247: What if you didn't see the signs?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. You spend a lot of time like, why did this happen? You think that if you think about it long enough or talk with enough people that you can make sense out of it, and it's really, I think, impossible. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 247.

What if you didn't see the signs?

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My parents met during World War II in Florida. My father was a fighter pilot, training people to go off to war, as he would eventually. Love at first sight. They were married. That was 1946. I came along in 1950. Very stable upbringing, nuclear family, very positive environment. About 15 miles outside of Baltimore, we lived out in the country.

I got good grades, probably not as good as my brother, who was a year ahead of me in school, but I did just fine. And I always felt like I could lead a successful life. And even then looked ahead and thought probably would have a family of my own one day.

From a very early age, I loved the idea of creating things, whether you pick up a pencil and get a piece of paper and draw something. My father was a fighter pilot, and I loved how he could pick up a pencil and he could draw an airplane. It was fabulous. And my brother was a fairly good artist. So I was very fortunate that I had people around me who were making things, these wonderful creations that came to life on the page somehow.

At some point in time, my father had this 8mm camera. My brother and I would take the 8mm camera and we would go off and do stop-action stuff in the backyard. And we would create our own version of James Bond movies and westerns. So that kind of very naturally led me to thinking that creativity was a direction I wanted to go into.

I, with some help, decided to go to the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore. I was very fortunate to take a job with the graphic design shop. Then I met some people who were in the advertising business, and the idea of creating ads, and especially TV spots, was something that I just thought, I just have to do that. I just wanted so badly to do that.

And I did get a job as a junior art director. Over the course of time, I managed to rise through the ranks, made my way to senior art director and eventually creative director, where you're the top creative person in the shop. So I really got to do all those things I ever wanted to do many times. I mean, just lots and lots of TV spots and helped others with radio spots, a lot of print ads and brochures, all kinds of things.

I met my wife when I was almost 17 and she had just turned 15. Her name is Michelle. I just thought how lovely she was and the way she expressed herself. The whole thing was like, wow, this must be what love feels like. From that point on, we've been an item. We were married when I was 25 and she was 23. The following year, we bought our first home.

Then about seven years later, we were very fortunate on August 24th of 1983 for my daughter to be born. I had a pretty healthy commute back in those days. And I remember with the child on the way, I went from just being a guy trying to get to work to being a guy who was super careful because I saw this responsibility was coming my way and I didn't want to have anything happen to me. Everything I just had to do better and better and better.

We went from being a married couple to a family with the birth of Kristen. And that to me was the crescendo. One thing that made it so much easier too for me is my wife is just a great mother.

I was always so appreciative of how my wife took care of herself. She was very careful about what she would eat, how much she would eat, what she would drink, getting the right magazines or reading the right books. I mean, she wanted to make sure that this child had every chance of coming into the world as healthy as possible. And when Kristen arrived, right from the moment she was born, she was absolutely beautiful. She was absolutely perfect as a little kid.

She understood pretty quickly in life that she was a main focus, of course, on my wife and I, but other family members and friends. And she loved mostly, I think, to see her parents or her grandparents laugh at something that she might say.

We always had cats, still do. She treated them wonderfully. She loved them so much. She kind of almost made them her baby dolls, carry them around and fall asleep with them. And later in life, she engaged with equestrian riding with horses, you know, loved them and held them and gave them a big kiss on their nose. And she was just a very loving, giving child.

With her friends, from the time she was little all the way through college, she was 100% loyal to her friends. She would do anything for her friends. You love the fact that she was loved so much and embraced by so many people. There are times that I know I would look at her and just say, I'm just very fortunate that this is my daughter. She's just this precious human being.

You know, everything just felt like it was falling into place. We were a great threesome right from the very beginning. Four years later, my son David was born. Both of our kids had a lot of friends. There was always someone at the house or they were always at somebody else's house and it was really a lot of fun. And, you know, eventually Kristen went off to high school and she got a partial scholarship to a college called St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

Had, again, many friends. You know, eventually got an apartment with her roommate. In the fall of her last year at St. Joseph's, there were all these interviews. Like, they would have people come from Rubbermaid, Hormel, and they had people from General Mills. That's the job you wanted to win. So she did the Rubbermaid. Didn't get anywhere with that. She did the Hormel. I think she lasted a couple of rounds, but then they picked someone else.

And then she did the General Mills and she got the job. She was the one. So that for her was a big boost in her life. And so she could carry that good feeling from October right through starting the following July, which would have been July of 05. You know, she used to get these little part time jobs. So she got a part time job as a waitress. The idea was just to work there, make a few dollars and then eventually be with General Mills in July.

But she met somebody who was a part-time bartender there. A bunch of people went out to get drinks or do something after work one day. He was in the group. They struck up a conversation. They struck up a relationship. And so they dated for four or five months. Her graduation day was May 14th of 2005. Of course, we went up to that. It was a Saturday. It was a pretty hot Saturday, very sunny, very hot.

They had a large white tent there. It's all outside. And we heard that afterwards we'd meet the boyfriend. So, okay. Got through the whole graduation event and we were introduced to Nick and also one of Kristen's other friends from college. It was strange because my immediate reaction when I met him and shook his hand, these are the words that went through my mind at that time was, I'd never want to tangle with this guy.

And I thought, how strange. You know, I'm just standing there looking at him, shaking his hand. It wasn't just his appearance because he looked like a guy that got in and out of the gym regularly. It was just something about him. I can't say it's something I really was looking at. It's just a feeling.

Then the focus shifted away from him to Kristen and we're all taking pictures. And there was one moment that Kristen's friend said to me, "Hey, Mr. Mitchell, I got to tell you, you're a pretty hip guy, pretty with it." And I said, "Oh, why do you say that?" And she said, "Well," she says, "most dads don't know how to text. They don't know how to do that." Now, back in 2005, I didn't know anything about texting.

This is kind of this odd moment where Kristen's looking at me, looking at Samantha, and then the boyfriend, Nick, is kind of looking too, like, what's that all about? As it turns out, that wasn't me.

Kristen, on her list of contacts, had another guy who she was just friends with, platonic friends with, and she put his name in as Dad so that if he ever texted her or she texted him, it looks like she was texting her dad and not her friend Mike. Kristen had to be careful what she wrote and he had to be careful what he wrote, but at least they could communicate that way. The thing about Nick was that I didn't have a very good first impression of him.

But I just didn't think about him very much, except he's standing there. We'll take some pictures. He's taking some pictures. And really, the following week, he and I, through email, we exchanged the pictures that we took. Besides that non-positive feeling about him, I didn't appreciate the fact that he was 28 and Kristen was 21. This was like my daughter's really dating a man now. It's not some college kid. This is a grown-up man.

My wife and my daughter had a phone conversation a couple weeks before that and asked her, so tell me about this boyfriend. You know, what's he like? You know, tell me about him. Well, mom, it's not the perfect relationship. I think my wife at that time felt the way I would have felt if I heard that, which is, I guess this one's not going to last. No big deal. It's not the first guy she ever dated. Won't be the last guy.

Back to graduation day, I'm taking pictures of Nick and Kristen, and he's taking pictures of the four of us in our family, my son, my wife, my daughter, and me. And during this part, Nick just seemed unhappy or angry with Kristen about something. I didn't know what it was. I said something to her about, do you think we should ask him to go with us when we go out to eat? She said, no, no, no, no, no. I'll see him soon. I just want it to be the four of us.

So off we went and we had a nice meal. Then afterwards, my son and I had to go back then to where we live outside of Baltimore. And I remember giving her a hug standing in a parking lot and it was raining a little bit. And I was thinking for her, it had to be in a very emotional day saying goodbye to so many people she had seen for four years. You know, you just don't know with life if this is the last time you'll ever see this person alive.

And that's really what I thought about when I gave her a hug. And I made sure that I really burned it into my memory how she felt and how she sounded and even really the way she smelled. 20 days later was rainy, overcast, kind of an ugly day all day that Friday.

There are two guys who own the agency I work for, but I remember going into the office of one of those guys and he was in the midst of having his next house built. And he said, hey, you got a few minutes? Let me show you the mansion. And I thought he was kidding until I saw the pictures. I don't know how long I stood there looking at his laptop. I get in the history of every cinder block practically. Mentally checked out, I did, at some point in time, just thinking, okay, enough, enough, enough.

Finally, I got out of there. So I walked down the hall and I stopped in with the other owner of the company. And I said, wow, you know, I just spent a lot of time looking at his house being built. And he said, what do you think? I said, well, it's quite a place. He said, you know, if you got a couple more minutes, let me show you mine. So I couldn't believe he was doing it, but I'm getting the same treatment. It was all I could do to stand there shaking my head. Thank God that day finally ended.

I was supposed to go to an area near BWI Airport. There's a restaurant there. I met with my parents there. They were 80-ish at that time. While sitting there with my parents, I then pulled out a framed graduation picture of my daughter and gave it to them, and they were just delighted. You know, look at her, all grown up, very proud grandparents,

We finally get done there, and I'm now out in the rain again. I'm driving along, and it's raining pretty hard. Windshield wipers are going like crazy. And it's about that time that the cell phone starts ringing. So I pull over, and I have on the other end someone who says, this is Lieutenant Detective Vicki, who's with the Howard County Police Department. Is this Mr. Mitchell? And I said it was. And she said, well, Mr. Mitchell...

We've been to your house a couple times today, and we need to speak with you, but it has to be in person. And I said, well, okay, let me think about this. Who were you? She went through it again. And then I said, well, okay, what's this about? She said, well, that's the problem. I can't tell you this unless I tell you in person.

And I'm thinking, who is this person? You know, this could be anybody who happened to get my number, some kind of a ruse, somebody who's trying to get me alone somewhere. I don't know what's going to happen. And she said, look, you know, if you don't believe me, let me give you a number. You call it. It's the desk of the police department. You can talk with them. This is all legitimate. And I said, all right, give me your number, too. I'll call you back. So I called. It seemed to be legit. I called her back.

I said, look, let me pick like a grocery store, like a giant or someplace. You know, I'll just kind of be out in the open, hopefully people around. And I went over there and I waited. This silver Honda pulls up and presumably Vicki Schaefer gets out from one side and a great big guy detective gets out on the other side. And then another car pulls up behind them, a dark blue compact. Two women got out of that. Both were wearing dark suits, black.

Vicki Schaefer showed a badge and she said, "Why don't you come over to my car and sit in my car and let me talk to you?" And I said, "I really don't want to do that." I still didn't believe they were who they were. And so I finally said, "Look, just tell me right here. This is fine." And she said to me these words, and that was, "Mr. Mitchell, I'm sorry to inform you that your daughter Kristen was murdered today by her boyfriend."

I remember back a long time ago, I had my home broken into. And to know that people were in my home and they were going through our belongings and taking things, it just rocked me for weeks. It was just this insidious feeling and it just really shook us. And then just over a year later, it was a really icy cold January morning and I got up and I went out to the driveway to get in my car and it wasn't there.

had been stolen, and that was a shock. But the next thought I had was at least I knew that my wife and my baby daughter were inside our home and they were absolutely safe. Then when I was told by police my daughter was murdered, I remember clearly that I just, it's like I understood what I was being told. I recognized it. I know what murder is. I know what dead is. I know I'll never see her alive again.

But I didn't burst into tears, and I didn't scream, and I didn't collapse. I just stood there, just kind of did nothing. And the detective who gave me the devastating news said to me, Mr. Mitchell, are you okay? You seem to be taking this very well. And all I said to the detective was, I'm acting. What I was hearing was just so horrible and so unfixable and so life-rearranging. But I was helpless to do anything about it.

So somewhere in my being, I just chose to do nothing. Just nothing emotionally. I can't believe I, at this moment, I'm holding this information and I'm being crushed by it and nobody else I know even knows this. They didn't have a lot of details except they had a fight around 3 a.m. on that Friday, June 3rd, and that my daughter was stabbed to death. At that moment, I was thinking that the last time I thought about her was

It was so great. It was so uplifting. There was so much to live for. And to have that whole house of cards blown down just with that one sentence, we regret to tell you your daughter's been murdered by her boyfriend today. Wow. It's just like having so much. And then this tsunami of information just swept it all away.

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Whether you call it God or you call it some force or whatever that is, I just feel like I was the one singled out to be the carrier or messenger of this news. Meaning I would be the first one to get it and then I was the one to tell it to all the key people and break one heart after another. I knew that was going to be part of it. Strangely enough, I felt good that it was me.

I didn't want it, but I was the best one to do it. I was somehow ready for it. So we assembled in the family room and my wife and my son sat on the couch and my parents sat on a love seat next to it. And then I just told them all at once. It was just kind of like people dropping their heads and crying hard.

Kristen was as important to my parents as their own two sons. They felt it just as hard as we did here at this house. The problem you have when you have somebody who is murdered is that their body is held onto for a period of time as evidence. So it did take a few days before she was sent, and then we knew that by Wednesday, say Wednesday evening, we could have a visitation.

We had an open casket. So that viewing took place on the 8th of June, which was scheduled to be three consecutive hours, and it went nearly five. You do get to the point when you're seeing all these sad-looking people that you're some version of exhausted. And I reached the point, too, where I'd say hi to somebody, I'd say their name, and then I'd realize later that wasn't that person's name. It was somebody who looked similar. I got calls from a couple newspapers saying,

I gave all this information to the most major newspaper in Baltimore. And instead, what they ran was parts of the interview with the guy that killed my daughter instead and nothing that I told them. So they didn't want my story about my nice daughter. They wanted the nitty gritty of what happened in that apartment. So it was like really more like a slasher piece. Yeah, that truly was insult to injury at that stage.

Beginning the next morning, and really every morning for weeks, I would wake, and then you think, oh God, that's right, Kristen was killed. And I would just cry uncontrollably. And then after a good cry, a hard cry, it would stop, and then I'd have to get up and face the day.

And all the crying and all those feelings would just shut down. They'd stop. It was the strangest thing. I'd never had anything like that before, to go from somewhat normal to a full cry to somewhat normal all in the space of minutes. I can remember instances of being in a mall, let's say, and I see across the way, I see some dad walking with his blonde-haired daughter thinking, "That could have been me."

I might see Kristen in somebody else at different points in her life. I'll see a little, you know, three or four year old. I'll see somebody who's in her late teens. And I would even let my mind think about, gee, I wonder if that's her. I mean, you do that type of stuff. You know, I'm up for a miracle. Why not?

But I would just go into a big cry. I mean, like a real gasping cry. In the beginning, it was every day of the week. And then after a while, it would just kind of like strike me one or two times a month. That was really a lot about the first six months to a year. I remember it was late on Monday. My wife and I were sitting on our bed. My son came in and one of us asked the question, how are we all getting through this? I don't understand how we're getting through this.

You know, there's the Holy Spirit you hear about from time to time, which I didn't really pay a lot of attention, but the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit's supposed to be about wisdom. And I actually mentioned that to the other two, and I said, you know, maybe this was where the Holy Spirit comes in. Because we all seem to get this. We've never done this before. We've never run this play. But we all get it. You know, everybody's doing their part. Everybody's picking the other person up.

We met with the people who owned the apartment complex and actually went into the apartment where she was killed. The first thing that catches your eye is the fact that a lot of the carpet has been cut and taken out of there. And then even sections of walls were carved out like a mat knife or some kind of a saw and just taken out. I mean, you can see the wood behind it. And all of these are, I didn't have to ask, you know, they're all carted away as potential evidence of what happened there.

And we just kind of quietly walked around. It was like being inside a tomb. It started in the kitchen, probably the worst place in the house to have an argument with somebody. And this guy, Nick, had actually bought Kristen a set of knives as a graduation present. I could see the block that used to hold the knives. Then we walked into the bedroom and there's a whole, again, large section of carpet and padding removed.

The mattress is gone, box spring's gone, all you could see is the headboard. Everything else about that bed was gone. I knew from talking with the detectives that she died laying in her bed. And I knew where the bed was, so I could stand there and say a few prayers. She had a couple little dolls when she was growing up, and she used to just keep it on her bed. And I thought, God, I bet you she had that in here, too. I guess they're gone, too.

But I walked over and took a look up into her closet, and darn if they weren't sitting up there just as okay as possible. So when I left that apartment, I actually left with those two dolls under my arm. On her last full day, the plan was that she would spend that day with two guys she graduated with. So she told Nick, I'm not going to see you that day. I'm going to spend that day with these guys.

He didn't like that at all, even though he actually knew the guys and knew that it was platonic. But it was like, no, it's all about me. That evening, the two guys left. And then she has these text messages with Nick. And Nick paints a picture of he has to stay over at his brother's place, but he doesn't want to because he doesn't get along with his brother's fiance. So Kristen buys that story, which wasn't true.

And says, well, look, you know, why don't you do this? Rather than stay over there, why don't you come here, sleep on the couch. I'll sleep in the bedroom and we'll pick up this conversation tomorrow. Because she really intended to break up. Apparently that wasn't good enough for him when he got there. So at some point he's in the bedroom. Kristen grabs her cell phone, goes in the kitchen and calls up one of the guys who had been there earlier and said, Nick's in the bedroom. He won't come out of there. I don't know what to do.

So Nick comes out of there, catches up with her, knocks the phone apparently on the floor, and that kind of hangs up the call. And the guy on the other end is like, oh my God, what's going on? And he's afraid to call back because he's afraid he's going to make it worse. At that point, all you do is you have what Nick said in his interview about what took place, which was a struggle. There was pushing and shoving and that he pushed her. So he says she wound up over near a block that had knives in it.

And at some point, she picked up a knife and she hit him with it. You know, she cut him with it. This basically escalated to the point where he got a hold of the knife and then the rest is inflicting 55 wounds. He left her there dead and then managed to make his way to a hospital, to an ER, to gain attention for himself. We actually later learned that

The injuries that this guy, Nick, had were all self-inflicted to create a story that this was a self-defense situation on his part. When I think about Nick, the guy that did it, I mostly wanted, if I could ask him one question, it would be why. Why did it get that bad? Why does it come to the point where you stab somebody to death?

I can understand somebody slamming a door and leaving or yelling, but I don't understand how you get so angry that you not only kill, but you kill so viciously. So it just was a big why question. And then as time wore on, you know, you cannot help. I don't know if it's a father thing or just anybody, but you can't help but think about revenge, right?

I know I can't get to you, but I wish I could. I wish I could put you out of this world like you did my child. I think that's a very normal feeling, and it's not one that I wanted, it just would enter my mind.

I can think back to the preliminary hearing, which was about two months after Kristen was killed. I remember going in and sitting in this courtroom. We were waiting because the guy that did it hadn't arrived yet. And I happened to look out through Venetian blinds on this sunny day, and I saw them open up the back of the van and bring him out. He had handcuffs and manacles around his feet. He had a dark blue jumpsuit. He looked very disheveled.

And they brought him in the left side door of this room and he walked across in front of the table I was at and then sat at a table that was off to our right. And I can remember thinking, you know, if I was some kind of a martial arts expert and I picked my moment, I bet I could fly out of this seat, grab him by the neck and snap it so easily.

And I would never do something like that because I have a fear of where I'd be for eternity if I did something like that to somebody. Where does that put my wife and son? Where does that put the rest of my family? It's difficult at times to fight that off. But those thoughts do enter your mind. I mean, I just felt hatred for him. If you would have acted differently, my daughter would be alive. You're why our lives are different the rest of our lives.

The next step was the formal arraignment, which was in late September. They were charging him with first and third degree murder. I think most of us know that first degree murder is premeditated. It's somebody decides definitely they want to kill somebody. This guy was willing to plead guilty to third degree. Third degree murder means 15 to 30 years. So he knew he was doing 15 no matter what he did in prison.

When you think of inflicting 55 wounds, you figure somewhere in the midst of those 55, someone shifts into kill mode. But he didn't show up with the knives. The prosecutor explained to us, if we go into a courtroom, it could go either way. Anything can happen.

And so if this goes down as a crime of passion where he lost his mind, if the jury for some reason looks over at this guy who's 28 and physically fit and kind of cute and thinks, oh my God, you know, he just lost his mind. He just lost his mind. You know, he was so mad at her. He didn't know what he was doing. I mean, of course, that's what the defense is going to be sending up. He had a couple drinks and he didn't know what he was doing. He lost it.

That was the fear, that if we didn't get him on first degree and somehow the slip between our fingers, we were really going to hate ourselves for not taking the plea. We were fully prepared to walk out of there feeling at least we bought 15 years of peace before parole reviews ever happened. We were given an opportunity to speak, so my son got up and spoke directly to Nick about what he did,

He also said that as bad as it looks right now, you have an opportunity to change your life around. My wife got up and talked about how this was the end of the innocence for my daughter and for our family. And then I got up and I said what I had to say, which was, I said, I don't forgive you, but I hope one day I'll be able to figure out how to do that. And I never have, actually. I think it's between him and his maker.

Then Nick had the opportunity to speak and he got up and really said a very short paragraph. And this is from the court record. He said,

Samantha, David, her parents, everyone. I can't change it. I would. I don't know what to say. There's nothing I can say. My words aren't significant enough, but that's all I ever think about. Every single day, every minute, every second, every hour. I loved her. And I remember it made me feel a little bit sorry for him. This is a guy speaking off the cuff. He didn't have notes.

And I think I felt, you know, didn't like him. I pretty much hated him, but I felt sorry for him somewhat.

afterwards got out of the courtroom and it was in a hallway and there were several reporters there asking me various things about you know how are you feeling and what did you think about what he had to say and I was going into something pretty much like it was good that he spoke and I'm trying to figure out if there's ever a possibility of me forgiving him at some point in time and I'm wandering through all these different nice guy thoughts and words and saying these things and

And then from my back, I feel my arm being pulled and I turned and look and it's Charlotte, who is the prosecutor, pulling my arm and then saying to the reporters, OK, the Mitchells are tired. They've been through a whole lot. They have to drive home. So that's it. We're done. And then she kind of took me off to the side and shook her finger in my face and said, you know, don't you ever believe a thing that that guy said? Don't you believe it?

He cried for himself. He feels sorry for himself. Your daughter had everything going for her. He took it all away. Just remember what he did to Kristen. That's who he is. And I felt embarrassed. Embarrassed because she was absolutely right. I had fallen prey to him too. I'm listening to this guy and I'm being manipulated because he's a monster. He's a complete killing monster. He's a beast.

I felt like I got sucked into the same vortex that he pulls everybody else into and had been doing, I'm sure, a good portion of his life just figuring out what people need, you know. You start to fall for it and when you snap out of it, it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is the same guy who stole a large portion of your life. And so I fell into that trap, but she kind of verbally slapped me out of it and I'm glad she did and I've been out of that trap ever since.

You know, thinking about the aftermath, you try to search for meaning from such a violent, brutal, devastating act, and you can't get there. There's a big hole in my life, and it'll be there forever. And I know that I'll never really touch the level of happiness that I felt when she was around, but just sitting around and feeling sorry for myself would just make me miserable.

And I felt like I just wanted to do things to make me proud of what I was doing. Even more importantly, things that maybe made my daughter feel proud about what I was doing, wherever she is at this time. I wanted to know what could make anyone so angry that they would do that to another person, let alone it being my daughter. Just talking about it, learning about domestic violence, dating violence, you know, what is narcissism all about, what sociopathic behavior is.

In trying to make sense out of this, a few years ago I started to write a book called When Dating Hurts, and I wanted to kind of tell everything I had learned. So I worked on that over the course of four years or so. Wasn't ever sure until the very end that I was actually going to get this out or that it was ever good enough or covered everything. Managed to get it out as a book, and eventually, about a year and a half ago, started something called the When Dating Hurts Podcast.

So this event, this horrific event, definitely gave me a purpose in life. So just talking about it, taking our emotions and turning them into action, you'll do yourself more good by helping other people.

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Domestic violence is all around us. You know, we just don't recognize it for what it is. One in three women will suffer serious physical harm at the hands of an intimate partner at some point in their lifetimes.

I've given speeches at high schools, let's say, and they got all the boys sitting over there, maybe, and all the girls sitting over there. But I look at all those girls, and if I thought, wow, every three rows, everybody in that row would have something happen to them. And we're talking serious physical harm. Somebody was choked. Somebody had something big and heavy thrown at them, or they were pushed down the steps. Something really jarring in their lives, like punched out.

Seems hard to believe, doesn't it? But it's true. One in three. After talking with enough survivors of abuse, I wanted to see if there was a pattern or a template that abusers follow because I wanted to see if they all do the same kind of things. And it turns out they do. The first is, upon meeting this other person, is storybook romance.

It's like a fairy tale. This person is so nice. You go out on a date and the next day you go back to work and two dozen red roses show up at work. Wow, nobody ever did that for me before. Or if your cell phone's, you know, if you got an iPhone 7, he shows up with a 13 for you. You know, wonderful things happen with this person. Then comes isolation.

And it will come. There isn't one abusive relationship where I haven't heard about isolation. Isolating you from your family and friends. For instance, just say, well, you know, I really don't like her. So I don't know why we need to go out with them. Or separate you from things you used to like. You have a cat. This guy doesn't like cats. So you think, well, okay, you know, I won't get another cat one day or I'll keep the cat away from him. But he keeps telling you how stupid cats are, let's say.

And I know from talking with my daughter's friends after everything went down that he was always like that. He didn't want her to be around them, didn't really want her to go away for a few days with her mother. They went to the beach after the graduation. Little by little, much like branches cut from a tree, after a while if somebody keeps snipping away there's nothing left. Then comes constantly putting the other person down as a controlling technique.

So you come up with some nasty little nickname, and it's a jab, and it's just to put you in your place. It's to emphasize the fact that you're a second-class citizen to this other person. I don't like it when you do this, and I don't like when you cut your hair that way, or I don't like, you know, why are you wearing so much makeup, or why do you dress like that around other people? Making you feel nobody else would ever want you.

You know, you're not such a prize after all. You know, you're lucky I even go out with you. Somebody who's always looking for opportunities to show you can't do anything right, that there were better ways to do things, that you're losing your mind, you're crazy, which is gaslighting. And it's just to belittle you into a place where you just are submissive.

And somebody who's preventing you from doing things you want to do. So if you like to play tennis or ride horses, that person's like, well, you know, that's really, that's expensive. That takes too long. Why do you want to play tennis? It's hot out there. Let's do something else. Somebody who's extremely jealous or possessive. Somebody who checks your cell phone or maybe your emails or texts without your permission. So you go in the other room and you walk out and he's holding your cell phone. And it's like, who's so-and-so?

Somebody who's constantly checking up on you when you're not around by calling you all the time, which this guy used to do to my daughter, and texting you all the time. "Well, what are you doing now? Well, you said you'd only be an hour." "Well, you know, when am I gonna see you?" "Well, you said this, and you said that." Then comes lying about practically everything. Somebody you're constantly finding out that they're presenting you with a false world as to what's really going on. The next thing is where it really starts to get tricky: threats of violence.

It might look like they're having an argument and he slams on the brakes. She practically hits her head on the dashboard. And he says, look, you know, I don't want you to ever talk to me like that. And if you do, I, you know, I just wanted to slap you. And she's thinking, man, this guy really means business. I better lay off of that. You know, I don't want to sound like his mother. I don't know what ticked him off. And then oftentimes actual violence.

And then the next part, it starts to get a little more insidious, which is the convincing apology. It's the guy that says, look, you know, I spent all summer doing everything I could to get in shape to make it on that football team. And on the last day, the coach cut me. OK, I'm really upset. I'm really mad. And I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I apologize. It'll never happen again. And then maybe, you know, you buy the apology. You hope we get back to better days.

The next step is actually go back to the first step, which is storybook romance. All of a sudden, behavior's better, nice person, takes you somewhere nice, treats you nice for a while. And then we move back into step two again, isolation. Things start getting bad again, maybe actual violence, convincing apology, and around and around and around she goes. Looking back over the 17 years since my daughter was killed, I believe that no matter how well you think you are prepared, things can still happen.

You just don't know sometimes when somebody you really care about is in a horrible relationship. And there might be different symptoms out there, red flags. And if you don't know them, you might think, gee, you know, it just seems kind of like a troubled marriage. And you don't realize it may be a lot worse than that. And that that person you care about just hasn't worked up the courage or doesn't feel like they can come to you and tell you.

You know, you can't bury your head in the sand and say, well, you know, that would never happen to me. That's just not true. You know, had I been better educated on this subject, and I don't really beat myself up about it, and I don't walk around with a big guilt thing. But for instance, if you go back to the evening before she was killed, really just hours before, with the emails that we wrote back and forth, I wrote her three or four, she wrote me back three or four.

One in particular, there must be seven different warning signs that jump off the page, talking about how annoying he was that day, how he gets jealous about other people. Knowing what I know now, I would have picked up the phone and would have called her. I wouldn't continue to write emails and would have just said, walk me through this last one.

Instead of doing that, I wrote back to her that he has to understand that you do have other friends, that he's still important to you, but these friends are important to you too. I said, if you just level with him, I'm sure everything will work out just fine. Well, it didn't. We just, like so many people, you just don't know what you don't know. She wrote me an email at 2.27 on June 3rd, 2.27 a.m.,

And it's like, thanks, Dad, for staying up late because my last email I sent after midnight. And writing to me, I really appreciate it. We should have more talks later. The police figure, he came back to the apartment about a half an hour after that. And as best they could place it, she was killed somewhere between 3 and 3.30 a.m. Here I am, well over a decade later.

And I get around the date, the anniversary of her getting killed or her birthday. And what I feel mostly is just the incalculable loss. One way I kind of work through it is I continue to write to her in a diary kind of way. It's a conversation that I have with her and I'm just filling her in like she's away. And I'm the one to kind of say, OK, here's what's going on lately.

Now I have boundless patience with people who need help. It's not that I didn't have patience, but now I have boundless patience, especially people who are innocent, who are being abused. So on one hand, I have boundless patience, but have no patience with people, I think, who are just aggressive people, abusive or physically abusive, of course, but even verbally abusive.

I want to put a stop to it, and I have to be careful that I don't treat abusive people with my own version of abuse. I don't want to become the thing that I don't like. So at this point in time, he's been in there the 15, and then there have been as many now as three parole board reviews, and he has been turned down now three times to get out.

And in fact, the parole board review, the result of it this year is that he will do at least another three years. So at that point, it would add up to 20 of the 30. Yeah, you can't help but have some tragedy like this crash into your life. You spend a lot of time like, why did this happen? You think that if you think about it long enough or talk with enough people that you can make sense out of it. And it's really, I think, impossible.

I think the closest I can get to that is that this ignited a passion in me. I'm just trying to fashion something good out of something that's so monstrously horrible. And I've tried very hard that other families don't have to.

Today's episode featured Bill Mitchell. Bill has a book and podcast, both called When Dating Hurts. You can find out more about Bill, his book, and his podcast all at whendatinghurts.com. You can also find his book on Amazon.

Bill was originally featured on Scott Johnson's amazing podcast, What Was That Like? If you love This Is Actually Happening, check out What Was That Like? featuring stories from people who have been through something extremely unusual. You'll hear people talking about being in a plane crash, a mass shooting, a grizzly bear attack, and many more. The guest comes on and tells the details of what happened firsthand. If you like This Is Actually Happening, I know you'll want to subscribe to What Was That Like?

It's available on any podcast app or at whatwasthatlike.com. Bill also wanted to send this final message to anyone out there who needs it. If you are in a relationship or you know of a relationship that just doesn't feel right, you really have to do something.

The National Domestic Violence Line hotline is 800-799-SAFE. 800-799-SAFE, which is 800-799-7233. And they're fabulous. They're well-trained. Most of the people that answer those lines have been through it themselves, so they're not really book-taught. They're really life-taught. And just chat with one of the people. ♪

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

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Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the best known companies in the world were built.

In a new weekly series we've launched called Advice Line, I'm joined by some legendary founders and together we talk to entrepreneurs in every industry to help tackle their roadblocks in real time. Everybody buys on feeling, Guy, like everybody. So if you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy. A lot of times founders will go outside of themselves to build a story. And

And you can't replicate heart. You know, I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which isn't the worst thing in the world because it doesn't allow you to get overconfident and think that you're invincible. Check out the advice line by following How I Built This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.