Mystery shackled woman seen ringing doorbell reveals she 'was fleeing boyfriend who duct-taped h
The mysterious woman captured on camera ringing a Texas doorbell in the middle of the night is speaking out exclusively to Inside Edition about what really happened that night.
Chilling footage showed the woman outside a home in Montgomery seeking help.
The woman, barefoot and wearing only a T-shirt, appeared to have restraints on her wrist.
"I was asleep and awoke to what seemed like a nightmare," said Lauren, who asked Inside Edition not to use her last name.
Lauren was filmed by a security camera in shackles, desperately ringing doorbells in a Texas neighborhood in the middle of the night.
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The woman, who is named only as Lauren, said she woke up to find her partner, Dennis Collins, "kneeling" over her in bed as he stuffed cloths in her mouth and duct-taped her "entire head".
Fearing for her life, the 32-year-old managed to escape after he stopped the attack and let her go to the kitchen to get a drink.
Lauren - barefoot and wearing just a T-shirt - ran out the front door into the dark neighbourhood and rang a doorbell where chilling CCTV footage was recorded, Mirror reported.
Recounting the ordeal, she told Inside Edition about the events behind the frightened image that later went viral across America.
“I was asleep and awoke to what seemed like a nightmare,” the woman, who asked to be identified as Lauren in our report, told Inside Edition.
Her captor and ex-boyfriend, Dennis Collins, shot and killed himself five days after the disturbing video was posted, as police closed in on him.
He wrote Lauren a goodbye letter, which she has revealed to Inside Edition.
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“I never would've killed you as you thought,” he wrote. “I'm sorry for what I’ve done and I wish I could turn back time. Love Dennis. Yes, love. I'm sorry.”
Lauren admits she feels a sense of guilt over her boyfriend's suicide, but believes the doorbell video may have saved her life.
“I worry that if this video didn't come out, and if he were not gone, that I eventually would be,” she said.
Lauren said was asleep at the house she shared with Collins in Montgomery, located outside Houston, when he attacked her.
“I woke up and he was kneeling on my chest and stuffing some sort of cloths in my mouth, duct taping my entire head,” she said. “I truly felt like when that was happening, like, I was going to die there that night.
There was nothing behind his eyes, it scared me and I didn’t feel like it was the person I knew.”
Lauren said Collins, whom she had been dating for four months, bound her hands and feet together with restraints and then raped her.
“I just kept repeating in my head, ‘God has more for me than this, I’m not going to die here tonight,’” she recalled.
Lauren explained how she managed to escape.
“My throat hurt really bad from screaming so he let me go into the kitchen to get a drink, and while I was getting a drink, he turned around to go out and walked to the bedroom, and that's when I ran out the front door,” she recalled.
When Lauren escaped, she ran into her dark neighborhood at about 3 a.m. Barefoot and still wearing shackles, she was in a desperate search for help.
She said she tried to flag a car down but they just took off. That's when she approached a stranger's house.
She said she started ringing the doorbell over and over and felt “panic, just terror.”
“I just wanted someone to lay eyes on me," she said. "I felt like if someone saw me, then I would be safe."
According to Inside Edition, Lauren fled to a friend's house and later sought sanctuary with her family in Dallas.
Lauren's boyfriend killed himself at their home days later
Lauren says she ran out the front door when her boyfriend turned his back
