Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - In the Valley of Sin: Bittersweet Ending

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

In the Valley Of Sin" is a six-hour docuseries that examines the mid-90's witch-hunt that pitted neighbor against neighbor in Wenatchee, Washington, when police uncovered a monstrous child sex ring known among its membership as 'The Circle.'Local authorities alleged that dozens of children were raped in the bedrooms of their parents, in the homes of their neighbors, and at ritualized orgies on the altar of a church. But there was one problem: there was no sex ring, a truth that only emerged after 43 parents were arrested and dozens of children were made wards of the state.Today, two of the families hounded by this witch hunt return to lay out what ultimately happened. Joining Nancy Grace today: Amber Doggett - victim Sam Doggett - victim John Doggett - victim Carol Doggett - victim Mark Doggett - victim Pastor Roby Roberson - victim Connie Roberson - victim Rebekah Osbourn - Tom Grant - Award-winning journalist (30+ years), former reporter, KREM, Associate Professor of Journalism at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College,  co-executive producer of “In the Valley of Sin” and other documentaries, www.drthomasgrant.com  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Group sex with little children, mothers and fathers in groups of adults molesting children literally in the church on the altar? Well, that sounds like a horror film to me. A horror film. In all the child molestations I have ever investigated or prosecuted, took to trial, I've never heard of anything like that. You know why?

Because it didn't happen. And it pains me as an officer of the court to believe this investigation went all the way to trial. People's lives ruined forever. I am talking about the Wenatchee, Washington witch hunt. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Every day when I get up at five in the morning, I've got one thing on my mind,

and that is getting through the day when I bring my children back home and we have dinner together. We have supper and we talk. It's the best thing. And I have imagined over and over after speaking to these mothers and fathers, being dragged away from that supper table with my children and arrested for child rape. As we tell you a story like no other, except it's not a story.

This is not a show. This is real. This happened to real people and they are suffering right now. But through it all, they are joining us here today. Let's kick it off with this. Listen. Ran me through it. You're going to say this, this, and this happened.

You've seen this happen at the church. You've seen these kids were involved. You know, and you just stick to, basically stick to the script, right? Just say what we want you to say, and you'll see your parents again. But if you don't say what we want you to say, you're never gonna see them again. And I just kept praying, Lord, let her tell the truth.

We raised her right, and let her tell the truth. Let the truth come forward. That is just breaking my heart to hear the voices of Rebecca Osborne and Connie Robertson talking about the horrible things that have happened to them. Moms and dads being railroaded for child molestations and rapes that never happened. Little children being literally forced to give statements against their own parents, landing their parents behind bars and living the rest of their lives, carrying around a sack of rocks on their shoulders that they sent mommy and daddy

to prison. We're only now learning the truth of the Wenatchee witch hunt. Joining me right now, you are hearing Rebecca Osborne and Connie Robertson speaking with me, Amber Doggett, Sam Doggett, John Doggett, Carol Doggett, Mark Doggett, a family torn apart literally by this event. Pastor Robbie Robertson, his wife Connie, Rebecca Osborne. You just heard her speaking and award-winning journalist, Tom Grant. You can find him at drthomasgrant.com, award-winning journalist and the co-executive producer of In the Valley of Sin. Enough from me.

Let's go to the stars of today's program. Let me start with you, Rebecca Osborne. We were just hearing your voice where you were told you either say this or you're never seeing your mom and dad again. And you know what, Rebecca, until I spoke with you and Sam and Amber and John, it was hard for me to believe that all these children had claimed child molestation, but that none of it happened. I'm so used to defendants trying to worm out of a child molestation charge and children being coached to say it didn't happen.

It was hard for me to believe it didn't happen. It just, it's against, contrary to everything I've ever known. When you hear and have to think back on what happened, Rebecca, what comes to mind? Well, you know, initially it's just kind of the trauma we all went through. And I know all of us kids experienced something different, especially dependent on the ages we were at at the time. But just those sessions that I know we all would go through where we were coerced and brainwashed and told what to say.

And it wasn't that we were allowed to tell the truth. You know, we were only allowed to say what they had dictated or what they had put in front of us to say. But looking back on it now, you know, I'm just so thankful for the grace of God for showing me the Praise the Lord that the parents have been exonerated, and I hate what they have been through. Rebecca, when you saw your mother and dad for the first time, after you had made the claims that they molested you, what happened? Are you referring to when I saw them in court? Yes.

Yes, I remember seeing them in court that day. And pardon me, I'm a crier when I start talking about all this, but I'll try my best not to be a blubbering crybaby. Also, you've got to remember, Rebecca and Nancy. Rebecca was only four years old. The first time an arrest warrant had ever been issued in the state of Washington for a four-year-old minor child, them trying to find her when she was running before the state got a hold of her. Yeah, I was literally arrested when they took me into custody. But when I saw my parents for the first time in court, I remember kind of having the thought process like, okay, well, they said that if I said what they wanted me to say, that I would see my parents again.

So I'm seeing them. So I guess I have to say what they want me to say to go home with them. But I knew, again, absolutely 100%, only the grace of God. When I was on that stand and they swore me in and they said, tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that stuck with me right now. Even though I was only four, that statement stuck with me. And I just remember when they started asking me questions, I just, I just started telling the truth, the honest to God truth. And the prosecutor was just upset. He didn't know what was going on because they had already talked to me right before I went on the stand and already had me, you know, geared up with

my script, everything I was supposed to say. And the prosecutor was just flabbergasted. He's like, I don't even know what to do here. You know, like he was he was in an uproar and everybody on that side was just dumbfounded. And I just I just looked him all straight in the face and I said, my parents never did anything. They never did anything you guys said happen to me. And I'm not going to sit here and lie because I know the difference between the truth and a lie. And I'm not going to lie. To Pastor Robbie Roberson. Do you remember that moment in court? Only too well. My wife, Connie, was holding my hand and almost broke my hand.

She was squeezing it. She couldn't look up. She couldn't look at Rebecca. We hadn't seen Rebecca in almost nine months. Never was able to talk to her all this time. They kept her totally away from us. But, yeah, I kept looking at her, and I just smiled. And every once in a while, she would look over and didn't say anything.

Mr. Van Sickling told Connie, he said, whatever you do, do not cry. Do not cry. And we were sitting there. First time we'd seen her, and Nancy, it was the hardest thing in the world. To just sit there like a bump on a log with no emotion. But it was amazing. I'll tell you what, it was amazing. Watching her, I don't know, I can't even explain it.

And when she said that, what she's telling you, they flipped out, and it was unbelievable. You could see it in the jury's face. Every once in a while I glanced over while she was talking, and Mr. Bansick, our own lawyer, it was pretty obvious that after he talked to her, it was unbelievable. She had them wrapped around her little finger. Becky won it for all of us, I'm telling you.

Rebecca, she was the trooper. Four years old, but boy, it was amazing. Connie Roberson, Pastor Robbie Roberson's wife do you remember the moment your daughter took the stand and said this did not happen yes what happened Connie

right now I'm crying so me too and I wasn't even there tell me what happened well when she began to sing her abc song i thought i would die i thought i would never hear my child again or hold her in my arm. And I just, uh, I wanted to cry, but mom said, don't cry. So I knew that if I looked her in the eye, I would be able to keep crying. When, when, when Mr. Uh, when Mr. Van Sicklin started cross-examining Rebecca, and he says,

you know the truth from the line, Becky? Obviously, yes. And you know your ABCs? And she says, yes, I do. And he says, well, let me hear it. And, well, Becky goes, well, go ahead, Becky. It's your show. Do it.

I just started singing my ABCs. Just happy-go-lucky as can be. You mean the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, that one? Yep. Yep. That one. Yep, that was it. And when Mr. Van Sicklin, I was talking to Bob yesterday, as a matter of fact, our attorney yesterday,

and he said when he looked and watched that jury when she said that that right there was what totally totally took that jury they just wanted to run over and grab rebecca and hug her but he said that's what absolutely just quenched it for us and destroyed the prosecutors and what they had done. Take a listen to this. They handed the judge, Chip Small, the verdict. And they said, on this count, not guilty. On this count, not guilty. Through 20-some times, not guilty, not guilty. And they said, is that the

verdict of the jury? And the jury, head of the jury stood up and said, yes, your honor, that's what it is. And so I sat down and lifted my hands and praised the Lord. My husband, I thought he was going to pass out, and I stood up to hold him up because I thought he was going to fall. And anyway, the crowd went wild, more or less, you know, because it was not guilty verdict for Pastor Robertson and his wife, Connie. To Rebecca Osborne, their daughter, can you remember the moment that you guys were reunited? Yes, I do. It was actually just a few days, if I remember correctly, before Christmas.

I was at my aunt and uncle's house, and I remember it was kind of later at night, and they came through the door, and I just jumped in my mom's arms. And I was just so happy. I mean, I didn't even cry. I wasn't even sad. I wasn't even upset. I was just so happy to see my parents. It was just happiness, pure joy. Pure joy.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We are talking about the so-called Wenatchee witch hunt and the way it has devastated lives. I want to go to who I now consider to be friends, the Doggett family, Amber, Sam, John, Carol, and Mark. Amber, how has being forced to give testimony, to give a statement against your mother and father landing them behind bars, how has that affected your life? First of all, let me ask you this. Did your parents ever molest you? after that interrogation, my little sister Megan and I were placed in foster care and Bob Perez went to our home and arrested my parents. And for a large majority of my life since that moment, I carried the guilt of my parents being arrested and I blamed myself for the whole thing. And if I just would have been strong and told the truth that night, then none of this would have ever happened, and my family would have stayed together. I disagree, Amber.

As much as I have grown to care for you, I disagree. Tom Grant, I don't think anything would have stopped her parents getting arrested, not even the truth. No, we can see looking back that the truth did not stop things. They refused to listen to anybody who told them the truth. And they kept pressuring people until they told the police and CBS got the lies that they wanted. And I just want to say that these two families were great families, and great families before this happened, and they were destroyed by what Child Protective Services

and Wenatchee Police did to them. And I'm so sad that that happened. Amber, your life has been altered, like everyone's, because of this. The guilt of thinking as a little girl, you somehow sent your parents to jail. You do know it wasn't you, correct? You do know you were just a tool of someone else using you. I do know that, Nancy, and I do understand that I was manipulated and used. But I still felt guilty for a long time and that guilt did lead to addiction and very

poor health choices, very poor relationship choices. And I was a miserable human being for a long time and it's taken a lot of work to pull myself out of that and to a lot of hours in therapy. And, and to finally be able to, to accept, you know, what, what happened to me. And, and I think it's also important to understand Nancy is that those five years that I was in the system, I was being treated, I was in therapy that entire time, and I was being treated for trauma that never occurred. And the trauma that was occurring during those five years was being dismissed, ignored, and completely just brushed aside as if none of the trauma I was experiencing was happening. I was being gaslighted. And so I was being treated for a trauma that didn't occur while my trauma that

I was experiencing was being ignored. And that had a very large impact on how I was able to deal with things as an adult. To your sister, Sam. Sam, how did your part in this witch hunt affect you the rest of your life? I felt guilt in a different way. I felt guilty. I never said that my parents had ever did anything to me. But I felt guilty that because I ran away, I had the easy way out. I took the easy way out. I didn't stay in the system. I wasn't abused by the system because I ran away, so I didn't have to deal with the trauma and the abuse that my siblings did by being stuck in that system.

And so the guilt I felt was because I took the easy way out. And I still feel that today. I feel really bad that it's very disheartening that my siblings had to go through that in a system that's supposed to protect children. And I had to run away and essentially live on the streets just to get away from it. You know, it sounds a lot like survivor's guilt. The one person that didn't, for instance, die in the car crash or the one person that escaped from the house fire.

You somehow feel guilty like it's your fault. What happened to the others? Hey, who was just jumping in? That's Mark. Jump in, Mark. And everybody, if you're listening or watching right now, Mark and Carol are Amber, Sam, and John's parents. Go ahead, Mark.

Yeah, Sam, Pinecrest, that's abuse. I hear you. Sam didn't escape everything. Sam, tell me when you decided to run away, where were you? And how old were you when you ran away from all of this? I was 16. I had only been in the system for a few months. And I believe I was in a foster home.

And I finally just had enough. They just kept lying to me. They wouldn't allow me to go to school. They wouldn't allow me to, um, I had put myself on independent study. They wouldn't allow me to turn in my homework. Um, they kept lying to me about my siblings. In what way? What were the lies? Well, they told me that my sisters were very mad at me. They wanted me to tell the truth. They were very upset with me. And it hurt my heart. It hurt my heart that my, my sisters, my siblings would be upset with me. And I just didn't understand why they kept lying to me. And they just kept saying, you know, like everybody else says, they just kept saying, we know your parents did this to you. We know your dad raped you. Why don't you just admit it? And it just disgusted me. When you ran away, Sam, where did you go? I bounced around a lot. I went to various family, friends, homes, family members, friends I

met along the way. I just moved around a lot. And how long were you basically on the run? Until I turned 18, two years. And then I didn't have to run anymore. And that whole time you did not see your parents? No. When I ran away, I snuck visits. I can't believe that, having to sneak visits with your mother and father. I mean, sometimes I literally count the

hours so I can pick the twins up from school. I can't imagine sneaking visits with them. Nancy, jump in. This is Carol. And I do remember one time we got Mark and I got a phone call saying that Sam wanted to see us before she left town. And he, this friend had arranged a secret meeting between us up in the mountains at somebody's cabin. And so Mark and I drove up there late at night. It was scary. Like literally we were so afraid that we would get caught. And we were just out on bond. I think it was before sentencing. And so we were just out on bond, I think it was, before sentencing. And so we were getting ready to go. You know, we were going to be sent to prison, and Sam was on the run,

and here we were having this late-night surreptitious meeting up in some cabin in the woods, just scared that we were going to get caught and just hugging and, and, you know, like just trying to cling to each other as long as we could until we were all separated again. When you heard the verdict, Carol, what happened? What went through your mind? I was furious, literally furious. And I just wanted to scream at the jury because we were convicted on Megan, the only child that hadn't even made any accusations against us until after trial started. And we were expecting for her to do what Rebecca did, get up on the stand and tell the truth because she had not made any accusations against us. But after the trial started, they had gotten to her

because she had had a colposcopic examination that showed she had a notch on her hymen. And a notch isn't evidence of abuse at all. But they told her that it was. They convinced her. They convinced her after the trial started that she had been abused. And if she would just say it on the witness stand, if she would just say that she had been abused, then we would get treatment. That's what they told her. Her parents would get treatment for six months and then she could go home. And this little girl wanted to go

home so badly that she had run away from her foster parents at one point, trying to chase a friend down the street to get her to take her home. Like Megan had literally climbed into a friend's van and begged her to go home. That's how badly she wanted to go home. And they got her to finally cave in and say that we had touched her between the legs when she got up on the witness stand. I was devastated. And so when we were convicted by the jury, I just wanted to scream at them. I just wanted to scream, don't you see

what you've done? Like, didn't you believe her when she said she wanted to go home and that she didn't remember until after? Like, they had just, there's a word for this, what they did to those kids, manipulation, showing them those dirty books, and it's called grooming. That's what they did. They were the offenders. They were the abusers, and they groomed these kids. And it's the most horrible thing I could imagine in life. Robbie here. Nancy, the thing that made the difference between Megan and Rebecca was one person, their attorney, Mr. Van Sicklin had an opportunity to speak to Rebecca just before she went on the witness plan. And Mr. Van Sicklin more or less kind of just had a good rapport. And it was obvious, Bob told us that he had a good visit with her and he was

hoping things would go right. And I can tell you with all the people, I mean, I've talked to all the kids, with all the families, and that's why a lot of the lawsuits that were settled afterwards were against public defenders, and money was obtained by some of these folks because they didn't have a defense. None of these attorneys bothered to, I guarantee you, Mark and Carol Doggett's attorney did not go and sit with Megan and say, Megan, this is really important. Your mom and dad really love you, and blah, blah, blah. I can guarantee's attorney did not go and sit with Megan and say, Megan, this is really important. Your mom and dad really love you and blah, blah, blah. I can guarantee you that did not happen. And I'll bet you Mark and Carol will actually validate that.

Speaking of Carol and Mark Doggett, the mother and father who really bore a brunt of this, Mark Doggett, can you remember when the jury verdict was announced? What happened? What went through your mind? Mark Doggett, can you remember when the jury verdict was announced? What happened? What went through your mind? Well, you're already in la-la land because this shouldn't all be happening. And then it was just unreal. I was probably in shock to some extent because I remember they say the sentence in, well, yeah, the verdict is like unbelievable, but I still believe that, you know, nothing happened. So eventually this has got to be cleared up. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Joining me is John Doggett. This is Carol and Mark's son. John, tell me your story. What happened? Nancy, that's a big question. A lot happened. A lot like my sister Amber, I carried the guilt because I sat on the witness stand looking at my parents

and said they did things to me that I knew weren't true. I stared at the ground and told the lies that I had been groomed to tell. And knowing that that's one of the things, well, now I know that it didn't send them to prison. But at the time, I mean, this was front page news every day in our town. I was going to school. I just, I sent my parents to prison. And living with that has been hard ever since. It's a horrible way to live with that guilt from such a young age.

Do you remember looking at your parents during the trial? Briefly, when I first got in and sat on the witness stand, I looked at them. And I actually remember thinking that my dad was my mom's lawyer because he had shaved so that he could look presentable in court and not like himself. And I didn't even recognize him. How long had you been apart? Oh, at that time, it had been months already. I don't remember exactly how long it was.

Let me ask you a question. How old was Megan when she was put on the stand? She was nine. Nine. Yeah. Guys, yeah. Guys, take a listen to this. And then one day while we were in prison, we got word that Sam was in a terrible car accident in California. And she was injured and she was in a coma.

And I was frantic. I remember strapping in. I remember driving a little bit and it was rainy and stormy. And that's it. So as you are hearing, Sam is in a crash, a horrible crash. Can you imagine being behind bars and you

find out your girl, the one that you risked everything for, the secret meeting in a mountain cabin while you're out on bond and you swore you wouldn't get in touch with your children, but you want to see her so bad and hold her one more time that you do it anyway. That daughter, horrible crash. Listen to this. She won an insurance settlement after that accident. That accident was a miracle. It honestly was a miracle. Sam got the settlement money, and I was like, don't spend it on us.

I'm like, no mom, just stop. I'm getting you out. That's what's good for me. And I was like, okay. Do what's good for you. This is good for me, getting my parents back. I was like, okay. And the next thing I know, she was hiring us, an appellate attorney from New York. Sam, you're in this horrible crash. And guys, I want to remind you of something for the Roberson family. They are still struggling horribly in so many ways. There is a PayPal for them, Roberson Recovery PayPal. You can go to roberson at televar.com. I want to go back to Sam Doggett.

You have the crash. You live through the crash. You get an insurance settlement. How did you decide, no question, you're using the money to get your parents out of jail, if that can be done? Like you said, there was no question about it. As soon as I found out that I was receiving this sum of money, I was like, yes, I need to get my parents out. I'm going to hire a real attorney and get my parents out. And I did not go to the state

of Washington. There was no way in heck I was letting that happen. And I did not go to the state of Washington. There was no way in heck I was letting that happen. And I did not go to the state of Washington. There was no way in heck I was letting that happen. You know, I'm really overwhelmed, Carol. Guys, Carol is Sam's mom. Carol says she tells her daughter, don't spend it on me. Don't. You know, a mother's love. Carol, there's nothing like it, is there? Oh, no. No, there's nothing like it. I love my children more than anybody on the planet. And I just always want what's best for them.

Seriously. I have to say that, um, that I didn't want Sam to spend the money on me. I wanted her to get herself, you know, started in life. And I knew that I would get out of prison eventually. And, um, but when she did make the decision, uh, to hire an attorney told me about it afterwards. She said, I've hired this attorney. And I was, I was so proud of her. And it wasn't because she was getting me out is because she would do that with her money, that she would spend her money to get an innocent woman, her mom out of prison. And I was just really proud of her. I just thought she was so generous and beautiful

and that she loved me that much. And it just really, it was a beautiful thing for her to do. And it worked. He did get us out. Take a listen to this. I wheeled out with all of my possessions and I was out of there. I'm happy to be out. Other nearby prisoners were yelling to Mark, we see your wife. We see your wife. She's out, she's out. You're gonna be out, you're gonna be out. I'm gonna be reunited with my husband and my children and I'm very happy to be released.

You walk out the gate, you know, and there's all cameras and all this stuff. Yeah, it's bizarre, yeah. You know, it's the beginning of the second phase. You know, we got our freedom, now we get our kids. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm happy to be out. Other nearby prisoners were yelling to mark we see your wife we see your wife she's out she's out you're gonna be out you're gonna be out I'm

gonna be reunited with my husband and my children and I'm very happy to be released to be released. You walk out the gate, you know, and there's all cameras and all this stuff. Yeah, it's bizarre, yeah. You know, it's the beginning of the second phase.

You know, we got our freedom, now we get our kids. It wasn't that easy getting their children back. Guys, you've heard about Megan. Megan, who took the stand at just nine years old. I want you to take a listen to our cut 33. Unfortunately, Megan came out of things very confused. Megan was our younger sister and she was nine at the time that my parents were arrested. She finally got to a point where she felt safe enough to to tell the truth. Megan wrote a letter

to this teacher that she trusted and recanted. She said that she had never been abused by her parents. Every time a child told the truth, they got in trouble, almost without exception.

After Megan recanted in that letter, her foster parents kicked her out of their house. The repercussions that Megan faced after recanting were so severe that she quickly went back to saying that she had been abused. And she stuck with that. To Tom Grant, the co-executive producer of In the Valley of Sin, what repercussions did this little nine-year-old girl face when she writes a letter to the teacher saying, this never happened to me.

She's living in a home with foster parents who thrive and are rewarded because she's a victim of sexual abuse. And when she recants, you know, it undermines their whole belief about her and everything. And they can't just accept her as a person. And so they have to punish her. And it's the system punishes her because they feel, well, if these foster parents weren't maintaining their version of the truth, then there must be something wrong with them. So you understand how the child gets punished every time that the system finds some kind of disappointment. And this is tremendously troubling because our system should be there to protect the children, and instead they're harming them and causing them immense amounts of pain and trauma. And I just, this is Amber speaking, and I just need to jump in here because it is more insidious than that, Nancy.

The foster home that she was at, I lived in that home with her for a short amount of time after our parents were sentenced and sent away to prison. And I, the father in that foster home was a state trooper and friends with many police officers. They would have police officers over to their house for barbecues. We, you know, they socialized with Bob Perez and, and I ran away from that foster home. And when they picked me up and brought me back and they asked me why I had run away, I told them that it was because I hated Bob Perez and they immediately threw me out of their house and said, I don't want this girl in my house anymore. Um, and, and so it's not just that, um, that Megan, you know, their excuse for kicking Megan out of the house was that she had lied to them and all of that.

But it was very, very obviously eight years earlier. And they were in close ties with the police officers involved in the case. I'm just thinking about my own children at age nine and how tender and naive and innocent they were at nine and still are at 13. This nine-year-old girl tries to tell her teacher, I was never molested. She's immediately, she's already been torn away from her parents, groomed. Then she gets thrown out of the foster home because she's trying to recant her story. It's almost too much for a child to undergo.

And I'm heartbroken to state that Megan was never the same after that. We never did get her back as Megan. They were able to pretty much completely brainwash her to the point where she didn't know if she had been abused or not. She never called me mom again, never threw her arms around my neck. She never bonded again. It pretty much broke me. And to make matters worse, there will never be a chance to fix it. Listen. I got a phone call out of the blue one afternoon that Megan had an accident. She was swimming with a youth group. She was 21 and a couple of the younger girls that they were with started drowning. So Megan jumped in to rescue them. The two girls were OK. And Megan ended up dying. I had to call my dad and my sisters

and tell them that she was dead. They felt a very, very strong feeling inside of Megan. Tell me she knew the truth now. To Sam Doggett, the daughter that ran away, Sam, when you look back on what Megan endured, the fact that she never rebonded with her parents, she didn't know whether she had been molested or not molested, the years she spent in foster being told over and over and over, this happened to you, this happened to you,

kicked out when she tried to recant, and now she's gone. And it can never be fixed. It's just so hard to take in. I want to hear your thoughts. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking and infuriating that they took her from us. And we'll never get the chance in this lifetime to have our Megan back. it disgusts me and just makes me so mad what they did to her, how they messed with her mind and her memories and her heart

to turn her against us like that. It just makes me sick. Carol Doggett, the mom, when you think about Megan now, how do you feel? What do you feel what do you think um it might sound kind of crazy but I just I can't stop trying to bond with her you know I have pictures of her everywhere and I have her artwork and I just um I'm looking at one of her pictures right now. And I just always, I just want her with me.

And I ask if she'll come to me in dreams. And I just, I would do anything to see her again. Does she come to you in dreams? She has, actually. She has a couple of times. What happened? And, um, and she's been, she's been happy and, uh, and acts just normal, you know, like bringing in the groceries and it's, and it's just normal. And I wake up, I wake up feeling very, very happy. Like she has reached out to me and that, and that she does still have a connection.

What about you, Mark? Oh, I'm convinced. I had a moment at the end of Megan's week. It was pretty much over and I was sitting in my friend's backyard and I felt, I felt Megan and I felt she was telling me she's okay. So I'll hold on to that. And it's much like Carol said. She's reaching out. She's letting us know she's okay,

and we'll see her again. God willing. God willing. When an injustice occurs, the wake it leaves behind never ends. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.