but what evidence was there that justine had done it, as the law says, purposefully? investigators pulled the so-called black box out of justine s pontiac, analyzed the data, and found another sign that pointed to suicide. she had taken off her seat belt. the black box also recorded speed, acceleration, and braking and found that justine was accelerating, flooring it so to speak, in the five seconds before the crash, speeding up from 81 to 86 miles an hour before hitting the brakes at the last second. she did not swerve. and she drove head-on into that other vehicle. to back it up, prosecutors pulled the speedometer from justine s car, there right above the mark indicating 85 miles an hour found an orange mark. it s known as a slap mark, made,
incredible feeling of, she s there, she s in there, and your heart s just beating. it was days later before justine could understand what was going on around her, but the news had to be faced eventually. and so, when she seemed ready, they told her. when you told her what happened in the accident and how those other people had died, how did she react to that? it was very emotional for her. it was very devastating. and then what was discovered was, well, quite frankly unimaginable. for, in the middle of that river of tears, grief on the one side, abject grief on the other, there was an undertow, a twist nobody saw coming. for, while justine spent 45 days in the hospital recuperating and months more here at home in montana healing, it didn t take
and then came sentencing day. and everyone wondered, would justine finally tell erin s husband, her family, what they desperately wanted to hear? in your ideal world, what would you like to hear from justine? to be sorry for what she took from us because it was huge. just before sentencing, the family received this, a statement written by justine. and it wasn t even close to what they were looking for. in it she called herself a miracle who was wrongly convicted of a horrific crime. she wrote that she would never, ever in a million years take her own life or anyone else s, that this was an accident that had been blown out of proportion, that she didn t need time behind bars, just a chance to turn a horrific situation into a
keep things together at home and get justine to her medical appointments. and randy, her father, the strong and tall as a montana spruce firefighter and national guardsman turned angry and bitter at the continuing prosecution of his little girl. i could be sitting in the living room watching tv and all of a sudden i hear something, i just completely lose it, start crying. the whole world, said justine s dad, seemed intent on misunderstanding, demonizing his little girl. yet, he said, she had always been so good, kind, thoughtful and responsible, was getting almost straight as in high school, but mostly wouldn t harm a bug, literally, and cared about people. would never, never want to hurt that sweet woman or her son or her baby. always that smile, always wanted to help. it s who she was. what kind of little girl was this? she was just a good girl.
son caden home from a school concert. he played the drums. i had always attended all of caden s concerts, and this is the first one i didn t attend because i had car trouble. this is caden s stepfather, jason thompson. my car was in the shop and finally fixed so erin dropped me off and that s why i wasn t with them. and soon the poison, the anxiety seeped under jason s door, through his windows, onto his nerve endings. just all of a sudden i realized, what s going on? why are they late? it just struck me that something definitely was wrong. at justine winters house, the fear was deep now. justine s dad randy was a national guardsman, firefighter. he was trained to keep his head, knew what he had to do. randy got in his truck, drove out of town to the road he knew she d take coming home from her boyfriend s house. and then he saw it. in a construction zone on a