Beyond the Monsters

Dawn Simmons and her daughter Katie DeRouen share the unimaginable story of losing Dawn's three children, Lindy, Christopher, and Kamryn, in a head-on crash caused by a drunk driver going the wrong way on the interstate just days before Christmas. Dawn survived the collision with life-threatening injuries, while Lindy, Christopher, and Kamryn were killed, forever changing the lives of everyone who loved them. Together, they recount...

Chloe spent years carrying the trauma of a SA she never spoke about, burying the experience for nearly five years before PTSD, flashbacks, and overwhelming anxiety forced her to confront what happened. As she worked through therapy, marriage struggles, and the lasting impact of trauma, she found herself raising her husband’s young niece, Olivia, after the child was removed from her biological parents' care. What began as a te...

JaHana Holloway spent much of her life searching for love while carrying deep wounds from childhood trauma, abandonment, SA, and years of believing her worth depended on what she could give to other people. Those experiences shaped the relationships she chose and eventually led her into a marriage marked by infidelity, manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, and the devastating reality of narcissistic abuse. She shares how grow...

Attorney JoDee Neil spent years prosecuting crimes against children while carrying the truth about what she had survived herself. After hearing thousands of outcries from survivors throughout her career, she finally shared her own story and began writing Outcry Witness, a book focused on trauma, sexual violence, and the process of becoming “unfrozen” after years of silence. She opens up about working child abuse cases, ...

Summer grew up in a severe hoarder home (level 5) where rooms became inaccessible, utilities stopped working, and over 30 animals lived in extreme neglect inside the house. Behind the scenes, she was dealing with chronic bullying, isolation, domestic violence, emotional abuse, and the impossible pressure of protecting her family while trying to survive her own childhood. She opens up about what it was really like going to scho...

In this follow-up to episode 18, Sarah is joined by her stepdaughter Avery more than 20 years after Avery’s mother was murdered when she was just five months old. After spending most of their lives carrying the weight of the case, they received the call that the execution date had finally been set for the man responsible. Sarah and Avery share what it was like preparing for the execution, traveling to Texas together, and walk...

Darlene Lekowski was sexually abused by two of her older brothers beginning at just 7 years old, carrying the trauma in silence for more than five decades while building a life that looked perfect from the outside. She shares the long-term reality of sibling sexual abuse, PTSD, perfectionism, fear of abandonment, and what happens when trauma is buried instead of healed. After finally confronting one of her brothers, he responded by...

Hope’s estranged husband murdered their two young children in an act of filicide after being granted unsupervised custody, despite clear warning signs of instability, prior abuse, and escalating mental health concerns. Just before their deaths, he made suicidal and homicidal statements, was hospitalized, and still walked out of court with 50/50 custody. Hope’s story exposes the reality of how quickly systems can fail, h...

Jess Patz was 18 when she entered an abusive relationship that quickly escalated from love bombing into domestic violence, coercive control, and manipulation. The first physical assault happened during her first pregnancy, followed by years of emotional abuse, gaslighting, sexual assault, and financial control that caused her to question her own reality. She breaks down what intimate partner violence actually looks like behind clos...

Sean Tobias Ambriz joined the Army at 18 and was deployed to Afghanistan early in his military career, where he was unexpectedly assigned as a combat medic in an active war zone. With accelerated training, he was responsible for treating wounded soldiers during intense firefights, navigating Taliban ambushes, sniper fire, and life-or-death decisions in the mountains.

He describes being surrounded during combat, running toward gu...

Jori lost her fiancé to an overdose after trying to save him from a hidden addiction to pills that began before they met. Kyle came into her life on New Year’s Eve and quickly became someone she saw a future with, outgoing, magnetic, and deeply loved by everyone around him. As their relationship grew, so did the life they were building together, but behind it, he was quietly battling a pill addiction. It quickly turned into t...

Tressa was 21 years old when she attended a company party expecting a normal night with coworkers. Within minutes of taking a shot, she began to lose control of her body. She was drugged, taken out of the bar, carried to an apartment, and left alone with a man she had never met. What followed was hours of rape and violent assault that resulted in severe, permanent physical injuries and long-term medical complications that still imp...

Ember grew up surrounded by manipulation, addiction, and instability that shaped her life long before she had the ability to understand or escape it. With a father in and out of prison for organized crime and a mother struggling with severe alcoholism, she was forced into survival mode early. By her teenage years, she was already raising her younger sister while navigating emotional abuse, financial exploitation, and constant insta...

Tony was once a talented BMX athlete with a promising future before addiction took over his life in his early twenties. What followed was a rapid descent into homelessness, drug addiction, and eventually prison. But prison became the turning point that forced him to confront everything he had been running from and rebuild his life from the inside out.

After his release, Tony returned to BMX racing, competing professionally and e...

A birthday celebration with friends, music, THC, and psychedelic mushroom tea quickly turned into something terrifying. Within days, Shannon began experiencing drug-induced psychosis. Music felt like it was speaking directly to her, television shows appeared filled with hidden messages, and everyday sights like billboards and street signs started to feel like coded signals guiding her through a test she believed she had to pass. As...

At 24 years old, Martin made a decision that would change multiple families forever. After a day of heavy drinking, he got behind the wheel on New Year’s Eve and caused a fatal DUI crash that left two women dead and another man seriously injured. He was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison, day for day. What followed was not a story about excuses. It was a story about accountability, addiction, guilt, shame, and what ha...

A former tennis pro turned forensic psychic medium, Nichole Duncan, shares how a remote viewing session cracked open an entirely new reality. What began with scientific curiosity about telepathy and intuition led to verified details in missing persons cases, homicide investigations, and human trafficking work. From describing evidence later confirmed by law enforcement to navigating strict ethical boundaries around spiritual consen...

Lori was finishing a work project in her mother’s quiet home when a violent home invasion began with men kicking in the front door. Within seconds she was running upstairs toward her firearm, calculating escape routes in real time, and opening fire as armed intruders stormed the hallway. When her gun malfunctioned and one of the intruders returned fire, everything shifted in an instant. One bullet tore through her body, ruptu...

Chris spent 23 years in law enforcement, 18 of them in K9, but nothing prepared him for bonding with the dog no one else wanted. Tambo had cycled through handlers, labeled aloof and difficult, until the two recognized something familiar in each other. What followed was an explosive detection career, a devastating cancer diagnosis, emergency surgery costing over $10,000, and a prognosis of just weeks to live. Instead of accepting an...