Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  CHAPTER 29

  State of Florida v. Kananen

  I couldn’t believe it, after all the delays, but the trial was finally starting, albeit a week late, due to the latest postponement. The jury of seven women and five men was chosen, and the courtroom was packed to the rafters with spectators. Outside, it was a media circus, not just because of my trial, but because the Casey Anthony trial was also building up there in Orlando, so there were reporters from all of the TV stations.

  My trial was going to be taped and later televised on CNN’s In Session, so there was a camera next to the judge’s bench trained on my face at all times. Another camera pointed, from the back of the courtroom, at the witness stand. I sat between Diana and Toni, and behind me the wooden bench seats were filled with people from the nudist resort—so many, in fact, that they spilled over onto the prosecution’s side of the courtroom, where Cheryl sat with her estranged husband and her victim’s advocate. Susan had to wait in the hallway because she was going to be called as a witness for my defense. She wasn’t going to be able to watch the trial until then.

  I had knots in my stomach and felt a mixture of terror and relief. This must be what soldiers about to go into combat feel—fear that they are about to die, but a profound wish to just get it over with.

  Robin Wilkinson got up and began her opening arguments. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, September 10, 2003, Marilyn Kananen, a mother of three children, a grandmother of three, left her work at the Delta Connection Academy, drove home to never be seen again.”

  She laid it out, the whole story—no holds barred, with a tone in her voice that deliberately implied that Cheryl was the only one in this tale who was telling the truth, and that Rickie and I were both sneaky and vicious. I had to just sit there and listen, showing no emotion.

  She told the jury that Rickie and I sold Mom’s collectibles at a garage sale, and still Cheryl struggled on, working with police tirelessly to find Mom. They were told about the bank accounts, the checks, the trucks, and the police interviews. Finally, they were told about the suicide attempt and the note that said, “We had a part in Mother’s leaving,” and that a handwriting expert would testify that I wrote two notes in that truck. She closed by saying, “I am quite confident that you will find that Stacey Kananen, back in September of 2003, decided that her mother’s life should end. The State is quite confident that you will find that Stacey Kananen is guilty of first-degree murder.”

  Then it was Diana’s turn, and the difference between the two attorneys was palpable. Robin was tense and seething with hostility, and Diana was like a breath of fresh air, very likable and friendly. I was relieved when she got up to speak.

  She stood up and started her opening statement by saying, “Good morning, everybody. My name is Diana Tennis.” She put her hand firmly on my shoulder, with a clear implication that she liked me, trusted me, and had no problem touching me like I was a good person, and said, “And this is my client, Stacey Kananen. As you would probably expect, I disagree with a lot of what I believe the evidence is going to be in this case.”

  Diana continued, “I want you to pay attention to what evidence existed and when. Pretty much all the prosecutor’s evidence that points toward Stacey existed and was known by law enforcement on December 22, 2003. All of it.”

  She was just warming up. She told the jury, “On December 22, 2003, Richard Kananen went from the hospital to jail. He was charged with first-degree murder. When Stacey got out of the hospital, she didn’t go to jail and was not charged. She went home to the house where she discovered her brother buried her mother. She moved with Susan to Hudson and has lived there ever since. She doesn’t flee. She doesn’t try again with a suicide attempt. She goes about her business.

  “She becomes a witness,” Diana continued, “for the State of Florida against her brother. She is listed as a witness that the prosecution,” she said, pointing at Robin, “this prosecution, is going to put on the stand, swear under oath, and tell everybody about what little she knows about her brother having killed their mother.

  “The only thing that changed between them only having a case against Richard in December of 2003 and Stacey being arrested for murder in May of 2007 is that her brother decided to weave his fifth version of what happened.

  “He is facing first-degree murder. At the bare minimum, he faces life in prison, possibly the death penalty. His sister is standing by, ready to testify against him. At the last minute he said, ‘I have things to tell you.’ He enters his plea and within minutes he gives his fifth version of what happened.”

  Diana wrapped up her opening statement by saying, “Only Richard Kananen was arrested in December of 2003. He was the one charged with the cover up and he was the one with the motivation. He was the one who bought the Taser and the freezer. He was the one who had the strength and ability to carry out the act. I believe when all is said and done, you will not find that Richard Kananen is a credible witness. If he is not a credible witness, you will not find near enough evidence to convict Stacey Kananen of murder. I appreciate your time. Thank you.”

  She sat down next to me and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze as the State began its case. Their first witness was my sister, Cheryl. I knew how it would look to a jury, both of my siblings testifying against me, but that wasn’t even what bothered me at that point. What bothered me was that Cheryl, a churchgoer, was prepared to swear before God that she believed I could commit murder.

  Cheryl was sworn in, and Robin started asking her about her own experience with being abused by our father. She told the jury, “I remember being in fifth grade living in Minnesota. My father became very upset that I lost a razor blade and I couldn’t find it. My punishment was that he took a metal broom and beat me up and down one side of my body.”

  She told them that our mom saw the bruises and did not take her to the police. She said, “When I decided I was going to show her, that was the day I decided that my mom needed to know what was going on. I decided to put on a tank top and shorts and I went downstairs and she said ‘What happened to you?’ I looked at my father and I said, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ He said, ‘I don’t know what happened to you,’ and she told me not to tell lies.” That, she said, was the last time she ever told our mom what he had been doing to her.

  Diana had supplied me with a yellow legal pad to write notes on just in case I noticed something in testimony that she needed to know about, or to write out anything that I needed to vent about. That way, I didn’t have to sit there and silently try not to scream about whatever was going on up there on the witness stand. I wrote a note to Toni, “The abuse conversations are going to bother me. How do I get through that?” She wrote back, “Deep breaths. Totally tense muscles, then exhale and totally relax. Squeeze chair arms, then relax or squeeze hands together.”

  When Robin asked if she had been sexually abused, Cheryl stated, “When we lived in Minnesota, my father would routinely lock my mother out of the house and make me go to his room. I remember going to the room. I don’t remember past that. When we lived here in Florida, I moved here in ninth grade and graduated here. I would go out at night and come home and find him hiding in my room.” She said that continued until she moved out, and she finally moved out after her nineteenth birthday because, she said, “My father kicked me in the head and stomach and said, ‘By the way, happy birthday.’ I told my sister, that’s it. I’m not coming back.”

  Robin asked her, “Do you see your sister Stacey in the courtroom here today?”

  “I do,” Cheryl replied.

  “Can you point out and describe what she is wearing, please?”

  Cheryl looked me right in the eye and said, “She’s wearing a black suit and a white shirt and glasses and blond hair. She’s sitting next to Diana Tennis and Toni Maloney.”

  I could feel the tears coming to my eyes, but I bit my lip to keep from crying. Robin Wilkinson said, “May the record reflect the witness has identified the defendant.”

&nbs
p; “Did you ever see your brother Richard abused in your house growing up?”

  “All the time.” she said, “My father choked my brother for not passing the salt when we lived in Minnesota and rendered him unconscious. He would routinely put my brother behind a closet door and shoot through it to see if he could hit him or not. He would take my brother out all hours and tell us that was the last time we would see him alive. He used to put chains on him and make him work in the field for many hours at a time. Make him stay outside and wouldn’t let him eat or drink.”

  She testified at length about the abuse that all of us suffered, and that our father had his mistress living in the house with us. I remembered that. The woman came to stay with us for a visit while we lived in Arkansas. She and my father had met in Minnesota, and we thought, at the time, she was his girlfriend, but I was a young kid so I really didn’t know what that meant.

  Cheryl told the story of our move from Arkansas to Florida, which is what I remembered as happening right after Grandpa sent Mom a thousand dollars to get away from him. She told how we were taking two separate vehicles, Mom and us kids in the car and our father driving the truck. “As we were getting ready to leave, my father came home and took me by gunpoint and put me in the U-Haul because he knew my mother wouldn’t leave without me.”

  Robin then asked about the house fire in Maine, when Rickie climbed a ladder and broke our bedroom window to save us. “When he brought us down, my mother was in the car, crying, and my father was out with the firemen in the yard, somewhere. Two weeks after we moved from Minnesota, our house there was burned to the ground.”

  Robin asked Cheryl if she ever saw me being abused by our father, and she said that she had not. This blew me away, because I saw abuse of all kinds in that household, against every one of them, so how she could have possibly missed seeing me get my turn was beyond me.

  She fast-forwarded the conversation to 1988, right before Cheryl’s wedding. She told the jury that a lot of relatives were afraid to come to the wedding, because of our violent father. Robin and Cheryl both had to be very careful to not mention why my father was “missing,” because his murder was not a part of the trial, so there was no mention made of why he was gone, just that he wasn’t there anymore. That had to be confusing to the jury.

  Robin asked, “As you had your children, how was your mother as a grandmother?” and Cheryl replied, “I used to say that she was the mom that she never got the chance to be. She was great with my kids.” I completely agree with that statement. I wish we’d had the chance to have that mom as our mom.

  The questioning led to the fact that Rickie was gone a lot over the years, and we rarely saw him. Robin slowly meandered her way up to September 2003, when Mom went missing. Cheryl told the story of that night. She said that while Rickie was ranting, “The nightmare is back! The nightmare is back!” I was sitting there, rocking and wringing my hands. She then told the story of getting goose bumps when she stood next to the refrigerator and said that something terrible had happened, and told the jury I said, “I have to go talk to Rickie,” and ran out of the house.

  She told the jury, at Robin’s prompting, that when they came by my house nine days later, on my birthday, I wouldn’t let them into my house even though Daniel needed to use the restroom. She said that I told her that we had to put the dogs away and that he knew all of our dogs so that should not have been a concern. She said I prevented him from using the bathroom, without any explanation. Robin asked, “Is there a window in that bathroom?” implying that I was preventing Daniel from seeing our backyard through the window.

  This didn’t come up at the trial, because I didn’t notice it on Susan’s calendar until years later, but if Rickie didn’t bury Mom in the yard until those three days that he took us to the movies, September 24, 25, and 26, then that event was the week prior. If that’s the case, then there wasn’t even anything yet to hide on my birthday, when I didn’t allow Daniel to use Ann’s bathroom because of her dog’s presence.

  Then she showed Cheryl a photo, and she immediately started crying and said, “That’s the mother’s ring that I had bought for her. Rickie and Stacey gave me money. It’s got two sapphires and a diamond.” Cheryl sat there chewing her lip as I tried to not hyperventilate. Dear God, this was hard, and it was just the first day.

  Finally, Robin was done with her and Diana took over with her cross-examination. She asked Cheryl, again, if she had ever seen our father abuse me, and she said no. Diana said, “If he was abusing your sister, he was doing it in a way that you did not see?” and Cheryl said, “Correct.” Diana continued, “If he was able to abuse Stacey in a way that you did not see, he would also have been able to do things to your brother that you did not see?” Cheryl agreed. “Did you ever see your father sexually abuse your brother?” Diana asked, and Cheryl said that she had not. “And yet that’s what your brother has said happened to him,” she said, and Cheryl replied, “That’s what I had heard.”

  “Your father, in fact, as far as your perception was concerned, seemed to treat Stacey better than you and your brother,” Diana stated. Cheryl thought for a moment and said, “If you’re asking me from an abusive standpoint, I guess I would say yes.” She testified that he often called me his only biological child and, because of that, I was treated better.

  She also questioned Cheryl about how things were tense between the three of us because of issues about her parenting, and how the three of us stopped communicating after she wrote us a letter telling us to butt out. Diana asked her about Mom taking the kids away from her, and Cheryl testified that Mom never told her she’d try to take the kids.

  Diana finished up with her, and then Robin got back up for redirect examination and asked her what she wanted to have happen to Rickie. Cheryl said, “I thought that twenty years and telling everything he knew was what I needed.”

  When she was finally done testifying, Diana tried to explain to me so it wouldn’t hurt so badly, “She’s not hurting you; she’s not helping you. She’s stating her facts the way she sees them. She’s not going to damage you.” And, yes, in retrospect I can see that she didn’t really say anything legally damaging against me, but the fact was, she was not a hostile witness for the prosecution.

  CHAPTER 30

  Father and Son

  The next day of the trial began much the same as the first, with the room packed with people from Gulf Coast Resort, many of whom drove there that morning, others who were paying for hotel rooms to avoid the four-hour round-trip drive. Robin called to the witness stand an employee of the bank that I called in December, the one who told me that I would have to call Detective Hussey because the account was frozen. She testified that I said I was Marilyn Kananen.

  Next up was Cheryl’s husband, who testified about the conversation that we had with him regarding Daniel having a knife to protect himself from his mother. He said that Rickie and I wanted Cheryl removed from their home, which was not true. I wanted Cheryl to get help without their family being disrupted.

  He also told the jury that during game nights at their home, Rickie and I would go off together and talk quietly. “When approached,” Chris said, “they would stop, turn toward whoever approached them, and talk about something else.” It’s true that Rickie tried to monopolize my every moment. But cast in this sinister light, it looked to Chris like we were plotting murder.

  They talked about my niece’s birthday party in November. Chris told Robin that he had invited an armed friend over to act as sort of a bodyguard, because he was afraid of me and Rickie. After telling the jury that he had visited Rickie in jail and that he and I hadn’t spoken since Rickie was arrested, Robin said that she had no further questions and Diana took over.

  Diana started out by asking Chris to confirm that, as an outsider, he was able to see that our family dynamic, due to the violent abuse, was unusual and dysfunctional, that we didn’t respond to one another in the way that an average family would. He did agree to that assessment.

>   He also confirmed that Mom would have her locks changed whenever an out-of-town visitor, like Aunt Gerri, would go back home, and that Rickie would be the one to do that. He confirmed that Rickie was very upset and animated that Daniel had a knife for self-defense, and that Rickie said he knew of a way to make Cheryl leave the home. Chris said, “His words were, he could ‘break her.’”

  Diana asked Chris if he was aware that Rickie was writing a book about his life, and Chris said he was. He testified that Rickie said that he sold his moving company so he could devote his time to rescuing abused kids. “He was hired by cartels to plan the perfect crimes,” Diana continued, “and was paid well to do so when they were successful, correct?” Robin popped up out of her chair. “Objection. Hearsay.”

  Diana looked at the judge with exasperation and said, “Not offered for the truth.” When the judge asked, “What is it offered for?” Diana responded, “Offered to show the mental health, state, intent, motive, and devolving mental health of the witness that’s in this case. I’ll rephrase.”

  “In your presence,” Diana said, “he told you about how the vigilante justice was funded. And he told you that he was hired by cartels to plan the perfect crimes and was paid well when they were successful, correct?” Again, Robin said, “Objection. Hearsay. Relevance.”

  Judge Lubet sighed and said, “Overruled,” and Chris replied, “Yes, ma’am.” Chris confirmed that Rickie said that one of the cases he worked on involved law enforcement.

  He was excused and the State called their next witness: Daniel.

  I hadn’t seen him since 2003, and I was overjoyed to see that he had grown into a handsome young man in those seven years. He reminded me of Rickie as a teenager, tall, lean, and strong. He had become a martial arts instructor, and I was so proud, even though my heart was breaking over the reason we were once again in the same room, after all those years.