by Holly Hughes
In her first lesson, Snider promised the officially sanctioned food of 12-year-olds.
By the end of that 45-minute class, Curtis had punched out circles of Pillsbury biscuit dough, slathered on spaghetti sauce, slapped on discs of pepperoni and covered it all with cheese. Cooking provided something lacking in Curtis, he’d later realize: a sense of ownership and control, an illustration of cause and effect. Get your hands in the dough, give a damn about something, and watch results bubbling from the oven 12 minutes later.
Snider witnessed the transformation. In Curtis she saw a boy who put on a hard exterior but behind it was sullen and painfully shy, a student still adjusting from being uprooted. He was all nervous tics, fingers constantly inside his mouth, nails emerging chewed down, arms crossed in a defensive posture. But with every fruit kabob skewered and every cinnamon roll baked, Snider watched his veneer crack, slowly, then in large pieces, until the boy felt safe in the classroom kitchen. Now Curtis actually looked forward to coming to school.
“He saw adults as the enemy, not sure who to trust on the outside,” Snider said. “I know he trusted me.”
On the first day of seventh grade, with home economics no longer mandatory, Curtis walked into Room 12 on his own. And in eighth grade, he took Snider’s class a third straight year.
Snider had seen thousands of kids pass through her classroom since she’d begun teaching in 1973. Most she never heard from again. But Curtis . . . something about the sadness in his brown eyes. She knew his history. She knew others around town whispered about his family. In Johnstown, population 3,200, gossip traveled with the wind. Even after Curtis left her classroom, she vowed to keep tabs on him.
His cooking fuse lit, Curtis begged for a job at a local diner called Ohio Restaurant #2, the greasy spoon on Main Street people in town called “The Greeks.” The boy was now 14. After baseball and wrestling practice, Curtis went there and washed dishes for four hours, and was paid $15 cash.
Menial tasks became a game to him, and a game was something into which he could channel his angst. He’d rush through washing dishes for the chance to prep food for the next day’s service. Even in peeling boiled potatoes, Curtis sought to remove the skin in a single unbroken coil, mesmerized by the challenge. Submitting himself to the kitchen diverted him—from fighting out of boredom, from stealing for the thrill. From listening to his parents’ latest screaming match.
Bear and Jan fought with increasing regularity; she’d discovered he was cheating on her. And money, too, was always an issue. Bear was a bear of a man, with tattoos for sleeves and an intimidating chest-length beard to go with his shoulder-length hair. He had been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth, and now when rage seeped to the surface, he had no problems getting physical with his wife. In 1989 he pleaded no contest to domestic violence charges and was ordered to undergo alcohol and family counseling after he punched Jan in the chest and mouth. Jan wouldn’t retreat—Trisha Duffy, Curtis’ younger sister, remembers her mom punching back. The family’s splintering seemed irreparable.
Curtis, meanwhile, kept running away to the kitchen.
His high school cooking teacher, Kathy Zay, connected him with her restaurant-industry contacts. Curtis took a job at a country club in New Albany, an affluent Columbus suburb, that altered his concept of food. It wasn’t just that wealthier patrons dined on fancier food; rather, it was the idea of cooking as a form of self-expression. Bear was a tattoo artist, and Curtis believed his father had passed down an artistic gene.
At New Albany Country Club, Curtis’ job title was dishwasher, but he also learned the one skill every chef must master to succeed: how to properly hold a knife. The key was finding that center of balance—or else you risked hurting yourself.
From one kitchen to the next, each more prestigious than the last, Curtis’ bosses entrusted him with more responsibilities. Yet even as he found a job at age 16 cooking at greater Columbus’ most exclusive golf club—Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio, its 18-hole course designed by Jack Nicklaus—not once did his parents dine where he worked. It was as if Curtis led two lives separated by 25 miles: one catering to the rich, where a set of golf clubs costs more than several months’ rent, and the other, where fast-food clerk was a career choice for some neighborhood friends. He chose to live in the former.
He was devastated that Trisha, then 15, got pregnant. Rather than confront the news, Curtis stopped talking to her. Focus hard enough on cooking, he thought, and maybe you can block out everything else.
Amid the tumult, came one happy moment: the first time he cooked for his parents. For those few hours, the blame game between Bear and Jan ceased. Curtis, having watched a line cook at Muirfield Village prepare penne alla arrabiata hundreds of times, improvised at home with tomatoes, garlic, black olives and red chilies. He approximated, tasted, tweaked and tried again. It made so much sense to him. This was cooking: a subjective, intuitive art with no right or wrong way. That night his parents found common ground: They were astounded by their son’s cooking.
“It was the first time I cooked something I was proud of . . . ” Curtis said, pausing, “and the only time my parents ate something I made.”
Any residual goodwill from the homemade dinner quickly disappeared. The fighting between Jan and Bear intensified, and so too did Curtis’ focus. He moved into an apartment with his best friend and wrestling partner, Tony Kuehner. When he wasn’t cooking at the country club, he entered culinary competitions through his vocational high school and smoked the field. In a competition staged by the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America in 1994, he carved a floral centerpiece from cantaloupes, pineapple and honeydew in 25 minutes and took first place in his category in the state.
Around the same time, in spring 1994, the fighting finally broke Jan Duffy down. She had had enough. By then, Bear and Jan were living in St. Louisville, a 30-minute, country-road drive from Johnstown. She moved out, filed for divorce and took Trisha with her to an apartment back in Johnstown.
Curtis, Trisha and court documents paint a picture of a man desperate to win his wife back in the months that followed. Thinking that getting in shape would show his commitment, Bear took to the gym and in four months shed nearly 100 pounds. He tried sleeping pills and an antidepressant; he thought they would stifle the rage. When that didn’t have the desired effect, he quit cold turkey, but cutting off the medication so suddenly did more harm than good.
Paranoia consumed him. Bear found out Jan’s boss at the supermarket was hitting on her. So he showed up at her workplace unannounced. Although he had left the police department years ago, Bear used his old equipment to tap her phone.
On April 29, 1994, Jan Duffy filed a civil protection order—one step up from a restraining order—in the Licking County (Ohio) Common Pleas Court. It barred Bear from contacting Jan by phone, or entering her home or place of employment. The order also called for Bear to turn in all his guns to the sheriff’s department. WBNS-TV, a local news station in Columbus, reported that in a July 21 court hearing, Bear told the judge he “would never hurt his wife.”
On Monday, Sept. 12, 1994, the day of the Duffys’ 18th wedding anniversary, Bear tried saving his shambling marriage one last time. He showed up at Jan’s apartment door unannounced at 6 a.m. with a card and a rose. He pleaded. A family friend would later tell The Advocate newspaper of Newark, Ohio, that Bear said to Jan: “Till death do us part, baby.” But Jan said it was over.
Trisha was awakened by the screech of her father’s car peeling away.
That morning in central Ohio was warm for September. The top local story splashed across the front page of the newspaper: “New City Engineer To Update Computers.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Jan Marlene Duffy left for work at the supermarket.
Seventeen-year-old Trisha Ann Duffy readied for Mrs. Sommers’ English class at Johnstown High School.
Twenty-year-old Robert Burne “Tig” Duffy planned on stopping by his father’s house.
Ninete
en-year-old Curtis Lee Duffy studied in his apartment on his day off from work.
Thirty-nine-year-old Robert Earl “Bear” Duffy switched to Plan B.
September 12, 1994
At 12:15 p.m., Jan and a co-worker crossed the parking lot from Kroger, where they worked, to a McDonald’s for lunch. In the back lot, Bear waited inside a two-door brown sedan.
He pulled up next to them, brandishing a carbine rifle. He told the co-worker to run away. He threatened to shoot his wife if she didn’t get in the car.
Curtis had a day off from cooking at Muirfield Village Golf Club, so he studied for his Columbus State Community College culinary classes. He and his brother had made plans to visit their father that day, but Curtis had so much homework he decided to stay home instead. He would study until his girlfriend Nikki Davis, a senior at Johnstown High, came to visit after school.
Nikki and Trisha were sitting in the same English class when Trisha was summoned to the principal’s office, where a police officer and Jan’s supermarket co-worker waited for her. The co-worker, still shellshocked, explained what had happened. The officer said Trisha had to come with him now.
Bear’s car hurtled east toward St. Louisville, 18 miles away, to the home where he and Jan had lived until she’d moved out months earlier with Trisha. He’d already disengaged the locks and removed the door handles.
When they arrived, he made Jan call her mother in Colorado and relay a message: Don’t get the cops involved. Jan’s mother called the Licking County Sheriff’s Department anyway, and soon sirens converged at 8146 Horns Hill Road.
Nikki rushed over to Curtis’ apartment and asked if he had heard what was going on. He hadn’t. Not long afterward, police knocked on the door. “We have to go now,” the officer told Curtis.
By the time police arrived at Horns Hill Road, Bear’s sister Penny Duffy was already pacing in front of the house with an envelope of handwritten notes that Bear had dropped off at her workplace after leaving Jan’s apartment. Penny hoped to reason with him through the window.
Two hours passed. Bear kept telling officers he was giving himself up.
Four hours. Bear told his sister Penny there was no way he was going to prison like their father. “You know what they do to ex-cops in there?” Bear said.
Six hours. Bear prayed with Penny and reminisced about their childhood.
Eight hours. He said, “There’s no way out of this.”
The chronology of what happened next differs between police and an eyewitness. According to a sheriff’s narrative of the incident, at 10:45 p.m. the sheriff’s department heard a gunshot, at which point a half-dozen officers stormed into the house with battering rams and flash-bang grenades.
But Penny didn’t believe it was a gunshot that triggered the raid. She said it was Bear unlocking the deadbolt from the master bedroom to the backyard and the audio surveillance unit picking up an amplified noise—what police thought was a bang. She said that was when they went in and Bear panicked, firing his gun.
This much was clear: He shot Jan once through the chest. He placed her on the water bed, lay next to his wife and fired a single bullet that pierced his heart and right lung. Water slowly drained from the mattress.
He was dead. Jan, though, had a faint pulse when paramedics rushed her to an ambulance.
Curtis was several houses away and under police protection when he heard the tear gas shells fired into the house. In the noise and confusion, Curtis recalled, an hour passed before he received any information about his mother. He thought he heard that she was being treated at nearby Licking Memorial Hospital. He pleaded with his girlfriend’s family for a ride.
“I need to see my mom.”
“I’m sorry, Curt,” his girlfriend’s mother told him. “She died at the hospital.”
Days bled into nights. Sleep proved impossible. The next thing Curtis knew, he was standing at his father’s funeral in Newark, Ohio. Many of Bear’s biker friends showed up. No one from Jan’s family attended.
Ruth Snider, the home economics teacher who inspired Curtis to cook, was there too. She noticed the thick, dark rings under Curtis’ eyes. “He looked like he was in a dream state,” Snider said. “Curtis hadn’t grasped the severity of it yet.”
She handed him a letter she had written, telling him: “You are not alone.”
Jan’s family wanted a separate funeral for her in Colorado. Curtis and his two siblings didn’t have money for plane tickets, so they said goodbye in an impromptu gathering at a funeral home in Ohio.
There wasn’t even a coffin—Jan Duffy’s body lay on a gurney beneath a white sheet. Curtis’ sister, Trisha, reached out and touched her mother’s cold skin. “She has goose bumps!” Trisha said aloud. Curtis stood catatonic. He lifted the sheet and saw the bruises, the gunshot wound in the chest. And then his mother’s body was wheeled away and taken to an airport. Some weeks later, a relative mailed Curtis photos from his mother’s funeral.
What Curtis remembers most about that time was the morning after his parents died. He, his brother and his best friend went back to Bear’s house to collect his father’s belongings.
The remnants of tear gas burned his eyes. He navigated around glass shards from blown-out windows, a T-shirt shielding his nose and mouth.
In one room, Curtis found a blue spiral-bound notebook. He recognized the cursive on the page immediately from the distinctive, swooping “G’s.” For such a rugged man, Bear’s handwriting was all soft curves, elegant and graceful.
The notebook contained letters Bear had written to family members. It was dated six months earlier. Bear had addressed a page each to his daughter, Trisha, his son Robert Jr., his wife, Jan—before she had filed for divorce. But no words followed for them.
The only person Bear wrote a full letter to was Curtis—two pages, single-spaced. The message Bear left behind was prescient, as if warning exactly how Curtis’ future would unfold.
Curt,
This is dad . . .
Slowly Curtis re-entered the world, and he seized upon the one stable thing in his life: the kitchen. When he’d first started cooking five years earlier, the kitchen was a place to run away to from the fighting at home, a place that kept him from bullying neighborhood kids.
Now his parents were dead. Every hour focused on cooking was another hour not dealing with his confusion and anger. He dreaded the end of the shift. While other chefs at Muirfield Village Golf Club went out for drinks afterward, Curtis stayed in the head chef’s office and dived into the cookbooks. One of those, a new addition to the library, caught Curtis’ eye: an oversize burgundy-colored volume by a Chicago chef named Charlie Trotter. That name would stay with him.
In the moments he surfaced for air, Curtis took off in his Jeep with no particular destination, drowning out the whys with the radio’s machine-gun guitar riffs and crashing cymbals.
Like his father, Curtis had an idea for a convenient escape. He could leave Johnstown, make the 20-hour car ride back to Colorado. He told best friend Tony Kuehner, “Let’s go.” They had one chance to change everything.
When they arrived, Curtis and Tony visited the mausoleum in Colorado Springs where Jan was interred.
Years earlier, Jan had sat Curtis down on the living room floor. She had something important to tell him. His real mother left Bear, Robert Jr. and Curtis when he was 6 months old. You’re not my biological son, Jan said, but I love you all the same. Curtis cried all night—not out of anger or betrayal, but for fear of never seeing her again. Jan assured her son: I will always be there.
The best friends also went in search of Bear’s ashes, which had been sent to Colorado. Curtis was told his father’s ashes were scattered on Pikes Peak, beneath a pine with a wooden cross on it, and they drove up the mountain looking for it. Curtis stared at the photograph of the tree from all angles, then scanned the snow-blanketed tableau. They never found it.
“I was looking for that reconnection,” Curtis said, “to have that quiet moment and r
eflect and say a few words.”
After coming down from the mountain, Curtis and Tony were dining at a pizza parlor when the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle” started playing.
When you comin’ home, son, I don’t know when,
But we’ll get together then, dad,
You know we’ll have a good time then.
It was a song Bear and Curtis had listened to together. Curtis broke down. This was the man who had killed his mother.
In the end, running away to Colorado didn’t provide solace. The kitchen jobs paid poorly, and Tony wasn’t thrilled with washing dishes. A standing offer from Muirfield Village Golf Club, however, remained. Any time Curtis wanted to come back, there was a job waiting for him. After four months, he and Tony loaded their cars and headed back to Ohio.
His home economics teacher, Ruth Snider, was there for him. The two spoke on the phone often, and in each conversation they let their guards drop lower. “Every time I iron my jacket or sew a button, it reminds me of you,” Curtis told her. Eventually, he felt safe enough to cry when they talked. The subjects of conversations were irrelevant; it mattered to him that she listened.
Meanwhile, there was someone at work. He’d been eyeing the server with the flowing brown hair. Curtis learned her name: Kim Becker. She could sing opera and play the violin. After he’d stockpiled enough nerve to make conversation, he said, “You know, maybe one day I’ll become the lead singer of a band.”
“Sure,” he said she told him, “as long as I can give you singing lessons.”
Others at Muirfield Village recognized the signs of a blossoming romance. A co-worker organized a dinner at his home and invited Curtis and Kim. The evening felt effortless. They laughed together over great food and pours of wine. His hunch grew over weeks and months, and when it passed the point of certainty, Curtis whispered to a fellow cook, “I’m going to marry that girl one day.” Three years later, halfway up Pikes Peak next to a fallen tree, Curtis got down on one knee and asked Kim to make it official. (Attempts to reach her for this story were unsuccessful.)