Woman Tells Story of Kidnapping, Attempted Murder After SWAT Pulls Ex-Boyfriend Strangling Her Off

All she could think of as it was happening was buying a little more time and then buying a little more in the hopes that she could find a way to survive. The experience left her severely injured, per CBS affiliate KOLN, spending two weeks in the hospital.

Now, she has metal pins in her ribs, a partially collapsed lung and patches of hair still missing from the near-fatal ordeal, per the outlet.

Jesserae Beck, 42, spoke with the outlet over the weekend where she described the change in her on-again-off-again boyfriend Christopher Collins, 36, as abrupt after more than a year together.

"I met Chris in July of last year. We started seeing each other, going on dates," Beck told the news station, saying that their love language was cooking together and for one another. However, after a breakup in July, things almost immediately took a turn toward violence.

"He never laid a hand on me previously," she said. "Never would I have ever imagined that any of this would have ever taken place, to be honest."

In late August, Beck said that Collins "snapped into a completely different realm," culminating in an order of protection against him where she alleges he beat and strangled her inside one of his rental homes. According to the order, Beck said he slammed her head into the floor during the alleged assault, broke her ribs, punched her in the face, and threatened to kill her.

"It was hard for me to understand, like, why would you do this? Why would you have wasted all the things that you’ve built as a man, to hitting a woman and could possibly lose everything?" Beck mused. And yet, despite everything, Beck admits she was "more worried about him and how he was feeling in those moments."

The alleged incident led to Collins' arrest and an assault by strangulation charge, and yet the couple would again reconnect and even reportedly were talking about plans for IVF in the fall. In court on September 24, Beck asked for the order of protection to be lifted. That very night, she nearly lost her life.

According to the station, she left home to bring Collins a homecooked meal, telling her daughter she'd be right back. Instead, she woke from unconsciousness completely naked in one of Collins' rental properties the next day with no memory of what had happened. Her last memory before waking up was being in the kitchen with Collins, she said. She then woke up to discover multiple injuries on her body, including her head, face, ribs and back.

Beck told KOLN that he told her he'd hit her so hard he thought he killed her. "He actually thought I was dead, essentially, and he didn’t know what to do," she explained. "I’m waking up in a completely different house, but he wasn’t expecting me to wake up, I think was the thing."

She then described that surreal time in that property with Collins after he initially woke up "yelling, panicking, wondering where I'm at." Beck explained that she'd simply gotten up to go to the bathroom and then went to lie down in another bedroom as she was still feeling sick.

"At this point, I had no idea what had happened. It’s like my body was in a state of shock or something." But after his outburst, she said she laid next to him and -- with no memory of her own of what had happened -- listened to Collins retell it.

"Listening to a man tell you what he did to you, and you have to lay next to him for several hours, all while he’s telling you how much he loves you, and that we were so close to the end; that was hard for me to process," she explained.

All the while, Beck said she was lying there bloodied, bruised and in physical pain. The alleged abuse she couldn't recall, she explained, was purportedly "really bad this time," as she said Collins told her, to the point he said, "I don't want to look at your face."

She said that after his freakout while she was in the bathroom, "he asked me if I would slit his throat, and I said, 'I cannot do that and I will not do that.'" She said he asked her why not, as it would mean she could get help for herself, with Beck saying she responded, "I will not watch somebody I love bleed out by the hands of myself.'"

His alleged response to that was to tell her, "Well, then I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill myself.'"

And yet, Beck again said that she felt this divide within her, wondering how he could be doing this not only to her, but to both of them. "Like, not only is he ruining my life, but he’s ruining his own."

"And I couldn’t fathom what was going through his head, nor did I want to ask," she said. "I just knew that I needed to buy as much time as I could so that nothing bad happened to me."

She recalled Collins later telling her that he was glad she had not killed him, promising that he would take her for help the next day and turn himself in. But she also remembered hearing loud sounds and a strong smell of natural gas. Collins told her it was someone working on a line in the area, she told KOLN, but she didn't buy that.

"In the back of my head, I knew what he had done," she explained. "He had zero intention of both of us making it out."

Still struggling with her injuries, Beck said she remembered falling asleep while praying, "Please, somebody find me. I do not want to end my life here on this note.'"

She woke to the sound of banging, which she told the outlet she thought was the house exploding. It was a law enforcement SWAT team breaking into the house. But even as that was happening, Beck alleges that Collins tried one last time to at least end her life as she got up to see what was happening.

"I remember Chris getting up after me and grabbing a glass bottle of Tito’s, and he slammed it on my head," she told KOLN. "And then he got on top of me trying to strangle me."

The next thing she says she remembers is "SWAT attacking him. And I remember looking up and there was like three or four guns right above my head and this man grabbing my hand and getting me out."

Beck said that a SWAT officer told her, "You’re the girl that everybody’s been looking for," but she had no idea that there was any manhunt going on. "I think you must have the wrong girl," she told KOLN she replied.

But they did not, with the news station reporting at the time that a search for Beck and Collins began almost immediately that morning after she failed to return home. She also missed an appointment she had with Lincoln Police Department Assistant Chief Jason Stille that morning.

According to the outlet, SWAT initially burst into Collins' home at around 10:30 a.m. While they did not find Collins or Beck, they did find what was described by investigators as a "very significant scene," with court documents detailing blood splatter, chunks of human hair and a large blood stain with evidence of attempts to clean it up.

After spotting Collins' Mercedes leaving his home at 6:41 a.m. on Thursday, September 25, police uncovered that he owned a total of four homes. That led investigators to secure a nighttime, no-knock, sealed search warrant, granted at 10:41 p.m. that night.

It was just 18 minutes later that the SWAT team served the warrant, discovered both Beck and Collins inside the home, along with a strong odor of natural gas throughout the structure, per court documents. They described the gas readings as nine percent of the lower explosive limit in the household, so Beck's fears of a possible explosion were valid.

"I don’t know how much longer it would have lasted before we blew up," she told KOLN in her latest interview. "But he would have blown up not just us, but he would have blown up a couple more houses on top of us. So not only would my life have been gone, but somebody else’s innocent lives would have been gone as well. And that is a hard pill to swallow, too."

"I want to lift up Jesserae Beck," Stille told KOLN. "This is why we do this job. It’s for the Jesserae’s in our community. And she was a warrior. And she turned seconds into minutes and stretched minutes into hours to allow us to find her."

Speaking over the weekend, Beck detailed the extent of her injuries for the news station, which notes that she now has to use a walker for balance. "I just knew that I was in really bad shape," she explained. But she had no idea the full extent of what she'd endured physically.

"I was told that he broke all of my ribs on my left side. I had a fractured sternum, which I still have now," she revealed. "I have severe bleeding on my brain in the frontal lobe area. He busted my nose and a facial bone, and then obviously my face was swollen really bad. I had bruises and black eyes and things that makeup can kind of cover up now, but you can still see some of them."

"But also internal wounds that I will never forget, because not only did he break all my ribs, he punctured a lung that filled up with air and blood," she added. "And I had four severe displaced rib fractures that they had to put metal on my ribs, which I will have for the rest of my life."

Now, she said, she finds she's still struggling with the why. "Why would you do that to me?" she said she finds herself asking, "Because I’m sorry, but I was so good to that person. Like, I’m not perfect. Nobody’s perfect. He wasn’t perfect either. But ... being with him, I realized how good of a woman I actually was."

Now, she said, she has to "start over," while also being totally afraid to reach for the same dreams she was pursuing before. "I have to tell myself I can’t go searching for that anymore," she said of the dreams and goals she had just two months ago. "It’s only going to lead me to more bad things that I don’t want."

And through it all, Beck said she has to "learn to un-love a person," as she still doesn't "want any ill-will or harm" to her alleged attacker. "That’s just not who I am as a person and that’s not how my heart is built. I’ll continue to pray for him that he gets the help that he deserves and he needs, and I will always thank him for the good times that he did provide me."

"And I’m sad that it got to this point," she added.

Collins was arrested and faces multiple charges, including kidnapping and terroristic threats. His next court date is set for November 6. He's facing the possibility of life in prison.