WINFREY: I really wasn't sure
that I really wanted to do this interview.
A terrible, terrible thing happened.
Two little girls who should be going
to kindergarten, learning to read, growing up,
are gone.
But I agreed to go to a prison in North Carolina
for one reason only,
I wanted to understand and to help you
understand how dark of a place you have
to be in to kill your own children.
Here is the statistic: there are 19 million
Americans who are suffering from depression
right now, 19 million.
It can range all the way from a mild kind
of sadness or moodiness or inability
to sleep to a full-blown psychotic break.
That is what a father, now behind bars,
claims happened to him: psychotic break.
WINFREY: January 20th, 2006.
An upscale suburb of Charlotte,
North Carolina, a tight community turned
upside-down.
Mr. KEITH BRIDGES: You've got two five-year-old
little girls that are dead.
I can't describe to you how horrific
and how sad this is.
WINFREY: This is the house where David Crespi
lived with his second wife, Kim.
Together, they had five children,
including twin girls, Tessara and Samantha.
TESSARA: Hi! Ms. KIM CRESPI: Tessa.
WINFREY: Forty-five-year-old David
was a successful senior vice president
of a well-known bank.
Colleagues describe him as smart, funny,
and an all-around great guy.
Many co-workers had no idea that, for years,
David suffered from debilitating
bouts of depression.
David says he had recently requested
a week off to deal with his illness.
On one of those days, Samantha
and Tessara were home sick from school.
Kim thought nothing of leaving the girls
with their father while she ran
out for a haircut.
What Kim did not know was that
David was having secret thoughts,
sick thoughts, of killing his wife
and children.
David's little girls wanted him
to play their favorite game, hide-and-seek.
When David found Samantha hiding
in the kitchen,
those deadly thoughts took over.
For the first time,
David will tell us why he brutally
stabbed his five-year-old twin daughters
on that day, January 20th, 2006.
WINFREY: David Crespi's wife, Kim, is here.
How did you find out?
Ms. CRESPI: I was getting my hair cut.
And when I came back into the neighborhood,
I was stopped.
There was a lot of commotion going
on and they let the van ahead of me
go to our street and they stopped me.
And then they asked me to get out of the van.
I was already getting those waves that
you get when something terrible has happened.
And the police officer told me,
`Your daughters have been murdered
and your husband has confessed.'
And that's--and I couldn't believe it.
WINFREY: Yeah.
That's an unfathomable thing that happens.
This is the call that her husband,
David Crespi, made just 15 minutes after
he had murdered their daughters.
Dispatcher: Police department.
Mr. CRESPI: Yeah. I just killed my
two daughters.
Dispatcher: You just what?
Mr. CRESPI: I just killed my two daughters.
Unidentified Woman: Matthews, that's ours.
Sir?
Mr. CRESPI: Yeah.
Woman: Tell me what happened, OK?
How--I mean, what's going on right now?
Mr. CRESPI: I just freaked out and killed them.
Woman: Are you on medication?
Mr. CRESPI: Yes.
Woman: Are they breathing or anything now?
Mr. CRESPI: They're dead.
Woman: What did you do to them?
Mr. CRESPI: Stabbed them.
Woman: You stabbed them?
Mr. CRESPI: Yes.
Woman: What's your name, OK?
Mr. CRESPI: My name is David Crespi.
Mr. CRESPI: There's two dead girls.
I killed them.
I just lost.
Woman: OK, tell me exactly what happened.
Woman: OK. Who are these girls?
Mr. CRESPI: They're my daughters.
Woman: Your daughters?
OK, how old are they?
Mr. CRESPI: Five.
Woman: They're twins?
Mr. CRESPI: Yeah.
Woman: How did you kill them?
Mr. CRESPI: With a knife.
Woman: What kind of meds are you on, sir?
Mr. CRESPI: I'm on antidepressants.
Woman: OK. Keep talking to me because
you sound like you're a little bit tired
and stuff and we're wondering
if you maybe took too much medication.
Mr. CRESPI: No, this is real.
Woman: I know. I know it's real, sir.
We're all--everybody's on the way, OK?
All right? How many times do you think
you stabbed them, sir?
Mr. CRESPI: I don't remember.
Woman: Where did you cut them?
Mr. CRESPI: In their bodies.
Woman: OK, I realize in their bodies,
where at--where at?
Mr. CRESPI: (Inaudible)
Woman: I'm sorry?
Mr. CRESPI: All over their bodies,
I guess.
Woman: All over?
Where did you say that the girls
are at inside, sir?
Mr. CRESPI: One's on the kitchen floor
and one is in the master bathroom.
Woman: One's on the kitchen floor
and one's in the bathroom?
David, are you sure there's nothing
we can do to try to help the girls?
Mr. CRESPI: No, no, no, no.
WINFREY: So you listen to that.
What do you think or feel or hear? What do you hear?
Ms. CRESPI: I hear what really happened that day.
I had not heard that tape until last week.
And I think it puts in perspective what happened that day.
It's very real, it was real to him.
He freaked out and he killed them and that's what happened.
And we don't understand that and it’s...
WINFREY: Yeah. What is amazing to me is that you are still
going to prison to see him.
Ms. CRESPI: Mm-hmm.
WINFREY: Because you have forgiven him.
Ms. CRESPI: Mm-hmm. I have.
I actually think that he was ill in a way we didn't understand.
So I look at it like I don't really even think I needed to
forgive him because I don't think he controlled
what he did that day.
WINFREY: Uh-huh.
Ms. CRESPI: So if he needs my forgiveness,
which he's asked, he has it. He absolutely has it.
I am so sorry that this happened, for everybody,
for him, for me, for our children.
WINFREY: Yeah. Ms. CRESPI: But it happened.
And I can choose to love him or I can choose to turn away.
WINFREY: Yeah.
Ms. CRESPI: And I could. I have that choice.
WINFREY: I know, that's--yeah. And that's what I'm sure a lot
of people watching right now, just like when I heard that
you were still with him and you consider him to be your husband
and you still love him, it was, you know,
upon the first time hearing that, I thought
`What is she thinking?’
Ms. CRESPI: Mm-hmm.
WINFREY: And what are you thinking?
Ms. CRESPI: I'm thinking it's very fair for people to
think that, because he did a horrible thing in that 20 minutes.
Nobody who knows him or knew him before January 20th can
believe that he could be capable of this. And yet he did it.
WINFREY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ms. CRESPI: And he's horrified, I'm horrified.
WINFREY: Yeah.
Ms. CRESPI: But we have to deal with that.
WINFREY: Yeah. My goal is, if there is anybody out there who
sees you, who hears this story and sees the same signs that
you saw with your family, maybe it could save somebody.