Today has not been easy. I've tried to stay busy making a quilt. I've been working on it for a couple of days now but today my mind dwells on little Patience. Ashleigh's due date was today a year ago. I should be celebrating her First Birthday. How great would it be to be born on New Year's Eve? Especially when she got older. I can picture her in my head and I smile because I just know in my heart she would have been so much like her mother.
We have been thru a lot for the sake of our little granddaughter. We had to fight hard in court for her to be recognized as a life, a real person and not just some blob or fetus. It was a challenge. Ashleigh left to protect that baby because she believed that little life deserved a chance. I must have wrote over a hundred emails/ letters trying to be sure the laws on Fetal Homicide are preserved. I had abortionist get ugly with me about a woman's right to choose. To them it was all political. And on the other side, I contacted many right to life groups for help and not a one responded. My grand child's death was not political enough for them, I guess. Really is sad. But we won all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Thank you, God. But the worst yet best validation came from the judge during Joshua Scott's sentencing. I saw little Patience die on the sonogram. I described it in the best detail I could for the court. What I saw was pain in that final moment. No one will ever convince me that is not what Patience experienced at death. People want to argue when a baby in the womb can feel, well I know for sure at 16 wks she felt. A part of the evidence introduced at sentencing was of coarse autopsy photos. I did not look at them but we discover one was of Patience on the metal autopsy table. The Judge acknowledge that between my statement and that picture, which very much disturbed him, and Oklahoma's laws that she was a real person, a baby. And during the sentencing he when he got past Chad and Ashleigh he said, and for the unborn child identified as Patience Lynn.......that meant everything to me. All this time for the last year and a half in court they would just say unborn child. But she had a name, a beautiful name picked out by her mother. He honored her life by using her name. 
Now in a few more weeks I will be blessed by the arrival of my second grandchild. Patience will alway be my first. A little girl! I can not wait to see and hold this Grandbaby. But there are moments were nothing helps the things you lost. One person can not replace the other. 
On New Year's Eve people reflect on the past year and try to start anew. But every News Years Eve from this day forward I will spend reflecting on Patience Lynn. Will she be anything like I have imagined in my minds eye......I don't know. But oh won't it be the greatest adventure the day I meet her and find out. Till then I love you, Patience Lynn and I love and miss your mommy everyday!

Today, it has been 17 months since Ashleigh's murder. This was the statement I gave before the court befor Joshua Scott was Sentenced to 3 counts of Life without Parole to run consectutively. During these many months of waiting we have been blessed by lots of love and support.

    As a child Ashleigh was a loving free spirit. She loved to read and be read to everyday. Her Favorite book is a very well-known children’s book called Where The Wild Things Are. Most of us have read this book as a child or to our children. The Book tells the story of Max, a rambunctious and sensitive boy who feels misunderstood at home and escapes to where the Wild Things are. Ashleigh was my Max. Max lands on an island where he meets mysterious and strange Monsters whose emotions are as wild and unpredictable as their actions. The Wild Things desperately long for a leader to guide them, just as Max longs for a kingdom to rule. When Max is crowned king, he promises to create a place where everyone will be happy. Max soon finds, though, that ruling his kingdom is not so easy and his relationships there prove to be more complicated than he originally thought. Max longs after a while to come home and when the Monsters find out they try to devour him because they Quote, “Love him so!” Yet Max makes it home to his mother.

    Where the Wild Things Are is a metaphor to Ashleigh’s life and the relationships she developed with Joshua Scott and Mahaffey. They all lived together; Ashleigh and Mahaffey were a couple and Joshua Scott as their roommate. But Ashleigh couldn’t rule the monsters in the house. During the course of the relationship Joshua Mahaffey begin to physically abuse Ashleigh. The slapping,  Josh Mahaffey put her head through a wall three separate times.  He burnt her multiple times with cigarettes.  Shook her like a rag doll, threw things at her.  Got her fired from two jobs, because he didn't trust her to be out of his sight.  Once he even stabbed himself multiple times to keep her from leaving.  He ripped her clothes off her two times.   He stole her birth control because he wanted her pregnant, destroyed and set fire to her belongs, and raped Ashleigh.  And what did Scott do? He watched!

    The first time Ashleigh came home because she left Mahaffey she was already pregnant. She desperately wanted things to change. Mahaffey called me wanting to come over and work things out but my husband Jim was not home so I told him no. That is he could call Jim the next day  and see what he says.  But Joshua Scott and Mahaffey showed up at my home anyway at 10:30 at night. Ashleigh and I heard them pull up and without knocking they tried to open the door and just walk right in but the door were locked. Mahaffey was trying to beat down the door while Scott was holding of our dogs. I called the police. When the police arrived Mahaffey took off on foot leaving Scott behind. Scott was released and they searched for Mahaffey but dint pick him find him.

    The next day Scott called Ashleigh worried because Mahaffey hadn’t turned up. Ashleigh put that call on speaker so her dad and I could hear the conversation. Scott was wanting Ashleigh to come back saying he was their friend and loved them both. Ashleigh flew into a rage. She said, “You are not my friend. How dare you pretend to be my friend! Friends don’t just sit there and watch someone be abused and put their headphones on and ignore what’s happening. You got off on watching, you sick Bastard! You are not my friend!” and she hung up the phone on him in tears.

    Ashleigh did end up going back to Mahaffey but it only lasted for a period of two weeks. Again Mahaffey beat Ashleigh and tied her to the bed and wouldn’t release her till she pretended that they would work it out and the proof of her word was sex. Again Scott ignored what was happening in that house. My daughter escaped and hid. This time she didn’t come home. Both Scott and Mahaffey were calling me telling me Ashleigh had disappeared and that they didn’t know what had happened to her. The fact is they both knew because Ashleigh left a note. I had to file a missing persons report to find my daughter. When the police showed up to question Mahaffey he hid under the house while Scott lied to them about his whereabouts. Now Mahaffey was missing and Scott started calling me trying to convince me to drop the missing persons report because Mahaffey and Ashleigh had run off and gotten secretly married. That was a lie.

    Ashleigh turned up and pressed charges on Mahaffey. I took Ashleigh to get a PO and she started working with the crisis control center. She was hiding between Heather Lara’s house and staying with other friends. Her dad and I begged her on many occasions to come home but she couldn’t. Ashleigh said, “Mom he, Joshua Mahaffey, said if I came home that they would come over and kill you all and rape my sister. I’m afraid of them and I believed Josh.” I had no idea how right she would be. Over the next month and a half we tried to protect Ashleigh all we could. Since the Josh’s could not get a hold of Ashleigh they called and texted me day and night. Even after I quit answering it continued. Anywhere from 5 to 20 a day. They were relentless. Then the Josh’s created fake Facebook accounts. I started copying and keeping records of all the harassment and activity. Not only Ashleigh but her father and I as well where calling the police constantly reporting everything they were doing. Anna from the Crisis Center was helping as well. The Josh’s would pretend to be people who went to high school with Ashleigh and asked if they knew how to get a hold of her. Some of who confronted them and then they got harassed and threatened as well. The Josh’s were having these fake conversations on Facebook to purposely through the police off from where Mahaffey really was. “Hey how is the beach?” “you should come down here.” But, Mahaffey was in Cleburne, TX  somehow he was finding out Ashleigh’s new numbers, her new friends, where she lived and worked. That was because Joshua Scott was here following, watching and enlisting others to help stalk down my daughter.

    During the week of the 4th of July things had gotten to a point that we were convinced that these young men would kill our daughter .It was spilling now over to Ashleigh’s roommate, at her jobs and our other daughter, Raechel as well. She was receiving hang up calls at work and then Scott contacted her. When Ashleigh was told what happen with her sister she began to cry uncontrollably. She said that was a message sent to her that they were coming for Raechel and I. She begged me not to let anything happen to her sister. To tell Raechel not to listen or trust Joshua Scott that he was a sick pervert would hurt her.

    At this point we were begging the police to please pick up Joshua Scott because he was the key to finding Mahaffey. We were desperate! So desperate that her father and I were showing pictures all over the county to catch them.

On July 12th & 13th good collided with Evil and the Monsters won. Scott the 12th killed Chad Page picked up Mahaffey hunted down Ashleigh and murderer her and that baby. Joshua Scott wants to say his hands are clean of Ashleigh’s Death but I believe his are the dirtiest of all. Mahaffey had a history of this kind of behavior with women and since the death of my daughter I have been contacted by many of his friends saying that they didn’t understand why Scott just didn’t tell him to move on that Ashleigh wasn’t worth the hassle. That is what they had done with the other girls friends Mahaffey had and he did just move on. Scott couldn’t allow that to happen. If Chad Page calling him a “punk” was enough to execute him then how much more would he have wanted to Kill Ashleigh?

    Most of Ashleigh and Mahaffey’s fight were because Ashleigh wanted Mahaffey to throw Josh Scott out. She did not want a roommate especially once she found out she was pregnant. How much more would he want her died just over not returning the phone of his she had? How much more when she called him a “sick Bastard”? Mahaffey was hiding with family who were taking him to church and trying to help him Move On. Scott couldn’t just leave him there. Especially since Mahaffey promised so much. And here is what I believe to be the real motive…..the plan was to do this all in such a way to leave Mahaffey holding the bag and Scott to walk away blaming all the murders on Mahaffey. Mahaffey told Heather on the phone in which she recorded the conversation and gave to police that once he killed himself and Ashleigh that he would leave all his belongings, house, boat ect…to Joshua Scott. That his mom was helping him write that in his Will.

    My daughter’s murder was no unknown fact to Joshua Scott. This was a murder spree and more would have died that day if Mahaffey wouldn’t have fallen on that gun and Scott could have gotten to it.

    The morning before Ashleigh died I saw the Facebook post from the night before that Joshua Scott had left. 2 pictures. The first one was a gun. The gun that happened to be used already to kill Chad with and a new photo of Scott. You see normally his hair was like you she now but the day of the 12th he had shaved it into a Mohawk and died it red. I immediately said to my husband they, the Josh’s, just declared War and our daughter. I think any parent would have felt that way from that picture. I called Ashleigh and warned her about the gun. I begged her to please be careful. Told her we would call the police and tell them about the post. It was the last time I heard my daughter say, “I Love you, Mommy!” Jim did call the police and they said that they couldn’t do anything over a picture on face book. I was panicked and tried to call Ashleigh back before she went to work only to have John Coleman answer the phone and tell me Ashleigh had been shot and to get there quick. And whom do I hear in the back ground but Joshua Scott telling John, “Don’t tell anyone I’m here.” The phone went dead.

    Half way there we found out Ashleigh had been shot in the head. When I got there I will never forget my daughter's beautiful face, it was forever ruined.  Her face was distorted from the massive swelling, her eyes black and blue.  Speckles of blood spot like blisters all over her face.  Ashleigh's right hand was so burnt from trying to block the last shot that it was burned clear down to her elbow.  The blood was everywhere including on the wall behind her. You literally had to search for an inch of her skin to touch that was not coved in blood.  At one point she went Code Blue, and I had to make the painful decision to have her revived.  Her Dad, Jim was with me in the room as they brought Ashleigh back.  I made that choice hoping our little Patience could survive.  We waited, and then the doctors came in and said, Ashleigh would never recover and there was nothing they could do to save her. She was brain dead. We also waited for an OB/GYN Specialist hoping our precious Ashleigh could be kept on machines long enough to give our unborn granddaughter, Patience Lynn a chance at life.  The sonogram revealed her tiny baby heart was failing. I saw little Patience last heartbeat. Her little back arched and her limbs went stiff and her tiny toes spread apart and then suddenly she went limp and moved no more. Once  Patience was truly gone, I was left alone with my daughter.

    Ashleigh's poor little body had been through enough.  I could see the scars on her arm, five or six of them from Joshua burning her with cigarettes.  I took her blood stained hand into mine and brushed what little of her hair that wasn't soaked in blood.  I bent down close and said-”If you are holding on for the baby you don't have to any longer.  If this is too hard it's Okay for you to go.  It is all right.  Don't worry about your mommy I will be Okay." Within fifteen seconds her heart stopped.  I had the nurse get her dad and sister.  Ashleigh passed away in peace and quiet.  

    Since that day we have endured a lot waiting for this day to arrive. I could not bury Ashleigh they was I wanted because the condition of her body. After you lose a child people don’t know how to talk to you anymore. Friends avoid you and it changes every relationship you have with someone. We have missed Ashleigh’s 21st bday and just 10 days ago her 22nd as well. The holidays are bad but especially with the loss of Patience. Patience was due on New Year’s Eve. This would have been her first Christmas and bday. I missed her first word, tooth, crawl and step. I’ve missed watching what a beautiful mother Ashleigh would have been. She would have been a strict but fun mom. The reason Ashleigh named her that was because she told me, “mom God didn’t grant me with Patience as a virtue so I’m going to name my daughter Patience to remind me to always have Patience with my daughter and her to have Patience with me being her mother.” We laughed because it was so true but wonderful that she felt like being a loving patient mother. Lynn is mine and her sister’s middle name being passed on. I miss little things like the smell of her hair and her funny jokes. How she could make anyone feel better about themselves. How we use to talk every day. Watching musicals with her and the singing. Oh to hear her sing. She would break out in a song no matter where she was because music was everything to her. Hearing her play piano and guitar to her little snort when she laughed too hard. All of that are just memories now.

    But one of the worst things has been this whole court process. The watching and waiting and never being able to speak out. But I’ve got something to say to you today Josh Scott. The day we were told that you and your lawyer were ready to talk a plea day meant something more to me than you could ever comprehend. That day Craig Ladd told us that if any of us in that room which included the Page family said no then we would continue pursuing the death penalty and the discussion would be over. Chad’s family and ours said that if you were willing to plead Guilty, not no contest but Guilty to All charges then we could live with a plea bargain. We all had many different reasons for this but 2 of mine were #1 that I had no desire to have your family watch you die away like we watched Ashleigh. #2 As a Christian it was an extension of forgiveness and mercy by giving you a full life. Under  Biblical law and the laws of the State of Oklahoma, what you deserve is the death penalty. I gave you forgiveness from what you deserved but that doesn’t mean that no punishment should be involved. You took the life of 4 people during those 2 days of shameless murder. One you should be charged for and are not and that is for Joshua Mahaffey himself. You are responsible for his death as well. You gave him a gun knowing full well he was going to kill himself with it.

    Any way as I see it the Page family and my family granted you mercy that day and what did you do? You walk into this court and Plead No Contest! And then your lawyer has the tenacity to ask for charges to be dropped. And somehow in the DA’s mercy he let it go and gave you that instead of going back to what you deserved which are the death penalty. You took our mercy and generosity and tossed it away like garbage. And to make matters worse that night I see your lawyer, Mr. Jones on the news saying you were never willing to plead guilty. So you lied and manipulated the families, the Da and this court to get what you wanted. Now you are her asking this court for more mercy! What mercy did you show my family when you harassed us day and night? What mercy did you show Ashleigh in the constant stalking and fear she endured? Or during the abuse she suffered at the hands of Mahaffey? What mercy did you show Mahaffey when you handed him a gun to kill himself let alone Ashleigh and the baby? What mercy did you show Chad when you shot him in the head? No Mr. Scott you have been shown enough mercy.

    Please your honor Joshua Scott’s plea of No Contest has given him ownership of the truth, yet without accountability.  He wants you to think he just “ loved Ashleigh So” but he is the monster of our dreams who devoured my Ashleigh and Patience, the most innocent victim and they never came home to their mom. What is worst of all the monsters cut off my family line thru Ashleigh. They robbed my family of generations of children that would see Grandma Ashleigh, to great grandma Ashleigh and on down the line. Once this generation of my family passes on and dies Ashleigh and Patience will be forgotten. It is worse than a life sentence for my family. Both Scott and Mahaffey have children that will pass down their family line. Someone their mothers can look at and see their sons in them. They stole that from me during their cowardly murder spree. I need to know that he will never get out and do this again. I need to know my family is safe from ever being harmed. Give him the harshest sentence possible and let me take my daughter home as a victim no more but as a child beloved by a mother who has to fear no more from the monster.

ATTENTION.......TODAY'S SENTENCING ON THE ASHLEIGH MURDER TRIAL........
We are finally home. It was a long afternoon. I gave my Victim Impact Statement along with others in my family and Chad Paige's family. I will post that statement tomorrow for everyone to read. I was up all night writing it and I did find the inspiration I was looking for in Ashleigh's Room. Anyway this was the sentence from the Judge. On the murder of Chad Page...Life without Parole. On the murder of Ashleigh Lindsey....Life without Parole. On the murder of Patience Lynn....Life without Parole. All counts are to run consecutively. Tonight KXII and KTEN they will run the stories. Joshua Scott still has 10 days to file for an appeal on the sentence. I have no doubt he will do that but for now I got to look him in the eye and say all the things bottled up inside. None of this will bring back my Ashleigh and my little Patience but for now I am satisfied. Please share to get the word out so those who loved her will see! 
All for you and that baby Ashleigh Marie, mommy kept the faith and God held me up thru it all. I love you!