Less than a week after my mother’s death, my father and Kevin were truly and wholly inseparable, so much so that my father’s brother, a retired Air Force colonel, worried that “Kevin will cause my brother to lose his soul.” One day they showed up at my house unannounced. They came in full of nervous energy, and I didn’t get the sense they came to see how I was holding up.
Their energy was different from mine. It felt like they were on a mission. Kevin certainly was. With my father standing behind him, nodding at everything he said, he let me know that he’d hired a lawyer. To prevent me from screwing him out of his share of money that was due him.
“What are you talking about, Kevin?” I asked.
“You know, Maureen. And I want to say this for the record, the will is no good.”
I said, “What?”
“The will—mom and dad’s trust—it’s no good.”
I glanced at Michael, who rolled his eyes. I looked at my father, who was nodding in agreement with Kevin.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a page missing from it,” he said.
We debated that point back and forth. It wasn’t true. I understood the real point, though. Kevin had heard from my father that their living trust was going to give him money in increments, and he was freaking out about it. Since my father was still alive, it didn’t affect him or any of us. Why he wanted to fight about it now was beyond me. He scared me, and made me scared for my father.
At this point, my father still drove, and the next day he came over and apologized for the previous day’s scene.
“Kevin is so sick,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”
I told my father that he needed to also apologize to my brother Mike in Hawaii. I had to explain that he and Kevin had treated my brother poorly during my mother’s illness. They didn’t keep him informed about her condition. They didn’t let him talk to her. They made him feel like he wasn’t part of the family.
“You need to communicate better with him,” I said.
At that, he called Mike and said he loved him. He said he was sorry for the way he’d treated him, blaming it on Kevin, who he said was sick and needed help. After the call, my father and I reminisced about my mother. He cried and apologized to me for his own behavior and for Kevin’s. He reiterated that Kevin had threatened suicide and needed to see a doctor.
He sounded like my old father again, and I fantasized about getting the family back together. I put my arms around him and promised to arrange for all of us to go to counseling. I said we had to work together in order to come together. My father agreed, but a moment later, seeming alarmed, he asked what time it was and said he had to get back to Kevin.
Alone, I found myself, for the first time, able to think clearly about my mother’s death. All of a sudden it hit me hard. I’d always thought I’d be with her as she took her final breaths, holding her hand, comforting her, and making sure the last words she heard were “I love you.” At the end, what else could matter? Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. I was thinking, God, if Mom was only here, none of this would be happening. She was the rock. She was the glue that held us together.
I felt awful that I hadn’t been there when she passed. I was angry at my dad and Kevin for not allowing me those moments. They knew how close we were. All of a sudden, as I thought of my mother being gone forever, I was unable to hold myself together. Not that I’d been doing such a good job up to then. But I burst into tears and felt what I was supposed to feel—extreme sadness, anger, and loss.
So much loss.
I remember Natalie coming home and seeing me so distraught. She walked over to me, and without saying a word, my fifteen-year-old daughter wrapped her arms around me. We hugged the way I wished I could’ve hugged my mother, the way I wished my mother would’ve hugged me, me taking strength from Natalie, then trying to give back the same to her, and then hearing her whisper, “Mom, I love you so much.”
I’d experienced my share of bizarre people and situations, but nothing prepared me for the kind of truly bizarre, un-Brady-like craziness I encountered in the ensuing months. The confrontation I’d had with Kevin at my house following my mother’s death was merely a warm-up. At the end of the summer, I was looking over some financial documents and accounts when I came across a bank statement that had my name on it as well as my parents’. It was an account of mine from years ago that my mother had monitored, as she did all of our finances.
I was surprised. The sum was significantly larger than I’d thought. I left a message with my father, asking what he knew about it. The response I got floored me. Kevin and my father called back, insisting I needed to sign paperwork canceling the joint accounts. When I hesitated, Kevin threatened to ruin my career if I didn’t comply. I wish I’d called his bluff. Instead, frightened and nervous, I let my dad take me to the World Savings Bank, where I signed everything he asked me to sign—which, in effect, transferred exclusively to him a huge sum of money.
The woman who’d helped with our family’s banking for years assisted us with the paperwork. She had been close with my mother and knew all of us, the whole family history. With each form she put in front of me, the two of us exchanged looks and I could tell she was asking if I was sure I knew what I was doing, if I was sure I wanted to transfer that much and take my name off those accounts.
I knew her instincts were right. I shared the same worry. But between the fact that my father was still my father (and still, at this point, behaving like it, sort of) and Kevin’s threats, I felt handcuffed. Then the two of them made a quick jaunt to Hawaii, first to Kauai and then to Maui, to look at a couple of investment properties. When my father told me about the trip, I assumed they would also see my brother Mike, his wife, and two boys, Brandon and Colin. My father had always enjoyed a close relationship with his grandsons.
However, when I called Mike to see how things were going with Dad and Kevin, he asked what I meant. He didn’t know they were in Hawaii. Nor did he ever hear from them. My father was back in Los Angeles before Mike, deeply hurt, caught up with him. My father explained that he and Kevin had thought it would be too uncomfortable for Kevin and Mike to see each other, so they’d decided against visiting. My father went on to say that he was also upset with Mike for beating him up thirty years earlier.
Mike was dumbfounded. As he told me, he heard this and stopped, shocked. When had he ever beat up our father, hit him, even raised a fist?
Never!
Both of us wondered what Kevin was telling our father. Was he brainwashing him? It sounded like it to us.
Mike was very upset. He couldn’t figure out why they’d slighted him in Hawaii or where my father came up with the story of a fight. We talked all the time. He lost sleep. He couldn’t figure it out. He assumed the problems dated back to the trip he and Kevin had taken to Europe as young men or the Mine Shaft.
In December, Mike’s younger son, Colin, was graduating from the University of Hawaii, and Mike invited my father to the ceremony. Mike reported that their conversation had sounded normal, like old times. My father agreed it would be good to spend time together since he hadn’t visited the last time he was there. He didn’t mention his accusation about the fight.
All seemed good until the day before my father was scheduled to fly out of Los Angeles. He called Mike and canceled his trip, explaining that Kevin thought that flying would jeopardize his health. In addition, my father said he was hurt after Kevin had told him that Mike’s older son, Brandon, who worked in the music business in Los Angeles, had referred to Kevin as a drug addict.
Mike didn’t know how to react. It didn’t sound like his son. Still. When he phoned his son, Brandon called the accusation ridiculous and said in fact he’d been helping his uncle set up a studio so he could record his own music. He expressed the same kind of shock, hurt, and confusion as the rest of us.
Toward the end of February 2005, I received a certified letter from the Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office, notifying me that one of the houses in the family trust had been quitclaimed, or deeded, to Kevin. Then I received a call from the woman at World Savings who helped with our banking. She alerted me to the fact that my father had transferred a large sum of money into an account for Kevin.
A few days later, my brother Mike received a certified letter in Hawaii. It was from my father, who wrote that Mike was no longer to have any contact with him, except by mail. It went on to state that neither Mike nor any other family member was to set foot in any of the McCormick homes listed in the trust, including the one my father and Kevin occupied. My father’s signature was at the bottom.
One day, after the money transfer but before I knew about the letter, Kevin called and insisted I come see my father and him. His voice was stern and clipped; he sounded like the head of some tribunal that had power over me. We want you to get over here right now!
I drove to their house, and Kevin let me in. I had a sense he’d been watching for me. The condo no longer felt like my mother had lived there. To be fair, I wouldn’t say she ever really had lived there. She’d just been sick there. After a quick glance around, I sat down on the living-room couch. Kevin quickly said I couldn’t sit there; he wanted me on the chair opposite the couch, one of two leather recliners.
Suddenly I realized the purpose of his camera equipment, the blackout curtains, and recording equipment. As soon as I sat down in the chair, he ran out of the room, then came back a moment later, studying me intently. It dawned on me that I was being videotaped, and he’d left the room to adjust the camera. Then my father entered the room. He looked at Kevin, as if the two of them were following a plan. Then my father gave me a piece of paper and told me to sign it.
What?
I scanned the paper which was an agreement saying that I willingly relinquished my role as executor of the family’s trust because I was mentally incompetent. I refused to sign it. My father and Kevin were irate. They threatened never to talk to me again if I didn’t sign. Kevin shouted at me: Face it, Maureen, you’re mentally incompetent. Isn’t that true? Admit it, you’re on mind-altering drugs. Just state that you’re incapable of being the executor because you’re a drug addict!
The more I resisted, the louder he yelled. I’ll tell people about the drugs you take. I’m going to ruin your career. My father stood beside him, agreeing. When I tried to talk back, Kevin grew louder and more insistent. You’ll never work again. I felt like I was being punched and bulldozed. Sobbing so hard that I began to gasp for breath, I looked at my father in desperation and bewilderment.
“Dad, why are you doing this?”
“Maureen, you know,” he said. “You are sick. You are on mind-altering drugs.”
Unable to take their punishment anymore, I crumpled to the ground and curled up in the fetal position. They broke me. Crying, fearing I’d never see my father again, scared by Kevin’s threats, I agreed to say whatever they wanted. Yes, I am greedy, I cried. Yes, I did cocaine. Yes, I am incompetent and crazy.
But I didn’t sign the paper.
No matter what they said or threatened, I wouldn’t sign.
Deep down, I knew better.
I don’t remember how, but I finally got out of there. I saw that nearly three hours had passed. My mind was going a million miles per hour, and I felt like I was about to have a nervous breakdown. My whole body was trembling. I kept replaying everything they’d said to me. I felt like I’d escaped from a cult that had been holding me captive, and it left me traumatized and scared.
I was scared for my own safety; that’s how scrambled and out of it I felt. I thought I might need hospitalization to calm me down. I went to my doctor friend Janie’s house for help and guidance. She was still at work, but her mother-in-law was there with Janie’s children, and she let me in. Still trembling, I called Janie, who told me to climb into her bed and wait for her to get home.
She got there as soon as possible. I stayed for several more hours. I didn’t want to leave the doctor’s care. I needed her reassurance that I wasn’t going insane. She went much further, in fact, saying that my family had imploded since my mother’s death, that my father and brother had gone off the deep end, that they had basically abused me for three hours, and that any sane person would respond the same way as I had—they’d feel like they had gone crazy.
My husband had a different response; he wanted to hunt them down and beat the crap out of them. I wouldn’t let him set foot out of the house. A couple weeks went by. Then Mike phoned with news of the letter prohibiting him from contacting our father. After hearing my story, he flew to Los Angeles, intent on finding out what exactly was going on with Dad and Kevin.
After he landed, we went straight to my father’s house. We knocked on the door even though it was apparent that no one was home. From the newspapers piled up at the end of the driveway, it appeared no one had been there for quite some time.
Concerned, we phoned the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. On their advice, we filed a missing-persons report, and then my husband and I returned to my father’s house, where several sheriffs and a social worker from Adult Protective Services joined us on the front lawn. The scene brought out all the neighbors. I heard several whisper my name. I wanted to crawl into a hole.
There were two deputies. They knocked on the door and looked around. One deputy thought he heard something inside. My brother Mike and I said we thought Kevin might be holding our father hostage. The deputies explained they didn’t have the legal authority to enter the house forcibly, but they said Mike and I, as concerned family members, could break in to check on our father’s safety.
They showed my brother how to kick the door in. Sure enough, it popped open. Mike gave me a surprised look, like “wow, it really worked.”
The deputies followed us inside as we looked around. No one was there, but we found Kevin’s bedroom padlocked (his camera equipment was inside), blackout curtains over the windows, and a chair wedged against the front door. Kevin and my father had seemingly anticipated a break-in.
I grabbed my husband. I needed support. I was more frightened than ever for my father’s well-being. Wasn’t this some form of abuse or kidnapping?
The deputies on the scene said there was nothing more they could do. My brother and I spent the next few days pleading with the sheriff’s department to take some kind of action. Weren’t they able to see something was wrong? But they said it was a matter for the court system, not law enforcement.
Not content to let it rest, I hired a private investigator. Days later, he found my father and Kevin at a hotel in Ventura County. He reported that my father appeared okay and had said that he didn’t want contact with any family members other than Kevin.
“How did my father seem when he said that?” I asked the PI.
“Emphatic,” he replied.
I was haunted by something. It was all those times Kevin had taunted me by saying, “You’ll see, Maureen. One day, you’ll see.” I never knew or understood what he’d meant—until now.