Killer Dads (4 page)

Figure 1.3. James, in a bulletproof vest and handcuffs, is led into a Washington State court to face murder charges for killing his five-year-old stepdaughter, Clare.
Courtesy of the
Mason County Journal/
Kevan Moore.

It was difficult to imagine James committing such a crime. Even his ex-wife spoke up for him. He had no arrest record. He briefly pleaded not guilty, offering a mental illness defense based on his struggles with bipolar disorder and anger issues. Sarah would say in an interview months later with Canadian broadcaster CTV that before the attack on Clare, James never exhibited any significant signs of violence, never threatened to hurt anyone, and “faithfully” took his medications for his disorder.
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James quickly changed his plea to guilty to first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances to “spare his family the anguish of a trial,” his attorney said in court. “He has apologized to his wife and family. He loved his family,” said lawyer Ron Sergi. “He lost control. He never saw this type of conduct coming; he was as surprised as anyone else by this. He asked for forgiveness, well aware he wasn't deserving of it.” As James entered his plea before the
judge, sobbing, he said he wished he could trade his life for Clare's. Mason County Superior Court Judge Toni Sheldon sentenced him to the maximum time allowed in prison, citing Clare's vulnerability, the stepfather's abuse of trust, and the destructive nature of the crime for the family.

“Clare's death has been shocking and devastating beyond comprehension to me and my family,” Sarah said to the court in her victim impact statement. “As I was preparing this, I realized how impossible it is for me to truly describe who Clare was, the spark that made her uniquely Clare, the essence of the little person that she was. Clare was a bubbly, smart, loving, creative, vibrant five-year-old girl. She was cheeky and had a fabulous sense of humor, even though she couldn't quite figure out how knock-knock jokes were supposed to go. Her laugh was infectious.” Her mom recalled how her daughter “saw beauty” everywhere, especially in “wild flowers most would call weeds, or in caterpillar-bitten leaves. When beach-combing with my parents, Clare wanted to keep all of the broken shells she had picked up because they were all special.”

Clare “never got to see her sixth birthday, or celebrate the first party she would have had with classmates instead of just family,” Sarah added. “I'll never get to take her dress-shopping, and she'll never attend her prom. I won't get to teach her how to drive. I will never see her off on her first date or help heal her heart with a bowl of ice cream after her first breakup with a boyfriend. What remains of my baby girl this side of eternity is a bag of ashes inside a pretty urn, photographs and memories.

“The life and experiences that James has robbed from Clare, and the joy that he has taken from me and my family by ending her young life are irreplaceable. All I can do is trust that the sentence James receives today will reflect the significant and devastating impact of his actions and our tremendous loss,” she said.

Sarah's sister, Helen Hutt, also read a statement in court about the tragedy that turned her life “upside down.” Hutt had been friends with James for several years before he fell in love with her sister, he explained to me. James was introduced to Hutt by a cousin, who wanted to put him in touch with other young people when he first moved to Vancouver. He grew so close to Hutt's parents that he called them Mom and Dad and walked into their house without knocking, just as if he was one of their kids, he recalled.
“My faith has been shaken to the core,” Hutt said in court. “Nothing people do, or are capable of doing, will shock me ever again.” In a particularly poignant note, she mourned not only the loss of Clare, but of James as well. “In one night, my family lost two people that we loved and cared about,” she said. Sarah, too, was devastated not only by the vacuum left in her life by Clare's murder, but also by the loss of James. “I have lost a daughter and husband,” she said in her statement. “Suzy lost her little sister and the man both she and Clare called Dad.”

Figure 1.4. The local
Abbotsford-Mission Times
revisits the murder that rattled a nation, and recalls a community stunned by a horrific crime that ended the life of a special little girl.
Courtesy of the
Abbotsford-Mission Times.

Among Sarah's most gut-wrenching struggles in the aftermath of her daughter's murder was the relentlessly recurrent image in her mind of Clare bleeding to death on the kitchen floor of the cottage, she told CTV News in an interview months later.
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Sarah, a deeply religious woman, is convinced she'll see her daughter in the afterlife, and that's the “biggest thing” that keeps her going, she said. Her daughter Suzy also remains a “powerful reason to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other,” Sarah told the
Abbotsford-Mission Times
.
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“She's a reason to seek goodness and not get sucked into the darkness because if I go there, she gets sucked down with me. I could become jaded and give in to bitterness, but it's a choice, and I have to make that choice every day.”

Long after she presented her victim statement in court, Sarah laid bare the particularly agonizing pain of a mother who loved and trusted, and thought she knew, a warm, affectionate man who would inexplicably murder her daughter. Sarah recalled that the day she spoke in court “the one piece I could not prepare for in any way was my emotional response at seeing him again. That was pretty hard,” she said, crying.
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“I haven't just lost a daughter, I've lost my husband, too.”

James, who still routinely refers to “my wife,” would tell me two years later that far harder than going to prison for 55 years was losing Sarah.

James's crime grabbed international media notice because of its particular brutality, but also because it was especially perplexing given his history with his family. I decided to reach out to him by e-mail in prison to ask if he would be willing to talk to me about what happened and maybe write an account of his life and his crime for this book. To my surprise, he agreed. “My story is a sad one, but, yes, if it will help you with your book and hopefully help others in the future then I would gladly like to help you,” he wrote back. After that, we e-mailed and talked on the phone frequently for several months, and, periodically, pages of his handwritten “chapter” appeared in my mailbox. James is a friendly, intelligent, articulate, apparently compassionate man who still seems stunned by what happened. He's aware that he has a “problem with rage,” as he puts it, and has been treated for bipolar disorder, yet he repeatedly emphasizes that he “makes no excuses” for what happened. He seems devastated by his crime and is desperately seeking some kind of redemption, which he fears he'll never find. He chose to summarize his background, highlighting events that may have influenced him or offer some kind of insight into who he is and what he did. Everything that follows was written by him, except for the account of the actual murder, which he recounted to me over the phone because it was difficult for him to put it on paper.

To start at the beginning, I was born in Vernon, British Columbia, in 1980. We moved to Spokane two years later, shortly after my little sister was born. My first memories are
from our first house in Spokane when I was about four years old. I remember sharing a bedroom in the basement with one of my brothers, and I have vague memories of climbing trees in our backyard.

We moved to Biloxi in Mississippi when I was still four. I remember very little of the drive, but I know we left a box of crayons in the back window and they melted into a lump of very pretty colors. While in Mississippi, I had my fifth birthday. We had spinach with dinner, and I liked it. I split my head on a slide at the park while we lived there—one of many injuries I had during childhood. My dad told me that I liked to stand on the edge of the tub after a bath and would inevitably fall off and smack my head on the wall. My dad was stationed at the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi for hurricane season as he was in the Air National Guard.

About six months after moving to Biloxi, we moved back to Spokane and stopped on the way to see the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and the Petrified Forest. We moved into a two-bedroom house in Spokane. During that time, life as a kid was pretty normal. My mom helped with our schoolwork and kept us in line most of the time. Spankings were dished out for serious transgressions, and most of those were handled by my dad. We went to school, camped in the summer, and sometimes traveled to visit grandparents around holidays.

My mom left my dad when I was nine years old. She packed all four of us kids into the car and went to my aunt's house in British Columbia. My parents were divorced when I was ten, and my dad was remarried later that year.

A quick aside: There were four children when my parents were together. Number Five died before I was born. The order of the four of us goes as follows: Ray (six years older), Steven (one-and-a-half years older), me, and Tammy (two years younger and the only girl). Ray, being a few years older, was like an overseer, and generally wanted the other three of us to leave him alone. Steven, Tammy and I were the “Terrible Trio.” If one of us was caught in trouble, then the other two were around the corner. We played as a group and were punished as a group.

Steven moved down to Washington to live with my dad, his new wife, and her son, Arthur (seven years younger than me). This happened when I was ten, and I moved down the following year because I missed my dad and brother. I lived with my dad in Spokane until 1995 when I then moved back north to live with my mom, and her new husband; and all four original children were back home. My brother Steven moved with me due to events that took place in Spokane.

Figure 2.1. A photo of a younger Clare Shelswell shows her smiling while wearing her glasses, which her big sister, Suzy, said gave her “quite the look.” James
(right)
, her stepfather and the man she called “Dad,” was convicted of her murder.
Courtesy of KOMO 4 News, Seattle.