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Killer Dads

Page 3

by Mary Papenfuss


  Clare “never got to see her sixth birthday, or celebrate the first party she would have had with classmates instead of just family,” Sarah added. “I’ll never get to take her dress-shopping, and she’ll never attend her prom. I won’t get to teach her how to drive. I will never see her off on her first date or help heal her heart with a bowl of ice cream after her first breakup with a boyfriend. What remains of my baby girl this side of eternity is a bag of ashes inside a pretty urn, photographs and memories.

  “The life and experiences that James has robbed from Clare, and the joy that he has taken from me and my family by ending her young life are irreplaceable. All I can do is trust that the sentence James receives today will reflect the significant and devastating impact of his actions and our tremendous loss,” she said.

  Sarah’s sister, Helen Hutt, also read a statement in court about the tragedy that turned her life “upside down.” Hutt had been friends with James for several years before he fell in love with her sister, he explained to me. James was introduced to Hutt by a cousin, who wanted to put him in touch with other young people when he first moved to Vancouver. He grew so close to Hutt’s parents that he called them Mom and Dad and walked into their house without knocking, just as if he was one of their kids, he recalled. “My faith has been shaken to the core,” Hutt said in court. “Nothing people do, or are capable of doing, will shock me ever again.” In a particularly poignant note, she mourned not only the loss of Clare, but of James as well. “In one night, my family lost two people that we loved and cared about,” she said. Sarah, too, was devastated not only by the vacuum left in her life by Clare’s murder, but also by the loss of James. “I have lost a daughter and husband,” she said in her statement. “Suzy lost her little sister and the man both she and Clare called Dad.”

  Figure 1.4. The local Abbotsford-Mission Times revisits the murder that rattled a nation, and recalls a community stunned by a horrific crime that ended the life of a special little girl. Courtesy of the Abbotsford-Mission Times.

  Among Sarah’s most gut-wrenching struggles in the aftermath of her daughter’s murder was the relentlessly recurrent image in her mind of Clare bleeding to death on the kitchen floor of the cottage, she told CTV News in an interview months later.3 Sarah, a deeply religious woman, is convinced she’ll see her daughter in the afterlife, and that’s the “biggest thing” that keeps her going, she said. Her daughter Suzy also remains a “powerful reason to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other,” Sarah told the Abbotsford-Mission Times.4 “She’s a reason to seek goodness and not get sucked into the darkness because if I go there, she gets sucked down with me. I could become jaded and give in to bitterness, but it’s a choice, and I have to make that choice every day.”

  Long after she presented her victim statement in court, Sarah laid bare the particularly agonizing pain of a mother who loved and trusted, and thought she knew, a warm, affectionate man who would inexplicably murder her daughter. Sarah recalled that the day she spoke in court “the one piece I could not prepare for in any way was my emotional response at seeing him again. That was pretty hard,” she said, crying.5 “I haven’t just lost a daughter, I’ve lost my husband, too.”

  James, who still routinely refers to “my wife,” would tell me two years later that far harder than going to prison for 55 years was losing Sarah.

  James’s crime grabbed international media notice because of its particular brutality, but also because it was especially perplexing given his history with his family. I decided to reach out to him by e-mail in prison to ask if he would be willing to talk to me about what happened and maybe write an account of his life and his crime for this book. To my surprise, he agreed. “My story is a sad one, but, yes, if it will help you with your book and hopefully help others in the future then I would gladly like to help you,” he wrote back. After that, we e-mailed and talked on the phone frequently for several months, and, periodically, pages of his handwritten “chapter” appeared in my mailbox. James is a friendly, intelligent, articulate, apparently compassionate man who still seems stunned by what happened. He’s aware that he has a “problem with rage,” as he puts it, and has been treated for bipolar disorder, yet he repeatedly emphasizes that he “makes no excuses” for what happened. He seems devastated by his crime and is desperately seeking some kind of redemption, which he fears he’ll never find. He chose to summarize his background, highlighting events that may have influenced him or offer some kind of insight into who he is and what he did. Everything that follows was written by him, except for the account of the actual murder, which he recounted to me over the phone because it was difficult for him to put it on paper.

  To start at the beginning, I was born in Vernon, British Columbia, in 1980. We moved to Spokane two years later, shortly after my little sister was born. My first memories are from our first house in Spokane when I was about four years old. I remember sharing a bedroom in the basement with one of my brothers, and I have vague memories of climbing trees in our backyard.

  We moved to Biloxi in Mississippi when I was still four. I remember very little of the drive, but I know we left a box of crayons in the back window and they melted into a lump of very pretty colors. While in Mississippi, I had my fifth birthday. We had spinach with dinner, and I liked it. I split my head on a slide at the park while we lived there—one of many injuries I had during childhood. My dad told me that I liked to stand on the edge of the tub after a bath and would inevitably fall off and smack my head on the wall. My dad was stationed at the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi for hurricane season as he was in the Air National Guard.

  About six months after moving to Biloxi, we moved back to Spokane and stopped on the way to see the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and the Petrified Forest. We moved into a two-bedroom house in Spokane. During that time, life as a kid was pretty normal. My mom helped with our schoolwork and kept us in line most of the time. Spankings were dished out for serious transgressions, and most of those were handled by my dad. We went to school, camped in the summer, and sometimes traveled to visit grandparents around holidays.

  My mom left my dad when I was nine years old. She packed all four of us kids into the car and went to my aunt’s house in British Columbia. My parents were divorced when I was ten, and my dad was remarried later that year.

  A quick aside: There were four children when my parents were together. Number Five died before I was born. The order of the four of us goes as follows: Ray (six years older), Steven (one-and-a-half years older), me, and Tammy (two years younger and the only girl). Ray, being a few years older, was like an overseer, and generally wanted the other three of us to leave him alone. Steven, Tammy and I were the “Terrible Trio.” If one of us was caught in trouble, then the other two were around the corner. We played as a group and were punished as a group.

  Steven moved down to Washington to live with my dad, his new wife, and her son, Arthur (seven years younger than me). This happened when I was ten, and I moved down the following year because I missed my dad and brother. I lived with my dad in Spokane until 1995 when I then moved back north to live with my mom, and her new husband; and all four original children were back home. My brother Steven moved with me due to events that took place in Spokane.

  Figure 2.1. A photo of a younger Clare Shelswell shows her smiling while wearing her glasses, which her big sister, Suzy, said gave her “quite the look.” James (right), her stepfather and the man she called “Dad,” was convicted of her murder. Courtesy of KOMO 4 News, Seattle.

  My dad and stepmom, K, fought constantly over the three children in their care. Dad took Steven’s and my side, while K defended Arthur. Because of this, K was mean to Steven and me, but for some reason, she really took it out on me. I even recall her telling me that their fighting was my fault. And, on a separate occasion, she told me that my bed-wetting problem was done on purpose to cause them to fight. I had started wetting the bed about a month after moving in with my dad in Spokane and continued until I moved b
ack in with my mom. I maintain that it was stress-related. Not only did K blame me, but she also used to tell me that I was fat and stupid. She even hit me on rare occasions when I was about 13. I never told my dad or anyone else besides Steven about any of it. It wasn’t until adulthood that it occurred to me that her behavior was inappropriate.

  Basically, life in Spokane at that time was hell for me. The only reason my brother and I stayed was because both my mom and dad said they didn’t want us jumping between parents every couple of years. In the end, Steven was the one to push K over the edge, and she kicked us both out. So by 1995, Steven and I were back at my mom’s house, now in Kelowna, British Columbia.

  Life in Kelowna was mostly fine, though my stepdad was a rough guy to deal with. He never had kids of his own, so to live with four teenagers was stressful for him. Ray was the first one of us to leave home. He moved to Vancouver by himself and started working full-time. Also at this time, our Terrible Trio lost a member as Steven started trying to act mature and felt that entailed keeping Tammy and me out of trouble.

  Tammy was the next to move out the following summer due to problems she was having [with our stepdad and mom].

  Quick fill-in: My mom and stepdad would start drinking from the time he came home from work until they went to bed. This caused its own tensions, and a lot of fighting between my mom and stepdad. I remember a family get-together in 1996 when my stepdad started yelling at me for no reason that anyone but he understood. I tried defending myself, but I wasn’t sure what was going on, and he sent me to bed at seven o’clock with family and friends still all partying around the house. I know quite a few people left because of this, and my mom had to calm me down because I was hysterical and on the verge of hyperventilating.

  Things were fine between my stepdad and me for the remainder of that school year. He spent the majority of his energy fighting with Steven then, so Steven moved in with my grandparents to finish high school (Steven and I were in the same grade all through school because our parents held him back a year right from the first grade). So for my senior year I was alone with mom and my stepdad. I had a job with a farmer down the road since 1995, and also babysat three or four neighborhood kids. When I wasn’t working, I was hanging out with friends, hiking, and riding mountain bikes.

  To recall a few key moments of my teens when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I remember K making me so mad and frustrated that I tried to strangle myself with my sheets. My brother Steven put that to a stop. Another time I pushed Steven down a flight of stairs for locking me out of the house. My sister let me in, and I went straight for my brother, and pushed him down the stairs. He tumbled to the first landing, and got up, furious. We ended up fighting around the living room with Tammy screaming at us to stop. Steven was bruised and a couple of my mom’s knick-knacks were broken, and that was all the damage. But I sometimes thought of that day later because I was so very angry and I wanted to get even with my brother so badly.

  A couple of years later while working for the farmer, we were in the bed of his truck, throwing pruning clippings onto a mulch pile. The farmer thought it would be funny to push me out of the truck. I wasn’t hurt, but I was so mad that I pulled a knife on him that I always carried while working. He talked me down and apologized for pushing me, and work continued as usual.

  Oh, and I also ran away from home once when I was about fourteen because K hit me. My dad was at work late so I called him from a neighbor’s house to come and get me when he was on his way home. I also ran away from school in fifth grade because my classmates were picking on me, and the teacher didn’t stop them. I was missing for four hours, and my mom was frantic when I returned to the school. All I did was hide in the trees at the park down the block from school.

  As you can see, I have a history of irrational overreactions.

  I moved out of my mom’s place right after I graduated from high school, at the very end of June 1998. I moved from Kelowna down to Vancouver to live with my oldest brother, Ray. I got a job working in a hydraulic repair shop, cleaning up and assisting the mechanics. It was a good job but it only lasted eight months before I was laid off due to a slowdown in business. About a month before my layoff, Ray and I moved to the suburb of Maple Ridge, . . . but a couple of months after my layoff he asked me to move out. So I was out on my own in the world.

  It was at a Halloween party of 1998 that I met my first wife, Sherri, and we started dating. She was only a few months younger than me, and very smart and focused on her education at the time. She worked hard at her job and on her schoolwork. She was taking some extra courses at the local high school to make the college jump easier the next year. The qualities I found most attractive in Sherri were her drive, her work ethic, intelligence, and her heart. She loved helping people. Over our eight-year relationship her drive and work ethic seemed to fade, and for the last four years I supported our household almost 100 percent. She dropped out of college before finishing her degree, so we had a boatload of debt and only one income.

  I attended college from the fall of 1999 to the end of the winter 2002 semester. I worked full-time during the summer and worked part-time while attending college full-time. I worked at a gas station as an assistant manager during this time, although without the title and without the extra pay—just the extra work and responsibility. I quit my job there at the end of 2001 because my hours were cut. I understand why they did it. I had numerous outbursts costing them both money and customers. I only recall one such incident, but I know there were more. I was never written up or warned after any one of them; they just moved to edge me out. The one incident I remember was in the summer of 2001. I went outside to fill up a customer’s barbecue propane bottle; I checked the date stamp to make sure the seals were good. It’s illegal to refill them past the date stamp. I informed the fellow that his tank had expired and offered to sell him a new one. The man got frustrated and tried to talk me into filling it anyway. I said I couldn’t, as it would be risking my job and his safety. The man got mad and started to climb into his car. I told him that he would have to pay to dispose of his propane tank, and he told me to go fuck myself. From my angle, I only started becoming angry when he acted up. He kept telling me I was ruining his barbeque party and that I was trying to rip him off. Now, I’ve done some dishonest things in my past (lying, shoplifting, etc.), but I always prided myself on my work ethic. I took offense at his comments. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I just grabbed his propane bottle and threw it at his car and dented it. He had just started to drive away so he, of course, stopped, and that was when realization and panic hit me. I ran for the store and phoned the owner immediately. The customer walked in after me and I handed him the phone to speak to the owner. The company ended up covering the cost to repair his car. (I’ve tried to remember my feelings on some of these other issues, but they aren’t coming to me.)

  I was with Sherri from 1998 to 2006. We were married in 2004. It was a weird engagement, and it makes me look like a total ass, but I guess I was. I had told Sherri numerous times that I wasn’t interested in marriage because of the way both of my parents’ marriages had gone. On Valentine’s Day 2002, I gave Sherri a promise ring just meant as a token. Well, she called her best friend to say we were engaged. She was so excited that I just went along with it. Upon reflection, yes, I should have clarified things, but I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  Our relationship was pretty easy-going. We both had similar interests, so fighting was fairly rare. Money was a hot topic, though. She spent it, and I yelled at her for it, but the cycle continued. The one spot where our relationship was far from normal was our sex life. I’d rather not even mention it, but it is pertinent to the main incident in my life. Sherri and I had an “open” marriage. Our parents were made aware of this after our marriage dissolved, because that’s the reason it fell apart.

  Even before I met Sherri, shortly after I moved to Vancouver, a cousin introduced me to some people around my age. Ray, being six years older
than me and much more mature, hung out with an older crowd. My cousin introduced me to her daycare provider’s daughter, and some of her friends. This would be my connection to Sherri and then, eventually, to Sarah (my second wife, and the mother of Clare, my stepdaughter who I killed). Helen was another of the girls I met through that first introduction. We became good friends, and I spent a lot of time hanging out at her house, and even called her parents Mom and Dad. Sarah was their other daughter, but she was never around, so I didn’t meet her until 2006. But throughout that time, from the day I first met Sherri to the time I met Sarah, we kept in touch with Helen, so when Helen was married in 2006 we were invited to the wedding. Sherri dragged me along to the bachelorette part for Helen, which is where I finally met Sarah. Things by then between Sherri and I had already digressed to being pretty much roommates, just sharing a bed. In 2005 I had applied to become a police officer, but was turned down in 2006 because they said the debts incurred by my spouse displayed a lack of financial control on my part. This concerned them as they felt it would make me susceptible to bribes. That was the final straw in my relationship with Sherri.

  When I met Sarah, I felt a connection with her that I had never felt with Sherri. I had never put much credit to the idea of “soul mates” before then, but Sarah was definitely my soul mate. After just my first phone call with Sarah, I knew I loved her. We dated behind Sherri’s back for a month before Sarah and I admitted to each other how we felt. I told Sherri I wanted to separate. She was crushed, and that was the end of my first marriage. It was your typical “you cheating bastard” break-up, and I was the bastard. I felt terrible about it, but as my relationship with Sarah was just taking off, all the other great things I was feeling squashed the ugliness with Sherri. Six years later, I still remember almost every minute Sarah and I spent together. But I’ve hurt her so terribly.

 

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