Betrayed: Powerful Stories of Kick-Ass Crime Survivors

by Allison Brennan

  For the first time in a long, long time, Jackie was at peace with her decision. She didn’t like that she had to step away from her sister, but it might be the only way to save her.

  #

  At first, Jackie didn’t hear the phone. Then she sat up abruptly.

  Rick reached over and handed her the cell phone. It was two-ten in the morning. Calls after midnight were never good news.

  If Jackie was on call, she wouldn’t have worried about it. But she wasn’t on call. The number was blocked.

  “Regan,” she answered.

  “Jackie, Jackie, please—it’s awful. I-I think Tom is dead.”

  It took her a second to realize it was Melissa.

  “What happened? Melissa—why do you think Tom is dead?”

  Rick turned on the lights.

  “I just—please, I-I-I need you. I don’t know w-what to do.”

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Where’s TJ?”

  “At a friend’s house. A sleepover.”

  It was a school night. Why was he at a sleepover? But Jackie didn’t ask. She said, “Where’s Tom?”

  “He’s—he’s bleeding. There’s so much blood. I need you.”

  “Call the police. Right now.”

  “I am—I’m calling you.”

  She was up and getting dressed. “Call 9-1-1. Answer their questions. I’m on my way.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. Are you safe? Right now, can he hurt you?”

  “No. No—I think he’s dead. I think he’s dead and I killed him.” Melissa started sobbing hysterically.

  Rick was dressed before Jackie had finished her conversation. She didn’t have her service weapon anymore, not until IA cleared her, but she had a personal handgun which she holstered. Just in case.

  “Melissa, listen,” Jackie said as she and Rick ran down the stairs to her car. “Hang up, call 9-1-1, and call me right back. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Jackie hung up.

  “I heard,” Rick said. He got behind the wheel and for once she didn’t argue. She waited for Melissa to call her back.

  There was no traffic and it took less than fifteen minutes to reach Melissa’s house. The police hadn’t arrived yet, which was suspicious to Jackie. And Melissa hadn’t called. Dammit, Tom wasn’t dead. Maybe he had been injured, but he had gotten to her.

  She pounded on the door. “Melissa! It’s Jackie, open up.” She was getting ready to break the door down when it finally opened.

  Blood streaked down her face and stained her hair. Her filmy white nightgown was splattered with it, and Melissa kept rubbing her hands like Lady MacBeth. Only this time, the blood was visible to all.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She began to sob and stumbled into Jackie’s arms. “You were right. You were right.”

  Jackie looked at Rick, and he nodded and began to search the house.

  “What happened?”

  “I was sleeping, and it was really late when Tom came in, later than most Sundays. After midnight. He shook me awake. Hard. I smelled—perfume on him. And I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I accused him of cheating on me. He said that you’d put that idea in my head, that he had no reason to cheat because... because ...”

  “Because why?”

  “I did everything he wanted. He—he said he wanted me now, I said I was sore and tired, and he just—he just did it anyway.”

  “He raped you.”

  “We’re married.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I started to cry and... he got so mad. And then I got mad and scared and I didn’t know what to do. Then I saw all the blood and I had killed him.”

  That was a big leap. And a non sequitur. She saw the blood then killed him?

  Rick came back into the living room. “Jack.”

  Jackie grabbed the afghan off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around her sister. “Did you call the police?” she asked Melissa.

  “I don’t remember. I called you.”

  “Stay here.”

  Jackie followed Rick down the hall. She stood in the entrance of Melissa and Tom’s bedroom and absorbed the scene.

  Tom was on his back, naked. Blood covered his body. Soaked into the bed. Sprayed all over the walls. It was a fucking massacre. She didn’t need to walk in to verify he was dead.

  “Did you go in?”

  “No. I just made sure that TJ is in fact not here.”

  Her stomach nearly revolted. She hadn’t even considered that Tom wasn’t the only victim.

  “Call the police. Get a bus here. I need to get her a lawyer.”

  “I heard what she said. She’s not thinking clearly.”

  “I know. She can’t talk to the police like this.”

  “You can’t obstruct the investigation.”

  “No, but I can make sure she has a lawyer present.”

  She started back toward Melissa. Rick touched her arm. She looked up at him. “She stabbed him to death, Jackie. That much blood, it’s--”

  “I know.” A violent rage. “She snapped.”

  That was the only explanation.

  Why did she have a knife in her bedroom? How long after she was raped did she kill him? How long did she think about it? Why was TJ not at home on a school night?

  Melissa was exactly where she’d left her, staring blankly at the wall. The blanket had started to fall from her shoulders.

  While Rick called the police, Jackie said to Melissa, “Honey, you have to listen to me.”

  Melissa nodded, blinked, and focused on Jackie.

  “I’m going to get you a lawyer. An ambulance is on its way and they’ll take you to the hospital. They’ll do a rape kit and X-rays and I’ll make sure they look for signs of abuse. Okay? You have to cooperate, but do not talk to the police without your lawyer.”

  “You’re the police.”

  “I’m your sister. All I know is that Tom raped you and you stabbed him.”

  “We’re married. It’s not rape.”

  “It is, Melissa. If he forced himself on you, in you, and you didn’t want it, and you told him you didn’t want it, that’s rape. Understand?”

  She nodded, but Jackie didn’t think it had sunk in.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “What?”

  “Tom—Rick is a nurse, right? Can he help him?”

  “Tom is dead, Melissa.”

  “No—he can’t be dead.” She jumped up and Jackie pulled her back down.

  “You can’t go in there. He’s dead. He will never hurt you again. Understand? But you still need to listen to me. For the first time, please listen to everything I tell you.”

  Melissa broke down into hysterics. “I can’t live without him. He’s my husband. I k-killed my husband.”

  Rick had the foresight to bring his medical bag. “Melissa, deep breaths. Slow, deep breaths. You need to control your breathing.”

  “I killed him. I didn’t mean to. I love him. I love him.”

  Jackie stepped away and let Rick take care of Melissa. Jackie didn’t know what to do right now, but she could talk to the cops when they arrived.

  “Jackie, take care of TJ,” Melissa said, her voice surprisingly monotone. The low, even tone was somehow even worse than the hysterics.

  “You’re going to take care of TJ.”

  “I don’t deserve him. I killed his father. He’ll never forgive me.”

  “Don’t talk like that. Melissa, we’re going to get through this. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Didn’t I tell you that I’d always protect you?”

  “You always protect me,” Melissa said. She put her head down and closed her eyes.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jackie asked.

  “Shock,” Rick said. “She hasn’t processed everything yet.”

  They heard the ambulance and police cars in the distance.

  “Jack? Are you okay?”

  �
�Tom is dead. Melissa killed him.” She turned to face her lover. “Maybe there really is a God.”

  # # #

  AFTERWORD

  (Pam Stack – TBK)

  A Survivor Story

  LEADING A DOUBLE LIFE

  By Jeanmarie Collins

  When his fingers were around my neck, squeezing, I had those flashbacks. You know, the kind they say one has when life is playing in fast motion, backwards in the head? Yeah, that kind.

  My mother had decided to marry a creepy, not-so-sane guy in Indiana, and because I had refused to live with them, I remained in the dingy little apartment to finish up my junior and senior year of high school. I was sweet sixteen, living on $60 a month. Though I was very popular in school (student council, concert choir, theatre,) when I left school for the day, I came home to a lonely two room efficiency. So, when the day came that my friend Karen and I were doing nothing but looking for boys, we were pleasantly surprised to find two guys working maintenance at the apartment building. It was 1971 and both males looked like hippies, each in their own groovy, far out way. The one I was immediately attracted to looked just like Kris Kristofferson and though he was shy, he quickly showed he was also interested in me.

  His name was Danny. Soon, we were together from the moment I came home from school until I left for school the next morning. He had dropped out of high school, never gotten his diploma, and was a rebel. My conservative friends did not understand the attraction at all, except for a few girlfriends who saw him as “yummy.” All my thoughts of college went out the beaded window, and with no parental figure to guide me, I decided that being with someone was more important than college.

  It’s almost funny now to think about how independent I really was, basically raising myself at that age, but I became convinced that I “needed” someone to take care of me. I was still a kid, not an adult. I was nowhere near emotionally mature enough to be making decisions about the rest of my life. Yet, here I was, longing to belong to some strong guy who could protect me from all the bad things in the world. Irony.

  Danny had come from a very dysfunctional family. His mother had an affair, got pregnant by a man other than his father, and left the farm where he had been introduced to life for fourteen years. His father was a decent kind of man with German heritage, and had lost control of his three children to their mother who had whisked them away. Danny was forced to grow up fast and make a living. He loved his siblings, but I knew he held a deep seeded resentment of his mother. Later, I would think that every time he hit me, he was really hitting her.

  While we were dating, Danny would drink. In the beginning, he did not take drugs; that came later. He was a dirt bike competition rider on the weekends and was pretty good at it, often winning trophies. As I was young with an hour glass figure in those days, I quickly learned that I was his trophy, too. His friends were uneducated, blue collar workers. When they did work, they partied as often as possible. There was always a lot of booze, mainly beer. I am certain I was odd to his buddies and their girls because not only did I, thanks to my mother, speak properly, but I didn’t like the taste of alcohol. Beer was disgusting to me. Yet there I was every weekend and, indeed, most evenings, watching Danny guzzle it down. I would go to school, attend a council meeting, run for V.P. of my senior class and the drama club, and carry on with my friends who were as opposite from Danny’s friends as they could be. It was if I were leading a double life.

  My father, who was in Miami, knew nothing of Danny. I had moved to Indiana when I was fifteen with my mother. My dad had set the standard in my head of what marriages were supposed to be. A man had many mistresses, came home at five and expected dinner on the table, and beat his wife and children for good measure. I distinctly remember him picking up my mother and throwing her across the living room until she hit the wall. On many occasions, my older sister would stand in front of him to keep him from knocking his youngest daughter to the floor. It didn’t take alcohol to motivate this behavior. My father was a deeply disturbed man, who had been raised in a Masonic Home in middle Georgia, after being taken from his own mother who had an affair with a man other than his father, who later committed suicide. My father, who had been at a fair, ran home to tell his daddy all he had seen. He found his body on the floor, where he had shot himself in the head. My dad was seven years old. My grandfather had been a Mason, and in his suicide letter, he asked for the Masons to take the children from their mother and raise them. They did, but at a great cost to their wellbeing.

  My father was a smart, handsome, strong willed fellow who built a raft to sail down the Ocmulgee River to escape the Home, that in those days, was more like those orphanages you hear about that beat the children when they disobeyed until they bled. George Collins always disobeyed. He would run away. They always caught him. Many years later when he died, I decided to weigh all that happened in his horrible life and find forgiveness; probably for my own soul more than his. So, this man, my distorted father, had been my role model for what to expect from husbands and men you loved.

  My mother, a basically good and loving woman, was not guiltless in my mind’s formation. She had been raised by a strong woman, whom I adored, but my mother was timid and tiny, and often hid under tables or in closets with her siblings to escape any confrontations that happened between her own parents. She learned to be submissive and brought three children into the world with this man, whom she loved. She died in April of 2016 and my heart continues to hurt for her. She married two more times after my father because she thought she could never stand on her own. Both were ignorant men, with husband number two eventually coming after her with a gun. But she was long gone. I, on the other hand, was still in Indiana with Danny.

  While my friends went off to college, I stayed around. Against my better judgment, married Danny. I was barely nineteen. I loved Shakespeare and Dickens and the idea of being married. I, of course, realize now that because I had not had a family unit in such a long time, that this was what really led me to marrying so young. Oddly, because I learn lessons slowly, it was also the reason for my second marriage, setting aside my dream of acting professionally. But that is another story.

  Danny had aunts that I adored. They were always so kind to me and thought I was sophisticated. At one point, I thought I was pregnant. Everyone was so excited. I was not pregnant. God, in His wisdom had kept that from happening. I hardly ever saw my friends that had remained in town. I got a job and was contributing to the household, but Danny did not want that. He wanted me at home. He had taken a job as a construction worker and when there were projects, the money was good, but when the work became scarce, money was tight. I think it was during those times that he drank more than usual. Now that we were married, I wanted him to slow down on his drinking and not go on the wild bike racing weekends anymore. One night, his excessively drunk buddy was driving and we were almost killed taking a curve on a back road in Kentucky. After that, I had refused to go with him to competitions. I desperately wanted us to settle and have a nice home and a family.

  My way was not Danny’s way. He drank more, he came home very late, and sometimes not at all. I began to get very upset about his behavior. The first time I did, he struck me across the face so hard, it knocked me to the ground. I was stunned. Of course, he was sorry. He would never do it again. The next time, he proceeded to yank me up by my hair while I was on the floor. Each episode progressed, adding more physical abuse. I was left with bruises and fear. One afternoon, I ran to his closest aunt’s house, where he would follow and calmly, almost methodically, continue to circle their dining room table until he caught me. His aunt and uncle quietly said, “Danny, you shouldn’t do this.” They never attempted to stop him. Nor, did his mother, or siblings. As my step mother had made it clear I could not come home to Miami, and my mother was now with husband number three in Georgia, I felt I had nowhere to go to escape. I was trapped.

  In the early 1970’s, I was not aware or privy to shelters for battered women. I went to hi
s sister’s house once, but I knew I could not stay there. When Danny showed up begging and pleading for me to come home, with promises to never raise a hand to me again, I followed him back. This was to become a pattern. There always is a pattern in these situations. Beaten, flee, succumb to begging for forgiveness with promises, return; repeat.

  It wasn’t so much that I loved him. I was more afraid of what would become of me and where I would go than I was of being hurt. As disgusted and angry as I had been with my own mother, I discovered I was repeating her life.

  If we could only know the things earlier, that come to light later in life, the world and our existence would become much easier. I know now the power of manipulation. I know that desperation leads one to do things we are ashamed of later, or, sometimes, at that very moment. I understand that every human on earth wants to be loved and will go to any length to obtain what they think they need.

  I could tell that I was being worn down. I stopped caring about my looks, about maintaining relationships with any of my high school friends, about feeling ultimately that there was anything really any better that was going to happen for my life. As I became less Jeanmarie, the more Danny ignored me, except to release his frustrations either through sex or beatings. I remember feeling one day that I was disappearing into the walls of the house. Even though I was continuing to work, I shied away from having long conversations with fellow employees, as I felt they would see right through me. I was a damn good actress, but a terrible liar. I would see families come into the store, husbands who were sweet to their wives and children and I would think, “Yeah, but what happens when they get home?” It was difficult to believe that anyone had a “good marriage.” What was that? To have a man treat a woman with true respect was so foreign to me. I had been so abused as a child, I thought that I was damaged goods, so why would I think that any man would want to show me respect?

  Many strong, independent women have difficulty understanding why a woman would allow herself to be abused. I look back on those days and I shudder. That young woman was surely not me! But our minds become so conditioned--molded, if you will--by our past, and with each abuse, we lose more of our identity.