amanda lynndow was a fearless young journalist willing to breathe the most dangerous hot spots. suddenly she became the story. kidnapped by rebels in somalia. what will she endured at the hands of her captors really destroyed her. what happened after she was freed was almost just as terrifying. here s kate snow with the capture. mom? amanda? amanda, i love you. imagine being the mother on the other end of this call. if you guys don t pay $1 million for me by one week, they will kill me, okay? your daughter a world away in the hands of kidnappers. amanda mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. both mother and daughter traumatized in their own ways by a callous captor. understand? i understand.
and he said to me, ah, it might be something like that. all the way back in canada, her mother lorinda stopped hearing from her daughter. she began to fear the worst. she knew kidnappings were common in somalia. you must have felt so helpless. i. like we were so far apart and didn t know where our daughter was. i think i would have been a collapsed puddle on the floor. i knew i couldn t. i couldn t. lorinda reached out to canadian officials who told her this was, in fact, a kidnapping by islamic rebels, and nay scrambled to set up a recording system in case the kidnappers called. the next morning, my cell phone rang. and it was adam who was negotiator for the kidnappers. canadian investigators had lorinda lead the negotiations,
if you guys don t pay $1 million for me by one week, they will kill me. okay? tonight thought have brought me out to kill me. amanda, amanda, stay strong. stay strong, hon. that phone call definitely made it harder. not to let me imagination go. did you keep it together? well, i just felt like i had to. that i had to be strong for her. canada does not pay ransom to kidnappers, so if lorinda wanted to buy amanda s freedom, she was on her own. a world away in somalia, amanda and nigel locked in separate rooms had discovered something if they each stood at their windows, they could hear each other. they began to hatch a plan. nigel realized that we might
their stories are intertwined. amanda my head is pulled back, and there was a serrated knife. it and her mother, lorinda stewart. did you keep it together? i did. i had to be strong for her. driven by strength, courage, and endurance, these women would not only survive this ordeal, but their determination in a completely new chapter of their story would ultimately lead them to triumph over one of the men who had terrorized them so brutally, and it would take an elaborate international sting. it sound like something out of a movie. it does. we refer to the operation as the hail mary play. but before all of that, this story begins in a small town in western canada where a young woman named amanda lindout yearned for a world beyond her hometown.
out of the blue you get this facebook message from adam. it must ve been shocking. it was a total shock. it was kind of terrifying, too, because it just felt like it was right in my space again. adam taunted lorinda. he said he was reaching out because he had journals amanda had written in captivity deeply personal writing that had helped her get through it all. what were you thinking when you saw that? i was hoping that i could get him to send amanda s journals. but if lorinda wanted those precious journals, adam said she d have to pay. for lorinda, it was outrageous. her daughter s kidnapper had tracked her down with more demands for cash. that s when she reached out once again to the royal canadian mounted police in ottawa a staff sergeant got a call from his bosses.