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A woman who was held at knifepoint by a Washington state man later convicted of murdering a 16-year-old girl escaped the maniac by diving into a river because he couldn’t swim, according to a new documentary.

Patrick Nicholas was found guilty this year of the 1991 cold case slaying of teen Sarah Yarborough, but eight years before that murder, Anne Croney encountered Nicholas in a parking lot near the Columbia River, which she recounted recently on “48 Hours.”

“He seemed normal, kind of friendly actually, just friendly,” Croney said. “I had asked him if he had done any water skiing yet because he said he had just moved to town and he said he couldn’t swim.”

As the two kept chatting one day in June 1983, the then-21-year-old noticed his voice was getting shaky, which made her uncomfortable so she told Nicholas she had to go.

Croney said as she went to close her car door, Nicholas put a knife to her throat.

“Everything kind of stopped in that moment,” Croney told CBS reporter Natalie Morales in her first-ever television interview.

She was forced to take her clothes off and led her toward the river bank when Croney made a run for it.

“We got about halfway down the bank and he told me to stop,” she said. “I ran and dove in the river cause I was thinking he couldn’t swim. Swam as hard as I could.”

Nicholas was convicted in May of first-degree murder in Yarborough’s case and sentenced to a bit more than 45 years in prison, the Seattle Times reported.

He was charged in 2019 thanks for advanced DNA testing nearly 30 years after Yarborough’s body was found near her Washington state high school but a group of boys.

One of the boys, Drew Miller, told “48 Hours” in another clip, he was breaking frozen mud puddles when he saw Nicholas from a distance.

He was charged in 2019 thanks for advanced DNA testing nearly 30 years after Yarborough’s body was found near her Washington state high school but a group of boys.

“He’s just staring at us from the bushes, that was pretty jarring,” Miller, who was only 13 at the time, said before he walked away.

While the kids didn’t think much of it at the time, they later found the body of Yarborough where Nicholas was standing. He was terrified when he saw the man only a short distance ahead of them looking back at the boys.

“It’s frozen in my mind,” Miller said of the stare.

The full documentary, “The Hunt for Sarah Yarborough’s Killer,” will air Nov. 18 at 10 p.m. on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.

Additional reporting by Alyssa Guzman

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