Female Prison Guard Felt 'Dead' as Hostage

March 23 -- After two violent prisoners took corrections officer Lois Fraley hostage and managed to get control of the prison guard tower during a prison uprising, Fraley thought her life was over.

"I said goodbye to everybody," Fraley, 33, said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

Fraley, agreeing for the first time to have her name made public, told GMA on Tuesday that she never expected to get out alive, because the inmates who held her captive were serving life sentences, and thus had nothing to lose.

The uprising at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis in Buckeye, Ariz., which lasted from Jan. 18 until Feb. 1, was the longest prison standoff involving a hostage in American history.

For 15 days, two violent prisoners held Fraley at gunpoint after their prison escape plan went awry. One was Ricky Kurt Wassenaar, 40, who was in prison for firing at police during a 1997 adult bookstore robbery in Tucson. The other was his cellmate, Steven Coy, who was serving time for robbing a liquor store in 1993 and raping the clerk while his pregnant wife waited in a getaway car.

The drama began around 3 a.m., while Wassenaar was on kitchen duty and planning to make his escape with Coy. He threatened the lone guard on duty with a makeshift knife and an industrial-sized stirring paddle, and then made him strip off his uniform. He handcuffed the guard, then had Coy tie up a civilian kitchen worker and guard the other prisoners, who didn't want to be part of the escape.

Next, Wassenaar walked to the two-story prison tower, where Officer Jason Auch, a 21-year-old rookie just three months on the job, saw the uniformed figure and buzzed him in. Using the paddle and shank as a weapon, Wassenaar was able to take both Auch and Fraley hostage, and get his hands on a gun. After other officers tried to subdue Coy outside, Wassenaar ran out of the tower, firing a semiautomatic rifle, and Coy was able to run in.

The Torture Begins

While holding the officers hostage in the tower, Wassenaar and Coy tortured Fraley and sexually assaulted her, before finally surrendering to authorities.