S21 E7: (1/2) [Krystyn] Ronald Blood is a Monster
40:13 Share

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Listening to Audible helps our imaginations soar. Whether we're listening to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre we love, we can be inspired to imagine new worlds, possibilities, and ways of thinking.

Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, all in one easy app. As an Audible member, I get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. This month, I selected Evil Thoughts, Wicked Deeds by Dr. Chris Mohandy. Take Audible with you through your week. Listen while doing household chores, going for a walk, commuting, you name it. Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your everyday routine.

New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash SWW or text SWW to 500-500. That's audible.com slash SWW or text SWW to 500-500.

Hey, Something Was Wrong listeners. Have you heard you can listen to your favorite gripping investigations ad-free? Good news! With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash adfreetruecrime. That's

That's amazon.com slash adfreetruecrime to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes.

Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes.

Pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening.

Trigger warning to everybody. It's important to hear stories like Kristen's and her story is so, so important, but it is probably one of the hardest listeners may have to get through on the show.

My name is Kristen Blood. I'm 28 years old. I was born in Munster, Indiana and continued to live in that general area until I was 17. We lived in multiple different houses, but our main house was on Davidson Place in Whiting, Indiana. That's where most of the story takes place.

Whiting's come a long way now, but when I grew up there was very small. There was a lot of gang activity. But where I lived wasn't as terrible. There was just a lot of graffiti everywhere.

I had two older brothers, Dan and Mark. At the time, my parents were married, my father's name being Ronald and my mother's name being Jessica. Their dynamic was weird, which is putting it gently. There was a lot of arguing, him constantly seeing what she was doing and just being on top of her, essentially. There was a lot of mistrust in their relationship.

I remember him pushing her against a wall before he would let her leave to go to work, searching her pockets, and him apparently finding like a little baggie of drugs. That's what he was looking for apparently. That's how it was. She couldn't just leave the house. He had to like search her pockets, search her phone, because she was either cheating or doing drugs. He needed one reason to like get mad at her before she left.

He was so convinced she was cheating on him left and right, and also angry at her that she was a stripper. Yet I remember specifically him being like, "You need to go back to stripping to make money."

They both had affairs. And early on, I remember reading my mom's diary. It was like, "That bitch blah blah blah," whatever her name was. He had a kid with her. That's how far the affair went. Like, I had a younger brother because of this affair. And they did come to live with us at some point when my mom and dad were fully not living together. I never really met anyone my mom had an affair with. I just know she brought random men to our house, which is not good either. They were both not innocent by any means.

When my mom was born, my grandma said she had lost oxygen for a while. And she seemed to have some sort of like learning delays and things like that. She was never very good in school. She never learned to drive fully. She never got her license. I think a lot of it was just fear. But that's what my grandma always said. She always assumed she had some sort of delay. She had a lot going on herself.

My mom, she was bullied a lot in high school. One of her so-and-so friends pushed her into a car with a random man as a joke, and that man ended up raping her. And she got pregnant at 14 and ended up having to get an abortion. So that just gives you an idea of her own trauma and then having to get married to my dad. In her wedding photo, she looks miserable. So I can only imagine.

I don't know how much of this is true. My dad's a pathological liar, so he's told me all sorts of things about myself. Like he said, I was born with some sort of like skull condition where there's metal plates in my head. And I've had an MRI since then, so obviously that's not true. He's made up so much stuff, who knows how much of it was actually true. But I know he said my mom had a drug problem, and it is possible. The sexual abuse from your father began at a really young age.

Do you actually remember life before any of that happened?

No. I remember him introducing that relationship by using his fingers on me. He didn't jump straight to what it became. I think he was trying to like see what he could introduce so it wouldn't hurt as much when the time came. But that's like my earliest memories, like screaming and crying, like on a bed and him giving me a pillow to put on my face so that my brothers didn't hear. He always did it with my mom was at work.

because obviously she would have known something was up if she heard me screaming. I had to have only been about like two or three. I know I wasn't in kindergarten yet when it first started happening. I couldn't even find the words. I said something along the lines of like, he put us together like peanut butter and jelly. My mom was so scared.

As soon as my dad got home, she made me sit at the table with him. And I, of course, was freaked out because he said if I ever told anyone that I was going to be in trouble. So I had that repeating in my brain as we're sitting at this kitchen table. My dad was like, if you're lying, now is the time to admit it so you don't get in trouble. I was like, yeah, yeah, I was lying. I don't know why I said that. That was it.

And that was, again, him conditioning me because he was like, can we do that thing? He liked to call it that thing because he knew deep inside it's disgusting and vile. So in kindergarten, you tell the school counselor...

Yeah. I remember it was like at the beginning of class each day, you would sit on the rug, crisscross applesauce, and they would ask you how your day was or something like that. I had this thing where I would yawn and I would cry. It would make me tear up. And for whatever reason, I kept doing it. I was bawling at one point. So my teacher was like, what is wrong with you? I was like, I can't stop yawning. And so she sends me to the school counselor and we're like playing with Play-Doh. And I end up telling her,

She asked what my mom does. And I was like, oh, she's a stripper.

Instead of calling the principal down or CPS, she calls up both of my parents at home and says, hello, your daughter has been telling me these things. Would you like to talk to her? And like gives me the phone. And of course I'm freaking out because again, I'm in trouble for saying it again. So I just take it all back. I get sent back to class and that's it. Like I never hear anything. No one ever interviews me. So as far as I can tell, she did absolutely nothing.

The second time I tried to come to somebody who should have definitely reported it, they again do nothing. And I found her since then and I messaged her because I was like, she can't possibly still be helping kids. And she is. She's literally a middle school counselor now. I have it right here. It was like, since you didn't report this incident, I continued to get raped by him until I was 11. I hope you take this example and do better. That was unacceptable.

I never got any sort of response. But at the end of the day, I wanted her to know her actions have consequences because who knows how many other people came to her with something happening to them. And all she did was just call their parents and tell them what they said. That is not what you're supposed to do. You're a school counselor. You're a mandated reporter. I hope she saw it and I hope she felt terrible about herself. In first and second grade, you start sharing a little bit more with your peers.

Yes. At first I would tell everyone and I was trying to figure out if anyone else had this happening. I was like, you know how dads do to their daughters? And they would just stare at me like, what are you talking about? And I'd be like, okay, nevermind. And I would start telling them like, yeah, my dad touches me down there. And you know, he says that other dads do that too. And they're like, no, that's not happening to me. And they would just like get weirded out.

Every time I brought a friend over, he would start grooming them is the best way to put it. And it did happen to a couple of my friends. And one by one, they would stop coming over as they should. And I remember every time I would tell a friend, I would get sad because I was like, oh, that means they're never going to want to come play with me again. But I also didn't want it to happen to them.

I went from Sally, she would always come knock on my door and she'd always have a smile on her face when she would ask for me. And I finally told her and another friend and they were the last of my two friends to know. And this was like third grade. I remember my dad being like, your friend Sally came by and she just looked like she had just been told her family member died. She's usually so happy when she comes over. Like what happened to her? That's kind of how it went. And I know that they would tell their moms because I found out later they did.

In my brain, I was like, oh, this is going to happen until I'm 18 and get to move out, which luckily it didn't have to take that long. You suffered this abuse from the age estimated two years old to almost 12 years old. How did you mentally survive this?

I have no idea. And it took like for years and years. And even now I have trouble with my fight or flight reflex. The self-harm started young. I remember allergy pills and they're in that kind of serrated thing. I would try to use that. I didn't know how to use anything else because I was like eight.

I would eat or not eat. The eating disorder behavior started early too. My dad told me I was fat in kindergarten. Never tell your kids they're fat ever. That stuck with me. It was a lot of isolation in my room and music. Music was a big thing. I did count money a lot. I would take my little quarters and I would make little stacks. I would read so, so many books. I was reading like 500 page novels since kindergarten.

And I would write in my diary every single day. I stopped writing my diary whenever I got taken and I realized it must have been like a coping mechanism I used. What's weird about it is I actually never wrote about the abuse in my diary. I guess because my dad would like sit at the dining room table with my brothers and read my diary. So in my mind, I was like, if he were to see that in there, I would get in more trouble and more abuse would happen.

He would just go take it like, okay, guys, look, we have a new entry, which you would think would like stop me from writing in it. But I just kept hiding it in different places. He just thought it was so funny to like sit with my brothers and be like, oh, look who she has a crush on. Oh, my gosh, she's in love.

Another thing is that he was my first kiss. He made me French kiss him one time. I remember we were in the public library in Whiting. I told him, I was like, I'm not happy. You keep making me do this and I don't get to have a first kiss. I don't get to have a first time. He just was so annoyed at me for bringing it up.

I remember he would tell me, "I'll know if someone else touches you." I was like six or seven. I was like, "Why would I want anyone to touch me? I really don't like when you do it." I didn't understand why he was so worried.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sometimes when we're struggling with our own happiness and feeling fulfilled, we struggle with comparing our life to others. And as we know, comparison is the thief of joy, and it's easy to envy other people's lives. Therapy is a great place to focus on yourself. It's helpful in learning positive coping skills, how to set boundaries, and empowers you to be your best version of yourself. If

If you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Fill out a brief questionnaire, get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Stop comparing and start focusing with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash sww today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash sww.

Thank you so much.

Hill House Home invented the viral nap dress, which has the most flattering and comfortable fit with their signature smocking. Celebrities like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Anne Hathaway, and Mindy Kaling have been spotted in Hill House Home. Their commitment to comfort and style is what I appreciate most. Make sure to check out their cute new arrivals for the fall and holiday season. Hill House Home also has baby and kids items if you want a matching moment or

or you need a baby gift. They have the cutest little tiny robe onesies and PJs that you can monogram for an extra special gift. Get 15% off your order of 100 or more at hillhousehome.com with code SWW15. Again, that's code SWW15 for 15% off your order at hillhousehome.com.

Whenever dad's in the picture, it's like when they open the door in horror movies and lightning strikes, that's what it was like whenever he would come home. We just hated being around him. My brothers, they both had a friend, Todd. He had a little sister or cousin or something that he lived with and we would watch her from time to time. And she had an older sister named

My brother, Mark, had a crush on her. My dad would always make jokes with him like, oh, you're going to ask her out? She has a crush on you. And then he asked this girl to babysit me. That night, he left and he came back within like 30 minutes with wine coolers and said, oh, I called out of work. I decided to just stay home. It was just very obvious to me what he was doing. He was giving her wine coolers and eventually that same night I could hear them

I wouldn't consider it consensual. He also had given her wine coolers and she was 15 or 16. And then the next day, I remember him bragging to my brother how he had had sex with her.

And I was just like, what the fuck is wrong with you? On so many different levels, how could you do that? And then brag about it to your son, who you know had a crush on her. Which is why I say my brothers definitely had their own role of trauma in their life from him being that emotionally abusive. Was there ever any suspected abuse of your brothers physically or sexually? No.

No, and neither one of them has said it. They mostly just go into like detail about the verbal abuse that we went through. We would always play board games in rock band. That was our thing. But like, all of us had the understanding that we have basically had to let our dad win or he would just throw a fit. This grown man would just throw a fit that he was losing a game of Monopoly. Like we must be cheating. It was not fun to play with him. And

And that's how it was for everything. He would tell my younger of the older brothers, Dan, that he could get whatever he wanted to eat on his birthday, you know, would make it a whole thing. And my brother would be like, oh, I want KFC. He loved fried chicken. So he would get him fried chicken and then make him feel horrible about getting fried chicken. He'd be like, you know, I have no money. And of course, you asked for something so expensive.

And then my brother would be crying in his room because my dad would call him fat, tell him that it's awful of him to make him spend money, even though he made it his idea to begin with. I would be in my room feeling guilty for my brother and be like, it's okay, Dan. For months and months, I would randomly yell into my brother's room. It's okay. He'd be like, what are you talking about? I felt very protective of my brothers, which sounds weird because I was the younger one.

I think my older of my two brothers, Mark is the most traumatized way just because he's the oldest one and he saw the most of everything my dad is. So we're all very different levels of fucked up, but like he's very stoic and cold. I can tell he loves me, but it's hard to explain him. And then Dan, he's not stoic and cold, but he has a lot of issues as well. I mean,

My fiance tells me, it's hard to believe that you're the least fucked up of all of you, but you went through the most. I'm like, yeah, but at the same time, I like, I get it. Everyone handles trauma differently. So I'm fortunate enough that I have been able to come out of it more functional is the best way to put it.

I was dealing with my own stuff. And so things that were traumatizing them probably just slipped through the cracks in my brain. They tell me later that they thought I was spoiled rotten. My dad would buy me things, but it was like, I'll buy you whatever toy you want if you do this and so forth. So in their brain, I was just spoiled because they didn't see the other half of it.

As my brothers got older, he would send them to get milk a lot of the time because that would give him enough time to like do what he needed to do. And if they came back early and he wasn't done, he would have me hide in his closet so that he could be like, oh, I don't know where Kristen is while they were looking around the house for me. And I brought that up to them later. And they were like, it makes a lot more sense now. We never understood where you were all the time.

During bath time, he would do a thing where you drew sticks. And if you got the shortest stick, you had to take a bath last. And he would always make sure that I got the shortest stick. Every time that would happen, I would run to our basement and try to hide because I didn't want to, obviously. He would always find me.

He would pretend that the only way to like give me medicine for worms that we had all gotten from a new puppy was for him to insert his penis into me with the medication because girls needed to have it done special. And my brothers only had to take an oral pill. I noticed that he kept that story going long after my brother stopped taking the pills.

You know, as a kid, you would fall asleep in the living room and your parents would carry you upstairs. And that should be like a pleasant-ish memory. But if I fell asleep and he was carrying me upstairs, then I would know what that meant. And one time I was really happy because he had carried me to his bed and he didn't try anything with me. It was really hot in our house. The AC wasn't working. He was like, you can take off your clothes. Don't worry. I'm not going to do anything to you. I was happy to like be cuddling with my dad and him not do something to me. And

And then he ruined that completely. And he actually sodomized me for the very first time. And it was so painful. I think I was like eight or nine. And he stopped doing it. He never did it again, thank goodness. And this is why I'm such a light sleeper now. I wake up at the drop of anything. He's also ruined honey for me to this day. I cannot eat honey because he would make me go down on him and he would put honey on it to try to make it more pleasant for me.

I also thought about this recently. I've had a hard time connecting with animals. And I always assumed it was because I'm a mother now and I just don't have a lot of room in my heart. And then I thought about it deeper than that. I think it has more to do with who my dad was as a person. So I always loved animals, especially cats. My mom was a cat person. We went through a lot of cats.

But something he would find funny to do was he would stick a cat in a bag, like a grocery bag, and have us whip it above our heads as fast as we could, which is horrendous on its own. We had like a newborn kitten one time and he stuck it in the microwave and turned it on. He would drive cats into the middle of the highway when he didn't want them anymore and throw them out of the moving vehicle in front of us.

One time we came home and our family cat that we've had for a really long time named Mickey. He was like a big old fat orange cat, kind of like Garfield. He said that Mickey had died. And how he died was that my mom's boyfriend at the time stabbed him to our fence and wrote in blood, you're next.

Yet, it wasn't there. And knowing my dad as a person, if that truly had happened, he would have taken pictures at the very least, or he would have kept it up for us to see because he did not give a damn about traumatizing us. But he pretended to be a holier-than-thou and said that he did it because he didn't want us to have to see that.

Church wasn't a thing really at all until I think it was second grade and he got super involved. He played the card of I'm the poor single dad who gets no help from my ex-wife. In the beginning, everyone liked him, no matter what, with women, with people. Until they see the real side of him, he comes off as the most likable man. So when we went to church, he would comb his hair really nice and dress up nice and do our hair well.

We were well liked there. We really were. And he actually had a relationship with a woman there. She was so sweet and they had this innocent relationship where he would write her these love letters and she would write them back.

The most they ever did was probably kiss. He was talking about her moving in with us. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. That cannot happen because when that happens, she's going to get treated terribly. He's going to beat her. He's going to rape her. It's not going to be a good relationship anymore. And I really liked her. I could tell she was a very pure, very moral person. And eventually, I guess her parents started to see that my dad was not a good person, saying he had too much baggage. And that was definitely the least of their concerns that they really knew.

And eventually she told my dad, my parents don't approve. It needs to end. And then from there, we didn't go to church as much. In fourth grade, living in your new apartment, what caused that move there? My dad was not good with money. Neither was my mom. But to be fair, it was my dad. Like he just spent it on anything. Like he took out his 401k at one point when he got fired, which was like $24,000, which back then was a lot of money. And it was gone within a month.

I don't even know if he worked. At the time of the apartment, he either wasn't working or was laid off, or there's a small possibility he was working at a welding gas company. I don't know. Just know his car smelled awful because it smelled like gas. My grandpa, my mom's dad, got him the job and definitely regretted that because he figured out he's a piece of shit.

He does get fired, takes out his 401k, and eventually does go on disability. At the very end, when we were living in like a trailer in Tennessee, right before we were taken, we'd lived off of like $600 a month of disability. And I think you got money in Tennessee just for like being unemployed and having kids. He would miss so many payments on that house that we would get kicked out. And we moved in and out of it a few times because I guess it was in such bad shape that they had a hard time selling it.

Have you ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your house, wondering if everything will be safe while you're away? I know I have. When I learned that statistically having a security system decreases the rates of break-ins, I realized how urgently I needed a security system, and I knew my family deserved the best. And I'm so thankful that I found SimpliSafe. I've loved having SimpliSafe protect our home for years now, and the security and service have exceeded all expectations. With

With Fast Protect monitoring and LiveGuard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and speak to intruders to stop them in their tracks.

SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and offers the best customer service in home security, according to Newsweek. It's easy to install and activate your SimpliSafe system in less than an hour or choose professional installation and have a pro do it for you. Protect your home with 50% off a new SimpliSafe system.

plus a free indoor security camera when you sign up for Fast Protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash SWW. That's simplisafe.com slash SWW. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising. But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive? Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Multitask right now. Quote today at Progressive.com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Now,

National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

When we moved to Tennessee, we were staying with my dad's cousin. My brothers really hated it. My dad must have not liked it either because he couldn't do as much of what he was doing to me there. He would take me to where the UPS trucks parked down the street, park in between them to like do that.

He was driving me around one night, and that was usually the sign that something was about to happen. And he said, "Your brothers are really unhappy in this house, and I have a trailer we could move into tomorrow, but I'm not going to unless you do this tonight. If you don't want to do it, then I'm going to drive home, and I'm going to tell them it didn't work out, and I'm not going to sign the lease for it." I agreed, and we moved into that trailer the next day, and we slept on mattresses on the floor.

For a minute there, we lived in an apartment, which is across the street from my aunt and her daughter lived. We weren't that close with them. We started living there and the girl, Susie, her mom was the Girl Scout leader. And that's how I knew her. The Girl Scout leader, she would teach my dad how to like make my hair look better because I had curly hair and I hated it, of course.

That mom herself is, she's something. Her son actually started trying to touch me a couple times while I stayed at her home. And I told her about it. And she said, I confronted him about it. And he didn't go run and hide under his bed. So that means that he didn't do it. She had a daughter, Susie. And we weren't that close. But we were friends mostly because of Girl Scouts. And my dad took advantage of the fact that she had mental delays.

Around this time, he groomed her. He had started the process before we lived in that apartment. It started at the house. He started the same way he did with me, where he would essentially be like, do you want me to make you feel good? We were in this apartment. He was like, I'm going to take you guys to the fair. I'm going to give you as much money. You can get anything you want and do anything you want. But in order to do that, Susie, you're going to have to do this. And Kristen, she's done it a bunch of times. So she'll be there for you. She'll hold your hand.

I just remember us laying on this gross apartment floor, me holding her hand as she's crying and screaming the same way like I used to do as well, and holding a pillow over her face from the couch just so we would get money to go to the fair. Of course, she was scared.

I feel horrible about this because I feel like it's partially my fault, which it is. But at the same time, I'm a child. I have a lot of guilt. And we've talked about it later. When I first got taken, I called her and I said, it's okay to tell your mom what happened now. What is your mom's role? And what's your relationship like with her through these years, elementary, getting into early junior high years?

It's hard now because I see her slightly differently. But at the time, my mom was like my best friend. I loved her. I wanted to be attached to her hip. My brothers weren't exactly the same way. They were kind of on my dad's side. She fought with him a lot. And that's all I really remember as far as that relationship goes.

It was very up and down. I wasn't angry at her a lot. When she still lived with my dad, there definitely was affairs happening. Like whenever my dad would go to work, she would bring a lot of people to our home. And there was definitely drugs going on. She had the sense to at least like lock us in our rooms. She didn't want us to see. It wasn't so much like a, I don't want to deal with you kids. It was like she was ashamed to let us see what she was doing.

Me and my brother should be like, I really hope they get divorced soon because we were scared he was going to kill her, especially me. There was like a little closet at the top of the stairs. And whenever they would start fighting, I would go lay in the closet and listen downstairs because in my brain, if he does start to kill her, I could run downstairs and save her.

I wanted to make sure I knew if something was happening to her because I was very attached to her. And it got to the point that she did move out. It would get bad enough at home that she would just show up at school and tell the school that we had a dentist appointment. In reality, she had our bags packed and she was taking us to like a woman's shelter. There was one that we went to, I think it was in Attica, Indiana. And we were there for a little bit, but she kept breaking curfew and we'd get kicked out.

when my mom and dad were actually separated. I think it was around the time we lived in the apartment. We came to stay because my dad convinced her to stay the night. They were on the couch next to me. And I remember him trying to rape her and hearing her scream. He eventually got her to go to the bedroom. And you could hear her being like, I don't want this. Stop touching me. And him doing it anyways. It didn't just go to children. It went to adult women as well.

Me and my mom lived in this tiny little apartment across from my elementary school that I went to for just a little bit of time.

I remember there was a point I had lice for like six months straight. Who knows why? Neglect. I don't know. I didn't go to school a lot. I missed a lot of fourth grade. I think that eventually after missing that many months of school, they would be like, hey, maybe there's something going on. Like I remember my dad and my mom combing all the lice out of my hair. And the only thing that finally got rid of it was my dad bleach and blonded my hair at fourth grade.

And this was after they cut it really short, like to my ears, thinking that would work somehow. I don't know why. It just seems like a very long time to have lice. But I loved living in that apartment with my mom. She got me a kitten and we were very close. We would watch Fear Factor every day after school. And she would give me all the food I could eat, junk food, ramen. She never made me feel bad about my grades or anything.

And then she got a boyfriend. His name is Arthur. And things got weird from there. He was in a gang. That's all I really knew about him. He asked to move into our apartment. She told him, no, it's a one bedroom. It's too small. And within a week, our apartment burned down, which is a weird coincidence. Not that there's any proof he did it, but there was always speculation. Luckily, we weren't there.

My dad would sometimes convince her to come back to the house. But I remember being really sad that the home I had with her, where I was happy and content, was burned down and that we'd have to be back where I was getting hurt. After the apartment burned down, we moved into this little duplex down the street with Arthur, unfortunately. It was kind of tumultuous there. Not in front of me, per se, but he always wanted to be near her. If she showered, he had to be in the shower with her.

I didn't like him. I don't know, I had a bad feeling about him, which was right. And it came to the point that her best friend, who was also the mom of my best friend at the time, she would tell me that my mom had bruises all over her body. And I would try to look, and she would be like, "No, no, no, I just fell." My dad, when he did get custody of me, I was forced to move back in with him after my mom and Arthur got arrested for drug possession, I think.

He would tell my brothers and me that we shouldn't talk to her. That way she'll be more likely to come home. We have to like be mad at her.

The last time I saw her in person, I had just gotten done playing with her hair and telling her it felt like straw. She would bleach her little hair at home with actual bleach because she didn't have money to go to a hairstylist. I was telling her she had to stop bleaching it and just cut it and all that stuff. And then we started passing notes back and forth because my dad was probably playing video games in front of us that I didn't want him to hear. And I was telling her I had this crush on a boy.

It wasn't anything super profound, but it was mother-daughter things. I felt comfortable talking to her about mostly anything except the obvious things.

That was the last time I did see her. And then we had that phone call. My dad gave me the phone and I talked for a minute and she had the phone in her hand and she kept having to walk right outside her house on her little house phone. Like she couldn't get that far, but she didn't want Arthur to hear what she was saying. She was talking about how she was going to leave him. And then the phone cut out. And when she tried to call back, I wanted to listen to my dad and like not talk to her so she would come home faster. So I pretended to be asleep. That was the last time I ever talked to her.

You go to a sleepover and your dad calls you the next day

We were playing Dance Dance Revolution, eating pizza, and I was happy to have a sleepover. It was like a girl I wasn't really close with, but some of my close friends were there. And I remember waking up pretty early. I was possibly going to spend the night again. And I remember my dad calling and he said I needed to come home. There was something he had to tell me. And I remember being scared for a much different reason. Because normally what that meant when he would make me leave places early was

and things like that is he found a reason to get me in trouble. And if there was a reason to get me in trouble, that meant that I was either going to be grounded for weeks at a time until I did what he wanted me to do, which at this point in time, I was willing to do much less.

because I was older. The older I got, the harder it was to convince me to do it. So it took isolation and grounding and not letting me do literally anything. So I was scared to go home. I was walking home in the snow and I walk in and everyone's in the living room. My brothers are there and my dad's like, I ordered pizza, but we don't have to worry about your mom paying child support anymore. And my older brother, Mark was like, that is not how you're going to tell her.

And then I remember my dad went to go make a phone call in the room and I was listening in and he told somebody that she got shot in the head. At that point, I had this hope that she got shot, but she's in the hospital or she's alive. He hadn't officially told me yet.

I'm trying to eat a piece of pizza and I'm trying not to cry because that was also something he didn't like. He didn't like me crying. He didn't like any of us crying. If we cried, we got yelled at. And so I eventually just went in the bathtub and just laid there numb and crying about it.

I don't think he ever actually told me. But I remember my brother, Mark was just like, are you doing okay? Are you sure? It was like, yeah. And I went to school. The reason I went to school is I actually won a trip to go to Navy Pier, which is like a carnival place because I read so many books that year.

But I remember this, my fifth grade teacher came up to me and was like, you didn't finish your essay. And I was like, oh, sorry. And she was like, have a nice time on your field trip. She was just so mean. And I was like, how could you possibly be this mean to someone whose mom would just kill? My other teachers knew. Like I remember them being a little bit more soft to me. I don't know what was wrong with this teacher. I think her grandmother had maybe passed. But either way, there's no excuse to be mean to a fifth grader.

Those are the most prevalent memories. And then my dad told us we had to pretend that we didn't know because my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, wanted to be the ones to tell me, probably because they knew how shitty my dad was. So we had to pretend. And I remember my grandma telling me later that she thought it was weird that I didn't look surprised or sad, but it was because I was told to pretend I didn't know yet. I just missed her. And when she was home, what happened to me didn't happen as often. My mom was the person I cared most about in the world.

So sorry for your loss and how traumatic that had to have been for you. And then coming to terms with that news while simultaneously being trapped in an environment that doesn't allow you to be yourself or feel your feelings. Was there anybody in your life that you did feel like at this time you could talk to about any of this?

No, but I became closer with my grandmother later on, but we didn't have a super close one because they didn't like my dad. My dad didn't like them, so he didn't let us see him. I don't remember being super close to my friends. Maybe I was, but honestly, I just don't remember a lot because trauma. I think people just don't know how to handle stuff like that. I remember telling my friend, my mom was killed and she was like, on my birthday? She was so concerned it was on her birthday.

It was just a weird response, but I mean, people just respond differently. I already knew Arthur was abusive. I wasn't able to talk to my grandparents much. Also, I wasn't the type to ask questions at this time. When we had the funeral, Arthur's son did come and apparently he was in the home at the time it happened, which means he probably knows what happened.

He was in his 20s, I think. He had a baby. Who knows if he was afraid of his dad or what? I don't know. But I just remember my grandma liked him enough and knew how much he loved my mom that she did let him come to the funeral. At the funeral, I was like slapping myself in the face in the bathroom so that I would not cry at my mom's funeral, which is crazy to me now. That's what I used to do. Like if I didn't want to cry and my dad was being an asshole or anything like that, it was like pinching yourself or slapping yourself in the face.

Her death certificate is ruled a homicide. Arthur's claim is that they were fighting and she shot herself in the head. It was like one of those guns that needs gunpowder and all this stuff that my mom doesn't know how to do. That made it even more obvious.

It wasn't until I was taken that I really got to know more about the details. And it wasn't even until actually a few years ago that I got to know even more details. Because in my head, they must have been looking into it. There must have been something done. I remember my grandma telling me, like, they said they needed to test to see if he could have shot her at the angle he did and killed her. And then they'll bring it to the DA. But nothing. No charges were ever brought to that man for murder.

I can't even find the original article that I found a long time ago. It had a picture of a candle and it said like domestic violence woman gets killed by her boyfriend. And he commented on it, Arthur did, and said, I would have never hurt her. She killed herself. I feel so sorry for kids. I loved her. And I commented, don't you dare say that. I saw the bruises. Everyone knows you murdered her. And I don't think he responded. I was probably like 14 years old.

Were your brothers involved with the investigation and giving statements or anything like that? No, and no one really asked me anything either. Like, the only time I talked to a detective about my mom's murder was when I reached out to them in my 20s. I did find her diary. I've read it so many times.

A year to the day of her being murdered. So December 15, 2006. It was, I need to go. I can't live like this no more. I have never been so ready to go. I don't know where, but I can't stay here. 10 days till Christmas and I don't know where I'll be staying. I can't live with it anymore. I'm afraid I'll end up dead. Beaten and strangled will be how he'll do it. He's getting worse and worse. Little things set him off. I think he has used me up and now he's ready to destroy me.

So that's very telling. She knew it. A year in advance, she knew it.

She definitely didn't feel like she had a choice. And she did try to leave. That's what the theory is, that she was packing up, trying to leave, and he didn't like that and he shot her.

Your dad wasn't any nicer to you after your mom was gone. No, I don't remember this for sure. But I think he waited a few more days than normal before he asked to do it again. There were times if I got really upset and I was like, I don't understand why you're doing this to me. Like, I need you to explain it to me that he would eventually be like, oh, it's because I heard my parents having sex when I was a kid, which what? How does that explain anything?

He would say he was done doing it. The most time that ever went by without him asking was like a month. It was a good month, but still.

As a kid, he didn't wait for me to say yes, like three, four, five, six, seven. He would just do it, didn't care. But eventually, he would make sure that I agreed to it in a sense. There were so many different ways he used it. Bribery, the isolation, the groundings, and the lies. He would make up, be like, oh, I found out that she had a secret boyfriend she's been sneaking out to meet for the past six months.

That's what he would tell people I was doing. But in reality, I was stuck at home, not able to do anything except maybe go to church. Truly an evil human being. I remember when we were younger, them telling me on my birthday one year that they were officially divorced. But when you look in their records, divorce was never finalized. She was murdered in 2007 and there were still updates in 2008. They never got divorced as far as the court system sees it.

The last time it had happened to me was the 30th. This is birthday, October 30th. My dad asked me if I would do it. And I was like, no, he's like, it's my birthday gift, please. I won't ask you again for a while. I wouldn't do it. So he took away all my belongings. He wouldn't let me go to church. And then it was like a few days later, I finally agreed. I remember like laying under my bed, not eating. I was so depressed and just tired.

My Tennessee friend, I usually would stay the night at her house, which is what I preferred. But this time she stayed at mine and I told her what was happening. And I was like, you can't tell your mom. And of course she told her mom. The mom called the counselor. The counselor called me in the very day, the 18th.

I won't name her, but she's a very sweet woman. People had asked me before and I would just lie. But in that moment, I was done. When she pulled me into the office, I think I was just so broken. I was so ready for it to be done that I said it. I didn't think anything happened because nothing had before. It felt fast to me. I was taken. I went to stay at that counselor's house that night until they found me like a placement, which ended up being my aunt in Tennessee.

The day I got taken, that was my day of freedom.

Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at SomethingWasWrongPodcast. Our theme song was composed by Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much. I take my time every day.

If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who will fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight just like you'd want your own children defended. Whether you're facing a drug charge, caught up on a murder rap, accused of committing war crimes, look no further than Paul Bergeron. All the big guys go to Bergeron because he gets everybody off. You name it, Paul can do it. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness?

From Wondering, the makers of Dr. Death and Over My Dead Body, comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Isn't it funny how witnesses disappear or how evidence doesn't show up or somebody doesn't testify correctly? In order to win at all costs. If Paul asked you to do something, it wasn't a request. It was an order. I'm your host, Brandon James Jenkins.

Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Criminal Attorney early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.