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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: This episode contains descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 1: Even after all these years, I'm too aware of the

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Speaker 1: chef's knife. When my husband and I cook dinner. It

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Speaker 1: might as well glow neon if I take it to

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Speaker 1: the sync to rents, I say knife behind, as if

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Speaker 1: we were still working in a restaurant together, because somewhere

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Speaker 1: inside me, a video is constantly playing handle in hand,

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Speaker 1: Blade in flesh.

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Speaker 2: That's Aaron Mcreynold's essayist editor, self described problem solver. Erin's

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Speaker 2: is a story on the one hand, of violence, trauma,

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Speaker 2: and the complicated legacy of rage. It is, on the

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Speaker 2: other hand, an extraordinary tale of compassion, strength, forgiveness, embassy

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Speaker 2: and the resilience of one woman's spirit. I'm Danny Shapiro,

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Speaker 2: and this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept

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Speaker 2: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the

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Speaker 2: secrets we keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape

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Speaker 2: of your childhood, where you grew up, what it looked like,

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Speaker 2: what it was like.

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Speaker 1: I was born in Orange County, California, in nineteen seventy six.

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Speaker 1: I always think of Orange County, California in the seventies

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Speaker 1: as being very amber. And I don't know if it's

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Speaker 1: just because all my pictures are amber, but everything was

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Speaker 1: so beautiful, peaceful, hippyish, like a very fleetwood max feeling.

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Speaker 1: Even the waves in California if you grew up there

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Speaker 1: saying ssh all the time, and it was like an

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Speaker 1: idyllic childhood for the first several years. Mom met dad

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Speaker 1: when she was maybe nineteen and he was twenty five

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Speaker 1: at a party where he was playing guitar. He was

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Speaker 1: very handsome, very charismatic, and this incredibly talented singer and songwriter,

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Speaker 1: and he had these ambitions of success in music. She

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Speaker 1: got pregnant when she was about twenty one with me.

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Speaker 1: They got married right away, and he was from a big,

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Speaker 1: tight knit evangelical family. But my mom's family, grandma, got

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Speaker 1: pregnant when she was seventeen, thought of high school, and

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Speaker 1: she was an utter romantic who just bought the whole

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Speaker 1: idea of a loving husband and fulfillment through motherhood. Bought

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Speaker 1: the whole thing. And my grandpa was also seventeen and

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Speaker 1: promised her the sun, moon and the stars. And then

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Speaker 1: after she dropped out and they had the baby and

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Speaker 1: had been married. He enlisted in the army and just disappeared.

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Speaker 1: It was an excuse to party for two years. He

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Speaker 1: didn't leave America. He was somewhere like Oklahoma, Tennessee, and

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Speaker 1: only came home once in a while, and when he

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Speaker 1: did he was just in a terrible frame of mind,

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Speaker 1: terrible mood. My grandmother later told me that she felt

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Speaker 1: like he was jealous of my mom and real bitter.

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Speaker 1: And she once told me that on her wedding day

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Speaker 1: in January nineteen fifty four, there was both an earthquake

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Speaker 1: and snow in Los Angeles, and she always wondered if

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Speaker 1: that was a bad omen, and it really did set

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Speaker 1: the stage for the childhood my mom would have with them.

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Speaker 1: Grandpa came home and became an alcoholic very quickly, was

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Speaker 1: a chronic philander, and in spite of that, they had

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Speaker 1: two more kids. So my aunt, my mom's sister, was

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Speaker 1: a couple years younger, but she was much bigger and stronger,

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Speaker 1: and she would beat my mom up a lot when

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Speaker 1: they were kids. So I think the instant my mom

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Speaker 1: graduated from high school, she was out of there. She

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Speaker 1: went to live with friends by the beach, and this

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Speaker 1: is around the time she met my dad. So, as

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Speaker 1: the family lore has it, my grandfather never told my

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Speaker 1: mom that he loved her. My dad would deride my

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Speaker 1: mom's family as being crazy, as being violent, hostile, alcoholics.

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Speaker 1: This became how I understood that family. I was around

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Speaker 1: them all the time, and I was steeped in this

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Speaker 1: low level violence. In fact, one of my earliest memories

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Speaker 1: is around the time I was seven or eight, my

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Speaker 1: aunt beat my mom up in a parking lot of

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Speaker 1: a grocery store in front of all of us kids,

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Speaker 1: Me and my brother and my cousin. We were all

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Speaker 1: screaming and crying while she just beat the holy hell

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Speaker 1: out of my mom, and people were walking by and

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Speaker 1: they didn't know what to do. And that was just

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Speaker 1: the vibe of that family. Things could go from zero

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Speaker 1: to one hundred real quickly.

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Speaker 2: How did that feel to you as a kid, That

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Speaker 2: moment must have been terrifying. That was there, this feeling

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Speaker 2: running alongside your childhood of this can happen at any moment.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I felt like everybody was volatile and brimming

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Speaker 1: beneath the surface was this rage and this violence. And

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Speaker 1: I've heard from other kids who grew up in families

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Speaker 1: like this, and you either become a clown or you

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Speaker 1: become an eggshell walker, or a little bit of both.

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Speaker 1: You can become a chameleon, you can become someone who

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Speaker 1: chronically pleases. I feel like I did all those things.

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Speaker 1: I grew up to be quite a ham. I was funny,

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Speaker 1: I sang for my supper. But I also developed this

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Speaker 1: extreme sensitivity and this radar for knowing the mood someone

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Speaker 1: was in. If I was at my grandparentarent's house, my

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Speaker 1: grandfather constantly had a drink tinkling in his hand. He

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Speaker 1: would refill from a giant jug of vodka on top

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Speaker 1: of the fridge, and he was cold and gruff, and

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Speaker 1: if you wanted to hang out with him, you'd find

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Speaker 1: him in the den watching any number of sports skins

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Speaker 1: on TV, and you could come in and have a

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Speaker 1: forward conversation with him. And I just thought it was

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Speaker 1: delightful in some way. I didn't know what a grandpa

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Speaker 1: was supposed to really be like, and I think I

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Speaker 1: found him funny. And my grandmother had this. She took

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Speaker 1: that utter heartbreak from believing in love and believing that

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Speaker 1: having a family was going to be everything, and then

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Speaker 1: having a husband who was a distant, cheating, alcoholic. She

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Speaker 1: shoved all that grief and rage way deep down. And

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Speaker 1: this is another really equally important part of my family's

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Speaker 1: legacy is she modeled shoving down rage and sorrow for

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Speaker 1: my mother, and my mother did the same, so that

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Speaker 1: when she and my father started to fight more and

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Speaker 1: more and they began to split up right around the

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Speaker 1: time I was nine or ten, her outbursts would be

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Speaker 1: so incredibly violent. They were just loud and not terribly physical.

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Speaker 1: Yet this would come later. But over the years she

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Speaker 1: I noticed she would drink more and more to what

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Speaker 1: I thought of as access that rage. When she wasn't drinking,

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Speaker 1: she was so quiet and shy, and she would pick

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Speaker 1: her lip and just look thoughtfully like she was trying

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Speaker 1: to gather her thoughts or gather her courage to say something.

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Speaker 1: But when she drank, this other side of her came out,

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Speaker 1: a side that was funny and brassy and brave and bold.

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Speaker 2: We grow up in whatever family we grow up in.

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Speaker 2: And that's like you said, I didn't know what a

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Speaker 2: grandpa was supposed to be like, I describe it.

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Speaker 1: As a seed. Not being able to describe the inside

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Speaker 1: of a tusk, you don't know any separation between yourself

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Speaker 1: and this world you're in. You just absorb. And what

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Speaker 1: I think I absorbed was grief. Don't show it, don't

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Speaker 1: feel it, don't express it. Rage. When you do express it,

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Speaker 1: it's going to be big and it's going to be scary.

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Speaker 1: So where do those things go? The kids have to

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Speaker 1: hold it, and where do the kids hold it? They

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Speaker 1: grow up to either drink it away shove it down

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Speaker 1: where it becomes anxiety and depression. I wanted to distance

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Speaker 1: myself from anger. Anger was dangerous and scary, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think I ever saw anyone handle anger in a

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Speaker 1: healthy way.

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Speaker 2: If you felt anger, would you even know that you

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Speaker 2: were feeling it?

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Speaker 1: That's a good question. There's a couple of ways to

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Speaker 1: answer that. When I developed some interesting nervous ticks, I

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Speaker 1: compulsively cleaned, Like around the time my mom left us

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Speaker 1: the first time, when I was nine or ten, right

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Speaker 1: before they sat me down the table and said we're

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Speaker 1: splitting up, who do you want to live with? She

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Speaker 1: had left and it was just my dad, and I

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Speaker 1: think he was probably a lot harder to live with

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Speaker 1: than I can remember. I'm pretty sure I was absorbing

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Speaker 1: some pretty scary anger on his side, and this is

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Speaker 1: the guy that had been my best friend. And so

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Speaker 1: to deal with it, I polished the furniture, I cleaned

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Speaker 1: the glass. The things I understood how to clean, I

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Speaker 1: would just clean them compulsively. I think I was trying

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Speaker 1: to make the atmosphere better and more peaceful. And then

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Speaker 1: sometimes I would just run away. And by run away,

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Speaker 1: I mean I'd rent to the next apartment building over

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Speaker 1: with my diary. And right, I hate them. I hate them.

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Speaker 1: They're crazy. I hate them. I also started in third grade.

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Speaker 1: I guess maybe fourth grade I started blacking out in class,

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Speaker 1: or I might have even gone semi catatonic. I used

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Speaker 1: to tense up my entire body, clench my eyes, my teeth,

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Speaker 1: my fists, and just releaf and do that over and over.

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Speaker 1: And it was so compulsive I couldn't stop myself doing that.

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Speaker 1: And a teacher must have noticed, because she took me

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Speaker 1: to lunch one day and said, I just went through

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Speaker 1: a divorce, and this is what divorce is. And this

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Speaker 1: is the early eighties, not a lot of people were

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Speaker 1: getting divorced, so her just acknowledging that this was a

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Speaker 1: thing that happens. I felt seen and safe in that moment,

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Speaker 1: and believe it or not, she was able to actually

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Speaker 1: convince my parents to let me come to her house

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Speaker 1: for the weekend, which is such a thing I think

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Speaker 1: teachers used to be able to do with students that

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Speaker 1: they took a keen interest in in a really honest

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Speaker 1: and pure way that now we don't acknowledge so much anymore.

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Speaker 1: We just assume the worst intentions. But she wanted me

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Speaker 1: to come experience some normalcy and peace. I imagine she

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Speaker 1: knew my parents were fighting. I think it was the

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Speaker 1: first time an adult in my life, without saying these words,

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Speaker 1: sort of acknowledge that what I was going through was

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Speaker 1: not normal or write or easy, that there could be

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Speaker 1: another way. That special treatment made me realize that maybe

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Speaker 1: my circumstances deserved a little extra sensitivity. I was too

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Speaker 1: young to really cognitively understand any of that. When my

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Speaker 1: parents split up, they sat me down at the table

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Speaker 1: and said, Okay, mom's gonna leave this school district, So

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Speaker 1: if you stay with her in the area, you are

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Speaker 1: still going to have to leave your school and start

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Speaker 1: over somewhere else, and you're gonna live with her and

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Speaker 1: your brother, or you can live with your dad, your

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Speaker 1: fun friend in Reno, Nevada, where he's gonna pursue a

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Speaker 1: different business venture. And so I chose him like immediately,

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Speaker 1: and later it made me really sad for my mother

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Speaker 1: how fast I chose him. But I didn't really understand

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Speaker 1: the full weight of the decision I was making.

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Speaker 2: What about your brother Arin, Did he stay with your

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Speaker 2: mother or did he also go with your father?

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Speaker 1: He stayed with my mother because he was about three

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Speaker 1: years younger. They agreed that, you know, a younger child

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Speaker 1: does better with the mother. And also I was very

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Speaker 1: kind of independent. I had a strong personality. Later I'll

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Speaker 1: look back and think, of course, I would be the

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Speaker 1: easier one to move with my dad, because what I

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Speaker 1: didn't realize was that she was planning to just leave

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Speaker 1: me alone all the time. I got left alone constantly.

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Speaker 1: As soon as we moved to Reno. He left me

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Speaker 1: with strangers, like a girl that worked reception at the

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Speaker 1: apartment building and her boyfriend, and then a woman that

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Speaker 1: he hired for the new office that they were working in,

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Speaker 1: and often just alone. I'd come home from school alone.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't see him sometimes for days. I was only

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Speaker 1: with him for a few months Reno was just a blip.

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Speaker 1: It was the rest of fifth grade. And then he

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Speaker 1: sent me back to live with my mom and they

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Speaker 1: tricked me into it, and I was enraged, But I

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Speaker 1: had to live with my mom and my brother, and

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Speaker 1: I had to start a new school. In fact, I

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Speaker 1: would start a new school every year for five years,

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Speaker 1: bouncing back and forth between my mom and dad. My

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Speaker 1: dad would dangle living with him in front of me,

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Speaker 1: and I would go for it, and then he would

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Speaker 1: leave me alone all the time, and then I would

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Speaker 1: end up back with my mom. It was a lot

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Speaker 1: of instability. So I learned how to get along, find

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Speaker 1: my people, bring out the best parts of my personality,

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Speaker 1: hide everything that was inconvenient or scary, and I really

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Speaker 1: learned the value of seduction, seducing new groups of people

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Speaker 1: and friends to stay safe. When my mom left us,

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Speaker 1: she went to go live with this new boy friend

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Speaker 1: and his family, and we would come visit her at

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Speaker 1: this place, and it was just foreign and a little

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Speaker 1: scary and weird, but also delightful in that way that

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Speaker 1: things are when you're a kid and you're just adapting.

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Speaker 1: I really liked their garden. I would go out and

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Speaker 1: water these people's garden. Oh oh, they have ho hose

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Speaker 1: in the fridge. I was excited about the ho hose

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Speaker 1: and the fridge. But we went to go see Aliens

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Speaker 1: opening night in the theater, me, my mom and all

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Speaker 1: of her new friends, these adults I did not know

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Speaker 1: who all represented this completely new part of my mom's wife,

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Speaker 1: and they were all probably drunk. We were late to

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Speaker 1: the theater, and the only seats we could get we're

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Speaker 1: in the front row. And so there I am, ten

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Speaker 1: years old in the front row of Aliens, a very

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Speaker 1: scary movie, which is to this day my favorite movie.

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Speaker 1: I'm completely obsessed with it. But we're watching Aliens, and

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Speaker 1: I think I absorbed that everything that was happening, with

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Speaker 1: the splitting up of my family and my mom becoming

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Speaker 1: this different person and these people around her different and

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Speaker 1: all this sudden certainty. And I started to have nightmares

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Speaker 1: that night about Aliens, and I would have them, no joke,

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Speaker 1: every night for the next ten years. It became a

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Speaker 1: recurring nightmare for years, and I doped. A very strong

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Speaker 1: sort of personal relationship with the Aliens franchise that continues

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Speaker 1: to this day. Came up in therapy a lot, and

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Speaker 1: my therapist was a union, and he pointed out that

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Speaker 1: there's hr Geiger and Young have a lot of archetypal

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Speaker 1: crossover in their work. And I used to think that

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Speaker 1: Alien represented the anxiety of what was happening in my family,

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Speaker 1: But I now understand it's where my ten year old

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Speaker 1: rage went. That rage that I couldn't show anybody because

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Speaker 1: my parents would be angry. They would already leave. They

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Speaker 1: were threatening, believe all the time. And now if I

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Speaker 1: was angry, all that rage I saw, not modeled well,

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Speaker 1: would drive them even further away and really put me

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Speaker 1: in danger. So I think I absorbed the rage and

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Speaker 1: I expressed it in my dreams through this horrifying, hateful

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Speaker 1: monster was just total bloodlust.

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Speaker 2: So fascinating the way that that particular exposition of that

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Speaker 2: film front row these people, these strangers in this strange

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Speaker 2: place all conspired to be the perfect storm that had

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Speaker 2: that happened, which is also an adaptation. That was you

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Speaker 2: adapting in a way. Yeah, Did you tend to let

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Speaker 2: people in and let them know what was going on

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Speaker 2: at home or was that something that you kept very

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Speaker 2: much to yourself at first?

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Speaker 1: I really kept it to myself. I think around ninth

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Speaker 1: or tenth grade, I got involved in theater, and theater

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Speaker 1: is such a great place for people to go and

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Speaker 1: share the most dramatic and horrible parts of their personal lives.

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Speaker 1: For Cachet, like, yes, it was other kids, but it

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Speaker 1: was theater, and theater really rewarded big stories, big outrageous personalities.

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Speaker 1: So I didn't really let anybody know that I had

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Speaker 1: this scary life at home because kids tend to push

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Speaker 1: away from them to reject things that are not familiar.

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Speaker 1: But when you get a little older, I really found

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Speaker 1: my people around tenth grade in high school, when I

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Speaker 1: was in theater and I started to let more of

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Speaker 1: my story come out. And around this time, we were

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Speaker 1: living with my mom's boyfriend and she was drinking more

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Speaker 1: he drank. They had friends over, they all drank. I

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Speaker 1: hated our life. We lived in a hovel full of

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Speaker 1: like roaches and spiders, and I knew it wasn't normal

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Speaker 1: to have your parents' friends over drinking all the time

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Speaker 1: on school nights, and I lived across an alley from

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Speaker 1: a liquor store. I couldn't bring my friends home. What

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00:18:18,600 --> 00:18:20,840
Speaker 1: teenage girl wants to bring her friends home to something

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Speaker 1: like that? She was really showing her anger a lot more.

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Speaker 1: I think she had all this really unprocessed rage at

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Speaker 1: my father, and I found out later as I grew

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Speaker 1: up with him too, that my dad could be kind

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Speaker 1: of a shit. He could be emotionally abusive, verbally abusive

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Speaker 1: in that way that really smart people who understand psychology

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00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:46,159
Speaker 1: can be, and it cut her in ways that re

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Speaker 1: traumatized her father. Wound than never feeling loved by the

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Speaker 1: male figure in her life and having no mother who

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00:18:54,280 --> 00:18:59,520
Speaker 1: could mirror that kind of self esteem to her, she

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00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:01,840
Speaker 1: would have to access it by drinking, and then when

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Speaker 1: she drank, all that rage would come out, all that

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Speaker 1: pent up rage. And this boyfriend, I think was starting

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Speaker 1: to after a couple of years, feel the effects of

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Speaker 1: having two teenage kids in his small home, and he

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Speaker 1: would start staying out later and they would fight. And

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Speaker 1: there was a couple of times where she threw something

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Speaker 1: at his head and it went past him out the window.

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Speaker 1: It broke the window and there was broken glass on

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Speaker 1: the floor. And there was another time, maybe it was

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Speaker 1: the same fight, where he had to grab her and

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Speaker 1: hold her arms, and I, just fifteen years old, jumped

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Speaker 1: on him and started punching him in the back, and

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Speaker 1: one day he was telling me off in a pretty

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Speaker 1: typical step dad to a brady teenager way. He got

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Speaker 1: really in my face and he never laid a finger

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Speaker 1: on me, but I wanted him to, because I needed

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Speaker 1: all of this tension to just culminate and break into

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Speaker 1: something I could point to. I felt like nothing that

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00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:04,760
Speaker 1: was happening to me was something I could point to

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Speaker 1: and say, this is really bad, so I was waiting

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Speaker 1: for something more universally recognizable to happen. And so he

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00:20:13,440 --> 00:20:15,280
Speaker 1: just looked at me in my face and said, you

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00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:17,320
Speaker 1: were a little brat, And I said, why don't you

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Speaker 1: just beat it into me? And he just really, ever

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00:20:22,480 --> 00:20:26,399
Speaker 1: so softly snacked me the littlest bit on the cheek,

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Speaker 1: not even enough to hurt. But I was already mad

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Speaker 1: as a hornet, and I decided he was going down

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00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:36,760
Speaker 1: for that. And so the next morning I put on

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00:20:37,280 --> 00:20:40,679
Speaker 1: I makeup really convincingly, like a black eye, and I

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00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:44,160
Speaker 1: went to school and my idea was just to really

337
00:20:44,160 --> 00:20:46,800
Speaker 1: wear sunglasses. And my mom was going to drop me

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00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:48,959
Speaker 1: off at school, and I thought, maybe she'll see it

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00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:51,520
Speaker 1: before I get there, and then we'll have a conversation.

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Speaker 1: Maybe I'll get my mom's attention, but no, she dropped

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Speaker 1: me off without even noticing. Now I have to commit

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Speaker 1: to this. I'm walking into school, I've got these sunglasses on.

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Speaker 1: My friend are going what is that? What's going on?

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Speaker 1: And I, oh, it got into a fight with mom's boyfriend.

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00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:08,600
Speaker 1: Just very dramatic, theatrical. But when I get to a classroom,

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00:21:09,040 --> 00:21:11,560
Speaker 1: that's when a teacher notices and pulls me out of

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00:21:11,600 --> 00:21:15,480
Speaker 1: his class and says, who did this to you? And

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Speaker 1: I think, well, I'm not going to outright lie and

349
00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:20,520
Speaker 1: say he did it, but I'm not gonna not say

350
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:23,960
Speaker 1: he did it either. So the teacher went through a

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00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:25,919
Speaker 1: list of possible people in my life it could have

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00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:27,439
Speaker 1: hit me, and I said no to all of them

353
00:21:27,520 --> 00:21:32,479
Speaker 1: until he said mom's boyfriend, and I just shrugged. And

354
00:21:32,520 --> 00:21:36,520
Speaker 1: that night child Protective Services came to the house, and

355
00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:41,280
Speaker 1: it was horrible. I had to admit that I had

356
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,840
Speaker 1: done this thing. I was so ashamed, and I was

357
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:47,439
Speaker 1: so angry that they were there, and I was so

358
00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:49,679
Speaker 1: self conscious that they were there, and seeing like the

359
00:21:49,760 --> 00:21:52,879
Speaker 1: hole in the window, the dog dying on a mattress

360
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:57,280
Speaker 1: in the front yard, is drinking parents, and now there's

361
00:21:57,320 --> 00:22:02,359
Speaker 1: a witness to it, and not only that, but my

362
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:06,720
Speaker 1: mom's boyfriend was accused basically of Even though I said

363
00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: it was a hoax or that I made the whole

364
00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:11,959
Speaker 1: thing up, it was a misunderstanding, it still gave him

365
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:15,840
Speaker 1: a record. And my mom was livid, and she said,

366
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:18,560
Speaker 1: you know, you gave this guy a record. This is

367
00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:20,879
Speaker 1: going to be hit with him forever. And I was

368
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:23,119
Speaker 1: crying my eyes out and she was like, good you cry.

369
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:28,159
Speaker 1: And all I wanted was for somebody to just acknowledge

370
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:31,000
Speaker 1: that things were hard for me and that they were bad,

371
00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:33,320
Speaker 1: and that I was growing up in violence and I

372
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 1: didn't know how to get that attention any other way.

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Speaker 1: And then I did this, and I went too far.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting because in a way, I'm struck by that

375
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 2: you didn't turn it, at least at that point in

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00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:52,720
Speaker 2: your life on yourself. This is where a lot of

377
00:22:52,760 --> 00:22:55,879
Speaker 2: people end up turning the punishment inward.

378
00:22:56,720 --> 00:23:00,720
Speaker 1: It is interesting. You know how I actually coped. I

379
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:04,359
Speaker 1: went into my fantasies of my future, my dreams, and

380
00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 1: I had these strong dreams about being an actress and

381
00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:11,399
Speaker 1: being loved by the whole world and being successful and

382
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 1: being in charge of my life. And I was going

383
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,679
Speaker 1: to flee this scene the minute I got a chance to,

384
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:20,439
Speaker 1: and by this scene, I meet the whole family, the

385
00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:23,879
Speaker 1: whole sad family legacy. I was going to survive it,

386
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,320
Speaker 1: whatever that meant, and so I couldn't do any of

387
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:29,760
Speaker 1: the things they did. I wasn't going to drink or

388
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: use drugs. I was going to go all the way

389
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:34,480
Speaker 1: through college, be the first person in my mom's family

390
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:37,919
Speaker 1: to go to college. I was going to just be

391
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:42,160
Speaker 1: a great success and have my shit together. That's how

392
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:44,360
Speaker 1: I was going to rebel.

393
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 2: Rebelling by getting her shit together, by doing well on

394
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 2: the essats, by getting into college at San Francisco State.

395
00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:59,960
Speaker 2: Nobody helps Erin to accomplish all this. It's a rebellion,

396
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,720
Speaker 2: after all. She takes herself to school, drives up with

397
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 2: a boyfriend. In her third semester, Erin finds out she's pregnant.

398
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 2: She feels sick, immediately violently ill. She has to wait

399
00:24:14,080 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks before she can get an abortion.

400
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:21,600
Speaker 2: During this cascade of unfortunate circumstances, she ends up dropping

401
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:25,200
Speaker 2: out of school. She's just too sick to attend classes.

402
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:29,960
Speaker 2: Erin and her boyfriend break up. She moves back to

403
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 2: southern California to attend another college, this one known for

404
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 2: its theater department. She moves into her grandparents' house outside La.

405
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 2: Her mom is living there at the same time, too,

406
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 2: staying rent free so she can save up to put

407
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,320
Speaker 2: a down payment on a place of her own someday.

408
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:51,680
Speaker 1: And this is when she and I really have a

409
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,120
Speaker 1: different relationship than we ever had before.

410
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 2: Was she at that point in a relationship herself in

411
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:01,159
Speaker 2: and out of relationships. She had one boyfriend who she

412
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 2: met on a chat room. She was obsessed with chatrooms.

413
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:07,639
Speaker 1: And she met this guy who came to live with her,

414
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 1: and he stole her identity and started running frauds from

415
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 1: her computer. And the FBI showed up at her house

416
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: one day and she said, I didn't know any of

417
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 1: this was happening. I'll help you catch him. I remember

418
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: she was on the phone with me crying, telling me

419
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 1: she felt so bad. She had to drop a dime

420
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:29,159
Speaker 1: on this guy who defrauded her, used her computer to

421
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:32,720
Speaker 1: defraud people. And after that, I got her a dog

422
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 1: from the shelter, a puppy, and I said, here, if

423
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: you want to take care of something so badly, take

424
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: care of this. It can't steal your credit cards. And

425
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 1: so we had this dog together that both of us adored, Chloe.

426
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:48,119
Speaker 1: This dog becomes a really important figure in our life.

427
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,160
Speaker 1: And I'm living with her. She's drinking more and more.

428
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,640
Speaker 1: I'm doing theater at night. I come home one night

429
00:25:55,119 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: from like Macbeth rehearsals, and she is wasted, and she'd like,

430
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 1: watch this baby, and she dials her parents, my grandparents,

431
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: and she yells at them about how they never loved her,

432
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: and then they'd hang up on her. She'd call back

433
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: and just cuss at them and yell at them, and

434
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: then she was like, you should call your dad and

435
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: tell him to fuck off too. We're on a roll tonight.

436
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:22,240
Speaker 1: I just went, oh, this is pathetic, and I grabbed

437
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: my keys and I left and I went and slept

438
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:26,879
Speaker 1: at somebody's house. When I came back in the morning,

439
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 1: she told me she had passed out on the floor

440
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,520
Speaker 1: and wet herself, and she kind of laughed it off, like, ah,

441
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:38,399
Speaker 1: I just can't do gin. I was like, mom, you

442
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: can't do any of it around this time too, Like

443
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: she lost the dog six months in she called me.

444
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 1: I was like working in the scene shop at school,

445
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 1: and she called me in a panic. I lost the dog.

446
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 1: Chloe jumped out of the window when I was parked

447
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: somewhere and she was beside herself. So I went up there,

448
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: and I I drove around the streets of outside LA

449
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: with my mom, up and down the streets, feeling so

450
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: scared and devastated for this dog that I loved so

451
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:15,640
Speaker 1: much and afraid for her. And at the same time

452
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:17,960
Speaker 1: I wanted to protect my mom from what she had done.

453
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: I was really felt just so bad for my mom.

454
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: I wanted it was like, really important that I made

455
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:25,439
Speaker 1: her feel like she was going to be okay and

456
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:28,360
Speaker 1: this wasn't her fault. And there was nobody there mother

457
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: and me in any of this, no one taking care

458
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,159
Speaker 1: of my feelings. And to add insult to injury, I

459
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: was pregnant again. Nobody was telling me how not to do,

460
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: but so not to keep getting pregnant. You would think

461
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,359
Speaker 1: it would sink in. It really didn't when you have

462
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 1: no education but a man who's two or three years

463
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,959
Speaker 1: older than you. So I was pregnant again and just

464
00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: sick as the dickens and waiting for my appointment at

465
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:56,960
Speaker 1: Planned parenthood and driving my mom around trying to comfort her,

466
00:27:57,880 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: and the dog shows up blow and behold after three

467
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 1: days like Jesus, and everything goes back to the way

468
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 1: it was.

469
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

470
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 2: When Erin is around twenty three, she crashes with her

471
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:28,199
Speaker 2: mother again. She's struggling with depression. She can't finish school.

472
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 2: She's waiting tables and trying to figure out what's next

473
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 2: for her, how to get her energy back. The environment

474
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 2: around her is anything but stabilizing. She's sleeping on a futon,

475
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 2: listening to her mom coming in very late at night, drunk,

476
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 2: blaring the radio, and fighting with the neighbors. During this time,

477
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 2: Erin and her mom get into especially horrible fights. Her

478
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:54,000
Speaker 2: mom shoves Erin, calls her a loser, tells her she

479
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 2: was sorry she'd ever been born. These are things her

480
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 2: mom would never have said in the light of day

481
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 2: at night when she was drunk. At one point, enough

482
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 2: is enough and Aaron starts to crash at friends' houses

483
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 2: the beach. Her car.

484
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: I was sleeping at a friend's house with my mom

485
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: paged me and again she had lost the dog. This

486
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 1: time she tried to take the dog to a bar

487
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: and got kicked out and like literally thrown out onto

488
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: the street, got in her car and in a blackout,

489
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:27,880
Speaker 1: drove home and got into a road rage thing with

490
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:30,880
Speaker 1: some guy. She got out at a parking lot at

491
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:32,840
Speaker 1: McDonald's to yell at this guy. When she got back

492
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: in the car, she realized that Chloe wasn't in the car.

493
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: So she calls me in a panic, and it's like

494
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, and again I am devastated.

495
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: I'm scared to death thinking of her just being hit

496
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: by a car gotten by coyote. And at the same time,

497
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: I felt that same level of devastation on my mom's behalf,

498
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to protect her from it. And

499
00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: after a few days of just constantly making posters, ca shelters,

500
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: driving around calling the dog's name as how my mom, look,

501
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: the only way we're going to get through this, the

502
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: only way you and I are going to be able

503
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 1: to survive this feeling, this horrible feeling, is if you

504
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: start going to AA and maybe this is the thing,

505
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 1: this is the change, and we can redeem this. I've

506
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: always been so big on redeeming every pain, every sorrow.

507
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: I think every bad thing can be redeemed later, and

508
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 1: she got raised, and she's just so lost and so

509
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: sad that okay, yes, And so we go to an

510
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: AA meeting together the first time ever, and I'm sitting

511
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: across from her at this table and everyone's going around

512
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: and saying their names, and I'm an alcoholic. When it

513
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 1: gets to her, she says, my name is Debbie, and

514
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 1: I think I don't know, I might be an alcoholic.

515
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: Even now, I want to cry. It was unbelievable. I

516
00:30:56,920 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: never thought I would hear her say that, and it

517
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: felt to me like the beginning name of a change.

518
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: But the dog shows up.

519
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:09,520
Speaker 2: Wow, Chloe go, Chloe.

520
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 1: Sees a miracle. This thing. She miraculously appeared at some

521
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 1: ex boyfriends of my mom's down by the pier, and

522
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: I have no idea how she got there. But it's

523
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 1: been seven days and I know this and I still

524
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: have it because my mom had pulled a page out

525
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: of her daily calendar and she'd written on it day seven,

526
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: meaning day seven of sobriety, with two exclamation points, love Mom,

527
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,240
Speaker 1: and she had put it on my windshield. That was it.

528
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: She made it to seven days, and the dog was boxed.

529
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like carte blanche to go

530
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: back to drinking. She said, in all honesty, I really

531
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: like the AA meetings, but I'm gonna drink, and I

532
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 1: don't want to be a hypocrite. So I took myself

533
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: to my first allan On meeting, and I learned that

534
00:31:57,760 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: she may not be able to quit, but I can.

535
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: And I began the long, slow business of trying to

536
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 1: quit my mother. We were just so enmeshed. I could

537
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 1: not see my own feelings or my needs for hers.

538
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's this one moment where around this time,

539
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: she was watching Oprah and somebody was on and they

540
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: said sympathetic disdain, and my mom latched onto that phrase.

541
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: I came home from work and she said this phrase.

542
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: I heard, sympathetic disdain. I realized that's how I felt

543
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: about my own mother all my life. And she said,

544
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:39,959
Speaker 1: that's not how you feel about me, is it? And

545
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,000
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, that's exactly how I feel.

546
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: But there's no way in hell I'm going to tell

547
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: you that. I said, of course not. Mom. You're awesome.

548
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: You give me emotional license. You taught me to just

549
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: be who I am and be so strong. And I

550
00:32:55,960 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: never told her that. Yeah, absolutely, she nailed it. Sympathetic

551
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 1: disdain is exactly how I.

552
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:08,080
Speaker 2: Felt for a couple of years. Erin attends Alan on

553
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 2: meetings and has a lovely boyfriend. They're living in Coasta Mesa,

554
00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 2: a town about twenty miles up the coast from her

555
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 2: mom in San Clemente, but Erin has learned to keep

556
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 2: her distance. She wants no part of her mom's chaos,

557
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 2: but she does worry about Chloe all the time. Her

558
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 2: mom never put a collar on the dog, and often

559
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:33,600
Speaker 2: she's wandered loose around the apartment complex. Erin goes down

560
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 2: and visits Chloe, takes her to the park, and continues

561
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 2: to worry. Around two thousand and one, Erin notices that

562
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 2: there's a guy who comes around a lot, an out

563
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 2: of work contractor. The new boyfriend moves in.

564
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: His name is j R. Anytime I called he answered,

565
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 1: which I thought was annoying, and my mom started canceling

566
00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: plans on me a lot more, in canceling plans with

567
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: my brother would come in from college in Pennsylvania, had

568
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 1: a visit or for Christmas, she would no show on us.

569
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 1: We would have plans to go see a movie or

570
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 1: go to dinner, and she would, Oh, I just can't

571
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: do it. I don't feel good, you know, this kind

572
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:19,399
Speaker 1: of really drained voice, and we were just we'd had

573
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,319
Speaker 1: it with her. We were so done. We were just

574
00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: exhausted and disappointed by her, and we just thought she's

575
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: just drinking so much. And now at this point wasn't

576
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: working anymore. If she had filed for disability from her job.

577
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: She had a really stressful, abusive boss, so she took

578
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 1: stress leave. And then also she had breathing problems. She

579
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: was on a nebulizer a lot. She had horrible asthma.

580
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 1: She had quit smoking, but she still had really bad asthma,

581
00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:52,319
Speaker 1: and so she was just weaker and weaker. How old

582
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: was she at this point, She's felt, you know, in

583
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:58,040
Speaker 1: her late forties. Whenever I go down there, he's perfectly

584
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 1: nice to me, but he's constantly twelve deep into a

585
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: twenty four pack of Natty Light. She has confided in

586
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: me before that he likes to do meth and I

587
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 1: was like, oh god, mom, She's like, I hate it.

588
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 1: I would never I tried it once and I hated it.

589
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:16,919
Speaker 1: You know me, I like a downer. And I was like, okay, great,

590
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 1: just not jin, just don't do gin again.

591
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, In two thousand and four, late June, Erin's mom

592
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 2: calls her and says, I need to take you to lunch.

593
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 2: Erin is surprised, really, She asks, just us without JR.

594
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:37,120
Speaker 2: Her mom says, yes, I need to tell you some stuff,

595
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 2: so they go to lunch. She tells Erin that Jr.

596
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 2: Has been acting increasingly controlling and frightening. He's been taking

597
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 2: parts out of her car under the auspices of fixing it,

598
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 2: but as a result, she now can't use it to

599
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:55,799
Speaker 2: go anywhere. He becomes vindictive when she wants to do

600
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 2: anything without him. She'd gone out to the desert with

601
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 2: her parents for Father's Day weekend, said she needed some space,

602
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:06,480
Speaker 2: and in lieu of space, JR. Gave her the exact opposite.

603
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 2: He blew up her phone, calling every minute. He made

604
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 2: sure to let her know that he knew a guy,

605
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 2: a guy who could get him a gun at a

606
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:16,280
Speaker 2: moment's notice.

607
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: She's telling me these things, and I am enraged. I

608
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:23,200
Speaker 1: just want to grab a baseball bat and go down

609
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:26,440
Speaker 1: there and deal with him myself. I'm not even thinking.

610
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:29,279
Speaker 1: And I grab a cocktail nap and I say, okay, Mom,

611
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to do. You're going to

612
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: stay with grandma and grandpa. You're not going back there.

613
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: You've got the dog. Stay away. Then she had no money,

614
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: no income stream at all, and I said, you got

615
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 1: to refinance at condo, get some cash. You're going to

616
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: go out of state. One of her best friends lived

617
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. She told me that he had already

618
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 1: invited her to come out there and get away. I said,

619
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: you're going to go out to New Mexico. You're going

620
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 1: to get away. I'm going to get this guy a

621
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: vic did. I knew it was going to be really

622
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: hard to get somebody squatting out of her place, but

623
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: I was working for a property management company at the time.

624
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:02,400
Speaker 1: I just felt like I could do it, and so

625
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: we had this whole plan to get her away and

626
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: get her safe. That following fourth of July, I go

627
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:11,879
Speaker 1: to my grandparents' backyard for a barbecue and he's there,

628
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: and I'm like, Mom, what are you doing? Why are

629
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: you back with him? Why is he here? And she said,

630
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: I'm refinancing. It's all going ahead. He's just being very

631
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:24,840
Speaker 1: sweet right now, and I just want to keep the peace.

632
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, fine. I don't like it as

633
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: long as the plant is still going forward. She said

634
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 1: it is a week later, on July eleventh, my grandmother

635
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: called me and said, I'm really worried. Your mom isn't

636
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: picking up the phone. I said, well, that's not unusual,

637
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 1: and she said, well, she's not picking up the emergency

638
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: cell phone I got her either. I didn't even know

639
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: you had gotten her in an emergency cell phone. And

640
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: that's when I found out my grandma had been hearing

641
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: more about Jr. Than I had, and that my mom

642
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 1: had come to stay with them, and he had, even

643
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: though he didn't have a license, He drove up there

644
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,839
Speaker 1: and went to the window and said something to her

645
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 1: that convinced her to come home. And my grandmother to

646
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 1: this day will still say she thinks he might have

647
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:18,080
Speaker 1: threatened us in the family. He knew where I lived,

648
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: he knew where they lived. Whatever the case, my mom

649
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: went home with him and then was not heard from again.

650
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:30,320
Speaker 1: I guess. The night before July tenth, my grandmother received

651
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: a call from my mother and my mom was sniffling

652
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: and crying, and then the background, Jr. Was saying, you know,

653
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: it's no big deal, She's just having an emotional reaction.

654
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: I bought her all this wine. We're having a great time.

655
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 1: We're having dinner and my mom is saying, I'm really scared,

656
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 1: and my grandmother is saying, come over now, and my

657
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: mom says, no, it's okay, I can handle it. I'll

658
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: call you tomorrow. But my mom never calls and my

659
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 1: grandma can't get a hold of her. And my first response,

660
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: my first feeling was God, damn it, Mom again, I'm

661
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:11,359
Speaker 1: going to drop everything. I'm going to drive down there.

662
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,359
Speaker 1: I'm going to sort your life out for you. And

663
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: I have my boyfriend in the car with me, and

664
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: I'm just going ranting the whole way down there. I'm

665
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: like ranting fifteen years worth the complaints about my mom

666
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 1: and her drinking and the chaos and the boyfriends. And

667
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 1: we get down there and it's dark, the condo's dark,

668
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: the dog's not there, the windows, the blinds are all

669
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:35,840
Speaker 1: drawn shut, which is unusual. No one's there, and the

670
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: car's not there. And a neighbor tells me that maybe

671
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 1: they've gone to dry out. This is something that they

672
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 1: would do, go camping somewhere to dry out, and.

673
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 2: Their neighbors actually knew this. It's not like they're going camping.

674
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 2: It's they're going somewhere to dry out, specifically.

675
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 1: To dry out. Yeah, these neighbors, they're privy to a

676
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 1: lot of fighting and screaming. But then these other neighbors

677
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: apparently were friends that they would party with. And these

678
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: neighbors are the ones that said sometimes they'll go dry out,

679
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 1: they'll come back, you know. Do you try calling them, yes, yes,

680
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 1: No one's picking up. So I drive down to the

681
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: campsite that they told me that they go to the

682
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:17,839
Speaker 1: beach at Santa no Frey and I drive around looking

683
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: for the car. I don't see the car anywhere, and

684
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:23,759
Speaker 1: now I'm getting really worried. But somehow this feels like

685
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 1: the same kind of worry I've had over the years

686
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: for my mom, and that it always works out okay.

687
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's just going to keep being like

688
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: this for the rest of my life. It's just going

689
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: to be like this forever, is what I felt. And

690
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: the next day was a Monday, I had to go

691
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:41,839
Speaker 1: to work, but at my lunch hour I went back

692
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 1: down to San Clementi and filed a police report. I

693
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,280
Speaker 1: had first tried to get back into the apartment, couldn't

694
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:49,439
Speaker 1: do it. Everything was locked no one's around, no one's

695
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: answering phones. So I file a police report, and of

696
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:56,400
Speaker 1: course they're like, so, let me get this straight. It's

697
00:40:56,440 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: a forty nine year old woman who drinks a lot,

698
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: who sometimes goes to dry out in the desert or

699
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,879
Speaker 1: at a campsite with her boyfriend. We got nothing here,

700
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: and it hadn't been forty eight hours yet, or maybe

701
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:13,719
Speaker 1: it had, I don't know. It was July tenth, was

702
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: the last time my grandma talked to her, anyone had

703
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: heard from her, And now it's July twelfth, and so

704
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: they're just not alarmed. They're like, we'll keep an eye

705
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: out kind of thing. So I get a call from

706
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: the neighbor later that night and she says, oh, my

707
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:33,320
Speaker 1: husband is telling me that on that night he heard screaming.

708
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,840
Speaker 1: He heard her screaming help it hurts. And I thought,

709
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: oh my god, why didn't you tell me this sooner?

710
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 1: So I call the police and I say, I have

711
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 1: more information. I think you need to bang down the door,

712
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: you need to break in, and they said, okay, we'll

713
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: send officers and let you know. They called me back

714
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 1: a couple hours later and they said, well, we send

715
00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:55,439
Speaker 1: officers down there. But we couldn't break in because there's

716
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,719
Speaker 1: no cause. I said, even the hearing that she was

717
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:02,880
Speaker 1: screaming a couple nights go isn't cause. I didn't understand.

718
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:05,400
Speaker 1: So they said, no, we have to see signs of

719
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: something while we're there. And so on a Tuesday after work,

720
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 1: Gwynn picked up my boyfriend I called the locksmith. I

721
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: luckily my driver's license still had that address on it

722
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: from when I lived with her. I said, Oh, wouldn't

723
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: you know my mom went out of town and didn't

724
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: have her keys or I didn't have my keys. Can

725
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:27,759
Speaker 1: you let me in? Here's my driver's license. We go

726
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: in and it's dark and it's quiet, and it's cool,

727
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 1: and we're by the ocean. Nothing unusual. The place seems neat,

728
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,239
Speaker 1: but I'm not like really looking around. I just see

729
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 1: that the bedroom door is closed. It's one bedroom condo,

730
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 1: very small, and I go to open the door and

731
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: nothing is just a big rumpled bed in the middle

732
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:48,839
Speaker 1: of the room, and so I go over to open

733
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:52,240
Speaker 1: the blinds. I was like, finally I can see something,

734
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 1: and start looking around and I think maybe I'll get

735
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 1: a clue as to where they went. Oh, there's a

736
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:59,239
Speaker 1: duffel bag on the bed, and I go to move

737
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:01,400
Speaker 1: the duffel bag to see what's inside of it, and

738
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 1: there's her hand sticking out of the blankets. And I

739
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: knew the rest of her was under there, and I

740
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: knew I did not need to see I didn't need

741
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: to see anything else.

742
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 2: And you're twenty seven years old.

743
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 1: I'm twenty seven. My mom was forty nine, one month

744
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:23,720
Speaker 1: away from her fiftieth birthday. The neighbor that they partied

745
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:26,359
Speaker 1: with came running in when she heard me screaming. I

746
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:30,560
Speaker 1: was screaming, no, and he killed her. Oh my god,

747
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: he killed her. And she comes running in and she

748
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:37,680
Speaker 1: ripped back the blankets. I wasn't in the room. I

749
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: didn't see, and I was screaming at her to leave

750
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: the scene, leave her alone, don't touch anything. She's my mother.

751
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: She's my Mother's what I kept saying. Sorry, I've told

752
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:53,839
Speaker 1: this story hundreds of times, but it's still yeah. I said,

753
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: she's my mother. Get away, And I smashed a number

754
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: of buttons on any phone I could find, and somebody

755
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 1: managed to make a call to nine one one get through,

756
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 1: And once that business was done, I just went to

757
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: the floor and that night I would go to the

758
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 1: police station and give my testimony about their relationship what

759
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: I knew of it. And when they said, so was

760
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: your mother an alcoholic? And I said, oh, yeah, big time,

761
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: Like it just came out of me that way. And

762
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:30,280
Speaker 1: I know that because years later at the trial, they'll

763
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 1: make me repeat those words back. The defense will make

764
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,719
Speaker 1: me say these words out loud to everybody, as if

765
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:38,760
Speaker 1: she had it coming.

766
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 2: In the coming days, Erin learns more the police determine

767
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:47,920
Speaker 2: that her mother had been stabbed multiple times around her

768
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:51,839
Speaker 2: throat and ear. They didn't find a weapon, said it

769
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 2: probably was some kind of small knife. They didn't know

770
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 2: where Jr. Was. They didn't know where the dog was.

771
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 2: Erin assumed he must be in Mexico. By now was

772
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 2: her mom's car, and wrenchingly, her mom's dog, Chloe.

773
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,839
Speaker 1: And actually what happened is a couple days later, the

774
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 1: police Stition calls and says, we have him. He turned

775
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: himself in and I said, did he have the dog

776
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 1: with him? And they said no. He says he never

777
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: had the dog. That afternoon, the animal shelter behind my

778
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:26,799
Speaker 1: mom's house in the hills behind her house calls and

779
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 1: they said, we think we have the dog. The police

780
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: put an APB out on her. The police figured wherever

781
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:36,839
Speaker 1: the dog is, he is and they said, we think

782
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:39,359
Speaker 1: we have your dog. And I went and I got

783
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: her and I just grabbed her and I was like,

784
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: I'm your mom now.

785
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chloe, Chloe, God.

786
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 1: If I tell you that dog went on to live

787
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: to be seventeen and a half years old, and that

788
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 1: I had to put her down because she wasn't going

789
00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 1: to die like her body kept going even though she

790
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: had dementia and she was really suffering. This dog is

791
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 1: the world's strongest dog. Yeah. I had her until I

792
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: was thirty six.

793
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 2: Wow, So what then happens? Also, it begs the question,

794
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,799
Speaker 2: was your brother anywhere in any of this?

795
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:18,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question, because this is the hardest

796
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:22,480
Speaker 1: thing I've ever had to do is tell my brother

797
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 1: that our mother had been murdered. He was across the

798
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: country at Penn State getting a PhD in physics, and

799
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:35,239
Speaker 1: I did not want him to find out with no

800
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 1: people around him over the phone. He's something of an introvert.

801
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,840
Speaker 1: He didn't have a ton of friends or a partner.

802
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:44,720
Speaker 1: I knew he'd be alone, and I was very afraid

803
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: for him to find out. At the same time, I

804
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:51,640
Speaker 1: felt like what happened, I couldn't even begin to absorb

805
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:56,040
Speaker 1: it until my sibling knew. I needed him to also

806
00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: know for it to really be real. So right after

807
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 1: the place station, first person I called was my mom's brother,

808
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: and I said, you have to tell Grandpa and grandma.

809
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:08,319
Speaker 1: I'll meet you over there later. Then I called my

810
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:10,879
Speaker 1: dad and I told him, and he said, I'm coming

811
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 1: right down there, and he sent his sister, my aunt,

812
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 1: because she was closer, to come be with me. And

813
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:20,720
Speaker 1: I told him, Sean cannot find out that's my brother.

814
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 1: He cannot find out on the phone. Someone has to

815
00:47:23,640 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 1: be with him. So my dad called his brother who

816
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: lived in Michigan that was the closest relative, and said,

817
00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:33,760
Speaker 1: can you please take a red eye and go find Sean.

818
00:47:34,400 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: I was sitting by the phone the whole next day,

819
00:47:36,719 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: just on pins and needles, waiting, And once my uncle

820
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: finally had my brother in hand and was with him,

821
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 1: I could tell him over the phone that our mother

822
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: had been killed. I started sobbing and I said something like, oh, baby, brother,

823
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, And he said, why

824
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 1: are you sorry? It's not your fault and then he

825
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: dropped the phone and my uncle picked it up and said, Okay,

826
00:48:02,239 --> 00:48:05,359
Speaker 1: I'm going to handle it from here. I think we

827
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: just need to get him on a plane and get

828
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:14,399
Speaker 1: him home. We'll be right back.

829
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:30,800
Speaker 2: As this a grieving process wasn't hard and consuming enough,

830
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 2: there would be another layer to this process for Aaron

831
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 2: and her family, a murder trial.

832
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:41,800
Speaker 1: So victim services came immediately, told us what to expect

833
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:45,240
Speaker 1: and what was going to happen. And around this time,

834
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: I wanted to go to graduate school for writing. I'd

835
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:52,759
Speaker 1: finally slogged my way through a bachelor's degree in theater,

836
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: and I knew I wanted to go further, but I

837
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 1: just didn't really have the self confidence. And then this happened,

838
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 1: and I just thought, but fuck it. You know, nothing

839
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:07,479
Speaker 1: bigger will ever happen than what just happened, and I'll

840
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 1: survive rejection, I'll survive whatever comes my way because this

841
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:15,080
Speaker 1: is bigger. And I the week after we put my

842
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,360
Speaker 1: mom's ashes in the sea, I wrote an essay about

843
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: being with that family on a boat, trapped with them

844
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 1: three miles off the coast, and I submitted it to

845
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 1: a couple of low residency MFA programs because I knew

846
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:30,320
Speaker 1: wherever I was going to go to school, I was

847
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: going to have to work full time. I was going

848
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: to have the dog with me. That was my biggest

849
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 1: priority with Chloe, and so I couldn't go live on

850
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:39,840
Speaker 1: a campus and be like a full time student. So

851
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 1: I got into Queen's University of Charlotte, North Carolina, and

852
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: the kicker was I could live wherever I wanted, and

853
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 1: I really did not want to live in Orange County anymore.

854
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:51,760
Speaker 1: And in fact, I realized the only reason I had

855
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: I'd stuck around for so long in a rut was

856
00:49:54,680 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: I was waiting for my mom to get sober or

857
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: to be ready to need me to help her get sober.

858
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: And now that was over, that was never going to happen,

859
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: and had all this trauma in me as rocket fuel,

860
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:15,239
Speaker 1: and I was finally horribly free and I could do

861
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,240
Speaker 1: whatever I wanted. And so I told the victim Service,

862
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: this person, you know, she's walking us through these processes

863
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: over the ensuing month or two. She's saying, trial could

864
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:29,640
Speaker 1: take years. I've seen this take years to go to trial,

865
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:31,879
Speaker 1: and when it does happen, it's going to be long.

866
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,839
Speaker 1: It's going to be like a month long trial, and

867
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,400
Speaker 1: I thought that she was saying, I can't leave California

868
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 1: until the trial's over. I just broke down crying, and

869
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: she said, Oh, Aaron, don't wait to start your life.

870
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 1: I've seen this take years. Just go start your life.

871
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: And so I did. I moved to Austin, Texas. This

872
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:56,040
Speaker 1: is two thousand and five. Now I broke up with

873
00:50:56,080 --> 00:51:00,640
Speaker 1: my boyfriend and I moved here and I was completely alone,

874
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 1: and that was horrifying. As soon as I got here

875
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: and realized what I had done, I thought I was

876
00:51:06,360 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 1: stepping into some big, brave new life as a writer,

877
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: and I was going to find a partner that was

878
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,360
Speaker 1: a lot more like for me and find people that

879
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,400
Speaker 1: were more like me. But now I was alone with

880
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:21,680
Speaker 1: this horrible trauma. I was having unwanted thoughts all the

881
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 1: time of her hand. Just images of her hand would

882
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: flash in front of my face constantly. I was having nightmares,

883
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 1: and the trial kept getting dangled in front of me,

884
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: like Okay, we have a date, and then three weeks

885
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: later I'd get a call and say, Okay, the date's

886
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,320
Speaker 1: been moved and it's for any number of reasons, staffing issues,

887
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:42,240
Speaker 1: the judge isn't available the courtroom, they got a higher

888
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: priority case. Whatever the deal, they kept getting moved further

889
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: and further down the field, and finally, in May two

890
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, we got a date that's stuck. And

891
00:51:58,520 --> 00:52:00,879
Speaker 1: I had a new boyfriend at the time who would

892
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,880
Speaker 1: later become my husband, and I asked that boyfriend to

893
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:07,360
Speaker 1: take care of Chloe and watched my house while I

894
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 1: went back to California for a month long trial that

895
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 1: brought everything not only brought everything back up again, but

896
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:20,800
Speaker 1: told me things I didn't know the first time, details

897
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:23,520
Speaker 1: about how it happened, or at least from his point

898
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:27,280
Speaker 1: of view, what happened, stories from the neighbors. It turns

899
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:31,279
Speaker 1: out that they had been fighting quite publicly for a

900
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:35,720
Speaker 1: long time before this. The security from the apartment complex

901
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: had been involved. There were instances of her running into neighbors'

902
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 1: houses with bruises and then him showing up later with

903
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,880
Speaker 1: his own bruises, and all the neighbors that I knew

904
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:53,759
Speaker 1: testified for the prosecution for our side. And then there

905
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 1: were these strange people that the defense got, like bouncers

906
00:52:57,080 --> 00:53:00,920
Speaker 1: from bars my mom frequented, or coworker from the former

907
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:02,239
Speaker 1: job she had.

908
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 2: How did you feel when all of this was unfolding?

909
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:11,600
Speaker 1: Just like a bag of electrified trauma. I felt like

910
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 1: somebody lit off a thousand volcanoes inside of me. And

911
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 1: every day I had to be there, and I had

912
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:19,799
Speaker 1: to sit in there and look at pictures or hear

913
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: are these testimonies and just relive all this. I was

914
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:25,200
Speaker 1: taking notes because now you know, I'm a writer, and

915
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:27,400
Speaker 1: I'm taking myself seriously as a writer, and I'm thinking,

916
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 1: someday I'm going to tell this story and I'm going

917
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 1: to need these notes, and so I'm taking notes. And

918
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 1: I always have a friend with me every day at

919
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 1: the trial for support. And I'm pretty much ignoring my

920
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:43,239
Speaker 1: family because my family still represents a lot of why

921
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:46,359
Speaker 1: this happened to her, all their rage and all of

922
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: their dysfunction. I'm blaming it on that. So I stay

923
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 1: away from them, and I do this really weird thing

924
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:56,800
Speaker 1: during the trial where I seek out the defense attorney

925
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: and he's not a high powered, expensive defensettorney. He's like

926
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: a state appointed one. He's just doing his job. And

927
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:06,839
Speaker 1: I said to him, I think you're a really nice guy.

928
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: I feel really bad that you have to do this

929
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:14,240
Speaker 1: and he said, oh my god, thank you so much.

930
00:54:14,400 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 1: You don't need to say that. But no one has

931
00:54:16,640 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 1: ever said that to me from the victim's family. And

932
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 1: I took that as such a I know, I was

933
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 1: so proud of myself for that. That was something my

934
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,080
Speaker 1: family would not do. My family was over there going

935
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 1: I hate him, that fucking guy, that fucking guy, the

936
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 1: defense attorney. So I went over there almost as a

937
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:38,960
Speaker 1: show that I wasn't so low and so base. I

938
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 1: wasn't on their level. But in terms of letting myself

939
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: feel anything like rage or grief, I did not. I

940
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,280
Speaker 1: would go to my friend's house immediately after the trial

941
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,040
Speaker 1: let out and drink and drink, and we would party

942
00:54:51,200 --> 00:54:53,960
Speaker 1: and we had music on and we would just have

943
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: a big old time and we would go bar hopping,

944
00:54:56,520 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 1: and they were always exciting people around. I just gave

945
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:05,280
Speaker 1: absolutely everything to them, and I gave them all my attention.

946
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: I just avoided myself so completely.

947
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:11,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting that you drank too,

948
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 2: just in a I was so struck by what you

949
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:19,160
Speaker 2: said before about you didn't turn against yourself. You said, yeah,

950
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:21,399
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to do that. During that period of time,

951
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 2: was this like you were just in this kind of

952
00:55:23,640 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 2: dissociated state and just needing to be out of all

953
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 2: the firecrackers going on inside your body and away from

954
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:35,439
Speaker 2: any possibility of feeling rage, because if you felt it

955
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 2: rage or grief, if you felt it, I imagine it

956
00:55:38,719 --> 00:55:42,880
Speaker 2: would feel bottomless. And rage for you was always something

957
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 2: that the way it was modeled for you was that

958
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 2: it absolutely was bottomless.

959
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 1: And it led to now it literally led to death. Right,

960
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 1: that's what I saw. I learned during the trial. Is

961
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 1: happened during a fight where she was saying I want

962
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: you out, I want you out of my house, and

963
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:04,440
Speaker 1: he alleges that, you know, she hit him over the

964
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: head with a cutting board. I actually have no doubt

965
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:11,040
Speaker 1: that happened, but he's conveniently left out everything leading up

966
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:13,520
Speaker 1: to that moment, Right, My mom was fighting for her

967
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: life in one way or another. She was fighting to

968
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,680
Speaker 1: get this man out of her house. Maybe he had

969
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:23,480
Speaker 1: said something really threatening and that was the final straw.

970
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:25,720
Speaker 1: Maybe he put his hands on her, but whatever the case,

971
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: she hit him over the head with a cutting board

972
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:31,640
Speaker 1: and that's when he says he grabbed the knives she

973
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 1: had been using to cut steak for fajitas, and he

974
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 1: grabbed the knives away from her and she got stabbed.

975
00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 2: Yeah. That language, she got stabbed.

976
00:56:43,120 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't you love that? It's admission of something happened.

977
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:50,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, all that's missing from that phrase is she

978
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 2: got herself stabbed.

979
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:55,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, she got herself stabbed. And I absorbed this message

980
00:56:56,640 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: over the years anyway, that her rage was so dangerous

981
00:57:01,640 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: and scary, and that then this happens. And now if

982
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 1: you think I'm going to show rage at all, he'll

983
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:12,319
Speaker 1: know because I'll get killed. Is what I still to

984
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:14,640
Speaker 1: this day. Even though I have a much healthier relationship

985
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: with rage, I still can't express rage without thinking it's

986
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:20,959
Speaker 1: going to mean violent death.

987
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 2: In two thousand and seven, Jr. Is tried and convicted

988
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 2: of second degree murder manslaughter, which carries with it a

989
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:35,840
Speaker 2: sentence of fifteen years to life sixteen actually with an

990
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:40,600
Speaker 2: additional year for using a knife. After JR. Is behind bars,

991
00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 2: Erin goes on with her life. She works hard on

992
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,040
Speaker 2: healing her trauma to the degree that it can be healed.

993
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:51,880
Speaker 2: She gradually accesses her grief. She learns to get in

994
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:55,680
Speaker 2: touch with her rage. She marries her boyfriend and finds

995
00:57:55,760 --> 00:58:01,800
Speaker 2: a great therapist. Now it's twenty seventeen, a decade since

996
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 2: the trial. Aaron has gone on to graduate school and

997
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 2: has an MFA in writing. She's published a few essays,

998
00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 2: but she wants to write a book about what happened.

999
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:15,640
Speaker 2: She takes a gamble on herself, quits her job, and

1000
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 2: she and her husband moved back to California so she

1001
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:22,400
Speaker 2: can research this story, the story of her life, the

1002
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:27,240
Speaker 2: story of her mother's death. In the following year, Jr.

1003
00:58:27,360 --> 00:58:29,200
Speaker 2: Applies for early parole.

1004
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:34,439
Speaker 1: And this is the first time now that I've had

1005
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: to go through the parole process and actually think about

1006
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:40,680
Speaker 1: all of this and get into it again since two

1007
00:58:40,680 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. And one of the things I've done

1008
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: is I become really obsessed with needing to collect all

1009
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:50,600
Speaker 1: the information, evidence, everything having to do with this case.

1010
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:54,680
Speaker 1: So I've called for the coroner's report, I've gotten my

1011
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 1: nine to one to one transcripts, I've got my police

1012
00:58:56,760 --> 00:59:00,960
Speaker 1: station interview transcripts. The one thing that I was too,

1013
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 1: I think, just traumatized to like even deal with I

1014
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: would hear white noise and associate every time I started

1015
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:10,840
Speaker 1: to deal with it was the trial transcripts. I knew

1016
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: this was going to be a month of some crazy stuff,

1017
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:18,640
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, you know, maybe that's outside the scope,

1018
00:59:18,640 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: so I won't deal with it. But then when they

1019
00:59:21,640 --> 00:59:23,880
Speaker 1: told me that he was applying for parole in that

1020
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: I could write a victim impact statement something that would

1021
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:31,360
Speaker 1: help influence their decision, I thought, Okay, I'm going to

1022
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:34,440
Speaker 1: get the trial transcripts. And I went through the process

1023
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 1: of ordering them, which was funny because I kept getting

1024
00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:41,040
Speaker 1: faint and foggy, and I kept forgetting whose number to

1025
00:59:41,080 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 1: call and how to do it, or I get ten

1026
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:45,160
Speaker 1: steps of the way through and then not be able

1027
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 1: to finish the last thing, like give them my credit card.

1028
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:50,720
Speaker 1: But eventually I finally got these transcripts, since like fifteen

1029
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:55,000
Speaker 1: hundred pages of trial transcripts, and I just go forget it.

1030
00:59:55,040 --> 00:59:57,520
Speaker 1: I can't look at that, and I dash off some

1031
00:59:57,560 --> 01:00:01,320
Speaker 1: sort of letter that's like, I don't love the prison system,

1032
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:03,920
Speaker 1: I don't believe in it. I don't think it's effective,

1033
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: I don't think it's just, and it sounds like hell

1034
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:11,000
Speaker 1: on Earth to me. So as long as you guys

1035
01:00:11,040 --> 01:00:14,040
Speaker 1: can promise he's not going to hurt another woman or

1036
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 1: her family, then do thy will. It was somewhat passive,

1037
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:21,080
Speaker 1: like I took them through the experience, the traumatic experience

1038
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 1: of finding her body, and I say, this will be

1039
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:26,600
Speaker 1: with me forever, what this guy did. But I also

1040
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:29,640
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of keeping him in prison or

1041
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 1: I just didn't want that power. And so you guys

1042
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: just I leave it up to you. More or less.

1043
01:00:34,600 --> 01:00:37,160
Speaker 1: My mom would not want anyone to never feel the

1044
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:39,800
Speaker 1: sun on their face again or the surf on their ankles.

1045
01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: It's pretty much what I said.

1046
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:47,160
Speaker 2: And when you were writing that victim impact statement, what

1047
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:49,919
Speaker 2: did that feel like? I can imagine that it could

1048
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 2: have felt like you're just washing your hands of it

1049
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:56,040
Speaker 2: in a certain way, or like a some kind of

1050
01:00:56,080 --> 01:00:59,480
Speaker 2: repair or reparation. It was something you said earlier about

1051
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:03,920
Speaker 2: always wanting to find redemption. Was there something in there

1052
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:06,320
Speaker 2: in that moment that felt like maybe this is some

1053
01:01:06,440 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 2: sort of strange I can affect this.

1054
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, just like how when every time Chloe disappeared

1055
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: and showed up again, it was like a redemption. It

1056
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 1: was like, as long as things change, this will have

1057
01:01:21,760 --> 01:01:24,200
Speaker 1: all been worthwhile. And it's what I felt about my

1058
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:29,160
Speaker 1: whole sad childhood and adolescence too. As long as X happens,

1059
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:32,040
Speaker 1: this will have all been worthwhile. And so as I'm

1060
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: writing this letter, I'm feeling myself like rise above everything

1061
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: and just going maybe I can redeem all of us here.

1062
01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:44,480
Speaker 1: And when this first happened and he turned himself in,

1063
01:01:44,760 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 1: people would say things to me like, good, I hope

1064
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:50,480
Speaker 1: he gets shived in prison. Are you kidding me? Or

1065
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:52,280
Speaker 1: they'd say, oh, I wish it. California is still have

1066
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:55,120
Speaker 1: the death penalty for things like this. Are you kidding me?

1067
01:01:55,400 --> 01:01:57,560
Speaker 1: When you're that close to death, when you're that close

1068
01:01:57,600 --> 01:02:02,040
Speaker 1: to a violent death, you're done. I just was done.

1069
01:02:02,120 --> 01:02:08,920
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be near anyone's violent murder again

1070
01:02:08,960 --> 01:02:11,600
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. I understand for some

1071
01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:17,400
Speaker 1: people that revenge or that quid pro quo feels like closure,

1072
01:02:17,480 --> 01:02:20,080
Speaker 1: but for me, it would have just been further traumatizing,

1073
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:24,320
Speaker 1: and I just did not no way. Redemption is what

1074
01:02:24,360 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 1: I want, not revenge. So this is my first victim

1075
01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:31,720
Speaker 1: impact statement. In twenty eighteen, he gets parole denied, which

1076
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:35,360
Speaker 1: was not surprising, and then COVID happens, and there's a

1077
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:38,800
Speaker 1: couple of years where all conversations about parole just shut down,

1078
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:43,040
Speaker 1: and then suddenly, in April twenty twenty three, the Deputy

1079
01:02:43,120 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 1: DA from Orange County calls me and he says, JR

1080
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:50,680
Speaker 1: Is applying for parole again, wondering if you were planning

1081
01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 1: to be there, and I said, absolutely not. I don't

1082
01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:57,280
Speaker 1: want to be there. I don't want to be on camera.

1083
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:00,800
Speaker 1: I just want to send you a letter I wrote

1084
01:03:00,840 --> 01:03:04,400
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen because it still applies. I still feel

1085
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:09,040
Speaker 1: all these things. And he said, yeah, I saw that letter.

1086
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:14,560
Speaker 1: And I call the Deputy da velvet hammer because he

1087
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:17,600
Speaker 1: has this way of getting really to the point the

1088
01:03:17,600 --> 01:03:20,240
Speaker 1: way a good lawyer would. But he's also a little

1089
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:24,760
Speaker 1: careful with me. He's not an insensitive jerk. And he says,

1090
01:03:25,240 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: can I just read to you what JR says in

1091
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:31,760
Speaker 1: his psych evaluation? And I'm thinking, oh my god, there's

1092
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 1: more documentation out there. This need for me to grab

1093
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:38,000
Speaker 1: all the coroner's report, the transcripts, just to have this

1094
01:03:38,160 --> 01:03:41,960
Speaker 1: information around me feels like I'm going to need it someday.

1095
01:03:42,040 --> 01:03:43,800
Speaker 1: I'm going to want to write with the stuff. And

1096
01:03:43,960 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, tell me everything.

1097
01:03:46,440 --> 01:03:49,600
Speaker 2: So he tells you things that JR. Has said that

1098
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:54,840
Speaker 2: shift you away from that sense of equanimity about his redemption,

1099
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,520
Speaker 2: his redemption, the possibility of his redemption or the possibility

1100
01:03:58,520 --> 01:04:01,959
Speaker 2: that his being out there would be safe for womankind.

1101
01:04:03,160 --> 01:04:05,480
Speaker 1: So one of the things I did was I returned

1102
01:04:05,520 --> 01:04:08,640
Speaker 1: to the numbers, the statistics of women who had been

1103
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:12,160
Speaker 1: severely harmed at the hands of a male partner in

1104
01:04:12,200 --> 01:04:15,320
Speaker 1: the United States, and it was one in four and

1105
01:04:15,360 --> 01:04:18,280
Speaker 1: that is just what's reported, and we know that number

1106
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:21,160
Speaker 1: is a lot higher. And that number went up during

1107
01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:25,160
Speaker 1: COVID lockdown two, which we knew from many news articles.

1108
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:29,640
Speaker 1: And I said, this man is in his early to

1109
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:33,240
Speaker 1: mid sixties. He's still a threat, he's still dangerous. But

1110
01:04:33,320 --> 01:04:37,120
Speaker 1: the real deciding factor for me was when the deputy

1111
01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:42,680
Speaker 1: da velvet Hammer tells me, yeah, he's saying that she

1112
01:04:42,880 --> 01:04:47,280
Speaker 1: got stabbed somehow, and I'm remembering, Oh my god, that's right.

1113
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:51,000
Speaker 1: That's the language he used in the trial. She got stabbed. Nonsense.

1114
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:54,600
Speaker 1: And then he talks about I think one of the

1115
01:04:55,080 --> 01:04:59,240
Speaker 1: evaluators asked, JR. What do you see when you look

1116
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:03,480
Speaker 1: at all the relationships you've had with women, Because one

1117
01:05:03,520 --> 01:05:06,280
Speaker 1: of the really important things is during the trial, his

1118
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:10,760
Speaker 1: ex wife testified via satellite she had left the state,

1119
01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:13,640
Speaker 1: taken the kids, and changed her name. And that is

1120
01:05:13,680 --> 01:05:16,120
Speaker 1: something I did not know. I don't know if my

1121
01:05:16,160 --> 01:05:19,160
Speaker 1: mom knew the full story when she started going out

1122
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 1: with him. But he had the sex wife who was

1123
01:05:21,000 --> 01:05:23,520
Speaker 1: so afraid of him because he'd made death threats and

1124
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 1: held a gun door ahead in front of the kids.

1125
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:31,360
Speaker 1: And when the psych evaluators are asking him to explain himself,

1126
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:35,000
Speaker 1: to explain these relationships, he says something like, I never

1127
01:05:35,920 --> 01:05:40,760
Speaker 1: started these things. I never instigated. I just subdued the offenders,

1128
01:05:41,560 --> 01:05:45,200
Speaker 1: meaning that all these women in his life that had

1129
01:05:45,720 --> 01:05:49,560
Speaker 1: filed charges against him or had testified against him is them.

1130
01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:52,720
Speaker 2: What did that do to you? Reading that, I'm going

1131
01:05:52,760 --> 01:05:56,720
Speaker 2: back to the whole idea in a way of ultimately rage,

1132
01:05:56,920 --> 01:06:01,360
Speaker 2: which has such a negative connotations victually for women and

1133
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:05,960
Speaker 2: in your case exponentially, so that rage can be the

1134
01:06:06,000 --> 01:06:09,360
Speaker 2: secret that we keep from ourselves, that that was in you,

1135
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:15,200
Speaker 2: but you couldn't access it because it was too terrifying. Yeah,

1136
01:06:15,240 --> 01:06:19,200
Speaker 2: and now it seems like, oh, something was unleashed there.

1137
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:23,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I can't get away from it. So what happens? Okay,

1138
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:26,840
Speaker 1: he's on the phone with me, and I just heard

1139
01:06:26,840 --> 01:06:29,640
Speaker 1: that in the psycha ow and how he wasn't taking

1140
01:06:29,680 --> 01:06:32,760
Speaker 1: responsibility still and he was using this passive language, and

1141
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:35,280
Speaker 1: I said, wait, we need to look at the trial

1142
01:06:35,320 --> 01:06:39,520
Speaker 1: transcripts because our attorney, the prosecutor, had this amazing thing,

1143
01:06:39,560 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 1: she said in closing statement, closing argument, what was it.

1144
01:06:42,440 --> 01:06:44,400
Speaker 1: I go to open the transcripts, and mind you, this

1145
01:06:44,480 --> 01:06:46,720
Speaker 1: is the first time I've looked at the transcripts since

1146
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:48,520
Speaker 1: I ordered them, and it was something I was too

1147
01:06:48,560 --> 01:06:50,800
Speaker 1: afraid to do in the past. But now this guy

1148
01:06:50,920 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 1: is with me, velvet hammer, my attorney, and I'm doing

1149
01:06:53,840 --> 01:06:57,560
Speaker 1: it with him, and so I'm able to launch myself

1150
01:06:57,600 --> 01:06:59,320
Speaker 1: into looking at this thing that was very hard for

1151
01:06:59,360 --> 01:07:02,040
Speaker 1: me to look at because he's there and we have

1152
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:06,200
Speaker 1: this common mission. And my eyes fall on this phrase

1153
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:10,520
Speaker 1: that I'd forgotten, which was that my mother had defensive

1154
01:07:10,560 --> 01:07:16,080
Speaker 1: wounds on her hands. And that's what did it. I

1155
01:07:16,120 --> 01:07:20,320
Speaker 1: could not hold this knowledge inside my body that my

1156
01:07:20,440 --> 01:07:24,360
Speaker 1: mother died with defensive wounds on her hands and have

1157
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:30,680
Speaker 1: this guy say she got stabbed. She was defending herself

1158
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:36,240
Speaker 1: against him to her last motion, for their last seconds.

1159
01:07:36,840 --> 01:07:42,160
Speaker 1: And I had to sit there with that knowledge and go,

1160
01:07:42,200 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 1: what am I going to do with this now? Am

1161
01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:47,000
Speaker 1: I going to show up? Am I going to be

1162
01:07:47,080 --> 01:07:50,280
Speaker 1: on screen? I still couldn't see myself doing that. I

1163
01:07:50,320 --> 01:07:55,760
Speaker 1: think I was just going to unload this inarticulate screaming.

1164
01:07:56,200 --> 01:07:58,640
Speaker 1: I would just banshee wail. I would be no good.

1165
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:02,000
Speaker 1: What I can do is right. And so I wrote

1166
01:08:02,040 --> 01:08:07,040
Speaker 1: a second, different letter, And this letter held a lot

1167
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:10,240
Speaker 1: more of the rage that I didn't let myself feel

1168
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:12,280
Speaker 1: for all those years, the rage I didn't want myself

1169
01:08:12,280 --> 01:08:15,280
Speaker 1: feel for the first letter. Where the first letter was

1170
01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:19,000
Speaker 1: a little more do that I will, this second letter

1171
01:08:19,200 --> 01:08:20,519
Speaker 1: was absolutely not.

1172
01:08:21,040 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 2: He is remorseless, and that letter ends up having an impact,

1173
01:08:28,080 --> 01:08:37,080
Speaker 2: and he is denied parole. That's right, But our stories

1174
01:08:37,200 --> 01:08:42,759
Speaker 2: are rarely neat and tidy, tied up in a bow. Recently, Jr.

1175
01:08:43,080 --> 01:08:46,600
Speaker 2: Was granted parole, a development that was simply not in

1176
01:08:46,800 --> 01:08:51,479
Speaker 2: Eron's control. She could not influence our enigmatic justice system.

1177
01:08:51,920 --> 01:08:55,040
Speaker 2: But what she could do. What she did do was

1178
01:08:55,080 --> 01:08:59,320
Speaker 2: fully embody and inhabit her truth. There's a comfort in that.

1179
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:05,559
Speaker 2: There's also, if not exactly a comfort, a clarity in

1180
01:09:05,680 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 2: Erin's understanding that though her relationship with her mother was

1181
01:09:09,160 --> 01:09:14,040
Speaker 2: far from perfect, she loved her, and after her mother's murder,

1182
01:09:14,680 --> 01:09:18,040
Speaker 2: Erin was able to break the cycle to learn to

1183
01:09:18,200 --> 01:09:21,680
Speaker 2: make meaning of her own grief, to make peace with

1184
01:09:21,800 --> 01:09:26,559
Speaker 2: her own rage, and to turn her sympathetic disdain into

1185
01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:30,760
Speaker 2: embassy nuance and a powerful display of love.

1186
01:09:32,840 --> 01:09:37,479
Speaker 1: I felt. I proved that I could hold rage in

1187
01:09:37,560 --> 01:09:42,719
Speaker 1: my body and that it was lightning. It was very strong,

1188
01:09:42,720 --> 01:09:46,320
Speaker 1: it was a thousand volcanoes. I could hold it and

1189
01:09:46,439 --> 01:09:50,720
Speaker 1: wield it and write something that had power. You know,

1190
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:56,400
Speaker 1: it didn't get me killed. I could express my rage

1191
01:09:56,640 --> 01:10:01,479
Speaker 1: in ways that I could control, role that I felt

1192
01:10:01,520 --> 01:10:05,160
Speaker 1: were in line with my integrity, and they had a

1193
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:08,519
Speaker 1: good effect. They had the effect I wanted, this thing

1194
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:11,640
Speaker 1: that I'd been afraid of for so long, feeling and

1195
01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:15,439
Speaker 1: expressing my anger, thinking that I came from a family

1196
01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:19,400
Speaker 1: where anger was like alcoholism. It was a disease, and

1197
01:10:20,080 --> 01:10:24,160
Speaker 1: there's no healthy way to be angry. In all those

1198
01:10:24,240 --> 01:10:29,200
Speaker 1: years that I had nightmares, recurring aliens, nightmares, the rage

1199
01:10:29,240 --> 01:10:31,360
Speaker 1: had to go somewhere, and it went within, and it

1200
01:10:31,439 --> 01:10:35,679
Speaker 1: created anxiety, and I suffered from panic attacks all through

1201
01:10:35,680 --> 01:10:41,519
Speaker 1: my twenties. And now that I have excavated that rage

1202
01:10:41,920 --> 01:10:45,639
Speaker 1: and held it outside of my body, in my hands,

1203
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:50,120
Speaker 1: in a pen, metaphorically on the page, it doesn't have

1204
01:10:50,240 --> 01:10:54,880
Speaker 1: that hold on me anymore. I really haven't had a

1205
01:10:54,880 --> 01:10:59,920
Speaker 1: panic attack since I very rarely have nightmares, and I

1206
01:11:00,160 --> 01:11:02,320
Speaker 1: know that if I need to feel rage, it's not

1207
01:11:02,360 --> 01:11:04,200
Speaker 1: going to burn me up or kill me or kill

1208
01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:07,639
Speaker 1: somebody else. I can feel it, I can let it pass.

1209
01:11:07,920 --> 01:11:09,639
Speaker 1: I can feel it and I can write with it.

1210
01:11:10,240 --> 01:11:12,040
Speaker 1: I can feel it and I can go for a run.

1211
01:11:13,320 --> 01:11:16,960
Speaker 1: I now have a relationship with rage that I never

1212
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:18,760
Speaker 1: thought i'd have, and that no one else in my

1213
01:11:18,840 --> 01:11:23,839
Speaker 1: family ever had.

1214
01:11:24,800 --> 01:11:28,800
Speaker 2: Speaking of making meaning, here's erin reading a passage from

1215
01:11:28,800 --> 01:11:30,840
Speaker 2: an essay she published in the Sun.

1216
01:11:36,600 --> 01:11:39,519
Speaker 1: I feel like a superhero now. I don't know how

1217
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:42,240
Speaker 1: else to put it. I let the rage come, and

1218
01:11:42,320 --> 01:11:45,040
Speaker 1: it did not kill me. I let the rage come,

1219
01:11:45,120 --> 01:11:48,240
Speaker 1: and it did not kill anyone else. It didn't ruin

1220
01:11:48,320 --> 01:11:52,160
Speaker 1: my job, my marriage, my friendships. It even served a purpose.

1221
01:11:52,720 --> 01:11:56,439
Speaker 1: It gave me power and clarity. Let the record show

1222
01:11:56,960 --> 01:11:59,160
Speaker 1: I held lightning and did not burn up.

1223
01:12:18,120 --> 01:12:22,080
Speaker 2: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccor is

1224
01:12:22,080 --> 01:12:25,160
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

1225
01:12:25,800 --> 01:12:27,760
Speaker 2: If you have a family Secret you'd like to share,

1226
01:12:28,160 --> 01:12:30,599
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

1227
01:12:30,640 --> 01:12:34,000
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

1228
01:12:34,040 --> 01:12:38,200
Speaker 2: eight secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

1229
01:12:38,360 --> 01:12:43,080
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider, and if you'd

1230
01:12:43,080 --> 01:12:45,560
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

1231
01:12:45,960 --> 01:13:14,360
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

1232
01:13:14,479 --> 01:13:18,000
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

1233
01:13:18,040 --> 01:13:18,960
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.