Katie Beers (26 page)

In fact, she was living in her parents’ home on Higbie Drive when she gave birth to John Carl, when she was twenty-seven. Marilyn delivered John much like she did everything else in her life: alone. She said her mother was too busy taking care of her ailing father to accompany her to the hospital, and so she cabbed it to the delivery room. Soon after, Stewart’s lungs gave out to decades of tugging on Old Golds and Silver Thins. Grand Pop Beers died of asthma and emphysema on a Saturday, a month before Marilyn drank her way into the conception of a second child.

Even before she was born, Katie demanded attention. Twice she was nearly lost when Marilyn, at age thirty-three, was diagnosed with borderline toxemia. She became a frequent visitor at the Bay Shore Health Center for a cattle call, as she considered it, to have her blood checked
for poisoning from the pregnancy. And her enormous pre-pregnancy size didn’t help matters. Her hands, ankles, back and knees ached from arthritis as she lingered long past her due date. Marilyn’s legs swelled up like sausages, from her toes to her panty line, eliminating any hint of ankles and making for an oppressive month of extra gestation.

Finally, on December 30, 1982, three and a half weeks after her due date, Katherine Marie Beers entered the world. The little girl was named for her maternal great grandmothers. Marilyn was awake and alone in the delivery room but for the staff and doctors at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore. She had been alone for the labor, alone for the birth and she and Katie went home from the hospital alone, in a cab. She had no layette or the usual abundance of baby supplies that accompany most suburban births. She was given a hand-me-down bassinet and some used onesies from a concerned neighbor. Taking virtually no time off, Marilyn continued to work double shifts driving for Sunset Taxi in Babylon. She said she had no choice. She had two children and a widowed mother to support and was too proud for a public handout.

Although she failed to save a single photo of either of her children, Marilyn recalled that Katie was beautiful. She had vivid recollections of Katie’s jet black hair that hung an astounding two inches in straight locks framing her equally black eyes. She and her older brother John were christened together at United West Minster Presbyterian church. Their single mother was not fond of services but was a staunch believer in God. Thereafter, she named her best friend, Linda Butler, godmother.

Katie was a happy baby and as she grew, her personality evolved into the utter opposite of that of her insecure mother. She would learn to be unafraid of strangers, as Marilyn would take her along on taxi runs. Marilyn was working twelve hour shifts, six in the morning to six in the evening, and her new baby didn’t slow her down. She worked for a fifty-fifty split commission and paid for gas. On some nights, she added in a shift as a home health aide. The long hours didn’t leave much time to tend to John and Katie and so Helen, her mother, now well into her seventies, tried to fill in. But it was Linda who really took over.

Linda Butler, a frequent cab fare, quickly became a close friend. Linda was five years younger than Marilyn, and at age twenty-eight, lived in a single room on Deer Park Avenue in Babylon—near the Long Island
Rail Road station and worked occasionally as a school bus matron. The two had much in common and always seemed to have plenty to talk about as Marilyn would drive Linda to her mother’s house in West Babylon and back to her apartment. Linda didn’t have a driver’s license. She was, Marilyn now concluded, “plain lazy and a con-artist.”

“Conned everyone she knew out of everything.”

At the time, Marilyn’s dear friend offered to watch Katie when Marilyn was exhausted from working double shifts. Linda would offer and Marilyn would gladly accept. The first visit turned into an overnight and soon Katie was spending days, sometimes weeks with Linda and referring to both women as mother.

It was Linda who introduced Marilyn to her friend Sal Inghilleri— a car mechanic with a pot belly and a chain smoking habit to rival Marilyn’s. Linda suggested she could fix Marilyn up with Sal, but Marilyn had no interest. Even she had standards and knew there was something about Sal she didn’t like. So Linda and Sal became an item instead and eventually married. Linda Butler became Linda Inghilleri and the portly couple moved into a rented house on Myrtle Avenue in West Islip—not far from the Beers’ house on Higbie Drive.

Katie could be found at either home with no apparent schedule or rationale. Sometimes she would be a ward of Helen Beers while Marilyn worked double shifts. Her grandmother meant well but didn’t have the strength for a toddler and gave Katie little attention or notice.

When Marilyn or Helen needed a break, which occurred often, there was always Linda—ever eager to take Katie for a night, or several days—however long, no one cared.

Katie would split her time between the Higbie Drive house and wherever Linda and Sal were living, often missing school in the transition. The changeover wasn’t always friendly. Several times Marilyn would show up to reclaim her daughter and Linda would refuse. Police were called on a few occasions. Marilyn recalled one Thanksgiving when she appeared at Linda’s home to retrieve Katie for a holiday dinner only to find the apartment dark—no one home.

What about the way Katie was dressed, no coat in the winter?

“That never happened on my watch. I always made sure she had a coat and shoes.”

Marilyn continued to allow the visits with Linda because Katie, she thought, seemed to be happy with Linda. And it enabled Marilyn to pay the bills because no one else in the family was working.

In 1987, Sal let the insurance on his car lapse. “He was always good for that.”

As a result, he lost his driver’s license. In the summer of 1988, his income evaporated too. He could never seem to hold onto a job. Once in a while Sal would repair a car in the driveway, but the work was sporadic and incoming money a rarity. Sal’s pudgy five foot six frame packed on more than two hundred seventy pounds and in his mid-thirties, he collapsed one day. His heart stopped working and even though he survived the heart attack, he stopped working altogether. Linda also gave up on work. Diabetes set in and she stopped getting out of bed much at all.

Linda and Sal always seemed to have trouble paying their rent and would often ask Marilyn if they could stay at her place on Higbie Drive. A couple of weeks would turn in to a couple of months and eventually the Inghilleris would move on, only to get evicted from another apartment and return to live with Marilyn. It was a cycle and it was repeated often.

Helen was miserable with the Inghilleris as non-paying boarders. The house was too small for six people, three of them over-sized, and everyone lived in terror of Sal’s temper. In Marilyn’s opinion, they were abusive, nasty, and nothing bothered her more than the fact they paid nothing toward the upkeep of the house. Not that much upkeep was ever done. The house was falling apart. Sal would often erupt into temper tantrums, yelling, cursing, “beating the crap out of Linda,” and just as often, Linda would need a lift to the hospital to be treated for raw bruises. Sal would swing a baseball bat with such force he left holes in the walls, “ticked off over any little thing imaginable.” Not even Helen’s black eye would end the Inghilleri’s free ride. Marilyn asked her mother how it happened, and a humiliated Helen muttered that she had fallen. Marilyn, of course, didn’t buy it, and eventually Helen had to admit that Sal slugged her during yet another quarrel over money.

The house was overrun with dogs and cats, as many as twenty-two living inside and in the yard. Marilyn now insisted that most of them were outdoor cats but conceded there was more than the average share of four-legged creatures. She also confirmed the odd sleeping arrangements.

Upstairs, Marilyn occupied her childhood bedroom and Linda took over what had been brother Robert’s room. Sal slept downstairs in a bedroom with John. Helen had her own cramped bedroom, also on the main floor. Little Katie had no formal room assignment. She was left to find a place to sleep at night. The child had no room and no bed to call her own.

Marilyn said she often called the cops to have the Inghilleris thrown out, but because the house was not in her name, she was powerless. And her mother Helen, who legally owned the house, was paralyzed with fear of Sal, too afraid to ever press charges. So the abusive occupation continued.

Sal often badgered Helen to sign the home over to him. He insisted she take out a fifty-thousand dollar home equity loan and lend half of the money to him. Under extraordinary duress, a petrified Helen took out the loan and handed over half to Sal. While she was afraid to refuse his demands, she would not agree to sign over the house. Instead, she simply stopped making the payments. The house on Higbie Drive was now unaffordable because of the increased mortgage. If Helen had made the higher payments, she would have had nothing left to live on. She had no choice but to sell the house for a below market eighty-one thousand dollars.

Marilyn packed up, leaving behind all family photos in the process, and moved into a garage apartment in Mastic Beach, thirty-five miles east of West Islip. The Inghilleris rented a house on Ocean Avenue in Bay Shore. Katie and Helen were assigned to live with the Inghilleris.

The move meant yet another interruption in Katie’s already intermittent education. She would be registered in the school district in which Marilyn was living, and if Marilyn were home, Katie would attend school. But when Marilyn was working, which was the case on most days and nights, Katie was home with Linda. School, said Marilyn, only seemed to get in the way of Linda’s needs. When school would call to question why Katie was not in class again, no one would bother to pick up the phone. Later, with bills unpaid, there would be no phone.

On one of those twelve-hour days driving for Sunset Taxi, Marilyn picked up a new fare, a sweet elderly woman named Rose. Marilyn and Rose got to talking and Rose said she also had a son named John. John Esposito. Her John was single and worked with a “big brothers” organization. She learned Marilyn’s John didn’t have a male influence anymore because
his grandfather had passed away, so she suggested that the two meet. Big John, as he quickly was dubbed, came over and met little John who was nine years old at the time. The two hit it off.

To Marilyn, Big John appeared to be a gentleman. Every week, he and Little John would get together, play games, watch videos. Big John would lavish gifts on his new friend—a twelve hundred dollar stereo and eventually even a trip to Disney World.

Little John never provided Marilyn with any details—just that Big John “touched him.” That was enough for Marilyn. She no longer let her children near Big John and reported her suspicions to the Big Brothers organization. Her antenna was up.

Not high enough.

Marilyn teared up as she spoke about the hand-off on the day before Katie disappeared.

“I had told Linda do not let Katie go with Esposito. She was told. She insisted that Katie go. Katie didn’t want to go. I said take her, but on one condition that she is not to see John Esposito and that she be home the next day.”

Katie’s taped message was indisputable. “Once I heard that tape,” said Marilyn, “they asked me what I thought and I said, ‘It doesn’t sound like Katie’s playing games.’”

Days after Katie vanished, Marilyn had a psychic drive her around Suffolk County. They stopped in front of John Esposito’s house and the psychic said she got a sense that “Katie is in the dark, she is underground, and she is alright.”

Marilyn now wept openly over her empty plate where meatloaf and mashed potatoes had been positioned around a pool of brown gravy. “I trusted the wrong people. I never got her back. I couldn’t even see her that day she was rescued. I was like garbage. Like I wanted to kill everybody just to get a hold of my daughter. Just to
see
her. It was horrible. I was called uncaring because I didn’t cry on demand. But then they didn’t see me while I was by myself, like
THIS
.”

“But yes,” she added, Katie’s new life was filled with much more opportunity “the way things worked out.”

She looked up, regained control of her breathing, put down the
fork and said firmly, “I do not regret the judge’s decision.”

“That’s why I didn’t fight that hard. I gave up my rights because I wanted what was best for Katie. I was not stable, and if she could be with a stable family—that was best for her at that point. She knows I never wanted to give her up. She knows I always wanted her back with me. But I believe to this day that I did do what was best for her. I thank God every day. Katie survived because of a strong will and a very good therapist who helped her through a lot. As for me, well, I’m a loner. Always was, always will be. You can overcome bad things. You can overcome just about anything. No matter how bad something is, just remember there is someone else who has it worse. I am not wishing it on anyone, what I went through, wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I just hate it when people come up to me and say, ‘I know how you feel.’ No you don’t. More than anything else, that bugged me the most. ?Cause even if you went through the same things that I went through, you don’t know how I feel.” Now Marilyn was resolute, even angry.

“Of course, I
am
proud of her,” she backed off.

Marilyn left the diner as I had always known her to be. Alone. There was something frail and sympathetic about what she exposed of her soul—housed in a distracting exterior—her arms covered with scaly red sores, her teeth crooked and yellow, skin hanging around the ghosts of lost obesity. In her eyes though, and partially toothless smile, there was more than a flicker of human frailty. She was repentant and admitted to her failings. And wanted nothing in return. Suddenly, I had an inkling as to where Katie’s resilience may have, in part, come from. For it is clear that Marilyn, like her daughter, is a survivor.

I never staked out Springs Elementary School on the East End hoping for a Katie sighting. I didn’t go there, literally. I agreed she should be allowed to grow up out of the news. Some felt differently and they had their reasons. The attorney who represented Amy Fisher, the Long Island “Lolita,” tried to pitch Marilyn the notion that the story was perfect for Hollywood. Proceeds of a movie would ensure Katie’s future. He would broker the deal. And books about the kidnapping were dished out like short order burgers. But her foster parents wanted no part of it for Katie, and declined all media requests through the sheriff’s department.