Germantown kidnap victim addresses her abductor in court
By any measure, federal authorities said Thursday, she is an extraordinary young woman. A 24-year-old nursing assistant who, from the moment she was violently snatched off a Germantown street two years ago, had the presence of mind to leave behind the trail of clues that eventually would aid in her rescue.
By any measure, federal authorities said Thursday, she is an extraordinary young woman.
A 24-year-old nursing assistant who, from the moment she was violently snatched off a Germantown street two years ago, had the presence of mind to leave behind the trail of clues that eventually would aid in her rescue.
One who, even while locked in the trunk of her abductor's car as he drove her across three states, attentively noted the noises his tires made as he switched from paved to unpaved roads - a trick she'd picked up from a movie.
And one who, on Thursday, resisted a federal judge in Philadelphia who practically invited her to say she wanted her kidnapper - Delvin Barnes, a 39-year-old Virginia supermarket clerk and serial abductor - locked up for life.
Instead, the remarkably composed young woman persuaded U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner to accept a 35-year prison term that Barnes had worked out in a plea deal with prosecutors, saying she wanted to give her tormentor a chance to reform.
"When he gets back out, he won't be able to do it again," the young woman said. "He'll be too old or would have thought about it. He won't do it again."
Her name was withheld at Barnes' sentencing hearing Thursday because he had sexually abused her during her captivity. But her caught-on-video kidnapping riveted the city in 2014 and mobilized a three-day multiagency manhunt and rescue operation.
"The miracle of this case was that she was found alive," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan. "This was a young woman we thought was going to be dead."
Wearing a black dress, with her braided hair pulled back to highlight streaks dyed with pink and purple, the nursing assistant eventually won over the skeptical judge, who said he thought Barnes - a violent criminal with eight prior arrests - deserved "much, much more."
"I am accepting these terms because, more than anything, the victim has accepted these terms and wants the court to accept them," Joyner said.
In addition to the prison term, the judge ordered Barnes to register as a sex offender upon his release and to pay nearly $5,000 in restitution plus a $3,000 fine.
Barnes hung his head low through much of the hour-long hearing.
"I am sorry from the bottom of my heart," he told Joyner when his time came to address the judge. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the victim."
Under his plea agreement to one federal count of kidnapping, Barnes also was required to admit his guilt in another abduction, committed about a month before the Germantown incident, involving a 16-year-old girl in Richmond, Va.
Virginia authorities said Barnes snatched the teen in October 2014, drove her to his trailer home in Charles City, Va., then raped her. He poured bleach and gasoline on her body, threatened to kill her, and dug a hole in the back of his property to bury her before the girl managed to escape two days later.
Named as a suspect by investigators in Virginia, Barnes fled to his hometown of Philadelphia and kidnapped the nursing assistant off West Coulter Street near Greene Street in Germantown.
Barnes described that decision at a court hearing last year as an "act of desperation."
He said at the time that he intended only to rob the money to travel back to Virginia to see his daughter one last time before turning himself in to authorities, but prosecutors disputed that account Thursday.
Barnes had zip ties in his car, said Linehan, suggesting that he had been plotting a kidnapping from the start.
As Barnes told it, he pulled the nursing assistant into his car only after another car turned onto the street and he feared that he had been spotted. "The robbery turned into other things," he told Joyner last year.
Speaking in court Thursday, his victim described her ordeal as "the day I met Delvin."
"I thought this was it," she said. "I thought I was going to die."
Unbeknownst to Barnes, a security camera recorded the woman's struggle to get away as he dragged her kicking and screaming down the street. She hit him in the head with a hammer she found in his car, but he quickly silenced her, threatening to kill her if she didn't stop fighting.
He bound her by her wrists, locked her in the trunk, and drove her to Maryland, where he held her captive for three days and sexually exploited her.
But even from the moment Barnes grabbed her, prosecutors said, the woman took steps to ensure she would stay alive long enough for investigators to find her.
She deliberately dropped her phone at the abduction scene and shattered one of the windows of Barnes' Ford Taurus as it sped away in an effort to make the car more identifiable.
She guided Barnes to an ATM with a security camera, hoping they would be caught on video as he drained her accounts of funds. And as both she and her abductor calmed down, she used skills she had picked up from her work at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center to draw Barnes out in conversation.
"She got him to open up to her," said FBI Special Agent Percy Giles. "She basically made herself human to him."
Her effort paid off. Investigators eventually traced Barnes' flight south through security camera footage recorded at gas stations and ATMs along the route. They found him and his shaken and hysterical captive three days later in a parking lot in Jessup, Md.
Although she appeared to have recovered remarkably in the two years since, she never looked Barnes in the eye Thursday as she detailed the litany of ailments she still suffers as a result of her experience - anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression.
To this day, she said, she prays each time she steps into a cab, hoping that the stranger behind the wheel means her no harm. And when bathing at home, she always has a friend or a family member on speakerphone. "I need someone to hear my voice," she said.
Barnes, meanwhile, teared up while addressing the court.
"I am waiting here today to receive the consequences of my sinful behavior, realizing sin must be punished," he said.
He paused to compose himself before adding: "I am sorry. I repent. I ask for mercy."
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