Woman testifies about assault

PALMER — For two days he threatened her with a gun and wouldn’t let her leave his cabin in Meadow Lakes.

Eventually, she gave in and had sex with him, hoping he would let her leave afterward. But when he tossed rope up into the loft where she waited and prepared to climb up after it, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer.

“I said, ‘oh, hell no,’” the woman testified Thursday. “I thought maybe he would tie me up and beat me up and really have some fun.”

So, despite not wearing any clothes and being in a second-floor loft with no ladder to the ground, she opened a window, jumped out and ran.

“Right when I hit the woods he was at the door, shooting at me,” she said.

The 22-year-old woman was testifying Thursday at the trial of Bobby Boyd, 72, who is accused of raping and kidnapping her in June 2011.

Also on the stand Thursday was Alaska State Troopers Investigator Andrew Adams. Under questioning from Boyd’s attorney, Greg Parvin, he told the jury about talking to the woman at the hospital.

Parvin asked about parts of the interview where the woman seemed unwilling to talk. She got up and wanted to leave the hospital.

“She didn’t want to talk to you. She didn’t want to be at the hospital and she was buzzing the nurse’s station for help,” Parvin said, summarizing Adams’ testimony.

That was about right, Adams said.

Eventually, though, after talking to a hospital staffer, the woman agreed to go to Anchorage for a sexual assault exam. Adams drove her there.

“During your interactions with (her) was there anything that gave you cause for concern that she might have difficulty perceiving events?” Parvin asked.

Adams replied that he had trouble talking to the woman, but not because of the way she perceived things.

“It was my observation that she had difficulty relaying things back to me,” he said. “I was having a hard time understanding what happened.”

But, he said, with some effort, “I believe I was able to come up with a fairly accurate idea of what happened.”

And, he said, the facts of the woman’s story didn’t seem to change as she told and re-told it.

Prosecutor Trina Sears, questioning Adams after Parvin was done, asked if the account from the woman was his entire case. Adams said it wasn’t.

“Were you able to find evidence independent of her that could corroborate everything she said?” Sears asked.

“For the most part,” Adams replied.

As for the woman, in her testimony she told the jury she’d known Boyd since she was 19. She was living in a halfway house close to where he lived. She’d hang out with him, smoke pot.

“We were smoking buddies,” she said.

Sometimes they’d go on long car rides together to Valdez or Talkeetna.

“He liked to drive and I liked the ride,” she said.

Boyd would periodically joke around about wanting to marry her or be her boyfriend and she’d always tell him “no,” she said.

In June 2011, she briefly thought she wanted to move in with him. She was lonely living alone in her small apartment. But the second day with Boyd she wanted to leave.

He accused her of throwing his things away and it spiraled out of control from there. He told her he’d drive her home, but first wanted a sexual favor in exchange for all of the marijuana she’d smoked. He showed her a gun and threatened to shoot her.

“I could just cut you up in little pieces and throw you in the river and nobody would ever find you,” she recalled him saying. “I told him I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I’ll do it and then just bring me home.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.