Not yet, anyway.
Marcus nodded a few times, and at one point, I saw tears dripping down his long, dark face. I sat there, taking notes, secretly wishing I could get up and give Marcus a piece of my mind.
The judge sat stoically throughout the hearing; then he spoke directly to Marcus.
“Marcus Delon Wesson, it is the judgment and sentence of this court that you shall suffer the death penalty,” he said. Putnam also sentenced Marcus to 102 years in prison for the sex charges.
Based on California’s capital punishment history, Marcus’s execution was decades away, so he would be safe and sound in isolation at San Quentin for the foreseeable future. It didn’t seem fair.
I wondered if there was any possibility that he might “accidentally” end up in the general prison population, where other inmates could carry out their own form of justice. That often happened with child molesters. The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who mutilated and ate seventeen young men and boys, died at the hands of a fellow prisoner.
Either way, his family would finally be safe.
THE JURORS MET in a room off the courthouse lobby to do interviews with the media. They talked about how much the case had affected them, and how they felt they had upheld justice.
If they only knew how much of the story didn’t get into court and how much the case had affected the family members, especially after all they’ve been through.
A number of radio stations called—some national and some regional stations from other parts of the country— asking me to go on live or do a taped interview with a thirty-second summary of the case and sentence. I prepared a script and read it to each audience, and, occasionally, the host would ask me follow-up questions.
“What was Wesson’s demeanor in the courtroom?”
“When will he be transferred to death row?”
I could answer those questions in my sleep. During the last interview, however, one question made me pause.
“We have about ten seconds left, Alysia. Can you tell us why the family members still support their father?” I wanted to laugh. I’ve been trying to answer that question for almost a year and a half, and I’m still at a loss for words.
I said the only thing that came to mind.
“Well, I think the family is still struggling with their tremendous loss and, up until his arrest, Marcus Wesson is all they knew. I’m sure they’ll have a chance to go through the grieving process now that the trial is over.”
That’s when the reality set in: the trial was over. Marcus had lost his battle against the law.
Now what is everyone going to do?
In a weird way, the constant demands of the trial had helped the Wessons avoid coping with the tragedy. Now that the distractions were gone, they would finally have to drop their defense mechanisms. I wondered how they would handle their new reality.
Marcus’s family members could do nothing else to help him at this point. All they could do was help themselves.
“What happens now?” Elizabeth asked when I got home that night.
“They’ll transfer him to San Quentin and go through the whole check-in process, then put him in isolation. They don’t think it’s safe to put him with the other prisoners.”
I almost told her what inmates did to child molesters, but I caught myself. “It’s for his protection, not theirs,” I said.
THE FAMILY WAS also dealing with another defeat. The victims’ advocates had written a letter to the judge advising against family visitation, using the same arguments they did when Marcus first went to jail: they worried he could still influence and control some of his family members. By now, I knew they were right. The judge agreed and prohibited any family visits at San Quentin.
“The good news is, we can talk about the case again,” I said sarcastically.
My joke didn’t go over well. Elizabeth and Rosie rolled their eyes. Now that we had the green light to talk about him, we didn’t have anything substantive to say.
“You know, they’re going to cut his hair,” I said. “And if you ask me, it’s long overdue.”
I would have done anything to chop off the malformed dreadlock myself. I felt like I’d earned it.
“He told us he was getting ready to cut it off anyway,” Rosie said.
“He’s only saying that because he knew they were going to cut it,” I said. “God, he still has to act like everything is his decision.”
“What are they going to do with it?” Rosie asked.
“Hopefully burn—” I started. “Oh, sorry. It’s just so gross and unsanitary. Why? Do you guys want it or something?”
They shrugged.
“Oh my God! You want it?”
The thought of those dreadlocks lying inside my apartment made me cringe. “No way are those things coming here.”
“He told us the prison would send us his belongings and his hair,” Rosie said.
I had a vision of the dreadlocks escaping from their plastic bag and wrapping themselves around my body, tying down my arms and legs, and choking me while I slept.
The huge shredded one I’d been fixated on in court would definitely come and get me.
The girls cracked up at my reaction.
“You guys better tell me that you’re not going to bring those things into the apartment.”
They kept laughing.
“I’m not kidding. Especially you, Rosie.”
I still needed to get her back for the Leatherface incident.
A FEW DAYS later, San Quentin e-mailed a new picture of Marcus sans dreads to all the media outlets, including our station. He looked almost normal. I prayed that the remnants of his haircut weren’t on their way to my apartment.
I flipped on one of our competitors’ news stations just as they were airing the hair story, so I turned it up loud. A reporter was saying that the hair would be donated to Locks of Love—a nonprofit group that makes wigs for children who have alopecia or who are undergoing chemotherapy. I couldn’t imagine how they’d ever let a bunch of little kids run around with a mass murderer’s hair on their heads. Still, I was relieved those demon locks would never come near me again.
Twenty-two
I felt like I needed a long vacation. We all needed a long vacation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money or the time off. It was a nice daydream, though. Someday, I thought.
To escape from reality, the Wessons and I often spoke about someday. The day we would hop on a plane—a first for them—and jet off to the Greek islands. Fantasizing about what we would see and do and who we would meet somehow made the depressing times a bit more tolerable.
That said, sometimes no amount of daydreaming seemed to help. The children’s birthdays were the worst. Elizabeth had a certain look on those days. I always knew by her face, but sometimes she would tell me anyway.
“It’s Sebhrenah’s birthday today,” she’d say, or “Today’s Jeva’s birthday.”
There was nothing I could say on those days. I just listened to her stories about that child, and in between the tears, she would smile. And in between my tears, I would smile. I wished her critics could have seen her during those moments. Maybe then they would understand that she never would have done anything to purposely hurt those children. The truth was, Elizabeth wasn’t doing well. She was simply surviving.
* * *
“YOU WON’T BELIEVE this,” she said to me one day as she handed me a printed envelope that said “Jury Summons.” Her husband had just been whisked away to death row and the county wanted her to be a juror?
“I can see it now,” I said playfully. “The defendant walks in and you’re like, ‘Your Honor, he’s not guilty!’ And the other jurors are like, ‘But he confessed five times and there was the victim’s blood and the murder weapon in his car.’ And you’re like, ‘It was probably a setup. Not guilty!’ ”
“Alysia, I’m not that bad,” Elizabeth said.
I shot her the Oh, really? look, and she laughed. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ma
rcus himself got the next jury duty notice.
Elizabeth reported to the courthouse on the specified date and actually made it through the first few stages of questioning, but luckily, she was excused.
TO BE FAIR, Elizabeth was slowly beginning to acknowledge Marcus’s mistakes. Still, every once in a while, she would say things that made me question her progress. Such was the case when we watched a true-crime program that focused on a serial rapist. The suspect would crawl through women’s windows at night and sneak into their bedrooms to attack them.
Elizabeth shook her head, turned to me, and said, “I guess you’re not even safe in your own home anymore, huh?”
I waited for her to see the irony in her statement, but it didn’t happen. Didn’t she realize that she and the kids would have been safer anywhere in the world except their home?
Even though the obvious often went right over Elizabeth’s head, I could tell she was reexamining her life.
“You know, by the time I was your age, I had given birth eleven times,” she said.
“You are crazy. I can’t even imagine having one yet,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “I’m surprised Marcus let you stop.”
I knew it was nearly impossible for Elizabeth to talk about sex. If actors were even kissing on TV, she’d turn red and cover her eyes.
“I remember the first time I went to Planned Parenthood,” she said, blushing. “I can only talk to you about this stuff, Alysia.”
“I know, Elizabeth. I feel honored.”
“Well, I went in there because I was pregnant. I was fourteen, and my mom had never told me about sex. I didn’t even know where babies came out. I thought they came out of your belly button. I don’t know why. But Marcus had to tell me about birth back then. Anyway, the lady asked me how much I was, you know. How much we were…”
She paused.
“Having sex?” I said, leaning toward her.
“Yes, well, having, you know, how much I was sleeping with my husband. So I didn’t know what to say. So I lied and told her two times a day.”
“Two times a day? Every day? When you were pregnant? What do you mean you lied?”
“You don’t know Marcus. We would, well, he would want it five times a day.”
“Five times? How many times did you do it?”
“Five times a day.”
“Oh my God, Elizabeth!”
“So, I was embarrassed to say five. So I told her two, but I didn’t know that was still a lot. So she looked at me with bug eyes and couldn’t believe it.”
“What did she do?”
“She handed me a huge bag full of condoms and another huge bag filled with that foam stuff for after I had my baby. I was so embarrassed because when I got out to the lobby, I saw all the other girls had these little dainty paper bags only half full, and I had two huge bags. Then I had to ride the bus home carrying them.”
“Clearly you didn’t use them. What did you do with them?”
“I gave them to my sister,” Elizabeth said, laughing so hard that tears poured down her face. “Alysia, I didn’t know any better. He was the only man I’d ever been with. The only man I have ever been with. And I was so young. And sometimes he wanted me to do things I wasn’t comfortable with. So, I didn’t satisfy him enough.”
“How do you know?”
“He would tell me, you know? And I could just tell.”
“He would tell you?”
“He would leave a lot and go to movies.”
“Movies?”
“Yeah. He was frustrated and he would tell me he was going to those kinds of movies.”
“Porn movies?”
“Yeah. He’d be gone most of the night, and then come back whenever.”
“And leave you home with the kids?”
“I didn’t mind. I knew I didn’t satisfy him. I was always pregnant.”
“Because he wanted so many damn kids!”
“Every year, I would go into the free clinic and the workers would get more and more upset,” Elizabeth said, more serious now. “With my last three, they begged me to get my tubes tied. When I came back pregnant with Lise, they wouldn’t let it go. They decided to pay for it themselves if I would have the procedure. So I finally did it. The day after I had Lise, I had my tubes tied.”
I hoped she couldn’t tell from my expression that I was grateful for those clinic workers.
AT HOME, I had turned into a life coach. It had taken Marcus years and years of manipulation to shape the girls into what they were. I knew I had no easy task talking them out of it, so I claimed a small victory every time they acknowledged he was wrong about something.
Rosie was the most stubborn, so no one in the family thought she would change her mind about Marcus. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I was convinced she was coming around a little bit. She was young, smart, and beautiful, and she had missed out on so much. It sickened me to think she might be fantasizing that Marcus would get out of prison and the two of them would ride off into the sunset.
I could tell she felt guilty for even talking about the prospect of moving on. She told me that, although she loved children, she would never have any more.
“But when you have kids, I’ll help you raise them, Alysia,” Rosie said, smiling.
“I just may take you up on that someday.”
“Aaaw, your kids would be cute, with big blue eyes and curly hair.”
“Okay, it’s a deal. How many should I have?” I asked.
“What about a boy and a girl?”
“That sounds good. Let’s see, I would name my girl Athena, after my favorite relative, and my boy, um, I don’t know what I’d name a boy.”
“How about Simon?” she asked, pointing to the American Idol media badges that hung on my doorknob.
“I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “Keep trying.”
As she listed off possible names for my future son, I thought about her boy and girl who had been murdered. The only time Rosie ever cried was when we talked about Ethan and Sedona. By then, I was mostly desensitized to Elizabeth’s daily crying. But when Rosie cried, it was different. I always thought releasing emotion was a good thing for victims, but that didn’t seem to be the case for Rosie. She wasn’t like most people, and I hadn’t quite figured out how to get through to her about Marcus.
Rosie always came and sat on my bed to talk while I was getting ready to go to work or out with friends. Since the trial ended, I had used those casual conversations to nudge her in a more positive direction.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, Rosie, but someday, you will get in a new relationship and be happier than you ever thought possible.”
“Alysia!”
“You don’t have to say anything, but I’m telling you, it’s going to happen.”
“No it won’t. Don’t say that.”
“I know. You’re convinced that I’m completely wrong. That’s fine. But someday, you’re going to be like, ‘Man, Alysia was right.’ And you won’t admit it to me, but we’ll both know the truth.”
Rosie laughed. “You are so wrong it’s not even funny.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
AT FIRST, I could tell Rosie was uncomfortable even being in the room when I was speaking out against Marcus, but after a dozen such conversations, she not only listened to what I had to say but began contributing as well.
Rosie and I had gone down to the pool to get a little sun and do some swimming. Fortunately, she had graduated to wearing a tank top and knee-length shorts, a vast improvement over the skirt. We were both standing halfway between the shallow and deep ends, with our elbows resting on the concrete rim that bordered on a horseshoe-shaped pond. There, we watched a family of ducks float through the pond’s artificially colored teal water.
“You want to know something?” Rosie asked.
“What?” I said, sensing I was about to hear a confession.
“You aren’t going to believe me.”
“Pr
obably not.”
She paused for about ten seconds, looked at me, then back at the ducks.
“I liked a boy once.”
Coming from the mouth of any other twenty-four-year-old, it would have sounded crazy.
“Shut up,” I said.
“I did,” she said, looking me in the eye. “He worked with us at the Radisson.”
“You liked someone? Did you ever talk to him?”
“No way! But he used to say hi to me all the time.”
“Did you ever say hi back?”
“No way.”
“Tell me more.”
What began as a lighthearted story became increasingly serious.
“I thought about saying hi to him, and then …,” she said, pausing.
“And then what?”
“I found out I was pregnant.”
There’s the rub.
“I was afraid something would happen to the baby if I didn’t confess.”
“Confess? Confess what?”
“That I was beginning to like someone else.”
“Please don’t tell me you—”
“Yes, I told Marcus,” Rosie said, finishing my sentence.
“What?”
“Yeah, I went to him and said I had feelings about a boy, but I’d never talked to him and I never would.”
“Wow. I bet he lost it,” I said.
“Well, he told me God would take my baby if I didn’t straighten out.”
“That mother fu—” I started.
“Alysia!” Rosie interrupted. “He told me to report the guy to Human Resources if he ever got near me.”
“What ever happened with the guy?”
“Nothing. He ended up getting fired.”
I wonder how Marcus managed that one.
* * *
EVERY SO OFTEN, Elizabeth’s and Rosie’s demeanor would visibly change. They seemed sadder, and they clammed up when I tried to talk to them. I came to learn that these changes occurred after they’d received a letter from Marcus, who was trying to “snap them into shape” just when they were making progress on their path to independence. I felt helpless, knowing he continued to dictate commands through the mail. I wished so much that I could intercept the envelopes at the post office. I wondered what he could possibly be saying to them.
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