I nodded my head. Sounded like a classic case of “Stockholm Syndrome,” where the victim in a kidnapping starts to bond with the kidnapper for various reasons. I was going to have to look into that a little bit more. “Who was Mary? I mean, I know that Mary was Uncle Jack’s wife and all, but she was somebody to him during this time. Who was she to Jack? What did she do for him?”
“Mary literally saved him. She was the one who brought Jack back.” Mom hung her head and sighed. “Mary was Steven’s last victim. Steven would have killed her, too, if he didn’t die first. At least, that was what Eli told me. She was in the hospital for a year after she got out of that hellhole. A psychiatric hospital. She refused to speak. The doctors said that she was catatonic. That she was somewhere inside of herself, but she was having problems coming out. She was that traumatized.”
“Okay. So how did Jack get in touch with her?”
“Eli was in the hospital at the same time. He was in there because he broke his leg when a car hit him while he crossed the street. After he was up and walking, he walked around the hospital grounds as exercise, and he saw her. He saw her, and she saw him, and she came up to him and started to speak. She spoke her first words in over a year, and, somehow, she brought Jack back. Eli was gone. Jack was back.”
“How did that happen?”
“Jack’s therapist told me that Jack was suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, and that Eli was Jack’s protector when he was with Steven. Eli was tough and strong and could withstand the abuse, where Jack was just a young boy. Eli was much older, much tougher, had been through it all, and he could take anything that Steven dished out. At least that’s what Jack’s therapist, Dr. Tom, told me about Jack when he finally came back. I don’t know. I don’t understand that. I still don’t understand it. And somehow, someway, when he saw Mary, Jack came out. It was only later that I found out exactly what it was about Mary that brought Jack back out and made Eli disappear.”
I was starting to piece everything together. Why Jack was seemingly normal for all those years, and why it has only been in the past five years that he “relapsed.” I didn’t know that Jack had dissociated years ago. I didn’t know anything about Eli. I certainly didn’t know anything about this Steven Heaney incident.
“What was it about Mary that brought Jack back?”
“Well, apparently, Mary and Jack bonded while they were being held by Steven. Mary was there for a month, and I guess that they stayed in the same room. Steven made them stay in the same room together. And he was Jack when he was with her in that room, because Mary made him feel safe. He didn’t feel safe otherwise, while he was being held by Steven, so that was why Eli was around and not Jack. But Mary made Jack feel safe, so he was Jack when he was with her, and, when Mary wasn’t around him, he became Eli again.”
I nodded my head and drank some of my tea. I didn’t know how any of this was significant to Jack’s murder case, or if it even was. But my mother was giving me a road map on why Uncle Jack was suffering from DID. I would imagine that it was necessary to create a tough older alter to take the abuse that the kidnapper dished out, and since Mary was tender and loving with Uncle Jack, he was able to push Eli aside to be with her.
“So, Jack went into remission? Eli disappeared when Mary came back into the picture?”
“Yes. That’s what happened. He had a spontaneous remission where Eli went dormant. At least, that was what Jack’s therapist told me. And Jack was able to live a normal life. He didn’t even really remember being held hostage by Steven, and what Steven did to him. He couldn’t remember any of that. He didn’t even remember meeting Mary and staying with Mary in that bedroom. He didn’t really know who Mary was when he saw her in the hospital, but he told me later that she gave him a strong feeling. A strong feeling that he knew her and that he was in love with her. And Mary was the same. She didn’t really remember him, either, but she had the same strong feeling for him.”
“Okay. So, what happened, then? I mean, he got therapy, of course. Did the psychologist bring any of that out for him? What had happened to him? Did Dr. Tom hypnotize him or any of that, to bring out what had happened?”
“No. Dr. Tom said that it would be more damaging to Jack to do that. You have to understand that Jack lived a normal life. He really did. He wasn’t haunted or depressed or anxious or any of that. Eli was the one who had the memories of being held by Steven, not Jack. Jack was slightly bothered by the fact that he lost all that time – he couldn’t remember two years of his life, at all. But that was the only thing that was wrong with him. He finished school and played football and was popular with all the girls. He and Mary got married right out of high school, and they went to the same college and they lived their lives. Everything was just fine for Jack.”
“Until Mary was killed.”
“Right. When Mary was killed, Jack relapsed. Eli was back, and so was this guy by the name of Mick. Mick is a homosexual, I guess.” She shook her head. “To each his own, but I’m surprised that Jack would create somebody who was gay.”
“I don’t think that Jack really has a choice in that, mom. I don’t think that Jack himself says ‘I think that I’m going to create a gay alter today.’ I think that it probably just happens.”
“Well, I guess. Jack started seeing his therapist again after he started having blackouts and hearing voices. He gave me permission to talk to his therapist. His therapist told me that Jack created the gay Mick and said that Mick was probably always with Jack during the abuse. It made sense to have an alter who enjoyed gay sex, because that was what Steven was doing to him. He was raping him, but, by creating this Mick character, who was a promiscuous gay man, Jack was able to endure what Steven was doing to him.”
I nodded. “That makes sense, mom.” I was stunned, absolutely stunned, to hear all of this about my Uncle. I had no clue about any of it. I was a little upset that my mom had lied to me about Jack’s condition by telling me that Jack was suffering from schizophrenia, which was why he was hearing voices and suffering from depression and the other symptoms that he showed. I knew why she lied, though. She obviously didn’t want to have to tell me all the things that she just told me.
She nodded her head and put her hand on mine. “So, you see, Harper, why it is that I’m so protective of him. Why I’ve always been so protective of him. He’s my baby brother. My baby brother. And he’s in trouble. You have to save him, Harper. You have to. If you don’t, then Jack will be gone forever. Eli will probably just come out and be out for good if Jack ends up in prison and-“ She started to sob and rapidly shake her head. “And if that happens, Harper, then I’ll have lost him again. Nobody ever thought that Jack would come back after Eli appeared. We despaired that he would come back. His therapist told us that Eli might be the person that we might always have, and that we were to call him Eli, not Jack, and realize that Eli was a completely different person than Jack. When Jack came back, it was like a miracle.”
Mom put her hands up towards the ceiling and smiled. “A miracle, Harper. And now he’s in trouble. I can’t lose him, Harper. Not again. Not this way. You have to figure out something to save him.”
I closed my eyes, wondering how it was that I was supposed to figure any of this out. Of course, I hadn’t yet started digging into the case itself. I had just seen Jack and talked to him. Now my mother had cleared up what was going on with him. Yet, I hadn’t had the chance to really look at the police report, go to the crime scene, interview the witnesses, any of that. The case was just beginning.
There was one thing that I was fairly certain of, though – I was going to have to find a way to acquit my uncle. Not try to get a plea for Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, which was what I initially thought that I was going to try. No, I was going to have to go balls to the wall and try for a full acquittal. A NGRI plea, assuming the judge found for this, would just result in my Uncle Jack going to a criminal facility for the mentally insane for the rest of his life. As mom said, this would no do
ubt bring Eli out for good, as Eli was apparently the alter that protected Jack from bad things. Going to a mental institution for the rest of his life, without any chance at all to come out, would certainly be something that would be considered to be a “bad thing.”
I realized then that I was crying. The tears were streaming down my face, and I let out a sob. “Poor Uncle Jack. I didn’t know any of this. I mean, he was so normal when we were growing up. So normal. I didn’t think that there was anything wrong at all.”
She nodded. “That’s because only Eli has the memories of that house of horrors. Only Eli knew what was going on during that time. Jack had no clue, and he still doesn’t know about what happened.” She sighed. “I know, Harper, that I’ve gotten on you over the years about what you do for a living.”
She shook her head. “But I’ve never told you why your chosen profession has always made me so upset. Now you know. You defend people like that scum Steven. I know that you do. If he was your client, you would do all you could for him, even though you would know what he did to young girls and boys. Sickos like him need to just be locked up and have the key thrown away, or, better yet, they should be treated like criminals were treated in Russia – after the trial was over, if the person got the death penalty, they would just take the prisoner out back and shoot them right then and there. There’s no years of appeals. Just a guilty finding and bang!”
I had to admit that she had a sick point. At least for guys like Steven, a sicko who was going to always be a sicko and a pervert and a murderer, there shouldn’t be any plea bargaining. Guys like him deserved the death penalty. They were, in my mind, the only ones that really did, however. And that was because guys like Steven were unredeemable. They couldn’t possibly live amongst us in society. They were predators and that’s all that they were.
“I don’t defend guys like Steven,” I said. “I don’t defend serial killers.”
“You defend all kinds of scum just like him,” mom said accusingly. “You defend drug dealers and murderers and rapists.”
“I don’t defend rapists,” I said. “Nor anybody even accused of rape.” Mom didn’t know my story about my own rape, and I wasn’t planning on telling her. That was finished, anyhow. Michael was behind bars, where he would remain for the rest of his life. That was really all that mattered to me. “But I do defend drug dealers and killers. I do. I also defend the innocent. Like Heather. Like Uncle Jack. Those are the cases that keep me going. Those are the cases that make everything else worthwhile. I’m going to get Uncle Jack off of this murder. I’m going to do it if I have to die trying.”
She smiled, perhaps for the first time of the day. “Don’t die trying, Harper. Just please, please, please help him. Make sure that he doesn’t spend a day in prison. Get him out of that jail, please, Harper. His bond is a million five. We don’t have that. Please figure out a way that he can have a bond reduction. You have to do this for him. He’s gone through so much in his life. He can’t go through much more. It’s not fair.”
No, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he would have to spend two years of his life in the clutches of a sicko perverted serial killer. It certainly wasn’t fair that he would have to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I was going to have to figure out this case.
And I was going to have to figure it out soon.
CHAPTER FIVE
The first thing that I was going to have to do, of course, was to find out all that I could about this disorder, and that was going to start with speaking with Jack’s therapist who treated him right after he got out of Steven Heaney’s house of horrors. I had Jack sign a waiver so that I could speak with him, and I made an appointment with him that day. He said that he could slot me in between his therapy sessions, which he ordinarily wouldn’t do, but he knew how urgent my request was, so he made an exception.
Dr. Wheeler’s office was in the Menorah Hospital on the edge of Leawood, right by the Town Center on 119th Street. It seemed to be a typical doctor’s office suite, complete with a receptionist behind a window and soft music piped in throughout the waiting room.
“Dr. Wheeler will be right with you,” Hannah the receptionist said.
And, sure enough, he was. He was tall, about 6’3”, with a bald head and glasses. He had a kindly smile and, when he shook my hand, his grip was strong. I immediately felt comfortable.
“Ms. Ross,” he said. “Come right on in. I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have.”
“Thank you,” I said to him as I followed him back to his office. I went in and sat on his red plush couch and put my hands in front of me. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Well, of course,” he said. “When you explained to me what you needed, I knew that I wanted to help. I saw the news about the murder of Father Kennedy in the paper and saw that Jack Calhoun was arrested and I…” He shook his head. “It’s a tragic situation.” He cleared his throat. “But I assume that you have a waiver signed by Mr. Calhoun so that we can speak freely?”
“I do.” I gave Dr. Wheeler the waiver that Jack signed in front of a notary. “Here it is.”
Dr. Wheeler examined the waiver and handed it back to me. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s all that I need from you. Now, where would you like to begin?”
“How did Jack come to you?”
“Well, I know that you are aware that I wasn’t speaking with Jack. His name was legally Jack Calhoun, but he was going by the name of Eli. Eli was the person that I met and the person that I treated.”
“Right,” I said. “I guess I need to back up. Was this the first case of Dissociative Identity Disorder that you have seen and treated?”
“No,” he said. “I admit, though, that DID is an extremely rare phenomenon. Extremely rare. I have worked with three other patients who have this disorder, but two of them came after I saw Mr. Calhoun. You have to understand, I was only 30 years old when Jack came to me. I’ve been practicing for 43 years since I first saw Jack, and I’ve only come across two other cases in all that time.”
“How did you know that Jack wasn’t faking his having DID or how did you do a differential diagnosis?”
“Well, I ruled out schizophrenia or mania based upon the symptoms. Generally, with other disorders of the mind, there are not distinct personalities that present themselves. With DID, there is a very strict protocol that we must observe to determine whether the patient actually has the disorder. There are several criteria that we must observe before we can make a proper diagnosis. Mr. Calhoun presented with every one of those criteria.”
“What are the criteria?”
“Well, the first criteria is self-evident, and that is that there must be two or more distinct personalities that exist. And by distinct, I mean that each personality has a separate and distinct way of looking at the world and will have different behaviors. Each personality perceives the world differently, each personality relates to their environment and self differently. Many times the different personalities have different names. Sometimes they have different speech patterns and dialects. Sometimes the personalities are a different sex from the individual – a man might present with a personality who is a woman, for instance. But they all have a different consciousness and they might have different memories.”
I nodded my head. “And the next criteria that you must use to assess this disorder?”
“The patient must have experienced amnesia. Gaps in their recall of everyday events and traumatic events. You must understand that I spoke with Eli most of the time, but, on occasion, I was able to speak with Jack. And he related to me that he had experienced prolonged periods that he could not recall. He told me that he couldn’t recall the prior two years of his life. I understood that this was because Eli and Mick had taken up that time.”
“The third criteria was that the person must be distressed by his amnesia, and this was certainly true with Jack. He was panicked that he hadn’t been able to remember the prior two ye
ars of his life, and, as he recounted this fact, he changed back into Eli immediately. So, I gathered that Eli was formed to protect Jack from extreme psychological torment.”
“Okay,” I said. “And what are some of the other elements to this diagnosis?”
“The fourth criteria is that the disturbance is not a part of a normal cultural or religious practices. For instance, a child might have an imaginary friend, and this is not evidence of this disorder and there are some cultural and religious practices where multiplicity is a common phenomenon. So, we must rule this factor out.”
“The fifth criteria is that the disorder is not due to something physiological like substance abuse or seizures.”
I nodded my head. “And Jack met all these criteria.”
“Yes,” Dr. Wheeler said. “He did.”
“What did Eli tell you about why Jack dissociated?”
“Good question,” Dr. Wheeler said. “He explained about how Jack was abducted by Steven Heaney and suffered through profound abuse for two years. He told me that Jack was just a child and was extremely weak and that he never would have survived the trauma that he endured if Eli didn’t take over. That’s commonly how DID occurs – through trauma. Severe abuse is typically the root cause of this disorder, because the alters that exist in the patient’s psyche are formed to protect the patient. These alters might be tough and strong, where the patient himself is weak and vulnerable. That’s why the psyche fractures in this way. The mind cannot tolerate the abuse, so the mind creates personalities that can tolerate it. Personalities are formed that will protect the patient. That is what happened with Mr. Calhoun.”
“How long did you treat him?”
“I treated him for two years. He went into a spontaneous remission when he broke his leg and met up with a girl that he met at the home of Steven Heaney. Her name was Mary, from what I understand, and the alters went dormant from the moment he met up with Mary. I treated him for another year after he and Mary were reunited, but I soon came to the conclusion that, while Jack’s personalities were not integrated, so he was not cured, the alters were in dormancy. I also concluded that Jack, himself, had no memories of being abducted and held by Steven Heaney. Because of this, I determined that Jack could most likely live a normal life.”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 66