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By Alyce Collins and Matthew Gibson
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"Hey Matt, I’ve bought some donuts for breakfast."
My boyfriend at the time, whose name I do not say, called out while I was in the shower. It was around 9 a.m. and evidently, he had already been out to the store. We had a busy day ahead as we were planning to go tanning, and then we had to go to the mall to go shopping for clothes and luggage.
My 21st birthday was just two days later and my boyfriend surprised me with tickets to the MTV Movie Awards in California. I had previously made a comment about how I’d always wanted to go to L.A., and the day before, he showed me our tickets.
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I was so excited because, back then, it was such a dream of mine to see Los Angeles.
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We had been dating for around three months. He was 24 and I was 20, and we met after I snuck into a bar one night. I was a student in Milwaukee and this was my first real relationship. I hadn’t even come out to my family,
Everything seemed so perfect and I thought we were a great match because he agreed with everything I said.
On the morning of June 2, 2005, I stepped out of the bathroom to eat some of the donuts before I finished getting ready. Just days earlier, he asked me to move in with him into the 10-storey apartment he had just moved into. It was all so quick that he didn’t even have furniture yet, there was just a bed in the bedroom and that was it.
"OK, are you ready for your birthday present?" He came into the bathroom and asked in this really cutesy way.
I was so surprised because I thought going to L.A. was my present. I asked what he meant, and he explained that he wanted to physically give me a gift, but there was a catch.
"You have to lay on the bed and put the pillow over your face so it’s a surprise."
Deep down, I knew that was odd and should have questioned it, but I was a 20-year-old kid in my first relationship. So, I did as he asked and I heard him go into the closet to get something. I could hear his stomach rumbling loudly, but it wasn’t hunger, it sounded like something was really wrong.
I had heard that stomach rumble once before when he was on a call with him mom. He sounded stressed and panicked then. Little did I know, it was a warning sign.
I lay on the bed with a pillow over my face for a minute, but nothing happened.
"Well, I’m just going to finish getting ready. It sounds like you might need the bathroom or something anyway," I said.
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He came over to me a few minutes later and said he was finally ready to give me my birthday surprise. I went back to the bed and he asked me to put the pillow over my face again to stop me peeking.
As he went over to the walk-in closet, I could hear packaging being torn apart. It sounded like cardboard and plastic. His footsteps were getting nearer and then he said: "Here’s your present!"
Seconds later, he jumped on top of me. His knees were either side of my chest, keeping me trapped. Then it felt like he punched me three times in the chest.
What is going on?
He was smaller than me, so I managed to push him off me and yelled: "What are you doing?"
I was so confused and angry that I didn’t even comprehend the sight in front of me. He had this crazed look in his eyes, and he had his arm in the air, holding an eight-inch butcher’s knife.
There was blood on the knife and it was trickling down his arm.
I had seconds to process what I was looking at. My boyfriend was standing in front of me holding a knife and his hands were covered in blood.
It must be a joke—it has to be. I like horror movies, so he probably bought one of those retractable knives and got some fake blood to trick me. Should I be laughing? It wasn’t funny though, my chest seriously hurt.
When I looked down, I realized the blood on his hands was real and it dawned on me that I hadn’t been punched at all. He had stabbed me, and because the knife was so sharp, the blade pierced my skin with such ease that it barely registered. What I had felt, however, was the wooden handle of the knife hitting my chest with brute force.
In a daze of fear, I asked what he was doing. But instead of answering, he started walking toward me, screaming, "I’m poor, I’m poor, I’m poor" and slashing the knife in my direction.
In that instant, I knew that everything I ever questioned about him was in fact a red flag. There were so many times when I thought he was lying, but I told myself I was just paranoid.
When we met and he told me his name, I said I loved that name when it's spelled a specific way, and he told me that was how his was spelled. But then I noticed that he never actually spelled it that way.
If I told him my favorite color was blue, he would say that was his favorite color too. If I said my favorite show was Strangers with Candy, he would say, "oh that's my favorite show too." Yet, he didn't know anything about it.
He also said he lived on Lake Drive in Milwaukee, which is a really wealthy area with huge houses, but he could never have me over. He was constantly lying and I should have trusted my instincts all along.
He pretended to be this popular guy who came from money but his lies were unraveling. He tried to create this fake image and ultimately, he lied so much that he couldn’t keep going.
Rather than owning his mistakes, he wanted to kill us both in a murder suicide.
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'I Had to Force My Way Past Him'
As we had only just moved in, there wasn’t anything I could grab to defend myself. I was powerless. There was only one option—I had to run past him.
I was trapped against the window and had to force my way past him. He followed me and started lashing out with the knife again, stabbing me three times in the back.
I had to turn around and in that split second, both his arms were raised and he was holding the knife aloft. I grabbed his wrists and twisted, attempting to prise the knife out of his grasp.
I managed to get hold of the knife and ran out of the bedroom and straight to the front door. Of course, he knew what he was planning to do, so he had locked and deadbolted it.
I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and I presumed he was going to get another weapon. What else did he have? Did he have a gun too?
Despite my shaking hands, I opened the door and ran toward the elevator. I hit the button for the lobby and willed the doors to shut so he couldn’t corner me again.
When the elevator doors opened in the lobby, I ran to the front desk and told them he had tried to kill me. I repeated it several times because I needed them to know his name.
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'I Was Trying to Survive'
He stabbed me 11 times—thrice in my chest, thrice in my back, and five times on my arms. I kept clutching my lower back because that’s where it hurt the most, and the blood was squirting out between my fingers.
A doctor who lived in the building started tending to me while we waited for the ambulance. Moments later, a woman came down screaming that someone had jumped off a balcony. Immediately, I knew it was him.
I told myself not to cry, but then I thought, why should I cry over him? I was trying to survive, and I didn’t have the energy to waste on him.
When the ambulance arrived, I was loaded in and transferred to the nearest hospital. I was lucid the entire journey, and I remember seeing a wall of doctors lined up to meet us at the hospital. Clearly, this was all hands on deck.
I was put under anesthetic so they could perform emergency surgery. My left lung and spleen had both been punctured, and I also had severe wounds in my diaphragm. Nonetheless, doctors said it was a miracle that my injuries weren’t worse.
My family arrived at the hospital while I was in surgery, and the news was on in the waiting room. Reporters were calling it a murder suicide, leading my dad to believe I was already dead. So, when a doctor told him that I was going to pull through, he didn’t understand.
Hours later, I woke up from surgery and was faced with the uncomfortable reality of not only coming out to my family, but also telling them I had been in a relationship and my now deceased boyfriend had stabbed me 11 times.
I think they were all just so happy I was still alive, honestly.
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I remained in hospital for five days. My physical recovery from surgery was slow, and my body struggled to recover from the blood I lost, so I required a transfusion.
Regardless of my physical wounds, I was determined not to let my ex win. He tried to take my life and failed. So, I refused to feel traumatized or shed a tear. I wouldn’t live in fear because of one crazed individual.
I still have the physical scars 21 years later, but I am alive and I know I have an interesting story to tell (hello Netflix). I was attacked by someone I knew and who I suspected was already lying to me. Had I listened to my instincts, I never would have been in that situation. I want people to learn from my experience and trust their instincts. If you are in a relationship and think the person is lying or you notice potential red flags, listen to yourself.
Matthew Gibson, 42, lives in California and has been working in PR for the last 13 years. On the anniversary of his attack, he began sharing his experience on social media to raise awareness and urge others not to ignore their instincts in a relationship.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or visit 988lifeline.org.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Charlotte Nisbet and Tony Phillips.
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