I took the stairs to her apartment on the third floor and she greeted me with a generous hug. She was pleased I was okay but she didn’t question me. I could see she was high and that’s where I wanted to be.
‘You got some gear?’ she asked once I was inside.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You got a cooker, lighter? I don’t have anything on me.’
Marnie rummaged around in her pockets and pulled out the small bottle we called a cooker and a lighter. She went into the kitchen and returned with a small pot of baking soda and some water. I set to work pouring the powder into the cooker, adding baking soda and water.
Then I held the lighter underneath the bottle until it started to boil. At that point I stopped and poured in cold water, the powder now quickly turning into a rock.
I took it out and placed it in the pipe she’d given me.
Now I put the pipe to my lips, held the lighter over the rock and inhaled deeply – once, twice, three times…
Suddenly all the anxiety and tension I’d been carrying around with me melted into nothingness. I felt my arms and fingers slacken as the drug seeped round my body, stroking my limbs with a gentle numbness.
My head cleared of all the horrors and trauma I’d been through the past four months – now I was floating on a sea of calm and euphoria.
I sank back onto the floor and surrendered myself completely to the drug.
* * *
I stayed with my friend a couple of days but then the media caught up with me. Someone walked in one day and said: ‘Hey, you know Channel 6 are outside.’
So I took refuge at another friend’s place. The problem was that the reporters had visited all the dealers and the hookers in the area, handing out cards and promising fat checks if they could find me. These were not the sort of people you could trust with a secret, not when there was money involved.
So it became a cat and mouse game between me and the press – forever being chased down from one apartment to the next, the reporters never far behind, always on my tail.
One day I got called into Gallagher’s office. But when I stepped outside, it was raining. I was rooted to the spot, letting the droplets fall onto my head. I hadn’t experienced rain in four months. I put my hands out now to catch the water and let it slide off my hands.
It seemed miraculous to me – incredible.
It was pouring now, coming down in sheets and running down my back, into my shoes and over my shoulders but I didn’t care. I stood there like an idiot, letting myself get completely drenched.
Who would think you would miss rain?
I started laughing to myself, a crazy, stupid laugh. I felt ecstatic, elated, alive!
* * *
‘The other girls have come to me with their lawyers – they told me they were considering filing charges against you.’
Gallagher was perched on the corner of his desk, looking at me intently. I’d changed out of my wet clothes to meet him and now I could hardly believe what I was hearing. The ecstasy I’d felt just an hour before at walking in the rain dried up.
I’d risked my life to save these girls and this was how they repaid me?
At first I was too dumbstruck to respond but finally I found my voice: ‘Why?’
‘They want to say that you were part of it, that you gave out the punishments because you liked it, that you were Heidnik’s partner in crime.’
My fists clenched in anger. How could they say those things?
Gallagher could see my blood rising and went on quickly: ‘But I told them: “Don’t you realize that if it wasn’t for Josefina none of you would even be here today? She saved your lives.” Well, they thought about that and then decided they weren’t going to be pressing charges after all.’
The betrayal was beyond my comprehension.
‘Why?’ was all I could manage. ‘Why would they do that?’
Gallagher sighed and removed his glasses from the bridge of his nose, rubbing the place where they’d previously sat. ‘You got to understand, Josefina, they’ve all got lawyers. They’re all cutting up, wanting a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. I reckon they think they’re going to get it too if they can put you in the picture with Heidnik.’
I’d been reading about Heidnik and his so-called financial wizardry. Turns out he had half a million dollars stacked up in an account in the name of his church, all thanks his astute investing on the stock market. That was how he could afford the cars.
My mind now turned over, thinking about the girls again.
Heidnik had freed me, but only because I had signed his paper agreeing I was responsible for killing Deborah. Was that what this was about? I wondered about that time I’d gone down to the basement with Agnes. They’d looked at me then, looked at me as if I was a traitor. Didn’t they realize now what I was doing?
‘What about the piece of paper?’ I asked Gallagher. ‘Did you ever find that? The one he got me to sign about electrocuting Deborah?’
Gallagher shook his head.
‘The police turned that house upside down but they never found it,’ he said. ‘And I don’t expect them to. Heidnik more as likely got you to sign that paper just to make you believe he had you over a barrel. It was as incriminating to him as it could ever have been to you so he probably destroyed it pretty soon after you wrote it.’
I knew by now that Heidnik’s lawyer, a man called Charles Peruto Junior, was going for an insanity plea. It was his only chance of getting him off the electric chair.
‘… so it was only a matter of time,’ Gallagher was still talking but now I’d lost the thread.
‘Only a matter of time before what?’ I asked.
‘Before he got rid of you,’ Gallagher went on. ‘You were the only one that knew everything, you were the only one who could stand as witness to it all from beginning to end. He may have freed you for a while but it’s clear he wouldn’t have kept you around much longer. You got out just in time, in my view.’
It was all coming so thick and fast I was struggling to keep up. Something else occurred to me now.
‘They put my kids’ names in the papers,’ I vented, angrily. ‘Their names and ages and where Toya’s at school. What’s that got to do with anything? Why did they do that?’
‘You got to try and ignore this stuff,’ Gallagher said patiently. ‘It is just par for the course. The media will print anything they can find out about you. You’re the main prosecution witness. My advice is to stop reading the papers, then it won’t upset you.’ He changed tack: ‘You ready for the preliminary?’
I nodded.
I’d been briefed about what came next – the preliminary hearing, just to see if there was enough evidence to take Heidnik to trial. In Gallagher’s view, it was just a formality but it would be my first day in court. My first of many.
As I left the office that day, a woman passed me on her way in.
‘Josefina!’ she exclaimed.
‘Lisa,’ I responded. But neither of us stopped to talk, we both just kept right on walking.
Later that night I wondered why I didn’t stop. We’d been chained up for months together in that basement, seen the worst horrors a person could imagine, experienced pain, deprivation and torture. We’d shared and endured the abuse of a cruel and heartless man, suffered his punishments, obeyed his every whim.
Now we couldn’t face each other for a few seconds.
Did she want to talk to me, I wondered? I certainly didn’t want to speak to her, not after learning about her betrayal from Gallagher. In that revelation I got the measure of the woman. I knew now that whatever I faced on the outside of that basement, I faced it alone. We may have kept each other sane during those months of captivity, helped and comforted each other during difficult times but now we were out, we were nothing to each other.
* * *
On April 23, 1987, a little under a month after my escape, I was led up to the witness box at City Hall to give evidence for the prosecution.
The charges
read like the script of a horror movie: murder, kidnapping, rape, aggravated assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent exposure, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, simple assault, making terroristic threats, recklessly endangering another person, indecent assault, criminal solicitation, possession and abuse of a corpse. I didn’t know what half of these charges meant so I had to get the police to explain them to me. The last one was unlawfully treating a corpse in a way that he knew would ‘outrage ordinary family sensibilities’. Well, he sure did that.
All of Heidnik’s captives were there but we were kept in separate rooms before giving our evidence. There could be no possibility of our testimonies influencing each other. The press attention around City Hall was unbelievable – I’d never seen anything like it. It was a sea of cameras, reporters and media vehicles. They had to smuggle us in the side door. When it came to my turn to give evidence I was led down a long corridor into the courtroom. The first person I caught sight of was Heidnik – he was wearing a strange blue Hawaiian shirt and he’d clearly not shaved or washed since his arrest. He was already playing his ‘insanity’ card, I thought. Let him try it. Let him just try.
I wasn’t intimated at all as I sat down to tell my story from beginning to end. I wanted them to hear the truth from my own lips, let them know what really happened.
Gallagher led me through my testimony in a calm and considerate way and after he sat down it was the turn of Charles Peruto Junior, Heidnik’s defense attorney.
When Peruto asked me why I punished the girls as Heidnik directed me I explained in simple terms. ‘He ruled all of us with an iron hand and he expected to be obeyed. When he told me to punish them, I didn’t even consider saying no.’
He asked me a few more questions – they were more like personal attacks than anything else. I glared at him from the box.
I was beginning to see what he was doing – trying to paint me as an accomplice. But it wouldn’t work. How could it possibly work?
The next day the papers were filled with reports of the victim’s testimonies – I bristled as I read the headline: HEIDNIK’S GIRLS.
It was a strange way to describe us, the victims. ‘Heidnik’s Girls’ implied we had some choice in the matter. Until we were captured and held against our will, we were all individual women. Now we were Heidnik’s, his possessions, just as he wanted all along. It made me mad as hell.
There were also some grisly accounts from the medical examiner who gave his evidence after me.
His description of what he discovered in Heidnik’s kitchen certainly made for grim reading.
‘Located in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator were several white… bagged parcels. As you would perhaps wrap up a piece of meat to keep it in the freezer, double wrapped in a white plastic bag. One of these bags had been previously opened. And I looked inside this bag and I believe I found two human forearms.’
He went on. ‘In sum, there were two forearms, one upper arm. Two knees, and two segments of thigh. Each of these pieces had… the bone end had been cut apparently with a saw. And the skin and muscle, soft tissue, was still on the bone.’
The details were so gory and sensational, it felt like nobody could take this seriously. It was simply too horrific and so, in some twisted way, the press and the people I spoke to turned it into a joke.
Now when I saw old friends they usually had something smart to say about how they heard I was eating dog food and bodies.
I walked down the street and people actually wound down their windows to holler ‘Alpo’ at me. It was extraordinary and disturbing. Would they do that if I was their sister or wife or mother? I found it really strange that some folks decided to actually attack me for being a victim of a vile and cruel man.
Gallagher was sympathetic – he said all the other girls were going through the same thing and told me again to stop reading the papers.
I tried not to let it get to me – in my mind, I’d achieved the impossible. I’d escaped, so whatever anybody said to me didn’t matter.
But when the whispers started behind my mom’s back, I felt bad. She didn’t deserve to be hounded by the press or the subject of unpleasant gossip.
Fortunately, Mom had a lot more sense than most people.
‘What are you all whispering for?’ she demanded to know one time on the bus when she overheard a pair of snickering ladies laughing and pointing to her from behind.
She turned to face them full on like a proud lioness ready to defend her cubs till the death.
‘You think I’m ashamed? You think I’ve got something to be sorry about? My daughter got free of that madman and she saved the lives of them other girls too. I’m damn proud to call her my daughter. So you don’t got no reason to whisper. Sisters – thank the Lord them girls are alive and pray you never have to face a madman like that Heidnik!’
And with that she stormed off.
* * *
Everyone had an opinion, everyone had their own ideas about what I should or shouldn’t have done. I read something new and untrue in the papers every day. Now Vincent Nelson was claiming I was his girlfriend and that I went to see him before calling the police on the night I escaped.
‘It’s such bullshit!’ I exploded at the cops one day when they’d called me in for about the millionth time to go over some small detail in the case.
‘How are they allowed to keep printing all this stuff that isn’t true? He was never my boyfriend! I don’t know how this guy’s gone and carved himself out some special place in this whole thing because he’s got nothing to do with it!’
They were pleading with me now: ‘Stop reading the papers. It will only make you angry.’
But it was too late. I was already angry.
* * *
My social worker came to me one day. Mr and Mrs Sepulveda wanted to adopt Ricky and Zornae. Would I agree?
With a heavy heart I said yes – I knew this was coming. From that first reunion in Gallagher’s office I knew I’d lost them. I had only seen the kids a couple of times in the past few months and each time they seemed more and more detached from me. I didn’t have the heart or the energy to fight for them. I could see they were a loving family and I knew it would only increase those kids’ trauma to be unsettled from their lives again.
I signed the adoption papers without a degree of doubt.
The fact was, I wasn’t really a good candidate for motherhood. I was using crack again, self-medicating I think they call it these days, and constantly moving from one friend’s house to the next, staying on any sofa I could find, trying to stay one step ahead of the press. I still saw Toya every week and I would always be Mamma to her but Ricky and Zornae didn’t know me at all. Was I really going to wrench them from the arms of the woman they knew as their mom to inflict on them a painful separation and adjustment? Did I even have it in me to be a mom right now?
Probably not.
* * *
Now I spent my life ducking out on all the people who came to find me. Even the detectives were a pain.
‘Hey, Josefina,’ said one dealer when I went to score. ‘You know there’s some detective looking for you.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. What was wrong with these people? Couldn’t they just wait a couple of days? I was sick of being at their beck and call the whole time. I wished everyone would just leave me alone.
The welfare payments weren’t enough to sustain me any longer or pay for my drugs so within a few months I was back out on the streets, hustling. It was all I’d known for so long I couldn’t think how else to cope. But it wasn’t long before I ran into trouble again.
One clear, warm evening in July I was hustling on Front Street when a guy pulled up in a brown Ford. He was a fairly ordinary Joe in blue denim jeans and a lumberjack shirt, mousy brown hair and stubble.
We struck a deal and I got in the car. He looked normal – well, they all do. I wasn’t really paying much attention when he stopped the car in a parking lot round the block but
then he pulled out a knife about a foot long and told me: ‘I’m Jack the Ripper!’
Oh Jeez! Here we go again.
I know what he wanted, he wanted me to be scared, but I wasn’t. How could I be after Heidnik? I was just thinking – you can’t be any worse than that nut so I shot back: ‘Oh yeah? What’s this all about? Huh?’
All the anger and frustration of the past few weeks now bubbled to the surface – who does this creep think he is?
I went on: ‘I guess you just want some free pussy, right?’
Now he had his dick out of his jeans but I just kept right on talking: ‘Well, you don’t need that knife.’
I took his hand, still talking: ‘If you’re getting free pussy, I’m going to get something out of this too.’ And I started moving his hand towards my crotch. He pulled his hand back in disgust. My forwardness has unnerved him.
‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’ He seemed confused.
‘You think you’re the only one who’s going to get their kicks tonight?’ I was almost shouting now. I was furious. ‘I don’t think so!’
We were struggling now and he dropped the knife.
‘Just get out of the car!’ he yelled at me.
‘Oh now you don’t want to do anything?’ I yelled back. ‘What the fuck?’
‘Get out!’ he shouted again.
‘Fine. Fine. I’m going!’ and I slammed out of the car. Idiot! If he thought he could scare me he could think again.
I walked back up to Front Street and as I passed by the other hookers I warned them about the freak I’d just encountered.
‘Brown Ford,’ I told them. ‘He’s got a knife.’
‘Thanks, honey,’ they drawled back at me, most of them high. Would they even remember in an hour’s time, when the night cooled down and they needed another hit?
I could have gone to the police that night and perhaps I should have but I didn’t. He didn’t actually do anything and besides, I felt stupid.
Mr Ripper turned out to be a wake-up call for me. If I was dumb enough to keep getting into strangers’ cars, risking my life, after what had happened with Heidnik then I had no right to complain about the consequences. I could imagine walking back into the police station and telling them: ‘Yeah, so I was just out Front Street and I met a guy with a knife who told me he was Jack the Ripper.’
Cellar Girl Page 17