Daddy's Little Girl

It might go on behind closed doors. It's 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, not a murder. She doesn't deserve to be there. We, myself, as a parent, should have saved her.

And I didn't. So hacking up at her Indianapolis home will get up there tonight to take Mindy her clothes. Mindy's mother, Shirley Berennie, is preparing for the fight of her life. She'll be taking the stand at her daughter's murder trial to explain what happened. She was still daddy's little angel there.

Who 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 Berennie, in high school. 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 distributed, 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's a good life.

That first. It wasn't long, Mindy says. Before life with the father, she adored, became a living hell. He would have me go and 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 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. It felt like her father began abusing her emotionally. What's wrong with you?

Why are you so goddamn stupid? 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 a night with my girlfriends and talk to boys on the phone.

And I guess I wanted to do the things that every other teenager wants to do. That's when she says Andy Brenny became impossibly controlling. I got a job at McDonald's and he kept a log of the identity. 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 to a phone, if he didn't like it, he would rip the phone out of the wall. You grabbed me by the neck and choked me. Don't make it the wall.

Now 16 years old. He just kept getting worse and worse. Mindy found out she was pregnant. She would later miscarry, but she didn't know that then. How did she think this was going to play out?

It would kill me. On the afternoon of September 27, 1995, Mindy came home to discover her father had searched her room again. This time, he had found her ash tray. I just got really scared. He just told me the night before that if he caught me smoking and 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 built up. She broke into her father's bedroom and took his shot gone. She was going to kill herself.

She says 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?

I just thought I could think it was that was pregnant.

So then I just decided that I couldn't. But before she had a chance to put the gun back, Mindy says her father came home from war.

“Right when he opened door, he holler where the hell are you?”

I just got really scared. Really angry. I just screamed at myself to stop. But I couldn't. The next thing I remember is I'm turning around and looking at me.

I just thought, oh my god, that was sorry. Mindy Burnie insists she killed her father in self defense. To convince a jury of that, she will use the risky and rarely successful battered child defense. She acclaimed physical, but especially emotional abuse.

Abuse the leftor in such terror of her father that one look from him that night, set her over the edge. She killed her father, she shot him, but she didn't murder him. Mindy's attorney, Larry Delabio. What would you call this?

Self defense, pure and simple. At that particular time, in her mind, there was a perception of imminent danger of fear. But a huge problem for the defense is that Mindy told no one not one soul about the abuse until after the killing. Nobody's known about it until now.

She didn't tell anyone. She never told anybody. I was scared. I didn't trust anybody.

“Why didn't we see something wrong even there?”

Compared to what she used to be. In hindsight, surely clearly remembers her daughter's cries for help. She'd called me, she said, "Mom, you're not listening to me. I mean, clear as well. You're not listening to me.

I can't take this." And I said, "Okay, Mindy. We'll get help." But nothing, Mindy told her mother. She came close to the abuse.

She now describes. She would say, "He yells at me all the time. He won't let me do anything." That kind of thing. But other than that, no.

Looking back, surely says, She should have understood what really was going on. I should have known. I was just stupid. Because she says she experienced exactly the same kind of abuse at the hands of her ex-husband.

He used intimidation, threats, and violence to control you. Did he physically beat you? He didn't beat me. He would choke me, slam me against the wall. You can get beat in the pain goes away.

It takes years and years to get over somebody. He can feel like you don't want to live." She left her three children with him because she says that she had no choice. I was afraid of him. She never dreamed.

Mindy would become his next target.

I never believed that he would do it to her, too.

Because she was his little princess. There's no excuse for me leaving her there. Can you ever stop blaming yourself? Maybe when she's home, maybe. She was just as afraid as I was.

She understands my fear and I understand hers. And earlier trial ended in a mistrial. So this time, Shirley will have her last chance to fight for her daughter's life in court.

“I really believe in two to three weeks, many of the home.”

Where she goes. It's a heart-wrenching tale. But is any of it true? He was a great father. He wasn't a child of you, sir.

And he's family tells a totally different story. She was just lying all the time. Running away. Of an out-of-control teenager who cut down her father in cold blood. I feel for Andy still today.

I go to the cemetery and feel like I have to apologize to him for what's happening to his name. I feel he's seen as going on. Did he spend much time down here? Oh, yeah. summertime was river.

Life. It's been four years since Andy Barany died. Andy knew where every rock was in the river.

But his second wife, Joni, still cherishes every memory.

With every glimpse of the river behind their house. We had a pontoon. The weekends we go on the pontoon. When Mindy'd go, he'd pull her on a tube. And she'd go to the river.

They married in 1992. Joni helped raise Mindy from the time she was eight. She was a sweet little girl. I loved her as my own. And Joni says that as the only other person actually in the house watching it all unfold,

only she knows the true relationship between Mindy and Andy Barany. He was a great father.

That is the issue here. Right.

And that is definitely not a true statement.

She says, Andy was nothing like the monster Mindy and her mother described. Andy was a strict parent. But he was not an abusive parent.

“Lady, you must almost 99% of the people that knew Andy.”

And I would bet you anything that you would not find one man that says anything again. Andy's parents Bill and Ruby live just two doors away. Looks like grain coming in, don't it? And would freak one way, drop by the house. And here, this is Mindy.

What do you think of when you see this picture today? Sadness. It just remind me of what Mindy was and what Mindy is. The sweet little girl that Mindy used to be was replaced overnight. They say by a teenager, they hardly knew.

You have to realize what kind of a girl you're working with. She's not an ordinary teenager. No way. Mindy's grandparents had her aunt Linda Coss described as 16 year old, headed for disaster. You see, she was just lying all the time.

Doing drugs running out of the house, running away. She laying his car. And a father desperately trying to save her. He was protecting her from the consequences of her own actions. That's the reason Joni says for the strict rules and he imposed on his daughter.

She says he locked up the phones. Yes, he did do that. She was calling friends in Indianapolis and making arrangements to run away. Check the odometer on the car. And yes, he did that after she had skipped work one day.

Go through her room. Looking for things. He would look for cigarettes. He didn't like her smoking. In the months leading up to the killing, Joni kept a diary, chronicling Mindy's misbehavior. Quite a bit in there.

And many times that she snuck out of the house, drinking. Just the lying on where she was going and who she was going. It was to the point where you didn't believe a word that she even said. I became afraid of her. She was the way she talked to her dad.

She was so mean to him. It was just tearing his heart apart. Yet in all those years, Joni says she only saw Andy lose his temper once. She called him a very bad name, which he flew hot and he grabbed her by the throat. But that was the only time that he ever touched her.

And as far as emotional abuse in terms of calling her names, be little in her telling her she was worth nothing. That was not true.

“As for any sexual abuse, did she tell you any of that?”

No, and I do not believe it. Joni, your testimony in this is so important because there were just the two of you in that house. Right. The jury is going to look at this and determine that one or the other of you is lying. Right.

And it's her. It was Joni who walked in on a distraught Mindy that night. I walked into Mindy with a gun to her head.

The first thing she said was I shot Daddy's dad.

She says her first thought was to get the gun out of Mindy's hand. I convinced her to go out in the kitchen and sit down and smoke a cigarette. And he's body lay just a few feet away. Did you realize he was dead? There was twice I had seen him the first time I seen the pool of blood.

And then the next time he hadn't moved. So yeah. I knew. Then she finally got Mindy into the car, unarmed, and drove to the sheriff's department where Mindy tearfully confessed.

The next day Ruby Verani did something perhaps only a mother could do. She cleaned up her son's blood. It was a liar. So I could do for him. Not to have strangers in here, but for me to do that.

Now the close-knit family that once counted Mindy among its own will face off against her in court. Convince that this was murder, pure and simple.

“Do you believe that she actually sat down and planned it ahead of time?”

Oh sure. I think she planned it. I absolutely think she knew what she was going to do. She shows no remorse. I can't be sorry and tell why he's at the same time.

For her to murder him and then come back and do this.

Like murdering the second time is hard.

History that doesn't suck is a legit heart-hitting American history podcast told through entertaining stories.

now might be the time to go back and learn how we got here.

“With more than 200 episodes, you can binge your way, decade by decade,”

defining event to defining event from the founding end of the 20th century. Join me, Professor Greg Jackson, for History that doesn't suck, an Odyssey podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Who is the abuse? Who is the abuse?

Who is the abuse it? Who is the criminal? Who's the victim? Tom Cardoards on two. All right.

It's day one of Mindy Barani's murder trial in Lima, Ohio. Larry Delabio, Mindy Barani's lawyer and her lawyer is feeling the pressure. She's a good kid. She should be out. She doesn't deserve to be in jail. But 20-year-old Mindy faces life in prison.

“Unless a jury believes her risky defense that she was a battered child.”

Sleep last night? Better not just physically, but emotionally. We're just going to tell him the facts. We're going to tell him the truth. She's been murdered until at 16, she had no choice, but to kill her father Andy. If I had said, "Dad, I need your help. I'm pregnant."

He would have killed me or he would have been very badly that day. So you think you did the only thing? Yes. She must realize what she has done. It's the most heinous act.

Andy's family, and his second wife, Joni, hope the jury will see Mindy as they now do.

As a calculating killer, with a story concocted, to get away with murder. Before the trial begins, Mindy and her main ally, her mother Shirley. Mindy, okay. We just have to touch out this couple of weeks. Meet in a private, back room. The council for the state may make us open the state.

Ladies and gentlemen. State prosecutor Joseph Bercard.

“Mindy Berenne is guilty of aggravating murder.”

And there's no legal excuse for her to walk away from this crime. Mindy's story, he says, is pure fabrication. This is a poem that Mindy wrote, and on the bottom there's a knife with a heart and there's blood dripping off the knife, this is what Mindy's thoughts were. This is truly who Mindy was.

She planned this murder. He insists from the moment she broke into Andy's bedroom to steal the gun. This is Andy Berenne's master bedroom. If indeed, she intended to kill herself, Bercard wonders why then she went to the kitchen bathroom. Rather than going to this bathroom, which is located next to the master bedroom, she traveled across the house, here to this small bathroom, located off the kitchen.

And that's where she sat for about an hour before her father came home. That bathroom was the perfect spot. The prosecutor says, for Mindy to lie in weights, Mindy is in here. Correct. And it comes through this door.

Yes. Dr. Haney was been marked as state's exhibit number. In court, Bercard also highlights how Mindy's claim of self defense makes no sense, given how Andy Berenne died. The cause of death was the shotgun last to the left back.

Mindy shot her father in the back. We have a man that's standing 40 feet away. We have a teenager in the middle of the room with a shotgun. There's no confrontation, no verbal exchange, no physical exchange prior to the shooting. But jurors can buy the prosecution scenario and still not convict.

If they accept the battered child theory, if they really believe Mindy feared for her very life.

The thing that's real critical is what did Mindy proceed was happening at the time that she shot her father.

She says she was terrified. No, she said that she was totally pissed. She said that she was mad, she was angry. Remember this? [BELL RINGING]

Fear has never come into the equation until much later. When all of a sudden, oh, I was a fearful of my father. Raise your right hand. After two days, the prosecution wraps up its case. He's telling us with testimony from Mindy's stepmother, Joni.

Who can curse? Mindy would go toe to toe in arguments with her father. The defense has a lot of work ahead. Burk Harris said he wanted to argue it. Hopefully we can show that Andy was the aggressor that Andy created the confrontation.

Hopefully the jury will see that. The next day-- I'm an nervous record. No.

My daughter's life. You're at this time. The defense would call Shirley Bernie. Sure. My biggest fear is that I am not going to be able to get through to the jury. Shirley testifies that during their marriage, Andy was violent and abusive to her and their two sons.

Our normal humiliation and verbal beating place was at the kitchen table. He would make a sit there and for hours. And I mean hours.

But he never turned his wrath on Mindy.

By age 15, however. She called me crying and said, "Please mom, please I can't take this anymore."

“Did she ever tell you anything specific about any bad things that Andy was doing to her at that time?”

No. So, Shirley, laughter there. She made one comment. Please don't do this to me, Bob. But you did.

Yes. After that, Delabio says Mindy fell apart. She was diagnosed as depressed, suicidal, and homicidal. She spent nine days in a hospital, but still told no one about the abuse. The fear of going back there anyway and then having told everyone just far outweighed the risk of telling and maybe I wouldn't have to go back.

So, doctors released her to the one person she was trying to escape. Her father. It was like a turning plate for me. I just didn't care about myself anymore. That's when Delabio says her drinking and drug use escalated.

And she was running away. The last time I tried to run away is when social services became involved. Social services in the person of child abuse investigator Laura Alvarado. Our agency received a call from father who was upset and was having some problems with his daughter. But when Alvarado interviewed her, she sided with Mindy.

I didn't feel the child was and I'm really child. I felt that the child was troubled by what was going on in the home.

“In your investigation, did you see signs of physical or emotional abuse?”

Emotional abuse. Again, Mindy pleaded for help. She said if my mother doesn't want me and doesn't want anything to do with me, then I'm willing to go to a military school of foster home. But Mindy was a minor and what to do was Andy's decision.

A week before the killing, when Alvarado saw Mindy for the last time, she just didn't open up as much. And it was like she had just given up and she was not disclosing anymore. Thank you very much. I have no further questions. Because as Delabio, Mindy, by then, had given up hope.

As he heads out to the jail two nights later. Big day, important dates mark. He must make sure she doesn't lose hope again. Mindy's credibility is going to be big tomorrow. I mean, what? The jury sees her.

Mindy will testify tomorrow? I have nothing to lie about. And that means stealing herself to relive the abuse that she says throw her to kill. This tough as it's going to be, put yourself there.

Put yourself there. Okay? This tough as it might be to talk about it. It's getting down to it. But like nothing more than it will happen. To be someone to raise children.

And do you shot your father? Yeah, I know. Is there a price for that? I think every day I look at them here. They look down.

So if you're going to tough price to pay, I hope that's enough. That was our only sign. It's four years to the day, since Andy Barante was killed.

What's been the toughest part? Disbeen without my husband. And ironically, today, Andy's killer is daughter Mindy will finally take the stand at her murder trial. What is the possible sentence here?

Should she be convicted? She could face three years to life in prison.

Her testimony is crucial.

It's up to Mindy to convince the jury that her father abused her for years. Although she never told anyone about the abuse until after she killed him. I know what the truth is,

and I hope that they see the truth too. I hope they see through her lies. You're at this time we would call Mindy Barante. As Mindy prepares to take the stand, her mother Shirley is worried.

She has told a story so many times. You raise your right hand at some point. You start to toughen toward that hurt.

“I think sometimes they want to see that emotional breakdown.”

Yeah, I'm worried. Mindy, you said you would go home from the bar, what happened then. Mindy begins by recounting the years of abuse.

First, it's actually a tell me,

to massage the back of his knee. Then he would roll over.

He said nothing but a guy.

“The award was slut just like your mother.”

Then physical. That's when he picked me up by my hair and started slamming my head against the door. Abuse that she says left her in fear of her life. Were there threats?

Threats every day. Jirking me around every day.

I never knew what he was going to do.

Jerry's milk's used about three minutes. During a break in a private back room, or attorney worries, Mindy isn't getting her story across. Don't think you have to tone down

when you're out there react. Don't feel like you have to sit there and narrate the story. Okay? Just tell me exactly the way it happened.

Sorry, I can't remember what those arguments were like. I mean, they were so kind of happened every day. I don't know how to explain it. You're just as well how it happened. Mindy.

I can't say well this is what happened this time because I can't remember the good thing. Or just tell me what I say that. If you just turn around and hit me.

You know that's always you would make.

Then he was with me. It's trying to follow me a little more this time. I'm trying. Okay, you picked up the gun, and then you walked over to the bathroom,

“which is marked sea on the states exhibit one, correct?”

During cross-examination, Prosecutor Burkhard reminds the jury that on the day of the murder, Mindy went out of her way to get to the kitchen bathroom.

Why didn't you go to the bathroom that was right next to the bedroom? Because I got into the shower because I figured it would be easier to clean up. And although Mindy claims she killed her father

and self-defense. It just approximately how far away from your father are you. About this far? He was 40 feet away from her.

When she shot him in the back. And he used this 12-gauge shotgun to shoot your father a little back, didn't you? Yeah. I know there are questions.

Before she gets off the stand, Larry gets one more chance to question Mindy. Mr. Burkhard showed you a number of drawings that you have. You said that that's a heart

with a knife going through. Right. With the dead represent? Just I felt like my heart was broken. I just told a lot of pain.

Just pain of an abused child. Intent on committing suicide that day. But every time I got ready to do it, I couldn't because I knew what was pregnant. I just, I didn't want to kill my baby, too.

She spends six grueling hours on the stand. You can't believe you. You can't believe you. You can't believe you. Yes, they can't believe you.

You can't believe you. I'm not going to fight. We're done with you. It's going to be... And it's just not now.

It's just going to be, you know, I'm not just going to be how they're going to listen to all those things and how they're going to interpret all those things. You did it, Mindy. Can you get the best you could?

You did it all the way? Can you? Can you?

Yeah, I'll think it one second.

I'll think it one second. But one unexpected observer was moved by her testimony. Jill Harris, a juror from Mindy's first murder trial, has driven miles to be here. I just felt that I connected with her some way, and I should be there. Just to show support that someone cares.

The first jury's deliberations were tense. We did a lot of screaming, a lot of crying, a lot of walking to floor. An anonymous call to a juror forced a mistrial, but not before the jury came to its own conclusion about Mindy. Did your jury believe her story?

Most of us, yeah. I believed that she did suffer from depression and better child syndrome. And the first vote was leaning in her favor. Seven of us wanted a quiddle. Really?

Yes. Council for the defendant recalls next witness. Including his case, Larry Delavio calls psychiatrist Dr. Kathleen Quinn. She was profoundly depressed. She says Mindy clearly showed signs of post-traumatic stress, just the hearing of his footstep,

or hearing him crack open a beer, would make her feel scared about the next confrontation. On that fateful day, her fears intensify. He had searched her room again. She was pregnant, her father didn't know that. She had taken a gun out of his room.

Did Mindy bringy perceive that she was in danger of suffering imminent death or great

“bodily harm at the hands of her father the day that she shot him?”

Yes, she did. Thank you very much, Dr. I had no further questions. In her bottle, the prosecutor calls his own expert, Dr. Barbara McIntyre. Did you see Mindy burning being fearful or father?

This was a young woman who consistently defied her father, swore at him, called him names,

threatened to kill him. Her diagnosis, Ms. Brenney, did not meet the criteria to be considered as suffering from better child syndrome. But the prosecutor has saved his most damaging witnesses for last. The only other people who knew what it was like to grow up in that house.

On my life, I saw them experience it. We talked about it.

“You haven't read the next call, Steve, the running?”

Mindy's brothers, Steve, and Scott. You saw only swear to the testimony you're about to give him this case. They refused to have their testimony taped. I do. I say that no of use took place.

They said it didn't happen, but neither one of them would look me in the eye. When you're dealing with a situation like that and close family, and a close knit community, you deny of use. I have a real tough time for a given for this, real tough time. The verdict, when 48 hours returns.

Yeah, this is it. This is the culmination of all the work, all the time. Two weeks after Mindy Bureni's murder trial began, it's time for the jury to decide her fate. Let's do it.

“The question, did she call the blooded lay plan her father's murder?”

Mindy Bureni removed the final hurdles. And the hurdle was Andy Bureni. Or did she kill him in self-defense? She had an honest belief that she was an imminent danger of great bodily harm that her dad

was finally going to break.

After years of abuse, you have the ability ladies and gentlemen to send Mindy back to her mother. At this time, the jury is excused to start their deliberations. While the jury deliberates, you guys helped me back. Mindy is returned to her self.

But it's a huge gamble.

“By choosing not to accept a plea agreement, she could be convicted of aggravated murder.”

Mindy is being tried as an adult, so a guilty verdict could mean life. By contrast, if the jury buys her stories, she could simply walk out of here. For now, all anyone can do is wait. The waiting. You've got to wonder what 12 people are thinking.

We covered all the points. I hope they can tell who's lying and who's not lying. They had to so scum at Steve, all the lies don't even told that she got caught in. Who knows?

And it's up to them, basically.

It's really nuts that Mom can't be here. And now it's the scary part. We've got upstairs, thanks for more notes. After 24 nerve-racking hours, we could have a verdict. The nine woman three-man jury reaches a verdict.

With her boyfriend Dave at her side, surely braces herself. As does the family of Andy Berenny. Mindy is found guilty of the most serious charge, aggravated murder. Not only did she kill him, the jury says she planned it from start to finish. The judge sentences her to life in prison with no chance of parole for 23 years.

It's all too much for Larry Delabio.

Pretty, surely lashes out at the Berenny family.

We need justice.

“On the way back to herself, a still shaken Delabio tries to get medical attention for the”

nearly catatonic Mindy.

And that's what's wrong about it.

“We were really shocked, it's the day after the verdict.”

I was stunned, I couldn't believe it.

The Berenny so desperately wanted. We didn't expect it to be this so there, but I'm just glad that my son's name and character was more or less cleared of that he was not the monster they made him out to be.

“I'm sorry, Wendy, but that's what you deserve and that's what you got.”

Do you think in retrospect it was a mistake to try to use this defense? No, it's what happened and I'll get people to understand. So last thing I do, she said, "Mom, I'll be alright no matter where I am." So we'll keep fighting and as long as she stays strong, she'll be okay. Mindy Berenny was released from prison in 2013.