Prologue

Transcript:

Hello, welcome to 43 Days to Freedom. This is Jeff Frazier.

If you're interested in true crime stories or true survival stories, you've come to the right place. Let me tell you about what 43 Days to

Freedom is. So it's actually my story and my wife's story, my family's story of when I was on a food distribution mission in Haiti and was kidnapped and held for ransom for 43 long days, that's six weeks. And you know, it was of course.

Terrible, lost 50 pounds, treated poorly, beaten, tortured, escaped for a little while, then was recaptured when the real fun began. It's a rough story, so if you're on board for that, be ready. There are ways to kind of dance around the hard parts, if you're sensitive to some of the more graphic details.

But it is a harrowing tale so to speak. is, so right now it's 2025. I was kidnapped in April of 2023 and then released in late May. In 2024, on the anniversary of when it happened, is when we recorded 43 Days to Freedom. So the other episodes that you'll see, they were recorded last year. And we weren't even sure what...

what we were going to do or if we were going to do it, it started out, you know, let's do this in real time as partly therapeutic, partly to raise awareness for Haiti. And so on day one of when I was taken, we actually recorded episode one, right? And then day two and day three, and we kept doing it each day in real time, so to speak, so people could kind of go with us. And that was a cool thing. We didn't end up.

recording 43 episodes, right? We recorded, I think it's 18 or so episodes. And so, you know, some of them are clumped together a few days at a time. But what you'll see is the beginning, it's just recorded audio and we're essentially reading from our journals. And then on, I think day two or three, we leave that and we just start chatting.

on audio only and then day 16 we jump into video. if you're on YouTube and you like to watch, you can do that. You can jump over to the video. But that's the story. so you'll experience it from my point of view, from my wife's point of view. She records her own side of the story and you'll get to feel what it's like to be in that situation.

also to understand the plight of the Haitian people at large. I hope you'll be interested in listening to the story and of course gaining insight into what's happening in Haiti and join us in becoming activists to try to lift that nation and help them lift themselves. Thanks for paying attention. A quick tip, you know, it's a lot, The whole story is, it's like 15 hours of content and people binge it.

If you don't have that kind of attention span, I'll give you like the cheat code. You'll want to listen to day one. Day minus two is kind of the set the scene to kind of understand the environment in Haiti. Day one is what you expect. It's long and heavy, but you kind of get the sense for what it's like to be taken. And then day four is really heavy. That's a torture day.

And then day, you won't want to miss day 14, because if you're into like the concept of preparing for an escape, because that's what that's all about is how do you do it and how do you think it through and plan it. And then day 28 is the failed ransom attempt. And then we escaped that night, myself and one fellow captive. And then we're recaptured on day 29 and then it gets really rough. And so that

If you're sensitive, skip day 29 and then go to episode day 30 through 43 is all one long episode. And then there's also interviews with one of my fellow captives, two interviews with my wife, and then one with one of our lead negotiators, Austin, as well at the end. But anyway, thanks for your interest.

Feel free to do it on two times speed. We're on of course, normal podcast platforms and then YouTube as well. And you can also go to our website, stimpack.org if you want pictures and there's some links to like Google maps of where certain locations are. If you want some extra content and then if you'd like to read all the transcripts are on there also. And then last note,

We're not doing this for money. My wife and I have had lots of success in business. We will make no money off of this. We're just trying to raise awareness. So any money that is made will go to our nonprofit, which is called Stimpack, or a similar nonprofit. We're not trying to land paid speaking gigs or movies or anything like that. We're just trying to lift Haiti and are grateful that you're interested and hopefully we'll be able to.

turn you into advocates for Haiti. So thanks for your time. I hope you enjoy the story. That's probably the wrong word, enjoy, but hope you're edified and uplifted by the story. It is a story of triumph and hopefully that'll be.

See you.