The following is a letter found on Justin Bruton's hard drive by the Jackson County Sheriff's Department during its investigation of the murder of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen. The creation date of the letter was listed as Monday 10/20/1997 at 10:47 AM, and had last been saved on Tuesday 10/21/1997 at 1:59 AM, just more than 30 hours before Anastasia's murder. It was originally written in one long paragraph without any special emphasis on any phrases. We have broken it into paragraphs for readability and have emphasized Anastasia's remarks directly related to her killer. Otherwise, it remains as last saved.
We post it in its entirety because some of the killer's supporters like to quote a small part of it severly out of context. They quote 52 words out of a total of 966 (5.4%). We have highlighted that portion of the letter that they chose to take out of context. The letter was not brought up in his court trial, but was mentioned in in his 1999 interview with JCSD1, and it could have been used as evidence as to his motive for murder.
And so, here are Anastasia's words, all of them, on the morning before her death.
I know who I am. You do not know who I am so do not claim to ever know who I am until you marry me (and maybe not even then). I may annoy you, you annoy me. It's a match made in Hell. I will not make myself what I think you want because chances are you won't want it if you were any other person I would've said to hell with it long ago. But you are you and I can not help but love you in every way except the one that tells me that I can tell you now because I can't trust you not to hurt me.You know why I can't trust you not to hurt me? Because you do hurt me. You hurt me every time that you are not sure of our relationship. It hurts so much that I may not be able to take it after a while. You remember when you said that you could beat me over the head with a bat and spray paint on my face that you did it and still tomorrow, I would call up and ask for forgiveness because I believed that I caused it? Well you are wrong. I may forgive you for a lot of things (including hurting me), but believe me I have nothing holding me here.
You don't care whether I am here for you or not and in the end, if you ever truly love me then it will be your downfall. I hold myself to you because I love you in so many ways. That will be my downfall. Sometimes I am so certain that you will leave me that I pack up my heart and tell myself that you are not worth the pain.
I want you to love me, I want you to feel pain if I ever leave you. Maybe not to the degree that I feel things, but I never felt anything until I felt love for you. I never cared about anybody but myself. I couldn't care about anybody. They would just hurt me. But I trusted you and you did not realize what I had given you. I am sorry that I trusted you. I never cried over anything before I met you and then I do and suddenly I cry over you. Why do I do that? You don't care whether I care about you or whether I love you.
I don't care what Byron thinks of me. I never cared what anyone thought of me until I loved you. Then I only cared what you thought of me. Byron can go fuck himself for all I care. Caring about anyone other than the one you love is completely wasted, in my opinion. I know that on Saturday they used me because I had transportation and I dropped someone who truly cared about me and wanted to spend time with me to go over there and be their cute little transportation bunny. I knew it at the time but I am such a bitch to those who actually care about me.
Very few people actually care about me I know that and that is why I actually thought you meant it when you said that you cared about me maybe you do maybe I am just lying to myself. Fuck knows that I do that to myself often but only when it comes to you.
I really hate thinking and possibly realizing that I made a mistake, that I made so many mistakes when it came to you, but the worst one being that I made a mistake loving you. I wish I could just drop out of time. Drop out of everything and say to hell with you. But no, I call you in hopes that you will one day say that you have something to tell me and that something will be that you loved me and that you never stopped loving me.
But I guess I will always lie to myself. I don't lie to anyone else; I might as well lie to myself. I fool myself into believing you, believing what you say about me being different from anyone else that you have dated or that you have screwed. But it all just seems to be some big lie, that what my relationship with you is just some big joke someone is playing on me to get back at everything I never felt but somehow should have felt I can't make myself feel what I do not feel and I shouldn't try to make you feel what you do not feel. I wish I could kill myself. I wanted to do it before but I couldn't because I firmly believed that you would come back to me. I hate life. Life is a big joke to be played on the ones who don't want to feel it I never wanted to feel life.
I never wanted anything in my life until I met you. Big fucking mistake for me, I guess believing that I was your true love. Wanting to be that person. You don't deserve my love. You don't care about my love at all. I am strong, stronger than you will ever know. I will be strong when it comes to you, because I need to be. Nobody seems to be worth my emotion. I am better than anyone else.
I know that you don't think that, but who cares? That is what I believe about myself. Fuck what anyone else believes. The only person's opinion I care about is yours. So, fuck me. You and Byron deserve each other. Because that seems to be the one you want. Someone who shares your brain and your thinking and So fuck me.
your ...