Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  “What was the significance of that in comparison to the time frame that you had in which she was reported missing?” Robin inquired.

  “Well, she was reported missing the next morning. She did not arrive at work for her scheduled work shift. So last time that she went through the toll plaza, near her home, was after work on the afternoon prior.”

  When asked about that garage sale that I was already sick to death of hearing about, he testified, “I actually was off that day, but when you’re working a homicide case, you’re never off. So I just decided to go by and see what was going on.” He saw that we were having a garage sale, and he recognized me from my driver’s license photo. At that time, Robin asked Hussey to identify me in the courtroom, sitting between Diana and Toni. As he did so, I glared at him.

  He said that we were selling Disney collectibles and that Susan was carrying a box out of the garage full of something that he couldn’t see, and that she asked me, “What are we going to do with these?” and that I responded, “Mom wanted us to get rid of those.” I wrote, “Funny how Cheryl never told him that Susan and I worked for Disney and collected Disney.”

  Robin asked him about the checks and bank accounts, and nothing new was revealed. They were just reiterating testimony from previous witnesses from the banks. I wrote to Diana, “Really feel like he didn’t investigate the checks, he just decided that since one was made out to me, that I was guilty of stealing money so I must have killed my mother.”

  He told Robin that he talked to Rickie about coming in for an interview on December 22, and Robin asked, “Did you ask him to bring anyone with him?” Hussey replied, “I asked him to bring his … well, he said he was going to bring his sister with him.” I furiously scribbled on my legal pad, “Thanks Richard for offering to take me with him to the Sheriff’s Office. Yet Richard told me we were asked to come to Sheriff’s Office to talk about my mother’s missing.”

  Robin took him through the story, again, of our morning interview at the sheriff’s office and the subsequent suicide attempt. She asked him whether he let me know that I was a possible suspect, and he turned to the jury and said, smugly and officiously, “Yes, ma’am, I told her that there wasn’t a statute of limitations on murder and that at some point I intended to prove that she was involved in this and I would be coming to arrest her.”

  Yes, I remember that day well. I wrote on my legal pad, “It feels like Detective Hussey wanted me so bad in jail that he was going to believe anything to try to get me arrested.”

  They then began talking about Rickie’s plea agreement and subsequent interview with Hussey, wherein he told Hussey that I committed the murders. Robin asked if Rickie agreed to turn on me in exchange for special favors, and Hussey said, “At that point there wasn’t anything we could offer him. He had already been sentenced. There was nothing we could have done for him at that point.” Hussey neglected to mention that he and Robin had already arranged with Rickie, before the plea deal, to talk about me, so some sort of discussion had to have taken place. His turning on me wasn’t a surprise to anyone on that side of the courtroom.

  Finally, Diana had her turn to cross-examine the detective. One of her first questions ascertained that he was assigned this case for training purposes, that he was the “new guy on the block.” It was bizarre watching his demeanor change, now that Diana was at bat. His breathing speeded up, his posture changed—he fidgeted in his seat—and his eyes started shifting back and forth, trying not to look at me. I even wrote on my pad, “It is hard for me to look at Detective Hussey but he really can’t look at me in the eye.”

  Diana asked him about how I came to be interviewed by the police in December, and he agreed that it was because I talked to the bank and was given his number. Because the account was frozen, I called him and he called me back. Her tone made it very clear that I had done nothing wrong; I had done exactly what I should have. I left a message for him with my name and my phone number. I obviously wasn’t trying to hide anything.

  She pressed on. “At no time during the pendency of Richard’s case did you ever express concern that Stacey Kananen would perjure herself, or that you would be inviting false testimony by allowing her to testify against her brother, correct?”

  Hussey shrugged, shook his head, and said, “That was not my call to make.”

  “You didn’t know whether she was telling the truth or not. And it didn’t bother you,” Diana continued, “to have her testify in light of the suicide attempt because your mind was open to her having attempted to committing suicide due to the stresses of having been interrogated and finding out for the first time that her mother had been killed by her brother. Correct?”

  He shook his head dismissively. “I have no idea why.”

  “Certainly that’s a scenario that was highly possible, correct?” Diana asked.

  Hussey replied, in a mildly condescending tone, “Anything’s possible, counselor.”

  Diana got him to admit that there wasn’t anything about Mom’s murder that required a second person and then asked, “When you went to the jail on May 1, 2007, to talk to Mr. Kananen, you would have been well aware that he had given varying stories regarding the murder of his mother, correct?”

  “That is true, yes ma’am.”

  “And,” she continued, “you would certainly have reason to have some skepticism about what Richard Kananen would tell you, correct?” Hussey agreed. “And you had not followed closely the competency hearings regarding his mental health issues, is that right?” and Hussey replied, “No, I did not.”

  “But you knew that there had been questions raised as to his competency and mental wellness?” she asked, and he agreed, “Yes, I knew he had been evaluated.” She got him to admit that he even visited Rickie at the mental health facility and got a look at him. “And at that time,” Diana said, “he appeared unkempt and unbathed, his hair was grown out in a big shaggy mop, he had a big, full, not-shaved-in-many-weeks beard, and he had put his own feces on himself, correct?”

  Hussey agreed about my brother’s appearance but replied about the feces, “I had heard that. I didn’t witness it. I heard that he was doing that, yes.” Given Rickie’s condition, Hussey said, he was unable to talk to him.

  “So when you went in to interview him on May 1, 2007”—the day Rickie took his plea—“had you reviewed your report so you could take in any new version that Mr. Kananen told you and make some evaluation as to how likely it was?”

  Hussey shifted his eyes and replied, “We were preparing for trial, so yes, I had reviewed the case.”

  “And he tells you initially at the start of the story of how Mom gets killed that he and Stacey and Marilyn go to a movie and dinner on the tenth of September, 2003. And he tells you that they go to the 6:00 showing of Charlie’s Angels at the dollar theater on Colonial Drive.”

  “Charlie’s Angels II, I believe,” he corrected her, smiling.

  “Did you check to see if that was playing at 6:00 on that day?” she inquired.

  Hussey said, “I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”

  “Well, you know already that Marilyn Kananen was not at a 6:00 movie on September 10, correct?”

  He shook his head, confused, and said, “I don’t … I don’t know that. What …” He stopped talking and sat there twitching, as Diana crossed the courtroom toward the evidence table and shuffled through some papers, which she brought back with her to show Hussey.

  “Well, you talked about what’s been marked as State’s Exhibit 31, the E-PASS transponder record, correct?”

  Hussey just sat there.

  “Do you recall talking about that?” Diana pressed, and he sprang back to life.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you recall talking about the last transponder entry on September 10, 2003, at 5:53 in the afternoon being on her way home, where she would have been located at University and 417, correct?”

  “That’s correct,” he admitted.

  “Okay, so she wasn’t si
tting in a theater over on Colonial at seven minutes to 6:00, correct?”

  “I would say you’re right.”

  I loved Diana Tennis so much, at that moment, and had a hard time not grinning from ear to ear, but I was busting with glee, inside. I scrawled on my legal pad, “Never questioned Richard about any of the story even if the evidence didn’t support what he was told!”

  “In fact,” Diana continued, “she’s a good fifteen or twenty minutes from home, correct?”

  “She’s probably ten or fifteen minutes, yes.”

  “Okay. And so you knew from talking to these friends and neighbors and family members how regimented Marilyn Kananen was.”

  “A little bit.” Hussey said, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Diana, “Yes, ma’am.” He started breathing heavily as she continued.

  “So she’s not home until, call it 6:15.” Diana plowed on as Hussey’s discomfort became more pronounced. “You knew that she was somebody who wore work clothes to work, and not-work clothes to not work, correct?”

  He had to admit, “I did find that out later, yes.”

  “So she would have had to, at the very least, change clothes, correct?” she asked, and he confirmed this. She continued, “And then they would have had to gotten to the theater. So a 6:00 movie just flat out didn’t happen.”

  He nodded. “Probably.”

  “So, say there was a 7:00 movie. Do you know if there was a 7:00 movie?” He did not. “Do you know if Charlie’s Angels II was playing on more than one screen?” He did not. “Alright, so maybe it was playing on more than one screen, maybe there’s a 7:00, if not, who knows?” She began pacing the courtroom. “Let’s say it’s a two hour movie. Does that sound fair?” He nodded. “So let’s say they go to a 7:00 movie and it let out at 9:00. He tells you they next have a sit down dinner at Fazoli’s, correct? So that gets them home by ten? Quarter to ten?”

  “Probably,” Hussey agreed.

  Diana went on, “The next day is the last working day Marilyn has before she’s planning to take off Friday for her trip, correct? Now you know enough about Marilyn Kananen to know that she is not going to go out with her kids until 9:30, 10:00 at night on a work night, the day before her last day at work, correct?”

  “I don’t …”—Hussey stuttered—“I don’t …” until Robin came to his rescue and said, in a bored voice, “Objection, speculative,” and the judge sustained it.

  Diana tried again. “Did you talk to any family members about whether it was likely that Marilyn Kananen would have gone out until 9:30, 10:00 at night on a work night?”

  Hussey started to respond, “I don’t recall …” and Robin popped up again, saying, “Objection, speculation.”

  Diana thought for a moment and rephrased. “Did you ever go back to Richard and say, ‘I have E-PASS documents and your story is not adding up’?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Hussey admitted.

  Diana, having beaten that dead horse until there was nothing left to flog, moved on to ask Hussey about the Taser dart found in Mom’s body. She said that the dart would have had two wires, but only one was found on Mom’s body. Her implication was that perhaps the Taser malfunctioned and didn’t actually take Mom down. It was grisly and I didn’t want to think about the fight that would have ensued between the two of them if that was the case, but it did, once again, cast doubt on Rickie’s story. Hussey couldn’t dispute her theory—in fact, he admitted that he couldn’t testify about how Tasers work.

  Diana paused for a long moment and started pacing again. “Fair to say, that you never asked Richard Kananen any questions about whether his Taser story made any sense, given the physical evidence?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Hussey confirmed.

  After some questions about whether or not the duct tape was tested for DNA (it was not), she asked Hussey, “At the time that you went by to look at the garage sale, had you ever been in Susan and Stacey’s home?” and he said he had not.

  “So at the time you called Cheryl to say, ‘Stacey is selling off your mom’s stuff,’ at that time you had never been inside their home.”

  Hussey replied, “That’s not exactly what I said to her.”

  “Whatever you said, made her very, very upset, correct?”

  He laughed and said, “Yes, ma’am, it did.”

  “And you did not give Cheryl a description, to actually determine whether any of the stuff you saw was from her mom. At the time you went by the garage sale, it was your understanding that Marilyn Kananen had a lot of Disney stuff. And were you under any understanding or knowledge about whether Stacey had a lot of Disney stuff?”

  “No, I did not.”

  Eventually, Diana brought it full circle. “You would agree that the thing that changed between April 30 of 2007 and May 1 of 2007 that led you to filling out an affidavit for an arrest warrant for Stacey Kananen was your conversation with Richard Kananen?”

  “It certainly was the main thrust, yes.”

  “You did not challenge him on any of the areas that I’ve asked you about here today, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And part of that is because it wasn’t your job to put your personal seal of approval on whether he was telling you the truth or not.”

  “That is true.”

  “I don’t have anything further,” she concluded. Diana had made her point. She was done with him.

  2 http://terryodell.blogspot.com/2009/06/homicide-hussey-copspeak.html

  3 E-PASS is the Orlando–Orange County Expressway Authority’s electronic toll payment system.

  CHAPTER 34

  “SHE IS MAD NOW!”

  The trial dragged on—we had been at this for a week and a half—and I was in absolute misery, 24–7. After we’d get out for the day—usually around 5:30 or 6:00—Susan, Diane, and I would go back to the hotel and I’d try to eat something, either room service or we’d grab something at a nearby restaurant. Sometimes we’d bring Chinese back to the room. I had no appetite, but I tried to choke down a few bites because I knew I had to keep something in my stomach. I was having a hard time sleeping, and the headache that had started on day one was relentless.

  We didn’t talk about the trial in the evenings much, because Susan had not testified yet. She was still being kept out in the hallway, outside the courtroom door. Mostly, I just tried to stay calm and deal with the pain between my ears. Between panic and constant headaches, I’d go to the courtroom and Diana would ask, “Did you sleep last night?”

  One morning I told her, “No, not really. I got an hour or two,” and she replied, “Dear God, do something to sleep. You’re starting to look crappy.” There wasn’t really anything I could do. I had quit drinking two weeks before the trial because I knew I had to be sober for this, I couldn’t swallow pills, and I certainly wasn’t going to take any liquid meds—the NyQuil suicide attempt had pretty much ruined that sort of thing for me. Besides, I didn’t want to be groggy when I woke up, so I just tossed and turned every night, knowing it would be over soon.

  The prosecution’s witnesses weren’t very damaging against me on their own, but Robin was certainly painting an overall picture of sneaky bank account activity. Robin pulled in Tom Vastrick, a handwriting analysis expert. It turns out that he helped us. Robin’s expert testified that he was positive that I wrote the notes to Susan and Cheryl, which I never denied, and that it was only probable that I signed the check. And then he said about the flyer that I admitted to making the day after Mom’s disappearance, “I was not able to determine whether or not she did it.”

  Robin had one more witness, Dr. Eric Mings, who testified that Rickie suffered from major depression with psychotic features, with hallucinations of our father visiting him in his cell, and was diagnosed at the hospital with schizoaffective disorder. He also said that Rickie told him that I helped him kill Mom.

  With that, the State rested its case and it was Diana’s turn. She called Susan as her first witness. Poor Susan was so
nervous. I could see her cues; she was talking a little faster than normal, and her breathing was nerve-wracked, but once Diana gave her a little “relax, it will be okay” speech, she settled in and her testimony began.

  First, Diana asked her about our family dynamic since we met in 1988, and Susan testified, in her mild New York accent, how we evolved into being very close: “We were all three of us were very close, Stacey and her mother, and myself and Marilyn. Through the years, Marilyn became almost—not the same kind of best friend Stacey was—but she was very close. I would call her a couple of times a week. We would do things, go to Disney all the time. We’ve gone to Disney conventions, out to eat almost every weekend.”

  Susan told the jury that we rarely saw Rickie—that he was always invited, if we knew where he was—but it was only occasionally that he was around. We really didn’t see him much until he moved in with us. Diana asked, “If you didn’t know him very well, why would you invite him to come live with Stacey?”

  She shrugged and answered, matter-of-fact, “He’s Stacey’s older brother. My brother was living with us for six years”—she laughed—“so I said, ‘Alright, your brother knows how to do this and do that,’ and we did recently find out he was separated from his wife, living in a shanty mobile home. Stacey asked, ‘Would you mind if I offer for my brother to live with us? He can help us fix the house up.’”

  Diana asked, when Susan said we didn’t charge him rent, “Was that because you didn’t need it, or he didn’t have it? Was he doing a substantial work that you thought was sufficient?”

  Susan laughed and said, “Since my brother already lived with us for six years and didn’t give us a nickel, and we didn’t need it, we were doing fine. I don’t believe in that with family anyway. Our theory was if Rickie moves in, instead of rent he can help us around the house and that’s what he did. We would come home and dinner would be already made. He would buy groceries and make us dinner.”

  Susan testified that, in previous years, she and I always took the week of our birthdays off to celebrate with her mother, whose birthday was the same week, and that for the few years before 2003, we started going on a cruise together.