INSIDE EDITION - For one married couple of 29 years, they may look like any regular partnership but they have a very dark past.
In 1986, Cheryl Pierson was a 15-year-old high school cheerleader who was being sexually abused by her father. She thought that killing him would put an end to the torture.
"The more I fought the more violent it got, so at that point, at 15 years old, I just let him do what he wanted to do just to be done with it," she told Inside Edition.
She asked another student at her high school to kill her dad. Her then-boyfriend, Rob Cuccio, paid the high school "hitman" $400.
“I never thought that he was going to do it,” Cuccio told Inside Edition.
Sean Pica, 17, assassinated her dad in his driveway in Long Island, NY.
“That was the first time in my life I felt safe," she told Inside Edition following the killing. "I was glad he was gone, that's how I felt."
But it didn't take long for the plot to unravel. Her boyfriend broke down and told police everything.
“I said, 'Wait a second, you have to understand the reason why,'" he recalled. "And then I went in and I told the detectives what was going on."
Pica was sentenced to 24 years in prison but only served 16 years for manslaughter. Now, he runs a program providing education and life-skills training for former inmates.
Pierson served just three months in prison for manslaughter.
“People felt like I deserved to get just as much time as him,” she said.
On the day she was released, her boyfriend, who got off with probation, was there to greet her with a limo. They were married nine months later.
She now goes by Cheryl Cuccio and they are a typical family with two adult daughters, Sam and Casey.
After decades of silence the couple has written a book together called Incest, Murder and a Miracle. They say its message will help victims of sexual abuse.