The former lover of accused serial killer Darren Vann has opened up for the first time about the horrific night he poured a can of gasoline over her, threatening to burn them both alive and take an apartment block down with them.

After a decade of terrified silence, Ceritha Grant, 43, finally feels free to tell her story after Vann's arrest in connection with the murder of seven women around Gary, Indiana.

And she revealed Vann came looking for her less than a week before he is accused of strangling prostitute Afrika Hardy in a motel room, leaving her in the bathtub with the water running.

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'He went to my mother's house hoping to find me there. I don't dare think what he was going to do,' Ceritha said as she sat down exclusively with MailOnline.

'I know he is capable of doing exactly what he is charged with — I went through it,' she added.

Vann, a former Marine, has now been charged with Hardy's murder last Friday at the Motel 6 in Hammond, Indiana.

Authorities expect to charge him with three other killings this week and he is the sole suspect in three more murders after a weekend in which he led police to women's bodies in several abandoned buildings in Gary.

Cops in both Indiana and Texas believe that Vann, 43, could be linked to more killings, possibly going back 20 years.

Vann charmed Ceritha with his intellect when they first met as neighbors on Madison Street in Gary in 2003.

'He was very smart,' she said. 'His idea of a night out was to go to Barnes and Noble and read books, mostly science fiction or Harry Potter.

'All he wanted to do was read and watch movies.
He was very clean living, he didn't smoke, didn't drink and he didn't take drugs.'

But behind the clean-cut façade was a monster who frequently kept her locked in the house, refused to let her have friends and even hogtied her in her own mother's home, she said.

'I couldn't leave him.

When we were together he would hold on to me so tight I couldn't get away. When he went to work he would often lock me in the house.'

Ceritha's terror came to a head in early April 2004 after they had been together for nine months and she realized she had finally had enough of her boyfriend's controlling ways.

Vann went looking for her, believing she was seeing her wheelchair-bound friend David Abram, who had been paralyzed below the waist in a shooting.

'He had absolutely nothing to be jealous about,' she said.

'David couldn't have had sex with me even if we had wanted to. He was just a very dear friend.'

Vann twice went round to Abram's apartment threatening him.
The third time, he returned with a red, plastic gasoline can, claiming he also had dynamite and was going to blow them all up unless he could find Ceritha, who, he claimed, owed him $7,000.

According to a police report of the incident acquired by MailOnline, Abram asked him 'You're going to burn my family — innocent people — over a woman?' Coldhearted Vann replied: 'Give me $7,000 and you can have her.'

Within minutes, Ceritha turned up on the scene and Abram threw her his keys.

She ran into the apartment, locked the door and hid under the bed.

Infuriated, Vann kicked in the door and started pouring the gas on the floor, saying if she didn't come out from her hiding place he would burn the place down, the police report states.

Ceritha crawled out from beneath the bed as the fumes from the gasoline got stronger.

Her ex-lover grabbed her and put her in a headlock, she recalled.