The kidnapping of Kayla Mueller, Part I

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LES SILLARS: From WORLD Radio, this is Doubletake. I’m Les Sillars.

In 2011, a terrorist group that would eventually come to call itself ISIS emerged in Iraq. It soon gained a foothold in Syria. The two countries share a long border. Between October 2012 and October 2013, in Syria, ISIS took four Americans hostage. One was a young woman from Prescott, Arizona, named Kayla Mueller.

WORLD correspondent Jenny Rough met Kayla’s parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, at their home. They talked about many things: How Kayla’s convictions drew her to one of the most dangerous places on earth. Why she felt called to use her hands as tools to relieve the suffering of others. And how she wound up in a very different set of hands … the brutal hands of terrorists. And not only that, but into the hands of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The founder and leader of ISIS.

Today on Doubletake: the first episode in a three-part series: The kidnapping of Kayla Mueller.

It’s a story about courage, and fear, and faith despite hopeless circumstances. It’s also about finding yourself in a position where you’re forced to negotiate. For the highest stakes imaginable: the life of your daughter. With terrorists. With your own government. With yourself. And, ultimately, with God.

Here’s Jenny.

JENNY ROUGH: Kayla Mueller had been missing since August 4, 2013. Twenty-four days. Her parents, Marsha and Carl, were frantic. And then they received this video.

KAYLA: My name is Kayla Mueller. Husni al-Barazi, my friend, I need your help. I’ve been here too long, and I’ve been very sick.

About three weeks after kidnapping Kayla in Syria, her captors sent the video to a highly regarded humanitarian leader in Turkey with a big network. That was Kayla’s idea. She wanted to spare her parents. But it soon reached the Muellers anyway.

Kayla appeared in front of a blank white wall. Although she’d grown up in a Christian home, she wore Islamic attire, a green outer garment and a black scarf that wrapped over her head, around her neck, and covered her left shoulder.

KAYLA: It’s very terrifying here.

The video was only ten seconds long. Marsha thought Kayla looked exhausted and much too thin. Her lips tense, her eyes sunken. But, still, the video flooded the Muellers with hope. Beyond Kayla’s physical appearance, Marsha saw something in her daughter she’d seen throughout all of Kayla’s life: God’s strength. Hallelujah, Marsha wrote in her personal notebook. She’s coming home!!!

The Muellers had every reason to believe that was true.

Before she went missing, Kayla had been doing humanitarian work in Turkey. Dangerous work. She first moved there in December of 2012 and took a job with Support to Life, a Turkish NGO, or nongovernmental organization.

Kayla’s mom, Marsha:

MARSHA MUELLER: I’ll never forget her reaching out to us and saying, I’m thinking of going to Turkey. … I’m going to go see if I can help.

Turkey shares a long border with the war-torn country Syria. By the time Kayla moved there, Syria was two years into a civil war. Women and children refugees crossed into Turkey to escape Syria’s violence while the men stayed behind to fight. Support to Life set up temporary shelters and aid stations to help the displaced Syrians. Kayla assisted the refugees.

MARSHA: So … she went to Turkey. … Um, so she really worked with children a lot, helping them. One of the things that she did … on the side … was started a little thing where these women were very talented in sewing and knitting. So they started making things to sell. … So she was trying to get people, making them feel worth, like they had worth by selling what they could do.

Carl and Marsha Mueller live in Prescott, Arizona. In addition to Kayla, they have an adult son, Kayla’s older brother, Eric. At the time, he lived nearby with his wife and little girl. The Muellers saw them frequently. To stay in touch with their daughter, Carl and Kayla tended to write letters and emails to one another. Marsha and Kayla also wrote constantly, and they used Skype.

In fact, the Skype notifications were so common, that if the Muellers’ granddaughter was around … Kayla’s niece … she would talk to the screen even when nobody was on it.

MARSHA: She would toddle around and … and she comes toddling by and said, “Hi, Kayla!” Because to her, Kayla was the computer.

But that first weekend of August 2013, the screen was dark. Kayla hadn’t Skyped … nor had she answered Marsha’s emails that weekend. At 5:19 a.m. Prescott time, Marsha’s cell phone rang. It woke her up.

MARSHA: Support to Life called us … to let us know she’d been detained. … Of course, we didn’t know what that meant exactly, at all.

Detained like … when they realized Kayla was a humanitarian aid worker, they’d let her go? And who were they, exactly? Who had detained her? The Syrian government? At the time, it was run by dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Here’s what the Muellers learned from Support to Life: Kayla had a friend named Rod. A Syrian guy. Rod agreed to help out Doctors without Borders, another NGO, by fixing an internet satellite at a hospital in Aleppo, a city in Northern Syria. Kayla came along. On the drive back to Turkey, while riding in a Doctors without Borders vehicle, they were detained.

The driver of the vehicle was released. He reported as much as he knew. He said Kayla, Rod, and one other guy were taken to a house about an hour from Aleppo. Of the three, Kayla was the only American.

Support to Life’s program coordinator assured the Muellers that they were working to get everybody released. And she stressed: Don’t tell anyone.

MARSHA: And we did one day. Waited one day. And then … we called the State Department.

The State Department told Marsha it would alert the FBI, but the woman Marsha spoke with didn’t sound surprised … or even sympathetic. It would be the first of many disappointments the Muellers experienced with the United States government.

Over the next twenty-four days, Marsha and Carl were on countless phone calls … calls with the state department, the FBI, a network of Turkish NGOs, and even Arizona’s then-Senator John McCain. Nobody knew who captured Kayla or why.

Marsha is a meticulous note taker. In a steno pad, she jotted down any information she could gather. Practical information, like the names of those Kayla worked with. Words of reassurance, especially Bible verses. Questions she had: Detained … or abducted? Letters she wrote to Kayla even without any way to deliver them: Kayla, no matter what, keep praying.

Then came the captivity video.

KAYLA-CAPTIVITY VIDEO: My name is Kayla Mueller …

Thank God she was alive.

Today, it’s been over 10 years since Kayla’s kidnapping, and Carl and Marsha Mueller are still trying to bring their daughter home. The Muellers live in a quiet neighborhood. Their house backs up to the Prescott National Forest with stunning views of Granite Mountain. Their yorkie-poodle mix greets visitors by running to the door.

ROUGH: Hi, how are you?

MARSHA MUELLER: This is Benji. … He settles down.

MARSHA: We actually got him thinking Kayla would come home. So he’s 10, or will be, actually he is 10, 11. … He’s been a real trooper over the last 10 years with all the people we’ve had come in. He thinks everybody’s coming to see him.

That day, I was one of the many visitors who passed through the Muellers’ home.

MARSHA: Well, come on in. I’m Marsha.

JENNY: I’m Jenny.

MARSHA: Anyway, come on in and have a seat. I just need a cup of coffee. Do you want coffee?

ROUGH: That would be wonderful.

As Marsha fetched two mugs for coffee, a piece of artwork caught my eye … a dirt path through hazy, heavy woods. In the far distance, a ray of sun.

ROUGH: That’s a beautiful picture.

MARSHA: Yeah, that reminds me so much of our search for Kayla. It seems like we keep going down that foggy road. There’s light down there.

So many times it had seemed like Kayla was within their grasp before she disappeared into the clouds again.

The painting hung next to a wooden cross.

Marsha showed me another painting. This one, a lone ship in a tumultuous sea.

MARSHA: It just reminds me so much of our stormy, stormy time.

As we settled into chairs in their great room, Marsha and Carl Mueller told me what happened. And we started from the beginning.

Kayla was a surprise baby. Eric’s birth had been hard. And Marsha’s doctor told her she wouldn’t have any more kids. When Eric was two, Marsha and Carl took a trip to the Grand Canyon. Carl loves to flyfish, so they went in December, one of the best times for fishing in the Colorado River there.

MARSHA: You’d have to have cleats on in the winter. And it was cold and blizzardy. … We didn’t even take the truck key with us. … And we got out, and it was a blizzard. So we ended up calling the lodge. … And I was pregnant with Kayla, and I didn’t know it!

They nicknamed their daughter Special K. And she was. Kind and big-hearted, she seemed to skip right over one of the developmental milestones of children: telling a lie to avoid consequences. Kayla was so honest.

MARSHA: If she did something wrong, she would admit it. So how do you punish somebody that admits … I did it. I shouldn’t have. So here you are as the mom … Okay, well, yeah, you’re right. You shouldn’t have done that.

In other ways, Kayla was a typical kid. She laughed with her friends. She loved music—she used to say music was everywhere. And, like any kid, she had her fair share of scratches and scrapes. Once, she was outside with Eric—

MARSHA: He had a little red wagon. And he had Kayla in it. And it tipped. And she got a gash, and we had to go get stitches, you know, over her little eye.

Kayla had so many dreams, they overwhelmed her. She constantly volunteered to help those who suffered. Homeless teens, alcoholics, AIDS patients. She had a heart for the elderly, veterans, even the impoverished who lived in polluted environments.

MARSHA: She had a big heart. … Kayla really, I don’t know ...

Here’s her dad, Carl:

CARL: If she saw someone that needed help … she couldn’t turn away. She just couldn’t.

Even her schoolwork focused on opening the eyes of her classmates and teachers to the pain that others endured. In a high school paper titled “Kidnapping: The First Hand Experience,” Kayla recounted the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis in Russia. For three days, militants used gunfire and bombs to take over a school. The siege left over 330 people dead, mostly children. In her paper, Kayla wrote: “Kidnapping can also be considered a form of terrorism.” Violent acts motivated by political causes.

In 2007, she started college at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. There, Kayla’s concern for others continued. She volunteered at the Coconino County Jail and taught anger management to Native American women.

Over Christmas her sophomore year of college, Kayla came home with an announcement:

MARSHA: Mom, I’m going to graduate next December. And I said, well, Kayla, how are you going to do that? And what’s your hurry? And she said, you know, I need to get out. I have things I need to do.

CARL: She graduated in two-and-a-half years.

Eight weeks after receiving her diploma, she was in India to care for orphaned children and teach English to Tibetan refugees.

MARSHA: She talked about how the sewer ran right through the streets and stuff.

In India, Kayla saw extreme poverty, neglected children, and a lack of opportunity for those living in exile. When she journaled what she’d witnessed, she was so upset, her hands shook. I will always seek God, she later typed in an email to her dad.

Here, Marsha reads more of it.

MARSHA: “Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love. I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is: Using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.” And then she goes on to say, “That is my life’s work. But my family is my life.”

After India, Kayla headed to France for a much-needed retreat.

THICH NHAT HANH: May the sound of this bell penetrate deep into the cosmos.

She volunteered at a monastery founded by the Zen Buddhist Thích Nhất Hạnh.

THICH NHAT HANH: Even in the darkest spots, living beings are able to hear it clearly. So that all suffering in them cease …

She even considered becoming a Buddhist monk herself … but ultimately, she chose not to.

CARL: We talked it over and … she said, I just don’t feel like sitting around and praying for people. I need to go and physically help people. … They sit around and pray, which is fine, but I need to go and I need to get busy with my hands and do something. And that’s why she decided not to become a Buddhist nun.

Still, Thích Nhất Hạnh taught Kayla it’s okay to ask hard questions. And that reminded her of the Jesus she had come to know as a child.

CARL: She got her Christian beliefs through us being here at home.

Carl’s grandfather had been a Lutheran minister. Marsha had been raised in the Nazarene church and says she really started following Jesus in her twenties. Kayla had always been fascinated by world religions.

CARL: She studied Buddhism. She studied Judaism. She studied Native American religion and beliefs. … And then she made up her mind how to proceed with her life and what to believe in, I think, and what not to believe in.

After the monastery, Kayla was at a crossroads about next steps. She traveled to Israel and Palestine to help refugees and children. But ultimately, she needed to return to Prescott. She had picked up typhoid fever and parasites in India and had to see her doctor.

Flights were cheaper from Egypt, so she decided to go to Cairo. During her brief stay there, she crossed paths with someone who would change the course of her life.

MARSHA: That’s where she met Rod. [Okay] The Syrian man.

CARL: She would do the, what do they call it? Couch surfing? Yeah, yes. The thing the young kids do. And when she was in Egypt, Rod had a place, and that’s how—she stayed with him.

Finally, in October 2010, Kayla returned to Arizona.

The year back home gave her time to think. She made plans to enter the Peace Corps and spent the following year in France to learn the language so she could work in a French-speaking region of Africa.

But Kayla and Rod … the guy she met couch-surfing … stayed in touch.

MARSHA: During that year, the Civil War in Syria was going on.

It was now 2012. Syrians who favored democracy began to oppose Assad. Assad responded by attacking civilians with bombs and heavy artillery.

MARSHA All this year, Rod had been telling Kayla about what was happening in Syria. He had gone back to help his people.

Rod sent Kayla photos and videos of the revolution. She helped Rod with his English. He helped her learn Arabic.

Ultimately, Kayla put her Peace Corps plans on hold. She went to Turkey instead. Her first stay there lasted six months. In addition to helping Support to Life set up community centers for refugees, she posted messages online to get the word out about Assad’s atrocities.

Here’s Kayla in a “Syrian Sit-In” on YouTube.

KAYLA: I am in solidarity with the Syrian people. I reject the brutality and killing that the Syrian authorities are committing against the Syrian people. Because silence is participation in this crime, I declare my participation in the Syrian Sit-In on YouTube.

During Kayla’s time in Turkey, she and her dad had a conversation over Skype.

CARL: I just told her it wasn’t her war and they weren’t her people. And that she needed to come home.

Kayla pondered her dad’s words. In response, she sent him an email with the subject line: “was thinking.” She said she agreed with him.

Marsha reads it:

MARSHA: Even that this is not my war. You’re right. It is not. I would never stake claim to such a barbaric thing as a war. Any war, anywhere. Yeah.

But Kayla went on to explain why she planned to stay, regardless. She said a hundred thousand lives had been lost. Again, this was 2013. Eventually, that number would surpass half a million. Kayla believed even though it was not her war … it was her struggle.

MARSHA: People are under the illusion that this is not their struggle. It’s not their people. It’s not their concern. I’m still enough of a hippie and an idealist that any struggle for greater freedom and justice is my struggle. And any time innocent civilians are being slaughtered, they are my people. And any time the world is not responding to such things because it’s not their concern, it becomes my concern. I might be alone in this idealism. We are all too busy with our everyday routines, our work and our families. But because of my privileged American life, I’ve been able to purposefully build my life in such a way that this idealism can be my life and my work. And I can act and stand by the fact that this is the way it should be. There should be no ‘my people, your people’ mentality. There should be no greater value placed on anyone’s life for any reason. I don’t think that’s idealism. I think those could be words that came from Jesus’ mouth and really, in one form or another, they did. I don’t know why we call what is just idealism. I think we place it in the category because we are afraid. We know what is just. And we know we aren’t really doing it despite being able.

She ended with a quote from one of America's founding fathers, Patrick Henry: Give me liberty, or give me death.

MARSHA: We got our liberty. I can only play pray that Syria will eventually gets theirs. … And I just just see her writing this to Carl.

When Carl read his daughter’s email—

CARL: I thought: That’s Kayla. … That’s Special K. … And once again, she schooled me, as she had so many times.

Shortly after that letter, she did come home—but only for a two-week visit. Marsha remembers taking a trip to Costco together.

MARSHA: And she’d forgotten how much stuff, and how big it was. … She was just never into stuff. … She’d wear the same shirt, you know, cover shirt that she’d had, I swear, since she was in high school maybe. She just didn’t go through clothes that quickly. … Material stuff was not her thing, unless it was books.

If Kayla did spend money, it was to buy gifts for others. The night before Kayla flew back to Turkey—

MARSHA: I was sitting in the living room with her, and I was crying. And I just didn’t want her to go. Her brother really didn’t want her to go back at all. … And Carl didn’t either. But I knew she had to. And I said, I don’t want to let go of your hand.

The next morning, Kayla walked into the living room wearing a hiking backpack.

MARSHA: And she hands me this little clay hand that she made. And she says Mom, you’ll always have my hand.

Kayla had found some clay in her room and molded the hand for her mom overnight. The parting gift reminded Marsha of Kayla’s decision in India to use her hands as tools to relieve the suffering of others. It was June 6th, 2013, the last day the Muellers saw Kayla in person.

Two months later, she was abducted.

That brings us to where we started and the captivity video her captors released 24 days after her kidnapping.

KAYLA: My name is Kayla Mueller. I need your help …

Not long after the video, the Mullers received an email from Rod. Kayla’s Syrian friend who had been captured with her. He had been released. He was back in Turkey. He said Kayla’s captors were taking good care of her. No one would touch her. He added that he planned to gather some clothes for Kayla and go back to her in Aleppo.

What!? Marsha felt a flash of fury. I’m overwhelmed, so very sad, and starting to get angry, Marsha wrote to Kayla in her journal. His email confused us even more, she continued, but we will take any bit of news that tells us you are hanging in there.

She and Carl immediately set up a Skype call.

ROD SAFAR JALANY: I remember the day like as if was yesterday.

Radwan Safar Jalany, Rod for short, will never forget the first time he met Kayla.

I talked with Rod just a few months ago. And he told me the story he told the Muellers that day way back in 2013.

SAFAR JALANY: In 1st of August, 2013, I received a call from … Doctors without Borders.

Rod is a journalist. At the time, he was going back-and-forth between Turkey and Syria every week or so to document the war. He also knew a thing or two about troubleshooting satellite internet. That’s why Doctors without Borders called him to fix a satellite at its hospital in Aleppo.

He estimated the job would take a few hours. Rod said that at the time, the border between Turkey and Syria wasn’t too strict. Syrians would often escort journalists and humanitarian workers into the country. In fact, Kayla had been before. She and Rod discussed whether she would go again with him on this trip.

SAFAR JALANY: Okay, let’s do it. Just like a one day trip. Nobody needs to know about it.

Just in case, they hatched a plan.

SAFAR JALANY: We agreed to tell everybody that we are a family, husband and wife. … Whatever happens, whenever asked about us, you are my wife.

In Aleppo, Doctors without Borders asked Rod to help with a second task. It required a part Rod did not have. He made a trip to the market to buy it, and that delayed them. So they stayed overnight at the hospital. The next morning, Rod finished his work. He and Kayla got in a car to go back to Turkey. The Doctors without Borders logo was displayed on the dashboard near the front windshield. But then—

SAFAR JALANY: A van came and cut off the road. Between six to seven armed and masked people forced us to leave the car and go with them to their car. … I was very terrified. The first thing that came to my mind was this was a mistake.

The men pulled Rod’s t-shirt over his head so he could not see. Kayla sat next to him inside the van.

SAFAR JALANY: I tried to whisper to her like don’t worry. It’s a mistake.

But the men stopped him from communicating.

SAFAR JALANY: Each time they hear me speak to her, they hit me on my head with a gun and asked me to be quiet and don’t speak to her.

Still, Rod thought whenever they got to wherever they were going, he could explain everything.

SAFAR JALANY: Maybe when we are in their office, or we are in their base, I can tell them who I am, I am working with who, who are my friends, and they will let me go with Kayla to our destination.

After 25 minutes, the van stopped. The men led Rod and Kayla to a basement and took their belongings.

SAFAR JALANY: My laptop, my cameras, my mobile, the lighter, my glasses, everything.

And they took Kayla.

SAFAR JALANY: I have no idea where, if she is here, if she is alive, where she is. … One guard, one Syrian guard, told me she is in a sunny room, she is okay, she has a private bathroom.

But that’s all he could find out.

Rod’s captors accused him of being a spy. When Rod insisted he wasn’t, they tortured him. Beatings, electrocutions, and stress positions. When he said Kayla was his wife, the captors played Kayla and Rod against each other.

SAFAR JALANY: I was saying, she is my wife. No, she is a spy. You are a spy. She is not your wife. She told us she doesn’t know you. She told us she is not your wife. She told us you are a spy … without me knowing for sure what she is telling them.

After three weeks, Rod caved: Fine, I’m a spy. Stop torturing me. His captors charged him with multiple crimes, like Satan worship for having heavy metal music on his phone. They gave him 100 lashings. Drove him to the border and said, just go. Don’t look back. Don’t tell anybody what happened. That’s when he returned to Turkey and contacted Kayla’s parents.

During his capture, Rod learned who had taken him and Kayla. He told Carl and Marsha: ISIS.

MARSHA: So I said, what is ISIS? And he said, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham. I said, what is Sham? And he says it means Syria.

ISIS fell under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

CARL: ISIS’ whole purpose was to establish that caliphate, [yeah] which is prophesied in the Quran. They would take over, they would have this caliphate, and they would have the great war, and they would destroy the infidels, Christians, us. And that’s what they were trying to do. They had huge swaths of Syria and Iraq at one time.

Marsha wrote another letter to Kayla: [Rod] told us a lot, but mostly that they are keeping you, he felt, for some sort of trade. … He seemed to have a lot of information that you were okay, but yet he has not seen you. … He seemed sincere, but we have more questions than ever. I continue to place you and this entire situation in God’s care. Only He knows the whole story, and I will wait for His miracle.

Between the video of Kayla, Rod’s release, and the new awareness that ISIS held their daughter hostage … not the Syrian government … things finally seemed to be moving.

But soon, progress slowed again. After six agonizing weeks, the FBI called Carl and Marsha, to ask if the Muellers had any new information for the government. The FBI had nothing.

Then in late fall of 2013, Carl received a phone call from a man who introduced himself as Barak Barfi.

CARL: He says, I need to talk to you about your daughter, Kayla. I was in the office. I pretty much panicked at that point. Walked outside, got in my truck, and started talking to him. He told me who he was.

Barfi was a researcher who specialized in Islamic affairs. He informed Carl that Kayla wasn’t the only American hostage in Syria. ISIS had kidnapped Barfi’s good friend Steven Sotloff the same day as Kayla. The news shocked Carl.

Turns out, ISIS militants in Syria also had American journalist James Foley and aid worker Peter Kassig. Until then, the Muellers thought they were alone. They hadn’t realized other American families were living a similar nightmare.

The families all decided to meet in Washington, D.C.

Barfi told Carl about David Bradley. At the time, Bradley owned Atlantic Media. One of his freelance writers had been taken hostage in Libya in 2011, and Bradley, a wealthy multi-millionaire, helped secure her release without the aid of the U.S. government. He was now interested in trying to free the Americans in Syria.

CARL: I don’t know what transpired completely, but what I do remember is going out behind the shop and getting on my knees and praying that day.

A month before their trip to D.C., Doctors without Borders contacted the Muellers to let them know a group of five of their employees, three women and two men, had also been captured in Syria by the same ISIS terrorists who held Kayla. The three women had been released. ISIS still held the two men. One of those women had slipped out a letter from Kayla. Her name was Patricia Chavez.

PATRICIA CHAVEZ: I went to Syria … I was working with MSF as a nurse.

Patricia was born in Peru, but later moved to Belgium. While working for Doctors without Borders, she went to its hospital in Syria for work. And five months after Kayla’s capture, Patricia and her colleagues were also taken.

PATRICIA: I was leaving the emergency room … And, well, I was kidnapped.

For the next several weeks, ISIS moved Patricia’s group from location to location. Then, on February 11th, 2014, ISIS brought Patricia and her two female colleagues to a building near an abandoned oil refinery in Raqqa.

PATRICIA: We arrived to this place … when we opened the door, they brought Kayla. She took off her veil, and we were like, Oh, a woman! We started talking with her. …. The first thing we asked was how long are you here? When she said seven months, we were like, oh my god!

Kayla and Patricia talked and talked and talked. Kayla described the early days of her capture.

PATRICIA: In the beginning, when she was taken, … she was in a place where it was very small, that she cannot open her arms.

Initially, Kayla was isolated and alone. But she knew other hostages were nearby.

PATRICIA: And she could hear people suffering around, or people crying, or people being beaten.

ISIS eventually moved Kayla to another building and kept her in a dark and airless room.

PATRICIA: She says, … she was in one cell … there was no light. And that, for example, was one time that was very difficult.

The darkness attracted cockroaches. The bugs circling the floor made it difficult for Kayla to sleep. By the time Patricia and Kayla met, ISIS had moved Kayla again and put the women in a square room with four mattresses.

PATRICIA: The walls were white. There was a window on the side, the window was painted with black something, so you cannot see outside.

Metal bars covered the window to block an escape. A large metal pumping unit outside their building sucked petroleum from an oil field. It cast a shadow over the room as it nodded up and down. The women figured they were near a farm.

PATRICIA: Because you could hear the chickens.

And in the middle of nowhere.

PATRICIA: When the trucks come and go, you could really hear that they were going away.

It became clear that the ISIS terrorists fell into two groups. First, the daily guards.

PATRICIA: They are like basic people. … Taking care of the house. … They cook.

These daily guards fed the hostages boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, and hummus. Sometimes chile peppers.

PATRICIA: We used to play with that sometimes.

Place the skinny chile above their lips to make a moustache or use two of them to make eyebrows. Anything to lift their spirits.

When the women menstruated, one of the guards offered a treat.

PATRICIA: He’d bring Pepsi and sometimes chocolate … it was only for us … he says … if you have your period you can have that. It’s like, thank you.

Patricia debated whether to say thank you … the guard thought he was being nice by giving her treats yet he continued to hold her prisoner.

But sometimes the guards’ leaders showed up. The second group. Three men whom the hostages called the ISIS Beatles, after the English rock band. The Beatles all had British accents. Though they had origins in Africa or the Middle East, their families had come to London as refugees. They lived in the same area and attended the same mosque where they became radicalized.

The three of them, John, George, and Ringo, were unlike the daily guards. The Beatles were never nice.

PATRICIA: The other ones, the Beatles, they were really mean. They hate us. … You could really feel the difference because … they talk to us like you are garbage.

The women settled into a routine: Wake up just before five in the morning.

PATRICIA: At five, with the first prayer, everybody wakes up. You go to the toilet, you wash yourself, you come and pray.

Everybody had to participate. Patricia says the prayer times allowed her and Kayla private time. To talk to the Christian God they both believed in … or even to talk silently to themselves.

PATRICIA: You have a moment for you. And then we sleep again, or you eat or whatever you want until 1:00, when you have the second prayer time.

The hostages could read the Quran, but not the Bible.

In the afternoons, ISIS forced the hostages to listen to nasheeds, praising violence … and Muhammod. The supervisor would preach Islam, droning on and on for hours, a drill Patricia described as mental harassment.

PATRICIA: That is the mood that you have until everybody goes to sleep.

Six weeks after Patricia met Kayla, Doctors without Borders negotiated the freedom of Patricia and her two female coworkers, but not Kayla. The women hugged and cried.

PATRICIA: She was very sad. … It was very hard for her … because she was left behind.

Patricia begged for Kayla’s release too. The Beatles taunted Patricia. If she cared so much, she could stay.

PATRICIA: The Beatles were very mean. Because they were saying something like … if you want her to go, why don’t you give her your place?

On April 4th, 2014, Patricia was released. She slipped out Kayla’s private letter.

PATRICIA: It couldn’t be really big … like two, three pages. So she was writing very, very small and trying to put everything she wanted to and trying to be as positive as she can. …. So we looked for a place where we could put it and we just folded it very well. … I was thinking, they’re never going to check my underwear.

Kayla’s letter contained few details of her imprisonment. Instead, it talked about her faith, and how her mom always said that in the end all you have is God. Kayla wrote that she had surrendered herself to her Creator.

Here’s Marsha at a public event reading from that letter:

MARSHA: I have been shown in darkness, light. And have learned that even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have had many hours to think how only in your absence have I finally, at 25 years old, come to realize your place in my life. None of us could have known it would be this long, but know I am also fighting for my side in the ways I am able, and I have a lot of fight left inside of me. I am not breaking down. And I will not give in no matter how long it takes.

Like so many of the apostle Paul letters from behind prison bars, Kayla did not ask for prayers for her release. Instead, she offered prayers for her family, writing, quote: “I pray each day, if nothing else, you have felt a certain closeness and surrender to God as well as have formed a bond of love and support amongst one another.” She signed it, All my everything.

Carl and Marsha begged Doctors without Borders to negotiate for Kayla’s release, too.

MARSHA: We kept saying, please help us. Can you help us.

After all, Kayla had been captured while in one of their vehicles. And held in the same exact location as their employees.

CARL: When I asked them if they would help us get Kayla, there was this long pause and they said no. … They said no, we cannot.

In May of 2014, ten months after Kayla had been taken, Carl and Marsha packed their bags and flew to Washington. It was Mother’s Day weekend.

The families of the American hostages met together and swapped stories. They also strategized. President Barack Obama refused a request to meet with them. Frustrated, the group seriously considered hiring mercenaries to conduct a stealth rescue mission.

CARL: I’m afraid I put the kibosh on that one because … I said, how do you think we can hire somebody to come in and rescue the hostages when the U.S. government’s got all these satellites and all of these resources. At that time, I still felt that our government would save our people.

The Muellers decided to stick with trusting the government. Even after Obama’s rebuff, they believed that would be their best chance of finding Kayla.

MARSHA: They led us to believe we’ve got this.

CARL: We’re doing everything we can.

On their way back to Prescott from D.C., something else came to light. Something troubling. They learned the letter Patricia smuggled out was not the only letter from Kayla. Doctors without Borders had more information to share, information they had withheld. Specifically, a second letter from Kayla to her parents. The second letter had critical information: a contact email for the ISIS Beatles.

The ISIS Beatles knew about this second letter. They wanted the Muellers to have it because they were ready to begin negotiations for Kayla’s release. So they sent it out with Patricia. But Doctors without Borders had kept it secret to achieve its own goals, before giving the Muellers the opportunity to negotiate Kayla’s release.

MARSHA: Doctors without Borders finally revealed that they had held things back from us, and their reasoning was they needed to get their men out.

Carl was furious. He demanded that Doctors without Borders overnight the second letter immediately. Six hours after the Muellers got it, before they could fully process it, the Muellers received an email from the ISIS Beatles. It had one word in the subject line: Prisoner. Here a voice actor reads the email.

ISIS BEATLE: This message is to inform you that we have the American citizen, Kayla Jean Mueller PRISONER. We don’t want to harm her. She is like a guest with us at the moment. If you want to confirm we are really the ones holding Kayla, then we will except [sic] three questions, of a personal nature, that only Kayla could possibly be able to answer correctly. The CONDITIONS OF KAYLA’S RETURNING HOME SAFELY ARE NO MEDIA INVOLVEMENT WHATSOEVER, AND A CASH PAYMENT! Reply FAST with a clearly written email message to this email address and NO ATTACHMENTS! Act promptly so as not to endanger the safety of Kayla.

The Muellers talked and prayed and contemplated how to respond. They wanted to flood Kayla with good thoughts and assure her they were thinking about her. So they crafted three proof of life questions to evoke childhood memories, her family, and her closest friends.

On Sunday evening, two days after receiving the “Prisoner” message, the Muellers typed an email response to the terrorists. The FBI scripted most of it.

CARL: I am very concerned about my daughter Kayla’s wellbeing and safe return home. I appreciate that Kayla has not been harmed while she has been in your care. In your email you requested three questions that only Kayla could answer. How did you get stitches in your eyebrow as a child? What did you teach your niece to say, Music is ________. What is your friend Moe’s real name? Please let Kayla know that her mother and I love her very much and we are doing everything we can to get her safely home. Know that Kayla is just a young girl interested in humanitarian work and has devoted her life to helping others. She is a kind, compassionate person that should be home with her family.

Only Carl signed the email, but they used Marsha’s account. Marsha’s thumb hovered over her mouse. They both read through it one last time. But there was only one thing left to do. Hit send.

SILLARS: Next time on Doubletake, part two of The kidnapping of Kayla Mueller.

KAYLA: Those detaining me are demanding an exchange of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s release for my release. 

ZORKA: They’re going to escape. They’re going to be rescued if we can figure out where they’re at.

ANNOUNCER: Now ISIS is threatening to kill the other American hostage if the US does not get out of Iraq.

MARSHA: ISIS was telling us it happened. Our government is telling us, no, it didn’t. So who do you believe?

SILLARS: Jenny Rough reported and wrote this episode, and I produced it. This is the first of three episodes in our series, The kidnapping of Kayla Mueller. The final two episodes will be out soon.

And one last thing. Our last episode, The Hill, told the story of Joe Infranco and Cody Nuessle, who has autism. We quoted experts saying that there was a scientific consensus that “spelling to communicate” has been discredited. Joe begs to differ.

JOE INFRANCO: Groups like ASHA make it sound like the science is one way in their favor. That's not the case. Their objections come from about 40 studies going back over 30 years ago, and since there are more than 100 positive studies at university levels confirming language ability with autism, see when groups like ASHA have come up with specific objections, people can test them to see if they're valid. The studies instead support spelling. Here's one example: they suggested that maybe people, the spelling partners, are using the board and moving it to help a speller get his or her finger to a particular letter. So, University of Virginia tracked eye movement and hand movement and found that the eye movement preceded the hand movement and that spelling was clearly a voluntary act. Other universities are doing the same. Cambridge University in England used EEGs to detect brain activity and they confirmed language ability in children with autism-they called it hidden ability. But groups like ASHA ignore these. Multiple universities, including the Harvard Extension School, UCLA, UC Berkeley, even recently MIT, now admit students with autism who spell. That clearly points to wide acceptance that spellers with autism are communicating.

Please don’t forget to rate and review us on your podcast app, and to share this episode with someone who might enjoy it. It’s one of the best ways to support this program.

I’m Les Sillars. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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