Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  Russell asked, “What do you want me to tell your sister when she asks me what happened?”

  “I killed her mother.”

  They talked for a while about where exactly in the garage they would find our father’s body, and Russell asked him, “When did you tell your sister that you buried your mom back there?”

  Rickie was curt. “Don’t want to say.”

  “Did she help you?”

  “Don’t want to say.”

  “What do you want me to say to your sister when I talk to her and tell her what happened?”

  “Just tell her Mom was gonna take the kids, ’cause Mom had the money.”

  “You told your nephew that you shot and killed and your father.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Well, he gave Detective Hussey a statement saying that you told him that,” Russell insisted.

  “No, I didn’t,” Rickie insisted back.

  Detective Russell asked, “If you had a chance to do it all again would you do it the same?”

  “No,” Rickie said. “I mean I wouldn’t do it. I would’ve called the police in the first …”

  Russell interrupted, “I just don’t understand, Rick. You cared so much about your mom and loved her so much. I understand maybe she was gonna take the kids, but I can’t see you intentionally killing her. I mean, if you got in an argument with her or you all got to fighting or something and it was an accident, I need to know that! I just need to know that for the investigation. Your sister, for closure, needs to know that.”

  Rickie was having trouble talking. “I can’t remember. I remember … she started screaming she’s gonna take Cheryl’s kids.”

  They went around and around in circles, and finally realized they weren’t going to get any more information out of him. They ended the interview and placed him under arrest. He was taken to jail straight from the ER. He stood up from the stretcher. They handcuffed and shackled him and walked him right past where I was still lying on a stretcher, wearing an oxygen mask and having my blood gases checked. He looked at me and I looked at him, and nothing was said. He just had a blank stare.

  I don’t know what happened when he got to jail, but I know when he went to his arraignment the next morning he was in what they call a turtle suit. The turtle suit means you acted up and went crazy, so he had already started his crazy routine that night.

  They locked me up in a psych ward with an attendant sitting right there because they were afraid I was still suicidal. The next day was Christmas Eve, and I was allowed to call Susan and say, “Hey, I’m still alive.” I was in there three days. I talked her into going to Hudson to visit her mother, because I was going to be locked up over Christmas, and she needed to be with family.

  When they finally released me and I went home, all the neighbors were staring at me. No sooner did I get inside than the doorbell rang. It was a reporter. I didn’t answer the door; Susan did. She said, “No comment.” I walked around the house, and as soon as I entered the family room, I looked out the sliding glass door, and there was the hole in the backyard. They left the fucking hole. I fell right down on my knees and started bawling. I sobbed to Susan, “I wish I had died. I don’t want to deal with this, I don’t want to see this, I wish I had died.”

  I was done. I said to Susan, “I can’t fill it. You can’t move the dirt and the rocks. What are we supposed to do?” So we called our neighbor Betty, who eventually testified against me. She had said, “Anything you need, call me,” so Susan called and said, “The police left a hole in the backyard.” Betty brought some friends over and they covered the hole and fixed the yard.

  I found out years later that when they discovered my father’s remains, they found remnants of a zipper, a belt buckle, and a pocket, and a pillow and mattress cover. He was wrapped in bedding. They found rope wrapped around his legs. He got a bullet in the back of the left side of his head. It stopped right above his right eye. Since it passed through both sides of his brain, it did extensive damage, so even if his body had recovered, he would have been a vegetable.

  Rickie vehemently claimed in all of his questioning that he didn’t shoot him, but he tells non–law enforcement people that he did. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what really happened, but I do know that there were lots of suggestions from his interrogators on how the crimes might have gone down, many of which he used as his stories later.

  CHAPTER 27

  Pretrial Prep

  During the three years between my arrest and my trial, there were a lot of delays. The trial would be scheduled and I’d be ready to go—albeit scared shitless—and then it would be put off for another six months. Some of the delays were in my favor, because new information would be discovered by Diana, but other times they were just red tape.

  Detective Hussey remained gung ho. One facet of the trial was going to be handwriting analysis to see if it could be proven who wrote which notes, because I didn’t remember writing the note to Cheryl and barely remembered writing the one to Susan. Plus, there was still that check for $2,500 that I supposedly signed. I had to supply a huge amount of sample handwriting, and Hussey showed up that day. He gave me a dirty look, and Diana said, “My God, he looks like a boyfriend scorned, like he’s out to get you.” It was a very uncomfortable moment, and Diana thought it was very unusual for him to even be there, like he was really out to get me.

  Diana was sure that Hussey had a lot to do with why Cheryl turned against me. She believed that Hussey was feeding Cheryl half-baked theories about his investigation that made me look suspicious. He was the one who convinced her that we were selling off Mom’s things. Diana thinks he worked on her to get her more firmly in their camp, and it was effective. I don’t know, now, if we could have undone that brainwashing.

  In the meantime, Rickie wavered back and forth over his willingness to testify against me. He would make it known that he didn’t want to do this anymore, and then Robin Wilkinson and Cheryl would go visit him in jail and apparently talk him back into it. In fact, Rickie said that right before his guilty plea, Cheryl visited him and asked him to not put the family through his trial—she begged him to “do the right thing” and turn me in.

  In 2008, in preparation for my trial, Diana set up a deposition with Rickie, which was attended by Robin Wilkinson, and he wove an entirely new story. According to this version, he never told Daniel, Catherine, or her husband that he killed our father. He also said that when Aunt Nancy, my father’s sister, came to visit us the month before Mom’s death, Mom was telling her that our father was in Chicago and that I became alarmed that she was talking too much and needed to die. He denied having told anyone that he was a vigilante, hired by a cartel, to “get rid of” abusive fathers.

  He told Diana that he decided to take the plea because it would be better for the family to not have a trial, as he was worried about Cheryl and Daniel. He said that he told them that I killed our father, and that I killed Mom.

  Diana asked him, “Did you tell them the full truth about things?” And when Rickie said that he had not told them the full truth, she asked, “What is it that you had told them about what happened with your dad?”

  He replied, “I told them Stacey killed my dad.”

  Then she asked, “What did you tell them happened with your mom?”

  “Stacey killed my mom.”

  She then asked, “So what is it that you told them that was not the full truth?”

  “That Stacey killed my mom,” he replied, in front of God and everybody, including Robin Wilkinson.

  Diana asked, “You said that Stacey killed your mom when you had killed your mom?”

  “Correct.”

  “And why would you say that about Stacey if that wasn’t true?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know. It just seemed like …”

  “Were you upset that Stacey had been listed as a state’s witness against you? Did you know that Ms. Wilkinson had talked to her about being a witness and that she was going to be call
ed at your trial? Did that upset you?”

  “Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.” He told Diana that he thought I was just saving myself, and that he made the decision to tell them that I had helped kill Mom because of the conversation he’d had with Cheryl. “It was just seeing her and hearing her talking. It was just better for the family not to have a trial. Cheryl said I should let out the whole truth and say everything that was going on so she could have closure.”

  I can’t say this for a fact, but it wouldn’t shock me if he said what Cheryl wanted him to say—she and Hussey both wanted me to go to jail for Mom’s death—just because she was the only one who came to visit him during those years. Diana asked if he was surprised that I didn’t come to see him, and he said, “No, I didn’t think she would visit me.”

  “Because she would be embarrassed, too afraid to face you?”

  “I really would have no idea,” he replied.

  “Okay. But you didn’t expect it?” Diana asked.

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t feel badly about the fact that she didn’t?”

  “A little bit.”

  I can’t help thinking that if I had gone to see him, this whole thing might not have happened. If only …

  Diana disagrees. She thinks Rickie turned on me because he got to be the star of his own show and this was sort of his last hurrah. He had the audience of the family, people were paying attention to him and his manuscript, and then he spent three years of sitting in prison while nobody gave a shit about his stories anymore. She thinks he did it to make his life exciting, to have something to do. He got to take a car ride, everybody poured over his every word, and maybe he thought this would somehow make Cheryl think better of him, as if to say, “I can’t take back what I did, but if I can make Stacey involved that somehow makes me a hero.”

  Diana did everything she could to keep me calm and to prepare me for what was to come. There were a few things that we argued about, though. Some of my explanations would sound fishy to the jury. She would say things like, “This doesn’t make any sense to me. Are you sure there isn’t some other explanation? If the explanation were like ‘this’ I would totally understand. That would make total sense.” I would say, “No, that’s not how it was.” She wanted me to remember signing a check I don’t remember signing, and to say I must have just left the M off. But I don’t remember signing the thing. I’m not gonna say I did.

  I also don’t remember writing that letter to Cheryl. If I was half drugged out of my mind and he dictated, maybe I did. Yes, I always sign things to Daniel and Cheryl “I love you with all my heart,” or whatever. It’s something I’ve always done. I didn’t know my own name that day. And if “I don’t know” isn’t a good enough answer, then I don’t know what to tell you.

  It was those little things that drove Diana crazy. She was able to work around them because she hoped that they would improve the overall impression of credibility, and Diana tried to point out later, “Hey, how easy would it have been for my client to make up a story?” She realized that it’s very easy to lie on the stand, but it’s harder to say, “Wow, you’re asking me a good question and, ouch, I don’t have a good answer.” She assumed that the jury would have known that I would have had a lot of time and a really good lawyer who would have helped me come up with a more believable story, if that was the goal.

  Leading up to the trial, we had a screaming match in her office, and I thought, “God, she really thinks we’re going to lose this thing.” But then I realized she was just getting me ready for Robin to rip me apart to see if she could get me to change my story. I told her, “Diana, I’m gonna tell it like it was. It’s who I am. I can’t make up stories and try to follow them. When your life’s on the line, you better know what’s real in your head.” That’s one thing my brother never knew. There were too many stories in his head. He never knew what was real.

  Diana told me one day, “I have to have some childhood stories from you. We have to prepare for you to tell one of them on the stand.” She sent me away and said, “I’ll see you in a week, and I want a list.”

  I wrote down ten or twelve. There were so many to choose from. She also had to prepare me for forensics testimony. She knew they would be showing pictures of my mom’s body being excavated and using words like “mummified remains.” There would be autopsy photos and graphic descriptions of the conditions of Mom’s body. It was going to be absolutely horrific and there was no avoiding it.

  She never coached me, and I was surprised about that. I always thought that’s what lawyers did. We had the conversation about how to act: they’re watching you, they’re watching you, they’re watching you. Look like you care, and keep in mind that they’re watching you at every moment. Don’t fake emotion; be genuine. There is no way you’re going to convince people who don’t want to be convinced, so you might as well just be real and not do anything that’s distracting to what you’re trying to get people to pay attention to.

  Toni briefly interviewed Rickie, twice. He was very receptive, very guarded, but at the same time courteous and respectful. He was very noncommittal when she spoke with him about whether he was going to be a part of the trial. He wasn’t sure what his testimony would be. She told me that he looked like a chronic mental health patient. He was on medication at the time, but he was oriented as to time, place, person, purpose of the visit. He wasn’t very forthcoming with information, however. When she went to see him, he said, “I don’t think I really want to do this anymore. I don’t think I want to testify.”

  The whole entourage went to see him—Robin, Hussey, Cheryl—and all of a sudden he was gung ho again. They were apparently saying something to him to make him keep going, because a week earlier he didn’t want to testify. Up until he got on the stand we weren’t sure what he was going to do.

  Catherine Crews’s testimony wasn’t going to be included in the trial. Although telling that story may have helped my case, I made it very clear to Diana that I did not want any attacks against anyone in my family, if at all possible. We had suffered enough, and if it wasn’t going to help, then I didn’t want to go there. She said, even if we did, it wouldn’t do too much to help, so I said, “Then don’t do that. I don’t play that way. You need to respect my family. It’s still my family.”

  I love her for respecting my wishes, especially when it came to Daniel. I told her that if Daniel was forced to testify, I wanted him protected. She had a few interviews with him over the years, and she would wait until his parents left the room for a minute, and told him that she had a message for him from me, that I loved him and missed him terribly. I’m very grateful for her doing that, because it let him know that I wished we could communicate. That was one bright spot buried in three years of shit.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Last Delay

  We finally had a court date, and this one was definite, after all the false alarms over the years. No more delays—February 22, 2010, was the day I had to be in Orlando to face a jury of my peers. Susan and I booked a hotel for two weeks and arranged for Wendell and the staff to take care of the resort in our absence. This couldn’t have been worse timing, because February and March were always the busiest snowbird months of the year and the park was booked solid. But, unfortunately, I had no say in it, so I just did what I was told.

  Susan sent out an e-mail to all of our friends and supporters, letting them know the date and location, so we could pack the gallery again. Diana had told me to get as many people as we could, because she knew, from the bond hearing, that we had a lot of support. She explained, “I have clients who are very likely innocent and everybody around them scurries away. Jurors know that. You’ve got people coming from far away, they’re putting themselves out, getting hotel rooms and paying for gas, and they obviously believe in your innocence. The jury may figure, if this whole room believes in you that strongly, maybe we should, too.”

  I realized that some of the people who went to the bond hearing only attended because they ha
d a business agenda—they wanted to keep the resort up and running. There were also people who wrote letters to the judge on my behalf and were there because it mattered to them what happened to me, personally. I knew the difference. Either way, they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t believe I was innocent. Their presence there, on my side of the courtroom, implied that. They wouldn’t have supported me if they thought I was a murderer.

  The first day was supposed to be jury selection, so no one from Hudson came, but as soon as I arrived in the morning, Diana told me that there was a one-week postponement. I was about to get upset, but Diana said, “I’m not going to waste this time off. I’m going to go back through the whole file again. I booked three weeks for the trial and I have nothing to do. I might as well use it.”

  So off I went back to Hudson, and off Diana went to what she called “the stinky underworld of the sheriff’s office” to go through mountains of papers and scraps of mostly meaningless garbage. Diana is usually impeccably groomed, but I could just imagine her in jeans and a T-shirt, hair up in a ponytail, sorting through this grungy heap of papers and trash.

  She told me that, in any case like this, you’re going to have trash bags filled with endless pieces of paper. We had a cash receipt for the Taser and a receipt for the freezer with a false name on it, and records from the storage units, which were in Rickie’s name. In addition to all of that, she wanted to take a look at the evidence that they hadn’t given to us because either they didn’t plan to use it or didn’t think it was going to be helpful. She said there were TONS of little pieces of paper that no one paid much attention to.

  So while I was back home, spending most of my time fighting off the waves of panic that constantly threatened to overtake me, she rolled up her sleeves and started rummaging. She spent countless hours examining scraps of nothing until she found that the actual spiral notebook from the truck—the notebook that held the suicide notes—was in one of the trash bags. Those notes were seemingly insurmountable evidence for the prosecution, and Diana had been given photocopies. This was the first time she had seen their origin. She looked at the notebook and thought, “That’s interesting!” and took it with her.