An A&E original podcast.

This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault and violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

I remember saying you know God just let me pass out and never once did I want to die I just wanted to pass out whether they would think that I was dead.

Christie Flynn has spent most of her life in Oklahoma and grew up exploring the outdoors.

A lot of fishing and we live right by the river so I would do trot lines and stuff with my dad.

We used to catch likehead catfish like 150 pounds. Yeah, yeah, big ones. We wasn't messing around and then we got an older sister and a younger brother and we used to go swimming in a spring. I couldn't

imagine getting in that cold water now but yeah it was good. By 1991, 21-year-old Christie had moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and was working for the state's

highway department.

I have my heavy equipment operators license is what got it started and then they

train me for my class A CDL with all my endorsements. So I was practicing driving a diesel rig.

Did you always kind of want to do these like big machinery jobs?

Actually, it happened because a man told me that women couldn't do it.

So...

Christie was a very devoted mother to her young son, who she was raising with a help from her mother.

And when she wasn't taking care of her son, she loved to shoot Poole.

I was actually, I shot on the Poole League for years and we went to different bars shooting pool and for tournaments and

stuff. We'd go there and shoot you know it just like a regular game and then you have five players and you decide you

know by the games who wins they add them all up. This is how she met her good friend Henry. It was funny because I met him because I had

went to another bar to shoot pool and we had a tournament that night and everybody was trying to get me with him because he was a big old chopped tall Indian and that was the only Indian guy they knew and I was Indian so they tried to set us up but we ended up being good friends.

And how often did you guys hang out?

About every week on Monday night.

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