CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains detailed discussion of domestic violence, child death, and systemic failures in the criminal justice system.

On March 13, 2024, eleven-year-old Jayden Perkins was stabbed to death in his Chicago apartment while trying to protect his mother from her abuser. He was a sixth grader. Four foot two. Cast as Nemo in his school play. A kid who noticed when people were hurting and walked toward them. He ran toward the danger that morning, and it cost him his life. The man who killed him had a two-decade criminal history built almost entirely on violence against women. He had been released from prison the day before the attack, after the Illinois Prisoner Review Board made its decision without running a standard background check. The electronic monitoring required by his release conditions was never attached. A court hearing on an emergency protection order filed by Jayden's mother, Laterria Smith, was scheduled for the very next day. This episode covers all of it. Who Jayden was before we ever talked about the crime—the full history of Crosetti Brand. Every institutional failure put him at Smith's door. The trial, in which Brand represented himself, took ninety minutes to convict. The sentencing. The reforms that followed. And the civil lawsuit, Laterria Smith is still fighting.

QUESTIONS FROM THIS EPISODE:

1. What does it mean that Jayden's death was preventable, and we know exactly how it could have been prevented?

2. Why do we keep asking why victims didn't leave, instead of asking why dangerous people keep being released?

3. What do we owe to the children who witness domestic violence, and specifically to Jayden's five-year-old brother?

4. Is legislative reform an adequate response to the death of a child caused by institutional negligence?

5. What does it mean that a standard background check, one that costs essentially nothing, was not run, and a child is dead in part as a result?

6. How do we tell true crime stories about domestic violence without reducing survivors to their victimization?

7. Jayden ran toward the danger. What does that tell us, and what does it demand of us?

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT: National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (24/7) Text START to 88788 thehotline.org

In memory of Jayden Perkins, 2012-2024. He saw people. He showed up. He did not flinch.