THE barefoot and shackled woman captured on CCTV ringing a doorbell of a home in the middle of the night has been located alive but in a bizarre twist her boyfriend is dead.

Chilling footage showed the distressed and dishevelled woman with broken restraints hanging from one wrist, approaching the door of a home in north Houston, Texas at 3am and made international headlines.

Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Scott Spencer said that the woman, 32, was a victim of sexual assault, allegedly at the hands of her boyfriend who killed himself on August 29 after the video went viral.

Lt Spencer said a breakthrough in the investigation came after a woman contacted police claiming she recognised the woman in the video as the girlfriend of her ex-husband Dennis Ray Collins.

The woman said she had received suicidal text messages from Collins, 49, and met deputies at his home to carry out a welfare check after he failed to respond to phone calls.

When police arrived at 11am on Wednesday, they found Collins dead and a series of text message on his phone linking him to the mystery doorbell woman.

“Due to the content of the messages received, deputies forced entry into the residence and found a male in the back bedroom with a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Lt Spencer said at a media conference overnight.

“Deputies found evidence that the woman on the video was the man’s girlfriend, including text messages from the deceased explaining what happened.

“Detectives were able to locate families members of the girlfriend in the Dallas Fort Worth area and, through those family members, made contact with the female.

“Officers met with the woman and she provided information that only the female in the video would have known. The female described her actions in detail that evening and mentioned items located in the residence that only she would know of.

“The female described the restraints in the video as the type of restraints commonly used in private intimate encounters.”

Lt Spencer said the woman had managed to escape after Collins allegedly held her against her will and sexually assaulted her. After trying in vain to seek help from the neighbours, the woman returned to the home she shared with Collins and drove to the home of relatives in the Texas suburb of Fort Worth.

“(When police interviewed the woman) she was in obvious distress,” Lt Spencer said.

“The allegations are that she was tied up by Collins and so when she went to get help — there were two neighbours she tried and she rang on both their doors — and when she didn’t get help she returned back to her residence and drove to Fort Worth a short time later.

“She is shocked, distressed and very embarrassed that it has come to this.”

Police had no reason to doubt that the woman had been sexually assaulted, although both she and Collins’ ex-wife had been too distressed to undergo full police interviews.

“He committed suicide which is obviously extremely upsetting for all involved but while we can’t go into the full detail of what was in the text messages because we don’t want to compromise the investigation, (Collins) admitted what he did to her.

“This was a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship,” he said.

“(Collins) left a suicide note in the text messages in which he mentions the video and admits what he did to her. If he was alive, he would certainly be facing charges of sexual assault and possibly kidnapping and unlawful restraint rolled into the sexual assault.”

It has since emerged that Collins was convicted of attempted second degree assault in Fort Worth in 2009. He had pleaded guilty to the charge and was given five years probation.

Lt Spencer said police were stunned and heartened by the avalanche of calls, emails and messages received after the haunting footage of the woman was released earlier this week.

Many people had contacted police to point out her resemblance to long term missing girls and women.

“We were definitely not surprised at the level of attention (the video received) and I think the public — not only the public but the world — took an interest to try and make sure she was safe and I think that’s a good thing for the whole world,” he said.

“We had many calls from people who thought she might be their missing sister or friend (but) we are confident, based on the totality of the circumstances, and the evidence available to us, that we have identified the female in the doorbell video and that she is safe.”