Women Behind Bars - Season 1, Episode 11 - Leslie and Deana - Full Episode | Forensic Files

on this episode of women behind bars one woman is convicted of fatally shooting her four-year-old twin sons
there is no justice there's nothing that's going to bring my little boys back and i asked her what happened and she
said i shot my kids then dina fairchild tells her story she allegedly set a fire that killed her
boyfriend and his parents i could hear him screaming i mean it was almost an inhuman sound
no i would not have set the fire i would have done my best to stop it two women two brutal crimes these are
the stories of leslie dominic and dina fairchild [Music] [Music] on march 17 2001 antonio ortiz made a
gruesome discovery when he visited his girlfriend leslie dominic at her father's home in potty
vidra beach florida ortiz told the operator that leslie's four-year-old twin boys jamie and johnny
deminik were shot in the head there was a lot of blood on the floor and on the bed
it was more of an execution-style murder when authorities arrived at the scene they found the young boy's mother leslie
dominic unconscious on the bed next to her fatally wounded children with a 357 magnum beside her
the evidence showed that the children did not fit into her lifestyle police charged 31 year old leslie
dominic with murdering her young sons leslie was chemically clinically depressed
she said i don't know why i did it was leslie dominic temporarily insane or was this a cold-blooded murder to get rid of
her children in 1969 leslie dominic the eldest of three daughters was born in charlottesville virginia to john and
catherine ewing we moved to maryland shortly after i was born and i grew up in maryland we had a
pretty normal family relationship leslie was always very intelligent even in the first grade very kind to
others loved animals she was uh she had her it was into brownies and girl scouts and
lived a very normal you know child's life i think she was raised in a very nurturing
environment her mother and father were very caring she was a very bright young lady iq was about 117.
when she was 12 years old leslie's parents got divorced while she continued to have a good
relationship with her mom and sisters leslie ended up living with her dad because she was enrolled in a school
close to his home like many teens during their high school years leslie experimented with recreational
drugs started smoking marijuana and that sort of grew into lsd and we used that off and on and
experimented with cocaine i think once or twice [Music] she was very popular she liked to party
yes she did and uh so we had to keep an eye on her but uh we kept an eye on all three girls so
yes after graduating high school leslie studied art in french in belgium for six months
i had good teachers it was a good experience but when i moved back to the united
states i decided that art was really not where i was headed according to court records leslie told a
psychiatrist that when she returned to the united states she attended loyola college in baltimore
maryland but she dropped out after a year those records also say leslie admitted
to having several relationships with men while continuing to abuse alcohol and drugs
she made some bad choices instead of pursuing a very [Music] very good career that she had an
opportunity to pursue she chose to engage in drugs and alcohol abuse at age 25 leslie moved from maryland to
the wealthy area of ponte vedra beach florida where both her mom and dad had relocated
in march of 1996 leslie met a 22 year old naval officer named tommy demenek while she and friends were playing pool
at a local bar he seemed like a good person and he had nice manners so you know i was interested in him the
couple dated for a few months before he was deployed he had to go away for a six-month cruise
in the persian gulf and i thought that i might be pregnant so i told him before he left
well i think i might be pregnant leslie confirmed the news and called tommy while he was in the gulf
he was happy about it i was happy about it in december 1996 when tommy returned home
they got married we didn't have a wedding we just went to the courthouse two months later leslie gave birth to
twin boys johnny and jamie it was wonderful they were beautiful and healthy she was the perfect mother everybody in
the family was impressed with a good mother she was her whole life revolved around
taking good care of these little boys in addition to caring for the boys leslie took online classes at a florida
community college where she was awarded student of the year in 1998 for her straight a average
but while she succeeded as a mother and a student her marriage was failing leslie says she was left alone for
months at a time to raise the twins while tommy was at sea with his job in the navy
he tried his best and he was a good father and he did everything he knew how to try to make things right
when he came back everybody had to readjust he had a hard time adjusting to the boys
and he had a hard time adjusting to it as a family unit according to leslie the couple fought
often and she says tommy's long absences put an additional strain on their relationship
i said to him several times you know i need you to be here i need to communicate with you and you know
you're not communicating with me and please let's do something about this in december 1999 while tommy was away at
sea leslie sent him an email saying she wanted a divorce nine months later she met antonio ortiz
a local sports photographer we immediately started a relationship as soon as we met
we fell in love and we were together every day since the day we met pretty much he was
always very affectionate and he loved the boys the boys loved him and it was a good relationship but as
leslie's divorce was about to become final she says she became depressed tommy and leslie were
very civil with each other everything was great he just wanted the boys as well i'm
having trouble sleeping feeling depressed and anxious i said let me go see my primary care
physician leslie said a nurse practitioner at a local health clinic gave her trial
samples of the antidepressant zoloft and the anti-anxiety drug xanax my lips were stolen and my face was kind of
swollen up and i started noticing that i had hives leslie claims that when she called her
doctor's office the nurse practitioner told her to continue taking the drugs after two weeks she began to hallucinate
lose her memory and began drinking heavily i found her one afternoon just laid out
in her bed and her eyes were rolling back and it looked like she was having a seizure
that's when she told me that she had first pulled out the gun and was thinking of killing herself when
women behind bars continues in march 2001 31 year old leslie dominic was taking medication for depression
and undergoing a difficult divorce from her husband tommy at the heart of the breakup was a
custody battle over their four-year-old twin sons jamie and johnny for financial and
emotional support leslie had moved in with her father and future stepmother in their townhouse in
ponte vedra beach florida i saw her as the most loving mother i had experienced with twin boys
patient and creative at the time leslie moved into the townhouse with her dad she had a gun her father gave her for
protection when i moved in with my father i had given him the gun so we put it in
the closet you know tucked it away up on the top shelf you know we were concerned about
you know the boy's safety leslie's divorce was settled on march 13 2001. she was awarded custody of the
twins her husband tommy was allowed visitation but despite the favorable divorce
outcome leslie says she was still depressed and suffering debilitating side effects from
her antidepressant including hallucinations memory loss and increased alcohol use
before i started the zoloft i was just a very on and off drinker you know a couple of beers on the weekend with
everybody when i started taking this olaf i had this like basically uncontrollable urge to drink
[Music] leslie says she also began to have thoughts about killing herself one afternoon the first week of march
2001 she nearly acted on it i had gone into the closet and got the gun i was going to shoot myself
and um i was standing in the closet holding the gun when i realized what i was going to do
it was after this event that leslie confided her suicidal tendencies to antonio i told her okay we're having some
problems because medication is obviously having a negative effect on you and you know you have to go to a doctor
according to court documents the following day leslie says when she called her doctor
she found out he was booked for three weeks so she saw the nurse practitioner that originally gave her the zoloft
she claims he immediately switched her medication to another antidepressant paxil i said well you know aren't you
supposed to wean off of them wean off and then wean on or something and and he said no just stop taking the
zoloft and start taking the pax look and she also told them that she had suicidal thoughts
and i think that somebody should have asked what they could do to help her you just can't let a patient walk out
with two young children and just you just can't do that but court documents state that the nurse
practitioner said leslie did not mention any suicidal thoughts to him for three days leslie took paxil and the
anti-anxiety medication xanax combined with alcohol on the night of march 16 2001 she and her boyfriend antonio got
into an argument when he asked her if she was sure she was taking the correct dosage of her medication
she hit me she just like whacked me right across the face and it was just like whoa i started noticing she was
getting physical i was like whoa this is totally out of character according to court records in the
afternoon of march 17 2001 jamie and johnny deminik were watching cartoons in their mother's bedroom
earlier in the day leslie had called antonio to set up a date that night to talk
about 3 48 pm she called her ex-husband tommy and asked if he could babysit the twins
but he said he was busy at 402 she called antonio to say tommy couldn't watch the boys
when she hung up she did the unthinkable she left the room walked through her father's bedroom
into a closet and high on a shelf in the closet was an unloaded revolver it was a 357
magnum took ammunition and loaded all of the cylinder holes so it had six shots in it she walked out
of the closet back into the children's room the children are still watching scooby
she then walked up to the first one james she put the gun against his forehead she did pull the trigger and
his his his skull exploded the second child went into a panic and that little boy tried to run away
and she shot at him one time missed him he's on his way out the door she shoots him and grazes his skull
then she pins him down and puts the gun to the side of his head and kills him she called me and just immediately said
i just shot the boys in the head like what did you say i kind of lost touch with her i guess she had passed
out by then [Music] antonio immediately drove to leslie's father's home where she had been living
with her sons i pull up into the house and as soon as i open the door i smell gunpowder and i immediately knew
leslie was laying on the bed the gun was beside her one of the boys was on the bed the other
one was on the floor and i can tell both of them weren't moving and i immediately called 911
[Applause] when i first arrived i seen uh anthony ortiz standing out in front of the residence
he's screaming they've been shot they're upstairs they've been shot detective burris ran upstairs to the
bedroom where leslie was with her deceased twin sons she was lying in bed next to james
she had the covers over the top half of her body pulled up to about where her neck was
she wasn't saying anything her eyes were closed i did notice a large amount of blood
covering her face wasn't crying or nothing i asked her ma'am can you hear me at that time miss dominic opened her
eyes looked around the room and looked at me and i asked her what happened and she
said i shot my kids i don't remember any of that day i remember i can tell you the bits and
pieces that i do remember but there's not a lot that i remember i don't remember the day before
and i didn't remember the day before that when they said the boys had been shot by their mother
it was a nightmare when i first came on the scene i found out what happened i knew right off right then i knew
why it happened it could not have happened if it hadn't been for something else and
we know what that was it was the antidepressants the paxil and zola leslie was taken by ambulance to a
nearby hospital accompanied by two police detectives during the trip they recorded their
conversation with leslie who was in shock over what she had done what do you think's wrong with you
you know at the hospital sergeant jay lawing interviewed leslie we were taking samples of the blood off
of her face and she started crying and kind of said oh my god i've killed my babies
she never could give me a reason why leslie confessed several times to killing her children but told
investigators that she didn't have control over her actions and really wanted to kill herself
instead [Music] i'd seen a drop of blood or something on my leg or a bone fragment or something
it was at that point that i realized that what had happened was real once we got the blood test back we knew
that she was under the influence of alcohol and then once i started talking to her
she told me she had taken some xanax and some paxils so we knew that was in her system her blood
level at the time it was tested was 324.324 that's four times the driving while drunk level of blood investigators
confiscated 11 empty beer cans an empty bottle of bourbon paxil zoloft and xanax from the crime scene
that night leslie was charged with two counts of murder and taken to the local jail
when women behind bars continues it's difficult to convince a jury that in one's entire lifetime
they've only been temporarily insane for three minutes and those happen to be the three minutes
that they committed the homicide and later in this episode of women behind bars deena fairchild is accused
of arson and the murder of three i caught fire while i was standing at the back door the whole side of my head
was on fire the front of my legs were on fire the night of march 17 2001 31 year old
leslie dominic was booked in the saint johns county jail in saint augustine florida
she was charged with shooting to death her four-year-old twin boys shortly after i was in the jail a couple
weeks a month maybe i had a dream meeting the boys were walking down the street and they went
running ahead of me and they turned into stores in the nearly five years leslie was in
jail while awaiting trial she met with dr ernest miller a psychiatrist for the defense
after 70 hours of evaluation he concluded that she was insane at the time of the murders
and that she believed she was taking her children to a better place [Music] she saw the world as a hell in which
they were living and she and her distorted mind and thinking projected onto the children that they
were having the same problems it's not logical to argue that she was trying to send the children to a better
place when in fact she felt that she was going to burn in hell for the for the evil thing that she had
done to the children on january 3rd 2006 leslie dominic went to trial her lawyers argued that she had killed
her children in a moment of insanity caused by drinking alcohol while taking a combination of antidepressants and
xanax [Music] lay persons believe that a mother who kills her two four-year-old sons
this way has to be crazy but that's a different standard than the legal standard of insanity
the prosecution argued that florida's standard for insanity requires that a person must not know what they are doing
or not know that it is wrong to support his theory that leslie knew what she was doing the prosecution
showed the jury a timeline of phone calls leslie made before and after the murders
[Music] all the things she did the things she said were all very normal we know that at 4
16 that afternoon after she'd killed them she picked up her telephone call and she dialed antonio
and she said antonio i've killed the children she knew what she was doing and had done but dr miller believes that
leslie's calls before and after the murders were not relevant to the question of whether or not she
was sane at the time of the killings people do it all the time they drink they become intoxicated on drugs and or
alcohol street drugs or alcohol and they have periods of lucidity they have periods of detachment from reality
sergeant jay lawing who interviewed leslie after the crime said the motive was anger
she killed him because she was upset upset lawing says because leslie could not go out with her boyfriend the night
of the murders because she said her ex-husband tommy could not take care of the twins
i loved my children more than anything [Music] that despite what is being said about me doing this to get back at my
husband that's not true the prosecution argued that leslie killed her boys to be free
to return to her single lifestyle she wanted to return to her pre-marriage lifestyle of drugs
and multiple male friends and she couldn't fit the children into that that's total nonsense
they were clutching at straws they were looking for any way they could find to malign her character
at the heart of the trial was the international debate about the possible dangers of antidepressants
also known as ssris dr barbara kerwin a psychologist for the prosecution testified that after evaluating leslie
she found her to be a woman in control who was sane when she committed the murders
barbara kirwan said basically that she was self-absorbed narcissistic and that ssris have nothing to do with
making people homicidal or suicidal for that matter the most emotional testimony came from
the victim's father tommy dominic he just told a straightforward story about what his
children meant to him and everybody in the courthouse teared up for that one i think it was a
stream of consciousness that that pervaded throughout the trial that leslie dimling knew what she was
doing that night she was in charge and she knew what she was doing and she knew that it was wrong
and i think that all of the witnesses provided some evidence of that each one provided a piece in
this puzzle that that painted the picture of leslie dominic and what she did it's difficult to convince a jury that
in one's entire lifetime they've only been temporarily insane for three minutes and those happen to be
the three minutes that they committed the homicide i think the verdict was a foregone
conclusion and the only real sentence variable was whether she would get consecutive or concurrent
and judge alexander gave her consecutive just to ensure that she would not get out of prison she was a victim of
the pharmaceutical companies in the legal system now the time goes by that if i close my eyes i can see him here
[Music] there is no justice there's nothing that's going to bring my little boys
back leslie demenek is now serving two consecutive life sentences at a maximum security prison in florida
she is currently not taking any medication or receiving therapy i can't just think about my children you
know how beautiful they were and sweet and loving you know i have to i can't think of them
just in just in the way of what they thinks of their children because when i think of them i always think
[Music] that they're dead and that they're dead because of me next up on this episode of women behind
bars a woman is blamed for arson and the murder of three i started dozing off and the next thing
i know the house blew up for more information about women behind bars go to www.wetv.com
july 21 1996 joe martin and his elderly parents joe senior and tommy grace martin died
in a fire that swept through their small home i've had numerous arson investigations
and this one with the elderly couple inside is certainly right up there with the
worst of them a fire investigator suspected 41 year old deena fairchild after he saw blisters on her hands and
legs it would indicate that a liquid accelerant had splashed on onto her and had caught on fire
at some point she wasn't well mentally she was you know becoming unhooked unstable
did dina fairchild intentionally commit a triple homicide or was she an innocent
victim in the ordeal [Music] deena fairchild was one of four girls she was born at lackland air force base
in san antonio texas in 1955 where her father worked as a mechanic my dad was a really good looking guy and
a lot of women like my dad and my dad liked women when her father left the air force he
moved the family to milwaukee wisconsin and became a truck driver he was on the road a lot while dina's
mom watched the kids i worship my daddy when my daddy was gone on the truck my mommy used to let
me sleep on the couch to watch for him okay a memory from dina's childhood which
foreshadows the future comes from dina's sister marsha who claims that when dina was seven
years old she set her mother's house code in flames and dina's father charles said that when
dina was a child she torched their curtains there were other comments made indicating that
she was fixated by fire [Music] but dina denies any memory of these incidents involving fire from her
childhood when she was 10 her world was shattered when her parents divorced and dena went
to live with her mother my mama had a real bad nervous breakdown when um she broke up with my father
she was never the same after that two years after the divorce her mother olivia remarried her second
husband had four other children we all got along really great it was me and my stepfather
didn't get along dina says her stepfather never made her feel like she belonged in his family
i took a lot of beatings off that man whether or not she was actually abused dina was so desperate to get away from
her family that at age 13 she ran away from home to live with relatives in milwaukee
when that didn't work out at age 14 she began living on the streets and hanging out with the wrong crowd
you know i was trying to be this hard tough person that could handle anything deal with anything
and i was trying to make it on my own but i ran with some friends and some bad things that happened to me
dina claimed she was raped by two men at two different times but she did not report them
during one of those rapes she says she became pregnant soon after she was picked up with
friends by police who were patrolling the streets of milwaukee for runaways from the back seat of the cop car dina
attacked one of the police officers a foolish act that would change the course of her life
i pulled a knife on him you know when i put it around his throat and i said okay
sweetheart pull over we're getting out here you know i thought i was being really cute when
he tried to take the knife from me we both got cut and that was why i went to the reform
school [Music] dina gave birth to a daughter while in custody but gave her up for adoption
after three years in reform school dina then moved to florida and during her 20s
and 30s she had several boyfriends and three more children out of wedlock i don't talk about my children because i
gave them up and i don't like to bring them into anything i don't believe in abortion
dina did raise one of those children on her own a son she named matthew born in 1986. i loved him to death
people used to tease me about him being connected to me at the hip matthew was the apple of his mother's
eye she was proud of his high iq it was in the gifted range so it was around 1 30.
he was just very smart even as a young child he was in tune with his mother's struggles
she felt worthless she felt useless she seemed to insinuate that life wasn't worth
living and seemed to have some very suicidal tendencies but matthew says that while he loved his
mother as a child he remembers her unpredictable rage when she was drinking she'd have bursts
of anger and she'd blame everyone else and then she would have sudden often times
violent mood swings where she would turn and go in introspective and blame everything
on herself matthew remembers he and his mother moving around florida a lot until he was
nine to pay the bills dina worked low-paying jobs as a cashier my mother often worked long long shifts
or would work multiple jobs and therefore i was home alone or out of babysitters a
lot of the time dina dated several men throughout matthew's childhood i get along good
with truck drivers and construction workers are my box of chocolates okay one of those
truck drivers was joe martin whom she met while she was a cashier at a truck stop in saint augustine
he would come in and he would stand at the end of the counter and talk to me and
his cb handle was running late because he was always late i used to tease him about the reason he
was late was because he stood around flirted with girls all the time at the truck stop
i remember meeting him and um you know liking him at least some level he certainly seems better than people my
mother had dealt with in the past we started dating and him and my son hit it off right off the
bat joe lived with his mother tommy grace and his father joe martin senior on a small farm in saint augustine
they had animals they had chickens and cows and pigs and ducks and dogs and everything
dina said her son would visit the farm on the weekends while she worked for my son it was like a gift from
heaven he had a man and he had a grand grandparent walter and marilyn schweinfurths knew
the elder martins for more than 20 years they were real nice people and they liked to party
in the moose lodge and we got along real good but the martin's peaceful life was
about to change as their son's relationship with deena fairchild heated up joe and i got married in 94.
and i wanted to marry him on july 4th because he was fireworks okay but the marriage was
never made official there were never any documents filed with the court no marriage certificate
was ever filed dina and her son moved in with joe and his parents there was friction between
the two mothers dina and tommy right from the start tommy wouldn't let her in the house
tommy hated her my mother and his mother would have disagreements and because of
that joe's relationship became strained between his parents and my mother they did both
have tempers there was numerous altercations between the two usually involved some type of alcohol
apparently he and dino drank quite a bit and fought a lot police say the couple fought so loudly
officers were often called to investigate the neighbors had called the sheriff's office on
numerous occasions and we responded out here and dealt with the issues in july of
1994 police filed a report of domestic violence but neither dina nor joe pressed charges against each other i
know little joe had been trying to get rid of her get her to leave she wouldn't go home
there were times where she seemed to depend on him and there were times where she hated him
police say that on july 21 1996 joe and dina were drinking all day they had gone with matthew to run an errand
to buy hay for joe's farm animals we'd gone that day and picked up some hay and i remember we started to unload it
and we decided to stop for a while while we ate dinner that evening nine-year-old matthew
was watching tv in the barn behind the house where he slept he says his mother and joe had been
drinking when they had a violent argument she left the house and stayed with her
son in the barn while joe and his parents were sleeping matthew and dina watched the movie
she-devil starring roseanne barr the premise of the movie was that she was tired of her old life
and that she had gotten sick and fed up with everything so she decided to torture house and move on and have a new
life i started dozing off and that was what was on tv when i fell asleep and the next thing i know the house blew
up i heard the explosion and i ran for the house matthew says what he remembers most
about the fire is joe martin jr screams inside the house i remember we went back out towards the
barn and um i could hear him screaming it seemed to carry on forever i mean it was almost an inhuman sound
when i got to the neighbors um i told her house was on fire and i told her to call i told her to call 911
by the time firefighters arrived at the scene the blaze fully engulfed the house
as i entered the front of the house i observed three bodies and it was determined at the end of my
investigation that this was an incendiary fire an intentionally set fire using an
accelerant when women behind bars continues the back of my hand got burned real bad
the whole side of my head was on fire [Music] in july 1996 the florida state fire
marshal's office determined the fatal house fire that took three lives was the act of an arsonist
deena fairchild's boyfriend joe martin jr and his elderly parents died in the blaze dina and her
nine-year-old son matthew lived with them but each said they were in the barn when
the blaze broke out sergeant robert gober worked on the investigation based on where the bodies were recovered
i did a crime scene sketch of the residence including measurements from where their bedrooms worked where their bodies
were found and where the front entry was the sketch determined the three martins were just a
few feet from escaping the fire out the front door before they collapsed the autopsy showed that all three
victims died from smoke inhalation investigators discovered the fire was started by gasoline
there was a definite pattern on the floor where the accelerant had been poured i had talked with dina fairchild
at some point during the investigation there were some unusual markings on her hands and
legs that appeared to be blistering but this time i'm beginning to think that there may be
some some more involvement that she's indicating oh i caught fire while i was standing at
the back door i had my hand up in front of my face my the back of my hand got burned real
bad the whole side of my head was on fire my um the front of my legs were on fire
but investigators were suspicious of dina's explanation it actually appeared that that she had
splashed a uh an accelerant onto herself which at some point in time did actually catch on fire they became more
skeptical when a police detective interviewed her nine-year-old son matthew he had been coached by his mother to to
come up with a story and he followed that in the beginning and then he i believe he broke down what did mommy
tell you about going to jail [Music] she said she told me not to tell anyone anyone what
what happened because um she'd go to jail for a long time is she talking about what happened with the
fire yes okay he was a matter of fact about the things that he heard and some of the things that he heard i'm
sure we'll stick with him for the rest of his life both joe and his parents were sleeping
it was late at night she at some point decided to take a can of gasoline that we kept for
lawn mowers started pouring it through and around the house she soaked a pile of laundry that was
close to joe's bedroom presumably to target him specifically and she couldn't get it lit so she asked
me to help her so i went and i got a bit of hate and she couldn't light that either
okay and what happened with the fire well she told me she sent me on out to the carport
and she enchanted told me to go get a twig okay and i went over to um about hay and i'm from the toy and she told me to
put a gasoline on it from the tank the nine-year-old even drew a picture of the kerosene can he used to soak the
twig in she used the kerosene and soaking it with the uh hay she was able to get it lit and was
able to get the house lit from there i mean the place you know almost instantly turned into an inferno
i don't like my son being called a liar but yeah that if it's straight out yeah it was lying no i
would not have set the fire i would have done my best to stop it if you're gonna try to
uh look at logic when it comes to criminals you know you'll never find it dina fairchild was charged with arson
and three counts of murder her son was not charged for his part in the fire he was sent to live with his
cousins in idaho prosecutor robin strickler said dina's motive was simple she was angry she and joe martin had had
a fight that night she didn't get along with joe martin's mother so to me it was it was really a
matter of just anger a year later after the fire matthew fairchild returned to saint augustine
for his mother's trial the prosecution was seeking the death penalty and matthew was their star
witness he didn't look at it when he testified and the only time that he did i think
was when they asked him if she was in the courtroom and he pointed to her the ten-year-old boy reiterated the same
story he told investigators when he was interviewed including how his mother used a pink
lighter to ignite the flames i knew very well that what i was saying was probably going to be one of the key
stones to put my mother in prison or you know even possibly given the death sentence
it was crucial testimony i just remember him being an exceptional witness and very good on the stand as a little
kid after the testimony from fewer than a dozen witnesses the prosecution rested
its case and the trial was in recess so we had a break we came back up the defense attorney came to me and said
that she's going to take the stand and say that matthew is the one who committed the crime
all she said was that her son had tried to do this she didn't offer an explanation
as to why he would do it i couldn't believe that i had actually took the stand and said that
but i was so scared that i was going to go to the chair i remember reading an article on the
saint augustine record after the trial was over that the jury had given mercy not mercy for miss
fairchild but mercy for matthew so that he didn't have to spend the rest of his life knowing that he put his
mother in the electric chair [Music] dina fairchild is now 53 she's serving time at a correctional institute in
south florida her son matthew lived with relatives in idaho until he was 15 and then returned to florida to live in
two different group homes he now lives on his own this year the 21 year old hopes to get his degree in
computer technology i don't drink i don't do drugs i've pretty much you know learned from my mother's
mistakes matthew says he only learned years after the trial that his mother blamed him for the fire in court
i felt betrayed at that point i began to hate her he no longer keeps in contact with his mother and still
lives with haunting questions he would like her to answer someday why did you claim that i was responsible
for what you did what drove you to that point and was there ever a point where you thought
to yourself maybe i should get some sort of help deena fairchild says she still loves her
son she has not seen him since the trial 12 years ago she still maintains her innocence and
has hoped she might someday be freed i've read stories where women women got cleared
and got out it could happen while i'm still alive you can turn things around you know you
can have a light

Brief Summary

Leslie Dominic shot her twin sons; Deena Fairchild is accused of arson that killed her boyfriend and his parents.

Key points

Leslie Dominic's Tragic Story. Leslie Dominic was convicted of murdering her twin sons in a shocking act of violence.
The Role of Antidepressants. The trial raised questions about the influence of antidepressants on Leslie's actions.
Dina Fairchild's Tragic Story. Dina Fairchild is charged with arson and three counts of murder after a deadly fire.
Matthew's Heartbreaking Testimony. Matthew Fairchild testifies against his mother, revealing her role in the fire.
Dina's Denial and Hopes for Freedom. Dina maintains her innocence and dreams of being freed one day.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just shot the boys in the head.

Leslie's immediate admission to Antonio after the shooting.

13:40WatchJan 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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