She told the detectives that she shot Beau because he had been “talking back.” She said that Calyx was “mouthy.”
After questioning the suspect, Detective Sandel contacted the state attorney’s office and reiterated the substance of the interview. Investigators Sandel and Prebish completed an affidavit and charged Julie with two counts of first-degree murder. Kiriangitis obtained a judge’s signature on the search warrant and read the document to Julie, who still appeared as dazed as she was when Officers Copulos and Noble found her at her home.
Every three days, somewhere in this country, a mother kills her child. It is a crime that runs contrary to all intuitive expectations regarding the mother-child bond. Law enforcement now knew that Julie Schenecker was one of that number—but knowing that did not answer the biggest question: Why?
CHAPTER 25
At lunchtime in the high school cafeteria, Jena was concerned that Calyx was not in school and her worry was heightened when she realized that no one had heard from Calyx since yesterday when she chatted with her on Facebook.
Jena sent Calyx a text: “WHERE ARE YOU?”
She received no response.
* * *
Back on Royal Park Court, Detective Ruth Cato arrived on the scene to assist the homicide squad. Sergeant Mark Delage lifted the yellow crime scene tape that blocked off the street to allow Cato to drive up the road to the house. She parked by the curb and was still in the front yard being briefed by Detective Eric Houston when a vehicle backed out of a neighbor’s residence.
“Go talk to that woman,” Detective Houston told Cato. “Ask what kind of person Julie is.”
Cato walked up to the vehicle, which stopped as she approached. The woman inside introduced herself as Pamela Elsaadi. “Will you speak to me?” Cato asked.
“Certainly,” Pamela said as she nodded.
“Are you friends with Julie?”
“You really should speak to Julie’s best friends, Lisa Prisco and Lorraine Livingston. I’ve had dinner with Julie and Parker and seen them at other house parties, but I have never had any one-on-one time with Julie or chatted with her on the telephone.”
“When was the last time you saw Julie?” Cato asked.
“Well, I saw her this morning being escorted out of the house by the police.”
“Do you know Julie’s closest friends?”
“Yes,” Pamela answered. “I am friends with Lisa Prisco and Lorraine Livingston. I spoke to both of them this morning. Lisa said that Julie sent her a text message at around one a.m. I don’t know exactly what it said. Lorraine called, too, because when she drove past Julie’s house and when she saw the police she wanted to know what was going on.”
“Do you know how I can reach these women?”
“Lorraine is leaving for New York today, but you can call her cell phone,” Pamela said, providing that number as well as Lisa’s number to Cato. “Lisa lives on the next cul-de-sac off of Sambourne.”
“Could you describe Julie?” the officer asked.
“Julie is nice, shy, not too outgoing. I don’t think she works. She’s had a lot of problems lately and was recently hospitalized at a drug treatment program in Clearwater for prescription drugs.”
“How long was she there?”
“May have been a month,” Pamela said.
“When’s the last time you saw the kids?”
Pamela’s brow furrowed. She shook her head and said, “I don’t know.”
“Have you ever seen the kids?”
“Yes. Julie’s son plays with the Zahrobsky boy. I don’t have any kids that age, but I think he must be around nine to eleven years old. I know they have a daughter, but she’s a teenager and I don’t see her much. Julie’s husband is in the military. He left for Afghanistan two weeks ago.”
“Have you ever been inside?” Cato asked, jerking her head toward the Schenecker residence.
“No,” Pamela said.
“Did you hear anything strange from Julie’s house last night?”
“No,” the neighbor said with a shake of her head. “I went to sleep around nine or nine thirty last night.”
“Do you live in the house alone?”
“No. I live with my husband, Nibal Elsaadi.”
“Where was he last night?”
“He was at home with me.”
“Is there anything else I should know?” Cato asked.
“I think there is a conflict between Julie and her daughter.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’ve heard them arguing—but not last night.”
“Arguing about what?”
“Just mother-daughter friction, I think.”
CHAPTER 26
Officer Cato continued her interviews by placing a call to Lorraine Livingston, who was at the airport awaiting her flight to New York. After identifying herself, Cato asked Lorraine how she knew Julie.
“I used to live in the same neighborhood,” Lorraine said.
“How would you describe your relationship?”
“She’s one of my best friends—we’re all girlfriends; we go out together. Are the kids okay?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Cato said, and then asked, “What was Julie’s relationship like with her kids?”
“They are all going to counseling.”
“Why?”
Lorraine pulled back, feeling protective of the family. “I can’t go into detail, but the mother and teenager have arguments every now and then.”
“When was the last time you saw Julie?”
“I haven’t seen her for two months,” Lorraine said, a statement that she has since contradicted.
“Why not?” Cato asked.
“Because the family is going through some changes,” Lorraine answered, continuing to be vague.
“When did you last talk to Julie?”
“Last week on the phone. Julie said, ‘You know, Lorraine, we are going to counseling. We are trying.’”
“Do you know where Julie’s husband is?”
“Yes. Parker is in Afghanistan.”
“Do you know anything about the Post-it notes found on the Scheneckers’ front door this morning?”
“I know I didn’t put them there,” Lorraine said. “I was on the way to Julie’s to borrow a pair of boots for my trip. I saw the police there and they wouldn’t let me go up to the house. They told me Julie was okay but did not mention the kids. Are they okay?”
Cato thanked Lorraine and ended the call, leaving Lorraine’s desperate question unanswered.
CHAPTER 27
After her interview with Lorraine Livingston, Officer Cato contacted Detective Danny Rhodes. Together they made the short trip to Sambourne Lane to speak to Julie’s other good friend, Lisa Prisco, and her husband, John.
“I haven’t seen Julie this week,” Lisa said. “But I did talk to her a few days ago.”
“When did you last see her?” Rhodes asked.
“I think the last time I actually saw her was in September.”
“You’re close friends, you live nearby, why haven’t you seen her since then?”
“Julie went away to a rehab center in Safety Harbor.”
“What was wrong with Julie?” Cato asked.
Lisa, just like Lorraine, put up a wall against that personal question, reluctant to reveal the truth about her friend’s condition, as if sensing it would be a betrayal.
John interrupted, “Lisa, just tell the officer what is going on.”
Lisa looked at her husband, then back at her questioners. “The family was in counseling. They’ve been in counseling since the fall. Julie was currently in the care of a military doctor—maybe for depression and being bipolar. Her medication is not meshing.”
“What do you mean?” Cato asked.
“Julie is forgetful. We’d be having a conversation and Julie would forget what she was saying or what she had just said. She would forget what she did the night before. I told her to jot down notes to help
remember and tell the doctor about her forgetfulness.” Lisa sighed. “The family is having a lot of problems and I kept pushing them to go into therapy. Julie told me they were going to counseling, but Julie complained a lot about the counselor and her inability to remember things because of her medications.”
“Do you know what she was taking?”
“Her normal doctor has her on about a dozen different medications and the doctor she saw for injuries in her car accident prescribed percocet and hydrocodone, which I think is against the regular doctor’s orders. Now Julie has tardive dyskinesia.”
“What is that?” Cato asked.
“It’s because she’s been taking her medications for too long. Because of that, Julie can’t control herself physically—her legs jerk and her arms twitch.”
“How do you know Julie?”
“I met her four years ago when I was her real estate agent. I moved them into their house, and we’ve been best friends ever since.”
“Who lives at the house?”
“Julie, Parker, Calyx, who is sixteen, Beau, who’s thirteen, and two cats.”
“What do you know about the children?”
“They’re both good students. Calyx is very driven academically. She wants to be a doctor. She gets all A’s and is in the IB Program at King High School. But she’s about to go off to a boarding school.”
“Why?” Cato asked.
“Calyx doesn’t want to live in the house.”
“How long has that been going on?”
“Since before Christmas. Calyx stopped speaking to Julie. Julie complained that Calyx would not answer her questions. Parker was trying to get Calyx into a good school before he deployed. I think he finished the paperwork and it’s probably sitting on the kitchen counter. But Parker just left for Afghanistan.”
“Do you know anything about the relationship between Julie and Parker?”
“They’ve been married for twenty years—I think they met in college, but I’m not sure. Parker has been trying to do what a dad can do. All of the fighting between Julie and Calyx has been too much for him.”
“What about Beau? What do you know about him?”
Lisa laughed softly. “He is so-o-o funny. He plays soccer—he’s always playing at the front court with other kids in the neighborhood.”
Officer Cato turned the interview back to a previous line of questioning: “If Julie is your best friend and she just lives down the street, why has it been so long since you have seen her?”
“Last month was a difficult month for us. My father-in-law passed away and we went to New Jersey. Then the holidays and this month, I’ve been sick with the flu. Julie has been asking me to come over, but I didn’t want to get them sick so I didn’t go.”
“What was the source of all the arguing between Calyx and her mother?”
“Julie said that Calyx would tell her: ‘You’re not my mother.’ Other than that, she just wasn’t speaking to Julie. When Julie cooked, Calyx would take her plate and go eat in her room. Calyx complained, ‘My mom is a terrible cook. I won’t eat foods out of a box. I want everything to be green.’ But everything was fine at Thanksgiving.”
“That was two years ago, Lisa,” John interjected.
“Oh, right. I met both of the mothers then. Parker’s mother is Nancy Schenecker and she lives in New York. I think Julie’s mom lives in New Orleans. They’re all friends on Facebook.” Lisa pulled up the pages on Facebook and then showed them a recent post by Parker from the Middle East and the postings on Beau’s page.
“What do you know about Parker?”
“He works with Intelligence and I think he’s a general. Julie was in the military, too. She was a Russian interrogator.”
“Is there anything else that could help us?” Cato asked.
“A couple of months ago, Julie slapped Calyx and DCF [Department of Children & Families] came.”
“Do either of you know if there are any guns in the house?” Cato asked Lisa and John.
“No way would Parker leave a gun in the house with all that was going on,” John said.
“Do you know if Julie had bought a gun?”
“No,” John and Lisa said in unison.
Lisa continued, “How about the children? How are the children?”
“I’ll come back and give you an update,” Cato promised. She left the Prisco home and soon learned that the media were about to report that two bodies had been found in the Schenecker house. She and Detective Rhodes went back to see John and Lisa, telling them that both of the children were dead.
Distraught, Lisa sobbed and said, “No, no, no,” over and over.
John tried to comfort his wife, but she was inconsolable. He turned to Cato. “I just can’t understand why a gun was in the house,” he said, then swallowed hard and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he added, “If you need me to identify the bodies, I will since no immediate family is available right now.”
Lisa said that she’d received text messages from Julie last night but did not see them until this morning. “Julie never texts me that late. I saw them this morning and tried to call her at eight, but she didn’t answer her phone.” Lisa allowed Rhodes to photograph the messages on her cell phone and then forwarded them to Cato’s e-mail.
That day in Qatar, Parker was informed by U.S. Army personnel that his wife had killed their children.
CHAPTER 28
Officer Cato next went to the C. Leon King High School, where Calyx was enrolled. Cato spoke to Principal Carla Bruning, SRO Deputy Johnson, Assistant Principal Yinka Alege, IB assistant principal Matt Romano, IB guidance counselor Rosanna Hoit, and school psychologist Etta Rahming. None of them knew of any problems being reported by Calyx.
“I saw her yesterday,” Hoit said. “We discussed preparing a recommendation to boarding school. She was going to provide me with more information.”
Cato requested a copy of Calyx’s class schedule and Alege provided it.
The officer asked him, “When was the last time Calyx was in school?”
“Yesterday,” he said. “Actually, today was Calyx’s first absence all school year and she’d only been tardy once back in November.”
* * *
Mainly through text messages, word of the tragedy spread through King High School like a flash flood, stunning students up and down every corridor. Coach Gary Bingham wanted to gather his team together to deliver the news to all of them as a group, but before he could do it they already knew. At the end of the day, he was busy making car-pool arrangements for the team members who had driven themselves to school and were now too distraught to get behind the wheel for the ride home.
One by one, the Ostuaries learned of Calyx’s death. After school, one of Sara’s friends said, “I learned something that I need to tell you.”
She looked at him and knew something was wrong. “Yes?” she said.
He then told her what happened to Calyx the day before. Sara did not want to believe what she heard.
Jena heard about it on the way home from school from another student in her car pool.
Tatiana was out sick from school that day. She remained in her Apollo Beach home on a canal that, after a few twists and turns, led out to Tampa Bay. She was sitting on her mom’s bed when her mother, Latanya, answered the phone and began to cry. “It can’t be,” she wailed to the person on the other end of the line.
When she disconnected from the call, Tatiana asked, “Mom, what?”
Latanya pulled Tatiana close, “I don’t know how to tell you this.…” And then she told her about Calyx and Beau, and Tatiana’s world went into a tailspin.
Late that afternoon, the moms of the Ostuaries, along with their daughters, gathered together at Sara’s house to make a poster for the vigil that night. On it was a quotation by Albus Dumbledore—Harry Potter’s headmaster: “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
* * *
In Texas that afternoon, Julie’s high school fri
end Sylvia Carroll, who had reignited her old friendship with Julie a couple of years earlier, was sitting down, relaxing and watching Oprah acknowledging military folks and the families left at home. While the show was rolling, Sylvia checked her Facebook and saw a message from a resourceful Associated Press reporter, who had used the social network to track down Julie’s friends: “Sorry to hear about the tragedy with your high school friend Julie.”
What does that mean? Sylvia wondered. Has Julie died? It was hard to imagine that the fit, athletic woman could have succumbed to any illness. An accident? Sylvia searched the Internet and found the photo taken of her friend after her arrest. No. That could not be the Julie Powers she knew in high school. It looked like a psycho woman. But there she was. The same last name Sylvia had used to find her old friend on Facebook. Sylvia felt as if part of her youth, her innocence, had imploded.
* * *
Out on the West Coast, Julie’s Hawaiian roommate, Darcelle, was on a layover in Seattle. On the television mounted above her she saw something on the news about someone killing her kids for being mouthy. Darcelle turned from her TV and looked back at her e-mail and switched over to news on the Internet.
She found the photo of the woman in the news and thought, I know someone who looks like that. What a coincidence. The woman in the story was named Julie and that was Darcelle’s roommate’s name, too. And her last name looked something like that of the woman in the picture. But it couldn’t be the same Julie Darcelle knew. Those two delightful children could not be dead.
Although it had been a dozen years since Darcelle witnessed her own sister’s demise, the murders of Calyx and Beau burrowed into the fault lines left in her heart from the earlier tragedy. Their deaths resurrected Darcelle’s old pain and added a layer of new agony.
* * *
Sleep My Darlings Page 10
