Live to Tell: The Year We Disappeared

Summary

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48 Hours | "Live to Tell: The Year We Disappeared"

CBS News | January 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this harrowing episode of "48 Hours", the team transports listeners into the heart of one family’s nightmare—when Officer John Busby of Falmouth, Massachusetts, was violently ambushed in 1979 and the subsequent year his family was forced to “disappear.” Through first-person accounts, powerful storytelling, and decades-later revelations, the episode lays bare the terror, paranoia, and heartbreak the Busby family endured, as well as the ongoing search for justice in a town gripped by fear and corruption.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Night Everything Changed (00:30–04:44)

• Introduction to the Family and the Attack:
  The narrative opens from the perspective of Busby's then-nine-year-old daughter, describing an idyllic summer day brought to a screeching halt when her police officer father is ambushed and shot in his cruiser.

  • “Imagine being nine years old and learning that someone wanted to kill you. … Until that night when everything changed.” (D, 00:30)

• Graphic Details of the Attack:
  Busby’s niece recounts how he was shot point-blank with a shotgun, shattering his face and jaw, leaving him critically wounded but alive:

  • “He was shot through the driver's side window … with a shotgun. The shotgun blast tore through his face, then ripped off his lower jaw.” (D, 01:58)

• Immediate Aftermath and Family Fear:
  The family is plunged into a lockdown: police guards, attack dogs, fences, weapons, and even snipers.

  • “We were guarded 24 hours a day. Everybody had a gun.” (D, 02:39)
  • “You couldn't go out. I had hidden a steak knife under my mattress … I just knew that the people who shot my father were not going to stop until we were all dead.” (D, 02:58)

2. Trauma and Community Isolation (05:44–13:25)

• Family Memories and Loss of Innocence:
  Normal life is shattered. The family reminisces about their former suburban happiness and how that ended abruptly.

  • “Growing up, it was really hard for me to look at [a picture from that day] … after that night, that child had ended.” (D, 05:44)

• Vivid Scenes of Panic:
  The children and relatives recount hiding from a suspicious man with a rifle, fearing for their lives, waiting in an attic.

  • “We need to be quiet until they go away.” (E, 10:24)

3. An Unsolved Crime and a Corrupt Town (16:07–25:11)

• John Busby’s Silent Determination:
  In the hospital, unable to speak, Busby scribbles warnings and the suspected perpetrator’s name — Melvin Rainey — in a notebook.

  • “He wrote, not an accident. Mel Rainey.” (D, 18:09)

• Melvin Rainey's Reputation and History:
  Rainey was known as a dangerous trash hauler with a criminal history, suspected in at least three disappearances or murders yet considered “untouchable” by local law enforcement.

  • “Melvin Rainey was a convicted arsonist. … His favorite saying was, 'I smell smoke.'” (B, 18:34)
  • “Melvin Rainey was also suspected of murder … in two of those cases, the bodies have never been recovered.” (D, 18:57)

• Law Enforcement Fears and Coverup:
  The Falmouth police fail to log the shooting or thoroughly investigate, suggesting a coverup.

  • “This did not happen in the town of Falmouth when John Busby was shot.” (B, 22:43)

• Quote Highlight:

  • “To my knowledge, the Falmouth Police Department never interviewed Melvin Rainey regarding the John Busby shooting.” (B, 23:44)

4. Effects on the Family: Daily Life Under Siege (28:30–33:34)

• Constant Protection and Alienation:
  The Busby children are escorted by police, isolated from peers, and treated as pariahs.

  • “Everywhere I went, there was a cop. … because somebody wanted to kill your dad and somebody's gonna come and kill you.” (D, 29:02)

• Paranoia and Loss of Childhood:
  Family members recount surveillance, fear, and how they had to change their lives completely.

  • “We were living in our own prison, and the people who had done that to me were living their normal lives.” (A, 31:49)

• John Busby's Thoughts of Revenge:
  Busby becomes consumed with thoughts of killing Melvin Rainey, plotting vigilante justice while grappling with his own trauma.

  • “I determined there was only one way that justice was gonna be done and I was gonna have to supply it … [My plan was to] put a hole in his head right through the windshield and finish him off.” (A, 27:10; 31:49)

5. Leaving Town and Disappearing (33:34–36:51)

• Relocation and Disguise:
  The police protection eventually becomes unsustainable; the family must relocate to Tennessee, adopting new identities and hiding their past.

  • “We relocated to Tennessee, but the people that we were are gone forever.” (D, 36:51)

• Financial and Emotional Toll:
  John Busby receives only minimal compensation and the town appears eager to remove the problem by sending the family away.

6. The Lingering Damage and Long Shadow of Injustice (37:41–42:28)

• Long-Term Psychological Impact:
  Years pass. Physical and psychological scars linger, with surgery reminders and flashes of rage haunting Busby.

  • “Every time I shaved my beard off, I would see what they had done to me, and the anger would just come flooding back.” (A, 37:41)

• Abandoning Revenge for Family:
  A powerful moment comes when Busby finally rejects vengeance, recommitting himself to his wife and family.

  • “I really felt we had turned a corner, that … he was leaving the revenge and his hatred behind, and that he was going to embrace his family and his life.” (C, 38:51)

7. Break in the Case & Aftermath (39:33–42:28)

• Confession Decades Later:
  In 2003, Melvin’s brother John Rainey confesses the full plot, confirming Busby’s suspicions—but the statute of limitations has expired, ensuring no prosecution.

  • “24 years after my dad's shooting, John Rainey finally came clean. … In a sense, it was vindication. John was right.” (D, 39:33; C, 40:01)

• Fates of Victim and Perpetrators:

  • “They remain unpunished, and they will remain unpunished because the statute of limitations.” (A, 40:39; B, 40:41)
  • Melvin Rainey ultimately suffers from dementia and dies in 2013; John Busby dies in 2022.

8. Epilogue: Reclaiming Life (41:24–42:09)

• Finding Peace:
  The Busby family, though forever changed, finds a measure of solace.
  • “Quite frequently, I compare what has happened to Melvin and what I'm going through now. There's no doubt in my mind that I won. No question.” (A, 41:54)
  • “We now live in paradise. … We’ve come through a storm and now we're at peace.” (C, 42:09)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Survival and Loss:
  “Their biggest mistake was they didn't kill him. That was their biggest mistake.” (E, 24:46)

• On Corruption and Coverup:
  “I think Melvin Rainey considered himself untouchable and that extended to his immediate family.” (D, 21:01)

• Childhood Stolen:
  “Those people that lived in Cape Cod, that little girl and my dad and all of us, they really did disappear.” (D, 36:51)

• Resolution Without Justice:
  “In a sense, it was vindication. John was right. … The sad part … was the fact that … it came to light after the statute of limitations, so no legal process would happen.” (C, 40:01; 40:43)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Family’s Normal Life and Attack: 00:30–05:44
• Immediate Aftermath and Siege: 02:27–13:25
• Suspect Melvin Rainey’s Background: 18:20–23:08
• Failures of Local Police: 23:08–25:11
• Busby’s Private Battle and Revenge Planning: 27:10–31:49
• Relocation and a New Identity: 33:34–36:51
• Decades-Later Confession: 39:33–41:24
• Epilogue & Reflections: 41:24–42:28

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Summary

This powerful episode of "48 Hours" captures the very personal cost of failing justice—how violence, impunity, and municipal fear can shatter families as surely as any weapon. With unflinching honesty, the Busby family shares not only how they survived, but how, in the absence of any real closure, they chose instead to rebuild and ultimately find peace—proof that resilience can, sometimes, outlast the long shadow of evil.

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Transcript

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[E]

My uncle was a police officer and he worked the midnight shift.

[D]

For work, just like normal. He hadn't gone probably half a mile from our house when a car pulled up behind him, pulled out alongside him, and he was shot through the driver's side window of his car with a shotgun. The shotgun blast tore through his face, then ripped off his lower jaw.

[E]

Before he lost consciousness, he wrote, not an accident. He realized that they were trying to kill him and he feared for his family's life.

[D]

On that summer night, my childhood ended. I was never alone again. We were guarded 24 hours a day. Everybody had a gun.

[E]

We were fenced in.

[D]

We had an attack dog. We had a sniper on the roof with a long range rifle.

[E]

You couldn't go out.

[D]

I had hidden a steak knife under my mattress and I would just lay there and listen. I just knew that the people who shot my father were not going to stop until we were all dead. Next door to our house there was an old graveyar. It sounds morbid, but it was actually this beautiful place to go and play. There were these old trees that were perfect for climbing and grassy lawn to play tag and hide and seek. And we spent a lot of time over There, Falmouth, Massachusetts, was the ideal place to grow up. Every summer day we'd get up in the morning, my mom would pack a lunch and we would head out to Old Silver Beach. By the end of the summer, we'd all be brown as berries and just relaxed and happy. That summer, it was me, my two older brothers, Eric and Sean. My dad, my mom. My mom was studying to be a nurse. And then my cousin Kelly, who was helping out my parents take care of us kids. She was there to have fun, but she was babysitting was how she earned her rent. My father was a police officer. Dad's first day in uniform. In his uniform, my dad looked incredibly handsome. I thought he looked like a movie star. To me, he seemed invincible.

[E]

My uncle John was a guy that you didn't mess with. He took his job and his position very seriously.

[C]

The John Busby I fell in love with was an athlete. He was handsome. He was very self confident. He was one of the nicest fathers. He was a wrestler on the ground kind dad and a hold my little girl close kind of dad. John always gave us the sense of safety and that nothing would happen to us as long as he was around. August 31, 1979, was what changed our lives forever. Nothing was ever the same.

[D]

August 31, 1979. This was the Friday, the start of Labor Day weekend. We were out in the driveway painting my dad's car. This was my mom's way of getting us out of the house that night so that my dad could sleep because he worked the midnight shift. And this is a photo that my mom took of me that night. When I was growing up, it was really hard for me to look at because I would look at this girl and I would study her face and I would think, what is that girl thinking about? Like, what is her life like? Because it felt like after that night, that child had ended. So that night, my dad got up to get ready for work. My brothers and I would have been in bed.

[C]

When I heard the knock on the door. I was watching Benny Hill. And in fact, I was laughing. I can remember.

[D]

I heard someone screaming or crying. And at first I thought it was the tv. And I woke and I came out of my room and I saw my dad's friend Rick Smith was there, and he was in uniform, and he was talking to my mom. And she was crying and screaming. And she kept saying, no, no, no, no. And she kept trying to push him away from her.

[B]

I said, paulie, there's been an incident involving John. And she goes what happened? What happened? And I said he'd been shot.

[C]

I made. I remember making a noise and falling back against the wall and sinking down.

[D]

I was saying, what? What's wrong? What's going on? And she didn't even acknowledge that I had come out of my room.

[E]

There was a great deal of confusion. We knew something bad had happened to him.

[C]

And I told Kelly, I'll call you as soon as I know what's happening. And the next thing I knew, I was in the cruiser. I could see lights, lights everywhere. And I could see John' Volkswagen riddled with holes. And I thought to myself, this is bad. This is really bad.

[B]

By the time we got to the hospital, there was a doctor and the nurses, and he was in a triage unit.

[C]

The doctors were all over him. And he kept beckoning that he wanted to write, wanted to write.

[D]

My dad managed to write a note. He said, polly and the kids not safe.

[C]

When he wrote that note, I knew there was one person in town that was capable of trying to kill John. And that person was capable of killing his whole family. It felt like I was in a storm, and I didn't know how bad that storm was going to get or if any of us were going to be safe again, ever.

[E]

My Aunt Polly had just left with a police officer. Instructions were to stay away from the windows and keep the house unlit and keep the door locked. I closed all the shutters and locked all the doors and turned out the lights. I don't know how much time had passed, but I saw the lights of a car pull into the driveway. I was expecting a police cruiser to pull into the yard, and it was not. There was a guy in a red car, and he had a rifle. I didn't recognize him. I can remember that the children, at least. Sean was very panicked, saying, who's that guy? He's got a. He's got a gun. Is he coming to kill us? I was scared. I was in great fear that that individual was going to come in and kill whoever was in the house.

[D]

Get in the back of the house. Get in the back of the house.

[E]

There was a lot of things going through my mind. To flee was not an option. There was no way out. All I could think of is, we need to hide and make it look like there's nobody still at the house. Everything was whispers. I said, we need to be quiet until they go away.

[D]

Then we heard someone knock at the door. Knocking loud or knock, knock, knock. Kelly just said, stay quiet. Stay quiet.

[E]

And I'm just talking to Myself saying, he's going to go away. It's going to be okay. We're going to be okay. Please stop knocking at the door. Please go away.

[D]

And then it stopped.

[E]

I took a deep breath, thinking, thank God it's over. He's going away. And suddenly I heard knocks at the back door. It was then that I realized they weren't going.

[D]

That's when Kelly said, this is the plan. I want you guys to go into the attic and hide in there. Do not come out of the attic until I come and get you or until your mom comes home. Don't come out for anybody else. All I could think was, we're going to go up in the attic, and this guy's going to come looking for us. And we have to be so quiet and not move. It was hard to balance on the rafters. And I was in a nightgown, and I didn't want to fall into the insulation, which was very prickly. So I was just trying to stay still really hard and not move or make a sound. And we just waited for whoever was gonna. Whoever was gonna come.

[E]

The kids are in the attic. Guy still knocking at the back door, not going away. And I remember thinking, what am I going to do? The first thing I had to do was protect those children and make it look as though they weren't home. And if there was entry into the house, that I was the only one in the residence. I walked over to the window, which is right beside the door, and at that moment, the guy pulled out a police badge. He said he was a Falmouth police officer and that he was here to watch over John Busby's family.

[D]

We heard Kelly say, he's a cop. It's okay. You can come down. And then once we heard that, we were like, okay, it's safe.

[E]

Throughout the evening, more police officers showed up to watch the home. And at that point, I realized that it just wasn't going to be okay. The next day.

[C]

They were trying to get an airway down. They couldn't get it down, so they started giving him morphine. And I heard somebody say, he won't go down. We can't get him to relax and get the airway in. One of the officers behind me, and I think it was Rick Smith, he said, we have somebody at the house with the kids. We've got somebody there, and others en route. And it was like you could see John just relax. He relaxed. He laid back, and they slipped an airway in. I really believe that John overwhelmed the doctors at the falmouth Hospital. They'd never seen anything like that. They didn't know quite what to do. John looked like a monster. His beautiful, handsome face went right to here, normal. And then it was like tissue had stretched and stretched and stretched. And right about here on his chest was his chin. There was no jaw. I wondered, how are we going to repair this? How are we going to put this back together? From the Falmouth hospital, they took him by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. They reassured me that they'd gotten him there in enough time to keep him from bleeding out. But it would depend on how strong he was to come through the surgery. Police in Falmouth today are looking for suspects who fired into the face of an officer there.

[D]

36 year old John Busby was driving. The morning after the shooting. We left to go stay with my uncle near the hospital where my dad was staying in Boston. No one was told where we were going. And when we got there, we were told not to tell anyone where we were staying or who we were staying with. This was the beginning of the year that we disappeared.

[C]

When John became aware in the recovery room, his eyes fluttered some and then he started going from tube to tube. And then he realized he couldn't talk. And I saw a look in his eyes almost of, you know, I can't talk. And then he saw me sitting there and he wrote, don't leave me like this. He didn't want to be on a respirator or be an invalid like that. And if the choice came, I needed to let him go. I needed to let him die. I said, you can't leave me here. You can't leave me with these three kids. I can't be left alone. You have to stay. You have to come back. We'll make it.

[D]

He couldn't speak, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't eat. He couldn't even drink water. I mean, he couldn't do anything because they had wired shut what was left of his face. Once I saw him, I thought, wow, they really meant to kill him. And I remember going to bed some nights and I would just lay in bed and think, my dad, everybody likes my dad. Who could want to kill my dad? My father knew the instant that he was shot who was trying to kill him. And he was able to communicate that to the officers who were there on the scene.

[B]

When I first saw him, he was shaking, shaking like a dog. He was holding the towels up to his face. And I asked him, who did this? John.

[D]

And he got out a pen and a notebook that he always carried with him and he wrote, not an accident. Mel Rainey.

[C]

John did not see who shot him, but he knew exactly who would want him dead.

[B]

Melvin Rainey was in the trash hauling business.

[C]

He had contracts all over Cape Cod and it was very lucrative.

[B]

He was a convicted arsonist. He had a reputation of getting even with individuals by sneaking in the night and burning properties. His favorite saying was, I smell smoke.

[D]

I smell smoke. Which meant, you know, without directly threatening it, meant there's going to be a fire in your future, your house, your car, whatever. I'm going to burn something of yours. Melvin Rainey was also suspected of murder. He was suspected of killing three people. And in two of those cases, the bodies have never been recovered. Melvin Rainey was married to a woman named Wanda Medeiros Rainey, and in 1971 she went missing. He claims that he dropped her off at the bus station and she was never seen again. About a year later, a teenage boy in Falmouth named Jeff Flanagan went missing. He was dating a 17 year old girl who had been babysitting for the Rainey family, who Melvin was also interested in.

[B]

Jeff Flanagan was found shot to death. His body was recovered in a cranberry bog directly across the street from Melvarini's home.

[D]

And then a former employee of Melvin Rainey's, a 17 year old boy named Paul Alwort, was set to testify against Melvin in a grand jury arson investigation. The police promised that he would be protected. They escorted him to the Martha's Vineyard ferry where he could go out to where he had some family and stay there until the trial. He got on the ferry, he didn't get off.

[B]

Melvin Rainey basically walked free on all of those accounts, I think because people were afraid to prosecute him and I'm talking about policemen afraid of him because they had families and they go to bed at night and you don't know if he was going to burn the house down with your kids in the house.

[C]

I knew that the police chief's car had burnt in his yard and everybody assumed that it was, you know, Melvin, but nobody could prove it.

[D]

I think Melvin Rainey considered himself untouchable and that extended to his immediate family. So if the police tried to give a ticket to anyone in his family, he would march into the police station and have the ticket torn up and have it erased from the logbook. Well, my dad was either brave enough to take on Melvin Rainey or he was foolhardy enough to take him on. If you broke the law, he didn't care who you were, who you were connected to, you were gonna get a ticket, you were gonna go to court. So he had run ins with them. My dad was conducting traffic at a roadblock at a fatal accident. And Melvin Rainey's brother, John Rainey, was there in his semi. And instead of waiting for this scene to be cleared, he just decided to drive straight through the accident scene. And he actually hit my father with his truck. He went to his house and arrested him and charged him with assault and battery with a deadly weapon.

[B]

And just prior to that court hearing, John Busby was shot. I thought instantly that Melvin Rainey had shot him. And now we're going to start after Melvin.

[D]

I think there were a lot of cops on the force who wanted to go straight to Rainey's house and just drag him out. But there were a lot of other people, people who were in positions of power who were really too scared to do anything about it.

[B]

I would challenge anyone to go to any police department and ask the question, if one of their officers was shot in the line of duty, what would they do? And I can tell you the response will be, they're not going to stop investigating that crime until an arrest is made. This did not happen in the town of Falmouth when John Busby was shot.

[D]

This is the police log from that night. You know, the local paper does the log of accident, fight in progress, disorderly group, noisy house. At the hour of my dad's shooting, there was nothing. They didn't put it in. They took it out of the police log. I mean, they've got everything else in here. Dog barking, two drunks near Russell and Falmouth Heights. You know, every single teeny thing in town is in here. And for some reason, the police log doesn't state for that night that a police officer was shot.

[B]

To my knowledge, the Falmouth Police Department never interviewed Melvin Rainey regarding the John Busby shooting.

[C]

I've often wondered just exactly how this.

[D]

Little.

[C]

Guy could get away with the stuff that he got away with without even being questioned.

[B]

It was clear to a lot of us that there was something behind the scenes that was much more powerful than Melvin Rainey. Melvin Rainey had something on someone. Whether he was paying people in envelopes or whether he had pictures from some sort of sexual act, he clearly had so much control that the police didn't go after him. Nobody was gonna do anything about a crime involving Melvin Rooney.

[E]

My Uncle John did not want to die. My Uncle John wanted to live and live to take care of what happened to him. Their biggest mistake was they didn't kill him. That was their biggest mistake.

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[A]

My name's John Busby. They didn't think I'd live, but I did. Someone's gonna do a voiceover for me. I'm a little hard to understand, but these are my words and this is my story. I was on my way in to work the midnight sh. The vehicle pulled up behind me, pulled out as if to pass. It didn't pass. It matched my speed. I got word while I was in the hospital that the investigation had been totally botched. I determined there was only one way that justice was gonna be done and I was gonna have to supply it. I was gonna have to get healthy, get out of the hospital and kill this guy.

[D]

We came back from Boston, we drove to our house, and when we pulled into the driveway, there were police cars in the driveway.

[C]

The police made it clear that we needed to be protected. We had at least two guards at our property 24 hours a day and they were well armed.

[D]

Everywhere I went, there was a copy. I had a police officer follow me to school, wait outside my classroom all day in the lunchroom, everywhere I went. My first day back to school, we went down to the lunchroom. A boy came over to the table, leaned over to me and said, you know why that cop's here, don't you? Because somebody wanted to kill your dad and somebody's gonna come and kill you.

[E]

They were thought of as being different at that time, and not in a special way, but in a way of almost like a virus.

[D]

Kids had been told, don't sit by her. They were transferred out of my classroom because what parent wants their kid next to, you know, a ticking time bomb?

[E]

Basically, life was spent speculating who somebody was who was traveling too close to you. Didn't matter where you were. You thought about who's beside me and what could they do to you.

[D]

We had police protection for the first few months when we were home.

[C]

When it started costing the town so much money that it was busting the bank, I guess they decided to protect us in a different way. An eight foot fence, an alarm system and a guard dog.

[D]

His name was Max. I did not like Max. If I was in the yard without my dad, that dog had to be chained up. If he thought somebody was gonna hurt my dad, even if it was me, he would just bite your throat out. Getting him meant that our family dog, Tigger, had to be given away because she was terrified of him. We had gone from a really regular family where my parents were really loving, to things being very serious all the time. We used to go to the beach, do things together as a family. And now we just. I mean, we really just didn't leave our house as a group anymore.

[E]

My uncle was very quiet, and you could almost see the turmoil in his thought process. You could see he was thinking, thinking all the time. There was a simmering anger that was building.

[D]

All physicality between us and him ended because he was injured. You felt like you couldn't get close to him physically or emotionally anymore. His personality was just so different. He just seemed like he was in a different world.

[A]

Two or three days would go by and I would just stay in my room. Felt like my head was gonna explode. I started pushing my family away from me, pushing my wife, the children away from me. We were living in our own prison, and the people who had done that to me were living their normal lives. The only way out of this mess was leaving town, moving my family somewhere safe. By then I would be healthy and strong. And able to arm myself with an untraceable weapon. I was gonna cut through the woods across from the dump and I was gonna wait for Melvin to empty his truck. There was no way I could miss him. He'd be a sitting duck. And that was my plan. Put a hole in his head right through the windshield and finish him off.

[D]

I would come home from school sometimes. I would just go into my room and sit on my bunk bed. And I would just stare out the window and wait for it to get dark. I just wanted the day to be over. I just wanted the days to go by. I wanted the waiting to end for whatever. Whatever was going to happen.

[C]

The only place we could think of that no one would ever think that we would live is in the middle of the country. And when we put the names of places that had accepted me as a nurse in a hat in Drew Out, Tennessee, we gave it a go.

[D]

Once we knew where we were moving, my parents made it very clear to us that we couldn't tell anyone anything about where we were being relocated.

[A]

Max, our killer dog, was sold back to the Training Center. And the town of Falmouth was kind enough to let us keep the money. And we would need every cent of it. My compensation for getting shot in the line of duty was $200 a week.

[B]

He was shot twice. He was shot once physically by a shotgun. And he was shot the second time by the town when they gave him the boot. They said it's easier for you to just go live someplace else than live here. And we'll save money and you'll be on your way.

[A]

The town ordered a police escort for us as far as the Bourne Bridge. Goodbye and good riddance. We weren't their problem anymore. I assumed the so called investigation into my shooting would end as soon as we cleared the bridge that morning. And I was right.

[D]

As we were driving south, it was August when we moved and it just got hotter and hotter. Every day that we were driving, it felt like we were driving into hell. And I do remember thinking, you know, after everything that we've been through and how crappy our lives had become, and now this is what we get. This is our escape. Our new life was to move to this place, which was in the middle of nowhere. It just felt like, you know, adding insult to injury. It was like. And then after this, here's your prize. Here's what you get, you know, We had to assume disguises almost to fit in and to not stand out and make ourselves too obvious. I became like the Girls at school. I pretended I had a Southern accent. I got a perm. I started wearing lip gloss. And I lied. I lied about our past, why we had moved there, what had happened to my father, what was wrong with his face. You know, when you tell a lie for long enough and it sort of becomes your reality. Those people that lived in Cape Cod, that little girl and my dad and all of us, they really did disappear. I mean, we relocated to Tennessee, but the people that we were are gone forever.

[C]

The first couple of years that we lived in Tennessee, we watched very carefully. We lived in a very isolated area. John watched cars that went by the house to see if they slowed down. And that finally wore away. It went away. He kind of looked like the old John, except for the fact that he had this huge mountain man beard. I believe that John needed that type of place for a healing process. We lived on a large farm. He did a lot of work on that farm. When he was physically able, he split wood we would never need just for the physical smashing of an axe through a piece of something.

[A]

From time to time, I had to return to Boston for surgery, and that meant shaving my beard off. And every time I shaved my beard off, I would see what they had done to me, and the anger would just come flooding back. While I was up in Boston, I visited my uncle. He always called me nephew. He said, nephew, come down in the cellar. I got something I want to show you. We went down the cellar. He opened up a gun case, and there was a.22 caliber rifle. It had a scope on it, and on the end of it was a silencer. It was everything. I. I looked at the gun my uncle had put together. I wrote a few words in my notebook and showed it to him. Thank you for all your effort. I won't need it.

[C]

When John returned from that surgery, he came through the door, and before he said hello or anything else, he looked me straight in the eye, and he said, I'm done. I'm done with surgery. I'm done with going back there. I'm really done. And I said, I'm done, too. I really felt we had turned a corner, that he was leaving the revenge and his hatred behind, and that he was going to embrace his family and his life. We were heading forward with the person that John grew into, to be the man he is today.

[D]

In 2003, there was actually a break in my dad's case. There was a confession. The Raineys had started turning on each other, fighting over money, and they'd gone into the police and started spilling family secrets. 24 years after my dad's shooting, John Rainey finally came clean. He placed the entire blame for my dad's shooting on his brother, Melvin Rainey.

[C]

Melvin's brother told the whole story of the night of John's shooting. Melvin sat in the backseat. He had a ski mask on. According to his brother, he had a shotgun, which he put out the back window. As they slowly passed John's Volkswagen, he shot a round from the shotgun, which went through John's face. In a sense, it was vindication. John was right. All those years he'd been right, it was Melvin Rainey who wanted him dead.

[A]

They remain unpunished, and they will remain.

[B]

Unpunished because the statute of limitations.

[C]

The sad part of this vindication was the fact that it came to light after the statute of limitations, so no legal process would happen. In some ways, Melvin did get punished.

[B]

Melvin is in a state institution. He has what is reported to be Pick's disease, which is a disease that affects the brain. I'm told that he's in a state of dementia. You know, what goes around comes around. He's getting what's rightly his. I guess.

[D]

This is the only childhood I had to have lived through it and be here today. I just feel like it's made me who I am. It's touched every part of my life. I write books for kids. I'm a mom and I'm a wife. Well, I can't think of anything else that I would. Yeah, I have it all.

[A]

Quite frequently, I compare what has happened to Melvin and what I'm going through now. There's no doubt in my mind that I won. No question.

[C]

We now live in paradise. And we are so content with one another. We've come through a storm and now we're at peace.

[D]

Melvin Raney died in 2013, and John.

[A]

Raney died in 2022.

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