TAMPA, FLORIDA | I researched and wrote this episode, which begins on August 22, 1992, when a 40-year-old woman and her 41-year-old boyfriend are brutally attacked in a motel room. The couple is beaten unconscious and hacked at with a knife before their attacker does something unimaginable to his male victim. The seeds of malevolence are sown in this perpetrator long before he gets to this point. But what was his ‘sliding doors’ moment? People don’t just evolve into criminals in a social and environmental vacuum. There’s a tipping point for everyone, a point of no return. When it comes to criminality, is there such a thing as genetic predetermination? When it seems like the world is against us from a young age is there truly hope for us to have the freedom to choose our own path? In episode 213, Jac and Alexis detail the incomprehensible case of Terry Barron, a serial abuser whose desire for control and vengeance knew no bounds.
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