Original subtitles

When I was little, I would try to intimidate my dad.

He would be on the couch, and I would come

up to him and I would flex my muscles like Superman,

and I'd say as stern as I could at four or five,

"I'm made of steel," and he would laugh and punch me

in the stomach and knock the wind out of me.

I would lay there and gasp.

He would taunt me.

He would stand over me and repeat my words.

"Oh, you're made of steel, huh? What happened?

What... I thought you were made of steel?"

And if I got back up and did it again,

he would punch me again, as many times as I would stand there,

he'd punch me in the gut and knock the wind out of me.

What I remember, is feeling

so defeated that he hadn't backed down.

I remember feeling like such a failure,

that my plan to intimidate him

hadn't worked at all.

I felt really helpless.

The lasting effects of the trauma

in my life wouldn't just go away,

and so I just forced myself to do the things

I needed to do to get here to tell the story.

I was the only one who knew my dad's secrets.

The stories are horrifying.

He did monstrous things.

It's so bad.

This photo just makes me mad.

Harley in the living room.

He's got a goat in his lap,

and he thought he was so tough,

but he was just a jerk a lot of the time.

When I was a kid, I'd look at this photo, and he looked

so intimidating to me.

He's big and scary and... and could come at me at any minute.

I look at it now, and I just... I think, you know,

what a.

And I was always hoping that he loved me

and didn't want to hurt me.

But he was... He was a violent man.

I always thought that well, okay, yeah, I got hit today.

But you know, I'll do better tomorrow.

I couldn't see the future,

but I was always naively optimistic.

I was born in Humboldt County in the Redwoods in

California on

80 acres of farmland and timberland with my mom

and my dad.

It's hard for me to remember happy memories with my dad,

because the scary times were so common

and so much more intense,

and one of them was when my dad put me in the oven.

My memory starts

all cramped up in the oven and the door opening.

I don't remember getting put in the oven, but I clearly

remember being in the oven,

crouched up and cramped in there and the door opening

and my dad being there, and my mom

was just standing behind him watching.

My mom knew better than to intervene

in what my dad was doing.

Get out.

I remember being let out of the oven.

My dad believed that children are to be seen

and not heard, and he was very serious about it.

Like, do I understand

that I'm never to speak without being spoken to?

Did you learn your lesson?

He said, "The next time you speak without being spoken to,

I'm gonna turn it on."

Don't do it again!

And I remember that all so clearly... I was terrified,

and I believed that he might cook me in the oven.

Well, there's this phrase, "I brought you

into this world, and I'll take you out."

And my dad told me that often, and he believed it.

If you don't learn to behave,

I will get rid of you once and for all.

If he chose to kill me because I wasn't obeying,

that was his right, and he was gonna do it.

He was trying to rule me through fear.

Get out of here!

And I would go in my room and cry

and... and vow to not be so evil anymore.

I thought the problem was with me.

As a little kid,

I thought he was going to kill me.

I believed I might die.

So my dad read the Bible a lot, and he believed that if God

didn't want him to do something,

God wouldn't let him.

My dad thought that women need to

be beaten and that that was his job.

I have this vague, troubling memory of

being in my room and reading my books,

And in those memories, I can hear her crying out.

How many times do I have to tell you?

I'm sorry!

I could hear the blows, just crashes and bangs.

I won't do it again, I promise.

And I wanted to protect my mom.

Why did you make me do this?!

Please, honey, stop!

So at some point, I had a knife

and I had gone to confront my dad

and try to intimidate him with this knife.

And things turned... He got very angry,

and he took the knife from me,

and I ran.

I went under the dining room table,

and my dad followed me and came right under the table

with me.

And there was this crazy intensity to him,

and he was in my face,

ordering me

to open my mouth.

Open up! Now!

He stuck the knife in my mouth and told me to close my mouth.

He was yelling at me something to

the effect of, "You come at me with this knife,

- I'll slit your throat. - I'll kill you."

No one is going to threaten me!

You understand?!

And I could feel the blade touching my tongue.

Then I remember feeling so afraid.

Hmm, when I think about it, like, it just... it's...

A shock inside my body just to remember that... how that felt.

And I guess it just... He just stopped.

I don't know what happened next.

I... you know, but I do know that as an adult,

I don't like to watch other people using kitchen knives.

I have, um, like an irrational fear.

I don't know that I ever

stood up to him again after that.

Like, maybe not for a long time.

But it was so real, you know?

Just years and years

after that, I just...

I didn't fight back...

anymore.

I watched my dad kill my pets when he was angry,

and I just learned not to get attached to things.

If I had a dog that took a scrap off

the table or peed on the rug one too many times,

we would go outside, and he would have me

hold their collar while he shot them in the head.

He would walk away and tell me to bury them,

and I did that more times than I want to remember.

You know, we never had a dog that

made it past, like, two or three years old.

I don't know how I processed that.

I didn't want to feel that pain,

and I just learned to shut myself off inside.

I spent a lot of time in my room when I was a kid.

He had a lock on the outside of my door,

and I would sit there and fantasize,

I would go into these daydreams.

On the opposite wall,

kind of right next to my bed,

there was a door, a tiny little door, and I would tell

people in school how my dad had built this little door

for me.

It was very comforting to know that I had

a door, and I could leave if I wanted to.

I believed it was true

until, um, about 10 years ago, I was... I was talking with

a friend and telling him stories, and he said,

"I don't... I don't understand why your dad would put a lock

"in the hallway on your door

"but then also provide you a little door to the outside.

Where did that door go?"

I couldn't answer.

I didn't know what the other side of the door looked like.

It hit me all at once that there was never a door,

and that was part of my way of coping.

I had imagined that that door was there.

I think it was too hard to accept

that I was trapped in that house with him,

and I needed...

I needed something, I needed some kind of fantasy,

something to believe in, some way out.

That was a big part of how I survived.

My whole life,

my dad was a commercial fisherman, and he had a boat.

My mom worked with my dad on the fishing boat,

and when they would leave to go on fishing trips,

they would leave me with my grandparents.

So one day, just before lunchtime, my grandparents were

in the kitchen listening to the radio,

and it was a report that the fishing vessel,

Fame I, had capsized in the entrance to the harbor

and that the Coast Guard had pulled

one person off of the boat, but it's believed that there's

another one on board, and they haven't been able to find them.

Let me call down there and see what's going on.

When I heard the radio report that

one person had been recovered from the boat,

I was immediately hoping that it was my mom.

The next thing I remember is

walking down a corridor in the Coast Guard.

The officer opened the door.

Sitting in a chair at a little table was my dad.

And I felt this welling like, "Oh, my God, my mom's dead."

But I... like, right away,

I knew I needed to shove that down.

I knew I couldn't express to him that

I was so disappointed that it was him

that made it.

He started to tell me his version

of what had happened that day.

The initial story was that he and my mom were just out there

in their boat, and a big wave

flipped them upside down, and the water had washed

through and trapped my mom inside and pushed him out.

You know, I was six, so I just believed him.

He was my dad.

And I said, "Come on, Dad, let's go home."

So we went home.

I rode home with my dad, and he didn't hug me or comfort me.

We never talked about her

or that her life was over.

There's never been an investigation

into any kind of wrongful death.

My mom's death was ruled an accidental drowning.

The boat was never recovered.

Her body was never recovered.

And I do remember being completely preoccupied

with the horror

of she's gone, and now I have to... to face him.

"Search continues for missing woman.

"According to a Coast Guard spokesman,

"one diver searched 90 percent of the Fame L

and did not find the woman."

"The only section not searched was the boat's engine room,

"he said, indicating that it was not likely

she would be inside."

30 years later,

I was looking through old photo albums, and I had

the newspaper clippings.

One of these newspaper articles said that

the engine room was locked.

I read that, and it hit me how odd

that seemed, because nobody locks their engine room.

I told my grandmother right then, "I... I think, you know,

"I'd like to go down to the Coast Guard

"while I'm here in town and... and ask them,

"you know, if they have any more information

about what happened," and she dropped whatever was in

her hands, and... And she looked so disturbed,

and she said, "Oh, Sammy,

"you think he killed her, and now you're gonna open

"all this up and... And... and create

all this drama or this problem."

I hadn't said that I thought he killed her.

I realized when she said that,

that... that she thought he killed her

and had all this time just gone

along with the story of the accident.

That was the day that I realized that I had been lied to.

I think my dad killed my mom

because he found out that she had been saving up money

to leave.

And he didn't want her to leave, and he wanted that money.

It was within six months or so,

he had, um, purchased a new boat with her money

and named it the Claire Louise after he.

When I was about 10, my dad got married to his girlfriend.

Her name was Nina. I liked her.

They were happy together,

but within a month of them getting married,

things started to not be so great.

So one day, he had beaten her up really badly,

and Nina must have reported this to the police,

because they came and picked my dad up in

the middle of the night and arrested him.

My grandparents would bring me up to visit my dad in jail.

The bulk of every visit was him talking to me on the phone,

and the only thing he wanted to talk about was his story

that he wanted me to practice.

His story was that he was innocently driving,

and she became irrational and angry,

and she grabbed the steering wheel and tried to wreck

the truck and kill us.

And he heroically maybe hit her once to try to save

our lives, and she's blowing it out of proportion.

What are you gonna say?

He programmed me and... and drove it into me

and made me repeat it back to him.

I was expected to... to testify on his behalf that

it was all Nina's fault, and he was the innocent victim.

I felt threatened.

It's not like I had a choice,

and he got found not guilty on all six counts.

After he got found not guilty,

it empowered him to be so brazen and so bold.

He definitely went around bragging to... to people in town

that he could get away with whatever he wanted,

and nobody can stop him.

So my dad would often tell me stuff I didn't need to hear.

I was 15 and had my driver's permit,

and I was supposed to be learning how to drive a car.

But instead, he had other lessons.

Had a lot of good times in here.

Soon, you will, too.

Part of his idea of being a dad or training me to be

a man was to tell me a lot of stories of women

that he date raped,

women that he would get alone in his car,

and then he would overpower them.

He didn't call it that, you know, because he was telling

me, look, girls want you to do this stuff, and, you know,

they might say no, but you just... you know, you can't be

a sissy, you gotta, you know, force 'em.

Give me your arm.

And he was showing me how to do it.

So he said, "So let's say we're... you're sitting here,

right, and you're my date," and he had me put my arm

behind him... so he said, "So see, I'm laying on that arm,

so that arm, you can't even get to it."

And he's like, "So if you're making out with a girl,

"and you get this far, you don't have to stop.

"You reach around behind them, hook your hand under their arm,

and now you've got both of their arms trapped."

Now try and move.

"My other hand's free to unzip your pants

"and do whatever I want to do.

"And that's... you know, pretty soon,

they get into it, you know? So that's how you do it."

They all want it. So give it to 'em, right?

I wasn't interested in learning how to do that kind

of thing, but he wanted to hear me

be excited about raping women

so it would prove that I wasn't gay.

I don't think I want to do it like that.

And he flipped out... He went on a rampage.

He was gonna beat the gay out of me.

He would say, "Sammy, you're never gonna have

"a woman that loves you,

"because you don't have the guts to hit 'em,

and... and women need to be beat up and retrained."

You're just gonna let 'em walk right all over you?!

"And you're too much of a sissy to do it."

I don't remember how that all ended up,

but I... I got hit a lot that day.

I would fantasize about escaping,

but I didn't know how to make my own choices,

so the world seemed scary.

And so I never had the courage to leave.

My dad spent a lot of time at the bars

when I was a teenager,

and Patty was... was one of the woman who was

often at the bar, and he would

bring her out for an evening or a couple of nights.

I liked Patty. She was nice.

This one particular time, I was in my room,

but I could hear him hitting her...

Please! Stop!

And her crying out in pain.

Sam!

He brought her out and showed me

the bruises all over her.

Her face was black and blue.

Her arms were black and blue, and he said, you know,

"I can't... can't let her go, because if she goes to

"the police then, you know,

that would be another trial, and possible jail time."

What the hell am I supposed to do?

- Just let me go home, please. - Shut up!

And she swore, "No, I won't go to the police."

And... and he said, "Well you know,

"I'm not gonna take that chance and, you know,

"I don't believe you.

So you're gonna stay here until you heal."

And I could see that she was frightened by that.

Dad said, "Well, we've... We've...

"I've got to go check on the boat,

what are we gonna do with her?"

And he couldn't leave her there alone,

and he couldn't bring her with us.

What about the old tree?

I didn't want him to entertain having to kill her,

and so I came up with the stump as an option.

There was an old growth stump behind the house,

a big redwood stump, like 8 or 10 feet tall

and 6 or 8 feet across at the top with a hollow center,

and I went down in the hole, and I put

water in jugs so she'd have water to drink.

And, um, he let me take down a Ziploc bag

of dog food so she'd have something to eat.

And so I put that stuff down there with a blanket or two.

It didn't seem that bad to me.

It'll be okay.

But I could tell that it was really,

really frightening for Patty.

She did not want to climb down in there.

When I talk about the tree stump now,

I see it on people's faces, that it's really scary.

And it's alarming that... To people, that I would say,

"Well, let's put her in this tree stump."

But at the time, to me, it seemed like a great solution.

She would be safe all day, and my dad would...

Would leave her alone.

At that time, if I could have skipped

spending the day with my dad

and just spent the day in the bottom of a tree stump,

I would have felt lucky.

And so I convinced her, like, you just... just

go down the ladder, and you'll be safe here.

And so she went down the ladder, and we went into town,

and we came back, like, six or eight hours later

and put the ladder back down in so she could climb out.

We did that for like a month, almost every day,

putting her in the stump,

pulling the ladder out, and at the end of the day,

we'd get her out, and she would come in

the house and make dinner and do the dishes and...

And he would take her in the bedroom,

and they'd have sex, and then the next morning,

we'd walk her out to the stump, until the one day

that she tried to escape.

So one day, my dad wanted me to get some chores done

before we let Patty out for dinner,

and so I brought the trash out from the kitchen, and I heard

something in the bushes behind me.

And there was Patty, dirt all over her hands and face.

She had dug her way out of the stump.

When she saw me, she said, "Please let me go.

Please let me escape."

And...

I felt so paranoid.

Like, was this a test?

And I can't tell if my dad's watching

me right now to see what I do.

I thought if I... if I try to help her right now,

like, he's gonna see that as a complete betrayal,

and all those times that he threatened to kill me,

um, well this would be the time when...

When he would find it justified.

All my life, I've regretted this, but...

I thought the safest thing for me

was to call out to my dad.

Dad!

When I did that, she just sunk,

and when he came out, I could see that

he was surprised.

He had no idea that she had gotten out.

And I realized in that moment, like,

"Oh, my God, he hadn't even been watching."

I could have said, "Yeah, go, run that way."

I felt so ashamed and foolish.

I had been too fearful and selfish.

I let her down,

and I let myself down,

and he didn't want her in the stump after that.

Get inside.

We both stayed home, and she stayed

in the house for the next four or five days,

and then he said, "Well,

I think her bruises are all healed up,"

and we drove her into town

and dropped her off at the bar where they had met.

Patty never went to the police.

She told her friends there what had happened,

and they didn't believe her.

They thought it was just too crazy.

In his own mind,

it's reaffirmed that he can get away with whatever he wants.

I was 16 years old when my dad met Sandy.

I liked Sandy. She was really sweet.

They seemed to be having, you know, just a lovely time...

for a month or so.

I don't believe you!

And then all of a sudden, things changed,

and he was suspicious of her and started beating her.

- Trying to.. - I'm not!

I'm not lying!

Over the course of about a month,

the beatings continued, and she's covered with bruises.

And then he's showing me, look at these bruises.

I can't let her go.

I didn't want her to have

to go through what Patty went through.

I didn't know what to do,

but I thought, I've got to do something.

I've got to stop this.

But I didn't... I didn't know who I could tell.

And within a day or two, she was dead.

I came home, and my dad had Sandy

sitting in a chair in the center of the house.

He was waiting for me.

- What's going on? - Look at her.

And he was explaining to me

that she wasn't gonna get better.

She wasn't responsive, and a lot of her skin was

turning green.

And he, um, he said something about, you know,

being out of options, and he said, "Go get the car."

I'll be right out.

I assumed he was gonna kill her,

and I didn't want to take part in that.

But I thought, if I stand here in front of him and say no,

I won't get the car, what if he kills me, too?

So I went and got the car, and I pulled it around back,

and he came out with her

wrapped up in a blanket, and he told me to open

the trunk,

and he put her in the trunk,

and then he closed it, and then he had me

get a gas can and set it in the back seat.

He drove down toward the woods,

so we're kind of off the road.

I couldn't figure out how to get out of this.

I felt so defeated

and... and so horrible,

and I just... I didn't know how to stop it.

He lifted her out of the trunk, and he picked up this large

pestle from a mortar and pestle set,

and he... He said, "Look away."

And so I turned, and I looked away,

and I heard...

like a thud,

and I heard her exhaling, moaning.

He killed her right then.

He carried her into the woods, and he laid her

in... in a ditch.

We had a pile of used tires, and he put the tires

on top of her, and then... and dumped

the gasoline over it and lit her on fire.

Jesus Christ.

I'm just kind of hearing myself say all this, like,

I knew... I know what happened,

I know the narrative, but, like...

God damn.

I mean I feel dirty, I feel...

just sick inside thinking about this, and, like, of course

I should have done something, and why didn't I do something,

and, you know, why didn't I stop it?

You know, like, I...

When we came back a few hours later,

he had me crawl down in the ditch and check.

I was poking around in the ashes and debris,

and I... I uncovered part of her skull, but

it wasn't burning anymore, and there was nothing really left.

I'm listening to myself, and I sound

so disconnected emotionally from... from any of it.

It seems surreal to me

that I'm describing such horrific events.

Did you... did you actually see

her catch on fire and the tires and the burning?

Yeah, yeah, I lit her on fire.

Okay.

He had me pour the gas and, um, and had me light it.

Wow.

I don't really remember that now.

And I guess I must have, you know, remembered more

specifically then, but, um, just right at the end,

I said, "I lit her on fire," and I'm...

I don't remember exactly how that happened.

But I guess, I mean, I would...

I would think in this moment, like, I was trying to be as

factual as possible and as honest as possible, so...

that must be what happened.

I must have, you know, thrown something in

there on fire to light the whole thing.

I was standing there in the woods, like...

like, just feeling in shock, and he turns around,

and he looks at me, and he says,

"Well, there's no way you're keeping this a secret."

And he just stared at me.

He was just sure that I couldn't be trusted.

And at that point, that day,

driving away from Sandy's body on fire,

I felt like there's no way he could let me live.

I always had been afraid that my dad would kill me,

but now I had, you know, seen him kill someone.

It was different now.

I couldn't sleep in my bedroom anymore.

He made me sleep on the couch in the living room.

And one of the first nights I woke up, you know,

in the middle of the night, and he had the light on.

Dad?

And he was fully dressed, and he had his boots on,

and he had the rifle across his lap, and he said,

"Go back to bed.

I haven't decided what to do with you yet."

It was hard for me to go back to sleep.

I focused on trying to convince him that I wouldn't

ever tell anybody... In those months that followed,

I was so scared, every day. I was at his mercy.

Like, he was going to decide whether or not to kill me,

and I felt like there was nothing I could really do

about it.

So about a year after he killed Sandy,

we were riding in the truck, and he told me

that he had decided to kill me.

He told me, "I'm gonna take you down into

the boat, and then I'm going to kill you."

And I felt like everything inside of me was screaming,

"Just run. Just run."

And I thought, "What if I trip, what if I fall?"

And so I was afraid to run,

and I just complied and walked with him.

And I felt sicker and sicker as we got closer to the boat.

I climbed on the boat, and he opened the door to the cabin

and had me walking in front of him,

and he had a knife in his hand.

My heart's pounding, and I'm... I'm sweating.

He was telling me clearly what he was going to do.

He was gonna find out who I was talking to,

and once he had the truth, he was gonna kill me.

Who have you told?!

He had all these questions, and he... he kept hitting me

in the head when he didn't like my answers.

This all went on for six hours in

the bottom of his boat, and I was having trouble standing.

I felt like I'm... I'm gonna die.

And I decided in that moment, if I'm gonna die,

I'm gonna die brave.

So I looked right at him,

and I said, "Dad, I'm the only person who's here with you

"all the time, and I'm submitted to you, and I obey you,

"and if you don't think you can trust me,

"you can kill me right now if you want to,

but I'm not answering any more questions."

I'm... done.

And it was the scariest thing to say,

but I just stared at him when I said it,

and the craziest thing happened.

I watched all the anger

and the fierceness just drain out of his face.

He looked down...

and he just set the knife down.

He wouldn't even look at me.

He said, "Go upstairs, just go.

Let's... let's go back to the truck."

Go outside.

He depended on his victims to be afraid

and to feel helpless.

That's what he exploited.

So that was

a huge turning point

in our relationship.

I started to see things differently

and start to see that I had some power.

We walked up to the truck, and he drove me home in silence.

I ended up living with him in until I was, um, 23.

And it wasn't until I was...

Was getting ready to be married

that I... I finally moved out.

I moved across the country, and... and I had my family,

and...

I felt so free.

I... I didn't think life could be so good.

It was a great feeling.

I never spoke about Sandy.

I never, never let myself think about her

or what had happened.

I blocked it.

It wasn't until 2000, when I was 29.

I was having dreams and seeing her face.

I would be walking through the house, and I would think

I saw her sitting in a chair in the living room.

And I'd have to do a double take,

and sometimes I was afraid to even check.

My heart was just stopping.

I had to force myself to back up and look.

And of course, I would look,

and there's nobody in the living room.

But I knew who I was seeing.

I kind of thought, am I being haunted?

It didn't occur to me that I really needed to face this.

I needed to say her name.

I needed to tell the story,

and it still took me 10 years to come forward.

So it was March of 2006.

My... my grandmother called me

to tell me that my dad had died.

He had, uh, lung disease and a series of strokes.

I was immediately filled with a lot of sadness and regret,

and I couldn't really put my finger on why.

I had reasoned that,

oh, you know, I hate him, and the sooner he dies, the better.

But in that moment, I felt just this... this deep pain of loss.

It was too late for me to be good enough to win his love.

I gave his eulogy, and, um,

I didn't pretend like he was a righteous man,

but I didn't really condemn him either.

And I'll never forget, after the end of the eulogy,

this little old woman came up to me, and then she smiled,

and she said, "It's almost like you were

talking about a different person."

And she gave me a little wink like that.

So she knew, like, what kind of man my dad really had been,

and I began to realize, like...

I don't really need to keep these secrets maybe.

It was kind of the first crack in that armor.

How long had you known this Sandy Turpin?

Probably a couple of months.

So do you know when he murdered her?

After a few years of a lot of misery and a lot of work,

I started to realize that I wanted to...

To tell everyone what had happened.

I called the Humboldt County Sheriff that day, and, um,

and... and told them who I was and... and what I wanted to

talk about.

He brought her out to the car,

and he had me open the trunk,

and he had her wrapped up in a blanket.

I showed the sheriff on a map where to find the stump

that Patty had been held captive in

and circled on the map about where

I thought Sandy's body was.

They had been considering me as a possible suspect,

but the office was overwhelmed

with calls from people who had known my dad

and knew me... across the board,

every person that called

knew that my dad was kind of a monster.

You know, and this isn't the first time his name came up

in... in a homicide.

Anyone who's been around for awhile

knows your dad's history.

I still feel regret for not coming forward sooner.

My father had passed away before he could be tried.

But shortly after I came forward in 2009, I had a dream.

I was in the house with my dad and Sandy, and I grabbed her,

and I started walking her towards the front door,

and my dad was objecting, and I told him to shut up,

and I opened the door and... and pushed her out

and... and walked her down to the sidewalk

and just told her, "Go, just get out of here."

And then I woke up.

I had never been able to help Sandy in real life,

but I felt like I was able to help her in that dream,

and I was able to set her free.

And... and that's when I felt like

I set myself free, as well.