Don't touch it.
You're supposed to be all excited and running.
Seeing my dad seemingly appear out of nowhere.
(girl giggles)
He had a gun, I thought it was fake
and I thought he was just using it to scare her.
He grabbed my mom by the hair
and I started running down the stairs
when I heard the shot.
Everything after that went black.
This whole album just makes me think about, it was like
the beginning, when like she's got her nails painted.
She's got makeup on, eyeliner on.
I remember later on Scott, wouldn't let her wear eyeliner.
He said it made her eyes look sad.
Not that she ever got to wear makeup
unless it was to cover up, having been beaten.
I know she felt beautiful
and it's such a weird thing to think
about where it all went from this day.
I often wonder like, was she happy?
Did she know she was making a mistake?
I'm opening it in front of them, right?
It's a box, oh I love it.
She was the best.
She's a really good cook, a really good baker.
She always liked lots of stuff
for like our teachers and stuff.
She would bring, cheesecakes and cookies.
Monkey bread, not monkey bread, banana bread.
Banana bread and like teachers would like argue
over or not argue but like be upset, like,
oh, you got the Magnano kid.
Like, 'cause like they knew
like the baked goods were coming.
She always did a lot of little extra stuff for us
like notes in our lunches and heart shaped birthday cakes.
(distant kids' voices)
She just always did stuff to make us feel special.
Holidays, birthdays, all that kind of stuff.
Even when it was like, it wasn't good.
You know, because of everything else that was going on,
she still had a way
of like just making it special for us.
(boy blows)
(kids laugh)
We were very close.
I was definitely a momma's boy for lack of a better term.
I remember every morning we had this like little ritual.
I'd wake up early for school, shower and then we'd sit
at the couch and have a cup of coffee together
and look out the window.
All of the happy memories are when he was not there.
Growing up in the house in Terryville
was an interesting experience.
To me it represents that like the classic, you know,
things aren't always what they appear.
We lived in a big, beautiful house,
a beautiful house that my mom and Scott built
but inside it was hell.
It was prison.
We felt like we were walking on eggshells all the time.
We were scared and on alert
and we never knew what each day was going to bring.
There was a lot of rules, like a lot of rules.
How to wash your hands, how to wipe your feet,
how to walk through a room.
We had to spend a lot
of our time in the playroom with the door closed.
Like just the three of us in there.
We didn't get to see our mom that much.
She had to be at Scott's beck and call,
just ready to just do his bidding.
I just always never knew what I would do
that would set him off,
things that a normal child would do
that their parents wouldn't necessarily be irritated by
would set him off more than you could imagine.
Just little things.
I was scared of him.
I always felt uncomfortable around him,
very on edge all the time, but also trying to please him
so that he would like me more and treat me better.
I know that the verbal abuse was always there
and it got worse and worse over time.
The physical abuse,
I want to say started around, shortly after Emily was born.
I know from having been told
that the first physical thing, he expressed dissatisfaction
with the marriage and my mom said, well,
when the kids graduate, then we'll just get a divorce
and he took her into the bedroom and strangled her
and she thought that that was like, she was going to die.
I think the first time he was
like snuggling in bed with Emily.
and I came in and he wanted me like me
to get in the bed too, so I did.
It was, he just, yeah he always called it snuggling
and then after that, he only wanted it to be me
and he would like just be wearing his underwear
and it was very uncomfortable.
It was just a lot
of like inappropriate touching, inappropriate conversations.
He would send my mom to get me and I can't explain to you
like what that did to our relationship.
I'd be like in bed, you know,
the bottom bunk and like the room I shared
with David and he would send her in to get me,
and that's cruel to her,
to me because like now I'm mad at her, you know?
And I'm like, Mom, I don't want to go in there.
And like, she's like, I know, but like I had to.
I remember he used to make me cuddle with him sometimes
and that made me really uncomfortable, but I would try
to just get through it because I knew that he wanted that.
The day that we left,
he was like on a rampage because the microwave didn't work.
I remember him coming into the playroom
and telling us like we'd better behave
and nothing needs to have, like, nothing can happen.
We need to be quiet and for some reason he didn't
like the way that my sister looked at him
or she didn't respond quick enough
and so he slapped her in the face
and I remember my mom coming into the doorway
and whispering to us, we're leaving tonight
and then once he got in the shower
and had been there for enough, I remember, it was time.
Me and Jessica went through grabbing stuff
while our mom went through and open all the doors as quietly
as possible, opened up the van and we just
started throwing whatever we could get in the van.
We didn't close the doors, didn't turn any of the lights
off, just put the car in neutral and then rolled away
and left the house like open and lit up.
When Jennifer first left,
and this is the first time she ever left,
she and her children went to a hotel and a spent off
and on all day long trying to get into a shelter.
Unfortunately, the shelter was not able to help them
at the time because they had an adult daughter,
Jessica living with them and a male child.
So unfortunately the shelter did not help them get shelter
and they ended up leaving Connecticut
with very little funds that they were able to pull together
and take a train to California.
The first place we went was called Haven Hills
and if I could return
to any period in my life, it would be then.
We were in Van Nuys, California, it was crappy
and we were literally eating government cheese
and wearing donated clothes but we did not care.
We were so happy to be with our mom
and to be free and just be away
and just experiencing such a different life.
I was so happy because we could do things
without having to fear what the consequences were.
We could walk around, we could spend time
with our mom, she was happier.
She was really nervous.
You know, she was very afraid of Scott.
You know, she would not have been
unlike him to have flown out there.
We didn't know how things were going to go.
So during all of this, while we were in these shelters
and stuff, my mom was, you know
obviously working, you know, she wants to get a divorce.
She wanted to get custody.
She found out that Scott was messing with her finances.
He got more than $80,000 out
from different like cash advances from credit cards
or like just all this kind of stuff
and I remember my mom just being so defeated
and so sad and so stressed
but she was still on the phone all the time.
They were working with authorities there and had
obtained a restraining order against Scott.
Meanwhile, Scott back in Connecticut filed for custody
of the two youngest children, David and Emily.
The court did give him custody of the two youngest children.
So at that point, she returned to Connecticut to fight
for custody of the two kids.
The night before she was murdered, she was allowed to be
in the house and with the children and the house was such
that there was a two family and Scott's mother
lived downstairs in a basement apartment.
911, what is the location of the emergency?
The 22nd, she called the police
and had them check
the house to make sure Scott wasn't there.
They checked the house and he was not there.
My mom was super excited at the opportunity
to clean the house 'cause it hadn't been cleaned
in the better part of a decade, going through stuff.
Like I think I heard Emily say that, you know,
we got to open things that we never got to touch.
I wish we had been smart enough to just never go back.
I remember driving back to the house,
listening to Hey There Delilah and Big Girls Don't Cry
and those are the last songs
that I ever listened to with her.
And then the next day, the 23rd, she had left,
I believe it was the curtains were open
and there was a light on when she came back
to the house that night the curtains were closed
and the light was off, I believe, or it might be vice versa
and so she was scared, so she called the police.
She had them check the house
and they checked the entire house
but Scott's mother wouldn't let them in the apartment
and so they didn't check the apartment.
Hours later, he came up from the apartment.
I just remember being on the couch
and my mom was standing in the doorway of the kitchen
and seeing my dad seemingly appear out of nowhere.
I was good friends with the neighbor kid
and I went over and we were playing video games
and I remember getting a call.
We're getting ready to leave, it was like 10, 11 o'clock.
So time to come home and we'll get in the car and go.
We walked back up the front steps
and I walked up the stairs into the living room, kitchen
and I turned around and I saw a gun
and at first I thought it was a joke
and then I saw him follow the gun into the room
and the like, for lack of a better way of putting it,
like the look of the beast in his eyes kind of thing.
Like the look that he always had in his eyes
when he was about to be violent,
when he was about to hit her,
when he was about to threaten us.
He had that look in his eye and I knew it was serious.
He grabbed mom by the hair
and pulled her over towards the kitchen counter
and she was saying, you know,
not in front of the kids Scott, not in front of the kids
and I remember he like slammed her head
down and made her search
through her purse for the keys and you know, said something
along the lines of, if anybody tries to call the cops,
I'll come back here and shoot all of you.
Next thing I know, he was just grabbed her hair,
pulled her down the stairs and I regret it so much
that the last thing I said was, stop Dad, I love you
and I wish I was telling her I loved her
but I just want him to stop and maybe break out of it
by seeing me be there telling him, begging him to stop
and I just was like, no stop, I love you.
I went to run after them.
I heard the shot, everything after that one black.
And I just remember hearing like gunshots
and in that moment felt like I went in deaf.
It was just like ringing in my ears and I was screaming
but I couldn't hear anything.
I saw her at the bottom of the stairs.
She had slid all the way down.
I don't know where on the stairs he pulled the trigger
but her head was like at the bottom,
her feet were like halfway up.
That's an image that still haunts me to this day.
There are times, it doesn't matter if I'm stressed or not.
I'll just randomly flashback to that moment.
I remember leaving a message for Jess that said,
Scott just shot Mom.
I feel like I can see it the most in your face
in pictures like I can just.
This is cute.
I like pictures like this make me hate these pictures.
I know, it's like, yeah.
The pictures on the steps
because I feel like it's like foreshadowing.
I know, like you didn't know that's where she was
gonna end up like literally laying.
I still like the picture.
I think it's a nice picture, but I know what you're saying.
I feel the same way.
Like I think about those steps in that image a lot.
I think this one, it's a good picture.
There's nothing in it that makes me upset.
It just shows me like that my mom did love me
and it's like a cute picture where everybody looks happy
and Scott's non it.
So I'd definitely like that one a lot,
but for this one, I think this one's very bizarre to me.
Not only is it dim from the light
but the weird hands in the corner,
just something about the way he's looking.
I think that's one of the few where it's us three together.
I mean, for me personally, it just makes me feel sad.
Like this is your child and here I'm innocent, you know
with my parents and just knowing
like what's going to happen
and she was going to be standing right in that doorframe.
Just that area of the kitchen, everything about this
picture makes you feel sad.
I often wonder like, did he really love her ever,
the whole time and this was just mental illness?
He would often say that like, you know, we ruined his life,
like my mom and I like, we sabotaged everything
and he could have been, you know, getting
to all these great plans, if it wasn't for us.
I don't feel like I had a childhood
and like, I was kind of forced into being an adult
at a young age.
So like looking at these things, do I remember them?
Yeah, but it's forced.
It doesn't feel like a childhood memory.
It feels like a play that we put on to keep him
from hitting her.
For years, I still had the glasses from that night.
I refused to clean them and like the clothes that I wore
that night, all that stuff I kept in a box.
She was such a presence in the town when she died.
I remember the venue that they had, the celebration
of life at wasn't big enough
for how many people want to come.
I remember laying on the floor
and just crying and thinking like, I can't go on.
Like, I don't want to go on, like,
how am I supposed to do anything about my mom?
It literally felt impossible.
There's just so many
like bad times that I wish she was around for.
There's so many good things, I wish she was around for.
If I have kids, it breaks my heart
just knowing that I'll have to tell them about her.
For me, the only real therapy was trying to just
make happy memories and I had 15 years of terrible memories.
So I needed 15 years of good memories
to kind of counteract that.
I think she knew the day that we left.
I think she knew what was going to happen eventually.
I think she knew that she was signing her own
death warrant at that point because he threatened it
all the time and he made good and all of his other threats.
She always said that she didn't want to be just
another statistic.
I'm very fortunate that we're still talking
about her and still advocating for her.
Jennifer's law is now being considered
at the state Capitol.
Jennifer Magneto, who was killed
in 2007 by her husband in front of her children.
The law would expand the definition
of domestic violence to include coercive control.
Coercive control is a behavioral regime,
a strategic pattern of behavior that is used to control,
to entrap, to dominate, to subjugate, primarily women.
So examples of some coercively
controlling behaviors are rules
about what time you can see people, where you can see them.
When you speak to people, what you wear, how you dress,
what food you can eat, your financial situation,
and coercive control really does correlate significantly
with femicide and familicides,
women being killed and children, so we have to change that.
We can't have professionals
in the system actually putting victims more at risk
which is exactly what happened
with Jennifer Magnano and her children.
I think that it's the kind
of thing that leaves invisible scars
and it's like, you, it could be happening
to your best friend and you don't know,
you're not going to see a black eye,
you're not going to see bruises.
You can see it in behaviors and stuff
but people need to be properly trained.
Judges, officers, people that work at shelters,
there just needs to be more knowledge.
I feel that the system completely collapsed
upon Jennifer and her children.
There were mistakes made
from the initial contact with the police.
Jennifer met with the Plymouth police officer.
She told him that she was being assaulted
and that her daughter was assaulted.
At that point, they didn't need her participation
in order to go forward with the case.
They could have easily sought out an arrest warrant.
They could have easily kept in contact with her,
while she was in safety in California, pursued the charges
and then if there was a trial,
they could bring her back to the state
in a safe manner and keep her and the kids safe.
I just would like to see more done
before it gets to needing laws.
Like I'd love to see things
in high schools and middle schools, teaching young adults
how to have healthy relationships.
What a healthy relationship is, what red flags are,
and then also informing them of, you know
laws like this so that they know, because what is the law
if no one knows about it, it's not being used?
Coercive control hurts more
and lasts longer than physical abuse.
So many people are like, oh, you're like,
you're so strong, you're so brave
and like, we all just feel
like we're just doing what feels right.
We're just doing things we feel
like our mom taught us and our situation is unfortunate
but I'm appreciative that at least we can use our story
and our knowledge to keep the conversation
going, to educate other people, even save one other family
make one other survivor, see that
like it doesn't have to define you,
that you can get past it.
(piano music continues)