I’d had a typical Sunday morning with my kids then was kidnapped, he raped me & asked my 3-year-old to choose if I died

LYING in the back of the van, Julie Weil, could only pray that her abductor would end her suffering and let her children go free.

It was a brisk autumn day back in October 2002 when Julie, from Florida, and her 3-year-old daughter and 8-month-old son were leaving their church.

The 31-year-old stay-at-home mum had begun to put her son in his car seat while chatting to a friend.

But as she saw her friend pull away, Julie was met with a sudden smack across her head and was pulled into a bear hug as she was warned to get in the car.

“If you don’t get in the car, I’m going to kill your children,” Julie recalls the man saying.

Still disoriented from the hit to the head, Julie looked up to see her daughter, Emily, screaming and trying to get out of her seat. It was then Julie realised the severity of the situation.

She began to scream as well, hoping that one of the fellow church members or school parents would see what was happening and get help, but no one did.

He threw Julie into her own car, took her keys, and turned the radio up to drown out their screams.

“He looked at me and said do you believe in God?” she told I Survived . When she responded yes he continued: “Good, then you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to do to you and your children.”

As he drove off, he took out a butcher knife and cut Julie on the side of the neck, warning her, “Don’t do anything stupid, don’t do anything heroic, don’t do anything to try and save your kids, it’s too late for that. You’re mine now.”

After proving to Julie he wasn’t messing around, he asked for all of her valuables. When he pulled out her ID he noticed they were just two streets from her house.

He told her they would head there so she would know he could find her at any time if she did get away.

Before doing so, the sick kidnapper forced Julie to perform oral sex on him, calling her daughter up to the front of the car to make her watch as well.

He turned to her daughter asking: “What has your family done that made God hate you so much?”

Don’t look at me or I’ll kill you because what I’m going to do to you would send me to prison for life.

Michael Siebert

Once he had his sick fill, he drove south to the Everglades, sexually assaulting Julie yet again.

Julie never looked her attacker in the face, stating that he told her not to right from the beginning.

He said: “Don’t look at me or I’ll kill you because what I’m going to do to you would send me to prison for life.”

He drove her to the Everglades, raping her four times while tormenting her daughter.

“He wanted her to have a front row seat to the most horrific things a child could ever watch,” Julie explains.

He went on to tell her daughter: “One false move, one scream, one disobedient action and I will sink your van into this canal and no one will ever find you.

“And Emily, the alligators will eat you.”

Julie’s son, just a baby, was screaming in the back fo the van having not eaten or been changed for hours.

While the sadistic man climbed on top of Julie and sexually assaulted her, she kept her eyes squeezed tight as to not look him in the face as he instructed.

“Every fibre of my being wanted to throw up,” she recalls. “I felt so sick.”

He had told Julie that he had recently got out of prison and that was why he had targeted her as he hadn’t had sex with a woman in months.

Once he had abused Julie, he drove them to an ATM as he wanted more cash from her and held her daughter with a knife to her head to make sure Julie didn’t get help when out of the car.

After Julie handed the cash over, he saw on the receipt there was more money in the account and demanded it.

As Julie had reached her transaction limit for the day, she convinced him to drive back into town to her usual bank, where she could sweet talk the bankers to take the cash out.

Convinced and blindsided by the money, he agreed, but warned her not to go inside the bank or he would drive off with her children.

She was screaming, ‘Don’t kill my mum.’

Julie Weil

She made her way to the ATM, bleeding and bruised from his physical attacks, but nobody stopped to see what was wrong.

Julie was unable to get any more money and he decided to punish her by taking her to a park and sexually assaulting her again.

This time, he had no idea the park was right next to where her parents lived and where Julie had grown up.

“It was so sick and twisted. In a city as big as Miami , what are the odds that he would show up and pull up on the side of the park I grew up my whole life playing at?” she said.

As Julie looked down the street, she could see her mum’s car in the driveway as she was once again sexually assaulted and beaten.

But in a split second, her kidnapper got up and drove her back to the car park outside of the church he took her from, into a shrub area that no one could see.

He contemplated aloud whether he should kill Julie and her children or not before taking the butcher’s knife and placing the blade on the back of her neck as he played with her hair.

He then turned to face her daughter, “He said to her, ‘Should I kill your mum now?’ She was screaming, ‘Don’t kill my mum,’” Julie said.

He pressed the knife further and Julie says she felt an instant wave of calmness as the abuse was about to be over for her.

“I was just waiting to die, and all of a sudden, I hear this piercing scream from my daughter and her shouting ‘I want my daddy, mummy get up,'” she added.

QUICK ESCAPE

At first Julie had no idea why Emily was so hysterical, but then she realised the kidnapper had got out of the car, and casually walked away.

Terrified he would come back, Julie jumped into the driver’s seat and went to her parents’ house to get help.

Naked and bleeding, she got her mum to settle the kids while she called the police .

When police arrived, Julie’s clothes and van were taken away for evidence and she had a rape test conducted.

However, her attacker had been meticulous about covering his tracks, burning his fingerprints and not leaving DNA behind.

But one tiny drop had been found on Julie’s top, which the police quickly put into their system, hoping to get a match as he had told Julie he was a convict.

While it could be linked to another rape case, the man wasn’t identified.

Three months later, police were called about a domestic violence case, where they took the man’s DNA, it turned out to match Julie’s attacker who was identified as Michael Siebert.

Once arrested, he confessed to doing the same thing to three other women in the Miami area and was finally sentenced to seven life sentences.

After the attack, Julie was homebound for six months as she was too traumatised to go outside.

LIFE NOW

But now, she has been able to use her experience to help others.

Since then, Julie has worked tirelessly on behalf of rape victims, creating the  Not Just Me  foundation, testifying before Congress about the importance of rape crisis centers and helping pass the SAFER Act, which tracks rape kits.

Weil admits it has been tough on her family, but she says knowing it wasn’t all for nothing has helped give them a purpose.

“We’re putting our lives back together,” she told People . “What’s been helpful for my kids in the healing process is giving a purpose to our pain.

“That’s how we’ve put our lives together as a family we’ve committed that this is our journey.”