Elizabeth fell apart as soon as they arrived. She couldn’t walk through the double doors between the hallway and the chapel because she could see all seven caskets lined up—their lids open for viewing—near the front of the room. It was too much for her to take, so she backed into the hallway until the coffins were out of her line of sight.
“You’re going to be okay,” Adrian said. “We’re all here for you.”
He and Cheryl each took one of Elizabeth’s trembling arms and guided her through the doors. She’d been weeping in the car, and she hadn’t stopped yet.
The family filled the chapel’s front row of pews and waited for the pastor to begin. He had never met the seven victims but, like many people living in the Fresno community, felt as if he knew them from the media coverage.
The pastor needed a list to keep track of the victims. As he began calling out the names of each child, Elizabeth could no longer control her loud sobbing.
“You shouldn’t be acting like this,” Rosemary scolded her. “You know the babies are okay. They’re in heaven now.”
Elizabeth thought her sister had no right to talk to her like that. After all, if Rosemary hadn’t asked Elizabeth and Marcus to raise her four daughters, the children might still be alive.
“Leave me alone,” Elizabeth said, looking her sister in the eye. “Just leave me alone.”
Nonetheless, she cried more quietly through the rest of the hour-long service of prayers and songs that seemed to blur together for the grieving family.
Elizabeth was the first in line to say good-bye to the children. She walked up to the smallest casket, which held little Jeva, and stopped. The baby had been so small for her age that she looked like a dress-up doll, lying in the padded ornate casket in her new outfit.
“I love you,” Elizabeth said quietly as she knelt down to kiss her granddaughter’s forehead. The cold, dense texture of the baby’s skin caught Elizabeth off guard. She had never touched a dead body and was surprised at how unnatural it felt to her lips. Jeva had always had such bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and warm skin.
Elizabeth repeated the gesture down the line, and Kiani and Rosie followed her lead, saying good-bye to their four children, Ethan, Sedona, Jeva, and Illabelle. The other family members did the same, each lingering at certain caskets.
Gypsy stayed the longest at Lise’s side. The figure in the casket didn’t look like Lise, even though she was wearing the blue dress Gypsy had picked out. The person at the funeral home who had done Lise’s hair must have straightened it first, then added tight, stiff curls with a curling iron. But Lise had never done it that way. Her hair was naturally curly, and that was how she’d worn it. Gypsy wished they’d done it right. But then again, she wished that everything about Lise’s life could have been different.
About ten members of the media and a few neighbors waited on the sidewalk outside the funeral home for the family to emerge. It was hot that afternoon, and the reporters, myself included, had taken off their suit jackets to stay cool. A thick black iron fence stood between us and the chapel’s parking lot. After about an hour, we heard voices coming out and figured it was the Wesson family, so one reporter peeked through the spaces between the rods of the gate to confirm it.
“It’s them,” he said. “They’re standing in a circle, but I can’t really tell what they’re doing.”
I had been sitting on the curb with a notebook, scribbling out a radio script. I was covering the story for radio and TV that night, and my cameraman was sitting next to me, ready to fall asleep from boredom. The sound of wings in flight made me jump to my feet.
“Get up. Start rolling,” I yelled, nudging my coworker harder than I should have.
Before I could get out my next sentence, the sight overhead took my breath away. A white dove rose above the fence and flew up into the cloudless sky. When I realized that the grieving family members were probably going to release more doves, I pushed my photog out of the way and stuck my face deep into the viewfinder.
“I need this shot,” I said.
Right on cue, eight more doves followed the same path. Through the lens, I slowly trailed them into the blinding sunlight. Even though I couldn’t see them as they flew into the brightness, I could still hear the nine birds fluttering their way to freedom, so I kept rolling.
THE FUNERALS WERE over, but life wasn’t going to get much easier for the family. We’d found out that Marcus was going to be formally charged with the nine murders the next morning.
Shortly after Marcus’s arrest, an “anonymous family member”—who I later learned was Gypsy—had called police and begged them not to let Elizabeth, Kiani, or Rosie visit Marcus in jail. She was afraid Marcus would instruct the women to kill themselves or others, and she was convinced they would obey. Although his visits were monitored, she said Marcus might send a message by using code words or phrases such as “go to the Lord” or send others “to the Lord.” The Fresno County Sheriff’s Department took the warning seriously and prohibited their most notorious inmate from getting any visitors other than his lawyers.
A hearing on the matter was set for a week after the funerals. I had another story to go to earlier in the day, so I arrived just in time, but I didn’t get a great seat. I had to lean around several other people to see the family sitting in the pew on the left side of the room.
My heart began beating a little faster when I saw two girls sitting next to Almae and Serafino.
They couldn’t be his daughters, could they? They’re so pretty.
The low hiss of whispering filled the courtroom. Had the mysterious Wesson girls shown their faces at last?
They both looked to be in their early twenties, maybe younger. One had porcelain skin and wore her long black hair pulled into a bun. She wore a royal blue button-down shirt and a below-the-knee black skirt with high heels. The other girl, who had darker skin, straight shoulder-length hair, and full lips, looked more like Marcus. She was dressed in a black V-neck shirt and a black skirt, and was wearing even higher heels.
My suspicion that they were related was confirmed when Marcus was led into the room. As he walked by the girls, he stopped and smiled at them. I was so busy watching him, I didn’t get a chance to see their reactions.
The judge saw no need for a hearing, determining that the prosecution could work something out with the defense, so it was over, just like that. Everyone but the reporters jumped up and flooded through the door, but we didn’t budge. We wanted to interview the newly available family members.
When the girls stood up, so did we, following them into the hallway like a row of ducks.
“Will you guys answer a few questions for us?” a reporter yelled out from the back of the line.
“We have a letter to read to you,” the girl wearing all black responded.
We eagerly guided the girls out to the front of the courthouse and surrounded them with a half circle of microphones.
I secured the closest spot but still had to stretch my arm as far as it would go, holding a TV microphone and my handheld tape recorder in that hand. I asked the question we all wanted to know: “Can you tell us your names and your relation to Marcus?”
“Yes, my name is Kiani Wesson,” the girl in black said confidently. “I am Marcus’s daughter.”
“And I’m Rosie Solorio,” the other girl said shyly. “I’m his niece.”
Kiani began reading her letter aloud without much emotion. I felt sorry for them. They sounded like windup dolls. Kiani was saying that Marcus was a good man and a good father and that the other side of the family was spreading lies about him.
I was so consumed by her comments, I didn’t realize that my outstretched arm had fallen asleep until it started hurting under the weight of the recorder and microphone. I switched the mike to the other hand and discreetly pumped my fist at my side to get the blood moving.
As soon as Kiani was done with the letter, the reporters began shouting questions. “Do you think your father is innocent?”
“Why do you think this happened?”
Kiani did most of the talking, but she didn’t give us any real answers. She just kept repeating what a great man Marcus was. It struck me as odd that she kept calling him by his first name rather than “my father.”
“So you want to visit him?” I asked. “What would you say to him if you could?”
“I hope to visit him,” she answered, looking directly at me. “What would I say? I don’t know what to say. I love him. I can say that.”
Hearing that made me want to shake my head in sadness. Instead, I nodded with an empathetic half smile, to make her feel as if she had given us a good answer. I was amazed at how brainwashed they were. Surely someone out there watching the news that night would do something. Maybe a psychiatrist would come forward to start the girls on an intensive therapy regime. Weren’t there cult rehabs? Deprogramming facilities, maybe? It was obvious these people needed to go through a Marcus Wesson detoxification.
THAT NIGHT, I studied the Wesson family tree the Fresno Bee had published. I needed to print a new copy, because mine was crumpled from so much use. I dragged my finger down the oddly shaped diagram and found Kiani and Rosie. My stomach dropped. Together, the two of them had lost four children in the murders, all fathered by Marcus, yet they were still defending him.
I felt sick the rest of the night, and I didn’t get much sleep, tossing and turning. I couldn’t believe how much Marcus’s daughter and niece were like Stepford Wives. I had expected them to be upset, but they weren’t. Marcus was still controlling and manipulating them, even from jail.
* * *
I WAS AWAKENED by my cell phone ringing early the next morning.
“Did you see the paper yet?” one of my coworkers asked.
“No, why?”
“I can tell I woke you up, sorry,” she said. “You should look at the paper, though.”
“I’ll go get it. Thanks.”
I hung up, stumbled to the door, and opened it to retrieve the paper from my front doorstep, where the wind was blowing the top fold up. I focused my tired eyes and jumped back. Kiani, Rosie, and I were featured on the front page in full color. The picture of me standing next to them with my microphone loomed large.
Why was I making such an ugly face? I look so mean.
When I got to work that day, someone had tacked up the photo and accompanying article on the bulletin board like a prize ribbon. Clearly, we owned the story.
ONE WEEK LATER, on April 7, the DA’s office slapped Marcus with thirty-three sex abuse charges on top of the nine counts of first-degree murder he already faced. The new charges were for raping and molesting six of his children and nieces. Five of the six victims had been under the age of fourteen when the alleged sexual abuse occurred.
The announcement was a disappointing and surprising setback for the defense attorneys, Pete Jones and Ralph Torres, who had come to court that day to ask the judge to dismiss the entire case against Marcus, contending that Sebhrenah was the one who pulled the trigger.
But the judge rejected the defense’s motion without batting an eye. I actually felt sorry for the defense team. Jones, a middle-aged man with a full head of gray hair, a bushy mustache, and big blue eyes, talked to the reporters afterward, lamenting his situation as “impossible.” Jones said Wesson had rejected his right to ask for a delay, and he complained that he hadn’t received any transcripts of interviews with witnesses. I could almost see the gravity of the case pressing down on his shoulders.
WHEN I INTERVIEWED Serafino and Almae that night, they seemed even more somber than before. I figured out that it would have been Sebhrenah’s twenty-sixth birthday that week. Now that the defense was pinning the murders on her, the boys felt protective of her, although they didn’t want to place the blame on their father either.
Given my exclusive stories and the picture of me with the girls in the paper, people started thinking of me as the authoritative Wesson reporter in town. I began seeing myself that way, too. The longer I covered the story, the harder I strove to uncover new details about the case. Elizabeth had done an interview with another TV station, and I desperately wanted to talk to her myself. During the first broadcast, she told them to disguise her identity, so the station showed only her hands to accompany the sound of her soft, wavering voice. All that did was add to the mystery surrounding “the wife,” one I wanted to solve more than ever.
Other reporters at my station had her phone number, but none was able to get her to go on camera again. I asked one of them to give Elizabeth my phone number and have her call me. The following Sunday afternoon, two hours before I had to be at work, she did.
“Alysia? This is Elizabeth Wesson. I know you’ve talked to my sons several times.”
“Yes, thanks for calling. How are you doing?”
There I go again, asking the same stupid question.
I was taken aback when she began crying uncontrollably.
After having watched the other women act like automatons, I found Elizabeth’s breakdown oddly refreshing. Finally, some emotion.
I had decided not to ask her any probing questions, and she opened up to me right away. She obviously had a lot to get off her chest, so I just listened to her cry, defend her husband, and blame Ruby and Sofia, while I interjected an “mm-hmm” every so often.
As I sat on my bed listening to her, I leaned back against the stack of pillows I’d propped against my wall while Cosmo rustled through the hula bed skirt underneath me, then jumped up onto the faux palm tree in the corner near the sandbox. The newest reporter at my station, I knew I was last in line for vacation time, so I had turned my bedroom into a makeshift Hawaiian vacation. I stared at the life-size hula girl cutout on the wall in front of me. It occurred to me that she looked like Elizabeth’s niece Rosie, only happier. I had yet to see Rosie smile.
Elizabeth told me that the county was taking good care of Ruby and Sofia, the prosecution’s star witnesses, but not Elizabeth’s side of the family. I understood how it worked, but she didn’t get it. She wondered why her kids were left homeless while the women she blamed for the murders were in protective custody. I knew if she and her children shifted their allegiance away from Marcus, they, too, would benefit, but I could tell from our conversation that that wasn’t going to happen. Still, I thought, they needed more help than Ruby and Sofia.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Elizabeth cried. “We have nowhere to go. I just don’t know how we’re going to make it.”
“There has to be someone who can help you guys,” I said. “Let me look into it and call you back.”
But Elizabeth wasn’t ready to hang up yet. She kept talking about the babies who were gone, and I felt it would be cruel to cut her off, so I continued to listen.
I ended up being half an hour late for work.
IT WAS MID-APRIL, and I couldn’t believe it was 90 degrees outside. Understandably, I didn’t mind sitting with the other reporters for hours in the air-conditioned courtroom during Marcus’s preliminary hearing, baking in the heat only when I did quick radio reports during breaks.
The testimony was intense as four Fresno police officers recounted what they’d seen in that back bedroom a month earlier. One of them talked about the intertwined stack of bodies and how he couldn’t tell which bloody arm or leg belonged to whom. He said he stuck his hand deep into the tangled pile past Lise, but all he felt was blood. No life, no pulses. When he realized he wasn’t going to be able to help any of the children, he started to cry.
Some testified that they’d taken time off and gotten counseling to deal with the trauma of that day. I only wished that the family would undergo similar therapy, but I figured they weren’t ready to delve into their troubled past.
Watching veteran officers grow visibly saddened as they recalled details of that day upset me, too. Shortly after the murders, Police Chief Dyer had said of his officers, “If someone wasn’t emotional,
I’d have to question if they have a heart.” Now I understood what he meant.
Given that Sebhrenah’s body was found on top of the pile with the gun under her, “The evidence is woefully slim that points to Mr. Wesson as the shooter,” Pete Jones said during the hearing. “All the circumstantial evidence points away from Marcus Wesson.” Marcus’s attorneys also argued that the sex abuse charges were “vague” and had “jurisdiction” problems.
But at the close of the prelim, Judge Lawrence Jones decided there was sufficient evidence for Marcus Wesson to stand trial for the murder of his nine children. Without much explanation, he also granted the prosecution’s request to drop nineteen of the thirty-three sex charges, by combining some of them and dismissing some altogether. If this was a preview of things to come, the main trial was going to be emotionally draining for everyone.
Although Elizabeth and her children were subpoenaed for the prelim, none was called to testify. I was glad they didn’t have to endure being questioned, but I was also a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to see what Elizabeth looked like. I kept hearing her hopeless voice in my head, telling me her family had nowhere to go. I kept thinking there had to be something I could do to help.
I HAD THAT Friday off, so I devoted the afternoon to finding an answer to the Wessons’ housing problem. They couldn’t have stayed in the house on Hammond Avenue even if they’d wanted to because of the zoning violations. After the family’s money ran out, the county had put them up in a motel for nearly two weeks, but that stint was up, too. The boys were staying with friends, but Elizabeth, Kiani, and Rosie considered themselves homeless. They had been staying with a relative, but Elizabeth told me she felt like they had overstayed their welcome and needed to find another place quickly.
I opened the phone book but didn’t know where to look.
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