"He won't hurt me"

Over and over and over Amy said this, to every close friend who knew about the circus freak she married. They met online-she had a major thing for men in uniform. He was ex-Navy, or something. Had her all convinced he was working for some Top Secret something or other. He lived in Virginia-she went to visit him one weekend last fall. He had been here, she had been there before. He managed to convince her that if he died, no one would notify her, so they should get married. And she bought into it. She came home, alone, and told no one at first about her non-wedding at the courthouse in VA. Eventually she told a friend or two. But she refused to tell her family, saying they had agreed to have a 'real' wedding in April (actually, it was supposed to be yesterday) and their families need never know about the original ceremony.
Then he got weirder and weirder. Listened in on her phone calls, hacked into her computer-at home AND work. S was getting more and more concerned. Then Amy called her in a panic one day saying he had claimed to ahve a video of Amy & T-S's husband-having sex. Which, if you know T & Amy at all, you would agree was a ridiculous idea. But she was all freaked out, called S in a panic. Supposedly that was when she broke the engagement. I'm a little fuzzy on wether they were married by then or not.
And he got weirder and weirder. She wouldn't talk on the phone-he had tappedher phone, or so she believed. She thought he was following her, so she took S's car to court the day after he was arrested for domestic violence in January. And we're pretty sure she only had him arrested that time because some friends brought her home and they found him drunk, sitting inhis truck in the yard. He grabbed her by the hair, they insisted she have him arrested. She went along with it but insisted he hadn't meant to hurt her. The duty judge that did his first apperance was a recently elected judge who used to do defense for our parents. He recognized Amy's name, and chewed the coward out but good, and gave extremely strict pre-trial release conditions. As soon as the case was settled, she filed for an inunction but because he hadn't been served, it wasn't in effect yet. (Paper got it wrong.)
It seems she had been letting him stay there a lot lately. She would do really well for a while, then he would re-appear and fuck her all up again. All of her close friends told her again and again, Amy, I'm afraid he's going to hurt you. I'm afraid he's going to kill you. PLEASE, get away from him, I'll help you.
"He won't hurt me, he won't hurt me." She thought he might hurt her dog Lucky or her cat Annie, or send someone to hurt her, but insisted he would not hurt her.
Friday night, she stopped by S's house, but she had gone to dinner with her parents. Amy called her and said where are you? your car's here. She told her, they actually ended up passing each other in opposite directions on the road, I'm headed home, ok, I'm headed out to dinner with a friend, see ya tomorrow at the wedding. We expected Amy to go to the wedding with C & M, who planned to go early and spend the day at the beach. S mentioned she hadn't gotten hold of Amy, but she was probably at the beach with C & M and left her phone in the car. We finally get to the beach yesterday, and ran into C & M. S asked where Amy was, C said she didn't know, she hadn't been able to reach her either. C thought she may be skipping the wedding since it was the day Amy had originally wanted to have her wedding on, and it might be too hard to watch G get married instead.
So we enjoyed the wedding, and ended up talking about Amy on the way home. That she needed to cut him off for good, before she lost her career and everything she had the way I did with car thief. And S said she knew, but everytime he reappeared, she lost her resolve.
Then this morning the nextel goes off. I was all confused, hearing S's assigned ring tone-assumed she was calling from the house, let's go shopping, or some such. Instead she had alerted me, I radio'ed back, and all she could get out was "He killed her, he fuckin' killed her." As soon as I was awake enough to process the words, I knew who she had to be talking about. Got dressed and headed to her house.
Friday, on her way home from dinner with friend(s?)-had to be teacher friends, no one from our office that we can find was with her-she talked was talking to C. She got home, and told C she had to go, her neighbor wanted to talk to her.
She talked to her neighbor about 15 minutes, begging her not to go in the house alone, that she had seen him come up, on foot, earlier and she was worried something was really wrong. Told her she didn't have to go in, she coudl stay at herhouse, or call a friend, but don't go in the house, he seemed very riled up.
"Don't worry, I'll talk to him." And she walked away.
The neighbor said she had barely made it to her front door when she heard three shots BOOM BOOM BOOM, a pause, then another BOOM.
He waiting inside the door for her, naked, shot her three times, then shot himself. She died immediately, laying on the front walk of her house that she loved so much. He died inside the house, on the carpet past the entry. It was a gruesome scene when we got there today.
Sandi needed to reach her family-cops had notified but she really felt a need to make contact-and try to find out where Annie and Lucky were. Cops said Animal Control, neighbor said she never saw Animal Control come, and never saw Lucky at all. Lucky is HUGE-you can't miss him. Apparently another neighbor said he saw Lucky pacing around Amy's body, then ran off. But no one else saw that, and there were several neighbors in the street within moments. The neighbor who had been talking to her went to see if she had a pulse, and she was already gone. They didn't bother checking on him, other than to see he was naked.
They found a number for her brother, got his mom, and S talked to her about Lucky & Annie, the car, etc. She said we had found a couple important documents, insurance, marriage certificate, etc. Amy's mom says "Marriage certificate? WHAT marriage certificate?" The cops hadn't mentioned they were married, assuming, of course, the family would already know.
The family is flying down tomorrow. Supposedly, Lucky & Annie are at Animal Control on a hold til the family comes in. They're taking Annie home but can't care for Lucky. Someone will take him, just not sure who yet.
S was pretty wrung out by the time we made it back to their house. T was all quiet and barely knew what to do with that many women in his house. He was pretty close to her-closer to her than any of S's friends.
I left them curled up in bed with the cat, and came home, where I have done almost nothing since. I was gonna do A, B, C, whatever. But it just isn't in me today.

Edited to add:
Got so involved in telling the story, I forgot my point.  (I do occasionally have one.)
Amy worked in child welfare for nearly 5years.  She saw, over and over again, what domestic violence could do to a family.  She KNEW everything we 'should' know about red flags, warning signs, when to get out and how.  She knew all of it, and it didn't matter.  It didn't save her.  It can happen to anyone.