When you discover that your cherished wife or husband is, in fact, a violent user, abuser, liar, cheater, thief, and manipulator, that’s when the teardrops start. And the longer you’ve been with them before the discovery, the harder it is to accept.
In severe cases, people spend years figuring out what happened and how they could have been so blind. They may even write a book, develop a website, or become a public speaker to warn others. That doesn’t mean that you must become an anti-predator activist to wring meaning from your horrible experience: surviving a predator’s maltreatment and then regaining your zest for life is plenty. And if you had no happiness before the predator’s attack, then developing it afterward is doubly satisfying.
Maybe you haven’t had a bad encounter with a predator, or your interest in predators doesn’t pertain to spouses. Still, the following marital nightmare may be instructive to your survival. It depicts the best and worst of humanity. I hope that Teri Jendusa-Nicolai’s desperate refusal to die will inspire your survival—should you ever need a lifeline to cling to.
Teri Jendusa met David Larsen twelve years before they ever dated. Then, and until their marriage, he seemed like a nice guy. Although he showed occasional temper at others’ ‘incompetence,’ it was never directed at Teri.
But soon after their marriage, things went to hell. For a description of David Larsen’s outrageous control and beatings of Teri throughout three years of marriage, see Left for Dead by David Alfvin. For an account of the beating that resulted in skull surgery, months of hospitalization, and amputation of all ten of Teri’s toes, see Teri’s presentation in Gavin de Becker’s Gift of Fear Masterclass, class five. Here’s the short version:
After three years of David Larsen’s controlling, abusive abominations, Teri divorced him and escaped with their two young daughters. Teri happily remarried three years after the divorce, this time to Nick Nickolai.
In the interim, and despite Teri’s protestations, Larsen was awarded joint custody of their girls.
On Saturday, January 30th, 2004, at 10:00 a.m., Teri arrived at Larsen’s house to pick up her daughters. Usually, Teri never entered his house, mistrusting his violent nature. However, on this occasion, Larsen lured Teri inside with a lie that the girls were playing hide and seek and wanted her to find them. Just as the door closed behind Teri and she called out for her girls, Larsen slammed a baseball bat into the back of her head.
From there, it got worse. Waking up on the floor with Larsen hovering over her with the bat, Teri put up a spectacular struggle but was struck at least six more times in the head with the baseball bat. The plastic surgeon who eventually performed reconstructive surgery of her skull said it was a miracle, not only that her brain remained intact, but that she survived at all.
Teri’s severe head beating was just the beginning of her ordeal. Her murderous ex-husband removed her pants, shoes, and socks, bound her wrists and ankles, and finally mummified her head with duct tape.
As if that weren’t enough, he stuffed her into a forty-gallon trashcan headfirst, took it outside, and half-filled the remaining space with snow. If Teri hadn’t managed to wriggle into a pretzel-like semblance of upright, that would have been the end of her right there.
The outside temperature on that January Wisconsin morning was about 20° Fahrenheit. And so, in temperature cold enough to kill in itself, but also severely head-beaten, bleeding profusely, hands and feet bound, half-naked, crammed into a trashcan in several inches of melting snow and slush, and with her face wrapped in duct tape, Teri realized that she still had her phone in a jacket pocket.
Teri Jendusa-Nicolai managed to free a hand and make three phone calls before Larsen inadvertently discovered the phone and took it away. While fading in and out of consciousness, Teri felt the raised buttons on the old-style phone and made two calls to 911 and one to her new husband, Nick—while Larsen transported her sixty miles and across State lines in the freezing ass-end of his pickup truck. Although she was barely intelligible with the duct tape encircling her head, the calls eventually led to her discovery in an unheated storage unit. David Larsen had left her to die, but she defied terror, agony, and ultimately death, cocooned in frozen hell for over twenty-four hours before her rescue.
To make a long story short, he’s the one left to die now, one day at a time, sentenced to 35 years in Wisconsin and a life term in federal prison.
While Teri suffered grievous wounds, requiring months of hospitalization, over a dozen surgeries, and amputation of all ten of her toes—not to mention the horrific psychological impact—she has found her way back to health and happiness.
That’s the takeaway here. Teri Jendusa-Nickolai withstood three years of horrendous marriage and a final attack on her life that should have killed her, but she is still alive and the picture of success today. One of the attending physicians was quoted as saying: “There were multiple events that could have killed her. Someone above must have been looking after her. First, the hypothermia should have killed her, and then the blow to her head also should have killed her.”
Whether it was divine intervention or an equally unfathomable miracle of the human will, Teri Jendusa’s survival and subsequent happiness is a shining beacon to all of us whom predators have impacted.
You can survive.
You can thrive.
Don’t give up if you’re under fire by a social predator. You can search for someone in your immediate sphere who understands and is willing to help; or utilize the help sources on the PsychopathSavvy.com home page.
Here’s something that may interest you: if your life is worsened by drug or alcohol use or uncertainty about your sanity, I get it because I’ve been there. I nearly destroyed myself with drugs and alcohol and have been mad most of my life. You can read the fictionalized account in my Memoir of a Repentant Psychopath—available on Amazon—of how a superior psychopath accidentally turned me around instead of destroying me. Fiction aside, I’ve made some horrible choices, and the only way I can redeem myself now is to warn and encourage others.
Until next week, please understand that more people wish you well than harm.
Robert Red Act