Marlene was still asleep when, about an hour into the drive, Ackroyd turned off Highway 20 and onto an old wagon road.

She woke to find his fingers squeezed tight around her legs as he dragged her out of the truck. Her head slammed into the door frame. She gasped.

She felt the cool blade of Ackroyd’s hunting knife against her neck.

“You’re going to do what I tell you,” Ackroyd said, speaking for the first time, his low, raspy voice laced with a bit of a drawl.

He ripped off her jeans with such force, the pants split from the waist to the ankle along the inseam. He sliced off her boots and her underwear and threw her to the ground.

Marlene was Ackroyd's first known victim. “I knew he was going to kill me just by the way he was treating my body so I just didn’t say anything,” she said. Marlene was Ackroyd's first known victim. “I knew he was going to kill me just by the way he was treating my body so I just didn’t say anything,” she said.

After the rape, Ackroyd slapped the knife against his grimy jeans held up by orange suspenders. Marlene slowly stood, wearing only her T-shirt and jacket.

He glanced around the dark woods.

“I’m not sure what to do with you.”

“You could take me home,” she said.

“I don’t know if I want to do that.”

“I have a baby that’s not even a year old,” she pleaded. “Please take me home.”

Ackroyd considered her for a long moment, then reached into the back of the truck and held out a dingy pair of plaid pants. Marlene put them on, holding tight to the waist to keep them from slipping off.

They climbed back into the truck and continued west on Highway 20.

He made a brief stop at the house he shared with his mother in Sweet Home, his hometown. He went inside to get a soda and use the bathroom.

Marlene waited in the truck, afraid to move. She’d need evidence so police could find him later. She couldn’t see the house number from the truck.

When he returned, she asked for his phone number to help identify him but also to make him think she liked him. She wrote it down on a pack of cigarettes.

“Maybe we can see each other again,” Ackroyd said.

He drove another 12 miles down the road and stopped in front of her mother-in-law’s house in Lebanon, where she’d asked him to drop her off.

Marlene flew out of the pickup, a blur moving toward the house. He drove off as she banged frantically on the door. She clung to her boots, which she’d grabbed from the clearing. Her hair was matted with sticks and dirt.

“Oh my God,” her mother-in-law said, opening the door. “What happened?”

“Call the police,” Marlene said.