Shawn and Sarah could have easily have said that the last time they saw Karly, she was perfectly okay, and no one would have been the wiser. But instead of denying Karly’s condition, Shawn gave Officer Cox a ready explanation for Karly’s injuries. He told Cox that earlier in the week he’d seen Karly balling up her fist, rubbing her eyes, and pressing her thumbs into her forehead. Those bruises on Karly’s forehead? Those were the corresponding marks left by her thumbs.
And that hair loss?
Well, Sarah explained to a none-the-wiser officer that Karly had recently been diagnosed with trichotillomania, a weird hair-pulling disorder. It was a little psychotic, for sure, but they’d been getting treatment for her. Kids. They do the craziest things.
Cox glanced around the tidy duplex. He noticed the Beaver blanket thrown over the couch and the framed professional photographs of Shawn’s daughter hanging in the hallway. He saw no sign of anything to give him cause for concern. No half-spilled prescription bottles. No worn roach clips. No empty Jack Daniel’s bottles. Cox concluded there was no indication Sarah or Shawn were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He’d know that. He was, after all, the leading cop in the state on such arrests.
Before leaving, Cox urged Sarah to get Karly to the doctor again, pronto.
No problem, she assured him, they were taking her to a specialist later that week. Then Sarah thanked the officer for his obvious concern.
Back at the police station, Officer Cox filed an incident report. It was posted at 4:46 a.m. and marked No Press.
Welfare Check:
On 12-11-04, I responded to 4111 N.W. Walnut Blvd. on a welfare check. Karla Sheehan’s (age 2) parents (David and Sarah Sheehan) are divorced and she rotates who she stays with. Karla has recently started pulling her hair out and hitting herself in the face and scratching herself with her hands/fingernails while staying with Sarah at 2652 NW Aspen. Karla’s hair was very thin and much of it had been pulled out. Karla had several small scratches and bruises on her face and head. David and Sarah believe that Karla may have psychological problems and are getting her an appointment with a specialist on 12-13-04. The scratches, bruises and the missing hair that I observed on Karla appeared consistent with self-inflicted injuries.
Cox sent his report to DHS, and to Detective Karin Stauder, as required, standard operating procedure for any potential child abuse case.
Nobody wants to be called out on a child abuse case, but patrol cops like Cox, in particular, don’t like them. Child abuse cases are labor-intensive, requiring a lot of paperwork and follow-up. There’s little glitz and glamour attached to the work, and very few awards, but a lot of heartache.
Cox was the state’s eyes that night, and he did not take photos of Karly. He did not take the time to interview Sarah and Shawn separately, to look for any inconsistencies in their stories. Cox did not approach Sarah or Shawn with the same level of distrust that he did David. The officer had threatened David with arrest but took Sarah and Shawn at their word. Some of his peers at the Corvallis Police Department feel that Cox’s investigation that night was shoddy, done haphazardly so that he could hurry back to the work that brought him the most notoriety: trolling for drunks.
Cox should have taken photos of Karly that night but he didn’t. The only documentation was the report he made based upon his own observations. A photo would have told an entirely different story than the one Cox reported. There was no way anyone could look at photos of Karly from that night and think all was well. As the father of young kids himself, Cox should have approached the case with more due diligence. His conclusion that Karly’s condition was “self-inflicted” threw the entire abuse investigation off the grid, and it was one of the primary reasons why Shawn Field was not considered a suspect until after Karly’s death.
Back at the house on Walnut Street, David waited and waited, but Cox did not return to make an arrest. It was well past one o’clock when David crawled back into bed. His head sank into the pillow. It had been the most draining day of his entire life. There would be more days like this to come. But David didn’t know that yet, so he fell into a still and silent sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The last letter I sent to Shawn Field came back marked “Return to Sender, Refused.” He has the right to do that, refuse to speak to me. I understand why he doesn’t want to talk to me. He believes because Sarah was once part of our family that I’m biased. He and his parents, Hugh and Ann, fear anything I write will put Shawn in a bad light.
Shawn continues to deny that he had any part in Karly’s death. Jack, the fellow who meets with Shawn weekly for Bible study, told me, “Shawn is very upset with God. He doesn’t understand how a loving God could allow many of the things that have happened.”
And that was before the cancer was discovered.
Three years following Karly’s death, I received a note from Jack alerting me that Shawn was seriously sick and asking I pray. “Shawn has been ill for nearly three weeks and yesterday they discovered he has a good-sized tumor in his chest. At this time, I don’t know if it’s malignant. He is in tremendous pain. Ann and Hugh wonder how much they can take. I would appreciate your prayers.”
The tumor proved to be a very aggressive cancer. Shawn was moved from the prison in Pendleton to one in the Willamette Valley, where he received the best medical care our state is able to provide.
I saw Shawn’s cancer as one more sad twist in an already tragic tale. David summed up my feelings best: “I think the mom in you probably senses the anguish of Ann Field.”
It’s true. I feel a good deal of empathy for Shawn’s parents. I wonder if they feel they failed at parenting. Much like Sarah’s parents have done, Hugh and Ann have picked up the pieces of their son’s messy life since he was a high school student at Santiam Christian High School in Corvallis, Oregon.
Hugh and Ann enrolled Shawn in the private school in hopes that, being surrounded by “good” kids, Shawn might be inspired to make better choices. Instead, he got kicked out. Superintendent Stan Baker didn’t have any trouble recalling the troubled teen. Baker considered Shawn an ill fit for the Christian school. “He was known to participate in satanic practices and rituals,” Superintendent Baker told investigators. “He dressed in black clothes and would go to cemeteries at night. He was not liked well by other students.”
Baker kicked Shawn out of school in January 1988 after he and another Santiam Christian School student were arrested for a series of burglaries in the Vineyard Mountain area of Corvallis, the neighborhood where Hugh and Ann Field made their home.
I wanted to speak with Hugh and Ann about Shawn’s tenure at Santiam, as well many other events that shaped young Shawn’s life, like the death of his brother. So I called Hugh and Ann at their home in Redmond, Oregon.
Hugh answered the first call.
“Hi, this is Karen Zacharias,” I said. “Is this Hugh Field?”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Hugh replied, sharply, gruffly. I expected as much. People had warned me Hugh is a tough guy. “Control freak” is a term I often heard others, attorneys and law enforcement folks alike, use when describing Hugh.
“I don’t really want you to…” I was going to say “…talk.” I wanted to give Hugh a chance to ask me questions, but he hung up before I finished my sentence.
I called back straightaway. This time Ann answered the phone. She wasn’t gruff, but she was curt. As soon as I identified myself, she hung up.
Not at all surprisingly, I received the following e-mail that same night:
Karen,
I received a disturbing phone call tonight. Hugh called to tell me that you had started calling Ann and Hugh. As a professional journalist, I know you are working every angle to find more information on the case, but Ann and Hugh would appreciate it if you would not call them again. They have no desire to talk to you about anything. Period. They consider your phone calls a severe invasion of privacy. Shawn also has no desire to talk to you in person, by letter
or any other means.
How you run your business is up to you, yet as a friend I ask that you would please consider my request.
Thank you, Jack
To be honest, Jack’s relationship with Shawn intrigues me, bugs me somewhat. I can’t help but wonder, if he knew what I know about Shawn, if Jack would be so eager to defend him I wrote and asked him about it:
Jack
I don’t have a clue what you know about this case, but based upon what you know or have been told, whom do you think killed Karly? Care to share how you reached your conclusions?
Because it occurs to me that if you think Shawn killed Karly, how are you able to sit with him and guide him through the Scriptures? If you believe Shawn killed a three-year-old child, do you really truly believe that God offers grace to such an individual?
On the other hand, if you don’t believe Shawn killed Karly, then you are sharing Scriptures with an innocent man, wrongly convicted. And in that situation, what hope does Jesus offer such a man?
ksz
Jack sent me a note back:
Karen
Journalists never rest, do they?
I have heard many things and have many other questions I would like the answer to. Most of my opinions are best kept to myself but I can tell you this. I am a firm believer in redemption and the power of God’s love. God called me to be a friend to Shawn. I am not his counselor, Father Confessor, judge, or conscience. Shawn is a friend who I care deeply about. I visit him not because I have to but because I want to. I listen to him, question him, tease him, debate with him, laugh with him and cry with him, and share the gospel with him.
The questions you ask are good ones and tough ones. God is obviously the only one who knows all the answers in this case and though I would like to know more and might have a chance to later, I will willingly spend time with Shawn as long as he and I are on this earth. When you visit a person in prison you don’t ask other people what the person they are visiting is doing time for or how long their sentence is unless they volunteer it, but one day a woman, who I assume was a newbie, asked when my friend was getting out and I said, “Until they carry him out or I die.” The look on the lady’s face told me I might have gone too far, but she asked a tough question and she received a tough answer.
There are things that this case raises and throws in my face regularly about justice, forgiveness, redemption as well as the role of believers and what we are called to do. Mercy and love are hard to give. This whole ordeal has stretched me and made me reconsider my own beliefs.
I regularly pray for the players in this play and pray that they might come to know God as Lord and Savior and one day experience his love, mercy, forgiveness and peace.
Jack
During the time in which Shawn’s cancer was discovered and treated, I lost two of my dearest friends to cancer. As I type this, Shawn’s cancer is in remission and he enjoys good health.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kate Field, age eight, School Journal.
Sept. 2004.
A bully is someone that make bad daseson and sometimes they can hert you. I have never been bullied by a bully and I have never seen a bully. A bully is big. They ruen your life. They can be really dangerus. They never say sory. Their not smart at all. They torger you. They can easly stell from you when your not looken so thats why you have to be really carful case you never no when there is a bully around. Bullys hert your mom and dad.
Matt Stark was out of the office on Monday, December 13, 2004, the first business day after Officer Cox’s midnight visit to investigate a reported possible child abuse. In Stark’s absence, his co-worker, Elizabeth Castillo, received Cox’s report regarding the child Karly Sheehan.
Castillo arranged to meet David late Monday afternoon at the DHS offices. David, who’d had Karly with him all weekend, brought Karly with him. Castillo attempted to talk to Karly, but as usual, Karly wasn’t having any of it.
“She didn’t want me being close to her,” Castillo said.
Most of Karly’s hair was missing. She had scratches on her face, a couple around her left eye, and yellowing bruises on her temple and forehead. Karly kept picking at the scratches around her eye.
David explained the whole situation to Castillo. He told her about Sarah dropping Karly off on Saturday in this horrific state with no more of an explanation than “this happened on my watch.” He told her about Officer Cox’s late-night visit on Saturday.
David held out hope that state investigators would finally see what had been clear to him: for Karly’s sake, Sarah needed to put some distance between herself and Shawn. His hopes were completely obliterated by Castillo’s response.
“Hispanic fathers are known to pull their kids’ hair out as a form of discipline,” she said pointedly.
David was stunned. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He wanted to blurt out, “As a Catholic I see lots of Hispanic kids in mass. They are not bald!” Besides, where in this situation was the Hispanic?
Castillo was insinuating David had snatched Karly bald.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!” David said. “This is the treatment I got from the people who were supposed to protect children? Any foreign father in my situation would have felt like he was under a microscope. I’ve had problems with that statement ever since Castillo made it.”
David was pissed but he kept his emotions in check. He told Castillo he had taken photos of Karly on Saturday, and would be happy to provide those to DHS. Great, Castillo said, but said she needed to take pictures of Karly herself. No problem, David said. Castillo got out the digital camera and took some snapshots of Karly. She told David that Matt Stark would be in touch.
Earlier that day, David and Sarah had taken Karly in to see Dr. deSoyza.
“What happened over the past week?” deSoyza asked. The doctor was disturbed by Karly’s condition.
Sarah explained that Karly had gotten upset when Sarah took her over to Shawn’s house.
“She refused to sleep. She yanked out her hair, and clawed at her face,” Sarah said.
The doctor urged Sarah and David to consider taking Karly to see a pediatric psychiatrist. Sarah said she’d already made an appointment for Karly to see a counselor at Old Mill Center for Children and Families. Sarah also assured David and Dr. deSoyza that she was moving out of Shawn’s house that very day, admitting her new situation was too stressful for Karly.
“Hopefully a change in environment will have a positive impact on the patient’s symptoms, but the underlying causes for this do need to be looked into,” the doctor wrote in Karly’s chart.
Dr. deSoyza knew something was terribly wrong with Sarah’s new living arrangement, and she had her suspicions.
Matt Stark returned to his office the following day, Tuesday, December 14, 2004. He retrieved two voice messages left by David Sheehan. Delynn Zoller had also called and left a message. Stark returned her call first. Delynn asked if he had seen Karly. He had not.
“My god, she looks awful!” Delynn exclaimed. “You need to get a look for yourself.”
Stark called David, who said Sarah had taken full responsibility for Karly’s battered condition. She had assured David she was moving out of Shawn’s place immediately. Sarah agreed for the time being that David would have full custody of Karly.
Stark put in a call to Dr. deSoyza and spoke with Mona Schneider, deSoyza’s nurse. Yes, she said, the parents had indeed brought Karly in yesterday. She described the abrasions around Karly’s eye and the wispy tuft of hair on the child’s head.
Stark decided to make an unannounced call to 2652 N.W. Aspen Street. Despite telling Dr. deSoyza and David she was moving out of Shawn’s place, Sarah was still at Shawn’s the next afternoon when Stark showed up. Because it was winter break at school, Kate was there too.
Sarah stepped out on the porch to talk with Stark. She did not invite him in.
“Karly hasn’t been sleeping well,” Sarah said. She added that she didn’t have
much sleep herself on Friday or Saturday because she’d been up with Karly those nights. “I had to restrain Karly to keep her from clawing at herself.”
Sarah said that whenever she tried to get Karly to quit playing around and go to sleep, Karly responded by digging at her eyes.
“On Friday night, I made a bed for Karly in the living room in front of the TV, and I lay down with her. I hoped she would sleep, but Karly kept digging at her eye,” Sarah said.
It wasn’t until morning’s light that Sarah realized how badly Karly had hurt herself.
“It wasn’t just the scratching at her eyes,” Sarah added. “Karly was also smacking at her head and pulling out her hair. And she climbed up on the bunk bed and jumped off the top bunk. That’s how she got the bruise on her forehead. She hit the Barbie house on the way down!”
“How long have you been at Shawn’s?” Stark asked.
“Pretty much all week,” Sarah said.
“And how was Karly earlier in the week?”
“She was fine on Tuesday and Wednesday, but she’d started acting out some on Thursday,” Sarah said.
“Why do you think Karly’s behavior has gotten worse over the past few days?” Stark asked.
“I think Karly really needs a schedule,” Sarah said. “Whenever she gets off her schedule she gets out of control.”
“How come you didn’t take Karly to daycare this week?” Stark asked.
“Because Karly had the stomach flu,” Sarah said. “You can’t go to daycare if you are throwing up.”
“How does Shawn deal with Karly?” Stark asked.
“Shawn tries to be helpful,” Sarah said. “He understands and agrees that Karly needs to be out of his home for a while.”
“Is Shawn here?” Stark asked. “Can I speak to him?”
“Just a minute,” Sarah said. “I’ll get him.’
Shawn stepped out onto the porch. Neither he nor Sarah invited the state investigator inside. Shawn told Stark, “I’ll answer general questions but nothing else without my attorney.”
KARLY SHEEHAN: True Crime behind Karly's Law Page 12
