Women Behind Bars - Season 2, Episode 3 - Donna and Marion - Full Episode | Forensic Files

on this episode of women behind bars he had a butcher knife in there he grabbed that put it up to my throat
said he was going to cut my effing throat she had what appeared to be dry blood underneath her fingernails
and then when you remove the socks you could actually see blood in between her toes dried blood
then marian fake hasten tells her story she is convicted of murder in the death of her two-year-old daughter
the doctors immediately notified the police that this looks like a classic case of an abused child
i laid my head down and cried no she's not dead no she's not dead two women two brutal crimes
these are the stories of donna buchanan and marion fake hasten [Music] on october 7th 2000 a 9-1-1 call led
police to the home of 80-year-old charles cuveea where his lifeless body lay on the
bloodstained floor charlie got stabbed a total of 54 times both to the back into the chest as well as to the head
guvaya's 37 year old live-in girlfriend donna buchanan quickly became a suspect in the murder
he had been threatening to kill her for quite some time if i had the choice of being with him or going to prison for
the rest of my life i would choose prison that's just how bad it was investigators believed buchanan's drug
addiction was the catalyst for the fight between donna and charles the night he was killed
we believe that the argument escalated to the point where she took a knife and stabbed him multiple times so she
can get her drugs that she desired did donna buchanan fatally stab her boyfriend in a drug-induced rage or
was it self-defense i grew up in portsmouth until probably about eight years old
then my family and i we moved to cumberland virginia and they had bought a farm donna was four years younger than i was
and she was like the child that was always getting into something one of my best memories christmas and
going camping in the mountains every summer but donna says the good memory stopped at age
12 when her relationship with her father began to deteriorate about that age it seems like um men
started paying more attention to me older men the first one was 18 years old i was about 12 or 13.
after him the next one was 26 years old and i was probably 13. i ended up running away with him we've
gone i think two or three days and then he brought me back my dad had him arrested
because she was too young to be having sex [Music] and he was married that's when my
ammunosity started towards my father because there was no sex between us i was still a virgin
so there could be no statutory rape so i was very upset a depressed teen donna was sent for
counseling where she says a doctor gave her a prescription for sedatives at 13 years old she began her lifelong
habit of using drugs i think that was my way of also self-medicating myself smoking pot drinking i just really
didn't care donna would ditch classes and disappear for days at a time next thing i knew donna had run away she
went to school one day and never come home that caused a lot of distress in the family
we didn't know where she was then somehow she came back when donna was 14 she claims an incident
occurred that drove her away from her parents home for good and fueled her desire to do drugs my
brother-in-law picked me up from school took me back to richmond which is about close to 60 miles away from home
he ended up breaking me and that's how i lost my virginity was by his rape at first donna kept the
alleged rape a secret i blame myself i guess that's what most children do that when something like that happens
after that i remember thinking there was no sense to go back home i didn't know what my
father would think so my talk was you know just run away she just skipped school and eventually
just got out of the road and started hitchhiking hitchhiking to texas and back to
virginia she hitchhiked to florida that's where she stayed having nowhere else to turn after living
on the streets donna moved in with her sister in fort lauderdale and the husband who donna
claimed raped her two years before that didn't work well my sister was pregnant at the time there
was a lot of friction between me and her donna told her sister that her husband had raped her two years earlier
debbie didn't know what to believe to her you know every person that that came into
her family's life she thought that that person had raped her i honestly don't know if anything
happened with tommy or not but it was donna's wild ways that drove the sisters apart
i was doing a lot of drinking and doing drugs there was drugs found in my house and i
told her i don't want any of that around my family you know and you're just going to
have to move out so she moved out buchanan spent her late teens shuttling around fort lauderdale
living in shelters and on the beach her drug use escalated even further she survived on the street as many young
runaways do training their body for whatever they can get that helps them to survive
heroin other drugs donna has been arrested numerous times in the past for drugs she also has been arrested for
prostitution she's been arrested for heroin possession cocaine donna continued her drug habit
into her 20s while living with various boyfriends a lot of abusive relationships
a lot of beatings for men in 1991 donna's mother linda moved to florida and the two decided to rent a condo
together after my divorce and i moved there and i lived with her briefly their landlord was an elderly man named
charles gouveia who sparked a fast yet unlikely friendship with donna he would come over and check on things
they started coming over more mostly too when my mom wasn't there charles told donna about his
granddaughter tina mancini who committed suicide in 1986. charlie always wanted to talk about what
had happened with his granddaughter i reminded him of tina used to tell me the things tina liked to
do and would call me tina sometimes they became more than just friends donna and charles
and i didn't agree with it but there was nothing i could do about it in 1993 donna moved out of the apartment she
rented from charles and moved in with him in a fort lauderdale suburb she was 30
years old he was 73. there was a big age difference between charlie and me age difference really never meant
anything to me i think that with my sister having issues over the rejection from
our dad she was looking for an older man someone who could take care of her because she
didn't know how to take care of herself when women behind bars continues you don't stab a man over 50 times to
protect yourself or because you're fearing for your life i'm not buying it by 1993 thirty-year-old donna buchanan
craved stability after years of drug abuse and unstable relationships still dependent on drugs she moved in
with her boyfriend charles gouveia 43 years her senior when i was with charlie at that point my
addiction was very bad donna maintained that charles not only enabled her drug habit
he used it to control her he would give me pills a fact he would go to doctors telling me needed
painkillers he started even buying heroin for me and here was a man who who said he loved
her but provided for her in a way that made him completely in control of when she woke up when she
went to sleep where she went when she left the house he used the promise of drugs if she
would behave the removal of the drugs if she did not that would basically made her a slave in
just about every sense of the word to his his whims he got a safe because he started getting so many bottles of
pills and of course i didn't know the combination or advocate he started calling me drug addicts started putting
me down for taking pills but yet he's the one that's supplying the bills he had this thing about rescuing
you know women in distress so him taking in donna and trying to change her ways that sounds like my
father something that he would do according to donna charles also saw the drugs as a way to bring in additional
income and he also sold the narcotics he got he was like this is easy money there was all the signs of of them
selling the drugs out of the house everything from the receipts from the doctors and the fake
prescriptions for every prescription that was written he would falsify for and go to four different pharmacies
with it he started confused which pharmacies he was using so he started making records of all the
pharmacies he used all the doctors to use where he had refills and everything as
buchanan found herself increasingly dependent on cuveea the tension between them began to escalate
this man was her friend he was her support person the person she went to for everything and at the same time he
abused her terribly i remember getting up one morning getting ready to ask where i was going i
said i'm going to go see my mom there before i go shopping and that was the first time he hit me
and told me no no you're not going he would physically hit her he would drag her by the hair he would
scream at her and threaten her donna was so small that you didn't have to be very physically strong yourself i
guess he was 80. he looked more like he was in his you know late 60s he was always out working
in the yard but guvaya's family denies buchanan's allegations of physical abuse i find it hard to believe he was abusive
because the age he was at that time he was never physically abusive he was just very verbally abusive very scary
when he went on one of his rants it was it was enough to scare a woman you know to fear for her life
even though he wouldn't hurt her despite the alleged abuse donna could not seem to stay away from
charles several times donna tried to escape and charles found her and brought her back now donna had
the drug habit that was difficult for her but she did try for rehabilitation i used to sign myself in and out of
hospitals to get away from him that was like a only place i could go that he couldn't go
she had gone to our battered women's shelter i believe several times he had always managed to get her back in
short order i think she kept choosing him because she was afraid of what her choice would
be she was afraid of going back on the street she was afraid of getting off the drugs
i planned to leave him to go to virginia for him not to know where i was at my sister
and my girlfriend took me to the hospital i stayed in the hospital withdrew from
narcotics i remember it was a very bad withdrawal but i was able to do it i was released and i remember i had no
place to go my sister i think thought it was better for me to stay somewhere else
fun you know like stay in the salvation army or do that but that to me was like put
me back on the streets i couldn't do it i couldn't so i went back to you although donna
claims she never fought back a neighbor witnessed otherwise you could hear them from inside the house she just
sounded like a crazy uh banshee out of control and i would really never really hear him
yelling my mother was worried that if charlie didn't kill my sister my sister was going to kill him
because it was just so ugly there at the house the way that they were treating one
another [Music] for two days i hadn't slept i remember he was playing a lot with the pills here
take these there no you're not going to take them anymore so i was like captain withdrawal half
out yelling fighting hitting the last day i went to the bedroom to go to sleep a half hour
later he comes in there and starts yelling at me apparently he was working on the
computer and he was having a lot of trouble with it and he dragged her by the hair to come
in and help him he had a butcher knife in there he grabbed that put it up to my throat
said he was going to cut my effing throat i told him at that point go ahead he didn't so i went back to bed
but when he came back in the second time he was in a rage i felt then that he was
going to kill me donna like most battered women reacted to the moment it was never
planned and it was her attempt to survive to protect herself we got to the office that time i reached for the knife
and that's when i stabbed him i stabbed him repeatedly i guess i snapped i don't know
donna buchanan stabbed eighty-year-old charles gouveia 54 times women who are abused one of the ways that they survive
is that they go into what we call a dissociative state that is their mind and their bodies sort
of get separated and they're on automatic pilot and i believe that's what happened with donna
the overkill or the numerous stab wounds are because once you start in that stage
you can't stop you don't stab a man over 50 times to protect yourself or because you're fearing for your life i'm
not buying it i guess i felt that if i didn't kill him he'd kill me at that point right at the end all i
felt was fear when women behind bars continues i was in charge of murdering the first degree
i felt i deserved everything i got and later in this episode of women behind bars
marion fake hasten tells her story they told me that she had died i was just in shock no she's not dead no
she's not dead on the night of october 6 2000 37 year old donna buchanan who was addicted to
drugs and painkillers fatally stabbed her 80 year old boyfriend charles gouveia according to buchanan gouveia who
allegedly had a pattern of abuse held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her
in the immediate aftermath donna panicked first thing i thought about was killing myself
her solution was to take as many pills as she could and to hope that that would solve the problem once and for all
that didn't work so she really in desperation just started making phone calls to
different people not quite knowing what to say i talked to my girlfriend my sister my
mom on the phone when she called um the night it happened i could tell she was on drugs she first
told me she just got home and something happened to charlie that someone had stabbed him and i
couldn't make any sense out of her i said donna you didn't go anywhere because he never let her go anywhere
she said don't worry mom i changed my clothes but i left them in a pile i told her to call the police i kept
telling him don't worry i didn't mess with the crime scene you'll be able to tell
what happened i contacted the broward county police and let them know that there was a
concern all right you need police fire medical rescue oh yes ma'am my sister lives in florida i'm calling
from virginia okay her name is donna buchanan the situation is a friend of hers who's
been on the phone with her that said that charlie is dead that he was murdered my sister came home from the drugstore
and found him and would not call the police but my sister is also trying to commit
suicide as we're speaking she's overdosing on medication the call came in after midnight probably in the area of
12 40 a.m i was dispatched as a backup unit when deputies arrived donna buchanan
told the deputies that she was fine that she wasn't going to overdose on pills and that charlie govier was in
stuart florida working we asked her if we could look inside the house that one room had a door closed and she
refused to let him in the deputy backed out of the house and began to look around the windows
through into the interior and we noticed that all the awnings were up except for
on the front bedroom on the side of the house that was the only one that was down
we found that to be kind of strange they opened the awning looked inside and that's where they saw charlie's
bloody body inside that room the murder occurred in this room here in the front the home office
now donna became a suspect detectives took her to the broward county sheriff's headquarters for questioning
i don't remember a lot from that point on she appeared upset but yet really wasn't
crying outwardly wasn't showing emotion donna was wearing a robe over a set of pajamas she was disheveled and
she was out of sorts she had what appeared to be dry blood underneath her fingernails and then when
you remove the socks you could actually see blood in between her toes dried blood her story initially to us
was that she went out and that she took her dog for a walk came back to the residence and found the door
jar so now when you get back in the house what are you doing i asked for charlie charlie where are
you so i went there that's why he was little what did you see uh as far as him laying
on the floor [Music] i said donna we have three versions of what occurred we need to know the truth we need to
know what happened she looked at me with great interest and then she gave a fourth version
then i got it first what happens once you said you got the knife first what happens then
this time friday whether [Music] we then transported her to jail where she was booked for murder in the first
degree meanwhile investigators processed the crime scene inside the room charlie had been stabbed
54 times both to his back his chest and even to his head there was blood all around his area where he was at she
subsequently took off her bloody clothes placed them on the ground along with the
bloody knife that she used to stab charlie and detectives also found evidence of
the extent of donna's drug habit we discovered a safe that was in the home office this is
right near where charlie was killed in a safe was two white boxes one box said xanax and the other box
said laura set the safe was open both boxes were empty and there were pills that were strong on the floor
near where charlie lie donna awaited her fate in the broward county jail i was in charge of murdering the first
degree my options at that time i didn't really care i felt i deserved everything i got
i just wanted it to be over the state was still seeking the death penalty against her
buchanan's defense attorney brought in top psychologists in the field of battered women to evaluate donna
donna was psychologically ver in very great distress all of her test results showed a pretty serious impairment of
brain function donna buchanan had four strikes against her there was neuropsychological impairment
there was a history of mental illness there was a history of drug abuse and a history
of being severely abused while donna's legal team felt they had a strong case of
self-defense the police had a different theory we believe what happened that evening
inside that residence is that donna who's been on prescription drugs for years was having an argument with charlie
about getting more drugs we believe in anger and rage that she stabbed him to death
so she can get the drugs that were contained within the safe that's what the evidence suggests and
she's using self-defense to minimize what she did the defense believed that bringing
donna's case to trial was risky because of his age and the fact that he did have some physical frailties
we were concerned the jury might feel that she was physically superior to him and really didn't need to use the level
of force that she did to repel his attack i didn't know if i wanted to take it to trial
didn't know if i could handle a drop i felt like i wasn't strong enough so the state attorney offered me a plea
uh 15 years i took it at that point if she had offered 25 30 40 i would have took it i didn't care
donna is currently serving her sentence at gadsden correctional institution in quincy florida
it's been a learning experience it's given me a chance to look at myself look at my life look at
my future what i want for my future i wanted to use my time in prison to educate myself
to give myself a better chance to if i when i get out then i take care of myself
never have to depend on a man again donna is taking an industrial drafting class and also tutors young girls
she's so interested in learning now and teaching and helping others to a lot of them there where she is now
she's like a mom they call her mom i like who she is without the drugs she's come a long ways from where she
started yeah i've still got a ways to go but i'm working to make myself stronger
on that i have no reason to ever pick up a pill again despite the progress she's made
donna still thinks of charles every day i don't think there's one day i don't wish i could tell him
i'm sorry but i can't that has been more of a punishment than prison ever could be
my father was was miserable to live with but he didn't deserve to die i guess she
got what she deserved but as a woman i just feel bad next up on women behind bars a mother
faces murder charges in the death of her two-year-old daughter my knees buckled and i just started
crying i couldn't do anything else it was not going to change anything for more information about women behind
bars go to www.wetv.com [Music] on the morning of january 2nd 2003 police and emergency services responded
to a 9-1-1 call that two-year-old serenity nicole miller was not breathing when baby serenity arrived at the
hospital the er doctor immediately noticed that she had been dead for two to three hours
the autopsy showed all this bruising trauma to the head and she was suffocated police focused their investigation on
serenity's mother 24 year old marion fake hasten who had a history of self mutilation
and her roommate 40 year old frederick stegall a convicted child abuser the mother
really showed no reaction at all it was almost like she already knew what happened
but marion claimed that serenity was perfectly healthy when she left the house that morning
and that her death must have been caused from injuries from a fall three to four days earlier it was
horrible just to find out that i had just seen her that morning give her a kiss goodbye
told her i loved her and then she's gone my theory of the case was that either she did it herself
or she knew that stegall had done it and was an accomplice did marion fake hasten participate in
her child's death or did she unwittingly allow a convicted child abuser to murder
her daughter she was really quite a normal kid except for being a tomboy and loving to climb
trees i spent a lot of my childhood playing make-believe she was happy she was adventurous
for a while she was just kind of an only child that changed when marion was 11. her
brother billy was born and suddenly the family's attention was on him i wasn't really keen on the
idea of having a baby around the house but once i got to really start paying attention to him
and he just he really stole my heart [Music] the following year the casons moved to
live oak florida at suwanee high school marion struggled to belong high school was very weird because
everybody's trying to find that little clique that they fit into but she liked you know reading and she
liked rotc marion also began dating but at a young age started a dangerous trend of trusting
bad men i was raped when i was 14 by an ex-boyfriend because he got mad at me because i dumped him she blamed herself
she was depressed and she had at one point mentioned you know that maybe if she committed suicide
the hurt would go away kayson coped with her internal misery by self-mutilating i would cut because i didn't know how to
let the feelings go marion did her best to put the pain behind her but could not break her
patterns when she was in the 11th grade she tried to escape by marrying her high school boyfriend
james foley we dropped out of school getting married moving to connecticut and starting a whole new
life but the couple split after just six months so marion returned to florida and
married another high school friend jimmy miller soon after she discovered she was pregnant
they said yeah it's a little girl and i was so excited serenity nicole miller was born on
january 30th 2000. marion was enamored with her new daughter she grew up to be a very
very very beautiful little girl she was just just so full of life that you couldn't help but just bubble over
if you got around her marion loved being a mom and was thrilled to learn she was expecting a
second child i used this love of sitting there and it's ready to have her head on my belly
then i just sit there and snuggle on august 29 2001 marion gave birth to a son joshua
miller but the happiness was short-lived the following year she learned that her
husband was arrested for a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under the age of 16. when he went to
jail i sit down talk to his mom i said look i said i'm going to divorce jim my kids deserve better and
that's when all the mess started in suddenly marion found herself a single mother of two young children
with a husband in jail for child abuse she got a job at a fast food restaurant to support her family
but still struggled to make ends meet you're sitting there trying your hardest to provide for these children
desperate for financial aid she went to the department of child and family services
they placed her in a government subsidized housing project in live oak the apartment was right in
the middle crackdown well at that time i had no choice craving male attention and support the
single mother befriended frederick stegall a co-worker at the restaurant i asked
him i said look i have two small babies and i need somebody there helping me and he said okay i don't mind
[Music] stego moved in with cason and her kids marion says she felt more secure having
a man in the house and that the relationship was strictly platonic mrs cason said no that he was just a
roommate according to him they were romantically involved kayson turned a blind eye to more than
just their relationship he told me he uh one night that he'd been to jail for fighting
frederick stegall had several charges of grand theft burglary aggravated stalking and
aggravated child abuse he had already served time in prison for aggravated child abuse
he had just gotten out when he met miss cason kayson claims she did not know about
stegall's criminal record for child abuse but prosecutors maintained she had been
warned children and family went to miss cayson and told her in no uncertain terms that
mr stegall could be around those children and all indications at the scene were that he was living there
marion denies receiving a warning about frederick and says that she never saw him hurt her kids
i didn't dawn on me that you know he might be a bad person because the kids are liking
you know they call him uncle fred and all that and she was too protective over her kids
to let somebody you know come into her house that she knew had been in trouble i told him
i know hit role i don't believe in spanking kayson maintains her daughter never had any
bruises and that she can only recall one injury when serenity fell out of bed three or four days before she died she
dropped her sippy cup coming down off the little rails she had bumped her head she had a little
bruise right here and that was about it [Music] i got up that morning the kids were
already up fed him some cereal i left the house serendi was doing fine her little nose was just a little runny
kayson chose to trust frederick stegall to watch her kids while she ran errands after she left he said that
he put serenity in her bed because she was crying and whimpering and a little while later he
goes back to check on her and she's unresponsive unconscious stiegel carried serenity next door to
ask for help it was 11 13 in the morning a 911 call came in four minutes later the
first responders are arriving the ems workers had the child in the back of the ambulance doing cpr
i could see the bruising on the child's forehead and around her eyes i reached out and touched her hand she
was very cool to the touch i seen frederick stigall standing there holding another small
child i approached him asked him what happened and his initial response to me is
there ain't been no child abuse here when women behind bars continues i wasn't even home
and i felt if i didn't do it then i should prove myself and i tried we had eyewitness accounts
of miss cason physically abusing little serenity when she was only six weeks old and this
lasted throughout her lifetime on january 2nd 2003 two-year-old serenity miller stopped breathing
and was covered in bruises serenity was rushed to the emergency room just as her mother mary and fake hasten
arrived home police officer walked over to me and he says we had to take her to the hospital
she wasn't breathing the mother really showed no reaction at all it was almost like she already knew what happened i
really wasn't paying attention because i was so shocked here you have a mother whose daughter has just been carried
away and miss cason does not ask what happened at chands hospital in live oak doctors
tried in vain to revive serenity the emergency room physician noticed that this child had
been dead between two and three hours about four o'clock that afternoon they told me that she had
died i laid my head down and cried i was just in shock no she's not dead no she's not dead
the doctors immediately notified the police that this looks like a classic case of an abused child
it didn't take long to center the investigation in on two people and one of them is mary and faye cason
and the other was a man named frederick stegall marion's roommate convicted child abuser
frederick stegall had been watching serenity and her one and a half year old brother joshua
the department of child and family services intervened on behalf of marion's little boy joshua wasn't
placed in foster care until the investigation was completed kasen agreed to help the police with
their investigation of steagle she participated in a recorded phone call with the intention of getting him
to confess i bite you know the truth i know you don't believe me either do you i'm not blaming you for anything and
basically they're telling me you know that i beat my child to death and they said ask me that i took my fist
and literally beat her in the head that's what they're saying i did you didn't like whip or anything did you
no i didn't whip her i didn't do that i cooperated whatever they wanted me to do
i couldn't get nothing out of him but three different stories on how he had found serenity
as investigators continued to view marion as a suspect they searched the residence she shared
with stegall it was nasty there was dried food and toys and stuff scattered all over it
it was it was very unkept inside the children's bedroom the investigators noticed that one of the
beds was broken that there was a blanket on it and a piece of cardboard and indications that someone was still
using that bed despite the unsightly conditions of marion's home it was her journal that most disturbed
investigators we found this poem that turned out to be written by marion fay cason
now serenity died on january the 2nd 2003 this poem is dated january 1st 2003 this poem is entitled dark side
i see myself taking their life i could do it without strife i can see the blood run red i giggle
as i bash in their head marion denied the poem had anything to do with serenity's death
and i said i was just really upset about the bad things that had happened in my life
i was so depressed at that time that i knew if i didn't write out my feelings i'd go back to cutting it was a pretty
bad point but it wasn't directed at nobody in addition serenity's body was sent to
the state medical examiner's office in jacksonville the findings corroborated the detective
suspicions what were the evidence we could say that this is a child that didn't die a
natural death this is child abuse most likely smothering but certainly there's head trauma as
well we're seeing all these injuries and died really of an injury of a swollen brain miss cason's statement to
the police was no i did not hit her and i've never hit her and the only way i can explain those bruises
on her is that she fell out of the bed a few days ago so basically her story was
consistent with mr stegall's the medical examiner's office did not see those injuries occurring from from
falling from a bed on july 28 2005 kayson and stegall were indicted by a grand jury for felony
murder in the first degree along with charges of child abuse and neglect kayson was arrested and placed in the
sewanee county jail i didn't understand why it had come to this my attorney told me it wasn't going
to come to that it was just shocking was blown away because of his previous criminal record
for child abuse frederick stegall chose not to stand trial once you've done something that stays
with you no matter what and that something else happens similar to that you're marked for life
i didn't do nothing i wasn't even home i felt if i didn't do it then i should prove myself
and i tried [Music] the timeline of this case is really one of the main pieces of evidence against
miss cason she indicated when asked that she had left the house at a 10 56 that morning at 11
27 we know serenity is arriving at the emergency room when she's at the hospital they noticed
that really she'd been dead for two or three hours so by mrs cason's own admission that
would have put her home when her baby died kayson insisted that she never harmed
her daughter but the prosecution presented evidence and testimony that proved marion wrong
on both counts we had eyewitness accounts of miss cason physically abusing little
serenity when she was only six weeks old and this lasted throughout her lifetime
going back to the trial transcripts i found out a lot of places where they have not told the truth
on december 14th after less than an hour of deliberation the jury returned with its verdict
guilty on all counts my knees buckled and i just started crying either she did it herself
or she knew that stegall had done it and aided and abetted him or was an accomplice
and under florida law if you are an accomplice you're punished the same as the actual perpetrator so i guess the
jury concluded that she was responsible for her death and they found her guilty [Music]
i was like oh my god this is can't be true but it was kayson is currently serving
her sentence at lowell correctional institution in ocala florida i was so scared because everybody has
their little horror stories about prison i can't say that it's bad here i can't say that it's good
kayson has lost her appeals but still maintains her innocence she now believes frederick stegall
killed her daughter in my own opinion because of what's been stated in trial i believe that she may have started
crying and he hit her and then he held her nose closed over her mouth before fred siegel came into her life the kids
did not have bruises marian's son joshua miller is in the custody of his paternal grandparents
the whole ordeal has devastated the case and family i love that baby i love josh i love my dog
and it's all been taken away she was just at that age to where you could really have fun with her and she was so
adorable we'd go to walmart and look at little dresses say okay next year she'll be big
enough at this one and then all of a sudden those dreams just died i know she's in a better place
i know she's not going to be hurt anymore i know her pain is all over with it's hard it's really hard if i don't go
back to court if i don't win my case i can't have my son back i have to do what i got to do to get out
of here to get my son back to show him that his mommy does love him and that i'll never leave him again
you

Brief Summary

Donna Buchanan and Marion Fake Hasten share their stories of murder, abuse, and the consequences of their actions.

Key points

The Murder of Charles Gouveia. Charles Gouveia was found dead, having been stabbed 54 times, leading to Donna becoming a suspect.
Donna Buchanan's Story. Donna Buchanan, a woman with a troubled past, fatally stabs her 80-year-old boyfriend in a moment of desperation.
Donna's Transformation. Donna uses her time in prison to educate herself and help others.
The Verdict. After a short deliberation, the jury finds Marion guilty on all counts.
Marion's Grief. Marion reflects on the loss of her daughter and the impact it has had on her life.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I would choose prison. That's just how bad it was.

Donna's reflection on her abusive relationship.

1:40WatchJan 12, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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