A wealthy Nebraska man was charged last month with kidnapping, terroristic threats and use of a weapon to commit a felony in a horrific in which he apparently tried to blow up one of his many homes while he and his ex-girlfriend — whom he had beaten to pulp — were inside.
And it wasn’t the first time Christopher Collins, 36, had beaten 42-year-old Jesserae Beck, KOLN reported.
Beck told the outlet that the two had been dating for about two years, on and off, when the relationship ended in July and Beck filed for a protection order, alleging that he had beaten and strangled her. The incident caused serious injuries, including broken ribs and a brain bleed. Collins was arrested on August 21 on a charge of assault by strangulation.
He was released on bond in early September. In late September, Beck went to court to asked for a dismissal of the protection order, saying that she and Collins had shared financial responsibilities and needed to communicate.
The next day, she disappeared.
Beck told KOLN she took Collins a home-cooked meal, telling her daughter she’d be back shortly, but never returned. And she missed an appointment with Lincoln Police the following morning. Police launched an immediate search, and a SWAT team burst into Collins’ home in northeast Lincoln, only to find the place empty but with a “very significant scene,” leading them to believe that Beck had been seriously injured.
According to court documents, they found chunks of human hair, blood splatter, and a large blood stain that had signs of an attempt to clean it up. The documents say they found surveillance video showing Collins’ Mercedes leaving the home before 7 a.m. that morning, and then further research found three additional homes in his name.
Late that night, armed with a no-knock warrant, a SWAT team burst into a home that Collins used as a rental, where they found Beck with severe injuries and a strong odor of natural gas throughout the home.
After a brief struggle, Collins was taken into custody and Beck was rescued. She was hospitalized with rib fractures, a brain bleed, and a fractured nose.
Beck provided a statement to police, saying that she remembered being in the kitchen with Collins at one of his homes and then nothing until she woke up in a bed in the rental, with Collins lying beside her waving around a silver pocket knife.
At one point, she said she heard banging noises and smelled gas, and thought that Collins planned to blow up the house. The next time she heard a loud explosion and glass breaking, she thought that was happeneing — but it was the SWAT team breaking in.
Beck spent two weeks hospitalized and now has metal pins in her ribs and a partially collapsed lung. She explained to KOLN that prior to this summer, Collins had never hurt her.
“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.”
“It was like he snapped into a completely different realm,” she added. “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 said Collins told her the assault was “really bad this time” and that he didn’t want her to “look at her face.” He asked her to kill him and when she refused, said he’d kill her and then himself.
“How did the person that I love so much bring us both here? Like, not only is he ruining my life, but he’s ruining his own,” Beck said. “And I couldn’t fathom what was going through his head, nor did I want to ask. I just knew that I needed to buy as much time as I could so that nothing bad happened to me.”
She said she lay in the bed, in pain, for hours before the rescue came — and that Collins got on top of her to strangle her as the SWAT team broke in.
“I remember Chris getting up after me and grabbing a glass bottle of Tito’s, and he slammed it on my head right here. And then he got on top of me trying to strangle me,” Beck said. “And then 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.”
Collins was arraigned last week and given a $10 million bond with conditions barring him from contacting Beck or her children, possessing weapons or ammunition, and traveling outside Nebraska. He will also have to surrender his passport, and is due back in court on November 6.
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[Featured image: Christopher Collins/Lancaster County Jail]
