A Mother’s Promise

by Lee Barnett

  Nathan said that the evaluating psychologist and the guardian ad litem had recommended that Mr Todd be granted custody. Then he went into the history of when Samantha was injured while with Harris and his mother. He said the injuries were not warranted for me to keep Samantha from Harris; however, he did not mention that there was no written order and I had been told by the police that I did not have to give her back without one.

  Nathan then stated that three days after the ending of the hearing I headed to LA to obtain false birth certificates, and in April I had travelled to Houston, Texas, stayed with Susan Poag and used her car to obtain a Texas driver’s licence. I then obtained a passport under the fake name of the birth certificate. Throwing Susan under the bus, he mentioned the $10,000 cash Susan had given me which had originated from a cheque written by my mom. I was baffled by these accusation. ‘The feds develop a much stronger case if they can make it into a conspiracy,’ Russell reminded me.

  It was now Russell’s turn. He stood and disputed the written order’s existence and insinuated everything would come up at trial. He alluded to the four psychiatrists, and I could tell by Nathan’s face that he was unaware that three of the four psychiatrists has given me a clean bill of health. There was some discussion about my supposed cognitive slippage, and I had to smile at how absurd it was that one minute I was this major criminal who had outsmarted the FBI for twenty years, but somehow I was mentally ill and suffered from cognitive slippage.

  Russell then told the judge that he was not calling any witnesses, but he did ask for Samantha to stand up, mentioning that she was accompanied by her brother, uncle, cousin and grandmother. Russell also made it very clear that I had no reason to run and requested that I be placed under house arrest before the bigger hearing. He gestured to the packed courtroom and the huge support I had, but did not ask for these people to stand.

  The judge said he would issue an order later that day and when he did so, my bond had been denied. Of course I was disappointed by his decision but I had also become philosophical about it. Maybe my trial judge, Judge Gergel, knew I was close to finishing my prison time and it would have been foolish if I were out on bond only to be returned for a few more months. But that’s my opinion. What really was disappointing was the way in which the television programs and newspapers reported on the hearing, saying that I had only a couple of dozen supporters in the room, which was a far cry from the sixty to seventy we had all estimated.

  I had always thought that sentencing was up to the judge, but there were sentencing guidelines I wasn’t aware of. Russell explained that so far, Judge Gergel hadn’t gone over the guidelines so it was likely that they would be followed. I persuaded Russell to send me the sentencing guidelines: he thought I was ‘a clear 15’, which translated to a sentence of eighteen to twenty-four months, but after I studied the documents I thought I was a level 14, which had a sentence range of fifteen to twenty-one months. And I had already spent nearly fourteen months in prison!

  In spite of the judge’s decision, my friends and family continued the parties without me, physically anyway. Samantha and Brad were wined and dined by everyone. After staying with Gail and Myron up in nearby Summerville, Samantha came to see me and said she had asked Gail and Myron if I could go and live with them once I was released from prison. They readily agreed. Sammy had made a point of emphasising that their home would be the best place for me. She said it was a beautiful, quiet place on the water where I could relax and be around people who loved me and wanted me there with them. I was so blessed.

  She also told me how she and Brad had gone to the FBI office to look at the evidence against me, and how Ed was really pleasant but that another officer there hated my guts. ‘He said he had looked for you for twelve years before Ed took over.’ And, it turned out, he was the same officer who had me declared as ‘armed and dangerous, proceed with caution, mentally unstable, has a voracious sexual appetite, preys on wealthy elderly men’. Sammy and I laughed. Later I would learn his name was Chris Quick.

  ‘There was also a pushy lady who was an advocate for victims,’ she went on. ‘I told her a million times that I only became a victim when they put you in prison, but she kept insisting that “poor Harris” just wants to see me. I told her I had offered to begin a relationship with him if he was honest with me, and that he had instead proved how dishonest he was by going on TV saying he has nothing against you, that you are the mother of his child and then making his lawyer say he was very much opposed to you getting bond.’

  ‘Yep, can’t go both ways,’ I agreed. ‘Are you going to see him while you’re still here?’

  ‘I was thinking about it.’

  ‘You do what you want, sweetie, but don’t be doing it for me; do it for yourself. And Sammy, whatever you do, don’t go alone to meet him. People will always believe what Harris says over what you say.’

  One thing that kept me busy during this time was to work on countering the claims that Nathan Williams had made in court. I called everyone, knowing all my conversations were being recorded. To Patty I said things like, ‘Can you believe that Nathan Williams said I was getting fake birth certificates on 21 February just three days after the oral order? But don’t you remember you were at my house on 21 February when Mendel called to tell me that my visitations were going to be just four nights a month?’ It was a little stilted, I admit, but Patty cottoned on quickly and said that she did indeed remember. ‘And Patty,’ I continued, ‘they have all my phone records so why don’t they check them to see that I spoke to Mendel that night and couldn’t have been on the West Coast in LA?’

  I did the same to Susan, to help clear her of any involvement in my getting a fake driver’s licence from her letting me use her car. I spoke about borrowing her car whenever I visited, because she was at work all day and it was silly to also rent a car. All, of course, was the truth.

  Then I called Cliff to clear up the money issue. ‘Wasn’t it silly,’ I said to him, ‘that they thought Susan gave me $10,000 in cash from the cheque Mom sent to me to take off with Samantha, just like they accused you when you both just loaned me money to pay Hans Paul for the Appellate Court? What really happened, if you can remember, Cliff, was that Mom reluctantly sent the cheque via a guy who was returning to Houston from Belize. Susan and I met him and went to her bank and while there I decided to get Susan to cash it instead. I was so sick and tired of Harris knowing about every penny I had. But now Susan is paying the price for that?’ I hoped that by telling the truth it might help when it came to trial, but more than anything I hoped it would stop Nathan trying to make Susan a conspirator.

  Christmas in the Al Cannon Detention Center was pleasant, just as it had been in Brisbane. I had received hundreds of Christmas cards and decided to use them to cheer up others. For those girls who hadn’t received a single Christmas wish from their loved ones, I cut the cards in half and used the front to make one-sided cards (like postcards), that many of us signed. My pod mate, Linda, and I bought extra supplies from the canteen and turned our chip bags inside out to make eye-catching silver bags. On Christmas Eve we filled them with candy, chips and cookies and put them under the beds of the five girls we felt were the most vulnerable in the unit.

  Sammy and Brad had been visiting New York, and arrived back in time to spend Christmas with Patty, Mike and the girls. They had an incredible time.

  On the evening of 29 December 2014, I called to say goodnight to my lovely daughter. It had been so wonderful speaking to her several times a day while she had been in the country; she and Brad were going back to Australia soon.

  ‘Hi, sweetie.’

  ‘Oh Mum! I love you soooooo much,’ was her greeting.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing, I just love you.’

  ‘Um, we spoke this morning so spit it out.’

  Sammy let out an audible sigh. ‘I’ve just spent three hours learning how many cc’s a 1964 Chevy has under its hood.’

  ‘What are you ta
lking about?’

  She explained that she and Myron had visited Harris at his house. I felt ill at the thought of it and asked if she was okay.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ she replied. I heard the relief in her voice, the kind you get when you’ve finally done something you had dreaded.

  She said that when she had walked up to him he had stuck out his hand, and that she had thought a hug was more appropriate. He seemed shocked but gave her a small hug back. And for a few hours they were shown his hundreds – or was that thousands? – of antiques while Harris mostly told Myron about his family’s history.

  ‘Mum, by the third or fourth trinket he picked up to show us, I noticed they were returned to the exact same spot. So I deliberately put one back half a centimetre off its original spot and he immediately corrected things.’

  Myron had apparently thought the place was so clean and ordered it was like a museum, with Harris its curator. And not anywhere did they see a single photo of Sammy, not even in her old bedroom. That seemed strange to me because the TV shows and newspaper articles usually mentioned how he had hundreds of baby photos of Samantha. In her old room, Harris had pointed to a musical jewellery box sitting on top of the chest of drawers. It had Harris’s mother’s initials on it, and he said that she had given it to Samantha. He then placed it in Sammy’s hands only to snatch it from her again and put it back in its place.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  Next he gave them a tour of his garages and the cars he was restoring. There were tools everywhere.

  In a corner of the garage there was a glass cabinet in which older medical instruments were displayed. He explained that the cabinet had belonged to his father and had stored prescribed medicines. I wondered if it had contained the drugs that eventually killed Dr Todd. Harris also spent some time showing them how an old glass syringe and needle unit worked.

  Through the course of the visit Harris had mentioned his niece Amber several times. She was his deceased sister’s daughter, and he told Sammy and Myron how he had dropped her off and picked her up from school each day. He said she had some learning disabilities and had trouble reading, so Harris read with her every afternoon and helped her with her homework. Myron thought Harris had said this to make Samantha imagine all the things he would have done with her if he had had the chance, trying to show what a good parent he would have been. But then Harris added that at sixteen or seventeen, Amber had met a man online. Harris called him a dirt bag, and Amber had fallen pregnant. I thought it interesting that Harris didn’t seem to think it odd that the one child he had something to do with hadn’t turned out as he had hoped.

  ‘I learned a lot today,’ said Sammy reflectively. ‘I learned all about Harris and his family and all of his accomplishments.’

  ‘And sweetie, what did he learn about you?’

  ‘He had no interest in me at all,’ said Sammy. ‘Only right at the very end he asked me how my grades were and I said they were fine.’

  Myron was especially annoyed that Harris had talked about his own heart problems and those of his family, but didn’t once ask Sammy how she was managing with hers!

  I empathised with my daughter that she had had a difficult and strange day, but also congratulated her on making the effort to meet Harris. Navigating all this couldn’t have been easy on her, and I was impressed by her grit and grace.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. I had a daddy who loved me unconditionally and I was lucky to have spent my childhood doing all the things we did together. I’m the luckiest girl in the world and I wouldn’t change a thing.’

  26

  Al Cannon Detention Center

  Charleston, South Carolina, US

  January 2015

  ‘ALEX. HEY, ALEX.’

  I untied my long underwear from around my head thereby removing my makeshift eye mask, and squinted towards the voice. New Jersey!

  I was so pleased to see her again, and we hugged. I asked her how she was sent back so soon. She said she had punched a girl in the face. Damn, why hadn’t I thought of that?

  We laughed and hugged some more. Then I asked after Mary and the rest of the girls, but both Mary and Tammy in particular were very unwell and struggling.

  A few days after that, I had a new visitor, a woman called Callie Walpole. Her family used to look after my Great Dane puppy Bell when I was out of town. Her parents were well and Callie, all grown up, was now an Episcopal priest in Charleston. We chatted for a while and then she asked if there was anything she could do for me. Without missing a beat, I said there was, and told her about Tammy. I asked if she could get her moved to a mental institution. Callie took a few seconds to think then said she knew some people. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.’

  One evening while I was on the phone to Gordon, there was a huge commotion. An inmate, Keisha, was about to be released. One guard had ushered her into the sally port to wait for another officer to escort her to reception. Keisha was in an absolutely foul mood, which seemed beyond strange to me; her freedom was just a couple of hours away after eight months of incarceration. Who wouldn’t be happy with that? The guard had pulled the big door closed, but the sally port still had all of our dirty dinner trays stacked against the wall. Keisha, clearly having a moment, started hurling the trays about, smearing the glass and doors with food scraps while banging on the walls in rage.

  As I watched this hissy fit I got to giggling, and started to give Gordon a blow-by-blow description of what was going on. And then Keisha’s eyes locked on mine. By this time I was laughing so hard I was afraid I would wet myself. And if Keisha had been angry before, she now lost it completely. ‘Alex, I’m going to fucking kill you!’ she screamed. ‘I’m going to rip your fucking smile off your fucking face.’ At last an officer took her away and the unit quietened down.

  ‘I promise you the day I finally get released,’ I said to Gordon, ‘I will be all smiles and there will be no arguments.’

  Like every other month in this jail, January moved at a snail’s pace. From only walking around the small cement ‘rec’ area when I first arrived, I was now running barefoot, stopping only when I was called in to the unit. One evening, the girls out in the rec area called us all to gather in the tiny room. They were in a high state of excitement pointing high up at the tiny wired windows. There, framed by the windows, a bright, sharp crescent moon glowed. A tiny taste of freedom.

  Then, less than two weeks after her release, Keisha was back. New Jersey bolted to the officer’s desk and told her about Keisha’s threats to me and how she needed to be moved somewhere else. The officer said that it was the person complaining who got moved; I tried to downplay the whole thing by saying it would all be okay. A few days later, I was out running my circles in the rec room when Keisha and two of her friends joined me.

  Uh-oh, I thought, this is bad. But I didn’t want Keisha to know I thought that, so I kept on running. Suddenly she broke into Hozier’s ‘Take Me to Church’ in her beautiful Southern gospel voice. ‘Damn, Keisha,’ I said, ‘you are so good.’ And I meant every word. She smiled at me with such pride I almost cried. I kept jogging, round and round as the other two girls harmonised with her. It was perfection. When they finished I breathlessly asked them if they knew Pharrell Williams’s ‘Happy’. Sure, they said. And then they serenaded me while I kept running, wreathed in their sweet rhythmic sounds and transported to another, much better place. It remains one of the most spectacular moments in my life and I will never forget it. Such rich blessings in such difficult places.

  On one of Russell’s visits he brought along a man – I think a US marshal or a Federal Probation officer – who was to assign me a sentencing guideline. He asked questions about my past employment, my cooperation with the authorities, my children and my mental health. He wanted to know what mental illness the prosecution claimed I had before I fled. ‘Hyperthymic temperament.’ He looked at me quizzically and asked me to repeat that, and then spell it for him. He and Russell typed it into their iPad. ‘Not
hypothalamic temperament?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  At best what he could find online was that hyperthymic temperament was a proposed personality type that was essentially very optimistic.

  ‘But it’s not a mental disorder,’ he said.

  I told him I knew that, and that I had lost my nursing baby to a mental illness that didn’t exist and that I certainly didn’t have.

  My guideline was between fifteen and twenty-one months.

  A status hearing was next, during which Russell hoped to discuss my sentencing guidelines with the judge and prosecutor Nathan Williams. That evening I spoke to Sammy, who said Nathan Williams had left a message saying he wanted to speak with her. What were the chances that Nathan would call Sammy in Australia right before he was meeting Russell and Judge Gergel? I calmly suggested she call him back – knowing that everything I said would be listened to – but I also had a feeling he wanted to ask Sammy how she felt about this situation. I was also well aware that this articulate young woman had always been my strongest advocate, and for her to speak to Nathan would only be a good thing.

  The next evening, Sammy told me she had spoken to Nathan and that he was super nice. He mainly asked how she felt about the situation. ‘Basically I told him that they put the wrong person in jail.’

  At the status hearing, as usual, I remained in the jury box with the other prisoners. Russell strolled over to me – actually it was more of a skip. He leaned over and whispered, ‘Hey, how does time served feel?’

  ‘Really?’ That would mean no trial and no scrounging to come up with the two hundred thousand dollars I needed to go to trial. I could be out and be back being a mother again. ‘Yes! So what’s next?’

  ‘A plea hearing, that will be real soon and where you will plead guilty.’ I asked if Sammy should be present for it and he agreed that would be a smart move.