Driving into town, Bill and Mary found this “great little adobe house.” It wasn’t a palace, but not a dump, either.
“We just loved it.”
It was outside of town. By itself.
“And we took turns working at the local Pizza Hut,” Bill explained, “to pay the small bills of living there.”
Bill was also working on a book based on his studies in philosophy. He still wasn’t ready to tackle the dissertation, a project that seemed so formidable, such a burdensome task. Philosophy involves lots of contemplating and thinking before committing ideas to paper, effectively locking them down. Bill wanted to be certain his concepts were fully fleshed out before being finalized into his doctorate.
Helping each other, Mary worked so Bill could write. Bill worked so Mary could take a break and focus on her studies.
“And after about a year—and I sound totally clueless when I say these things now—something like getting married, the idea in and of itself, had just never occurred to me as the next step,” Bill explained. “We were just so happy, and busy living each moment, the topic never came up.”
With Bill, his life and motivation were more about the moment than yesterday or tomorrow. Same with Mary. They weren’t a couple settled inside the mainstream expectation of meet, date, marry, have children, work, white picket fence. They were creating their own path, the way they wanted, without any blueprint or predetermined belief of what their lives should be.
One afternoon, however, as Bill sat by himself in the apartment while Mary was out, a thought knocked him over: I’m going to ask her to marry me.
His next thought, Bill admitted later with a smile, was Where in the hell did that come from?
“It wasn’t that I was against it, I had just never thought of it before that moment.”
“Yes!” Mary said immediately.
They packed and drove back to Utica.
11
BILL YODER RUSHED TO the hospital and ran into the ICU. What had changed overnight? Mary seemed to be recuperating when Bill had left the hospital the previous night. She was talking, hard as it was. She was partially alert. Sick, tired, and drained, but seemingly on the mend.
Now she’d taken a turn for the worse?
Didn’t make sense.
Not long after Mary was admitted to the ER the previous day, doctors took a close look at her vital signs. However sick she was upon arriving, those readings were typical and stable: temperature, 98 degrees; heart rate, 81; blood pressure, 128/62; respiratory rate, 20; oxygen saturation, 98 percent.
By those standards, Mary Yoder was in good health. Although her electrolytes were a bit low, and Mary was dehydrated, “all [of her vitals were] . . . normal,” the doctor who treated her in the ER later explained.
As they looked deeper into what might be ailing her, sending Mary’s blood to the lab for analysis, her doctor noticed something: “I did a complete white count . . . which was elevated to 14.6, and hemoglobin was 16.2, which was also slightly elevated.”
What did this say about her condition?
“The white count elevation . . . [an] inflammation or infection can do that.”
Among those treating Mary, the collective analysis was that she might need to have her gallbladder removed.
* * *
BEYOND HIS WORK AT the office, Bill—or, actually, William R. Yoder, PhD (as he went by on his website)—had an indelible passion, maybe even an obsession, with happiness.
In 2010, Bill published his second book, The Happy Mind: Seven Principles to Clear Your Head and Lift Your Heart, with a small independent press. Since the book’s publication, Bill had turned the concepts he proposed in the book into a website, and, subsequently, a small cottage industry: a scaled-down cross between Tony Robbins and Norman Vincent Peale. Bill advertised workshops and seminars, sold CDs. He gave practical advice for changing one’s life: “Happiness is a state of mind inside, and not a state of affairs in the world.”
Bill’s core philosophy was a rather common concept within the guru circles of self-help: A person’s “ability to experience happiness [is] determined by [one’s] thoughts and beliefs.” Bill promoted the idea that anyone has the opportunity and power within, regardless of social or financial status, to achieve total and complete happiness.
The cover copy from Bill’s book promised “an alternative way of thinking based on seven simple principles” he had developed, each leading to a “deep and lasting happiness.”
According to some, however, Bill himself was unhappy—in work, life, and marriage. Mary Yoder’s sister, Janine King, later said publicly, “[Bill] is a brilliant scholar, with two PhDs, and was the valedictorian in at least one of them.” Janine called Bill an “avid murder-mystery buff and the quintessential detail-ist,” adding how meticulous and organized Bill was in his life.
Somehow, it seemed, she viewed those characteristics as negative. Also, according to Janine, Bill had an extensive knowledge of computers, which, for whatever reason, Bill never acknowledged. More important, however, Janine talked about a deep, spreading crack in Bill and Mary’s marriage. Theirs was a decades-old relationship that Bill had routinely described as happy and, not without any bumps, a soul mate–type of union.1
“He wanted to retire,” Janine further explained. “But he and Mary had ongoing financial problems and there were no retirement savings. Just a lot of debt. Mary had told me the little bit of retirement savings they set aside had been used for advertising to promote Bill’s latest book.”2
Janine said she’d heard from one of the Yoder kids (whom she did not name) that the plan to bring the book to the masses “did not pan out.”
From her point of view, and based on what Janine later wrote online, Bill Yoder was all about, well, Bill Yoder. Even with the alleged financial problems within the Yoder household, along with a side business, Bill was allegedly growing a “supercrop of marijuana.” If that was not sketchy enough, according to Janine, there might have been far more serious problems: an inheritance Bill had received.
He’d admitted to one of his kids, Janine alleged, “that the inheritance. . . was not enough for two people to live on.”
On the flip side of all that negativity, Bill and Mary were in the process of selling the family business, which would generate a large lump sum of money. Secondly, one could take that quote in an entirely different context. Straight up. Just as it comes across—a father telling his child: Yeah, we received an inheritance, but it’s just not enough for the two of us to live off of . . . so we have to continue to work and sell the business.
According to Janine, a far more scandalous and alarming accusation included Bill allegedly having an extramarital affair with Mary and Janine’s other sibling, Kathleen. Just days before Mary became ill and wound up in the hospital, one of Kathleen’s neighbors later claimed that she and one of her daughters witnessed “a passionate embrace and kiss between” Bill and Kathleen on Kathleen’s front porch.
Janine also suspected that Mary had called a marriage counselor the week before she became ill. Why (and if) she called, of course, only Mary could say. Yet, one does not call a marriage counselor to sing the praises of a marriage and figure out a way to celebrate anniversaries.
The problem with the accusations was no supporting evidence to suggest Mary had called a counselor existed, nor that there were any problems within the Yoder marriage. In fact, all available evidence would lead one to believe the Yoder marriage was stronger than it had ever been.
Kathleen suffered, Janine said, “neurological disease.” So the family “did not believe [she should be held] fully accountable for her actions/choices” within the alleged affair. The assumption was that Bill had taken advantage of Kathleen. The motive was not love, but rather that Kathleen was “financially well-off by most people’s standards.”
“That’s his primary attraction to you,” Janine told Kathleen the day after she found out what was allegedly going on. “I worry for your safety.”
&
nbsp; This entire narrative, law enforcement and prosecutors later said, after looking deeply into it, had been invented.
“We did a subpoena for the supposed [marriage] counselor,” said a prosecutor connected to the case, “that was a no.”
Likewise, Bill adamantly rejected the accusation of him and Kathleen starting an affair before Mary became ill.
* * *
BILL FOUND THE DOCTOR in charge of the ICU and asked what happened.
The state police showing up at his door.
The call to the hospital.
Intensive care.
Mary’s health outlook deteriorating.
All of it gave Bill the impression of urgency. What had changed overnight?
“Mr. Yoder, your wife fell last night . . . her heart stopped . . . and we were able to resuscitate her,” the doctor said. “I need you to be prepared for what you will see before you go in.”
Mary had walked to the bathroom and had fallen. They weren’t saying the fall had caused her condition to worsen, but it was shortly after that occurrence when things took a 180-degree turn.
Bill spent the next ten minutes with Mary’s doctors discussing her condition and what Bill should prepare for.
He was obviously upset. This was not the prognosis he expected. Bill thought he’d be bringing Mary home. Now, suddenly, he was wondering if she’d make it out of the hospital alive.
While walking away from the doctor on his way toward the ICU, Bill called Liana.
As soon as she answered, Liana could tell her father was “totally devastated,” Liana recalled.
They spoke briefly.
Bill handed the phone to the ICU doctor so she and Liana could discuss Mary’s medical status.
Liana spoke to the ICU doctor for fifteen minutes, obtaining all the information she could. As a physician, Liana could clearly see what had changed.
For a reason no one could figure out, Mary Yoder was dying—and nobody in the hospital knew what to do about it.
12
STAY-AT-HOME MOM LIANA HEGDE, at thirty-eight years old (in 2015), was the Yoders’ oldest daughter. A physician, Liana had been trained in family practice. Bill and Mary had Liana in 1978, the year after they married. Because Liana and her husband lived on Long Island, it was more than a quick road trip upstate if Liana felt the need to rush to her mother’s bedside. With four kids and a working husband, she would have to plan accordingly. As Liana considered what was going on back home, from what her father was now saying, in addition to consulting with Mary’s doctors, it appeared that her mother was fighting a stomach ailment, likely a bug or flu. However, her mother’s condition had rapidly deteriorated, right after she had rebounded. After getting all of this information, Liana sensed that her mother was fighting for her life.
As dire as the circumstances seemed from a medical standpoint, the Yoder family believed Mary could recover. Optimistic, Liana could make plans to go up for the weekend and see her.
Bill stopped and took a deep breath before walking into the ICU. After he spoke with her doctors, “warning lights went off in my head,” Bill recalled. One statement in particular: “Mary coded a few times, Mr. Yoder . . . she died.”
Mary was now intubated. Strapped to her bed. IVs stuck into her arms. Her limbs were swollen. She couldn’t move or gesture. The only parts of her body Mary could control were her eyes.
“Going into that room was the worst moment of my life,” Bill said.
He stood bedside. “Mary?”
13
AFTER ADAM YODER COMPLETED classes that May, only partially finishing his exams, he traveled southeast to Long Island for that visit to see his sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephews. He was feeling much better after his monthlong battle with what he assumed was the stomach flu. Two of Adam’s nephews were celebrating a birthday that summer. Adam wanted to be there. Back in June, Liana’s daughter had gone in for routine surgery. Adam had made the trip then, as well, looking after the other children while Liana and her husband spent as much time as they could with their daughter at the hospital.
Adam’s niece, who had made it through surgery fine, was set to celebrate a birthday on July 25. Days before Mary entered the ER, Adam had made plans to travel from Oneida County to Long Island. There had been no indication, as far as Adam knew when he left, that his mother was ill. Or he would not have gone. As Liana later explained, Adam planned to “kind of hang out with us for the summer because the kids were all home from school and [he wanted to] be there for my daughter’s birthday.”
Furthermore, Adam welcomed the notion of getting away from Katie Conley, who was still playing games and messing with his emotions. For Adam, there was a clear disconnect. By July, he was certain he wanted nothing to do with Katie whatsoever. They had not seen each other on a regular basis since the last breakup in the fall of 2014. They might have gone back and forth, broken up and gotten back together in the past. But it was unquestionably finished now, even though Katie still worked at the family business and routinely tried to bait Adam into another chance.
Mary and Bill were scheduled to make the same trip to Long Island on July 24, after their workday. They were excited to spend the weekend enjoying the birthday party and “possibly staying until Monday as well.”
Visiting Liana’s family was nothing new for Adam. When they were together, he and Katie had visited. They’d made the trip “multiple times during the summers of 2012, 2013, and 2014,” Liana confirmed. Sometimes Adam showed up alone, but “once or twice a year,” he always brought Katie.
“I liked Katie,” Liana said. In fact, since Mary had taken ill, Liana was in near-constant contact with Katie via text, trying to figure out what had happened. Katie was comforting, willing to assist Liana in whatever she needed.
* * *
BILL YODER STOOD AND stared at his wife. Mary was conscious.
“Lying on the bed, strapped down, a tube down her throat, needles and IVs everywhere.”
It was a sobering scene, giving Bill an immediate feeling of how serious the situation had turned overnight.
Confined, only able to move her eyes, Mary woke up and looked terrified. She had no idea what was happening. She couldn’t speak, of course. As Bill began to say something, Mary’s eyes darted back and forth, giving Bill a message: What is happening to me?
“It was torture,” Bill explained. “Not just for me, but for her, too.”
Bill spoke briefly. He stood by her side, held her hand. “I love you so very much . . .”
By then, Adam, Liana, and her husband were well aware that the situation had a ticking clock attached to it. Bill had been texting and chatting with Liana.
At some point in the ICU, Bill called his other daughter, Tamaryn (Tammy), who lived in Cooperstown, New York, less than an hour’s drive south of Utica. On his way back from Long Island, Adam had also called Tamaryn, filling her in as best he could with what little he knew.
At some point, Adam called his dad. Bill assumed Adam was still on Long Island.
“I drove all night,” Adam clarified. “Just getting back into town now.”
Bill texted Adam and Tammy: “Come right away, your mother is really, really sick.”
Liana called Tammy near 6:00 a.m. Liana had tossed some clothes in a bag and was on her way upstate—a six-hour drive with traffic at that time of day.
Throughout the morning, into early afternoon, Bill sat with Mary as doctors shuffled in and out.
“Because nobody,” Bill said, “had an idea what was going on.”
Mary died “six or seven times” throughout that day. As each death occurred, the monitors made a loud, piercing noise. Teams of nurses and doctors would rush in, loudly barking orders. They would ask Bill, Adam, and Tammy to leave the room (which meant standing on the opposite side of a curtain extended around Mary’s bed). After each death and resurrection, doctors emerged exhausted, as if having run a short marathon, saying: “We revived her again. You can go back in.”
�
��This happened again and again,” Bill noted.
Earlier that morning, as Adam drove up from Long Island to Utica, he texted Katie: “I’m sorry to put this pressure on you. You don’t owe me anything. But I need you.”
Near 2:00 p.m., Adam and Tammy were at the hospital, and Liana was close by, but still driving. The monitors screeched once again and the entire Code Blue action plan went into effect.
Emerging this time, after saving Mary’s life, the doctor looked sullen. He approached Bill, Adam, and Tammy. “She came back, but her eyes are fixed and dilated.” A respectful pause so that Bill could take it in. Then: “She is probably brain-dead. I am so sorry to have to say.”
The doctor disappeared behind the curtain after hearing a mild commotion, adding, “Give me a moment.”
Bill, Adam, and Tammy stood astonished. Speechless. Holding on to one another. Crying.
“I don’t know how this happened,” the doctor said, emerging from inside the curtain moments later. “But she’s responsive again. You can all go in and see her.”
14
AFTER A PERIOD OF time back home, now married, Bill and Mary Yoder took off for an extended honeymoon to Kauai, Hawaii. Bill later described this place as “the littlest island.” They were “scraping by at that point.” They had just enough money to live on. Without fear, the young, happy couple tossed two backpacks filled with essentials into a plane, landed, and hit the ground hiking. Once again, no particular plan. Just the two of them living life on their own terms.
They stayed overnight in several public campgrounds. Then they found their way to a remote area around the north side of the island along the coast: Kalalau Valley.
“You can only get there by a ten- to fifteen-mile hike, along these narrow paths,” Bill recalled. “Or by taking a boat ride. Or flying in by helicopter. But we walked.”
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