It's cold and dark, and there's literally no one around for miles.

Ah, human body lies in the midst of this nothingness.

His hands were bound behind his back.

His legs were bound together.

He's not moving.

He's bloody questions.

What happened here?

What happened?

Indeed, Now I've spent years covering what has to be one of the most incredible stories I've ever heard about, and it all began in Newport Beach, California Newport Beach is a beach community.

If you have more money than you know what to do with a lot of people move to Newport Beach.

Beverly Hills is fine, but you can't have your yacht in Beverly Hills.

Just beautiful sparkling ocean sailboats, beautiful people, not at all the kind of place where you would expect something terrible happened.

Mary Barnes had just come to California from Florida.

Mary has just moved into this house with her boyfriend and his roommate, this guy Michael.

Now we've agreed to only use Michael's first name and not to show his face.

Michael had been running a room in the house for about eight months, and Mary had just moved in with her boyfriend, like, two days before.

So Michael was suddenly her brand new roommate, too.

There's a four bedroom house a block from the beach.

It was just a nice house when you first met him.

Your roommate.

Do you recall what your impression was of him?

Yeah.

Um, he was a very friendly guy.

Kind like a teddy bear.

I kind of wanna hug him.

She has no idea who he is or even what business season.

She essentially knows nothing about this guy.

28 year old Michael Waas.

A young businessman.

He took advantage of the new laws in California that allowed the sale of medical marijuana.

He's in the marijuana business, but he's not a shady drug dealer.

He is a legitimate businessman.

Yes, a legitimate businessman.

But with one odd twist.

Now, medical marijuana was legal in the state of California, but illegal federally.

That meant that people like Michael couldn't do business with banks.

That means no credit cards, no checks, thistles.

A cash only business for unscrupulous people.

You looking to get cash?

You know who has cash?

Typical Monday night.

Early fall here in Southern California.

We're talking 70 degrees clear sky.

There's two people inside the house.

There's Michael, and there's Mary.

That particular night her boyfriend was out of town on business.

Both of them were sleeping on the second, for Mary was sleeping in the master bedroom and Michael was sleeping on a couch in the recreation room.

They could not even imagine the night that they were about tohave right around 2 30 in the morning.

All chaos breaks.

Sudden masked men are in this house.

Mary wakes up a cold piece of metal on the back of her neck, and she immediately realizes it's the barrel of a gun.

A man leaned down next to my ear and whispered, Don't worry, this is not about you.

You slept piece of tape on my mouth, and then he zip, tied my hands.

Is it tied my ankles together.

She is blindfolded and is immediately taken out of bed.

Is he's carrying her downstairs?

She can hear the cries for my and Michael is fighting for his life.

At that point, they asked him once, Where's the money?

And he said, I have $2000 in a sock in the drawer in my room Not that the $1,000,000 $1,000,000 Where's the $1,000,000?

Within just a few minutes, I heard them dragging him down the steps.

Each time he hits a step bang, bang, bang, he has no clue who this is or why it's happening.

He just knows everything is a nightmare.

It's not until they hear a vehicle pull up that they realize that this is much, much worse than they thought.

They're not stealing from him.

They're actually getting kidnapped Him suspects loaded Michael and Mary into their vehicle.

Two of the men are in the back with Mary and Michael, while 1/3 is driving.

We can only imagine the terror we were definitely on a highway.

Kept bouncing, was on my side.

Michael's taking a CZ brutal beatings you could possibly imagine.

Do you hear what's going on next year?

James.

It was horrible.

They beat him repeatedly all over his body with a rubber hubs.

He's also getting shocked with a stun gun, getting burned by a blow torch, continuously asking for one thing, the $1,000,000.

It's really heinous.

This man has no mercy, he kept saying.

I don't have a $1,000,000.

Did he offer them something else He did.

He said I have $100,000 in the safety deposit box.

Like I can get it for you tomorrow.

What did they say?

Not good enough.

She hears him grunting and pain.

And this goes on for hours.

And you're saying that the whole time your roommate was being tortured the entire time Are you thinking Is this ever gonna end?

Yeah.

At one point, even in blindfolds they can tell that they slow down.

It appears they've gotten off the highway because they can hear the crunch of grab.

I was just filled with terror.

A gut feeling of these could be my last moments on Earth.

It's like something out of a like a gangster.

Like where you take somebody when you want to get rid of that.

I was praying.

I was praying a lot.

I didn't want to die.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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