[reporter] 33-year-old Heather Barron
and her boyfriend, 37-year-old Kareem Ernesto,
who had both already been found guilty
of first-degree murder and torture.
Family members say the woman they once loved
turned into a monster.
This is a picture of Heather's mugshot when she was arrested.
She doesn't even look sad.
Your baby just died, and you're not sad, you're irritated.
To me, this isn't my sister,
this is the monster she became.
[David] I never thought she was capable of doing what she did,
that she was so evil.
I feel like it was yesterday, and then I start to think what
Anthony went through.
I feel guilty because I made that promise to him
that I was going to protect him, and I wasn't able to.
[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]
This is a picture of Heather and me when we lived in
Missouri at Christmas time.
These were one of the happy days.
I loved my sister, and you can see it in this picture.
This was before the evil took over her,
and it's hard to connect the dots of who she was in this
photo to what she became and what she is today.
We had each other.
We were there for each other, no matter what.
Those were good times, and there weren't very many
of them.
Uh, there are three of us -- myself, then my brother David,
and my sister Heather.
I am the oldest,
and then my brother is two years younger than me,
and then Heather came about a year and a half later.
David and I have always been really close.
We had the same friends, we liked the same music.
We've always had a really good bond.
Heather always had a little bit of a different personality.
She didn't really click with us.
There was just something off.
Heather had multiple personalities as a child.
When certain people were around, she was a happy princess,
and when other people were around, she was screaming
and acting crazy.
She often liked to play the victim
and get me and Crystal in trouble.
I have this one incident where I was in my room, watching TV.
She wanted to do gymnastics, so she would often
walk on the bed like a balancing beam,
and she slipped and fell, and she hit her mouth on
the wooden bed frame.
She told my mother that I threw a sandal at her
and made her fall.
[voice echoing] I've had enough.
[David] And my stepfather got home, and then he started beating me.
-[belt slaps] -[As David] Ow, please!
She was crying hysterically, but as soon as I started
getting punished, the crying stopped. -Stop, don't!
-[belt slaps] -Then she just watched me
with this little dead blank face,
just watched me get beat,
and I asked her why she did that, and she said, "Because."
It didn't faze her,
that she just caused all this pain to me,
and it just terrified us, knowing that she can say
anything she wanted at any moment,
and we can be tortured for it.
[Crystal] When she would get us in trouble,
knowing what the consequences were,
it made me feel worthless, that I didn't matter.
Looking back,
I think that Heather's evilness started
then at a young age.
I think she enjoyed watching others get hurt,
and she was just taking notes for when she got older.
After school one day, I had a friend come over,
and no adults were home.
-When is it gonna be my turn? -Go away.
And Heather wanted to play with us, but I wanted to hang out
with my friend.
Heather was set off very easily,
and she grabbed a butcher knife
and got an evil smile on her face
and said, "I'm gonna stab you."
And then proceeded to chase us around with the butcher knife.
I was terrified.
I thought she was really going to try to kill me or my friend
or my brother.
-[echoing] Put it down! -Stop!
[Crystal] I can still see that look in her eyes.
It was just evilness took over her.
The more we begged her to stop, the more it fueled her.
We got away and locked ourselves in the bathroom
and put our backs to the doors to hold the door closed.
We just see the knife going from underneath the door at us
and Heather screaming that she was gonna kill us all.
I was telling them, get away from the door,
because we weren't sure if she was gonna stab her way
through the door.
It was worse that we couldn't call for help because we didn't
have cell phones at the time.
I was scared she was gonna cut us or kill us.
After the incident and Heather cooled down,
my friend left immediately.
When I finally was able to get to the phone, I had called
my mom at work and told her what had happened.
And she said, "Why did you let Heather play with the knife?
We will deal with this when I get home."
David and I both
got beat with a belt that night.
[David] Heather got to kind of just sit back and not just kind of peek,
but she would make eye contact with us and just watch it.
I try to forget a lot of the stuff that happened to me
as a child.
I get bits and pieces, but there was a lot of things
done to me that no kid should have ever gone through.
As we got older, my mom came up with new punishments because
like, it wasn't hurting us enough.
The punishments that we did were insane.
It was more torture than a punishment,
and I'll never understand why my mother let that happen to us.
It's just reliving all these childhood memories
that I forgot about.
They're all just kind of rushing back to me.
It does haunt me. It was a crazy thing to watch,
like, her progress with her actions.
You go from telling lies to get us in trouble
to actually trying to stab us.
You're disregarding life that young.
What are you gonna do when you're an adult?
When I was 16, I ended up getting pregnant and married.
After I moved, Heather and I started writing to each other
like pen pals.
I felt like we were starting to get that sisterly bond
that I desperately wanted with her.
I felt like Heather had finally matured and realized,
hey, I do love my sister, and I do want to be a better
person and a good aunt.
In 2006 or 2007,
Heather was 16
and was in a new relationship
and had become pregnant,
and I was very supportive of that because she said that
she wanted this baby, and I wanted her to have
the support I didn't get when I was pregnant at 16.
I thought she had a really great support system to become
a good mom.
On May 4th, Anthony was born.
When I saw his little picture, it just melted my heart.
That little boy, he was so beautiful and healthy,
and I was in love.
So Anthony was special to us when he was born.
He was the first boy in our family.
He brought all of us together. We forgot all the past.
And we were all just there for Anthony.
Heather looked like she had some kind of happiness
in her eyes.
But deep in my heart,
I kind of, like, feared for this child.
[distant baby fussing]
Once Heather moved in, we realized she wasn't being
the mother that we thought she was.
Anthony's father was doing a lot of the work.
[as Anthony's father] You need to be a mother.
You don't do anything!
[David] We would hear Anthony crying at the night,
because Heather wouldn't want to wake up.
Heather's and Anthony's father's relationship was shaky.
[echoing] He is a baby.
He's going to cry no matter what I do.
You can hear all the arguing and fighting,
and they would argue over drug usage and not taking care of
the baby and accusing somebody of cheating.
It wasn't as good a relationship as it looked
like in the public's eye.
It seemed like towards the end,
Heather was intentionally trying to push him away
because she wanted to go with another man.
[echoing] I want you out of my life,
and out of Anthony's life!
Heather says that she doesn't need him,
he's a worthless piece of crap,
and tells him, like, "I don't want to see you anymore.
"You're not going to see my kid anymore.
"If you come around, I'm going to call the police and let them
"know that you and your family are illegal
and get you deported,"
and then she punched him in the mouth
and made his lip bleed.
And that's when he told me that he was leaving,
and he begged me and my wife
just to make sure Anthony's safe and taken care of.
I believe Heather would have called the police
on Anthony's father because it's just the type of person she was,
she would do anything to get her way.
This is a picture of me and Anthony.
I miss his smile.
I think me and Anthony were a lot similar and a lot of me
in him even though he's not my kid,
but maybe it's because I showed him good times and happiness,
and he knew -- like I said, he knew I was there
to protect him, and I was there to love him,
and we were always there when he needed us.
When I look at pictures of him and this big smile that he has,
the happiness, and I could see it, you know,
it's there, but at the end of the day,
I feel guilty because I made that promise to him that I was
gonna protect him, and I wasn't able to.
Me and Anthony were so close because at an early age,
we saw how Heather treated him, and it was a lot like how
our mother treated us.
And so I wanted to be that father figure to him
that I know he wouldn't have in his life.
I wanted to be his safe spot.
[Crystal] Heather had a very short fuse when it came to
her own children.
She would snap at them for any little thing.
She would throw things at them, call them names.
One day, Heather came over with Anthony,
and Anthony was being a little wild.
He had been cooped up.
He was excited to be at my house,
and Heather kept yelling at him,
and she eventually grabbed my vacuum and hit Anthony
with the hose to my vacuum.
Anthony's whole demeanor changed right
in that very moment.
He went from wanting to play and having a lot of energy to
just shutting down and crying.
I quickly told Heather, what are you doing?
You hit him?
Heather told me to basically mind my business, and she would
punish her children how she found fit.
I was really angry at my sister
and confused on how she could
do that to her child,
especially knowing what we've been through.
There's discipline,
and then there's taking it too far,
and I felt hitting him with the hose was too far.
Come on.
[Crystal] And they quickly left after that.
[quietly] His smile.
He had such a good smile,
contagious.
All he wanted was love.
I'm out here doing some follow-up on a referral
called into Children's Services. -[indistinct radio chatter]
When was it called?
[officer] Yesterday, late afternoon, early evening.
Alright, so it must have been baby daddy.
[officer] Hi, buddy, how are you?
At this point, I had already made several reports
to the Department of Children and Family Services,
and nothing was taken seriously.
Heather always had a believable excuse for it.
"Oh, this kid threw a toy at that kid, and that's where that
"bruise came from, or this kid ran into the coffee table when
they were running and fell."
They got into it, you know, brothers fighting.
-[officer] OK. -Uh, Junior had scratches
from Angel digging his nails into him, -OK.
and then Angel had a little bruise right here.
Heather didn't know I was responsible for DCFS showing up
at her front door.
If Heather knew I was the one making reports, she would have
cut me off, and I would have never seen the kids again.
So, for me, it was very frustrating and heartbreaking
that nothing was being done.
-[officer] OK. -OK, thank you.
-Thank you, have a good day. -[Heather] You, too.
[Crystal] This is a picture that I took of Anthony at the park.
I had just gotten a new camera, and I made him do a photo shoot
with some of his cousins.
I remember, he was like, "Take another, take another, auntie."
He was just enjoying every second of it.
These are the times that I know he was truly happy.
He was a very loving child. He loved to hug.
He loved to make you laugh.
He was always there to protect, and he wanted to help.
You didn't have to tell him twice
to come help with something.
He would just come up for no reason behind you and just give
you this great big hug and then run off and go play
with his cousins.
I would give just about anything
to have just one more hug.
So one day, there was a football game on, and I invited a couple
friends over.
I invited Heather over, and Kareem ended up showing up.
I met Kareem at a warehouse job we were working.
He was talking about his two daughters that he had
and then kind of became friends.
The day I met Kareem was at my brother's house for a party,
and I just remember, like,
I got a really bad vibe from him,
and I knew that he was my sister's type,
and I immediately turned to her, and I remember saying,
"Don't even think about it."
Don't.
[Crystal] There was something about him
that just turned my stomach inside out.
It was just this gut feeling that he was bad.
We didn't know that they were dating until they were,
like, a good month and a half, two months
into their relationship, and that's when Kareem moved in
to Heather's apartment.
It's really hard to put into words how it feels,
but I'm gonna feel guilty the rest of my life.
It's just, if I would've never introduced them, it
wouldn't have happened the way it happened.
My wife tells me all the time, it's not my fault,
but deep down inside,
I'm the one that introduced the two,
and that's how I'm gonna feel,
probably for the rest of my life.
So one day, Anthony was over, and I was playing with
the kids, and he took off his long-sleeved sweater that
he had, and we noticed some scratching on his arms,
and we asked about it.
And he told us that he fell down playing.
At first, we're like, OK, it looks kind of bad,
but boys are boys,
and then I noticed there was a hand mark on his thigh.
And I asked him what happened, and he tried to say
his little brother hit him,
but his brother was two years younger than him,
and the hand mark was the size of an adult hand,
but after that, we kind of felt this uneasy, and we started
asking him more questions.
What happened, bud?
And it was always,
"It's basketball, it was soccer."
"He pushed me," or "He hit me."
They never wanted to admit that it was mom and the boyfriend.
Am I in trouble?
No, you're not in trouble.
[David] And me and my wife kind of freaked out, and we're like,
what's going on? He's not telling us,
and in my mind, I'm freaking out more,
because what happened to us as children,
I used to have to say those things,
and that's why knowing that Anthony went through the same
things I went through hurts even more, because I know how
he felt at times,
and I was terrified when I went through it,
so I can only imagine what he was going through.
So one day, Anthony and his siblings were over at our house,
and Anthony's sibling asked to use the restroom,
and then five minutes later, he had to go to the bathroom
again and again, it just kept happening,
but after he did it multiple times, that's when I felt like
I needed to go check on him.
I opened the door and he was eating a banana through
the peel and just devouring it.
That's when me and my wife sat down and started asking
a lot more questions,
and I asked him what was going on, and he just kept saying
that he was hungry,
and he was eating them whole, so there was no evidence left
in the bathroom.
And then he started crying
because he thought he was in trouble.
I reassured him that he wasn't in trouble.
He's allowed to eat the food, but I was trying to tell him
he doesn't have to sneak it.
He doesn't -- you just let us know that he's hungry.
When you're here, you can eat anything you want.
You don't have to hide it from us.
And I was like, "Your mom said you ate before you came over."
He's like, "No, they haven't fed us since yesterday,"
and I was like, "What'd you eat yesterday?"
And they told us that they ate a frozen burrito, still frozen,
that that was all that they were given by Kareem.
And what haunts me to this day is I told them
that we'd always be there to protect them
and that they don't have to worry, just tell the truth,
and that's when they started opening up about everything.
And so once he felt safe in telling one story,
another story came out and another one
and another one.
It just hurts knowing that
somebody can treat kids that way.
I would never treat my kids that way.
There was so much going on
that we didn't even have a clue about...
until that day.
Kareem would grab the boys by the ears and twist them.
He would yell at them,
throw things at them,
make them fight each other.
They were taking food out of the trash and eating that
just to get something to eat,
and I told David, "We have to do something.
It's only getting worse," and David said,
"I'm going to call 911 when Heather shows up."
It was such a risky call for us.
We were going to lose the kids and access to the kids if
the allegations were made, and Heather got the kids back,
but something had to be done,
and we were willing to take that risk to try to help
our nieces and nephews.
[David] So that night, Heather shows up from work to pick up her kids.
[echoing] Where are the boys?
And that's when we tell her, "You're not taking
the kids home, we're keeping them."
And Heather tried to force her way upstairs, and my wife
just blocked the stairway.
My priority was always the kids first, and then my sister.
When I looked at her, she wasn't quite human to
me anymore.
She had become this monster
in very slow, very slow motion to me.
[David] Right there and then, we called 911.
[producer] Whenever you're ready to go.
[clicking]
This is an audio recording of the deputy that came out to
my house the night that I called 911.
He made the decision that those kids
weren't going home that day.
At that point, we were basically telling
those kids that they can live with us and that we will be
their parents from now on.
The kids cheered when they found out that they got to
stay with us.
They actually smiled and jumped up in happiness
and hugged us like we were their new parents.
It gave us a lot of false hope because at that moment
we thought it was done.
We were so sure that things were gonna be taken care of
and these kids were safe,
and they just ripped our hearts out and stomped on them.
[Crystal] Heather told them Kareem was never gonna be around anymore.
They were gonna go to the park, their lives were going to be
happy, she was going to be a better mom, but the kids had
to tell everybody that they were lying,
and that's what they did.
And then they told me that at the end of the week we were
going to have to return the kids, and I begged with them,
and I pleaded with them, and I told them that
if they return these kids, within five years,
one of them will be dead.
[bleep]
That was the 911 call Heather made on June 20th.
She was doing her fake cry that she always did
to get us in trouble.
She had a lot of practice.
She was already planting the seed that he hurt himself
in this call.
She already knew what she was going to say.
She already knew how she needed to act.
It just -- it's infuriating.
When first responders got there,
they said that he looked like a zombie.
Anthony was probably laying there for three days
before they called 911.
So when Maria arrived at the hospital,
she realized Anthony was on life support.
The way Maria described him is that he wasn't recognizable.
He was so skinny.
He was taller than we remember.
All his ribs were exposed.
He had like no muscle on his arms.
He was just super skinny.
She said his eyes were sunken in and dark, bloodshot.
She asked Heather what really happened because she can tell
this wasn't an accident.
And Heather got upset and asked the sheriff that was standing
outside the room if she could
have Maria removed from the hospital.
Then my wife told me that she had to drop to her knees
and cry at Heather's feet
and tell her that she was sorry
for everything that we've done,
and she just kept re-apologizing for everything
until Heather gave her permission to come back in.
My wife had told me that there was a few nurses and they were
sobbing while they were trying to clean him up,
and she described what looked like cigarette burns
on his chest.
All the skin was missing off of his knees.
His eyelashes were missing because she rubbed hot sauce on
his face, and they burned off his eyelashes.
A few of them had mentioned that this is probably
the worst child abuse case they've ever seen.
And, most likely, he's not gonna survive,
and I fell to the floor, and I just started crying.
I just broke down.
I didn't know what else to do.
[sighs]
[sniffles]
This is a picture of Anthony in the hospital,
[sniffles]
hooked up to all the tubes and wires that were keeping
him alive.
[sniffling]
[sobbing] He didn't deserve this.
[sniffling]
[sighs]
[sniffling]
I can't look at this. I'm sorry.
[sniffling]
[normally] It's hard to look at that picture because those were
his final days, and I know
what he went through and all the pain
that was caused to him,
and that my sister did it to him and her boyfriend,
[sniffling]
and he didn't do anything to deserve that.
There's nothing in the world he could have done
to deserve that.
About 6 o'clock in the morning, I received a phone call from
Maria saying that they were going to take Anthony off of
life supports,
and that his body couldn't fight any longer, he was brain dead,
and just 30 minutes later, Anthony was gone.
Heather was in the hall
trying to convince everyone that she didn't do this to him
when he died, so he died alone.
She should have been in there,
making him feel at least a little bit loved,
knowing that was the last thing he was going to feel,
instead of making him feel alone and unwanted and unloved.
So once I found out that Anthony had passed, this rush
of guilt went over me.
That's when I really started to feel it, because I felt like
we let him down.
If I could say anything to Anthony right now, I'd tell him
I'm sorry that I wasn't able to protect him at the end.
I would tell him I love him and I'm gonna do everything
in my power to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else.
This is Kareem's first interview with the police.
And he's doing the same thing Heather did, trying to blame
the kids, trying to deflect off of him.
And everything he says is just a straight-out lie.
To me, he sounds annoyed that they're even asking
him questions.
Like, he doesn't want to be there, and he feels above it.
He doesn't care that Anthony's dead.
He just wants to make sure that he gets away with it,
and he can move on and go to the next chapter of his life.
When Heather and Kareem were arrested,
I felt a sense of relief that I knew
the other children were safe now.
Heather was pure evil, and I believe Kareem is, too,
in the mixture of the two.
It was like throwing gas on a fire.
[reporter] Heather Barron faces murder and torture charges for killing
her 10-year-old son, Anthony Avalos.
The first time I saw Heather in the courtroom,
she wouldn't look at us.
She had a very smug look on her face.
She didn't show any emotion. And it was very infuriating.
There was so many times I just wanted to jump over and just,
like, shake her and be like, what is wrong with you?
Why are you like this?
How do you not feel sad that your child is dead?
I am very angry.
That was her baby. Her job was to protect him.
The grand jury
thought that there was enough evidence for the death penalty
to be OK'd for punishment.
And then when the new district attorney of Los Angeles took
over in office, he took it off the table,
but for me, it's what she deserved.
I never thought I would say
my sister deserves the death penalty,
but that day has come, and she's no longer my sister.
So before Anthony's funeral, we got together as a family
and decided to celebrate Anthony
instead of mourning him.
And we all made it a superhero theme because he was,
in our eyes, a superhero.
If there was a kid being picked on at school, he would befriend
that kid, try to protect him, invite him to go play.
He did the same thing for his siblings.
He was a protector.
It just shows what a great person he really could
have been.
He would have changed this world somehow or another.
That's why I call him my superhero.
Then I start to think what Anthony went through,
and me and him went through a lot of similar things,
but I survived,
and sometimes I think, why did I survive and he didn't?
I miss him so much.
There's not a day that goes by when I don't think about him
and his beautiful smile and those hugs.
He gave the best hugs.
He would come up and hug you for no reason
and tell you that he loved you.
I just hope Anthony knows that
he didn't die in vain, that we are fighting for him
still and his siblings and other children, and we're
gonna make changes, and he is gonna be the difference,
and he is going to save lives just like he wanted,
and I miss him,
so much.
[woman] My aunt and uncle were evil people.
I didn't feel like my body was mine.
I wanted to kill them in their sleep
because I was in so much pain.
That's how far they pushed me.
Almost becoming a murderer.