Ex-girlfriend: Kidnapper was addicted to drugs

Keith Van Elson is a decent man who turns into a monster on drugs, said his girlfriend of seven years, Carol Kubik.

Elson, the man accused of kidnapping a 19-year-old girl from a southwest Cedar Rapids gas station early Monday morning, is still crushed by his failed marriage and a strained relationship with his father, and has turned increasingly to crack cocaine for escape over the past seven years, Kubik said.

“He's a great guy when he's off that,” Kubik, 49, said from behind a glass wall at the Iowa County Jail in Marengo, where she is serving time for probation violation. Her last arrest was for public intoxication, but she was sober Wednesday when she agreed to an interview.

She last saw Elson - who has twice been convicted of assaulting her - on April 13, she said. A no-contact order forbids them from seeing each other, but she visited him for three days anyway.

They played Elvis Presley too loudly and Elson got into a tangle with the landlord over it. The last day she was there, he stole her ATM card, pulled $300 from her bank account, and told her to leave, Kubik said.

Kubik said when he's on drugs, Elson is “weird, mean and violent,” but he never sexually assaulted her in seven years.

“We were happy for three or four,” she said.

Police have still not charged Elson with a crime, though initial reports have him abducting Amanda Daniel from the Kwik Shop at 1001 First Ave. SW around 4 a.m. Monday. Police say they found her seven hours later at his apartment about seven blocks away at 1400 Seventh Ave. SW.

Daniel was in the bathroom, and Elson was in the living room with a stab wound to the chest, police said. What happened is still not clear.

Elson, 54, remains in the hospital and will be charged upon release, police said. Daniel visited the apartment building Tuesday to explain what happened to investigators.

Patrick Blin, another tenant in the apartment building, said he heard no screaming or struggle during the night or that morning when he was sleeping off and on.

“I didn't hear anything that morning except for when the cops showed up,” he said.

Kubik, a small woman with brown hair who lives in Oxford, is serving a jail sentence until June 3. She said Elson doesn't have many friends, and fights depression. Her family has long told her to leave him, but she has always gone back.

“I don't understand why he took that girl,” she said. “I'm not going to go back to him after he did that.”