When Candice, 35, uncovered the disturbing truth about her husband, Martin, she grabbed her baby son and ran \u2014 barefoot, heart pounding \u2014 through the night to her parents\u2019 house. She had no plan, just one certainty: she couldn\u2019t stay another minute. Her parents were shocked when she showed up sobbing, baby in her arms. But once she told them what she\u2019d found, they understood. Martin had become distant over the past year \u2014 obsessed with spending nights in the basement. Candice thought it was just stress, until one night, he forgot to lock the door. She found the walls\u00a0covered\u00a0in drawings and paintings of\u00a0Dakota\u00a0\u2014 Martin\u2019s ex-girlfriend, and Candice\u2019s childhood friend\u2026 who had died five years earlier. The basement was a shrine to a ghost. And then Candice overheard something chilling: Martin telling his mother,\u00a0Linda, that he wished\u00a0Candice\u00a0had died instead of Dakota. He admitted he only married Candice because she\u00a0looked\u00a0like Dakota \u2014 and that their son was the only reason he hadn\u2019t left. With her parents\u2019 support, Candice filed for divorce and started custody proceedings. But Martin and Linda wouldn\u2019t let go. One night, they\u00a0broke into her parents\u2019 home, demanding she come back. Martin grabbed her arm, insisting they were \u201cmeant to be.\u201d Her father called the police just in time. Martin and Linda were arrested for attempted kidnapping. The media frenzy that followed was overwhelming. So Candice left it all behind \u2014 moving to a new city, starting fresh with her son, and changing her name. Therapy helped her reclaim her strength. And slowly, she built a safe, peaceful life for herself and Barry. She\u2019ll never forget what she went through. But when her son asked her, \u201cMommy, are we safe now?\u201d she could finally answer:\u201cYes, sweetheart. We\u2019re safe. And we\u2019re going to be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Candice, 35, uncovered the disturbing truth about her husband, Martin, she grabbed her baby son and ran \u2014 barefoot, heart pounding \u2014 through the night to her parents\u2019 house. She had no plan, just one certainty: she couldn\u2019t stay another minute. Her parents were shocked when she showed up sobbing, baby in her arms. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2498,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}