At 16, Roxie is charmed when she meets Gigada Pearson Sr. and rushes into a marriage that would drag her into hell. He manipulates, abuses and threatens her nearly every day. After 30 years, Roxie finally leaves, but not before she pays a terrible price.
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00:00even though I don't think about it on a daily basis I do have nightmares that he's out and
00:12still chasing me normally I wake up because I'm screaming yeah and that's what I'm talking about
00:29when I say disfigured that is not the man that I married or knew he was too perverted into evil
00:41I believe that this picture shows the true Jugada Pearson senior evil cold vicious and lifeless no soul
00:59when I look at this picture it makes me wonder how much fear that Erica endured before you know she
01:28passed I don't think I properly grieved there are some cries some shouts some hollering I think all of
01:41that is still down deep inside of me I won't allow myself to let out what I know is still in me that
01:49needs to come out it's because I feel like it might be that button that's gonna push me over
01:53so
01:55so
02:30I was raised by both parents, and there was nine children.
02:44There was six girls and three boys.
02:47I grew up in a Christian home where my mom made sure we went to church, Sunday school,
02:54all those things.
02:55I met Jagata in the summer going into my senior year.
03:01He was the best boyfriend any young lady would want, and I think that he did love me.
03:11And so when he proposed to me and asked me to marry him, you know, I said yes.
03:15But little did I know that was when I led the devil into my life.
03:22This is actually a picture of our wedding reception.
03:52My mom gave it to us.
03:55She couldn't afford anything big, so she just gathered a few family and friends around the dining room table.
04:00I was pretty excited that day.
04:05I really thought that this was the beginning of something great.
04:09I thought this was the beginning of what every young teenage girl dreamed of, you know,
04:15a home with a white picket fence and having a couple kids riding around the yard on bicycles.
04:23And that was my dream.
04:25That was my dream for us.
04:28But his family did not come to the wedding.
04:30Neither did they come to the reception.
04:34Jagata showed up by himself.
04:36I didn't want to make him feel bad, so I didn't question him as far as why.
04:40When I look at it now, that should have been a sign, but I guess we just overlooked it.
04:51I really wish that I could just take this time back
04:55and all the way up to the day that he proposed where I could have had an opportunity to say no.
05:01And my life as well as my children's life would be very different.
05:04Once we moved in with Jagata's grandmother, I realized that she didn't say much.
05:22She treated me okay, she just didn't talk to me a lot.
05:26Then one morning, after Jagata had left to go to work,
05:33his grandmother came in the kitchen where I was while I was cleaning dishes.
05:38And I noticed that she looked out the window to make sure that he was gone.
05:43She turned around, and these were her words.
05:47She said, don't start nothing with him that you can't finish.
05:51And I'm like, what is she saying?
05:56But she was a woman of little words.
06:00And she turned around, and she walked out the kitchen like she had never said anything to me.
06:09When his grandmother warned me that day,
06:12it literally stirred and spooked my spirit.
06:16And I felt like that she knew him better than I did.
06:21I believe they wanted to warn me because they probably had seen previous incident,
06:28and it probably was pretty bad.
06:29I didn't know anything.
06:31I was just young and dumb.
06:32She gave his reaction when I told him I was pregnant was excitement.
06:53He was very excited about having a child.
06:56Shortly after that, I would say maybe about another month and a half,
07:01I was sitting in his grandmother's house.
07:07Every day he gets home, he get out the car, he give me a smack on the lips.
07:14How was your day?
07:16Let me in.
07:16But this particular day, he said, come on, let's go in the house.
07:20And I said, what's wrong?
07:23There was an old man who used to cut grass across the street.
07:26He accused me of looking across the street at this old man as if I was interested in him or something.
07:33What are you really doing when I'm not here?
07:36Hmm?
07:37Chagata, I don't know what you're talking about.
07:39He said, you were waiting for me to come home, but you watching that man when he cutting grass and everything.
07:43And I was like, Chagata, that's not true.
07:46That's not true.
07:48He grabbed my hair and yanked it as hard as he could.
07:52The next thing I knew, I was on the floor and he's standing over me, screaming at me.
07:58I expect my wife to be facing you.
08:01You understand?
08:01I looked up and I saw his eyes.
08:03They were staring at his eyes, but they looked like they didn't have a care.
08:08It was just a blind look.
08:11It was as if, who are you?
08:16Suddenly, he just snapped out of it, walked away as if nothing had never happened.
08:25I didn't share with anybody, of course.
08:27And after that, I just, you know, I was like, he, he went from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.
08:35I mean, what made him act like this?
08:37And then the next day, it made me understand what his grandmother said even more clearer,
08:41because the next day, when I questioned him about it, he didn't want to talk about it.
08:46And he acted like it just did not happen.
08:48And I had never experienced anything like that in my life.
08:51So here, here I was that day, I was a changed person.
08:58This was not the man that I married.
09:06Generational abuse is real.
09:10The children of one generation watches the parents or the grandparents being abused,
09:16and they think that that's just the way it is.
09:20I feel like that's what happened to me.
09:24My grandmother and my mother, they were so silent about it.
09:28They never did anything about it besides, you know, take pills.
09:31I definitely wasn't going to tell nobody that my husband had hit me or anything like that.
09:38I might have did something wrong.
09:40It must have been me.
09:41All these thoughts start coming to your head to make you rationalize yourself that it wasn't his fault.
09:48When our son was born, you know, I thought that was going to end all of the abuse.
10:06I really did.
10:08He was happy he had a son, and he was a good father.
10:12One day, I was looking at him playing with our son, and I thought to myself,
10:16you know, maybe this is what it took for him to change.
10:21But little did I know that it would get worse.
10:27I recall one day, I was in the kitchen, and I was preparing a meal.
10:33My son was in my arms, and he was crying.
10:37And Jagata was upstairs sleeping, and so he hollered down a couple times for the baby to be quiet.
10:44I was trying my best to quiet the baby.
10:48The baby just kept crying.
10:49Keep it down, damn it!
10:51I'm working on it.
10:53And I spoke back like I'm trying my best.
10:56Keep it down!
10:57But whatever it was, it was enough to set him off, which don't take a lot to set him off.
11:04He came down the stairs.
11:07And I'm holding the child, and he just go off and swing and hit me.
11:16Not realizing that, you know, I could have ducked and he would hit the child or anything like that.
11:22I immediately laid the child on the couch, because I didn't want him to harm my baby.
11:27We began to fight.
11:29I was hitting him back.
11:31The next thing I know, there was a knock at the door.
11:41It was my neighbor.
11:46Jagata being a coward, he would go immediately up the stairs so he wouldn't have to look at her.
11:51I think that was her way of stopping what was going on.
11:59I truly thank God for that type of neighbor we had.
12:02She saved my life.
12:04She don't want to see me hurt or the baby hurt or things like that.
12:09If I could turn back the time, I would have been left just for my son's sake.
12:16Because he saw too much, and I believe it affected him a lot from that day forward.
12:35Jagata was a licensed minister.
12:38He was an ordained elder.
12:40And he was studying because he said God had called him to pastor.
12:43So at church, Jagata portrayed to be this man of faith.
12:49But at home, he was a different person.
12:54Jagata had a big sexual appetite, and it consumed him.
13:00They were never asked that a preacher, a man of God, would ask his wife to do.
13:08It was no longer about intimacy.
13:14It was all about him and him tormenting me in a different way.
13:20And so if I didn't have sex with him, it was going to be hours and hours of him falsely accusing me of having sex with somebody else.
13:28But it was anything to get under my skin.
13:35Anything.
13:38He intimidated me and forced me into sexual acts that I did not want to participate in.
13:45The level of sexual abuse that I endured, I call it rape.
13:49Because I endured, if I can say it without saying it in a bad way, I lived in hell within them walls.
14:02No matter what happened the day before, when I woke up, I tried to forget about it and start afresh.
14:18I remember one day, Jagata got upset about something, and it became an argument.
14:27Nobody's telling me what to do on my own.
14:29I don't have to be spoken to like this.
14:31And instead of me sitting there, standing in the argument with him when I know it wasn't going to do any good, you know, I decided to walk away.
14:39But before I could walk away, he went in the kitchen drawer, and he grabbed a knife.
14:45And when he grabbed a knife, you know, the fear just went to another level.
14:51Felt like that my whole head was going to cave in, and I was just going to smother and die right there.
14:58He would give me a stare, an evil stare.
15:03And he would be like, I wish you were just dead.
15:09And so I ran out the door, and I ran next door to a friend of mine's house.
15:16And I told her, Jagata had put a knife on me.
15:18She asked me, did I want her to call the police?
15:20And I told her, I said, no, let me just call my mama.
15:22My sister Erica and my mother came to my house to get me.
15:37My mother pushed past him and went into the house.
15:40Then he threw her on the floor and started threatening her.
15:44Don't you move, both of you.
15:46Erica said that he was standing over my mom with a knife, demanding that if she don't leave, he was going to kill her.
15:51Now, where is she? Tell me.
15:53Jagata.
15:54Erica said that she just started screaming and hollering.
15:57And a man who lived in the neighborhood heard my sister screaming and hollering.
16:02And so he came over to see what was going on.
16:04And he said, let her up.
16:06Son, you don't want to do this.
16:15Jagata let my mom up.
16:17And then that's when her and Erica got out of there.
16:21As angry as he was, he probably would have stabbed my mom.
16:34After all of that, she still didn't tell me to leave him.
16:38She just pretty much just forgave him and we moved on.
16:41Just be a good wife no matter what you say or do.
16:51I used to pray every day.
16:53I'd say, Lord, don't let me die by the hands of this man.
16:58I knew that he wanted to kill me.
17:01I just didn't know when and I just didn't know how to get out.
17:05Oh, wow.
17:17I hate looking at this picture.
17:18When I see this picture, all I see is evil.
17:27The look that he gave me when I snapped this picture.
17:31He looked at me as if, if you don't walk away right now, you're going to regret it.
17:41I probably had my cell phone in my hand and just snapped the picture because I was always trying to make him happy.
17:52But nothing that I did or could do could make him happy.
17:58And so, you know, you see it for yourself when he's getting ready for bed and he's looking like this.
18:06It probably was a hard night for me.
18:09I believe that Jagata was living a fantasy life, tormenting me.
18:16I believe about excitement in his life.
18:18You know, to see me always afraid, to see me always on edge, to see me always trying to appease him.
18:25I feel that he knew that I was really afraid of him because he lived to make me miserable.
18:45I recall one night, Jagata was reading and studying his Bible.
18:50And when he studied, he didn't just study with a Bible.
18:52He studied with other books and dictionaries and things like that.
18:57I never could understand how somebody so evil could even, you know, even look at the Bible.
19:02And so I began to tell him that what he was doing was dangerous and that God was going to deal with him.
19:12You're going to have to answer for your actions, Jagata.
19:15One thing the Bible said, the Bible said that a husband's supposed to love his wife like Christ loved the church.
19:24I said, but you act like you hate me.
19:28And I think something hit him.
19:30I can't say what it was.
19:31And so he laid there for a minute.
19:35He just got up, went and got him a box and put all his books and Bibles and stuff in it and put it in the shed.
19:43I asked him why.
19:45He told me he just didn't want to have anything to do with the Bible anymore.
19:48But I think that he did it because he knew he was losing this battle between evil and good.
19:56And I think that night, evil won.
19:59Once he turned his back on God, I knew things was going to get worse for me.
20:21One night, he called my mother house.
20:25I didn't want to talk to him, but I did.
20:27What do you want?
20:31When he called, he sounded as if he was remorseful.
20:36And he was just begging for us to come back and how much he loved us and he's not going to do it again.
20:44Once I told him I didn't want to come back, I wanted to stay away, he began to tell me goodbye and he loved us.
20:51And the words he was saying and how he was saying it, I knew that he was talking about death.
20:57Why would you say that?
21:03And so I began to tell him, don't talk like that.
21:06Don't say that.
21:06What's wrong with you?
21:08He said, you know, if I can't have you, I'd just rather, you know, I'd just rather die.
21:13And so I began to tell him I'm on my way home.
21:15Soon as I opened the front door, I could smell the gas in the apartment.
21:26Jagata?
21:27He was actually sitting on the couch like his head back.
21:30And then I'm like, Jagata, are you okay?
21:32I'm okay, I'm okay.
21:34And then he stands up and, you know, of course I go to hug him.
21:37I'm like, don't do that no more.
21:39So when I looked up, I saw the curtain move.
21:47And when I did, I pulled him back and the window was wide open.
21:52He was not trying to kill himself.
21:54The gas was going right out the window.
22:00And he looked at me as if it got you back, didn't it?
22:04And he went up the stairs, in the conversation, like it had never happened.
22:15And I feel like to this day that that's how much control he knew he had over me.
22:21He knew all he had to do was some simple, stupid stuff.
22:26Because I didn't want to see him dead, even though he was trying to kill me.
22:34I remember one day I had put our son on the school bus.
22:50And at that time, we had a baby girl.
22:53After I came back from putting him on the bus, Jagata and our daughter were sitting on the couch.
22:58And so I sat down on the couch with him, and I began to ask him what was wrong.
23:05And he just began to tell me that he was tired of living, and he didn't see nothing worth living.
23:11I got scared that he was going to try to do a murder-suicide or something like that.
23:17And so I just openly said, Jagata, I hope you ain't got no gun in this house.
23:26You promised me that we was not going to have no gun in the house.
23:29So with me constantly talking, and him not really saying I don't have one, it led me to know he had a gun.
23:37Jagata, tell me where the gun is.
23:39The more the time was passing, the more anxious I was becoming.
23:46So I convinced him to please show me the gun.
23:53I didn't let him know I was upset with him or anything, because I didn't want it to go, you know, in the opposite direction.
24:00All I thought about was, you know, he's going to kill me.
24:05And so I lived for many, many years believing that I was going to die by his hands.
24:19When I saw the gun, I began to just convince him that I don't want him to hurt me or hurt himself or anything.
24:28He told me that he's not finna do anything to me.
24:32He said, I'm not going to go to prison for you.
24:34You ain't worth me going to prison for.
24:36He used to give me the look.
24:38You just worthless.
24:40I don't even know how I deal with you.
24:43That's the mindset.
24:44That's the evil, demonic mind to make you think you're greater than somebody else.
24:50Eventually, he gave me the gun.
24:52I just believe that if I had not talked him out that gun, our son probably would have came home that day from school.
25:03And his sister probably been there crying over two dead bodies.
25:06I do believe that.
25:07Jigata Paranoil was getting worse and worse because he had figured out that I was talking to other people about our relationship.
25:23By this time, my parents and my siblings, too, they all knew, you know, that Jigata was abusive to me.
25:28I assumed that he knew that I was telling other people how bad things were at home.
25:35There was even a couple of times I caught him spying.
25:39I recall one day where I had just gotten home and my aunt, she had called me.
25:47Hello?
25:48And while we talking, the phone seemed like it was staticky.
25:52But then, all of a sudden, it got to where it was echoing.
25:58Do you hear that?
25:59Do you hear that?
26:01Seemed like I hear somebody talking.
26:04Do you hear that?
26:05Do you hear that?
26:05Do you hear that?
26:06I said, just keep talking so I can see where it's coming from.
26:11Hello?
26:11Hello?
26:12As I went to where the song was, it seemed like it's coming from up under the house.
26:17Hello?
26:18Hello?
26:18When I got under there and I saw the system set up, I was afraid because I'm like, what is this?
26:38It was one of those box tape recorders that you can't even find them all.
26:41And it had some wires going to a phone, like a house phone.
26:48Then those wires was going up through the house.
26:52And I told her, I said, you ain't going to believe this.
26:55I said, but it's a recorder, a phone, and everything up under here.
26:59I believe he was spying to try to find some type of way that I was not faithful to him.
27:06And I believe it was a plot for murder.
27:11Now I got a reason to murder her.
27:18It appears to me that every abusive situation that I was placed in, it made me only think
27:27about, what could he do next?
27:30And I knew that if I had her left, he was going to stop me to death.
27:33This is Erica and Steve.
27:50Mm-hmm.
27:52As nice and humble and sweet as Erica was, Steve had her beat by 100%.
27:59Steve was one of the nicest guys ever.
28:05He was the best husband Erica could have ever dreamed of having.
28:11Erica, in the last six months of my marriage, she called me and asked me would I help her.
28:19You know, she wanted to study her Bible, and so we became really tight.
28:23I just always felt like that there was a special connection between me and Erica.
28:27And we had been, you know, been together for like six months, almost every day.
28:32Jigato knew how close we was.
28:35So looking at this picture, I wish that we would not have gotten that tight.
28:42Because then Jigato wouldn't have never went to their house, never went to their house looking
28:48for me if me and her had not been together for about the last six months.
28:52I remember one night, so I was in another room saying my prayers for the night, and as
29:08I walked into the bedroom, Jigato was awake, and I could sense that it was going to be one
29:15of those nights.
29:17He wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do, you know, something that he knew
29:22I didn't want to do.
29:24And, you know, it wasn't even about the distastefulness of it.
29:27It's the way he demanded it.
29:29It's the way he said it.
29:31You know, you're going to do it or else.
29:34And then I'm looking in his eyes, and now the black is like turning like red.
29:40And I'm like, oh my gosh, this man is possessed.
29:45And I begged him not to do it, but he just didn't care.
29:49And when he was finished, he laid over and he went to sleep.
29:57And I told the Lord, I said, Lord, if you let me live to see in the morning, I'm out of
30:04here, and I'm not coming back.
30:06When I was leaving, I heard this voice say, when you leave this time, cut off all communication,
30:29because if you don't, it's going to be your last time.
30:32I didn't tell my mama.
30:33I didn't tell none of my siblings or nobody where I was.
30:37I was in hiding for about 30 days.
30:40No communication from me.
30:41It ain't no telling what was going through his mind.
30:44But I knew the educator would hunt me down and kill me.
30:47There was no doubt about it.
30:49And I remember that I was so afraid, his whole purpose was about finding me.
30:57And so he started pretty much stalking my family.
31:01I remember about a week after, he went to my sister's house looking for me.
31:06I got a phone call from my brother, who was a police officer in Mobile.
31:12He told me there was a fire at my sister's home, and I needed to get home.
31:18My brother tells us that Erica and Steve, they didn't make it.
31:25To hear that Erica and Steve was dead, it was almost like unreal.
31:32I felt like that my best friend was gone.
31:34And I felt like that I was no longer in my body.
31:41I felt like I had an out-of-body experience.
31:44And I felt like this can't be true, this is not true.
31:52So we had this emotion, this feeling where everybody was just hugging on each other and crying.
31:57And it was just a horrible scene, you know.
32:00About an hour later, my brother came out and told us more bad news.
32:05That they believed somebody had broken the house.
32:08And then he told me, he said they were shot and stabbed.
32:12I could feel myself like I was there, but it was like I wasn't there.
32:21I just didn't feel like I was me.
32:23I feel like a void.
32:27Something had been torn out of me.
32:29When I woke up the next morning, I still felt empty.
32:41I still felt void.
32:43I felt like somebody had just ripped my insides out.
32:48I was so in shock until I couldn't really cry, but I can feel the pain.
32:57My heart was just aching.
32:59I feel sad.
33:01I feel hurt.
33:03Not only do I hurt for them, I hurt for her children and her grandchildren.
33:08You know, it was early, probably 6 o'clock, and I almost wishing that it was a dream.
33:15You know, you're wishing that you don't slip this off.
33:18You wake up and it's still real.
33:20That Sunday, my phone rung.
33:35It was my brother.
33:37He said, I think Jagata had something to do with Eric and Steve's murder.
33:40And when he said that, I almost fell on my face.
33:44I almost fell off my chair on my face.
33:46And I was like, oh, my gosh, I mean, I didn't have that idea.
33:52An evil as Jagata was, I never thought that he would be the one that killed Eric and Steve.
33:58Why?
33:59There's no purpose to that.
34:01And the first thing that I remembered was the very first day I left him, I was at Erica's house.
34:09And the police came and escorted me into hiding.
34:13And so I think that he chose Eric and Steve because he figured that they knew where I was.
34:23He was searching for me and looking for me because that was the last place he saw me.
34:29And he went to one of my sister's home that night.
34:32And pretty much he was begging her to tell what I was or to call me for him.
34:38And her husband ended up telling him, say, you know, she says she's not coming back.
34:44He just became furious.
34:46Authorities say Pearson murdered Erica and Steve Langford Friday, then set their home on fire.
35:02Did you kill Erica and Steven?
35:05Did you?
35:06No, I'm asking, did you?
35:07No, I'm asking you, did you?
35:09Then why, why, why did they have you in cuffs right now?
35:11I'm asking them.
35:12So are you saying you didn't do this?
35:14That's right.
35:17What gets me on there is it shows just how cocky he is and how smart, mouth, and nasty attitude.
35:27And that's what I had to deal with for 30 years.
35:31That throws it all back at you.
35:32Never going to fault himself or blame himself.
35:35He didn't do anything.
35:37And that's how he always was.
35:38I believe he did it to hurt me and so that I can live in, you know, in pain the rest of my life.
35:49And I think he did it because he lost the control that he wanted to have over them to tell him where I was.
35:57And Jagayla would get very angry about anything that he could not control.
36:03Once Jagayla entered the house, Erica was in the kitchen and Steve was in the bed.
36:20And when he opened the door, he immediately shot her three times in her upper torso.
36:30Steve ran out the bedroom to see what was going on.
36:34And there he confronted Jagayla with the gun and Jagayla ended up getting the best of him and shot him in his left temple.
36:42Jagayla grabbed the biggest of the butcher knife and while my sister was crawling on the floor, he stabbed her four times in her back.
36:51And they said that's what killed her.
36:53And then he set the piles of clothes on fire, which cost the house to catch a fire.
37:06They never found the gun, but they found a shotgun in the truck.
37:14And along with the shotgun was two long bullets.
37:18So I had talked to the lieutenant and he told me that I believe that if he had gotten a hold to you,
37:28that he was going to use those bullets, one for you and one for him.
37:35And I realized that I probably was going to be Jagayla's next victim.
37:48Now, why do I feel ashamed, but I do?
38:09Why?
38:10I don't know.
38:12You feel ashamed because I don't know.
38:18I just feel ashamed now that I've told my whole story and people are always opinionated.
38:29I had to cut off a lot of people.
38:31And, um, I think just knowing that my situation, my own personal situation,
38:46caused my sister and her husband to lose their lives.
38:50I don't know if the pictures did it or that last video did it, but it's just like something
39:00came over on me, you know.
39:03I know that it's not my fault.
39:08It's Jagayla's fault.
39:10It was never anything wrong with me.
39:12But it took me many years of torment, fear, walking on eggshells, paranoid, depressed.
39:22It took many years of that for me to realize it was never anything wrong with me.
39:26It was always you.
39:36I remember the week approaching the funeral.
39:41It was something that, if I could have escaped a tendon, I would.
39:49I felt for a long time that I should have been the one that should have been in that castle.
39:54I didn't know if I was going to come out alive or not, but once I came out alive, I made a promise.
40:05One of my vows was, um, I told Erica I would not let her name go down in vain.
40:11In 2015, I started an organization.
40:15Our motto is, not one more domestic violence victim.
40:19When someone wants to get out of a bad situation, we're their hands and their feet.
40:26We help them to get to where they need to go.
40:29For a long time, I thought about, you know, my sister died for me, you know.
40:34And it was, it was so, whew, it was so hard to, to deal with the fact that
40:41what was meant for you, somebody else, had to get it.
40:51And so for a long time, I, I lived under so much guilt.
41:00But the good Lord, he, he delivered me from the, from the guilt and the shame.
41:11Living with my scars is hard because you wouldn't want to think somebody that you considered
41:19your best friend could do something like that.
41:22I opened my eyes and there was fire all over the room, everywhere.
41:28I thought, okay, I'm gonna die in here.