The Silo at Loop Canyon: A Story of Murder and Survival

Warning: The following story contains descriptions of sensitive topics such as physical and sexual violence. Reader discretion is advised.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, November 29, 1981, eighteen-year-old Kim and her sixteen-year-old friend, Danny, drove their Datsun station wagon up a lonely mountain road overlooking the San Fernando Valley. In the vicinity were radar testing facilities operated by ITT Gilfillan Corporation—once part of the Los Pinetos–Newhall Nike missile base and included vacant missile silos.

ITT employed 24-hour security guards who patrolled the grounds in a white van. That night, Michael and Steven, both uniformed guards, were on duty. With them was a friend, Clifton, who was not employed by ITT but was tagging along in the early hours.

Around 3 a.m., Kim and Danny parked near the main facility. Moments later, a white van pulled diagonally in front of them, blocking their path. Steven approached and demanded identification, warning them they were trespassing.

The men insisted Kim and Danny follow them down to the facility to “check them out” on their computer to ensure they were not “spies.”

Reluctantly, Kim and Danny followed. One guard unlocked the gate, and the vehicles were driven inside the fenced compound. What followed was the beginning of a nightmare.

The couple was separated. Danny was taken into a nearby building while Kim was led by Clifton and Steven down into one of the dark, hollow silos.

As they descended the cement stairs, Kim hesitated, and Steven swung a three-foot white pole at her, forcing her to continue. At the bottom, in a cold cement room, she was stripped of her glasses and her clothing.

Clifton then fondled her and forced her to orally copulate him, after which he raped her.

Clifton told Steven to “try her out,” taunting Kim for her virginity and mocking her pain as she bled. Steven then raped Kim and forced her to orally copulate him.

At about this time, Michael appeared in the silo, and he too forced Kim to orally copulate him. Then he raped her and, following that, turned Kim on her stomach and sodomized her.

When they were finished, Clifton gave her thirty seconds to dress.

Kim was taken back outside to the station wagon. There she saw Danny again, his head and arms forced through a ladder leaning against the building he had entered earlier. He was dragged to the car and made to sit on her lap in the passenger seat, slumped and bleeding from the nose.

Clifton drove the Datsun, following the van down the mountain.

After ten to fifteen minutes, Clifton honked. Both vehicles stopped on the desolate road. Danny was pulled from the car, forced to the ground in front of the van. Steven began striking him over and over with the white pole. Kim could hear the sickening cracks of the blows in the cold air.

Clifton stood beside her as she shivered in the night air. She turned her head away from Danny, and Clifton asked flatly what she was thinking about. She whispered that it was freezing and that they were going to kill her.

Then Steven returned, pole in hand, and said chillingly, “Now it’s your turn.”

Clifton seized her by the arms, yanked her head back by the hair, and held her in place as Steven swung the pole toward her throat.

Kim twisted away, screaming, and the blow smashed into the side of her face instead. In that moment of chaos, she broke free, tumbling down the mountainside, half-running, half-falling into the brush below.

Above her, she heard angry voices. One shouted, “What did you let her go for?” Another replied, “She broke free.” She heard someone say that they had to find her.

Kim lay motionless on the hillside while one of the men stumbled down toward her and touched her arm for a pulse. She held her breath, feigning death. Convinced, he shouted up the hill that she was dead and departed.

From her hiding place, Kim overheard the men plotting. They talked of pushing her car off the cliff next to where she lay to stage her death as an accident.

Then she heard a voice say that Danny was not dead yet, and someone else replied that “they were going to kick the son-of-a-bitch to death.”

Soon after, they stuffed Danny in the station wagon. Moments later, Kim listened as the Datsun roared over the edge. The crash echoed through the ravine, followed by the sound of wheels still spinning.

The van’s engine started. The men were gone.

Kim lay still for about fifteen minutes, too weak and terrified to move. By her guess, it was nearing 5 a.m.

Finally, she clawed her way back up the slope, staggering onto the road just as dawn broke. Alone and battered, she began half-running, half-stumbling down the mountain.

Ten minutes later, the sound of an engine cut through the morning stillness. A white pickup approached from behind.

Panic surged through her. She darted off the road, sliding partway down the hillside to hide. Then she heard voices calling out, asking if she needed help.

A hand stretched over the edge of the road toward her. Relief flickered, until Kim, still without her glasses, realized to her horror it was Steven and Clifton.

Steven lunged, stabbing her in the chest three times with a sharp, gleaming blade. She toppled back down the slope, blood soaking her shirt.

One of the men barked, “Make sure she’s dead this time.”

Kim rose, staggering further downhill, screaming, her body running on raw survival. At the bottom of the hill, Steven closed in on her. Exhausted, she begged him to leave her alone and let her die in peace.

He said, “I’d like to, but I can’t.”

Rage overtook her. She fought, striking him, clawing at him, and aiming for a kick to his groin. But she stumbled forward, crashing onto her stomach.

Steven fell upon her, driving his blade into her back again and again, seventeen times in total. He left her bleeding on the mountainside as the pickup rumbled away.

Kim lay there, fading, but not gone. She tried to stand, but her body gave out.

She lay there all day Sunday until the day became hot, forcing her to roll into the shade while trying to put pressure on her back to stop the bleeding. She also pressed her hands against her chest to slow the bleeding there.

To survive, she licked dew off leaves, ate berries, and covered herself with dirt and brush to stay warm at night.

By Monday, she dragged herself halfway up the ravine, wrapping her leg around a bush so she wouldn’t slide back down. Her bleeding had finally stopped.

Meanwhile, when Danny failed to return home by Sunday morning, his father reported him missing to the police.

When officers failed to respond with urgency, his father chartered a small plane. From the air, he spotted the wreckage of the Datsun in a ravine two and a half miles from the ITT facility.

Fire crews and police reached the site by 5 p.m. Sunday. Inside the crushed station wagon, they found Danny’s body in the rear cargo area. His young life had ended brutally.

But Kim was nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t until Tuesday night that she managed to climb the last stretch back to the road. Broken, bruised, and bleeding, she walked alone down the mountain until she reached the outskirts of Sylmar.

At a house nearby, she collapsed, and neighbors summoned help.

Kim was rushed to Holy Cross Hospital, where she spent two weeks recovering. Doctors treated twenty stab wounds, a broken shoulder, a partially collapsed lung, and countless cuts and bruises. Her face was swollen beyond recognition. Doctors later testified at trial that her injuries were life-threatening and that Kim had suffered a torn hymen from the assault.

The investigation soon turned to the guards.

Kim, still in her hospital bed, picked out Michael and Steven from photo lineups. She was also shown a videotape of a live lineup conducted at the county jail, where she identified Clifton, noting he had cut his long hair since the attack.

When detectives finally confronted him, Clifton gave a detailed confession, recounting the assaults and Danny’s murder.

In 1983, all three men, Michael, Steven, and Clifton, were convicted of first-degree murder, rape, and robbery. Each was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kim and Danny’s families later reached a settlement with ITT, whose negligence in hiring and poor security had allowed predators to operate unchecked on its property.

What began as an innocent drive to a mountaintop overlook became a descent into terror, an ordeal that turned the abandoned Nike missile silo into a backdrop for murder, and where one young woman’s survival came at an unthinkable cost.