Woman Says She Was Kidnapped, Beaten By Santeria Group
Posted: 5:38 pm EDT September 23, 2008Updated: 6:15 pm EDT September 23, 2008
FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. -- A ceremony involving devil worship and a ring of fire ended with a Palm Coast woman left beaten and bloodied on the side of a highway. The woman was found along US-1 hours after she said she was kidnapped from her neighborhood.The woman was left presumably to die on a rural dead end road in St. Johns County. She was able to crawl away from the scene, still had her cell phone, called 911 and had no idea where she was except that she could hear and see traffic on a nearby highway. She was on the side of US-1 just over the Flagler County border.The first deputies on the scene in the early morning hours Monday found 42-year-old Michelle Wood covered in blood. She had rope around one of her wrists, a bungee cord around her foot and her shorts and had no idea how she got there."We haven't had anything like this that I can remember and I've been in the county for awhile," an official told Eyewitness News.What sheriff investigators have learned so far is Wood says she was kidnapped by six members of a Santeria group from Bunnell, one she was a former member of and had been trying to escape. They took her to a circle of fire in the woods to call in spirits for the autumn equinox, which she wasn't willing to do.Carol Giambalvo, a cult recovery expert, told Eyewitness News the violence is highly unusual, but the fact that Bunnell police said they've never heard of such a religious group in the area is not a surprise."There are a lot of groups operating under the radar that you have no idea are occultist groups or even questionable," Giambalvo said.Investigators are already confirming parts of Wood's story, including that a local church was helping her, but are waiting for her condition to improve so they can get more information. Wood said she had another run-in with the group late last week, but didn't report it to police out of fear.
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