Cooper Mall

That maybe even she needed to believe.

There's a part of Tanya's life, Margo's really, that sits in a black box.

Opening it is the hardest part of telling her story because inside that box is everything she learned to use to survive long before she stepped into a courtroom or scaled a prison fence.

When she was a child, she grew up with an alcoholic father, who she repeatedly witnessed abuse her mom.

At 15, she was date-raped and pressured into getting an abortion.

It set her up for the life she had now as Tanya, the mother of seven.

Margot had given up the baby she got pregnant with at 17.

That was the son that got her kicked out of her mother's house.

All of this had taught her that when things got bad, she needed to get out fast.

It's almost like she'd been on the run long before she became a fugitive.

But Tanya's life rarely paused to let her process anything.

It just kept coming.

And the next turn had nothing to do with her past and everything to do with her future with Joe.

It was a malignant tumor.

Joe was terminal.

It could be two years, 10 years, but there was no getting out of this alive.

The cancer spread fast and the fateful day came in less than a year.

Tanya remembers when she got the call from the hospital on May 18th, 1988.

With Joe, she had a real home.

And after he died, she once more had to go on the move.