“It’s very, um . . . country,” one former local said. “It’s very redneck out there. Sybil was, well, incompetent.”
And, in many ways, she was Donna’s puppet.
Sybil was making good money, and she would do just about anything that the older woman asked. Even George, when pressed to comment on what investigators called “Donna’s potential hold on Sybil,” did not have many pleasant things to say about her. He accused Sybil of taking drugs. He talked about her “strange behavior during the time I was employed. . . .” Part of her conduct at work included Sybil not calling in, an “argumentative and uncooperative” [attitude toward] “her supervisor.” She would not answer her beeper, [and] “not comply . . . with company policy.”
Strangely, George said, although they believed Sybil was a drug user, Donna never tested her.
What does this comment say about Donna and her business? Can any rational person imagine sending a known drug-using nurse into the homes of elderly patients to care for them? It sent a message to her employees that Donna was not interested in running a business centered on patient care and proper medical ethics.
[Donna] had a deep-seated need for control and power, said one law enforcement document. She had grown . . . accustomed to being a manipulator of people and life circumstances.... Nobody crossed Donna without suffering consequences; she was driven by revenge.
The fact that Donna let Sybil get away with such bad behavior was Donna’s way of controlling Sybil and, fundamentally, having things to dangle over Sybil’s head when the right time came.
Speaking about Sybil’s possible drug use, George said, “If so, Sybil could lose her Florida nursing license, since Donna could report her to the state board.”
Is this what Donna had in mind: to hold Sybil by the collar and threaten to have her license revoked?
More than protecting her on the job, Donna loaned Sybil money from her personal accounts and gave Sybil cash advances on her paychecks.
“Sybil and Donna go back a long time [about four years],” George later said, “and have been together since the start of the agency. So Sybil ‘owes’ Donna for all the breaks and favors of the past.”
One of those “favors” Donna routinely did for Sybil was rent cars.
There were days when Sybil worked under Christine Stokes, who thought Sybil was one of the most useless and inept nurses she had ever worked with. Christine had been promoted several times. She had a lot of responsibility within CCHH.
There came a point when Christine made phone calls under a quality control program she initiated. In the home health care business, you are as good as your reputation. A few bad nurses working out in the field can take down a company. Christine had been in the business a long time.
As she called several of Sybil’s patients, Christine found out Sybil had not been there. Not once or twice—but never.
First thing she did was go to the charts Sybil had kept on each patient. Lo and behold, there were notes, indicating Sybil had been to the home and had made reports of each visit.
Christine went to see Donna. “Sybil’s got to go! She’s going to ruin your business.” Christine showed Donna the reports.
Christine and Donna went to see Sybil. As it happened, George was there.
“You know,” Christine said, Donna and George looking on, “you cannot be doing this. We’re going to have to get rid of you.”
Crying, Sybil was devastated.
Two weeks later, Donna called Christine into her office. “Listen,” she said, “Sybil is really having a hard time. I think we need to give her a second chance.”
“I disagree with you, Donna. I’ll tell you what: My license will be on the line. You want her back? You supervise her.”
The indication was that Sybil, who had a few kids, could not help herself because she was being beaten by her significant other, but she refused to report the dude. She’d come to work with black eyes and bruises. Donna felt sorry for Sybil, Christine contended.
At the expense of the business, Christine thought.
Sybil was a solid woman: nearly six feet tall, 160 pounds. Average-looking, she wore her hair long, maintained a charming smile against arresting blue eyes. Men used Sybil—that much was clear by the way she “presented herself.” Sybil was weak in that respect, afraid to stand up for herself, in fear, perhaps, of being beaten harder. Yet there was more to it. Donna’s and Sybil’s relationship was something no one at work knew the inner workings of. There were reasons why Donna put up with Sybil’s drug use, poor work attendance, and unacceptable work actions.
[Sybil’s] only perceived salvation, law enforcement reported, was to maintain her employment as a health care professional with Donna’s health care operation. Donna . . . took advantage of Sybil’s weaknesses and convinced her, that if she did not help Donna . . . then Donna would ensure that Sybil would lose her job and eventually [lose] her children.
Sybil was motivated, primarily, by a “sense of despair.” She had no one else to turn to.
The way in which Donna took advantage of Sybil—slowly and deliberately—over a period of time, grooming her and allowing her to stumble, picking her up and brushing her off (playing the good mother), was what made George and Donna a pair to be reckoned with: Donna and George were alike in many ways, especially the way in which they treated people.
26
DONNA WAS BLISSFUL, walking on air around the office, bursting with smiles and fleeting adolescent emotion. By the middle of January 1998, Donna had kicked Chuck out of the house and sent him back to Louisiana, promising to see him in divorce court. That was Donna. She berated the guy for years, took him for a fool, used his muscle in the office where she needed it, and then kicked him to the curb after meeting George, whom she was referring to around the office as “this wonderful engineer” she had met and was soon going to be bringing into the company as a full-time employee. But not only was Donna bringing George into the fold to take care of the claims for CCHH and oversee its finances, George had agreed to rent a space from Donna inside her home to use as an office for a new company he had started. George would be doing work for Donna as a private contractor. The agreement was that George reported twice a month to Florida for business and, of course, Donna’s personal pleasure. A lot of the work he could take back to Michigan and do from a home office.
Donna was getting exactly what she wanted.
Same as the situation with George, Donna’s life and business were about to take on enormous change. She soon received a letter from George, and Donna knew from the context that she had perhaps reeled George in completely by this point. George had typed out the lyrics to the popular song “My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic,” by Celine Dion, and sent them along with a few closing remarks, calling his new flame “Dear Love,” “Dear Friend,” “Confidant,” and “so Much More.” He signed the note: George, the One who Loves and Adores you so much!
As her father spent more time in Florida, Emily sensed he was stepping out. It wasn’t just the mustache George had grown; it was his attitude, too.
“He seemed upset with my mom.”
All the time.
Whatever Gail did.
Nothing was good enough.
According to Emily’s recollections, whenever George was mad at Gail, or snappy with the kids, or especially when he retreated off by himself, something beyond the household was taking up space in his heart and in his mind. It was almost, Emily noted, as if her father was punishing the family for his lack of control when it came to his sins, especially lust.
Gail would never visit George in Florida—likely because George told her not to go there. Gail also was not interested in seeing in person what she undoubtedly knew in her gut. The other factor was that the kids were still in high school when George started dividing his time between Michigan and Florida. Gail felt her place was at home, caring for the kids.
“We had no family in the area,” Emily remembered. Everyone was in Texas or Virginia. “M
y mom was paranoid that something might happen to us.”
Gail was devoted to—and loved—her children. She was never going to leave them alone and chase her husband around Florida. This was another aspect of this woman, one could argue, that George took great advantage of with his conduct.
George changed, Emily noticed. One telltale sign to Emily beyond her father growing facial hair was that he got angry with the kids and Gail for no apparent reason. He might get excited and gesture, I’m going into my cave—leave me alone! It was George’s way of responding to shutting out everyone around him. He wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t answer questions. The mustache, Emily was convinced, was her father’s way of disguising who he was, or becoming, effectively, someone else.
It didn’t take much to get George upset, Emily explained. “And the mustache? Oh, my . . . it’s a sign that my dad is trying to change who he is. Trying to mask who [he] is by growing facial hair.”
During Emily’s senior year (1998), as George and Donna’s affair became hot, George moved to Florida in a more permanent fashion. Not completely. But he was going down and staying for a while to get his new business—that dream he’d always had—up and running smoothly. He told the family it was “because of the job working with Donna.”
Emily felt blindsided. She had not been getting enough sleep because of schoolwork, sports, and being a member of the student council. She depended on her father to drop her off at school early every morning so she could get in extra calculus study. But there was one morning as they drove to school when George, looking down at the floorboard, then up into his daughter’s eyes, said, “Shorty”— his pet name for Emily—“your mom is really going to need you while I’m gone.”
George had always supported the family financially. If he wasn’t there, he sent money.
“But he had checked out emotionally by then,” Emily recalled, “and probably before that.”
That day of the car ride, “I knew,” Emily said, “my dad was essentially leaving us for someone else.” George couched it as “the job” taking him away. But Emily felt the weight of what he had said and, particularly, how he had said it. What a blow. In not as many words, George said he was leaving and not coming back.
Emily felt her father was saying good-bye.
George was never honest with Gail, as far as admitting the affair, Emily thought. But that choke hold he had just put on her heart—that he was leaving the family (a wife of over two decades and two kids still in school) for another woman—was devastating. Everything this guy did, the decisions he made that would affect his family—be it moving north, quitting a job, starting a business, buying a $100 necktie—came like a shot in the dark, sucker punching everyone. And now, after all they had been through, after moving everyone north, away from family, here he was saying he was leaving.
Emily thought: Who is this person? What does she have that Mom doesn’t?
“She’s really gonna need you, Shorty. You understand me?”
Emily looked at him. What is this—good-bye?
“You need to step up,” George continued. “Be there for your mother.”
It was times like these when Emily felt an overwhelming black cloud hovering (even smothering) her father.
“I could see auras at the time,” Emily recalled, “and I would literally see black around my dad. I can always feel when people aren’t right, but sometimes I can see it, too.”
As Emily closed the car door and watched her father drive away, it was almost as if he had disappeared, like he had been swallowed up by that black cloud.
27
EMILY FULTON NEEDED answers. She had a feeling what her father was up to. In retrospect, she said, it was no secret what her dad was doing, nor whom he was doing it with. At times Emily played the arbitrator between her mother and father, trying to be the bond that held the marriage together.
“My mom told me stuff. My dad told me stuff,” Emily said. “I was right in the middle.” This was happening at a time when she was finishing high school and thinking about college. Gail protected Andrew, Emily said. And, as Emily thought about it later, being the person that her mom and dad could go to was “a role I took on myself.”
Gail had an interesting upbringing. She was the first grandchild born on both the Garza and Salinas side of her extended families.
“I remember my grandma telling me that Grandma Garza (my grandmother’s mother-in-law or my mom’s grandma on her dad’s side) was a very stern woman who did not smile much, but when she saw her first grandchild (my mom), she became a totally different person. She took my mom and unwrapped her from the blanket she was swaddled in . . . and proceeded to kiss each of my mom’s little fingers and each of her little toes. My grandma said it was such a loving and tender gesture, and this made her view her mother-in-law in a whole new light. She said Grandma Garza was so grateful she gave her a grandchild and that my mom was treasured. . . .”
Gail’s mother described her as the “perfect” child. What she meant was that Gail never gave her parents any problems; Gail learned to do things on her own from an early age, which made her self-sufficient—a trait, albeit good or bad, she had passed on to her youngest daughter.
Donna called the house when George wasn’t in Florida. She knew when there were problems in the Fulton household. How? “Because,” Emily said, “my dad told Donna everything.” So, being the consummate control freak and manipulator she was, Donna did her best to take advantage of the situation.
Gail was always on Emily, but it came from a place of love and concern, Emily felt. Gail wanted to make certain Emily wasn’t overextending herself with school, work, and all the extracurricular activities Emily was involved in. Emily grew up with a drive to be the best at whatever she put her mind toward. She knew that in order to get into a decent college under a scholarship, she’d have to work harder than her peers. Emily felt George was not going to help her. She embraced this work ethic, however, knowing that, in life, you worked hard for what you wanted and earning it built character and nobility.
One of the criticisms Emily commonly heard from her mother was about her weight. “You weigh too much, Emily,” Gail would say. However, it wasn’t said in a derogatory fashion, or with an air of a stage mom sizing up her daughter in a negative manner. Gail didn’t understand that Emily was an athlete who had developed muscle and bulk in order to compete. “My mom was obsessed with weight and being in shape.” She didn’t want her daughter to be unhealthy and develop bad habits she’d carry into adulthood, so Gail spoke up.
“Mom, it’s not about weight,” Emily said. “It’s about how you look!”
They agreed to disagree.
George was on the periphery of these conversations, but he would relate them to Donna—likely, Emily was certain, with a negative connotation toward Gail. Emily was a smart girl. When Donna called the house and tried to influence the situation to her advantage (as she squirmed her way into the lives of not only George, but his children), Emily wasn’t going for it.
“Hi, Emily,” Donna said once, calling the house out of the blue.
“Yeah? . . .”
“How are things going?” Donna was always trying to get in “good” with Emily. She knew a large part of George was tied to his kids. If she could win them over (especially Emily), she’d be that much closer to taking Gail’s place.
“My dad’s not here, Donna.”
“How are things going between you and your mother?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Emily understood Donna was her father’s boss and signed his paychecks. So there was always a bit of putting up with whatever nonsense Donna instigated. For example, during spring break one year, Emily wanted to go somewhere hot and sandy—take a bona fide vacation and forget about her studies for a week. She told her mother she deserved the trip.
“It’s too dangerous,” Gail responded. “It’s not a good idea.”
George must have overheard and h
ad told Donna that Gail had denied Emily. The next time Donna called the house, she said to Emily: “Look, why don’t you come down here to Florida for spring break. I have a house on the beach.... You can stay with me.”
Emily was appalled by the invitation.
“I won’t judge you,” Donna continued, “like your mother does.”
Why is my dad’s boss doing this?
The conversations Emily had with Donna during 1998 added up: Emily realized there was more to her father’s relationship with Donna than employee and employer. She observed the mustache, the acting out on her father’s part, the snide remarks at home, and the anger.
Why is this woman trying to be my friend?
“Listen, Donna,” Emily said, “you cannot try to manipulate me. This is what you’re doing. Yes, my mom and I are having some issues. Every daughter and mother go through that. But don’t you try and use that. . . .”
Emily lived in a constant state of optimism. She knew her mother was the perfect sense of balance in her life. Gail had a way of keeping Emily grounded. People need guides in their lives, not to mention stability. Some saw Gail’s parenting as harsh and negative, brought on by her years of living with George. Others viewed Gail as overbearing. But Emily learned to embrace this aspect of her mother as the right amount of stability she needed in order to fulfill all her dreams. Her mother was her guide. Her biggest supporter. Her friend.
Emily spent many nights not long after the Fultons arrived in Michigan (during her junior year) crying for reasons she didn’t understand. But as Donna tried to manipulate her, and Emily put things together between her father and Donna—along with her mother being so deeply troubled and walking around in a state of depression—the way of their lives began to make perfect sense.
Friends at school would ask Emily if she was okay. She’d brush it off. “Sure, I’m fine.” She needed to maintain a façade among her peers, she said. Emily didn’t want any interference in her studies or sports/extracurricular activities. She needed to focus.
Kiss of the She-Devil Page 12