For Susan Kuhnhausen (now Susan Walters) things went real bad when her husband of 17 years hired a hitman to kill her. 

Still remembered as one of the most violent crimes in the history of Portland, USA, Susan’s story of survival proves that reality will always be a step ahead of fiction. 

Susan and her husband, Mike Kuhnhausen had completed 17 years of marriage in 2006, even though not all those years had been filled with marital bliss.

However, no one could have imagined the deadly turn those troublesome years would take. 

Susan, who had been working as an emergency nurse for 30 years at that time, returned home after a hard day at work to an empty house. 

Seeing a note from her husband stating that he was out at the beach, she switched off the security alarm and was collecting her mail, when she noticed that her bedroom was pitch dark. 

Thinking she had only forgotten to switch on the lights, she moved towards the room, only to see a huge dark figure looming over her. 

Exactly like a crime adventure, she hardly had a moment to herself when a big man lunged at her with a hammer in his hand. However, this was not a fictional story and Susan was no ordinary woman. 

Trained to take split-second decisions in the emergency room, she immediately side-stepped but the attacker still managed to land a hard blow on her head. 

Despite the hard blow, she managed to wrestle the hammer away from him and swung at the attacker, who being a trained killer, attacked her back. 

In a last-ditch effort, she began to strangle the guy, all the time fending off his attacks. This altercation lasted for about 15 minutes, where she also had the presence of mind to bite her attacker and leave DNA evidence, in case she died. 

Clearly, emergency nurse training and fight for survival trumps any training that a professional killer might have, because through the fight Susan did manage to gain the upper hand. 

The moment her attacker passed out, she rushed to her neighbor and dialed 911 for help. She was calm even when she made that call! 

But the story does not end here! Because it was the Police who ultimately made the big reveal. 

The killer was actually a hitman called Edward Dalton Haffey, who was paid $50,000 by her husband to kill her. 

So Mike, Susan’s husband, wasn’t really out for a stroll at the beach; he was actually out creating an alibi. One that was clearly not as strong as his wife’s defensive skills because he confessed to his crimes to the police when caught. 

Now, as her husband is scheduled for an early release from the prison, she waits with a fair bit of caution but the same ‘die hard’ attitude. 

This is a woman who defines the term badass! Because when things go tough, people like her don’t wait for knight in shining armors. They don the fucking armor, or in this case, the hammer, and swing for safety.