Head Shot

by Burl Barer

  “My son was shot in the head,” said Opal Bitney. The clemency board, unfamiliar with details of the Achord case, sat silently spellbound as she told the dreadful tale. “He lay conscious, unconscious I pray, on the St. Pierres’ floor, till they all three—Webb, Christopher, and Paul—decided what they would do with him, whether they would take him to the hospital or murder him. And can you imagine anyone laying, having to listen to your murder being planned like that? Believe me, I think about it. Anyway, they stabbed him either thirteen, my son, either thirteen or eighteen times. They took him up, the same place they had buried Damon. They buried him, but their hole that they buried him in wasn’t big enough, so they jumped on his legs and broke his legs so he’d fit in their hole. They go home and wait for a while, the St. Pierres and Webb. So they decide that maybe with this bullet in John’s head would identify them. So they go get an ax and go up there and cut my son’s head off after he’s been buried. They bring it down in Tacoma. They dropped it in a five-gallon bucket of cement, and dropped it off the bridge into the Puyallup River. I know Webb was involved in all that. Anyway, it took us two months to get part of my son buried. Just part of him. Took two more months for Tacoma Mountain Rescue to find John’s head in the bay so we could get the other part of him buried. It took us four months getting him buried, and a lifetime that none of us will ever forget. I can’t see Andrew Webb having any mercy because he was involved in John’s death, and he did not mention that to anyone, not the governor or you.”

  When Opal Bitney left the hearing, Gail Webb followed her out. “I wanted to talk to her, tell her how sorry I was for what she went through. We had a short chat. She told me that during the trials she could see that my mom wanted to talk to her, but mom just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Mrs. Bitney said that she would have welcomed it.”

  The last person offering an opinion to the clemency board was, once again, Pepper Black. In what was literally a last-minute appeal, she said that she had only recently found out about the murder and decapitation of John Achord.

  “Andrew, just the last couple weeks, told me about the second murder that he was involved with indirectly. When Andrew wrote and said he was a part of the murder, Andrew felt that because, because this young man was still breathing and he didn’t take [him] to the hospital, he felt like he contributed to the murder. Andrew did not stab him. Andrew was not there when they buried the young man. The St. Pierre boys had taken him up on the hill. Andrew had been stuck in a ditch and he was waiting for a tow truck at that time. He had no part in dismembering this young man, nor did he have any part in jumping on this man and breaking his limbs. That was completely the sole responsibility of Chris and Paul St. Pierre. Andrew was not there. And when he wrote that letter saying that he contributed to the murder, I want to make it very clear it was because he felt that because he was still—he was still breathing, that he felt that he should’ve done something else. I also would like to remind everyone that Andrew was a victim as well,” she said, referring to the morning Andrew Webb was shot. “When Andrew walked in Paul’s home, he was about ready to shoot another man. We’ve been trying to get hold of this man so that he could come and testify today. I have not been able to get hold of him. He’s in the witness protection program, but Paul St. Pierre was going to kill him, and Andrew walked in and just said, ‘Man, you’ve got to stop killing people. You just cannot go around shooting people.’ And so Andrew stepped in and got in front of Paul St. Pierre, and this man ran from the home, and Paul St. Pierre then shot Andrew for intervening, shot Andrew to kill him. The only thing that saved Andrew’s life was the fact that he was wearing tight pants.” With that, Black sat down.

  “I make a motion that we recommend to the governor that the petition be denied,” announced a board member. The motion was seconded, the votes taken, and the motion carried. Andrew Webb would not receive clemency. He returned to his cell at the Washington State Prison. He will be eligible for a parole hearing in the year 2005.

  In retrospect, and despite his manipulations and duplicity, refusing to testify may have been Andrew Webb’s one moment of loyalty—loyalty not to the St. Pierres, but loyalty to his father’s unwavering standard of honesty. Lowell Webb hated liars. To him, a liar was the lowest life-form. To Andrew Webb, the next lowest creature was a snitch.

  “Our sister once snitched on Andrew,” recalled Gail. “She told on him to Dad about something. Because of that, Andrew did not speak to her for three years. The idea of him being a snitch was abhorrent. He knew he killed Damon Wells all by himself. He slit the kid’s throat; he threw the knife into Wells’s back. It was Andrew who did those things, not Paul or Chris St. Pierre. Sure, Andrew made that deal, or his lawyer did, with the prosecutor’s office when Andrew was furious with Paul for shooting him, and mad as hell at Chris for rolling over and ratting out everything to the cops. But he could not, and would not, take the stand and be both a liar and a snitch. I think he figured that Paul St. Pierre would be put in a mental institution and that Chris would get some punishment for going along with everything. Andrew didn’t keep his word to Griffies about testifying against the St. Pierres, and that self-justified violation may be his one selfless and ethical act of loyalty and honesty. Dad hates liars, and loyalty is a top priority for all us Webbs. Andrew ended that nice kid’s life out of selfishness and fear—not fear of Paul St. Pierre, but fear of being locked up. Once being locked up was the reality, the only things he had to fall back on were family, faith, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Damned if he was going to add disloyalty and dishonesty to his list of grievous sins.”

  “Family loyalty? Honesty? Integrity? Who’s this we’re talking about? Andrew Webb, my ex-husband who talked to dead beavers, throttled his bride, shoved rifles in people’s mouths, and slit an innocent boy’s throat, is trying to get sole custody of our kids—and he’s in prison! You know what he told the judge? He said that he was in prison for killing a burglar who broke into our home. Damon Wells wasn’t a burglar, he never broke into our home, and I made damn sure that the judge knew exactly why Andrew was in prison.”

  Anne Webb devoted fifteen years of fidelity to Andrew Webb. In all that time, she said, there was no evidence whatsoever that her beloved husband experienced any alteration other than waist size or inseam.

  “He’s no different today than he was the night he forced his way through Nellie Sanford’s back door,” she insisted. “He’s still out to get what he wants; he’s still loaded with ammo. Instead of bullets, it’s bullshit. He’s got everything a convict needs—big black lies, little white lies, and a few lines from First Corinthians. A changed man? Let me tell you something, the man quoting Second Timothy is still the first Andrew. The only thing that’s changed is that he’s had more than fifteen years’ experience as a convict. That’s fifteen years to learn new ways to con people, and the new words, new justifications, and new tools to do it with. Some people change for the better, some for the worse. No one ever said about Andrew Webb what they said about Christopher St. Pierre—no one ever said, ‘I can’t believe a nice kid like that would wind up in prison.’ ”

  Mark Ericson, Christopher St. Pierre’s former employer, could never comprehend his young friend’s involvement in the Wells and Achord homicides. “I have a hard time reconciling the Chris I knew—a bright kid with a good future—with the man who stood there watching Damon Wells die,” he said. “I just can’t imagine anyone doing that stuff. I can’t comprehend it.”

  Over the years, Christopher St. Pierre called Mark Ericson several times from the Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington. Ericson accepted the calls, and the two former friends shared superficial conversations. “Then one day Chris called,” said Ericson, “and I just had to say what I had on my mind, ask what I needed to ask.”

  Ericson’s revulsion for the deeds, the deaths, the decapitation, and the overwhelming horror of the crimes found expression, and he asked Christopher St. Pierre how he could live with himself, how he could sleep at nig
ht, knowing what he had done to those innocent victims. “ ‘Fuck them,’ ” snapped St. Pierre, according to Ericson, “ ‘fuck them both. They’re dead. I’m alive, and I’m the victim here.’

  “That was the last time I talked to Chris. He called again, but I never accepted the charges. He’s not the same anymore. He sees himself as a victim, and in some ways, he is. Prison does that, I guess. It makes victims out of people either for real or in their own minds. Being in prison doesn’t do nothin’ much for those in there, maybe, except harden the heart.”

  Marc Ericson paused and looked off toward the open doorway through which Christopher St. Pierre walked for the last time on that sunny summer morning in 1984. Focused beyond the sunlit exit, past the rental house where Damon Wells was beaten, John Achord murdered, and a nameless girl with pink tennis shoes tearfully begged the boys to let her go home, Ericson’s inner sight watched the intervening years pass over like a flight of birds. It was as if the unspeakable remained unspoken, the dreadful deeds undone; June 1984 best remembered as thirty temperate, uneventful days pleasantly spiced by honest work and casual conversations with a nice guy in white coveralls—a likable lad from a fine family “right here in the neighborhood.”

  “He was a good kid, Christopher St. Pierre ...” Ericson said, but his comment’s conclusion remained unspoken. The phone rang; a customer came in. Mark Ericson tugged on the battered brim of his baseball cap and got back to work. “Sometimes,” he remarked a few minutes later as he wiped his hands, “well, sometimes there’s just nothing more to say.”

  Afterword

  Damon Wells and John Achord didn’t lay down their lives protecting America’s interests overseas, nor did they die on the battlefield defending the right to vote in a free democracy. Had they fallen on foreign soil as two servicemen sacrificed for an altruistic principle or popular political opinion, all America would mourn their loss.

  Neither Damon nor John was of military fabric or of mettle suited for the armed forces, fire fighting, or law enforcement. Previous physical injuries precluded such careers. They wore no uniforms, carried no weapons, and had no enemies.

  Achord loved driving fast cars, and driving cars fast. A traumatic brain injury suffered in an auto accident ended his days behind the wheel. Wells preferred the ocean to asphalt, imagining himself a nautical man. An injured spleen, also the result of an auto accident, confined Damon’s world-embracing vision to the Port of Tacoma.

  No gold watch awaited Wells or Achord for years of exemplary employment; no offsprings’ accomplishments offered them old-age bragging rights. Damon’s and John’s worldly achievements—the ones of least lasting value—are contained within the phrase “the two innocent victims.”

  Life, including death, appears incomprehensibly unfair. Time heals all wounds except the fatal. Scars of the heart seldom fade, and comforting the bereaved is a temporary social obligation.

  A natural desire for simplicity and certitude tempts us to sanctify the innocent and demonize the guilty, burying the depth of our pain in the shallow “It was God’s will.”

  “What my Uncle Andrew did to Damon Wells was not God’s will,” insisted Travis Webb. “God’s will is, simply put, the Golden Rule. Treat other people the way you would like to be treated. God’s will is love and unity, not beatings, beheadings, and homicide. I can understand why people would want to just not think about why these things really happen, and we all want the easy explanation and the sound-bite solution.”

  There are no explanations for the inexplicable, reasons for the irrational, nor justifications for injustice. If an immediate answer is urgently imperative, fabrication is sufficient. Anne Webb, for example, needed to know why her husband strangled her. In response, her mother-in-law provided a quick, convenient, and entirely fictional answer validated by its immediacy alone. The truth, detained by time-consuming investigation, often arrives late, unwelcome, and rebuffed.

  If we do not search out the truth, and strive to understand what made Andrew Webb a killer, we do disservice to Damon Wells’s sacrifice. If we fail to consider the factors that contributed to the ghoulish treatment of John Achord, we make a mockery of his previous heroic recovery.

  Jack Olsen, my friend and fellow author, once said, “Any true crime book that doesn’t try to explain how and why the killer behaved the way he did is pornography.” This book is not pornography.

  Recent scientific research indicates that hypervigilant, overly suspicious, and anger-driven violence devoid of guilt or remorse—what experts define as psychopathic behavior—are primary symptoms of an incurable brain disorder. An individual is either born with this severe defect or it is acquired as the result of a serious head injury, especially when aggravated by sexual, emotional, or physical abuse.

  Childhood beatings, for example, interfere with the proper development of the hypothalamus, which regulates the body’s emotional and hormonal systems. An excess of the hormone noradrenaline or low levels of the brain chemical serotonin may cause violent responses to imaginary threats.

  Physical damage to the brain may mark the difference between a person who occasionally turns his pent-up violence on family or friends, and someone, such as Andrew Webb, who turned his anger loose on strangers. The additional presence of intoxicants, narcotics, mood-altering drugs, and stressful interpersonal dynamics in the household increase the possibility of psychopathic behavior.

  The foundation of all current knowledge on the topic of psychopaths and their behavior is based upon the extensive research—over thirty years—of Dr. Robert Hare, author of Without Conscience. It was he who first delineated the relationship between psychopathy and crime, and defined psychopathic behavior.

  According to Dr. Hare, psychopaths are “social predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to satisfy their own needs. They are found in both sexes and in every society, race, culture, ethnic group, and socioeconomic level.” Although small in number, their contribution to the seriousness of crime, violence, and social distress in every society is grossly out of proportion to their numbers.

  Psychopaths can readily be identified by qualified clinicians utilizing the Hare Psychopathic Checklist. “Clinicians are not the only ones in the mental health and criminal justice systems who need to make critical judgments about patients, offenders, and suspects,” said Hare. “Many others, including prosecutors, law enforcement officers, hostage negotiators, parole and probation officers, social workers, correctional officers, therapists, and case management personnel, routinely evaluate and deal with individuals with [the] potential of being psychopaths. In many cases, the accuracy of their evaluations and judgments will have serious consequences.”

  He and his colleagues have also addressed crucial questions regarding the defining features of the disorder. Among these are repetitive, casual, and seemingly thoughtless lying; apparent indifference to, or inability to understand, the feelings, expectations, or pain of others; defiance of rules; continually in trouble; persistent aggression, bullying, and fighting; a complete lack of conscience.

  Just as the color blind cannot experience red, blue, green, or yellow, a person without conscience cannot experience empathy, sympathy, compassion, remorse, guilt, or shame. “Psychopaths,” said Dr. Hare, “have no anxieties, doubts, or concerns about being humiliated, causing pain, sabotaging future plans, or having others be critical of their behavior.”

  Comte & Associates noted that Andrew Webb showed no emotional connection to his assaults, and that there might be something wrong with his brain. They also stated that Webb was unlikely to feel guilt or remorse for his deeds. Even though he knew the difference between right and wrong, legal and illegal, such knowledge did not deter Webb in the least. Andrew Webb showed no remorse or shame for killing Damon Wells; he only showed anger and resentment at Christopher and Paul St. Pierre.

  The senses of guilt, shame, and remorse (penitence) are not the same. Guilt is feeling bad about what you have done. Shame is feeling bad about wh
at you have not done—the actions not taken, the standard not attained. Remorse, or penitence, is a combination of emotions. Philosopher Adam Smith considered it the most dreadful of all sentiments. He described it as “made up of shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct; of grief for the effects of it; of pity for those who suffer by it; and of the dread and terror of punishment.”

  There is no “terror of punishment” for the psychopath—except perhaps an understandable aversion to the death penalty; reprimand is a waste of time; penitentiaries never teach them penitence. Incarcerated psychopaths reinforce each other’s lack of remorse, virtually assuring that any expression of heartfelt shame and regret is more show than sincerity, more performance than penitence.

  Fear of punishment is not the primary reason “normal” people don’t commit horrid acts, such as the murder and decapitation of John Achord or the slaughter of Damon Wells. “Most important perhaps is the capacity for thinking about, and being moved by, the feelings, rights, and well-being of others,” stated Dr. Hare. “There is also an appreciation of the need for harmony and social cooperation, and the ideas of right and wrong instilled in us since childhood.”

  Traditionally, it is religion that cultivates a conscious awareness of morality and ethics. The moral/ethical content of one’s deeds is nurtured and reinforced by religion’s morality-centered philosophy. In the Webb household, however, God was cast against type.

  The nine Webb offspring would sing “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world” while having the unshakable conviction that God was hell-bent on sentencing those children to eternal damnation. Thus, the Webb children found themselves caught in the relentless grip of an all-loving God turned despotic dictator—a deity as irrational and jealous as Dolores Armstrong Webb’s father. Sadly, this religiosity instilled more despair than dedication, more fear than faith.