Hello everyone and welcome to Scary Interesting.
So here's what I'm thinking for this series going forward.
I think that limiting it only to occurrences that end in a loss of life is a bit too constraining.
And I think we can all agree that there are some circumstances
that certainly fit the description of a horrible fate even if they don't end in death.
So going forward, the stories that you'll hear in this series might feature someone's tragic end,
or they might feature some other horrible circumstance,
and you'll never quite know what to expect.
This way, it'll include a broader range of topics and hopefully, the ending will always be a surprise.
With all of that said, as always, viewer discretion is advised.
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In the northeast section of Maryland is a small town known as Betterton.
With a population of only 345 people,
Betterton is a small coastal town that sits at the mouth of the Sassafras River
and occupies an area of only a single square mile.
Because it's such a small town, the town government consists of a single mayor and four council members.
These individuals meet every second and fourth Tuesday of every month
to discuss all things related to Betterton.
In 1980, the town mayor was a woman named Monica Meyer.
At 70 years old, Monica didn't have much else to do,
and so she spent her time doing odd jobs around the town to help maintain it.
One of these tasks that she regularly performed was testing
and cleaning the water at the town's municipal facility.
The job involved brushing the tanks and testing the water for chlorine
and other sediments to make sure that the water was safe for the town's people.
Almost every day, she'd drive up to the facility, bring in all of her equipment,
clean and test the tanks, and then leave for the day.
Early one Thursday morning, town engineer Karl Gustafson arrived at the facility
where he worked part-time overseeing its operation.
And he noticed all of Monica's equipment
was where she normally left it when she was going about her cleaning.
He climbed up to the catwalk to where Monica normally went, thinking that she had gotten there early,
but when he got to the top, he looked down and was horrified to see Monica's body
floating face-down in one of the 15-foot (4.57 m) deep aeration tanks.
It was clear that Monica was dead, and to make things even worse,
the tank that she was in was filled with raw sewage.
The liquid that she had fallen into was described as having the consistency of putty or quicksand.
Meaning that if you fall into it, not only is it insanely disgusting,
you have essentially no chance of getting out on your own.
Police were brought in to investigate, but they quickly ruled out foul play.
It seems as though, unfortunately, Monica simply slipped as she was going about her normal cleaning
and fell into the sewage tank below where she ultimately drowned.
In the spring of 2012, everything was going perfectly for a woman named Amy.
She had just finished writing her last exams for that school year
where she was studying to get a master's degree in Psychology.
She was in a relationship and she had a job as a barista that was close to where she lived in Carrollton, Georgia.
It seemed as though everything was going right in her life.
On top of all of that, she had big and exciting plans to make the most of summer break.
On the afternoon of May 1st, a coworker from the cafe she worked at
invited her over to hang out after work.
Apparently, her coworker's house backed onto a creek,
and because it was so nice outside, they could go swimming in it.
After work, Amy headed over and then the two of them changed into their swimsuits
and walked into the backyard into the gorgeous sunny weather.
The creek was nice and warm, and after swimming for a bit, they noticed a homemade zip line
that was strung up just a little ways away from where her coworker's backyard was.
It was about six feet (1.83 m) high up and extended for another six feet over the water
so they could zip across and jump into the water at the end.
As an adventurous 22-year-old, Amy obviously wanted to try it,
so they walked over to where the handlebars were at one end of the zip line.
Then, they each took turns flying across the zip line and jumping into the water.
On Amy's second turn, she grabbed onto the handlebars just like she had done the last time.
She lifted her feet and started to go across when all of a sudden, there was a loud snap.
The zip line broke and she fell short of the deep section of the water and onto some rocks down below.
As she landed, her leg was sliced open by one of the rocks,
and it was bad enough that they knew right away that she needed to go get stitches.
So they got her in the car and headed off to the hospital.
At the hospital, she had to get 22 staples to close the wound.
She got some antibiotics to prevent it from getting infected,
and then she was sent home that same day.
And although the cut was pretty bad, Amy figured it would just be bad for the first few days
until it healed up a little bit and then the worst of it would be over.
But already just a few days later, Amy could tell something wasn't right.
The wound didn't seem to be healing at all.
Despite using the antibiotics, the cut seemed to be staying exactly the same or even getting worse.
The pain that should have subsided after a few days seemed to be getting worse as well,
and even felt like it was moving around her body, causing pain in different areas.
On the third day, on May 4th, Amy woke up to find that her leg
looked like it was literally rotting. It had blood blisters all over it,
her tongue was all shriveled up and scaly, making it hard to talk,
and she felt like she was dying.
Upon seeing this, her boyfriend immediately picked her up, threw her over his shoulder,
and then tossed her in the car to go to the hospital.
From that point onward, everything was a bit of a blur.
At the hospital, doctors knew almost right away what was happening.
Amy contracted a bacteria known as Aeromonas Hydrophila.
Normally, if you accidentally swallow this bacteria while swimming, it can cause diarrhea.
But in rare cases, if it enters an open wound,
it can cause something called necrotizing fasciitis.
This condition is more commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria.
If it's treated early enough, the infected person might only need some skin removed
but in the case that's not caught early, the symptoms can be much, much worse.
At the hospital, Amy was given more antibiotics,
but doctors could already tell that her leg wasn't responding to the treatment.
She was airlifted to a hospital in Augusta where the doctors informed her parents
that if they didn't start more aggressive treatment, Amy would die.
The infection had already spread to her organs, causing them to start to fail,
and so they asked her parents' permission to amputate her infected leg
and part of her abdomen to slow the spread.
All the while, Amy was drifting in and out of consciousness.
In the course of just a few days, the infection had become so bad
that Amy had a heart attack while being moved from bed to bed.
She was put on a respirator to breathe for her and was on full-time dialysis.
Even after removing her leg, a doctor informed her parents that her chances of survival were slim to none.
Apparently, up to 25% of people who were infected with necrotizing fasciitis
die due to either organ failure or blood poisoning.
Every time Amy regained consciousness, she was so delirious
that her parents had to re-explain her situation to her.
And every time, she reacted like it was her first time hearing it.
It was horribly traumatizing to hear that she'd lost her leg and was close to dying over and over again.
Even worse, one morning, she woke up to her dad sitting at her bedside and holding up her hands.
Her dad lifted up her hands to show her them,
and she saw that they were dark purple and black and looked dead.
Amy had been put on a type of medication that constricts the blood vessels
to help keep her blood pressure high and in her organs.
Unfortunately, this constricts blood flow to the extremities,
causing her hands and her other foot to be starved of blood.
As she fought to stay alive, her other limbs had slowly died.
Now that they were dead, they were also at risk of becoming infected,
further reducing the chances of her recovery.
Amy's dad had to explain to her that her best chance of survival
was to have the rest of her limbs removed as well.
Even in her delirious state, Amy was devastated to hear that,
but at the same time, in that moment, she desperately wanted to live.
She knew that if her hands were holding her back, she needed them gone too.
So she told her dad that the doctors could go ahead, and then she was taken into surgery
where her hands and her other foot were amputated as well.
In the first few weeks following the other surgeries,
everything was really hazy because of all the painkillers she was on.
After the doses were slowly reduced, it started to set in that her life had changed forever.
Amy had lost all four of her limbs in just a few short weeks from one highly unlikely incident.
During her recovery, she was at the lowest point in her entire life.
She had to relearn how to feed herself, how to brush her teeth, how to get dressed,
and she was no longer able to walk because the leg that had to be amputated first
had to be cut off high up near her hip.
Her self-esteem was destroyed, she battled depression,
and as she slowly tapered off the painkillers, she battled withdrawal symptoms as well.
But things would steadily improve.
Amy was determined not to be beaten by her circumstances.
Slowly, she returned to normal life. She was fitted with a prosthetic that allowed her to walk.
She went back and finished her master's degree
and she even started a nonprofit for other individuals with disabilities like hers.
Eventually, Amy would even go on to work at the rehab clinic she was in during her recovery.
And since the incident, Amy has even said that she's the happiest she's ever been.
Angela Hammond was born in Kansas City, Missouri on February 9th, 1971.
After she was born, her parents decided to move to the small town of Clinton, Missouri
to be closer to Angela's mom's parents.
After having a son, the family would live in Clinton for the entirety of their childhoods.
Growing up, Angela was considered to be smart
and witty by the people who knew her, and generally, very likable.
This led her to be quite popular all throughout school.
She was also a very driven individual and along with being really likable,
everyone had a feeling that she was destined to do great things.
At 19 years old, a year after she left high school, she started dating 18-year-old Rob Shafer.
Rob was in his final year at the high school that they both attended,
and the two of them seemed like a perfect match.
Not only was Rob a football star at their high school,
he was smart and funny and likable just like Angela.
The two of them got along incredibly well, and so when Angela got pregnant in 1991,
Rob proposed almost immediately.
Angela accepted his proposal, and then from that moment onward,
their life revolved around getting established and getting ready for their new baby.
Rob intended on joining the military and worked odd jobs until then,
and Angela attended Central Missouri State University and worked at a bank processor in the evening.
The two of them also rented a house together and worked hard to save what little money they made.
On April 4th, 1991, the couple went to a barbecue at Angela's mom's house.
Her parents were now divorced, but thankfully, the divorce had been amicable.
Then, at 9:00 PM after spending a few hours at the barbecue,
Rob had to leave to go babysit his younger brother at his parents' house.
After Rob left, Angela picked up her best friend
and the two of them drove around and hung out for a couple of hours.
Just after 11:00 PM, Angela dropped her friend off and then went to a payphone to give Rob a call.
At the time, the couple didn't have a home phone, and so the payphone was her only option to get ahold of him.
Angela had initially told Rob that she would come over to her parents' house after hanging out with her friend,
but now, she was super tired and just wanted to head home and get some sleep.
She gave him a call and let him know, and then the two of them talked for a little bit.
While they were on the phone, a green Ford pickup pulled into the parking lot
and started making circles around the area.
Angela told Rob about it and described the truck,
but as she was telling him, the pickup pulled out of the parking lot and out of view.
They both thought that it was kind of odd, and then as they were talking about it,
the pickup pulled back into the parking lot and parked in a parking space.
A man then got out of the pickup and walked into the phone booth next to her.
She told Rob that he had come over, but again, this is 1991,
so payphones were much more commonly used, so it wasn't really anything out of the ordinary just yet.
Another second later, the man left the phone booth and went back to his truck where he took out a flashlight
and started rummaging around as if he was looking for something.
At this point, Angela started to get a bit nervous because the guy's behavior was just kind of off.
She told Rob about what he was doing,
and Rob suggested that maybe the phone the guy had tried to use wasn't working,
and maybe he was waiting to use the one that she was using instead.
Angela thought that sounded reasonable, and so she leaned out of the booth
and asked the man if he needed to use the phone.
The man quickly said no, and then Rob started feeling uneasy about the whole situation as well.
Angela started to describe the man to Rob as a white man who was wearing overalls,
a baseball hat, he had a beard and he was really dirty-looking.
But midway through her sentence, she let out a blood-curdling scream.
On the other end, Rob heard a man say, "I didn't need to use the phone anyway." and then the line went dead.
Rob dropped the phone and sprinted out of the house to his car.
He immediately hopped in and sped over to the payphone that was just a few minutes away from his parents' house.
On the way, he saw a truck approaching from the opposite direction
that matched the description that Angela had given him.
He looked into the truck as it passed and saw a man driving
with a woman in the passenger seat, screaming.
Rob instantly recognized it as Angela, and so he slammed the car into reverse
and then turned around to chase after it.
He managed to get two miles before his car died,
and he watched as the green pickup disappeared into the distance.
When he had shifted into reverse so quickly, he had damaged the transmission.
By the time he had gotten close to the truck, the transmission died,
leaving him to watch in horror as it sped away.
He quickly got out of his car and chased after the truck,
but within a few moments, he realized it was hopeless.
Instead, he ran back into town and flagged down the first car he saw,
and then had them bring him directly to the police station.
This small-town police station didn't regularly have major occurrences.
They weren't quite sure what to make of the situation at first,
but they launched an investigation anyway.
They had Rob describe the man and created a sketch based on his description.
Weirdly, the sketch that was created doesn't have any facial hair
because the police claim that they thought it was possible he was wearing a fake beard.
Rob also described the truck the man was driving as a green 1960s or 1970s Ford pickup
with a decal of a fish jumping out of the water on the back window.
Unfortunately, the license plate was too rusted out to identify anything other than an "X" and a "Y",
giving the police very little to go off of.
With so little evidence and an unusual story, police started looking at Rob as a suspect.
He was given a polygraph test and passed,
but police still found his story to be too unbelievable.
They went to interview each of Angela's parents next, and each of them insisted that Rob adored her.
Neither of them thought Rob had anything to do with her disappearance.
His car was also found in the exact spot that he claimed had broken down,
and Angela's car was found in the parking lot where the payphone was with her purse still inside.
In addition, witnesses started to come forward
claiming to have seen a truck matching description with a woman screaming inside.
Following these discoveries, Rob was cleared of any involvement,
but in the meantime, he was frantic and desperate, looking for not only the love of his life,
but the woman carrying his child.
Angela's disappearance was devastating for Clinton.
It seemed like the whole town was out and helping look for her,
searching for any evidence and hanging flyers around town.
Rumors quickly started to pop up about Angela's ex-boyfriend being somehow involved
and also claiming that the baby wasn't Rob's.
But both Rob and her ex-boyfriend would deny this and another polygraph would rule him out as well.
Then, after local police came up with essentially nothing, the state police
and the FBI got involved in the search.
First, they tried to locate trucks similar to the one that took Angela,
but over 1,500 trucks showed up as a potential match.
Other police jurisdictions even got involved to help locate any leads,
but every effort just ended in a deadend.
Police even looked at two other disappearances in the area to see if there was any connection to Angela's case.
First was a woman named Trudy who had vanished from a convenience store in Macks Creek.
Then in February, another woman named Cheryl vanished from a gas station and was never found.
Despite the similarities in these cases, Trudy's body would eventually be found,
and two individuals were convicted for her murder, but they were not connected to Angela's disappearance.
The second disappearance offered no additional clues either because the woman was simply never found.
After that, the case went cold.
Occasionally, another vague lead would pop up, but they all ended in nothing,
and it would remain that way for decades until 30 years later.
On the 30th anniversary of Angela's disappearance,
investigators released new details about a possible theory for Angela's abduction.
Around the same time that she had been abducted,
a man had been acting as an informant in a narcotics case,
and he received a note threatening his daughter's life.
His daughter's name also happened to be Angela, and she looked strikingly similar to Angela Hammond.
And the note he received was on April 4th - the same night Angela was abducted.
As of April, 2021, that lead is still being investigated,
and so that leaves a few possibilities for her disappearance.
First, there were two active serial killers in Missouri at the time.
They both targeted young women, but they have since been executed for their crimes,
so there's no evidence linking them to her disappearance.
Second, it could simply have been a random attack.
Someone could have seen a woman alone in a phone booth and decided to attack her.
And finally, it could be a case of mistaken identity.
Angela could have been mistaken for another woman matching her description,
but so far, nothing has come of it, and Angela has been missing ever since.
If you made it this far, I just want to thank you for watching.
My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
This is part six of the series A Collection of Horrible Fates.
So if you enjoyed this video, you may wanna check out the other videos in the series.
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Once again, thank you so much for watching and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.