Obsession (29 page)

Once Katie had gotten beyond her initial need to know, as well as dealing with the guilt, there still remained the overwhelming task of making sense out of the tragedy, which meant nothing less than confronting the entire weight of her own harrowing past and her relationship with her family. It was a task that easily could have destroyed a weaker or less determined person.

Katie grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “We moved from place to place to place. My mother was an alcoholic, and she was in and out of mental hospitals, trying to commit suicide. So we lived out of our suitcases, from grandmother to grandmother to aunt, to wherever. I never had a sense of belonging. I came from a household where we had sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.”

She was about six when her father left for the first time, though he came back from time to time, such as during her mother’s hospitalizations. She reports that she and her brother, Ted, were never close with him, but that the younger sister, Becky, always seemed his favorite. When Katie was in ninth grade, she told her father she wanted to leave. He told her to go ahead. Despite her mother’s neglect, Katie, the middle child, tried to keep the household functioning, making sure her brother and sister were properly clothed and fed, carrying heavy bags eight blocks from the grocery store, cooking, cleaning, doing the washing. By the time she was sixteen, she couldn’t take it anymore and left home. By that time, Ted, who was two years older, had already been in a foster home.

She eventually went to live with her aunt, her mother’s sister, and for the first time in her life felt a sense of normalcy and belonging. It was there that she was given the first birthday party she had ever had.

She joined the Air Force after high school, where she became a maintenance analyst, then developed a specialty in contracts. She stayed in the service ten and a half years altogether. While she was stationed overseas, she married a man, but quickly fell back into feelings of emotional neglect that continually tore at the fragile fabric of her self-esteem and confidence.

But the question we ask over and over again in these situations is, Why would a woman who has been through this before voluntarily place herself back in the same role? After all, she was bright and extremely attractive, with a solid job and a promising future. Katie’s answer is realistic and insightful:

“It’s something that happens and you don’t even realize it You’re a magnet. It’s like going into a bar and having a billboard on your back that says, ‘I’m a victim.’ I mean, of all the men, that’s what I was attracted to. I could say that my ex-husband was good
looking. He had control of the situation. He was very possessive of me and, hey, gee, nobody else was when I was growing up, or fought for me. And I mistook that for the wrong thing.”

Ultimately, Katie decided she needed to leave the marriage. They had been living in California and she picked up, took her daughter, and moved to upstate New York to be as far away from him as possible. Then she moved to Virginia.

Unfortunately, not everyone has Katie Souza’s courage.

The one thing that fulfilled her life, that gave her meaning and direction, was being a mother, and Destiny was a delightful infant and child. Within months of her birth, Destiny’s father was largely out of the picture, so it was just the two of them. They did everything together—ice-skating, roller-skating, camping. They camped out overnight in the parking lot of the Capital Center arena to get good seats for a Janet Jackson concert. When Destiny was still a baby, wherever Katie went outside of work, she took her along. She didn’t like the idea of baby-sitters and felt that if there were places she couldn’t take Dee, she didn’t need to be there herself. It was the first time in Katie’s life that she’d ever experienced unconditional love.

Destiny was two years old when Katie finalized her divorce. The child came up behind her when she found out, patted her on the back, and said, “Don’t worry, Mommy. It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you.” Katie’s heart nearly broke when she heard that. It was as if the little girl had become her, desperately trying to hold a family together and take care of everyone else.

Destiny adored Katie’s brother, Ted. As soon as they would get to his house, Dee would run upstairs with him to his computer room. Katie didn’t discourage the bond, but it made her extremely nervous. She remembered him sexually abusing her as a child. So
whenever Dee was with Uncle Ted, Katie would nervously keep her eyes and ears peeled for any sign. When they would leave, she would question the child at length to see if anything had happened. Destiny was confused by the questioning. Eventually Katie told her the truth. As far as she could tell, nothing ever happened between Ted and Dee. But because of her own background, Katie was always nervous and cautious with Destiny, as well as other young children, around men.

“I was strict with her and wouldn’t let her run around the neighborhood by herself because I was always afraid that some of the things that happened to me might happen to her. I was pretty possessive, and as she got older, I tried to explain why.”

In the early-morning hours of a Friday in May of 1990, Ted was talking to his wife on the telephone. Ted had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and they were having problems in the marriage, too. She heard the sound of a shotgun blast. But he’d missed. So he tried again. This time he was successful. He’d tried to kill himself the week before with pills, but had failed. Whenhe woke up, he’d been extremely upset about it.

He was supposed to come down to visit Katie the dayhe killed himself, to try to straighten things out. She had done her share of drugs, and now that she’d cleaned up her act, she thought she wanted to try to help him. She couldn’t bear to tell Destiny that her beloved uncle Ted had taken his own Me, so she just said that he had died. Dee insisted on going to the funeral, where she held her head in her hands and cried inconsolably.

Meanwhile, Katie’s sister, Becky Hall, was living up in Pennsylvania. She’d been discharged from the Navy. She had a child and was on welfare. Katie had spent most of her life trying to protect Becky, and she didn’t feel she could stop now. In fact, when things had been really bad when they were children, either
she or Ted would try to get Becky out of the house so she wouldn’t know what was going on. Now, Becky had a baby girl of her own, and Katie wanted to get her sister off welfare, so she invited her and the baby to come live with her in Virginia until they could get back on their feet.

Katie also knew from her own experience and reaction show easy it would be for Becky to fall in with the wrong person. She’d already been married twice, and some of the men in her life had been ex-cons. In Katie’s words, “After a while I began asking her, ‘What are you doing, waiting outside the jail for these guys to come out on probation?’ And she laughed, because it was true—anything from robbery to people that were doing bombs. She hung out with bikers, she was in a very bad group.”

This was already the second time that Katie had come up to get Becky, and after talking to her mother, Katie was concerned about Becky’s emotional state.

About two and a half months after Becky and the baby moved in with Katie and Destiny, Becky got a call from her boyfriend in Pennsylvania, Robert Miller. He told her he was having trouble up there and couldn’t take it any longer; he had to get out of town for a while; he needed a break. As she listened, Becky repeated the litany of complaints to her older sister.

Katie said to her, “You act like you’re waiting for me to make a decision or something.”

Becky replied, “Well, yeah. He’s on the phone.”

Katie had met the tall, thin, wavy-blond-haired Miller a couple of times, and he was always polite and deferential to her, even calling her “ma’am.” Her impression was that Rob was a step up from some of the men Becky had been associated with. So Katie said okay, he could move in. “Because I pretty much gave in to whatever Becky wanted.

Becky and Rob lived in the basement of Katie’s rented town house in Newington. This was summer-time. Becky had a job, but Rob didn’t, so Katie asked him if he would look after Destiny during the day until she went back to school in the fall. The polite and quiet Rob had no problem with that. Meanwhile, Katie had arranged day care for Stephanie.

The arrangement seemed to work. Rob took Dee places like the swimming pool during the day and they became pals. Katie actually felt sorry for him because of the nasty way she thought Becky was treating him. In fact, Katie thought it had driven him to drink.

When he was supposed to be baby-sitting, she would come home to find a bottle of liquor broken on the floor and Rob cleaning it up, explaining that he or Destiny had knocked it over. Only after this happened several times did she realize that it was his way of covering the fact that he was actually emptying the bottles, drink by drink. Then he stopped trying to hide it. Several times she came home to find Rob passed out and Destiny fending for herself. Katie attributed the drinking to the aggravation he was getting from Becky and tried to talk to her about it several times, but she wouldn’t listen.

As we discussed in
Journey into Darkness
, we’ve got to teach our children—of whatever age—to be “profilers” of adult behavior so they can know whom to trust and whom not to trust, whom to listen to and whom to rely on if they get lost or need any kind of help or assistance. If a child has confidence in these skills, and the security of knowing that his or her parents and other important adults are supportive and understanding, then that child is far less likely to become a victim.

As Katie perceived it at the time, the main conflict was with her sister. If they got into an argument at the dinner table, Becky would storm off, taking Stephanie
with her. Becky would borrow the car, which Katie would let her do, but then remind her, “Okay, but Dee needs to go to ballet practice,” or, “She has gymnastics. If you need the car for work, can you do me a favor and go take her there?” Katie later found out Becky wasn’t always taking Dee.

Ultimately, Katie came to believe that Becky felt that Destiny had replaced her in her older sister’s love and affections and that Katie’s love of Destiny represented an abandonment of her, an abandonment similarto when Katie had left home as a teenager, then joined the Air Force, thereby—in Becky’s mind—not taking care of her any longer.

“At one point my sister came downstairs when we were living in the town house and she was all upset. I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

“She answered, ‘You’ve got to do something about your daughter. I’m sick and tired of what she’s been doing.’

“I said, ‘What are you talking about?’

“And she said, ‘Well, come here.’

“So she takes me up to the bathroom. She had just gotten finished with a shower and shows me where it says, ‘I hate you Becky,’ on the mirror. Well, my sister apparently did not know Dee could barely write, and when she wrote, it was backward and upside down. So when I looked at the mirror and saw this plain writing, I started laughing. And she said, ‘What’s so funny?’

“Destiny had been right at my side the whole time and I told Becky, ‘You’re setting my daughter up. It wouldjust please you to no end if you stood there and watched me spank her.’

“‘Well, after what she did …,’ Becky said.

“I said, ‘But you don’t understand something.’ And then I told her.

“She said, ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

“I said, ‘Yeah.’ And so things got worse.”

The strain continued to build all the way around. Eventually, after a petty argument between the two sisters, Becky decided she’d had enough and announced that she and Stephanie and Rob were clearing out.

For his part, Rob said he was happy where he was, but it was Katie’s impression that Becky called the shots in that relationship. They went to the next-door neighbors and told her Katie had kicked them out. The neighbors, with whom Katie is still friends even though both have moved, kindly agreed to take in Becky and Rob. During the next several days, Rob would return to Katie’s house frequently to pick up various belongings and supplies. Katie told him to take whatever they needed. In the next few days they moved again, this time into Becky’s boss’s house, about two miles away.

On the morning of September 17, 1990, Katie awoke with severe stomach cramps, which she attributed to her pregnancy. She was in the bathroom when the phone rang. Destiny answered it and told her mother it was Rob.

“Well, tell him I’m in the bathroom right now,” she replied. “Can he call back in ten minutes?” He said okay.

An hour went by. She had to get into the shower so she wouldn’t be late for work. Sure enough, that was when Rob called back. Destiny came running into the bathroom and said to Katie through the shower curtain, “Mommy, Rob called again. He said that you’re not supposed to hide from him anymore or he’s gonna make you pay for it. Quit avoiding him or he’s gonna make you pay for it.”

What was that all about?
Katie wondered. He had never talked to her that way before. He couldn’t stand up to an adult; anyway, they’d never had a disagreement.
In a way, they were emotional allies when things got rough with her sister. Katie couldn’t figure it out.

That morning represents Katie’s final memory of Destiny.

“While I was doing my hair, she was doing her hair at the same time. And I was telling her how gorgeous she was and how she was going to make all the little boys jealous at school, and she was giggling. And I gave her a kiss and she went downstairs and I said, ‘Don’t forget your book bag.’ She said, ‘I won’t,’ and I said, ‘I love you,’ and she said, ‘I love you, too. Mommy.’ And she left.

“And that was the one memory that I guess I hold on to the most: the giggle … when we were doing our hair together. And that it wasn’t a bad morning or a rushed morning. It was a good morning.”

When the police told her Rob was the killer, just hours after Destiny had died, Katie was still in shock. Her first reaction was disbelief. Det. Bill Whildin, now an investigating social worker with the county’s Child Protective Services, came to visit her. He kept pressing, sensitively but firmly, on anything she could tell him about the relationship between Rob and Becky.