The Millard County Jail is set on the open slopes of the Pahvant Valley, where stretches of sagebrush run up against fenced pastures filled with dark-brown mixed-breed cattle—the result of local cattlemen breeding their local herds away from the classic red and white Hereford toward leaner Black Angus. Close as the cattle were to the jail, Carole's life inside was sharply separate from the animals she loved. Her daily rhythm settled into a monotonous, tightly circumscribed routine.

Still, Carole kept herself busy by organizing a mass publicity campaign in her defense. She sent slews of letters to media outlets and also asked her children to act on her behalf. One early payoff for these efforts was a March 26, 2007, article in the British version of the National Enquirer: “Wife Kills ‘Depraved’ Hubby Who Made Her Wear Chastity Belt,”2 with a tag line insinuating the title was actually a quote from the police. The article began boldly: “Artist Carole Alden endured living hell at the hands of her sadistic husband—including drunken rages, beatings and the indignity of a chastity belt—until she couldn't take it anymore and shot him dead, cops say.”³ The rest of the article consisted of a more straightforward version of the killing.

Carole's letters to the press and to sympathetic outsiders displayed an exquisite sense for the kind of underdog story that might strike an editor's fancy, describing Carole's plight as she imagined it—a gutsy, truth-speaking woman who, despite her molestation as a child and horrific abuse in her marriage, dared to stand up against “the man.” Carole portrayed herself as a free-thinking flower child, an independent feminist in a group of lockstep, chauvinistic Mormons behind the “Zion curtain.”⁴

A year and a half after the homicide, Carole's twenty-one-year-old daughter Krystal used the same approach—her words being quoted in provocatively titled articles that shaped a sympathetic storyline. “Forced to Wear a Chastity Belt!” appeared in the British tabloid Pick Me Up,⁵ and in a major PR coup, the American National Enquirer ran “Woman Marries for Love—THEN KILLS FOR SURVIVAL: ‘Loving ex-con turned into ABUSIVE MONSTER who got physical once too often.’”⁶ This was a shorter version of the Pick Me Up article. Marty was portrayed as a straggly-haired, tattooed monster who cast a spell on kindly Carole, who thought her love was enough to fix him. He was timing Carole's jaunts to neighbors and the store, obsessed with the crazy idea she was cheating on him. Worst of all, Krystal said, was that Marty had “pierced Mum's genitals and forced her to wear a chastity belt so she couldn't sleep with other men…. It was like something from the Dark Ages. The pain must have been horrific. And the mental anguish of being abused like that, utterly degrading.”7

In the aftermath of the homicide, Carole had written Krystal a letter from prison, thanking her for standing by her and apologizing for being an embarrassment. “She could never be that,” Krystal wrote, adding poignantly: “I pray her parole board sees she killed Sessions because he was killing her, and releases her early. After years of torment, she deserves to be free.”⁸

SHAPING THE BRAIN

It makes perfect sense that a child's story would support that of a parent's, even if there is evidence to the contrary. This is the result of a process that starts early and can last all through the maturation process. Scientists have found astonishing resonances and synchronizations between a mother and her baby, as if at some deep level, the pair form a single creature. This mother-baby creature shares sleep patterns, brain patterns, heart rhythms, direction of gaze, facial expressions, and speech.⁹ Mothers can excite or soothe their babies through their voice alone, or by jostling, or in a myriad of other warm and comforting ways.

Baby's brains take a long time to develop. The limbic areas dealing with emotion develop early on, but the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that deals with rational thinking and control of our emotions—develops much more slowly. (This is why babies and toddlers throw temper tantrums so easily.)

To support the methodical but slow development of a baby's brain, the mother's prefrontal cortex initially pulls double duty and also serves as the baby's prefrontal cortex. At least, it does so until the baby's own prefrontal cortex is developed enough to slip into gear.10 As the infant matures, the parents' interests and ways of looking at the world shape what the infant and child focus on, and in this way amplifies some neuronal activities even as other neuronal activities are diminished.¹¹

But what this also means is that adults—particularly the child's mother—have an extraordinary influence on how a child's brain develops. As Yale professor of psychiatry Bruce Wexler observes: “Thus, from a very early age, social interaction with adults shapes the mechanisms that underlie social interaction, externally influences the direction and manner in which the infant's attention is deployed, and shapes the development of the self-regulatory mechanisms that direct attention throughout the individual's adult life.”¹²

As always, the brain's two hemispheres focus on different aspects of interacting with the world as the child develops. Where the left hemisphere, rather slow to pick up steam, focuses on analyzing bits and pieces of what is sent to it by the right hemisphere, the right hemisphere itself is experiencing the richness of the world in context. Indeed, the right hemisphere can be thought of as the bridge to emotions—it is connected more strongly with the evolutionarily ancient limbic system and is more strongly focused on interacting with others.

Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, using the research skills she'd honed as one of the National Institute of Mental Health's top developmental psychologists, found that sensitive children can be swept into a disturbing role-reversal situation, in which the “parent looks to a child to meet a parent's need for comfort, parenting, intimacy or play, and the child attempts to meet those needs.”¹³ This promotes an “empathic over-arousal” as the child tries to help and care for a parent even as the child begins to suppress his or her own needs.

According to family friends, Krystal has served as her mother's confidante since she was a child. Even when she was visiting family in other parts of the country, Krystal would be caught up in hours of lengthy “compulsive care-giving” telephone conversations with Carole back in Utah, helping her mother sort out whatever crisis was at hand for the day. This use of the children as witnesses and cocon-spirators in Carole's dramas surpassed normal bounds. For example, Carole invited Krystal, then in her mid-teens, to watch the cremation of Andy Bristow's body. Krystal later described how she watched the body burn through a little window as layers flaked off.

Krystal was taught early on who was worthy of focused care and compassion—and who wasn't. Any hint of criticism toward her mother, for example, seems to arouse instantaneous feelings of aversion. In some sense, this is understandable—who wouldn't react to criticism of one's mother? But when that mother is Carole Alden, well, a dollop of dispassion couldn't hurt. One can't help but wonder what years of entanglement in Carole's never-ending misfortunes have done to her children. “Empathic overarousal,” notes Zahn-Waxler, “can begin in the first years of life when children try to help and care for their parents…. This ‘grown-up’ behavior likely masks insecurities as children begin to suppress their own needs. Patterns of codependency between parent and child can develop.”14

Melloney, Carole's oldest daughter, is also in thrall to her mother. According to Carole and other family members, Melloney, a kind-hearted young woman who is a marvelously caring mother, dutifully visits Carole at every opportunity—although it is more difficult now that Carole is nearly one hundred and fifty miles away, in the Utah State Prison in Draper, near Salt Lake City. Carole writes that Melloney also puts money in Carole's prison account and accepts weekly phone calls. Once she is paroled, Carole notes, Melloney plans to have her move in with her family.¹⁵

It is always hard to know the real motivations underlying any relationship, whether mother-daughter or husband-wife. Melloney told an acquaintance that Carole got so used to persuading everybody else to believe her lies about Marty that she started believing them herself. Melloney reported that Carole really loved Marty, too, and love can be quite blind.

Another family friend goes deeper.

To some extent, all of the children do understand there is something terribly wrong with their mother. But it is too painful for them to believe that Carole could be totally responsible for herself—that she has had the same opportunities as everyone else to create the life she wanted. Her eviction from home after home because she didn't pay rent wasn't because she didn't have money. She did have money—child support, welfare, help from family. But she always blames her problems on the situation, or the guy she's with, or what-have-you. She's learned to make a living out of being a victim.

And yet another friend adds, “The children all know, but they don't know. They don't want to know. Because if they faced the truth, they'd have to admit that everything they believed growing up—everything—was a lie.”