CHARACTERS- Tammy (Tia), Police Inspector (Bery), Susan Hanks (Tanya), Paul

(Dev), Ken (Siddhant), Misty (Niharika), Narrator (Khushvi)

(Opening scene where Ken attacks Misty and Kirt)

NARRATOR: Women may be afraid of strangers, but it's the most intimate of strangers
-- a husband, a lover, a friend -- who is most likely to hurt us. According to a Justice
Department study, two-thirds of violent attacks against women are committed by
someone the woman knows. In the United States, the most dangerous place for a
woman is in her own home, where intimacy can invoke an anger that may explode into
domestic violence.
NARRATOR: For years, Misty Marchant was abused by her husband, Kenny. Their
separation only seemed to make things worse.
POLICE: Your colleague, Misty Marchant unfortunately has been murdered. You have
all been summoned for interrogation. We will begin with you, Paul.
POLICE: We know she came to work three days ago. Did you notice something
unusual in her behaviour that day? Loss of appetite, withdrawal, anxiety, low self-
esteem or anything different about her? Tell us everything you remember; every tiny
detail is significant.

PAUL: She had come to work and she walked up to my desk and asked me, how do I
look. And I looked at her and I says, like a million. She says no, my face. And at the
time I looked at her it looked like she had smeared her mascara. But what it turned out
to be was her whole side of her face, had it shut in a door. And that was the day or the
day after she went and filed for divorce from Kenny.

POLICE: So, are you saying she was aware she could die?

PAUL: She says well I just want to thank you for being my good friend and all your good
advice and I don't think I'm going to see you again. And I says, well if you really think it's
that serious, would you want to borrow a gun. And I personally thought she would have
said no because she has a child and was afraid of guns, but her reaction was so
positive she couldn't wait. I should have brought it to her that night.

NARRATOR: Misty never got the gun. Two days later she was dead.

POLICE: Early on the morning of July 3, 1994, an intoxicated and heavily armed Kenny
broke into Misty's house, and gunned down her and her friend Kirt Swann, a 32-year-old
father of four.
(Paul is horrified)

POLICE: That will be all, Mr.Sottisani. This is Ms. Tammy, Misty’s sister.

(Tammy is sobbing and doesn’t register much)

TAMMY: ... Her death was so violent that you can hear on the 911 tape, you can
actually hear her body completely bleed out, every drop of blood in her body.

TAMMY: At that point Kenny shot Kirt several more times...then he left the house...and
went to his father's where he'd been living and killed himself there.

POLICE: The entire scene was played out in front of the Marchant's five-year-old
daughter.

TAMMY: ... You can hear her on the 911 tape saying, "Mommy, where's Mommy, I want
Mommy."

PAUL: Misty had tried to reach out... She went to court.... The night the dispatcher got
the call, the first thing the officer said is, 'That's Misty's house.'" Everybody was aware of
it, and nobody ever did anything about it.

NARRATOR: As to why a man would be enraged enough to kill his wife, family and
friends can only speculate.

TAMMY: during custody hearings his parents admitted on the stand in court to 28 years
of domestic violence and spouse abuse. He was raised in an abusive family. He was
taught that it was okay, that this is how it was.

NARRATOR: Kenny and Misty were both victims of the cycle of abuse. It was a pattern
both saw as normal, a pattern that eventually led to their deaths.

POLICE: Approximately 1,500 women are killed each year by husbands or boyfriends.
About 2 million men a year beat their partners. Domestic violence knows no social or
economic boundaries. Dr. Susan Hanks is director of the Family and Violence Institute
in Alameda, California. She believes there is no one profile of men who batter women.

HANKS: Many men batter because they feel, because they are tremendously
dependent on the woman... because they are threatened by her moves towards any
kind of individual life of her own or individual thinking of her own. Some men batter
because that's the only way they know how to be close.

NARRATOR: What pushes a violent man to kill? Often a woman leaving or threatening
to leave a relationship is the trigger.
HANKS: That's often the most dangerous time in a relationship because that's when the
man is most psychologically vulnerable, feeling most rejected and most threatened and
his only way that he knows how to deal with those feelings is to act violently towards the
woman who he perceives is causing them.

HANKS: Also, Misty’s daughter witnessed her death. Children are always traumatized
by witnessing violence in families. We know that from family backgrounds of men who
are abusive that they often witness their mothers being abused and also they were often
victims of child physical abuse themselves. We also know that of women who are
battered, if they have the misfortune of having come from a family of witnessing their
own mother being abused they will be susceptible to developing what we call battered
women's syndrome, in which they believe that there is nothing they can do to get out of
the situation.