CLEARWATER - The 26-year-old woman had a fear of dying so unmanageable, she said, she took medications for anxiety and could not work. Then she met Michael Lee Montgomery.
It was 2 p.m. on Feb. 3 in St. Petersburg. Montgomery, 48, asked her for directions from his car, pulled her into his vehicle, and drove to his rented bungalow in Gulfport, according to police records. There he raped her and subjected her to depraved acts, police and the victim said. He also took photographs.
The woman, a ninth-grade dropout, said she would like to forget what happened, but she can't.
"I see it over and over again," she said in a brief, tearful interview Friday. That Montgomery had plastic sheets spread out led her to believe he was going to kill her.
It was that fear, she said, that made her do everything he asked. She hoped if she did so, he would spare her life.
Montgomery, a boat mechanic, was arrested Thursday, and accused of raping the 26-year-old and two other women in separate incidents in July 2007. Investigators said the assaults occurred at the rented bungalow at 2412 53rd St. S., across the street from the Gulfport police station.
He was charged with three counts of sexual battery, two counts of false imprisonment and one count of kidnapping. He was being held at the Pinellas County Jail on $350,000 bail.