Kathleen Gregg convinced her assailants to take her to the bank, where she escaped.

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – Tied-up and lying face down on the floor, Sen. Judd Gregg’s wife, Kathleen, knew she had to take charge or risk being murdered by two assailants who had entered her home, but were furious she had no money to give them.

“One man was saying to the other man ‘I don’t care what happens. We’re going to go down. We’re going to go down together and she is going down with us,”‘ Mrs. Gregg told WMUR-TV on Wednesday.

“One man was sitting on me and I kept thinking ‘I need to get out of this house’ and I said ‘The only way I can get you money is if we go to the bank.”‘

It was there, that she got away.

A day after surviving the ordeal in her Virginia home, she told the television station that she plotted her escape as she lay on the floor, while the seemingly confused assailants tried to figure out what to do.

Mrs. Gregg said she had left her home in McLean, Va. Tuesday morning to pick up some dry cleaning and milk. She came home, she said, to make tea and read the newspaper.

“As I was reading the newspaper, I could hear people in the garage,” she said. “I went to the back hallway and before I knew it, I was face to face with these two men I had never seen before.”

She asked them what they were doing, she said, but she quickly figured it out. Mrs. Gregg said she believes they followed her home and entered the house through the open garage door.

“I ran to the front door to get out of the house and I didn’t make it. They caught me and put me down on the floor and tied me up,” she told the station in an interview in Manchester. Sen. Gregg sat beside his wife of 30 years as she recounted the frightening details.

The Greggs’ grown children live away from home.

As she lay bound on the floor, the intruders went through the house, rifling through jewelry and taking things they thought they could sell. “They were very upset because they wanted cash and I wasn’t able to give them what they wanted.”

They took her engagement ring, golf clubs and $50 from her wallet.

“They were just not all there. They were crazy people. They were there and they wanted to get money and we didn’t have any money,” she said. While one man sat on her, the other ran around the house, throwing things and screaming, she said. The men told her they had guns.

“They were very threatening. They (said they) were going to kill everybody I knew and they were going to do terrible things,” she said.

After lying tied up on the floor for more than an hour, she convinced them to take her to the bank.

“At our house, it’s sort of a joke that I take charge, so here we are in this horrible, horrible situation and clearly someone had to take charge.”

At first they wanted to take her to the bank tied up. “I explained to these people that it wouldn’t look right if I was all tied up going into the bank. I just had to walk into the bank like I normally do and get their money,” she said.

She rode to the bank in the passenger seat with a knife at her throat.

“So I went into the bank with this man standing right beside me with a knife in my side and I told the teller how much money I wanted and she gave me half of it and I gave it to the gentleman and he started to talk to me like we knew each other.”

While in the bank, she saw a bank employee walk through a door on the other side of the building. She figured it had to lead somewhere, so when she had the chance, she bolted.

“I thought ‘I am not getting back into that car with this man and going anywhere. I’ve got to get out of there.’ So I handed him the money and I ran through the doorway and I ran down a hallway and locked myself in a closet,” Mrs. Gregg said.

The men sped off in a silver Chevrolet Monte Carlo with Virginia license plates, police said.

“Obviously, she is an amazing person. We all know that.” said Sen. Gregg, choking back tears. “She was just constantly thinking of ways to calm them and then get to a place where she could escape.”

At the time of the abduction, Gregg was in New Hampshire with his mother, taking care of business from his father’s recent death.

“I think this has been harder for Judd, between losing his father and having this traumatic thing, it’s been much harder for him,” she said.

“I just wanted to be here,” she said of her escape.

“Well, thank God,” Gregg said.

Police have released a bank surveillance photo of the man who accompanied Mrs. Gregg to the teller. They said the same two men robbed other women in the same area recently.

AP-ES-10-09-03 0608EDT