After over 15 years of imprisonment and psychological
torment for doing to a younger boy the same thing that older boys and men had
done to me all my adolescent life, I was paroled at last. But, I wasn’t free,
and knew I never would be. My rage was my prison. It took a lot of effort to
keep it hidden. But, I’d been practicing for several years, preparing
explicitly for this very opportunity. Soon I would make society pay for what it
did to me, but first I had to make sure I could hit them without getting hit
back. I had to make them unwary of my intentions, and I knew exactly how.
I was the model parolee. I got my first job within
days of my release, as a telemarketer for Time Life Libraries, Inc. I never missed
a rent payment for my room at the Interaction Transition (I.T.) House in
Seattle, and even saved up enough money within just three or four months for
first, last, and deposit on an apartment of my own near downtown in a newly
renovated complex, called the Tuscany, with all brand new appliances,
carpeting, and bathroom fixtures. I especially liked the large mirrored closet
doors that made my new studio apartment look twice as big as it really was.
I registered as a “sex offender” on my first day in Seattle,
right after my older homosexual friend --- and soon to be lover --- Dave,
picked me up at the Sea-Tac Airport. My mother was with him, and after a quick
stop at the City-County building downtown (so I could register), we all three
went to the Seattle Centre to celebrate my release. Nothing could have been
more surreal than that day, especially looking up at the Space Needle with my
mom by my side --- as I once did as a child only 17 years hence.
But, the unrealness of it all didn’t distract me for a
moment. Most of my life had been one unreal/unbelievable moment after another.
So the surrealness of my first day on parole was taken in stride. I hit the
ground running without even giving any of it a second thought. I had a clear
goal in front of me, and until I reached it little else mattered to me.
Of course I couldn’t let the obsession show, so on the
outside, for my mother’s sake and for Dave’s sake, I was like a kid on his
first visit to a Toys-R-Us store. Not that I didn’t feel the excitement that I
projected --- feeling it was part of the art --- but deep inside, in the part
of myself that I ended up referring to as “the dungeon”, I sat coldly watching
myself pretending on the surface, knowing it was all just for show; knowing
nothing was real, not my mom, not Dave, not my excitement, not even the city.
Only one thing was real: my rage. It was the only thing in my life that never
changed; the one constant that kept my head above water, and the only part of
my reality that made any sense to me. It was my raison d’etre, and my love.
Everything went as I planned. I avoided all the traps
and pitfalls layed out by the system to keep people recycling through the
system once they are caught up in it; like the narc dressed like a hippie on
the busride to work one day who asked me where he could buy some weed. If I had
so much as just mentioned the part of town he should go look in then I would
have violated my parole. So I said, honestly as it turned out at the time, “I
have no idea, sorry I can’t help you.”
Traps like that are what account for the extremely
high recidivism rates for parolees, not actual crime. Not that I didn’t commit
a crime or two while I was on parole. I just never did anything “stupid”, like
buying drugs from someone I didn’t know, or dropping my pants in front of
someone in the park who wasn’t already hard and waiting for me to do so. Once I
went so far as to steal a boy’s underpants out of an unlocked locker at a
public swimpool, but I never said as much as “hi” to the boy himself, nor did I
let him see me checking him out as he dressed into his swim trunks. In fact, I
was always extra careful around children at all times. Aside from the
underpants, which I only kept for a few days before I got rid of them as “too
risky”, I never did or kept anything questionable in that regard. Unlike
“stupid” pedophiles, I kept my obsession hidden deep in my dungeon, and very
very rarely ever let it manifest on the surface of my reality.
That’s why I never got caught. People who “knew” me
“knew” that I was not a pedophile, or otherwise sexually interested in
children. I never sought children out in parks, or stores, not even just to
look. I did not keep child related items or pictures in my apartment (again,
with rare and extremely limited exceptions, like those underpants).
Once I was using the men’s room at the Jack In The Box
restaurant on Broadway and a gorgeous little boy, no more than six years old,
came in all by himself. I could have easily pretended to wash my hands while I
checked him out and no one would have been the wiser. But instead I did what
most men would do; I hurried up and got out of there before anyone thought it
was even a little strange that I didn’t hurry up and got out of there. As it
turned out the boy’s mother was waiting just outside the door, and she actually
smiled at me when she saw me rushing out just seconds after her boy went in. I
understood “the cod” of “expected behavior” around children the way most
pedophiles never do.
I later reported this “incident” to my parole officer,
who in turn reported it to the polygraph examiner, who in turn included it in
my bi-annual parolee polygraph exam; I passed with flying colors when he asked,
“Did you attempt to peep on a boy in a public restroom?” (or something like
that). It was because of this nearly complete detachment of my “dungeon” from
my surface reality that allowed me to convince so many people, including my
parole officers, and psychologists, that I was not interested in children for
sex at all.
In fact, I even started to fool myself, in a sense
(actually, I had to fool myself first if I really wanted to fool anyone else).
Only by fooling myself could I fool others without even thinking about it. But
there still had to be at least a thin thread of truth that ran up from my
“dungeon” or else I wasn’t fooling anybody. Without that thread of malice then
I would have nothing to hide, and I would have been exactly what I pretended to
be; an honest to God repentant rapist who never wanted to hurt anyone. But my
act was so good that after a while I started to question my need for that
thread. And that question ended up becoming a major source of stress and
internal conflict for me.
Did I really need vengeance? Could I not live out my
life without ever again thinking about all “they” took from me, and all the
pain they cause me and my family? Couldn’t I just become the content, if not
happy, person I pretended to be? Must I rape and kill, as I had for so long
planned, in order to avenge my years of degradation, humiliation, pain, and
fear?
I asked these same questions over and over so often
that it became almost a melody of desperation in my mind. I honestly did not
want to rape or kill anyone. I was searching for the way to an answer that
would let me out of my real prison; my “dungeon”, as it were. But no amount of
pleading, or rationalizing, or even good reasons could dissuade me from the one
answer that overcame all attempts to change the course I was on. That one
answer was simple and pure: I swore to myself that I would have my revenge,
that I would make “them” pay for what they so ignorantly and so callously had
done to me. It was that oath that gave me the will to live, and the desire to
prosper, just so I could hurt those who hurt me, and my family. Justice is a
cruel and demanding god, and one that is impossible to reason with. No real
evil is ever done in the name of evil.
I was doing so well. I was honored as Rookie of the
Year at Time Life Libraries. It seems I had a real knack for salesmanship. I
averaged over $12 an hour with commissions, which was pretty good for someone
fresh out of prison and no job history to speak of.
I also applied for a job with a Temp agency, and
eventually got placed doing tech support for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator over
the Christmas rush. My employer reports were so positive from that job that I
got placed again almost immediately doing inside sales support for a medium
sized software company in Brothel (just North of Seattle). They hired three
temps to help with a new version release of their “Laplink” software, but they
kept me on and even assigned me to a cubicle in with the regular sales staff
after they let the other temps go. Amongst other things, I became the technical
liaison between the sales staff and the new company-wide database technician.
My job was to train the sales staff on how to use the new database software,
and also relay the sales staff requests for changes and updates to the I.T.
staff. This, and other aspects of my job, required me to communicate frequently
with people from several different departments, including the CEO on at least
one occasion. I was even invited once to a sales staff meeting in hopes that I
could provide some “fresh input” of ideas (I didn’t), which really made me feel
out of place, though honored at the same time. I never got invited again after
that, but I did get invited to join the company softball team, which I did, and
played several games that summer as a fielder.
Because of the increased income from the inside sales
job (I never did any actual sales, I was more like support for the sales
staff), I was able to afford a car. I bought a used (’87) Buick Skylark at a
big used car sales event at the Northgate mall. Of course I did it by taking
out a high-interest auto-loan, but I had a car! My first! (A week later I got a
notice from the bank demanding a larger down-payment; money I didn’t have, and
I almost died from the heartbreak of it. But my friend Dave bailed me out, not
by loaning me the money for the larger down-payment, but instead by co-signing
for the car, which satisfied the bank with his credit. Of course Dave got
burned when I absconded with the car about a year later, but he was able to
save his credit by just paying off the loan, and I eventually, though slowly,
paid him back after I got out of prison and moved to Fargo.)
I loved my car, it had power everything, A/C, and the
larger six-cylinder engine. The previous owner, literally a little old lady,
who I met when she handed me complete service records from the day she bought
it brand new, right down to every scheduled oil change and tired rotation.
There was a design flaw in the engine mounts that caused the larger engine to
vibrate the car at certain speeds, but other than that the car was in perfect
condition. It was also the last piece of my plan that I needed to enact my
revenge against society, and as such marked the beginning of the end of my
parole.
With a car I had the mobility I needed to carry out my
plan. And my plan was to establish a base of circumstances that would allow me
to seek out and take advantage of any stray child I came across. This “stray
child” strategy is a classic in the annals of nature making it a tried and true
technique. I knew from studying police tactics and procedures that it is also
almost impossible to get caught so long as you maintain stealth and distance
(i.e. lack of connection to the “crime scene” and/or victim). The police rely
on pure chance to solve crimes of opportunity like this. So, my plan was to
reduce the odds; and a car was a huge odds reducer.
Another part of my plan was to act as soon as
practical. I knew that the odds of completing my parole successfully were
already against me. Being a model parolee helped reduce the odds of my being
violated, but those odds were still high and against me. So, I knew I had to
act quick, or lose my chance, possibly forever (note: I am relaying the frame
of mind I was in at the time; the truth of all this is only relevant in so far
as it is what I believed at the time – even though my current beliefs and understanding
are quite different).
Interesting enough, though my focus back then was
clearly on enacting my revenge much of the time, I still had a very active and
sophisticated life in many other regards. Dave and I joined a club of gay
couples that met monthly for social functions. I visited my mother in Tacoma
often, and my sister in Poulsbo a little less often. I sometimes attended
parties where I was invited by co-workers (at Time Life Libraries), and even
got involved with a couple different women and lots of different men on
occasion.
One of my parole conditions was that I enroll in an
outpatient sex offender treatment program. At first I attended some weekly
meetings held by a company that was founded by an x-con who got a doctorate
degree in psychology and then started his company catering to sex offenders who
were required (like me) to receive “sex offender treatment” as a
parole/probation condition or court order. It quickly became clear to me that
this was just another scam designed to get money for simply writing meaningless
reports; in this case the reports were “treatment” reports to the
parole/probation officers or court judges.
I never actually met the x-con himself. Even though he
signed off on all the reports, they were actually written by one of several
“therapists” who worked (or rather, did all the work) for him. In my case the
therapist was an extremely manipulative and domineering woman with (to me at
least) very obvious dominance issues over men. She ran the group meeting like a
psychological dominatrix, controlling every aspect, and even steering the
conversations with obvious manipulative tactics in order to get the men to say
what she needed them to say for her reports. If anyone failed to cooperate,
like me for instance, she would stir the group into a frenzied and practiced
attack on that person’s position, whatever it might be.
I couldn’t believe the kind of garbage therapy she was
dishing out for those men. Just for example, I remember one man disclosing to
her (in group) that he had had anonymous sex with men in a public park. Her
advice was to seek anonymous sex at a sex club instead. She referred to this as
a “responsible alternative”.
At the time I had never heard of either (public sex or
sex clubs; yes, I was that naïve; remember, I had been incarcerated since I was
16, and a very inexperienced 16 at that). So for me it was all food for my own
perversions (i.e. it made me “sicker”).
I ended up getting permission from my parole officer
to change to a private therapist who specialized in therapy for gay men, not
sex offenders. His rates were a bit higher, but the sessions were one-on-one,
much closer to where I lived (the previous meetings were in Bellevue, a long
bus ride at the time for me, and late in the evening so if I missed my bus I
wouldn’t be able to get home), and less frequent (monthly instead of weekly).
Most parole officers would never have approved such a
change. But my first parole officer in Seattle was close to retirement and more
interested in treating his charges like human beings than x-cons. I really
respected him for this. I had to switch to a downtown parole officer when I
moved out of the I.T. House into the Tuscany apartment, so I only had him for
short time. But I honestly believe that he was the one who really made me
question my need for revenge against society. Not that I ever spoke to him
about it, but the way he spoke to me, and treated me, made me feel welcomed and
wanted. I really think that if I could have kept him as my parole officer that
I might have actually successfully completed my parole (i.e. gave up my desire
for revenge and become a “responsible” member of society). I make this claim
based on the fact that every time I chose the path of revenge (or, “justice” as
it is often called from the other side of the fence) I did so as a direct
consequence of some major rejection. So, feeling wanted and accepted,
especially by an official officer of society, really made a big difference in
how I felt in general, the choices I made, and in my overall reaction to any
rejections I experienced.
The subsequent parole officers I was assigned to
treated me like an x-con, always with suspicion and cold detachment. Shortly
after my move to the Tuscany and getting a new parole officer (my first parole
officer actually vouched for me so I could get into the Tuscany, and the
manager --- a restricted marine who, along with his wife, became my friends and
invited me over for dinner on occasion --- told me later that when he found out
I was a sex offender he was going to reject my application, until my parole
officer convinced him to give me a chance; any other parole officer would have
remained “neutral” in a situation like that and I would have been rejected once
again) I was soon visiting public parks at night looking for some anonymous
“acceptance” that I desperately needed just to feel “normal”. I did this, of
course, without telling anyone, not even my lover, Dave. I always used
“protection” at least, and the cops, undercover or not, were always so obvious
I could avoid them easily. The only real threat was getting mugged or otherwise
assaulted, but that was a threat no matter what I was doing (and it only
happened once, when a man decided he wasn’t finished pleasuring himself after I
was, so he grabbed my privates to prevent me from leaving and I just coldly
told him, “If you don’t let go, in three seconds I’m going to break your neck.”
He calculated the threat for two seconds, then let go, and that was that). I
never took risks with STDs, by not using a condom for example, and I always
made sure there was enough light so I could inspect the bodies I had sex with
before doing so. And I never caught so much as crabs or anything else, which I
admit was some luck, but mostly caution (you might be surprised to learn how
cautious most other men were as well, the in-cautious ones don’t last long by
virtue of simple natural selection at work).
I got along so well with the “gay therapist” that he
invited me to attend an annual retreat that he held for select clients, all
expenses paid! This was shortly after I had bought my car, but still living in
the Tuscany apartment. The therapist convinced me to leave my car in the garage
(a small parking space that cost me an additional $120 a month in the basement
of the Tuscany) and car pool with another one of his clients, Dave “Wingy”
Wingert, who turned out to be a popular day-time radio show host for one of the
biggest stations in Seattle. I had never heard of him before (I wasn’t much
into day-time radio) but he was nice and we got along famously (get it?
“famously”?). He had just bought a “pre-owned” Lexus, and was happy to take it
out for a stretch, and “share the wealth”, so to speak, with someone less
fortunate. (Actually, for what he told me he paid for the only slightly used
Lexus I wasn’t very impressed. It seemed to me that the main “feature” of the
car was the name, “Lexus”. My Buick Skylark had everything his Lexus had,
except the price tag and the name brand.)
The retreat was on the Eastern slopes of the Cascade
mountain range, in a modern cabin next to a stream set in the forest, but with
several other similar cabins all neatly lined up in a row along the stream;
extremely bourgeois. We slept in our own sleeping bags (one of the “must bring”
items) on narrow bunks that seemed to occupy odd places throughout the cabin
(like along the stairs, and in the upstairs foyer). There were about ten or
eleven other “clients” in attendance, and the activities as I recall centered
around group meetings in the cabin dayroom (though instead of sitting around in
chairs arranged in a circle like some typical therapy group we sat on far more
comfortable cabin furniture arrange haphazardly).
Aside from “Wingy” and the therapist (whose name I
just remembered was Glen), there were only two other men at this retreat who
stand out in my memory. The first was the top psychiatrist from the University
of Washington’s psychological trauma research center, who despite the retreat
“rule” of no sex, screwed my brains out several times over that weekend (when I
tried to apologize to Glen later about so flagrantly break the rules he said,
“No problem”. The other retreat members, who couldn’t avoid knowing that we
were having sex every chance we got, thought it was “very romantic”. Glen was referring
to the fact that on the second night of the retreat, the professor and I shared
the same sleeping bag outside on the back porch, “under the stars”. Of course
the real reason we slept “under the stars” was so we could have a little
privacy to do, you know what!).
It seems I have a thing for successful doctors, as
I’ve had flings with several over the years. Or, maybe it's they who have a
“thing” for me; I don’t know. All I know is that when someone tells me they’re
a doctor I become like putty for them to do with what they like. (I wonder now
how much that has to do with the fact that my very first orgasm, at the age of
thirteen, was at the hands of a doctors as I lay with my pants down on his
examining table while he masturbated me. When it happened I had no idea what an
orgasm was, so I had no idea I was technically being “molested”: all I knew was
that it felt good; very, very good.) Needless to say, I didn’t initiate
anything with the doctor at this retreat, I just went along with whatever he
wanted, and that seemed to turn him on more than anything. I admit though, I
was certainly turned on as well. Not only because he was a successful doctor,
but also because he was tall (taller than me by several inches; hence over
6’3”), muscular, and good-looking, which made him practically irresistible to
my libido (which he seemed to know well). I saw him a couple of times more
after the retreat, but as it turned out our personalities clashed (we were both
sexual narcissists), so it never went any further than that.
The other man that I remember from this retreat was a
short overweight balding man. He was also, I found out later, the wealthiest
man there. I was told that he was the owner and CEO of a mid-sized
manufacturing company in Seattle with over a thousand employees. But that’s not
the reason I remember him (money has never impressed me much, especially not at
that point in my life). What I remember about him is what he said to me during
a trust-building exercise that Glen asked us to do as part of the retreat.
It was in the afternoon of the second day (a
Saturday), before the doctor and I had had a chance to get really steamy (that
happened Saturday evening). Glen had asked everyone to pair off in twos, and I
was approached by this fat bald guy and asked I I’d be his partner for the
exercise. I agreed for no particular reason, and then Glen instructed everybody
to find a private space to talk, and to share a secret with each other.
My “partner” and I headed out back down toward the
stream. I honestly don’t remember what “secret” I shared with him (though it
certainly wasn’t anything about the contents of my “dungeon”) but his “secret”
stands as one of the many shocking revelations I received relatively late in my
life. This man, this multi-millionaire and CEO of his own successful company,
told me, the x-con/sex offender (by this time I had already voluntarily
disclosed that information), that he secretly wished he could be a popular and
likeable person, like me!
Like me?!
I was flabbergasted! Everyone else at this retreat
were very successful gay members of society. I was a social outcast invited on
a whim by a therapist who probably just wanted to fill an empty bunk (that’s
what I thought at the time, but I realized later that Glen genuinely respected
me as a person and knew I would be accepted by these men for who I was, which
he thought would be “therapeutic” for me; Glen was one of those rare souls who
understood naturally what a person needs to “heal”). Once more I was learning
that the negative way in which I saw myself wasn’t how other people saw me. I
grew up believing I was an ugly child, but all my childhood pictures show a
genuinely beautiful and healthy boy! I thought I was stupid too, and a slow
learner. But even though I had only completed the ninth-grade when I got to
prison all the academic level tests showed me to be at college levels for all
categories! And now, after believing all my life that I was an unlikeable
“dork”, I was being told by a man with no ulterior motives that I was popular,
and likeable! Wow!
I actually ended up consoling this guy with platitudes
that emphasized the fact that I did not see myself as popular at all, and if I
were, then there was certainly nothing to be desired about it since I could
perceive no benefits from being so. But his “secret” stuck with me, and has
helped open my eyes to how I so often deceive myself, both positively and
negatively, ever since.
As I already mentioned, throughout all my adventures
on parole in Seattle I was constantly struggling with the “monster” that lurked
menacingly in the dungeon of my mind. I had never anticipated such a struggle
to ensue and was quite unprepared for it. The question remained: Should I
compromise my private principles by breaking such a sacred promise to myself;
the promise that “kept me alive” all those years of unjust torment, the promise
to get even? Or, should I take my revenge as planned, without remorse, and with
clear conscience? There were a couple of incidents that finally pushed me over
the ledge of retribution, but in hindsight I was destined to be pushed over
that ledge one way or another by sheer proximity alone. It’s one thing to visit
the edge, look down, then back away. It’s completely another to just stand
there, looking both ways over and over, trying to decide whether or not to
jump, until it’s too late.
Well, not surprisingly, I didn’t jump. I got pushed.
And one of the people who pushed me was the new polygraph examiner. He was an
x-cop, and unlike the previous examiner, who seemed to actually want to help a
parolee pass their routine exams, this pig clearly brought his “good guy, bad
guy” attitude with him into the exam room, and all x-cons --- as far as he was
concerned --- were the bad guys.
I only ended up being examined by him twice, and both
times he pushed and pushed and pushed, until he had what he wanted; proof that
I was a “bad guy”.
The first time he examined me caught me completely off
guard. Though I had been struggling with my conscience, I had not yet done
anything that could seriously be considered a real violation of my parole. This
x-cop decided otherwise. During the pre-exam interview I disclosed to him
(thinking he’d be on my side) that I had accidently picked up my brother’s
handgun, which he had removed from his belt and set next to the computer in my
apartment during a visit. I explained that the holster it was in looked like a
triangular wallet, and completely concealed the weapon inside. I told the
examiner that I didn’t realize it was my brother’s gun (which I knew he was
licensed to carry concealed) until I felt the weight of it in my hand, at which
time I scolded my brother for even having it in my apartment, and asked him to
take it out and lock it in his car.
Now, I’m tempted here to leave my story about “the gun
incident” just as I told that x-cop examiner. But, the truth is that in an
effort to befriend my brother during the visit I had expressed an interest in
his gun, that I knew he was very proud of and always had on him. I asked him to
show it to me, at which point he removed it from the holster, ejected the clip,
insured the champer was empty, then handed it to me unloaded. I feigned
fascination for his sake, then handed it back. I then explained to my brother
that even being near a gun could potentially get me in trouble, and asked him
not to bring it, or at least not mention it, when he visits. The only reason I
told the polygraph examiner anything was to avoid a “fail” on a question like,
“Have you touched a gun or any other weapon in violation of your parole?”
Well, I actually passed that particular polygraph
exam, but that oinker filed a report about the “gun incident”, calling it a
“parole violation” and possible criminal offense. The exam was on a Friday
evening, so I had to go the entire weekend thinking I would be arrested on the
violation on Monday, as soon as my parole officer saw the report. That was all
the “push” I needed. Even though on Monday, when I called my P.O. to get the
bad news, she told me not to worry about it. She said she had to submit the
report to the parole board, but that she was recommending no violation. I
thought I “skated” on that one, but the close call only reminded me of how
terribly easy it would be for me to get violated for some completely stupid and
unexpected reason at any time, in spite of all my efforts to be a model
parolee.
When the parole board saw the report they ordered that
I be arrested and held for a violation hearing. But, that was many months (as I
recall) later. In the meantime I had gotten the push I needed to step up my
plans for personal justice before I lost my chance, possibly forever. (A
“deadly weapon” possession charge could send me back to prison for at least ten
years, or more, and Washington state was notorious for taking criminal charges
to the extreme limits. They once convicted a man for manslaughter after he was
arrested for eluding the police, because one of the “investigating officers” at
the arrest scene walked off a cliff in the dark and fell to his death, while
the suspect sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car! And that’s just one
example of the state’s insane lust for what I calls “justice”. So in my mind I
had good reason to fear being arrested at any time for almost anything, just
because in the state’s mind I was a “criminal” and therefor fair game).
Consequently I redoubled my efforts to find a
vulnerable child to kidnap, rape, and murder (because that’s exactly what I
felt was “expected” from me, or at least “feared”; thus making it the most
potent “punishment” I could invoke personally against my most feared and hated
enemy, the “faceless” society that condemned me as a child and took my life
away before I even understood what life was) as my “poetic” revenge. Any
question of ever being able to forgive “them” and move on with my life was
answered by that x-cop polygraph examiner’s accusations: NO! He made it
imminently clear that I could never have my life back, that I would never be
accepted by society no matter how hard I tried to be “normal”. And worst of
all, that I would always be forced to live in fear of my prison nightmare happening
all over again, at any time, for any reason. That “pig” being the pig he was,
accomplished exactly what he wanted, to make me feel HIS power and control over
my life, and my lack of power and control over my own life. That’s what pigs
do, ignorantly believing that their imposed dominance will somehow make things
better, and completely ignoring the so very obvious fact that it consistently
only makes things worse. (My first parole officer was no such pig. More people
like him in positions of “authority” in this world would make for far fewer
people like me.)
(I should emphasize again, that I am relaying my
thinking at that time as best as I can, and that this is not necessarily my
thinking now; i.e. I have since broadened my understanding, to say least.)
I got my chance on July 5th, 1996. It was
just a week before I was planning to move in with a couple of gay meth-heads,
paying them $250 a month for an extra room in the house they rented together
right on the North Seattle city limit line. The move was meant to save money.
Rent had gone up at the Tuscany, and the expense of a parking space, not to
mention the car itself, was a little more than I could afford; I had bit off
more than I could chew, and this move was my first step backward from all the
progress I had been making until then.
Joe and Ed tried real hard to be accepted as a regular
gay couple. My friend, Dave, had met them, apparently the same way he met me,
through a personal ad in the Seattle Gay News (I don’t remember ever asking
whose ad it was, but I’m sure it was Dave’s). I never used meth with them, and
they kept their meth use to themselves. But we smoked a lot of pot together.
But, before I moved in I was in their neighborhood
visiting my lady-friend, Dee. I picked her up at her home, took her to a Dairy
Queen restaurant, and bought enough ice cream for her and her family (two young
girls and estranged husband, who stayed home) and a sundae for myself. When I
dropped her off back at her house (she lived about five blocks west of Joe and
Ed’s house just across Aurora Avenue) her husband, Lee, came outside and
started yelling at me for taking Dee away from her family obligations. Instead
of just driving away, as Dee tried to get me to do, I rolled down my window and
invited him to say his piece.
Apparently he, Dee, and the girls, had planned to
watch a rented movie together as a family when I showed up “out of the blue”;
and ran off with the children’s mother. I listened to his complaint patiently,
but instead of defending myself, or Dee, I simply told him that his was a grown
woman responsible for her own choices, and if he had any issues with her
decisions then he needed to talk to her, not me. I have to give the man some
respect though, because as clearly offended as he rightfully was, he was still
able to see the logic in my reasoning, and promptly aborted his verbal assault
on me and went inside, presumably to finish the conversation with Dee. (I
actually spoke to Dee about this whole incident later, and told her that I had
to take sides against her in that case: she should have put her family ahead of
me, and I made sure she understood that in the future I hoped she would.)
So anyway, after dropping Dee off I drove onto Aurora
Avenue, but instead of heading home downtown I decided to find someplace to
pull over so I could eat my ice cream before it melted. I spotted some children
out in front of a motel at the same time and decided to park across the Avenue in
an empty parking lot from where I could see the motel as I ate my ice cream. By
the time I had parked in a secluded enough spot I could no longer see any
children at the motel, but the main reason I stopped was to enjoy my sundae, so
that’s what I did.
What happened next was a point of no return in the
tragic course of my life. My struggle to decide if I would take revenge, and
become the child rapist/killer that society feared and expected at the same
time, seemed to finally resolve itself (though, as I have admitted many times
since, I actually made the decision long before it became evident to me).
As I sat quietly enjoying my ice cream, I saw two
young girls suddenly appear out of nowhere and dart across the five lanes of
Aurora Avenue almost directly in front of me. They crossed the road coming in
my direction, but then quickly passed out of my view to my right because I was
parked right next to a building (to be in its shadow). But, it was clear to me
that they were unescorted and up to some sort of mischief.
I remember clearly the thought that went thought my
head at that very moment: “You stupid little girls!”
I opened my door and dropped the remains of the sundae
on the concrete, then started the car and pulled onto Aurora in their
direction. I saw them walking hurriedly on the shoulder and then as I drove
past they veered off the road completely and into the shadows between two
closed business buildings. I knew if I could catch them there they’d be mine,
free and clear; nobody would see anything.
Everything seemed to just fall into place for me to
kidnap those girls. I pulled around the block and parked in the shadows of some
tall bushes on a side street behind the businesses where I saw the girls
disappear. Then I got out and walked half a block to where I thought they’d be.
But, when I got there the girls were nowhere in sight. So I quickly gave up and
headed back for my car, and that was when I spotted them climbing over a low
concrete wall coming out from behind another closed business. They were
directly in front of me and I had caught them in the act of trespassing; stupid
little girls indeed!
No planned kidnapping could ever have worked out so
perfectly. I had only tell the girls that I owned the property that they were
just caught trespassing on, and that gave me all the “authority” I needed to
accost and question them. I ordered them back behind the building that they had
just come from, under the pretense that I wanted to see what they were doing
back there. Then I asked several questions to determine exactly how vulnerable
they were: Where do you live? At the motel across the avenue. Why are you here?
Our brother sent us out to buy cigarettes from the vending machine in the
lobby, but we wanted to explore. Where is your mother? She’s playing bingo.
What are your names? I’m Carmen, she’s Sammiejo. We’re half-sisters (though
Carmen was clearly the younger of the two, she was the dominant and assertive
one). How old are you? I’m nine; I’m eleven. Do you realize how much trouble
you are in right now? No answer, just wide eyes.
It so happened that I had parked my car directly next
to the place where the narrow alley behind the building (where the girls were)
came out to the side street, and in a shadow, so it was easy to get the girls
into my car with no chance of anyone seeing anything. I told the girls I was
only going to teach them a lesson, but I already knew by this point that I was
going to rape and kill them both, all according to plan. Justice was to be had
after all!
I drove the girls --- both crouched on the floor of
the car --- out to a location in Bothell near to where I worked for the
software company. It was an abandoned farm house that I’d found on a lunch
break once while driving around for the fun of it. I parked behind the house,
then told the girls they could get up off the floor. Sammiejo sat up front with
me and Carmen was in the backseat. I remember there was a full moon that night
and as I sat waiting to make sure all was quiet (and that I hadn’t been
followed by the cop car I saw a few moments before), Sammiejoe asked some
childish question about the moon and I answered as if she were a niece and we
were just spending some family time together.
At one point Sammiejo insisted that she saw someone,
“or maybe a ghost” in a darkened window of the house out in front of the car. I
thought it was just her childish imagination at the time and completely
dismissed the notion that we weren’t alone. I found out years later that there
was in fact a homeless woman in the house at the time, and she saw me in the
car but thought only that we were young lovers looking for privacy from our parents.
She gave the police a very vague description of me and my car when she came
forward after seeing the publicity about the bodies being found in a shallow
grave over a year later by a construction crew that was clearing the land for a
new office building.
After I tried (and failed) to rape the girls inside
the abandoned house (still oblivious to the woman inside also), I masturbated
to achieve climax, then took the girls into a patch of trees next to the house
and killed them as quickly and cleanly as I could. Then I hid their bodies in
some berry briars, wrapped the VHS-C tape I had made in an oily rag and hid it
in the engine compartment under the hood (in case I got pulled over on the way
home – a pretty stupid thing to do I realize now), then drove back to my
apartment at the Tuscany. (I hid the video tape under a false step in my
apartment, but only kept it a few days before I destroyed it in the microwave
and threw it away). I didn’t keep any other souvenirs.
The next day was a Saturday. I drove back out to
Bothell to make sure there was nothing happening around the abandoned farm
house. Then I stopped at a Home Depot and bought and pick and shovel (again,
stupidly). Then I drove home and waited until the wee hours of the next morning
(2 or 3 a.m.) before driving back to the farm house, and burying the girls
beneath a pile of old rotting wood. (I used the pile of wood to cover any signs
of that something had been buried there.) Then I hid the shovel and pick in the
abandoned barn that stood about 50 yards from the house, and went home again,
exhausted.
The missing girls were in the news, but there was a
lot of speculation that they had run away. That week my parole officer came to
see me at work (something she had never done before) and she brought a “trainee”
with her for the interview. We met at a cafeteria near the officer where I
worked and she asked me a bunch of questions about why I had asked permission
to visit my father in Nevada on short notice. I told her that my grandmother
had fallen ill (she had) and I wanted to offer help and support during the
crisis. Of course the real reason I wanted to go was to get as far away from
the crime scene as possible (another stupid move), which I knew she suspected.
I also knew that the man with her was no trainee. He sat quietly the whole
time, clearly paying careful attention to me, but not acting nervous or
apologetic the way a normal trainee would. Besides, I had never heard of parole
officer trainees, and doubted if there even was such a thing. Of course he was
a detective, and they we rechecking me out as a possible suspect. I’m sure that
if they knew how close we were to those little girls’ bodies as we ate lunch
that day I would have been more than a casual suspect. But, they didn’t know,
and my nonchalance about the whole meeting seemed to put them both at ease. I
know now, from Federal court proceedings more than ten years later, that I
never became a serious suspect in this case, not even after the bodies were
found (at which time I was in the King County jail, in Seattle, for absconding
parole, and they “investigated” me again as a possible suspect, again under a
transparent “cover”, (i.e. pretending to be another inmate that I could tell
was a cop almost as soon as I saw him because of the way he acted all wrong),
and I again played it off nonchalantly and this never became a serious
suspect).
A couple of weeks later I moved in with Joe and Ed and
gave up my Tuscany studio. This was a definite step backwards that totally
disrupted all the progress I had been making before. I started getting high
with my new roommates almost every day, which of course resulted in my getting
a “dirty U.A.” (urine analysis) for cannabis (I’ve never used meth in my life,
despite what some of my “official” records assume), which in itself is not
enough to get my parole revoked, but the gun incident with my brother was.
Joe and Ed, as I have already mentioned, were a gay
couple. I’m not really sure about what that means though. I only actually had
sex with them once, upon Joe’s invitation. But, I’m not really sure if I’d call
what we did “sex”. They were into weird stuff that I’d only read a little about
in novels once in a while, but never took an active interest in myself. They
must have sensed my disinterest, because I never got invited to have “sex” with
them again.
Because I now lived about 20 miles from downtown, and
away from all of my favorite anonymous sex parks, I started frequenting a
nearby park, that was usually completely deserted at night when I liked to go.
I would park in a secluded location then go into the woods and take off my
clothes then run around naked and masturbate to fantasies of letting men I meet
use me for sex. It remained a mere fantasy, for that particular park at least,
but it was more than enough to keep me sexually satisfied.
On Halloween my “girlfriend” Dee stopped by Joe and Ed’s
house so she and her girls could show off their costumes. They came inside and
visited for less than ten minutes in the living room only. Apparently because I
stayed (and didn’t run out the back door or something) after the children
arrived I had violated another condition of my parole (i.e. no contact with
minors without prior approval). Actually, the violation hinged on the fact that
I greeted them and complimented them on their costumes. My parole officer had
told me previously that some brief contact with minors was okay, as long as I did
not initiate it or prolong it. I felt well within those limitations during this
visit, but that pig polygraph examiner apparently felt otherwise and put it
down as another violation in his report.
So, one day I got a call at work from my parole
officer asking me to come to her office that afternoon. I had to leave work
early to make the unusual appointment, which I did. And when I arrived at her
office two policemen were waiting to arrest me for violating parole. My parole
officer apologized for the arrest explaining she got orders from the parole
board against her recommendations, to have me arrested. She said I would be held
until I could have a parole hearing (about a month), and she assured me that
she was on my side.
I was held in the King County Jail for one day, and
then, to my great surprise, and horror, I was unceremoniously transported on
the prison bus to the Receiving Center in Shelton, Washington. That was the
place where the nightmare of my incarceration really began, where I was beat up
and repeatedly raped as a kid, and where I first discovered the true meaning of
despair. It was the place where the very foundation of my rage was laid, and
returning me there now was like pouring gas on an ember that I had hoped to let
die after I’d killed those girls and vented the bulk of my rage against
society. It seems now, in hindsight, as though some sinister plan had been laid
and my rage was intentionally refueled by sending me to Shelton for that month
to await my fate once more before the parole board. Being there made me feel
like the nightmare was starting all over against from the beginning, and that
it would never truly end.
But, I kept calm, and stayed out of trouble, even
passing up a pinner (marijuana joint) that someone offered me out of sheer
respect for the queen they knew me to be (I wasn’t being flamboyant at this point,
nor even looking for sex, but I was well known throughout the state prisons as “Jazzi”
and my reputation apparently carried in my absence).
They moved a man into my cell the first week I was
there whom I knew to be an informant from my connections in the past. But, he
didn’t know that I knew, so when he started pumping me for information about my
activities on the streets I kept the information I gave him on the up-and-up,
and “confessed” to things that weren’t really illegal in order to make him
think he had my confidence. I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance that the whole
“violation” arrest was a ploy on part of the police and parole office just to
get me in a cell with this rat so he could feel me out on the two girls who
were still missing. He was obviously pumping me for information, and the story
he gave for why he himself was violated was obviously contrived (I didn’t ask,
but he insisted on telling me, a sure sign that he was on the make).
But, I was well aware of such tricks, and whether he
was on an assignment specifically aimed at me, or just pumping me for info on
G.P., didn’t matter because I didn’t tell him anything genuinely incriminating.
And when I saw the parole board after one month they reinstated my parole, with
some superficial new conditions (to make it look good I suppose) and let me go.
The only problem was now I was so angry, and terrified at the same time, that
there was no chance in hell I was gonna finish my parole.
From the very moment I walked out of that jail (they’d
brought me back to Seattle for the parole hearing, so I was released from the
County Jail immediately, after the hearing) I knew I wasn’t going to stick
around, and I knew that another serving of “justice” was in order.
Because of the parole violation I lost my job as an
Inside Sales Rep Liaison at the software company. But the Temp agency quickly
placed me with another Web-based software company called iCat (which has since
gone defunct and now a new and completely different company has that same name)
located on two floors of the Seattle City Centre Building downtown, one of the
most beautiful office buildings in the city! The new job didn’t pay as much,
but I was very proud to work in that building. I was hired to process data from
customers that the company collected from their Website, and to call and
interview customers about their use and satisfaction with the company’s
flagship product (Internet Catalog software, thus the name iCat, pronounced “eye-cat”).
I was actually given responsibility for the entire interview process, including
what questions to ask. I used my telemarketing skills to develop a fixed script
that I typed up and submitted to my supervisor. They were so impressed by the
job I did, and the results I was getting (i.e. useful customer feedback), that
they brought in two more temps from the temp agency and put me in charge of
them. I trained them, much as I had been trained at Time Life Libraries, and
supervised their calls fulltime (i.e. I no longer made customer calls myself)
and collated the data they generated. I was also given more responsibility for generating
other reports from the web data that went straight to the sales V.P., which I handed
to him personally once a week. I actually improved the report in ways that got
me some kudos from the V.P. himself.
But, the job still didn’t pay much (only about ten
dollars an hour if I remember right), so I decided to go back to Time Life
Libraries part time as well, so I’d have enough income to build the capital I needed
to abscond (I figured I needed at least a few thousand dollars if I wanted to
make a good run for it, i.e. last long enough to complete my revenge!).
Of course, I was still getting high (marijuana only)
almost every day with Joe and Ed, even though one of the new conditions of my
parole said that if I got another dirty urine test I would be automatically
violated. But, I had no intention of sticking around long enough to get another
piss test. But my parole officer must have sensed my skittishness --- it couldn’t
have been too hard for her to miss --- and she ordered another U.A. sooner than
I expected.
I had only been back out for a couple of months and
had only saved up just under two-thousand dollars from working two jobs. I pissed
dirty on a Friday, and by the time my parole officer showed up at Joe and Ed’s
house with two cops to have me arrested on Monday morning I was no longer even
in the state of Washington.
Once I left the state without permission I was
officially an escape and no longer considered to be in custody. So everything
that happened next, including the kidnap, rape, and murder of a ten-year-old
Southern California boy named Anthony, won’t be included in this “What Happened
In Prison”-series. Instead, I’ll pick up again, with Part VII – The Last Laugh,
when I am arrested again in Missouri and taken back to prison in Washington to
skip through the last three years of my 20-year-sentence, and “maxing out” to
be released with no more parole. I call it “The Last Laugh” because I knew I had
taken my revenge and killed three innocent children, and yet I was released
after just three years with no parole!
Even one day of freedom after the crimes I had
committed would have been enough to make me laugh victoriously; I had almost
five years of underserved freedom before the system once more reminded me that
laughing was not allowed for people like me, and I lashed out once more…
But, that’s another confession altogether.
