This episode contains disturbing accounts of extreme violence and sexual assault.

Listener discretion is advised.

Also just another note about this episode, we interviewed Ellen over Skype,

so in parts of her story, the quality drops a little bit.

Well, I mean there's been a lot of bizarre cases since mine.

You know the Mint Ninja in the Attic, you don't hear that all the time.

In 1986 Ellen lived with her husband and two teenage children in Austin, Texas.

I was in the real estate business. It was a safe place where I was in the real estate business. It was a safe place where I lived and I was really pretty

amazed that it all happened and it was a long heel but at the same time it wasn't.

Troy Wiggly was wandering through her safe neighborhood and would change Ellen's life forever.

This is I survived, the podcast where we talk to women who've lived through the worst things

imaginable and all the tragic, messy, and wonderful things that can happen after survival.

I'm Caitlin Van Mall.

Well now he had attacked his brother-in-law

and so he hitch-tacked to Austin somehow ended over where I live.

He took his duffel bag and went over the low water bridge and that just kind of leads up to

where my house was in the hills.

And apparently he was across the street and he saw everybody

leave in the morning and he ended up getting in the house and hiding in my

attic and he stayed there for a couple of days until he thought everybody was gone and then surprised me.

On August 29th, he came down from the attic.

Ellen's husband was playing golf that day,

...