JOHN AND SHARON MET IN the spring of 1983 at the Wanamaker’s department store where they both worked—Sharon pricing merchandise, John unloading trucks. Sharon was twenty-one, the youngest of nine siblings (including a twin brother) in a close family from Oxford Circle, not far from Rutland Street. Her father left when she was twelve or thirteen, and she grew even closer with her mother and siblings. Some of her sisters wanted to go to college, but without their father around there wasn’t enough money. Sharon never wanted to go to college. She wanted to get married and have kids, so when she graduated high school she got a job.
John was also one of nine children (second youngest) from Northeast Philadelphia; he’d joined the marines out of high school and served for three years, mostly driving trucks. He was twenty-two when he met Sharon. She was dating someone at the time, but John knew when he saw her that she was for him. He cultivated a friendship, taking lunch breaks with her and a couple other friends, hanging out with her when he could.
Sharon’s relationship with her boyfriend ended because she wanted marriage and kids and he didn’t. She found out a couple weeks later she was pregnant and called him; he wanted her to have an abortion. She wasn’t doing that. She told him she wouldn’t bother him and thanked him; they parted on good terms but didn’t stay in touch. She’d always be glad he was part of her life because she got to have Barbara Jean.
By May of that year, Sharon was getting big and gave notice at Wanamaker’s. John wasn’t going to let himself be out of sight, out of mind, so on her last day, May 17, 1983, he walked her to the bus and asked if he could call her. She said that’d be fine. He called that night and visited her. She was surprised he wanted to get involved right away. By October he was living with her at her mother’s house in his own room in the basement. Her mother quickly grew to love him.
Sharon had always wanted a daughter to buy dresses for, to braid her hair. As her due date approached, she decided that if her baby was a girl she was going to name her Barbara Jean, after her sister. Little Barbara Jean arrived at 5:23 PM on October 18, 1983, weighing five pounds, twelve ounces, nicknamed “Peanut” by the hospital staff.1 Sharon and John weren’t married yet, so she gave the baby her own last name, Horn.
Sharon stared at Barbara Jean in disbelief that she could make something like this, that this little girl had grown inside of her. John had wondered sometimes how it would feel to be a stepfather, but from the moment he saw the baby it wasn’t like that—she was his daughter from the get-go; there was never anything “stepfather” about him.2 She slept through the night from two weeks old and put on weight so fast that by three months she was too chubby to close her arms in a hug.
Sharon got her job at the customs brokerage firm downtown, and John worked construction or warehouse jobs, whatever he could find. They were married in March 1985 at St. Martin of Tours, Sharon’s parish growing up, and paid for their own reception at a nearby Knights of Columbus Hall. More than a hundred people came.3
Around their first anniversary they split up. Sharon moved in with one of her sisters and John went to live with a buddy and then back with his mother, but within a few months they were back together. In the summer of 1987 they were helping a friend clean up a row house on Rutland Street she and her husband rented out; they thought it would be good for their little family, asked if they could rent it, and moved in that September.4 They didn’t meet many people on their block before cold drove everybody inside.
John and Sharon enjoyed the house and loved being parents. But John was drinking almost every day—Southern Comfort mixed with anything, and beer. He used crank, a cheap, crude form of speed, to stay awake and keep drinking.5 He wanted to be clean, a good husband and father, but struggled with the combination of self-loathing, boredom, and addiction that makes people medicate themselves into an alternate universe.
Sharon smoked a little pot and occasionally used crank. When John stayed out late drinking, she went to bed thankful they didn’t have a car so at least she didn’t have to worry about him crashing. She didn’t back down from telling him what she thought of his behavior; it might be 4:00 AM and he might be drunk, but she was going to say what she thought. The arguments sometimes led to throwing things, pushing, even to John smacking her.
The spring of 1988 brought people on Rutland Street out on their stoops in the evenings to drink beer, chat, and watch their kids pedal and run up and down the block. Barbara Jean was going on five, bright, with a wide smile and long brown hair cut in bangs. She had a vivid imagination, could entertain herself easily, and was strong for a little kid: John, the former marine, believed in push-ups for discipline, and Barbara Jean, who had her moods like any child, did her share.6 She could be a little shy at first but quickly outgoing; she pushed boundaries but knew that when her parents said “no,” they meant it. She loved riding her bike, roller-skating, jumping rope, and playing with Barbie dolls; she really wanted a scooter, and her parents were thinking about getting her one for her birthday.7 She liked to watch herself sing and dance in a mirror in the living room, songs from The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz and Madonna’s “Open Your Heart.” She loved the television shows Alf and Rags to Riches; the night before she died, she told her parents she wanted to be on TV someday.8
Barbara Jean made friends quickly on Rutland Street and could almost always find someone to ride bikes or play Barbies with. Her best friend on the block was little Charlie Green across the street, whom everyone called “Charliebird.” They got along well from the first time they met, and he treated her like a little sister, helping her learn her way around the neighborhood.
One day Charliebird saw John’s marines tattoo and said his dad had one too, so John, the type who said hi to everyone, met Charliebird’s parents, Chuck and Linda Green. Chuck was known as “Sarge” because he’d been in the marines in Vietnam; he had a Time Life book about the war with a picture in it that he said was of him. He was enormous, six feet tall and probably three hundred pounds, with tattoos all over his arms, a long ponytail, and a full, wild beard. He could be loud and aggressive and said he’d been kicked out of a violent biker gang. He had a long criminal record of drug and assault charges, collected disability payments, and carried a walking stick, explaining that part of his heel had been shot off in Vietnam. He dealt crank and other drugs, sometimes to John, and inked tattoos in his basement.
Charliebird’s mother, Linda, was heavy and short; everyone called her “Turtle.” She made trips into the city to bring back big wheels of government cheese and tubs of peanut butter. She had a loud voice and when she wanted her son home was known to stand on the front porch and yell, “Charliebird, get your fucking ass in here!”9 Charliebird would run home fast to avoid being hit. The Greens’ daughter, Alice,*1 was thirteen and babysat for some of the neighborhood kids, including Barbara Jean. She drank and smoked and was dating a twenty-year-old.10
Sarge and Linda drank and used pot, crank, Valium, heroin; cars would pull up and idle as someone dipped inside to score drugs from Sarge. The Greens had parties, the scrum of motorcycles taking over their lawn, the sidewalk, lining up along the street, rumbling houses when they started, each thrust of the engine noise blending with the music and the noise of people laughing, yelling, or fighting. Later, stories of the parties and crowds at the Greens’ would get exaggerated, but neighbors were alarmed by them.
John wasn’t one for the biker parties but would cross Rutland Street to drink beers with Sarge while their kids played. He thought Sarge was a drunk and a bit of a loser but felt bad for him; he’d been wounded in Vietnam and seemed on the whole pretty harmless. They bonded over having been in the marines, and Sarge gave John some Marine Corps stickers and a poster.
Sharon, more guarded than John, had strong instincts about people and didn’t like the Greens. They were wasted all the time. Linda would even send Charliebird across the street with a note asking if Sharon had an extra joint lying around. And Sharon didn’t like not knowing who lived at the Greens’—there were always people moving in and out, biker friends of Sarge’s, she figured. John would tell her Sarge wasn’t so bad, Charliebird and Barbara Jean were good friends, and Linda needed a friend. I don’t need friends like that, Sharon would think.
One weekend that spring Sharon came home to find that Alice had given Barbara Jean a full makeup job—eye shadow, blush, everything. Sharon was furious and told Alice never to do it again and told Barbara Jean the same thing. Sharon thought people let their kids grow up too fast, and she wasn’t going to let that happen to her daughter.
Trying to be friendly, she did agree to go over to the Greens’ with John one evening for a beer. But from the moment she walked into their house her nerves were on edge. The living room was filthy, dust and dog hair everywhere; the dining room had a mattress on the floor and garbage bags full of the Greens’ stuff lining the walls. The bathroom upstairs was filthy, too, the sink broken off the wall and sitting on the floor.
Sharon sat on the edge of her chair in the living room, watching her daughter and Charliebird jump on the disgusting mattress, thinking it was time to leave, it was too chaotic; trying to figure out how Linda had broken their vacuum cleaner, which John had lent her, because she’d sure never run it.
It was the only time Sharon ever went in that house, and her instincts were clear. At home, out of Barbara Jean’s hearing, she told John, “Don’t you ever let her in that house, ever again in your life.”
By the summer of 1988 Sharon wouldn’t even say “hi” to the Greens, but John tried to keep the friendship up. One night toward the end of June, Sharon came home from work to find John, Sarge, and Linda sitting in her living room watching Full Metal Jacket while Charliebird and Barbara Jean played. Sharon tried to be polite, but the room was tense; the Greens knew Sharon didn’t like them, and John knew Sharon was pissed off the Greens were there. Sharon didn’t think Full Metal Jacket was appropriate for Barbara Jean and took her upstairs.
John looked over at Sarge, who was passed out in his chair, and thought about how pissed Sharon was. He told Sarge it was time to go, but Sarge didn’t move. John slapped him on the chest and told him to wake up.
Sarge woke up. He slammed his walking stick against the ceiling, then did it again. John grabbed the stick and backed him out the door and down the front steps, then threw the stick at him and said, “Don’t ever come over here again.”
Upstairs, Sharon heard the banging. She didn’t go downstairs. The next morning she found little blue pills scattered all over the couch, Valiums maybe, something Linda spilled the night before. She yelled at John: What if Barbara Jean had gotten some of those pills?
A few days later Sarge knocked on John’s door and asked for his marines poster and stickers back. John gave them back, and Sarge handed him a biker’s memento: a small grim reaper pin with the phrase FINAL NOTICE on it.