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

26:03And 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 alter 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.

26:38And 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 altar comes about is generally for protection it's never like oh i just have like a serial killer altar that is crazy that's 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 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.

27:56This 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 going to 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.

28:33And 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 is sharing this story, saying how much Sarah loved her dad. to Sarah's psychologist. Oh, okay. And Sarah's psychologist was 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.

29:09She 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 on 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 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 he's old he's described as crabby.

29:50He 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 and 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.

30:21He's going to 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 going to be you next. If you tell anybody anything, this is going to be you.

31:03And 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 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.

31:42She 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.

32:23Sarah'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 McLenn. 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 try knocking on the front door. Nothing. They try 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.

33:01I'm sure they've got a list of reasons, but the police force 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, bedsheets 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 r e e d o m freedom the most popular item at cc's pizzas 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 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.

34:27And on top of that, the owner, Harold Sasko. So he's the owner of three CC's pizza franchises. He's not like the owner of the CC'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.

35:06He kind of feels more like a business mentor than a boss. And Harold could just see from a mile away that Sarah McLenn 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.

35:43She 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 mentor, like a father figure.

36:23You 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.

37:03At least 20 times, he visited a website that feature 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.

37:38They 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.

38:10Which, 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 that's crazy 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 a loan but he really didn't even have to do that for her who loans someone six thousand dollars 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 for a 17 girl it probably feels like six million dollars you know what i mean 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 six thousand dollars at 17 yeah 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.

40:24Ashley 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.

41:18Places 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 or 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 going to keep them safe and alive for a few days. They're buying survival knives, her and Harold. survival skills are going to 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 the sister 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.

42:15But 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 like just a fake name. Yeah. And regardless, before Ashley can 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.

43:15Decides 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.

43:49If 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's 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 going to be OK, if he's in trouble, if he's even alive, if he's abandoning them.

44:33But they can't go talk to their mom about it since she's on the phone and sent 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.

45:17When Ashley meets Harold, he seems nice enough. He talks about how he's Christian and Sarah told her that he was going to 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?

45:53And 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 sunburnt 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.

46:27So 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 it. This is not a normal father-daughter relationship photo. It just rubs Ashley the wrong way.

47:02enough 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 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.

47:59I 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.

48:52Wait, 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 It disgusted her, but what can she do?

49:51She 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 saying 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.

50:26He 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 going to 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 going to 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.

51:02Sarah's very first boyfriend, she's thinking this is going to 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 want to 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?

51:36He 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 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.

52:16And 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 what allegedly her mom would half joke that Sarah's a slut now. And 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.

52:53And 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.

53:32Wow. 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.

54:08She 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 going to 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 because 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 like 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.

55:19And if we take that out of the equation, this is, it just psychologically makes a lot of sense. A lot of experts are like, this just, this, it's not far-fetched. It doesn't feel like someone made it up. Yeah, even without DID, just look at what happened to someone. Imagine that type of trauma to anybody. Like what, you know. 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.

56:11He 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 to demanding more and more from Sarah is how she puts it.

56:43She 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 nonstop. 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 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 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 going to focus on that and not anything else.

58:07AKA 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 going to happen to her. He won't stop talking about the butt implants. And she feels like, fine, if I get it, he's going to 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.

58:41Sarah 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 six thousand dollars for the nose job ten thousand dollars 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.

59:52And 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 and beyond. She has sporadic hours, does not really get the best pay. Her last paycheck from bed, bath and 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.

1:00:34After 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.

1:01:10She 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.

1:01:47Sarah 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.

1:02:22Sometimes 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 her 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.

1:03:02She's the more compassionate alter, 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. Wow. 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.

1:03:42So 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 going to 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 going to 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 abuse 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.

1:04:47She 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.

1:05:25Because if you hate something, you're not going to 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 alter. I don't know if it's type, but categorization of alter. 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.

1:06:14Younger, 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 altars will tell Dr.

1:06:58H 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.

1:07:41Now Alyssa 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 so that she can just cut me out? Like, how does she think that she's going to 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.

1:08:17It'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 McLenn talks about the crime that she commits, she's very cold, very blunt, almost to the point of sounding like Cassandra Bjork. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People believe that that is Alyssa 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 alissa 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 talk to the walled off altars they had no idea what the other alters have said.

1:09:17And 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.

1:09:58Vanessa wants to self-exit soon. Alyssa realizes that is what Vanessa is planning and she's not going to 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 Cece's Pizza had come over to Sarah and Harold's house and he's friends with Harold.

1:10:38I 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 yeah 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 um 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 cc's pizzas but he's just over to hang out.

1:12:00He walks over to the dining room and there's this box sitting on the table. It's a cardboard box. It's closed. And every 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 going to clean it and cook it? He watches Sarah bring 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.

1:12:35And 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 durable 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 torturing animals.

1:13:22She 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.

1:13:53And 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 want to kill it and I want to 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 to three minutes. So I don't know. Those who knew Sarah said, none of this makes sense.

1:14:30Sarah has 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 writing 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.

1:15:06When 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 want to 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. 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.

1:15:38She'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 ax. And those visions were back. But this time that unknown man was now Harold Sasko. January 11th, 2014, Sarah logs onto her computer and asks Google, why do I feel so differently from everyone else?

1:16:16She 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.

1:16:48It 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 and 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 say her when he's drunk there's no more time left either she does it now or she's going to get S8 is what she says, right?

1:17:55Now, 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.

1:18:36Then 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 ambient 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's 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 wrist 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 uh sarah later tells her doctor that something in that moaning sound um all of this up until this point was alissa 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 alissa does not want this alissa would later tell the doctor i was not going to let her do that she gains control and reties his hands and his ankles takes the knife before Vanessa can do anything about it.

1:20:09She 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.

1:20:44She 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 ax 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.

1:21:20so 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 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 ribcage 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 um 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.

1:23:29They 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 axe, 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 two thousand dollars in cash and weed. Sarah was immediately placed into custody and is brought into an interrogation room now we only have three 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 beorge 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 ask her Sarah, how long have you had planned to kill Hal?

1:24:25Um, 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. Um, 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.

1:24:58I 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. 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.

1:25:31It'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 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.

1:26:13Sarah 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?

1:26:43And 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.

1:27:17Then 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.

1:27:47Harold'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 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 in fact it 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.

1:29:11But 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 argue 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.

1:30:05She 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 going to 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.

1:30:36She was looking up things, bold 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.

1:31:07They 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 bed sheets off of 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.

1:31:39She 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 wow 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.

1:32:21Harold'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.

1:32:52But 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 is 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, like you get a diagnosis, you get the opposite.

1:33:29People 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 um 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.

1:34:14Sarah 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.

1:34:50They do not condone what she did. They said murder is bad. Nobody condones that. However, they don't think that she's this crazed evil killer that just wants to kill Harold for curiosity. Some also argue 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.

1:35:25Writing 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 all right. 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 kind of always see how people react after math, right?

1:35:59Some people, they flee, 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 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 um 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 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 1500 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.

1:38:09In 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. 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.

1:38:47Insinuating 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, and 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 under age, 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.

1:39:27That even just a few days before he was killed, she had been talking to the girl's school guidance counselor about filing a no contact order against him. Wow. 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.

1:39:55He 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, quote, my 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.

1:40:24He 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 On 20 occasions, he visited websites that featured men fondling or having intimate relations with women who appear to be sleeping.

1:41:04None 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 going to 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?

1:41:39Why 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. 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 was a different person inside of Sarah's body.

1:42:12It 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, or 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.

1:42:52Sarah'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.

1:43:28During 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 and spending, sex and substance abuse, rapid mood swings.

1:44:07She 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.

1:44:42her 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.

1:45:29Sarah 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 going to get worse and worse, and then it's going to 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.

1:46:04Sarah 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 going to 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 foreman 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 foreman 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 sympathize 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.

1:47:03She was mentally going through a lot, but she knew what she was doing. It was first degree. It was premeditated. It was planned. Wow. 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 hoped 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.

1:47:42So 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 preyed on it. He moved her into his home, telling her he'd be a father and take care of her.

1:48:15He 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.

1:48:44Sasko's 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've 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.

1:49:23I 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's 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.

1:49:59I 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. Sasko's actions contributed to his death.

1:50:31He was well aware of Miss McLean'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 McLean would have killed Mr. Sasko 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. Micklin'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.

1:51:06And 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 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 nonstop to get her butt implants removed.

1:51:41She 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 going to remove it and then later, recently, I just asked again and I don't know. It 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.

1:52:15I 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 um 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.

1:53:43That 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 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.

1:54:41But 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. Wow. 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 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?

1:55:25I 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 herald after the fact what are your thoughts please let me know in the comments and please stay safe and i'll see you in next one bye