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 DayGlo 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 stint 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.”
“We can have a meaningful discussion about a possible settlement of the case without wasting a great deal of time and money,” Heiser suggested.
The offer was made two days after the grand jury returned a true bill on June 13, 2005. After hearing testimony from a host of people, Sarah included, the grand jury charged Shawn with five counts of aggravated murder; one count of first-degree murder; two counts of murder; three counts of murder by abuse (torture); four counts of manslaughter in the first-degree; three counts of assault in the second-degree; two counts of criminal mistreatment; one count of manufacturing a controlled substance; and two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.
A prosecutor generally gets one shot at indictment, so they charge everything that fits. So many charges may confuse jurors and the public, but there are strategic reasons for this. It is one way to ensure that those guilty don’t get away with murder.
Because Sarah testified before the grand jury, she was exempt from being charged with any crime. The decision to put her before the grand jury, to not charge her with any crime, was made solely by District Attorney Heiser.
He denies his decision was the result of being manipulated by Sarah. Heiser and police investigators said they figured out pretty quickly Sarah was a flirt who employed her wiles to try to influence them.
I tried numerous times to meet Heiser in person, but we were unable to work out our schedules. We finally agreed to a phone interview. I had one question in particular I wanted him to answer: Why did he not charge Sarah with any crime?
“There was probable cause to charge Sarah for exposing her daughter to Shawn Field,” Heiser said. “At a minimum, she was reckless. She analyzed everything from her own interest first.”
But Heiser said his decision to not charge Sarah was purely an emotional one.
“I chose not to charge Sarah Sheehan with anything, recklessly endangering a minor or neglect, because I weighed the cost benefit. What do we bring to the safety of the community by raking her through the coals? It was a mercy decision, based solely on empathy and grief. I felt like she had already paid a high enough price.”
Besides, he noted, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Sarah had physically abused her daughter in any way. Heiser remains on the fence about whether Sarah was involved in the scheme to extort money from David.
“The question is, was she involved or did she have knowledge about the plan to frame David and to extort money from him?” Heiser said. “I don’t believe she was, but she may have been. I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that she was.”
District attorneys make compromises. Their positions require it of them. Heiser was willing to sacrifice the wrongs committed by Sarah Sheehan against her daughter in an effort to build a stronger case against Shawn Field.
Somewhere in those first few days after Karly’s death, Heiser convinced himself Sarah Sheehan’s betrayal of her daughter was not sufficient to warrant a criminal conviction. He told himself Karly’s death was punishment enough for this mother.
Heiser’s decision not to charge Sarah with any crime wasn’t all that surprising. Historically, the courts have been far more lenient toward women than men. Until recently, women were less likely to be formally charged with crime, and more often than not, when they were charged, they were likely to receive probation.
“The woman nearly always gets a lesser sentence and is viewed merely as a compliant accomplice, especially if men are handling the case,” said Kathleen Ramsland. Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University and has written numerous books on forensics and crime. “I think men are afraid of knowing women might be capable of real brutality, so they default to a softer view, mostly to preserve their own sense of insecurity. Some admit it, too.”
But those views of women are changing.
The Bureau of Justice reports that between 2000 and 2008 the number of women incarcerated increased by thirty-three percent. The biggest contributing factor is drug and alcohol abuse. According to her friends, Sarah’s drug of choice was alcohol and a smorgasbord of prescription drugs. Investigators had discovered what they described as a “ton of prescriptions” in Sarah’s name.
“Sarah could be lot of fun,” said one of her former girlfriends. “But she had mood swings. She’d be high for five minutes and then it was like she went catatonic. She’d be very flat, like she was in her own world. I pulled back after I saw too many troubling things in her personality. I didn’t kno
w how stable a person she was.”
While Human Services investigators were relentless in their assumptions about David, they were disturbingly negligent in their assumptions about Sarah. If the roles of father and mother had been reversed in the death of Karly, what are the chances prosecutors would have determined the father had suffered enough already? Would the system have overlooked any contributory role David may have played in his daughter’s death the way they did with Sarah?
Highly unlikely, said Eugene attorney Bill Furtick. A man who’d worked with the state’s juvenile court system for decades, Furtick was called in on one of Oregon’s most notorious crimes: the case of Diane Downs.
On May 19, 1983, a young woman reported she had been carjacked on a rural road in Springfield, Oregon, by an unidentified male, who, she then claimed, shot her and her children. One child, a seven-year-old girl, was killed. The two surviving children, a girl, age eight, and a boy, age three, suffered paralysis as a result of the shooting. Furtick was the court-appointed attorney for the living children.
Diane Downs, the children’s mother, was later convicted of the attack, a deed she carried out as an attempt to hang on to a married boyfriend who didn’t want children. Downs, a verifiable narcissist, was sentenced to life in prison.
Getting the conviction took some doing.
“The construct of the entire investigative and training paradigm for the State of Oregon is built on the idea that only men do domestic violence,” Furtick said. “Men are seen as the abusers. Fathers, not mothers. Of course that’s not always true.”
Mothers acting alone commit the bulk of child abuse, but the judicial system has cultivated a bias toward men and allotted women preferential treatment. “There is a bias,” said Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, medical director for the Children Protection Team at the University of Florida. “I think society accepts that a man may not be a good caregiver. As a whole, society expects women to be nurturing caregivers.”
A Silence of Mockingbirds Page 17