- 6 days ago
When Eline starts dating Matthew, he seems kind and charming, but soon he reveals his dark, secret life. By the time she realizes it, Eline has a son with a man who was violent and full of rage. When she leaves him, Matthew’s fury explodes.
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00:00That is a mugshot of Matt.
00:30I don't know who that is, I don't recognize that person.
00:40He looks like he ran away from an insane asylum.
00:46It's very clear that every time he has done something violently, it has escalated.
00:53When he's released and his actions escalate, I think he has the personality traits to become
01:01a serial killer, I really do.
01:05The man above us just threw the woman over the balcony, she's laying on the ground, she's
01:30very bloody.
01:32When the ambulance got there, they were able to see a bunch of stab wounds on me.
01:41It was in my hands, my arm under my arm, the back of my head.
01:51He got my artery in my neck, my left back, and they were able to count about 40.
02:05And I'm screaming, somebody needs to call 9-1-1 because I'm dying.
02:12That's what you do.
02:21Oh, my God.
02:51I grew up in Oslo, in Norway.
02:56I think it was about my second year of high school.
03:02Everybody else was preparing to go to university, college, that kind of stuff, and I just felt
03:07like that really wasn't my path.
03:10I needed to experience what was out there.
03:14I finished high school, and about seven weeks later, I was on a plane to North Carolina.
03:21I started working as a promoter for a nightclub, and on my way out the door, Matthew was standing
03:29and opening the door for people who were entering and exiting.
03:34He worked as a bouncer, the security crew.
03:36He was tall, and he was very muscular.
03:44I felt like he was naturally funny.
03:48He was smooth with it, and it catches you by surprise.
03:51As time went on, the more we spent time together, the more it felt like it got a little bit easier
03:59to find things in common once we got to know each other more.
04:04I felt like I had found somebody that I could see myself with long-term, and I thought we clicked well.
04:14Looking back now, I feel like I was getting to know somebody who was playing a role.
04:19I was falling in love with somebody that didn't exist, pretty much.
04:23It was one of those nights that he was working at the club.
04:52And he had gotten really rough with one of the guys that was at the club having a good time.
05:01And apparently, somebody at the club started videotaping this whole scenario.
05:08And Matt got his hands on this video and decided to show it to me.
05:17Hey, take a look at this.
05:20It was almost like a, look what I did.
05:23And I just remember looking at it like horrified.
05:29Wondering, what in the world did this guy do to deserve this attack?
05:35It bothered me because of the way that he acted when he showed it to me.
05:42It was strange.
05:45Like, why are you proud of this?
05:48And he just kind of laughed off, like, oh, you weren't there.
05:53You didn't know.
05:54Like, he thought it was funny.
05:55And I was sitting there like, huh.
05:58That's not okay.
06:00This is not normal behavior.
06:01I think he used his job as a cover so he could let out his aggression.
06:08It became a way for him to do what he really wanted to do, which was exert power and control.
06:15At the time, I saw that as like he's keeping us safe, kind of, because he's removing people
06:21that shouldn't be there.
06:21I just didn't see him using that kind of force on me because, in my head, I'm like, but he loves me, so he wouldn't do that to me.
06:38I was wrong.
06:51So I parked and walked up to the house.
06:57I open up the door and just walk straight in.
07:03And immediately I met with somebody I don't recognize.
07:06Hi.
07:07Hi.
07:08I immediately thought, oh, this must be one of the roommates.
07:12And I introduced myself to her.
07:13I shook her hand.
07:14I told my name and she said hers.
07:16And I asked where Matthew is.
07:19And she said he's sleeping.
07:20I'm like, well, I know he's up.
07:22Why would you go to sleep right after you invite somebody over to your house?
07:26Strange.
07:27And so I was like, all right, I'll just go grab him.
07:32And he was like on his stomach, sleeping, snoring.
07:37And I knocked on the side of the door, like, hello?
07:41Matt.
07:44And he jumped up.
07:48I had never seen somebody get to their feet so quick in my life.
07:52He was completely surprised that I was there.
07:57He said, why are you here?
07:59What do you mean, why am I here?
08:01And the lady that just greeted me at the door comes yelling down the hallway.
08:08He is stopping her, like, restraining her from going at me.
08:14And he pushes her physically all the way back towards the living room where the front door is.
08:20I don't know what's going on.
08:23It was just a lot of screaming and yelling.
08:26Obviously, I now kind of gather, like, oh, this must be somebody that he's involved with.
08:36Apparently, she has texted me through his phone.
08:44So he never invited me over there.
08:47So all of this information is, like, piling on top of each other.
08:52I don't know what to do.
08:54I want to leave.
08:54I don't want to be there anymore.
08:56Stop!
08:56You're going to hurt our baby!
08:57And she's screaming, I'm pregnant.
09:01You're hurting me.
09:02Stop!
09:03You're hurting our baby.
09:05I don't know who this lady is.
09:07And I need him to stop hurting her.
09:11And so I take a couple of steps towards him.
09:15And I punched him in the face.
09:19I don't know why I felt like I needed to do that.
09:22I just felt like it was the right thing to do in the moment.
09:25And I regretted it right away.
09:30He lets her go.
09:31And she runs down the hallway.
09:35And he turns to me and he says, leave.
09:39Get out!
09:41If you're out of here, you're done.
09:43He says, if I ever find you here again, I'll kill you.
09:49Matt had never looked at me like that before.
09:52With pulled, evil eyes.
09:55So that was scary.
09:57And I could not get out of that house any faster.
10:02I mean, looking back, I should have probably realized what was going on.
10:06I should have seen the bigger picture.
10:08He was obviously dating multiple people.
10:12He was living a double life.
10:14After that whole mess of a situation, I just decided to end all communication with him.
10:33I deleted his number.
10:35I deleted pictures, text messages.
10:38I just didn't want anything to do with him.
10:41Because what I had seen scared me.
10:44And I really tried to avoid him as best as I could.
10:49So the next two weeks was no communication between him and I.
10:55So we met up at a deli shop for lunch.
11:12And he explained everything.
11:17He said that she was a, just somebody that he was casually seeing.
11:23And he didn't really want a relationship with this lady.
11:27But now she's pregnant.
11:29So he kind of have to deal with her is how he laid it out to me.
11:34He said that he shouldn't have reacted that way.
11:40He apologized.
11:43He said that he didn't want to hide anything anymore.
11:47And just be completely open and honest with everything.
11:55I was naive to the whole dating scene.
11:58I thought that once you date somebody, you date one person.
12:02But that's what I thought.
12:03Like something as cliché as watching the TV shows and the movies and stuff.
12:08I figured, well, that's what the dating culture is like in the U.S.
12:12I didn't know it at the time, but it's very casual.
12:17You can date multiple people.
12:21I think I was willing to give him another chance
12:25because I had also developed feelings for this man.
12:29It was a very complicated situation.
12:33I was willing to give him another chance
12:36because I didn't want him to be out of my life.
12:38I talked about this with Matt.
12:56And he kind of jokingly said, well, we could just get married.
13:03I was like, no, that's crazy.
13:06And he said, well, then you don't have to leave.
13:09And so the more we talked about it, the more I thought, well, I guess we could.
13:15I mean, we're in a relationship.
13:18We want to be together.
13:20It started making more sense.
13:23So I eventually said, all right, fine.
13:30I was really, really young.
13:32I didn't see the consequences of being married to somebody.
13:36Looking back now, I can tell that this was not a sustainable relationship.
13:41After we got married, we started living together.
13:56And he expected me to deal with house chores.
14:02He was very adamant about me wearing more modest clothes.
14:07As time went on, I felt like he was getting, like, a shorter fuse.
14:14He had less patience for little things.
14:19It was really frustrating.
14:22So everything I did, I had to go through, like, how would he react if I did this?
14:27Or what would he think if I wore this?
14:29Or how would he think if I said this or confronted him with this or that?
14:34And it became a really, like, an evil circle of those thoughts going through my head.
14:40Like, I better not do anything to set him off.
14:44I think I didn't want the embarrassment of having a marriage not work out.
14:49So I didn't tell my family anything because of that shamefulness.
14:54I didn't want to be a failure.
14:56I didn't want to be the one that had a failed marriage.
14:59Because, I mean, I chose to be married to this person.
15:04It was a shock because I didn't know how it was that possible.
15:28And so I figured, um, maybe I missed a pill somewhere.
15:35And I was not happy about it.
15:38I remember reacting like, oh, oh no.
15:43What now?
15:44The fact that we were in such a rocky place in our marriage, there was no room, really, for a child to get in the middle of everything that we were in.
15:59When I told him that I was pregnant, I called him after my appointment.
16:07Um, and he was at work.
16:10And, um, it was really odd the way he reacted.
16:14He just said, oh, I knew.
16:18Like, how did you know exactly?
16:23It was very odd.
16:26And I said, okay, what do we do now?
16:29He was like, I guess we're having a baby.
16:31Um, and then he had to go because he had to go back to work.
16:33So I hung up the phone.
16:35And that was that conversation.
16:37When he was born, I felt kind of abandoned.
16:59I felt like I was in it alone.
17:02And I had just turned 22 at this point.
17:05I was still pretty young.
17:07I was really unsure about having a child with you to begin with.
17:11And I told him, like, why can't you be the kind of parent to Eli as you are with the previous child?
17:16I need more help from you.
17:18You look like you've got it under control.
17:21And he said, well, you know, I kind of wanted you to get pregnant anyways.
17:26I already knew you were pregnant when you told me.
17:28And I said, yeah, I remember you said that on the phone.
17:31And I don't really know why.
17:32How would you have known that?
17:33Don't tell me you didn't notice.
17:35He said, you don't know that you were off the pill for, like, months?
17:39He had been messing with my birth control pills and that I was taking placebo pills instead of the actual hormone pills.
17:53And that that is how I got pregnant.
17:56And that's how he knew that I was pregnant.
18:00You honestly didn't know?
18:02And he's like, again, flipping it like I'm the idiot that didn't figure it out.
18:07And I said, are you for real?
18:10Are you messing with me?
18:11And he said, no, I wanted you to have a baby.
18:14And I just felt so betrayed.
18:20I mean, the thought of him just going through my birth control pills and being so insane to think of doing that to somebody.
18:29Looking back now, it really just makes sense why he wanted me to be pregnant.
18:37It was another way for Matt to control me.
18:40He really was in control of every aspect of my life.
18:44But what I didn't know at the time of Matt is a psychopath.
18:49And it just got worse.
18:53One night we were at home and again, we had gotten into some sort of dispute over something that he had found on my phone in one of my conversations with one of my friends in my mom group.
19:21And obviously, things hadn't really gotten a whole lot better at this point.
19:26And he was really upset about the fact that I had talked to my friend about our issues in our marriage.
19:37But he was so angry.
19:42And we're in the room.
19:44And Eli's in the room with us.
19:47I need to be allowed to have a friend.
19:48Why are you telling people that I'm a musician?
19:51And the baby's awake.
19:53And he wants to be picked up.
19:57And Matt's not allowing me to go pick my child up.
20:02Because we're having this very angry conversation.
20:07And he picks my child up.
20:14And in the same breath, he comes over towards me.
20:18And he chokes me out while he's still holding my child.
20:37And, uh, I black out.
20:46And I don't know how long I'm out for.
20:57But I wake up to him breathing into my mouth.
21:06Like, trying to give me CPR.
21:08And my child is screaming.
21:17He's crying.
21:18He wants his mom.
21:19And I can't give to him.
21:20And, um, my neck is sore.
21:25Everything hurts.
21:28And, um, I'm so shocked at the whole situation.
21:34Um, that I don't really know what to do with myself.
21:41And, um, he just kind of, um, he hands me my child.
21:51And he walks out to the freezer and gets me ice and just throws it in my lap and says,
22:04here you go.
22:09And then walks out of the room and starts playing video games.
22:17Like, what the hell?
22:19That's insane.
22:21Who does that?
22:25And that's when I realize I'm like, oh, gosh, I'm in trouble.
22:44This is a family photo of me and Matt.
22:49And baby Eli was just taken right after we had celebrated his first birthday.
22:59I think about two months after the choking incident.
23:03It's weird looking back on that.
23:05I can see how fake my smile is.
23:07We were not doing good in this photo.
23:12And I really didn't want to do this photo shoot.
23:16But he insisted.
23:16But he insisted.
23:18I think I'm just in survival mode here.
23:20When you have a little person who's completely dependent on you, you kind of put their needs
23:26ahead of anybody else's.
23:27He came first no matter what.
23:30He knew exactly how to use our child as a pawn in order to get me to do things.
23:39He was like, well, you know, nobody's forcing you to stay.
23:50You can just leave.
23:51But you're not taking Eli with you.
23:53He's staying.
23:55You can just go.
23:56But you're not taking my son.
23:58That's what he would say to me.
23:59And I'm not leaving Eli with a psychopath.
24:02It's not happening.
24:03I mean, at this point, I'm still doing everything on my own.
24:06I don't have family around.
24:09I'm not an American citizen.
24:11Keeping everything outside of court, I thought, was in my son's best interest.
24:17So I stayed.
24:28One evening, I put Eli to bed.
24:31I went to bed.
24:32And I think I wake up around 3, 4 a.m.
24:39And I'm trying to find my phone, because I remember I brought my phone in the room with
24:44me and put it under my pillow.
24:48And now it's not there anymore.
24:51And I just, you know, you have that instant feeling of like, ugh, it's not in your stomach.
25:00And I step into the living room.
25:01And he's sitting in his office chair.
25:12And I tell him, hey, do you have my phone?
25:15And he goes, yeah, it's right here.
25:18Like, no, completely monotone.
25:21No, it wasn't angry or anything at this point.
25:26But that's the thing with him, is he will get eerie calm before he reacts quickly.
25:37You just don't see it coming.
25:40And he grabs my phone in front of me.
25:45And he goes into my phone, opens it up, and pulls up the conversation.
25:50He must have gone into my social media and opened up the message conversation with my
26:00friend's friend, and confronted me with it.
26:04And he was holding the phone and showing me.
26:07He said, what the is this?
26:10And I could tell, like, his hand is shaking.
26:14And the next thing that comes is a punch to the side of my face.
26:20It's quite hard.
26:24And I fall over on the couch, and he's punching me in the back.
26:28And all I can do is really cover my head as best as I can.
26:35I'm scared.
26:37I just want him to stop.
26:40And he stops.
26:46And he says, get your ass up.
26:48Go clean yourself up.
26:50And I'm shaking uncontrollably at this point.
26:55And I'm walking into the bathroom.
26:59And everything hurt.
27:00My face hurt.
27:02Um, and I had broken ribs.
27:08He had broken my nose.
27:09And then to add insult to injury, he pushed me down again so that I fall into the bathtub.
27:20It was just his last little dig at me.
27:25I felt like I was just worthless to him.
27:28Like, he doesn't see me as a human being at this point.
27:31He kept me on house arrest for about two weeks until the swelling had gone down.
27:49I remember my friends couldn't contact me for a while because he had shut my phone off.
27:56And once I finally got it back after a couple of days, he did warn me about not telling anybody.
28:01He acted like I deserved it, like I was the one that provoked the incident because of disrespecting him.
28:10And his reputation is what he told me.
28:15He did imply that if I ever did something like that again, I'm asking for much worse.
28:21And that scared me.
28:22I think at this point, I'm thinking I need to do whatever I can to protect me and my son in this situation.
28:32Now I can see the pattern of like, this is just not going to work.
28:35It's January 6th, 2021.
28:54And I'm in the kitchen trying to prepare food for my son when I heard a loud bang at my door.
29:01And in the next second, my estranged husband is standing in front of me.
29:10Eli screams.
29:12We didn't know what was happening.
29:15And I didn't recognize him.
29:18I mean, I knew who it was, but I didn't recognize his eyes anymore.
29:21He looked like he had escaped from like an insane asylum.
29:25And then all of a sudden,
29:27he is beating me to a pulp on the ground.
29:34He is attacking me with a pocket knife.
29:40And repeatedly stabbing me in my arm, my neck, in front of my son.
29:47My three-year-old son is standing in the kitchen watching his dad stab his mom over and over and over while he's screaming for help.
30:01And you're in such a shock.
30:05You can't even feel any pain.
30:06I don't remember being in pain at all.
30:07I just thought he was beating me up.
30:11I didn't know that I was bleeding.
30:14And he goes over to my son and picks him up.
30:17And he's leaving out the door.
30:21I just remember thinking I got to go and get my son.
30:25He can't leave with my son.
30:27I just knew I needed to go after him.
30:29I needed to put myself as the target instead of Eli.
30:36I get on my feet.
30:38And I could tell something.
30:39Something is going on with my neck.
30:41Like I feel like this, some kind of puncture wound.
30:44And I ran out the door after him.
30:52And I'm banging on the neighbor's door.
30:55And I'm screaming.
30:57Somebody needs to call 911 because I'm dying.
31:02And he gets to the bottom of the stairs with my son in his arms.
31:09And he sees that I'm standing up there and I'm still alive.
31:14And it probably shocked him because he probably thought that I was down for the count.
31:21And he quickly hands my son over to somebody on the first floor.
31:28And he runs back up the stairs towards me.
31:33Knocks me out.
31:39And that's the last thing I remember.
31:44I remember vividly the last thought that I had before a blackout was my son.
32:08And so that was the first thought that I had in my head when I was conscious.
32:14All I really cared about was like, is my son okay?
32:18Is he unharmed?
32:19And then they explained that my son was doing okay.
32:24He was in a trauma foster family.
32:28When they finally took the breathing tube out, there was a team of doctors that came into my room.
32:39And it was so surreal because they had to explain to me what happened to my body because I didn't know what my body had been through.
32:52And I guess I had this secondary shock of like, I'm sorry, what?
33:01I'm stabbed?
33:03I, what?
33:03And everything that happened after was told by witnesses.
33:12He stabbed me over and over all over my body again.
33:16And he picks me up like a sack of potatoes over his head and throws me over the balcony.
33:26And my head goes right into the concrete and my son is watching this.
33:41And, um, he's literally watching his mom dying in front of him.
33:46And, um, I'm apparently trying to get back on my feet and, um, I'm calling out for my son.
33:54I don't remember any of this.
33:55This is what my neighbors have, um, told me afterwards.
33:58And I'm trying to find my son and then I collapse into the flower bed.
34:05And that's where the, um, ambulance, um, picks me up from.
34:12And, um, start life-saving measures.
34:18I later learned from the investigators, uh, that they had caught him the same night, a couple of hours later,
34:26at his dad's residence, about an hour away.
34:32I, uh, have no memory, no recollection of anything.
34:36Um, and that's the, the, the thing that bothers me probably the most is that my son, which, he was watching all of this happening.
34:45And he saw a lot more than I can remember.
34:49And that's really tough.
34:51Because I can't, I can't take that away from him.
34:57And he was just a baby.
34:59He had just turned three years old and he's not supposed to see that when you're three.
35:02Yeah.
35:06No kid is supposed to watch that happening, especially, you know, watching your parents do something like that.
35:14It's, it's heartbreaking.
35:17The day after, uh, so this is probably day number three.
35:34Oh, this is really tough.
35:35Um, I was able to, um, have a phone call with Eli.
35:51And he didn't recognize me on the phone.
35:55And I had to tell him, it's Mommy, I'm in the hospital.
35:58And he, uh, his little voice said on the phone, you're not my mommy, because my mom's dead.
36:08And, uh, that was really tough.
36:13I remember getting off the phone and asking the nurses, can you please just sedate me?
36:18Because I was, it was too much.
36:21It was really, really hard to hear your son tell you that you're dead.
36:29And nobody teaches you, I mean, who teaches you how to deal with stuff like that, you know?
36:37I didn't know how to handle it.
36:41It was really, really tough.
36:42Um, this brings up, um, a lot of feelings.
37:10Good feelings, obviously.
37:13These are happy tears.
37:15Um, this was my first meeting with Eli.
37:21Right outside of the hospital, the same day I was released.
37:25They released me from being able to go back home.
37:30And, um, we had been separated for ten very, very long days.
37:38And, um, all I wanted to do, I remember all I wanted to do was to pick him up, but I couldn't.
37:49And, um, I was just really happy to see him again after all that time.
37:57Um, I was very overwhelmed.
38:01It was a lot of, a lot of overwhelming feelings and just gratefulness.
38:07Um, just one thing different ten days prior and I wouldn't have been able to have my son.
38:15Um, and I was able to bring him home.
38:21And, um, kind of start our new normal.
38:26And, um, I was really, really, really, really happy.
38:34Um, yeah, this is a really good memory.
38:38Do you believe in miracles?
39:05I do.
39:06I do believe in miracles.
39:08It's hard not to when you go through something like that.
39:11Nobody had expected me to really make it through the night, um, just based on how much blood they assumed that I lost.
39:20And it was, it was quite a lot.
39:22Um, but it's by a miracle that I, that I made it.
39:27I think my son had a big role, played a big part of why I made it and why I'm sitting here today.
39:49It's because of my son.
39:51I am so glad and so grateful that my son is nothing like his biological father.
39:58He loves to be happy and make other people happy.
40:03He is just the light of everybody's life.
40:08He makes the world a better place.
40:10It's been a process trying to take back control of my life and it's, it's, it's going good.
40:21I'm going to, I'm on a good path right now.
40:23I have a lot of great people around me, my family, my friends who have become family.
40:32I don't feel like I'm missing out on, on anything.
40:35I'm living life to the fullest and I'm taking full advantage of being given a, a second chance at life.
40:46So I think that's something really beautiful to take out of this situation that I've, I've lost a lot, but I've gained so much more.
40:59Um, and I'm really grateful for that.
41:05Um, you could see the rage coming out.
41:18I've seen this look right before he explodes.
41:22I've never been able to talk about what it's like to live with my brother.
41:26People call him a monster.
41:28It's probably because it's true.
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