Original subtitles

I was on the phone still with

the 911 operator as I went into the house.

I think that I just thought, "No, not possible.

Let's go see for yourself."

Jesse is one big ball of spite.

I mean, he has infinite hatred.

He gained so much joy out of other people's fear

and pain.

Bad people exist, and I happen to be

related to one of the worst people I know.

Jesse had intentions to kill me,

and he still does right now.

It's also extra devastating,

because he's up for parole.

I'm extremely fearful for my life.

He might get out one day.

This is a picture of Jesse,

who is three years older than me, in preschool,

and he looks so cute and innocent,

which is a little heartbreaking.

This makes me immediately think of my brother's preschool

teacher, and she told me he always kind of

seemed different.

He looks just so...

sweet and playful and childish.

But when I guess the cameras weren't present,

he was already kind of different.

Jesse was always kind of quiet, withdrawn.

He never really fit in.

It honestly makes me a little sad that

he could have been so cute and innocent at one point.

Looking at this photo and trying to think of...

happy circumstances I might have shared with him,

I can't... his goal in life generally was just

to try to make us as miserable as he was.

My mom had one of the hardest moral compasses

I have ever encountered in my entire life.

She raised us to know right from wrong.

However, I don't remember a time when he wasn't...

a liar.

I think probably the earliest memory I have

in terms of manipulation is the Oreo story.

We didn't have a lot of junk food in the house.

And I remember one instance, she bought this pack of Oreos.

Jesse! Amy! Come here, please!

And I remember Jesse being probably, like,

eight, maybe nine,

and he ate almost the whole pack in one sitting.

Who ate all these?

And through, like, gritted black teeth,

Oreos full in his teeth,

he said that I had eaten them.

Jesse, I see the crumbs on your teeth.

Mom made it a very strong point, though, to tell us,

like, hey, if you lie to me, I won't be able to believe you.

It'll be like the boy who cried wolf,

and he just wouldn't step down from that lie.

I only had one!

She ate all the others.

Jesse absolutely knew right from wrong.

I'm not lying.

I think that he almost got off on

knowing his actions

were wrong and that he was getting away with them.

Fine.

He taught himself to do whatever he had to do

to get whatever he wanted.

Go.

This is probably my favorite photo of the three of us...

Not because it's the best photo of us,

but because it really kind of

painfully illustrates our dynamic a bit.

That smug smirk on his face.

I don't remember him being a happy kid.

I don't remember him smiling a lot.

And I can see in this smile, the mockery.

It almost looks like he's laughing at how much

she adores him.

It looks like she's seeing him for

who she wants to see him for and not who he actually was.

I was in fourth grade, and he was in about seventh grade.

Things were absolutely already tumultuous in our home.

He would pick a fight about everything... chores, food,

mess... it doesn't matter, there was a constant fight.

And the very first violent act he executed

was punching a hole in the wall in our house.

There were so many holes punched in the wall.

Probably 10 or 15

holes this deep in our walls.

And we would worry he'd hit us.

He would punch a hole and say, "That could be your face."

Why was he full of so much anger?

We tried to make an excuse. We tried to figure it out.

Jesse!

- What is going on? - Nothing.

And sometimes that excuse can be my dad's absence.

My dad left my mom before I was born.

I really do think Jesse never got over

the feeling of being abandoned from my father.

But there are plenty of fatherless

children who are still fully functioning adults.

- You have to stop this. - Or what?

And I think he allowed himself to get more and more angry as

the years went on, because he always thought things should

have been easier for him.

Go to your room.

I think that is his very first excuse

towards the path that he chose in life.

As his behavior became so out of control,

my mom started seeking help from medical professionals,

and nobody seemed to know what to do with him.

He was being detained in teen rehabilitation centers

and sent home afterwards,

and he became extremely angry

and volatile.

One day, I remember there was a knock on our door, randomly,

and my mom answered, and there were just some people in suits.

They told her they were from CPS, Child Protective Services,

and they needed us outside.

So they pulled my brother and I outside.

I just need to ask you a few questions, okay?

I knew something was wrong. I knew something was weird.

This wasn't right.

They were asking me questions like,

"Does your mom ever hit you?"

- Has she ever hurt you guys? - No way.

My mom was my best friend.

No, absolutely not.

Um, and you know, they're, like, lifting up my shirt,

checking for bruises, and I remember, like, neighbors

peering through their windows,

and my mom was, like, embarrassed.

She had just assumed somebody in

the neighborhood had called CPS on her.

But I remember looking over at Jesse, and he smiles at me,

and it wasn't just like a "It's gonna be okay smile."

It was like a very sinister, dark smile.

Is there anything you need to tell us?

He was just gaining way too much pleasure

out of these people questioning us about her.

Amy.

And it made me think that he had caused that

day's occurrences,

like, wanting to turn my mom in for something

that she didn't do.

As soon as he sensed

somebody wanting him to behave in a certain way,

he was determined to do the opposite.

And that was such an awful day for me,

such an awful experience.

After CPS left,

I remember mom hugging us both and then

we never really spoke about that day again.

Are you okay?

Mom always wanted to believe in the best in everybody,

but especially her own children.

But when I look back at all of Jesse's actions,

I see that Jesse is capable of almost anything.

I don't think I have happy memories with my brother.

Thinking back, there are only

sort of tainted, manipulative memories.

And it started relatively innocently enough as

the cycle of abuse sometimes does.

Money was tight.

My mom was a single mother, and I remember one year,

I think I was in 5th grade,

she had bought me a yearbook, and I begged her.

It was like $200 for the yearbook.

And I got that yearbook, and I saw my picture, and I hated it.

And I scratched my face out of it.

- What are you doing in here? - Nice picture.

And my brother found it, and he... oh, God.

He was like, "She's gonna kill you.

You just wasted all her money."

Mom is gonna lose it when she sees this.

It made me feel like she was gonna be

severely disappointed in me, and I believed it.

Jesse, please.

I won't tell.

But then you have to do something for me.

So he... he blackmailed me to stay home from school.

So I did.

He starts blackmailing me to do different

things, like sexual acts in front of him.

He would make me undress in front of him,

insert objects inside of myself,

and he would keep those items as, like, totems.

You know, he actually never touched me sexually,

so it took me years

to realize that I had been abused.

In fact, I had never even heard the term sibling abuse.

I think he knew there was

absolutely something wrong with his behavior,

and that's why he never touched me.

Because he could just say, "I never touched her."

That only goes to show his shrewdness in terms

of manipulation even more.

He gained power,

and...

Happiness from seeing my misery.

A few months after the worst parts of it,

it actually all ended.

I clearly remember one day, we were in my mom's room,

all three of us, and Jesse wanted me to do something

for him.

I said no, and he simulated

having me wrapped around his finger.

He twirled his finger around the other one, and my mom

saw that action, and she asked him what that was about.

What is this?

And, you know, we both kind of froze.

I was like, wow,

what... what am I gonna admit in this moment?

Amy, what's going on?

He's telling me I have to do whatever he says.

And all I did say was, he's been blackmailing me

for something, um,

and that means he's got me wrapped around his finger,

and she made me tell her, I showed her my yearbook.

Didn't tell her anything else.

I was sure that I would

be grounded for the rest of my life.

- But she laughed. - Because of this?

She said, "I'm sorry you thought I would have been

that angry about something like that."

Amy.

Come on. That is nothing.

That's when the sexual abuse stopped entirely.

But also when he realized that level of

power that he had over me was gone.

That's when he started resorting to more

physical measures.

Jesse was a very volatile person.

I mean, he could go from 0 to 600

in the matter of a moment.

It was a constant,

is he gonna be okay?

Is he gonna be nice today?

Or is he gonna make my life miserable?

I remember the violence really starting to

escalate when he was about 16 or 17.

I remember,

I was making myself lunch.

I was in the kitchen, and out of nowhere,

he just came up behind me

and solidly, swiftly kicked me in between my legs.

I can't even describe the pain.

It radiated through my pelvis for days.

I remember hunching over and crying

immediately and just looking up at him like why?

I remember my mom was in the room, and she was like,

"What the?"

Jesse!

Why did you do that?

I was just curious.

He just said, "Oh, I just wanted to see if

it hurts a woman to be kicked between her legs."

That was his excuse.

Get out of here. No. Go.

Are you okay?

It was so traumatic to just out

of nowhere be attacked for no reason.

But we're kind of writing Jesse off.

He's going through a tough time.

Boys will be boys or kids will be kids.

We didn't realize that was abuse.

We just thought we were going through a really tough time.

Not only was Jesse the increasingly violent

and increasingly volatile,

but he also had this penchant for darkness and death.

I can remember one instance in particular, out of nowhere,

Jesse asked mom if she had ever seen a dead body.

Have you ever seen anyone die?

And she admitted, yes, she had.

Unfortunately, yeah, it was horrible.

And he goes, "Well, like, tell me details,

and, you know, was it bloody?"

Wait, are you serious? What happened?

When he asked her, I could see her reticence,

I could see she didn't want to talk about it, but she explained

how there was a party in the neighborhood...

And somehow,

some of the kids found a gun and started playing with it.

The teenagers had decided to play Russian roulette.

And, um, the parents heard a gunshot, ran over, and my mom

said she saw one

of the teenagers had shot himself, and you know,

Jesse was just like, "What? Tell me more."

I mean he asked her, like, "Blood everywhere?

What color were his brains?"

Was it in the head? Did his head explode?

Okay, don't be disgusting. We are not talking about this.

I knew in my heart, and she knew in her heart,

I could see it in her face,

that it was, like, confirmation that he had this

twisted obsession with all things dark and dangerous.

And she ended the conversation right there.

I said we're not talking about this.

We never talked about it again, to be honest.

And I really wish I had with my mom.

Jesse was very manipulative.

So I truly believe he made her think that he would change.

But unfortunately, that is not the way things played out.

As time went on,

his affinity towards weapons worsened,

and it scared me immensely to know that he was

collecting weapons.

Jesse would go online

and obtain really almost anything he wanted.

I remember him coming home with swords.

He definitely had a gun,

at least one,

and my mom really didn't know some of the extent of things.

She didn't know he had guns until he shot me.

And I remember just walking into his bedroom to

say something, I don't know, I wanted to ask him a question.

Hey, have you seen my CD player?

I can't find it.

I looked at him, and he pulled from

his side a gun that was all black,

and, like, my heart stopped.

I remember standing in his doorway,

and he's aiming a gun at me.

The look in his eyes,

he got too much joy.

He was smiling.

He was happy, seeing the fear in my eyes.

It was like he gained so much

joy out of other people's fear and pain.

I remember

thinking, "Holy, you're about to die.

Get out of his room. Get away from him."

When I turned away from him to get away, he shot me.

And I felt an immense pain in my buttocks,

and I realized it was a BB gun that he had shot me with.

What the hell?

Oh, don't be such a baby.

Afterwards,

he definitely tried to write off his actions as like,

"Oh, I was just with you.

"I was... I was messing around.

It's brothers... brothers will do that kind of thing."

But his actions spoke much louder than his words.

There was absolutely no remorse from him.

That was one of the scariest moments of my life.

It was awful to live on eggshells.

But that is exactly how I lived in that house.

It was part of his fear tactic, to make sure

we knew we weren't really that safe under our own roof.

I can remember several instances

where Jesse

gained so much pleasure

from hurting mom, at her worst.

She had ankle problems and back problems, which left

her wheelchair-bound for majority of the healing.

Can you make me some tea?

Uh, maybe later.

So I can remember her getting up out of her wheelchair,

and him just shoving her down forcefully into it.

Just stay there. I said I would get it.

Stop!

He hit her.

She couldn't lift herself up, and he had left.

I would hear her shouting, and it

would be her calling for me.

Amy?

It was horrific to see her in so much pain.

- Are you okay? - Yeah, I think so, yeah.

But it was even more horrific to see somebody that I thought

I had loved want to cause her even more pain.

Jesse was dropping out of high school.

Jesse didn't have a job, he didn't have a car.

He had no way of getting himself

out of the house any given day,

and mom was bound to the house at the same time,

and he was put in the position of taking care of her.

You can't keep letting him do this to you.

He was angry that he was now stuck at home with my mom.

And their relationship just worsened.

She would call the cops.

I remember the cops came to

my house probably upwards of 20 times.

Yeah, it's Jesse again.

But no parent wants their child in jail.

And so she would drop the charges.

She wanted to protect him, and that's

why she would let him back in.

This is around the time when

he started really hating mom,

and I mean hate with every sense of the word.

I was finishing up high school, heading

into college, and it got so much worse.

Um, and so much more violent when Jesse knew

I was not going to be home for a while.

For instance, one night,

I was at a fraternity party, and I told mom

and Jesse that I would not be coming home,

that I would, in fact, be sleeping over a friend's house

that evening.

I remember after, like, three hours or so, going back to

my purse and checking my phone just to see if anybody

had called.

Um, and there were just 20-something missed calls in

the last hour or so from my mom.

- I'll be right back. - Okay.

That left me a pit in my stomach.

My first thought was something awful had happened.

I immediately called back.

Um, and mom picked up, crying.

What happened... Is everything okay?

And she said, "Well, I need you home.

"Jesse attacked me.

"He grabbed an aerosol can and a lighter

and sprayed fire at me."

Well, did you call the police?

Of course I believed her, I just didn't want to.

I remember mom kicked him out, and we talked about what we

were gonna do with Jesse and if we'd allow him

back in the house.

You can't keep taking him back like this.

Whenever mom and Jesse would fight,

it always ended with him coming to me and expressing

the desire to watch her die.

Stay where you are. I'm coming home.

He'd say, "Come on, let me just run to Mexico.

I'll kill mom. You split the money with me later."

That conversation wasn't one conversation.

It was probably 20 conversations.

At the time, I did not think he was serious.

I never realized he would act on those threats.

I was wrapping up college, kind of lost,

and trying to find my way a little bit.

So I sought some guidance from a psychic.

And I told mom, and mom loved

the idea of going to a psychic, and it was really kind of

mind-blowing, to be honest.

She shared some things about my past

that happened to be spot-on.

The woman let us take notes.

We could write them all out.

And I asked mom to see her notes, and she said no.

And I asked her why, and I asked her what

the woman said, and she said she wouldn't tell me.

She said, "I just don't want to talk about it.

It's too negative."

Those were her words.

So that made me think that there

was something very ominous mentioned in that conversation.

Later on, it became very clear to me

that she had warned mom about Jesse.

I have to talk to you about something.

Okay.

It was not long after she said she had just named

me the sole beneficiary of an accidental death

life insurance policy.

I'm afraid he might do something.

I knew she had several... You know,

she had a heart attack policy. She had cancer policy.

But this one was the only policy that

covered her murder and did not name my brother

as a beneficiary.

Mom. That's crazy.

I'm sure he's not. I don't... I don't know.

I don't know.

I can't even imagine having that

conversation with one of my kids.

I could see she was sad.

She was kind of just facing

a reality as she thought could very well happen.

It was clear how fearful she was of him.

I'm just overthinking.

But as she's telling me this, I'm in complete denial.

I had no clue.

I had no way of knowing or truly believing

how bad things could get.

Mom did, but I didn't.

Hey, don't worry.

Nothing is gonna happen.

September 25th, 2007,

was kind of just like any other day.

I was at work.

The first phone call I received was from mom.

Hi, mom.

She wanted to know when I was gonna be home.

Is everything okay?

I had a date.

I told her it would be some time before I was

able to head back, and she said fine and hung up.

I felt off.

I felt there was something going on at home.

Not long after we hung up, I got a call from Jesse.

Hi, Jesse.

His voice was tense as well, and he wanted to know

when I would be home, too.

I don't know... I'm not gonna be home

until after 10... I'm going on a date.

Their phone calls were so close together.

I got the vibe that this was just

not a good evening for both of them.

But this wasn't that rare.

You know, I would get these phone calls occasionally

where I would be needed,

and most of the time, I would drop what I had... was doing

and... and come.

Other times, I couldn't.

And this was one of those evenings.

Fast forward about an hour or two.

I'm on the date, and although I probably

wouldn't normally pick up the phone,

I think the previous conversations I had with mom

and Jesse had left a pit in my stomach.

And so when mom called me again next...

I picked up.

- I'm sorry, I have to take this. - Yeah.

Mom?

She wanted to know when I would be home.

I told her it would be some time still.

I asked her if everything was okay.

She said fine, again.

I said, "Okay, bye."

Is everything okay?

Yeah, it's just family stuff.

So where were we?

Within a few minutes of getting off the phone with mom,

Jesse was calling me again.

Jesse, I can't talk right now.

I can remember his voice.

It was so tense at that time, and instantly, very gruff,

"What are you doing? What are you up to?"

And I told him I was on a date.

No, I'm still out.

"Well, let me know when you're on your way home."

And that was our conversation.

Basically, he hung up on me.

And that was the moment I knew,

very clearly, that something was absolutely wrong.

I tried to focus on my date,

but I could not ignore the nagging sensation

that something was wrong.

- I think I have to go. - Oh.

I left my date,

and I started home with this big pit in my stomach.

So I called home.

Come on mom, where are you?

And mom did not pick up, and that was kind of weird,

especially since it was, like, 10:00 at night.

So I called Jesse.

"Hey, mom is not picking up.

This is very weird."

Jesse, do you know where mom is?

And at that point, Jesse told me not to go home.

I was like, "What are you talking about?

Of course I'm going home. It's 10 o'clock at night."

"Just don't go home," and he hung up.

Uh, so I called him back again, and he said,

"I told you, don't go home."

And I said, "Why, Jesse, come on, like, enough."

And he said, "I killed mom."

And I think I remember screaming and saying,

"No, you didn't."

I told him to shut up.

I told him not to lie to me.

Um, and he said, "No, I killed mom."

And he hung up, and he turned off his phone.

I thought to myself, you can

go home and see if he's lying.

You can call 911 and report it.

And that's what I did.

I... I...

It was more of a possibility for him to

tell me a sick joke like that on the phone,

because that had happened millions of times, right?

Just to see a reaction, you know?

So, I think that I just thought, no, not possible.

I was on the phone still with

the 911 operator as I went into the house.

Yes, please.

I looked to my left, into the kitchen, which

was her favorite room, and that's where I found her.

She was lying on the ground in a very large pool of blood.

I saw that her hand was outstretched, and just out of

the reach of her fingers was the phone.

She was trying to get help.

And on the off chance that she was still around, her spirit,

her... even if she was just hanging on by a thread,

I leaned over her, and I hugged her and kissed her, and I told

her I loved her, and then I ran out,

and about the time I...

My feet hit the grass outside, the police had arrived.

Probably around midnight or so,

everybody that had amassed outside of

our house migrated into my neighbor's home.

I don't remember faces.

I don't remember, like, even seeing details.

I just remember very tall sheriff's department deputies

telling me that Jesse had, after killing mom, had gone upstairs,

washed himself off, changed his clothes, and fled.

Amy?

What happened? Did you find him?

He had called a friend for some help.

He told the friend he did something really bad.

He needed help,

and he needed a ride to Mexico.

He was arrested.

I took the seat, and I was forced to just look

right at him, and there was just something different

about him.

He looked purely evil.

I mean, truly maniacal.

How're you doing, sis?

One of the first things out of

his mouth was, "I dream about mom a lot.

She visits me here. She forgives me."

- Mom's not mad. - Stop.

He didn't ask for forgiveness, but he basically

implied that he wanted it

and that mom had given it to him.

And I told him I did not. I did not forgive him,

and I did not plan to.

You disgust me.

Eventually, Jesse and I did

talk about what happened that night.

He was making a sandwich at the counter,

and mom asked him if he would clean up after himself.

I mean, honestly, he's come up behind me

and kicked me in the vagina for no reason.

So I don't think anything had to precipitate the argument

to make him want to hurt her the way he did.

I asked for him to take responsibility

for what he had done.

I asked for him to stop this

legal battle that we were embarking on.

Um, and he told me he would think about it.

And instead he pled

not guilty by reason of diminished capacity.

Jesse dragged out the legal process of

our attempt to convict him for years.

It was endless, really.

One day, I got a phone call from the detective.

"Can I come over? It'll be about an hour,"

that's what he said.

And in my head, oh gosh,

I'm going through all the possibilities.

I'm thinking maybe Jesse is dead.

Maybe he's ready to plead guilty.

I don't know what.

And when he got there, he sat me down, and he said,

"Did you have anything to do with your mom's murder?"

And I said, "What?"

And he said, "I have to ask you again, were you part

of the plan to kill your mother?"

And I said, "Absolutely not. She was my best friend.

"How could you be asking me that this long into

"this process?

I've talked to you a million times."

He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket,

and I could instantly see it was just scribbles of.

Jesse's writing.

He had written this manifesto of sorts to another inmate,

professing that I had helped him plan my mom's murder.

This is the letter.

It says,

"Check it out,

"a couple of years ago, when my sister initially

came up with the idea to do this thing..."

Even that it makes me so angry.

Excuse my language.

It makes me so angry to hear him write,

"the idea to do this thing."

Murder is a word that

I cannot go by a single day in my life without saying.

I can't say my mom died.

I can't say she passed, and for him to write,

"I came up with the idea to do this thing,"

is so infuriating.

He goes on to write, "She said when I got out I could live

"with her, and she would split

all the money she gets with me, and nobody would ever know."

This is a little jarring.

I obviously haven't seen it for quite some time.

And this reminds me just how sick he is.

This just proves the very worst.

There's something else I should warn you about.

The detective explained that Jesse had

asked the inmate to kill me.

Excuse me?

The moment he told me that Jesse had intentions to

kill me, I instantly honestly threw up.

I raced to the bathroom and vomited and did not stop.

It was almost four years after she had been murdered.

I now not only had a brother

I was trying to convict but also a death threat looming

over my head.

I was exhausted.

The district attorney said, "Look,

"we basically have an option now... we can offer him

a plea deal."

And I didn't like that idea.

But again, I was just... I was done.

Fine.

He took that plea deal, which was offered to him.

The plea deal was second-degree murder,

and he was sentenced and given 15 to life.

I received notification April 16th, this year,

which was only 9 and 1/2 years after his conviction, um...

letting me know that he was up for his very

first parole hearing.

The hearing will be in two weeks.

I feel shocked. I feel sick to my stomach.

I feel devastated and disappointed

and heartbroken all over again.

I have no clue what I would do if

Jesse got out of prison... If I heard the words

that he was being released,

I would run as far away from this state as possible

so he couldn't find me and my kids.

That morning, I think I just woke up with

a sense of dread and also a sense of prepare for anything.

The hearing was officially the first time I saw my brother

in about 10 years,

and he was staring right at me, and he said hello,

and it made me sick.

One of the first things he said was that

he has stabbed over 90 people

since getting into prison,

and he was smirking when he was talking about how many

people he had stabbed, and at that point he chose

to recite my address and then tell me that he could have

my whole family and myself killed if he wanted to.

It was really shocking and gutting in that moment.

And he kept at that point, going like this, crossing his...

I'm sorry, his thumb actually,

across his throat at me... When the hearing was complete,

the outcome was officially that we would be returning to

the hearing room and another parole hearing in two years.

I have my own life sentence, that I'll do this until

he dies,

I die, or he gets out... Victims like myself,

we shouldn't feel like we're given

a death sentence after we've experienced murder.

Um, I think that we should be given some sort of peace.

I am definitely taking precautions,

and I'm considering moving, to be honest.

Nothing would give me greater joy to see him as a different,

happy, healed person, but that's not possible.

Um, and this parole hearing made it incredibly

painfully clear.

So I would like to see him behind bars

the rest of his life.

And I hope that that is how our story plays out.