KARLY SHEEHAN: True Crime behind Karly's Law

by Karen Spears Zacharias

  “You have this perception that those things happen, but not to anyone you know,” Liz said. “There was this disbelief that it could happen at all, but that it happened to someone I’d seen around, who seemed like a very gentle and kind individual…you don’t expect that.”

  Tragedy is the unseen sibling of every Polish child. Liz had grown up in Chicago, a member of one of the largest Polish communities outside of Warsaw. Sacrifice and suffering were common topics of discussion at the dinner table, as her parents told and retold the story of how Liz’s great-grandmother had been a POW in Siberia. Soldiers had marched into the house and snatched her away from her terrified children. Twice Poland has been completely wiped from the maps, first by the Germans and then by the Russians—their daughters and mothers raped, their sons and fathers slaughtered. “I heard all those sad things growing up,” Liz said.

  It’s a gift, knowing where you come from and who your people are. It enables a person to see a connectedness from country to country, from generation to generation, from person to person, and it keeps us from being too self-centered, too self-interested.

  Liz was shocked and horribly sad for David, but she didn’t know him well enough to approach him, to tell him how terribly sorry she was for his loss, to give him a hug, the way she’s prone to do for anyone, any time they are hurting. The hearts of so many people at HP and in the broader community of Corvallis went out to David, but it’s hard to know what to say, what to do, when a child is murdered. They wept and prayed for him, they sent hundreds of condolence cards, and they swore that from here on out they would be more watchful, for all the children’s sakes.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  District Attorney Scott Heiser was buckled down writing search warrants for the Benton County Major Crime Investigation Team, per their request, and getting updates from the detectives at the scene. Two things in particular concerned Heiser: Why was Shawn Field taking photos of Karly Sheehan? And what was up with Sarah Sheehan?

  “Sarah’s demeanor was almost across the line,” Heiser said. “She was so hysterical you had to wonder if she wasn’t involved in this somehow.”

  Heiser drafted a warrant to seize Shawn Field’s camera.

  Investigators found photos of a very battered Karly on the camera’s disc. Heiser wasn’t yet sure about all the details of Karly’s death, but by midafternoon, Heiser was certain Shawn was their guy.

  And he thought the motive was the same issue that had plagued Sarah her entire adult life: money. Investigators theorized Shawn was abusing Karly and documenting the abuse with photographs for the purpose of extorting money from David.

  David had not made child-support payments to Sarah because with her gambling problems, Sarah couldn’t be trusted to spend the money on Karly. David paid for everything Karly needed: childcare, clothing, and medical care. In addition, David was paying off thousands in gambling debt that Sarah saddled him with in the divorce agreement.

  David set up a college fund for his daughter. He had even discussed paying for Sarah to complete her college education, reasoning that the better educated Sarah was, the better a mother she’d be to Karly.

  Sarah had attended college off and on for ten years, ever since she had left our house and moved to Corvallis, but in all that time, she had never completed her degree. David wanted Sarah to pursue a profession, to be a good role model to Karly. He was willing to help underwrite Sarah’s education to make that happen.

  From the beginning of the police intervention, Sarah and Shawn were both fingering David as the primary suspect in Karly’s death, even though David hadn’t even seen Karly in nearly a week.

  Investigators, however, suspected Sarah was complicit in her daughter’s death, theorizing that she was out to “prove” David Sheehan was beating his daughter. Then Sarah would get full custody of Karly—and the regular monthly child-support payment that went along with custody. David was making plans to move to Portland in August with Karly. Investigators learned that Sarah had borrowed $1,000 to hire an attorney to fight for custody. Sarah said she was worried that David would take Karly and move out of the country.

  She saw an attorney, Hal Harding, in early 2005, and had taken along that sketchy four-day diary that she’d kept, supposedly documenting the ways in which David was abusing Karly. But she told Detective Wells that instead of using the money to hire a lawyer she had used it to pay some bills or something—she couldn’t remember what she’d spent it on exactly.

  Detective Harvey finished his last interview with Shawn shortly before 7 p.m. on Friday, June 3, 2005. Shawn said he was tired and asked the officer if there was some place he could lie down. He was shown to a quiet room with a sofa, where he rested until 9 p.m., when Shawn told Harvey he was ready to leave. Harvey arranged for a patrol officer to give Shawn a ride anywhere he wanted to go.

  After Shawn left, Harvey informed Heiser that during his preliminary interviews, Shawn “blamed David for everything. At no time during this interview did he blame Sarah for Karla’s injuries.”

  Heiser told Harvey to arrest Shawn—not for murder, but for manufacturing a controlled substance. At approximately 9:30 p.m. on Friday, June 3, 2005, Shawn Wesley Field was arrested as he got out of a patrol car in front of the police station. The charge was manufacturing and delivery of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school.

  That charge was updated on Monday, June 6, 2005 when Shawn Wesley Field was charged with the murder of Karla Sheehan.

  Detective Harvey had earlier read Field his Miranda rights, so he just cuffed him and booked him into custody.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  God stopped the abuse.

  That’s what Delynn had told me the day we met at the bakery.

  “God was the only one who could stop it,” Delynn said. “We were all failing. Everybody was failing her. I know God intervened because of Karly’s prayers.”

  The community learned about Karly’s prayer from Sarah, who testified about it. Sarah said Karly had woken up complaining that her head and tummy hurt. Sarah had not been home on Thursday, June 2, 2005. The bar where she worked had a promotional event that night, and Sarah, who was scheduled to work from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., had left Karly with Shawn earlier that afternoon.

  Shawn was angry when Sarah drove off. Livid, Sarah recalled. They’d had a fight because she’d failed to pay the water bill and the water had been shut off. He threatened that if she didn’t get over to the city water department and have the water turned back on she’d be sorry she’d ever met him. When Sarah pulled out of the drive, she looked in her rearview mirror. Shawn was holding her daughter.

  “Karly looked fine, physically,” Sarah recalled. “But emotionally, she

  just looked defeated.”

  Sarah paid the water bill, but didn’t have enough money to pay the reconnect fee. She hurried back to her own apartment, changed for work, borrowed some money from her roommate Shelley, and then rushed back to the water department. She paid the reconnect fee and begged the city staff to please, please turn the water back on before closing for the day. They assured her they would.

  Despite leaving her defeated-looking daughter in Shawn’s care, Sarah did not return to Shawn’s until shortly before midnight. She’d clocked out of work at Suds at 7:45 p.m., but instead of rushing back to look after Karly, she stayed for the party. She drank several beers and went to the parking lot with one of the beer distributors, where police reported the two participated in fellatio.

  The jury, however, did not hear the specifics of what Sarah did on Thursday evening after her shift ended. The prosecuting attorney argued in pre-trial, “The fact that Sarah remained with a patron after clocking out is only relevant in that it shows Karly was alone, except for the defendant’s nine-year-old daughter, during which time Karly was beaten severely. Evidence regarding with whom Sarah spent her time, in what activities she engaged, what she drank, what she ate, how many times she used the restroom, etc., is all irrelevant to the issue at hand
.”

  The judge agreed, if the wider world does not.

  Sarah had broken up with Shawn two weeks before Karly’s death after finding gay pornography on Shawn’s computer. She claimed the discovery left her feeling “really shocked and sick”—not because she thought being gay was a bad thing, but because she was worried there might be child pornography on the computer as well. Searching quickly through Shawn’s files, Sarah was able to determine the sites did not involve any child porn, but she did find several e-mail exchanges between Shawn and men he met online.

  Shawn’s ex-wife, Eileen, testified that she had made the same sort of discovery after breaking into a safe belonging to Shawn. “I knew he was hiding something,” Eileen said. What she found inside the safe shocked her. There were photos of men in various states of undress and an e-mail from a man who claimed he was having a relationship with Shawn. “He said if Shawn didn’t pay him money, he was going to tell me about the relationship,” Eileen said.

  Like Eileen, Sarah confronted Shawn. He was incensed.

  “Irate. Outraged,” Sarah said, describing that moment. “He kept saying I’d ruined everything. He screamed at me to get out, to get my shit and get out. ‘Leave,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you did this to me.’ He was angry. He sat down at the computer and screamed ‘NO!’ and looked at me in a scary way.’”

  After Shawn’s arrest, a prominent Oregon State University employee came forward to police, worried his dalliances with Shawn would be made public. Investigators assured him he had nothing to worry about. His sexual encounters with Shawn were not deemed relevant to the murder of Karly.

  As a teen, Shawn had been grossly obese, hitting over three hundred pounds. This was a point of consternation for his father Hugh, who had also struggled with his weight as a child. Hugh is a highly disciplined man, a math professional who spent a career working at Hewlett-Packard. He and his wife Ann were devastated when their eldest son, Kevin, died of a drug overdose. In the aftermath of Kevin’s death, Shawn became focused on his own health. He began to exercise regularly, and switched his fare of pizza and hamburgers for low-fat buffalo and other healthy food. Shawn relished the attention his new physique brought him. He became obsessive about his hygiene, his weight, and his workout schedule.

  Shawn was collecting thousands of dollars a year from his parents’ estate, all part of Hugh’s plan to ensure their only living child wouldn’t have to pay high inheritance taxes. But had his parents known about their son’s homosexual activities, they would likely have cut Shawn off financially. That alone was reason enough for Shawn to want to hide his sexual encounters with other men.

  Shawn was not teaching at the university as he had claimed. In fact, even though he was thirty-three years old, he had never held down a full-time job for any consistent period of time. His primary source of income came from his mom and dad. Eileen and Sarah’s accidental discovery threatened the matchstick house Shawn had so carefully constructed.

  During the trial, the prosecutor attempted to portray her as a victim, a woman manipulated and so emotionally abused by the man she lived with that she couldn’t possibly think rationally. The prosecutor hoped it would help explain why Sarah repeatedly left Karly with Shawn for extended periods of time, despite having promised David and others that she wouldn’t.

  Members of the jury I spoke with said they wholeheartedly rejected the notion of Sarah as a victim. Several stated it was likely they would have found Sarah guilty of neglect, reckless endangerment or more had the district attorney charged her.

  Although she had left her daughter in obvious distress, Sarah did not check on Karly when she got back to Shawn’s Thursday night. She said Shawn didn’t like it when she went into the girls’ room after they were asleep because he didn’t want her waking them. Sarah testified that Shawn had told her Karly hurt herself that night by jumping from the top bunk and hitting her head. Still Sarah did not bother checking on Karly to make sure she was okay.

  The next morning, Friday, June 3, 2005, Karly woke with her left eye swollen shut. Doctors would later declare it ruptured. Shawn reminded Sarah about the “fall” that had happened while Sarah was at the bar Thursday night. After a prompting from Shawn, Karly reportedly gave her mother a weak “Ta-da,” like an acrobat performing a circus act. Neither Shawn nor Sarah sought medical attention for Karly, even though the girl was in glaring physical distress, crying red tears—literally blood.

  Once Kate left for school, Sarah gave Karly a handful of trail mix for breakfast and then joined Shawn in the bedroom. The two had sex while Karly sat on the floor of the living room, sick to her stomach, fighting a headache, watching cartoons, one eye blinded.

  Afterward, Shawn left for the athletic club, and Sarah turned her attention to cleaning. She wiped down the baseboards and vacuumed, trying to rid the place of cat hair, she later explained in court.

  Karly sat on the couch, or on the floor, unable to walk because the soles of her feet were badly bruised. Sarah had noticed Karly’s swollen feet when Shawn brought her to Sarah earlier that morning. But when Sarah asked Karly what had happened, Shawn interrupted, “Remember? I told you she was jumping off the bunk bed last night.” Sarah didn’t ask any more questions.

  After she finished cleaning, Sarah picked up Karly.

  “She was just really clingy,” Sarah said. “She wanted to be held a lot.”

  Sarah carried Karly into Kate’s bedroom. “I was going to lie down with her for a little bit. There were some stuffed animals on the floor and Karly looked at me and said, ‘Mommy, I want to go see Jesus.’”

  Picking up a couple of the plush toys, Sarah tried to engage her daughter in a bit of role-playing. It was a technique a counselor had taught Sarah: a tool to get Karly to talk about things.

  Sitting on the floor, stuffed animals in hand, Sarah asked Karly if she wanted to pray.

  “Yes,” Karly said.

  Sarah prayed aloud for Jesus to come and heal her daughter, to make Karly’s tummy and head feel all better.

  Then Karly prayed: “I want to go be with Jesus. Amen.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I’m typing this from a cottage in Fairhope, Alabama. A tangerine sun is slipping into Mobile Bay. It is Father’s Day, 2008. As I sat on a bench near the pier, watching the sun disappear, a little girl walked past, yelling out to anyone listening, “I like that bird! That bird there! See it!”

  She pointed at a long-beaked pelican flying overhead.

  The girl was wearing a blue-jean skirt, white sandals, and a pink polo top. Her white-blonde hair was shoulder-length, like Karly’s had once been. Karly is frozen in time for me now—forever three, instead of the growing girl she should be.

  I see her when I’m at the grocer’s or when I’m out walking on the pier. I see her chasing the foamy surf at Gulf Shores, and eating ice cream at Mr. Gene Beans. I see her standing in line at Winn-Dixie, itsy bitsy tattoo stickers spattered about her face like day-glow freckles. I see her carrying a pink fishing pole, trailing her daddy, step for step. Wherever I see Karly, I also think of David.

  David sent me a text message and said no one had wished him a Happy Father’s Day today. I suppose they think it is best not to mention his loss—as if David could ever forget Karly, reminder or no.

  “Karly made me laugh so much,” David said, though I know he cries now.

  David and I have a comfortable relationship. It’s as if we walk around, slipping in and out of the same worn house slippers. He puts his grief on, I take mine off. He is the daughterless father; I am the fatherless daughter. We don’t need to say anything to each other on days like this, on Father’s Day.

  It was Father’s Day, 2001, when David first found out he was going to be a daddy. The news was a surprise, coming at a time when the marriage was threatened.

  Sarah did as she pleased. When they weren’t getting along, she’d move out, then back in, a trademark pattern marring Sarah’s relationship with men. Sarah was back at home after a s
tint of being gone when she revealed she was pregnant.

  David had made some off-the-cuff comment about hoping any child they might have wouldn’t be burdened with his big head. David thinks he has a pumpkin head.

  Sarah replied, “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “What do you mean?” David asked, confused.

  “I’m pregnant,” Sarah said.

  David was jubilant. Family meant everything to him. The toughest part about leaving Ireland was leaving behind the family he loved so well. Families in Ireland are less fragmented than families in the U.S. That’s partly due to geography—Ireland is small, compact. Americans are more mobile but the Irish have an easier time getting together as a family for weekly gatherings, something David’s family did frequently. In Ireland, family is the social network.

  A child would root David in ways a job could not. There would be soccer matches in his near future—afternoons spent kicking the ball around with his very own child. A family to call his own in America.

  The months that followed, the months when Sarah was pregnant with Karly, were the happiest times David and Sarah shared. Sarah quit smoking, drinking, running around at night. She settled in and nested.

  Surely, this baby would tether them together and shine some love on them both.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The trial of the State vs. Shawn W. Field lasted twenty-six days: twenty-three days of testimony and three days of jury deliberation. It takes a considerable amount of taxpayer money to put on a trial, and cash-strapped counties try to avoid such lengthy trials. In fact, Heiser did offer Shawn a plea agreement: if Shawn would plead out, Heiser would make sure he only got twenty-five years in the slammer. But Shawn’s defense attorney, Clark Willes, turned it down. Heiser noted in his letter to Willes that the purpose of the offer “is to save resources.”