Daddy's Little Girl

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1:51I come from a small town. It's a farm community. I think people think, well, you have the right to raise your child how you want. What goes on behind closed doors stays there. That's what we were always told in my family. Whatever goes on here, you better not ever tell anyone. The mystery of what really went on here in this middle-class house in Antwerp, Ohio, is at the heart of an unspeakable crime. A beloved father lies dead. His daughter Mindy, a high school cheerleader, is in jail, awaiting trial for killing him in cold blood. I had said before, you know, out of anger, I could kill him. But I'm not a murderer.

2:43She doesn't deserve to be there. We, myself as a parent, should have saved her. And I didn't. So... Packing up at her Indianapolis home... We'll get up there tonight. I'll take Mindy, her clothes. Mindy's mother, Shirley Bereni, is preparing for the fight of her life. Court starts tomorrow morning. She'll be taking the stand at her daughter's murder trial to explain what happened. She was still daddy's little angel there. To a father-daughter relationship that had once seemed magic. She loved him to death, and he loved her to death. Shirley met her future husband, mechanic Andy Bereni, in high school.

3:23I'd just turned 18, and Andy wasn't quite 17. They married just six weeks later, when Shirley learned she was pregnant with another man's child. You must have felt like he was rescuing you. Well, basically. But after 15 years and three children, the marriage fell apart. I truly believe deep down he loved us. He just didn't know how at all. Depressed and dispirited, Shirley gave up custody of teenagers Steve and Scott and of six-year-old Mindy. He told them that I was the one that wanted to leave, that I didn't love them. Did you want to go live with your dad? Yeah, I did. It was a good life at first.

4:07It wasn't long, Mindy says, before life with the father she adored became a living hell. And he would have me go in his room with him and he would have me massage him first. And things started then. Things started, what do you mean? Like having me touch him and telling me that no one loves me like he does. And how old were you? About eight. And when she rejected him, she says... He just started to hate me almost, I felt like. Her father began abusing her emotionally. What's wrong with you? Why are you so goddamn stupid? You're a whore. You're a slut. You're never going to amount to anything. You make me sick.

4:54Her older brothers eventually left home. Her father remarried. Mindy became a teenager and wanted her freedom. I wanted to go spend the night with my girlfriends and talk to boys on the phone. I guess I wanted to do the things that every other teenager wants to do. That's when, she says, Andy Bereni became impossibly controlling. I got a job at McDonald's, and he kept a log of the odometer. He knew exactly how many miles it was to and from my job. He searched her room and more. He recorded my phone calls. He locked up the phones when he wasn't home. If I was talking on the phone and he didn't like it, He would rip the phone out of the wall and grab me by the neck and choke me, throw me against the wall.

5:42Now 16 years old. I just kept getting worse and worse. Mindy found out she was pregnant. She would later miscarry, but she didn't know that then. How did you think this was going to play out? I thought it would kill me. On the afternoon of September 27, 1995, Mindy came home to discover her father had searched her room again. This time, he had found her ashtray. I just got really scared. He just told me the night before that if he caught me smoking again, it would be the last time. And then I started to think about being pregnant, what he was going to do. It just kind of all built up. She broke into her father's bedroom and took his shotgun.

6:24She was going to kill herself, she says. I went into the bathroom because I figured if I messed up and I didn't kill myself, I didn't want to get in trouble for making a mess on the wall. What stopped you? Every time I got ready to pull the trigger, I just, all I could think of was that I was pregnant. So then I just decided that I couldn't. But before she had a chance to put the gun back, Mindy says, her father came home from work. Right when he opened the door, he hollered, where the hell are you? I just got really scared, really angry. I just screamed at myself to stop, but I couldn't. The next thing I remember is him turning around and looking at me.

7:09I just thought, oh my God, Dad, I'm sorry.

7:14Mindy Perini insists she killed her father in self-defense. To convince a jury of that, she will use the risky and rarely successful battered child defense. She'll claim physical, but especially emotional abuse. abuse that left her in such terror of her father that one look from him that night sent her over the edge. She killed her father she shot him but she didn't murder him. Mindy's attorney Larry DeLabio. What would you call this? Self-defense pure and simple. At that particular time in her mind there was a perception of imminent danger of fear. But a huge problem for the defense is that Mindy told no one, not one soul, about the abuse until after the killing.

8:01Nobody's known about it until now. She didn't tell anyone. She never told anybody. I was scared. I didn't trust anyone. Why didn't we see something wrong even there compared to what she used to be? In hindsight, Shirley clearly remembers her daughter's cries for help. She'd called me. She said, Mom, you're not listening to me. I mean, clear as a bell, you're not listening to me. I can't take this. And I said, okay, Mindy, we'll get help. But nothing Mindy told her mother came close to the abuse she now describes. She would say, he yells at me all the time. He won't let me do anything, that kind of thing.

8:39But other than that, no. Looking back, Shirley says she should have understood what really was going on. I should have known. I was just stupid. Because she says she experienced exactly the same kind of abuse at the hands of her ex-husband. He used intimidation, threats, and violence to control you. Did he physically beat you? He didn't beat me. He would choke me, slam me against the wall. You can get beat and the pain goes away. It takes you years and years to get over somebody making you feel like you don't want to live. She left her three children with him because she says she had no choice.

9:20I was afraid of him. She never dreamed Mindy would become his next target. I never believed that he would do it to her too because she was his little princess. There's no excuse for me leaving her there. Can you ever stop blaming yourself? Maybe when she's home. Maybe. She was just as afraid as I was. So she understands my fear and I understand hers. An earlier trial ended in a mistrial, so this time Shirley will have her last chance to fight for her daughter's life in court. I really believe in two to three weeks Mindy will be home where she belongs. It's a heart-wrenching tale, but is any of it true?

10:07He was a great father. He wasn't a child abuser. Andy's family tells a totally different story. You see, she was just lying all the time. Running away. Of an out-of-control teenager who cut down her father in cold blood. There are people you are told to trust. Lawyers, teachers, especially doctors. But what happens when you put your life in someone's hands and they betray you? The hit podcast, Dr. Death, is back. And this season is unlike any other. Dr. Death the Cowboy is the story of a charming neurosurgeon who rode into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients he promised to heal.

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11:56I feel for Andy still today. I go to the cemetery and feel like I have to apologize to him for what's happening to his name. I feel he's seeing this going on. Did he spend much time down here? Oh, yeah. Summertime was river life. It's been four years since Andy Barini died. Andy knew where every rock was in the river. But his second wife, Joni, still cherishes every memory with every glimpse of the river behind their house. We had a pontoon. The weekends we'd go on the pontoon. When Mindy'd go, he'd pull her on a tube and she'd go tubing in the river. They married in 1992. Joni helped raise Mindy from the time she was eight.

12:49She was a sweet little girl. I loved her as my own. And Joni says that as the only other person actually in the house watching it all unfold, only she knows the true relationship between Mindy and Andy Barani. He was a great father. He was not a child abuser. That is the issue here. Right. And that is definitely not a true statement. She says Andy was nothing like the monster Mindy and her mother described. Andy was a strict parent, but he was not an abusive parent. Lady, you ask almost 99 % of the people that knew Andy, and I would bet you anything that you would not find one man that says anything against Andy.

13:34Andy's parents, Bill and Ruby, live just two doors away. Looks like rain coming in, don't it? And would frequently drop by the house. And here. Now, this is Mindy. What do you think of when you see this picture today? Sadness. that just remind me of what Mindy was and what Mindy is. The sweet little girl that Mindy used to be was replaced overnight, they say, by a teenager they hardly knew. You have to realize what kind of a girl you're working with. She's not an ordinary teenager. No way. Mindy's grandparents and her aunt Linda Koss describe a 16-year-old headed for disaster. You see, she was just lying all the time.

14:17Doing drugs, running out of the house, running away. Stealing his car. And a father desperately trying to save her. He was protecting her from the consequences of her own actions. That's the reason, Joni says, for the strict rules Andy imposed on his daughter. She says he locked up the phones. Yes, he did do that. She was calling friends in Indianapolis and making arrangements to run away. Check the odometer on the car. And yes, he did that after she had skipped work one day. Go through her room looking for things. He would look for cigarettes. He didn't like her smoking. In the months leading up to the killing, Joni kept a diary chronicling Mindy's misbehavior.

15:00Quite a bit in there. Many times that she snuck out of the house, drinking and just the lying on where she was going and who she was with. Go ahead, break the rules and have some fun. It was to the point where you didn't believe a word that she even said. She was completely out of control. I became afraid of her. She was, the way she talked to her dad, she was so mean to him. It was just tearing his heart apart. Yet in all those years, Joni says, she only saw Andy lose his temper once. She called him a very bad name, which he flew hot and he grabbed her by the throat. But that was the only time that he ever touched her.

15:39And as far as emotional abuse, in terms of calling her names, belittling her, telling her she was worth nothing? That was not true. As for any sexual abuse, did she tell you any of that? No, and I do not believe it. Joni, your testimony in this is so important because there were just the two of you in that house. Right. The jury is going to look at this and determine that one or the other of you is lying. Right. And it's her. It was Joni who walked in on a distraught Mindy that night. I walked into Mindy with a gun to her head. The first thing she said was, I shot Daddy's dead. She says her first thought was to get the gun out of Mindy's hand.

16:23I convinced her to go out in the kitchen and sit down and smoke a cigarette. Andy's body lay just a few feet away. Did you realize he was dead? There was twice I had seen him. The first time I'd seen the pool of blood, and then the next time he hadn't moved. So, yeah, I knew then. She finally got Mindy into the car unarmed and drove to the sheriff's department where Mindy tearfully confessed.

17:07The next day, Ruby Verrani did something perhaps only a mother could do. She cleaned up her son's blood. It was the last thing I could do for him. Not to have strangers in here, but for me to do that. Now the close-knit family that once counted Mindy among its own will face off against her in court, convinced that this was murder, pure and simple. Do you believe that she actually sat down and planned it ahead of time? Oh, sure. I think she planned it. I absolutely think she knew what she was going to do. She shows no remorse. You can't be sorry and tell lies at the same time. For her to murder him and then come back and do this, like murdering him a second time, it's hard.

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20:29Who is the abused? Who is the abuser? Who is the criminal? Who is the victim? Hold the corridors on two. That's clear. All right. It's day one of Mindy Barani's murder trial in Lima, Ohio. Yes, sir, can I help you? Larry Delavio, Mindy Barani's lawyer. And her lawyer is feeling the pressure. She's a good kid. She should be out. She doesn't deserve to be in jail. But 20-year-old Mindy faces life in prison, unless a jury believes her risky defense, that she was a battered child. Sleep last night? Battered not just physically, but emotionally. We're just going to tell him the facts. We're going to tell him the truth.

21:17Battered until at 16, she had no choice but to kill her father, Andy. If I had said, Dad, I need your help, I'm pregnant, he would have killed me or he would have beaten me very badly that day. So you think you did the only thing? Yes. She must realize what she has done. It's the most heinous act. Andy's family and his second wife, Joni, hope the jury will see Mindy as they now do, as a calculating killer with a story concocted to get away with murder. Before the trial begins, Mindy and her main ally, her mother Shirley, meet in a private back room.

22:08The counsel for the state may make his opening statement. Ladies and gentlemen. State prosecutor Joseph Burkhardt. Mindy Burrini is guilty of aggravated murder, and there's no legal excuse for her to walk away from this crime. Mindy's story, he says, is pure fabrication. This is a poem that Mindy wrote, and on the bottom there's a knife with a heart, and there's blood dripping off the knife. This is what Mindy's thoughts were. This is truly who Mindy was. She planned this murder, he insists, from the moment she broke into Andy's bedroom to steal the gun. This is Andy Barney's master bedroom. If indeed she intended to kill herself, Burkhart wonders why then she went to the kitchen bathroom.

22:55Rather than going to this bathroom, which is located next to the master bedroom, She traveled across the house here to this small bathroom located off the kitchen. And that's where she sat for about an hour before her father came home. That bathroom was the perfect spot, the prosecutor says, for Mindy to lie in wait. Mindy is in here. Correct. Andy comes through this door. Yes. Document handy with Ben Marcus States exhibit. In court, Burkhardt also highlights how Mindy's claim of self-defense makes no sense given how Andy Bereni died. The cause of death was the shotgun's last to the left back.

23:35Mindy shot her father in the back. We have a man that's standing 40 feet away. We have a teenager in the middle of the room with a shotgun. There's no confrontation, no verbal exchange, no physical exchange prior to the shooting. But jurors can buy the prosecution scenario and still not convict if they accept the battered child theory, if they really believe Mindy feared for her very life. The thing that's real critical is what did Mindy perceive was happening at the time that she shot her father? She says she was terrified. No. She said that she was totally pissed. She said that she was mad. She was angry.

24:14Remember this?

24:20Fear has never come into the equation until much later, when all of a sudden, oh, I was fearful of my father. Raise your right hand. After two days, the prosecution wraps up its case. She solemnly swears the testimony. With testimony from Mindy's stepmother, Joni, who concurs. Mindy would go toe-to-toe in arguments with her father. The defense has a lot of work ahead. Burkherr said he wanted to argue it. Hopefully we can show that Andy was the aggressor, that Andy created the confrontation. Hopefully the jury will see that. The next day... I'm a nervous wreck. What's riding on this, tell me? My daughter's life.

24:57At this time, defense would call Shirley Barini. My biggest fear is that I'm not going to be able to get through to the jury. Shirley testifies that during their marriage, Andy was violent and abusive to her and their two sons. Our normal humiliation and verbal beating place was at the kitchen table. He would make us sit there for hours, and I mean hours. But he never turned his wrath on Mindy. By age 15, however... She called me crying and said, Please, Mom, please, I can't take this anymore. Did she ever tell you anything specific about any bad things that Andy was doing to her at that time?

25:39No. So Shirley left her there. She made one comment. Please don't do this to me, Mom. But you did? Yes. After that, DeLabio says Mindy fell apart. She was diagnosed as depressed, suicidal, and homicidal. She spent nine days in a hospital, but still told no one about the abuse. The fear of going back there anyway and then having told everyone just far outweighed the risk of telling and maybe I wouldn't have to go back. So doctors released her to the one person she was trying to escape, her father. It was like a turning point for me. I just didn't care about myself anymore. That's when, DeLavio says, her drinking and drug use escalated, and she was running away.

26:30The last time I tried to run away is when social services became involved. Social services in the person of child abuse investigator Laura Alvarado. Our agency received a call from a father who was upset and was having some problems with his daughter. But when Alvarado interviewed her, she sided with Mindy. I didn't feel the child was an unruly child. I felt that the child was troubled by what was going on in the home. In your investigation, did you see signs of physical or emotional abuse? Emotional abuse. Again, Mindy pleaded for help. She said, if my mother doesn't want me and doesn't want anything to do with me, then I'm willing to go to a military school, a foster home.

27:14But Mindy was a minor, and what to do was Andy's decision. A week before the killing, when Alvarado saw Mindy for the last time. She just didn't open up as much, and it was like she had just given up and she was not disclosing anymore. Thank you very much. I have no further questions. Because, says DeLobbio, Mindy by then had given up hope. As he heads out to the jail two nights later, Big day, important day tomorrow. he must make sure she doesn't lose hope again. Mindy's credibility is going to be big tomorrow. It's going to mean a lot. The jury sees her. Mindy will testify tomorrow. I have nothing to lie about.