I have not slept a night, one night,
since all this has started.
My God.
You think that you know somebody,
and then they do something like this.
I had nothing to lose.
You got... there is absolutely nothing
that could hurt me now.
I have no consequences for my actions,
and I plan on hurting people.
It's just unbelievable that I've raised a child
that would be capable of doing something like that.
He wasn't raised like that.
I wholeheartedly have nothing to lose,
and I'm gonna take it out on everybody I can.
I'd rather just kill people. It's much easier.
My son is damaged goods.
There's no fixing him now.
You can't fix something that's that broken.
♪♪
MAN: Some of the most damning testimony in
the trial of Peter Avsenew came from his own mother,
the woman who turned him into police.
JEANNE: He said he had done something that he needed to get
away for six months, and then everything would be all right.
People think I'm terrible,
and I don't care.
I couldn't let him continue doing what he was doing.
Somebody had to stop him.
He broke God's law... Thou shall not kill.
When you break God's law, you have to pay up the God.
But then he got two death sentences.
God, I wish none of this had ever happened.
[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 had the hardest time picking out these pictures,
finding them,
because it's so hard for me to look at them anymore.
Just breaks my heart.
It makes me cry.
Never thought...
we'd been doing what we're doing.
When he was that age,
he was the happiest little guy, always smiling.
He had so much potential.
I had such hopes for him.
He was the light of my life,
and then this monster came along,
and where this monster came from, I don't know.
All the hopes and dreams I had for him are just gone.
I look at his pictures,
and I say, "This is not a murderer.
This can't be a murderer," but it is!
What happened?
What happened to make him turn into
this horrible... psychotic... thing?
♪♪
He first started to change
when my daughter was murdered.
Peter was eight years old.
I had to tell him, sat down on his bed and said
I had to talk to him, and I told him
that something awful had happened.
What's going on?
JEANNE: Peter had two siblings.
Jennifer was 20 years older than him,
and Eric was 10 years older than him.
Something's happened to your sister.
JEANNE: My daughter was dating George,
the guy that murdered her.
She didn't want to see him anymore, because he was
harassing her, and she got a restraining order on him.
And that night,
he went to her house,
and, um,
he shot her point blank with a .357 Magnum
in the base of her brain.
When I told Peter that his sister was gone,
that she had been murdered,
he said, "No, that's not true. You're lying."
- No. - I'm sorry.
- I don't believe you. - I'm so, so sorry.
- You're lying! You're a liar! - JEANNE: He was devastated.
It was like he lost his hero.
His whole little world was just shattered.
- You're a liar! No! - I'm so, so sorry.
Here he had this person he worshiped,
and now they were gone.
He he was, like, lost.
He was just inconsolable. He was so angry.
♪♪
After the murder, Peter started getting
anger issues. He became very bitter.
He started going around just screaming.
And he was never like that. He was never like that.
Peter!
JEANNE: He was so angry.
He wanted to go to jail and get George.
He wanted to do something bad so he could
get in jail, and he could kill George.
He wanted to do the same thing
to George that he did to Jennifer.
Then I said, "You can't do that."
You don't hurt people.
Then you'd be just as bad as he is.
He deserves to die.
I didn't know what to do, because
I didn't know how to handle his anger.
♪♪
He started getting in fights.
We ended up in court when he was nine,
because, um, he broke a kid's nose.
The kid was saying something about Jennifer,
and he just told him to shut up about his sister,
and the kid kept it up, and, uh,
and Peter broke his nose.
Now, I hadn't really seen Peter do anything like that.
So I kind of, um, was shocked.
♪♪
Peter?
In court, he had to tell the judge that
he was sorry and he wouldn't do it anymore.
We have to show the judge you're serious about this.
Why aren't you ready yet?
JEANNE: I was hoping that he would realize
that he can't do stuff like that, and it's not right,
but he just kept getting worse,
kept getting more violent and more violent.
Now!
JEANNE: He was becoming this person that I didn't know.
We tried desperately to get Peter help.
We had him in a grief group,
and, um... but that didn't seem to help.
He just didn't respond well at all.
I mean, I felt like I was losing him,
and I didn't know what to do.
I mean, we thought we were doing everything
that we could by taking him to therapy.
♪♪
But then it just...
steadily got worse.
♪♪
When Peter was around 10 years old,
he started to get into his fascination for knives.
He wanted anything sharp. He had to have something sharp.
At first, he just had a fascination with little knives.
Then it got to be where
he wanted bigger knives and bigger knives.
And then he started sharpening them.
He got his own little sharpening tool.
He would sit and sharpen the knives obsessively.
I disagree that he should be allowed
to have the knives to begin with,
but his stepfather thought that it was perfectly manly
for him to wanna do that.
He used to bring it closer and closer to me.
"Look at this."
- Watch this. - And he would, like,
cut a piece of paper in front of me and stuff like that.
I bled easily, because I took blood thinners,
and he would be like,
"This would really make you bleed, wouldn't it, Mom?"
I could cut you so easily with this knife.
I started getting scared.
Don't you have schoolwork to do?
Oh, no.
I was always afraid he was gonna cut me,
and then I would bleed to death.
Now put it away and get some work done.
I would say, "Put them away.
Please. Put them away."
He didn't listen.
You question yourself, because this is your child,
and your child is not
supposed to do things like this to you.
And yet he was doing it.
He was... he was... and he would seem to be enjoying it.
And that was very upsetting. Very.
♪♪
[knife scraping]
[suspenseful chord strikes]
You don't want to believe that it's happening,
and you want to ignore it, because maybe it'll go away.
Maybe it's just a phase they're in,
and it's gonna pass.
But unfortunately, Peter's never passed.
Just kept getting worse and worse,
and he kept getting in more trouble and more trouble.
♪♪
It was almost like there was
a demonic possession that came over him.
He took a samurai sword, and he came after me
with a samurai sword.
♪♪
I worked at a vet's shop, and we had so many animals.
He was always so kind to them.
But then, as he got older, his whole personality changed.
And because Peter was so volatile,
you never knew what was gonna come next.
The thing with him and wanting to cut my dog open...
That will always stick in my mind.
I'm probably doing laundry or something like that,
and I thought everything was fine.
I didn't think there was a problem going on.
And all of a sudden, he grabbed my dog.
[Young Peter laughing]
[dog whining]
And took a knife, a brutally sharp one,
and he held it down at the bottom of her,
like in her groin.
And he said, "Just how
easy do you think it would be for me to just slit her open?"
And my blood ran cold.
You ever seen people with just mean eyes,
and... and you know that
you don't wanna go in their space?
Well, that's the way he would look.
His eyes were glassy and black,
and... and it was very frightening, very scary.
He was gonna kill her right there in front of me.
You put her down, now.
I said, "You put that dog down",
"and if you're smart, you'll get out of my sight,
you'll stay out of my sight,"
I said, "because you won't live to make it to the door
if you hurt that dog."
♪♪
I must have scared him.
I must have had the look, because he put the dog
down quickly.
[laughs]
Then he'd laugh.
He had a little sicky laugh.
He would just say, you know, like, "You're overreacting."
- It's not a big deal. - Get out of my face. Now!
The sad part is Peter was such a good little boy.
He was a sweetheart.
You're like, this can't be happening,
not to my child.
My child can't be this way.
But it is happening right there before your eyes.
It's like he progressively got worse
and worse and harder and harder to deal with.
♪♪
That same day, right after that happened,
I remember now, he took a samurai sword
and he came after me with a samurai sword.
AS JEANNE: Peter! Peter!
Peter!
JEANNE: It was almost like there was
a demonic possession that came over him.
I mean, he was swinging that thing.
You could hear it going [mimics blade slashing]
And oh, my God,
you have no idea what it... what that sound is
when it goes past your head,
it's just like [makes whooshing noise],
and you realize how sharp that thing is.
I was scared to death.
I thought, "This is it. I'm getting it now."
Any minute, I'm gonna be... Blood everywhere.
I picked up a cushion off the sofa...
and he slit the sofa cushion almost in half.
That's how sharp his samurai sword was.
♪♪
And if I had not taken the cushion and held it up,
he would have hit me with a samurai sword.
You can't imagine.
You just can't imagine what it feels like.
Peter's stepfather was absolutely useless.
He didn't want to get involved.
I had to do it all on my own.
I felt all alone and desperate, because I had
no one to help me deal with him.
And that was more than I could handle.
One thing just led into the next and the next,
and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
♪♪
Peter just did things.
He did... you didn't know why he did things.
He wouldn't tell you why he did things.
He didn't give you answers.
One day, he put his trash can right at his door.
And then he was sitting there,
and he's striking matches and throwing them into trash can
full of paper.
I said, "Don't do that."
What are you doing?
You could start a fire.
He taunted me.
"So what if I do?
What are you gonna do about it?"
I said, "I'm gonna call the authorities",
"that's what I'm gonna do about it.
I'm gonna call the fire marshal."
"Do what you gotta do, mom."
So I did.
[music building]
♪♪
They send this woman over, and that...
He wouldn't talk to the girl.
She tried so hard, but he was such an obnoxious little snot.
He was so nasty to her.
So she told him that she would have
to take him into custody if he didn't stop.
That got a little bit of respect out of him.
During that period of time,
Peter's rage towards me really intensified,
and it never stopped. Just didn't stop.
♪♪
That's when I found the bullets.
[intense music]
♪♪
Oh, my.
See the eyes?
The eyes are starting to get dark.
This is when he was a teenager.
You can see the darkness coming in the eyes, the stare.
They could just burn, like, burn a hole
through you when they were staring at you.
When he became a teenager, I started losing him.
This is where he was becoming uncontrollable.
♪♪
I found jewelry and collectibles
and stuff like that.
I was like, "Where is this stuff coming from?"
And it was coming from the houses he was robbing.
You get to a point where you really are scared.
And you also get to a point where you're pretty fed up.
[door creaking]
Mom?
What is this?
I had the police take him right out of the bathroom one day.
Come on out, put your hands up against this wall for me.
And he'd be like, "I can't believe you did this."
Well, I don't approve of what you're doing.
You won't stop.
I will never forgive you.
JEANNE: It's terrible to have to turn your own child in.
♪♪
He went to juvie.
I went to see him with my mother.
We were supposed to spend Christmas with him,
and I had taken him presents and everything.
And we didn't get to do that, because he went off on us.
There she is, my mother, the slut.
He started when he saw me.
He called me every name in
the book, every kind of horror imaginable.
And Peter started coming at me.
I really was scared for my life.
He's grasping at you, trying to hit you,
trying to grab you.
And then these guys, these great big,
burly guys come and have to pull this kid off of you.
They had to take him out and restrain him
and give him medication,
because he was going after me so bad.
It's horrible. I'm his mother.
I can't imagine being that angry with my mother.
And he got away with it. Nobody would help me.
Nobody would put him away and keep him there
so they could do something with him.
They kept letting him out early, and he kept doing,
re-offending, re-offending.
And, uh, I kept trying.
I wasn't giving up on him.
I always thought that he could be saved.
Um, I prayed that he would be saved.
♪♪
I got a phone call at work
that Peter was in the emergency room.
He... he wasn't hurt, but they had him in there,
and the State Police were holding him,
and I was very confused.
I had no idea what was going on.
The police officer came in and told me that Peter had this
whole diagram of what he was gonna do to the school.
He was gonna blow it up.
He had picked out certain people in
the rooms that he was gonna blow up.
You're looking at this, and you're just
in total disbelief that this is happening.
Is it okay if I speak with him?
I asked him, I said, you know, "So what's going on?"
"Oh, mom. You know, just don't get excited about it, mom,
It's all right, everything's gonna be all right."
It's not a big deal.
Your heart drops. Your heart just drops
to your ankles. It's terrible.
He went to the psych hospital, and from the psych hospital,
he went to juvie.
♪♪
After we took care of Peter,
I went home, and I started looking in his room
to see what else was there.
And the floorboard was up in his closet,
and I reached in there, and there was the gun.
And then I found the attache case,
and the attache case obviously had something in it,
because I could hear it when I shook it.
And that's when I found the bullets.
The shotgun shells, and there were four of them.
One of the bullets had "mom" on it.
When I looked at that bullet and it said "mom,"
I thought, Oh, my God. What did I do?
What did I do to him
to make him hate me so much?
What did I do to him
to make him so vicious and mean?
I didn't know what to think.
I was scared.
I really didn't know what to think.
And you question yourself.
You question yourself over and over again,
because you don't know what you did wrong.
Why would he want to kill me?
I did everything for him, and why?
I cried a lot.
It was just so, so heartbreaking.
I can't take anymore.
[sighs heavily]
♪♪
He just turned around, and shoving me against
the refrigerator.
He had just lost control.
He spent 11 months in a facility
for, um,
aggressive teenagers.
I thought, well, this is really gonna help.
He was on medication.
I thought, oh, my God, this is working.
It's gonna work. Everything's gonna be okay.
He's gonna be acting normal.
Didn't work that way.
I was all excited, because when he came home,
he looked so good,
and he sounded so good.
And, you know, it was like having my son back.
He was affectionate.
Oh, it was wonderful.
But it didn't last long.
One day, I was in the kitchen with him.
Peter, I asked you to take out the garbage.
I'm not gonna ask you again.
I said something to him... I don't even know what
I said to him, and he just turned around
and shoved me against the refrigerator.
I was very shocked.
He had never put his hands on me before.
You don't tell me what to do ever again.
He had just lost control.
You understand me?
[music intensifying]
He left shortly after that, and I just went in my room,
stayed away from him for a while.
I had lost control completely, because he was
just doing whatever he wanted to do.
♪♪
After Peter turned 18,
there was no other place for him but jail.
He just was in jail all the time, so, um,
I didn't see him that often.
[phone ringing]
He would try and call me collect,
always begging for money when he was in jail.
[phone ringing]
I just decided one day that I had given enough,
and I wasn't gonna give anymore.
[phone ringing]
And I stopped receiving the calls.
[phone ringing]
And it was relieving.
It was freedom to be away from it.
When I didn't have to have contact with him,
it was almost refreshing that I didn't
have to put up with it every day.
♪♪
[phone ringing]
Hello?
"Hi, Mom. It's your favorite son, Peter.
How about I come over for dinner?"
I'm like, what?
I said, "Where are you?"
He said, "I'm right across the street."
I'm like, aw... God.
You gotta be kidding.
[knocking noises]
When he came home, he brought in
guns, knives, stun guns.
I was like, "What are you doing?"
No way.
I said, "Oh, no... No, no, no, no, no.
Out with the gun."
I said, "The gun doesn't stay."
"The knives don't stay, the tear gas doesn't stay.
"I don't care what you do with it,
but you get it out of this house, and you get it out now."
Take them to the car.
I didn't ask him anything, because knowing Peter,
I knew that he was gonna come up with some cockamamie story,
and I really didn't want to hear it.
♪♪
Is everything okay?
JEANNE: After dinner, Peter started telling me
how he had done something,
something that he could never get back from.
I said, "Did you hurt someone?"
And he said yes.
Two men.
And I said, "Did you, you know, hurt them bad?"
He said, "Well, yes, I murdered them."
I honestly just didn't know what to do.
That's not funny.
Then I thought he was lying, because Peter's notorious for
making up stories, and I thought, well,
this can't be true. It just can't.
I can't get the smell of bleach off of my hands.
JEANNE: He was saying how he couldn't believe that
it had been so many days since he had been able
to get rid of the smell in his nostrils.
Do you smell it?
No.
He never told me what he actually had done
to those people.
He didn't tell me how he maimed them, how he slaughtered them,
how he wrapped him in bleach-covered blankets
after they were dead.
How he shot one in the head twice and the other 8 times.
He didn't tell me any of the gruesome facts.
I didn't learn those until way into the trial.
I couldn't go to sleep. I just laid there.
I kept thinking all night long.
♪♪
I'll be right back.
I have to stop you,
because nobody else seems to be able to stop you.
So I have got to stop you before you hurt somebody else.
I honestly don't know how I got
through that... The rest of that night,
but the next day, I asked him,
I said, "Did you really do that?"
Last night,
were you serious?
"Yes, mom. I really did it."
"I murdered two people, and they deserved it."
I said, "What do you mean, they deserved it?
How could they deserve it?"
I don't know what I was thinking.
To be honest with you, I really don't.
All I know is I was so...
emotionally distraught.
I was scared.
I was so scared.
I didn't know what was gonna happen to me.
I didn't know what he was capable of.
Where are you going?
JEANNE: I told him that my friend had called me,
and she needed help.
So then he wanted to know if I wanted him to go with me.
I said, "Oh, no, that's all right.
Stay here and relax."
I'll be right back.
Meanwhile, I'm going to my friend's house,
and that's how I got out of the house.
And I went to my friend's house,
and we called the police, and...
they came, and he gave himself up.
♪♪
WOMAN: Stephen Adams and his partner, Kevin Powell,
were found shot to death in their Wilton Manors home
over Christmas 2010.
Prosecutors say Avsenew met the couple
after posting a suggestive ad on Craigslist.
They told me that the two guys were gay,
and that that's why Peter murdered them,
that he had picked them up.
He was soliciting himself on Craigslist.
He'd been selling himself
to gay guys.
I still in the back of my mind was hoping that he was lying.
I was hoping that this wasn't true.
I kept praying that it wasn't true, but it was.
♪♪
Well, I was scared.
I mean, come on. I was really scared.
I didn't know whether he was gonna go
off on me and attack me or what.
I went in, and I said, "You know, Peter,
"I can't let you do this anymore.
"I brought you into this world,
"and not to do the things that you've done.
"I just can't watch this go on anymore.
"I've got to stop you.
So yeah, I'm turning you in."
♪♪
And he said, "It's not your fault."
Well, no, it wasn't my fault.
I've tried to raise you the best I could,
and you have rejected me and rejected me.
I cannot keep beating my head against the wall.
And I have to stop you, because nobody
else seems to be able to stop you.
He said, "Don't worry. I'm not mad at you."
He said, "I understand."
I started crying.
I couldn't stay in there with him.
The last thing I said to Peter before I left him was,
"I love you."
And I said, "That will never change."
And he said, "I love you too, mom."
♪♪
I had nothing to lose.
You g... there is absolutely nothing
that can hurt me now.
I have no consequences for my actions,
and I plan on hurting people.
I wholeheartedly have nothing to lose,
and I'm gonna take it out on everybody I can.
Peter has never shown any remorse.
None whatsoever.
If you ask him why he did it,
he said, "Because they deserved it."
MAN: Avsenew sent a letter to the judge saying in part,
"You will never be able to stop me."
Then he went on a bigoted rant,
saying, "It is my duty as a white man to cull the weak"
and tired from existence," he continued,
"Homosexuals are a disease to mankind
that must be put down."
JEANNE: When it I knew what he had done, it disgusts me so bad.
I don't have the empathy for him.
I really don't.
At trial, the judge asked me,
"Mrs. Avsenew, what would you do?"
And I said, "Your honor, I got to say that..."
"I can't ask you for mercy for my son,
"because he doesn't deserve it."
"He did this.
"He's guilty,
"and he needs to pay.
"And whatever that be,
that has to be up to you."
♪♪
When the sentence came down, I was there,
and he did
one of these... pulled over like he was pulling
a sling or a... a hangman's noose around his neck.
He went like that to me.
He shot the finger at the family.
He did it to the judge, and that's terrible.
He kills their family, and then he turns around,
and he's gonna sit there and shoot the finger at them.
Come on, that's total disrespect.
He has no respect for anybody.
- We pray for Peter's mom. - Yeah, we do.
Because she is really the one
that allowed Stephen and Kevin had this justice, too.
- Yeah. - So we thank Jeanne Avsenew
for coming forward. - Our prayers are with her.
I do agree with the judge,
and it's gut-wrenching.
It hurts. It hurts to know that your son's gonna die.
But he had no right to take two people's lives.
He has to pay. He has to give back.
What he did is inexcusable.
♪♪
Peter has not called me
or spoken to me since he was sentenced,
because he said that if I couldn't accept him
and what he did
that I could no longer be a part of this family.
Let him blame me. I've had it.
I'm 74 years old.
I don't need this anymore.
He has put me through hell and back.
And maybe that sounds selfish on my part,
but my whole life was dedicated to Peter
and getting Peter out of jail,
getting Peter out of juvie.
I don't have any time anymore.
I'm used up, and he's guilty.
♪♪
If I could speak to him, I'd tell him I love him.
That's never changing. He's my son,
and I would tell him that.
But I sure do miss him, and I sure do miss
trying to talk to him.
♪♪
I feel so desperately alone.
I lost my best friend.
I just really miss him.
He was my buddy.
We were really close, I thought.
[sighs heavily]