In the Family is the twentieth episode of Season 8. It aired on December 5, 2014.
Summary[]
Sandi Nieves' troubled eight-year marriage to her former stepfather, David Folden, triggers a series of misfortunes for her, including a failed relationship with a younger man, an abortion, and David's rescinding his adoption of her three oldest children. In June 1998, seeking revenge against her children's fathers, Sandi sets a fire in her home and lets her four daughters die of smoke inhalation, then tries to blame her surviving son for the crime. She is sentenced to death.
20-year-old Texan Nicole Yesconis is a spoiled brat who hates her father and stepmother, Robert and Aletha, yet expects them to continue supporting her financially. When her father threatens to cut her off, Nicole enlists boyfriend Jeremiah Wetmore and his friend Michael Heath to murder Robert and Aletha in January 1994. Jeremiah is sentenced to life, Michael to 35 years, and Nicole to 40 years to life.
Farzana and Iftikhar Ahmed are strict, conservative Pakistani British immigrants who are upset by their teenage daughter Shafilea's embrace of Western culture, which they are unable to suppress despite holding the girl hostage in her own home. After Shafilea attempts suicide to avoid an arranged marriage to an older man, her parents suffocate her in September 2003, then dispose of her body in a river and swear the rest of their family to secrecy. After nearly a decade of evading justice, the Ahmeds are turned in by their surviving daughter and are serving 25 years to life.