Out of the Woods: A Girl, a Killer, and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Way Home

Shasta’s relationship with her father quickly became volatile. His cancer went into remission, but he leaned further and further into drugs and alcohol and abused Shasta physically and emotionally. Steve also stole from Shasta’s charity funds on multiple occasions and was generally ill-equipped to raise his daughter. Shasta was never sure if he hated her, and if he did, whether that was because she lived while Dylan had died. When Shasta was in treatment at Vista, she had a couple of therapy sessions with her father, neither of which helped her. She was accused of lying about his abuse and told to reframe her thoughts about her trauma. At the same time, Shasta’s problems were ignored in group therapy, which she suspected was because of their severity. Nobody was able or willing to hear what she went through.

After Jet murdered Shasta’s mother and brothers, he carried Dylan and Shasta to his Jeep and took them up the mountain. On the drive, Dylan sat silently crying in the back seat while Shasta wondered where they were going. At one point, Jet stopped the car and forced eight-year-old Shasta to perform oral sex on him. He also watched voyeuristically as the children relieved themselves on the side of the road.