Disclaimer: I am NOT saying DB deserved to be murdered. She did not. No one deserves that. And I agree that murder is evil.
But "all they had to do was walk away" is simplistic, imo. Yes, that's "all" she had to do, but how difficult was that for her? Who did she have to turn to? Did she know for a fact that her father and stepmother would be there for her? Did she know any of her extended family well enough to turn to them? Did she know that she could turn to a battered women's shelter? She couldn't provide for herself. Her education, imo, was poor in quality, and she may not have had a high school degree (home school laws vary from state to state). Did she have the skills and knowledge to get an apartment? Did she even have any ID? Look how hard
Alecia Pennington has had to fight just to prove she even exists because her parents withheld all her documents. Maybe ID documents were part of what was in that safe of DBs.
As someone who had to leave an unhealthy family and move into a world I knew nothing of at a younger age than Gypsy, I can say that "just leaving" can be one of the hardest things one will ever do. I had a job, which was one huge step ahead of GB, but I had to squirrel away money and eventually find an apartment and move out ... all without my parents knowing. And I had to leave my parents, my friends, my church, everyone and thing I'd ever known behind. Do you have any idea how hard that can be? I might have had people I could have turned to (looking back two decades later, I can say I definitely did), but I didn't know who or how to reach out for help at that time. I had no safety net. When most kids leave home, they know they have that soft place to land if anything goes wrong. GB may have known (or believed) she had no soft place and may have even had a world of hurt waiting her return.
I am unable to look at this through a lens of normal family, close extended family, typical upbringing, happy childhood. I think if GB had had the benefit of any of those things, she could easily have "just walked away." If she had the isolated, possibly abusive upbringing that I strongly suspect she did, then no, "walking away" is nowhere near easy. She did not have to turn to murder and
should not have turned to murder -- that's something you can never take back, never undo. But I *can understand how she may have gotten to that point of thinking it was her only escape.
I'm sorry for writing a book. I just keep seeing "why couldn't they leave," and having btdt, I can say it's almost never that easy. (Abused adult women have far more resources than an older teen/young adult, and they are just as likely to have a hard time leaving their abusers).