♪
Gary took me in the other room, tied me up,
and threw me in the box.
I was basically told how well I performed sexually
determined if I lived or if I died basically,
and then he raped me
and put me back in the box.
I prayed a lot
in that box,
because I didn't think I was coming home.
It, uh -- yeah, I...
I remember the first time I saw the box.
I know what it's like, you know,
not knowing if you are going to live or die.
He tied me up. He used a knife.
The house was my box.
MAN: Simmons was accused of raping Wolfe's girlfriend
and imprisoning her inside this box.
LORI: I can relate to Brook.
Our stories are connected because
the thing that we have in common
is Gary.
I hate that somebody had to be murdered,
traumatized, and tortured.
It could have all been prevented.
She could have stopped him,
and she didn't.
[very quietly] Wow.
[normally] I would have put that [bleep] away then,
and I wouldn't have stopped until he was behind bars.
I felt guilty. I think the guilt
that I -- I felt was when it --
when it started affecting other people
other than me, like Brook.
She has every right to be angry.
I'm nervous to meet her.
I need to look her in the eyes
so she knows...
I got butterflies in my stomach. I'm nervous.
My palms are sweating, my hands, my feet,
they're both sweating.
Um, it's hard to breathe a little bit.
I'm just nervous. I'm a nervous wreck.
[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 picture was taken at church with my first daughter
with Gary.
It's my son, my oldest daughter,
and my second daughter, Gary, and myself.
I met Gary about 10 months after my first divorce,
I had two children, you know, with my first husband,
and Gary was the groundskeeper at my kids' daycare.
He was very sweet, kind to my kids.
He smiled -- he was the perfect stepdad.
He was the perfect first-time father.
The terror and fear had not yet started.
We were all content.
We were all peaceful.
Gary started attending the church that I was attending.
It was after Sunday school, and my pastor's wife,
she had come to me, and she said,
"Lori, can I speak to you for a minute?"
She says, "I love you.
"I want the very best for you and your little family."
She says, "But Gary does not have an easy spirit."
She says, "There is something there.
It is not right."
That conversation didn't take more than 20 seconds.
And literally, that's all that was said.
I didn't hold much merit to it, because I didn't feel
threatened in any way.
But I remembered that statement when things started changing,
when things started happening.
If I would have heeded that warning,
I would have not endured the things that
I endured through the years.
When we were dating,
he was very considerate and loving and always wanted to
show appreciation.
But I guess his cockiness showed through a little bit.
He says, "I'm going to marry you.
I'm going to make a life with you."
Our church would have Sweetheart Banquets.
-Couples would go have a dinner. -But we're not rushing anything.
I'm talking with a person, and I didn't even pay
attention, and everybody just started getting quiet.
Somebody at the end of the table kind of pointed,
and I looked, and Gary was to my right, and he was on his knees.
He proposed in front of all these people.
I swear to you,
you could have dropped a pin and heard it.
And I told him, "Get up, this ain't happening."
He wasn't disappointed.
He was smiling, and he says, "I'm not getting up.
I'm not getting up until you say yes."
All of the pressure was on me, so all of eyes were on me.
His eyes never wavered.
He was not moving until I said yes.
And I said, "Okay, yes. Get up."
He puts the ring on my finger,
and he turns around, throws his arms up and says,
"She said yes," you know, and I was mortified.
And he leaned in
and kissed me on the cheek.
And he told me, "I told you, you'd say yes."
That was just one more calculation.
He did it knowing that I would, I would say yes
just to stop it.
Gary was my rebound.
He was the person that I thought I needed.
My rebound
could have killed me, and not only me, it could have killed
my children.
This is the front part of the house.
For a split second, when you handed that to me,
I -- I, um, I got nervous.
It was a little unsettling.
The house still creeps me out,
and I have not set foot in there in 27 years.
You almost feel the evil that resonates there.
That was supposed to be my safe haven.
It wound up being a tomb for a person, you know,
it wound up being a prison for another one.
The acts that happened in that house...
were evil.
The evil in the house
started with me.
This is Gary and our first child.
He was still
very much the Gary
that he had led me to believe he was still -- still happy,
still peaceful, still contented.
The monster's not in there yet.
He didn't start changing until after
I gave birth to our child.
After my daughter was born, when he would want to be intimate,
I told him no, he can't. It's not time. It's too soon.
You have to wait, and he said, "That's not gonna happen."
There was no way that he was not having sex.
That evening, he forced himself on me.
That was the very first time Gary raped me.
I was shocked that it happened.
I did not have any idea that he was capable of that.
I couldn't get in the shower fast enough.
I could never use enough soap.
I could never stay in the shower long enough.
I felt dirty, and I felt used.
I wasn't quite sure on what happened.
And I didn't even know if that was considered rape,
because we were married.
I had already had one failed marriage,
and now I am on marriage
number two -- the only common denominator
between those two was me.
So something was wrong with me to drive these men
to do what they did.
It's easy to pass judgment on somebody and say, well,
if that was me, I would have left and never
thought nothing about it.
You can tell me all day long what you think you would do
if you were put in a situation where you have been
manipulated your entire relationship.
It's easy to say, well, I would leave,
but it's not as easy as people think it is.
LORI: Gary had told me early on in our relationship
that he loved to write short stories.
He had like 40, 50 binders.
And I remember reading the stories,
and I don't know if he let me
read that to gauge my reaction or my interest
in what he had written.
The women in the books that he was writing
about were sex slaves, and it was all, all about
dominating women.
I wasn't aware of how deep and dark his writings were.
Deviant would be putting it very lightly.
That's when I had learned that his taste
for darker sexual activities was really dark.
Each of them were stories that consisted of
owning a sex slave,
you know, exploring different type of
sexual avenues, from pouring wax
on somebody, burning somebody,
cutting somebody, sticking somebody in a box.
If you did not arouse him in the manner which he was trying
to seek, in the book, then that person was killed off.
And then he would start another story.
Hey, hon, dinner's almost ready.
I told him, that's not pleasure. That's torture.
And he says, "Well, these are my fantasies.
Something that makes me tick."
He said, "I have secrets you know nothing about."
At first, I didn't want to acknowledge that his mind could
be that dark,
but he tried to bring them to life with me.
When I would
stand up to him, there was no warning.
There was no, um, you better stop, you'd better, you know,
you better back down, there was nothing like that.
He went in for the kill.
And when I tell you that, he would choke me,
choke me to the point to where I would pass out.
He was so big.
I swear to you, his fingers would touch behind
my esophagus,
and he would hold it there.
He would hold it there until I passed out.
When I had come to,
we were in the bedroom.
He had tied both my arms above my head, um, and both my feet to
the bedpost.
He was, like, standing to the left of me,
and I didn't know what was going to happen.
My heart was beating so fast, I just knew he could hear it.
Please stop.
LORI: I had asked him, "Let me go, please untie me.
I'm not a fan of this," and he told me it was not about me.
This was not about me.
AS GARY: Don't be selfish.
LORI: He was calm. He wasn't angry.
I remember him blindfolding me,
and I just remember
being scared out of my mind.
I could hear him walking,
but I couldn't see what he was doing.
[creaking noises]
And he just told me to
pay close attention
to my body.
I didn't scream. I didn't squirm.
I literally just held my breath
and just waited for what was coming.
He took a blade, and...
he just kind of outlined my face and he would go --
go behind my ears, almost like --
almost like he was peeling my face off.
He just started outlining my body.
He was a butcher.
You know, he worked in a butcher shop.
His knives were razor sharp.
If I would have flinched, it would have cut me.
He was just tracing the outline of my body with
his knife, and I was petrified.
I thought I was dying that night.
This was one of the fantasies that he had written about.
If I made a noise, if I twitched
or flinched a little bit,
it aroused him.
I could feel the arousal, and I could almost
feel his pulse quicken with each time that I would moan
or each time I would wince, because of
the fear that was building inside me -- he enjoyed
the discomfort, he enjoyed the pain
and the agony that he was causing.
That's what excited him.
The fear that he instilled.
I'm holding my breath, and I'm not wanting to move.
The stiller I became, the less he liked it.
I stayed perfectly still.
He kind of ripped the blindfold off really fast, you know,
and he said, "Well, this is not any fun anymore."
You ruined it.
LORI: He couldn't untie my restraints.
He had to cut them.
And I remember getting in the shower and turning on
the shower and just sobbing.
It got to the point to it didn't take much to arouse him.
It did not take much to set him off.
I was definitely becoming afraid to --
to be alone with him.
I think it was, like, a legal aid service, and, um,
I had called them and had spoke to
a lady and just told her about the abuse and about
the sexual abuse and all that stuff.
And she told me that in the state of Mississippi,
you can't get divorced when you're --
when you're pregnant.
And I said, "Well, I'm not pregnant," but
the state of Mississippi, um, required me to take
a pregnancy test in order to proceed with me filing for
a divorce.
I took a pregnancy test
and found out that I was pregnant.
Every avenue I took, every explanation I got,
it was all in his favor.
It was my job to prove the abuse.
It was my job to supply them with evidence.
There was no way for me to prove anything that happened.
I had to stay put where I was for another year.
I was devastated.
So when I found out I was pregnant for the second time,
it was just very, very stressful, because
I wanted out, I wanted -- I wanted this to be over.
Sorry.
And I could not have --
I had the potential of not living through that.
And it wasn't only me, you know, it was my kids,
and it was, uh...
there wasn't just me
that I look back now and think
the danger that I, uh,
I not only put myself in, but I put
my children in, you know,
I put people in that I love.
When my children were sick or anything,
I would just use that just to keep our --
keep us distant from him.
We would go sleep in their bed or something like that.
You know, anything to avoid him.
My first daughter by Gary was hospitalized.
She became very, very sick,
and we were there several days.
Gary and my other two children were in Moss Point, and I shared
custody with my ex, and it was his weekend to take
the children, and he went and got our children.
And while I was in the hospital with my daughter,
my ex-husband came and told me that he needed to speak to me,
and he had handed me some Polaroids.
You need to take a look at this.
LORI: The Polaroids were of children that had been beaten.
And he told me that that was my oldest two children.
I said, what are you talking about?
And he said that Gary had beat them.
I was kind of in disbelief.
It went from the top of their bottoms to,
you know, like the back of their knees.
That wasn't just little welts or something.
Those were deep black and blue bruises.
So they were beat with a boat paddle and then
the rod that you use to open and shut blinds.
It turned my stomach.
[exhales shakily]
As a mom, my kids are who I live for.
To know that I left them with somebody who would harm them
scared me to death -- he didn't deny it.
He said he might have went too far.
According to him,
physical discipline and hard work never hurt nobody.
He said, "I hit them a few times."
I said, "No, you beat them, you didn't hit them."
I said, "There is a difference between discipline and abuse,
"and if you don't know the difference,
you have no business executing either one."
My daughter told me that, uh,
the reason it took so long for them to tell me was he had
threatened them that he would kill me.
He used their love for me
in order to get them to submit to whatever
he needed them to do.
It haunts me. It haunts me to this day.
Mind you, it, you know, it's been how many years,
but that's not the point.
The point is, you know, I...
was not there when it happened.
He had already played out some of
the stories in his books.
I didn't want any of the other stories.
I didn't want to become a statistic,
did not want to become one of his books.
I didn't want to become one of his stories.
One of the stories that Gary wrote
was about a box,
and it was for a person.
I was in the kitchen when I heard
this noise and this banging,
and I'm thinking, what -- what are you doing?
What is that?
I seen he's got this huge box.
I'm thinking, why do you need such a --
a big box, why do you need such a heavy box?
AS LORI: Gary?
And he said, "Oh, it's for my guns and for
my knives, I want to make sure the kids don't get them."
You need a case big enough to hide
a body in for guns and knives?
And I asked him, "What knives and guns do you have?
You know, what, uh, I didn't know we had knives and guns."
"We don't have them yet."
It had a lock on
the outside, and whatever you put in was not coming out,
and just as easily as he told me it was just the box,
he just dismissed the conversation.
Why would you need a box so big for guns and knives
that you didn't have? Something else was going on.
Something was much deeper concerning the box.
LORI: I remember coming home, and my son was coming
out of the woods.
Honey?
LORI: And I asked him, "Why are you so sweaty?"
He said, "I'm digging a hole.
"Gary told me to go out here and dig
"a hole and not to come back in until I had reached
a certain depth," or something like that.
And I said, "Well, where is your sister?"
"She's in the house."
And I said, "Doing what?" He said, "Mom,
"I don't know what -- what she's doing.
I just know that I'm not allowed to go in the house."
He was scared,
like he was picking and choosing his words very carefully.
When I walked into the house, I had called for my daughter.
She looked a little uncomfortable,
she looked a little scattered, and I said, "Are you okay?"
She says, "I'm fine," just very short.
And that was not like her.
My son told me that, "Mom, we need to talk.
We need to go somewhere private."
Well, the only private place I could
think of would be the bathroom, so we went into the bathroom.
My son was probably 11, maybe 12.
And then my daughter was either 10 or 11.
My daughter starts shaking, and I said, "Baby,
what is wrong with you?"
[pounding noises]
AS GARY: Lori!
Then just instantly, it literally sounded like
the walls were gonna fall in, because Gary started
beating on the doors. -[pounding noises]
He beat the door so hard that
the door frame come off in the bathroom.
AS GARY: Lori, open this door!
Open this door right now!
This is the very first time I'd ever
heard him raise his voice.
He just kept saying, you know, "Don't you say a word.
Remember what I told you."
AS GARY: It's our secret, not hers.
LORI: His voice was full of hatred, of anger, of rage.
AS GARY: Open this door, or I'll break it down!
You could feel the rage.
It was almost like it radiated out of his body and vibrated
everything in the vicinity. -[pounding noises]
-AS GARY: Open up! -It was extremely frightening.
AS GARY: Lori! Lori!
And they proceeded to tell me that Gary had been, um,
molesting her.
It had happened more than once.
I opened the door, and I was livid.
If there was anything within my reach
that would have caused him physical pain,
I would have used it.
Everything that ever happened,
every incident, every time he had put his hands
around my throat,
every time he threatened to harm my kids,
that all came out in that moment.
I could have killed him
and never even thought a thing about it.
I didn't know that was in me.
We're leaving.
I didn't know so much hurt and so much anger was built up that
I had suppressed
that for so long.
I told my daughter that we have to go and speak to the police,
and he said, "You gotta be smarter than the system."
And I had looked at him, what are you talking about?
You know, what is that supposed to mean?
And it was just like, I know what I'm doing,
and I'm gonna get away with what I'm doing.
There was not enough evidence to charge him with what had
been done.
It was his word against her word.
I spoke to the manager
for some domestic violence association.
I told 'em I don't have a job.
I literally left today. I have no place to go.
I have no furniture.
I had two diaper bags and two suitcases,
and she got me into the apartment.
We had no beds. We had nothing.
I actually was able to rent furniture.
Somebody gave me a TV
and, um, be able to set up the children's bedrooms to where
they had a place to come.
And, you know, that was their home and safe place.
When I found the first device,
it was almost in disbelief.
There was a tape recorder that was
screwed into the wood of the sofa,
and it was rolling.
He had bugged my apartment.
I hit play to see what he could hear, and he could hear me
speaking to my children.
He could hear what was playing on the TV.
It was just as clear as I am speaking to you.
He could hear everything that went on in my living room.
I literally started from one end of my apartment, from
the ceiling to the floor, and I went through everything.
I get into the kitchen.
There is a -- a baby monitor on top of
the China hutch.
He was listening to the conversations that I would
have either with my children or if I was on the phone.
I get to my bedroom, I move my bed away from
the wall, and there is a tape recorder screwed into
the headboard of my bed.
I was just sick and tired of being manipulated.
I was sick and tired of being timid.
I was sick and tired of being taken advantage of.
I was sick and tired of him taking advantage of my kids,
and it was going to stop,
if I had to stop him myself.
I opened the tape recorders, I pulled all the --
the cassettes out, and I cut them all up.
I smashed everything.
When I gave him the box, he was excited,
like I was letting him in, like this was going to be some sort
of social call or visit.
And I remember him unwrapping that box, and his demeanor
instantly changed,
almost to the point to where you saw his eyes go black.
It was absolutely terrifying.
He looked in the box, and he looked up at me...
and I turned the phone around and showed
there was 911 right there, all I had to do was dial.
I'm poking the bear. I'm daring you to do something.
He says, "You know I would never hurt you.
"I would hurt your children.
I would hurt your girls."
And I said, "You have." He said, "Oh no."
He said, "I would hang them upside down by their ankles.
"I would pass a blowtorch over their body
"until their skin peeled.
"I would pull their skin off,
"and I would rub salt on their body
and do it all over again."
I said, "Do you understand
"those girls are a part of you?
"You're talking about harming
your children?"
His eyes glazed over.
I'm telling you, it petrified me, and I am scared to
the point to where I hear my heart beating.
I break out in a sweat,
but I closed the door and locked
the door probably the fastest I've ever done it.
My heart was racing so bad,
but I will never forget how empowered I felt,
but it wasn't over.
He was no longer hiding.
He was no longer trying to pretend.
I wasn't going to be safe until either
he was killed or put in prison.
Hello, Lori.
I guess it's time. I love you.
LORI: This is a picture
of my four children with my brother, Timothy.
Timothy loved his nieces and nephews.
In the summer of 1996, Timothy
was 17 -- he had, uh, moved in with me for that summer
so he could tend to his nephew and nieces to help me out.
He had no problem wrestling with him.
He had no problem throwing a ball or playing dolls.
Timothy was young, and I didn't realize that his relationship
with Gary was still intact.
I would never think in a million years he would end
up in the place that he is now.
He is paying the price for not telling Gary no.
So it was late at night, and Timothy and I were night owls.
So we would stay up, and we would watch
a movie together or we would just sit around and talk
or drink coffee, and it was late.
It was probably 11, 11:30.
I got a knock at the door.
[knocking noises]
And we looked at each other, because we were surprised,
and Timothy goes and opens the door.
And it's Gary.
I did not know that they still spoke.
I did not know that they even had a relationship.
Gary?
I didn't tell Timothy about what Gary did to me, and I could tell
that Timmy was surprised, because he said,
"What are you doing here?"
I saw Gary kind of motion him, and he steps outside.
He comes back in.
"Gary needs my help."
I said, "You have no business with that man."
-Hey. -LORI: And he walked over,
he hugged me, kissed me, and he said,
"Gary said I'll be back within the hour."
I said, "No good comes from being out this late at night."
Gary was a grown man, a professional at manipulating.
You can't dance with the devil and expect to walk
out unscathed.
It was probably 3:30, 4:30, and I got a little concerned,
and then I called Gary's house,
because, you know, he was the last person that I knew
Timothy was with.
[phone ringing]
Gary had an answering machine,
and I left a message.
-[phone ringing] -[answering machine beeps]
AS LORI: Gary, pick up the phone.
LORI: And then I called Gary's home again.
[phone ringing]
-[answering machine beeps] -Gary, answer the phone.
LORI: I think there was a total of three phone calls.
And then the third time,
the answering machine didn't pick up.
[phone ringing]
The phone literally just rang and rang
and rang. -[phone ringing]
I literally just put the phone down, and I just let it ring.
[phone ringing]
It was about ten after eight.
Timothy walks through the door. He's not there.
It's almost like he's checked out -- I said, "Timothy,
I have got to go to work, I'm already late."
And he'd just kind of nod.
By the time I got home,
the police were already in my apartment.
One of the police officers says, um, "There was
an incident in Moss Point,"
and I knew immediately it was at the house.
I stop, and I think, oh, God, what has happened now?
What has Gary done to my family now?
I look at Timmy,
and he said, "I had to do it.
I had to help him, because he threatened you and the girls."
MAN: Authorities say Simmons shot Wolfe, cut up
the body, and scattered it in a nearby bayou.
Simmons also was accused of raping Wolfe's girlfriend
and imprisoning her inside this box.
From what I understand, it was a drug deal gone bad.
Jeffrey Wolfe had given Gary drugs to sell.
Jeff came back to get the money that Gary owed him.
Gary didn't have
the money to give him,
and somebody shot him.
I don't know if it was Timothy that shot him.
I don't know if it was Gary that shot him.
From the time that Jeff was murdered
and the time that Timothy was arrested,
Jeff was dismembered.
And then Timothy was arrested.
Gary was on the run.
That is still very hard for me to process.
I mean, you are...
you are soulless -- I don't know.
There are no reasons for anything so evil.
It's no longer cruel.
That is downright,
100 percent...
evil.
I was looking down
when the gunshots went off,
and when I looked up,
Jeff fell.
Gary took me in the other room, tied me up,
and put me in the box.
And I was locked in there. I just kept praying to God.
I was telling him, you know, help me get out of here.
You know, I didn't want to die.
I understand her feelings. I lived her feelings.
I could have been the one that was killed.
I could have been the one that was put in the box.
I can relate to the terror.
I know what it's like to be tied up.
I know what it's like not to know what's coming next,
you know, not knowing if you are going to
live or die.
And although I was never put
in the black box...
the house was my box.
Gary would come in and, you know, take me out,
and, uh...
I was basically told how well I performed sexually
determined if I lived or if I died basically.
And then he raped me.
LORI: The moment that he laid eyes on her,
he knew exactly what he was going to do to her.
She was almost the reason the box was created,
the box was made.
She didn't know what made him tick.
She didn't know what he was searching for.
She knew that he was a monster.
She knew that he killed her boyfriend.
She knew that if she didn't do what she was told, she was next.
I fell asleep in the box.
And when I woke up, I heard the phone ringing,
and it went to voicemail.
And I was thinking in my mind, I was like, um,
if you're ever gonna get out of here, now's the time.
[phone ringing]
LORI: Whether she knows this or not...
[answering machine beeps]
...the phone ringing that she heard...
the day that she escaped...
was me calling.
I would love to...
look her in the eyes
and commend her for her courage,
and I know that probably means nothing because I mean
nothing to her, I'm nothing to her, but I understand her.
BROOK: I was very anxious, and I was very nervous
on my way over here for this interview.
You know, I deal with PTSD, so I have flashbacks.
I have nightmares.
I am here today to get closure.
Mm.
For so long, I ran from this, and I ran from
people that I thought were gonna come and hurt me,
because I put their dad in prison.
You know how many years of my life I lost
running from this, hiding from this, doing drugs
or substances or -- or whatever to make
the pain go away?
I lost myself.
Jeff and I had just met -- we were still in
the honeymoon phase of our relationship where everything
was perfect.
I think about him a lot,
like every day.
I just think about, you know,
what our life would have been like if Mississippi
wouldn't have happened.
I'm looking at a picture of Jeff.
The last memories I have of him
are being shot and falling to the ground.
He was so young
and beautiful and smart and funny
and I just feel like
I was put there on purpose
so that they didn't get away with it.
Back in 1996, I was 18 years old.
I was probably about 100 pounds soaking wet.
I was tiny.
I had long, bleached blonde hair.
I was just normal.
We drove to Gary's house, which is in the country.
It was dark, real dark.
And we pull up, and there's not a porch light on.
So that kind of was like, why don't he have
the porch light on, you know, he knows we're coming.
We walked in the house, and Gary was
standing behind the bar, and Jeff was standing
right here, and he was asking if we want anything to drink,
blah, da, da, da, da.
-You get in all right, man? -Yeah, yeah.
BROOK: And you didn't even feel no hostility.
There was nothing, nothing -- they're just talking.
AS GARY: You know, actually I got a surprise for you.
I'm really not paying attention
to what they're saying, because that's their business.
So I just stayed out of it.
And, uh, that's when I heard the gunshots.
[gunshot blasts]
I seen Jeffrey's chest blow out all over the blinds,
and then he fell,
and Timothy Milano was standing right there with
a gun in his hands,
and we didn't even know he was in the house.
I was like, oh, [bleep] I'm gonna die.
That's Timothy. Much older.
He's in his forties now.
Such a long time have gone by and,
you know, he was a boy when he went in.
And it's sad.
I'm able some time to speak with him on the phone, but
the last time I laid my eyes on him was outside my apartment
when he was being taken away.
I don't know if it was Timothy that shot him.
I don't know if it was Gary that shot him -- Jeff was just shot.
I find that hard to believe
that he played a part in that.
Jeff's directly in front of me
just like you are right now.
But there's a table in between us.
I was looking down when the gunshots went off,
and when I looked up,
Jeff fell...
and Timothy Milano was standing behind him with the gun.
That is something very hard to hear,
you know,
I've already had one cold-blooded killer in my life.
Do I actually need two?
I think the situation that Timothy
was in, he was in because of the threats
that Gary made to him.
Gary had basically threatened him.
"You will do what I tell you, or I'll kill your sister,
or I'll kill your nieces," and he never thought twice about it.
He was willing to sacrifice his life in order to save mine
and my children's.
BROOK: They shot him, and I'm freaked out.
I was so scared.
I thought for sure that Timothy was gonna shoot me.
And then Gary came over and grabbed me in a bear hug.
[echoing shouts]
Then he, uh, hog-tied me, and he gagged me,
and he locked me in that box.
It was the scariest moment of my life.
I didn't know
what they were gonna do to me.
I didn't think I was getting out of that box.
It was dark, and you're just sitting there alone
with your own thoughts and fears
and just prayin'
for a way out.
And that's when Gary came around.
He took me out, and that's when he raped me.
And, um...
And, uh...
I fell asleep in the box, I was in there so long.
[phone ringing]
The phone is what woke me up.
[phone ringing]
I heard the answering machine come on...
[answering machine beeps]
...and I knew nobody's there.
And I had already gotten out of the knots,
and I could get on my knees and put my back
on the lid of the box,
and I could use my legs as force to push.
So I -- I just kept pushing on it
and pushing on it, and it broke.
And I grabbed the butcher knife off the table,
because if they were coming in when I was going out,
I was gonna gut them...
period.
But I would have crossed that line, because they weren't gonna
kill me -- I was not dying that day.
LORI: The police tell me that there is a massive manhunt.
When all of this happened,
they had Timothy, but they didn't have Gary.
Gary was loose.
Based on what I had learned that he had done
to Jeffrey and Brook,
I don't think he would have had any reservation killing me.
You know, he was losing grip over reality.
The monster was coming out of the cage
that it had been locked away in.
And then I get a package at work,
and I open the box, and it's a VHS tape.
I remember putting in the tape and sitting in
a chair and literally taking a deep breath,
because I did not know what was on the tape.
I didn't know what to expect, and I watched the tape.
Hello, Lori.
-LORI: It was Gary. -GARY: How you doing today?
LORI: He was calm.
I guess it's a real mess, isn't it?
To my way of thinking, I didn't have much of a choice.
I mean, I'd already taken his money.
There was no excuses.
There's never been an excuse for any of
the things that I've done.
There's never been any excuses for
the way I've treated you.
I love you.
I know that for a fact.
I waited a long time
to find somebody like you,
and for a long time
you held me together.
You held me up.
I really don't think it had anything to do with you,
unless it's just the absence,
you not being there.
You never realize
how close you are to the edge
until you actually step over it.
Then the fall is like nothing that
you've ever felt before.
The edge I believe
that Gary's talking about there is, you know,
with all of the dark secrets that he
wrote about, with all of the dark fantasies that he --
he would fantasize about.
I think his ultimate fantasy was murder.
His ultimate fantasy was
being so powerful that he took somebody's life.
I guess it's time.
But in the end, it wasn't what he thought
it was going to be. -I love you.
He should have learned to be satisfied with
the purity of just love instead of
feeding the beast, instead of feeding the monster.
When they arrested Gary, he was a few blocks from my office.
If Brook did not escape, Gary would have killed her.
Brook is the hero of this story.
She is the reason that it ended.
She is the reason that he was caught.
She is the reason that he was stopped.
Mm.
Yeah.
He haunts my dreams.
There's evil right there.
When I look at him, I see a rapist, I see a murderer,
I see a sexual deviant.
The state of Mississippi called me and told me that he was --
exhausted all his appeals
and that they had a final execution date,
and I had already seen Jeff die.
I didn't want to see another person die.
So I just decided against it.
I thought I had destroyed his family.
My testimony put him in prison.
I thought his children were gonna grow up and want to take
revenge on the girl that put their dad away.
I thought that, you know,
maybe Gary and Lori were high school sweethearts, and I just
ruined their perfect marriage.
I was terrified of Gary's family.
I was running and hiding, changing my hair,
changing my -- changing, changing, always changing,
maybe thinking that I wouldn't look
the same, that they -- they couldn't find me,
because now, I don't just have me
to worry about, I have my children,
and -- and that's scary, because...
if they get to my kids,
it's a wrap.
I think I was more in shock
when y'all told me that, um, Miss Lori wanted to speak
with me -- I don't really understand that.
I wouldn't want to talk to somebody
that my husband brutalized
and hurt
and that put my husband away.
I was 18 years old. I am 45 now.
I'm tired of running, tired of being afraid.
I'm tired of
the aftermath of
trauma.
I wanna heal. I want my power back.
I wanna know. Are you gonna hurt me?
Are you gonna come after me?
You know, does -- does the family hate me?
I do not have a clue what to expect from Miss Lori.
I'm gonna be blindsided by something, and I just don't know
what it is, and, um, I'm a nervous wreck about it.
Maybe I would ask her if there were any warning signs,
you know, was he sick and twisted?
Like how dark was he? I wanna know.
I mean, did he hurt you?
Did he beat you? Did he terrorize you?
Did he hurt -- did he rape you?
There had to be some sign somewhere that he was a sicko.
There had to be.
PRODUCER: So I have some clips from Lori's interview.
Would you wanna see the first one?
Okay.
You're given a timeframe to heal after you
give birth to a baby, you know,
and Gary didn't want to wait that time.
He said, "That's not gonna happen."
That evening, he forced himself on me.
-PRODUCER: Did Gary rape you? -Yes. Yes, Gary did.
That was the very first time Gary raped me.
I hate that somebody had to be murdered.
I hate that somebody had to be
traumatized and tortured.
It could have all been prevented.
She could have stopped him.
And she didn't.
Wow.
PRODUCER: Do you empathize with Lori?
-No. -Why?
Because I would have put that [bleep] away then.
And I wouldn't have stopped until he was behind bars.
I'm hoping that it is a whole bigger picture and it
comes all together tomorrow, because right now I'm
just angry, and I know there's a lot more that I haven't
seen yet, so I'm trying not to be too judgmental, but...
that's hard right now.
Okay.
Gary...
had an incredible imagination.
He wrote,
uh, stories
about sex slaves.
He wrote stories about owning women,
pouring wax on somebody, burning somebody,
cutting somebody, sticking somebody in a box.
And I said, "Well, that's -- that's not love.
You know, that's -- that's torture."
He tried to bring them to life with me.
She knew
the whole time.
Why didn't you do anything about it?
Why didn't you warn people?
[exhales heavily]
That makes me angry.
I just, like, blindsided right now.
I knew he was a monster, and it only took one
night for me to figure that out.
They had multiple red flags
and multiple chances
to stop him, and they didn't.
So far, what I see is all of that with Jeff and me could have
been prevented
if somebody would have just took a stand against him.
I don't think I want to do this no more.
Okay. I need to get some air.
[exhales heavily] Wow. Wow.
The signs were all there.
It's like the makings of a serial killer.
[exhales heavily]
My mind is going 9,000 miles an hour right now.
Mm.
I fell asleep in the box.
And when I woke up, I heard the phone ringing,
and it went to voicemail,
and I was thinking in my mind, I was like, um,
if you're ever gonna get out of here, now's the time.
The answering machine picked up,
and I left a message the third time that I called.
I literally -- the phone started ringing.
I set the phone down and let it ring.
-It was her calling? -LORI: My phone is ringing.
Brook is fighting for her life trying to get out of that box.
And the only way that Brook knew
that there was nobody in the house was because
the phone kept ringing.
-I presented her with... -An opportunity.
...with an opportunity to free herself.
It was up to her to do it.
Not knowing that I was helping her.
Wow.
That's a divine intervention if I've ever seen one.
That phone call's the one that saved my life.
I'll be forever grateful to her.
[exhales heavily] Wow.
I asked for clarity. I'm getting it.
PRODUCER: What do you see in that picture?
Is that the box?
That turned my stomach, I mean, just, it made me shudder.
I know that that box
could have been a tomb for Brook.
I admire Brook.
She is an amazing young woman.
I know the terror
I faced with him.
Brook is the hero of this story.
She is the reason that it ended.
She is the reason
that he was caught -- she is the reason
that he was stopped.
[breathes shakily]
[exhales heavily]
Wow.
I was a scared little girl...
who just did the right thing.
I'm not a hero.
I'm a [bleep] up.
All these years, I thought that lady was gonna
come after me because she was a "love her man" kinda gal.
Boy,
my perception was kinda wrong, huh?
Hoo.
Wow.
I think I'm fixing to learn some more things.
That's Timothy Milano's mug shot.
I don't feel sorry for him one ounce.
At any given moment,
he could have stood up and said no,
but he was a coward, and he let somebody
influence him to murder Jeff.
He belongs in hell.
They should have executed him right along with Gary.
I got butterflies in my stomach. I'm nervous.
Uh, my palms are sweating, my hands, my feet --
there's both sweating.
Um, it's hard to breathe a little bit.
I'm just nervous. I'm a nervous wreck.
I heard some of her story yesterday, and I'm just shocked
with everything.
It -- it's...
it's some -- it's just a lot of emotions, happy, sad,
scared, mad.
Um, it's a lot, it's a lot to take in right now.
She doesn't owe me anything,
but I owe her everything.
I felt guilty -- I think the guilt that I felt was
when it's -- when it started affecting
other people other than me, like Brook.
She has every right to be angry.
I'm nervous to meet her.
I have no idea if Brook knows if Timmy is my brother or not.
I need to look her in the eyes
so she knows
Brook is my hero.
[doorbell rings]
-Hi, Brook? -Hi.
-Hi, I'm Lori. -I'm Brook.
-Can I hug you? -Sure.
It's very nice to meet you finally.
Oh goodness.
-This is so crazy. -It's crazy.
Oh.
It's so nice to finally meet you.
-Do you wanna come in? Okay. -Sure. Sure.
I am so glad that you're sitting here right now.
Mm-hmm.
Because people don't understand. They don't understand trauma.
Nope.
-Not like this. -No.
-They don't understand. -They don't.
They're just like, "Oh, well, get over it."
How do you get over something like that?
-You don't. -You don't ever.
It haunts your dreams, your days, the flashbacks,
the blood, the --
they don't get it. -No.
The things that you experienced,
I understand.
In your marriage to Mr. Gary Simmons,
do you think that you saw
his disease progress
and progressing?
Like his sickness, his stories, did they get sicker?
I would see glimpses of it.
Gary never drank or cussed or smoked or anything.
When I was married to him, he never raised his voice,
but we could be talking the way you and I were talking,
and he could literally just reach up and choke me out till
I would pass out.
And when I would come to, I would be tied up, and then
whatever happened would happen.
If I would go to the police or something,
there would not be a bruise for me to show them.
It would be his word against my word.
When I left Gary, I had four kids.
I was a single mom, but I didn't have a job,
but I knew I had to get out of there.
Gary, I didn't know that
he was abusing you and harming you and hurting your children.
I didn't know any of that until yesterday.
I'm sorry that you and your family had to endure all that.
I owe you a debt of gratitude.
You are my hero.
You might not believe that,
but you are.
You...
accomplished
in one night
what I couldn't do in years.
I was never gonna let him get away with what he did to me
and to Jeff, never. -No, ma'am.
I spent the last 30 years running from
you and your children.
I thought y'all were gonna hurt me
and that y'all hated me -- your kids,
I thought they were gonna grow up and hate me because I put
their dad away. -Oh, my goodness.
And we have thanked God for you every day since you've escaped.
-You're my children's hero. -You have made my whole year.
Like...
you kind of make it okay now.
I have four children who are grown...
because of you.
I am here today
because of you.
I never looked at it that way.
I don't know if you know this or not,
but Timothy is my baby brother.
Shut the...
LORI: Yeah.
-You're kidding me, right? -No.
No.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know that.
So now I put your husband and your brother in...
-You didn't do anything. -I know.
Wow. I didn't know that.
You didn't do anything.
And you're sitting here calling me a hero.
-I think I need a minute. -Yeah.
I'm sorry that your brother is in prison, and I'm sorry that
your husband is dead.
I'm not.
You lost your brother.
My brother
is in prison
because of an action that he took.
He could have chose not to.
He had options, and he chose wrong,
and I'm sorry that he did that. I'm sorry for him.
I'm sorry for what happened to Jeff.
I didn't know that Timmy was your brother.
And it scares me,
because now I put your ex-husband and your brother
in prison. -You didn't do it.
I know,
but some people don't think right.
My family holds nothing against you.
My parents don't hold anything against you.
There's nobody in my life that holds anything against you.
Do you understand how long I have ran from y'all,
not knowing this?
When I...
did my interview with Andrea,
I didn't know
about Timmy
until Andrea told me.
I didn't know that -- I never read
trans -- I never read anything.
He didn't know that Timmy shot him.
I was in complete denial.
I didn't know that part of my brother.
Do you think that Gary talked Timmy into shooting Jeff?
Yes, and I do believe that Gary threatened him in some manner
with harming probably me or one of the kids.
Timothy said, "I was just going to go help him with
the car," and he left.
Well,
six o'clock come, you know, and he wasn't home,
and I'm calling
Gary's house, and I left a voicemail,
left another voicemail, and then just put the phone down.
You woke me up in the box. I had fallen asleep.
I heard it. You saved my life.
I didn't even know till yesterday
that you were calling.
They didn't say nothing in court.
They didn't say nothing.
I didn't know.
You saved me, and you didn't even know it.
I fought evil that day and won.
He practiced that to get to the point where he could murder
somebody and cut them up.
What is there that we don't know?
You know?
I don't believe...
that that was his first time
because of the way that he handled me.
He wasn't afraid -- he was in control the whole time.
He knew what he was doing.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
He was meticulous and thorough.
-Yeah. -He was seasoned.
He was a seasoned, professional monster.
If Gary would have come back, and she was in that box,
she was gonna die. -He was gonna kill me.
Yeah.
-Yeah. -But I think with time,
it's gonna be okay.
Do you feel like
the Mississippi Police Department,
do you feel like they failed you?
Oh, on several occasions, yes.
When I seen the clips, I got angry at first,
because I was like, why didn't she put him away?
This could have all been prevented.
-Yeah. -But I know how hard it is.
My thing was, when I've gone to the authorities and, you know,
when I've gone to doctors and gone to
people,
and they didn't believe me, you know, and...
The crazy wife. Yeah, I get it.
And I'm thinking, are you kidding me?
Mm-hmm. It's -- it's a shame
that the authorities didn't put him
away sooner for the things that he did to you
and your children. -Yeah.
I think right now I am
overwhelmed
with emotion
and new insight to what happened.
It's like I could shed it off
and just let it go.
I think I'm done.
I'm sorry that you went through all that.
I'm sorry you did.
Due to the trauma that I experienced,
I have a hard time trusting people
in any sense.
So at first, I was very untrusting and didn't
believe her, but as I got to talking to her,
I've been a hero to their family,
the whole family, for a long time.
And I didn't know that, because I don't see myself as the hero.
She filled in all the blanks.
You know?
It makes those fears go away that --
that I had for so long.
She screamed out for help many times,
and they didn't help her.
And now it's just -- it's time to heal.
It's time to let it go and heal.
Thank you for, um, hearing my story,
and thank you for, um,
for everything, because y'all don't know how many --
how much this is changing my life right now.
And I'm grateful. So, thank you.
I'm not ashamed of it anymore.
It doesn't define me.
I am Brook Weber, period.
I'm not a victim anymore -- I'm a survivor of
a violent crime, and we're gonna make it through it.
It's nice to know
she's as strong as she is.
It's nice to know that, uh,
you're not the only one that has
survived something that's, uh...
traumatic, you know?
What she's given me, you know, is closure
and a debt that I could never pay.
It's one thing to read about somebody in your -- in
the papers or -- or watch something on TV
or something, but to actually shake their hand and to look
them in the eye or to hear their voice or --
or to hug them and, you know,
to, you know, to know she's real,
to know that she's a fighter -- we're gonna be okay.
I hate that she...
thought that we were after her. I don't like that
so much of her time and effort was wasted on
thinking somebody was after her.
I can understand that, though.
She was able to, um...
stop somebody that I could not, she was able to protect
my children when -- when I tried and failed,
and I hate that it took this long to thank her.
I just wanted people to understand
that it's not as easy as it looks.
You can't say that you could walk out or --
or, you know, you would do something
differently from, from what I did or from what
Brook did,
because you weren't there.
You weren't tortured or brutalized.
If you were put in a situation that I was put in
or that Brook was put in,
your outcome could have been different than what ours was.
You might not have made it out alive the way we did.
♪
This is my father and he's got that look on his face
like he's a prophet of God.
I was completely trapped. There was no escape,
because I knew I couldn't escape God.
Lack of empathy. Just horrific to hear.
I was angry at myself for a long time.
I thought Ray was the perfect man.
Ray was evil.
He was very difficult to even say that
my mom killed three children, possibly four.
Ooh, sorry. I'm having a panic attack.
The worst kind of evil is when it comes from somebody
you thought you could trust.
[screaming]
The loss lives in you like a scream you can't scream
all the time.