Kidnap victim testifies about her abduction, Robert Abner

September 12, 2008

Sedgwick County, Kansas

BY RON SYLVESTER
The Wichita Eagle

A man walked into the Viola convenience store where Joyce Patterson worked as a clerk and demanded money.

"You kidding me?" she remembered asking. Then she saw he had a gun.

That response would surprise no one who heard her calmly testify about being kidnapped and sexually assaulted for four days as she faced her accused attacker, Robert Abner, in court on Thursday.

After hearing Patterson's testimony during a preliminary hearing, Sedgwick County District Judge Robb Rumsey ordered Abner to stand trial on armed robbery, kidnapping, rape and sodomy charges.

Abner pleaded not guilty, and his public defender, Jama Mitchell, argued that Patterson was a willing participant.

Patterson, 48, said she was working her regular shift, noon to 10 p.m., on June 23 at the General Station near Viola, about 20 miles southwest of Wichita. She testified she noticed a man walk into the store. After he came up behind her and pointed a gun wrapped in a white cloth, she began handing him cash out of the register.

"I said, 'Don't kill me, don't kill me,' " she testified. "Then he took my hand and we went out the door."

"Run," she remembered him saying. On cross-examination she said she couldn't run in her flip-flops, so he pulled her along until they reached his car. The man opened the door for her, but she noticed there was no passenger seat in the car.

"I ended up on my knees with my head toward the floor," she said. They drove what seemed like a long time, she said, then the car stopped.

Patterson felt the gun press into her ribs and heard him say: "Just remember." Then he blindfolded her and led her to the house. Patterson said the man led her into the bedroom and pushed her onto the bed. He then tied her hands behind her back and tied her hands to her feet.

He also asked her what kind of cigarettes she smoked, what she liked to eat and drink and then went to the store to buy those, she said.

She asked the man whether he was going to take her home. "Persuade me," she heard him say, meaning she would have to have sex with him to guarantee her safety. "If I do, will you let me go?" she recalled asking him. He said he would, so she did.

Then he turned on the TV, she said, where reporters talked about the missing woman and flashed her picture across the screen, asking for help in finding her. That was a Monday night.

By Thursday, she was still at the house, and he'd had sex with her repeatedly. "Did you want to do those acts?" prosecutor Marc Bennett asked. "No," Patterson said.

At one point, the man went to sleep for hours, but Patterson said he tied their hands together.

By Thursday, he was apologizing. "I'm sorry," she heard him say. "What happened shouldn't have happened."

The man saw the pastor of Patterson's church on television, pleading for her return. The man looked up the pastor's address and drove her to his house. "He said he wanted to make sure I got home safely," Patterson testified.

Throughout the four days, Patterson testified, the man demanded that she not look at him. She told the judge she was kept in a dark room. She said she never got a good look at his face.
After her pastor called police, Patterson was examined at a Wichita hospital. Swabs were taken, then tested for DNA.

Bennett said the DNA matched Abner.