Sleep My Darlings

by Diane Fanning

Julie’s neighbor clinical psychologist Tsila Abush Kirsh left the neighborhood Friday morning at seven. She went to her son’s school to volunteer. A neighbor approached her and asked, “Have you heard what’s happening in the neighborhood?”

  “No, what happened?”

  “The police are there. They blocked the road, but I don’t know what’s happening,” the neighbor said.

  “It must have been murder if the road is blocked.”

  That afternoon, she learned what happened at the Schenecker home from a student at Liberty Middle School. Even though the school day ended before any adults could address the situation with the children, the kids knew by text messages and hallway chatter. Being a mental health professional did not protect Kirsh from being traumatized—she was shocked and incredulous at what had happened.

  Returning home, she encountered emotional upheaval in her neighborhood: “All in all, though, I was very proud of my community—very proud—the way they pulled together so quickly in the immediate aftermath and got things together for each other with great speed.”

  The news of the Schenecker tragedy drifted down the streets of the Ashleigh Reserve development, leaking its infectious poison through the doorsills of each home, shattering the established perception of reality at every house.

  Even if the neighbors did not know any of the family members, even if they’d never even heard the Schenecker name, it was now on all of their lips and burrowing deep into their minds. The psyche’s natural refuge of denial whispered, then shouted, It can’t happen here. And yet it did. A community’s innocence was lost. The false sense of security of life in a gated neighborhood was exposed to be as mocking a sham as the emperor’s new clothes.

  CHAPTER 29

  Those who knew the family or one of the children were hit hardest in the aftermath of the shocking crime. But even those across the entire Tampa Bay area who had never heard of Ashleigh Reserve or had never even seen photographs of North Tampa before the horror filled their televisions, radios, and newspapers were staggered by the story. It was difficult at all times to understand how anyone could murder a child.

  Child killers, however, weren’t unknown to this seaside region. In the decade before the deaths of Beau and Calyx, the news of such crimes had reverberated through the media and into their lives.

  Of the many cases, two garnered widespread attention on the national news front. One was the murder of eleven-year-old Carla Brucia on Super Bowl Sunday in 2004. A video camera at a car wash captured her abduction and riveted attention from coast to coast. Her body was found four days later in a grove of Brazilian pepper trees behind a church.

  Joseph Smith was arrested the following day and convicted of her assault, kidnapping, and murder. At his sentencing the judge said, “Her death was conscienceless and pitiless and undoubtedly unnecessarily torturous. The scales of life and death tilt unequivocally on the side of death,” and sent him to reside at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, in a cell on death row.

  The second case was the disappearance of nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford. John Couey, a registered sex offender, kept Jessica alive for three days of sexual assault. He then buried her alive with her purple stuffed dolphin.

  Passions in the Tampa Bay area were so inflamed that the judge suspended jury selection after two days because of the difficulty of finding impartial jurors and moved the trial to Miami. After several delays of deliberations, Couey received a death sentence, but he died of colon cancer before the sentence could be executed.

  Stranger homicides like those, as horrific as they were, were easier for the public to understand than were deaths as a result of domestic violence committed in the home, by a parent—but that wasn’t an unprecedented occurrence in Florida, either. That’s just what happened to Patty Para-Perez and her two children, thirteen-year-old Lauren and twelve-year-old Sean. They returned to their home in northwest Hillsborough County on December 10, 2004, where they were ambushed by Robert O’Mara, Patty’s ex-husband and the father of the two children. He called out his wife’s name; when she turned toward him, he shot Patty in the head. Sean panicked and ran to the front door, desperate to get inside of the house. His father caught up with Sean quickly and shot him, too. Lauren screamed and ran up the street; O’Mara chased her down and fired a shot into her body. O’Mara then put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. After a lot of healing and rehabilitation Patty survived, but both of her children were dead.

  As dreadful as this triple murder was, it still does not have the same impact as when a mother murders a child. A crime like that makes many people reevaluate the way they view the world, their sense of security, and the sanctity of mother love that society takes for granted. Like Julie Schenecker, two other women with serious mental illness had taken the lives of their own children in the Tampa Bay area in the not-too-distant past.

  On January 23, 1990, Dorothy Ross thought she was going to lose custody of her two children, two-year-old Michael and thirteen-month-old Jessica, to her husband and his girlfriend. Dorothy strangled the two toddlers and then slit her own wrists. She was found guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental health facility where she still remained twenty-two years later.

  Another mother, home health nurse Kristina Gaime, told co-workers that she and her children were all set to go to heaven. No one thought that Kristina meant right away. But on April 12, 1999, soon after they had all returned from a Caribbean cruise, Kristina handed six pills each to her two sons, eight-year-old Adam and six-year-old Matthew. She told them it was aspirin—it was really morphine.

  She carried the boys out to the van and connected a hose to the tailpipe. She joined them in the vehicle and turned it on. The next day, she and Adam were found alive, but six-year-old Matthew was dead. In a plea bargain, Kristina received a twenty-year sentence over the objections of her parents, who felt she needed psychiatric treatment rather than prison treatment.

  Now another mother in the Tampa Bay area had committed an unspeakable, unbelievable act—with less provocation and more violent intent than anyone could comprehend—and two more innocent children were dead. The question “why?” echoed up and down the streets throughout communities along the Gulf Coast.

  CHAPTER 30

  Detectives Sandel and Prebich returned to Royal Park Court at 4:32 p.m. and received a walk-through from Detective Henry Duran. Forty-five minutes after their arrival, Medical Examiner Dr. Vernard Adams was ready for the examination of the crime scenes and the viewing of both bodies in situ, a prerequisite before they could be removed from the home.

  On his way to the stairway, he glanced at the framed picture of the two victims’ smiling faces hanging above a beige sectional sofa—the contrast with what he was about to see was as extreme as any comparison could possibly be. On the second floor, he observed the condition and location of Calyx’s body lying on her bed before going back downstairs and into the garage. He first examined Beau through the rolled-down passenger window. He then opened the driver’s door and carefully, with Detective Houston’s assistance, eased the body out of the car and placed Beau on a sheet stretched out flat on the garage floor.

  There Adams leaned over Beau and examined his injuries more closely. When Adams was satisfied that he had seen all he needed to see at the scene, the two young victims were loaded into medical examiner transport units. They pulled out of the driveway taking Calyx and Beau away from the home for the last time.

  After that sad task was completed, the white Honda van where thirteen-year-old Beau lost his life was sealed and towed by a private company provided through USAA, the carriers of the policy on the vehicle, to the Tampa Police Department impound lot to be processed for evidence.

  The search of the home where the crime occurred had been thorough and was now complete. Law enforcement removed a vast array of pharmaceutical evidence from the home, including seventeen clonazepam, ninety-one lithium in two separate containers, seventy-five benzatropine, twenty amoxicillin, four tr
iazolam, eight venlafaxin hydrochloride, fifty warfarin, forty-one buspirone, sixty-eight lamotrigine, fifty-nine coumadin, twenty-nine citalopram, a white pharmacy bag with seven loose pills of unknown identity, and two bottles for oxycodone, one with a water bottle cap inside.

  They also collected a pile of paperwork; $689 mostly in $20 bills; a purple koozie or foam can cover; nineteen cigarette butts, three cigarettes, a blue lighter, and an empty pack; three cell phones; two purses; jewelry; family photos; five computers; and, of course, everything connected to the gun purchased by Julie Schenecker from the receipt and manual to the live ammunition and spent cartridges and the weapon’s original box.

  Detective Prebich made one final walk through the fateful home, securing and locking windows and doors. He then stepped out of the house and carried the keys back to headquarters.

  * * *

  As darkness fell, on the evening of the discovered tragedy at the Schenecker home, they came one by one to Hampton Park—friends of Calyx and Beau, neighbors of the family, teachers, and others impacted by the horrific, inexplicable crime so close to home. Soon, nearly two hundred people, many dressed in black, had gathered to honor the memory of this sister and brother whose lives were lost in two coldly calculated moments of violence.

  They pulled out lighters and lit their candles with reverence, passing the flame to anyone who needed one. To the sound of shuffling feet, sobs, and sniffles they marched together to the gate of the Ashleigh Reserve of the Tampa Palms subdivision where Beau and Calyx once lived.

  Tears streamed down inconsolable faces. Spontaneous hugs flashed like an infection through the crowd. Calyx’s seventh-grade teacher stepped to the front of the mourning crowd and said, “You all should remember that you made her life happy.”

  Those who knew Calyx believed that if she could look down and see them now, she would be happy to see so many friends gathered there, but, at the same time, she’d be a bit embarrassed knowing that she was the reason for all the fuss. Beau’s friends were there to remember him but, being younger, remained silent as the older teenagers spoke. Everyone—both children and adults—struggled to make sense of a crime that really made no sense at all.

  Dr. Kirsh stood before them and said, “Anyone who wants or needs—parents or kids, it doesn’t matter, anyone—can come to the community club tomorrow to talk.”

  As they walked away, they placed candles around the edge of the oval garden plot at the entrance. Thus ended a horrific day of lost innocence and shattered security for the young friends of Beau and Calyx Schenecker.

  Jacob Gassen came home from the event depleted from sorrow, sadness, and shock at the events that unfolded that day. To help him cope, he wrote a poem to Calyx, “Strange Little Running Girl.” He recalled the sweetness, simplicity, and kindness of her personality, the strangeness, innocence, and purity of her soul, her quirky, odd, and unique collection of friends, and the shot that ended her life. He wrote about the embarrassment Calyx would feel at their collective worry and ended with encouraging words that she should keep running toward her goals.

  * * *

  To some extent, life still moved on. That night, the scheduled Class 5A, District 9, tournament was scheduled at King High School’s Bill Stewart Stadium. Those who competed that night did so under a flag flying at half-mast.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Julie’s life in institutionalized captivity had begun. First she was transported to the Orient Road Jail for processing. After fingerprinting, photo taking, and paperwork completion, she was moved to her new home as one of the thirty-three hundred inmates of the Falkenburg Road Jail. She was expected to remain there at least until her bond hearing.

  Julie’s shaking grew so intense, however, that she was taken to Tampa General Hospital just before midnight. She was scheduled to appear in court the first thing Saturday morning, but that hearing was delayed while she was being treated by doctors in a guarded room.

  * * *

  Saturday morning, Dr. Kirsh knocked on a neighbor’s door and asked if she could take care of her children while she was talking to people up at the club. The neighbor readily agreed—the increased closeness and unity with one another in that community was amazing and very healing.

  So many people showed up at the club that Dr. Kirsh recruited two colleagues to volunteer their services with her that day. They talked to the children in age-appropriate groups. Many of the high school students brought up the story of another teenager, who went to King and then to Freedom High School. A month earlier, he’d gotten into a fight with his parents and ridden off on his bike. The next morning, he was found dead. None of them knew why he died; they just knew he was gone. The murders resurrected the pain and fear of that last loss, intensifying the students’ anxiety. Every loss caused a reactivation of the one the preceded it.

  The middle school kids remembered a much-loved art teacher at the nearby elementary school who’d taught them all in earlier years. He was riding his bicycle to school one November day when he was hit by a car driven by another teacher and died. The children had not yet gotten over his death and now another piled on top. The students in that age group were the most traumatized. At that critical age when they are questioning their own identity, trying to find their place in the world, and testing the limits with rebellion, they are most vulnerable to lasting effects from trauma.

  All of the teenagers had lost their natural sense of immortality. All of the pupils had to cope with the fact that they had parents, too, and their whole concept of parents had just been challenged. They needed to talk about it to find a way to accept these changes without undue fear.

  The elementary school pupils were thinking of the art teacher, too. The pupils also possessed the darkest fears of the parents. They wanted to talk about the worries that one of their parents would snap and kill them, too.

  All of the kids shared their memories of Calyx, Beau, or both of them. What shocked them all the most was who committed the crime. They knew Julie. They liked her. They all thought she was a nice, kind person. It made no sense to them at all.

  The adults who visited the club that day were in a state of shock and disbelief. The sense of safety had evaporated. Their worldview was shattered. “Everyone felt guilty,” Dr. Kirsh said. “There were multiple red flags that we just didn’t see.”

  She talked a lot to parents who wanted to protect their children. Most of them wanted to tell their kids: “She was out of her mind. This is not something that normally happens in life. Let’s move on.” Dr. Kirsh explained the importance of allowing their children to talk as much and as long about the deaths as they needed to help them process and heal.

  The three psychologists remained at the club until seven that evening. Some of the teenagers, who’d been there all day, still didn’t want to leave.

  After the end of the day, Dr. Kirsh worried about her neighbors. Raised in Israel, she had experienced an entirely different way that people grieved from what she found in this country. After a funeral in Israel, mourning consumes every aspect of life for seven days. Family members sit on low stools or on the floor. They wear torn clothing; do not shave; cut their hair, wear cosmetics, or bathe; and cover the mirrors in their homes. In short, they do nothing but mourn. During the next month, mourners do not attend weddings or any events with music—they don’t even listen to music—and continue not to shave or cut their hair. It is a total-immersion approach that is designed to drain away the worst of the grief and prepare the mourner to go on with life.

  In this country, people encourage one another to celebrate the life of those who passed even at funerals and memorial services. Grievers are asked to be joyful for having known the deceased rather than wallowing in the selfishness of missing them now that they’re gone. To Dr. Kirsh, Americans seemed always determined to be strong, move on, and overcome. Whether it was grief, emotional problems, or mental illness, this culture expected everyone to pull themselves together with willpower and determination.

  *
* *

  Ann Sloane, one of the shattered teenagers at the vigil, had started a new page on Facebook, “R.I.P. Beau & Calyx Schenecker,” on Friday to honor “two amazing people.” By the end of Saturday, the site had drawn more than fifty-five hundred fans.

  The participants were located all over the country and across the globe. Some knew the children, but many more were drawn there by the horror of the story. Beau’s friends left wistful comments in his memory:

  “Beau was a good boy. He’ll be dearly missed.”

  “You were the best friend I ever had. That will never change.”

  “Beau, we love you. You were the best guy I ever met in 5th grade.”

  Calyx’s friends also dropped by to express their grief:

  “Calyx Schenecker was the sweetest girl. I ran track with her for two years … to see her picture just makes me cry … she will be loved and missed and always remembered for the goodness she had in her heart.”

  “Dedicating my track season to you, Calyx.”

  “You’ll be missed in art history):… Nothing will be the same without your creative sketchbooks!”

  Others wrote about both of the teenagers:

  “I knew Beau and Calyx from Germany. I grew up with both of them and I hope they know they did not deserve…” to have this happen.

  “I know my mum won’t kill me. She would never.”

  Many negative comments about Julie Schenecker and a desire for the death penalty popped up on the page. Ann reminded people that the page was for Calyx and Beau and not about their mother, what she did, or how she should be punished. Her pleas fell on many deaf ears.

  Then it grew much worse with the arrival of the forces of negativity known as trolls in internet slang—individuals who had no connection to the deceased but simply roamed the Internet looking for opportunities to exploit the pain of others, mocking the grief of the mourning participants in the group. They ridiculed Calyx and Beau—some making obscene comments. They voiced approval of Julie’s actions. These angry, bitter people who felt threatened by the presence of harmony anywhere created such a surge of distress that Ann had to shut down comments until she could get assistance to moderate the site.