Someone was gonna die that day... period.
It was the cat mouse game for
so many years, and I didn't know it.
I didn't know I was the mouse.
He was a monster.
And monsters are great at pretending to be
something they aren't.
Look at Ted Bundy -- Charismatic,
good-looking, charming,
and he was a monster.
Well, I was married to a monster, too.
He was cruel. He was heinous.
He was atrocious.
He was evil incarnate.
I am filled with absolute hatred.
I can't express...
the hatred I feel.
I am glad that he's suffering where he is right now.
I hope he's rotting in hell.
I really do.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
[knock at door] [creaking]
[banging on door]
[creaking]
[water dripping]
[banging on door] [creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
I don't refer to him
by his first name.
I will always
use his last name, Palacio.
I don't want his name passing my lips.
He doesn't deserve it.
He doesn't deserve to be acknowledged.
When I met him, I was just turning 15,
and he was 21 or 22.
He was significantly older than I was.
But when I was 15, I looked 23, 25.
I got into nightclubs without being carded.
Just didn't look my age at all.
You were a cop?
Yep. I used to work Miami Beach, but I got laid off.
JENNIFER: We were talking, and I asked him
what he did for a living, and he told me
he did corporate security for Citibank,
but that he had used to be a cop and pulled his jacket back
and showed me the gun that he still carried.
Do you always carry that around?
Of course.
And he said, "Old habits die hard."
He says, "I'm always armed."
Can't be too careful, right?
I guess I know who to call if I need protecting.
Here's this big, husky guy who carries
around a gun, and it made me feel safe.
I wish I had known that he was going
to be the one I needed to run from.
[eerie music playing]
He and I became friends, and he would
pick me up and take me to work,
and we'd hang out, and we'd do things.
He seemed so sweet, and we were such good friends.
And eventually, he made it known that he wanted more
than that, and I told him that I couldn't.
I made it very clear to him that I only ever wanted to be
friends, and he said, "That's okay."
That is the most shocking thing I've ever heard.
I got to know him and thought
that I knew who he was.
But it turns out that was all a lie.
First time I ever saw him angry
was on my birthday.
I was 18, and my friend Carl
came to tell me happy birthday.
- Hey, Carl! - Hey, how's it going,
birthday girl? - Good!
- Oh, thanks for stopping by. - Of course!
JENNIFER: And I was standing outside with him,
and I saw Palacio.
- Thank you so much! - You're welcome.
I really, really appreciate it.
- Thank you. - Of course, of course.
JENNIFER: He saw Carl, and he
got red-faced and clearly was livid.
He had a look of rage.
His hands were clenched.
He glared at me like he was ready to kill somebody.
I had never seen him angry before.
Never. He said, "You [bleep] whore."
And he turned around and left.
It was very scary to see him looking like that.
Sorry about that. [clears throat]
I didn't understand why he was so angry.
Carl told me, "You don't want to be around this guy."
He says, "This guy is not what you think he is."
You're just saying that 'cause you don't like him.
JENNIFER: And I looked at him, and I said,
"I don't know why you're saying that,
but he's never been anything but nice to me,"
and he said,
"Just remember I warned you. He's crazy.
He's not all there."
I'm saying you should really be careful, okay?
I came to find out sometime later
that the reason he was so angry
was because he had bought me a ring,
and was going to ask me to marry him.
I didn't know why.
I've said so many times that I'm not interested
in having that kind of relationship.
And that definitely should have been a warning sign.
I think that I was just too young and naive to really see.
And I should have listened to the warnings
that people gave me.
I started getting sick, having really bad headaches,
pain behind my eyes,
started breaking out in these lesions
all over my body,
and nobody knew what was wrong with me.
I was terrified I was going to die.
And the one person that was there was Palacio.
So one night, we went to dinner,
and he said, "What's wrong?
What's wrong with you?"
So what's going on? What did the doctor say?
JENNIFER: And I said, "Nobody knows what's wrong with me."
I said, you know, "I've seen every
"doctor I can afford to see. I'm done.
They don't know what it is."
He wants to run more tests, but I can't afford it.
JENNIFER: He said, "Let me take care of you."
And I didn't understand what he meant
by let me take care of you. What does that mean?
- I have an idea. - What's that?
JENNIFER: And he says, "Well, we'll get married.
"I'll put you on my insurance, and you'll be able to
"go to doctors and specialists and figure out
what's wrong with you."
I can't -- I can't do that.
Why not?
That seems so cold, to marry somebody for insurance,
but here I am,
sick and, for all intents and purposes, dying,
as far as I knew.
How else are you supposed to get better?
The household I grew up in was very violent.
I was 14 the first time I ran away,
so I didn't have parents.
I didn't have security.
I didn't have someone who cared about me.
This was the first time that I felt protected.
Please, let me do this for you.
JENNIFER: I told him if we got married,
it would have to be name only.
As long as we agree,
it's just as friends.
And he said, "Okay." He was okay with that.
It would be a friendship, and nothing would change between us.
Of course.
JENNIFER: But I'd be able to see doctors.
So finally, I agreed.
Thank you.
I agreed to marry him.
I felt tremendous gratitude
that somebody cared enough
to make such a life-altering decision
to help me.
But I was manipulated into being married.
When I look back at it,
I think to myself, those were signs.
Those were big signs, and you ignored them.
They were flashing red lights that you ignored.
I agreed to marry him,
and we started living together.
He went from being this amazing friend
to a monster almost overnight.
The first thing he did when we moved in was
he put two deadbolts that could only be opened with keys,
and I was not given keys.
Don't forget to leave me a set.
JENNIFER: He had the only keys.
- I didn't make you a set. - But then I can't get out.
I know.
JENNIFER: I asked him, "Why are you locking me in?"
And he said, "Because I need to be
able to trust you before you can go out."
That was like whiplash.
What are you talking about?
You need to give me a key.
Are you insane?
You can't just lock me in here.
Who do you think you're talking to, huh?!
And he threw me up against the wall, and he grabbed
me by the throat, and he said, "You don't question me.
You don't question my decisions."
He looked crazy.
I was just horrified. Who is this person?
And I kept saying, "What is wrong with you?
What's wrong with you?"
And he says, "There's nothing wrong with me.
"You need to learn what the rules
"are and how to live by the rules.
"And you don't ever question me.
You never question me again."
[sobbing]
After he was done, was getting ready to leave,
he would always pull the phone off the wall,
unplug it, wrap the little cord around.
You can have this back when I can trust you.
And off he went to work, and click, click went the locks.
No phone, no way to get help.
Nothing. I was a prisoner.
I was an absolute prisoner.
And I just kept thinking back to that day on my birthday,
and I kept thinking,
oh, my God,
I was warned,
and I didn't listen.
When we agreed that I would move in
and get married, and he would give me insurance,
there was never any talk
about him expecting sex from me.
He told me he was my friend,
and he just wanted to take care of me.
And it's not true.
It was not true.
The very first time that we were in the apartment together,
he raped me.
After the first time he raped me,
I was sobbing and hysterical and crying,
and I kept telling him, we -- we talked about this.
Why are you doing this to me?
Who the hell are you?
And he said, "I am the person I've always been."
And I just --
I couldn't believe it.
Who the hell am I sitting next to you right now?
That's all I could think of.
He made it clear that this was what was gonna happen,
that I was gonna cook, I was gonna clean,
I was gonna do his laundry, and I was gonna have sex
with him, and that was my role.
I became a possession, and he used me however he wanted to.
I dreaded it every single time,
but at some point, you just quit fighting.
He told me, "Shut the hell up, get in bed, and go to sleep.
"You've got to make me breakfast in the morning.
Go to bed now and shut up."
I kept thinking to myself, he's always watching.
And if you get away from him, what are you gonna do?
Where are you gonna go?
You're so sick, you can barely lift your head up
off the pillow some days -- What are you gonna do?
My health was deteriorating every day.
I was sicker every single day.
[coughing]
When I would ask him,
"Can we please make an appointment for me to go to
the doctor?"
He would just look at me,
slap me, and say, "We'll do it when I'm ready to do it."
He loved having that power.
He loved control.
He thrived on it.
He needed it.
It wasn't until I was
basically blind
that he let me go to a doctor.
I was useless to him if I was blind.
How could I iron shirts if I'm blind?
How could I keep the house clean if I'm blind?
He said to me, "You make one wrong move,
"you say one wrong thing,
I'm gonna kill your cat, and it'll be your fault."
He went into the doctor's office, into the exam room.
He knew his mere presence
would make sure
that I didn't say anything.
DOCTOR: All right, well, let's see if we can
figure out what's going on with you today, all right?
JENNIFER: I was diagnosed with systemic lupus
and fibromyalgia on top of many other issues.
DOCTOR: Is there anything going on at home
that might be causing any stress lately?
I didn't for more than five minutes at a time
ever think about leaving.
What am I gonna do?
I'm gonna go back to not having insurance?
How am I gonna be treated for
my medical conditions if I don't have insurance?
No.
There's no point of running,
because there's nowhere to go.
I was trapped by my illnesses.
I was trapped by my own psyche.
My own brain
told me I was not capable of surviving without him.
Hopefully, in the next few days, we can get an answer
back to you, all right? - Okay.
JENNIFER: He always carried a gun.
And it made him feel like a big man.
And so he would always bring the gun out when he was mad
at me, and he would start cleaning it,
take it apart, and clean it and just stare at me.
He was threatening me with it, without having to say it.
And then he'd put it back together, and he'd say --
Put it right up to my face and say, "Look, doesn't it
look nice?"
And he'd smirk.
It terrified me.
One time, he came into the bedroom
and raped me with the handle of a knife
and told me, "It'll be the sharp end of the knife next time."
And this is what people don't understand
when they say...
"You can go to the police now,
you can do this, you can do that."
You don't leave someone like that.
That's a psychopath.
And I was in his grips.
You can't leave somebody that crazy,
because they'll find you.
JENNIFER: I didn't want to be a captive anymore.
I didn't want to live, but I didn't want to die.
I was in limbo, and the medication is working,
and slowly,
I'm getting a little bit better, a little at a time.
Once I started feeling better, I started feeling that urge
to call somebody to beg for help,
to find a safe house, to do something.
I knew I had to get out.
I couldn't stay there anymore.
I had to get out somehow.
And as I'm thinking all this and thinking about, well,
you can go live in a homeless shelter until you find a job,
I found out I was pregnant.
Hm. My babies.
[laughs quietly]
Emily and Ryan.
That was the picture that I took
the day that Ryan came home from the hospital.
They gave me purpose.
They gave my life meaning -- I had something to wake up for.
I was very fierce about protecting my children,
and I didn't care what happened to me.
My children gave me courage.
When my son was young,
he had severely crossed eyes.
The treatment for the crossed eyes
is to patch each eye individually.
Palacio told me that was wrong, and that I was gonna do it
his way, and I said,
"No, I'm gonna do it the way that the doctors
told me to do it."
I'm just telling you what he said.
And he was fuming that I corrected him.
If you want to check, give him a call.
And he grabbed me by the hair,
and he pushed me against the wall.
Maybe you forgot how things work around here.
And he said, "Don't you ever, ever tell me
I'm not doing the right thing for my children."
And he took a big heavy-duty hole puncher,
and he hit me right up here.
And out I went.
I was unconscious for a period of time.
I don't know how long.
When I woke up, I was on
the ground, and I was bruised and bloodied.
He was never gonna change or come to some epiphany
and realize he's been a complete bastard.
And...
say, "I'm so sorry I made your life hell
"for so many years.
Can you ever forgive me?"
That was never gonna happen.
We were at his cousin's house,
standing around right by this hot tub,
and my daughter kind of toddled over,
and she fell into the hot tub.
Emma!
JENNIFER: And I was on the other side of the pool,
and he's just standing there staring down.
She's sinking. She's reaching up like this.
Cris -- do something!
I ran over and jumped in
and grabbed her out
and started patting her back to get the water
out of her lungs.
And I said, "What the hell is wrong with you?"
I said, "How could you just stand there?
"You were gonna let her drown because
you don't want your clothes to get wet?"
Are you insane?
And that was the first time that
I had ever really stood up to him
and said something.
He said, "We're leaving." I said, "Good."
Let's go.
He beat the hell out of me that night.
But my daughter was alive, so it was worth it.
That night was the night I realized he was
going to kill one or all of us,
and we needed to get out.
We had to go, and we needed to get somewhere safe.
I started calling lawyers
and would tell them the entire story.
And all of them said
the same thing.
"Don't worry. You'll get alimony.
"You'll get child support.
You'll be able to support yourself."
It was all about my kids at that point.
What happened to me didn't matter anymore.
Those were my babies.
They saved me, and it was my turn to save them.
I slept with my children.
So I started pushing the dresser in front of the door
every night so that he couldn't get in
and to keep me and the kids safe so that we could sleep.
But one night, I was tired.
The kids were asleep.
I didn't want to make any noise,
and I didn't put the dresser in front of the door that night.
And that's the night he picked.
I woke up, and Emma was gone.
I was terrified.
She would never get up and leave me on her own.
Emma?
JENNIFER: I panicked.
I jumped up, I started screaming her name.
Emma!
And I ran through the house looking for her, and I run
into the living room, and there she is on his lap,
with a gun to her head.
He said, "I know that you've been talking to a lawyer.
"I know you're thinking about leaving,
"and you're never gonna leave.
"You're never gonna get away, because I'll make you
watch the children die before I kill you."
First them,
then you.
My daughter has a gun to her head,
and he's gonna kill her.
And I'm begging and pleading and praying,
"Dear God, help me," and begging him that I will
do anything he wants me to do if he would just put her down
and let her go.
He picked her up,
and he threw her across the room,
and he walked up to me, and he kicked me twice in the gut.
And he said, "You're never going anywhere.
You just remember that."
And he just smiled that maniacal smile,
and he left.
I'm thinking how the hell did
he know I've been talking to a lawyer?
How does he know I'm leaving?
What else does he know?
Somehow, he's getting information,
and I hadn't told anyone about my plans.
No one -- no one knew.
So it had to be something in the house.
I was certain he planted something in the house.
I knew there had to be cameras
or listening devices in the house somewhere.
So I started searching those rooms, and then
I started looking through light switches
and electrical outlets.
It was a methodical search,
light by light, switch by switch,
and just looked around with a little flashlight until I saw
something that didn't look like anything I had seen in
the others.
I pulled it out,
and sure enough, in the electrical outlet,
there was this thing that had a wire.
And I went all around the house,
and I found about four more of them.
I found these teeny, tiny,
itty bitty little cameras in the light fixtures.
He was watching with everything I did.
He listened to every word that was said in that house.
I just sat, and I looked at them,
and I started crying,
because I thought, "My God, any time he wanted to,
"he could listen,
and he could see."
I became so determined,
I wasn't gonna let my kids live like this,
but I knew better than to talk in the house.
I knew better than to make any kind of plans in the house.
I didn't even write things down in the house.
I started playing my kids' computer game, and I met
other parents online that were also playing.
I wasn't allowed to have friends,
so being able to socialize felt great.
It was wonderful -- that game was an outlet for me.
One of the people I met was
a single dad named Paul, and he lived in England,
and we developed a friendship.
Paul told me I had to get out, he told me to leave.
And I made my decision to leave Palacio.
And I dropped the kids off at school one morning and went,
and I signed a lease on a furnished apartment,
grabbed all our clothes, grabbed my cat,
put it all in my minivan,
stopped at my lawyer's office,
signed divorce papers, and I prayed.
I prayed.
I had panic buttons everywhere,
on my neck, around the children's necks.
I had a panic button
in each and every room of that town house.
All I had to do was push it, and the police would come.
I knew he'd find me.
I knew it would be a matter of less than
24 hours until he found out where I was living,
but I prayed for that security to work.
I was awake and listening
for every little sound, checked
the alarm system a million times that it was on,
checked the motion detectors.
Checked everything.
And I just waited and waited and waited.
And he never came.
He never came.
Paul called me
and said, "Could I come and see you?"
I was not looking for a relationship, but one day,
he kissed me, and I kissed him back.
He knew that we were in danger,
and so he said, "I want to stay and help try to protect you."
I tried to warn him, and he said,
"Oh, I know what I'm getting involved in.
"I know he's psychopathic, I know that he's insane.
I'm gonna stay and protect you."
The day the divorce was final, Paul and I went to
the clerk's office to get a certified copy of the divorce.
And I was happy and smiling,
and I was giving Paul kisses on
the cheek and just saying, "I'm so happy."
I can't believe it's finally over.
- I know. It's so exciting. - It is.
And I turned around, and there was Palacio.
And I said, "Oh, my God, Jesus, Paul, he's there."
What is it? What's wrong?
It's him, he's here.
So we were standing in line, and for
whatever reason, he decided to stand directly behind us.
Everything's gonna be fine.
He's not gonna do anything with a roomful of people
standing around. - JENNIFER: And he had this face.
I can't really explain it.
The eyes are dead or the eyes
are evil or the eyes are plotting.
He could have shot me right then and there.
He could have stabbed me, he could have done anything.
I just whispered, "Oh, my God," and I grabbed Paul's hand,
and I just squeezed it as hard as I could and he squeezed back.
That was his way of saying, "It's okay, I'm here."
- Can we please leave? - Yeah, come on. Let's go.
JENNIFER: So I got my papers, I left,
made sure he wasn't in the same elevator
going down, and we went to another courthouse,
a different courthouse, to get our marriage license.
Made plans to get married three days later,
and we went to go pick rings.
I told Paul so many times
that he needed to go home and go be with his son,
and that I loved him,
and that I would go and visit him as often as I could.
He refused to go.
He wanted to stay with me.
And I kept telling him, "One day, he's gonna kill us,"
and he said, "He's not man enough.
He's not man enough to do that."
And he refused to go.
I wish you had listened to me.
I wish you had gone back to England.
And I'm sorry.
When the divorce was final, the judge gave him 50% custody.
So he got them every other week.
I had to take my children, sobbing,
to this monster's house.
Every time I dropped them off,
I didn't know if I was ever gonna see them again.
It was terrifying.
It's my birthday.
Paul and I and the kids went out to eat.
I had to take the children back to Palacio.
Cris?
We got there, knocked on the door, and he didn't answer,
and I rang the bell and waited, and no one answered.
I guess he's not here.
Got back in the car, and we were getting ready
to leave, and Paul honked the horn one last time,
and out comes Palacio screaming, in a rage.
What the hell are you doing here?
It's fine. I'll handle it. Wait here.
Please don't. Paul...
And Paul said, "This is enough.
"We're not leaving the kids here with him
"if he's gonna act like this -- if he's that unstable,
then he can't have the kids."
Get off my property.
Cris, come on, man.
So Paul started to tell him exactly that.
I am sick and tired of you causing problems.
And Palacio goes like this,
behind him, and I knew.
I'd seen that motion before a million times when he
would go to take the gun out and point it at me.
Paul, watch out!
And I said, "Oh, my God, Paul, he's got a gun."
By the time the words were out,
he was already on the ground,
[gunshot blasts]
And it was too late.
He had already fired the shot straight to the heart.
He just started grinning ear to ear,
just smiling, like he had won the lottery,
he was smiling, and he...
went up to Paul, and he shot him twice more in the back,
and he just kept shooting him with a smile on his face when
he emptied the clip into him,
and I'm screaming, and people are coming out of their houses,
and he had gone back into the house to reload.
[distant sirens wailing]
At that point, you could hear the police sirens
already from the people calling the police.
They were right around the corner.
They were there in less than two minutes, so he never
had a chance to shoot me or the kids, because the police came.
They cuffed him.
They put him in the squad car.
He told the police, he said, "Look what that [bleep] bitch
made me do -- do you see what that [bleep] bitch made me do?"
That's what he kept saying to the cops.
"Look what that [bleep] bitch made me do."
He tried to claim self-defense
when they were interrogating him.
He said, "Well, I think he had a gun,
and he is bigger than me."
He was running at me,
and he looked like he was coming with a gun.
- I shot him. - I wanted to testify.
I wanted...
I wanted the world to know what he was.
I wanted them to know what he did
and why he did it.
I screamed,
I said, "Oh, my God, Paul, he's got a gun."
When I walked in, he was sitting there with his lawyers.
But other than that one brief moment when I was being
sworn in, I could not see him.
WOMAN: Winter described the slow, merciless method
in which Palacio shot at Paul.
She said he did so while smiling.
He walked up to my husband after he was laying face down,
and he shot him more in the back.
He fought every little thing, to the point that my lawyer
told me, "Jen, you need to get
"out of Florida now, you need to go.
What if they come back not guilty? You need to go."
I have nothing to say to him.
He knows what he did, he knows what he is,
and he's in a very harsh prison.
One of the worst in Florida, from what I understand.
I learned to make a life for myself, and I wouldn't
have had my children if it hadn't been for all of this.
And having my children made it all worth it.
Every ounce of pain, every punch,
every slap, I'd go through it again to have my children.
I know that's probably the most ridiculous
thing most people have ever heard of,
but my kids are my world.
They're absolutely everything to me.
Paul was an innocent
man -- he loved me.
It's all there is. He loved me.
He gave his life for us.
I live with tremendous guilt about that.
And for a long time, I was angry at him.
After he died, I was angry,
and I used to scream, "I told you just to leave."
I'd be dead, but he would have been alive.
It's not right, because he didn't marry that monster.
I did. We're so lucky that we're alive.
I'm sorry for Paul,
and I'm sorry for his family.
I'm so sorry for his son.
My heart breaks for his son.
It really does.
But I feel tremendously lucky.
I got away.
Paul gave his life, but I got away.