Here we are.
To be honest, when I read your letter,
I couldn't read it without tears.
And it took me about 10 times to read the letter
to be able to control that flood of emotion.
The fact that your...
letter triggered such huge emotions
tells me there's a part of me that's still unhealed.
It was shame.
It was humiliation. It was fear.
It was apprehension.
I don't know to this day why I'm still alive.
And that's the truth.
After I left Mike, he called late at night,
and I said, "What do you want?"
And he's whispering, and he's like, "I just wanted
to hear your voice."
And I discovered
later on that he had called me
from the victim's...
home on the night that they were murdered.
I often think...
was it me he was killing each time he brutally killed
these people in his mind?
I was running a cardiology unit,
and I had my office manager call me in one day
and she found about my ex-husband.
And she told me that she was going to lay me off
because she couldn't handle the knowledge,
knowing that I was married to him.
And the nature of his crimes, apparently, in her words,
freaked her out,
and she couldn't deal with it knowing that
I was in the same building with her.
And that makes you feel like
you're a plague, like you're a cancer,
like you've done something wrong.
I did nothing wrong.
I remember going home and thinking,
"What am I gonna do?"
You know, I have bills, I have children,
I have responsibilities.
There was a point in time in my life where
I had nobody, where I felt very hopeless
that nothing was gonna change.
I'd always had the stigma
of being the serial killer's ex-wife.
I thought he was the most handsome thing.
Dark hair. He was very muscular.
And at first he was a charmer.
He would buy me flowers and he would buy me chocolates.
Told me everything that a young girl wants to hear.
He told me he loved me.
I never had anybody, including my parents, ever say,
"I love you."
My family was very strict,
overbearing on religion. There was a lot of abuse.
So he was the first person that made me feel special.
I thought he was the love of my life.
And we also connected through a bond of abuse.
He told me early on about a story
that he must have been about 10 years old.
There was a conflict with his father,
and then he proceeded to...
take his right hand. He had...
turned on the burners to the stove
and burned his hand.
How could you not have empathy?
He started becoming very jealous and controlling.
Like, even going to school, you know, like,
"Who did you talk to?" You know, like,
"What do you mean, who did I talk to?"
One day, we were just driving along, and I don't even know
what triggered it, but I was accused of cheating on him.
When he got mad, he would speed.
Now we're going 110 in a 45.
It perpetually got worse
and worse and worse.
Just all in anger and rage.
And when he pulled over, the car skidded off
to the side.
Get out. Get out.
He literally dragged me out of the car.
And he drove off.
And I thought, "How am I going to get home?"
He left me stranded on the side of some road
that I had no idea where I was.
I don't have any idea what's going on.
This was my first love.
This was the first person I ever dated.
I truly thought I was in love.
I wish I could go back to the girl I was.
I wish I could just look at her and say,
"You're beautiful, and nobody needs to tell you that."
I wish I had the strength
to walk away.
And then, of course, he came back telling me,
"Get in the car."
So I got back in the car.
I was scared,
you know, and then that became a way of life.
He would lose his temper.
He would grab the back of my hair or grab my neck
and shove me into the wall.
He had a temper that would flare at a blink of an eye.
And no rhyme or reason, nothing that you could do
to prevent it.
And I think I had so much trauma
as a child, I just kind of accepted it.
Even though my relationship with Mike
wasn't the best, it was the best I ever knew.
People that haven't been physically
and emotionally abused in their childhood
have a very hard...
It's very hard for them
to relate to those of us that have.
So again, as abusive as it was.
It was better than what I was used to.
A friend of ours invited us to a Halloween party.
And we went, and we were all dressed up
and having a great time.
And obviously, I'm talking to people,
and I'm in the moment.
And I had noticed that Mike was gone.
And then
I started asking people, "Hey, have you seen Mike?"
And nobody did. And he was gone
a good hour.
When I finally did find him, I think all I said was,
"Hey, I've been looking for you."
You know, and all of a sudden, the mood with him changed.
And there was this refrigerator that was there.
And he started punching it, and like, all this rage
out of nowhere.
I mean, it was like he was fighting somebody.
I mean, total, complete rage, you know,
and leaving indentations in this fridge.
It was horrible.
And I was like, "What is going on?"
And I remember he stopped punching the refrigerator
and he started punching me.
What did I do to deserve this?
It's not about love.
It's more like I was his possession
and he needed something in his life that he can control.
Nobody knew what to do. They were kids.
It's not like you think now where you shield somebody.
And I kept thinking, "I don't want to do this.
And I needed to leave."
And then I found out I was pregnant.
I was dating Mike for about a year and a half
when I found out I was pregnant.
I was about 17.
He just kept saying, "I want to marry you."
And I just kept saying, "No, no, no, I'm good.
I might be pregnant,
but I don't want to get married."
I knew that this isn't the life I wanted to be in.
This isn't the life I wanted for my kids.
I was petrified.
My parents...
and his parents emphasized
that if I didn't get married, that God would be upset with me
and I would go to Hell.
And I truly didn't want to offend God
in any shape or form.
And I didn't want to be condemned to hell for eternity.
You know, who would?
Mike and I were going to my parents' home,
and somebody had cut Mike off.
And he grabbed a hammer
and went over to the guy that was driving
and screaming and yelling and waving this hammer,
you know, and telling him he was gonna kill him.
And I was horrified.
You know, I thought he was gonna drag him out of the car
and use that hammer on him.
And then he was gonna bash his skull in.
And the man had the common sense to...
leave that immediate area.
And then he just got in the car
and nothing was ever said after it.
He would go into these rages and then just snap out of it.
And he could switch it on and off like a light bulb.
You know, and your adrenaline's still going,
your fear's still going.
Not only was I in fear for that man's life, but I was in fear
for my life, too, because, you know,
I knew what he was capable of.
The wedding wasn't for me, the wedding was for them.
It wasn't a happy event.
First off, I was pregnant,
and everybody knew I was pregnant.
And after the event, he was counting some envelopes,
and I went to open up one of the envelopes,
and I asked how much we had,
and I don't know what trigger I hit.
And he grabbed me by the back of the head.
Threw me into the closet,
and started beating me.
And I went into a fetal position.
And all he did was start kicking my back and my spine.
And all I could do
was try and deflect it.
So my wedding was not...
a beautiful thing.
And I knew it wasn't gonna get any better from here.
Mike had fish tanks throughout the house.
And we had come home,
and there was a fish out of the tank.
And he was enraged.
And I had a kitten at that time.
And whether the fish jumped out of the tank and died
or the kitten got it, I don't know.
But...
his rage was focused on that kitten,
and he beat it to death.
I was horrified.
What could I do to stop it? Absolutely nothing.
I think somehow I was responsible for the kitten
that he felt killed his fish, so...
I was going to...
have to suffer and watch the brutality of it.
That's what I think.
I was absolutely terrified of him after that.
I knew in that moment that he was capable of killing me.
This is a picture of all the generations
of the Edwin Bernard Kaprat.
It's a picture of my ex-husband with my oldest son
as an infant,
his grandfather and his father.
And I actually look at this picture and Mike looks happy.
He looks proud.
He looks like a proud father. He looks hopeful,
optimistic for the future.
That's the person that I fell in love with,
not the person that he became.
I would like to put this down.
Sometimes I would wake up
and the man would be gone.
Like, I have no idea where he went.
You know what I mean?
You know, like, are you in the bathroom?
So you walk around and, "No, he's not here.
No, the vehicle's not here."
And I never once asked him where he was
because he wasn't one to take for questioning.
You know, like, it kind of was like,
"I'm gonna do what I want to do when I do it.
And you're just gonna have to deal with it."
But I did noticed a box
that I never saw before, and it had
all sorts of miscellaneous items,
like a watch in there,
foreign money, foreign coins.
Where did this come from?
He probably was breaking
into people's homes and stealing items.
That's what occurs to me.
But one time,
when he came home early morning, his knuckles were swollen,
and he had...
not welts, but red marks on the side of his face
and on the side of his neck.
And I did question him on that, and he told me,
"None of your business."
You know, that was the finality of it.
The one time he was gone for maybe two months,
not a phone call,
nothing, absolutely nothing.
It was a relief.
I didn't want him back at that point.
And I remember the boys were sleeping
and I went in to take a shower and I came out,
and standing in my living room is...
Mike.
And the first thing I said are, "Where are my kids?"
And he said, "They're in the car."
And he said, "I'm coming home."
And I said, "Oh, no, you're not."
And he said,
"Before you say anything else,"
he said, "Understand, if you don't allow me
back here to live,"
he said, "I'm going to take... both the boys."
And he said, "And I'm gonna kill 'em
before you can even pick up a phone to call the cops."
So people ask, "Why did you stay?"
I tried so many times to get out.
We went from living in our apartment
in New Jersey to all of a sudden,
we're going to move to Florida.
None of it made sense.
Why are we going to Florida? You know what I mean?
You know, was there a certain incident?
I don't know the answer.
It was right before Christmas.
We moved in with his parents.
And it wasn't good.
At that time, he wasn't working and I was barely working.
And at Christmas time,
he went up to the attic and came down with everything
my children wanted for Christmas.
You know, Nintendos, I believe there was one each,
video games, things that were beyond
his financial capabilities.
You know, like, "Where is this from?"
"Don't worry about it.
None of your business," was what I was told.
I thought it was very odd.
Because of my childhood,
I was overly protective of my children.
I did everything for my kids.
I lived for my kids. I took beatings for my kids.
He always used the children as a weapon.
The way that he could continue giving me emotional pain was
by raising his voice to them,
by grabbing their arms, by shaking them.
I took so many beatings by overstepping my bounds,
by telling him not to touch them that way,
by not to scream at them.
You know, again, it was a way of life.
It's amazing sometimes you don't stand up for yourself
as much as you should,
but you stand up for other people.
I bought my ex-husband a big old bottle of Jack Daniel's.
I got him...
good and drunk, and I knocked on the door.
I introduced myself.
I told him I need to go in there and get my kids
and my cats.
And he said, "Absolutely, I'll go to the house with you."
And I remember walking through that front door,
deputies behind me.
He says, "You go in there." And he says, "And I'm not
leaving until you retrieve your kids,
get them safely in the car."
And that's what I did.
I wanted to leave from the day I got married.
I remember being in that car
and thinking that this is something I didn't want to have
as a permanent part of my life.
And I wanted something better.
I guess a moment of clarity, a God moment,
a universe moment.
I don't really know, but I know that was the day.
I didn't feel that...
that sense of freedom until hours later when I realized
nobody was following me.
I was in New Jersey, and I was at my parents' house.
I remember thinking, "I can do this."
I had a job. I took care of my kids.
I remember thinking, "Am I really free?"
I felt safe.
Until I opened that door.
And he was just standing there.
He had showed up out of the blue,
like no phone call ahead of time, just like...
you hear the doorbell
and you open up the door and he's there.
He told me how much he loved me and he missed the kids.
And my parents had this, "that's your husband"
sort of attitude, so he can come and see his children
anytime he wants.
And he walked in the house and never left.
So there wasn't much I could do about it
because I was not in my own home.
He just moved in like...
he owned me again.
I felt trapped.
I felt like, "What the hell am I going to do?
"And how do I get away from this now?
'Cause I have nowhere to go."
Two detectives
from Florida had come to my parents' home
and asked to speak to Mike.
And at that time, I knew nothing.
Um...
and they didn't just speak to him.
At that time, they put him in a car and that was it.
I had asked, you know, "What's going on?"
And that's when I was informed that he is being extradited
back to Florida and placed under arrest, for murder.
That the man was bludgeoned to death,
and that...
Mike was caught using his credit cards,
and that's how they traced it back to him.
After the fact, I put two and two together to realize
that man lost his life to get my children presents.
That's horrific.
The system sucks.
I truly did believe that he had killed this man.
I filed for a divorce.
And right before I left him, he grabbed my...
elbow and dragged me into a room
and raped me.
In our yard.
The last time that I had seen my ex-husband was
when I was leaving the courthouse.
Mike had come up to me and grabbed my arm,
and his words to me were, "I don't care about the kids.
I only care about you," and that...
"You need to come to Florida, and that's what I want,
and that's what you're gonna do."
And as he's talking to me, his hold on my arm
is getting tighter and tighter and tighter.
And all I knew is there was a snowball's chance in hell
that I'd ever go back to Florida with them.
I fought too hard to get out.
I heard that apparently he had gotten arrested
at one point in time,
and he was an informant to have his freedom.
He was a rat.
He was a coward, a bully, and a rat.
And he had no idea that I knew.
I told him "You [bleep],"
there were some pretty big cats,
and I gave him some names, which I'm not gonna share here.
And I said, "If I don't get to where I'm supposed to be
"at 5 o'clock, rest assured, there are three envelopes
that are getting mailed."
It felt good to make a stand and take my power back.
And he didn't say a word.
He just released my arm, and that's the last time
I ever saw the man.
I heard that he was arrested
and um, he was a suspect
in multiple killings.
I knew he was a monster.
He's labeled a serial killer now.
I think it was shock.
I think it was traumatic. It was trauma.
And then I was told that he targeted elderly women,
which I think about,
and I thought about the horror that I went through him,
and then I thought about the horror
that they went through.
To me,
it looked like the perfect victim,
because they can't fight back.
I really think it was because it made him feel powerful.
So this is a page
from Hernando County Sheriff's Office.
You know, they didn't put a transcript of his confession,
but they described it.
I hope I don't have to read this out loud.
You can make me do it if you want.
It's much easier because...
it's very emotional.
In Kaprat's own words,
he stated, "I'm a sick individual.
I broke in, found the people, did what I did."
They were sexually assaulted and then they were killed.
He stated he confronted the victim
and struck her several times.
He admitted that he made the victim have
vaginal intercourse with him and then
made her perform oral sex on him.
He states the victim did resist and that at one point
while he was on top of her, she appeared as though she was
having a heart attack.
So he, in turn, stepped on her throat
to put her out of her misery.
My whole body is shaking.
"Lydia M. Riddell was 79 years old.
"Lydia Riddell was active in her church.
"Neighbors remember her as caring and helpful,
someone who often looked out for others."
What a beautiful soul.
Some beautiful person lost their life for no reason.
None of this should have ever happened.
She should have died of old age in the arms of her family.
"William and Alice Whitney.
"William was brutally beaten
"and later died of pneumonia from his injuries.
"Alice, who has Alzheimer's disease, was also assaulted
"but survived the attack, living with the trauma
for the remainder of her life."
I can only imagine
growing old with a person that you love
and trying to save your wife.
And I couldn't even imagine
what they felt during it, what they felt after it.
"Alice Dawe was 87 years old.
"Alice Dawe was found dead in her Spring Hill home,
"which had been set on fire.
"The 87 year old had been sexually assaulted
and beaten to death."
Dawe, a one time speed skater and athlete, fought hard."
I'm sure she did. Good for her.
"Her bloody dentures were found near her body.
She had bitten the assailant in the back."
That was the last victim, the one that got him caught.
Good.
I mean, it's not good that any of this happened.
But it's good that somebody finally connected all the dots
and put the pieces together.
It's an atrocity.
And if that wasn't horrific enough, I
think the thing that hit home to me was
when I had read articles
that the victims, they were sexually assaulted.
Essentially, it gave him a euphoria and a sense of power
when he assaulted them in that manner.
And that's very hard for me to talk about.
I know, towards the end, sex became very violent.
Yes.
It was choking.
It was restraining.
It was demeaning.
And I still, to this day, believe that everybody
that he killed, he thought he was killing me,
because he lost control.
Because he couldn't control me anymore.
I had a friend of mine that I was discussing this with,
and my friend had asked him, "Hey, man, where you been?
We've been looking for you."
And he said, "I just killed somebody," and smiled.
And the person that told me was very freaked out about it.
And he was like, "Do you think he did?"
And I said, "I have no idea."
I said, "None of us know where he went."
Now that I reflect back on it, I feel like
it could have been possible.
It's surreal.
I don't know all the people that he killed.
I honestly don't know.
Where is the line that the only thing that brings you joy
is extreme violence and cruelty?
I have looked at this picture many times.
And at first, it was hard for me to, uh,
meet his eyes in it.
All I feel in this picture is suppressed underlying rage,
because he had gotten caught.
I don't identify with who this person is.
I mean, I--
before I left him, he was becoming this person,
but he wasn't wholly this person at this point in time.
It doesn't even look like the same person.
I don't know what makes people
capable of killing another human being.
But I really believe,
and especially after looking at those pictures,
the only thing that made him feel anything
was committing these murders.
I have no remorse for him being dead.
I feel like death was too easy on him.
I would have rather seen him spend his life in prison
and be brutally sodomized
by not one but many people.
I would have liked him to be in fear for his life
of every one of his [bleep] days.
I would have liked everything
that he did to me and to these people,
I would have liked to have him relive it
every [bleep] day.
I feel like it got off too easy.
I do. I think he got off easy.
That's the truth. That's how I feel.
I wouldn't be the person I am today
if this didn't happen the way that it did.
It made me stronger.
It made me...
live my life with no regrets.
It made me recognize who the true people
in my life were. And there is hope.
And there is more to life than dysfunction.
You know, I'm alive to tell my story,
you know.
And in some odd way,
I am thankful for this experience,
as painful as it is,
because...
it's helping me heal.
And that's what I want for all people that have suffered abuse
is healing and to be better
and beautiful.
I hate him.
The sight of him makes me sick.
I think Leslie put them in the closet and left them.
I don't know how they felt but I think about it all the time.
I chose this man to be my husband and
it's a hard pill to swallow.