John Stevens IV doesn't want Austin Harrouff's "crocodile tears" apology.
Stevens, the son of 59-year-old John Stevens, who investigators say was killed by Harrouff, said his infant daughter will never know her grandfather, and no apology that can change that.
When he heard that Harrouff, the 20-year-old Jupiter, Florida, resident who investigators say killed Stevens and his wife, Michelle, and was found biting Stevens' face on Aug. 15, had apologized for his actions and asked for forgiveness, he said he lost it.
"His apology means nothing to me," Stevens said in an interview Wednesday with The Palm Beach Post. "If they want to apologize to us, stop this, tell the truth."
The State Attorney's Office in Martin County on Tuesday released a 22-minute interview between Dr. Phil McGraw and Harrouff that was recorded just days before Harrouff was arrested and booked into the Martin County Jail.
The interview is set to air on CBS at 4 p.m. Thursday.
Harrouff was charged by a grand jury with two counts of first-degree murder in the fatal stabbings of Stevens, 59, and his wife, Michelle Mishcon, 53, Martin County Sheriff's Office investigators said.
Throughout the interview, Harrouff tells McGraw that he doesn't remember much from the attack, but remembers a "dark figure" named Daniel who called his name.
"I don't remember thinking at all. It's like a blur," Harrouff said. "I don't think I was thinking straight."
On the night of the fatal attacks, it took a Taser, several kicks to his head and a police dog to get the then-19-year-old Harrouff off of Stevens, the sheriff's office said. Investigators originally believed that Harrouff was under the influence of a synthetic drug like bath salts or flakka. A toxicology report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation was negative for any such drug.
One of Harrouff's attorneys, Nellie King, released a statement this week saying the video is "one of the many pieces of evidence demonstrating the deterioration of Austin's mental health." King said her client was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness at the time of the attacks. Neither the family nor his counsel has said whether he's been formally diagnosed.
Stevens' son, who lives in a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas, said the interview makes him angry because Harrouff comes off as disingenuous but asks for forgiveness from the families. Stevens, who has a 5-year-old child and an infant, said anyone who has children knows when the tears are fake.
"Sure, he looked sad and disheveled. But he's not sad about what he did — he's sad that he's about to go to jail," he said.
Stevens said what adds to his anger was Harrouff's father's comments about neighbor Jeff Fisher. Fisher was Stevens' and Mishcon's neighbor on Southeast Kokomo Lane who heard Harrouff attacking Mishcon that night and went to try to save her. Stevens calls him a hero.
"The report is, you severely wounded him and stabbed him multiple times and he's critically wounded," McGraw said to Harrouff in the interview. "He heroically tried to save those people."
"I don't remember. I don't remember," Harrouff said as his father interrupted.
"From what I hear, Dr. Phil, he was slashed with a liquor bottle, a broken liquor bottle, and he wasn't critically wounded. I'm pretty sure it wasn't critical," Wade Harrouff said. He said the wounds were across Fisher's back.
McGraw ended the questioning about Fisher, saying that he didn't want to "minimize or trivialize what happened to him because he was just trying to help."
Fisher told investigators that when he approached Harrouff that night, Harrouff said: "You don't want to, you don't want this, you don't want to be a part of this." Fisher said he punched Harrouff once in the face, which knocked the teen to the ground, but then noticed that he had been stabbed.
Fisher went back to his home to call for help, authorities said. In crime scene photos released last year by the State Attorney's Office, a blood trail leads from the scene to Fisher's home. Inside, blood covers the floors.
Stevens, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps and completed a tour of duty in Iraq, said he saw Fisher's wounds, and they were "extremely bad." Stevens said that instead of an apology from Austin Harrouff to his family, he wants an apology from Wade Harrouff to Fisher.
"He needs to apologize for what he said about Fisher, and he needed to do it yesterday," Stevens said.
Fisher could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
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