BOB SCHROEDER, LOCAL HISTORIAN: The Massacre at Crybaby Bridge will live on in the annals of Somerset history and lore. Like all local legends, it’s not immune to the gossip and embellishments that are inevitable in a rural town the size of Somerset.
The state news covered it for about a week and it barely made a blip in the national news headlines. The nation was too caught up with coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also an effort by many members of the community to suppress the story. They didn’t want the travesty to be the only thing the town was known for.
STEPHEN PARKER: How much fight could I possibly have left? How much adrenaline did I have in reserve? I knew that at a certain point death might come as relief. I would no longer have to feel scared for my life.
I wasn’t ready yet.
We rounded the side of the house. There was a barn out back, old and wooden. Completely dark. An old truck was parked next to the barn. Maybe it was open. Maybe it would have the keys in it. Nick headed straight for it. I followed. “Need...to...catch my breath,” he gasped. “Me too,” I agreed.
DAVID NEAL, SHERIFF, MOMADAY COUNTY: The Loveless property was a massacre in its own right. That place alone might be the kind of crime scene that sticks with you for years. Five dead at the scene and in all different manners.
STEPHEN PARKER: The doors to the truck were locked. We darted to the inside of the barn. We couldn’t hear anything from behind us, no signs we had been seen or followed. It was really dark in there and as my eyes adjusted, I could see a tractor parked dead center of the barn and smell the musty scent of dust and hay.
There was a loft towards the back of the barn that was loaded with bales of hay. A ladder led up to it and in the back of the loft under the angle of the barn’s roof was an open window.
“Let’s hide up there, catch our breath,” Nick said, pointing. Looking back, it seems like such a rookie horror movie mistake.
The loft was warm and stuffy and Nick quickly piled up a few bales for us to hide behind. We lay on our bellies like soldiers in a foxhole, peeking through a crack in our alfalfa barricade, waiting for the enemy.
DAVID NEAL, SHERIFF, MOMADAY COUNTY: The first body we encountered was Floyd Loveless. He was deceased on the porch with an extensive neck injury.
JOEY KESSLER, LOCAL RESIDENT, FARMER: They were confused as to what to do with that ol’ gal with the blade in her back. Everyone was afraid to remove it. I got creative while they was twiddling their thumbs and waiting on the helicopter. I rushed back with my cutting torch and cut it down close enough to her back.
SKYE HERRERA: What else could I do but pray? I’d never done it much before, but I sure as hell was right then.
STEPHEN PARKER: The mind of a teenager is not a rational thing. I don’t know what I was thinking. My best friend had just been brutally killed and I had seen it, seen him staggering around in his final throes before he collapsed. All of the others, too.
Maybe stress had done crazy things to my mind. Maybe the adrenaline and survival instinct had made it impossible for me to feel any sort of grief.
It felt like we were up in that loft a long time. I guess it was the silence that made it feel that way. All that I know is that I felt safe in that moment despite all that had happened, the dark all around, the warmth.
It felt like there would never be another safe moment.
It felt like this could be the last time.
I could feel Nick’s body rising and falling beside me, his heavy respirations slowing as he caught his breath. I could feel his warmth in the crisp autumn air and smell his sweat and cologne.
In the dark it was like we were anywhere else.
I whispered his name.
“Yeah,” he whispered back, and his face was close to mine as he turned. I took it in my hand and right there in that dusty, hay filled barn, I leaned in to kiss him.
The mind of a teenager is not a rational thing.
DAVID NEAL, SHERIFF, MOMADAY COUNTY: Around the backside of the house we found the second body. A decapitation had occurred.
STEPHEN PARKER: He didn’t turn away right away, didn’t shove me off in a fit of disgust. For a second, he let me, I think. I could feel his lips and mouth and then he pulled away.
He gave me a pat on the back and then whispered, “I’ve got a plan. If he comes here we can go out the window. It’s a twelve-foot drop. We’ll just hang off the side and let go. Bet we could do it pretty quietly.”
Before we could discuss any further, there was a scream.
DAVID NEAL, SHERIFF, MOMADAY COUNTY: It was presumed that Mrs. Lorraine Loveless had come out to check on her husband, encountered the perpetrator, and fled to the backside of the house.
STEPHEN PARKER: It was a woman’s voice, screaming “Floyd! Floyd!” and then these kinds of yelps that started sounding closer and then nothing.
DAVID NEAL: Next we speculated that Shaun Loveless, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Loveless that lived on the property in a fifth wheel camper trailer, attempted to subdue the suspect. His body was found nearby with a twelve-gauge pump action shotgun that was empty of shells. There was blunt trauma to the head with gray matter in the nearby grass accompanied with massive blood loss.
STEPHEN PARKER: After a little while we heard the angry shouts of a man, followed by several gunshots. From our vantage point, this seemed to be coming from a direction away from the house. Nick’s eyes got big. We inched backwards towards the window, but then he stopped, looked at me.
“I’m through running,” he said. His face was serious. “He’s just gonna keep coming and coming and more innocent people are gonna get caught up in it. I’ve got an idea.”
I could only stammer out a “What?”
He leaned in close to me. My heart was jackhammering in my chest all over again. He touched my shoulder. “Stay here,” he said and gave me a smile. “Go out the window if things get too hairy.”
SKYE HERRERA: They say the explosion could be heard for miles. I certainly heard it.
STEPHEN PARKER: Nick slithered down the ladder, disappeared in the shadows below me. I waited. So much for my heart rate going back to normal. It beat rapidly in anticipation, and I was close to pissing myself as I feared the worst to come.
STEPHEN PARKER: I still get nightmares where I’m at the end of a long hallway. There’s a door on the far end and it slowly opens. I see that figure, that face, the one that had now appeared in the wide doorway of the barn. He stood with several bleeding holes scattered around his torso. Blood oozed from them they didn’t seem to slow him down any. In his hands he wielded a T-post.. Something dripped from its sharp edge.
DAVID NEAL: We arrived on the scene after the explosion. In fact, several of the deputies en route to the area heard it.
STEPHEN PARKER: That baby motherfucker looked up at me. The tractor roared to life, the diesel engine revving, the gears grinding as the clutch popped and it lurched forward. It had a front-end loader on its front—basically like this bulldozer kind of thing. It slammed into Big Baby. He didn’t fall underneath it, he withstood the blow, caught it right in his arms and managed to push back on his feet against it. The engine struggled and the throttle roared and Nick sat behind the wheel.
Big Baby managed to skitter back a few feet, but the tractor kept coming for him and soon they both were well out of the barn. Nick maneuvered the levers and tilted the front-end loader’s bucket to keep Big Baby on his heels. I slid down the ladder and ducked my head out of the barn’s doorway to watch the outcome.
The last steps took place in a matter of fast forward, before I could truly comprehend what was going on. Big Baby’s arms were bloody and he hung onto the bucket of the front-end loader, attempting to pull himself up. His feet hung above the ground. It seemed his goal was to climb onto the arms of the front-end loader and leap at Nick if he had the chance.
He wasn’t quick enough.
Nick shifted gears and the tractor revved forward to a utility line pole to the left of the house. Sitting next to that pole was the shiny silver of a propane tank, one of those that are shaped like a pill and the size of a truck.
I yelled for Nick to look out, yelled for him to jump off, as if gunning straight for that tank hadn’t been his plan all along. As if he didn’t know the stakes.
As if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.
There was the collision of metal on a body and then the sound of grinding metal as the corner of the bucket pierced the tank. The gas hissed as it escaped and I saw Nick stand up in his seat and fish around in his pocket. He was pretty far away, but I could make out his hand movements as a flame appeared in his hand, the flame from a Zippo lighter.
JOEY KESSLER: I heard that explosion and I thought, “What now?”
IRENE MYRTLE, LOCAL RESIDENT: I thought the good Lord was coming down to get us. The rapture.
TERESA RUSSEL, 911 OPERATOR: The calls started coming in left and right, first the injuries and then about the explosion and all in this particular part of the county. It was mayhem for a while. Busiest night I ever worked.
EDDIE DUNN: LOCAL RESIDENT, UNEMPLOYED: I thought it was them damn terrorists, myself. Heard they might try and strike a little place like the Somerset area on account of all our oil wells and the like. Y’know we got that refinery a town over? I’d even seen some A-rabs at the truck stop recently.
STEPHEN PARKER: If this is a feel-good action movie, if I’m the one writing the screenplay, then Nick turns his back right as he throws the lighter. He does a running leap off the back of the tractor right as the propane tank explodes. The fireball propels him forward, singeing the back of his shirt and head and that’s it. He lands in the grass, and I run to him and I say, “Looks like you got out just in the Nick of time.” We both laugh and embrace. End scene.
But that’s not what happened no matter how much I look back and try and rewrite it in my mind. What happened was he managed to do a half turn before the tank exploded and the flames engulfed him.
Through the smoldering rubble and debris, I found his body and rolled him over and it was clear that there would be no happy ending for us. No final words. Just an embrace followed by me stumbling into the house, my eyes blinded by tears. I found a phone, dialed 911.
That was it.
SOMERSET REGISTER 10/19/2003, FRONT PAGE: MULTIPLE VICTIMS IN KILLING SPREE SATURDAY NIGHT, SUSPECT DECEASED AT SCENE, TEENAGER REMAINS IN CRITICAL CONDITION