GREENSBORO, N.C. — September 18, 2004.
It's a date that Christy Carroll can't forget, even 16 years later.
"Does it feel like it happened just yesterday?" WFMY News 2's Jess Winters asked her.
"It does, it does all the time," Carroll responded.
It's the day Carroll, and her cousin/coworker were almost killed by two people they knew: their boss at Glass Pro, and his wife.
Edward Junior Ratliff and Shelly Ratliff.
The motive? It's unclear.
"I don’t know, that’s why I reached out to talk to {Junior Ratliff} I would love to know the motive," Carroll explained after requesting a visit with him in prison. She never got a response. "I mean the motive was everywhere. It was like 'I had to kill these girls,' I was jealous of this one, she was sleeping with my husband."
Carroll said there was no such affair.
"Never was {my cousin} sleeping with {Shelly Ratliff's} husband," she stated. "Then in court, she comes back and says she wasn’t, it was all in my head, so it was really out there."
No motive. The victims had no idea what was coming when they went to work that fateful Saturday morning.
Carroll said she only knew something was wrong when the couple came in, and locked the door behind them.
"The first thing Shelly did is went right to {my cousin} while we're sitting at our desk, and {my cousin} stood up. She tried to block that bat but it still got her."
Shelly struck Christy's cousin. in the head with a baseball bat.
Boss Edward Junior didn't have a baseball bat, he opted for a gun.
"He kept saying shut up and get under the desk!"
At that moment, he went from manager – to monster.
"What really triggered it for y'all to want to take us to go kill us?"
Meanwhile, Christy's cousin was duct-taped.
"She put up a good fight she did everything she could," Christy said. "She was kicking and screaming."
"{My cousin} took that whole force to her, and I think that was the most traumatizing to me is that I couldn’t help her as bad as I wanted to when that gun was at me," Christy said.
The couple then forced and pushed the cousins into the trunk of their car.
"Detective Terry, he was over our case, he said y’all had zero percent chance of survival after they got you in that trunk."
Let that sink in for a second.
"Yeah, zero percent."
"He shut the trunk and said let's get to the woods."
Luckily, a customer at Glass Pro saw the blood on the floor and some of the scuffle.
So he followed the suspect's car when they took off and called police.
"We were praying the whole time."
A short police chase ensued. It ended when the couple crashed their car into a church parking lot on Spring Garden Street.
"All of a sudden we feel it lift off the ground, the whole car, then I felt a big crash and I was like 'wow, what just happened are we dead?'"
They weren't dead, despite the odds.
Police arrested the suspects after a brief standoff.
Carroll and her cousin were saved.
"Police told me they were taking us to the West Virginia/Tennessee line, they actually had a home there so the detective said as soon as they got you on the highway you were gone, that was it."
Police say the couple planned to torture and kill the two.
A chilling thought for Carroll. A traumatizing day she'll never forget. But one she's ready to move past.
A survivor's strength
"Life moves on, and you have to look at the future, not the past," Carroll stated emphatically.
Carroll was in a dark place after the attack but knew she survived for a reason.
"I'm here today and it took me years of counseling, years of therapy and I say that’s the best thing to get."
She hopes her story helps others.
"Get the help you need because one day I realized I can't sit here and watch my kids see me be depressed, and be at home so I have to do something."
She did something amazing.
"I went to college got my criminal justice degree – worked for the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department," she explained. "I worked with inmates and changed some lives with some inmates and based on my story they got out and they got their life straight."
Now she's a real estate agent!
"You have to think where you came from, to now," she reasoned. "It's basically like you defeated these people, the demons and look at you now."
Charges
Edward Junior Ratliff
- First Degree Murder (conspiracy)
- First Degree Kidnapping
Sentenced to 34 years
Projected release date: 10/08/2030
Shelly Ratliff
- First Degree Murder (conspiracy)
- First Degree Kidnapping
Sentenced to 26 years
Projected release date: 10/03/2024
Carroll's thoughts on her attacker's imminent release:
"Hopefully they’ll get together with their kids," Carroll said, with a heart of gold.
"They had small children at the time so hopefully they can reunite with their family."
She says she hopes they learned from their mistakes.
"If they served their time, if they get out back in the world then hopefully they get family time because they lost a lot of time from the consequences."
Carroll has spoken to Junior Ratliff's mother.
"His mother told me 'I hate this for my son, but he deserved everything he got.'"