Exclusive Interview: Terri Schiavo’s Brother Replies To Michael Schiavo’s Lies Which Continue To Murder Terri
By John Lofton, Editor
TERRI SCHIAVO, shown here with her Mom, was murdered not simply ‘allowed to die’L: Thank you very much Bobby for talking to us about this horrible, painful, awful situation. I must admit I was a little bit surprised - maybe not, that you didn’t see the DATELINE show - was there any particular reason you didn’t see it?
S: Our family wasn’t in a position to see it. I don’t know that I would have anyway, because ultimately, Mr. Lofton, it doesn’t matter what Michael does or says from this point on. You know whatever he says or does doesn’t change anything, and it doesn’t change the fact that he killed my sister in such a horrible, brutal way.
L: Well, that’s for sure. Let’s go to some of the sound bites and then you tell me what you think. The first one is where Michael Schiavo talks about this alleged conversation on the train where Terri supposedly said she never wanted to live disabled, and I think this is a pretty good job of Matt Lauer pursuing him on this point. Here’s the first soundbite of what Michael Schiavo said:
MS: Her uncle is very disabled and he lived with his mother and Terri said to me if I ever become a burden to anybody don’t ever let me live like that. And I said okay, and you would do the same for me.
ML: She’s how old at that point?
MS: 22?
MICHAEL SCHIAVO continues to lie causing great pain to and anguish for the Schiavo familyMS: Matt, let me tell you something —.
ML: Is that the same thing as really stopping and thinking and saying, no Michael, listen to me, if it happens to me I don’t want to live like that. You never followed it up, you never said, Terri, you said something a second ago and that was pretty dramatic, let me make sure I understand what you are talking about. Huh?
MS: Because I understood Terri.
ML: Her parents say they don’t remember her ever saying anything like that.
MS: They weren’t there, Matt.
JL: Your comment.
BS: Well, I mean if you looked at a timeline of these so-called alleged wishes that Michael claims my sister made, you’ll see that Michael, and this is in the book that we wrote, you’ll see just how Michael is lying, quite frankly. Michael never mentioned anything about Terri’s wishes when he was suing her doctors for $20 million dollars. He had opportunities to bring forth Terri’s alleged wish, but he waited eight years, and what most people don’t understand, and what the media did not report, is that Michael brought these wishes up eight years after her collapse, and it was after he already announced that he was going to marry the woman he was cohabitating with for two years at the time. So, to believe for a moment, and if anybody knew my sister they would know it was completely contrary - even as Matt Lauer said, for someone at 22 to make such a declaration is ludicrous and it’s just - you know our family’s been saying all along that we believe Michael perjured himself in the trial in order to kill my sister. So, it’s nothing new, and again, I’m probably going to sound like a broken record, it doesn’t really matter what Michael says because it doesn’t change anything. And it doesn’t change the fact that he did this to my sister.
JL: Well, what struck me is that by Michael Schiavo’s own recollection this is an extremely ambiguous statement, even if your sister made it in passing it was never repeated again, and on that basis you kill someone, you murder them? You take away their food and their water? And do you know what uncle was alluded to here? And what was the disablement of the uncle?
BS: It was my uncle Fred, my dad’s brother and he was in a car accident and received a brain injury, but he was living on his own, and he was partially paralyzed on one side of his body. But it’s ludicrous to think that Terri would ever say something like this, first of all, and just the fact that you know, as I said the timeline. You know, if we’re to believe that Terri said this why wasn’t this brought up anytime before the eight years, where Michael could have brought these wishes up, but they never were?
JL: Well, I’m sure this is not something that’s new to you, but for me just watching this interview I wouldn’t believe anything this Michael Schiavo says including that his name is Michael Schiavo. But let’s go to the next cut in which Michael Schiavo was asked why he did not divorce Terri since he was living with another woman and his answer was that she wasn’t an inanimate object like a football, which is ultimately the way he treated her. In any event here’s what he said when asked why he did not divorce Terri since he was living with another woman?
MS: Why do I have to divorce her? Terri was not an inanimate object to pass back and forth; just because your wife gets sick you give her back?
BS: I don’t know quite how to comment on that.
JL: I know.
BROTHER BOBBY asks- What about Michael’s other promises to Terri — his wedding vows, his promise to care for her the rest of her life?JL: Yeah, that was exceptionally incoherent, I thought.
BS: Well, as far as to divorce Terri, I just didn’t understand what he was trying to say. As I said he was cohabitating with another woman since 1995 and the proper thing to do was move on with his life and give Terri back to us, which is what we were asking him to do.
JL: So many of these cuts, we have a few more from this NBC show are, if it didn’t involve murder, they would be comical as to what was said. In this next soundbite you’ll hear his new wife going on a little bit about how admirable about Michael Schiavo’s persistence in trying to murder his first wife though, of course, that’s not the word (murder) that was used.
Here’s what she said:
“I would think so much less of Michael, had he walked away from her (Terri). That is one of the qualities in him that I so admire. That up against everything - everything, he stuck by her and did it anyway.”
JL: Go ahead, Bobby, that’s sickening isn’t it?
BS: Again, I’ve got to say - you’ve got to understand something. Anybody that would do this to a human being - anybody that would kill somebody that was simply disabled, and suffering from a brain injury, in this manner, I’m not really surprised at anything they say.
JL: Sure.
BS: So to admire somebody for killing somebody because they are disabled and have a severe brain injury, they look at it as something to admire. And I think you can understand more and more why our family is forming a foundation, to stop other people like Michael from doing this to other families.
NBC’s MATT LAUER did a good job pressing Michael Schiavo on important pointsMS: It was, Matt, I guess what it all boiled down to was, I couldn’t understand why these people were so passionate about my wife. This happens to people across this country every day. People are allowed to die every day. Feeding tubes are removed every day.
JL: Yeah.
BS: I mean, I have - again, it astonishes me that they’re so cavalier in announcing that you know, feeding tubes are removed every day. I think it clearly illustrates the problem we’re having in America. I think Michael’s absolutely right. We are removing feeding tubes from people every single day, and killing them, but as Michael said, in such a nonchalant fashion, that nobody seems to care - it doesn’t seem to disturb anybody, that we’re starving and de-hydrating people to death
JL: Well, you also picked up on that demonically deceptive phraseology, that this is happening every day across our country where people are “allowed to die.”
BS: Exactly, and they call it a right to die case, when in reality it’s a duty to die. Terri wasn’t dying, she was stable, she had a brain injury, and to simply remove the very thing keeping her alive which was ordinary basic care, food and water, is tantamount to murder. I mean we, Michael Schiavo and the people working for him, obviously killed Terri because she was disabled, because they believed she had no worth, because they believed she had no quality of life, and this perfectly justified to them to kill her in this manner and again, everything and anything Michael says doesn’t change that fact, and is why our family is fighting, is why our family created our foundation - to try and stop this from happening to other families because as we’re seeing, there’s a powerful and strong death movement occurring in our country.
JL: No doubt about it. Tell us right now if people want to get in touch with your foundation, how would they do that?
BS: Well, it’s Terrisfight.org. If you do a search on Terri Schiavo search on Google, it’s the first one that’s listed, our foundation and if people want to support what we’re doing they should go to our website - see our goal, see what we’re doing and do what they can to stay involved with our foundation.
JL: Some people do object to the word murder to describe what was done to your sister. And I always say to them, “Well, that’s what it seems to me. What do you call someone who is innocent and is executed and their life is taken for no reason? It strikes me as murder. And that’s what I say, and I have yet to have anyone come up with an alternative word, once that situation was described to them. It’s clearly murder.
BS: I think our family used to describe it as judicial homicide. And if you look at the definition of homicide it’s being killed at the hands of someone else, and Terri was certainly killed at the hands of whoever you want to point out as the person who killed Terri - whether it would be Michael, or the court or the Judge. Terri died for no reason.
JL: Absolutely.
BS: Yes, she was murdered. I think it’s a perfect way of describing what happened to her.
JL: Now, in this next cut, Michael Schiavo was asked if he was ever tempted to give it up, to abandon his effort to murder Terri though, again, the word murder was not used here, and his answer - just when you think you’ve heard the most nauseating thing, which you’ve already heard, you find out there are further depths, to which this guy can sink. Here’s what he was asked. He was asked if he was ever tempted to give up his effort, to call it off.
ML: I think even Jody (his present wife) came to you one day and said, “give it up.”
MS: I couldn’t. I couldn’t. You know, my parents, they raised me to be a fighter, and I was doing something that Terri wanted, and I wasn’t going to let anybody stand in the way.
JL: Let me go first here. I of course, do not know Michael Schiavo’s parents. I doubt seriously that they told him to grow up to be a fighter for murder. That was an exceptionally nauseating statement.
BS: Well, and if the audience knew my sister, and they knew my family and they knew how much Terri loved her family - you know, my family and how close we were, she would simply be appalled and outraged at what was being said in this interview and at what Michael did to her. There’s no doubt in my mind Terri would be on the phone right now if it was me or my sister or my mom or dad, in her situation. So to, for Michael to be saying and acting in this manner, to me it’s absolutely appalling and again, anything he says (and I’ve said this before) doesn’t change anything. He’s just trying to distract from what happened here, and justify what he did. And that was the purposeful killing of my sister who was terribly disabled and that’s what we have to focus on — that we killed someone that wasn’t dying, or that they killed someone that wasn’t dying. Instead of loving and caring and showing her compassion they looked at my sister as being an inconvenience. And therefore, ended her life and naturally, we have to stay focused and try to change what’s happening in our country.
JL: In this next cut when asked why not just let Terri’s parents have her? And this is an exceptionally important cut because it shows what a liar Michael Schiavo is. It doesn’t show anything new to you, about his being a liar, but to a lay person, simply watching TV like I was when I saw this exchange, and to his credit, Matt Lauer pointed out the lying context of this, Michael Schiavo says what he says and this in and of itself was enough to show that this guy is a liar because when he’s asked why not let the parents have Terri, well, he wouldn’t do this because of this horrible thing that her father said, which of course it turns out - once you hear the context, turns out to be not horrible at all. And, again, thank you, Matt Lauer, for correcting this.
MS: When you sit in the court room and you hear the father say, I’ll cut her arms and legs off, just to keep her alive, why would I put their daughter back with her parents, if he’s going to do that to her?
ML: Let’s make sure we understand that statement. I think the statement was, she would have developed gangrene, and would have had to have limbs amputated, he would do that and okay that as long as he could still have her.
MS: Right.
ML: It’s a little different than what you said.
MS: And he also stated that even if this was Terri’s wish, it wouldn’t have been theirs. They’d have kept her alive.
JL: Yea, what a terrible thing, to have kept her alive.
BS: Well, again, and as Matt Lauer pointed out, it was out of context and you’d have to read the court transcripts to see what they were asking my father at the time. They were trying to box him in to where he’d admit that there was a point to where you would kill somebody. Again, it’s just distracting from what’s taken place here, and that is justifying the removal of someone’s food and water and under no circumstances would we ever agree to remove ordinary care for somebody that was simply suffering from brain injury or disability and to try to justify - rationalize reasons to do that to our family is just wrong.
JL: I made a note when I saw him saying how your parents would not honor Terri’s wish, and I thought let’s assume she’d made the wish, which I don’t think she did, well, yeah, I would hope they would not honor it. My mother committed suicide. That’s self-murder and if somebody ever said to somebody in their life that at some point they’d like to be murdered, I would hope that wish would not be honored. So that when Michael Schiavo tried to make your parents look bad, it really makes them look very good.
Here’s two more cuts of what Michael Schiavo said and these are exceptionally bad and disgusting and sickening, and I apologize for asking you to listen to them. But in this next to the last one, he was asked, what was it like at the end, and this is so ghoulish. I told somebody here in the office, we often forget how tricky the devil is, you know, how subtle the devil is, what a good actor the devil is, and what a liar he is. As Jesus has said: the devil from the beginning was a murderer, and a liar. So, what was it like at the end, Michael Schiavo was asked?
LAST LINE of Terri’s gravestone adds insult to injuryML: Did you talk to her?
MS: I caressed her arms and told her it was okay to go.
JL: Notice again the lying language here. He’s talking as if Terri simply wanted “to go” - as if she had packed her suitcases and was of her own free will ready to go somewhere.
BS: It certainly is disturbing to hear that. And again, as I said before, if you are willing to kill somebody in this manner, you are not really surprised or shocked at anything they have to say. And to describe Terri as being peaceful, it’s - you know, they have to lie about Terri’s condition and the manner in which she died, because if they would tell the truth about the way she looked and how she suffered for a period of 14 days, you would understand why they are saying what they’re saying. Try going a day or two without eating, and imagine how you would feel and then imagine how you feel after a period of two weeks and if anybody saw her and the way she looked, it will be an image seared in my mind forever, and it was absolutely horrible, and it really is offensive to hear someone describe my sister dying in that way, that they’re saying that she died.
JL: OK. Last and certainly least, Matt Lauer and Michael Schiavo are at the gravesite, and the last line of the tombstone has the words on it “I kept my promise.” Lauer asks Michael Schiavo why was it so important to have this as the last line, and here’s what he says:
MS: It was from me to her, it had nothing to do with anybody else.
ML: Do you ever come here, Michael and wonder how she feels about that promise, or how she felt about that promise twenty years after? Do you think it was as important to her as it was to you?
MS: Definitely. I think she’s up there praising me saying “Thank you.”
BS: I think my sister is up asking forgiveness for Michael for what he did. To say - again to refer to this whole promise thing –I’d like to ask which promise he’s referring to, the one he took when he and my sister got married? The one which he promised her rehabilitation and care for the rest of her life? It seems to me that those promises were forgotten. To put that on my sister’s gravestone - it just shows how vindictive he is and how much he wants to hurt my parents. Because, as I said, if you knew Terri and how close our family was and how much she loved my parents, I think she’d be quite upset to say the least, that he’s constantly doing things - even with these interviews to cause my parents harm. They just loved Terri and wanted to care for her, and Terri equally loved my family and I think she’d be quite upset in the manner that Michael’s acting and treating my family right now.
JL: Well, again, I apologize to you for putting you through this, I appreciate you being on the line with me and God bless you, Bobby and your family and your work.
BS: Well, thanks Mr. Lofton, and again, as I said, the reason we created this foundation, and why our family it continuing to do what we can to stop this horrible thing that’s happening to our disabled and hopefully God willing, we’ll continue and expose this movement and change the laws and protect the disabled, because right now they’re very vulnerable to what’s happening - we saw with my sister and hopefully we can stop it from happening in the future.
JL: One more time, give us the contact information that you gave us earlier, and speaking of God, a Scripture comes to mind, God says that He will by no means clear the guilty.
BS: I certainly hope you’re right and our contact for our foundation is Terri Schindler-Schaivo Foundation and of course we started it in honor of Terri and Terri’s fight.org. And thank you for you support for our family during this difficult time.
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