Abby Hernandez was 14 years old when she was kidnapped while walking home from her school in North Conway, New Hampshire, and held captive for nine months
A teenage girl who was kidnapped and then mysteriously reappeared at her family home nine months later, wearing the same clothes she had on when she disappeared, has revealed that ‘working with’ her captor saved her life.
Abby Hernandez was just 14 when she was snatched while walking home from school in North Conway, New Hampshire, leaving the police utterly perplexed about what had happened.
The search for Abby in 2013 turned into one of the largest in the history of the state as the local community struggled to comprehend the fate of the Kennett High School freshman. Little did they know, the responsibility for her disappearance rested solely on the shoulders of a local man.
The horrifying truth was that Nathaniel Kibby had abducted Abby and kept her captive just 30 miles north of Conway, imprisoning her in a storage container where she suffered relentless sexual abuse and torture.
Speaking to ABC, Abby revealed her survival instincts kicked in immediately after she was taken: “I remember thinking to myself ”Okay, I got to work with this guy’. I said (to him) ‘I don’t judge you for this. If you let me go, I won’t tell anybody about this’.”, reports the Mirror US.
“I remember I never said ‘amen’ in my mind,” Abby confessed. “I never wanted to end my prayers because I didn’t want God to leave me. I just really wanted to live.”
In a strategic move, Abby managed to establish a connection with her kidnapper. “I told him: ‘Look, you don’t seem like a bad person. Like, everybody makes mistakes. If you let me go, I won’t tell anybody about this’.”
This strategy worked, and he began to trust her more, even allowing her to produce counterfeit money in his home. She said: “Part of how I gained his trust, I guess, was… I went along with whatever he wanted to do.”
Clinical psychologist Rebecca Bailey praised Abby’s tactic as extraordinary. She said: “It’s amazing that she was strategising. It is, again, very remarkable and, again, speaks of her ability to get out of her terror state and problem-solve.”
Abby’s decision proved crucial when her captor started giving her books to read, and one day, she found her captor’s name written in a cookbook he had given her. “I said, ‘Who’s Nate Kibby?’ And he just kind of breathed and he said ‘How do you know my name?'”.
Eventually, fearing the police were about to visit his home due to a counterfeiting investigation, Kibby released Abby months later. Lauren Munday, who claimed to have met Kibby online, said he gave her three $50 bills to help pay for a hotel room, only for her to discover one of the notes was fake.
Munday told 20/20: “So, I told him, ‘Whatever you’re ——- making in your damn basement, you better clean it up right now, because they are coming for your —.”
Kibby made Abby promise not to reveal his identity to anyone, then drove her back to North Conway and let her go where she was taken nine months earlier. Wearing the same clothes she had on when she disappeared, she walked the remaining mile to her mother’s home.
“I remember looking up and laughing, just being so happy,” Abby said. “Oh my God, this actually happened. I’m a free person. I never thought it would happen to me, but I’m free.”
Abby provided the police with Kibby’s name and location, leading to his guilty plea on seven felony counts, including kidnapping and sexual assault. He is now serving a life sentence of 45 to 90 years outside of New Hampshire.
“If I were going to write a textbook about how victims should deal with abductions… the first chapter would be about Abby,” said former FBI profiler and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett. “It’s always about bonding to the bad guy.”
Despite her ordeal changing her, Abby has found a new appreciation for life: “Every time I go outside now, I really try to appreciate sunlight and fresh air. It really went in my lungs differently… I really try to never take that for granted.
“Just don’t lose hope… even when you feel like you’ve lost everything, hope is something that nobody can take away from you. And just keep that. And it’ll keep you going.”