Transcript of Covert Court

As a 911 dispatcher for more than two decades, Sara Miller has made a career out of staying calm under pressure.

I've worked three different locations.

You like it?

Yeah. I was made to be a dispatcher.

Sarah says she's good at multitasking, which she says is a requirement for the job.

We usually have six to eight screens, depending on what center you're at.

When Sarah starts a shift, she logs into all those computers, and then she waits.

You never know when the call will come in or what call it's going to be.

In September 2016, Sarah was working the overnight shift in Ashtland, Ohio, a rural town about 60 miles southwest of Cleveland. Just before 07: 00 AM, the sun was rising over Ashtland's cornfields, marshes, and woods. Sarah was about to clock out when one more call came in.

911, what is the address to your emergency? 5, plus Street Marjorie, The fourth Street Laundermat.

At first, I couldn't hear. It was real quiet. She was whispering. What is it?

fourth Street Laundermat.

The fourth Street Laundermat. There were just five laundermats in Ashland. The one on fourth Street was near the center of town, a few blocks from Ashland's Main Street, with its brewery, restaurants, bank, and Derry Queen.

What's the problem? I've been exhausted.

Police identify the call her as Jane Doe to protect her privacy. She said she'd been abducted and that the man holding her captive was sleeping nearby.

My reaction was to find out where she was at first to get her out of there.

Jane said she was in a house by the fourth Street Laundermat.

You don't know what color the house is? Yellow. I'm sorry. And you think it's a yellow house? I think so. And does he own the house? No, he broken. Does anybody actually live there? I think he's been abandoned.

A yellow abandoned house by the Laundermat. Sarah Miller told another dispatcher to send police officers to the area. The precinct was about five minutes away by car.

Sarah, hold on. If you don't mind with me, okay?

Sarah knew if those officers were going to find Jane Doe quickly. They needed to get more information.

Do you have a weapon? He's got a taser.

He's got a taser. Sarah could hear that the caller's breathing was getting heavier and heavier. She was clearly afraid died, but Sarah knew that she could not panic.

Good dispatchers train not to react to emotions. You have to stay calm.

You have to remain calm.

Yes, you have to stay calm. And think straight.

Sarah had been trained to handle all calls the same way, but this call was anything but routine. In fact, it would become the first step in an investigation that would reveal sinister and shocking crimes. From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm John Quiñones, and this is The Hand in the Window. Episode One, Colvert Court. Dispatcher Sara Miller needed to keep Jane Doe on the line. You had a lot of questions right away.

I have to get information for the officer. If he was to wake up, kill her and escape, I wouldn't know what his name is, what he looked like, anything. I knew he was sleeping, so I asked her more questions, trying to get as much as I could before he woke up.

Sarah asked, What does the kidnapper look like? Jane Doe said he was white, about 6 feet tall and around 175 pounds with brown hair. Sarah tried to learn more about Jane Doe's circumstances. What was the layout of the house? Where was she within it? Jane Doe told Sarah that she and her kidnapper had entered the house through a side door which opened into the kitchen. She was calling from a bedroom on the first floor. Sarah asked, Is there any way you can escape?

I don't know I'm not waking him, and I'm scared.

Jane Doe was worried about waking her kidnapper. He'd put a chair against the bedroom door so that it would make noise if the door were opened. Sarah asked, Was there a bathroom in the house? Could that be a way to escape?

If you told me you had to go to the bathroom, he would do something to you? Yeah, because he had me tied up. So you're tied up now? Well, I... Yeah, but I freed myself. Is he in the same room with you? Yes. Is it his phone you have? Yes.

Yes, she was in the same room as the kidnapper. Yes, she was calling on his phone. Jane Doe took a deep, pained breath and asked, Are they on the way?

Are they on the way? We have officers resuming. If you're worried, you don't have to talk. You can just set the phone down, okay? I just need to hear if the officer is finding you or not.

Jane Doe whispered, Okay. At this point, she had been on the line with 911 for six minutes.

Do you need an ambulance? Are you bleeding from anywhere? Not anymore. Where were you bleeding from? We don't need to talk. You don't need to, okay?

All right, okay.

We'll come up. Okay, set the phone down.

When you have a high stress situation and you think someone's in danger, if they set the phone down, I can still hear what's going on. I can still tell the officer what I can hear, and that puts her in less danger than if he catches her with the phone.

But you didn't want her to hang up?

No. No, because then I might not have got her back because I can't call his phone back or he'd have woke up.

And then the line goes silent for what seems like. Must have seemed like. Yes, forever. Almost four minutes passed without Sarah hearing anything from the caller.

Are you still there?

No response. Another minute passed.

Are you still there? A minute longer. What? A minute longer.

Twelve minutes into the call, fearing for her life, Jane Doe desperately wanted to know how much longer. Her kidnapper had been shifting in his sleep, starting to stir. Jane Doe would later say that her kidnapper had alarms going off on his phone every five minutes to keep him awake. Jane Doe had gotten to his phone, turned the volume all the way down, and that's when he finally dozed off.

Do you hear any officers outside? Okay, they're in the area.

The Ashland Police Division is a smaller police division. We have about 32 officers, 33, if you count the chief.

Kurt Dorsey was one of the officers who was dispatched to help Jane Doe. He had just started his shift that morning.

We were actually sitting in roll call when the call came out. So we immediately get up and go to our cars and start to drive towards the area of the call.

At that point, Officer Dorsey had been on the force for about eight years. Initially, he wasn't even convinced the call was real.

This wasn't a call that we typically got in Ashland.

I've covered countless stories for 2020, but this case, it really struck a chord with me because it happened not far from where as a teenager, I I once picked tomatoes with my family as a migrant farmworker. Who would have thought, way back then, that this kid, who only dreamed of someday becoming a journalist, would one day be back here to report on such a shocking crime. Ashland is a town of less than 20,000 people. It's best known for farming, the local Christian University, an annual hot air balloon festival, and a popular county fair. On Friday nights, people gather to watch high school football games under the bright lights. Ashland is also a deeply religious place. The town itself has dozens of churches, and it's surrounded by Amish country. One police officer told us that Ashland is the place where police have time to respond to small complaints and nuisances, like a bat flying around in someone's house. That September morning in 2016, as officers drove to find Jane Doe, they kept their sirens off. They didn't want to risk waking up her kidnapper.

When we get out of the cars, we didn't really have a game plan.

The laundromat Jane Doe mentioned was at the corner of East fourth Street in Covert Court. When officers arrived there, they discovered two nearly identical houses right next to each other. Both houses were two stories with pale yellow siding, green window frames, and front porches.

When the call came in, I was pretty calm at first, but when we got to the set of houses, I started to get nervous and a little bit afraid, actually. There was really no time to formulate any plan. We just started looking.

Officers didn't know which house to target. Jane Doe's description of a yellow abandoned house didn't narrow things down. Both houses fit that description.

I began to look through windows and see if we can see anything.

Inside, the houses seemed empty.

So there wasn't much by looking through the windows that told us anything.

While officers scoped the two houses, Sarah Miller was still on the line with Jane Doe. She asked again if there was any way for Jane to escape. Jane Doe said she was standing right by the bedroom door.

Can you open it? I'm afraid without making noise.

She was afraid of making noise.

If you think you can get out, you need to get out. Start The officer was right here. He was hearing me. Just be any strong.

Jane Doe said her kidnapper was strong. The officers needed to be right there to help her escape. And as far as she could see, Even here from inside the bedroom, they weren't. Officer Dorsey started pulling on the doors to both houses to see if any of them would open, but no such luck.

All the doors were locked in both houses.

If the officers decided to just barge into one of the houses, they could wake up the kidnapper and put the collar's life at risk. But then, Sarah Miller heard this from Jane Doe.

She heard the side door open. She heard the side door open.

Jane Doe took a big risk. She pushed the a chair blocking the bedroom door out of the way, and rushed to the side door of the house. Big curtains blocked the bedroom windows, but there was also a window in the side door.

Yeah, I'm looking out and they're coming to come back. She said, hurry, hurry. She said to hurry up and come back.

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Officer Kurt Dorsey was told that Jane Doe had heard him at the side door, that she wanted him to hurry, hurry, and come back. Now he knew that this call, as strange as it seemed for Ashland, was real. There was a kidnapped woman fearing for her life inside one of the two houses. Reflecting on that day still makes Dorsey emotional.

This is like the third time I've talked about it. I was at the second house, and I remembered that I had pulled on a door hard, and it made a noise that I didn't intend because we're trying to be stealthy, but it it slipped out of my hand. So I ran around the house that we were currently at and looked towards the direction of the other house, and I saw her hand Her hand.

Jane Doe had put her hand up against the window of the side door. They knew finally where she was. 911 dispatcher Sara Miller had been getting updates from the officers on the ground. What a relief. They're there. But it's not over yet, right?

They can't seem to get in yet. Yeah, he's not awake yet, so they haven't got to him yet. And who knows what weapons he has hidden in the house.

You still tear up when you hear this. Tell me why.

It's just a lot to deal with unhearing things that heard.

Once they saw Jane Doe's hand, the officers had to figure out how to get to her without putting her in danger.

So once I got to the door, it was locked, and we're still trying to be quiet because we were told that he was sleeping.

Officer Dorsey asked dispatcher Sara Miller to tell Jane Doe to unlock the side door. Sara and Jane Doe had gone back and forth throughout the whole call, Sara urging her to escape if she could. Jane Doe saying it was too dangerous. Jane Doe had already gotten out of the bedroom. Now, she was ready to take another risk as officer stood behind the locked door.

Once I heard the door unlock, I opened it, and she stood there in the doorway, fully nude, and just looked like she had seen a ghost. The shock on her face was unreal. I'll never forget it. I don't think I've ever felt so much relief to find her.

Jane Doe was frozen in place. The officers gave her a blanket to cover herself and instructed her to leave the house and finally get to safety.

Come on, come on, come on, come on, get up, get up, get up.

19 minutes into the 911 call, Jane Doe was rescued.

Okay, they have her.

Sarah, you helped save that woman's life.

She saved herself. I was just doing my job.

Sarah Miller ended up winning Ohio Dispatcher of the Year for her work on this call. The stress of the call and the huge relief she felt when Jane Doe was rescued, it sticks with Sarah. Even after the decades of 911 calls, she's handled.

The best reward was her getting free and his I'm alive and well.

Do you get therapy after something like this?

I got God. That's all I need. God? Yep.

Your faith? Yep. What does it teach you?

It He needs you something to let go.

Do you think God would be proud of you?

I hope so. I'll ask him someday.

Officer Kurt Dorsey is also religious. Jane Doe would later say that she sensed a Christian would be sent to rescue her. And her rescue did seem miraculous to Officer Dorsey. So much had to go right for her to make it out alive.

When I looked back at that morning, I think something told me to look at that window. There were two other guys there. They don't seeing the hand, and I saw it. I think that a combination of maybe some divine intervention and a good dispatcher led us to that house and ultimately that door.

Once Jane Doe was out of the house, officers could turn their attention to the kidnapper. They went back inside the house, weapons drawn, and began moving toward the bedroom.

I remember when I first went into the house, it was a mess. Although it was vacant, it looked like it was being lived in. There was a bed clothing, and things like that inside.

The house was so dirty that you could see footprints in the layers of the dust on the stairs. Random items like a shopping cart, a clock, and stuffed animals were scattered around. Officer Dorsey went through the kitchen and then turned back into the bedroom.

And that's where we found the male lying in the bed. And I gave him orders to show his hands, and we ultimately arrested him at that point. He was handcuffed and he was nude, so I actually assisted him in putting some shorts on. At that point, we walked out to one of the patrol cars.

Two of the officers searched the rest of the house, but Officer Dorsey stayed back and waited with the kidnapper. He was tall with dirty blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Officer Dorsey started to question the kidnapper.

Do you remember I read you, Miranda? You understand all that? Your Miranda rights and all that? Yeah. Okay.

Dorsey eased into things. He didn't zero in on Jane Doe's abduction right away.

So obviously, again, I already told you, you can't crash in an abandoned house. I mean, that's... It's just one of those things. I understand that you're homeless. You need a place to crash. It is what it is, but you still can't do it.

The kidnapper spoke quietly and gave brief responses, just a few words at a time. He said he'd been living in the house for about a month without being noticed. Then, Officer Dorsey started asking the kidnapper about Jane Doe.

What happened? That's why we're here, man. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Something obviously went on, and we're trying to figure out what in the hell is going on right now.

Yeah, I understand. Again, the kidnapper was responding, but not with any real information. He got out of hand, probably.

Okay. How did it get out of hand? What do you mean?

I don't know. The other officers came out of the house. That's when Officer Dorsey got a message over the police radio. Bring the kidnapper to the police station.

I'm going to take you on station, and I think they want to talk to you a little bit more.

The kidnapper was still shirtless and only dressed in the shorts that officers had given him. Officer Dorsey put him in a police car and drove him to the station. At the police station, investigators had already begun talking to Jane Doe to get details on what she had been through. When the kidnapper arrived, he would be placed in a room down the hall from her. Who was this man living in an abandoned house who had kidnapped and assaulted Jane Doe? And had he done something like this, or worse, before? The Hand in the Window is a production of ABC Audio and 2020. Hosted by me, John Quignones. Produced by Madelyne Wood, Camille Peterson, Kiara Powell. Edited by Giana Palmer. Our supervising producer is Susie Lou. Music and mixing by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Michelle Margules, Caitlin Schiffer, Rachel Walker, Analisa Linder, Joseph Dias, Jonathan Balfaser, Gail Deutsch, Gary Winn, Stephanie McBee, Natalie Cárdenas, and Samantha Wanderer. Josh Cohen is our Director of Podcast programming.