March 23, 1989

Portia K. Meares

Wolftown, VA 22748

540-948-6517

The Power of Prayer

"Somewhere behind that terrible mask of hatred and evil there was a child of God."

Louise and I were chatting on the phone that Sunday night in September 1984. It was just a friendly phone visit. Her goodbye was casual. There was no hint in her voice that a life-threatening drama had already started. She said later she knew if she'd sounded alarmed it would have be been all over before anyone could get to her.

Hidden Valley Ranch is a good name for the isolated farm Louise called home for thirty years. Nestled in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, the house was a rambling frame structure close to a century old. She lived alone, widowed for half a-dozen years. At 76 she still managed a large and active cattle ranch.

Louise was always finding ways to he1p the young men in the neighborhood, giving them work, vouching for them when they got into trouble. Helping others was a life-long commitment. Prayer was a way of life. That September night would test both her commitment and her way of life.

It was barely dark when she'd hung up. But just before her casual goodbye Charles Franklin Seale, a local tough character out on parole, had walked through her unlocked screen door into the kitchen. The phone was there and Louise had her back to the door while we talked. She turned around at the sound of his entering. A sheath on his belt held a knife, hanging from one pocket was a rope, and in another was a large flashlight.

"I'd never met Seale, but I knew about him," Louise told me later. "Charles' wife‚, Betty Jane was the sister of the young man who worked for me. Charles' face was all snarled up, fierce and hating. His eyes were wild as though he was on drugs of some kind.

He said he'd been hunting coons and his pick-up truck had broken down and would I come outside to he1p him. I told him no, but I'd phone a garage for him. I decided to take the attitude that nothing was wrong.

"He wouldn’t let me use the telephone. He asked if I knew him. I said no. Charles had a terrible reputation. He'd been in jail for abducting a man. He'd forced the man into his car, taken him to a deserted road, beaten him over the head with a tire iron trying to kill him. He tied him up and, threw him out of the car and left him in the woods to die."

Seale was now out on parole. He'd been threatening Betty Jane and the baby she was carrying. He'd threaten his mother and his step-father and they'd call the police. But when the police came, they were afraid to press charges. Instead they'd get him drunk and get whatever weapon he had away from him while he was drunk. Louise knew all this from Betty Jane's brother and from other neighbors.

"Charles bounced around my kitchen for a minute or two, rocking back and forth nervously on his feet. Suddenly he turned around and grabbed me by the blouse, shook me hard and yanked me up on my toes. He pulled out a knife that looked long as my arm. He held it to my throat and said, "I'm Charles Seale. I'm from the Mafia. I have a contract on you and Dr. Elliott." He said William [Dr. Elliott, deceased] and I were responsible for sending him to prison.

"Everytime I tried to talk to him, he yelled, 'Shut up, shut up!' He was wild-eyed and at first wouldn't listen to anything I said.

"He wanted to drag me upstairs to get my purse. I knew if I went, upstairs it would be the end. I said, 'If you want money that's not where it is.' He ried again and again to force me to go upstairs, pulling me by the arm. I kept saying, 'Do you want the money? If you want money you've got to do it my way.' Finally he followed me into the dining room. My purse was in a drawer there. I knew there was about $200 in it, because I'd just been to the bank. I knew if he took that much, it could make a felony case.

He pulled the rope from his back pocket and bound my wrists behind my back. He tied a dirty bandana around my nose and mouth for a gag." The rope on Louise's wrists were tight enough to hurt, but the gag was loose. "I could talk through it, but I kept trying to keep it up in place over my mouth. I thought he'd feel threatened if it fell down.

He demanded I turn out the porch lights. I said I couldn't, with my hands tied. Then he wanted me to turn out the kitchen light and I said, you'll have to do it, since you tied my wrists. So he switched it off and got out a flashlight. He turned it on, got his face down close to mine and shined the flashlight off and on, off and on, in my eyes, trying to see terror. He wanted to see terror before he would do anything. It's no fun to kill--you want to frighten, to see the terror in your victim's eyes."

"Fortunately I was not afraid. I was looking for the light through this terrible threatening mask. Somewhere back in there was a person who was God's child. If I could find that person, I thought I could turn the situation around."

Louise's Quaker background and her belief in the power of prayer had supported her in other life crises. But this would put her belief to the severest test it had ever had.

"My behavior upset him. He kept screaming, 'This is no joke!' He put the knife across my eyes, and I would just look at him and talk to him a little bit about his family as if this wasn't happening. And then he'd make some more threats.

"I used my deafness to good purpose. When he'd make a threat Id say, 'Beg pardon? I'm sorry, what was that you said?'"

"He demanded I give him the keys to the car. I told him they were in the car. He didn't believe me, and insisted I get the keys. Finally, I convinced him."

He pushed her out the door to the back porch and down the steps, then pulled her by the arms down the path to the car. "He kept pointing the knife at my throat and at my back. He was itching to use the knife."

"As soon as I got in the car he tied my ankles together. Then he accidentally shut the car door and locked me inside. He panicked because he couldn't get in. So I let the gag slip a little and yelled, 'Use the key--put the key in the lock.' He had the keys, but the car door was locked."

Seale drove Louise to an abandoned dirt road and headed up the wooded mountainside. After thirty years in Madison County Louise knew the area well enough to know he was taking her to the same place he'd taken the man he'd abducted earlier.

"I tried to sit forward because my hands hurt, but Charles said, 'That doesn't matter.' It made him very nervous every time I leaned forward."

"He kept talking about a Mafia contract out on both William and me. He was the hit man, he said. Then he insisted he wasn't Charles Seale but was Steve who had been in prison with Seale. He kept making wild accusations and threats."

He told Louise he was going to rape her. Finally he stopped at a shallow turnaround and got out of the car. "He yelled at me to get out too. But of course, I couldn't because my feet were tied. So he picked me up and tried to carry me, but couldnt hold me. He dropped me on the ground and then propped me up against the car. I could feel the point of the knife in my back."

"All the time he was raving about rape and murder. And I said, 'You know that's just ridiculous for you to be talking about rape.'"

"He screamed, 'Don't you know what rape means?'"

I said, "Yes, I know what rape means, and I think it's just ridiculous that a young man would have to go out and get a poor old woman and tie her up with a knife, and drag her off somewhere like this. People will laugh at you.'"

He tried to make me walk down a narrow path that was up ahead, but, of course, I couldn't because I was tied up.

He went off in the bushes and I heard him urinate. After a while he came back and said, I can't do it,' and said again and again, 'I can't do it.'"

"So we were quiet for awhile. Finally I said, 'You'd better get me on my feet.' He did and leaned me against the car again. He still had the knife at my back, but he didn't know what to do next."

"So I let him think about it. After a while I said, 'Why don't we get in the car and sit down. You'll have to untie me so I can get In.' He did untie my ankles, but my hands were still tied very tight1y behind me. When I got in the car he tied my ankles up tight again. Then he got in on the other side.

"We sat in silence for a little while. Then I said, 'Do you believe in prayer?' And, to my astonishment, he said, Yes.'"

"I said, ‘I'm praying for you, because you're in very bad trouble, and I'm praying that you won't get into worse trouble'"

"Then he threatened me again with the knife, and said, 'You're going to turn the law on me.' And I said, 'No, I'm not.'"

"He said, 'Don’t you lie to me.' And I said, ‘I don't lie, and I keep my promises.'"

"We sat awhile longer. He calmed down more and more. Finally I said, ‘I think it's time for us to drive down now, don't you?’"

"On the way down we passed his father's place, and I said, 'I think there are people there who can help you.' We stopped and he got out and started back for the house. I said, 'Come back. You'll have to untie me and give me the keys, because you know I'm too old to walk home this time of night.'"

"So he came back and cut the ropes. He took off the gag and gave me the keys, and then he started back to the house again. This time he came back to the car again and said, 'I'm sorry.' And I said, 'I'm sorry too.'"

"And I was."

Incredible as it seems, Louise drove herself home. It was a little after 9:00 p.m. And she went to bed--in her unlocked house!

The next morning she called near-by friends, Donn and Ursella Grand Pré. She told them what had happened, but didn't want Donn to call the police. It would be breaking the promise she'd made. Finally he convinced her a promise extracted under duress was not a binding promise. He also convinced her that if he made the report to the Sheriff's office she would have upheld the letter of her promise, if not the spirit. Since Seale was a continuing threat to the neighborhood, Louise finally agreed to let Donn call the sheriff.

Caroline Watts, Madison’s Commonwealth attorney, arrived short1y thereafter. She saw the rope bums and the broken blood vessels on the palms of Louise's hands and between her fingers and bruises on the backs of her hands.

To gather evidence Watts drove Louise to the place in the mountains where she said Seale had held her captive. They found a few of the tortoise shell hair pins that Louise often wore to hold her hair in place, and found some of the rope Seale had used to tie her up. "For me," said Watts, "the tortoise shell hair pins and the rope lying there together epitomized the contrast between Seale's brutality and Louise's gentleness." And the gentleness triumphed.

In church the Sunday after her ordeal Louise told me. "You know I'd been praying all last week that there would be some way I could he1p Betty Jane. I could picture what she was going through. I didn't dream my prayer would be answered this way."

The End

On February 8, 1985, Charles Franklin Seale was sentenced to 25 years in prison for robbery and 25 years for abduction with intent to defile, the sentences to run consecutively.