Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  “It’s going to be over today. Your life is not going to be the same after today, ever.”

  That statement shook me to my core. I whispered out a quiet, “Uh huh.”

  His voice got a little kinder. “So, you need to get some strength, inner strength right now. Not from anybody else, but from you, okay? Because your life has changed—is going to change right here, right now, today. You need to tell us exactly what you know. I think that you’ve been manipulated. But I can tell you that with the scenario as we have it, your brother’s been living with you for six months, this thing appears pre-planned and appears to have been carried out. And like Detective McCann says, the motive is simple, it’s greed. It’s the oldest one in the world.”

  Even though I could hear his soothing voice, and began to comprehend what he was saying, he sounded very far away as I retreated to my safe, inner world. He kept going. “Now, it doesn’t appear to be your greed, but you need to help us out with that, okay? Because as it appears right now, you’re not looking very good as things lay right now. I think your brother’s been in your life for the last seven months and manipulating you. You’re not the mastermind here, you’re not the strong one, you’re not the take-charge one. I believe he is. And I believe he may be leading you down. He’s giving you seven thousand dollars, helping pay for your truck. He’s doing all these things. I don’t think any of this is by coincidence. Personally I don’t believe in coincidence. This is money that’s been obtained through those accounts because he knew that your mother wasn’t coming back.”

  McCann’s voice jarred me back into the room when he said, “And once the accounts were frozen it’s like, oh my God!”

  Ruggiero continued, “Sometime this afternoon when we dig that garage up, his world is going to be coming to an end. And lying is going to come to an end, it’s going to stop. Now, usually people sense somewhat of a relief at that time because the lie is finally over. It’s kind of like the world’s come off your shoulders. I’m hoping to get that sense of relief from you.”

  I was briefly wounded that he seemed to be so caring for a few short moments, but then came back to his implication that I had been involved in murder. I stammered, “I haven’t lied at all. I … I don’t know what’s going on with the money. I … dear God … I hope you don’t find anything in the garage. I …”

  McCann sneered, “What do you mean you don’t know what’s going on with the money?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t know who took it. I …”

  “So, you’re saying that he took a hundred grand out and hasn’t given you a dime?”

  “I don’t know that’s where the money came from.”

  He shot back, “Well, what does this sound like, Stacey? Let’s have a reality check here. He’s buying you off to shut you up. What else is he giving you other than that six, seven thousand dollars? Is he going to tell us that, oh yeah, she knows, Stacey knows? She wanted half of it or else she was going to come to the police and tell the police what she knew. So, yeah, I had to give her thirty or forty thousand dollars. But, that’s all she wanted and she told me that she wouldn’t say anything. Is that what happened, Stacey?”

  “No! No!” I shouted.

  “You wouldn’t cheapen your mother’s memory by just wanting some money?” he taunted.

  His words brought back a heartbreaking image of spending time with Mom, all the good times we had together, all those years, and tears came to my eyes. “God no! I loved my mother. I was with my mother all the time!”

  “Yet you didn’t report her missing.”

  Why didn’t they get this? I was there, and Cheryl gave the report! “I was in the house the night that my sister did!”

  Ruggiero asked, “What’s going to be your reaction when we do go dig up the garage?”

  McCann said, “What if we find your dad there, too?”

  I said, “What do you mean? I … I’m … I’m just freaked out by what he said. What do you mean by what’s going to be my reaction?”

  “Well, what’s going to be your reaction? Are you going to be surprised?”

  “Yeah! I’m … I’m …”

  “That would surprise you? Funny, it wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t surprise me knowing what I know. What other explanation is there for these big metal sheets to be placed down on a garage floor? And then the garage floor redone in river rock? Go ahead. I’m more than game to listen.”

  “I don’t know. I … I … I don’t know.”

  Ruggiero continued, “I don’t, either, but I got a pretty good guess.”

  McCann added, “Maybe you don’t want to know. Maybe you just say, ‘If I don’t think about it, it’ll go away. And I won’t have to think about my mother and my dad being under concrete in their driveway in the garage.’”

  I started sobbing. “I think about my mother every day. I think about my mother every day.”

  Ruggiero asked, “What’s going to be your reaction then if we find her? You going to think that we planted her there?”

  “No.”

  “What would you think happened?” I couldn’t answer, so he asked again, “I’m asking you what would you think happened?”

  I finally said, “I … I … I would guess he would’ve done something.”

  “You don’t find that unfathomable?”

  “I have a real hard time with it.”

  Detective Ruggiero said, “What Detective McCann has in his hand right now is a search warrant that’s been signed by a judge. We are going to go to the house later today. I’m not telling you anything that’s not going to happen. But let’s say, hypothetically, that after we do dig it out, that we find her there. I’m asking you, what would be the explanation?”

  I stammered, “I … I don’t know. Well, I guess, I … I don’t know. I guess … he would’ve had to have something to do with it.”

  “What would’ve been your brother’s motive for doing something like that? Why is the motive being money or simply greed, why is that not believable to you? It’s believable to me, but why is it not believable to you?”

  He didn’t know Rickie the way I did, at least the way I thought I did. I tried to explain, “Because he’s always told me money’s not important to him, being happy is important!”

  “But he’s driving a 2004 Dodge truck that he just paid for in cash.”

  “I didn’t know he paid for it. I thought he had payments to make.”

  “People who don’t think that money is important to them usually don’t drive around in their net worth. Somebody living with their sister usually doesn’t go and buy a twenty-five-thousand-dollar automobile and pay cash.”

  McCann took over. “The logical inference is that if your parents are underneath the concrete in the garage that your brother killed them. Maybe he killed your dad because he was a bad guy, and he was protecting you and your sister. But he killed your mom simply so that he could buy stuff!”

  Ruggiero agreed, “That’s what it appears.”

  McCann said, “Now that is a low denominator. And he felt the need to provide you with the proceeds from the trust until the account was frozen by us. Because we knew that eventually somebody was going to make the call to the bank. And the call was made by you.”

  “Yes, I did,” I said.

  Detective Ruggiero said, mildly, “Money makes people do strange things. How would you account for your role in this incident?”

  “I don’t have a role. I just want my mother to come home.”

  His cruel words struck me like a blow. “Your mother is not going to come home. I think we’re going to have some answers by the end of today and you may not like them. But we’re going to have them nonetheless. There’s a good chance that your brother isn’t going to be coming home with you.”

  I couldn’t answer, so he continued, “What do you think he’s going to say regarding your role? What would you say if I told you that he’s already told somebody he’s killed your father?”

  McCann said, “Th
at’s why he’s absolutely sure that he’s not coming back to hurt you or him or anybody else. Because he’s already dead.”

  My head was starting to hurt. I just wanted this to be over, to not think anymore, to not hear anymore. I said, “I’m having a hard time with this. I’m having a real hard time with this.”

  McCann taunted, “You’re not having a hard time yet. This is the beginning. If he tells us that you profited, if you got money from the trust …”

  Ruggiero added, “That you knew …”

  McCann finished his thought. “That makes you a principal to murder. But we want to make sure while we’re talking that we get one hundred percent truth. Because if there’s a variation from the truth, later on, that gives you a problem. So, I want you to be absolutely, positively accurate and truthful with us. Because we’re going to find out whatever it is that you’re trying to hold back.”

  I started to say, “I’m not …” but he interrupted, “Alright, we found out a whole hell of a lot up to now. That’s why you’re here! That’s why you’re here! We don’t bring you in and start thinking of stuff to ask you. We got pages and pages of information. We have technicians waiting to go to the house, alright? We’re going to dig that garage up until we find her and him, too. That’s what we want, very simply: the truth. The truth rings true and it always prevails.”

  I cried, “I’ve given you the truth!”

  Ruggiero said, “Okay, these are the facts that we have. Do you see how, even if you’re naïve as the day is long, how that’s a little suspicious?”

  I had to admit that it looked pretty bad. “When you put it all together, yeah.”

  McCann said, “Do you kind of get the impression, from the conversation we’re having, that you’re a doormat for him? That whatever he needs to do, he can use you. He can tell you to call the bank and find out why the bank accounts are frozen. What did Richard tell you over the weekend about this pending interview? What did he tell you about coming down here then?”

  I told him, “He just said we were coming to talk to Mark Hussey about Mom being missing.”

  There was a knock on the door, and two detectives came in. One said, “Stacey, we just got finished talking to Richard. These are the keys to the house. He’s admitted to those steel plates, that your parents are there. He’s put the blame on you. You guys are working together.”

  I lost my breath for a second. “No, we’re not!”

  The new detective continued, “This is the diagram of the garage with the steel plates. And he specifically pointed to this area right here. That’s his drawing. We’re on our way to the house. And he’s saying that you, because of the abuse, killed your father.”

  The other officer said, “Listen, we understand there’s two sides to every story. We want to hear your side. But what you do by continuing to lie, is make yourself look guilty. You’re at a crossroads right now and you got to make a decision. You’re gonna either continue to lie, or you’re going to tell the truth.”

  The first detective said, “How do you think we got the key?”

  “Your brother is playing you, okay?” the second officer said. “Your brother doesn’t care about anybody but himself. We don’t want to believe him, but we’ve got nothing from you.”

  I insisted, “I don’t know what’s under those plates,” and he said, “You know a lot more than what you’re telling us.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “And we can sit here and play, ‘no, I don’t, yeah, you do,’ all day long. We’re not going to play that anymore.”

  Ruggiero asked, “So, he’s saying she had a more active role?”

  “Right,” the first detective said, “and he drew a diagram of the garage with the metal plates and specifically said right here. And that because of abuse that your father was doing to you, you killed your father.”

  I couldn’t even speak above a whisper, I was so horrified. How was this happening? “No, I did not kill my father. No way.”

  “But I wouldn’t take all this blame on myself …” he said.

  “I didn’t do it!” I insisted. “I … I …”

  The detective continued, “The bottom line is you know your parents are there. You know that they’re in the house.”

  “I … I don’t! I … I … I don’t. I swear to God I don’t!”

  McCann asked, “But were you a victim of sexual abuse by your dad? That made you angry, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but it made me more scared of him than anything.”

  “Are you scared of your brother?”

  “No, I’m not scared of my brother.”

  “You love your brother?”

  “I do love my brother.”

  “Is that why you’re trying to cover for him?” McCann asked.

  “I … I don’t want to believe …”

  McCann said, “He’s not covering for you. Sounds like he would give you up in a New York second. He gets all the money and he puts the blame on you. Now how does that happen? Unless you’re the mastermind. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you’ve just been conning us the whole time, Stacey. Maybe you’re the one that put Richard up to this stuff.”

  I could barely keep from crying. This was a nightmare. I gasped, “No. All I want is my mother to come home.”

  “You know,” McCann continued, “if I was being accused of involvement in a murder of my parents, I would be outraged. I would be pounding the table. You haven’t showed one iota of anger that we are accusing you of something so heinous as the murder of your own parents.”

  Was that what they wanted? Histrionics? I never learned how to do that. I only learned to stay extremely calm and quiet when under attack. All I could say was, “I’m just baffled by this whole thing.”

  Ruggiero asked, “But what have we said that’s a surprise to you?”

  “I just can’t believe he would do that.” I was about to fall apart. I couldn’t take any more of this. “I … I can’t. I just can’t. I just want my mom.”

  “Well,” he said, “you’re going to fall under the category of state’s witness or co-defendant, as well as your significant other. Which one do you want to be?”

  Jesus, what a choice. I said, “Well, I … I don’t want to be either, but I prefer to be a state’s witness because I didn’t know anything about any of this.”

  And that was the end of that. Once they were done with me, they took me into another interview room. Rickie was sitting there, and they left me with him. Alone.

  CHAPTER 24

  Rickie’s “Confession”

  While I was with Detectives McCann and Ruggiero, Rickie was having a disjointed conversation with Detectives Hussey and Russell. He brought the letter from Social Security and various tax documents with him.

  Hussey asked Rickie when he last saw Mom, and the answer was Sunday, September 7. He said that Mom dropped in because we were getting in the habit of eating together several times a week.

  That was a lie, but the officers didn’t know that. He told Hussey, “She said she was real busy and she had to go.” Hussey asked if that was unusual behavior on her part, and Rickie said, “No, sometimes our … our mother, she … I know she was getting depressed because she didn’t like September 11th.”

  Hussey asked, “What was up with September 11th?”

  Rickie babbled, “Well when it first happened she wanted everybody ready when we … gonna walk the Appalachian Trail. I mean, um … she … the Sentinel came out with a report, you know, what to do for emergencies. She wanted to have a big family meeting and that. She just didn’t like September 11th.”

  Hussey said, “Okay. Because of the World Trade …”

  “So I didn’t really think anything of it and that’s the last time I heard from her.”

  He told them that since she disappeared, no one had called to find out where she was. “See,” he explained, “that’s not unusual, the way we used to live. But no
one has called her. Her two friends here in Orlando, one is—I don’t know her name: I call her the cookie monster lady—and Ginger. They haven’t heard anything from her, either.”

  Hussey brought up the bank account that we called him about. He said, “What bills were you paying out of that?”

  “Well,” Rickie said, “she used to have everything direct deposit from McCoy. McCoy kicked the bills back and I called them up so it’s on hold now, Social Security. And just her everyday bills and fixing up her house.”

  Hussey was already confused. “Why is it on hold for Social Security?”

  Rickie responded, “When we went in the house, when we decided to call the police, this is what my mother left on the table. That’s the Social Security benefits from my father. We have never heard or seen him since ’88 and I mean to leave something like that on … she knows what … you … you know what I’m saying.”

  “The checks were continuing to be mailed to …” Hussey was having difficulty following.

  “No, direct deposited to this bank.”

  Detective Russell took a shot at it. “Even after he disappeared or moved he didn’t get his check forwarded? Didn’t you guys find that unusual?”

  Rickie said, “Well that’s what we’re telling everybody, ev … all … all along that, you know, something’s wrong here. Yeah. Cause she left all this for me to go through and it’s from ’88 on. All of her returns have got him on there. And I know he was not living in the house ’cause my grandfather would not have moved in that house and none of us would have had anything to do with her with him being around.”

  Russell asked, “Was he ever physically abusive to her?”

  “Oh yeah. Yeah.”

  Russell replied, “Those are all her income tax forms?”

  “From ’88 on up,” Rickie explained.

  “How do you know she left them for you?”

  Rickie said, “About, sometime, August maybe we were just sitting there and she just … she said it out of the blue, what was it, exactly what … You all aren’t gonna be happy with what’s gonna happen but, you know, you are gonna have to accept it. I’m thinking she’s got a boyfriend or something. We asked her and she wouldn’t say anything. And with our mother she would say something, we’d drop it, that’s the end of the discussion. And then this comes up. And I told you, you can get very little information from Social Security or IRS.”