Facing her demons

Michaelle Dierich spends her days looking over her shoulder, afraid she’s being stalked by one of the two men who tortured and held her captive nearly two decades ago.

In her dreams, she relives the seven days and six nights she was kept as a sex slave. The fear of dying consumes her.

“I’m afraid,” said the 39-year-old Hayden woman, whose story is set to air on “America’s Most Wanted” this spring. “I have nightmares of people abducting me, taking me away, strangers hurting me.”

The faces in her nightmares aren’t always the faces of the two men who abducted and tortured her. The car isn’t always the same vehicle she was taken away in.

But the terror she feels now is just as real as it was then.

Today Dierich is a long way from the woman she was in 1988 – a crack-addicted prostitute living a lifestyle that made her a prime target for two twisted brothers trolling the streets of downtown Portland.

Dierich said she was in chains the entire time she was held captive by half-brothers Vance Roberts and Paul E. Jackson in Roberts’ single-level rancher in Hillsboro, Ore., a suburb of Portland. She was repeatedly raped, sodomized and abused.

At times, she was left locked inside an unfinished closet, chained to the floor. She didn’t know when – or if – the two men were going to return.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she said. “With that kind of terror you think you’re going to die.”

She was surprised when her captors let her go. They dumped her on a street not far from where her mother lived, handing her religious literature, flowers and some pictures taken during the ordeal.

She went to the hospital, then to police.

Roberts and Jackson were arrested about two years later after a 16-year-old girl escaped from the home they’d transformed into a literal torture chamber. Police found Polaroid photos in the home of multiple women being tortured and held in bondage.

A Portland officer recognized Dierich as one of the women in the photos Hillsboro police had seized from Roberts’ home. She picked both men out of a photo lineup.

Police haven’t been able to identify any of the numerous other women believed to be victims, and none has come forward.

As their trial was getting under way in 1991 the brothers – who had been bailed out of jail by their mother – fled.

For years, Dierich was obsessed with bringing the fugitives to justice. Finally, she became discouraged and tried to put it all behind her.

But an October phone call resurrected the nightmare: Roberts, now 53, had walked into the Washington County (Oregon) Jail and turned himself in.

‘More than a skeleton …’

Dierich’s husband, Mark Williams, was surprised when his cell phone rang and it was the Coeur d’Alene police asking for his wife.

When the officer told Dierich that police had received a call from Washington County, Dierich knew what they were calling about.

“My heart sank,” she said.

She had told her husband that she had worked in prostitution and battled drug addiction years before she met him. Dierich had never told him about the torture she had endured.

“That was horrific,” Dierich said. “That was above and beyond drug addiction. That was above and beyond prostitution. That was above and beyond regrets and shame.

“That was more than a skeleton in my closet.”

Dierich said she was stunned to hear Roberts had surrendered. She immediately called Hillsboro police Detective Bruce Parks. He had investigated the case years earlier and kept in touch throughout the years with Dierich and the other known victim.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to testify, don’t call me anymore … I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to be a part of it.’ And I hung up,” Dierich said.

A couple days later, Parks called her back. He told her she would have to testify. She didn’t have a choice.

By that time, Dierich said, she had calmed down. She had begun telling her husband the details of the abduction and torture she had experienced.

She said her husband wondered why, after 13 years of marriage, she hadn’t told him about such a significant part of her past.

It might have helped him understand why she did some of the things she did, he said.

Like why she was obsessive about work – spending nearly 80 hours a week working two jobs – and why she had taken most of the doors down in their Hayden home and replaced them with curtains.”It took a little while for it to soak in,” Williams said. “I was working. I was just thinking about it all day. I basically broke down after a week.”

And he became angry.

“It was like I wanted to be mad at somebody,” he said. “I didn’t know who to be mad at. I just didn’t know who to be mad at.”

Tired of being a victim

Dierich was already in a fragile state when she learned of Roberts’ surrender. Her mother had died months earlier, followed by her beloved Shih Tzu.

In November, Parks called and told her he’d received a call from “The Montel Williams Show” – they wanted her to share her story.

Dierich said she once again told Parks she wanted no part in the matter.

She and her husband had made a nice life for themselves in Hayden in an apartment Dierich has meticulously and elegantly decorated. The showcase-perfect home, she said, is another example of how she obsesses.

Dierich works at a minting company and cleans upscale homes. She worries people will be critical of her – and her husband – because of her past. She worries people will wrongly associate her husband with her past.

But Dierich doesn’t want to be a victim any longer. She said she called Parks back and agreed to appear on Williams’ show. She wanted to speak out in the hopes that someone would recognize Jackson and turn him in.

“I thought, this is going to be one of the chances to find the other brother,” she said. “This is for my safety now.”

She flew to New York for a taping of the show, which aired last month. “America’s Most Wanted” also interviewed Dierich, but she was concerned local viewers wouldn’t see either of the shows, which air on the Fox network. Due to a contractual dispute, Fox currently isn’t available to cable TV viewers in North Idaho. In the meantime, Roberts was not cooperating with police, Parks said, and his attorney was able to delay the trial by claiming Roberts wasn’t mentally competent to aid in his own defense.

Last week, the judge declared Roberts competent and a May 1 trial date was set, according to Jeff Lesowski, senior deputy district attorney for Washington County.

He hopes the publicity surrounding Dierich’s appearance on Williams’ show and “America’s Most Wanted” will result in Jackson’s capture.

“Ideally, we’d like to try these brothers together so we don’t have to put the victims through another trial,” Lesowski said. “Both of these ladies have been waiting almost two decades for some closure in this case.”

Dierich is looking forward to confronting Roberts.

“I need to see him,” she said. “I don’t know how to say it. I do. I need to go. I’m tired of being a victim. I want to see that guy – not as a victim.”