I didn't know what red flags and signs to look for.
Maybe I wouldn't be sitting here where I am, you know,
blind in one eye and, you know,
torn AC and rotator cuff and with the pain
and the trauma that I've been through.
This is probably one of the hardest photos to look at.
For a while, it was almost like...
it played in my head over and over,
and I was outside watching a movie,
but it was really something that had happened to me.
It was a 3.5-hour fight for my life.
And I still remember the noise of
the crunching of the knife going in my skull.
[voice breaking] And I remember just thinking,
okay, yes, this is my time.
I'm gonna go home and meet God.
[sniffles]
If I hadn't fought
like hell,
I wouldn't be here today.
You can't always tell the face that evil has.
It's definitely not what I thought it would be.
I believed if somebody loved God, they were a great person.
That really got shattered about four years ago.
When they say that love is blind,
it really is a true statement, and looking back, I think,
how could I have not seen what a monster he was?
[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]
My whole life, I had always visioned having
that marriage that God talked about in the Bible.
I went on dating websites, and I was
very specific with what I was looking for.
Um, I wanted a God-fearing man that showed it in his life.
This was one of the first photos that Shawn sent me of
himself and his semi-truck that he drove.
My first impressions of him was that,
you know, he was very handsome.
He was sweet.
He knew the Bible -- when we first started talking,
it was a lot about, um, our values and our faith.
He told me that he attended church regularly
and that he used to
take groceries to the elderly, that he was very involved in
serving with church.
He kind of passed all the little tests that I gave him
and kind of met the expectations
that I had to kind of move forward with somebody.
I was really kind of starting to think that, you know,
this is maybe a person God had brought into my life,
but he's the person that taught me
there was evil in the world.
One of our early dates, uh, my church
was having what they call a Good Neighbor Weekend.
Everybody goes out and kind of serves.
We're like the hands and feet of Jesus.
This was the photo
that him and I took at the...
Good Neighbor Weekend when we volunteered together,
and I had invited him to come with me,
and I almost expected him to just say no,
but he kind of said "Sure, absolutely.
I would love to go with you."
Thanks for coming out today.
We planted, we, you know, de-weeded, we put rocks down.
Um, and it was just a great day.
He worked really, really hard,
talked to everybody, just seemed like
he was a really good guy.
And it was just nice to see someone that
kind of was wanting to do God's work with me.
So we ended up talking about just different things in
our past.
He told me that he had been married before.
But, um, you know, it was kind of a bad situation.
Things didn't really work out between us.
SARA: His ex-wife had cheated on him.
He found her in bed with somebody, and that was kind of
the final straw, and he just knew that she wasn't
gonna change.
He ended up beating up the guy
that he found his wife in bed with.
He went to jail for it, and he got
an assault charge is what he said.
I would have probably done
the same thing if the situation was reversed.
So that didn't make me think any different of him.
He really wants to get married again and have kids.
And, um, you know, it be forever this time.
At the time, I thought he's a great guy.
Let's kind of move past this,
and let's focus on us and our future together.
And so, you know, we definitely moved pretty quick.
Years later, I found out that the assault
charge wasn't because he beat somebody else up.
He didn't even ever find his wife in bed with
another person.
The assault charge was for attacking his wife.
I never really saw what a healthy relationship
looked like, because I didn't have a father.
And so I didn't know how a man was supposed
to treat a woman or what he was supposed to say.
And so I think that affected a lot of my relationships.
It wasn't big fights, but what I kind of
learned was that what he said went.
[knocking noises]
One day, Shawn was upstairs working.
There was a knock on the door,
and it was one of the contractors, and I went
upstairs to get Shawn, because he hadn't heard the door.
We came downstairs,
and he started talking to the contractor.
Yeah, thank you.
Then, you know, the contractor ended up leaving,
because he -- he got what he needed.
What the hell do you think you're doing?
Shawn started going off on me and telling me, you know,
"Don't you ever answer the door unless I'm here."
You know, "Why would you let somebody in?
You don't know who he is," you know,
"I don't trust you with anybody else in this house.
"You make sure that you don't have
"any guys in this house unless I'm here.
"I don't care if they're contractors.
"I don't care if they have work to do.
If I'm not here, they're not coming in."
And he was very mad and in my face
and then walked upstairs and walked away.
I was very surprised that he got angry,
but I believed at the time that he was
really trying to protect me.
Our first session, I would bring up something, and then
he would over talk me, say, "That's not how it went.
This is how it went," and he would cut me off.
He wouldn't let me continue talking to the counselor,
or he would let me talk to
the counselor, and then he would say,
"Oh no, no, no, that's not how it went.
This is how it went."
-We've had a few sort of like... -Well, look...
SARA: It was about three-fourths of the way into the hour.
And I just remember the counselor saying, okay,
I'm gonna stop you guys right now.
My recommendation is gonna be
that you guys do not get married.
We both were kind of shocked, like, what just happened?
You know, we came for premarital counseling.
You're supposed to be helping us with
the tools to have a better marriage.
I didn't feel like she had the right to
say that yet, because she didn't really know us.
At that point,
you know, we were in a good place.
We were going to church together,
you know, we had started praying together,
started reading the Bible together.
We closed up the session.
Shawn went to the bathroom.
I remember the lady kind of pulling me aside and saying,
you know, "I just get a feeling
that this isn't a good person for you to marry."
I said, "Well, what do you mean?"
And she said, "You know, I just --
I just don't think you guys are supposed to be together,"
and then he came out of the bathroom,
and we ended up leaving.
Have a good night.
I kind of took it as, you know,
she was a stranger, and I kind of knew more
about my life than she did,
and I didn't see any big red flags.
I mean, we were moving in the direction of
getting married.
That's what I wanted.
I think I was just very set on him being a good person
and, you know, our lives kind of aligning.
And so I wasn't ready to kind of hear that.
I used to have a lot of guilt about why
I didn't listen and why I didn't see those things.
I think things would have turned out differently.
Shawn would just get to a point where he would explode,
and he couldn't kind of handle his emotions anymore.
No!
SARA: It really did concern me.
We started arguing more and have more altercations.
I was starting to really wonder if
this was the right relationship that I wanted.
And I said, you know, "I think we kind of need to discuss
"what the counselor said and how we're gonna kind of
"move forward.
"There's been things that haven't been
"the greatest lately,
"and so I think that we need to make
a decision to kind of go our separate ways."
He ended up going into the bathroom,
and...
he was in there for a little while.
I remember hearing the bathroom door open,
and I remember seeing blood
just pouring down his arm, from his elbow to his wrist.
It was kind of terrifying.
What did you do?
And he told me that he had cut his arm with a box opener.
He got mad, and he ran out the front door,
and he just got in the car and drove off.
I was so shocked, I didn't know what to do.
And so I called his mom -- his mom said, you know,
"All I can do is tell you to run."
And I was like, "What do you mean?"
And she goes, "That's all I can say," and kind of hung up.
SARA: I was worried about where he was.
I was worried about whether he was okay or not.
You know, I -- at that point didn't know how bad it was.
I was sitting on the couch when he came home.
It was almost kind of a relief when I saw him and he was okay.
Where have you been?
I just needed to clear my head.
SARA: I went and got kind of a cloth to kind of
wipe the blood off, and it really wasn't a deep cut.
I just asked him, "Why would you do something like that?"
He explained that, you know,
it was something that he had did
because he was scared he was going to lose me.
I just can't stand the thought of us not being together.
He believes that, kind of, God put me
in his life, and we're supposed to get married.
He knew that, you know,
I would feel bad for him, and that's kind of why he did it.
And I had found a person that...
knew how to
manipulate and prey on someone that
wanted to be in a relationship,
and I think,
looking back, I could even yell at myself
and say, "Why did you stay?"
But when you're in it, it's not that easy.
When you're in it,
you don't see the things you see looking back.
Looking back, I see everything.
We are supposed to be together.
It's not what your mom thinks.
I told him that, um,
you know, I had spoke with his mom,
and his mom said to just run.
I asked him what that meant.
He told me, you know, I'm not surprised that
she would try to sabotage something that's going good in
my life -- she typically does that in my life.
He definitely preyed on my sympathy.
My desire to be in a relationship
helped me overlook any doubt that I had.
Don't let her come between us.
SARA: It makes me shocked that, you know,
I believed him and that I didn't see kind of
the manipulation that was going on.
[short groan]
This is
our wedding trailer.
We humbled ourselves and did what Jesus did
to the apostles and washed each other's feet.
I thought it would be, um, a nice touch to get Shawn
a knife that said "Hubby Shawn" on it.
He had said he was somebody that was patient,
somebody that was kind, somebody that wasn't
self-seeking.
You know, somebody that would
love me and honor me and cherish me.
It was something I had
dreamed of my whole life.
And instead I got somebody that...
lied to me,
that was angry, that made me feel...
worthless.
He had me fooled as to who he really was.
We cherished and wanted this to be a godly relationship.
So we didn't have sex till we were married.
It was not the intimate, romantic
relationship that I thought we would have.
We definitely had sex when I didn't want to.
I remember one night, I was so exhausted and so tired.
I just wanted to go to bed.
He wanted to have sex.
He started kissing my neck.
When I said "No, I really don't feel like it, I'm really tired,"
he made me believe that it
was something that was wrong with me.
He said I was letting him down and letting
our marriage down and I wasn't doing my wifely duties.
He knew that me thinking I was not a good wife
would be very hurtful to me.
I wanted to be
a good wife, and I wanted to make him happy.
I remember him rolling me over, and I literally just
laid there, and, you know, he just
had really rough sex with me.
Tears started to fill my eyes and I just thought,
is this really what sex is supposed to be?
I definitely felt violated.
I thought that I was being a good wife
by letting him do it.
That definitely is rape, and that's
not what a good marriage looks like.
I definitely felt that biblically,
I didn't have a reason to leave.
Um, you know, he hadn't cheated on me.
He hadn't physically hurt me.
We had made a commitment for better or for worse.
And, you know, this was the worst time right now.
Things kind of started taking a turn for the worse.
He never liked to kind of
work through things or talk about things.
I mean, he would get mad and scream and yell and walk away.
I noticed whenever his temper flared up,
he would disappear into the basement.
One night, we had gotten into a big argument,
and he went down in the basement,
he was there all night and then came up
and went to work.
I went downstairs, and I looked around the corner
and saw a big black punching bag
that had my name spray painted on it -- Sara.
And I just, like, was in shock.
This is a photo of our basement.
I remember this like it was yesterday.
To know that he was punching something
that had my name on it...
it was kind of scary.
I cringe at the thought of someone spray painting
my name on a bag and that he's literally down there
basically beating the [bleep] out of Sara, you know, um...
It's just kind of sick.
Even though this was in the basement,
I never believed
that he would physically hurt me,
but I was dead wrong.
I didn't understand why
my name was on a punching bag.
When he finally came home,
I asked him about it,
and again, you know, he kind of brushed it off
like it wasn't a big deal.
He said, "Well, it's better
that I hit the punching bag than I hit you."
And I thought, well, I guess that makes sense.
We had kind of made
the covenant of marriage.
And so it was so hard for me
to be okay with walking away,
because he hadn't physically hurt me.
When we were kind of
just not connecting like we used to,
it seemed like every other thing I said was wrong
or every other thing I did was wrong.
We started to have sex less.
I was a little relieved that he wasn't coming to me
every single day to try to have sex with me.
I started to wonder what was going on.
He was spending a lot more time on his phone,
which kind of made me wonder what he was doing on his phone.
He had gone upstairs, and I started going through
his phone, and I saw that he had placed some
personal ads on social media and was looking for
a married women that wanted to have sex with married men.
There was one person that he had been talking back and forth,
and he had messaged her and said,
"[Bleep] so my wife will come home and catch us,
and then she'll leave me."
I really didn't care, because we were not in a good place.
But on the other hand, I knew
it wasn't right, because we were married.
I confronted him about the ads,
and, you know, he said that, you know,
he was lonely, he had never met anybody, he had never done
anything with anybody.
And so, you know, it wasn't that big of a deal.
He always had a reason or an excuse or...
a way of talking his way out of everything.
He wasn't really the godly man that I thought
he was or that he had portrayed himself to be.
Um, even though, you know, we went to church
every weekend and, um,
attended church, he didn't live that out
in his daily life.
I started to think that maybe all the things that he had said
to me or all the things that he said he wanted were lies.
This time, I kind of had decided that maybe things
needed change and, um,
I decided to kind of go stay at my mom's for a little while.
This wasn't a marriage, and this wasn't a place that,
you know, God wanted me to stay.
So this is the hood of my car.
I told him I was gonna come pick up the car,
and when I got there,
it was keyed on both sides from the front to the back,
and on the hood,
he wrote "bitch"
in a key mark.
It made me sick to my stomach.
I don't really
understand what kind of person
would do something like that
to someone's vehicle that they loved.
This just kind of shows the type of vindictive
and sick person he was.
He knew what he was doing every second
and every moment that he did this.
[phone buzzing]
I started getting text messages, um,
that were videos from him.
[phone buzzing]
He literally was going through every
single photo that we had of us...
AS SHAWN: You never cared about me!
...talking about the memory and talking about that
it was a lie and that he hated me
and why would I say these things
and I never really loved him, and he literally would rip
the photos up, and he would throw it in a trash can.
None of this meant anything to you!
He was getting meaner and nastier with what he was
saying, and he just kept sending them and sending them.
I had to literally turn my phone off,
because I couldn't sleep.
When I woke up, I turned my phone back on and, you know,
had 30-plus videos of him continuing to do
what he was doing.
He just wanted power over me
and was realizing he didn't have any more power.
I had really started to realize who he was
and the manipulation that he was doing.
That was the wakeup call I needed.
Moving, you know, to Arizona from Indiana
kind of gave me my freedom back.
I think I believed that once I left and created
some distance in between us, that he would
be able to leave me alone,
and I was wrong.
I had become so isolated and confined,
and so I had to figure out what I --
what I liked again, what my hobbies were,
what my passions were,
um, and what I wanted to do in life again.
I didn't have anyone that was telling me who I couldn't --
could and couldn't hang out with, you know, I could go do
things with my friends when I wanted to.
Um, and I was really working on
a lot of, like, personal development and self growth.
So I had done photography before, and I decided
to update my online accounts for my photography business.
[phone buzzing]
I got a text message from someone saying that they would
like for me to do their engagement photos,
and it was a pretty big hike out to the actual point that
they wanted to take the pictures at.
I looked it up, and it was about a 2.5-mile hike.
I overbid the job, because I had to bring
all my gear out there, and I'm not a hiker.
[cellphone chimes]
I was really surprised when they accepted the bid.
A little bit later,
-I get a text, and it said, -[phone buzzing]
"We know some friends of you
"and, you know, your husband's.
"Your husband's a really good guy, and we don't know why you
would leave him."
So that immediately triggered a light bulb like this --
this has to be Shawn.
I thought me leaving would just
help him understand that I was done,
but he wouldn't leave me alone.
I said, you know, I had something come up,
and I can't do the shoot for you guys.
Knowing Shawn and all the things that he had done in
the past, I wouldn't put it past him to go to
this low to figure out what I was doing.
Looking back on that,
you know, I really feel like I came extremely close to death.
He would have lured me out to
that location, and he would have easily killed me.
[phone buzzing]
I received a text message.
It basically said, "Hey,
"I am really excited to come out to Arizona.
I can't wait to be together."
It's like nothing's wrong, nothing's happened.
He's coming.
He can't wait to start his life together with me.
It took me until the next day to even respond,
and I just said, "I'm not interested in being with you."
[phone buzzing]
He said that God had told him that
it was time that we got back together.
I just said, "I have no desire to be back with you.
"You know, we're separated, we filed for divorce.
"You know, I've moved on with my life.
I wish you the best -- you need to move on with your life."
I felt like it was a mind game that he was playing,
but I also have a security that he didn't know
where I live, so I thought that I was safe.
He told me that he already knew where I lived,
and this was the picture that came next,
and I was in complete disbelief.
He wrote the letter to the last known address
and put "Do not forward return to sender,"
and they sent it to him,
and it had the little yellow sticker on it with my address.
When I got this photo, my heart started racing.
I didn't want him at my house.
The fact that he knew
where I lived scared the [bleep] out of me.
I still never believed
that he would do what he did.
I never believed somebody could be that evil.
September 15, 2018,
I did my morning routine, opened the door,
and as I opened the door,
Shawn was standing around the corner.
He had a can of bug spray and sprayed me in the face with it.
[muffled shout]
I fell on the floor, and he got on top of me.
I started screaming, "Shawn, what are you doing?
"Stop, stop! What are you doing, Shawn?
Shawn, stop! What are you doing?"
[muffled shouts]
He told me he had been stalking me and watching me
for weeks.
He told me that he wasn't happy and I was,
and he couldn't deal with it.
He said that he wanted closure.
[actor as Sara grunting]
He pulled out a knife, and he said, "Do you remember this?"
And it just so happened to be the knife that I gave him on
our wedding night that was inscribed and said,
"Hubby Shawn."
[actor as Sara grunting]
He told me that he came to kill me,
that he was gonna cut me up into pieces and put me in
a suitcase and drive off a cliff and commit suicide.
And I believed every word he said.
I was scared for my life.
I knew that I was gonna fight like hell to survive.
He put a plastic bag over my nose
and my mouth and started to try to suffocate me.
He said that we were supposed to be married forever
and that he could never see me happy with somebody else
and having a child with somebody else
and that, you know, if he couldn't have me,
nobody could have me.
And that, you know, one of us was gonna die that day.
I remember, um...
feeling...
something go right below my eye, and I didn't even
see it, because the plastic bag was over my face.
I remember hearing crunching and a sound
that I will never forget to this day.
And all of a sudden, I couldn't see out of my right eye.
And I had an excruciating pain that I had never felt before.
I had no clue what had happened.
You know, I had the bag
fully over my face and was trying
to kind of get him off of me.
I just grabbed whatever it was and pulled it out and threw it.
I remember clawing at the plastic bag and trying to
breathe as the bag went in and out,
you know, with my breath.
[actor as Sara struggling to breathe]
He was trying to suffocate me.
And I remember
just my breath was getting really shallow,
and my body was starting to get lethargic.
And I remember just thinking,
okay, I guess this is my time.
I'm gonna go home and meet God.
SARA: It was really scary to know that it could be over.
[actor as Sara grunts]
You know, I felt like I wasn't
done with being here
and just to be grasping for air and not
being able to catch my breath and feeling my body almost go
limp was the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
And then I remembered that my mom would be left here by
herself and she would lose her daughter, and that just gave me
a fight to fight a little bit more,
and I was able to get him off of me.
The bag came off my face, and I could gasp for air
and catch my breath.
The whole time, I'm thinking, how can I escape?
I've screamed, I've yelled, nobody has come.
[quietly crying]
I asked him, you know, like, "Why are you doing this?"
Then he just said, "Because we were
"supposed to be together forever.
"It was till death do us part.
And one of us is gonna die today."
I was really trying to kind of figure out what he wanted
and how to kind of get into his mind to save myself.
It was hard to kind of think like a crazy person
would think,
try to figure out what he wanted and where he was trying
to go with this and what I could say to make him happy.
I was able to convince Shawn that I was unhappy
and didn't want to live without him,
and that pretty much all this had been a show,
and I missed him,
and I really loved him, and I wanted to be with him.
I said, why don't we go get some ice cream?
Because it was something that we had done before.
And in that moment, I had kind of
passed that test for the time.
He said, "Okay, well, that sounds like a good idea.
But, you know, I -- I want to make love one more time before."
I thought to myself...
well,
I'm definitely not gonna say no, because, you know,
I've kind of been through this, and so I went into the bedroom,
laid down on the bed.
I remember just seeing this group of people.
I remember thinking to myself, this is it.
If I don't get out now, I'll never have a chance.
And I grabbed the door handle,
the lock opened, and I was able to get my wrist out, and I just
ran as hard as I could towards the people.
And I said, "Help, help. He stabbed me, he raped me,"
Shawn drove off really quick.
This probably was a day or two after I'd been attacked.
My face has been cleaned up.
There's not blood.
How can someone do this to somebody else,
much less how can someone that...
supposedly loves someone,
and was married to somebody,
and wanted to spend forever with them...
do this?
He brought a murder kit.
He had researched how to stab someone in the eye to kill him.
He meant to stab me in the eye with the knife,
but because he had the bag over my head,
it missed and went below.
The...
cut under my eye is where the knife went in.
The eye socket was fractured when the knife went in.
I still get
twinges in my eye, and I still
don't have any feeling in my forehead.
I stayed in the hospital for five days.
My eye
was pretty swollen shut.
They told me it would never open again.
I think that he really took the vows
of till death do us part.
I mean, he told me I was gonna die that day.
[sniffles]
This is
a photo of
Shawn
in his wardrobe for the rest of his life.
He actually kind of hated the color orange.
So it's kind of funny
that that's what he gets to wear.
I hope that someone shows him
the same evilness that he showed me.
I mean, this is such a different photo than
the person standing in front of the blue truck
in the first photo he sent me.
I don't think he was ever capable of being
a kind, loving, godly husband.
I will always look over my shoulder.
Even though he's been sentenced to life,
he could get out in 25 years.
If he ever gets out,
it'll be the scariest day of my life.
My faith today is stronger than ever.
I believe that God is using,
um, the bad situation to help others,
um, kind of get out of a situation
that they're potentially in.
I felt a lot of guilt that if I would have just walked away,
I would have my vision, and I wouldn't have pain constantly,
but I'm put here to help others
and to really create awareness around this.
I believe that he was a fraud
the entire time, that he never
really loved me, and he never really came
into this relationship wanting the same thing I wanted.
I think the fact that I didn't have a father figure in my life
and I didn't know what a healthy,
good relationship looked like really made me vulnerable.
He definitely found somebody that
he could prey on.
Looking back, I wasn't strong enough to walk away
when I saw that first red flag.
Even though he's locked up,
I have learned how to protect myself, um...
I carry a weapon with me.
Um, it's a life that I never thought I would live.
It's not just a dark alley where someone evil is gonna be.
It could be somebody that's sitting right next to you,
and you have no idea what they're thinking.