Man Accused of Holding Mystery Woman Seen in Shackles Captive Was Not a 'Monster,' Brother Says

Mystery
Montgomery County Sheriff's Office

The man, Dennis Ray Collins, took his own life earlier this week.

The brother of the man who was dating the mystery woman captured on surveillance video in shackles said his sibling was a good man who was not holding the woman captive, contrary to speculation. 

Jeff Collins, brother of Dennis Ray Collins, disputed allegations Dennis sexually assaulted the woman, as she has claimed. 

"It wasn't like what people are saying — she was never a captive or being kept in his house against her will," Jeff told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Chilling footage showed the mystery woman ringing a doorbell at a home in Montgomery, located outside Houston, Texas, at 3:20 a.m. on Aug. 24. The woman, barefoot and wearing a T-shirt, appeared to have restraints on her wrist.

For days, authorities searched for her before she was finally found after the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office did a welfare check on a man who had made suicidal comments earlier this week. When they entered the home in question on Wednesday, the man, later identified as Dennis, was found dead of a single gunshot wound. 

Dennis' girlfriend, a 32-year-old woman, was then confirmed to be the woman in the video. She was not at the scene when Dennis died, authorities said. 

She is not being identified due to her status as "a family violence victim," but officials confirmed she is safe.

Jeff told ABC News his brother and the woman were just having "kinky sex" and that Dennis had raved about his girlfriend, who lived at his home with Dennis and Dennis' daughter.

The woman, however, told officials that she was sexually assaulted and the distinctive shackles seen in the video were in fact bondage cuffs. She said on the night in question she managed to break free and was trying to get help.

"He killed himself not out of guilt, but because he couldn't stand his daughter thinking of him that way and because he had been unhappy for a long time," Jeff said. "My brother's come out looking like a monster in all this but he wasn't.

"He was a good man," he added. "They were both good people."

Dennis previously pleaded guilty to sexually abusing another woman nearly two decades earlier in an unrelated case, court documents obtained by ABC News show. 

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