December 29, 2023 • 37 mins
Meet Karly Rain's Mom, Amber who is on a mission to fight for change in public safety policies and find jsutice for her daughter. Her journey of grief and turmoil with facts and policies she unveils. A desire for a foundation and to spread her daughter's story, kindness and light. karlyrain.com
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Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
I don't understand why that many peoplewere shot and only her. She was
the most innocent thing in there.You have to remember Carly Rain and we
I don't know how, I don'tknow what if that's gonna look like,
but we have to. We haveto stand up for Carly rain period.
(00:30):
We have to remember her because thatwas a waste, That was a wasted
life. Carly rain matters topics thatarise in a journey through murder, grief,
loss, and fight for change.This is I am far from over
(01:06):
well there. My name is Amber, and I hope that this is going
to be many of a series ofpodcasts, maybe even vlogging about the current
judicial system, the way we treatjuveniles, the way we treat victims,
how victims voices are not heard,and so on. My daughter, carl
(01:33):
Rainwood was killed November thirteenth, twentytwenty two. She went to actually her
first party and she was shot eighttimes. Carly was there fifteen minutes and
(01:53):
this was not her normal choice ofentertainment. Worked three jobs, and she
had decided to accept an invitation fromsome friends at one of her jobs who
were going for a birthday party,which turned into an after hours party,
(02:15):
and after her shift for the evening, she decided she would stop in and
support these friends. Fifteen minutes shewas there and she never came home.
In my journey, which definitely wasn'tby choice, I have learned a lot
(02:40):
of things, and I've also themain thing that I've learned is how backwards
the system is and how there isno logic into law. Any laws that
we do have that logical are notcurrently being prosecuted. Logic also would mean
(03:06):
that you would think police would haveGPS locations to current criminals on GPS monitor
assignment or those who are repeat felonswho are on pre trial release. And
would you believe that the police,no law enforcement agency has real time access
(03:31):
to GPS monitoring locations. They haveto get an actual subpoena in order to
locate that person. Again, thesystem, the more I unfold and the
more that's just like plopped in myface, it is set up for criminals.
(03:52):
It seems like it's a machine andthe machine makes money. And in
a sense, people aren't the onesthat we are trying to protect. A
lot of the policies in Douglas Countythat I've noticed are not in the best
(04:13):
interest of public safety, nor dothey get the public's opinion before they implement
policies or new projects, new testpilot programs. And in fact, that
pilot program called pre trial lease hasactually had a few innocent people killed.
(04:39):
When you let violent offenders, repeatfelons out on pre travel lease program,
this endangers public safety. And inthe case of pre trial release in Douglas
County, I know firsthand of twomy daughter is one, and actually Chris
(05:01):
Gradoville, who worked with the CreightonBaseball program, also an innocent victim of
someone out on pretrial release, someonewho was a repeat violent offender. At
some point, you would think thatcommon sense, which is not common anymore,
logical sense would tell you that certainoffenders and certain crimes would make you
(05:29):
ineligible for any type of pre trialrelease. So if you're arrested for a
violent offense, I would think thatyou definitely would not be eligible for pre
travelase where you're running around the streetsand able to kill someone else. This
was the case with and I believethere's probably more stories like this. We
(05:56):
just a lot of people are justcoming to me with their with their stories,
and it's the system that doesn't makesense. The system seems like it's
just out to make money. Istarted something on TikTok called did you Know?
And in the process of this grievingand daily you know, what's your
(06:16):
emotion going to be today? Andare you gonna be able to function today?
That's literally a process. When youlose your child, you don't know.
Some days you don't think about itthat much, and then two days
later you'll be like, man,I didn't think about it that much,
and then you kind of fall intothis guilt of why am I not thinking
(06:39):
about it? Dude, I carefor my kid. Just it's a crazy
crazy I call it an a fibof chaos. It is not a roller
coaster, because when you get ona roller coaster, you choose to and
you know it's going to end thegrief of losing your child, especially in
(07:00):
a manner like I did, thatisn't ever going to change. So I
feel like the more people that Ican let know about Carly, the more
people that maybe she will touch.Carly was a one of a kind,
(07:21):
unapologetically her twenty year old who learnedvery early that you need to be who
you are, love who you are, and she did. Man, she
did random acts of kindness. Nottoo many twenty year olds just do that
(07:41):
on their own. She decided notto let what other people thought of her
enter her vibe. She used tosay that drama isn't my problem. And
to have the confidence she did atthat young of an age, and to
not care what people thought for thethings she wanted to try to learn.
(08:05):
That's a crazy, crazy, awesometrait to get that early. Usually only
hear that from you older people who'vebeen through the hell of growing up.
And Carly just decided not to letoutside influences affect her and we can all
(08:26):
learn from that. In fact,I've created a few videos and I love
to share Carly's story, and thesestories and videos have actually helped some juveniles
who are currently in the system andcurrently don't have self worth or don't know
where to go and are dealing withtrauma, boys and girls. I get
(08:50):
calls from parents who my daughter sawyour video of Carly a couple videos,
and she talks about her all thetime and she wants to do better.
And hopefully we will have a serieswith some of these kids and see if
you know learning about Carly helps them, because it helps me. If Carly's
(09:13):
story helps even one kid. Carlywas very independent. Carly was a just
a light. And it's very hardto explain Carly because she would want to
explain herself, which is why Icreated videos, because you can't really describe
(09:35):
her. It's something that you seecome out of her. Nor would she
want anyone to try and describe herwhen we have videos. But for me,
talking about her is gonna hopefully encourageother people to go look her up,
look up some videos, and chooseto be happy. Choose choose happiness,
(10:00):
choose less drama, don't care whatother people think. Carli was very
independent in the manner of she wantedto learn something, she would go figure
out how to learn it, YouTubeschool, she called it, and she
would try and master it. Carlywanted to be the best. If she
was going to decide to do something, she was going to do it full
(10:22):
on and do it the best shepossibly could and do it better than anyone
else around her. Even when itcame down to Carly's you know, her
car check engine light, I hadtold both of my girls, you know,
you can go to AutoZone, youcan go to Riley's. They will
run the code for you and tellyou what the problem is and to a
(10:46):
fault. Sometimes Carly was so independentthat she just did not want you to
tell her fix it for her.She wanted you to help her guide her
on where she can go to getit handled. So she would go to
AutoZone, she would have her codechecked and then she'd come back and say
it's this and this, and thenshe'd go handle it herself. You know,
(11:09):
anything that interested that kid, shewould go figure out how to do
it. And I think she hadthis entrepreneurial spirit. And at even a
young age I wouldn't say man,maybe nine or ten, she asked me
for Christmas for a gallon of glue. And I was like, oh,
(11:31):
no, what's she doing with gluebecause at the time some kids were snorting
glue or sniffing glue or whatever.And after vetting her a little bit,
and she would wanted to make slime. And I found out later that yes,
she was making slime. I knewshe was making slime. However she
was selling it. And Carly hadthis entrepreneurial spirit spirit and she her friend
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said she made lip gloss and soldit, and she made bath salts and
sold them for the bathtub like bathbombs and anything that she Carly learned the
value of money very quickly, andshe wanted to make her own and write,
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even down to when she decided shewanted to learn about nail art and
nails, how to do nails myself, because I don't want to spend the
money. Carli was very frugal inthat way. If she could figure out
how to do it herself, shewas going to do it herself. And
when it came to artistic things,she absolutely wanted to because she was so
talented. She learned how to donails, the proper application, the sanitary
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parts, the proper care, andshe experimented on herself, and then she
experimented on she'd save her money andshe'd buy the mannequin hands, and then
she was making press on sets andshe was hand painting them and selling them.
And then she graduated into I'm gonnatest it and do the nails,
(13:03):
and then I want to do myfriends and see how it goes, and
people. This girl was so insanelytalented, and you can check out some
of her nail art at carlerain dotcom. That's k A r l y
rain r Ai n dot com uhand find out a lot more about her.
(13:24):
She was going to go get hernail license, and then she found
out that she had to go tothis school and it was four thousand dollars,
and she thought, well, whydo I have to spend four thousand
dollars to go through the classes thatI've already taught myself And kind of dawned
on me, uh, actually,why can't they test out for that?
(13:46):
Why can't they do a test andto be a little bit more farther along,
because there isn't a lot of scholarshipsfor trades like that and beauty school
and things that may be not necessarilyyou know, the typical trades you hear
of and plumbing and electrical, butnail art, hair design. And for
(14:11):
years this this girl learned on YouTubehow to do hair and how to color
hair the proper way. In fact, my hairstylist, who used to be
an instructor at a hair school,would look at what she was doing and
basically gave her the Yep, she'sdoing it healthy on herself, how we
(14:31):
should And in fact, you know, Carl loved doing her platinum blonde,
which a lot of hair people won'teven do because you can damage your hair
so much or it can fall out. Carly did that on herself and her
hair was so healthy and just gorgeous. And then I don't know, I
want to say, two months beforeshe passed away, she had said,
(14:54):
I need to give my hair abreak from the from the blonde, and
she had decided to try the black, really dark brown, and she did
and she liked that too. Anyhair color Carly tried, which is most
she owned it and she made itlook amazing. She did pink, she
did blue, she did like aburnt, like an auburn, red,
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deep red, the blonde, abrown. I mean, she did everything.
One thing I never saw her inwas green. So this is going
to be a very interesting podcast.I have not come up with a name
for it yet, but I definitelywant to get all the voices that are
(15:41):
coming to me. And we're gettingtogether to fight against some of these terrible
policies that are repeatedly They're repeatedly hurtingpeople, having people killed because of the
lack of due diligence on the executionof monitoring some of these policies. And
(16:02):
in Carly's case, one of theguys that was shooting outside the building.
He was on federal supervision, federalsupervision and pre trial release, both for
violent offenses, and nobody's monitoring.This was three four in the morning.
Who is monitoring this person? Clearlywasn't happening, and he's a repeat felon.
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You know, as a juvenile,he was involved in a case that
another murder. So you know,the system doesn't seem too concerned with the
Carles and the Chris Gradvilles and youknow, the not so common innocent people
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murders. In their mind, it'snot so common when logical sense tell you,
if you're gonna put something like thispre travel lease program in, why
wasn't anyone there saying, wait aminute, there's certain people that shouldn't be
eligible for this in the name ofpublic safety. And where is that?
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Where's the public voice? Where isthe community voice? So we're here to
be a community voice, and we'rehere to hold people accountable and to hold
lawmakers accountable. If pre traw releasesays, if we put them on pre
trial lease, they're on an equalmonitor GPS monitor and they're not actually monitoring
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them, wouldn't that be negligence onthe part of the corrections Department. You
know, they don't they don't sharethis information with law enforcement. In fact,
all I've observed is the Douglas Countycommissioners, some of them getting upset
because law enforcement wants to implement likebills or things like that to make it
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accessible to them, and then theyget mad because they didn't come to them
first. It's all, you know, it seems childlike and junior high.
When the cost is death, thecost is innocent people losing their lives.
It's actually kind of ridiculous. Andas a mother who's sitting here who lost
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her daughter to repeat violent offenders andrepeat felons, like, why are they
even out after how many times?Nebraska has three times or three strikes,
but it's very specific on the threestrikes, So do we actually implement three
strikes? I mean, they're seriouslya break here. Not to mention in
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the juvenile system, all of thepeople that were involved in Carly's shooting grew
up in the juvenile system that failedthem too. So if you want to
if you want to start fixing things, we're going to have to start with
juveniles at you know, the ageof twelve. Because I believe we just
had a shooting I don't know,not too long ago with involved a twelve
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or thirteen year old. So wegotta look at the children because a lot
of the older ones are saying,oh, well, we'll just have the
kid do it now, and becausethe kid's going to be let out.
In the state of Nebraska, Ibelieve at fourteen or younger, you cannot
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be tried as an adult, nomatter how horrific the crime is, no
matter if it's premeditated murder or not. And then at fifteen you can be.
However, it doesn't happen very often. There's just it's stories on and
on and on, and all I'mseeing is they want to build buildings and
they want to open new things,but they're not holding people accountable. And
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then the community and US citizens orvictims, our hands are tied because technically
we can't hold the policy makers accountable, which is crap. It's crap.
There's some policymakers in there that havebeen in there twenty some years and they
will brag about it and brag aboutit, Well, what have you done
in twenty some years? Because theproblem is the same and it's getting worse,
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and we have to have accountability forthese How many of you know who
your Douglas County commissioner is? Howmany of you know what a Douglas County
commissioner does. It's probably not verymany. And in fact, Douglas County
commissioners, the county board is whoruns our corrections department. The director of
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corrections is not a law enforcement guy. The director of corrections is a mental
health guy. Then if you wantto connect the dots there, there's probably
a lot of people in that needmental health help more than correction law help.
We don't have any mental health facilitiesanymore in Nebraska. We don't have
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locked facilities, we don't have mentalhealth wards. And I have spoken to
many therapists who say, you know, this happened in the eighties nineties.
We were going, what do wedo with these people? What do we
do when we don't have They closethe facilities. But this person cannot function
on their own yet, and theyare a risk. They don't have a
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place to put them. Putting themin with the you know, first degree
murderer in the same cell, that'sonly going to harm that person. So
if we wonder why jails are beingfilled up, it's because there's lack of
infrastructure for proper help, proper rehabilitationfor what the person actually needs help with,
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which may not be as bad asprison. They may not need that,
They may need life skills, theymay need a few you know,
Carly, videos and stories and tounderstand, you know, you can make
a choice, and you can decidebetter for yourself. You can choose happiness.
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There's there's a lot of people willingto help, but it seems like
the system itself doesn't want that.And I will quote, to the best
of my memory, sitting in aDouglas County Commissioner meeting, the director of
Corrections said, and this is thepart I quote, pre trial release has
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been able to free up many bedsso that we have room for our paying
customers. So what that means isthe pre trial release program that at the
time that I spoke with them currentlyhad nine hundred people on pre trial release.
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I did not get the number ofhow many of them are repeat violent
offenders or felons. I should askthat. However, with nine hundred people
on pre trial release, there wasone person that was assigned to monitor them.
One person. Now, since Carly, I was told they added three
or four people. Again, howare they monitoring these people? Juveniles especially
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will cut off their ankle monitors numberone probation kids do it all the time.
They don't violate them. But backto paying customers. So what that
means is they're opening up their bedsfor their paying customers, which would be
the federal US Marshall's office, sothat they can hold fugitives and then the
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count and he gets paid by thefederal people for those beds. So like
a hotel. So it's Hotel DouglasCounty and we have made in Douglas County
a million dollars, over a milliondollars doing this. So what that tells
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me is people like Chris Gratoville orcarly So was their life worth a million
dollars? Because unfortunately, we're toldwe can't go after the county because they're
doing their due diligence. I arguethey're not doing due diligence because they're not
monitoring, they are not taking intoaccount repeat violent offenders, They are not
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taking into account that they could harman innocent person. So where do we
go from there? The public's handsare tied and we just they just say,
oh, sorry, some things weren'timplemented before your daughter died. We
didn't think of that bowl. Ifyou would tell the public about these programs,
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it's logical to say certain people aren'teligible for programs like this. If
you're a one time felon, sorry, you're not eligible. If you're a
one time felon for a violent offenseperiod, you are not eligible. You
will sit and wait for your courtdate. We don't hold accountable felons who
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have ammunition. I'm told the USAttorney's Office doesn't prosecute that law. So
we have a law that says ifa felon has ammunition or touches ammunition,
meaning let's say you're at a crimescene and there's a case scene and you
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dust it for fingerprints, and fingerprintcomes along and it's a repeat violent offender
felon. Well, the law saysa felon cannot handle ammunition. That would
mean that felon handled ammunition his fingerprintson it. The US Attorney's Office currently
will not prosecute that law. Ithasn't been changed, but it's a law,
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but they won't prosecute it. Now, what we're being told is when
when we go scream about our children, and our husbands and our loved ones
that are killed. And all theDouglas County commissioners and elected officials want to
say is well, we have tochange the laws. You have to go
our hands are tied. We gotto you got to go to Lincoln,
got to change the laws, oryou've got to go to the US.
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The law's got to be changed.And they want to push it off on
that. So you're pushing it offon everybody that is. It's a bunch
of finger pointing. And you cango to one of these meetings, please,
you know, if you can affordto take one day, one day
and go watch the circus, you'llstart to understand why I'm out here screaming.
(27:15):
This is it's insane, like theinsanity of the things they try and
push through. Right down to theJuvenile Justice Center. So they built this
big old building. How this passed, I don't understand. Currently there's you
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know, on average, seventy sevenjuveniles in the facility. They wanted to
open this facility that only had fiftysix beds. Currently we can hold one
hundred and one. And then onany given day it's the average is seventy
seven. So and they're already tryingto push numbers down by not taking kids
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in. And I have moms whosaid, I've been baked for them to
help me and detain my child,and they won't because they want numbers to
look low. So again at therisk of public safety. So when you're
electing people, you really have toask what their stance on public safety is.
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You really have to investigate. Theywant you to be educated voters,
right, how do you educate yourselfon a Douglas County commissioner, a legislature
senator, or a judge. You'resupposed to vote on judges, and you're
supposed to vote on Douglas County commissioners. How are you supposed to follow if
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they've been voting the way that youwould want them to vote? Because I
can tell you there's some that willrun for the party that their district will
vote for because people sometimes just vote, you know, left right, but
everything they do is completely opposite.If you go actually look get their record
of voting and what they've pushed through, see if it aligns with what you
(29:06):
would want. Well, currently there'sno website for that, there's no way
to track them, and there's certainlyno way to monitor judges. Everyone says,
we'll just vote judges in and out. First of all, most people
don't know to do that. Secondof all, I'm sure there's some legitimate
judges that align with what you want. So why would we blanketly just vote
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everybody out? And the sad thingis because that's the only way in our
power to make it fair, whenactually what the fair is if they work
for us, we need to beable to hold them accountable. Where's their
report card? So if there's anybodyout there who wants to help us,
who wants to help create a websiteand to gather the data so that we
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can post it so voters can educatethemselves, please help us, Please come
forward. Since Carly has passed,you know, a lot's been going on.
There's there's still guys out there thatshot her. There's three guys that
we have trials for. So ithasn't been just an easy oh, you
(30:11):
know, start the grieving process,go to one court date and it's done.
And there's a lot of things Iwant to do. I still am
trying to start her foundation. Wedon't even have a memorial space for her
yet, so I'm doing all thisand screaming and hooting and hollering, but
at the same time trying to honormy daughter and come up with a place
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where people can go, where ourfamily can go, and and honor Carly.
Two. Everything costs money. Obviouslyshe did not have you know,
I didn't have life insurance on her, which side note, I can't even
get life insurance now, which isa whole nother issue in this entire crazy
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system. You go to counseling becausethey tell you that you should go to
counseling, So go to counseling,and then you apply for life insurance so
that your other daughter is okay ifsomething happens to you or you know,
just plan ahead and they tell you, well, we deny you. I've
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had four insurance companies deny me citingthat I have PTSD from my daughter dying.
Isn't that like a common thing whenyour daughter is brutally murdered when she
shot eight times, and so PTSDeliminates you from getting life insurance. That
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doesn't make any sense because last Ichecked, there's a whole lot of military
guys and a whole lot of policeofficers and other people that have PTSD,
like it's not nothing in there saidanything about suicide or I'm gonna hurt somebody.
Uh so the insurance companies them sellWe already know that's a whole other
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beast, you know. So it'sgonna take an army of people to speak
up against these things in order tomake change. And we can't do it
ourselves. But I will tell youour small little group of Mom's family members
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speaking out is helping. So imagineif we imagine if we even doubled it.
You know, if our group oftwenty goes to forty and everybody out
there puts a yard sign of carlyin and everybody out there gets three businesses
to put her stick her up,and everybody out there shows up to a
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court hearing, or everybody out therewrites into their representatives and says no,
no, See, we want publicsafety to be number one. Because you
can have all the tax breaks,and you can have the property tax relief,
and you can have, you know, the cool building down the road,
(33:06):
But if your child, or yourhusband or your sister is murdered,
none of that will matter to you. Nothing will matter to you. Your
entire life flipped like you aren't eventhe same person, and you mourn that
(33:27):
too, But all of those littlethose are trivial in comparison to your daughter
being shot eight times, from goingto a party for fifteen minutes, from
never asking anyone for anything, fromworking hard and three jobs and skipping skipping
vacations. Carly literally turned down twovacations that I offered for us to go
(33:54):
on because she wanted to work,because she was wanting to open her own
busines, and she wanted to buya house, and she was driven.
So you know, at twenty yearsold in nineteen and twenty, I'm not
going to stop her from working andmaking her money. And I, in
my mind, foolishly now thought we'llhave time for that. Well, you
(34:17):
know, she'll she'll save her moneyand then I'll get her to go.
Even for her twentieth birthday, Imean, geez, I wanted to have
a party, and she said nobecause Carly wasn't a party person. She
liked that one on one with herfriends. You know, you wouldn't rarely
would you see her with more thantwo or three friends at a time.
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And a lot of her friends didn'tknow each other, but they were so
they would call Carly best friend andShe did so much stuff with them,
one on one, and they hadtraditions and they had you know, she
was the epitome of an amazing friend. And but I'm telling you, when
(35:00):
when that's ripped away, when yourchild is ripped away like that, potholes
won't even matter to you because tofind out that it could have been prevented,
that it's four time felons involved.That the government and the correction system
is not looking out for public safety, that's what matters. And now with
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it happening more and more with juveniles, your kid could be going to school
with somebody who murdered someone. Imean, I know of a kid right
now who's in a school in Omahawho shot someone in the back. Everyone
at the school knows. But heclaimed self defense, self defense when the
(35:52):
person wasn't attacking him, self defensewhen the person's walking away and shoots him
in the back. But he's goingto school with a lot of people who
I guarantee don't understand what really happened. He hasn't done any time. He
hasn't uh, actually, he hasn'tdone what he was assigned to do,
(36:15):
what the court ordered him to do. He's never done it. And this
is what you know. It's notjust pumping gas next to these guys,
it's literally your children are going toschool with them. So if your kid
gets in a fight with a withsomeone because teenagers, their hormones are all
over the place, what's going tohappen next? Because I can tell you
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he feels emboldened, that street cred. At least that's what I'm told.
So we're going to cover a lotof topics, and I certainly hope that
this interests people enough to perk yourattention and do a little bit of investigating
(36:58):
on your own, or educate yourselfwhen you are voting, and hold lawmakers
accountable, hold them to the fire. Because Carly should be here today,
a lot of other people's children shouldbe here. Chris Gradoville should be here,
(37:20):
And I just hope that someone listens. Thank you,
I don't understand why that many peoplewere shot and only her. She was
the most innocent thing in there.You have to remember Carly Rain and we
I don't know how, I don'tknow what if that's gonna look like,
but we have to. We haveto stand up for Carly rain period.
(00:30):
We have to remember her because thatwas a waste, That was a wasted
life. Carly rain matters topics thatarise in a journey through murder, grief,
loss, and fight for change.This is I am far from over
(01:06):
well there. My name is Amber, and I hope that this is going
to be many of a series ofpodcasts, maybe even vlogging about the current
judicial system, the way we treatjuveniles, the way we treat victims,
how victims voices are not heard,and so on. My daughter, carl
(01:33):
Rainwood was killed November thirteenth, twentytwenty two. She went to actually her
first party and she was shot eighttimes. Carly was there fifteen minutes and
(01:53):
this was not her normal choice ofentertainment. Worked three jobs, and she
had decided to accept an invitation fromsome friends at one of her jobs who
were going for a birthday party,which turned into an after hours party,
(02:15):
and after her shift for the evening, she decided she would stop in and
support these friends. Fifteen minutes shewas there and she never came home.
In my journey, which definitely wasn'tby choice, I have learned a lot
(02:40):
of things, and I've also themain thing that I've learned is how backwards
the system is and how there isno logic into law. Any laws that
we do have that logical are notcurrently being prosecuted. Logic also would mean
(03:06):
that you would think police would haveGPS locations to current criminals on GPS monitor
assignment or those who are repeat felonswho are on pre trial release. And
would you believe that the police,no law enforcement agency has real time access
(03:31):
to GPS monitoring locations. They haveto get an actual subpoena in order to
locate that person. Again, thesystem, the more I unfold and the
more that's just like plopped in myface, it is set up for criminals.
(03:52):
It seems like it's a machine andthe machine makes money. And in
a sense, people aren't the onesthat we are trying to protect. A
lot of the policies in Douglas Countythat I've noticed are not in the best
(04:13):
interest of public safety, nor dothey get the public's opinion before they implement
policies or new projects, new testpilot programs. And in fact, that
pilot program called pre trial lease hasactually had a few innocent people killed.
(04:39):
When you let violent offenders, repeatfelons out on pre travel lease program,
this endangers public safety. And inthe case of pre trial release in Douglas
County, I know firsthand of twomy daughter is one, and actually Chris
(05:01):
Gradoville, who worked with the CreightonBaseball program, also an innocent victim of
someone out on pretrial release, someonewho was a repeat violent offender. At
some point, you would think thatcommon sense, which is not common anymore,
logical sense would tell you that certainoffenders and certain crimes would make you
(05:29):
ineligible for any type of pre trialrelease. So if you're arrested for a
violent offense, I would think thatyou definitely would not be eligible for pre
travelase where you're running around the streetsand able to kill someone else. This
was the case with and I believethere's probably more stories like this. We
(05:56):
just a lot of people are justcoming to me with their with their stories,
and it's the system that doesn't makesense. The system seems like it's
just out to make money. Istarted something on TikTok called did you Know?
And in the process of this grievingand daily you know, what's your
(06:16):
emotion going to be today? Andare you gonna be able to function today?
That's literally a process. When youlose your child, you don't know.
Some days you don't think about itthat much, and then two days
later you'll be like, man,I didn't think about it that much,
and then you kind of fall intothis guilt of why am I not thinking
(06:39):
about it? Dude, I carefor my kid. Just it's a crazy
crazy I call it an a fibof chaos. It is not a roller
coaster, because when you get ona roller coaster, you choose to and
you know it's going to end thegrief of losing your child, especially in
(07:00):
a manner like I did, thatisn't ever going to change. So I
feel like the more people that Ican let know about Carly, the more
people that maybe she will touch.Carly was a one of a kind,
(07:21):
unapologetically her twenty year old who learnedvery early that you need to be who
you are, love who you are, and she did. Man, she
did random acts of kindness. Nottoo many twenty year olds just do that
(07:41):
on their own. She decided notto let what other people thought of her
enter her vibe. She used tosay that drama isn't my problem. And
to have the confidence she did atthat young of an age, and to
not care what people thought for thethings she wanted to try to learn.
(08:05):
That's a crazy, crazy, awesometrait to get that early. Usually only
hear that from you older people who'vebeen through the hell of growing up.
And Carly just decided not to letoutside influences affect her and we can all
(08:26):
learn from that. In fact,I've created a few videos and I love
to share Carly's story, and thesestories and videos have actually helped some juveniles
who are currently in the system andcurrently don't have self worth or don't know
where to go and are dealing withtrauma, boys and girls. I get
(08:50):
calls from parents who my daughter sawyour video of Carly a couple videos,
and she talks about her all thetime and she wants to do better.
And hopefully we will have a serieswith some of these kids and see if
you know learning about Carly helps them, because it helps me. If Carly's
(09:13):
story helps even one kid. Carlywas very independent. Carly was a just
a light. And it's very hardto explain Carly because she would want to
explain herself, which is why Icreated videos, because you can't really describe
(09:35):
her. It's something that you seecome out of her. Nor would she
want anyone to try and describe herwhen we have videos. But for me,
talking about her is gonna hopefully encourageother people to go look her up,
look up some videos, and chooseto be happy. Choose choose happiness,
(10:00):
choose less drama, don't care whatother people think. Carli was very
independent in the manner of she wantedto learn something, she would go figure
out how to learn it, YouTubeschool, she called it, and she
would try and master it. Carlywanted to be the best. If she
was going to decide to do something, she was going to do it full
(10:22):
on and do it the best shepossibly could and do it better than anyone
else around her. Even when itcame down to Carly's you know, her
car check engine light, I hadtold both of my girls, you know,
you can go to AutoZone, youcan go to Riley's. They will
run the code for you and tellyou what the problem is and to a
(10:46):
fault. Sometimes Carly was so independentthat she just did not want you to
tell her fix it for her.She wanted you to help her guide her
on where she can go to getit handled. So she would go to
AutoZone, she would have her codechecked and then she'd come back and say
it's this and this, and thenshe'd go handle it herself. You know,
(11:09):
anything that interested that kid, shewould go figure out how to do
it. And I think she hadthis entrepreneurial spirit. And at even a
young age I wouldn't say man,maybe nine or ten, she asked me
for Christmas for a gallon of glue. And I was like, oh,
(11:31):
no, what's she doing with gluebecause at the time some kids were snorting
glue or sniffing glue or whatever.And after vetting her a little bit,
and she would wanted to make slime. And I found out later that yes,
she was making slime. I knewshe was making slime. However she
was selling it. And Carly hadthis entrepreneurial spirit spirit and she her friend
(11:54):
said she made lip gloss and soldit, and she made bath salts and
sold them for the bathtub like bathbombs and anything that she Carly learned the
value of money very quickly, andshe wanted to make her own and write,
(12:16):
even down to when she decided shewanted to learn about nail art and
nails, how to do nails myself, because I don't want to spend the
money. Carli was very frugal inthat way. If she could figure out
how to do it herself, shewas going to do it herself. And
when it came to artistic things,she absolutely wanted to because she was so
talented. She learned how to donails, the proper application, the sanitary
(12:41):
parts, the proper care, andshe experimented on herself, and then she
experimented on she'd save her money andshe'd buy the mannequin hands, and then
she was making press on sets andshe was hand painting them and selling them.
And then she graduated into I'm gonnatest it and do the nails,
(13:03):
and then I want to do myfriends and see how it goes, and
people. This girl was so insanelytalented, and you can check out some
of her nail art at carlerain dotcom. That's k A r l y
rain r Ai n dot com uhand find out a lot more about her.
(13:24):
She was going to go get hernail license, and then she found
out that she had to go tothis school and it was four thousand dollars,
and she thought, well, whydo I have to spend four thousand
dollars to go through the classes thatI've already taught myself And kind of dawned
on me, uh, actually,why can't they test out for that?
(13:46):
Why can't they do a test andto be a little bit more farther along,
because there isn't a lot of scholarshipsfor trades like that and beauty school
and things that may be not necessarilyyou know, the typical trades you hear
of and plumbing and electrical, butnail art, hair design. And for
(14:11):
years this this girl learned on YouTubehow to do hair and how to color
hair the proper way. In fact, my hairstylist, who used to be
an instructor at a hair school,would look at what she was doing and
basically gave her the Yep, she'sdoing it healthy on herself, how we
(14:31):
should And in fact, you know, Carl loved doing her platinum blonde,
which a lot of hair people won'teven do because you can damage your hair
so much or it can fall out. Carly did that on herself and her
hair was so healthy and just gorgeous. And then I don't know, I
want to say, two months beforeshe passed away, she had said,
(14:54):
I need to give my hair abreak from the from the blonde, and
she had decided to try the black, really dark brown, and she did
and she liked that too. Anyhair color Carly tried, which is most
she owned it and she made itlook amazing. She did pink, she
did blue, she did like aburnt, like an auburn, red,
(15:16):
deep red, the blonde, abrown. I mean, she did everything.
One thing I never saw her inwas green. So this is going
to be a very interesting podcast.I have not come up with a name
for it yet, but I definitelywant to get all the voices that are
(15:41):
coming to me. And we're gettingtogether to fight against some of these terrible
policies that are repeatedly They're repeatedly hurtingpeople, having people killed because of the
lack of due diligence on the executionof monitoring some of these policies. And
(16:02):
in Carly's case, one of theguys that was shooting outside the building.
He was on federal supervision, federalsupervision and pre trial release, both for
violent offenses, and nobody's monitoring.This was three four in the morning.
Who is monitoring this person? Clearlywasn't happening, and he's a repeat felon.
(16:30):
You know, as a juvenile,he was involved in a case that
another murder. So you know,the system doesn't seem too concerned with the
Carles and the Chris Gradvilles and youknow, the not so common innocent people
(16:52):
murders. In their mind, it'snot so common when logical sense tell you,
if you're gonna put something like thispre travel lease program in, why
wasn't anyone there saying, wait aminute, there's certain people that shouldn't be
eligible for this in the name ofpublic safety. And where is that?
(17:12):
Where's the public voice? Where isthe community voice? So we're here to
be a community voice, and we'rehere to hold people accountable and to hold
lawmakers accountable. If pre traw releasesays, if we put them on pre
trial lease, they're on an equalmonitor GPS monitor and they're not actually monitoring
(17:33):
them, wouldn't that be negligence onthe part of the corrections Department. You
know, they don't they don't sharethis information with law enforcement. In fact,
all I've observed is the Douglas Countycommissioners, some of them getting upset
because law enforcement wants to implement likebills or things like that to make it
(18:00):
accessible to them, and then theyget mad because they didn't come to them
first. It's all, you know, it seems childlike and junior high.
When the cost is death, thecost is innocent people losing their lives.
It's actually kind of ridiculous. Andas a mother who's sitting here who lost
(18:22):
her daughter to repeat violent offenders andrepeat felons, like, why are they
even out after how many times?Nebraska has three times or three strikes,
but it's very specific on the threestrikes, So do we actually implement three
strikes? I mean, they're seriouslya break here. Not to mention in
(18:47):
the juvenile system, all of thepeople that were involved in Carly's shooting grew
up in the juvenile system that failedthem too. So if you want to
if you want to start fixing things, we're going to have to start with
juveniles at you know, the ageof twelve. Because I believe we just
had a shooting I don't know,not too long ago with involved a twelve
(19:10):
or thirteen year old. So wegotta look at the children because a lot
of the older ones are saying,oh, well, we'll just have the
kid do it now, and becausethe kid's going to be let out.
In the state of Nebraska, Ibelieve at fourteen or younger, you cannot
(19:33):
be tried as an adult, nomatter how horrific the crime is, no
matter if it's premeditated murder or not. And then at fifteen you can be.
However, it doesn't happen very often. There's just it's stories on and
on and on, and all I'mseeing is they want to build buildings and
they want to open new things,but they're not holding people accountable. And
(19:59):
then the community and US citizens orvictims, our hands are tied because technically
we can't hold the policy makers accountable, which is crap. It's crap.
There's some policymakers in there that havebeen in there twenty some years and they
will brag about it and brag aboutit, Well, what have you done
in twenty some years? Because theproblem is the same and it's getting worse,
(20:25):
and we have to have accountability forthese How many of you know who
your Douglas County commissioner is? Howmany of you know what a Douglas County
commissioner does. It's probably not verymany. And in fact, Douglas County
commissioners, the county board is whoruns our corrections department. The director of
(20:48):
corrections is not a law enforcement guy. The director of corrections is a mental
health guy. Then if you wantto connect the dots there, there's probably
a lot of people in that needmental health help more than correction law help.
We don't have any mental health facilitiesanymore in Nebraska. We don't have
(21:11):
locked facilities, we don't have mentalhealth wards. And I have spoken to
many therapists who say, you know, this happened in the eighties nineties.
We were going, what do wedo with these people? What do we
do when we don't have They closethe facilities. But this person cannot function
on their own yet, and theyare a risk. They don't have a
(21:33):
place to put them. Putting themin with the you know, first degree
murderer in the same cell, that'sonly going to harm that person. So
if we wonder why jails are beingfilled up, it's because there's lack of
infrastructure for proper help, proper rehabilitationfor what the person actually needs help with,
(21:55):
which may not be as bad asprison. They may not need that,
They may need life skills, theymay need a few you know,
Carly, videos and stories and tounderstand, you know, you can make
a choice, and you can decidebetter for yourself. You can choose happiness.
(22:19):
There's there's a lot of people willingto help, but it seems like
the system itself doesn't want that.And I will quote, to the best
of my memory, sitting in aDouglas County Commissioner meeting, the director of
Corrections said, and this is thepart I quote, pre trial release has
(22:44):
been able to free up many bedsso that we have room for our paying
customers. So what that means isthe pre trial release program that at the
time that I spoke with them currentlyhad nine hundred people on pre trial release.
(23:07):
I did not get the number ofhow many of them are repeat violent
offenders or felons. I should askthat. However, with nine hundred people
on pre trial release, there wasone person that was assigned to monitor them.
One person. Now, since Carly, I was told they added three
or four people. Again, howare they monitoring these people? Juveniles especially
(23:33):
will cut off their ankle monitors numberone probation kids do it all the time.
They don't violate them. But backto paying customers. So what that
means is they're opening up their bedsfor their paying customers, which would be
the federal US Marshall's office, sothat they can hold fugitives and then the
(23:59):
count and he gets paid by thefederal people for those beds. So like
a hotel. So it's Hotel DouglasCounty and we have made in Douglas County
a million dollars, over a milliondollars doing this. So what that tells
(24:21):
me is people like Chris Gratoville orcarly So was their life worth a million
dollars? Because unfortunately, we're toldwe can't go after the county because they're
doing their due diligence. I arguethey're not doing due diligence because they're not
monitoring, they are not taking intoaccount repeat violent offenders, They are not
(24:45):
taking into account that they could harman innocent person. So where do we
go from there? The public's handsare tied and we just they just say,
oh, sorry, some things weren'timplemented before your daughter died. We
didn't think of that bowl. Ifyou would tell the public about these programs,
(25:08):
it's logical to say certain people aren'teligible for programs like this. If
you're a one time felon, sorry, you're not eligible. If you're a
one time felon for a violent offenseperiod, you are not eligible. You
will sit and wait for your courtdate. We don't hold accountable felons who
(25:36):
have ammunition. I'm told the USAttorney's Office doesn't prosecute that law. So
we have a law that says ifa felon has ammunition or touches ammunition,
meaning let's say you're at a crimescene and there's a case scene and you
(25:56):
dust it for fingerprints, and fingerprintcomes along and it's a repeat violent offender
felon. Well, the law saysa felon cannot handle ammunition. That would
mean that felon handled ammunition his fingerprintson it. The US Attorney's Office currently
will not prosecute that law. Ithasn't been changed, but it's a law,
(26:22):
but they won't prosecute it. Now, what we're being told is when
when we go scream about our children, and our husbands and our loved ones
that are killed. And all theDouglas County commissioners and elected officials want to
say is well, we have tochange the laws. You have to go
our hands are tied. We gotto you got to go to Lincoln,
got to change the laws, oryou've got to go to the US.
(26:44):
The law's got to be changed.And they want to push it off on
that. So you're pushing it offon everybody that is. It's a bunch
of finger pointing. And you cango to one of these meetings, please,
you know, if you can affordto take one day, one day
and go watch the circus, you'llstart to understand why I'm out here screaming.
(27:15):
This is it's insane, like theinsanity of the things they try and
push through. Right down to theJuvenile Justice Center. So they built this
big old building. How this passed, I don't understand. Currently there's you
(27:36):
know, on average, seventy sevenjuveniles in the facility. They wanted to
open this facility that only had fiftysix beds. Currently we can hold one
hundred and one. And then onany given day it's the average is seventy
seven. So and they're already tryingto push numbers down by not taking kids
(27:56):
in. And I have moms whosaid, I've been baked for them to
help me and detain my child,and they won't because they want numbers to
look low. So again at therisk of public safety. So when you're
electing people, you really have toask what their stance on public safety is.
(28:17):
You really have to investigate. Theywant you to be educated voters,
right, how do you educate yourselfon a Douglas County commissioner, a legislature
senator, or a judge. You'resupposed to vote on judges, and you're
supposed to vote on Douglas County commissioners. How are you supposed to follow if
(28:40):
they've been voting the way that youwould want them to vote? Because I
can tell you there's some that willrun for the party that their district will
vote for because people sometimes just vote, you know, left right, but
everything they do is completely opposite.If you go actually look get their record
of voting and what they've pushed through, see if it aligns with what you
(29:06):
would want. Well, currently there'sno website for that, there's no way
to track them, and there's certainlyno way to monitor judges. Everyone says,
we'll just vote judges in and out. First of all, most people
don't know to do that. Secondof all, I'm sure there's some legitimate
judges that align with what you want. So why would we blanketly just vote
(29:29):
everybody out? And the sad thingis because that's the only way in our
power to make it fair, whenactually what the fair is if they work
for us, we need to beable to hold them accountable. Where's their
report card? So if there's anybodyout there who wants to help us,
who wants to help create a websiteand to gather the data so that we
(29:51):
can post it so voters can educatethemselves, please help us, Please come
forward. Since Carly has passed,you know, a lot's been going on.
There's there's still guys out there thatshot her. There's three guys that
we have trials for. So ithasn't been just an easy oh, you
(30:11):
know, start the grieving process,go to one court date and it's done.
And there's a lot of things Iwant to do. I still am
trying to start her foundation. Wedon't even have a memorial space for her
yet, so I'm doing all thisand screaming and hooting and hollering, but
at the same time trying to honormy daughter and come up with a place
(30:33):
where people can go, where ourfamily can go, and and honor Carly.
Two. Everything costs money. Obviouslyshe did not have you know,
I didn't have life insurance on her, which side note, I can't even
get life insurance now, which isa whole nother issue in this entire crazy
(30:55):
system. You go to counseling becausethey tell you that you should go to
counseling, So go to counseling,and then you apply for life insurance so
that your other daughter is okay ifsomething happens to you or you know,
just plan ahead and they tell you, well, we deny you. I've
(31:18):
had four insurance companies deny me citingthat I have PTSD from my daughter dying.
Isn't that like a common thing whenyour daughter is brutally murdered when she
shot eight times, and so PTSDeliminates you from getting life insurance. That
(31:41):
doesn't make any sense because last Ichecked, there's a whole lot of military
guys and a whole lot of policeofficers and other people that have PTSD,
like it's not nothing in there saidanything about suicide or I'm gonna hurt somebody.
Uh so the insurance companies them sellWe already know that's a whole other
(32:02):
beast, you know. So it'sgonna take an army of people to speak
up against these things in order tomake change. And we can't do it
ourselves. But I will tell youour small little group of Mom's family members
(32:22):
speaking out is helping. So imagineif we imagine if we even doubled it.
You know, if our group oftwenty goes to forty and everybody out
there puts a yard sign of carlyin and everybody out there gets three businesses
to put her stick her up,and everybody out there shows up to a
(32:42):
court hearing, or everybody out therewrites into their representatives and says no,
no, See, we want publicsafety to be number one. Because you
can have all the tax breaks,and you can have the property tax relief,
and you can have, you know, the cool building down the road,
(33:06):
But if your child, or yourhusband or your sister is murdered,
none of that will matter to you. Nothing will matter to you. Your
entire life flipped like you aren't eventhe same person, and you mourn that
(33:27):
too, But all of those littlethose are trivial in comparison to your daughter
being shot eight times, from goingto a party for fifteen minutes, from
never asking anyone for anything, fromworking hard and three jobs and skipping skipping
vacations. Carly literally turned down twovacations that I offered for us to go
(33:54):
on because she wanted to work,because she was wanting to open her own
busines, and she wanted to buya house, and she was driven.
So you know, at twenty yearsold in nineteen and twenty, I'm not
going to stop her from working andmaking her money. And I, in
my mind, foolishly now thought we'llhave time for that. Well, you
(34:17):
know, she'll she'll save her moneyand then I'll get her to go.
Even for her twentieth birthday, Imean, geez, I wanted to have
a party, and she said nobecause Carly wasn't a party person. She
liked that one on one with herfriends. You know, you wouldn't rarely
would you see her with more thantwo or three friends at a time.
(34:38):
And a lot of her friends didn'tknow each other, but they were so
they would call Carly best friend andShe did so much stuff with them,
one on one, and they hadtraditions and they had you know, she
was the epitome of an amazing friend. And but I'm telling you, when
(35:00):
when that's ripped away, when yourchild is ripped away like that, potholes
won't even matter to you because tofind out that it could have been prevented,
that it's four time felons involved.That the government and the correction system
is not looking out for public safety, that's what matters. And now with
(35:24):
it happening more and more with juveniles, your kid could be going to school
with somebody who murdered someone. Imean, I know of a kid right
now who's in a school in Omahawho shot someone in the back. Everyone
at the school knows. But heclaimed self defense, self defense when the
(35:52):
person wasn't attacking him, self defensewhen the person's walking away and shoots him
in the back. But he's goingto school with a lot of people who
I guarantee don't understand what really happened. He hasn't done any time. He
hasn't uh, actually, he hasn'tdone what he was assigned to do,
(36:15):
what the court ordered him to do. He's never done it. And this
is what you know. It's notjust pumping gas next to these guys,
it's literally your children are going toschool with them. So if your kid
gets in a fight with a withsomeone because teenagers, their hormones are all
over the place, what's going tohappen next? Because I can tell you
(36:37):
he feels emboldened, that street cred. At least that's what I'm told.
So we're going to cover a lotof topics, and I certainly hope that
this interests people enough to perk yourattention and do a little bit of investigating
(36:58):
on your own, or educate yourselfwhen you are voting, and hold lawmakers
accountable, hold them to the fire. Because Carly should be here today,
a lot of other people's children shouldbe here. Chris Gradoville should be here,
(37:20):
And I just hope that someone listens. Thank you,
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