Original subtitles

We were just eating spaghetti at

the dinner table,

and I was slurping my spaghetti, and she was not

having it, but she was slurping her spaghetti.

I thought it was funny. I was a kid.

And all I remember is just eating my spaghetti,

and then just feeling, like,

a super intense, piercing pain, and looking over,

and I had a fork in my arm.

I don't ever remember going to the hospital or anything.

I just remember sitting there and, like, getting stabbed in

the arm and looking over,

and they're just, like -- My arm literally bleeding with

a fork in it.

I have a tattoo that covers the scar from my mom, it says,

"I forgive you."

And then it's, uh, Mary Bernice Rowles underneath.

It's my mom's initials.

MAN: Mary Rowles sobbed in court.

Alice Jenkins showed little emotion as they heard the long

list of charges they were about to admit to.

I have had cold-blooded murderers

stand in front of me, rapists, child abusers,

burglars, drug traffickers.

I would have to say that the two of you are perhaps

the coldest, most unfeeling,

least empathetic criminals I have ever seen.

You don't really know, like, what's going on inside

people's homes.

You just don't know.

There's, like, demons inside some homes

and, like, you just don't know.

It's scary, man.

Like your neighbor, the person across

the street or someone like your family,

it could be your family member,

you wouldn't even know it's happening.

[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]

[strings continue playing sinister tune]

[static crackling]

[knock at door] [creaking]

[banging on door]

[creaking]

[water dripping]

[banging on door] [creaking]

[sinister chord strikes]

JESSE: My mother's name is Mary Rowles.

From age 15 to 21,

she had six children.

The furthest back I can remember is...

1997.

I was living with my mom and my brother Tyler,

my sister Marissa,

my brother Darrell and Danny, and Caleb had just been born.

She was, like, a really good mom.

There's early photos of us, like, going

to Chuck E. Cheese and stuff like that,

and, like, just being kids.

Before Alice, my mom treated us pretty good.

My mom met Alice at a gay nightclub in Akron, Ohio.

And then the next thing I know, we're living in a new house

with just Alice.

My three older siblings, Darrell,

Danny, and Marissa, moved in with their fathers, and I was

left with Alice, Mary, my older brother,

Tyler, and my younger brother, Caleb.

And for a while, everything seemed okay.

But Alice saw herself as the boyfriend,

the man of the house.

♪

This is the house that we lived in last,

I was 14 when I saw the house last.

Just get, like, a little nervous when I see this.

It seemed for -- like for years we were never gonna make

it out of that house and away from Alice and Mary.

It's just like... I don't know.

Um, just makes me nervous, because it --

It just make -- like, this house makes me think about just,

like, dark times.

Nobody knew what was going on.

At first, Alice treated us pretty good,

like, pretty kind, but over time,

she kind of got, like, jealous of the attention that Mary was

giving us.

Alice began to separate us from our mother

and tie us to the bed when she went to work.

Get on the bed and lie down.

JESSE: Tyler and I were both put in the same room

in the beginning,

two twin beds side by side, essentially, and she would tie

us by our wrists and our ankles to

the bedposts so we would essentially be strung, like,

laid out so we couldn't roll over or move around.

Alice was never aggressive with it.

She was just very quiet and very stern

and just wanted to handle business and be done with it.

And Mary was taking care of Caleb most of

the day, because he was still a baby at the time.

So I didn't see much of Mary.

Stay here and be quiet until I get back.

So we would just be, like, in a room tied to beds,

Tyler and I, side by side.

I didn't really understand, like, what was going on.

It scares me more now, like, as an adult

than it -- than it did when I was a kid.

I didn't really understand it then -- I was

just so young, and, like, just seemed normal.

♪

After a while, we figured out how to untie ourselves,

and then we'd come downstairs

to, like, hang out with our mom and hang out with Caleb.

Alice would get very frustrated when she'd come home

and see that we were downstairs with Mary,

and we had escaped,

but it definitely appeared as though it was kind of a game.

Because, like, we didn't get punished for escaping.

We would just go to bed and repeat the process.

It seemed like that was the game of it all was to be

tied up and then to escape

and then to be tied up and to escape.

It just seemed like she wanted the separation between

Mary, Tyler, and I, trying to, like, break that bond.

Alice sort of became the divide between Mary

and her children.

When we would escape during the day, she would come home,

and we would be doing the same thing,

just on the couch, hanging out with Mary,

trying to spend time with our mother.

And one day, she just separated us into separate rooms...

and tied the opposite opening doors together so that

we couldn't get out or open either door.

She was very quiet and reserved and almost seemed like

it was just a task

that she had to do, almost as if we were just animals to take

care of.

The doors being tied together

felt less of a game

and more like a punishment or like imprisonment.

There's, like, nothing really to do in the room.

You're kind of just sitting around from like eight a.m.

to four p.m.,

when Alice would come home to give us dinner.

♪

♪

There's just no word to describe the emptiness

of just, like -- just feeling like you're all alone,

like, trapped in a space for an extended period of time,

and there's no way to track time, and you're just there

by yourself.

There's no one there to talk to.

You're kind of just, like, left in your own head,

left to your own thoughts.

Tyler and I liked banging on the walls and making music.

That became a way that we would, like, talk to each other,

as well, just like tapping on the wall.

Even after dinner, we were still taken to our rooms

and the doors were tied together

so that we were just left alone in our separate

rooms at night.

Mary never said anything to us once

we started being separated into separate rooms.

Sometimes she wouldn't even, like, be there when

we were at the table to eat dinner.

It would just be us.

We'd eat real quick and then go back upstairs.

I do think it was to keep

all of Mary's attention focused on Alice.

Alice's behavior slowly got worse, and she started

withholding food from us,

essentially starving us.

Up until this point, Alice would let

Tyler and I out of the room.

Most of the time, we would just have Captain Crunch

or something for breakfast, just a little cereal.

And then for dinner, the majority of what

we had was mac and cheese and hot dogs.

But I just remember one day, her coming up and opening

the door, and I'm sitting there,

and she just has a paper plate with a half

a peanut butter sandwich on it.

That was our dinner.

Like, half a peanut butter sandwich

didn't seem enough for a dinner

or to last you through the whole day.

You eat your sandwich, and when

you're finished, you go right to bed.

JESSE: I just thought it was just, like, a snack or something

until it started to become routine, where she wouldn't let

us out.

It went from having dinner downstairs

and breakfast downstairs,

to, like, just eating in the room all the time.

♪

We weren't allowed out to use the restroom.

That's when we started using the corners of the bedroom.

We would pull up the carpets and use

the restroom and put down the corner of the carpet

so Alice couldn't find it,

and we did that for months and months.

It's just crazy.

It's very animalistic.

No one should have to survive like that.

I was not able to talk to Tyler during that time.

I assumed he was getting the same food I was,

but we hadn't seen each other

for 10 to 11 months at that time.

At that point, it's almost like

the days all connect, because everything's the same.

♪

We had no other contact with Alice besides that.

And Mary didn't do anything in this situation.

Is everything okay?

They're fine. They're just having dinner.

Mary should have called the police in this situation

or called CPS or called a family friend or her parents.

She could have just walked out.

She didn't stand up for her children, defend us,

protect us like you're supposed to.

I've asked her why she allowed it to happen multiple times,

and she says that she was strung out

on morphine and just simply wasn't herself.

But it's not supposed to be like that.

[sniffles]

She failed.

She should have just left.

JESSE: Mary had taken Darrell and Danny

and Marissa's fathers to court for custody.

Mary wanted partial custody.

So they'd come over and visit and hang out

for a couple hours on the weekend.

There was a honeymoon phase of about two weeks to a month

where everyone was on

good terms, and we all just slept in normal beds, and we had

breakfast and dinner downstairs.

Alice was kind of, like, trying to cover her tracks so they

couldn't say anything when they would return home

to their biological father.

♪

One day, we're just woken up, and we're dressed

in very minimal clothes, like shorts and a T-shirt.

Now I'm just, like, being walked somewhere with Marissa.

We had never been outside at that point.

♪

My first day walking to school was the first time I ever

remember going outside,

and I didn't realize there was a whole world, like,

outside of the bedroom.

Alice is standing on the sidewalk in front of

the house,

watching Marissa walk us down the street

to the elementary school.

I didn't understand what school was even.

We were all very unequipped to even be in public at the time.

We couldn't read. I couldn't tie my shoes.

We weren't potty trained.

They were literally sending wild animals to school.

But I don't remember any of the teachers

asking any questions

about my size or my malnourishment or showing

any concern,

and I don't remember ever telling anyone at

school either.

We were going to school for about 2 to 3 weeks,

and we were just taken out instantly, all of a sudden.

I hope that one of the teachers reported something

or someone said something,

but I don't know if they -- Any of my teachers knew what was

going on.

Nothing ever came of it.

Nothing was ever done about our situation.

And once Alice and Mary pulled us out of school,

things started to get worse at home.

It was about a week or two after we'd stopped going

to school, and we had seen kids

out on the sidewalk, coming home from school.

They're hollering up at us.

Hey! Hi, guys!

And they're, like, trying to get us to come out and play, like,

"Let's hang out."

And, like, that's all they were trying to do,

just, like, kids being kids.

We can't come out.

We're not allowed.

We're hollering down to them, tapping on the window.

But then it ended up, like, getting us in trouble...

Hey!

because Alice came home and was, like, freaking out.

What the hell is going on in here?

Get away from that window!

"What are you doing? Like, you're not supposed to be by

the window, and people shouldn't know you're in here."

If you can't behave yourselves, you can stay in here.

JESSE: And then that's when the closet thing started.

It's a 3-by-5 closet with a carpet inside.

There was no shelving, no overhead bar to

hang anything.

Just an empty closet, no pull string lamp, nothing.

And so she puts us in the closet and just --

I just remember that padlock going on

and, like, it being really dark in there.

The first time that Alice put us in a closet,

I thought it would be a one-time or just, like, a short

span punishment, but it just

ended up being continuous and ongoing.

In the beginning, the closet door was just getting locked,

and then over time, a large brown dresser was

acquired, and they would take that dresser and put it in

front of the closet door so that if she ever forgot

the lock, which she did a couple of times,

the dresser's there.

For about three years,

we were spending periods of time in the closet,

which is complete dark,

like, there's no light except for the light that comes

underneath the door.

And we would get fed super sporadically, not let out

for breakfast, not let out for dinner.

There was no regular schedule -- Alice just came

in whenever she pleased to feed us.

Alice would come upstairs with half a peanut butter sandwich

and either let us out, and we would have to eat it

in front of her on our knees,

or she would open the door and just give it to us, and we would

eat where we'd been using the restroom and sleeping.

There would be two of us sharing

this half a peanut butter sandwich,

so we would eat as slow as possible,

just, like, essentially, like, little hamster nibbles,

and then we would vomit it back up and eat it again.

It's a tough one to think about.

It was a survival tactic.

I actually, like, struggled with a huge eating disorder when

I became a teenager,

because of, like, my body could not keep food down,

and I have terrible, terrible vision from, like,

being locked in the dark.

At one point, we had thought that we could escape through

the closet,

like digging a hole out of the house.

We were just using our fingernails to, like,

dig our way out.

Tyler and I were confined to the closet for anywhere

from a couple of weeks to a month at a time,

and we're in complete darkness,

so we don't know what time it

is until Alice opens the closet door.

I didn't have a concept of day or night and, like,

I didn't understand the concept of telling time.

Now that I know how to tell time, and I know what a year is,

like how -- How fast a year goes by,

and then, like, one month or two months

in darkness feels like 10 years.

It's hard to keep track of like who you are

and how old you are, and time is super foggy.

And so now, I always keep track of time, and I manage time,

and I try -- I try to do as much as I can

with the time I've got, but...

It's a long time.

It seems like such a long time.

[sniffles]

Can I take a break?

[sniffles]

♪

This is the closet, the 3-by-5 that we were in,

um, and Tyler and I would just share this space.

When I see it fully lit up,

definitely feels like a different space.

I always remember it as just, like, a large,

black box,

and you can see that we tore the paint clean off

the walls in a few spaces, and we did that with

our fingernails.

There were often times we would end up sleeping

in our urine, because we wouldn't be allowed to

use the restroom for days at a time, and we'd just have to

use the restroom in the closet.

It's insane to think that we survived

in, like, just a small space, just him and I for, like,

so long and, like, held out.

It's just crazy to think that Alice could have

put us into an environment like this for so long.

JESSE: All the physical violence was towards Tyler.

It started with him getting kicked in

the groin, and then him getting

kicked down the stairs.

Alice just had a lot of hate for Tyler.

Tyler and I would be in the closet, and we would be

too loud for Mary and Alice while they were home,

just by talking.

Anything that disturbed Alice's time

with Mary earned you a spanking.

You can hear her steel-toed boots

that she wears coming up the steps.

It would sound incredibly heavy

and ominous and dangerous and aggressive.

She's coming.

Shhh.

That became, like, the notorious sound, just pounding.

The second you hear her hit that bottom step,

it's like be quiet, don't move, if she can't hear us in

the closet, maybe she'll forget we're here.

You know I can hear you all the way downstairs.

She would essentially call us out of the closet and force us

to get down on your shins

and knees and look up at her, because she wants that

power of people below her.

Get out here.

- But I... - Now!

She would spank or whip him with the belt.

It became less about, like, getting fed

and more about just, like, surviving.

I would have rather died of starvation

than him gotten beat a couple of times.

He and I have talked -- he just

feels like he was treated like a slave.

That wasn't fair.

I would do it all over again just to prevent all of that.

One day, Tyler and I are taken out of the bedroom and taken

downstairs and sat on the floor

in the family room, and a trash bag of stuffed animals and toys

and trinkets, which we'd never seen before,

spewn all over the floor.

Go ahead. Play.

JESSE: We're not, like, really playing.

We're just sitting there, and it's all super strange.

We'd never been given anything,

and two strangers we've never seen before

came into the house.

I thought maybe it was just,

like, some of Alice and Mary's friends.

We didn't know at the time that was CPS.

I believe CPS was prompted to come to the house

because someone,

either Marissa or Danny or Darrell, said something to

their fathers.

Danny and Darrell would come over on the weekend,

so they would come upstairs and hang out with us.

Alice would let Tyler and I out of the closet.

So we would be in the room,

and you could smell the feces in the bedroom.

And I assume over the span of the years that Danny,

Darrell, and Marissa were saying something to their parents

or their teachers at school about our conditions.

But CPS never -- never went upstairs, never looked at

the bedroom, never looked at the closet.

They didn't ask us any questions at all.

If they would have just gone upstairs and turned

the corner into the bedroom, it would have been over,

but they didn't.

Alice seemed super calm.

Mary really let Alice do most of the talking.

It's like theater to Alice.

It's all just, like, a big show to put on.

Thank you so much for coming to check in.

JESSE: When they left, Alice packed up

all the stuffed animals and the toys

right back into the garbage bags

that they were in, and we were taken right back upstairs

and put right back into the closet.

Once Alice had that first CPS visit,

and they walked out the door,

she knew she was golden. She could get away with it.

In 2003, Darrell, Danny, Marissa,

Tyler, myself, and Caleb

were all living in the house.

Mary wanted full custody,

and my three older siblings moved

into the home with us.

We were always telling Danny and Darrell that we weren't

getting fed, and then that would get back to Marissa.

Marissa was essentially our golden ticket.

Marissa had led us out into the room a couple times,

and then Marissa would sometimes be

the one to, like, have to lead us to the bathroom, because

Alice doesn't want to deal with it.

She was never inhumane about anything.

Like, she definitely looked out for us.

One time, I remember Marissa letting us

out of the closet, and she talks about how

Alice and Mary had went out.

We asked her if, like, can we go downstairs,

can we -- can we get some food?

Please?

All right, but we have to make this quick,

because they could get home any minute.

Got it?

And we went downstairs to check out the kitchen to find

the cupboards were packed,

the fridge was packed, everything completely full.

And in that moment, it definitely made Alice seem like

more of just an outright evil by choice

person, when she clearly had all the resources to

provide, and she just chose not to.

I was definitely overwhelmed that even that --

That much food could exist in one space.

We took anything from cans of Pringles to Gatorade to

granola bars, everything that they had,

we took upstairs.

And we had Marissa put us back into the room.

You can't tell anyone about this, all right?

JESSE: Locked us back in the closet, and we ate as much as we could.

I had never been so full in my life, and it was delicious.

And when Alice got home, she was furious,

absolutely furious.

It was probably two or three days before we got fed again.

Alice lets us out of the closet,

and we're kneeling, and she's standing above us.

She had a bowl for each of us.

She just puts it down, and like we all see it, and she

just told us that we had to eat it for stealing her food.

What's the matter?

I thought you were hungry.

We were forced to eat feces.

Eat it.

JESSE: And we assumed it was the family dog,

like from the backyard.

♪

Sometimes, I think about, like, I didn't have to do it.

Like, they didn't have a gun to my head.

But like, I just felt so trapped in that situation.

Makes me feel super low as a human.

[sniffles]

And it still takes a toll on me today.

I still think about that all the time.

That affects you -- that affects you as a human being.

You have to be low to be able to force

someone to do something like that, to take away

their humanity.

JESSE: In 2003, I was eight years old.

Alice was feeding us once a week at

that time -- I hadn't seen my mother in months.

So at that point, I kind of knew we were just on our own.

I just wanted to get out.

I start to try to convince Tyler

and everybody else of the same thing.

We were mainly trying to figure out how we were gonna

get out of this situation, because at that time, Danny

and Darrell had already talked to their father,

Marissa had talked to her father, and nothing

had happened, and that's when we started

planning for essentially a getaway plan.

So one evening, Marissa comes into the room while Alice

and Mary sleeping, and she lets

Tyler and I out of the closet, and Darrell and Danny and Caleb

are all in the room, and she's like,

"We gotta do it now," and she's panicked, like frantic panic.

- What are you doing? - Shh! Stay quiet.

We're gonna get you out of here. - What? Right now?

JESSE: She was like, "Tonight's the night.

Tonight's the night." - It can't wait.

It has to be now.

And that's when she had mentioned that

we should try to go out the window.

You got to go with them, Darrell,

make sure they get out okay.

JESSE: Then we have to decide, like,

who's going, because there's six of us.

We all can't go, because if Alice comes back in and looks

in the room, the same people have to be in the room.

We have to get you guys out first.

BOY: Yeah, you guys have to go.

Darrell, Tyler, and I decided to leave, and Caleb, Danny,

and Marissa stay behind.

We'll be fine -- now hurry.

JESSE: Marissa tried to cover

our tracks.

She had put the dresser back in front of

the closet just in case Alice would wake up and come in.

Darrell wants me to get on his back, and then he's gonna climb

down the gutter, so I get on his back,

and he climb -- he shimmies over the edge of the roof,

and he slides down the gutter, and when we land on the floor,

the gutter breaks and makes the loudest bang.

We're waiting for Mary and Alice's bedroom light to just

turn on, like we all froze,

and we waited for a couple of minutes.

Bedroom light never came on.

Tyler jumps down from the roof,

and then we start walking up the street.

There was a bit of adrenaline, and then you realize, like,

you just escaped and, like, you start like looking around,

and like the sky goes all the way up,

and there's trees everywhere, and it

was very overwhelming.

It's crazy. It was beautiful, though.

Myself and my siblings, trekking to freedom,

it was, like -- it's more beautiful now than it was then.

Three near naked boys,

walking in the streets at 3 a.m.,

malnourished and unclothed and unbathed,

no shoes, no socks, almost looked like we were homeless.

We had no plan.

It was just, like, just get out

and walk and, like, hopefully, someone would do something.

We walked around the corner and got some

water from a hose from some lady's house,

and there was a house light that was on.

And there was a lady just

standing in the curtain, like, watching us,

and she's holding the curtain with one hand,

and she's got the phone in the other hand.

No more than 30 seconds later, we get

a cop car that comes zipping right at us,

[sirens wailing]

And they pull us over and ask us why we're walking around

the streets of Akron, and we didn't want to say

anything at first out of fear that we would just end up right

back at Alice's, and they would side with her.

We were all sitting in the back seat, and that's when

they had offered to buy us food

if we would have a conversation with them,

and they have taken us to get sandwiches and large

sports Gatorades --

A foot-long sub with meat and veggies and cheese and things

I never even had before.

I had no clue what the sandwich was.

Still don't to this day, because I'd never had

it before.

And the second we started eating in the back of their car

and they noticed, like, how animalistic

we were eating the sandwiches,

and they realized something was wrong.

And that's when we kind of started to tell them that

we're being locked in a closet

and starved and abused, and this is going on.

What do you mean you live in the closet?

We're not allowed to come out unless Alice says we can.

They're not responding.

They're just, like, sitting there, just, like, staring at us

with, like, blank faces, just taking everything in.

I was very terrified that they would not believe us.

They make a radio call, and we're just, like, sitting there

in silence, essentially,

and they get off the radio call,

and we just start driving.

They literally tell us we're gonna

take you back home. - No, please!

So we're screaming, and we were freaking out.

We're like, "Why are you taking this back?"

You're supposed to help!

We're trying, like, to get as low and scrunched in as

possible so that if they open the back doors,

they're gonna have to, like, literally pull us out of

the car, because, like, there's no way

we're going back to the closet.

All right, we're taking you back.

JESSE: It was very nerve-wracking.

I definitely thought they were going to just side with Alice,

just like everybody else had.

You can't take us back there!

And then they're just like, "Relax, relax.

We're not taking you out of the car."

And then they stayed in the car with us,

and a bunch of other police showed up.

They kicked the door in, rushed inside.

And then the next thing I know, out walks

Alice and Mary in handcuffs, side by side.

And that was the last time I saw my mom.

I still think about it sometimes.

It's definitely a moment that, like, plays in my head,

and, like, it's nice, like,

I don't know, that was, like, the moment, um,

that, like, we were all able to get some peace,

and they were gonna pay for what they did.

♪

These are me.

Um, these are two photos I keep on my phone.

It was like -- I kind of just look at to, like,

remind me...

remind me where I came from.

Um, these two pictures show the abuse and neglect

and malnourishment that we faced under Alice

and Mary's wrath.

I was eight years old, and I weighed

28 pounds in these photos.

I don't have any chest, and my sternum's caved in

a little bit.

I've got huge bags under my eyes,

like I haven't slept in weeks.

I remember, like, being this size, like, for

a long time, and just, like, felt like years.

I felt like a really old soul in that body.

I'm just proud of myself, too.

Like I know, he's proud of me, and I'm proud of him.

This is my favorite photo.

I take a lot of pride in this photo.

This photo was taken, um, about a year after.

This was, like, the epitome of being,

like, a kid, and I would just like ride in circles in

the driveway all day long.

These were good years in my life where, like, nothing bad

happened, where I was able to just, like, soak up time

and, like, be a kid and do what I wanted, and I didn't have to

worry about anything, and people were taking care of me.

Someone who wasn't my mother was willing to give me that,

like, time and attention and effort to, like, have

a childhood.

MAN: Mary Rowles sobbed in court.

Alice Jenkins showed little emotion as they heard the long

list of charges they were about to admit to --

Kidnapping, felonious assault,

endangering children, and then...

Miss Jenkins, what is your plea? - Guilty.

Alice and Mary both pled guilty and were sentenced to

30 years.

I think that both Mary and Alice

pled guilty just to limit the time they'd spend behind bars.

MAN: Judge Patricia Cosgrove held Mary Rowles

just as responsible,

even if she may not have initiated the abuse.

At any point in time,

if you acted as a mother in this case,

you could have prevented the harm to your children.

You chose not to.

Now,

I'm already halfway through those 30 years, it's been 15.

So in 2033, they both get out,

and, like, now that I, like, start getting closer

to that end date, just doesn't seem like enough time.

Our conditions as children were worse

than their conditions in a state prison.

These are their online

inmate photos -- Alice definitely looks tired in

the eyes.

Mary has changed a lot. She looks super old.

It just makes me angry that they could still be smiling.

They almost look content and comfortable

with where they're at.

Back in 2017,

I had contacted Alice and asked her why she did

the things she did and if she felt

any remorse, and she claimed that

she didn't do anything wrong and that she was playing

the role and doing the job that

Mary should have done as the mother.

♪

Mary, she writes me occasionally.

Mary would always just reply that she's sorry.

She should have never let it happen.

I don't believe her apologies.

I think it's just what Mary expects people want to hear.

But it was important to forgive her

and not forget it but just to let her go and

let her existence be hers and let mine be mine.

I want to forgive Alice, but I haven't yet.

It's hard to look back on what happened between

me and my siblings, but we endured and made it through.

Darrell ended up having kids of his own,

and Danny is doing pretty good,

he's married and has a couple of kids, and I talk to Danny

pretty -- pretty regularly.

Um, Tyler, as well.

I haven't talked to Caleb in a few years.

I love Marissa.

After years of separation,

I was able to get in contact with her and meet her beautiful

children and see her

as, like, a full-grown parent.

She was just...

a good mother.

She just wanted -- that was her dream, like, that's all she

wanted was to be a mom and do it right, and on her way home,

she dropped her kids off at school, and then on her way home

from dropping her kids off at school,

she got hit in a head-on collision

by a street racer, and it killed her instantly.

I don't know, man.

I just think about Marissa every day.

I want to know why it all happened, and we could

have been a good, like, strong family.

Like, there's no reason we couldn't have been.

I know, like, I could have died in that situation, like...

they were gonna let me, so, like, I see

the world through a lens where bad things are

probably happening,

um, and I just want more things to be done about it.

You look at the homes, like, nobody knows what goes on

inside a house, like, nobody,

You just don't know -- There's, like, demons inside

some homes, and, like, you just don't know.