Tim and I suggested she should come live with us. It would allow her time to regroup and develop a plan for her own life. It didn’t take her long to decide our offer was her best option.
Sarah came to our home and Hillary remained with her adoptive parents. When friends hosted a baby shower for Missy and Hillary, I drove to Portland, and took along a pair of tiny Nikes, a stuffed bunny and a poem Tim had written. It was the first and only time I would meet Hillary, though I’ve seen photos of her over the years. The week before I learned of Karly’s death, I serendipitously came across a yellowed copy of the poem Tim had penned:
Ode to Hillary Jane
Welcome to the world, Hillary Jane!
Not as gentle an abode as that
from which you’ve come.
Yet, God, The Creator, carves out human souls,
and yours, Hillary Jane, He designed especially so.
Wear these shoes of Nike, classic messenger of God,
as honor to the mother who bore you,
and the family God appointed you.
Go boldly into this world, Hillary Jane.
step lively, step swiftly, along the path,
watch out for side roads,
stay within His lane, listen to the pace.
God, The Creator, designed you for a purpose,
Our Little Hillary Jane.
Sarah saw very little of Hillary during that first year of her life. The phone calls between Missy and Sarah that had taken place almost daily during the pregnancy became less frequent, once a month, then every other month, and then months would pass without any at all.
That disturbed me. I knew that if Hillary had been in our home, Sarah would have had regular contact with her. I thought Sarah needed and wanted that. Whenever I asked if she had heard from Missy recently, Sarah would shake her head no.
It was such a hard place to be in. In some ways it still is. When I look at photos of Hillary now, all grown up and dressed in blue satin, and I consider all those homecoming dances, the proms, the school musicals, the youth fellowships and all the late-night talks I missed out on, and of the story not written, it grieves me deeply.
Missy recognized that grief in me long before I ever did. Sometime shortly before Hillary’s first birthday I wrote Missy a letter expressing my dismay at the breakdown in her relationship with Sarah. I blamed Missy for it, never allowing for the possibility that it was Sarah who was being unreliable or manipulative.
A month passed before Missy replied. The letter she sent me in May 1995 reads now more like a prophetic word than the defensive rebuttal I mistook it for then:
Dear Karen,
When I received your letter in February I wanted to respond right away, but I really wasn’t quite sure how to. I went through a lot of emotions, first I bawled for hours. I felt very hurt by your disappointment in Chuck and me. For you to think we didn’t care about Sarah and had closed the door on her was very hard to understand. But as I reread the letter and Chuck and I discussed it, I began to understand better where it was coming from. I think it comes from your heart and reveals your deepest emotion. I know that you care very deeply for Sarah, as though she was your own child. You have seen her hurting so much and you would like to stop it for her. I believe that you hear from Sarah, perhaps, a slanted view of the actual truth or fact. We both know Sarah has a way of making people feel sorry for her. I’m not saying she isn’t experiencing some major emotions but there is also tremendous confusion in her life and she doesn’t want to acknowledge where it’s coming from.
Karen, not only were you expressing Sarah’s pain, but also your own. I realize you must be going through a tremendous amount of your own grief. I know Hillary could as easily have been living in your home as ours. I’m sure you think about how you would have dealt with things if that had been the case. It’s very easy to imagine what we would do if we were in a situation, but we can’t always know until we are actually in it. The choices Chuck and I make are made with a lot of discussion and prayer. We do feel our first consideration has to be for Hillary. Sarah has to be second to that. If that means there will be times when we distance ourselves, it is because we feel it’s the best for our whole family, not because we don’t care about Sarah. We have tried to explain this to Sarah. We have also tried to get her to respond and tell us how she feels about everything. She said very little, but what she has said is that many people are trying to make her feel bad about not grieving over Hillary. She feels she has done that (not that I agree). She also expressed that she missed the relationship with Chuck and me that she had in the past. We have discussed the fact that things can’t be the same as they were but that we will always be open to a relationship with her. I don’t doubt that Sarah and Hillary will have a relationship in the future. How and when I don’t know but it doesn’t scare or threaten me in the least because Hillary will always know who she is and where she came from and that we love her very much.
Love, Missy
We never did speak much after that. I’ve seen Missy and Chuck only one other time since then, and I’ve only known Hillary from afar, in photos others shared, in the stories others told.
Hillary has Sarah’s dark eyes and the same caramel complexion, but she’s more petite and fine-boned than Sarah. She sings, writes lyrics, and possesses the passionate heart of a poet who cares about issues of social justice, especially when it comes to children.
When she was younger, Hillary would spend time in Pendleton with Gene and Carol, but that all changed when Karly died. That year, Chuck and Missy packed up and moved to Mexico, where they worked in missions for a short time. They moved back to Oregon for Hillary’s high school years. At the time of Karly’s death, Hillary was told her sister was dead, but she did not know Karly was murdered. I don’t know if she has ever been told the real story.
I’m not sure anyone but Shawn, Sarah and Karly know the real story.
Chapter Eight
Expect hell to freeze first. That’s the gist of the reply I received from Shawn Field after sending him a letter, week after week, for a year. Only the date has changed.
Shawn Wesley Field
Inmate ID: 16002306
EOCI
Mr. Field:
I am at work on a book about the murder of Karly Sheehan. I am interested in hearing your side of the story. But in order to do that I will have to be added to your list of approved visitors. If you will add me to your list, I will make an appointment to visit with you.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Karen Spears Zacharias
Detective Wells also attempted to interview Shawn Field. Field turned down the detective, too. Wells is the father of three daughters. His oldest daughter was only four years old when he was working the Karly case. Having a daughter so close to Karly’s age made this case more personal than others. Wells could easily imagine David’s grief, but the detective could not understand the systematic senselessness, or the vile sickness behind the murder. Like me, Wells remains haunted by unanswered questions. Who is Shawn Field? Why did he kill Karly?
What role did Sarah play in all of this?
I’ve been warned more than once that I ought to give up trying to get an interview with Shawn. “Short of a Grade B miracle, you will not get the chance to sit down with Shawn. That door is closed and he has no intention of opening it.”
That warning came to me via an e-mail from a man in my community—Jack, I’ll call him. Jack’s in-laws are close friends with Hugh and Ann Field, Shawn Field’s parents. Jack meets with Shawn on a regular basis as part of a prison ministry and he sends me intermittent e-mails, informing me of all the ways in which God is working in Shawn’s life.
“God never ceases to amaze me with how he works through the grimmest situations,” Jack writes. “Only God can change lives and I remain confident that he is doing that in Shawn’s life. I pray that Sarah might come face to face with God here on Earth while she has a chance to receive his gift.”
It
’s hard for me, when I receive notes like this, not to be put off. I’ve read thousands of pages of documents, police interrogations, evidence, and autopsy reports. I’ve studied the reports filed with the Oregon Department of Human Services Child Welfare Division in the months leading up to Karly’s death. I’ve seen the photographs Shawn took in the moments before Karly died and the glossy color autopsy photos that caused me to flee the office of the Oregon Court of Appeals building so that I could cry unnoticed within the confines of my car.
I want to sit Jack down and walk him through all the evidence I’ve plowed through. I want him to study the photos of Karly’s battered body that caused doctors and nurses alike to break down in tears. Yes, I’m disturbed and defensive over Jack’s suggestion that Shawn is on some holy path that Sarah seems to have missed.
I wrote back to Jack and told him it’s a good thing I believe in the God of Grade A miracles because I have every intention of continuing to pursue an interview with Shawn. And oh, by the way, I added, “I think if you were to ask Sarah she would tell you she is washed in the blood of the Lamb…or was at one time.”
A week later, I received another e-mail. This one a little sterner in tone than all the previous exchanges:
Karen,
Shawn said you contacted him again. He also tells me his stance hasn’t changed. The door is closed and locked to you. No matter how many times you contact him he will not answer any of your letters or add you as a visitor. I assume he isn’t kidding.
Have a nice day. Jack
Chapter Nine
I didn’t know about Karly’s murder or the three-year-old’s desperate prayers for deliverance when Tim and I made the trek upriver to Bend, Oregon, in March 2007 to visit two of our four kids. Stephan, our eldest, worked at the High Desert Museum, one of the region’s most popular tourist attractions. Our youngest daughter, Konnie, had just moved to town.
We’d spent the night at Konnie’s new digs. I slipped out of bed at 7:45 a.m. Tim, who was wedged between the edge of the twin mattress and the wall, didn’t flinch. Prying a peephole in the aged blinds, I glanced across the parking lot of the Boys & Girls Club. Half a dozen pines stood motionless, like trees in a picture book. Blue sky. No wind.
We didn’t have big plans. After Tim got out of bed and got dressed, he and I grabbed a cup of coffee at the joint down the street, read the paper, poked around town a bit. Later that afternoon, Stephan gave us the town tour.
“What’s The Source?” I asked, as he turned left past a brick building with a sign bearing that title.
“A newspaper,” he replied. Parking the car in front of the saltbox house Konnie was renting, Stephan walked to the end of the block and grabbed a paper. He flipped through the weekly arts and entertainment guide while we huddled around a space heater in the living room. Stephan opened the paper and leaned over to show something of interest to his father.
“What?” I asked.
Stephan turned to me and leaned in. “Isn’t that Sarah?” he asked.
“It sure is,” I said.
There she was holding up a dollar bill, wearing what was obviously her St. Paddy’s Day t-shirt, the one with the four-leaf clovers that read, Feeling lucky.
“Does it say anything about her?”
“Nope,” Stephan replied. “It doesn’t even give her name.”
It was a blip about some women who’d gone to a restaurant with an open fire pit. Their money had gone up in smoke after being blown into the pit by an unexpected wind. Sarah was holding up a dollar with burnt edges. She had that same engaging smile, the one that had slain dozens of men, and charmed nearly as many women.
“You think she lives here?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Stephan said with a shrug.
The day after Stephan discovered Sarah’s photo, I cranked the shower to a hot-as-I-can-stand-it setting and let it rain down over me.
“Please, God,” I prayed, “if Sarah lives here, let me run into her today.” Sometimes I have my best talks with God in the shower.
It was the morning of March 28, 2007.
At 5:30 p.m., Konnie burst through the door, ran to her bedroom, and changed into running clothes.
“Meet me at the bridge down by REI at the Old Mill,” she instructed, as she grabbed her iPod and jogged off.
Tim and I walked down to the Old Mill shops and stood at the end of the bridge, watching for our daughter as brightly colored flags snapped overhead. I saw Konnie waving to us from across the Deschutes River.
We walked back, past the Old Mill and through the parking lot at Strictly Organic Coffee. At the top of the incline, we approached a man and a woman talking outside a small bungalow, their backs to us. The woman wore red shoes with three-inch heels, unusual in a town where flat, rubber-soled shoes are the most common footwear. Konnie strode a few steps ahead of us. When she got to the other side of the couple, she turned, cupped one hand over her face, pointed at the girl, and mouthed “Sarah!” to me.
I turned toward the couple.
“Sarah?”
It was the first time I had spoken to her since that nasty phone call in February 2003 when she told me she was divorcing David.
Sarah’s jaw went slack. “Excuse me,” she said to the man next to her. “These people are like my family and I haven’t seen them in a very long time.”
We embraced warmly.
“Do you live here?” she asked. Her dark-roasted eyes scanned the three of us, searching for some sign we were part of the Bend community.
“Konnie does,” I answered. “She just moved here.”
“Yeah, I live up the street,” Konnie added. “Why don’t you come up?”
The man shifted his feet anxiously. We had interrupted.
“Let me finish up here,” Sarah said. “Then I’ll come up.”
Konnie gave her the address.
“How bizarre is that?” our daughter asked as we turned to leave.
“Pretty bizarre,” her father said.
“Not bizarre at all,” I said. They didn’t know about the power of a shower prayer.
We’d barely walked in the front door before Sarah drove up. I met her on the stoop.
“I knew you were in town,” I said, hugging her again.
“How?” she asked, laughing. I’d missed Sarah’s easy laughter.
“I saw your picture in The Source. I wasn’t sure if you lived here or were visiting but I had a strong feeling we’d run into each other.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty random,” Sarah said.
“Not random at all,” I said.
Then Sarah laughed again, but in a tense way people do when they are trying to appear confident but are anything but. I chalked it up to the normal anxiety that can exist between two people whose last conversation was an exchange of harsh words. I couldn’t have been more wrong about the nature of Sarah’s unease.
“How long have you lived here?” Tim asked from the corner of the sofa where he was sitting. A heater was pulled up next to him. Tim is a lean athlete who doesn’t tolerate chill very well.
“Two years.”
“Do you work?” I asked as I took a seat on the U-shaped footstool nearest the chair where Sarah sat.
“I manage the restaurant for one of the hotels in town,” she said.
Sarah pulled a strand of her dark hair through her fingers. I recognized the nervous gesture. I’d witnessed it a thousand times back when she lived with us. Our daughter Shelby has the same habit.
“Do you keep in touch with anyone from Pendleton?” I asked.
“Not really.”
“Are your parents still there?”
“Yes.”
“How’s Hillary? What is she, like, ten now?”
“Thirteen,” Sarah replied.
I looked at Tim. “Has it been that long? God, I feel old.”
“You are old,” Tim said. Everyone laughed.
“Chuck and Missy moved to Mexico,” Sarah added.
“Really? When?”
“So you haven’t seen Hillary in all that time?”
“No.”
“Do they write? Send photos?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And what about Karly? Is she with David?”
Sarah had been in the house for nearly half an hour and hadn’t mentioned Karly once. I wasn’t sure how the custody issues had been ironed out. When we’d last spoken, Sarah said she and David would share custody of Karly. But with her living in Bend, and him in Corvallis, I didn’t see how that would work. Karly would’ve turned five in January. She’d be old enough to attend preschool, at least. I assumed Karly was with her daddy.
A bad pause followed. That’s how Tim described it later.
“If it had been good news, it would’ve come rushing out. But there was that bad pause,” he said.
Tim swears he knew then, in that moment of silence, that Karly was dead. But I had no clue anything could be so wrong.
I watched as Sarah fumbled around with different phrasings before answering. I figured she was trying to find the best possible way to tell us she didn’t have custody of her daughter.
“She has—” Sarah started, stopped, then started again, blurting it out in one breath. “Karly passed away. That’s why I’m in Bend. But I’m having a very bad day so I don’t want to talk about it. We’ll have that conversation on another day.” Sarah’s eyes begged for grace.
My mind scattered like birds, startled. I’d spent the better part of the past two years on the road advocating for war widows and the children of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a war widow said to me that she didn’t want to talk about something, I backed off. I knew she’d talk, eventually, when she was ready. I did as Sarah asked—I dropped it. Let it go.
Over dinner we talked about Sarah’s current boyfriend—how she loved the boyfriend’s family, but him, not so much. We talked about the job market in Bend, skiing, snowboarding, and the upcoming play at Second Street Theatre, where Stephan had the lead role.
KARLY SHEEHAN: True Crime behind Karly's Law Page 4