Carrie
Appearances
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
That just made my heart race. As soon as you said those words, I do remember that.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Well, Tim went through this thing where he thought he was in love with me and it caused all kinds of problems because I did not have any feelings like that toward Tim. But Tim did say that, that he would kill for me. I didn't need him to kill for me. Who would I need Tim to kill for me?
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Well, if that's what he was trying to do, he failed miserably. Unless he had it in his head that he could pin it all on Mick so that I would think Tim was completely innocent, you know what I mean? Because Tim knew the kind of person I was, and I couldn't even stand looking at him when he killed a rabbit. Now, how would he think I would look at him when he killed a human?
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
No, that's the truth. That's the truth. When, you know, we've done a lot of recording for the podcast, and when I said that I could tell Mick was afraid, I meant that. Like, Mick was afraid. Now, I don't know when that fear started, you know what I mean? But that night, Mick was afraid.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
He was so afraid that he was making me think that I needed to be afraid of him when he was really trying to protect me. And he knew exactly how dangerous Tim was.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Yes. He was. afraid something was going to happen. It's part of the reason why you and your sister weren't there anymore. I didn't want you in the house for my own reasons. Mick didn't want you in the house for his reasons. And those reasons were very valid reasons to not want you guys there.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
It was clear that Mick was afraid of Tim, and I think that might be part of the reason why they never left for Cambridge. I don't think that Mick wanted to be alone with Tim.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I've gone back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Did Mick shoot her? Didn't he shoot her? Did he? Didn't he? Over and over again. And I think my young naive self believed that he didn't because there was no way he could do that. The older I have gotten, the less naive I am, the wiser I am. And Tammy's words ring in my head all of the time. Mick sacrificed himself to save us.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
He did what he had to do so that he felt like we were safe. That's the only way it makes sense to me, knowing Mick the way that we knew Mick.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I don't know. I don't know. He destroyed my life for a long time. Took away things I loved. Took away Mick. He's a sick man. I don't know that I would say anything to him. I don't know that he even deserves words. I might thank him for not killing me that night. Because he easily could have. He easily could have taken me away from my kids and my family.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
And you know, he didn't just destroy part of my life. Cindy was a human. Cindy had a family. And so many times I've wished that I could talk to her family and tell them how sorry I am for the choices that I made that night. I wasn't with them. I didn't have anything to do with what happened to her other than I gave in and I gave them my keys. And I want them to know that I'm sorry I did that.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I have lived with so much guilt over her dying for so long, almost 30 years. And I want her family to know that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that my decision to give them the keys took Cindy away from them.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
So many people say it's not my fault, and I know that, but it does not take that guilt away. I've lived with it for so long. It's so heavy. But it does not take that guilt away. I've tried to convince myself, you had nothing to do with it. You had nothing to do with it. And so many people say that to me.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
But unless you've walked in my shoes and been the person that said, go ahead, take my keys, and then this happens... then you will never understand how I feel. This will haunt me forever. I struggle with the guilt I feel over Cindy's death more than losing Mick, losing the man that I was so in love with. The fact that Cindy died weighs way heavier on me than losing Mick.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Yeah, and I hope he stays there, because I don't care how old he gets, if that man ever gets out, I'll still be afraid of him. Yeah, I put him behind bars, but a lot of fear came with that, and it's still there.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I still have nightmares that I'm found, that somebody comes to get me. I still have those nightmares. They're never gonna go away.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
So what happens when he gets out? I'm hoping to be the one to pick him up from prison.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I hope that it is. I was trying to keep it together, but I just have this image in my head of what it would be like To see him after all of these years and to feel him give me a hug. The one thing that I was denied the day that he was found guilty was a hug. The bailiff told the officer that was in the room, just let him have a hug. And the officer was like, no, I can't do that.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
And I've waited a long time to get that hug. I can sit here right now and honestly say it's what I feel deep in my soul. that we were supposed to be together. This was not supposed to happen. 25 years right now has passed, and it's like time stopped in our relationship when he went to prison. Time stopped. He's not that same person that he was 25 years ago.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I'm not the same person I was 25 years ago. Do I still love him? Absolutely. He will always have a place in my heart. Always. That will never change. It will never, ever change. But I know I could not ever have a healthy relationship with him again. He's not who he was. I'm not who I was. But I would love to see his face. I would like to have a conversation with him face to face.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
He's been in prison for a long time. I mean, think about everything that's happened in your life from 1995 till now. You were just a little boy. Now you're a man. So much time has passed. Time where we've had our freedom to do whatever we wanted to do or not do, where for these 25 years he's been locked up.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
It is. When you think about every life that was changed because of one person, so many lives, my life, your life, your sister's life, Cindy's life, her family's life, her daughter's life. But I think more about Cindy's family than any other person that has been impacted by Tim. I think of her family. I mean, I really just want them to know that I'm sorry. There's nothing I can ever say.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
There's nothing. I've tried to put myself in their shoes. And if I were them, I would hate me because I enabled this to happen. I mean, I'm glad that Justice was served. It doesn't bring her back, though. You know, I used to go to Triangle Park on the fifth of every month. I used to go there on the 5th of every single month and pay my respects after I don't even know how long I quit doing it.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
And sometimes I still feel bad because I don't go back there. But in the real world, it's just not a safe thing for me to do anymore in that area.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Are you kidding me? No. I always wished they would tear that shelter down. But then again, it's kind of like a memorial in a way.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I'll never forget seeing her face for the first time. It was when you sent me that picture. I had never seen Cindy's face, and it was nice to put a face with the name and all the feelings that I have that revolve around that person. It was painful losing Mick. It was painful going through two murder trials. But I think the majority of my pain comes from knowing that Cindy was killed. For what?
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Why did she have to die? She didn't do anything, you know what I mean? There's a lot of pain that I carry knowing how she died. I'm sure I owe you and your sister both apologies for putting you guys through that and however you felt while I was going through what I was going through. I tried to still be a good mom and not let it affect our lives too much, but there was really no way around it.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I did the best that I could and let you know that you're loved and Like you and your sister, even to this day, are like the most important people in my life. You guys saved me more than you'll ever know. You really did. And I've said it many times, if it wasn't for you and your sister, you know, I probably still wouldn't be here. And I mean that. I really mean it.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
But I'm sorry that you guys went through what you went through over choices that I made. If I could go back and redo those days, I definitely would. It would not involve Tim living with us. And I don't even know that it would involve Mick living with us. If I could go back and change everything...
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
It made all of us stronger. You can't go through that and not come out stronger on the other side.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
The ending is, we survived. And we grew. And we're productive members of society, and we're doing well, and I have two grandchildren, and you have Caitlin, and it ends with us doing well. How else can it end?
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
Mick actually ended up appealing his guilty conviction. His first trial, he was found guilty of murder. He appealed that with the assistance of his attorney.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
his murder conviction was overturned. And I don't know if it's true or not, but Chuck Smiley told me it was the first time in Dayton history that a murder conviction was overturned. So it was overturned stating that his attorney was less than adequate for allowing some things in the trial that he should have objected to.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
So he won a new trial, and he had to decide whether he wanted a jury trial or a three-judge panel. I tried to convince him to go with a jury trial because I felt like he had a better chance, but he chose a three-judge panel.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I begged him to go to trial again. I begged him. I told him that I read in a newspaper article evidence that was available in the first trial would not be available in a new trial. And when I read that, I told Mick, go to trial, go to trial, but he was so afraid he would be found guilty that he refused.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
But I begged him to do it. I begged him to go to trial.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I bet now he wishes he would have at least tried. I mean, the outcome could have been better, but it wouldn't have been any worse.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I'll never understand why he did that, unless he was so ashamed of what he had done that he felt like he deserved to be punished. I don't know.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
There was a point when Tim said he would clear Mick, but I don't think the prosecutors were going to allow that to happen anyway. They were presented with a letter that Tim wrote telling me that he had found God in prison. I don't really believe that part, but that Mick had absolutely nothing to do with the murder, that it was all him.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I think Tim had such a, you know, a bad life, and I don't know if he ever really knew true happiness. And maybe there was jealousy between what Mick and I had. Yeah, he sabotaged it for sure. Which is like one of the questions that I asked him when I went to see him when he first got arrested. You know, why would you do this to us?
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
And I think that maybe part of Tim longed for what I'm going to refer to as a normal life. And I think that when he would start to feel that, normalcy of like a family, it was good for him. And then he felt like he had people that cared about him and people that he cared about. But that other side of him was always there and would never allow that to come full circle.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
For privacy reasons, I had gotten a P.O. box, and, like, every day, you know, getting multiple letters from Mick. He would send letters to me, letters to the kids, and, like, he would have prison inmates that knew how to draw, like, draw cartoon characters on the envelopes for the kids. It was, at times, overwhelming.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
It was not easy. It was not easy at all because I had made all sorts of promises to Mick that, after several years, I knew I was not going to be able to keep. I had two young kids. I needed a life. I couldn't just, you know, run to the prison every other weekend and visit him and constantly have $1,000 phone bills.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
The first date, my sister was supposed to watch my children. And for whatever reason, she ended up backing out. So I called him to tell him that I, you know, needed to reschedule the date. And he said, why? So I told him, you know, I was having issues with a babysitter. And he said, just bring the kids with you. So we met him at a movie theater. We saw the movie Fly Away Home.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
It was awkward, you know, like you're trying to start a new relationship with someone and you have this hanging over your head, but he was like a very adventurous person. So he was kind of like into the whole story. He wanted to know like all the details and everything about what had happened and what we had been through.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
And probably out of everyone that I've dated since then, he was probably the person who like understood it the most.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
I couldn't start a new relationship and still hold on to him, so I had to find a way to let go. Even after everything that we went through, everything that the situation put me and my kids through, I still loved him, and it was hard to let it go. So I drove to Lucasville one last time to tell him goodbye, that I had met someone.
Lords of Death
8 | Time Casts a Spell on You
And even though I had promised that I would always be there, that I couldn't make good on that promise.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
I do not. I think that the only reason Mick would have fired a shot would be if he thought she was already dead and he was doing it to save us. He did what he had to do so that he felt like we were safe. That's the only way it makes sense to me, knowing Mick the way that we knew Mick.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
The verdict was read and I don't think either one of us thought that that was going to happen.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
I knew about Mick having a past from day one. From the very first day that he came over and sat on the porch and talked to me, he was very open and honest about his past and the fact that he had been in prison before and why he was in prison. He told me that in the mid-80s, he had served some time in prison for killing his uncle.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
He told me that his uncle was very abusive, a very mean, angry man that abused Mick and his cousins. And they all got together and decided to put an end to it. And the only way they could do that was by murdering him.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
So he told me that they killed his uncle by shooting him, that they all had participated in shooting him. And then they took the body and buried it in Wayne National Forest. He took the blame for the murder completely himself. He didn't want his cousins in any kind of trouble at all. So he was the only one who served any time.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
I was never skeptical of anything that he told me because he didn't have to tell me. He volunteered everything that he told me, so I never questioned it. It just seemed like the truth. He wasn't putting the blame on anyone else. He was taking the blame. He wasn't making any excuses for it. So yeah, I believed him 100%.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
I kind of feel like he might have been along for the ride and then took the fall for it because his personality, although he had a strong personality and he was very outgoing, he kind of does seem to be a follower, not a leader.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
I had no reason and still have no reason to not believe what he had told me. I didn't have the internet then. Nobody did. So I couldn't look things up and verify anything, but I had no reason to not believe him. Although I don't condone murder in any capacity, I understood why he did what he did.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
No, I was never afraid of him because of that, because I trusted him. If anything, I felt terrible that he had to do what he did to protect his cousins and his family. You know, unless you knew him, you probably wouldn't understand.
Lords of Death
6 | Angel of Death
But I also know that I'm not the only person that's ever been in this type of situation that saw someone for who they really were and not the way the rest of the world saw them.