The violent rape and murder of a young woman almost 14 years ago still haunts all involved despite the fact that the media focused its attention on her killer.
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In the almost 14 years since the cold December night when evil caught three college cheerleaders off guard, Yolanda Woods married and had three children. Dawn Killen graduated from nursing school.
Whelette Collins, had she lived, would be 34. She likely would be an artist or a painter or an actress. She may even have fulfilled her dream of getting married at Duke Chapel - she had already designed her wedding dress.``But when we look, she's never over 20,' said Whelette's mother, Marjorie, whose home, a few miles from where Whelette Collins was killed, is decorated with her daughter's paintings.
Collins is one of the victims that advocates say are too often forgotten while media attention focuses on the killer - in this case, 37-year-old Kermit Smith Jr. He's next on North Carolina's put-to-death list; if his appeals fare poorly, he could be executed in December.
The kidnapping, rape and murder that made Smith a celebrity forever changed the lives of Collins and the two young women who survived.
While Smith waits on death row to hear if the judicial system will spare his life, Collins waits, too. She says she'll shed her first tears over her daughter's death when Smith is executed.
``After her death, I decided immediately that I couldn't protect her when she needed me, but I would be in control after that,' she said. ``The strength came from her.'
Woods and Killen found their own strength the night they were kidnapped. They escaped by attacking Smith with a lug wrench and a straightened-out safety pin.
The ordeal the night of Dec. 3, 1980, began when Smith kidnapped the three women from North Carolina Wesleyan College, where they were cheerleaders.
He forced Woods and Killen into the trunk and put Collins on the floorboard of the back seat, then drove them to some woods near the Roanoke River.
By the time Smith parked and allowed Collins and her friends to talk, Woods already had her hands on a lug wrench. But Collins, described by her mother as trusting, with a ladylike ``air about her,' thought violence wouldn't be necessary.
``I told her what I had. But she said he was going to let us go, that he had promised her,' Woods said. ``She felt she could talk her way out of it, that it didn't have to go violent.'
Smith put Woods and Killen back into the trunk, then took Collins into the woods, where he raped her.
``I told Dawn,' Woods recalled, ``'we've got to think about things. If she doesn't come back, we are not to separate. If we're going to die, we might as well die together and die fighting.'
Woods took bobby pins from her hair and straightened them and did the same to a safety pin on her uniform. They hid the lug wrench in Killen's clothing.
Smith and Collins returned. The women in the trunk could hear Collins crying, pleading with Smith for a blanket. She was naked and the temperature was below freezing. Smith snickered and said sadistically, ``I can put you out of your misery.'
Then the women heard a noise, like rocks under someone's feet. Smith banged on the trunk and said he'd be right back.
Woods said: ``I said to Dawn, 'Whelette has run away. She's either going to get away or he's going to kill her.'
The women later learned Smith killed Collins by smashing her head between two cinder blocks.
When he returned, Smith asked them to choose which one was going to go with him to look for Collins, who he said was going to the bathroom. They refused, then he asked them to call for her.
``Who do you think you're fooling?' Woods recalled saying to him. ``She's either gotten away or you have done something with her.'
They all got into the car with the two women in the back seat. Killen passed the wrench to Woods. When Smith stopped the car, ``I started banging him on his head as hard as I could,' Woods said.
They both got out of the car and Woods kept hitting Smith. He turned on her with the gun, took the lug wrench and threw it in the woods.
As he walked her back to the car, he got in front of her and leaned into the car to say something to Killen. Woods stuck Smith in his neck with the safety pin and he fell over on her.
Woods and Smith wrestled for the gun. Killen bit Smith. Woods kicked him in the stomach in a `` 'Charlie's Angels' kind of move.'
She finally got the gun and shot at Smith. It only clicked. Smith, 5-foot-9-inches and 120 pounds, had kidnapped the women with nothing more than a starter's pistol.
``When I saw that scrawny little thing, that wimp of a thing, it made me angry to think that wimp of a person could take someone's life,' Woods said.
The women hid in the woods until morning. Then they set out for Interstate 95, where a motorist picked them up. Smith was captured the next day.
Most of the account comes from Woods; Killen doesn't discuss as easily the night she said changed her completely.
``It was like a piece of me was taken,' Killen said. ``I was handicapped emotionally.'
She would start at different schools, then inevitably be unable to study for finals in December because of her memories of that night. She has lived in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. ``It was like I was trying to run from myself.'
She seemed self-destructive at times, she said, fighting tears. ``But I always wanted to live. I found out I can reach down in myself and find the power to go on.'
She has returned to church and recently finished courses to be a licensed practical nurse. It's the first thing she's completed since high school.
``I feel like I have a bright future ahead of me now,' she said. ``I feel like the dark years are over.'
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