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Speaker 9: Baby, You are now listening to True Murder, The most
Speaker 9: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 9: have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 9: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
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Speaker 9: your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good evening.
Speaker 10: Do you think I'm pretty? No one likes me. I
Speaker 10: hate my life. I wish I had a friend. It
Speaker 10: was the mantra of fourteen year old Cherokee Harriman, who,
Speaker 10: in September two thousand and fifth, jan faced her allege
Speaker 10: bullies in a small Tennessee public park and pulled out
Speaker 10: a concealed kitchen knife. She drove the knife into her
Speaker 10: stomach as the horrified teens watched. Local media focused on
Speaker 10: sensationalism rather than truth. The word bulla's side was used,
Speaker 10: meaning bullying drove Cherokee to kill herself. The story of
Speaker 10: Cherokee's death flew through social media broadcasts for all to see.
Speaker 10: Cherokee had shared her secrets online, where privacy disappears with
Speaker 10: a slight movement of a computer mouse. A product of
Speaker 10: a family doing their best with little resources. Cherokee was
Speaker 10: passed through the mental health system as far as it
Speaker 10: would take her, shuttled through and overworked an underfunded education
Speaker 10: system supervised by government agencies with no real answers. She
Speaker 10: was sent to stop bullying school programs unprepared to assist,
Speaker 10: exasperbating the problems Cherokee Rose harrim November seventh, two thousand
Speaker 10: to September fifth, twenty fifteen. A community began to question
Speaker 10: the laws and definitions regarding bullying. Should schoolyard bullies be
Speaker 10: held legally responsible for causing a suicide? Can a rough
Speaker 10: family history guarantee a tragedy? And just what is bullying anyway?
Speaker 10: Perhaps Cherokee's death was an accident. Perhaps there was a
Speaker 10: sinister truth that had yet to be told. The book
Speaker 10: that we're featuring this evening is Bullied to Death, A
Speaker 10: story of bullying, social media and the suicide of Cherokee Harriman,
Speaker 10: with my special guest, journalist and author Judith A. Yates.
Speaker 10: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 10: for a Greenness interview. Judith A.
Speaker 7: Yates, thank you for asking me, Thank.
Speaker 10: You very much, very very unique book as I had mentioned,
Speaker 10: and I think very very timely considering everything that's gone
Speaker 10: on is going on presently and just recently. So first
Speaker 10: I I want to ask you how you came to
Speaker 10: be in a position to be able to write this book.
Speaker 7: Well, I was working on the book out of Memphis,
Speaker 7: which is called She Is Evil, and between that and
Speaker 7: the magazine that i'm editor, the story about Cherokee hit
Speaker 7: local news and it was all over local news. And
Speaker 7: I've looked at it because for some reason, Cherokee's photograph
Speaker 7: just sort of grabbed me, and I thought, what in
Speaker 7: the world. This is a sweet, beautiful girl. She just
Speaker 7: radiates kindness. What would make this beautiful, little angelic girl
Speaker 7: do something so severe? And I read a couple of
Speaker 7: the articles and it just it just got me, and
Speaker 7: I thought, Okay, I cannot look at anything else, because
Speaker 7: I try not to read anything else or look at
Speaker 7: the news or anything while i'm working on something. But
Speaker 7: for some reason, it was almost like she was tapping
Speaker 7: me on the shoulder, and it was, Okay, not right now,
Speaker 7: I'll look at this later. I'm working on She As Evil.
Speaker 7: I'm back and forth to Memphis, and it just kept
Speaker 7: tapping me and finally I was like, Okay, I will
Speaker 7: look at you know, the news. I will look at
Speaker 7: her Facebook page, I will look at her tweeter. I
Speaker 7: knew I'd missed this up. I would look at her
Speaker 7: tweeting and her parents' Facebook pages and everything else, and
Speaker 7: I just fell into it. That's no other way to
Speaker 7: explain it. It just it grabbed me because she just
Speaker 7: had this aura that I could not fathom what happened,
Speaker 7: how it happened. And I would keep feeling, literally feel
Speaker 7: that nutge on my left shoulder, and I kept thinking,
Speaker 7: I am so busy right now, and I kept feeling it.
Speaker 7: And her family and her friends seem to believe, because
Speaker 7: she did have such a strong presence, that that was
Speaker 7: her tapping me, saying tell my story. And I do
Speaker 7: believe that.
Speaker 10: Certainly now. Cherokee Harriman was fourteen and five three and
Speaker 10: one hundred and twenty pounds. Before we get to September fifth,
Speaker 10: twenty fifteen, let's go back to her grandmother and her grandfather,
Speaker 10: which are such important figures in this book, and their
Speaker 10: story and their background and their mother's upbringing is crucial
Speaker 10: for people to understand the story. So let's go back
Speaker 10: to Rita Coats and Joseph Harriman. They were married on
Speaker 10: June twenty ninth, nineteen sixty eight, in Illinois. But tell
Speaker 10: us about their getting together where they were in terms
Speaker 10: of children at that point already before we talk a
Speaker 10: little bit about life with Rita Coats and Joseph Harroon.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, Rita had several children when she met Joe,
Speaker 7: and she really didn't know that much about him. And
Speaker 7: when they first met, he was babysitting some of the
Speaker 7: children and his family, and she was very taken because
Speaker 7: he said, well, don't you have a little boy, And
Speaker 7: she said yes, and he said, well, why don't you
Speaker 7: bring him? And she was very taken with that that
Speaker 7: he took the time to say that, and that he
Speaker 7: took the interest. And they begin dating. She likes him,
Speaker 7: and eventually they marry, and she soon finds out that
Speaker 7: Joe is a bully. He has a drinking problem, and
Speaker 7: he's a bully and he's very mean, but when he drinks,
Speaker 7: he becomes even more so of a bully. Now, in
Speaker 7: that day and time, women didn't file for divorce. They
Speaker 7: certainly didn't leave. She had no marketable skills, as many
Speaker 7: women of that time didn't That was just the times,
Speaker 7: and so she was really forced to stay with this man,
Speaker 7: and then together they had several children, so she was
Speaker 7: really stuck in the times and by the times. Now.
Speaker 7: Rita is a good person, she's a good hearted individual.
Speaker 7: He has a lot of anger and resentment and a
Speaker 7: lot of depression from how she's being treated. Where is
Speaker 7: that anger and depression and that resentment going to go?
Speaker 7: But also out on her children because there is no
Speaker 7: other outlet. You certainly can't bully the bully because now
Speaker 7: you're really asking for it. So it was sort of
Speaker 7: just one big vicious circle. And the children never questioned
Speaker 7: Joe because they were already being beaten and treated very badly,
Speaker 7: called names, physically, being beaten emotionally, he was calling them
Speaker 7: horrible names. And so they all grew up in this
Speaker 7: horribly oppressive household. And Heather Cherokee's mom told me, very bluntly,
Speaker 7: my life was hell. And that was the environment in
Speaker 7: which all of this started festering.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you talk about this horrible language, and I'll just
Speaker 10: put it in there for people for detail and bitches
Speaker 10: and whores and sluts. So he had this no respect
Speaker 10: for his children. And he was a mean person, but
Speaker 10: you said he was an even meaner drunk, so drunk
Speaker 10: or sober he treated everybody, especially Rita, like crap.
Speaker 7: Definitely, yes, and alcohol just exasperated the problem he was.
Speaker 7: Here's a bully. He bullied Rita. He bullied the kids.
Speaker 4: Too.
Speaker 10: In addition to this misery, you also talk about the
Speaker 10: meager income. And then also as a result of this,
Speaker 10: what Heather experienced at school? What kind of names did
Speaker 10: she get she was getting at home? But what did
Speaker 10: you get at school as a result of this meager income?
Speaker 10: And how did how did how was it that she
Speaker 10: was bullieding? Why specifically?
Speaker 7: Right now? Both of the parents had blue collar jobs
Speaker 7: and you know, several children, and they were really just
Speaker 7: peacemailing it together. They were paycheck to paycheck and of
Speaker 7: course whi Joe's drinking. That took away a lot of
Speaker 7: the money with Heather Cherokee's mother. You know, she told me,
Speaker 7: she said, we didn't have a lot of money, We
Speaker 7: didn't have a lot of nice things. And with you know,
Speaker 7: just this terror growing up in the house. You go
Speaker 7: to school and so you get called names, You get
Speaker 7: called fat and stupid and ugly, and you get made
Speaker 7: fun of. You get made fun of because your clothes
Speaker 7: aren't as nice as everyone else's. You get made fun
Speaker 7: of because you know you can't concentrate in school because
Speaker 7: of what went on last night in your household where
Speaker 7: you didn't sleep or you didn't get a meal before
Speaker 7: you left, And so now you get called stupid or lazy,
Speaker 7: and you get made fun of because maybe you smell
Speaker 7: differently than the other kids. So really you're just being
Speaker 7: bullied at school now, and now you go home to
Speaker 7: a bully and it's just this almost a whirlpool of crap.
Speaker 7: You know that these kids are growing up in now
Speaker 7: they have friends that they can escape to. That's really
Speaker 7: only just for a very short time because you have
Speaker 7: to go home and you have to go to school.
Speaker 10: What happens at fourteen years old for Heather? Ironically, as
Speaker 10: we'll understand later in the story, what does she do
Speaker 10: at fourteen years of age? And then afterwards what happens
Speaker 10: in the home after this? This is a bizarre story.
Speaker 7: Okay, Heather had just she had had it up to here. Now,
Speaker 7: mind you, she's only a fourteen year old girl. She's
Speaker 7: a child, and she's had enough of the bullying. She's
Speaker 7: being called a slug, an idiot, fat, ugly, smelly. She's
Speaker 7: getting that at home, she's getting that at school. There's
Speaker 7: no safe place for her. So she's sitting on the
Speaker 7: couch and all of this is just whirling through her
Speaker 7: head and she's thinking, my life is worthless. I hate
Speaker 7: my life. I'm nobody, I'm nothing, And this is why
Speaker 7: don't I just end it all and make everybody happy?
Speaker 7: So she goes into the bathroom, she takes a handful
Speaker 7: of peals, chugs them down and waits to die. And
Speaker 7: a family member finds her, takes her to the hospital,
Speaker 7: has her stomach pumped, and she's put on suicide watch. Now,
Speaker 7: the strange thing is when she goes home, she is
Speaker 7: babied by her parents. They can't do enough for her.
Speaker 7: What is it that you want? What can we get you? Oh?
Speaker 7: We love you, know we care about you. Please don't
Speaker 7: do this anymore. And just a few days later, it's
Speaker 7: over and everybody starts treating everybody ugly again, the name calling,
Speaker 7: the kicking, the hitting, the slapping. And then she goes
Speaker 7: to school the name you know, the the ugly words,
Speaker 7: And she said to me, it says, if they forgot
Speaker 7: how to be nice.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about after eight years, Rita gave Joe
Speaker 10: an ultimatum. What was the ultimatum? How did he respond right?
Speaker 10: What was the result?
Speaker 7: She tells Joe she's finally fed up. Rita's kind of
Speaker 7: getting her her own voice just a little bit, and
Speaker 7: she says to Joe, you have got to quit drinking.
Speaker 7: You quit drinking, or I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving. Now.
Speaker 7: This is big for Rita. This is just a huge
Speaker 7: step for her. And you know, I believe that Joe
Speaker 7: was such a bully that when you stand up to
Speaker 7: bullies and you find your voice, they're going to back
Speaker 7: down because they're taking advantage of the situation that you're
Speaker 7: small and you're weak, and you are going to back down.
Speaker 7: So when Rita does this, Joe does that, he backs
Speaker 7: down and he stops drinking. And after that he absolutely
Speaker 7: forbade alcohol in the house. And even one of Heather's
Speaker 7: friends from childhood said, if Joe thought you had been drinking,
Speaker 7: he'd have you sleep on the porch before he allowed
Speaker 7: you in his home. And he was sober, he was cleaning,
Speaker 7: but he was still mean. He was still a bully.
Speaker 7: He still treated his career kids like crap. He still
Speaker 7: was very mean to read us, but he wasn't drinking.
Speaker 10: Now, you talk about Heather's life growing up, but she
Speaker 10: meets friends, she socializes, she meets long, long, long lost friends,
Speaker 10: and she meets and you talk about a friend named
Speaker 10: Abigail Fraser, which plays into the story a little bit later,
Speaker 10: and they're fifteen and thirteen years old. She notices things
Speaker 10: and talks about Heather and is with Heather all the time,
Speaker 10: and grew up in not great circumstances herself, so she
Speaker 10: has a lot of empathy for her. But what does
Speaker 10: she categorize Heather's behavior as growing up in regards to right.
Speaker 7: Well, you know everybody, you know, how when you're in school,
Speaker 7: particularly high school, and you always find a kindred spirit
Speaker 7: where you don't really even have to say anything and
Speaker 7: they know how you're feeling. Or maybe your households are
Speaker 7: so much alike that your friend knows what's going on
Speaker 7: and they don't even have to say it and they
Speaker 7: know how you're feeling because they felt that way too. Well,
Speaker 7: that was Abigail, and she understood Heather, and that's why
Speaker 7: Heather loved her so much is because she didn't judge her,
Speaker 7: she didn't call names, because she also knew what it
Speaker 7: was like to not have the best clothes or the
Speaker 7: best house. But Abigail did notice with Heather that she
Speaker 7: was looking for love, and even Heather knew that about herself.
Speaker 7: She was looking for love and boyfriends. And she felt
Speaker 7: like if she could just find a good boyfriend who
Speaker 7: would love her for who she was, who felt she
Speaker 7: was the best thing that came his way, who would
Speaker 7: just give her hugs and kisses and told her I
Speaker 7: love you and I care about you, she would be fine.
Speaker 7: She would be in a perfect world for herself. And
Speaker 7: Abigail would say, you know, she was always looking for
Speaker 7: the right man, and when she found a boyfriend, she
Speaker 7: sort of forgot all her friends because she was so
Speaker 7: fixated on finding that someone special. Now, when women do that,
Speaker 7: or even young girls, nine percent of the time, they're
Speaker 7: going to find the wrong one. What Heather would do,
Speaker 7: yew You.
Speaker 10: Say that also that she was sick of being in
Speaker 10: the home, so she used this as also an escape route.
Speaker 10: And she had a boyfriend named Ronnie, and they were
Speaker 10: living with three others and Ronnie and what happens with Ronnie,
Speaker 10: and in terms of considering him this the one, what
Speaker 10: does she overlook?
Speaker 7: Heather was trying so hard, and she told me this herself.
Speaker 7: She said, you know, she was trying so hard to
Speaker 7: get out from under her father's thumb. She quit high
Speaker 7: school because of the way she was being treated. She
Speaker 7: got out of her parent's house as soon as she could.
Speaker 7: And she's overlooking bad things. And that included Ronnie's addiction.
Speaker 7: That included Ronnie's drug dues. She kind of had this
Speaker 7: flotsome life where they went from crashing at a friend's house,
Speaker 7: sleeping on the couch. Okay, well there are my roommates
Speaker 7: this month, where we're going to go next month. So
Speaker 7: that was life with him. And Heather started dabbling herself,
Speaker 7: and she found that if you smoked weed, then you
Speaker 7: really forgot everything. The pain was away, and you could
Speaker 7: live in this kind of a dream world. And so
Speaker 7: she overlooked that with him.
Speaker 10: You talk about she had a child. They had a
Speaker 10: child named Shiloh born July ninety nine. What was the
Speaker 10: she's this child was born with some problem? What were
Speaker 10: the problems and what was the response from her mother?
Speaker 7: Right sea I was born with several learning disorders, and
Speaker 7: she wasn't your I hate to say normal baby, I
Speaker 7: hate that term. She wasn't learning as quickly as most
Speaker 7: babies were. He didn't seem to have the normal responses
Speaker 7: as babies her age did. And right away Heather's mother,
Speaker 7: Rita wondered if Heather and Ronnie had been using or
Speaker 7: maybe they were smoking too many cigarettes while they were
Speaker 7: both pregnant, because Heather had told Ronnie, well, we need
Speaker 7: to settle down, we need to have a baby. You know,
Speaker 7: we're we're right for parenthood. You know, we have a
Speaker 7: baby and we'll make the perfect family. And they're overlooking
Speaker 7: Ronnie's drug abuse. They're overlooking their lifestyle. They're overlooking the
Speaker 7: fact that they're living in a place with you know,
Speaker 7: it was no hot water. Sometimes they could pay for electricity.
Speaker 7: Just in their minds, if they had a baby, they'd
Speaker 7: be one big pappy family. And There's mother would try
Speaker 7: and explain that to them, but as long as they
Speaker 7: had each other, it was going to be fine. But meanwhile,
Speaker 7: Shiloh's got all of these problems.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and you talk about that, she didn't really curb
Speaker 10: the mother didn't really curb her. Late nights and party
Speaker 10: didn't accommodate this, you know, the challenges that you'd have
Speaker 10: with this child. Then you talk about she meets a
Speaker 10: man again. Another crucial person hid his story incredible is
Speaker 10: Mac Edwards, and she meets them at an amusement park
Speaker 10: through Mark's Mac's uncle. So how does this She supposed
Speaker 10: to be in a relationship. So what happens here with
Speaker 10: this Mac Edwards?
Speaker 7: I think that what was going on is, you know,
Speaker 7: things had started to crumble with Ronnie, so again she's
Speaker 7: sort of still looking for that perfect loving relationship. Friends
Speaker 7: introduce her to Mac, not on purpose. It was sort
Speaker 7: of one of those oh, you know, we're all going
Speaker 7: out here together. This is my cousin, Mac, OHI how
Speaker 7: are you? And they all end up going together. Well,
Speaker 7: he and Mac like each other, and they get along
Speaker 7: and they talk and they laugh and it's someone that
Speaker 7: you can actually be yourself with and they exchange phone
Speaker 7: numbers and the next thing you know, they're dating. And
Speaker 7: I believe Mac truly did like her as much as
Speaker 7: Mack could. Mac had a problem with alcohol. He admitted
Speaker 7: to me openly that he was an addict. His drugs
Speaker 7: and choice were alcohol and marijuana, and he was a
Speaker 7: bad boy. He got into a lot of legal trouble
Speaker 7: with Gosh, a lot of what I want. You know,
Speaker 7: it sounds bad, petty crime, car thefts and dw I
Speaker 7: and just Max's record was spotty, let's put it that way.
Speaker 7: And he didn't want to settle down. He liked her,
Speaker 7: he loved her in his own way, but Mac wanted
Speaker 7: to be a bad boy. He wanted to run with
Speaker 7: his friends and create mayhem. He wasn't ready to settle down.
Speaker 10: Now November seventh, two thousand and he doesn't know this,
Speaker 10: he's unaware of this. I have to say that there's
Speaker 10: a second child, and that's Cherokee Rose. And you say
Speaker 10: the Cherokee Rose as a state flower Georgia. Just for
Speaker 10: interests sake, what was her state in terms of her
Speaker 10: medical condition at birth? I tell us a little bit
Speaker 10: about the birth of Cherokee Rose.
Speaker 7: Cherokee had a lot of medical issues when she had
Speaker 7: been placed in ICU. It was some you know, several
Speaker 7: days before she could come home. They had to make
Speaker 7: a lot of allowances for her to be able to breathe.
Speaker 7: They had to have her on several machines so that
Speaker 7: she could breathe normally. And what I thought was interesting
Speaker 7: as a side note here is the Cherokee rose is
Speaker 7: a flower that legend has it when the Native Americans
Speaker 7: were driven out of Georgia during the Treilla Tears, the
Speaker 7: children were dying on the wayside, and the elders prayed
Speaker 7: that there would be a symbol of left for the
Speaker 7: mothers of those children to remind the world that they
Speaker 7: had been there, that their children had been there. And
Speaker 7: when their tears failed to the er the flowler, Cherokee
Speaker 7: rose grew in their place of their tears, and it
Speaker 7: was white for purity, and it was gold in the
Speaker 7: sinner to represent what the white man had taken from
Speaker 7: Native Americans. And I found that to be a very
Speaker 7: interesting story as far as what happened to Cherokee is
Speaker 7: Forster's story, so I thought that was an interesting choice
Speaker 7: of names. But she had problems with her breathing, some
Speaker 7: medical issues, and Heather also suffered a very difficult pregnancy
Speaker 7: when she was pregnant with Cherokee and when she was
Speaker 7: giving birth, and one of Cherokee's family members said to
Speaker 7: me that baby has had problems literally since she came
Speaker 7: into the world.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you talk about she was on a breathing machine,
Speaker 10: and Heather had smoked during this pregnancy, and you say
Speaker 10: motherhood didn't settle Heather down her no radic work record,
Speaker 10: and they moved constantly. So again, money was a big issue,
Speaker 10: wasn't it.
Speaker 7: Right, It's still you know again, she didn't have her
Speaker 7: high school diploma, which she always regretted. Money was always
Speaker 7: tight in the household. Just lack of skills and you know,
Speaker 7: lack of education, and they struggled. You know, there was
Speaker 7: a struggle. It was blue collar just I'm sorry, I
Speaker 7: met a loss for words here. It was a struggle
Speaker 7: that was fast food at the She would work at
Speaker 7: one place, quit go to another. Well maybe this job
Speaker 7: at fifty cents more would would be better. Okay, Well
Speaker 7: I quit that job because this job seems better. And
Speaker 7: she didn't have a vehicle. She didn't have a driver's license,
Speaker 7: so okay, well this person won't give me a ride anymore.
Speaker 7: They're mad at me, so I've got to quit that job.
Speaker 7: It was just kind of this day to day today existence.
Speaker 7: And still in between, she's trying to meet a good man,
Speaker 7: a good person to sail down with, because now she's
Speaker 7: got two children, and she's you know, Hunter has such
Speaker 7: a good heart, she really does, and she wants to
Speaker 7: find someone that appreciates that that will pull her out
Speaker 7: of this slump.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about trying to meet men, and she
Speaker 10: meets a Jamie Duke. This guy's verbally abusive. His ex
Speaker 10: became friends with Heather, however, but anyway, then she met
Speaker 10: this Nate Rodriguez guy. That was they married and that
Speaker 10: ended in a few years later in divorce. And then
Speaker 10: she gets back again, very crucial character with Ronnie again.
Speaker 10: Now with Ronnie again, we'll get back to Ronnie to
Speaker 10: try again. But their conditions were still very, very very poor.
Speaker 10: But I found this really sad and depressing. I mean,
Speaker 10: one of the saddest things. You talk about Shiloh and
Speaker 10: the boss and the report and the authorities get involved.
Speaker 10: So tell us about this.
Speaker 7: Right, Shiloh was going to school and she smelled very
Speaker 7: strongly of urine, and she had been wearing the same clothes,
Speaker 7: and the best driver smelled and saw this. Well, legally
Speaker 7: they have to make a report, which they did. Chess
Speaker 7: gets involved, and meanwhile Shiloh makes an outcry to Heather
Speaker 7: that her daddy touched her and Cherokee also makes the
Speaker 7: outcry that Ronnie touched her, so they were taken to
Speaker 7: the emergency room. DHS got involved and it was decided
Speaker 7: that the children were going to have to go to
Speaker 7: the foster home. Into the investigation, Rita tells Joe, I
Speaker 7: want to take these children and raise them because I
Speaker 7: don't want them to go into foster care, because foster
Speaker 7: care is We don't want them to go to someone
Speaker 7: we don't know. These kids are our flesh and blood.
Speaker 7: Joe's not crazy about that idea. He says, We've raised kids.
Speaker 7: This is our time. Rita wins the argument. Now at
Speaker 7: the same time, Ronnie skips down and he's gone, so
Speaker 7: there's no prosecuting him. And ultimately Rita and Joe get
Speaker 7: legal custody of Shy and of Cherokee, and so from
Speaker 7: literally little girls, you know, three years old, four years old,
Speaker 7: they are in therapy.
Speaker 10: What is Heather to do? Ordered by the courts, and
Speaker 10: what does she do?
Speaker 7: She has no contact with the children because they were
Speaker 7: also when they went to the hospital, they were not clean,
Speaker 7: they were not taken care of, and so she is
Speaker 7: ordered to stay away from the children. It started out
Speaker 7: with she could call them only so many times a month.
Speaker 7: Then it was she could telepone them more times a month.
Speaker 7: Whon it was supervised visits, and then it moved to
Speaker 7: where she could have visits with the children. And Heather
Speaker 7: carried that guilt with her. I believe she'll carry that
Speaker 7: guilt until the rest of the rest of her life.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about we just talked about the original
Speaker 10: life of Rita and the ultra abusive husband Joe, whether
Speaker 10: he's drinking or not. Now they are grandparents, does he
Speaker 10: change and what's he like?
Speaker 7: Yes, Cherokee is his girl. She's Pap Paul's girl. She
Speaker 7: can do no wrong. And Shy is Mama's girl. And
Speaker 7: if Mama coddled her because of her learning disabilities, angry
Speaker 7: and he would say, look treat her like a normal person,
Speaker 7: because otherwise, you know, she won't try. And I want
Speaker 7: her to try. I don't want people treating her different.
Speaker 7: I you know, I want her not to be bullied.
Speaker 7: I want her to learn that she's okay as she is.
Speaker 7: It's very interesting dynamic. And of course Cherokee was she
Speaker 7: could do no wrong. So if Rita corrected Cherokee, it
Speaker 7: was on. You know, he would don't don't be mean
Speaker 7: to her. Don't spank her. She didn't mean to do it.
Speaker 7: She's had a hard life. She's just a little baby,
Speaker 7: don't you know. Don't correct her. I mean that was
Speaker 7: his that was his girl, and he he doted all
Speaker 7: those little girls. It was a complete three sixty for job.
Speaker 10: Unfortunately, he then suffered from dementia, and as many people do,
Speaker 10: he had symptoms of violent behavior towards Rita. That was
Speaker 10: a little bit later, you say, though. Meanwhile, when they
Speaker 10: lived they lived with their grandparents. Gradually Heather had more
Speaker 10: access and was able to talk to them than it
Speaker 10: was visits. So it did progress favorably in her having
Speaker 10: to try to re establish a relationship or maintain a
Speaker 10: relationship with her children. But at the same time, and
Speaker 10: again this is one of the striking parts of the book.
Speaker 10: At a very early age, and you can tell us
Speaker 10: what age this is, we're talking about kindergartener, before kindergarten,
Speaker 10: she's both of these children are assessed. Tell us what
Speaker 10: the diagnosis is for both Shy Shiloh and for Cherokee,
Speaker 10: and as a result, what was prescribed.
Speaker 7: Well, they were both described with personality discordin as they
Speaker 7: were both described with the issues of bipolar, which you know,
Speaker 7: sometimes there's a it's sort of like the diagnosis of
Speaker 7: the day schizophrenia, and then years later it'll be bipolar,
Speaker 7: and then later on it'll be But they were both
Speaker 7: diagnosed by polar They were diagnosed with post traumatic stress
Speaker 7: disorder at three years old. Uh. Hierarchy was actually quite
Speaker 7: articulate at three, and she was diagnosed suicidal because she
Speaker 7: would warn people, or she would tell people who wanted
Speaker 7: to kill herself she wanted to die. And they were
Speaker 7: diagnosed with learning disorders. So they kind of had a
Speaker 7: you know, right out of the bat, these kids have
Speaker 7: so many things against themselves.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 7: Shai has has learning disorders. For example, you know, she
Speaker 7: could read a well, later months, she could read a book,
Speaker 7: but she would have no idea what she just read.
Speaker 7: But she would watch a television show and she could
Speaker 7: repeat it verbatim. And when she would start talking to you,
Speaker 7: she would just veer off the subject and go into
Speaker 7: twenty five different you know, you would have to hold
Speaker 7: her face and look in her eyes and say, okay, Shi,
Speaker 7: tell me again, but let's stay on track. So her
Speaker 7: mind would just race and race and race and in
Speaker 7: all these different directions, and they had just so many
Speaker 7: issues in several diagnoses, you know, in their little girls,
Speaker 7: there are three. Therefore, I believe Shi was in kindergarten
Speaker 7: and Cherokee was, of course one year behind when they
Speaker 7: were going to outpatient therapy. And what's interesting is every
Speaker 7: time Cherokee was in some kind of a therapy, it
Speaker 7: lasted until their insurance was up, until the insurance could
Speaker 7: no longer pay for it.
Speaker 10: It's interesting the Again, it's a shock to people, but
Speaker 10: I haven't hearing these kinds of stories and finding out
Speaker 10: about people as young as five or younger on some
Speaker 10: powerful antipsychotic drugs antidepressants, and this is no different talking
Speaker 10: about antipressants and antipsychotic drugs for these kids. I don't
Speaker 10: know the dosage, mind you, but again, two to four
Speaker 10: different drugs for each one of them. And you say
Speaker 10: something an anti convulsant because I guess that was the
Speaker 10: side effect of the one antipsychotic drug. You talk about
Speaker 10: the things that Cherokee said, tell us some of the
Speaker 10: things that she said constantly about her life and in
Speaker 10: terms of who loved her and who didn't.
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, well, you know little Shiloh is kind of
Speaker 7: the quiet went now she's you know, as we're rolling along,
Speaker 7: she's diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger's and then they're they're
Speaker 7: diagnosis modelamentally challenged jerokee. She's she's kind of bouncing back
Speaker 7: and forth. They're calling her bipolar, they're calling her attention
Speaker 7: deficit hyperactivity, they're, you know, still post traumatic deficits. I'm sorry,
Speaker 7: post traumatic stress disorder. And all the time she is
Speaker 7: telling people she hates them. She's going to tell herself
Speaker 7: nobody loves her. Everybody hates her, particularly when she's not
Speaker 7: getting her way, and pretty soon it's sort of like
Speaker 7: the girl who cries wolf. You know, she doesn't want
Speaker 7: to go to school. She hates school, and you know
Speaker 7: when she gets of school, aide there, little Cherokee's got
Speaker 7: to go to school. I'm not going. You have to
Speaker 7: go to school. Everybody has to go to school here.
Speaker 7: I'm not going. I'll kill myself if I have to go.
Speaker 7: And that just became the norm. You know, it was
Speaker 7: so difficult to get her on the school bus. I
Speaker 7: hate you, I hate everybody in this house. I hate
Speaker 7: my whole family. I'm going to kill myself. And then
Speaker 7: you know, not too long after she arrives, then the
Speaker 7: phone call would come. Cherokee's in the nurse's office. She
Speaker 7: says she has a stomach gate. I readA would have
Speaker 7: to go and get her. And she's got again all
Speaker 7: these diagnoses going on, and on top of that, she's
Speaker 7: tell everybody she hates them. She tell everybody that she's
Speaker 7: so unhappy that she's going to kill herself. And this is,
Speaker 7: you know, kindergarten that's going on, and a lot of
Speaker 7: times it's because she's not getting her way.
Speaker 10: You say, there's all kinds of incidents, but her grades
Speaker 10: aren't so bad in those first few years. But again
Speaker 10: shocking to talk about the third grade and an incident
Speaker 10: where Rita calls the police. So what is the reaction.
Speaker 10: I can't see this as myself working. But what does
Speaker 10: the police do?
Speaker 7: Turns lives in third grade and that morning there's a
Speaker 7: huge rawle and she tells Rita, I'm not going to school.
Speaker 7: I hate school. You can't make me, which is the
Speaker 7: old song again, and she says I'm going to kill
Speaker 7: myself now. This is when she also started hitting, and
Speaker 7: so Rita calls the police and says, I don't know
Speaker 7: what to do anymore. She's hitting, she's talking back, and
Speaker 7: she says she's going to kill herself. According to Rita,
Speaker 7: the police show up and they say to Cherokee, so
Speaker 7: you want to kill yourself? Yes, So they handcoff her.
Speaker 7: They put her in the back of a squad car
Speaker 7: and they go to the mental health hospital. They interview
Speaker 7: her and she said, well, she didn't really mean it,
Speaker 7: and according to her family, that's what happened.
Speaker 10: There's an incident in the fourth grade that doesn't help
Speaker 10: her at all. Twenty and ten, she's in a different
Speaker 10: school now, and you say the teachers and the principals
Speaker 10: didn't understand her. I thought she was strange and more
Speaker 10: bullying from students. But then on January fourth, twenty ten,
Speaker 10: what happens, What does you talk about? Cherokee findings someone
Speaker 10: that's close to her tell us about this incident, and
Speaker 10: it's effected.
Speaker 7: Joe by now had been in and out of the
Speaker 7: hospital for a numerous numerous things. His health was really
Speaker 7: going downhill, and by now he was more or less
Speaker 7: in hospice and he was at home sick, and Rita
Speaker 7: had been sitting with him bedside, feeding him ic chips
Speaker 7: and he was barely barely existing, and she said, Daddy,
Speaker 7: if you're staying around for me and the girls, let go,
Speaker 7: will be fine. When she left the room, she was
Speaker 7: in out of the room very long, and Cheryke came
Speaker 7: and told her I went to see Papa and his
Speaker 7: lips are blue and he's not breathing. And they sat
Speaker 7: with Joe, who had passed away for several hours before
Speaker 7: the Ambimans could arrive to take the remains away.
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Speaker 7: And that was another just a downhill slide for charity
Speaker 7: because again she's Pappau's girl and she's the one who fountain.
Speaker 10: So that doesn't help her behavior at school, at home,
Speaker 10: in her personal life. What does it? Is it a
Speaker 10: market difference in her at that time? I know it's
Speaker 10: hard to maybe say, but was there a big difference
Speaker 10: in her afterwards?
Speaker 7: Yes, definitely. She started setting fires. She became very defiant,
Speaker 7: acting out. She was she was very overly emotional. It
Speaker 7: was it was either one way or the other. There
Speaker 7: was no real mental ground. There was some bed wedding.
Speaker 7: She constantly fought with her grandmother, She fought with her family.
Speaker 7: She and Shi would get into it to where it
Speaker 7: was throwing each other into the walls and punching and kicking.
Speaker 7: She got to where she would destroy property, stealing. She
Speaker 7: was always stealing at school and she even got I
Speaker 7: think it was in first prade where they sent her
Speaker 7: home for a day for stealing. But it was it
Speaker 7: was always little stupid stuff like little bracelets or a
Speaker 7: dollar or you know, just pretty little things that little
Speaker 7: kids like, nothing even really worth anything. She just wanted
Speaker 7: little things to be pretty, nail polish, a little trinkets,
Speaker 7: little faked rings. She would steal money out of Rita's
Speaker 7: purse by dollars here, ten dollars there, and she would
Speaker 7: use it to buy ice cream. She would use it
Speaker 7: to buy a little bracelet as she wanted, and you know,
Speaker 7: she wanted to be like all the other kids in
Speaker 7: her school that had little cute things, little cute clothes.
Speaker 7: But the destruction of property got worse. She's kind of spiraled,
Speaker 7: and the loss of her grandfather really hurt her. The
Speaker 7: issues at Hanum, the mental health issues did not help.
Speaker 7: You know, this kid had a lot of stuff going
Speaker 7: on and she didn't have a family that was equipped
Speaker 7: to handle it because they never had handled something like
Speaker 7: that before.
Speaker 10: Now things change in another crucial character, a very a
Speaker 10: positive character in Cherokee's life and Heather's life is October
Speaker 10: twenty eleven and Mike Edwards Michael Edwards and no relation
Speaker 10: to this Mac Edwards, and he met Heather online on
Speaker 10: online dating and he was originally from Oklahoma, and the
Speaker 10: first date was near as Eve twenty eleven. Tell us
Speaker 10: about what happens and the change in the living arrangement
Speaker 10: and if this is a positive move at all, even
Speaker 10: for a time in their life.
Speaker 7: Okay, well they did meet online, and you know, Heather
Speaker 7: tells Mike, I have two little girls, and if that's
Speaker 7: going to be a problem for you, then walk And
Speaker 7: Mike says, no, that's not a problem at all. And
Speaker 7: he gave her his phone number and he said, call
Speaker 7: me if you want. If you don't, I understand, you know.
Speaker 7: They sort of lift it in the air for each other.
Speaker 7: If you like me, that's fine, If you don't, that's
Speaker 7: fine too. Mike made her laugh, which Heather had not
Speaker 7: done in a long time, and they truly enjoyed each
Speaker 7: other's company. So they finally meet, they go out on
Speaker 7: a date and they just found that they fit and
Speaker 7: they liked each other, and they got together as a couple.
Speaker 7: Eventually they moved into the same house, and the girls
Speaker 7: just loved Mike. He was patient with them, He was
Speaker 7: very kind. He was a disciplinarian, but he wasn't mean,
Speaker 7: and he wasn't you know, he didn't call names, he
Speaker 7: didn't spank, he wasn't cooel. He made them follow rules,
Speaker 7: but he didn't do it the wrong way. And he
Speaker 7: called Cherokee. Her nickname was Chicky. And at one point
Speaker 7: they're driving along. Mike loves sports cars, and he had
Speaker 7: a car with a sunroof, and they're driving along and
Speaker 7: the girls are giggling because the sunroof is so cool,
Speaker 7: and Cherokee turns to Mike out of nowhere, and she says,
Speaker 7: are you the kind of man that would touch a
Speaker 7: little girl? And he says, no, never, And she just
Speaker 7: looks out the window and she's sort of contemplating, and
Speaker 7: she says good and he was just you know, he says,
Speaker 7: she was. I was skittish at first, but she came
Speaker 7: around and the next thing you know, they're all a
Speaker 7: family together. They're actually like a family union, and Cherokee
Speaker 7: came up to him. Then they shot and she said,
Speaker 7: do you mind if I call you daddy? And he said,
Speaker 7: if that's what you want, then I don't mind. And
Speaker 7: the next thing, you know, Mike was daddy to both girls. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and he was here.
Speaker 10: Sorry, he was what sorry to cut you off?
Speaker 7: Oh? He was. He was a very positive influence for Heathers.
Speaker 7: She had always talked about maybe starting her own business,
Speaker 7: and he said, then why don't you? Well I was
Speaker 7: thought maybe a you know, a cleaning company, Well why
Speaker 7: don't you? And so she started one up and he
Speaker 7: got a job working in a factory. And you know,
Speaker 7: Mike is a very hard worker and he has a
Speaker 7: very good look ethic, and he passed that along to
Speaker 7: the girls. If you want something, you work for it,
Speaker 7: and you know, you don't steal, you don't lie. Now
Speaker 7: that doesn't say that. Jerocke, you know, changed immediately. There
Speaker 7: was still some issues with her, and of course they
Speaker 7: still had some problems with with Shy, with her Aspergers
Speaker 7: and her ADHD, but she's shot was a very sweet girl.
Speaker 7: She's a very sweet little girl. And he loved you know,
Speaker 7: they loved going to places together and they didn't have
Speaker 7: to have money to go out and have fun. They'd
Speaker 7: go to the park and ride bikes or you know,
Speaker 7: they'd go to local attractions that were you know, that
Speaker 7: were free, and he'd drive him in his in his
Speaker 7: car and just drive around and have fun. So he
Speaker 7: he made things fun for them.
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Speaker 10: it looked like Judith Heather's life, and more importantly, the children,
Speaker 10: Shiloh and Cherokee's life was going to turn around with
Speaker 10: a somebody that really did love them, that she could
Speaker 10: call daddy, that cared to, gives her discipline that she needed,
Speaker 10: and also the loving and attention and support that she
Speaker 10: had never really had from anyone. But what is her
Speaker 10: behavior like under these conditions? And you also talk about
Speaker 10: the relationship of Heather and Rita under the same roof.
Speaker 7: Right now, you know, I should add that for all
Speaker 7: her problems and all her issues that Cherokee had, Cherokee
Speaker 7: was she was such a sweet little girl. And you know,
Speaker 7: she could be such a sweet kid, and she had
Speaker 7: a good heart. She was a lot like Heather in
Speaker 7: that way. She was so such a loyal friend to
Speaker 7: the friends that she did have. And she was so
Speaker 7: boy crazy. I mean just you know, she'd have, Oh
Speaker 7: she'd have this crush on this one kid one week
Speaker 7: and oh they love each other forever, and then the
Speaker 7: next week on Facebook she's calling him all kinds of aims.
Speaker 7: She's very quick to give hugs. She'd love to give
Speaker 7: her friends and her family hugs. She is very quick
Speaker 7: to say that I love you, and she meant it.
Speaker 7: She was a very sweet natured kid. For all of
Speaker 7: the negative behaviors that she had, you know, she was
Speaker 7: such a dichotomy in a lot of ways. And you know,
Speaker 7: in the middle of all this, Heather and her mom, Rita,
Speaker 7: their relationship has always kind of been off and on.
Speaker 7: I do believe that they truly love each other as
Speaker 7: mother and daughter, and Heather does understand the issues that
Speaker 7: Rita was under while Heaven was growing up, but still
Speaker 7: there was such friction and so there's still that misunderstanding there,
Speaker 7: that misdirection between them, and of course growing up without
Speaker 7: any sophistication of understanding those problems, you know, and now
Speaker 7: they've moved into adulthood and then you know, later in
Speaker 7: their lives, still not understanding what's causing that friction. There's
Speaker 7: a lot of fighting, and there's a lot of blaming,
Speaker 7: and there's a lot of self blaming that gets thrown
Speaker 7: in there as well. And Heather does see a lot
Speaker 7: of herself in Cherokee. You know, she sees the sweet
Speaker 7: and loving side, but then she also sees the problematic
Speaker 7: sides to her. She sees that, you know, one minute,
Speaker 7: Cherokee is so loving and giving, and then the other minute,
Speaker 7: Cherokee's telling her family, I hate you, and she's striking out,
Speaker 7: and you know, she sees that she's a loyal, good friend,
Speaker 7: but yet she doesn't have that many friends. But she's
Speaker 7: seeing herself in Cheroke, and she also sees that that's
Speaker 7: what aggravates Rita. So there's so many arguments, and unfortunately
Speaker 7: it's a tiny house and the kids are standing there
Speaker 7: literally in the middle of it.
Speaker 10: You talk about striking out, but she's actually striking Rita
Speaker 10: and Shiloh. She's physical, so she can kid now, but
Speaker 10: she becomes physical and she's actually at some point on
Speaker 10: probation for hitting Rita. Us about for hitting tell us
Speaker 10: about the Oak Plains stay and its effect on Cherokee,
Speaker 10: what it is that works.
Speaker 7: At one point, Rita was at the end of a rope.
Speaker 7: Cherokee was hitting and kicking and I hate you. You know,
Speaker 7: it just got to its point and the threats of
Speaker 7: suicide became norm the destruction, the fire setting. So she
Speaker 7: has Cherokee admitted to a Plains which was a mental
Speaker 7: health hospital. Just let's see, it's the northeast, I'm sorry,
Speaker 7: northwest of Nashville. And of course Cherokee A won't ago.
Speaker 7: I hate you, you hate me for doing this to me.
Speaker 7: I'll never speak to you again. Yet Cherokee excelled at
Speaker 7: that mental health HOSS grades sword. She did very well socially.
Speaker 7: Another there was a few times that she got into trouble.
Speaker 7: She was Eventually she was allowed to go on a
Speaker 7: path back home for an overnight's day or a weekend stay.
Speaker 7: Now what's interesting is when she would go home, he
Speaker 7: did well, but then when she would return, her behavior
Speaker 7: would disintegrate. And so they were working with Cherokee. They
Speaker 7: were working with the family. Her family would come and
Speaker 7: visit her, and it was you know, it was smaller classrooms.
Speaker 7: They had her on medication. They worked with her medication
Speaker 7: to get her stabilized. She was in group, she was
Speaker 7: in therapy with counselors. The one thing they could not
Speaker 7: get her to talk about is they couldn't get her
Speaker 7: to open up about the sexualization. And it was very
Speaker 7: difficult for her to talk about her grandpa's death. So
Speaker 7: they had some problems with getting her to open up
Speaker 7: about those things. And she won a few loops.
Speaker 10: I'm sorry, we'll go ahead.
Speaker 7: Sorry, She won a few little awards. They work on
Speaker 7: a level system where your behavior is to meet certain
Speaker 7: you know, behavioral.
Speaker 3: Levels.
Speaker 7: Then you can be on say Lion level or Tiger level.
Speaker 7: She didn't make it all the way to the top level,
Speaker 7: but she did move up several levels and she did well,
Speaker 7: and when the entrance ran out, then she was released.
Speaker 7: Now she was on an outpatient program. She completed that
Speaker 7: and she went home and things were good for a while,
Speaker 7: and then it just escalated back to where it was.
Speaker 10: You talk about that she did gain some insights into
Speaker 10: her behavior while she was in this clinic, and that
Speaker 10: she was more in control of her emotions. She seemed
Speaker 10: to be sweet and loving. When she did go home,
Speaker 10: they had prescribed her Abilify melowtonin for sleeping, tris doone,
Speaker 10: the convulsant, and a multi vitamin. Interestingly, she said she
Speaker 10: was a good artist. She had plans to be a
Speaker 10: hair stylist. Her family loved her new outlook. But you
Speaker 10: say it didn't last. What went wrong?
Speaker 7: I think it was probably the environment she went back into.
Speaker 7: You know, it wasn't a steady environment, it wasn't a
Speaker 7: controlled environment. Perhaps you know, after a while, medications have
Speaker 7: to be adjusted, and if you're not in a controlled
Speaker 7: environment where the medication isn't monitored as it should be,
Speaker 7: you know it's going to adjust. You're going to your
Speaker 7: body chemistry and everything else is going to change, and
Speaker 7: the medication is going to need to be changed. And
Speaker 7: if you don't have the doctors and the therapistulity counselors around,
Speaker 7: you're going to change and you're going to have to adjust.
Speaker 10: You talk about her grades declining, but they still they
Speaker 10: had a you know, they promoted her to next grade,
Speaker 10: so she always passed on to the next grade regardless, right,
Speaker 10: But you talk about in May twenty thirteen, around this time,
Speaker 10: if the bullying gets to the point where Rita and
Speaker 10: Heather complained to the school and filled out what they
Speaker 10: called bully reports, tell us about what these were and
Speaker 10: what was the result after they had filed these.
Speaker 7: Okay, in that school system, there is a bully report,
Speaker 7: and if you feel like you were being bullied, you
Speaker 7: complete this report and you turn it in to someone
Speaker 7: that is a staff member at the school, and from
Speaker 7: there it goes into the system. From what I understand,
Speaker 7: and I you know, this is what I was told,
Speaker 7: it goes to someone accounselor I believe, who makes the
Speaker 7: decision on where does it go from here? Do they
Speaker 7: pull the bullies aside and talk to them, Do they
Speaker 7: pull the bully and the parents aside and talk to them.
Speaker 7: You know, what level of seriousness is it? And Cherokee
Speaker 7: had completed a few bully reports. Now the problem with
Speaker 7: these bully reports is when you're pulling the bully inside,
Speaker 7: they're going to know who completed them. Now, this person
Speaker 7: who reported them is going to be labeled a snitche
Speaker 7: and you know, where does it go from there? You're
Speaker 7: going to pull the kid inside who's going to be innocent,
Speaker 7: and they're going to say it wasn't me. Where does
Speaker 7: it go? Okay, don't do that again. Okay, I want
Speaker 7: in the story. Now. You know, if if I turn
Speaker 7: in the bully report and they tell me, okay it
Speaker 7: was taken care of, I have to go out there
Speaker 7: on that playground. I have to go out there in
Speaker 7: that lunch room. So to me, if it continues, then
Speaker 7: in my eyes, the school did nothing about it. So
Speaker 7: who knows if the kid was talked to? I don't
Speaker 7: because I don't the one that turned it in. Mm hmmmm,
Speaker 7: Well nothing was done right.
Speaker 10: You talk about the PTSD and that's evidenced by these nightmares.
Speaker 10: Tell us about the did these nightmares subside while she
Speaker 10: was in Oak Plains and or did a subside when
Speaker 10: she got back home. How how did she fare with
Speaker 10: these nightmares?
Speaker 7: They eventually they eventually went away. She would have horrible
Speaker 7: nightmares where she was convinced there was someone outside her
Speaker 7: window and if she went to sleep, they'd come in
Speaker 7: and get her, which is typical of a childhood than
Speaker 7: the listed kind, as you said, typical of someone would PTSD.
Speaker 7: And she self reported that when she went into the hospital,
Speaker 7: and I believe that the counseling and the therapy she
Speaker 7: received along with the medication took care of that issue.
Speaker 7: And you know, when she returned, she no longer had
Speaker 7: the nightmares. And then slowly and surely, however, the destructive
Speaker 7: behavior reared its every head now and again. You know,
Speaker 7: she still continued to be this good hearted little kid.
Speaker 7: It's just she had so much going against her. I
Speaker 7: truly do not believe Cherokee was a bad kid. She
Speaker 7: did some bad things, but I don't think she was
Speaker 7: a bad kid. You see the difference.
Speaker 10: M Yeah, sure certainly. Now you also talk about, just
Speaker 10: because it's an interesting part of this story as well,
Speaker 10: that this at some point she has an aunt, Samantha,
Speaker 10: and there's a party at some point, and she's thirteen
Speaker 10: and this Timothy Ashbury is eighteen. Maybe we just talk
Speaker 10: about we might as well say what was he doing there?
Speaker 10: And what happened? They found out later, But what was
Speaker 10: this little meeting and what did it lead to with Cherokee?
Speaker 7: You know, that's sort of one of those mysteries. He said,
Speaker 7: she said they were And as you know, that's one
Speaker 7: of the problems in writing about people's lives, is, especially
Speaker 7: in the aftermath, you have ten people who are going
Speaker 7: to give you ten different stories, and if you span that,
Speaker 7: you're still going to get more stories, and you either
Speaker 7: have to ditch it or you have to go with
Speaker 7: the majority of the story. And Timothy is one of
Speaker 7: those very interesting individuals. But from my understanding, he did
Speaker 7: show up at a few different parties of Cherokee. Some
Speaker 7: people remembered him there, some people didn't. Some people said
Speaker 7: they were dating, some people said no. But then you
Speaker 7: got to think, you know, in junior high what is dating?
Speaker 7: You know, you hold hands in the hallway, or you
Speaker 7: go to somebody's house and talk, you know, which with
Speaker 7: Cherokee that's the extent of dating. You know, you go
Speaker 7: to each other's house and talk, or you talk on Facebook,
Speaker 7: or you know, you text constantly, and that's really the
Speaker 7: extent of her dating, and that's what they were doing.
Speaker 10: Another interesting event happens in two twenty and thirteen when
Speaker 10: we go back to this Mac Edward no relation to
Speaker 10: Mike Edwards, who's now her father for all times of purposes.
Speaker 10: In twenty and thirteen, Mack Edwards is in prison and
Speaker 10: his cousin talks to him. What does he say, what
Speaker 10: does he learn?
Speaker 8: What does he do?
Speaker 7: Right? His cousin says it to him, By the way, did
Speaker 7: you know you have a daughter? What? Yeah, Heather has
Speaker 7: your daughter. So he calls Heather and he says, what's
Speaker 7: this business about? I have a daughter? And she says,
Speaker 7: yes you do. Do you want to talk to her?
Speaker 7: And he said, yes, yes I do. Well. At first
Speaker 7: they just wrote letters just to kind of get to
Speaker 7: know each other, and pretty soon they talk in real
Speaker 7: time on the phone and he would send her drawings
Speaker 7: and she would send him her drawings, and pretty soon
Speaker 7: he invited her up to visit him, and she was very,
Speaker 7: very excited, and she told her best friend and she
Speaker 7: told Heather and Mike that she really, really, really wanted
Speaker 7: to go visit her dad, and Heather and Mike discussed
Speaker 7: it and they said, okay, but when we are not
Speaker 7: leaving her with him, it's going to be a supervised
Speaker 7: visit because Mac was still a bad boy. So they
Speaker 7: disgusted it at length and they said, okay, we will
Speaker 7: take you to meet him. So she was very very
Speaker 7: over just overjoyed that she's going to meet him. Mack was.
Speaker 7: He was very excited to get to meet Cherokee, and
Speaker 7: she sent him her school pictures and he believed that
Speaker 7: she was, you know, in his eyes, she was a
Speaker 7: very sweet little girl, very innocent, sweet kid, and he
Speaker 7: did want to meet her. She was his child, right.
Speaker 10: You talk about Cherokee in school. She has a friend.
Speaker 10: She has a friend named Katie Nichols that has a
Speaker 10: slight speech impediment. She's only ninety pounds. She had been
Speaker 10: bullied befo. She knew what was all about. They became friends,
Speaker 10: they became very close, and Cherokee liked a young man
Speaker 10: named Alex Seether. Now tell us just about again. You
Speaker 10: talked about junior high and how serious can relationships be,
Speaker 10: But in a person's mind, they could be very very serious.
Speaker 10: So tell us what about this relationship and how did
Speaker 10: she see it and what really was their relationship before
Speaker 10: we talk about events that happened not that long after.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, Katy is just a sweetheart of a little girl,
Speaker 7: and she understood a lot of what was going on
Speaker 7: with Cherokee emotionally, mentally, her background, and one of the
Speaker 7: people I interviewed said, Cherokee could not have had a
Speaker 7: better friend. Katie is wise beyond her years. She is
Speaker 7: an old soul, and she gave Cherokee a lot of advice.
Speaker 7: And one of the advice she gave her Cherokee was
Speaker 7: just moaning and crying and dying over Alex. Oh, well,
Speaker 7: never be the same. He's ruined my life. And Katie
Speaker 7: very practically said, Cherokee, we will never see these people
Speaker 7: again after we graduate school. You'll probably never even see
Speaker 7: him again after this summer, So what do you care?
Speaker 7: You know, Jerokee thought that, according to Katie, if she
Speaker 7: had a boyfriend, it was going to be forever. It
Speaker 7: would be the rest of her life. You know, she
Speaker 7: gets his boyfriend, then that's it. They were going to
Speaker 7: be married, she would some of her boyfriends. She even
Speaker 7: called my future husband. You know, the kids, not even quixteen,
Speaker 7: you know, and she's saying, my future husband, and she
Speaker 7: would just get so serious about these kids, and alex
Speaker 7: Seed was one of them. You know, she was just convinced.
Speaker 7: And on her Facebook you can see it. You know,
Speaker 7: I am in love with him. He is the best
Speaker 7: thing ever. I'm sad because I won't see him today,
Speaker 7: but I will see him tomorrow, so that will make
Speaker 7: me happy. Just how handsome he was, how cute he was.
Speaker 7: Here's a picture of him, here's another picture of him.
Speaker 7: You know, I love him so much. He is my life.
Speaker 7: And Katie's just rolling her eyes and saying, look, you
Speaker 7: know you're you're a kid basically, So Katie's just kind
Speaker 7: of going, okay, whatever, and Cherokee's no, I'm in love. Well, eventually,
Speaker 7: like all the other serious boyfriends that Cherokees has, she
Speaker 7: and Alec go their separate ways and the next thing
Speaker 7: you know, she's writing on her Facebook that he is
Speaker 7: a little bit that you know that didn't last.
Speaker 10: You talk about the situation with Cherokee too, and I
Speaker 10: thought this is you know, I could imagine the pressure
Speaker 10: and the peer pressure because of it. She didn't have
Speaker 10: her own phone, so her mother gave her her phone,
Speaker 10: and then her mother got another phone, because you can
Speaker 10: imagine a kid that age not having an iPhone or
Speaker 10: a cell phone. So, oh my god, the horror of
Speaker 10: it all. But also they're not important, yeah, and you
Speaker 10: talk about you talk about the importance of Facebook to
Speaker 10: these kids, and so you also include very important part
Speaker 10: of the book too, is you include all these Facebook
Speaker 10: posts because they're very, very telling. And you include May six,
Speaker 10: twenty fourteen Facebook posting just for example, what kinds of
Speaker 10: things would you say on these posts? Unlike some people.
Speaker 7: Oh, if you read Cherokee's Facebook and her Twitters and
Speaker 7: you saw the videos that she posted on YouTube, you
Speaker 7: would you could read this kid, You really could, because
Speaker 7: all of her songs were about heartbreak but she was
Speaker 7: strong because he left her, or she was a strong
Speaker 7: woman because she didn't meet him. All of her Facebook
Speaker 7: posts were about, you know, boys that she thought was
Speaker 7: cute or boys that she was mad at. So he's
Speaker 7: a little bit. And she also wrote about, you know,
Speaker 7: why why is everybody so mean to me? Why does
Speaker 7: I why do people not like me? Just the you know,
Speaker 7: you could read it and almost hear her voice when
Speaker 7: you read it, you know, I just want to have
Speaker 7: a friend. One minute, it's why do people hate me
Speaker 7: so much? And then the next it's, you know, I
Speaker 7: love my mama so much. And she loved to write poetry.
Speaker 7: She'd write songs and one song that I have an
Speaker 7: idea who it's about. She was writing about, you know,
Speaker 7: why won't you get me? I know you say it's
Speaker 7: because of my age? Do you think I'm pretty enough?
Speaker 7: And a lot of that was a lot of her
Speaker 7: writing was why don't you think I'm pretty enough? It
Speaker 7: was it was cherokey, you know, just raw, you know,
Speaker 7: putting it all out there.
Speaker 10: One bright spot in her life that you write though.
Speaker 10: And this is again incredibly heartbreaking. Later as we'll see this.
Speaker 10: Mac Edwards kept in contact with Cherokee from prison and
Speaker 10: he had a release date of September eleventh, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 10: and they corresponded and she was excited and he was excited.
Speaker 10: He had asked if she could spend the summer with
Speaker 10: him in Ohio. So he was looking forward to that
Speaker 10: and he was yes and so and so he was
Speaker 10: really looking forward to them. So was she You talk
Speaker 10: about examples of this bullying, you know, I mean we
Speaker 10: talk about bullying, and then people might say, wow, what
Speaker 10: you know tough enough? Or when I was a kid,
Speaker 10: we did that, and you know we did. But we're
Speaker 10: talking about some of the things that you describe, like,
Speaker 10: you know, rolled up paper thrown at her, and what
Speaker 10: a kind of names were thrown at her, hurled at her,
Speaker 10: and the kinds of things talk you talk about some physicality,
Speaker 10: tell us just as you do describe a walk down
Speaker 10: the hall. For Cherokee, some days in school.
Speaker 7: A lot of words were hurled at her clothes. Cherokee
Speaker 7: loved to do hairstyles and nails. She could look at
Speaker 7: a YouTube video and no matter how intricate or how
Speaker 7: difficult a braid or a hairstyle was, she could copy
Speaker 7: it immediately and she would cut in style and color
Speaker 7: her own hair and look like she just stepped out
Speaker 7: of the salmon. And she would go to school very
Speaker 7: proud of it. And kids would make fun of her.
Speaker 7: You look like a boy that looks ugly. What are
Speaker 7: you trying to do? Look pretty? They would throw rolled
Speaker 7: up paper. There's a couple of times she got pushed
Speaker 7: into lockers. Uh, there's a you know, there was a
Speaker 7: name calling, ooh, you stink. What are you trying to look?
Speaker 7: You know, you're trying to like a movie star where
Speaker 7: you dumped? Why are you wearing that? You look like
Speaker 7: a hoe? Hoe was the big name, you know, it
Speaker 7: was kind of the catch all phrase. Now, Cherokee lives
Speaker 7: in a in a very small house, in a house
Speaker 7: of chainemunkers. And the fact that you know, she had
Speaker 7: the problem of One issue with kids who've been molested
Speaker 7: is they either don't like to bathe or they bathed
Speaker 7: too much. And Cherokee was one who didn't like to bathe.
Speaker 7: And that's a dynamic with molested kids. So they would
Speaker 7: make fun of her for smelling a certain way because
Speaker 7: the way she smelled, they would just they would make fun.
Speaker 7: You know, kids will think of anything to make another
Speaker 7: kid an outcast if they want to. Plus the fact
Speaker 7: that it was fun to make Cherokee mad. You know,
Speaker 7: they would push buttons, push buttons, push buttons until she
Speaker 7: blew up. And boy, when she blew up, it was volcanic.
Speaker 7: And then that was the show, you know, because she
Speaker 7: would oh rid the face and fists and crying and
Speaker 7: yelling and you know, striking back. I mean, that was
Speaker 7: the show. To look for so that's another reason why
Speaker 7: that they would give her a hard time, right.
Speaker 10: Right, You include all these texts that are so important,
Speaker 10: as you say, it's telling to see where what her
Speaker 10: state of mind was was pretty obvious through these texts
Speaker 10: you could read a lot into it. Obviously. September fifth,
Speaker 10: twenty fifteen, she writes, my life is worthless. And you
Speaker 10: talk about that day in question, Well, what Rita did
Speaker 10: and Mike and and Heather as well, she was using
Speaker 10: her mum's cell phone. Tell us of the circumstances of
Speaker 10: that day, starting off with that text, why she was
Speaker 10: in such a fizzy, and what she did as a result,
Speaker 10: where she wanted to go to sort of chill out.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, that day Mike and Heather had you know,
Speaker 7: she had her cleaning company and Mike was going to
Speaker 7: help her. They had a new client, and she had
Speaker 7: asked them, Hey, can I go with and Heather said
Speaker 7: no because it's a new client. Okay, Well, then her
Speaker 7: grandma took a shy to a family member's house. So
Speaker 7: Cherokee's just kind of moving around the house. And there
Speaker 7: is a park a couple of blocks away called Manton Park.
Speaker 7: It's a very small park, and it's got some swing sets,
Speaker 7: it's got some jungle gym type of stuff. It's got
Speaker 7: a pavilion with a couple of benches. Jerokee likes to
Speaker 7: go there every now and then just so she can
Speaker 7: be a woman and she can kind of sort things out.
Speaker 7: And it's quiet, and so she's thinking, okay, you know what,
Speaker 7: I'm going to head to Manson's Park. I'm gonna you know,
Speaker 7: maybe sit on the swing set, sit under a tree
Speaker 7: and just kind of gather my thoughts. It's nice and
Speaker 7: quiet there. So she asks her grandmother, who, who's you know,
Speaker 7: in and out of the house at this time? Can
Speaker 7: I go to the park? And she gives permission, and
Speaker 7: you know, ask your mom, She checks Heather, can I
Speaker 7: go to the park? Grand says it's okay. Her mom says, yes, sure,
Speaker 7: just text me every you know, so many minutes and
Speaker 7: let me know you're okay, because I don't trust men
Speaker 7: in that area. Okay. So she you know, changes clothes.
Speaker 7: She chooses her outsit very carefully because looking pretty was
Speaker 7: very important to Cherokee. You know, she wanted to look cute,
Speaker 7: wanted to fit in, she wanted boys to notice her,
Speaker 7: and you know, she's a little girl. She's she's coming
Speaker 7: into her own, you know. She's she's a nice kid.
Speaker 7: She wants to look pretty, she wants to she's growing up,
Speaker 7: you know. So she's she's taking a long time deciding
Speaker 7: what she's going to wear. And she walks. She goes
Speaker 7: to a park and that's where she's decided. She's she's
Speaker 7: going to kind of spend the afternoon. And she texts
Speaker 7: on her Facebook she says she's headed toward the park.
Speaker 7: Does anybody want to go? It's Manson Park, right, and.
Speaker 10: That Mankin Park? Is this Ali Trace a girl? She
Speaker 10: knows Debbie Horns mean, she knows Ali Ali Trace too.
Speaker 10: There's this former boyfriend or the love of her life,
Speaker 10: Alex Either and he's now going out with Ali Trace right,
Speaker 10: but he has a decision to make that evening apparently
Speaker 10: in this very serious love life of these young teens
Speaker 10: and another boy named Donnie Deroy. Now, why is it
Speaker 10: that Ali? Well, what does Ali do? And why? Tell
Speaker 10: us what this altercation was about?
Speaker 7: Possibly Cherokee does not know who Alie is. She only
Speaker 7: knows Debbie through they go to the same high school,
Speaker 7: so they kind of know each other on a Okay,
Speaker 7: I know who that girl is basis, but they're not
Speaker 7: in the same circle of friends, not even close. And
Speaker 7: of course they all know Alec because of this, like
Speaker 7: you said, this serious romance going on. And so when
Speaker 7: Cherokee arrives, those other kids are sitting at the bench
Speaker 7: talking on their cell phones and you know, Tess and such.
Speaker 7: Cherokee goes and sits on one of the swing sets. Well,
Speaker 7: Debbie breaks away from the group. She walks over there,
Speaker 7: and she tries to talk to Cherokee, and Cherokee's not
Speaker 7: talking much, okay, So she goes back and sits with
Speaker 7: the group. Allie says, well, I'm want to talk to her, okay,
Speaker 7: And one of the boys says, please don't start anything,
Speaker 7: because Allie has a tendency to start drama. Well, Cherokee decides, okay, well,
Speaker 7: you know, no peace here. You know, I'm not by myself.
Speaker 7: So Cherokee starts home, which again is just a few blocks,
Speaker 7: and Allie says, no, I just want to say something
Speaker 7: to her. So as Cherokee is crossing the street, Ali
Speaker 7: crosses the street and yells at her and across the
Speaker 7: you know, across the way, and she just starts cursing her,
Speaker 7: and Cherokee's like, I don't even know who you are.
Speaker 7: And Allie is yelling, you know, intelligent things like you're
Speaker 7: a hoe, you're a bitch, and Cherokee said, I don't
Speaker 7: even know who you are, and don't you know again, Ali,
Speaker 7: you think you're going to steal my man? And Cherokee's like,
Speaker 7: I don't know who you are. Meanwhile, Ali's friends are like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, Ali quit stops right now. Now. Some
Speaker 7: witnesses say that Debbie shouted things. Other witnesses say she didn't.
Speaker 7: From what I understand, the boys just stood there, stopped,
Speaker 7: and it went back and forth and went back and forth. Now,
Speaker 7: off on the sidelines are two younger kids who are
Speaker 7: related to one of these older kids, and they're watching
Speaker 7: kind of like this is getting good, you know, back
Speaker 7: and forth and Cherokee, you know, she jumps in and
Speaker 7: she's like, I don't know who you are. I don't
Speaker 7: know what you're talking about. You can have him. I'm
Speaker 7: not interested. And so finally Cherokee just turns on her
Speaker 7: heel and leaves, and Ali's yah, yeah, bitch, you go on,
Speaker 7: you know, just team talk. And so the kids go
Speaker 7: back to the park bench. Cherokee leaves and she's headed
Speaker 7: for home, and she gets home, he kind of slips
Speaker 7: into the kitchen. She pulls a kitchen knife out of
Speaker 7: the dream. She hides it in her jacket and she
Speaker 7: heads back outside toward the park.
Speaker 10: What she calls somebody named Abraham, her friend. What does
Speaker 10: she tell Abraham she's gonna do with the knife? And
Speaker 10: what does he tell her?
Speaker 7: Yes, she calls Abe as she's leaving the park, and
Speaker 7: she says, hey, can you come over to the park,
Speaker 7: and he's, you know, he's hurt himself and he can't
Speaker 7: ride his bicycle and he says, no, I can't. What
Speaker 7: is going on? Some kids are being mean to me
Speaker 7: at the park and she starts telling him what's happening,
Speaker 7: and he's, you know, basically like, look, they're stupid, and
Speaker 7: so they're kind of jib jabbing. Well, meanwhile, Heather's breaking in, Hey,
Speaker 7: I haven't heard from you. I'm sorry I didn't get
Speaker 7: a chance to call you. And then somewhere in the fray,
Speaker 7: she texts Heather back and she says, I hate to
Speaker 7: be the one getting called a bitch in a hope.
Speaker 7: So now she's texting Heather At the same time, she's
Speaker 7: talking to Abe on the phone, and Heather's like, baby, girl,
Speaker 7: they're just jealous. I keep telling you that over and over.
Speaker 7: You're so much prettier than those girls. Now, Cherokee's heard
Speaker 7: this one hundred times, like the rest of us used
Speaker 7: to when I was in junior high and our mothers
Speaker 7: would say, Oh, they're just jealous, you know. So she's like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 7: And I truly believe that at that point in her life,
Speaker 7: Cherokee was fed up. She had had it up to here. Now, bulletside,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry. You know, when we talk about bulletside, bullying
Speaker 7: is not the cause of suicide and these kids, but
Speaker 7: it is a component. So by then, this kid, this
Speaker 7: little girl, had had enough. And I feel like she
Speaker 7: was just slowly like caving in and just kind of wlavering.
Speaker 7: And so Abe is telling her, Cherokee, whatever you're thinking
Speaker 7: about doing, just leave it, Just leave them. They're not
Speaker 7: worth it. Meanwhile, her mom is texting her, they're not
Speaker 7: you know, you're prettier. They're jealous. She gets a knife
Speaker 7: from the kitchen and she tells Abe, I have a knife.
Speaker 7: Now he is freaking out, Oh my god, what is
Speaker 7: she going to do. He's thinking she's going to go
Speaker 7: back to them, and she's either going to wave it
Speaker 7: at them to scare them, or maybe even go up
Speaker 7: to them with that knife. But at the same time,
Speaker 7: that is not Cherokee. That is not her personality. She's
Speaker 7: not the tipe to go laving a knife at anyone,
Speaker 7: much less even pick up a knife. I mean, that
Speaker 7: is just so beyond her personality. So at the same time,
Speaker 7: maybe's going, Cherokee, don't do anything. That's crazy what you'd
Speaker 7: be doing. What are you going to do with that knife?
Speaker 7: In the back of his head, he's like, this is
Speaker 7: so surreal because I don't even see her picking up
Speaker 7: a knife, much less holding it in her jacket, much
Speaker 7: less leaving her house with it. So she just playing
Speaker 7: Is she telling me the truth? You know what is
Speaker 7: going on? And that's all happening within just a few
Speaker 7: blocks of her walking back to the park.
Speaker 10: Now you talk about eyewitnesses to what exactly goes on
Speaker 10: here when she has the knife to make it clear,
Speaker 10: because there was the media, you say, sensationalized this event.
Speaker 10: The coroner later called it a suicide. That was his ruling,
Speaker 10: but the family thought that bullying caused this suicide and
Speaker 10: called for serious charges. So what did the eyewitnesses actually
Speaker 10: see Cherokee do or have done to her, and what
Speaker 10: was the result.
Speaker 7: Eyewitness testimony varied, and we do know for sure that
Speaker 7: Cherokee stabbed herself. She yelled at the kids were still
Speaker 7: under the pavilion at the you know, at the uh
Speaker 7: chairs and talking, and she walked up and she yelled
Speaker 7: at him, and when they all turned around to look,
Speaker 7: she raised her hands over her head and then pushed
Speaker 7: herself in the stomach and fell down, and the kids
Speaker 7: ran over and Ali grabbed Turkey's jacket and tried to
Speaker 7: stop the bleeding. It was kind of chaotic because it
Speaker 7: was call nine one one. Well I don't have any
Speaker 7: minutes on my cell phone. Well, I can't get cell
Speaker 7: phone service. Somebody called their mother. Their mother wasn't answering.
Speaker 7: Then somebody said, uh, go get her mom. Well, Alec
Speaker 7: knew where Turkey lived because he, you know, they dated.
Speaker 7: So Alec and the other boy get on their bicycles
Speaker 7: and ride to her house. And then another you know
Speaker 7: somebody else tells the two little kids that are still there.
Speaker 7: You go home. When you forget anything, you saw here today.
Speaker 7: So they take off. Then somebody grabs Cherokee's phone and
Speaker 7: they die. You know, they scroll to find the first
Speaker 7: name on her phone list, which is an a. Of
Speaker 7: course they dialed that person. If this her mom, No,
Speaker 7: it's not her mom, it's her friend. What's going on?
Speaker 7: This girl's name is Angel. Well, she stabbed herself in
Speaker 7: the park. Angel says, you're talking from her mom's phone,
Speaker 7: called this number. Now they call Heather. Well, Heather thinks
Speaker 7: it's a cruel joke, right, So she texts Cherokee and
Speaker 7: she says, did you really stab yourself in the park,
Speaker 7: because she's thinking, God, you know, first they bully her
Speaker 7: at school. Now they're bullying her in the park. Now
Speaker 7: they're being ugly, you know, and this is this is
Speaker 7: Now they're being ugly to her parents. And it just
Speaker 7: went from chaos to crazy. You know. The knife was
Speaker 7: moved and then the knife was moved again. And when
Speaker 7: the officers arrived, you know, they separated the kids, and
Speaker 7: then Ali was on the side trying to hear the cops,
Speaker 7: and then they had to move her. The younger kids
Speaker 7: came back with parents and they said, okay, well here's
Speaker 7: what we saw. And everybody got taken to the police
Speaker 7: station and separated, and then parents had to be called.
Speaker 7: So it was just chaos on top of chaos, and
Speaker 7: you know their kids and they just they just experienced
Speaker 7: a very traumatic, horrific thing. And they also had a
Speaker 7: hand in it some way, somehow. And I'm not saying
Speaker 7: they're guilty of something, but they were there. One of
Speaker 7: the boys texted k and Katie, well, I'm sorry. Katie
Speaker 7: texted him and said, did you hear about Cherokee? And
Speaker 7: he says, I was there? What I was there? And
Speaker 7: the first thing he thinks of when Cherokee passes is,
Speaker 7: oh my god, I'm going to jail. Her parents hate me,
Speaker 7: and I'm going to jail. So you add a bunch
Speaker 7: of juveniles in the juvenile mindset to this horrific event,
Speaker 7: and that's what you've got.
Speaker 10: What was the media response, you talk about sensationalism rather
Speaker 10: than fact. How did they treat this story? How did
Speaker 10: they depict the crime or the event? Pardon me?
Speaker 7: Well, right away, it was a little girl stabbed herself
Speaker 7: in front of her bullies, and that wasn't true. A
Speaker 7: little girl stabbed herself because of her bullies. You know,
Speaker 7: she walked up to some kids who were being mean
Speaker 7: to her in the park and to get back at them,
Speaker 7: she she stabbed herself. You know, this bullying problem is
Speaker 7: a big issue. You know, when are when are we
Speaker 7: going to do something about it that that kind of reaction.
Speaker 7: As I said, you know, the bullying is not the cause,
Speaker 7: it is a component. But they ran with this whole
Speaker 7: bullying story right away. Yes, and you know those kids,
Speaker 7: three of those kids weren't being mean and was it bullying?
Speaker 7: You know, the police ruled it was a fight over
Speaker 7: a boy. So again, we look at all these different
Speaker 7: definitions of bullying, We look at what is and what
Speaker 7: isn't legally bullying. Leave it. And that's all you heard
Speaker 7: is she killed herself because she was bullied, and she
Speaker 7: stood in front of her bullies and did it. And
Speaker 7: it made it very dramatic, as if you know, these
Speaker 7: kids are taunting, taunting, taunting, so she pulls a knife
Speaker 7: out of her permose or what have you, and stabs
Speaker 7: herself in front of him, this little group who's just
Speaker 7: banded together to beating her.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's interesting too because Rita, Heather, Mike all find
Speaker 10: out the news, Like you say, at first Heather thinks
Speaker 10: it's a joke and her daughter's just being the drama
Speaker 10: queen again. And then they find out and they run
Speaker 10: to the park. It's a heartbreaking story that you have
Speaker 10: here about how they find out and then the reaction after
Speaker 10: thinking somebody should be charged, somebody has to blame. And meanwhile,
Speaker 10: the life that she was raised in, the grandparents, that
Speaker 10: two generations of abuse, neglect, and self interest, and the
Speaker 10: effects of all those things rendered her life, like she said, worthless,
Speaker 10: and she suffered so much, this kid and wanted so little,
Speaker 10: and it seemed like by the time she got the treatment,
Speaker 10: it really couldn't have much of an effect. It just
Speaker 10: as so many things that she had endured. And again,
Speaker 10: I don't know what your opinion is, but it seemed
Speaker 10: like and in you write that, it seemed like despite
Speaker 10: the medication and the melatonin and the vitamins, that still
Speaker 10: doctors really don't have answers to complex behavioral problems like this,
Speaker 10: do they.
Speaker 7: Now? And you know, when it comes to a crime,
Speaker 7: and when it comes to the tragic event like this,
Speaker 7: everybody wants an answer. We want to know who to blame,
Speaker 7: We want to know what to blame because it makes
Speaker 7: us feel better, you know. We want to blame something someone,
Speaker 7: and I think that was a lot of their reaction,
Speaker 7: as we need to arrest these kids, we need to
Speaker 7: stop bullying. Let's make a law that says bullis to
Speaker 7: be arrested. Let's, you know, draft in the legislation something
Speaker 7: that stops bullying. It's the school's fault, it's the parent's fault,
Speaker 7: it's the you know, people who invent school desk's fault.
Speaker 7: I mean, we always want to blame someone or something
Speaker 7: when really, and this is what I learned myself in
Speaker 7: writing this book. It's so many things. It's a perfect
Speaker 7: storm of things, and bullying is really universal. You can
Speaker 7: say the healthcare system believes us, you know, because here's Cherokee.
Speaker 7: She's doing really well in this in this mental health facility,
Speaker 7: but now she has to leave because it's so expensive
Speaker 7: and the family can't afford it. You know, we can
Speaker 7: blame the education system. Well, it's the school's fault because
Speaker 7: they need to. Okay, we're talking about an underfunded, overworked
Speaker 7: system that's barely eching along. And I taught high school
Speaker 7: for six months. We did good to have supplies, We
Speaker 7: did good to have you know, the right textbooks. I
Speaker 7: spend a lot of my money I made on stuff
Speaker 7: for my students. We're not okay, well we'll have a
Speaker 7: new programs. Okay, look, we can't even afford the programs
Speaker 7: we have. Yeah, you know, well the teacher should. Okay,
Speaker 7: why don't I add that to the curriculum. I al
Speaker 7: that they don't have time to teach. You know, families
Speaker 7: bully one another in the workplace, people bully one another,
Speaker 7: you know. Okay, So who are we going to blame?
Speaker 7: And it's not just when we talk about bullies. It's
Speaker 7: not just the big kid in the schoolyard picking on
Speaker 7: the weak kid. It's one big universal and you know
Speaker 7: in the school. You know, well, I was bullied when
Speaker 7: I was a kid, and I did fine. I didn't
Speaker 7: shoot at the school and I didn't kill myself. Okay,
Speaker 7: some kids, for whatever reason, can get through it. Some
Speaker 7: kids cannot. And there's no one reason why a kid
Speaker 7: shoots at a school. It's no one reason why a
Speaker 7: kid commits suicide. It's never that simple. But we want
Speaker 7: one answer, We want one thing to blame. It makes
Speaker 7: us feel better.
Speaker 10: I think the thing is too We assume that despite
Speaker 10: well with programs and medication that this girl could recover
Speaker 10: from being raped by a stepfather, by her sister's father,
Speaker 10: and then she could have as we find out later
Speaker 10: in your book, that this eighteen year old again he
Speaker 10: didn't know she was thirteen, but he's sexting her. He's
Speaker 10: sending her images of his genital So he was later
Speaker 10: charged and put on probation. So it's a sad, sad story.
Speaker 10: Again we want to attribute blame, but the lifestyle that
Speaker 10: she was born into, that background that she inherited, like
Speaker 10: you say, led to this very very complex behavior that
Speaker 10: she had. But she really did commit suicide. And despite
Speaker 10: the media's portrayal as this is bully to Death, you
Speaker 10: went and found out the truth behind this story. I
Speaker 10: want to thank you very much, Judith for coming on
Speaker 10: and talking about Bullied to Death, a story of bullying,
Speaker 10: social media and the suicide of Cherokee Harriman. It's been
Speaker 10: a real pleasure, Judith. For those that might want to
Speaker 10: contact you or look at a Facebook page for this book,
Speaker 10: how could they do that?
Speaker 7: Tell us I am on truecrimebook dot net or Judithayates
Speaker 7: dot com. And I did want to mention that a
Speaker 7: percentage of book proceeds is going to be donated to
Speaker 7: a national organization that will help children like Cherokee.
Speaker 10: Oh that's great, that's really good.
Speaker 7: I want someone to learn something and move forward with this.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, it's a fascinating book, and I want to thank
Speaker 10: you very much for coming on and talking about it.
Speaker 10: I hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you,
Speaker 10: Judith Yates. Good night, good night,