Heroes & Zeros- A True Crime Podcast · Annie Weaver

Episode 79 The One That Got Away

·1 hr 28 min·5 clips

True crime host Annie tells the story of Jennifer S. Benson, the only known survivor of a notorious American serial killer, drawing primarily from Jennifer's autobiography 'The Girl in the Treehouse' and A&E interviews. The episode traces Jennifer's profoundly neglected childhood in the Mojave Desert — including her severely disabled brother Jason's catastrophic seizures that shattered the family — before detailing her 1992 abduction: a stranger offering a ride who became a monster, binding her, beating her, and strangling her to unconsciousness while she experienced a vivid near-death out-of-body state. The episode frames Jennifer's remarkable survival instincts and eventual defiance as inseparable from the resilience forged by a childhood harder, she says, than the abduction itself.

As heard by us

A survivor-centered true crime episode that keeps Jennifer S. Benson at the center.

Heroes and Zeros keeps its attention on Jennifer S. Benson, the only survivor of one of America's most notorious serial killers, and treats her as a person instead of a case file.

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Why you'd press play

When you want a survivor story that stays with Jennifer S. Benson from the abduction onward.

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