Killer Dads (5 page)

My dad and stepmom, K, fought constantly over the three children in their care. Dad took Steven's and my side, while K defended Arthur. Because of this, K was mean to Steven and me, but for some reason, she really took it out on me. I even recall her telling me that their fighting was my fault. And, on a separate occasion, she told me that my bed-wetting problem was done on purpose to cause them to fight. I had started wetting the bed about a month after moving in with my dad in Spokane and continued until I moved back in with my mom. I maintain that it was stress-related. Not only did K blame me, but she also used to tell me that I was fat and stupid. She even hit me on rare occasions when I was about 13. I never told my dad or anyone else besides Steven about any of it. It wasn't until adulthood that it occurred to me that her behavior was inappropriate.

Basically, life in Spokane at that time was hell for me. The only reason my brother and I stayed was because both my mom and dad said they didn't want us jumping between parents every couple of years. In the end, Steven was the one to push K over the edge, and she kicked us both out. So by 1995, Steven and I were back at my mom's house, now in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Life in Kelowna was mostly fine, though my stepdad was a rough guy to deal with. He never had kids of his own, so to live with four teenagers was stressful for him. Ray was the first one of us to leave home. He moved to Vancouver by himself and started working full-time. Also at this time, our Terrible Trio lost a member as Steven started trying to act mature and felt that entailed keeping Tammy and me out of trouble.

Tammy was the next to move out the following summer due to problems she was having [with our stepdad and mom].

Quick fill-in: My mom and stepdad would start drinking from the time he came home from work until they went to bed. This caused its own tensions, and a lot of
fighting between my mom and stepdad. I remember a family get-together in 1996 when my stepdad started yelling at me for no reason that anyone but he understood. I tried defending myself, but I wasn't sure what was going on, and he sent me to bed at seven o'clock with family and friends still all partying around the house. I know quite a few people left because of this, and my mom had to calm me down because I was hysterical and on the verge of hyperventilating.

Things were fine between my stepdad and me for the remainder of that school year. He spent the majority of his energy fighting with Steven then, so Steven moved in with my grandparents to finish high school (Steven and I were in the same grade all through school because our parents held him back a year right from the first grade). So for my senior year I was alone with mom and my stepdad. I had a job with a farmer down the road since 1995, and also babysat three or four neighborhood kids. When I wasn't working, I was hanging out with friends, hiking, and riding mountain bikes.

To recall a few key moments of my teens when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I remember K making me so mad and frustrated that I tried to strangle myself with my sheets. My brother Steven put that to a stop. Another time I pushed Steven down a flight of stairs for locking me out of the house. My sister let me in, and I went straight for my brother, and pushed him down the stairs. He tumbled to the first landing, and got up, furious. We ended up fighting around the living room with Tammy screaming at us to stop. Steven was bruised and a couple of my mom's knick-knacks were broken, and that was all the damage. But I sometimes thought of that day later because I was so very angry and I wanted to get even with my brother so badly.

A couple of years later while working for the farmer, we were in the bed of his truck, throwing pruning clippings onto a mulch pile. The farmer thought it would be funny to push me out of the truck. I wasn't hurt, but I was so mad that I pulled a knife on him that I always carried while working. He talked me down and apologized for pushing me, and work continued as usual.

Oh, and I also ran away from home once when I was about fourteen because K hit me. My dad was at work late so I called him from a neighbor's house to come and get me when he was on his way home. I also ran away from school in fifth grade because my classmates were picking on me, and the teacher didn't stop them. I was missing for four hours, and my mom was frantic when I returned to the school. All I did was hide in the trees at the park down the block from school.

As you can see, I have a history of irrational overreactions.

I moved out of my mom's place right after I graduated from high school, at the very end of June 1998. I moved from Kelowna down to Vancouver to live with my oldest brother, Ray. I got a job working in a hydraulic repair shop, cleaning up and assisting the mechanics. It was a good job but it only lasted eight months before I was laid off due to a slowdown in business. About a month before my layoff, Ray and I moved to the suburb of Maple Ridge, . . . but a couple of months after my layoff he asked me to move out. So I was out on my own in the world.

It was at a Halloween party of 1998 that I met my first wife, Sherri, and we started dating. She was only a few months younger than me, and very smart and focused on her education at the time. She worked hard at her job and on her schoolwork. She was taking some extra courses at the local high school to make the college jump easier the next year. The qualities I found most attractive in Sherri were her drive, her work ethic, intelligence, and her heart. She loved helping people. Over our eight-year relationship her drive and work ethic seemed to fade, and for the last four years I supported our household almost 100 percent. She dropped out of college before finishing her degree, so we had a boatload of debt and only one income.

I attended college from the fall of 1999 to the end of the winter 2002 semester. I worked full-time during the summer and worked part-time while attending college full-time. I worked at a gas station as an assistant manager during this time, although without the title and without the extra pay—just the extra work and responsibility. I quit my job there at the end of 2001 because my hours were cut. I understand why they did it. I had numerous outbursts costing them both money and customers. I only recall one such incident, but I know there were more. I was never written up or warned after any one of them; they just moved to edge me out. The one incident I remember was in the summer of 2001. I went outside to fill up a customer's barbecue propane bottle; I checked the date stamp to make sure the seals were good. It's illegal to refill them past the date stamp. I informed the fellow that his tank had expired and offered to sell him a new one. The man got frustrated and tried to talk me into filling it anyway. I said I couldn't, as it would be risking my job and his safety. The man got mad and started to climb into his car. I told him that he would have to pay to dispose of his propane tank, and he told me to go fuck myself. From my angle, I only started becoming angry when he acted up. He kept telling me I was ruining his barbeque party and that I was trying to rip him off. Now, I've done some dishonest things in my past (lying, shoplifting, etc.), but I always prided myself on my work ethic. I took offense at his comments. I didn't even think about
what I was doing. I just grabbed his propane bottle and threw it at his car and dented it. He had just started to drive away so he, of course, stopped, and that was when realization and panic hit me. I ran for the store and phoned the owner immediately. The customer walked in after me and I handed him the phone to speak to the owner. The company ended up covering the cost to repair his car. (I've tried to remember my feelings on some of these other issues, but they aren't coming to me.)

I was with Sherri from 1998 to 2006. We were married in 2004. It was a weird engagement, and it makes me look like a total ass, but I guess I was. I had told Sherri numerous times that I wasn't interested in marriage because of the way both of my parents' marriages had gone. On Valentine's Day 2002, I gave Sherri a promise ring just meant as a token. Well, she called her best friend to say we were engaged. She was so excited that I just went along with it. Upon reflection, yes, I should have clarified things, but I wasn't ready for that yet.

Our relationship was pretty easy-going. We both had similar interests, so fighting was fairly rare. Money was a hot topic, though. She spent it, and I yelled at her for it, but the cycle continued. The one spot where our relationship was far from normal was our sex life. I'd rather not even mention it, but it is pertinent to the main incident in my life. Sherri and I had an “open” marriage. Our parents were made aware of this after our marriage dissolved, because that's the reason it fell apart.

Even before I met Sherri, shortly after I moved to Vancouver, a cousin introduced me to some people around my age. Ray, being six years older than me and much more mature, hung out with an older crowd. My cousin introduced me to her daycare provider's daughter, and some of her friends. This would be my connection to Sherri and then, eventually, to Sarah (my second wife, and the mother of Clare, my stepdaughter who I killed). Helen was another of the girls I met through that first introduction. We became good friends, and I spent a lot of time hanging out at her house, and even called her parents Mom and Dad. Sarah was their other daughter, but she was never around, so I didn't meet her until 2006. But throughout that time, from the day I first met Sherri to the time I met Sarah, we kept in touch with Helen, so when Helen was married in 2006 we were invited to the wedding. Sherri dragged me along to the bachelorette part for Helen, which is where I finally met Sarah. Things by then between Sherri and I had already digressed to being pretty much roommates, just sharing a bed. In 2005 I had applied to become a police officer, but was turned down in 2006 because they said the debts incurred by my spouse displayed a lack of financial control on my part. This concerned them as
they felt it would make me susceptible to bribes. That was the final straw in my relationship with Sherri.

When I met Sarah, I felt a connection with her that I had never felt with Sherri. I had never put much credit to the idea of “soul mates” before then, but Sarah was definitely my soul mate. After just my first phone call with Sarah, I knew I loved her. We dated behind Sherri's back for a month before Sarah and I admitted to each other how we felt. I told Sherri I wanted to separate. She was crushed, and that was the end of my first marriage. It was your typical “you cheating bastard” break-up, and I was the bastard. I felt terrible about it, but as my relationship with Sarah was just taking off, all the other great things I was feeling squashed the ugliness with Sherri. Six years later, I still remember almost every minute Sarah and I spent together. But I've hurt her so terribly.

Even though Sarah filed for divorce after what I did to Clare, and remarried, in my heart she is still my wife. I loved her with every fiber of my being, and my ultimate punishment is living with the knowledge that I betrayed her and broke her heart. I took away one of her precious little babies, along with her best friend and husband. I was the one person who could have comforted her through such a tragic loss, yet I was the one who caused it. It's like a knife through my heart. I left behind two families, my own and my parents', with broken hearts.

I don't quite understand what happened the day I killed Clare. I was very, very angry. It sounds strange to say, but part of it was related to how much I loved Sarah. She was everything to me. But because of that she could hit all of my nerve centers. I sometimes think it would have been better for me to be with a woman I wasn't so wrapped [up] in. We had a perfect life the first year or so we were married. We had laughs and fun times, Sarah and me and the girls. The girls were nuts about me, and I loved them. Things started bothering me the next year. There were times I would feel sad or angry for no really clear reason.

I tried to commit suicide, twice. The first time I overdosed on medication with painkillers, any pills I could find in the house, after Sarah and I had a huge fight. I emailed my goodbyes from the living room while Sarah was sleeping in the bedroom. But I didn't know her email would ping on her phone, and she woke up and came in the living room, and said, “What's going on?” and called an ambulance and they pumped my stomach in the emergency room. After another suicide attempt a while later I ended up staying with her parents for about three or four months. I think I was overwhelmed
by the family. I loved Sarah's girls, Suzy and Clare, and considered them my daughters. Clare especially was so excited to see me when I came home from work every day. She was the one who would run to the door, excited, with a smile on her face. But they were a lot of work, and Clare could be a troublemaker. Sarah and I were both working full-time. Sarah was working as a nurse, and I was selling parts for [a trucking company]. But somehow, I felt like I was getting stuck with more of the kid work. I was always the go-to guy. Sarah rolled out of bed in the morning and went straight to work, earlier than I did, and I had to get the girls up and ready for school, then drop them off. I usually picked them up from school, too. I felt like I was being taken advantage of. I thought that Sarah could have been more appreciative. I felt she didn't pay me in kind for everything I was doing, and I thought [I] was entitled to more. Actually, I don't think I was ready for kids then; I was too immature. Of course, no one would ever let me get close to children now.

At one point Sarah suggested I see a psychiatrist because she thought I had some of the same symptoms as bipolar people she had seen at the hospital. So I did see a doctor who diagnosed me as a bipolar, but not too enthusiastically, I guess. He gave me a prescription for Depakote, a mood stabilizer, which seemed to help sometimes. But he didn't really help me in any other way, besides writing out prescriptions. So I went to a counselor for anger management. But he eventually told me that he thought we were done, and I didn't really feel like I got anything out of it. It was costing a lot of money and it wasn't helping.