How will this latest development impact your own healing journey?I don’t think that there’s any way that it can’t. Even yesterday, we got death threa
How will this latest development impact your own healing journey?
I don’t think that there’s any way that it can’t. Even yesterday, we got death threats. “Beware, it’s all coming out. They’re coming for you,” [from] just truly mentally ill individuals. And it’s not that I really care. But at the same time, it does make you think, “What did I say that bothered you so deeply that you have now found my address and are handwriting me death threats that are being delivered via the United States Postal Service to my door?”
Then you have people who view it as entertainment. The amount of comments saying, “Oh, I’m stoked,” or tagging their friend and saying, “We’re going to have to keep up on this.” Or like, “Ooh, chapter two,” those almost get to me more than the comments defending him because it really is such a break from my reality. Don’t view this as entertainment. Kaylee was my real-life sister. I remember the day she was born. I grew up with her; we played with our toys together; we went to school together. I can still remember hugging her. I can remember the smell of her hair, the way her laugh sounded. She’s not a character. She’s a real-life human being, and then multiply that by four, for Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan.
Look, we’ve all been there when we have viewed true crime as, “Oh, this case, it’s a good one, that Dateline episode or that 20/20.” I cannot tell you how disgusted I am with myself that I ever viewed someone’s pain, someone’s worst day of their life, someone’s nightmare, someone’s loss, someone’s grief as anything other than a reality that I should be grateful to not know about.
Conspiracy and internet sleuthing play a role in any recent true-crime case, but few as intensely as this one. How has your relationship to the media frenzy around your sister’s murder evolved?
It’s still evolving to this day. I avoid most of it. I’m going to go to the root of what I think the conspiracies are: People cannot fathom a crime like this being just what it is. Because, I’m sorry, but it’s terrifying to think that you could do no wrong, you could not owe someone this or that—however, people make themselves feel better when a tragedy happens. A lot of people say, “But that could never be me because X, Y, Z.” When there’s a lack of that in the case, it makes people incredibly uneasy.
Something I always go back to is that she had a melancholy death, but she is not a melancholy thing. When I see people kind of muddying the waters, putting their grubby little fingers all over her and just mucking it up, there’s something in me that Kaylee…will never be dead to me.
I will never hear a comment about my sister and not go to bat for her, whether she’s here to be offended by it or not. I know it can’t hurt her, but it doesn’t matter to me. That’s still my sister. I’m still struggling to find a place [online] where I hope one day I can find a path to be able to have some presence that is helpful to Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan. But until I can get there, I’m good.
