In Due Time

This section is about things our family and friends observed personally or spoke about directly with Tiffiney. While most of this shows her darker side please keep in mind she was a victim of abuse for years. And yes, she was a grown woman no longer in that situation and able to make her own decisions by the time she met Jason, however those of you who know or have counselled or tried to help someone who has been in an abusive situation know there are lifelong repercussions that most victims struggle to overcome. There were some key facts about Tiffiney that did not come out at trial, things that were going on behind the happy, friendly, always smiling face she presented to the outside world. Things about her childhood and the mental, physical and sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-stepfather while her mother chose to not do anything about it or that she was under a tremendous amount of stress and was drinking heavily in the months right before she committed suicide. This was brought up but not in a lot of detail. There are a lot of people out there who are claiming to have been Tiffiney’s “best friend”. Except most all of you making this claim didn’t know her as well as you think. If you were her “best friend” you would have known those things about her and her past and that this affected how she made her future life choices. You would know how impulsive she was and how easily she became bored with just about everything – from jobs to friends and lovers, husbands and children. You would not be telling everyone she was “fine”, she would never kill herself – if you are one of the people saying this, you were not a close enough friend to understand her. Her unhealthy, chaotic and tragic childhood led her to lead an unhealthy, chaotic and tragic life. Do any of you really think she wanted everyone to knowing she was cheating on her husband? Or that she had also cheated on her first husband, more than once – Jason being one of the men she cheated with. It was during one of these affairs, right before she met Jason, that she had become pregnant. She told us she had been unsure about having the baby and after talking to her mother, her mother convinced her to have an abortion. She talked about regretting this decision because her family was known to have trouble conceiving and even the doctor had told her she might have trouble having children in the future.

At Jason’s sentencing hearing, Tiffiney’s mother got on the stand, accused Jason of killing Tiffiney (not true – Tiffiney chose to end her own life) and cried about how Tiffiney’s children would never know their mother. I mention this here because ironically, as some of you know or may have guessed, Tiffiney never got to know her own biological father, even though she begged her mother over and over to let her know who he was, her mother always refused her requests. Her mother did finally tell her – after her dad had died.

Tiffiney had grown tired of her kids and was hardly ever spending any time with them, both of whom she was supposed to be home schooling. They were so far behind in their education, they had to be held back a year when Jason later enrolled them in a local school. She had all her friends and our daughter on a rotating schedule to babysit her kids while she spent all day shopping or getting waxed or meeting her friends for breakfast and lunch dates and later visiting her boyfriend. She rotated who was babysitting so that no one person would figure out how little time she was spending with her children. She would rush back just before time for Jason to get home, she would take the kids and set up a scene, take pictures and post them on Facebook saying, “Oh look what we learned today” or “Oh look what a fun activity we did together!” Do all of you out there actually believe everything you see or read on the internet? Do you honestly think that people who have something to hide don’t try to cover for it? She was tired of dealing with her children, so she spent more and more time away. After spending all day away from her, they would of course want their mother when she returned – they would want her to hold them or would seek comfort from her. She had started telling her son that he was the reason why she stayed gone, she couldn’t deal with him being so “clingy” and “whiny”. Both children were below average on their growth charts, but especially her daughter. Her daughter had begun trying to wean herself, but Tiffiney was determined to “beat” her mother’s breastfeeding record of 3 years. She would sometimes let her daughter have yogurt and water in addition to breast milk, but not much else. Because of this her daughter became malnourished, she was under weight, losing her hair due to iron deficiency. She had to be given a daily iron supplement, which Tiffiney didn’t give her half the time because she didn’t like having to brush her teeth after giving it to her – again this was a once-a-day liquid supplement. Tiffiney had spoken to our daughter about killing herself. She had also started to include the kids in these conversations. Tiffiney had told her once after coming home from a rare trip with the kids, that the kids had been crying the whole way home and that she had thought about just running the van off a cliff or a bluff with all of them in it, but she had been afraid that it wouldn’t kill them and she would be stuck in the van with two crying kids. When Tiffiney had first started mentioning suicide our daughter had tried to get her to go see a councelor but Tiffiney would always say she was fine but at this point, when she had started to include the children in her thoughts of suicide, my daughter told her that she was letting things go too far, she told Tiffiney she needed to see a counselor and get help and if she didn’t, she was going to tell Jason. Remember this is the founder of the Moms Helping Moms organization who was considering taking not only her own life but those of her children as well.

For my grandson’s birthday in 2017, we took everyone out to eat. Tiffiney had a bandage on her neck, Jason explained that she had accidentally burned herself with her curling iron. She actually had burned herself with a curling iron, except we later found out it wasn’t an accident. Tiffiney had deliberately burned her neck to try and cover up where her boyfriend had left a hickey.

I don’t know at what point, but I do know that it was not long before her suicide that her boyfriend broke up her, refusing to be her excuse for ending her marriage. Some of her friends that knew of the affair had told her they did not approve of her affair and would not support her in keeping it a secret from Jason. Her life was spiraling out of control, she was lying to her husband, her family, her friends and herself. All the lies caught up with her and she was unable to deal with the fact that all of these things were about to be exposed, and unfortunately, she had never been taught how to deal with her life choices and on the night she killed herself she once again made the wrong choice.