After you’ve been parenting for more than a few years, there’s something you learn.
The way you communicate with your child changes as the child gets older.
When you say something to a toddler, you don’t usually need to provide all the logic and reasoning with it. At that stage they are absorbing information like a sponge, and you’re the primary source of all their new knowledge.
But when they get to the teenage years, it’s a different story. At that point, they might question your advice. So a lot of times, as a parent of a teenager, you might find yourself walking that thin line – you don’t want to just tell them what to do with the “because I said so” logic, because that could just push them farther in the wrong direction. But you also don’t want to see them make a big mistake that could have serious consequences.
That’s kind of the spot Heidi was in, with her daughter Emali.
Emali was with a boy, and Heidi was trying to get her to understand that he was not the one for her. He was controlling and abusive. Emali did realize that eventually, but when she tried to leave, she sadly didn’t make it.
So Heidi is telling the story of her daughter Emali – who she sometimes refers to by her middle name, Renee – so that others might recognize that situation earlier, and get away.
If you have a question or comment for Heidi, she’s in the Facebook group. Come over and join over 7500 other listeners in our amazing discussions – WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
If you’re in an abusive situation, you can call or text for help:
National Domestic Violence Hotline – thehotline.org – 1-800-799-7233 or text to 88788
Heidi created this GoFundMe to help with expenses:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/helping-hands-for-elianna-rebuilding-life-after-tragedy
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/184
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Content warning: this episode includes discussion of domestic violence.
After you’ve been parenting for more than a few years, there’s something you learn.
The way you communicate with your child changes as the child gets older.
When you say something to a toddler, you don’t usually need to provide all the logic and reasoning with it. At that stage they are absorbing information like a sponge, and you’re the primary source of all their new knowledge.
But when they get to the teenage years, it’s a different story. At that point, they might question your advice. So a lot of times, as a parent of a teenager, you might find yourself walking that thin line – you don’t want to just tell them what to do with the “because I said so” logic, because that could just push them farther in the wrong direction. But you also don’t want to see them make a big mistake that could have serious consequences.
That’s kind of the spot Heidi was in, with her daughter Emali.
Emali was with a boy, and Heidi was trying to get her to understand that he was not the one for her. He was controlling and abusive. Emali did realize that eventually, but when she tried to leave, she sadly didn’t make it.
So Heidi is telling the story of her daughter Emali – who she sometimes refers to by her middle name, Renee – so that others might recognize that situation earlier, and get away.
Scott
Heidi loves to talk about her daughter, Emali.
Heidi
She was a fantastic mother. Raising Emali was a lot of fun. She was very strong-willed. When she had something in her head, she had to get to it, she had to get exactly what she was thinking in her brain, and there was no getting her off track. There was no derailing her thought process. She was a young mom. She was 15 when she got pregnant. She was 16 when the baby was born. She had postpartum depression. We got that taken care of. I did allow her to drop out of high school because she had to take care of her mental health and her baby was more important than her education at that point. Then, she ended up going back to school, graduating early, and getting her CNA license. She kicked off her career running with her CNA. She’s worked for Clover and she worked for a CNA agency and she absolutely loved her job. She loved her clients. She loved her patients. She loved her coworkers.
Scott
Then Emali met a boy, Tyson.
Heidi
My first impression of him and his mother was off-putting. Emali wanted to go hang out with him, so I drove her over cause she wasn’t old enough to drive and I wanted to make sure that his mother was home. So I asked to meet her and she just came to the banister of the porch because they had the house that they were living in at the time. You had to walk up probably 20 steps and there was a porch. She came out to the banister of the porch. I introduced myself, she introduced herself. I was like, “All right, just nice to meet you. Just want to make sure that you’re here. I’m going to make sure that your kid doesn’t get my daughter pregnant,” making it like a joke. And she’s like, “Oh, no, they’re good. They’re good. I’m here. I’m working on the computer.” And I was like, “All right.” He didn’t really say anything to me. He just stood there and looked at me.
They’re supposed to go to the apple orchard. I checked her location one time a little bit later, just to kind of check up on her, and she was still at the house. So I texted her and I asked why she was still at the house and she said that they had left to go to the apple orchard but then they had to go back because they had to get milk for his little sister or something. I told her that I didn’t like that, so I wanted her to come home when she was on FaceTime and stuff. So he heard me being upset with her. I was like, “Listen, I told you that you were okay to go do this and you didn’t follow the rules and now I want you to come home. So either I can come get you or he can bring you home.” She’s like, “Well, we’re already in the car, so I’ll just have him bring me home.” Okay, fine.
So he brought her home and he pulled into the end of my driveway. She got out, came into the house, and I instantly had a gut feeling. My stomach turned and I did not like that. When she came inside, I was like, “Where’s Tyson? Why did he drop you off like that?” And she was like, “Oh, well, I don’t know. I asked him to.” The way that she responded to me, I knew that she didn’t ask him to and that she was covering for him already, and I didn’t like that.
Scott
But when Emali got pregnant, did Heidi think it might work out?
Heidi
No, I was hoping that something was going to go south and he was going to ditch her, to be honest, when she got pregnant. She said that she wanted to be with him or whatever. I was really hoping that he was going to back out. Instead, he used the pregnancy and the baby as a means of control.
Scott
And for her new daughter, Emali had chosen the name Elliana years earlier.
Heidi
We did a gender reveal, which she did with her sister. We did invite Tyson to the gender reveal. We did it at our house. We had a barbecue and everything and we had a Facebook live streaming. Of course, he didn’t show up. He gave some type of excuse and why he couldn’t be there, but Emali and Eva did the gender reveal and they found out it was a girl. She was excited and she’s like, “I know what I’m going to name her. It’s going to be Elliana May.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.”
Scott
And even though she was now a mother at a very young age, Emali was a natural.
Heidi
She fell right into it perfectly. Obviously, she was a teenager, she was young, so there were struggles and she did have postpartum. So that was a struggle as well, but she always made sure that Elliana came first and that Elliana was taken care of consistently, whether it was her asking me to take care of her, or she was taking care of her, or she brought her to her sister’s room so she could take a shower. She was always taken care of.
Scott
Early on, Heidi suspected that Emali was being abused.
Heidi
I had always kind of suspected at least some type of emotional abuse because he was always trying to control everything that she was doing. We went to Georgia right after the baby was born to see my family because my grandmother wasn’t doing well. We wanted her to be able to meet Elliana but he was very controlling about, like, how often she was on the phone and he was, like, constantly sending her messages, texting her, and accusing her of things. That was right after the baby was born. That was in July.
It was the end of August, beginning of September. Emali had made plans to go to Popham Beach with her friends and I had the baby. I was going to meet her at Popham Beach with her friends. She was going earlier than I was because I had something that I had to do. She ended up calling me from a police officer’s phone. I answered the phone and she’s like, “Mommy, it’s Emali.”
And I’m like, “What? whose phone are you calling me from?”
And she’s like, “I’m calling you from a police officer’s phone.”
And I was like, “What do you mean? Why are you calling me from a cop’s phone?”
And she’s like, “Well, it’s a long story. I’m at Popham Beach and my friends left and I need you to come get me.”
And I’m like, “Okay…” I tried to get it out of her but she didn’t want to talk. She just asked me to show up, so I drove all the way to Popham. Her knuckles were bright red. She had bruises on her legs. She had bruises on her arms. I asked her what the hell happened and she said that she made plans to go to Popham with her friends and he knew about it and it was fine until she was getting ready to leave. Then, he didn’t want her to go. She said that she told him that she was going anyway because her friends were already on their way and he was telling her, “No, you weren’t going,” so on and so forth and they just got into a physical altercation and he put a pillow over her head and was punching her in the thigh.
I asked her where her phone was and she said he took it from her and he threw it and he wouldn’t let her take it when she left the house. And I was like, “Okay, well, That’s not his phone. You are not his property. He doesn’t get to tell you that you can’t leave, and you don’t even live there.” She just stayed there a lot because it was more of a fight and it was more draining for her to not be there than it was for her to be there.
On the way home, she used my phone to call his mother. Listening to the conversation with his mother, I found out that his mother knew that he had put his hands on my daughter. I took the phone away from Emali and I asked her what the hell she was thinking. The only response that she gave to me was that they were putting their hands on each other. I said, “Self defense doesn’t count as putting your hands on each other. Either way, your son is three times the size of my daughter and you just allowed that to happen.” She just kept asking to talk to Emali and I said, “No, you’re not talking to Emali. You’re talking to me. Emali is 16 years old. You don’t get to talk to her anymore. Now you’re talking to me.”
I was fuming. I was so angry. I went to the courthouse to try to get her to fill out a restraining order. We started to fill out the paperwork and she got upset and she was like, “Mommy, this doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong. I shouldn’t be doing this.” And I was like, “You should be doing this. He put his hands on you. What happens if he gets mad at the baby when she gets older? This is something we have to do.” She refused to talk to the judge and stuff, so I contacted the police and went to his house and I made her get all of her stuff out of the house. His mother was there. Because she was 16, I asked the police officers, “Can I fill out a protection order with her being 16 and keep her away from him?” They said that I could do that. It’s within my rights. However, if she decided to leave me and go to his house, they wouldn’t be able to hold him accountable for breaking the restraining order.”
Scott
So Emali stayed with him and, eventually, they kind of had their own place.
Heidi
His grandparents both passed away and the trailer is going through probate court. So I guess his mother asked him if the two of them could live there for the winter so that the house wouldn’t freeze up and the pipes wouldn’t break and the roof cave in and all that kind of stuff while it was going through probate. When they first moved over there, I would go over quite frequently. I’d bring dinner or I’d bring Elliana home and they’d put her to bed and then I’d leave so that she wouldn’t freak out that I was leaving. But then, for the past six months or so, every time I went there, she’d call me and be like, “Mommy, can you get me McDonald’s? Or mommy, can you bring me this? Or mommy, can you bring me that? Can you come get Ellie or can you drop Ellie off?” Whatever.
She would always meet me outside. Even in the dead middle of winter or snowstorms, it didn’t matter, she’d meet me outside, and this is a girl who hated the cold. I kept asking her, “Why don’t you want me in the house?” And she was like, “Oh, it’s just a little bit messy and I don’t want to deal with it right now. It’s just messy. I don’t want to do it right now.” I think that she wasn’t allowed to have me in the house. I think that he was telling her that he didn’t want me there but she still had to keep me to some degree because I’m her mom. She depended on me to take care of Elliana and stuff.
Scott
But what frustrated Emali is that Tyson would never allow her to go anywhere.
Heidi
The most recent time was when she made plans to go to the trampoline park with one of her friends. It was great until that day. They were leaving at 12.30. He woke up at nine and she’s like, “Hey, don’t forget. I’m going to the trampoline park with Chloe.” The girl’s name was Chloe. And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” It was on a weekend so the fuel company wasn’t open. Because they had run out of heating fuel, he was like, “It’s fine. I just got to go to the store and get some K1 before you leave.” And she’s like, “Okay, well, it’s 9 o’clock. I’m not leaving for three and a half more hours.” And he’s like, “Okay, that’s fine. Just remind me that I got to go.” And she’s like, “Why don’t you just go get in the shower and go now so I don’t have to remind you?”
Then, 10 o’clock rolls around. He still hasn’t gone. She’s like, “Hey, don’t forget. I’m going to the trampoline park with Chloe today.” We’re leaving at 12.30. He’s like, “Yeah. Don’t forget, I still have to go get fuel.” And she’s like, “Yeah, you’ve been awake for an hour and you haven’t gone.” They only had one vehicle. 11 o’clock rolls around. And she’s like, “I’m leaving in an hour and a half.” And he’s like, “Okay, I still got to go get fuel.” And she’s like, “Okay, you’ve been up for two hours. Go get fuel. Well, I don’t know what you’re doing.”
So then 12 o’clock rose around and she’s going to leave in a half an hour. She’s like, “Are you going to go get fuel? Because I got to leave. I’m leaving in 30 minutes. I have to meet Chloe at 1.” Then it was this big, long, knock down, drag-out fight. There were yelling and screaming. She had called me that day to come pick up the baby because she was just exhausted after trying to fight for the right to leave the house. She just wanted to go to bed.
Scott
That was one of the final tipping points. Heidi explained to Emali that this is narcissistic controlling behavior that she doesn’t have to put up with and Emali finally started to realize it herself.
Heidi
She’s like, “Yeah, I know mommy. I want to get out. I want to leave. We can’t stay in this house all the time. I look like an idiot because I’m making these plans with people and then I have to turn around and make some bullshit excuse because I don’t want to make myself look bad but I don’t want to make myself look worse by making it known that I’m being controlled by some dude. So I have to come up with some excuse. I have to lie to my friends and I just don’t like it. I want to be able to go out and have fun. I want to watch Elliana have fun and grow and make friends and I can’t.”
Then she decided that she was going to take a weekend. She stayed here for the weekend and he blew up her phone. She had a friend come over and they hung out for a while. Somebody that she hadn’t talked to for quite some time. That was the first weekend that she was back here. And then she ended up going back over there because he was blowing up her phone. He was like, “I promise I’m going to get a job. I have an interview on Monday.”
Scott
But somehow the interviews, if they even actually happened, never resulted in a job. So, one Monday morning, Emali got out of the house for a bit and called Heidi and they formed a plan for her to leave, and the plan involved Emali’s sister.
Heidi
She said, “Well, I have to work today and I have to work tomorrow, but I have Wednesday off. So on Wednesday, I’ll take Elliana to daycare and then I’ll go back to the house and I’ll pack up all our stuff and I will move home.” So Emali and Eva were talking to their father about staying at his house in Sabattus and paying him mortgage and stuff like that. That way, they had their own place and they could kind of live like adults but still have their parents as their cushion if they needed it and it would have just made sense. That was the whole plan.
Emali’s father was okay with it as long as the girls could prove their financial ability to pay the mortgage and pay the light bill and that kind of thing and as long as Tyson didn’t live there. That was the plan for her to move in here. Then, once the Sabattus house was completely– cause he had other people living there once they were out and it was ready for the girls, the girls are going to move in. So on Wednesday morning, she was supposed to be getting her stuff together, getting it ready to come home, and then come home.
Scott
And you were supposed to pick up Ellie from daycare?
Heidi
Initially, because I knew him enough to know what he was going to try to pull with her, I didn’t offer to pick up Elliana because the plan was for her to drop Elliana off, go back to Minot, get their stuff, and have their stuff done and picked up before Elliana had to get picked up for daycare. I told her that I had to work. I mean, I could have gotten out earlier, which I did because I ended up picking up Elliana. But initially, I told her that I couldn’t get her because I had to work. That was me leaving that as a motivation for her to get her stuff out of the house as soon as possible. She texted me throughout the day and asked me, “Oh, can you get it, Ellie?” So on and so forth. There’s a couple of times I did ignore the text messages because I wanted to, again, keep that motivation for her. If I was busy at work, then she was going to get stressed out enough to hurry and leave some things and go get the baby.
But then, I was in a meeting and she FaceTimed me, and then she FaceTimed me, and then she FaceTimed me. So, finally, I answered FaceTime and I was like, “Honey, what do you need?” And she’s like, “Mommy, I need you to pick up Elliana.”
And I was like, “Honey, I told you I’m working. I can’t pick her up. Why can’t you pick her up? You have the day off. You’re at Tyson’s picking up your stuff. What’s going on? Why can’t you pick?”
And she’s like, “Mom, it’s just taking longer than I thought for me to get my stuff.”
And I was like, “Okay, whatever. Listen, I want you to relax Calm down. I want you to have as much time as you need because you’re making the right decision.
“Yes, I’ll figure it out. I can go get Elliana and then I’ll see you later. I’ll see you when you get home.”
And she’s like, “Okay, thank you so much. It makes me feel so much better.”
I could see her. She had the phone propped up and she was actively going through clothes in the living room and putting them in bags.
Scott
So she was feeling that pressure of she had to get out of there.
Heidi
Yeah. I could have continued to keep the pressure on her and forced her to go get Elliana. That’s not really the kind of person that I am. I knew that leaving was enough of a stress. I could see it in her face and I could see it in her body language and stuff that she was freaking out and I didn’t want her to make the decision of not leaving because I denied going to get Ellie. Eventually, I was like, “Yeah, okay, fine. Just calm down and relax. Just get your stuff. I’ll go get Elliana.” And then that was the last time I heard from her. Well, honestly, that’s where I started to get super emotional because I was on my way to get Elliana and I was at a stoplight and I texted Emali and I–
Elliana has to take a medication at night because she has an issue with her bowels and the only way to get the medication into her and the only way for the medication to work is to get it into her all at one time and it has to be, like, 6-8 ounces of liquid just down the hatch. Getting a two year old to drink that much at one time is almost impossible. So she still has a bubby – a bottle at night with milk with her medication. I didn’t have any more. When Emali left on Sunday, she took Elliana’s last bubby. So I was at a stoplight and I texted her and I said, “Hey, you have her bub.” So that would remind her to grab it. Typically, with those types of things, I would get an immediate response back.
The other thing was that I didn’t leave my job until 5.15. My job is further away from daycare than my house and Emali would always check my location starting at 4.50 to see where I was at. And then if I hadn’t left my house or left my job by five o’clock, she was texting me. So when it was 5.15 and I didn’t get a text message asking where I was, I thought that was a little bit weird. But then I was at a stoplight and I asked her, I said, “You have her bubby.” And I didn’t get a response back. I thought that was super weird because she would have checked my location and said, “Okay, I’ll bring it. But where are you? Why aren’t you at daycare yet? Because it was, like, 5.24.”
I got home and I cooked dinner and I still hadn’t heard from her. I texted her and asked her if she was coming home and I didn’t get anything back. Okay. I texted her again. I was like, “Hello, are you okay? What’s going on?” Obviously, she didn’t answer me. So I started reaching out to her friends and stuff like that when it got 9 or 10 o’clock at night. When she didn’t answer me when I asked her about her bub, in my head, I was like, “What is she doing? Maybe she’s really busy or what have you.” But she didn’t ask me if I brushed Ellianna’s teeth or not, she didn’t ask me what time she went to bed, she didn’t ask me to FaceTime her before she went to bed. She did every single time I had her. It was weird.
Then, her friend went over to the house and she called me and said, “Heidi, something isn’t right.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
And she’s like, “Both of the cars are in the driveway.” because Emali had purchased a vehicle. She said, “Both of the cars are in the driveway. All of the lights are on in the house. The curtains are drawn, so I can’t see anything but the door is locked and nobody’s coming to the door.”
I said, “Well, are you just lightly knocking or are you pounding like a man on the door?”
And she’s like, “I’m pounding and I’m screaming and nobody’s coming to the door. Do you think that I should call the police?”
And I was like, “Well, what does your gut say?”
And she’s like, “My gut tells me that I need to call the police.”
I said, “Okay, hang up the phone and call the police. Emali should have answered my calls, she should have answered my FaceTime, she should have picked up the phone and answered the door. She can be mad, I guess, if the cops show up. If she gets angry that we called the cops, she’ll have to get over it. So Kyra called and did a wellness check but they said that they were going to be a while because they were really busy, so she left. They got to the house around midnight, according to the police officer that I spoke with that gave me the news. He said that when the police went at midnight. There were full sirens in the driveway and flashing lights, they’re on the PA system, they’re pounding on the door but they weren’t able to make contact. But because they were unclear about the owners of the house or what have you – I don’t know the exact legalities behind it – they didn’t force entry.
They called Kyra because Kyra was the one who initially did the wellness check. So they called her back and told her all of this and she called me and told me what they had said and said that the police officers were going to go back and they were going to call her when they did. It was an hour or so after I talked to her when I asked her if she had heard anything and she said, no.
Scott
Did you have any thought about going over there yourself at that point?
Heidi
I did. I wanted to go over there initially anyway but I had the baby. I would have to wake her up and put her in the car. So it made more sense to me to have a friend go over just in case. Say everybody was okay, Emali would have been absolutely fuming that I woke her baby up and put her in the car and drove her over there. I called at 5.50.
Scott
This is the next morning you’re talking about.
Heidi
Correct, yeah. At 5.50, I called the sheriff’s office and I talked to the dispatch. I said, “You guys, my daughter’s friend called the welfare check on her around midnight and you weren’t able to make contact and you’re supposed to go back this morning. I haven’t heard anything. She hasn’t heard anything. I need to know what’s happening. I haven’t heard from her. I haven’t heard from you guys. What’s going on?” So he put me through to an officer and the officer told me what he told me at that point was that he had just got on duty and he read the report from the previous wellness check and he was alarmed at the fact that there was so much happening and they didn’t make contact. Nobody came out.
He’s like, “I’m down the street from the house. I’ve pulled over so I don’t drop our call and I’m waiting for another officer to come meet me here and then we’re going to go try to make contact again. If we don’t make contact, we’ll look into forced entry.” It was hours. I was freaking out. I was calling him. I called my brother. I called Emali’s father. I was hoping that somebody would give me some type of hope, that my gut was wrong because, even though I didn’t know, I’m a mom, so I could feel that something wasn’t right from the time that I texted her that she had her bub. I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t prove it. There’s a mother’s intuition and then there’s going overboard.
I went to work still because what am I going to do? Sit home and stare at the wall? I’m waiting for a phone call from the police or from my daughter or from something. So the only thing that I know how to do is just my job. I still went to work and went about my day. Then, they came in and they gave me the news. I wasn’t driving. I couldn’t drive. I left my car at work and I got in the cruiser with the officer who I had talked to on the phone earlier in the morning and he said that he wasn’t on the side of the road waiting for an officer. He was at the house in full SWAT uniform with a team just about to force entry when my call came in. He walked down to the end of the driveway and shut his radio off so that I wouldn’t hear anything happening and told me the story that he told me, and then he went and forced entry and found them.
Scott
So he came and gave you this news at work? How do you even absorb those words?
Heidi
You don’t. I mean, even now, it’s still not absorbed. When I see her pictures and stuff, there are still so many things that happen. I saw things on Facebook and I was like, “Oh, I want to screenshot– there’s a boy who was, like, obsessed with her when we lived up north and he and his new girlfriend are having a baby or something.” And my immediate intuition was to screenshot it and send it to her. So I screenshot it and sent it to Eva and told her that I instantly wanted to send it to Emali. Even now, I go about my life and I take care of Ellie and I take care of my daughter and my son and my house and I have my job and I’ll see pictures and stuff– as crazy as it sounds, I’ll forget that she’s gone. I’ll go to call her on my way home from work or I’ll send her a text to check on her or something and then I’d be like, “Oh yeah, she’s not going to answer me.” Obviously, I know she’s not here but I just get so into my daily stuff that I just forget and then remembering it just kills me again.
Hearing the news about my daughter taken from me completely broke me. The only thing that I know how to do as a human is to just swallow it and keep going because I can’t wallow in my own self-pity. I have to push forward and speak for her because she’s not here to speak for herself anymore.
The most surreal thing or unreal thing is that his whole argument with her leaving him and the whole guilt that he used on her was that he didn’t want or that it wasn’t fair to Elliana to have to grow up in, like, a split household. That always made her feel bad for the baby because he’s like, “Well, what do you think that Elliana is going to do later on in life when she has two Christmases and two birthdays and we’re arguing over school vacations? Shouldn’t she just have a normal life where both of her parents live together?” That’s how he kept her from leaving for so long. Then, when she finally told me about it, I was like, “Honey, you can live a separated life and have Elliana still be happy. You don’t have to live miserably and live in a house with her potential father just because it’s her potential father. Just to have two parents under one roof doesn’t make a happy child. Love, affection, experiences, and understanding make happy children. Right now, the only people that are allowed to love Elliana are me, you, him, and his mom.” Sometimes, nobody else can be around her because he doesn’t allow her out of the house. And that’s not fair to her.
Scott
The police investigated, what did they determine had actually happened?
Heidi
The only information that I have is– the only thing that they had said was that he shot her in the head and then he turned the gun on himself. When we went to see her at the funeral home, before the funeral, they had done their best to cover up her wound. It just looked like she had bumped her head. We did an open casket at first because we wanted to make sure that everybody could see her and touch her and kiss her and say goodbye because it was so sudden that we didn’t want to take that away from her friends and she had so many people who loved her. Eva went in to see her. She came back out and talked to the funeral director and she was like, “Okay, you have to flat iron her hair and put fake eyelashes on her because she was too bougie.” She was, like, listing all these things that she wanted the funeral home to do to make her look like her.
I sent the kids to Portland to buy her outfit and instead of being like the traditional flower sundress or whatever– apparently, when I spoke to the funeral home, she had too many abrasions on her body to have a lot of exposure. We got her some gray sweatpants, a gray zip-up hoodie, and a pink crop top because that’s what she would have worn anyway. That’s what we had them put her in. I mean, we wanted her to look as normal and as much Emali as possible. The police didn’t give me any details as far as anything that had potentially physically happened before he took her life. The funeral home tried to be as discreet as possible but my assumption based on what the funeral home had stated and the situation is that he beat the hell out of her before he shot her.
Scott
I would imagine that part of what makes this difficult is how senseless it is.
Heidi
Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense because he’s like, “Oh, well, we don’t want Elliana to grow up in a house with parents living separately. Hell, let’s just take both of them away from her.” What?! Why?! Why would you do that?!
Scott
Trying to apply logic to someone who thinks the way he did, there’s no way.
Heidi
No, this guy didn’t just flip a switch and have this thought process and have this way of thinking. He was wired this way and it was ignored and enabled for his entire life. He should have been medicated. He should have been institutionalized. Some type of treatment needed to happen way earlier. Something should have been taken care of. He should have been treated well before he met my daughter.
Scott
You’ve done a couple of things to kind of keep Emali’s memory alive. What are those things?
Heidi
Well, one of the things is she had a tattoo on her bicep that was Elliana’s birth flower. So what I did was I got a tattoo of two flowers on my bicep. One of them is Emali’s birth flower and one of them is Emali’s death flower. I put her name in the stem and then I put the same tattoo that she had on her bicep for Elliana. I put that on my forearm, but there are voids through it so that it’s like wind. So it’s Emali’s birth flower and death flower and then there’s wind coming down and wiping away the tattoo that Emali had on her bicep. And then I have her thumbprint and Eva’s thumbprint together in a heart on my wrist that has her ashes in it. Eva has the same thing. Eva has my thumbprint and Emali’s thumbprint and a heart on her forearm. I have the year 2005 tattooed on the back of my elbow because this past year, on my birthday, Emali went and got a tattoo of 1985 on the back of her elbow, which is the year that I was born, and that was her birthday present to me – her tattoo of my birth year. As silly as it sounds, she sent it to me. I was at work. I had to work a double that day. She sent me a picture of 1985 on the back of her elbow and it made me cry.
Scott
Yeah, you had to be delighted to see that.
Heidi
I was so happy. Even though she was so young, a few years ago, she was scrolling through Facebook and she saw a video of a burial option, which was you take a whole body and it gets put in, like, a pod. You grow a tree out of the pod. She brought it to me and she showed it to me. She’s like, “Mommy, this is what I want to do. If anything ever happens to me, when I’m old and I die, I want to be made into a weeping willow tree.” Nobody ever thinks about what their kid wants when they die. They want to be put to rest. But she was always like– I don’t know. It’s just so crazy that there are so many things that happened throughout the 19 years of her being alive that made me make the decisions that I’ve made.
Maine doesn’t have the option to do a whole-body pod. We do have, like, green cemeteries where we could make a tree or what have you and it’s protected, but they’re very far away from where anybody lives. We split her ashes. We made a living urn, which is something that Maine does offer. We have some of her ashes in one urn that’s going to go into her plot that is in a cemetery. She’s protected there. And then we have some ashes that are in a living urn that we are going to bury with a weeping willow tree across the street from the cemetery that she’s going to be buried at because that’s the house that her father owns. The plan is that we’re going to put her tree in the front yard. Eva is going to be living there. He built her an apartment in the basement. So she’s going to be living at that house for now and she’s going to take care of her sister’s tree along with everybody else. Obviously, she’s got so many friends, so everybody’s going to come help take care of the tree. Then, when Eva’s family is all grown, the house is going to go to Elliana. So Elliana is going to have the house with her mom in the front yard and across the street.
Scott
You’re making it a point to keep Emali’s memory alive and to get this story out there. What’s your incentive for that? Why are you doing that?
Heidi
I can’t allow her to fade away. She wasn’t that type of person. She wasn’t one to kind of be sitting in the background and be forgotten about, so I can’t allow her to be forgotten about. The other part of my motivation is making sure that this doesn’t happen to other people. The huge percentage of Maine homicides are domestic homicides. There are so many different things that can be done to help prevent them from happening and to reduce the high percentage that we have. I’ve heard a couple of different numbers. I’ve heard 49%, I’ve heard 51% of Maine homicides are domestic homicides. If I can save a life using Emali’s story, then I’ve succeeded.
I’ve already saved a life that I know about in New York from Maine. A young lady wrote to me and told me her story and told me that, after she saw my inside interview on YouTube, she packed up her stuff and left before this happened to her. She felt like she was in a similar situation and everything just pinpointed what she was going through. She was pregnant with a baby boy and she wanted to make sure that she got out of her situation before she met the same demise that my daughter did. So I know that I’ve already saved her and that is a success to me. But if I can continue to save lives and raise awareness and get these victims to understand that they’re victims and get them to understand that it’s okay, to stop being embarrassed and stop making excuses, to stand up and hold your head high and keep your voice, don’t let them take it, then that’s my mission. That’s my motivation for empowering these victims.
Scott
And from a practical standpoint, it seems like if the police were involved on the day she was trying to leave, that could have changed everything.
Heidi
It would have. It 100% would have. There’s no way that he would have pulled a gun on her. He wouldn’t have put his hands on her if the police were there.
Scott
That’s a big thing.
Heidi
It is a huge thing. Even if there was another type of person there– If I was there, I don’t know, it probably wouldn’t have changed. My kids probably would have lost their sister and their mom. If it was one of my children– because I had actually told her that my son got out of school early that day so she could go get him to help her. I’m glad that she didn’t because I could have lost two children. But if it was some type of official person, it wouldn’t have ended the way that it ended. Things would have been very different.
However, the reason why the police weren’t there is because of Emali’s fear of getting into trouble because of their living situation because they were living in a trailer that was going through probate court. So she was afraid that she and her assailant would have gotten in trouble for squatting. Obviously, she didn’t want to get in trouble for squatting. She didn’t want him to get in trouble for squatting either for a couple of different reasons. One was because she didn’t want to be the reason for him to technically be homeless because, then, that would have just given him more fuel to continue to treat her poorly and to reach out to her and to make her feel guilty for him not being able to have a relationship with Elliana because he has no place to live, so on and so forth. Two, if he had to go somewhere, he would have gone to his mother’s house which would have put him closer to my house, so she didn’t want that either. She didn’t want to bring his drama here because this was her safe space even though she knew that she would have been safe, even though he would have been closer because I would have called the police, and he knew that and she knew that. She just didn’t want to have to bring anything to that point. She was just trying to take care of it on her own. That’s the thing that a lot of victims do is if there’s any type of illegal activity happening in the house, if their assailant is using drugs or I don’t know, keep illegal reptiles – because that happens sometimes in a house – they don’t want their assailant to get in trouble because, then, it’s their fault because they called the police there. So on and so forth and it just extends their abuse even after they’re out.
What I want to do and what I’m working with the main attorney general’s office is there’s a lady named Regina that I’m spitballing all of my ideas at to try to change processes and possibly create different departments within the police force to help ease the pain of getting these victims out of these situations, even if they’re not technically ready to leave. I don’t want anybody to wait to reach out for help until they’re at a point where they’re just so beaten and battered and backed into a wall that they have to leave to feel like they’re going to survive. In all of the stages of abuse, I want to create more options for people than calling a 1-800 number and speaking with someone. I know that the domestic violence hotline is a huge help, but it’s a lot of numbers to have to dial and it’s still a conversation and a lot of these victims aren’t able to have phone conversations because their assailant is there, and they’re watching, and they’re listening, and they’re paying attention to every single thing because these victims are their property. They’re things. If other people know how they’re behaving and their property is trying to find help, well, that removes their control from them and they don’t allow that to happen.
So I’ve thrown a bunch of ideas at her and she’s bringing it up to the proper channels to see what we can do and how things can be tweaked and how things can be to be set in place, to make it easier for these guys to get help. I’ve also started the process of getting domestic violence license plates just like we have breast cancer license plates and the animal shelter license plates. With our rate of domestic homicides being so high, why hasn’t there been a domestic violence license plate made before now? It blows my mind. How we’ve never done that to raise money, to raise awareness– like, if we have the funds, then we can pay people, we can pay someone to go sit in a house and not be threatening like a police officer, just a regular clothed person that’s armed with a taser or a pepper spray or some type of neutralizing non-deadly weapon to just sit on a couch, sit in a chair in a corner and allow these victims to work out these processes. But how are these people able to get paid for it? Because that’s a big problem. They can’t afford to live and volunteer their time to do those things because there are too many of those situations. So having a paid position, I think, is very vital to start saving lives in the state.
Scott
Yeah, it’s interesting. You doing this is going to be saving lives. Maybe you already have. But the simple thing like the funds from an extra wording on a license plate could also save lives. So, definitely got to get that word out there. And we’ll have links to, like you mentioned, the National Domestic Violence Hotline. They do a lot of good too. There are a lot of different ways, different directions to attack this issue. What’s your favorite memory with Emali?
Heidi
My favorite memory, honestly, is one of the things that I hated the most. I know that sounds crazy but it was the phone calls. I miss the phone calls. I hated waking up at 5.30, 6 o’clock in the morning to my phone ringing. Or it would be a day that I didn’t have Ellie or I had to pick her up at 4.30, 5 o’clock, and I got out of work and I was just relaxing and I’d lay down and take a nap at noon or 1 o’clock and my phone would ring right before I went to fall asleep and she would just want to talk sometimes about super important stuff and she had to hear things from my perspective to make decisions or what have you. Sometimes it was just boredom. She just wanted to have somebody on the phone. There are so many times I was like, “Renee, what do you want?”
“Mommy, I’m pumping gas.”
“Okay. You’re grown. You can pump gas.”
“Well, no. What if I get kidnapped?”
“I promise you, if you FaceTime them the way that you FaceTime me, they will bring you home, honey. You’re going to be okay.” But I’d always stay on the phone with her. I never hung up on her. I never made her feel like she actually really couldn’t call me which is why she called me constantly. But that’s my favorite memory. I know there’s a lot of memories that have happened but that’s definitely my favorite thing. I mean, if we’re talking about one situation, it was watching her give birth and seeing her reaction. Oh, it was amazing. Just being there, supporting her, and just watching her take her baby from the womb was just the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen. That was where I saw her actually. That’s where I saw her change. She went from being a girl to being a woman at 16 years old.
Scott
I appreciate you coming on and telling the story.
Heidi
I appreciate you reaching out, for sure.
Scott
Heidi and I recorded this conversation only about 2 months after Emali had been murdered. Her grief is still very fresh. But she didn’t want to wait. As you heard, Heidi wants to help people recognize the signs of domestic violence and get out before it’s too late.
And there’s a plot twist in this story. Since Emali’s death, Heidi has been taking care of her little girl, Elliana. But someone else has filed to request custody of Elli – and that person is Tyson’s mother. Yes, the mother of the man who killed Emali wants to get Emali’s 2 year old daughter. Of course Heidi is fighting this. The first step is a DNA paternity test to find out if Tyson was even the father. Right now as I record this, that test result has not yet come back.
For Heidi, this will be an expensive battle for custody. If you’d like to help her with this, there’s a GoFundMe set up and I’ll have a link to that in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/184.
And Heidi is in the Facebook group, so if you’d like to ask a question, or drop her a message of encouragement, you can do that at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
If you liked this episode, you might like the episode I did with Bill Mitchell. Bill lost his daughter Kristin to domestic violence, and now he is raising awareness through his book and his podcast called When Dating Hurts. That’s episode 99, titled “Bill got a dreaded phone call”.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And here we are at this week’s Listener Story. If you have a story that you can tell in about 5-10 minutes, send it in! It can be funny, sad, amazing, whatever – just something interesting that happened to you. Record it on your phone and email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This week’s story is from a woman who finally figured out why she was feeling so terrible in Ecuador.
Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.
(Listener story)
A few years ago, I took a trip to the Galapagos Islands. It was all organized through G Adventures, which is a small tour group operator. So all I had to do was get my flights. Because they organized everything, I did not do the kind of research I would normally do for a trip which turned out to be a huge problem. The trip to the Galapagos went well, except for a baby sea lion bumping into my eye mask – something they commonly do to be playful – resulting in a bruise on my nose.
On the way back, I had a 24-hour layover in Quito, which did not happen on the way there. I arrived in the city in the evening and wandered around taking in the sights the next morning with a few people from our group who were also on some layovers. I started to not feel good around lunchtime. My stomach felt off and I had a headache. I felt really tired and a little lightheaded. I rested in the hotel lobby for a few hours, then headed to the airport on my own for my 5.30 flight. I remember feeling really weird in the cab. Even though the driver wasn’t driving fast, things felt like they were rushing past and were a little blurred.
I also started to feel like I couldn’t breathe. Even recounting this right now, I need to stop and take some deep breaths remembering that awful feeling. I would take large gulps of air and my chest would hurt but I would only get a very brief feeling of relief before struggling again. I was dizzy and nauseous. When I got out of the cab, I even wobbled a little bit.
Moving very slowly, I walked into the airport. I felt confused and I had to keep checking my ticket for the airline. I found the line to check in and got into it although still not feeling very sure about it. I sat on my suitcase whenever I could, and I kept struggling to get air. A wave of fatigue came over me and I closed my eyes whenever I could.
I noticed a door to the far left that was clearly only for staff. I wondered if I should go ask for help but I was terrified that I would miss my flight and also just really scared about what could happen. I started to sweat a little bit and I felt my heart racing. When I finally made it to the counter, the agent looked at me a little strangely but she checked me in. Somehow I made it through the airport security and then down to my gate. I just kept telling myself, “Just get to the gate. Just get to the gate. Just get to the gate.” I thought if I could at least do that, if something happened to me, I would be near my flight. It was not a rational thought but it was what I was thinking.
Across from the gate, there was a tiny little restaurant, just a counter where you could order food. I thought maybe I needed to eat something. So, I bought some French fries and I sat and tried to eat them. I could only take a few bites. I then went and bought some water and tried to drink that but that made me feel really nauseous. I can’t remember how long I had to wait for the flight – at least an hour, probably longer. My symptoms didn’t worsen but they didn’t improve either. The worst part was the breathing. I just could not catch my breath. I had never experienced anything like that before.
I went back and forth in my head about asking for help. I knew something was really wrong but the fear of missing the flight home and being stuck there was scarier. I was overwhelmingly tired and slumped in a seat with my eyes closed, which also helped with the dizziness. I told myself to stay calm, that everything would be okay, and that I would be on the plane soon. Finally, it was time to board. I waited until the line was almost gone so that I would not have to stand for too long. I remember gripping my backpack so tight, my hands sweating, swaying a little as I made my way down the ramp to the plane, holding onto the railing.
The confusion had cleared up a little while I was waiting at the gate probably because I didn’t need to think about anything. But when I tried to find my seat, I started to feel confused again, checking and double-checking my boarding pass. The numbers were a little blurred and I stumbled a little as I shuffled down the aisle. “Breathe, just breathe,” I kept telling myself.
I found my seat and settled in. It was then that I realized that the air was blowing, just in general, that hissing sound in the plane, but also from my individual air fan above my head. It felt good, and I felt my lungs expand a little. I tilted my head up and just sucked in that oxygen, noticing that I was feeling better and better. By the time the plane took off, I was feeling almost normal again.
When I could breathe and think clearly, it hit me that it must have been altitude sickness. I asked the flight attendant what the altitude was in Quito, and she said just over 9,000 feet. Had I done my homework, I would have known that and prepared myself knowing how serious altitude sickness can get. I felt both scared and relieved that I’d gotten through it. Had I been there longer than a day, I would definitely have needed to get medical help. I love to travel and I’ve been all over the world, but even if I go through a tour company now, I always Google every single place to check the altitude. Can’t let that experience happen to me again.