Series Prologue
I abhor violence.
Violence has dominated my life.
It forged my place in the world before I was ever conceived and set in motion the only true pre-destination any human being ever has beyond death – my own personal struggle to overcome the violence imposed upon me at my birth.
I’m not talking just about the historic violence of human conflict that has evolved since the days of our pre-historical ancestors “Ug” and “Ig” fighting over scraps of meat, or a prized possession, or the right to mate with the chosen female conquest. Or the non-stop refinement of violence and its excuses in the thousands of years since. That history and evolution of violence matters, no doubt to all of us. To my personal horror, I have no shortage of graphicly violent stories to share with you, and I will.
I’m taking you on journeys involving violence of a much more personal sort, too. You’ll come to know the kinds of violence that are instantly inflicted according to one’s “birthright”, the luck of the biological draw. Violence that is as inescapable as its consequences are inevitable. Violence of a kind that hurts worst when inflicted by family, creating mental wounds that will never heal. And the types of soul-crushing violence that can only be caused by intimates.
There is no telling my story without telling of the violence I’ve lived, for there is no telling the story of my generation in the absence of the violence we have shared. Or in the telling of any generation’s story, for that matter.
Violence defines us. It is required of us as participants in Life on Planet Earth. All we sentient beings can do is attempt to minimize our personal involvement in violence upon others and manage the results of the violence done to us. I will show you this truth.
For this is a love story. Several of them, in fact. Oh, sure, you’ll read plenty about love of life, love of family and friends, love of one’s self and selfless love. But all of that amounts to mere greeting card feel-goodness unless you also know the mythical and mystical “True Love”. Romantic, passionate, achingly horny, wet and sloppy-sex kind of love. Ends of the Earth love. The kind of love that most people either never find or are too fearful to act upon…or worse, be able to open themselves up to even feel. Risky, dangerous, invigorating, “forbidden” Romeo and Juliet kind of love. The kind of love that can consume one’s soul as well as one’s heart.
I cannot tell my story without also telling the story of my generation. We occupy a unique slice of history built upon the violence inflicted by our forefathers and the illusions of our own manifest greatness plied into our minds by our churches, our government, our media, and ourselves. I was the poster-boy “true-believer” in most of the propaganda I was fed from the start of a life that has been the discovery of one truth after another, with each truth exposing and laying waste to the preceding lies. Never have I been able to unlearn or obscure from my mind the truth about matters of substance once I have found it, much to my personal and professional cost. And that cost has been dear…
Born from poor farmer stock in the middle of Nowhere, USA, I breezed through the education system to a higher degree. And I went broke doing it. I’ve approached greatness and I’ve tasted great despair. I have been an outcast and a hero; a criminal and a crime fighter. I’ve lived in rural ghettos and urban ghettos, clawing through poverty over and over again just to test new bottoms after being flung on my face once again by Life. You will see my rises to glory and my fallings from grace…Yet I will stand again and be fulfilled anew. You will see the hopeful and desperate cling to Honor as my last flotation device while floating on a sea of political bullshit, institutionalized hypocrisy and personal misery. I have survived to tell you my stories.
This is not a series of books for cowards. I will make you laugh and cry as any worthy author would, I hope. I will take you to places and events most folks who’ve been there can only speak of in hushed tones to their dearest loved ones, if at all. Deeper still, I will turn the spotlight on the scariest place of all to look – the mirror. For if these tales should be construed as my confessions then they must also serve as my righteous condemnation of the system of violence, lies and corruption in which we willfully wallow. These are not cautionary tales…they are the witness I bear, testaments of my times. You will see me, and you will see my peers. You will see that we never stood a chance.
I’m calling this multi-volume work a piece of fiction because I amalgamated many characters and a few events for the sake of clarity and brevity, and I changed most of the names to protect those worthy of anonymity, as well as the innocent. The dead, the guilty, some folks I hold in high esteem, and a few people who have already been publicized elsewhere will be mentioned by name. I have created or changed some locations and settings for the same reasons. In fact, all of the characters in these works have been changed, amalgamated, or invented to the extent that they should all be considered fictional characters, with the exceptions of several family members, honored and/or dead friends, and politicians who play various roles in the telling of my story. The few people actually named can stand on their own feet and deal with it. There is nothing to lose and no more time for me to waste.
You, Dear Reader, shall find your own truth as I lay the search for mine naked before you.
I am Generation X, and this is my Autobiography.
Wesley T. Miller
March 2, 2012
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 1
Mass murder on the Oregon coast
Coos Bay, Oregon – May 1996
I awoke from a deep sleep as my alarm clock went off. It was 6:30 AM. Time to make the doughnuts, or in my case, put the bad guys in jail. Since I wasn't scheduled for court this morning and I had settled the trial scheduled for today at the last-minute yesterday afternoon, I was in no hurry to crawl out of my nice warm '70's style waterbed. Just as I reached past my 9 mm Ruger P-85 and hit the snooze button, the phone rang. Since there was no going back to sleep after that, I stumbled out of bed and rushed to answer. It didn't take long to cross the open space of my one-bedroom apartment. I made it by the third ring and quickly rubbed the sleep dust from my eyes and cleared my throat before answering the phone.
“Hello?”
“Good morning! You up yet?” It was Steve Keutzer, my boss, the Chief Deputy District Attorney for Coos County. He was by nature a chipper, upbeat kind of man, but this morning he sounded almost frantic with enthusiasm.
“Yea, just getting ready to come in,” I said, as if 6:30 was sleeping-in.
I had just moved to a basement one-bedroom apartment overlooking Coos Bay. Rain is the norm here, so it was difficult to miss the stunningly perfect sun-shining morning.
“Great. Say, I need you to cover the Circuit Court for me this morning. There’s just been a murder, and I’m heading out to the scene right now.”
Coos Bay would be considered a small County by most standards, but it did have its occasional homicide or two. It had been averaging about eight per year in a County of 65,000 people. I was nine months on the job and had just been promoted to circuit court deputy, handling garden-variety felonies. On any given morning one of three Circuit Court deputies would cover the morning’s arraignments, pleas and sentencings.
“What happened?”
“We don’t really know yet. I just got the call. There’re five bodies out in Bandon, and that’s all I’ve heard so far.”
“Five? You got to be shitting me…” I was wide awake now.
“That’s what I was told...five!” Keutzer was almost giddy. He was one of the State of Oregon’s most experienced murder prosecutors, having tried well over 100-some capital murder cases with no losses. He had been to over a hundred homicide scenes. THIS was what he knew and what he did best, so what he said next stoked the fires of my career ambition. “When you’re done with court, find out the directions from the Sheriff’s office and come on out. Sounds like a great training experience, maybe once-in-a-lifetime.”
I was about to learn from the Master, a man who had made his career traveling on behalf of the States’ Department of Justice to small counties to assist local (read: inexperienced) prosecutors try their capital murder cases. I was about to learn things that law school could never teach. But even more important to me was the chance to start forging a relationship with Steve, hopefully leading to a real mentorship down the road. He had much to teach, and I was eager to learn, but we had gotten off on the wrong foot. While our interactions were polite, Steve was slow to warm to me. In fact, it had been a very frosty nine months for me.
“Okay. Will do,” I said, trying to be cool about it.
I took a whore’s bath, skipped the shave, dressed like a man caught cheatin’, and drove as fast as the curves in the winding road to Coquille allowed me. It was Friday, and Keutzer’s stack of files for that morning’s circuit court session was relatively “light”, standing a mere 8 inches high. A typical day could see two foot-tall stacks of files, with morning court easily taking 2 ½ hours to sort through the human misery and wasting lives.
Coos Bay may be small in terms of population, but it soared in suffering. Decades of economic depression plagued its populace. The entire region depended on two major industries in perpetual states of decline - fishing and timber. Even though Coos Bay has an incredible natural port, its location and mountainous geography make it too remote to become a major shipping hub for much beyond fish and timber, so of course, the port and associated businesses also suffered. The result was typical urban decay symptoms found in formerly wholesome small-town America. Unemployment had soared for years, and as one might expect, so did addiction and domestic violence. Then methamphetamine came to the county, and things got tragically worse for the entire community.
I cycled through the morning’s stack of PCS (that’s possession of a controlled substance) and felony driving cases (that’s driving with a suspended license, usually), and a business burglary plea. We continued three felony cases for additional plea negotiations in light of Keutzer’s emergency absence (I didn’t know what he wanted to do with them – no notes, since he was expecting to make the offers himself), and I was out of the courtroom in under 40 minutes.
The murder scene would still be fresh. No way the crime lab guys would be done by now.
I bumped into our newest deputy district attorney, I’ll call her Gwen Thompson, on her way out of the District Court. It was a slow Friday for misdemeanor appearances as well.
“Hey Gwen! How’d it go?”
“Oh, I’m getting used to it.”
“Still think Giovanni hates you?” I asked. Judge Giovanni (real person, fake name) was a good judge but known to be prickly, especially to prosecutors. It wasn’t that he didn’t like prosecutors, he just had high expectations of them. Rookie or not, if you stumbled in his courtroom, he’d embarrass you for it. Gwen had already gotten a taste of the Judge’s ire, and it was easy to take that ire personally.
“He was tame today. He asked if I knew any details about what happened in Bandon,” she replied. “I told him, ‘How could I, I’m just the FNG!’”. (“FNG” stands for “fuckin’ new guy”).
“Really?” I snorted. “He didn’t get pissed?”
“No, he just chuckled and said, “Maybe you’re lucky, then.”
“Niiiice”, I replied with a smile. “He’s gone from direct insults to curt comments. You’re making progress.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said with a smile. Gwen had a great sense of humor. She had a way of charming and disarming most people without being a suck-up, usually with a touch of self-deprecating humor. It was just taking her longer for this particular Judge to warm to her.
Gwen was in her third week on the job, and although I was her on-the-job trainer, we were fast becoming friends, too. I saw a possible learning experience for her as well, and time was being wasted in the courthouse hall. I quickly got to the point.
“Do you have anything on your calendar today?” I asked.
“No,” she replied.
“Wanna’ go see some dead people?” I said with a smirk. “I’m about to go out to the crime scene. We’ve got 5 dead bodies out there, I’m told. If you can leave the office, you’re welcome to come with me.”
She didn’t miss a beat in saying “Yes! I’m there!”
We walked down the back steps of the courthouse to enter the basement-level Coos County District Attorney’s Office. I felt the heavy mood immediately as we walked past the line of three secretaries’ cubicles. Word was out - it was a bad one.
“I’m going out for a smoke after I drop the files in my office,” I said. “Meet me in the alley. I’ll drive.”
“OK,” said Gwen. “I’ve got one call to return real quick. I’ll be there in 5.”
As I walked out of the back door to the D.A’s Office, I ran in a Coos County Sheriff’s Deputy, I’ll call him Sergeant Collins. He was in his early 40’s and had served as my police training officer when I first started the job. He normally had a colorful macabre sense of humor, the type one would expect from any seasoned cop. Today I saw nothing but an ashen man standing before me, smoking intensely.
“Hey Sergeant.”
“Hi Wes.” The Sergeant was rattled, trying to suppress his emotions. He looked like one wrong word could either set him off in anger or crush him in despair. “Are you going out to the scene?”
I lit my Marlboro Light 100. “Yeah. Just about to split. I’m waiting on Gwen.”
He looked me dead in the eye as he spoke and I saw something beyond emotional pain. I saw the trauma in his eyes as he pled with me, “Don’t do it. I just came back. You don’t need to see it.”
“Keutzer thought it would be a once-in-a-lifetime training experience,” I stated blandly. There was no way he was going to talk me out of it.
“This will change you. I’m telling you - as a favor to yourself, don’t go.”
Sgt. Collins’s cigarette was burned to the filter, so he stamped it out in the over-filled government-issue outdoor ashtray. He started walking toward the Sheriff’s Office back door with the energy level of a zombie.
“Thanks for the heads-up”, I said as he opened the door.
“Do yourself a favor and listen to me, Wes.” He paused in the doorway. “I’ve been at this job for over 20 years, and I’ve seen a lot of really bad things. None of it even comes close to this. Don’t go…I mean it.”
“OK, I hear you. Try to have a decent weekend,” I lamely replied. What else could I say to the man?
I finished my smoke, went back into my office to strap on my shoulder holstered 9 mm, and pull on my white lettered “D.A.” black windbreaker instead of my suit coat. The Medical Examiner had a deputy sheriff assigned as an assistant to the D.A.’s office, and he found some money for our crime scene attire. Today would be my first chance to wear it. The jackets weren’t very practical as they were only meant to look good for the press.
Ten minutes later I’m driving my 1984 Cougar way too fast for safety through the winding mountain roads between Coquille and Bandon, again just short of 20 miles distance. Hairpin turns are the norm on this stretch of road, and I managed to keep us out of the ditch while taking 15 MPH corners at 35+ MPH. Even though I didn’t dare look over at her, I could tell Gwen must be excited to get to the crime scene. She didn’t complain about my driving at all – she just tried to hang on tightly and not slide into me on the tightest corners.
“What did Keutzer say when he called you?” Gwen asked.
“Just that there’s five bodies, and to get out there as fast as I could after court,” I said before screeching around another 20 MPH corner doing 50.
“Do we know how they died?”
“'Stabbing' is all I’ve heard so far.” I paused and slowed just enough to negotiate another hairpin turn in the opposite direction. In my nine months on the job to that point, I had been to two autopsies. Though memory-etching experiences of their own, I knew already that what we were about to see had no comparison in either of our experiences. We were about to find out that there was no comparison in anybody’s experience.
Realizing that there wasn’t much else I could say to prepare Gwen, I told her “Just prepare yourself for the worst thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
Finding the crime scene was easier than I expected – as we entered Bandon, we just drove toward the circling news helicopter and followed the stream of police vehicles.
The murders occurred in a shitty run-down trailer home resting on a lot in a dumpy little trailer park near the Pacific Ocean. Police cars from 9 different police agencies, ambulances, and crime scene trucks dominated the available parking along the streets. After finding a parking spot, Gwen and I walked through a small crowd of people, including several TV reporters, then under a line of police tape. The reporters sized us up but did not ask a single question.
The police tape blocked off a dirt road about five trailer houses down from the actual murder scene. Gwen and I walked slowly toward about two dozen police and sheriff’s deputies. Several evidence markers were strewn on the ground, calling out a small blood trail across the dirt street of the trailer park that led from the back door of the murder scene to a nearby trailer on the opposite side of the street. As we approached the group of police, we walked around a pick-up that had been parked in such a way as to obscure the reporters’ view from down the street. As we cleared the pick-up, our eyes were immediately drawn to a large woman’s body hanging with her head and one shoulder out of the side door to the trailer home. Police tape was stretched several feet away from and around the circumference of the trailer, around a small patio area.
The woman’s shirt, once white, was now entirely dark crimson. After absorbing the shock – and the rotting metallic scent – of all that blood staining her shirt, we could clearly see a large knife lodged to its handle standing perpendicular directly in the upper-middle of the woman’s back (just like you would see in a horror movie, but this was very real). The trailer’s screen door was slowly banging against the head, shoulder and dangling arm of the corpse, pushed by a gentle breeze. Blood slowly dripped from her arm to the step below.
Drip, drip, drip.
The blood pool was massive, both inside and outside the trailer.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
A tall middle-aged cop (I’ll call him Dave Sheffield) in plain clothes approached us as we looked down at the dead woman. His sports jacket was off, sleeves rolled, with a service-issue .45 hanging from his shoulder holster. Dave’s another police Sergeant, with the Oregon State Police, also assigned to the District Attorney’s office as an investigator. Having been around a few blocks in his time, he seemed a bit too relaxed when he spoke, like it’s a party instead of a murder scene. He exudes no shock at all, like this was nothing new to him, just another day on the job.
“Nice of you join our little gathering,” Dave says with a smirk.
We all exchanged handshakes and greetings. Gwen was quickly fixated, staring at the body getting slapped by the screen door.
“Wouldn’t miss it. I was told I might actually learn something today,” I replied.
“I see you brought the new kid.”
“Yeah, Keutzer said it would be a good training experience, so I thought it might be a good learning experience for her, too.”
“Might be for all of us,” said Dave, with only a hint of sarcasm.
“Do we know who did it?” I asked.
“Oh, we got the cutter. Dumb-fuck sliced his hand when he shoved that knife in like that. Fucker almost bled to death in the brush over there…before the dog got to him.” Dave was smiling broadly at with that comment.
I pointed to the crowd of police and deputies milling about, doing nothing. “What are we waiting for?”
“Search warrants,” Dave replied. “Crime lab guys are ready to go, but we don’t want any possibility of this turning into another O.J. case. This fucker’s perfect for the plunger and nobody here wants to cheat the hangman, right?” The “plunger” was Dave’s reference to Oregon’s preferred method of inflicting death, by lethal injection.
The screen-door continued to thud against the corpse in the doorway.
Thwank. Thwank. Thwank.
Gwen’s attention was split between the conversation and the gore in front of her.
“Keutzer said there were five?” I said.
“Yup. Four in there, and one made it across the street to a neighbor’s before bleeding out. Meat wagon took him already.”
“All stabbed?”
“She’s the only one really stabbed...” Dave said. “The rest had their throats slit.” Dave mimed the universal action for throat slashing as he said it and hung his tongue out for a tasteless secondary effect.
“Who got it?” I asked.
“The whole damn family, that’s who. Looks like mom right there, and dad's the one who made it across the street. From what the neighbors said, we got an uncle dead on the couch in there. Looks like he never woke up.” Dave’s demeanor was aloof to this point, making his mood shift obvious and uncomfortable as he said, distantly, “…and then two kids...a five-year-old girl…and a baby.”
“Christ...” My stomach turned instantly. This was no longer an adventure, or a learning experience, or “training”…this was to become a defining nightmare of my life. A nightmare that would haunt my waking hours, too. Even twenty years later. I knew it instantly, fully aware that I could never go back to ignorant innocence before I even came close to walking through that goddamned thwanking screen door.
“Yeah, it’s a regular Charlie Manson nightmare in there.” There was no smirk from Dave as he spoke this time. He meant every word.
We all stared vacantly at the bloody corpse in the doorway as the door continued to slowly thwank against her. Nobody was in any hurry here. Everybody with a heartbeat was in some form of shock or gathering themselves from it. The victims' world had ended gruesomely, and all we could do is try to process the damage, to make some kind of sense of what had happened to them, and why. It felt like a hive mind amongst the cops and prosecutors to do our jobs as right as we could, and bring to Justice the bastard who brought this Hell to Earth.
Thwank. Thwank. Thwank.
I looked down, underneath the corpse’s face. She had a gash through all the fat flesh in her neck, down to the veins. She was still dripping blood in a steady rhythm.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I gestured to her and asked, “Any connection to the killer?”
“Oh, he’s an old family friend. Just spending a couple of nights here after getting out on a crank P.V.,” meaning a probation violation. “From the walk-through, looks like mom and dad liked to snort a little crank, too.”
The screen door kept hitting the bloody corpse. Thwank, thwank, thwank.
The blood kept dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip.
We stood in silence for a while. The door kept thwanking. Flies were making homes on the corpse flesh – inside the slashes on the victim - and as the breeze shifted, the stench of death and fresh rot began wafting in ever stronger waves as we stood there, waiting on a search warrant for a house full of dead people. Dead children.
Thwank. Thwank. Thwank.
Gwen couldn’t take it anymore. “Can’t you guys do something about that?” she asked, with more than a hint of irritation and dismay.
Sgt. Dave Sheffield busted out laughing. “Why? She don’t give a fuck!”
Gwen was horrified, but said nothing as Dave walked away, having found his comic relief for the moment. I probably would have laughed but for Gwen’s horror - and the fact that I hadn't seen the worst yet - so under the circumstances, all I could do was roll my eyes and shake my head at the juvenile response of this veteran police officer.
“It’s like I said earlier, laugh or cry. There aren’t many choices for trying to keep your head straight in this kind of shit,” I told her. That’s as much bravado as I could muster, too. Sure, I had more procedural experience and while I may have been more prepared in terms of having seen more death in the last year, there was absolutely no way for anyone to prepare for what we were going to walk into. We were both rookies here. We were all rookies here.
We waited for over four hours – for the warrants and for the crime lab guys to process the scene - before seeing the real nightmare. All the while spilled blood thickened, drying where the layer of blood was thin enough, like at the edges of the blood pool around the doorway. The stench of gore also thickened, the metallic and rotting organic stench wafting more noticeably by the minute in the warm springtime air. There is absolutely nothing more distinctive - and horrific - than the smell of massive amounts of human blood. The smell of fresh Death.
The crowd grew. The press vultured. The helicopter buzzed overhead repeatedly.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Thwank. Thwank. Thwank.
The wait gave me time to reflect on what had been the hardest, loneliest nine months of my life up to that point. I had felt as isolated as if I were in another country, alone to my own devices. Worse, I had been shunned by my peers shortly after taking the job. And they didn’t even know that just a year ago, I was a criminal and had been on probation myself.
It was a miracle I even got this coveted position as a newbie litigator. While my experience didn’t hurt, I know that wasn’t it, nor were my grades, and I had absolutely no office connections or political contacts. I guess I must have nailed the interview...
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 2
Virgin Territory
First week of August, 1995
I left Portland for my interview at the D.A.'s Office a day early so I could meet a high school alum who had been practicing as an attorney in Coos Bay for over ten years. I called her a month earlier out of the blue – we had never met – after I found her name from an alumni search I did just before leaving North Dakota. I wasn’t very good at networking, so I felt like it was a hail Mary pass just to dial her phone number. Jennifer had graduated law school over a decade before me and I had no one to introduce us. But sometimes the good thing about having nothing to lose means you just have to go for it.
It worked. Every so often, long-shots pay off.
Jennifer was a well-established local attorney, a partner in one of the biggest local law firms, and to my great relief, she was very friendly. We talked on the phone for about 45 minutes or so in that initial conversation, and she told me about the opening at the Coos County District Attorney’s Office. Her own practice kept her out of the criminal practice realm – mostly – but as a prominent bar member, she knew the local courthouse scene. I applied for the job both as an excuse to meet her and work the network angle, and out of simple desperation. I believed it to be my most remote prospect among a small set of remote prospects, especially considering my criminal record. Hell, I just got my driver’s license back three days ago, I thought. This is going to end up being a practice interview.
Might as well let it all hang out. No guts, no glory, right?
The drive from Portland to the I-5 exit for the coast was only a pleasant hint at the beautiful lush forest that I was about to sink my car into. I had spent enough time in Oregon to fall in love with the mountains, the evergreens, the ferns, the rivers, the ocean…all that growing up in barren North Dakota was not. Southwest Oregon still made my jaw drop sometimes, and this territory was virgin to me.
My pale-blue ’84 Cougar floated around the tight river-bends in the last forty miles of Highway 38 before ending in Reedsport. Highway 101 then took me south, through the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area – miles and miles of sand dunes interspersed by long stretches of evergreens stretching to the sky, occasionally making the road feel like a tunnel capped only by a thin edge of blue sky. Stunning, isolated natural beauty felt like it was drawing me to a familiar place…like being reminded of a dream long forgotten…or catching a unique old scent that rushes back the memories associated with that peculiar olfactory bounty. A trippy deja-vu…
Even though I had never ventured further south along the Oregon coast than Winchester Bay, and that was just one brief camping trip with my father, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of recognition as I neared the Bay. It was a weird, misplaced feeling, but the thought and the feeling wouldn’t go away - I felt like I was going home to a place I had never been before.
Crossing the enormous McCullough Bridge into North Bend, Coos Bay’s northern sister-city, I finally had a panoramic view of the lush green hills surrounding the bay. A large freighter was docked near the center of Coos Bay proper. The sand dunes marked the north side of the bay, with tug boats and fishing vessels in between, passing each other in the winding waterway stretching through to the rock jetties and out to the open ocean. The smell of cut trees and sea salt were a fantastic compliment to the day’s perfect 80 degree weather, which altogether only served to highlight one of the most beautiful ocean bays I had ever seen.
I could be happy living here.
I continued on through North Bend, passing two gigantic piles of wood chips in what looked to be the only remaining functional saw mill, then on toward downtown Coos Bay. I had enough time to check in to my Motel 6 room and snoop around the waterfront before meeting Jennifer at a Starbucks near the boardwalk.
I walked in and stepped in line at the appointed time, right behind one of the most attractive women I had seen in months. Standing a slender 5'7” with dark hair, with piercing grey “wolf” eyes, and an ass that complimented her skirt-suit better than any model ever could, I immediately thought it couldn't be her. Not a forty-ish attorney from North Dakota...no way. But a quick glimpse of the six other customers in the room – two grannies, two teeny-boppers, and two construction dudes – left me knowing the answer. I was looking at Jennifer, and as soon as she saw me, dressed as I had described to her on the phone in my best pin-striped off the rack grey suite, it was time for the introductions.
“Hi! You must be Wes!”, she said with a beautiful, sultry smile.
I wanted to fuck her immediately. I already knew she was brilliant, but I had no idea she was all of THAT! Even though I had just taken the bar exam, I knew that there weren't many female attorneys anywhere who looked like models, especially at 40 years old. I had to try hard to focus on not showing my attraction to her, yet be warm, friendly and not too flirty.
Even if she digs you, you can't move to a new town and become the source of small town gossip the day you show up! Besides, she's 15 years older than you. Get real!, I told myself.
“And you must be Jennifer!” I said with my happy grin.
“I'm so happy to meet you!” she said as she took my hand in hers for a “shake” that felt more like a flirt. Our fingers lingered just a little too long...and her eyes had such depth...
“Me too! What can I get you?” I asked, trying to pull myself back to reality and the purpose of meeting her in the first place. The last thing I needed was a hard-on in the middle of Starbucks with a woman I just met, just before a job interview she helped me to get.
“Oh, just a House blend, black.”
“OK. Do you want to grab a table? I'll grab the coffee and be right over.” She said “yes” and found a table for us while I consciously pushed down my libido. I needed the few moments to reign it in, gather my thoughts, and ask her about the job interview or this career prospect wouldn't go far at all. Embarrassing myself with her wasn't in the cards, ever – I was a professional, and she was a new friend. She caught me off guard and horny, that was all...
When I sat down with our beverages, the smiles and happy talk continued. We spent 20 minutes or so getting to know each other and eventually getting to our stories of how we reached Coos Bay from North Dakota. Jennifer had been an oil-field kid, traveling with a rather rough family from one oil patch to the next, ending with a broken home and her graduation from Dickinson High School a decade and a half before me. She got married too young to a mental infant, she tolerated his bullshit through college and law school, and finally divorced him before moving to Oregon. Jennifer came close to a second marriage a couple of times since but decided against it both times because her “bad choice in men kept coming around and around again” on her. I didn't press the issue.
Jennifer understood my poverty and job plight as I told it to her. My family situation also rang true to her experiences. Soft survivors generally don't come from where we grew up, and our experiences resonated with each other’s. She came out to Oregon on a wing and a prayer, sort of like I did. She had her times of having to pick up cans and bottles in order to get the 5 cent return fees to buy cat food and tampons. Yeah, she had a sense of humor, always. She was extremely easy to like.
Now, after spending a tour of duty or two in the Coos County Public Defender's Office followed by over ten years in “the Coo” as a respected partner in a local law firm, she made a good living, had no debts, and owned her life completely. She was a strong, confident, smart women living in one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. Why the hell she gave me two seconds of her time was beyond me. I was grateful for the insight she shared when we finally got around to talking about my job interview.
“Have you spent any time in juvenile court?” Jen asked routinely.
“Not for a long time,” I replied with a grin.
“Well, around here, it can be rather shocking. The first time I saw a 12 year-old in an orange jump suit and shackles in the Circuit Court almost made me cry.” She paused for a second, then got very serious. “It's a tough job to put kids in jail, and there is no shortage of that sort of work in this county,” she finished.
“I'll get used to it. I'm tough enough to handle it. Besides, at least there's still hope for some of them,” was my reply.
“Very true, there is. Just remember to always do the right thing. Don't let yourself get pressured by anybody, especially the police. A lot of power comes with the job, and as long as you keep your head together, and keep watching out for what's best for the kids that come through your court, you'll do fine, I'm sure.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So what's the D.A. like? Got any interview tips for me?
“He wants to be a judge,” Jennifer said of the sitting District Attorney after sipping her coffee. “And he's willing to sort of 'bend' for it.”
“Really? You mean he's just another politician?” I asked with obvious disappointment.
“No, I wouldn't say that. Peter's a good guy, a very good attorney, and he's an even-handed D.A. It's just that he wants to be judge a whole hell of a lot more than he wants to be the D.A.!” she laughed. “He's not a Republican or a religious fanatic or anything like that. I think he leans more Democratic than anything.”
“So what's his deal?”
“Well, like I said, he's not really religious, but this last election for District Court Judge, well...it was noticed that he carried around a Bible with him while campaigning door-to-door,” she said with a devilishly-cute smirk.
“What's up with that?”
“I guess he thought it would appeal to the Jesus people and 'wingers around here, but it didn't work. He's still 'stuck' as D.A., but he's also the best they'll likely have around here. I'm sure he'll take another run for Judge the next go-round.”
I nodded, thinking I understood.
“Thanks Jen. At least I'm not going in completely blind.”
“My pleasure. I'm happy to help out another from Nodak. Ther' ain't many of us around here, don'tcha know!” she said with her best North Dakota accent. I laughed as we got up, hugged, and said our good-byes.
“I'll let you know how it turns out,” I said as we stepped back from each other.
“Please do. And call me if I can do anything else to help.”
“Oh, I will, Jen. Thank you, really. I'm so very glad to have met you. I hope to see you again soon.”
“Me too. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I left Coos Bay driving again down a winding road surrounded by forested mountains for the next twenty miles to the County seat, Coquille, an even smaller town of about 4,000 people. Smack in the middle of Coquille stood the Coos County Courthouse, right next to an impressive-sized county jail and Sheriff's Office. It was impossible to miss, and it was obvious that it was the town's major draw.
After finding a parking space and straightening up my tie and jacket in the first restroom inside the building, I found my way to the D.A.'s Office. It was located in the basement corner of the courthouse, across an alley from the three-story jail. Several sheriff's deputies exited as I came through the outer glass door, and seeing them jump-started my nerves like a static shock. As a man recently off probation, it felt a bit surreal to be having this interview at all. It was the best job option I had so far, but I was realistic about my recent past and its immediate limitations on a prospective career in law enforcement. I wanted this job – mainly for the trial experience it would give me right away as a rookie lawyer – but I had no illusions that my past criminal experiences might easily cloud my resume and legal experience. My financial situation was growing more dire by the day, however, and that added to my motivation. I had no silver spoons in my past, and three years of debt-financed law school and a summer of studying for the bar exam left me drowning in debt. And hungry to work.
I was going to go “all-in” in this interview. I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. If I didn't get the job, well, fuck it. It would at least be great practice and I could learn from it for next time.
After checking in with the receptionist at a half-door marked “District Attorney's Office”, I sat patiently in a cheap plastic chair in the hallway. I was five minutes early, as I had made it to be my practice for job interviews. Never be late, but don't show up too early, either. It could be interpreted as a sign of desperation, or so I've been told.
The walls were a barren pale yellow, so there was nothing to look at or focus my attention upon. Just my faux-leather tablet case holding my legal pad and extra copies of my resume, cheap department store off-the-rack grey suit, and lawyer-standard black wingtips. Self-consciousness was creeping in as time ticked on. The minutes passed slowly – and now they were running late. Not a good sign for me, as I was the last interview of the day, and the day was quickly coming to a close. I read my resume for the tenth time while sitting there.
The interview was scheduled for 30 minutes. I checked the clock again. My interview should have been over already. They were now forty minutes late. Shit.
Just as I was about to ask the receptionist if they wanted to reschedule the interview, a door at the far end of the hallway opened. A young female attorney who looked to be around 30 or so, wearing a tailored suit with all of the trimmings, walked partially through the door bearing an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign. She was all bubbles to the people escorting her out.
“Thank you again, so much. It was such a pleasure to meet all of you!” she gushed. I couldn't see who she was talking to, or how many people, but a man's voice answered.
“No, no, the pleasure was all ours. We’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.” She was smiling confidently.
“Great. Have a safe drive back to Portland,” the man responded.
She kept grinning broadly as she turned and walked towards me, and the exit.
“How’d it go?” I asked her.
“It went okay,” she replied with all the smugness she could muster. She already had this job locked in, or so she believed. She definitely wanted me to believe it.
She kept beaming as she continued past me, not stopping for an instant.
“Any pointers?” I asked.
She looked back at me, briefly sizing me up. Judging me.
“Just be yourself!” she scoffed as she turned and continued out the door to a parking lot, barely suppressing a laugh.
“Great. Thanks,” I said, mainly to myself at that point. I knew her type well enough from law school. The puffers. Otherwise known as “sandbaggers.” They're the ones who always know everything (even when they don't), always putting on the air of superiority. They are the egotists who try constantly to elevate themselves by putting themselves above the crowd. Apparently, these type of young “professionals” think that if they put on the arrogance mask long enough, they will come to fit in it and maybe even deserve it. The crazy thing is that this strategy frequently works, almost like a form of marketing themselves. Other than doctors or politicians, there is no crowd of self-absorbed egomaniacs like lawyers. They tend to find like-minded others and form herds, drawing the most arrogant assholes together in fusions of self-interest. And greed.
She seems more suited to a corporate law firm, I thought. If she's so great, why waste her time as a public servant? Unless she's another trust-funder looking to get into politics...then I'm pretty much screwed here.
Then I waited another 10 minutes for my turn as the interviewers wrapped up their internal take on the prior candidate.
The “Authorized Personnel Only” door opened again, and a tall, very pleasant woman named Bev entered the hallway. She was wearing a genuine smile, demonstrating the natural warmth and gracious nature that I would soon come to know.
“They’re ready for you now, Mr. Miller.”
“Thanks. And please, Wes is just fine,” I replied.
Finally, it was time for the interview that would change my life forever.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 3
The Interview
Bev escorted me through to the inner office, which consisted of an “L” shape hallway with small offices on the window sides. Three administrative assistant cubicles occupied the space on the other side of a small file room, which itself was on the other side of the wall between the half-door and “Authorized Personnel Only” door. Someone had the decency to paint these walls white, or I may have just turned around at that point. The corner office, of course, was our destination – the District Attorney's Office. It was a relatively small office, just large enough for a big executive desk and three extra chairs. There was no mistaking the authority of the office, however; behind the desk stood large Oregon State and U.S. flags on proper display.
Between the flags and behind the desk sat the District Attorney, Peter Blanchett. He rose to greet me and put his jacket on again. Peter was in his mid-forties with dark curly hair and a mustache that was probably grown in the '70's and looked trimmed down for the '90s. Standing a couple inches shorter than me, he came off as confident right away, reciprocating my handshake and looking me directly in the eye. Peter then introduced two additional interviewers who were seated to the side of the desk, forming a semi-circle around my chair. They stood up as introductions were made.
To my right was a woman in her mid-forties. She was a good-looking brunette who had kept herself in decent shape over the years, and when she spoke, she came off just a bit flirty. “Looks like you're last, but certainly not least. Hi, I’m Patty Myers. I’m the Crime Victims’ Advocate for the office,” she said.
“Hi, Patty. Very nice to meet you.” We shook hands. Then I turned to the man in the middle, a pleasant looking man in his late thirties dressed in a white shirt and tie, no jacket. I'll call him Bob.
“And I’m Bob Hartman. I’m the Director of the Juvenile Department,” he said as he extended his hand.
“Great! Nice to meet you as well, Bob,” I said. As I let go of his hand and we started to sit, I quickly made out the writing Blanchett was making on my interview sheet. He wrote at the top “firm handshake – good”, and then circled his comment. My eyes darted away before he caught my glance.
So far, so good.
“Okay, Wes. Why don’t you go ahead and close the door behind you there, and we’ll get this started,” Peter said.
“Sounds good to me,” I replied as I pushed the door shut.
“First thing we'd like to do is to get to know you a little better. Then, we have a set of questions that we’re asking all of the applicants, just to be consistent. Fair enough?” Peter asked.
“That works for me. I guess I’d like to know more about the position, too.”
“Sure thing,” Peter said. Peter broke into a small smile before saying, “I gotta tell you, some of the things on your application gave me pause. But some of the other things made me pretty curious...”
Patty jumped in before I could get insulted. “Peter always like a good story or two,” she said innocently.
“Well, I don’t know how good they are, but I definitely have some stories. What’s on your mind in particular?” I asked.
“Let's start with this: you're the first applicant I've ever had to list “stand-up comedy” on their resume. You got any jokes for us?” Peter asked with a grin.
“I could start ripping on that Tom Selleck 'stache you got goin' on there, but I actually want this job,” I said with a smile.
Bob and Patty laughed out loud, while Peter smiled and snorted, “Well, it's not looking too good for you so far!”
“Touche,” I replied with a grin. “To be serious, I've always had a little interest in it, ever since I won a State high school championship for “After-Dinner Speaking”, which was basically a 6-minute speech of clever ways to insult Moammar Ghaddafi. It went over great in 1986, especially in North Dakota. Anyway, during my second year of law school, I had the opportunity to guest emcee at the local comedy club one weekend a month while the regular host went off on National Guard duty weekends. I saw it as an opportunity to learn how to work a crowd and to get better on my feet for jury trials.”
“Do you think it helped?” Peter asked.
“Definitely. I had two State Supreme Court cases that I handled as a third year, and let me tell you, it's a lot scarier to stand up in front of a hundred people and try to get them to laugh than it was to stand in front of the Justices.”
***********************
Grand Forks, North Dakota – June 1994
Scott Hansen's Comedy Gallery was the one and only nightclub in that sparsely populated region to feature live stand-up comedians. The comedians came in pairs, with an opening act and a headliner. They were professionals on comedy road tours following an informal circuit through the mid-west. Many of the comedians were – or had been – nationally recognized at some point in their careers. Grand Forks was either a stop on their way up while working out new material, or it was one of the last stopovers near the death of their comedy careers. The giants of comedy, like George Carlin, always played at the University's largest theater that seated thousands. “Working” comedians played the only comedy club in town.
Comedy nights were always followed by karaoke, and since every professional comedian prefers to have a warm-up act go first, the club had a need for an emcee to warm up the crowd and tie the show together, including hosting the amateur hour for drunk wanna-be singers after the main show. The club was lucky in finding a talented comedian and guitar player who had developed his own act over the years that was perfectly suited for the combination of college students, Air Force members, and local hicks. I'll call him Ed. He was both folksy and edgy (for Grand Forks) at times, but he never “played blue” or got dirty with his jokes. The comedians loved him because he was excellent at warming up the crowd while clearly not trying to compete with them. Ed could sell any corny old joke, like “A horse walked into a bar, and the bartender said, “Why the long face?”, but he always left room for the show to build, to crescendo toward the headliner's act.
I, on the other hand, couldn't play the guitar and I had a taste for hard-edged comedy. My primary comedic influence was George Carlin, and I had a North Dakota farmer's mastery of the many derivatives for the word “fuck” ready to pull from my lexicon. (For example, when I told the “horse walks into a bar” joke, I would add, “the horse replied, ‘My wife has terminal cancer, you fuckin’ prick’”). Though our styles were different, we got along from the start - which was when I asked him if I could do an opening set the previous September. Ed was all for it, and after I stumbled through a few 5-minute guest sets, Ed hit me up to substitute for him one weekend a month so he could go out and play with his National Guard unit. I was an easy pick - there was no one else around who was willing to go on stage.
My first night on stage was almost my last. The headliner was a comedian who had previously won a Showtime National Young Comedians Award a few years back. His name was Sam Greisbaum, and he looked and sounded just like “Hoss” from the old TV western “Bonanza”. So of course, that was his schtick, and he always killed on stage.
I knew who Sam was immediately (I had watched the show when he won), and we hit it off fast because he wasn't shy about looking for some weed and I was very happy to share a bit. After the first joint, Sam volunteered to help me write a few jokes for my act. He said local humor usually worked well with these smaller venues, so he asked what was going on around Grand Forks at the time. I told him we were having another big controversy over the offensiveness of the name for the University of North Dakota's teams as they were then called “The Fighting Sioux.” Without missing a beat, Sam had a joke made up and said, “You've heard about the Fighting Sioux name controversy, right? Well we've decided to change it. We're now the Whining Alcoholic Casino-Owning Bastards.”
I actually supported the idea of changing the name, so I busted up laughing immediately. To me, the joke was classic Carlin-esque biting humor - taking a name with an already obviously racist slant to it and making it ludicrously racist, thus hammering the point home and getting the laugh for taking the absurdity to “10.” I was instantly committed to using the joke onstage. When I did, the joke got the first major laugh of my act, but there were a few folks who didn't get it. Instead, they got PISSED OFF and complained to the manager (I'll call him Skip). Luckily, Sam was standing right beside Skip at the time, and Sam stopped Skip from pulling me off stage by taking the blame. That was a rare thing to happen - I came to find that most comedians fucking hate each other - so Sam had my immediate respect as not just a stand-up comedian, but as a stand-up guy.
After getting chewed out anyway, I cleaned up the joke a little bit and talked Skip into letting me keep it, all the way through my final night...
"We've had a controversy of late at the University of North Dakota over the team's name, so we've decided to change it. Instead of the 'Fighting Sioux', we're now known as 'The Whining Alcoholic Casino-Owning Losers'.” It still worked because it also became a dig at the school's shitty team records, but I had since added some salve to the PC-inclined crowd with the next joke - one I borrowed from Ed.
“Oh, come on now! You've heard of North Dakota white wine, right? It goes 'why can't we have a casino?'” That usually stopped any groans. Then I would get into some self-deprecation to lighten up the remaining stiffs. I had since learned that every audience was different, however, and no joke went over the same way every night.
“This isn't really my job. I'm actually a law student at UND, going on my third year. (A spattering of applause from the audience).
“Law school's been kind of a trip for me, really. They started right away in the first year telling us that the purpose of law school was to make us 'think like a lawyer'. Think like a lawyer? I'm already kind of an asshole, right? Do you think I really need a degree for this?”
“Let me tell you how a lawyer really thinks: You see some old lady slip, fall, and break her hip, and you think, "Hey! Trip to Tahiti!" That usually got a smattering of laughs.
“I can almost remember the days when a simple country lawyer was respected, even looked up to. Nowadays, most people wouldn't cross the street to piss on a lawyer if he spontaneously combusts."
It would figure that my last night would be a heckler night. Tonight, it was a drunk-bumpkin-heckler, sitting with his drunk buddy and two rather plain and tubby bar ladies. As the laughter quiets, he pipes up, “But I'd piss on you right now!"
"Only if I let you squat over me, junior," came my retort. One weekend with Sam had taught me volumes about dealing with hecklers. Hell, we even made it a purpose to stay after the comedy show and heckle a group drunk comedy-hecklers during their attempt at karaoke. They were a group of house-fraus on the prowl, and all completely hammered. By the time Sam was done with them – from his chair in the front row – he had them so verbally beat-up that they were literally tripping over themselves and the stage gear. Until they got thrown out, of course. After getting booed off stage. It was a rare moment of comedians' revenge that I was glad to experience.
As the laughter quieted again, my heckler got louder. They always do until they get sufficiently humiliated or thrown out of the club. "When does the real comedy start?" He shouted at me.
I pointed to the chubby girl sitting next to him and replied, "I'd say about the time she gets you naked."
The heckler is momentarily silenced by the crowd's laughter, and I thought it was over. Time to shift gears and get back to the set...
"Me, I've got other worries – like passing the Bar. But then again, Ted Kennedy's a lawyer, and we all know he's never passed a bar!"
"You should stick to just being an asshole." He wasn't finished, just reloading.
"Sir, this ain't the fuckin' OPRAH show, alright.” The audience roared. “Besides, if I wanted any shit from you, we could just scrape your fucking teeth.” The audience laughed again with approval.
“Anyway, just sit back, relax, and have another beer before you strain yourself, okay?” Turning back to the audience, I continued: “We've got a great line-up for you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, but before we bring out your first comedian, I'd like to remind you” - I was addressing Mr. Heckler directly - “to please keep the table talk to a minimum. Also, please don't forget to tip our lovely waitresses this evening. They're working hard so you don't have to. Alright, your first comedian tonight comes to us all the way from New York City...”
I got off stage and as the show went on, I found Skip seated at the end of the bar. It was time to end my career in comedy. Between my real job, law school, and my father's worsening condition, I simply didn't have the time to give to it anymore. It had started as my pleasant distraction, and now it had just become a distraction.
Skip wasted no time as I sat down. "Wes, I've been getting some shit about your 'Fighting Sioux' joke again, so you'd better tune it down a bit more."
"Not to worry, Skip. I was meaning to talk to you anyway."
"What's up?"
“Sorry to have to do this, but tonight is it for me. I've just got too much on my plate...”
My timing was good. Just a few weekends later and I would have been violating my bail conditions just to be there.
I had spent the day out on the golf course in Grafton, ND, with my boss and friend, Tim McCann (real name), and my sister's latest boyfriend (I'll call him Sean). Tim had moved the 45 miles from Grand Forks to Grafton to run for County State's Attorney, North Dakota's designation for “District Attorney.” Spending the day “out golfin” generally translated to “drinking beer all day,” and that is precisely what we had been doing. A lot of beer, and no inclination to stop until after the concert of a Pink Floyd cover band later that night. Too much beer, in fact – enough for Tim's wife to pull his plug on going to the show with us at the last minute. Tim had a child on the way, so we understood and made our goodbyes, then hit the road back to Grand Forks.
Since Sean was an enlisted man – an air traffic controller at the Grand Forks Air Force Base – he had no desire to drive. It was my car anyway, and I'd driven that road a million times, so what the Hell, I thought. I can get us to the show on time.
My little Geo Prizm was doing 78 in a 55 MPH zone when we passed the State Trooper going the opposite direction. His lights came on almost before he passed us.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “Quick, hide your beer!” I told Sean as I pulled to a stop on the side of the highway.
The Trooper did a quick U-turn and stopped behind my car, then he slowly sauntered up to the driver's side door. I tried to act cool and keep my beer covered behind my right calf while I handed the Trooper my Driver's License and insurance card as soon as he approached the window. He saw my bloodshot eyes and made no attempt to even look around the interior of the car before saying, “Now do you want to hand me those open beers.”
“What beers?” I said like a dumb-fuck.
“The ones under both of your legs,” he said matter of factly.
I was screwed and I knew it. I grudgingly complied, snapping my fingers at Sean to retrieve his beer, then I handed two half-full Bud Light bottles to Trooper Fitzgerald.
“Step out of the car, please." Trooper Fitz had his catch of the day, and he knew it, too.
I complied and got out of the car. Dressed in Bermuda shorts, a white half-shirt, shoddy deck shoes, and a baseball cap, I looked like a guy who had been “out on the golf course” all day. The Trooper could barely contain a grin. He told me to stand at the rear of the car, then stuck his finger in the window at Sean and said, “You stay put.”
“Yes sir,” Sean replied.
After three sobriety tests, including the so-called “pen test”, I found myself leaning on the hood of the Trooper's vehicle with half of my weight on my hands as the Trooper frisked me, then very roughly handcuffed me behind my back. I offered zero resistance to the Trooper, yet he felt it necessary to manhandle me and crank the cuffs extra tight before shoving me into the back of the car, bumping my head into the door frame for good measure. It wasn't hard enough to leave a bruise, just hard enough to piss me off and let me know he's the Man.
From the rear seat of his patrol car, I watched Trooper Fitz empty the beers bottles and set them on the roof of my car. He then retrieved Sean from the passenger side of my car and escorted him to the passenger's side of his car. The Trooper came around and sat in his seat as he copied my info from one ticket to another (speeding, DUI summons, and open container).
“I need your permission to drive your car a little further off the road. You don't want it to get hit by some other drunk, do you?" asked Fitz.
I was suspicious, but there was no way Sean was going to drive it home for me, so I said, “You can move it off the road a bit further, but that's all."
As soon as Fitz left the patrol car, my lawyer-in-training brain started firing away. “Don't say a fucking word to him,” I said to Sean in a hushed but assertive tone. “Don't give him anything."
“Believe me, I won't.”
I continued watching from the backseat of the patrol car as Trooper Fitz pulled my car about six feet further off the road. After locking the passenger compartment, and without any further permission from me, Trooper Fitz opened my car trunk and started rummaging around. First, he pulled out my cooler, opens it, inspects its empty contents (we were on the last beers), and places the now-empty beer bottles inside. He then started digging around several gun cases that were in the trunk, opening them and inspecting the contents of each, before replacing the cooler back inside the trunk.
“What the fuck does he think he's doing?” I said to Sean. “God damn it! He's digging through my shit to try to find something else to bust me on!” It grated me. I was watching the cop perform a completely illegal search of my car: I sure as hell didn't give him permission; it wasn't an inventory search because my car was not being seized; and he had no probable cause to continue searching for evidence of any other crime. He didn't know who or what I was - a law school student going into his third year - and he probably wouldn't have cared anyway. Trooper Fitz was on an illegal fishing expedition, plain and simple. If he found something against me - say a pot pipe or a trace of any drugs at all - his narrative of events would flow in such a way as to “make” the search legal, and there would be fuck-all I could do about it since I was “intoxicated” and therefore less credible or believable than this upstanding officer of the law. Lucky for me that I had already decided to lay off the weed for a while, or Trooper Fitz might have ended my legal career that day. In North Dakota, marijuana was still very much illegal, and the combo of arrests might have been just enough to get me expelled.
My law school brain started cooking with anger at what I perceived was a blatant violation of my civil rights. We drove in silence back to the Grand Forks County Jail. While on the road, I slipped my handcuffs to give my own little “fuck you” to the cop. Without the Trooper noticing, I walked through my restrained arms, bringing my hands from behind my back to the front of me, all while remaining handcuffed. It was relatively easy for me as I was in great shape at the time, standing 5'10” and weighing about 155 pounds, and I was still flexible from years of martial arts training.
When we arrived at the alley port to the jail, I asked Sean to find my sister and get my car home, if possible, just before the Trooper opened his car door and told him to go home. Then the Trooper extracted me from the back seat, noticing my new hand position immediately. He looked at me with a mix of surprise and anger because he didn't catch what, with a dangerous suspect, could have been a life-threatening mistake by him. He glared at me.
I glared back and said, “They were very uncomfortable the way you put 'em on.”
Message sent and received. Fuck you, too, buddy.
We spent the next hour and a half going through the procedures to give me a breathalyzer test. Part of that procedure was to allow me the opportunity to speak to a lawyer first. It being a Saturday, lawyers were rather hard to find out of the phone book. I called every lawyer in the book, to no avail, of course. Trooper Fitz chose to take my desire for the assistance of counsel as a mere delay tactic, and he got increasingly testy with me. I felt like he was ready to punch me in the face at least twice during his wait. He was on the clock - the breathalyzer had to be performed within two hours of the arrest to be considered a valid test, and he was running out of time. Finally, he cut off my phone calls by threatening to treat the delay as a “refusal” to take the breathalyzer test, which would be an automatic 3-year license suspension for me and still keep open the prosecution for DUI.
I relented and blew into the machine. I failed. Then I got booked. By a friend of mine.
The intense embarrassment, shame and abject humiliation of being arrested for a DUI was just about to get started...
Once finished with his paperwork, Trooper Fitz turned me over to the jailer's custody. The jailer happened to be the husband of one of my co-worker friends at the Child Support Unit. I'll call him Charles.
Charles didn’t make any comments in the presence of the Trooper to give away the fact that we knew each other, he just routinely did his paperwork until the Trooper left (the Trooper’s job was done for the time being, and he wanted to get back on the road). After rolling my fingers on the ink pad, Charles gently rolled them across the fingerprint card, one after the other. He gave me a handy-wipe to get the excess ink off my fingers, then moved to check the camera mounted above the same counter-top as the fingerprinting gear.
“Wes, I need you to step back against the wall so we can take your mugs," Charles instructed.
I glanced back at the wall and stepped back against the familiar height display.
"You're gonna have to take your hat off, alright."
"Do I have to, Charlie?" I asked.
"'Fraid so, buddy..."
I reluctantly removed my hat because I knew that I was going to have a Nick Nolte mugshot kind of moment. My hair was messed and matted from a day in the sun, and frankly, I looked fucked up. And worse yet, I knew that that photo would be viewed (and judged) by both the prosecutor and the judge, not to mention the possibility of one of my law school classmates working an internship getting ahold of it and making a copy for public distribution.
I tried to muster my sense of humor because I knew I was fucked, and whenever I knew I was totally fucked, I tried to laugh rather than cry. "Make me look pretty,” I said to Charles, then I smiled broadly just before the camera flashed. Then we did the profile shots.
“Okay. I guess it’s time to find you a cell. Do you want me to call the bail bondsman for you?” Charlie asked.
“Absolutely. The sooner the better.”
“Sure thing. It normally takes them about an hour or so to make it over here.”
Charlie ignored protocol by not keeping me in restraints while he gently guided me to a cell at the end of a small cellblock.
"Do me a favor and tell Susan (his wife, my co-worker) to keep this under her hat, alright?"
"No problem. You gonna make it to the poker game tomorrow?" Charlie asked.
"I kind of doubt it."
We reached an empty cell and paused for a moment as Charlie searched for the right key on his ring. As Charlie opened the door, I couldn’t help but make a wise crack.
"So, do I get a harmonica, or a tin cup, or something?" Laugh or cry, right?
Charlie smiled and said, "Nah, we save those for the more permanent guests...Just sit tight until the bail bondsman gets here. And if you need anything, just yell for me, okay?"
He opened the cell door for me and I walked into the Iron-bar Hilton, complete with bunk beds anchored to the wall outfitted with shitty thin vinyl bed pads and the shiny combo sink and toilet in the corner. At least I was in the cell alone.
"Thanks for your help."
"No problem," Charlie replied as he closed the cell door, which locked with a very pronounced metallic CLANG! Under my combined personal circumstances, it was one of the loneliest sounds I had ever heard. Worse, it was the sound of abject failure.
The bail bondsman got me out in due course, and Sean picked me up (in his car) outside of the Grand Forks County jail about three hours after my arrival. He and my sister had already picked up my car and dropped it off at my home – a dingy little 12 x 65 trailer house that was as old as I was, parked in a small trailer park at the edge of the UND campus. My sister had gone to work, so he was dropping me off at an empty shithole. Sean stopped at the curb, I exited the passenger side door, looked back to Sean, and told him, “Hold up a second – I’ve got something for you.”
I quickly retrieved the cooler from the trunk of my car, then walked up a small deck to the door of a shed/entranceway to the trailer. The inside of the trailer looked much better than the outside as it had been newly remodeled (by me in the summer before law school started) with white walls and glossy black trim. Commercial grade gray carpet covered the length of the trailer. A picture of MACOLM-X was prominently displayed directly across from the entrance. I went straight to the refrigerator, which was painted glossy black and speckled with neon orange, red and yellow paint. I opened the refrigerator door to an orange neon blacklight-lit interior and retrieved the five unopened beers from within, which I threw into the cooler. Then I took the cooler with me back out to Sean and put it in his back seat.
“You'll get more use out of these than I will,” I told him. “Take care in California, man,” I said as I offered my hand to Sean to shake goodbye. “And don't let my sister run you into the ground. Be sure to tell 'em all that I'll be fine, too, okay? "
"Sure thing, dude. Try to stay out of trouble."
"Hmph…Count on it. Take care."
Sean waved again as he pulled away.
I sat around for hours on my tattered old couch chain-smoking in a state of shocked despair. All the possibilities for my future, especially all the bad possibilities, kept washing through my mind. Looking at the line of law books stacked in rows on my chipped-up old entertainment center, I fully absorbed the deep, embarrassing trouble that I had just gotten myself into. I could easily lose my job at the Child Support Office, as traveling to regional counties for court enforcement actions was a part of the gig. If that wasn’t enough, the possibility of expulsion from law school was very real. If I didn’t finish law school, I would be nothing but a washed-out loser with no money, a huge debt load and very poor immediate job prospects. Worse still, my entire extended family would look at me like I was just another fallen drunk and the biggest loser in the herd. But the most frightening prospect to me, the thing that filled me with dread and absolute anguish, was the idea that I could lose HER – Tami – just when I had finally reached the point of getting her back.
How much more can I stand to lose?
I finally got my nerve up to make the first of several unpleasant phone calls. I needed to talk to someone who’d understand, and maybe not judge me so harshly, and there was only one person that I could think of – my dad. I reached to my right and picked up the receiver of my thirty-year-old phone. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hi Dad,” I said. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m hanging in there. Just starting to get ready for work. I’ve got a graveyard shift tonight.”
“Graveyard? I thought they had you on day shifts?”
“Yeah, I’m just trying to pick up a few extra shifts while I’m still on my feet. I gotta tell you, though, the only ones working at night oughtta be things that shit through feathers.” He managed to get a chuckle from me.
“Got a few minutes to talk?” I asked.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Dad, I totally messed myself up today,” I began. I’m sure he could hear my struggle to maintain my composure as I briefly explained the day’s events. He listened intently without interruption until I finished by saying, “Dad, I think I'm totally fucked. I don’t think there’s any way out of it - he got me at 78 in a 55 zone with an open beer, and I blew well over the limit. I'm screwed..."
Gary Miller was exactly the man I needed to talk to at that moment. It’s not that he was just my dad. Yes, I knew he had also had his own encounters on the wrong end of the law and had gotten through them relatively unscathed. But, more importantly, he was a man fighting for his life at that very moment, a man with troubles and concerns that were as intense and immediately mortal as anyone I had ever known. After taking it in for a second, his confident reply was amazingly reassuring, funny and heartwarming to me, all at once. "Son, you're never really totally fucked unless you're bleeding from a major artery and too far away from a hospital..."
He made me smile, almost laugh, for the first time since I got pulled over.
"Now you just slow down for a while, think this thing through, and start taking it one step at a time."
We talked for about a half hour. He left me with the belief that my life wasn’t over, that I could overcome all of it with the right state of mind and level of effort. By the time we hung up, I was relaxed enough to go to bed and actually fall asleep.
***************************
“Why did you stop doing comedy?”, Bob asked.
“First off, I wasn't really that good. Definitely not good enough to go on the road. But the main reason was time and focus. To be completely honest, another reason I did it was as a distraction from both the stress of law school and my dad's situation. Since the end of my first year, he's been dying from prostate cancer.”
Peter was quick to respond. “We're sorry to hear that. How old is he?”
I took a steely control over my emotions before the interview could get too side-tracked, and before they could write me off. “Well, that's the hardest part - he just turned 50. It's okay, though, I've been working through it for over two years now. He was diagnosed as Stage 4 terminal right away - that was the big shocker - but he's made it a lot longer than anybody expected. We're all prepared for it to happen.”
“Are you close to him?” asked Patty.
“Yes, although he has lived a significant distance away from me since the second grade, when my parents got divorced. In fact, I'm going to go see him down in California right after I leave Coquille. But to get to the point a bit better, I've made the most of every time I've seen him, and we haven't left anything unsaid, so I really feel like I am as ready as a person can be for the inevitable.” It was easy for me to believe as the words came out of my mouth. I meant them, or at least, thought I did. I was soon to learn that we are never REALLY ready for anyone we love to die.
And death always comes as a surprise, even when it is expected.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 4
Ending Generations of Abuse
The interview continued...
“I guess my next question is 'why come all the way to Oregon from North Dakota?'” Peter asked.
“They have a saying in North Dakota – ‘forty below keeps the riff-raff out.’ They should also say forty below keeps out the youth,” I quipped. “Why not Minot? Freezin's the reason.”
The ice was well broken by now. They all laughed.
“Seriously, North Dakota is a really great place to be FROM.”
****************************
Outside Flasher, North Dakota, 1965
Her dad wore a thick leather belt with a traditional big solid silver cowboy belt buckle, the kind with a hook on the inside to catch the loophole on the belt, so when it arced down on each massive swing, Diane's skin reacted with the impact of both a punch and a “bee-sting” at one end.
“No, Dad!! No!!” Diane screamed as she crumpled on the bedroom floor while taking the beating of her life. The infamous beating worse than any that her thirteen siblings had ever received or would ever receive. And it was just getting started.
“You lying goddamn bitch!” Stahli (rhymes with “Holly”) stammered as he kept swinging. “I didn't...(smack!)...raise...(smack!)...you...(smack!)...to...(smack!)...be...(smack!)...a goddamn...(smack!)...lying...(smack!)...fucking...(smack!)...whore!” (smack! smack! smack!) Diane's only reprieves from the assault happened when Stahli had a bad swing and managed to hit a wall or the ceiling instead of her. But each time that happened, he only swung harder on the next arc.
Celestinus “Stahli” Miller was a mean fucking drunk. And this night, he was at his meanest and drunkest.
As what would later be referred to as Diane's “horsewhipping” continued, her mother, Carol, grew concerned. Stahli wasn't tiring out. The loud 'SMACK!' noises continued, as did the yelling, screaming and crying, so Carol did the only thing her superstitious Catholic mind could fathom – she grabbed her container of “Holy Water” and her rosary, then entered the bedroom sprinkling and praying. Carol actually believed that her husband was possessed by the Devil, and by-God, she was coming to save him!
Stahli wasn't having any of that shit. Not tonight. Definitely not as he beat the Hell out of my mother when she was a mere 16 years old. Diane had lied to him. Worse yet, she had been “out” with the man who would eventually be my father, and Stahli despised Gary Miller from the start. Gary had already been forbidden to come around Stahli's farm, and Stahli sure as shit wasn't going to let his daughter go traipsing around with Gary behind his back. Hell no. She was going to pay, and Carol had better get out of the fucking way.
After a couple spritzes of aqua Jesus, Stahli grabbed the Holy Water from Carol and threw her and it out of the room, then slammed the door. He had a beating to give, and he was far from done.
All my mother could do is cower in pain and the fear of more of it, cover her face, and pray that her father would stop trying to kill her. If she lived through this, she was determined to run away for good.
Stahli had beaten her before. He had beaten all of the kids before, and his wife Carol, too. They were farmers, including milk farming, so naturally the excess black rubber hosing used for milking cows came in handy as a preferred instrument of discipline. The hose, the belt, a leather strap – they all worked well enough. Stahli and Carol were both “raised by the belt,” and goddamn it, that's how they were gonna raise their kids! They could always ask Father for forgiveness at Sunday confession if they felt bad about it, of course, and that was good enough for them.
This beating was different, though. It was the buckle end of the belt. More than that, it was an over-the-top demonstration of rage and violence that changed them both forever. Maybe it changed the whole family. At least to some extent, it helped bring about my own existence.
It all started through a series of what would – in a healthy family – be absolutely ordinary events. Our family was far from healthy.
Stahli and Carol were married in 1941, when he was 23 and she was 18. Her family had some money from somewhere – enough to loan Stahli the money to buy his farm outside of Flasher, North Dakota, about 45 miles southwest of the State capital, Bismarck. Both were of German-Russian heritage, and both were from stern Catholic parents with very large Catholic families. Carol was one of 15 children herself, born in the middle, so she was expected to help raise the younger children instead of going to high school. She did it, and she resented it. Then she copied it all over again with Stahli.
Shortly after marrying, Stahli and Carol got busy making babies. Over and over again. My mother was the fourth child born out of a total of fourteen children, and the first girl to be allowed to go to high school. Their very first child was a boy, and he was allowed to go to college to find his own path. The next two children were girls, both pulled out of school after the eighth grade to work strictly as farm hands until they were married off. Like Carol, they resented it, too.
A few weeks before my mother, Diane, was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1948, Stahli lost his left hand in a corn-picker machine (he was a lefty, too). He had been pulling the corn-picker with his tracker when the belt feeder jammed up. Stahli stopped the tractor but did not shut off the PTO (Power Take Off) drive for the corn-picker, as he thought it would be easier to unjam if it was still running at a lower speed. As he tried to pull free the excess corn stocks, his glove got caught on the conveyor belt and pulled his hand partially into the picker. He could not free himself as the machine battered and hacked away at his hand, taking off chunk after chunk of flesh and bone. He was alone in the field, with only a dirt road nearby, and thought he was about to die when a truck came by. The driver saw Stahli trying desperately to flag him down. The drivers was a man named Fisher, and he happened to hate Stahli, but he stopped anyway and helped free Stahli from the jaws of Death. Stahli's hand was hanging by mere skin and tendons by that point. After rushing to the hospital 40 miles away in Mandan, there was no saving the hand. The doctors severed it completely at the wrist, and Stahli was forced to adapt to living with a pinching metal hook device in its place.
Stahli could be mean but he was also a tough SOB. He didn't quit. With the generous and near-continuous application of alcohol to his system and the addition of plentiful new farmhands born to him, he adapted to his new condition and managed to keep the farm. By the early 1950's, he was able to afford installing indoor plumbing - until then, it was the outhouse only. One working toilet and a huge metal tub serviced the entire family for many years. The kids always squabbled over who got to go first – or close to first – at every bath-time, for they were the lucky ones to get warm “clean” water. Since Stahli and Carol weren't much for wasting anything, of course everybody else got stuck bathing in the wastewater of their siblings.
After the first son, Carol had nine girls in a row – by 1958. She followed that amazing feat of biology with a nervous breakdown. Upon her doctor's orders, Stahli took Carol on the first vacation of their lives. Carol had a brother who fled North Dakota after high school and wound up working as a cop in Los Angeles, so off to the City of Angels they went, zero kids in tow (babysitting was an expected part of being one of the older kids). They were free to roam the streets of Los Angeles, so they did what many mid-westerners do – they went stargazing in Hollywood. They also decided to go to a gameshow while in Hollywood, and then, for once in her hard-lived life, Carol got a break. In 1958, Carol Miller told her tale of woe live on national television, and she became NBC's Queen for a Day. Carol awed the crowd with her story of ten kids and a crippled husband working to survive on the prairie and ended up showered in gifts and appliances to help ease her burden. It was a short 15 minutes of fame, however.
Stahli and Carol returned from L.A. with their new bounty, and nothing else changed. Stahli kept drinking hard and he kept ruling his little kingdom with an iron fist, literally. Together, they kept pumping out the babies. Fourteen children in all, plus two miscarriages. All raised by the belt and the rubber hose, of course.
The beating of my mother's life happened when she was a senior in high school. Diane had become a respectable seamstress over her years of growing up on the farm - good enough to be in some demand for bridesmaids' dresses from her many relatives in the area. In school, she saw a posting for the “Make It with Wool” competition sponsored by the 4-H club. Diane was encouraged by her sisters and friends to enter, but it would require her to travel 40 miles to Mandan on the day of the contest. Diane talked to Stahli about it and got Stahli's approval. Stahli surprised her by even volunteering to drive her to Mandan himself on the appointed Saturday in October. She was thrilled and did her best on the project.
On the weekend before the competition, Stahli - for no reason at all - informed Diane that he would not be taking her to Mandan. He had no excuse. He just backed out and left it to her to find her own way. And that she did.
Diane had been dating my father - secretly - for years by then. My father, Gary Miller, had a local reputation as both a scrapper and a womanizer. (Yes, they had the same last names but they were NOT related in any way. There are a lot of Millers in that part of the world.) Gary grew up in Raleigh, ND, an even smaller town than Flasher, about 15 miles away from Stahli's farm. Gary liked fast cars, partying, and he was reputed to have a different girlfriend in each little town in the area. He was said to have been “going steady” with five different girls at the same time, but the girls didn't know it. Diane was the one who eventually stole his heart, however, just as he was the only guy she was taken with. Small towns don't keep many secrets, though, and Stahli had heard it all. Gary was quickly FORBIDDEN to date Stahli's daughter or come to the farm at all.
Gary was not about to be kept away from Diane. Gary had learned to be resourceful growing up, and he was not above dishonesty and manipulation to get what he wanted. Not back then, anyway. He was determined to get what he wanted, and even more so to get WHO he wanted, and that person was Diane. So what did he do? He hired a friend of his named John to pretend to be dating Diane. John would show up to pick up Diane, then meet up with Gary to drop her off with him. It all worked out for a while...until the weekend of the 4-H competition.
The year was 1965 and the war in Vietnam was just picking up steam. Gary and many of his buddies decided the safe route to avoid getting drafted was to join the National Guard. On the weekend of Diane's 4-H contest, Gary happened to have Guard duty in Mandan, so he volunteered to take Diane after Stahli had backed out. Diane agreed and they formed a cover story involving her getting an early-morning ride from an “acceptable” family friend, a guy named Mike.
On contest Saturday, Diane met Gary at 5:00 AM on the dirt road running past the farm, and off to Mandan they went. Diane had a pretty good day in Mandan - her made-with-wool entry took 3rd Place in the entire State! She was proud of herself and got a very rare confidence boost. After the contest, she caught a ride home with her 4-H leader and all appeared to be well.
The flaw in their plan is that neither Diane or Gary told Mike about it. Stahli saw Mike at the local bar that Saturday afternoon and asked about the trip. Mike obviously didn't know what Stahli was talking about. Then Stahli's rage began its build-up. Stahli went home immediately and started pressuring Diane's next oldest sister to tell him the truth. Her sister saw his rage and she didn't want to take Diane's beating, so she told him that Gary drove Diane to Mandan. That was all the info Stahli wanted. He got back in his truck and drove right back to the bar, where he commenced to get totally shit-faced while he waited for Diane to come home.
Diane's pride was replaced with fear as soon as she walked in the door. Stahli was still at the bar, but Carol stood waiting for her.
“What did you do?” Carol asked ominously. “You're in trouble.”
Diane went to her bedroom to wait for Stahli, and his wrath. It didn't take long after Carol called the bar for Stahli to show up at her bedroom door.
“Why did you lie to me?” Stahli raged at her. Before Diane could even answer, Stahli smacked her in the face hard enough to bust her lip open and throw her 95-pound body across the bed. She didn't get a chance to answer. Before she could get up, Stahli had the belt off. The beating commenced in earnest.
After Stahli had finally spent himself on almost killing his daughter, he got back in his truck and went back to the bar, of course. He wasn't going to listen to the crying or face the rest of his children after that. He'd rather finish getting falling-down drunk.
By the time I was born, Stahli had taken on the role of kindly grandfather. As I would come to see with my own dad, Stahli tried to make up for his inadequacies as a father by overcompensating with attention and kindness to his grandchildren. I had no idea that this other side of him even existed until I was in junior high.
The beating of my father's life came when he was a mere 8 years old. Gary was an altar boy, and after being sexually abused by a priest who had been traveling through the area and had had a stop-over at their local church, he tried to tell his parents about it. Gary was instantly accused of lying about the priest - and such a dirty, rotten lie at that! His father, Adolph, beat the living hell out him with a leather strap, and ended any hope at all of saving young Gary from the real abuse he had been suffering. Abuse he would never truly recover from or be healed of.
My father had been getting raped and otherwise sexually abused by his oldest sibling, his brother, Otto Miller, starting when Gary was only 5 years old. Otto was nine years older than my father when it started. Somewhere in that region of the prairie, there was a den of pedophiles – a nest of vampires - and Otto had become a very active part of it.
Gary also had two older sisters and one younger sister. The older sisters suspected something was happening, and little Gary confirmed it to them. His parents, however, were in abject denial. Any attempt to bring up any abuse by Otto AT ALL was met with a stern reprimand that “blood is thicker than water” and to stop saying such things “or you're going to end up in Hell”. Sometimes that reprimand came with a slap. It didn't take long for the sisters to just give up trying.
The abuse continued sporadically for years until Otto enlisted in the Marine Corps. While Otto was away, Gary hit an early puberty and started developing into a man. And Gary trained. Hard. He worked daily on increasing his physical strength, his speed, and he worked most of all on his fighting abilities, often learning by doing through the many fights in which he eagerly engaged. By the time Otto was found in flagrante delicto with some other enlistee and dishonorably discharged for “homosexuality,” Gary was 13 years old, ripped and mean as a junkyard dog.
The first time they saw each other without anyone else around, Otto tried to grab Gary's crotch. Gary quickly busted three of Otto's ribs and put Otto's head through the plaster wall.
Thus ended the abuse of Gary Miller, forever.
My father spent the rest of his high school years chasing every skirt he found interesting. He was a man, and he had to prove it. Especially to himself. Over and over again.
Following Diane's beating, she was left with welts covering most of her body that were the size of goose eggs, all deep shades of black and blue and many having pierced the skin where the loophole hook impacted. She could barely walk for several days. Her shame was just getting started, though. On Monday - a school day - she had to start wearing clothes that covered her entire body and the bruises. She also began three weeks of lying to her PE teacher in order to stay out of gym class. The cover-up was successful, and no authorities ever knew or cared about what Stahli had done to her.
Everything was different for Diane from that point on. She avoided Stahli at all costs and refused to even speak to him for months on end. Stahli kept his distance from Diane, too. While he'd never admit it, he showed a touch of shame after that night, and his temper was sated...for a while, anyway.
Diane was still only 16 and had most of the rest of the school year left before graduating, so she was stuck living at the farm. Any attempt at running away, at least then, would only result in another beating. Her only escape was Gary, and she clung to him. They continued dating on the sly until prom season came about. Diane had grown very tired of lying to Stahli and wanted to go to the prom with Gary in the open. Still fearing to even ask Stahli, she went to the local priest, Father Hugo, and asked for his help. The Father went out to the farm to visit Stahli, and whatever he said, it worked. Stahli granted Diane his permission to go to the prom with Gary and he lifted the ban on Gary coming to the farm. He even offered to buy her a prom dress, which was as close as Stahli ever got to an apology for what he had done to her. Diane refused to take the dress, which was as close as she could get to saying “Fuck you!” to Stahli. They understood each other just fine. That was as close as either of them cared to come toward making amends. All that mattered to Diane at that point was being allowed to openly date Gary.
It didn't take long until Stahli had a full reversal of his attitude toward Gary. Gary was four years older than Diane - meaning he was of legal drinking age - so they quickly became bar buddies. Stahli had many a drunken night with Gary in which he schooled Gary on the demands required to ever marry his daughter. The first such requirement was that Gary had to become a member of the Knights of Columbus. Gary did it. The second was that he had to have a steady job that paid good money. Gary found that job with Frontier Airlines in Bismarck, a secondary benefit of which was the ability to transfer to distant locations down the road and put enough comfortable miles between them and both of their families.
The third was that there would be no shot-gun weddings. No shacking up before marriage, period. Stahli had laid down the law with his girls early on, threatening to hang them upside down in the barn and whip them until they bled if they ever “brought home a bundle.” All of the girls had every reason to believe him. Being “good” Catholic girls, all of them were very careful to not get caught or get pregnant. Stahli was amazingly blind in that regard, like many fathers, as Gary and Diane had been getting busy for some years by that time. They made it until the summer following Diane's graduation before getting ratted out by none other than Gary's brother, Otto.
By the end of Summer 1966, Gary had just transferred to Williston, North Dakota (well over 200 miles away from Flasher) and came back for Diane's oldest sister's wedding. After being told of Gary and Diane's illicit deeds, and although Diane had just received her high school diploma, Stahli still refused to let Diane leave the farm until she was either 18 or married. Both Carol and Stahli feared that Diane was already pregnant, Diane was desperate to get off the farm and away from her abuser, and Gary wanted to take Diane with him as far away from there as possible, so the solution to all their problems was obvious. They set a wedding date that very night.
Diane and Gary were married in September of 1966. She was 17 years old, NOT pregnant, and he was 21. It was their mutual escape from the nightmares of their youth. My older brother was born two years later, with me following 18 months after that. By the time my sister was born, almost five years after me, their marriage was already nearing its end. It had to end - it was a marriage that was doomed from the start.
They got divorced when I was in the second grade, just past the 11-year mark and just over a year after Stahli died of a massive heart attack. Unknown to anyone before his death, Stahli had a rare and very painful disease called ankylosing spondylitis, which causes the vertebrae in one’s back to fuse together over time, causing increasing immobility and extreme pain. It also leads to inflammation of heart valves and hardening of heart muscles and was likely the main contributing factor in his heart attack. By the time of his death, Stahli’s unannounced disease had become so severe that all but two of his vertebrae had become fused together. (In the years to follow, I would come to understand Stahli’s pain, and his attempts to self-medicate with alcohol, much better than I ever desired.)
The very first time Diane had learned of Gary's history of being sexually abused was only months before the divorce (I learned about it for the first time when I was in the eighth grade). For Diane, the horror of Gary's youth was the final deciding factor in ending their marriage. She simply couldn't live with it. She found a new man, and that gave her just enough confidence to find her way out of the marriage.
To me, the knowledge of the abuses my parents suffered had a huge impact on how I saw my entire life to that point, looking backward. It all started to make a lot more sense. My empathy for and understanding of my mother and the hell she endured blossomed as did our relationship. I was a very good listener with whom she took time to vent a lot of deep and unhealed wounds (she called them “heart-to-heart conversations”, which they were, but there was still plenty of residual anger).
As for my father, the information about his abuse felt like a deep dark family secret, something NEVER TO BE DISCUSSED, especially with him. Nobody knew about that history in either my mother or father’s families other than the people I already mentioned. He was judged quite harshly by many of those people through the divorce and after. I felt his embarrassment and the shame of his victimhood that I could now see he carried. Although we visited him in the summers and major holidays, he was mostly an absentee father and I resented him for that as time went on. I now saw him in a new and better light and had a much better comprehension of why he wanted to be as far away from North Dakota as feasible. He wanted to get as far away in both time and space from the nightmares he suffered.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 5
Inheriting the worst first case
Despite his assurances on a quick selection for the new juvenile prosecutor position, three weeks had past following my interview at the D.A.'s office without any word. I felt the prospect of getting hired becoming slimmer by the day. Of the bleak job prospects I had, the D.A.'s office paid the best - starting at about $30,000 per year - which would just about be enough for me to avoid personal bankruptcy if I found a cheap enough place to live and lived a Spartan lifestyle. Maybe enough. The other two prospects I had were both criminal defense positions - one with Multnomah County starting at about $23,000 per year and the other a private firm in Bend, Oregon, at $25,000. I had only had one interview per office, so in my mind they were both long-shots, too. In any event, time was running out to find a job. My student loans - which added up to over $35,000 - would start coming due within the next couple of months and I was already extended to the max on my credit cards just making it this far.
The good news was that I had a temporary place to live - rent free - and I didn't need to buy groceries, either. I had been staying with my mother's oldest friend, Rachel, and her husband of 20-some years, Keith. Rachel grew up near my mother and they went to school together as best friends from first grade until graduation, so it was only natural that Rachel was named my Catholic godmother after I was born. My mother and Rachel remained close over the years, despite the geographic distance between them. Growing up, we vacationed several times together and they felt very much like family. Rachel and Keith were unable to have children of their own, so naturally they took to my siblings and me. When I decided to move to Oregon (or rather, each time), they were always very enthusiastic and immediately welcomed me to stay with them, gratis, to give me a chance to get on my feet financially.
They were usually a fun couple to be around, too. Keith and Rachel had great senses of humor, albeit twisted and dark at times, which made a great fit for me. Both worked in good-paying union jobs, so with two incomes and no kids, money was never an issue to them. They liked the change of pace of having someone around that they liked and cared for, and I was treated almost like a surrogate son. Having gone sober via AA for over 15 years, they also liked living a bit vicariously through their younger, wilder friends, particularly me. My life was exciting to them, going in a direction they could only vaguely imagine for themselves. We had already experienced some of my bad times together. They were present and helpful in my past times of need, and I was a willing ear to listen to their plights as well. Our shared experiences bonded us in friendship as much as my mother and Rachel had ever been, and they beamed with the pride of parents in helping me achieve my destiny.
Rachel and Keith's home was brand new, beautiful, and too huge for the two of them. When I wasn't studying for the Bar exam in their separate double-car sized two story back building they had dubbed “The Villa”, we spent hours upon hours in the “smoking lounge” (their two-car attached garage) talking about everything - my past, their pasts, my family's dark history...everything was on the table all the time. Of course, being my elders as well as my friends, and Keith having gone through substance abuse treatment and years of AA meetings, one of the most popular topics was drinking (and sometimes sobriety). They were a couple who had been through their own Hell together and found themselves on the other side of addiction still in love and still together.
They never lacked for advice, either. Solicited or not. My DUI the previous summer and subsequent sobriety only brought us closer together, as I was now “one of them”. Keith in particular opened up to me - probably more than he ever had to anyone other than Rachel. To him, now that we shared a “disease” and “The Cure,” I was brought fully into the fold as he had found a new friend and a confidant like none other. Keith was a very private person with a gruff persona, not one to make - or keep - friends easily, so I believed I was likely the only such person he found outside of his marriage. At least since he became sober.
This day, August 31, 1995, found me pacing around the smoking lounge with Rachel intently observing and Keith puttering around his garage, pretending to do something as we waited. The time had come for me to find out my Bar exam results. I had a cigarette in one hand and the cordless phone in the other, on hold with the State Bar for several minutes. I was as anxious as I could be - my entire life rested on this one phone call! Or so it seemed...
“With my freakin’ luck, they probably lost the results,” I said to Rachel over the phone. Then someone picked up the other end. I kept talking into the phone.
“That’s right, WESLEY MILLER.” I spelled it out. “My Social Security numb...,” I started to say, but was cut off with an “Okay, I found you,” on the other end of the line. Then more silence.
Every second that ticked by seemed like another torturous minute.
“Okay, so what’s the news,” I pressed. My composure was maintained even if my patience was waning. “Can you give me my score...Alright, thanks anyway.”
I kept my poker face for a moment - long enough to generate Rachel's impatience.
“Well? What was it?” she asked.
I couldn't hold the secret and broke into a huge smile. “I passed! Once I'm sworn in, I'll officially become your favorite blood sucking bastard attorney!”
Rachel and Keith both broke out into huge smiles. Both of them gave me deep hugs, and the congratulations flowed. “Let's go out to dinner tonight to celebrate,” Keith suggested. “My treat.”
I laughed. “It's always your treat! But hell, yeah! Sounds like a plan.”
“Well, when you start making those lawyer bucks, then you can buy a dinner or two. 'Til then, it's still on me,” he said with a grin.
After calling my mom to share the great news, I found some quiet to make the phone call that my dad had been holding on so desperately to hear. A dying man hangs on hard to hope, especially for his own children.
“I made it, Dad. I passed!”
“That's fucking fantastic, son! I knew you'd do it,” he replied.
“Thanks, Dad. That means a lot to me,” I said.
“How high did you score?” he asked.
“I don't even know. They only release the scores in Oregon to the people who fail, so I don’t know.”
“Have you heard anything on the prosecutor job?”
“No, nothing yet from the D.A. He said it would be a quick decision, but I'm still hoping.”
“Got any other irons in the fire?” he asked. I could feel his paternal need to know that I would be alright, regardless of his fate.
“Well, I interviewed with a defense firm down in Bend, and that looks promising,” I stated.
“You don't want a shit-job like that! You know what I've always thought - that the phrase 'criminal lawyer' was a redundancy!”
“Dad, at this point, I’ll take anything. I mean, my debt’s pretty damn high. If I don’t get a job quick, my first case might be my own freakin’ bankruptcy,” I said with complete honesty.
I turned the conversation to how he was doing. There was no good news. Over the two-plus years since he had been diagnosed with Stage Four terminal prostate cancer, he had gone through many big slides in his condition, only to plateau for a while with a new round of hormone or radiation treatments, then slide downhill fast again a few weeks (sometimes blessed months) later. As we continued talking, I could hear his energy level dissipate and I knew he needed to get off the phone and rest.
“Son, I love you...and I'm very proud of you,” he said as a beginning to his conversation wrap-up. I silently teared up with his words “I'm very proud of you.” Despite all I had done to reach this point in life, it was the first time I had ever heard those words said to me by my father.
“Be sure to call me and let me know right away about how that D.A. job turns out, okay?”
“Believe me, I’ll let you know when I do...Get some rest, Dad. I love you, and I'll talk to you again soon.”
Keith and I went to dinner that night (Rachel was working her standard swing shift at the bakery). While we were both upbeat, the mood - my mood - had been subdued after talking with my dad. It was hard to keep my mind off him. His tone and energy made it seem like he was literally watching the sands of his like-clock running out faster and faster. I could hear it all in his voice. He was struggling with everything he had just to maintain his crippled state, and he was losing. His Time was approaching.
It was a pretty quiet dinner.
When I wasn't stressing about my father's condition, I spent the rest of that weekend worrying over my job prospects and near-term financial distress (read “Bankruptcy”) if I didn't land one soon.
Passing the Bar exam on my first attempt turned out to be a very anti-climactic victory.
Tuesday morning after Labor Day Weekend found me still stressing, pacing around in the garage smoking cigarettes with Rachel again. I was venting hard. “Portland is a tough market for me,” I said. “All the little rich kids from Lewis and Clark and the other two law schools in Oregon have either interned here or have connections through ‘mommy and daddy’. The jobs I would be in competition for - like the public defender’s office - the pay is jack shit. Low twenties to start, and not much room to grow.”
She was stunned. “You’ve got to be kidding me! I make more at the bakery! How the Hell do they expect that a person can go to law school, take on all those student loans, and ever hope to pay them back?” she asked.
“The short answer is that “They” don't give a fuck,” I retorted. “The schools already have your money and the lenders stay on your ass forever to collect it, legally, job or no job. They'll defer you for a while and capitalize the interest for you while they're at it, of course. Lucky borrower, right? Shit, you can't even discharge it in bankruptcy. You carry that shit around forever, like luggage,” I finished with an Eddie Murphy line.
She took a big drag before asking me, “Wes, what are you going to do if you don't get one of these jobs?”
“Guess I'll just keep leeching off of you,” I said with a smile.
“Oh, what a load of bullshit.” she replied with a shoulder nudge. “You've always been a good guest. You know you can stay here as long as you need...” She was cut off by Keith coming out of the house, cordless phone in hand and a grin on his face.
“Phone for you, dude.”
As I took the phone and put it to my ear, Keith, who can barely contain his excitement, starts chanting “COOS BAY! COOS BAY!” in cheerleader fashion until I had to walk outside just to obscure the noise. He was embarrassing me but he didn't give a damn.
“This is Wes...”
“This is Peter Blanchett in Coos County,” came the neutral reply.
It was the Boss, the District Attorney himself calling me. I shined up like a newly minted quarter. “Hi! How are you?” I asked.
“Just fine, thank you.” His voice was getting friendlier. “First off, I want to apologize for the delay in getting back to you. It was a long interview process with a lot of highly qualified applicants, so the decision wasn’t easy to come by. Frankly, I’m still a little uncertain because of all the competition, but...after a great deal of thought and discussions in the office...you’ve edged out them all out, and I would like to offer you the position with us. Congratulations!”
“Thank you. And believe me, I greatly appreciate the opportunity...”
He cut me off, saying, “I hope so, because you beat out plenty of extremely bright candidates. I hope you realize the amount of trust and confidence I’m placing in you.”
“I won’t disappoint you; you can be assured of that.”
“Fair enough. Now the next question is, how soon can you start?”
“Is tomorrow soon enough?” I asked with a chuckle.
“While I appreciate your enthusiasm, we'll give you a bit more time than that. How about the beginning of next week? Can you find a place and get moved that fast?”
“Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I didn't bring much with me and I have some help for the move. All I have to do is find a place to rent. Do you have any suggestions?”
“I don't, but I'm sure my staff of young bucks here can help point you in the right direction.” I could visualize him puffing his chest as he said it.
“Great! It's still early in the day, so I can probably get down there this afternoon yet and start looking.”
“Hey, that would be outstanding. What is it, about a four-hour drive for you? Well, if you get down here before close of business, stop by the office and I'll introduce you to whoever's not in trial today.”
“Awesome! I'll pack an overnight bag and be there in a few hours.”
“Looking forward to it. See you soon,” he said before hanging up.
My life had just taken the big swing up. I had a career ahead of me.
A few minutes later, I was on the phone again calling my father to tell him the good news. Great news for him - it was the job he wanted to see me land. A job that fit with his correctional-officer sense of what side of the justice aisle is proper to sit. “Do corporate law or become a prosecutor,” he'd say. “As a corporate lawyer you get rich, plain and simple. And if you're going to practice criminal law, you need to be putting the bad guys away. Defense attorneys are the scum of the Earth!”
The machine picked up my call. Margaret's voice answers. “You’ve reached the Miller residence. Sorry, but we’re not able to answer the phone right now. Please leave a message.”
A chill ran through my stomach, but I pulled it together to leave my message.
“Good news, dad! I just got offered the prosecutor job, and I accepted. They want me to start Monday, so I’m leaving for Coos Bay shortly to find a place to live. I hope everything’s okay, dad....I love you, and I’ll try again later.”
Keith happened to be using up some vacation time that week and he was eager to help. He not only volunteered to drive, but he also called ahead and reserved a room right on the beach in Bandon. Coquille - and the D.A.'s Office - were just a twenty minute hop away, so we both packed overnight bags and hit the road.
Four hours later, I arrived in the D.A.'s Office wearing the same T-shirt and jeans I had on earlier in Rachel's smoking lounge. I was eager to get there before closing time and decided it was late enough in the day to forgo the business attire. The office area was a big L-shaped, with small attorneys' offices complete with outside-facing windows lining the exterior walls. The place looked deserted except for several secretaries who occupied three cubicles in the central part of the “L”. Blanchett met me as soon as I was buzzed through the security door. We greeted each other briefly then he led me directly to the only occupied office.
“Most of the attorneys are either in trial today or otherwise occupied, but Kevin has been handling the juvenile case load up to now, and he’ll be the one training you anyway,” the D.A. told me.
We stopped at the entrance to the office of (I’ll call him) Kevin Baker. Kevin was seated behind the desk, seriously pouring over a thick police report. He presented a mix of intellectual, with his horned-rimmed glasses and grim expression while reading the report, and athlete, as he stands a muscled 6’1” after being drawn away from the report and standing up to shake hands.
Blanchett took the initiative and made the introduction. “Kevin, I’d like you to meet our new juvenile prosecutor, Wes Miller.”
Kevin walked to the door with a friendly smile and extended a hand to me.
“Kevin Baker, nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“Kevin primarily works as the sex crimes prosecutor but has had to pull double duty with the juvenile side.”
He kept shaking my hand, humorously. “No, I’m really glad to meet you!”
All three of us smiled and shared a brief chuckle.
“Well, I’ve got work to do, so I’ll let you two get acquainted,” Blanchett said. “If you have any questions about anything, Wes, just call our office manager, Bev (real name – great person). She’ll get you squared away.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Will do.”
As Blanchett exited down the hall, Kevin asked me to “come on in and have a seat.” I found one of the two shitty old government-office-building chairs, the same kind I had back at the Child Support Office. I asked him a few establish-an-interest questions about him and his background, and we made the chit-chat for a few minutes before getting into questions about the job. It didn't take long at all for Kevin to establish that he was an over-talker, meaning he had the irritation-inducing habit of talking over anything I said. At first, I thought maybe he was just another asshole attorney, too full of himself to bother listening to anyone else, and it made me prone to disliking him. (In the weeks to come, as I discovered that he was a very good attorney, well-respected by his peers and even loved by some in the office, I learned to live with it as a mere annoying personality quirk). He was going to be my trainer, the attorney I would be working with most directly at the launch of my career, so I bit my lip, swallowed my ego, and attentively listened to him.
“Obviously, all other attorneys are obligated to zealously represent their clients’ interests within the rules of ethics,” Kevin continued the conversation. “But being a prosecutor is unique because it is the only job as an attorney where you are given an affirmative ethical obligation to ‘do justice’. And that’s not so easy all the time...” He paused in consideration. “Were you aware that your position was just recently created?”
“Yeah, they told me in the interview about how they just got funding for the position...”
He cut me off with, “...Because of measure 11. Where did you go to law school?”
“University of North Dakota.” He didn't laugh, but I could see a hint of amusement.
“Then you probably don’t know much about Measure 11. It’s our ‘get tough on juvenile crime’ measure passed by the voters last spring. What it does is make it mandatory for all juveniles 15 and over to be prosecuted as adults if they are accused of person felonies, and it also carries mandatory minimum sentences for those felonies, in the adult system. No discretion of judges in sentencing, and no determination of the maturity level or understanding of juvenile offenders 15 or over. What it means to you is that you, as a prosecutor, must use your discretion much more carefully to achieve anything close to a “just” result.
“For example, if a fifteen-year-old hits another kid with a stick, say on the arm or leg, and doesn’t seriously injure him, but just leaves a bruise, that’s technically an Assault II, because he caused a physical injury, a bruise, with a weapon, the stick. Under Measure 11, if that kid is convicted of Assault II, he gets an adult person felony conviction and a mandatory minimum sentence of 60 months in prison.”
“Holy shit!”
“No shit. Most prosecutors, myself included, despise Measure 11. It treats the bully with a baseball bat who breaks someone’s ribs and deserves that kind of treatment by the system and real, serious jail time, the same as a regular teenager who’s horsing around with his buddy and gets carried away, giving the other kid a little bruise. Same conviction, same sentence, no discretion.”
“So you have to be careful...”
“You have to be very careful in the charging stage,” he interjected again. “But that’s always the stage of a case when you have the least amount of reflective information to make a decision. Cops, as you’ll see, usually do enough work to make their bust, then they want out. They don’t want to get bogged down in follow-up investigation that may actually hurt their original case. Witnesses leave town, can’t remember because they were drunk, or high, you name it. Alleged victims often change their stories after they’ve had time to sober up or cool off... But if you make the wrong call, you can tarnish a person for life.”
“How much discretion do we actually...”
“You’ve probably already been told that you ‘work at the pleasure’ of the D.A., and that’s true, but we do have an incredible amount of discretion here. Basically, you make the call, but you better be able to back it up. We’ve argued quite a bit over the whole Measure 11 problem here, but Peter’s pretty much let us make our own decisions. Basically, in these cases, you have to decide what a just outcome is before you charge it,” Kevin said as he reached across the desk, handing me the thick police report he was reviewing when I had first walked up to his door. I started flipping through the pages as Kevin continued.
“This case is a prime example...frankly, it’s probably the most difficult case I’ve seen since I’ve been here...and it’s going to be yours,” he said with a big smile of relief.
Later that night, after a delicious surf-and-turf dinner compliments once again of Keith, we took a long walk on the rocky beach beneath our room. The heat of summer was still with us and the sky was clear. It's a perfect evening - if only Tami was with me...
Keith stopped to light one of his Schwisher Sweets cigars, then asked me, “So what the fuck is this 'first-case' all about, anyway?”
“Oh, god, it's awful. Just fucking horrifying,” I said solemnly. “It's a molestation case. Of a five-year-old boy by a fifteen-year-old.”
“Ooo, that not good. So what's so tough about it?” Keith pushed.
“Well, it's not the evidence or proving it or anything like that. The five-year old’s mother walked in on the fifteen-year-old while he had the son’s penis in his mouth. Then the perp admitted everything to the cops, even said he knew that what he was doing was wrong...”
“So what's the deal, then?”
“The problem is what to do with him, especially after Measure 11 kicked in.”
“That’s easy - shoot that fucker!” He laughed and made a fake gun gesture as he continued, “Just sign me up and I'd be happy to send that sick little fuck on to Jesus!”
“I wish it were that easy...The fifteen-year-old is retarded.” (Had I explained that the kid was “developmentally disabled,” I would most likely have then had to define that to Keith as “retarded” anyway.)
That information stopped Keith's riff cold. “Oh, shit...”
“It gets worse,” I said. “Apparently, he was born with massive birth defects, including a bad heart. According to his family, he’s had four open heart surgeries so far and he’s on about a dozen different types of medication. Adult prison could possibly kill him. And under Measure 11, that's exactly where he is supposed to go.”
Keith knew all there was to know about adult prison. I'll tell you more about that later in my story. Just know that he understood immediately that I was talking about essentially giving this fifteen-year-old perp a death sentence...on my first case.
“So how much time is he looking at?”
“We got him on at least five separate counts of Sodomy I that he admitted to, all backed up by the five-year-old’s statements. And Sodomy I is an A felony, mandatory minimum of ten years per count.”
“So even if the little bastard survives in prison...”
“Yup. It’s still the equivalent of a life sentence.”
I paused to light a cigarette, then said to Keith, “I'm livin' one weird kind of fucked-up kinda life here, already. You know? In the course of a day, I went from desperate and unemployed to potentially a State's executioner. It's a lot to wrap my head around.”
Keith gave me a quick little one-armed side-hug. “No fucking shit, huh?”
I woke up suddenly at 2:30 AM to the peaceful sounds of ocean waves and a far-off sea gull coming through the open balcony door. I was wide awake. And totally serene. Calm. At peace.
At that moment, I knew my father was dead.
There was no going back to sleep, so I grabbed my smokes, a blanket, a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew out of the mini-fridge and walked out on the deck. It was a clear and beautiful morning, a few hours before sunrise. A bright not-yet-full moon had come up while we were sleeping. Now it hung brilliantly over the surf, a perfect postcard setting. I sat there for hours, alone on the balcony, smoking cigarettes and watching the morning colors change over the water as sunrise approached. I felt sad but also at peace in a resolved sort of way. Like when a long, hard-fought battle was finally over.
I knew - I mean I knew in my head and my heart - that he was gone. And I was trying to make myself “OK” with it.
I pushed my feeling about my dad aside and hit the ground running that morning, having found a one-bedroom furnished house for rent that fit my needs. By 9:30 AM, Keith and I were talking to the polite and grandmotherly real estate agent/property manager who was in control of leasing that house.
“I’m in rush, so...let’s do it,” I told her. I was ready to move in TODAY. Hell, I wanted to make a day trip to Portland and back THAT DAY with my first (maybe only) load of belongings. I was an eager beaver to be on my own and get my career underway!
“Great! Now would you like a long-term lease, or...”
“Can I go month to month?”
“...Yeah, the owner is willing to do that, but it’s an extra fifty dollars a month,” she said. Of course it was...
I didn't like the extra attempt to part me with more money, but my options were slim. I thought I found the right place at the right time. “Let’s do it,” I told her.
“Okay! Just give me a few minutes here to print out a lease agreement for you...”
As she left to go to the printer, Keith leaned over to me and said, “I haven’t checked in yet with the old lady...better get to it.” He turned to the real estate agent and said, “Is it okay to use your phone? I’ll put it on my calling card.”
“Sure, help yourself...Now let me just hang on for that lease to print...”
Keith leaned back to me. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked as he picked up the phone and started dialing.
“It’s not the Taj Mahal, that’s for sure, but I gotta live somewhere...At least with a month-to -month, if I find something better, I’m not stuck.”
The real estate agent returned to her desk with several documents just as Keith started to greet Rachel. “Okay. This is the rental agreement...” she said. As she handed me the document, I looked over at Keith and saw his face go dire. And pale.
My stomach seized into an icy ball while tears were trying to force their way into my eyes. Right then, I knew it was true - my dad was dead.
I struggled to maintain my composure while trying to finish the transaction with the real estate agent.
“And here’s the fire alarm inspection notice...and I also have some contact information here for you for the gas company...and the power company...and trash removal service...and the cable company.” She was being very helpful, oblivious to what was silently going on between Keith and me.
“Okay,” Keith said into the phone. “Just a second...” He covered the receiver as he passed the phone over to me. “You need to talk to Rachel.”
“Excuse me for a minute,” I said to the agent. I then stood up, took a deep breath, put the receiver to one ear while plugging my other ear with an index finger, and I turned away from the realtor, awaiting the bad news. And that's exactly what came.
Just as Rachel was saying to me how sorry she was to have to tell me, Keith turned to the real estate agent and told her, “His father just passed away this morning...”
Death of a loved one, even when expected, changes everything in your life real fucking quick.
I had a house to move in to (I signed the papers before leaving the real estate office) and a job to start in less than a week, and all of it instantly got put on hold. I had to help bury my dad first.
Before I could do that, I needed to start gathering info and make arrangements with my new employer. 1995 was a few years before the massive proliferation of cell phones began, so we were off to find the nearest pay phone. The closest choice was an open-air pay phone located in a McDonald's parking lot.
The first call had to be to Margaret (not her real name). I needed to know the details - of how and when he died, and how and when we were to say our goodbyes. We were both sad and stunned - I guess you could call it “in shock,” for lack of a better term - but we both maintained our composure and got through the call.
Keith just sat in his black Ford Splash, smoking a cigar and trying not stare at me while I took care of my unpleasant business.
The second call had to be to the District Attorney's Office. They needed to know, and other arrangements for my starting date needed to be made.
“Hi. Is Bev available...This is Wesley Miller. I was just hired as the juvenile prosecutor...Thanks...” I didn't want to speak to Peter or one of my soon-to-be peers in the office because 1) I didn't want to dump my troubles on them and start off as a sympathy case, and 2) I didn't know if I was going to be able to keep from breaking down as I spoke. Besides, I was told to go to Bev if I needed anything. I became damn glad for it, too.
“This is Bev,” she said as she picked up the line.
“Hi Bev. This is Wesley Miller, your new Juvenile prosecutor.”
“Hi there! What can I do for you this morning?” She was so nice...I hated to throw a damper on her day.
“Well, I'm in Coos Bay and just found a place to live...”
“Wow, aren't you on the ball? That's great!”
“Yeah, well...this isn't easy to say, but I just found out that my father died last night,” I said without a shaky voice (but just barely).
“Oh, Wes, I am so sorry...” she said with total sincerity and a genuine warmth that came as a welcome relief to my anxiety. “What can we do to help you out?” A huge weight lifted from me - I still had a job.
Bev was incredibly gracious throughout our talk. And helpful. Within ten minutes or so, she had worked out an entirely new plan for the start of my career. Better still, she left me feeling like I had not just found a new job, but a new home.
As I explained to Keith on the drive out of Coos Bay, “When I get back from the funeral, they’re sending me to two different training conferences before I start at the office...”
“What for?”
“One is a conference on Measure 11 and how to implement it. The other is like a basic training for prosecutors from all over the state...”
My siblings and I arrived the afternoon before the funeral. We stayed with Margaret, my dad’s second wife, at their home in little Esparto, California. She took us over to the funeral home where we each got about twenty minutes or so of private time alone with my dad’s body before the following day’s services. I took every moment of it to say my “goodbye.” His face looked almost normal but when I touched his cheek and lips with my hand, it felt solidified like hard plastic.
The next morning, the church was half-filled with mourners. A California Department of Corrections Color Guard was seated in the rear and there were many other CDC uniforms apparent in the congregation. I was seated up front, flanked to my left by my younger sister (20) and older brother (27). On my right were Margaret, her daughter (21), and a very sad grandchild (3).
The Priest started wrapping up the service with, “…And so it is with love and joy that we say fare-well to Gary, as he is at peace, returned to his Father’s kingdom... Why don’t we take a few minutes now to share with each other any thoughts or memories we may have...”
I looked about the silent room - nobody was getting up to talk. I couldn’t let that happen, so I stood and faced the crowd. My voice wavered a bit, but I managed to maintain my composure.
“I just want to express our gratitude, on behalf of our family, to the men and women of the Department of Corrections for being here today...My father, I know, was extremely grateful to all of you for the care and support you’ve shown through his illness...He often spoke with wonder about how the men and women of your Department had donated their vacation and sick leave time to help him stay afloat financially, and that gesture helped ease the burden of his illness...As most of you know, Corrections wasn’t his first career. After working at a job he loved for over twenty years, he became a victim of corporate raiding and greed... I know it filled him with immense pride and satisfaction to find a second career working with honorable people in an important, but often overlooked, profession.
“My dad had a lot more he wanted to accomplish with his life, but he never really had the chance. He was too busy trying just to survive… On his behalf, I thank you all for being with us here to say goodbye.”
That was all the eulogy I could muster.
Outside a few minutes later, the California Department of Corrections Color Guard stood at attention as my father’s casket approached the hearse. My brother and I were the last pallbearers and helped push the casket into the vehicle. On instinct or impulse (don’t know which), I lingered behind the casket as it was secured by the funeral director. I was then joined by my siblings, who removed the roses on their lapels and placed them atop our father’s casket. I placed mine last, paused a few seconds with my hand on the casket, then I brought my hand to my lips. I kissed two fingers and touched the casket again before stepping back for the rear hatch to be closed.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 6
Facing the consequences
The interview continued…
“Okay. Now for the part that troubles me a bit...” Peter began.
“The DUI last year?” I replied.
“Good guess. It says here you don’t drink anymore?”
“That’s right. The whole thing was very embarrassing, but looking back, it was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me. It definitely refocused me. With my father’s health situation weighing on me, I don’t know if I would have made it through the end of law school had I not gone through the program and gained a better emotional toolkit to handle it all.”
***********************
July 1994…
I started my job as an intern for the Grand Forks Regional Child Support Unit immediately following my first year of law school. It was considered one of the better positions in Grand Forks for a law student primarily because it afforded the most court opportunities to appear under the “third-year practice rule,” which allowed third-year law students the chance to appear in court ostensibly under the supervision of a practicing attorney. Being part of the government, the Child Support Unit had no compunction about filing appeals against clearly erroneous decisions in court, therefor – if you were lucky in the timing – one might be able to brief and argue a case before the State Supreme Court as a third-year law student (I would get double lucky, having two State Supreme Court Appeals in my third year). Quite the prestige while still in school, especially if you won. Also, because it was a government job, it came with health insurance and the ability to build up hours in flextime to compensate for time off during final exams each semester.
I entered the job during a transition period in which the office was changing its legal department structure. For many years, the Child Support Unit hired two or three law students, depending on their budget and workload. When I started, I was to be the lone and last law student in the position, as they decided to hire one of the graduating third-year students to be the full-time attorney following his passage of the Bar exam. There were three law students in the class immediately ahead of me as the workload had shot through the roof following Bill Clinton’s “welfare-to-work” model that required us to pursue child support for every single welfare case or health insurance dependency on the State. Baby-daddies were made to reimburse AFDC according to their financial ability, and if they had none (unemployed), we were to attribute a minimum wage income to that person and we pursued them regardless. The rules were stern and made quite inflexible after years of women being cheated in their divorce settlements out of fair and entirely reasonable child support - or worse by being abandoned completely or never even acknowledged - forcing many on to the public dole. Our program was meant to change that and require accountability and put financial responsibility on to those to whom it should be held and not the general public. At least, that’s the theory.
The reality of the job was fairly mundane. As a second-year law student, we were assigned to the role of “investigator” and case processor. Investigators did the initial intake interview, called the “paternity interview,” as this was how we gathered all the initial information on the potential father(s) to begin the process of drafting a paternity complaint to start the court case to first establish who the legal father was and then to establish the proper child support amount. That was determined solely by the father’s income and the according amount of child support as determined by the State’s Child Support Guidelines (which is very much like an IRS tax table with fewer brackets). For one child, 25 percent was the minimum amount of gross income that an estranged daddy could expect to be ordered to pay, only going higher from there based on income and the number of kids.
Once paternity was established and child support was court-ordered, our job became one of enforcement. Fathers who did not pay would be summoned to an Order to Show Cause hearing (for why they should not be held in contempt of court for failure to pay child support). At those hearings, handled by the third-year students, we pursued satisfactory payment arrangements for both ongoing support and any arrears that were due, subject to potential jail time for those who refused, of which there were plenty. Serial deadbeats were frequently told by the judge “I hope you brought your toothbrush because you’re going to jail for x-number of days.” And that’s what would happen until they got the message that payment of child support was not optional.
Sounds like a pretty boring job, right? Quite the contrary, it could be dangerous at times to the point of being lethal. Ask any greybeard litigation attorney about what type of case is the most volatile and intense, and 9 out of 10 will likely say a “domestic” or “family law” case. Nobody gets as intense and emotional as parents fighting over their child(ren). Violence is frequently threatened, and sometimes delivered. Case in point, the year before I started working at the Child Support Office, one of our local judges, I’ll call him Bill Janson, was shot twice in the chest while sitting on the bench by a defendant in one of our support enforcement cases. After sentencing the man to a short jail stint for contempt of court for failure to pay child support, this maniac pulled a .357 magnum from his satchel and fired on the judge. He then left the courthouse and later surrendered himself at a local radio station. Luckily the judge survived. And only then the County decided it was time to fund courthouse security.
That hearing had been handled by an Assistant State’s Attorney, who was the official supervising attorney for the third-year students at that time. She was extremely fortunate that the gunman did not turn the gun on her, standing mere feet away from him. This was the type of hearing that was usually conducted by one of the third-year students. And that fact was never lost upon me.
Starting the job with that knowledge in mind, I got my first concealed weapons permit. That turned out to be a strange enough experience by itself. While I was at the sheriff’s office getting fingerprinted for the permit, a local bank robbery happened and I got to witness the department snap to attention. Lots of cops running around, trying to look in charge and not having a fucking clue what to do. One off duty cop who happened to be in the office heard the call and couldn’t wait to jump into the hunt, day off or not. “I got my gun and badge, let’s go!” - didn’t go anywhere. All the excitement was for nothing, however, as this bad guy was smart and slick enough to get away with it. He disappeared quickly and never got identified or caught.
Judge Janson would later write the best letter of recommendation I could have hoped for, and it definitely helped me secure the D.A. job. I don’t know if he did this just out of earnest respect for what he saw of me in his courtroom, or if there was a bit of an “atta boy!” kind of hat tip to me for getting some payback for him against his perp. As an investigator, I had that guy’s child support file. I found out he was making $27.00 a month working in the prison laundry, so I did my job – I requested a wage withholding order for 50 percent of his monthly wages, and got it! The moron didn’t like that very much, as he filed a frivolous lawsuit against the judge and court clerk that was promptly thrown out of court as baseless. It made all the papers but the shooter never had the slightest clue that it was little old me who shivved him from afar.
Enough background, back to the story…
It was my first Monday back in the Child Support Office after my DUI arrest. I was just starting my transition from second year to third year. I had one paternity interview left after a full slate of interviews that afternoon to clear my prior workload. I was always careful in these interviews – most of these young mothers were just looking for honest help – but on occasion, one might encounter a loon or a vulture. Being a good-looking young attorney-to-be also might make me an attractive target to the more vicious types, so I was always careful in escorting them politely through the building and I always left the door mostly open to my cramped corner windowless office.
I was dressed in the usual attire - a white shirt, slacks, and tie. I was busy reviewing court pleadings when the phone rang.
"This is Wes...Okay...Tell her I'll be right down."
I quickly added a sports jacket to my attire to make the interview appear more formal, then descended the three flights down to escort an attractive 22-year-old women - I’ll call her Gina – back up to my office. Gina was carrying a child safety seat which contained her newborn baby.
I sat behind my desk after offering a chair to Gina. “Gina, what we need to do here is take your statement for a paternity affidavit. Now, it's nothing to be nervous about, or anything. It's just the first step that's necessary for us to initiate the lawsuit to get a child support order, okay?"
"Do I really have to do this?" Gina asked.
"Well, yes. You see, you made an assignment of your rights for child support when you signed up for AFDC and medical support, so you don't have much of a choice, really. It's pretty painless, and believe me, it's totally routine and necessary for us to establish jurisdiction over the father. Okay?"
"I guess...”
I retrieved a multiple-page form from my desk drawer and got ready to write. "Okay...Now, where did conception take place?"
"...At a booth at the El Toro Bar..." Gina replied sheepishly.
It took all I had to suppress the laughter, so I took a second, smiled and said, "We only need the city and state...so we can establish jurisdiction. So that would be Grand Forks, right?"
While the last interview was funny, the previous one was just pathetic. When I got to the question of potential fathers who could have conceived the baby, the girl ran out of names that she knew at 13. That case would take a lot of DNA tests, but no longer my problem.
By the time I was done with Gina’s interview, it was near closing time. I drifted over to my boss’ office because we had to have the uncomfortable conversation about my past weekend, and what it meant for my future. Luckily, Tim McCann and I hit it off immediately and became fast friends. He had managed to get himself into a different batch of trouble as a first-year student and could relate, so I knew he’d have my back.
I waited just inside the doorway to his street-facing office. As the new staff attorney at only 26 years old, he got some perks to go along with the respect he had already engendered from the staff over the last two years. Tim was an excellent family law attorney who really knew his subject matter. He was a very energetic man despite his 80 extra pounds of heft packed on his 6’2” body. He could get very animated sometimes when dealing with obstinate opposing parties or counsel. Such was the case this afternoon as he spoke into his phone. When he looked up and noticed me, he waived me in casually and rolled his eyes comically as he pointed to the phone receiver. I closed the door behind me before taking a seat in front of Tim’s desk.
"...Oh really...Just when was the last time you actually read the support guidelines, Mr. Larson?....No, I'm not calling you stupid, just uninformed....Look, I don't really care how long you've been practicing. I've been doing this long enough to know what I'm talking about...Well, that's just tough shit for him, isn't it?...Look, I don't have time to waste in a useless argument with you. We're going forward, we're gonna get the amount we ask for in accordance with the support guidelines, and if you don't like it, you can fuckin' sue me, alright?...Whatever. Goodbye."
Tim slammed the phone down and shook his head in disgust.
"What was that all about?"
"Ah, just another old prick-lawyer trying to bully the young guy. The fuckin' dude's an idiot, doesn't know shit about child support, and he expects me to just cut him a sweetheart deal."
"If he stayed current on the law, he'd know you can't do that."
"No shit...I don't even know how he passed the bar thirty years ago. Backward-ass hick...So what's up?"
"Well...on my way back from our little target shoot Saturday, I got nailed for a DUI (pronounced 'dewey'), that's what."
Tim became instantly somber. "Oh shit...Did you blow?” he asked, referring to the breathalyzer test.
"Off the chart..."
Tim processed this for a moment, then looked at his watch briefly before speaking. As he started speaking, he was already getting up from behind his desk and walked toward a corner coatrack to retrieve his suit jacket. It always took a bit of extra effort as Tim had a prosthetic left arm, but no one ever made the mistake of trying to help him. He did not think of himself as disabled even though he was hit by a car at age 2 and lost the arm mid-shoulder. Growing up without his left arm had made Tim fiercely independent and self-starting. He didn’t look for or want sympathy from anyone. Similarly, he tolerated no shit from anyone for it either.
"Hey, it's just about closing time. Let's bug out of here. Why don't you (pronounced "whyn 'chya") meet me at the HUB in ten, and we'll figure this thing out."
"I'm there, buddy."
Ten minutes later, we were sitting opposite each other in a booth in a narrow downtown bar with 40-year-old furnishings. The Hub had ten other patrons disbursed mostly along the bar. Tim had started working on a Bud Ice as I mostly just stirred the ice in the Diet Coke in front of me. It was the start of happy hour, and the bar was slowly filling with customers throughout our conversation.
After I had explained what had happened in detail, Tim tried to lighten me up by saying, "At least when I got in trouble, I hadn't been in front of all the judges as a law student...That's gonna suck for you, buddy."
“Oh, reeeally...thanks for reminding me, you freaking roundhead." Yeah, we were also drinking buddies that had leeway to mess with each other, as such friends do.
"Just trying to help...", he replied with a big grin.
I just shook my head and chuckled.
"So what's a 'roundhead?'"
Just then our very butch older barmaid – I’ll call her Roxy - came the table.
"Tim, do you know why lawyers wear neckties?" she asked.
Tim feigned exasperation saying, "No, tell me, Roxy."
"So their foreskins don't slide up over their heads."
"That's good, Roxy. 'Been saving that one for me?"
"No, just stating the obvious."
At that, I busted out laughing, followed by Tim. Roxy remained deadpan.
"Wheel's got it at seventy-five cents..." The happy hour wheel was spun every 15 minutes or so to determine the drink bargain until the next spin.
"Better bring me two"
"You doing okay?", Roxy asked me.
"I'm good, thanks." I replied.
As ROXY walked away, Tim asked again, "So what's a 'roundhead'?"
"Ask Roxy,” I laughed.
After the laugh, I got serious again. “Goin' in front of one of the judges will suck, for sure, but what I'm really nervous about is telling Tami."
"Who's Tami?"
"I've told you about her...she's the ex-high school sweetheart..."
"The one who got married?" he asked.
"It was a rebound thing and I've always known that."
"But what's the big deal? She's friggin' married...what do you care what she thinks?"
"Well, she probably won't be married for much longer..."
"They gettin’ divorced?"
"Separated for now, hopefully divorced soon.”
"You haven't been putting the wood to her, have you?"
"Naw, man, no physical contact whatsoever. I only wish...I probably talk to her once a week, on the phone, and that's it."
"And she's telling you about her marital problems?"
"We've actually stayed fairly close, but it's not easy. I've made no secret of the fact that I still love her, but she claims she doesn't like it when I go there. She hardly ever talks about the guy she married, though, because she knows it bothers me."
"Let me get this straight: you're not beefin' her, yet she's keepin' ya on the backburner. What gives?"
"I told you, dude. It was a rebounder after we split. She just won't admit it is all. She's got a lot of pent-up Catholic guilt goin' on, and she took the marriage thing far more serious than it actually was. That, and she's stubborn - doesn't let go easily."
Roxy returned with two more Bud Ice beers for Tim. He thanked her as she removed his now empty bottle and left.
"I mean what gives with you. Are you losing your friggin' mind, messin' with that shit?" Tim asked earnestly.
"What can I say, man? I love her. Always have. There was no reason for us to split up in the first place, at least not as far as our feelings for each other went. Maybe we were just too young to handle the level of relationship we had? I'm not sure. But I know I made plenty of mistakes that I wish I could undo. And even though that's impossible, I still have confidence in her, in us, that we can overcome the past and get back what we both lost. I can tell you this, buddy, and I'm not shitting you - I would quit law school tomorrow and be a garbage man if that's what it took to be with her."
Tim was blown away – both shocked and enthralled by what I had just said.
"Wow," was all he could muster in way of a response.
"Yeah, and I'm serious. And now I'm afraid I just fucked it all up!"
”She's not gonna hold something like this against you, is she?"
"I don't know...She hangs on to the past pretty hard, and I've got a few strikes against me already..."
"Just don't sweat that bullshit, man. If she's even close to worthy, she'll be behind you. Just take care of what you need to for the Bar and deal with everything else as it comes."
That shifted my attention fast. "So, what kind of problems am I looking at there?"
"Well, when I got trouble as a first year, they made me go through an alcohol eval, then outpatient treatment for a coupla' months. Probation for a year."
"What about the Character and Fitness review." That is the third part of getting licensed as an attorney – you must exhibit appropriate “character and fitness” to practice law. Criminal convictions mattered, especially for crimes of dishonesty or “moral turpitude,” but how one handled the consequences mattered more. Taking responsibility was key, as I had already intuited.
"It was a pain in the ass, but nothing too difficult. Lawyers and judges get DUI's all the time, so don't get too paranoid. I just had to have three additional references specifically regarding my fitness to practice, and I got a great letter from the addiction counselor I went to. He's a good guy, you should go through him."
"So, what happened?"
"Oh, my brother and I were at some party, fucking HAMMERED, and this dude called me a fuckin' cripple. That's all it took for my brother, man, it was ON! Cops showed up right away, and four of us got charged with assault by the time it was over. Pled out to disorderly conduct and got hit with the alcohol eval because we'd all been drinking."
I pointed to Tim as he sipped a beer. "So, what gives with you?" I asked.
"Look, it was a good class and all, but I wasn't a drunk when I had to go, and I'm not a drunk now."
"Didn't say you were, you fuckin' lush,” I jabbed.
"As you know, not everyone who gets in trouble with the cops is an alcoholic. I told him the whole time that I had no intention of never drinking again, and he was fine with that as long I wasn't drinking while going through the class."
"Who is this guy?"
Tim filled me in on his details and I made an appointment the next day.
As I walked into a bland brick downtown Grand Forks office building, I found the right name placard on the wall. I walked downstairs to an office door reading (not real name):
"JAMES FLANIGAN, L.A.C.
Licensed Addiction Counselor"
Moments later, after the introductions and insurance information were settled, we got right into the alcohol evaluation. James was a very affable and energetic man in his late fifties. I liked and trusted him immediately. He had me sit in a chair next to his desk as our conversation began.
"Do either of your parents have a drinking problem?" he asked.
"Well, my mom cites my dad's drinking as one of the primary reasons for their divorce."
"Did your dad ever go through treatment?"
"Yeah, once. Just before they got divorced."
"Does he still drink?"
"He doesn't get hammered all the time, but he still drinks...Come to think of it, I can't remember a long conversation with him when he didn't have a beer in his hand."
"How long ago were they divorced?"
"When I was in the second grade."
"Have you had any other traumatic occurrences since then?"
And that’s where the conversation got long and heavy.
Forty-five minutes later and I was sitting at a conference table watching James start to work on his whiteboard.
"Before I show you my evaluation, why don't you tell me what your definition of an alcoholic is?"
"I've got this older family friend – husband of my godmother - who lives out in Portland. I've spent quite a bit of time around him even though he's kind of the black sheep of the family. He's been clean and sober for about fifteen years now. He's very open about his problem and I've talked to him a lot about it. He says that no one can tell another person whether or not that person's an alcoholic; only the alcoholic knows, and every alcoholic makes that determination for himself."
"I'd agree with that. But what's the difference between alcohol abuse and alcoholism."
"Well, the best way I can answer that is to tell you what my friend told me: if drinking causes problems for you or if your problems cause you to drink, then you have a drinking problem. The next question is whether or not the drinking problem is severe enough to make you an alcoholic, and only the person with the problem really knows the answer to that."
James paused for a beat before saying, "Let me take some of the mystery out of this for you, alright?"
James then uncapped a felt marker and wrote in big abbreviations as he spoke.
"Your friend's right for the most part, it is up to the individual to determine, but we have some diagnostic tools to make it simpler. First, you take the person's Biological Disposition (BD), which is basically their family history of alcoholism. For example, if alcoholism was present in just one side of your family, then you'd have about a fifty percent chance of becoming an alcoholic. In your case, it's spread back through both sides of your family, so you have about an eighty percent likelihood."
He wrote "(80%)" next to "BD", then faced me again.
"Then you have to figure in a person's Quantity (" + Q" written next in equation format) and Frequency ("+ F") of alcohol use, for which you're well above what's considered 'social drinking.' Other factors, such as Trauma and Stress ("+ T/S") are also factored in, and when we put it all together, we get a risk assessment."
He finishes the equation with"= ?alcoholic?". JAMES then drew a rough 90-degree angle chart with a line running through the middle at 45 degrees. On the right side (vertical) he writes "BD & T/S". Beneath the horizontal line he writes "Q & F".
"If I were to actually chart your risk assessment, you'd come out somewhere around here."
James marked a big "X" near the top of the chart, just to the right of center.
Shit, this guy had it all figured out to a fucking math equation! He must really know his stuff, I thought. He had me hooked on his presentation, a new believer who had now found the simple answer to almost all of my very complicated problems.
But in the years that followed, I would learn a hell of a lot more about the true nature and ugly face of addiction than this addiction counselor could ever teach.
My lawyer and I had tried to beg the Assistant State’s Attorney to reduce my charges to reckless driving, but he was a staunch prosecutor who would put his own mother in jail if he had a case. So, I pled guilty at my first appearance in court several weeks after my first meeting with James.
I stood in the courtroom before a younger female judge I’ll call Julie Severson. The judge appeared disappointed and sad as the prosecutor wrapped his presentation and sentence recommendations. Before sentencing, and after indulging myself by informing the Court about the illegal search of my car, I had my opportunity to plead for leniency.
“Your honor, I have pled guilty, and I accept full responsibility for my actions. The circumstances I have explained to the court are not offered as an excuse, for I have none. Having recently appeared before this court for the first time under the third-year practice rule, my embarrassment of appearing now before you as a defendant is extreme. I ask only that court sentence me in such a way as to allow me the opportunity to fulfill my obligations to my employer and develop my courtroom skills; to allow me the opportunity to try the two cases I have currently pending before the North Dakota Supreme Court; to complete law school and graduate this year; and to get on the plane to go visit my dying father later today.”
A few minutes later, I found myself getting into the passenger side of a truck driven by my friend Steve Nelson (real name). Steve came to pick me up from court since we knew I wouldn’t be driving anywhere for a while.
“So? What’d she do to ya?” Steve asked.
As soon as I closed the door, he started to drive away, and I started talking.
“She gave me bench probation. 80 hours community service. One-year license suspension. The outpatient program I’m already in. Fines out the ass.”
“You’re a lucky motherfucker.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how lucky I am when I apply for admission to the bar.”
“‘Least you’re not in the slam.”
“Thank God for small favors...I gotta get to the airport.” Every trip to see me father felt like – and I treated it like – it would be my last time seeing him alive.
“On our way…”
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 7
MY juvenile crime spree - arrested in the third grade
The interview, continued…
“I see here you got into some trouble as a juvenile. What bearing would that have on you as a juvenile prosecutor?” Peter asked.
“I think it will help me be better at the job because I know what it’s like to be an angry kid from a broken home. My brother and I got into trouble when I was just a third-grader, shortly after my folks got divorced. We were both angry at the world, so we took it out on a bunch of windows. The law came down on us hard and put us through the whole ‘scared straight’ kind of thing. I had six months of supervised probation, with the threat of going to reform school hanging over our heads. It frightened the Hell out of me, and I tell you, I never wanted to get in trouble again!
“As a prosecutor, though, I believe it will make me more empathetic to the plight of many of these kids. There are usually pretty obvious reasons that kids go bad. And while I believe in the same sort of stern discipline I got as a kid, I also know that there is hope to turn them around and help them become better people as adults. I guess in a way, I’m a living example of how a kid who comes from a rough environment and does a few bad things can turn his life around completely. By holding kids accountable for their actions, and through the resources and help from the Juvenile Department, I hope I can help accomplish that, at least with some of them,” I said.
Peter sat stone-faced, but I could tell that Patty and Bob liked my response.
*****************************
Bismarck, North Dakota - mid 1970’s
Despite the abuses suffered by my parents when they grew up, my early childhood was relatively tame. Following their very young marriage, my parents worked hard to lift themselves into the lower-middle class. My Dad started working for the old Frontier Airlines before I was born, and my mom took on various seamstress work until she landed her first steady job at Sears. As my brother and I came into the world, more money was needed, so they took on the live-in manager role at the Bismarck Motor Hotel for several years until they could afford to buy a house in a new development outside of Bismarck known as Apple Valley.
All of the while and unknown to us, my mother was fiercely protective, never allowing Otto to hold us or be alone with us. Ever.
By the time I reached kindergarten, I could feel the tension in our household starting to rise. I had no idea why, of course, just that mom and dad were fighting more and more. The reality was that both family histories remained a secret just as the damage from those histories began to manifest in their relationship. As I turned 5 years old, my parents had entered desperation mode to maintain the marriage. My mother was anxious to have another child, a girl, but my father was not. He was quite satisfied with having two boys, and he had some level of fear about raising a girl. One of the degrading misogynous things he said to my mother was, “At least with a boy, you only have to worry about one dick. With a girl, you have to worry about every dick in town.” He would know. He eventually relented and agreed to having another child. I took it over the years as being the textbook example of a dysfunctional couple trying to save their marriage by having another baby, as if that had ever worked for any couple, but the reality was more complicated.
I welcomed my sister (I’ll call her “Tia”) with enthusiasm after having been the tag-along with my dad and brother (I have scabs on my face in every picture of me as a toddler from falling down while chasing after them). “Greg” (not his real name), my brother, had constantly been referred to as “Little Gary,” or “the chip of the old block,” while I was “just Wes,” or “the small one.” It wasn’t Greg’s fault that he was first born, or that my dad’s family, in particular, favored him, but he relished the attention he got for looking like his dad (dark hair, brown eyes, same smile) and acting like his dad (a bit mischievous). It made it all the harder for Greg when the divorce finally happened.
Tia turned out to be a complete opposite of my dad, like me, with blond hair, blue eyes, and a clear look that favored my mother’s side. As she came to be a toddler, she looked sort of like a young Drew Barrymore (the E.T. years), so naturally she was fawned over by everyone. I never got jealous of her because I loved her as much or more than anyone else. Where I had felt shut out sometimes by my dad and brother – like I was in their way or something – I never felt that way around my sister and mother, or the cadre of my mother’s sisters that were always near at hand.
I was just stuck in the middle, that’s all. Unintentionally left to my own more often than my siblings. While sometimes a bit lonely and sometimes a bit sad, it had its beneficial effects on me in the longer run. It made me very independent. It forced me to think for myself and develop my own interests. And, hating to be disregarded, especially by my extended family so much, it helped me find my ego at the young age of six.
That happened in the first grade. I entered school knowing how to read at a very simple level. When we began doing an individual reading and testing program – a system of progressively more difficult reading cards and tests where you read at a given level, performed basic testing on the material, and advanced at your own pace based upon performance – I soon discovered that I wasn’t the most advanced reader. The idea that I wasn’t the smartest kid in class was completely unacceptable to me. Not to my parents, or anyone else, just to me. I wouldn’t have it. So I quickly learned to apply myself academically, and in short order, I jumped ahead and was recognized as the best reader in class. From that point forward, I vowed to myself never to be anything less in school than the “smartest kid in class”. And that motivation – and designation – not only stayed with me all through high school and became more than an escape from family bullshit, it became my identity, or at least the part of my identity that I valued the most.
Still, it didn’t take long for trouble to find me, and then for me to find myself in trouble.
North Dakota was, and still is, cowboy country – hard working people who also partied hard when the work was done. Drinking was the dominant pastime of most (not all) of the related cowboys and other family members. And my family had quite a few drinkers, on both sides. They set an example of heavy drinking and getting drunk as being the norm, it was just what people did, with absolutely no thought to consequences or problems resulting therefrom. Drunk driving was only a problem to many of these folks if one were to get caught. Out-foxing or evading close calls with the police were the source of many tales of teen adventures, often accompanied by stories of drunken practical jokes. As kids, the older relatives whom we (in the younger crowd) looked up to would be considered scoundrels by modern standards. To us, they were cool, and we wanted to be like them. So we frequently tried to act like them.
For example, the first Time I ever got drunk was in the third grade. We were at Stahli’s farm (this was some time after his death at age 56) for Christmas. The adults all wanted to go to the town bar to meet some old friends, followed by midnight Christmas mass. One of the youngest uncles was left to watch over us but he had other plans. He wanted to go be with his girlfriend. He struck a bargain with us – if we didn’t tell on him, we could drink his beers out of the fridge. Oh, we took him up on that offer! After three Miller High Life beers, I was drunk to the point of vomiting. Luckily, the uncle came home in time to help clean up and come up with a cover story (I ate too many sweets and we were wrestling around too much). I don’t know if anybody bought it, but none of us got in trouble.
In terms of the divorce, by that point in time, the acrimony and hostility between my parents was at a peak. My siblings and I were very much caught in the middle. While my dad continued to profess that he loved our mother and she just didn’t love him anymore, he was on the prowl, fucking any reasonably attractive and available women he could. My mother, on the other hand, could not stop accusing him of being a drunk asshole who was entirely responsible for the divorce through his drinking (and cheating she claimed), and he wasn’t paying enough child support (legit beef). It was all quite bitter and mean spirited, particularly the venom displayed by my mother toward my father. She had reasons to be angry, and she held on to them tightly.
The reality was that my mother had fallen in love with a new man before the divorce, and my father never stood a chance after that. At her behest, Gary went through inpatient alcohol treatment in Minot to try to save the marriage. It was too little, too late. During the course of treatment, my father revealed to my mother the abuse he suffered at Otto’s hands as a child. Years later she would admit to me that she couldn’t handle it, didn’t want to handle it. She already had her “out,” and she was taking it. I can’t and don’t blame her for that choice – she found herself overwhelmed and was trying to save herself and her kids from an ugly past. It was a marriage doomed at its inception - they just didn’t have the maturity to know it then.
The divorce went forward. It was ugly all around, as ugly as one might possibly imagine a Catholic divorce in 1977 North Dakota. Our house was sold, and my mother, siblings and I had to move into a trailer house on the south side of Bismarck, the poor neighborhood. My mother went to work for JC Penny’s as a custom decorator making poverty wages. While we were never on “welfare” (AFDC), we were living in poverty (I only found out later that we were on the WIC food program for a while). My father, on the other hand, was trying to leave a vapor trail behind him as he transferred out of the State with the airline at his first opportunity. Having to only pay $300 per month for child support, he was a free man on the prowl again! He ended up in Denver at first. Both sides of the extended family treated my mother, and us, as “others”, not quite outcasts but not as good as them anymore (again, not all, but too many). One aunt even went so far as to say we weren’t allowed to play with our same age cousin anymore. Oh yes, dear reader, the children were made to suffer, too.
To make matters worse, the man my mother had fallen in love with was a complete douchebag who was a hell of a lot more messed up than my father ever was. Yeah, my brother and I completely hated the fucker. Eventually, the anger and pressure got to be too much for my brother, and he started acting out (first). With a hammer against a car’s windshield, right near the front of our trailer house. He would get busted.
I think the final stressor that impacted my brother and me in the months leading up to our vandalism spree, the thing that brought our angst to a boil, was when my father told us he was getting re-married. Not too long after he had gone to Denver, he landed a manager position at a new destination for Frontier, lovely little Sydney, Nebraska. He had found a serious girlfriend there and planned to propose. But he wanted some reassurance that he was doing the right thing. He even went so far as to tell Greg and me that he had asked our mother one last time if there was any hope of reconciliation, to which he got a flat “Never.”
How he put it to us was in the form of a question. He asked Greg and me if we thought it was “OK” if he got re-married. What were we supposed to say, “No Dad, I forbid it!”? We were grade schoolers. Of course we said it was okay. But we both understood what that meant – that there was no chance, ever, of our parents getting back together. While my mother never tired of complaining about anything and everything Gary Miller, my father had been holding out hope to us of their getting back together ever since the divorce. Now that hope was dashed forever. I have no doubt it hit Greg the hardest.
Also around this time, I had made friends with another child left mostly to his own devices. His name was John, and his father just happened to be a liquor distributor, meaning he had innumerable various bottles of booze around the house. John and I started to sample. We didn’t get drunk like I had at Christmas, but we did sample frequently. I remember it being kind of burning and gross to take a partial shot of whatever, but that’s what the men did, so that’s what I was trying to do.
One day in early 1979, John came over to my trailer house all excited over something.
“You’re not gonna believe this, man, but I just found an abandoned trailer house!” John said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Right across the street, man. Nobody lives there! I just went in through the side door – it was unlocked! Man, it’s like our own little fort. You gotta come and check it out!”
I followed him to a trailer house across the street and adjacent, just two spaces over from our lot. He looked around sheepishly for any witnesses before he entered the front door. I followed quickly.
The trailer was completely empty, except for a kitchen gas stove and a refrigerator, and a stack of storm windows in one of the closets. The power was off but the water and gas were left on for the trailer. It had a very basic 1970’s style of beige/yellow carpet, linoleum flooring in the kitchen, and cheesy flower-print wallpaper in the kitchen with wood paneling complete through the rest of the trailer. Nothing special at all, but we saw it as our new clandestine hangout.
I told my brother about it later that same day, and he was all-in, too. It became our escape from our home trailer house and the escalating fights with my mother. Her boyfriend had been taking her away from us too much, leaving us on our own to take care of our then five-year old sister too often. We rebelled, especially me. My brother wanted to live with my father, so he acted out, and I wanted more from my mother, not to be forced into a new family with a guy I completely despised, so I rebelled, too. Tensions grew to the point where I actually challenged my mother to physically fight me (as a third grader!). At that point, all I felt I had was being the best in school, a few friends from school, and my escape from the trailer house. As one might imagine, it wasn’t long before everything blew up in a cavalcade of dysfunctional behaviors.
February 26, 1979, was the highly anticipated and publicized date of what would be a near-total solar eclipse as viewed from Bismarck, North Dakota. My brother and I were dead set on seeing it in person, even though our mom refused to call in to school to excuse us for the morning so we could watch it. She was even off of work that day, so why not? Well, that didn’t sit with us – not when we had a clandestine place to escape to and watch it from!
Without any serious thought to the consequences or what would happen if (not when, as we should have thought of it) we got caught, Greg and I acted like we were going to school like any other day, actually walking in the door to the school. But instead of going to our classes, we went to the bathroom for a few minutes before turning around and going back out across the field to the empty trailer house to hang out and wait for the eclipse.
It was pretty damn boring – no TV or radio, just standing around shootin’ the shit. Greg had started messing with cigarettes by this time (he was a fifth grader) so we started playing with matches, a few candles, and the gas stove, as we had with John on previous boring visits to our little club house. Playing around with candle wax and seeing how far we could make singe marks with burning matches up the freezer door were our pastimes as we waited for the eclipse. (We would later be questioned by the police about whether we were into “occult” practices, like witchcraft or some such bullshit. We weren’t – we were just dumb ass kids playing with matches.) Finally, we got to see the long sought after eclipse. It was a letdown – not a full totality event from Bismarck, just some serious shade for a few minutes.
In the meantime, the school’s principal had called my mother, asking if Greg was home sick.
“He’s not at home,” she told the principal. “Are you saying he’s not there? What about Wes, is he there?” she asked.
He didn’t know but would call back after checking. Embarrassed, he did.
My mom was near panicked. Then I strolled in the door at lunch time, as if I were coming home for lunch, feigning a stomachache that required me to stay home for the rest of the day. She wasn’t having any of it.
“Where’s your brother?” she demanded.
“At school,” I tried to lie.
“That’s a damn lie and I know it! I just spoke to the principal, and I know Greg’s NOT in school. So where the hell is he? You know where he is, I know you do, so you better go get him right now!” Mom was a bit more than pissed off.
I left our trailer house and ran around the back of the trailer to throw her off of my destination. I worked my way around a few more trailers, then crossed the street to the “fort” trailer. After going in and telling Greg how much trouble we were in, we slumped out and around the way I had come to try and still keep the empty trailer house our secret.
Child brains in panic mode do not think with anything remotely resembling reason. After getting grilled by our mother (and lying to her) about skipping school and where we had been, at the first opportunity that I had away from her, I called John and arranged to meet him at the empty trailer with my brother. We started freaking out, worried about getting caught. It was going to be our last time in that place, and for no reason whatsoever, we started tearing the place up more. We smashed all the storm windows in the closet and busted some other glass work and mirrors. John then got the bright idea of burning the place down so there “wouldn’t be any evidence.” That was too far for me, I was way too afraid of getting into serious trouble. Greg wouldn’t go there either, so John dropped it and we agreed to leave and never to come back to that place again.
It never once occurred to me that someone owned that trailer house or that we were harming a person’s home. At least, not then.
Consequences started coming fast and hard.
The police had paid us a visit just a few days before regarding Greg’s hammer incident, as it was seen by and reported by a neighbor. Those same neighbors also saw us going into and out of the empty trailer house. Within another few days, my mother got a call for us to report to the police station, with my brother and me, immediately.
The mustached plain-clothes detective sat us in front of his desk in a police station room that resembled the set of Barney Miller, minus the jail cell. He displayed his badge prominently on one of the straps to his shoulder holster and took on the air of absolute certainty.
“So who was your buddy who helped you destroy that trailer house?” he started.
“What do you mean?” I asked, attempting to lie my way out of it. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Cut the shit, kid. Do I need to have your neighbors come in and testify, you know, the ones who saw you going in and out of that trailer? Or would it be easier to go through the mountain of evidence we have back there with your fingerprints all over it?”
That’s all it took to crack that wanna-be tough third grader. I caved, confessed, and gave up John’s name. A court date for our first and only appearance was set, and our troubles got started in earnest.
My father flew back to Bismarck for the hearing, which turned out to be less formal than a regular courtroom setting. Instead, we met with the judge, juvenile department official, and an Assistant State’s Attorney in a conference room. After sufficient scolding and browbeating from the judge, an agreed sentence was reached whereby Greg and I both got six months of supervised probation (requiring weekly meetings with a probation officer), restitution of $3,000.00, and mandatory family and individual counseling through social services. Greg was told he came very close to being sentenced to the State juvenile reform school (known as “The Boy’s Ranch”) because of the prior hammer-to-windshield incident, but someone managed to convince the prosecutor and judge that it was the same course of conduct (had John lit a match to try to burn the trailer down, we definitely would have been sentenced to the Boys’ Ranch and my story would not be).
The idea of reform school scared the hell out me, especially after our younger uncles made a point of telling us how lucky we were to not be getting held down and butt-fucked by the meaner, older kids there. Oh yes, if I thought we were treated poorly after the divorce, now we were on another plain of shame entirely. Kids can be mean, and farm kids can be downright fucking cruel at times. In the year or so that followed, I got it full blast from nearly all of them, “othered” and ridiculed at any opportunity by those same older relatives to whom I had always looked at with admiration.
Further humiliation was attained at school. I was made to undergo multiple psychological and personality tests, even a stupid fucking Rorschach paint-blot test! The principal, my teacher at the time, and other staff were confounded by this super smart kid who was lashing out at the same time as outperforming his peers. I hope it gave them fits. My teacher at the time was an authoritarian type, and it drove her nuts that I would be in the 99th percentile on my state-required standardized tests and be a juvenile delinquent at the same time. We frequently went round and round whenever I challenged her arbitrary commands to the class. God forbid I actually challenge her intellectually! She’d throw a tantrum any time I asked a controversial question or one that stumped her. I almost got to enjoy it, until I found out she was moving to the fourth grade the next year and I was stuck with her again for another full year.
With time and some counseling success the drama at school, and in our family life, slowly tamed down. It would have been very easy to keep going down the bad path, but I did not. I chose not to do so. I had always been a caring child, and I wanted to do good, to be thought of as one of the good guys, not some loser criminal. I still had a prankster side to me, but I tempered that by finding better friends and focusing my attention on school.
My brother, on the other hand, had a solid taste of being the bad boy, and he liked it. He stayed out of trouble for a while, largely based on luck. It would find him again in high school in a way and at a time that changed both our lives again.
********************************
The interview, continued…
“My life took a big turn for the positive about a year and a half later when my mother got remarried and we moved to an even smaller town, Dickinson. It was the size of Coos Bay back then and it’s about a hundred miles west of Bismarck. I got the chance to basically wipe the slate clean and start over. I took the opportunity and ran with it.
“My dad was also a big influence on me in terms of getting a good education. He always emphasized the importance of becoming adept in the English language and continuing education beyond high school. He used to say, ‘There are thousands of people with Master’s degrees who are driving cabs for a living. You have to be smarter and better than your competition.’ I took it to heart in a big way.
“I also got pretty lucky in finding a few really awesome mentors along the way, especially in junior high. One teacher, in particular, saw the potential in me early on in the seventh grade, and he went out of his way to help me see it, too. And he helped me to develop that potential. Not to mention a damn strong work ethic,” I said. “He sort of took me under his wing and helped guide me along to becoming student council president the next year and really igniting my academic career.”
My interviewers were still interested… ‘
*********************************
Bismarck, North Dakota 1979…
Along with the endless counseling sessions my mother went through – she was determined to get her life in order and not to lose us either to the State or to my father – she eventually came to discover a Catholic organization called Beginning Experience. It was a support group for parents who lost their partner through death or divorce and who were trying to get back into the dating scene “responsibly.” She had already been through Parents Without Partners, this was just more Catholic oriented, and it had an inclusion for children on occasion (that my brother and I refused to participate in, of course). It was in one of those meetings that she met Mel, a recently divorced father of two kids, a two-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter. He lived a hundred miles away in Dickinson, which limited the amount of time they could spend together.
My mother got very lucky in her next relationship. Mel was (and is) one of the nicest and best people I have ever known. He was an Army vet who worked for AT&T at the time they met, installing and maintaining phone systems. The story of his divorce was even worse – at least, even uglier - than our story. In a nutshell, his ex was a manipulative liar who was rampantly cheating on him and had been throughout their marriage. She had eventually fallen in with some drug-running trucker asshole and decided to abandon her family. The vile bitch literally looked her then five-year-old daughter in the eyes and said, “I don’t want you,” then she walked out of their house for the last time. I’ll leave the rest of those details to your imagination…
Within a few months of dating, my mother had come to realize, as we did, that her prior love interest was a lousy piece of shit. She further came to realize that she could have a real, fulfilling, happy life with Mel. After only about six months, Mel proposed to her one weekend while we were visiting him in Dickinson. She was excited and happy, so when she told me, I instinctively hugged her, knowing how much it meant to her. It was also a huge relief to me, as it slammed the door on any possible future with the douchebag who shall not be named.
We moved to Dickinson in the summer of 1980 and they married at the courthouse on my sister’s birthday that September. The happy days, at least for my brother and me, were short-lived. Neither of us were ready for insertion into a blended family of five children. Greg, in particular, held on to the idea of living with my father, and he made no secret of it. My father, unfortunately, stoked that tension by telling us how he wanted us to live with him and maybe, down the road when we were old enough to have some say about it to the judge, he would take custody of us. Another angle he laid on us as some sort of consolation was the idea that, “Your mother may have you as children, but I’ll have you as adults.” The bullshit was laid thick back then. Gary would evolve substantially in the years to come, but he was still stuck in a thick layer of dysfunction at that time.
My mother, for her part, kept her anger toward my father ever-present and sharp. She never missed an opportunity to bash him or complain about any sort of petty old meaningless shit. One of her favorites was, “He had never even changed one of your diapers when you were babies.” That kind of tension and cold conflict never receded or diminished.
Added to all that was the deep reluctance of both my brother and me to accept Mel as our “new dad.” We had a dad and loved him, and neither of us wanted him replaced. Mel, for his part, put forth his best efforts but we were a huge challenge for him. He was raised in a traditional North Dakota Catholic family with all the underlying beliefs and values that come with that upbringing. At that time, to him, kids were not to question adults, but to listen and obey. Greg and I were definitely not the “listen and obey” type of kids. We both rebelled against any flex of authority by Mel, which caused innumerable silly, but frequently intense, arguments between one or both of us and our blended parents.
During this time, I got fat for the first (but not last) time in my life. I found another escape in candy and milkshakes, and those calories added up fast. Somewhere between the fourth and fifth grades, I got hefty to the point of ridicule and mockery by my extended relatives (mostly uncles and cousins). They had absolutely no qualms about fat-shaming back then. I was told I looked like I had no neck, or that I was standing in a hole, or just outright called names, like “lard ass” or “flubbsy.” That additional new shame silently crushed me even though I would outwardly attempt to respond with whatever obnoxious comeback I could muster (I had developed quite a foul mouth by then). In response, I began building a drive to show them all how wrong they were about me. I was better than that, and damn it, I would show them all! (And by the time I got to high school, I did!)
For both good and bad, several things eventually evolved from all of those family dynamics. Foremost was that Greg and I both developed our own outside friend groups with whom we spent as much time out of the house as possible. By the sixth grade, I met my first real best friend (who is still one of my best friends to this day), I’ll call him Jim. I spent many nights hanging out at his place playing Atari videos games and just being a sixth grader. My parents were big on pushing Catholicism on us and made us go to church every week (in addition to CCD or “catechism” classes every Wednesday night). Jim’s house became my escape to go to on Saturday afternoons when I claimed to go to the 4 PM mass in order to avoid going on Sunday mornings with my family. Greg, on the other hand, found his friend group in various local miscreants and ne’er do-wells, becoming a full-fledged member of the black jacket coalition. At this point he was disappearing often, doing his own thing.
Early in the seventh grade, my first real mentor found me, and I found the positive path forward. Frank Lewis (real name) was the Vice-Principal and eighth grade history teacher at Hagen Junior High. He had been teaching for about thirty years at that point, having helped shape and develop countless young lives over those years. The man had an indefatigable spirit and zest for life. He was always beaming with positive energy and goodwill toward everyone.
I met him working in the cafeteria at lunch hour. Doing that job provided free lunches, more time out of class and some food perks, but for me it was mostly about being independent. I liked the idea of working and at least partially providing for myself. Mr. Lewis was one of two lunchroom supervisors, his compatriot being the school’s other superstar (and most popular) teacher, John Huber (real name). One day early in the school year Mr. Lewis approached me about running for student council.
“I hear you’re a really good student, Wes. And I see that you’re a bit of a self-starter. Have you ever thought of running for student council?” he asked. Mr. Lewis was also the teacher supervisor/coordinator for student council, so he had some self interest in building participation, while Huber was popular for running the science club. As was normal with every new class, the incoming seventh graders were pooled together for the first time from several grade schools spread around town, making for a lot of initial strangers to one another. The students were often too shy to put themselves up for running for anything. Still, I was flattered Mr. Lewis took notice of me. I was in.
“Do you know any other students that might be interested in student council? You know what I mean, the good students, kids who like to get stuff done? We could use a few more like you, you know?” He knew how to sweet talk a student.
“I think I know one guy,” I responded. I was thinking of another loner (I’ll call him Jack) a new kid from Montana who I knew from band and a couple other classes. He was obviously smart and seemed like he had his act together, so I agreed to ask him about running. After giving Jack almost exactly the same talk as Mr. Lewis gave to me, he signed up. We both got elected and became very good friends. Where Jim slipped into the role of my fun friend/party buddy, Jack started out as more of my “academic” friend. By the time we reached high school, all three of us became close friends. It wasn’t long before I considered Jack my “other brother from another mother,” and still do to this day.
*******************************
Interview continued…
“Things weren’t always smooth back then. We actually had a pretty traumatic experience when I was in junior high – one of the teachers went on a murder spree one night and killed four people with a shotgun.”
“Jesus,” Patti let go. “What happened?”
I told them an abbreviated version…
******************************
Dickinson, North Dakota – March 15, 1983
It was a cold cloudy morning near the end of winter. School started early for us - 8:15 AM – and we were in a rush that morning, so I didn’t see any morning news (as was my habit already at that age). None-the-less, I could tell something awful had happened almost immediately after entering Hagen Junior High. An air of profound sadness and gloom permeated the building. Most kids were very quiet, having hushed conversations in stark contrast to the normal hallway bustle and noise.
By lunch time, I had heard some weird rumor that Mr. Huber, one our two life sciences teachers, the head of the science club, and my freaking supervisor in the lunchroom, was in jail for killing his wife. Strange stories started to emerge about how Huber had been acting the day before. He seemed totally normal when I saw him at lunch that day, but sometime later that afternoon, he began acting bizarre in class. Several students, including Jim, told me that Huber had put on a nature film and when game animals appeared, like buffalo, he acted like he had a rifle and was shooting them. Kids also took note that not only was he not there, his eighth-grade daughter was absent as well (Huber also had another younger daughter in the fourth grade). All of this left me dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe that that boisterous, fun, energetic and absolutely beloved teacher could do something so heinous. I was in a state of disbelief…until lunchtime.
As soon as I saw Frank Lewis, I knew all of the horrifying rumors were true. I had never seen a man who looked so thoroughly sad and heartbroken as Mr. Lewis did. He tried valiantly to cover as best he could, but there wasn’t any life in the man that day. After all the students had gone through the lunch line, we ate with the teachers in what was the most somber and depressing environment I had ever experienced (until then). It was complete silence, but for the clattering of silverware and food trays. Everyone was in a collective state of shock, with many trying to keep from total despair.
As soon as I got home, my mother confirmed what we had heard at school. I ran to the TV to get the details. More were to come out at trial. Heinous is not a strong enough word for his deeds.
Sometime between midnight and 1 AM, Huber started his killing spree by tracking down his wife and her boss just outside of Dickinson and bumping them to the side of the road with his Bronco. Believing that his wife, who had separated from him about three months prior, and her boss were having an affair, he went into a fit of rage and shot her boss, Maurice O’Connell, in the head through the back window of his pickup with a 10-gauge shotgun, killing him. Huber’s estranged wife, Gladys, got to the passenger rear of the pickup they were driving, where Huber shot her in the neck. It came out at trial that he forcefully bit into one of her breasts for whatever sicko fucking reason, leaving teeth indentations. Evidence.
Huber wasn’t finished. He had written a manifesto of sorts, claiming that he was going to kill his wife, her boss, his wife’s parents, and anyone else who knew about the alleged affair. Huber got to work on his list.
For whatever deranged reason, probably because he thought she knew about the alleged affair, Huber went to O’Connell’s house. There he shot O’Connell’s wife, Kathleen, in the face with his shotgun as she looked through a front door window to see who was ringing the doorbell.
Next, Huber moved on to his wife’s sister’s house, where she lived with her husband and two children, a daughter at the age of three and a son aged nine. Tim and Dinah Riegel were asleep in bed when Huber rang their doorbell. Tim descended the half-flight of stairs and went to the door. Huber claimed that he just wanted to talk. Tim let him inside and as he did, Huber ran up the half-flight of stairs and turned around with his 10-gauge. Tim ducked just in time to avoid the blast that took out the window next to the front door. Tim ran down the next half flight of stairs and ran out of the house. Then he heard the shotgun blast as Huber cold-bloodedly murdered his wife, Dinah, in their bed. Tim heard Huber flee in his Bronco before he went back inside to find his wife brutally taken from him. He then called the police. Fortunately, his children were left unharmed.
Apparently after realizing he was fucked on completing his hit list because of the one that got away, Huber turned himself in to the Regional Law Enforcement Center, which included the Dickinson city police and the Stark County Sheriff’s Office, at 1:05 AM. Four bodies in three different locations in less than an hour. He was definitely a man on a mission of rage.
Huber tried right from the start to manipulate the detectives and build some sort of insanity defense, claiming he “blacked out” and didn’t remember anything. Uh huh. Right. They saw through it all and had plenty of evidence. In December of 1983, Huber’s bullshit insanity defense was rejected by the jury in less than six hours of deliberation. He was convicted of four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The judge didn’t give a shit that Huber was a former choir boy, Vietnam vet, popular teacher or active member of the Boy Scouts and his church, and he surely didn’t believe a second of the insanity crap, as he gave Huber the maximum – five consecutive life sentences.
John Huber will never be a free man again. And rightly so.
********************************
The interview, continued…
“It’s just too bad the son of a bitch can’t live long enough to serve all five of them,” I wrapped up the story with.
“He racked up some numbers there,” Peter said. “We average about twice that number of homicides here every year.”
That was about the average for the entire State of North Dakota in those days, eight homicides. It seemed like a lot for a county of 65,000 people. “You handle that many with this small office?” I asked.
“Yeah, we have some really great litigators here, some of the best in the State. We also get help for some of the more complicated ones for the A.G.’s Office,” Peter said. (“A.G.” means “Attorney General.”) “If you get the job and stick around, it won’t be very long until you find yourself trying murder cases, too.” He was throwing out a carrot.
“You know, what was really kind of weird for me personally with that whole thing is that I ended up meeting him almost ten years later on a prison tour, and he remembered me!” I said.
“How did that happen?” Bob asked.
“Well, I was an intern at the State Legislature, and I was tagging along on a committee tour of the prison. It was led by the head of the Department of Corrections, and I told her about knowing Huber from working with him in school. She told me that Huber was their model prisoner, even leading the prison choir. When we got to the section of the prison he was in, she just ran up to his cell and brought him down to me. He remembered me by name right away. Then he shoved out his hand like were old pals or something, and all of the sudden I find myself shaking hands with a freaking mass-murderer!”
“Geez…what was that like?” Patti asked with a look of astonishment.
“Totally surreal. The guy talked to me like we were old drinking buddies or something. Asking me how I was doing, where I was going to school, all the sort of stuff you’d be asked by distant relatives at a holiday gathering. I was glad to leave.”
“So, Wes, I’m curious – how did the school, the administration, handle that? I mean, did they provide any counseling services for the students and staff?” Patti inquired. It was a natural question for a victim’s advocate. Her job was helping broken people pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
“Counseling? Nothing beyond the regular school counselor, and I think he was as messed up by it as anyone. This was 1980’s North Dakota, don’t cha’ know,” I replied with my best NoDak accent. “We didn’t have anything like grief counselors or trauma therapists. Hell, we didn’t even get a day off from school! Back then, you just picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and got on with living,” I said. “I’m sure plenty of people sought comfort in religion - that was a big thing for many. But for the rest of us, I guess we just absorbed the shock and got to moving on again.”
Rugged individualism was the North Dakota way. At least that’s what Teddy Roosevelt got out of it.