Chapter 5 - Tyler’s recording
Tyler gave investigators his phone the same afternoon.
Not voluntarily at first.
He wanted to keep the video.
“For what?”
I asked later.
He looked ashamed.
“I don’t know.”
The original reason was ugly.
He had been recording because he thought Michael was going to embarrass me.
Tyler and I were half siblings.
Same mother.
Different fathers.
Fourteen years apart.
When he was little, I sent him Army patches and ridiculous T-shirts from wherever I was stationed.
When he became a teenager, Michael started talking about me differently.
“Amanda thinks rank makes her better than people.”
“Amanda comes home and acts like everybody is one of her subordinates.”
“Amanda doesn’t understand civilian life.”
Some criticism was fair.
I could be rigid.
Overdirect.
Turn family logistics into operations.
Tyler absorbed the rest.
He thought my promotion story was exaggerated.
Not because he had checked.
Because Michael laughed whenever Mom mentioned it.
So that morning, Tyler began recording to capture what he expected would be:
Dad exposing Amanda.
Instead he recorded his father pointing a loaded weapon at his sister.
The video showed the entire confrontation from the moment Michael entered.
It showed my hands.
The phone.
The cuff.
The shove.
The chair tipping.
Michael aiming downward.
It also captured Mom saying:
“She told you who she is.”
And Michael saying:
“She’s been filling your head with this garbage for years.”
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Not proof of motive.
But revealing.
