268: What if he followed you into the house?
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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. Before we begin today's episode, I have an announcement. Starting next week, we will begin a special limited series called Point Blank, featuring five stories that center around a spree shooting in Rancho Tehama, California in 2017 that left six people dead and 18 wounded.

Starting next week over the following five weeks, we'll hear five different accounts from the incident, from a man who was shot while driving with his wife and left for dead, to a teacher at the school where the shooting ended, to the sister of the shooter, all with their own life stories, perspectives, and traumatic journey in the aftermath. So stay tuned for the launch of the Point Blank series beginning next week.

March 14th. But today, we bring you this week's episode, What If You Followed You Into The House? I think I let out a scream, but I do know for whatever reason, my brain flat out said, no, like you cannot show fear. He can't know that I might be afraid. Like that was the last thing that I wanted him to think was that I was weak and small and afraid. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 268 What If He Followed You Into The House?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. I was born in Phoenix. I am one of only two kids, so it's just my sister and I, and I'm the older one.

super traditional of my dad worked eight to five. My mom stayed home. My dad was the fun one. My mom usually was the one that did the punishment. He would do all the fun activities on the weekends. And my mom was the one that dished out the rules and dished out the discipline. But she also was really easy to talk to. So I've always had a pretty good relationship with my mom.

I think for my mom, my maternal grandmother, she grew up in a very fractured alcoholic home. Her and her sisters were bounced around to different foster families. And so I do remember growing up being told, you know, don't ever try alcohol because it's in your blood to be an alcoholic.

Growing up, my parents fostered this environment where, you know, home equaled safety. They fostered like a really safe home environment. Absolutely sheltered from the evils of the world. I mean, you know, I didn't even see my first PG-13 movie until I was 14. I didn't even learn cuss words until way later.

I think my family would have prided themselves on me not knowing certain things. It was like, we can keep you safe from these different things. Let's not educate you on stuff. Let's just keep you away from it.

I was raised Christian evangelical is how they phrase it. We went to church every single Sunday. We went to Bible study fellowship and memorized all of the Bible verses. And it was deeply woven into our family of you follow God and good things happen to you. And that's just how it works.

We weren't really told about like different religions or different thought processes or different gods. It's like this is the Bible and this is the framework. This is the rule book guidelines for our life. Like that's what you do. And if you question, then you just need to go back to the Bible and all of your questions will go away.

My mom described me as this independent kind of porcupine type of person, you know, really pokey on the outside, but like soft and gushy in the middle. But I think as I got older, my parents represented this good, like safe home environment. So as I got older, it was kind of like I should conform to produce the same results in my own life. After 18, I went to college.

It was a really positive experience of getting some independence because while I was at home, I didn't allow myself to actually independently free think. But I went there for one year because private schooling was just too expensive. So I moved back home after a year. My husband, who I'm still married to, he and I became friends when I was in ninth grade.

He, of course, grew up the same way that I did. He comes from a pastor missionary background. His growing up home was a lot less safe than mine was. It was a little bit more volatile. But at the same time, I think both of us carried the same ideals and goals and thought processes on how we wanted to have a family and raise a family.

He is actually the only person that I've ever dated. I never had any boyfriend or any dating experiences or anything in high school at all. And then we started seriously dating after I moved back home. So my sophomore year of college. At the time, he was a full-time firefighter and then I was going to college full-time.

You know, I was still in college when we first got married. And I feel like most of my life, I thought that there was a set of rules and guidelines, a to-do list of like what you're supposed to do. But I got pregnant with our first child during college. So this whole idea of I'm going to get out of college and then I'm going to work for like several years, get experience, pay off my student loans completely went out the window.

The whole idea growing up was when you have kids, you don't work. You know, your passions and dreams and wants go to the back burner because it's not about you. It's now about your child. So I didn't feel excitement. I felt fear and regret about what this was going to look like. I took probably 10 pregnancy tests, if not more.

I strongly considered aborting her, but I chose not to because this would be a regret I would have. So I didn't.

I had a baby over spring break and went back to nursing school like three days after she was born because I had to prove it to myself, but to prove to other people too, that just because I had a baby didn't mean that all of my wants and desires and dreams are going to go out the window. But I always felt guilty because I should have been, you know, 24 seven with her and I wasn't because I was going to school.

So my second son was born about 17 months after my first was born. And then right after he was born, I started in on my first nursing job. The first job that I got was actually in the state-owned, state-run mental health hospital. And then while I was working there, my husband had gotten a job valeting cars because the fire departments weren't hiring people.

mentally, he declined majorly because he didn't feel adequate. He didn't feel like he was doing enough to help support the family. That was probably our worst time in our marriage. We fought a lot

And so I'm the one that brought up, why don't you join the military? I said, but the only branch that I'm okay with is the Coast Guard. So he went off to boot camp. And at week five, you get a phone call home to basically tell your family where you're getting orders to and where you're moving after boot camp. So he calls me for my phone call. And he's like, we're moving to Kodiak, Alaska. I was like, you've got to be kidding me.

But when we moved to Kodiak, so many things had gotten better. We were making more money. I got a job at the hospital up in Kodiak. We had like automatic built-in friends because the boat wives all get together and all the kids play and everything. And we had a three-bedroom townhouse with a backyard overlooking a lake. And it was gorgeous. And it was all mine. And it felt so nice to finally gotten out of this like really hard time.

We're like, should we just be like this fun little four pack family or do we want to have another baby now that we could actually afford another baby? So she's our third. She was born in Kodiak, Alaska at the little tiny hospital there. From the second she came out, she was like this snuggly little baby. Like all she wanted was to be held and rocked and snuggled constantly.

We then moved to Puerto Rico. It was fun. We pretty much just spent like most nights at the beach. When she was two, we had her brother in Puerto Rico. We then moved to Cordova, Alaska, which makes Kodiak, Alaska look like a really big city.

It was the summer of 2017 that we moved from Cordova, Alaska to Charleston, South Carolina. Now I was pregnant with our fifth baby. We chose to not live on base. We chose to purchase a house so that we could qualify for school choice. My first impression of the neighborhood was, oh my gosh, this looks like one of the resorts in Disney World.

So we get inside the house. It was super cute. It was the first time we had purchased a house together. Life kind of just unfolded after that. You know, the oldest two were in school. I had three kids at home with me. My husband's job, they sent him on what they call C school. So he was actually going to be in Yorktown, Virginia for two months starting the second week of February. And he actually left on Sunday, the week before President's Day weekend. And

I had attempted to lay out the framework for a well-oiled machine as much as physically possible for me to be home alone. I had tried to build as big of a community as possible so that, you know, me with five kids at home for two months, I would at least have some people that I could count on and some activities that we could do while he was gone. So it was new. It was different for me. But I felt like, you know, that I had a really good handle on it. I felt like we were in a good space for him to leave.

Monday actually went off without a hitch. Like I drove the kids to school. I took our third to dance that day. We came home. We did nap time and dinner that night. We picked up the house. I sent my husband a text message that evening after the kids were in bed of like, heck yes, we're like such badasses. Look at how clean the house is. We've got this. You have fun.

Tuesday morning, I got up. I think it was six o'clock in the morning and feed the baby and then get the other kids up so that we could go take them to school. So I took them to school. I texted my husband before we left. Hey, good morning. Hope you have a great day today. I dropped the older two off at school and then started driving back home. So as we're driving home, I had my five-month-old daughter, the two-year-old son, and then my four-year-old daughter all in the car with me.

They asked for pancakes and I was like, yeah, we're going to eat pancakes and then we'll watch Tinkerbell. And they were all excited, like singing on the way home. There was nothing out of the ordinary. I was feeling really good about myself. When I pulled up into the house, I went around to the side of the car where the baby was and I grabbed the full car seat out, then let the other two out. I walked up, unlocked the door, went inside the door,

Our house had a long hallway that then opened up into like the great room area. But I always set down the baby carrier like in that hallway. So I set her down in the hallway and then I walked into the kitchen thinking about like we were going to make pancakes. My other two kids, they were behind me. You know, I wish I could say for sure that I know that they came in the door and I like made sure that everything was locked up, but I don't know. I got into the kitchen area and I heard these footsteps on the ground.

And they just sounded too fast and heavy for them to be a four-year-old or a two-year-old. So my brain literally did, oh my gosh, like that's not the kids. That was really the only thought that I even had before I was like engulfed with this human.

He was up behind me and had his arms wrapped around my neck and chest area. And, you know, I instinctively reached up to grab him, but I had never been like approached from behind and grabbed by somebody. Your brain hasn't even caught up to what's even happening yet. I think I let out a scream, but I do know for whatever reason, my brain flat out said, no, like you cannot show fear.

He can't know that I might be afraid. Like that was the last thing that I wanted him to think was that I was weak and small and afraid. The second he came up around me, it was like, wait, what the fuck? What's happening? I don't know. I really don't remember having fear in that moment. It was more just shock and

I don't know when he said something to me. I think it was while he was still standing, but I have a very specific memory of him talking into my left ear. I don't know what he said, but I'll never forget the sensation of his breath and the sound of his voice in my ear. He took me to the ground pretty quickly afterwards. He beat my head into the hardwood floor and

So I don't know if I was ever punched or if he literally took me to the ground and slammed my head into the floor. He took out a knife and held the knife up to my throat and then asked me where my phone was. I just automatically assumed that he just wanted to rob me. He just wanted my purse. Of all the houses that you want to rob, like you're not going to find a whole lot here. That was kind of my thought was it's like maybe he just was hoping that we were a lot more well off than we actually are.

So I was just thinking, you know what, whatever he asks, just answer so that he can take what he wants and he just get out as quickly as possible. So I told him where my phone was a couple of times. And I remember closing my eyes and just like slowing down my breathing too. Because again, like I didn't want him to think that I could possibly be afraid of him. He left almost like he was looking for my phone and then came back, asked me where my phone was and then beat my head into the floor several times.

And at this point, I knew I was bleeding. I don't know from where, but I knew I was bleeding. And I knew that my lip was fat because I was having a harder time like talking. I could hear stuff, but it was almost like, you know, you could hear things through like a tunnel. As I got more beat up and it was all on my face, like I could feel the tennis shoes on the floor and not just hear them, but I could feel them too. I was trying to fight back.

I've never even taken a self-defense class. I would like to think that I'm athletic, but I'm not very athletic.

But I remember my mom had taken this weird self-defense class back at the church that we went to, like when I was in elementary school. And I remember her coming home and saying, oh, the biggest thing that we learned was just like if a guy is attacking you, you just grab, twist, and pull. And so I was on the ground looking up at him. The only thing I could reach was his dick anyways. So I tried. I tried to grab, twist, and pull it.

His pants were like way too baggy that I couldn't get a grab on him. So I'm like trying to grab like his pants and his crotch to try and like grab something. As I'm doing this, he's like taking a step back and then laughing at me. And I remember the laugh too. And it was almost nervous. It was almost pressured. Like the impression that I got from him at the time was that he was nervous. He had never done anything criminally before. And this was his first attempt. And he didn't know what he was doing.

I almost felt like I heard this voice in my head of, "Stop fighting. Just stop. It's not working. Just stop." My memory is that I stopped fighting at that point. I have jagged memories of the rest of the assault because I think at that point, my brain had been smashed so many times that I no longer can give you a detailed account of what happened.

My five-month-old sat in the carrier the entire time. My four-year-old and my two-year-old were crouching, like kind of crouched down in the main hallway, kind of just watching the whole thing happen. And at one point, I sat up and I looked at them and I said, go hide. I don't even remember him really pulling my pants off. At some point after saying I need to stop fighting and I don't remember tons, I said,

I feel like I probably went unconscious or at least semi-unconscious and then I came to and remember him trying to tie things on to me. He tied my legs up, he tied my wrists up, and then he tied my legs and my wrists together.

He used fabric from my sewing room. He used the baby monitor cord. He used my pants. He used the shoelaces off of my daughter's sparkly tennis shoes. I just remember thinking as soon as he leaves, like, it'll be okay. Like, we'll be okay. He just needs to leave. And I just kept waiting for that to happen. I rolled over to my right side and I could feel the vibrations of his feet on the floor.

My youngest was still buckled in the car seat, so she was safe. And then my other two, they went upstairs. I remember hearing their feet on the stairs, so I know they left. I never thought that his goal was to do anything to the kids. I thought that I was his only focus. I think he had to have closed the door when he left because I don't remember closing it, and it was closed. At some point, it was like, okay, he's gone.

And I got up and I really couldn't move because my wrists were tied to my ankles, but it was so tight and my hands were both losing circulation. Like I really couldn't feel them or move them much. So I scooched across the floor. We had a junk drawer like every kitchen does. And there was some scissors in the junk drawer. And I grabbed a pair of scissors. I cut the left wrist free. My two-year-old came downstairs and he was hungry for breakfast.

A lot of times in trauma, like your body reverts back to like, what did you pre-program it to do? You just go back to what you were doing before because you have no critical thought processes left to think anything else. And I remember looking at him and saying like, I'm sorry, it's not going to be pancakes.

Somehow I figured out how to get milk out of the fridge. And then I had the bowl and the cereal on the floor and I poured it and I made a mess. There was like milk and cereal all over the floor too. And I was like, sorry bud, this is going to have to do. And then I remember crawling back into the hallway where the baby carrier was and I grabbed my baby out and crawled up the stairs carrying her.

I laid her down in the crib. I remember barely looking for my phone, but since he had obsessed so much about my phone, I just assumed he had it. So my glasses had been obviously like thrown off long before and I couldn't see anything. I'm blind as a bat. Like I got glasses in the third grade.

I wasn't dying. And that's really what I thought was that I wasn't dying. It was fine. And I'm sure I'll just feel better when I wake up from a nap and we don't need anything and it'll be like, it's fine. So I laid my baby down. I had gotten the two-year-old breakfast and then he came upstairs and I turned on Tinkerbell. And I remember thinking, well, where's my four-year-old?

I was like, she's probably scared. She's probably hiding. She'll come out later. I have dealt a lot with feelings like I failed her as a mother because of these thought processes. Like, I'm sure she's just in her bedroom. She'll come out later when she hears Tinkerbell is on. And then I went into my bedroom and laid down on the bed and went to sleep.

I think for the vast majority of that day, my brain just never did catch up to what was actually going on. And part shock, part internal bleeding, part my brain can't even grapple with what has even happened. And so let's just shut down literally everything. The two things in front of you that needed something you've taken care of. And so let's just literally pass the fuck out and deal with it later.

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I don't really know when I woke up or what. I don't remember the baby waking up and crying at all. The cops have said based on blood patterns on her clothes, they think that I breastfed her during the day, but I don't have a memory of doing that. As far as blood patterns are concerned, literally all over the house, I had to have been walking around and doing stuff during the day. But what my memory serves as is that I laid in bed and I went to sleep and then

My two-year-old woke me up and I opened up a bag of pretzels and then I woke up later and went, "Hmm, maybe I should check and make sure my phone is actually gone."

So I walked back downstairs and I opened up the diaper bag and my phone is literally sitting right in the top of the bag. So I grabbed my phone and of course, like I had all these like missed text messages and missed phone calls. And I clicked on the first text message and it was my friend that led our small group. And it was like, hey, you know, we missed you this morning. Like I know that your husband just left. Let us know if there's anything that we can do for you or something along those lines.

And I said, I was beat up. Call the cops. Right after I sent that text message to my friend, my husband calls. The room was spinning and I was like leaning up against the front door too because I couldn't stand. And I answered the phone and he just said, Brittany, just open up the front door. The cops are out front. Like just open the door.

I opened the door and I had this cop sprint towards the door. It was like this huge weight rush over me of like, he's going to help me. I don't have to be anything for me or the kids anymore. Like somebody else is going to take care of me. I remember laying in the back of the ambulance. I did say, I'm supposed to have three kids at home, but I don't know where one of them is. I haven't seen her today.

So I made sure that they got the baby and they got my two-year-old in the back of the ambulance. They all came to the hospital with me. And I really don't remember anything much after that at all for like days.

And then I remember waking up. This was on Thursday, the 15th, and feeling like I needed to go to the bathroom. And the nurse came in and I was like, I need to go to the bathroom. And she's like, that sounds great. Then my mom and my sister both came in and then they get my husband on the phone and turn on the speakerphone. So my husband's talking to me and I remember him saying stuff like, I'm in Alabama. We're coming home. And I'm like,

I don't know if I said anything or not, but again, I don't think my brain had any clue what was actually happening or what had gone on or anything. So I was in the ICU for three days and then the step-down unit for the additional like four days. I remember telling my mom and my sister what happened and, you know, like trying to make sense of stuff. And they were like reporting to cops of like what I was saying.

I slightly remember them showing me like a lineup pictures of guys and having to pick out which one it was. I just have a bunch of memories of like not really knowing what had happened and then mad that nobody was letting me do anything or be privy to anything.

I don't have a memory of being strangled, but based on the markings on my neck, the trauma team thought that I had been strangled. I remember being black and blue everywhere. I think at one point in time, I learned that I did have surgery. So I had surgery on the 14th, so the day afterwards. But I wasn't really completely aware of what surgery was.

When I was discharged from the hospital, we didn't go back to our home because our home was now like taped off, you know, with police tape. It was a huge crime scene investigation place. Some people, anonymous people, paid for an Airbnb house on Seabrook Island. It was a large house so that we could keep family with us if we needed. And it was behind a gate so we would feel protected and safe because it was behind the gate.

I think the best way to describe like the early few days after I got out of the hospital was I was 100% completely disassociated. My husband was supposed to be gone for two months and now he's home. We now have FBI agents that are literally crawling around our house asking me all kinds of questions. I think I was just treating life as a childhood of like, I'm too young to make decisions for myself. Like everybody was just telling me what I needed to do, where I needed to go.

What I was feeling was out of control. I think I knew that my four-year-old daughter, Heidi, was missing and that she was taken. I wasn't for certain that that's what happened. It was kind of a I think and maybe because I haven't seen her. But on some subconscious level of my brain, I knew she was gone.

The FBI basically told me in account of what they knew had happened to her and what had happened for two days with him when I still was barely out of the hospital and not really understanding things. Maybe it was better because then instead of reacting so violently to the first account, I probably like cognitively unpacked it slower because I didn't have the capacity to comprehend everything that he was explaining to me right away.

So when I first stopped hearing his footsteps on the floor was actually him walking upstairs on the carpet to go find Heidi. I don't remember ever hearing her screaming. She said she was. She said she need him and said, you can't take me. She has said that she did all kinds of stuff. But he took her out the front door and initially put her in the trunk of his car. So he originally stuck her in the trunk and got out of town.

I actually listened to his entire interview that the FBI did when they first captured him. What he said was that he wasn't originally planning on taking her. He said that the reason why he picked our family was because we were the goddamn Brady Bunch fucking family and he wanted to ruin it.

And the reason why he took Heidi was because since this was really bad, he knew he had to get out of town, but he didn't want to go alone. So he picked Heidi, the four-year-old, as his travel companion. When he got out of town, he could hear her crying, and I guess that bothered him. So he took her out of the trunk and then let her sit in the front seat. She has described to me that they ate some snacks, but they were yucky.

He went through Georgia, stopped at a house, got more drugs. He said he hit that guy over the head with a hammer and they kept driving. So early morning on Wednesday the 14th, somewhere in Georgia, he stopped for gas because he was about out of gas. And he had stolen my purse. So he had my debit card.

But I didn't have a job yet. And my husband was an E-5 active duty salary with five children. We had less than $100. So obviously, the debit card was rejected at the gas station.

The police department and the fire department and the Coast Guard actually started a huge search team with dive units and helicopters and canines to dive into the lake and literally search in the wooded area around in our neighborhood for her. The FBI basically like took all of my debit card numbers and like tracked all the things. So they literally were pulling out all the stops to look for her absolutely everywhere.

The first sign of hope was when he used the credit card at the gas station. And at that point, they could see on surveillance videos from the gas station that Heidi was still with him. And so it was like this glimmer of hope that like maybe this isn't going to turn into absolutely the worst fucking nightmare on the planet.

He was just coming off of a 10-year-long sentence for armed robbery. He was released from prison on February 1st of 2018. And he was on supervised parole release to a girlfriend's house.

And the two weeks between when he was released and when he showed up at my door was him and his girlfriend apparently got into one too many arguments. He said he stabbed her in the side with a knife. She ran off into the woods and died.

Then he took her credit cards, her phone, and her car and drove to South Carolina. When he got to South Carolina, he basically lived out of some random shed, getting high as fuck several times. And then that's when he basically decided that he was going to basically find the Brady Bunch family and hurt them.

So he was in his girlfriend's car driving with my daughter to who knows where he doesn't even know. When my credit card was declined in Georgia, he was going to run out of gas. He broke into some house in South Carolina. Then he broke into another house, beat the guy with a hammer and got a bunch of drugs out of that guy's sock, I guess.

Then he tried my card and it was declined. Then he needed gas, so he broke into another house and there was nobody home. Stole a car that was in the driveway of that house. So dumped the girlfriend's car and stole a different car. I think it was at that house that he sexually assaulted my daughter.

had her get in the shower to wash off all the evidence, and then he changed her into adult clothing that was in that house. According to her, he wasn't mean to her, minus the sexual assault.

He actually said the same thing in his interview. They hung out. She was his friend. They, like, hung out and, like, got snacks together and, like, went on a road trip. He didn't yell and he wasn't mean. But he also did tell her that I'm your daddy now. I killed your mom. So he pulled off onto the side of the road in absolutely nowhere, Alabama. He pulled off on this, like, random embankment side road, like, in the trees, like,

Heidi is still sitting in the front seat. They're actually right next to these train tracks. And that day, the Norfolk Southern Railroad had some contract workers working on a line of track right there.

Like, and we saw this car on the side of the road, and it just looked suspicious. You know, it didn't make any sense. The guy's sleeping in the front seat, and then there's this little girl also in the front seat. And we didn't know, but, you know, we thought maybe he was in a diabetic coma or something. It just looked off. So they called 911 to basically report a suspicious vehicle along the side of the road that didn't make sense. So the little tiny Riverside Police Department...

So the chief takes the call, gets in his car and goes to drive to where this spot is. And he said he climbed over the train tracks, walked over the car and knocked on the window. The guy answers and he's like, hey, can you get out of the car? And so he steps out of the car. He goes, I'm not going to lie to you. Here's my name. Here's my social security number.

And he's like, well, I'd appreciate you not lying to me. Who's the girl? He's like, oh, she's my daughter. Well, where's her mom? Oh, she's back in Johns Island, South Carolina. He's like, interesting. You want to come back to the station and talk about it? And he's like, no, I'll just go back to Johns Island. He's like, no, I really think that you should come back to the station and just like hang out. We'll talk and figure out like, you know, how to get you where you're going.

And he just said it was like his spidey senses were just going off. Like it just didn't look right. So then Mr. Bad Guy says, well, I have a bad back. Can you carry the girl? And he's like, absolutely not a problem. So he picks up Heidi and Heidi literally like monkey grabs him like legs wrapped around his belly, arms around his neck, clung to him like tight, like

The second Heidi was in the cop's arms, the guy jumped back in his car and races away. So then police chief pulls out his gun and shoots two rounds in the tire of the car. Takes Heidi back to the station. Back at the station, she like gives him her name. So then they basically they Google Heidi's name. They're like, wait, like this is the missing girl from John's Island.

He calls up his friend, the FBI agent from the Birmingham office and says, hey, by the way, like, I think I found your missing child from South Carolina. The FBI agent then gets in the car and speeds, got from Birmingham to Riverside in about 15 minutes to pick Heidi up, took her to the hospital.

What Heidi was dealing with initially was this sense of really needing security. She didn't want to be alone at all, ever. She didn't want to get in the car for the longest time, like any car ride, absolutely not. She'd prefer to walk. She didn't want to ride in the car. She didn't want to take a shower. I don't think she really understood what happened. She just knew that everything was scary. So many people were like, she probably won't remember. She's only four. Well, she remembers and will always remember.

Thank goodness we had a therapist that was coming to our house like at least twice a week, if not more often. For a while, she would just randomly throw out a detail. I remember the one that was the hardest pill for me to swallow was, she's like, I really didn't like it when he made me stick his thing in my mouth. And it just kind of really hit me as like this. I don't know how to respond to this. I don't know how to react to this.

It was just really hard there for a while, like finding out new things that happened to her. A big thing that they did with all of us was to write out like a trauma narrative of like what happened and what your feelings and perspectives were about it. But for Heidi, who was only four, she actually drew her trauma narrative with the main goal of us teaching her that she was safe and loved in our environment.

And I don't know that that means that we won't have future stuff as she gets older to work on with her, especially now that we're moving into puberty and how I'm going to have that conversation with her. And that's scary as hell to me. But I also think that she did not get her spirit wrecked by this for the last five years. She's more fearful than some children, I believe, her age. But she is not a very fearful person that is unable to handle daily living.

Going back to living in our house, I was kind of nervous to begin with. There was like several days that I would drive past the house without going in. I think that it was better for me to be able to go back home and work with the same trauma psychologist because I was very afraid to just go in the front door.

It was a really good way for me to attempt to take some control back of my life and basically hit the fear head on because I literally was in the exact same spot. And then we had actually our chaplain, him and his wife, they walked through the entire house with us and just kind of blessed it and said a prayer over the entire thing. And that really helped feeling like, okay, like this house is, it's okay. It doesn't have to be scary.

I didn't want to be alone ever. I didn't trust myself with the kids because I'm the one that failed them and so I didn't trust myself with them.

In therapy, you can go over and you can remind yourself over and over and over about how this wasn't your fault and you didn't do it. You weren't being a bad mom or a bad person and this happened anyways. But the fact that there's still that thought that I failed them or I didn't do well or I did something wrong, it's that initial thought that's just constantly there that's really hard to live with.

I constantly question myself and constantly check myself on what I'm doing or what I'm supposed to be doing or am I sure that that's okay. I honestly don't think that I could have done anything different.

Sometimes bad things just happen and you can do everything right and it still happens. But the biggest problem that I still five years later have not really gotten any better on is I have absolutely no confidence in myself at all. I don't trust myself. I trust other people, but I don't trust myself.

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The trial for us was split up into two different parts. We had federal trial that we had to go to. And then after the federal trial was going to be completed, then the state of South Carolina was like going to come in with their stuff and we would do a second one. The first time that I saw him after the event, it was in the courtroom, but it was for his guilty plea.

He was not going to request a full trial. He was pleading guilty to all charges that they were finding against him. We didn't have to go through getting a jury. We didn't have to go through months of presenting evidence in the courtroom or anything like that. So it basically, it went to the ending pretty quickly. When I saw him for the guilty plea, I remember him looking back at me and my first impression of how I saw him was he just looked so sad and just so lost.

I thought I was going to be looking at this person that was going to be viewed to me as this monster, this like, I'm a badass monster. And it didn't look that way at all to me. There was a ton of pain behind his eyes.

We call him like Mr. Bad Guy or The Bad Guy. Heidi, for the longest time, didn't want to know his name. It's easier to detach yourself from somebody who you can view as a bad guy or a monster or not a person like you. But after seeing him in the courtroom for his guilty plea, I just felt like I was looking at a human. So I chose after that to just start to refer to him by his actual name.

Referring to him as Thomas instead of the bad guy made it feel like I was attempting to take back control of the situation. This was something that I could choose to do and I could control it. I was like, you know what? This is a person who made horrible choices. And so I'm going to choose to revert to him as his person's birth name.

So the federal sentence was in March of 2019 when it was going to be pretty clean because he was pleading guilty to all charges.

You know, even though we can't try him because we don't have evidence, they've never found a body for his girlfriend, even though he's told cops that he killed her. So they couldn't add that to anything that they were sentencing him with. But he admitted to that. He admitted to breaking into several houses. He admitted to assaulting one of the guys at the house he broke into. So it was kind of like painting this picture of clearly he had begun a crime spree.

Then me and my husband were both given the opportunity to share victim impact statements. Heidi was also not, she never had to be in court. So she never came to any of the hearings. She has never seen him again. And I'm happy about that.

How I viewed my victim impact statement, for me, I viewed it more as like my only chance to get to tell Thomas what he did and how it had impacted me. I'll go ahead and read it here. I've been asked to speak to the impact this crime has had on me and my family. The choices that Thomas made against my family will forever impact all of us.

Nothing in my life runs the same way that it did before February 13th. This crime has caused me and my children to be fearful of the South, big cities, not living on a military base, and larger communities.

It causes me to be fearful for my family's safety and the future. It has left me confused about my identity as a person and sadness for the physical, emotional, and relational losses that our family has experienced since then. I have struggled with my identity as a wife, mother, nurse, and Coast Guard spouse. My physical injuries were critical enough that I was unable to care for my own children for four months.

I missed milestones for my baby that I will never get back. I've lost my confidence as a nurse. I've questioned my ability to care for patients and be able to critically think through how to safely care for them. Physically, I will carry scars, surgical scars and ligature scars from this attack for the rest of my life.

I will always remember the feeling of my skull hitting the hardwood floor, the feeling of a knife being held up against my jugular, how it felt to be brutally tied up to the point of losing circulation in my hands, when I went from being cognitively aware of the attack and trying to protect my children to when my mind just went dark.

What I don't remember is I laid in bed bleeding all over the mattress enough that it had to be thrown out. You taking off your clothes and violating me. You walking out my front door with my daughter. Did my baby eat anything? I am completely unaware if I tried to feed her. What did my son do all day? How hungry and scared he must have been. As a mother, I always know where my kids are, who they're with, and what they're doing. But that day my sweet daughter was lying in the trunk of a car, all so scared and hungry.

You beat my skull to the point of brain bleeding. I sat in our house all day after the attack with a two-year-old and a five-month-old unable to tend to their needs. I couldn't walk, recall or process information, eat or swallow, and I struggled to maintain an open airway related to the swelling. I had multiple facial and jaw fractures, a Laforte 2 fracture, which is where the bridge of the nose and the upper jaw is free-floating from the rest of your skull.

An oracle to fracture is that if they would have been left unprepared surgically, my eyes would fall into my cheeks. Related to the bones holding my eyes in place were crushed. I spent a week in the surgical trauma ICU because of these injuries. I had three surgeries total, which has now been four surgeries, with six metal plates along my face to fix these fractures.

My eyes still hurt daily. They're very dry and sensitive to light. I've had multiple procedures to help with sensitivity, and I now have specialty contacts that I have to wear. My eyes continue to impair my ability to drive safely and work.

Heidi's physical injuries also required surgical repair. Because she was sexually assaulted, she required repair of her vaginal tear. It was described to us as a fourth-degree vaginal tear, which extends through the anal sphincter and into the membrane that lines the rectum. She had difficulties going to the bathroom, was unable to ride her bike, and suffered from fecal incontinence for several weeks after surgery.

She had to endure HIV testing and prophylactic drugs to fight off the possibility of HIV and Hep C. She has had to miss school for continued blood tests and was unable to attend any pre-K prep, and as a result is now behind in kindergarten because of that. Heidi has struggled with her own set of fears that a four-year-old getting ready to start kindergarten should never have to.

She has had to battle with and overcome the fear of going to the doctor to get another vaginal exam, the fear of being alone, fear of riding in a car, fear of taking a shower, fear of her daddy leaving and not being safe without him home, fear that she believed her and her brother had watched their mommy be killed.

We've had to lean into our faith to find the strength to recover both as individuals and as a family. Although our bodies were violently impacted in a way that took the tedious work of countless skilled medical professionals to recover, our hearts and minds have only been able to find peace in the presence of God. I will never get back what I have lost, but I am choosing to live for now. My prayer for you, Thomas, is that through all of this you will be able to seek purpose and hope.

that you will be able to feel the fullness and immensity of God's love for you, that you will be able to release yourself from these crimes that you have committed just as I have chosen to do." For federal, he got three consecutive life sentences, one for child kidnapping, one for transporting a child for sexual behaviors, and the last one was for aggravated sexual abuse of a minor. Then after that, he literally sentenced him to the supermax prison.

It was like this huge high coming out of that courtroom. We did it. We did this for Heidi like 100% because all three of those charges were all for Heidi as well. And it just felt like such a huge win.

A lot of the community and the Coast Guard community, in a lot of ways, they're like, oh my gosh, huge win. Federal court is over. He's locked away and the key is definitely thrown away forever. Now it was the expectation of honestly everybody in our life almost that it's finished. It's finished. You can move on with your life. It's like, oh, time to get back to normal.

I think a lot of trauma survivors would say this is that you have life before and then you have the event and then you have life afterwards.

Getting back to normal is just not a thing. There is no normal to return to because everything's been annihilated in the middle of the trauma. And so it was this weird, elated feeling to reality hit like hard and fast of like, now you're supposed to get back to normal and you're supposed to be able to handle literally everything and more that you did before all of this happened. And we just basically carry on as if nothing ever happened. And I couldn't do that.

Where I am with recovery as of now, I still talk to the original psychologist that was initially with our family. I no longer can like walk around life with blinders on to a lot of different things. And before I just didn't concern myself with it because I just would prefer to live tunnel vision because this works, this is safe, this is fine. I don't need to know about all of the other stuff.

The older I get and the more experiences that I have, and especially with trauma, it really kind of opens you up to a lot of different things. I'm really grateful for that piece of it because I'm so glad that I'm no longer narrow-minded like I used to be. For the most part, I just kind of carry on. My kids just carry on. We can get through this. We can get through it together.

I need to choose to live now. I don't have yesterday anymore. Yesterday's gone. Tomorrow, I don't know what it's going to be. And if you look at tomorrows, it could be scary. And if you look at yesterdays, they can be sad or frustrating. But if I look at today, this is what I have today. Like, what am I going to do about today?

Today's episode featured Brittany Todd. You can find out more about Brittany and her daughter on Instagram at F-O-R-T-I-S underscore L-I-B-E-R-Q-U-E. You can also reach out to her over email at animusfortis87 at gmail.com. That's A-N-I-M-U-S F-O-R-T-I-S 87 at gmail.com.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein.

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Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.

Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.