One Family. Two Serial Killer Victims.

INTRODUCTION: In 1992, when Cindy Jaramillo was 15 her mother died of a drug overdose.

Cindy had run away from home by then and was living on the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This was after trying and trying to convince her family that she was being sexually abused by uncle. But no one believed her, except her mother. But all her mom could do was believe her. She was too deep in her own life of partying and drugs to help more. So Cindy ran away and by age 12 she was living on the street and selling drugs.

Three years later her mothers death sent even deeper into that world. One morning in March 1999, Cindy was out working when a man in an RV asked for a date. Once inside the RV, he hit her with the sun gun. He kidnapped her and tortured her for three days before she escaped by running to the desert barefoot and naked. Police would later call him the Toy Box serial killer because that was what he called his own personal torture chamber.

For most people that experience would mean a lifetime of paralyzing nightmares. But for Cindy it was something to fight against. He was something to fight against. He hadn’t broke her during the torture and he sure as hell wasn't gonna break her life. So she fought. Hard. She got off the street and got clean. She got married and had kids. But that wasn't enough. She wanted to help the women who lived on the streets of Albuquerque as she once did. In 2009 she and I founded Street Safe New Mexico to do just that.

The Toy Box serial killer might have died 20 years ago in prison but Cindy still wins every day in her fight against him.

But recently it's a completely different serial killer that occupies most of Cindy's thoughts. It's a new development, one that happened only a few months ago. Because that's when that serial killer confessed to killing her mother.

MUSIC BY:
Luckylittleraven