In My Father's House

by Fox Butterfield

  But the member of Kathy’s side of the family who got in the most trouble was a nephew, Corey Lee Wilson, the son of her sister, Lana. At the time Corey was born, according to Bert, his mother often left him alone in his crib, “throwing bottles of milk in there for him to feed himself.” As a result, Corey became “attached to food, and later was so addicted to it as a way to comfort himself that he would pull himself up in his crib and eat a whole pumpkin pie, gorging himself,” Bert recalled. In school, the only thing that interested Corey was football, because he was big and very heavy, but his grades were so poor the authorities declared him academically ineligible for school football. There were early signs of worse things to come, like one day in junior high school when Corey threatened to throw a girl student to the ground and rape her, Bert remembered.

  In July 1990, when Corey was seventeen, he and a friend, Dan O’Rourke, burglarized a large brick house in the small community of Peeltown, kidnapping a forty-year-old woman named Sandra Jackson and driving her in her Buick across rural ranch roads to a corral in a pasture where they made her get out and kneel down. O’Rourke then put a gag in her mouth and tied her hands with cord before shooting her twice in the head with a .25-caliber handgun and shoving her body in the trunk of her car, according to later testimony in the trial of the two men for murder in 1991. They were turned in by Lana, who, as it happened, often acted as an informant for the local sheriff in exchange for not being arrested when she was caught selling drugs. O’Rourke received a life sentence for murder. Corey was given thirty years to life in prison just on the charge of burglary; he was released in 2015 after serving twenty-four years.

  Bert had gone straight after her own stint in prison in Nebraska and often wondered why so many members of both the Bogle and Curtis families kept repeating the same mistakes and crimes. “When you get right down to it, they must like it,” Bert said. “You have a choice. If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t be doing it.”

  But there was another factor at work, Bert had come to realize over the years watching her own family and the Bogles. “It’s the way we were raised. We imitated what we saw our families doing. So it was all we knew to do, and therefore it was the easy thing to do. We didn’t have the skills or education to make other choices or get a job.”

  * * *

  —

  For Kathy, living this way had never had severe or painful consequences. But after years of hard drinking and heavy drug use, not to mention the physical and sexual abuse by Rooster, Kathy was having more and more trouble managing her everyday life. Each morning waking up was like living in a thick fog. She now had to wear false teeth because of the ravages of meth, and one day her son Michael stole her dentures. Her dog chewed up another pair. “Some days I just forget where they were,” Kathy said. “I’d put them in my lap and get up, and unless I heard them fall, they’d just drop to the ground or the floor in the car and get lost.” Kathy roared with laughter at these memories. She had been wearing false teeth for two years and had broken or lost so many pairs that she was now trying to glue some back together.

  By 2008, with Kathy living in the small trailer, she had seemingly lost almost everything in her life. The probation department had already taken away her rent-subsidized apartment. Her trailer was too small for her furniture and clothes, so she had thrown many of her possessions away. Because of all the probation violations, she lost her Social Security payments as Rooster’s former wife, her only legitimate source of income. “For Kathy there is no need to plan,” said Linda, who stayed close to her, despite, or because of, all their years together with Rooster. “She has no real house, no furniture and no income, so everything is spur of the moment. She is living on the edge. And the funny thing is, it fits Kathy because she never grew up,” Linda said. “She’s real trailer trash.”

  It hardly seemed possible, but in August 2008 things got worse. Kathy’s daughter with Rooster, Vickey, and granddaughter Robin, and great-granddaughter, Divinity, were arrested at Kathy’s trailer home in Salem for possession of meth. Vickey, Robin and Divinity had been living out of Vickey’s old Subaru and panhandling at rest stops on Interstate 5 between Salem and Eugene, fifty miles to the south at the bottom of the Willamette Valley. Vickey, who was forty years old, looked like Kathy had when she was younger—very short, very thin, her face still childlike. Vickey often wore a short blue denim jumper over a pink low-cut T-shirt with a Playboy Bunny symbol. She spoke in a little girl’s voice, but in staccato fashion, like rapid bursts of machine-gun fire, so she seemed sweet and manic at the same time, perhaps a consequence of too much meth. Like most of the women in her family, Vickey had numerous arrests, but they were all for petty crime, like shoplifting at a Walmart, or drug possession or speeding. She never got more than a few days in jail.

  But when Vickey and Robin were arrested in Kathy’s trailer that August, it meant another probation violation for Kathy—who was not allowed to have drugs at her residence. She was taken to the Marion County Probation Department, where she started shouting at her probation agent, Linda Wilson. “They said they found drugs in my place, but they didn’t find anything on me or in my place,” Kathy was screaming. Instead, she said, it was really the trailer of her daughter’s boyfriend, which made no sense to the probation agent. “It was all a dirty trick on me,” Kathy shouted. “I’m not a drug addict. I’m a respectable woman.”

  Kathy’s probation was revoked, and she was sentenced to spend eighteen days in jail. When she heard the verdict, Kathy said, “I say, you want to put me in jail, fine. It’s rent-free.” They were words that Kathy would regret.

  * * *

  —

  Kathy’s booking into the Klamath County jail was noted with concern by an unlikely person, a case manager for the Oregon Home Healthcare Provider organization, the state’s Medicaid agency. The case manager immediately contacted the jail “to ensure that she was receiving proper medical assistance.” Unbeknownst to most members of Kathy’s family and people she dealt with regularly, Kathy had claimed for more than two years that she was completely disabled, suffering from arthritis, diabetes and cancer, and was unable “to drive, dress, bathe, cook and walk without assistance.” Kathy had applied for Medicaid, and the Oregon Home Healthcare Provider program had been giving her $2,500 a month. When the solicitous case manager called the jail, she was surprised to learn that Kathy was housed in “general population,” with the other inmates, able to walk, bathe and eat without assistance. The health-care worker therefore contacted the Oregon Department of Justice’s Medicaid Fraud Unit, which opened an investigation and began videotaping Kathy’s daily activities. Kathy was only the latest grifter in the extended Bogle family.

  When she was released from the jail and returned to Salem, she was driven by Linda. The Medicaid Fraud Unit was following both women. Investigators filmed Kathy driving herself around Salem, going shopping at a local Safeway supermarket and picking up prescriptions at a pharmacy. They also filmed Kathy meeting Linda after Linda had picked up Kathy’s monthly Medicaid vouchers from the Oregon Home Healthcare Provider’s office. The vouchers were made out to Linda, who was splitting the money with Kathy.

  In September 2008 both women were indicted by the Marion County Grand Jury, Kathy on twelve counts of making a false claim for health-care payments—that is, Medicaid fraud—and eight counts of theft. Both offenses were felonies. Kathy faced up to one hundred years in prison given her prior criminal record. Linda was charged with five counts of theft.

  “It was an idea we both came up with,” Linda said later. “We had a friend who was ill, and on Medicaid, and got help that Medicaid paid for, so it seemed like a natural thing to do.” Linda did perform significant chores for Kathy, doing much of her shopping and often driving her around because she was both morbidly obese and enfeebled.

  After being caught, Linda quickly pleaded guilty on October 16, 2008. She was ordered to perform 480 hours of community se
rvice and to be jointly responsible with Kathy for repaying the $60,000 in Medicaid funds they had stolen, and she was placed on five years of probation.

  Kathy took the opposite approach. “I’m not guilty; I didn’t do anything wrong,” she told everyone she talked to, including her court-appointed lawyer, Brooke Holstedt, as well as the Oregon assistant attorney general who prosecuted Medicaid fraud, Rod Hopkinson, and finally Judge Norblad, who found yet another Bogle on his court docket. Linda thought Kathy was in denial or perhaps just running another scam. “She’s scammed people her whole life,” Linda said. “It’s her default response to everything. She thinks she can just pretend her way out.”

  Kathy’s attorney, the state prosecutor and Judge Norblad spent almost a year trying to talk Kathy into taking the least onerous punishment—admit her guilt and accept a plea bargain of one year in jail. If not, the judge and prosecutor told her, she would have to go on trial, with no real defense, and face a sentence of at least five years in state prison, and as much as one hundred years.

  Kathy’s behavior became increasingly erratic. Some days she failed to show up for court dates to discuss the plea bargain, risking a contempt-of-court citation. She repeatedly demanded that Norblad fire her attorney, whom she said was incompetent. The judge denied her requests and said her lawyer was doing a very good job, under the circumstances.

  Finally, after months of chaos, Kathy’s lawyer began driving to her house early in the morning to pick her up and personally bring her to court. In August 2009, Kathy signed a plea agreement. The next morning, though, Kathy called Norblad’s office to say, “I’m not coming to court today. I’m not guilty. I’m going to change my plea. God has spoken to me.” A few minutes later, Kathy was suddenly less sure of herself. “I feel like a pinball,” she said. “I think I’ve lost my mind.”

  Linda thought the real problem was that Kathy was afraid of going to jail for a year because she would lose her access to marijuana. Kathy’s landlady at the time, Jeannie Kelley, was a thoughtful psychologist who worked in a local hospice counseling the terminally ill and was sympathetic to Kathy, recognizing that she had serious emotional issues. “I think she has done so many drugs she has burned her brain,” Kelley said. “She can no longer put things together.”

  On a Friday in late August, Kathy’s lawyer called her to report that Judge Norblad had run out of patience and was going to issue a warrant compelling her to appear the next week to stand trial. Kelley said, “Maybe this is for the best. Kathy will be incarcerated and protected from herself, like someone with a mental illness. She is a danger to herself.”

  Besides, Kelley said, “Kathy has told me she likes prison because they have television and she says her whole world now is watching television.”

  Finally, on September 28, 2009, Kathy agreed to plead guilty, surprising both Judge Norblad and her own lawyer. When Kathy arrived at the boxy white marble courthouse in Salem’s business district, a few blocks from the Willamette River, she was wearing a loose black velour blouse and even looser black velvet pants with a maroon pattern. Her hair was cut short on top and on the sides, but long in the back, like a hockey player’s mullet. She had dyed her graying hair a dark red. Her mouth was turned down in a scowl, and the devastations of her life showed as anger in her eyes. When a camera crew for KATU, the Portland affiliate of ABC-TV, began to film her in the courtroom, she jammed a finger at the camera. “I am not guilty,” she said. “You are very evil, very ugly. Get out of here.”

  Judge Norblad cut her off. “They have permission to be here. Your request is denied.”

  Norblad then explained the plea bargain for Kathy. “It is a gift,” he said, considering what she had done and what her record was. Instead of the total of twenty counts of Medicaid fraud and theft, the judge was permitting her to plead guilty to only six counts. Hence the penalty would be only one year in county jail. The judge told Kathy that she would be jointly responsible with Linda to repay the $60,000 in Medicaid funds they had stolen.

  Kathy mumbled her acceptance of these terms. But after Judge Norblad banged his gavel, she said to him and the prosecutor in a barely audible voice, “I’m not guilty. I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  At that point, the court officers moved to put their arms around Kathy to lead her to a van that was waiting to take her to the county jail. Kathy announced, “I have to go home to get my things and my dog.” Watching from the front row of the spectator seats, Linda said, “Kathy is still in denial, as if nothing could touch her.”

  After Kathy was escorted out, Judge Norblad said, “The people in the Bogle family seem to be infectious; their ethical and moral code permeates the whole family like a contagion.” Kathy, of course, was not a violent criminal who committed assaults, armed robbery or murder. But her brand of low-grade lawbreaking—drug possession, hiding a son from the sheriff, probation violations—still got herself and her family members locked up.

  By his back-of-the-envelope calculation, Norblad said, Kathy Bogle alone had cost the taxpayers of Oregon “close to a quarter of a million dollars,” and that was only in direct court, police, jail and Medicaid costs. It did not include the much greater cost for the damage caused by Kathy and Rooster’s children and grandchildren.

  Linda Bogle has worked at various jobs and has paid back $20,000 of the $60,000 that the two women took in fraudulent Medicaid payments. After Kathy was released, she absconded from parole, living at first in Montana with her daughters and then in Arizona with her sister. She has paid nothing back. The Oregon authorities have given up looking for her. A spokesman for the Oregon Department of Revenue, Derrick Gasperini, said it is virtually impossible to collect from people like Kathy who have no salary to garnish, no bank account to draw on and no property to attach. This kind of delinquency has become a major problem for many states, he said. In Oregon alone the amount of unpaid money from criminal fines and restitutions now amounts to $2 billion. Kathy had figured out how to make crime pay, the ultimate con.

  [ 7 ]

  Tracey

  A Fateful Compulsion

  At precisely 8:00 a.m. on August 10, 2009, a solitary figure emerged from the front gate of the sprawling Oregon State Correctional Institution. The man looked small set against the immensity of the yellow-painted prison complex, sheathed by coils of gleaming razor wire. It was Tracey Bogle. He had just finished serving his full sixteen-year sentence for the attack on Dave Fijalka and Sandra Jackson, and he was carrying a large plastic trash bag that held all his worldly possessions: a well-thumbed Bible, a few other books, his copious legal file and a change of clothes. Tracey was wearing black slacks and a dark collared shirt that had been donated to him by two volunteers from the Seventh Day Adventist Church. They had also given him $25, the only money he had.

  No members of Tracey’s family were waiting to meet him. His brothers were all in prison themselves. His two sisters were leading vagabond lives, doing drugs and panhandling where they could. His mother, Kathy, was about to go on trial and then go to jail too. So Tracey had asked me—knowing that I was working on a book about the Bogle family—if I would pick him up. He needed a ride to the halfway house for newly released sex offenders where he would be required to live by state law, and he needed to be driven to meet his new parole officer and to a state office to get his allowance of food stamps so he could buy food. He also had to report to the Oregon State Police office to register as a sex offender.

  At first I was reluctant. As a correspondent for The New York Times for thirty-six years, I had followed the paper’s strict code of not becoming personally involved with a source to get a story. But Tracey had no one else to turn to, and I knew from reporting on criminal justice for the past fifteen years that the odds of a newly released inmate making a successful transition back to life outside prison were bleak. In fact, a comprehensive national survey of state prison inmates by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that two-thirds o
f the 600,000 inmates released every year are rearrested within three years, and three-quarters of all inmates are rearrested within five years. Our prisons have become a giant, expensive recycling machine that feeds on itself. Repeated findings by criminologists about this high level of failure had led one leading sociologist, Robert Martinson, to conclude, “With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitation efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism.”

  Martinson’s conclusion was so damning that it soon became known as the “nothing works” doctrine in trying to rehabilitate inmates. Later research by other criminologists questioned Martinson’s findings, but the “nothing works” notion helped lay the groundwork for America’s great social experiment with mass incarceration in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as the way to solve our crime problem. So I thought that picking Tracey up on his release from prison and following him around for a week or two might give me an insight into why so few convicts were able to make a successful reentry into civilian life.

  By this time I had observed the Bogles long enough to know that much of their criminal behavior was already baked in during their childhood upbringing, long before they spent years in various prisons. Nonetheless, Tracey had been in prison for sixteen years, and counting the earlier years he spent in juvenile institutions in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada, he had been locked up almost full-time since he was fifteen. He had, literally, come of age in prison, and not only his family members but most of his friends were inmates. Tracey was only one tiny digit in the explosion of our prison population. We now have 2.3 million people in prison and jail, and Americans spend an estimated $179 billion a year on prisons, police forces and our court system. That is more than the entire annual budget of any of the individual fifty states, including the largest and most expensive: California, New York, Texas and Florida.