When Pam Knight dozed off in the lap of her date as he finished his DJ set, she had no idea the grave danger she was in.

Henry Lewis Wallace was 'charming,' 'really handsome' and immediately made 18-year-old Knight feel 'comfortable' when she met him on a blind date in 1983.

And there were no obvious warning signs that he was a serial killer in-the-making, on the prowl for his first victim.

Wallace offered to take her to the radio station where he worked part time as a DJ – a proposal that thrilled Knight who had dreams of becoming a singer.

She felt so at ease in his presence that she drifted off to sleep in his lap for hours as he worked late into the night.

Why he let her live, she'll never know. 

A decade later, Wallace was unmasked as a cold-blooded predator who brutally strangled, raped and murdered 11 young women across the Carolinas, earning him the nickname 'The Taco Bell Strangler' - a nod to a later job where he met many of his victims. 

'I dodged a bullet,' Knight told the Daily Mail, recalling details from the night they met.

Pam Knight lay in the arms of one of America's most prolific killers without even realizing it

Wallace was unmasked as a cold-blooded predator who brutally strangled, raped and murdered 11 young women across the Carolinas, earning him the nickname 'The Taco Bell Strangler'

'You don't think about who an axe murderer or a serial killer could be, you don't think about that,' she continued. 'You're just thinking about having a good time.' 

Only one thing that haunts her when she looks back for 'hints' that Wallace was a killer: the way 'he stared... a lot.'

She also described him as being 'dead behind the eyes,' with a vacant stare that she noticed but didn't think much of at the time.

'He was charming,' she said.

Now, she realizes: 'If you look in people's eyes and you don't see anything, then they're liars. Like, if you don't see that spark, or you don't see something in their eye.'

Knight was a fresh-faced teenager at the time, away from home for Thanksgiving, staying with her college roommate in Orangeburg, South Carolina, for the holidays. 

She described herself as a naive kid from Philadelphia who was a little out of her depth and trying to fit in.

'I was the city girl in the country,' she said, accompanied by a shudder, 'fresh meat.'

The blind date had been innocently arranged by Knight's roommate at the time who had told Knight they would make a 'great couple.' In fact, Wallace was 'someone the family had known and been close to for years.'

'They trusted him so I trusted him,' Knight said.