It was Wednesday, October 9, 2013 & Abby Hernandez was a 14-year-old freshman at Kennett High School in North Conway, New Hampshire, a town that’s described as small, picturesque & safe. Abby was raised by her mom, Zenya Hernandez who was divorced & worked as a nurse, raising her two daughters, Abby & Sarah. Abby was described as a happy, kind, animal loving child who was more of a tomboy who loved to hike & ski. She had recently started freshman year of high school; she had a boyfriend named Jimmy & loved listening to classic rock music, especially Tom Petty. After school, Abby would sometimes take the bus home, but this day, she decided to walk & as she did, the new boots she wore from an early birthday present began to rub & hurt her feet, causing blisters. As she continued on, a car pulled over & a man offered her a ride; she felt that he seemed like a nice, average person from her town so she accepted the ride. Careful not to let the man know where she lived, she asked him to drop her off at a local restaurant, but he told her that he had to stop at Home Depot. When he pulled into a spot at the far end of the parking lot, Abby sensed something wasn’t right & told him that she was close enough to her house to walk the rest of the way. As she took her seatbelt off, he began to dig into his pocket until he pulled out a gun & pointed it at her thigh & told her that if she tried to scream, he would kill her.
Abby didn’t come home from school that day & her family wouldn’t know what happened to her for nine horrific months. Zenya began to worry when the time passed that Abby would normally be home; her worry grew when her daughter didn’t answer her cell phone so she headed to the high school to see if she could find her. Zenya began to panic when the librarian told her that she’d seen Abby leave the school. Abby was a responsible person who told her mom where she was when she changed her schedule. Zenya called local hospitals but there was no sign of Abby. She was only three days away from her 15th birthday, a day that Abby had been excitedly planning; Zenya knew there was no possibility that Abby had run away. At 7 pm that evening, she filed a missing person’s report.
The Conway police began the search & the attorney general’s office & the FBI became involved, Abby’s story news headlines in the town. When surveillance video was reviewed, Abby was seen leaving school at 2:29 pm; she walked through the field hockey field, down Eagles Way & into a power line trail near the school where she was seen walking between 2:30-2:35. During this time, she exchanged several text messages with her boyfriend Jimmy as he rode home on the bus; he told her he loved her & at 2:53 pm she sent her last text which was a heart emoji. Fourteen minutes later, at 3:07 pm, her cell signal disappeared, about a mile from her house. Police needed to find out what happened in that time-frame. The FBI said that the last known contact between the cell phone & the cell network was from a tower on the west side of Cranmore Mountain. Three days into the search, it was Abby’s birthday & instead of a celebration, a candlelight vigil was held. Police were convinced that someone must have seen something & asked the public for any information.
Police looked closely into the relationship Abby had with Jimmy as well as her own family. They found that she was a very family-oriented person & extremely close with her mom. She seemed to be a classic teenage girl. As the weeks went by & it approached the one month mark since Abby had been missing, Zenya was falling into despair, unable to cope with routine daily tasks, ignoring even her mail. When she finally checked her mail, there were many letters of well-wishes; within the pile, there was an envelope & it appeared to be a letter from Abby. In it, Abby wrote how much she loved & missed her mom & that she was alive & healthy; she asked her mom not to lose hope & to stay strong. She also wrote, “I’m sorry I did this.” Zenya was both ecstatic & confused by the letter. She told her mom that she couldn’t tell her where she was. The letter was sent 13 days after Abby disappeared & brought hope to the case. The DNA from the letter was confirmed to be Abby’s. Investigators didn’t know what to expect from the letter; was it a message to reassure them that she was okay? They wondered if and when they would hear from her again.
Investigators also struggled with the decision to release that information to the public; it was possible that Abby sent the letter without her captor realizing. Eventually, the information was released to the media & Abby’s case remained a missing person’s case. After learning the information, public opinion & social media expressed the idea that Abby was likely a “punk teenager” runaway. The rumor mill in her high school speculated the possibility that Abby had gotten pregnant & ran away. The information within the case fit the description of an abduction; Abby hadn’t taken any personal belongings or money with her, she wasn’t able to drive & her boyfriend was cleared from the case. The case soon grew cold, the holidays & the new year coming & going.
The man who offered Abby the ride was 34-year-old Nate Kibby. When he picked Abby up, his initial helpful demeanor quickly changed & he pulled a gun & threatened to slit her throat if she tried to escape or cry out. He took his baseball hat off & put it on her head, covering her face with the brim & handcuffed her hands behind her back. From the moment Abby realized in horror that she was being kidnapped, her survival instincts kicked into high gear & she remembers thinking that she had to work with this guy & said to him, “I don’t judge you for this, if you let me go, I won’t tell anybody about this.” Abby asked him if he was going to rape her & he asked how old she was & she told him “fourteen.” The negotiation didn’t work at first & Abby would become Nate’s prisoner for nine torturous months.
As Kibby continued to drive, he caught Abby trying to peek from under the hat she wore to see where they were going, it was then that she felt a terrible pain in her leg & immediately thought he had shot her. It was a stun gun. He took her cell phone & broke it as he drove, taking back roads to avoid traffic lights that might have cameras. He then brought her to his property & placed zip ties on her that were so tight, they left scars. He gagged her, placed tape on her eyes, wrapped a t-shirt around her head & then put a motorcycle helmet on her & then raped her. He let her watch the news about her disappearance & watched as her mom begged for her safe return during a press conference. This was the first time Abby cried.
Nate drove Abby just 30 miles north of Conway, to his mobile home community in Gorham, New Hampshire, keeping her hidden in a red cargo container on his property. When Nate placed a “No Trespassing” sign near the container by his own trailer, his neighbors never thought anything about it, finding him to be an odd person in general. The cargo container had cost Kibby $3k, it had multiple rooms, electricity & space heaters & was soundproof; neighbors had no idea what was going on within its four walls. When he left for work, driving into Conway daily, Abby remained gagged in the container, heavy metal music playing loudly all day long.
As time went by, Kibby told Abby that he found something “more humane” & placed a dog’s shock collar around her neck & told her to try to scream. She slowly began to raise her voice & then the collar shocked her & he said, “Ok, now you know what it feels like.” He also told her that if she tried to escape & open the door to the container, the room would catch fire; fake wires drilled into the door. He forced Abby to wear a diaper & referred to himself as “master” while in her presence. He showed off his gun collection & threatened to kill her family & her dogs if she escaped.
Nate was born on July 15, 1980 & frequently rubbed classmates the wrong way as he made his way through high school. Many felt that he was aggressive, cruel & described him as a “loser” or a “weirdo.” He worked at a machine shop & was said to be a model employee but definitely had a darkness inside him & developed a reputation with local law enforcement. At one point he got in trouble for grabbing a 16-year-old who tried to get on the school bus, he provided false information when obtaining a weapon & was found to be in possession of marijuana. He was an unpleasant & argumentative person, a conspiracy theorist who was known for his frequent anti-government rants. Neighbors knew him as a loner & some referred to him as “Crazy Nate.” Debbie Demers who lived near Nate would often warn the local girls to stay away from him. He loved guns & a wide array of weapons.
During the time that Abby remained in captivity, in March of 2014, Nate was arrested & charged with criminal trespass & assault for an incident with another woman after he followed her home after a minor car accident. She asked him to stop taking pictures of her car & he then pushed her to the ground on her driveway. During his arrest on the trespassing & assault charges, police seized the pistol he was carrying & in a later petition, he called this “an immoral & irrational unconstitutional restriction of my civil rights.” A condition of his bail included turning over his gun collection; police were surprised when the typically confrontational Kibby was exceptionally cooperative & contacted the Gorham PD himself. As the patrol car arrived to pick up the weapons, Kibby met the officer at the curb & he had all of his guns lined up, ready to go. The officer noticed the 40 foot cargo container on his property but didn’t investigate, having no reason to get closer. Little did they know, they were only feet away from where Abby was being held prisoner. A month later, in April, Kibby was fired from his job at EMM Precision where he’d worked for five years; he was described as a “good worker” & let go because business was slow. In July, the assault charges were dropped but the alleged victim was quoted as saying “He is not a normal person, he is not right.”
Despite the immense torture, Abby never lost hope while in captivity, saying, “I feel like hope, even when you feel you’ve lost everything, hope is something that nobody can take away from you. Just keep that and it will keep you going.” She said throughout all the prayers she continued to say, she never ended them with ‘amen’, not wanting God to leave her & just wanting to live. She continued to strategize a way to stay alive & maintained the idea of establishing a bond with Kibby, telling him, “Look, you don’t seem like a bad person. Like, everybody makes mistakes.. If you let me go, I won’t tell anybody about this.” As time went by, Kibby became more trusting. She felt that part of gaining his trust was going along with whatever he wanted to do. Clinical psychologist, Rebecca Bailey, later praised Abby’s resourcefulness in such a situation of terror & how remarkable she was. At one point, Kibby gave Abby books to read to pass her time, giving her a cookbook, telling her she would need to know how to cook for a man; as she flipped through the book, she noticed his name written inside. She asked him, “Who’s Nate Kibby?” He took a breath & said, “How do you know my name?” Abby had also been given a ruler to use that had the initials “N.E.K” written on it.
When Kibby allowed Abby to write the letter to her family, the first draft was thrown away by Kibby when he saw she’d inscribed help with her fingernails in the paper. He held a stun gun to her feet in punishment & Abby described this as the most pain she’s ever felt. He instructed her to write, “I’m sorry I did this” to make them believe that she had run away. At the same time, she was terribly remorseful that she had trusted a stranger & gotten into his car. The letter was postmarked on October 23 but didn’t arrive until November 6.
While in captivity, Kibby told Abby that he’d been abused while he was incarcerated for forty-two days during high school. He said he wanted to start making counterfeit money because “they owed him.” Abby volunteered to help him, wanting to agree with anything he said to keep him happy.
In July of 2014, a woman Kibby had met online, Lauren Munday, contacted him after he’d given her three $50 bills to help pay for a hotel room. When she tried to use one of the bills at a local Walmart, it ended up being counterfeit. She told him that she had called the authorities & given them his name & said, “Whatever you’re making in your damn basement, you better clean it up right now because they’re coming for your a- -.” On the night of July 20, 2014, Kibby told Abby that he needed to get her off his property because the police were likely coming. He gave her the clothes back that she wore on the day he abducted her & they got in his car. Wearing his baseball hat, he drove her to Dairy Queen & they ate in the parking lot. Abby’s release was very abrupt; he drove a mile away from her house & stopped on a quiet dark road & told her to get out of the car. When she did, he demanded his hat back & she took it off, threw it into the car, slammed the door & he drove off. He’d made her promise that she wouldn’t reveal his identity to anyone & gave her a fake story to tell the police.
As the car drove off, Abby remembers looking up & laughing, so happy to be free. She was released in North Conway & walked the remaining mile to her mother’s home.
She described seeing her mom as a “beautiful moment.” Kibby told Abby that if the police were to come to his home, he would kill them & then kill her family. She initially told her mom that she couldn’t tell her who her captor was, but a week later, she told her mom his name was Nathaniel Kibby & he lived in Gorham, New Hampshire. A swat team raided his property & took him into custody on July 28, 2014 at his home without incident. He was arraigned on kidnapping charges & ordered to be held on $1 million bail. His criminal record dated back to 1998 when he was 18 & found guilty of assault.
On May 26, 2016, Kibby pleaded guilty to seven felony counts, including kidnapping & sexual assault though was not charged with counterfeiting. He was sentenced to 45-90 years in prison & at his sentencing, Abby gave her victim impact statement & said that the two years that had gone by since she was a prisoner had gone both fast & slow & what he’d done to her impacts her life on a daily basis. She’s afraid to tell anyone her last name at school since her name is tied to what happened to her. She said that others may think of him as a monster, but she sees him as a human & she told him that she forgives him. Abby made sure he knew that he put himself in prison, not the other way around; when the gun was pointed at her & she was forced to stay at his home, these were his choices, not hers. She actually thanked him for giving her freedom back. Abby says that she has come to appreciate the new outlook on life that her harrowing experience has given her, “Everytime I go outside now, I really try to appreciate the sunlight & fresh air. It really went into my lungs differently, I really try to never take that for granted.”
Abby has since moved to Maine & had a child of her own & works as a hair stylist. A 2022 movie called Girl in the Shed was released about Abby’s story & she consulted on the details.
References:
- WMUR9: Victim gives impact statement at Kibby sentencing
- WMUR9: Timeline: Kidnapping of Abby Hernandez; conviction of Nathaniel Kibby
- ABC News: Kidnapping survivor Abby Hernandez reveals how she stayed alive in captivity & never lost hope
- Heavy: Abby Hernandez’s Kidnapping: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
- ati: The Disturbing Story Of Nate Kibby, The New Hampshire Man Who Kidnapped A 14-Year-Old And Held Her Prisoner For Nine Months
- ABC Action New: 20/20: S41 E1 Abby Hernandez
