How could a man who started out so sweet and nice gradually turn into a monster? In 2008 this monster unleashed unspeakable horrors on the woman he “loved”. Listen to Deanna Walters story of survival. She lived through six days of torture on a cross-country trip with a man who planned on never letting her return home.
Apple Podcasts
Stitcher
Pandora
Spotify
Google Podcasts
iHeartRadio
TuneIn“Our criminal justice system requires that women be beaten enough to satisfy the system.”
Kit Gruelle
Relationship
For the first few months of their relationship, Robbie Howell was sweet and nice to Deanna Walters. Then he started asking a lot of questions about her past and the people she had been with. As time went on the cycle of abuse began and including some classic controlling behavior that we have seen before.
“If I worked, he would take my money. He was in charge of everything. I never knew from day to day how much money we had in the bank, what the money was spent on.
“I didn’t even know he was using drugs until we were in the truck. I didn’t know what the money was spent on. I didn’t even know if our bills were being paid.”
This continued along with Robbie belittling her, being jealous and paranoid.
Jealousy
In 2008 they were living in North Carolina and Robbie was a truck driver. Deanna Walters had separated from Robbie earlier in the year after 9 years together. A domestic violence incident that happened over the summer triggered the separation. No charges were pressed.
Deanna had invited Robbie to get together for Halloween to take their 2-year-old daughter trick or treating. They got into Robbie’s car and drove to downtown West Jefferson in NC. When they got there Robbie wanted to stay in the car. Deanna took Martina and they went trick or treating. When they got back to the car Robbie started questioning Deanna saying that he saw her talking to a man.
He got more and more jealous as they drove. Robbie told Deanna that she had to come with him on his run in his truck. She told him that she couldn’t because she had to work in the morning. He pulled into a hospital parking lot, pulled her out of the car, and began beating her. Their daughter was asleep in the backseat.
Cross Country Beatings Begin
He said that he wasn’t going to leave her there to cheat on him. Robbie loaded her and their daughter into the truck. They met up with his cousin John, who was his co-driver. They drove towards the final destination of CA stopping in Virginia at a truck stop. Robbie and John played electronic poker while Deanna and Martina walked around the truck stop.
Then they headed towards Tennessee and when they crossed into the state Robbie again stopped to beat Deanna. During these beatings, Robbie kept trying to get her to confess to having cheated on him. She continued to deny it.
Deanna Walters Changes Tactics
During the second beating, she thought she could change tactics. She falsely admitted to having cheated in an effort to get him to stop. Once she admitted it, he wanted names. She began giving names of people that they knew. He pulled out his phone and forced her to call these people.
During a call with one of the couples, the guys could tell that something didn’t sound right.
As they continued west Robbie would beat her with a flashlight all over her body. While he was beating her, he would pull her by her hair. He forced her to look in a mirror on the side of the truck so that she could see her face. He would ask, “is it worth it?” Martina asked over and over, “why are you hurting my momma?”. Robbie told her that her mom didn’t love him and she didn’t love her. Therefore, it was okay to hurt mommy.
At one point they stopped at a truck stop to get meatballs for him to eat. Their daughter asked for some as well. He told her that she can’t have any because her mom wasn’t telling him the truth. Robbie said she should tell her mommy to tell him the truth so that she could eat. Martina started crying and screaming, begging her mom to tell her dad the truth. Deanna kept telling her she had told him the truth. When he came back he stuck the meatball in Martina’s face and then took a bite. Robbie said it was a shame that she couldn’t eat because of her mom.
Escape Attempt
Deanna Walters couldn’t take it anymore, she reached for the flashlight determined to hit him. When he saw her move he dropped the meatballs, grabbed the flashlight, and beat her. She was able to grab the meatballs and began trying to feed her daughter while he continued to beat her. She didn’t care how hard he beat her, she was going to feed her baby and not let her starve.
They drove all the way to California and started to head back to North Carolina. It was in Oklahoma that she received the worst of her attacks. In the sleeper section of the truck cabin, he beat her and smothered her with a pillow. He kept repeating that she wasn’t going to make it back to West Jefferson.
Seizures Start
At one point Deanna Walters stopped moving because she couldn’t breathe. He removed the pillow and laughed while saying “I almost got you that time, didn’t I?” As a result of her brain lacking oxygen, she began to have seizures.
Police Stop Truck
They were stopped in Oklahoma on November 6th due to his trucking company reporting 2 unauthorized passengers in his truck. They were alerted by the couple who had received Deanna’s phone call. Patrol Deputy Spencer Davis of the Caddo County Sheriff’s Office, who conducted the traffic stop, described the victim as “severely beaten with most of her body swollen and bruised.”
Deanna Walters is Hospitalized
Deanna was hospitalized after enduring 6 days of abuse. This included being hit with fists, a Maglite flashlight, being burned with a lighter, bitten, and suffocated. Robbie was not arrested by the Oklahoma police. He was left by the side of the road to make his way back to North Carolina.
Deanna Walters would not tell the police who had done this to her. There was no way of knowing where it had happened. It wasn’t until she and Martina were safely in police custody that she admitted that Robbie had been the one who beat her, but by then he was gone.
Deanna’s entire body was covered in bruises and dried blood. Her hair was also covered in a sticky substance. When doctors asked what it was, Deanna Walters explained that her husband would throw soda in her face. When he had to urinate he would hold her by the ears and urinate in her face.
Robbie is Interviewed by Police
When Robbie returned to NC he was interviewed by police. He admitted to beating her so badly that he almost broke his fingers, but he was still not arrested. The local DA in Ashe County, North Carolina wanted to go for misdemeanor assault on a female. The maximum sentence for that charge is 150 days in jail.
Push for Federal Case
Deanna Walters and her advocates pushed to take this from a state-level assault case to a federal case. Robbie intentionally took Deanna across state lines for the purpose of terrorizing and beating her. The key was to get a doctor to be able to say that she had received serious injuries. At a conference, Kit met Dr. George McClane who has studied injuries of domestic violence victims.
In examining the photos from her hospitalization he was able to see petechiae around both eyes, more severely on the left side. There also appeared to be a subdural hematoma caused by the force of the strangulation and the capillaries burst. When Deanna Walters was younger she had a seizure disorder. It was under control until Robbie’s attacks. When he strangled her the oxygen supply to her brain was cut off.
Charges are Finally Filed
It took over a year of pressing local and federal prosecutors for the federal United States attorney’s office to press charges of kidnapping and interstate domestic violence.
One of the questions that come up most for abuse victims is “Why didn’t you leave?” In preparing for trial they had to ensure Deanna Walters was prepared to answer that question. Most people don’t understand what it means to be a victim of abuse.
She said that she thought of running when they stopped at a truck stop in Virginia for a few hours. Deanna feared that Robbie would wake up and catch her or her daughter would make a noise while they tried to run. She thought about taking a page from her daughter’s coloring book and writing Help Me and sticking it out the back window for someone to see, but again feared Robbie’s wrath.
While she was hospitalized Martina was taken from Deanna and she was only able to see her twice a week for an hour at a time. Martina was placed with foster parents for protection and asked her mother on the phone every night why she had given her away. She describes this as the hardest thing that she has ever had to go through.
Trial
Robbie was tried in June of 2011. The defense argued that this was a family trip and that Deanna Walters had gone willingly.
The prosecution argued that Deanna and her daughter had been kidnapped and Deanna had been beaten across the country. They brought forward witnesses including the nurse that saw her in the ER, people that had received strange phone calls during the trip, and Deanna herself. Robbie Howell was found guilty of both counts. He is serving 21 years in federal prison.
At trial, Deanna brought a picture of their daughter, who by that time was 6 years old. This was to show him all that he had missed because of what he did to her.
Deanna Walters’s Current Plans
Deanna is completing a degree in social work and volunteering with A Safe Home for Everyone’s crisis intervention line. She uses her past experiences to help and encourage other victims to remove themselves from harm. Deanna hopes to land a job as a victim specialist with the FBI. She wants to help women who’ve been abused—and find solutions to end domestic violence.
Domestic Violence
Nearly half of all female homicide victims are killed by a current or former dating partner, according to a 2017 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On average, 24 people per minute—and more than 12 million men and women every year—are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In 2018, the hotline received more calls and messages than in any year since the organization’s inception in 1996.
COVID-19
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early March, the Chicago Police Department has been seeing more and more domestic violence-related service calls—as many as 13-percent more than last year at this time—even as domestic violence police reports decline, according to Aileen Robinson, the police’s domestic violence operation coordinator there (the department does not make 911 data available online). This means fewer victims are following through with filing complaints after they or their neighbors called the police.
Officer Victoria Oritz of Austin, TX indicated prisons are trying to process people more quickly to prevent the spread of the virus. Rachel Teicher, director of the intimate partner violence Intervention program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s National Network for Safe Communities, said essential businesses such as pharmacies and grocery stores should become a new hub where survivors can connect with advocates.
Health care providers who are conducting telehealth meetings can also screen for abuse. School districts that are providing students with free tablets for remote learning can include applications for survivors to connect with law enforcement or advocates discreetly. “For many domestic violence survivors, calling law enforcement might be the last resort,” Teicher said, adding, “The services domestic violence survivors have been relying on may look different now, but they are more important than ever.”
If you or someone you know is in danger, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE (7233). If you are unable to speak, you can visit online at www.thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 22522.
Resources
- Private Violence | Home
- Domestic violence victims speak out: ‘If I worked, he would take my money’
- HBO doc highlights hidden pain of domestic violence
- Ashe Trucker Receives 20 Years for 2008 Assault | News
- Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women…
- NDVH Annual Impact Report shows record-setting year