In 1961, a man on a boat saw something incredible around the Bahamas, a little girl, almost dead, floating in the ocean on a small piece of wood. So how did Terry Jo Duperrault, who was only 11 at the time, get to float alone in the ocean? Her story will shock and amaze you as well.
Terry’s visit to that part of the world was to be her family’s journey of life. In fact, Dr. Arthur Duperrault, a 41-year-old ophthalmologist, and his wife, Jean, 38, had been raising money for this trip for years.
And of course, they wanted to take their children, 14-year-old Brian, 11-year-old Terry Jo, and 7-year-old Renee, and the trip had to be one they would never forget. So they rented a huge boat to take them on a week-long vacation in which they planned to explore the Bahamas.
On November 8, 1961, the ship landed safely, the captain was a certain Julian Harvey, who had also brought his wife, Mary. For 4 days the vacation went exactly as they had planned, pure fun and unforgettable adventures.
In fact, no one suspected anything when, on November 12, little Terry Jo decided to go to bed very early. However, she was awakened that night by her brother’s whispers and she knew immediately that something was wrong: “I was awakened by my brother’s screams repeating DAD, HELP ME!” Terry said only 50 years later, “It was that kind of scream that made you know for sure that something horrible was going on.”
Here’s what happened: Harvey, a 44-year-old military pilot, had a troubled past. He chose that night to kill his wife, whom he had married for only 4 months. The reason? He had taken out life insurance and wanted the money, he was going to declare it “lost at sea”.
However, things did not go according to plan, Dr. Duperrault saw what was happening, intervened, but he was also killed. Then, desperate because he didn’t want witnesses, he butchered the whole family. Only Terry escaped because he had gone to bed early in the cabin below.
Awakened, Terry saw his family in a pool of blood and went to the captain to ask what had happened, but Harvey pushed Terry under the deck, not long after the ship began to take water. Then the killer sank the ship, thinking that Terry would die too.
But when she realized she could survive, she took a knife and went after her, but the girl managed to get out and swim. She found a piece of wood, tied herself to it, and started to drift, so she stayed 3 days in a row, she says that she had lost all hope and that she had started to hallucinate.
Her killer was at large, and relatives advised her not to talk about what had ever happened to her. That’s what she did for 50 years: “I always thought I was saved for a reason, but it took me 50 years to gain the strength to give hope to others with my story,” says Terry. Now the woman has written a book about her experience:
