My daughter Elizabeth twirled in her wedding gown.

'What do you think mom?' she asked.

'You look beautiful honey,' I smiled.

She smiled back, but her eyes were sad. 

The wedding was just days away, but this wasn't just last-minute nerves.

'You don't have to marry anyone you don't want to,' I said, hugging her tightly.

She nodded. 'I know, mom.'

I wish I'd said more. If I could go back in time, I'd tell her to run.

Elizabeth Amirian was the youngest of my four kids. Nicknamed Bipsey, she was creative, funny and very musical. She wrote her own little comic books and songs, including, when she was seven, a song called The March of the Angry Dishes, because she hated doing the washing up.

Bipsey was about 11 when the kids and I left her father. I'd worked in my husband's art gallery before, but had to start all over again, working night shifts in a factory. It was tough and it didn't help when Bipsey hit her teens and rebelled.

One night I was at work when her older sister Helen, then 17, called.

'Bipsey's run off,' she said. 'I went into her bedroom, and she'd put cushions under the blankets to make me think she was there and asleep.'

It was like something out of a movie. She'd snuck out to be with friends.

Eventually, she got so disobedient, I decided to send her to a strict Christian summer camp.

'If you do, I'll hate you, never speak to you again and hang out with all the bad kids,' she fired back.

'If I don't, I'll lose my job because I have to keep leaving work to get you out of trouble,' I said.

The camp worked. She came back a changed girl and after that focused even more on her music. Her talent was incredible.

I'd bought her a second-hand piano and one day, she played me a beautiful instrumental piece. I was mesmerized. It sounded classical, but I'd never heard it before.

'What's that called?' I asked.

'I just made it up,' she shrugged.

Bipsey completed school and college and then worked as a teaching assistant and barista while trying to make it as a musician. She got an agent and developed a following at venues around our California home.

Her voice was haunting, full of emotion. She sounded a bit like Tori Amos and looked like Drew Barrymore.

'One day you'll get your break,' I'd tell her.

She was about 25 and playing in a local coffee shop when she met Mickey Wagstaff and brought him home for dinner.

Mickey was smartly dressed, very polite and respectful.

'Hello Mr and Mrs Plato,' he said, introducing himself to me and my new husband Michael.

'He seems like a nice boy,' I said to Michael afterwards.

I was impressed, but Michael frowned.

'I don't like him. There's something off with that guy,' he insisted.

I couldn't see it myself, but Michael's reaction against Mickey was strong and I trusted his judgment.

'He reminds me of the prisoners I worked with,' said Michael, who once had a job at a jail.

Mickey was a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which led to problems.

Bipsey said family members and friends had rejected him because he was dating outside of his faith.

'Well, if you ever break up with him, do it gently because he's given up a lot to be with you,' I said.

About a year after they began dating, Bipsey and Mickey visited together.

'I've got some news,' she said. 'Mickey's asked me to marry him.'

Michael glared at them both, so I congratulated them to try to break the tension.

Bipsey had always been a bit alternative. She dressed a little bit like a hippie, dyed her hair bright colors and had tattoos. But over the next year she began dressing more conservatively and covered her body art. I wondered if Mickey was a bit controlling.

'You don't have to let Mickey talk you into stuff you don't think is right,' I advised her.

'It's okay mom,' she said.

She seemed happy and was working on an album called Battle Cry. She'd written a song called Beautiful about a girl who'd met the love of her life and intended to play it at her wedding.

Then, on Christmas 2008, something happened that concerned me.

I'd wrapped up a leather purse and some other gifts for Bipsey, but she arrived in tears.

'I can't keep these,' she said, handing back the wrapped gifts. 'You keep them here for my birthday.'

'Adventists think it's wrong to celebrate Christmas,' she wept.

I gently told Bipsey that it's fine those are Mickey's beliefs, but they didn't have to be hers, too.

'No mom, you keep them. It'll be easier,' she cried.

I was heartbroken and worried about what other rules she was having to follow.

One month before her wedding, on February 9, Bipsey came over to try her gown on.

It should have been a moment to treasure, but she just seemed so sad. I told her she didn't have to go through with the wedding.

We usually saw each other or spoke every other day at least, so I was concerned when I called her three days later, and it went straight to voicemail.

That day I had a colonoscopy and when I came out of anesthesia, I suddenly broke down in tears. It was the strangest thing: I had no idea why, but it felt like my heart was breaking.

My son Isaac picked me up and we went to get sushi. As we were eating a police officer called, identified himself then said, 'You need to come home immediately.'

He wouldn't tell me why. Somehow, in that moment, I just knew Bipsey was dead.

The officer was waiting and confirmed my worst fears. He said Bipsey had been murdered and Mickey had confessed.

When I broke down in the hospital, that was the moment when Mickey slaughtered my daughter.

I was distraught. I knew he was controlling, but I'd not seen this coming.

From the police and news reports, we discovered that Mickey and Bipsey had been in a minivan on the third floor of a local shopping center parking lot.

A security guard thought it looked suspicious and called the police. As a police officer approached the minivan, Mickey launched a frenzied attack on Bipsey with a hunting knife. He cut her throat and stabbed her 39 times as she screamed, 'You don't have to do this. It doesn't have to be this way.'

I couldn't imagine the terror, but there was more awful news.

The day after Bipsey came home to try on the wedding gown, Mickey had kidnapped her. He tied her legs together with a shirt, drove around for two days and raped her.

'She called the wedding off and that's why he killed her,' I sobbed to Michael.

The police later confirmed it.

Bipsey's brother Isaac was a youth pastor and he conducted her funeral service. We played the haunting music from the album she was about to release.

If I closed my eyes, it felt like my daughter was there.

Bipsey had traveled throughout the US, Russia and Belgium and wanted to travel more, so I scattered her ashes in the ocean.

The police charged Michael with murder, kidnap and rape.

In a photo released while he was being held, he had long hair and a beard.

'He looks like Charlie Manson,' I gasped to Michael.

Of course, by the time of his trial, he cut his hair, shaved and was wearing a suit and tie. He looked like a clean-cut young executive.

Denying murder, he said he hadn't planned to kill Bipsey but panicked, snapped and killed her when the police officer approached the minivan.

Mickey's lawyer claimed that, though he'd said he raped Bipsey, that's not what he meant. She explained Mickey and Bipsey had consensual sex in the van but, because he was a very strict Seventh Day Adventist, he considered that rape.

According to his defense, Bipsey wasn't kidnapped either, because her hands weren't tied and she could have escaped at any time.

'She didn't escape because she was terrified,' I thought.

Thankfully, the jury didn't buy any of it: He was convicted on all charges and got life without parole.

It should have been the death penalty.

We released Bipsey's album Battle Cry online and it's comforting to know people can still hear her wonderful voice.

Bipsey was such a sweet and sensitive girl and I know she'd have called off the wedding as gently as possible.

That wasn't good enough for him, though. He was obsessed and decided if he couldn't have my beautiful girl, nobody could.

It's why now I've made it my mission to warn as many women as I can about how to break up with a man. Even if you trust him, even if he's never been violent or abusive, do it in a public place, sensitively and have a friend nearby.

I wish Bipsey had. I wish she'd called me or a friend. It might just have saved her life.

My daughter would be 44 now.

Mickey didn't just murder her, he murdered the potential children she would have had one day; the grandchildren and her future descendants.

And all because she called off a wedding.