Original subtitles

Sound speed. Mark.

Sherry, I'm gonna have you read this

letter. Just read it nice and slow.

Just take your time.

This here is a letter Brian wrote to me

back in October of 1989.

Dear Sherry, hi. It

is very hard to write this letter to you.

I am very sorry for the crimes they say I

committed. If I did do this, there

had to be a lot of things going

crazy in my head. Sherry,

no matter what happened or who did it,

I want you to know that I am still your

brother, and I love you. You can hate

my guts and want me dead all you want,

but I love you. You're all I have

left, and I don't want to lose you.

Please accept me as a human and not

an animal. Take care. Love

always and forever, your brother, Brian

T. Britton.

This letter basically...

It means nothing because he doesn't

admit to anything. No

remorse, no I'm sorry that I did this.

I live every day without

people I cared about, without having them

around. You have no

sense of remorse. You've never

shed a tear.

You won't even admit that you... did do

it. Things must have been crazy in my

head. You You try to put the blame on

something else, and it's like, you can't

even admit what you did.

And you want freedom?

Hey, guys.

I love to miss you so much.

Not a day goes by that I don't think of

you.

I wish that you were here. I

can't believe I've spent

over half my life without you.

When I go to the cemetery, it

reminds me that this is what I've

lost. I'd do anything just to have them

here for a hug or a kiss, to

tell them I love them. It's like

I would give anything to even hear their

voices.

I can't get that back because

Brian took everything away from me.

Things just slowly were. spiraling

with him. Looking back at it

now, there's all

kinds of, like, signs. Back then, it

was just, like, you didn't

really think of it.

This is where I grew up, from the age of

7 to 19. We had good

times here. We jumped rope and rode our

bikes around the yard.

My father would barbecue out there over

by the tree, and then, like, my cousin

Tammy and I, we would sit on the side of

the house, listen to music and sunbathe,

and then Jason would come out and run

around. Brian, he usually would

play with the boys across the street

because Jason was little.

When Brian was younger, Brian was the

sweetest kid, always doing little boy

things. He would ride his bike around the

neighborhood. He had his little Matchbox

cars, and he just was your normal little

boy. But

Brian could be selfish at times.

My dad would play different board games

with Jason, and

Brian would be like, Hey, Dad, let's do

this, or, Let's do that. It was just like

he had to have my father's attention

instead of Jason.

And he was insistent.

Brian would be relentless on it, and my

father would be just like, OK, Jason,

we'll play another time.

It's almost like he's missing

something-- common

sense, concern,

respect for other people. If

it's not about him, he doesn't care.

Here, he's got life in his eyes.

It's just amazing that someone

so sweet and innocent here could be

so cold

and calculating years later.

You would have never thought that that

sweet little boy would turn into this

monster.

Growing up, me and Brian, we didn't

always get along. Normal, sibling

rivalries. Sometimes we got along great.

Then there were times we would fight. He

had this thing with camouflage. He loved

his camouflage jeans, his camouflage

jacket.

So I would make fun of him wearing it.

And he didn't like it, so he would punch

me.

And I I kept teasing him more, and he

would punch me more.

But then he doesn't stop hitting me.

He wouldn't listen to me just saying,

hey, stop, that hurts. The only

way I could stop him would be to kick

him.

Because now he's in pain.

Somebody's saying, Hey, stop. That hurts.

You would normally stop unless you just

don't care.

He didn't care if he hit his

sister.

When he hit, like, the 13 to

16 years, he started doing,

like, things that were

rebellious. They started out, like, as

little small things. And then it was,

like, each step was, like, one step worse

than the last one.

When I was going on 17, I got my first

job, and we used to get paid in cash.

On Fridays, I would put it on my mom's

dresser to put into my account when she

went to work on Monday. Well, there were

times my mom would go to do my deposit

for me, and monies were missing out ofit.

It was obvious it was Brian because Brian

didn't have a job, and Brian's

getting things.

Hey, did you take any money from Mom's

drawer?

No.

It's like, wait a second. I was

missing $20 out of my

deposit this week. That magazine

subscription's $20.

Okay, so that's where the money's going.

I thought it was pretty low that he was

stealing from his own family. It's like

family usually helps each other

out. It's like that didn't matter to him.

Are you sure?I-- I thought I still had

that earlier today.

I haven't seen your money.

But I just let it slide.

Anything

else?No. $20 here, $20 there was

not worth a blowout fight.

It was kind of like, Let's pick and

choose our battles. It's just a phase

he's going through.

I'd say he had to be around 15 or

so when he started the obsession with the

war movies.

There was never a time that it really,

like, struck me as not being normal,

but he had a plan.

It scares me to know that there was this

much hatred in him, and I really

didn't see this in him.

Evil, it does exist in this world.

It's not like the evil you see and

The scary movies,

here you have your

typical all-American,

blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy,

and

there's evil. Nobody...

Nobody knows that.

It makes me wonder what went

wrong.

He was obsessed with, like, the war

movies and stuff that were coming out.

You're watching this

again?

My father and brother would sit there and

they'd watch the different shows on TV,

but Brian got obsessed with it.

He'd watch him over and over again.

He was always talking about how he wanted

to join the Marines when he got old

enough. This is what I want to do in

life. I felt the

military would be a good choice for him

because there he would learn more

discipline. It's like, Hey, he's

interested in something. This is a good

thing.

In his room, he had all different kinds

of military magazines. He had other

military-type posters.

He was collecting hand grenades

and bullets, gun magazines.

He had the camouflage that he would wear.

Just about everything he owned was either

camouflage or having to do

in some way, shape, or form with the

military. But we didn't really see

anything wrong with him ordering

stuff that had to do with the military.

After all, that's what he wants to do.

My father would go hunting with my Uncle

Barry, so having the guns in the house

would be a natural thing, being a hunting

family.

They didn't feel that they had to put

them somewhere and lock them up because

there was no fear that anything would

happen.

Someone raise it up, put the... Make sure

you've got the gun stock against your

shoulder. My father taught him on the

back porch how to use the gun. Line that

side up there. That gun

stock's firmly against the shoulder, okay?

The rule was, you don't touch them

unless I'm home. And then, and only

then, I give you permission to do so,

and it's done in a safe environment.

Remember, don't put your finger on the

trigger until you're ready for the kill

shot.

My father was teaching him how to use the

shotguns and stuff right up on the porch

here. And they used to have

targets down where those sheds are.

Never would have thought that he's

teaching his son how to use the gun

properly, and his son's going to do what

he did in a few years to come.

I don't think he would have ever taught

him how to use it properly if he had

figured Brian would do something like

that.

He went through this phase where he was

interested in, like, the Chinese throwing

stars, the nunchucks and stuff like

that. He used to think it was fun to just

throw him at the wood paneling in the

living room. And it just got to the point

where my parents were like, What are you

doing?

Brian.

But he just had

blatant disregard for that. You can't

keep doing that. Now give it

to me.

You take him away from him, he gets

another one from somebody. I tell him,

No, he does what he wants. We don't

understand why he's not listening to

us.

It was an atmosphere of

worry.

I think they were looking at the big

picture of if they kept on him just long

enough for him to graduate high school,

then it's like he could go into the

military. Once they got him

there, he would be learning respect. The

things that he was doing to my parents,

the military wouldn't put up with.

At 19, you don't expect

to wake up and

have your world destroyed.

Growing up, once we started dating, we

had rules that our

education was more important than seeing

our boyfriend or girlfriend. Like, we

could see him one day a week. Usually it

was, like, on the weekends, since there

was homework and stuff during the week.

It sucks. The worst.

I had no issues with it. It was like,

okay, it's understandable.

Education comes first. Brian

didn't agree with that. It was his very

first girlfriend. Any waking moment he

was up, he wanted to be spending time

with her, and... He didn't like being

told what he could and couldn't do.

Honey, could you excuse us?I need to

speak to Brian.

Why do you always have to ruin everything?

I just think you should be spending a

little less time together. He would start

raising his voice. I can hang out with

whoever I want to hang out with. It's my

decision to make, not yours. You can't

tell me that I can't see my girlfriend.

I'm a teenager. I can do what I

want. I keep explaining this stuff to

you. I hate you. I wish you were

dead. How stupid are you?

And he'd just walk off and go to his

room. Why don't you just die?

Looking through my 19-year-old eyes,

it just seemed like normal

teen stuff, normal teen

angst, rebellion.

Looking back now, I see

things with what he did

as a-- like a downward

spiral.

If he wanted his way, he was just going

to keep going at it. It didn't matter

how many times you said no. It would be a

never-ending battle.

They were just trying and trying, feeling

helpless, because everything they're

trying didn't work. He'll grow out

of it. He has to. What

if he doesn't?His

obsessions were just--Military and his

girlfriend, and it was like his family

that didn't mean anything anymore.

You get to a point where it's like, well,

what do you do?

January 22nd of '89,

that day his girlfriend had come up to

the house with him

and brought up vodka to the house. That's

crazy. Well, let me just

chug a bottle of vodka

and see what happens to me.

Then he said he felt funny and he passed

out. Hey, hey,

heyWake up.

His girlfriend called my father at work.

My father took Brian to the hospital.

He ended up having a stomach pumped from

the alcohol, and

had my father not come home, there's a

possibility that Brian could have died.

I wish I could go back in time and know

what I know now to

prevent my father from saving his life

that day.

If Brian had died, yeah, we would have

been all upset, but

he doesn't deserveto

live with what he has done.

I know that's not a nice thing to

say. I've been told that

I should forgive him. My

people. I can't forgive.

It was March 20th of '89 with my

grandparents' 45th wedding anniversary.

Everybody's going.

Come on, Brian. Get changed. We're going.

I'm not going. Your grandparents will

want to see you. I said I'm not going.

He wanted to see his girlfriend. Didn't

matter that it was his grandmother's

anniversary, that...

Everybody's gonna be there. Brian,

it's their wedding anniversary.

I don't care.

Family to him didn't mean anything

anymore. It's almost like it's a bother

to him that he has family that he can do

things with.

Everything was perfect.

My dad picked me up at college around 9

o'clock. I think my class was over.

My mom was all happy. Before we went to

bed, we would hug and kiss each other

goodnight.

I showered and called my boyfriend.

talked to him for a while and went tobed.

When I woke up in the hospital, it's

like, Wait, this isn't my bedroom.

Where am I?

I had a very bad headache.

And there was ringing in my ears.

I touched my head and realized there was

bandaging on there, and I'm hooked up to

machinery, and I have a

gaping hole in my side.

And I have stitches all over.

And I'm just like, OK, what

happened?

There were doctors, and all they would

tell me at first was, there was an

accident. What kind of

accident?Couldn't have been an auto

accident because I went to bed.

Where's Mommy?Where's Daddy?Where's

Jason?

Not once did I ask about Brian. It's

like my mind knew that he did

something, even though I didn't

remember what happened.

But what?

It's scary seeing this,

knowing that I was that

close to losing my

life. It's a

scary thought.

It's a scary feeling waking up in the

hospital and realizing that

you're injured, and you have no

idea how you were injured.

Every time I woke up,The same thought

would come to my mind. Oh, I'm I'm just

dreaming. This can't be real. This stuff

doesn't happen in real life.

I'm in the hospital, hooked up

to tons of machines.

And every time I would wake

up and I asked about my mom, my dad,

my little brother, Jason, what's going on?

If I'm in the hospital, whereAre they?

Why aren't they in the room with me?

Where's my mom and dad?

Nobody could explain to me what

happened because they themselves didn't

know. Why wouldn't anyone tell me what's

going

on?I did 32 years in that police

department, and I've seen a lot of really

nasty things, but I will never

forget that morning.

And I can say this to you. I don't think

you could ever prepare yourself going

through that door for what you were going

to find. It

was a horrific crime scene.

I mean, there was blood all over that

place.

As soon as we opened the door, we saw the

blood and the hair and

the bone. embedded in the wall.

Something terrible has happened here.

We really did not know if there was an

active shooter in that house, and we had

to assume that there was.

We go up the stairs and look to the

right, which was the mom and dad's

bedroom, and he's still in bed.

Been shot in the face.

And shot in the chest. When you

walk out of that room, you look directly

across the hall and on the

floor was Brian's

mom. She's obviously deceased.

We found Jason next to his mom

and his head was almost

crushed.

He decided he would use the shotgun as

a club. And he did. He used it

on his brother's head.

We walk a little further into the house

and we find Sherry

in her bed, covered in blood. She

had been shot twice. One of the shots

actually took a part of her skull.

She was shot again on the left side in

the abdomen.

We weren't sure she was going to survive.

And we got her out of there as fast as we

could. She is so fortunate

to be alive today.

Brian was the only one-- the only

survivor that we could talk to. So we

talked to him right away. He's saying

that somebody forced their way into the

house.

This is Brian Britton on the day he was

arrested, on the day that he killed

almost every member in his family.

He was sitting in the chair opposite my

desk. The officers were interviewing him.

He's not showing any remorse.

I stood here and listened to him for

about two minutes, and I said, Brian,

Sherry's alive. We talked to her.

Where did you put the guns?

And he immediately said, They're in the

attic. And that's where they were found.

He goes on to try and justify what he had

done, telling us about the problems with

his mother and his father. You're so

stupid!

Brian! And his mother was always on his

case and wouldn't let him see his

girlfriend and wouldn't let him stay out

at night and insisted that he go to

school. So he was trying to justify his

actions, but there was no way you could

justify what he just did.

I kept thinking, oh, I'm in a bad dream,

a really bad dream. This isn't real.

I have nothing left. I lost my

world. Now what happens to me?

Here I am, 19.

No place to go. My home

is no longer my

home. Mom and

dad are gone, Jason's gone.

I felt very lonely.

Sometimes I wished I had died, and I was

always like, why why was I the one who

survived?Why me?Why Why couldn't

my mom survive?Why couldn't my dad have

survived?Why didn't Jason live?

Why was I the lucky one?

There's so many things that have

happened in my life since then.

They missed me graduating college.

When I married my kid's father,

I didn't have my father to give me away.

They didn't get to have the joys

of their daughter getting

married. having

grandchildren.

It's not the same going down to the

cemetery and talking

to the headstone, telling them

that you love them.

I would give any amount, anything anybody

wanted, to even hear their voices,

just to hear my dad

laugh one last time, to hear

Jason ask for cookies.

Sometimes I wish I still had the

answering machine. My mother had done the

voice on it, just to hear her voice.

I still fully don't understand the why.

That's always been the big, huge

question, and

it's never been answered.

I don't remember anything from the time I

went to bed on March 21st

until whenever I woke up in the hospital.

The whole thing is just a big

blank. There's a lot of stuff that I

probably saw that morning. It's somewhere

locked up in here somewhere.

Where, I don't know.

Well, here here we start with the video.

It's the front of your house, as

it as it looked that day.

I honestly don't think I could handle it,

but I want everyone

in the world to know what a monster

he he is.

That's just too horrific.

That's really scary.

Hi. How are you?OK. How are you?OK.

I'm glad to see you. I really am. I'm

going to go in. OK. Well,

here we start with the video.

At the front of your house, as it as it

looked that day, and Asby entered your

home, up the stairs and to the right to

your dad's room. You

shot your father first. You figured your

father was probably the only one in the

house that could stop him.

Your dad was still in the bed. He was

deceased. He had two

obvious wounds.

And your mother came out of the kitchen

screaming and he shot her.

And in the living room, you found your

mom.

Your mom was here. Jason was

alongside of your mom. He

actually fired from the hallway at Jason,

but did not kill him instantly.

Jason was able to get up

and go out into the living room and lay

down by your mom.

This is what we found to the knee,

left of the door. Blood, hair,

skin.

This is where you were shot. You went up

the stairs. You went into the

bathroom. You can see blood on the walls

here.

Ohh That's from you, from your hands.

You went from the bathroom back to your

bed, and that's how we found you in the

bed.

The amount of blood was very shocking.

There were things I found out that I

didn't know happened. I had

gotten up from where I had been shot and

went back to my bedroom, I didn't know

that I had made a stop in the bathroom. I

never knew that. I

guess I felt comfortable in my bed, so I

just went back to my-- back to my

room for comfort. You did come back to

your bed. Yeah. And that's basically

what we had at that point. You were still

alive. So we immediately

got you out of the house and started

treating you and took you to the

hospital. He

told everybody that he had problem issues

with your mother because of his

girlfriend and that she was disciplining

him all the time for getting home late

and stuff like that. In my estimation, it

was preventative. He thought about this

before he did it, and I think he thought

about it for a while. I don't think it

just was that a spur of the moment thing

that night. I don't believe that at all.

realizing it's your own brother who

did this, that's just

too horrific. After

having talked to the detective

yesterday and seeing the pictures, it's

like, now I have the hard,

true facts of what

happened that day. I've seen

now they didn't even have a

chance. They were just... They

were defenseless. It makes me feel a

little more at ease knowing what actually

did happen, not just what people

were telling me. It's amazing I'm still

alive.

Every two years, Brian has a parole

hearing. Every two years, I fight

to keep him in prison, every two

years. I have to

relive the nightmare of

that day. I

must write a letter to explain

to the parole board this is why he

shouldn't get out.

To whom it may concern, I have

been notified that Brian is up for parole

again. As the sole surviving

victim, I am writing this letter to ask

that his parole be denied a second time.

26 and a half years have passed since the

murders took place. What has

Brian done in these past 26 and a half

years to prepare him for a life outside

of prison?Do you know for certain

that Brian would not get angry at

something else and snap and kill someone

else?Why should I be

forced to be fearful for the rest of my

life?worrying that Brian may attack

me or my children and loved ones.

It never ends for me. Every year,

it's not fair that I have to

keep reliving this.

But I'm doing it to help

keep Brian in prison

because he doesn't deserve

freedom. He He killed three

people. One innocent

child who didn't even have the beginnings

of a life, and he has

not shown remorse.

The hurt from what he did, it never

goes away.

It stays right here.

That's whyThe tattoo I got is

straight by my heart.

That's where my parents and brother stay.

They're always in my heart, always in my

thoughts.

Brian, you got the easy sentence.

The people on the outside are the ones

that have to-- that are suffering.

And the only way that it will end is

if he dies in prison.