Original subtitles

[Jessica] I lived in this fairytale

that I needed a man that would rescue me.

He made me feel safe.

He made me feel secure.

But my station in life

was to be a housewife,

a mother,

and a maid.

I've said, "God, if you could...

make a way for me to escape right now,

I'll never look back.

I swear to you."

He forced the gun into my mouth.

And he got really close to me,

his mouth to my ear,

and he said,

"Do you see the evil in my eyes?"

"Do you see the evil in my eyes?"

[Stacy] I said, "Put the gun down, what are you doing?"

I'm sorry.

[Jessica] I was his wife.

I never realized that he,

even as evil and as vile as he is,

that he would go that far.

I grew up in a small town.

in rural southern Mississippi.

Almost like a one-horse town,

everybody knew everybody.

I did things, small things like sneaking out,

underage drinking.

And that environment is where I met Chad.

When I first met him,

the first thing that I noticed about him

the first thing that I noticed about him

was his outgoing personality.

For lack of a better word, he was very hyperactive.

Very, "Go, go, go. Let's do."

And he was also very attractive.

I was very young and naive

and lived in this fairy tale

that I needed a man that would rescue me

and take care of me.

Chad gave me all those things.

He made me feel safe, he made me feel secure.

He made me feel safe, he made me feel secure.

Our relationship moved so fast.

I was barely 17 and he was 24.

The day that I found out

that I was pregnant with Scott

was very scary for me.

I knew, even as a teenager,

that this was a lot, and a huge step,

that this was a lot, and a huge step,

and I was gonna have to grow up really fast.

The day that I told Chad that I was pregnant,

he acted ecstatic.

He was happy.

Just a normal, I guess, soon-to-be dad.

He started being more aggressive

in his plans to find us a home to live in.

I thought that that would give us time to just

really become the family

really become the family

that I thought that we could be.

We ended up renting a home

from his older brother

in the middle of nowhere,

down a long, dirt country road

in the middle of the woods.

For the first few weeks,

For the first few weeks,

we just lived together

trying to figure out what we were to each other.

We would have bonfires and...

we would go fishing and just...

just the country way of living,

it was really what it was.

At that time,

Chad was an attractive guy

that was fun to be around.

Early on in my pregnancy,

there was a shift

in the way Chad treated me.

He started isolating me more.

He slowly alienated me from family.

Being an outdoorsy, tomboy country girl,

I had a lot of male friends.

If I was allowed to be around them,

he had to be in my presence.

he had to be in my presence.

And it was very few and far between.

And his jealousy towards those male friends

fractured a lot of those friendships for a long time.

Chad paved highways

all across the southern part of Mississippi.

He sometimes would be gone five days a week.

I mainly would see him on the weekends.

I mainly would see him on the weekends.

While he was gone, I was still isolated

in the home that we lived in.

He made sure of that

because he would unplug the landline

and take it with him to work.

He would also take the only vehicle that we had

and the cell phone with him.

I was pregnant.

I was terrified to be alone there

in the middle of nowhere

without a way to go

or a way to communicate with anyone.

or a way to communicate with anyone.

One day he came home

that weekend from working out of town.

Immediately jumps in the shower.

You know, that was an immediate red flag for me.

It's like, "Why before he even touches me does he have to get in the shower?"

And then I just decided to go through the cell phone.

And I noticed there was incoming and outgoing calls

And I noticed there was incoming and outgoing calls

to this same number that wasn't saved in his phone

and the was talking to for an hour or two at a time.

So, I ended up writing down that phone number

and then calling from the house phone.

And the lady informed me that

they had been having an affair for about six months.

I always had

problems with self-esteem

from a very early age.

With Chad and with a lot of abusers,

what they do is they break down your self-esteem,

your self-confidence,

and make you feel like there's no way

that you could survive without them.

I'm not sure

when his interest in the military started.

when his interest in the military started.

He had a almost unnatural obsession

with firearms.

And I think that probably played a big role

in him originally joining the National Guard.

Where I grew up in in rural Mississippi,

it is not uncommon

for everyone to own firearms.

But what was unusual

with Chad's interest with firearms

is that it went a little bit beyond that.

is that it went a little bit beyond that.

He had up to 20 firearms

including assault rifles and handguns.

He had an AR-15,

he had an AK-47,

he had a 12-gauge shotgun,

.45 caliber handgun,

357 Magnum,

and a 38 Special.

That's the ones that I remember.

It was less about owning the firearms

than the comments that he made

than the comments that he made

regarding those firearms.

The need to stockpile weapons

in case if there was ever an instance

where he needs to be in a militia

or to overthrow the government.

When I was with him, I was...

17 to 21 years old.

It was very terrifying to me.

There was an instance

where we were driving down a back road

where we were driving down a back road

in the middle of the woods.

I remember it being a really hot day.

In my area, there's a lot of strays

and stuff that get dumped in the country.

And a dog was just walking down the side of the road.

And Chad stopped all of a sudden

and he called the dog to the driver door.

And the dog was happy to see him,

wagging its tail.

[dog whimpers]

And he grabbed

And he grabbed

his .45 caliber handgun

out from underneath the seat.

And he was saying,

"Come here, poochie, come here."

Then the dog kinda put its front paws

on the side of our vehicle.

And at that point, he just...

-[gunshots] -[dog cries]

...shot the dog in the head.

To see someone be so evil towards animals

was something I had never witnessed before in my life.

was something I had never witnessed before in my life.

And it traumatized me.

It scared me.

And I think it was to let me know

that he's capable of doing some pretty horrible things

if I didn't get in line.

[Jessica] Chad was extremely peculiar

about the way the house was supposed to be.

He made it obviously clear that...

what my station in life was.

To be a housewife,

a mother and a maid.

It was compulsive,

it was obsessive.

it was obsessive.

He would want things lined up a certain way.

All of the vegetables in the cabinets,

they all had to be grouped together,

the corn together, green beans together,

all the labels facing a certain way.

It all had to be lined in a uniform, straight manner.

Usually, when I knew that he was heading in

for the weekend,

I would spend that whole day before

scrubbing with Q-tips, toothbrushes,

scrubbing with Q-tips, toothbrushes,

just getting everything right.

But in those occasions when something slacked,

I paid for it.

Dirt on the floor

could cause him to empty out

and dump out dressers

and tear clothes out of closets

and flip mattresses off of beds.

Swipe clean dishes off surfaces.

There was instances where he would...

his nose would almost touch my nose.

To look into his face,

it looked sometimes like he was looking straight through me.

Like, he wasn't even looking at me,

he was looking straight through something else,

and his eyes almost became black.

And as time went on,

the violent aspect of our relationship

really, really got more intense.

The first time that Chad ever laid hands on me

was about six weeks

after I found out that I was pregnant.

I went into the bedroom,

into a dresser.

And he was sleeping

because he was working the night shift.

And the drawer squeaked.

[faint squeak]

And it woke him up.

And it woke him up.

And he immediately jumped up out of bed,

grabbed me by my hair,

drug me out of the room,

kind of tossed me into the hallway

and slammed the door on my face.

I was shocked.

I didn't know what had just happened.

I was confused, I was scared.

I was confused, I was scared.

My heart was racing.

I didn't know what to do.

And I just stood there, dumbfounded.

And then, after a few minutes,

he came out

and he wrapped his arms around me

from behind and just said that he was sorry,

that he had never done anything like that before to someone.

And that he was probably half asleep when he done it

and that it would never happen again.

At the time, I believed him.

You know, I woke him up,

he's tired, he works, he provides for me.

he's tired, he works, he provides for me.

And I was so inconsiderate

to go in there and wake him up.

I didn't wanna leave

because there were times

where things were really...

when they were good, they were okay.

And it kind of helped

soften when things weren't okay.

It didn't last long compared to the good times that we had.

It didn't last long compared to the good times that we had.

Scott was born on January 9th, 1998.

I was 18 years old.

And I instantly fell in love with him.

From the moment he took his first breath,

he was a ball of energy.

Things were really good for a little while after that.

Things were really good for a little while after that.

There were times where we got along great

and we laughed and we loved and...

He would shower me with compliments and gifts and love.

So, for a little while after Scott was born,

he kind of helped us have better times

and make good memories of him when he was a newborn.

It was calm,

and there were no violent instances

where he hurt me.

We got married

when I was six months pregnant

with my second child at the time, Cynthia.

There was no proposal,

there was nothing romantic that happened.

It's just,

"Hey, we're getting married."

We walked in front of a judge

and it took about 10 minutes

and I wore blue jeans and a t-shirt.

And that was it.

And that was it.

It was done in 15 minutes.

After a...

what I would call a honeymoon break,

we would just eventually circle back around.

By the time I was pregnant with Cynthia,

I kind of knew the routine.

He would be angry,

he would become violent,

he would become remorseful.

And you could see a pattern forming.

I lost all my friends.

I lost all my friends.

And my family were disappointed in me.

And...

did not like him.

It made it really hard

to have a relationship with them.

It hadn't been long since I had Cynthia,

she was probably a few months old.

One day, he had been working out of town

and he had came in

and I had made spaghetti

about three days before.

And he made the comment,

"Why is this still in here?"

He grabbed me by my hair

and made me get on my knees

in the middle of the kitchen.

And he set the pot of spaghetti in front of me.

And he started scooping handfuls of spaghetti out

And he started scooping handfuls of spaghetti out

and force-feeding me.

[Jessica straining]

He's like, "Eat it.

If you expect me to eat it,

then you should have no problem eating it."

And he started rubbing it on my and in my hair.

He would take his hand

and like, push my face back like that.

He started punching me and slapping me around.

He started punching me and slapping me around.

He drug me into our bedroom

where he continued to assault me.

And continued to beat me

for a considerable amount of time.

After he'd done that,

he made me scrub the floors

on my hands and knees

with bleach rags to clean off the spaghetti sauce.

There was something about that day,

him treating me

like I was not human.

like I was not human.

By the next morning,

I had two black eyes

and a fractured rib on my right side.

He had never touched the kids in an aggressive manner,

but it terrified me.

And it terrified me,

like, how far is this gonna escalate?

I never realized that he,

even as evil and as vile as he is,

that he would go that far.

[Jessica] When Chad left for work,

I got my children dressed

and myself dressed

and I walked to the nearest neighbor

where I could use their phone.

I called my family.

And they said...

that I would need to press charges on him.

He beat me pretty bad.

So, I pressed charges on him.

He was arrested and booked.

And once he went to court

And once he went to court

the judge had an agreement with his lawyer

that he would seek psychiatric help

in a in-patient facility and start medication.

And after he was released from the psychiatric facility,

I was very much on guard.

But over time, I felt like I saw a difference in him.

And if the therapy and medication was working,

I didn't know not to believe him.

It all goes down to him

It all goes down to him

spinning it around to make it somehow seem my fault.

A few months later,

I became pregnant with Joe, my last child.

At that point,

I had three children by him in three years.

And I realized that

how was I ever gonna escape this relationship

if I kept having children by this man?

And unbeknownst to him,

it was absolutely a big risk,

and I was terrified the whole time,

and I was terrified the whole time,

I went behind his back and had my tubes tied

while he was out of town one day.

Chad was working out of town.

While I was waiting for him to come home, I had went to see my dad that day

and I was a little late getting home...

and he was frustrated that I was late...

and he started in on me.

Scott, at the time, was three...

and Scott ran into the living room as he was beating me

and tried to separate us and tried to get in-between us.

And, at that time, Chad picked him up,

threw him onto the couch and slapped him across the back

so hard that it left a handprint.

so hard that it left a handprint.

He always kept a handgun in the nightstand and it always stayed loaded.

And he laid me across the bed

and he straddled me, with his knees on each side of my shoulders...

and he told me to open up my mouth...

and he forced the gun into my mouth.

And he got really close to me, his mouth to my ear...

And he got really close to me, his mouth to my ear...

and he said...

"Do you see the evil in my eyes?"

I thought I was dead.

And I vomited on me and him and the gun.

And at that point, he pulled me off of the bed, put me on my knees...

and, at this point, he put it to the back of my head.

and, at this point, he put it to the back of my head.

[phone ringing]

[Jessica] It was like a switch.

He went from this aggressive, crazy, evil mindset

to talking normally on the phone, setting up arrangements.

And he said, "Get in the vehicle.

We're going. Get the kids up. Get a towel for your face...

We're going. Get the kids up. Get a towel for your face...

and if you let anyone see your face,

I will kill you when we get home.

I will promise you that. I will kill you."

I had always made a promise to myself.

I said, "He can hurt me as much as he wants,

but the first time he ever puts a hand on my children,

I will be gone."

And so, I got the kids into the van.

He drove to the house...

and I just prayed the whole way there.

I just said, "God, make a way for me to escape right now.

I'll never look back, I swear to you."

And he stepped out of the vehicle...

and was walking up to their door...

and I jumped into the driver's seat and I locked the door

and I probably did about 60 miles an hour

and I probably did about 60 miles an hour

in reverse out of their driveway.

And when I went to put it in drive to go forward,

he had run across their small yard and jumped in front of the vehicle.

And he was mouthing, "I'm gonna kill you."

And I just closed my eyes and I pressed the gas.

He could do whatever he wanted to to me and I would put up with it.

He could do whatever he wanted to to me and I would put up with it.

And I always said, "He'll never hurt my kids,"

but I always had this knot in my stomach...

that something was going to happen.

He came before a judge.

Chad would know exactly what to do.

He knew that he needed to show remorse to the judge

and to immediately admit fault and...

check himself into a psychiatric facility voluntarily

and start medication

and start medication

and that way it looked like he was sincere and getting help

and that he was wanting to change.

And I knew that wasn't true.

He started the divorce proceedings the next month...

and that's where the whole fight for custody began.

And he said, "If you don't do exactly what I tell you to do

in the divorce proceedings, then I'll take the kids

and you'll never see them again."

Sorry.

If he said that he was gonna take my children from me

and I was never gonna see them again,

I believed that he would make that happen.

Even though I wasn't living with him,

I still felt that fear of him and what he could do to me.

He was always gonna have some rights to his children

and he was so manipulative in the court system

and he was so manipulative in the court system

that I was afraid that if I kept pressuring the courts

to make a decision on where they needed to stay for the most part,

that I would end up swaying it his way.

So, in a way, I kind of just...

broke down and gave him what he wanted

so the children would stay with him for the school year.

I still felt like maybe the instance with Scott was a one-time thing.

I still felt like maybe the instance with Scott was a one-time thing.

And I looked back and I was like, "You know, Jessica,

he was never violent towards them."

They loved him, especially Scott.

Scott and Chad have so many likenesses.

They have so many things in common.

I don't think there's anything that I could have done or said

to break that bond with them because it was so tight.

I think, in this picture, that Scott's emotions in it are genuine.

I think, in this picture, that Scott's emotions in it are genuine.

I think that Chad's is for the camera.

This is Scott.

He loved to dress up in his dad's army gear.

It's one of my favorite pictures.

After our divorce, I decided that

I was gonna stop depending on men for my livelihood

and that I was gonna step up and take care of myself.

I can't think of anything more empowering for a woman

than to join the United States Army.

And that's what I did.

I just had recently graduated basic training with the United States Army.

I just had recently graduated basic training with the United States Army.

I actually met Eric through one of his friends.

[Eric] January 1st of 2007,

a friend of mine had gone to a New Year's Eve party.

I was on duty that night.

The following afternoon, he called me and said,

"Hey, I met a girl. Will you come with me? She has a friend."

We kind of hit it off and we liked each other a lot.

It got serious pretty quickly.

It got serious pretty quickly.

[Jessica] When the kids first met Eric,

Scott was 10, Cynthia was nine and Joe was eight.

[Eric] We went to the beach, went out and played catch on the beach.

Their dad had never done that with them.

The kids, throughout the years, had gone back and forth

from Dad to us.

The teenage years, in particular, were a little bit difficult.

Their love for their father and what he was constantly telling them

was kind of against all the rules

and expectations that we were trying to set in our house.

and expectations that we were trying to set in our house.

We had his father telling Scott that he didn't have to listen to me...

and that caused, you know, kind of a rift.

So, Scott, he was very outgoing

and he lived the kind of life where he didn't care who was looking.

He was the guy that everybody invited to the party

'cause he was gonna bring it.

I met Chad on a few occasions.

I met Chad on a few occasions.

Jessica always asked me to maintain

a cordial relationship with him for the kids.

So I tried to do that.

I will tell you that there's not a single time...

that I have been around Chad Graves

that I have not had a gun on me, though,

because I do not trust that man.

[Stacy] We actually met in the seventh or sixth grade,

but when we got to high school,

but when we got to high school,

we kind of went our separate ways

until he contacted me on Facebook.

He's very, very charming.

He would open the car door for me, help me put my seatbelt on.

Just very, very gentleman-like.

I was aware Chad was on medication

a month or so, I guess, three months, maybe, after we got together.

He told me that he had had some issues

with PTSD from being in the Army

with PTSD from being in the Army

'cause as far as me and him, he had not shown any violent side yet.

Chad would tell me and Scott about some of the things he done in the military.

He told us that he was a commander on a Bradley

and they hit an IED and it flipped the Bradley

and he landed on his head and that's how he got injured in Iraq.

I believe Scott was 16 years old when I met him.

I believe Scott was 16 years old when I met him.

Scott was very, very loyal to his daddy.

It didn't matter what Chad done to him, he would always forgive him

and hug him and tell his daddy that he loved him.

No matter what Chad did, he always forgave him.

[Jessica] I woke up like it was any other day.

I got up and I made me some coffee.

And I noticed that I had a missed message on Facebook

from someone that I did not recognize.

It stated, "Hello. I'm a friend of Chad and Stacy's

and Stacy's trying to reach you.

It's an emergency. Please call her back at this number."

And so, immediately, my first thought was...

And so, immediately, my first thought was...

they've probably got into an argument and they've fought.

So I called.

And as soon as Stacy answered the phone, I couldn't understand her.

She was screaming and crying and saying, over and over, that he killed him.

[Stacy] On August 16th of 2018...

Scott asked his dad if he could go to his grandmother's house...

and Chad told him no...

and things escalated...

from there.

Chad was in the bed.

I was standing beside the bed, talking to Chad.

And the next thing I knew...

Chad jumped up out of bed, pushed Scott into a corner.

That's where Chad's shotgun was.

Scott grabbed the nozzle of the gun

and then Chad grabbed it and that's when they started fighting over it.

They worked their way into the dining room,

fighting over it, wrestling over it.

fighting over it, wrestling over it.

From where I was standing, I couldn't see where Scott was...

but Chad, I could see and he had the shotgun...

in his hand.

And I said, "Put the gun down. What are you doing?"

And he just looked at me with a blank look...

and he racked the shotgun...

and then fired.

[gunshot]

[sniffs] I'm sorry.

[sighs shakily] I come running out of the bedroom...

to get to Scott...

and Chad got in front of me and told me,

"Don't look at him. Don't touch him. Call 911."

I was in such shock.

And then, after that, it's all...

a blank until the police get there.

[police sirens]

[Stacy] The police took me out in the breezeway of the apartment.

I'm in my pajamas, no shoes.

Chad was to the left of me and I remember them

arresting and handcuffing him, but they took me to a police car.

It's pouring rain this night.

It's pouring rain this night.

From there, he goes to the VA, to the mental hospital.

[Eric] I was at work.

It's about nine o'clock in the morning.

I was on a break and Jessica called me...

hysterical.

And she's screaming into the phone,

"He killed him. He killed him. He killed my baby."

"He killed him. He killed him. He killed my baby."

[Jessica crying] And I prayed for God to send him back to me

and that he could take me.

And then the next thing I remember...

was being in the front yard on my knees

and a police officer from our town pulling up to be with me

until Eric could make it.

And I fell onto hot asphalt and laid in the fetal position...

while my whole world just fell apart.

I immediately knew there was no way that it was self defense

because I know my son and I know what kind of heart he had...

and I know how evil Chad was...

and I knew that he would say whatever he needed to to try to get out of trouble.

and I knew that he would say whatever he needed to to try to get out of trouble.

I let fear drive me to accept...

the custody agreement.

And I will, to this day, for the rest of my life...

feel guilt...

and anguish over that decision.

[Stacy] They looked at all the evidence.

All the shotgun pellets were in the baseboards of the floor.

The way the blood was pooled showed that Scott was on the floor when he was shot.

So he was not a threat for Chad.

He could have put the gun down at any time.

Chad shot Scott like it wasn't nothing to him.

And I just... I can't comprehend it.

The police arrested him on August the 29th of 2018...

The police arrested him on August the 29th of 2018...

at the Biloxi VA, when he was being discharged.

[Jessica] With Chad being manipulative,

he found this perfect opportunity

to say, "Hey! You know, I have PTSD."

But anybody that knew Chad before he deployed

knew that this behavior didn't come around because of PTSD...

knew that this behavior didn't come around because of PTSD...

because he was abusing people and being violent way before he ever saw combat.

And, which we later found out, he, in fact, never saw combat.

People don't realize that not every job that you do in the military...

puts you in harm's way or puts you in a combat situation.

I contacted several of his army buddies...

I contacted several of his army buddies...

and they told me...

early on in his deployment, he was deemed a liability

because of a negligent discharge.

They pulled him off of the frontlines and put him behind a computer.

He lied about everything that he did in the military.

I felt betrayed.

I believe he uses PTSD as a crutch.

I believe he uses PTSD as a crutch.

I mean, you don't lie about stuff like that.

[Jessica] When I saw him walk in, I was shocked at his appearance.

He's aged...

rightfully so, being in jail for the last three years.

I saw very little remorse.

I saw very little remorse.

They told me I could have a few moments to speak and I took six minutes

to give my victim's impact statement.

[Jessica on laptop]

I looked him in the face and there was no expression,

except for the fact when I said,

"Scott was the only child that loved you unconditionally

and forgave you for everything you ever did to him."

and forgave you for everything you ever did to him."

And, at that point, he shook his head "yes."

And then they asked him if he wanted to speak and he said no.

And then they sentenced him.

The fact that he could get out in six years consumed me.

I kept thinking, "What do I need to do,

proactively as a parent, to protect my remaining children?

proactively as a parent, to protect my remaining children?

How do I protect us all?"

[Stacy] He was just a mean, evil, evil person.

Who could do that to their own child and not show any remorse?

[Eric] I, in the back of my head...

always believed...

that one day...

Chad would go too far.

But I never thought that it would be one of his kids

But I never thought that it would be one of his kids

and, furthermore, I never thought that it would be Scott...

the one kid that always stood by him, always defended him.

Chad didn't become a monster because of Iraq.

Chad was a monster...

from his teenage years...

from his teenage years...

to the point where he decided to pull the trigger on his own son.

For a long time...

I felt like a piece of me died.

I got justice for him, to some degree.

I was honored to be his mother.

The world is really missing out

The world is really missing out

with him not being here anymore.