Rapist's Captor Hailed As Hero, Lives Each Day As Victim

MADELINE MOREHOUSE awoke the night of May 13 to find Allan Ray Chesnutt attacking her. During the ordeal, she believed he would kill her if she didn't stop him first.

The flashback came with sudden, piercing intensity. He had her pinned to the bedroom floor again, his knee in her back, his knife digging into her shoulder. He told her she was going to die.

People keep telling Madeline Morehouse she is a hero for stopping the Lynnwood rapist by firing several rounds at him from her handgun and holding him until police arrived.

But being a hero doesn't make it any easier to be a victim.

Allan Ray Chesnutt, 21, faces a recommended 77 years in prison when he is sentenced Friday for attacks on Morehouse and nine other South Snohomish County women during a six-month period.

The "Lynnwood rapist" terrorized women living around Edmonds Community College. But Morehouse had never heard about him before May 13, when she awoke to find herself on the floor of her bedroom with him on top of her.

In her first extended interview since the assault, Morehouse said she knew Chesnutt would kill her if she didn't stop him first. She is allowing her name to be used because the people most important to her already know about her ordeal.

As she pulled into the driveway of her Edmonds townhouse complex about 11 o'clock that night, Morehouse noticed Chesnutt skating through the parking area on in-line skates.

Morehouse went into her house and let her dog out, standing for a moment outside her front door. Chesnutt skated by again, glancing at her quickly and looking away.

She went inside and balanced her account books for the day, unaware Chesnutt had climbed onto the roof of her garage and was watching her through her second-floor office window.

Later, as Morehouse slept, Chesnutt picked up a ladder from a nearby construction site, wrapped a T-shirt around the ends to muffle the noise and cut through the screen on her bedroom window with a knife.

She awoke to find him in her room. She could hear herself screaming, but it seemed far away.

He blindfolded her and told her he was going to rape her. Morehouse was crying and told him, "No, I'm too old. I'm 46, and those are my kids' pictures on the wall." Chesnutt said he didn't care and raped her.

He dressed and asked where her money was. He pulled her into her office.She snatched her blindfold and tried to run, but he tackled her. The two struggled on the floor. She bit his fingers to the bone, breaking two teeth, and grabbed his genitals. He begged her to let go, broke free and stomped on her face and chest.

"He was just furious. You could just feel the violence in him," Morehouse recalled.

Bleeding and bruised, Morehouse pulled herself toward the bathroom as Chesnutt returned to her office to look for money. He told her she could go into the bathroom and stay there.

But there was no lock on the door, and Morehouse believed he would come back to kill her. "I just knew it was him or me," she said.

She picked up her bag containing her .22-caliber Beretta and went into the bathroom.

She poured rubbing alcohol into the toilet, then flushed it, to fool him into thinking she was using the bathroom. Hands shaking, she loaded her gun. It jammed.

She tried again and got it loaded. She stepped outside the bathroom.

Chesnutt was walking toward her. Only a dresser separated them.

"No! Don't shoot!" Chesnutt yelled and ran for the stairs. Morehouse followed, opening fire as he raced downstairs. The bullets struck the wall, missing him.

Then she heard a click. No more bullets.

Downstairs, it was silent. Chesnutt was frantically trying to get the front door open.

Morehouse went downstairs and boldly put the gun up again as if to shoot. Chesnutt yelled, "No!" and ran into a downstairs bathroom.

She told him to throw the money out he had taken from her office. He did.

She told him to get on the floor. He did.

"I was trying to make him think that I would kill him. I wanted to, and I would have," Morehouse said.

She dialed 911. Though she remembers very little of what she said, the 911 tape indicates she told the dispatcher she was going to kill Chesnutt, while the dispatcher tried to talk her out of it.

The dispatcher asked how old her attacker was. "I said, `I don't know.' And I turned to him and asked, `How old are you going to be when you die?' "

An officer banged on the door. As Morehouse opened it, her gun accidentally discharged, the bullet ricocheting off the metal door. "For the first time, I felt this intense anger for a second as I realized there had been another bullet," she said.

She watched as police officers swarmed into the house. She felt as if they were looking at her strangely. Then she realized she was naked.

She was treated at Stevens Memorial Hospital in Edmonds for a broken toe, a fractured nose, multiple cuts and a bruise around her heart where he had stomped on her.

A week later, the flashback occurred. "It was like it finally hit me that it had all really happened," Morehouse said. Wanting only to end the terror of reliving the attack, Morehouse took at least six prescription sleeping pills and ended up at the hospital again.

Friends and relatives have been staying at her townhouse, where she installed an elaborate alarm system following the attack. But she rarely sleeps there, preferring to stay with a friend.

Morehouse has been a gun owner for years and had been at a firing range with her handgun a month before the attack. She has had a concealed-weapon permit since 1969. "I'm actually a good shot. I don't know why I missed," she said.

The National Rifle Association has been in touch, asking to talk to her about an article for its members. She wasn't interested.

She has been in counseling since the day after the attack and knows she faces a lot of work in putting her life together again.

"I'm hoping to overcome the psychological trauma, but I know this has changed me," she said.

Deputy Prosecutor David Kurtz is seeking a sentence that will put Chesnutt in prison until he is at least 86 years old.

Chesnutt's public defender, Richard Tassano, will ask for a prison sentence that would keep him in prison until about age 65.

"He's trying to make a bad situation as right as he can" by pleading guilty soon after his arrest on eight counts of first-degree rape, one count of attempted first-degree rape and one count of attempted second-degree rape, Tassano said.

On Friday, Morehouse will be in the courtroom to watch the sentencing. But she is skeptical that Chesnutt actually will serve his full sentence. As a volunteer victim advocate for Pierce County Rape Relief in the mid-1980s, she learned there are no guarantees in the legal system.

Other victims have praised her courage, but Morehouse believes any one of them would have done the same if she'd had the chance. In some ways, the praise only makes it harder, forcing her to acknowledge what happened to her.

Shortly after the attack, she went to see a doctor about her fractured nose. On her way out, the nurses gathered around and told her they considered her a hero.

"I almost cried. I had to get out of there. It's just easier to disassociate it and think it didn't happen to you," Morehouse said.