This is Ella Lee.
And we bought this movie camera so we can
take movies of her and Paris.
Here, Ella.
Santa Claus brought you a bracelet.
It says "Ella."
Ella.
There we go.
Let's show Mama.
Look, it says "Ella."
Hey mom, you need to open one.
- Is that for me? - Yeah.
OK.
Cool.
Open this one, Ella.
Paris, hold your video game up.
It was February 4, 2007.
I had to work Saturday, and then I had
to go back to work on Sunday.
It was Super Bowl Sunday. I hate football.
Around midnight, the cops were at the front door.
They went to the manager's office.
They called my name.
They told me that my daughter had been hurt.
And I was like, you need to take me to Ella now.
And they were like, you can't go.
And I'm like, what do you mean I can't go?
You just told me that she's hurt.
She needs her mother.
And then they said, well, she's dead.
That made no sense because I left her
at home with her brother and a babysitter.
And so I said, is my son OK?
And they said, we have him.
Then where is he?
That's when everything stopped making sense.
Abilene 911.
Hello?
Abilene 911. Go ahead.
I I accidentally...
I accidentally killed somebody.
You think you killed somebody?
No, I know I did.
My sister.
OK, where's your sister now?
She's in the bed.
Is she breathing?
No.
I... I feel so messed up.
OK, calm down, OK?
I want you to stay on the phone with me, OK?
Now what your sister's name?
Her name is Ella, Ella Bennett.
How old is Ella?
Four.
She's four years old?
Yes.
How old are you?
13.
Is she bleeding anywhere?
Yes, she's bleeding all over the bed
because I stabbed her.
What did you stab her with?
A knife.
OK, where'd you stab her?
Um, lots of places.
OK, Paris, where's the knife?
It's on the bed with her.
I didn't mean to.
I know, Paris.
OK, I want you to stay calm for me, OK?
I was...
OK, listen to me.
Paris.
Paris?
Four-year-old Ella Bennett was fatally stabbed.
Taken into custody was her 13-year-old brother.
Paris Bennett convinced
his babysitter to go home early while their mom was gone.
He stabbed Ella 17 times.
There was police everywhere,
news trucks, neighbors, the entire street was lit up.
She was in a body bag, of course.
It was zipped up to her chin.
She had blood coming out of her mouth.
She had a very large contusion on her forehead
where she see been punched.
I started screaming that I was sorry that I wasn't there.
They took her away.
Everybody left.
Four hours later, I was sitting in the defense
attorney's office, trying to take care
of the only child I had left.
To be a good mom to Paris, I felt like I was betraying Ella.
And to have said what happened to Ella was wrong,
I would have had to have been a bad mom to Paris.
Paris had positioned himself in a chair
in the very back of the room.
He said, you used to say that you would
never be able to kill anybody unless they
hurt one of your kids.
I bet you didn't think it was going to turn out like this.
So what are you going to do now?
I was 18.
It was totally not in the plan.
But from the minute I found out that I was pregnant,
I immediately fell in love with Paris.
I was a crazy teenager.
By the time I was 17 years old, I was strung out on heroin,
had skipped the 10th grade, and then graduated
high school with honors.
About a year after, I got sober, and I met Paris' dad.
But I was miserable still.
Everybody had been telling me that you
get sober, you get your life together, it'll get better.
Well, it wasn't.
It was just hard without anything
to take the edge off of it.
So I had made a deal with myself that if I'm
not happy in a month, I'm going to overdose.
But when I found out that I was pregnant with Paris,
he saved my life.
It didn't matter anymore how hard everything was.
I knew I had Paris to look forward to.
And I used to tell them that, one of these days,
you're going to have to remind me to tell
you how you saved my life.
13 years later, of course, he destroyed it.
We've got 50 acres between this
and then across over there where the lake
and everything is, big lake.
Hey, girls. How are my girls?
We have chickens, goats, and the horses, dogs, and cats.
We have fresh eggs.
We have a wash bay for our horses.
It's got hot and cold running water so they
don't have to take cold baths.
I owned a trucking company.
I was a US mail contractor.
One of the largest in the United States.
Charity's father helped me get started,
and he was involved with it.
But because of financial reasons,
everything was always owned by me.
All the flowers we planted for Ella.
She loved butterflies.
I was supposed to plant her a butterfly garden that spring.
So every time we see butterflies,
especially the big monarchs, we always say, hey, Ella.
Kiss your sister.
Ella loves her big brother and his toys.
Ella was Ella.
Whereas Paris would walk into a room, and he would be polite,
Ella would announce her arrival.
She would say, I'm Ella, y'all can have fun now.
She was bossy, extremely opinionated.
But very, very loving.
She had it in her mind that we had
to adopt half of her pre-kindergarten class
because they would tell her that they got into a fight
with their mom or something.
Ella fit a very large personality
into a very small body.
Ella, she was a pistol.
She came to stay with me one weekend,
and I guess Charity talked at home about what
she didn't like about me.
So Ella comes out for breakfast, and she
puts her hand on her hip, and she says, well, Mama.
She said, I just wanna tell you.
She said, I love you.
I don't care if my mama hates you, I love you.
And she always said what was ever on her mind.
She just... she brought life into everybody.
I'm horrified about what he did to Ella,
but I never stopped loving Paris.
And I'll never stop loving Charity.
She's still my daughter, much to her chagrin.
I haven't talked to my mom in years.
And contact before that was sketchy at best.
My mom was an extremely beautiful woman.
She's been married 7 times, 8 times.
I can't remember if she has Liz Taylor beat yet or not.
Some of the things I did weren't probably very motherly.
Um, you know, I started drinking some, did some drugs.
I mean I didn't do them in front of her.
I mean, she had nannies.
But um, you know, I probably wasn't there.
I didn't give her all the attention that she wanted.
She seemed to want quite a bit.
Nothing was ever good enough for her.
I often remember thinking that she just really didn't like me.
It wasn't that I didn't approve of her.
It's just that she does, she did things differently
than I would have done them.
You know, I chose to be a mother and to have a life.
And um, later on in life...
She didn't seem to mind at the time, but as she got older,
she seemed to resent the fact that I actually had a life too,
besides just her.
Today, we're going to talk about healthy boundaries.
I want everybody to stand up.
Crystal, tell me something that you're upset or feeling
stressed over right now.
CPS.
Valerie, comfort Crystal.
It'll be OK.
Was that comforting?
Yes.
Really?
The night that Ella died, I made her
a promise that something meaningful
would come out of her death.
I tell myself that it's OK to enjoy life,
but there's always that thought in the back of my mind,
well, Ella's not here to enjoy it with me.
So I set up the ELLA Foundation to prevent
violence by sharing our story.
Focus on the entire dynamic.
We are done.
Next week, we go back to family systems.
The benefits of being single.
After Paris killed his sister, I was
not trying to get Paris off.
I wanted to get Paris help and try
to get my kid into a mental institution,
especially as a minor.
I felt like I needed to figure out what was wrong with him,
not just lock him up and throw away the key.
I offered the DA that I would pay the expense
for a mental institution.
If he needed to stay there for the rest of his life,
then he'd stay there for the rest of his life,
but I wanted him to have help.
His defense attorney wanted not guilty.
What good would that have done Paris?
He wouldn't have been able to come to my home.
I was scared to death of him.
The prosecution wanted to make sure that Paris was given
the maximum sentence possible.
He just gets locked up.
That's it.
I don't think Paris is capable of curing himself.
There are better ways of handling
even somebody like Paris.
Not forget about them.
Not force them to grow up in these violent worlds
that the prisons are.
Somebody should be giving a damn what's
going to happen with that kid.
We are at Paris' lip sync show.
Paris was a ridiculously smart kid.
He has an IQ of 142.
He was always artistic, creative.
He started to draw when he was three.
He was a calm child.
I mean, he would tell lies sometimes, yeah.
He would throw temper tantrums sometimes, yeah.
And Paris was not happy when I was pregnant with Ella.
And I was concerned.
But the day that Ella was born, he fell in love.
Rawr.
Ella absolutely adored Paris.
Anything Paris did, Ella had to do.
Paris would pick her clothes out every day.
He was her fashion consultant, she said.
Hello.
This is Paris Bennett, reporting live.
This is Ella's Ball Pit.
Reporting live at Ella's Ball Pit.
This is the suspect of the dirty diaper,
creating dirty diaper, Ella, Ella Lee Bennett.
I used to have parents come up to me and tell me how lucky I
was that I had a 13-year-old that was
so good with his little sister.
But they quickly changed their opinions about Paris.
You know, that was Abilene.
Abilene is interesting.
It's a world record in the Guinness Book as the most
churches per capita.
There's almost more churches than there are people.
Everyone knows everybody, and everybody talks about everyone.
I remember people discussing what kind of books
did Paris read, and what kind of video games did he play.
But um, I believe Charity got the brunt of that,
because even if it's a book that he's reading, well,
who got him the book?
And even if it's a video game that he's playing, well, who
allowed him to play the game?
Charity took a lot of heat for her situation.
People were very cruel to her.
She'd be in a shop, you're the mother that...
Your son.
It's like that's... there's only one judge, and I'm not it.
What were some of the questions I would get?
Did you know Paris was different?
Were there any warning signs?
Was he abused?
I think people do have a hard time getting their head
around the concept of Paris.
I remember being angry all day long,
and thinking all day long.
I wanted to hurt somebody.
I'm going to snap.
And it wasn't... initially, I thought about the babysitter.
I thought about going down the street
and seeing somebody I knew.
And I thought about hurting a stranger.
I don't remember exactly at what point
I decided it's going to be Ella.
For a few moments, for a few minutes after it happened,
it almost seemed like it was a dream,
like it hadn't just happened.
Because I had left the room and everything, and I was just
hyperventilating.
And then I had walked back in, and I had looked,
and I had seen Ella.
And when I did, it hit me like a punch in the gut
that, no, I really just did that.
And I called 911 because I felt like I needed
to do something about this.
I need... maybe they can do something.
Maybe... maybe it's not too late.
Paris could have been avoided if all of us
had been willing to let go of our own lives a little bit.
Go over there with Ella.
Stand next to Ella.
You ready?
Paris came to live with us for seven months,
and then he went to live with Charity.
They just really lived between homes.
They lived half the time with us and half the time with Charity.
I think I used to be scared of Paris without knowing
that I was truly scared of him.
I knew that I just didn't want to talk to him.
We knew, all of us knew, that there
was something wrong with Paris.
Charity knew, I knew.
From the time Paris was born, he was different.
He was never real sociable.
He was never real affectionate.
Ella, talk to us, Ella.
Talk.
Come on, Ella.
And when Ella was born, he wasn't the center
of the universe anymore.
It seemed like all of a sudden, he couldn't do anything right.
And Ella couldn't do anything wrong.
Yay!
Look at Ella walk.
And I think he really resented that.
- Woo! - Hey.
Bad Ella, bad, bad.
Paris, what is your problem?
Mom, what's your least favorite word?
My what?
Your least favorite word.
Butt crack.
Or sentence.
I don't know.
"Kill Charity's children"?
Paris...
Paris would pound his head against the wall
till it would bleed, or he had thrown
glass all over the place.
I guess he was screeching for help,
but we just didn't pay any attention.
We were so caught up in our own turmoil
that Paris just kinda got left to the wayside.
But I always thought he would take it out on Charity.
I never dreamed he would take it out on Ella.
After Paris' sentencing,
his assessor told me, you deserve to know
that your son is a sociopath.
Happy birthday to you.
And I remember saying, you are wrong.
There has to be a better explanation.
But six months or so after that phone call and things
his caseworkers told me, I started wondering,
is his doctor right?
So I had a psychopath checklist youth
version administered to Paris.
And then re-evaluated by other assessors.
The last person that I contacted was Dr. Park Dietz.
He gave me the number of a risk management firm,
and he told me that I should stop spending so much money
on my son, and I should start spending my money
on changing my identity and hiding for when
my son got out of prison.
But I really don't know if I can walk away from Paris.
There are people who would murder my child just
to make a name for themselves.
I killed the child killer.
Phoenix was born with a very severe heart defect.
There we go.
He ended up having open heart surgery at six days old.
But obviously, he made it because he's still here.
He's on heart medication, and then he had to have
this feeding tube put in.
You're OK.
Shh, love, breathe.
After six years of not having Ella and having Paris
the way that I do, Phoenix reminds me
what it feels like to be happy.
When I first told Paris that Phoenix had a heart defect,
Paris started to cry, like really cry.
And I've never heard Paris cry like that, ever, not over Ella,
not over where he is.
I remember him saying something to the effect of,
after everything I did to you, it's really not fair that...
That you have to go through this again.
Let's find your brother.
It's like playing Where's Waldo, only not really as much fun.
Paris Lee Bennett.
Paris was just transferred to an adult unit.
This is the Texas Department of Criminal Justice web site.
You can look up any inmate you want.
Hello, how may I help you?
My son, Paris Lee, was moved.
How do I go about finding where he is?
What is his number?
01804782.
Paris Bennett.
The number is 936-348-3751.
OK, thank you, ma'am.
She hung up on me.
Imagine that.
It really irritates me when they ask me for his number.
I always make sure to say his name.
He has a name.
The number or code
you have dialed is incorrect.
Please check the number or code and try again.
Three days, I haven't known where he is.
You want to know where your child is.
The longer I don't get information,
the more I begin to wonder if anything has happened to him.
Has he been hurt?
TDC, Clemens Unit.
This is Cheyenne. How may I direct your call?
I just called to find out where
my son was transferred to.
OK, what's the TDC number?
01804782.
Paris Lee Bennett.
OK, he's actually at the Ferguson Unit.
All right, thank you so much.
Ferguson.
20 miles northeast of Huntsville.
So yay, if that's where they leave him, he's closer.
"If anyone has a loved one at the Ferguson Unit,
please be advised that your loved one is in grave danger."
"My son got checked by a bunch of guys,
and his eye is now messed up.
The guards don't allow him to see the docs or the nurses.
He has to use toilet water to wash his face."
Shh.
OK.
Shh.
Whenever an offender hits a new unit,
he needs to be able to walk in with his head held high.
So I came into this unit with my head held high
and my back straight.
And anybody I saw in the hallway,
if they made eye contact with me,
I would make eye contact back.
I would maintain it.
But it's delicate, because if you maintain it for too long,
it becomes threatening.
And I just made sure to present myself
as somebody who wasn't a pushover,
because that's what everybody's looking for.
On any unit.
It doesn't matter if it's a good unit or a bad unit.
Everybody's sizing you up the moment you hit the unit.
I was arrested for my crime when I was 13 years old.
I will be 33 years old before I'm eligible for parole.
It's like being raised by Orwell's Big Brother
and Kesey's Nurse Ratched, being raised by them
while living under a rock.
You're always being watched.
You're always being scrutinized.
And not only being scrutinized, but expected
to perform in certain ways.
And there's punishment.
And then it's like living under a rock
because you're not out there experiencing things.
I didn't ever get a driver's license or a first car.
I didn't go to prom or even make it to high school.
I've never had a steady girlfriend.
I've never been to parties.
I've never been stupid and gotten
drunk for that first time.
Just a lot of I guess what you would
call the snapshot moments.
I missed a lot of snapshot moments.
So you really just get passed by by life.
I miss my family.
I miss, I miss the...
I miss the family that I had, that, that I tore apart.
So not only am I... Am I missing it, um, there's
guilt and remorse mixed in with that because not only...
I didn't do something stupid and get locked away,
and that's why I'm missing my family.
I did something that tore my family apart
and took me away from them.
And it's something that I can't fix, ever,
and that's what I miss the most.
Because I wouldn't mind being incarcerated,
knowing that my mom and Ella were coming to visit me.
Do I have a dad?
Do you have a dad?
Yes, child, you have a father.
Everybody has a father.
Do you have a dad?
No, not everybody has a dad.
I didn't have a dad.
I turned out OK.
Do you not have a sugar dad?
Yeah, that's a whole different conversation.
We'll finish that tomorrow.
Can I borrow your bear?
Yeah.
Thank you.
My bear is a pillow.
For now.
Here, hold my owl.
I met Phoenix's father
when Ella died.
But he didn't try to be a parent.
Gandalf, dwarves, and Mr. Baggins.
And I wanted to be a single parent.
And I don't like to negotiate or compromise,
especially when it comes to my kids.
I have been married twice, for less than a year total.
Once to Ella's father, and once to a guy named Brendan.
The only reason I think I married him was
because he was an NCAA swimmer.
He looked really nice not in clothes.
Boy, you could put a drink on that man's butt.
That is one thing my mom and I have in common,
we do not pick decent men.
Paris' father left not long after I got pregnant.
And then when Paris was 17 months old, he showed up,
and it was fairly obvious that something was not right.
His father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia,
with audio and visual hallucinations.
That's me and Ella.
Say...
Ella's father
had problems with alcohol.
Look like your mother.
I got a phone call one day, telling
me that he's in the hospital.
A state trooper pulled him over and asked
him to get out of the car, and he wouldn't do it.
And so the officer reached into the car,
and Ella's father popped the clutch
and drug the state trooper 75 feet up an exit ramp.
And so the officer shot him through the leg.
When I heard that, I was done.
I'm not dragging my children through this.
All right, hold on one second.
We're going to have to remember to...
Paris Lee Bennett.
An offender at Ferguson Unit.
To accept charges, press 1.
To refuse charges, press...
Thank you for using CenturyLink.
You may start the conversation now.
Hey.
Hey, how are you?
I'm good. How are you?
Pretty good.
Looking forward to "Star Wars" tomorrow, so pretty good.
Y'all get to do it?
That's what I'm hearing.
There's a notice posted on the board.
You're excited?
Yeah.
Phoenix, did you like "Star Wars"?
I want to watch it again.
He says he wants to do it again.
I guess that's a yes.
Yes!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Hey, Phoenix.
He's listening.
How about this?
Hey, I will watch it tomorrow.
And tomorrow, you can watch it.
And then we'll talk about it, OK?
It's getting loud. What's going on?
Everyone are watching Olympic tryouts
because it's women's swimming, so I think
you can imagine the appeal.
Yeah, not as much as I can imagine
the appeal of men's swimming.
So what else is up?
I am writing a letter to Phoenix.
It's a really long letter.
Right now, it's like 14 pages typed.
Mommy, I want them.
I want them.
Well, I hear him doing the mommy chant
should I get off and let you...
You have one minute left.
Well, it's up again anyway.
Yeah.
It's all right.
Yeah, we gotta go. We're in the driveway.
I love you.
Love you too.
Phoenix, say bye to your brother.
Bye!
Good night, Phoenix.
The caller has hung up.
I try to keep everything as benign as possible.
I don't want to do anything that's going
to make Paris want to hurt him.
I really believe that part of the motivation behind murdering
Ella was to have his mother all to himself,
and he had that again for eight straight years.
Wah!
So I don't sit and go, wow, this is so nice.
They're getting along so well.
I sit, and I listen to what Paris says,
and I listen to his tone.
There's no warm fuzzies.
When I found out about his heart condition,
I almost felt like it was my fault, in a way.
And I regret that he's going to grow up with me in here,
and knowing me like this.
And I hate that my actions taint the relationship.
But at the same time, I'm so happy to have him.
And I think that he'll get to know me
much better through my letters.
I know that he's not ready yet for some
of the content of the letters, because a lot of times,
I'm writing about prison.
So I asked my mother to just put those letters in a box for him
and gave them to him when he is 12 or 13.
I'm letting the person who killed
my child talk to my child.
And the only reason I'm letting it happen
is because I have forgiven him, and they are related.
But I'm never going to be comfortable with it.
I will never be comfortable with Paris and Phoenix.
Paris tried to stab Charity at the house
one day, so we took him to a psychiatric place up
in Wichita Falls.
Charity wouldn't let me go with her to pick him up.
And I never even found this out until after Ella was murdered,
and we were talking with the police.
But the psychiatrist up there had evaluated Paris,
and they had told Charity that he had homicidal tendencies.
And she didn't leave him in treatment there.
She chose to take him back.
I believe it was November of 2006.
And then Ella died February of 2007.
I feel like even if Paris had stayed at that place,
it wouldn't have helped him.
I don't know.
I can't, I can't spend a whole lot of time
anymore double guessing the past.
And I don't have any regrets except for the fact
that I had relapsed.
When Paris was 12, and Ella was 3 and 1/2,
I relapsed on cocaine.
You want nectarines or plums?
Puh-lums.
Say that again.
I said blums.
P, P for plum.
For about three months,
Paris took up the slack.
I mean, he knew that something was going on,
and he really started to look after his little sister.
I felt betrayed.
I felt neglected.
And really, just a child's selfish thought of,
am I not important enough?
But I don't think that it was theone
reason why I murdered Ella.
My relationship with my grandmother
is not tinged by as much emotion as the one with my mother.
My grandmother's always been a very cold and collected woman.
And I'm the same way.
When I was 29, my husband, Charity's father, was murdered.
Charity was five.
I took her out to my parents house as soon as it happened,
and I told her that her dad had been shot.
The only thing she said was, well, I'm glad it wasn't you, Mama.
Get these people out of here.
About a month after the funeral, the police talked to me.
And um, I was arrested and charged with murder.
My husband was involved with illegality.
His father was part of the Georgia mafia.
And um, through another attorney, they
convinced the DA to take a warrant out
for me for conspiracy to commit murder.
They came up with a black boy that said that I had paid him,
or that he knew that I had paid somebody
that paid him, to murder Bobby.
I spent six weeks in jail, and then I
was on trial for six weeks.
Charity stayed with my mother and father.
Lots of things came out in that trial that just pretty
much threw me for a loop.
But I was acquitted.
I had to work to get my company back on its feet.
I had to fight to keep my contracts with the government.
And I had a child to raise.
And I didn't have time to sit around
and brood over spilt milk.
Charity didn't really know her dad that well.
He was always off, skiing with this girlfriend
or down in Florida with that girlfriend.
It wasn't like he was a daily dad.
She might see him once every three or four weeks.
Never took her to school.
Never gave her a bath.
Never dressed her.
I don't even know that he sat down and had a meal with her.
So I don't think it really affected her.
What affected her was kids would come up and say,
I hear your mommy killed your daddy.
Or you'd be in a grocery store, checking out,
and somebody would say, you're that woman,
did you kill him?
So at her age, I'm sure that was very tough.
My father was involved in auto theft.
And then I believe he had started into drug trafficking.
So what I heard growing up was it was these guys that did it.
It wasn't me.
I was framed.
I believed her.
It wasn't until after Ella died that I really
began to take a second look.
So I went to Georgia and talked to the DA that prosecuted her,
the detectives.
And I ran across the report by the officer
who transported my mother to the station that morning.
And he said, I saw her in the mirror,
and it seemed at times that she was
really pleased with herself.
They even had a napkin where my mother had
drawn a map of the house and marked on there that this door
would be unlocked.
I think he had started doing drugs and getting sloppy.
And I think she felt like her financial security was
threatened, so she eliminated a problem.
And so of course, there's the thought, OK,
so your mom might have killed your dad,
and your son definitely killed your daughter.
You know, where does all of this come from?
Up until Charity was 12 years old,
she was the most wonderful, loving child
that anyone could wish for.
We were inseparable.
And then from 12 on, it's been, it's like an alcoholic.
It's up and down, up and down, up and down.
If she'd get mad at me because I wouldn't
allow her to do something, it was,
well, you murdered my daddy.
So she was a good manipulator.
But we all are.
Paris is.
Ella was.
I would be lying to you if I said that I wasn't.
We all manipulate each other.
We're all spoiled rotten.
My other daughter Khyman, I don't
think she's quite as good.
She didn't have as good a teacher because I
don't do it so much anymore.
I don't have a company to manipulate.
I don't have drivers to manipulate.
And I don't have a jury to manipulate.
So.
My mother was sending Paris really
inappropriate material for a boy in prison
for murdering his sister.
He wanted a science fiction book,
and so I had it sent to him.
And they denied it because inside the book,
there is a picture of a woman, and her breasts are exposed.
But it's just a drawing.
So he says, take the book apart, send me a chapter at a time,
and when you get to the picture with the bare breasts,
he said, tell Khyman just to draw a bra on it.
Let's see... raping women, murdering them,
bludgeoning people to death.
So I went to the authorities, and I'm like,
listen, my mother can talk to Paris, they can write letters,
she can come visit, but no more books.
That's it. No more books.
And that's when I got sued.
She and Paris sued me in 2009.
Paris wanted my parental rights terminated.
And then my mother wanted those same rights for herself.
She wanted to be Paris' guardian.
Paris said that I was not good for him.
He blamed everything on me.
I'd had it.
I pretty much said, you can kiss my fucking ass.
Excuse my language.
What I tell Paris is it's not up to you
to tell me when I stop being your mom.
And if you try to tell me, then you
don't get to decide if I ever get to be your mom again.
I'm done.
She told Paris, if you don't do what I want,
then I will never speak to you again.
And Paris wasn't going to risk not having his mother.
So he dropped his lawsuit.
Abilene 911.
Hello?
Abilene 911. Go ahead.
I...
I accidentally... I accidentally killed somebody.
You think you killed somebody?
No, I know I did.
I woke up, and I was hallucinating.
You were hallucinating?
Yes, and I thought my sister was a demon,
and I killed her.
- I - want you to start CPR, OK?
What I want you to do is take her off the bed and put her...
No, I know for a fact that she's dead.
Do you want to go ahead and try?
It might still help, OK?
No, I don't think it'll help because...
Come on, Paris, work with me.
I know I stabbed her lots of times.
OK, Paris?
Yes?
Take her off the bed and put her
on the floor.
OK, hold on.
Please don't hang up.
I'm not hanging up on you.
I just thought she was a demon.
OK.
OK, she's on the floor,
but I can't save her because she's all bloody and stuff.
No.
Paris, what I want you to do is I want you
to put your hands on her chest.
OK?
And I want you to push 30 times.
I want you to count.
OK.
All the way to 30,
and then blow two breaths in her mouth, OK?
OK.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Paris?
He put it down.
You know, I believed all that.
That he was hallucinating in bed.
I mean, he had a story worked out pretty damn quick,
didn't he?
Quite the actor.
That's not what Paris sounds like when he really cries.
I mean, it's all a lie from start to finish...
What happened, doing CPR, none of it is the truth.
None of it.
She was face down on the floor.
There was no way he could have done CPR.
It's very difficult to love Paris.
It has been in my mind for a while
that I have been able to forgive Paris for the worst thing
imaginable.
And in order to have my own sense of peace,
to have integrity, I need to process through it with my mom.
I would be a hypocrite if I didn't.
When Paris murdered Ella, I lost Charity too.
I lost them all.
I knew Charity was pregnant again because of Facebook.
And I knew she had a child, and I've seen the pictures
because of Facebook.
But I try to think about all the good things that have changed
in my life because of Ella's death,
and that way, I can live with Ella's death.
I mean, Ella made me a more caring person.
She made me realize that I can't always have everything my way.
So if Charity has chosen to blame me or be angry at me,
that's fine.
Whatever she wants to do.
If she ever needs me, I'll be there.
All she has to do is call me and ask me.
Your grandmother says to save her at least one cookie.
OK.
I decided to give my mom the opportunity
to come back into our lives.
We're not the same people we were when this first happened.
And I'm trying to focus on how we're similar as opposed
to how different we are.
There she is.
Yay!
Did you save me a cookie?
Yes.
How you feel?
Good.
Yeah?
Give Grandma the cookie.
Let's give her a cookie.
Yeah.
Should I share it with you?
Yeah.
Phoenix.
Last night, I was telling him, you're part me,
and you're part your dad, and you're part your grandma
too, because I'm part of your grandma.
Without missing a beat, he tells me the back of his feet
are the part of him that he got from his grandma.
His Achilles heal, maybe?
So you're saying he got his weakness from you?
I guess, but nobody will ever know what it is.
Hey, Achilles got killed.
Unfortunately.
By Paris.
OK, on your mark, get set, go.
You can barely run and beat him. He's pulling his pants up.
Paris knows somewhere inside of him that he is dark.
He knows it's not acceptable, but for him, It's not wrong.
OK, it's like when I was shooting heroin.
I hated myself for what I was doing, but I kept doing it,
right?
Because my need for the drug, for that feeling, was like, OK,
I'm just going to bear all of this nastiness
to get that drug, right?
The only time that Paris felt fully himself
was when he was killing Ella.
At that moment, like when I got high for the very first time,
he felt fucking awesome.
I chose to do my crime, and I
accept full responsibility for my crime.
And I wouldn't say that there was a predisposition, what
had happened, I'm not insane, and I don't
suffer from any mental illness.
I'm sure all crazy people say the same thing.
But one thing I accept is that I'm sane,
and that kind of underlies everything.
Now did I have issues?
Yes, I did.
If I didn't have issues, I wouldn't have killed my sister.
Was I well adjusted?
No.
I was a coward. I was passive aggressive.
I lashed out at people who were trying to support me.
And I've always been very disconnected from my emotions.
I've always sat inside my head instead of my heart.
I lied very much about what I had done to absolve myself
from the responsibility for it.
And the lies were shed like articles of clothing.
I didn't just simply stop lying all of a sudden.
I would stop telling one lie, then
I would stop telling another.
And after a while, I had stripped myself bare.
In our family,
this is a trait that all of us share.
Once a decision is made, action will follow.
So I'm moving to Georgia to my mom.
In spite of everything that happened,
I know that what happened to Ella hurt my mom too.
And I'm tired of the history repeating itself.
It's time to try to stop the pattern.
This is a box of Pooh Bear.
He's seen better days.
Paris used to pick him and eat him.
The doctor told me that I had to make Paris stop.
I told him that wasn't going to happen.
And if he wanted him to stop eating Pooh Bear,
he was more than welcome to come try to put him to bed
every night without Pooh Bear.
But Paris always did that.
He'd get like a nervous habit, like when he was little,
and he'd pick things off of you, like little sweater pills.
The board he made me so I would never get lonely.
What's this box? Ella's clothes.
I wish they did still smell like her.
When we first moved to Texas, I built us a big house.
Ella and Paris both had their own rooms, big rooms.
And Ella's room, I painted pink, and her bathroom purple.
And when she saw it, she's like, it should all have been purple.
So I just decided when I did this house that it
was all going to be purple.
'Cause I had told her that we would change the room,
and she died before we painted it purple.
So I painted everything purple.
All right, Miss Ella.
I think Paris had the deck stacked against him.
Charity had lots of problems when she was younger.
And then there was mental illness in the family.
I'm sure that if somebody examined
my innermost thoughts, to a lot of people,
I would not be normal.
I've certainly not lived a normal life.
Come right here, Mommy.
I'm coming.
Hey, why you bring that?
It's Ella.
That's your sister.
I don't think he's a sociopath.
I don't think he'd ever hurt me.
I don't think he'd ever hurt Khyman.
Should Charity be afraid of him?
Maybe.
I tell people in my presentation,
if you don't believe that my son was a sociopath,
the experience of having grown up in prison
is going to force him to become sociopathic
just so he can survive.
- I know. I like you too.
If Paris hurts anybody else when he gets
out, he can blame me, but it's on Texas, because Texas
has had him since he's 13, and they've
done so little to help him.
And it's so obvious that he needs help.
I'm the sort of person who has done the sort of things
that people tend to judge pretty quickly.
And I'm aware that I can't change people's minds about me.
But just because I'm incarcerated doesn't mean
that I'm worthless, doesn't mean that I
don't deserve a second chance.
The things that I did when I was 13
aren't indicative of the man who I am now.
Just because I committed a murder when I was 13
doesn't mean I'm going to get out of here
and commit more murders.
In fact, I'm going to get out of here and prove you all wrong.