This holiday season is especially painful to Crystal Kneeshaw.
Her mother and little sister were killed nearly 25 years ago and she feels responsible.The killer was her boyfriend at the time.
Because so many years have now past, he’s going to be eligible for parole.
She was only 15, when she broke up with her then 19-year-old boyfriend Robert Miles. He’s been in prison for the last 25 years.
Back on December 29, 1991, on Fenton Street in Redford, he became enraged.
“I heard screaming,” Kneeshaw says. “Mom was on the couch. She had been stabbed in the stomach. My sister was on the floor and I noticed her hand was dangling.
Her sister Michelle was 14 and had been stabbed seven times.
Sandi, their mother, had three stab wounds and told Crystal, who had not been attacked, she had to be the one to save their lives.
“She said that if I got help, they’d be alright and she wouldn’t die. I went and got help,” Kneeshaw says. “He went back into the house and stabbed her 18 more times.”
Then Crystal says Robert turned his rage on her.
“He attacked me in the front yard and it was deep snow and he choked me,” she says. “I remember seeing stars and I almost passed out.”
She says Robert then turned one of the knives on himself.
“He lifted his shirt and started to stab himself, with, I think, a broken knife,” she says. “I don’t know.”
Robert Miles pleaded guilty to 2nd degree murder and could get parole because of good behavior behind bars.
Crystal’s concerns are not just because of what happened to her mom and sister.
She says he also had an altercation with another girl earlier in his teen years and he’s sent her chilling messages from prison saying what his next move will be.
“He was calling to relay a message that he loved me,” she says. “He’s sorry and no matter how long he does, when he gets out, we’ll be together."
Crystal is asking for your help.
She also has one big question for that killer: Why in the intense rage, she was spared?
“I want to know,” she says. “For 25 years I’ve wanted to ask him that. 'Why? Why didn’t you kill me?' Maybe he wanted to hurt me.”
Crystal has been told she can’t visit Miles in prison.
The Wayne County Prosecutor will join with her to try to make sure he’s not released anytime soon.
