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Authors: Lowell Cauffiel

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House of Secrets

BOOK: House of Secrets
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House of Secrets

by

Lowell Cauffiel

 

Other Works by Lowell Cauffiel

 

Nonfiction: Masquerade Forever and Five Days Eye of the Beholder Fiction: Dark Rage Marker

 

SQtJSE QF

 

SECRET S

 

inwell Canffiel

 

KENSINGTON BOOKS

 

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com Author’s Note For Paul Dinas, who appreciates all it takes.

 

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022 Copyright (D 1997 by Lowell Cauffiel Excerpts from Father-Daughter Incest by Judith Lewis Herman, copyright (U) 1981 by President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting quotes used in reviews.

 

Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

 

ISBN 1-57566-221-3

 

Printed in the United States of America House of Secrets employs no “fictionalization” to tell its story. It is told with court and police records, interviews with key participants, and nearly three years of research using proven methods of journalistic discovery. The names of a few individuals in this account have been changed to help protect their safety and privacy.

 

The pseudonyms are, Anne and Gerry Greene, Walter and Kathleen Dundee, Augusta Townsend, Tuck, Colleen and Bonnie Carson, and Tommy Sexton.

 

Also, the accounts by Estella May Sexton, Sr., were taken from taped interviews, her quotes organized for clarity but kept in context.

Also, like other seconthand accounts, Machelle Sexton Croto’s disclosures to Anne Green were also confirmed and explored in many hours of taped interviews with Machelle. Some of the victims in this book are minor children. Certain agencies, juvenile courts, and some news organizations keep the names of minors confidential. The intent is to protect children from embarrassment or ridicule. But the perpetrators in this story further exploited these children by manipulating the well-intentioned confidentiality maintained by these agencies for their own criminal purposes. Some child experts also believe this secrecy only contributes to the stigma of certain types of abuse, and fails to alert good citizens to the predators who walk among them. Aspects of this case eventually were tried in the adult court system. There, the names of minors and the crimes committed against them found their way into publicly available police files, sworn depositions, testimony, and other material available under state freedom of information laws. Some news organizations also publish the names of the entire Sexton family.

 

Though part of the family’s story was made public in the courts and news media, many details continued to remain secret simply because others lacked the time, resources, or interest to discover them, until this book. Nevertheless, my interviews with workers for the Stark County Department of Human Services were limited to material already on the public record, in keeping with the agency’s standard of confidentiality. The DHS provided no material to me directly from its interviews with the children. Human services reports, psychological evaluations, and summaries cited in this work were already available in public court files in Ohio and Florida. 8149 Caroline Street Northwest Outside near the ascending walkway, a statue of Jesus stood with outstretched arms, amputated at the wrist, as if to deprive the Savior from offering any comfort and hope. At the front door, somebody had tacked a small metal cross to the clapboards, inscribed with the words, “Peace to All Who Enter Here.” But some people were already saying it, In the house on Caroline Street, there had been no peace at all. These contradictions and others struck Bob and Edie Johnson when they first inspected the house during the short days of the winter of 1994. The Stark County sheriff was offering the property for back taxes, bank foreclosure, and various other debts. A year earlier, the original owner had tried to auction it, but title liens had sabotaged the sale.

 

An auctioneer’s one-column ad in the Canton Repository read, SPACIOUS

9

 

ROOM CAPE COD HOME ON ONE ACRE

 

STOCK POND-TANDEM 4 CAR GARAGE

 

CONTENTS-APPLIANCES-FURNITURE

 

The home was perched on a hilltop, its front deck overlooking the pond.

 

A weathered split-rail fence bordered the property. Beyond it, across Wales Avenue, the gable of the New Covenant Christian Church poked through the treetops. Better Homes a Gardens featured the home in an article not long after it was built in the late 1950s, the Johnsons were later told. There were anecdotes about backyard barbecues in the summer and hot chocolate in the winter for kids coming in with their skates from the frozen pond. It was one of the largest properties in the old Highland View Farms sub, easy to find. Coming from woodsy suburbs north of Canton, you drove south on Wales past the clubhouse and 18th green of Shady Hollow Country Club. Caroline was another mile south. Or, you could drive two miles north on Wales, out of the rusty rail town of Massilon. The property was in Jackson Township, the Canton-Massilon area’s hottest suburb. First-rate schools. A half dozen lakes. Four golf courses. A well-equipped and smartly uniformed police department. And Belden Village, a mall and shopping district that featured so many upscale franchise restaurants it looked like the proving grounds for America’s newest chains. The auctioneer’s ad promised a spacious family home. The large garage was below grade, opening to Caroline Street. On the first floor there was a large living room with a fireplace, its sliding doors opening to a fenced area shaded by nine tall pines. A family room, kitchen, dinette, formal dining and master bedroom with full bath were also on the first floor. Three more bedrooms, a full bath and ample closet space were located upstairs. The contents were listed in the first auction ad as well, Three chest-type freezers and one upright. A Maytag washer and dryer, and another set by Whirlpool, too. Two sets of bunk beds. A threepiece French Provincial bedroom suite. Bookcases. Three couches.

 

Tables and chairs. There were rods and reels and a 15-foot Coleman canoe. There were ten ladders, most of them aluminum. Six lawn mowers. Chains saws. A snow blower. A 77 Suzuki motorcycle There was a wheelchair, hardly used, and a shiny new hospital bed There was a hint of even more. “Family is moving out of state and decided to sell everything, loads of contents not seen,” the ad read. Bob Johnson knew that owner. His name was Eddie Lee Sexton. Sexton was a longtime customer at his used car lot, Johnson Motors. Sexton showed up one day 15 years before at his first lot on 7th Street in Canton, and Johnson kept his business as the lot moved to other city locations over the years. Sexton bought cars in the 1,500 to $4,000 price range, usually paying cash. Johnson had sold him a Ford van and a 76 black Cadillac.

 

Johnson remembered Sexton as a striking figure. His hair receded deeply above the temples. He had a long weathered face and penetrating eyes, which he softened somewhat with a full beard. Early on, he told Johnson he was “retired,” but he hardly looked old enough to qualify for a military pension, let alone one from a forge plant where he said he once worked. But Eddie Sexton also was the most polite man Bob Johnson had ever met. “Yes, sir.”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Thank you very kindly. I appreciate that very much.” And bright, too. Knew his cars. Knew how to make a deal. Not one to argue or get anxious or be indecisive. He shopped the lot methodically, in no hurry. He seemed to be a regular guy with common sense. Bob Johnson also had met Sexton’s wife, Estella May, and several of the children.

The wife always waited in the car. She sat patiently on the passenger’s side, the door closed, her feet never touching the lot.

Sexton told him he had a dozen children at home, seven boys and five girls. He never brought the girls to look at cars, only the older boys. They walked the lot with him, then came into the sales shack.

They sat quietly in chairs, their backs straight, listening to their father conduct his business. When they reached their late teens, they began stopping by on their own, checking out the inventory. They always had something to say about their father, particularly his namesake, Eddie Lee Sexton, Jr. Dad’s doing this. Dad’s doing that.

“Man, did his kids love him,” Johnson would tell me. “You know, you could just tell.” One of those big, old-fashioned happy families, Bob Johnson thought. Not a lot of money, but a measured mix of love and discipline. You’d have to really love kids to have 12 of them. You’d have to have some discipline to survive living with them under one roof. And you’d need bunk beds and four freezers and two washers and dryers and everything else the auctioneer promised in the house. At the auction for the house’s contents, the appliances and the canoe and the tools were snatched up by the small crowd that gathered at the home on February 18, 1993. One of Sexton’s older daughters, now married and a mother, stood silently as the bids rolled off the auctioneer’s tongue. She passed on bikes and beds and household heirlooms. She bought a refrigerator, her only purchase that day. The Johnsons, Edie in particular, were interested in real estate. She ran the family’s construction business. The couple had bought and remodeled almost 50

houses with their small firm. Edie envisioned turning 8149 Caroline Street into a $150,000 property, a handsome homestead by Ohio’s reasonable real estate values If her suspicions proved correct, 8149

Caroline was going to auction for much less than that. Dark headlines and TV reports could do that to a property. At the 1994 real estate auction on. the courthouse steps, Edie Johnson and a lot of other people in Stark County knew that Eddie Lee and Estella May Sexton had not only “left the state.” They’d been on the wanted list of the FBI.

There was only one other bidder for the homestead. When the bidding was over, the Johnsons purchased the property for $56,000. It was enough to pay off the Sextons’ $46,000 mortgage balance and $7,200 in back taxes. It was not enough to satisfy a list of other creditors, one of whom was Eddie Sexton, Jr. He no longer talked lovingly of his father. He claimed his father stole nearly 8,000 bucks from him. When they took title, a policeman friend said, “Bob, watch closely when you’re digging out that little lake.” After they took possession, a friend in Edie Johnson’s office said, “My God, what have you done? I’m going to bring over holy water and sprinkle it.” Edie said, “Leave the holy water and bring some Spic & Span.” But as the work began, the house seemed to whisper secrets. The Sextons liked to hide things.

Underneath the deck, they found a stash of everything imaginable.

Bicycles. Paint cans. Wood. Old tools. Newspapers. Weathered lumber. Rusty toys. It took eight men an entire day to fill a Dumpster with items. It was the first of eight Dumpsters they would need to clean up 8149 Caroline As the couple became more familiar with the property, the back part of the lot intrigued them. An eight-foot stockade fence shielded the home on three sides. Neighbors had no view of the lower windows. Privacy was one thing, but it seemed like overkill, considering the shrubs and trees that already shielded the lot. One by one, the neighbors began to drop by, telling stories. An old woman showed up. “Is there a Weed Wacker in that garage?” she asked. “They borrowed mine and never brought it back. ” Bob Johnson hadn’t seen a Weed Wacker. “I thought it might be here,” the woman said, wandering off. He wondered why she’d never simply asked the Sextons for it back. The Johnsons soon befriended a retarded woman in her 40s who lived behind them. Her voice quaked with terror at the mention of the Sexton name. Years of harassment by the Sextons had killed her disabled father, she claimed. There were a spate of stories about fires in the neighborhood. Fires in trash cans and Dumpsters.

Fiery attacks on neighborhood homes. One neighbor said she’d taken a nap after returning from a family funeral one afternoon, only to be woken by the sounds of Sexton children trying to set fire to her awning. Another claimed the Sexton boys tried to burn down her garage.

 

There also had been two blazes at the Sexton home. One neighbor brought over photographs, showing fire trucks arriving at 8149 Caroline as flames leaped from an upper dormer. It was a bedroom where the Sexton children slept, but no one was home that day. It was said the fires were caused by bad wiring and careless smoking. They heard other versions of the children’s behavior, particularly how well-behaved they were. In the later years, Estella May Sexton was no longer having babies, but two of her teenage daughters did. They didn’t have husbands. They didn’t move out of the house. Neighbors said Eddie Sexton had a certain way with children. They would follow the patriarch as he walked the grounds, or took them to the pond to fish and swim. They clustered around him, hanging onto his words. One neighbor had nicknamed him “The Bellhop,” because of the way his children jumped at his commands. Inside the home, the Johnsons found evidence of a certain chaos. There were four wallpaper patterns in the living room, none of it really matching the gold carpet that covered the first floor. The window moldings all had nail holes, as if they’d been boarded up from the inside. The kitchen stove was caked with deposits inside. Edie was convinced it hadn’t been cleaned in 10 years or more. The Johnsons were struck by the doors. The locks were dysfunctional on every interior door in the house. The strike plates were busted out, as if someone had kicked in every one. Up the narrow stairs to the second floor, 9-x-13 bedrooms and one 18-x-12 seemed inadequate for 12 children. The smell of cigarette smoke pervaded one of the bedrooms. Along the walls of the children’s rooms, the Johnsons found small trapdoors, the kind used for access to the hidden attics under the lower roof of a Cape Cod. As Johnson opened them, she found small human nests between the ceiling rafters. There were children’s blankets and toys and stuffed animals. Edie said, “These look like they were some kind of place for punishment. “

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