Melissa's mother said Jones was correct that the family felt Melissa wasn't ready for a relationship.

"Her mind was only up to a 15-year-old at the time," Daubenspeck said.

Melissa's family does not blame Jones for the accident, but the family was extremely protective of Melissa, and Jones understands why. "That was their daughter and their granddaughter," he said.

"I still feel guilty," he said. "I work a lot. That's how I get through the day, I guess. . . . I think about her all the time. I took responsibility for that action back then. I blamed myself for the longest time."

Jones had two kids before he met Melissa. (He has since had a third.) He said the tragedy had made him a better father. When his daughter fell off a bunk bed and punctured her kidney not long ago, he didn't leave the hospital for two weeks. He said that was a result of his experience with Melissa and Jasta.

He gave up drinking for a year after the accident, and his children never get into a car without clicking their seat belts.

Melissa said she had no interest in romance with him or any man. She said she could not imagine becoming a parent again. She couldn't bear the pain of losing another child.

Remembering Jasta

On her left shoulder, a year after the accident, Melissa got a tattoo of Jasta, rising out of clouds. On her right shoulder, months later, she followed with a tattoo of Tinkerbell blowing fairy dust across to Jasta.

Melissa is "obsessed," to use her mother's word, with Tinkerbell. Her small SUV has Tinkerbell seat covers and Tinkerbell floor mats. A plastic Tinkerbell hangs from the rearview mirror. Her mother calls the vehicle the "Tinkmobile."

In Melissa's bedroom, along with pictures of Jasta, are pictures of Tinkerbell, and a Tinkerbell snowball, and three Tinkerbell pillows on her bed. "I just like fairies," Melissa explained.

Her mother thinks this reflects her immaturity after the accident.

"She wasn't like that before," Daubenspeck said. "I can tell you that much."

Her brother thinks it's a way for Melissa to keep the memory of Jasta near and alive.

"Jasta loved Cinderella," John Sweeney Jr. said. Both Cinderella and Tinkerbell, he said, "remind Melissa of Jasta, and that's her way of coping."

A letter from prison

Awaiting trial, Steven Williams tried to commit suicide, according to his lawyer, Ronald Elgart.

Later, he got a tattoo on his arm, "In Memory of Jasta."

This made Melissa angry. She feels he has no right to carry her daughter's name on his arm.