Evaristo Salas Jr. (Junior)

And somehow my dad, who lived in the same town as my stepfather, who was my father, you know, heard about it, found out about it.

And they ended up taking me to my father's house.

You know, he lived, you know, on the other side of town.

And, you know, and I'm kind of unconsolable.

I'm crying.

And my dad comes into that room and I'm coming to the back of the cop car.

And he takes one look at me, and he sees me, and he just almost starts to cry, but he tries to hold it in, and he tries to grab me, and he says that, you know, it's going to be all right, you know, and, you know, don't worry about it.

I can't really speak.

I'm just saying my mom, my mom.

And he tells me, he's like, you know, your mom's in a bad place, you know, and his voice is breaking up at the time.

And he's trying basically to explain to a 7-year-old kid, you know, that your mother still loves you,

You know, but, you know, this is what's going to happen.

But he took me in, you know, so I didn't have to go to foster care.

And I lived with my dad all the way up until the time that I was wrongfully convicted.

But he did his best, and I spent probably about a year with my dad.

It was just us, and he had a four-bedroom house.

It was just us two, and he had to work 12 hours, sometimes 16-hour days.

So I spent a lot of time alone there at the house.

And then a year later, my older sister came to live with us because she couldn't deal with my mother no more either, and my mother was abusing her and everything.

So he took her in too.