Rotten Mango - #367: Girl With Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) Kills Her "Abuser"

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

A man is laying face first, unconscious in his living room. Alyssa and Vanessa are standing over him. Alyssa reaches for the zip ties and binds his ankles together, three zip ties thick. Vanessa on the other hand is terrified. She’s screaming in her head to ‘STOP! This needs to stop! It’s taking things too far!’ But the words won’t come out; the only thing she can do is wait for a moment when Alyssa looks away—then Vanessa dives for the scissors. She cuts the zip ties off his ankles. “NO!” Alyssa forces Vanessa aside and reties his ankles and his wrists. Vanessa lost her chance. She can only watch helplessly as Alyssa yields a massive hunting knife and sends it plunging into the man’s neck. Then she begins sawing—back and forth. They watch the blood soak into the carpet. Police would later find the victim, Harold Sasko, and announce that his suspected killer was a 19 year old girl named Sarah. However this episode is NOT Harold’s story. Neither Alyssa’s, nor Vanessa’s. This is the case of Sarah McLinn, diagnosed with DID, and the many, many people who believe she should be free. RAINN Resources Website link to CHAT w/ a trained staff member who can provide you confidential crisis support: https://hotline.rainn.org/online  Call the National SA Hotline anytime at: 800.656.4673 Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ramble. There is a man laying unconscious in his living room. He's knocked out face first, onto the carpet. He's not dead, at least not yet. Alyssa and Vanessa are standing over him. Alyssa believes this is what this man deserves. This is the only way. They have to kill him or else.

There really is no other option here. She reaches for the zip ties. She nudges his ankles together and starts zip tying them. Three times She reaches for the zip ties, she nudges his ankles together and starts zip tying them three times across, three separate zip ties. Vanessa on the other hand, she does not want to do this. She's screaming in her head non-stop, stop, stop, this just needs to stop, this is taking things way too far. When Alyssa has a moment where she is no longer in control, it's like a brief second, Vanessa goes, grabs a pair of scissors and cuts the man's zip ties off When Alyssa has a moment where she is no longer in control, it's like a brief second.

Vanessa goes, grabs a pair of scissors, and cuts the man's zip ties off his ankles, essentially freeing him. Alyssa is screaming, no! She rushes to grab more zip ties, continues zip tying his legs, his arms together, all the while, Vanessa, all she can do is just helplessly watch what's happening. She watches as Alyssa grabs a knife and plunges it into the man's neck, stabbing him so deeply that she nearly decapitates him. It's over now. They're gonna be safe. Alyssa drops the knife.

There's blood dripping down her arms and her hands. The police would later report the victim, the man dead on the living room floor, to be Harold Sasko and the killer to not be Vanessa, to not be Alyssa, but a single 19 year old teenage girl named Sarah McLyn. This is the story of Sarah McLyn and how she violently murdered a man and was diagnosed with DID, and a lot of people believe that she should be free. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to Support RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, with a focus in prevention,

bringing perpetrators to justice, and comprehensive care for survivors. They've created and currently operate the national essay hotline, and all resources will be linked in the show notes. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team, and we would like to thank our listeners for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com Now, a couple of very important disclaimers before we start in today's case There are mentions of CSA, SA, grooming, R-word, and self-exits

So please take care of yourself and watch at your own discretion One more clear disclaimer I want to provide very clear is Dissociative Identity Disorder, aka DID, is mentioned throughout this case However, this episode is in no way a representation of the entire DID community nor is it our objective to speak over people with a similar or that diagnosis. we did our best to consult and research only peer-reviewed research by medical professionals and we pulled research from the DID community for their unique perspectives. it's also just like any other mental illness, depression, anxiety, to give you examples,

people with DID are not inherently violent or dangerous in any way solely based off of a diagnosis. I would really hope that by this point we all know that. Anybody has the capacity to be a terrible human being, and from what I can tell, just anecdotally, typically those who struggle with their mental health, whether that be depression or DID or anything else, are much more vulnerable to becoming victims rather than perpetrators a few small things to note, statements and letters have been condensed for time

and this is a case where a lot of interpersonal relationships are very important but because the interpersonal relationships are not heavily documented or recorded we really only have one version of events for that Sarah's. Sarah does have an incentive to lie or alter the truth considering she was on trial for murder so use your best judgment on whether or not you believe she's trustworthy I'm not here to sway you one way or another like with any case I have no skin in the game I will say though that when I was first researching this case,

I watched a snapped episode on this case from Oxygen, and I thought I knew the story. Then we filed a Freedom of Information Act to get court documents, which were only partially approved because of an appeal, and I have to say that they were so revealing. It's about 1,500 pages that we combed through of transcripts, documents. And I did not see most of the information mentioned at all in the snapped episode.

And I believe that episode came out a little biased because of that. So hopefully, this will feel a little bit more like a comprehensive deep dive. So with that being said, let's get started. Dr. Hutchinson was called by a criminal defense attorney. He told her he's got a very puzzling case. A 19-year-old girl in prison for a brutal, heinous murder.

She nearly decapitated her victim. Can you please evaluate her for us? Dr. Hutchinson is a psychologist. She works with offenders pretty often, and she has experience with the trial process. And obviously, her intrigue has peaked. What do you mean? This is a puzzling case. Dr. Hutchinson agrees to a meeting. She goes to meet with the patient, the inmate, the defendant, literally about to go on trial for murder, 19-year-old Sarah McLynn.

The first meeting lasted a little over an hour and Dr. Hutchinson walks back out. The defense attorney, Sarah's attorney, walks up to her. What do you think? I mean, the doctor's got it now. Sarah is by far one of the most unusual people that she has ever interviewed. She says initially she appears to be this sort of sweet, typical 20-year-old Midwest kid who is kind of lost in the world. Then we started talking about the actual murder and all of a sudden there was just a lack of distance. A lack of a... it's almost as if she wasn't describing what she was describing. To the point where after that first meeting, Dr. H on the drive home, she kept shaking her head and kept saying to herself, what in the world was that?

She said, I have never really witnessed anything quite like that. shaking her head and kept saying to herself, what in the world was that? She said, I have never really witnessed anything quite like that. Dr. H likely could not put her finger on it the very first interaction, which I don't think anybody expected her to. Things like this take time. But to Dr. H, it did not feel like Sarah

is just this cold-hearted ruthless killer that can talk about a violent murder in a blunt sort of way. That's not the feeling she's getting. It's not, oh, she's so detached from the crime, she doesn't care, she has no remorse. It's not that. Regardless, Dr. H is so intrigued, she wants to be a part of this case. She starts going to build rapport with Sarah, meeting with her, getting to know her, analyzing her.

And a few things. The first few things that really stuck out to the doctor the first being sometimes when Sarah Described certain situations or memories that she herself was a part of she uses language that typically wouldn't be used For example, if I'm standing in the living room, and then I walk to the kitchen to grab water I would say oh I felt really thirsty when I was standing in the living room So I walked over to the kitchen and I grabbed a glass of water That's what happened. But Sarah, and this is obviously an example, would say something along the lines of

we were in the living room. Then I watched myself go to the kitchen to grab water. Interesting. It's almost like she's narrating her actions. Noted Dr. H also noted that Sarah has these unexplainable gaps in her memory. She does not remember random chunks of her day, her week, most of her childhood. She has no memory of it. Not, oh, I don't remember anything particularly that stands out. Nothing spectacular happened, but just straight up no memories.

Random blanks in the day that are unexplainable. She would be sitting in her bedroom and then all of a sudden she would be in the kitchen. She doesn't know what happened in between that time span. Dr. H goes to pull records from 2012. This would be two years before she's talking to Sarah. Oh, this happened 2014? Yes. And she pulls records from 2012, Sarah's medical records, before Sarah committed any sort of crimes. And she finds that even two years ago, Sarah had attempted self-exit, she was forced to report to a psychologist on a daily basis for a week, and she keeps mentioning even two years ago that she has gaps in her memory. There's time in her day that she just can't fill.

The psychologist from two years ago writes in her notes, patient reports gaps in memory on almost daily basis, losses of time that she does not know what happened during those incidents. Interesting. Noted. Another interesting observation, Sarah would be talking to Dr. H about the events, and every now and then, so naturally that Sarah herself doesn't even seem to notice, it almost just comes out of her mouth so smoothly,

but Dr. H would note it down. Sarah would use we and us pronouns to describe herself when referring to herself. Now she does identify with she her pronouns, which side note, this is not like a matter of her identifying with different pronouns. It was just a little bit different from that. Dr. H noted something is interesting here.

Then another observation, this one is harder to ignore. Sometimes Dr. H would come in to talk to Sarah, and it would just feel like a completely different person. Each time. Most of the time, Sarah, according to Dr. H, her detailed notes appears quiet, soft-spoken, apologetic, often tearful and horrified at what's happened,

what she's done, and deeply terrified and scared. And every person has a very specific tonality, body language, even the way you use your face muscles is very unique to your personality. So, side note, the way your face looks is, yes, based on your face structure, the way that your bones are set, but there's also face muscle usage. That's only part of it. The other part is actually your personality. So if this is your face, this is your bone structure, but you have a completely different personality than I do, we might look different. Right. Because when you're anxious,

you hold tension in certain areas that make maybe your jaw more prominent. Maybe your lower lips come down because you're pulling down at them. Maybe there's a little bit more tension in certain areas of your cheeks. So the way that your personality is can reflect on your face. Sometimes her face would just look slightly different. And people have a baseline pitch, they have a baseline body posture, they have baseline hand gestures that they use when they're speaking. Obviously there's

subtle differences depending on environment or stress levels, but the minute that Dr. H believes she has a grasp on Sarah's mannerisms, she would come to see Sarah and everything feels different. It's like a completely different person. Sarah would go from being quiet, soft-spoken, to being incredibly assertive, definitive, clear, sharp-spoken, unapologetic. There's not a single tear, no crying whatsoever. And almost kind of snappy. Dr. H has been a psychologist for a very long time. Probably longer than we've been alive. She knows this is not a matter of a good day versus a bad day,

or getting more comfortable, or even like a mood swing, which is very typical things that people go through. Or like someone pretending to be someone. This is something else. The doctor said, then I think it was one time I arrived and there was again what felt like a completely different person that met me.

And I just asked, who are you? She responded, I'm Alyssa. Thank you for coming to talk to me. Is there a reason you're here today? Yes, there've been some fights in the jail and I had to come out because Vanessa can't handle that. So I'm here. Dr. Hutchinson remembers saying,

there are really a few more important things I would want to talk to Vanessa about today. Is it possible that I talk to Vanessa? No, it's not safe, I'm staying. Later, Dr. Hutchinson would ask about Sarah if she could please speak to Sarah, the name on her patient chart. She was informed that Sarah was dead. Sarah had died at 16 years old. DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, a quick disclaimer before we get into this episode. Like I said, we try to gather as much peer-reviewed research as possible from the medical

community as well as listen to the DID community and go on forums and try to pull from actual personal experience rather than people who think they know what they're talking about. And I will say that what we gathered is DID might be the most poorly represented psychological disorder in mainstream media. So we tried our best to separate that from all of our research i really wish i had more experience or i really wish that i knew people that i could speak to that had DID to get you even more insight we also know that DID can present itself very differently person to person

so this should not be taken as a generalization of DID as a whole so please, if there's anything you felt was not exactly explained correctly, or honestly even more insight that you have on this topic, I would be very grateful if you could leave that in the comments. DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, can loosely be defined as a disruption in one's identity by the existence of two or more distinct identity states in an individual. Which, okay, when I'm reading that definition, I'm like, yes, it makes sense, but I think this definition explains a lot more to me in terms of understanding.

Someone without DID typically experiences a very stable, singular sense of identity. The identity evolves over time through experience, obviously, and of course we all have mood changes, periods of sadness and personality evolution but overall there is this underlying feeling of being the same person that evolves and over time adapts. I mean don't get me wrong, I would think that I'm not the same Stephanie from 10 years ago but it's because I've evolved. That Stephanie from 10 years ago went from point A to point B which is where I I'm today, but it's still Stephanie. It's just changed. It's not a fixed identity that I have, but it's moving and developing,

and it's just one singular identity going through motions. Whereas people with DID describe their perception of self as a bit different. And there's not one way, but some people have described it as seeing their identity as multiple identities, not limited to one. And it's not just, oh today I'm happy so this is my identity, just completely different identities. It's like two souls in one body is the feeling. Others have described it as multiple identities coexisting in a vessel, like one body that has to be shared. So for someone like me who does not have DID think of this analogy

I'm driving a bus there is nobody else on this bus I'm the only driver of this bus the whole time I'm driving I have a very clear memory of everything that's happened while I was driving this bus obviously the boring bits where I space out on the highway it's not gonna be strong in my memory but there's very big moments where I'm like

oh yeah, I saw that while I was driving down the highway. Oh yes, and I was listening to this song while I was driving down the highway. But someone with DID has a very different bus driving experience. They might only remember half of the drive. They might have this feeling that they don't remember anything prior to suddenly I was sitting in the bus driver's seat and driving the bus, but they don't know how they got on the bus. Or sometimes they experience driving the bus from the outside,

almost like they can see themselves driving the bus, but they don't actually feel what it's like to drive the bus. Wow. They say also another good way to describe it is someone without DID is you look in the mirror, that's how you perceive yourself. Someone with DID might perceive themselves

almost like a CCTV camera from the outside, not staring into the mirror, but watching their body stare into the mirror. That's because someone with DID, there is more than one identity on that bus. DID is categorized and characterized by the DSM-5 by having the presence of two or more separate identities or alters. There is not one singular identity, there is not one singular driver of the bus. There are multiple different alters that drive that bus. Now there might be one or two alters that drive most of the time. Some alters barely ever drive, or other alters are fighting to try to drive but they never get the chance to. But there's a lot of people on that bus and they all feel like completely

different identities, like think of a full bus of different people because they are. So what does that mean? I'm driving a bus alone. I see my hands on the wheel. I am in control of the bus nonstop. I have the AC blowing in my hair. I see the red lights. These are my personal experiences.

I remember the whole bus drive. Someone with DID might experience that for 25% of the bus drive. The other 75%, they feel like they've been sharing the seat, helping the driver drive the bus. Or sometimes they feel like they're in the back of the bus, not paying attention to who's driving the bus, or they're watching from the front seat,

trying to give backseat driving instructions to the driver and they're getting frustrated because it's like, why aren't you listening to me? Or they can see themselves driving the bus, but almost from the view of a CCTV camera. And these identities and alters make up a system. Now, side note, they are referred to alters that make up a system. I think prior, maybe decades ago, they were called personalities.

That's not, that doesn't apply because I think people without DID was like, I also have different personalities when I'm at work that's not what we're talking about so instead of having one singular identity, there's many separate identities that make up a system think of it this way it's like if I were to take your soul and put it into my body but my soul is still in here, and it's completely separate conscious stream of thoughts dislikes likes preferences mood

Stabilities and now we're both trying to figure out who's in control of this body each identity has a distinct personal history self-image and has completes completely separate responses to certain situations They can even have different handwriting psychologists say it's actually pretty common for different alters within a system to have drastically different likes of music, food preferences, political views. Even the way that they use that body, they say, is different. And I think that maybe if you don't know anyone with DID,

some psychiatrists were saying, you might have a tendency to be like, wait, that doesn't make sense, right? But when you see someone switch between alters, you see their tone, their body language, the way they use their face also changes. I don't want to get it too complicated, but just know that there are multiple alters that make up a system. And when we say fronting, when we, I'm talking about me talking about the

case, not as someone with DID, I don't want to act like I'm representing that community, but it's referred to as fronting is that altar is in control of the body. And sometimes the other altars have no idea what's happened when that altar is in control. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they do. That's called co-consciousness. Sometimes they can actually have inner dialogue between, like inner monologue between the different altars and they can fill each other in. Or they have systems where a lot of people with DID have specific apps where they write down, hey, this is what I did as this altar.

And then the next altar that comes to front, they can see what's happened so far. So they're not completely out of the loop. But that is why recurrent amnesia is typically a big diagnostic point that psychologists tend to focus on in terms of diagnosing someone with DID. There may be random slots of missing time, or at least that's what it feels like. Giant gaps in memory, chunks of childhood times just missing from your memory. Or you see pictures of your wedding and you know you were there. You see it in the picture. You're there. That's you. Obviously, you're getting married, but you have zero memory of your wedding. Wow. Zero. You just know what people are telling you happened. So there are people

who like look at their wedding photo who can't remember. So I imagine the altar that was fronting during the wedding they're the only one that remembers so when they are present or when they're fronting they're like, okay, yes, I remember but the other alters they might not or you might be watching a video eating a bowl of cereal and then suddenly in the blink of an Eye you look up and you're in bed reading a book and you have no idea what just happened It does seem like there are people out there in this world that either don't take DID seriously or think that it cannot be real Which is obviously very ignorant and yes, there have been instances of people faking DID typically for social media fame but there's also people faking terminal illness for social media fame

that does not make terminal illness fake. if you take brain scans of people with DID you'll see that oftentimes they even have blood flow patterns that are different from people who do not have DID. One study showed that people with DID also tended to have a smaller hippocampus, which is the part of your brain that helps you form memories. And it's not like, oh, the smaller your hippocampus, the more likely you are to get DID. It seems more like after the facts. And you'll see why.

So we kind of know what DID is, but how does DID develop? It's generally agreed upon in the scientific community that DID is typically formed during childhood as a protective mechanism against trauma. I think Dr. Mike Lloyd puts it a lot better than I do, but he says, and this is a paraphrase, every single one of us has a different tolerance for trauma or life stress. So visualize it. Think of it as a glass cup. Your resilience to trauma is an empty glass cup. And all of us are going to have different size cups. Some people are naturally more resilient than others. Typically when you're younger, your cup is going to be very small.

As you get older, your cup grows. Or at least it should, as an example. So if you're an adult with a great well-adjusted life and support system You likely have a great deal of resilience and you've got a big empty glass cup now think of trauma as a jug of water So every time someone experiences trauma you splash some water in there It goes into the glass cup and if you have a fairly empty cup one splash of water is gonna do nothing It's just gonna be a sip of water is gonna do nothing. It's just gonna be a sip of water

sitting at the bottom of your cup. It's not gonna be good, you wanna get it out, but you have so much room in that cup to learn how to cope, manage, grow. You have space in that cup to think and process the trauma. You can actually pour the trauma water out because you've put it in the cup, experienced it, processed it, and now you're done with it. it's no longer taking up all your

brain space. that's for a healthy adult. when you're a child, every amount of trauma, every splash feels like it's gonna overwhelm the cup because you probably just have a shot glass. the cup is so small. children do not have strong coping mechanisms to deal with trauma. even if there is room in that tiny little shot glass, likely the child does not know how to manage that water that goes in. But that's why you have parents or adults in your life. They will take your shot glass and actually pour it into their cup. They take your trauma out of them. They see trauma, they take it out. They try to lighten, constantly drain the child's trauma cup. But what if that child

does not have an adult or anyone in their life that can take away their trauma? Or the trauma, it's not just a little splash, it's a giant splash, or sometimes it's a constant trickling of water that never ends, like an open faucet, just constantly pouring more water. It doesn't matter if someone once in a while tries to dump the glass, there's just new water coming in. Whether it's parental neglect, physical or sexual violence,

high stressors that the child has, it is nonstop. Now, nobody's taking any water out. Eventually that cup is going to overflow. Where does overflowing trauma go? It doesn't just disappear. Our brains don't work like that, where it's like, oh, you know what? I can't handle the trauma. So it's just not there anymore. It's there it just does not evaporate so what does

that child's incredibly powerful desperate but also very resilient brain do they create new glasses to hold the trauma additional vessels to hold more trauma alters think of the cup as new alters sometimes those new glasses are clear and people can see, they themselves can see, perhaps therapists can even see how much water and trauma is in some of those glasses. Other times, the new glasses that they have are paper. You can't even see what's in there. They themselves can't even see what's in there or how much is in there.

And as the child grows or as more trauma takes place they might have more glasses that are required to contain the trauma so that's why you'll see that with people with DID even later down the road they might have new alters emerge and it's usually because they need more glasses and those glasses make up a system multiple identities in one body. And side note with alters, it does seem common that there are specific alters that are usually made out of paper, the ones that you cannot see through, and they hold most of the trauma. So that's why the DID community said, you'll actually see a lot of people with DID say, that doesn't make sense because I've never experienced childhood trauma.

And then they start reflecting, they start going through therapy and they realize, oh, actually, this happened to me and there are witnesses from my childhood that are like, yeah, that's crazy because that did happen to you. And they just didn't realize it. So they have trauma holding alters. So it's all like your brain just trying to protect you. Yes. And that's where the disassociative also comes in. It does feel like it didn't happen to me. It's almost like your brain just trying to protect you. Yes. And that's where the disassociative also comes in.

It does feel like it didn't happen to me. It's almost like you're protecting yourself. Like, I can't handle this emotion, so it didn't happen to me. But I can't just get rid of the trauma, so I'm just looking for a different way to cope. It is called a disorder, but a lot of psychologists say it's more like a protective mechanism that develops in the brain.

Another thing to note is that DID is not something that needs to be healed a lot of people will say oh you need to learn to reintegrate yourself as an adult go back to one identity but that's not really necessary that would imply that someone with DID is broken which that's not the case i think every person on the planet can use some healing but you get it and this part is important but when talking to someone with DID from what we've researched, it is preferred that we use the pronouns of the fronting alter. Someone who is part of a system of alters said,

if you're talking about me, as in me, the person sat in front of you, talking to you, then it's me, one person, and I identify as, and then they would give their pronouns. So we will stay with how Sarah's doctors refer to her which is Sarah and the pronouns she uses are she her now side note, most of the time people with DID will refer to themselves as we instead of I which is why I wanted to make sure that there's no confusion about the pronouns and one more thing to note just because there are different identities working in a system that has completely different likes and dislikes, it is nothing like the movie Split, which is about a homicidal person who happens to have DID and that's like the whole punchline, right?

People with DID do not have bad, evil alters that are trying to front and commit heinous crimes. Alters have different personalities, but the formulation, the reason that a new alter comes about is generally for protection. It's never like, oh, I just have like a serial killer alter. That is crazy. That is unhinged. That is movie. That is crazy. Usually, alters are created again to protect someone. So sure, there can be bad people with DID, and there's also bad people who don't have DID Just statistically speaking people with DID are no more likely to commit crimes than the general population and 70% of people with DID have attempted self-exit at one point in their lives They are likely to be victims of crime more than anything. Yeah, because they are traumatized

Yeah, when they were young, yeah, and even in today's case case there is a lot more nuance so just follow me there. Sarah has a habit, well she did, she had a habit of stealing her dad's keys before he went to work. This is when she's a kid. Sarah's dad was almost always running late because of Sarah which is kind of cute at first but over time it's just very inconvenient it's part of the daily routine where are my keys hurry go find daddy's keys daddy's gonna get fired but now that Sarah's older both of Sarah's parents they're divorced and she no longer lives in the family home but they just think of that moment when they're asked what do you remember most about Sarah's

childhood they would both respond oh she used to do this thing where she would hide her dad's keys she's like daddy's little girl they would smile and it's like this cute little memory one of the happiest memories they have as a kid and Sarah must have loved her dad that is the messaging she loved him so much she never wanted him to leave the house. So both mom and dad are sharing this story, saying how much Sarah loved her dad. To Sarah's psychologist. Oh, okay. And Sarah's psychologist is like, okay, that's very interesting because I feel like Sarah

has a lot of complex feelings about her parents. And Sarah clearly remembers things very differently. As a child Sarah actually had a lot of interesting habits. She didn't like wearing shoes, she likes to play outside and most unique and potentially alarming one is she had this habit where she would run outside to play with her friends and she would come back home and everyone is like what are you doing? Where did the rest of your clothes go? She would just come back home in nothing but her underwear.

What? And nobody looked into it. They just thought Sarah's such a tomboy. She doesn't like wearing clothes. Like how old was she? Not even elementary school. Maybe like four or five. Whoa, that's crazy.

And she really, really, really hated their next door neighbor. Hated him. But that's not really news. I think everyone in the neighborhood hated this guy. Despised this guy. Hated him. But that's not really news. I think everyone in the neighborhood hated this guy. Despised this guy. He's old. He's described as crabby. He has dementia. And he would do this thing where he would just shoot squirrels with BB guns. Sometimes the BB gun pellets would ricochet off and hit other things. Sometimes he would hit neighbors' cars parked on the street while he's attempting to hit a squirrel with a BB gun, which I imagine

is happening frequently considering his age and deteriorating eyesight. He's hitting random things in people. He is overall probably the worst neighbor of the year. Nobody even knows why he's torturing squirrels in the neighborhood. He's not exactly the type of person you can ask that question to. You feel like you're next. He's gonna shoot you next. So everybody just stays away from this guy. They keep an eye out for him,

and he keeps an eye out for little Sarah. Allegedly, he would make Sarah watch him, shoot a squirrel with a BB gun, walk over, grab that squirrel, still half alive, and skin the squirrel alive using a knife. Then he would kill the squirrel in front of her face, just after literally ripping and peeling its skin off in front of this, I don't know, five-year-old girl.

He would scream at her, if you try to run or if you look away, this is gonna be you next. If you tell anybody anything, this is gonna be you. And when he's done killing a squirrel in front of her, he would hold Sarah down, shove the mutilated squirrel in her face, and molest her. It's stated that he essayed her orally and digitally, and then he fully essayed her by inserting gardening tools into her.

We don't have specifics. The very first time it happened, Sarah runs all the way way home screaming yelling. She slams open the front door She doesn't even know how to describe what happened to her. I believe she was young to the point where She knows this is bad painful evil terrifying But I don't think that she can put it into words like I don't think she understands her body like that even or what? This action is she has no idea. She just knows she hated it that even or what this action is she has no idea she just knows she hated it she runs inside and her mom is on the phone and she screams at her loud daughter you're making too much fuss go to your room maybe it was Sarah's choice to take off her clothes while playing outside maybe it wasn't but

had someone just looked into it they would have realized that the demented neighbor doc that's what they called him is more than just demented. later, Sarah's psychologist would ask, when did the neighbor assault you? at night, in the mornings, before school, after? Sarah responded, anytime my dad wasn't home. so that's why she hid his keys, in hopes that he would stay home. Sarah's psychologist firmly believes this is the

childhood trauma that Sarah's brain could not handle and protected her by creating new altars. Police are called to do a welfare check on a 19 year old girl named Sarah McLin. They show up at the house in question that she's apparently staying at. It's not her mom's house, it's not her dad's house, it's not even a relative's house. It's just a small little suburban house in Kansas. The police initially tried knocking on the front door, nothing. They tried the back door, nothing.

Now it's a little unclear if this was their second welfare check or if there was some reason that they felt that they needed to break into the house. I'm sure they've got a list of reasons, but the police forced their way into the home, through the door, through the kitchen. They kick it in.

And they step right into the house, and they're like, we were right. The whole place is ransacked. If you were to go into the bedrooms, you would see dressers are rummaged through, bed sheets are ripped off the bed, pictures are ripped out of the picture frames. But two things would stand out the most.

On the wall written in big red letters is a word. Like imagine just spray painting inside the house, it's weird. And right underneath that is a dead man laying in a pool of his own blood. Zip ties around his wrist, zip ties around his ankle. Curiously there are cut zip ties next to him and a pair of scissors next to his foot, so it seems like someone zip tied him and then cut it and then re-zip tied him for whatever reason. The police look at the man then they look at the words on the wall and they realize that the words on the wall were written using this man's blood and the words read and it's kind of hard. F RR-E-E-D-O-M.

Freedom? The most popular item at Cici's Pizza's, it's a pizza chain. It's not actually a pizza, it's their cinnamon rolls. It's also not the most popular pizza chain in the world, but it is, or at least it was, one of the only places in the entire town that would hire 15-year-olds and give them a part time job after school.

And on top of that, the owner, Harold Sasco, so he's the owner of three Cici's pizza franchises. He's not like the owner of the Cici's pizza franchise company. He just owns three locations and he would hire 15 year olds and he's really cool. Harold is interesting. People say he's a cool boss. He lets the high schoolers call him Hal and instead of talking to them like they're irresponsible, incapable, incompetent 15 year olds,

which is usually how these kids feel like adults talk to them, he talks to them like they're his age. Like they're also adults. He'll even randomly talk to them or teach them about business and the struggles of running a franchisee location. He kind of feels more like a business mentor than a boss. And Harold could just see from a mile away that Sarah McLin is hurting. She's got scars on her arms, on her wrists

that are in various stages of healing. She just seems lonely, like she doesn't have anyone. She's also a little awkward. She was homeschooled as a kid which side note her homeschooling curriculum was just so questionable apparently her daily routine was to read classic literature novels and then watch the movie then which is just kind of I don't know I've never heard of that but regardless Sarah was homeschooled and it resulted in her not really knowing how to make friends she was awkward even when she does eventually go back to public school. It was just a little too late Usually Sarah keeps to herself keeps away from people and people keep away from her except for Harold

He just feels like she needs help and he wants to help her. Does she work for him? Yeah Oh, so she's one of the employees and he's her boss and he's also 33 years older than her so technically old enough to be her dad and he tells her I can help you get on your feet I can see that you're really struggling and when you're ready, I can help you get your life together I can help you learn how to run a business kind of like a dad or a mentor like a father figure You can even move in with me. Harold has been divorced four or five times. Right now he lives alone.

He has got a spare room she could use. It's completely up to her. How old is she at this point? 17. Okay, and he's 33 years older, so he's 50? Yes. Sarah looks up to him. Nobody in her family owns a business

I mean nobody in her family even wants to help her like that. So she really admires this guy She does not know that her new mentor Harold has downloaded hundreds of videos of violent explicit Content onto his phone and visits x-rated websites that feature children teens and bestiality At least 20 times he visited a website that feature children, teens, and bestiality. At least 20 times he visited a website that featured men fondling or having intimate relations with women that appear to be asleep. Sarah did not know this at the time. Instead, she had his name saved on her phone under the contact, Dad. But dads don't really do drugs with their daughters, do they? According to Sarah, right after moving in, Harold was supplying her and giving her unrestricted access to whatever drugs she wanted, weed, vodka, cocaine,

ecstasy, which there seems to be other witnesses that have stated Harold was buying drugs, mainly weed and black market prescription painkillers, allegedly. They said he talked about it. They never saw it happen, but he talked about it. But if it's true that he is buying drugs and giving it to Sarah it defeats the whole purpose of her moving in to begin With because he said it was to make sure that she got clean and worked on her future Sarah said after moving in with Harold she might have actually started doing more drugs. This is according to Sarah She said she was drinking almost on a nightly basis She's having seven shots of vodka at a time seven drinks at a time She would smoke weed almost every single day and a few times a week she would take super strong prescription painkillers.

Which yeah, from the outside we're confused, we're alarmed, but Sarah, she's 17, she's having what she thinks at the time is a really good, good time. One month into Sarah's move into Harold's house, Sarah shows up with a whole brand new nose. She got a nose job. Sarah's sister Ashley is kind of confused. Maybe because a nose job is like $6,000? How on earth did you pay for it? But she also knows that Sarah has complained about how she hates her nose, how ugly it made her feel, and how ashamed she was of it. And Sarah tells her sister, well, Harold told me that if I feel insecure he can help me not feel insecure I'm gonna pay him back though he's he's just fronting me the money Sarah feels really lucky I mean not only that this sweet man is paying for her very expensive nose job I mean obviously

she's gonna pay him back it's more like loan, but he really didn't even have to do that for her. Who loans someone $6,000 so casually? I don't think many people would do that. For Sarah, even just the fact that he thought of it and offered it to her, it just, she said it felt like, wow, I finally have an adult that sees what I really need and will help me. It's not a free ride, but somebody is really helping me and they care about me. It's that type of feeling. 6,000 is a lot of money. Yeah.

And for a 17 year old, it probably feels like $6 million. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you know, you can't even fathom that amount of money. And that must mean like the world for her to receive that. But also think about that later because imagine someone tells you, you need to pay me $6,000 at 17.

Yeah. I would not even, I would be so overwhelmed. She probably feels like she owes her, owes him. Her life. Yeah, exactly. I think Sarah's so happy with this newfound parental figure that she trusts. She doesn't even see what people see from the outside, which is... No, this is definitely a little bit strange. I don't even think most parents would give their 17-year-old a nose job.

Sarah's older sister Ashley allegedly starts picking up on it just a little bit. Ashley knows that her sister Sarah is moving in with her boss Harold. She thinks, yeah it's weird, it's strange, but maybe it's for the best? The two of them, Sarah and Ashley, they never really grew up with strong parental figures. Maybe this is what Sarah needs. But there are weird things. Like the fact that ever since Sarah moved in with Harold, she's had her nose job, but also butt implants.

Not that Ashley is judging or anything, but it just doesn't sound like her sister. Ashley was under the impression that both of them never wanted to get body augmentation surgeries. And also, she's so young! And Sarah can't stop talking about the end of the world, political annihilation through war, like she's becoming a doomsday prepper. I mean there are some really unstable nuclear power plants right now and they're on the cusp of exploding.

Um, okay. It would be in everyone's best interest to look for bunker locations. Places in places like Utah, Montana are good. They're far away enough from any of the blast sites that it should feel safe enough. Oh yeah, I mean I have a friend in Utah, they say it's nice. Is the older sister a younger sister? Older sister. Sarah and Ashley would be out grabbing coffee or food, and Sarah would just keep going on

and on about how they need to make go bags filled with dry food that's gonna keep them safe and alive for a few days. They're buying survival knives, her and Harold. Survival skills are gonna be more important now than ever. Because think about it, sure, you can do things on the computer, but what if computers are shut down? How are you going to get food if there's no grocery stores? Could I get a name for the order? Sarah would turn Vanessa. Ashley's thinking, okay, whoa, this is a little strange. Sarah just called herself Vanessa, but maybe she doesn't like giving her real name to strangers.

So you're saying this is the sister's first time hearing Vanessa? Yes, and she thought it was a little odd. And then sometimes she stated that Harold would even call Sarah Vanessa. But it was just weird. She didn't ask about it, she didn't think too much into it, but it was just odd. She thought it was just a fake name. Yeah, and regardless, before Ashley can ask ask about it Sarah would go on another tangent about volcanoes another newfound obsession since she moved in with Harold

so yeah things are a little bit strange but as long as Sarah has someone and somewhere to make her feel safe which she never had in her childhood maybe Ashley can support it Sarah grew up in this really dysfunctional family. I mean obviously so did Ashley. She's got Ashley, then it's Sarah, and then they have three younger brothers, all of whom were adopted, which apparently according to Sarah, Sarah's mom would have these phases in her life. Implying that her mom went through an adoption phase where she either thought that's what she wanted to do or thought it was cool or something, I don't know, it's just something that she

would tell her psychologist later. Their mom adopts three boys and according to Sarah, when they were no longer cute, her mom just decides the phase is over, decides she doesn't really want to be a mom anymore, leaving both Ashley and Sarah responsible for the care of the boys and it's obviously not easy. One of the brothers has fetal alcohol syndrome and two of the other brothers both have ADD. The girls are left to raise their three brothers and all they remember growing up about their mom is she was always on the phone. Her phone is glued to the side of her face talking to her friends. She just always seemed to be way more concerned with

the opinion of her friends and what they think about their children than her actual children. She wasn't really maternal either. If the kids had a problem or wanted comfort or support or something, she was either A. Not there to provide it, or B. Usually her method of support was along the lines of, hey, suck it up, stop whining, life is hard, okay? The world is harsh, so go to your room which fine maybe dad is better Sarah's dad is described by Sarah as being quote very

emotional she said he is very depressed and has a very weak personality that lets both of his wives control him she also thinks that he has an alcohol problem he would constantly be out till five in the morning. the girls would be up all night wondering if he's gonna be okay, if he's in trouble, if he's even alive, if he's abandoning them, but they can't go talk to their mom about it since she's on the phone and send them to their rooms. they both always felt like their parents only ever did what was most convenient for them. they did not care about their kids. then they divorced. sarah's only 15 when it happened. It's rough. There's non-stop

fighting in the house. Both parents get new partners and the kids feel even more abandoned. At one point Sarah's mom would put the boys to bed then leave to spend the rest of the night at her new partner's place just leaving the kids. So it's safe to say that there really were no strong parental figures in their life. No sort of guidance. They could sneak out, skip school, get high. It didn't seem like anybody cared or anything, which is maybe why Ashley thought, yeah, Harold is weird, but maybe he could be good for Sarah.

When Ashley meets Harold, he seems nice enough. He talks about how he's Christian, and Sarah told her that he was gonna teach her how to start a business, help her through school, which is super sweet. And everything seems super normal, except Harold mentions to Ashley that her daughter, Ashley has a daughter, so this is Sarah's niece. Sarah's very young niece is more than welcome to stay at his house if Ashley ever needs to get away and get some time alone. Ashley thinks the offer is quote weird and a little creepy but she tries to brush it off. He's probably just saying that nobody actually wants to babysit right and she's trying to be

supportive of her sister and her journey but there's a few things that you really cannot explain away. One time Ashley's hanging out with Sarah. Harold is out of town in Florida. Sarah gets a text message from Harold and it's something about how sunburned he's getting on vacation, which is normally enough, but this is the picture that he sends. It looks like a bathroom mirror selfie. He is very sunburned. He looks like a cooked red lobster and you can't see any intimate areas. He's shirtless, but you can also tell that he's not wearing pants and he's not wearing underwear so it's like a top bare chest

selfie yes but he's showing enough of the waistband area that it's implied he's not wearing anything so he took that photo naked yes which it's cropped like I said you can't see his parts but it's just a very odd thing to send someone that you call your stepdaughter. If I received this picture from my father or a stepfather if I had one, I would genuinely be terrified. I would ask, did you mean to send this to somebody else because I need to throw my phone away now? This doesn't make any... this is not a normal father-daughter relationship photo. It just rubs Ashley the wrong way.

Enough so that the next time Ashley visits Sarah at the house She makes sure to be a little bit more observant and she notices two things from her perspective it seems that her sister is high on cocaine and Harold is looking at her sister in a very creepy way Ashley is so tired that night But she refuses to fall asleep because something in her gut is telling her to stay awake be alert and keep an eye out on her sister which is exactly what she ends up doing but what about all the other nights that she's not there she can't stay awake and sleep over every night she's got kids she has obligations she has a job after that incident Ashley goes to their mom and tells her

look we got to do something about Sarah Sarah's not in a good situation right now, she needs help. But their mom would more or less tell her, shh, we can pray for her. She didn't ask for any more specifics on like, hey, what's happening to Sarah? Is she okay? Who is she with? Didn't really ask much. It's unclear if Sarah picked up on all these weird little instances or not. I would imagine not. And by the time she finally did pick up on something, it'd be too late. One day, Sarah is sitting on the couch with Harold, and she's got him in her phone contacts as dad.

And he tells her, I have feelings for you. I want to go on a date with you. Which is the last thing Sarah would ever want. She genuinely sees him as a dad. She tries to reject him as nicely as she can, but she's confused that he would even ask such a thing or even feel such a thing. But ever since that conversation, things start changing around this house. The energy is just different. The dynamic is shifting. When Sarah's sitting there watching TV, he would come up behind her, sit really close to her, put his arms around her, and she could see or feel that he's getting an erection.

And it's starting to make her feel super uncomfortable. One time she woke up to him lying next to her in bed without his shirt on. Wait so she's still 17 or? So this happens when she's 18 now but she moved in when she was 17. Now one time she woke up with him lying in bed next to her without his shirt on. They sleep in separate rooms so what is going on right now? and just to emphasize once more in the eyes of the law any unproven interactions between Sarah and Harold are from Sarah's conversations with her psychologist. it is at the end of the day her version of events but there are some witnesses we'll get into later.

within a few weeks of asking Sarah on that date though and being rejected, Sarah sees Harold as her dad and hopes maybe things will go back to normal. Clearly that's not the case. According to Sarah, Harold does something no person should ever do, let alone a father. No father should ever do this to their daughter. According to Sarah, he starts essaying her. He threatens to kick her out of the house if she does not comply. she said that she felt she had no choice. the thought, the action, it disgusted her but what can she do? she tried to tell him they're like father and daughter this isn't normal and he allegedly responded this is

just what people do when they're drunk. so she quote, i would get as drunk as i could and i would just lay there. she stated she tried to tell him no, but refusing consent does not feel like an option. He would just quote, act like he didn't hear me. She stated that one time he kept essaying her while she was pleading no the whole time. Or if Sarah starts squirming to get away, he would quote, like when I would move my arm, he would just hold my arms. According to Sarah, this is just the start. He would essay her multiple times a week for months after that. And each

time it happened, Sarah would be mad at herself for thinking it was gonna be any different this time. She said, he was my hope that the world wasn't just like the people of my family and that maybe there were good people in the world. And now that's gone. Why would he be different from all the other people that essayed Sarah what just because he's 33 years older than her and said he was gonna be her father figure it is alleged that pretty much every male interaction Sarah had in her life on a deeper level had negative horrendous outcomes Sarah's very first boyfriend she's thinking this is gonna be like the movie shows, or the TV shows,

where they find comfort and love in each other. And then one day he tries to get intimate, and she tells him she's not ready, considering all of the trauma that she likely had as a kid, she just doesn't wanna do this, and he responds by beating her. Later at 16, Sarah starts doing drugs and drinking alcohol, and she's visiting this guy's house and they're not really friends

He's 20. She's 16. He's drunk and he's trying to get her to agree to have intimate relations. And again, she says no Then why would you come over? He pushes her onto the wood coffee table so roughly that it breaks He does not care He puts all of his body weight on top of her lays lays on her, grabs his cigarette that he was smoking and starts pressing it into her arm, burning her skin. Then he drags her by the hair into his room and proceeds to essay her while he tells her that if she tells anybody, he's gonna find her and he's gonna kill her. Do we know who he is? No. And initially she didn't tell anyone.

She didn't tell anybody and nobody questioned why she came home with bruises and scars on her arm. It's not until months later, Sarah finally tells her mom a little bit about what happened with the 20 year old. And her mom is quiet at first. And she just responds, I don't want you to tell anyone else. But according to Sarah, her mom went ahead and just told everybody else for her, just about told every family friend, every family member that they have, and would allegedly, her mom would half joke

that Sarah's a slut now. Sarah seemingly does not know how to digest all this additional trauma, including her alleged childhood abuse. And I say alleged because, I mean, I don't like to question victim stories, but we do have to factor in that she does have incentive to lie, but you get it. I just can't imagine someone making this up. And maybe I have a naive perspective on the world. It just, she's having traumatic nightmares where she's holding,

and there are medical records that do state things. She's having traumatic nightmares where she's holding a knife and killing a faceless man. She attempts self-exit multiple times around this time. She's hospitalized for over a week for that, and they just prescribe her antidepressants. Side note, one of Sarah's therapists at the time straight up told Sarah's parents, we cannot help Sarah. We are not qualified. She is beyond our scope of expertise.

You need to find someone else. This is like younger, right? Younger before she even meets Harold. Wow. And I don't think her parents took it that way the way they were supposed to. I don't think they digested that information and went home thinking we really need to help our daughter. They were just like, okay, then we just won't find her a therapist if they can't help all she had are her meds and the meds are okay but drinking is better she starts skipping school drinking apparently she would start her day with multiple shots of vodka in her coffee at 15 she's doing drugs just about anything that can help her forget all of the trauma and abuse and sometimes forgetting includes doing so much ecstasy or cocaine that you genuinely feel nothing

she said no matter how bad my day was at least I could do a lot of drugs and all the negative stuff would just fade away she said when I was drinking I wasn't depressed but clearly it's not working she's not coping with all of this trauma well at 16 she even starts watching very violent graphic explicit videos, specifically videos involving women that are being brutally humiliated as key points. and this is gonna be a theme throughout the rest of the episode. she almost starts trying to this is a what a lot of psychologists suspect is her behavior she feels so powerless and she starts doing actions she believes her

perpetrators would do because she believes they are the ones with power yeah cuz later she's gonna start skinning animals yeah I mean you can always almost pinpoint how it happened at this point. You know, she's like, look at the conditions. Look at all these, you know. And again, I know that there are people out there that believe that not DID is fake, but Sarah is faking DID. I think it's very hard to do, first of all. And if we take that out of the equation, it just psychologically makes a lot of sense.

A lot of experts are like, this just... it's not far-fetched. It doesn't feel like someone made it up. Even without DID, just look at what happened to someone. Imagine that type of trauma to anybody. How do you respond at that age? Sarah would later state, for 10 months, the essays would continue to escalate in Harold's house. She states she would be essayed by Harold over a hundred times. She said it was just so gradual that I feel like it wasn't until I was really far into things that I started to question.

Almost like to a point where I didn't feel like I could do a lot about it. Thinking back, she said he was always controlling. Right when she moves in, he tells her, I just want to let you know that this is still my house. I have the right to search for all of your things. Sarah thinks, yeah, I mean, no big deal. Of course, it's his house. He has the right to not want certain things in his house. He would go through her things. Then she's immediately given access to as much weed and alcohol as she wants, the only condition being she always has to

do it in the house and he would be there Controlling and taking advantage of the situation little by little he starts taking over her life He would tell her she can't have her phone in her room at night when she goes to sleep because technology should not be in rooms Well, not in her room He's gaining full control and slowly starts demanding more and more from Sarah is how she puts it She claims he essayed her multiple times a week for 10 months, but sometimes it's not just the essay that's messing with her ability to cope, it's the words. Sarah doesn't really know how to handle those. She said it was non-stop. He would follow her around and tell her, men aren't going to find you attractive because your breasts aren't

big enough and your butt's not big enough. Sarah starts feeling less confident in herself, which is saying a lot because she said at that point, her self-esteem was practically non-existent already. And she was already embarrassed by when she was younger, you know how she was burned with the cigarettes. She was so embarrassed by how round the scars were. It looked in her mind, she thought someone would see it from a mile away and think, ah, she was ripped and someone burned cigarettes on her because it's it's not a natural scar pattern. It's so round. So she would actually take a sharp instrument and alter the scar to make it look natural, like a normal scar. It's alleged that she would lie and tell people that she fell off a horse and that's how the scar came about. how the scar came about. And now Harold is basically telling her, trying to convince her to get a boob job or butt

implants, a BBL, this is worse than a BBL. BBL is a fat transfer which is very painful and it's dangerous, but butt implants I heard are miserable. You're literally sticking foreign objects into your buttocks area. And he's telling her maybe if you have that,, people are gonna focus on that and not anything else. AKA, like those cigarette scarves. Sarah does not want either of these. She tries to convince him, I'm way too young for breast augmentation surgery.

Somehow, Harold agrees. But he still wants her to get the butt implants. And Sarah feels like she has no choice. She's cut off from her family, she's got nowhere to go, no money. He keeps telling her that she can't leave or else he's... something bad is gonna happen to her. He won't stop talking about the butt implants and she feels like, fine, if I get it he's gonna stop talking about it. And essentially he's making her feel completely undesirable, a burden, destined for a homelessness and all the scary things that come with being

a woman without a home. Sarah later said, I think more than anything he made me feel like he owned me to him I was just a toy like his personal Barbie doll that's what he tried to make me by this point that Sarah had moved in, she's isolated she now has a nose job and butt implants she's essayed by Harold on a weekly basis, allegedly and before she can try and manage to cope, he's degrading her

he's kicking down her self-esteem, telling her that she's ugly and that she's gonna die alone unless she does everything he says, she is completely helpless. and on top of that, we add on another layer. this reminds me a little bit about the Sarah Lawrence College cold case. Harold starts writing up lists of all the money that Sarah owes him. money for rent, $6,000 for the nose job $10,000 for butt implants which side note we're not even going into the psychology of forced body modification we tried looking into peer-reviewed medical studies about the psychology of what

that could do to someone's psyche and there's not a lot of information the closest we could get was branding on sex trafficking survivors who get brands or tattooed by the traffickers. It would be a little bit similar to that to force modifications on your body that you don't want. And now he's charging her $10,000 for it. He's charging her gas bills. Netflix is on her list of debt. The streaming service. She's almost $20,000 in debt to Harold. She's 19. $20,000 at 19 and he's holding it over her head, threatening to sue her if she doesn't do as he says. She's working at now, she's working at Bed Bath & Beyond. She has sporadic hours, does not really get the best pay. Her last paycheck from Bed Bath & Beyond was just $265, which is deposited into an account that only Harold has access to

and when Harold gets drunk, he would allegedly throw Sarah down and essay her Sarah said it was always when he was drunk after Sarah's butt implants, she is in so much pain physically she's laying on the couch, she doesn't feel like this is her body she has a loss of body autonomy and I think visually it's very scarring to see her body in a way that she does not like and does not want. All she wants to do is lay on the couch, get high off of prescription pain meds, and she just spends months laying there, depressed. She said all she could do was drink, smoke marijuana, and think about how much she hates

herself, and how much she hates everybody, and how much she hates Harold, and how much, honestly, she hates being essayed, which she claimed happened even while she's depressed on the couch while she's laying there. She said she started having these very strange symptoms, stomach distress, daily headaches and this bizarre tingling sensation in her fingertips and she thought it was so strange because her fingers wouldn't stop tingling and she starts feeling like wait am I being poisoned right now? I feel like I'm being poisoned.

Either Harold is poisoning my food or this house is poisoned. Otherwise, there's no reason for me to feel this weird. Which means Harold must be trying to kill her, right? So she has to kill him first before he kills her. Or at least that's what Sarah thought sometimes. Sometimes she wouldn't have this thought. Sarah starts feeling very confused at how much her state would just change and go through the motions every day.

And it doesn't feel like depression. She's had depression, clearly, right? She tried to self-exit. She's been in the hospital for that. But this is different. She starts Googling rapid fire. Why am I different than anybody else? Why do I see things like this?

Why am I always different at night than when I am in the morning? Sarah wouldn't know until later that she's diagnosed with DID. At this point of living with Harold, she just knew that she had random gaps throughout her day, or she remembered doing things, but very vaguely.

Sometimes she could see herself doing things like she's watching from a bird's eye view it's registering in her brain that that is me doing it but it doesn't feel like it that is how our psychologist explains her alters now her alters are just four that we know of that her psychologist knows of and this is her psychologist explaining Vanessa is very depressed anxious and described as very weak. She's also very, um, has a lot of dark thoughts about wanting to self-exit. Very, very suicidal.

She is described to have the energy of a skinny miniature greyhound. Nervous, anxious, breakable. She's immature, maybe 17 years old. She's the more compassionate altar, but it does appear that the compassion comes out of fear more than anything. She's the one that is fronting most of the time. This is Sarah's state most of the time. Alyssa is the protector. Alyssa came about to protect Vanessa. Alyssa drinks a lot. She never panics. She's very strong, very witty. People really like her.

She's confident, but not reliable. She is boiling with rage. She has so much anger, but she doesn't want to let that anger go because she deep down believes that's where her strength comes from, is this anger. She mainly fronts when the body is numb. So that might be why Sarah was googling, why am I different at night? It seems that Alyssa fronts more at night because she's drinking, she's getting more of that rage is coming in. She seems to have taken the protector role

and put it upon herself. She feels like she has to be this way. She told the psychologist that she doesn't want to be the angry one. She doesn't want to be the aggressive one or constantly vigilant about protecting them, but she feels like she needs to because if not her then who? the others are just gonna let themselves get abused non-stop. Alyssa would later say I didn't want

this, I didn't want this paltry life we had to be all I would ever have and then when the world was gonna be ended and that would all be there is? side note it does appear that she genuinely does think that the world is coming to an end. And the idea that this is their life before the world ends is so painful and sad and depressing for her. And that's still, that's an idea that's forced upon them from-

The Abyss and Harold, the end of the world. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was forced, but it does seem like she never had those conversations with anybody in her life until she moved in with Harold. She did not seem to care about the end of the world. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was forced But it does seem like she never had those conversations with anybody in her life until she moved in with Harold She did not seem to care about the end of the world until then She also has very Alyssa also has very very strong feelings about men She said that she would never kill a dog horse or a woman, but men are a disease on this earth They think with their bodies so they are not human. They are animals Alyssa hated everything about men and felt Harold was worse than a pig, more offensive than a pig.

And again, I'm not trying to defend Alyssa. I don't think that Alyssa is sitting here just like waking up hating men. It's clearly her trauma and this is her protection. It's stated that she needs to hate men because it makes her feel in control of not letting more men into her life because if you hate something you're not gonna try to let it into your life the other alters consist that we know of of Myla and no name however as Sarah's doctor she was not allowed to talk to them much we have very limited information about them we just know that Myla is a bit, tiny bit more confident than Vanessa, but she's very feminine and quite young. I'm not sure if she's considered a little, which is a type of altar. I don't know if it's type, but

categorization of altar, and typically it embodies a childhood version of the person. Very young, her role is interestingly though, young but almost kind of like a mother figure to Vanessa. Younger, more feminine, but that is how much Vanessa is weak in their system, that everyone needs to protect Vanessa. Myla is the most like Sarah before her reoccurring trauma. She's very nice and content with the world,

not too angry. She likes people. She thinks all people are pretty good and she's very feminine. Dr. Hutchinson described Myla as being very polite. Now, No Name is the trauma carrier. The memories of the essay from the creepy old neighbor only come about when No name is fronting.

No name? Yes, literally. That's no name. No name. The memories of the childhood. This is the only altar in the system that carries memories before middle school. The other alters will tell Dr. H

I don't remember anything before middle school. Wow. No name is described by the others as just a body, doesn't really have inside emotion, just kind of functions. Which is very enlightening considering no name is the trauma carrier. And Sarah, Sarah is dead. She died at 16 years old when she was essayed

by the 20 year old. So it seems that Sarah was likely part of the system. I don't even think they knew it was a system at the time I think I don't know if they could categorically say that but when she was burned by the cigarettes they said that is when Sarah died Sarah's doctor would later state Vanessa was very afraid anytime I talked to Vanessa she was always crying now listen never cried Milo was extremely soft-spoken and liked to quote Bible verses, which Alyssa was very angry about.

Alyssa said Milo has always been reading parts of the Bible, like you should cut off the part of you that offends you. And she thinks that she can just cut me out? Like, how does she think that she's gonna cut me out? Alyssa is very protective. She's the protector of the system. Now, I will say this is the part of DID that I think the jury and a lot of people couldn't understand about this case, right?

And please correct me if I'm wrong, but DID, your alters, it's very hard to control who's fronting. It's typically a psychological response to triggers and triggers could be something big or something so unnoticeable to other people that are not part of the system. And anytime Sarah McLin talks about the crime that she commits, she's very cold, very blunt. Almost to the point of sounding like Cassandra Beorge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People believe that that is Alissa fronting and she presents herself when she needs to be in a situation where she needs to protect the system

and she's very- a little bit more emotionless right, and it doesn't deliver well at all no, it does not Sarah's doctor would later explain, Sarah's system has a bunch of walls and sometimes those walls are permeable so they can kind of like- like Alyssa and Vanessa can talk back and forth but some of them are like concrete bricks and this part never talks to this part and when I work with clients or when I have worked with Sarah is that when I talked to the walled off

alters they had no idea what the other alters have said and if I asked them about hey they said this they would have no recollection of that I didn't hear you talking to them and I didn't know that would be their response. The way Sarah describes what is going on in her brain to her doctor is I feel like I'm a puppet with no master. But there was only one rule. The entire system was forced to follow. The rule was don't let anyone know. Nobody was allowed to know that Sarah had a system,

which means nobody knows there is what is described as inner conflict taking place. Vanessa and Alyssa have a conflict at hand. Vanessa has decided the only way to escape this life and this abuse is to either kill Harold or to self-exit. Vanessa wants to self-exit soon. Alyssa realizes that is what Vanessa is planning and she's not gonna let that happen. This is how Sarah's doctor explains it. Alyssa was angry. She would later tell her doctor that had Vanessa been smarter, none of this would have happened. Alyssa told the psychologist, Vanessa's weak. She would lay there like a dead dog and she let him touch us and talk her into

that stupid butt surgery. Sarah's doctor believes Alyssa was forced to protect them or let Vanessa self-exit because she could not handle the abuse from Harold. Around this time, a coworker from CC's Pizza had come over to Sarah and Harold's house. And he's friends with Harold. I believe he's also young too. So, just giving you an idea, it seems like Harold, some people say he was a mentor to the youth, other people say he's hanging out with a lot of young people and it's weird. No, like there's no anything to signal that he actually cares about youth, future or anything. Like this is not his interest or motive or reason at all. And I would just say that if I knew someone who was 50 years old

and genuinely cared about helping the youth and they see a young 17-year-old girl, I think the smartest best decision most of these men would make, these good men, in my opinion, would be to tell a woman of age or look for a shelter. Because I think it's just not a comfortable setup to have a 17 year old girl living with a 50 year old man that is not her relative or dad because even even relatives and dads abuse their daughters yeah it's proven i mean just like from the get-go the why the way he

brought her in it was zero ounce of actually wanting to help yes because there are lots of witnesses who do state they saw Sarah do drugs in front of Harold, and if Harold wanted to get her clean, which is the whole point that he wanted her to move in, it doesn't make sense, right? Now, he knows that the two of them are living together. He's also heard that they've been sexually involved. This guy that works at C.C.'s pizza.

But he's just over to hang out. He walks over to the dining room, and there's this box sitting on the table. It's a cardboard box that's closed. And now and then the box would start shaking the box would start moving shuffling He's like what is going on in that box Sarah walks over opens up the box inside. There's a little fluffy rabbit. Oh What are you guys gonna clean it and cook it? He watches Sarah bring the box over to the kitchen sink He can see her taking the rabbit the box over to the kitchen sink. He can see her

taking the rabbit out placing it into the deep sink but he's behind her at this point so he can't really see what she's doing to the rabbit but he hears high-pitched yelps coming from the rabbit and Sarah's body is like an autopilot. Just nothing behind the eyes. She kills the rabbit, proceeds to disembowel it, skin it alive, and to him this is all so confusing Why is she doing this? Can't she buy rabbit meat somewhere else if she wants to eat rabbit? Not only that, you know how hunters will hunt down wild rabbits And that's you know every person finds it questionable or to a degree

This rabbit was not that, this rabbit was a cute little fluffy white one that you would have as a pet In fact Sarah bought this rabbit from a pet store to slaughter and eat. She did this with both a rabbit and a gerbil from the pet store. Later, Sarah would state at the time she believed it was a normal survival skill practice. She was practicing for the end of the world. It's not like she was just just torturing animals. She was eating them for food. What's the difference between that and hunting? She said it made her feel really, really in control.

At first the rabbit was almost like a test. She tried to justify it. Oh, I have to kill and eat the rabbit to test my survival skills. But it started scratching this itch inside of her. I will say there's a very strong correlation between her mental state and her killing animals. She states that one day after a really stressful day at work, she walks into the pet store trying to buy a toy for her dog. she's got a labrador named oliver, but she's passing the guinea pig cages and she remembered someone talking about how in south america they eat guinea pigs. so she stops in front of the cages

watching them sleep in their little barn, hay barns. She just has this urge. I wanna kill it and I wanna eat it. She would go on YouTube and watch videos on how to kill, skin, and slaughter rabbits. The video in particular she watched over 14 times was of a man using scissors to skin a rabbit and ultimately package it for human consumption. Oddly, after watching this video,

she then watches a Tupac video within two-3 minutes. So, I don't know. Those who knew Sarah said, none of this makes sense. Sarah's always been an animal girl. She grew up with a rescue horse named Black Beauty, who was so badly neglected and abused by his previous owners, to the point that Sarah could not even ride him. Which is kind of the purpose that she got a horse to begin with and she would take these riding lessons and she did not care. She babied that horse until his very last breath and when he was gone everyone in Sarah's life remembered her just being absolutely devastated. She had this yellow lab growing up aptly named Shadow because it was literally Sarah's shadow.

Technically Shadow was supposed to be the family dog, but ended up just following Sarah around everywhere. When shadow passed away, she was a wreck, and she always told her family, I don't even want a house when I grow up. I just wanna travel around and help animals, because there's animals everywhere that need help. But now she's skinning pet rabbits and eating them? She's also punching walls and breaking glass?

She would later say somewhere down the line, her sadness turned into anger, disgust, and pure hatred. And she's not scared anymore, she just feels rage. To this part, she does not tell anyone about. But Sarah said at this point she starts having these crazy visual hallucinations of killing herself, her parents, and Harold. She's hearing all these voices in her head, and every time she sees people walking around, they're walking around faceless and bloody.

Every single person she runs into, walking past, saying hello to at work, she would picture them dead, what they would look like, and then her visions would come back. Years ago, when Sarah was essayed and burned with a cigarette, for a while afterwards, she started having these visions where she would find unknown men and slash their necks with a knife, or chop them up with an axe and those visions were back but this time that unknown man was now Harold Sasco January 11th, 2014, Sarah logs onto her computer and asks Google why do I feel so differently from everyone else?

she then texts her sister I'm starting to realize I don't want the life everyone expects of me I don't want the American dream, the house, or the car I don't want to be tied down to a job or debt. I want real freedom and I know how to get it, but it means giving up a lot. It's like, do I want what my friends and family think is right? Or do I take a risk of being happy and not trapped anymore? I feel like a caged animal right now. It's making me crazy and on edge. Then a text comes in to Sarah's phone. Not a response from Ashley, but a text from Harold.

It reads, Hey, good morning. Thank you for last night. It was good. We never got to talk about Sunday. I apologize for trying to sleep with you. Tonight before we get going, can we talk? Please and thank you.

I apologize for trying to sleep with you? Yes. Like, trying to essay her? Yes, is what Sarah says. Now, people who believe that Harold is innocent, well, he's innocent in the eyes of the law. Of course, he's a victim in the eyes of the law. People that believe that he did not essay her believe that maybe he, she's of age, he was drunk. He tried, but then stopped because she said no. So the text messages is

interpreted in two vastly different ways. Now initially the plan was to attack Harold in his sleep but she starts worrying what if he wakes up there's no way she can overpower him there's got to be a better way. Then ding she gets another message. Harold wants her to put some beers in the fridge for tonight when he gets home. Beers in the fridge. According to Sarah, he would always essay her when he's drunk. There's no more time left. Either she does it now or she's gonna get essayed, is what she says, right? Now, have you heard of Ambien? It's a prescription sleep medication and it is very strong. It's considered a sedative, hypnotic medication that should really only be used in the short term because serious side effects can lead to

sleepwalking, sleep driving, memory loss, hallucinations, severe allergic reactions, and sometimes even death. Harold had Ambien in his bathroom. Sarah knows this. She sneaks into his room before he gets home and goes into the bathroom, pulls out a bottle of Ambien, and she starts grinding up a handful of pills using one of those glass figurines on top of the dresser. She puts the powder into a piece of paper, folds it up, like cocaine, I guess, hides it in the kitchen under a box of green tea on top of the microwave.

Then she just waits. Waits for him to get home. He starts drinking one beer. She waits until he's what, five, six beers in, because she would assume that the crushed up Amb has a very specific taste. Probably bitter. She doesn't want him to taste it and feel suspicious or stop drinking the beer. So the sixth beer, he's like, can you get me another one? She dumps it in to the beer can and watches him gulp it down and eventually he gets up from the couch to walk over to his speaker system to fix it.

Halfway there, collapses, falls onto the ground, face down onto the floor. Sarah is calm. She walks to her car, grabs a stack of zip ties, brings them back in, and then walks into her room to grab a hunting knife. She stands over his limp body for a second. Then she starts tying his legs together, three around his ankles, locking them together, and as she's about to tie, zip tie his wrists, he makes some sort of moaning sound. Some people say this is so important. Moaning could be that he's unconscious, but also could trigger... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It could be a trauma. And Sarah later tells her doctor that something in that moaning sound, all of this up until this point was Alyssa, but when Harold moans, Vanessa steps back into control, screams no, grabs a pair of scissors and cuts the ties off of Harold's ankles to release him to let him go. But Alyssa does not want this. Alyssa would later tell the doctor, I was not gonna let her do that. She gains control and retires his hands and his ankles, takes the knife before Vanessa can do anything about it, she reaches her hand down to feel for an artery, she needs

to find the vulnerable spot on the neck, and when she finds what she's looking for, she takes both of her hands and plunges the knife straight into his throat, pulling from one side to another, like truly slicing. She practically saws his head off. She plunges the knife so deep into his neck, the knife blade hits the carpet, she just starts pulling through his neck muscles, like sideways, out.

So instead of pulling up to bring the knife out, she pulls sideways to go through his neck, through his neck muscles, arteries, veins, his windpipe, even his esophagus. She had to use both hands to get it out. And she's standing there now with blood dripping down her arms, and the original plan that she had was to dismember Harold. She had an axe in her trunk. But, I don't know. She said when she's done, it felt like being in a cage and having the

door swing open. She said in that moment, it felt like she was standing in the sun for the first time. So she grabs a towel drenched in his blood and writes, F-R-E-E-D-O-M So she grabs a towel drenched in his blood and writes F R E E D O M freedom Then she goes to wash off the blood from her hands and the first thing she does which is very questionable Is she grabs her Samsung tablet brings it into the bathroom where she proceeds to put on some music and start showering When she's done she gets gets out, dries her hair, straightens her hair, and then gathers up all the things

she wants to take with her. Jewelry, guns, money, everything. She's got to bring it all, truly everything. She even prints a file off of Harold's computer of a tattoo idea that she had saved. A rib cage tattoo with the quote, beware the pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its black, icy depths dwell strange and twisted creatures.

It's best not to disturb. So again, a lot of people say everything, even the quote that she resonates a lot with is reminiscent of what people with DID that might not know they have DID might feel. Now I'm not saying people without DID can't resonate, but knowing that it feels kind of like, I feel like there's something or someone else inside of me is the feeling. she's taking the clothes out of her closet taking a

picture of her and Ashley out of the picture frame then she loads up Harold's car and she brings her dog Oliver and she just starts skipping town. oh she does leave one thing though she leaves her phone on the kitchen counter because she knew that she could be traced through it. She first goes to Texas almost all the way down to Mexico then she decides you know what let's do Florida. Now side note she's selling jewelry along the way to get cash, she's living out of the car never checking into hotels and at one point she gives away her beloved Oliver to a local vet. Yeah and And she does get that rib cage tattoo, starts making it to Florida, and she will be arrested 11 days later by the National

Park Service in the Everglades National Park in Florida. The police had been called to do a welfare check on Sarah, broke into Harold's house, found him dead, and at one point they thought that Sarah had been kidnapped, but they were like nothing's adding up, all of her stuff is gone. It seems like she's the perpetrator. And finally, 11 days later, Sarah is arrested. They were still questioning if Sarah had been truly just a perpetrator or a victim or kidnapped and then a perpetrator, they didn't know.

In the car though, they found knives, an ax, two handguns, nine boxes of ammunition, a taser, multiple knives, a stack of murder mystery books, a machete, a large supply of bottled water, military food rations, a fishing pole, and other camping and survival supplies, as well as over $2,000 in cash and weed. Sarah was immediately placed into custody and is brought into an interrogation room. Now we only have 3 minutes of that footage that is publicly released. We did file an FOIA and I received no footage in that. just transcripts and court documents. but Sarah is sitting cross-legged at the

table across two interrogators. she almost has the energy of Cassandra Björg that we recently talked about. not in the sense that she's oh she's so heartless but she's so blunt. there's no emotion. they asked her Sarah how long have you had planned to kill Hal? um it was sort of just in like the last week where um, well not just in the last week, it's like um, last five days I really thought about it. You said the last five days before you actually did kill him? Okay. And tell me what you, about the thinking and the planning that you did. I just, you know, like I said, I just wanted something different and I was stupid. I just thought about it and how I would do it and that's how I did it.

So would you say that you started making preparations about five days before? Well, I had everything that I needed so I didn't have to like go out and I just sort of did it almost the exact same way I killed the rabbit when I ate it. I mean I did, I cut his throat too. So you decided to do it like you did the rabbit and the way you did it push push the knife through and push out Yeah, as opposed to slicing right? Is there a reason that you chose that method? Is that a reason is that I mean, I don't know that's I just thought that he would bleed out faster that way And I wouldn't have to be as strong to really like slice his neck and she motions a slicing motion

Okay and she motions a slicing motion. Okay. One of the interrogators actually gets up and puts his head down on the table facing Sarah and forces her to motion how she stabbed Harold in the neck. It's visually a lot, I will say. Then I went and I took a shower. Okay. And got ready. Oh, I brought my tablet in the bathroom too.

Okay. For music. Okay, while you were showering and where was that tablet before you brought it into the shower in my room okay backing up there a little bit we talked about what you said when you wrote freedom on the wall when did that happen immediately after immediately after cutting his throat yes I guess okay so after you cut the throat how did how did you uh how did you do that well I had a towel and that's kind of what I used to put the blood up there on the wall and then I wrote in it with my finger.

Sarah would later say that, she was asked why, why did you write freedom on the wall? And she said, I guess because that's what it felt like. Sarah said she also didn't like her job. She owed money, she hated her life. She felt trapped and she was curious. She said she was curious about killing someone. And in the interrogation, she does later compare herself to Jeffrey Dahmer, which is not really something that you would ever want to do in a police interrogation. But later, her psychologist asks her about it, because she's like, I read the transcripts. Why did you tell the police that you felt like Jeffrey Dahmer? And she explained, Jeffrey Dahmer responded to betrayal. I don't like the

necrophilia and I didn't have any interest in cannibalism, but I felt his understanding of betrayal was similar to me. Now there are three groups of people. One group of people that believe that Harold is purely a victim and what he did or didn't do does not matter and Sarah is the ultimate perpetrator. Then you have another group of people that believe Sarah shouldn't have done what she did But she essentially killed from a buildup of trauma and almost as a mechanism of self-defense That she is a victim and a perpetrator and that Harold is also a victim and a perpetrator Then you have another group of people that just hates the both of them

They think that both of them are just evil for whatever reason Those who believe Harold was completely innocent of any wrongdoing and brutally and viciously murdered by someone he was trying to help said... some that knew Harold said this, right? Harold's ex-girlfriend said he told her that he was just trying to get Sarah away from drugs and away from friends who were in gangs. He was always involved with his employees. He wanted to have a mentoring program for the youth. He has a good heart, a good soul, and he cared about helping a lot of people. Harold's brother said,

From what I know of Harold, there's no question that his purpose with Sarah was to be a father figure to her. My honest opinion was the defense was just grasping at straws and making up stories. It's also argued that Sarah was diagnosed with DID after she was arrested, and after she allegedly confessed to killing Harold out of curiosity. The group that fully supports just Harold and believes Sarah should be locked up for the rest of her life, they state her interrogation is a confession. Police even noticed scars on her arm and they asked her about it. The cigarette burns and she said she fell off a horse. So the people who don't believe Sarah, they said, see she's just making up lies with her psychologist to get out of this after the fact,

but she straight up told the police it was from a fall off of a horse. In that moment when the police are asking her and questioning her about murder, wouldn't she try to build sympathy then unless she didn't have time to think about a lie? Mmm, I don't know about that. Okay, I will say I don't know if this argument in particular is a good argument because if truly infected is a scar from an essay and she is that embarrassed of it and that ashamed of it to the point That she took a knife to alter it to look more normal I think this would be her default lie, especially to two men sitting in front of her

Yeah, exactly without thinking like yeah She's not gonna open open up right now and tell you exactly how this happened In front of, again, two men So a lot of female victims have a harder time opening up to male interrogators or male psychologists for that very reason But there are statements from people around Sarah that said She made a lot of comments about serial killers She once told her sister Ashley that she did think about killing someone and the thought had crossed her mind But other people argued that's nothing new She literally admits to hallucinating and killing faceless men.

She also told interrogators that she wanted to prolong the murder as long as possible for maximum enjoyment, basically. But I don't know how much of that is accurate because she looked for the artery to kill him instantly almost. Yeah. There was no signs of torture. Harold had no defensive wounds, so he wasn't fighting back there was no prolonged aggression Sarah also does seem to have an inclination towards violence a co-worker at Bed Bath and Beyond reported that Sarah would talk about how she and Her friends would take drugs and have a fight club in the basement

She thought it was fascinating and it made her realize that watching people get beaten up to a pulp was interesting And maybe she wanted to watch people die she also went on tangents on how good she was of a hunter and how she liked to kill and clean animals there's also a lot of evidence that Sarah thoroughly planned the murder I don't think that's ever really debated by both sides but without a shadow of doubt it was very thoroughly planned Sarah even told her doctor later that for a couple of days before the actual murder she had already reached a conclusion that she was gonna kill Harold and she stopped seeing Red. The doctor describes Sarah's state in that

point as an incredible sense of calm when the anxiety drops off because she's got a plan. She was looking up things, bull tranquilizer, wilderness areas, rope bondage techniques, how to get a passport in Lawrence, Kansas, and even vulnerable neck spots. Another argument made against Sarah is, why a knife? When Sarah was arrested, she was found with two guns on her. Shooting someone is remote, easy, and quick. She would have done that while he was asleep.

Or she could have. She wouldn't have even had to touch him. Or while she's crushing up Ambien to slip in his beer, she could have just crushed up the entire bottle and tried to kill him through a fatal dose of the drugs. But no, that wouldn't accomplish what Sarah wanted. They argued Sarah wanted blood and vengeance. She wanted to slice into him, touch Harold while she killed him, which is why she chose the knife because it's intimate, it's bloody, it's violent, it's painful.

Additionally, Sarah continues to do a lot of strange things after the murder. She takes bedsheets off of Harold's bed and takes them with her, right? I don't know if it was Harold's bed and takes them with her, right? I don't know if it was Harold's bed or her bed, but she would later tell the investigators, well, he took the bed sheets because they were expensive. They argue that this is not a snap decision. She called into work stating that her dad died

so nobody would be alarmed when she doesn't show up to work. She crushed up Ambien. She was clever enough to put them in his beer, like fifth beer, so that he wouldn't taste it. She found zip ties She didn't have any difficulty locating her survival knife in her bedroom She went through a rehearsal several months earlier with a rabbit and a guinea pig Sarah used to work for him. Yes. How come she stopped working there and went to bed bath and beyond I think he didn't want to pay her

So, um, there was a whole thing in the court transcripts about how he was paying her less than everybody else once because he was like you owe me money I mean it was heavily planned Harold's older brother would say that Harold might have problems and issues he believed but he still believed Sarah should spend the rest of her life in prison Harold's daughter who is just a few years younger than Sarah, said Sarah had taken away far more than just a father. She wrote, you took away irreplaceable happiness, a normal life, and years of my life that were now filled with anger and incredible sadness. Now of course one of

the biggest debates in this case is whether or not Sarah actually does have DID. I will say I think it's very difficult to fake having DID on a clinical scale. Sure, maybe you could do it on social media in an attempt to go viral, but I think the DID community would immediately clock you regardless that you're faking it. But to fake it during a murder trial where there are psychologists from both sides, where some of them it might even be beneficial for them to even to a degree perhaps prove that you don't have DID. I mean it's very difficult to fake. DID is really hard to fake.

But there are claims and allegations that Sarah's faking it. The prosecutor stated that psychological evaluations at Larned State Hospital, a neutral hospital between the two, found that Sarah did not meet the criteria for DID. Now another argument against that though is DID is heavily misdiagnosed. Not saying that everybody gets DID is heavily misdiagnosed. Not saying that everybody gets DID, like you get a diagnosis, you get the opposite. People actually do not get DID diagnosis really easily. They get a major depression disorder, they get bipolar disorder, they get schizophrenia. So how does the diagnosis affect the sentencing?

Because that was what the defense put their whole argument on during the trial they pled not guilty by reason of insanity okay but DID does not make you insane but they need to prove that she has DID and then they need to prove that she was in a state of psychosis so they need to do one and two that was their game plan they don't technically need to prove that she has DID as long as they can prove that she was in a state of psychosis, but still. Now, Sarah did mention Vanessa in her police interview stating that Vanessa was a name that Harold had come up with because they were going to run away together. Sarah was going to be Vanessa and Harold would be Scott. So people are like, see Vanessa is in her altar, Vanessa is an alias. A doctor on the prosecutor's side, so technically against Sarah, went onto

the stand and he said, I think certainly it's a possibility that she has DID. I don't know that I could confirm it, but I respect Dr. Hutchinson and she spent a great number of hours with Sarah. I certainly think at this juncture Sarah believes she has the disorder. He basically argued even if she had DID, it was not to the level where she was having psychosis. but then you have a group of people including a lot of advocates for domestic violence and essay they do not condone what she did they said murder is bad nobody contones that however they don't think that she's this crazed evil killer that just wants to kill Harold for curiosity. some also argued that Sarah's bizarre sudden interest in harming animals is linked to her essay as a child.

It's her taking control, the rage and wanting to feel that sense of control go hand in hand. Her psychologist believes that the foundation for her subsequent obsessions for dead animals, knives, and everything is then. Those in support of Sarah argue that everything she did, even after the fact, seems like someone that's not really planning to get away with it. Writing freedom on the wall? That's not someone who's let me make it look like a home invasion gone wrong. She also makes one last call to her sister and grandma to say goodbye before leaving her phone but she doesn't actually say goodbye she just makes it appear that she's doing alright she just wanted to hear their voices it seems. She gives her dog away to a vet knowing that she cannot take care of her dog anymore and gets a tattoo with a very dark quote. It does seem like someone who is trying to

start over. Yeah yeah yeah and you know we cover so many of these cases you you kind of always see how people react after math right? Some people they flee, they they go off with their new boyfriend, they live in the house with their dead grandparents and spend the money. Yeah, the motive you can always kind of pinpoint, but for her, it truly feel like she fell free. And she would, because people later ask why Florida? Because remember she was talking about Utah and Montana

are the furthest away from nuclear power plants or what she felt was safe. She didn't really have a plan. She said she just wanted to see the ocean. Now again, that's not to justify or excuse what she did and obviously we could all just be naive and be falling for things. I don't know. See good in people or not good but you get it. But that's the argument that freedom on the wall, that should hold a lot more weight. That's a huge thing. We've never seen that before. But the most important evidence for the group is most conversations about Harold allegedly grooming Sarah were not allowed in the trial.

Why? The judge is very questionable decision, questioned by a lot of people, but the judge stated any character flaws that Harold might have had will not be discussed in front of the jury. The judge stated that Harold was not on trial, Sarah was. So his visiting of websites that may or may not contain videos of children, teens, and bestiality was not- Wait, those happened? Yes, but they were not allowed in court. They were not admissible as evidence.

Which, side note, this is less of an interesting observation, but as I was going through like the 1,500 pages of court documents and transcripts, there were multiple times where the prosecutor and the judge. So these are people who do not like Sarah. They want to put Sarah in jail for a very long time. They would call Harold the defendant and then they would go, I mean, sorry, the victim. And then they would call Sarah the victim and then say, I mean, sorry, the defendant, Sarah. So even them for a second, they keep getting confused it seems. I mean it could just be a slip

of the tongue. Maybe they say those words too often. I don't think that insinuates guilt or innocence. I just thought it was interesting. Now this is where I think the evidence against Harold starts ramping up. Acquaintances of Harold allegedly reported that he would tell them that it was quote amazing to have an 18 year old. This is again someone he brought into his house at 17 as a 50-something year old to help her. In the eyes of the law, maybe it's not illegal if she was 18 and it was consensual, but still it's morally and ethically incredibly questionable especially if she moved in at 17. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It changes the whole motive and the reason. Everything. Now, another witness, and this is absolutely personal opinion rather than a testament to anyone's character, but just to give you a full picture, a former manager that had worked with Harold said that

when they found out Harold had been murdered, he went home to his wife and said, I wonder which one of those girls' dads went over and killed him. Because he believed Harold was constantly having not inappropriate relations, but something weird was going on, insinuating that Harold was known to groom girls that would infuriate their dads. Obviously, that's not what happened, but it is interesting that that's the first thing he would think of. A different ex-girlfriend of Harold said, he's a very sick person.

The jury should have heard how messed up he was and that this was the environment Sarah was part of. I'm an adult woman with five children, high functioning, and he weighed me down. Just listening to him is exhausting. But probably the most worrisome testimony that was not allowed in court was the day after Harold's body was found, a single mom of two twin girls, underage, 16, she goes to the police and the mom does let the detectives know that Harold, the man they just found dead, she believes he was in the process of grooming her twin girls, that even just a

few days before he was killed, she had been talking to the girls school guidance counselor about filing a no contact order against him. The detectives are like, okay, what happened? She stated that they were all family friends, but he just kept referring to the twins as his daughters and kept saying, call me dad. And it just made her so uncomfortable like you're not their dad it's crossing a line you're crossing a boundary and i don't like it but he wouldn't listen he would also tell the twins if they ever wanted to run away from their mom they were more

than welcome to come live with him he would take care of them feed them give them jobs so that they would have spending money the only rule he had and he told the twins allegedly was quote my drugs are our drugs and your drugs are our drugs and your drugs are our drugs he was supplying them with drugs and recently gave them an envelope full of weed and he kept telling the twins that he was going to buy them a car for their 16th birthday so much so that she ended up having to buy her girls a car for their 16th birthday when she wasn't planning on it because she didn't want Harold to do it and it just it was putting her in a

tricky situation he would also buy them other expensive gifts as long as they promised not to tell their mom about it and just a few days before Harold's death the twins went out with him to Best Buy to buy $400 speakers for their new car that they weren't allowed to tell their mom about it until after he was dead. Now a data dump was processed on two of Harold's phones and that's when they found out that he was visiting websites that had inappropriate, if not fully explicit, illegal videos featuring children, teens and bestiality. He had actually downloaded more than 300 videos from that website. I don't know if those videos he downloaded in particular were illegal or not.

And on more than 20 occasions he visited websites that featured men fondling or having intimate relations with women who appear to be sleeping. None of that was allowed in court. Also, Harold would go around telling everybody that Sarah was his stepdaughter. And people thought that was weird. If he was someone that was such a good figurehead in the community, that was a mentor to the youth, why couldn't he just tell people the truth of, yeah, she's not doing well, I've taken her in.

She doesn't have a support system. Why lie that it's your stepdaughter? That makes it seem like you're hiding something. Like you know it's weird. You know people are gonna have questions. Those in support of Sarah also say, okay fine, if Sarah truly is sick and twisted in the head and she just wants to kill out of curiosity because she likes serial killers and she's sick and nasty, why kill Harold if he's so good to her? Why wouldn't she just have killed someone else and then come home to Harold to have free drugs and a free place to stay? Why

would she bite the hand that feeds her and then why write freedom on the wall it's obviously a very emotional crime so she didn't she did this emotionally yeah I will say that most people do believe that Sarah has DID it doesn't seem like the symptoms spawned out of nowhere when Sarah was 14 years old one of Sarah's closest friends she came forward later she said she stopped hanging out with Sarah she told her mom that she was scared and she doesn't know how to describe it, but it just felt like there is a different person inside of Sarah's body. It was like very unsettling, she said.

She said Sarah would just like randomly start talking about violent things and it didn't seem like Sarah was saying it. At least the Sarah she knew. So they stopped hanging out at 14. saying it. At least the Sarah she knew. So they stopped hanging out at 14. And she said, um, that Sarah that she saw at 14, the new Sarah, the one that was talking about violent things, that was the one she saw in the interrogation video later when she saw it. Sarah's doctor would tell the jury and the during the trial, certainly nothing in this report should be taken as excusing the conduct of Sarah. Mr. Sasko did not deserve the death he received. The purpose of this report has been to lay out the puzzle pieces that can identify the controlling factors to the severe mental illness that she suffers from.

Sarah's psychologist believes Alyssa's actions of killing Harold are reminiscent of a mother that would want to kill a person who essayed her daughter, AKA Vanessa. It's very impulsive, crazy, but usually mothers have emotional maturity and the ability to stop themselves but Alyssa did not have that. Sarah's psychologist also noted that Alyssa and Vanessa had very different ways of describing the crime. Vanessa said,

It's like a fog and I remember intense moments after the crime when I sat down and looked at him. I don't know when I actually did it. I kind of remember myself from above. It stated like she was watching herself do it from above, like a CCTV camera. During the actual crime, she felt nothing, no emotions. Alyssa, on the other hand, was very blunt. She told the doctor, for once in my pathetic life, I found strength and I took control.

Now pain feels tolerable because deep inside, this weak little girl is a powerful woman who lets no one use her. Now with all of this Sarah pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Her psychologist diagnosed her with high levels of depression, anxiety and alcohol substance abuse. Her psychological profile reads as follows likely to be generally pessimistic and dysphoric, has the potential to act out at her anger in impulsive ways, self-destructive in spending, sex and substance abuse, rapid mood swings, she often feels her behavior

is out of her control, is likely to self-mutilate and act out self-exit plans, limited social skills has difficulty interpreting the nuances of social relationships. In relationships, she likely takes a very passive, submissive role, and very uncomfortable around people. Sensitivity in these interactions leads to her holding grudges against others. Ironically, difficulties in relationships are a major source of stress for her.

She would also be diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, major depression, recurrent moderate PTSD, alcohol and marijuana dependence, in remission subsequent to incarceration. Her clinical symptoms include weekly episodes of amnesia, daily episodes of losing time, unable to remember her home address, depersonalization, not recognizing self in mirror, feeling like an observer of self on a daily basis,

rather than feeling oneself, feeling detached from body, feeling more than one person at a time, perception that someone else is talking for themselves, speech is not under personal control, episodes of feeling like someone else has taken over, different smoking and drinking habits for different parts of self, derealization, feeling like self or things are not real, that friends and relatives seem unknown, not knowing what is real and unreal, identity confusion, an internal struggle about who they are that is usually triggered by stress,

identity alteration, feeling or being told that they were acting in different ways that they do not recall Sarah was found guilty she was sentenced to a hard 50 sentence, meaning she will have to serve at least 50 years before the chance of parole so she could technically be there for the rest of her life she will be 70 years old by then Harold's brother stated, I feel sorry for the family. Harold's daughter will hurt the most. she lost her dad. through the years it's gonna get worse and worse and then it's gonna fade away. but I honestly think that it'll do nobody good if Sarah

gets released before those 50 years. I want 50 years. he also stated that he believed his brother Harold was just being overly generous and thought he could fix Sarah. Sarah and her team have appealed the sentence and took a deal where she would get her parole reduced cut in half. So meaning instead of doing 50 years mandatory, she would just have to do 25, but here's the thing. That's the chance of parole. That doesn't mean she's gonna get parole and likely she's not because she committed a pretty violent first-degree murder. So it's not like her sentence was cut in half, but now she's lost her chance to appeal ever again. The jury foremen who was on Sarah's trial

said that it was frustrating that they weren't given options. They either had to say she's insane or she's guilty. They didn't have a self-defense angle to consider. The jury foremen said, if her attorney presented a self-defense angle, I could see a non-guilty verdict play out. I couldn't tell you it would have changed the verdict then but in today's age I'm sure it would. Really? Yeah. So the jury I think they all sympathized with

Sarah but it's the fact that they could not say that she didn't know what she was doing because she was not in a mental state. She was mentally going through a lot, but she knew what she was doing. It was first degree. It was pre-meditated, it was planned. The jury foreman also stated that they had no idea that them finding her guilty would result in a hard 50 sentence. He said we wanted relaxed sentencing instead of straight incarceration behind bars. We wanted some sort of mental treatment for her. Wow. Even the jury was feeling bad.

In retrospect, he hopes Sarah could have been given a new trial. So a lot of advocates have come together in support of Sarah and they believe what she did is bad and nobody deserves murder but they're trying to get clemency for her, which is like a pardon. So you write to the state governor. She can't get an appeal. She can't get a new trial, but they can write to the governor and say for her, which is like a pardon. So you write to the state governor. She can't get an appeal. She can't get a new trial. But they can write to the governor and say, hey,

can you commute her sentence? Can you show mercy? Can you release her? Can you pardon her? Can you do something? Which none of this is even in the snapped episode. But Megan Stuke, the executive director for the Willow Domestic Violence Center,

wrote long letters to the state governor asking that, I mean, Hal saw a vulnerable teen already suffering so many forms of abuse and violence as a young woman. Hal recognized her vulnerability and prayed on it. He moved her into his home telling her he'd be a father and take care of her. He paid for plastic surgeries

in order to make her into his perfect girl and brag to his friends about how amazing it was to be with a young woman. Hal created lists of debts Sarah could never repay and threatened her with homelessness and financial strife if she left. He controlled her movements, her medications, her mind. A former business associate of Harold

wrote to the state governor, "'Shortly after Mr. Sasko's death, "'I realized the media was portraying him "'as a kindly businessman who opened his home "'to a troubled teenager. "'I called Sarah's attorney to provide "'a different perspective on Mr. Sasko's character,' character, stating that he is not a good person in their opinion. And they stated that they do not condone what Sarah did, but my heart goes out to her each

and every day. A former inmate from prison who shared a cell with Sarah wrote a letter to the state governor and it reads, I want people to know that Sarah has the purest heart of anyone I have ever known. A lot of women in prison, they regret their crime. But they also brag about it. Sarah was never like that. She was very sorry for what she did.

She was not proud at all. She didn't share much or go into much depth about the crime, but she did say that a man made her do things that sexually she did not want to do, that he abused her physically, mentally, and sexually, and she wanted out but she didn't think there was a way out. I just wish people would stop and think about what he must have done for her, for her to have that much hatred, that much anger, that much fear in her heart. She was a young woman, barely. He was much older.

I remember laying in my bunk at night, listening to her cry in her sleep, sobbing. She'd be thrashing and screaming, no, no, no, stop, stop. And she'd be moaning, not like in the movies when someone is dying more like a petrified shuddering Terrified animal she'd be kicking and jerking and at first I tried to wake her up But she wouldn't wake up that went on night after night and I finally gave up because there was nothing I could do I will say Sarah is the one person in my whole prison experience who had the most positive impact on my life And for that I will forever be indebted to her. This inmate is now free.

Sharon Sullivan, a professor and expert on human trafficking said, Sarah's brain wasn't fully developed. She was trapped. She didn't know there were options. She said, I can't even imagine having to deal with that at 18 years old with so little experience of the world. And this is someone who's supposed to love her. Called her his daughter? How creepy is that? Dave Ranney a retired reporter wrote mr. Sasco's actions contributed to his death he was well aware of miss

mclinn's sexual traumas her battles with depression her unexplained mysterious mood changes and her homicidal thoughts yet he continued to provide her with ready access to alcohol and drugs he continued to rape her it is reasonable to ask whether miss mclinn would have killed mr.asko if he had not been raping her two, three, four times a week for almost a year? I believe the answer is no. In Ms. McLyn's case, the state was allowed to portray her as a crazy killer. Her attorney was not allowed to portray Mr. Sasko as a sexual predator. That is an injustice. Sarah's mom is rebuilding her relationship with Sarah in prison and

the saddest part of all of this is Sarah had told her mom the first feeling that she had when she went to prison was At least it kind of feels safe. She would write letters to God trying to process her shame. Sarah is very remorseful for her crime and she works with a program called pooches and pals Sarah is very remorseful for her crime and she works with a program called pooches and pals that helps train dogs for people with physical or visual impairments. Basically she helps train service dogs. She said, I will say that these dogs healed me in a way that I didn't even know I needed healing. They're just amazing. Sarah said she requested non-stop to get her butt

implants removed. She said when I first got incarcerated I asked them to remove them and that in itself was traumatic because I had to go to the doctor the prison doctor and just how it was handled I felt like everyone was just curious I remember one nurse waiting and called another nurse into the room and they both touched me and they did all of that just to tell me no they're not gonna remove it and then later recently I asked again, and I don't know. It's stated in prison that Alyssa and the other alters did have some internal arguments at first that were very intense. They were mad at Alyssa. I think that, um, I just really

hope nobody compares this to the movie Split, because I think even internally, Sarah felt like, look what Alyssa got us into. And it took a lot of therapy and a lot of mental help to realize that even though in that moment it wasn't self-defense, a lot of psychologists see what Sarah did as self-defense. Because do you guys know what battered woman syndrome is? Is when a husband typically beats a wife so much, the wife will typically kill them in their sleep.

And the self-defense is there, but in the eyes of the law, they're like, well, he was asleep, he wasn't trying to kill you, so you can't kill him. They're saying this is a version of that. They're saying that this was self-defense. Now, I think the system has come to realize that, but remember the journalist I was talking about earlier? Which one? The retired journalist that was advocating for Sarah's clemency. Okay. They would have an interview with her, her first prison interview and he just wants to ask the public how is it that she can be tried and convicted without a jury being fully aware of what's going on in that house? How is that not an injustice? The question isn't whether she killed him, it's why.

And if you don't know the answer to that, just ask anyone who counsels women who finds themselves caught up in abusive relationships. They can tell you. Sarah said if she could sit down with the governor right now, she would say, I would say that I'm not that young girl who found herself in a situation of hopelessness, and she had no idea how to deal with it. That I have dedicated myself every day since my incarceration to better myself not only for myself but for my family and the community. I want to continue to give

back and help other young girls who feel just as hopeless. It's the worst feeling you can ever have. You're just held down by complete hopelessness and I just hope my story can touch the heart of someone who feels that. As for mental health wise it is stated that Sarah is doing great. Sarah has returned. The altar of Sarah has returned. Really? Yeah, I don't know if Sarah... there have been conversations that she's been fully integrated, which I know some people don't like that term because again, you don't need a singular identity, but mental health professionals believe Sarah is... she has other alters still,

Alyssa and Vanessa are still there, but she said it's more like I don't feel alone anymore. Less of there's a lot of turmoil. Mental health professionals believe Sarah is very capable of living and maintaining a crime-free and productive life, but her potential release date as of right now is February 1st 2039 but that's if she makes parole which she could very well be denied. When I watched the snapped episode I definitely went in to the court documents feeling very strongly one way when I read some of the court documents the transcripts until I got to the part where the judge transcripts, until i got to the

part where the judge is declining all of these things to be admitted into evidence, i mean it's it feels like the story is much deeper than i ever thought it would be. what are your thoughts? do you think that she's paid her time? do you think she needs more time? do you think that she shouldn't have paid this time in this way? i mean i don't think she ever wanted to be free. I think that they just wanted her to get mental treatment versus prison. What are your thoughts? Or do you think that this is just a big injustice to Harold after the fact? What are your thoughts? Please let me know in the comments and please stay safe and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.