Children
He asked if I wanted to stop by a mutual friend of ours’s house because he wanted pick up… some cocaine and… he said “sure”, asked me if I wanted to go up, he knew it had been a long time since I’d seen Peter. Parked the car, went up there and he had six of his friends waiting for me… I remember them… like having sex with me. I don’t remember them hurting me… like… physically beating me, or anything like that… I guess after like the third or fourth one I passed out… And when I came to, they had put me in his wife’s running path in the park and left me there. She loaded me up in her car and took me to a hotel room. One of her friends was a doctor and he came over and checked me out. She got round the clock nurses and body-guards for me. Like three weeks later my eyes… got to where I could see. They were still all black and blue but they weren’t swollen shut anymore.
My name is Mars. That’s my mother’s tacky sense of humor. And I left home when I was thirteen because my stepbrother raped me, and I didn’t try and find my real father because he was gonna have me raped anyway, according to my mother. So I ended up being on the street, living in a lot of different places, and now I live in Boston and I work as a stripper.
I think it is very strange that older men like little girls ‘cus they’re perverts, is what they is. I mean, I like the money but I don’t like them.
I used to least bring in three hundred, four hundred dollars, and for a blowjob ‘d be thirty on up, and for a lay ‘d be like forty on up. Most these veterinarian hoes would charge more than, y’know, us little kids do.
I mean, I used to turn dates lots and lots of times, y’know just about every day. I’d be pulling dates day and night, day and night, and it’s just like, I’d get bashed like five times… so I don’t pull dates I don’t know.
And then… make the daddy do- to me, do the bad things… take off (unintelligible).
Ok… ok now you tell me you want me- you want me to take the pants off or do you want to take the pants off?
Ok. The daddy took off the pants so he could poop the little child in the heinie..
Okay… Okay… Okay…
(unintelligible)
Okay… And then, we’ll pretend, okay?
Right.
Now when I say we’ll pretend, we’re just gonna pretend that the dolls are doing it, ‘cus it makes me a little unhappy to really do that to the dolls.
Okay.
Alright. So you tell me if that’s-
He’s going like that.
Okay. Okay, and then what else?
Slapped her with her clothes on.
Okay. Does he slap her with his- with his hands?
Yeah.
Okay. Does… anything else?
No.
Okay. Does he slap her with his clothes on, should I put his clothes back on, or does he slap her without the clothes on?… Okay… Okay… Is it some-
Heather was sleeping and then she got pooped - okay? Okay? She got pooped.
Okay…
(unintelligible) Daddy comes along and poops her.
Okay…
Bleh.
Okay, alright, and then, show me what the other’s hearing. Sweetheart…
(unintelligible) the penis.
Okay. Tell me where he puts it… Okay, what is that?
Mouth.
Okay, where else does he put it?… Okay, what do you call that?
Heinie.
Okay, where else does he put it?
My hair.
Okay and where else does he put it?
He, he’s a… very scary person, and when I look at him, I don’t look at him for how do I see him, I look at him for how did he look to my son. H- he must’ve been very scary in, in the shades of the tree, uhm, overpowering him like that t- uhh… I can’t imagine how- how scared my son must’ve felt. I only know that he felt very compelled to do… whatever he had to do, uhm ah, when it was over with, uhm, he was gonna try to find a way to get home.
Hmm hm.
Uhm… the people that did find him, we’re really… very fortunate that they found him as quickly as they did and they responded, as fast as they did, because that’s what really did save his life.
It makes me sick… From when I was little and he was a pervert and shit, when every time I remember that, every time I remember what he did to me, what he took advantage of me and shit-
I didn’t know, you wouldn’t tell me-
I didn’t know! I didn’t know it! Until you started asking me!
But you wouldn’t tell me then!
I told you that he did. When you’d asked me if he did something, I said yeah. And then you went ahead and told him and ever since then he’s hated me.
Yeah but he didn’t do it anymore.
So? I st- I still hate him for doing it to begin with.
So my stepbrother decided to have a live-in sex partner. So I put up with it for ten months and then I left. Told her I wasn’t gonna lay her stepson anymore to keep her marriage together. It’s really not easy being on your own at thirteen. Friends all think you’re weird, they don’t understand why you can’t spend time at ball games, or cheerleader practice or whatever.
Uhmmmmm, I don’t know how it started, I remember… used to climb into bed with my mother and father a lot, my father used to always grab my ass and… My mother went to church, he used to come in my room… on Sundays and touch me, feel me up, and make me do things to him uhhhhh, when he was in the bathroom. Used to call me in… after he’s done doing what he did, doing his thing he used to bribe me, y’know, used to take me to the drugstore and buy me… stuff… every Sunday. At the… drugstore’s on the corner, and uhhhh, seemed like a pretty good deal. He took me to the church one night… and we’re upstairs, at uhmmm, the minister’s office… and uhmmmm he was sitting at the chair behind the desk and, so he calls me over he goes “Give your father a hug.” So… I give him a hug, and he starts feeling me up or something so I start to pull away, he goes “What’s the matter with you? Don’t want to give your father a hug anymore?” I go “I don’t like it.” I don’t remember, something about him touching me, I didn’t like it, and I just wanted to get away, and I just started crying… So he got really pissed off and started yelling “You don’t love your father no more. Rururururururuh.” So we made- so w-we had to leave. So we get home right? And I’m crying and in tears and my father’s screaming out and my mother meets us at the door “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? Says he doesn’t want to give no father no hug anymore.” so… I went to bed. Everybody was mad at me, ‘cus I didn’t want to give my father a hug anymore. And uhhhhhh… when my father abused me I felt… like I guess, like it was okay, like, it happened to everybody. And uhhhh, when I get older I didn’t- I felt uhmmmmm uhhhhh… used, like… used in a sense, I really didn’t know what used meant, I just felt like, uhmmmmm… What’s the word I wanna use? I felt- I was afraid, and not- my father never threatened to uhmmm… like, kill me or anything like that, y’know, he, he was a really intimidating person always, but just like afraid… like it was such a big sec- secret, I felt ashamed, y’know, like the world was gonna find out and, this wasn’t right, y’know, like I knew.
Was a typical Saturday evening after dinner, he wanted to go out and play, and there was a good two hours of light left and it was a, uhhh, a reasonable request, uhmmmm… He left and, uhhhh, at about eight thirty, I started thinking “Well, in my mind it’s getting dark, and, so he should be starting to come home”. Uhmmmm, by nine oh clock, he hadn’t come home, and I started phoning various friends and discovered that he wasn’t at any of those places. Uhhhhh, I started looking for him, uhmmmm, thinking the whole time that as soon as I get home, he’ll be- he’ll be there and I’m just really gonna give it to him.
Hmm hmm.
But uh, of course he wasn’t there when I got home… And then, the panic starts to escalate, because you start running out of alternatives although you keep thinking there must be something else happening that I’m just not thinking of…
Yeah, is he as Josh’s house?
Yeah…
Or is he at this house?
“He must’ve gone indoors and he’s watching TV and he doesn’t even realize it’s dark, and ther- there’s probably some reasonable explanation, and I’ll hear it when it gets home, and then after that, he’ll- he’ll have to deal with the, the punishment.” By ten o’clock, after I’d cruised the neighborhood two- two times looking for him, I had to… break down and phone the police… And that in itself is a major step, when you have to admit that… things have gotten beyond your control.
Hmm hmm.
The police were very uhmmmmm… sympathetic, and I was really glad about that, because I kind of expected more… ramifications and more questions from them than just-
Yeah, how long was he- ‘cus he hadn’t been gone for how long?
For very long! He was due back by dark, which technically would’ve been nine o’clock and so he’d only really been missing an hour… But they told me to, stay by the phone, uhhh, and stay home… that someone would either phone me or come by. But then an hour, the uhhh… police officer and the… police staff chaplain… came to my house. The chaplain by himself is a major statement, I mean, not too many times do those people come to your house, uhhhh. I… listened as calmly as I could as they informed me that they were pretty sure they had my boy… that he was alive, but that he had been sexually assaulted and he was in the hospital, and I needed to go down there. I… don’t remember too much more beyond that… My- my whole system started shutting down. All I could think of was “He’s alive, and there’s something I need to do.” And.. so I, got my shoes on and I got in the car and I drove down to emergency room and uhhh… The staff at the hospital is really, very, very supportive uhhhm… My mother had gone with me, and they took us into a conference room and the chief uhhh, surgeon or… staff doctor uhhhh uhhmmm-
Hmm hmm
Doctor Coums, came in to… tell us the… details then of what had happened. There was a… psychologist there with us also, in order to uhhh… help us through this… uhmmmm, the more people that are there, the more tragic you know it’s going to be and yet I was not at all prepared for what the doctor had to say. He asked what we’d already been told and I told him “basically nothing, you might as well start from the top”. And if I could take back those words I would love to… because, the irony was… he started from the top… He had been strangled… He had been stabbed… and his penis had been severed… which is not exactly castration but it is… quite a dramatic mutilation.
My real dad, I’ve never known. He could be a guy that’s really rich, driving a Mercedes, y’know? Or he could be one of these bums on the streets, I don’t know… I- I really wanna meet him. For all I knew, y’know, he could be one of these dates going around, I could’ve dated him, for all I know.
No child should, as happened to my child, have a judge deem their risk of rape to be fifty percent, and to have unsupervised visits increased four hundred per cent. That should not be allowed. If there’s a risk of abuse, the child must be protected until it is known that the child will be safe. In my case, we are drowning in evidence. You almost never in an abuse case have what we have, which is an articulate child giving a consistent story to expert after expert; incest experts confirming the abuse as among the worst they have ever seen, an eye witness account from an older sibling, both girls with the vaginal scars of sexual penetration and the older girl having a founded case in the Social Service department of Virginia. Also I had more resources than any other protecting mother, I had more evidence and more resources. If my child cannot be safe, no child in this country can be safe. The day that my child is safe, is the day that there is hope for other children.
She was a three and a half year old child… who was able to tell me very complex sexual… uhh, details. And at the same time, she was showing the- what you would think would be the appropriate emotional response to that: shame, guilt, fear, sometimes terror, uhhh anger. Uhhhh, all those things at appropriate times, and… to imagine that a three year old could be coached to carry out that level of complex behavior, uhhhh… without somebody in the room, y’know, helping her do that, uh, is just ludicrous.
N- I don’t know about other children, Hillary could not have been coached to tell such a story. She was… was a very disturbed child, she couldn’t have been… Maintained any, any fiction, she was… in… physical and emotional pain, all the time… and was talking about…what was… making her suffer. I mean, when she began… to talk about the abuse, she’d often just start to scream and she’d fall on the floor and just claw the air and scream for help… I- I mean… i-it’s just ludicrous to, to think that a child… could be acting. She obviously wasn’t.
You’re not going away from your mother. This is a weekend, your daddy wants to see you.
Uhhhhhhhh ahhhhhhhh.
Okay.
My mommy!
What, you don’t want to see your daddy?
I don’t want to.
He loves you.
I don’t want to go.
And I really cannot talk about it.
Would you go if your mother took you to my office?
Nu-huh, nu-huh.
Can you say any reasons why you don’t want to go?
Because I had not been able to protect her.
I don’t want to go!
And I had not been able yet to hide her. Which she was asking me to do.
I want to stay with my mommy!
And she was just taken. Out of our home… To be sexually molested. And I still can’t believe that it happened.
I don’t want to!
McMartin
He made us have sex with him, and, with other guys, and, he’s done it with other people uhmmm… I don’t know, I just don’t like him.
We found out she had been defecated on, that that was smeared all over her body and put in her mouth.
The children have to live with this for the rest of their lives. It will never be known whether or not the children were actually molested or whether they were… led to believe they were molested. The parents have to live with this, and there’s nothing that I can say or anyone else can say to make them feel better. We did the best job we could do, with the information that was given to us.
Emotionally, I’m- I’m very distraught, I think we’ll see that most all of us are very distraught about this whole thing. I don’t know what it’s gonna do to my son… Uhhhhhh, y’know, we’ve spent many years bringing him to therapy so he could handle it… and now he’s gonna have to look at this whole thing again, and uhhhh, it’s gonna be very detrimental.
I’m still in shock… It’s starting to wear off a little bit now, but uhh, when I first heard it I just didn’t believe it, I thought somebody made a mistake. When this all first broke and my daughter was talking to me about what happened to her it wa- it was really, really tough. A lot of sleepless nights and uhhhhhh, a lot of uh questions and… just trying to understand what had happened.
Well, the jury is working with a standard of proof that is not necessarily the real world. I know my children were molested. I’ve- I’ve had my daughter lay in-between my husband and I for a whole year because she was so afraid that somebody would come and get her, that they would kill her because she told. Now, that’s what I live with… And the world, yes, will think Ray Becky is innocent and I just hope that uhhh, you don’t send your children to his preschool.
It was just- it was- it was- y’know, it was really hard stuff to talk about ummmmmm… Al- y’know, groups of uh, kids were taken to various places off the campus of the school, and uh, where various acts were committed, ummmmm, I really, y’know, hate to get into the details because I’ve done- again I’ve done it so many times ummmm… but… I don’t know, it’s just that once we were taken away, the acts were committed, we were usually brought back in a short period of time, and, I guess it would’ve seem- would seem to a parent that nothing had happened.
Hmm hmm.
And I- d- y’know, they just- it was really hard to, as a child, I remember at the time I can, y’know, remember that it was just so hard to… tal- try to talk about it to anybody because you were just scared.
Hmm hmm.
Really scared and… these things, you couldn’t, you couldn’t just come out and say, y’know, “Mom, I have a question”, it was really hard to do.
Well I wanted to find out if they were going to jail or not and, for the last five years… I’ve no doubt in my mind. I thought they’re going to jail and… when I heard the verdict “not guilty”… I mean, a chill just wen- goes throughout your body and, it’s like tears running down your face, but not tears, it’s, it’s really bad.
Well I was molested, uhhhh, physically and I’m not gonna go into detail and uhhh, and uhhh, thirteen counts that I think that they called a “mistrial”, ah uhhh, dealing with the Satanic church and stuff like that, I was involved in that too, and it’s not, it’s not- five hundred kids don’t come up with the same story and just make up, make it up.
I might just add to that it was equally as difficult for us to listen to what he had to say, and I can imagine how hard it was for him to tell it.
It’s not a story, it’s what really happened, it’s facts, and, y’know, it just hurts me to think that Ray is still out there.
We saw what the system did. I saw how it treated children. I saw how it treated adults. It doesn’t work very well. It didn’t work for either side. And now everybody, it’s a very safe side to be on, saying “Gee, these poor children that went through hell”. And they did go through hell, but I’m not the cause of their hell, and neither is my mother, n- nothing that happened in that pre-school is a cause of their hell. Cause of their hell is a product of the adults, who took on this case and made it what it is.
If w- we were lying I don’t think we would come up with such good lies.
If this isn’t true, I mean, you can do anything you want with me but it’s true.
They said that if we told, that the devil would come and kill our parents… and he said that we wouldn’t live to b- be the age nine.
Molesting me.
What does that mean? What does molesting you mean?
Touching us in places we don’t want. And then they would, like, threaten us, like, “Oh you don’t say a word, else we’re gonna come to your house and kill everybody except for you and we’re gonna send you to the devil… and everything…” and it would scare us really much.
Shocking, it just cannot be true. Jus- They’re just wrong. Sorry.
My feeling is we need a guilty verdict so that what’s going on around the rest of the world can continue- can be- have- have something to be based on. By saying not guilty, y’know, everybody is on their own now, it’s what’s gonna amount to.
Life is not fair. I tell my children all the time and I did way before this ever entered their life: “There is no such thing as fair. Fair is a word in the dictionary. If you think there’s such thing as fair, uhhh, go ahead and think it, doesn’t mean anything, you’ll always say it was unfair.”
I’m just real disappointed. Y’know, we have programs all over the country that tell children to run and tell when somebody hurts them and our children told. Some of them spent thirty five days on the stand and, uhhh, they get a “not-guilty”. Shows that our justice system needs a revamp for kids, if kids are gonna be important.
One of the things that somehow we- we’ve failed to impress the jurors with, during this trial, was the level of fear these children experienced and still do experience. The, uhh, University of California has just completed a longitudinal study on this population and the most significant piece of data from that study is that, many of these children, six years after the trial and a significant number of years after the experience, still suffer from abnormal levels of fear, about whether or not the world is a safe place to be, about whether or not they are going to be safe, about whether or not their families are safe… and, really what happened in this school involved terrorist tactics, against the children. And they really did believe that they might die and that their parents might die. And that fear, and that feeling of powerlessness is still there for-
Did you ever believe that Brian?
Yeah, at the time I did.
The system worked well for them, they were lucky and, uhhh, I hope to god that, uhh, that none of us ever hear anything in the future about either one of them molesting children.
These people are not quite all in kilter. We’re talking- they’re believing nation-wide conspiracy, uh, ritualistic satanic abuse, pedophiles in pre-school settings, and “Gee, we didn’t find one strap of evidence, in a nation-wide conspiracy to back that up.” That’s their belief. Every- every teacher in Manhattan Beach is a child molester. Every pre-school that was ever closed with allegations- is a- is a conspiracy of child molesters. You listen to them and they’re talking: witch-hunt. Tha- plain and simple, that’s what they’re talking.
“Daddy was, ummm, heading the meeting and he wore a real life’s baby foot around his neck, just as they each drank the blood, and then they all hurt me.” Said “How did they hurt you?”. She spread her legs and pointed to her crotch and says “Right here."
Jimmy talks about having a gun held to his head, about being shown a skeleton, about having to touch the skeleton. He has drawn pictures of a… child being sacrificed. Uhhh, he’s talked about animal sacrifices, he’s disclosed molestation.
The stories are so outrageous and I am such an honest person and I assumed everybody would believe me. And to this day, I’ll get in the middle of a story and I’ll think “They’re gon’ think I’m crazy. This sounds crazy.”. But when you begin to hear the same thing, time and again, different stories but the same… the same horrible underlying things, the same behaviors in the kids, I just wanna scream.
That’s the baby right there.
Right here?
Uh huh. It came out of her already.
What did they do to the baby?
Then they- they took it and kept throwing it against the wall and he- and he killed it, and he took it in the house-
No, you saw that?
Yeah! They took us in an old caboose. And they had these things, they called it spains.
Spains?
Yeah, spains. They stuck it up my butt.
Who stuck it?
They did.
Your dad?
Uh huh. Ow did it hurt.
Trash
Did there come a time where you started to wonder where Carol was?
Yes, uhmmm… we watched a… a movie. Uhmmm, a video- we had a video of Sleeping Beauty. And uhh… hmmm… uhh… when that was over we, uhhhh, were working on a puzzle. So, we weren’t really watching our clock or anything. And uhh… I don’t recall what- when I went out to the kitchen and noticed what time it was, but, I said “Gee, Carol’s not home yet”. And that’s when we became alarmed.
I saw my daughter’s Volkswagen. In a cul-de-sac.
Did you approach the car at that point?
I s- I slowed down and I stopped my car. And I stopped it because I won- I- I knew.
Did you suspect your daughter was not alive?
I knew. I walked up to the officer who was a commanding officer, and I looked at him. I- man-to-man, eye-to-eye. And he started crying. I told him my daughter’s dead.
Did you then tell your family?
Yes.
While we’re talking, Jason, he went on back into the house. Left me out there on the porch by myself. And the last question he ask me was “Well is your mother and father home?”. That time he was still wobbling his head back and forth look into the house when he ask that question.
What happened then?
Well, he kind of turned around so… I start to close the door, but… I felt a push, on the other side. He approached the door and pushed it open, with his hand. He closed the door behind him and… threatened. He said “I have a knife. I hurt your brother and you if you don’t cooperate”. He started rubbing my breasts and my back.
And what happened then?
Then he had told me to get down on the floor and I didn’t respond, so he pushed me down onto the floor. He started unbuttoning my pants and started to pull my jeans off. I-
And what did you do?
What did I do? I closed my legs and rolled over.
What happened then?
He rolled me back onto the mat, to my back. He took his fist and punched me in the forehead because I wouldn’t take my jeans off as he requested. By that time, he started unbuckling his belt and unbutton his pants that he had on and this zip- unzipped his zip.
Did you see him do this?
Yes, I did.
What happened then?
He told me “Take your panties off, you bitch”. It’s literally what he said.
What happened then?
I was on the back- my back. I yelled out for Jason twice. I said “Jason, Jason, help me”.
What happened then?
He grabbed my ankles and pulled me down. In the same motion he kind of got on top of me and started to- try to kiss me.
What did you do?
I… tried to push him away or, y’know, move my head.
What happened then?
He… put the blanket’s, the corner edge of the blanket in the sheath of my mouth and put my arm behind me and held both of my wrists with his hand and went inside of me.
Y’know, while he was doing this, he was, ahh, basically on top of you, correct?
Erh- holding me down… I mean, he was moving so he could do this, but…
What happened then?
He… kissed and touched my breasts and then he pulled my underwear down… and he had oral sex with me.
Okay. What happened after he had oral sex with you?
Then he had… sex with me.
Okay, vaginal sex?
Yes.
After he had vaginal sex with you, what happened then?
He… he rolled me over and kind of pushed me up the side of the bed and then… and… and then he had anal sex with me.
Did he ejaculate?
I think so.
What happened then?
After that he… just kind of pushed me aside, and got up, hmm, to leave.
Did he say anything before he left?
Yes.
What did he say?
He said that, to go ahead and tell Ted ‘cus no one would believe me anyway.
Ted was your boyfriend?
Yes.
Did you report this to the River Falls Police?
Yes.
Did anyone go with you when you reported this?
Yes. Ted.
Why did you report this on- on March 18th?
Because everyone encouraged me to do so, except my dad and… and I wanted to do the right thing.
Why didn’t you report it earlier than March 18th?
I just couldn’t even think about it then.
Force his penis in my mouth. And he would… he would hold my head down… oh… and make… me suck him. And he would say- and I would want up. And he wouldn’t let me up, he would just- and I’d be gagging. I would be thinking he was gagging me to death, I would feel it. I mean he- he would just hold my head down and I’d want up. He wouldn’t let me up. Anytime he- tell me… that that was what I had to do. And then he would go in my mouth… and that would make me… swallow… that stuff. And, oh, oh… I’d be gagging on that… nasty stuff. And… he would laugh at me. Think it was a joke. And I would run to the bathroom and start throwing up. And he would laugh at me- he made me, he made me feel like I was just a… trash. I’d tell him I didn’t want to do it, it was against my religious beliefs and he said that I had to do it anyway. And he would do it… in front of my kids. We would be on our way to visit my parents. He’d want me to do it, in the car.
The officer told me to get in the car and he directed Jim to pull around… the patrol car and, uh, further ahead into a grassy area, in front of where we were.
When you got to the troopers car, was that area also dark?
Yes, very.
What happened next?
He asked me had I had sexual intercourse with Jim just then. And I was… a little foggy I said- I had thought for a minute and then I said “No, because I remember… having a Tampax earlier” and… he told me that he would have to check and see and he told me to lower my jeans.
Did you lower your jeans when he told you to?
Yes.
After you lowered your jeans, what happened next?
He used his finger to check and see if I had a Tampax on.
What did he do with his finger?
He inserted it in my vagina.
What happened after that?
He told me that he did not feel anything but, there was another way that I could be in the car and on my way.
Did he indicate to you what he wanted you to do so you could be on your way?
Yes, ma’am he did. I don’t remember the exact words but I knew that he meant oral sex.
What did you do when you got behind the patrol car?
I went down on- I was down on my knees… he removed his penis- unzipping his pants, and I- we- wen- engaged in oral sex.
He had a knife at my throat and he kept saying “Get naked”.
What kind of knife was it to the best of your memory?
Uhh, looked like a kitchen knife.
Do you… remember about how long it was?
Uhh, ‘bout that long.
Did you say anything to him?
I kept begging him just to leave me alone.
Did he leave you alone?
No.
What were you thinking when the defendant woke you up and held a knife at your throat and had you take your clothes off?
I was scared.
What was the next thing that the defendant said to you?
He just- he didn’t really talk that much, he just kept touching me and… kissing me and…
Where did the defendant touch you?
All over my body.
Could you tell us in a little more detail?
Uhhh, on my breasts and in-between my legs and…
Did he- what part of his body did he touch you with?
His hands.
Did he ever touch you with his mouth?
Yes.
Where did he touch you with his mouth?
My breasts and in-between my legs.
Did the defendant ever have you do anything to him?
Yes.
What was that?
He made me put my hand on his private areas.
On his —————?
Yes.
Did you do that?
Yes.
Did the defendant ever make any threats to you?
Yes. He told me to act like I was enjoying it and not to make any noise so he’d kill me.
After the acts you’ve already described, did the defendant do anything else?
Yes.
What did he do?
He made me have intercourse with him.
And did you ever attempt to yell?
No.
Why not?
I was scared he’d kill me.
When the defendant had intercourse with you, did he say anything to you?
Uhhh, yeah.
What d-
He asked if I’d like it better if it was big and black.
Did you respond to the defendant in any way?
I just… I just kept begging him to leave me alone.
Bundy
We would’ve cut Bundy off at the pass right in Utah. As soon as he uhh… he ha- he had killed the girls in… in the Northwest and then moved to Utah and… th- all of the sudden they stopped at the Northwest. But then they started in, in Utah. If there had been a ViCAP, that information would’ve been collected, collated, analyzed and both those agencies would’ve known about the tremendous and great similarities and- and he would’ve been stopped in the past so all- some of the young ladies in Utah, uhhh… the women in Colorado and- and uhhh… the uhhh… the girls at the college at Florida State would be alive today, including the little thirteen year old, would probably be uhhh… uh, very, uh… a- a happy young bride someplace, instead of moldering in a grave somewhere.
She’d be going to a Valentine’s dance, next month. She’d probably be married by now. She’d probably have children. Uhh… this evil man came into our community and took it all away from her.
It’s rough for him because it still bothers, in that he can’t do nothing about it, what happened to his daughter. But he would like to.
I’m not sure anyone, uhh, knows how he got in, uhh. All the girls left their individual rooms unlocked. Uhhh… of course, nothing like this had ever happened before and we had no reason to be afraid for our safety, uhh. The doors were locked downstairs so…
Hmm hmm
…uhh, he just walked in, I guess. Uhh, I don’t remember anything. Uhh, I woke up in the hospital room, uhh, two days later.
We will never turn it off. After a few years we said we wouldn’t turn it off. And now it’s kind of a memorial. It will burn forever.
I think every time his name comes up and he- uhh, the appeals he gives and everything… just reopens, rehashes the whole thing, you really have the whole nightmare again, from start to finish, continually. And so… I want him to be executed, done away with, so that, we don’t have to hear his name anymore, we don’t have to liv- relive these horrible memories, we can all get on with our lives.
I want ask him why he killed my daughter and what he did with her, where he put her body.
Having her body is extremely important. And uhh… three years ago we did put a marker in for her, so we do have a headstone at the cemetery where we can take flowers and honor her, but, uhh… there’s still no body there. That’s still an open book, so to speak. So I would hope with all my heart that Bundy confesses and tells us where the body is, that we might find it and… have that piece of mind, once and for all. He should definitely be executed and I guess he should probably have extra time to tell, so that, we as parents and family… can have piece of mind and… be able to, uhh… end our nightmares. He cheated each and every one of us as parents out of raising our children and having a wonderful relationship. And I think he should pay for that. I uhhh… feel like he deprived me of a very special thing, to raise my daughter and to know and love her as she, uhh, grew into adulthood. I uhh… I hope they execute him in the morning. I- I think he deserves to die, for all the lives he ruined.
I just feel like we as mothers who have lost daughters are so heartbroken and it’s so hard. To lose a child, and uh… not have the opportunity to love them and raise them, and I feel very sorry for her that she has a son that has ruined so many people’s lives and destroyed so many young women, and I would imagine the anguish she’s going through now as he’s confessing to all these murders, and the heartbreak that she has to live with.
I find myself even and- even now, when I’m in a crowd, looking for her.
Well, first of all, it was unexpected because those things don’t happen to you; they happen to everybody else. You read about them in the paper; they happen in New York City, they don’t happen in Ellensburg, Washington.
Well, we received a phone call from the university that, uhhhhh, my daughter was missing, that she hadn’t come home. She was a straight A student, the type of child who just wouldn’t normally do those kinds of things. For her not to come home, from a meeting, was just… not right. She just wouldn’t do that kind of thing. She just wouldn’t.
She was easily frightened by… uhhh… stories of things happening to other young girls.
No one, uhhh, paid any attention to it. It was just written off as a… a runaway. The interesting thing is, that if you look at the state of Washington, there had been twelve, fourteen of these occurrences in a six month period.
I don’t think anyone ev- y’know, correlated all these missing girls until we bought an ad in the paper. Y’know, “help us find out daughter, we know something has happened”. Huh.
A- uh- you couldn’t… you couldn’t say or do any more than we did, I don’t think.
For a long time that bothered me. I thought perhaps something in our… training, y’know, could’ve helped her in that situation but… I wouldn’t have wanted her any other way.
And I think that you have to have, uhhm, a society that says that you can conduct yourself in this fashion and feel reasonably safe.
Why did he do it? Why did he pick on her? She would’ve been his friend if he had given her a chance.
I’ve said from the very beginning that, somewhere, there was a mother with a hurt deeper than mine… and I’d rather have my daughter than that son.
We still don’t believe it, it just- just can’t be. I keep shaking my head, day after day, saying “how can this be”, because our son is the best son in the world, a very normal, active boy.
It does bring some relief. We knew many years ago that he was guilty, but there was a finality to it when he did confess. We put an end to uhh… uh- i- uh- plain and simple you would have to say it’s revenge. Uhm, we will be able to see her murderer punished. That’s alright I… I know it’s not a very Christian way to be but… I think in this case revenge is- is needed.
I do not feel sorry for Ted Bundy; I feel sorry for his family.
The son we raised was a wonderful, good person. We don’t understand what has happened to him… It is not the same person that we raised; that we knew an- and, we know- we’re confident in our hearts that nothing we did during his raising, it ain’t nothing to do with this.
I still want to know. And I would have to come right out and ask him, and say “did you kill my daughter? Did you abduct my beautiful daughter? And di- did you take her, and did you kill her?”. I would give anything if she would just call me on the phone and say “mom I’ve been in California and, uh… and I’m coming home”. It’s- It’s fantasizing, and I’ll never see her again.
I would say he can’t continue living, because he wouldn’t talk about it. I- I couldn’t trust him. I wouldn’t believe him. Ted Bundy needs to die. He needed to die ten years ago, or longer; and he should not have been allowed to live this long.
I say this for each member of my family, and, I’m certain for the other families too: nothing is ever, ever the same again.
I do. I believe that with all my heart, I feel it. And I, uh, really think he’s a psychopath, and I think that he will murder another girl, and I think the death penalty is a deterrent, and I’m very pleased that that jury had enough guts to recommend it.
All I can think about is… what he did to her. What were her thoughts. How long did she suffer. Those thoughts are with me all the time.
She left for the picnic with her friends and, about nine o’clock at night, I saw that her boyfriend came up pulling in her car, and I knew right then there was something wrong, and he said “I can’t find Denise”. He said the picnic was over with for a couple of hours and he had been looking all over for her and couldn’t find her. I knew that Denise would not disappear like that for any reason at all.
Well, I feel sorry for them, in a way. And then in another way, I feel that they should’ve seen something… in his eyes, or something, somewhere about him, to give them a clue that something was wrong.
I feel that my life has been completely destroyed.
For everything he did to the girls: the bludgeoning and the strangulation, humiliating their bodies, torturing them… I feel that the electric chair is too good for him.
Victims
We thought it was a football helmet, with all bleached white. Looked like a football helmet, or… a tetherball. We had this twenty dollar bet going on what it was. And then John jokingly said “well what if it’s a body?”.
What did you do?
We checked it out. We could only see the head, and uhhh, the left hand sticking out of the mud… Had rings on it, and apparently she had died screaming: her mouth was open. Was the scariest thing we ever did see.
When I saw my sister, all I saw was skin on her face, very, very little bit of skin, no eyes left in her head, most of her hair was gone. Uhhh, there was hardly any skin on her at all; she looked like a complete skeleton that you’d find in a health class in school. It was not pleasant, it was very upsetting… To be honest to you, it scared the hell out of me.
Debby, she, she was a very sweet girl. She was well liked by everybody.
One thing that she really liked to do was write poems.
I miss my daughter Debra, and I love her more than anyone in the world.
I mean, my god, she was only twenty three years old.
Tell a three year old… that her daddy will not be back, is not easy. And then, trying to explain… that somebody just blew him away, is not easy.
They- then they- then they sliced my thu- son’s throat.
He shot them, in the head. They were leaving the motel. They w- had gone on vacation. And as they were leaving, this man forced them back into this room, had them lay down, and shot them in the back of the head. The one thing that was not presented as evidence was: after he murdered my- my mother, he masturbated and left his semen in a tissue next to her. But this was not introduced as evidence as part of his personality because it’s not a crime to masturbate.
We buried Debby in a… pink child’s casket, uhh, because she- she liked pink, and she was a child.
She was a… little tomboy, y’know? She, uhhh, ahm… liked to play with boys, uhhh, climb trees… Y’know, she wasn’t afraid of anything.
You see there she’s got lipstick on and, I think she was in the sixth grade. She was just getting more out of that tomboy stage, into the feminine. When I start finding out what’s going on, uhhhh, it was too late; ‘cus it’d been going on for a while. Debby was going to Planned Parenthood and getting birth control pills, when she was eleven, twelve years old. I found out that she was smoking marijuana. I found out that uhh… boys were a lot more interested in her than just being friends… Uhhh, a lot of things that… breaks a mother’s heart. They arrested her for prostitution, and didn’t know who she was. She… she thought it was a game. I mean, that was fun for- for people not to know who she really is. She thought she was getting away with something. You think you’re raising your kids normal… Y’know, you’re doing everything right, and, uhhh, how she could get involved in something like that, y’know, when she’d never been exposed to it… Uhhh… I couldn’t understand it. I just- I couldn’t understand it at all.
It would be hard for any father, after all it’s my daughter that I’m looking for, a kid that I cared about, a kid that I loved, my last born, my baby.
We looked for Debby for… six years. Uhm… And, when they found her… Uh… I just thank god they found her. I s- I sat down at the funeral home for three hours… telling her all the things that I… tried to tell her when she was alive. If you have kids, and they’re out on the street, you better go get ’em. Because if you don’t, you won’t have them; and when they’re dead, they’re dead. Forever is forever.
By the time they start finding all these girls and realized they had a serial killer, uhhh… they were all bones. Not too much evidence you can get from bones. I called the taskforce and I proceeded to get the same story that I had gotten for two years: uhm, they h- they had not made any connections between Debby and prostitution and until they do, they weren’t in the business of looking for runaways; that was the typical story. And, so I told them that I had pulled her picture out of their file, and, oh he said “oh yeah, we’ve been looking for Betty Jones, y’know, since, 1982, because nobody had seen her.”
It’s like they don’t matter, that this is common trash. And these are… children. And this is my girl. And she’s not trash.
My daughter didn’t do anything wrong. Not a thing wrong. She didn’t deserve what she got.
When your children die of, y’know, natural illness, that’s one thing. But, for them to be murdered, y’know, it’s uhhh… it’s unreal to me, and I don’t know if it ever will be.
The pain that he’s caused.
I would like to see him die in the electric chair, for the murder of my sister, who was innocently- innocently killed in cold blood. I was abused, for three years… mostly- physically and mentally, but mostly the mental part. I got over the physical, but I’ll never get over the mental. There’s no way to tell you what this man has done to me and my family, he doesn’t deserve to live.
Kimmie, oh she was so cute. She didn’t walk, she danced. She was a little girl next door, she was… everybody’s sweetheart. Once things get out of hand and I can’t handle it, that’s the way I think of her. I would like to have met the woman that she would’ve been. She would’ve been somebody.
He, uhhh, took the… the transformer and hooked it to my genitals, and stepped back and took pictures, while I’m flopping around; a scene that never ends, y’know.
He had pictures of guys that he had- did- did things to, kids tied up, and, with marks on them and things.
I dug through his trash and found different things- The one time I thought it was dog remains. Later on after the investigation the police come in, three years later, I found out that this the way they said Bob disposed of some of the waste of the human remains. He put them in dogfood bags and set them out in the trash.
When James first disappeared even, we- we begged him to do something, to go in Berdella’s house, to get a search warrant for any reason to try to find my son in there, because it had been told to us that he was possibly chained up in the house in there.
Mary was very free spirited as a child. Very lovable. I remember when she did good in school. She’s come home, she’d be so proud of her report card. She grew up too fast. She always told me “mother don’t worry, I can handle it”. She couldn’t.
And he just asks me “hey mom, can I go out on the back, and get some air?” So I told him “sure, go ahead”. So, that’s where I figured he was, until he was out there for quite a little while and hadn’t come back in.
I see him go out the back door, and that was the last time I saw him.
That was the last time he was seen.
They shouldn’t have let him go, because they- if they would’ve, uhh- wouldn’t have let him go, my brother wouldn’t be dead. He’d still be alive. I think it was wrong.
He asked her where she was going and she said she was going home… and he said he was going to Timber Creek, which is right next to our subdivision, so she took a ride with him.
Opel liked to… write stories. She was a real, uhh, happy person.
And let it show, because of Opel (unintelligible) you really had a friend.
Well, I’ve kept Opel’s room pretty much like she did: her dolls are still on her bed, like she kept them.
You have to go down and you have to identify your child. And she’s there with a s- big solid scream on he- face. And you try to understand why anybody could do something like that.
Carrie was a loveable person. She was involved in choir, singing, church, and she was a real bright, intelligent person. She always felt that she could handle everything.
I have a dream that she’s gonna come back, that the person we buried was not her.
Denise was a very trusting - I think that probably is the biggest word - trusting person. She believed everybody was good and thought I was a cynical old lady because I tried to point out to her that some people weren’t; some people would hurt her if she wasn’t careful.
I was, uhhh, going home from work, uh, in the afternoon, I had the radio on to my favorite station, and, uhh, they broke in, with a newscast, saying that Denise had been found. Uhhh, that’s the way I heard it, I heard it on the radio. And, it bothered me so badly that, uhh, I just couldn’t drive, I had to pull off the side of the road and, uhh, stop shaking, and then I thought about my wife being home and the possibility of her hearing it on the radio… So I just, drove home as fast as I could, and by the time that I got there, of course, she had already been told, and…
It happened right about right here, where we walked over to the car, and, we asked him if he was lost. And then he got out of the car and threatened us; said that, if we didn’t get into the car, that he would kill us, so… I ran up the… little bank over there, to the neighbors house, and, Katie was crying and, she got into the car.
Katie had been so brutalized that Tom said “the only thing that looked like her, were the freckles on her face and the braces on her teeth”. She was such a good little kid, and such a regular kid. To allow a child like that to be destroyed is so horrible.
When he did this to my sister, he killed a part of the family. No matter what she did, or how she lived her life, she was my sister and I loved her very much.
Great work!