Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  Robin started out asking him how close he was with Mom, and Daniel testified that he was very close to her and to me and Rickie. He said that he and I went to Disney and played basketball together, and that he and Rickie would just talk.

  As he testified about having a knife to protect himself from Cheryl, and about Rickie sharing stories of abuse, I wrote on my legal pad to Toni, “It hurts to know that Daniel and I were best friends and may never be able to build that friendship.”

  Robin asked him about their visit to the house on my birthday, and he testified that I prevented him from using the bathroom in Ann’s room. I wrote on my pad, “He went into the other bathroom because of Susan’s mother’s dog.” He testified that he didn’t remember if I told him why he couldn’t use that bathroom and directed him to the other one.

  The prosecution didn’t have very many questions for him, once Robin laid out a foundation that Daniel had told me and Rickie about his abuse and that we weren’t happy with his mom. He testified that he had been forbidden to talk to me since 2003 and that he had visited Rickie in jail a few times.

  When Diana got up, his demeanor changed. I wrote to Toni, “Now he smiles when Diana gets up.” She started out asking him about all of our trips to Disney together, and all the family outings that we all took, Mom included. She took him down a meandering path, talking about how he and I had a different relationship than the one he had with Rickie, that he told Rickie things he didn’t tell me and Rickie told him secrets, too.

  “He acted out for you,” Diana stated, “how violent and angry his father had gotten at him, one time using a ladder and throwing it around. Is that right?” Daniel said, “Yes, one time.” Diana continued, “And he told you, one time, that his father had sodomized him. Raped him.” Daniel nodded and said, “Yes.”

  After a long pause, Diana asked, “You and Rickie had kind of a pact between you, that you would tell each other secrets, correct?” Daniel agreed. “When you would tell him that his mother loved him, he told you to quit talking like that. Correct?”

  “I don’t know if he used those words, but he didn’t like that,” Daniel replied.

  She asked, and he answered, that Rickie had told him tales of traveling the country, helping abused kids, and that he knew how to rob banks and commit other crimes, like hacking into bank accounts. He told Daniel that he knew how to kill people and make it look accidental, or like suicide. Daniel confirmed all of those things.

  Diana’s final question was, “If you were going to get help on the computer from anyone in the house, would it be Stacey?” and Daniel responded, “No.”

  With that, he was done and gone, sent back out of the courtroom and back out of my life.

  CHAPTER 31

  My Brother, My Protector

  It was day three of the trial, and I wasn’t any less terrified, even though many of my friends were assuring me that there was nothing being said that was actual evidence that I was guilty of anything. “There’s plenty of reasonable doubt!” they would say, but it wasn’t enough to make me feel better.

  It was odd, during lunch, to go downstairs to the little courthouse diner and eat with the jurors sitting at tables nearby. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, but Diana assured me that it was probably good for them to see me out in public, like a normal person, surrounded by my friends from GCR, who obviously liked me and didn’t treat me like a murderer. As long as no one discussed the trial in their presence, there was no issue.

  So while my initial tension was starting to alleviate, the overall tension in the courtroom that day was palpable because everyone knew that Rickie, himself, was going to testify. When Robin called him to the stand, we could hear his shackles first, as he was brought in, wearing blue prison scrubs, unshaven, his hair disheveled. He was sworn in and sat down heavily, looking around the room nervously. Robin started, “Can you tell us your name please,” and he said, “Richard Kananen.”

  Robin continued, “Mr. Kananen, do you have somewhat of a hearing loss?”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, his face bursting into an impish grin. Robin was having none of it. “Do you have a hearing loss?” and he replied, “Yes, left ear.”

  Robin led him through statements about his sentence, that he pleaded guilty to second-degree and got thirty years. His replies were rushed, so Robin asked him to slow down. “Mr. Kananen,” she asked, “did you kill your mother?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And was someone there to assist you?” she asked.

  “Yes. Stacey, my sister.”

  Robin asked, “Do you see Stacey in the courtroom?” and he looked at me. “Yes, she’s sitting over there at the table.” I couldn’t even look up at him.

  They talked about our abusive upbringing, with Rickie using as few words as possible, his responses rapid-fire. He told about beatings he received for no infraction, depending on our father’s mood. Robin asked if our father drank alcohol, and Rickie said yes. “How would that affect him?” she asked.

  He shot back, “It didn’t matter. It made him worse sometimes, it made him better sometimes.” I scribbled, “Not true. He was much, much worse when he was drunk—sober he was almost human.”

  When asked about our mom, he said, “Sometimes she would intercede, sometimes she wouldn’t.” As he testified, Cheryl sat in the gallery, sobbing. I wrote, “I can’t look at him. Is that bad? Bothers me. I have feelings.” Toni patted my hand, as if to say, “It’s okay.”

  He told the jury that he witnessed verbal and physical abuse between our parents, beatings, thrashings, whippings. He testified that he was sexually abused by our father, behind closed doors, starting at age six, until he was about ten or eleven.

  Rickie testified that our father beat both me and Cheryl, as well. He said that we moved around a lot, because our father would get in trouble. She asked how his hearing loss occurred and he rapidly stated, “Took a double barrel shotgun blew it off in my ear when I was sleeping.”

  She asked him about the fires in our homes, and he said that the first one occurred in Maine. He said he was in high school. “Who got your sisters out of the house?” she asked.

  “I did.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Broke a window. Got ’em out of the window.”

  “Where were your parents?”

  “Outside.”

  “Did your father make any effort to rescue his daughters?”

  “No.”

  “What was his reaction when you got your sisters out?”

  “Wasn’t too happy.”

  “What was your mom’s reaction?”

  “Wasn’t too happy.”

  There was more testimony about the abuse, about our father putting him in chains and locking him in the closet. Robin led him into testimony about when he moved in with me and Susan because “it seemed like a good idea,” and that he became aware of how much money Grandpa had left to Mom. So far, there was nothing new being said on the stand. I was just concerned that he look drugged and rehearsed, answering too quickly, in too pat a way, with creepy, weird facial expressions.

  Robin asked him, “Did you ever discuss with Stacey killing your mother?”

  “Yes,” he said, without hesitation.

  “Did you two plan to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you were planning to kill your mother, what did Stacey say about how she wanted to do this?”

  “She just wanted her dead.”

  “Did you discuss with her ways to kill your mother?”

  Rickie replied, “No, we decided on suffocation.”

  He told Robin that we decided to use a Taser to incapacitate Mom, so we could suffocate her. He said we talked about it quite a few times.

  She abruptly changed the subject. “Did you tell Daniel about your sexual abuse?”

  “No.”

  “Did you and Stacey approach Chris that Cheryl should move out?”

  “No.”

  “What,” Robin asked, “w
as your mother’s reaction to what was going on with Cheryl?”

  “She was gonna take the kids away from my sister.” He said that he didn’t want Mom to take her kids because most of the time she wasn’t a good mother. She didn’t protect us children.

  Robin asked, “Was your mother, herself, physically abusive to you?” and Rickie, surprisingly, said, “I won’t answer that,” and grinned. “Mr. Kananen, you’re under oath and you have to.” He started laughing and shook his head, no.

  “Your Honor, may we approach?” she asked Judge Lubet, and she and Diana went up to the bench for a private conversation with the judge. After they returned to their places, the judge told Rickie, “Mr. Kananen, sir, you’re under oath here. And you’re in this courtroom as a witness and it’s not a matter of a Fifth Amendment right not to testify because this can’t incriminate you any further. You’ve already admitted to what you’ve done. Therefore, the question I have for you is, are you going to answer the question?”

  “Yes,” Rickie answered, quickly.

  “Thank you. Let’s continue.”

  Rickie’s demeanor changed. Suddenly he looked dark and sullen. Robin asked again, “Mr. Kananen, did your mother ever physically abuse you?”

  “Yes.” He told her it happened about once a month, and he never saw her abuse either me or Cheryl. I wrote on my pad, “He is lying. My mother never hit or abused any of us.”

  Immediately, Robin brought him back to questions about our plotting to kill Mom. He said we had talked about it for several months, over ten or twelve discussions. He told Robin that he went to the Spy Store to buy a Taser. He told her that after Susan went to Hudson to pick up Ann for the cruise, he and I took Mom to Fazoli’s and a movie, Charlie’s Angels II. I wrote, “I saw that movie prior to that.”

  He testified that when we went out, I had the Taser behind my back, underneath my clothes. I scribbled, furiously, “How could I go to dinner and a movie with a Taser under my clothes? That is large to supposed to have hidden under my clothes and no one to have noticed.”

  He said that we met Mom at her house and went to Fazoli’s, and then the movie, then back to Mom’s house. He said we went into the house, and he went into the dining room area. I wrote, “That is quite a story he’s weaving. We would not have been asked inside after dinner and a movie because she would have had to get ready for work the next day.”

  He said, “I sat down, at the dining room counter, Stacey and my mother were standing over there talking. And a few minutes later Stacey Tasered her and said, ‘Rickie help me,’ and Mom was on the ground. Then I took my bandana out and suffocated her.”

  “Did you know Stacey was going to use the Taser?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Because,” Rickie said, “she had it with her and the opportunity was there.”

  “Had you had a plan of what would happen after your mother was Tased?”

  “Not really, just ca … cam … came that way,” he stuttered. “Tasered, she fell down, suffocated her. Took a bandana, put it over her mouth and nose.”

  “How long did you keep that bandana on her?”

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  By this time, I was trying to maintain my composure, but not doing very well, just picturing what he was describing, my mom’s murder. I wrote, “He has quite a story. I am very upset by all of this. How are people ever going to believe that I had nothing to do with this?”

  “Were there things that came out from the Taser into your mother?” Robin asked, and I bit my lip. I couldn’t let myself cry. Not now, not with Rickie watching me.

  “Yeah, things came out. Came out,” he said.

  “What was your sister doing as you were suffocating your mother?”

  “She was standing over there, over me.”

  “Was she saying anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “When did you pull the bandana off?”

  “After a while.”

  “Why?”

  “There was no more breathing.”

  “When you did that, what happened?”

  “Told Stacey to go in the garage and get some duct tape. She duct-taped her hands and her feet.”

  “Why did Stacey duct-tape her hands and feet?”

  “For when we carried her in the … car … hands wouldn’t fall over,” he slurred. He said that we took Mom to the storage unit in the trunk of her car and that I drove. He said we put her body in a freezer, parked the car in the storage unit, and went back to the house. I wrote, “I hate the ‘we’—I didn’t have a part in this. How do I prove this?”

  “About what time of night was this that you were driving to your storage unit?”

  “About 8:00, 9:00.”

  The two of them went on and on, Rickie telling the jury that he and I gathered up Mom’s clothes and some family photos in some trash bags and took them to the dump. The reason “we” put the papers on the counter, in spite of everyone knowing that Mom was a neat freak, was to give the appearance that she had left. He also said that the weekend that Susan went on her cruise, he and I dug the hole in my backyard and buried Mom’s body, and that I chose the location.

  Robin asked, “You take any appliances out of your mother’s home?”

  “The refrigerator.”

  “Stacey ever ask you why you’re having an extra refrigerator in the house?”

  “No,” he said, and I scribbled on my notepad, “I did ask him why he moved the refrig. He chose not to answer me. I grew up not asking questions twice. It got you in trouble.”

  Robin brought the conversation up to December 22, the day we attempted to commit suicide. Hearing him tell his version of that day brought back all of those horrible memories of how desperate I felt that day, just wanting to not know what he had done. I wrote, “This is harder to go through than I thought.”

  “Any discussions between the two of you on the method of suicide?” Robin asked.

  “Through exhaust pipe from the vehicle.”

  “When you went in Wal-Mart, did both of you go in the store? Were you together the entire time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever hold a weapon to your sister? As you’re walking in Wal-Mart, are you holding onto her?”

  “No.”

  That was a lie. I scribbled, “I didn’t go in Wal-mart. I waited in the truck very upset, confused and depressed.”

  Robin took him down the path of that day, leading him into telling about what we did when we got into the storage unit. I could tell it was difficult for him, too, because he was shaking, practically vibrating, as he talked. She asked him to identify the notes that he wrote and read them aloud.

  She showed him lots of pictures to identify, the truck in the storage unit, the bottle of NyQuil, my backyard, and the steel plate that he used to cover the hole he said I dug. My head was reeling with all of the visual evidence of my mother’s horrible demise. I wrote on my legal pad and showed it to Diana, “The pictures of the backyard, the holes in the ground and steel plate and the visual that is in my head about duct tape is just overwhelming. Can we disprove any of this that he is saying?” Diana just nodded. It was her turn to question Rickie.

  She dove right in with the tough questions. “Your mother was physically and sexually abusive to you as well as your father, correct? And your mother quit abusing you about the time you were a teenager, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The fact that your mother stood by while your father burned down two of your homes with you and your siblings in it is something you never forgave her for, correct?”

  He answered very quietly, “Correct.”

  Diana continued, “When you left home at twenty two and your father told you that you couldn’t have contact with anybody remaining in the household, that was not a surprise to you, right? And he told you that if you tried to have contact with your sisters he would coerce them into saying that you had sexually abused them?”

  “Yes.”
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  “And you believed that he could do that?”

  “Yes.”

  She talked to him about how he became close with Daniel. She asked, “You told him about how abusive your father was to you? You told him about how your father raped you?”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel that you traveled around the country helping children who were abused.”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel that you know how to rob a bank.”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel that you knew how to plant drugs on abusive fathers so that the police would arrest them instead of you.”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel that you were learning how to hack into computers and into bank accounts.”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel that you knew how to kidnap people.”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel you knew how to kill people and make it look accidental.”

  “No.”

  “You told Daniel you knew how to kill people and make it look like suicide.”

  “No.”

  “At family gatherings you would tell your sisters and your brother-in-law and your nephew that you traveled around saving children from abusive parents.”

  “No.”

  “At family gatherings, you would tell your family that you were hired by a cartel to go commit crimes and paid very well when you succeeded.”

  “No.”

  “You would tell your family at gatherings that your business had been sold so that you would have the time and money to travel the country taking abusive parents out of their children’s homes.”

  “No.”

  Watching her was dazzling, and I was hoping that the jury was paying attention to all of the lies she was catching him in. She changed the subject. “At some point according to Daniel after he talked about his mom going to classes, he indicated to you things were getting better.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he indicated to you that things were improving in the late summer of 2003, that his mom was being nicer to him and she seemed to be dealing with her anger in a better way. He had confidence that this was going to be a long-term improvement and you believe that your mother, Marilyn, also saw this improvement over at that household.”