Murder, Motherhood, and Miraculous Grace
Page 24
In October 2001 we celebrated Courtney’s third birthday. Life felt as though it was moving further away from the heartache of Hannah’s death. Then one day a registered letter arrived in the mail.
Some of Hannah’s family had brought a lawsuit against the Department of Family Services in Casper, and a settlement had been reached. A sum of money had been put in a trust for all of the surviving Bower children. The attorney who sent the letter asked if we wanted a portion to be set aside for Courtney. We needed to answer yes or no and send the letter back by registered mail to his office.
As soon as I read the letter, my eyes welled up. A flood of sorrow washed over me as I saw this money as blood money. I didn’t want any part of it. I didn’t want to connect our innocent child to the horrible history of her sibling’s death. The drama surrounding the murder wouldn’t go away, and it seemed we couldn’t move away from it either.
When Al returned home from work that evening, we both agreed to mark no and send the letter back. We could take care of Courtney. She didn’t need to be tied to the money from Hannah’s death.
I had recently begun introducing Courtney to the concept of adoption by reading her children’s stories of bunny rabbits taking in baby squirrels as their own. We had a long way to go before ever telling her the circumstances surrounding her adoption, but Al and I had decided that Courtney would always know that she was adopted, and when she was old enough to understand, we’d tell her more of her story if she asked. I knew from experience that some children hunger to know of their past, while others are content to live in the present. Who knew where Courtney would land?
At Wayland Baptist University, prayer requests were commonly shared in class. One evening, my professor asked if anyone had a need for prayer. I raised my hand. “My teenage daughter is being treated for osteosarcoma. I’m asking for prayer for her health and for wisdom for the doctors and nurses who are caring for her.”
The professor asked the class to stop and join him in prayer. As they did, I silently asked God to help me discern how I could better help pay for Helen’s medical expenses.
I had no inkling that God would use that prayer to lead me into what would be perhaps the most unlikely role I have ever played in my life.
Shortly after the touching prayer, we had a break before class resumed. A funny and intelligent gentleman in my class approached me, asking if I would be interested in experiencing the jail system in a position other than as a chaplain.
I laughed as I held my cup under the coffee dispenser. “Do you mean as an inmate?”
Chuckling, he said, “No. As an officer for the sheriff’s department.”
I was so jolted by his response that when I turned to give him a dumbfounded look, my coffee cup overflowed. “An officer? Are you joking?”
“Believe me,” he said, “if you really have a heart for prisoners, there’s no more up-close-and-personal way to have an impact on them than to feed and clothe and care for them where they live and breathe. There you can make a real difference in their daily lives.”
It turned out that he was a captain of one of the jails in Maricopa County. He knew the department was hiring and told me he thought I would be an asset. He offered to write me a letter of recommendation.
“Deb, you can gain a far richer perspective on inmates and the jail system wearing a uniform with a star rather than wearing street clothes and carrying a Bible.”
At first I dismissed the idea as absurd. Me? An officer? In a jail? The Bible-study-rescue-mission-Sunday-school-teacher-pregnancy-center-director-foster-mom? With two teenagers and a toddler at home? I wanted to be a chaplain, not an officer. It was laughable. Except for two facts. It would mean a paycheck right away—something we needed to help with medical costs. And my heart stirred with that familiar inexplicable sense of calling. A calling to surrender once again.
I said nothing to my family until the next evening at dinner. When I recounted the conversation I had with my classmate, the clicking of forks and knives against ceramic plates ceased, and all eyes fell on me.
“Are you crazy?” my protective Charles asked.
“Maybe a little. I would like to look into it at least. I’ve never thought of working as an officer before, but I could gain better insight from a whole different position.”
“That position is what makes us nervous.” Al didn’t sound convinced that it was such a good idea. But my baffled husband, after first laughing it off as crazy, joined me in praying about it and eventually gave his blessing.
The next day I called to set up an appointment and an interview. The first went well, leading to weeks of additional interviews, psychological testing, and a lie detector test. Finally I was hired. Boot camp would begin a few weeks later, but before starting the six-week program, I began running each day, working out, and dieting. It reminded me of preparing for the pageant.
As I entered the meeting room on the first day of boot camp, I saw a variety of diverse ethnicities of young people between the ages of twenty and thirty. Only one other person was close to my age of forty-eight.
What have I gotten myself into?
But in no time at all I was learning, of all things, how to use a Taser and flip people onto thick mats.
This is even more bizarre than my pageant experience!
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe the first time I put on my official uniform and looked at myself in the mirror. So I did both. Let’s just say that the boxy, khaki short-sleeved button-up shirt and high-waisted dark brown pants with cargo pockets were far less flattering than my Mrs. Wyoming gowns. And as for accessories, the duty belt that held a radio, handcuffs, glove pouch, Taser, and pepper spray added a good four inches to my hips. I will say, however, that it was far easier to walk (and run) in the heavy regulation black army-style boots than to dance in three-inch heels. And the boots didn’t make my toes hurt.
Stepping through the gates of Estrella Jail on my first day was sobering. It was one thing to enter a prison as a visitor for one hour, but the thought of being locked inside the facility for many hours, day after day, made the razor wire curled atop the fences and walls look far more threatening. Security doors slammed shut with an eerie clank. A stale locker room smell hung in the air. And faces with sad, hopeless, often empty eyes looked back at me from every direction. I could see right away that the captain was right. Within those walls, life was raw and hard. Everything is stripped away except the bare essentials. If I wanted to make a difference in any of these women’s lives, spending time in their reality was the place to do it.
I thought I was going there to have an impact on the prisoners. Little did I know the impact they would have on me.
Chapter 24Boots and a Badge
I HAD TOUCHED DEATH ONLY twice before. One of the bodies I had wrapped in an old washrag and buried in a shoebox in my backyard when I was six years old. The other I had scooped up in a dustpan and carried to the trash. This time, I was holding up the limp body of a woman hanging by her neck.
It didn’t seem that long since I’d worn my jeweled crown and three-inch heels as Mrs. Wyoming. Now I had traded them in for boots and a badge as Officer Moerke at Estrella Jail in Phoenix, Arizona. An officer only weeks out of field training, I was assigned this fateful morning to A-Tower. Estrella (es-tray-ya) was divided into dorms and tower housing, with each identified by a letter. There were only four towers. A and B towers were for females only. They stood next to each other, connected by a long hallway. The towers housing males, C and D, were some distance away in another part of the 1,700-plus-inmate prison.
Each square tower was a huge two-story cement and cinder block detention area separated into quarters, called pods. In the center of each tower stood a cylindrical guard tower. An officer could stand in the middle of the windowed tower and, by slowly turning around, see everything in the four two-story pods, identified as 100, 200, 300, and 400. All security doors in a tower were controlled electronically at a panel within the guard tower.
I radioed my partner as I finished my security walk in the 400 pod. “Officer Moerke to A-Tower.”
“Go ahead, Moerke.”
“Security walk is complete. Open 400 pod slider, please.”
The steel-framed, windowed door slid open. Once I’d entered the corridor that circles the guard tower, it closed sharply behind me with a grinding squeal. It was early in my shift, around 0840. I was approaching the security door to the guard tower when an officer’s scream blasted over the radio, shattering the quiet of the morning.
“B-Tower . . . a . . . in . . . ahh!”
The main security control center for the entire jail responded: “Security control to B-Tower officer. 10-9?” That was a request to repeat the radio call.
“B-Tower to security control. Inmate hanging! Assistance needed!” screamed the female voice. Clear and deliberate this time. “Hurry!” Her voice broke into crying.
I froze with one foot still on the cement entry to the tower, my fingers gripping the door handle. I looked up the metal steps and saw my partner jump to her feet from the stool at the control panel.
“I’ll go!” I yelled to her. To this day I’m not sure why I volunteered so quickly. I was still so new, so green. But the distress in the officer’s voice on the radio call stirred me to respond. A tower must be manned by at least one officer at all times, 24/7. Only a second officer can leave to assist elsewhere in the jail, so I left my partner to man the post, slammed the tower door, and ran across the concrete hall toward B-Tower.
My boots felt heavy. My mind replayed the panicked voice of the officer. Running in response to a radio call for officer assistance due to an inmate fight was not uncommon. But in my first month on the job, I’d never before heard the words “inmate hanging.” As I ran, I reached to the back of my duty belt for my glove pouch, ripped open the Velcro flap, and pulled out a pair of blue latex gloves. Gloves were required when handling inmates or their property.
I saw another officer sprinting into B-Tower ahead of me, and the sound of pounding boots coming from different halls assured me more help was on the way. I turned into B-Tower, and through the security windows the officer waved me on to 300 pod. The slider into the pod was already open and all inmates locked down in their cells. Only one cell door remained open. Dodging tables as I ran through the general eating area of the pod, I heard inmates calling out, screaming, crying, and beating on their cell doors.
“What’s happening down there?”
“What’s going on?”
“Is someone hurt?”
The din grew louder as more inmates joined in. Yelling. Pounding. I ran into the corner cell where an officer stood with arms around the torso of a woman hanging from her bunk, a knotted bra her makeshift noose. He was panting, his face red and damp with sweat, his voice desperate. “Grab her legs. Help me hold her up!” The hanging woman’s arms were limp at her sides. The female officer who had made the call was also there, crying, too hysterical to be much help.
I tucked myself between the metal bunk frame and the hanging woman. Leaning against the other officer, I folded my arms tightly around the woman’s legs and lifted, my cheek against her thigh. I smelled urine and other bodily fluids that were draining from her, saturating her striped uniform, and I soon felt the dampness on my cheek and shirt. She was lifeless. Heavy. Together the other officer and I tried to lift her high enough to release the pressure from the ligature around her neck.
Adrenaline rushed through me. I’m sure it was only seconds, though it seemed much longer, until half the jail officers appeared in the pod.
“Fire department is on the way. You both need to hold her up till they get here,” the sergeant ordered, stating the policy we already knew.
Sarge told the crying officer to go to the office. Though a seasoned officer, she was a mess and needed to let others take over.
“Is she dead?” she asked. “Is she? I just finished a security walk. She was fine. She can’t be dead.” She wept as she walked out of the pod. I prayed. My heart hurt for the officers of B-Tower as much as for the woman in my arms. It hadn’t taken long for me to discover the unique bond that forms between some officers and the inmates they oversee. The weeping officer’s emotional state underscored that reality.
Soon, firemen, EMTs, jail officials, and officers filled 300 pod. Medical personnel brought a gurney into the cell. The other officer and I relinquished the hanging woman to the EMTs. Checking her neck, they loosened the bra, untied it from the bunk rails, and laid her gently on the gurney. I knew there was no life in her, though that would need to be legally determined by a doctor.
The sergeant told me to take over the vacated position in B-Tower and help the assigned officer quiet the other pods. I made my way through the crowd of officials and waved to the guard tower to open the security door for me. As I walked the short hall to the door, I could see (and hear) that pods 100, 200, and 400 were out of control, unlike 300 pod that had now grown deathly still. I gulped. How would I quiet them? All inmates were locked down in their cells, but the volume was so loud I couldn’t hear my radio.
Like caged animals sensing a tiger lurking, they were anxious, beating and slamming against the doors of their individual cells. They were safe—they just didn’t know what was happening, only that officers and medical personnel had rushed through the facility. Although there was an intercom system to communicate instructions, the women were so loud they could barely hear the tower officer’s commands to quiet down. Praying silently, I radioed the tower officer to let me into 100 pod. It would take personal attention, not a loudspeaker, to calm them.
I entered 100 pod and stood silently in the middle of the day- room until I could get the women to quiet down enough to listen. “There is an emergency in 300 pod. A woman is hurt.” I spoke softly, calmly, calling on the Holy Spirit for wisdom. “You all need to quiet down and let the EMTs do their job. If it were one of you or a friend of yours, you would want everyone to be quiet and let the medical people do what they needed to do to help you. Right?” I hoped that by speaking personally to them, with respect, they would calm down. It worked.
I delivered the same talk in each pod until B-Tower as a whole was quieted. Then, I went back to the control tower and climbed the stairs to find the tower officer, a young woman, staring out the windows at the medical personnel at work. She was sobbing.
“You okay?” I hugged the officer. She sobbed harder.
“No. I’m not okay. This is horrible. Is she dead?”
I nodded. Together we watched through the windows as the EMTs strapped the woman to the gurney and rolled it out of 300 pod. The sergeant closed the hanged woman’s cell door, and all the officers returned to their posts.
Sarge radioed me as she passed the tower security windows. “Moerke. Turn your radio to channel two.” Using that channel allowed us to talk without interfering with communications on the standard jail channel.
“How’s the officer in the tower doing?”
“She needs to leave B-Tower, Sarge. She’s not doing well,” I radioed back.
“Send her out. I’ll take her with me. You have the tower now. I’ll send an officer to do your security walks, and he’ll take care of lunch chow as well. You’re in charge for the rest of first shift. Log everything that happened and record all officer names and ‘A’ numbers [officer ID numbers] of those who responded. Can you handle that?”
“10-4, Sarge.” I opened the security door to the tower so that the weeping officer could leave.
After I watched the sergeant and the officer disappear down the hallway, I sat tentatively
on the tall stool facing the pods.
Silence.
A silence so still I could hear my heart beat.
My body was stinging from the drama of the whole insane event. What horrible hopelessness she must have felt. My uniform stank from my own sweat and from the bodily fluids of the woman who had rested in my arms, dead.
She’d rested in my arms. Dead. I was too stunned to cry and realized with surprise that I was still trying to catch my breath. I’m just a fish. (The nickname inmates gave rookie officers.) What do I know? How did I end up in charge? My mind was stuck on rewind. Over and over I relived the sights and smells of the hanging. Feeling caught in a fog, I knew I had to begin my work in the logbook.
Fortunately, other than meal service, all the inmates stayed locked down in their cells the rest of my shift. The tower remained quiet.
Every twenty-five minutes an officer did my usual security walk through all the pods. He checked each cell carefully. No one wanted a copycat hanging or anyone else trying to hurt themselves. I logged each walk during the seemingly endless wait until 1455, when second-shift officers would relieve me. They, along with all officers that day and night, would be briefed on the hanging.
As I waited, I thought of Karen back in the prison in Lusk. What hopelessness was she fighting? What must she witness on a regular basis? Had any inmates around her attempted or committed suicide? I lifted her in prayer, asking that God would fill her with purpose and hope and prayed that the Lord would continue to grow her faith deeper and develop her reliance on him. Then I prayed for Courtney. One day, she’d be a young woman coming to terms with having her birth mother serving a life sentence for murder. My mother’s heart wanted to spare her that pain, but I knew there was no avoiding it. All I could do was model a life of dependence on God—a dependence I felt as I sat at my post recovering from the day’s trauma.