Cruel Death

by M. William Phelps

  One of their favorite films, Erika said, was Natural Born Killers.

  There was one time when Erika looked at BJ, and in a phrase that now sounded more clichéd than sincere or even sinister, said, “I would die for you, Beej.”

  13

  Hot Tub

  Erika spent twenty minutes in the bathroom with Joshua inside Seacrets at some point that night. It was near the time the bar was about to turn on the lights and motion for everyone to get the hell out. Part of what would become known later to police was that Erika was famous for making dirty promises to the men she and BJ met at bars—that is, if they wanted to continue to party with a couple after the bar closed. Some detectives from the OCPD assumed Erika had made one of these same graphically sexual promises to Joshua when they were in the restroom together for that twenty-minute span. In one instance later that same week, Erika told a man that she and BJ met at a bar and were hanging out with, “Come back to our condo and I’ll let you do me in the ass. I like it. My husband wants to watch.”

  BJ kept Geney busy while Erika was gone with Joshua. There’s no doubt that Erika asked Joshua if he and Geney “wanted to come back to our penthouse and hang out?”

  The Rainbow.

  Erika said she and BJ wanted to continue the party. It would be fun.

  A dip in the hot tub.

  Drinks.

  Drugs.

  According to Erika, Joshua mentioned something about having “some really good” marijuana back in his Atlantis room and he wanted to pick it up and bring it over to the Rainbow. On top of that, Geney and Joshua needed to pick up their bathing suits if they were all going for a romp in the hot tub.

  “Sure,” Erika said, referring to stopping by the Atlantis. “Beej loves to smoke. I don’t. I hate it.”

  So after Joshua and Erika emerged from the restroom, Erika later said, they grabbed BJ and Geney and decided to take the bus back to the Atlantis.

  “My husband really jumped at the opportunity [to smoke weed], because I don’t smoke,” Erika later explained to Detective Bernal. “He loves to smoke it, because I don’t. . . .”

  After getting off the bus, Erika, BJ, Joshua, and Geney went up to Geney and Joshua’s room at the Atlantis. After Joshua got his and Geney’s things together (his weed was in an Altoids tin canister), they walked along the beach back to the Rainbow, which was just a few city blocks away.

  14

  Stranded

  According to BJ, only Erika, Geney, and Joshua got off the bus. He decided to take the bus back to the Rainbow and meet them there.

  “I’m going back to the condo,” BJ said.

  “We’ll meet you there, then,” Erika replied.

  When BJ got to the Rainbow, he realized that he couldn’t get in. Erika had the keys.

  “Shit.”

  So, BJ said later, he waited by the door for a while.

  “But it was uncomfortable.”

  Sick of sitting on the concrete floor by the door waiting for Erika, he went downstairs and passed out in the Jeep Cherokee, which, he said, was unlocked.

  15

  The 130 Ways to Torture a Person

  One of the main reasons Erika was so bold—so offensively oversexual and fearless when she and BJ went out on the town to drink or steal or just cause mischief a teenager would be proud of—centered around a feeling she had that he was paying very little attention to her anymore. It wasn’t even that they didn’t have sex anymore. It was that BJ, according to Erika, was more concerned with putting his wife down and demeaning her than he was with handing out compliments.

  “I’m not a shy person,” Erika explained to Detective Scott Bernal. Her lawyer and the state’s attorney Joel Todd were also present during this same interview. “I talk to people at bars. I sit down beside someone at a bar, ask them how they’re doing . . . because I do not get that sort of attention from my husband. He’s not turned on by me. I’m not what gets him excited.”

  Erika was embarrassed by the discussion. It was hard, she claimed, to talk about such intimate things with strangers.

  “No, just tell,” her lawyer encouraged.

  Erika stopped talking, looked over at her lawyer, and grimaced, whispering, “You know . . . you know—”

  “No, it’s OK to tell them,” her lawyer said.

  “We hardly ever have sex,” Erika said after a slight hesitation. “When we were first married, we did, but then it really slowed off to the point that I don’t even think we had sex while we were on vacation (in Ocean City).”

  It was once or twice a month, Erika said, if she was lucky—and if she pleaded and pleaded with BJ for it.

  “I would practically have to beg.”

  The problem wasn’t her, however, she went on to explain. BJ had even told her one day what it was that was going on with him.

  According to Erika, BJ told her, “Sex is not what excites me. It’s not what gets me off. If you want me to have sex with you, then fine. I’ll take the time out of my day, if that’s what I have to do to make you happy.”

  She was curious, of course, as was the state’s attorney and Bernal. The questions then became: What excited BJ? What was it that stimulated this failed SEAL, who had been trained to kill with his bare hands and to get out of just about any situation he found himself in?

  Erika said BJ had turned into the type of person who “swerved to hit animals on the road, instead of not to hit them.”

  He was perpetually chasing a thrill.

  Bernal asked Erika what else.

  “BJ is the kind of person that, when he’s bored, he makes lists of, like, one hundred thirty ways to torture someone.”

  Pen and paper.

  Detective Bernal asked Erika for an example.

  She spoke of BJ’s mistress, the woman from Arkansas that he’d had an affair with. To prove that this woman indeed had had an affair with BJ (he would not admit to it) and that she had no idea he was married, the woman had called Erika and told her intimate details about BJ that only someone who had slept with him would have known. The mistress also said BJ had a separate cell phone set aside just for her.

  Erika found out this was true.

  But he still would not admit to the affair.

  “So what does BJ do?” Erika told Bernal, shaking her head in disbelief. “He gets on the computer. He sends her an e-mail and it says—again, forgive my language—‘Hey, bitch, you better tell my wife I never fucked you. . . . ’” Erika went on to say that BJ promised the mistress that if she didn’t call Erika and tell her it was all a lie, he would drive down to Arkansas and “amputate your bastard kids with a butcher—with a butter knife” and then “board up the windows and doors” and torch her house down. He signed the e-mail, “Your worst enemy, BJ.”

  That e-mail, according to a naval investigation report I was able to obtain, was the beginning of the end for BJ Sifrit and his relationship with the military, along with several incidents involving cars, foul language, and threats.

  Erika talked about what truly turned BJ on: getting chased by the police. He would actually instigate pursuits with cops. BJ drove a hot rod, a bright orange (with black stripes) 1972 Chevelle, all decked out. It was a fast car, a muscle car. He was your typical gearhead. There was one time, Erika recalled, when she and BJ were cruising down the main strip in Virginia Beach, Pacific Avenue.

  “It’s like a strip,” she explained, “where you cruise, like, twenty miles an hour.”

  BJ spotted some cops hanging around a 7-Eleven convenience store. He pulled up. Revved the engine. Then pulled the car up in front of the cruiser and took off like a racing flag had been waved, burning rubber, leaving a trail of smoke behind him.

  “He did that purposely?” Bernal asked when Erika was finished telling the story.

  “I’d say weekly.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Because that’s what got him off: to outrun police.”

  There was another instance—the episode that solidified BJ’s ousti
ng from the navy—shortly after Erika’s father bought her a new Audi. Erika and BJ had met up with two of his friends, who had spent the day drinking at a bar. They were afraid of getting popped for a DUI and getting expelled from the navy, so BJ offered to follow them back to the base.

  “They were swerving and Beej sees a cop, so he’s afraid they’re going to get pulled over, plus he wants the rush,” Erika said. Not to mention that he was living up to his true SEAL reputation of protecting your fellow men at any cost.

  BJ got into the left lane of a two-lane, thirty-five-mile-an-hour road. His plan was to make himself noticed by the cop—BJ was heading straight into oncoming traffic.

  “All the cars coming toward us,” Erika explained, “are going into the trees and bushes and onto the other side of the road.” By this point, BJ was pushing the Audi to speeds of 125, 130, Erika insisted.

  The cop was close behind.

  Erika was screaming, “Slow down . . . Beej,” tightly gripping the dashboard. “Stop, you’re going to kill us.”

  Then she peed in her pants.

  And grabbed the keys out of the ignition, which slowed the car instantly, thus propelling her head against the dashboard.

  BJ was convicted in a Norfolk, Virginia, courtroom on a variety of charges. But, because he was a SEAL, some later asserted, he was given a slap: community service.

  This was one of the only times, Erika remembered, that BJ had ever gotten caught.

  Erika finished this portion of her interview with a story that spoke to BJ’s bigotry and staunch hatred toward any other race besides his own. They’d be driving around, Erika explained, and BJ would say, “Hey, let’s go shoot us a nigger.”

  “What?”

  “No one will ever know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve got to kill someone,” BJ told his wife, “where there’s no motive.”

  BJ was saying that it was the toughest murder for investigators to solve because there was really no reason for the person to have been killed.

  “Let’s go down to the ghetto,” he continued saying to Erika, “and shoot us a nigger. It’ll be really fun.”

  “No! I want to go home. Let’s go home.”

  Erika admitted that there was a time when she and BJ liked to snort cocaine. It was approximately the end of the year 2001, when she and BJ went out one night to buy come coke. They were in Altoona. BJ found some woman, Erika explained, and made the buy.

  When they got back to the apartment and set up the lines, BJ was the first to snort.

  The coke burned his nose something terrible. Made him cough and choke.

  It was Ajax. They had been ripped off.

  BJ couldn’t let it go, Erika said. He had to do something about it.

  BJ left the house. Went to the “cement store,” Erika said, “and bought a big . . . five-gallon” bucket of acid.

  In order to see if the acid would indeed melt away the drug dealer’s body after he killed her, BJ took one of the rats they fed to their snakes. He placed the rat, alive and kicking, inside the acid bath. There was a smile on BJ’s face, Erika said.

  A day later, the rat was just about completely gone.

  16

  Control Freaks

  Erika called home one night in 1999 after she met BJ. She wanted to speak to her dad. According to Mitch, Erika explained that she and BJ were thinking about getting married.

  “Erika,” Mitch explained, “why would you ever do that? You’ve known him for what, a few weeks? Why would you even consider doing that, honey?” Mitch was perplexed. This wasn’t the daughter he knew. “If you’re that intent on getting married, live with him for a while and find out who he is.”

  Mitch’s astute point was centered on the notion that you not only have to love someone to get married, you also have to like the person. You don’t marry someone because you have fallen in love with him. People fall in love every day. And people also fall out of love every day.

  That old cliché has some wisdom to it: get to know each other first.

  “No, I won’t do that. I won’t live with someone without marrying him,” Erika said sharply, subtly using religion as an available crutch to go through with something she obviously had already done.

  And that was the end of the discussion. Mitch never heard anything else about the subject until Erika brought BJ home one day to Altoona and introduced him as her husband.

  It was just one of those nights that newly married Erika was at home in the apartment but feeling especially down. She wanted more from her husband already. By now, she knew BJ a little bit better. She was scared to push BJ in any direction. Scared, not of him abusing her—but of losing him. Their first year together had been “exciting,” she later explained to a government agent. “We did cocaine and ecstasy five days a week,” she admitted.

  One party after the other.

  Coke. Sex. Bars. Booze. Wild nights.

  Being married to a SEAL was fun and exhilarating for the first twelve months, but was this it? Erika wondered. Routine, sporadic sex, drugs, and then waiting for your husband to return from wherever the navy had sent him this time around. She wanted more out of life.

  As the marriage seemed to burn itself out, and running from the cops after initiating high-speed chases wasn’t satisfying BJ’s thrill-seeking nature, BJ and Erika began burglarizing Hooters restaurants and small businesses and retail stores in and around Altoona. They’d even started a side business on eBay selling the hot merchandise. Erika later said in letters that she was making up to $2,500 per week selling the stolen items—and loving every minute of it.

  Erika not only participated in the burglaries, but she loved the high of being able to break into an establishment and steal things at will. It gave her a sense of power, authority.

  Still, there had to be more to this guy.

  More to life.

  More to being married.

  BJ shocked her one night, Erika later said. “I want kids,” he said. It was out of the blue. She had no idea he was even thinking about it.

  She was pleasantly surprised. “Kids?”

  “Yeah. I want you to get pregnant.”

  What a turnaround. Overnight, the guy had gone from a criminal to someone who wanted to become a parent. This wasn’t the BJ she knew. But then maybe he was ready to settle down and change. By now, BJ had already been discharged from the military. They had opened Memory Laine, their scrapbooking business. Save for the thieving and drugs, one could say, they were living a fairly contemporary married life.

  But both were obviously bored.

  It didn’t take long. That first month passed and Erika missed her period. She was ecstatic. Maybe this was it? Maybe BJ was destined to become a father and everything would take on a new significance. She could live like her parents. Erika was not just an only child; she was the only child in the family. No cousins. Erika beamed with the glow of being a new mother. She was five feet six inches, plus, with BJ on her all the time about her weight, she had whittled herself down to almost nothing at ninety-five pounds. So, after three and a half months, she stood one night in front of a mirror and had herself a moment. BJ wasn’t home. She relished having the child. It was going to be magnificent.

  Wonderful.

  She hadn’t known it, but it was just what she had wanted.

  In between her third and fourth month (Erika couldn’t recall the exact time when she was asked about it later), BJ came home with several of his SEAL buddies one night. They were drunk. BJ had “this look” on his face. He wanted something.

  What have I done? Erika thought immediately.

  “I don’t want kids,” BJ came out and said. “You thought I wanted to be a dad? You stupid whore. I don’t want no kid.”

  Erika was confused. “You what?”

  “You heard me. Get rid of the kid.”

  She started crying. She knew it wouldn’t do anything. But she couldn’t help it.

  “Beej—”

>   “Either we get it out, here and now—I’m going to dig it out of you with a coat hanger—or you go to the clinic in the morning. Your choice.”

  BJ walked away.

  Enough said.

  No more discussion about it.

  The following morning, BJ drove Erika down to the local clinic and she got the abortion. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. She had taken a life. The baby had been alive that morning, kicking and moving in her womb, and now it was gone. Dead. Just a piece of garbage in some medical disposable waste site. They didn’t even know what it was: boy or girl. And now they never would.

  The abortion issue had never meant much to Erika. Heck, since she’d married BJ—who absolutely disbelieved in and despised God and religion altogether, shunning and exclaiming that Jesus Christ was a fake and a fraud—Erika hadn’t even thought about it much. But here she was, heading home after aborting her child, knowing exactly what all those women before her had gone through. Later, she would get a tattoo of a cross on her stomach to pay homage to the child.

  On the way home from the clinic, Erika later explained to a friend in a letter, she sat with her head down on BJ’s lap and he petted her hair as he drove.

  I was 100% sedated . . . , she wrote.

  “It’s OK now, Lainey,” BJ said. He was rubbing her ears and talking sweetly. “You passed the loyalty test. Everything is going to be OK.” He said he was going to “take care” of her now that she had proven her devotion to him. He had to “make sure” that she would “pass the test” and because she had, she would “be his wife forever.” It was why he had to do it, BJ explained.

  “Everything’s gonna be OK now, Lainey.”

  When he returned home one afternoon shortly after that, BJ saw that Erika had a sad look about her face. She was hurt. How could he be so coldhearted and cruel? What had motivated him to manipulate her to such an extent?

  “Why?” she asked him.

  According to what Erika later recalled, BJ said, “I never wanted a kid to begin with, Lainey. I just wanted to see how far you would go for me.”