- I lived in this fairytale
that I needed a man
that would rescue me.
He made me feel safe.
He made me feel secure.
But my station in life was to be
a housewife, a mother, and a maid.
I've said, "God, if you could...
"make a way for me
to escape right now,
"I'll never look back.
"I swear to you."
He forced the g*n into my mouth.
And he got really close to me,
his mouth to my ear,
and he said,
"Do you see the evil in my eyes?"
- I said, "Put the g*n down,
what are you doing?"
I'm sorry.
- I was his wife.
I never realized that he,
even as evil and as vile as he is,
that he would go that far.
I grew up in a small town.
In rural southern Mississippi.
Almost like
a one-horse town,
everybody
knew everybody.
I did things, small things
like sneaking out,
underage drinking.
And that environment
is where I met Chad.
When I first met him,
the first thing that
I noticed about him
was his outgoing personality.
For lack of a better word,
he was very hyperactive.
Very, "Go, go, go. Let's do."
And he was also very attractive.
When I met him he was outgoing.
Immediately he seemed
like he was the life of the party.
Everybody wanted
to hang out with him,
be around him, be his friend.
He gave those things
as most of my crowd were.
We were young,
we were 17, 18-years-old,
so, when you go to a school
you usually hang out
with people in that school
and that, that side of the county.
And he lived,
and went to school
in our neighbouring
you know, our neighbouring school,
and our kind of rival school.
So, I didn't know anyone in his,
you know, his...
on his side of the family.
I couldn't see past what I was get
you know,
what we were doing right then.
I was very young and naïve,
and lived in this fairy tale
that I needed a man
that would rescue me
and take care of me.
Chad gave me all those things.
He made me feel safe,
he made me feel secure.
Our relationship moved so fast.
I was barely 17 and he was 24.
The day that I found out
that I was pregnant with Scott
was very scary for me.
I knew, even as a teenager,
that this was a lot,
and a huge step,
and I was gonna have
to grow up really fast.
The day that I told Chad
that I was pregnant,
he acted ecstatic.
He was happy.
Just a normal,
I guess, soon-to-be dad.
He started being more aggressive
in his plans
to find us a home to live in.
I thought that
that would give us time
to just really become the family
that I thought that we could be.
We ended up renting a home
from his older brother
in the middle of nowhere,
down a long, dirt country road
in the middle of the woods.
For the first few weeks,
we just lived together
trying to figure out
what we were to each other.
We would have bonfires and...
we would go fishing and just...
just the country way of living,
it was really what it was.
At that time,
Chad was an attractive guy
that was fun to be around.
Early on in my pregnancy,
there was a shift
in the way Chad treated me.
I was told very early on,
that his money was his money,
and that he would allow me money
when he thought that I deserved it.
And he would allow me to pay bills.
He would give me a check,
written out to the bill company.
I had to justify every
cent that I ever spent.
In hindsight,
it was probably for him to know
that I wasn't squireling away money
for a rainy day to leave him.
He started isolating me more.
He slowly alienated me from family.
Being an outdoors,
tomboy country girl,
I had a lot of male friends.
If I was allowed to be around them,
he had to be in my presence.
And it was very few
and far between.
And his jealousy
towards those male friends
fractured a lot of those friendships
for a long time.
Chad paved highways
all across the southern part
of Mississippi.
He sometimes would be gone
five days a week.
I mainly would see him
on the weekends.
While he was gone,
I was still isolated
in the home that we lived in.
He made sure of that
because he would
unplug the landline
and take it with him to work.
He would also take the only vehicle
that we had
and the cell phone with him.
I was pregnant.
I was terrified to be alone there
in the middle of nowhere
without a way to go
or a way to communicate
with anyone.
One day he came home
that weekend from working
out of town.
Immediately jumps in the shower.
You know, that was
an immediate red flag for me.
It's like, "Why before he even
"touches me does he have
to get in the shower?"
And then I just decided
to go through the cell phone.
And I noticed there was
incoming and outgoing calls
to this same number
that wasn't saved in his phone
and the was talking
to for an hour or two at a time.
So, I ended up writing down
that phone number
and then calling
from the house phone.
And the lady informed me that
they had been having an affair
for about six months.
- I always had
problems with self-esteem
from a very early age.
With Chad and with a lot of abusers,
what they do is...
they break down your self-esteem,
your self-confidence,
and make you feel like
there's no way
that you could survive without them.
I'm not sure
when his interest
in the military started.
He had a almost unnatural obsession
with firearms.
And I think that probably
played a big role
in him originally joining
the National Guard.
Where I grew up in
in rural Mississippi,
it is not uncommon
for everyone to own firearms.
But what was unusual
with Chad's interest with firearms
is that it went
a little bit beyond that.
He had up to 20 firearms
including as*ault r*fles
and handguns.
He had an AR-15,
he had an AK-47,
he had a 12-gauge shotgun,
.45 calibre handgun,
and a 38 Special.
That's the ones that I remember.
It was less about
owning the firearms
than the comments that he made
regarding those firearms.
The need to stockpile weapons
in case if there was
ever an instance
where he needs to be in a militia
or to overthrow the government.
When I was with him, I was...
It was very terrifying to me.
There was an instance
where we were driving
down a back road
in the middle of the woods.
I remember it being
a really hot day.
In my area, there's a lot of strays
and stuff that get dumped
in the country.
And a dog was just walking
down the side of the road.
And Chad stopped all of a sudden
and he called the dog
to the driver door.
And the dog was happy to see him,
wagging its tail.
[DOG WHIMPERS]
And he grabbed
his .45 calibre handgun
out from underneath the seat.
And he was saying,
"Come here, poochie, come here."
Then the dog kinda
put its front paws
on the side of our vehicle.
And at that point, he just...
- [g*nshots]
- [DOG CRIES]
...shot the dog in the head.
To see someone be so evil
towards animals
was something I had never
witnessed before in my life.
And it traumatized me.
It scared me.
And I think it was
to let me know that
he's capable of doing
some pretty horrible things
if I didn't get in line.
- Chad was extremely peculiar
about the way the house
was supposed to be.
He made it obviously clear that...
what my station
in life was.
To be a housewife,
a mother and a maid.
It was compulsive,
it was obsessive.
He would want things
lined up a certain way.
All of the vegetables
in the cabinets,
they all had to be grouped together,
the corn together,
green beans together,
all the labels facing
a certain way.
It all had to be lined in a uniform,
straight manner.
Usually, when I knew
that he was heading in
for the weekend,
I would spend that whole day before
scrubbing with Q-tips, toothbrushes,
just getting everything right.
But in those occasions
when something slacked,
I paid for it.
Dirt on the floor
could cause him to empty out
and dump out dressers
and tear clothes out of closets
and flip mattresses off of beds.
Swipe clean dishes off surfaces.
There was instances
where he would...
his nose would almost
touch my nose.
To look into his face,
it looked sometimes
like he was looking
straight through me.
Like, he wasn't even looking at me,
he was looking straight
through something else,
and his eyes almost became black.
And as time went on,
the violent aspect
of our relationship
really, really got more intense.
The first time that Chad
ever laid hands on me
was about six weeks
after I found out
that I was pregnant.
I went into the bedroom,
into a dresser.
And he was sleeping
because he was working
the night shift.
And the drawer squeaked.
[FAINT SQUEAK]
And it woke him up.
And he immediately
jumped up out of bed,
grabbed me by my hair,
drug me out of the room,
kind of tossed me into the hallway
and slammed the door on my face.
I was shocked.
I didn't know what
had just happened.
I was confused, I was scared.
My heart was racing.
I didn't know what to do.
And I just stood there, dumbfounded.
And then, after a few minutes,
he came out
and he wrapped his arms around me
from behind
and just said that he was sorry,
that he had never done anything
like that before to someone.
And that he was probably
half asleep when he done it
and that it would
never happen again.
At the time, I believed him.
You know, I woke him up,
he's tired, he works,
he provides for me.
And I was so inconsiderate
to go in there and wake him up.
I didn't wanna leave
because there were times
where things were really...
when they were good, they were OK.
And it kind of helped
soften when things weren't OK.
It didn't last long compared
to the good times that we had.
Scott was born
on January 9th, 1998.
I was 18 years old.
And I instantly fell
in love with him.
From the moment
he took his first breath,
he was a ball of energy.
Things were really good
for a little while after that.
There were times
where we got along great
and we laughed and we loved and...
He would shower me
with compliments and gifts and love.
So, for a little while
after Scott was born,
he kind of helped us
have better times
and make good memories of him
when he was a newborn.
It was calm,
and there were no violent instances
where he hurt me.
We got married
when I was six months pregnant
with my second child at the time,
Cynthia.
There was no proposal,
there was nothing
romantic that happened.
It's just,
"Hey, we're getting married."
We walked in front of a judge
and it took about 10 minutes
and I wore blue jeans
and a t-shirt.
And that was it.
It was done in 15 minutes.
After a...
what I would call a honeymoon break,
we would just eventually
circle back around.
By the time I was
pregnant with Cynthia,
I kind of knew the routine.
He would be angry,
he would become violent,
he would become remorseful.
And you could see
a pattern forming.
I lost all my friends.
And my family were
disappointed in me.
And...
did not like him.
It made it really hard
to have a relationship with them.
It hadn't been long
since I had Cynthia,
she was probably a few months old.
One day,
he had been working out of town
and he had came in
and I had made spaghetti
about three days before.
And he made the comment,
"Why is this still in here?"
He grabbed me by my hair
and made me get on my knees
in the middle of the kitchen.
And he set the pot
of spaghetti in front of me.
And he started scooping
handfuls of spaghetti
out and force-feeding me.
[JESSICA STRAINING]
He's like, "Eat it.
"If you expect me to eat it,
"then you should have
no problem eating it."
And he started rubbing it
on my and in my hair.
He would take his hand
and like, push my face
back like that.
He started punching me
and slapping me around.
He drug me into our bedroom
where he continued to as*ault me.
And continued to beat me
for a considerable amount of time.
After he'd done that,
he made me scrub the floors
on my hands and knees
with bleach rags to clean off
the spaghetti sauce.
There was something about that day,
him treating me
like I was not human.
By the next morning,
I had two black eyes
and a fractured rib
on my right side.
He had never touched the kids
in an aggressive manner,
but it terrified me.
And it terrified me,
like, how far is this
gonna escalate?
I never realized that he,
even as evil and as vile as he is,
that he would go that far.
- When Chad left for work,
I got my children dressed
and myself dressed
and I walked
to the nearest neighbour
where I could use their phone.
I called my family.
And they said...
that I would need
to press charges on him.
He beat me pretty bad.
So, I pressed charges on him.
He was arrested and booked.
And once he went to court
the judge had an agreement
with his lawyer
that he would seek psychiatric help
in a in-patient facility
and start medication.
And after he was released
from the psychiatric facility,
I was very much on guard.
But over time, I felt like
I saw a difference in him.
And if the therapy
and medication was working,
I didn't know not to believe him.
It all goes down to him
spinning it around to make it
somehow seem my fault.
A few months later,
I became pregnant with Joe,
my last child.
At that point,
I had three children by him
in three years.
And I realized that
how was I ever gonna escape
this relationship
if I kept having children
by this man?
And unbeknownst to him,
it was absolutely a big risk,
and I was terrified the whole time,
I went behind his back
and had my tubes tied
while he was out of town one day.
Chad was working out of town.
While I was waiting for him
to come home,
I had went to see my dad that day
and I was a little late
getting home...
and he was frustrated
that I was late...
and he started in on me.
Scott, at the time, was three...
and Scott ran into the living room
as he was beating me
and tried to separate us
and tried to get in-between us.
And, at that time,
Chad picked him up,
threw him onto the couch
and slapped him across the back
so hard that it left a handprint.
He always kept
a handgun in the nightstand
and it always stayed loaded.
And he laid me across the bed
and he straddled me,
with his knees on each
side of my shoulders...
and he told me
to open up my mouth...
and he forced the g*n into my mouth.
And he got really close to me,
his mouth to my ear...
and he said...
"Do you see the evil in my eyes?"
I thought I was dead.
And I vomited on me
and him and the g*n.
And at that point,
he pulled me off of the bed,
put me on my knees...
and, at this point,
he put it to the back of my head.
[PHONE RINGING]
- It was like a switch.
He went from this aggressive,
crazy, evil mindset
to talking normally on the phone,
setting up arrangements.
And he said, "Get in the vehicle.
"We're going. Get the kids up.
Get a towel for your face...
"and if you
let anyone see your face,
"I will k*ll you when we get home.
"I will promise you that.
I will k*ll you."
I had always made
a promise to myself.
I said, "He can hurt me
as much as he wants,
"but the first time
he ever puts a hand on my children,
"I will be gone."
And so, I got the kids into the van.
He drove to the house...
and I just prayed
the whole way there.
I just said,
"God, make a way for
me to escape right now.
"I'll never look back,
I swear to you."
And he stepped out of the vehicle...
and was walking up to their door...
and I jumped into the driver's seat
and I locked the door
and I probably did
about 60 miles an hour in
reverse out of their driveway.
And when I went to put it
in drive to go forward,
he had run across their small yard
and jumped in front of the vehicle.
And he was mouthing,
"I'm gonna k*ll you."
And I just closed my eyes
and I pressed the gas.
He could do whatever
he wanted to to me
and I would put up with it.
And I always said,
"He'll never hurt my kids,"
but I always had
this knot in my stomach...
that something was going to happen.
He came before a judge.
Chad would know exactly what to do.
He knew that he needed
to show remorse to the judge
and to immediately
admit fault and...
check himself into
a psychiatric facility voluntarily
and start medication
and that way it looked like
he was sincere and getting help
and that he was wanting to change.
And I knew that wasn't true.
He started the divorce proceedings
the next month...
and that's where the whole
fight for custody began.
And he said, "If you don't do
exactly what I tell you to do
"in the divorce proceedings,
then I'll take the kids
"and you'll never see them again."
Sorry.
If he said that he was gonna take
my children from me
and I was never gonna
see them again,
I believed that he would
make that happen.
Even though
I wasn't living with him,
I still felt that fear of him
and what he could do to me.
He was always gonna have
some rights to his children
and he was so manipulative
in the court system
that I was afraid
that if I kept pressuring the courts
to make a decision on
where they needed to stay
for the most part,
that I would end up
swaying it his way.
So, in a way, I kind of just...
broke down
and gave him what he wanted
so the children would stay
with him for the school year.
I still felt like
maybe the instance with
Scott was a one-time thing.
And I looked back and I was like,
"You know, Jessica,
"he was never violent towards them."
They loved him, especially Scott.
Scott and Chad have
so many likenesses.
They have so many things in common.
I don't think there's anything
that I could have done or said
to break that bond with them
because it was so tight.
I think, in this picture,
that Scott's emotions
in it are genuine.
I think that Chad's
is for the camera.
This is Scott.
He loved to dress up
in his dad's army gear.
It's one of my favourite pictures.
After our divorce, I decided that
I was gonna stop depending on
men for my livelihood
and that I was gonna step up
and take care of myself.
I can't think of anything
more empowering for a woman
than to join the United States Army.
And that's what I did.
I just had recently graduated
basic training with
the United States Army.
I actually met Eric
through one of his friends.
- January 1st of 2007,
a friend of mine had gone
to a New Year's Eve party.
I was on duty that night.
The following afternoon,
he called me and said,
"Hey, I met a girl.
Will you come with me?
"She has a friend."
We kind of hit it off
and we liked each other a lot.
It got serious pretty quickly.
- When the kids first met Eric,
Scott was 10,
Cynthia was nine and Joe was eight.
- We went to the beach,
went out and played catch
on the beach.
Their dad had never
done that with them.
The kids, throughout the years,
had gone back and forth
from Dad to us.
The teenage years, in particular,
were a little bit difficult.
Their love for their father
and what he was
constantly telling them
was kind of against all the rules
and expectations that
we were trying to set in our house.
We had his father telling Scott
that he didn't
have to listen to me...
and that caused,
you know, kind of a rift.
So, Scott, he was very outgoing
and he lived the kind of life
where he didn't care
who was looking.
He was the guy that
everybody invited to the party
'cause he was gonna bring it.
I met Chad on a few occasions.
Jessica always asked me to maintain
a cordial relationship
with him for the kids.
So, I tried to do that.
I will tell you that
there's not a single time...
that I have been around Chad Graves
that I have not had
a g*n on me, though,
because I do not trust that man.
- We actually met
in the seventh or sixth grade,
but when we got to high school,
we kind of went our separate ways
until he contacted me
on Facebook.
He's very, very charming.
He would open the car door for me,
help me put my seatbelt on.
Just very, very gentleman-like.
I was aware Chad was on medication
a month or so,
I guess, three months,
maybe, after we got together.
He told me that he had
had some issues
with PTSD from being in the Army
'cause as far as me and him,
he had not shown any
violent side yet.
Chad would tell me and Scott
about some of the things
he done in the military.
He told us that
he was a commander on a Bradley
and they hit an IED
and it flipped the Bradley
and he landed on his head
and that's how
he got injured in Iraq.
I believe Scott was
Scott was very, very loyal
to his daddy.
It didn't matter
what Chad done to him,
he would always forgive him
and hug him
and tell his daddy
that he loved him.
No matter what Chad did,
he always forgave him.
- I woke up like
it was any other day.
I got up and I made me some coffee.
And I noticed that I had
a missed message on Facebook
from someone that
I did not recognize.
It stated, "Hello.
"I'm a friend of Chad and Stacy's
"and Stacy's trying to reach you.
"It's an emergency.
"Please call her back
at this number."
And so, immediately,
my first thought was...
they've probably
got into an argument
and they've fought.
So, I called.
And as soon as Stacy
answered the phone,
I couldn't understand her.
She was screaming and crying
and saying, over and over,
that he k*lled him.
- On August 16th of 2018...
Scott asked his dad
if he could go to his
grandmother's house...
and Chad told him no...
and things escalated...
from there.
Chad was in the bed.
I was standing beside
the bed, talking to Chad.
And the next thing I knew...
Chad jumped up out of bed,
pushed Scott into a corner.
That's where Chad's shotgun was.
Scott grabbed the nozzle of the g*n
and then Chad grabbed it
and that's when they
started fighting over it.
They worked their way
into the dining room,
fighting over it, wrestling over it.
From where I was standing,
I couldn't see where Scott was...
but Chad, I could see
and he had the shotgun...
in his hand.
And I said, "Put the g*n down.
What are you doing?"
And he just looked at me
with a blank look...
and he racked the shotgun...
and then fired.
[g*nsh*t]
[SNIFFS] I'm sorry.
[SIGHS SHAKILY] I come
running out of the bedroom...
to get to Scott...
and Chad got in front of me
and told me,
"Don't look at him.
Don't touch him. Call 911."
I was in such shock.
And then, after that, it's all...
a blank until the police get there.
[POLICE SIRENS]
- The police took me out
in the breezeway of the apartment.
I'm in my pyjamas, no shoes.
Chad was to the left of me
and I remember them
arresting and handcuffing him,
but they took me to a police car.
It's pouring rain this night.
From there, he goes to the VA,
to the mental hospital.
- I was at work.
It's about nine o'clock
in the morning.
I was on a break
and Jessica called me...
hysterical.
And she's screaming
into the phone,
"He k*lled him.
He k*lled him.
"He k*lled my baby."
[JESSICA CRYING] And I prayed
for God to send him back to me
and that he could take me.
And then the next thing
I remember...
was being
in the front yard
on my knees
and a police officer
from our town pulling up
to be with me
until Eric could make it.
And I fell onto hot asphalt
and laid in the foetal position...
while my whole world
just fell apart.
I immediately knew
there was no way
that it was self defence
because I know my son
and I know what kind
of heart he had...
and I know how evil Chad was...
and I knew that he would
say whatever he needed to
to try to get out of trouble.
I let fear drive me to accept...
the custody agreement.
And I will, to this day,
for the rest of my life...
feel guilt...
and anguish over that decision.
- They looked at all the evidence.
All the shotgun pellets
were in the baseboards
of the floor.
The way the blood was pooled
showed that Scott was
on the floor when he was shot.
So, he was not a threat for Chad.
He could have put
the g*n down at any time.
Chad shot Scott like
it wasn't nothing to him.
And I just... I can't comprehend it.
The police arrested him
on August the 29th of 2018...
at the Biloxi VA,
when he was being discharged.
- With Chad being manipulative,
he found this perfect opportunity
to say,
"Hey! You know, I have PTSD."
But anybody that knew Chad
before he deployed
knew that this behaviour didn't
come around because of PTSD...
because he was abusing people
and being violent way before
he ever saw combat.
And, which we later found out,
he, in fact, never saw combat.
People don't realize
that not every job
that you do in the military...
puts you in harm's way
or puts you in a combat situation.
I contacted several
of his army buddies...
and they told me...
early on in his deployment,
he was deemed a liability
because of a negligent discharge.
They pulled him
off of the frontlines
and put him behind a computer.
He lied about everything
that he did in the military.
I felt betrayed.
I believe he uses PTSD as a crutch.
I mean, you don't lie
about stuff like that.
- When I saw him walk in,
I was shocked at his appearance.
He's aged...
rightfully so, being in jail
for the last three years.
I saw very little remorse.
They told me I could have
a few moments to speak
and I took six minutes
to give my victim's
impact statement.
[JESSICA ON LAPTOP]
I looked him in the face
and there was no expression,
except for the fact when I said,
"Scott was the only child
"that loved you unconditionally
"and forgave you for everything
you ever did to him."
"And, at that point,
he shook his head "yes."
And then they asked him
if he wanted to speak
and he said no.
And then they sentenced him.
The fact that he could get out
in six years consumed me.
I kept thinking,
"What do I need to do,
"proactively as a parent,
"to protect my remaining children?
"How do I protect us all?"
- He was just a mean,
evil, evil person.
Who could do that to
their own child
and not show any remorse?
- I, in the back of my head...
always believed...
that one day...
Chad would go too far.
But I never thought that
it would be one of his kids
and, furthermore,
I never thought that
it would be Scott...
the one kid
that always stood by him,
always defended him.
Chad didn't become a monster
because of Iraq.
Chad was a monster...
from his teenage years...
to the point where he decided
to pull the trigger on his own son.
For a long time...
I felt like
a piece of me died.
I got justice for him,
to some degree.
I was honoured to be his mother.
The world is really missing out
with him not being here anymore.
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