CHAPTER EIGHT: The Trouble Closer to Home

Hey there, I want to give you a heads up that this episode will discuss sexual abuse. Please listen with care.

Previously on Hello John Dale, I think.

Everybody's got an origin, and I would just like to know you know where I will get.

The girls were traumatized by the tornado because we were in the trailer when the tornado hit and we had no way out. When you try to talk to her about certain things when we were little, she would change the subject real quick.

Yes, she regrets that she didn't do everything that she could. She's putting a lot of the blame on herself, and I'm like, Mom, you know it's not just your fault.

In the past few chapters, I've told you about Franklin for it's destructive impact on Steve's birth family. We heard how he kidnapped Steve's sister, Susie Sevegas, and how he kidnapped Michael, HER's son, and how Susie was killed and how Michael was never found. These stories are all part of the fabric of Steve's birth family, their traumatic past

I told her who I was.

I think you're my sister, and then she's like, you gotta be kidding what I'm not kidding And then we just went back and forth from there.

Amy read me some of those early Facebook messages.

I said, Wow, I hate to say that I never believed her when she said we have had a brother named Steve, Well, let me tell you a little bit about me.

The two shared DNA but knew almost nothing about each other, so they started feeling in each other in the details of their lives, if they were married, if they had kids, but they did for work for days. They talked on and off. Once he was ready, Steve asked something that had been weighing on him.

And then he said, or are you calm enough to ask a question? And I said, yeah, what's on your mind? He said? Who is my dad?

Steve hoped maybe Amy knew something no one else did, maybe she had some insight, but Amy didn't.

I said, let me ask you something. How did you end up where you are? Did she give you away or what? He said, Yes, she gave me away. I said, did you have a good childhood? He said, call me.

That's when Steve got real with Amy, and then he went.

To his feelings, said that he's a bastard and I said, no, you're my brother, and that's what matters to me. He said, nobody cared about me. For forty five years.

Steve felt abandoned, and he was fixated on the fact that his parents weren't even a couple, definitely not married. He was, in his words, a bastard. Amy set him straight. She read me the message just you sent to Steve.

I didn't know you were alive. I was told you died as a baby. If I knew about you, I would have searched the world for you. I was robbed of knowing you and you were robbed of knowing me.

She blamed some of this on her mom. Amy felt like Sandy didn't tell her the full story. When she was growing up. Sandy hadn't told her that Floyd forced her to give away Steve, or that she hitchhied looking for her missing kids. Now it was on Amy to make sense of the pastor for Steve. They talked on and off for the next two years, as the world

They stay focused on.

The small details, the ones that were easier to control, and they kept texting.

I said, we can come to you and order pizza, and he said, okay, we could go anywhere. I'll pay and I was like, on our way. He said, the place we were staying at right now is shitty and I'm embarrassed. I said, don't be. We aren't high allar either, and then he said, Okay, I'm nervous. I don't ever get nervous. I was like me too, and then I said I'm here.

After almost fifty years apart, the siblings were face to face.

We held each other tight. I mean I had said, oh my god, and I held a and I said, god, you look just like Papa.

That's her grandpa, Sandy's dad.

And it was like we held on for quite a while.

It was kind of emotional. We got the same personality more or less. She's a little bit lighter now, she's got a sense of email. She'll tell you like it is too now. She don't should have coad anything. She's a trait shooter.

That day in North Carolina wasn't just a reunion for Steve and Amy. There was someone else who said goodbye to Amy half a century ago. Mary Patterson, the woman who had adopted Steve.

Than my family. Now, you know, you know you could have been my child.

You might remember this from before Steve's adopted mama. Mary considered taking all of Sandy's four kids, but didn't have the room in her trailer. Mary had always wondered about the three girls she left behind, Susy, Allison, and now here was Amy in front of her.

I could have had you, she said, you had a I mean, I wouldn't went through what.

I went through.

The first time she hugged me, you could feel her ex hell to know that she wanted me, but it wasn't able to take me and for her to be able to see that I was okay.

If Amy or Stay were worried that they might run out of things to say, they were dead wrong.

We cried quite a while, and then we just sat there and we talked, went out to eat and talk, fought over who was paying for what, you know, all that sort of stuff like Girls of the Slumber Party. You just want to sit around and talk and talk and talk.

Finding the family stable loss was just the first step. The next was deciding how and where he fits in. At this point, Steve was open to Amy, but he wasn't so sure he wanted to know Sandy.

I don't blame him for not wanting to talk to her at all, and I try not to talk about her to him because I feel kind of guilty because I lived with her our whole life and he didn't, and it wasn't his choice. That's part of the guilt that I have.

Steve didn't know it yet, but Amy was once at a crossroads too, figuring out how she wanted Sandy in her life. For a couple of years, she stopped talking to their mom entirely. You see, Amy had her fair sheriff suffering under Sandy's roof. In this chapter, we'll go back to Amy's childhood and hear her mixed feelings a better upbringing. Steve missed all of it back then, but he was about to learn the trauma that shot through his birth family was worse than he could have imagined.

Those are my children. You don't know what their life is like outside of the time you see them.

In a lot of cases, she just doesn't know what kind of home the kids are going back to maybe they're going hungry, maybe their parents just turn around.

Maybe it's worse.

I know that I may be the only smile they get in the day. I may be the only I love you, or I may be the only one that say, hey, we don't behave like that.

To know Amy Winkles is to know what a big heart she has. She lets everyone in her kids, her family, even me. But she wasn't always this way.

I beat all my brothers and sisters up all the time.

When she was a kid. Amy was a bully of sorts. She often acted out. When I met her in Virginia, he was warm and friendly. She laughed a lot. I had a hard time squaring Nat with the raide she carried around in childhood.

I was a fighter and then Dodi was the angel. So I was secretly beating tar out at Dodie wife. Yeah, I'd beat her up when nobody else was around.

Dodie is Dorothy Sandy's youngest. Amy grew up in Sandy's house in coastal Virginia. Her dad was Dennis Brandenburg, the professional gambler.

It's not a whole lot to tell. I mean, we grew up your typical low income family, but.

She wasn't raised by her father. Amy was raised by Carson, Sandy's last husband, who died in twenty ten, the one she was married to for thirty years, who she called Sonny.

He was the only dad I ever knew. I never got to meet my dad. I was told that he died before I was born.

Later, Amy learned that wasn't true. Dennis wasn't dead after all, Sandy said Dennis his grandmother lied to her.

Anyway.

Growing up, Amy was violent toward her siblings, but she didn't really get why she kept laying her hands on them. Much later, she was able to connect it to something she dealt with as a child.

Carson abused me from the time I was seven until I got out. It was sexual abuse. The whole nine yards. Anything you can think of happen happened from seven until I was fourteen. It started when I was seven.

For several years, Amy didn't speak up, which is common. By the way, Amy was scared to fight back against Carson, her stepfather, or even to tell her mom. Sandy told us herself that she didn't always speak the right guy in her life, but she thought her husband of thirty years, the one that stuck around was the exception that Amy said that her mama often chose men over her kids, and Sandy could have a temper.

If she had a man, she was fine. The time she didn't have a man, it was hell. It was like she was mad at all of us kids because she didn't have a man.

The sexual abuse went on for seven years. At the beginning of high school, Amy met a boy named Mike Winkles.

My husband and I are high school sweethearts. We started dating the first day of school. I was in ninth grade. He was a senior. He knocked my books out of my hand going down the hallway, and I grabbed his ear and made him pick a up right in front of all his friends. And we haven't been separated since.

One day when they were in high school, Mike was ob at Amy's house, Carson, her stepfather had a strange request.

For Mike asked him to go buy him some condoms.

This startled Mike and it made him realize his girlfriend was being abused by her stepfather. He got angry and told Amy she was coming with him.

I went to the house and packed it back. He said, you're leaving now, and I don't know if it's just when he said, why does your dad want me to go buy condoms or whatever? And I think I might have blurted out so he can use them on me.

And that's when Amy went to her mother, Sandy.

She believed me because he didn't deny it. I said something to her, and she said something to him, and he admitted to it. He never denied the abuse.

Never I asked Sandy about it.

She said that her dad had touched her, that Sonny had touched her. So I confront of him right away about it.

Then she kicked him out.

I made him leave. He was gone for a long time. He went to jail because of us.

In nineteen eighty seven, Carsonus found guilty of sodomy and aggravated sexual battery and sentenced to one year in jail and forum probation. According to court records, when Amy told her mother what her stepfather had done, Sandy believed her, But what happened next caused the relationship to break down.

Did she kicked me out? We went for two years. We didn't talked, two years, not a word.

So Amy was all of fourteen when she spoke up about being sexually abused.

She told me.

From that moment on, she studied her boyfriend Mike's house with his family, and that's how it went. I asked Sandy if she kicked Damie out after she told her about the abuse, and she swore Amy left of her own volition.

No, I did not blame her. I believe it.

Then Sandy didn't deny Carson's abuse, but had a different perspective on what happened after. But you didn't ask, really, so she finally ended up going to live with Mike in his house. And so you didn't ask for the lead because she felt like you did.

No, no, no, okay. Mike's parents let Mike do whatever they wanted to do, and they had no curfew, no rules, no nothing. And you know, at fifteen, no curse, you, no rule. If you don't want to go to school, you don't go to school. It sounds really good. So she went and told my family that she couldn't live with us anymore because we were too strict, and she went to lived at mike house.

Obviously the two have conflicting stories, but think about it. Amy was just a teenager. Sandy was the parent. If she had made a fuss and told Amy to get her ayes home, she likely would have instead. Mother and daughter didn't talk for two whole years. After Carson served us one year behind bars, Sandy allowed him to move

He did his time, but I wasn't allowed to go back.

My experients were caring, they were often around, but they also had expectations. Amy is telling this different than Sandy's. Amy says, my experients were more strict.

You follow the rules, of course, you had to go to school. At school. Before I moved in with them, I missed fifty four d's and I got caught sleeping in the parking lot in the car, and Mom would write notes like Amy was absent because she went to get her lazy ass out of bed. They'd excuse it.

And even though Amy recognized her generosity and taking her in, and even though she loved Mike, she still had a tough time following those rules to a tea or choosing to do the right thing, or even knowing what the right thing even was.

I'm not an angel, don't get me wrong. I've done some shady shit. I've drained our bank accounts. I've stole from his parents. You know, I didn't know what it was like having money. So when I moved on with them, and you had all these things and if you wanted it, you got it, and things like, I didn't understand that you worked for it before you could get it.

Eventually something started to shifting Amy. She recognized what was going on. This was stability.

There was always food. I just remember that there's always food to be like, oh you can get seconds, or you can get more.

You know.

It was just a complete flip flop of everything that I had got used to growing up. It was weird at first because I didn't know. I didn't know what love, what it really felt like.

And she stopped acting out.

I didn't fight anymore. I didn't get in fights. It's just things just changed. So it was a blessing.

Things got better for Amy, but her relationship with her mama remained fractured. So let me wrap my mind around this. Amy's mam married a serial killer who kidnapped and killed Amy's sister Susy and her nephew, Michael. Unlike Susanne, Amy lived, She survived, and she can tell her story. Amy escaped

If she wanted something, he found a way to get it for. You know, whether it meant when extra jobs or barter room with somebody or whatever. He got it for.

So Amy did the same thing.

She is one of the first ones that a woe is me In a second, I fell for it for a long time. After Carson died, I paid her bills and forgot our bills, didn't pay our bills.

By this point, Amy was about forty and married to Mike, her high school sweetheart, so you know, it.

Almost cost me a marriage. And then he was like, you gotta stop.

That's when Sandy and Amy stopped talking again. During that time, the FBI agents knocked on Sandy's door. They asked for DNA samples so they could figure out if she was Susie. Saveka's his mom. You know this story. This is where Sandy realized Susie had been killed by Floyd. For the first few weeks after Sandy found out, Amy just blew her off, didn't believe that she was telling her the truth about Susie. She realized there was an entire book

It made me so mad to know that she was alive. We knew she had gotten kidnapped. MoMA always said she got kidnapped, but because I couldn't remember, I was like, whatever, you're so full shit, whatever, because she lies a lot. She's always lied a lot my whole life.

This was a turning point. Amy started to talk to her mom again. It was a tragic way to reunite a family, but it is a silver lining. Sandy had to make peace with the fact that she lost a daughter, but in this moment of utter agony, she was reunited with another. Then, in twenty nineteen, the family found the biggest silver lining in the whole story. Steve Patterson was alive.

I feel a little guilty because I didn't get to grow up with him I didn't get to p protect him or show him how to do things, or you know, things a big sister would do.

Now Amy's in her fifties and Sandy's in her seventies. They only live about an hour apart from each other.

I forgave, I forgave, I forgive, I forgave, And Steven says, do you talk to Trim like you? I almost every day. I just saw her yesterday. I mean, you would think we were a normal TV family or whatever. Like nobody knows the dark secrets.

Amy has that essence about her. You just kind of feel comfortable, like she's seen some shit and doesn't judge you whatsoever.

I love my mom, I really do. Do I like her sometimes?

No?

Do I like the choices she's made some? No, but I love her. She's still my mom.

Amy's lived long enough to realize everybody's done something they ain't proud of. After all, Amy used to beat up her siblings. She put her marriage on the line. Amy is mature enough to realize she's not perfect, and neither is their mama.

Am I mad at her?

Yes?

Hell, yeah, I'm pissed. I just can't walk away. You know, after everything I've been through, I cannot walk away.

And you forgive her?

I think. I don't know if I forgive her or just to accept her. I'm a grown woman, I have children of mine. I've seen shit, been through shit. Everybody has a past. Everybody has a past.

At this point in her life, Amy sees lots of people as worthy of love and forgiveness, even if they do some messed up things. That's part of why she's good at her job and.

Drive a school bus cause of little kids, the children I have. Nobody wanted those children because they were so out of control. They needed to be held responsible for their behavior. I know what it's like to not feel love, and I think that plays a big part on how much compassion and patience I have. They love me, they have my phone number, they call me, they text me, We talk trash.

Based on what Amy's telling me about growing up, she could have used someone like this, someone that gave her both disciplined and unshakeable compassion.

I guess she'd call that tough love.

A few years ago, Amy had a heart attack. It happened around the time she was getting to know Steve. I'm not sure if that's why she opened up to Steve, but maybe it made her more inclined to get to know him better. In middle age, Amy's come closer and closer to this truth. We're more than her past, and we can dig out I need.

People don't understand. You're not about your past. Your past is you passed. And I tell the kids all the time if they have a bad morning on the bus, make better choices when you get into school, and that it's just who I am. I don't know.

I think that's that's what's louder. To talk to her mom again and to be someone Steve feels so comfortable with. I mean, I felt comfortable meeting her for the first time. She's incredibly warm, has this wonderful belly life. She welcomed me with open arms, and I can imagine the way she embraced her little brother.

I think we can make up for loss her just to know that they're there. They're there.

In a way.

Both siblings are dealing with a lot of wiffs right now. Steve's wondering what it might have been like growing up in Sandy's house, and Amy wonders what it might have been like if she was adopted by Mary. They didn't grow up in the same house. But lately they're both thinking about the road not taking.

I feel like he's a little bit jealous because I had our actual warm and I'm jealous that he didn't have her, And I think he feels guilty because he had a natural life.

On one hand, they both envy each other a little bit. On the other hand, they're envia something the two of them have in common. There's also a truth that both had to confront. They're both lucky to be here. When their sister, Susy didn't survive. Franklin Floyd could have taken either of them too. Amy can see the big picture now that Steve avoided the clutches of Franklin Floyd. But I don't think Steve's there yet. He still believes he

So although he had a good life with Mary and her raising him and everything, I still feel like he's upset that he was given away, you know, instead of being part of the family. He was given away when in all reality has saved his life.

Steve and Amy chose each other, filled a hole in each other's lives. But Dorothy, Sandy's youngest daughter, hasn't got to know her long lost brother as well, not the way Amy has. Li was down the street from Sandy, so she was right there when she found out Steve was alive.

She said, you wouldn't believe who got in contact with me. I was like, who Stephen Phillips my son?

And I was like, oh, Dorothy is the child of Sandy and Carson, a child from that last long marriage. Growing up, she thought Stephen gone missing. Now she learned he was living one state over in North Carolina.

I feel like the how can I say it's the keeper of everybody? I'm always in everybody's business.

So naturally, Dorothy found him on Facebook and started snooping.

And I was like, oh my god, he looks just like my grandfather. I knew he was family automatically because he We all have the same eyes, the almond shape of him, we all have them. I'm a text message here. I told him and say, hey, I'm your younger sister, and and we talked.

Dorothy was super excited to know this brother of hers. She got to FaceTime with him.

And I taught him. I was like, you know, look, dude, I was like, we take trips down in North Carolina a bunch.

She and her husband go down there for motorcycling events. She tried to get in touch, come on through.

You know, I can get you into the pit. Not a problem.

Steve never responded. I don't know why I didn't, and I don't know if he plans to. When I played him some of Dorothy's interview, he didn't seem to even really process that he had another sister. From his perspective, it seemed he had three older sisters, Susie, Allison, and Amy, but he didn't really take Dorothy into account the same way she did him. It was almost like he drew a line between siblings born before him and those Sandy

Where did we go wrong? Because we were talking. I just want to know where we went wrong. I just I want to hold him. He's my brother.

Dorothy had already started making space in her life Steve, even before she knew he was still alive. She told her kids about his disappearance.

All of my kids know the story. I mean even my stepsons, they know the story. And in that short time that I did video chat with him, I knew right then and there he's perfect.

He's perfect.

He is us.

This is what it looks like on the flip side, to find a lost brother, but to have him not claim you. As of Tray Steph's family tree, I've thought a lot about meeting long lost relatives who we let in and who we keep at arms link, Sharon Blood, isn't enough. Being in someone's life is a choice that two people have to make. We asked Eve about what it's been like finding his sisters after all this time.

Anything you want it out of us just to get the I guess, just to get to know him a little bit better.

I would like to know who my dad is. I mean, that's one of the biggest things for me, I think, out of this whole situation, but I could get the get to know the girls a little bit better'd be pretty cool.

He said, he wants to get to know his sisters a little better. But it might be that he only wants to get to know his older sisters, not the one Sandy birth and raised after giving him away. Maybe that's why when Steve went looking for Sandy's family, he wasn't totally satisfied with what he found. He's told me, still skeptical of her story, that she didn't realize she was giving him up permanently, that she worked hard to find him, and there was no doubt his biggest interest

Surprised us both.

That's next time on Hello John Doe.

He wants those answers. We're going to do everything we can and as a family to help him get those answers.

Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment in association with First and last productions from Revelation.

Our executive producers.

Are Morgan Freeman and James Younger from first to last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing partner is neo On Home Media. It was written and produced by Kate Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis. She is also neil On Home Media's executive editor. Our executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay. Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and mixing by Scott Servell. Themon original music composed by Jesse Pearlstein.

I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about name us at nam us dot com.

The number for the National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one eight hundred. The loss that's one eight hundred, eight four three five six seven eight. The National Sexual assauld hotline from the Rate Abuse and Incest National Network is one eight hundred sixty five six four six seven three. Okay, guys, this is the end of the show. If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if you did like it, you make sure that your rate and review the show. It helps more people