Meanwhile, more members of her family were getting in trouble. Her younger sister, Britney, with whom she had been very close, got pregnant and had a child, and also developed a drug habit and was arrested and put in jail for drug possession and child neglect.
For a period of time, to save money, Ashley moved in with Tim’s older sister, Debbie, who also lived in Salem. Debbie was another of the handful of Bogles who had managed to graduate from high school, and then, at the command of Rooster, she had enlisted in the Air Force at the age of seventeen, in 1987. After basic training, Debbie was sent to a U.S. Air Force base in England as a member of the Air Force Security Forces, the equivalent of being in the Army Military Police. Debbie, though, was soon diagnosed with bipolar disorder, just as Tim would be a few years later, and she was transferred back to the United States and discharged from the Air Force.
At home in Salem, and emotionally unstable, Debbie became addicted to meth and let a gang of other drug users move in with her. They were growing marijuana plants in her closet. She gave birth to two young boys. When the police raided her house one day, they found the marijuana plants and charged Debbie with the manufacture of a controlled substance and with child endangerment. Because she had no previous criminal record, she was kept in jail for only one night and then sentenced to probation.
This was the beginning of a prolonged period of chaos for Debbie. When she stayed on her meds, she was lucid and highly intelligent. When she went off her meds, which happened often, she could be psychotic—depressed and angry one moment, then suddenly full of enormous energy the next, like a tornado.
As her two sons, Jorden and Kaleb, grew older, they were in and out of prison themselves. Jorden was first sent to prison at sixteen for the new crime of sexting. He had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl who came to visit him when he was staying at a mutual friend’s apartment, and then another boy used Jorden’s cell phone to take a video of them on the bed and sent the video to their friends at high school. The video went viral. More recently, Jorden was sent to prison for a second time for four years for the attempted strangulation of his new wife. Kaleb was sentenced to prison for six years for taking part in beating and robbing a man at a Salem convenience store. He had just turned eighteen when he was convicted.
A psychiatrist in Salem who has treated Debbie for the Veterans Administration, Dr. Satyanarayana Chandragiri, asked her if she or other members of her family had ever had genetic tests to see if anything could be learned about their propensity for developing mental illness and committing crime. Dr. Chandragiri, originally from Bangalore, India, said he had seen mental illness and criminality co-occurring in families in both India and the United States over three and four generations. “As a result of practicing psychiatry in two countries for more than twenty years,” he said, “I have come to the conclusion that the old, binary way of looking at people as criminals or noncriminals is too simple. I have come to think of it as something more than that. There is something genetic, moderating or aggravating, that is going on,” he said. Doctors now must take epigenetics, the interplay of the environment and genes, into consideration in dealing with mental illness and other diseases, he said. “So why not with crime?” Dr. Chandragiri asked. It was much the same idea as the research done by Professor Terrie Moffitt at Duke University. None of the Bogles, though, have ever been tested for any genetic markers, and virtually all such testing is illegal inside America’s prisons. This is partly the result of revulsion against the terrible genetic experiments performed by the Nazis on concentration-camp inmates, and partly a fear that genetic tests on American prisoners could be misused to stigmatize African Americans.
Despite all the chaos in her family, Ashley managed to persevere in her studies, but it took her four years to earn her associate’s degree, twice as long as she had projected, though she did it with honors. A photograph taken at her graduation, with Ashley dressed in her academic black gown and mortarboard hat, shows her with a broad smile, as if she was profoundly relieved at her accomplishment in graduating. “She is still pretty shy, and she was very happy that it was all over,” her father observed.
Ashley has gotten a job as a medical-records technician at Santiam Hospital in Stayton, Oregon, a small town a few miles southeast of Salem. She is doing coding of patients’ medical records. Eventually, when she has saved some money, she wants to go back to college to earn a full bachelor’s degree.
In the meantime, she has found a duplex apartment for herself and her now three-year-old daughter. Ashley has entered mainstream America in a rapidly growing profession. Her daily commute from her apartment to the hospital takes her directly by the big Oregon State Correctional Institution, where her grandfather long was captain of the guard and many members of her extended family served prison sentences, including at present her cousin Jorden. But Ashley does not dwell on this curious coincidence. She has broken the Bogle family curse, free to live without crime, violence or prison.
Epilogue
Bobby Bogle had never read a book about criminology. He knew even less about the research showing that 5 percent of families account for half of all crime, and that 10 percent of families account for two-thirds of all crime. But he had learned, instinctively, from his own family, that crime often runs in families. After all, Bobby has been locked up in a series of juvenile reformatories and adult prisons since he was twelve years old, and his eight brothers and sisters have all been incarcerated themselves. Altogether, with a little figuring, Bobby could count at least sixty members of his own extended family who have been sentenced to jail or prison or placed on probation or parole—in other words, put under the supervision of the criminal justice system. Like other members of the Bogle clan, Bobby had come to believe they lived under a curse of crime, where crime was an incurable virus that had infected them. “My brothers always end up here eventually,” Bobby said during an interview in the Oregon State Penitentiary. “They always show up. It’s an honorable thing to do for your family, as a criminal. It’s normal.”
But even Bobby was not prepared for the day when he met Jeremy Vanwagner, a youthful-looking inmate with big, protruding ears like many members of his family. They were out in the penitentiary’s exercise yard and they got to talking. “This new guy says he is from a town called Angola, Indiana, and suddenly a wave of excitement came over me. It made me want to jump,” Bobby later told me. “It sounded very familiar to me because when I was fourteen in 1977 I met a woman named Ginger who worked with my mother in a nursing home, and we followed her back to her hometown, Angola, Indiana,” Bobby said.
Ginger was a year older than Bobby and she was very open sexually, and pretty soon they were sleeping together. Bobby noticed that “she had a large birthmark on her butt.” He also remembered that he contracted gonorrhea from Ginger and that his mother took him to a local hospital for treatment.
Now, out in the prison yard, Bobby asked Jeremy when he was born, and Jeremy answered that it was 1978, which fit the timing Bobby was calculating in his head. Jeremy could be his son. Bobby then asked Jeremy what his mother’s name was. Jeremy said she was named Ginger.
With that, Bobby grew more cautious. In prison you never wanted to reveal too much. It could open you up to a fight, or create enemies or some gang grudge. But Bobby also felt something he had never felt before—that he might have a son, an experience all those years of incarceration had denied him. So, without explaining anything, Bobby invited Jeremy to be his cellmate, since his previous cellie had recently been released.
Once they were sharing the five-by-seven-foot cell, with two steel bunks stacked one on top of the other, Bobby mentioned that he had known a Ginger from Angola, Indiana, and that she had a birthmark on her rear end.
“I was amazed,” Jeremy said during a prison interview. “I had no idea who my father was. My mother just said my father was a gangster and a gypsy, and now here was Bobby, who had a gypsy tattoo and said his fam
ily were gypsies.” Bobby even knew about his mother’s birthmark. “This whole thing just landed in my lap,” Jeremy said. “I was not upset about my father being in prison. I was glad to finally find out who my father was.”
Jeremy’s mother had been an alcoholic who beat him when she was drunk when he was young, Jeremy told Bobby. And she had boyfriends who hit him in the head with a baseball bat and a golf club, and he had the scars to prove it. Jeremy said that, as a result of this physical abuse, he had run away from home and got into drugs and stealing cars and was eventually caught and sent to prison.
Bobby and Jeremy found themselves talking for hours about what the story of their lives and its intersection meant. Jeremy later said, “It really helped me to find my father. He helped me to see there is such a thing as a true family. I had missed a lot of important things in my life.”
For Bobby, ending up in the same prison cell as his son produced some unfamiliar introspection. It had long been an accepted fact of his life that his father and uncles and his older brother, Tony, had passed on a criminal life to him. They were living exemplars, right in his father’s house, of how crime can run in a family. But how, exactly, Bobby now wondered, did that criminal proclivity get passed on to Jeremy, a son he had never met. “I became afraid that there was something genetically wrong with me and our family. That we were doomed,” Bobby told me.
After three years of being a cellmate with his father, Jeremy was scheduled to be released in 2012. Bobby knew his own earliest possible release date would not be until 2023, and even that depended on a decision by the parole board, which would not be favorably inclined, given Bobby’s record. So Bobby set himself an unusual task. “I told Jeremy, you are ruining me, man,” Bobby said. “I lived a life without love from my family, so I had to be hard, without emotions, to survive in prison. I was a very messed-up human being. Now you’ve showed me a different way from outlaw culture.”
Bobby said he had a big request to ask of Jeremy. “When you get out, don’t mess up. Stop the crime. I don’t want to see you back here.”
That was five years ago, and Jeremy has not gone back to prison. That was another way to break the cycle: create a strong family bond.
A Family Guide
Following is a brief guide listing the sixty members of the extended Bogle family with criminal records. I have included only the family members I could identify who were arrested by the police or were sentenced by a court to prison, jail or a juvenile reformatory, or placed on probation or parole. Because many family members were convicted multiple times and some sentences were much longer than others, the list is not intended to be exhaustive. In the interest of brevity, the list gives only the person’s name, his or her family relationship and the most serious crime or crimes he or she committed, along with the corresponding punishment.
The First Ancestors
LOUIS BOGLE—Making moonshine liquor, sentenced to prison, with the sentence suspended, 1923
ELVIE BOGLE—Arrested as an accessory to burglary, 1959, and later released
The Children of Louis and Elvie Bogle
JOHN BOGLE—Reformatory, for stealing a truck
LLOYD “DUDE” BOGLE—Prison, for burglary
CHARLIE BOGLE—Prison, for burglary
ELVIE “BABE” BOGLE—Jail, for drunk driving and beating his wife
ROOSTER BOGLE—Prison, for burglary
The Family of Rooster Bogle
FAMILY OF ROOSTER AND HIS FIRST WIFE, KATHY CURTIS:
KATHY—Jail, for Medicaid fraud and drug possession
Their children:
MELODY BOGLE—Jail and probation, for drug possession and drunk driving
TONY BOGLE—Prison, for murder
PAULA BOGLE, TONY’S WIFE—Prison, for murder
BOBBY BOGLE—Prison, for kidnapping, assault and robbery
JEREMY VANWAGNER, BOBBY’S SON—Prison, for auto theft and drug possession
MICHAEL BOGLE—Jail, for statutory rape and failing to register as a sex offender; prison, for a series of burglaries and auto thefts
GLEN BOGLE—Prison in Washington and California, for auto theft, selling drugs, burglary and parole violations
VICKEY BOGLE—Jail, for drug possession and trespassing
SONNY RUTLEGE, VICKEY’S HUSBAND—Prison, no record on the charge
ROBIN FOWLER, VICKEY’S DAUGHTER—Jail and probation, for assaulting a police officer and drug possession
TRACEY BOGLE—Prison, for kidnapping, sodomy and assault
FAMILY OF ROOSTER AND HIS SECOND WIFE, LINDA WHITE:
LINDA—Probation, for Medicaid fraud
TOMMY WHITE, LINDA’S BROTHER—Prison, for stealing a money-order machine
TIM BOGLE—Jail, for negligent driving and reckless endangerment
BRITNEY BOGLE, TIM’S DAUGHTER—Jail, for drug possession
DEBBIE BOGLE—Jail, for child endangerment and manufacturing drugs
JESSE JAMES, DEBBIE’S HUSBAND—Jail, for child endangerment and drug possession
JORDEN BOGLE JAMES, DEBBIE’S SON—Prison, for sexting and attempted strangulation of his wife
KALEB BOGLE JAMES, DEBBIE’S SON—Prison, for assault and robbery in a convenience store
Family of Kathy Curtis Bogle
BERTHA WILSON, KATHY’S SISTER—Prison, for selling stolen money orders
LANA REE LUNA, KATHY’S SISTER—Prison, for stabbing her boyfriend
COREY LEE WILSON, LANA’S SON—Prison, for burglary in conjunction with a murder
DICK AUSTIN, KATHY’S SECOND HUSBAND—Jail, for assault and domestic violence
MATTHEW AUSTIN, KATHY AND DICK AUSTIN’S SON—Prison, for burglary and drug possession
JIM BOB CURTIS, KATHY’S BROTHER—Jail and probation, for drug possession
CARL ED CURTIS, KATHY’S BROTHER—Prison, for drug possession
Family of John Bogle
JERRY MICHAEL BOGLE, JOHN’S SON—Jail, for automobile theft; also used a homemade bomb to rob a pharmacy of morphine and then died of a drug overdose in his car as the police chased him and fired at his car
JERRIE LYNN BOGLE JONES, JOHN’S GRANDDAUGHTER—Jail, for prostitution, robbery and forgery
JERRY PAUL BAKER, JOHN’S GRANDSON—Jail, for possession of heroin and burglary before he hanged himself
Family of Lloyd “Dude” Bogle
RICK BOGLE, DUDE’S SON—Federal prison in Montana, for selling Cocaine
RICKY BOGLE JR., DUDE’S GRANDSON—Prison, for drug possession, assault and drunk driving; died from an MRSA infection after a drug overdose
LLOYD BOGLE JR., DUDE’S SON—Probation, for drug possession
DARRELL BOGLE, DUDE’S SON—Prison in Montana, for drug possession and escape
Family of Charlie Bogle
NAN BOGLE, CHARLIE’S DAUGHTER—Prison, for drug possession
JERRY PAUL MACKEY, CHARLIE’S GRANDSON—Prison, for drug possession
Family of Elvie “Babe” Bogle
TAMMIE BOGLE SILVER, BABE’S DAUGHTER—Never arrested; ran halfway house for ex-convicts
DURRELL BURDEN, TAMMIE’S FIRST HUSBAND—Jail, for drunk driving and disorderly conduct
CURT JAMES, TAMMIE’S SECOND HUSBAND—Jail, for attempted murder
STEVE SILVER, TAMMIE’S THIRD HUSBAND—Prison, for robbery, kidnapping and assault; the son of a man sent to prison; after Steve’s release, he went straight and ran a halfway house for ex-convicts with Tammie
JASON BOGLE, TAMMIE’S SON—Prison, for drug possession and armed robbery
SHANNON BOGLE JAMES, TAMMIE’S DAUGHTER—Probation, for theft, prostitution and trespassing
DARREN WADE, FATHER OF SHANNON’S OLDEST CHILD—Prison, for drug use
LOUIS BOGLE, TAMMIE’S BROTHER—Prison, for drug possession, automobile theft and escape from jail
DEBORAH BARNES, LOUIS’S LONGTIME GIRLFRIEND—Prison, for drug possession
TOMMY BOGLE, LOUIS’S SON—Jail, for drug possession
ALICIA BOGLE BARNES, LOUIS’S DAUGHTER—Prison, for drug possession
MARK BOGLE, TAMMIE’S BROTHER—Prison, for manufacture of meth and for identity theft
In My Father's House Page 22