(Continued)

Real Life Collector

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Many killers who've held victims captive for a period of time have expressed admiration for The Collector, sometimes citing this novel (and film) as the inspiration for their actions. The idea of having total control over another person had appealed to them and so they put their own plans into motion: they wanted a sexual slave who would accede without resistance or complaint to their most deviant whims. Even Joyce Carol Oates based a serial killer on this idea in her 1996 novel, Zombie.

Sometimes these slaves manage to escape and alert the authorities. One woman, "Carol Smith," who claimed to have been held captive since 1977 in a small box for the greater part of seven years, eventually ran away and testified against her abductor, Cameron Hooker. She described his coercion tactics, which included regular beatings and threats against her life and the safety of her family, based on Hooker's supposed membership in a dangerous underground sexual organization. Smith had no way of knowing if he was lying or telling the truth and she eventually adjusted to her situation.

Now we have Tanya Kach who recently told deli shop owner Joe Sparico that she had disappeared ten years earlier, held captive by a man named Thomas Hose. She had known him as a security guard at her middle school in McKeesport, PA. Court records indicate that Hose, then 38, began a relationship with Kach, even openly escorting her to class. Within a few months, she allegedly ran away from home to be with him and ultimately moved into the house where he lived with his elderly parents. Supposedly Hose engaged the services of a female friend, Judith Sokol, to cut and dye Kach's hair to change her appearance. He then forced her to stay.

Authorities now allege that Hose, who somehow managed to keep the girl's existence secret from his parents, repeatedly sexually assaulted her and then forced her to write down the details so he could "brag" to friends. While the story, if true, is shocking, it's also somewhat incredible. To believe it, one must accept that for each and every day and night for several years a growing young girl was so utterly quiet on the second floor of a rather small house (with other houses quite close by) that the couple who lived below never heard her...or heard her being assaulted. One must also buy that a girl who was supposedly fed mostly junk food could emerge in apparently good health, and that for some time after meeting Sparico she never breathed a word, though she detested the life she had. Let's examine some of the explanations for her possible state of mind.

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