cover of episode 99. The Teenage Monsters

99\. The Teenage Monsters

2024/12/11
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Payton Moreland
探讨真实犯罪案件的播客主持人。
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@Payton Moreland : 本期节目讲述了丹尼尔·哈尔塞斯被杀害的案件,案件的核心围绕着一个充满危险的爱情故事,受害者并非预料之中的那个人。案件中存在许多争议,以及事件是如何出错的。丹尼尔·哈尔塞斯在2000年秋季开始了他在大西洋俄勒冈大学的最后一年学习,主修音乐,并以优秀的钢琴和鼓手而闻名。他与高中生伊丽莎白相识并迅速结婚,婚后育有三个孩子。他们的婚姻因年龄差距和生活方式差异而出现问题,最终在2011年离婚。2011年,伊丽莎白指控丹尼尔对她进行肢体攻击,丹尼尔认罪并被判缓刑。伊丽莎白搬到阿拉斯加,导致丹尼尔与孩子们的相处时间减少,引发了抚养权纠纷。丹尼尔和伊丽莎白之间关于子女抚养权的争执升级,双方都互相指责虐待儿童。丹尼尔的女儿西耶拉声称在母亲家中感到不安全,但同时也指责父亲虐待。儿童保护服务机构调查了西耶拉的指控,但未能找到确凿证据。法官在2020年10月的听证会上注意到西耶拉的情况异常,暗示存在某种未被发现的问题。2021年4月8日,丹尼尔没有回复前妻和母亲的联系。丹尼尔的母亲的朋友发现丹尼尔的房子着火了,并在车库里发现了一具尸体。警方发现丹尼尔死于多处刀伤,死前并未吸入烟雾,表明他死于谋杀。警方通过信用卡交易记录和监控录像确定西耶拉是购买凶器的人。警方在盐湖城逮捕了西耶拉和她的男友亚伦·格雷罗。西耶拉和亚伦在案发后录制了一段视频,其中他们承认杀害了丹尼尔。西耶拉和亚伦都认罪,西耶拉声称丹尼尔对她进行性侵犯和虐待。亚伦支持西耶拉的说法,认为丹尼尔对西耶拉的虐待是他们杀害丹尼尔的动机。丹尼尔的母亲不相信丹尼尔虐待西耶拉,认为西耶拉是为了减轻刑罚而撒谎。丹尼尔的妻子伊丽莎白支持西耶拉的说法,理解她杀害丹尼尔的动机。西耶拉和亚伦都被判处终身监禁,有资格在服刑22年后获得假释,并在判决后分手。亚伦在采访中表示,他在犯案时吸食了LSD,并声称这影响了他的判断力。丹尼尔被谋杀的原因仍然存在争议,他的家人仍在努力寻找真相和安慰。 @Sierra @Aaron Guerrero @Christine @Elizabeth

Deep Dive

Key Insights

Who was Daniel Halseth and what were his interests?

Daniel Halseth was a senior at Western Oregon University in 2000, majoring in music. He was known as an excellent piano player and drummer, earning the nickname 'Drummer Dan.' He was also an avid photographer who enjoyed taking pictures of nature during long walks. Additionally, he worked in telecommunications, which provided him with financial stability.

What led to the breakdown of Daniel and Elizabeth's marriage?

Daniel and Elizabeth's marriage became rocky due to their rapid progression from dating to marriage and parenthood, compounded by their age gap. Elizabeth's political career required her to travel frequently, leading to long absences from home. By 2011, they divorced after Daniel was arrested for physically attacking Elizabeth, to which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months of probation.

What were the circumstances surrounding Daniel Halseth's murder?

Daniel Halseth was brutally murdered in his Las Vegas home in April 2021. He was stabbed over 70 times, with 42 wounds on his back, and his throat, arms, and legs were cut. His body was found in a sleeping bag in the garage, and the house was set on fire to destroy evidence. His daughter, Sierra, and her boyfriend, Aaron Guerrero, were later arrested and confessed to the murder.

What evidence linked Sierra and Aaron to Daniel's murder?

Surveillance footage showed Sierra using Daniel's credit card to purchase bleach, lighter fluid, drop cloths, gloves, and cutting tools, including a saw that matched the wounds on Daniel's body. Aaron was also seen buying tools at Home Depot. Additionally, a video on Sierra's phone showed the couple joking about the murder, and they were captured on camera at a train station before their arrest, appearing happy and unremorseful.

What were the motives behind Daniel Halseth's murder?

Sierra claimed she killed her father because he was abusive, alleging he sexually assaulted her, hit her, and forced her to drink alcohol. Aaron supported her claims, stating they murdered Daniel to protect Sierra. However, Daniel's mother, Christine, disputed the abuse allegations, suggesting Sierra fabricated them to justify the crime. The couple also admitted they wanted to stay together, as Daniel had forbidden their relationship.

What were the legal outcomes for Sierra and Aaron?

Sierra and Aaron pleaded guilty to nine charges, including murder, theft, and arson, as part of plea deals. They were each sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 22 years. They were incarcerated in separate prisons and eventually broke up, ceasing all communication.

Did Sierra and Aaron express remorse for their actions?

Aaron later expressed regret in an interview, stating he was under the influence of LSD and off his prescribed medication at the time of the murder, which impaired his judgment. He called the murder an 'evil act' and said he regretted it daily. Sierra, however, has never publicly expressed remorse and maintains her claims of abuse by her father.

Chapters
This chapter explores the life of Daniel Halseth, from his college years to his marriage, divorce, and eventual death. It highlights the troubled relationship with his ex-wife, Elizabeth, and the custody battle over their children, which involved allegations of abuse from both sides.
  • Daniel Halseth's life and career
  • Marriage to Elizabeth and subsequent divorce
  • Custody battle and abuse allegations
  • Mysterious circumstances surrounding his death

Shownotes Transcript

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Hey everyone and welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I am your host Peyton Moreland and I'm so so so happy you are here. It feels like it's been so long since I recorded ITD because I recorded early and then took the week off for my birthday. Speaking of that, thank you so much for all of the birthday wishes. I felt so special and I truly love you guys so much.

If you are watching this on YouTube and can subscribe, turn on notifications, leave a comment down below. Thank you so much. It's just a great way to interact with the podcast and help out. And if you are listening on audio and can leave a review, I would appreciate it. Honestly, thank you so much for consistently supporting this show.

show. It means more than you will ever know. For my 10 seconds, I just wanted to talk about all of the people who tagged me in their Spotify wrapped this year. Honestly, it's one of those days that just feels surreal year after year, but especially this year with Into the Dark as a new podcast, you guys know how scary it was for me to start this show and to see so many people who had both Murder With My Husband and Into the Dark on their top podcast.

was an insane feeling. I don't know if this life will ever feel real but I can't thank you guys enough and I just wanted to make this 10 seconds about that because I saw all of it and I love you so much. Just a quick cutesy little 10 seconds and with that let's jump into the episode. So so often when we tell true crime stories there's a toxic romantic relationship at the heart of the case. It

It could be a controlling violent partner or an affair that turns deadly. But today's story is also about a dangerous love affair. But the victim wasn't who you might expect. And to this day, there's actually a lot of controversy about this story and how everything in it somehow went so wrong.

So in the fall of 2000, Daniel Halstead was starting his final year as a student at Western Oregon University. Again, 2000, Daniel starting his senior year in Oregon. He was majoring in music and had a reputation for being an excellent piano player and drummer.

Actually, his friends nicknamed him Drummer Dan. He was also an avid photographer, and Daniel liked to go on these long walks where he'd take gorgeous pictures of the natural world around him. And on top of all of that, he also had a job in telecommunications, which...

let's be honest, probably gave him a lot more stability than his music degree would. But that year, he met a local high school senior named Elizabeth. So he's a senior in college and Elizabeth is a senior in high school. And right away,

They felt a connection. So they began dating and they actually got married very quickly. In fact, the wedding was on July 2nd, 2001, pretty soon after both of their graduations, his from college, hers from high school. And then they would go on to have three children together, one right after the other, the

The oldest was born in 2002, the next in 2003, and then the youngest, a girl named Sierra, came along in 2004. So basically, in the blink of an eye, this couple went from dating to married to being parents in a family of five. And like you often see when relationships move this quickly, the marriage was rocky, especially given the age gap.

Four years isn't a huge deal for older adults, but it can be a major gap when one person is in high school, like Elizabeth was. So anyway, by 2006, Elizabeth and Daniel were both thinking about their future careers. Daniel had actually gone back to school to get a master's degree, and now he had an IT job in Nevada. And Elizabeth's

Elizabeth at this point felt called to get involved in politics. She won an election that year, and then she climbed the ranks going from local positions to higher ones. And then finally, Elizabeth was actually voted into the Nevada State Senate. The position meant she had to work in a city that was four hours away from home. And because of this, she was traveling a lot. In fact, so much so that she was able to travel to the United States.

Sometimes in this family, it felt like the mom, Elizabeth, was never around.

and her relationship with Daniel soured. They spent some time in marriage counseling trying to make it work, but by 2011, it was clearly time to call it quits, so that year they divorced. However, according to some allegations, the long distance and Elizabeth's job were not the only reasons for this split.

There may have been something darker at the core of this marriage. That same year, in October of 2011, Elizabeth accused Daniel of physically attacking her. She reported the incident to the police and he was arrested. Daniel was charged with open and gross lewdness. And he didn't fight those charges. He pleaded guilty. Then he was sentenced to six months of probation.

And just a few weeks after this incident, he formally filed for a divorce. So that's the timeline. First, the attack happened. Then they ended the marriage. And then Daniel had to spend six months on probation. Now, that wasn't a very serious sentence, but it probably made it harder for him to advocate for himself in the custody negotiations. The courts were not going to have much sympathy for a man who'd admitted to hurting his wife.

And to make matters worse, in 2012, Elizabeth decided to move out of state to Alaska. She quit her government job only saying that she had to leave due to a quote, incredibly difficult private matter. The truth was the stress of everything had been getting in the way of her work for a while. She had missed important meetings and hearings and her colleagues were even thinking of disciplining her for it.

So Elizabeth realized at this point she needed a fresh start, a way to get away from all of this. And that fresh start was going to be in Alaska. But Daniel would be staying in Nevada, which meant a shared custody arrangement for their three kids would be almost impossible. There was no practical way for the children to travel back and forth between those states. So

So one parent would get full custody and the other would almost never see their son and daughters. And as it worked out, Elizabeth won custody. She moved to Alaska and she took the three kids with her. But then a few years later, she would actually return to Nevada, which was when Daniel decided to reopen negotiations and try to change the custody terms now that the kids were in the same state with him.

And this new battle turned vicious. At different times, both Daniel and Elizabeth were accused of being abusive to their children, and they weren't just accusing each other. At least one of their daughters also made allegations. So it began around 2020, although I'm not sure of the exact date.

So that's when 15-year-old Sierra, this is the youngest child, started texting Daniel, her father, to say that she did not feel safe in her mother Elizabeth's home. She wanted to live with her dad full time because the conditions at her mother's house were impossible for her. Except at other times, Sierra actually told other people that her father Daniel was the abusive parent.

I don't know the specifics of what she said, but I do know that the adults in her life took her claims very seriously. And she agreed to cooperate in a full investigation with Child Protective Services, but they weren't able to find any definitive evidence one way or the other. So none of these allegations were ever proven. We can't say for sure what was going on behind closed doors in either household.

All we can do in this situation is focus on the facts we do know, which is that in 2020, Sierra and her siblings stayed with Daniel over the summer. And this was with Elizabeth's permission. It was the first time Daniel had the chance to have any real quality time with his kids since the divorce. And he used this opportunity to get to know them and learn what sorts of people they were now.

Sierra was quiet. She kind of kept to herself. She didn't seem ready to open up to her father. And they actually had a lot of conflicts because she was so strong-willed. Like a lot of teenage girls, she didn't like for Daniel to set rules or tell her what to do. So there was a lot of tension and coldness between them. But eventually, Daniel figured out how to reach Sierra. She loved to dance.

All he had to do was put on some music, start swaying to the rhythm, and pretty soon she would jump up and join in. And it was something they bonded over. And they finally began to establish a father-daughter relationship.

In fact, from the sounds of things, they might have become pretty close. Because when fall came and it was time to go back to her mom, Sierra refused to leave. She just stayed at Daniel's house. And eventually law enforcement got involved and told her she had to go back to her mom's. So Sierra moved in with her mom only to run away right afterward and end up back at her dad's house again.

And everything got messy enough that Daniel and Elizabeth had to go to family court to work out a new custody arrangement in October of 2020. Now, during the hearing, all of these different abuse allegations came up. And to try and get to the bottom of things, a judge talked to Sierra and he could tell something was wrong with her. He actually said, quote,

Something else is going on with Sierra. I don't know yet what that is, whether that's parental alienation, whether that's human trafficking, whether that's manipulation. And I don't know who at this point is to blame for that, which was such a telling summary. Clearly something was wrong, but nobody knew what. Maybe Sierra's mother was hurting her. Maybe it was her father. It could have been both of them or someone else entirely like a family friend or a teacher who

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By the spring of 2021, Sierra was now 16 years old and living with Daniel at their home in Las Vegas. And from what I can tell, her other two siblings were with their mom. Now, on April 8th, Elizabeth sent Daniel a few text messages, just checking in, clarifying a few things. This is divorced parents texting each other, checking in.

But Daniel never responds. And the same thing happened when his mother, Christine, tried to get a hold of him. She called in the morning and he didn't pick up. She also texted him all through the day. And again, she gets no reply. And all day long, she tried everything she could think of to try and reach him, calling and texting over and over. But Daniel never gets back to her. So eventually his mother, Christine, gave up on trying to talk to her son directly.

And so grandma figures granddaughter would know where he was and if he was okay. So as soon as Christine asked Sierra what was going on with her dad, Sierra gives her grandma a very vague answer. She wouldn't say where Daniel was or what was going on, which only made Christine feel more worried. So she got a little more forceful, pressing Sierra to explain what he'd been up to all day.

One of Christine's texts said, quote, I'm trying to get a hold of your dad. Where is he? And Sierra's response at this point was his phone has been acting up, but he's OK. It should be all fixed by tomorrow night. No worries. And then she ended the message with a smiley face emoji. Now, if you believe what Sierra said, it was clear why Daniel couldn't answer a reply to text. But.

Christine, grandma, didn't believe it. Everything Sierra said was setting off alarm bells in her head. She could tell the teen was changing her story. So she asked more pointed questions. But the more aggressive Christine became, the vaguer and more evasive Sierra would get. Almost like she was hiding something. So at this point, Christine was incredibly worried, of course. So as a last-ditch effort, she asked a friend, Peggy Newman, for help.

By this point, it was late in the evening, and even though Peggy lived somewhat close to Daniel, she wasn't comfortable going to his home at this time of night. So Peggy told Christine, don't worry, I will head over to Daniel's house the next morning and make sure he's okay. And that's what she did on the next day, on the 9th.

Now, before Peggy made it to Daniel's house, Christine tried to reach him and Sierra one last time. Maybe she hoped Sierra's story was true. The Daniel's phone really was just broken and he'd reach out and confirm he was fine eventually, except he still wasn't answering. And when Christine once again asked Sierra about it, she said, oh, he's just in the shower and that he'd text her back as soon as he got out and had a chance to look at his phone.

except Christine didn't believe that. It was after 10 a.m. at this point, and Daniel was not a late sleeper. It would be weird. This would be a random time for him to be showering. So Christine replied to Sierra and told her point blank, I don't believe you. And she also warned that she would figure out the truth. One of the last messages Grandma Christine sent to her granddaughter, Sierra, was, why are you doing this? Now the police are involved.

Except it wasn't the police who were on their way to Daniel's house at that moment. It was Peggy, Christine's friend.

And she actually brought her roommate with her because she had a bad feeling. She didn't know if she was going to be safe going there alone. And so Daniel's mom's friend, Peggy, and her roommate get to the house and they go straight inside, which is easy to do because the door was closed but not locked. Now, right away, they could tell something was wrong. And that's because the house was on fire.

Now the flames weren't big enough to be visible from the outside yet, so they didn't realize this before going in. But when they opened the door, the interior was filled with smoke.

So now Peggy and her roommate thought there's a chance Sierra or Daniel could be trapped inside the house. So rather than run away, they actually go through the burning home. They race to each bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, yelling Daniel and Sierra's names. Remember, they went over here in the first place to check on the wellness of Daniel. But there was no sign of the father or the daughter. So in the moment, I have to think that Peggy and her roommate were panicked and horrified.

And I'm not sure if they actually were paying attention to the surroundings of the house. But I do think it's worth mentioning that the place was visibly trashed. There was a huge mess everywhere, which must have made it harder for these two to even get around and search the home. So finally, they pushed their way into the garage and

And that's where they saw something lying on the ground against one of the walls. It was a sleeping bag, but it didn't look empty. It looked like it was full of something. And after a little examination, Peggy and her roommate realized something was in the sleeping bag. It was a person and they were dead.

Now, at first, Peggy thinks the body is Sierra's. She actually didn't get a good look at the deceased person, but her assumption was that the 16-year-old girl had tragically somehow died in this house fire. So Peggy calls 911, and the first question the dispatcher asked was, do you need police, fire, or medical? But no.

Peggy didn't know how to answer because she needed all of the above. So she stammered. She's like, there was a fire. We went in to investigate and there's a dead body in the garage. Well, once the police arrived on the scene, the evidence told a different story that didn't fit Peggy's assumptions on the 911 call. First, the deceased person in the sleeping bag in the garage was not Sierra. It was an adult man, Daniel.

and he hadn't died in the fire. In fact, his autopsy showed that there was no smoke in his lungs, meaning he was already dead and not breathing before the fire even started. And even worse, his cause of death was actually a brutal stabbing. In total, there were more than 70 wounds on his body. Most of his injuries, 42 of them, were on his back.

His attacker had also cut his throat, arms, and legs and punctured his lungs three times. Many of those injuries were from after he was dead. And it seemed like the killer had used different tools before and after Daniel's death.

It was hard to say with certainty because about 40% of his body had burned in the fire. But one theory was that the murderer stabbed him to death with a knife and then switched to using either a circular saw or a chainsaw after he passed away. I've seen both of those possibilities reported in different sources. And police figure this...

Because besides the body, the police also found power tools all over the house that were fairly new. They clearly hadn't been used in any construction projects, but all of these power tools were covered in blood.

So the police assumed that someone had murdered Daniel with a knife and then used the power tools to try and dismember the body, but it didn't work, which might be why the murderer then lit the remains on fire. It was pure luck that Peggy and her roommate arrived when they did. They were able to get help before that fire destroyed all of the evidence.

So after a bit of investigation, police found out that in the past day, someone had made a lot of purchases using Daniel's credit card. It had paid for bleach, lighter fluid, drop cloths, gloves, and a bunch of cutting tools, including a saw that matched the cuts on the body. So police believe that the murderer had stolen the victim's card to buy the tools after stabbing him to death.

And that's not all they took. Daniel's car wasn't at his home. So the detectives reported it as missing and put out a notice all over the region so other divisions would know to watch for it. Now within four days, police in Salt Lake City, Utah spotted Daniel's truck. And when they searched it, there was a rug in the trunk of the truck and it was drenched in blood.

The police had a hard time coming up with a theory about why the killer took the rug, if it was meant to be a souvenir, or if the killer just didn't want to leave the evidence at the scene except left everything else, or maybe something else was at play. But here's where it gets interesting. During the course of those four days between the murder and the search for the truck, nobody had seen Sierra.

She wasn't in the burnt house. She also hadn't come to school. So by this point, Christine had told the police that yes, Sierra was living with him. And here's these weird vague texts that she had sent me on the 8th. So it was pretty clear that Sierra had been hiding something during the time that Daniel was missing and was probably dead and in that garage. And on top of that, the police went to all of the stores where the killer had bought tools with Daniel's card. They found surveillance footage and

And it was Sierra making those purchases. She was the one who'd bought the bleach, other supplies. She also went to an ATM and withdrew hundreds of dollars worth of cash from her father's account. So the top theory at this point was that Sierra had committed the murder. She had lied about Daniel's phone being broken to help cover up the crime. And then she took his truck and skipped town. Well, when the police tracked Daniel's car to Salt Lake City, they also found Sierra there. She had just bought a train ticket.

Who knows how far she would have gotten if the police hadn't caught her that day. Instead, they got to her just in the nick of time. Sierra was at the station with her ticket in her hand and she was just about to board the train when police arrested her on April 13th, 2021. And interestingly, she wasn't alone. Sierra was with her boyfriend, 18-year-old Aaron Guerrero,

Now, Sierra and Aaron hadn't been together very long. They'd actually just begun dating in June of 2020. So less than one year ago.

That was the summer when Sierra and her siblings were all staying with Daniel. And you'll remember that at the end of that summer, Sierra refused to go back to live with her mother. So it does seem possible that maybe Aaron was a factor in that decision. Even though her relationship with him was new, the two were head over heels for each other. Things had become very serious very quickly. In fact, just six months later in December, she'd come up with a plan to run away with Aaron to live in Los Angeles.

Before they could get away with it, Daniel, her father, had learned about their plot and he had put his foot down. He said Sierra wasn't even allowed to talk to Aaron anymore. He said, your relationship with this kid is over. Or at least it would have been if Sierra had followed her dad's rules. But instead, she and Aaron kept seeing each other in secret. And as the police would soon learn, they resolved to do anything they could in

in order to stay together. And as you're probably guessing right now, they resolved to even commit a murder. See, when the police pulled that surveillance footage from the hardware stores, they learned that Sierra wasn't the only person using Daniel's card to buy supplies. Aaron had also gone to Home Depot to pick up different saws and knives. Plus, after the police arrested Sierra and Aaron, they searched her phone.

And there was a video on it that the couple had recorded together the day before their arrests. Day three after murdering somebody. Whoa, don't put that on the camera. In it, they were giggling and cracking jokes. The clip began with Aaron jokingly saying, welcome back to our YouTube channel. And then Sierra jumped in to say day three. And she laughed like it was a funny joke. And then Aaron eerily adds in this video,

Day three, after murdering somebody. Now, this is a shocking thing to say, but Sierra just smiles at him and says, don't put that on camera, like he'd made a racy joke. They also bragged about how they'd been having a lot of sex with each other since committing the crime. And all through the 46 second video, Sierra and Aaron were laughing, kissing and cuddling. There was no sign that either of them felt any remorse or sadness. And this actually fit in with some additional surveillance footage the police found.

Even more video on top of everything else, and these clips were from the train station where Sierra and Aaron had been waiting before their arrest. In this footage, they're kissing and cuddling. It would have been very sweet if not for the fact that they were on the run for a brutal murder.

But it was pretty chilling how in all of these recordings, the two of them seemed happy. There was no sign that they felt upset or guilty. Nothing made the police think that Sierra and Aaron were under duress. It was clear to them that they had probably planned this murder, pulled it off, and now were kind of celebrating. And Sierra and Aaron's attitudes didn't change much by the time their trials began in 2022.

They both admitted that they'd done it, and both of them pleaded guilty as part of similar plea deals. They each confessed of nine charges, including murder, stealing Daniel's bank card, arson, and more. When she gave her plea, Sierra also read a confession aloud for the court.

She said that she killed her father because he was abusive. According to Sierra, in court, her father had sexually assaulted her and hit her and he'd forced her to drink alcohol against her will. According to her, it was a bad situation and one she didn't see any way out of. She'd felt like she'd had no choice but to kill Daniel.

Now, it may be tempting to think that she was saying whatever she could now to earn the judge's sympathy. After all, she'd always had the option to move back in with her mother. But instead, she fought a court order telling her to go to Elizabeth's house and she actually ran away from her mother's home to go back to her father's home. Except when Aaron gave his statement, he completely backed Sierra.

That was the whole reason that he'd helped her commit the murder in the first place. According to him, Sierra had talked a lot about how her father was hurting her and making her feel unsafe. And so they came up with the idea to murder him together.

He says Sierra didn't manipulate him and he hadn't coerced her. They'd made this plan as equal partners. And even now, over a year later, while he faced a judge, Aaron made it sound like this was the only choice the two of them had. He believed that Sierra had been in a terrible situation and the only way out was for Daniel to die. But I will say, not everyone agrees with Aaron's argument.

Daniel's mother, Christine, this is grandma, had publicly come out and said that she does not believe her son was abusive. In her mind, Sierra just said that to try and justify the crime. Maybe she thought the judge would go easier on her if he felt sorry for her. And in Christine's mind, that plan had worked.

She believed that Sierra should have been sentenced to death, but her plea deal took the death penalty off the table. And Christine thought that was unfair to Daniel. And as for his ex-wife and Sierra's mother, Elizabeth, she supported Sierra wholeheartedly. She said that she believed Sierra was telling the truth. And while murder was not the right option, she understood why her daughter, Sierra, did what she did.

So again, this sounds like one of those situations where we'll never know exactly where the truth lies. If the abuse ever happened or what Sierra's real motives were. Either way, the terms of the two plea bargains meant that both she and Aaron were sentenced to life with a chance of parole after 22 years. Of course, they would spend this time in separate prisons and unsurprisingly, not too long after their sentencings, they broke up. It sounds like if

If they weren't seeing each other regularly, they had no reason to stay together. And after they split, they actually stopped talking to one another entirely. They didn't stay friends. They were completely out of one another's lives. And like I said before, usually young whirlwind romances don't last. However, this case is bitterly ironic.

Because we still don't know if the abuse allegations are true. But from the sound of things, Sierra and Aaron also committed the murder because they wanted to stay together. They didn't like that Daniel had forbidden their relationship. And now they had done it. Daniel was dead. And the two of them...

Weren't dating anymore. Basically, Daniel died for nothing if that was their motive. He lost his life to save a relationship that wouldn't last. After the breakup, Aaron gave an interview where he said that at the time of the murder, he was on LSD and he thought that impacted his judgment. And he would have never killed Daniel if he was sober.

Besides the LSD, Aaron said he also wasn't thinking clearly because he was off his meds. He had a mental health condition and he was supposed to be taking something to help manage it, but instead he let the condition go untreated. To hear him tell it, this all made it impossible for him to think rationally about what he was doing or what consequences his actions would have. And as he put it, he made a knee-jerk decision that he now regretted.

It didn't even have anything to do with loving Sierra. He says it was truly a spur of the moment impulse. Now, to be clear, even in this interview, Aaron still implied that he believed Daniel had been abusive towards Sierra. It's just that now he thought they could have responded differently. He called the murder an evil act and added that he regretted it every day.

And as for Sierra, she has never publicly expressed regret or remorse. She also hasn't ever changed her stance that her dad was abusive. Sierra is 20 years old now and still in prison. So that is the story of Daniel Halstead. Even with Sierra and Aaron's confessions, we don't actually know the entire reason why he was murdered. It had something to do with abuse or toxic love or something else entirely.

Sadly, his family members are also grappling with those questions and pointing fingers in all sorts of different directions, and they might never get peace or closure for his horrific death. And that is our case for today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I will see you next time as we travel further into the dark together. Goodbye.

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?

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