Original subtitles

This is a letter that he wrote to me in

care of one of my aunts. I

didn't get it until many years after he

wrote it to me.

It says

Tiffany, I love you. I miss you.

God, I miss you so very much. I am so

sorry for everything. I know sorry

doesn't make anything OK. Nothing will

ever make what happened OK. Nothing.

Tiffany, I never, ever meant to hurt you.

I loved you so much. I would do anything

to go back to the beginning and undo the

nightmare of the past.

Just-- it's just empty words. It's just a

bunch of garbage.

We have been waiting for 10

years for him to receive the sentence

that he asked for and that he deserved.

And he's still not gone for good.

I absolutely do want to be there to see

it when he is ultimately executed, if it

happens. So it's not that I want

to watch him die. I just want that

sense of closure. I want to see it

happen. I want to see that he is no

longer a threat to anyone, that he can't

hurt anyone anymore, that he's

gone for good.

Did you feel like your dad loved you?

No. I don't feel like my dad ever loved

me. I don't feel like my dad was ever

capable of loving anything.

Ever.

Did you love him?

I did. I I really did love my

dad.

AndI don't think that feeling ever

entirely goes away. I know he's done

terrible things, and I

feel like he's where he deserves to be.

But you don't just stop loving someone. I

had 12 years of my life with this person,

and though a lot of them were bad, I

still had some good experiences, too.

We would go to like the Renaissance fair

or build sandcastles

or

do art or just always something

fun.

He was charming. He was handsome. He

was funny. He was smart. He was

talented. He was all of those

things. And I

at the time, you know, I really admired

my dad. When I was little.

My parents had gotten divorced, and

my mother wanted to move in with her new

boyfriend. And so

we would go live with our dad.

He was so fun to go visit on the

weekends, and you get this idea when you

visit a person that they're super fun to

be around. Well, living with a

person and visiting a person are two

totally different things.

We've never really had, like, a good

supply of food growing up.

I remember we had, like, this giant

bucket of peanut butter, and we would all

make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

'cause that was, like, a staple in our

house. But this bucket of peanut butter

was just riddled with ants.

Dad, there's

something wrong with this peanut butter.

That's all we had to eat because you

wouldn't buy us anything else. It's

either that or nothing.

We could either eat it or starve.

He would always get himself these steaks

and like at the time, like, you know,

steak is good. And it smells

great when you're cooking it. And we

really wanted steak, but we didn't get

steak. We got, like, some busted peanut

butter and toast-type stuff.

And then the cast iron skillet that he

would cook it in with all the leftover

grease and nastiness, we would have to go

clean it. And it was just, like,

awful. It was an awful feeling, having to

go clean up after this fantastic meal

that you didn't get to partake in.

His justification is just that, you know,

he's the man of the house and he earns

the money, so if he wants to eat a damn

steak, he's going to eat a damn steak. If

you want to get a job and get your own

food, then get it. But this is the food I

provide for you. That's what you get.

He always bought us nice. Things though,

like material objects, the nicest gaming

consoles, the nicest televisions,

bicycles.

Because it showed people that he was

willing to spend all this money on us and

that he was such a nice person to his

kids, when in reality he wasn't providing

necessities. If we had enough material

objects, maybe he could convince

everybody that everything was normal.

Actually, we moved in with my dad.

The first year or so living with him,

I thought my dad was, like, super cool.

Like, nobody had a parent like my dad.

Around the age of, like, nine or ten, I

started smoking cigarettes and stuff.

Then I remember I thought him providing

us alcohol and cigarettes just made him

kind of like the fun, cool dad,

but... A lot of

things in our life was very

outlined and scripted.

And we knew what our script was and what

we were supposed to do, how we were

supposed to act, what we were supposed to

say and wear and think and feel.

And our appearance had to be spotless and

perfect all of the time. You

know, if we went anywhere as a family,

our hair had to look a particular way.

Our outfit had to look a particular way.

We had to talk and act a particular way.

Everything was just, like, a show.

But if it doesn't go the way he planned

it, then all hell breaks loose, and

everybody suffers in the house for it.

One time, it was, like, morning time, and

I was running late for school. I told you

to be ready. That means 100% ready!

And my dad was just so pissed off.

that we were there for whatever reason.

We were trying to get out the door. He

was screaming at us, and he just started

throwing things at us. You little

ingrate! Get out! Get out of my sight!

Get out of my sight right now! Stupid

little brats!

It wasn't in his script of expectations.

Therefore, it just set him off.

Anything, anything out of the ordinary

would set him off.

I just... accepted things the way they

were. I just felt like I deserved it in

some way because I was late. I shouldn't

have been doing what I wasn't supposed to

be doing, and that was the penalty for

it. That's what I thought.

After living with my dad, it

became very clear that he didn't

like anybody to question his authority or

the way that he did things. You just

accept it, or you would get

physically assaulted by my dad.

You like Jason?He will never notice

you! No, give it back! When I was a kid,

I did normal kid things. I was loud and I

was defiant, and I would scream in my

room and throw things. Hey!

No, she's taking my diary, it's not my

fault! He would...

beat us pretty hard, like hitting us in

the head and pulling our hair and

stinging our feet and our legs and

anything he'd get his hands on. No! No

Give me this book. Stop!

Ohh Saying stop crying, stop crying.

There's no crying allowed in this house.

He absolutely despised crying. He said

crying was not allowed in his house.

which is a really hard thing to avoid

when you're being beaten. Shut up. Stop.

Please. And the more we cried, the

angrier he would get.

As a child, I just-- I couldn't help it.

I did. I just cried because I didn't know

anything else that I could do, and I

didn't know how to keep that in.

At that point, because no matter how much

I tried, I couldn't stop crying. He would

roll us up on the sheets and tie the

sheets really tight so that we couldn't

move, so our arms would be compressed to

our bodies. Be quiet.

And I remember not being able to move

and not being able to breathe and him

just taking the pillow and smothering me.

No! No Give me this ball. Yeah,

do it. It is very

clear as day in my mind, and screaming at

me, and the feel of the pillow on my

face, and then not being able to breathe,

and the shame that I felt for not being

able to stop crying.

I didn't understand why I couldn't do

what it was that he wanted for me to make

him happy. Shut up!

I just felt just so ashamed to cry and

not have a control over that feeling.

Shut up.

My sister and I both became very

good at hiding our feelings. And to this

day, yeah, like, I don't...

I don't really cry or get

overwhelmed by intense

feelings like that anymore,

because it's just been programmed out of

me. It was beaten into

me, literally, not to show any

feelings of sadness, and so you

just learn to put on a

face that doesn't show anything.

My sister and I were inseparable when we

were kids. We were very close.

We just took care of each other. We

looked after each other. We worked kind

of as a team, make sure one

didn't get, you know, into trouble

because he was just so violent. Just her

presence being there, it helped make

it OK. And I didn't want to leave her

alone and she didn't want to leave me

alone.

But the longer that we lived with him,

the more we were afraid.

My dad worked for Southwestern Bell as a

telephone man. He would do, like, I

guess, in-house repairs and repairs on,

like, the telephone lines. He went to

work really early in the mornings, and it

would still be dark outside.

Some days he would come home

very late, like 9, 10, 11 o'clock at

night. Back then, I just accept that it

is. He had a long day at work and he was

doing stuff, but in hindsight, like, who

works that kind of overtime

as a telephone repairman?

It's just not realistic.

When he would leave us alone in the

house, he would barricade us in the house

so that we couldn't leave. He would

nail all the windows shut, and then all

of the doors locked, deadbolt from the

outside. There wasn't any

other way to escape that house. There was

no other exit. We were

100% locked in.

I'm doing this so you girls are safe.

His excuse was, basically, the world was

full of bad people trying to get at you

and that you couldn't trust anybody.

We really didn't have any exposure to

anything different.

If that is all you have ever been shown,

you have no reason to question it. So

I just accepted it, that that was okay.

He warned us about all these awful people

in the world, but then he was the

horrible person in the world, and I

shouldn't have placed my trust in him.

And that is a really

hard thing to move past.

We really liked having friends over for

sleepovers, and I think our friends

enjoyed coming over to our house for

sleepovers, because when he wasn't being

a monster, like, he was so much fun.

We would sit there and pretend like we

were at a rock concert or something.

Like, we would have music going on in the

background and, like, pretend like we

were in a music video. He was very

involved in our dress-up moments.

He liked to put us in outfits that

were very suggestive, like little

cropped halter tops that showed my

stomach and, like,

shorts, like the Daisy Duke-style

shorts and

dresses that barely covered anything at

all.

At the time, it was a lot of fun doing

it, but in reflection, he dressed us up.

I mean, we basically looked like little

prostitutes.

We would just jump up and down, just

acting silly like we were rock stars or

whatever. And my dad

definitely was always somewhere watching.

My dad would religiously make us hot

chocolate. We would all be sitting in the

living room, and he would bring us hot

chocolate to drink before

we went to bed.

My sister told us all the time, Don't

drink the hot chocolate. It tastes funny.

And it did taste funny. I remember that,

but I just didn't think anything of it. I

thought it was some, like, cheap, nasty,

awkward end of hot chocolate. We would

drink it, and consistently, shortly

thereafter, we would all get quite tired

and go to sleep.

The next thing you know, it's morning.

We were being drugged.

You don't really question the fact that

you don't remember anything from the

night. You just assume that you were

sleeping the whole time.

Like, I feel like somebody came in and

wiped away a pretty good portion of my

memory because that's the whole point of

those drugs. It's so that you don't

recall what happened.

It's just so horrible that it's not

something you particularly want to

remember. Like, there's a reason why your

body tries to block out that stuff.

Given the nature of the fact that he

drugged us quite often, you don't

remember exactly what happened, but you

know bits and pieces.

Because that's all I ever remembered was

bits and pieces of things that happened.

And it's hard sometimes to make sense of

those bits and pieces.

I was in and out of consciousness,

but I rememberthat I was

totally naked and that he was doingstuff.

I remember waking up to that happening,

and I pretended to be asleep

because I was afraid.

I was afraid that if he knew I was awake,

something bad would happen. That maybe if

he didn't know that I knew it was

happening,I would be safer. I was afraid

that if he knew that I knew what was

happening, he would see me as a threat to

him.

And I didn't know what to do about it,

'cause he's-- he was bigger and stronger

than us, and he was my dad.

So I just pretended to be

asleep.

I didn't want to tell anybody about it

because I was ashamed that it happened. I

just really desperately wanted it not to

be true.

So I just tried not to think about

it.

I thought that if I took the brunt of it,

she would be okay. My dad

definitely treated me

like I was the prettier

one. the smarter one, the better one,

and he treated my sister like she

was some kind of second-class citizen.

I didn't want that to happen to her. I

didn't feel like she should have to deal

with that, too.

I can only imagine how many times that it

happened that I don't remember what

happened. I thought that maybe some way I

deserved it. My whole life, I

always just felt guilty.

Every time I got any kind of assault from

my dad, I just felt guilty because there

was probably something I did to deserve

it. All I ever wanted to do was

be this ideal

image child that he had

prescribed myself to be. When anytime I

didn't live up to that, I just felt

guilty and that I deserved to be punished

for it.

Our teachers and stuff had observed

bruises on my sister and I and the fact

that we never had food when we came to

school, and they were concerned for our

welfare. And CPS had been

contacted. My dad told us they were

coming. And the story

that he built in our minds about what it

would be like to be taken by CPS was

terrifying. They were just, like, these

evil people that come in and try and

break up people's families and

steal you away from your parents and give

you to foster care, where people are

horrible and mean to you, and you

guys will be separated, and I would never

see my sister again. She was my rock at

the time. That's all we had in life. We

had each other. I didn't want to be

all alone in the world. All

right, listen up, girls. And so he

told us what to say. If they ask you this

type of question, tell them this.

So we practiced our story as a family,

what we were gonna say. This woman who's

coming, she's gonna pretend to be your

friend, but she's not. So you

have to be perfect.

Understand. Perfect. Yeah.

OK. Understand. Yeah. OK,

good.

My dad had put, like, some

Stew on the stove so that the house would

smell very aromatic and welcoming.

We dressed in very nice clothes. We

had our faces plastered on with

smiles, and from the outside looking in,

I think it was pretty easy to say that it

was a very healthy household,

and he did a lot of the talking.

These are my daughters. This is Ann

Bernard and Tiffany. Hello. Hi,

Amber. Hi, Tiffany. Can I get you

something to drink?Tea, water, coffee,

anything?No, I'm fine, thank you. Well,

if you change your mind, you just let me

know. Oh, I'm so sorry that you had to

come out today, you know, when clearly

everything is so perfect in our house.

He was a really good actor. I

told the lady pretty much what my dad

had told me to tell them, that everything

was good at home, that we got proper

meals, and we were loved and taken care

of, and it was very scripted.

You always have clean clothes to wear.

Yes.

Does your dad get you to school on time?

Yeah. We put on

a really good show about everything just

being spectacular at the house. Well,

I think that's all I need to know. There

was no reason for them to look beyond

what they were seeing. Nice to meet you,

girls. And

nothing ever came of it. Okay, great.

I'll show you the way out. All

right. Girls, say goodbye. Bye.

We were just left to live with this

person because he was a nice

person on the outside.

I just started feeling so hopeless, like

there was no way out of the

situation that that we were in, that it

was never gonna get better, that it would

always be that way or worse.

I think it was around

that time period

that I started to become

suicidal.

That I just didn't want to live anymore

because I just didn't feel

like I was cared about or loved by

anybody.

I had locked myself in the bathroom with

knives many times, and I just wasn't

brave enough to take to cut myself.

And so I was at home,

and our dad had left us unattended. I had

seen things on television about all these

rock stars who OD on pills. So I found

pills.

I took them all.

Well, what did you go and do?

My dad basically just gave me this pep

talk about don't be depressed about life

anymore and just don't ever do that again

type thing. I feel

so bad. I

don't feel bad.

Now get up. It's time for dinner.

I think what was more devastating than

the feeling of leading up to that point

was the feeling I had after I realized

that he just didn't care. He

just just didn't seem to care at all that

I tried to kill myself.

And I remember telling my sister, what is

there worth living for anymore when your

own father doesn't care if you ever die?

She didn't want me to die. She wanted

me to be around. She didn't want to

be alone with him.

Stop! I just told you what needs to

happen. He just got angry. I can't

sticker with these kids. It's like, well,

if you don't take them now, you're never

gonna see them again.

I just wanted to see... if Amber and

Tiffany could come visit for a little

while. My dad had called my grandmother

that summer and asked

her if my sister and I could come visit.

It's just-- it's not a good time for them

to be here. He wanted to get married to

who-- the woman who became our stepmom,

and he didn't want us to be there for it

so that he could have, you know, the

honeymoon phase with her without us

getting in the way. And

my grandmother told him, you know, it's

just not a good time right now. I just

told you what needs to happen. No, I

can't stick her with these kids. That set

him off. It's a classic trigger for him.

He expected her to say yes, and she said

now is not a good time. So he just got

angry and said, well, if you don't take

them now, you're never going to see them

again. Damn it!

And so very shortly after that, we went

to go see her.

We left for California with a

singular suitcase, had a couple

changes of clothes, and that was it.

We were thinking we were gonna go back in

a month.

And we never did.

Tiffany, I was talking with your dad. How

would you feel if Amber came to live with

me?

My aunt had been talking to my dad about

having my sister go live with her for a

school semester because Amber was

struggling at school, and I

was so afraid to go be alone with

him. Please don't do this.

You'll be fine. No, you won't. I won't be

fine. I did not know how to be

strong without her to help me. I would

no longer have the extra person in

my life to rely on for the really bad

days.

I was really just kind of afraid that he

might kill me if we were alone, and that

was terrifying. I was in

such a panic. I burst into tears, and I

told her everything. He

hurts me, and...

And he's angry all the time. He hurts us.

I said, you know, please don't do this.

Don't make me stay alone with him. He

hurts us and he's molesting me and I

don't want to be alone with him. It's OK.

Well, my sister was there because we have

each other. Don't take her away from me.

Don't make me be alone with him.

I was afraid that she wouldn't believe me

because that was his sister. Tiffany,

are you saying he touches you?Yes.

Please don't take Amber away from me. How

long?since we moved home. Oh,

God. She promised to do

everything she could to prevent that

situation from happening. I'm so sorry.

Oh, I should have known.

That's when my aunt contacted my

grandmother, and my grandmother talked to

my sister, and that's when my sister came

forth and told everything about what was

happening to her, to my grandmother.

I remember being alone with my sister

and just her crying, saying, I didn't

know it was happening to you, too. Yeah,

he did it to me, too.

Neither one of us knew about the other

being sexually assaulted by him. She just

felt... so guilty. I

didn't want to say anything because I

thought if I kept quiet, he wouldn't

touch you. She just kept telling me I

thought it was only me. I thought if it

was just me, he wouldn't do this to you.

I'm so sorry I couldn't protect

you. It just hit me like a a ton of

bricks that day, finding out that

the person at the time that you most

deeply care about in your life and that

you are trying to keep safe is no longer

safe. In spite of your best

efforts and sacrifice to ensure that

safety, it is devastating.

He didn't actually... serve any long

time jail sentence, maybe like a few

weeks or months. And yeah, we lived in

constant fear that he was going to show

up at the door someday,

that he would retaliate against us.

We didn't have any contact with him after

that at all. We were so afraid of his

retaliation.

My sister and I did not continue to stay

close. She ran away from home

when I was 15. She said she didn't

like walls being around her. She didn't

want to live with my grandmother because

my grandmother had rules. My

sister didn't want rules. She didn't want

structure. I would hear from her every

couple years or so here and there. And I

worried about her.

I don't think I really believed it at

first. It's one of those moments

where you kind of do a double take. What

do you mean dad's a serial killer?

I hadn't really had much contact with my

sister. I received a phone

call from her. Hello?And it was

very strange that she called me because

she never really called me for anything.

So I answered the phone and my

sister just

told me no

real. Sugar coating on

it, she just said, hey,

have you watched news or something like

that?And I said no.

And she was like, oh, well, Dad's a

serial killer. That's exactly how she

said it. Dad's a serial killer.

I was just like, you know, OK,

what do you mean Dad's a serial killer?

Well, she said, you know, it's all over

the television. He was arrested

on suspicion of murder of all these women

in Houston. I got off the phone with her,

and sure enough... The man now

charged with the crime?41-year-old

Anthony Allen Shore.

It was all true. They say Shore

confessed to the four killings, showed no

remorse. Each victim was strangled with a

ligature wire.

Shore is now charged with four sex

murders dating back 17 years. The

killings occurred over a nine-year span,

and authorities fear Shore killed others

as well.

It was very surreal. It was like having

kind of like an out-of-body experience. I

wish I could share with you guys what he

told us. But it's unspeakable. He is

not remorseful. He is an evil man. You

hear the words and see what's going on,

but you just feel so disconnected from it

because it just doesn't seem consistent

with reality. I just--

I just shut down.

Yeah, these are all the women that he

murdered.

And children, they varied

between the ages of nine and 21.

You look at these faces and

it's devastating. It's very

upsetting because they were so young that

they never had the opportunity to be

adults.

That could have been us. This could have

been, this could have been my sister and

I easily. They all had dark

hair and dark eyes and

very young

features. He seemed to be drawn to little

girls that looked like

my sister and I.

All of the murders occurred during the

period of time we were living with him.

Was he trying to find people that looked

like us because he wanted to kill

us?That's something that's occurred to

me. And if that was the case, how badly

did he want to kill us?How long would it

have been before he would have strangled

my sister or I to death?It is a

terrifying thought. Would it have been

another month, another year when I made

it to adulthood?It's

terrifying. I am thankful to be alive

because. That could

have been either one of us.

And I try to

keep that in mind every time

I feel down and out about it, because I

don't feel like you ever

just get over something like that.

After finding out about it,All those

memories just came flooding back to me.

Things that just seemed unimportant just

became so relevant.

When we lived in Houston, we had this

van. The van had no seats

in the back. He had, like,

the cliche, stereotypical

serial killer van, and I rode around in

it. I remember seeing this girl walking

along. And there wasn't anybody around. I

just picked up and they were in the lane

and nobody saw . My

dad would pick up hitchhikers, and I just

thought it was so strange that my dad

would pick up a stranger off the side of

the road and just let them ride in our

car. So who

knows?I mean, I can only imagine what he

was doing. I was

driving around. I saw this

girl. Why not?I just said, Hey, you about

to go ahead. Jump right in.

There were all these signs that something

wasn't right, and nobody,

nobody did anything about it.

He had everybody convinced that he was

this fantastic, wonderful person,

neighbors and things, saying, Oh, he was

just such a nice guy. We couldn't see it.

When they said that he was going to get

the death penalty, it was almost a relief

because I thought, finally, he'll

be gone. You know, we'll all get closure.

We won't ever have to worry about what

he's going to say or do next or him

hurting anybody else or manipulating

anybody else.

He'll just be gone. And

it's frustrating. You know,

I... I've been counting

down the days for 10 years now,

waiting for that

closure. And it doesn't escape

me that I do have good memories of my

dad, and he wasn't always a horrible

person, but he did very horrible,

unforgivable things. He asked for death

row. He deserves death row.

So now it's just a waiting game.

When he is finally gone, I think I'll be

able to really breathe again.

But I haven't heard from my sister in

years. I don't know if she's alive. I

don't know if she's dead. I don't know if

she's in prison or if she got her life

together. I don't know. I don't know what

happened to her.

She didn't want to be found,

so we lost her.