Latest / The Mind of a Man / A Secret He Thought No One Would Ever Discover - True Crime Documentary

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A Secret He Thought No One Would Ever Discover - True Crime Documentary · The Mind of a Man

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: He called 911 and said his dog killed her. Animal
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: control came. They took the dog away. Eleven days later,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that dog was dead. Put down for a crime, investigators
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: would later say he never committed. Because the man who
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: made that call, an Instagram personality who branded himself Cash Cartier,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't telling the truth. And underneath his image of six-figure
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: paychecks and financial freedom, prosecutors say there was something much darker,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a pattern of violence against more than a dozen women,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: one of whom, a woman named Sheila Cuevas, would never
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: get to tell her side of what happened inside that
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Texas apartment. By the time this case reached a courtroom
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in April of 2026, It had stopped being about one
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: woman and one apartment. It had become the story of
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: how a lie about a dog cracked open years of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: hidden violence. Stay with me. Because the ending of this
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: one is not what you'd expect from a true crime
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: case this brutal. Unreal True Crime launches its new book,
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• 2:15
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• 2:25
  Speaker 1: isn't much public record of who Sheila Cuevas was before
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: she met Caleb Mickens. No outlet ever published her exact age.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: No one confirmed her hometown, her high school, or the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: university where she built the academic record that would later
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: become one of the most important details in her case.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: What we do know comes from two places, the words
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of the family who loved her, and the words of
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the prosecutor who fought for her. Sheila was, by every account, exceptional.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: She had been her class valedictorian. She went on to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: earn a graduate degree. She came from a family that,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: in the words of the prosecutor, who would later stand
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: up for her in court, loved her deeply and surrounded
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: her with support. To the people who knew her outside
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: of headlines and court filings, She was simply full of life, energetic,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: quick to laugh, the kind of person whose smile people
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: remembered years later. She had a wide circle of friends,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the sort of social gravity that pulls people together. She was,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: as her own family would describe her, an amazing human being.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Sheila's education matters here more than it might in most
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: true crime stories. because it directly contradicts the assumption a
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: lot of people quietly make about domestic violence victims. She
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't isolated. She wasn't uneducated. She wasn't without resources or
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: people who cared about her. She had all of it,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: academic achievement, a graduate degree, a loving family standing behind her.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And none of it, in the end, was enough to
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: get her out of the relationship that would eventually kill her.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: The man Sheila became involved with presented himself very differently
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: online than he apparently behaved behind closed doors. Caleb Mickens
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: had built a following approaching 100,000 people on Instagram under
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the name Cash Cartier. He was a prominent recruiter for
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: IM Academy, a multi-level marketing organization built around financial market
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: trading education, which promised its members, often young people looking
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: for a way out of ordinary paychecks, that they could
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: make thousands of dollars if they followed the system. At
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the height of his involvement, prosecutors say Mickens was pulling
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: in roughly $ 20, 000 a week. He wore the image of
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a self-made financial mentor. someone teaching other people how to
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: build wealth and freedom for themselves, one recruit at a time.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: That image, prosecutors would later argue, wasn't just marketing. It
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: was leverage. Investigators came to believe that Mickens used his
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: perceived success, his money, his following, his status, as a
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: tool to manipulate the people around him. both romantically and professionally.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Through a calculated mix of threats and promises, wealth wasn't
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: just something he displayed. It was something he weaponized. It's
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: worth understanding just how large the world Mickens was operating
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: in actually was. IEM Academy, later rebranded under other names,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: wasn't a small operation. Regulators would eventually allege that the organization,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: taken as a whole, generated well over a billion dollars
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: in consumer harm through exaggerated earnings claims used to recruit
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: new members into its trading education pyramid. Mickens wasn't one
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of the executives named in that larger regulatory fight, but
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: he was operating inside that ecosystem, using the same playbook
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of promised wealth and lifestyle to build his personal following
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and his personal income. To the people watching him online,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: he wasn't just a boyfriend or a partner. He was
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: proof that the system worked. That kind of public credibility
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: is exactly the sort of thing that makes private accusations
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: harder for people to believe and harder for victims to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: make stick. And according to court records, that pattern predates
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Sheila by years. On December 28, 2021, nearly two years
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: before Sheila Cuevas would die, Mickens was involved in an
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: aggravated assault against a different woman in Dallas County. That case,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: on its own, wouldn't come to public attention until much later.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: But it establishes something important. Whatever happened to Sheila in
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: 2023 didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened after Mickens
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: had already been accused, at least once, of seriously hurting
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: someone he was dating. That 2021 case wasn't the only
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: one sitting in his past. At some point, Mickens faced
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a separate charge for aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: against yet another woman, a case that initially resulted in probation.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: He was allowed to remain free under supervision. While that
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: case moved through the system, whatever violation eventually occurred, that
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: probation would later be revoked entirely. By 2023, Mickens was
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: living with Sheila Cuevas in a shared apartment. Public records
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: don't tell us exactly how the two of them met,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: how long they had been together, or whether Sheila knew
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: anything about the assault allegations already sitting in Mickens' past.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: What we do know is that his income, once substantial
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: enough to fund the Cash Cartier lifestyle, had reportedly declined
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: significantly by that fall. The man who had built an
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: online persona entirely around financial success was, behind the scenes,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: apparently not as flush as the image suggested. Then came
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: October 8th, 2023. On that day, according to the Tarrant
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: County District Attorney's Office, Caleb Mickens drugged and violently assaulted
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Sheila Cuevas inside the apartment they shared. What exactly triggered
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the attack has never been publicly established. Investigators never identified
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: a clear motive. And to this day, Nobody outside of
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Mickens himself may fully know why that particular day turned catastrophic.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: What we do know is what was left behind. Sheila
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: was found near the foot of the bed. Her body
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: bore injuries that the prosecutor who later handled the case
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: described as covering her from head to toe. Her face
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: was swollen. Her ear had been so severely traumatized that
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the prosecutor used the term cauliflower ear to describe it,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: an injury more commonly associated with repeated blunt force trauma
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: than an animal bite. She had puncture wounds across her body.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: She had extensive bruising. And when investigators later examined her
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: more closely, they counted 15 broken ribs. Sheila stopped breathing.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And that's when Mickens picked up the phone and called 911.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: His explanation was almost unbelievable in its simplicity. His dog,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a boxer named Soldier, had attacked her, he said. She
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't breathing. He needed help. For a period of time,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that story worked. Animal control responded and removed Soldier from
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the home. Whatever the internal process was that followed, it
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: moved quickly, and it moved against the dog. Approximately 11
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: days after Sheila's death, Soldier was euthanized. Put down for injuries,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: investigators would eventually conclude he had absolutely nothing to do with.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Because as detectives began examining Sheila's injuries against the story
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Mickens had given them, the pieces stopped fitting together. Fifteen
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: broken ribs, widespread bruising, facial trauma severe enough to be
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: immediately visible, a damaged ear, puncture wounds, and evidence that
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: something had been used to drug her beforehand. None of
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it matched the injury pattern you'd expect from a dog attack,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: even a violent one. Investigators working the case, led in
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: large part by Arlington police detective Tracy Dixon, began building
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: a very different theory of what had actually happened inside
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: that apartment. The dog explanation collapsed. Authorities determined that Soldier
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: had not caused the injuries that led to Sheila's death.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: The man who had called 911 blaming his pet was,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: according to investigators, the one actually responsible, Mickens was arrested
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: and charged with aggravated assault. Just two days after Sheila died,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: before any of that investigative unraveling had made its way
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: into headlines, her family was already organizing to grieve her publicly.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: On October 10, 2023, a man named Johnny Cuevas set
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: up a memorial fundraiser in her name. Within weeks, it
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: had drawn 238 separate donations and raised more than $ 14, 000,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: blowing past its original $ 10, 000 goal. The people who gave
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: to that fundraiser weren't reacting to a viral true crime
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: headline or a courtroom drama. They were reacting to the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: sudden loss of someone they actually knew. Someone remembered for
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: her energy, her humor. and the kind of smile people
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: don't forget. Friends and family later gathered at a golf
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: club outside the city for a formal celebration of her life,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: a reminder that long before this case became a public
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: spectacle about manipulation and violence, it was simply a family
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: burying someone they loved. But this is where the case
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: stopped being just about one woman, one apartment, and one
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: violent night. As detectives dug into Mickens' background, they didn't
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: find a man with a clean history who had suddenly snapped.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: They found a pattern. Investigators uncovered his documented history of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: violence toward romantic partners, including the aggravated assault from December
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of 2021 and the earlier probation case that had already
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: resulted in supervision for a different act of violence against
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: a different woman. Word started to spread that Mickens was
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: under investigation, and something remarkable happened. Women he had previously
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: dated in different parts of the country began coming forward.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Some had never spoken publicly about what happened to them.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Now they were talking to detectives. Now they were talking
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: to detectives, to Tarrant County D.A. investigator Timothy Pinckney, and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to victim advocate Karma Anderson. describing experiences that echoed what
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: had apparently happened to Sheila. Manipulation, control, violence. In some accounts,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: far worse. By the time the investigation was finished, prosecutors
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: say they had identified more than a dozen women who
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: described being abused by Mickens over the course of years.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: As prosecutors built their case around Sheila's death, they ran
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: into a serious obstacle, one that would ultimately shape the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: entire legal outcome, despite the severity of her injuries. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: despite Mickens' apparent role in drugging and assaulting her, the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: medical examiner's office reportedly ran into complications, establishing the precise,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: provable cause of death required to bring a murder charge
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: to trial. Assistant District Attorney Peter Gieseking would later explain
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: that without being able to nail down that exact medical
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: causation to the standard needed for a murder conviction, the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: state's strongest path forward was a first-degree felony assault charge instead.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So Mickens was never tried for murder. There was no
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: jury trial where prosecutors laid out, hour by hour, exactly
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: what happened to Sheila on October 8, 2023. Instead, the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: case moved toward a plea. Mickens ultimately pleaded guilty to
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: first-degree aggravated assault, family violence, and admission that his assault
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and the drugging of Sheila Cuevas led directly to her death,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: even without a formal murder conviction attached to it. The
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: sentencing hearing took place in early April of 2026. It
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: was not a quiet preceding. the courtroom filled with people
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: whose lives Mickens had touched, and not in the way
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: his old Instagram captions once suggested. Several of his former
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: partners stood up and gave victim impact statements, describing experiences
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: of torment, manipulation, torture, and in some accounts, sexual assault.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Sheila's family was there too, including her brother, who addressed
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Mickens directly. Their message wasn't about undoing what had happened.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: They knew that wasn't possible. It was about making sure
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: there would finally be consequences. On April 7, 2026, the
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Tarrant County District Attorney's Office announced the results. For the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: aggravated assault that led to Sheila's death, Mickens was sentenced
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to 40 years. For the probation revocation case involving a
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: different former partner, he received an additional 20 years. For
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the Dallas County deadly weapon case involving yet another woman,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: he received 15 more. Some headlines quickly added those numbers
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: together and reported that Mickens had been sentenced to 75 years.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: That framing wasn't quite accurate. The Tarrant County DA's office
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: later confirmed to reporters that the three sentences are being
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: served concurrently, meaning Mickens' controlling sentence, the one that actually
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: determines how long he'll spend behind bars, is 40 years.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Assistant District Attorney Elena Bangs, who prosecuted the case, summed
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: up the contradiction at the heart of it all when
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: she spoke about Sheila after sentencing. She was a valedictorian.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: She held a graduate degree. She had a family who
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: loved her fiercely. And still, Bangs said, she became trapped
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: in Mickens' orbit and couldn't find a way out. Bangs
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: called Mickens a master of manipulation, a man who used
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the appearance of wealth and success to control the people
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: closest to him while hiding, prosecutors say, an extraordinarily violent
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: private life. As for Soldier, the boxer who was euthanized
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: because of a lie, reporting after the sentencing surfaced something
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: almost too strange to believe. Mickens had apparently kept an
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Instagram bio memorializing Sheila and his two dogs together, describing
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: them collectively as the family he had lost, the same
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: man who blamed an innocent animal for a crime. Investigators
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: say he committed himself, had turned around, folded that animal
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: into his own public grief. From a forensic standpoint, this
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: case is unusual precisely because because of what it couldn't prove,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: not what it could. Investigators had overwhelming physical evidence of trauma,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: 15 broken ribs, extensive bruising, facial swelling, a severely damaged ear,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: puncture wounds, and indications that Sheila had been drugged before
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the assault. That's not a subtle injury pattern. That's the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: kind of injury profile forensic pathologists typically associate with a sustained,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: severe beating, not an animal attack. And it's the primary
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: reason investigators were able to dismiss the dog's story as
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: quickly as they did. And yet, despite that level of
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: visible trauma, the medical examiner's office reportedly ran into what
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: prosecutors vaguely described as complications, establishing the precise cause of
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: death to the legal standard required for a murder charge.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: That gap matters enormously. In cases involving both drugging and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: blunt trauma, cause of death determinations can become genuinely complicated.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: A body that has been both drugged and severely beaten
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: is can present overlapping, sometimes competing mechanisms of death, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: pinpointing which factor was legally the proximate cause can be
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: far harder than it sounds from the outside looking in.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: No toxicology results, autopsy findings, or specific drug identification have
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: been made public in this case, which means we're left
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: without knowing exactly what substance was used. how it was administered,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: or precisely how it interacted with her other injuries. This
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: is the single biggest evidentiary black hole in an otherwise
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: well-documented case, and it's the reason the legal outcome doesn't
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: match the popular perception of what happened to Sheila. Fifteen
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: broken ribs sounds like murder to most people, legally proving
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: it is an entirely different much narrower question, and that
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: gap between public perception and courtroom proof is exactly where
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: this case lives. There's also a quieter forensic story running
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: underneath the human one, and that's soldiers. Investigators had to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: functionally rule the dog out as a suspect, which meant
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: comparing Sheila's wound pattern against what an actual canine attack
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: looks like. The depth, spacing, and shape of bite marks
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: versus blunt force and possible weapon-based trauma. Puncture wounds paired
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: with 15 broken ribs and severe facial and ear trauma
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: simply don't line up with a dog attack, even from
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: a large breed. That distinction is part of what allowed
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: investigators to move so decisively away from Mickens' initial story
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: once the physical evidence was properly examined, even though it
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: came too late to save Soldier's life. Psychological Angle Psychologically,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: what makes this case so unsettling isn't just the violence.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: It's the architecture Mickens appears to have built around it.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Prosecutors described a man who used financial success, real or
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: performed as a mechanism of control. That's a recognizable pattern
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: in coercive relationships. An abuser who positions himself as a provider,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a mentor, someone whose partner comes to depend on him,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: not just emotionally but materially, which makes it that much
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: harder to walk away when things turn dangerous. Combine that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: with a public-facing brand built on confidence. generosity and aspiration,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: and you get someone who's difficult for outsiders, and even
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: for partners themselves, to reconcile with private accusations of violence.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: What's most important here is what this case says about
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: who ends up trapped in relationships like this. Sheila wasn't unintelligent, uneducated,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: or isolated. She was a valedictorian with a graduate degree
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and a loving family actively in her corner. That combination should,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: in theory, make someone less vulnerable to coercive control. It didn't.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly the point prosecutors seemed determined to make
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: in describing her. Abuse doesn't select for naivety. It selects
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: for opportunity. And a sufficiently skilled manipulator can find that
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: opportunity in almost anyone, regardless of how accomplished or supported
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: they appear to be from the outside. The dozen-plus women
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: who prosecutors say came forward also tell us something about
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: how these patterns persist. Every one of them represents a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: moment where Mickens' private behavior could have been exposed earlier,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and wasn't. Whether out of fear, shame, self-protection, or simply
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: not being believed. That silence isn't weakness. It's often the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: rational response to a system that historically hasn't made it
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: easy or safe for victims to speak up, especially against
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: someone with a polished public image and the resources to
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: defend it. Personal take. What stays with me about this
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: case isn't even the 15 broken ribs or the drugging
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: or the dog. It's the number 12. More than a
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: dozen women. Not one bad relationship, but a pattern spanning
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: years in multiple states, involving a man who had already
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: been through the court system for aggravated assault before Sheila
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: ever died, who had already been on probation for hurting
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a different woman, and who was still free enough still
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: trusted enough, still charming enough to be sharing an apartment
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: with someone new. Every one of those women who stood
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: up in that Tarrant County courtroom in April 2026 had
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to make a choice most people never have to make.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: To relive the worst thing that ever happened to them,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: in public, in front of the man who did it.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: For a woman, many of them may never have even met.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Sheila couldn't be there to speak for herself, so they
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: spoke for her and for themselves, and probably for other
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: women who still haven't come forward. And here's the part
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that should genuinely bother you. The system almost let the
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: dog take the fall. If Mickens' story had held up
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: even a little longer, if investigators hadn't pushed past that
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: first explanation... We might not be talking about any of
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: this at all. We just have another quiet family tragedy
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and a euthanized animal and a man free to build
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: his next relationship exactly the way he built the last dozen.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: The only reason this case unraveled the way it did
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: is because a handful of investigators and remarkably a growing
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: group of women who had every reason to stay silent,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: refused to let the story end with a dog. Sheila
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Cuevas deserved so much more than 15 seconds in a
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: 911 call and a lie about a dog. If this
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: case moved you, hit subscribe so you don't miss the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: next one and drop a comment telling me what part
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: of this story stuck with you the most.