My name is Kristy, and I am much like anyone else, I have had a very difficult past. July first, it got even harder. Now I know I’m not the best writer, but this is my story.
It was Seven in the morning, and being a teenager, I was still asleep. Well I was, until my grandmother came into my room and woke me with horrible news I never thought I’d live to hear. She looked at me and said “Kristy, I have some bad news… Dig’s dead.” I just stared at her. Thoughts crossed my mind, did he get sick? My mother would have called. You see, I was out of town visiting my home in Nevada, 3,000 miles away from them. Surely she would’ve told me. Finally my Grandmother continued. “He was killed last night.”
So many different emotions passed before me; Anger, Hate, Confusion, Sadness, but most of all, Denial. then, After five minutes of sitting in disbelief, I began to cry. I tried calling my mom, but she didn’t answer. My grandmother informed me that she wasn’t allowed to make phone calls, because she was now under interrogation. The whole day was filled with more tears than I ever thought my body could produce, and the most frantic and rushed packing I’ve ever done. I flew home that night and my mom told me what had happened. He was stabbed to death in our own home.
My mom said that she had had quite a bit to drink and my step dad, Dig, had been drinking to. He had gotten rough with her, and she left and went to bed. She then said that she was woken at 2:30 in the morning by Digs friend asking her “where’s your Bleach?” Still waking up, she told him where it was and only then realized how odd the question was. She got out of bed and into her wheel chair, and as she was coming down the hallway she heard Dig cry out, “Please, Please!” Zac, The man that had asked for the bleached stopped her in the hallway and said, “You don’t want to go out there.”
At this point my mom was in a panic. She said “Wait, what do you mean I don’t want to go out there?”
“I think I killed him.”
“Who??”
“Dig!”
She told him to move, and as she peeked around the corner, there in the kitchen was Dig, lying face down in his own blood. Laying in front of the kitchen opening was a sprawled out comforter and our trash can with a pair of bloody latex gloves lying on top. The covering for our couch had been ripped off and laid out, there were bloody footprints leading all over the house. In the kitchen blood covered the counters the walls, and even the ceiling.
Zac told my mom what he claime happened. He said he confronted Dig about how he treated her and he took it the wrong way and came at him with a knife and a rock. He claimed he acted in self defense, took the knife from him, and stabbed him. He never mentioned that he had another friend, Tony there. He never could explain where the rock was, or why there were three knives in the crime scene, and he most definatly couldn’t explain why, if it was self defense, had he attempted to clean up. There were too many holes in his story. Right in the other room, in earshot of everything, my seven year old brother was sleeping. Zac walked into the kitchen and moved Digs body like it was nothing, so he could put the trash can back. Realizing that he could never clean it all up himself, Zac began to panic, asking what they should do. Dig was clearly dead. Still trying to wrap her head around everything, they went outside and smoked a cigarette. At this point, my mom was in self preservation mode, just trying to save her life. Zac finally told her that if they were going to do this the legal way, they needed to call 911. He picked up the phone, and instead of calling the police, he called his girlfriend, and she came from next door. She was the one that called the cops. Zac waited outside on the curb to be arrested.
When I arrived back in Arizona to my mom, reality sunk in. This was real. This was happening. Dig was dead. I would never see him again. We couldn’t stay at the house, so we stayed at a nearby hotel. But I had to go inside to retrieve some necessities, the crime scene wasn’t cleaned up. I would say it was like walking into a horror movie, but that was an understatement. There was so much blood. The body had been removed, but the blood hadn’t. It was 10:00. there was a huge puddle of blood in the kitchen, It still hadn’t dried. Right there I crumbled to my knees. The senselessness of it all tore me apart. I must have stared at it for a half hour trying to put it all together. But still, it made no sense.
From the month that has past so much has happened. We ended up leaving the hotel and staying at an abuse shelter for a week. I had to share a bed with my brother, and by the time we left, we were sleeping on the floor. My mom couldn’t deal with that, so we ended up going back to the house, the blood had since been cleaned, but the carpet was torn up. We begged our landlord to give us a transfer to a different unit, the made false promises. By the end of the month, our options were to stay in the unit, or break our lease, either way we’d have to pay over $3,000 in damages to the unit. We gave notice, found another place to live and moved.
Every day its a challenge to deal with what happened. He was killed in his own home, by his own “friends”. All that happened that night, my brother heard everything, and now he had nightmares, and constant breakdowns. That is what kills me the most about it.
The police have both Zac and Tony in custody, Zachary merriman is being held on 2nd degree murder and tampering with evidence. He has a $500,000 bail. Tony is also being held on 2nd degree murder, burgalary, two charged of disorderly conduct towards an official, and one charge of assault on an officer. They are still awaiting trial
kristeen