or he would harm someone else, yeah. when my father was give an parole hearing, it just spun me out. i was 48enned, you know, i felt unsafe. to keep the carsons behind bars, jen has connected online with each of the victims families, to fight their parole. today, she s meeting the family of the carsons last victim in person for the very first time. john offered a ride to my father and susan and susan stabbed him repeatedly, and then my father shot him. why do you want to meet the family members of the people your father killed. i want to tell them that i m so deeply sorry for the loss of their brother and i m hopeful this could help bring them peace. in a suburb of san diego, we re about to meet john s
think, three murders. it did not surprise me. i knew he did it. before he killed those people, i felt a pure unconditional love. now, it s hard to feel and find that love under the grief i feel for his victims. as a little girl just 8 years old, jen was blind-sided by the father she thought she knew. it completely changed who i was, how i thought about myself. i remember thinking i have monster dna, that eventually i would hurt someone, maybe i would kill someone. i became very frightened. i started sleeping with knives and scissors under my pillow. i would barricade my door at night. i went into a really really severe depression.
prisoners have complex grief, depression, school failure, substance abuse and you know what? i m really open. i am mentally ill. i have a mental illness, everybody. is that scarring you? it shouldn t. we can talk about that like people can talk about diabetes. i m not ashamed of being mentally ill. i didn t put that stigma on me. somebody else put that stigma on me. today s crowd is unique. while some gathered out of pure interest, others connect to jen s message more deeply. my grandson s father is in prison for murder. he doesn t know. he s 9 years old, and he doesn t know. we don t feel it s time to tell him something like that. i don t even know where you begin. how do you tell him? just as the mother-in-law of someone who is in prison for murder, how does that affect you? my biggest fear is him buying
jen and zack s stories are very, very different, but strangely enough, they are very similar. they are both very protective of their mothers and they are both very passionate about their mission. in many ways, their childhoods and adult lives have been defined by what their fathers have done, but they have chosen to spread messages of life and not death. being a child of a killer is a silent burden but jen and zack are no longer hiding. in the past, i was trying to atone for my father s crimes and now i know i cannot bring back his victims. i cannot pay this debt. it s not my debt. of course. thank you. there are people out there who would not listen to me if it weren t for the fact that my father committed horrible crimes. as the son of an extremist, i
the carsons admitted to two additional murders, describing the brutal violence they had inflicted on their victims. in 1981, they stabbed 23-year-old karen barnes 13 time, bludgeoning her to death with a frying pan. in 1982, they killed 27-year-old clark stevens, shooting him three times and burning his body. they claimed everyone they had killed were witches, and that god had told them to do it. jen had seen some clips from the press conference over the years but we re about to watch one we ve never seen before. my heart is beating from hearing her voice. i need to go take a break.