The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart

Eduardo Valseca is locked inside a tiny box, its coarse walls tearing at his skin whenever he moves. He doesn’t know where he is, what has happened to his wife, or why the men holding him refuse to speak. Then the message comes: his captors want millions of dollars in ransom — and when his family can’t pay, his captivity stretches on for seven months of beatings, starvation and torture.

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Seventeen-year-old Lisa Mae has already decided she doesn’t want to live. Then, riding her bike home through the darkness after a late shift, she notices a car sitting strangely in an empty church parking lot. Seconds later, a man lunges from the shadows, presses a gun to her head, and drags her into his car. Suddenly, the girl who had planned to end her own life is fighting desperately to keep it.

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For the first time, Elizabeth sits down with three fellow survivors — Kara Robinson Chamberlain, Chris Cander and Kimberly Corban — to answer questions directly from listeners. They share new details from their remarkable stories, talk about facing dangerous situations after their attacks, and reveal what surviving taught them about spotting danger, trusting their instincts and staying alive when the unthinkable happens...

Three weeks after Kimberly Corban is attacked in her own bedroom, police bring in a suspect — but can Kimberly identify him, even though she never saw his face? In the finale of her story, Kimberly reveals how investigators uncovered why a complete stranger targeted her, what happened when she faced him in court, and how a day once defined by trauma would eventually become something very different: the day she was brave.

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Twenty-year-old college student Kimberly Corban wakes in the middle of the night to find a stranger inside her bedroom. Unable to see his face and terrified that her roommate could be next, Kimberly focuses on surviving the attack — while quietly memorizing everything she can about the man holding her captive. In Part One of her story, Kimberly reveals how she endured her terrifying captivity, preserved the evidence her attac...

Nineteen-year-old Chris Cander is studying abroad in Madrid when a stranger locks her inside his car and drives her far outside the city. Alone in an abandoned industrial area with a knife pressed to her neck, Chris realizes the man intends to kill her, and decides "I'm not going to die like this." In this remarkable story of survival, Chris reveals how one terrifying night has quietly shaped the strong, fearless life she built aft...

After 18 harrowing hours of captivity, Kara Robinson leads police back to her abductor's apartment — where they discover evidence connecting him to the unsolved murders of three young girls. Kara learns she didn’t just escape a predator; she escaped a serial killer.  In the finale of her story, Kara reveals what happened when her kidnapper was finally cornered, and why surviving the crime was only the beginning of ...

Fifteen-year-old Kara Robinson is kidnapped at gunpoint in broad daylight and taken to her abductor’s apartment. Trapped with a man who seems to have planned every detail, Kara begins making a plan of her own — studying her surroundings, memorizing anything she might be able to use against him, and waiting for the moment he lets his guard down. In Part One of her story, Kara reveals how she survived 18 terrifying hours ...