Chapter 6 - Chloe’s First Interview
The child advocacy center did not interrogate Chloe at bedside.
That mattered.
She needed treatment first.
Three days after admission, when fever improved and pediatric team agreed, a trained forensic interviewer met her in a child-friendly room at the hospital’s advocacy unit.
One interviewer.
Recorded.
No parents.
No me.
I waited behind a one-way observation? Usually caregivers don't observe to avoid influence. So I waited in a separate room.
Detective Collins stayed outside process until afterward.
The interview lasted fifty-two minutes.
I did not hear it directly that day.
Later, prosecutors summarized what was legally shareable.
Chloe said the “sleep medicine” began about two weeks before the wake.
Sometimes it made her dizzy.
Sometimes she slept for hours.
She did not know names.
Good.
Nobody asked her to guess.
She had a real cough and fever.
Victoria told her:
“You’re very sick.”
Then:
“You might have to go away.”
Julian told her:
“Grandma cannot know because Grandma will ruin everything.”
The day before the wake, Chloe heard them arguing.
Victoria:
“She keeps waking.”
Julian:
“Then keep her quiet until tomorrow.”
Chloe remembered being carried downstairs.
Seeing the white casket.
Crying.
Julian said:
“If you behave, it won’t be scary.”
She asked:
“Am I dead?”
Victoria replied:
“Everyone has to think you are.”
That sentence destroyed whatever fantasy remained that this was accidental sedation.
Chloe also described the second casket.
Weeks earlier, Julian locked her in basement room after she opened his office drawer.
While there, she heard scraping in adjacent wine cellar.
Through a gap near floor, she saw him and Victoria lower “Grandma’s box” into hidden space.
“How did you know it was for Grandma?” interviewer asked.
“Mommy put Grandma’s dress inside.”
“What dress?”
“The black one with shiny buttons.”
I owned such a dress.
Victoria had borrowed it after Martin’s funeral because she said she wanted matching fabric for a memorial project.
I never got it back.
Then Chloe said:
“Daddy said Grandma would have a stroke if she found out.”
That phrase later became important.
Not necessarily a plan to induce one.
A belief they could explain my death as stroke complications.
The interviewer asked:
“What did they say would happen to you after funeral?”
Chloe:
“We were going to the lake house.”
“What lake house?”
“Where Daddy says nobody knows us.”
Police found it.
A rental property in rural Wisconsin reserved under Victoria’s maiden name.
Three months prepaid.
Groceries.
Child-sized bedding.
Blackout curtains.
A wireless camera.
No evidence of a murder room.
It looked like a place to hide a child.
That complicated charges.
Perhaps they intended to keep Chloe alive after fake funeral.
Perhaps later kill her.
Prosecutors could not prove every future intention.
May you like
They did not need to.
Placing a sedated child in a coffin and staging her death was already a catalog of crimes.
