00:00:00
[Music] Here we are. [Music] So, we're at Olive Branch, the church that I grew up in for 3 years. This is
00:00:38
the house that I lived [Music] in. This is probably not a door I want to open. I just I
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don't I don't know if I could handle being in there. [Music] knowing what [Music]
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happened. My name is Jesse. My hair is pink. I decided to change my hair. I also changed my name to
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Jesse. Jessica, I no longer wanted that name cuz she was a very sad, lonely, angry little girl. And I just didn't
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want that anymore. [Music] When I was a young child, I lived with my mom and my dad. And then there was
00:01:38
me, the oldest, my middle sister, Janelle. And then there was my little sister, Jolene. My dad died when I was 5 years
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old. After my dad had died, my mom married Bob P. and Bob had become a minister because
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my stepdad was the minister of the church. We lived in the parsonage. Bob's kids were older than me and my sisters.
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My first impression of Jeff was he was very tall, skinny, crazy, big hair. Uh, and Jackie, she was a little more quiet,
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reserved. My sister Janelle and I had a best friend, Stephanie [Music] Fagan. She was like one of the family.
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We played in the backyard. We ran through the cornfields. It was typical country girl
00:02:29
stuff. The P family through my eyes. Seemed normal for the most [Music] part. In April 1989, I was 9 years old.
00:02:46
My whole world was shattered. Jeff was planning to go to the prom that weekend. Jackie was at a church camp. I had
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planned to go to a friend's house, so I ended up going to the sleepover by myself for the whole
00:03:08
weekend. My Sunday routine was we would usually arrive at church between 9:00 and 9:15.
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I would go over to the Pellies because Don usually had breakfast made, eggs, bacon, whatever we wanted. So, I ran
00:03:24
over there, but the door was locked. I was confused. The doors were never locked. And I went running back to the
00:03:35
church and I said, "I don't know. They must all be sleeping." At this point in time, I think the whole
00:03:44
congregation was there. They had a master key. They went and scoped it out themselves and they came back and
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said, "Everybody needs to run to the altar and [Music] pray." I was super confused. We drove up and I saw lots of
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people in the parking lot. And there were cop cars everywhere. There was yellow crime tape. A police
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officer came up to the van and asked my friend's mom to get out. And I could see
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them talking and I could see the tears just start streaming down her face. Who shot and killed the P family? So she
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came around and told me that my whole family was gone. The brutal murder of the pelower shotgun wasn't
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[Music] home. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] The brutal murder of the P family shot
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to death in their home Sunday morning. thrust a small town into the national spotlight.
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I had just found out that my whole family was gone. I had just lost everything. I pretty much became an
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orphan in a day. Lakeville was never the same for me and it was never the same for anybody to
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be honest with you that live there. It was hard on the whole community. This happy picture of the P family is
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how most people who knew the Pellies probably want to remember them because that family was loved dearly and nobody
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could understand it. Jesse and I, we were 3 years apart in age. It wasn't too hard for me to try to
00:06:36
put myself into her shoes and to know what it must be like to lose everyone. The funeral was on May 3rd,
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1989 in the church where Bob Preached every Sunday next to the house where they were
00:06:54
murdered. It was standing room only. There was media everywhere. news anchors running around with cameras
00:07:02
pointed at us as we walked in. Also at the funeral were Jesse's stepsister Jackie and stepbrother Jeff. Both had
00:07:11
not been home the weekend of the murders. I remember seeing Jackie visibly emotionally upset and
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shaken. Jeff, he was just flat and distant. It's like he was there but he wasn't there. The only thing I remember
00:07:27
about my family's funeral was the [Music] caskets. I don't remember who all was there. I couldn't tell you what I was
00:07:38
doing. I just remember the four caskets. We were toward the front of the church in a
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[Music] pew and all at once the cords to a piano began to play the song Amazing Grace.
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[Music] And I just remember being so devastated to realize the reason that the caskets were closed is because of
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the horrific way that they had died. No one should have seen what we saw that morning. We walked in through the garage
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door and upstairs, Robert P was in the hallway, his glasses next to him, and he had two gunshots on his
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body. And then we went downstairs and saw Dawn, Janelle, and Jolene. And that was what
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really put a face to this crime. To see the young girls in that position the way they were with their
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mothers, trying to protect them was just something that was etched in my mind forever. They were all shot in the head.
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It was devastating. It stuck with me my whole life. I mean, 30 years later, I can still see if I close my eyes the
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three people in the basement. As a detective, I saw the worst of the worst that morning, but we had a job to
00:09:29
do. So, immediately started talking about suspects. It did not look like a burglary. It not look like a home
00:09:38
invasion. The police spoke to all of the surviving members of the P family, including Jeff P. So, do you know who
00:09:45
killed your mother and father or your father? And No, I I really don't. I I don't know who would want to. I didn't
00:09:54
know who had done it or who they thought had done it. It was like a hush- hush thing with
00:09:59
me. In my own mind, I had to come up with something. So, I thought my stepdad had killed my mom and my two sisters and
00:10:07
then killed himself. He was not very nice to me. spanked me a lot. So, I thought, you
00:10:16
know, at nine that he could have been capable of that. But police had dismissed that
00:10:22
possibility almost immediately. After seeing the extent of injuries of Bob P and no murder weapon or no weapon
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laying around him, I wrote the suicide part out in my mind. A month after the funeral, relatives sent Jesse away to
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camp with her friend Stephanie in an effort to restore some normaly to her life.
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uh ended up to not be normal. Jessica was a very changed person after that. When I say the million mile stare, like
00:10:53
she had it a lot. It was almost as if she was there, but she wasn't there. When I look at those pictures,
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it's just so weird and strange to me because we both have smiles on our faces, but those little
00:11:08
girls weren't right. Um, those little girls were hurting. After camp, Jesse says her relatives
00:11:18
thought it was best for her to start over. They didn't want her to communicate with the people that she had
00:11:26
shared this tragedy with. After the murders, we really didn't have a close relationship. My stepbrother and my
00:11:32
steps sister and I, they went with family members on their dad's side and I went with a family member on my mom's
00:11:39
side. I ended up in Michigan because I went and stayed with my grandfather. They
00:11:44
just wanted me to forget and move on. It's like they wanted me to be in this bubble to protect me, but it wasn't
00:11:51
really protecting me. It was isolating me and hurting me. I had sent letters and I was told not to send any any any
00:12:01
more letters. I just would sit at night and think to myself, I can't imagine what
00:12:08
she's going through. I ended up running away and then they placed me in a foster home. I didn't
00:12:19
really have a place to call my own. I felt like a drifter. I didn't know where I was going
00:12:26
to stay. I felt like I didn't belong anywhere. As time passed and Jesse tried to regain
00:12:33
her footing, the investigation dragged on without any arrests. At the age of 13, I did try and take control of my
00:12:41
life and I actually pushed down all the feelings that I was feeling. I was happy
00:12:46
and outgoing and had friends and didn't think about the past. But 5 years after the murder of her family, someone from
00:12:54
her past life came calling. My stepbrother Jeff, he did call me when I was 15 and asked me to come down to
00:13:03
Florida to visit him. When I went to visit him, he did have a really good job with the
00:13:10
computer business. He had a wife, Kim, and you know, had his own house. So, he was he was doing pretty good. And the
00:13:18
first thing that he asked me was, "Who do you think did it?" So, I looked at him and said, "I
00:13:24
think your dad did it." And then it was dropped. Unbeknownst to Jesse, police had been
00:13:30
focusing on someone else from the very beginning. Looking back on that time visiting Jeff, it could have gone way
00:13:38
worse than it [Music] did. [Music] After the pellets were gone and after they were buried, here I am at the
00:14:04
cemetery. There was no more laughing. There was no more running. There was no more playing. Just going to grab my
00:14:10
stuff out of the trunk. There was just no more of anything. And they're right over here.
00:14:18
When I was 16, I got my driver's license and the first place I went was to the cemetery. I would just
00:14:25
sit and talk to them. It was a huge way to cope with the loss. And then I started kind of tending
00:14:33
their graves, just making sure that they were clean and scrubbed and that there wasn't any moss and stuff on them. My
00:14:41
mind just wonders why. I mean, they were so young. For years, Stephanie Fagan grieved the
00:14:57
loss of the murdered P family, but also the loss of Jesse. She was gone. I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't
00:15:07
just let me, you know, keep in contact with her. When I was a teenager, I did start doing
00:15:17
research about the murders. And that's when it became kind of an obsession for me to find
00:15:26
her. Every time I came out, I was always thinking, I'll run into her someday. If
00:15:32
I just come out here enough, she'll be [Music] here. I did not realize anybody was out
00:15:40
there looking for me. I pretty much thought everybody forgot about me and had moved on with their lives because it
00:15:48
wasn't their family that they lost. In 1998, when she was 18, Jesse tried to move on as well. The first chance that I
00:16:01
got to purchase my own home, I did. I used some of the inheritance to purchase it. I had not had a home since I was
00:16:09
nine. It was an amazing feeling. I felt like I belonged there, that I had a place.
00:16:19
Jesse finally had a home and a family would soon follow. When I first met Tyson, it was love at first sight for
00:16:27
him. Me, it was not. I was with someone else. So, when we reconnected a couple years later, we just started hanging
00:16:33
out. And ever since then, we've been together. I have two children. When my children
00:16:40
were younger, they did know that I had a family and that they were gone. I did not go into detail. I did not really
00:16:49
give them any explanation on what had happened. They just knew they were gone. But in
00:16:57
2002, 13 years after the murders, keeping her past buried would become more difficult. There was a knock on my
00:17:04
door and there were two detectives standing there. They told her the case was being reopened. They said, "Well,
00:17:11
we're here to talk about, you know, your family's murder case and we just want to
00:17:16
know who you think did it." When I told them it was my stepfather, they looked at each other and then, you know, looked
00:17:22
at me and said, "Well, there's no way it could have been him." And then that's when they asked me, "Well, who do you
00:17:28
think could have done it?" And in that moment, Jeff came to my mind. My older stepbrother Jeff liked to do
00:17:38
things that just scared me. He was so quick to getting angry and he would use his fists. He would fight
00:17:47
and they said, "Yep, that's exactly who we think did it." I got a pit in my stomach and then
00:17:55
they started telling me a little bit about the case. Reverend Robert P, his wife, and their
00:18:02
two youngest children were found shot to death in their home Sunday morning. I know there was a lot of angst in that
00:18:08
family between him and his dad. I know a situation where Bob punched him one time. I think the the
00:18:18
neighbors saw a lot of that same thing as well. Just weeks before the murders, center had handled a case in which Jeff
00:18:26
Purglarized a home. Bob P grounded Jeff for the burglary case. He could not go to the prom without his dad taking him.
00:18:35
He couldn't go to dinner before the prom. He couldn't go to the after prom. The embarrassment of his dad driving
00:18:42
him, not having to do any of the other activities was crushing to Jeff P. Inducting an interview with Robert
00:18:49
Jeffrey P. I interviewed Jeff with his grandparents May the 1st, 1989. Did you have anything to do with it? No,
00:19:00
I didn't. Me and my father didn't get along sometimes and sometimes I'd be really upset with him,
00:19:08
but we always work things out. But investigators didn't believe him. When you're talking about the death of your
00:19:15
family, uh you think, you know, every once in a while he'd tear up or he'd cry. Um he never did any of that. The
00:19:21
main evidence against Jeff was the timeline. The Pellies were last seen alive shortly before police believe Jeff
00:19:29
left for prom. Who else could have done it? Who else would have done it? Who else had the
00:19:34
motive? I believe he killed his family and then was able to go to the prom. Yet back in 1989, the case against Jeff
00:19:44
was thin. We didn't have any forensic evidence. We didn't find a murder weapon, no eyewitnesses. We had
00:19:50
circumstantial evidence and the timeline. Very tough case to prove. very tough case to prosecute.
00:19:59
The prosecutor's office chose not to file charges on Jeff P. At the time, the prosecutor did not think we had enough.
00:20:05
To my mind, I thought we had enough. But 13 years after the slaughter of the P family, a new prosecutor thought there
00:20:16
was enough evidence. Jeff P was arrested and charged with four counts of murder.
00:20:26
When I heard Jeff was arrested, I was just waiting until the trial to see, you know, what was going to
00:20:33
happen. I was scared that he was going to get out, come after me. When he's angry, he's not a nice
00:20:41
person. [Music] [Music] When I came back to Indiana for the trial, it was like coming back a
00:21:06
stranger. 17 years after the murder of her family, Jesse returned to the place she once called home. I felt like it had
00:21:15
never been my home. I couldn't remember a lot about it. I couldn't remember a lot about the past.
00:21:21
On Monday, a jury got its first good look at a man most people in St. Joe County haven't seen for a long time.
00:21:28
Jeff Pely. And when I went to trial, people were asking who I was. And that's when it hit me that, wow, I really was
00:21:35
lost. A jury of seven men and five women will hear the case against Jeff P. I was
00:21:40
scared to see him. I was scared to have all these memories come back up. I did hope to have a reunion with
00:21:49
Jessica at the trial. My anxiety was very high because I thought, "Okay, here's my chance. I'm going to be able
00:21:55
to see her because we're all going to be in the same courtroom." And that never happened. That's because Stephanie was a
00:22:02
witness and only in court the one day she testified. I was not allowed to see her. I was not allowed to contact her.
00:22:11
Tuesday, lawyers laid out their cases to the jury in opening statements. This was
00:22:16
a totally a circumstantial evidence case. There was a very, very small window when
00:22:23
the family could have been murdered. It was very clear the only person who could
00:22:26
have done this was Jeff. The prosecution's theory was that Jeff killed his father in an argument over
00:22:32
prom and then had to get rid of the surviving witnesses. The prosecutor took the jury through the timeline.
00:22:42
On Saturday, April 29th, the P house was definitely buzzing. Many of the individuals going
00:22:50
to the prom wanted to come by and show Bob their prom dress, their prom tux. His home was always open. He wanted to
00:22:58
be someone the community could depend on, someone who could be trusted by his parishioners. So, up until roughly 5:00,
00:23:06
there was a lot of traffic in and out of the home. But the prosecution says by 5:30 no
00:23:12
other visitors could get into the house. The house was locked up as tight as a drum. It became very clear that the
00:23:19
murders had to happen between say 5 and 520. The biggest thing was Jeff said he wasn't there. Jeff told investigators he
00:23:27
left before 5:00, but witnesses testified they saw Jeff's car parked outside the P home after that. The
00:23:36
witnesses who saw when the car was at the house and when the car left the home, he was clearly at the house.
00:23:42
Jeff's prom date also testified. She said when Jeff showed up at a nearby friend's house at 5:30, he wasn't
00:23:50
wearing his tux. The idea that he had to take the prom off it down to his girlfriends and there was no pictures
00:23:57
taken with his parents said a lot about what he had done in the house. He had to
00:24:01
get out of there. Jeff's prom date also recalled something Jeff told her at an amusement park the day after prom.
00:24:08
Shortly before news broke of the murders. Jeff had seemed troubled when she asked him what was the matter. Jeff
00:24:16
had told her he thought something bad had happened at home. It seemed to come out of nowhere for this whole situation
00:24:23
unless he knew something had happened back in Lakeville, Indiana. Even though Jesse had not been home the
00:24:30
weekend of the murders, she was also called to testify. The day comes to where I have to testify and I was very
00:24:37
nervous cuz I knew I was going to see Jeff. And at this point, I did want to say something to him that he took my
00:24:43
whole family from me. He destroyed my life in one split second. As I sat on the stand and looked
00:24:53
at him, he didn't even look at me. I did not get what I wanted. It's like he just pretended like I
00:24:59
wasn't there. I was always concerned that she would break down on the stand just because of the emotion involved in
00:25:07
this. She did not. She stayed very, very solid the whole way. Jesse testified she
00:25:11
saw something important before leaving for that sleepover. I let them know that when I said goodbye to my mom that the
00:25:20
gun rack was on the wall and there was a bow and a shotgun on it. The bow was in
00:25:26
the rack when officers came that Sunday morning cuz we had photographs of it, but the firearm was not there. Police
00:25:32
never found that gun believed to be the murder weapon, but they were convinced they didn't need it. They testified Jeff
00:25:40
made a seemingly damning statement in an untaped interview. If I tell you what happened, would I get the death penalty?
00:25:48
Who would say something about that unless they' done something wrong? There was no motive. There was no opportunity.
00:25:55
There was no murder weapon. There was no case. From the very beginning, the police basically assumed that Jeff had
00:26:06
committed this crime without any evidence. What they didn't investigate in the case was any possibility that
00:26:14
someone else and for other reasons had committed these murders. After calling more than 50 witnesses, prosecutors say
00:26:20
all the facts point to Jeff Kelly. It's preposterous to think that in the short amount of time that Jeff's presence was
00:26:28
unaccounted for, somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes, he could have killed his family, disposed of the murder weapon,
00:26:35
driven over to his date's house. There no possible way that he could have done all of those things in the amount of
00:26:42
time he had. As the trial drew to a close, Jeff's fate and Jesse's sense of security were
00:26:51
hanging in the balance. There's no doubt in my mind that Jeff is innocent. He did
00:26:57
not commit these murders. He's not a killer. Do I think the evidence points to Jeff? Yes, I do.
00:27:05
[Music] The prosecutor started his closing argument, letting the jury know it was
00:27:27
his burden to prove the case. The prosecution had no murder weapon. Did you have anything to do with it? No,
00:27:36
I didn't. No confession and no forensic evidence. The case the jury had to consider rested mainly on the timeline
00:27:43
and Jeff Pelly's motive. His anger over prom. Waiting for a verdict was very nerve-wracking. But now the burden of
00:27:51
deciding Jeff Pelly's fate is theirs. I didn't know what was going to come out of this. I hoped he was going to be put
00:27:58
in prison, but there was always that chance that that might not happen. One of Pelly's lawyers says his client is
00:28:04
under a lot of stress now that the jury has the case. Jeff was facing life in prison, so
00:28:11
everything was at stake. The jury deliberated on this case. They went out, I believe it was a Wednesday afternoon
00:28:16
about 2 or 3:00. Came back with a verdict. I believe it was after 8:00 on Friday
00:28:23
night. The jury came back with guilty on all four counts against Jeff P. guilty for the murders of Dawn, Bob,
00:28:34
Janelle, and Jolene P. I felt a sense of justice when I heard the verdict was guilty. My family's killer was put away.
00:28:46
Jeff does have a wife and a child, so I did feel for his son because he was losing a dad, and I know how that feels.
00:28:55
But I remember to this day the image of Jeff being handcuffed is burned in my mind. Jurors were quoted as saying,
00:29:02
"Well, if he didn't do it, who did?" That is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Jeff was sentenced to 160 years
00:29:08
in prison for the four murders in this matter. The case, however, was far from over.
00:29:17
So after the conviction, we of course filed an appeal and we were successful. The convictions were set aside on a
00:29:23
number of procedural grounds. I actually had someone call me and tell me that and
00:29:29
I remember being at Save a Lot actually and I was sitting in my car and I just started crying because I was afraid it
00:29:37
was all going to start again and I didn't want to have to look over my shoulder. But Jeff remained in custody.
00:29:44
And in February 2009, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld Jeff Pelly's conviction. The sentence
00:29:53
stood. With the case seemingly behind her, Jesse decided her children were old enough to hear how she lost her family.
00:30:03
When I was first told about my mom's past, we were actually in Indiana. She took me to her sister's and mom and
00:30:11
stepdad's graves. She told me that they had been killed when she was nine. It made me sad cuz I was like, "Well,
00:30:22
that's your family. That's my family." I had never actually witnessed her cry like
00:30:30
[Music] that. So, I would Google P. P murders Jessica [Music] P., you know, any two words that I could
00:30:43
put together to figure out where she was. Well, I had found one clipping of one article that said Jesse
00:30:54
Toronto. So, I went on the search bar, typed in her name, boom, this eye came up. It was just this part of her eye. I
00:31:05
knew it was her. I knew part of me was scared because I thought maybe she didn't want me in her life, but I said
00:31:16
to myself, you know what? I've come this far. There's no stopping now. I don't know if you remember me or not. My name
00:31:24
is Stephanie. We were close when we were younger. I'm just going to write her a letter. I'm going to tell her how I
00:31:29
feel. I'm going to tell her who I am. And if she wants me to be in her life, fine. If she doesn't, I will leave it to
00:31:35
you to write me back. I will probably be biting my nails until you do. So, one day I log into Facebook and there's a
00:31:41
message from Stephanie Fagan. Well, I don't recognize the name, but I I click on it and I read it. I have huge tears
00:31:48
in my eyes right now just knowing that you were actually going to get my letter this time. I just told her, "I've been
00:31:53
looking for you my whole life." And I told her, "I took care of your parents' graves and I've thought about you and
00:32:00
I've talked to you in my sleep. if I've talked to you when I wake up. I've gone through my life and never lost sight of
00:32:06
finding you. I never in a million years thought I'd ever see you again. And I'm balling as I'm reading it. I'm just
00:32:12
crying hysterically. And the feeling I got was someone reached out to me and has been looking for me this whole time
00:32:21
and wants to get to know me again and wants to be around me and remembers everything. And at first she didn't
00:32:29
remember me, but then I started kind of telling her stories about camp and it clicked immediately. I have missed you
00:32:36
for many years. Much love, Stephanie. And the rest is kind of history. There we go.
00:32:48
Stephanie and I call each other sisters. From the moment that we reconnected, we
00:32:52
bonded in such a way that I've never had a bond like that. Jesse's cousin Jamie Collins also came back into her life.
00:33:01
Reuniting with Jesse, she was this fierce, vibrant, kind of bold, freespirited um person with this hot pink hair. She
00:33:11
had told me a lot of her deepest, darkest secrets about her past and her thoughts and her fears and her dreams.
00:33:18
And we talked about so many things that in a lot of ways I felt like I knew her better than maybe I've ever known
00:33:25
anyone. So Jamie said to me, "You know, you should write a book about your life." And I told her, I said, "Well,
00:33:31
everybody tells me that, but I definitely could never do that." And I probably couldn't talk to a stranger
00:33:36
about everything. And she said, "Well, what about me? Could you tell me?" And I told her, "Yeah, I could probably do
00:33:42
that." Though she came across as outgoing and positive, the trauma of Jesse's childhood was never far below
00:33:51
the surface. We were actually writing the book at the time that Jessica kind of had a downward
00:33:56
spiral and it was a very scary time for both of us. She lost a close family friend to cystic
00:34:05
fibrosis and for her it had triggered these elements from her past. Once the triggers hit her, that was that was it.
00:34:12
I hadn't lost anybody since my family and I never realized that it would hit me like that. So, I have a whole week
00:34:21
where I don't remember a whole lot. I trashed my living room. I was angry. It was like I wasn't even there. I could
00:34:29
feel myself being sucked into the darkness and I just couldn't bring myself out.
00:34:34
That week, I knew something was going on. I got a call and she was crying. All I could hear was, you know, I need I I
00:34:43
need you. I was like, okay, you need to calm down. There was no calming her down. I was like, "Maybe you just need
00:34:48
to take an anxiety pill, you know, maybe you just need to calm down." She's like,
00:34:51
"I took all of them." I said, "Oh, this is not good." And the phone went silent and I
00:35:03
couldn't hear her anymore. And I thought, "That's it." This whole time I waited for her and I looked for her and
00:35:10
now this is it. This is it. She's gone. [Music] [Applause] [Music] That week when she was spiraling, the
00:35:34
last thing I remember was an ambulance at our house and I was watching them take my mom out on a stretcher.
00:35:43
[Music] I ended up waking up in a hospital and I didn't know how I got there. I didn't
00:35:53
know what had happened, but the doctor asked me if I tried to kill myself and I was floored. I guess I had taken a
00:36:00
bottle of pills and tried to kill myself. I later found in a notebook a goodbye note. At that point in time,
00:36:09
that was rock bottom for her. She called me. I was one of the only people that knew. She said, "I'm done. I got to get
00:36:17
help." I was scared for my life that I wasn't going to make it. And I did not come this far not to make it. So, I
00:36:26
ended up admitting myself in the hospital and started getting some help. I've learned that I do have DID, which
00:36:37
is dissociative identity disorder. And I am part Jessica and part Jesse. So when
00:36:44
I pushed Jessica down inside me way down and didn't want to feel sad, lonely, I think I lost a lot of the memories that
00:36:52
I had in doing that. And now that I'm trying to get them back, you know, it's difficult to because I'm just now
00:37:00
letting Jessica come back. A survivor's path is very messy. There is no clean line. There is no straight
00:37:10
path. You have your ups and downs, but when you get help, it's a little bit easier. I do not consider myself fully
00:37:18
healed, but I am definitely on the way to recovery. When I think of Jessica, I don't think of just a lonely, scared
00:37:25
little girl anymore. I realized she is me and together we can overcome anything.
00:37:34
Anything, including a recent development in her stepbrother's case. It's still winding its way through the courts. Jeff
00:37:42
Py's new legal team has filed a motion for postconviction relief. 30 years later, there's still a legal process
00:37:48
going on. It really is a form of slow torture, but I fully believe that he's not getting out.
00:37:56
Jesse is trying not to dwell on it and instead focusing on helping others. I am Jessica, the book she wrote
00:38:05
with her cousin Jamie, was published on April 29th, 2019, the 30-year anniversary of the
00:38:13
murders. We've had a few book signing events, and it's been amazing just to see kind of the outpouring of support
00:38:19
from the community. I just appreciate everybody that's been supportive and um has hung in there with me. It's been
00:38:26
really an overwhelmingly positive experience for both of us. When I read the book, it made me realize
00:38:34
how strong I am and it made me realize that I have a purpose and it is to help people and this book is one way that I'm
00:38:44
going to do that. There's a lot I admire about Jesse. I admire Jesse for her strong will. I
00:38:52
admire her for her strength. I admire her for everything that she went through. There you go. And I feel like she came
00:39:01
out just this beautiful flower in a field full of weeds. That's how I feel about
00:39:09
her. What am I doing with this lemon? I saw her in this downward spiral and then in just the past year or so I've
00:39:20
seen her crawl back up. She survived it. Seeing my mom go through this has taught
00:39:27
me to value family and to never give up and to always keep fighting no matter what's going on in my life. You better
00:39:36
eat your salad. Having my family today is a blessing. I look at them and I just realize how lucky I am to be alive. 30
00:39:44
years later, Jesse has regained the sense of family she lost so suddenly, but she still thinks of what life would
00:39:51
be like had things turned out differently. Now that I'm starting to feel again, I do think about my sisters
00:39:59
and what they would have been like and if I would have had any nieces and nephews from them. And my mom, you know,
00:40:07
how would she be with my kids? Would they have called her grandma? Would they have called her
00:40:11
nana? I think today my mom is looking down. And she's proud of me. I know they're not here, but I know
00:40:22
they're with me. And I still think of [Music] them. I remember singing with my sisters
00:40:33
right up there on that stage. We would sing Amazing Grace. 30 years ago, I did not know Amazing Grace would
00:40:43
apply to me. I know now that I survived for a reason. I once was lost. Now I'm found. I really was lost for a long time
00:40:54
and now I'm not anymore. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]