In his first television interview, an American missionary is revealing for the first time the full story of his capture by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Niger and how he managed to persevere through a harrowing 6 1/2 years as their prisoner.
"He said, 'There's that vehicle.' In my peripheral vision came a rifle barrel and muzzle flash -- bright orange against a black background. All of a sudden, I hit the dirt and there were shots and I could hear people crying, dying," Woodke told ABC News."They got my shirt, but they didn't get me. And I kept running, you know, bare-chested. And they started hitting me with a rifle buttes trying to knock me down.
"At Jeff's birthday, I would plan tulips on his -- the amount of his years, and always trusting or hoping that he would see the bloom in the spring. So for me, I was never hopeless. How strange that sounds but I was never without hope," Els Woodke said."They broke my hope. I was in that box for two months, I disassociated numerous times. I thought I was dead.
Then one day shortly before his release, Woodke says he received a letter from "the big boss" that said, "In a week, you'll be with your family." "And then he said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jeff, we're going out. We're going home. You can go ahead and eat,'" Woodke said.