The foursome met for Sunday breakfast at a neighborhood bakery. But when Sanna had to leave for an appointment (or so she claimed), Emmet suggested everyone else head over to The Beanery for some coffee. The three of them found a table and had just gotten their mugs of coffee when Emmet stood up abruptly and announced he had somewhere else to be. It was so obvious to both David and Liz they were being set up that they laughed.
“Emmet thought we were a good match from a personality standpoint,” Liz said. “He was trying to get us in the same place at the same time. He wanted David to be happy.”
In my almost weekly phone conversations with David during the spring of 2008, he told me about the pretty, smart chick from Chicago. He sent me e-mails, reassuring me that he intended to be extra careful this time around. In May, he sent me this note:
Hey Elly May (his pet name for me),
I will keep doing this group thing for a while and see where it goes. Anyway, Liz might have no interest in me, so it could be a moot point. But I hope she is interested; she’s a sweetheart. She e-mailed me on Tuesday to acknowledge Karly’s anniversary and she offered to help with the playground on Wednesday.
That had been a big point of concern for me. David knows I disapprove of the silent treatment when it comes to grief of any sort. A loving mate doesn’t tell their partner, “I don’t want to hear about all that.” Initially, I held my tongue (a first for me) because I loved David and, like Emmet, wanted so badly for him to be happy. When he told me Liz had sent him an e-mail acknowledging the anniversary of Karly’s death, he knew it would score big points with me. He was right. It softened my heart toward Liz right away.
Liz has the gift of mercy, the result of having grown up hearing all those tragic tales of the Polish people. “I’m drawn to people who have suffered,” she said— part of why she was drawn to David. “I had a huge amount of compassion and empathy for him. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose Karly. David was so kind. From the start, I got this sense that he was a good, good person. I didn’t know if we would wind up getting married or not, but I thought that we might.”
Falling in love with the father of a murdered child isn’t the hard part; figuring out how to talk to him about his child is what takes some skill. Liz wanted David to know that he could talk about Karly with her anytime.
“David can be hard to read. He’s very reserved. He was concerned; he didn’t want all this to be the focus of our relationship.”
One of their first dates was a trip to Karly’s grave. It was Memorial Day weekend, this one marking the third anniversary of Karly’s death. David debated whether to ask Liz to go to the cemetery with him. There was a lot of complicated history to consider.
“He was pretty cautious,” Liz said. “He thought maybe I didn’t want to hear about it, maybe I didn’t want to go with him— but he told me he was going and asked if I could come along.”
Karly is buried on a gentle hillside at St. Mary’s Cemetery. Not surprisingly, David picked the spot and planned the funeral without any help from Sarah. He didn’t want her input. He waited for his family from Ireland to arrive before burying Karly, so although Karly was killed on Friday, June 3, 2005, Karly’s services didn’t take place until the following Thursday.
When she saw Sarah Sheehan across the room at the funeral home, Noreen Sheehan hesitated. Should she speak to her former daughter-in-law? Could she speak to her? It was a question Andrea debated as well. Andrea was so angry she had no intention of speaking to Sarah, but when David implored his sister to be mannerly, Andrea walked up to Sarah and said, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Sarah replied.
Those were the only words the former sisters-in-law exchanged.
But that was more than Noreen received. “This was the mother of my granddaughter,” Noreen said, “so I did approach her. I put my arm around her and asked, ‘Sarah, what happened to our little girl?’”
Sarah never said anything, not then or the next day at the graveside. The two women sat side by side, and when the time came for them to put flowers on Karly’s grave, Noreen asked, “Sarah, are you ready to do this?”
Silence was all that Sarah offered Noreen Sheehan. Karly’s graveside service was the last time the two saw each other.
Noreen Sheehan struggles with the passage of time. “I could picture what Karly would have been like at four, maybe, but not what kind of nine-year-old little girl she would be.”
Karly’s grandmother thinks about all the plans she had for Karly and mourns for what might have been. “We are left with the sadness, our own and the sadness of our son losing his only child.”
It’s the memories that strengthen Noreen: “The memories of talking to her on the phone. She sang happy birthday to me only two weeks before she died and asked if I would love a cupcake.”
Even now the recollection of that brings a smile to Noreen’s face. “These are the memories of a little girl I will love forever and never forget, and so life goes on.”
Andrea has her memories, too.
“I think of Karly every day, mostly of the beautiful little girl who came to visit, who wanted to visit the chippy fry store for ‘chocolate moatshakes.’ I think of all the goodness she brought to our lives. But it’s hard not to think of how she suffered at the hands of that monster, and to this day I cannot understand how her mother didn’t protect her. I know it’s wrong but I hate what Sarah did to my brother and to my family. She took away a treasured child, grandchild, niece, and cousin, and for that I cannot forgive her.”
Burying Karly violently tore David from the arms of all he held precious. While he can’t cuddle her, suds up her hair, or kick a soccer ball between the two of them, or awaken his sleeping princess with the perfect kiss, David feels her presence when he’s sitting with her under the tree on that knoll, watching the deer and squirrels romp like storybook animals. Karly would love that.
•
A year after Karly’s death, Andrea’s son, who is only seven weeks older than Karly, asked his mother to take him to town to buy some wings.
“What do you need wings for?” Andrea asked.
“So I can fly straight to Heaven and bring Karly home in my arms,” he replied.
When it grows dark in Ireland, Andrea’s children ask their mother, “Why did Karly turn off the lights?” And when it rains in County Kerry, as it so often does, Karly’s cousins ask their mother, “Is Karly splashing in the bathwater again?”
These are the ways Karly’s cousins keep her memory alive, through stories of tricks they imagine Karly playing on them.
David and Liz parked on a slope near Karly’s plot. The air smelled of wet bark. A bright mixture of fresh and artificial flowers were scattered about the graves like mismatched colored socks. A spinning flower garden ornament marked Karly’s headstone.
St. Mary’s is a pioneer cemetery, with graves dating back to the mid-1800s. Catholic families paid $50 for the two-and-half-acre cemetery in 1873. Some of the graves’ inscriptions have eroded with the passing of time and the soft rub of gentle rain. Although located by some of the city’s most well-traveled streets, the cemetery is shrouded with trees: tall ones and short ones, thin ones and thick ones, a protective shoulder-to-shoulder watch. Sometimes, most often in the spring, OSU students will bring their books and study under the oaks.
David led Liz over to Karly’s plot. They had brought carnations— something the deer wouldn’t eat. David knelt in the damp soil, wiped wet leaves from the headstone, and traced his fingers over Karly’s name.
Karly had been baptized at St. Mary’s on Easter, Resurrection Sunday. She wore her daddy’s baptismal gown. It all seemed fitting now, almost poetic. This child who so willfully kept rising above the darkness. She was joyful and merry, curious and cute, and so very independent.
David had taken her to Avery Park one late summer afternoon to play. When it came time to leave, Karly put up a fuss— she was not ready to go, not yet. “Hold my hand,” David sai
d, holding out his open palm. Karly reached up to take her daddy’s hand, then, pausing briefly, she grasped his wrist instead. It was a technical defiance, one that had David laughing to himself as they walked off into the golden sunshine.
One night David was in the kitchen preparing dinner, but Karly didn’t want to wait for supper; she was hungry now. She walked toward the refrigerator. “Karly, do not touch that fridge,” her father instructed. The impetuous child put out her hand and touched it ever so slightly with her index finger. She then looked up sweetly, assuredly at her father. Score! Another technicality. David had to fight to keep from laughing at Karly’s willful ways.
These joyful memories break his heart. The times he had to stifle his laughter in order to teach his daughter to do better. That impish personality that was all bubbles, and brightness, and boldness, all Karly— that is what David misses most. It is not the memory of her death that haunts him; it is the memory of her living.
David began to sob as grief pitched through him. Standing behind him, Liz reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was a simple gesture, but the sentiment was not.
“I’d never seen him like that before,” she said. “The only thing I can do is be there to support him, whatever grieving he needs to do, now and forever. I want to be there.”
Karly had done that once: touched her daddy’s shoulder in that very same way. It was the Saturday night after her death. David was lying face down in the bed. He’d been inconsolable then, too. All of a sudden, he felt Karly’s little hands rubbing his shoulders. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he, but his breathing relaxed and he fell into a deep and restful sleep.
A visitation from the child of Resurrection.
“I know that was Karly saying goodbye to me before she went to Heaven,” David said.
Epilogue
Inmate 16002306 has refused all my requests for an interview. One law enforcement official offered that perhaps the reason Shawn Field will not meet with me is that it gives him a certain amount of control. The causes of child abuse are multidimensional: drug abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, or an abusive childhood, to name a few. Some abusers do it simply to exercise power and control.
Perhaps the theory that Shawn Field wanted to extort money from David is true. But it could also be true that Shawn Field tortured Karly because he is a sick bully. He liked the power it gave him. David believes this and so do I. It certainly helps explain why Shawn began to torture Karly almost as soon he struck up a relationship with Sarah.
I have no relationship with Sarah. We have not spoken to each other in the past few years. I cannot tell you what she thinks. I can only tell you she continues to act as if life is one big party thrown in her honor. Her Facebook is full of photos of her all dolled up, or scantily clad, at one party or another. She’s usually snuggled up to some new groovy guy— often several of them— although they are getting older and older.
On what would have been Karly’s ninth birthday, Sarah made a trip to Corvallis and, while she made no mention of Karly, Sarah did put up this post on her Facebook: “Status update: traffic in Seattle to be expected. Traffic in Corvallis, OR? Effing annoying. I’ve been at the same gd traffic light for twenty minutes. Gah, I LOATHE this town!!!” (Emphasis Sarah’s).
People who know this story often ask me, what do you make of Sarah? It is a difficult question to answer. I am conflicted. I love and adore the girl that I met in that Helix classroom all those years ago. But the Sarah who repeatedly placed Karly in the hands of her killer, and lied about it as she was doing it, evokes grief and sadness. Not only is Karly lost to us forever, so is the Sarah I once regarded as a daughter.
The most telling moment of this entire story for me came the day I visited the Oregon Court of Appeals. Because Shawn Field was appealing his conviction— an appeal he lost— the evidentiary files were being stored at the Judicial Department’s building in Salem. I spent a few days going through the documents, word by word, photograph by photograph. When I came across a video investigators had made at Shawn’s place the day Karly died, I asked if I could view that tape.
Having already been screened by security, I was escorted to a room with a television. It was while watching, and re-watching, the tape that I realized that when Karly was at Shawn’s house she slept on the floor. While there were bunk beds in the tidy bedroom, there was only one mattress: the one for Kate. Sarah testified that Shawn was fanatical about the all-white couch in the living room, yelling at her if she so much as let Karly sit on the couch, worried that she might accidentally tinkle on it.
So on the last night of her life, Karly slept on a folded-up blanket on the floor in Kate’s room. Seeing that pallet on the floor in a room that sang Kate’s name with its leopard-print décor, Hilary Duff poster, and cat toys, I realized how diminished Karly must have felt, sleeping on the floor like a servant girl, not even allowed to sit on the sofa.
I sometimes wonder whose betrayal hurt Karly most: Shawn or Sarah’s? Every child expects their parent to be their protector, their defender, their safe shelter. It must have been very confusing for Karly to have her mother choose her own wants over her daughter’s needs.
The public might find it startling, but the people who work on the front lines of child abuse assessment centers routinely encounter mothers, who for a host of complex reasons, put their children in harm’s way. Or, more commonly, inflict the abuse themselves. Even after all these years of diligent research, I struggle to understand why Sarah repeatedly left Karly alone with Shawn. As a mother and a grandmother, my heart breaks for the neglected and abused children among us. We can and we must do better by them.
David sued the Oregon Department of Human Services for negligence in Karly’s death. The lawsuit maintained the state did not conduct appropriate follow-up on abuse complaints, lost photographic evidence, failed to properly train workers, and failed to have Karly examined by a medical examiner. The state’s attorneys were aggressive in their response, putting the blame where the state had always put the blame: on David. “The damages alleged by (David Sheehan) were the direct and proximate result of his own negligence in failing to report to the state facts he knew about Karly Sheehan’s condition.”
The case was settled out of court with a non-disclosure clause. David has established an endowment through the Benton County Foundation in Karly’s honor. “I think every kid should have an equal shot at life,” David said. “I think it’s a pretty sad reflection on our society that there are fundamentals that kids just don’t have. I wanted to try and do a little bit to level that playing field.”
Once the community learned of Karly’s death, David received a deluge of condolences, cards and donations. He used the money gifts along with Karly’s college fund to build a playground at Avery Park in memory of Karly. For locals, Avery Park represents the best of Corvallis. There are kites flying, bicyclists pedaling, joggers running, dogs fetching, families picnicking, people visiting, and children laughing. David spent a lot of time with Karly at Avery Park.
In September 2007, I stopped by the memorial playground and called David to tell him I was there. A toddler in a red t-shirt and blue jeans was scooching down the slide as his mama held onto his dimpled hand. Nearby, a copper-headed girl squealed in laughter as her mother gave her a push in the swing. David told me there was a plaque inscribed with Karly’s name on the wooden structure attached to the slide.
David and the good people of Corvallis built the memorial to Karly in a grassy sanctuary, surrounded by lichen-covered trees. This is the place where children kick their way to the sun and back without ever leaving their swings, where wind speaks in whispers and laughter hollers as loud as it wants.
When David and Liz have children, if they are so blessed, they will take Karly’s brothers and sisters to that playground and speak to them of the sister who died. One day, when those children are old enough to understand, David will tell them of the whole story of Karly. David and Liz will remind their childr
en that evil is always threatened by goodness and that the only way we can truly honor Karly is to be good and joyful like she was.
Six months into his third term, and only a couple of weeks after the sentencing of Shawn W. Field, Scott Heiser resigned his position as Benton County District Attorney. He cited Judge Janet Holcomb’s conduct in the trial as the reason for his departure. Justified or not, his feud with Holcomb was legendary. He had filed motions to have her disqualified in nine high-profile cases. Heiser said he would ask the Commission of Judicial Fitness and Disability to assess Holcomb’s conduct in the trial of Karly Sheehan.
Heiser now works with the Animal Legal Defense Fund on behalf of those who can’t defend themselves.
Dr. deSoyza left her job, too. I asked her if she left her practice behind because of Karly’s case. She marked up her departure to issues with administration. Specifically, Dr. deSoyza said she wanted to take unpaid leave to go visit family in Sri Lanka, but the administration wasn’t keen on the idea.
When a job at the Oregon State University campus opened up, she thought it was the perfect position, from a mother’s standpoint. She gets vacations and most of her summer off. There are no rounds or weekend rotations.
There’s also no chance she’s ever going to deal with the nightmare of child abuse again. “Most of my patients are younger and middle-aged women,” she said. “It’s interesting to work with college students, but I miss my babies. Pediatrics was a pretty large part of my practice.”
She still thinks about Sarah Sheehan, about the “what ifs” of Karly’s death. “Sometimes I wonder if Sarah had not been my patient, whether I would have been more suspicious. Having had a relationship with her the way I did, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would put their child at risk.”
Officer Dave Cox resigned from the Corvallis Police Department in 2007 amidst allegations that he was arresting sober motorists on DUI charges. Cox averaged twenty-plus arrests a month for drunken driving charges. Eight citations was the average for most city police officers.
A Silence of Mockingbirds Page 24