It’s not just those with millions of dollars in cryptocurrency who are at risk of violent kidnappings these days. Bloomberg News recently reported on a terrifying case:
The pecking at the sliding glass door awoke Julia Goodwin shortly before midnight. She and her husband, Glenn, retirees in their 60s, first thought the noise might be coming from a bird who’d fallen from the palms outside their stucco one-bedroom home in Delray Beach, Florida, maybe one like their pet parrot, Kiwi, who was dozing in her nearby cage. It was strange enough to get them up—both still half asleep, Julia unclothed—and lumbering toward the sound in the living room. Glenn switched on the ceiling lights. The rapping on the sliding door abruptly stopped. Staring at the glass, Julia could see only framed darkness, but she instinctively sensed that whatever was on the other side could clearly see her.
Then that noise again against the panes, loud and hollow like joints cracking, and in an instant, the glass shattered into triangles and fell to the tile floor. Three hooded shadows rushed in. Julia screamed and ran back into the bedroom as Glenn scuffled with one of the intruders, crashing into the dining table and chairs and some ornamental macaw figurines. The other two ran after Julia and forced her to her knees near Kiwi’s cage, according to victim interviews and accounts that came out at subsequent criminal trials. Pressing a handgun to her forehead and an AK assault rifle into her neck, they demanded to know where her phone and computer were and how to log into her cryptocurrency wallet. “We’re going to kill you if you don’t give it to us,” one of the masked men said. “What’s your password?”
In the chaos, Julia thought of Jesus and the lone cross on the wall and of how much pain Glenn must be in, especially given his advanced-stage Parkinson’s disease. But her overriding sensation was disbelief—how could this be happening a second time?
Read more at Bloomberg.com
