Living With Monsters: The Amari Hall Story

On Prime, crime. We have an eight-year-old child that has autism. We're trying to find that has been missing for several hours and we're concerned about it. It's getting very cold. And it's only going to get colder tonight. When a little girl disappears, police leave no stone unturned. Anytime a missing child report goes off, all hands on deck, everybody was struggling to find her. The police determined that the story that led up to her being missing began to unravel. And they suspected foul play. As hours stretching to days, the case grows even more grim. At that point, our investigation transitioned from a missing person case to indeed a homicide case. Hi, everybody. I'm Jesse Weber and welcome to Prime Crime, where we break down some of the most compelling and memorable true crime cases from across the country. We have an eight-year-old girl who's in danger. She's been missing for two days by the time police are called. And the people you'd expect to help the most seem to have a different agenda. So on November 21, 2021, police received a phone call coming out of Georgia about a missing eight-year-old girl. The 911 call was made by Brittany Hall, the girl's mother. Gwyneth County, Georgia, just a few miles outside of Atlanta. Little Nicole Amari Hall has reportedly disappeared from the extended stay hotel, where she's been living with her blended family. So Brittany Hall was the mother of the three children who lived in the motel, the mother of Amari Hall, and also of Amari Hall's younger siblings, a six-year-old sister and a five-year-old brother. Brittany Hall was living in that motel with the children and her girlfriends Celeste Owens. Celeste was Brittany's partner. They had known each other for several years, eventually moved in together in the summer of 2021. Nicole Amari Hall, she was autistic. She used to like to go by the name Amari rather than Nicole. So the 911 call came in on November 21st of 2021 and police arrived. They obviously started their investigation. Things started looking suspicious pretty early on. So the children, in this case, were living in quite a high level of isolation. They were living in this extended stay hotel and being homeschooled. So what does that mean? That means first and foremost, no contact with other children for all intensive purposes. There are no neighbors, so to speak. The living situation raises a red flag for police, who immediately brings Celeste Owens and Brittany Hall in for questioning. They begin by asking what happened on November 20th, the last day Amari was said to be in the hotel room. Celeste sometimes refers to her as "Mori." We're going to start with Saturday from the moment you woke up. I want to know everything you did all the way until the moment you. Saturday, I woke up and went to the store. Okay, what time is that? Saturday, I woke up and went to the store and had to be around 11th. Couldn't have been at the toilet because I don't like shelving that early. Then I came back. What happens right after that? Right after that. Okay, Julie, where'd you go? I went with my sister back to my grandma's house. So you and your sister were going to grandma's house? So when you got back from grandma's house, did you get back to your grandma's house for five p.m.? No, eight a.m. The story wasn't adding up because she had told the police that she was with her sister. And the police interviewed the sister and found out, no, that wasn't correct. She was not with me, so she had fault statements. Now, when you get back around four or five, did you notice the kids were in their bed? My corner, I was straight in my corner with some rest. She just wanted to go to bed. You weren't really like checking to see if they were there or not. You just assume they were. Yeah. And what was Britney doing when you got in? Okay. And that's around four or five. And then what happens after that? That's when I was asleep. And that's when Britney woke me up and said, "Hey, you know, we've got to find him." And I'm like, "What happened? What's going on?" And then that's when she went outside and started looking. Okay. What time was that when she woke you up? Right before. Wait, before she called 911. She went, "We have as soon as she was down." And I was, "We have." While detectives questioned Celeste, other officers search for Amari. They distribute a poster that describes her as four foot ten, wearing a Tweety Bird jacket and blue and white pajamas. A missing child report goes off, all hands on deck. Everybody was struggling to find her. There was door to door canvassing trying to maybe see if she had wandered off into a neighbor's home or a neighbor's in the motel. Like just a neighbor's room in there. Or maybe she was just on another floor. She was autistic. And obviously those were issues that the police had in mind when trying to find her. So she wakes you up, she calls 911 as she's waking you up. And then she goes outside and she wakes. And she wait and check the whole park while I walk out. Check the camera out your teeth. Okay. So that was one thing I wanted to touch on too. So we've checked several cameras. There's a camera for the hotel. There's the car wash cross straight. There's a bachi. There's another camera. We've checked all those cameras. We had people check those cameras right now. They never saw her walking around that hotel. Really this morning? So is there any reason why that's not in there? I don't know. They came out and they poured over the hotel complex. They neighboring businesses. They tracked down surveillance footage from the motel and from businesses across the street and on the same side. But there was no surveillance video played of Amari running out of the hotel because she didn't. There's a lot more of this hall searching for because that never occurred. Now we didn't see her walk. No, we didn't see any of that. So that didn't happen. Okay. We know that didn't happen. There's no dispute about it because the video evidence shows that that did not happen. The police started to determine that the story that led up to her being missing began to unravel. Police tried to fill in the missing pieces by talking to Amari's two younger siblings. Sister Zaire and brother Jikari. The statements the children made to the police when they arrived at the scene were somewhat disturbing. The middle child gave more of a little comprehensive statement about seeing her sister go away. She misbehaved and went away and she wasn't going to be coming back. He said a hospital did that kid go to him and then put it home in the bathroom. Oh wow, that sounds kind of scary. When was she at that hospital? Either night. The other night? Yes. Okay, so would you say it was like two nights ago? Or three nights ago? Two nights ago. So the little sister explained to police that Celeste had told her that Amari had to go to the bad kid's hospital. Which is really just a terrible phrase to say to a child. It feels almost like she had used that phrase maybe more than once. Or maybe used it kind of as a veiled threat to the child. How did the kids know you? Like, do they call you Celeste? Do they call you mom number two? Like, what? They call you dad? Okay. Is there any reason why Zahir would say dad took her sister to the bad girl hospital? To the bad girl hospital? Oh, she's saying that because when more would act out, I say more. Listen, if you can't listen to this, you want to go. Can't say defects. Can't say none of that stuff. I said more. If you can't play with your sister's or you can't go to this place. And normally, when we say that, more you act right for at least three hours. Nicole Amari, she was at the very least on the autism spectrum. Quite often, children with this disorder have been misinterpreted as being difficult, stubborn, and so forth. Then you have two younger children who, just by virtue of them being younger, are likely to be a handful. Who are in the mixed human living in the hotel, not the best environment to raise a child with challenges. So this was just the environment that was somewhat of a powder keg psychologically, I would say. And it appears the children may have endured severe suffering as a result of the fallout. Pretty early on, the police realized the other children looked abused, maybe malnourished, the other two children had some bruises on them. Is there any reason why this person is on the children? Do you know about the bruises that are on Sarai? It was the last time she got looking. Is that her? I can't tell. Actually, if there's a back or eye face, I mean, that's not a slap on the wrist. Do you know how those were caused? With every hour Nicole Amari Hall is missing, the chances of finding her alive continue to fade. the detective's press. when's harder to tell them anything she knows about the girl's whereabouts. "I have a six-show that tells me that that which is you took her and she's not coming back and that that raises some concerns and that's something I have to explore. So with that being said again, do you know where Nicole is? "No, I don't." "Did you take Nicole from the home?" "I did not take." "Did anything happen with Tuna Col within the last 24 hours that you're aware of that caused her any to prevent you?" "No." "Isn't Nicole alive that you're aware of?" "And I'm aware of it." "Is she dead that you're aware of?" "No." "No." "Okay. Do you have any reason to believe that she would not be okay?" "Well, do you think that's one or another, I assume yours." "Okay. Do you know anything about her whereabouts?" "No. It's the same thing we've been saying 20 times today. This is the same thing." "And if I'm coming up angry, it's because it looks a lot more." "I know. It's a lot more." "I just have a couple more questions." "And then?" "What questions?" "Then that's all I got for you." As a last ditch effort, detectives use Amari's sister's statement to try to pry information from Owens. "The little girl said that you're involved. So we need to address that. We need to see if there was any type of involvement." "Okay. Why would she say that she's afraid of you? Why would she say that you have a gun and that you would threaten to her? Why would she say that you took Nicole?" "I don't know what she said that you would have to …" "So you're just saying she's just making it up. "No, I'm making it up. But they don't like when I get mad. But I don't get mad to the point where it's like threats and stuff like that. "No. And it's like kids also lie as well. So it's like I'm not going to believe everything that flies out of kids mouth." Meanwhile, police continue their search for Amari, still hoping to find her alive. "These pulled out all the stops. There were helicopters. There were K-9s that were around trying to sniff for her body or her scent." Ember 22nd, the Gwenec County Police Chief has a devastating update to the case. "We compared statements that we had gotten from Brittany Hall and also her partner Celeste Owen. We compared those statements with evidence that we gathered and recognized that those statements were indeed false. At that point, our investigation transitioned from a missing person case to indeed a homicide case." "So last was arrested first, and it was, I think, the 22nd, and Brittany Hall was allowed to go home, but she was arrested the very next day when they called her back in." Celeste Owen and Brittany Hall, after they were arrested, were not released on their own court. Police are now searching for eight-year-old Nicole Lamari Hall's body, and also trying to determine whether Celeste Owen's had a role in her death. "Police then tried to track Celeste Owen's movements, and they found surveillance video of Celeste and receipts by Celeste, essentially renting a U-Haul truck on the 19th, which then corroborated, of course, that this did happen two days before the 9-1-1 call." Police tracked Celeste cell phone pings from the hotel to the U-Haul place, back to the hotel, tracking it into the cab county, the neighboring county, and then going back to the U-Haul, back in Gwyneth County. All that was captured on the flock camera system, which reads and captures the license plate. They got the receipt where she had signed for it, from the U-Haul place itself. Following the trail of surveillance videos in Owen's cell phone pings, police tragically find what they're looking for. "Deeply sad to report to you that at 10.45 this morning, the body of a Marri Hall was discovered in the cab county near the Stone Mountain Freeway. My heart goes out to the extended family of a Marri Hall. We worked diligently on this case. The investigators from our uniform patrol officers who went out and searched the area. We worked extremely hard and unfortunately these were not the results that we had hoped for." "Amarri was ultimately found in a wooded area in a neighboring county." They found her body wrapped in garbage bags just in the wood line. Within the next several hours, we will charge Celeste Owen with felony murder and connection with the death of a Marri Hall. Additionally, Brittany Hall will be charged with fulfilling the death of another. We will continue to also investigate her role in this murder. We are happy to bring these individuals to justice and I'd like to once again thank the officers here. I'd also like to thank the residents at the hometown studios who are very helpful in our investigation as we search door-to-door for a Marri." "It tugs at your heartstrings. Here you have an eight-year-old who is just starting out in life and she winds up and trash bags into the woods. I'm sure it took an emotional toll on all the law enforcement police prosecutors who were involved. For sure, everybody out there searching for her." Her body was actually cocooned in two plastic bags. The two bags were anchored around her body with a black knit piece of cloth. When you have bodies that are wrapped, that goes to show maybe even elements of premeditation because a Marri's body was off the road and back into a wooded area. That means that the perpetrator would have had to have stopped the vehicle, taken her precious little body and walked from the shoulder of the road back into the wooded area in order to discard them. There's a real attempt to try to obscure or hide a Marri's body in this particular case. A Marri died from the injuries she sustained from being beaten. Juries are human. Someone has to pay. A Marri's cause of death, to be quite frank, was that she was beaten to death. There's no other simple way to put it. The autopsy report showed multiple injuries, fractured bones, and in addition, she was malnourished. The state of a Marri Hall's body is damning evidence, as Celeste Owens and Brittany Hall are formally charged. She had cruelty to children first degree, malice murder, felony murder, I know they had a charge for false statements to law enforcement, hindering the location of a body. She had multitude of charges and several charges per each of the surviving children for cruelty in the first degree. And Brittany Hall, who's been charged basically with the same felony murder, the same malice murder, abuse charges, the concealment of evidence, child abuse, but the prosecution decided to try the Celeste Owens case first. They had separate trials because Brittany in her second statement to the police blamed it on Celeste. So that's why the trials had to be severed, split off because those statements could not be used in Celeste trial. So Brittany Hall has not gone to trial yet. She's still incarcerated awaiting her day in court. As Celeste Owens case goes to trial, the prosecution has a clear advantage. So going in, I think the prosecution had 90% home to a conviction from the start. They had the sympathy because you had children, not just the deceased, but you had children as alleged victims. So that going in tugs at the heartstrings of jurors. You had the flock cameras, you had the surveillance, you had the crime scene, photos, you had the U-Haul rental, you had the tracking of the cell phone. So going in, they had a tremendous advantage. Prosecutor Sabrina Nazam opens with a shocking cell phone video that was actually recorded by Owens herself. It shows her and Brittany Hall abusing the children. She's too disturbing to show here, but for the jury, the impact of that clip was devastating. I said, "Well, we were pulled first and taken a little bite because she tried to mess with it. And tried to steal out the car from the school. Then I said, "Stop. She's out of the pocket trying to keep going. Keep going. I said, "Stop. So I'll slap a skewer." Please enjoy what you just said. This is 90 seconds, just 90 seconds, of the length that 8-year-old Marley Hall or 6-year-old and their fine-year-old brother, Jakari Cole, live in a care of this dependent state. We'll expect the evidence which shows that the young child in the middle who has slammed so hard that her hands to one back is eight-year-old Amari Hall. The stakes were very high for this prosecution because you must come home with a conviction on a case like this. Such a tragic and horrific murder, you cannot afford to lose. And so the prosecution, I'm sure, even though it seems like a slam dunk case did not want to be cocky. They wanted to, you know, check every box, dot every eye, cross every T. But you know what, is that four months, four months after this video was made, Amari is dead. She is found naked, wrapped in garbage bags, and thrown into the woods. And the evidence will show by this department. The only thing concretely they did not have was direct evidence that Celeste Owens killed Amari. There was no direct evidence of that. It was not even circumstantial evidence in my opinion. Nobody ever said they saw Celeste Owens strungler, choker, beater, and inflicted the fatal blows. There will not be specific evidence in this case. At pinpoint that my client delivered the fatal blow or blows to Amari. I'm going to ask you to hold the state to the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And we turn a burden of naked as it pertains to Celeste Owens. Some of the most powerful testimony in the trial comes from Amari Hall's younger sister, who spoke to police early in the investigation. Can you say your name is Bella Forse? Thank you, ma'am. How old are you? 9 years old. Obviously, for her protection, she was testifying off-camera rather than being in person in the room. Now I want you to tell me about a typical day when you live with your mom in Celeste and the apartment. So what would you do then? I don't know. Did you watch TV? No. Did you play on a phone? At that time I didn't have a phone. Did you play with toys? We didn't have toys. What things did you do since you didn't have toys on a phone, did you? We looked at the wall and, yeah, I thought I can't take a toy now. Just looked at the wall. When you lived there, did you get spankings? Yes. It's actually quite remarkable that Amari's little sister was able to give the extensive detail that she was able to give, not only to the police, but then again during trial in her testimony. We'll talk about where you slept. When you lived in the apartment with your mom in Celeste, where did you sleep? On the floor. Did you have a pillow? I don't think so. Did you have blankets? Maybe. I don't know. That's OK. Where did your brother sleep? On the floor as well. Where did your sister, Amari's sleep? On the floor. Did your brother ever get spankings? Yes. Did your sister get spankings? Yes. All of these minute details that the younger sister was able to remember and retell is again very remarkable. What a brave young girl who obviously was concerned for her sister's well-being and was able to remember all of these very specific details. Do you remember a good night in the last few slides? Yes. I went to the bathroom and when she came out, Whitney told her to open her mouth and she had a toilet paper in her mouth and the next morning she would have wake up and yeah. What else happened, actually? The next morning, Whitney tried to wake up and then after that she got home. I put in a container with a lid on it and that put in a trunk of a car and drove to the bad kids hospital. Mm-hmm. Who put her into the toilet? So where did you say she took her? To the bad place hospital. To the bad hospital where kids go. Have you been to the bad kids hospital? No. How do you know that's where the morning went? So let's talk about it a lot. Prosecutors also questioned Zaire Hall about how she suffered too. What part of your body is it? Come on back. Do you see the marks on your back in that picture? Yes. Do you remember where that came from? I think so. Okay. Where do you think they came from? I don't know. Children are wildly impactful. They are testimony can be wildly impactful on a jury. For a few different reasons. First of all, for the most part, the younger the child, the less likely they are to lie. We know that they tend to tell the truth. And further, this is a child who suffered an enormous amount of trauma. And the things that she described are not the things a child would lie about, toilet paper being shoved in the mouth, the bad kids hospital, her sister being placed into a container. These are not even things that children can make up. But then, a Mari's grandmother, Brittany Hall's mother, takes the stand, and there seems to be a disconnect. Were you ever aware that Brittany was in court for punishment on the three days? No. Where would you learn? When I saw it for the first time. Miss Wright, tell me a little bit about a Mari. She was a very vibrant, happy, love girl. We love to play dress up together. And now we go in the kitchen and cook. She would love to come in the kitchen to see what she was cooking so she can have a cook. Mari's grandmother, Barbara Wright, seems to paint a very different picture of the child Celeste Owens apparently punished for being bad. While Mari was you in attending school, did you have any problems with her as far as school? No. Were you ever notified by her teachers about every behavioral issues? No. Any fights that she had with any other students? No. Being disrespectful to her teachers? No. Was she ever disrespectful to you? No. Was she ever disrespectful to Mr. Wright? Did she ever wet the bed when she was with you? No. No. She ever held the appetite when she was with you? Yes. She liked to eat? Yes. She's loved Gigi's cooking. She had hands-on contact with her, never noticed anything, never reported anything, never even reported any concerns. Miss Wright, at some point did Mari, Isaiah and Jakari leave your home? Yes. Do you recall around what year that would have been in relation to Mari's death in 2021? Mari, um, Jakari and Isaiah had to leave at the end of 2020, um, going, yeah, 2020. They went back to go live with Brittany Hall? Yes. Did you want them to leave? No. Would they have been able to stay with you? Yes. She really lost contact with them since the start of the year, and we're talking now August. When they were living in the motel and she said that she couldn't locate them. But there was never any police reports made. Did you ever try calling Brittany to speak with the children? All the time. Tell me about how you would try contacting. I would call her cell number, I would take her, we would try to phase time her. There was no response that a lot of the times in the FDA, it would be weeks later, we would try to have around, um, from the last place they might have stayed looking for them. It mystified me. The child's missing for eight months and you can't get a hold of them while you would not have raised the alarm. During cross examination, defense attorney Rob Greenwald presses Amari's grandma on how much she knew about her granddaughter's condition. To the best of your knowledge. was Amari ever diagnosed with autism. - Not that I know of. - Was she malnourished? - No. - On your way in Europe? - No. - And you don't recall the last time you saw the kids in the 21. - You know, because we was calling, look it for them, don't know. - Were you ever aware that Brittany was in front of a corporal punishment on the through this? - No. - When did you learn that? - When I saw it for the first time. - You saw the video? I first saw it on your angel? - No, I saw the video when news people had it on news, when the case, when they found them in, and I saw them when I went to the courthouse. - I saw it. - You weren't aware that your daughter was stopping on. - No. - It gives you pause and you think, well, why wasn't something said? What was it that you didn't observe? And unfortunately, when you live under the specter of the potential that you're not gonna get to see these kids anymore, sometimes your judgment is clouded, because you think if I say anything, I'll never be in their presence again. It's one hell of a trade-off. - If there was any doubt of the extent of Amari's abuse, the medical examiner shows photo after photo of the injury she sustained. It is a lot for the jury to see and far too much to show here. - There's a lot of stuff here. And so I tried to separate out the injuries as to, this is critical. This is something that this person could die of, in and of itself. Here she died from all of it. - It's not something the average everyday person and they come into court sees. I mean, certainly don't see such graphic images on TV or movies, very graphic testimony, very graphic images that for sure it had an effect on them. - Paws of death, multiple blunt force injuries, other significant conditions. Those are things that aren't reflected in the cause, but are also important in her death. And those other conditions were battered child syndrome, malnutrition, and the matter of death homicide. - Can you define battered child syndrome for the jury? - That is a description to describe multiple wounds in multiple locations, in multiple stages of healing. That is a child who has been abused with injuries in multiple different areas that happened at different times or different episodes. - It's really horrific the injuries that this poor little girl sustained over the course of time living with these women. So she died, obviously after a very serious trauma, but a prolonged life of abuse, unfortunately. - But there's something even more horrifying about this case, something the state had revealed at the beginning of the trial. In a Mari's case, and in the case involving her siblings, one of the more disturbing elements is the fact that Celeste videotaped beating these children and abusing them. - You've got two dominating adults in the life of these precious children that are completely and totally depended upon you for their welfare. And not only is it not enough for you to strike them, you won't have a video record of it. This goes to a much deeper, darker place. - As Celeste Owen's trial draws to a close, jurors are once again faced with the actual videos of the horrors of Mari Hall and her siblings endured. - There were over a dozen videos on Celeste's phone - The children being abused and suffering all types of beatings. How sadistic can that be? It's one thing to do it, and it's another to memorialize it in some type of video form. - It's hard to say why someone would videotape the abuse of the children, but in this case, it happened. - Owen's had also made some incriminating web searches on her phone. So I'm going to ask you now to read for the jurors and you don't have to read the date since it's all on November 19th, but at least the time and the search. - How the sewage work and the streets work. Why can kids run away? Search again, what can kids run away? Highline reports, some of missing. The same search again at 116, early 19, early 21, how are the reports and what missing? What do you do with the involvement of missing? Why is it so hard to find missing people? - Things like what do you do when your child refuses to listen, lakes near me, things like that, things that really showed consciousness of guilt in this case, and definitely established that they were involved somehow in this murder of Amari. It is absolutely fascinating that in this day and age, people who commit serious crimes, leave a trail of all their thoughts preceding the crime in their internet browser history. Absolutely fascinating. You can literally track everything. It's like saying to the police, hey, in case you wanted more evidence, or in case you really didn't understand how I got to this point, please check my computer 'cause I'm too tired to draw a map. And that's what occurred here. - All of those searches on November 19th deleted from the defendant's phone. - They were just in the tournament. She could delete the data. - Okay. - By deleting that video and her Google searches, obviously those acts by Celeste Owen showed that she knew what she was doing and that she had the appropriate malice and what we call men's rea to commit this crime of murder. You can find this defendant guilty of every single one of these crimes that took two people to kill a crime. Two people to cover up the murder. One person who I think the evidence is clearly established and you know, you actually don't feel like trash. And like I said, but you will have her day. That's great. It's this defendant's day. So that should be right before your house. - The prosecutors took the case to Hart. And yeah, everybody was emotionally, I would say, involved on their end. The police, prosecution, the investigators, family of Brittany Hall, very invested. So when you say a mountain to climb, yeah, we're talking Himalaya, kind of mountains. I get the heartstrings of this case. I've got three kids at home. You are to base your verdict in all these counts, not on the heartstrings, not on emotion, not on sympathy. You are to base your verdict on the evidence where the lack thereof, plain and simple. There's no direct evidence she killed mama. - It was relatively quick as murder trials go. Started Monday, we finished up on Thursday with the jury verdict late in the day. - All right, so as we please rise, verdict of the jury. We the jury find the defendant as follows. Count one, malice murder, guilty. Count two, felony murder, guilty. Count three, felony murder, guilty. Count four, felony murder, guilty. Count five, cruelty to children in the first degree, guilty. - She was found guilty of everything. Some charges merged together. They were duplicitous. - Before sentencing, Amari's grandmother speaks to the court about her family's painful journey. - My heart has broken as in millions and millions of pieces. Did I have not been able to put her together? I miss Amari every day, my grandmother did not deserve. The way that she was taken out of this world, I would never get to teach her how to drive. How would you even never get to see her go to a prom? Do the things that grandma do with their granddaughters? - Oh, these days I'm going to miss. With tomorrow. - They're living with grandmother, both surviving children and they're supposedly doing very well with grandma. - And grandfather. - All right, Miss Owens, would you like to speak? - Me too. - Miss Owens, please think. I've been a jurist. for 25 years. This is by far the most heinous, evil that I have ever seen in my entire career. And I do not understand. The crimes and evil that's perpetrated against these three children is something that I will never understand. Normal I ever forget. Based on that, the court does hereby sentence you as follows. Account one, Malice Murder. You are hereby sentence to life without the possibility of parole. On the remaining counts, the court does hereby sentence you to consecutive 235 years. So life without parole plus 235 years. You will never see the light of day to perpetrate this type of behavior, cruelty, and evilness upon another person. Over the course of my career, I've unfortunately observed many cases of child abuse relative to Amari's death. It would rank right up there with the worst that I have seen because her injuries were so extensive. These kinds of cases are the worst of the worst. It's not only an innocent young child who lost her life, a child who's supposed to be protected by her caretakers, by the women who were supposed to be taken care of her. This case just reflects how difficult it sometimes is to know what's going on behind closed doors and how difficult it is to intervene in a situation of child abuse. It's tough, I'd be honest. I had nightmares before the trial, during the trial, after the trial. And so yeah, it takes a toll on you. It was definitely emotionally challenging. It will stay with me for quite a while. If there's one bit of comfort, we can take away from Amari's tragic death, and there's really not a lot. It's that her two siblings were rescued from their abusers. And now they can grow up knowing that they are safe and that they are loved. It's all we have for you here on this episode of Prime Crime. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Jesse Weber, and as always, stay safe. [MUSIC PLAYING]