by Jerome Gold
“Yeah, he does. Imagine that.”
“You two are going to have to learn to talk to each other. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re telling me Julius and I have a communication problem. That’s the phrase you usually use: ‘communication problem.’ You said Frank’s being irresponsible was owing to a communication problem between him and me. Now you’re saying Julius’ cruelty owes to a communication problem between us.”
“I don’t think Julius is cruel. I do think you’re interpreting his style as cruel because you don’t talk to each other. And he interprets your style as being nonsupportive for the same reason. I’ll have the two of you come in during quiet time. You’re going to have to talk to each other. I’ll have you do role plays, if necessary.”
“He’s not working tonight. It’s his weekend.”
“Shit. I have to leave early tomorrow. Friday, then.”
“I don’t work Friday. It’s my weekend.”
“Wise ass. Well, it’s just going to have to wait until Monday. Maybe you can work things out for yourselves between now and then.”
“Let’s do it as a peace table,” I said.
Julius and Jan and I were in her office. I had introduced the peace table to the cottage after having taken a workshop on mediation. I trained kids in its use as part of Alternatives to Violence.
“Each of us will tell the other what his perception of the problem is. The person being addressed must keep silent and may not defend his own behavior. The peace table is about perception, not accusation. After the first person has his say, the addressee tells him what he heard. If he heard him right, they reverse, so that the addressee becomes the speaker and the speaker the addressee. If he heard wrong, the speaker corrects him and then they reverse roles. After each person has spoken, each then comes up with ways in which he would like to see the problem corrected. Usually this involves the other person doing something differently.”
“That sounds good,” Jan said. “What do you think, Julius? Will this work for you?”
“Well, I’m willing to try it. I’ve never done a peace table before, so you have the advantage on me.”
“If we do it right, neither of us will have an advantage. Both of us will walk away from it equally unhappy.”
Julius and Jan laughed. He said, “Well, as long as it’s equal, I’ll be satisfied.”
I saw Jan’s eyebrows go up, but she didn’t respond. “Well, who will go first?” she said.
Julius said, “Jerry’s done this before. He can go first. I’ll learn from him.”
Jan’s eyebrows did not move this time, but I thought mine had. I said, “All right. The primary problem I have with you is what I see as your humiliation of the kids. At least some of them.”
“You mean Jeremiah.”
“Yes. And also Jazz when he was here. But let’s focus on Jeremiah. The other night when he was at the counter in the kitchen—”
“You don’t need to go into that. I’ve already told Jan about it. Oops!” He put his hand over his mouth. I hadn’t noticed before how long the bones of his fingers were. Each phalange was three inches long or more and, following the second knuckle, dipped as though it had been carved with a scoop. “I’m sorry. I forgot I wasn’t supposed to talk.”
“Uh huh. Okay, you’ve given Jan your version and I’ve given her mine. Now I’ll say this: I regard what you did to Jeremiah as perilously close to abuse. And I’m telling you that if I ever see you abusing a kid again, or even coming close to it, I’m going to report you to CPS. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I drew out the last half dozen words. I wanted to demean him, but I also wanted him to respond in front of Jan. I did not want him to be able to say later that no one had warned him.
“CPS, huh?”
“Is that your only comment, Julius?” Jan asked.
“If we’re going by peace table rules, he doesn’t get to comment now,” I said.
“Fuck peace table rules. Is there anything you want to say, Julius?”
“Naw, Jan. I got nothin’ I want to say.”
“Then it’s your turn,” I said. “Tell me what your problem is with me.”
“I got no problem with you.”
“What?”
“I got no problem with Jerry. Jerry speaks very directly. He says what he means. I got no problem with that.”
“That’s not what you said a few days ago.”
“I was just spoutin’ off, Jan. I was perturbed over that memo he wrote you. But I got over it.”
“Okay, if that’s how you want to leave it.”
“There’s nothin’ to leave. I know I got to be careful so that Jerry doesn’t misinterpret how I handle the kids. I will do that.”
“You’ll do what?” I said.
“I will not give you an occasion to misconstrue—naw, I won’t use that word; I’ll say ‘misinterpret’—I will not give you an opportunity”—he laughed, seemingly amused with himself—“I mean an occasion to misinterpret my actions insofar as they relate to the kids. Is that what you want to hear? Did I get that right?”
“That’s it. Thank you.”
He turned to Jan. “The kids have been locked down for a long time. We should get them out.”
“I want to talk to Jerry for a minute, Julius. We’ll be done in just a minute.”
After Julius had gone, Jan asked, “Well? Are you satisfied?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“There was a point you made when we were talking about Julius last week. That he targets only black kids. Black boys.”
“Last week you said that. I said it a month ago. Layton and I.”
“Whatever. Why do you suppose he does that?”
“He wants them to be like him. Or the way he sees himself.”
“Not quite. He’s told me some things about himself that I gather he hasn’t told you. I’m not going to betray his confidence, but he knows he’s angry and that his anger has been a problem for him. Whatever else has happened to frustrate him, he knows he also does it to himself. He wants these kids to get their education, to get steady jobs, to take care of their children when they have them. In that sense, he does want them to be like him. But he wants them to be like him without the bitterness. He doesn’t want them to fuck things up for themselves.”
“If he knows that much about himself, he’s one up on most people. But his humiliating these boys—is that supposed to drive the anger out of them? Or does he do it out of frustration with them because they’re not perfect? What about his own children? Does he have any?”
“He has a son. His wife, by the way, is white. A Jew.”
I was silent. Finally I said, “He’s more calculating than I thought he was.”
Jan gave a sharp laugh. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you think he married her to advance his career? What the hell kind of career is this?”
“I have no idea why he married her. He could even have done it out of love. What I meant was that for him to say to me some of the things he’s said, he must have been testing me for a particular reaction. I hadn’t picked up on that. Unless, in spite of his being married to a Jew, he believes the crap he puts out.”
“Maybe he believes it because he’s married to a Jew.”
“I’ll have to ask your husband if that’s what’s at the root of his anti-Semitism.”
“I’m not Jewish. And Herman is not anti-Semitic.”
“You told me your father or your grandfather or somebody was Jewish.”
“But my mother isn’t. Herman is anti-white. I thought you knew that.”
“Herman is anti-everything. He’s anti-black too, if the black man is Jamaican.”
“Herman doesn’t think Jamaicans are black.”
I looked at my watch.
“You’d better get the kids out,” Jan said.
“It’s been informative. Was that all you wanted to talk about?”
“That’s all. I just wanted to muddy the wate
rs a little bit.”
“You did.”
I got up from my chair.
“There’s one more thing before you go. I lied to you. Julius’ wife isn’t Jewish. She isn’t white either. No. Wait. She is Jewish but she isn’t white.”
A beat. Two. I said, “Mindfucker.”
“I haven’t heard that word in a while. What is it, an Eighties term?”
“Seventies. Besides, she is white, and she is Jewish. Julius told me. And she’s sleeping with Herman. Julius asked me not to tell you, but I thought you should know.”
“Get out of here. Get back to work. Julius needs you.”
Four days later Jeremiah assaulted Renaldo Tarr while they were outside for rec. Renaldo had bent over to pick up a basketball and Jeremiah rushed at him from mid-court and hit him in the back of the head.
As Jeremiah was being led to the van by Security, I reminded him that he had given his word that he would not assault anyone.
“I lied,” he said.
We put him back on the In/Out program where he remained until he paroled a month later.
PART II
Caitlin: scenes from a life
In watching some things but not others, these things but not those, we are able to tell ourselves that we can control events, that we can direct the future. And of course we have to tell ourselves that the unanticipated will not occur.
FOUR
Here is what we knew from the newspapers and the police reports and, later, what Caitlin and Sonia told me. On the second Friday in April of the previous year, three boys, ages seventeen, fourteen, and twelve, waited inside the front doorway for Jerry Jonas to return to his home in a Seattle suburb after an evening’s drinking. Jonas was sixty-four years old, retired from a career in the aerospace industry. He had terminal cancer but had decided not to undergo chemotherapy. Instead, he used alcohol to deaden the pain caused by the cancer. He had a history of hitting and threatening women, including one of his wives and a woman he had hired as a live-in caretaker for his mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.*
When Jonas walked inside, Kelly Parrish, the oldest boy, came up behind him and hit him in the back of the head with an aluminum baseball bat belonging to his girlfriend, Caitlin Weber. Jonas fell forward into the kitchen and collapsed. The two younger boys then began striking him with smaller souvenir bats of the kind given out at professional ball games. Stunned, Jonas yelled out, “Who the fuck are you?”
In a moment, Lucas York, the fourteen-year-old, realizing that they really were killing Jerry Jonas, ran out the door, followed by his cousin Walter, the youngest of the three. (Lucas would testify at Linda Weber’s trial that while he had taken part in planning to kill Jonas, he had agreed only to beat him up; someone else would have to kill him.)
Kelly, alone with Jonas, shouted for the girls to help him. Caitlin, thirteen, and Sonia, who had turned fourteen a week earlier, were in the basement where they had been listening to what was going on upstairs. Also in the basement were Caitlin’s mother, Linda, and Linda’s other children, Drake, eleven, and Jewell, seven.
Caitlin and Sonia went upstairs. When Sonia saw him, Jonas seemed already to be nearly dead. He was lying on his stomach, struggling for air. A lot of blood had issued from his nose and mouth. Sonia, in accordance with the plan, was supposed to stab Jonas, but she could not bring herself to do it. She had a knife she had taken from a kitchen drawer, but she dropped it on the counter and ran back down to the basement where she collected the things she had brought with her: her curling iron, her gym clothes, her coloring pens. It was the end of spring break and she had spent most of the week with Caitlin and her family. She was climbing out of a window when Linda shouted: “You’re not being a very good friend to Caitlin! You’re supposed to be there for her!” Sonia came back inside and returned upstairs.
In the kitchen, Kelly insisted that Sonia stab Jonas, but again she could not do it. Instead, she picked up the bat Kelly had used and hit Jonas in the head three times. Kelly and Caitlin and Sonia were not certain that Jonas was dead, so Caitlin picked up the knife that Sonia had been going to use and stabbed the prone man twice in the soft part of his back above the hip. (Years later she would tell me that there was no blood on the knife each time she withdrew it, only “some yellow stuff.”) Then Kelly tried to cut Jonas’ throat, but Jonas’ muscles were so slack that the dull knife would not cut through the tissue. Sonia hit Jonas with the bat for the last time.
Linda came upstairs with her other children. She ordered the kids, including Drake and Jewell, to mop up the blood while she went out to rent a carpet cleaner. When she returned she had the kids wrap the body in bed sheets. They put it in the back of a pickup truck belonging to Jonas and put a tarp over the bed. In this vehicle and a sedan also owned by Jonas, they drove to the Indian reservation north of the city and dumped the body in a ravine. The plan for killing Jonas did not include a provision for disposing of his body; all of the decisions about what to do with it were made following the murder.
Linda and her family and Kelly continued to live in the house until the morning of the day Jonas’ son and daughter-in-law were due to arrive for a visit. That day Linda checked her clan into a motel.
The next day, she and the five kids involved in the killing were arrested. Drake and Jewell were placed in foster care.
In the six days between the murder and the arrests, Linda wrote checks on Jonas’ account and used his credit cards at stores and restaurants. By telephone, she transferred twenty thousand dollars from his savings account to his checking account. She knew he had recently come into money from the sale of some property.
It began, perhaps, five months earlier when Jonas and Linda met at a Dairy Queen. The woman who had been looking after Jonas’ mother had finally left. He needed someone else to care for her. Linda needed money. Her only support came from the fathers of her children and from her mother. She did not have another source of income. In December she and her children moved into Jonas’ house.
At first things went well. Jonas was a generous man and even bought Christmas gifts for Linda’s children. But when he was drunk he was mean, and as his cancer progressed, he was drunk more often. He targeted Caitlin particularly, belittling her, calling her names. Once he threw an ashtray at her. Once, when he opened his bedroom door to take the phone she brought him, he was naked. It would be a large part of Linda’s defense that the kids had organized Jonas’ murder to retaliate for his mistreating Caitlin.
It would have been more accurate to say that Caitlin and Sonia enlisted to kill Jerry Jonas because of the abuse. A month before the murder, in a phone call to Sonia, Linda brought up the idea of killing him and asked: “Do you want to kill Jerry with us?”
Sonia said no. She would say at Linda’s trial that she had thought Linda was joking but, too, she had been shocked that Linda had asked her. But she participated in the killing because Jonas had been mean to Caitlin. When Linda told her that Jonas had thrown an ashtray at Caitlin, “I got mad because she’s my best friend. I didn’t want anybody hurting her.”
A few days after her conversation with Sonia, Linda and several kids not named in the newspaper accounts, but including Sonia and Caitlin, made a plan to beat Jonas to death. The kids would go into his bedroom while he was asleep and do it with baseball bats. But when the time came, they got to the bedroom door and could not go in.
Early in April, Caitlin met Kelly Parrish while skating at a local rink. They were instantly attracted to each other. Linda encouraged them to deepen their relationship and Kelly, without Jonas’ knowledge, moved into the basement of his house with Caitlin and her family. It was Kelly who recruited Lucas and Walter to help kill Jonas.
As payment for killing Jonas, Linda said she would give Kelly enough money to buy a car, and Lucas two hundred dollars to buy a handgun he wanted. She promised money to Walter also. She told Caitlin she’d get her a dirt bike when it was all over. Linda didn’t offer anything to Sonia.
Or
perhaps it began thirty-eight years earlier.
Linda was the product of a liaison between her mother and a man not her husband. Following her birth, her mother left the hospital, abandoning her. Two months later, her mother claimed her from the orphanage where she had been placed. From that time, mother and daughter were inseparable.
Linda’s mother spoiled her, in the opinion of Linda’s older sister, buying her a fur coat when she was still a child and giving her money after she had grown up. As a teenager, Linda dated a boy she especially cared for. Her mother talked about moving so Linda could be closer to him, but the boy’s parents ended the relationship when they learned of her intention.
At her trial, a character witness would portray Linda as “too close to her mother.” Other witnesses would say she seemed to see herself as a kid. She had no adult friends but went out with Caitlin and her friends. Sonia would testify that Caitlin would call her, but then Linda would get on the phone and talk to her. Her attorney would characterize her as “a child in an adult’s body.”
Linda would say she felt trapped in Jonas’ house, unable to stand up to his abuse, but not having the money to leave. “It was like living in a prison,” she would say.
Five days after the murder, Jonas’ son, Todd, and his wife flew in from Arkansas. Already concerned because his father had not picked them up at the airport, Todd found the house dark. Inside, his grandmother sat in her wheelchair, eating pages from a telephone directory.
Except for Walter, the youngest, the kids were sentenced as adults. In Caitlin’s case, the judge justified sentencing her as an adult because she had been physically abused by her mother, abandoned by her father, and had had a life visited by neglect and instability. The judge noted that the therapist who interviewed Caitlin during her time in county detention described her as emotionally immature and “uniquely loyal to her mother.”
FIVE
Walter came to us first. He was thirteen now and he would be in the system until his twenty-first birthday. He was small, though not abnormally. He had an adult’s voice and it was strange to hear his baritone come out of that little body. But he was coordinated and had a good eye for a shot from behind the key, and this helped him fit in. He was not a behavioral problem and because of that and the fact that he had been sentenced as a juvenile, he was transferred to another cottage after a few months.