California Stalker

NARRATOR: A group of mountain bikers on their favorite trail... WOMAN: It's good to see you! NARRATOR: A couple on a hike... All being stalked by a deadly predator... WOMAN: The first thing was this horrible scream. [screams] Oh, my God! MAN: That bite comes down, it crushes the spinal cord, it's dead. NARRATOR: From this point on, everything they do will determine whether they get out dead or alive. It's a beautiful winter day in Northern California. Jim and Nell Hamm are heading out into the woods. The retired couple want to hike the forests at Prairie Creek. NELL HAMM: We thought, well, the weather was looking good. There were no storms coming in, so maybe it'd be a good time to go all the way to Prairie Creek and go for a good, long hike. So we packed up our little lunch with us and lots of water and layered our clothing. So we'll take the Prairie Trail, okay? JIM HAMM: If you think you're up to it! NELL: Oh! JIM: Looks like we've got the whole forest to ourselves. NELL: No one else would be crazy enough to be out here in this cold! NARRATOR: Jim and Nell have enjoyed a love of the outdoors since the early days of their relationship. NELL: I met Jim in Seattle. We were very, very young. I was 15, Jim was 19. It's been quite a ride. It's, it's really been something, because 55 years of life, that's a long time. Ah, this is nice. JIM: Back in the sunshine. NARRATOR: After 45 years in mechanical engineering, Jim has recently retired. NELL: Oh, without the hat, why not? When it came time to retire and leave the city life of Southern California, we were just drawn to Northern California, and of course the beauty of the forest is what drew us there. I just love these ferns, don't you? NARRATOR: And there's another reason this is a special day for the couple. NELL: I think the most very special thing the two of us had together was our Danny. We were both very much aware it was Danny's birthday the next day. So we thought this will be something really good for us to do. Go on a good, long hike the day before his birthday. NARRATOR: When Danny was 30, Jim and Nell received news that every parent dreads. NELL: Danny died very suddenly and for an apparent, no reason. We went over to Danny's home, and Danny was dead on the floor. And my life will never be the same again. When I lost Danny I'd look at Jim and knew he needed me, and he had the same feeling, that if he fell apart I would never have made it. The forest has a silence all its own. I think of Danny there a lot, because he loved nature so much, just like Jim and I do. NARRATOR: The tranquility of the forest has drawn Nell and Jim back to it time and again. But today they're not alone... BOONE SMITH: Cougars are incredibly impressive predators, and there's an athleticism that just has to be respected. NARRATOR: Cougars are the fourth largest cat in the world, and one of the most agile and deadly. BOONE: To put it in perspective, the strength they have, a 95-pound female can kill a 1,000-pound moose. Something 10 times their size, they can subdue that animal and kill it. NARRATOR: In winter, food is scarce so cougars have to search harder for their prey. BOONE: If we're starving we're going to eat about anything we can possibly get our hands on. Cougar's going to be no different. NELL: We took our backpacks off and I said, "Gosh, Jim," I said, "We're so fortunate, we are just so fortunate to be our age and be in such good health." JIM: This has got to be one of my favorite spots, this. NELL: Such a great view. JIM: I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you. NELL: After lunch we knew, well, it's time to head down, off of the ridge and head towards the car. NARRATOR: The cougar stalking Jim and Nell is part of a growing population in California. And in new housing developments close to the wilderness, such as Foothill Ranch, attacks are on the rise. BOONE: We have more interaction between people and cougars because their territories, their habitats overlap now. NARRATOR: Foothill Ranch is on the edge of 4,300 acres of wilderness known as Whiting Ranch. The area is popular with cyclists wanting to ride the extreme trails. Many have set up home here. 35-year-old Mark Reynolds is one of them. DONA REYNOLDS: Mark, I think, was what I call an all-American boy. He loved bikes of any nature. GREG NOROMBABA: Man, I don't know. [laughs] I don't know what Mark did when he wasn't cycling, he liked to cycle, he did that a lot. DONA: Rain was never a deterrent, snow was not a deterrent. NARRATOR: As a long time competitive off-road cyclist, cycling isn't just a hobby for Mark. GREG: I think some people thought Mark was crazy. He kept his bikes in the house. NARRATOR: Mark has recently returned home after a big family Christmas in Missouri. MARK REYNOLDS: Hello? DONA: I talked to him on December 30th. Just to be sure he had reached home. He said he was ready to go for a bike ride. GREG: He was asking me a bunch at the time to go riding. And I had been working so much I kind of put him off. Mark was gonna ride that day regardless, if anybody obviously went with him or not. DONA: He said, "Take care, I'll see you in a couple days, and remember I love you." GREG: Mark could ride literally right out of his door and ride on the road for a mile maybe, and be on the Whiting Ranch trails. Mark enjoyed the outdoors. I think he enjoyed being out there, I think he enjoyed that solitude and nature, not being so confined. His bike took him there in a lot of ways. DONA: Right after Mark started his first job, he said, "Mom, I've been saving my change all year, and I would like to buy some little kids a first bike." We purchased some bicycles at Christmas, and this became a yearly event for Mark. There was something about a kid and his first bike that he never forgot. NARRATOR: Mark pushes on down the trail. But as he approaches a steeper section, he crosses into the territory of a young male cougar. And it's heard him coming. BOONE: Cougars have incredible hearing. They can hear really high-pitched frequency sounds. They can pick that up and key in and hone right in on it. They are very sensitive to noises that are different, that stand out. It triggers a cat to go into hunt mode. Behind him at the trailhead, Anne Hjelle, a fitness trainer, is meeting up with a close friend, Debi Nicholls. DEBI NICHOLLS: Hey, hon! ANNE HJELLE: Oh! Hey! How are you? DEBI: I'm good. It's good to see you. I was looking forward to this ride, because it had been a while that I had ridden with Anne. ANNE: I'm excited to get out there! DEBI: She'd been away for a while, and you know, we were kind of getting back on our game. NARRATOR: They are planning to ride the same trails as Mark Reynolds. DEBI: Anne and I were really kind of soul mates with riding. We just had an immediate connection. I think there's like 15 years between us, maybe even 16, but I never felt like there was that distance. Oh, my God, I've got to get out more. ANNE: You're doing just fine, old girl. DEBI: You're making all those years count! ANNE: Ha ha! Woo! DEBI: All you see are large beautiful oak trees and stream crossings. Everything's just really alive. It was just gonna be a nice evening ride. NARRATOR: The two friends push hard down the trail. But every turn of the track is leading them deeper into a lone cougar's territory. It's a young male, forced away from better hunting grounds by a larger alpha cat. BOONE: As cougar populations increase, we see the lesser dominant animals pushed out towards the edge. And that's typically where we see human/cougar conflict start again, is in the areas that there's not quite sufficient prey, there's not quite sufficient food, and so cats will start to seek out other alternative food sources. NARRATOR: Debi and Anne are heading for the Cactus Trail, the steepest descent in the park. DEBI: Cactus, to me, is what I do Whiting for. You get up to the top, and you know, it's more of a guy's section, I guess, there's not a lot of women that like going down it. You know, there was just some guys ahead of us, and Anne's competitive juices usually kick in, and I can see that she starts to kind of gear up her bike. So I know if I'm going to stay with her I've got to do the same, and so it's like, great, okay, I'll stay with you if I can. NARRATOR: Mark Reynolds is approaching the end of the Cactus Trail. But he's got a problem. [cougar snarls] BOONE: When a cougar identifies its prey, its focus is to close that distance without being detected, to be within range to make a strike and kill that animal. NARRATOR: Cougars can reach speeds of 35 miles per hour and can leap 30 feet in a single bound. BOONE: The cougar jumps up on the back of the animal to pull it in tight. It can position the neck or the back of the head right in line for where that bite motion is. That bite comes down, it crushes the spinal cord, goes through the back of the head, and it's dead. NARRATOR: Crouched over his bike with his back turned, Mark's an easy target. BOONE: Cougars are very opportunistic hunters. If something just shows itself there on the side, they're going to take advantage of it. When stalking a prey, a cougar will get really low to the ground. It'll move very slow, it'll use cover to make its approach. It'll be very focused on what the prey is doing, when it looks away, when its head's down, when it's not paying attention. When it feels like it's within attack range, it's close enough, it's gonna make an incredible rush, it's a bull rush. DEBI: As we descend down Cactus for a few minutes, we could see a gentleman with his bike and another bike off to the side. I kind of said, you know, "Are you okay?" And he said, "Yeah, I'm fine, I'm just checking on this bike." NARRATOR: Another cyclist has found an abandoned bike. But its owner is nowhere to be seen. DEBI: I didn't think much of it, you know, other than the bike was leaned up against a tree, and I thought, you know, maybe a guy's going to the bathroom off to the side. So I wanted to keep up with Anne, so I continued to ride and catch up my speed. NARRATOR: In Prairie Creek State Park, north of San Francisco, Nell and Jim Hamm are hiking deserted trails. It's winter, and the drop in temperature has scared off other visitors. By 3:00 PM they're heading back to their car. NELL: We knew the rest of the hike was pretty easygoing, 'cause it was pretty much downhill from there. We'd done all the hard work, so we headed on down the trail. You don't really want to be in the forest early morning or at dusk, because that's just not a safe, good time to be in the forest. I was probably a dozen feet ahead of Jim, maybe a little more, just enjoying the hike. I wasn't really aware of how far ahead I was, I wasn't paying that much attention. The first thing was this horrible scream. [screams] Jim, Jimmy! Oh, my God! Jim was on the ground and a mountain lion had his head in its mouth. Jim! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Jim, just fight him, just fight him! I didn't have time to think. The log must have been just there. The next thing I knew I had it in my hands, and I thought good, good, because I'm strong, and I was going to bear down on it as hard as I could, and that would be it. Get off! Get off him! Get off! It's not working, Jim! And what amazed me and shocked me was that the lion didn't even flinch. JIM: Get it off me! NELL: It's like you're going to wake up from a nightmare. It's not happening, this is too unreal. How do I get this lion to let go? And that was the thing, 'cause I knew she was going to kill him. BOONE: Cougar claws, they're all extremely dagger-like and they have those incredibly strong forearms, so they're able to rip and tear and just tear things to shreds. NARRATOR: Nell is just feet away. But she's powerless as the cougar continues to attack her husband. NELL: I was extremely desperate. He's all I have in the world. I didn't know if Jim was still alive or what. I said, "Fight, Jim, fight, you're all I have, fight." I don't know what to do! I really believe in mind over matter. You're going to have to fight until you drop, and so that's what I was doing. I just went for her, her mouth, her face area. And she let go. NARRATOR: But now the cougar has a new target... NELL: She's got me. Jim, she's got me. Her ears were down, her teeth were barred, and she was about 8 feet from me. Believe me, that's a terrible thing to see. I just screamed with everything I had. [screams] And she just, just walked off. She did not run or anything. She looked at me and she just walked off. BOONE: Certainly, if you can drive a cat off from its initial attack, you have a chance of being safe. But depending on how desperate a cat is, there always is a chance it's going to come back. NELL: I just thought, I've got to get him out of here, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I've got to get him out of here. Come, Jim, honey, you got to get up, we got to go. She's gonna come back, I know she's gonna come back. I couldn't, couldn't leave him to go for help. I knew she'd be back. I know wildlife enough to know Jim was her kill, there was blood everywhere, she wasn't going to give up that easy. NARRATOR: In Whiting Ranch, Debi Nicholls has lost her friend Anne up ahead on the Cactus Trail. DEBI: I have Anne in my sight, then I don't, and then I do, so it's cat and mouse. She's in front and then I get closer, and she's traversing down and I don't see her. NARRATOR: To a cougar, the sight of bikes flying past looks like startled prey. BOONE: A cyclist or a bike going by, the movement, the sound, it triggers that instinct to go into hunt mode. I've got to go get that, I've got to go catch that, and it's just instantaneous and it's reactive. And you've got a cougar attack. [growling] [screams] DEBI: Then all of a sudden I come around a corner and what I see is really horrific. My God, there's a mountain lion on Anne! [screaming] I just lunged forward and grabbed her leg. I've just got to hold on to her because she's going to be out of my sight. Help me! BOONE: Typical cougar behavior after making a kill is to drag it away to a more secluded place to keep it away from other predators and to help keep the meat fresh. DEBI: I can't hold on much longer, my hands are sweaty. She had blood all over and desperation in her eyes. NARRATOR: The cougar has Anne by the head. DEBI: When the mountain lion eventually gets to the side of her face, you know, his front fangs just slice right down to the eye socket. His jaws, you know, gripped the bottom of her face and then just tore it open. I kept screaming and screaming. I'm not letting go, I am not letting go, you are not going to have my friend. BOONE: Your only option is to fight like no other. But the more you fight, the more he wants to hang on and make a kill. NARRATOR: The cougar is now pulling both Anne and Debi down the slope and into the brush. DEBI: It's a standoff, it's just, you know, it's between me and him, and I'm not letting go. And that's when he went to her throat. Other cyclists arrive on the scene and start throwing rocks at the cougar. DEBI: Eventually one hit the mountain lion on the back of the neck. When the mountain lion took off, I started to turn Anne and pick her up, she's passed out, there's blood everywhere, and I remember her body just being totally limp. NARRATOR: The others run to get help. DEBI: From what I could see, she had a huge blood clot hanging on her eye. She had this weird, gurgling sound happening with her throat. NARRATOR: Jim Hamm has just been savaged by a cougar, and his wife Nell is desperate to get them safely back to their car before the lion returns. NELL: Jim, come on, come on. I would have given anything that day. And I think after losing Danny we're all we have. I was convinced that lion was going to track us. And I just kept encouraging him, come on, Jim, stay with me, stay with me. Every step seemed like a mile. We did get down the road a little ways, but I knew he couldn't go any further. You don't know how long it's going to be before somebody's going to come along. But I said, "Jim, we've just got to hang in there." And it was then that I looked at Jim's head and I was, I just... I just didn't know what I was seeing. He was torn from claws, he was torn from fangs, all over his face, neck, shoulders, arms. It was terrible. Oh, oh, thank God! Jim, Jim there's a car coming! We're getting help. Jim, stay with me! I can only guess how long I waited. I felt total relief when I saw a car coming. The guy had his window down a little bit, and I said, "I need help," I said, "My husband's hurt so bad, it's a mountain lion attack." And he looked and looked at me and drove on. I went back to Jim, I said, "I don't think he's going to go for help, he didn't say anything." Jim! I knew he was going into shock. I had no idea if he was going to be able to survive. NARRATOR: A series of cougar attacks has left lives hanging in the balance. [screams] [beeping] [flatline] [police radio chatter] DONA: I knew that when the police come in the middle of the night, it's not good. He said, "It's Mark." It's devastating. It's something that's never supposed to happen. Parents are supposed to die first. NARRATOR: Mark's decision to ride alone that day meant he was powerless to defend himself against the cougar's sudden ambush. BOONE: I think there's precautions everyone can take when they're out in the wild in cougar country. Obviously, don't ever be alone, pay attention to your surroundings. Listen to what Mother Nature's doing. In Mark's situation, he bent over to fix his chain. It just really is that wrong place, wrong time. NARRATOR: When park rangers catch and kill the cougar that attacked Mark, a necropsy reveals human tissue... from two people. DEBI: They found that the sample that was in his gut was Mark's tissue, and under his nails were Anne's tissue. I would find out later that the bike that we had passed while we were on Cactus was that gentleman that had been found later that evening. The same mountain lion that attacked Anne, attacked Mark. And that's, that's when I broke down and started crying. It's 'cause, you know, it was just, it was real at that point. ANNE: At the point where I said, "I'm going to die," to Debi, I would describe it as almost a peaceful moment. I felt as though we had done all we could, we were being completely overpowered. At that point he had me by the face, but then went to grab me by the front of the throat, and as soon as he grabbed me there, my air supply is cut off, this is the way it's going to end. When I came to, I was so surprised to be alive. I didn't even look for the lion. I mean, Debi is there and I'm alive and I can breathe. One of the fangs had entered at the front of my neck and actually went through all the tissue to touch my vertebral column in the back. So the fact that I'm alive is unbelievable. One of the fangs entered through my upper lip, the other fang entered through the bridge of my nose, broke my nose. The lower fangs entered into my cheek, from the end of my eyebrow to the upper lip, peeled back and was attached at my nose. I'm fully aware of the fact that he just ripped half my face off and thinking, I don't think I want to live. That I don't know if I can deal with the damage he had just done. NARRATOR: Anne had unwittingly raced onto the radar of a cougar on the hunt-- the cougar that had just killed Mark Reynolds. BOONE: The cat had killed someone, and then right there next to it again, here comes something to stimulate that instinct and it just clicks into attack mode. NARRATOR: In Prairie Creek, California, the light is failing. Jim Hamm is going into shock, and unless a car pulls up soon, he won't make it. NELL: He had already been in shock for quite a while. And I knew that his life was in jeopardy. NARRATOR: But just as Nell is giving up hope... MAN: What happened? NELL: We need help, please, please help us. MAN: Sure, I'll go get help right now. NELL: It wasn't long after that that the parkway was filled with people. I asked one of the rangers, I said, "He's hurt so bad," and I remember she put her arm around me, and I said, "Why, why does his head look so white? It looks white, what is that?" She said, "That's his skull." I hoped he would survive. And we talked about fighting with everything we had. But he'd been through so much and he was hurt so bad. As we get older, you're faced with, you know, one day one of you is going to lose the other. JIM: I thought when the lion came for me that I'm going to be dead. This lion is going to kill me, I'm going to die. It's not like a car wreck-- I've got a broken arm, I got this cut or I got that. It's "I'm going to die." When I went down, it grabbed and ripped my hair and just ripped a hunk off of me. Its teeth are going across my skull. And it doesn't matter how much adrenaline is flowing, it hurts something fierce. It went like that and it tore all my lips. When it had me by the mouth it registered that our teeth were grinding together. But you can see back here where it was all ripped down and they stapled it together. I had a very lucky escape. NARRATOR: Crucially, months earlier, a park ranger informed Nell and Jim what to do in the event of a cougar attack. BOONE: Make yourself appear as big as possible. Make a lot noise, be loud back, be aggressive back towards it. It's coming to eat you, so you want to convince it otherwise that it's not making a good choice. NARRATOR: It's knowledge that could ultimately save lives, especially now that encounters with cougars are on the rise. ANNE: I feel extremely fortunate to have lived through something like that. I guess I've just been more cautious about choices I make when I go into wilderness areas. NARRATOR: In Mark Reynolds' memory, his family established a fund to buy underprivileged children their first bike. DONA: After Mark died, it seemed only appropriate that we continue what Mark so believed in. And the Mark Reynolds Fund... was started in 2004. Sorry. NELL: Jim and I live such a great life, we are so happy. You have to live each day to the fullest and enjoy life.