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The Mother Who Couldn't Watch Her Children Die · Scary Paranormal Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Three boys died in the same house. Three boys who
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: shared the same mother, the same father, the same blankets
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: on their beds. And after the third one was gone,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the woman who tugged them in walked into a police
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: station and told investigators exactly what she had done. Not
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: because she was caught, because she was ready to explain.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: That detail has stayed with this story from the moment
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: it first surfaced. A confession has offered not as a breakdown,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: but as a kind of accounting. In Logan County, Ohio,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: between July of 2014 and August of 2015, three infant
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and toddler boys died inside the same family home. The
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: first death was ruled a sudden infant death syndrome case.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: The second triggered a call to child services. The third
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: happened one week after a family court. Judge returned the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: surviving children to their parents. All three boys shared the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: same mother. And when investigators finally sat across from Brittany Pilkington,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: she did not deny what had happened. She described it
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: in detail, including the part where she covered each child's
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: face with a blanket because she could not bring herself
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: to watch. That is the sentence that doesn't leave you
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: once you've heard it. The house sat in Logan County,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a stretch of rural Ohio, the distances between neighbors are
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: measured in feels, not feet. It was not a place
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that announced itself as dangerous. Nothing about it did. Brittany
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Pilkington was born on January 27th, 1992. By the time
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: she was nine years old, Joseph Pilkington had entered her
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: life permanently. He was twenty years older than her. He
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: was her mother Laurie's partner, He held a formal role
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in her schooling as an administrative figure, and from that age,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: according to the case record, he began sexually abusing her.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: That abuse continued for years without any institutional response. Brittany's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: biological father, Edward Cummins, called Child Protective Services at some
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: point during her childhood to report Joseph. The call was documented.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: No action followed. By the time Brittany was 17, she
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: was pregnant with Joseph's child. At 18, she married him.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: The law had finally caught up with her age, if
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: not with anything else. They had four children together, three
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: boys and a girl named Hayley. Hayley was four years
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: old when investigators began looking closely at the family. Something
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: about the shape of this story is worth sitting with
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: before the first death is even described. Brittany Pilkington grew
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: up inside a system that was supposed to protect her
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and didn't. Every adult institution that encountered Joseph Pilkington, schools,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: child services, family court, registered something and did nothing. She
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: grew up in that silence. And then she built a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: family inside it. Niall Pilkington was three months old when
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: he died in July of 2014. Joseph called 911 while
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Brittany performed chest compressions. The recording captured a household in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: apparent crisis. Paramedics arrived. Niall never responded. The medical examiner's
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: finding was sudden infant death syndrome. That classification ended the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: official inquiry. Gavin Pilkington was four years old when he
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: died in April of 2015. He was old enough to
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: have a personality. Old enough to get into trouble, old
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: enough to be described later by those who knew him
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: as a child with energy and presence. After Gavin died,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Brittany called 911. An anonymous teenage babysitter, who was present
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: at some point near that period of the family's life,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: would later testify at trial that at Gavin's funeral, Brittany
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Pilkington did not shed a single tear. Not one, The
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: babysitter said she watched Brittany's face and saw nothing move
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: in it. That testimony would become one of the pivots
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of the entire case. What investigators did not know in
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: April of 2015, what no one outside that house knew, yet,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: was that the 911 call Brittany made after Gavin's death
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: was placed in a voice that multiple people who heard
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: it described as very calm, not the calm of Shaw,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: A different kind of calm, the kind that takes a
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: long time to explain. Two infant boys dead in the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: same home within nine months. The second death was enough
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to move child services to act. Brittany and Joseph were
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: called in for a meeting in June of 2015. Evaluators
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: suspected something had gone wrong in both cases. A psychological
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: assessment was proposed. The couple declined, under the law at
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that moment. With no open criminal charges, no one could
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: compel them to submit to one. The children, including four-month-old
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Noah and four-year-old Haley, remained in the home. A family
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: court judge reviewed the evidence available and returned the children
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: to their parents. Noah Pilkington died on August 18, 2015.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: He was four months old. One week had passed since
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the judge's ruling. After Niall died, Logan County looked the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: way grief is supposed to look. A young mother, a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: stunned father, a house that had just become smaller. The
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: medical examiner's initial finding gave everyone something to hold onto.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Sudden infant death syndrome. It happens. Families absorb it. They
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: move forward. Brittany and Joseph moved forward, Nine months later,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: in April of 2015, Gavin was dead. He was four
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: years old, and this time, there was no comfortable explanation
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: waiting at the door. Investigators noted the pattern immediately. Two
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: children in the same household, both under the age of five,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: both gone without a clear medical cause. The phrase, lightning
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: strikes twice, exists because people need to believe coincidence can
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: stretch that far. The detectives assigned to the case stopped
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: believing it, almost immediately. But belief and evidence are different things,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: and in the spring of 2015, the evidence was thin.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: What they had was a timeline. Brittany was alone with
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Gavin when he died. Joseph was at work. When Joseph
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: came home, he found the boy. That detail, Joseph returning
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: to find the body already waiting for him, would not
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: register as significant. until it happened a second time. In
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a case built on pattern, the pattern was still assembling itself.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Investigators also had one other thing. They had the phone call.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: When Gavin stopped breathing, Brittany called 911. The dispatcher on
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the other end was trained to read distress in a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: caller's voice. The fractured sentences, the inability to complete a thought,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the specific kind of panic, that does not perform itself.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: What the dispatcher heard from Brittany was something different. Witnesses
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: who later heard the recording described her voice as very calm,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: not the flatness of shock, not the mechanical steadiness of
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: someone fighting to stay functional, just calm, the kind of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: calm that does not belong to that moment. Prosecutors would
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: return to that call repeatedly. It was the first audible
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: fracture in the image Brittany had maintained, since Neil's death,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the image of a mother absorbing an impossible weight. The
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: rational explanation for the calm voice existed. Shock suppresses effect.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Some people go quiet rather than loud. Grief does not
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: have a correct sound. Any defense attorney worth the title
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: could dismantle that detail in front of a jury. And
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: at that point, there was no confession, no forensic evidence
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of violence on Gavin's body. And no way to prove
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the death was anything other than a tragic medical event
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: without a clear cause. So investigators did what the system
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: allowed them to do. They referred the family to the
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Logan County Department of Job and Family Services. A meeting
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: was scheduled for June 14th, 2015. Brittie and Joseph attended.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: The caseworkers suspected what they could not yet prove. and
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: they asked for something that would have given them a
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: clearer picture, a psychological evaluation. Both parents declined. Here is
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: where the system hit its own wall. Without a criminal charge,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the agency had no legal mechanism to compel the evaluation.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Melanie Engel, the executive director of the Children's Services Agency,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: would later say in testimony that a psychological assessment conducted
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: at that point could have saved Noah's life. She said
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: it plainly, without equivocation. The system had identified the risk.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: The system could not act on it. A family court
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: judge reviewed the available record. No evidence of visible abuse
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: on the children. No toxicology findings. No confirmed criminal conduct.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And returned Haley and Noah to the home. Noah was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: four months old. One week after that ruling, on August 18th, 2015,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Noah was dead. Joseph came home from work and found him.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: The same sequence. The same staging. The third time, it
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: had happened in 13 months. And the third time, Brittany
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: had been alone in the house when it did. This time,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: investigators did not wait for a comfortable explanation to form
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and collapse on its own. Brittany was arrested. She was
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: charged formally on August 25th, 2015. with a bond set
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: at one million dollars. What happened next did not come
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: from forensic reconstruction or physical evidence. It came from Brittany herself.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: In her confession, Brittany Pilkington described what she did to
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: each of her sons in language that was quiet and
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: specific and impossible to look away from. She told investigators
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: she used a blanket. She placed it over the child's face.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Then she pulled it over their entire body. Not just
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the face, not just the head, but the full length
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of them. And she told them why she covered them completely.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: She said she did not want to watch them die.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: That single detail lands differently than anything else in this case.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Not the act itself, but the reasoning attached to it.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: She had already decided. The decision was made before she
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: reached for the blanket. What she was managing in those
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: final moments was not doubt or impulse. She was managing
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: her own discomfort at witnessing the consequence of a choice
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that was already complete. So she covered them. She made
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: them disappear from her field of vision while she waited.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And then she left the room. And then she called
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: no one. And then she arranged the scene and waited
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: for Joseph to come home. She did this with Gavin.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: She did it again with Noah. The staging was not incidental.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: It was a repeated decision, made twice, across a gap
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: of four months. She needed Joseph to be the one
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: who found them. That need was deliberate enough that she
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: reproduced it under conditions that should have made repetition unthinkable.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: The first time could be attributed to shock, to dissociation,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to any number of explanations that softened the geometry of
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: what she did. The second time removes all of those explanations.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Investigators pressed on motive. What they received was an answer
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: that recontextualized the entire shape of this case. Brittany told
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: them she was jealous. Joseph paid attention to the boys
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: in ways he did not pay attention to her, and Haley,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: she resented it. But the second part of her stated
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: motive is the peace that refuses to settle. she said
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: she was afraid her sons would grow up to be abusers,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: like their father. She was describing a man who had
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: started abusing her when she was nine years old, a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: man who had fathered four children with her before she
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: was legally an adult. A man who, when Edward Cummins,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Brittany's biological father, reported the relationship to Child Protective Services
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: years earlier, faced no legal consequence whatsoever. Joseph Pilkington, was
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the fixed point around which every disaster in this case orbited,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and Brittany, who had spent nearly her entire conscious life
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: inside the damage he created, looked at her infant sons
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: and saw him. What she did with that fear does
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: not become comprehensible, but it does become locatable within a
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: logic that the system around her had failed to interrupt
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: at every available point. The teenage babysitter who testified at
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: trials said she watched Brittany at Gavin's funeral and waited
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: for something to break through. A tremor. A sound. Anything.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Brittany moved through the room without expression, without tears, without
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: the physical markers grief writes on a person, whether they
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: wanted to or not. The babysitter said she could not
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: stop watching her. The way you cannot stop looking at
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: something that has no explanation yet. That absence at the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: funeral was the same absence that shaped every scene she
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: left behind in that house. A face covered with a blanket,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a room she exited, a body positioned for someone else
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to find. The question that investigators, prosecutors, and those who
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: have studied this case cannot fully resolve is not whether
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Brittany Pilkington committed these acts, she confessed. The question is
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: what to do with the context surrounding those acts. Dot.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and whether the two things can be held in the
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: same frame without one erasing the other. Brittany entered a
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: household shaped entirely by Joseph Pilkington before she was old
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: enough to understand what a household was supposed to look like.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: The abuse began at nine. The pregnancy came at seventeen.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: The marriage followed her eighteenth birthday, the way a door
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: follows a lock. She had no period in her documented life.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: not one that existed outside of Joseph's control. Her reported
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: IQ of 94 places, her within normal cognitive range, and
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: she graduated with marks that did not suggest impairment. What
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: her lead poisoning history may have affected, and to what degree,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: remains a subject. The record does not resolve with precision.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: What the record does resolve is that every institution that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: touched this family before August of 2015 chose the least disruptive,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: available option. The school system appointed Joseph as Brittany's educational custodian.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Child Protective Services received a report from Edward Cummins about
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the abuse and did not act. The family court judge
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: presented with a file containing two dead children and a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: declined psychological evaluation, looked at the absence of visible physical
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: evidence and sent the remaining children home. Melanie Engle's later
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: testimony that an evaluation could have saved Noah was not
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a statement of accusation. It was a statement of architecture.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: The architecture had a gap exactly the size of one
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: more child. Joseph Pilkington was arrested weeks after Brittany. He
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: was found in Ohio. He pleaded guilty to sexual abuse
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: and domestic violence charges and received a reduced sentence. along
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: with mandatory registration as a sex offender for 15 years.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: He has no custody of Haley. She lives with family members,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: whose names do not appear in the public record. On
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: November 19th, 2019, Brittany stood in court and entered guilty
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: pleas to two counts of murder and one count of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: involuntary manslaughter. She received two consecutive life sentences, plus seven
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: additional years. She becomes eligible for parole consideration after serving
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: 37 years. Her attorney read a letter to the court
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: on her behalf. Britain could not deliver it herself. The
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: letter said she loved her children. It said she missed them.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: It asked Hayley, who was four years old when she
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: last saw her mother, to forgive her someday. Hayley was
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: not in the courtroom. The letter exists in the court
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: record now. Whether Hayley will ever read it, and what
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: she will do with it, if she does, is a
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: question that has no scheduled answer. It is the one
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: open thing in a case where everything else has been
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: formally closed. A sentence handed down. A plea accepted. A
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: file marked resolved. Somewhere in Logan County, a girl who
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: survived the house her brothers did not carries a name
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: that connects her to all of it. She did not
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: choose the name. She did not choose any of it.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And the letter her mother could not read aloud is
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: waiting for her in a file she may never open.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: On November 19th, 2019, Brittany Pilkington stood before a Logan
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: County judge and entered her plea. Two counts of murder.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: One count of involuntary manslaughter. She was 27 years old.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: She did not read her own statement. Her attorney read
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it aloud instead. The letter asked Haley to forgive her someday.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: It said she loved her children and missed them. The
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: words existed in the room, but Brittany could not deliver
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: them herself, which may say more about the distance between. Feeling.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: An action than any psychiatric evaluation ever could. Haley was
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: not in the courtroom. The sentence, two consecutive life terms
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: plus seven additional years. Parole eligibility after 37 years served.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: By the time Brittany Pilkington could walk out of a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: correctional facility, she would be in her 60s. And Niall, Gavin,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and Noah would have been in their 40s, 30s, and
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: 40s respectively, had any of them lived past infancy or
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: early childhood. Joseph Pilkington was arrested weeks after Brittany, found
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: in Ohio, not far from where all of this began.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: He pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and domestic violence. He
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: received a reduced sentence. He is required to register as
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: a sex offender. For 15 years, he has no custody
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: of Haley. What he carries beyond legal consequence is something
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: no court defined. Melanie Engel, the executive director of the
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Children's Services Agency that handled the Pilkington case, testified that
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: a psychological evaluation had the family submitted to one in
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: June of 2015 might have saved Noah. That sentence has
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a weight that does not diminish with repetition. Noah died
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: on August 18, 2015. The evaluation was never conducted. The
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: agency could not compel it. The law had not yet
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: given them that tool. After Noah's death, Ohio lawmakers revisited
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: child welfare statutes. The specific gap that prevented mandatory psychological
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: assessment in cases of unexplained child death without criminal charges
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: became a documented policy failure. Change moved slowly, as it
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: tends to, when the children affected are already gone. Hayley Pilkington,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: who was four years old when she was removed from
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the home. Lives with relatives. She was the only one
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Joseph did not appear to neglect. She was also the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: only one Brittany, by her own account, was trying to protect.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: That paradox does not resolve neatly. It sits in the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: record and stays there. There is a detail from Brittany's
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: confession that this story keeps returning to, and it is
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: not the one most people fixate on. Everyone focuses on
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the blanket. On the deliberate act of covering a child's
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: face and body so completely that she would not have
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to see what she was doing, that detail is already
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: hard to hold. But the detail that doesn't release is
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: what came after. Each time, Brittany left the child positioned
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: in the house and waited, She waited for Joseph to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: come home from work and find them. She did it once.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Then she did it again. Then a third time, with Noah,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: one week after a family court judge had returned him
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: to that house, because there was no visible evidence of harm.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Three times, she arranged the aftermath for someone else to discover.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Whether that was an act of control, of punishment toward Joseph,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: of dissociation, or something the field of psychology... has no
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: clean name for. No one has fully answered that. Brittany
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: gave a reason. A force eyes. She said she was
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: jealous of the attention Joseph gave his sons. She said
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: she feared they would grow up to be like him.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Both of those things can be true and still, not
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: explain the staging. The staging was its own decision, made repeatedly,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: with full awareness of what had just happened. Gavin was
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: four years old. He had done something that irritated her,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: a child's ordinary misdeed, and he was dead within hours.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: A teenage babysitter who attended his funeral later testified that
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Brittany did not cry. Not once, the babysitter was watching,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the way teenagers watch adults in grief, looking for how
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: to feel. She found nothing to mirror. Hayley is growing
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: up somewhere in Ohio, She carries a last name connected
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: to three dead brothers, a convicted mother, and a man
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: who abused her family from before she was born. She
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: did not ask for any of it. She was four.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: She is older now. Brittany's letter asked her to forgive Sunday.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: The letter did not arrive. It was read aloud by
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: someone else, in a courtroom Haley did not attend, addressed
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to a child who will one day have to decide
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: what to do with all of it. That decision belongs
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: entirely to Hayley. It always did. This show is made
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: by Obermedia.