From Deseret News archives:
Woman is found chained to engine
Details of the bizarre incident were released Wednesday by police.
Investigators believe the woman was held captive in her apartment, near 2900 West and 3500 South, for several days, possibly a week or more. When her boyfriend was home, she was allowed to roam freely in the apartment. But when he left, a chain was tied around her ankles, said West Valley police Capt. Tom McLachlan. The other end of the 20-foot dog chain was tied to a 6-cylinder engine in the closet, he said.
The chain was long enough for her to reach a restroom, but she could not leave the room. The door leading into the room had deadbolts on both sides, McLachlan said, and both were locked. The windows in the room were screwed shut so they couldn't be opened. Additionally, the apartment had no phone.
Last Friday morning, the desperate woman wrote "call 911" in the condensation on her window. The first floor window, which was in the back of the building, faced a neighboring trailer court. The nearest trailer was about 20 yards away.
"She can't come out of the room," Erkelens told the dispatcher in the taped emergency call released Wednesday. On it, Erkelens can be heard talking to the woman in the background while also talking to the dispatcher.
"She says her boyfriend/husband is going to hit her if she comes out of the room. She says he's been hitting her all night," he said.
The woman talked to the man while her boyfriend was still in the house, McLachlan said. She barricaded the door with a dresser so he could not get in, he said.
When police arrived, they kicked in the front door of the apartment and broke out the glass from the back room. They found "a frantic woman crying," according to a Salt Lake County Jail report.
"After police told me she was chained to an engine block, I was kinda shocked and disgusted," Erkelens said. "Who does that?"
The woman told officers that her boyfriend, "beats her regularly, strangles her and doesn't let her leave." In addition to the engine block and chain, police also found padlocks and the two-way deadbolt lock "that was secured with a key from the inside and outside."
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