It Could Have Been Me: Anne Croney

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Ann, can you start by telling me your name and who you are?

Sure, I'm Ann Croney, and I'm the one that got away from Patrick Nicholas.

Got away alive and safe.

That's Ann Croney, a remarkable woman who survived an attempted attack by Patrick Nicholas back in 1983 when she was just 21 years old.

I met Ann while reporting on the story of of Sarah Yarbrough, another young woman attacked by Nicholas eight years later.

Tragically, Sarah died.

I'm Natalie Morales of 48 Hours.

So much of our work at 48 Hours focuses on the stories of victims who didn't survive.

But what about those like Anne who lived to tell?

From 48 Hours, this is It Could Have Been Me.

And today I'm joined by 48 Hours field producer Lauren Clark.

And Lauren, we're here to talk about Anne Croney's story, but before we do, I think it's important that people understand the case of Sarah Yarbrough.

Yeah, so Sarah had been, she was a 16-year-old girl living in kind of the suburbs of Seattle back in 1991 when she was found strangled on her high school campus.

It was a horrible case for the people of the community.

You know, it was a December day.

It seems she had missed the time for a drill team practice.

She had thought she had to get there early, but the rest of the team wasn't arriving for another hour or so.

So she had pulled into the parking lot in her car.

Not many people, like no one was around.

And she was found just about 300 feet from her car, strangled.

She was still partially clothed in her drill team uniform, and there was a pile of clothes found nearby her body in the grass.

Investigators at the time believed her murder had been sexually motivated, but they didn't have really a ton to go on.

They did like rounded up the usual suspects and, you know, really worked the case.

but for almost 30 years, Sarah's case went unsolved.

Yes, and it's important to note the clothing that Sarah was wearing and the clothing on the side.

There was DNA evidence.

But again, this was 1991 and DNA technology had not evolved yet to the point where we are today.

So investigators did their part.

They preserved very carefully that evidence, but they knew, Lauren, that at some point in time that they would hopefully be able to get clues and to be able to verify and use that DNA to hopefully find a match down the road.

As you said, for a long time, the case went cold for nearly 30 years until a forensic genetic genealogist was able to crack the case.

She was hired to track some new leads.

Yeah, in 2019, this forensic genetic genealogist went through and basically reverse engineered finding a match to the genetic profile that they had at the scene.

And she narrowed it down to these two brothers, one of whom had been incarcerated.

So he was in the federal database.

He was in CODIS.

So it wasn't him.

And that's when they focused on Patrick Leon Nicholas.

And what investigators did with the King County Sheriff's Department, he still lived in the Seattle area.

So they followed him.

They found him.

They trailed him.

They actually went to a laundromat where he was doing laundry and watched as he smoked a cigarette.

and then watched him discard the cigarette outside the laundromat right on the sidewalk there.

And when he went back inside, they ran, they grabbed that cigarette, packaged it up securely and sent it to a lab.

And the DNA from that cigarette was a match to the DNA that had been found on Sarah's clothes all those years ago.

So then, Lauren, how did you come to find out and hear about Ann Crony's story?

So in early 2023, Patrick Nicholas went on trial for the murder of Sarah Yarborough.

And right before trial, we had learned through some pretrial motions that Patrick Nicholas actually had a prior criminal record.

The judge had ruled that that evidence wouldn't be allowed at trial, but we were able to read through and we knew that there had been some previous attacks.

And I heard as we were at trial talking to people,

there were kind of whispers like, you know, one of the victims is here.

And it was kind of this remarkable, like, oh my gosh, how could someone be here to take that on?

I didn't know who it was at the time, but we did learn that back in the early 1980s, Patrick Nicholas had served time as a juvenile for raping two women and attempting to rape a third.

Reading through the case files, we learned that he had approached multiple women at their cars.

He would kind of casually strike up a conversation with them and then pull a knife and order them to undress.

So this brings us now to Ann Croney's remarkable story.

And let's go back in time to 1983 in Richland, Washington.

That's about 200 miles from where Sarah Yarborough was found dead.

Now, Anne was just 21 years old at the time.

She was a server at a restaurant.

She was also a lifeguard.

She loved the water and specifically the Columbia River.

So that's an important part of the story because on June 13th, 1983, the day all of this happened, Anne said she had just tragically lost one of her really good friends and she just wanted to sit alongside the river to think.

Here's her story.

So I pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car and sat on the bumper of my car.

And you're sitting there thinking, having some time to yourself, how quickly before a man approached you?

It wasn't long.

It was

maybe a few minutes.

And

he walked up to me and

started a conversation.

I don't remember exactly how the conversation started, but he

introduced himself, said his name was Pat,

and he was new in town.

And he was

working on

an old building in town called the Griggs Building that was

empty and he was working on a remodel.

I knew the space well.

I knew the story he was talking about.

I knew everything about it and he didn't.

He didn't seem to know anything.

He seemed to be kind of making things up.

As you listen to that, I mean, Lauren, what struck us, I mean, already her instinct, sort of her spidey senses are going off.

Something is off here with this guy.

She knows that space well that she's talking about, the Griggs building.

She's like, nothing seems to be adding up.

He's acting strange, but

he's a good-looking guy.

She described him as youngish.

He's got blondish hair, glasses, a mustache, but she's getting a really bad vibe from him, right?

Her alarms were going off in her head at that point.

So another fact, as they continued to talk, Nicholas told her he couldn't swim.

And again, that really struck Anne as being odd because that area along the Columbia River, there, like it gets hot in the summer.

It is dry, and swimming, and water skiing, and just all sorts of activities along the water.

It's what everyone does there in the summer.

So, for him to say that, it just really stuck out to her.

And overall, it's just as he keeps talking, she's kind of placating him, but she's just getting a very weird vibe from him all along.

I noticed his voice was getting shaky

and I told him I had to go.

So I went around and got into my car and my door was open and I had a two-seater sports car and he knelt next in between the door and me and I got in your way?

I was in the car.

So I got in the car and the door was open and he knelt down between the door and me and

told me his name.

He gave me his name and phone number and he asked for my phone number and I gave it to him and I went to close the door and he put a knife to my throat.

And what was he saying as he put the knife to your throat?

He told me not to scream.

He told me to take my clothes off.

So I did take my clothes off and as I was doing that I noticed a couple of people walking to a car that was parked sort of nearby and I did scream

but he put the knife to my throat a little harder and pushed me down and laid on top of me so they couldn't see me.

It's really hard to hear Anne describing those moments just to think about the terror that must have been going through her mind.

She told us, you know, in After he put the knife to her throat, he actually took her underwear and put them in her mouth almost as a sort of gag so that she wouldn't keep screaming, so that she wouldn't be heard.

Right.

And there were people nearby pulling up into the parking lot.

So she was trying to get people to notice and to come help her.

But talk about that terrifying few minutes for her.

Well, we learn from Ann then what happens next.

He told me to get out of the car and he had a shirt that he put over my head.

He actually told me to put it on and I refused.

So he put it over my head and put my left arm through it and grabbed the back of it and shoved me towards the bank of the river.

And we started walking and we got about halfway down the bank and he told me to stop.

And I didn't.

Instead of stopping, I pulled the shirt off over my head and ran down the bank and dove into the river and swam.

Because at that time I was thinking he told me he couldn't swim.

So I swam out and swam as hard as I could.

Swam for your life.

I swam for my life.

All I had on was my tennis shoes.

And I swam to a dock and started screaming for help.

Wow.

I mean, to have the presence of mind to be thinking in that moment, he told me he can't swim.

And to see that, that is your opportunity.

You know, every time I hear that, I just get goosebumps because even as she was reliving that moment, you could just see

the terror in her eyes and just feel the emotion of that.

Truly remarkable.

Yeah.

And just talk about all the moments of luck here, all the things that happened for her to be able to put that together that he couldn't swim, that he was leading her towards that riverbank.

You know, we went down there to film it and it is, it's very steep.

It's very hard to just jump right down there.

So once she swam for her life and made it to the dock, thankfully, there were people there and she was able to get help.

And the police came to her help as soon as she arrived there.

And so she was able to tell police, this happened to me and his name is Pat and gave them a good description of who they were looking for.

And based off of his name and his description, the local police pretty soon realized that Pat was likely this man, Patrick Nicholas, who had just recently been released from a halfway house nearby for those previous attacks that he had committed on a juvenile.

So police went to track him down.

They visited his apartment.

He wasn't there.

They suspected he must have fled, gotten out of town really quickly, but they did find some key evidence there.

They found the notebook that Anne had remembered writing her number down in.

And I think they actually found a piece of the page torn out where he tried to give her his number.

So after they searched his apartment, we're like, okay, this is probably our guy.

They went to the airport and found out that Patrick Nicholas had hopped a flight soon afterwards and gotten out of town.

They tracked him down to the Midwest and within a few weeks, they arrested him.

And he actually pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted rape.

He was sentenced back then to what was the maximum sentence that he could receive, and that was 10 years in prison.

So, Ann assumed, rightfully so, that he's safely locked away for those 10 years, all of those 10 years in Washington State Prison.

But it turns out, in 1987, Nicholas is let out early on parole.

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So Anne was never notified.

Police never told her, never sent her a letter or anything to let her know that the guy who did this to you, he is now out.

She told us though, Lauren, that she tried really hard within those years to kind of put this out of her mind and she didn't want it to have a major impact on her life.

All of that changed, though, in 2019.

Here's Anne again.

The police knocked on my door in Portland and said

that there were detectives in Seattle that wanted to talk to me about a cold case.

And I had no idea what they were talking about.

And they wanted to come interview me about it.

So that was the first I'd heard of it.

And how did you feel hearing about what happened to Sarah?

What did they tell you about her story?

They told me that there were similarities in the cases.

And

I was

crushed.

It's this part in the interview, I remember, this is where Anne just kind of paused and broke down.

She'd been really kind of strong through that interview and was just recounting things.

But I think, you know, this is describing the realization that Sarah Yarborough's murder was in any way connected to what had happened to her so many years ago.

And she, I think, was dealing with, as she described to us, her own version of survivor's guilt, you know, once she realized how her story and Sarah's were connected tragically.

Yeah.

It

had never occurred to me that what I escaped from

was a murder.

I just

had always figured I had escaped from a rapist,

which you can survive a rapist.

You can

get past it.

You can't get past

murder.

And the fact that she was only 16

was really hard to hear.

And then when I found out that he had been released early and this happened when he was supposed to be in prison

for what he did to you.

For what he did to me

really affected me.

A lot of people, I bet you were angry, a lot of it.

I was very angry.

When he

was arrested for what he did to you, he confessed.

And he wrote in his confession, I realize I have a problem concerning raping girls.

You had never heard that?

No.

No.

So

he says that, and he ended up serving.

So why was he let out after three and a half years?

What a little fair.

No, I didn't know that.

You know, f.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

So that's the part you didn't hear on our 48 hours episode, obviously, because of the language.

Now, you know, we all kind of laughed a little bit at that, but usually humor is a coping mechanism, and that was the case here.

This was truly a very traumatic experience and memory for Anne.

And

especially, you know, learning that he did not complete his full sentence and then hearing that detail that she only heard now for the very first time that he had told police at the time that he had a problem raping girls, trying to rape girls.

And yet he was able to get out early on parole, which she just was clearly very angry.

But at the same time, she had to laugh at the insanity of it all.

I remember in that interview, she had been so strong.

And then it just kind of broke through.

And yeah, you hear us laughing in the background because we're all crying and then hearing.

It just gave us a moment of levity, I think, just having her real life reaction.

I think it just made us all so grateful that she was able to speak so freely and to just...

tell it like it is with us.

And I remember like we weren't really sure how far she'd want to go.

We'd wanted to be very sensitive with this because we knew it was a lot for her to come forward, you know, using her name to come on TV to talk about this.

We actually were in this really incredible space because we wanted her to feel very comfortable.

It was like a horse ranch.

It was my version of paradise.

And there was horse therapy right outside the door.

So after this interview, we all went out and we were petting the horses because we needed it.

I mean, it was just really such a powerful interview.

And she just gave us so much.

Absolutely.

I mean, her strength just stuck out to us all along.

And even going back to the trial, I mean, so I was there.

We were hearing in these whispers that there was a victim there.

And it was almost inconceivable.

I mean, like, wait, what, how could someone have the strength to come and do this?

And learning that it almost brought this back full circle for her, that she had thought she had done her duty back in 1983, that she had put away this bad guy, that the justice system had worked for her.

And then, so learning that it had failed Sarah Yarborough by him being let out early so that he was able to attack Sarah Yarborough, she felt like she had to be there.

She had to see justice truly be done this time around.

I mean, she was there for as much of the trial as she could be.

You were there, Lauren.

I mean, there was so much emotion.

It was a packed courtroom.

Her friends, her family, they were all there.

They were there to witness this moment nearly 30 years later.

That speaks to the kind of woman that Sarah Yarbrough was.

She was a connector.

I've actually never seen anything like this.

And it was almost overflowing.

Everybody, usually in a trial, there's like the victim side, the victim's family side, and then the defendant side.

And in this, there were just so many people there.

So this brings us to how Anne Croney came into the courtroom and where she sat.

You know, the courtroom's full.

So she goes and chooses to sit right behind Patrick Nicholas because that was the open spot.

I was sitting there thinking, I could easily jump up.

and put my hands around his neck or I could slam his face into the table.

That would be great.

I thought, no, I don't think anybody else would really appreciate that.

So.

Order in the court.

And so it's interesting because it made me think the

two of Sarah's friends that they first saw you get behind him.

They're like, is she with him?

No.

And then they cornered you.

They said they got out into the hallway and they were like, who are you?

Like wanting to know what you were there for.

Yes.

So they hadn't heard your story yet or about you.

I guess the judge wouldn't allow that.

Yeah.

I think they they must have heard something because

they did ask my connection and I said, I believe I told them I was the one that got away.

And it took them a second and then

they full embrace.

Yes.

Yeah.

Wonderful people.

Oh my gosh.

Wonderful people.

Sarah's been gone a long time, but they could hug Ann.

And they have remained friends with Ann Crony, which is remarkable.

The thing that I heard in court was that one of his survivors is here and she's a badass.

And then I remember, I just gave her my card very tactfully.

I don't know if you want to talk, but then I remember at your interview with her, Natalie, we were sitting there.

We're just like, she's a badass.

Like,

totally, I get it.

Yep.

And Natalie, in your interview, you asked her what Nicholas looked like when she saw him in court.

And here was her response.

Can I say him?

Yes, go ahead.

He'll be like a piece of shit.

I mean, he just looked like an old piece of.

You know, he was young when I saw him.

He was young.

Vital comes to mind, fairly attractive.

And he's just an old piece of shit now.

Sorry.

You heard the anger there.

She was still, you know, living in that moment.

But

even though she was struck by the fact that his appearance had changed, but she said looking at him and staring at him in the eyes, she saw those same evil eyes staring back at her.

They were the same.

So after the jury found Patrick Nicholas guilty of the murder of Sarah Yarbrough, Anne was able to finally speak her truth by giving a victim impact statement during the sentencing hearing.

Let's listen to some of that.

We rely on a system of justice that is designed to protect us from predators like Nicholas.

And this system failed me.

It failed Sarah, her family, friends, and countless others.

I asked the court to please not make the same mistake.

And I don't know if Nicholas knew that she was there until this moment.

And she stood up and she gave it to him.

And she told the judge, like, hey, don't mess this up again.

I can't imagine the feeling that she had inside of her to do that.

It must have been so scary and so intimidating at first.

But she told you, like, it was really that community and that love from Sarah's friends and family that really helped her get up there and put it all out there.

Yeah.

And he was, you know, and the judge did sentence him to 46 years in prison um

so he's not gonna get out anytime soon and and i think an important detail was that anne has a daughter as well at the time of the trial who was sarah yarbrough's age 16 years old and how much that probably impacted her as she was saying those words Yeah.

And she talked with you in her interview about how like they have had talks about how

when something happens, what to do when you're attacked, that you fight.

And if you're lucky, really, like the luck here is so essential.

If you can put those pieces together, you can get away.

She was able to really follow her instincts there.

And again, the luck of being near the water and knowing that he couldn't swim, her gut telling her that something was off.

She was able to have the presence of mind to recall all of this.

to get away.

So, I mean, just her thinking that, all right, I've got to protect my kid here, give her the tools she could use.

I mean, it's really, really impactful.

Yeah, I mean, truly

everything sort of lined up in order for her to be able to survive.

There was also a moment, what I love about Anne is that she told us she wanted to take back that part of her life.

She decided to do a triathlon that summer after Nicholas's murder trial, diving right back into those very waters of the Columbia River that saved her life.

And she started by parking in the exact same spot that she did in that parking lot in the park where the attack occurred.

Take a listen.

The parking lot's the same.

The trees have grown up, so it looks different, but the the bank is a lot steeper than I thought it was.

And further up from the river, it's about 10 feet.

So I was surprised.

pretty proud of myself for what I'd done because

it was pretty amazing that I was able to do that.

There was a reason that I was meant to do that and I was able to do that.

But doing the triathlon was interesting.

I didn't have any odd or bad feelings.

Swimming in the river was great.

Do you feel like you reclaimed that?

I do because the swim took off at the same dock that I was rescued on.

So

I do.

I felt like I reclaimed all of that and

there's no fear to stop me from doing what I love to do.

I just, we just loved that moment so much.

Even after going through hearing about Sarah Yarbrough's death, going through the trial, stepping forward, she was like, you know what?

I want to get back there and I want to show that I can do this and I'm going to reclaim this.

It's just incredible.

And I think you hear a lot of survivors who say that.

They say, I wanted to, you know, get myself back, take my power back.

And in doing that triathlon, she did.

I think it's so important that we tell these survivors stories because I think we can all learn so much from them as well.

What it takes to do something when something feels off or doesn't feel right, what it takes to speak up, what it takes to fight back, to scream as loud as you can possibly scream.

She did all of that and then some.

And then at the end of the day, she got her peace with justice.

Lauren, I have to thank you so much for joining me.

And of course, I have to say our thanks as well to Ann Crony.

And thanks to all of you who have listened.

And be sure to stay tuned for more stories from courageous individuals like Anne.

By following and listening to 48 Hours, It Could Have Been Me on Tuesdays on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

I'm Natalie Morales for 48 Hours.