Welcome back to status pending Scott Fuller and Heather Rights back with you for another case this week.

Heather, how are you?

I am good for the most part.

It's Christmas time and at our job we get to give children gifts, so that's nice.

Oh cool, Yeah, that's fun.

How's life for you?

It's good.

Yeah.

Christmas is definitely sneaking up on me.

It's the latest ever bought a Christmas tree and it's just last weekend.

So I dropped the ball on that one.

But it's only going to be up for three weeks, but we'll probably leave it up until Valentine's Days or something.

Wait, do you do a tree?

So we have?

We have in the past.

We did that this year.

I dropped the ball on that too.

Every Christmas before that in Minnesota, we would Black Friday.

My son and I became the tradition to go down pick a real tree, spend too much money on a you know, fancy, nice new one, put it up, and take it down and burn it.

But this year, so you can in the National Forest around here, you can get a permit for like ten bucks to go get your own tree, which is cool.

But we dropped the ball on that because now up there there's about four feet of snow on the ground.

So waited too long and just got a fake tree this year.

So to be fair, you guys spent Thanksgiving apart this year, right, Yes, so that's why let's just blame it on that.

For one year.

That works for me.

It was not my fault, not my lack of planning.

No, it's not.

It's fine.

We do a fake tree every year.

We did change it out a couple of years ago.

We got one that had like the snow on it already with the lights because I'm getting really lazy and I'm tired of having to put the lights on it every year.

So we did that.

But I did decorate it with national lampoons Christmas vacation again, and I've added more decorations.

I'll have to send you pictures of the outside and the inside of our house.

But my neighbor came up to us the other night and he was like, so, where'd your flags go?

And I was like, well, the wind was taking them away.

So at one point thirty in the morning, I went outside and brought them in and he said, oh, well, my wife had to tell me what it was.

But I just wanted to let you know this is a family neighborhood.

I said, well, let me get them real quick, let me put them back out.

Then went in the world.

He was being funny, but at the same time I was like, no, I'm going to put ass on everything now.

Yeah.

Wow, I did think about you this week because our office ordered a an artificial tree and it came and the office administrator opened the box and it was black.

It was just pitch, Oh you thought of me.

Wow, okay, black tree.

I was like, this is a herd tree.

You put Jack Skellington's stuff all over it and heavy.

I used to, I used to, I did do a Jack Scillington Christmas a few years.

But I want a black tree really bad.

So I'm glad you thought of me, if not.

For the reason you would rather have thought of you, apparently.

But sorry, blackheart.

But we're gonna try and do some good or at least raise attention to a case this week that has not been talked about for a long time.

This is an old one too.

This goes back to Minnesota in nineteen ninety and the terrible murder of del Trees Nicole Benson.

We have as a guest on the show.

Del Trees's foster parents, one of them in the two years leading up to her death.

Mary mckinna will be joining us this week on Status spending coming up next.

I think Mary, our first question is how did you come to know del Trees many many years ago?

Now?

Well, at the time, I was married to Scott and him and I were foster parents.

We had two little boys that were probably eight or nine at the times, and del Trees was sent to our house.

She had been in a treatment center in Iowa for some pretty intense trauma that she experienced, and so our house was a step between the treatment facility and her going back to home.

And we were supposed to kind of preper for what was to come to go back home.

And how old was she at that time?

Del Trees?

Was she about ten?

She was eleven when she came to She was twelve when she died, almost thirteen.

When you say come to us, you were her foster parents, we're along the timeline for your fostering was del Trees?

Was she one of your first or later kids?

We started fostering when my youngest son was like one or two, So we had been fostering for maybe six or seven years.

By the time she came to us, a kid would be the only one at our and then sometimes we had three kids at our house.

How was she in terms of her development under your care?

Did you see any changes over the couple of years that you were with her?

Well, sill Treuth did a hard time telling the truth and okay, do you want to think about that and then reach out that story.

So we're trying to teachers, like how to behave in school, and how to behave on the bus, and how to behave in church.

She loved being the center of attention.

She loved us dearly, and she called my sons, who were several years younger than her, she called them the little dweeds affectionately.

I'm sure so from the time you knew her at about eleven, obviously in February of nineteen ninety she was murdered on that day in February of nineteen ninety, or even if you think it's relevant, back us up a couple of days or a couple of weeks, or whatever you think provides the best context of of what happened to her.

Well.

Once sil Trees returned back to her mom.

That was in August of eighty nine.

The mom had not had deltries living with her for several years through to gil Trees being at this treatment center.

Every other weekend, she came back to our house to kind of keep the connection she had with us.

She'd stay with her mom for a week and a weekend.

We kind of co parented her for her about six months, and.

The idea was to transition her from your house to hopefully eventually her biological mom's care at some point.

How, when she was with us, she was in special education.

She had learning disability, so she struggled to read and she struggled with matt Her special ed teacher was just a saint and worked diligently with her and she really got some good grades.

She joined the basketball team, she joined us fall team, she was in the Girl's Scouts.

We kept her busy just you know, doing kids stuff.

Should have sleepovers, going trick or treating.

He was a treat for her because she doesn't remember doing that previously.

So we basically just let her be a kid.

Yeah, all the kids stuff that she didn't have the structure miss, Yeah, she didn't have the structure of support system.

Around her until that point to be able to be a kid.

The day of the murder, what do you recall from that day.

I know you weren't with her, but I know you spoke to her the day she died.

Yeah, she called us.

I want to say about five in the evening.

We lived on a lake prior Lake in Minnesota.

We had a telephone down by the water, and my kids were out on the lake playing hockey.

I walked down to the lake and back in most days, we didn't have cell phones.

So my boys got on the phone with her and we're talking on the beach phone with her.

They kind of were busy playing hockey and wanted to get back skating, so they said, can we follow you later, we're in the middle of a game.

You know, half the neighborhood was overplaying hockey.

So to this day, my sons are kicking themselves, going, why didn't we spend more time talking to her?

You know, you can't take that time back.

Selt got me back on the phone and she told me that there was some white substance, powdery substance on the coffee table in the house.

She didn't say the word cocaine, but she knew that it was some kind of substance that should not have been there.

I said, well, did you talk to her mom about it?

And she didn't want to get her mom in trouble because she didn't want to get taken away from her mom again.

So but she very freely volunteered the fact that it was on the coffee table and she said, I know that's not good.

A person had been in the house and was in a appropriate with a roommate that lived at the house, that was a female eighteen year old.

Our word for you know, good touch, bad touch, that kind of stuff was appropriate or inappropriate.

So she said, he's been inappropriate and I said did you tell anyone?

And she said, well, I'm telling you And I said, okay, I'll make sure to call the social worker.

No, and then she kind of backed off because she didn't want her mom to get investigated again.

She didn't want to get taken away again.

So our conversation just went on and on, talked more about illegal substances, and I said, how about I just come and get you because she was scared she was home alone.

She didn't exactly for sure know what she was seeing.

So I said, you know, it's not our weekend to have you, but I can come and get you if that make you feel better.

Well, my mom will get mad.

And I said, well, i'll call your mom and you know, we'll talk about it.

We'll get it figured out.

Don't worry about it.

Then I called the PoCA worker.

It was after hour, so I asked the on call social worker if she could put in a message to the social worker.

She said, well, I'll have her call you on Monday.

So she said, well, I'll take your name and number and have her call you on Monday.

And that was the end of trying to get intervention with social service.

Apparently, later in the evening, the police are saying they think Deltrees let someone in the house because all the doors were locked, all the windows were locked, and she would have had to unlock the door to let someone in, So the police speculate that it's someone she knew, you know, when that person knocked on the door, she opened the door and let the person in.

She had some real tight scars tied around her neck to strangle her her hands.

She was found nude laying on her bedroom floor, faced down.

Her hands were tied behind her back.

Ironically, when you go to donate blood or you go have a blood test, you know the rubber tubing that they put around you to get a vein to stick out at the doctor's office.

Her arms were tied behind her back with that tubing that a doctor's office would use.

It turns out that the person that is the suspect had a broken arm, had a capt on the arm and was holding that rubbert tubing around one part of his neck and had his cast being held up by this rubber tubing.

And many people attested to the fact, you know, weeks previous using that as a sling.

Back then, the NA tests weren't as sophisticated as they are today.

But they couldn't lift any DNA or fingerprints off of the rubber tub But it was just coincidental that this person had a broken arm and that's what he used for a splink.

The scarf that was used was that something that.

Was Yeah, there were several scarves I imagine they were taking either out of Jody's room or Daltrees's room, you know the kind of scarves that they put around your neck.

And Jody they had two scarves around her neck and they were like nodded really really tight to strangle her.

And Jody is the mother?

Correct?

Jody is the yeah?

Yes, Okay, So you mentioned that there is a suspect in this case, and it does seem through public comments that the police have made that they have narrowed in on a person who has some kind of an alibi that so far hasn't been disproven.

And you just mentioned there's no forensic link that they had to use too, but police have done kind of what they can to visit people around this person of interest and basically tell them, are you sure that's what happened?

Are you sure you're telling us the true story here?

And they've apparently gotten nowhere.

With that, correct, And they keep thinking the person that's supplying the alibi at some point will have a heart and decided to tell us the truth.

Since that, since that time, what interactions have you had with the police or walk us through kind of your interaction with is this Minneapolis Police?

Is that the jurisdiction?

Yes, it was Minneapolis Police Department.

She lived in a duplex in northeast Minneapolis.

If we backtrack for a second, the mom had gone out with some friends and she kept calling home to see if Deltrees was okay, and when she wasn't getting anyone answering the phone.

It was sort of like a grandma grandpa couple and they often looked after del Trees.

So the guy next door went over to their house knocked on the door real loud.

He heard the back door open although he was knocking on the front door.

I don't know exactly.

Maybe he had a key to get in, but he did go in and found del Trees on her bedroom floor the first thing he did because he said he thought she was still alive, so he untied the things off her next and tried CPR.

Admitted he had no idea how to do CPR, but his girlfriend called nine one one and the ambient showed up pretty quickly.

The back door was open and the back gate on the fence was open, So the theory is that the neighbor interrupted like the end of the crime.

To back up a little bit, these are Heather's questions that she sent over.

Why was Deltrees in a treatment facility?

Was that just behavior?

Were there other factors?

No, that was a whole nother drug related time.

The mom had been in kind of a for lack of any other term crack house where people would go and do their drugs.

Apparently there was a crowd of people in a house.

Del Trees was one of a few kids that were in the house being exposed to these drugs and someone came in and you can't make this stuff up.

It was like an act murder that I came in the house and someone must have owed him money for drugs or something, and he hit some guy with an axe and killed him.

So all the children were picked up by the police that evening, and it was so traumatic for del Trees to have witnessed a murder.

You know.

It took a while, but she ended up in a treatment facility for trauma.

So she actually witnessed the murder.

Yes, she did.

Wow, so did other children that weren't out.

What about Jody?

What about del Trees's mom?

Was she in treatment during this time?

During the time we had del Tries And when she was at the treatment center, the mom had gone through a recovery program, several relapses, went through parenting classes, and so the treatment center vouched for her in court.

She really did work hard to get Jill Tries.

Back, but it sounds like it fell.

Back into her drug use.

Again and but a lot of us know it's not an easy thing to do, but she made that a priority in her life her daughter for long enough to check the boxes and do what she had to do to start the process to get her back.

So there was an effort there.

Who else do you know was living at the duplex where she was found at the time where there you mentioned either del Trees let somebody in or perhaps this person at a key somehow, But was it just Jody living There were there others other.

Children There were Jody del Trees, and then Jody had a niece who was eighteen years of age.

She lived in the house.

The evening of the murder, she was hospitalized for some kind of health problem, but she knew nothing about what happened at home.

And how long had she been every other weekend back with her mom at that point six months or so?

Okay, she went back home in August and then every other weekend she'd come to our home.

You called the social services, that's the only the social the case worker.

I'm guessing when Delteresad called you, did you call the police at that time or was there?

I know didn't because the social workers kind of poo pooed me off.

How I found out about Del Teresa's murder, it's just ironic.

My sister and I were running in a land running event around Lake Harrius in Minneapolis when my sister had headphones on.

I did not have headphones on.

And my sister, of course, was Delteres's aunt because all my siblings just loved her, and my sister heard that there was a twelve year old girl in northeast Minneapolis named del Trees Benson murdered, and my sister fell under her knees and just started screaming.

I had no idea what she was talking about because I didn't have a headphones on, so I didn't hear it.

So she says, we got to go.

So we stopped in the middle of this run, got in our car and drove back to my sister's house, who didn't live too far from Lake Harriet, and her husband was there and he had the police on the phone.

The police wanted to talk to me right away, so they asked me, like, in the last time you talked to her.

So that's how I found out about it.

My sister heard it on the radio.

That's not a good way to hear about a death.

No, of someone you know obviously and have lived with and who's been in your care.

How long were we on the phone, you know, talk about this white substance that she described.

I mean they broke down what I told them, like minute by minute.

And Jody was out at this time.

Do you know where she was?

Well, she went to some friend's house and I hate to say, I imagine they were getting high.

She kind of took till like Tuesday.

She was killed on a Friday night.

On Tuesday, she called me and she was just then like realizing what happened.

This person that the police have looked at and consider their suspect in this case, this is a person that's known to Jody, right, yes, and so probably would have been known to del Trees.

That's what the police said.

Well, she would have opened the door if he was knocking on the door.

One of the things she told me during our conversation, she say, Mom, I'm in love.

And I said, oh my god, you're too young to be in love.

We're in love with come mom.

And so she told me this guy's name and apparently he went to her school.

He arrived at his home and he had blood on his jacket and blood I don't know, on his pants or something.

Well, instantly the police thought it was him.

He had a cat or a dog, I can't remember which.

That the blood like the animal had gotten hurt and this boy was holding this, you know, animal, in bringing it home.

Therefore he had blood all over him.

But it was not Delteresa's blood.

It was like the dog's blood.

Wow.

But he was put in jail and the news and everything said, oh, fifteen year old boy arrested for probable pause murder.

And it's like they released him about two days later.

Wow.

That's yeah, trying to help an animal, that's that's bad luck.

It's really unfortunate.

But yeah's welcome to the justice system.

The hard way there is trying to help an animal.

Yeah, get arrested.

I know that this is a hard question.

I know you've thought about this.

But the second guessing that you must have done over the years, because on the one hand, you were not supposed to have her that weekend.

Had you gone over to her house to take her for a day or a couple of days until her mom was able to take her back, that would have caused problems for you.

But obviously, knowing what we know now, I'm sure that's a regret that you've carried.

With you exactly.

I live with that guilt every day.

And it's an impossible situation, I think, because it's all hindsight.

If the social the caseworkers telling you this probably isn't a big deal.

And I'm sure they get situations like that all the time, calls like that all the time, so that kind of reassures you that, yeah, maybe I'm overreacting a little.

It'll be fine, certainly, never imagining what happened was going to happen.

Hours later, right Minnesota's court justice happened to be a family friend, and so this woman called me personally and she said, the legislators are having a bill introduced to open up foster care court cases so that the public can go in, foster parents can go in, and anyone can talk in court if this law goes through.

And she said, would you be willing to testify in front of this committee at the Capitol, And I said, tell me when I'll be there.

And that's the one thing I'm proud of that I got.

Like Minnesota's court laws changed.

Back in the day, it used to be confidential and family court was only for families, and the public didn't hear what went on or didn't go on, or who talked who didn't talk.

Now it's it's state law that they're open to the public.

Kind of stood out to me, and you're retelling of this that when Deltrees called you, she's probably calling partly to talk to you out a concern about her surroundings.

But it was interesting she also wanted to talk to your own children, Like first, that's the first thing she wanted to do is talk to them.

So they clearly had a bond with her as well.

Yes, yes, they were so affected by her death, you know, as their developmental age, you know, they didn't know how to process, like, what do you mean we're never going to see her again?

You know, they didn't get all that.

I started to ask you this, but your interactions with the Minneapolis Police Department.

I'm sure the case has changed hands investigators over the years, But what what kind of progress or reach out did you get or not get from them?

Since well, at first, the detective that was assigned to the case called me quite regularly basically to say, you know, we sit this sample of blood and we got nothing.

We have aliva here.

We sent to the lab.

It was inconclusive.

So like everything they tried was getting nowhere.

So on the anniversary of her death, I buy a plant and her favorite color was purple, so I put like purple ribbons or purple bull and something purple in the plant, and I went down to the homicide checked his office at city Hall in Minneapolis every year and I'd say, don't forget this case is still on salt, like I don't want you to forget about this case.

And they would assure me, you know, if anything comes up, we'll call, or if you know, we get any new evidence to a call.

And I just pictured her file going further and further and further back in a drawer, being forgotten about.

Once a year.

Would make sure to remind them that this is still unsolved.

Your oldest son does does he have a tattoo in memory of till Trees?

Yeah, he's got so many tattoos, I've lost count of them.

But he actually has the picture of del Trees had food along his side and partial on his back.

He's been in a couple near myths, our accidents, a few things that you know, a normal person could have been hurt badly and died.

He said, I think that she is my guardian angel because she's keeping me alive.

Wow, worst possible thing in the world happened to her.

But what do you think about your time with her?

Kind of in reflection, and do you ever wonder had things gone differently and where she's still with us?

You know, what she might have accomplished or what she wanted.

To do with her Oh the town I lived in, Prior Lake, Minnesota.

Her special ed teachers lived in Prior Lake.

Or girl Scout leader lived in Prior Lake.

Basketball and he news about del Trees's pace, and he knews about this, and he news about that.

So I wasn't the only one who missed her.

I ended up having to plan the funeral.

Me and Jody talk and I'm trying to like just be polite with her.

You know, some days I just want to scream, but I irustration.

I know she had problems, you know, I'm being more sympathetic to her.

The funeral home the night of her wake that in the afternoon, they said, well, we asked the mom to bring some clothes and she hasn't brought any clothes.

The funeral and wakes.

We're in Northeast Minneapolis, so I had to drive from Prior La to Northeast Minneapolis.

I grabbed clothes that were my clothes that would fit her so that they could put her in her coffin with clothes on.

What was the funeral, Like, how was it and what were your emotions and takeaways from that?

It was a roller coaster del Teresa's birth father was there.

It was in a chapel and the place attacked.

The social worker from my foster care agency and a bunch of her coworkers were there.

A lot of my friends from Prior Lake were there.

Some of her classmates from her special ed class were there.

Her girl Scout friends were there.

So it was just a mixture of inner city people and a country bumpings from prior life.

An interesting, interesting mix.

Yeah, you mentioned the person of interest of the suspect.

You said, this person was there at the funeral.

That's what the police surmise.

I personally didn't talk to him or see him or anything, but the police like sent people to the wake and observed like who was there, who wasn't there?

So the police have always thought a particular person did this, and they just can't break that alibi.

Yeah, that's been my impression of it reading the news coverage of it.

Not super rare, but usually police are more guarded and more open minded, at least public facing than this.

They've made investigators over the years of mate statements like we pretty much think we know who did it, but we can't prove it.

You know, we can't break that alibi.

If you had a chance to talk to this person, if that's the scenario, if that's what happened, if you have a chance to talk to this this person who's alibiing Delterese's potential killer, what would you tell them?

How would you try to appeal to their sense of morality?

I would appeal to their emulsion because this is just so devastating for so many people.

Whatever this person is saying for an alibi pales to how many people hurt because of this murder.

That you're protecting one person at the expense of so many others.

Right right, I don't know how you can sleep that.

Night, all right.

So that was our conversation with Mary McKenna, who's Delterese's foster mom, in the two years leading up to it.

For me, emotionally kind of mentally exhausting to listen to that story where no one really did anything necessarily overtly wrong except the killer, and look at how many lives it's impacted since then.

But I don't know what your impressions were.

I had a lot of thoughts and I haven't really said, like while recording on any of my podcasts, I kind of want my job entails right now.

But with the job that I have, I know a lot about this aspect of things now.

So it was really hard for me to sit there and like not talk also and not cry.

So yeah, it was a really hard story to hear, especially when she started talking about how she did what she should have done.

She did amazing.

She called them.

She called the after hours line.

We you know every state has that, every agency should have that.

So she did.

She took the right steps to report something that she felt was not right, and for her to feel like she was brushed off, like, oh, well, we'll leave a message with your social worker for Monday, blah blah blah.

I know this was a long time ago and things have changed, but that is like red flag number one for me, Like if somebody's calling in with a concern like that and they know it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter the job that I have now, I have been able to see the back end of that type of stuff.

It doesn't matter.

There are people on call for that.

There are after hours workers, as she mentioned, they still have those today.

There are people designated for after hours and weekends.

It doesn't matter if it's your social worker or not.

There is a social worker who will go out and do these visits.

They also can call and do welfare checks on your behalf, like you don't have to call the police to do that.

The agency will dedicate somebody to do a welfare check.

So I know things have changed since then, So maybe that wasn't an option back then, but it's really sad to see that it probably could have been avoided because had they sent somebody out that night, as I know some agencies around here do, she could have been saved.

Yeah, that's really start I was going to ask, is all right, so assume this went the way it's supposed to in modern times and make that phone call sounds like hours before the murder, and at the very minimum, some social workers out there to knock on the door and see that this is a bad situation if there's maybe drugs on the table and this girl's here by herself.

So what happens then in that.

Circumstance, Absolutely there's a few things that can happen.

So it just all depends on the severity of the call.

So when the intake is made, it depends on, Hey, what did this referral source give you, What kind of information did they say that there were drugs in the house.

If so, you know, maybe that social worker will bring a second social worker out, or sometimes they even just bring the police right away with that same visit, and they will go in and they will check the safety.

That's like the whole job of social workers is to evaluate and assess the safety of the child in the home.

If that child and she had mentioned that, you know, Delterrece had a learning disability, she wasn't developmentally at the appropriate age at that time.

So there are many factors at play here.

But in that situation and with no parent being there, and if they had already been involved, obviously they were already involved in you know, the agency, because there was a foster mom involved, they would have looked taken all of that into account, and that would have been an intake right then and there, and if mom or caregiver whoever it was, wasn't present, they would have taken her to the agency, they would have found placement, which Mary was already still heavily involved in Deltes's life, so they probably would have just taken her directly to Mary's house and then investigated it further with Mom and whoever else is in the house, which.

Is kind of what she was trying to do.

That's what Mary thinks are trying to accomplish, but she didn't.

Yeah, understandably, Mary didn't want to go abduct the child in this.

And in her position, she did the appropriate thing.

Like if I would have been in her position, I would have done the same thing, because you can get in trouble, like you would not want that on you, right, So, and at that time, she really didn't know that, you know, her safety was an issue.

She was concerned for her, yes, but she didn't know that she was in danger.

So she did exactly the steps that she should have done.

I don't think del Trees from the sounds of the call all these years later, knew that she was in danger either.

There was no no exactly.

Physical danger it was just right uncomfortable.

Yes enough to call Mary a comfortable adult, trusted presence, yes, but absolutely there's no one in the house.

There's no one knocking on the door.

There's no overt threat to her at that time.

And by the time there was what you just described hadn't happened, and so she was still in the house.

And I did want to kind of touch a little bit on how she mentioned that things have changed over the years.

I've seen that as well.

I mean when I was growing up, I had heard of cases and I was like, oh, that makes no sense.

I would never want to be a part of that because it was scary, right, CPS workers social workers are called baby snatchers, like there's a reputation about.

It certain communities.

Correct, Yes, but it has changed a lot over the years.

And I think what she was mentioning in the episode when we interviewed her about it is, you know, these different laws that have come into effect or legislations that have come into effect, and I think it has gone nationwide, honestly, which is great because the ultimate goal is the safety of the child.

You know, we want permanency with the family, with reunification with the bioparents or whoever the original caregivers were.

But we also have to maintain that safety of the child.

So I think that, you know, over the past two decades especially, things have changed so much that it's really, really, really I mean, I don't know, in my opinion, it's just a lot better now.

It's not all snatched the baby.

They never get them back like there is.

How she said, Jody put the work in, she got her kid back, great, but then her kids still died.

So there are a lot of checks and balances that still need to be had, and I think that over the years those have really ironed out and it's a lot safer when they do return.

Oh it's definitely safer than it was back at that time.

For sure.

I admire the fact that they did put her in treatment after everything that she had gone through.

They didn't just you know, yank her from her mom so to speak, and say, hey, you're not getting her back ever, this is what happened, this is what's going on.

They also put her in the necessary treatment, And that's why I had asked that question because I was confused as to why del Trees was also in treatment.

Sometimes you know, there are children who are substance exposed babies in your utero, so they need a certain type of medical treatment.

But as a ten year old or an eleven year old, when Mary started fostering her, I was a little bit confused until she mentioned what she had witnessed.

They're addicted as well somehow, which is probably pretty rare at that age.

Yeah, and that can happen absolutely, which can stem other issues like the learning development issues.

In this case, it was just witnessing an ax murderers, all correct, Yeah, just an axe murder, yeah, the way you say that.

But once she shared that, I just couldn't believe it, Like, yeah, I didn't know.

That either, And I went from you know, this is unfortunate because this person isn't surrounded by a support system too.

It's amazing how well she's doing in foster care.

Tel Trees after witnessing someone murdered with an axe.

There are plenty of people of all ages who would just fall apart mentally after that.

Tel Trees had made so many steps forward in her life, and this is really what the world is.

Gonna do to her, you know, right, like what a fucking curveball, right, Like she was she lived at the lives that seemed like before this, and she was finally to a point where she could thrive.

She was making friends, building relationships, had those support systems, and then everything was taken from her.

It's horrible.

Yeah, again, no phone number to call, there's no suspect to keep on the lookout for in this one.

More just presented in a you know, telling the story of who this one particular child murder victim was and also hopefully maybe to get you think about all the different aspects of this case, from the foster care system to just interacting with kids on a day to day basis, and even if you're not a parent or a foster parent, if you're a coach, a Girl Scout leader, a whoever it is, the impact that you're having on the kids I think was shown inversely with her loss.

All the people that she had impacted had been people that impacted her in her death.

And she was young and she'd only been you know, a normal kid quote unquote for a couple of years.

So nice reminder.

I think that the lives that we impact, especially when it comes to kids, just doing what you do every day and being whoever it is that you are in your community is pretty important, all right, Well, thank you all for listening.

We appreciate Mary for telling what is i'm sure a hard story to tell, something she lives with every day, but no less important for that reason.

And so with that we will be back with another case.