Nathalie Birli attributes her survival in part to the power of empathy.
After she regained consciousness, among the first things Nathalie Birli noticed were the orchids. Their delicacy and colour stood out amid the chaos and grime dominating the dim room where she sat, bound and alone with a man who was threatening to kill her.
Hours earlier, she had been transformed in seconds from happy new mother, cycling near her home in Kumberg in southern Austria, to the victim of the kind of horror most people glimpse only in movies. A man rammed her with his car, got out, wrenched her from her bike, beat her severely, pulled her into his vehicle, and bound and blindfolded her.
She feared that he would kill her and bury her in the surrounding woods, she recalled in an interview. Instead, he drove her to his home, dragged her up some stairs and locked her in a closet, where she blacked out.
"Part of me had already thought my life was over," Birli, 27, said today , a week after her waking nightmare.
When she came to, her left arm ached, and her head throbbed — the attacker had fractured both her skull and her lower arm — but the pain paled in comparison to the fear that she might never again see her 14-week-old son.
Yet somehow, improbably, Birli kept her wits about her, realizing that if she were going to survive to see her baby grow up, she needed to find a way to connect with the man who seemed intent on killing her.
"I thought, I have to convince him that he can get out of this unscathed, because otherwise he wouldn't have released me," she said. "I had to find a way to convince him to trust me."
Many stories of young women being abducted end in tragedy. In recent decades, Austria has seen two notorious cases of kidnapping, in which women were held captive for years.
But the tale of Birli, a competitive triathlete, took a different turn and had a different ending, one that she attributes not to her physical strength but to the power of her empathy and her refusal to become a victim. Starting with those orchids, she found a way to connect with her captor, which may be why she lived and a 33-year-old man suspected of being her attacker and kidnapper was arrested.
By the time she had regained consciousness, it was dark outside. Over the course of six to seven hours, the man tried to force her into a cold bath, holding her head under water once, twice, a third time, when she refused to get into the tub.
As she gasped for breath, he warned that the abuse was just a taste of what would happen if she did not do what he wanted. Then he pressed towels over her face, apparently trying to suffocate her.
She said that she did not recall him trying to sexually assault her and that a physical exam showed no indication that she had been raped while she was unconscious.
"I don't think he fully understood himself what he wanted," she said. "He said that he was just really angry and wanted to take his anger out somehow."
She had studied sports and nutrition as a university student, and her courses included psychology. "The importance of TLC," reads a comment that she posted on social media in 2017, along with an explanation of the value of sharing small kindnesses — a smile, a nod of approval, an acknowledgment.
In a moment of quiet, "when he was not beating or threatening me," she looked around, noticed the orchids and without thinking, commented on them. "I just threw it out there, that his orchids were so beautiful."
She added that she had orchids as well and knew how much care went into keeping the delicate blooms alive and thriving.
"Suddenly, he started talking about how he cared for them, using water from his aquarium," she said. "Suddenly, he was a completely different person."
As she listened, he kept talking. He told her about the many cats he had also cared for but were taken away from him; about his grandparents, whom he never really got to know, but who had left him the house in their will; and about the girlfriends who had betrayed him. He also talked about his mother, who he said had a drinking problem.
Birli used that moment to tell him that she had a little baby at home who needed his mother. "I asked him to please not kill me, because the little guy needs me," she said. "I asked him how that would have been for him to grow up without a mother."
That brought the next turn. Her kidnapper, she said, began asking her whether she could help him.
"I told him I could help him find some friends because it was obvious to me that's what he was missing most," she said. "Then I suggested we could just make the whole thing out to be an accident and say that a deer jumped in front of me and that he found me and brought me home."
At first he remained silent. She waited. Then he agreed and began discussing the details of their story, how it would work, what each of them would say. He released her and left the house, telling her to wait while he got her bike.
Standing in the dark, freed, she realized that she could run, but she had no idea where she was. No lights from other houses were visible. "I thought if I ran away and got lost in the woods and he found me again, then he would certainly kill me," she said.
So she waited as he tried to repair her bicycle, then loaded it into the car. She got into the passenger seat and told him where she lived. But at the main road, instead of turning toward her home, he headed off in the opposite direction.
"He told me he wanted to show me a plot of land he had inherited from his grandfather, and I panicked again," she said. "I thought, now he's bringing me to a plot of land and will tie me up again and nobody will ever find me here."
But after several minutes staring into the darkness, he turned around and drove her home.
Her partner, Martin Schöffmann, was out searching for her, but his mother was there, looking after the baby. Safely inside, Birli locked all of the doors and windows, and called the police.
Using data from her cycle computer, which had recorded her movements, Austria's Cobra special forces tracked down the suspect and arrested him.
The man, who has not been identified in keeping with Austrian privacy laws, has confessed to the kidnapping, but gave no clear motive, police said.
Birli has been released from the hospital and is enjoying the small kindnesses of everyday life at home with her son.
"It's so good to see the little guy smile," she said. "Or just talk to the neighbour. Everything is good; I am just so grateful."
Written by: Melissa Eddy
© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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