♪♪
These are pictures of my house.
Where the freezer was.
I was afraid to even walk by the freezer.
Every time I came downstairs to eat breakfast
or to play a video game,
I have to walk right past the freezer.
There was nowhere else that my mom could hide the bodies.
They were cooped up in a freezer...
like -- like meat.
I'm happy I was able to make it out alive.
[detective speaking]
[Mitchelle speaking]
[detective speaking]
I didn't think that there would be anyone to rescue me.
When things got bad,
I would have these fantasies of escaping.
I just remember being surrounded by fear.
There was definitely not a trace of hope within me.
Um, I thought that I was meant to be next.
[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]
GABI: I was born in Detroit, Michigan.
I am the oldest of four.
Stoni, the second oldest, she's two years younger than me,
then Stephen, and then there's the youngest.
Me and Stoni shared one dad, while Stephen and our youngest
brother shared another dad,
and neither of them were really present.
So it was just us five,
me and my siblings and my mom, in the household.
AS GABI'S FATHER: Stop playing with me!
AS MITCHELLE: Why don't you make me, you coward?
GABI: My mom hated my dad.
So after my dad left, we didn't see him as much.
He tried to come around,
but I think that her anger pushed him away.
When he was around, we weren't hit.
She wouldn't lash out at us because she was angry.
My mom made his life a living hell.
But once my father was out of the picture,
we became the target of my mother's abuse.
From as early as I can remember,
my mom was never warm or attentive.
The most amount of affection that we would get is a kiss
goodnight, and that's about it.
One night, I had this terrifying dream,
and I woke up thinking that my mom was dead.
The nightmare was her being run over by a car.
I was scared -- I actually thought that it happened.
So I went downstairs,
and my mom was asleep on the couch at the time.
Mom, wake up.
What? What is it?
And she's like, "Why the [bleep] are you crying?"
And I said I had a bad dream.
And she looks at me,
and she's like, "Go back to sleep.
I don't care about no damn dream, go back to sleep."
I think at that time, what I needed most from my mom
was comfort and was a hug -- at the very least, a hug.
But she told me to shut up, stop crying, go back to sleep.
That's what I was met with.
And so I just go upstairs, and I go back to sleep.
I knew after that, I couldn't turn to her for comfort.
I found comfort in books, and I would read all the books
we had cover the cover, because that was the only way to
cope that I had.
But I thought I had a normal childhood, because I didn't know
any other childhoods.
I didn't know
what a normal childhood actually was.
And if I saw a normal childhood,
it was on TV, and I thought it was fantasy.
It was just fake.
For a lot of the time that I can remember,
we were hungry.
My mom had a few odd jobs here and there,
but after a certain point, she just never went back.
My mom started using the money that was meant
for us to eat, our food, for drugs and alcohol.
Let's go -- food's out.
GABI: We would run out of food.
There was one time in particular where we would
eat canned potatoes for breakfast and then again
for dinner.
That's all we would eat, and they would taste awful.
They were the worst.
To this day, I cannot stand canned potatoes.
I never asked for seconds,
but the youngest one did, and she would get angry at him
and start yelling at him about how
you already ate, and you should be full, and stop being greedy.
I'm going out.
I knew she didn't care, but I would feel bad
to see my siblings as hungry as I was,
especially the youngest one.
So I would share food with -- with them.
Here.
My stomach was -- it felt so sunken in.
We were severely underweight and malnourished because of it.
So when I was in school, if there was something that was
on a kid's plate that they weren't eating,
after they pushed it away,
I would always ask, "Hey, you gonna eat that?
Can I have that?"
But I don't think anyone noticed anything
about how we looked, how we ate.
No one paid attention.
My mom was a ticking time bomb.
She always had her fuse lit, so anything,
the slightest tap, would set her off.
One day, we were all sitting around watching a movie,
and I made a remark on one of the characters.
Why would she do that?
That's so stupid.
And all of a sudden, my mom just exploded.
Keep your mouth shut.
And got angry and started
berating me, calling me stupid, dumb.
I didn't understand why.
Come over here.
GABI: And then told me to
hold these painful positions for extreme amounts of time.
They're called wall sits,
which is where you place your back up against the wall.
It's almost like you're simulating sitting in a chair,
but you're just,
you're suspended in air, only supported by your legs.
You can stay there until I say.
And she had me hold that pose for over an hour
while she sat there and finished the rest of the movie.
My legs would shake, and if we fell, if we shifted our weight,
she would start barking and screaming about how
the punishment will get worse.
But I thought that what we went through
was normal across all households, because the public
saw one thing, but we saw a completely
different thing -- um, to other people,
she was kind, she was nice, she was giving,
but what we saw was irritable, um, angry.
So I thought the world was like my mom, that the people
who were being nice, behind closed doors,
they could be something completely different.
And so I just thought that
everybody's fate was the same as mine.
While my mom was making the threats of, it'll get worse,
at that point, I didn't fear that I would die.
I felt that it would get worse,
but I didn't think that I would actually --
I didn't start fearing for my life yet.
[sniffles]
GABI: My mom's method of punishment changed
as we got older.
I think that she started to see us as more of a challenge
or more of a threat.
So the punishments had to be more severe.
My mom would have different forms
of punishment depending on her mood.
So for a while, there was an extension cord phase.
Then there was a belt buckle phase.
She would have us touch our toes, and she
would just slam the belt buckle down on our back.
And she would make sure to hit our backs
and miss our legs and our arms, and that was so
we could wear short sleeves and shorts.
She would say she was
really paranoid about child protection services.
If one of us were being beaten,
my mom would make the rest of us watch TV, and we had to
pretend like nothing was even happening.
AS MITCHELLE: Mind your business!
It was hard to focus on a TV show
when you can hear your sibling being hurt behind you.
I don't know if she enjoyed it.
Um, when I look back on it now, sometimes I think she did,
but in the moment, I just saw rage.
As far as I feel I've come emotionally,
I still see in the mirror those scars.
This is from one of the toys that she threw at me, and it
hit me, and it split my lip open a little bit,
like right there.
There's also this scar.
This was from a 2x4.
Uh, some are a lot easier to hide.
Um, have one on my arm.
My mom would stand me in
the bathtub and throw hot water on me repeatedly.
My back also is 75 percent covered in iron burns,
but they've healed tremendously over the years,
and they're barely noticeable.
I thought the scars were ugly, the one on my lip,
the one above my eyebrow, I thought those were ugly.
Um, but over time, I actually stopped noticing
that these scars are here,
and I just see my face now, me.
One day, my mom was yelling at me in the bathroom.
Sit still!
GABI: And the next thing I knew,
she had grabbed a gold-plated curling iron,
and she'd smacked me in the mouth with it.
I was stunned, and I felt what felt like crumbs,
food crumbs, on my tongue.
I turned to the mirror, and I stuck my tongue
out of my mouth and saw a shard of my tooth.
What's the matter now?
GABI: Her whole demeanor changed.
She just went into damage control, because she had
realized that she had done something permanent,
and she grew concerned and worried.
[doorbell rings]
[knocking on door]
Soon after, someone rang the doorbell, and she
had already come up with the cover story.
You say your brother did that.
GABI: The cover story was that my youngest brother
had a toy car, and he smashed the toy down on to me.
My aunt comes over, and she sees my tooth, and she says,
"What happened to Gabi?"
My mom tells her the same cover story.
She was playing rough again and chipped it.
And my aunt is trying to offer to take me to the dentist.
She's like, "Don't you want your tooth back?
Don't you want to feel pretty again?"
But my mom didn't take us to any dentist, any doctors,
not even for checkups, because she was afraid
that they would see the bruises.
So my mom told my aunt that I thought
that I looked unique, and that I didn't want
to have my tooth fixed, and my aunt looks at me,
and she's like, "Really? Is that what you really think?"
And I said yes.
I like it.
I was going to cry, because I desperately wanted
my tooth to be fixed,
but I just accepted what happened
and did what she said.
I...
walked into the living room one day
and saw my youngest brother, and he had two toys.
They were army wrestlers or something like that,
and he had them in a position that was...
suggestive, kind of rubbing against each other.
What are you doing?
GABI: My mom became obsessed with this crazy notion that
my siblings had sexually assaulted our youngest brother.
Did someone teach you that?
GABI: And she started basically interrogating the youngest.
Stephen had been bullying our youngest brother, and she asked
the youngest, "Did Stephen do this to you?"
[voice echoing] Did your brother do that to you?
Tell me the truth.
GABI: She kept asking and just repeating it over
and over again
until the youngest finally said yes.
There's no concrete evidence to prove
that Stephen sexually assaulted the youngest.
I think he only said yes to such -- such a terrible
accusation, because he didn't know any better.
My mom left the room
and came back with an extension cord.
She wrapped it around Stephen's neck
and flung it over her back, like kind of how you're
carrying a sack over your shoulder, and she lifted him off
the ground that way, and then she took him to the ma --
the master bedroom and closed the door.
I'm just terrified. I'm in shock.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
I was just afraid.
Throughout most of that week or two, he was alone.
She had him isolated.
She used trash bags to asphyxiate him.
She denied him food.
She would switch between strangling, between blunt force,
to where his head was severely misshapen.
My mom thought she was teaching Stephen a lesson.
She thought that this was an appropriate punishment.
AS MITCHELLE: You little brat! Get up!
GABI: I thought many, many times about telling people,
but I didn't think no one would believe me.
I thought about running away, but I also felt like I would be
deserting Stoni and our brothers,
so I just never really acted on that, because I didn't want
to leave them behind.
What are you looking at, girl? Go downstairs!
GABI: The following day, and days, weeks,
they somewhat run all together into one.
But the only thing that remained constant
was his abuse and how severe it got.
♪♪
This is a picture of my little brother, Stephen.
It hurts seeing this picture.
He was a child. He didn't deserve this.
Stephen was a 9-year-old that had
been abused since he was 5 or 6.
How anyone can torture a child is beyond me.
I don't understand
where my mom's mind was.
What hurts the most to me
is that I thought that Stephen would be okay when my mom
decided to stop.
I thought that he could heal, and everything would be fine.
GABI: After torturing Stephen for so many days,
one night...
my mom called me into the kitchen, and she said,
"I think he's had enough. I'm gonna stop.
I feel like he learned his lesson by now."
But the next day, he was feeling weak.
My mom took him into the room, she laid him down,
and then she said, "Say goodbye to your brother.
He's leaving."
Sorry.
GABI: I saw Stephen laying on the floor in a blanket.
My mom was leaning over Stephen and telling him that
she was sorry and that she loved him, and he weakly said,
"I love you, too." He said it back.
My mom told me to give him a kiss,
but a kiss goodbye.
I told Stephen that I loved him, and then I got down on
the floor where he was and gave him a kiss on his forehead.
♪♪
Then I heard a sound, and it sounded like a breath,
and so I gasped, like, "Oh, he's fine,"
and she said, "No, that was his last."
I won't forget that sound, and that will always --
will always stick with me, and it always has.
And I just sank to the floor right there.
And I had never done anything like that in front of my mom.
Never sank, never cried in front of my mom,
but at that point, I didn't care.
She could hit me all she want -- my brother just died in my face.
After Stephen passed,
she had a bed cover, and she wrapped him in it,
and then had me help her take him down the stairs.
I didn't know that we would be
putting Stephen in the freezer...
until my mom told me to open it for her.
She cradled him in her arms,
and she
set Stephen down in it.
♪♪
At first, I didn't think it was real.
I thought it was a bad dream, and I thought tomorrow, he would
wake up or that he will open the freezer and be like,
"I'm okay. I'm perfectly fine."
[crying quietly]
I think after
the first few days is when it set in
that this isn't reversible.
This isn't something that...
♪♪
[sniffles]
This isn't something that will just heal, like my burns.
Like, he's actually gone.
Trying to live,
knowing that my brother is in the freezer, was terrifying.
I made sure to watch what I said around her.
I already knew that one misstep,
and this is where I'll end up.
After Stephen's death,
my mom grew more and more paranoid
about it, and her threats became more severe.
In the morning after we were all dressed and ready
for school, we would be by the front door,
and what she would do is
drill us over our cover story.
What do you say
if someone asks about Stephen?
We would have to say that he was at our aunt's house
or he was at his dad's house,
and I would have to deliver my line with --
without hesitation, without looking like
it was rehearsed.
No.
If we didn't rehearse our stories correctly,
she would just get more agitated with her tone,
and that let us know that something bad
was about to happen.
Do you want to go to the freezer, too?
Once she was sure that we had our stories straight,
then she would let us go to school.
There was a creative writing teacher,
and she was always the nicest teacher to me,
and I wanted to tell her so bad -- I did.
But then I had the thought that she wouldn't believe me
or fear that maybe my mom would try something.
Our youngest brother is still there,
and what if they show up, and I'm not there to help
or protect him -- what is she gonna do?
After Stephen died,
my mom calmed down a bit, and it seemed like the worst was
behind us, but nine months later,
something set my mom off again.
AS MITCHELLE: Don't you lie to me.
You know what happens when you lie!
GABI: And she started asking my youngest brother
if Stoni had ever sexually assaulted him.
Did she do that to you?
And just like last time, my youngest brother said no.
My mom started to get aggressive, and she threatened
to beat him
if he didn't tell her the truth.
He said yes.
Stoni obviously said no,
but my mom, she was not having it.
My mom just went full feral, basically.
She just started wailing on her,
beating her, slamming her against the wall,
and as the days went on,
she started to do a lot of the same things
that she did to Stephen.
Though with Stoni, it was worse, because she wouldn't feed
her at all, and she just became skin and bone, basically.
I didn't know what to do -- I was just afraid.
I know the gravity of the situation, and this is
the second time it's happening, but I felt helpless, like there
was nothing I could do to change or stop it.
At one point, I did think that one day, we'll go
in the room, and she'll be laying there and won't wake up.
But that's not what happened.
GABI: One day, my mom told me there would
be an inspection coming up in the house.
When my mom found out that we were having an inspection,
she started to get agitated,
she started to scramble around, because in the master bedroom,
mainly, there were streaks of blood along the walls.
And she basically told me to clean the house top to bottom,
and that's what I did.
There was a mattress that had -- that was just bloodied.
It was -- it was just terrible, and she had me put a regular
blanket over it.
Hurry up! And I better not hear a sound.
She told Stoni to lay under the bed, and my mom draped
the blanket over the sides to where it looked
like a bed skirt.
And she told Stoni to stay completely quiet.
Make sure you get the wall.
GABI: She had to hide, because she had bruises
and burns and everything all over her.
There were three inspectors, I believe,
and when they came in, it just felt
like I couldn't say anything, because my mom was always
right there, right behind them.
My mom said something to kind of spark up a conversation,
but I believe it was to let Stoni know that
I am in here, and if you do anything, I am right here.
Then as quickly as they came, they left.
All they had to do was open
the freezer, and this whole thing would have been over.
My mom started abusing her worse, torturing her.
Then my mom grabs a 2x4,
and she hit Stoni right here on her temple,
and it opened, it split, and I saw
a stream of blood spurt out of her head,
and my mom
cheered, she cheered, she said, as it happened,
she said, "Ooh, look at that!"
And she grabs a black pajama shirt, and she wraps it around
Stoni's neck. She strangled her.
At this point, Stoni is barely conscious.
She picks her up
and tells me to grab Stoni's legs -- I didn't want to.
But I had to -- I couldn't say no.
My mom and I
put Stoni in the freezer on top of Stephen.
After putting her in the freezer,
my mom saw that Stoni was still trying to breathe,
and my mom grabbed the plastic bag and then
put it over her face and held her nose
while she was still in the freezer to speed it up,
and then my mom let it go, and she said, "You know what?
[Bleep] it -- you're as good as gone anyway."
My mom closed the freezer,
and then told me,
"Don't cry over that bitch."
She said,
"That bitch...
"hurt your little brother,
and she caused all of this [bleep] to happen."
Stoni I've always felt the most guilty for, because
she was still somewhat conscious.
She didn't just die.
She was still there -- she knew
that I had helped put her there.
Whereas, you know, Stephen was -- Stephen was already gone
by the time we put him in the freezer.
So the last thing he knew was me giving him a kiss
on the forehead and telling him bye and that I loved him,
and the last thing Stoni knew was me helping my mom
put her in her coffin.
♪♪
I am on the left,
and Stoni is on the right.
When I look at this,
I can see how much we do look alike.
Stoni was really friendly, um, always had a big smile,
always -- she was always eager to meet other people,
to meet new people.
She wasn't shy and timid like me.
She was inviting and warm, and everybody loved her.
Just looking at this picture, it just...
it just reminds me of, again, what I lost.
♪♪
[sniffles]
I'm thankful that I have this picture, though,
so I can remember her as she should be remembered.
A few days afterwards, my mom was already threatening
for me to be next if I were to step out of line.
AS MITCHELLE: Wait a minute.
GABI: Any time my mom wanted to send me out
to the grocery store,
she would stop me at the door,
and she would tell me,
"You can go out there, and you can be free,
"and you can be whatever kind of hoe you wanna be.
"But if you bring the police back to this house,
"you're gonna be responsible for what happens.
I will take your brother, kill him, and then kill myself."
The very first time my mom threatened that to me,
I felt a pit in my stomach.
It felt like my heart just dropped
to my stomach, because I believed it wholeheartedly.
Every day, I'm on my tiptoes, tiptoeing around her,
unable to do anything for fear that it'll set her off.
In March of 2015,
my mom got an eviction notice in the mail.
My mom hadn't paid rent, and she owed a certain
amount of money, so we were being evicted.
AS MITCHELLE: I don't understand!
GABI: When she read it, she started panicking.
The eviction letter meant to her
that this whole thing was -- was over.
There was nowhere else that my mom could hide the bodies.
This was it. This was the end.
She couldn't run. She couldn't hide anymore.
You can't do this!
GABI: She talked about often
killing us and then killing herself, and so I thought that
that's what...
that's what was about to happen was that she was just
gonna end it all.
I immediately thought we were going to die.
And I just sat there and waited.
I just sat and waited to die.
Come with me. We're leaving.
GABI: But then she told me we're going
to the neighbor's house, and it confused me.
[knocking noises]
I was afraid, because things were changing,
but I was excited.
I was -- I was happy that I wasn't dying.
AS MITCHELLE: I need to see if you can watch my kids for me.
The neighbor let us in, and my mom explained
to the neighbor that Stephen and Stoni are dead
and they have been for two years,
and she's been hiding them.
I don't know why she -- my mom decided to confess.
My mom asked if it was okay
if me and my youngest brother went upstairs.
We went upstairs, and we turned on the news,
and I saw our front door on the news.
And breaking news come across that they found what appears to
be an old woman -- they called Stoni an old woman.
She was frozen, so they couldn't accurately make out
that it was a 13-year-old girl.
Maybe 10 minutes passed, I believe, and...
we hear voices, um,
call our names.
I didn't recognize the voice as my neighbor's or my mom's,
so I didn't know until I got
downstairs and saw that there were the police.
My mom was in handcuffs at this point, and she called me
over and started to apologize profusely and tell me
that she loved me, and my mom asked me for a hug,
but by this point, her hands were already cuffed, so she
couldn't wrap her arms around me,
so she leaned her chest against mine.
I didn't hug her back, though -- that was
probably the first time I genuinely felt anger.
She just kept saying how sorry she was, how much she loved me.
I moved in with my great-aunt,
and my aunt adopted my youngest brother.
I was elated, because my aunt adopting
him meant that we could stay together.
My aunt is the kind of person to turn on the news
at 7 in the morning,
and I would see pictures and videos of my mom,
lashing out and practically
acting like a rabid dog.
I am the only one throughout both these cases,
I haven't lied about anything -- as horrendous
as everybody think I am, that's fine, but I'm the only
one that's not lying about anything.
I felt disgusted.
I felt embarrassed that I came from that.
That's my mom.
I did what I did,
and I did what I did for my baby, period.
She justified my brother and sister's murders.
There was no remorse, because I believe at one point,
she clearly said, "If I had the chance, I'd do it again."
[speaking indistinctly]
-It wasn't an accident? -MITCHELLE: No, not at all.
If I had a chance to do it again, I would.
GABI: Over time,
my stance on my mom's sentence has shifted.
My stance started off as she deserves death.
Now I realize that death is mercy.
She has to live, and she has to
remember and think about everything she's ever done
and not be able to atone for it.
And I think that if there's anything that
she deserves, it's to live with that pain.
MITCHELLE: I'm sick of this [bleep].
GABI: For maybe the first
few years,
I was severely depressed, angry all the time.
I didn't know how to just be happy or live.
I didn't think that I should have lived through it.
I thought I should have died with Stephen and Stoni.
I really have no idea why I'm still here,
because I 100 percent thought
that before I turned 18,
I would be in that freezer, as well.
I'm still angry at my mom,
but I don't have the unbridled rage
that I used to have.
Knowing that my mom is behind
bars forever, never getting out,
that's a type of closure for me now.
She won't ever have the same freedom and ever have
the same life that I'm able to discover for myself now.
I haven't spoken to her about us and what happened to us,
but last year, um, on my 24th birthday,
my mom reached out from prison.
She was bawling her eyes out, saying how sorry she was
and that she wished she could take it all back
and then she does love Stoni and she does love Stephen.
She was just so remorseful.
Almost -- she was like a baby.
I want to say it's okay as my first natural response,
but I stopped, because no,
it's not okay, it's not okay at all, there's nothing okay.
And so I just say, I know -- I know you are.
I will never forgive her, because in my eyes, that means
I'm accepting it, and I don't want to,
but after the phone call,
I kind of felt relieved, because I knew now that my mom
was remorseful, and then I got a little bit happy,
because I know what remorse will do to you.
I know what guilt will do to you.
If you let guilt run rampant,
it would tear you down from the inside, and that's exactly
what I believe now is still happening to my mom.
Um, and to me, that's kind of like
a revenge all of its own,
and I don't have to lift a finger.