed on. My thoughts raced but I was too tired to think clearly. So many questions; What will happen next? How is Mary holding up? When will I get my phone again? Will Bill be able to get me out? Will the scare tactics continue tomorrow? Will we get food? Repeat. All night long.
About 5am the generator ran out of fuel. The music stopped. The twinkling LEDs stopped, but the fan stopped as well. I may have slept at some point but anytime I seemed to get close, gun shots would ring out. Sometimes far away and sometimes just outside our windows.
