warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
“What happened in that box?”
January 11th 1973, on his way to buy milk for his siblings, 13 year old Paul Martin Andrews doesn’t notice a blue van is following him.
Sitting in it is Richard Ausley, a dangerous outlaw on the run, and as Richard usually does, he simply asks Paul for help and offers him a ride.
His story would end up becoming infamously known as “The Boy in the Box”, and 30 years later, Paul speaks up about it for the first time, as his captor begs for freedom.
13 year old paul martin andrews . kidnapped, assaulted , and trapped inside a box in the ground for eight days .but he escaped.
and when he got out ,he did everything in his power to ensure richard ausley would never terrorize another little boy again…
but unfortunately,that would be a lot harder than he thought.
” this man is a monster , this man cannot be released”
-paul marting andrews.
in a small town of portsmouth, virginia,13 year old paul martin andrews has recently mvoed to the area with his family,including his younf sister , jennifer.
January 11th 1973
it’s a snowy day, and martin walks to a local convenience store just two blocks away from his home to buy some milk for him and his sister.
but jennifer starts to worry when martin doesn’t return home.
with no sign of martin , his family calls the police.police began their search. a local fireman searches for martin using a helicopter, but no traces of him is found.
january 12th ,1973
a day passes with still no leads. martin’s family anxiously awaits as one day turns into tw0, then three. they fear the worst has happened, that martin has died.
worrying he might have drowned, the coast guard drags a local waterway, looking for martinäs body ,but nothing comes up..
january 19th 1973 – 8 days after the disappearance
there is a glimmer of hope. deep in the woods ,hunters come up a hill and discovered a door in the ground….
…they opened it and find little martin chained inside the box.
martin’s mother is at work whn she gets the call, she doesn’t know if he is dead or alive.
he’s just arrived at the hospital with the police martin is badly beaten with two black eyes and a broken nose, but he’s alive.
marting and his family are finally reunited but his abductor ia arill on the loose.
no where to be found.
the police bring marting suspect photos and he quickly identifies his abductor, richard ausley. the police looking into ausley.
and learn that he is one of Virginia’s most notorious child molesters.he’s been convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting minors many times before.
the very same day asuley kidnpaeed martin,he skipped his court apearance for abducting a boy named buck.
as police and FBI scramlbe to find ausley before he takes another victgim, martin returns home,but his sister sees that his nightmare isn’t over yet.
the search for ausley extends into neighboring north carolina until finally , on the fourth day of the search, at 2:30 a.m., the FBI gets a phone call from ausley’s father.
ausly has returned home.
the FBI moved quickly , and ausley is arrested on september 27th,1973.13 year old martin is scheduled to testify agains his abductior in court.
the trial willbe the first time martin speaks about what happened to him in the box.
the prosecution is worried about martin having to relive the abuse.
despite ausleyäs eyes watching him the entire time,martin tells the police what happened to him the day of his abduction.
january 11th 1973- day of the abduction.
paul martin andrews stroy starts on a snow day.he decided to walk up to the convenience stor while walking , a blue minivan pulls up next to him.richard ausley rolls down the window.
he says” i’m in trouble , i need help ,i have to move some furniture for my brother and i can’t do it by myself. could you help me?i’ll give you a few dollars.”
not knowing that there was a predator lurking in his small community , martin agrees. they drive off together, ausley drives martin 20 miles from his home into a forest.
ausley stops the van in the middle of the snow covered woods and gets out.he tells martin they need to take some suplies to his brother’s deer box
so,ausley goes back to the van and marting see him sort of rumbling around and he pulled out a big sort of butcher knife and then closed his jacket around it.
at that moment , very bell and whistle was going off in martin’s head and yet he continued to follow him down this path.
and he points over to these mounds of dirt and he says”his deer box is over there.”there was a piece of metal. like a plan.and then he grabbedahold of it and he lifted it up.
ausley reveals a box hidden in the ground.just from the opening ,you could see some sleeping bags and there’s a blue plastic sheet that covered the floor.
ausley jumps down into the box and tells martin to do the same.
so , martin lowered himself into the box and ausley said ” I’ve got bad news for you.you just been kiddnapped.”
martin started to fight to get out and then ausley grabbed martin . and martin fighting, his fought was about getting ahold of his hands onto that knife. and starting to reach for it.
they’re were wrestling as martin reaching for that knife , ausley hits marting in the facce at that point.ausley had marting under control.
ausley binds martin’s hands and feet and attaches a chain aroundhis ankle making sure he can’t escape. what happens next may be distrubing to some poeple.
almost immediatelly he had martin strip out of his clothes. he told him , he said ” that’s gonna happen,you’re not gonna like.”
so,he assaulted martin.always brutal , always at the point of that knife, always with the threat of death martin didn’t cooperate.the knife has been the one thing that haunts martin more than anything.it was what he used to intimidate marting the entire time. it was what kept martin from running.
out of respect for martin,we won’t be covering the assault past this point,but note that ausley stays with martin in the box,keeping him hostage for days until martin sees something change in ausley.
he was working himself up to kill martin but marting sthink he couldn’t. he never saw the endgame. marting think ausley planned for it and now he’s stuck.
his stuck with this boy.it’s gonna cost him even more years in prison.unable to bring himself to kill marting just yet, asley viciously attacks him.
and just as martin thought he was leaving ,he gets over top of him , kneeling ,looking martin in the face andthen began to b eat marting with his fist.back and forth, punching martin yelling at martin,he came away with it with two black eyes, a cracked tooth, his nose was broken.he was hurting very bad.
martin knows his time is running out. as he lays in the box at night,he thinks about what his mother is going through.
would she be worried? would she be crying?martin think that bothered him more than anyhing that his mother would be crying about him,that he was gone and never to know what happened to him.
it wasn’t so much about going home,it was staying alive.
january 19th ,1973- day 8 in captivity.
the eighth day of martin”s captivity. ausley makes a mistake that will change the course of this case forever.he leaves martin alone in the box.
8:00 a.m for the first time,martin hears something outside.
he sat there ,hoping that his mom would come soon to pick him up,he heard the sound of gears shifting and he said ,”that’s gotta be my mom!”
his leg chain behind him,he could just stretch out enough that he could open up the top of the box and just get the top of his head out.
he saw it wasn’t his mom,but these two trucks coming through the woods. martin started screaming at them ,he screamed and he hollered , and he said”please stop, please stop!”.
they walked over to where martin was at and looked in the hole. and martin said ;
” i’ve been kidnapped.”
hunters find martin beaten and chained inside the box. for one of the hunters, the sight of 13 year old martin is to much to handle and he has to step away.the police are called.
the police arrived.they decided to take pictures while martin still chained in the box.those pictures show the brutality of what goes on there.
the police free martin , put him in a patrol car, and rush him to the hospital where he’s reunited with his mother.
because of martin’s testimony, ausley i s sentenced to more than 40 years in prison but ausley could be released after serving his time.
he has the possibility of getting out and hurting another child.
after bravely coming forward,martin thinks he is finally done with his nightmare.
but thecircumstances of his abduction are so shocking that a professional psychiatrist calls martin ” a lier and told my parents that i should be institutionalized,he didn’t believe my story”
the psychaitrist tells his parents that he shouldn’t talk about his experience.
martin’s parents were told , though ,that if martin wasn’t allowed to speak about it,that he would forget about it , that it would just go away.and what happened over time ,though, was that everyone forgot about it.-everyone execept for martin.
martin never talks about what happened with anyone again and falls into a depression
he said;
” that it was difficult still keeping my secret allthe time.my spouse never knew those things.i never spoke to him about them.
friends i had known for years never knew that part of my life.while the outside looked great ,the inside was being torn apart.”
June 2002
june 2002,30 years later ,martn thinks he hhas finally moved on when he receives a call he thought he’d never get.
martin was at his joband the phone rings and it’s his mom.she told him that richard ausleyäs about to be released.
martin doesn’t know what to do. until he discovers that ausley is trying to convince everyone he’s a changed man in order to be released.
ausley’s been serving the last 30 years in prison for kidnapping martin andrews, he says every day behind this barbed wire.
he fights the temptation,warns others about the dangers od sexual predators.
i tried to educate them about people like me, i looked at that picture of martin and i asked myself” how in the hell could i have done that?, i would never hurt another child.”
allthough he hasn’t spoken about what ausley did to him in 30 years,martin knows he has to come forward to ensure another child is never hurt by him again.
for 30 years, i had kept silent about what had happened to me. it had been a secret. i knew that if richard ausley ws ever released that it would mean that another child would have to suffer through what i did. this man is a monster . this man cannot be released!
-paul martin andrews
martin started emailing every one of the delegates and the senators , attorney general and the parole board.but ausley fights back….
what can i do, man? just tell me, what do you want?if you want me to spend ther rest of my lif in here ,fine.if you want me to get out andbe your personal slave for the rest of my life ,hey
I’ll do that.if tou want me to lick your shoes every night , I’ll do that.just tell me what you want,man. my life is over . he saw to that, i will be his victim for the rest of my life or his. this thing about eight days of beating and rape that’s a bunch of bull , he knows it.”
by speaking out , martin inspires buck miller,another of ausley’s victims ,to come forward.
martin is able to track down another victim of ausley.s gary founds and discovers he never came forward to police when ausley assaulted him in 1972 , out of shame.
inspired by martin ,gary speaks out after 30 years and files charges against ausley,forcing him to serve more time in prison.two years later , in january 2004,ausley suddenly dies in prison. although ausley tried to play the victim.
martin came out on top showing that he is a true survivor.martin is no longer a 13 year old boy trapped inside abox, with hollow eyes.he got married ,became a loving husband and is closer to his family now after speaking out.
today ,he is an advocate for survivors.he dedicated himself to help pass law,to protect vctims of sexual violence.he understands that in order to heal your pain,you have to talk about it.