“Mr. Field, in my nearly twenty years in the criminal justice system, this is one of the worst cases of brutality I have ever seen. The jury found you to be responsible, and it is now for me to hold you responsible and accountable.” With those words, Judge Holcomb handed down exactly what Joan Demarest and the state had asked for, the maximum sentence allowed under the law: more than forty-six years without possibility of time off for good behavior.
When I spoke with Judge Holcomb, she wanted to know if I had had a chance to interview the jurors. I told her I had.
“They were an incredible jury,” she said.
Chapter Forty-Three
Stephen Meyers, a New York native, believes in resurrections. He’s been through a couple himself. Before coming to Oregon State University to work on his Ph.D. in botany, Stephen worked as an air traffic controller, then as a stonecutter.
“A stonecutter?” I asked when we met for coffee at New Morning Bakery in Corvallis in March 2008.
“Yeah,” Stephen said, pushing back his shoulder-length hair. “The person who carves the headstones for graves.”
I’ve been to hundreds of gravesites in my lifetime, and never gave a passing thought to the person with the job of carving in all those names and dates—until I met Meyers.
Stephen was one of the eight men and four women who found Shawn W. Field guilty of torturing Karly to death. The jurors’ lives have been forever altered by the death of Karly Sheehan. Some still have nightmares.
Stephen’s been to Karly’s grave a couple of times since the trial.
“I think about Karly a lot,” Stephen said. “I think about Kate, too. I wonder, does she have a chance at being okay?”
I wonder that myself.
Kate is in high school now. Driving, dating, picking out dresses for the dances, doing all the things Karly will never do.
It was obvious from the drawings Kate did for the ABC House that she witnessed far more violence than she was able to testify to. On one of her doodles, done on white paper with black bold writing, Kate wrote: Dad, kidnap, scary, kids, strangers. On another she wrote the words, perfectly spelled: Bitch. Fuck. On another she helped identify in a drawing the layout of the house. In the center of it are two stick figures. On the back she wrote, again in black bold letters: Share. Eye. Spoon. And she’s blacked out the upper left corner, where she had written the words: Dad, I wanted…
I can’t make out the rest of what it is Kate wanted from her dad.
In those early days of his arrest, Shawn wrote letters to Kate. I don’t know if she ever saw the letters or not. In one, Shawn tells his daughter:
I know it’s hard to understand why Daddy is not with you. But understand that life can sometimes be unfair to all of us. We must just do the best we can and move on. Please go give your mommy a big hug and tell her that I love the both of you.
Love always and forever, Daddy
It’s obvious from his “life is unfair” remark, Shawn is trying to say he’s a victim in all of this. In another letter written from jail, Shawn tells Kate:
Hello again Princess!
This is daddy again. It’s about 5:30 on Monday, June 13, 2005. I was just thinking of you and wanted to write you some more. Daddy got a little sad earlier today. But I just thought of you and your wonderful smile and your big hugs and kisses and I got happy. I wonder if you are in Disneyland right now. All wet from the log ride and with a tummy full of good treats.
Remember to always keep that beautiful smile on your face and give all the love you have to others. Your (sic) such a special person and I love you with all my heart and soul.
Love, Daddy
I believe Shawn loved his daughter, however imperfectly. I believe Shawn couldn’t imagine hurting Kate as he did Karly.
I spoke with Kate’s maternal grandmother, Brenda Baze. She told me Kate has no contact with Shawn, or with her paternal grandparents.
Shawn’s lead defense attorney, Dan Koenig, met me at Starbucks in Hermiston one winter’s night. He and Shawn were hammering out an appeal on his conviction. A former Marine, Dan has a commanding presence, a head full of dark hair, and unflinching gray eyes. He’s as comfortable packing a rump sack over the rough terrain of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest as he is stringing a jury along. He can converse easily about the best places to hunt elk or about the wrongs inflicted upon Chief Joseph and his people. And he can recite with the accuracy of a history teacher every major Civil War battle and why the losers lost.
He grew up in Kelso, Washington, among loggers and green-chain gangers. He knows how to read a jury.
“My only concern is that twelve-person jury. I don’t even care what the judge thinks,” Dan said. His thick fingers were wrapped around a cup of bold roast coffee, a diamond ring on one finger.
Dan spent eight years as a district attorney before switching over to criminal defense. Predictably in Shawn’s case, he thinks the jury flubbed up. “That Corvallis jury is different than any other I’ve ever had. Almost all of them had a master’s degree or were working on one. Corvallis is a big town trying to be small.”
Dan thought Sarah’s motivation for killing Karly was better than Shawn’s.
“So you don’t think Shawn was trying to extort money from David?” I asked.
“Why?” Dan said. “At the time of Karly’s death, Shawn was bringing in as much money as David between his parents and his school loans. Check it out,” he challenged.
So I did. Shawn’s parents were reportedly giving him $11,000 each, all part of keeping his inheritance tax-free for as long as possible. He worked part time at a restaurant but had only been doing that for a few weeks. His jobs at OSU were all drummed up. It’s hard to know how reliable his school loans were, given that Shawn’s claims about pursuing his degree were bogus.
“There’s some dirty little secret behind why Heiser didn’t charge Sarah,” Dan said.
“What kind of secret?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Dan said, shrugging. “But most courts would have charged them both and let them hang each other.”
That’s true. I had witnessed that time and time again during my days covering the court beat in Eastern Oregon. Prosecutors usually had no trouble getting one defendant to rat out the other one. And the quickest way to justice usually hinged on charging both people whenever a crime duet was in doubt.
“There’s an hour gap between the last text message Sarah sent Shawn and when she arrived home. How do we know Sarah didn’t do it? She had sent David a text message saying she had a rough night.”
There was no hour gap. Demarest had proved that in court by entering Sarah’s time card as evidence.
“If you have proof that Sarah killed Karly, why didn’t you offer that up in court during the trial?” I asked.
“Police never even considered Sarah a suspect,” Dan said. “I don’t buy into that victim mentality of hers.”
Sarah testified that Shawn had only hit her once, and even that was only teasingly; still, it hurt, she had said. That’s why Demarest made a point to talk about all the ways in which emotional abuse can be just as debilitating as physical abuse.
“Was Sarah given immunity?” Dan asked.
“In a sense,” I said. “Her testimony before the Grand Jury protected her.”
I repeated to Dan a remark someone in the Par 3 crowd had made the night I visited with them: “They got the right guy. They just haven’t gotten the girl yet.”
It was a sentiment I’d heard time and time again from Sarah’s former friends, Karly’s former daycare providers, lawyers and lawmen, and concerned community members.
Dan smiled. He’d love for a jury to think Sarah was responsible somehow.
“C’mon, you really believe your guy’s innocent?” I asked. “You’re paid to believe that.”
“I don’t concern myself with what I believe,” Dan replied. “I worry about what I can prove or not prove. That’s a different question.”
Chapter Forty-Four<
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Karly’s death changed the way Delynn Zoller interacts with her daycare children.
“There are days when you have so many children you are just going through the motions,” Delynn said. “I wish I’d spent more time with Karly. I wish I hadn’t been so busy.”
Karly had an animal book at home her daddy used to read to her.
There were four animals in it, and whenever David read it, Karly would point to each animal and name it: “That’s Daddy. That’s Mommy. That’s Karly. And that’s Delynn.”
Call her paranoid, but Delynn said every mother’s boyfriend is now suspect in her mind. If a child cowers behind a chair, crying, “I’m scared of him,” as one tyke recently did, Delynn wastes no time in reporting it.
Shortly after Karly died, Delynn sat down and wrote a letter to the parents of the other children in her daycare:
Dear Parents –
I wrote this newsletter last week and cannot add anything new (computer problems!) but I wanted to say something about Karly before we all move on with the day-to-day life and she fades into my memory like so many other children in my past.
Your child’s friend, Karly’s, full name was Karla Isabelle Ruth Sheehan. She was white-blonde with sky blue eyes. She was half Irish and looked like a pixie. She was extremely smart and could talk and think like a 5-year-old even though she was only 3. She wanted to grow up and be Princess Fiona and marry her daddy, Prince Charming.
She was easy to care for and played very well with all the kids. She could play with them and make up games regardless of their different personalities. She was quiet and talked softly to everyone. Never hit, yelled or threw any type of tantrum. She was easily one of the best-behaved children I have ever had over these many years.
She turned 3 on January 4th. She used to sing “You say potato, I say patato” and told me her daddy sang that to her. He is Irish and has an accent! She loved to eat the snap peas from my garden and wanted to even dig up the old carrots that I’d left there over the winter—to eat! She hummed while she ate her food. I would tell the kids that she was singing in her mouth!
She loved Dragon Tales and played “Dragon” with the other kids. Her favorite color was blue, “like my eyes” she would always say. Her daddy told me her favorite foods were fried onions and Shepherds pie. I always told her she was a weird kid. She would laugh and run around and get all goosey and then talk like a baby.
She asked me a lot about God and Jesus. And she wore a small silver cross around her neck that her daddy gave to her for her birthday. She told me “God protects everyone” and that Jesus was taking good care of her, and that’s why she had his cross.
I loved Karly and so did all the kids. And I would like to say that God did protect her. He was taking care of her by his dramatic rescue of her. It was an answer to many prayers for her safety. Now she is a princess in heaven.
I hope we can turn this terrible grief into a time of glory for God and His purpose on this earth.
Thank you,
Delynn
As I write this, I am sitting in a cottage not far from Mobile Bay. There’s a chorus of mockingbirds heralding the morning sun. Mockingbirds are monogamous, often for life, not just for a season. Male mockingbirds are territorial, particularly during mating season.
Nesting is a chore attended by both the male and female mocks. They build their nests not far from the ground, in the forks of trees or bushes. Their nests are vulnerable to predators. But in the sacred shelter of adult mockingbirds, tiny ones thrive.
Although they aren’t very big, mockingbirds are fierce about protecting their young. They will drill anyone and anything they consider a danger to their offspring, no matter the size of the predator. Mockingbirds will swoop down from the skies like kamikazes to dive-bomb snakes, cats, dogs, pigs, or people.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Florida campus in Gainesville discovered mocks are incredibly perceptive about identifying predators. In fact, mockingbirds are so keen they can pick out exactly which person, among thousands, poses a threat.
Volunteers who had previously touched nests where the baby birds were sheltered were repeatedly singled out. The birds seemed to bear a grudge against those who interfered. Even when the volunteers dressed in different clothing or came from different directions or in groups, the birds still knew which person had been the greatest threat. These mockingbirds could pick out from thousands of students which particular volunteer had messed with their nests, and would attack that person.
“We think our experiments reveal the mocks’ underlying ability to be incredibly perceptive of everything around them, and to respond appropriately when the stakes are high,” said lead researcher Doug Levey.
When their young are threatened, mockingbirds take action.
Should we do any less?
That is the question Judge Janet Holcomb asked just prior to sentencing Shawn Field.
And it is the same question that David Sheehan’s father, James Sheehan, considered in the witness impact statement that he wrote from his home in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland.
“Six thousand miles can be a barrier at the best of times. It can be a major barrier when you’re trying to get to know your granddaughter,” James Sheehan said. “But get to know Karly we did quite well, largely through her two trips to Ireland. It was during the latter of these trips that she proved the old adage true: ‘If I had known grandchildren could be this much fun, I would have had them first.’”
James Sheehan noted that it was his trips to Karly’s hometown of Corvallis that gave him further insights into his granddaughter. “On the second of these trips, we took Karly to St. Mary’s Catholic Church. It was a joyous day, with a lot of fond memories. But little did we realize that on our next trip to Corvallis, we would again be taking Karly to St. Mary’s, to a little plot on the slopes of a wooded hill.
“Yes, Karly was gone, taken from us in a cruel and brutal manner. Events of that June weekend opened a wound in our hearts that no amount of retribution will ever heal, but it will stop the sopping around the moon every day for the rest of our lives,” James Sheehan said.
“The one thing that impressed me about Corvallis was its community spirit,” he added. “It’s a town where everybody helped and cared for one another. But as in any community, whether it be Corvallis or a small town in Ireland, greed will infest the minds of some individuals, and it is made all the more sickening when that greed hurts those who are the most vulnerable in society.
“Our kids need our attention, our caring, our love—not our selfishness, our apathy, or our anger. The kids you see around every day are not just kids, they are your future engineers, teachers, police, doctors, and they should all be given the chance to achieve these goals. Nobody must be allowed to take away that chance from them by any means, and certainly not by the violent means that took that chance away from Karly. You must send out a very clear message to any budding criminal entrepreneur that you will not tolerate these actions in your society. So that you never again have to read the kind of headlines you’ve been reading the past four weeks. God bless you.”
I am no lyricist, but I am pretty sure I can make out the mockingbird call this morning— and if I’m right, it is a call of caution: Remember Karly. Remember Karly. Remember Karly.
Chapter Forty-Five
Emmet Whittaker had in mind for some time that David and Liz might make a good match. Emmet was eager to see David happy, given all the heartache. It took some scheming, but along with some help from his wife, Sanna, Emmet finally managed to set David and Liz up. Emmet and Sanna had talked about it ahead of time, of course: how they could get these two together.
Liz Sokolowski is a lithe classic beauty: Audrey Hepburn with fair hair and shockingly blue eyes. She moves with grace and embodies that katharos Jesus spoke of when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matt.5:8).
David couldn
’t help but notice her. “I’d always thought she was cute,” he said. Their first few encounters in early 2008 were sporadic. David would meet Emmet after work on Fridays for a beer. Liz would join Sanna for a glass of wine. David had had surgery on his shoulder and couldn’t drive, so Emmet would pick him up, and because Liz lived closer to him, she would give David a ride home. Their conversations were clumsy. Mostly, David would talk to Emmet and Liz would talk to Sanna.
One evening, a large group of HP professionals got together for dinner and to attend a friend’s play. David decided to ratchet things up a notch. “I made sure to sit across from Liz at dinner and next to her at the play,” David said. “But another friend was talking to Liz about a handsome friend of hers. She wanted to set Liz up on a date. I was thinking, ‘How handsome can this guy be? Maybe he’s not!’”
Fortunately, nothing ever came of that, thanks to Emmet and Sanna, who had finally devised a plan to get David and Liz alone. “You want to meet Sanna and me for breakfast Sunday?” Emmet asked David.
“Sure,” David said.
“Liz might join us,” Emmet added.
Splendid! Breakfast with Liz was something David had been yearning for. On those Friday nights when Liz would give David the occasional ride home, he found himself entranced. “I often wanted to reach across and plant a big kiss on her face,” David said.
Liz, however, didn’t have a clue David was crushing on her. “He was so quiet,” she said. “We usually sat in different spots, so the only time we talked was on those rides home. I didn’t get the idea he was interested in me.”
And David didn’t know that Liz was already in love. “I loved David right off the bat,” Liz said. “I know that sounds crazy, but I feel like I did.”
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