Editors Note: This article was originally published on November 11, 1997. Due to frequent requests, Agent News is re-running this series.

This four-part series focuses on the personal safety issues facing the real estate professional as illustrated by the disturbing experiences and subsequent coping responses of two Realtors who each were viciously attacked while showing homes to what they assumed were prospective buyers. One stayed in the real estate business, determined to educate other Realtors how to protect themselves from similar crimes. The other left the profession, too traumatized by her ordeal to return. Also included in Mark Spencer's informative series are life-saving tips for how Realtors -- who assume considerable risk every day -- can avoid becoming the next tragic statistic. Parts 1-4 will run in installments Monday through Thursday this week. Click Here to read Part 1.

Looking back, Joan Malone can't put her finger on what made her suspicious of the man who asked her to show him some houses in the Dallas suburb of Coppell in January. All she knows now is that she wasn't suspicious enough.

When Malone first met her client, Carl, in January, he was accompanied by two women who he said were his girlfriend and her mother. They visited five houses. Carl exhibited all of the "buying" signs, placing furniture, discussing which bedroom would be right for each of his two sons, asking about the local school system.

Joan Malone

"He was clean-cut," Malone recalls. "I didn't have any reason to believe that what he was telling me wasn't true. He didn't do anything or say anything that was out of the way." Still, "I had a funny feeling about the guy."

Because of that uneasiness, Malone didn't pursue Carl as a client, choosing not to call him or write a follow-up note. Two months later, Carl walked into Malone's RE/MAX-DFW office and asked to look at more houses. Still uncomfortable, Malone told him he needed an appointment. He made one for the next morning. Malone took him to see four or five homes in Coppell, she says. He stole a knife in one of them, then attacked her in the next house.

Malone had kept her distance that morning, "but suddenly, he was right there," she recalls. "He hit me like a man would hit a man, in the jaw, knocking me off my feet." Despite "horrific pain," she fought off his attempted sexual assault. He choked her and tried to steal her jewelry. "And then I saw the knife, and it was unbelievable," Malone says. "I went from total disbelief to trying to survive."

Carl stabbed her twice in the side, then gashed her throat. "I was about to lose consciousness," she says. "I knew this was probably it." The attacker left the house in Malone's car and drove it back to her office, where he exchanged it for his. He had some of her jewelry but didn't touch her purse, which contained her credit cards and cash. Blood pooling from her wounds, Malone crawled to a phone and dialed 911. She spent the next four days in intensive care, close to death.

Before long, Carl was captured in Missouri, and Malone picked him out of a photo lineup. He was charged with attempted murder but plead to a lesser charge in return for a 40-year sentence, making him eligible for parole in 20 years. Upon his arrest, Carl told police he thought he had killed Malone.

Malone returned to work three months later because, she says, she had a message to spread. "Nobody should have to go through what I went through," she says. "I'm as careful as you can get. I've always been cautious. The broker in my office said that of all the people something like this might have happened to, he never would have imagined it would happen to me."

Malone's return to the job was made easier by the outpouring of support she received. It came from everyone she knew -- and many she would never know. After noticing her name badge, a man stopped Malone in a grocery store and told her the entire congregation of his Los Angeles African-American church had prayed for her recovery.

Malone hasn't gotten over her ordeal entirely, nor will she -- ever, she says. "It still makes me mad ... to think what my husband and two daughters went through," she says. "But I realize how lucky I am, how blessed I am to be here. It's only by the grace of God that I'm here." And Malone says she's come back to wage a fight -- to launch a one-woman campaign to alert her colleagues of the risks they assume every day -- and what they can do to protect themselves.

Click here for: Part 1

Coming in Part III: Paula Herrington describes her two-day nightmare and her attempt to move on with her life -- and her real estate career.

Published: July 21, 1998

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.