[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18887]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       OUTLAW OF THE UNDERGROUND

  Mr. POE. Request permission to take Mr. Burton's time and speak out 
of order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from Texas 
is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, it is said that justice is the one thing that 
you should always find. And hopefully we will find justice soon. Just a 
few days ago in South Carolina, on an afternoon like every afternoon 
throughout America, school buses take children home, and this 
particular school bus dropped off a 14-year-old girl named Elizabeth 
near her home so she could walk through this rural place where she 
lived.
  Soon after getting off the school bus, though, she came in contact 
with a local villain. His name is Vincent Filyaw, 37 years old. He 
started talking to Elizabeth. He kidnapped her. He took her to the 
woods. He was posing as a police officer. And after he finally walked 
her around so she could be disoriented about where she was, he took her 
to a hole in the ground, 15 feet deep, where he kept her for 10 days.
  In this hole in the ground, the cover of it was a piece of plywood. 
Down in this hole he had a camp stove, he had another hole dug for a 
toilet, he had a shelf and some dirty cooking utensils. It looked like 
an underground outhouse. I have seen photographs of it.
  This was Elizabeth's dark dungeon of depravity for 10 days. He had 
booby-trapped this hole in the ground so that when he was gone, and if 
she tried to leave, it would blow up and kill her.
  When he was there, he abused her. He abused her as much as he wished. 
He had weapons. He had homemade grenades to protect himself from the 
police if they ever found him. It is hard to imagine what happened 
those 10 dark days for this 14-year-old girl.
  One night when this villain was asleep, Elizabeth was able to take 
his cell phone away from him and text message on the cell phone to her 
mother a note: Hey, Mom, it is me. And with those simple words, the 
police were able to track down, through cell towers, the near location 
of where this little girl was.
  The deputies came looking for her. The villain had already left. And 
as these deputy sheriffs approached Elizabeth, she saw them, and, of 
course, she immediately started to cry because she was safe in the arms 
of the law.
  After deputy sheriffs rescued her, they were still looking for 
Filyaw. He was not out there. He wasn't in this hole because he was out 
trying to carjack a woman at 2 o'clock in the morning.
  The sheriff's department had been looking for him for 10 months 
because he was wanted for, yes, kidnapping and assaulting a 12-year-
old. And when they went to his house months before to try to find him, 
he had already dug a tunnel, like the rat that he is, to escape. And he 
had escaped the police and was on the lam for 10 months. By the way, he 
was aided in this escape by his mother and his mother-in-law, who, by 
the way, are in jail where they ought to be.
  He was finally caught this week, and he went to court to see the 
judge, to have a bond hearing. And this little girl, this 14-year-old, 
decided to go to court to see this outlaw of the underground here in 
this bond hearing. And his bond, thank goodness, the judge did the 
right thing and denied this bond. Now he awaits trial for committing a 
crime against the greatest resource in our country, children, little 
girls.
  Mr. Speaker, like most Members of this House, I am a parent. I am a 
father of four kids; three of them are girls. I have five grandkids. I 
have a granddaughter named Elizabeth. It is hard to imagine pain that 
is suffered by your own child. And here we have this little girl 
suffering pain because of this criminal that lives among us.
  While it is true we should be concerned about the terrorists 
overseas, we need to be concerned about the street terrorists that live 
among us. As a former judge, I hope that justice prevails in this case.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not normally quote Toby Keith or Willie Nelson, but 
I think they had the right thing to say in their song, when they said, 
Back in my day a man had to answer for the wicked that he had done. You 
have to find a tall oak tree, round up all of the bad boys and hang 
them high in the street for the people to see.
  We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds, we have got too much 
corruption, too much crime in the streets. It is time the long arm of 
the law put a few more in the ground. Send them all to their maker, and 
He will settle them down, because justice is the one thing you should 
always find.
  Mr. Speaker, like a rat living underground, the fact that this 
criminal likes living underground, hopefully the good people of South 
Carolina will do the right thing and justice will prevail in this 
particular case.
  And that's just the way it is.

                          ____________________