Denyse Holt Escapes James Davis III Thanks To Wordle: Police

James Davis III (left) was charged with kidnapping after breaking into Denyse Holt’s home (right) over the weekend

An insidious wordsmith who took hostage in the basement of her Chicago home over the weekend was able to escape the clutches of his armed captor and get naked thanks to an unlikely savior. happened: Wordle, police said.

Denyse Holt, 80, told officers from the Lincolnwood Police Department that she slept alone on Saturday night but woke up in the middle of the night to find a naked and bloody man standing in her bedroom. She said her immediate instinct was to stay calm, but at the same time, she recalls thinking to herself that she was about to be murdered in her bedroom.

Suspect, 32 years old James Davis IIIwas charged with multiple counts, including Home invasion with a dangerous weapon, aggravated kidnapping while armed with a dangerous weapon, and two counts of aggravated assault against a Peace Officer.

Holt said she immediately told the intruder that she wouldn’t scream and wouldn’t try to fight. He then allegedly informed her that he was cold and needed all of her blankets, and she immediately offered the man naked and bleeding. After lying in bed under a blanket for a while, the intruder decided he needed a shower and forced Holt to join him in the tub, police said.

According to Holt, it was after the shower that this already horrifying situation began to turn hopeless.

After getting out of the tub and still wearing her wet nightgown, she said, the alleged intruder suddenly grabbed Holt’s hand and started dragging her around the house. He is then said to have disconnected Holt’s landline phone lines one by one, leaving pools of blood everywhere after his cuts. The intruder’s gasps are believed to be from shards of glass he was unable to move after smashing a window and crawling through to get into the house.

In an interview with CBS 2Holt says she next goes to the basement, but not before the intruder makes a quick stop. “He took two knives from my kitchen. He told me he liked that stuff,” Holt said.

While in the basement, the intruder intercepted Holt in her tiny dressing room.

“I don’t think I’ll live,” Holt said.

No windows, no lights, no clocks — and no way to contact someone who could get her out, she said. She said she was cold and still wearing her wet nightgown, hungry and without medication. She doesn’t even have toilet paper. Meanwhile, her captor is making her home his after locking up his elderly victim.

Holt then decided she wouldn’t give up, refusing to tell her children about the murder of their mother. She thought of trying to escape at one point but decided the risk was too high. In addition, on two nights, someone was bound to come and inspect the house.

Holt recalls: “I marched and stretched as hard as I could.

Little did she know at the time that a rescue effort was forming about 2,000 miles away in both California and Portland, Oregon. That’s where Holt’s two daughters live, and both expressed concern when their mother didn’t reply to their texts that day. More troubling, however, was that she didn’t share her Wordle scores.

With the text messages undelivered and her Wordle unfinished, Holt’s daughters called the police to request a welfare check.

Officers arrived on the scene a little after 9 p.m. Sunday, where they immediately noticed a broken window with dried blood stains. They then searched the house, starting in the basement, where they quickly found Holt and brought her to safety.

Officers were later able to locate her alleged captor, later identified in police documents as Davis, on the second floor of the home.

Deputy Chief of Police Travis Raypole told Law & Crime that Davis was armed with several knives when found in one of the bedrooms of the house. Efforts to get Davis to surrender were fruitless, forcing officers to deploy Taser to subdue the man. That also failed.

At the time, officers on the scene said they chose to call in the SWAT team rather than engage Davis, who had barricaded himself in his room with knives he had collected from around the house. Immediately after arriving with the team, SWAT caught the subject “using less lethal options”, ending a five-hour standoff.

Detectives noted in their report that Davis, who was subsequently treated, was likely going through a mental health crisis when he decided to break into Holt’s home topless. and terrorize the woman on the weekend.

(Image source: CBS 2, Lakewood Police Department)

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