All language subtitles for Let the Devil In S01E04 1080p WEB h264-ETHEL_track3_[eng]

[Ominous music plays]

♪♪

Something unusual
happened to my daughter

when she was probably
about 8-years old.

Wow. It's hard to talk about.

Okay. Hold on.

So my daughter said that
there had been an apparition.

[Male voice] [Singsongy voice]
Christina.

An apparition of a boy
that came in her room.

She said he was wearing
these overalls.

He had kind of an impish smile.

♪♪

[Ominous music plays]

And what occurred was
that this little boy

would be transformed
into this character

that was horribly evil.

[Laughs]

He started to laugh.

[Laughs]
Go to the window.

[Scherlacher] I thought maybe
I heard something,

something moving in her room.

It's okay.

And I got up out of my bed
to look.

Now fly.

[Laughs]

She was gonna kill
herself.

Christina!

I grabbed her and had to,
like, restrain her.

Are you okay?

She said, "The little boy says
I have to kill myself."

[Male voice laughs]

I felt so powerless.

In my faith,

in Christ, and in my prayers,

I knew I was dealing
with hell itself.

[eerie piano music playing]

This was over 30 years ago.

And my daughter grew up,
of course.

Whether a Satan exists
is a matter of belief,

but we are certain
that Satanism exists.

[Scherlacher] Recently she
called me up and said, "Dad,

I watched this thing
on YouTube --

'Geraldo Rivera.'"

And our own Detective Hart
was on that program.

We came down here.

We found Mrs. Sullivan
laying on the floor.

And there was this kid,
Tom Sullivan.

[Man] Tommy Sullivan had written
this contract with the devil.

[Scherlacher] She sees the face.

And she recognizes him as the
boy that showed up in her room.

The same kind of smirk
and everything.

She said, "That's him."

My daughter would have
not recognized Tom

at the age of 8, because Tom
had been dead for years already.

She didn't know anything
about Tom,

and to this day,
she will tell you...

[Laughs]

..."The little boy
that appeared in my room,

that was Tommy Sullivan."

[exhales]

[ominous music plays]

[laughs]

♪♪

[woman vocalizing]

♪♪

[fire crackling]

♪♪

[Indistinct whispering]

♪♪

[piano music playing]

[Roth] When something
traumatic happens,

something you can't
wrap your head around,

it's natural to reach for
the oldest story in the book...

...good vs. evil...

God vs. the devil.

It gives the horror a shape,
a villain, something to blame.

But that doesn't consider
the real-world demons

that live within us all.

It's a shield against
an even more violent foe.

It's realizing that the monster
was never hiding under the bed.

It was always much closer
than that.

♪♪

[Birds chirping]

Everybody that
I've ever talked to about Tommy

and about the whole situation
definitely has questions.

The part that stood out to me
the most

was that he killed himself
that way.

Both of his wrists were slit.

And then the way
it was described to me

is that from ear to ear
he was slit, like,

almost, like, basically
through his throat.

Like, it was deep.

I had the exact
same pocketknife.

It's not a big knife.

If you were gonna hold it,

the handle is about
the size of your hand,

and then the blade
would be sticking out

maybe an inch
to an inch and a half.

So he wouldn't have been
able to hold the knife

to cut the next wrist.

And if you slash--
slash your throat,

well, you're not gonna be
able to do either.

So, I mean, not to make it
a math problem,

but the order of operations
just doesn't make any sense.

[Breathing heavily]

[Cies] The devil possessing you,
giving you superhuman strength

was the explanation that put
that to bed to everybody.

[Woman] I understand there
may have been some Satanic,

uh, indications
in that letter, as well.

That's true.
That's correct.

Even as a 13-year-old
trying to process it,

like, the devil doing it
just didn't --

It's not really
a satisfying explanation,

and it just leaves you
really, like, unsettled

and really uneasy.

It's 30-something years ago.

It didn't make any sense
at the time.

And, like, looking back,

I don't know anybody that thinks
that Tommy killed himself.

♪♪

♪♪

[Man] It's just...

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Satan came to him.

Satan had his face on it.

And Satan told him to kill
his family and then go out

and preach Satanism.

♪♪

A neighbor down the street
told me Tommy Sullivan

used to cut his grass.

He said he was
an all-American boy.

He said nobody--
and I mean nobody--

can figure out what went wrong.

Satanism made little Tommy
kill his mother so brutally.

Yeah, I don't buy that.

I just don't.

I was there just to learn.

I was just there
to find out why.

Why? What happened here?

I did not talk to Tom Sr.

Trust me, I tried really,
really hard to talk to him.

I tried and tried and tried.

He did not want to talk to me.

So here I was going
to look into, like,

why and what happened
and really,

you know, dig as deeply
as I could.

But it wasn't an easy dig.

I got a lot of,
"I can't talk to you,"

"I don't want to talk to you."

"Why?" "I'm sorry.
I just can't talk to you"...

as if there was this big secret,
which made me even,

you know, more curious.

Like, what's being hidden here?

I remember my mother
not being a fan of Tom Sr.

My folks remember
Tom Sr. was heavy-handed.

I used to occasionally catch
a beating

from my father,
obviously.

I mean, it was the 1980s

and I was a pain in the ass,

but Tommy was in trouble a lot,

either grounded or afraid

that his father was
gonna give him a few cracks

when he got home.

I was able to rationalize it
at the time, like,

you know, that's
just what happens, you know?

But looking back, it definitely
was a different level.

[Indistinct talking on TV]

Tom Sr., he had a temper.

I guess that was
pretty well known.

Detective Pell related to me,
and one of the people

that he had spoken with
from the neighborhood

described Tom Sr.
as having some type of argument

or something with Tom Jr.

Kind of got loud and stuff.

Kind of an aggressive type
of situation.

Went unreported
to law enforcement,

but nothing was ever done.

There were people
around the neighborhood

that voiced concerns about Tommy
and his father getting into it,

but certainly nobody's
picking up the phone,

calling 911,

um, and didn't.

When I first started looking
at what was going on

with this family,

one of the things that I recall

didn't involve Tommy
or Tommy's room,

but it was Brian
and Brian's room.

Most of us, if you had brothers
and sisters growing up,

remember putting a sign
on your door

that said, "Do not enter," or
whatever or something like that.

"Keep out."

That's until your mother
and father said, "Nah,

we don't do that here,"
and take it down.

The thing that struck me
was that on the door

to Brian's bedroom,

it said,
"Stay out or I will kill you."

And I think it speaks
to a level of violence

that I hate to say
was acceptable.

It certainly wouldn't
have flown in our home.

Um, and I think most parents
would say the same thing.

That -- In my opinion,

this was an indicator
of the family situation,

the dynamics.

I always had this feeling
that Tom was mad at his mom

for not protecting them
from the dad.

And I remember having the sense

that his mother didn't step in
to protect him and Brian

as much as he would have liked
that she would have.

Like, she should have been there
to cushion that blow.

I hesitate
to judge a person's home,

and there are factors
in every home that have issues,

and parents have issues.

[Indistinct arguing]

[Fleck] But I don't think
there was good communication.

[Arguing continues]

In an article that
was written subsequent to this,

the father had been quoted
as saying,

"My wife was overbearing

and she's too strict."

And maybe she was too strict.

♪♪

[Video game sound effects
playing]

♪♪

[Woman vocalizing]

♪♪

♪♪

[Davidowitz] Betty Anne
is the one who believed

that parochial education
was good.

I don't think that
the dad had signed up for that,

but he just went along with it.

What little I gathered
from talking to neighbors

is that this boy,

I think he just felt
as if he couldn't breathe...

[Betty Anne
shouting indistinctly]

[Door slams]

[Davidowitz] ...as if he had
no say in that family,

because Mom knows better and
Dad knows better than you do.

[Heavy metal music plays]

And if you are miserable,
well, you'll get over it.

And he wasn't getting over it.

He was miserable.
It wasn't a fad.

It wasn't just a little
period of time.

He was miserable.

[suspenseful music playing]

♪♪

There's piety that's good,

and there's piety
that is self-serving.

I'm very influenced
by my tradition

for daily Mass and prayers
four times a day.

That's part of who I am.

But it does not absolve me

from the realities
I see around me.

I can't just pray them up
to God.

I believe that she
was praying for her family

and for herself and not seeing.

And we all have blind spots
and we all have things

we don't want to see.

So obviously she was struggling

and saw things perhaps that she
didn't know how to deal with.

[Speaking indistinctly]

I remember
when she came to talk to me

and I told her, "The children
are worried about your son."

I said, "Some of what
he's talking about"...

I think it's something
you might be interested in.

...is about Satan
and his power."

I said,
"I don't know everything,

but I really encourage you
to talk to your son

with your husband
over the next few days."

And she said to me,
"Where's the rule book?"

And I said, "Rule book?"
She said, "Yes.

How do I raise children?
I don't know how to do it."

I said, "There's no rule book."

I had never been asked
about a rule book.

And I'd been doing
the work for a long time.

No parent ever said,
"Give me the blueprint.

Give me the --"

So that spoke volumes to me.

If you are asking
for a rule book,

you're in a lot of conflict.

That was Thursday.

He had killed his mother
on Saturday night.

And somewhere before they found
him, he had killed himself.

Truth be told,
I thought it was my fault

because I asked her
to talk to him.

So my first thought was,
"This is on you."

♪♪

[Indistinct talking on TV]

[McConley] Something horrible
happened in that house.

I had a lot of questions and
a lot of -- a lot of confusion.

I just know my gut feeling
that something didn't add up.

It wasn't right.

I felt that the father
was suspicious

and maybe that knew more
than he had told us.

I mean, I wasn't saying for sure
that he did anything.

I don't know that for a fact,
but I felt

that he seriously needed
to be looked at as a suspect.

[Speaking indistinctly]

For a father to draw
a conclusion that quickly,

to go from knowing nothing
to saying, "Get my son,"

it just didn't make sense.

That's what really threw me off.

How do you know that?
You were sleeping.

And now you know
your son murdered

your wife and his mother?

It just didn't seem right to me.

And how did this kid come back
to the scene

and cut his own throat

with all the officers there
and everything?

And he wasn't there
when we started the search.

Something isn't right.

Like, how did he reappear
right there?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Camera shutter clicks]

The thing about
the Tommy situation is that...

I don't know
that anyone's ever gonna know

what actually happened,

but I just don't see it
as possible that Tommy did it.

It feels to me
that what makes much more sense

is that Tom Sr. is the one
that killed Tommy.

♪♪

♪♪

[McConley] I remember, like,
early in the morning

writing my report.

My report originally expressed

that I felt the father was
a suspect, strongly felt that.

And then if not, he knew
a lot more than he told us.

The chief told me I was wrong,

that it was a homicide-suicide.

I couldn't comprehend how
we'd determined that that quick.

♪♪

[Cies] Murder, suicide.

It was almost like the police
couldn't comprehend it either,

but this seemed like
it made sense,

so "let's just do this and get
it done with" type thing.

And it just never felt right.

I think that's part
of the reason

why it's just never
really gone away.

[Hart] I've certainly heard that
Tom Jr. couldn't have done this,

that it was Tom Sr.

I again look at it from
an investigator's standpoint.

I've never seen any evidence
that would make that connection.

[Davidowitz] The police didn't
think it was the father.

When something is
incomprehensible,

theories are always around.

They're always around.

When you don't understand
something,

you got to come up
with something

that to you makes sense.

'Cause a 14-year-old boy
brutally killing his mom?

Unh-unh. It's got to be
the husband, right?

That's usually the suspect,

so it must have been the father,
even though it makes no sense.

Tom.

[Roth]
On the night of the murder,

Thomas Sullivan Sr. provided
a detailed account

of his whereabouts to police.

He stated that, "He had not been
feeling well during the day."

[Smoke alarm beeping]

He was awakened
by the sound of a smoke alarm,

and upon getting up
to investigate,

he hears
the front door slam closed.

As he exits the bedroom,

he observes a small fire
on the living room floor

and begins to stomp it out

and uses a couch pillow
to beat at the flames.

He is confused.

He went across the street
to the Eastman home,

banged on the door, and
requested help from Mr. Eastman.

[Kennedy]
He went into the house.

He's screaming for his family.

At that time,
the younger son

comes out of his bedroom,

and Tom asked him if he saw
his brother and his mother.

And he said, "Yeah, I saw Tommy

and he was covered in blood."

Brian's interaction with Tom Sr.
is just one more piece

of the puzzle
that made Tommy a kind of

a prime suspect or person
of interest.

The night that this happened,

there was certainly
enough bloodshed in the house.

If Tom Sr. was responsible
for that,

we would have had blood
on his clothes,

blood on his hands,
blood on his face.

And when the call
went into the arrival,

couldn't have been more
than a few minutes.

The idea that he, what --

He would have killed
these two people,

been covered in blood,

and then run into the house
and took a shower.

And certainly,

if Tom Sr. had been responsible
for killing Tommy Jr.,

there would have been
two sets of footprints

going out to the body,
not just one.

And it would have been
the same thing.

There would have been a lot
of blood.

I think people just have
a hard time accepting

that that level of violence
could be perpetrated

by a 14-year-old.

And people
like to jump to a conclusion.

"Tommy couldn't have done that.

It had to be somebody else,"
you know.

"It had to be somebody else."

Well, the evidence in this case

didn't support anybody else
but Tommy.

♪♪

[water rushing]

[Roth] Within a few months,

final autopsy reports
came back to say

that Tommy Sullivan Jr. was not
under the influence of drugs,

and that the same knife
was used to kill

both himself and his mother.

So the case was
officially closed.

Murder-suicide.

But the questions
have always lingered.

I can't explain everything
that happened.

I can explain some of it.
I can accept some of it.

But I don't have any better
an idea of what happened.

There are things
that can't be explained

and died with people
that are no longer with us.

In a basic police report,

there should be the primary
questions -- Who, what,

where, when, and why?

But we've never had the why,

and we never got to ask
those questions

or come up with answers.

What cases like this bring up

is, we often don't know

what's going on inside
of somebody's head.

My area of expertise
is kids who kill and parricide,

which is kids who kill parents.

The killing of a parent
is very, very personal.

Killing the people
that gave you life --

That's why it horrifies people.

What we know about Tommy is,
he was a healthy kid.

Good family, good community,
athlete, Catholic school.

He was kind of privileged
in a lot of ways,

but he's willing to trade all
of that to be with Satan.

So what was going on with
that individual or in that home

that things could
have ended so badly?

Could there be,
for example, abuse?

Maybe.

Could he have been angry?
Yes.

But if it were simply a matter
of responding to violence

that he had experienced,

I don't think we'd have
this Satanic element involved.

Once you mix
in the Satanic involvement,

you can't say, "Well, it was
only the abuse that drove this."

When you start making pacts
with Satan,

it's a whole different
ball game.

Tommy was involved
in reading, drawings,

learning about Satanism

to the extent
of making what he believed

to be a pact with Satan.

I mean, that's extreme.

[Horowitz]
Tommy's drawings bespeak anger,

but there's a lot of adolescent
boys filled with anger.

You could probably find drawings
like that

in the notebooks of
a vast number of adolescent boys

from that era

who never acted out on any
of this stuff and never would.

But he did act.

I drew in my notebooks
the same way he did,

and I have to confess,

I feel a certain affection
and sympathy for Tommy Jr.

He went down one path.

I went down another.

[Indistinct whispering]

What was it in his life

that went in such
a violent direction

that my life did not go in?

[Indistinct whispering]

[Heide]
With Tommy, we have to ask,

why did it take a violent turn?

When I look at those drawings

and I read those letters
to Satan,

and I look at the background...

...the strongest evidence
from a clinical perspective

is that Tommy, at 14,

was severely mentally ill...

[Tom Sr.] You do not have a life
outside of this house!

[Heide]...and experiencing
likely some type of psychosis.

[Betty Anne] Why can't you
just be a good boy?

Like I said...
[ Heavy metal music plays ]

Psychosis means being
out of touch with reality,

having delusions
and bizarre beliefs

with no basis in reality.

[Gasps]

Whether it was
a psychotic episode

or childhood schizophrenia...

[Indistinct arguing]

...without treatment,
it's a ticking time bomb.

[Roth] In the '80s, mental
health was a taboo subject.

Therapy was something
that the rich did,

or if you had suffered
a traumatic event,

it wasn't something
that was openly discussed.

If something was off,

if you were struggling,

if you were feeling dark
or angry or just lost,

who did you turn to?

Your friends?
They'd make jokes about it.

Adults?
They'd tell you to toughen up.

There were no resources
or guidance

for dealing with those feelings.

So you kept them to yourself...

buried deep down.

But here's the thing.

When you keep stuff
like that bottled up,

it doesn't stay quiet.

It festers.

And when it's left
to rot in the dark,

it poisons
everything it touches.

[Switch clicks]

[Man laughs]

[Heide] It's my belief

that psychosis could lead an
individual to do such an extreme

and unthinkable act.

[Betty Anne] I told you to go
to bed hours ago.

[Heide]
Tommy was so immersed...

I'm going down here, Tommy.

...in Satanism
and destructive themes.

[Tom Jr.] Leave me alone!

If we take, you know, the fact
that his thinking is disordered,

which is part of psychosis...

He has delusions.

[Betty Anne] I don't know
what to do anymore.

[Tom Sr.] You do not have a life
outside of this house!

[Heide]
In this case, the delusions

are that he's in a pact
with Satan...

How are we supposed
to help him?

He won't talk to me.

...and that Satan
is gonna reward him,

and, in turn, for power,

he's gonna do the killing
of the family.

♪♪

Tommy killed his mother
with a Boy Scout knife.

Boy Scout knives
are pretty small,

so that suggests to me

a lot of effort
to get those kinds of wounds

with a little knife...

which suggests a lot of anger.

He may have been dissociated,

which means that when somebody
is so overwhelmed with feeling

that they just keep going,

it's almost like
automatic pilot.

The aggression fuels
the release of stress hormones.

The cycle then propels
more aggression,

and people don't stop until
typically, they're exhausted.

[Breathing heavily]

[suspenseful music playing]

[buzzing]

[Heide] The brother said
Tommy was very fidgety.

He's hyped-up.
Well, I mean, I'd expect that.

I'm thinking he's just, like,
on automatic pilot,

and that would fit in
with the dissociation.

Sort of like, you know,
just moving,

just going through motions.

♪♪

[Footsteps]

When I heard Tommy
committed suicide...

And it's actually not uncommon
in cases of parricide

that the assailant
will kill himself afterwards.

When I was informed about
how he killed himself,

I'm thinking of the intensity
and the pain,

which would be extreme.

When somebody
is really dissociated,

the stress level is so acute.

He's not gonna be
in good contact

with feelings and thoughts.

He's just not
in good reality contact.

He's just not there.

[Man] They say he fought with
his mother, then stabbed her.

[Davidowitz] I think he was
a very, very sick boy.

Wo[Man] He went into a rage,
stabbed his mother to death.

[Sighs] I know that [Sighs]

this boy committed murder.

That's horrible.

But I feel for him.

I feel for this little boy.

He needed help.

He needed help.

And obviously, he didn't get it.

[Fleck]
It just makes me so sad to think

that a 14-year-old
could have been so...

...haunted.

Not realizing he had
any lifelines.

That makes me very sad.

[Morgan] Nobody realized
that he was in crisis.

And as a parent now, for me,

that's far more terrifying than
any alleged demonic possession

or Satanic influence.

[Applause]

Washington Township residents
packed an auditorium tonight

to hear more about Satanism.

Did the Satanic Panic
or some of the other cases

that were floating around at
the time kind of feed into this?

I would say probably yes.

[Man]
The Satanic message is clear,

both in the album covers
and in the lyrics.

[Hart] People in the community

were looking
for something to blame.

I think it's a problem.

You can call it the boogeyman.

You can call it the devil
or you can call --

something
to hang a label on,

to blame for what happened.

You can't prevent
mental illness.

You can hope to treat it,
you know,

but you can't prevent it.

But Satanism?

[Man] The question in
everyone's mind seems to be,

how widespread
is this Satan business?

[Woman] It makes you wonder,
you know,

if it can't happen
to your child.

[Horowitz] Humanity enjoys
looking for an enemy,

but whole books have
been written

discrediting
the Satanic Panic.

Most infamously,
Geraldo Rivera spoke about it.

It's teenagers
who are most likely to fall

under the spell
of this jumble of dark,

violent emotions
called Satanism...

[Horowitz]
...and has recently apologized

for having participated
in the Satanic Panic,

blaming Satan or the devil.

Satanism gives people
a false sense of calm

that they have an enemy
that is easy to identify.

Blame it on horror movies,
Ozzy, and Judas Priest.

It's much easier.

But a broken home
with an alleged abused kid,

a lonely child --

That's a story that we
should be looking to learn from.

Whether you believe
in occultism,

whether you believe
that Satan has power,

whether you believe that Satan
can give you the things

that he's promising these kids,

that's immaterial, my friend,

because they believe it.

[Heide] Is Satanism
inherently dangerous?

Probably not.

But if that becomes
one's solution to problems,

that's -- that's dangerous.
[Door slams]

[Heavy metal music plays]

You can't take Tommy
out of the times.

This was part of the culture.

And it wasn't just
the pop culture.

The fact that Tommy
was raised in a Catholic family,

I think, is important

because Satan
was something that existed.

So it was easy to understand

how a mentally ill juvenile
with a lot of anger

believed he was
writing to Satan.

[Indistinct whispering]

♪♪

[Fleck] I think Tom
Jr. tried God

and didn't get the answers
he wanted,

and so he turned
to another source of power.

♪♪

♪♪

Later that week...

I'm so sorry.

...Tom Sr. and Brian
came to talk to me

about what had happened.

No one should ever
have to go through this.

I was afraid
to see the father

because of my feeling

that perhaps I had caused this.

I had asked Betty Anne to talk
to Tom Jr. about Satan.

Did she talk to him
and those were the consequences?

We didn't listen to you.

Tom said to me right away...

I wish I had listened.

..."You told us
and we didn't listen."

[Sighs]

And then I knew
my first thought was wrong,

that it was my fault.

That was, for me,
a graced moment

because he was able to free me

from what I thought
perhaps had happened.

He gave me that gift,
and I was so grateful.

I just feared for Brian.

Brian was barely able
to function.

I found out
that he saw his brother

after he killed his mother

with his mother's blood
on his hands.

Tommy?

He did say this to me --

"My brother told me
to go back to bed.

And the look on his face,
I went back to bed."

I can only imagine his horror.

The demons that must have
haunted him about all of it.

I couldn't even imagine
living Brian's life.

Brian had to live with the fact
that the only details

that are known up until
the last minute of Tommy's life

before he dies
are in Brian's head.

He's the last person.

[Woman vocalizing]

I mean, I don't know
how you would live with that.

♪♪

♪♪

[Door closes]

♪♪

♪♪

[Davidowitz] He lost his mother.
He lost his brother.

I can't imagine that he wasn't
terribly damaged by this.

Just look at this case

and it's just layers and layers
and layers of sadness.

The first thing I thought about
when I heard about Brian was --

I'm like,
"Does this ever go away?"

[Woman] A small new Jersey
community stunned

by a Satanic murder-suicide.

When a person passes on,

the energy of the individual
still remains.

[Woman] Setting fire
to the family house

in an attempt to kill
his brother and his father

were all linked to Satanism.

[Scherlacher]
Spirits have to go somewhere.

They just don't disappear.

They wreak havoc in other lives.

[Siren wailing]
What occurred in Morris County

on that night in 1988...

[Man]
Washington Township residents

packed an auditorium tonight
to hear more about Satanism.

...not only affected Tom
and his mother

and his brother and his dad --

I can tell you that each person

whose life was touched
by that event

carries it to this day.

[eerie tone playing]

[Heide] Probably the hardest
thing about this story

is just the effects on everyone.

It's a small town.

I mean, this --
this will live on

in the fabric
of their community,

I would think, forever.

[Morgan] I am haunted.

Haunted in the sense
that it's 35 years

that I haven't been
able to shake it.

You know?

[car passing by]

[Sighs]

What happened to me
as a 19-year old boy

being put in that situation,

it really stuck with me.

I had a tough time.

I couldn't sleep.

I wanted things to be good
for them.

Yeah, it was tough.

[Hart] Not many years ago,

I recall a conversation with
Chuckie and how it affected him.

He apparently struggled
with issues in his adult life.

You would have to think that
it would have been difficult.

To be honest with you,
I lost touch with Chuck,

but I remember him being hit.

Like, it resonated
differently with him,

like it resonated with me.

For me, it was 'cause
he was my neighbor next door,

and because we had hung out

and he and Chuckie
had had that relationship

where it definitely resonated
strongly with him.

I just recently learned that
Chuck also committed suicide.

I was surprised and saddened
to hear that he'd passed away.

You don't see
those things often happen

in small communities like this,

and when they do,
they're not easily forgotten.

You wonder how many
of the other friends

are sitting around all these
years later still, you know,

thinking about, "Well, maybe
if I had said something."

Or maybe they just buried it.
Who knows?

[indistinct police radio
chatter]

[McConley] Everybody knew
that I was the one

that found the bodies in town.

So people would ask me
and I would just,

"Yeah, yeah, it was terrible,"
you know.

Like, how do you talk
to somebody that didn't see it?

You know what I mean?

As far as what I saw...

...you know, I kind of, like,
blocked that out.

I don't know.
Just kind of buried it.

Like, I never got
no counseling or nothing.

Now that I'm a born-again
Christian, it makes more sense.

I truly believe now
that Satan played a part in it.

That wasn't God's work.

Everything evil that happens,
Satan's involved with.

I mean, you can call him
whatever you want.

Um, if you really,
truly believe in God,

then you believe in Satan.

You can't believe in one
without the other

if you read the Bible.

[Children shouting playfully]

♪♪

[Roth] The community
of Jefferson

is still haunted
by this mystery.

Why did Tommy kill his mother
and himself?

Was it the devil whispering
promises of power and violence?

[Man] "To the greatest demons
of hell, I, Tom Sullivan,

would like to make
a solemn exchange with you."

[Laughs]

Do I believe in the possibility
of supernatural forces?

[Man] [Distorted voice]
Sign below.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

There are dark forces
out there,

and there are people
that are gonna succumb to--

you know, to the devil.

[Indistinct whispering]

[Betty Anne screams]

Sometimes evil wins.

Or was it a mind
pushed to the edge...

[Betty Anne]
Satanism? Really?

...breaking under the weight

of something we can't fully
know or understand?

Leave me alone!
[Door slams]

[Morgan] The really scary part
of it for me

is that a 14-year-old kid could
be angry enough to do this.

There's true evil out there.

It doesn't have to be, you know,
supernatural or anything.

[Crying]

I think he was a very,
very sick boy.

[Morgan] And he needed help.

You don't even talk
to me anymore.

This story has captured
the imagination of people

trying to understand
or explain the unexplainable.

'Cause no one can really
explain the nature of rage...

...or what's really going on in
the mind of a 14-year old kid.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Roth] What keeps us all up
at night

is that no matter how safe
our world feels around us,

there's always that malevolence
creeping in the shadows.

And you never know
when it's going to strike.

[indistinct police radio
chatter]

But why the Sullivans?

[Dogs barking]

The truth is,
we'll never know,

because the only person that
can give us answers is Tommy.

And he has disappeared

into the silence
of his own tragic end.

[Woman vocalizing]

[suspenseful music playing]

♪♪

[eerie piano music playing]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Woman vocalizing]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪