“Her words were not slurred nor were her pupils dilated or pinpoint,” Steed wrote. “She was able to track and answer questions in an appropriate manner.” After Michaels advised Amanda of her Miranda rights, Amanda was asked about the scratches on her arms and whether she needed medical attention. Amanda said she was okay. She asked twice how the children were. Detectives told her they did not have an answer to that question.
Detectives asked what happened the night before; Amanda told them they must know.
“You can just kill me,” she said, and began to sob.
Amanda said she had “told everyone to just lock her up.” She had lost too much. She said she had told Jason to take the kids, which was “the stupidest, craziest thing she had ever done to save the marriage.” Details of what she meant by this are unknown. She said in response to Michaels asking about what happened the previous night, “I went a little crazy.”
Amanda stressed she wanted no media attention, that she did not want to be on the news. This was at odds with Shanon Gray’s opinion as to how lucid she might have been to make such a choice at this time. Also, with the opinion that, by dropping her children off a bridge in a major American city, Amanda had pretty much forfeited her right to privacy.
“I hurt the children. I mean, I didn’t hurt them, I just let them [go],” Amanda told detectives. Asked where she let them go from, Amanda said, “You guys probably know.”
Amanda said she let the children fall from the bridge and did not try to stop them. She said Jason had told her on the phone that one of the children had drowned and the other was hurt. If this were so, it meant Jason spoke with Amanda between his being told of Eldon’s death at around 8:45 a.m. and Amanda being taken into custody at 10:20 a.m. There is no known record of this call, nor would Jason mention it to police.
Amanda described being in and out of hospitals all spring, of “going nuts and thinking she could just die.” She said Jason had “taken her joy,” which detectives surmised meant “she was going to take his so he would know what it felt like.” They asked whether she thought she and Jason might get back together, without the kids.
“No,” she said. “He’d kill me.”
Told by detectives that the children had been found, Amanda again began to cry. “I am so dumb,” she said. She went on to say she had heard two splashes. When detectives asked her to further pinpoint events, she said she had planned to jump. She asked about the children again and asked for a cigarette. Her statements further fragmented, “I told this one guy kill I told them guys” and “I was thinking bad thoughts. Not kill.” She remarked that the chairs in the interview room were hard.
Detectives nudged her back on topic. They wanted to talk about the bridge.
“STOTT-SMITH admitted to dropping the children over the concrete part of the bridge,” Steed wrote. “She stated she dropped TRINITY first and then ELDON and that ELDON had asked, ‘Did you just put her in the water or something?’”
Here is the image: a four-year-old boy, woken from sleep, outside at night in a windy place, seeing the black line of the river run into the distance, seeing his sister drop from view. I see Eldon, as unfamiliar as he was with his surroundings, showing remarkable focus and logic. He asked a grown-up, what is going on here? He was using what coordinates he had to make sense of where he was.
Amanda added to the sequence of events, saying that Trinity was asleep when she dropped her, and that Eldon was awake. I am not sure his mother’s recollection can be trusted, but it is the only one we have (but for those scratches). She repeated what Eldon said upon seeing his sister drop from their mother’s arms: “Did you just put her in the water?” Eldon’s question had not stopped Amanda from dropping him in turn.
At 11:15 a.m., Detective Rico Beniga interviewed Chantel and Daryl Gardner. Both were very upset. Chantel reported that she had eaten dinner with Amanda the night before. Amanda had been excited to see her children, and she appeared to be in better spirits than she had been for much of the spring, when, Chantel said, she had been hospitalized twice for suicidal ideation. Like her mother, Chantel was a registered nurse. She said Amanda had been noncompliant about taking her antidepressant medications, including Trazodone and Abilify.
During dinner the night before, Amanda mentioned to Chantel she would be taking Eldon and Trinity to see the fireworks. Amanda had asked Chantel to come, but Chantel had been too tired. She said her sister had not had any alcohol at dinner.
Daryl interjected that when Amanda did drink, she drank “an obscene amount of vodka.”
Detectives received a phone message from a woman I will identify as KL, who said she had stopped at a Plaid Pantry market in Sellwood at around 12:15 a.m. on May 23. She had seen Amanda in the parking lot. Amanda had approached and asked if KL would watch the children while she went into the market. Amanda said she would give KL five dollars to do so. KL said she thought it was “really odd and was concerned the woman was drunk or high. She agreed to watch the children but refused to take any money.”
KL saw the children inside the car. “One was in a car seat and the other was slumped over the lap of the one in the seat,” Steed wrote. Both appeared to be asleep.
KL said Amanda was in the store for maybe three minutes and came out holding a small paper bag. She again offered KL money, which KL again refused. She said Amanda did not display “any noticeable drug or alcohol” impairment, yet KL was still concerned about her driving. But Amanda did not drive. She only sat in the driver’s seat and was still sitting there when KL drove away.
KL said “the whole encounter was strange” and that she would have called 911 had Amanda driven away. Seeing news reports the following morning, KL said she regretted not having called. Video footage and a printout of Amanda’s transaction showed she purchased a 500-milliliter (16-ounce) box of Bandit Chardonnay for $3.67.
After telling detectives how she had killed her son and tried to kill her daughter, Amanda said, “I think I need a lawyer or something?” Detectives noted they had asked several times if she understood she had the right to an attorney and whether she wanted to continue the interview without one, to which she had responded, “What’s wrong with telling the truth?”
The truth, during this first interview, was as follows: Amanda’s “life began falling apart” after Jason took the children and Amanda was told she had to move out of the house. She had not been able to handle being without Eldon and Trinity. She “went crazy” because she could not get her husband back.
“I’m in, really in big, big, big trouble,” she said.
She continued talking about Jason, how he was nice to her in private but not “in front of his mother or anyone else.” The detectives steered Amanda back to the kids, back to the bridge. She repeated that she wanted to take from Jason what he took from her, that she hated herself, and that she sometimes wanted to die.
Asked directly if her intention had been to kill herself, Amanda said, “Well, that wasn’t really my plan.” She said she had hoped “if I fell” it wouldn’t hurt. She said she did not want the children to be hurt either, and she thought that by putting them in the water, their “pain of separation would end because hers hasn’t.”
She said after the kids were in the water, she was “going to go in and get them but changed her mind.” When detectives asked what changed her mind, Amanda said only that she was “so ashamed, that she had no idea why she changed her mind and then because her car was in the way.”
Detectives drew two lines representing the river’s banks and bisecting lines representing the Sellwood Bridge. Where, they asked, had Amanda parked? She indicated that she had stopped the car midspan and dropped the kids from the bridge’s south side. Steed asked whether Amanda had seen the children fall into the water. She said it had been too dark. He asked if she heard them yell. Trinity she had not heard; Eldon “a little.” They asked how she had been holding the children when she dropped them. She indicated she had been cradling Trinity. She said no more about E
ldon.
Amanda again asked if she could have a clove cigarette, and again she was told she could not smoke in the building. She would not tell detectives where she had gone after she dropped the children, only that she “needed to be executed and couldn’t we just do that?”
Detectives said that sometimes people make bad decisions, but that trying to understand the roots of the decisions was important. Amanda did not seem in the mood to be placated.
“It’s all calculated. Cold-blood murder,” she said. When asked how so, she said, “Thought, thought, thought. How do I hurt Jason?” When asked how she would hurt him, she said, “I killed his kids.”
Detectives paused the interview so Amanda could get something to eat. At 2:50, she was back in the holding cell. At 3:00, she was observed eating a granola bar. At 3:55, the interview recommenced. Amanda answered that she did not know whether she had consumed any alcohol before picking up the children the previous night. During a later interview, she told them she was taking the antidepressants Abilify and Seroquel. By my count, this made three antidepressants she was taking or had been noncompliant in taking. When detectives asked what the medications were for, she said she did not know, only that she was supposed to take them because her “life was in shambles.” At the conclusion of the interview on May 23, 2009, Amanda was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges of aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder.
Detective Steed spoke with Ray Pratt, the harbormaster for Portland. Pratt explained that the bottom of the Sellwood Bridge was “75 feet above the zero waterline,” but because the river was running consistently ten feet higher, the distance shrank to sixty-five feet. Steed determined that from the bottom of the girders to the roadway was an additional twenty-five feet, and the cement railing another three or four feet, meaning the children had fallen a total of ninety-three to ninety-four feet. They would have been in the air for approximately 2.41 seconds before they hit the water.
Around 6:45 p.m., Amanda was offered something to eat. She had earlier seen investigators eating pizza and told Detective C. Traynor she wanted some. He explained the pizza was gone but offered to get her a sandwich from Subway. Amanda repeated that she wanted pizza. After being told this was not an option, she asked for a pen and paper in order to write down instructions for what she wanted. She wrote, “veggie sandwich, honey oatnut bread, no cheese, extra lettuce onions tomatoes pickles and olives, banana peppers, xtra vinegar, pepper, lots of dijon, honey mustard, no mayo.” She told Traynor she wanted a six-inch, then changed it to a foot-long and added that she wanted some Sun Chips. Traynor purchased the sandwich. He later realized he had left the instructions at Subway. An employee retrieved the note from the dumpster, and it was logged into evidence.
Around the time Amanda was eating her sandwich, Detectives Lori Smith and Beniga were visiting with Trinity in Doernbecher Children’s Hospital at OHSU. Beniga noted that an ICU nurse characterized Trinity as a “bright, polite child . . . cognizant of her surroundings.” Trinity told detectives that she had broken a bone in her chest. When asked how this happened, she said she had been asleep in her mother’s car and “fell into the water and was picked up by a boat.”
She did not know how she wound up in the water.
Trinity said she and Eldon had been dropped off with their mother for the weekend. They were supposed to see the fireworks, but her mother could not find parking. Trinity said that while she and Eldon drove with their mom, they had seen some fireworks from the car. They stopped and ate cotton candy from a mini-mart and “drove all around town around midnight.” She said again that she had been asleep when she fell in the water. When asked where Eldon was when she fell, Trinity said he was with their mom.
“I almost drowned,” she told detectives. “I was crying for my mommy. . . . The river was fast.” She repeated that she was “calling for her mommy” when she was picked up by the boat. She said she did not see or hear Eldon when she was picked up by the boat and said again that she missed her mother.
Trinity was asked about her parents. She said her dad did not like her mom “because she smokes and does not have a job.” Trinity also said her dad doesn’t like her mom because he pays all the bills and her mom does not help.
When questioned about whether she felt “safe” with her father, Trinity replied, “Yeah.” She said her favorite family members were her grandmother and her aunt “because they were both nurses and help her.” She said that “Gavin is friendly and nice to her because he tickles her.” She said there was no one in her family she was afraid of.
Trinity healed with remarkable speed.
Concurrent with Trinity’s interview, Detectives McCausland and Ober were at the home of Jackie Dreiling. This was when she told detectives that Amanda was “the number one most self-centered, selfish person” she knew, adding that she thought her granddaughter had been “diagnosed with a ‘Defective Character Disorder.’” Kathy Stott at this time described Jason as “a psychopath.”
Shortly after 7:00 p.m., Amanda asked Detective Traynor whether a lawyer would come see her in her cell. Traynor explained that was not how things typically worked, that she would be assigned an attorney if she could not afford one, and that once she had legal representation, investigators would no longer question her. Amanda wanted to know “how long this process was going to take.”
The holding room log indicates that at 7:00 p.m. Amanda was eating, at 7:20 she was reading the ingredients on the Sun Chips bag, and that she slept between 7:42 and 8:30.
At 8:35 p.m., her photo was taken. At 8:45, her clothing was seized. Amanda was “upset” by both actions and told Traynor “several times that she did not want to be on television.”
At 9:00 p.m., Amanda was moved to a cell. At 9:15, she was observed to be crying. At 9:30, she was asleep.
Evidence found in Amanda’s car included business cards for a clinical psychologist at Wildwood Psychiatric Resource Center and a primary therapist at St. Vincent Medical Center, and a black spiral notebook in which she wrote short notes. Her handwriting is spidery and hard to read, the notes dated but out of sequence:
2/12 Grandma Chris said she has to practically force Jason to come in & hug me.
2/12 Grandma Chris told me that Jason never said he wouldn’t divorce me.
[Undated] We stopped @ the park on the way back & as Eldon ate his Flintstone push-up pop he told me all about how Kelly & Daddy had taken him to the park & how they sat on a bench together. . . .
2/19/09 He still won’t let me talk to the kids on the phone when I call & ask.
1/12/09 It’s a plan to make me jealous & do something stupid like get frustrated or bitter & I can’t and won’t because I love the children too much but Eldon tells me about Kelly [sic] Townsend & says she has no kids even though Jason says she does & is happily married even though a couple of years ago & just two days ago Grandma Chris told me & Jason that she had an asshole husband & that she and Jason were just friends.
3/11 Jason said that I could see the kids this weekend & that he just wanted to see them first so I waited though I haven’t see them for a while so I called 3/12 3/13 to 3/14 & had arrangements . . . & then Jason called when I was on my way & he said no changed the plans.
On May 26, Detectives Michaels and Steed went to OHSU, where Trinity was still hospitalized, to meet again with Jason. The detectives had a few more questions. When, for instance, had he moved out of the house in Tualatin? Jason had stayed with Ryan Barron in summer 2008 but told detectives he had left the family home in September or October. He said he had continued to support Amanda after he left but told her she needed to be out of the house by May 31. Asked to describe how he thought Amanda was handling the move, Jason said she seemed “indifferent.”
Jason said the last night he left the children with Amanda, she had a “big grin” on her face and “hugged the kids.” When he asked Amanda what she and the kids were going to do, she said she didn’t know, but “maybe the beach.” She
told him she wanted to see the kids more. He told her “what I always tell her. It’s about her actions and what [she] has done [and that she needed to] get her life back on track.”
The first 911 call from someone who heard screaming in the river was received at 01:19:23. Jason’s phone rang at what detectives confirmed was 01:22:50. Jason heard it but did not answer. His phone rang again at 01:33:04. It was Kathy Stott, telling him the children were not home.
Jason began calling Amanda. He said they spoke several times, and during the “first few seconds of the first time, she said, ‘Help me. Help me. Help me.’ She said something like, ‘I don’t get to see my children. You’ve taken my joy away.’”
Asked to describe her emotional state, Jason chose the words “subdued” and “calm.”
After Amanda refused to answer Jason’s questions about the children, Jason said he hung up and called Kathy Stott, who told him that Amanda was not answering her calls and to call Amanda back. Jason did. Amanda told him he did not know what it was like to have everything taken away—your husband, your children. She accused Jason of having an affair with Keli Townsend, and at one point, police noted, “said something like he [Jason] had ‘stuck his penis in Keli.’ She went on about how messed up he was and that he had ruined her.” Jason said he told Amanda that if she did not immediately tell him where the children were, he was going to call the police, at which time Christine Duncan did call the police. Upon learning this, Jason said Amanda “freaked out. She said, ‘Why did you do that?’” After asking Jason where he was, she hung up.
Jason said “there was no further phone conversations with her after that and she would not answer the phone,” a statement that contradicted Amanda telling detectives she learned from Jason that one child had drowned and one had been hurt.
At 7:20 a.m., Jason received another call from Kathy Stott, who was in “a panic” because Chantel had seen a news report about two children found in the river. Jason said he thought, “There’s just no way.” He told detectives you’d expect someone who did this to sound “whacked out,” and Amanda, according to Jason, had not.
To the Bridge Page 23