Yeah, this is the monster I know.
This is who I grew up with,
this is what he looked like, just a little bit shorter hair
and -- and no life in his eyes.
You can -- you can tell there's nothing behind his eyes.
There's no...
soul.
Not a care, only for himself.
I dealt with mental, physical, psychological,
every abuse that an adult can put on a child, I dealt with,
from him, him alone.
And it's almost like I can see the proudness, kind of.
He's proud of what he did, almost.
I can almost see that look in his eyes he used to get
when he would come into my room.
It's just disgusting.
Just...
trash, garbage of the earth.
[unsettling music plays]
[female producer] What was your reaction
when I reached out to you?
My reaction when you reached out was...
why didn't this happen sooner?
You know, maybe three people would have been saved.
I believe that everybody that came in contact with him
knew that he was about control.
He's just an evil person.
He's the devil.
[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 have so many mixed feelings about this picture.
This was the -- the building we lived in.
My life before Robert, I would say it was a regular
textbook family.
All three of us -- me and my mom and my sister
were always super close.
I was old enough to understand that my dad, who was
in the Air Force, was out of the country,
and he had been gone
for a while, and she was lonely.
I'm sure she was lonely until Robert came in
the picture, and things...
took a big, big turn.
This is a picture of my mom and Robert
soon after they started dating.
My mom met him. She went out with one
of our neighbors to the local officers' club,
the NCO club on base.
When I found this picture...
even my mom doesn't look happy in this picture.
I feel during the time my dad was gone,
my mom really didn't know what to do.
This was her first time with two little kids on her own.
And I think that she just thought it'd be easier
if she had somebody else to help her with everything.
The first time I met Robert, I was seven,
getting ready to have my eighth birthday.
It was kind of exciting at first.
This was the Robert that we had in his off-time,
when he wasn't...
thinking he was playing G.I. Joe, Rambo
in the Air Force.
He worked in the military police.
He was a big guy.
He always seemed so big to me.
And he always had his camis on and his camouflage hat
with a beard and a koozie.
That was his outside-of-work uniform, always.
We initially thought it was a cool idea
if he would have really been that way, you know?
I'd say that we're off within the first six months.
I would say their relationship moved rather quickly.
He would just come on the weekends
or, you know, a couple of days.
But when he started being there all the time, it just...
it was so overwhelming for me.
So overwhelming.
He had set up a target in our basement
and he would shoot our Barbies
that we no longer played with
or dolls we didn't play with anymore.
He had a blast doing that,
which I thought was very, very weird in our basement.
He had a seat on the couch that was just where he sat.
We had a coffee table that all his guns
and all his cleaning products to clean them
were always right there.
He didn't need to have guns,
and I think that that was his backbone.
It was more of him showing the power behind them
and what he had, honestly.
I had never been around that, so it was kind of scary to me.
One day, I come in, open the door, drop my stuff,
and run to the bathroom.
And right before I could pull my pants down,
the shower curtain flies open.
[girl screams]
And he's standing there with a gas mask and a machete.
[whispers] Boo!
[laughs]
He thought it was the funniest thing that I peed my pants.
I felt like I was on eggshells all the time.
I didn't know what was gonna happen.
He just kind of took over, and my mom let him.
Like, I guess the man's supposed to control the house,
so that's how she felt about it.
I just wanted to not worry
and not be anxious all the time and just be a kid.
I just did not trust him.
You know, I was always waiting for something to happen.
And I guess now we really have to follow his rules.
Whenever we asked for something,
he would have us drop and do push ups
for whatever we wanted.
"You wanna go roller skating? 30 push ups."
You know, it started being whatever we asked,
we had to do push ups.
So yeah, I quit asking for anything.
I mean, because there would be any time he would just be like,
"Give me 20 push ups," or, you know,
just sitting there,
and he'd tell us to -- to count them off.
It was all him establishing dominance over me.
He was...
taking control and seeing what he could get away with.
Robert, along with many other things, implemented
that I wash dishes now.
I was eight years old,
couldn't even reach in the sink yet.
And there was a time where
I had did the dishes the night before,
and...Robert came and woke me up from bed.
It wasn't time to get up for school yet.
He pointed out a plate that still had crusty stuff on it
and told me that I was to hold the plate to the wall
with my nose,
until he told me I was done.
He told me if I dropped that plate, I would pay for it.
The whole time I'm just sitting there thinking like,
"What's next?"
And just trying not to cry because there was nothing
I could do about it.
Absolutely nothing.
I just, it was my life.
I'm just thinking like,
"What is the point of this?"
You know, the anxiety and the fear
and everything that I was already feeling,
I felt was enough punishment.
I must have been standing there 30-45 minutes.
And he finally said, I could move.
[loud thud]
OK, that's enough.
This is a picture of my sister and I with my puppy Buster
that I had received on my birthday.
When I got Buster, he was mine,
and nobody could take him from me, not even Robert.
My mom gave him to me, and he was mine, you know?
But when Robert came home and found Buster, he was mad.
He voices his anger,
and he wasn't gonna do anything for him.
It was me and my mom's job to take care of him, and...
and we did.
I was running all over the house looking for him.
[as Trina] Buster.
[Trina] Like, "Where's Buster?"
[as Trina] Buster?
I already had all these things in my mind.
Like, "Did Robert do something to him?"
He didn't like him from the beginning,
so what's stopping him from doing it?
And Robert's just on the couch.
He just...
blatantly, like, he was so proud of himself.
Was like, "If you really want to know what I did to Buster,
I broke his neck and threw him in the garbage."
And I just, I just ran up to my room.
I just, I cried the whole night.
[crying]
I was so, so messed up at that time.
I just didn't even know what to do.
I didn't -- I didn't know who to talk to.
I'm like, "This -- this just -- this is not good."
And that was always in my head, always in my head.
If somebody could kill a dog,
they could definitely kill a person.
And I didn't know if that was gonna be me.
This was our baby, Rocky.
Right before he went and got Rocky is
when he told me what he did to Buster.
It was just, like, a couple months before that.
And I thought, "Well, maybe he's trying to make it right."
He was such a good dog, though.
But just like everything else,
Robert had to tear it away from us
because he couldn't control him.
I remember the day that he broke his 4x4 run.
Robert ran over there and took him by his chain
that he was dragging
and flung him around like a helicopter in the air.
It was terrifying to hear the noises coming out of Rocky
and to see a human being doing that.
And he had to shoot him five times
because he just wouldn't die.
[Trina] I wanna know why...
he ever kept getting dogs.
You know you're just gonna take them away from us.
Why even do that? Why?
Was that fulfilling your need of killing something?
The day he did that, I just, I wouldn't even look at Robert.
I just kept staring at my mom, just like,
"Are you gonna open your mouth?
Why is this OK? Hello, lady?"
You know, "Do you see what's happening here?"
And I just kept looking at her like...
and just no response, nothing.
She just...and...
I just think she was afraid
if she would have said something.
He controlled all of us.
He did it because he wanted to
and he got a thrill from it.
And after Rocky was killed,
I definitely had the thought in my head that, um...
nobody's safe.
He wore the belt to work every day.
That seemed to be his go-to, you know?
Well, you can always get the belt,
you know?
The one time I got the belt, that was the first time.
I didn't make it home before the streetlights came on.
I was actually 30 minutes late.
I had marks for days,
thick, leather marks for days.
And that was just for coming home late.
He had no problem whooping me.
And um, that's when the paddle,
my cutting board, came into play.
I was so excited because I made her a cutting board
because I cut it out myself and I'd sanded it for weeks
and put the finish on it,
and I was so excited to give it to her, and...
I came home and handed it to her, and Robert grabbed it.
and he said, "You know, this would be perfect for a paddle."
And, like, my heart dropped.
I was so disappointed.
Because I knew he was gonna do what he was saying,
you know, and he went and cut the sides off.
I was crying.
I was also crying because...
I seen what he made with it.
And I knew that was not gonna be anything nice.
So it always became a choice between the paddle that he made
out of my cutting board or his military belt,
which was, like, thick leather.
And I had already felt that,
so I thought maybe the paddle would be better.
I always chose the paddle. I don't know why, but I did.
It was a big deal to me, because then he took
what I made and used it against me.
And that's when he started the whoopings.
It was a part of the grooming.
I believe he was trying to see what he could do,
what -- what he could -- just push the limit far enough.
My mom won't say anything.
He could get away with it.
And it was just always,
just a little bit more each time.
He would ask me to rub his back.
So, you know, I'd have to go around on the couch
and rub his back, which was fine because my mom was right there
and we were in the couch -- on the couch.
But then it started escalating to um, he lay in the bed...
and he would just have a towel over his butt.
We'd get up to get ready for school and he would just say,
"Hey, I need my back massaged."
And normally it would be after my mom already left for work.
So she wouldn't really know
until she gotta home and she's like,
"Why aren't you at school?"
But even then, I don't think she questioned him.
I don't understand why my mom thinks this is normal, you know?
But nobody wanted to...
anger the bear.
Nobody wanted to see what would happen if they said no.
When I was sleeping,
all of a sudden, I would just be woke up to him up my shirt...
or down my pants...
and just the smell of beer.
But he would come in there every --
It was a lot.
I try and make myself -- I started layering.
I would wear like -- like four tank tops
and then a shirt.
You know what I'm like,
"If you can't get through all the layers,
he can't touch me,"
was my thinking then.
But I'd also...
normally cry myself to sleep.
Because I couldn't believe I was having to go through that.
I finally was able to tell my mom about it.
She said she'd talked to him and it stopped for a minute.
And I, you know, I'm like,
"Wow, thanks for talking to him, Mom,"
but, um...
then it started back up again.
And there was one opportunity where I told her,
"Well, he's doing it again."
And she's like, "What?"
And I -- [sighs]
"What do you want me to do?"
Like, "I would really like to just be a kid."
And she's like, "Well, why don't we just pick up a lock?"
And we bought one of them slide-chain locks.
I couldn't wait to go to bed and lock the door
because I was gonna sleep that night.
You know, I was excited. I'm not gonna be bothered.
I get to sleep. My mom did something.
And I woke up immediately as soon as I heard that doorknob.
He tried it, and he couldn't get in.
And then I could hear him with my mom, like,
"What did you do? What did you do?"
[indistinct arguing]
I'm just laying there just thinking, like,
"Is that the conversation we're having right now?"
I guess, you know.
[Trina's mom] No, don't touch me!
But I'm safe. He didn't get in here tonight.
I believe at the time when my mom put the lock on the door,
she was brave enough to finally...
tell him to get out,
was finally stepping up for herself.
Sometimes I just wonder
if she even had a clue what to do.
One day I just noticed, like, a really,
it was a big gash in her back.
And then like a mark over it.
And it was big, you know?
And I'm like, "What happened to your back?"
And she's like, "Oh, I fell into the bedside table."
Even at that age, I was telling her,
"There's no excuse for him to put his hands on you."
You know, it's bad enough, like the mind control
and everything, and now he's touching,
putting his hands on you.
No.
I feel it just, it goes back to the grooming,
the predatory behavior,
seeking out people that you can
manipulate and control.
And I think that most narcissists,
they go for people.
They see people, they notice people
that they can influence and engage in and control.
They pick up on that so easily.
And I think he probably picked up on that.
My mom was so small and petite compared to him.
And I think he took advantage of that.
He knew...
that he could control her.
I would ask her, "Why can't we just leave?"
Because she was always afraid of him.
So if you can't make him leave, why can't we leave?
I know that there had to be brainwashing and she was just,
it was just fear.
But then I did start thinking
about what he might be doing to her.
[indistinct chatter on TV]
[Trina] We were sitting watching TV one day after school
and he was cleaning his guns like he normally did.
My mom was cooking dinner.
So she really was oblivious to anything that was happening.
And he pulled the gun on me.
He said, "I could just shoot you right now.
And what -- what -- what would you do?"
[tense music plays]
[Robert] Hey.
And I just kind of stared at him.
I was stunned.
And I didn't really know how to respond.
I just...
I'm sure my face probably said it all.
And I think that gave him the gratification he wanted.
And he just started going back into cleaning it again,
like nothing just happened.
And that was the first time that it happened
where he actually pointed the gun at me.
We were at my cousin's house visiting.
We were in Robert's parents' like, conversion van,
and my mom had to run up to the corner store.
I'll be right back, OK?
And then he turns around and started arguing with me
with something that I don't remember
what we were arguing about.
But he was like,
"You know, I could just kill you."
And just pulled his gun out from under the seat
and just held it to my head.
I always remember expression.
I always remember his face.
He was very straight-faced and very serious.
And I knew it, but I just didn't care anymore.
And then, like, I see my mom in the rearview mirror
walking up,
and I thought I'd probably be better off if he just pulled it.
Then I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.
None of the bull, none of it, not worrying about
what's gonna happen to me, what he's gonna do
or, you know,
that maybe he'll get in trouble.
I was like, "Just do it."
"Just do it.
You'll have a lot to explain to my mom."
"Just pull it."
[Trina] He intended to shoot me that day.
Something just happened, and I was done.
And I wasn't going to let him do his dumb [bleep]
he had been doing to me for all them years,
and I was gonna talk back and fight back.
And he slid it back under the seat.
And I think about that all the time.
Like, what if he would've did it?
[reading] "Cyclist charged in fatal I-270 crash.
"A Columbus man is charged with drunken driving after
"a passenger on his motorcycle died as a result of injuries
"he sustained in an accident.
"The driver over the motorcycle, Robert Cordell, 32, was driving
"at a high rate of speed and lost control
"of the motorcycle.
"Both men had been drinking at the time,
and the investigation continues."
This was...
an accident that my mom had actually been waiting to happen
because he told her he had planned this.
Their marriage was dissolving,
so things started, you know, taking...different turns,
meeting different people he wanted to bring around.
Robert started having an affair with his friend's wife.
He would brag to my mom that he was gonna take care of him,
get him out of the picture,
and did exactly like he told her.
He was gonna get him as drunk as he could,
he was gonna put him on the back of his bike,
and he was gonna drive as fast as he could till he flew off.
And that's exactly what he did.
When we seen it on the news and in the paper, she just...
her jaw dropped when we seen it and that he actually did it.
I don't know why she would ever think he wouldn't.
I mean, he was pretty good with following through with threats.
It was heartbreaking that his family did not know
how evil Robert was
and actually fought for him not to do jail time.
They won. He did no jail time for this.
I believe that he murdered
his best friend.
He's just the lowest of the low.
[Trina] I'm sure...
there was fear and despair.
My mom just really couldn't handle it, and she was over it.
And...I think she needed that.
She just was fed up,
and she gained her footing.
My mom finally had the courage to leave.
I was happy that she was divorcing him,
just making him go.
And she made him go.
We didn't leave. She made him go.
At least when he wasn't there, I could breathe.
I felt like I could breathe.
I could fully expand my lungs and I could breathe.
The day she went to court, I told her, come pick me up
from school early and we went out and celebrated.
But she was scared. She was so scared then.
And...
I think she was afraid of...
him stalking, which he did.
[phone ringing]
Robert kept calling over and over again
and leaving messages on the answering machine
that he was on his way over there to kill her.
And he was gonna do to her like he did to his friend.
"And we all know how that turned out," is what he said.
It was just constant.
He was calling back to back to back to back
and just kept leaving messages.
[phone ringing]
I believe he was very capable of following through
with every threat.
Probably wouldn't have a second thought about killing me
or my mom. Wouldn't even bother him.
When he was gone,
I would still feel the anxiousness.
I think that I won't truly feel, like,
calm in my heart until he's dead,
until I know he's -- he's gone.
[phone rings]
Around 2002, we had just moved.
My mom was in a new place, and, you know, we're settling,
and the phone rings, and it's a lawyer.
And she asked what it's referring to,
and they said, "Robert Cordell."
And I'm like, "What are they, what?"
And I guess he was explaining to her what happened.
[female reporter] Prosecutors say Cordell shot and killed his neighbor,
former Reading Mayor Frank Carnevale,
his ex-wife Rita Bushman,
and Cordell's former sister-in-law, Kathy Cordell.
[male reporter] Yesterday afternoon, police say he had blood
on his boots and eventually admitted killing his neighbors
and then told police his sister-in-law was also dead
inside the home.
[Trina] None of us were surprised.
I mean, it blew our mind that he did that,
but we weren't surprised.
He's 100% a monster and a predator...
and a killer.
[news reporter] The victim's family was also in court to face the man
they say turned on friends.
Just came over and killed my brother and his wife
for no reason.
I don't know, it just don't make sense
why somebody would hurt somebody that...
that did so much for them.
I learned that he...
strangled his sister-in-law.
And I can't believe he was in the house with her
for a day or two.
And went next door and confronted the neighbor
about wanting his vehicle back
and proceeded to shoot him 12 times.
And when his ex-wife came to check out what happened,
he shot her.
It wasn't unexpected.
We 100% thought we'd see something else
sooner than this.
I just think about...
his sister-in-law.
He had to stare her in the eyes
while he was doing this.
That's very personal, to strangle somebody.
Honestly...
I... [sighs]
None of us would've been surprised
if there was other victims.
There's probably other victims.
People that he took advantage of didn't have people.
You know, the grooming mentality of trying to be
around people that didn't have
anybody protect them, look out for them.
And I think about that a lot, too,
because I think, you know,
anytime he came in my room, he could have just decided
to get rid of me, too.
I knew too much.
You know, I could get him in trouble.
And then it just makes me think of the guns to my head,
and he could have killed me two times then.
He actually looks very small.
He looks like he's defeated, and I like that.
He needs to be defeated.
He needs to be brought down to...
the level he belongs, which is under my feet.
And that's the first, like,
the first time he looks like that.
I believe he should have been given the death penalty.
And I would have loved to seen that day.
I don't think the taxpayers should pay for him to breathe.
And to eat and to live.
He's a waste of space.
I would actually like, when he dies, can they send me
a video of him being pushed into the oven?
I am so serious. That would be the best closure
for a lot of people.
My mom was diagnosed with lung cancer
in the summer of 2018.
And even though she went through treatment
and was doing well,
it still took her life in 2020 during COVID.
If my mom was here for this,
I believe that she would be very supportive.
And I think she'd probably be proud of me.
It's kind of like the end of a chapter, closing the book.
I wish she would have had the strength to leave earlier.
I wish she would have known what to do.
I think just...
at her age and in the life she lived,
she really didn't know her options,
and she didn't have anybody to talk to about that either,
and she just picked what she thought was...
the best route for her.
And...
as much as I paid
for her being with him, she paid.
I've closed my book on all the trauma.
I've worked through with the trauma.
It's just made me the person I am today.
I don't deal with anybody's bull[bleep].
I'm always the one to stand up.
If I wouldn't have lived the life I lived with him,
I probably would have been a different person.
My experiences have made me who I am today.
I'm not gonna thank him for that.
He should die for that. But I am the person I am.
Everything has built me up to this.
[producer] What would you say to Robert
if you were sitting in the same room with him today?
I would say,
if I seen Robert today --
you didn't get me.
I won.
I'm still here.
I'm walking this earth. I'm breathing this air, free.
And I'm not only
free to do it,
I'm free from you to do it,
and I'm good, and I made a life,
and I didn't let anything you do take that from me.
Anything you did,
I still did everything, just made me do it better.
I could have went down
his path and ended up crazy
and let everything that affected me drive me crazy
and do crazy things,
but it's my mind.
So I chose that I was gonna heal from it.
And I wasn't gonna let it break me
like it did when I was that age.
I've done pretty good.
I made the comment-- he angers [snap] like that.
The next thing I know he's got hands around me choking me!
It was real then that he was a murderer
and I had been living with him.