On the day of the murder, Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy Nestor Argote arrived at the townhouse complex alongside the Overseas Highway first and alone. A breathless neighbor greeted him, telling the deputy that Daniel Weisberger’s dad was lying on his living room floor, with a stab wound to his neck and nearly dead. Argote told the neighbor to go inside, tend to the dad and lock his door. Argote then headed into the townhouse to look for Daniel and his little brother, Pascal.
The crime scene he discovered inside was gruesome: a 14-year-old boy in his bed, his neck nearly cut in half, killed by his older brother.
To understand why, we head back to the beginning, to Central Africa, where Daniel and Pascal’s parents met while working in the Peace Corps. Both 22, they married, then headed back to the U.S. to start a life. Instead, years of fighting would unfold, ignited by a bitter separation when Pascal was just seven months old and Daniel was three, followed by a divorce two years later. Lawyers on both sides of the case later described these years as a “pressure cooker” that for Daniel, and his festering mental illness, would eventually, violently explode.
In Episode 2, we take a closer look at court records, mental health reports and talk to family and friends to better understand the pressure cooker and its simmering ingredients.