Crime Stories with Nancy Greece Sweet sixteen. I don't want the twins to grow up and move away, but I look forward to sweet sixteen or sixteenth birthday for them. Believe it or not, they are turning fifteen and a certain name that keeps going through my head over and over and over. McKenna Brown, gorgeous, so smart, sixteen and a hockey star in Florida. She committed suicide. But I want to know why. Is it true that mean girls, real life mean girls. You've all seen the movie Real Life Mean Girls drove her to suicide? Is this true? And if so, what if anything will being done about it? I Meanancy Grace, this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation, and Sirius XM one eleven, first of all, take a listen to this. I went upstairs the next morning and opened the door and I she was on the ground, face down, and I thought she was sleeping. She could sleep anywhere, She truly could sleep anywhere, and so I didn't realize initially what I was looking at. And I went over to her and went to turn her over, and she was cold and stiff, and I knew that she was gone. On all the seventh days before the first day of school, she took her own life. It's in total hell, and I know she's all around us still, but she's not here physically and that hurts. More than a thousand people showed up to pay their respects at her memorial service, including all of Palm Herbert Fire Rescue, where her dad is a lieutenant. This brave, brave mother speaking Cheryl. This is McKenna's mother speaking to our friend doctor Phil and our friends at Fox thirteen. Why did this have to happen? With me and All Star panel to make sense of what we know right now? But first I want to introduce to you two very special guests. And I do not know how they are putting one foot in front of the other, but I think it's because they want to help other teams, like their daughter McKenna with me, Cheryl and Hunter Brown, McKenna's mom and dad. To the Browns, thank you for being with us, Thank you, Nancy, Thank you for having us. I have so many questions for you. I want to understand what happened and what if anything, can be done to stop this, To stop A gorgeous, talented, brilliant teen girl like your daughter from taking her life and what drove her to that? And is it true that three, essentially three mean girls drove her to do this. It was a group of four girls, four. I'm glad to know that. Yeah, miss Brown, before you found McKenna, you thought asleep. Did you know that there was trouble brewing? Not to the extent that it was brewing. I knew, you know, earlier that week. You know, in less than four days, there have been some some boy drama some of McKenna's friends that accused her of breaking the girl code after she had talked to one of the boys is an ex boyfriend from two years earlier. And you know, there was some negative correspondence ranging from you know, tex phone calls that led up to that weekend breaking the girl code. Guys, take a listen. As it's explained to doctor Pheel, Tuesday evening, she was with girlfriends out on the beach. One of her friends his her ex boyfriend, was on the beach there with her. She had known him for a couple of years as well. They had dated two years earlier, and they started talking and flirting with each other. McKenna wanted to make sure that her friend was okayed and wanted to be awkward, had asked her if she would be okay with them talking Wednesday evening when a group of them went to the Causeway and she continued hanging out with him, and you know it obviously wasn't okay with this person hanging out with somebody's ex boyfriend from two years ago. On one night in a group listen to more, she went and spent the night with a couple of the girlfriends that evening and they dropped her off at our house on Thursday. Later on that evening, she started getting a barrage of texts and phone calls from the girl with the ex boyfriend. She tried to kind of distance herself and not respond. Friday evening, she sent a text to this person saying that, you know, if I crossed the line, I'm sorry. She she sent that for her just so that she'd feel better, you know, kind of park it there. It didn't matter how she responded, but she was, you know, owning it if she crossed the line. But then suddenly McKenna knew things had absolutely gone sidewise. Listen. The next day, we spent the day together, you know, talking through it. We were very close. She was my best friend. And we went to dinner and she looked down at her phone. She'd been ignoring her phone most of the day, just trying to put some distance between it, and she looked at her phone in the snap map, she looked down and she saw the four friends that had been sending her texts and phone calls and you know snaps. They were all together at her friend's house, you know, just a short ways from our house, and they'd come from fair distance all to be together. Okay, if you don't know what snap is, snapchat or snap map, you're about too. How hurtful do you think it was? To mckinna, a teen girl which she luis and sees all of her friends are right down the street together, but nobody invited her listen. So she saw on the snap map that they were all together, and her face just kind of went white, like I feel like that was a turning point for her. She had been getting all these you know, correspondences and trying to ignore them. She saw that and she just, you know, we went home that evening, we watched a movie together again, just talking, and she decided that, you know, we were going to church the next morning, she said she was going to go upstairs and wash her hair and clean up her room and she might be back down. She didn't come back down, and I didn't think anything of it, because you know, it's here. The next morning for church, you were hearing McKenna's mother speaking to her friend, doctor Phiel, and miss Brown, Cheryl Brown and mckinna's dad Hunt or both with us. Now, Miss Brown, I feel like I'm living it through it because it sounds just like my daughter Lucy. Before McKenna told you about Snap, did you even know what it was? I had an idea and I, you know, the whole concept of disappearing messages always kind of haunted me because there's no way to stay on top of it or monitor it. Really, I think parents are in the dark when it comes to a lot of social media that my daughter showed me, like the Snap map and you know where you can actually see friends, you know, situated geographers, queen on the map, you know, and it works all around the world. I was driving the twins to my hometown of Macon, Georgia, and my son was on Snap and he said, guess where I forgot who Alexander is? I'm like where I thought, and they might say New York or Florida. Said he's a Switzerland. What how do you know that? And he goes, look, it's on my snap map. You can find out where if they're on Snap and they share their location, you can see where all your friends are. And I'm just thinking about that moment when mckinna looked, and so all of her girlfriends all right down the street, but nobody invited her. I don't even think it was so much the fact that she wasn't with them. It was the fact that, you know, two of them had been together, the other two were separate, and there'd been a blurry of text back and forth between her and them individually, and that and now that you know, so it had been kind of going sideways for a few days, and then now they were all together, you know, five traffic lights from our house as a group. And I think that was more what said in on her than just the fact that she'd been left out, because she'd known by this point in time, you know, she was on the outs with the group. They'd made that fairly clear. She'd been trying to, you know, trying for a approachment. They'd reached out individually. You know, they'd had conversations that the detective sharing some of them with me where you know, they accused her of this. He said, Okay, yes I did that. You know, I probably shouldn't have that sort of thing. So, you know, I don't think she expected to be there. I think it was more of the fact that they were all together now, so it had kind of all come full circle back to where now they were all together hanging up on her exactly like a cabal ganging upon her. And I mean, let me understand this, miss Brown, Cheryl Brown. The whole thing started when the girls were together at the Causeway. They're in Florida, and an ex boyfriend two years x two years out of a relationship with what then thirteen year old girl and who starts flirting with McKenna and she flirts back like any red blooded American girl would. Of course, she flirted back, right, But she asked the friend first. Hey said, okay, if we're talking, and the friend goes, yes, we're way over. That's what started this whole thing. She was also there with her current boyfriend on the beach, this friend, and that is what started this whole thing. Yeah, there's two nights. There's Tuesday night when they McKenna and the boyfriend first kind of flirted when they were all at Saint Pete Beach, McKenna and three of the group of four, and then on Wednesday, McKenna and two of the group of four wound up at the Causeway. So there's two different beaches on two different nights. And then the one girl with the X was not there on Wednesday nights, but the boyfriend was, and McKenna and the boyfriend again you know, had interaction and showed it would interest in each other. And then obviously the two girls that were there relaid that back to the age and then things started the spiral from there. Time stories with Nancy Grace, Okay, it's amazing to me that these ming girls, as they have been euphemistically called, ganging up and bullying McKenna to the point where she takes her own life. It's amazing to me that, according to reports, they have shown no remorse whatsoever. Take a listen to our friends at Fox thirteen. She says she was baffled when she saw the teammate who sent the text at McKenna's funeral. Do you feel like no, I don't, because she had mentioned to one of her friends she got what she had deserved. It's all read. I was enraged. For now, Brown says she's putting her faith in the ongoing investigations, hopeful the teens realize the power behind their words. I just wish she could have seen through it. The suspensions would have still happened, and repercussions would have been there, and she'd still be here. Okay, Cheryl and Hunter Brown, please jump in whenever you have anything to add because us parents out here like you, we want to do everything we can to protect our children, even from themselves. If one parent hears this and can help their teen girl or boy, your words today will have made all the difference, all the difference in the world. Also one eight two seven three talk one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. That is the National Toll Free Suicide Prevention Line. I'm just having a hard time taking it all into doctor Jorry Crawls and psychologists joining us Saint Leo University and author doctor Jory You know it hurts adults when they feel rejected by family members or friends. I remember having an argument with my brother and do you know it upset me. For the next two years. I wouldn't say anything because I didn't want to start back up. But I love him and you know, and I'm an adult. So when teen girls or boys have an argument and their peers gang up on them, of course they're upset. And with social media, that energizes. And it's such a powerful platform because there's anonymity to it, yet it goes out and it reaches you know, other people, and trying to deal with that as a teenager. Doctor Jorry guys, I'm calling him doctor Jory's doctor Jorry Cross, and he's a renowned psychologist. The other day, my little girl, Lucy came in to the din. I was sitting there working and she had tears in her eyes. I said, honey, what is it? She said, Mom, did you see what they said about you? I'm like, who said what? No, I didn't see it. She goes, look, she couldn't even say the words, and she showed me it's somebody had written on a star or Twitter or something, probably Twitter the hate fest, but it said you're ugly? Why are you on TV? And I laughed at me, Yes, it wasn't me. But my daughter cried and it wasn't even about her, and you know, finally the tears spilled over. She was so upset that would hurt me. I can only imagine doctor Jerry Cross and what words like that do too a little girl, She's still a little girl at sixteen. You see how powerful that is because of that environment. I mean it just you know, the environment of the social media. It just really energizes that type of damage and information. And it's twenty four seven. Yes, I think I ended up writing back something like, oh, I know, aren't I the lucky is personally or something like that. But that's after years of taking heat in the courtroom and being called all kinds of things by murderers and rapists and defendants and their cadre of lawyers. Unlike a sixteen year old girl, everybody jump in when you have a thought. This is way I'm just a JD. This is way beyond anything I understand. Is how Hunter Brown jumping in? Yeah it is. I just wanted to get a couple things out here. I didn't realize till this morning that you guys hadn't received the text or anything like that. I asked Cheryl just in a minute of a half hour before we came. First thing I'd like to say is just in the in the weeks after mccanna passed, actually the National Suicide and Depression Hotline has changed to a nine eight eight number of works like nine one one. Now you need to do is dial nine eight eight from any phone and it hooks you right up. Okay, let me say that very clearly. Not if you dial nine eight eight the way you would dial nine one one, you're immediately hooked into the suicide hot line. Yes, that's the suicide in crisis, my lifeline. You know what. I would like to take this opportunity to reprimand everybody here in the studio, but I'm taking full responsibility for that. I didn't know that, and that is a good thing to know. It happened right after me kind of past because you know, I've got a theory, and everybody jump in if you agree or disagree. But doctor Joy, I remember there were times after my fiance's murder that I did not want to even live. Just thought, why don't I just kill myself and be done with it and I can be with him. But I have found I learned several things the hard way that if you can get through that crisis moment. The next day you don't feel that way. You may feel that way again, but if you can get through that crisis, that interval of hours where you just don't want to live anymore, how do you get past that? And I'm sure there's got to be a name for that, doctor Jorry Crossing. Yea. That's part of the grieving process. And really it's normal, okay, and it needs to be integrated in, you know, just like what you did. You saw the very next day, you know, and just like the parents would recognize that she's taken it day by day and that's the way you're gonna have to do it, and it's going to be for the rest of your life. You have to recognize that too. I got a question for you, Earl and Hunter. These are McKenna's mom and dad with us. What were the girls saying to her on snap? So that was what I was going to get into after the nine to eight eight point, I just wanted to point out, like, the social media is a big aspect of this, the social media, and they used phone, Twitter, phone snatchet, Instagram and TikTok I believe as well. And you were canceling her, so canceling. You know, that was what happened over social media, was they were going to cancel McKenna. You know, they pulled two friends over the phone that she'll have no friends or you know, their goal was to make sure she didn't have a single friend left. So that played a big part in all of this. But I think you know, McKenna was a goalie, she was a warrior. She was pretty tough and pretty feisty. I think she could have persevered and survived through that. I think what really pushed her over the edge and made you know, unbeknownst to us her freshman year basically team, she had been sexually assaulted. And she kept that a secret for three years. And then our understanding is on Wednesday night at the Causeway, she had revealed to one of one or both. I'm not one hundred percent certain of the friends that were there that she had been sexually assaulted. You know, I've made some mistakes, as the doctors know. You know, that weighs heavily on a fourteen year old school high school girl, and you know, so she had been carrying that burden secretly tours with by herself and struggling through it and all that. In my line of work, we see them all the time, and people, never, adults, never recover from that. And you know, so that weighed heavily on her mentally, and she shared that, she said, don't let this happen to you, you know, don't make the mistakes I've made. Don't let this this will ruin your life kind of thing. And then they betrayed that, gave that back to the girl whose brother had actually been the one that had sexually assaulted her, and then they shared that via screen captures of texts, a half dozen screen captures, five or six of them from one of the girls and one from McKenna, where along with you know, a list of boys and all this stuff, and they revealed back to teammates and friends. And I think that and I think that's what pushed McKenna over the edge, was being this humiliation and the deep secret that she had carried forever and then had betrayed back to her in a matter of days being shared with her teammates and friends. I'm pretty sure that's what probably ultimately drove her to her end. It's amazing to me as well, Cheryl, that you believe these girls have no remorse and actually sits she deserved what she got, that she deserved to die. That information is from friends that came forward after and helped us kind of piece together what had happened, what it actually happens, you know, days moments leading up to we've we've heard nothing. We've heard, you know, No, I'm sorries no, I mean, in fact, it's kind of the opposite. Their families have kind of they've appeeled. There's there's suspensions from the high school hockey league. Three of the girls in mc kanna played in the high school hockey league. All four of the girls in mccanna played on a travel organization. They've been suspended from the high school Hockey League sending appeals and the conclusion of the USA Hockey investigation, and they've all field their suspensions. You know, they've some of their families have gone. I'm kind of a scorched earth policy turning it back on McKenna. She broke the girl boone. How could she have done what she did? You know, their daughters, like I said, they don't see they don't see themselves as having done anything wrong. They're not only no repercussions because there's no law to support that. But you know they don't think they've done any wrong either. Yes, so, because because there's no law, they haven't broken a law, they've done nothing wrong in their eyes. To Nicole Parton, joining US Crime online dot Com invest to get every reporter, is it, first of all, give me your rendition of what we know right now, Nicole Partner, And you're a mother of how many five? I'm a mother of five, yes, ma'am. Yes, I thought that number is a stuck in my head. It's amazing to me that the only repercussion so far from these girls who bullied reportedly bullied McKenna to her death. The only thing that's happened is that they were suspended from the Florida High School Hockey League. Is that all? That's it? And they can appeal that, so it's very possible that they could be back on the hockey league. They're all, as far as I'm aware, they're all in appeals now trying to get back on the hockey league. And that's all that's happened. And we've got to remember. Stats show us that forty percent of all teenagers in America between the ages of twelve and seventeen have experienced some type of severe cyber bullying. So this is an epic, epic problem that we have in our nation, and there has got to be stiffer punishment for these type of things that are happening. As a parent, this is my worst nightmare. My children have been bullied because we're an interracial family. And to these parents, Cherylyn Hunter, my heart breaks for you. I cannot even pretend to imagine what you're feeling. There's got to be stiffer punishment. We have to be run into this type of bullying. With me is Titania Jordan. She is a chief parent officer with BARK and the author of Parenting in a Tech World, and you can find her at Bark dot us on Twitter at Titania Jordan. And I've got to tell you I have BARK and it monitors the twins, cell phones and devices, and it's extremely sensitive to words that would induce that would refer to harm, suicide, cyber bullying. And here's an example that I give to explain how sensitive BARK is. My son was goalie at his middle school team, and he was so proud that one time he dove through the net to stop a goal of the opposing side and his arm was covered in bruises from diving through the net. Well, he was so proud he took a picture of it and sent it to his friends and captain it. They didn't get the goal, you know when the bruise was proof. Well, I got that immediately and nearly did a backflip until I went and got his phone. I thought, how could John David be hurting himself? Until I saw his phone and he was really just showing off a trophy, a soccer trophy. That's how sensitive these net nannies are. Okay, titarn you go ahead. Yes, So you mentioned a forty percent rate of children twelve to seventeen experience severe cyber bulling, and in fact, in twenty twenty one, for our case study of billions of data points, we showed that seventy three percent of tweens that's eight to twelve year olds and eighty five percent of teens experienced bulling either as a bully, victim or witness. And unfortunately, we have observed a thirteen percent uptick in online bulling events since children return to school this school there and as a mom of a thirteen year old who has received BARK alerts for children bullying him in his current eighth grade situation. I just my heart goes out to you, and they're absolutely do need to be more stringent laws that hold children accountable? Yeah, go ahead, Hunter Brown. I was considered just there needs to be consequences that show and the turk kids from from bullying. If that's you know, if you think that the moral compass is enough, But I mean, there needs to be consequences. Straight out to David Bianci joining us as Centulli family lawyer. He is America's leading hazing lawyer out of Miami at st fblaw dot com. Jump in, David. Yeah, so, Nancy, I just would make a two quick comments everything. These are such horrific cases. I feel horrible for this family and everyone else with the whole bullying thing. It is not unlike hazing in college. It's very similar and the consequences are similar because in college hazing cases, young males usually get seriously injured or they die because they're being essentially bullied or hazed. And to bring us back to Florida where this happened, there are laws in Florida regarding bullying. There is one law called the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act, which is a byproduct of a horrific middle school suicide that happened in Cape Coral to an honors student because he was bullied, and a new law got passed in Florida that says bullying in schools is illegal and the schools have to do a whole bunch of things to stop it. But it doesn't make it criminal. It puts the obligation on the schools to rein it. In in addition to that, we have a criminal statute in Florida that says stalking is a crime, including cyberstalking, and a lot of these bullying things that happen with teens can be categorized as cyberstalking under Florida's criminal law. And the third prong of what the legal system can do is the civil court system, because in Florida, there's a Florida Supreme Court case, so not that long ago, that says that parents can be liable under certain circle substances if they failed to exercise reasonable care when they knew that one of their kids was going to inflict injury or possibly inflict injury on another student. So that's a way to rein it in under the civil law in Florida. I'm very curious in this case whether charges are being considered. What about it, Cheryl Brown, I know that they're not. No one is even considering charges. No, So I met with the detective. In fact, I am expecting to pick up the investigative you know the file. I actually thought I would have it last Wednesday, and they're about to close the case. He's just waiting on his sergeant. Basically, as he said, as the attorney said, you know, bullying is illegal, but all that law does is it ties the hand of the school and it requires the school to take certain action and provides a bully child with the opportunity to change schools or to get a scholarship to the tax money back to go to a private school. Cyber bully. Cyber stocking can be used to prove a half period of stocking, which can then be charged as stocking. Like he said, but if you look at the Rebecca Sedgwate case that happened a decade ago, Sheriff Brady Judge, who you know, never looked away from a camera, and you know Buffs the camera loves the Limelight loves to be very aggressive when he brings charges. He charged two girls in that case. In that case, a twelve year old girl, a month before her birthday, not unlike McKenna, climbed the three story water abandoned water tower and jumped to her death because she'd been you know, hazed online, bullied for a prolonged period of time. She'd been taken out of school, she'd been homeschool, she'd changed schools. These girls continued to stock her. They recruited other girls to come in and to bully her. They had recruited other girls to join in. And Sheriff Brady Judd brought charges against those two girls, and even ultimately he was forced to drop those charges. No prosecution occurred. The Rebecca's Law gain traction in Tallahassee for a year or two, they thought it was going to pass and all that it never got passed. It never became law. The laws in Florida have not changed, and these cases are very difficult to bring charges and to make them stick and to prosecute, and even ultimately if they were able to bring charges or whatever and prosecute and see them to their to their conclusion, it is like a thousand dollars fine and up to a year in jail. And he said, the detective said, ultimately, you know, it would be like, you know, counseling kind of thing or behavior modification in the end, and the sheriff's department just was the sheriff's office just wasn't willing to you know, they didn't see it as a winnable case. Two, Cheryl Brown, I'm flummixed at your theory that these girls, no remorse whatsoever, came to the funeral, your daughter's funeral and would not even speak to you. They didn't. The parents came up and you know, with white faces like they you know, they looked guilty, They looked like they knew, and they obviously knew more than we did at that point, because it wasn't until after the funeral that mckenneth's friends other teammates came forward with the screenshots and, as I said, helped us piece together what we're on the text. What were they saying to calling her names? They had listed, um, you know, a group of six different you know, boy names that two of which mckenned didn't even know who they were. Another one that she hadn't talked to. They were basically, you know, accusing her of again breaking the girl could and then ultimately, as Hunter had mentioned, sharing that information that she had been keeping secret for three years and mass distributing that to her teammates and friends. Oh, you know, grown women in their thirties, forties, fifties do not want to talk about a sex assault, be it right or any other type of sex assault grown women, much less a little girl exactly, and something that she had been keeping, you know, a secret for three years. When she went upstairs that Saturday night, the night before she passed away, she will then have looked at her phone obviously and saw this and saw the social media canceling and saw the you know, the distribution of this bundle of texts that you know that had been distributed by the group. And the only reason she revealed she actually told Cheryl like two nights before she passed about the sexual assault and the only reason she even mentioned it to Cheryl was because the girl had threatened to phone her phone her parents and she knew at that point in time. So you know, that will have been what mccanna would have impetus behind her, says, the impetus behind her finally sharing it with us, and Nancy, if I could make one last observation, please, this is a bit broader than the specific issue you're talking about, but I cannot help but think that what we see in these school bullying cases and the college hazing cases is really just symptomatic of a much bigger problem we have in this country. And we are seeing bullying at every level of our society. And it goes on every day in politics and politics in Washington, DC, in campaign season like the one we're in now, in state level politics and school board politics, we have seen bullying like we've never seen it before. These kids are exposed to witnessing all of that, and frankly, they're just doing what they're seeing adults do. And until adults get their act together, it's going to be impossible to rain this in when it comes to kids. And I'm no expert on that, but that's my two cents. Time Stories with Nancy Grace to doctor Tim Gallagher, the medical Examiner for the State of Florida. You can find him at pathcaremed dot com. Lecturer University Florida Medical School, founder and host of the International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation conference, Doctor Gallagher. McKenna's parents believe that she saw another barrage of these texts and snapchats calling her all sorts of hurtful names by her so called friends. And when the mom got up there and saw her the next morning, she was cold to the touch. That tells me their theory is correct. And I'm asking this for a probitive reason. I believe that the texts and the snaps and the posts were a direct cause of her suicide. And I want I'm coming to you on the time it would have taken from McKenna's body. This beautiful, sweet sixteen year old girl would just tear up the hockey field for her body to be cold to the touch, doctor Gallagher, and am beyond temperature. Let's just say seventy degrees sixty nine in the home. How long would it have been for her to reach that body temperature? Well, the body asked her death cools at about one degree per hour in ambient temperature. So if her body was cool to the touch, it most likely would have been deceased for several hours, possibly five, six, seven or eight hours. You know another point that I wanted to bring up. You know, in light of this tragic case is that this isn't, from my point of view, an isolated incident. You know, we're seeing this in the Medical Examiner's office more and more frequently. The other problem is that the victims of this cyber bullying are becoming progressively younger and younger. We have decedents who had taken their own lives for the same reason, who are thirteen years old, twelve years old, and it all generates back to their social media interactions with their friends and their I guess phenemies is what they're calling them now. You know, I want to jump off what you just said, doctor Tim now all her too, McKenna's moms, Cheryl Brown or Dad Hunter Brown, either one of you. You know, I'm trying to accept that from my children, what their peers think and say seemingly impacts them more than what their father and I think or say. I'm wonder of us because we give them unconditional love, they don't have to worry as much. But I think that that is a single most powerful influence on them. Their peers. It's their world at that age, it's their whole world and absolutely to undevelop brains, you know, it's and they're more impulsive at that age. And you know, I was let Cheryl comment on this, and I had a comment that I'd like to circle back to um. But like in McKenna's note with Ryl can talk about you know, she talks about her family versus what was going on in her friend world. She left us a note and the timeline he's very correct because Cheryl last saw Charyl let the dog out to McKenna's room at three o'clock in the morning, and then she went up to get her to go to church right around after I got home to them from the fire station. So the time and when I let the dog out of the room, I stepped into a room and I saw her in bed and she was snoring. So it happened between three thirty and nine thirty. And I mean obviously not at nine thirty, because at the you know, she was cool. So it had happened sometime in between and rigor had set in. I've got two words, Michelle Carter. She pushed her very sensitive boyfriend to commit suicide and she was tried and convicted. So it can be done if the police investigate this case and get the warrants to connect those texts, those snapchats, those social postings to the time of her death, and this she got what she deserved. I think it's a very damning statement to show the frame of mind of the so called mean girls that putting ephemistically that they thought, this is exactly what she deserved. Translation, this is what we intended. I believe a jury may see it that way. Of course, all of them and their families insist there innocently had nothing to do with this, this horrible moment in the Brown family's lives. To the Browns, I just wish that McKenna could have held on a few more hours until she was back and your loving arms and your supportive words and your encouragement and her teammates would have rallied around her. Yes, yeah they did. They came forward, they knew it had happened, was wrong, and she persevered just a few days, you know, and struggled through it. Like Cheryl said, you know, the only reason we know any of this is because after the Kanna passed and after the service, her friends started to come forward, you know, and make phone calls and send us the text, you know, forward the text to a friend of Cheryl's and then they got forward to us. Only reason we have any knowledge other than you know that there had thinke been a little bit of mean girl activity. But the only reason we know anything about the screen catchers that work forwards the teammates and friends, the phone calls that were made. Hey, you know, Hunter Brown, that's the kind of thing that law enforcement should be gathering in this case. They have all that mcckenna wiped her McKenna wiped her phone as well and her social media accounts, and then of course the friend to quote friends had deleted all of the their posts as well and all of their texts. Much of that can be reconstructed. While we were dealing with discovering McKenna, getting the law enforcement, the fire department, who is the neighboring department to us? If we lived next door to the community on which I work, So the neighboring department to mine whom I all move very well, you know. Meanwhile, the four girls were at the beach. The detective went right over to that house. The detective went right over and yep, the girls are at the beach. So they talked to the parents there, who, Cheryl, tell me what you're a day in your life is right now. I wake up every morning hoping it's a nightmare and knowing that it's not. I mean, for the first month, I was thrown up every morning. Just once that realization set in, and now it's you know, I hear songs, I see pictures, and you know, it makes you cry, and I hope I get to the point where I you know, they'll make me smile again. She was just such an amazing kid too, you know, popular, beautiful, funny, just loved by everyone that met her. She was a future scholar into national championships, would have been three times, but one got canceled because of COVID, and she was the one helping others, like she was the one including others that were feeling left out that we're new, they didn't have any friends, that were feeling bullied. She walked you know, a student so the parking lot twice because they felt bullied. She was the one that was, you know, very cog is nobody what was going on. If nobody would talk to the studenter they were ostracized, you know, she would. She was the one that would talk to them and you know, make them feel like they belonged. Mister miss Brown I know that these may sound like empty words, but they're not. We care so much about what you're going through, and I pray to God in Heaven that you're speaking out today will help just even one child, one team girl or boy, get through that dark moment. Just if you could just give what is your advice to parents? Parents like me, having open dialogue and constant conversations with your kids. I know that a lot of people have come forward since McKenna has passed away, and conversations are being had that weren't being had before because of these statistics about all these kids going through and experiencing some type or form of bullyers cyber bullying. But having those conversations with your kids, and you know, kids are kids. Kids have secrets. But some secrets are too heavy a burden to bear by themselves. And most of the time they are a secret because they think that the parents are going to be upset or mad, or they're going to get in trouble. Parents just want to help their kids. It is unconditional love, and they they got to know that they can talk to them and that they're there for them and they've always got their back. My advice would be don't don't think it can't happen to you. I mean, we live in a very affluent area. You know, our son went through the school as well. He played hockey for the high school team. Uh, McKenna. Our understanding is she's she's right around. There's a half dozen get suicides in that school. It's an a rated school in a very affluent area. There's been a half at least a half dozen suicides in a half dozen years. One of them played football, two of them were swimmers. One I already had any one a full one scholarship, one was a band member, McKenna. You know they were all scholar at four scholar athletes, a band member, and then we believe there's at least one no other. And there's a number of people who have come forward to whose children also had unsuccessful accounts, who have been bullied in that school quite severely as well. So you know, don't think it can happen. I don't think it can't happen to you, just because you know your kids go to a Greade school and are doing well athletically, academically and socially. I've got to tell you something to Sherylan Hunter Brown, your comments have had a huge, a profound impact on me, and I don't know where you're getting the strength to continue, McKenna, but I do want to let you know from McKenna that you are having a huge impact on this world. Nancy Grace signing off good bye three

Crime Stories with Nancy Greece Sweet sixteen. I don't want the twins to grow up and move away, but I look forward to sweet sixteen or sixteenth birthday for them. Believe it or not, they are turning fifteen and a certain name that keeps going through my head over and over and over. McKenna Brown, gorgeous, so smart, sixteen and a hockey star in Florida. She committed suicide. But I want to know why. Is it true that mean girls, real life mean girls. You've all seen the movie Real Life Mean Girls drove her to suicide? Is this true? And if so, what if anything will being done about it? I Meanancy Grace, this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation, and Sirius XM one eleven, first of all, take a listen to this. I went upstairs the next morning and opened the door and I she was on the ground, face down, and I thought she was sleeping. She could sleep anywhere, She truly could sleep anywhere, and so I didn't realize initially what I was looking at. And I went over to her and went to turn her over, and she was cold and stiff, and I knew that she was gone. On all the seventh days before the first day of school, she took her own life. It's in total hell, and I know she's all around us still, but she's not here physically and that hurts. More than a thousand people showed up to pay their respects at her memorial service, including all of Palm Herbert Fire Rescue, where her dad is a lieutenant. This brave, brave mother speaking Cheryl. This is McKenna's mother speaking to our friend doctor Phil and our friends at Fox thirteen. Why did this have to happen? With me and All Star panel to make sense of what we know right now? But first I want to introduce to you two very special guests. And I do not know how they are putting one foot in front of the other, but I think it's because they want to help other teams, like their daughter McKenna with me, Cheryl and Hunter Brown, McKenna's mom and dad. To the Browns, thank you for being with us, Thank you, Nancy, Thank you for having us. I have so many questions for you. I want to understand what happened and what if anything, can be done to stop this, To stop A gorgeous, talented, brilliant teen girl like your daughter from taking her life and what drove her to that? And is it true that three, essentially three mean girls drove her to do this. It was a group of four girls, four. I'm glad to know that. Yeah, miss Brown, before you found McKenna, you thought asleep. Did you know that there was trouble brewing? Not to the extent that it was brewing. I knew, you know, earlier that week. You know, in less than four days, there have been some some boy drama some of McKenna's friends that accused her of breaking the girl code after she had talked to one of the boys is an ex boyfriend from two years earlier. And you know, there was some negative correspondence ranging from you know, tex phone calls that led up to that weekend breaking the girl code. Guys, take a listen. As it's explained to doctor Pheel, Tuesday evening, she was with girlfriends out on the beach. One of her friends his her ex boyfriend, was on the beach there with her. She had known him for a couple of years as well. They had dated two years earlier, and they started talking and flirting with each other. McKenna wanted to make sure that her friend was okayed and wanted to be awkward, had asked her if she would be okay with them talking Wednesday evening when a group of them went to the Causeway and she continued hanging out with him, and you know it obviously wasn't okay with this person hanging out with somebody's ex boyfriend from two years ago. On one night in a group listen to more, she went and spent the night with a couple of the girlfriends that evening and they dropped her off at our house on Thursday. Later on that evening, she started getting a barrage of texts and phone calls from the girl with the ex boyfriend. She tried to kind of distance herself and not respond. Friday evening, she sent a text to this person saying that, you know, if I crossed the line, I'm sorry. She she sent that for her just so that she'd feel better, you know, kind of park it there. It didn't matter how she responded, but she was, you know, owning it if she crossed the line. But then suddenly McKenna knew things had absolutely gone sidewise. Listen. The next day, we spent the day together, you know, talking through it. We were very close. She was my best friend. And we went to dinner and she looked down at her phone. She'd been ignoring her phone most of the day, just trying to put some distance between it, and she looked at her phone in the snap map, she looked down and she saw the four friends that had been sending her texts and phone calls and you know snaps. They were all together at her friend's house, you know, just a short ways from our house, and they'd come from fair distance all to be together. Okay, if you don't know what snap is, snapchat or snap map, you're about too. How hurtful do you think it was? To mckinna, a teen girl which she luis and sees all of her friends are right down the street together, but nobody invited her listen. So she saw on the snap map that they were all together, and her face just kind of went white, like I feel like that was a turning point for her. She had been getting all these you know, correspondences and trying to ignore them. She saw that and she just, you know, we went home that evening, we watched a movie together again, just talking, and she decided that, you know, we were going to church the next morning, she said she was going to go upstairs and wash her hair and clean up her room and she might be back down. She didn't come back down, and I didn't think anything of it, because you know, it's here. The next morning for church, you were hearing McKenna's mother speaking to her friend, doctor Phiel, and miss Brown, Cheryl Brown and mckinna's dad Hunt or both with us. Now, Miss Brown, I feel like I'm living it through it because it sounds just like my daughter Lucy. Before McKenna told you about Snap, did you even know what it was? I had an idea and I, you know, the whole concept of disappearing messages always kind of haunted me because there's no way to stay on top of it or monitor it. Really, I think parents are in the dark when it comes to a lot of social media that my daughter showed me, like the Snap map and you know where you can actually see friends, you know, situated geographers, queen on the map, you know, and it works all around the world. I was driving the twins to my hometown of Macon, Georgia, and my son was on Snap and he said, guess where I forgot who Alexander is? I'm like where I thought, and they might say New York or Florida. Said he's a Switzerland. What how do you know that? And he goes, look, it's on my snap map. You can find out where if they're on Snap and they share their location, you can see where all your friends are. And I'm just thinking about that moment when mckinna looked, and so all of her girlfriends all right down the street, but nobody invited her. I don't even think it was so much the fact that she wasn't with them. It was the fact that, you know, two of them had been together, the other two were separate, and there'd been a blurry of text back and forth between her and them individually, and that and now that you know, so it had been kind of going sideways for a few days, and then now they were all together, you know, five traffic lights from our house as a group. And I think that was more what said in on her than just the fact that she'd been left out, because she'd known by this point in time, you know, she was on the outs with the group. They'd made that fairly clear. She'd been trying to, you know, trying for a approachment. They'd reached out individually. You know, they'd had conversations that the detective sharing some of them with me where you know, they accused her of this. He said, Okay, yes I did that. You know, I probably shouldn't have that sort of thing. So, you know, I don't think she expected to be there. I think it was more of the fact that they were all together now, so it had kind of all come full circle back to where now they were all together hanging up on her exactly like a cabal ganging upon her. And I mean, let me understand this, miss Brown, Cheryl Brown. The whole thing started when the girls were together at the Causeway. They're in Florida, and an ex boyfriend two years x two years out of a relationship with what then thirteen year old girl and who starts flirting with McKenna and she flirts back like any red blooded American girl would. Of course, she flirted back, right, But she asked the friend first. Hey said, okay, if we're talking, and the friend goes, yes, we're way over. That's what started this whole thing. She was also there with her current boyfriend on the beach, this friend, and that is what started this whole thing. Yeah, there's two nights. There's Tuesday night when they McKenna and the boyfriend first kind of flirted when they were all at Saint Pete Beach, McKenna and three of the group of four, and then on Wednesday, McKenna and two of the group of four wound up at the Causeway. So there's two different beaches on two different nights. And then the one girl with the X was not there on Wednesday nights, but the boyfriend was, and McKenna and the boyfriend again you know, had interaction and showed it would interest in each other. And then obviously the two girls that were there relaid that back to the age and then things started the spiral from there. Time stories with Nancy Grace, Okay, it's amazing to me that these ming girls, as they have been euphemistically called, ganging up and bullying McKenna to the point where she takes her own life. It's amazing to me that, according to reports, they have shown no remorse whatsoever. Take a listen to our friends at Fox thirteen. She says she was baffled when she saw the teammate who sent the text at McKenna's funeral. Do you feel like no, I don't, because she had mentioned to one of her friends she got what she had deserved. It's all read. I was enraged. For now, Brown says she's putting her faith in the ongoing investigations, hopeful the teens realize the power behind their words. I just wish she could have seen through it. The suspensions would have still happened, and repercussions would have been there, and she'd still be here. Okay, Cheryl and Hunter Brown, please jump in whenever you have anything to add because us parents out here like you, we want to do everything we can to protect our children, even from themselves. If one parent hears this and can help their teen girl or boy, your words today will have made all the difference, all the difference in the world. Also one eight two seven three talk one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. That is the National Toll Free Suicide Prevention Line. I'm just having a hard time taking it all into doctor Jorry Crawls and psychologists joining us Saint Leo University and author doctor Jory You know it hurts adults when they feel rejected by family members or friends. I remember having an argument with my brother and do you know it upset me. For the next two years. I wouldn't say anything because I didn't want to start back up. But I love him and you know, and I'm an adult. So when teen girls or boys have an argument and their peers gang up on them, of course they're upset. And with social media, that energizes. And it's such a powerful platform because there's anonymity to it, yet it goes out and it reaches you know, other people, and trying to deal with that as a teenager. Doctor Jorry guys, I'm calling him doctor Jory's doctor Jorry Cross, and he's a renowned psychologist. The other day, my little girl, Lucy came in to the din. I was sitting there working and she had tears in her eyes. I said, honey, what is it? She said, Mom, did you see what they said about you? I'm like, who said what? No, I didn't see it. She goes, look, she couldn't even say the words, and she showed me it's somebody had written on a star or Twitter or something, probably Twitter the hate fest, but it said you're ugly? Why are you on TV? And I laughed at me, Yes, it wasn't me. But my daughter cried and it wasn't even about her, and you know, finally the tears spilled over. She was so upset that would hurt me. I can only imagine doctor Jerry Cross and what words like that do too a little girl, She's still a little girl at sixteen. You see how powerful that is because of that environment. I mean it just you know, the environment of the social media. It just really energizes that type of damage and information. And it's twenty four seven. Yes, I think I ended up writing back something like, oh, I know, aren't I the lucky is personally or something like that. But that's after years of taking heat in the courtroom and being called all kinds of things by murderers and rapists and defendants and their cadre of lawyers. Unlike a sixteen year old girl, everybody jump in when you have a thought. This is way I'm just a JD. This is way beyond anything I understand. Is how Hunter Brown jumping in? Yeah it is. I just wanted to get a couple things out here. I didn't realize till this morning that you guys hadn't received the text or anything like that. I asked Cheryl just in a minute of a half hour before we came. First thing I'd like to say is just in the in the weeks after mccanna passed, actually the National Suicide and Depression Hotline has changed to a nine eight eight number of works like nine one one. Now you need to do is dial nine eight eight from any phone and it hooks you right up. Okay, let me say that very clearly. Not if you dial nine eight eight the way you would dial nine one one, you're immediately hooked into the suicide hot line. Yes, that's the suicide in crisis, my lifeline. You know what. I would like to take this opportunity to reprimand everybody here in the studio, but I'm taking full responsibility for that. I didn't know that, and that is a good thing to know. It happened right after me kind of past because you know, I've got a theory, and everybody jump in if you agree or disagree. But doctor Joy, I remember there were times after my fiance's murder that I did not want to even live. Just thought, why don't I just kill myself and be done with it and I can be with him. But I have found I learned several things the hard way that if you can get through that crisis moment. The next day you don't feel that way. You may feel that way again, but if you can get through that crisis, that interval of hours where you just don't want to live anymore, how do you get past that? And I'm sure there's got to be a name for that, doctor Jorry Crossing. Yea. That's part of the grieving process. And really it's normal, okay, and it needs to be integrated in, you know, just like what you did. You saw the very next day, you know, and just like the parents would recognize that she's taken it day by day and that's the way you're gonna have to do it, and it's going to be for the rest of your life. You have to recognize that too. I got a question for you, Earl and Hunter. These are McKenna's mom and dad with us. What were the girls saying to her on snap? So that was what I was going to get into after the nine to eight eight point, I just wanted to point out, like, the social media is a big aspect of this, the social media, and they used phone, Twitter, phone snatchet, Instagram and TikTok I believe as well. And you were canceling her, so canceling. You know, that was what happened over social media, was they were going to cancel McKenna. You know, they pulled two friends over the phone that she'll have no friends or you know, their goal was to make sure she didn't have a single friend left. So that played a big part in all of this. But I think you know, McKenna was a goalie, she was a warrior. She was pretty tough and pretty feisty. I think she could have persevered and survived through that. I think what really pushed her over the edge and made you know, unbeknownst to us her freshman year basically team, she had been sexually assaulted. And she kept that a secret for three years. And then our understanding is on Wednesday night at the Causeway, she had revealed to one of one or both. I'm not one hundred percent certain of the friends that were there that she had been sexually assaulted. You know, I've made some mistakes, as the doctors know. You know, that weighs heavily on a fourteen year old school high school girl, and you know, so she had been carrying that burden secretly tours with by herself and struggling through it and all that. In my line of work, we see them all the time, and people, never, adults, never recover from that. And you know, so that weighed heavily on her mentally, and she shared that, she said, don't let this happen to you, you know, don't make the mistakes I've made. Don't let this this will ruin your life kind of thing. And then they betrayed that, gave that back to the girl whose brother had actually been the one that had sexually assaulted her, and then they shared that via screen captures of texts, a half dozen screen captures, five or six of them from one of the girls and one from McKenna, where along with you know, a list of boys and all this stuff, and they revealed back to teammates and friends. And I think that and I think that's what pushed McKenna over the edge, was being this humiliation and the deep secret that she had carried forever and then had betrayed back to her in a matter of days being shared with her teammates and friends. I'm pretty sure that's what probably ultimately drove her to her end. It's amazing to me as well, Cheryl, that you believe these girls have no remorse and actually sits she deserved what she got, that she deserved to die. That information is from friends that came forward after and helped us kind of piece together what had happened, what it actually happens, you know, days moments leading up to we've we've heard nothing. We've heard, you know, No, I'm sorries no, I mean, in fact, it's kind of the opposite. Their families have kind of they've appeeled. There's there's suspensions from the high school hockey league. Three of the girls in mc kanna played in the high school hockey league. All four of the girls in mccanna played on a travel organization. They've been suspended from the high school Hockey League sending appeals and the conclusion of the USA Hockey investigation, and they've all field their suspensions. You know, they've some of their families have gone. I'm kind of a scorched earth policy turning it back on McKenna. She broke the girl boone. How could she have done what she did? You know, their daughters, like I said, they don't see they don't see themselves as having done anything wrong. They're not only no repercussions because there's no law to support that. But you know they don't think they've done any wrong either. Yes, so, because because there's no law, they haven't broken a law, they've done nothing wrong in their eyes. To Nicole Parton, joining US Crime online dot Com invest to get every reporter, is it, first of all, give me your rendition of what we know right now, Nicole Partner, And you're a mother of how many five? I'm a mother of five, yes, ma'am. Yes, I thought that number is a stuck in my head. It's amazing to me that the only repercussion so far from these girls who bullied reportedly bullied McKenna to her death. The only thing that's happened is that they were suspended from the Florida High School Hockey League. Is that all? That's it? And they can appeal that, so it's very possible that they could be back on the hockey league. They're all, as far as I'm aware, they're all in appeals now trying to get back on the hockey league. And that's all that's happened. And we've got to remember. Stats show us that forty percent of all teenagers in America between the ages of twelve and seventeen have experienced some type of severe cyber bullying. So this is an epic, epic problem that we have in our nation, and there has got to be stiffer punishment for these type of things that are happening. As a parent, this is my worst nightmare. My children have been bullied because we're an interracial family. And to these parents, Cherylyn Hunter, my heart breaks for you. I cannot even pretend to imagine what you're feeling. There's got to be stiffer punishment. We have to be run into this type of bullying. With me is Titania Jordan. She is a chief parent officer with BARK and the author of Parenting in a Tech World, and you can find her at Bark dot us on Twitter at Titania Jordan. And I've got to tell you I have BARK and it monitors the twins, cell phones and devices, and it's extremely sensitive to words that would induce that would refer to harm, suicide, cyber bullying. And here's an example that I give to explain how sensitive BARK is. My son was goalie at his middle school team, and he was so proud that one time he dove through the net to stop a goal of the opposing side and his arm was covered in bruises from diving through the net. Well, he was so proud he took a picture of it and sent it to his friends and captain it. They didn't get the goal, you know when the bruise was proof. Well, I got that immediately and nearly did a backflip until I went and got his phone. I thought, how could John David be hurting himself? Until I saw his phone and he was really just showing off a trophy, a soccer trophy. That's how sensitive these net nannies are. Okay, titarn you go ahead. Yes, So you mentioned a forty percent rate of children twelve to seventeen experience severe cyber bulling, and in fact, in twenty twenty one, for our case study of billions of data points, we showed that seventy three percent of tweens that's eight to twelve year olds and eighty five percent of teens experienced bulling either as a bully, victim or witness. And unfortunately, we have observed a thirteen percent uptick in online bulling events since children return to school this school there and as a mom of a thirteen year old who has received BARK alerts for children bullying him in his current eighth grade situation. I just my heart goes out to you, and they're absolutely do need to be more stringent laws that hold children accountable? Yeah, go ahead, Hunter Brown. I was considered just there needs to be consequences that show and the turk kids from from bullying. If that's you know, if you think that the moral compass is enough, But I mean, there needs to be consequences. Straight out to David Bianci joining us as Centulli family lawyer. He is America's leading hazing lawyer out of Miami at st fblaw dot com. Jump in, David. Yeah, so, Nancy, I just would make a two quick comments everything. These are such horrific cases. I feel horrible for this family and everyone else with the whole bullying thing. It is not unlike hazing in college. It's very similar and the consequences are similar because in college hazing cases, young males usually get seriously injured or they die because they're being essentially bullied or hazed. And to bring us back to Florida where this happened, there are laws in Florida regarding bullying. There is one law called the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act, which is a byproduct of a horrific middle school suicide that happened in Cape Coral to an honors student because he was bullied, and a new law got passed in Florida that says bullying in schools is illegal and the schools have to do a whole bunch of things to stop it. But it doesn't make it criminal. It puts the obligation on the schools to rein it. In in addition to that, we have a criminal statute in Florida that says stalking is a crime, including cyberstalking, and a lot of these bullying things that happen with teens can be categorized as cyberstalking under Florida's criminal law. And the third prong of what the legal system can do is the civil court system, because in Florida, there's a Florida Supreme Court case, so not that long ago, that says that parents can be liable under certain circle substances if they failed to exercise reasonable care when they knew that one of their kids was going to inflict injury or possibly inflict injury on another student. So that's a way to rein it in under the civil law in Florida. I'm very curious in this case whether charges are being considered. What about it, Cheryl Brown, I know that they're not. No one is even considering charges. No, So I met with the detective. In fact, I am expecting to pick up the investigative you know the file. I actually thought I would have it last Wednesday, and they're about to close the case. He's just waiting on his sergeant. Basically, as he said, as the attorney said, you know, bullying is illegal, but all that law does is it ties the hand of the school and it requires the school to take certain action and provides a bully child with the opportunity to change schools or to get a scholarship to the tax money back to go to a private school. Cyber bully. Cyber stocking can be used to prove a half period of stocking, which can then be charged as stocking. Like he said, but if you look at the Rebecca Sedgwate case that happened a decade ago, Sheriff Brady Judge, who you know, never looked away from a camera, and you know Buffs the camera loves the Limelight loves to be very aggressive when he brings charges. He charged two girls in that case. In that case, a twelve year old girl, a month before her birthday, not unlike McKenna, climbed the three story water abandoned water tower and jumped to her death because she'd been you know, hazed online, bullied for a prolonged period of time. She'd been taken out of school, she'd been homeschool, she'd changed schools. These girls continued to stock her. They recruited other girls to come in and to bully her. They had recruited other girls to join in. And Sheriff Brady Judd brought charges against those two girls, and even ultimately he was forced to drop those charges. No prosecution occurred. The Rebecca's Law gain traction in Tallahassee for a year or two, they thought it was going to pass and all that it never got passed. It never became law. The laws in Florida have not changed, and these cases are very difficult to bring charges and to make them stick and to prosecute, and even ultimately if they were able to bring charges or whatever and prosecute and see them to their to their conclusion, it is like a thousand dollars fine and up to a year in jail. And he said, the detective said, ultimately, you know, it would be like, you know, counseling kind of thing or behavior modification in the end, and the sheriff's department just was the sheriff's office just wasn't willing to you know, they didn't see it as a winnable case. Two, Cheryl Brown, I'm flummixed at your theory that these girls, no remorse whatsoever, came to the funeral, your daughter's funeral and would not even speak to you. They didn't. The parents came up and you know, with white faces like they you know, they looked guilty, They looked like they knew, and they obviously knew more than we did at that point, because it wasn't until after the funeral that mckenneth's friends other teammates came forward with the screenshots and, as I said, helped us piece together what we're on the text. What were they saying to calling her names? They had listed, um, you know, a group of six different you know, boy names that two of which mckenned didn't even know who they were. Another one that she hadn't talked to. They were basically, you know, accusing her of again breaking the girl could and then ultimately, as Hunter had mentioned, sharing that information that she had been keeping secret for three years and mass distributing that to her teammates and friends. Oh, you know, grown women in their thirties, forties, fifties do not want to talk about a sex assault, be it right or any other type of sex assault grown women, much less a little girl exactly, and something that she had been keeping, you know, a secret for three years. When she went upstairs that Saturday night, the night before she passed away, she will then have looked at her phone obviously and saw this and saw the social media canceling and saw the you know, the distribution of this bundle of texts that you know that had been distributed by the group. And the only reason she revealed she actually told Cheryl like two nights before she passed about the sexual assault and the only reason she even mentioned it to Cheryl was because the girl had threatened to phone her phone her parents and she knew at that point in time. So you know, that will have been what mccanna would have impetus behind her, says, the impetus behind her finally sharing it with us, and Nancy, if I could make one last observation, please, this is a bit broader than the specific issue you're talking about, but I cannot help but think that what we see in these school bullying cases and the college hazing cases is really just symptomatic of a much bigger problem we have in this country. And we are seeing bullying at every level of our society. And it goes on every day in politics and politics in Washington, DC, in campaign season like the one we're in now, in state level politics and school board politics, we have seen bullying like we've never seen it before. These kids are exposed to witnessing all of that, and frankly, they're just doing what they're seeing adults do. And until adults get their act together, it's going to be impossible to rain this in when it comes to kids. And I'm no expert on that, but that's my two cents. Time Stories with Nancy Grace to doctor Tim Gallagher, the medical Examiner for the State of Florida. You can find him at pathcaremed dot com. Lecturer University Florida Medical School, founder and host of the International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation conference, Doctor Gallagher. McKenna's parents believe that she saw another barrage of these texts and snapchats calling her all sorts of hurtful names by her so called friends. And when the mom got up there and saw her the next morning, she was cold to the touch. That tells me their theory is correct. And I'm asking this for a probitive reason. I believe that the texts and the snaps and the posts were a direct cause of her suicide. And I want I'm coming to you on the time it would have taken from McKenna's body. This beautiful, sweet sixteen year old girl would just tear up the hockey field for her body to be cold to the touch, doctor Gallagher, and am beyond temperature. Let's just say seventy degrees sixty nine in the home. How long would it have been for her to reach that body temperature? Well, the body asked her death cools at about one degree per hour in ambient temperature. So if her body was cool to the touch, it most likely would have been deceased for several hours, possibly five, six, seven or eight hours. You know another point that I wanted to bring up. You know, in light of this tragic case is that this isn't, from my point of view, an isolated incident. You know, we're seeing this in the Medical Examiner's office more and more frequently. The other problem is that the victims of this cyber bullying are becoming progressively younger and younger. We have decedents who had taken their own lives for the same reason, who are thirteen years old, twelve years old, and it all generates back to their social media interactions with their friends and their I guess phenemies is what they're calling them now. You know, I want to jump off what you just said, doctor Tim now all her too, McKenna's moms, Cheryl Brown or Dad Hunter Brown, either one of you. You know, I'm trying to accept that from my children, what their peers think and say seemingly impacts them more than what their father and I think or say. I'm wonder of us because we give them unconditional love, they don't have to worry as much. But I think that that is a single most powerful influence on them. Their peers. It's their world at that age, it's their whole world and absolutely to undevelop brains, you know, it's and they're more impulsive at that age. And you know, I was let Cheryl comment on this, and I had a comment that I'd like to circle back to um. But like in McKenna's note with Ryl can talk about you know, she talks about her family versus what was going on in her friend world. She left us a note and the timeline he's very correct because Cheryl last saw Charyl let the dog out to McKenna's room at three o'clock in the morning, and then she went up to get her to go to church right around after I got home to them from the fire station. So the time and when I let the dog out of the room, I stepped into a room and I saw her in bed and she was snoring. So it happened between three thirty and nine thirty. And I mean obviously not at nine thirty, because at the you know, she was cool. So it had happened sometime in between and rigor had set in. I've got two words, Michelle Carter. She pushed her very sensitive boyfriend to commit suicide and she was tried and convicted. So it can be done if the police investigate this case and get the warrants to connect those texts, those snapchats, those social postings to the time of her death, and this she got what she deserved. I think it's a very damning statement to show the frame of mind of the so called mean girls that putting ephemistically that they thought, this is exactly what she deserved. Translation, this is what we intended. I believe a jury may see it that way. Of course, all of them and their families insist there innocently had nothing to do with this, this horrible moment in the Brown family's lives. To the Browns, I just wish that McKenna could have held on a few more hours until she was back and your loving arms and your supportive words and your encouragement and her teammates would have rallied around her. Yes, yeah they did. They came forward, they knew it had happened, was wrong, and she persevered just a few days, you know, and struggled through it. Like Cheryl said, you know, the only reason we know any of this is because after the Kanna passed and after the service, her friends started to come forward, you know, and make phone calls and send us the text, you know, forward the text to a friend of Cheryl's and then they got forward to us. Only reason we have any knowledge other than you know that there had thinke been a little bit of mean girl activity. But the only reason we know anything about the screen catchers that work forwards the teammates and friends, the phone calls that were made. Hey, you know, Hunter Brown, that's the kind of thing that law enforcement should be gathering in this case. They have all that mcckenna wiped her McKenna wiped her phone as well and her social media accounts, and then of course the friend to quote friends had deleted all of the their posts as well and all of their texts. Much of that can be reconstructed. While we were dealing with discovering McKenna, getting the law enforcement, the fire department, who is the neighboring department to us? If we lived next door to the community on which I work, So the neighboring department to mine whom I all move very well, you know. Meanwhile, the four girls were at the beach. The detective went right over to that house. The detective went right over and yep, the girls are at the beach. So they talked to the parents there, who, Cheryl, tell me what you're a day in your life is right now. I wake up every morning hoping it's a nightmare and knowing that it's not. I mean, for the first month, I was thrown up every morning. Just once that realization set in, and now it's you know, I hear songs, I see pictures, and you know, it makes you cry, and I hope I get to the point where I you know, they'll make me smile again. She was just such an amazing kid too, you know, popular, beautiful, funny, just loved by everyone that met her. She was a future scholar into national championships, would have been three times, but one got canceled because of COVID, and she was the one helping others, like she was the one including others that were feeling left out that we're new, they didn't have any friends, that were feeling bullied. She walked you know, a student so the parking lot twice because they felt bullied. She was the one that was, you know, very cog is nobody what was going on. If nobody would talk to the studenter they were ostracized, you know, she would. She was the one that would talk to them and you know, make them feel like they belonged. Mister miss Brown I know that these may sound like empty words, but they're not. We care so much about what you're going through, and I pray to God in Heaven that you're speaking out today will help just even one child, one team girl or boy, get through that dark moment. Just if you could just give what is your advice to parents? Parents like me, having open dialogue and constant conversations with your kids. I know that a lot of people have come forward since McKenna has passed away, and conversations are being had that weren't being had before because of these statistics about all these kids going through and experiencing some type or form of bullyers cyber bullying. But having those conversations with your kids, and you know, kids are kids. Kids have secrets. But some secrets are too heavy a burden to bear by themselves. And most of the time they are a secret because they think that the parents are going to be upset or mad, or they're going to get in trouble. Parents just want to help their kids. It is unconditional love, and they they got to know that they can talk to them and that they're there for them and they've always got their back. My advice would be don't don't think it can't happen to you. I mean, we live in a very affluent area. You know, our son went through the school as well. He played hockey for the high school team. Uh, McKenna. Our understanding is she's she's right around. There's a half dozen get suicides in that school. It's an a rated school in a very affluent area. There's been a half at least a half dozen suicides in a half dozen years. One of them played football, two of them were swimmers. One I already had any one a full one scholarship, one was a band member, McKenna. You know they were all scholar at four scholar athletes, a band member, and then we believe there's at least one no other. And there's a number of people who have come forward to whose children also had unsuccessful accounts, who have been bullied in that school quite severely as well. So you know, don't think it can happen. I don't think it can't happen to you, just because you know your kids go to a Greade school and are doing well athletically, academically and socially. I've got to tell you something to Sherylan Hunter Brown, your comments have had a huge, a profound impact on me, and I don't know where you're getting the strength to continue, McKenna, but I do want to let you know from McKenna that you are having a huge impact on this world. Nancy Grace signing off good bye three