Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  Well, that’s what he did, and I was glad that I had chosen to surrender to the Pasco sheriff, because no one in that department had a personal grudge against me. They were just assisting the Orange County boys. Detective Hussey and his partner took me into an interrogation room at the Pasco Sheriff’s Office. I sat there and said absolutely nothing. He asked me, “Do you have anything to say?”

  “No.” Not only was I angry, but I wasn’t stupid. I’ve seen enough cop shows to know better than to talk to anyone who wants to take you down, not without a lawyer.

  He pushed a little bit further. “Your brother tells us you killed your parents. Don’t you think you should defend yourself?”

  “No.”

  “What does no mean?”

  “I don’t have anything to say,” I replied. I knew the game by now. I was glaring at Detective Hussey, and he said, “You need to just go ahead and tell me. I have pictures of you in the shop where your brother bought the Taser.”

  He asked again, “Do you have anything to say?” and I said no. He asked, “No, you weren’t there?” and I replied, “No, I have nothing to say.”

  With that, he stated, “Well then, you’re formally under arrest,” and I replied, “I’m aware of that.” He Mirandized me and left the room. He left with me his partner, who played good cop and said, “Look, it will go easier if you just tell us what happened. Here’s my business card, if you want to talk to me.”

  I said, “I have nothing to say.”

  He said, “You’re making it harder on yourself.”

  I said, “I have nothing to say.”

  I cooperated with them back in ’03 and ’04 and they screwed me in ’07. You think I’ve got something to say? I’ve got nothing to say. I wanted to see the pictures they had. They got pictures? Bring ’em on, buddy, because they don’t exist. You got the man who worked at the store where my brother bought the Taser swearing he saw me there? Bring him to the courtroom.

  Bring it on.

  For all of my bravado, though, Hussey scared the hell out of me. I sat in that interrogation room and listened to the man lie about all these photographs he’s had since 2003. Well, if he had them, I would have been arrested in 2003. He had nothing. He wanted me just to say something to save face and save a murder trial. I don’t save face on something I didn’t do. And up until nine days ago, I was a witness. It took nine more days for them to transfer me from the Pasco County jail to the Orange County jail. Those days before the transfer were stressful and horrible, as I reluctantly became acclimated to the concept of incarceration. They tell you when to shower and what to eat, drink, and any other normal activities or needs, and I had just been labeled a murder suspect. People look at you funny when you have that label. It wasn’t a label that I enjoyed having. The place was so crowded that they didn’t even have enough beds, so I had to sleep in what looked like a plastic boat, on the floor. However, the building was relatively new, and the food—such as it was—was edible. I kept to myself, for the most part, and people left me alone. The conditions weren’t bad, per se, but the reason I was there was enough to make it unbearable.

  Susan came to see me every day, frantic with worry. I didn’t have a lawyer because I didn’t think I needed Michael Gibson anymore, so I had let him go years ago. Susan was making phone calls, trying to find out how to get some good legal counsel, but the prices were astronomical.

  It was looking like the public defender was going to be in my immediate future, and I was mortified. God bless the folks who work as PDs, but we’ve all heard horror stories about what can happen when you don’t have a private practice attorney for serious charges. The public defenders are overloaded and don’t have the time it takes to dedicate themselves to each and every case. Chances were good that I would end up having to plea-bargain my way into lesser charges and lighter sentences. I knew I was going to be in jail for a very long time, for crimes I didn’t commit. I spent a lot of time wavering between self-pity and sheer terror.

  Once I was transferred to Orange County, they dressed me up in the same kind of blue jumpsuit I’d seen Rickie wearing. I was assigned a bunk in a huge dorm room and quickly tried to blend into the scenery. God knows I’d had enough training in invisibility as a child.

  The next day, I went before the judge, who told me that I was being charged with murder in the death of my mother, and told me that the death penalty was being considered. The public defender, who was standing next to me, literally had to keep me from collapsing on the floor. I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t walk. My knees went weak and it was all I could do to not vomit. The one piece of good news was that, since Rickie had been appointed a public defender, it would be a conflict of interest for them to defend me. Eventually, I was appointed a private attorney, Diana Tennis, who specialized in death penalty cases. The bad news was that she was on a ten-day vacation. I was going to have to stay in jail for a while.

  At least in Pasco County I could eat the food. Orange County food was inedible. It took me a long time to acclimate because I was hungry all the time. All the time. I couldn’t get their food down and I was starving. I wanted to eat; I just couldn’t swallow it. I’d force it into my mouth and start to throw it up. It was horrible. I should have been able to eat noodles and rice, because I love those, but the noodles were like glue. All I tasted was salt and slime. The rice was so sticky I just couldn’t get it down. I could feel my body deteriorating from not eating.

  It’s funny what’s important when you’re locked up. I bought coffee packets at the commissary because they could be used as currency. I saw inmates make jailhouse “cocaine” out of powdered drink mix, sugar, a coffee packet, and a bottle of water. They whip it really fast until they get this frothy foam and then they down it. If they were coming down off of drugs, that’s what they’d do for a boost. No one can bring you anything from the outside world. Whenever Susan or Diane came to visit me, it was via video camera, and we weren’t even in the same building.

  There are some very scary people in jail, but some of the women I met were unfortunate souls who never stood a chance. One had been doing heroin since she was four—her mother taught her how; one was in for prostitution, which she had been involved in since she was a kid; another was just a drug addict. We would sit and play cards until they made us go to bed. And that’s how we got through the nights.

  We were in a dorm, like an army barracks. I bought a deck of cards at the commissary because sometimes we’d get banished to our bunks and weren’t allowed to speak, so the only thing to do was play solitaire. During the day, you either take a class to pass the time, or you watch TV and listen to the guards yell at you all day. You get two hours recreation a day, an hour in the morning and an hour at night. There was a basketball hoop outside, and if everyone was good, we got the basketball.

  Everyone had to wake up at 4:00 A.M. in case somebody had to go to court. Breakfast was at 4:30 so they could get to court. Even if nobody had to go to court, we were still up because they do the same process every day.

  Every night they came into the dorm with a bag of used disposable razors, which were sanitized and reused until the blades went dull, in case you wanted to shave. And you didn’t talk when you were in the shower. Didn’t even say “good morning” because they’d throw you out. I saw them cut off the water in all the showers because two people were talking—you were soaped up and had to wait until they got female guards to remove the two who were talking and then they’d turn the water back on. If you had a male guard, you were not allowed to use the restroom until they got a female guard because there were open walls so they could see. So if you had to go, that was just too bad; you had to wait. If you had to go to the bathroom after lights out, too bad. No walking around after hours.

  While jail was a horrid experience, I have to give credit where it’s due and say that some of the correctional officers were really good people. When I got a postcard from my aunt saying that I was where I belonged, I went up to the guard, crying—it r
eally hurt—and she said, “You don’t want to cry in here.” I explained how devastated I was, and she asked, “Do you want to go into solitude just so you can deal with this?” I said no, and she said, “I’m telling you for your own safety, you have to stop crying right now because I won’t be able to protect you from all these girls.” She explained that they’d think I was weak and bad things could happen. So we talked for a while and she really helped me.

  Friday and Saturday nights we got to stay up late because there were no classes and no court on the weekend. The guard on watch those two nights was a really nice lady. We’d have talent contests and she’d give out candy to the winner. She would talk to us like we were human beings. She understood, shit happens, sometimes you’re in here for the wrong reasons, sometimes you’re not supposed to be here. She said, “I’m not here to know why. I’m here to keep everybody safe.”

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, my court-appointed attorney came to see me. Diana Tennis was a very likable, no-nonsense person, and I grew to be very fond of her over the years. But my first meeting with her wasn’t under very good circumstances, so I probably wasn’t as nice to her as I could have been. I was innocent and terrified, and I had been waiting for what felt like time without end, in jail, while she was off on some trip. She began our working relationship by shaking my hand and saying, in essence, “I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself. I’ve been on vacation. I’ll be back to see you in four days.”

  Disappointed that she was leaving so quickly and with not so good news, I shrugged. “Okay, whatever.” She asked, “Are you alright? Do you need medication?”

  I said, “No, I don’t take medication. I’m fine. Whatever.”

  The thing about Diana that made me trust her so much was her demeanor when she came to me in jail: she didn’t look down at me. Some attorneys would come to see their clients, and they were awfully stuck-up. She came at mealtime, so they brought me a tray while we sat and talked, and of course I couldn’t eat. She said, “You need to eat something.”

  I told her, “I can’t eat this food. It makes me nauseous.” She said, “Well then, we need to get you out on bail.”

  Next time, when she came back, we met in a private room. She had a huge stack of papers, and as she was flipping through them she said, flat out, “Tell me why you’re in here, because this doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t believe they’re charging you with this when you were their star witness.”

  I was as baffled as she was. “I don’t know why, Diana, other than …”

  She interrupted, “I can tell you, Detective Hussey is trying to make a name for himself. Your name is on these business bank accounts and that’s all they have at this point.” She said, ruffling through the papers, “Richard has this story and he has this story and he has this story,” pointing them all out to me.

  I said, “Exactly.”

  She said, “We’re going for a bond in a couple days. You’ll be home that night.” I tried not to roll my eyes while I thought, “No I won’t, you nutcase. I’m in here for murder!” At that time it was only one count of second degree on my mother. They had not charged me in my father’s death yet.

  She and Susan had been talking on the phone, and Diana told her that the bond was probably going to be a large amount, and it would help if she could rally some friends or family to show up and sit in the gallery to show the judge that I had a normal life, with normal people who believed in me. Well, the only people I had left were my nudist friends, so that’s who Susan turned to. No one else in Florida, not the few friends I made growing up, none of my Disney coworkers, no one would stand by my side and say they believed in my innocence. But the people at Gulf Coast Resort promised to show up, and, to the judge’s surprise, they did en masse.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Sunshine State

  We moved to Orlando in late spring of 1977. On the way, our father made Cheryl ride in the moving truck with him to keep Mom from taking off with all of us in the car. When Cheryl got out of the truck when we arrived, she was badly bruised.

  Mom got a better job in Florida and his Social Security went up, so for the first time they could live in a decent house, and it even had a pool in the backyard. Our living conditions were definitely better.

  Rickie moved out almost immediately. I think he stayed as long as he did because we had always lived in the country and he finally felt comfortable moving out now that we lived someplace we’d at least have neighbors if something went wrong. Little did we know, that didn’t make a difference. There was a long period of time when none of us saw him because he was told by my father not to come back.

  That’s why I can’t say anything really horrible about my brother. Yeah, he threw me under the bus. But he also stayed years longer than he had to, just to keep us alive—he even quit college, all those years ago, because our father threatened to kill us if he didn’t come back home. We all seemed to have this delusional idea that we could keep one another alive, just by sticking together. I have a dual-edged emotional tug with him, and I think that’s why Cheryl wanted to believe his stories, no matter how implausible they were, because he was the one that kept us alive until we got to the city.

  Shortly after he moved out that first summer, he met a woman where he worked, a meat-packing plant, and they got married. She was probably a very nice lady, but she was my mother’s age, maybe older, with grown kids, and he was only twenty-two. I didn’t understand what he was doing, and I never got to know her very well.

  I lived in that house from seventh grade until I was twenty-two years old. That’s when I met Susan and she and I moved out to Kissimmee in early 1989. In the meantime, we tried to live a normal life, such as it was. There wasn’t much music in our home, but my parents used to listen to Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and Elvis Presley. I had a radio in my room that I turned on when they were fighting, to drown out the sound.

  If I wanted to watch TV, there was one in the kitchen or in my parents’ room. I’d come home from school in the afternoon and he’d be watching The PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, drinking his booze. He was an atheist, but there was something about Jim and Tammy Faye that intrigued him.

  Until we moved to Florida, Mom was not allowed to get a driver’s license. He drove her everywhere or she walked, so he had total control. Eventually, though, his eyesight faded because intense drinking will kill your vision, so he told her, “You need to get a driver’s license if you want to work, because I can’t drive you forever.”

  Well, that was his undoing, because he lost control. He couldn’t stop her from going where she wanted. She could make a twenty-five-dollar allowance go pretty far. He would fill her gas tank and hand over her money for the week. She always had money, and he didn’t like that.

  I don’t know the exact year, but Cheryl and I, one Christmas when we were in our midteens, saved up and bought a mother’s ring at Kmart for forty dollars. We were so proud that we were able to do that, to show her that we loved her, because she sure didn’t get any appreciation from him. That money was just about everything we had saved, and then we realized we forgot to buy something for him. That year, Mom helped us out and got him cigarettes and a bottle of booze and marked it from us kids.

  We did try to make our lives feel normal, like the time that Cheryl and I attempted to throw our parents a twenty-fifth anniversary party. Their anniversary was on a Wednesday, and we were planning a party for Saturday, with a few of the neighbors. We hadn’t been in that house very long, so they really didn’t know any of us—or our family dynamic—that well.

  We came home from school on Wednesday, and he said to Cheryl, “Aren’t you making a cake?” He had never asked about an anniversary cake the whole time they’d been married, and they’ve never gone out for their anniversary. Cheryl, disappointed that the surprise was being spoiled, replied, “No, we’re planning a party for Saturday,” thinking that would calm him down. It didn’t. He screamed, “You fucking kids are useles
s! You don’t give a fuck about us. You didn’t even make a fucking cake for your mother!” and left to go to the bar.

  Cheryl and I made a chocolate mayonnaise cake, and when Mom came home she said, “Oh, how nice! You made a cake!” He came home, and when Cheryl said, “Here’s your anniversary cake,” he took it out to the backyard and threw it against the fence. He screamed, “You wouldn’t make it until I got pissed off and screamed at you, so what’s the point of having it now?” We didn’t have an anniversary party that weekend. We were grounded for two weeks. No phone or TV. Nothing but homework and sitting in our rooms.

  He was big on throwing food, as Cheryl even said during one of her TV interviews after my trial. She told the story about mashed potatoes being flung at every meal if you left a lump in them. The pot would sit on the table and he’d fling it at whoever cooked that day. It was not abnormal. We learned to beat those potatoes until they were almost like soup.

  Oddly, having a pot of potatoes thrown at your head was preferable to the alternative, because he usually had a loaded gun at the dinner table. One day, my father was drunk and threatening a neighbor when the police were sent to our house. My father had his pistol on the dining room table, and after many words with the officers he stood up and put his hand near the gun. He was taken down and arrested. My mother stayed home from work the next day and bailed him out of jail. Her three children could have banded together and said enough to put him away for a long time, but she said no. The good news was that he received probation for his actions.

  However, one day he was beating my mom so severely that I thought he was going to kill her—he said he was going to. I called the police telling them his name, probation, and his charges. Two officers came out to the house, and my father answered the door and said, “Everything’s okay.” They said, “Fine, we’re just checking on you,” and away they went. I got my ass beat for that. That was the last time I called the police.