#367: Girl With Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) Kills Her "Abuser"
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There is a man laying unconscious in his living room. He's knocked out face first onto the carpet. He's not dead, at least not yet. Alyssa and Vanessa are standing over him. Alyssa believes this is what this man deserves. This is the only way they have to kill him or else there really is no other option here.

She reaches for the zip ties. She nudges his ankles together and starts zip tying them three times across three separate zip ties. Vanessa, on the other hand, she does not want to do this. She's screaming in her head nonstop. Stop. Stop. This just needs to stop. This is taking things way too far.

When Alyssa has a moment where she is no longer in control, it's like a brief second. Vanessa goes, grabs a pair of scissors and cuts the man's zip ties off his ankles, essentially freeing him. Alyssa screaming, no, she rushes to grab more zip ties, continues zip tying his legs, his arms together. All the while, Vanessa, all she can do is just helplessly watch what's happening.

She watches as Alyssa grabs a knife and plunges it into the man's neck, stabbing him so deeply that she nearly decapitates him. It's over now. They're going to be safe. Alyssa drops the knife. There's blood dripping down her arms and her hands.

The police would later report the victim, the man dead on the living room floor, to be Harold Sasko. And the killer, to not be Vanessa, to not be Alyssa, but a single 19-year-old teenage girl named Sarah McLynn. This is the story of Sarah McLynn and how she violently murdered a man and was diagnosed with DID. And a lot of people believe that she should be free.

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As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Now, a couple of very important disclaimers before we start in today's case. There are mentions of CSA, SA, grooming, R-word, and self-exits. So please take care of yourself and watch at your own discretion. One more clear disclaimer I want to provide very clear is Dissociative Identity Disorder, aka DID, is mentioned throughout this case.

However, this episode is in no way a representation of the entire DID community, nor is it our objective to speak over people with a similar or that diagnosis. We did our best to consult and research only peer-reviewed research by medical professionals, and we pulled research from the DID community for their unique perspectives. It's also just like

any other mental illness, depression, anxiety, to give you examples, people with DID are not inherently violent or dangerous in any way solely based off of a diagnosis. I would really hope that by this point, we all know that anybody has the capacity to be a terrible human being. And from what I can tell just anecdotally, typically those who struggle with their mental health, whether that be depression or DID or anything else are much more vulnerable to becoming victims rather than perpetrators.

A few small things to note, statements and letters have been condensed for time. And this is a case where a lot of interpersonal relationships are very important. But because the interpersonal relationships are not heavily documented or recorded, we really only have one version of events for that. Sarah's. Sarah does have an incentive to lie or alter the truth considering she was on trial for murder. So

So use your best judgment on whether or not you believe she's trustworthy. I'm not here to sway you one way or another. Like with any case, I have no skin in the game. I will say though, that when I was first researching this case, I watched a, um, a snapped episode on this case from oxygen. And I thought I knew the story. Then we filed a freedom of information act to get court documents, which were only partially approved because of an appeal. And I have to say that

They were so revealing. It's about 1500 pages that we combed through of transcripts, documents, and I did not see most of the information mentioned at all in the snapped episode. And I believe that episode came out a little biased because of that. So hopefully this will feel a little bit more like a comprehensive deep dive. So with that being said, let's get started.

Dr. Hutchinson was called by a criminal defense attorney. He told her he's got a very puzzling case. A 19-year-old girl in prison for a brutal, heinous murder. She nearly decapitated her victim. Can you please evaluate her for us? Dr. Hutchinson is a psychologist. She works with offenders pretty often, and she has experience with the trial process. And obviously, her intrigue is piqued. What do you mean? This is a puzzling case.

Dr. Hutchinson agrees to a meeting. She goes to meet with the patient, the inmate, the defendant, literally about to go on trial for murder, 19-year-old Sarah McLynn. The first meeting lasted a little over an hour. And Dr. Hutchinson walks back out. The defense attorney, Sarah's attorney, walks up to her. What do you think?

I mean, the doctor's got it now. Sarah is by far one of the most unusual people that she has ever interviewed. She says initially she appears to be this sort of sweet, typical 20 year old Midwest kid who is kind of lost in the world. Then we started talking about the actual murder and all of a sudden there was just a lack of distance.

A lack of a, it's almost as if she wasn't describing what she was describing to the point where after that first meeting, Dr. H on the drive home, she kept shaking her head and kept saying to herself, what in the world was that? She said, I have never really witnessed anything quite like that.

Dr. H likely could not put her finger on it the very first interaction, which I don't think anybody expected her to. Things like this take time. But to Dr. H, it did not feel like Sarah is just this cold hearted, ruthless killer that can talk about a violent murder in a blunt sort of way. That's not the feeling she's getting. It's not, oh, she's so detached from the crime. She doesn't care. She has no remorse. It's not that. Regardless, Dr. H is so intrigued. She wants to be a part of this case.

She starts going to build rapport with Sarah, meeting with her, getting to know her, analyzing her. And a few things, the first few things that really stuck out to the doctor, the first being sometimes when Sarah describes certain situations or memories that she herself was a part of, she uses language that typically wouldn't be used.

For example, if I'm standing in the living room and then I walked to the kitchen to grab water, I would say, oh, I felt really thirsty when I was standing in the living room. So I walked over to the kitchen and I grabbed a glass of water. That's what happened. But Sarah, and this is obviously an example, would say something along the lines of we were in the living room. Then I watched myself go to the kitchen to grab water. Interesting. It's almost like she's narrating her actions. Yeah.

noted. Dr. H also noted that Sarah has these unexplainable gaps in her memory. She does not remember random chunks of her day, her week, most of her childhood. She has no memory of it. Not, oh, I don't remember anything particularly that stands out. Nothing spectacular happened, but just straight up no memories, random blanks in the day that are unexplainable. She would be sitting in her bedroom and then all of a sudden she would be in the kitchen.

She doesn't know what happened in between that time span. Dr. H goes to pull records from 2012. This would be two years before she's talking to Sarah. Oh, this happened 2014? Yes. And she pulls records from 2012, Sarah's medical records, before Sarah committed any sort of crimes. And she finds that even two years ago, Sarah had attempted self-exit. She was forced to report to a psychologist on a daily basis for a week and

And she keeps mentioning even two years ago that she has gaps in her memory. There's time in her day that she just can't fill. The psychologist from two years ago writes in her notes, patient reports gaps in memory on almost daily basis. Losses of time that she does not know what happened during those incidents. Interesting.

Noted. Another interesting observation, Sarah would be talking to Dr. H about the events and every now and then, so naturally that Sarah herself doesn't even seem to notice, it almost just comes out of her mouth so smoothly. But Dr. H would note it down. Sarah would use we and us pronouns to describe herself when referring to herself. Now she does identify with she her pronouns.

Which, side note, this is not like a matter of her identifying with different pronouns. It was just a little bit different from that. Dr. H noted, something is interesting here. Then another observation. This one is harder to ignore. Sometimes Dr. H would come in to talk to Sarah and

And it would just feel like a completely different person each time. Most of the time, Sarah, according to Dr. H, her detailed notes appears quiet, soft-spoken, apologetic, often tearful and horrified at what's happened, what she's done, and deeply terrified and scared.

And every person has a very specific tonality, body language. Even the way you use your face muscles is very unique to your personality. So side note, the way your face looks is, yes, based on your face structure, the way that your bones are set. But there's also face muscle usage. That's only part of it. The other part is actually your personality. So if this is your face, this is your bone structure, but you have a completely different personality than I do, we might look different.

Because when you're anxious, you hold tension in certain areas that make maybe your jaw more prominent. Maybe your lower lips come down because you're pulling down at them. Maybe there's a little bit more tension in certain areas of your cheeks. So the way that your personality is can reflect on your face. Sometimes her face would just look slightly different.

And people have a baseline pitch. They have a baseline body posture. They have baseline hand gestures that they use when they're speaking. Obviously, there's subtle differences depending on environment or stress levels. But the minute that Dr. H believes she has a grasp on Sarah's mannerisms,

She would come to see Sarah and everything feels different. It's like a completely different person. Sarah would go from being quiet, soft-spoken to being incredibly assertive, definitive, clear, sharp-spoken, unapologetic. There's not a single tear, no crying whatsoever.

And almost kind of snappy. Dr. H has been a psychologist for a very long time. Probably longer than we've been alive. She knows this is not a matter of a good day versus a bad day. Or getting more comfortable. Or even like a mood swing. Which is very typical things that people go through. Or like someone pretending to be someone. This is something else. The doctor said, Then I think it was one time. I arrived and there was, again, what felt like a completely different person that met me. And I just asked,

Who are you? She responded. I'm Alyssa. Thank you for coming to talk to me. Is there a reason you're here today? Yes. There have been some fights in the jail and I had to come out because Vanessa can't handle that. So I'm here. Dr. Hutchinson remembers saying, there are really a few more important things I would want to talk to Vanessa about today. Is it possible that I talk to Vanessa?

No, it's not safe. I'm staying. Later, Dr. Hutchinson would ask about Sarah, if she could please speak to Sarah, the name on her patient chart. She was informed that Sarah was dead. Sarah had died at 16 years old.

DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder. A quick disclaimer before we get into this episode. Like I said, we try to gather as much peer-reviewed research as possible from the medical community, as well as listen to the DID community and go on forums and try to pull from actual personal experience rather than people who think they know what they're talking about. And I will say that what we gathered is DID might be the most poorly represented psychological disorder in mainstream media. So we tried our best to separate that from all

all of our research. I really wish I had more experience or I really wish that I knew people that I could speak to that had DID to get you even more insight. We also know that DID can present itself very differently person to person. So this should not be taken as a generalization of DID as a whole. So please, if there's anything you felt was not exactly explained correctly, or honestly, even more insight that you have on this topic, I would be very grateful if you could leave that in the comments.

DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, can loosely be defined as a disruption in one's identity by the existence of two or more distinct identity states in an individual. Which, okay, when I'm reading that definition, I'm like, yes, it makes sense. But I think this definition explains a lot more to me in terms of understanding.

Someone without DID typically experiences a very stable, singular sense of identity. The identity evolves over time through experience, obviously. And of course, we all have mood changes, periods of sadness and personality evolution. But overall, there is this underlying feeling of being the same person that evolves and over time adapts. I mean, don't get me wrong. I would think that I'm not the same Stephanie from 10 years ago, but it's because I've evolved.

That Stephanie from 10 years ago went from point A to point B, which is where I'm today. But it's still Stephanie. It's just changed. It's not a fixed identity that I have, but it's moving and developing. And it's just one singular identity going through motions. Whereas people with DID describe their perception of self as a bit different. And there's not one way, but some people have described it as singularity.

seeing their identity as multiple identities, not limited to one. And it's not just, oh, today I'm happy, so this is my identity. Just completely different identities. It's like two souls in one body is the feeling. Others have described it as multiple identities coexisting in a vessel, like one body that has to be shared.

So for someone like me who does not have DID, think of this analogy. I'm driving a bus. There is nobody else on this bus. I'm the only driver of this bus the whole time I'm driving. I have a very clear memory of everything that's happened while I was driving this bus. Obviously the boring bits where I space out on the highway, it's not going to be strong in my memory, but there's very big moments where I'm like, oh,

oh yeah, I saw that while I was driving down the highway. Oh yes, and I was listening to this song while I was driving down the highway. But someone with DID has a very different bus driving experience. They might only remember half of the drive. They might have this feeling that they don't remember anything prior to suddenly driving

I was sitting in the bus driver's seat and driving the bus, but they don't know how they got on the bus. Or sometimes they experience driving the bus from the outside, almost like they can see themselves driving the bus, but they don't actually feel what it's like to drive the bus. They say also another good way to describe it is someone without DID is you look in the mirror. That's how you perceive yourself. Someone with DID might perceive themselves almost like a CCTV camera.

from the outside, not staring into the mirror, but watching their body stare into the mirror. That's because someone with DID, there is more than one identity on that bus. DID is categorized and characterized by the DSM-5 by having the presence of two or more separate identities or alters. There is not one singular identity. There is not one singular driver of the bus. There are multiple different alters that drive that bus.

Now there might be one or two alters that drive most of the time. Some alters barely ever drive or other alters are fighting to try to drive, but they never get the chance to, but there's a lot of people on that bus and

and they all feel like completely different identities. Like think of a full bus of different people because they are. So what does that mean? I'm driving a bus alone. I see my hands on the wheel. I am in control of the bus nonstop. I have the AC blowing in my hair. I see the red lights. These are my personal experiences. I remember the whole bus drive. Someone with DID might experience that for 25% of the bus drive. The

The other 75%, they feel like they've been sharing the seat, helping the driver drive the bus. Or sometimes they feel like they're in the back of the bus, not paying attention to who's driving the bus. Or they're watching from the front seat, trying to give backseat driving instructions to the driver. And they're getting frustrated because it's like, why aren't you listening to me? Or they can see themselves driving the bus, but almost from the view of a CCTV camera.

And these identities and alters make up a system. Now, side note, they are referred to alters that make up a system. I think prior, maybe decades ago, they were called personalities. That's not, that doesn't apply because I think people without DID was like, I also have different personalities when I'm at work. That's not what we're talking about. So instead of having one singular identity, there's many separate identities that make up a system.

Think of it this way. It's like if I were to take your soul and put it into my body, but my soul is still in here and it's completely separate, conscious stream of thoughts, dislikes, likes, preferences, mood, stabilities. And now we're both trying to figure out who's in control of this body.

Each identity has a distinct personal history, self-image, and has completely separate responses to certain situations. They can even have different handwriting. Psychologists say it's actually pretty common for different alters within a system to have drastically different likes of music

food preferences political views even the way that they use that body they say is different and i think that maybe if you don't know anyone with did some psychiatrists were saying you might have a tendency to be like wait that doesn't make sense right but when you see someone switch between alters you see their tone their body language the way they use their face also changes

I don't want to get it too complicated, but just know that there are multiple alters that make up a system. And when we say fronting, um, when we, I'm talking about me talking about the case, not as someone with DID, I don't want to act like I'm representing that community, but it's referred to as fronting is that alter is in control of the body.

And sometimes the other alters have no idea what's happened when that alter is in control. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they do. That's called co-consciousness. Sometimes they can actually have inner dialogue between like inner monologue between the different alters and they can fill each other in where they have systems where a lot of people with DID have specific attitudes.

apps where they write down, hey, this is what I did as this alter. And then the next alter that comes to front, they can see what's happened so far. So they're not completely out of the loop. But that is why recurrent amnesia is typically a big diagnostic point that psychologists tend to focus on in terms of diagnosing someone with DID.

There may be random slots of missing time, or at least that's what it feels like. Giant gaps in memory, chunks of childhood times just missing from your memory, or you see pictures of your wedding and you know you were there. You see it in the picture. You're there. That's you. Obviously, you're getting married, but you have zero memory of your wedding. Wow.

Zero. You just know what people are telling you happened. So there are people who like look at their wedding photo who can't remember. So I imagine the altar that was fronting during the wedding, they're the only one that remembers. So when they are present or when they're fronting, they're like, okay, yes, I remember. Yeah.

but the other alters, they might not. Or you might be watching a video, eating a bowl of cereal, and then suddenly in the blink of an eye, you look up and you're in bed reading a book and you have no idea what just happened. It does seem like there are people out there in this world that either don't take DID seriously or think that it cannot be real, which is obviously very ignorant. And yes, there have been instances of people faking DID typically for social media fame, but there's also people faking terminal illness for social media fame. That does not make terminal illness fake. If

If you take brain scans of people with DID, you'll see that oftentimes they even have blood flow patterns that are different from people who do not have DID. One study showed that people with DID also tended to have a smaller hippocampus, which is the part of your brain that helps you form memories. And it's not like, oh, the smaller your hippocampus, the more likely you are to get DID. It seems more like after the fact.

And you'll see why. So we kind of know what DID is, but how does DID develop? It's generally agreed upon in the scientific community that DID is typically formed during childhood as a protective mechanism against trauma. I think Dr. Mike Lloyd puts it a lot better than I do, but he says, and this is a paraphrase,

Every single one of us has a different tolerance for trauma or life stress. So visualize it. Think of it as a glass cup. Your resilience to trauma is an empty glass cup. And all of us are going to have different size cups. Some people are naturally more resilient than others.

Typically, when you're younger, your cup is going to be very small. As you get older, your cup grows, or at least it should, as an example. So if you're an adult with a great, well-adjusted life and support system, you likely have a great deal of resilience and you've got a big, empty glass cup. Now think of trauma as a jug of water. So every time someone experiences trauma, you splash some water in there. It goes into the glass cup. And if you have a fairly empty cup, why?

One splash of water is going to do nothing. It's just going to be a sip of water sitting at the bottom of your cup. It's not going to be good. You want to get it out, but you have so much room in that cup to learn how to cope, manage, grow. You have space in that cup to think and process the trauma. You can actually pour the trauma water out because you've put it in the cup, experienced it, processed it, and now you're done with it. It's no longer taking up all your brain space.

That's for a healthy adult. When you're a child, every amount of trauma, every splash feels like it's going to overwhelm the cup because you probably just have a shot glass. The cup is so small. Children do not have strong coping mechanisms to deal with trauma. Even if there is room in that tiny little shot glass, likely the child does not know how to manage that water that goes in. But that's why you have parents or adults in your life. They will take your shot glass and actually pour it into their cup.

They take your trauma out of them. They see trauma, they take it out. They try to lighten, constantly drain the child's trauma cup.

But what if that child does not have an adult or anyone in their life that can take away their trauma or the trauma? It's not just a little splash. It's a giant splash. Or sometimes it's a constant trickling of water that never ends, like an open faucet, just constantly pouring more water. It doesn't matter if someone once in a while tries to dump the glass. There's just new water coming in.

whether it's parental neglect, physical or sexual violence, high stressors that the child has. It is nonstop. Now, nobody's taking any water out. Eventually, that cup is going to overflow. Where does overflowing trauma go? It doesn't just disappear. Our brains don't work like that where it's like, oh, you know what? I can't handle the trauma. So it's just not there anymore. It's still there. It just does not evaporate.

So what does that child's incredibly powerful, desperate, but also very resilient brain do? They create new glasses to hold the trauma, additional vessels to hold more trauma, altars. Think of the cup as new altars. Sometimes those new glasses are clear and people can see, they themselves can see, perhaps therapists can even see how much water and trauma is in some of those glasses. Other times, the new glasses that they have are paper. You can't even see what's in there.

They themselves can't even see what's in there or how much is in there. And as the child grows or as more trauma takes place, they might have more glasses that are required to contain the trauma. So that's why you'll see that with people with DID, even later down the road, they might have new alters emerge. And it's usually because they need more glasses.

And those glasses make up a system, multiple identities in one body. And side note with altars, it does seem common that there are specific altars that are usually made out of paper, the ones that you cannot see through, and they hold most of the trauma. So that's why the DID community said, you'll actually see a lot of people with DID say, that doesn't make sense because I've never experienced childhood trauma.

And then they start reflecting, they start going through therapy and they realize, oh, actually this happened to me. And there are witnesses from my childhood that are like, yeah, that's crazy because that did happen to you. And they just didn't realize it. So they have trauma holding alters. So it's all like your brain just trying to protect you. Yes.

And that's where the disassociative also comes in. It does feel like it didn't happen to me. It's almost like you're protecting yourself. Like I can't handle this emotion, so it didn't happen to me, but I can't just get rid of the trauma. So I'm just looking for a different way to cope. It is called a disorder, but a lot of psychologists say it's more like a protective mechanism that develops in the brain. Another thing to note is that DID is not something that needs to be healed.

A lot of people will say, oh, you need to learn to reintegrate yourself as an adult. Go back to one identity. But that's not really necessary. That would imply that someone with DID is broken, which that's not the case. I think every person on the planet can use some healing, but you get it.

And this part is important, but when talking to someone with DID, from what we've researched, it is preferred that we use the pronouns of the fronting alter. Someone who is part of a system of alters said, if you're talking about me, as in me, the person sat in front of you, talking to you, then it's me, one person, and I identify as, and then they would give their pronouns.

So we will stay with how Sarah's doctors refer to her, which is Sarah, and the pronouns she uses are she, her. Now, side note, most of the time people with DID will refer to themselves as we instead of I, which is why I wanted to make sure that there's no confusion about the pronouns.

And one more thing to note, just because there are different identities working in a system that has completely different likes and dislikes, it is nothing like the movie Split, which is about a homicidal person who happens to have DID and that's like the whole punchline, right? People with DID do not have bad, evil alters that are trying to front and commit heinous crimes. Alters have different personalities, but the formulation, the reason that a new alter comes about is generally for protection, right?

It's never like, oh, I just have like a serial killer alter. That is crazy. That's that is unhinged. That is movie. That is crazy. Usually alters are created again to protect someone. So sure, there can be bad people with DID and there's also bad people who don't have DID. Just statistically speaking, people with DID are no more likely to commit crimes than the general population. And 70% of people with DID have attempted self-exit at one point in their lives and

they're likely to be victims of crime more than anything. Yeah, because they're traumatized when they were young. And even in today's case, there is a lot more nuance. So...

Just follow me there. Sarah has a habit. Well, she did. She had a habit of stealing her dad's keys before he went to work. This is when she's a kid. Sarah's dad was almost always running late because of Sarah, which is kind of cute at first. But over time, it's just very inconvenient. It's part of the daily routine. Where are my keys? Hurry, go find daddy's keys. Daddy's going to get fired.

But now that Sarah's older, both of Sarah's parents, they're divorced and she no longer lives in the family home. But they just think of that moment when they're asked, what do you remember most about Sarah's childhood? They would both respond, oh, she used to do this thing where she would hide her dad's keys. She's like daddy's little girl. They would smile and it's like this cute little memory, one of the happiest memories they have as a kid.

And Sarah must have loved her dad. That is the messaging. She loved him so much. She never wanted him to leave the house. So both mom and dad is sharing this story, saying how much Sarah loved her dad. To Sarah's psychologist. And Sarah's psychologist was like, okay, that's very interesting because I feel like Sarah has a lot of complex feelings about her parents. And Sarah clearly remembers things very differently.

As a child, Sarah actually had a lot of interesting habits. She didn't like wearing shoes. She likes to play outside. And most unique and potentially alarming one is she had this habit where she would run outside to play with her friends and she would come back home and everyone is like, what are you doing? Where on where did the rest of your clothes go?

She would just come back home in nothing but her underwear. What? And nobody looked into it. They just thought, Sarah's such a tomboy. She doesn't like wearing clothes. Like, how old was she? Not even elementary school. Maybe like four or five. Whoa, that's crazy. And she really, really, really hated their next-door neighbor.

hated him. But that's not really news. I think everyone in the neighborhood hated this guy, despised this guy. He's old. He's described as crabby. He has dementia and he would do this thing where he would just shoot squirrels with BB guns. Sometimes the BB gun pellets would ricochet off and hit other things. Sometimes

Sometimes he would hit neighbors' cars parked on the street while he's attempting to hit a squirrel with a BB gun, which I imagine is happening frequently considering his age and deteriorating eyesight. He's hitting random things and people. He is overall probably the worst neighbor of the year. Nobody even knows why he's torturing squirrels in the neighborhood. He's not exactly the type of person you can ask that question to.

You feel like you're next. He's going to shoot you next. So everybody just stays away from this guy. They keep an eye out for him and he keeps an eye out for little Sarah.

Allegedly, he would make Sarah watch him shoot a squirrel with a BB gun, walk over, grab that squirrel still half alive and skin the squirrel alive using a knife. Then he would kill the squirrel in front of her face just after literally ripping and peeling its skin off in front of this, I don't know, five-year-old girl. He would scream at her, if you try to run or if you look away, this is going to be you next.

If you tell anybody anything, this is going to be you. And when he's done killing a squirrel in front of her, he would hold Sarah down, shove the mutilated squirrel in her face and molest her. It's stated that he essayed her orally and digitally, and then he fully essayed her by inserting gardening tools into her. We don't have specifics.

The very first time it happened, Sarah runs all the way home screaming, yelling. She slams open the front door. She doesn't even know how to describe what happened to her. I believe she was young to the point where...

She knows this is bad, painful, evil, terrifying, but I don't think that she can put it into words. Like, I don't think she understands her body like that even or what this action is. She has no idea. She just knows she hated it. She runs inside and her mom is on the phone and she screams at her loud daughter. You're making too much fuss. Go to your room.

Maybe it was Sarah's choice to take off her clothes while playing outside. Maybe it wasn't, but had someone just looked into it, they would have realized that the demented neighbor, Doc, that's what they called him, is more than just demented. Later, Sarah's psychologist would ask, when did the neighbor assault you? At night, in the mornings, before school, after? Sarah responded, anytime my dad wasn't home. So that's why she hid his keys. Oh my God.

in hopes that he would stay home. Sarah's psychologist firmly believes this is the childhood trauma that Sarah's brain could not handle and protected her by creating new alters.

Police are called to do a welfare check on a 19-year-old girl named Sarah McLennan. They show up at the house in question that she's apparently staying at. It's not her mom's house. It's not her dad's house. It's not even a relative's house. It's just a small little suburban house in Kansas. The police initially try knocking on the front door. Nothing. They tried the back door.

Nothing. Now, it's a little unclear if this was their second welfare check or if there was some reason that they felt that they needed to break into the house. I'm sure they've got a list of reasons, but the police forced their way into the home, through the door, through the kitchen. They kick it in and they step right into the house and they're like, we were right. The whole place is ransacked. If you were to go into the bedrooms, you would see dressers are rummaged through, bed sheets are ripped off the bed, pictures are ripped out of the picture frames.

but two things would stand out the most. On the wall written in big red letters is a word. Like imagine just spray painting inside the house. It's weird. And right underneath that is a dead man laying in a pool of his own blood. Zip ties around his wrist, zip ties around his ankle. Curiously, there are cut zip ties next to him and a pair of scissors next to his foot. So it seems like someone zip tied him and then cut it and then re-zip tied him for whatever reason.

The police look at the man, then they look at the words on the wall, and they realize that the words on the wall were written using this man's blood. And the words read, and it's kind of hard, F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Freedom? The most popular item at CC's Pizza is

It's a pizza chain. It's not actually a pizza. It's their cinnamon rolls. It's also not the most popular pizza chain in the world, but it is, or at least it was one of the only places in the entire town that would hire 15 year olds and give them a part-time job after school. And on top of that, the owner, Harold Sasko. So he's the owner of three CC's pizza franchises. He's not like the owner of the CC's pizza franchise company. He just owns three locations and he would hire 15 year olds and he's really cool.

Harold is interesting. People say he's a cool boss. He lets the high schoolers call him Hal. And instead of talking to them like they're irresponsible, incapable, incompetent 15 year olds, which is usually how these kids behave.

feel like adults talk to them. He talks to them like they're his age, like they're also adults. He'll even randomly talk to them or teach them about business and the struggles of running a franchisee location. He kind of feels more like a like a business mentor than a boss. And Harold could just see from a mile away that Sarah McLynn is hurting.

she's got scars on her arms on her wrists that are in various stages of healing she just seems lonely like she doesn't have anyone she's also a little awkward she was homeschooled as a kid which side note her homeschooling curriculum was just so questionable apparently her daily routine was to read classic literature novels and then watch the movie then which is just kind of i don't know i've never heard of that but regardless sarah was homeschooled and it resulted in her not really knowing how to make friends she was

Awkward. Even when she does eventually go back to public school, it was just a little too late. Usually Sarah keeps to herself, keeps away from people and people keep away from her. Except for Harold. He just feels like she needs help and he wants to help her. Does she work for him? Yeah. Oh, so she's one of the employees. And he is her boss. And he's also 33 years older than her. So technically old enough to be her dad. And he tells her, I can't.

can help you get on your feet. I can see that you're really struggling. And when you're ready, I can help you get your life together. I can help you learn how to run a business, kind of like a dad or mentor, like a father figure. You can even move in with me. Harold has been divorced four or five times. Right now he lives alone. He has got a spare room she could use. It's completely up to her. How old is she at this point? 17. Okay. And he's 33 years older. So he's

50? Yes. Sarah looks up to him. Nobody in her family owns a business. I mean, nobody in her family even wants to help her like that. So she really admires this guy. She does not know that her new mentor, Harold, has downloaded hundreds of videos of violent, explicit content onto his phone and visits X-rated websites that feature children, teens, and bestiality.

At least 20 times he visited a website that featured men fondling or having intimate relations with women that appeared to be asleep. Sarah did not know this at the time. Instead, she had his name saved on her phone under the contact, Dad.

But dads don't really do drugs with their daughters, do they? According to Sarah, right after moving in, Harold was supplying her and giving her unrestricted access to whatever drugs she wanted. Weed, vodka, cocaine, ecstasy, which there seems to be other witnesses that have stated Harold was buying drugs, mainly weed and black market prescription painkillers, a lot

allegedly. They said he talked about it. They never saw it happen, but he talked about it. But if it's true that he is buying drugs and giving it to Sarah, it defeats the whole purpose of her moving in to begin with because he said it was to make sure that she got clean and worked on her future. Sarah said after moving in with Harold, she might have actually started doing more drugs.

This is according to Sarah. She said she was drinking almost on a nightly basis. She's having seven shots of vodka at a time, seven drinks at a time. She would smoke weed almost every single day. And a few times a week, she would take super strong prescription painkillers, which, yeah, from the outside, we're confused. We're alarmed. But Sarah, she's 17. She's having what she thinks at the time is a really good, good time.

One month into Sarah's move into Harold's house, Sarah shows up with a whole brand new nose. She got a nose job. Sarah's sister, Ashley, is kind of confused. Maybe because a nose job is like $6,000. How on earth did you pay for it? But she also knows that Sarah has complained about how she hates her nose, how ugly it made her feel and how ashamed she was of it. And Sarah tells her sister, well, Harold told me that if I feel insecure, he can help me not feel insecure. And she's like, well,

I'm going to pay him back, though. He's just fronting me the money. That's crazy. Sarah feels really lucky. I mean, not only that, this sweet man is paying for her very expensive nose job. I mean, obviously she's going to pay him back. It's more like a loan. But he really didn't even have to do that for her. Who loans someone $6,000 so casually? I don't think many people would do that. For Sarah, even just the fact that he thought of it and offered it to her...

She said it felt like, wow, I finally have an adult that sees what I really need and will help me. It's not a free ride, but somebody is really helping me and they care about me. It's that type of feeling. $6,000 is a lot of money. For a 17-year-old, it probably feels like $6 million. $6 million.

You know what I mean? Like, you know, you can't even fathom that amount of money. And that must mean like the world for her to receive that. But also think about that later because imagine someone tells you, you need to pay me $6,000 at 17. Yeah. Yeah. I would not even, I would be so overwhelmed. She probably feels like she owes her, owes him her life. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, you can do this. I know, I know. Carvana makes it so convenient to sell your car. It's just hard to let go. My car and I have been through so much together. But look, you already have a great offer from Carvana. That was fast. Well, I know my license plate and VIN by heart, and those questions were easy. You're almost there. Now to just accept the offer and schedule a pickup or drop-off. How'd you do it? How are you so strong in letting go of your car? Well, I already made up my mind, and Carvana's so easy. Yeah, true.

And sold. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting. Wait, don't you need like weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want.

I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way.

I think Sarah's so happy with this newfound parental figure that she trusts, she doesn't even see what people see from the outside, which is, no, this is definitely a little bit strange. I don't even think most parents would give their 17-year-old a nose job. Sarah's older sister, Ashley, allegedly starts picking up on it just a little bit. Ashley knows that her sister, Sarah, is moving in with her boss, Harold. She thinks, yeah, it's weird. It's strange, but maybe it's for the best.

The two of them, Sarah and Ashley, they never really grew up with strong parental figures. Maybe this is what Sarah needs. But there are weird things. Like the fact that ever since Sarah moved in with Harold, she's had her nose job, but also butt implants.

Not that Ashley is judging or anything, but it just doesn't sound like her sister. Ashley was under the impression that both of them never wanted to get body augmentation surgeries. And also, she's so young. And Sarah can't stop talking about the end of the world, political annihilation through war. Like, she's becoming a doomsday prepper. I mean, there are some really unstable nuclear power plants right now, and they're on the cusp of exploding.

Okay. It would be in everyone's best interest to look for bunker locations. Places in places like Utah, Montana are good. They're far away enough from any of the blast sites that it should feel safe enough.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I have a friend in Utah. They say it's nice. Is the older sister or younger sister? Older sister. Sarah and Ashley would be out grabbing coffee or food and Sarah would just keep going on and on about how they need to make go bags filled with dry food that's going to keep them safe and alive for a few days. They're buying survival knives, her and Harold. Survival skills are going to be more important now than ever because think about it. Sure, you can do things on the computer, but what if computers are shut down? How are you going to get food if there's no grocery stores? Could I get a name for the order?

Sarah would turn Vanessa. Ashley's thinking, okay, whoa, this is a little strange. Sarah just called herself Vanessa, but maybe she doesn't like giving her real name to strangers. So you're saying this is the sister's first time hearing Vanessa? Yes, and she thought it was a little odd. And then sometimes she stated that Harold would even call Sarah Vanessa. But it was just weird. She didn't ask about it. She didn't think too much into it, but it was just weird.

She thought it was just a fake name. Yeah. And regardless, before Ashley can ask about it, Sarah would go on another tangent about volcanoes. Another newfound obsession since she moved in with Harold. So yeah, things are a little bit strange. But as long as Sarah has someone and somewhere to make her feel safe, which she never had in her childhood...

Maybe Ashley can support it. Sarah grew up in this really dysfunctional family. I mean, obviously so did Ashley. She's got Ashley, then it's Sarah, and then they have three younger brothers, all of whom were adopted, which apparently, according to Sarah, Sarah's mom would have these phases in her life, right?

Implying that her mom went through an adoption phase where she either thought that's what she wanted to do or thought it was cool or something. I don't know. It's just something that she would tell her psychologist later. Their mom adopts three boys. And according to Sarah, when they were no longer cute, her mom just decides the phase is over. Decides she doesn't really want to be a mom anymore. Leaving both Ashley and Sarah responsible for the care of the boys. And it's obviously not easy. One of the brothers has fetal alcohol syndrome and two of the other brothers both have ADD.

The girls are left to raise their three brothers and all they remember growing up about their mom is she was awesome.

always on the phone. Her phone is glued to the side of her face, talking to her friends. She just always seemed to be way more concerned with the opinion of her friends and what they think about their children than her actual children. She wasn't really maternal either. If the kids had a problem or wanted comfort or support or something, she was either a not there to provide it or be usually her method of support was along the lines of, Hey,

Suck it up. Stop whining. Life is hard. Okay. The world is harsh. So go to your room, which fine. Maybe dad is better.

Sarah's dad is described by Sarah as being quote, "very emotional." She said he's very depressed and has a very weak personality that lets both of his wives control him. She also thinks that he has an alcohol problem. He would constantly be out till five in the morning. The girls would be up all night wondering if he's going to be okay, if he's in trouble, if he's even alive, if he's abandoning them, but they can't go talk to their mom about it since she's on the phone and send them to their rooms.

They both always felt like their parents only ever did what was most convenient for them. They did not care about their kids. Then they divorced. Sarah's only 15 when it happened. It's rough. There's nonstop fighting in the house. Both parents get new partners and the kids feel even more abandoned. At one point, Sarah's mom would put the boys to bed, then leave to spend the rest of the night at her new partner's place, just leaving the kids.

So it's safe to say that there really were no strong parental figures in their life, no sort of guidance. They could sneak out, skip school, get high. It didn't seem like anybody cared or anything, which is maybe why Ashley thought, yeah, Harold is weird, but maybe he could be good for Sarah.

When Ashley meets Harold, he seems nice enough. He talks about how he's Christian and Sarah told her that he was going to teach her how to start a business, help her through school, which is super sweet. And everything seems super normal, except Harold mentions to Ashley that her daughter, Ashley has a daughter. So this is Sarah's niece. Sarah's very young niece is more than welcome to stay at his house if Ashley ever needs to get away and get some time alone.

Ashley thinks the offer is, quote, weird and a little creepy, but she tries to brush it off. He's probably just saying that nobody actually wants to babysit. Right. And she's trying to be supportive of her sister and her journey.

But there's a few things that you really cannot explain away. One time, Ashley's hanging out with Sarah. Harold is out of town in Florida. Sarah gets a text message from Harold and it's something about how sunburned he's getting on vacation, which is normally enough. But this is the picture that he sends. It looks like a bathroom mirror selfie. He is very sunburned. He looks like a cooked red lobster and you can't see any intimate areas. He's shirtless, but you can also tell that he's not wearing pants and he's not wearing underwear.

So it's like a top bare chest selfie? Yes, but he's showing enough of the waistband area that it's implied he's not wearing anything. So he took that photo naked? Yes.

which it's cropped. Like I said, you can't see his parts, but it's just a very odd thing to send someone that you call your stepdaughter. If I received this picture from my father or a stepfather, if I had one, I would genuinely be terrified. I would ask, did you mean to send this to somebody else? Because I need to throw my phone away now. This doesn't make any, this is not a normal father daughter relationship photo.

It just rubs Ashley the wrong way enough so that the next time Ashley visits Sarah at the house, she makes sure to be a little bit more observant and she notices two things. From her perspective, it seems that her sister is high on cocaine and Harold is looking at her sister in a very creepy way.

Ashley is so tired that night, but she refuses to fall asleep because something in her gut is telling her to stay awake, be alert and keep an eye out on her sister, which is exactly what she ends up doing. But what about all the other nights that she's not there? She can't stay awake and sleep over every night. She's got kids. She has obligations. She has a job. After that incident, Ashley goes to their mom and tells her, look, we got to do something about Sarah. Sarah's not in a good situation right now. She needs help. But their mom would more or less tell her we can pray for her.

She didn't ask for any more specifics on like, hey, what's happening to Sarah? Is she okay? Who is she with? Didn't really ask much. It's unclear if Sarah picked up on all these weird little instances or not. I would imagine not. And by the time she finally did pick up on something, it'd be too late. One day, Sarah is sitting on the couch with Harold and she's got him in her phone contacts as dad. And he tells her, I have feelings for you. I want to go on a date with you.

which is the last thing Sarah would ever want. She genuinely sees him as a dad. She tries to reject him as nicely as she can, but she's confused that he would even ask such a thing or even feel such a thing. But ever since that conversation, things start changing around this house. The energy is just different. The dynamic is shifting. When Sarah's sitting there watching TV, he would come up behind her, sit really close to her, put his arms around her, and she could see or feel that he's getting an erection.

And it's starting to make her feel super uncomfortable. One time she woke up to him lying next to her in bed without his shirt on. Wait, so she's still 17? Or...

So this happens when she's 18 now, but she moved in when she was 17. Now, one time she woke up with him lying in bed next to her without his shirt on. They sleep in separate rooms. So what is going on right now? And just to emphasize once more, in the eyes of the law, any unproven interactions between Sarah and Harold are from Sarah's conversations with her psychologist. It is at the end of the day, her version of events. But there are some witnesses we'll get into later.

Within a few weeks of asking Sarah on that date, though, and being rejected, Sarah sees Harold as her dad and hopes maybe things will go back to normal. Clearly, that's not the case. According to Sarah, Harold does something no person should ever do, let alone a father. No father should ever do this to their daughter. According to Sarah, he starts essaying her.

He threatens to kick her out of the house if she does not comply. She said that she felt she had no choice. The thought, the action, it disgusted her. But what can she do? She tried to tell him they're like father and daughter. This isn't normal. And he allegedly responded, this is just what people do when they're drunk. So she quote, I would get as drunk as I could and I would just lay there. She stated she tried to tell him no, but refusing consent does not feel like an option. He would just quote, act like he didn't hear me.

She stated that one time he kept essaying her while she was pleading no the whole time. Or if Sarah starts squirming to get away, he would quote, like when I would move my arm, he would just hold my arms. According to Sarah, this is just the start. He would essay her multiple times a week for months after that.

And each time it happened, Sarah would be mad at herself for thinking it was going to be any different this time. She said, he was my hope that the world wasn't just like the people of my family and that maybe there were good people in the world. And now that's gone. Why would he be different from all the other people that essayed Sarah? What, just because he's 33 years older than her and said he was going to be her father figure?

It is alleged that pretty much every male interaction Sarah had in her life on a deeper level had negative, horrendous outcomes. Sarah's very first boyfriend, she's thinking this is going to be like the movie shows or the TV shows where they find comfort and love in each other. And then one day he tries to get intimate and she tells him she's not ready considering all of the trauma that she likely had as a kid. She just doesn't want to do this. And he responds by beating her.

Later at 16, Sarah starts doing drugs and drinking alcohol and she's visiting this guy's house and they're not really friends. He's 20. She's 16. He's drunk and he's trying to get her to agree to have intimate relations. And again, she says no. Then why would you come over?

He pushes her onto the wood coffee table so roughly that it breaks. He does not care. He puts all of his body weight on top of her, lays on her, grabs his cigarette that he was smoking and starts pressing it into her arm, burning her skin. Then he drags her by the hair into his room and proceeds to essay her while he tells her that if she tells anybody, he's going to find her and he's going to kill her. Do we know who he is? No.

And initially, she didn't tell anyone. She didn't tell anybody. And nobody questioned why she came home with bruises and scars on her arm. It's not until months later, Sarah finally tells her mom a little bit about what happened with the 20-year-old. And her mom is quiet at first. And she just responds, I don't want you to tell anyone else.

But according to Sarah, her mom went ahead and just told everybody else for her, just about told every family friend, every family member that they have, and would allegedly, her mom would half joke that Sarah's a slut now. Sarah seemingly does not know how to digest all this additional trauma, including her alleged childhood abuse. And I say alleged because, I mean, I don't like to question victim stories, but we do have to factor in that she does have incentive to lie, but you get it. I...

I just can't imagine someone making this up. And maybe I have a naive perspective on the world. It just, she's having traumatic nightmares where she's holding, and there are medical records that do state things. She's having traumatic nightmares where she's holding a knife and killing a faceless man. She attempts self-exit multiple times around this time. She's hospitalized for over a week for that. And they just prescribe her antidepressants.

Side note, one of Sarah's therapists at the time straight up told Sarah's parents, we cannot help Sarah. We are not qualified. She is beyond our scope of expertise. You need to find someone else. This is like younger, right? Younger, before she even meets Harold. Wow. And I don't think her parents took it that way, the way they were supposed to. I don't think they digested that information and went home thinking, we really need to help our daughter. They were just like, okay, then we just won't find her a therapist if they can't help.

All she had are her meds and the meds are okay, but drinking is better. She starts skipping school drinking. Apparently she would start her day with multiple shots of vodka in her coffee at 15. She's doing drugs, just about anything that can help her forget all of the trauma and abuse. And sometimes forgetting includes doing so much ecstasy or cocaine that you genuinely feel nothing. She said, no matter how bad my day was, at least I could do a lot of drugs and all the negative stuff would just fade away.

She said, when I was drinking, I wasn't depressed. But clearly it's not working. She's not coping with all of this trauma well. At 16, she even starts watching very violent graphic explicit videos, specifically videos involving women that are being brutally humiliated as key points.

And this is going to be a theme throughout the rest of the episode. She almost starts trying to, this is a, what a lot of psychologists suspect is her behavior. She feels so powerless and she starts doing actions. She believes her perpetrators would do because she believes they are the ones with power. Yeah. Cause later she's going to start skinning animals. Yeah. I mean, you can always almost pinpoint how it happened at this point. You know, she's,

Like, look at the conditions. Look at all these, you know. And again, I know that there are people out there that believe that not DID is fake, but Sarah is faking DID. I think it's very hard to do, first of all. And if we take that out of the equation, this is, it just psychologically makes a lot of sense. A lot of experts are like, this just,

It's not far-fetched. It doesn't feel like someone made it up. Even without DID, just look at what happened to someone. Imagine that type of trauma to anybody. How do you respond at that age? Exactly.

Sarah would later state for 10 months, the essays would continue to escalate in Harold's house. She states she would be essayed by Harold over a hundred times. She said it was just so gradual that I feel like it wasn't until I was really far into things that I started to question almost like to a point where I didn't feel like I could do a lot about it. Thinking back, she said he was always controlling right when she moves in. He tells her, I just want to let you know that this is still my house. I have the right to search for all of your things.

Sarah thinks, yeah, I mean, no big deal. Of course, it's his house. He has the right to not want certain things in his house. He would go through her things. Then she's immediately given access to as much weed and alcohol as she wants. The only condition being she always has to do it in the house and he would be there controlling and taking advantage of the situation. Little by little, he starts taking over her life. He would tell her she can't have her phone in her room at night when she goes to sleep because technology should not be in rooms. Well, not in her room.

He's gaining full control and slowly starts demanding more and more from Sarah is how she puts it. She claims he essayed her multiple times a week for 10 months, but sometimes it's not just the essay that's messing with her ability to cope. It's the words. Sarah doesn't really know how to handle those. She said it was nonstop. He would follow her around and tell her men aren't going to find you attractive because your breasts aren't big enough and your butt's not big enough.

Sarah starts feeling less confident in herself, which is saying a lot because she said at that point her self-esteem was practically non-existent already. And she was already embarrassed by when she was younger, you know how she was burned with the cigarettes. She was so embarrassed by how round the scars were. It looked in her mind. She thought someone would see it from a mile away and think she was ripped and someone burned cigarettes on her because it's it's not a natural scar pattern.

It's so round. So she would actually take a sharp instrument and alter the scar to make it look natural, like a normal scar. It's alleged that she would lie and tell people that she fell off a horse and that's how the scar came about. And now Harold is basically telling her, trying to convince her to get a boob job or butt implants, a BBL. This is worse than a BBL. BBL is a fat transfer, which is very painful and it's dangerous. But butt implants, I heard...

are miserable. You're literally sticking foreign objects into your buttocks area.

And he's telling her, maybe if you have that, people are going to focus on that and not anything else, aka like those cigarette scarves. Sarah does not want either of these. She tries to convince him I'm way too young for breast augmentation surgery. Somehow, Harold agrees, but he still wants her to get the butt implants. And Sarah feels like she has no choice. She's cut off from her family. She's got nowhere to go. No money. He keeps telling her that she can't leave or else he's...

Something bad is going to happen to her. He won't stop talking about the butt implants and she feels like, fine, if I get it, he's going to stop talking about it. And essentially he's making her feel completely undesirable, a burden destined for a homelessness and all the scary things that come with being a woman without a home. Sarah later said, I think more than anything, he made me feel like he owned me. To him, I was just a toy, like his personal Barbie doll. That's what he tried to make me.

By this point that Sarah had moved in, she's isolated. She now has a nose job and butt implants. She's essayed by Harold on a weekly basis, allegedly. And before she can try and manage to cope, he's degrading her. He's kicking down her self-esteem, telling her that she's ugly and that she's going to die alone unless she does everything he says. She is completely helpless. And on top of that, we add on another layer. This reminds me a little bit about the Sarah Lawrence College cult case.

Harold starts writing up lists of all the money that Sarah owes him. Money for rent, $6,000 for the nose job, $10,000 for butt implants, which side note, we're not even going into the psychology of forced body modification.

We tried looking into peer reviewed medical studies about the psychology of what that could do to someone's psyche. And there's not a lot of information. The closest we could get was branding on sex trafficking survivors who get brands or tattooed by the traffickers. It would be a little bit similar to that to force modifications on your body that you don't want. And now he's charging her $10,000 for it. He's charging her gas bills. Netflix is on her list of debt.

The streaming service. She's almost $20,000 in debt to Harold. She's 19, $20,000 at 19. And he's holding it over her head, threatening to sue her if she doesn't do as he says. She's working at now. She's working at Bed Bath & Beyond. She has sporadic hours, does not really get the best pay. Her last paycheck from Bed Bath & Beyond was just $265, which is deposited into an account that only Harold has access to.

And when Harold gets drunk, he would allegedly throw Sarah down and essay her. Sarah said it was always when he was drunk. After Sarah's butt implants, she is in so much pain physically. She's laying on the couch. She doesn't feel like this is her body. She has a loss of body autonomy. And I think visually it's very scarring to see her body in a way that she does not like and does not want. All she wants to do is lay on the couch, get high off of prescription pain meds,

And she just spends months laying there depressed. She said all she could do was drink, smoke marijuana and think about how much she hates herself and how much she hates everybody and how much she hates Harold and how much honestly she hates being essayed, which she claimed happened even while she's depressed on the couch while she's laying there. She said she started having these very strange symptoms, stomach distress, daily headaches, and this bizarre tingling sensation in her fingertips.

And she thought it was so strange because her fingers wouldn't stop tingling. And she starts feeling like, wait, am I being poisoned right now? I feel like I'm being poisoned. Either Harold is poisoning my food or this house is poisoned. Otherwise, there's no reason for me to feel this weird. Which means Harold must be trying to kill her, right? So she has to kill him first before he kills her. Or at least that's what Sarah thought sometimes. Sometimes she wouldn't have this thought.

Sarah starts feeling very confused at how much her state would just change and go through the motions every day. And it doesn't feel like depression. She's had depression clearly, right? She tried to self-exit. She's been in the hospital for that. But this is different. She starts Googling rapid fire. Why am I different than anybody else? Why do I see things like this? Why am I always different at night than when I am in the morning?

Sarah wouldn't know until later that she is diagnosed with DID. At this point of living with Harold, she just knew that she had random gaps throughout her day or she remembered doing things, but very vaguely. Sometimes she could see herself doing things like she's watching from a bird's eye view. It's registering in her brain that that is me doing it, but it doesn't feel like it. That is how her psychologist explains her alters.

Now, her alters are... She has four that we know of, that her psychologist knows of, and this is her psychologist explaining. Vanessa is very depressed, anxious, and described as very weak. She's also very...

Has a lot of dark thoughts about wanting to self-exit. Very, very suicidal. She is described to have the energy of a skinny miniature greyhound. Nervous, anxious, breakable. She's immature, maybe 17 years old. She's the more compassionate alter, but it does appear that the compassion comes out of fear more than anything. She's the one that is fronting most of the time. This is Sarah's state most of the time.

Alyssa is the protector. Alyssa came about to protect Vanessa. Alyssa drinks a lot. She never panics. She's very strong, very witty. People really like her. She's confident, but not reliable. She,

is boiling with rage she has so much anger but she doesn't want to let that anger go because she deep down believes that's where her strength comes from is this anger she mainly fronts when the body is numb so that might be why sarah was googling why am i different at night it seems that alissa fronts more at night because um she's drinking she's getting more of that rage is coming in

She seems to have taken the protector role and put it upon herself. She feels like she has to be this way. She told the psychologist that she doesn't want to be the angry one. She doesn't want to be the aggressive one or constantly vigilant about protecting them. But she feels like she needs to, because if not her, then who? The others are just going to let themselves get abused nonstop. Alyssa would later say, I didn't want this. I didn't want this paltry life we had to be all I would ever have. And then when the world was going to be ended and that would all be there is,

Side note, it does appear that she genuinely does think that the world is coming to an end. And the idea that this is their life before the world ends is so painful and sad and depressing for her. And that's still, that's an idea that's forced upon them from... The Abyss and Harold, The End of the World. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was forced, but it does seem like she never had those conversations with anybody in her life until she moved in with Harold. She did not seem to care about The End of the World until then.

Alyssa also has very, very strong feelings about men. She said that she would never kill a dog, horse, or a woman, but men are a disease on this earth. They think with their bodies, so they are not human. They are animals. Alyssa hated everything about men and felt Harold was worse than a pig, more offensive than a pig. And

And again, I'm not trying to defend Alyssa. I don't think that Alyssa is sitting here just like waking up hating men. It's clearly her trauma and this is her protection. It's stated that she needs to hate men because it makes her feel in control of not letting more men into her life. Because if you hate something, you're not going to try to let it into your life. The other alters consist that we know of, of Myla and No Name. However, as Sarah's doctor says,

She was not allowed to talk to them much. We have very limited information about them. We just know that Myla is a bit, tiny bit more confident than Vanessa. But she's very feminine and quite young. I'm not sure if she's considered a little, which is a type of alter. I don't know if it's type, but categorization of alter. And typically it embodies a childhood version of...

the person very young her role is interestingly though young but almost kind of like a mother figure to vanessa younger more feminine but that is how much vanessa is weak in their system that everyone needs to protect vanessa

Myla is the most like Sarah before her reoccurring trauma. She's very nice and content with the world, not too angry. She likes people. She thinks all people are pretty good and she's very feminine. Dr. Hutchinson described Myla as being very polite. Now, no name is the trauma carrier.

The memories of the essay from the creepy old neighbor only come about when no name is fronting. No name? Yes, literally. No name. The memories of the childhood. This is the only altar in the system that carries memories before middle school. The other altars will tell Dr. H, I don't remember anything before middle school. No name is described by the others as just a body. Doesn't really have inside emotion. Just kind of functions.

Which is very enlightening considering no name is the trauma carrier. And Sarah, Sarah is dead. She died at 16 years old when she was essayed by the 20 year old. So it seems that Sarah was likely part of the system. I don't even think they knew it was a system at the time. I think, I don't know if they could categorically say that, but when she was burned by the cigarettes, they said that is when Sarah died.

Sarah's doctor would later state, Vanessa was very afraid. Anytime I talked to Vanessa, she was always crying. Now Alyssa never cried. Milo was extremely soft-spoken and liked to quote Bible verses, which Alyssa was very angry about. Alyssa said Milo has always been reading parts of the Bible like you should cut off the part of you that offends you. And she thinks that she can just cut me out? Like how does she think that she's going to cut me out?

Alyssa is very protective. She's the protector of the system. Now, I will say this is the part of DID that I think the jury and a lot of people couldn't understand about this case, right? And please correct me if I'm wrong, but DID, your alters, it's very hard to control who's fronting. It's typically a psychological response to triggers. And triggers could be something big or something so...

unnoticeable to other people that are not part of the system and anytime Sarah McLynn talks about the crime that she commits she's very cold very blunt almost to the point of sounding like Cassandra Bjorg

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People believe that that is Alyssa fronting and she presents herself when she needs to be in a situation where she needs to protect the system and she's very, a little bit more emotionless. Right, and it doesn't deliver well at all. No, it does not.

Sarah's doctor would later explain Sarah's system has a bunch of walls and sometimes those walls are permeable so they can kind of like like Alyssa and Vanessa can talk back and forth but some of them are like concrete bricks and this part never talks to this part and when I work with clients or when I have worked with Sarah is that when I talk to the walled off alters they had no idea what the other alters have said and if I ask them about hey they said this they would have no recollection of that I didn't hear you talking to them and I didn't know that would be their response.

The way Sarah describes what is going on in her brain to her doctor is "I feel like I'm a puppet with no master." But there was only one rule the entire system was forced to follow. The rule was: don't let anyone know. Nobody was allowed to know that Sarah had a system, which means nobody knows there is what is described as "inner conflict" taking place.

Vanessa and Alyssa have a conflict at hand. Vanessa has decided the only way to escape this life and this abuse is to either kill Harold or to self-exit. Vanessa wants to self-exit soon.

Alyssa realizes that is what Vanessa is planning and she's not going to let that happen. This is how Sarah's doctor explains it. Alyssa was angry. She would later tell her doctor that had Vanessa been smarter, none of this would have happened. Alyssa told the psychologist, "Vanessa is weak. She would lay there like a dead dog and she let him touch us and talk her into that stupid butt surgery." Sarah's doctor believes Alyssa was forced to protect them or let Vanessa self-exit because she could not handle the abuse from Harold.

Around this time, a co-worker from CC's Pizza had come over to Sarah and Harold's house, and he's friends with Harold. I believe he's also young too, so just giving you an idea, it seems like Harold, some people say he was a mentor to the youth, other people say he's hanging out with

with a lot of young people and it's weird. No, like there's no anything to signal that he actually cares about youth future or anything. Like this is not his interest or motive or reason at all. And I would just say that if I knew someone who was 50 years old and genuinely cared about helping the youth and they see a young 17 year old girl, I think the smartest, best decision most of these men would make, these good men,

in my opinion, would be to tell a woman of age or look for a shelter. Cause I think it's just not a comfortable setup to have a 17 year old girl living with a 50 year old man that is not her relative or dad. Because even, even,

Even relatives and dads abuse their daughters. Yeah, it's proven. I mean, just like from the get go, the way he brought her in, it was zero ounce of actually wanting to help. Yes, because there are lots of witnesses who do state they saw Sarah do drugs in front of Harold. And if Harold wanted to get her clean, which is the whole point that he wanted her to move in, it doesn't make sense, right? Now, he knows that the two of them are living together. He's also heard that they've been sexually involved. Right.

This guy that works at CC's Pizzas. But he's just over to hang out. He walks over to the dining room and there's this box sitting on the table. It's a cardboard box. It's closed. And every now and then the box would start shaking. The box would start moving, shuffling. He's like, what is going on in that box? Sarah walks over, opens up the box. Inside, there's a little fluffy rabbit. Oh, what are you guys going to clean it and cook it?

He watches Sarah bring the box over to the kitchen sink. He can see her taking the rabbit out, placing it into the deep sink, but he's behind her at this point, so he can't really see what she's doing to the rabbit, but he hears high-pitched yelps coming from the rabbit, and Sarah's body is like an autopilot. Just nothing behind the eyes.

She kills the rabbit, proceeds to disembowel it, skin it alive. And to him, this is all so confusing. Why is she doing this? Can't she buy rabbit meat somewhere else if she wants to eat rabbit? Not only that, you know how hunters will hunt down wild rabbits? And that's, you know, every person finds it questionable or to a degree. This rabbit was not that. This rabbit was a cute little fluffy white one that you would have as a pet. In fact, Sarah bought this rabbit from a pet store to slaughter and eat.

She did this with both a rabbit and a gerbil from the pet store. Later, Sarah would state at the time she believed it was a normal survival skill practice. She was practicing for the end of the world. It's not like she was just torturing animals. She was eating them for food. What's the difference between that and hunting? She said it made her feel really, really in control. At first, the rabbit was almost like a test. She tried to justify it. Oh, I have to kill and eat the rabbit to test my survival skills. But it started scratching this itch inside of her.

I will say there's a very strong correlation between her mental state and her killing animals. She states that one day after a really stressful day at work, she walks into the pet store trying to buy a toy for her dog. She's got a Labrador named Oliver, but she's passing the guinea pig cages and she remembered someone talking about how in South America they eat guinea pigs. So she stops in front of the cages, watching them sleep in their little barn, hay barns. She just has this urge. I want to kill it and I want to eat it.

She would go on YouTube and watch videos on how to kill, skin, and slaughter rabbits. The video in particular she watched over 14 times was of a man using scissors to skin a rabbit.

and ultimately package it for human consumption. Oddly, after watching this video, she then watches a Tupac video within two to three minutes. So I don't know. Those who knew Sarah said, none of this makes sense. Sarah has always been an animal girl. She grew up with a rescue horse named Black Beauty, who was so badly neglected and abused by his previous owners to the point that Sarah could not even ride him.

which is kind of the purpose that she got a horse to begin with. And she would take these writing lessons and she did not care. She babied that horse until his very last breath. And when he was gone, everyone in Sarah's life remembered her just being absolutely devastated. She had this yellow lab growing up aptly named Shadow because it was literally Sarah's shadow. Technically, Shadow was supposed to be the family dog, but ended up just following Sarah around everywhere. When Shadow passed away, she was a wreck and she always told her family, I don't even

even want a house when I grow up. I just want to travel around and help animals because there's animals everywhere that need help.

but now she's skinning pet rabbits and eating them. She's also punching walls and breaking glass. She would later say somewhere down the line, her sadness turned into anger, disgust, and pure hatred. And she's not scared anymore. She just feels rage. This part she does not tell anyone about, but Sarah said at this point, she starts having these crazy visual hallucinations of killing herself, her parents, and Harold. She's hearing all these voices in her head. And every time she's

sees people walking around, they're walking around faceless and bloody. Every single person she runs into walking past saying hello to at work, she would picture them dead, what they would look like. And then her visions would come back. Years ago, when Sarah was essayed and burned with a cigarette for a while afterwards, she started having these visions where she would find unknown men and slash their necks with a knife or chop them up with an ax. And those visions were back.

But this time, that unknown man was now Harold Sasko. January 11th, 2014, Sarah logs onto her computer and asks Google, "Why do I feel so differently from everyone else?"

She then texts her sister. I'm starting to realize I don't want the life everyone expects of me. I don't want the American dream, the house or the car. I don't want to be tied down to a job or debt. I want real freedom and I know how to get it, but it means giving up a lot. It's like, do I want what my friends and family think is right? Or do I take a risk of being happy and not trapped anymore? I feel like a caged animal right now. It's making me crazy and on edge.

Then a text comes in to Sarah's phone. Not a response from Ashley, but a text from Harold. It reads, hey, good morning. Thank you for last night. It was good. We never got to talk about Sunday. I apologize for trying to sleep with you. Tonight before we get going, can we talk? Please and thank you. I apologize for trying to sleep with you? Yes. Like trying to essay her. Yes, is what Sarah says. Now, people who believe that Harold is innocent, well...

He's innocent in the eyes of the law. Of course, he's a victim in the eyes of the law. People that believe that he did not essay her believe that maybe he, she's of age, he was drunk. He tried, but then stopped because she said no. So the text messages is interpreted in two vastly different ways.

now initially the plan was to attack harold in his sleep but she starts worrying what if he wakes up there's no way she can overpower him there's got to be a better way then ding she gets another message harold wants her to put some beers in the fridge for tonight when he gets home beers in the fridge according to sarah he would always essay her when he's drunk there's no more time left either she does it now or she's gonna get essayed is what she says right now have you heard of ambien

It's a prescription sleep medication and it is very strong. It's considered a sedative hypnotic medication that should really only be used in the short term because serious side effects can lead to sleepwalking, sleep driving, memory loss, hallucinations, severe allergic reactions, and sometimes even death.

Harold had Ambien in his bathroom. Sarah knows this. She sneaks into his room before he gets home and goes into the bathroom, pulls out a bottle of Ambien, and she starts grinding up a handful of pills using one of those glass figurines on top of the dresser. She puts the powder into a piece of paper, folds it up like cocaine, I guess, hides it in the kitchen under a box of green tea on top of the microwave. Then she just waits.

Waits for him to get home. He starts drinking one beer. She waits until he's what? Five, six beers in because she would assume that the crushed up Ambien has a very specific taste. Probably bitter. She doesn't want him to taste it and feel suspicious or stop drinking the beer.

So the sixth beer, he's like, can you get me another one? She dumps it in to the beer can and watches him gulp it down. And eventually he gets up from the couch to walk over to his speaker system to fix it. Halfway there, collapses, falls onto the ground, face down onto the floor. Sarah's calm. She walks to her car, grabs a stack of zip ties, brings them back in, and then walks into her room to grab a hunting knife.

She stands over his limp body for a second, then she starts tying his legs together, three around his ankles, locking them together, and as she's about to zip tie his wrist, he makes some sort of moaning sound. Some people say this is so important.

moaning could be that he's unconscious but also could trigger yeah yeah yeah it could be a trauma and uh sarah later tells her doctor that something in that moaning sound um all of this up until this point was alissa but when harold moans vanessa steps back into control screams no grabs a

the ties off of Harold's ankles to release him to let him go but Alyssa does not want this Alyssa would later tell the doctor I was not going to let her do that she gains control and reties his hands and his ankles takes the knife before Vanessa can do anything about it she reaches her hand down to feel for an artery she needs to find the vulnerable spot on the neck and when she finds what she's looking for she takes both of her hands and plunges the knife straight into his throat

pulling from one side to another, like truly slicing. She practically saws his head off.

She plunges the knife so deep into his neck, the knife blade hits the carpet. She just starts pulling through his neck muscles like sideways out. So instead of pulling up to bring the knife out, she pulls sideways to go through his neck, through his neck muscles, arteries, veins, his windpipe, even his esophagus. She had to use both hands to get it out. And she's standing there now with blood dripping down her arms. And the original plan that she had was to dismember Harold. She had an axe in her trunk. But...

I don't know. She said when she's done, it felt like being in a cage and having the door swing open. She said in that moment, it felt like she was standing in the sun for the first time. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered Internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live,

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So she grabs a towel drenched in his blood and writes, F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Freedom.

Then she goes to wash off the blood from her hands. And the first thing she does, which is very questionable, is she grabs her Samsung tablet, brings it into the bathroom where she proceeds to put on some music and start showering. When she's done, she gets out, dries her hair, straightens her hair, and then gathers up all the things she wants to take with her.

Jewelry, guns, money, everything. She's got to bring it all. Truly everything. She even prints a file off of Harold's computer of a tattoo idea that she had saved. A ribcage tattoo with the quote, Beware the pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its black icy depths dwell strange and twisted creatures. It's best not to disturb.

Wow. So again, a lot of people say everything, even the quote that she resonates a lot with is reminiscent of what people with DID that might not know they have DID might feel. Now, I'm not saying people without DID can't resonate, but knowing that it feels kind of like I feel like there's something or someone else inside of me is the feeling.

She's taking the clothes out of her closet, taking a picture of her and Ashley out of the picture frame. Then she loads up Harold's car and she brings her dog Oliver and she just starts skipping town. Oh, she does leave one thing though. She leaves her phone on the kitchen counter because she knew that she could be traced through it.

She first goes to Texas, almost all the way down to Mexico. Then she decides, you know what? Let's do Florida. Now, side note, she's selling jewelry along the way to get cash. She's living out of the car, never checking into hotels. And at one point, she gives away her beloved Oliver to a local vet.

Yeah. And she does get that rib cage tattoo, starts making it to Florida, and she will be arrested 11 days later by the National Park Service in the Everglades National Park in Florida. The police had been called to do a welfare check on Sarah, broke into Harold's house, found him dead. And at one point they thought that Sarah had been kidnapped, but they were like, nothing's adding up. All of her stuff is gone. It seems like she's the perpetrator. And finally, 11 days later, Sarah is arrested. And she's

They were still questioning if Sarah had been truly just a perpetrator or a victim or kidnapped and then a perpetrator. They didn't know. In the car, though, they found knives, an axe, two handguns, nine boxes of ammunition, a taser, multiple knives, a stack of murder mystery books, a machete, a large supply of bottled water, military food rations, a fishing pole and other camping and survival supplies, as well as over $2,000 in cash and weed.

Sarah was immediately placed into custody and is brought into an interrogation room. Now, we only have three minutes of that footage that is publicly released. We did file an FOIA and I received no footage in that, just transcripts and court documents. But Sarah is sitting cross-legged at the table across two interrogators. She almost has the energy of Cassandra Bjorg that we recently talked about, not in the sense that she's

Oh, she's so heartless, but she's so blunt. There's no emotion. They ask her, Sarah, how long have you had planned to kill Hal?

It was sort of just in like the last week where I'm, well, not just in the last week. It's like, um, last five days. I really thought about it. You said the last five days before you actually did kill him. Okay. And tell me what you, about the thinking and the planning that you did. I just, you know, like I said, I just wanted something different and I was stupid. Um, I just thought about it and how I would do it. And that's how I did it.

So would you say that you started making preparations about five days before? Well, I had everything that I needed so I didn't have to like go out and I just sort of did it almost the exact same way I killed the rabbit when I ate it. I mean, I did, I cut his throat too. So you decided to do it like you did the rabbit and the way you did it, push, push the knife through and push out. Yeah. Yeah.

As opposed to slicing, right? Is there a reason that you chose that method? Is that a reason? Is that, I mean, I don't know. That's, I just thought that he would bleed out faster that way and I wouldn't have to be as strong to really, um, like slice his neck. And she motions a slicing motion. Okay. One of the interrogators actually gets up and puts his head down on the table facing Sarah and forces her to motion how she stabbed Harold in the neck. It's visually a lot, I will say. Then I went and I took a shower.

Okay. And got ready? Oh, I brought my tablet in the bathroom too. Okay. For music. Okay. While you were showering. And where was that tablet before you brought it into the shower? In my room. Okay. Backing up there a little bit. We talked about what you said when you wrote freedom on the wall. When did that happen? Immediately after. Immediately after cutting his throat?

Yes, I guess. Okay, so after you cut the throat, how did you do that? Well, I had a towel and that's kind of what I used to put the blood up there on the wall and then I wrote in it, with my finger. Sarah would later say that, she was asked why, why did you write freedom on the wall? And she said, I guess because that's what it felt like. Sarah said she also didn't like her job. She owed money. She hated her life. She felt trapped and she was curious. Yes.

She said she was curious about killing someone. And in the interrogation, she does later compare herself to Jeffrey Dahmer, which is not really something that you would ever want to do in a police interrogation. But later, her psychologist asks her about it because she's like, I read the transcripts. Why did you tell the police that you felt like Jeffrey Dahmer? And she explained, Jeffrey Dahmer responded to betrayal. I don't like the necrophilia and I didn't have any interest in cannibalism, but I felt his understanding of betrayal was similar to me.

Now, there are three groups of people. One group of people that believe that Harold is purely a victim and what he did or didn't do does not matter. And Sarah is the ultimate perpetrator. Then you have another group of people that believe Sarah shouldn't have done what she did, but she essentially killed from a buildup of trauma and almost as a mechanism of self-defense. That she is a victim and a perpetrator and that Harold is also a victim and a perpetrator.

Then you have another group of people that just hates the both of them. They think that both of them are just evil for whatever reason. Those who believe Harold was completely innocent of any wrongdoing and brutally and viciously murdered by someone he was trying to help said...

Some that knew Harold said this, right? Harold's ex-girlfriend said he told her that he was just trying to get Sarah away from drugs and away from friends who were in gangs. He was always involved with his employees. He wanted to have a mentoring program for the youth. He has a good heart, a good soul, and he cared about helping a lot of people. Harold said,

Harold's brother said, from what I know of Harold, there's no question that his purpose with Sarah was to be a father figure to her. My honest opinion was the defense was just grasping at straws and making up stories. It's also argued that Sarah was diagnosed with DID after she was arrested.

And after she allegedly confessed to killing Harold out of curiosity, the group that fully supports just Harold and believe Sarah should be locked up for the rest of her life. They state her interrogation is a confession. Police even noticed scars on her arm and they asked her about it. The cigarette burns. And she said she fell off a horse. So the people who don't believe Sarah, they said, see, she's just making up lies with her psychologist to get out of this after the fact. But she straight up told the police it was from a fall off of a horse.

In that moment when the police are asking her and questioning her about murder, wouldn't she try to build sympathy then unless she didn't have time to think about a lie?

I don't know about that. Okay. I will say, I don't know if this argument in particular is a good argument because if truly, in fact, it is a scar from an essay and she is that embarrassed of it and that ashamed of it to the point that she took a knife to alter it to look more normal. I think this would be her default lie, especially to two men sitting in front of her. Yeah, exactly. Without thinking like,

Like she's not going to open up right now and tell you exactly how this happened. In front of, again, two men. So a lot of female victims have a harder time opening up to male interrogators or male psychologists for that very reason. But there are statements from people around Sarah that said she made a lot of comments about serial killers. She once told her sister Ashley that she did think about killing someone and the thought had crossed her mind. But other people argue that's nothing new. She literally admits to hallucinating and killing faceless men.

She also told interrogators that she wanted to prolong the murder as long as possible for maximum enjoyment, basically. No, how much of that is accurate? Because she looked for the artery to kill him instantly, almost. Yeah. There was no signs of torture. Harold had no defensive wounds, so he wasn't fighting back. There was no prolonged torture.

Sarah also does seem to have an inclination towards violence. A coworker at Bed Bath & Beyond reported that Sarah would talk about how she and her friends would take drugs and have a fight club in the basement. She thought it was fascinating and it made her realize that watching people get beaten up to a pulp was interesting and maybe she wanted to watch people die. She also went on tangents on how good she was of a hunter and how she liked to kill and clean animals.

There's also a lot of evidence that Sarah thoroughly planned the murder. I don't think that's ever really debated by both sides, but without a shadow of doubt, it was very thoroughly planned. Sarah even told her doctor later that for a couple of days before the actual murder, she had already reached a conclusion that she was going to kill Harold and she stopped seeing red.

The doctor describes Sarah's state in that point as an incredible sense of calm when the anxiety drops off because she's got a plan. She was looking up things, bold tranquilizer, wilderness areas, rope bondage techniques, how to get a passport in Lawrence, Kansas, and even vulnerable neck spots.

Another argument made against Sarah is why a knife? When Sarah was arrested, she was found with two guns on her. Shooting someone is remote, easy and quick. She would have done that while he was asleep or she could have. She wouldn't have even had to touch him. Or while she's crushing up Ambien to slip in his beer, she could have just crushed up the entire bottle and tried to kill him through a fatal dose of the drugs.

But no, that wouldn't accomplish what Sarah wanted. They argued Sarah wanted blood and vengeance. She wanted to slice into him, touch Harold while she killed him, which is why she chose the knife because it's intimate, it's bloody, it's violent, it's painful.

Additionally, Sarah continues to do a lot of strange things after the murder. She takes bed sheets off of Harold's bed and takes them with her, right? I don't know if it was Harold's bed or her bed, but she would later tell the investigators, well, he took the bed sheets because they were expensive. They argue that this is not a snap decision. She called into work stating that her dad died, so nobody would be alarmed when she doesn't show up to work. She crushed up Ambien. She was clever enough to put them in his beer while

like fifth beer so that he wouldn't taste it. She found zip ties. She didn't have any difficulty locating her survival knife in her bedroom. She went through a rehearsal several months earlier with a rabbit and a guinea pig. Sarah used to work for him. Yes. How come she stopped working there and went to Bed Bath & Beyond? I think he didn't want to pay her. So there was a whole thing in the court transcripts about how he was paying her less than everybody else once because he was like, you owe me money. Wow.

I mean, it was heavily planned. Harold's older brother would say that Harold might have problems and issues, he believed, but he still believed Sarah should spend the rest of her life in prison. Harold's daughter, who is just a few years younger than Sarah, said Sarah had taken away far more than just a father. She wrote, you took away irreplaceable happiness, a normal life, and years of my life that were now filled with anger and incredible sadness.

Now, of course, one of the biggest debates in this case is whether or not Sarah actually does have DID. I will say, I think it's very difficult to fake having DID on a clinical scale. Sure, maybe you could do it on social media in an attempt to go viral, but I think the DID community would immediately clock you regardless that you're faking it. But to fake it during a murder trial where there are psychologists from both sides, where some of them, it might even be beneficial for them to even, to a degree, perhaps prove that you don't have DID. I mean, it's very difficult.

very difficult to fake. DID is really hard to fake, but there are claims and allegations that Sarah is faking it. The prosecutor stated that psychological evaluations at Larned State Hospital, a neutral hospital between the two, found that Sarah did not meet the criteria for DID. Now, another argument against that, though, is DID is heavily misdiagnosed.

Not saying that everybody gets DID. Like you get a diagnosis, you get the opposite. People actually do not get DID diagnosis really easily. They get a major depression disorder. They get bipolar disorder. They get schizophrenia. So how does the diagnosis affect the sentencing? Because that was what the defense put their whole argument on during the trial. I see. They pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Okay.

But DID does not make you insane, but they need to prove that she has DID and then they need to prove that she was in a state of psychosis. So they need to do one and two.

That was their game plan. They don't technically need to prove that she has DID as long as they can prove that she was in a state of psychosis, but still. Now, Sarah did mention Vanessa in her police interview, stating that Vanessa was a name that Harold had come up with because they were going to run away together. Sarah was going to be Vanessa and Harold would be Scott. So people are like, see, Vanessa is in her altar. Vanessa is an alias.

A doctor on the prosecutor's side, so technically against Sarah, went onto the stand and he said, I think certainly it's a possibility that she has DID. I don't know that I could confirm it, but I respect Dr. Hutchinson and she spent a great number of hours with Sarah. I certainly think at this juncture, Sarah believes she has the disorder. He basically argued even if she had DID, it was not to the level where she was having psychosis.

But then you have a group of people, including a lot of advocates for domestic violence in essay. They do not condone what she did. They said murder is bad. Nobody condones that. However, they don't think that she's this crazed evil killer that just wants to kill Harold for curiosity. Some also argue that Sarah's bizarre sudden interest in harming animals is linked to her essay as a child. It's her taking control, the rage and wanting to feel that sense of control go hand in hand.

Her psychologist believes that the foundation for her subsequent obsessions for dead animals, knives, and everything is then. Those in support of Sarah argue that everything she did, even after the fact, seems like someone that's not really planning to get away with it. Writing freedom on the wall? That's not someone who's, let me make it look like a home invasion gone wrong. She also makes one last call to her sister and grandma to say goodbye before leaving her phone.

but she doesn't actually say goodbye. She just makes it appear that she's doing all right. She just wanted to hear their voices, it seems. She gives her dog away to a vet, knowing that she cannot take care of her dog anymore, and gets a tattoo with a very dark quote. It does seem like someone who...

Is trying to start over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, we cover so many of these cases. You kind of always see how people react after math, right? Some people, they flee, they go off with their new boyfriend. They live in the house with their dead grandparents and spend the money. Yeah, the motive you can always kind of pinpoint. But for her, it truly feel like she fell free.

And she would because people later ask why Florida? Because remember, she was talking about Utah and Montana are the furthest away from nuclear power plants or where she felt was safe. She didn't really have a plan. She said she just want to see the ocean. Now, again, that's not to justify or excuse what she did. And obviously, we could all just be naive and be falling for things. I don't know. See good in people or not good, but you get it. But that's the argument that freedom on the wall that should hold a lot more weight than

That's a huge thing. We've never seen that before. But the most important evidence for the group is most conversations about Harold allegedly grooming Sarah were not allowed in the trial.

Why? The judge is very questionable decision, questioned by a lot of people. But the judge stated any character flaws that Harold might have had will not be discussed in front of the jury. The judge stated that Harold was not on trial. Sarah was. So his visiting of websites that may or may not contain videos of children, teens and bestiality. Those happened. Yes, but they were not allowed in court. They were not admissible as evidence.

Which, side note, this is less of an interesting observation, but as I was going through the 1,500 pages of court documents and transcripts, there were multiple times where the prosecutor and the judge, so these are people who do not like Sarah, they want to put Sarah in jail for a very long time, they would call Harold the defendant. And then they would go, I mean, sorry, the victim. And then they would call Sarah the victim and then say, I mean, sorry, the defendant, Sarah. So even them for a second... They keep getting confused, it seems. Mm.

I mean, it could just be a slip of the tongue. Maybe they say those words too often. I don't think that insinuates guilt or innocence. I just thought it was interesting. Now, this is where I think the evidence against Harold starts ramping up. Acquaintances of Harold allegedly reported that he would tell them that it was, quote, amazing to have an 18 year old. This is, again, someone he brought into his house at 17 as a 50 something year old to help her.

In the eyes of the law, maybe it's not illegal if she was 18 and it was consensual, but still, it's morally and ethically incredibly questionable, especially if she moved in at 17. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It changes the whole motive and the reason. Now, another witness, and this is absolutely personal opinion rather than a testament to anyone's character, but just to give you a full picture, a former manager that had worked with Harold said that when they found out Harold had been murdered, he went home to his wife and said, I wonder which one of those girls' dads went over and killed him.

Because he believed Harold was constantly having not inappropriate relations, but something weird was going on, insinuating that Harold was known to groom girls that would infuriate their dads.

Obviously, that's not what happened, but it is interesting that that's the first thing he would think of. A different ex-girlfriend of Harold said, he's a very sick person. The jury should have heard how messed up he was and that this was the environment Sarah was part of. I'm an adult woman with five children, high functioning, and he weighed me down. Just listening to him is exhausting.

Wow.

The detectives are like, okay, what happened? She stated that they were all family friends, but he just kept referring to the twins as his daughters and kept saying, call me dad. And it just made her so uncomfortable. Like you're not their dad. It's crossing a line. You're crossing a boundary and I don't like it, but he wouldn't listen. He would also tell the twins if they ever wanted to run away from their mom,

they were more than welcome to come live with him. He would take care of them, feed them, give them jobs so that they would have spending money. The only rule he had, and he told the twins allegedly was quote, my drugs are our drugs and your drugs are our drugs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And just a few days before Harold's death, the twins went out with him to Best Buy to buy $400 speakers for their new car that they weren't allowed to tell their mom about it until after he was dead.

Now, a data dump was processed on two of Harold's phones, and that's when they found out that he was visiting websites that had inappropriate, if not fully explicit, illegal videos featuring children, teens and bestiality. He had actually downloaded more than 300 videos from that website. I don't know if those videos he downloaded in particular were illegal or not. And on more than 20 occasions, he visited websites that featured men fondling or having intimate relations with women who appear to be sleeping. None of that was allowed in court.

Also, Harold would go around telling everybody that Sarah was his stepdaughter and people thought that was weird. If he was someone that was such a good figurehead in the community that was a mentor to the youth, why couldn't he just tell people the truth of, you

Those in support of Sarah also say,

Why kill Harold? If he's so good to her, why wouldn't she just have killed someone else and then come home to Harold to have free drugs and a free place to say, why would she bite the hand that feeds her? And then why write freedom on the wall? It's obviously a very emotional crime. So she didn't, she did this emotionally. Yeah.

I will say that most people do believe that Sarah has DID. It doesn't seem like the symptoms spawned out of nowhere. When Sarah was 14 years old, one of Sarah's closest friends, she came forward later. She said she stopped hanging out with Sarah. She told her mom that she was scared and she doesn't know how to describe it, but it just felt like there was a different person inside of Sarah's body.

It was like very unsettling, she said. She said Sarah would just like randomly start talking about violent things. And it didn't seem like Sarah was saying it. At least the Sarah she knew. So they stopped hanging out at 14. And she said that Sarah that she saw at 14, the new Sarah, the one that was talking about violent things, that was the one she saw in the interrogation video later when she saw it.

Sarah's doctor would tell the jury and during the trial, certainly nothing in this report should be taken as excusing the conduct of Sarah. Mr. Sasko did not deserve the death he received. The purpose of this report has been to lay out the puzzle pieces that can identify the controlling factors to the severe mental illness that she suffers from.

Sarah's psychologist believes Alyssa's actions of killing Harold are reminiscent of a mother that would want to kill a person who essayed her daughter, aka Vanessa. It's very impulsive, crazy, but usually mothers have emotional maturity and the ability to stop themselves, but Alyssa did not have that.

Sarah's psychologist also noted that Alyssa and Vanessa had very different ways of describing the crime. Vanessa said, it's like a fog. And I remember intense moments after the crime when I sat down and looked at him. I don't know when I actually did it. I kind of remember myself from above. It stated like she was watching herself do it from above, like a CCTV camera. During the actual crime, she felt nothing, no emotions.

Alyssa, on the other hand, was very blunt. She told the doctor, for once in my pathetic life, I found strength and I took control. Now pain feels tolerable because deep inside this weak little girl is a powerful woman who lets no one use her. Now with all of this, Sarah pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Her psychologist diagnosed her with high levels of depression, anxiety, and alcohol substance abuse. Her psychological profile reads as follows, likely to be generally pessimistic and dysphoric, has the potential to

Thank you.

Sensitivity in these interactions leads to her holding grudges against others. Ironically, difficulties in relationships are a major source of stress for her. She would also be diagnosed with disassociative identity disorder, major depression, recurrent moderate PTSD, alcohol and marijuana dependence, in remission subsequent to incarceration.

Her clinical symptoms include weekly episodes of amnesia, daily episodes of losing time, unable to remember her home address, depersonalization, not recognizing self in mirror, feeling like an observer of self on a daily basis rather than feeling oneself, feeling detached from body, feeling more than one person at a time, perception that someone else is talking for themselves, speech is not under personal control, episodes of feeling like someone else has taken over.

Different smoking and drinking habits for different parts of self. Derealization, feeling like self or things are not real, that friends and relatives seem unknown, not knowing what is real and unreal. Identity confusion, an internal struggle about who they are that is usually triggered by stress. Identity alteration, feeling or being told that they were acting in different ways that they do not recall.

Sarah was found guilty. She was sentenced to a hard 50 sentence, meaning she will have to serve at least 50 years before the chance of parole. So she could technically be there for the rest of her life. She will be 70 years old by then. Harold's brother stated, I feel sorry for the family. Harold's daughter will hurt the most. She lost her dad. Through the years, it's going to get worse and worse, and then it's going to fade away. But I honestly think that it'll do nobody good if Sarah gets released before those 50 years. I want 50 years.

He also stated that he believed his brother Harold was just being overly generous and thought he could fix Sarah. Sarah and her team have appealed the sentence and took a deal where she would get her parole reduced, cut in half. So meaning instead of doing 50 years mandatory, she would just have to do 25. But here's the thing. That's the chance of parole. That doesn't mean she's going to get parole. And likely she's not because she committed a pretty violent first degree murder. So it's not like her sentence was cut in half, but now she's lost her chance to appeal.

Ever again. The jury foreman who was on Sarah's trial said that it was frustrating that they weren't given options. They either had to say she's insane or she's guilty. They didn't have a self-defense angle to consider. The jury foreman said if her attorney presented a self-defense angle, I could see a non-guilty verdict play out. I couldn't tell you it would have changed the verdict then, but in today's age, I'm sure it would. Really? Yeah.

So the jury, I think they all sympathize with Sarah, but it's the fact that they could not say that she didn't know what she was doing because she was not in a mental state. She was mentally going through a lot, but she knew what she was doing. It was first degree. It was premeditated. It was planned. Yeah.

The jury foreman also stated that they had no idea that them finding her guilty would result in a hard 50 sentence. He said, we wanted relaxed sentencing instead of straight incarceration behind bars. We wanted some sort of mental treatment for her. Even the jury was feeling bad. In retrospect, he hopes Sarah could have been given a new trial.

So a lot of advocates have come together in support of Sarah and they believe what she did is bad and nobody deserves murder. But they're trying to get clemency for her, which is like a pardon. So you write to the state governor. She can't get an appeal. She can't get a new trial. But they can write to the governor and say, hey, can you commute her sentence? Can you show mercy? Can you release her? Can you pardon her? Can you do something? Which none of this is even in the snapped episode, but...

Megan Stuke, the executive director for the Willow Domestic Violence Center, wrote long letters to the state governor asking that

I mean, Hal saw a vulnerable teen already suffering so many forms of abuse and violence as a young woman. Hal recognized her vulnerability and preyed on it. He moved her into his home, telling her he'd be a father and take care of her. He paid for plastic surgeries in order to make her into his perfect girl and bragged to his friends about how amazing it was to be with a young woman. Hal created lists of debts Sarah could never repay and threatened her with homelessness and financial strife if she left. He controlled her movements, her medications, her mind.

A former business associate of Harold wrote to the state governor. Shortly after Mr. Sasko's death, I realized the media was portraying him as a kindly businessman who opened his home to a troubled teenager. I called Sarah's attorney to provide a different perspective on Mr. Sasko's character.

stating that he is not a good person in their opinion. And they stated that they do not condone what Sarah did, but my heart goes out to her each and every day. A former inmate from prison who shared a cell with Sarah wrote a letter to the state governor, and it reads, I want people to know that Sarah has the purest heart of anyone I've ever known. A lot of women in prison, they regret their crime.

But they also brag about it. Sarah was never like that. She was very sorry for what she did. She was not proud at all. She didn't share much or go into much depth about the crime. But she did say that a man made her do things that sexually she did not want to do. That he abused her physically, mentally, and sexually. And she wanted out, but she didn't think there was a way out. I just wish people would stop and think about what he must have done for her. For her to have that much hatred, that much anger, that much fear in her heart. She was a young woman, barely. He was much older.

I remember laying in my bunk at night, listening to her cry in her sleep, sobbing. She'd be thrashing and screaming, no, no, no, stop, stop. And she'd be moaning, not like in the movies when someone is dying, more like a petrified, shuddering, terrified animal. She'd be kicking and jerking. And at first I tried to wake her up, but she wouldn't wake up.

That went on night after night. And I finally gave up because there was nothing I could do. I will say Sarah is the one person in my whole prison experience who had the most positive impact on my life. And for that, I will forever be indebted to her.

This inmate is now free. Sharon Sullivan, a professor and expert on human trafficking, said Sarah's brain wasn't fully developed. She was trapped. She didn't know there were options. She said, I can't even imagine having to deal with that at 18 years old with so little experience of the world. And this is someone who's supposed to love her. Called her his daughter. How creepy is that?

Dave Ranney, a retired reporter, wrote, Mr. Sasko's actions contributed to his death. He was well aware of Ms. McGlynn's sexual traumas, her battles with depression, her unexplained mysterious mood changes, and her homicidal thoughts. Yet he continued to provide her with ready access to alcohol and drugs. He continued to rape her. It is reasonable to ask whether Ms. McGlynn would have killed Mr. Sasko if he had not been raping her two, three, four times a week for almost a year. I believe the answer is no.

In Ms. Micklin's case, the state was allowed to portray her as a crazy killer. Her attorney was not allowed to portray Mr. Sasko as a sexual predator. That is an injustice. Sarah's mom is rebuilding her relationship with Sarah in prison. And the saddest part of all of this is Sarah had told her mom the first feeling that she had when she went to prison was, at least it kind of feels safe.

She would write letters to God trying to process her shame. Sarah is very remorseful for her crime and she works with a program called Pooches and Pals that helps train dogs for people with physical or visual impairments. Basically, she helps train service dogs. She said, I will say that these dogs healed me in a way that I didn't even know I needed healing. They're just amazing.

Sarah said she requested nonstop to get her butt implants removed. She said, when I first got incarcerated, I asked them to remove them. And that in itself was traumatic because I had to go to the doctor, the prison doctor. And just how it was handled, I felt like everyone was just curious. I remember one nurse waiting and called another nurse into the room and they both touched me. And they did all of that just to tell me, no, they're not going to remove it. And then later, recently, I just asked again. And I don't know.

It's stated in prison that Alyssa and the other alters did have some internal arguments at first that were very intense. They were mad at Alyssa. I think that I just really hope nobody compares this to the movie Split because I think even internally, Sarah felt like, look what Alyssa got us into. And it took a lot of therapy and a lot of mental help to realize that

Even though in that moment, it wasn't self-defense. A lot of psychologists see what Sarah did as self-defense because do you guys know what battered woman syndrome is? Is when a husband typically beats a wife so much, the wife will typically kill them in their sleep and the self-defense is there. But in the eyes of the law, they're like, well, he was asleep. He wasn't trying to kill you. So you can't kill him. They're saying this is a version of that. They're saying that this was self-defense.

Now, I think the system has come to realize that, but remember the journalist I was talking about earlier? Which one? The retired journalist that was advocating for Sarah's clemency. Okay. They would have an interview with her, her first prison interview, and...

He just wants to ask the public, how is it that she can be tried and convicted without a jury being fully aware of what's going on in that house? How is that not an injustice? The question isn't whether she killed him. It's why. And if you don't know the answer to that, just ask anyone who counsels women who finds themselves caught up in abusive relationships. They can tell you.

Sarah said if she could sit down with the governor right now, she would say, I would say that I'm not that young girl who found herself in a situation of hopelessness and she had no idea how to deal with it. That I have dedicated myself every day since my incarceration to better myself, not only for myself, but for my family and the community. I want to continue to give back and help other young girls who feel just as hopeless. It's the worst feeling you can ever have. You're just held down by complete hopelessness. And I just hope my story can touch the heart of someone who feels that.

As for mental health wise, it is stated that Sarah is doing great. Sarah has returned. The altar of Sarah has returned. Really? Yeah. I don't know if Sarah, there have been conversations that she's been fully integrated, which I know some people don't like that term because again, you don't need a singular identity, but mental health professionals believe Sarah is, she has other altars still. Alyssa and Vanessa are still there, but she said it's more like, I don't feel alone anymore. Less of, there's a lot of turmoil. Yeah.

Wow.

When I watched the snapped episode, I definitely went in to the court documents feeling very strongly one way. When I read some of the court documents, the transcripts, until I got to the part where the judge is declining all of these things to be admitted into evidence. I mean, it's it feels like the story is much deeper than I ever thought it would be.

What are your thoughts? Do you think that she's paid her time? Do you think she needs more time? Do you think that she shouldn't have paid this time in this way? I mean, I don't think she ever wanted to be free. I think that they just wanted her to get mental treatment versus prison. What are your thoughts? Or do you think that this is just a big injustice to herald after the fact? What are your thoughts? Please let me know in the comments and please stay safe and I'll see you in the next one.