Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  “No.”

  “Maybe we’re going to need to shut Cheryl up?”

  “No.”

  “I want to understand what Stacey’s involvement in this is. Because the interviews that I’ve had with Stacey, she doesn’t say anything. She’s kept her mouth shut. I need to know what she’s thinking. The only one that can shed some light on that is you.”

  “We never talked about getting rid of Cheryl.”

  Hussey switched his line of questioning again. “At some point you talked to your nephew, Daniel. You shared some things with him, that he eventually came to us with. Did you ever talk to Stacey about things you said to Daniel?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. So, that was just you and him. The day after the murder you went over and you cleaned out some clothes.”

  “The closet, cleaned up the floor.”

  “What was on the floor that you had to clean up?”

  “Um, when she shot the Taser the little makers fell out.”

  Rickie told Hussey that he and I sent Susan off on a cruise with her mother, and that the cruise was planned that way so that we would have time to bury our mother in the backyard. He said that it was my decision to bury her there, and that we waited for Susan to call from the ship to make sure she wasn’t going to come back.

  “How long did it take you to do all that?” Hussey asked.

  “Maybe an hour.”

  “Okay. So, you did all that in one day.”

  “Yeah it was all … all … soon as … soon as … soon as Stacey got the call from Susan we started digging the hole.”

  “Okay,” Hussey continued, “in December of ’03, tell me about what Stacey’s mood was then and what you talked about when you guys started to realize that maybe we had some idea about what was going on there.”

  “I said we’re going to get caught. Stacey didn’t think so.”

  “Okay.”

  “I knew we were caught when the sheriffs came by when we were putting the Chattahoochee stone down. I said, after I seen the sheriff came by in the squad car, we’re going to get caught. She said, ‘We won’t get caught.’ And that’s basically all the conversation.”

  The rest of the exchange was mostly about how he prepared the floor for the decorative covering of Chattahoochee stone, whose purpose was to hide the steel plates. His rambling tale, along with Hussey’s hand-fed prompting, were the basis for an arrest warrant being made out in my name. Yes, ladies and gentleman, this half-assed conversation is the one that landed me in jail and on trial for my life, facing the death penalty.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hussey Gets His Wish

  The state’s attorney’s office was supposed to contact me and let me know if he took a plea deal, which would mean that I wouldn’t have to testify at his trial. When I didn’t hear anything one way or the other, Susan e-mailed them several times, asking what happened with the case, what’s the status, is it going to trial? We couldn’t find any information online or anywhere else for that matter. Finally, I saw a newspaper article that said he took a plea. I looked at Susan and I said, “I think I’m in trouble.” The complete lack of communication had me scared.

  I was arrested May 9, 2007, at Gulf Coast Resort, in front of a crowd of friends and gawkers. The day the police showed up, Susan and I had gone to Jo-Ann Fabric. We were buying decorations for our yard. Jo-Ann was having a sale on yard accessories, so we were just farting around, having a good time. After shopping, we were going to a birthday party, so we thought we would pick up something to bring as a gift.

  We were killing time until the party, enjoying being out of the park. Living where you work can be very difficult, because you’re never off the clock. There is always someone with an issue or problem, and if you’re outside where they can see you, it’s open season. They might not expect you to do anything about their complaint outside of office hours (although many of them do), but it doesn’t stop them from tattling on their neighbor while you’re trying to relax and grill a couple burgers on the back porch. Once in a while, we just had to get away and leave Wendell in charge.

  We finished shopping at Jo-Ann at about 5:00 P.M. Susan had left her cell phone in the car—I rarely carried a phone—so when she saw that she had missed six calls from Wendell, we were both alarmed. Wendell never called just to gab. She checked her voice mail and discovered that he just left a cryptic message: “Call me.”

  On the edge of panic, Susan called him. He said, “The police are here to arrest Stacey. You have to come back, immediately.” Instantly, she was crying, hysterical. Jo-Ann’s was about a fifteen-minute drive from the resort and we needed some levelheaded advice.

  First, we called my best friend and coworker, Gail, and her husband, Bob. They lived a little north of where we were, and they insisted, “Come to our house! Don’t go to the resort under any circumstances until you talk to a lawyer!” I told Susan, “That’s Hernando County and I’m not bringing another county in on this.” I wasn’t going to run. I wanted to do the right thing, but I wanted to do right by me, first and foremost.

  Susan understood that, but she was still freaking out. She cried, her voice high and shrill, “Well, we have to talk to somebody to get the same opinion from everybody, because we don’t know what to do!” So I asked, “Whose advice would you trust?” The only person she could think of was her mother, and we both agreed that Ann would have trusted one of the City Retreat homeowners, the president of the HOA, Gary.

  Once Susan got him on the phone, Gary said, “You have to come back, that’s what you have to do.” Of course, Susan was still hysterical. She called our other friends, Jim and Alice, and they said the same thing: get back to the resort. We started driving south on U.S. 19, hearts pounding, tears flying, when Susan said, “No, we’re not going,” and she whipped around back up 19 and parked in the Publix grocery store parking lot.

  Meanwhile, back at the park, it was utter mayhem. We heard later that it looked like an entire SWAT team had shown up to arrest me. The police stormed the resort, in black gear and flak jackets, armed to the teeth as though they were there to pick up a cell of terrorists. Upon arrival, they headed straight to Lot 130, the trailer where Susan and I first lived. When we moved, we must have forgotten to change the unit number on record at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which we had given them three years ago. The address was exactly the same; only the unit number had changed. They certainly had no problem delivering subpoenas.

  This scene drew a huge crowd of naked people. Surrounding the trailer, officers approached the front door and pounded, weapons at the ready. The snowbird owners were already back up north, so one of the nudists, trying to be helpful, shouted out, “No one’s there. They’re in Canada.”

  From what I’ve been told by those who were there, the officers’ reactions to this news was both frightening and comical, because they apparently thought this meant that Susan and I had fled to Canada. They were panicked, chagrined, and furious at the same time. Fortunately, Wendell pulled up on his golf cart and took charge. He told them that Susan and I now lived just a few doors down, but that we were out of the park. He asked them to calm down and gather their officers, who were spread out all over the resort, by the front gate where we were sure to be coming back any minute. They agreed to do so, as long as Wendell called us to let us know to get back there. And that’s what he did, six times, before we got back to the car and heard his voice mail.

  What we didn’t know was that once Wendell actually spoke to Susan, they took his cell phone and got Susan’s phone number in order to track us. By having her phone number, as long as she kept the phone turned on—which she did—they were able to track its signal on the nearby cell towers and keep a general eye on our movements. Fortunately, it never seriously occurred to us to try to run or to pull a Thelma and Louise, even if we did sit in the Publix parking lot for a little while until Susan stopped screaming. Gary had told us that he’d be at the gate waiting for us, so while we were en route, I call
ed Diane, our surrogate mom since Ann died, and told her what was going on. By this time, Susan’s brother, Robert, called us, too, because the police were now gathering in his front yard, right by the front gate. I told Diane, “You better go be with Robert because he’s going to panic.” So Diane was with Robert, Gary was with Wendell, and a whole crowd of nudists were gathered with them, all waiting for us.

  Apparently, the resort was swarming with police cars, some marked, some not, but once they were assured we were coming, Gary told them that they should put their weapons away because he thought this was ridiculous. “What are you doing? She weighs a hundred pounds. Who are you coming to get, Bonnie and Clyde?”

  On our way down the home stretch, down East Road toward Gulf Coast Resort, we saw squad cars, spaced at intervals, waiting along the road to make sure we were coming because I was now “wanted.” There was a warrant for my arrest. They were watching us drive all over on their GPS, but there was no panic because they saw us coming.

  The scene in our car was crazy, with the screaming match between me and Susan, trying to decide what to do. I finally said, “We have to go. You’re going to get arrested. Then it becomes aiding and abetting. We’ll both be in jail and no one could get us out.” From the initial phone call, to our actual arrival, was probably about thirty minutes.

  To say I was terrified would be a galactic understatement. When we pulled in the gate, the Pasco County Sheriff’s car was right in front of Robert’s house, and then there was Detective Hussey’s car. His wet dream had come true: he was there to arrest me.

  We pulled in and parked, as I counted my last moments of freedom, aching for it to be yesterday again. Susan hopped out of the driver’s side and started screeching at Hussey, “You fucking asshole!” And even though I agreed, I yelled at her to shut up. I got out of the car and saw Diane and begged, “Get her away.” I had my hands on Susan, asking, “Somebody, get her out of here, she can’t go to jail.”

  Robert stared at me, incredulous, as if to say, “I can’t believe you’re going to surrender.” What was I supposed to do? There was a murder warrant out on me. If I didn’t do something really calm, I was dead. Both Pasco and Orange County officers were there. I surrendered to Pasco County because if I surrendered to Orange County, I’d be going across the state in a car with Hussey. I wasn’t comfortable with that.

  I said to the officer, “I understand you need to arrest me.” He said, “I do,” and looked at me quizzically—he didn’t expect this to go so easily. He put the handcuffs on me and sat me in the car. Susan was hysterical, stuttering, “C-c-can I bring her some clothes?” I was wearing shorts and a tank top and she was afraid I would freeze. The officer said it was okay, and Diane said to Susan, “Let’s go get her a few things.” I think he said yes, just to shut her up and get her away from everybody.

  She brought me some sweats, which never left the trunk of the police car until I actually got to the jail. I never saw them until they checked them in as part of my property, in Orange County. I didn’t get to wear them there, either; I got jail scrubs.

  Diane was standing by the car door, talking to me, when Hussey came up and said, “I don’t want anybody near this car. She’s a murderer. Nobody’s allowed to talk to her.” The Pasco County officer started to say, “Look, man …” and Hussey barked, “I’m in charge of this case. I don’t want anybody near her.” And he slammed the door. As we drove away, I didn’t look out the back window. I knew the scene I would see would break my heart: Susan collapsing in tears in Diane’s arms and being led to her golf cart to be driven home to our little house that we were still decorating with knickknacks from Jo-Ann’s.

  CHAPTER 13

  Descent into Hell

  The long drive to jail, handcuffed and shivering in the back of that squad car, gave me a lot of time to think about my predicament and the bizarre path that my entire life had taken. If it hadn’t actually happened to me, I don’t think I would have believed that a story line like this could possibly be true. For so many years I had fought to keep my childhood experiences out of my conscious thoughts, but they just kept coming back to slap me as if to say, “It’s never going to end.” If I’d had any idea, when I was a child, that this is where I would end up, I don’t know that I would have fought so hard to stay alive all those years, especially when I was struggling to survive in Arkansas.

  When we arrived from Minnesota, to the outskirts of the tiny town of Viola, Arkansas, in the middle of my sixth-grade year, my father found a house to rent. It was way off the beaten path on a dirt road, several miles from the nearest neighbor. I know it seems hard to believe that it could get worse than it was in Minnesota, but it did. Each one of us felt that we would die in Arkansas. The only times we were safe was when my father was at the bar.

  I don’t know what caused him to snap, but I think the seclusion of where we lived—in Minnesota you could actually see the other farmhouses; in Arkansas, we had fifteen acres of woods—made him believe he could do anything he wanted to and nobody could see him. There was no one around to rein in his madness and nobody could hear us scream. He could do whatever the hell he wanted to. And he did.

  Mom worked far away. Oftentimes, my father would force her to walk to work in the morning, then pick her up at night and she would come home bloody. I have vivid memories of constant gunfire in the house.

  Cheryl and I only attended classes for a few months that semester. Shortly after we arrived, there was a blizzard and the schools closed down. As the snow melted, the dirt roads were flooded. No school buses would run. That left my sister and me alone, with him, for a long time while my mom and brother were at work. He was drunk every day. He hit us with his fists, pulled hair, slammed us against the wall; sometimes we’d get a dish thrown at us, and if we were lucky we’d see it coming and duck.

  One Saturday morning, my father woke us up screaming that he was going to kill us all. He and Mom had apparently already been fighting that day, and Rickie, who was in his early twenties at the time, picked up another loaded shotgun and started yelling back at him. By this time my brother was involved in all the fights. I don’t know whether it was because my father dragged him in, or if he chose to take my mother’s side.

  Rickie and my father went outside and headed toward the woods behind our house. My father hollered to us that only one of them was coming back alive. Three agonizing hours later both men came back. I don’t know what happened in the woods, and I don’t want to know what happened in the woods. Nothing was ever said about the incident.

  One day, after a huge fight with my mother, my father decided that he was leaving and my sister and I should leave with him. He, of course, was drunk and it was early evening when he decided to go. He made us pack our clothes and put them in the trunk, and he drove off with us. First, he decided to stop at the town bar.

  Cheryl and I sat in the car for hours, until he came out too drunk to drive far. We returned to the house, and when we got inside he grabbed his gun. He forced me into his bedroom and, with the door locked and a loaded pistol in my mouth, he raped me for the first time. That was the first time he got all the way through the act. Other times he had tried and didn’t succeed. Up until then, he was using items, fingers, and tools, which do enough damage, trust me.

  He said, “If you make a sound I’ll pull the trigger.” I knew he’d do it. Telling me that he’s going to hit me if I move or scream is one thing. Putting a loaded gun in my mouth is a totally different feeling. I was fully aware of the power he had over me then, as well as the changes that were to come regarding my sexual abuse. It was that night I realized my father would kill me.

  Rape isn’t just someone physically violating your body in a cruel and selfish way; it’s that they’re getting off on doing this to you. Imagine being a small child looking up at your father, your rapist, seeing that he is enjoying hurting you and forcing you to submit, and treating you like filth. Imagine what that does to your developing psyche.

  In the years
to come, I never got raped again when anyone was home, except once in a while when my mother was beaten so badly she couldn’t get out of bed. He fondled me when other people were home, but that’s different from climbing on top of me and penetrating. He fondled Cheryl in front of me and I didn’t think anything of it when we lived in Maine and Minnesota. It’s just what happened. It’s what he did. But that was the first real, hard-core rape, and he didn’t want anyone to interrupt him. I think Mom knew what was going on in that room, and Cheryl must have figured it out. He may have already been doing this to her by now. I guess everybody just figured it was my turn.

  I believe it was the next day that Mom and Rickie were out in the barn, working with the animals—we had goats back then—and my mother sent me back to the house to fetch something for her. When I got there, my father was in a rampage and he had all of my mother’s clothes, everything she owned, piled in the front yard. He said, “You tell her to come to the house or I’m going to set her clothes on fire.”

  I ran back to the barn and said, “I’m supposed to make you go to the house.” She said, “You can’t make me do anything,” and stayed put. Well, he torched all of her belongings, except for a couple outfits for her to wear to work.

  That night, he sat her down in a chair, took a knife, and carved up her forehead, slowly and deliberately. After he passed out for the night, she put a bandage on it and took us kids with her to a pay phone where she called my grandfather. She told him, “I have to leave him and I need money.”

  My grandfather sent her a thousand dollars, which she handed to my father. She told us kids, “We were going to leave but this will keep him quiet; he’ll be nice for a while.” Next thing I knew, we were moving to Florida.

  CHAPTER 14

  A Nightmare Come True

  People ask me sometimes why I didn’t just take off when I knew they were coming to arrest me. All I can say is that I had a naïve faith in the system and knew that I was innocent. If I was guilty I would have disappeared. Even though I knew Hussey wanted to arrest me, my response was, “Here’s my address. That’s where I’m going to be. Need me? Come see me.”