Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / A Cop Thought His “Crazy” Ex Was “All Talk.” Then, She Shot Him in the Head

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A Cop Thought His “Crazy” Ex Was “All Talk.” Then, She Shot Him in the Head · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because if you really try to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: imagine standing on your own front porch, just a perfectly
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: ordinary neighborhood in Hialeah, Florida.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Right, just a normal morning.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly, a normal Tuesday morning. It's November. You've got your
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: keys in hand. You're heading onto your car to go
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to work. The sun is up. The street is pretty quiet.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Routine stuff.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally routine. But then a red truck aggressively pulls
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: up and intentionally blocks your driveway.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Which is an immediate red flag. Right.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: And you don't even know who was driving at first. Yeah.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: But when the door opens, it's not some stranger. It's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the woman you spent the last seven years of your
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: life with.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, your ex-partner.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: She steps out and you immediately pull out your phone.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You dial 911 and you say to the dispatcher, hey,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: can you start me a unit? Female with a gun
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: in front of my house.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Just like that. So procedural.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, you don't call her by her name, right?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: You don't scream for help. You literally call her a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: female with a gun. And that's because you are a
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: seasoned Miami-Dade police detective. And the woman walking toward you
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: is your ex-girlfriend, who also happens to be a former
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: police officer.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, what's fascinating here is that moment completely encapsulates
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: this terrifying collision of two worlds that we usually assume
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: are kept totally separate.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally separate.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: You have the domestic private sphere... The home, the driveway,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: you know, the intimate history of a seven year relationship.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: And that is violently colliding with the cold procedural reality
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: of law enforcement and threat assessment.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: What we are looking at today isn't just a tragic crime.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: It is a profound psychological study, really, of how two
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: people whose entire professional lives were dedicated to understanding the law.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Recognizing danger.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Recognizing danger, de-escalating violence. how those two people ended
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: up caught in this lethal cycle of it in their
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: own home.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And that, I mean, that is the central irony that
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: we really need to tear apart in this deep dive today.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: We're looking at the case of Detective Damien Cullen and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: former officer Yesenia Sanchez.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Such a heavy case.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And the source material we're looking at is a true
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: crime recap from an Oxygen Snap feature that was published
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: in September 2026.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Which lays out the timeline so clearly.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: It does. And the mission for this deep dive... What
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: we really want to explore with you all listening is
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: how we unpack the anatomy of an escalating toxic relationship.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Because it shatters this really comforting assumption we all seem
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: to hold.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: The assumption that expertise protects you.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We like to think that, well, knowing the signs,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: having the training, wearing a literal badge that acts as
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a shield. Like if you know how domestic escalation works
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in theory, surely you can prevent it in your own life, right?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: But that's the blind spot. Yeah.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: This story forces us to look at how a profound
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: familiarity with someone can actually create the most dangerous blind
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: spot imaginable.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Right, because expertise can sometimes be the very thing that
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: blinds you. I mean, when you spend your days analyzing
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the chaotic, violent behavior of strangers, you develop really high
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: tolerance for chaos.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. You build a toolkit.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: You build a highly specialized toolkit for handling threats. But,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: and this is the crucial part, when that threat is
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: sleeping in your bed or, you know, showing up in
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: your driveway, that toolkit can just malfunction.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: It just shorts out.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the brain just refuses to process the person you
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: love through the same threat assessment matrix that you would
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: use for a suspect on the street.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So let's get right into the anatomy of that Tuesday morning.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Because the timeline of their relationship, like you said, It
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: reads like a textbook escalation of domestic violence.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: It really does. It's perfectly mirrored.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: But it all funnels down into this one hyper-condensed moment
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: of violence in November 2022. It was captured on home
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: surveillance cameras, broadcast over police radio, and it's just fractured
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: multiple lives in a matter of seconds.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Just absolute chaos.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Right. So let's look at Damien's immediate reaction when that
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: red truck blocks him in. He dials 911 and he says,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: start me a unit. Now, I find that phrasing so fascinating.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It is very telling.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Because, I mean, if someone pulls a gun on me
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: in my driveway, I am screaming. I am panicking.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Anybody would.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: But Damien defaults to police jargon. Is that just muscle
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: memory for a cop or is that a psychological defense
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: mechanism kicking in?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Well, it's both, honestly. But the psychological aspect is absolutely
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: paramount here. In high-stress life-or-death situations, human beings fall back
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: on their highest level of ingrained training.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Whatever is hardwired in there.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For Damien, being a veteran detective, that training dictates
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: a very procedural response to an armed threat. By requesting
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: a unit and describing her as a female with a gun,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: he is tactically dissociating.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Wow. So he's mentally separating himself from who she actually is.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: He has to. Because if he processes her in that
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: split second as, you know, Yesenia, the woman I loved,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: the woman who helped raise my kids who's now trying
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: to kill me. The emotional flooding would just be paralyzing.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: He wouldn't be able to act. He'd freeze.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Right, he wouldn't be able to function. So his brain
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: just flips a switch. He categorizes her not as his ex-partner,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: but as a hostile subject. It is essentially a survival
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: mechanism disguised as radio protocol.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense on paper, but the tragedy is that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: he is still fundamentally trapped in the domestic reality. Because
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: while he is on the phone with his dispatchers, his
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: own colleagues, he doesn't retreat into the house.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: No, he doesn't take cover.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: He doesn't barricade the door. He actually walks back toward
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: his porch and he engages her. He asks her what
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: she is doing there. And her response, the very last
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: thing she says before pulling the trigger is just chilling.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: She looks at him and asks, are you going to
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: take me serious now? And then she shoots him directly
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: in the face.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Let's. We really need to isolate that question for a moment.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Are you going to take me serious now?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's unpack that.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Because when we think of violent crimes, particularly shootings, we
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: often assume the driving emotion is just blinding anger, right?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Like a total loss of control.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Like a crime of passion.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But that specific question implies something entirely different. It
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: suggests a deeply calculated simmering resentment over a perceived loss
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: of status. Oh, wow. It isn't just about causing physical
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: injury to him. It is about demanding an audience and
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: forcing him to acknowledge her power.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: See, I want to dig into that because to me
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: it sounds almost counterintuitive. I mean, if you want someone
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to take you seriously, destroying them seems like the opposite
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: way to achieve it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: It does seem contradictory.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: You can't be taken seriously by a corpse.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Right. So is this really about violence or is it
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: fundamentally about power and just, you know, demanding an audience?
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Is it a permanent temper tantrum? from someone who can't
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: handle rejection.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Well, the line between those two things is razor thin
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: when we talk about intimate partner violence. To an abusive personality,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: power and existence are completely intertwined.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: They can't separate the two.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: No. Yesenia felt marginalized. In the aftermath of their breakup,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Damien was moving on with his life. He was establishing boundaries.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Right, he was seeing other people.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: And to a healthy person, a boundary is just a boundary.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: But to someone who requires total control... A boundary is
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: an existential threat. It is literally an erasure of their
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: importance in the world.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: She had to force her way back in.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. By arriving with a firearm, blocking his exit, and
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: confronting him on his own porch, she is forcefully centering
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: herself back in his universe. That question, are you going
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: to take me serious now, is a demand for total submission.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: And the gunshot is just the punctuation mark.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to put it. She is essentially saying,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I have the power to end your reality, therefore I
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: am the most important thing in it.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: It's an absolutely horrific inversion of intimacy. She's demanding to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: be the center of his world, even if she has
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: to burn that entire world to the ground just to
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: get his attention.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: And the setting makes it even darker.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: The physical environment of this confrontation adds a layer of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: symbolism that is almost too heavy to even process. When
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Damien is shot in the face, the physical impact of
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the bullet throws him backward, but he doesn't hit the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: concrete floor of the porch. According to the investigators on
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the scene, he actually hits his head on a porch swing.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: And that porch swing alters the entire trajectory of his fall.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: It literally saves his life.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: It does. Major Yolanda Jacinth of the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: specifically pointed out that this object broke his fall and
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: prevented what likely would have been a fatal full-impact collision
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: with the ground.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Because a head injury from that height combined with a
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: direct gunshot wound to the face... would almost certainly have
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: been unsurvivable.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about the jarring dissonance of that for
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a second. A porch swing is the ultimate emblem of
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: domestic tranquility.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Right, it's where you relax.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: It's where you drink coffee on a Sunday morning, you know?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: It represents safety, family, stability. And in the middle of
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: this absolute nightmare, that very symbol of domestic peace literally
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: intervenes and saves his life.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: It really is a surreal detail.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: It changes the physics of his collapse just enough to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: keep his heart beating.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And I think it also highlights the total desecration of
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: the home as a safe space. Because the home is
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: supposed to be the sanctuary away from the violence of
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: the street.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Especially for a cop.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But Yesenia brought the violence of the street right
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: onto the sanctuary of the porch. And what's even more disturbing,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: while Damien is lying there bleeding catastrophically from a head wound,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: her reaction is just unthinkable.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Let's talk about her reactions.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: The official investigation notes that after firing the gun, Yesenia
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: casually walks away.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I just have a really hard time wrapping my head
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: around that phrase, casually walks away.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: It's chilling.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You just shot someone you spent seven years with, someone
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you theoretically loved. I mean, even in crimes of extreme passion,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: you expect some kind of panic, right?
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: You expect a physical reaction to the adrenaline.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You expect the perpetrator to drop the gun, to scream,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to run frantically to their car, or even to try
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and administer aid once the shock wears off. But a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: casual stroll back to the truck, that suggests a level
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of psychopathy that is deeply, deeply unsettling.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Well, it speaks to a psychological phenomenon called emotional compartmentalization
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: in the immediate aftermath of a violent act.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Okay. How does that work?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: For Yesenia, the goal was not necessarily the murder itself,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: but the reclamation of power.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: The control.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Right. The act of pulling the trigger satisfied that psychological itch.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: In her distorted reality, a task was completed. The point
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: was made. He was forced to take her seriously.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So she just clocked out.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Because the internal goal was achieved, there was a momentary,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: chilling absence of adrenaline or panic. She simply disengaged. It
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: demonstrates a profound lack of empathy, just a total disconnection
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: from the humanity of the man bleeding out at her feet.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: But see, here's where it gets really interesting. Because that
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: terrifying detachment, it didn't last long, did it?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Because while she casually walked away from the porch, the
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: minute she got back into that red truck, the psychological
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: dam completely broke.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: The illusion of control vanished. Right.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: The coldness of her walking away stands in the stark,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: jarring contrast to the absolute chaos she unleashed immediately afterward.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: The violence didn't just end with the gunshot. It mutated
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: into this sprawling, chaotic public emergency.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: The transition from the calculated cold executioner on the porch
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: to the erratic, out-of-control suspect in the truck is instantaneous.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It's like flipping a switch back the other way.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, we see
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the immediate unraveling of the perpetrator's mind once the adrenaline
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: of the planned act wears off and reality sets in.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: It's like a grenade going off. I mean, the initial
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: blast hits Damien, but the shrapnel rips through everyone else
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: in the vicinity. Let's map out how quickly this situation splintered.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: It's a rapid sequence of events.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Inside the home, Damien's brother, David, is getting ready for work.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: He hears his father scream. And it wasn't just a yell.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: David described it as a chilling, primal scream.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: That's a sound you never forget.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Never. The father had looked out the window and seen
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: his son in a massive pool of blood. So they
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: rush out. They find him with a pulse, and this
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: frantic chaos of an airlift begins. But while the family
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: is desperately trying to keep Damien alive on the porch,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the 911 dispatchers are getting slammed with a second emergency.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Right. While first responders are racing to the Hialeah home,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: another 911 call drops. A hit-and-run collision. Liar. Yes.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Liar.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: A woman in a red fruck, matching Yesenia's description, has
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: slammed into a parked car. But she doesn't hit the brakes.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: She keeps accelerating and plows into four more vehicles.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, five cars.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Five cars in total, just smashed into as she recklessly
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: flees the area.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I want to look at the psychology of that hit
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: and run, because is this just someone trying to escape
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the police, or is the erratic driving a physical manifestation
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of her mind completely unraveling?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: It's the unraveling, without a doubt.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Because on the porch, she had absolute control. But in
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the truck? She is literally a wrecking ball.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Fleeing a crime scene in a calculated way requires intense focus.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Smashing into five parked cars indicates a total loss of
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: motor control, a loss of situational awareness and executive function.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: The adrenaline crash is hitting her system.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The reality of having just shot a police detective,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: who is also her ex-partner, is flooding her brain. That
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: casual demeanor was a temporary illusion.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Just a facade.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: The hit and run is the outward, physical expression of
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: her psychological disintegration. She has lost control of the vehicle,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: just as she has irreversibly lost control of her life.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And as if a shooting and a five-car pileup aren't
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: enough for the police dispatchers to handle on a Tuesday morning...
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: A third emergency call comes in.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: It just keeps escalating.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And this one doesn't even go to a dispatcher at first.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It happens right on the street. An off-duty officer is
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: suddenly approached by a young boy in an absolute panic.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And the boy says, my aunt, Yesenia, was just involved
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: in an accident. She's in the house saying that she's
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: going to end it.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: The ripples of trauma just keep expanding outward. Yesenia had
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: fled to her relative's home and her behavior upon arriving
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: was so volatile, so suicidal. that her own family had
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: to physically restrain her until the police arrived.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Let's just pause and ask you, the listener, to think
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: about the sheer volume of collateral damage inflicted in the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: span of maybe 15 minutes.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: It's staggering.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: We always frame an act of domestic violence as a private,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: closed-door tragedy, right? Like it's just between two people. But
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: this morning proves that violence is a contagion.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: It really is. It can't be contained.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: It cannot be contained to a porch. You have a father...
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: who will never unsee his son bleeding out. You have
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: neighbors whose property is destroyed. And most devastatingly, you have
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a young boy, her own nephew, who is thrust into
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the position of intercepting law enforcement to report that his
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: aunt is threatening to put a gun to her own head.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: That is a level of trauma that permanently alters a
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: family tree.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Completely alters it.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: The psychological burden placed on that child is just, it's staggering.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: He was forced to become the liaison between a suicidal
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: family member and the police.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: A kid should never have to do that. No.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: And the psychological footprint of this one morning extends so
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: far beyond just Damien and Yesenia. It altered the neighborhood,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the responding officers, the family unit. It is a cascading
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: failure of safety that engulfs everyone nearby in real time.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Which naturally forces us to ask the most difficult question.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: How did they arrive at this morning of absolute chaos?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: How did it get to this point?
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Right. How do two people go from sharing a life,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: sharing a home... To this level of catastrophic destruction. To
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: understand how this morning came to be, we have to rewind.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: We have to look backward.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: We have to look at who Damien and Yesenia were
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: before the violence totally eclipsed their identities. We have to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: look at the badges they wore and the incredibly complex
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: irony of their professional expertise.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Because looking at their history, we see two very driven,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: very capable individuals. Damien was described by his brother Daniel
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: as a feisty guy.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And a prankster, right?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a prankster. He had this natural fearlessness that suited
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: him perfectly for police work, and he was incredibly ambitious.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: By the age of 20, he had already graduated from
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the police academy, hit the streets, and systematically worked his
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: way up to the rank of detective.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: So he was committed. And he had a whole past life, too.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: He was building a future with a longtime girlfriend. They
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: had two kids before they separated.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Right. He had a whole established life.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And when that relationship ended, he met Yesenia Sanchez, who
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: was a single mom at the time. and they found
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: love with each other. But what's really interesting is how
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: intertwined their identities became.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: They really enmeshed their lives.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Yesenia didn't just share a home with him. She admired
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: him enough to mirror his career path. She followed in
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: his footsteps to become a police officer herself, working for
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department. And they were together for
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: seven years.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Seven years is a massive chunk of time to build
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: a life.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: A shared culture, a shared professional language. But we have
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: two people deeply embedded in law enforcement. They are literally
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: trained to de-escalate situations and spot criminals.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: That's their day job.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: So how does someone with that rigorous training end up
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: as the victim and the other as the perpetrator? Does
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: wearing a uniform give someone a false sense of immunity
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to domestic issues? Like, we're cops. We can handle it.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's a false sense of immunity as
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: much as it is a profound over-reliance on compartmentalization.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Well, the shared professional identity is really the key to
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: understanding how this relationship deteriorated in plain sight without anyone
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: intervening sooner. Being a police officer isn't just a job
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: you clock out of at 5 o'clock. Right.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: It becomes who you are.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is an all-encompassing identity. It comes with a
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: specific subculture, a specific way of viewing the world, and
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: a specific set of psychological defenses. And police officers are
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: trained to compartmentalize trauma.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: It's a necessary survival skill.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: It is. You cannot respond to a fatal car crash
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: or a domestic homicide or a violent robbery, absorb all
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: that emotional weight, and then go home and be a
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: functioning parent. You have to put the trauma in a
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: psychological box, lock it, and move on.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: But if you become an expert at locking trauma in
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: a box at work, you probably apply that same strategy
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: at home, right?
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The coping mechanism becomes the fatal flaw. When you
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: deal with extreme, life-threatening conflict on the streets every single day,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: your baseline for what constitutes unacceptable behavior shifts dramatically.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: That makes so much sense.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: A civilian might panic if their partner yells aggressively. A
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: police officer might view that same yelling as a minor
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: annoyance compared to the suspect who pulled a knife on
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: them earlier that shift. They normalize aggression.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: But there's also the culture of the badge itself, right?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: The stigma of admitting weakness.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, the culture is heavily rooted in stoicism, control, and authority.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: To be a police officer is to be the protector,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: the one who saves victims.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Not the one who I as a victim.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For a veteran male detective to admit that he
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: is the victim of domestic abuse and that his abuser
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: is a fellow officer requires him to completely dismantle his
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: professional identity. It requires an admission of vulnerability that police
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: culture historically punishes.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: It's a massive barrier.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: The uniform provides a camouflage of competence. It allows both
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: of them to project this facade of order and authority
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: to the outside world while privately descending into chaos.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It's chilling to think that the very psychological tools that
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: made them effective at their jobs were the exact tools
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: that blinded them to the lethal danger in their own
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: living room.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: It's a tragic irony.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But that compartmentalization, that camouflage, it eventually failed. It couldn't
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: last forever. And the private dysfunction spilled violently out into
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the public record a full year before the shooting on
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the porch.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Right. The events of 2021 are the glaring sirens that
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: were tragically ignored. This is when the violence transitioned from
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: private dysfunction to documented criminal escalation.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: The history here is incredibly volatile. Damien's brother David recounted
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: prior allegations, and he detailed a pattern of behavior that
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: goes way, way beyond normal relationship arguments.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It was severe physical abuse.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: David said Yesenia went crazy and had previously slashed Damien
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: with a knife, not threatened, actually slashed him. She threw
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: objects at him. She physically punctured the tires on his vehicle.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Destroying his property.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And she engaged in what has to be the most
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: terrifying form of emotional manipulation. She would hold a gun
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to her own head and threaten suicide.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And we know this isn't just hearsay. Major Jacinthe from
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the sheriff's office confirmed this history on the record. She
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: explicitly stated that evidence supported domestic violence in the home,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: that Yesenia had struck him several times in the past.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: So we aren't talking about subtle red flags here. We
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: are talking about documented physical assaults with deadly weapons, property destruction,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and suicidal threats.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Blatant sirens.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And finally, in September of 2021, Damien hits his breaking point.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: The detective acts like a detective. He files an official
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: police report against Yesenia.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge step.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: A massive step. She is arrested. She's charged with battery
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: and criminal mischief. And the fallout for her is immediate
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and severe. She is forced to resign from the police force.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Her career is over.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Her career is over.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: From a systemic standpoint, this is exactly what is supposed
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: to happen, right? The victim reported the abuse. Law enforcement intervened.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: An arrest was made. Professional consequences were levied.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: The system worked. This should have been the definitive severing
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: of their ties.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't. And this is the twist in the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: story that just leaves you staring at the wall in
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: absolute disbelief.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: It's so hard to comprehend.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Damien. the victim of a knife attack, the man who
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: just had his abuser arrested and stripped of her badge,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: goes to the jail, bails her out, refuses to press charges,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and they get back together.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: He undoes it all.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I am trying to find an analogy for this level
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of self-sabotage. It is like a seasoned firefighter standing in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: his own living room, watching smoke pour out of the curtains,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: feeling the heat on his face, and deciding to just
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: close his eyes and close the door instead of putting
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: it out.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: It's a complete denial of reality.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? Why would a detective
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: who surely knows the statistical reality that domestic violence almost
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: always escalates bail out his own attacker?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Well, this raises an important question about the cycle of
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: abuse and something called the savior complex.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: The savior complex. OK.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: To understand this, we have to completely discard the idea
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: that logic or professional intelligence can override trauma bonding. We
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: assume that because Damien was a smart, trained professional, he
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: should have made the logical choice. But the cycle of
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: abuse operates on emotional terrorism, not logic.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Emotional terrorism. That's a strong phrase. It is.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: And Yesenia utilized a very specific, insidious tactic, the weaponization
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: of guilt.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: But how does the abuser weaponize the victim's guilt? She's
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the one who attacked him.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Think about the sequence of events from her perspective. She
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: attacks him. He reports her. She gets arrested. And because
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: of his report, she loses her identity, her income, and
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: her career. A career she chose specifically to mirror him.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Right. She followed him into the force.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: In the psychology of an abusive dynamic, the abuser is
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: incredibly adept at flipping the script. It is highly probable
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: that in the aftermath of the arrest, the narrative shifted
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: from you attacked me to you ruined my life.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So he feels responsible.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Damien likely felt a crushing wave of responsibility. He possesses
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: a strong protective instinct. It's why he's a cop in
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the first place. When the person he loves is sitting
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: in a jail cell, stripped of her dignity, blaming him
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: for the destruction of her life, that protective instinct just
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: short circuits.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: He steps right into the role of the savior. He
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: feels obligated to fix the damage he caused by reporting her,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: completely ignoring the fact that reporting her was the only
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: safe thing to do.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: It stressed the savior complex compounded by extreme trauma bonding.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: And we cannot overlook the suicide threats we mentioned earlier.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Right. The gun to her head.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: The brother noted she had a history of doing that.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Threatening suicide is a tool of ultimate manipulation. It creates
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: a psychological hostage situation. The abuser is effectively saying, if
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: you leave me or if you hold me accountable, I
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: will die and my blood will be on your hands.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And for a cop, that's the ultimate failure. Exactly.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For a police officer whose entire ethos is saving lives,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: watching your partner threaten to pull a trigger on themselves
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: is paralyzing. He bailed her out not because he felt safe,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: but because his fear of her destroying herself and his
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: guilt over her ruined career completely eclipsed his own instinct
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: for self-preservation.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I want you to remember that as a listener.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Because it's a profound reminder that intelligence or professional training
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't make anyone immune to emotional manipulations. We all have
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: blind spots when it comes to the people we love.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: We really do. Nobody is immune.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: But Damien's decision to drop the charges, it only bought
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: them a temporary reprieve, right? It put a bandage on
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a gunshot wound.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: It merely delayed the inevitable explosion.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: It pacified her immediate crisis, but it did absolutely nothing
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to treat the underlying pathology of her need for control.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It just delayed the explosion, leading to their final fatal
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: summer in 2022.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: And the summer of 2022 is when the illusion of
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: the relationship finally breaks for good. Damien finally, definitively ends it.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: He breaks up with Yesenia, he moves out, and moves
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: back into his parents' home in Hylia.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: He is actively trying to extract himself from the toxicity.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: But Yesenia refuses to let the narrative end. The stalking begins.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: She starts driving by his home repeatedly. She calls him incessantly.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Just constant harassment.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: And it escalates to the point where she physically follows
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: him when he goes on a date with another woman.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: We are witnessing the dangerous transition... From intimate partner violence
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to stalking. And what is the psychological driver of stalking?
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Is it just jealousy?
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Stalking is fundamentally about the absolute catastrophic loss of control.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Loss of control.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: During their relationship, even during the violent periods, Yesenia had
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: access to him. She had a lever she could pull
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: to elicit a reaction. But when he moved out, and
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: especially as he began seeing other women, that lever snapped.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Her control vanished.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Right. To a person with an abusive, controlling mindset, the
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: victim demonstrating independence is not just painful, it is an
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: intolerable threat to their own ego. Stalking is the desperate,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: frantic attempt to force themselves back into the victim's reality.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Like we saw on the porch later.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is a way of saying, you might have
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: left the house, but I still dictate your life.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: And Damien's family recognizes the danger. They are watching this
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: escalation in real time. They see her stalking him, They
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: know the history of the knife and the gun, and
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: they are terrified.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: They see the reality of it.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: They sit Damien down and warn him that she is
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: capable of extreme harm. But Damien dismisses the threat. He
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: completely brushes it off. He tells his brother David, and
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: this is the quote that just haunts this entire case.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: He says, don't worry about it. She's crazy, but she's
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: not that crazy. She's all talk.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: She's all talk. That phrase is a tragic masterclass in
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: cognitive dissonance.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Isn't it fascinating how we create sliding scales for the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: word crazy? I mean, Damien accepted a baseline level of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: chaos as normal. How do we lose our baseline for
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: what is actually dangerous behavior to that extreme degree?
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: It happens through a process of habituation and normalcy bias.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: When you are exposed to chaos over a long period,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: your brain adjusts its definition of normal just to survive
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: the environment.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So his normal was totally warped.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: For Damien, screaming matches were normal. punctured tires were normal,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: even physical altercations had become a normalized part of his
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: relationship matrix. When his family expressed terror, they were looking
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: at the situation with a healthy, uncorrupted baseline.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And he wasn't.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Damien was looking at it through a lens warped by
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: seven years of escalating trauma. The brain fiercely resists categorizing
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: a loved one as a mortal enemy.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: It's too painful.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: It is too painful, too disruptive to your psychological foundation
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: to accept that the person who knows you most intimately
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: is actively planning your murder.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: So the brain rationalizes. It minimizes.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: It's not that crazy.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Right. But we have to deconstruct the phrase, she's all talk.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: The tragic irony here is that she wasn't just talk.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence proved the exact opposite. Yeah.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: She'd already slashed him with a knife.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: She had used a knife. She destroyed property. She had
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: held a gun to her head. Those are not words.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Those are actions. But because Damien had survived those past incidents,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: he fell into the trap of believing that his past
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: ability to manage her guaranteed his future safety.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Damien's normalization of her past violence created a fatal cognitive dissonance.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: He thought he had the situation handled.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: He had no idea what was coming.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Which brings us directly into the mind of Yesenia Sanchez,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: in her own words. Because this cognitive dissonance from Damien
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: collided tragically with a completely different, deeply distorted reality inside
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Yesenia's mind.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And we get to see that reality in the interrogation room.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Yes. After the ambush, after the hit and run, after
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: she is restrained at her family's home and arrested, she
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: is taken in for police questioning.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: And she confesses. She admits to the shooting.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: But it's her justification that is so revealing.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly revealing and frankly, so disturbing. Her recorded
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: statement to the police literally blames Damien. Let me read
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: exactly what she told the authorities.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Please do.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: She said, It's been brutal with Damien. He just changed
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: from one day to the next. It was like his
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: way only. And she claimed it was impossible to get
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: anything out of him, saying, Everything is no, no, and
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the disrespect and the constant dismissing me, not caring. It
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: is a.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Textbook example of Darvo psychology.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Darvo. Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is stunning to hear those words in the
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: context of what she had just done.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I am reading this and trying to find a shred
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: of accountability. It is the ultimate, look what you made
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: me do, defense. She is sitting in an interrogation room,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: having just ambushed a man, shot him in the face,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: caused a mass casualty traffic accident, and traumatized her own family.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: And yet in her narrative, she is framing herself as
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the victim of being dismissed.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: It's a genuine reflection of a deeply fractured, narcissistic worldview.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: We have to analyze the psychology of her confession, what
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: she's actually complaining about. Right.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: His way only and everything is no.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: What is she describing there? She is describing Damien setting healthy,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: normal boundaries. He had ended the relationship. He was saying
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: no to her demands for his time and attention. He
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: was moving on.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: But to her, a boundary isn't a boundary.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: To her, Yesenia equates Damien setting healthy boundaries with disrespect.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: To an abuser who feels entitled to total ownership of
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: their partner, a victim asserting independence is perceived as an
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: act of profound, malicious disrespect.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Like an attack on her ego.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: When Damien said no, he was committing an unforgivable offense
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: against her. The authorities, and specifically State Attorney Catherine Fernandez-Rundle,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: determined the true motive was crystal clear. It was sheer
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: jealousy over him seeing other women.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Rundle actually noted he had moved on with his life,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and she obviously hadn't it. She stayed in her rage.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Stayed in her rage. Explore that phrase for a second.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Jealousy is a normal human emotion. We all experience it.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: But when you combine jealousy with a deep sense of entitlement,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: a history of unchecked power, and a propensity for violence,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: that jealousy ferments.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: It becomes toxic.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: It turns into attempted murder. Yesenia could not tolerate a
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: universe where Damien existed happily and independently of her. Her
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: confession is not an expression of remorse. It is a
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: justification of her right to punish him for defying her.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It is a terrifying glimpse into a mind that is
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: fundamentally incompatible with a healthy relationship. But ultimately, Yesenia's refusal
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: to let go of that rage, her desperate need to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: assert ultimate control, it ended up costing her her freedom.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: While Damien had to fight his way back to his life.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the judicial outcome, because it brings a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: very heavy... definitive close to her reign of control. Ahead
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of her trial, Yesenia accepts a plea deal.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Avoiding a full trial. Right.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: In March of 2025, she officially pleads guilty to stalking
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: and attempted first-degree murder. And the sentence she receives is staggering.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: 30 years in state prison, followed by 20 years of probation.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: That is half a century of judicial oversight. The sheer
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: weight of a 30-year sentence plus 20 years probation is
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: a definitive close to Yesenia's need for control.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Think about it. She spent years demanding to dictate Damien's
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: every move. She used violence, stalking, and manipulation to assert dominance.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: And now the state will dictate every single aspect of
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: her existence for the next 50 years. It is a
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: total irreversible revocation of the power she committed murder to maintain.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: And as for Damien, miraculously, he survives. He survives the gunshot,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: the brain trauma, the sheer horror of the ambush. He
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: credits his family, the ones who tried to warn him,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: for being his anchor during his recovery.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Which is incredible considering how close he came to losing
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: it all.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And he actually finds the strength to address the court
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: during Yesenia's sentencing. He says, I think justice is served.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: I think she got what she deserved.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Very measured response.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: But he also notes the emotional toll. He tells the court,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I was betrayed by the person closest to me at
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that time.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: That word betrayal is the defining emotional wound of domestic violence.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: We focus so much on the physical violence, the gun,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: the porch swing, the hit and run, because it is tangible, right?
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we can see the physical damage.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: But the psychological violence is the betrayal. It is a
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: complete shattering of the human contract.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I really want to focus on Damien's emotional survival here,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: because what does it mean to be betrayed by the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: person closest to you. It's the ultimate violation of trust.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: The person you share your bed with, the person you
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: confide in, choosing to become your executioner.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: The physical wound on his head will eventually heal, but
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: recovering from the psychological trauma of that betrayal is a
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: lifelong effort.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: How do you ever trust your own judgment again, right?
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: When your judgment told you, she's all talk.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: You have to mourn not just the relationship, but the
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: version of reality you thought you lived in. Which makes
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Damien's final public statement so incredibly powerful.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: It really is. His final message to the public is
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the thesis of this entire story. He says, that red
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: flag you're seeing is waving for a reason.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: It's a profound evolution of thought. It's a powerful transition
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: from a victim who ignored the signs to a survivor
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: desperately trying to warn others. He is looking back at
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: the slash tires, the knife, the suicide threats, the stalking.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: And he is acknowledging that they were never anomalies.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: They were promises.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He is pleading with anyone listening not to make
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: the same fatal miscalculation he did.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: So turning directly to you, the listener.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: How many times have you justified a red flag because
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: you love the person holding it?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: We've all done it on some level.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Have you ever smoothed over a toxic comment or minimized
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: an aggressive outburst by telling yourself they're crazy, but they're
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: not that crazy? Damien's story is a harrowing reminder to
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: trust your instincts. The hardest part isn't seeing the flag.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: The hardest part is having the courage to look at
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: it honestly and walk away before the porch swing is
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: the only thing standing between you and the end.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: The survival instinct is a powerful tool, but it only
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: works if we don't allow our emotions or our pride
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: to override the alarm bells. We cannot rely on miracles
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: or physics to save us from the red flags we
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: intentionally choose to ignore.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: As we wrap up this deep dive, I want to
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: leave you with a final lingering thought to mull over
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: or explore on your own that builds on what we've
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: discussed today.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: It's a provocative thought for sure.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: We talk extensively about how Damien's expertise in law enforcement
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: might have created a blind spot in his personal life.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: But it makes you wonder, does deep expertise in any
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: field actually create a dangerous arrogance?
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: If a trained veteran detective can somehow convince himself that
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: a woman wielding a knife is just all talk, How
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: equipped are the rest of us to see the danger
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: hiding behind a familiar face? Does our shoe familiarity with
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: someone make us the absolute least qualified people to judge
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: their capacity for harm?
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: It is a chilling paradox. We assume closeness brings clarity,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: but sometimes the closer you stand to a painting, the
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: harder it is to see the picture.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: That is so true. Thank you for joining us on
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: this deep dive into the source material. It's a heavy story,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: but one we all need to hear. Stay curious, stay vigilant,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and we'll catch you next time.