Look, I’m not here to tell a sad sob story to garner sympathy for myself. The purpose of this page is to shed light using other people’s flashlights. Whether I liked it or not, I was forced to have my history, mind, and character dissected on an operating table while I was still awake and alive.

What I’m sharing here is a collection of what others have said about me — from online discussions and local news articles reporting on every step of the process, from the moment the crime happened, through the court dates where the judge had to decide prison time or not, to my eventual release on parole.

It also includes what I can find right now of my attorney’s well-written statement pleading that I not be sent to prison, and why.

And of course, Dr. Cohn’s (a highly decorated criminal psychologist) 16-page report — the result of a nine-month investigation. That investigation included three multiple-hour interrogations (oops, I mean interviews), two separate 300-question questionnaires, interviews with family, friends, neighbors, school officials, former coworkers and bosses, as well as access to private journals, text messages, photos, videos, and whatever else she could get her hands on to build a profile of who the hell I was.

But before I do that let me just say…

I think that when my father’s therapist lawyered up and began providing statements of what he would say week after week (included in my attorney’s statement), along with the secret video I recorded of my father in the U of U psych ward after he first asked me to end his life, the picture becomes clearer. I filmed that moment with the intention of showing my family, so they might better understand just how disturbing his mindsets had become. The recording was taken just moments after he had broken down on that same hospital bed and suffered a full-blown panic attack.

Including these details, I believe, will help the audience better grasp how genuine and raw the blood before me was in life. And to all the people who’ve heard my story and said, ‘That’s messed up for him to do, blah blah blah’ — maybe reconsider. Maybe change your heart and see that he is not to be labeled a villain. In fact, perhaps there is no villain at all in this case.

I will never believe it was okay to do what I did, especially in the way it was asked of me. I will always be haunted by that night. But the ghost of my father is not a shadow — he is a bright, beautiful, beaming light. He does not whisper like the Holy Ghost he and his fellow Mormons believed in, but blazes with memories of tenderness and love in the moments when hardship strikes and tough decisions must be made in the dead of the night.

I must pause here to offer an apology. To all who have carried hurt or grief because of my actions, I am sorry. I know he was a man deeply loved, and I do not expect forgiveness… not from some, not from all. Still, I give you this apology, because it belongs to you.

A second apology: I am sorry to those I abandoned, left behind, or was too selfish to continue cultivating a relationship with. I am sorry for the promises I broke and the trust I betrayed. I am sorry for putting myself first so many times under the guise of ‘putting the oxygen mask on first.’ I am sorry for the money I borrowed and have not yet repaid. I am sorry for the excuses I made to avoid doing the hard thing — and sometimes the right thing. I am sorry for my pretentious attitude, for acting as though I always knew best.

And lastly, I am sorry to myself — for being so cruel, for being so harsh. For knowingly placing myself in risky situations, driven by a suicidal mindset and the belief that I was nothing more than a dead man walking.

I know that the path of discipline, and of facing hard truths rather than avoiding them, is ultimately the path that allows me to feel like a man of repute. And it is the path I am dedicated to now. Nature does not care about your feelings, or mine. Fulfillment is not based on happy or sad.

Fortune favors the adaptable, the accountable, and the ones who exercise empathy.

So the real question I have for you is this:

Will fortune favor you moving forward?