She Was Held Captive In A Garage And Tortured For 4 Years, And She Escaped After Sneaking A Letter To A Postal Worker
A California woman suffered four years of heinous torture and was held captive in her abuser’s garage before he was ultimately arrested.
Now, her survival story has become a Lifetime movie entitled “Girl in the Garage: The Laura Cowan Story,” which premiered on January 18.
Laura, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, relocated to Santa Monica, California, in 1985. And at first, her life in the Golden State seemed happy.
While visiting a convenience store, she met a man who was preaching in a parking lot, and they hit it off. By 1991, Laura tied the knot with him, and they welcomed two children into the world together.
She and her husband owned two businesses together, a restaurant and a bookstore, and from the outside, things were fine.
Yet, authorities showed up at the restaurant one day and arrested Laura’s husband for trafficking illegal firearms. He was sentenced to serve five years behind bars.
Laura was left as a single mom, raising her two kids, with no funds or husband to rely on. That was when her captor, Mansa Musa Muhhamed, entered the picture. He offered to lend Laura a hand, and after she was introduced to his wife and children, she took his help.
She and her two kids shared Mansa’s Aguanga, California, home with his wife and their 13 children, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that he was very different behind closed doors.
“He was so angry all the time. It was like walking on eggshells around there. You have to be careful about what you say, and you don’t want to tick him off,” Laura remembered.
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“He would beat his children for the littlest things. He would beat them for not getting up in the morning for prayer. He would go in their room with a bucket of water and pour it on them.”
Laura gradually became more isolated within the house, and over time, her abuse at the hands of Mansa worsened.
She was rarely allowed out of the residence, and for days, he would refuse to give her food as punishment. Mansa also boarded up the home’s windows, locked the doors, and assaulted her.
Then, during the final six months she was held captive, Mansa made Laura and her kids live in the garage. The garage, which had no heat, food, water, or toilet, was even nailed shut to prevent them from escaping.
Laura had tried to escape and get help on various occasions. One day, she persuaded Mansa to allow her and the kids to go outside to the backyard.
She’d said they were going to do yard work, but instead, she tossed a note with the word “help” written on it into a neighbor’s yard.
This prompted a social worker to conduct a wellness check at Mansa’s residence, yet nothing came of it. The social worker reportedly looked in the cupboards, saw cereal boxes lined up, and deemed Mansa’s house as functional.
According to Laura, all of those cereal boxes were empty, but the social worker didn’t bother to check. She claimed that Mansa had “smooth-talked the guy.”
It wasn’t until Laura and Mansa went to a post office in Riverside County, California, in 1999 that her pleas for help were answered once and for all.
“Fearing that she would never make it out of that garage alive, she began to meticulously keep detailed accounts (via pieces of scrap paper she found throughout the garage) of the horrific daily abuse that she and her children endured,” reads Laura’s bio on her website, The Laura Cowan Story.
Prior to leaving for the unplanned post office visit, she hid the 12-page handwritten letter underneath her dress.
Laura was so nervous that she wasn’t sure if she should approach someone and hand them the letter or simply drop it on the ground in hopes that someone would see it and read it. Thankfully, a stranger happened to distract Mansa and start talking to him, which gave her a window of opportunity.
She reached down, grabbed the letter, and slid it toward a female clerk at the post office. Laura could tell that the clerk “knew” what was going on, and she took the letter.
“I never talked to her. We only made eye contact. And as I was going to the door, I looked back at her, and all she did was nod,” Laura recalled.
Within days, deputies from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office arrived at Mansa’s house on April 6, 1999. Laura answered the door and was told to get rid of them, but using her eyes, she was able to signal for help. The deputies understood, called for backup, and she was freed at last.
Mansa was later found guilty of various counts of felony child abuse, torture, and false imprisonment. He received seven life sentences.
Laura was shocked to find out that many of his kids were actually adults. One of Mansa’s sons, for instance, was 20 years old, but he weighed just 78 pounds.
Her husband had been released from prison as well, so following Mansa’s arrest, she was reunited with him. Laura had also delivered another daughter while being held captive, and she and her kids were working to recover from the traumatic experience together.
Sadly, Laura’s husband had a heart attack and died within a month of his prison release at only 45 years old. For Laura and especially her kids, who had “finally got their daddy again,” this was “devastating.”
“I knew then, after that, I had to leave California. There’s just too many bad memories here,” she said.
With her children in tow, Laura went back to Cleveland, and they all underwent eight years of therapy. Today, she is an award-winning speaker, educator, and activist who shares her story to raise awareness about domestic violence.
“But now I don’t call myself a survivor. I’m a thriver,” Laura noted.
She’s a graduate of Bryant & Stratton College, works in Resident Services as a Domestic Violence Advocate for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), and is involved with numerous organizations, including Coalition for a Better Life, Peace in the Hood, Black on Black Crime Inc, Positive Plus Support Group, and National Action Network (N.A.N).
Laura has also appeared on multiple programs, such as the Meredith Vieira Show and Anderson Cooper 360. Most recently, her experience has been made into a Lifetime movie, “Girl in the Garage: The Laura Cowan Story,” which premiered on Lifetime on January 18.
When asked what she hopes people walk away with after watching the film, Laura responded, “If I survived, you can, too. And there’s a way out. There’s hope out there. You’re not by yourself, you’re not alone, and there are resources out there available.”
“I want people to see and know that domestic violence is real. And we have lost so many lives of so many young women, and as I speak right now, someone is going through domestic violence. So they need to know how to get help, and at the end of the movie, they’ll show resources on how you can get out of that situation.”
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