A Mother Learns Her Son Is a Murderer

In a Marion County, Florida interrogation room, two homicide detectives sit across from Margot Valencia, a truck driver who has just been pulled over and handcuffed on her way to her father's house. She does not yet know why. She tells the detectives she is a rule-follower, a supporter of law enforcement, a Christian woman who prays. She has no idea that her son, Henry Jonathan Valencia, has just shot and killed his 17-year-old boyfriend, Nasia Santos, at a Petro gas station. The detectives are there to find out what she knows.

A Mother's Day of Routine and Concern

Margot Valencia describes her day in careful, chronological detail. She works overnight shifts driving a semi-truck, and after getting off at 10 a.m., she stops at her father's house in Jacksonville. Her father is bedridden, and she regularly helps care for him—washing his hair, shaving him, doing his nails. She brings food from Lemon Pepper, a local restaurant. She falls asleep on the sofa, exhausted.

When she wakes, she gets coffee, though she does not normally drink it. Then her son Jonathan calls. He is upset, crying, distressed. As a mother, her instinct is practical: she tells him not to speed because he has a CDL, and she tries to meet him on the road to drive behind him and keep him calm. But he arrives at her father's house before she can intercept him.