Daddy's Little Girl
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What led to Mindy Berenyi's tragic decision to shoot her father?
I come from a small town.
It's a farm community. I think people think, well, you have the right to raise your child how you want.
What goes on behind closed doors stays there. That's what we were always told in my family. Whatever goes on here, you better not ever tell anyone.
The mystery of what really went on here in this middle-class house in Antwerp, Ohio, is at the heart of an unspeakable crime. A beloved father lies dead. His daughter, Mindy, a high school cheerleader, is in jail, awaiting trial for killing him in cold blood. I had said before, you know, out of anger, I could kill him.
But I'm not a murderer.
She doesn't deserve to be there. We, myself as a parent, should have saved her.
And I didn't. So packing up at her Indianapolis home. We'll get up there tonight. I'll take Mindy her clothes. Mindy's mother, Shirley Bereni, is preparing for the fight of her life. Court starts tomorrow morning. She'll be taking the stand at her daughter's murder trial to explain what happened.
She was still daddy's little angel there.
To a father-daughter relationship that had once seemed magic.
She loved him to death and he loved her to death.
Shirley met her future husband, mechanic Andy Barreni, in high school.
I'd just turned 18, and Andy wasn't quite 17.
They married just six weeks later, when Shirley learned she was pregnant with another man's child. You must have felt like he was rescuing you. Well, basically. But after 15 years and three children, the marriage fell apart. I truly believe, deep down, he loved us. He just didn't know how at all. Depressed and dispirited, Shirley gave up custody of teenagers Steve and Scott and of six-year-old Mindy. He told them that I was the one that wanted to leave, that I didn't love them, Did you want to go live with your dad? Yeah, I did.
It was a good life at first.
It wasn't long, Mindy says, before life with the father she adored became a living hell.
And he would have me go in his room with him, and he would have me massage him first. And things started then.
Things started.
What do you mean?
Like having me touch him and telling me that, you know, no one loves me like he does.
And how old were you? About eight. And when she rejected him, she says... He just started to hate me almost, I felt like. Her father began abusing her emotionally.
What's wrong with you? Why are you so goddamn stupid? You're a whore. You're a slut. You're never going to amount to anything. You make me sick.
Her older brothers eventually left home. Her father remarried. Mindy became a teenager and wanted her freedom.
I wanted to go spend the night with my girlfriends and talk to boys on the phone. I guess I wanted to do the things that every other teenager wants to do.
That's when, she says, Andy Bereni became impossibly controlling. I got a job at McDonald's, and he kept a log of the odometer. He knew exactly how many miles it was to and from my job. He searched her room and more. He recorded my phone calls.
He locked up the phones when he wasn't home. If I was talking on the phone and he didn't like it, he would rip the phone out of the wall and grab me by the neck and choke me, throw me against the wall.
Now 16 years old. It's kept getting worse and worse. Mindy found out she was pregnant. She would later miscarry, but she didn't know that then. How did you think this was going to play out? I thought he would kill me.
What were the circumstances surrounding the Berenyi family dynamics?
On the afternoon of September 27th, 1995, Mindy came home to discover her father had searched her room again. This time, he had found her ashtray. I just got really scared.
He just told me the night before that if he caught me smoking again, it would be the last time. And then I started to think about being pregnant, what he was going to do. It just kind of all built up.
She broke into her father's bedroom and took his shotgun. She was going to kill herself, she says. I went into the bathroom because I figured if I messed up and I didn't kill myself, I didn't want to get in trouble for making a mess on the wall. What stopped you?
Every time I got ready to pull the trigger, I just...
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What led to Mindy Berenyi's tragic decision to shoot her father?
0:15–4:19
2
What were the circumstances surrounding the Berenyi family dynamics?
4:19–8:38
3
How did Mindy's relationship with her father evolve over time?
8:38–15:41
4
What evidence supports Mindy's claim of self-defense?
15:41–22:12
5
How did the trial unfold and what were the key arguments presented?
22:12–27:20
6
What were the reactions of the family members during the trial?
27:20–37:35