Original subtitles

Vera did as she was told and went with her killers, knowing she was going to

die.

When they told her to put her shoes on, you know, she kind of, she was like

yelling, why?

You know, like, why? Why do you want me to get my shoes on?

And Zachary had went up to her and said, just get your effing shoes on.

Had she been given one final wish, it would have been to say goodbye to

Willadeen, her precious little girl.

But instead, Her last farewell came from the baby's grandmother, who knew this

was the end.

And as I laid my head down, all I seen was a vision of Danny, Nicole,

and Vera's purple hoodie of them walking outside on the porch.

And I said, good night, Vera.

And she said, good night.

She said, good night, sugar baby. And I said, good night.

She had 15 minutes to live.

sugar baby now but no sugar baby now

all I can do is seek peace with you and I

can't get along just the way

I've

got

No sugar baby now.

I've got no sugar baby now.

All I can do is be peace with you.

What more can a poor boy do?

Who will rock the cradle? Who will sing the song?

Who will rock the cradle when I'm gone?

The case began on a cold spring

morning. They had her laying, they had her laying on the rails.

They had her laying in between the tracks.

Like, if he hears the two tracks, she was in the middle. And he was going so

fast with the train that he looked down and he thought that it was a baby deer.

And the engine and eight cars went over her?

He stops the train, gets out, and walks back, thinking that he was going to find

the carcass of a deer.

Because the train, the cars were still over her. He looks under, sees that it's

a human.

Right in between there, across the Blanchard River.

Okay. We've got to report that we have a train stop right now because they see a

naked female body laying in the middle of the track.

Appears to be deceased.

The location of this grisly discovery could not have been more symbolic.

On a train trestle in the center of Findlay, Ohio, a town once designated by

official act of Congress as Flag City, USA.

It is known for its good schools.

low crime, and famous sports stars.

And little girls dream of becoming homecoming queens and cheerleaders.

But now

someone had taken a knife to this picture of all -American bliss and left

little girl under the central overpass, slashed, bruised, and slaughtered.

Two months earlier, Findlay police responded to a domestic violence call at

Center Street.

This was not the first time Vera's abuse had been reported.

But if anyone was paying attention, they would have seen the violence getting

worse. I was there a few times when the cops was called.

They'd come, be like, we need to speak to Vera and Zachary and Sherry, and then

they'd tell her, don't say Zachary did anything.

Or be like, you fell down the steps, you did it, it was your fault.

Only this time, the quote, I tripped and fell excuse would not work.

A problem soon solved with a better lie.

Oh, what is his name?

They said it was a black dude that I guess she was supposedly dating, but I

believe he was an uncreated character, as they call it in the video game world.

I can't even think of his name now, but it's

Demetrius Jones, I think it was. She made up the...

um desmond thompson guy from lima and he had busted her nose because she had to

go out to the hospital because she had a bump here and they said she might have

a concussion and bleeding they come up with this story saying that vera had a

boyfriend a black man that was out of lima or somewhere and he come up here

got in a fight and punched her in the face and broke her nose but that's not

true it was her son zachary he came downstairs went straight to his mom

her what happened, and Sherry just came up with an excuse saying that Vera was

the one that pushed her own daughter into the coffee table.

And Zachary just listened to what she said, went over to Vera, swung his fist,

and hit her in the face.

Even more chilling is what happened next when Zach and Sherry brought in a third

party to finish the beating.

Zachary got a hold of his aunt Sam.

And when Vera didn't give her a straight answer,

Samantha just straight up punched her in the face again.

And broke her nose. And broke her nose.

This January assault is a glaring example of how the system failed Vera.

They talked to me and Vera both together because Vera wouldn't talk to nobody

unless I was there in front of her. She wasn't allowed to talk unless she was

told to talk by Sherry. Nobody else, just Sherry. Sherry had to be the one to

tell her she could talk.

It astounds me to this day that the police did it, or wasn't there a social

worker there? I mean, it's just sort of police 101 that you say, I want to know

what she's going to say, and I know that woman's going to get in the way, so I'm

taking her somewhere else, and she's staying there. They could have done

They could have said, no, you're not coming, you're staying there.

Except telling Sherry no is easier said than done.

You can tell me to do something, but I'm going to listen to you.

To say that Finley P .D. was familiar with 300 Center Street is an

understatement. Even on the day of the murder, earlier that afternoon, police

were dispatched to break up a neighborhood brawl.

Cops were there earlier because of a fight that I guess broke out because I

woken up.

And while they knocked at the door, Sherry was busy inside.

How I got woken up was Sherry, my mother, sent Vera up to wake me up.

They had to hide Vera.

because the police would have taken her out if they'd have seen all bruised up

she was.

But the police were not there for Vera.

They'd been called to a street fight.

There was a fight between Danny and my kids with the people down the street.

Zachary, Garth, Chucky, Danny, and Nicole.

They all went down there.

Danny had got out of prison like three weeks before all this happened.

A detail that made the officers immediately worried.

Like when I first met him, I was actually kind of like intimidated

had tears on his eyes. They'll let the other inmates know once you walk in the

door. See this?

I killed once, I'll do it again.

The fight was finished by the time police arrived.

And while they interrogated the other gang, the Brooks boys were in the house

getting ready to flee.

You can't tell me Daniel and Nicole's the only one that escaped the house

because they don't know Finley. They're from Tiffin. He had went over to, um...

Playing a much greater role would be the third person who jumped out Sherry's

window, her son, Zachary.

In that short run from the Brooks house here to the Schwab house there, Zachary,

Danny, and Nicole began a chain of events that within five hours later,

Vera dead on the tracks.

And they ran to this house right here, and that's where Sherry even admitted

they were at, was right here.

And how close is that to the tracks where Vera was murdered?

But right then, police had one priority.

to find the guy running around Findlay, flapping a knife and wearing a teardrop

tattoo.

In the first news reports, it seemed that Daniel Bixler was some crazy

cousin who blew in from Tiffin, a town 25 miles east of Findlay.

An impression supported by the fact that only three weeks before he'd been

released from Allen Correctional, after serving almost three years in prison.

Once free, Danny went on a spree of escalating violence, beginning at this

where, in an act of twisted chivalry, he attacked a teenager who had refused to

give up a park swing to his new girlfriend, Nicole Peters.

It was this assault charge that sent the fugitive couple on the lam, fleeing

Tiffin before Danny got arrested.

The reason Danny felt comfortable turning to Sherry is obvious.

He was not a distant cousin at all, but a close member of the family, best

illustrated by Sherry's relationship with the other Danny Bixler, his father.

He was like a boyfriend.

Oh, yeah.

Danny and I go, they call us the kissing cousins.

From this incestuous romance, Sherry conceived the first of her nine

Scotty Emmons.

Scotty Emmons belongs to Danny Bixler, Sr.

Her mother's sister's kid. He would be her cousin.

The incest kind of stuff that's in our family.

In 2008, Big Danny stabbed his wife's lover and led police and sheriffs from

three different counties on a high -speed chase in an 18 -ton semi.

When he gets a temper, both of them, when they get a temper, you can't handle

them. Even Danny had said it's in the Bixler blood.

I'm meant to kill, I guess.

For a homicide that started out with a naked dead woman with no ID, no

witnesses, no murder weapon, no suspects, and no apparent motive, Finley

solved the case incredibly fast.

She had been to the hospital before. There was a social worker involved. She

bruises. She had been beat.

So it's not like, you know, this was a surprise.

When they do ask you to talk, is there anything, any big points you plan to

across to them?

I will make sure that they know that that's the Bixler.

Danny, when he was drunk, he kind of basically told her every single detail

about the murder.

While we were drinking, they were smoking all my cigarettes. So we decided

down to the gas station, which isn't that far from here. And so we walked

there, and we see the train that stopped.

And then I'm, like, sitting here thinking.

Like, why is the train stopped at, like, 3 or something in the morning?

And I asked the lady at the gas station, I'm like, do you know why the train

stopped? I'm like, was there something wrong with the engine? Just being nosy.

And she's like, no, they found a body.

And I look back at Danny, and he's just staring.

Like, he's froze.

And that's right then I knew. I knew everything that was being said was true.

I mean, I was scared.

In addition to death as information, police also learned that there had been

eyewitness after all.

Across the street from the Brooks' home, there was a camera out there for

surveillance, and they'd seen them walk across the street.

The grainy video showed three figures, Danny Bixler, Vera Regal, and Nicole

Peters, in a single -file line walking south.

They did have the knife towards her.

That if she would scream or anything, that they would stab right then and

Confronted with this mounting evidence, Danny first tried to push blame on

others, then started making damning admissions.

By mid -afternoon, he and his interrogators were driving back to the

bridge, returning to the scene of the crime.

There he pointed to the spot where, just 18 hours earlier, he threw the murder

weapon into the water.

The blade that he used was from the kitchen.

Danny picked it out of my knife set, and he was playing with it and twirling it

and all that.

For her part, Nicole was more tight -lipped, and to this day, exactly what

did at the tracks remains a mystery.

But she still was not as skilled at lying as the Brooks family, and it did

take long for her to implicate herself as well.

The detective had caught the murderers.

The people that were charged were Daniel Bixler, Nicole Peters, and then

people that lied to the police, which there's quite a few of those,

Zachary Brooks,

Sherry Brooks, Shannon Brooks, and Michael Brooks.

And then they have a juvenile son that also participated in lying to the

and his name is Chuck Brooks.

And so everyone zeroed in on Danny, the out -of -control ex -con, and Nicole,

his bloodthirsty girlfriend.

How old are you today?

Eighteen. How old were you when this offense was committed?

Seventeen. Some girls go for the bad boys.

Like a Bonnie and Clyde kind of thing, but with an evil twist.

I've known him since I was younger. I met him at the Seneca County juvenile

detention center.

And I used to hang out with his brother, Richard Bixler, and that's how I met

Danny. She was obsessed with this man.

Like, she'd constantly talk about him.

Everything, all of her letters were about how much she was devoted to him,

much she loved him. She cared about him a lot. They had only been together for

like a week and a half. So he was out for a week and a half, and then they

started dating for the other week and a half that he was out.

And then, boom, he's right back in again.

An indication of how authorities struggled with this bizarre case from

beginning is that they did not inform the public for a day and a half after

body was discovered.

Vera's mom didn't even find out about it from the police or anybody. They went

directly to Sherry first. And I think that's a bunch of crap. You know, the

police department wouldn't go directly to her own mother.

Did you have to identify the body?

No, because Sherry already identified it. Because Sherry told the police that

Vera's parents died.

I'm supposed to be dead.

I've died like three different times in three different states.

According to who?

Sherry. These deceptions, which she hones over time, come in two types.

Lies to protect and lies to instigate.

What happened next is an example of the former.

We met Larry one time because he stopped out front of our house and Samantha,

swabbed. was at our house and she went outside and smacked Larry because they

got into a fight because they owed money to her and stuff. And he started

talking to us and then next thing I know he started hanging around our house

like a leech. The Larry Spencer guy shows up.

This guy who's been at the house once or twice suddenly is being accused of

taking Vera away and probably killing her. Because I've talked to Larry and

Larry said that they tried to tell the detectives that it was him that killed

her. To those who knew about Vera's life inside the Brooks house, the story on

its face was ridiculous.

They said, oh, she took off with her boyfriend.

Well, she wasn't really allowed to have a boyfriend except for Zachary because

she wasn't allowed to go anywhere with anybody.

They wouldn't even let her have a cell phone.

Sherry said that she didn't need one because then she could get a hold of her

mom or she could talk to whoever she wanted to.

After Danny and Nicole were arrested, the cover story was modified to fit the

changing situation.

She'll basically change the story up and she'll basically confuse everybody.

And she's trying to cover up a murder, period.

The witch's spell had worked like a charm.

I believe that my own mother had this set up perfectly. She knew exactly how

do it.

She can get away with shit.

There are certain things that she's done in her life that... Should

have then put her behind bars and pretty much slap on the hand, go ahead, walk

away. Gone were any questions about what role she and her family played in

Vera's death.

You just not want to say my name on there saying that I had anything to do

this. Now it was as if they were just passive spectators. The only thing

wanted to know was how they could sit there and watch Danny and Nicole do

something so barbaric. I asked her a million times.

Sherry, why didn't you call?

Why?

Why?

I mean, even a five -year -old knows if somebody's being hurt, you call the

police. And as the accusations intensified, the truth of what happened

further and further away.

Like someone's really going to be there to help me say, hey, go get the phone

over there off of my computer stand so I can call the cops.

You know, they're not going to, Nikki's not going to give me the phone. Dan's

not going to give me the phone.

Scotty sure in the world's not going to give me the phone.

And Shannon, her fat ass was sitting on the couch playing with her phone.

I wish I would have had my phone working because it was, well, it was dead

and I had no minutes even though I know you can call 911 off of it.

No matter her age, Vera was still a child.

If there's a way she could do it, she would do it. You know, never complain,

always help.

She'd help you any way she could.

If you told Vera something, she'd do it. I mean, she didn't question.

Almost to the point that it was too much. I wish she could have maybe stood

for herself a little more. She was mentally challenged.

She was slow.

And Sherry and Em end up talking her into moving in with them.

And, you know, and then she ended up hooking up with Sherry's son.

For Vera, her old life was gone, like she had joined a cult and got separated

from her past.

When Manson put ideas in his minions to where he's pretty much the puppet master

and he's doing his puppets to do his dirty works for him. Brooks family being

like the Manson family, yeah, I have to agree with that. They are like that.

A family that makes sense, whatever she meant by that.

It's a cultish type of thing, and I really believe they saw her as an easy

target. We was at the Salvation Army, and she came in with the Brooks's, and

she'd see me, and she kind of lit up, because she always smiled, you know,

that, you know.

And she'd come over, she'd put her hood up, and as she walked by, can't talk,

can't talk, can't talk. She'd stop, and I'd put my arms on her and give her a

big hug and ask her where her baby was.

And she said, oh, she's at home, but boy, she just run away. I mean, flat

There wasn't no stopping and talking.

And that's not Vera.

Because they didn't want her to talk to no one about what was happening at the

house. That's what they were afraid of.

They basically did not allow Vera to maintain a relationship with her

It didn't take long for people to see a change.

Before she started dating Zach, she was happy.

She was pretty much...

I mean, she loved to sing. She liked to dance.

Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton.

She liked all the older country.

But when she moved in with them, it just, she changed real quick.

What I can't see is the Vera that I knew willingly

massaging.

Sherry's feet. That was her job there, was to rub her feet. I guess she had

problems because of diabetes or something.

But that was her job. When she did mom's feet, if she did something wrong, mom

would hit her with the itchy stick.

Well, Sherry had this like a, not a back scratcher, but it's a little bit

thicker. She just whacked her alongside the head. Don't touch my baby.

And Verily keeps telling her, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

She'd say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Why she was saying I'm sorry for, I don't know.

because I guess she just felt she was doing something wrong.

They even made her sleep with a pig.

You're allowed to have a pig live in a closet to where he urinates and has

all over?

Oh, no, I'd never make her sleep with the pig.

But you did.

Of course you did.

She made her sleep with the pig. They had the cops called continuously,

children's services called continuously, and God knows why nobody done anything,

you know, to even remove the baby itself out of that home.

I don't understand that. She was such a frequent flyer, as we call them, that

you could answer the phone, and as soon as she says the first word, you know who

it is. You eventually become kind of desensitized to them calling, and it's

that... people mean to do that it's just you know that the major problems are

ones that nobody's going to cooperate vera told the cops no i'm not moving

home with you guys and the cops said how old are you vera's cognitive level i

would i would compare to my daughter who's eight years old okay i wouldn't

expect the police to take my daughter's word for it you know what i mean because

vera even told cps

One CPS asked her, Vera, are you in danger here? Do you like it living here?

Vera said, I love Sherry. I love staying here with Sherry and her family.

She said, Sherry is my family. She helps me out, and I would never leave Sherry.

They came back here and told me that they talked to her, and because she was

years old, even though her mind was an 8 -year -old mind, they couldn't do

anything because she was 24 years old and she made her choice.

It was her bed. She needed to lie in it.

It was total control.

They'd make her do pretty much everything and nobody else would go up

something around the house. It was always her.

They actually treated her like a slave.

They wanted her as a slave and her SSI check that she got first of the month.

That was legal. They got that done. Don't know how they did it and who

mean, they must know enough.

It sounds like they got a pretty good racket going.

Maybe I ought to go on SSI.

and have people stay here with me, and they sign over their paychecks to me.

And each of them getting about $700 a month, coming into one place.

Sherry's on disability, all of her kids are on disability, and then everybody

else that moves in with them are on disability.

But more than Vera's money, Sherry wanted her womb.

Everybody that gets pregnant that lives in that house, you know, she always

says, oh, I hope you have a girl, you know.

Vera Jo Regal was killed because of two conflicting motives.

I have four kids of my own. I have three girls and one boy.

Well, when I first had my first daughter, she said she wanted it because

girl. Because in her mind, any girl that she could get, she was going to get.

The primary motive was based in Sherry's obsession with baby girls.

An abnormal perversion that began in childhood when she, like Vera, was

abused by her own father.

He molested her quite often, I guess.

The man who nicknamed her Sugar Babe.

That's her number one name right there, Sugar Babe. That's what everybody calls

her. Since I was a little girl, my dad gave that name to me before I was put in

foster home.

I actually felt sorry for her. She did tell me about... you know, her

experiences with her father and how he had raped her.

And I began to kind of understand a little bit of how this woman come

to be the way she is.

As a young child, Sherry and her three siblings became wards of the state.

She was put in the children's home and taken away from her mom when she was

three years old, and then she came back when she was 16.

It was then she made her first attempt to take someone else's baby.

She told us when she come home when she was 16 that she had a baby over here in

Tiffin and that the welfare wouldn't let her have it.

And my mother would always say, did you have a baby while you were in foster

care? Because if so, I'm going to go get it. Because it was Sherry's baby and

that would have been my first grandbaby, so I was going to get it.

But being them said, no, it wasn't.

And Sherry's baby was the foster baby there, too.

It wasn't her baby in the first place.

And then we talked to Sandy, and Sandy Snyder, so that's the welfare lady that

was taking her case and stuff, said that she is an obituary liar.

And that's why she's a fantasy world.

She lives in a fantasy world life.

And that way, whatever she thinks, That's what really happens in her world.

Well, see, she'll tell you something totally opposite than what everybody

is telling her.

She'll lie.

She's many times done it, and people have fallen in her trickery,

and they believe everything she said.

Because she's convincing about everything. I mean, she convinces

everything.

Who will hold your hand as each one walks out of your home to pain that will

put my mark in your hand? And I'm talking about Sherry losing all of her

one at a time. I'm really confused about all that because I thought once you

have kids taken that you're not allowed, especially if you have five.

You have all those kids taken, and then you have a second round of kids, and

you're allowed to keep those?

They removed Maria and two other, well, Scotty was one, Michael was one, and

then there was another one, but I don't know the name.

Which was Joshua, Michael, Maria, and little Sherry was all taken away from

In three of the cases, she lost custody, at least in part, due to reports of

sexual abuse.

My sister was coming over to pick her up, wanted to take her out to her house.

and the railroad tracks right beside her house. So there was a train going by.

She didn't hear my sister knocking, and she was even hollering out Sherry's

name, and Sherry didn't answer, and she said when she walked in there, Sherry

was supposed to be giving the little baby bath cup thing there, and she was

holding the baby up like this here, sucking its penis.

She's sick enough that she even molested me when I was younger.

Sherry's first five children were not removed as a group.

She would have one, lose it to CPS, then have another, over and over and over.

I see her more attached when the baby girl was born than when she was with the

boys. I mean, when that girl was born, she would let her out of sight, let no

one hold the baby.

Or if someone did, she would, like, look at them until they put the baby down.

It was just like, like, kind of obsessed with Maria.

By all accounts, it was the loss of this child, baby Maria, that was most

traumatic.

She'll always be my girl, my little girl, no matter what.

And that she's my first daughter.

And that I always want her to know that she's always welcome here to meet me

anytime she wants.

Every other kid she had, she didn't take care of right. But Maria, she did real

good with Maria. We really was proud of her. She kept her for a whole year.

But in the spring of 1987,

Sherry reverted to her old ways, and things went horribly wrong.

My brother one night called me up saying that we needed to take the baby to the

hospital, that she had been molested, she was bleeding from the vagina.

Somebody had raped our little Maria, because when she went to change her

she was all bloody down there.

That night, Sherry reclaimed her baby, but the authorities were on her trail.

They told her to take her to the doctor the next day. Well, she didn't take her

to the doctor.

So we went over, and she says, Mom, take Maria home with you.

That was at Easter time one time. I took Scotty home with me, and I gave her

Maria to take home for the night. She never let me take Maria home at all. She

says, I'll keep Scotty over here, and you take Maria home.

So I did.

Not come through my door the next morning and hear it was the sheriff

Maria.

She wanted all of her boys to at least have one kid by the time they were 16 or

17. An example of this is Gina Lopez, a 15 -year -old girl with a troubled

family life.

who fell in love with Cherry's second -to -youngest son, Garth. She is like,

give me a grandbaby. I like grandbabies. I want another grandbaby.

And as soon as she was carrying a Brooks baby, like Vera before her, the

stalking and the threats began.

I had a job at the time. I was working at this little shop at the corner of

Center and Main Street. I was working there, and they would follow me.

Cherry, Zachary, Garth, and Chucky.

They all work as a team.

Chucky would be the one that always followed me most of the time.

Zachary would sometimes.

And then when they knew it was time for her to get off, they would send, it was

mostly Chucky, they would send him down to kind of spy on her to see where she

went after work or if she came back to the house. Fortunately for Gina, her

pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and she was able to reconcile with her

and move to Kentucky.

putting a couple of hundred miles between herself and the madness up in

Vera loved that baby.

That was Vera's pride and joy right there. She was the one that was always

babysitting for Stacy's little girl. She always had her. So I could...

I could see her really being a mother to her own child.

Except Sherry was in charge, and she saw things different.

Sherry had a lot of boys. I think she was really, really obsessed with girls,

especially since Maria was taken away from her.

And I think, you know, with Vera, I mean, she has a chance to, you know, she

a chance to take that one rather easily.

Sherry has always wanted a baby girl again.

She was going to have somebody make her a child, another daughter.

And then she was going to try to take him away from her.

Sherry said, that's my kid if you get a girl. And she told Zachary, it better be

a girl.

She did tell Zachary that if it turns out to be a girl, that she wanted him to

sign off his rights to her.

And he did that. He said, yeah, that was fine.

And this was not just any womb chosen for the assignment.

Because Sherry once targeted Vera herself.

to replace her lost baby.

Yeah, I was there when she lost Maria.

Because we lived on Sandusky Street, a white apartment house there, and her

and her ex -husband Mike lived upstairs.

For five months from the time baby Vera was born in November until the sheriff

took baby Maria at Easter, the two little girls lived in separate units of

exact same house.

She was trying to take over on Vera when Vera was a baby, and I told her, no,

that's my baby. And so remarkably, Sherry ended up taking the baby of the

she tried to get 24 years earlier, claiming custody of baby Willadeen

was even born.

Vera was like way out here.

You would talk to Sherry or you'd see Sherry. My baby's in there, my baby.

That's my baby, my baby. You know, it's always my baby.

They kept on telling Willa Dean that Vera wasn't her mom, that Sherry was her

mom.

And every time Willa Dean wanted to come to her mom, like her learning how to

walk, she'd walk around and she'd see her mommy and she'd want to run up to

mommy. And Vera would say, no, no, no, I'll get in trouble if I touch you.

So I seen Sherry after Willa Dean was born maybe, I don't know, four or five

months later.

See my new baby?

So that's Vera's. No, it's mine. I adopted this baby.

So it was no longer Vera's.

Vera never had anything, could not do anything with the baby. She touched the

baby, Zach hit her.

That was Sherry's baby, not Vera's.

Another example of Sherry's control appears in the date of the child's

Well, I'm November 3rd, she's November 4th.

It is here we glimpse the true depth of Sherry's madness.

She gave her castor oil and orange juice.

To have the baby come out earlier than what it was supposed to be.

According to a website for the castor oil industry, the recommended dosage for

inducing labor with this old mid -wiving technique is two tablespoons.

Because she gave her that castor oil and gave her about three bottles of it.

And it was about three bottles, yeah.

To make her go into labor so she'd be there for her birthday.

Didn't happen on her birthday. It was the day after.

Because she bragged about that. She said, well, we didn't get it on my

but it was close.

So she was an early baby and ended up with having in the hospital for a while

because she had heart problems.

Supposedly her original date was supposed to be December 6th, that she

supposed to come out.

But she decided she was coming out to have pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes

Mama for Thanksgiving.

So she come out early.

And she wanted to meet her mama.

The

secondary motive

was far more common.

I don't think he really wanted to be with her anymore.

He wanted to be with other people, but he couldn't because Sherry wouldn't let

Vera leave.

They needed to get rid of her and that he was seeing some other girl.

And Vera's relationship with Zach at this point is what?

Completely over.

She wanted Zachary because, well, they had a baby together and she wanted

Zachary for herself.

If Zachary, he would get really mad of her being jealous and go over the wall

sometimes.

After, before she got beaten into submission, Vera would fight back.

Vera.

Sometimes could be rebellious. Sometimes she had a lot of anger.

Vera could cuss you.

Vera could tear you up.

Zachary ain't allowed to talk to a girl or look at them or anything. She was

always mad.

And when she got mad, he got mad.

He whipped a phone at her face, like right here.

Her eyebrow ring came completely out.

like meet with hanging out and stuff.

I raised my kids not to hit a girl, but if they're going to put their self in a

man's place, then yeah, then do it.

In a normal family, the father would step in and stop this kind of abuse, but

not Kevin Brooks Sr.

He's the opposite of Sherry. Sherry was loud and upfront and boisterous.

Kevin was a background person who liked to stay out of everyday minds on

business. Even when minding his own business meant letting Vera.

get beaten.

And when it became clear that they were

really going to kill her, Kevin looked out for Kevin.

Crazy as it sounds, if Vera was going to be saved, it would have to have been

one of the Brooks boys.

That was Punky. He was the one that was killed in an accident.

Unfortunately, the only one with enough balls to stand up to Sherry was already

dead. He ran that household. Punky ran that household when his dad and mom were

both afraid of him.

On July 3rd, the summer before Vera's murder, Punky was walking with his

girlfriend on a dark, rural highway.

They were heading towards their town to go see the fireworks.

That's not what I was told.

That's what Sherry told me. He was going for the fireworks.

But yeah, I know he was going for it. He was going to get Heather's heroin.

The old cab was driving by. I couldn't see him. Bang!

She was really crazy because of him dying, and the ashes are still at the

and everything, and she won't bury him.

My son's laying up there on the bottom shelf.

in that box it seems like she gotten worse i mean it's just like sherry went

crazy i mean you talk about punky punky it was like wow punky you know all the

girls went wild for punky from the night he was hit sherry could not accept her

son's death was an accident now she was out for revenge the accident happened 20

minutes before they got any call

And Sherry was all mad about that and then was trying to put the blame on

Heather, saying that Heather pushed Punky.

Sherry had told Heather, you know, I just want the truth.

Did you push him?

And Heather looked at her and said, no, I did not do it.

But when it comes to Sherry's fantasies, what actually happened doesn't really

matter. Heather pushed Punky in front of the Ackerd cab.

That helped kill my son that night.

Sherry said that Heather is the one that killed Funky. Had it set up, so that's

why Sherry had Marcy beat Heather up.

Marcy was, I believe she was standing on the porch. She was like standing by

Sherry. And then Sherry had whispered to her. She said, I need you to do me a

favor.

That went down crazy.

Then out of nowhere, Marcy just takes her hand and starts punching her in the

face. And took her by the head of the hair and rolled her down the steps and

started beating the hell out of her. They're like, bring her to the road,

stomp her.

And at that time, Heather's nose was, like, bleeding really bad, and you could

see that it was broken.

All she kept saying is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and she kept putting her hands up

in the air.

And Zachary said, this is fucked up.

Then Marcy told me, you know, that'll teach you to ever mess with my family

again. Because you killed Punky.

You had Punky killed.

And you took the best thing away from us all when you had Punky killed.

Like his brother Zach, as well as Danny Bixler, Punky was a member of the Crips

street gang.

Punky was supposedly a Crip.

And Zachary.

Punky says that he wanted to get Zach to take his place.

To be able to fight like he does. And they want to run this town.

It was then that Sherry and Zachary really turned on Vera.

At times I lived with them and everything else, you know, they were

along great. You know, love you, kisses and everything else. And now all of a

sudden, you know, Punky dies.

It's, you know, I want to beat her.

The pattern began to take shape.

There was a candy bar in the room where they had Punky's little memorial

thing. And I know Alyssa Casey and Punky, they were really tight together.

I guess the candy bar was supposedly for Punky and Vera ended up eating it

because she was hungry and they told her she couldn't get out of the room. And

Alyssa went off on her and she actually had her on the ground and she punched

her like maybe twice.

This game of trumping up a charge to get someone else to beat Vera was not an

isolated incident.

He was thinking of people who could beat the crap out of Vera badly.

So he just got on his phone and he started calling people or texting

And as soon as they got the word, they came rushing over.

Zachary Brooks, tough new leader of the Finlay Crips, was texting his dead

brother's old girlfriends to come over and assault his defenseless baby mama.

Crystal pushes her down on the floor, and Zachary's yelling at her, come on,

her, hit her.

And they do it.

The location was chosen for a very personal reason.

They tried to do the same identical thing to Vera that happened to Travis.

her to the railroad tracks and lay her out for a train to run over her and cut

her head open and, you know.

Travis Puckett was the son of Sherry's baby sister, Tabitha. My nephew Travis

was 16 years old, and my sister told him to get the hell out of her house.

The same age as Zachary, Travis became part of the Brooks Boys gang, hanging

at a local park riding skateboards.

He went taking off down the road, and that's when he jumped the railroad

Like, because there's two trains coming at the same time.

So he couldn't do nothing.

And when Travis went to jump, Travis slipped under and off came Travis's

He looked back like this to see his brother Curtis.

And when he did, the other train came and that's when he got, she said, like

hamburger.

And then he was smashed up like hamburger.

But what's important is not whether Sherry and Zachary consciously wanted to

imitate Travis's death.

It's that they told the killers about their vendetta against Vera.

I think she was thinking about when Vera accidentally dropped a brick

on her foot.

I asked her to come outside with me and help me clean the rabbit cage, and I had

a tarp on top of the rabbit cage. And there was like four bricks to keep the

tarp on there so that way it doesn't blow away.

onto her feet, and that's why her feet had to be wrapped.

Zachary come running outside, and he said, what's wrong, Mom? I said, bitch,

fucking dropped that rock on my foot. I need help.

He said, what?

I said, she fucking threw that rock on my foot, and it hurts. Get it off.

Zachary and all them, they're saying that she intentionally did it.

And I yelled at her, said, you fucking bitch. Said, you fucking hit me at the

fucking rock, you fucking bitch.

The slave had committed a fatal error.

No, she didn't apologize.

She never apologizes.

From this point on, things went downhill.

It all happened events after that, after she got the bricks, was on her foot.

the rock hit on sherry's foot and then that's when they were going to plan on

throwing vera on the tracks

jerry

made a little joke about wanting to drug vera

with her sleeping pills and zachary wanted to give her get her high and

everything and make those together

and then let her walk the tracks at nighttime.

Eventually, she would fall over and land right in the middle of the tracks.

When she said, you need to cut her up, put her on the tracks, then she looked

towards Vera, smiled, and turned back.

And there would be no way of the conductor to stop the train in time.

She thought if she did get squished by the train, then there wouldn't be any

fingerprints because he would be like hamburger meat.

So basically, she wanted to kill her.

On Sunday, March 20th, Danny and Nicole ran from the assault charge in Tivin and

arrived at the Brooks house.

That evening, they met a being named Vera who, already living in a perpetual

state of terror, could no longer be considered human.

She stayed in her room 24 -7.

She barely ever came out unless Sherry called her.

She was basically like this.

Wouldn't look you in the eye.

Wouldn't talk if somebody walked in the house.

She'd go to the bedroom by herself.

If she's sitting there and she's just curled up like this and looking up like

this every now and then going back down, I mean, you get this idea that she was

probably pretty much psychically dead, you know, anyway.

Meanwhile, Vera's baby daddy had found a kindred spirit bonding with his long

-lost crip brother.

They seemed very dependent on each other. Like, they seemed very close for

knowing each other for that little time.

For the next four days, they unleashed an animalistic rage that is hard, but

impossible to explain.

Sherry Brooks and...

The entire family was telling Danny stories.

For the past three years, he lived here at Allen Correctional.

Guys who in prison have been raped, when they come out, it's like they want to

get revenge on somebody.

And gangbangers and their bloody code of survival is very, very real.

Well, I know she's all about the crit stuff, because when we were at the

funeral, she was talking all about monkey being a crit.

And she had a blue bandana around his flowers.

Do you think Sherry thinks he's a crip? Yeah, for sure.

So as far as his gang affiliation, who's the first crip amongst the brokers?

Punky.

This is why, when interviewed for this project, Danny's response was so

chilling. When he mentioned something about Punky, they all, like, get this

thing of...

thinking that she's disrespectful to Punky.

But she was being accused of more than just disrespecting Punky.

Zachary and Sherry told Danny, who was in prison when it happened, that she had

murdered him.

In their most vicious lie of all, knowing full well how he would react,

convinced Danny it was Vera who pushed Punky in front of the cab.

No, but that is just messed up just to tell anybody Vera was the one to push

Punky because there was a lot of people that would take up for Punky.

So not only was Vera a threat to Fury's precious baby Willadean, she also killed

the Brooks gang's leader.

Now Sherry wanted something done about it.

Nicole was just another opportunity for her to...

do her mind games with.

She wants to be a people pleaser so bad. She wants friends so bad that she just,

she couldn't see it coming at all.

Especially not with somebody as conniving as Sherry is.

From what she either says or does, everybody else follows and just does

they're told.

Like the female Charlie Manson. Like if Charlie Manson had a girl for him, it

would be her.

Sherry is the one that told him to do it.

He did say that.

Since she knew Danny was in the Crips, and she believes that she is a Crip, she

pretty much put it into Danny's mind, like, hey, help us out.

Then Sherry's little helpers got busy.

Chuckie's padlock from his school locker was sitting on the stand, and they just

happened to pick it up and hook it to the belt, and then all of a sudden

when they started hitting Vera in the head and the body with it.

It was their weapon of choice after that.

That and a big, long paddle with a number three on it.

Nicole took the paddle and beat Vera's ass, and Vera had a bruise on her ass.

And all Vera had on was a T -shirt and her underwear.

And the more Vera screamed, the more it became sexual.

I think Nicole gets off of a lot of violence.

And Nikki was like, she was getting real excited.

And then she'd go over and start kissing on Danny like she was being turned on

for what she was doing.

I think once Danny started beating her, he couldn't stop.

He got off on it.

Basically, he says, now this is getting fun.

When she got hit, her hand went up like this, and it accidentally hit

Nicole's boob. And Nicole said, oh.

After the beatings of Vera, they would run up to the room where they were

sleeping at to pretty much get it on.

The idea that after they had beaten Vera, they would go upstairs and have

would also indicate that there was some sort of real psychological thrill about

this. I don't know if you know, but almost every bone in her face was broke.

A lot of that's from being slugged for looking at Danny.

Nicole punched...

Vera, right screw in the nose like this.

Vera was not even interested in Danny. That was all brought up because Sarah

kept saying that, yeah, Vera will sleep with any of them. She slept with all my

sons. She'll sleep with Danny too.

And then as soon as they would beat on her, they'd run right upstairs and have

sex and then come right back down and beat on Vera again like it turned them

By this admission, when you consider whose bedroom was downstairs,

Danny and Nicole, We're not the only ones getting off on it.

It always happens in the mother's room for some reason.

All the beatings were in your mother's room? Yes.

Sherry just spoke out. She just said hit her again. She thinks it's cute of Vera

having black eyes and stuff, said she looked like a little squirrel.

Like she wants everybody to know that she wanted her to be hit.

She kept hitting her head like this on the dresser.

Nikki kept saying, can I kill her? Can I kill her? Can I kill her? And through

it all, to quote Danny Bixler,

Vera just took it.

That's when he pretty much mud stomped. You know, it's a southern term. It's

where when they're on the ground, you just stomp them until they're pretty

weakened to where they can't even get up again.

When somebody gets beat up in prison, they call it that way. Her injuries from

the mud stomping were all too evident the following day.

when, amazingly, they took a break from beating Vera and walked her across the

street to lunch.

Somebody else actually told us what she wanted.

It looked like her lip had been busted right here.

We talked about it after we were done, after they had left. We all said, man,

did you see that girl's face?

I'd made the comment to Shane and a couple of other people. I said, man, she

looks like she went through the windshield of a car.

As it became clear the legal system was going to minimize the enormity of what

had happened to Vera, frustration grew throughout the community.

This led to the formation of Voices for Vera, an activist group dedicated to

bringing the people who brutalized her to justice.

We don't understand. We don't know why that there was only two people that was

charged with this murder.

There were so many people involved, and there's only two people that's being

charged with it, except for lying to the police. Wow.

Nor did anyone in the prosecutor's office figure out the author of these

evidenced by how the judge sentenced Sherry for passing on secondhand

information that she herself had created.

Mrs. Brooks has a relatively long criminal history, mostly minor offenses,

of a minor nature, but at least one felony offense, albeit some.

Here's a ghost. With respect to Ms. Brooke's involvement in this particular

case, it appears that Ms. Brooke's participation is slightly, and I

slightly less serious than that of the others who've been involved because it

appears that her crime involves the passing along of secondhand information,

which nonetheless misled the officers, but it appears to be more of a

information that she passed along as opposed to firsthand information.

Not only was the court fooled about Sherry's role in making up the cover

no one even bothered to determine when she told her family to say it.

Who told you what the cover story was?

Sherry? Yes.

And how did that happen?

When Vera was sleeping from her bruises, because I had

to actually do her dang feet that night.

Yeah, there was one night I had to do her feet because Vera was too wounded

Scotty is talking about Thursday following Vera's mud stopping.

I believe, yes, I believe he did do her feet that night.

And that's when she said if they would kill her, and I hope they don't, like,

you know, throwing it off, that we would have to have a cover story to protect

this family.

And him saying there was a cover story picked up even before the murder.

They had to think of something and put blame on certain people to still try to

keep certain members of the family out of it. The second -hand information that

you got. The second -hand information means that Shannon told me

that they took Vera up to the track and that they de -gutted her like a

fish and that they left her up there to die.

And Shannon said, don't worry about it because she deserved it.

Like this.

You're looking at this hand while something else is going on in this hand,

you're pretty much more interested in this hand.

That's probably what was in her head, was to take Willadeen away from Vera,

Vera out of the picture, so that she could have Willadeen

as her own child and have her raise it as...

Her and Michael. And it's not her child.

I mean, there's nothing wrong helping Vera with the child, giving her a bath,

helping her feed her, and helping her change her, you know, taking care of

But she didn't have to kill Vera, have Vera killed just to take her baby from

her. Yet incredible as it sounds, this absurd projection of Sherry's own motive

became the basis of the state of Ohio's case.

against Vera's killers.

To the official version of the event, Danny Bexar indicated he was upset with

Vera Jo for spraying, um, pepper spray in the home. Not that Shannon had no

involvement in Vera's murder.

She did.

It's not only Sherry that was manipulated.

Shannon Brooks, Michael Brooks' wife, also said that she was three months

pregnant. She was never pregnant.

Sherry, I guess, while I was gone, had told Danny and Nicole that

I had miscarried. I never

told her that I was pregnant.

Not one bit did I say that I was pregnant.

Except based on these Facebook timestamps, this claim is a demonstrable

Because in addition to posting she was pregnant two days earlier, Shannon was

talking to Sherry about it the morning of the murder.

If you go with the flow, nothing's going to happen to you.

However, once you go with the flow, you do get involved into it, and there's

sometimes no turning back.

And then she saw a way out.

They had said that Vera had sprayed the pepper spray upstairs to where it was

really bad.

No,

Vera never did.

Shannon did come back furious.

At who?

At Vera.

Shannon was like, that little bitch, if she made me lose my baby, I swear to God

I'm going to kill her.

And when she got back, she said she had a miscarriage and that she had to get a

DMC and everything else that goes along with a miscarriage.

Nicole had clearly developed a bond with Shannon, but she didn't understand the

game.

Vera caused it.

But in everything on Vera, Vera already caused everything else.

Vera can cause this too.

And with Danny and Nicole accepting plea bargains, the judge responded to

criticism from voices for Vera.

Obviously, the facts and circumstances of this crime have been the subject of

much media and public attention.

Then to hear the judge say, oh, we're going to provide adequate punishment for

the ones involved in this, 30 days deferred with five years probation and

and a half years reserved. Dude, put him in jail.

Many interested persons have spoken out in the news media.

Do you think this is one step toward injustice?

What's going through your mind? I'm hoping it's one step towards justice.

Others have used various forms of social media to express their views.

It is, of course, the right of all of our citizens to speak freely and openly,

especially on matters of great personal and public interest.

Free speech is beyond question. It must also be remembered that opinion

unconnected to fact, the law, or for that matter, reality, must be rejected.

But what is the reality the court accepted?

Daniel Bixler, Shannon Brooks, Zachary Brooks, Garth Brooks, Sherry Brooks, and

I agreed to kill Vera Jo Regal on March 26, 2011.

We agreed to do this because Shannon Brooks said Vera Jo Regal caused her to

miscarry. Only... Was this really the motive?

Well, I guess if you believe the source used by Nicole's lawyers.

Nikki's lawyer had came to the house to talk to me and was wondering why was

Vera killed. Was it because of jealousy because Nikki thought she wanted Danny?

Or was it because of the miscarriage?

And I said, well, for one, Vera always will and always

will love Zachary.

She went to her grave loving Zachary. So imagine Sherry's delight at being

presented with this smorgasbord of her own lies.

Vera was killed later on because of the miscarriage of Shannon.

But events leading up to the murder paint a very different picture. For

the first time Vera got stabbed wasn't even that day.

She went into the bathroom, and Danny and them followed her. That's the first

stabbing. was when danny stabbed her in the leg well sherry said she took her

finger and stuck it in the hole of this uh where the hole of her sore where they

stabbed her my finger went that far into her leg this is no nightmare

this was vera's final day of life that is one of the ones that were meeting the

beer yeah she had to um Pick up the dog poop of

Jackson and eat it.

I think they said Chucky made her eat the dog poop.

They're all sadistic.

They all had to have been.

Talking about they took a plunger and put it up.

They thalamized her with it, yeah. She was completely naked.

She was on her menstrual period that day. They took a toothbrush.

They raped her.

sexually with the toothbrush, and then she had to use it for her mouth.

The following morning, five hours before the mace incident, they were trying to

stab her again.

Daniel actually gave me a knife and asked me if I wanted to

slice her, you know, cut her up.

This was during a visit from Punky's baby mama, Angel Might.

I do know Zachary was hitting her, and then I can't remember if it was Danny or

Nicole or both of them that actually started hitting her too.

And telling her to, you know, shut up, bitch, be quiet, I'm hitting you, you

know, shut the fuck up, and, you know, just hit her.

Her and her mother and her brother sat there for 45 minutes, they said,

this episode going on.

Not only Nicole.

and Danny, but then also little Chucky started getting into it because I

saw him with a fishing pole striking Vera.

Sherry had made up this thing.

I don't know how true it was, but supposedly Vera had given little Kay

milk.

She had gave little Kay the same milk that he went to bed on instead of coming

out. And rinsing the cup out and giving him fresh milk, she just went on and

gave that to him and told him, get back on the couch and lay back down and

covered him up.

She was scared.

All crunched up in a little ball, like in a fetal position.

She lifted her head once and I saw a cut on her nose, a

split lip.

A half hour after Angel and her mother left, the street fight between the

Brookses and the rival neighborhood gang broke out and someone called the

police. This sent Danny, Nicole, and Zachary running to his Aunt Sam's,

Schwab's. They hid there in the basement until the police left and were next

seen two hours later walking in an alley three miles away.

I was getting ready to leave, head over to take my kids someplace, and they was

walking up the aisle towards my house, and they're like, where are you going? I

said, well, we're leaving. He goes, can you get rid of my house?

George Speck lives by the Brooks gang's favorite hangout, the skateboard park.

Who all did you get married to? Nicole Peters, Danny Bixler, and Zachary. His

house is also near something else, the railroad tracks where Vera was murdered.

Danny, Nicole, and Zachary.

was at Samantha Swab's house over here and walked down these tracks around 4

.30. Now, are you telling me that they did not go and try to scout out a

place to kill Vera five hours later?

From the bridge, they continued down the tracks toward Alan Capp's apartment,

which is beside that rail line, too.

So in addition to casing the murder scene, they were also plotting their

We know this was their plan because the following day, after Vera was dead and

Danny and Nicole were arrested, Zachary started desperately calling Gina, trying

to use the escape route for himself.

Every time he'd call, I'd be like, no, you don't need to be coming down here.

They're just going to put more stuff on you for running away.

Now, mind you, Danny nor Nicole knew George Speck or Alan Capp.

So, who's the ringleader?

And where is his sentence?

When is he going to get charged for all of this? By the time the three co

-conspirators were riding across town in the back of George's pickup, they

already had a cover story, the murder scene scouted, and an escape plan ready

hatch.

By 5 .15, the Brooks house was filled with pepper spray, forcing a complete

evacuation.

The mace was upstairs, but it was coming downstairs once Danny opened the door.

All the windows were open. They were airing the house out. Hospital records

Shannon arrived at the ER at 5 .32 p .m.

Around the same time, while the Brooks house was being aired out from the mace,

Danny and Nicole walked over to his sister's place.

And he told me that they just asked him all day to do something about her.

But was he in a rage strong enough to kill Vera?

They were just, you know, saying how much they didn't want her around

And, I mean, I just figured that they would either kick her out or something

like that or just tell her to get her kid and leave.

But that wasn't even, obviously, that wasn't what they were thinking.

From what I've been told is that you were getting this kind of pressure

the mace ever went off.

So by elevating Shannon from bit player to a starring role, prosecutors got it

backwards. Like breaking her nose for pushing the baby into a coffee table, or

beating her to a pulp for eating Punky's Kit Kat bar.

They needed a rationalization to blame the victim.

An excuse to punish her.

That means Vera was not killed because they accused her of setting off the

They accused her of setting off the mace for a reason to kill her.

At 9 o 'clock, Zachary summoned Danny, Nicole, and his brother Garth to

room.

This

meeting

was to decide where to kill Vera.

Danny wanted to do it in a park they checked out earlier in the day, which he

felt was more secluded.

But Zachary wanted to go back to the bridge, insisting they stick to the plan

having the train turn Vera's body into hamburger.

They wanted everybody to think that the train hit her.

As the murderers went into action, Vera began to panic.

When they told her to put her shoes on, you know, she kind of, she was like

yelling, why?

You know, like, why? Why do you want me to get my shoes on?

And Zachary had went up to her and said, just get your effing shoes on, you

know.

Who was telling her to put her shoes on?

Zachary and Danny.

And then Nicole had come in, and she was standing right by Vera's door, and

she's like, you need to put your damn shoes on right now.

And then Vera didn't hesitate. She put her shoes on.

Zachary said he was going to go with him.

But apparently this was no comfort because judging Vera's reaction, she was

as scared to leave with Zachary.

I think she knew what was going to happen.

I was sitting on the couch right by her room.

She was looking at me for like a way out.

Like, you know, she was trying to tell me to help her.

When it became clear Shannon was no help, she reached out to Scotty.

She knew what's going to come.

That's why she asked me.

to come along with her.

Because, you know, she felt safe with him. And she wanted Scotty to walk with

her. But I told her, hold up, I would have to go upstairs real quick to get my

shoes.

Well, as I got upstairs, I pretty much was stopped

from leaving.

Who stopped you?

I was supposed to say Danny.

It wasn't.

It was Zachary who stopped me.

Who told you to pay Danny?

My mother.

But, like I said, Zachary's the one who stopped me, not Danny. Even though I

told the police it was Danny.

And why would he say that?

That I think he already knew what was up and he wanted to protect me.

Scotty was not the only one prevented from going.

When Zachary was told to go upstairs to get Scotty, it was right at that time

that she told Zachary, no, you're not going to be a part of what they're going

to do.

Then they hustled Vera outside, ignoring her pleas for her life.

She said, I don't want to go. I want to stay here.

And she was crying.

Vera was crying, wanted to stay home.

And Nicole said, No, you're going with me now. I'm going to crack your head

right here on the porch.

The temperature was below freezing that night, yet Danny wore a borrowed pair of

dark blue gym shorts out of respect for their former owner, Punky Brooks.

He also wore a blue Crips bandana, signaling this was official gang

The ones that they believe happened first, because then there was overlay

people would stay at the same areas.

From what I heard, the first ones...

were weaker, coming from a weaker person, a female, possibly.

She was cut from almost ear to ear in a very sort of sawing motion that was

described as by the coroner. This initial failed attempt, as Vera's

sweatshirt shows, happened while she was still dressed.

And one final act of humiliation, they forced her to strip.

Yeah, they found the clothes scattered around in the trees and stuff, in the

bushes. They found her panties and I think her shirt. They took them off and

then just threw them.

Didn't even try to hide that.

The full day to day and a half before the murder actually happened, that they

were completely messed up the whole time.

Like, there was not one sober moment.

He was heavily using alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and by his own account, an

excessive amount of ecstasy.

When questioned about why Vera was made to get naked, Nicole Peters replied, It

wasn't working at first.

Asked what his girlfriend meant by this odd statement, Danny Bixler explained,

that knife was dull as hell and she couldn't get it through the clothes,

by strange coincidence, is the exact same reason given by Sherry Brooks.

The only thing I can think of is if you take your clothes off, well, then you

get to get to the bare skin and it'll go faster.

These details, told in separate jailhouse interviews by two people

not spoken to since the night of the murder, are something only the killers

would know.

When they were stabbing at her, maybe it wasn't that she was dying fast enough

for them because of the clothes.

When you stab somebody that snags the clothes.

So what appeared to be a staged sexual assault was actually just laziness, and

they needed Vera's help.

to make it easier to kill her.

It's almost as if he's attempting to minimize the conduct of 21 stab wounds,

he said he only did six.

But an examination of those six stab wounds is also very telling.

First the leg.

Why was she stabbed in the leg?

He said it was to keep her from running away so they could continue the abuse.

She couldn't get out of that situation.

Then he mounted her from behind, reached around, and cut her throat.

They tried to cut her head off, but couldn't get through this bone here. So

like cut from here to the spine bone back there. I think they laid her out on

the tracks after they slaughtered her neck to make it look like the train cut

her neck like that.

And then they fled, leaving Vera behind, still alive.

He left her to bleed out on the railroad tracks alone, naked and in the cold.

And from there, he told the detectives he went to party.

They were celebrating, yeah.

They called me up, and then they told me what they did.

But I thought they were messing with me. So I walked back to their house to see

if it was true.

I look at Nicole, and she just got this big smile on her face, you know. And she

puts her arms out like this, like she wants me to hug her.

And she's like, it's done, it's done, no more. And I was scared.

And she just comes in and hugs me.

When they did come back, Danny went over to Zachary.

Patted him on the back. When I go back in the living room and Danny's in there

high -fiving Zachary, and then they go into Sherry's room and they're both, you

know, kind of laughing.

And I got there, they were talking about how they killed her and stuff, but I

didn't believe it. Because after they said they did it, Sherry was talking

how she was with Larry, her boyfriend.

And then that's when Nicole had said, I got my first teardrop.

I finally got it.

And she says it to Sherry? She says it to Sherry. And she gives Sherry a hug,

and Sherry hugs her back, and they start laughing.

And why wouldn't they celebrate? To them, Vera was the abuser of baby

killer of Punky, smasher of Sherry's feet.

Now that evil bitch was out of Zachary's life, and she left without taking

Sherry's baby.

They came back and switched clothes, and then pretty much went out to get drunk.

Sherry called me.

and said Danny wants to come back over.

While Vera's body was still warm, Nicole was visibly excited.

She was excited and ecstatic.

She wasn't sorry. You could see that in her face.

She was smiling and happy and just, you know, like I've never seen somebody that

happy before.

But on the tracks, something was happening.

Vera was becoming an angel, and she had a few surprises.

Using her last ounce of energy, she pulled herself off the rails and

into a ball only 12 inches high.

She curled up in a fetal position.

That's why she always slept in a fetal position.

Miraculously, this allowed the front of the train, which police later found to

have a 13 -inch clearance, to pass over without touching her.

I started feeling like something was wrong when Zach decided to pretty much

drink one entire bottle of vodka to himself.

The angel started haunting Zachary, whose actions the rest of that night

for themselves.

Zachary said out loud that he only went to get drunk so he can forget about

the whole entire thing.

And he looked all depressed and upset about something.

Like he was involved deeply with his own thoughts.

Zach was doing like weird stuff like...

like hit his head on walls and stuff.

And I was talking, I'm like, so why is he so sad?

And I'm like, what's going on? And then that's when Danny decided to say, well,

I slit her throat.

And I was like, what'd you do? He's like, I slit that bitch's throat.

So it was Zach's guilty conscience that led Desta to confront her brother, which

ultimately broke open the case.

They're sick.

They need help.

But when it's their time and they have to meet their maker,

hey.

And when it came to motive, on the final day of court, the judge admitted he

still had no idea why the murder happened.

As we grapple to make sense of this, perhaps as some have suggested, that our

community has failed Virgil Regal, and I'm sure that debate will continue.

But we must also not forget that there were those who were directly responsible

for Ms. Regal's death, and in particular, the defendant, Daniel

here today for the court for sentencing.

The evidence reveals that on March 26th of 2011, the defendant assumed the role

of self -appointed judge, jury, and executioner.

For what?

Jealousy? Revenge?

Unfocused rage?

Some perverse sense of family honor?

It doesn't appear we'll ever really know.

In the end, Vera is an angel.

One whose wretched life and bad death shines a light on the rest of us.

And you know, at the time, I'd like to read a letter that was found in Vera

purse after she was murdered.

And this is what it says. It says, I love you, Willadean.

You are a good little baby girl to us.

I'm glad to be your mommy, and I'm glad that I had you on November 4th at 4 .16

a .m.

Six pounds, two ounces, 19 inches long. Mommy loves you.

Worse, by not getting convicted of a major felony, Zachary still had parental

rights to Willadean.

Oh, yeah, or they would not be making a reivocation plan for Zachary to get his

daughter back.

A case already being discussed when Zachary's friend Alan Capp arrived at 10

'clock on the night of the murder.

All I heard is something about them wanting to kill Vera about custody.

She had that in her mind that that's her kid now and Vera had it, but that's her

kid now and she's going to keep it.

And she had to get rid of Vera because Vera wanted to move out and take the

too.

Right here, and then their room's like right here. They're all in a group

talking about killing Vera.

Okay, so custody meaning what?

Like, if Vera dies, then Zach gets custody.

But why at this moment were they celebrating Zachary getting sole

According to the lawyers, it was all about Shannon's phony miscarriage,

it? They were talking about Zach having custody.

Nah, they never said anything about Shannon.

A version of events confirmed by the killer himself.

And did they give it an indication of why they wanted this done with Vera?

It

is

a hope Sherry still holds strong.

Zachary sits in great anticipation, waiting for the return of her lost

baby girl.

I added daddy to the picture.

Had to copy her daddy there.

Because I'm getting ready to frame it and start to show Zachary and her look

alike.

And we just passed your birthday, the first one That you

spent underground And I

really miss you Though to feel

close to you I visited

your grave

But I've just felt your love from you

Further than our own little eye

And I'll be fine if heaven isn't just a crop

And I'll

be fine if we don't decay underground