The Thirty Five Year Old Secret

What would you do if you woke up one morning and learned you had lived for five years with a serial rapist/killer? How would you react especially when you knew he had been your stepfather?

In this true story of Karen Woods, a fifty-something-year-old woman, you will learn how she reacted to that knowledge. When she was eight years old, her birth mother met and married Willie Roy Jenkins, a man who in 2013 was tried and convicted of committing the thirty-five-year-old Texas cold case rape and murder of a young woman. Enduring emotional and physical abuse from both, it so traumatized Karen that she suppressed that reality for over thirty-five years. Testifying at Willie’s sentencing trial brought it all out into the open, plunging her into a raging depression that became full blown PTSD when she learned of his other victims.

In this candid account of her life, she shares her sometimes rocky journey of healing given by the love of God. Karen tells her story in the hope that others suffering trauma will also find healing through God’s love. Because with Him, all things are possible.