Mary Sue Stauffer taught Ming Sen Shiue. 15 years later, he kidnapped her and her 8yo daughter.

Warning: This post deals with sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers. 

"Hello, Dad?" 

"Yes, Bethy. Are you ok?... When can you come home?"

"I don’t know."

Those were a few of the words eight-year-old Beth Stauffer managed to exchange with her dad during an FBI- tapped phone call on Father's Day in 1980. 

Beth and her 36-year-old mother Mary, a former high school teacher, had been missing for weeks after being kidnapped. 

Their abductor allowed them to make a phone call home after he forced them into his car at gunpoint when leaving a hair salon weeks earlier on Friday May 16, 1980.

That day, the daughter and mother-of-two had decided to get haircuts before their family would fly overseas for a missionary trip to the Philippines in a few days' time.

After making their way back to their car, the man approached them and held a gun to Beth's side. 

At the time, Mary had no idea who he was or what he wanted with them - only that he demanded they get into his car. 

"The reality was, there was no place for me to understand what was really happening at the time of the abduction," Mary later told People. 

"I knew I was scared, and I know she was scared and I knew he was angry. That’s really what I knew at that moment."

Mary would later learn the man behind the gun was someone she knew 15 years ago. He was her former student she taught in a ninth-grade math class at a Minnesota high school - Ming Sen Shiue.

Shiue, who Mary later described as a "bright" and "capable" student, had developed a dangerous obsession with the 36-year-old. He had stalked her family and tried to kidnap her on at least four other occasions before he eventually succeeded. 

After being forced inside Shiue's car, the 29-year-old demanded Mary drive to a remote location, where he bounded Mary and Beth’s hands and stuffed them into the trunk before driving off. 

Inside the trunk, the mother and daughter began praying loudly, prompting Shiue to stop the car and cover their mouths with tape. 

Shiue later stopped the car again when he opened the trunk to find Mary had partially freed her daughter. 

Furious over the attempted escape, he threatened to kill them both if they tried anything again. 

That’s when two young boys passing by noticed something wasn't right - one of them was six-year-old Jason Wilkman. 

Wilkman walked over to the car and spotted Mary and Beth in the trunk. 

"Whoa," he said, before Shiue hurled him into the trunk and drove away. 

The next time the car stopped, Shiue threw Wilkman out of the trunk and fatally struck him on the head with a metal rod. 

The six-year-old's body was left in the woods as Shiue drove off. 

Shiue later arrived at his house in Roseville, Minnesota, where he locked Mary and Beth in a wardrobe that was 21 inches (53 centimetres) wide and four feet (1.2 metres) long.

The next day, he took Mary out of the wardrobe and revealed his identity. 

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Held hostage for 53 days. 

For the next seven and a half weeks, the wardrobe - which contained a single light with a pull cord, two throw pillows and a rug on the floor - became Mary and Beth's home. 

Chained together, they were told if they ever tried to escape, Shiue would kill them and their family.

"Every day we wondered if it was going to be our last day," Mary told People. "We had no confidence that we would get through it alive."

According to the publication, Shiue would also sexually assault Mary, which he would videotape. 

"When he would take her out for the rape sessions, he never had me know about any of that," Beth told Fox News. "They kept it from me. I was locked away in a closet, so I was removed from it. Those times I was alone... there was fear and loneliness."

"He also threatened to kill us... but the reality is, killing us was not his end goal. His end goal was, he was obsessed with my mother and he wanted us to be with him."

Beth quickly noticed the more the pair were "difficult" for Shiue, the more he became angry and "things [became] worse for us." 

"If we’re nice and if we’re pleasant, he becomes more pleasant. The truth of the matter is, the more kind we were to somebody who is being awful to us, the better our situation was," she told the publication. 

Looking back, Mary credits her faith for keeping the pair alive during a time they felt completely "hopeless". 

"It was no insurance policy that we would come out of there alive... But we knew that [God] wouldn’t desert us. He would be with us no matter what happens. We had to believe that."

Mary and Beth's escape. 

Then, on July 7, while Shiue was working at his local electronics store, a thought flashed into Mary's head. 

She remembered how her father used to take hinge pins out of doors. 

Holding the door with one hand, she used her other to pull the pin out of the door.

"It came out just like it was greased... it was a miracle," she told the publication. 

Finally, they had a chance to escape. But Beth started to panic. 

"She said, 'Mama, don’t do it. Mummy, you know what he said. If he finds us escaping, he’s going to kill us. Just wait for the police.'"

Sitting her down in a chair, Mary tried to talk some sense into Beth. 

"[I] said ‘Listen, Beth, if God has given us this way of escape, we have to take it. Sure, it’s dangerous. If Ming comes home and finds us escaping, he’s going to kill us... But I can’t fight against you. We have to work together in this.'"

And so they did. 

Once freed, Mary called the police and hid with her daughter in Shiue's backyard until officers showed up. 

Shiue was soon arrested at his workplace and went on to stand trial for kidnapping the mother and daughter. 

During the trial, Shiue attempted to lunge towards Mary while she was on the witness stand.

"I turned, and the defendant Ming Shiue had gotten out of his chair on the other side of counsel table and was coming up, going after Mrs. Stauffer, the witness. So I just kind of instinctively grabbed him," Thomas Berg, the former U. S. Attorney, told A&E Real Crime.

Shiue later slashed Mary across the face with a knife when she was testifying during his second trial for the murder of Jason Wilkman, the publication reports. 

He was later found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crime. He was also sentenced to another 40 years for the murder of Wilkman. 

In July 2010, Shiue was denied parole and has remained in prison to this day. 

Where Mary and Beth are now. 

42 years on, Mary and Beth have moved on with their lives, determined not to let the ordeal define them. 

After the trials, the family moved to the Philippines to carry out Christian missionary work.

Mary has since retired and Beth and her brother now have children of their own.

Their story of survival also inspired 2019 film Abducted: The Mary Stauffer Story, which Mary said shows other survivors that they’re not alone. 

"I think many people have gone through really bad things; many women have been raped," she told People. "They need to see that there’s life after this."

Mary and Beth Stauffer in 2019. Image: Inside Edition. 

Looking back, Beth told Fox News, "It’s very easy to let the tragedies of our lives define us or become the thing that… creates who we are, but they don’t have to".

"Good things can still happen after tragedy and [you] can still have a good life. He had... 53 days, where our lives were basically hell, where he had us and he had control, but he does not get to have the rest of our lives."

Feature Image: Bruce Bisping/Star Tribune/Getty.

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