Kait Granger recalls the last time she told her mom she loved her.
On December 8, 2019, Granger ran back into their shared apartment in Chesterfield, Missouri, before her young-adult ministry internship at church to grab a Diet Coke.
“I got to hug her and tell her that I love her. It was a sweet little moment,” Granger told The Post.
Later that night, her mom, Bobette Everhart-Boal, 59, went to a Christmas party. Granger woke up around 2 a.m. and saw a text from her father, Michael Boal, 59, asking her to take care of the dog. She had a strange feeling.
“I woke up to find my mom wasn’t there. I checked her location on my phone and saw she was in the parking lot. I said, ‘There’s no way she’s just coming home.’”
Granger opened the blinds to find flashing lights and cop cars next to yellow crime scene tape.
“At that moment I knew what happened,” Granger said. She went outside, feeling numb and “like I was in a trance.
“I met with a cop and asked, ‘Is my mom dead?’”
While Granger slept, her father fatally shot her mother during an argument in the parking lot of the apartment complex around 12:45 a.m.
He then returned to their previous home, set it on fire, and shot himself.
The estranged couple were due in court later that week for the first meeting of their divorce proceedings. Granger regrets that her mother didn’t get the “true freedom” of the divorce she desired before her death.
“My mom knew he was capable of really dark things,” Granger said of her father. “Even to the point where, at the end of her life, she told one of her friends that he was going to kill her. She turned to her co-worker and said, ‘Please take care of Kaitlyn.’ I was naive to think that if my mom left [him] she would be safe.”
Granger, 27, shared her story on TikTok in a video titled “The Story,” with a trigger warning before detailing the tragic events.
“They found the murder weapon in the house in the fire,” Granger says in the video.
“As the investigation unfolded, we learned there was a lot of premeditation. My dad opened up a storage unit four days after my mom had left back in August and started to move things from the house in there to protect them because he knew he was going to set the house on fire,” she continued, summarizing the most traumatic event of her life in 4 minutes and 19 seconds.
Granger has since gained 330,000 TikTok followers with the series “Let’s Not Rot,” where she shares videos of herself going about daily tasks with voiceovers and poems she’s written about grief.
She said the videos are a promise she made to herself and her mother to live her best life.
“I had this story inside of me I knew I needed to tell, for her and for me,” Granger told The Post. “A big aspect of this was to motivate me to do things and talk about grief in a way that is more real.”
Bobette and Michael got married in 1992 in Las Vegas. Granger was born five years later, following her brother Andrew. Michael, according to his daughter, was let go from his job at the University of Chicago Medical Center’s organ transplant team around 1998 for “ethical reasons” and the family moved to the St. Louis suburbs a couple of years later.
The Post has reached out to UChicago Medicine.
Granger, a self-described “shy kid,” said her mother experienced physical abuse at her father’s hands that was so intense that, when Granger was 3, “My mom took us kids and ran away and went and stayed with friends.”
“I don’t have a memory of my dad where I wasn’t fearful of him,” Granger said.
But they eventually returned.
“My mom kind of got trapped. She believed in the good parts of him,” Granger said. “My dad was a very charming man. He had this really manipulative pattern of being horrible and abusive to a point where she’d question everything, and then he would turn the charm on and be romantic. He hid it really well to the public, how narcissistic and mentally ill he was.”
Bobette, who worked at an interior design company in Maryland Heights, became the breadwinner for the family, Granger said. Her father, she recalled, was unemployed and “would sit at home all day.”
Granger and her brother, who she says were emotionally but not physically abused by her father, walked on eggshells.
As a child, Granger witnessed the verbal and emotional manipulation her mother faced, shaping her into a small, quiet individual. Softball became her escape, providing a silver lining by allowing her and her mother to bond and travel together, despite their financial limitations.
After graduating from college, Granger’s mother, Bobette, filed for divorce from Michael, initiating a period of anxiety and unrest as her father exhibited stalker-like behavior. Despite the challenges, their apartment served as a safe haven.
Bobette’s work at Make-A-Wish Missouri showcased her selfless and positive nature, bringing light to the lives of children with terminal illnesses. Granger fondly remembers the brief period of peace they shared before tragedy struck.
Reflecting on their time together, Granger cherishes the sense of home they found in their shared apartment, where they could be themselves without fear. Despite the heartbreaking loss, she remains hopeful that sharing their story will inspire others in similar situations to seek healing and empowerment.
