BELINDA: This is difficult for me to do.
It's extremely difficult.
There's several family members that
aren't happy that I'm doing it.
But I'm not here to... To make my family
look bad by any means or anybody look bad.
If anything was gonna come out and be discussed
about Eric, I wanted it to be the truth,
and it was gonna be done on my terms.
This is my brother.
If my brother can do something like this,
then anybody can do something like this.
I carried that burden for a long time
that I was responsible.
I loved Eric.
I know something was wrong with him.
I couldn't fix it. He's been called evil.
He's been called a monster.
Do I think he was evil?
Sure.
Wouldn't you have to be evil to do something like that?
[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 was taken at our church in Arkansas.
It's my parents, every one of my siblings.
It's a loving family in this picture, and it's before things
went really crazy.
Eric's standing behind me.
I am the seventh child out of eight,
and Eric is five years older than me.
I have a big smile on my face.
But I never liked having my back to him,
not even in photos.
To most, he just looks like a handsome
teenage young man that's polite
and standing there with his family.
But he...
was not like the rest of us.
He was like a chameleon.
He could turn into whatever he thought somebody needed him to
be in order to get whatever it is he needed from them.
Looking at him,
the picture makes him look handsome and sweet,
and... but at this age,
that's the farthest from who he was.
Not too many people, if any,
really knew what he was capable of.
♪♪
I do believe that Eric
was born a psychopath.
I think he needed help at a very early age.
He couldn't handle "No's," he couldn't handle
anybody trying to correct him.
He was very defensive at all times,
and anything could trigger him.
One night, all of the siblings were
at the dining room table playing cards,
and Eric was fine.
It was normal.
Everybody was laughing.
Everybody was having a good time.
But I think he was cheating.
He thought he was gonna win, and he didn't win doing that.
Sorry, Eric, cheat all you want, you're still gonna lose.
And, I mean, he literally jumped up.
I wasn't cheating!
Just the cards went all over the table,
and he just, like, stormed out of there.
He just snapped... It was like a switch.
It was like he couldn't control it.
GIRL: Come on, Eric. Don't be such a baby. Come back!
BELINDA: When he did come back in, he wasn't apologetic.
Help us pick these up.
When he got angry or if something was said
that he didn't like, his eyes seemed to get dark.
He would have his fist just as tight as he could,
and he had this look on his face.
His lips would be tucked in, his eyes would be narrowed.
And it was almost like he was huffing.
And I learned that look at
a very early age, and it was frightening.
It was extremely frightening.
♪♪
We had rules.
We didn't grow up in a naked house.
The girls changed in their room with the door closed.
The boys had their room.
We didn't share the bathroom with the boys.
The first time that I recall him sneaking up on me,
I was in the bathroom.
There was this closet behind the bathroom door.
I didn't really realize he was in that closet
until I was finished using the restroom.
And when I saw the door to the closet move,
I didn't know who was in there.
So I had reached to the door, and out pops Eric,
and he just started laughing.
You scared me. I'm telling mom.
You better not.
Then he said, "If you tell anybody I was in here,
I'll tell 'em you were lying."
And it made me so uncomfortable.
It just gave me this feeling of, "Wow",
"I've got to check behind the bathroom door now and open
that closet next time I decide to go to the restroom."
That wasn't uncommon for him to do things like that.
He enjoys scaring... scaring us
and frightening us, and... it was...
who he was.
My neighbor,
her daughter got a duck for Easter,
and they didn't want to keep it.
So they asked me if I wanted it,
and I begged and begged and begged to keep it.
And so my mom finally gave in.
I named it Yellow Belly Quack Quack.
She would follow me all around the yard,
all around the neighborhood... I loved her.
I was like her mom.
And one day, I remember laying on my bed with
the window open, and I was reading a book and, um,
I could smell the grass that had been cut.
- I remember smelling that. - [dog barking]
And then I just remember hearing a commotion,
and I just kind of,
you know, didn't pay much attention.
And then I could kind of see out
the corner of my eye my brother coming down the hall.
And he gets in my room, and...
he has my duck in a box.
And he said, "The dogs got your duck."
And I'm like, "What?"
Eric's just standing there, holding the box, like, nothing.
It was like no emotion, no emotion whatsoever.
And my duck is just crying and making these horrible noises.
I'm looking at her, and I'm like,
"This is not something a dog would do."
I mean, it was like one of her wings was almost gone.
You could see her insides.
It was not a dog attack.
Mom! Mom!
My mom came in the room,
and she asked what was going on,
and Eric immediately said, um,
"Some dogs got the duck, and Belinda's upset."
And so Mom told Eric,
"Finish her off and bury her."
You need to do it quick so she won't suffer.
[young Belinda sobbing]
BELINDA: I just remember getting in my closet.
I just sat in there and cried.
I don't know how long I was in that closet,
and, um, Eric came back
and opened the closet door
and he said, "Oh, I just wanted
to tell you I buried your duck alive."
Yellow Belly was still crying when I buried her.
"But I'm sure she's dead now."
That's what he said.
He goes, "Dogs didn't really get her.
I ran over her with the lawnmower,"
and he laughed.
It was like you could see his teeth and everything smile.
It was like...
pride almost, because he could just see
the shock and hurt in my face.
He enjoyed hurting me.
He enjoyed hurting my duck.
It's not normal behavior for anybody.
It's just not normal.
I stayed in that closet
the majority of the day.
I just sat there with the doors closed in the closet.
I cried myself to sleep.
That was never brought up again.
It's just one of those things that
happened that you just don't speak about.
I never got over that.
Sorry.
It's just cruel.
It's just so cruel.
And he was happy about it, which made it worse.
That left...
a deep wound on me.
♪♪
He knew right from wrong.
I know he knew right from wrong.
I think that there were just these urges that
he had, and he had to act out on 'em.
BELINDA: I don't know why he felt the need to torture me.
It was just something Eric did,
and he did it on a regular basis.
I could be sitting in a room watching cartoons,
and he would come in and start pacing,
and he would have his fist drawn up and just...
[inhales and exhales heavily] just the breathing.
And if I was engrossed in the TV, in a cartoon
or something, you know,
I would be sitting there watching it, not really paying
that much attention.
He actually would grab my hair and, like,
yank my head back and forth just hard.
[Young Belinda shouting indistinctly]
He'd twist my arm really, really hard,
and, like, he would literally pull my arm up
as high as he could, and I would be screaming,
and he would say, "Does that hurt?"
Ow! Stop it! Let go!
And of course you're saying, "Yes."
Please stop." But it didn't make him stop.
It was an intentional hurt.
He's laughing about it, like it's a game to him.
Eric, Let go of her. Stop it! Stop it!
To him, it was funny... My younger sister,
to my knowledge, he never picked on her.
And I always thought, "What did I do
to make him want to hurt me?"
I would talk with my mother about it.
She said she would take care of it,
but I don't believe my mom knew exactly how to handle him.
She thought if she could protect him
and guide him, that she could fix him.
I actually stopped telling my mom when he would hurt me.
Because no matter what he did to me,
there was no consequences.
There was no kind of action.
So I had to realize that Eric
wasn't gonna change when it came to me.
I was... I was an easy target,
As Eric and I got older,
he would find new ways to, um, hurt me.
It was just... just who he was.
There was a pool that was just a few blocks from our house.
I loved to get in the water with everybody else,
but I could be playing,
and then, all of a sudden, you know,
there goes my hair, and I'm being pulled under.
I knew immediately that it was Eric, and underwater
I went, I was at the bottom of the pool,
and I could not get up.
He's standing on me.
My eyes were open and I could see him through the water,
him looking down at me.
I'm thinking, "I'm gonna drown,
and nobody's gonna know, I'm gonna drown."
And then all of a sudden,
I could see there was somebody else's legs there.
Somebody pushed him, moved him off of me.
And I come up, and I'm choking.
I remember crying
just hysterically.
When I told my sister what had happened,
she was very concerned.
You stay here. I'll go get mom.
No, don't.
She said she was gonna go tell mom and dad,
and I just would beg her not to do it, because I didn't need
him to do something worse
next time... With Eric, you never knew
how much worse it would be.
♪♪
This is Eric, I believe it would be ninth grade.
It's about the age where he started
getting into more trouble outside of the home.
I've never liked this picture of him.
This smile that he has on his face,
I've seen that smile, and it's so fake.
And it's almost that smile where I got away with something,
the same smile when he tortured my duck,
the same smile when he told me he buried her alive.
I stayed as far away from him as I could.
Eric was getting in trouble with the law at this point,
because police officers were already showing up at our house.
[siren wailing]
One day, a police vehicle pulled up,
and my dad goes outside to speak with them,
and then my mom follows.
They were out there for a while and,
you know, you just wonder what happened.
And then my mom came in and got Eric,
and he went outside and talked with them.
I constantly asked questions.
Do you know what's going on?
BELINDA: Then one of my siblings had said
something about he vandalized the school.
Another one said something about that
they were told that he and one of his friends
had robbed a grocery store that they had been working at.
His anger wasn't just in the house anymore.
It was out there.
He lashed out at people the same way he lashed out
at me.
As Eric got older,
it wasn't uncommon for the police to come to our home,
and the more frequently they came,
he had to have done something really bad for them to
keep coming, but I didn't know what.
Eric! Eric, come back here!
I just always wondered, "What did he do now?"
BELINDA: Eric was a very, very handsome man
and very charming.
He knew how to charm the girls.
He had a girlfriend
almost always, and when Eric had
a girlfriend that he really cared about,
he would become basically a better person.
I loved the fact that he was happy,
because when he was happy, I felt safe.
But once they broke his heart, it was another story.
There was this one girl that really, really took Eric,
I think, by surprise.
He really liked her,
and she was so sweet and just so beautiful.
And she had the most beautiful red hair.
Just beautiful.
Something happened. She broke up with him,
and it literally just, like, devastated him.
It was almost like he kind of lost it.
Eric would pace the floors and kind of talk to himself.
[mumbling indistinctly]
BELINDA: He would, like, pace and pace and pace and pace
and pick up the phone and make a call, and she wouldn't answer.
Then he'd slam the phone down and pace some more.
He started driving by her house.
Then he started knocking on the door.
He wasn't good with being told no.
It was the no that he couldn't take.
I think that's what triggered something in him.
♪♪
He had an issue with women with red hair.
In my point of view, I do
believe that there was a trigger there.
One day, I don't know why he and I went
to town together, because we never really went
anywhere together,
but a girl approached him that apparently liked him,
cute as she could be.
- Hey, Eric. - Hey.
Good to see you.
BELINDA: And he was nice to her.
Good to see you, too.
But when we went to walk away from her, I was like,
"Well, she's nice.
She's really cute," and he goes, "Well, her hair is not
red enough." - She's pretty.
She's okay.
Then it did not mean a whole lot to me,
but as years went by, that comment immediately came back
in to play in my head.
I could just hear that comment and see the look on his face,
but it didn't really mean that much to me at that moment.
He started working in Oklahoma,
and when Eric left home,
it was like I could breathe.
It was a relief.
It was almost liberating, because I didn't have to live
in fear... things became normal,
and I was finally of age to date.
So I started dating this guy, dated him for almost two years,
and I ended up being... Getting pregnant.
Single teenage mom.
I had my son, and as soon as I had him,
my parents were leaving to go to Oklahoma,
because Eric had been arrested.
I was told that Eric was arrested for robbery,
but I remember one day, shortly after they had left,
there was a phone call, my other brother was talking
to my parents, and I kind of got
a sense that this wasn't a burglary.
- Are you serious? - What's going on?
So I point blank asked
what happened, why is he in jail?
What'd they say?
He told me the truth.
It's not good.
And said that Eric was
accused of raping and beating two women at gunpoint.
Eric had denied that he raped
these girls, he had said it was consensual,
but I believe that he did it.
And Eric pled guilty to rape of the two girls
and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
♪♪
This was taken
shortly after he got out of prison.
Eric didn't serve his full term, his full sentence.
He was released on good behavior,
which almost...
is unthinkable to me.
So many people thought he had changed
and that he was doing so well.
And he had a great job
and was staying out of trouble.
You would like to believe that he was
going to make it and be a different person.
But a few months later, everything did change...
for the worst,
and...
in the worst way possible.
My mom wanted to have a barbecue, a cookout,
and all of us come and see Eric and visit and have,
like, a little small family reunion.
When I saw Eric, it was just nauseating.
I did not feel comfortable.
I wanted to be able to say, okay, he's changed.
He's learned his lesson.
But I had that bad feeling
that something bad would happen again,
and I didn't want to be a part of it.
I actually said something to him at the grill.
I said, "I need you to be on your best behavior."
I hope you've really changed, because mom
and dad can't take much more of this.
And he said, "I've served my time,"
and that's all he said about it was, "I served my time."
Leave me alone.
It wasn't but a few months after I get this phone call,
[phone ringing]
And it's my oldest sister.
[phone ringing]
Hello?
And she said, "I need you to wake up," and I said,
"I'm a awake," she goes, "No, I need you to sit up
and I need you to wake up," and I said,
"Okay, what's going on?"
And she said, "I have to tell you something.
Eric was arrested for murder."
BELINDA: When I got that phone call from my sister
telling me that Eric had been arrested for murder,
she told me, you know, what had been
put out there in the media.
REPORTER: October 11, 1993,
the night 18-year-old Julie Heath's car
was found abandoned just west of Malvern.
A week later, Heath's body was discovered in a wooded area,
her throat slashed with a box cutter.
Apparently, her car had broken down on the side of the road.
Somebody had stopped to pick her up to help her,
and her body was found
a week later by a hunter
with some of her clothes turned wrong side out.
Eric completely denied killing Julie.
He said that these guys
that were after him from Oklahoma,
they had kidnapped this girl
and made him watch them kill her
and planted evidence that he would take the fall, and that if
he didn't take the fall,
then they would come after his family.
That was the story he had told.
When I heard that story, I did not believe a word of it.
When I learned about Julie's death,
I was thinking how scared she must have been,
how long she suffered.
It just crushed me.
I mean, she's...
18 years old, and this is my brother.
If my brother can do something like this,
then anybody can do something like this.
And my whole life changed at that point.
I never seen this before.
[sniffles]
Wow.
I guess these were up all around town,
I'm assuming... this should have never happened.
It should have never happened.
Had he still been in prison, like he should have been,
this little girl would still be alive.
And he wasn't even out six months.
It was like five months or something
when he killed this girl.
♪♪
It was around Christmastime,
and
I had talked with the sheriff
if... was it possible for me to bring Eric dinner?
I was trying to do something nice...
Not for Eric really as much
as for my mother, I was trying to take weight off of her
however I could.
So I go up to the jail,
and he's in this cell when he comes over to the corner.
And I said, "Hey, you know",
"the sheriff said I could bring you food for Christmas,
you know, so what is it you want me to cook?"
Why are you whispering?
Because I need you to do something for me.
And he said, "There's one thing I want," and I said, "Okay."
He said,
"I want you to get the murder weapon and destroy it."
And I just stood there for a minute,
and I looked at him, and I'm like, what?
What?
He's like, "Yeah, I need you to get it and destroy it."
Don't you understand?
I had to look at this as my brother
just admitted to me that he actually killed this girl.
And this is the way that he did it, by
telling me to get a murder weapon and destroy it.
Why is he telling me this?
Why is he asking me to do this?
He didn't say what the murder weapon was,
the actual place where he said it.
It was an old abandoned gas station.
You know the one, by the turn off at the lake.
He goes, "I'll give you a couple of hours,
and then I'm gonna call you at mom's."
And I said okay.
I said, "Okay, I'll do it."
And why I said that, I'm not sure.
Promise me you'll do this.
BELINDA: Part of me thought this is ridiculous.
I really don't know what possessed me to go ahead
and go. I really don't.
I mean, I have asked myself that question
for so many years.
♪♪
I drove out there and did as he asked,
and, um, I had no idea what I was looking for,
and as I'm walking around out there,
I'm thinking to myself, I can see him right now
just laughing, because he sent me on this wild goose chase.
There's no murder weapon out here.
He is playing typical Eric games, and it's a control thing.
I was getting ready to get back in my car,
and then I saw this box of cigarettes
that he used to smoke,
and I just kind of kicked it over,
and underneath it was this box cutter.
And it was pretty evident that there
was... looked like dried hair stuck to it,
and I immediately just threw up.
I lost it. I knew in my gut that was the murder weapon.
I didn't know what to do, because I didn't want to
touch it, didn't have a cellphone back then.
I pulled my sweater down over my sleeve, and I picked it up,
put it in the trunk of my car, and I was like, okay.
I know exactly what I'm gonna do with it.
I drive straight to my mother's house.
I knew Eric was gonna call me there.
- [phone ringing] - I got the phone call
from Eric,
and I got kind of choked up, because I wasn't exactly sure
how I was gonna handle this at this point.
Yes, it was still there. I found it.
And...
he was in a good mood.
He was happy, and he said, "Yes, that's it."
And he said, "Did you burn it?"
And I said, "Yes."
And he said, "Thank you for the Christmas present."
I have to go.
BELINDA: I felt horrible that I lied,
but I know exactly what I'm going to do with it.
I am turning it in.
I had no doubt from the get-go.
It was like he doesn't know me at all
if he literally thought I was gonna destroy it.
I go outside, because at this point,
I've already decided I'm driving to the prosecutor's office.
Belinda, wait.
BELINDA: But then mom comes flying out
the door and is asking me, "Where is it? Where is it?"
How can you do this? He's your brother.
I don't have a choice.
One of my siblings had said something to my mother about
me having the murder weapon
in my trunk and that I was going to turn it in.
She was in tears.
It broke my heart,
but I had to do what I was raised to do,
what was best for my family,
and I have a little girl.
And if this was my little girl that this happened to,
I would want whomever to do the right thing.
Belinda!
And that's why I did what I did.
BELINDA: This is Julie Heath.
I didn't realize how pretty she really was.
She was a very pretty girl.
Absolutely beautiful red hair.
The red hair...
just really stood out to me.
The first thing I think about when I see this picture
is how in the hell
he could take an 18-year-old girl's life.
And when I learned that she had red hair,
it just made me think that it was something about
her red hair that may have set him off.
The conversation that I had
with Eric so many years ago,
it just rung a bell.
Her hair wasn't red enough,
and I just kept saying that over and over in my head,
her hair wasn't red enough,
and part of me feels like he enjoyed it,
because I know from how he tormented me,
the things that he did,
the joy that he got from it,
and...
[sniffles]
It makes me sick... It just makes me sick.
And that's my brother.
He ruined a lot of people's lives.
I had already told the sheriff, "I need to talk to him.
"I need to be the one to tell him what I did,
that I lied to him, and that I turned it in,"
and he said, "I respect that.
I can make that happen."
And so I get in front of his cell.
I remember him having this look on his face, it's like,
"What are you doing here at this hour?"
And I said, "Well, I came to tell you something."
I just finished giving them my statement downstairs.
I wanted you to hear it from me,
not from somebody else.
I said, "Eric, I turned the murder weapon in.
I didn't destroy it. I turned it in."
And he just kind of looked at me,
and his whole demeanor changed.
The jawline got tight,
the eyes narrowed,
and the look in his eyes...
I've seen it before,
and it scared me.
I forgive you.
Then he smiled and said, "Well, come here,
let me give you a hug."
And it was just so out of character.
Come here.
BELINDA: And he reached through the bars.
I moved so quickly that I almost fell trying to get away.
[laughing]
Then you can hear him laughing,
just laughing, as if it was funny.
Like the whole thing was a joke.
When I was leaving, I saw
my mother talking to my brother's attorney,
and she looked at me,
and she said, "What did you do to my son?"
At that point, I knew that there was
gonna be a huge rift between my mother and I.
Belinda, this is all your fault.
BELINDA: And his attorney made it very clear
that I put the nail in the coffin or the needle in his arm.
He's like, "You killed your brother.
You just killed your brother. You know that, right?"
But I... I know that
it wasn't me that killed my brother.
I do believe that he deserved the death penalty.
He never said he was sorry for what he did.
He didn't have the remorse.
He wasn't capable of that.
The day before Eric's execution,
I wanted to get some answers
from him and arranged a phone call.
I needed...
to know why he put me in the position he put me in,
and deep down,
I wanted him to say, "Because I knew
you would do the right thing."
Eric, this is the last chance we'll
ever have to talk... You owe me an answer.
I said, "Okay, I need to know."
"I need to know why you put me in this position
"to have to turn in a murder weapon and testify against you.
Why would you do that to me?"
And he said, "I didn't want to put anybody else in
that position."
That isn't the answer that I wanted.
I said, "You don't know me at all."
And I said, "And I obviously don't know you."
And unfortunately, that was our last conversation.
He was executed the next evening.
On the night of Eric's execution, I was in
the recliner and I had been dozing on and off.
[indistinct talking on TV]
And I don't know what it was, but something just woke me up.
And I said, "It's over. It's done."
I can feel it.
And my ex-husband said, "No,
they haven't said anything about it yet."
And then at the bottom of the screen came across that
Eric Nance was executed, and it had the time.
[indistinct talking on TV]
And I had no way of explaining how...
I knew it. It was just weird.
It was like I felt it.
It was... like I felt like it was finally over.
[indistinct talking on TV]
BELINDA: I kept playing over and over in my head,
his attorney telling me
that you just killed your brother, and it...
And that seemed like it made it actually true.
So I carried that burden for a long time,
that I was responsible.
I had so many people say, "No, you killed your brother."
Well, that's their opinion,
and they're entitled to it, but I didn't kill my brother.
My brother killed a girl,
a little girl, she was 18.
That's a little girl to me, and, um...
he paid the price for it.
He had to be held accountable for his actions.
But it was very, very difficult.
I lost a lot of friends over it.
I got divorced.
It is a very, very small community.
So when a family member does something
so horrific that he did,
people associate you with that type of behavior.
So you are now known as Eric Nance's sister.
I don't have a name.
I'm Eric Nance's sister.
I do fear that there's more people like him out there,
and it's made me very aware
that...
he's not the only person in this world that's
done these things or will ever do these things.
I mean, I get terrified at times.
I'm terrified, because if my brother could do something
like that, anybody could do something like that.