Bad Girls

by Phelps, M. William

  Jen would lock herself in the bathroom and refuse to come out. She was addicted to Bobbi by then. Nobody could tell her differently.

  “Leave me alone. I love Bobbi Jo.”

  Jen later said she was in a state of euphoria with Bobbi and truly felt that she had found her soul mate, the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

  Kathy Jones said she was equally concerned when she heard that Jen had entered into a lesbian relationship with Bobbi Jo and was now staying with Bobbi at Bob Dow’s. Jen was not ready for that type of world, Kathy knew—the one that Bob Dow created, that is. So Kathy headed over to Bob’s to see what she could do about convincing Jen that this was not the proper life for her. There were people who could handle the lifestyle, Kathy knew. Her daughter was not one of them. Jen wasn’t built for it, emotionally or psychologically. She wasn’t tough enough.

  This made Jen fuming mad. She was always the little sister.

  “[Kathy] went over there a few times to try and get Jen out of there,” Audrey explained. “But you know what, [Kathy] ended up partying over there with them! Apparently, Jen wouldn’t leave, so [Kathy] just stayed there and partied with them all.”

  “She put Bob’s [penis] in her mouth on camera plenty of times,” Bobbi later told me, speaking of Kathy. Photographs and interviews with people at the house later proved this.

  The same thing happened to Audrey. She’d go over to the party house with the intention of trying to convince Jen to come back to the apartment, that Bob Dow was a bad influence on her, only to find herself staying and caught back up in the partying.

  There are photographs of Kathy with Bob and other women, not only drinking and getting high, but indulging in the sexual behaviors as well. Kathy was going back over there when Jen and Bobbi weren’t around, once she realized Bob was funding all of the parties. Kathy admitted in court later that she’d had sex with Bob on a number of occasions.

  Nobody could do or say anything to convince Jen that Bobbi Jo wasn’t right for her. To Jen, the relationship was like nothing she had ever experienced. It wasn’t just the female-on-female sex with Bobbi that Jen found out she liked. It was everything. The way Bobbi made her believe she could have that white-picket-fence life she’d always dreamed of as a child and stared at inside the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. Jen felt it. She thought the answer to her woes was with Bobbi Jo.

  “It was the attention,” Jen said in court, looking back. “The love that I felt from her. I felt the caring and the nurturing that she . . . she was giving me—that I was being a part of the relationship, that I could just, like I said, not have to prove, you know, anything to her.” Jen stopped here, turned on the tears, choking up. Then: “Bobbi Jo took me as I was.”

  Which was all Jen ever wanted.

  Something else, however, was playing out here within the relationship Bobbi Jo had with Bob Dow. Something that was much more dangerous and dark.

  “Bobby [Dow] used—he took Xanax and some painkiller,” Elizabeth Smith said. “But Bobbi Jo was bringing in heroin, which Robert objected to. He threw her out, as a matter of fact, because he caught her shooting it up. . . . I seen it with my own eyes.”

  According to Bobbi, Bob would lace cigars and cigarettes with heroin, and he smoked it right along with her. Furthermore, Bob Dow was copping the dope—not Bobbi. She didn’t have the connections; Bob did.

  Elizabeth seemed to see things differently, or as she wanted to see them. She claimed to have been over at the house one weekend, sometime in February. This was before Bobbi hooked up with Jen. Elizabeth walked in, through the back door. She was stopping in to check on Bob and Lila, maybe help out. That was when, she later claimed, she saw Bobbi sitting at the kitchen table, prepping some dope to be booted in her arm.

  So Elizabeth ran and got Bob.

  According to his former wife, Bob shouted at Bobbi, “Get the hell out!” He ran into the kitchen from another room.

  The house was the size of a shoe box, however; so the obvious question would have to be: How could Bob have not known Bobbi was using heroin in the next room? It didn’t seem likely.

  “I was smoking dope,” Bobbi told me when I asked her about this. “Not shooting it. Elizabeth knows that. [Her] trailer house and her life speak for itself—look into it.” Moreover, Bobbi claimed, she was not the one shooting dope in that house—but someone else was. “I’m not going to . . . stress myself out over a lie,” she added when I pressed.

  Elizabeth witnessed a parade of girls coming in and out of the house. When Bob and Bobbi would have their little sex parties, Elizabeth said, she’d walk out of the house and “go outside” to wait, adding, “I wanted no part of it.”

  She spoke to Bob about her concerns one day. “I’m worried about Lila,” she told him. “What if I take her to my home and care for her there?”

  Bob didn’t like the idea. In fact, he became incensed. It had to be the check. Who would get Lila’s Social Security money then?

  “You could live life as you see fit, Bob,” Elizabeth said.

  “You get out,” Bob raged.

  CHAPTER 13

  DETECTIVE BRIAN BOETZ was back at the crime scene on May 5, 2004, looking things over, searching for that lead that might put him like a bloodhound on Bobbi Jo’s trail. One would think that Boetz needed more than a short—however powerful—statement from Bobbi’s grandmother in order to make the charge against Bobbi stick. Sure, once he got Bobbi inside the box, door closed, hands cuffed, her future not looking so promising, an experienced interrogator could probably crack the young girl. But right now, no one knew where Bobbi had run off to with her girlfriends.

  At some point late that same evening, Boetz made contact with Jerry Jones. The two men had a short conversation. By this time, Boetz figured Jen was Bobbi’s girlfriend. After talking to Dorothy a bit more and getting Richard Cruz’s entire story, it wasn’t hard to work out. Obviously, talking to the girl’s father could yield important information.

  Boetz explained to Jerry how the MWPD had obtained a warrant for Bobbi’s arrest. He mentioned that Bobbi likely took off with Jen and several others.

  “I saw Jennifer and the others earlier that day,” Jerry explained.

  “Who are we talking about?” Boetz wondered.

  Jerry ran down the names and explained who each female was: Bobbi, Audrey, Kathy Jones, and a girl named Krystal Bailey. Krystal was Audrey’s new girlfriend, Jerry said. Kathy was Jen’s mother.

  “Her mother?” Boetz asked.

  “Yup.”

  Boetz couldn’t believe it. Jen and Bobbi were traveling with Jen’s mother and Bobbi’s ex-girlfriend.

  “Where were they headed, Jerry?” Boetz asked.

  “Out of town. They were all in Bob Dow’s truck.”

  Boetz asked if there was anything else.

  “Yeah,” Jerry said, “Jennifer hugged me . . . and thanked me for everything.” That was a fairly telling statement, perhaps letting Jerry know that Jennifer was planning on checking out somehow.

  At this juncture, the fact remained that Bobbi, now wanted for murder, was on the run in Bob Dow’s pickup. She and the others could be just about anywhere; they’d had a half day’s jump on the MWPD. At least twelve hours. A person on the run could cover lots of roadway in half a day.

  “We knew who we wanted to speak to,” Boetz explained to me. “Now it was just a question of ‘Where is she at?’ It was the only way for us to work the case.”

  As Boetz saw it, even after speaking to Jerry Jones, “We didn’t have a clue as to where they were. At worst, we thought they were somewhere around Mineral Wells.”

  Boetz had underestimated these women. He and his colleagues were way off in their assessment—because Bobbi Jo and the others were halfway to California by then. They were traveling in a truck full of booze, weed, a few guns, and very little money.

  PART TWO

  THE SECRET AGONY OF THEIR SOULS

  CHAPTER 14

  IN KRYSTAL
BAILEY, Audrey Sawyer hadn’t necessarily found the ideal lover, committed in the way Audrey might have dreamed a woman would one day be. However, Jen’s blond-haired, light-skinned, attractive half sister, with the aqua blue eyes, did find a companion in Krystal whom she could count on more than her last lover, Bobbi. Yet, even in that kernel of intimacy that Audrey found, by May 2004, just weeks after she and Bobbi Jo split, Audrey was already singing the blues; and the title of the tune was Krystal Bailey.

  Krystal worked at a local factory, a business that seemed to have employed just about everybody in town at one time or another. Like Audrey, she was young, pretty, and willing to give her lover companionship on top of intimacy. Krystal lived in a small, redbrick, one-story ranch in a quaint Texas suburban neighborhood. It was definitely the polar opposite to where Audrey had lived the past ten years or more. Krystal grew up in a place where kids played tag after school, and home owners cut their lawns on Saturdays and washed their cars on Sundays. It was a “normal” life, outside the confines of that unpleasant drug and sex culture that Audrey and Jen and Bobbi had been groomed in and thrived on. And the funny thing is, Krystal lived just a soccer ball’s kick away from the back of the Spanish Trace Apartments.

  On that Wednesday, May 5, 2004, somewhere near 2:00 P.M., not long after Bobbi and Jen left Bob Dow’s house—Bob Dow lying on his bed, a laundry bag over his face, blood and pieces of his face running down his chin—they showed up at the Spanish Trace complex. Krystal was in the bathroom with Audrey. They were quarreling. Krystal wanted to continue the relationship; Audrey was finished.

  “Get out,” Audrey said. “We’re done, Krystal.”

  “What?” Krystal was crying. Audrey sounded frustrated. The relationship had run its course. Why isn’t this chick getting it?

  Krystal had been stopping by the apartment over the past few days to pick up some of the belongings she had left at Audrey’s throughout the relationship. We’ve all been there. Lovers like to leave something at their other half’s place, using it as an excuse to drive over and talk. These personal items become an insurance policy. This was where Audrey and Krystal’s relationship currently stood. Audrey didn’t want her anymore. Krystal was fighting the end, trying whatever way possible to stay connected. She didn’t want to leave that day and bring her possessions back home.

  As one version of this part of the day went (and Kathy changed her story a few times, too), Kathy Jones was in the living room. She was watching a movie, listening to the argument going on in the bathroom, shaking her head, when Jen and Bobbi came bursting into the apartment enthusiastically. Both girls seemed excited and freaked out about something that had just happened.

  Audrey heard the racket from the bathroom, where she was fighting with Krystal.

  Jen was crying, Kathy noticed after jumping off the couch from the shock of the girls’ arrival.

  “I just killed Bob.” Kathy later recalled Jen had said first.

  Bobbi was jumping up and down, hyped up and manic. She said (according to Kathy): “We shot Bob.”

  We?

  This announcement got everyone’s attention. Audrey and Krystal were now in the kitchen, standing next to Kathy, staring at Jen and Bobbi, wondering what all the commotion was about.

  “What’s going on?” Audrey asked.

  “Slow down,” one of them suggested.

  “Okay, what the hell is going on?” Audrey said again, taking control. This was no way to joke around.

  They told her.

  Audrey laughed. “Y’all are full of shit.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kathy said, reacting to what Jen said about killing Bob. Kathy smiled, shrugged, and threw her hands at them. Then she walked back into the living room to continue watching her movie. There was no way Kathy Jones was going to believe that Bobbi or Jen had shot Bob Dow. It wasn’t possible. It was just some story Bobbi and Jen were telling, Kathy and Audrey both assumed, to inject a bit of excitement into the day. They were probably coked out, hyped up on meth, totally drunk out of their minds, or all three. Simply talking gibberish. This was something Audrey recalled Bobbi and Jen doing when they were high or drunk (something, incidentally, Bobbi Jo later agreed with when I asked).

  “You’re full of shit,” Krystal said. “That’s bullshit.”

  But Audrey noticed Jen had a look on her face that spoke to the point of this perhaps not being a joke. Audrey had never seen Jen look so stunned, so shaken up. Jen was naturally pale, anyway; but she now had a ghostly, pasty sheen to her, which Audrey had trouble writing off.

  Still, taking into account what her gut said, Audrey was going along with Kathy and Krystal, adding, “You’re lying.”

  Jen tried to speak, but she couldn’t. She was crying. Her hands shook.

  Kathy got back up off the couch. “Okay,” she said, walking toward them, “just shut up . . . and listen to me. If you shot Bob, take us over there right now to see the body.”

  “Yeah,” Audrey added.

  “Damn straight,” Krystal said. “Let’s go see the body.”

  Audrey looked outside. There was Bob’s truck. Just then, Bobbi took out $100 in cash, according to Kathy and Audrey. Then (Kathy and Audrey later claimed) Bobbi showed them the gun. (“We just thought maybe they had rolled Bob,” Audrey remembered, “that he passed out and they took his money and his truck.”)

  Jen finally spoke up, according to one of Kathy’s later recollections. Jen said quite pointedly, very seriously: “I killed him—”

  “We killed him,” Bobbi interrupted, seemingly covering for her friend.

  (“I was protecting Jen,” Bobbi later said.)

  Audrey and Krystal looked at each other. Kathy went quiet.

  “We gotta do something,” Bobbi said. “Mom, we gotta get out of here.” (Kathy Jones had instructed all of her children’s friends to use this appellation for her.)

  Kathy laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Bobbi asked.

  “Y’all are just joking.” Kathy thought about it. “Listen to me . . . I want to go see Bob right now.”

  “You cannot see Bob,” Bobbi said.

  “I killed him . . . ,” Jen kept saying. She continued to shake uncontrollably. She repeated that sentence over and over, as if stunned by her own words.

  “They started telling details [about the murder] and I figured out that they were telling the truth,” Kathy later told police. Kathy felt the specifics Jennifer shared were enough for her to change her mind. Plus, Kathy later explained, she walked up to Jen at one point, and “I . . . just felt her whole body shaking.”

  Kathy stared at her daughter, holding her face by the cheeks. “Jennifer, what happened?” she whispered. “You know . . . tell me . . . what happened?”

  “Look, listen to me,” Bobbi said, “Bob was raping Jen and she shot him.”

  “Jennifer, if that is true, it was self-defense,” Kathy explained. “We need to call the cops and tell them what happened.”

  Later, Krystal vividly recalled the moment when she believed them, telling police: “Jennifer was crying. She was in hysterics. And Bobbi Jo was just kind of, like, jumping, like—I don’t know—like she was bragging about it.”

  Krystal and Audrey still had a hard time believing that Bobbi and Jen shot and killed Bob Dow. Bob had held such power over Bobbi. He was so much more controlling and bigger and stronger and mature. He definitely had Bobbi wrapped around his finger and whupped, Audrey knew. She had witnessed the behavior herself. Whatever the reason, Bobbi had been consistently loyal to the guy. It didn’t make sense to Audrey that Bobbi would be involved in killing him. Bobbi would not benefit at all by Bob’s demise; quite the opposite, she had everything to lose by his death.

  Over the past few weeks, as they hung out together and did lots of dope, Krystal had gotten to know Bobbi fairly well. They spent time talking and dreaming about getting out of Mineral Wells. Krystal, particularly, did a lot of listening.

  In this regard, as Krystal stood, staring at the two
of them, she was torn. “I thought it was a joke, actually.”

  Bobbi said, “Pack your shit. Come with us.” She meant all three of them.

  Audrey, Krystal, and Kathy looked at one another; then they shrugged their shoulders in a “what the hell” moment.

  “Why not?” Kathy said. Then she stopped herself: “But wait. If this is true, if you killed Bob, why not go to the police department? Let’s turn yourselves in. If he raped Jennifer, you need to tell them that.”

  No one said anything.

  Then Bobbi spoke up. “No. We’re not calling the police. Let’s go.”

  “Jennifer, you should stay,” Kathy said.

  Jennifer shook her head.

  (“I could not talk Jennifer into staying,” Kathy later told police. “I felt like it was better if I went with her to try to talk her into giving herself up rather than her be with Bobbi Jo alone.”)

  Jennifer was apparently in a state of shock. She was shaking and crying and could barely utter but a few coherent words.

  As Jen stood in the living room, unable to speak, Bobbi said, “No. No. No. We cannot do that. We cannot do it.” She meant go to the police. “We’ve got to get out of here—right now. We’re going to Mexico.”

  “You ain’t going to Mexico,” Kathy said. “And you ain’t takin’ my daughter with you.” Kathy walked over and put her arms around Jen.

  “Ma, I am going with Bobbi Jo—no matter what you say,” Jen explained.

  “Well, shit, if y’all are going, I’m going, too,” Kathy said.

  Kathy said she noticed something about the relationship her daughter had with Bobbi Jo. “Bobbi Jo was making the decisions.... The only decisions Jennifer was making—whatever Bobbi Jo was going to do, [Jen] was going to do it, too.”

  And this comment fits perfectly into the nature of their relationship: Jen had been looking for someone to tell her how to live. Bobbi came along, and Jen found that mother figure to nurture her.