Chapter 12

“She never was a very good judge of character when it came to boyfriends.”

While Hayward Bissell visited his friends and relatives, telling them about his discontinued medication and the voices inside his head telling him to kill someone, Patricia Booher visited a local pregnancy test center, where she was overjoyed to learn she was five weeks pregnant with Bissell’s child.

Patty had begun to suspect that she might be pregnant. She went to the center on Friday, January 21, for testing and the results of the pregnancy test turned out to be positive, just as she had thought and hoped. She was very happy and excited to find out that she really was expecting, according to the staff of the center, and made plans to come back the following week to begin counseling sessions on parenting and self-care. She also told several friends and her sister, Charlene Booher, the good news and told most of them that Hayward was also pleased about the pregnancy. There were conflicting reports about that situation, however, with some people claiming she told them Hayward did not yet know that she was pregnant and that she planned to tell him on Sunday. Others said she told them Hayward was the person who had driven her to the testing center for her appointment, and that he was pleased with the news of the positive test results.

“When she told me, I asked her, ‘How does Hayward feel about it?’ She said he was happy about it,” Charlene Booher said.

But apartment complex manager Linda Rogers said Patricia had told her a couple of weeks earlier that she planned to break up with Hayward. Rogers told authorities she thought Patty might have told Hayward she planned to raise the child herself, and suspected he might have been displeased with the situation.

Another friend said Patricia told her that she and Bissell were going to break up but remain friends, and that she would still be able to get rides with him. Patty also said she was going to raise the child herself, and talked about her plans to get a two-bedroom apartment before the baby arrived.

Was Hayward Bissell aware he was about to become a father again, and how did he feel about the prospect of paying support for a third child? Did he know Patricia was pregnant before their hurried departure on Saturday morning, supposedly on the way to visit his parents in Florida?

 

 

Patricia Ann Booher grew up in a trailer court near the town of Olena, Ohio, playing with her sister, Charlene, and their cousins who lived in the trailer next door. Their life was less than picture-perfect, for Patricia was molested by a relative who was sent to prison for child sexual abuse. Despite this trauma Patricia and Charlene still enjoyed spending hours playing with their Barbie dolls, and they and their cousins all went together to the same school. Patricia was a shy, quiet little girl who loved animals and enjoyed reading, dancing, music and swimming, but her asthma prevented her from taking part in more strenuous athletics.

When her aunt, uncle and cousins moved away to Wakeman, Ohio, Patricia often visited them in the country and they remained close.

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Patricia,” her cousin Rebecca Booher told reporters from the Norwalk Reflector. “She was just very kind and sweet.”

Rebecca said she didn’t see her cousin as often as she would have liked because of her work schedule, but Patricia always came to visit at the holidays and liked to talk to Rebecca and her mother, Betty Booher. She called her aunt often, keeping in touch with her and her uncle and cousins.

Patricia was well liked at Western Reserve High School and in the EHOVE career development program for students with special needs, making many friends among her teachers and EHOVE tutors. But she tended to hang back, remaining quiet and seldom speaking up in class, lacking the confidence and self-assertion of most of her classmates. She often told her friends she wished she could be more like her older sister, Charlene, whom she had always looked up to as a role model. Charlene was so smart and pretty, Patricia said, and she was popular and had lots of friends and knew how to dress well.

After Patricia graduated from high school, she began having recurring bouts of deep depression. During the course of her treatment, she began attending meetings of an organization called the Friendship Club, a support group for young adults with mental and emotional problems. Through the club, she made a number of new friends and gained the self-confidence that would help her to eventually join the Norwalk First Baptist Church. She began volunteering at a local clothing bank, attended church suppers, which she particularly enjoyed, and took part in group activities at the Friendship Club.

As a part of Patricia’s therapy, counselors suggested she begin keeping a diary, writing down her thoughts and feelings. Patricia went out and bought a small pink hardbound book with a design of multicolored flowers on its cover and bright pink pages. She began writing sporadically in her book, using the diary as a sounding board and reporting her daily activities as well as the emotional highs and lows she experienced. The entries show her to be a hopeful but insecure young woman who was constantly in search of someone to love, someone who would love her in return. She yearned for friendships and tried, almost too hard sometimes, to cultivate new relationships. With entries scattered from April 1995 until shortly before her death, the diary’s pages document Patty’s joys and disappointments in life and love.

On April 21, 1995, Patricia wrote enthusiastically about a man she met six months earlier, saying she didn’t think she could stand to be without him and didn’t know what she would do without him. She said he was really fun to be with, looked good in jeans, was a really good kisser and—best of all—he loved her.

“I’m in Heaven!” she wrote.

She said she hoped she never loved any other person but him and hoped he’d always be hers. He was a really nice guy, she said, and was considerably older than she was.

The diary entries then skipped to June 31, 1997, when Patricia wrote that she didn’t understand why something bad was happening to her every time she turned around. She told of living every day in fear of being shot, abducted or raped, but said God must be watching over her, and that He would not have sent one of His assistants if He wasn’t. Whether or not this referred to a new boyfriend was not explained.

“I’m in good hands with God,” she wrote.

Patty went on to say that she had learned a while earlier not to justify herself to others, then wrote that maybe she hadn’t learned after all. She thought her unresolved feelings from the past might be what was causing her to feel depressed, and she said she wasn’t doing anything when she was at home but “mope around watching TV.”

Around three months later, on September 12, Patricia dashed off a short, two-line entry complaining about feeling stressed when trying to concentrate or when trying to find something she had lost. Then a week later, after a nightmare on September 19, Patty told about the “really scary dream” she’d had the night before. She dreamed her ex-boyfriend walked up to her door nude, she said, adding that she was in no way attracted to him anymore. He was a sex maniac, she said, and he did obscene things in strange places.

“He masturbates and other stuff,” she said.

Before he and Patty broke up, he began stealing little things when he came to visit, and Patty said she eventually stopped answering the door when he came around. He found out her phone number, though, and wouldn’t leave her alone.

“I think he pranks me sometimes,” she said.

Patty told of her fear that she might never have him completely out of her life, and wondered if the dream was trying to tell her something.

“I’m really scared,” she wrote.

Two days later, Patty wrote about a girl she met with whom she wanted to develop a friendship. The girl, however, apparently didn’t want to be friends. Patty said that part of her still wanted to be good friends with the girl, but the other part of her was learning to give up on friendships that weren’t meant to be before she ended up getting upset or hurt.

The entry then abruptly switched to the topic of driver’s licenses, with Patty saying she needed help with getting over her sister, Charlene, getting her license first.

“It’s eating away at me,” Patty wrote.

She said she wished she knew someone who had the time to help her with her driving.

“It’s the most important thing to me right now,” she said.

On October 14, Patricia was evidently still being troubled by her dreams, reporting she’d had scary dreams about her father and a lot of dreams about accidents. She was going to ask her counselor to tell her the warning signs of stress, she said, so she would know what to avoid. Her counselor told her certain things she wanted her to do, Patty wrote, but said that she had a hard time remembering the details.

The next entry in the diary came on October 27, when Patty wrote that she recently lost a friend because she was afraid of getting hurt. Then she mentioned the Friendship Club directly for the first time, saying she had gone there three times. She had fun when she went there, she said, and was impressed with herself because she automatically made friends.

Then she skipped abruptly to another topic.

“I have a problem I’m dying to talk about with someone,” she wrote.

The problem, it seemed, was that she was attracted to one of her new male friends from the Friendship Club. He didn’t know, she said; neither did her boyfriend.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said.

Patty was unsure of what she wanted, saying she still loved her boyfriend but was scared to tell him about his competition because it would be the end if or when she told him. She had been with him for so long, she said, that it would seem awkward and she needed some advice on wht she should do.

Two days later, on October 29, Patty was off on another romantic tangent and writing about yet another new friend from the Friendship Club.

“He likes me,” she said, adding that she told him she was engaged and he still liked her. She told him she’d still be his friend, she said, but confided to the diary that she just wasn’t attracted to skinny guys; the other two, she said, weren’t really skinny. She went on to say that she had told “the new guy” that if she were single, she would choose him over her boyfriend. That news, she said, brought a smile to his face.

November 15 brought only a one-line entry, saying that Patty had gone to Ponderosa with the Friendship Club.

Four days later, on November 19, Patty wrote that she was “even more depressed than the last time,” and had been to see her counselor. The reason for the depression was, she said, that she had finally told her new friend how she felt and he told her he just wanted to be friends. Everything was okay, she said, now that things were out in the open.

On November 21, two days after the previous entry, Patty said she and her boyfriend had decided they should go their separate ways because things just weren’t working out for them. He knew everything, she wrote, but wasn’t upset like she had thought he would be. Patty, however, said she “got really depressed on Wednesday night. I felt like harming myself. I feel better now.”

November 24 brought another rambling entry, which began with Patty saying that she wrote poetry, had written a poem for her friend Cheryl and the Friendship Club, and had won an award once. Then she jumped to a far more serious topic.

“I think maybe I’ll wait and see if my depression increases any more before considering PHP,” she wrote, adding that she really didn’t think she needed a psychiatrist, since she was already on an antidepressant.

A rather bleak, one-line entry on December 1 stated that Patty had visited her family for Thanksgiving. Then, two days later, Patty wrote that she was scared that whatever she said or did, her new friend was not going to find it interesting. She thought she should tell him, but was afraid that would make things worse. The following day, Patty said her new friend was a very special friend, and whenever she said or did something, she was scared she wouldn’t be a good-enough friend. She had started burying herself in work, she wrote.

The entry for December 12 covered several different topics, with Patricia writing that she was no longer upset about her ex-boyfriend coming to see her. Then she said her depression fluctuated from time to time, and lately she had been irritable and had felt like crying for no reason. She wrote about an invitation to go to Curtice, Ohio, for Christmas Eve, then said that her ex-boyfriend’s day off would be changing from Thursday to Monday after New Year’s. She ended the entry by saying one of her girlfriends had gone with her to open a checking account. Two days later, Patty wrote that she had come close to having another “episode” because she had skipped one day of taking her medicine, and was still feeling very depressed.

“I’ve had a not so good weekend,” she wrote, “and it’s all my fault.”

Patty said she had fun at Ponderosa on Wednesday, evidently another Friendship Club outing, and said the club was planning a bowling night in January. She also said she got her picture taken on Thursday, December 4.

Patty wrote on December 15 that she had come to realize that she didn’t want to “depress” for the rest of her life and was going to work harder at pushing herself out of it. She was going to need help, she said, and didn’t know what to do.

Apparently, the approaching holidays were becoming hard to face, for on December 19, Patty wrote that on Wednesday night she had started thinking about all the things her ex-boyfriend had done and on Thursday morning she became very depressed over it and started crying. She had seen the ex-boyfriend at the Friendship Club, and had done okay all day until that night. Then, as an afterthought, she added that she had sent out Christmas cards to friends.

Two days later, on December 21, Patty said she was feeling better. She had decided, she said, that she planned to have a baby between the year 1999 and 2000. Then she said she was going to get her hair cut.

“I feel like I’m going through a lot of changes right now,” she said.

Then she wrote about being worried about how she was going to get her Christmas shopping done; her ex-boyfriend, she said, had offered to help her out. Her counselor had called to tell Patty she was going to send her the handouts from the holiday stress group. Patty also said she was going to take karate lessons, and said the Friendship Club had sent her a fruit basket.

“I sent them a Christmas card,” she wrote, “and I have one for my girlfriend too.”

That was the last entry in Patricia’s diary for a long time, until August 1999, when she wrote about having a crush on a man from Sandusky that she met through her work selling Avon.

“I plan on asking him out,” she said.

Patty also wrote about her ex-boyfriend, saying he was acting very strange and that his behavior was hurting her. Then she went on to say that she was a lot more assertive than she used to be and was speaking up more. She had a job for a few weeks, she wrote, but had to quit and was selling Avon now.

There was only one entry remaining in Patricia’s diary, written on December 20, 1999, after she had been dating Hayward Bissell for a few months. It expressed doubts about their relationship but was also full of determination and hope for the future—a future Patty would not live to see. She wrote that it had been a year since she’d been in the hospital and had only been depressed a few times since then, but was depressed again.

Then she made the only reference to Hayward Bissell to be found in the diary.

“There is a man in my life that I love with all my heart and soul,” she wrote, continuing to say that they were not getting along and that she was depressed because it might come to splitting up. Patty then wrote that she was going to start doing some assessments in her life because she wanted to live a better life for herself.

“I can’t go on depressed any more,” she wrote, saying that she wanted to make some decisions for her future and live each day as it came, following her heart and not taking anything for granted anymore.

“I feel like I have received a wonderful blessing,” she wrote. “I am in touch with myself now.”

From now on, she said, when she had any thoughts, she would jot them down in the diary. She would think of her needs first and others second, and work on her priorities and at solving her problems. And she said she would learn to accept when someone else wanted to help her.

Patricia had obviously spent enough time in counseling to learn which behaviors were supposed to improve her life, but the rest of the pages in the little pink diary would remain blank. Sadly, at the time she wrote her final entry, she had only a month to live. There was no time left to put her good intentions into practice.

Patricia’s diary was filled with accounts of relationships that just didn’t turn out quite the way she hoped, and her last entry indicates she felt she was headed toward a breakup with the man she claimed to love with all her heart and soul. Relatives said that previously Patricia always had brought her boyfriends home to meet her family, but they had never met Hayward Bissell.

“She just said she had a boyfriend she really liked, and they were planning on getting married,” a cousin told the Norwalk Reflector.

“He gave her an engagement ring, but she lost it on the beach last summer. She didn’t say he hit her or anything, but he was mad.”

Patricia’s aunt had watched her niece grow up and had seen several men come and go in Patricia’s life through the years. She apparently hadn’t been very impressed with any of Patricia’s choices.

“She never was a very good judge of character when it came to boyfriends,” she said.