It was a quiet Sunday morning as the motorist made his way along a country road in Muskingum County. But what he drove upon spoke of a night of terror and horrible violence.

"I have a woman right here. She's burnt severely. She's been raped, and she's been beat up," the man told a 911 dispatcher.

The woman, he said, was lying in the middle of the road, naked and scorched over much of her body and with a rope around her neck.

She can be heard moaning on the tape.

"We need a medic," the man says.

The dispatcher asks the man whether the victim can give her name.

He replies that she's so injured, "I can barely understand her."

Seven minutes after the 8:34 a.m. call, the same man calls 911 again, imploring the medics to get there quickly because "she's a mess."

The dispatcher promises that help is on the way, but "you're quite a ways out there."

The man was, indeed, quite a ways out there. Driving along Rt. 208, between Dresden and Adamsville, he found the woman near Steel Hill Road, in the northern part of the county and about 70 miles from Columbus.

It was a miracle she was still alive. Authorities say she probably was set on fire. She somehow made her way from woods to the road with much of her body covered in fourth-degree burns, which go as deep as muscle and bone.

Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz called the attack "one of the most-gruesome things I've ever seen in 23 1/2 years in law-enforcement."

The woman, whose name isn't being used because she is a rape victim, was in "very critical condition" at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center yesterday, Lutz said.

Authorities are still trying to piece together what happened to the victim, a 29-year-old from Canton.

Lutz didn't know when the woman was attacked, but he said authorities had found a "crime scene" in woods in the nearby Tri-Valley Wildlife Area. He wouldn't give details.

He also said that the attack didn't appear to be random, but he didn't say why.

Muskingum County deputy sheriffs traveled to Canton, where they seized a vehicle that was then searched for evidence by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Lutz said.

According to WBNS-TV (Channel 10), the truck belonged to the victim's father and was found at a McDonald's restaurant near downtown Canton.

WBNS-TV said the woman's father told a Cleveland television station that he last saw his daughter on Friday morning. She and a friend borrowed the truck and said they would return in a few minutes.

When they didn't, the father started to look for her and eventually called authorities.

"This is a vicious animal," the father said of whoever nearly killed his daughter. "They ought to be taken off the street and put away."

Authorities spent the day in Canton gathering evidence. Among items they took were gas cans, although Lutz and other officials wouldn't say where they were found.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Muskingum County sheriff's office at 740-452-3637 and choose 1 from the menu.

Dispatch reporters Lori Kurtzman and Jim Woods contributed to this story