REPORTER: Fred Bowen has a gun to his head -- for five hours,
he lies out on a grassy area holding the gun.
TERESA: This is the first time
I'm telling my story, because
I feel that I can help someone else.
PRODUCER: Marker.
TERESA: I wasn't ready for over 20 years to
do what I'm doing today, to talk about it.
REPORTER: Police had tried to negotiate with Bowen
all afternoon -- when talks break down,
police move in.
One of my brothers told me to go ahead and do it.
He told me the past couple of months,
"Don't you ever let no one keep
you from telling your story, it's your story."
The other family members don't know,
but they will when they see this.
REPORTER: First, a flash bang, a puff of smoke,
a distraction -- due to the nature of what happens next,
we will stop the tape here.
I hope they feel what I feel, like, I wanna just be
a family.
That's all I ever asked for.
I hated my father.
I knew that he was a predator.
He was an evil person, because he did evil things.
Only evil is going to do evil.
I didn't ask to be born into this evil spirit that
took place and messed up my family.
Things happened so crazy in my life,
and I'm just not happy about a lot of it,
but I keep pushing forward.
I'm damaged, but I'm -- I have hope
that God will come and change everything.
I'm not a hateful person,
and I will never be my father.
I will never be my father.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
I think it was Freddie that took the picture.
I can't believe it's still here, like...
it was so long ago.
It was my mother and my sisters and brothers and I.
I think we were just all...
about to have d-- I think we were having
a picnic, about to have a picnic in the backyard.
Yeah, I remember this picture.
This is the time where I felt family.
Well, our home was a great big house.
Freddie had eight kids with my mom.
Freddie wanted us to call him Freddie instead of daddy.
I think he wanted to
look younger all the time.
He didn't wanna look like he had so many kids.
Freddie was very well liked in the community.
My father was trying to be a Jehovah Witness.
He didn't drink, he didn't smoke cigarettes.
He didn't do drugs.
When I was younger,
he made me feel safe at first.
When he came home from work,
I always used to be happy to see him, because he'll tell me
to take his clothes to the washer,
and I can have the change, any money in his pocket.
Everything was kind of, you know, okay, until my dad
started having Bible studies.
AS FREDDIE: Whoever disregards discipline
comes to poverty and shame.
TERESA: Things started changing in our household.
AS FREDDIE: Whoever spares the rod hates their children.
TERESA: It was like Jekyll and Hyde.
We didn't know what he would turn into
every day.
AS FREDDIE: But the one who loves their children
is careful to discipline them.
But because of our religion, no one
suspected his behaviors.
People thought they knew my father as this kind of man
when he had two sides.
At home, he was a monster.
My father was very selfish,
as I learned.
On Saturday mornings, we'd get up, we'd have our breakfast.
Freddie would have days off on the weekends sometimes,
and kids sometimes are, um, left there with him
if my mom had to go make an errand at the store.
[exclaiming, laughing]
TERESA: Freddie wanted peace on his days off,
but my sisters and brothers,
they were all like playing, screaming, having fun.
[exclaiming, laughing]
The noise, as kids,
he wouldn't like that at all.
[echoing laughter]
He'd want us quiet so he could hear his music.
[echoing exclamations]
Shut up!
TERESA: He would line us up on the couch,
and he'll put tape on our mouth,
gray tape that can keep our mouths closed.
The way that he put the tape on our mouths,
he pushes it on our face hard.
When he put the tape on my mouth,
I felt scared, because I don't
like feeling like I can't breathe.
Here's this big grown man putting tape on
little kids' mouths, and I just didn't understand it.
It was just terrible.
When we're all sitting around with tape on our mouths,
he's usually looking for an album.
He's probably on the phone, or he's probably eating
a sandwich,
but he's making sure that we're not gonna cry out loud.
If we tried to get up...
he would hit us, and we had to sit back down.
He's gonna grab you and tell you to be quiet,
shake you up a little bit.
We understood, do what he wanted.
And when we're done crying, he'd just rip it off.
It was painful.
He didn't take it off slow.
I definitely was afraid of my father,
because you can tell something's wrong.
Freddie used power and fear to control us.
One day, he came in the house from work.
He was happy, and he showed
my mom the paddles that he made,
and we were looking at 'em, too.
He had a few paddles. He had at least three.
Ones that are thicker than the other -- like this long,
and they would be this wide,
and they have holes going down the row.
When he came in with the paddles,
he was oh so happy.
I never seen him so happy.
That's the way he wanted to discipline us next,
to see if we would listen to him.
He did use them right after he made them.
One of my brothers took a record to school
for show and tell.
-Who gave you permission? -No one.
And you thought that was okay?
TERESA: Freddie went crazy.
Why did you take it?
And my brother's trying to explain,
"Because of show and tell. I had nothing to show.
I didn't have anything."
I don't care who it was for. I don't raise no thief.
TERESA: That was very painful to watch.
So sometimes I would go in the closet.
AS FREDDIE: Get over here!
Just shut the door, because I didn't even want to hear him.
Sometimes I would even put a pillow over
my ears, because I don't wanna hear pain.
-Please, dad, I'm sorry! -AS FREDDIE: Just shut up!
AS TERESA'S BROTHER: Agh!
My phobia
now about closed spaces,
I got it because of being in closets
and trying to hide myself from things.
AS FREDDIE: You -- oh, you don't do that!
AS TERESA'S BROTHER: I'm not!
When he used the paddle, he would tell us to touch
our ankles
and keep our hands down there and don't move them.
Because if you move them, I'm gonna hit you again.
AS TERESA'S BROTHER: Agh!
Hearing the whacks
and hearing the pain and the cries...
it was just horrible.
My mom would finally say, "Freddie stop, stop,"
and then he eventually stopped.
But Freddie never showed remorse.
A man that does that to his children,
he's a coward, because we're just children.
He wanted to scare us.
So it was a Saturday.
We were all supposed to be in bed.
We all knew that,
but we were playing with a blue ball,
and the ball rolls down the stairs.
My father asked who threw the ball downstairs.
And I said I did.
So he took my arms, and he started
strapping them up, tied it tight.
And then he tied me with my ankles next.
Um, so I was tied like a roasted hog.
He said that he had to whoop me, and he wanted to
read the scripture to me about
spare the rod, spoil the child.
So he read it to me,
and after he read the scripture to me,
he just start whipping me with the bell all over.
Every hit he did,
I would just want him to stop.
[grunting]
I was saying, "Okay, okay,
daddy, okay, okay," you know, just crying,
you know, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay."
Only thing I can think of is why is
my dad doing this kind of stuff to me?
[grunting]
And he kept whooping me until he took a break,
and I'm screaming, I'm crying.
Mom, where is you at?
When he took a break from whooping me,
um, she came, and she said,
"You guys need to tell your teachers...
Okay.
"...and your counselors at school.
Tell the teachers. Tell someone."
She could tell his behavior
was erupting a little bit differently.
I just looked at her,
crying because I'm still in pain.
I was scared to do it, because
I thought I was gonna get another beating.
It's a question that I always had in my mind about my mother,
why she wouldn't tell.
I always thought that she was scared.
And later on through life, she did tell us, she --
"Y'all still know how afraid I was of him."
She used to say that to us a lot, and she was very much
trapped in -- in the relationship.
My mom had all these children.
How is she gonna get out there and take care of us?
So she stayed in it under his control.
I was mad at why am I in this family?
[sobbing]
So...
I'm just mad, because I'm in this family, knowing that
every day is gonna be this way until somebody finds out.
TERESA: The things that he would do
wasn't spankings.
It wasn't discipline, because you can discipline
someone by putting them in a corner.
But he's just making us suffer.
One day, my father had money that came up missing.
AS FREDDIE: I know you stole it!
TERESA: One of my brothers had a habit
of stealing candy bars from the store.
So he assumed that it was
the brother that was stealing the candy bars.
Stole what?
You know exactly what I'm talking about.
I know that my brother wouldn't do that, because you
have to be out your mind to take money from Freddie.
You know what you took. You gonna keep lying to me?
-No, I'm not lying! -You gonna keep lying?
But he would take my brother and say, "Where is my money?"
You know what I'm talking about, you keep playing dumb...
And then he says, "Come here, I tell you what,
"but I'm gonna show you,
"I'm gonna show you why you're not gonna
touch the money anymore."
Let's go.
We all followed my brother into the kitchen,
and I'm like, what is he gonna do?
Is he gonna take a knife? Is he gonna cut his hand off?
I know you stole it.
-I didn't! -Stop lying to me.
He would take him to the stove
and want to put his hands on fire.
"Come here. Give me your hand.
Get up here. Bring it up here."
And he would just keep going like this.
Stop! He didn't do anything!
TERESA: My brother's screaming, and we all screaming,
"No, Freddie don't."
AS TERESA: Stop it, please!
TERESA: Making us all cry, screaming
and hollering and telling him to stop.
And he's just saying, "You wanna steal?
"I'm gonna teach you not to steal.
I'm gonna teach you not to steal."
AS FREDDIE: I'm gonna teach you what happens
when kids steal from me.
TERESA: My brother was trying to pull away from
the fire, and we were like, no stop.
Please don't, please don't.
And he just wouldn't stop until
he got enough of scaring him.
And then he stopped.
My brother didn't do it.
I believe that my father wanted just to find
a way to abuse someone, because he wanted to let off steam.
Just because he wanted to show his power and control.
I wanted to tell people.
But at the same time, I would be scared to,
because he would do things to make you afraid of him.
Like, you're not gonna tell.
He always had some type of rageness
about himself, and he couldn't control his rage.
He snaps, like, it's like his way or no way.
One time, me and my mom
and my dad was together, going to go on one of
his trips to do a job, and someone trying to pass him,
basically did cut him off.
What the hell was that? Did you see that?
And he got upset about it.
-Hey, pull over! -He just snapped.
What I seen Freddie do was get out the van.
He start arguing with the man.
Hey, man, you almost killed us!
-Why don't you just calm down? -No, you calm down!
TERESA: And he started punching him real bad,
just unstoppable punches.
[grunts]
TERESA: And then my mom was screaming...
Get back in the car!
...please stop, stop. -[grunts]
And he just didn't want to stop.
What I seen was a man that was in rage,
and he wanted to show that he can win.
[grunting]
I've seen it at our own home,
how violent he can be.
No one can stop him.
[grunting]
My mom was saying, "Come on," because the police gonna come.
And that's when he let up.
Left a man there, on the ground.
When he got back in the truck,
I seen him just laughing and talking
about it, and he was just happy.
He was pretty much bragging.
I just feel that he was just, um,
out of control and out of his mind.
Don't no normal person do something like that.
I knew that he was a predator
because of the other things that he done.
Freddie would ask if I would clean his room,
and one day I was changing the sheets, and, um, I had
to lift up the water bed mattress to put the sheet
around it.
So when I lift up the water bed mattress,
I seen naked pictures,
and they were graphic.
They were in different sexual poses,
but the people in the pictures were sedated,
like they were asleep.
And when I was a little girl,
he asked me to go get a briefcase.
He'll have two briefcases.
One will be full of congregation magazines,
and one will be full of naked women.
All different color women,
and it was filled with them.
I was just so shocked.
I was sick.
Like, why am I seeing this?
It's like he wanted me to see these things
In my nine-year-old mind,
I thought that he was going to try to do something to me.
TERESA: As I got older,
I believe that my father was more --
becoming more infest of evil.
We couldn't have a regular summer.
In the summer months,
he would, like, make us wear hot shirts.
All of the girls in the family,
we were darn near wearing turtlenecks.
We couldn't wear tube tops like
the rest of the kids on the block.
They'll look at us and say,
"It's hot, ain't you hot in that?"
But I'll say,
"It's what Freddie says we have to wear."
At the time, I didn't know why he would do that.
Looking back at it now, Freddie
was very sick.
Freddie was having feelings about us,
and he's trying to make us cover up
so he don't take advantage of his own child -- to put on
something to cover ourselves would make him,
I guess, feel better about not looking at us as much.
I noticed that my mom, at eight
or nine, would get a little white pill.
And she'd be knocked out.
Freddie would, as I remember, give my mom something that keep
her nerves calm, something that would put her to sleep.
The doctor said that she needed it because her nerves
were bad.
You know, having so many kids, I believe that's why,
but he'll give her a glass of water
and make sure that she's taking her medication.
She takes it.
She falls asleep with the fan on.
And as he put her to sleep,
he's waiting a couple hours to make sure she's knocked out.
And in the summertime, he had us all
have fans in every room in the house.
When he put all these fans everywhere,
we didn't know what was going on.
I think that now that I'm older,
I know why he did it.
The fans will block out noise.
He did it to get ready for his next phase.
This one night, my mom was gone to the store.
I came in like three minutes late.
You had to be in at eight o'clock, and I came
in a little late from playing with one of my little friends.
He said, "You're late coming in,"
and he's behind my ear telling me,
"You go downstairs and take off all your clothes,
'cause I'm ready to whoop you."
We had a finished basement in our home,
so Freddie would have the Bible studies
conducted there.
But I would describe that basement as a place of
evil, because...
this evil took over the good.
He took me to the basement, and he has no shirt on,
and he tells me to come to him, and then he whoops me
with my panties and bras on,
[exclamation]
just going back and forth with the belt.
And I'm crying, and I'm saying, "Stop, don't...
could you stop please?"
And he would whoop me for at least 10 minutes.
[smacking noise]
The kids were up in their rooms watching TV with
the fans on.
-[smacking noise] -[sobbing]
The fans are always on,
and no one would hear me in the basement getting whooped.
[smacking noise]
He was sweaty from whooping me in the hot basement.
He was enjoying it.
-[smacking noise] -AS TERESA: Please, stop!
I felt humiliated.
I felt, like, sick.
And after he whoops me,
he wants to hug me, and he tells me to come to him.
So I go up to him, and he hugs me.
I had my hand, like, right here.
I didn't want him to really touch me.
And he says, "Don't tell no one."
Let's keep it just between us.
-You understand? -TERESA: And I said okay,
and I wanted to just die.
[sobbing]
I really hated him even more.
TERESA: I feel like I'm one of the daredevils of the family.
When it comes to family, you save them,
you love them, and you save them, because your family
is all you have.
One day, I seen Freddie playing with my sister, and they
were just playing catch, and I heard her laughing,
and he's laughing.
But when my sister threw the ball,
it was coming towards his face.
So he ducked, and then all of a sudden I heard was a crash.
My sister accidentally threw a baseball through a window.
Why did you do that for?
TERESA: He got upset.
-Come here! -TERESA: He started exploding.
He started saying, "Where's my belt?
Where's my belt?"
AS FREDDIE: Now where's my belt? Go get my belt!
I came to a point where I didn't care no more.
I didn't care what was gonna happen to me.
No, I just wanted to do something to save my sister.
Get away from her!
TERESA: I grabbed a belt,
and I told him, "You're not going to hit my sister."
So he didn't end up whipping her.
But when I grabbed that belt, he looked at me...
and had me pressed against the wall.
And he said, "If you do anything else like this again,
I will kill you."
He said, "Don't you ever stop me
"from doing anything that I want to do.
"I will kill you.
Do you understand that?"
And that was probably one of the first times
that he ever said he was gonna kill me.
I just went upstairs and cried.
I always felt like he's not done.
I always feared that we were gonna be hurt in some kind
of way from all the threats he used to give my mom.
One day, we come home from school, and as soon as we get to
the door, mom is saying, "You gotta leave,
"you gotta go.
"Freddie's gonna kill everybody.
"He's really gonna kill everybody.
"So you guys can't stay here.
I need you to take this food," and we're going a few
blocks away from the house to her sister house with the food.
AS FREDDIE: Where are the girls?!
And all because of him feeling like
he wanted to kill everybody this particular day.
AS FREDDIE: I am gonna kill you!
My mom, she's in the house just with him,
talking him out of it.
And when he was done being so angry,
my mom would come and pick us up.
All I know is that this episode happened a few times.
His explosive behaviors just got to the point
he wanted to take it out on his kids.
We couldn't come home, because he didn't wanna hear us.
He didn't want to hear our voices.
I'm thinking he's no longer my father.
That's what I thought.
I wanted my father to die.
I wanted him to be dead or gone from our house.
I felt if he was dead,
that we would no longer have to suffer.
I had a boyfriend when I was 16,
and I told him about the stuff that would happen in our house.
I said, "I wish he was dead."
He said, "Y'all need us to do something to him?"
He was in a gang.
It could have happened easily.
I thought about having him kill my father.
I paused for a minute and said to myself,
this could be a way out of the situation.
But I also thought about
what can happen to me.
I said, "Don't kill him,
because we're gonna get in trouble."
I decided to go another way,
and that was to let God handle everything
the way I was raised and taught from the Bible.
Eventually, the church found out things about Freddie,
and my father got disfellowshipped because of
all the bad things that he continued to do,
meaning that they no longer will allow him back there.
And my mom and my father start
growing apart in their marriage and separated.
I learned that he had a lady in the neighborhood
that he was starting to date,
and I heard that he was gonna move to Minnesota
to marry this lady.
Last time I saw Freddie, he told me
that, "I'm gonna be leaving town.
I won't be here too much longer."
And I said, "Okay,"
and I said, "You take care of yourself."
I gave him a half hug.
I said to myself, he was gonna
have a relationship, and it's gonna be abusive.
But I never
met the woman that he fell in love with.
I would have warned her about his abusive behaviors.
To be honest, I felt that someone was gonna get hurt.
I felt like someone is gonna die.
I hadn't seen him for years
after that, years.
I had moved from Indiana to Texas.
Just moved into my new apartment, called to
tell my mom that I had a new apartment.
My mom gave my brother the phone.
When my brother gets on the phone, he says,
"Freddie's dead."
[distant sirens wailing]
I said, "What do you mean Freddie's dead?"
He said, "They shot him."
I said, "What happened?"
He said, "He killed the woman, the woman he was dating."
REPORTER: Fred Bowen has a gun to his head.
Police believe he killed his fiance,
41-year-old Yvonne Thompson.
He wanted to marry her, and she told him, "No,
I'm not gonna do it. I don't want to marry you."
And that upset him.
He went in a rage.
He went to the van, and he got the gun,
and then he went back in to argue with her
about why, and he couldn't handle the word
no, so he shot her, twice, in her back.
REPORTER: Police had tried to negotiate with
Bowen all afternoon -- for five hours,
he lies out on a grassy area, holding the gun.
There was a standoff -- when my father was on the ground,
he was telling everybody that he was
sorry for what he did to his kids.
Maybe he wanted us to forgive him.
I don't know.
REPORTER: St. Paul police try to negotiate.
But when talks break down, police move in.
He wasn't gonna listen to anyone.
He wanted to die.
I believe he got what he wanted.
REPORTER: First, a flash bang, a puff of smoke,
a distraction.
In slow motion, you can see Bowen turn.
Police say he points his gun at them.
They fire. Bowen is killed.
I just froze.
I didn't cr-- I didn't cry.
I couldn't cry.
I couldn't feel for somebody that didn't feel for me.
I was relieved
more than anything.
He's gone now.
He can't hurt anybody else.
REPORTER: The entire episode has devastated
Yvonne Thompson's family.
They say Yvonne wanted to break off the relationship.
TERESA: I thought about the time that they had together,
and I thought about why couldn't you just
leave her alone?
I was upset. I was hurt.
I was angry.
I was like, how could he kill her?
Why'd he kill her?
I just wish I could have saved her,
and I wish I could have talked him out of it.
I wish -- I know I could have talked him out of it,
because I'm the one
that always came when Freddie was ready
to kill somebody or hurt somebody.
And I would have fought him to not do that to this lady.
She had kids.
I just wanted to tell them, "I'm so sorry for your mom.
I am so sorry for her."
'Cause I just felt real bad for the kids.
I just did.
That's sad.
She's pretty.
And I finally see the woman that
he killed that I never ever seen.
Never ever looked at footages,
never looked on the computers at the library, never
looked anywhere.
I just had in my head
the way she looked.
Everybody said she was beautiful,
and that's all I had in my head.
And I feel sorry for her,
because I would have told her so much...
before they had that relationship,
to leave my father, because he's gonna hurt you.
He's not gonna be healthy for you.
I think it's best that you
find someone that's more balanced for you.
If I had told her that,
but I was a kid, you know?
She could've escape him.
She could have moved anywhere in the world
and had her peace with a whole new friend.
That's what I would have did for her.
I never got to know her.
I decided to forgive Freddie, because I moved on
with my life, and I just wanted some peace.
The Bible says forgive.
I can't judge him.
And that's the man that put me through hell.
From the Bible,
according to the Bible, the devil's here,
his angels are here.
So as long as they're here, there's evil.
Freddie stressed us out tremendously.
Evil spirit in him.
Yeah, evil spirits can go into people that accepts it
and that it,
you know, like, uh, manifests in them,
infests, infests, until they turn to
that kind of person.
It's important that I tell my story this time in my life,
um, because I've been suffering from a lot.
Um, and I had a lot of trauma behind it.
It's been a long time, this point in my life,
that I feel that it needs to be released.
It's bothered me a lot.
It's taken away things from me.
It caused me great pain.
What kept me going was remembering God and Jesus,
remembering to pray and --
and to remember that I'm -- I'm not perfect, um...
I didn't ask for these things to happen,
and that there is -- there was help out there.
I'm super glad
that he's not here to harm
or -- or hurt another person.
I will probably always hurt and have nightmares.
He's gone, but he's still in my dreams.
He scares me.
The nightmares are like, I jump out of my sleep.
It's like it's never gonna go, like he's so evil,
that he's still trying to control us from the other side.
My art is my therapy.
When I started painting in 2009,
painting helped me relieve stress.
Keeps my thoughts simple.
Makes me feel relaxed when I'm upset.
I look at the paint brushes that I will keep near,
and I would just paint.
When I make a mistake in my art, I'll look at it
and see what else God wanted me to create from it.
When you make mistakes in life,
you grow from them.
You don't give up, you fight.
I just really appreciate life now.
Life gonna always bring something new.
There's always gonna be a new storm.
Some people make it through the storm.
Some people don't.
I fortunately made it.
I'm a survivor.
I believed if somebody loved God then they were a great person.
That really got shattered about four years ago.
I still remember the noise of the crunching
of the knife going in my skull.