March, 1976
I knew she was a prostitute. She used to walk up and down through there and come into the gas station once in a while to use the telephone.
I knew her as Candy. Candy is a street name. You don’t use your real name on the street. I’d seen her children once too, but I’d forgotten them.
She was walking north. I went around the block. She gave me the high sign as I came by. That meant to go around, come back and park. The station where I used to work is about three blocks away.
There’s a package store on the corner with a park across the street. She walked up to the car.
“Hi,” she said. “How ya doing?” A really pretty black girl, with a beautiful figure, she was wearing a long black wig, a leather jacket, black boots and white pants with a design on the pockets.
She sat in my car, her feet out on the street, as we talked. “How about going up to my place?” she said.
“Well,” I said, “I’m not…” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take her, because I knew her. “I’m not sure I want to pay for going to bed with anybody.”
“Well,” she said, “I haven’t done anything tonight. Come on up and we’ll talk about it there.”
“All right,” I said, and she swung her feet into the car. “Where do you live?”
She showed me. Go around the block, come back, make a left turn. I didn’t make the turn. I kept going, straight ahead.
“Where you going?”
I pulled the knife on her.
“Oh my god!” She grabbed the knife with her right hand and clung to the blade. I couldn’t turn loose of it and I was scared she would come up with a knife in her other hand. I knew she had one: every prostitute in Hartford had one.
“Let go of the knife!”
“Oh please, don’t hurt me!”
“Candy! Turn loose of the knife!”
“Are you going to stab me with it?”
“I swear, I won’t stab you. But you’re gonna cut yourself all to pieces if you don’t turn loose.”
She let go and grabbed her hand. “You cut me!”
“You cut yourself. You shouldn’t have grabbed the knife.”
She cried, “Oh, please! I’ve got kids. Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything.”
I told her to get down on the floor. She did, and I covered her up. She trusted me, I think, because she knew me. I grabbed her head, pulled it over against my leg and put my knife right in the middle of her back where she could feel it all the time.
I made her fold her arms under her. As we drove, she asked if she could pull her arm out. I said no, but she did anyway. I heard something hit the floorboard and thought it was a knife. But as long as I knew she couldn’t use it, I wasn’t scared of her. I just held her down tight.
She kept begging me to please let her go. “My kids are locked up, alone, in my apartment.”
I thought about it. “How old are your kids?”
“Three and five. They don’t have anything to eat. Nobody’s there. They’re asleep. They’re alone.”
“Nobody’s there?”
She said no.
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes, and they can’t reach the lock.”
“Oh my god,” I said. I stopped beneath an overpass. I was scared the cops would come by.
“Candy,” I said, “I’m going to put you in the trunk. Where are the keys to your apartment?”
“You’re going to hurt them!”
“I’m not going to hurt them. I’m just going to open the door and leave.” She said okay and told me the keys were in her coat pocket. I took them out, walked her back, stuck her in the trunk and drove back to her neighborhood. I got to the house I thought was hers and there were people all over the place. I didn’t dare, a white guy in a black neighborhood. I swung back out onto Route 2, opened the trunk and put her back up front. She asked about her kids, and I told her I couldn’t get to her apartment. I drove her out to the road where Kathy and I used to park. She asked if she could sit up. I told her no and started searching her.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for a knife—or a gun.”
“The knife is on the floor.” I reached down on the floorboard. It was a butcher knife, about eight or ten inches long. She didn’t want me to find it on her, so she’d knocked it onto the floorboard. She figured when she sat up, she’d grab it. I put it in the glove compartment.
“Got any more like that?” She said no. “All right. Sit up on the seat.” I went through her coat, pockets and everything. I found a small container of chemical Mace and threw that in the glove compartment. Then we sat and talked.
She asked me to take her home. I told her there was no need of arguing the point any further. “You’ll go home when I say so. You won’t go home before that. Keep arguing and I’ll lock you back in the trunk so I don’t have to hear it.”
“Okay,” she said. “I won’t mention it again.”
The trunk always worked. There’s a fear of being locked up, confined, in a space that tight.
I told her to get undressed. I raped her. I raped her about three more times that night. And I stayed drunk. I had three fifths of booze in the trunk, plus another fifth and two six-packs of beer that I had thrown over a bank on the road, knowing I’d be up there. I kept a bottle at Kathy’s, a bottle at home, three or four in the car, and some hidden in the woods. I wanted to be sure I never ran out of booze. Damn it. I drank.
We walked around a little bit the next day, up and down the road. Rhonda was about five-foot-one and weighed about a hundred and ten pounds and was a lot prettier than her picture. She wasn’t a bitter person, although she talked about being arrested and how much she hated cops. She was twenty and never married. Her kids were by two different guys. She liked to party. She’d go out, earn her own money and then go to the nightclub across the street from the gas station. I’d seen her there a lot. That’s where I met her. She came in drunk one night and we talked. Then I found out she was a prostitute and dropped her. Prostitutes turned me off. But she was so pretty and I was so wound up I kidnapped her. If I hadn’t found her I might have taken some alternative. I’m that way. I go into something, like a kidnapping—and if it doesn’t work out, I say damn, I didn’t want to do it anyway. I’d be glad it didn’t work out. But this one had worked out.
We got back in the car about two o’clock in the afternoon. I made her perform oral sex on me. While she was doing it, two guys came over the hill, walking up the road. They went by laughing. They’d seen what was happening. They got a good laugh out of it. When they left, I put her in the trunk. I was scared to stay there after that.
I was nearly out of gas, so I drove to a service station with her in the trunk. A kid who pumped gas was the only one there. I told her ahead of time, “I’m going to be the one pumping the gas. You make any noise and I’ll just open the trunk and work you over.” She didn’t dare try anything.
I filled the tank, charged the gas, got back in the car and headed for Devil’s Hopyard. It started raining on the way. As hard as it could pour. I passed a guy I knew on the highway and he blew the horn. I didn’t want to see him. To me, that meant a witness. I was still drunk. I drove up and parked back in the woods. I raped her again during the day.
She kept asking when I would take her home. I sat there and thought about killing her. How could I let her go? She knew everybody I knew. No, I kept thinking, I’m not going to. I felt sorry for her. She was a sweet girl, for a prostitute. On the street she had street ways, but as a person she was really tender. She hated being a prostitute. She only did it because the state wouldn’t give her money enough to live on. I related to her situation.
It got dark and I still tossed it around in my mind. Take her home, I thought. She won’t tell anybody. And then I said no.
“So help me,” she was saying, “I won’t tell anybody.” I conned myself for a few seconds more. Take her home. Take her home. I really wanted to let her go. There was a lump the size of a football in my stomach.
“I’ve got to tie you up,” I told her. She asked why. “Because I’m going to stop by my house. I just want you to lie still. If you don’t, I’ll lock you in the trunk.”
“Okay,” she said. “Tie me up. Don’t lock me in the trunk.” I knew she’d say that. I tied her up, hand and foot, her feet pulled up tight behind her back. I lit a cigarette and started talking to her. She didn’t struggle. She thought she was going home. I told her I was going by my house and then I’d take her right on into Hartford.
I think she died senselessly. I don’t think she would have told anybody. She did die senselessly. Because I confessed.
She lay there, trussed up on the seat. “Candy,” I said, “you want a drag off my cigarette?”
“Yeah.”
I gave her a couple of drags. I really felt sorry for her. Even then, something said, Untie her. Take her home. It took me about thirty minutes to build up the nerve to lay my hands on her.
She lay on the seat, so I sat down on the floorboard, on the rider’s side, my back against the door. I had my feet stretched out, legs across the hump and my feet on the driver’s side. It was raining a little bit. Her hands and feet were tied behind her back. I loosened the ropes a little so they wouldn’t cut her. I gave her a couple more drags off the cigarette. She lay on her side, facing me. I sat on the floor, reaching over and putting the cigarette in her mouth. She had all her clothes on. It was about seven-thirty or eight o’clock. It had just turned dark. I’d had her with me less than twenty-four hours.
“I know my kids are going to be glad to see me,” she said. “I’ll be grateful. Take me home.” She’d started sensing something.
I gave her another drag off the cigarette. I waited until she blew out the smoke and I knew all the air was out of her lungs. I grabbed her throat and started strangling her. She struggled, real hard, trying to bend her chin down and push my hand out. I grabbed her head and yanked it back with my other hand.
“Don’t fight it,” I told her. She just stared up at me. Her eyes got bigger. I turned my head away. When I looked back at her, she moved her lips. She couldn’t make a sound but I could see what she tried to say: “I hate you.” Then she just faded away. She’d kicked so hard she had loosened the ropes on her feet. Her wig was on the seat.
I got out of the car and smoked a cigarette. I walked around, opened the door and her head fell out. I dragged her out of the car and after I did, I noticed one of her gold earrings was gone. That worried me. I took a flashlight and looked all over the car for it. I searched through the leaves on the ground. I couldn’t find it. Her feet had come untied and her legs were stretched out. I pulled them back up and tied them again. I put her in the trunk.
I was so drunk and sick and everything was all screwed up. I drove home, parked the car in the yard and went inside. When I didn’t sleep in the car I stayed there. Joanne and the kids were all asleep. I hit the couch and just passed right out. I woke up about four o’clock and remembered her in the trunk. I lay there waiting for daylight.
At about seven that morning I went out to the car and started riding around again. The odor of death was in the car. That fast. It’s a real oily smell you never forget. I rolled all the windows down and drove around until about ten o’clock.
I went to Kathy’s and borrowed a shovel. I told her I had bought a car, it was stuck in a dirt lot behind the car company where I bought it and I had to go dig it out. I was always buying cars. Kathy didn’t think anything about it. She said okay and got me the shovel.
I put it in the car and went back up to where I had killed her. I looked for the earring again. I found her scarf on the ground. But no earring. I put the scarf and her wig in the trunk. Then I tried to dig a hole, but I couldn’t. The ground was too rocky. I hit rock about eight inches down.
It was about noon or so. If anybody came around, I could say I was burying garbage. It was a campsite. Nobody would think anything about it. I’d gotten drunk again and I had problems digging. I gave it up. I drove around the rest of the day with her in the car. The weather was warm and the odor was awful. There were gases coming out of her body by this time.
That night I went back out to where Kathy and I always parked. There’s a wide place in the road and I started digging a hole, right there in the road.
The highway curves where you turn off. To come onto the dirt road you just drive straight in. As cars approached the curve their headlights would shine up in the trees. I’d stop digging, stand there and wait to see if they turned. I had parked so if anybody came I could quick jump in the car and pull up over the grave to hide it. I threw all the dirt toward the back side so the car would hide that, as well. In the dark I don’t think anybody could have seen it. It was pitch black. Every few minutes I’d turn on the headlights to see how the grave was coming. Then I’d turn them off and dig some more.
All of a sudden a set of headlights swept the treetops like they’d driven onto the dirt road. I froze. Then they went out. I stood for a moment. Everything was quiet. No, I thought, maybe not. I finished digging the grave. It took an hour and a half. The dirt was soft and sandy. No rocks, no nothing. I put her in it and covered her up. I drove back and forth over it. Back and forth, packing the dirt down and making tire tracks. I got out and shone the car lights on it. It looked good. I’d come back in the morning and check it—to be sure. I’d done enough for one night. Someday, I thought, they’ll pave the road. Then she’ll never be found.
I drove up the incline. It levels off and kind of drops a little bit, not a big hill, but a hump. I dropped off the other side, and sitting there was a couple in a green ’70 Chevy Nova. Parked right at the side of the road. Those headlights I’d seen sweep the treetops did come in that road. He’d turned around and parked on the side, two hundred yards from the grave. I would have detected them right away had I been sober.
I hesitated, then drove on out. I was scared. I didn’t know what they’d seen. I started to go back later that night to dig her up and move her. Then I figured, no, they didn’t see anything. They were lovers. They were all involved with each other.
I drove back home and went to bed on the couch in my little boy’s room. Next morning I went back up to the grave. Everything looked normal, except it was a little dark in one spot. I scooped up some sandy soil in my hands and spread it out.
That was the seventeenth or eighteenth of March. I remember, because I had to see my probation officer on the twentieth.
The only reason Rhonda came into the picture at all was that she was available. She was a substitute. Yet today, I think about her kids. I worried more about her children than her.
I took the shovel back to Kathy’s. Kathy had been a big comfort to me up to the point where she started getting serious. Then she became a burden. At the same time, Cookie’s mother, Connie, became a burden. Joanne was a burden. There was more pressure after I killed Rhonda. It was always under stress that the violent feelings I had with Mark and Todd came over me. Strong stress, something I could no longer carry. It started happening again. I started sleeping in the car. I didn’t go home for days at a time. I wouldn’t go to Kathy’s. Something was happening to me. I was afraid I would hurt one of them.
I started having blackouts, periods of total loss of reality. It’s the only way I can describe it. Sometimes I could control it. Sometimes I couldn’t. It depended on how strong it was and how disorganized my mind got. I couldn’t talk to my kids. I wouldn’t allow myself to get close to them. Mark and Todd were on my mind. I couldn’t look at Chris. I couldn’t love him.
A used car dealer had been after me to go in partners with him. I’d planned how I was going to rip this guy off someday. How easy it would be. I’d cheated him before. I went to see him. I gave him a phony list of used cars we could buy. “I need $1,250 cash tomorrow morning.” He said okay and gave me the cash the next day. I went to another dealer who had a ’74 Chevy II and a ’74 Chevy sedan. He wanted $3,200 for them both.
“I’ll take them,” I said. “I’ll bring the money back tomorrow or the next day.” They said okay. They gave me the papers, signed them over to me. No receipts. No nothing. I took the cars, wholesaled them in Norwich and got $4,000 for them. I took it in twenty-dollar bills. I counted the money into thousand-dollar stacks, put bank wrappers around them and hid it all in a cigar box under the seat of my car. I got two more cars, a Maverick and a Pinto, the same way, from another dealer. I got twenties and put them in the trunk. I collected $8,400 in one day. I made a bundle.
I went home, picked up my clothes and kissed Joanne goodbye. She didn’t try to stop me. I’d seen my parole officer on the twentieth. I stayed to see him because I wanted that time, that full month. A lot of people would soon start looking for me. They’d be looking for some cars, or some money. But I knew he wouldn’t believe it all right away. He was a fair person. I had no complaint with him. He’d asked me if I was drinking. I said no.
He had looked like he wanted to question that. My eyes were all red. I was all screwed up. I’d taken a shower and changed clothes so he wouldn’t smell the booze on me. I was chewing gum. “Okay,” he said. “See you next month.” That’s the last time I saw him.
I didn’t even say goodbye to Kathy. I just left. I drove into Richmond about six o’clock in the morning and went and saw some of the spots I used to go when I was a kid. Just wandering around. I knew a lot of people were looking for me that day. I thought about that. I stopped to pick up some booze and drove on down to Miami. That night I started cruising the L-shaped route again, along Biscayne Boulevard and 163rd Street. Next morning I did the same thing. It took several days before I saw Tammy waiting there in the shadows—and knew she was the one.
I want it understood what Tammy went through. I saw her suffer. I got a certain pleasure out of seeing her suffer. It was well-planned, very cruel, very systematic. I controlled her. She didn’t just have to believe she could be hurt if she tried to ask anybody for help. She had to know it, beyond a doubt. I went to great lengths to prove it to her.
Tammy was buoyant, magnetic. She attracted people. If she had asked for help, nobody could have refused her. I’ve never seen anybody like her. I loved Tammy then with all my heart. I love her today.
I left Mississippi after burying her and got back to Miami just before dark on April 9. I had Tammy’s address so I started looking for her mother’s car. I very cautiously picked out the building Tammy had lived in—and started watching. Somehow I wanted to tell her mother what had happened. I remembered Tammy saying once that if anything happened to her, her mother would have a nervous breakdown. It stayed in my mind. I had taken her father’s business card out of her pocketbook. He operates an upholstery company. I called and talked to him a couple of days after I got back. Tammy was real proud of her father. She had described him as looking and sounding like Wolf Man Jack. For some reason I just had to hear his voice and try to figure out how I could tell him she was dead. I told him I had some upholstery work I wanted done. He did sound like Wolf Man Jack. I never saw him. But I did see Tammy’s mother and a girl I believe was her sister.
I made up my mind firmly. I was going to straighten out and make my life work. I threw all the knives away. I hooked the door handle back up. I went to a park and washed down the car, the interior, the exterior and the inside of the trunk as well. I was worried about fingerprints. I was worried about being picked up. I was very paranoid. I missed Tammy something awful. I couldn’t believe she was dead. I couldn’t accept it. It was like somebody in my own family had died.
I was all right for days, but then, it’s like anybody. You get that feeling, that gut feeling. A sex drive. But it’s a very twisted and distorted thing when it hits me. It becomes probably ten times as strong as it is in most people. And the pressure starts to build. It’s like a severe hunger. And if you haven’t eaten in days and there’s food available—you’re apt to think about it. I bought a knife and disconnected the door handle again.
It was only four days after I returned to Miami. I drove down 135th Street, bombed out of my mind on schnapps, a cooler of beer in the car. Two boys crossed the street in front of me and went into the park. I made a U-turn. It was the first time I’d been in there. There’s a jungle area, real thick growth, in the back, and a day school of some kind just up the bank. The boys were playing in the jungle area below it, near a pond. I parked, started feeding the ducks some bread I had in the car and waited. They finally came out of the jungle and sat at a picnic table, one on each side, just playing.
One boy, Michael, looked very much like Todd. Jeff, the other, looked a lot like Mark, only bigger, very nice-looking, clean-cut, husky. I walked along the edge of the water, watching. Now they were behind me, probably thirty or forty feet, at the picnic table. They saw me and ambled down to the water. They’d played hooky. I figured that out without them telling me. “You guys want to feed the ducks?” They said yeah and I gave them some bread. They started throwing it to the ducks.
They were curious, just a couple of kids looking for something to do. Jeff was twelve and Michael thirteen, though he was the smaller of the two. I told them I was waiting for my nephew to come help me move something. I was going to pay him for it. I acted impatient. “It doesn’t look like my nephew is going to show up. Hey! Why don’t you guys make the money?”
“Doing what?”
“I’ve got a boat I want to load on a trailer.” The same story I used with Mark and Todd. It worked again.
Kids are very naive. They don’t expect people to hurt them. I took Route 1 out to where you catch the expressway to the Keys. From that point, it was exactly a mile and five-tenths. A dirt road turns off there. The trees and bushes are so thick you can’t see through them. They stretch across the road and run right into each other. Nothing but a wall of brush. I drove through it. Tree limbs dragged against both sides of the car. They weren’t alarmed. It was already too late. The knife was under the floor mat, a cheap wooden-handled steak knife, $1.39 at Walgreen’s.
They were looking around. “What are we stopping here for?” Michael said. We were all in the front seat. He was in the middle, next to me.
“Have you kids ever been kidnapped?” They looked at each other. Then Jeff stared right at the dashboard in front of him. You could tell he was worried.
“No,” Michael said. “Is this a joke?”
“No, it’s not a joke. You’ve been kidnapped.”
“Why?” he said. “What for?”
“Do your parents have any money?” I’d used that before. There had to be a logical reason.
“No,” Michael said. “My mom doesn’t have any money.”
“How about your parents, Jeff?”
“No, my mom…I don’t even have a dad.”
“I don’t either,” Michael said. “My mom is a nurse. She doesn’t make a whole lot.” His father had been dead eleven years. He didn’t even remember him. Jeff’s father had been killed in a construction accident in 1970. They started talking at once.
“Are you for real? Are you really serious? Or are you playing a joke?”
“I’m serious.” They just sat there. Michael had his hands in his lap, and was looking down. He’d swing his eyes around at me once in a while. Jeff didn’t say a word. I don’t think he was even breathing.
“Why did you do this to us?” Michael said. “You seemed like such a nice guy.”
“Look,” I said. “Didn’t your mothers tell you not to get in cars with strangers?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you should have listened.”
“Are you going to hurt us?” Michael said. “Are you going to kill us, or what?” He was ready to cry. Jeff still wasn’t saying much, just doing a lot of thinking. I noticed him looking into the woods, thinking about jumping out and running. I told him to roll up his window. He did.
“That door handle over there is disconnected. So if I’m going to have trouble with you kids, I don’t need a knife to handle it. But I’ve got one. Want to see it?” They both said no. “I’m going to show it to you anyway.” I pulled it out from under the mat and held it up by the blade. “Does that worry you?”
“Sure it worries us,” Michael said.
“Okay, we’ll lock it up in the glove compartment.” I locked it up and made them take their shoes off. The ground out there is rocky and padded with about two or three inches of real long pine twigs. They’d be hard to run on barefoot. We got out of the car. The area is really remote. There used to be an old rusted washing machine in the middle of the road with a rotted log across it. I’d moved them both before kidnapping Tammy and even tied some of the tree limbs back so I could get the car in there. I’d been thinking about using that spot. A drainage ditch runs right alongside. The water’s crystal clear, with turtles and big fish.
We sat on the edge of the ditch. I was trying to see if they’d jump and run. There was no place for them to go. If they tried to jump the ditch they wouldn’t make it without a running start. I wanted to test them and see just how smart they were. I pulled a little reverse psychology. I was really worried about Jeff so I talked to Michael. “I’m not worried about Jeff running,” I told him. “I’m more worried about you running.”
“Why me? I’m not going to try anything.”
“You seem more outgoing. But I warn you against it.” Jeff sat on the ground looking up at me. I knew he’d try it if he got the chance. “Sure, you can jump up and split,” I said. “But I’ll catch one of you and that one’s in bad trouble.” I was testing how devoted these two were to one another. I found out. I’d never seen a kid devote himself so entirely to another kid as Jeff did to Michael.
I gave them the same story I’d used before—the story I told Tammy, about the SLA. They were intrigued. I told them they’d been kidnapped for a specific purpose. I mentioned Patty Hearst’s sentencing.
“What do we have to do with that?” Michael said.
“Well, if I’m holding you and other people are holding other kids, the judge will think twice before he burns her. And another thing,” I told them. “We can prove she’s innocent. Suppose you kids go out and rob a bank or a store or something?” I was testing their responses. It was very important to get to know what to expect from them. “Suppose you two kidnap victims rob a U-Tote’M store or a gas station…?”
“Are we going to do that?” Michael said.
“Possibly.”
“But suppose we get shot? Suppose somebody pulls a gun?”
“Well then,” I said. “We’ll have to shoot him.”
“Wow! This is heavy!”
“You’ve never shot anybody before?” He said no. Michael has the deepest brown eyes I ever saw in my life, so alert and so smart.
Finally Jeff spoke up. “You really think we could pull it off?”
“Sure, we can pull it off,” I said.
“Wow,” he said. “I never tried it before.”
“It sounds to me like you’d like to try it.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I hope we don’t get hurt. But it sounds like fun.”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll set it up and we’ll pull it off.”
They were really going for it. We talked for about thirty minutes before I brought up sex. I asked them if they ever had anybody fool with them sexually. They both said no. I asked if they had any girlfriends. They said no. They talked about their sisters. “I’ve got a sister,” Michael said.
“Is she good-looking?” He shrugged.
“Yeah!” Jeff said. “She’s good-looking.”
“Well, I don’t look at my own sister,” Michael said.
“Well, I do,” Jeff said, “and she’s good-looking.”
“Well, you’ve got a sister too.”
“You’ve been noticing his sister?” I said. “How do you feel about her?”
“Ahhh, I don’t know.” He just shrugged. I could tell by their eyes they’d started to wonder why I was talking about all this. I told them we were going to get into some sex acts.
They’d never done it before. I made them suck my penis. Both of them. One, then the other. One watched while the other one did it. Michael was first. “You’re next,” I told Jeff. “So don’t laugh.” He wasn’t laughing. Then I made Jeff do the same thing. They didn’t like it. I didn’t climax at all. They gave right in. They had no choice.
I put them in the car, Michael in the back and Jeff in the front, beside me. I told both of them to get undressed. I put Jeff on all fours, pushed his head under the armrest and shoved him up against the door. I performed anal sex on him. It was very painful for him, but he didn’t scream or holler. Knowing that there was no alternative, he took it. For some reason—it was part of the sex thing—I wanted to find flaws in them, an excuse to justify the pain I was going to cause them.
“Would you rather I did this to Michael than to you?” I said to Jeff as I raped him.
“No,” he said.
“You like it?”
“No! Just hurry up.” He didn’t want Michael to suffer that pain. He tried to take the pain for him.
“How about you, Michael?” Michael didn’t say anything. He just lay naked in the back seat, looking at me. I made him roll over and while I was having sex with Jeff, I shoved two fingers into Michael’s rectum. I was very rough with him. It hurt and he kept trying to roll over. I forced him to lie on his stomach and take it. He was bleeding.
I wasn’t enjoying it at all. I had trouble maintaining an erection. I kept remembering Mark and Todd. I even called Michael by Mark’s name. He just stared at me. The thought kept recurring as I tried to climax that I had to kill them—and I didn’t want to kill them. It became very difficult. I tried to get my mind off those other things and enjoy it, but it was impossible. I quit using my fingers on Michael and told him to come up in the front.
“Why?”
“Don’t argue with me. Just get up here. You’re going to do what I’m doing to Jeff.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Get up here!” Jeff hollered. He was in pain and I guess he thought it would hurt less if Michael did it. I was trying to destroy their friendship. But I couldn’t. Jeff was devoted to his friend. The pain and suffering he endured for that purpose was unbelievable. Michael got up in the front. “I don’t want to,” he said again.
“I’m not going to make you,” I said. “Go on in the back.” I stopped. I didn’t climax. I told them to get dressed. I turned the car around and drove down to where there was more covering overhead. I’d been paranoid for days, scared of anything that moved, scared of every police car I saw. The sound of a siren drove me nuts. I’d feel like covering my ears. Now I was worried about a police helicopter. One might fly over and spot us down there. We got out of the car and walked around. It was about two-thirty, I guess.
I sat up on the front fender, on the driver’s side, Jeff on my right and Michael to my left. Michael’s brown eyes worked overtime. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you just take us home? As long as we’re home by five o’clock, nobody’s going to ask us anything.”
“Well, you’re going to be sore tomorrow. Suppose somebody asks you about that?”
“My mom won’t ask me,” Michael said. “And, so help me, we won’t tell anybody anything.”
Jeff started too. “Yeah,” he said. “I know you were drunk. That’s probably what caused it.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “My mother’s in AA and I saw that AA book on your dashboard.” I stood there thinking, Jesus Christ, I wish I could believe them. They kept talking. First one, then the other.
“I wish I had a couple of kids like you,” I told them. “You’re a couple of great boys.”
Jeff put his arm around my back, in a father-son fashion. “I like you too,” he said. “I really do. It hurt, but I don’t think you’d do it again. I wish you’d come around sometime and we’d go places together. Maybe, you know, you could take us places.”
“You mean you’d trust me again! You’d get in a car with me?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?” Michael walked around in front of me. They could see they were selling me on this whole thing—because I wanted to be sold, so bad. They kept talking.
“Look,” Michael said. “Why don’t you throw that booze away? I know. My mom was awful. I used to come in and she’d be lying on the floor. She got into AA and she hasn’t had a drink since. We’re so proud of her.”
“Well,” I said, “maybe I will come to see you. As far as the booze goes, if you want to, throw it away.” I was serious. Up to that point I hadn’t even seriously considered stopping. I knew I had a problem. I went to AA and got those books, but I didn’t really want to stop drinking. They threw the booze under a bush. I watched them, and thought, well, I can come back and get it later. At the same time I hoped that maybe I could stop.
“All right,” I said. “I want you both to take your underwear off.”
“Oh no! You’re not going to do it again?”
“No, I just want you to take it off.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s dirty and I want you to take it off.”
At home, they’d throw them in a laundry hamper. They’d be seen, questions would be asked. They took off their shorts and threw them in the bushes. Michael covered them with leaves. Then we headed back. I drove past the North Miami Police Department to take them home.
Michael lived in a high-rise condominium next door to an Arby’s sandwich shop. Jeff lived diagonally across the street in an apartment house. They wrote their phone numbers, names and addresses down for me, on a piece of paper towel. “I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Okay, call us and we’ll see you—later.” They didn’t walk off in a hurry. They stood outside the car and talked.
“What would you like to have more than anything else in the world?” I asked Michael.
“A dog,” he said. “But I can’t have one where I live. But that’s what I’d love, a dog.”
I drove up and down in front of those two buildings that night, looking all around the whole neighborhood for police cars. I wanted to know if they called the police. I didn’t see any. So I drove up to an outdoor phone in front of a donut shop and called Jeff. He answered. “Oh Bob, I’m glad you called.” I told him I was sorry for what I’d done to him. “Look,” he said, “you don’t have to tell me you’re sorry. I know it. Just forget about it and we won’t ever talk about it again. Are you drinking?” I said no. “We can be friends,” he said, “as long as you don’t drink.” We talked for a long time. I felt close to Jeff. He seemed so sincere in needing somebody.
“My mother’s had lots of boyfriends,” he said. “I always end up getting to like them—and then they take off. They leave and I never see them again.”
“In other words,” I said, “you feel like you’re being used? Like these guys are using you to get to your mom?”
“Something like that.” I could relate to that. I felt we had something in common. And I knew he did too.
“Will you meet me tomorrow?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let me see Michael. Call me tomorrow at three o’clock and I’ll tell you then.”
I called Jeff at three the following day.
“Meet us over at Arby’s,” he said. “Where are you now?”
“Just down the street.”
I had this scared feeling—but it meant so much. If a cop had been waiting, I would have driven right into his lap. But there wasn’t. I’d gone up to the Humane Society and got a puppy. They fell in love with it. And it loved kids. I had picked the right dog, a little black and tan mongrel. It had a brown spot over each eye, with whiskers growing out through the brown spots and little flappy wavy-haired ears. It was a beautiful puppy. I paid fifteen dollars for it at the Humane Society. It was my last fifteen dollars and I wasn’t working.
Tammy and I had spent a lot of money. You can blow some money in New Orleans, and we blew some. I’d buried the rest back up in Mississippi. I guess it’s still there.
I kept on seeing Michael and Jeff. I was very serious about quitting drinking. I might drink a couple of beers at night. By that time two beers would get me high and I’d go to sleep. Michael and Jeff had become very important to me.
I called Jeff from a shopping center phone booth one night and his grandmother grabbed the phone out of his hand. She started hollering at me. “Why are you calling these young boys?” I knew by her voice that Jeff hadn’t told her a thing.
“Well,” I said, “I’ve got a couple of kids of my own, but my wife and I are divorced and they live up north. I met the boys at the park and I’d just like to have the opportunity to do something for them. As I understand it, Jeff lost his father.”
“He tells everybody his business,” she said. “He’s not supposed to be telling everybody his business.”
“I think he trusts me,” I said. “And I’m not going to deceive him in any way.” I felt sincere, but I ended up deceiving him anyway, I guess.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t see anything wrong with it. You do seem like a nice person. We don’t let any alcohol in our house,” she said.
“Good. I’m a member of AA.” She was impressed.
“Oh, really? In other words, you do have a drinking problem?”
“I did have a drinking problem.”
“Okay,” she said. “Sure. I suppose it’s all right.” And so I had her permission. I went to work at a TV shop and started making fifteen dollars a day. I kept calling Michael and Jeff every afternoon—and seeing them most afternoons. Michael’s mother answered the phone one day.
“Is this Bob, by any chance?” It was a very intelligent person on the other end. I could tell that.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “Are you Michael’s mother?”
“Yes. I’ve been hoping you’d call. From what Michael tells me, you’ve got a drinking problem.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Are you drinking now?”
“No, not since meeting Michael.” And I hadn’t. Not to any extent anyway. I’d slowed down.
“Bob,” she said, “why don’t you meet me tomorrow at the Little River AA group and we’ll have a talk?” I felt leery about it because I was wiped out, my mind was pretty bad—and this lady sounded pretty hip. AA people can spot a phony four miles away. I felt like a real phony because of what I’d done to her son. I could never get really close to Ruthie because of it. I met her the next day. She was about forty, quite pretty, and very well dressed. She was so cheerful and so friendly. She came over smiling and shook hands with me. “Bob? I’m so glad to meet you.”
She asked what my drinking problem was and I explained part of it to her. I was afraid Michael might slip up and mention the SLA, so I told her I’d been to federal prison—not Connecticut State Prison. I told her it had been for SLA activities.
“Well, we won’t worry about any of that. All we’re worried about now is your drinking problem.” We went to an AA meeting that night. I was filthy. My mind was just gone. She must have been ashamed of me. I worked very hard just to get up the few bucks to go out there. I put a buck in the collection plate. My last buck, as a matter of fact. Nobody would have cared, but I didn’t have enough mind left to know that. I didn’t want to be a cheapskate. She introduced me to the group and she said, “Guess who’s Bob’s sponsor?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, my son Michael is Bob’s sponsor.” She was so proud of him.
I drove into the Everglades that night and went to sleep. I called Ruthie to thank her for everything the next day. We did a lot of talking. She was so open and sweet. She was trying to help me. It never became a romance. I don’t say it couldn’t have, but Ruthie was a little out of my class. I stayed straight and didn’t drink. And then, all of a sudden, one night about two and a half weeks later, I went to a 7-11 store for some milk and bread. The milk was next to the beer. Instead of milk, I bought a six-pack. I was off and running, and ready to rape.
“Obsessive thoughts are the kind where people think of something over and over and over and over again and they can’t seem to get the thought out of their mind. Normal people do this. You may have a song on your mind and you just can’t get it out. You just keep thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it. Compulsive behavior involves actions rather than thoughts, but it’s the same mechanism. The individual repeats and repeats and repeats behavior, recognizing that it is wrong but unable to control it.”
—Dr. Geraldine Boozer
This was May, the beginning of May, and I was wiped out. There was a rock concert at the Jai Alai Fronton that night and there were kids all over. I sat in the car watching girls go up and down the street. They’re going to be hitchhiking, I thought. All I have to do is sit here and wait. I got a corner seat where I could see up and down 36th Street. Once, five or six girls came out together, hitchhiking. I wasn’t going to bother with them. There were too many of them. I waited and waited.
Finally I saw a kid, about ten or eleven years old, dark complexion, black hair. He looked Cuban. The police were breaking up something in a skating arena across the street. He stood there and watched. He was looking for something to do. He finally started walking along 36th Street. I drove by, stopped on the far side of some railroad tracks and waited for him to walk up to the car. I asked directions to East Drive. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s down in this direction.” He had a slight Spanish accent.
“Hop in, you can show me where it is and I’ll give you a couple dollars. I’ll take you back home after you show me.”
“Well…” he said. He looked in the car. The puppy was in the back seat, wagging his tail. The kid looked at me and looked inside the car. He was skeptical. But he got in.
“Is this your dog?” I said yeah and he sat there petting the dog. That dog loved kids. I stopped for a red light and we kept talking. About a block farther, while he was looking out the window, I pulled the knife out from under my leg and showed it to him. “Oh no!” He put both hands down on the seat.
“Just don’t move and nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“Oh no!” he said again. He grabbed my arm and started pushing the knife away, screaming out the window, “Help!”
With him clutching my arm, I twisted around, threw the knife on the floorboard and grabbed his arm. He turned around and started kicking. He kicked the dash of the car. He bent the vent control. He bent the key in the ignition and kicked the knobs off the stereo. He kicked the steering wheel and kicked me in the side. “All right, kid! If you don’t stop it you’re going to get hurt! Now!”
He stopped for just a second, then, all of a sudden, he went frantic. Instead of kicking me, he spun in the seat and got his feet out the window. It was fantastic. This kid was really great. He must have been an athlete. He was so small but so quick and precise with every move. A car was following about a hundred feet behind me. I watched that car and tried to keep my car on the road. I’d swerved up on the curb when he started kicking. I knew that must have caught the attention of the people in the car behind me. Now they see a kid hanging half out the window. I tried to yank him back in. He held onto the roof of the car with one arm and I pulled on the other. By this time he was sitting on the windowsill, his feet outside the car, screaming, “Help me! Help me!” He screamed his lungs out as we went by Lum’s Restaurant.
“Oh no,” I said. I turned his hand loose and he went down. I saw him drop. The headlights behind me swerved to the right. I kept going. That kid was like an eel. I couldn’t hold him. In seconds, the whole thing was over. I went out to the Palmetto Expressway, took the first left, went down a dirt road, pulled up and turned around. I was scared to death. I didn’t know if the kid was dead or not. I drove out later and cruised back up 36th Street. I looked all around Lum’s and the side streets. I didn’t see him. I guess he just got up and went home. I was doing fifty miles an hour when it happened. It could have killed him. But I don’t think he was hurt. Kids are so agile. I have no idea who he was.
When the screaming started the puppy dived into the back seat and just watched, real quiet. When I turned around to check the headlights behind me it was lying down, looking up at me.