Kill the Ones You Love

by Robert Scott

  Gabe then said, “They walked down through the front door. And they started talking. They’re together and I come out and say, ‘Take me seriously! Have a seat!’ And he came up that quick. He made a real quick move. Done.”

  Troutner asked, “Could they see you were holdin’ a gun at that point? Do you think that’s why he reached?”

  Gabe answered, “No. I mean, he made a move. And I don’t know my mom. I’ve never known her. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what she’s got.” (Author’s note: Perhaps Gabe meant a weapon in her possession.) “I don’t know how capable . . . All I know is she’s making plans to hurt us and feed me rat poison. So he makes a move, and they’re both dead.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Troutner asked, “You shot ’em?”

  Gabe said he did. So Troutner asked, “Do you remember how many times?”

  Gabe said that he didn’t know.

  Troutner added, “In that situation, a cop doesn’t ever remember. You know. They just shoot until the threat goes away.”

  Gabe replied, “My thought was, shit, make it not hurt for my mom. So hit, move down and make it not hurt. Enough shots to make ’em stop.”

  Coady asked where Bob and Robin had been standing, and Gabe showed him on the diagram he had made.

  Troutner said, “Do you remember where you shot them when you came downstairs?” Gabe drew on the diagram and said, “Robert Kennelly was right here. And Mom was there.”

  Asked how Kennelly’s last name was spelled, Gabe said, “Hell, I don’t know.”

  This drew a rejoinder from Troutner. “You didn’t know that guy at all, did you?”

  Gabe replied, “Not very well.”

  Asked if his wife and daughter woke up at the sound of gunfire, Gabe said that they had. “And at that time, I wasn’t hoping that anything would happen. I had some feeling, because there was a murderous intent already. My intent was to sit down and get them recorded, and get them to say a lot, and have a witness and make them stop. I had a little mic thing. And I had planned on having Jessica listen in. But the recorder wasn’t on, and, like, all of this wasn’t planned. Like, we were planning on coming back and talkin’ to Bob and Mom. And there you go.”

  Coady said that Bob and Robin, obviously, had been shot, “and you need to get your family out of there, because you don’t want them involved in all of this. So, what happens next?”

  “Okay, we go and get the car. See, now, gentlemen, this is where we start getting into motives and ‘why you do this’ and ‘why you do that.’ I know there is no one else, except for a handful of people, who love their children as much as I love Kalea. And if you guys are Christian and you go to church, you can think I’m nuts. But guess what? So is He. I’m not coming in here and saying, ‘I’m Jesus and I can cut people’s heads off.’ No, that ain’t it. Motive for why you do what you do—well, does Kalea need to be in the possession of people who are gonna give her prescription meds to shut her the fuck up when she’s supposed to? I said no. That ain’t appropriate. That ain’t even legal.

  “So I gotta get Jessie and Kalea out of there, and let’s find somewhere better than with the two of them. Whatever happens to me, I don’t care. So, come on, gentlemen, if you’re a woman, do you think you’d be a little bit intimidated by me? I mean, if you’re small and have a kid. Yeah, it’s going to be terrifying. And they might all say I’m a really nice guy, but at the same time it’s scary.

  “I mean, I’ve trained in martial arts since I was five or six years old, and I’ve done it intensely on my own with a master, with teachers, with people I’ve known. I’ve learned healing. I’ve learned praying. I’ve learned meditation. I’ve read books on anatomy and physiology. I’ve read books on botany. I’ve read books on just about everything there is out there so that I can better understand the world we live in. And what I’ve seen is an entire group of humanity steal and rob and take everything from everybody and then charge people a hundred dollars for just a fraction, when it’s all out there and you put your hands on a woman who’s been in enormous pain through pancreatitis for ten years going on.

  “Kalea isn’t going to have another human being in her life that can do that. So at least what I want to do is, I want to find someone that experiences this and have it happen to them. And then, maybe there are a few other people out there that Kalea . . .” Gabe then mumbled some unintelligible words. “It’s hard to find anybody who will even let someone put their hands on you and heal you. They don’t even want it. They want to be sick. They want their meds. The want their calm-down factor.

  “You know, they want their security. They would rather have security, even though their whole household is miserable. Solutions to problems can’t be charged. You can’t make money on a solution. And I can’t get paid. Right? If a doctor could do this, he’d be a jillionaire. He’d do it for Magic Johnson. He’d do it for someone else and someone else, and then he’d get paid.”

  Perhaps to keep him talking, Troutner said, “I see what you’re saying.”

  Gabe was very irritated that he hadn’t been paid for his “healing powers.” He said, “This ain’t a paying job! I mean, I’m not going to say a lot more than what I’ve said, because you guys got it.”

  The detectives didn’t want him to stop there, however. Troutner asked, “What happened to the HK?” They were referencing Bob’s semiautomatic handgun.

  Gabe either lied or he truly didn’t remember. He answered, “It’s gone. I don’t know. I seriously don’t know. I forget. I think I threw it out the window somewhere. And, honestly, I drink. That’s part of it. People want to say, like, I’m an alcoholic. Some guys are alcoholics. I’ve met those and they beat women and they’re pretty nasty. Some people drink and there’s a different reason why they drink.”

  Troutner said, “You drink, like, to take the edge off?”

  Gabe replied, “No. I drink to sometimes just shut me the fuck up so I can be faithful and just listen and stop getting my intellect and my ego and my dumbassedness and my forward planning and my . . . all my actions—why I sit there and ignore everyone around me—just to shut up!”

  Coady asked, “Do you remember what vehicle you took?”

  “I think it was a Dodge. Bob had a truck. White. I can tell you where it is, if you haven’t found it.”

  Even though the detectives knew it had been found, Coady asked Gabe where it was, anyway, possibly to see if he would tell the truth.

  Gabe answered, “It’s in Coquille. Near the front of the Eschlers’ home.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “I wouldn’t say a ‘friend.’ A past acquaintance. I mean, people knew me when I first joined the church when I was nineteen. And Fred was the one who baptized me.” Gabe left out a lot here, considering the fact that he had dated the Eschlers’ daughter for years.

  Gabe continued, “So I went to their home and I told them I was in trouble, and I said, ‘I need a vehicle. I need a firearm. I need some money.’ And then Fred gave it to me.”

  Troutner asked, “He have a gun?”

  Gabe said that he did.

  “Is that the Beretta?”

  “Yeah, but I also had an HK with me.”

  “Well, we’re not trying to get Fred in trouble. We’re just trying to keep track of guns.”

  “Yeah, so I got the Beretta from Fred. I got the car. I got some money.”

  “Did you trade him?”

  Gabe said that he hadn’t done that.

  “You didn’t give the HK, like a trade?”

  “No, I did not. I did throw the HK out the window. I do know that. I just can’t remember when or how. I remember I was looking for it. And thinking, ‘Man, why the hell did I throw it out the window?’”

  The detectives wanted to know about Gabe’s route after they left Coquille. Gabe answered, “We took a ride down to San Diego. We went to Oceanside. We stayed at a hotel down there. The gun—I mean, it’s not going to be found, I guarantee you.”

  Of course
, it already had been found.

  Coady said, “Well, that’s my concern. I don’t want a kid to find it alongside the road.”

  Gabe replied, “No, he won’t. I took the pieces apart. I’m pretty sure I did that.” Gabe was either lying or he truly believed he had done that. “I don’t have anything to hide. I’m serious. I’m not going to lie about where the gun is. I’m certain I took the cylinder out. No kid is going to find it and shoot somebody.”

  Troutner asked what Gabe’s plan had been when he, Jessica, Kalea, Judy and Judy’s brother were leaving, when they got caught. Gabe actually laughed and said, “I knew it was coming. But the safest way to do it was street style.”

  Troutner asked, “Yeah, but why’d you take everyone with you, if you knew you were going to get caught?”

  “Because you don’t want to get a door kicked down and guys coming at you and surprising you. You stopped two vehicles, right? I was not with my wife and daughter. I’m with Judy, and Judy’s a little bit more brave and courageous and just got healed, so she has faith. I know what to do in these situations at a vehicle stop. You know that you’re in public. So there are people watching. If you shoot wrong, if you go into a house . . . well, a vehicle stop is the safest way to get picked up.”

  Troutner said, “And you know you’re not going to get shot, because there are witnesses?”

  Gabe said, “No, no, no. It’s just that I wanted everyone to get picked up safe.”

  Troutner asked, “Did you know we were out there?”

  Gabe said that he did, and he added, “I knew a few of you were. It was pretty easy. I mean, the white Explorer down the road and then there was that vehicle coming down a back street. And then I saw a fella in another little black one, but I wasn’t running because I was afraid.”

  Troutner said, “Well, they said you were very cooperative.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t want to give anybody any trouble, unless they want to hurt someone. My daughter has finally found a place and she visualized it. She’s been in the experience really strong, and it’s warmed everybody’s hearts. She’s had a personal experience. I went up to the top of the stairs, and she was there, and she looked down on me and said, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ It was, like, a really, really intelligent way of looking right at me.

  “So it was like telling everyone, ‘Everything is going great. We’re gonna go on a trip down to Florida to have a vacation. It’s all gonna be good.’ We were going to have a good time. And I knew that Judy’s brother was a real sweet guy and he wasn’t going to get anything out of me. And with Jessie, I was telling her, ‘Don’t be foolish.’”

  Troutner wanted to know when Judy and Doug figured out that he and Jessica were on the run. Gabe said, “They didn’t. No, nobody ever thinks I’m wanted. They want a story. They want to think I work for the government. They want that, so I go along. Sometimes I do tell people different things to get them to feel relaxed and comfortable. They ask, ‘Why do you seem to know how to shoot?’ ‘Oh, I worked for the military.’ All right. Fine. Whatever you want to hear. Whatever makes you believe that your ego doesn’t want to shoot me in the head because I’m a cop, and you can’t shoot that well. Now, let’s just say I worked for the military a long time ago. Who cares? I’m doing it because Tony (a person Gabe knew) comes back from Iraq and he’s really enjoying this ability. And I’m a fine shooter. And I haven’t been in the military, right? So him and his buddies want to talk to me about maybe having an accident on a training environment, to prove me wrong, or stuff like that. So, ‘Hey, guys, I’ve had training like you.’ Don’t trip out. I’m not like some hillbilly that learned how to do it better than you. I’m just better. ‘All right! I’ve got good training.’ You know? Ego. It loves to get out there. So people hear you’re in the military and that’s intimidating. I mean, it’s better than saying, ‘I’m the Son of God. I’m Jesus.’ And I’m not.” By this point, Gabe was barely making any sense at all.

  And then Gabe was off and running again. “That’s the whole point. People want to say, ‘Oh, you know, this guy, he wants to hurt people.’ I don’t want to hurt anybody. All I want to say is the truth, which is very difficult nowadays. Because you have to have a bowl of truth to talk about the truth, and half the time the proof . . . Well, the proof is just what you can find and what a lawyer is paid to find, to find his side of the story. So either I’m crazy or I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to sit here and plead my case and say I’m innocent, because I know the shit is out there. I’m guilty of what I’ve done, guilty as charged of what I’ve done, and much more. I mean, you can go through my past. I lifted a gun when I was five. So, yes, that kind of stuff does happen, and we live in a world where you cannot go and heal a fella in a hospital who’s got cancer. You cannot go and go and do anything without someone thinking you’re nuts.

  “I would like to find an environment where my daughter could grow up learning these things, because they’re beautiful things. Where she can be safe. Unfortunately, here, I don’t know where to find that. So I have to leave it in His hands, and I gotta deal with what I’ve done. Fair enough. I trust Him. He’s the one who taught me how to do this stuff. So if He says, it’s what to do, then that’s it. I mean, there ain’t no more motive. There ain’t no more secrets.

  “You guys probably have the stuff about what I’ve done or had around me. There are no people I know like me. There’s a few I’ve seen in other countries. I mean there’s some Polynesians. I’ve seen people who can do this.” (Author’s note: Gabe was probably alluding to his healing abilities.) “I’ve seen it in movies. But, quite honestly, gentlemen, I’ve never met another human being who can do the stuff I do. Believe it, or don’t believe it. I mean, I love you, and I wish you would believe me. I wish you could go into the night, and get on your knees and ask Jesus, God, in His name and say, ‘Hey, man, was this fella telling me the truth? I know we gotta do what we gotta do. We got a job, but, shit, man, what about my life? What about my kids? What about the people who are suffering? What about the next time I have a family member who goes down to the hospital and has cancer? Is that what I want to pay my money for and get into debt for? Or would I really like to know what it felt like for God to say, “Hey, why don’t you come on over.”’”

  All Troutner could think to say to this diatribe was “I’m Catholic. I believe in miracles.”

  Gabe replied, “Amen.” Then he was off and running again. “Keep preaching that, and hope that no one attacks you and you gotta be in this situation—”

  Troutner interrupted and said about the shooting, “I’m like you. The training kicks in. We’re trained and trained and trained. And the muscle memory kicks in.”

  Gabe veered off once more. “You know, in Salt Lake City, there’s a fella that started pulling a gun—the guy that took me down was an off-duty police officer, but he had a sidearm. I didn’t have a gun, and somebody starts going AWOL, and goes killing. Man, guess what? I’m running at him, not from him. So I just don’t have a badge on me. I don’t know. It’s up to Him, really. I don’t want to spend the taxpayers’ money to argue over whether I didn’t get some public attorney to come here and be stressed out because this case is way more fuckin’ than they know what to do with. And the lawyer thinks this guy (meaning Gabe) is a crazy SOB.”

  Coady agreed, “Our lives would be a lot easier if more people felt that way.”

  “Yeah, life would be a lot easier if more people took responsibility.”

  All of them took a coffee break, and Coady said, “I’m tired.”

  Gabe piped up and responded, “I’ll bet. You’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  They then all talked about the bad economy. Troutner joked to Coady that in thirty years he’d have about twenty-seven dollars in equity in his house.

  CHAPTER 25

  After the break, Gabe was in for more questioning. About his long-distance trip, a detective said, “Well, at least you got to see some of the country in the last few weeks.”
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br />   Gabe replied, “I’ve seen a lot of the country. That’s the point. You get out there and you look at people in their faces and you stop watching TV, and you realize that people out there are a whole lot different than ones on television.”

  Troutner added, “Especially the ones not on the Coast. I grew up in Washington State. And I know all about the Northwest’s kind of liberal vibe.”

  Gabe added, “A lot of people are hungry. A lot of people are starving. A lot of people are hurting. A lot of people can’t find a job, no matter how hard they try.”

  Coady said, “I’d like to go see your neck of the woods (Oregon) someday.”

  Gabe responded, “Go see the Coast while it’s still there.”

  Coady asked, “Is it going to fall into the ocean?”

  Gabe laughed. “Well, eventually it will.”

  Coady then asked if Gabe had been up to Seattle recently. He answered, “Yeah. Real recent. As a matter of fact, I took Jessica and Kalea up there before this all went down.”

  “Did you jump over and see any of the Olympic stuff up there?” Coady was referencing Canada.

  “No, we went to [the] Pike Market, where they throw the fish and stuff. Just a road trip. You know, let Jessica see a better world. I mean, I kinda know what’s coming.”

  Coady asked, “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, seeing things, but not always real clear on how things are going to come out. You sense things. Our egos get us into big trouble. Make us look like fools in front of each other. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s realize that we’re different, but we can get along fairly well.”

  Coady said, “There was a time in the world where two guys could have a disagreement, duke it out and then go to the bar and have a beer together.”

  Gabe replied, “That’s right. And now there’s a time where two guys have a disagreement, they have a beer and they shoot each other.”