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In March 2012, a man on YouTube under the screen name “Lasvegas collapse” posted a video telling potential newcomers that Concordia Lutheran Church was a place where people could sleep. In the video, he drives by the church with his camera, revealing the exact location. “Parking lot fills up, so you got to get here early. As you can see it’s not very big. There’s probably about 30 spots,” he says in the video. The video received over 30,000 views, and Reinke soon saw an uptick in men arriving at his doorstep saying they had heard about it through the video.
Men would show up to the church in tears, saying that coming to Williston was their last hope. “It became kind of a beacon for people,” said Reinke. One man told the pastor his beloved wife had recently died of cancer. He’d been laid off from his job after she passed away. He struggled daily with grief and mounting debt from her medical bills and his unpaid mortgage. He believed coming to Williston was his last chance to turn his life around.
Reinke began calling the men who slept at the church “the Overnighters.” In the evenings, men played cards or Skyped with family members back home. Occasionally someone dropped off a home-cooked meal or buckets of fried chicken from KFC. Some men stayed a few nights, found a job that provided housing, and were on their way—grateful for Reinke’s help. But other times, the number of people asking for help was overwhelming. “I remember one time it was bitterly cold, and we had like 50 or 60 people in the building. It was way too many. We had them everywhere,” said Reinke. “Then three guys showed up late at night. I said, ‘We cannot have this. You’ve got to find another place.’”
At least once a week, Reinke had to turn a man away—sometimes because the church was at capacity and other times because he simply didn’t want the person to stay. It often took one look for Reinke to decide. If the man looked unkempt or like a vagrant, Reinke would tell him to move along. If the man said, “I hitchhiked to get here,” Reinke took it as a sign the man was transitory and not planning to build a life in Williston. He’d let the man stay the night but would ask him to leave in the morning. “There were people who shouldn’t have come to Williston,” said Reinke. “I remember one guy had long straggly hair and looked like a beat-up guy. We all go through adversity, but he’s not going to survive in Williston. So let’s get real here—it’s time to go home. It wasn’t always peaches and cream.”
Other men overstayed their welcome. Initially, Reinke gave each Overnighter a two-week deadline to find employment and another place to stay. But two weeks simply wasn’t long enough. He extended the deadline to a month and sometimes longer, depending on the situation. “Unless they got a job with housing, it just didn’t happen that quickly,” said Reinke. But he wanted to be clear the church was a short-term solution, not anyone’s permanent residence. He had to nudge some men out the door. One man stayed for nearly six months because of health problems that made it harder for him to survive in Williston, but it was rare for men to stay longer than two or three months. “When there are no options, you can’t just kick them out,” said Reinke. “It’s harder than that.”
The last thing Reinke wanted was for people to think he had started a homeless shelter. One eccentric middle-age black man who stayed at the church often carried his personal belongings in plastic Walmart bags. Reinke told him he needed to knock it off. He looked homeless, and he wasn’t going to find a job by looking homeless. He’d tell other men to cut their hair, improve their personal hygiene, and stay away from the local parks where the homeless tended to gather. “I was sometimes merciless,” said Reinke.
Reinke soon established rules for the Overnighters—no alcohol consumption, no showing up to the church intoxicated, no tobacco use in the building or parking lot, no weapons, no fighting, no profanity, no interpersonal loans, no long-distance phone calls from the church phone, no food preparation in the kitchen except the microwave, no work shoes worn inside the church, shirts must be worn at all times, photo ID is required, occupants must sign in and out, no one is allowed in the building between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., devotions after 9 p.m. are mandatory for those in the building, and the doors are locked at 11 p.m.—there were 23 rules total. He asked each Overnighter to sign an “Occupancy Agreement” with the rules listed. The first line of the agreement was: “By the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Concordia Lutheran Church would like to welcome you.”
In addition, Reinke implemented background checks for the men sleeping in his church—mostly to placate the growing complaints from members of his congregation, the city, and his neighbors. Reinke used his own discretion on whether he would allow an Overnighter with a criminal record to stay at the church, and it was rare he turned someone away on their record alone. He “welcomed sinners,” he said. He still let men with felonies sleep in his church and, at times, his home. Two registered sex offenders stayed at Concordia. One was Keith Graves, a 36-year-old man from Los Angeles who had a 1999 conviction for a lewd act with a minor under 14. A reporter at the Williston Herald received a tip that Graves was staying at the church and questioned Reinke about it. Though the reporter never published a piece on the topic, Reinke worried Graves might jeopardize the Overnighters program and moved Graves into an extra bedroom in his home with his wife and children. A few years later, Graves was arrested for organizing a sex trafficking operation in Williston—some of which likely occurred while he was staying with Reinke—and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Despite Reinke’s efforts, some men had little intention of turning their lives around. They were simply running away from their past. Williston became a place where men with dark pasts could easily hide; a destination for people to run from the law, or disappear—literally, in some cases.
Disappearance cases increased, and the police department had few resources to solve them. “We have a very transient population,” said Detective Caleb Fry. “Guys will go missing and they just stop calling their wives or families completely.” Most of the time, they eventually showed up, but not always. There was Kristopher Clarke, 29, who came to North Dakota to work in the oil fields, but went missing in 2012 and was never found. For two years, his family searched for answers, only to discover that Clarke was likely murdered by James Henrikson and Timothy Suckow. Or Jack Sjol, 58, who was reported missing from his rural ranch in April 2013. Three weeks later, his body was found in a private dump site east of Williston.
Then there was the case of Joe Lee. Lee came to Williston in 2012 from Arizona and stayed at Reinke’s church off and on in 2013 as an Overnighter. “He was just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful guy, and almost brilliant,” said Reinke. “He became one of the primary leaders at the church.” Lee eventually moved out of the church—he found a job at a burger joint in Williston called Big Willy’s and another place to live. Reinke knew Lee had struggled with drugs in the past but hoped he had found a fresh start in Williston. “He seemed like a real survivor, almost like a cat—always landing on his feet,” said Reinke.
But on June 1, 2013, Joe Lee borrowed a friend’s truck and never returned. A few days later, the truck was discovered abandoned by a shallow creek north of Williston, and Lee’s boots and socks were found 200 yards away. The police never found a body. “It was an odd case,” said Detective Fry. “He was a loner. He didn’t do much with anyone else. He moved from place to place, and there was meth use involved.”
Reinke speculated drugs had something to do with his disappearance. He talked to Lee on the phone the day before he went missing, and Lee wasn’t making sense. “I thought, something’s wrong, something’s wrong. He’s doing something,” said Reinke. “He was talking fast and very rapid.”
Detective Fry claimed that the police department did an extensive search and used a search-and-rescue robot to scan the stream’s bed, but many of Lee’s family and friends believe that after the initial search, police moved on too quickly. “I feel that the investigation went nowhere because they chose to not do anything about it,” said Blake Hall, one of Lee’s cl
osest friends in Phoenix. “’Cause he wasn’t important. And that’s not really fair.”
A local woman named Stephanie Nelson, who volunteered to search for missing persons in the region and helped search for Lee, agreed that the police department didn’t do all it could at the time of his disappearance. “He got lost in the shuffle because people were so busy,” she said. “We had a lot of people missing at that time.”
Blake Hall believed Lee was either murdered by drug lords or staged his disappearance to escape but had little evidence to support his theories. And being 1,500 miles away, he was unlikely to find out more about what Lee was doing the day he disappeared. “I miss my friend Joe. Whatever happened to him, he deserves better than this. It’s sad no one’s probably ever gonna look into what happened to him.”
Lee’s family is still hoping for answers.
23. TOM STAKES
Tom Stakes’s life wasn’t always this way. Years ago, Stakes was a pastor in the small town of Kenbridge, Virginia. He had a stable job, a wife, two sons, a three-bedroom house in a brand-new subdivision. In many ways, he had accomplished the American Dream. Growing up as a poor orphan in the South, he graduated from college and achieved a level of success others from his childhood could only dream of.
In 1955, Tom was born out of wedlock in Tampa, Florida, to a woman named Joanie Johnson. At birth, his name was James Thomas Johnson, but he’s gone by many different versions over the years—James, Tommy, Thomas, Jim, Jimmy, and today, Tom. In Georgia, he’s Jim. In Louisiana, he’s Tommy. “People can call me whatever they feel comfortable with callin’ me,” he said. “I mean, they could call me asshole—jus’ don’t call me late for supper!” Today, when people ask him his name, he says, “Tom. Just Tom. That’s all there is.”
The memories of his time with his mother are hazy, but he remembers being left alone often. No one seemed to care if he came home from school or not, and there were no rules at home. “I could leave after school and never go home. And when I showed up, they didn’t care.” Eventually, Child Protective Services intervened, and six-year-old Tom and his little brother, Dennis, who was four, were placed in foster care. For two years, they were shuffled through eight different foster homes. It was a confusing time for Tom—he didn’t understand why he was taken away or who his parents were supposed to be. “As a child, you get passed around from one family to another, tossed around like a rag doll. You get kinda weirded out, with who to trust. It messes ya up.”
When Tom was eight years old, he and his brother were adopted by Henry David Stakes and Mayonie Stakes, and he became James Thomas Stakes. His adoptive mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a Baptist minister, and that same year they moved to the small farming town of Transylvania in northeast Louisiana for his father to preach at the only church in town. Located about a mile away from the Mississippi, the town had only 600 people, one convenience store, one gas station, and a cotton mill. It was surrounded by soybean and cotton fields. Tom and his brother liked to play behind a levee next to the Mississippi. They borrowed neighbors’ horses and rode bareback through the fields. Tom loved animals and soon after they moved to town, he caught a wild baby rabbit in a field and took care of it. He cared for abandoned baby squirrels until they were old enough to fend for themselves. He raised beavers, deer, possums, armadillos, birds, stray cats—any orphan animal he came across, he took it in. “Oh, bless their hearts,” he said. “I’ve rescued so many little animals in my life. They were jus’ beautiful because they jus’ loved you unconditionally.”
Mayonie and Henry were strict parents who expected their children to follow the rules. If rules were broken, there were harsh consequences. Pastor Henry had a temper, and would beat the boys until they bled while Mayonie stood by and watched. “They’d whoop them kids for nothin,’” said David Kirby, Tom’s childhood friend. “His daddy was hard on him and his mom was mean as hell. I don’t know the reason they adopted those boys. I don’t think they ever did love ’em.” Tom wore a towel under two pairs of pants to help cushion the blows. His father couldn’t tell Tom was wearing the extra clothing, but the boy still gave a dramatic performance to convince his father the beating was excruciating. “He was pretty conniving,” said Kirby. “He’s street smart. You could turn him loose anywhere and he’d survive.”
Mayonie and Henry had another adopted son, John Alton, who went by Al and was two years older than Tom. For the most part, Al followed the rules, but Tom and Dennis were troublemakers. “I gave ’em hell,” said Tom. “I rebelled against everythin.’ Nobody was gonna tell me what to do, ’cause I had already learned to raise myself by that time. I didn’t trust anybody.” He shoplifted, burglarized stores, smoked marijuana, skipped school, started fights. He showed an affinity for substance abuse at an early age, and would sniff gas just to feel a buzz.
His parents tried to instill Christian values and a belief in God in him, but he went to church and agreed to be baptized only to appease them. When he became a teenager, he questioned the existence of a higher power. One day, to test his beliefs, he stole $5 from his mother. Tom felt guilty about it and said, “God, if you want me to give it back, then let it rain tomorrow.” He knew the forecast was sunny and clear. The next day, sure enough, it poured down rain. He still resisted, not wanting to return the money, and while riding in a tractor with a friend, his favorite wallet made out of elephant ear—an expensive gift from his aunt—slipped out of his pocket with the $5 bill tucked inside. By the time he noticed it was gone, it was too late. He never found it. In his mind, the message from God was clear. “God said, ‘I’m gonna get it from you one way or another!’” Tom said.
At 16, his parents sent him to a reform school called the Louisiana Training Institute. It didn’t do much good. Tom only felt more abandoned and rebelled just as much. (It was later discovered that institute staff members were abusing the children.) When he turned 18, he joined the Army in an effort to impress a girl and hoped it would “make a man out of him.” It was 1973, the year the United States withdrew troops from Vietnam and the draft ended. Tom survived basic training and was stationed for over a year at a base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In addition to combat training and marksmanship, he learned how to parachute from airplanes, navigate his way across a mountain range, and survive in the wilderness. “They trained me to be a killer,” he said. His family thought he was finally becoming a responsible young man. Then suddenly Tom went AWOL.
Tom had fallen in love. Her name was Linda. She attended North Georgia College and they met while he was stationed at the nearby Ranger camp. When he returned to Kentucky, they dated long distance. One weekend, the sergeant gave Tom a pass to visit her but warned there would be consequences if he didn’t show for Monday morning drills at 8 a.m. Tom intended to be there, but on the way back late Sunday night, he pulled over to rest, fell asleep, and didn’t awake until late morning. He missed the drills. He knew he was already in trouble, so he turned around, headed back to Georgia, and married Linda the next month. When he finally returned to base, his sergeant gave him two options: undesirable discharge, which was a few levels above a dishonorable discharge but would disqualify him from any veteran’s benefits, or stay and be tried in military court. Tom wanted out. He took the undesirable discharge.
Tom and Linda stayed married for three years. Married life was much different from their whirlwind courtship period, and their initial infatuation quickly fizzled. “I don’t know what went on in her life. I mean … she didn’t want to have sex. I couldn’t deal with it,” he said. Tom left her for another woman.
Tom met his second wife, Patti, a few years later while he was living in Gainesville, Georgia. They had two children together, James David Stakes and Daniel Josiah Stakes, and Tom was amazed at the power of fatherhood. “My happiest times was seein’ both of my sons born. When I saw them come into the world, that made my world ’cause I didn’t think I was capable of doing somethin’ that beautiful.”
Patti’s father was also a preac
her, and she attended church regularly. Tom tagged along grudgingly at first but then found himself enjoying it. “I started believin’ some of the doctrine they had,” he said. “I felt like God was leadin’ me to the ministry.” He decided he wanted to become a minister like his father and enrolled in Atlanta Christian College in East Point, Georgia. He didn’t excel in school, but he passed, receiving mostly Bs and Cs. He and Patti lived in campus housing and on weekends went fishing and swimming in nearby lakes. After four years, he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in Christian ministry, and the couple moved to Kenbridge, Virginia, for Tom to preach at the local church.
Tom loved preaching—he felt like he was making a difference in people’s lives. “I can read people. I know who needs help and who doesn’t need it, just on their mannerisms and their voice, how they speak. There’s things you learn,” he said. He was also good at it—church filled up every Sunday. But at times, having so many people who needed his help was difficult. “I love people,” he said, “but sometimes you feel their feelins’ and their pain, their hurt. And sometimes it’s more than I can handle.” He claimed he didn’t drink while he was a pastor, but he still smoked marijuana in secret. After a few years, Patti’s parents fell ill and they moved back to Gainesville, Georgia, to care for them. Tom couldn’t find work there as a pastor, so he became a supervisor at a poultry plant. Patti worked at a bank, and they bought their first home together.
On the outside, everything looked great for their family—they were well on their way to a stable, middle-class life. But on the inside, life was hard. He and Patti fought constantly, and he was working long hours. Day-to-day parenting was difficult for both of them. Tom would come home exhausted from work, and Patti would list the boys’ bad behaviors that day. She’d tell Tom to punish them. Tom would whip his boys just as his father did to him. “I whooped ’em hard and I hate myself for that,” he said. “That hurt me so much. They were a part of me, and I loved ’em with all my heart.”
The New Wild West Page 15