Missouri man who kidnapped two Christian college students and forced them to have sex at gunpoint sentenced to 20 years
HOLLISTER, MISSOURI: A man who was convicted of abducting two Christian college students and forcing them to have sex at gunpoint was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The sentence was handed down to Robert Hyslop, 49, after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping a male and a female student from a Hollister parking lot.
On October 29, 2018, the victims were sleeping in a car when they were jolted awake by the defendant breaking one of the windows of the vehicle with a hammer.
According to the Taney County Prosecutor's office, Hyslop then got into the vehicle armed with a handgun and forced the pair to drive from the Hollister parking lot to another location. He then ordered the students to perform sex acts on each other as he kept the firearm pointed at them. He also made the female victim touch his penis.
He then ordered the students to drive him back to his dark green vehicle. The victims immediately contacted law enforcement, who began a search for Hyslop. A week after the incident, the police found a vehicle matching the description provided by the students at a traffic stop, which was being driven by the defendant. The 49-year-old, who agreed to talk to investigators, was arrested and held without bond at Taney County Jail.
At the time of the incident, Hyslop was out on supervised probation after he pleaded guilty in a drug case in 2017. During interrogation, he admitted to investigators that he had been high on methamphetamine for three days when he spotted two students asleep in a car.
He was charged with first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of first-degree kidnapping.
The students told the investigators that they returned to the Point Lookout campus 10 minutes after the 1 a.m. curfew on the day of the incident and found the college's front entrance was locked. Unable to get in, they went to the Kum & Go convenience store on Gage Drive, parked their car in the parking lot and went to sleep till Hyslop broke into their vehicle.