Kidnapping survivor Hannah Anderson says she eventually tried to distance herself from family friend and abductor James Lee DiMaggio.
According to Anderson, she used to bring friends over to DiMaggio’s house, until he because disturbed when she invited over a male friend.
After revealing his crush on Hannah the crazed man attacked and killer her mother and brother, and then kidnapped her.
On Thursday Hannah Anderson sat down with TODAY where she revealed, “He’d get really upset that it was a boy. And he told me, he said, ‘It’s not that I don’t want your friends up here. It’s that I don’t want to see you kissing your friends or anything like that, because I have a crush on you. Not a crush that, like, feeling a crush as in — like family, like I care about you,’” and the 16 year old added, “And it kind of seemed really weird.”
Hannah continued to trust DiMaggio because he helped her though a rough patch when her parents were going through a divorce.
Speaking the Savannah Guthrie the teenager added, “I wouldn’t have really anyone to talk about it with. Me and him, instead of talking face to face, if we didn’t have time or, like calling, we’d just write letters back and forth, talking about the situation and how to get through it.”
After he announced his crush in no uncertain terms Hannah Anderson began to distance herself from the family friend. As she moved farther away from his advances she says, “He got upset about that and would always text me and say that I was rude and I was trying to stay out of his life. And basically I was, after that, but I couldn’t, because he was my dad’s best friend and he was always there for my mom.”
On August 3 James Lee DiMaggio convinced Hannah to head over to his home where he held her captive. Rescue workers spent a full week looking for Hannah throughout the western United States. Eventually four horseback riders found James and Hannah in the Idaho wilderness. Realizing they seemed out of place the riders alerted police.
DiMaggio picked up Hannah from cheerleading camp and took her to his home. While inside she heard her brother screaming from behind a gag. Her brother had been restrained before her arrival.
Hannah says she wanted to flee with the horseback riders but DiMaggio threatened her with death. “I remember hearing them come behind us the first time and Jim would say, ‘Don’t. Act normal. If you say something, I’m gonna have to kill them.’ So I’d have to sit and I’d have to just act normal,’” she said.
The horseback riders checked the Amber Alert System when they returned home and then called police who quickly rescued Hannah Anderson from the clutches of her abductor.
Here’s Hannah’s full interview with the Today Show:
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