EPISODE 01
BEFORE
TRANScript
Heather:
It’s October 1996. My mom is rushing me and my siblings out of the house so we can get to the library before it closes. I say a quick goodbye to my dad. He works nights, so by the time we get home, he’ll already be gone. He asks me to look for a book he saw in yesterday’s paper - something about Mayor Daley. I tell him, “Okay, I’ll look,” and run out the door. My mom remembers that evening as well.
Lynn:
I remember my kids had a report due on the Tuesday they returned to school after Columbus Day and we had plans for that Saturday so I knew we couldn’t get to the library, so we had to go to the library.
Heather
Most of the rest of that night is blurry now. I was thirteen, and thirty years have passed. But I remember one thing clearly - that was the last time I saw my dad alive. The next time I saw him… he was in a coffin at his wake. On October 11, 1996, my dad left for work and never came home.
For most of my life, that sentence was where the story ended. A date. A tragedy. A closed chapter. Something that happened to me - not something I was ever invited to understand. This podcast is my attempt to understand it.
This… is Blood at Dawn.
In 1996, I was just a regular 13 year old girl. Thinking about high school, playing volleyball, babysitting for extra money and spending time with my friends. When I think back to the days before October 11, 1996, I miss that kid. The kid that had two parents. The kid who thought murder was something that happened on the news, not something that could reach into her own life. After my dad died, life didn’t stop. School still happened, birthdays and holidays went on without him. But everything felt altered. Every milestone, it was evident that something was missing. And for a long time, I convinced myself I was fine, because that’s what you do when you are 13 and grieving. You become fine, even when you’re not.
My dad, Kevin Carroll, was born in 1956 and raised on the south side of Chicago in an Irish Catholic family. He was one of four siblings - two boys, two girls - spread across fifteen years. As a kid my dad went to Tonti grammar school, and Hubbard high school. He was a Boy Scout, and supporting scouting remained important to him all the way until his death. He was a die hard Chicago White Sox fan, and tried to bring us to as many games as he could. Today he even has a brick with his name on it in Champions Plaza, right outside the stadium. His dad, my grandpa, died when my dad was 9.
When my dad met my mom, he was very happy that he had a father figure in his life, and took to calling my maternal grandpa “Dad”. My mom remembers that pretty well.
Lynn:
He was proud that he could call my dad, his dad all the time.
Heather:
He and my mom were high school sweet hearts. My mom told me about how they met.
Lynn:
We both worked at Zayre and I was a cashier and he pulled his bike outside of my register where I could see it through the window and he asked me to keep an eye on it while he closed up automotives where he worked. And then we just started talking and he asked me out.
Heather:
They got married in 1977 and enjoyed 4 years of marriage before they had their first child.
Lynn:
We did a lot of camping before children. We would go every Saturday night to someone's house and watch Saturday Night Live.
Heather:
My dad made an extra effort to be involved in the lives of his nephews, before he even had kids of his own. He coached little league and one of my cousins even lived with us when I was little. Simple things meant a lot to my dad. Growing up, he neglected his teeth and as a young adult, it showed. He invested a lot of time and money in getting his teeth fixed, and my mom said that was something he was really proud of.
Lynn:
He went to the dentist and he got them all fixed. They actually used an example of his teeth in the dentist’s office, a before and after. And after he got his teeth fixed, anytime he smiled, he had this huge big smile. He was so proud of them.]
Heather:
In 1981 my parents had their first child, my older sister, then they had me in 1982 and my younger brother and sister over the next 4 years. We lived just a couple blocks from my grandparents. My dad worked as a machinist. My mom ran a daycare out of our house, so she could stay home with us. When we were little, one of my moms favorite memories of my dad was reading books to us.
Lynn:
Once we had kids he would be really into reading bedtime stories. Like he would take on the voices of Elmo and Cookie Monster and, and I remember that so well because we'd go camping with grandma and grandpa and be in their trailer and he'd be doing this in the back room where you guys slept and grandpa would just be sitting there laughing and laughing because he'd make all the different voices.
My older sister was fifteen when my dad died. When I asked her what she pictured when she thought about him at home, it wasn't anything extraordinary.
Older Sister:
He was always reading the newspaper. I have a lot of memories of him grilling outside. Like even when it rained, he would pull the grill into the shed and grill inside the shed while listening to sports games on the radio.
Heather:
There were ordinary pieces of my dad that have survived the last three decades without him. From the outside, it probably looked like our family was pretty ordinary, as a whole. But in many ways, we weren’t. Alcohol was a constant in our home. And when my dad drank- which was often-he wasn’t the version of himself that any of us hoped for. He could be unpredictable. Sharp. Intimidating. My mom remembers the things that alcohol changed in our house.
Lynn:
When we would do stuff, it was always me doing it with you guys, not him. So it took a lot away from family time once this addiction really held true. There were many nights that felt heavy before they even began. I learned to read moods quickly. To measure words, and adjust my behavior.
Older Sister:
Life at home was difficult because he was unpredictable and unreliable… I think we just learned as a family to function without him because you couldn't rely on him… A lot of times I feel like maybe it was better when he wasn't home, because at least then it was predictable.
Heather:
Money was tight for my parents when I was a kid, but somehow my dad always had enough to make a stop at the bar after work. The imbalance is something you notice as a kid, even if you don’t have the words to express it. Addiction shaped a lot of what went on in our house. There were apologies, promises and attempts to quit. My dad went to rehab more than once. I remember him sitting on our black sectional, one of the very few times I saw him crying. I remember listening to him tell us that he was going to get help, and wanting to believe that it would stick. My older sister remembered that happening, too.
Older Sister:
I remember him saying he was going to get help. I really remember him saying, ‘I was nine when my dad died. I don't want to die… when one of you is nine.’ That's stuck out to me. It's like he didn't - he didn't want that life.
Heather:
My dad was nine years old when he lost his father. And when my dad died, my little sister was nine. He didn't want to repeat that part of his own childhood. But in the end, he did. When he was sober, he was a genuinely different person.
Lynn:
Other times, he'd come right home, and he would be totally sober and make breakfast for everyone and put it on a warming tray in the oven for us to have either pancakes or French toast or homemade donuts, whatever he was making.
He cooked. He grilled. He baked. He showed up for things in a way he never could seem to do when he was drinking. He asked us questions, and listened to the answers. My older sister remembers this, as well.
Older Sister:
He was more active. Like he would take Bandit for walks… even with us, like he would do more stuff with us… I remember him just being more present.
Heather:
But, unfortunately, sobriety never lasted. It would begin with something small. He would have a belief that he could manage it this time. And slowly, the shift would happen again. Looking back at it as an adult, I can see that addiction had a grip on him that love- the love of my mom, my siblings and I- couldn’t loosen. I do believe that he wanted to do better. But I also know that wanting to do better, and being able to do better are not the same thing.
Older Sister:
It would be different if he never went to rehab, never acknowledged it, never participated in our lives, was like one hundred percent awful all the time… He wasn't. I think his mind and his body was controlled by addiction a lot of the times. And so I think that's how I balance it… he tried his hardest to not be. ]
Heather:
The man who scared me sometimes, and the man who made our house feel warm. Both of these men are my father. And both are a part of this story. Nearly 30 years have passed since he died. I’ve grown up. My sisters and brother have grown up. We've built careers and families of our own. There are grandchildren my dad never met. But in some ways, he is still here. In the people he left behind, and the bloodlines that he was never fortunate enough to meet.
Lynn:
I think about it every day. When I see your son, I look at him and think, ‘Oh my God, he looks so much like Kevin.’ … And I think about how proud your dad would be. You all have wonderful careers. You all have beautiful children. And he missed all that. It was taken from him.
Heather:
For almost thirty years, that has been the hardest part to explain. My dad didn't just lose the years he had already lived. He lost everything that was supposed to come next. He never saw us grow up. He never met his grandchildren. He never got the chance to become an older version of the complicated man I've spent almost my whole life remembering. But none of us knew any of that yet on Friday, October 11, 1996. That afternoon, he was still just Dad. For most of my life, I believed one version of what happened on October 12, 1996. It was the version adults told a scared thirteen-year-old girl. There were arrests. Trials. Convictions. Life sentences. To me, this meant certainty. This meant closure. This meant justice. Or at least that’s what I thought it meant. I didn’t question too much. I didn’t let my mind go there. Part of this was protection. Survival. And part of it was fear. Because asking the questions felt dangerous. Like if I pulled on a thread, the whole story might unravel. In 2024, something shifted. I moved back to Chicago after living in Texas for most of my adult life. Something about being back in this city, driving past the neighborhood where my dad died, lit a fire in me to start asking questions. I started requesting court records. Reading transcripts. Looking at motions and appeals. At first, it was curiosity, then it became something else. Because the more I read, the more complicated it felt. I read a lot- thousands of pages. I highlighted things like I was studying for an exam. I came across details that I had never heard. Legal arguments that no one had ever explained to me. There were moments where I would stop and think “Wait…what?” There were some nights I had to close my computer because reading about my dad’s death in legal language felt colder than any headline ever had. He wasn’t my dad in those documents. He was “One of the three victims.” Or case number 9628875. But once you open the file, you can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. And I couldn’t unread what I was seeing. At some point, not asking the questions or seeking the answers, starts to feel like betrayal to the reality and gravity of what I went through as a 13 year old. If I am going to say his name. If I am going to carry his memory forward, then I need to understand what really happened.
Not the simplified version that I was told at 13.
Not the newspaper headlines.
The whole thing.
Good. Bad. Complicated.
I don’t know where this search will lead, but I do know this:
I’m not turning away from it. The truth - whatever it is - deserves to be faced.
Even if it is hard.
Especially if it is hard.