I am a Killer (2018) s04e02 Episode Script
A Mother’s Love
1
[somber melodic music plays]
[birds chirping]
[bell ringing]
[woman] The first moment
that I tried to pull away from him,
he just grabbed me by my throat
and squeezed so hard,
and I was terrified.
I knew that there was only one way
for it to end.
And, uh
I wasn't willing to let it
end with me dead.
[tense instrumental music plays]
I just knew, like, I had to
I had to fight back.
[cryptic music plays]
[somber melodic music plays]
[birds chirping]
I always saw my parents being very loving.
I can remember, you know, my dad kissing
my mom good morning in the kitchen, and
I always wanted that.
My name is Jema Donahue.
I was sentenced to ten years
in the Department of Corrections.
[upbeat music plays]
I was born in Berlin, Germany.
My father was in the military.
I was the baby of the family.
You know, everybody says
the baby is spoiled,
but that wasn't the case in,
in, uh, my household.
I didn't get away with anything.
Like, I was almost punished
before it ever even happened.
We didn't really have friends
because we moved every, like, five years.
So, we just really loved
and embraced each other as a family.
[somber instrumental music plays]
I was homeschooled
from second grade until sixth grade.
And then my mother decided to enroll
my brother and I in public school.
The children were
a lot more advanced than I was.
They just knew more
about the world around them,
whereas I feel
that we were kind of kept in a bubble.
My last year in middle school
was really hard.
After the assault,
I had begged my mom not to call the police
because I just wanted to act like
nothing had ever happened.
And she promised me that she wouldn't,
and then she did.
[birds chirp]
I do remember law enforcement
was trying to deter my mom
as far as pressing charges,
which, of course, my mother,
she's a mama bear,
so she was like, "No,
she's gonna continue this."
I experienced a lot of bullying.
I had to leave the school district.
I blame my mother, um
for a lot that happened, um,
when I was a teenager.
[car horn blares]
She became so protective. [sharp inhale]
I really wasn't allowed to have friends.
[birds chirp]
My mom would do background checks
on everybody.
So I stayed at home a lot.
[sirens wailing]
[somber melodic music plays]
Everybody around me was telling me that,
you know, that I ruined my life.
And the day that I gave birth to my son
and looked in his eyes
[gasps]
I knew
there was nothing I wouldn't do
[chokes up]
for my children.
There's nothing in the world
like coming home
from a hard day at work and
walking through that door
and your children just running up to you
and wrapping their arms around you.
[gasps]
[sighs]
[gasps] I need a moment.
[moody instrumental music plays]
We were introduced from a mutual friend.
Javon had went to prison,
so he was being released from prison.
And the same mutual friend had asked me
if I would let him use my address
as a home plan.
And I said yes.
[bell ringing]
[metal squeals]
I remember, um, just being so curious
about his childhood
because it was so different from mine, um
He bounced around a lot and, um
that was new to me,
and it was almost tragic.
He was previously, um, incarcerated
for manufacturing
and distribution of drugs.
But I believed
that he had been rehabilitated
and changed his life around.
So, from the very beginning,
I just had this
longing, like I needed to protect him.
We never really established
that we were going to be together.
It just kind of sort of happened.
I was going
to University of Central Missouri.
And he would stay at home with the kids.
And that spoke volumes to me
that he could be trusted with my children.
[cryptic music plays]
[birds chirping]
The officer at the time said to me
Javon was a well-known
crack cocaine dealer in that county.
And I was just floored
because I had never
heard or seen anything like that.
And that was like the first
instance I ever realized
that maybe there were things
going on behind my back
that I wasn't exactly aware of.
I was angry with Javon.
And I was like,
"You just need to go. Leave us alone."
And he just grabbed me by my throat
and squeezed so hard
and was, like, choking me.
I remember to the point that
I couldn't breathe and I was terrified.
And he was telling me, like,
"You're never gonna leave me."
"The only way that you'll ever leave me
is if I kill you, bitch."
[ominous music plays]
I remember saying to him,
like, "I love you."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
And he would tell me,
"Fear lasts longer than love."
Like he never wanted to hear
[deep inhale]
um, that I loved him.
[grim instrumental music plays]
I would tell myself
that if I could just help him
or get him away from the drug scene
that our marriage would be better.
[birds chirping]
But the abuse with Javon
continued throughout our marriage.
I learned really early on
that the less that I struggled
during a strangulation,
the quicker I would pass out.
And that made things easier.
I do believe
that Javon loved me.
But the only way he knew how to show me
was through violence.
[birds chirping]
It was just
a nightmare,
but I think that also is what made
the good times so good,
because they were
so far and few in between [chokes up]
and we cherished them.
[sniffles]
[birds chirping]
[somber melodic music plays]
[birds chirping]
[birds chirping]
I didn't really want anyone to know
how bad it was,
so I just tried to keep it under wraps
and appease him.
[inhales deeply]
But then he was closer to his old friends
and started using drugs again,
and it just got ugly.
[birds chirping]
He locked me in the room.
[sighs]
Beat me with a belt.
Um
Held knives and screwdrivers to my neck
as he would sexually assault me.
And he would be just telling me,
"I will kill everybody.
I have nothing to lose."
And I believed him.
I knew, at this point
something had to change
because now it wasn't about me.
He wasn't just hurting me.
He was threatening to hurt everybody.
[eerie instrumental music plays]
[music intensifies]
[music crescendos]
Which brought us to Good Friday,
which would have been April 14th of 2017.
[birds chirping]
I just remember being really anxious
because it was gonna be the first time
since obtaining the order of protection
that I was going to be alone in the house.
[tense instrumental music plays]
I went downstairs.
And when I opened up the family room door
[music intensifies]
Javon was standing there.
He flew forward at me,
grabbed me by my throat.
He started dragging me up the stairs, um
[gasps]
um, by my neck.
The scariest thing in the world
is to know that somebody else
[inhales sharply]
is holding your life in their hands.
He started checking
the windows and the doors,
making sure they were all locked.
He went back downstairs.
And then,
I heard him call my name.
And I went downstairs. [chokes up]
[music intensifies]
[quavers] And when I stepped into
the bedroom
he was holding a gun.
And he pulled the trigger.
And the gun jammed. It didn't go off.
[ragged breath]
So he became angry
that the gun was, like, not working
and he hit me over the head with it.
And whenever he did, um,
it fell to the ground.
So I picked it up,
and I just remember, like
aiming it at him, and, um
I told him, "I want Just leave.
Just get out."
And he didn't want to.
So he stepped forward,
and whenever he made that forward motion,
I just pulled the trigger.
[gunshot echoes]
I hit him about right here
in his left shoulder.
And, um, he screamed,
like, "Ah! You hit me!"
And then lunged forward at me again, um,
grabbed me by my wrists.
[swallows]
So my hands were kind of up like this,
and he had both my wrists,
and I pulled the trigger again.
And he was flinging me around
and slamming me to the ground.
And in that motion,
I pulled the trigger again.
[inhales sharply]
Um
When he landed on top of me,
like as we were coming down on the ground,
he said, "Fuck it.
We're gonna die together, bitch."
[sharp inhale]
And he laid his head right next to my head
and he grabbed the back handle,
like the butt of the gun,
and aimed it towards his left ear.
And I just wrapped my finger around
to grab control of the handle
and pulled the trigger.
And, um
I just remember that last final shot.
Just feeling the weight of him
on top of me.
Everything was black.
[music crescendos]
I never realized my eyes were closed.
[quavers] Like, I thought it was black
because I was, like, dead.
I thought it was
[gasps]
[hoarsely] And then, um
I just kind of crawled out from under him
when I realized,
like, "Okay, it's over. I'm not
I'm not dead."
[birds chirping]
[somber music plays]
My mom pulled up from work
[phone ringing]
and the phone was ringing.
[ringing continues]
And it's saying, like, Johnson County
on the caller ID.
[ringing continues]
I have no recollection of calling 911,
but I remember that I did call 911.
And I handed her the phone.
[ringing]
And I was, like, shaking my head no.
I was like, "Please."
I just felt like, in that moment,
my best decision
of protecting my family and my children
was to not
let anybody know.
My mom answered the phone.
[muffled clicking]
And, um, she said it was a mistake.
"We didn't mean to call."
The dispatch then said to her, um
[inhales] "We're gonna send somebody out
there anyways."
So I went and sat outside
[birds chirping]
and waited for the police.
[inhales] I remember my mom coming out
to the front step
and kind of tapped me on my shoulder,
rubbed me, and said,
"Come inside, Jem. No one's coming."
[cryptic music plays]
[traffic passes]
[indistinct chatter]
[steam hissing]
My name is Margaret Heffernan,
and I'm the mother of Jema Donahue.
[Margaret] Jema is the youngest
of three of my children.
I can remember her
as, um, an infant sitting on my lap,
and I said, "You'll never be too old."
She excelled in school.
[somber melodic music plays]
Things were going in the right direction
until she was sexually assaulted
at the age of 13 by a 21-year-old man.
[tense discordant music plays]
I was given the excuse
that they couldn't locate him.
I was very surprised.
So I told my son to go to school.
First one that could tell me where he is,
I would give them a hundred dollars.
And in 15 minutes, that phone rang
and I was told where he was.
And I went out
and sat in the car
and waited for him to come out to his
and followed him.
He started coming towards me
and swearing at me.
It's like a switch went off on me.
And I drove straight for him.
I was going to hit him.
[music intensifies]
And the individual jumped over hedges.
I lost common sense,
I guess you could say.
[birds chirping]
I had the sheriff's department
come out to my house.
[somber melodic music plays]
[Margaret sighs]
They said, um
well, possibly,
if I don't press charges against him,
they won't press charges against me.
And I said I would not drop the charges.
[birds singing]
Jema was very angry with me
for contacting, um, the police.
She felt that I betrayed her,
and, um, our relationship, I would say,
was damaged through her teenage years
because of that.
[quavers] You want to protect your child.
And you want to be able
to handle a situation.
[inhales sharply]
And it was out of my hands.
[grim instrumental music plays]
[music intensifies]
I questioned him,
and I said, "Did you put your hands
on my daughter?"
And he didn't answer me.
And I told him, "You just answered me
by saying nothing."
I says, "Promise me you will never
lay your hands on her again,"
and he wouldn't say the words.
I'm angry that
he hurt my daughter repeatedly.
Especially, you know, when I asked him,
"Please don't."
She's a survivor of domestic violence.
It was self-defense.
Nobody knows what they're going to do
until they're in the situation,
and
and it's done.
[moody instrumental music plays]
[birds chirping]
[music crescendos]
[birds chirping]
My name's Aaron Brown,
and I'm a major here
with the Johnson County, Missouri
Sheriff's Office.
I got a call from a a source.
[indistinct radio chatter]
They advised that, um, Javon Donahue
was, in fact, shot and killed
by his wife Jema.
Um And during the process of that,
um, the body was taken to the farm
and buried on the farm.
[music intensifies]
[eerie discordant music plays]
We went out to the residence,
uh, the farm.
But Johnson County is, is a rural county.
It's a cattle-grazing, uh, farms area.
Um, so just merely driving down a road,
uh, you're not able to see terribly much,
just the house.
We needed a helicopter or a plane
to go overhead to look at this property.
[cryptic melodic music plays]
At this point, it is a crime scene.
So we tape it off,
uh, we begin coordinated interviews
with everybody that was on the property
or in the house.
And during a conversation
with one of the individuals at the farm,
they advised that they knew
where Javon was buried at on the property.
And they led us to Javon.
We dug up the body,
wrapped in a white tarp
with rope around, uh, the tarp.
[passing traffic]
[grim melodic music plays]
We needed to locate those individuals
and conduct interviews with them
immediately.
And, uh, one of those
happened to be Jema's mom.
Just shut it off.
Just shut it off and I'll talk to you.
[birds chirping]
[dog barking]
[birds singing]
[Margaret] I told them
I saw Jema standing outside, dazed.
She said, "Javon is in the house."
I says, "We need to call the police."
"No, he's dead."
I said, "Are you sure he's dead?"
And she says, "He's dead."
[eerie music plays]
[phone ringing]
[ringing continues]
She had dialed 911 and hung up.
[ringing continues]
911 called back.
[ringing]
She's throwing the phone at me.
She's shaking her head no,
back and forth, but no words.
[receiver clicking]
And I told them,
"I'm sorry to bother you,"
that I made a mistake.
And he said, "Unfortunately,
we still have to send somebody out."
And I said, "I understand."
[quavers] I remember saying to her,
"When the cops come, Jema,
please let me tell them I did this."
[smacks lips]
"I lived my life."
"You have children to raise."
She said, "No, Mom. I will not."
But it's what I wanted to do.
[somber melodic music plays]
I let Jema down when she was 13,
and I felt
I can't do that again to her.
I remember our relationship
just being undone
overnight.
I didn't want to go through that again.
[birds chirping]
We were probably out there
a good 45 minutes, and they never came.
And I told myself maybe this is
the way it's supposed to be.
When the police didn't show up
at the house was the turning point
that we'll take matters
into our own hands.
I thought, "Okay, we can do this."
"We can get away with this."
[eerie discordant music plays]
We placed Javon's body
in an area that he dug.
And he says, "I don't want you to know
where I'm gonna bury him."
"I have two other holes dug."
And I thought,
"Well, that's good that I I won't know."
I I prayed that Jema
was gonna be strong enough
to keep her mouth shut
and not share this with anybody.
That we would have to go to our grave
knowing what we did.
[somber melodic music plays]
[sirens wailing]
[downbeat instrumental music plays]
My name is Dr. Lisa Witcher.
And I was a state-appointed
forensic examiner, um, for Jema's case.
When we're looking
at battered spouse syndrome,
we're looking for the cycle of violence.
Part one is this tension-building phase.
[grim music plays]
So where you start seeing
the perpetrator of the abuse
becoming triggered by either you
or the environment around them.
The second phase
is the acute or crisis phase.
That is when violence occurs.
After that, the honeymoon phase,
when the batterer promises
to never let that happen again.
And then the cycle starts over again.
[Jema] There was an incident.
We were in a motel room.
And Javon raped me, sodomized me,
and afterwards, he called his friend
and was kind of laughing and making jokes,
saying, "How long is it gonna take her
to stop, like, bleeding?"
Like, from my rectum. And
Just anything to humiliate me
or degrade me.
[Lisa] You know, calling and bragging
about beating a woman
It's either a twisted call
for somebody to come intervene
or it's truly despicable.
It's truly someone
who believes that they have
done what's right
and taken what's theirs.
I am surprised that Jema made it
as long as she did.
And that she is alive
at the end of this story.
Had he not come to the house that day,
I don't think
he would have stopped pursuing her.
She meets all of the factors
that we look for, um,
and that research has shown
is tied to women who become
battered spouses.
[tense discordant music plays]
[sirens wailing]
[man] To my knowledge,
battered spouse as a self-defense
has not been successful yet in Missouri.
It's been here a while, but it has not
really ever been a successful defense.
Okay, come on.
But the question wasn't whether or not
she suffered
from battered spouse syndrome.
It was whether or not
she used deadly force
justifiably under the circumstances.
A slap to the face
doesn't justify someone shooting someone.
My name is Rob Russell,
and I was the attorney
who prosecuted Ms. Jema Donahue
for the homicide of Javon Donahue.
[Jema] As we were coming down
on the ground, he said,
"Fuck it.
We're gonna die together, bitch."
And he laid his head
right next to my head
and he grabbed the butt of the gun
and aimed it towards his left ear.
And I just wrapped my finger around
and pulled the trigger.
And, um, I just remember
that last final shot. Just
feeling the weight of him on top of me.
Well,
her story doesn't match up
with the injuries suffered by Mr. Donahue.
There are four bullets in his body.
One is in the shoulder.
One is through his jaw.
One is in the back of his head.
And one is underneath his chin,
straight up.
The shot to the back of the head
would have been a fatal shot.
The shot underneath his chin
was a fatal shot.
His jaw would have been broken
in such a way that he would not
have been able to talk to her
and tell her that he loved her
in this Romeo and Juliet moment,
they were both going to die together.
That didn't happen
because he couldn't talk.
So, I don't think the jury really
bought into
that she was acting in self-defense.
Certainly, when people try to
hide evidence of homicide,
and certainly hiding the body
tends to give you the impression
that the person who's doing that
has a guilty conscience.
If they had accepted the self-defense
argument from Ms. Donahue,
she would have been found
completely not guilty.
But instead,
they found her guilty of manslaughter.
[car horn honking]
[somber melodic music plays]
[Lisa] I think that the decisions
that were made after Javon was killed
did put her in prison.
The dedication to burying the body
really stuck in the craw
of a lot of the jury members.
[traffic noise]
Her mom certainly
could have acted differently.
I don't know if in her mother's mind
that that was really a choice,
but the concealment of Javon's body
made things a lot worse for Jema.
[Jema] I blame my mother, um
for a lot that happened,
um, when I was a teenager.
I really wasn't allowed to have friends.
My mom would do background checks
on everybody.
So I stayed at home a lot.
[Lisa] You know, becoming a social pariah
at a very young age
for a sexual assault she could not help.
Then the
the withholding
of any type of social relationship.
Essentially, what her mom was doing
was holding her hostage.
Holding her in such a safe place,
um, that it went overboard.
It went overboard into, quite honestly,
emotional abuse.
Um, not letting your child
out of the house ever.
Not letting her socialize
in any normal type of way
certainly sets up
a sense of learned helplessness.
I don't think
there's anything malicious about it.
I just do not believe
their relationship has ever been healthy.
[eerie music plays]
[grim music plays]
Jema describes her mother
as "an evil, wicked woman
who is controlling and vengeful."
"If she has the chance, she will kill me.
I'm sure of it."
"She will bury me
like she did my husband."
[music crescendos]
It's very possible that the line,
"She will bury me
like she buried my husband,"
was Jema's acknowledgement of
"I'm into this even further now
because of her involvement."
[birds chirping]
[Jema] During my trial, um
I had a strained relationship
with my parents.
I was drinking.
I was abusing drugs. Um
Do I think today that my mother
would kill me or bury me in a field?
No.
We've come so far.
It's not even the same relationship.
Like, we're not even the same people.
I've made great strides,
and she's made great strides.
[somber melodic music plays]
[Margaret] I've changed as a parent
realizing that
my ways of being a helicopter mom
over an adult was wrong.
It's It's their life, their choice,
their decisions,
and their consequences.
This part of me that always had
to be in control and fix problems.
Why give myself more problems
than I already have, you know?
It's just, um
It's not my problem.
I don't need to fix it.
Of course, I would do things differently.
I blame the police not showing up.
But ultimately, I, I told them,
like, "You don't have to come."
"It was a mistake."
So I started that.
I started that with a lie.
And the day had to come
where I had to acknowledge it.
I have learned a lot,
you know, about accountability
and the importance of it
in order for a person
to learn by their mistakes.
I have seen such improvement in Jema
since she's been incarcerated.
She lights up when I see her,
when I visit her.
And always a big hug, a kiss on the cheek.
That's my daughter.
That's the baby that I had.
[birds chirping]
[Jema] When I first came to prison, um
life was in an uproar.
But once I started to take advantage
of the different programs
I enrolled in, like, women's empowerment.
I was able to kind of see my prison life
in a different light.
[birds chirping]
It wasn't so much condemnation
as much as rehabilitation.
Also, in here,
I've learned accountability
because the fact is I still made
the choices that I made.
[Rob] The shot to the back of the head
would have been a fatal shot.
The shot underneath his chin
was a fatal shot.
He would not have been able to talk to her
and tell her that he loved her
in this Romeo and Juliet moment,
they were both going to die together.
That didn't happen.
There was no Romeo and Juliet moment,
where Javon said, "Do you love me?"
He said, "We're gonna die together, bitch.
Till death do us part."
Those were his words
as he was flinging me around
and slamming me to the ground.
It's a really hard situation to decide,
um whose life is more important.
Or do you take the chance
of fighting for your life?
[sighs]
I hate the fact
that I have to wake up every day
[chokes up]
and know that I took somebody's life.
And on top of that,
it was someone's life whom I loved.
[Margaret] I remember saying to her,
"When the cops come, Jema,
please, let me tell them I did this."
And she said, "No, Mom."
"I will not."
I admire
[inhales]
what my mother risked in helping me
and trying to save me.
She threw everything away.
And honestly,
I probably would do it
for my children as well.
I mean, not go about it like that, but
we do what we need to
to protect and save our our babies.
This time in our life is almost over, and
I see all good days ahead for us.
[somber discordant music plays]
[somber melodic music plays]
[birds chirping]
[bell ringing]
[woman] The first moment
that I tried to pull away from him,
he just grabbed me by my throat
and squeezed so hard,
and I was terrified.
I knew that there was only one way
for it to end.
And, uh
I wasn't willing to let it
end with me dead.
[tense instrumental music plays]
I just knew, like, I had to
I had to fight back.
[cryptic music plays]
[somber melodic music plays]
[birds chirping]
I always saw my parents being very loving.
I can remember, you know, my dad kissing
my mom good morning in the kitchen, and
I always wanted that.
My name is Jema Donahue.
I was sentenced to ten years
in the Department of Corrections.
[upbeat music plays]
I was born in Berlin, Germany.
My father was in the military.
I was the baby of the family.
You know, everybody says
the baby is spoiled,
but that wasn't the case in,
in, uh, my household.
I didn't get away with anything.
Like, I was almost punished
before it ever even happened.
We didn't really have friends
because we moved every, like, five years.
So, we just really loved
and embraced each other as a family.
[somber instrumental music plays]
I was homeschooled
from second grade until sixth grade.
And then my mother decided to enroll
my brother and I in public school.
The children were
a lot more advanced than I was.
They just knew more
about the world around them,
whereas I feel
that we were kind of kept in a bubble.
My last year in middle school
was really hard.
After the assault,
I had begged my mom not to call the police
because I just wanted to act like
nothing had ever happened.
And she promised me that she wouldn't,
and then she did.
[birds chirp]
I do remember law enforcement
was trying to deter my mom
as far as pressing charges,
which, of course, my mother,
she's a mama bear,
so she was like, "No,
she's gonna continue this."
I experienced a lot of bullying.
I had to leave the school district.
I blame my mother, um
for a lot that happened, um,
when I was a teenager.
[car horn blares]
She became so protective. [sharp inhale]
I really wasn't allowed to have friends.
[birds chirp]
My mom would do background checks
on everybody.
So I stayed at home a lot.
[sirens wailing]
[somber melodic music plays]
Everybody around me was telling me that,
you know, that I ruined my life.
And the day that I gave birth to my son
and looked in his eyes
[gasps]
I knew
there was nothing I wouldn't do
[chokes up]
for my children.
There's nothing in the world
like coming home
from a hard day at work and
walking through that door
and your children just running up to you
and wrapping their arms around you.
[gasps]
[sighs]
[gasps] I need a moment.
[moody instrumental music plays]
We were introduced from a mutual friend.
Javon had went to prison,
so he was being released from prison.
And the same mutual friend had asked me
if I would let him use my address
as a home plan.
And I said yes.
[bell ringing]
[metal squeals]
I remember, um, just being so curious
about his childhood
because it was so different from mine, um
He bounced around a lot and, um
that was new to me,
and it was almost tragic.
He was previously, um, incarcerated
for manufacturing
and distribution of drugs.
But I believed
that he had been rehabilitated
and changed his life around.
So, from the very beginning,
I just had this
longing, like I needed to protect him.
We never really established
that we were going to be together.
It just kind of sort of happened.
I was going
to University of Central Missouri.
And he would stay at home with the kids.
And that spoke volumes to me
that he could be trusted with my children.
[cryptic music plays]
[birds chirping]
The officer at the time said to me
Javon was a well-known
crack cocaine dealer in that county.
And I was just floored
because I had never
heard or seen anything like that.
And that was like the first
instance I ever realized
that maybe there were things
going on behind my back
that I wasn't exactly aware of.
I was angry with Javon.
And I was like,
"You just need to go. Leave us alone."
And he just grabbed me by my throat
and squeezed so hard
and was, like, choking me.
I remember to the point that
I couldn't breathe and I was terrified.
And he was telling me, like,
"You're never gonna leave me."
"The only way that you'll ever leave me
is if I kill you, bitch."
[ominous music plays]
I remember saying to him,
like, "I love you."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
And he would tell me,
"Fear lasts longer than love."
Like he never wanted to hear
[deep inhale]
um, that I loved him.
[grim instrumental music plays]
I would tell myself
that if I could just help him
or get him away from the drug scene
that our marriage would be better.
[birds chirping]
But the abuse with Javon
continued throughout our marriage.
I learned really early on
that the less that I struggled
during a strangulation,
the quicker I would pass out.
And that made things easier.
I do believe
that Javon loved me.
But the only way he knew how to show me
was through violence.
[birds chirping]
It was just
a nightmare,
but I think that also is what made
the good times so good,
because they were
so far and few in between [chokes up]
and we cherished them.
[sniffles]
[birds chirping]
[somber melodic music plays]
[birds chirping]
[birds chirping]
I didn't really want anyone to know
how bad it was,
so I just tried to keep it under wraps
and appease him.
[inhales deeply]
But then he was closer to his old friends
and started using drugs again,
and it just got ugly.
[birds chirping]
He locked me in the room.
[sighs]
Beat me with a belt.
Um
Held knives and screwdrivers to my neck
as he would sexually assault me.
And he would be just telling me,
"I will kill everybody.
I have nothing to lose."
And I believed him.
I knew, at this point
something had to change
because now it wasn't about me.
He wasn't just hurting me.
He was threatening to hurt everybody.
[eerie instrumental music plays]
[music intensifies]
[music crescendos]
Which brought us to Good Friday,
which would have been April 14th of 2017.
[birds chirping]
I just remember being really anxious
because it was gonna be the first time
since obtaining the order of protection
that I was going to be alone in the house.
[tense instrumental music plays]
I went downstairs.
And when I opened up the family room door
[music intensifies]
Javon was standing there.
He flew forward at me,
grabbed me by my throat.
He started dragging me up the stairs, um
[gasps]
um, by my neck.
The scariest thing in the world
is to know that somebody else
[inhales sharply]
is holding your life in their hands.
He started checking
the windows and the doors,
making sure they were all locked.
He went back downstairs.
And then,
I heard him call my name.
And I went downstairs. [chokes up]
[music intensifies]
[quavers] And when I stepped into
the bedroom
he was holding a gun.
And he pulled the trigger.
And the gun jammed. It didn't go off.
[ragged breath]
So he became angry
that the gun was, like, not working
and he hit me over the head with it.
And whenever he did, um,
it fell to the ground.
So I picked it up,
and I just remember, like
aiming it at him, and, um
I told him, "I want Just leave.
Just get out."
And he didn't want to.
So he stepped forward,
and whenever he made that forward motion,
I just pulled the trigger.
[gunshot echoes]
I hit him about right here
in his left shoulder.
And, um, he screamed,
like, "Ah! You hit me!"
And then lunged forward at me again, um,
grabbed me by my wrists.
[swallows]
So my hands were kind of up like this,
and he had both my wrists,
and I pulled the trigger again.
And he was flinging me around
and slamming me to the ground.
And in that motion,
I pulled the trigger again.
[inhales sharply]
Um
When he landed on top of me,
like as we were coming down on the ground,
he said, "Fuck it.
We're gonna die together, bitch."
[sharp inhale]
And he laid his head right next to my head
and he grabbed the back handle,
like the butt of the gun,
and aimed it towards his left ear.
And I just wrapped my finger around
to grab control of the handle
and pulled the trigger.
And, um
I just remember that last final shot.
Just feeling the weight of him
on top of me.
Everything was black.
[music crescendos]
I never realized my eyes were closed.
[quavers] Like, I thought it was black
because I was, like, dead.
I thought it was
[gasps]
[hoarsely] And then, um
I just kind of crawled out from under him
when I realized,
like, "Okay, it's over. I'm not
I'm not dead."
[birds chirping]
[somber music plays]
My mom pulled up from work
[phone ringing]
and the phone was ringing.
[ringing continues]
And it's saying, like, Johnson County
on the caller ID.
[ringing continues]
I have no recollection of calling 911,
but I remember that I did call 911.
And I handed her the phone.
[ringing]
And I was, like, shaking my head no.
I was like, "Please."
I just felt like, in that moment,
my best decision
of protecting my family and my children
was to not
let anybody know.
My mom answered the phone.
[muffled clicking]
And, um, she said it was a mistake.
"We didn't mean to call."
The dispatch then said to her, um
[inhales] "We're gonna send somebody out
there anyways."
So I went and sat outside
[birds chirping]
and waited for the police.
[inhales] I remember my mom coming out
to the front step
and kind of tapped me on my shoulder,
rubbed me, and said,
"Come inside, Jem. No one's coming."
[cryptic music plays]
[traffic passes]
[indistinct chatter]
[steam hissing]
My name is Margaret Heffernan,
and I'm the mother of Jema Donahue.
[Margaret] Jema is the youngest
of three of my children.
I can remember her
as, um, an infant sitting on my lap,
and I said, "You'll never be too old."
She excelled in school.
[somber melodic music plays]
Things were going in the right direction
until she was sexually assaulted
at the age of 13 by a 21-year-old man.
[tense discordant music plays]
I was given the excuse
that they couldn't locate him.
I was very surprised.
So I told my son to go to school.
First one that could tell me where he is,
I would give them a hundred dollars.
And in 15 minutes, that phone rang
and I was told where he was.
And I went out
and sat in the car
and waited for him to come out to his
and followed him.
He started coming towards me
and swearing at me.
It's like a switch went off on me.
And I drove straight for him.
I was going to hit him.
[music intensifies]
And the individual jumped over hedges.
I lost common sense,
I guess you could say.
[birds chirping]
I had the sheriff's department
come out to my house.
[somber melodic music plays]
[Margaret sighs]
They said, um
well, possibly,
if I don't press charges against him,
they won't press charges against me.
And I said I would not drop the charges.
[birds singing]
Jema was very angry with me
for contacting, um, the police.
She felt that I betrayed her,
and, um, our relationship, I would say,
was damaged through her teenage years
because of that.
[quavers] You want to protect your child.
And you want to be able
to handle a situation.
[inhales sharply]
And it was out of my hands.
[grim instrumental music plays]
[music intensifies]
I questioned him,
and I said, "Did you put your hands
on my daughter?"
And he didn't answer me.
And I told him, "You just answered me
by saying nothing."
I says, "Promise me you will never
lay your hands on her again,"
and he wouldn't say the words.
I'm angry that
he hurt my daughter repeatedly.
Especially, you know, when I asked him,
"Please don't."
She's a survivor of domestic violence.
It was self-defense.
Nobody knows what they're going to do
until they're in the situation,
and
and it's done.
[moody instrumental music plays]
[birds chirping]
[music crescendos]
[birds chirping]
My name's Aaron Brown,
and I'm a major here
with the Johnson County, Missouri
Sheriff's Office.
I got a call from a a source.
[indistinct radio chatter]
They advised that, um, Javon Donahue
was, in fact, shot and killed
by his wife Jema.
Um And during the process of that,
um, the body was taken to the farm
and buried on the farm.
[music intensifies]
[eerie discordant music plays]
We went out to the residence,
uh, the farm.
But Johnson County is, is a rural county.
It's a cattle-grazing, uh, farms area.
Um, so just merely driving down a road,
uh, you're not able to see terribly much,
just the house.
We needed a helicopter or a plane
to go overhead to look at this property.
[cryptic melodic music plays]
At this point, it is a crime scene.
So we tape it off,
uh, we begin coordinated interviews
with everybody that was on the property
or in the house.
And during a conversation
with one of the individuals at the farm,
they advised that they knew
where Javon was buried at on the property.
And they led us to Javon.
We dug up the body,
wrapped in a white tarp
with rope around, uh, the tarp.
[passing traffic]
[grim melodic music plays]
We needed to locate those individuals
and conduct interviews with them
immediately.
And, uh, one of those
happened to be Jema's mom.
Just shut it off.
Just shut it off and I'll talk to you.
[birds chirping]
[dog barking]
[birds singing]
[Margaret] I told them
I saw Jema standing outside, dazed.
She said, "Javon is in the house."
I says, "We need to call the police."
"No, he's dead."
I said, "Are you sure he's dead?"
And she says, "He's dead."
[eerie music plays]
[phone ringing]
[ringing continues]
She had dialed 911 and hung up.
[ringing continues]
911 called back.
[ringing]
She's throwing the phone at me.
She's shaking her head no,
back and forth, but no words.
[receiver clicking]
And I told them,
"I'm sorry to bother you,"
that I made a mistake.
And he said, "Unfortunately,
we still have to send somebody out."
And I said, "I understand."
[quavers] I remember saying to her,
"When the cops come, Jema,
please let me tell them I did this."
[smacks lips]
"I lived my life."
"You have children to raise."
She said, "No, Mom. I will not."
But it's what I wanted to do.
[somber melodic music plays]
I let Jema down when she was 13,
and I felt
I can't do that again to her.
I remember our relationship
just being undone
overnight.
I didn't want to go through that again.
[birds chirping]
We were probably out there
a good 45 minutes, and they never came.
And I told myself maybe this is
the way it's supposed to be.
When the police didn't show up
at the house was the turning point
that we'll take matters
into our own hands.
I thought, "Okay, we can do this."
"We can get away with this."
[eerie discordant music plays]
We placed Javon's body
in an area that he dug.
And he says, "I don't want you to know
where I'm gonna bury him."
"I have two other holes dug."
And I thought,
"Well, that's good that I I won't know."
I I prayed that Jema
was gonna be strong enough
to keep her mouth shut
and not share this with anybody.
That we would have to go to our grave
knowing what we did.
[somber melodic music plays]
[sirens wailing]
[downbeat instrumental music plays]
My name is Dr. Lisa Witcher.
And I was a state-appointed
forensic examiner, um, for Jema's case.
When we're looking
at battered spouse syndrome,
we're looking for the cycle of violence.
Part one is this tension-building phase.
[grim music plays]
So where you start seeing
the perpetrator of the abuse
becoming triggered by either you
or the environment around them.
The second phase
is the acute or crisis phase.
That is when violence occurs.
After that, the honeymoon phase,
when the batterer promises
to never let that happen again.
And then the cycle starts over again.
[Jema] There was an incident.
We were in a motel room.
And Javon raped me, sodomized me,
and afterwards, he called his friend
and was kind of laughing and making jokes,
saying, "How long is it gonna take her
to stop, like, bleeding?"
Like, from my rectum. And
Just anything to humiliate me
or degrade me.
[Lisa] You know, calling and bragging
about beating a woman
It's either a twisted call
for somebody to come intervene
or it's truly despicable.
It's truly someone
who believes that they have
done what's right
and taken what's theirs.
I am surprised that Jema made it
as long as she did.
And that she is alive
at the end of this story.
Had he not come to the house that day,
I don't think
he would have stopped pursuing her.
She meets all of the factors
that we look for, um,
and that research has shown
is tied to women who become
battered spouses.
[tense discordant music plays]
[sirens wailing]
[man] To my knowledge,
battered spouse as a self-defense
has not been successful yet in Missouri.
It's been here a while, but it has not
really ever been a successful defense.
Okay, come on.
But the question wasn't whether or not
she suffered
from battered spouse syndrome.
It was whether or not
she used deadly force
justifiably under the circumstances.
A slap to the face
doesn't justify someone shooting someone.
My name is Rob Russell,
and I was the attorney
who prosecuted Ms. Jema Donahue
for the homicide of Javon Donahue.
[Jema] As we were coming down
on the ground, he said,
"Fuck it.
We're gonna die together, bitch."
And he laid his head
right next to my head
and he grabbed the butt of the gun
and aimed it towards his left ear.
And I just wrapped my finger around
and pulled the trigger.
And, um, I just remember
that last final shot. Just
feeling the weight of him on top of me.
Well,
her story doesn't match up
with the injuries suffered by Mr. Donahue.
There are four bullets in his body.
One is in the shoulder.
One is through his jaw.
One is in the back of his head.
And one is underneath his chin,
straight up.
The shot to the back of the head
would have been a fatal shot.
The shot underneath his chin
was a fatal shot.
His jaw would have been broken
in such a way that he would not
have been able to talk to her
and tell her that he loved her
in this Romeo and Juliet moment,
they were both going to die together.
That didn't happen
because he couldn't talk.
So, I don't think the jury really
bought into
that she was acting in self-defense.
Certainly, when people try to
hide evidence of homicide,
and certainly hiding the body
tends to give you the impression
that the person who's doing that
has a guilty conscience.
If they had accepted the self-defense
argument from Ms. Donahue,
she would have been found
completely not guilty.
But instead,
they found her guilty of manslaughter.
[car horn honking]
[somber melodic music plays]
[Lisa] I think that the decisions
that were made after Javon was killed
did put her in prison.
The dedication to burying the body
really stuck in the craw
of a lot of the jury members.
[traffic noise]
Her mom certainly
could have acted differently.
I don't know if in her mother's mind
that that was really a choice,
but the concealment of Javon's body
made things a lot worse for Jema.
[Jema] I blame my mother, um
for a lot that happened,
um, when I was a teenager.
I really wasn't allowed to have friends.
My mom would do background checks
on everybody.
So I stayed at home a lot.
[Lisa] You know, becoming a social pariah
at a very young age
for a sexual assault she could not help.
Then the
the withholding
of any type of social relationship.
Essentially, what her mom was doing
was holding her hostage.
Holding her in such a safe place,
um, that it went overboard.
It went overboard into, quite honestly,
emotional abuse.
Um, not letting your child
out of the house ever.
Not letting her socialize
in any normal type of way
certainly sets up
a sense of learned helplessness.
I don't think
there's anything malicious about it.
I just do not believe
their relationship has ever been healthy.
[eerie music plays]
[grim music plays]
Jema describes her mother
as "an evil, wicked woman
who is controlling and vengeful."
"If she has the chance, she will kill me.
I'm sure of it."
"She will bury me
like she did my husband."
[music crescendos]
It's very possible that the line,
"She will bury me
like she buried my husband,"
was Jema's acknowledgement of
"I'm into this even further now
because of her involvement."
[birds chirping]
[Jema] During my trial, um
I had a strained relationship
with my parents.
I was drinking.
I was abusing drugs. Um
Do I think today that my mother
would kill me or bury me in a field?
No.
We've come so far.
It's not even the same relationship.
Like, we're not even the same people.
I've made great strides,
and she's made great strides.
[somber melodic music plays]
[Margaret] I've changed as a parent
realizing that
my ways of being a helicopter mom
over an adult was wrong.
It's It's their life, their choice,
their decisions,
and their consequences.
This part of me that always had
to be in control and fix problems.
Why give myself more problems
than I already have, you know?
It's just, um
It's not my problem.
I don't need to fix it.
Of course, I would do things differently.
I blame the police not showing up.
But ultimately, I, I told them,
like, "You don't have to come."
"It was a mistake."
So I started that.
I started that with a lie.
And the day had to come
where I had to acknowledge it.
I have learned a lot,
you know, about accountability
and the importance of it
in order for a person
to learn by their mistakes.
I have seen such improvement in Jema
since she's been incarcerated.
She lights up when I see her,
when I visit her.
And always a big hug, a kiss on the cheek.
That's my daughter.
That's the baby that I had.
[birds chirping]
[Jema] When I first came to prison, um
life was in an uproar.
But once I started to take advantage
of the different programs
I enrolled in, like, women's empowerment.
I was able to kind of see my prison life
in a different light.
[birds chirping]
It wasn't so much condemnation
as much as rehabilitation.
Also, in here,
I've learned accountability
because the fact is I still made
the choices that I made.
[Rob] The shot to the back of the head
would have been a fatal shot.
The shot underneath his chin
was a fatal shot.
He would not have been able to talk to her
and tell her that he loved her
in this Romeo and Juliet moment,
they were both going to die together.
That didn't happen.
There was no Romeo and Juliet moment,
where Javon said, "Do you love me?"
He said, "We're gonna die together, bitch.
Till death do us part."
Those were his words
as he was flinging me around
and slamming me to the ground.
It's a really hard situation to decide,
um whose life is more important.
Or do you take the chance
of fighting for your life?
[sighs]
I hate the fact
that I have to wake up every day
[chokes up]
and know that I took somebody's life.
And on top of that,
it was someone's life whom I loved.
[Margaret] I remember saying to her,
"When the cops come, Jema,
please, let me tell them I did this."
And she said, "No, Mom."
"I will not."
I admire
[inhales]
what my mother risked in helping me
and trying to save me.
She threw everything away.
And honestly,
I probably would do it
for my children as well.
I mean, not go about it like that, but
we do what we need to
to protect and save our our babies.
This time in our life is almost over, and
I see all good days ahead for us.
[somber discordant music plays]