Sleep My Darlings

by Diane Fanning

  Parker took another step in a different courtroom that day, filing a wrongful-death civil suit against his wife. The legal activity now hit a fever pitch with proceedings simultaneously occurring in criminal, civil, and divorce courts.

  The document filed by the legal firm of Fonvielle Lewis Foote & Messer, of Tallahassee, began with a two-part complaint regarding the deaths of Parker’s children and a request for an unspecified amount for damages. Following that was a twenty-seven-point statement of fact from the plaintiff’s perspective that included the allegations that Julie’s e-mails to Parker in Doha, Qatar, after the murders of Calyx and Beau were sent with “the intent or reckless disregard, to cause her husband severe emotional distress.”

  Then came the listing of counts, the first the intentional death or Beau; the second the deliberate killing of Calyx; and finally the intentional infliction of emotional distress. In the latter section, Parker claimed that Julie’s actions were “outrageous conduct … so outrageous, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency … and utterly intolerable in a civilized society.”

  In addition to the claims of severe distress caused to Parker by the acts of murder, the document further claimed that, in the death of Beau, “firing a shot through the windshield of the car created a sense of terror immediately prior to his death. Parker Schenecker’s knowledge of his son’s terror has caused him additional intensive emotional distress as a direct result of Julie Powers Schenecker’s conduct.”

  Following the filing, Parker released a statement to the public:

  Today I have filed a wrongful death suit as well as other filings against my wife Julie for the murders of my children Calyx and Beau.

  This is a necessary step in my desire to give voice to my children and to ensure that throughout what may happen in the future criminal and civil litigation, Calyx and Beau are not forgotten.

  I feel strongly that Julie be held accountable for her selfish acts on January 27, 2011, when she silenced my children—I won’t let that happen again. They deserve to be heard.

  I am choosing to file this suit to give voice to my children and to hold their murderer accountable for what she did. As I’ve said, my loss is total. But I won’t let my children be silenced or forgotten now or ever.

  This is another step in my commitment to them, to my family and friends, their friends and to the public—to honor my kids and the way they lived. If I did not file this suit, I would not be true to my children or my character.

  I now look to the judicial system for help. It’s a system I swore to protect and defend along with the U.S. Constitution for more than twenty-seven years in uniform. I have faith in this system, that defends good over evil, will do the right thing and hold my children’s murderer accountable for her actions.

  In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times in the downtown riverfront of Tampa, he spoke of his fears that people would see his civil action as being all about money. He described the lawsuit as a mission that he was honor bound to complete and added that he wanted to use the couple’s money to do good in the memory of their children: “I’m standing up for my kids … otherwise, I couldn’t be the dad they knew.”

  He talked, too, of his future plans to end his army career by June and to find a smaller place to live near MacDill Air Force Base where he hoped to work as a civilian.

  He was right to be concerned that many would see his filing as being about nothing more than money. Legal experts on the airways referred to the move as “smart lawyering” that was a strategy to recoup anything that Julie won in divorce court. The bottom line, though, was that Julie, like any spouse who gave up a career in the best interests of the family unit, did have grounds for her requests—and grounds that were even firmer for equitable distribution of funds from the sale of their primary home, and money in 401(k) and IRA accounts. Any alimony judgment could not be touched in a wrongful-death claim.

  With the filing of the civil suit, Parker caused more lawyers to enter into Julie’s universe of legal representation—seventy-nine-year-old Arnold Levine, with fifty years of experience, including defending Tampa Bay Buccaneers team members against murder charges; and Paul Sullivan, Levine’s son-in-law, a former prosecutor with twenty-two years of experience as a defense attorney and qualified by the state supreme court to handle death penalty cases.

  Immediately after joining the Julie Schenecker team, Levine announced that he would be taking over the criminal case as soon as Julie had access to funds: “The public defender is hanging in there right now because she doesn’t have any property, money or assets.”

  Julie remained behind bars at the Falkenburg Road Jail, waiting for three different courts to decide her fate.

  CHAPTER 41

  On May 18, attorney Caballero, on Parker Schenecker’s behalf, asked Hillsborough Circuit Judge Cheryl K. Thomas to order deputies to transport Julie from the county jail to her courtroom for questioning in the divorce matter. In no time, Julie’s lawyer Ed Brennan filed an emergency motion to block that move.

  He accused Parker of grandstanding and attempting to poison the potential jury pool for her upcoming criminal trial. Brennan also said that Julie had the right to avoid self-incrimination in that case and could not answer questions posed by her husband in the defense case for that reason.

  Brennan also informed the court that his client was on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch in the infirmary at the jail and claimed that forcing her to attend a divorce hearing could damage her fragile mental health. Before the day was over, Julie agreed to the divorce, removing any need for an emotion-filled battle before Judge Thomas.

  The next day, the divorce was finalized in five minutes and involved almost no discussion. Parker was there; Julie was not. The judge asked Parker, “Is your marriage irretrievably broken?”

  Parker said, “Yes.”

  Judge Cheryl Thomas pounded a steel legal stamp on her order instantly dissolving the Scheneckers’ twenty-year marriage: “From this day forward, you are considered divorced.”

  In divorce law, the judge invoked “bifurcation,” which immediately ends the marriage but retains jurisdiction over future distribution of assets. Whatever the Scheneckers owned or saved in the marriage could not be touched by either party.

  The judgment also granted Julie Schenecker the ability to restore her maiden name, but she would only be allowed to do that once—and then only after her criminal case had been closed.

  The lawyers for both sides began work on a distribution of assets for the judge to review and approve. The legal minefield continued for Julie Schenecker. Three different courts still had control over her future. And the biggest obstacle to her continued existence rested in the hands of the criminal court. At this point, however, it was still not clear exactly what would be at stake at her upcoming trial and when that event would occur.

  CHAPTER 42

  On July 8, Julie was back in the courtroom. Her attorney, Robert Frasier, asked the judge to seal 23 of the 167 pages, as well as a number of photographs taken in the investigation, that the prosecution proposed to release. Included in what Frasier wanted excluded were writings by Julie that police found in her home and any description of the two dead teenagers, including their autopsy reports.

  “I’m a little taken aback by the idea that we’re all supposed to dance through the raindrops for Media General and the St. Petersburg Times when we have no duty to do that at all.

  “I’m asking the court to take a hard look, a hard scrutiny, at these documents as Your Honor already has, I’m sure. I’d appreciate the significance to Julie Schenecker, if they were known to the community at large, regardless of whether they make it to the St. Pete Times or the Tampa Tribune. It’s not their business. It’s her business and it should stay there,” Frasier argued.

  “Case law is pretty clear that the court has a responsibility to balance the interests of the media. But first and foremost, I have to weigh the defendant’s right to a fair trial and make su
re she’s afforded due process so I will give great consideration to each piece of discovery,” Judge Moody responded.

  Attorneys for Media General along with the St. Petersburg Times expressed their reasons for why they thought the items should not be blocked and asked the judge to make her ruling as lax as possible and still guarantee Julie’s right to a fair trial. The judge released her decision four days later, ordering the State Attorney’s Office to withhold the twenty-three pages as well as some photographs that the defense found objectionable and release the remaining materials to the public. On July 25, they did so, but they withheld some of the photographs in question.

  After the materials were made available, Parker Schenecker made a statement saying that it was “another step in the judicial process.” He added that the documents had “highlighted the substantial burden and responsibility that comes with access to details of my children’s murders. My family, friends and I, along with the thousands who have mourned Calyx and Beau with us, will continue to honor my beautiful children, remembering them with dignity and respect.”

  Everyone was in court again on July 29, for the state to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed for a violation of the judge’s July 12 order when it did not release eighty of the photographs. The prosecutors said that they were concerned about a new state law that made the depictions of the killing of a person exempt from public record.

  Media attorney Gregg Thomas argued that the crime scene photographs should all be available for viewing because state law required the restriction of images of the actual killing, not photos from the crime scene taken a day later: “The photographs here are not of the killing—they’re not of Julie Schenecker pulling a gun and killing her son and killing her daughter.”

  * * *

  Calyx’s friends made an event out of attending the opening showing of the seventh and final movie in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2. They all ached that Calyx could not be there with them, so they went to the film with thoughts of her and in her stead.

  A Facebook page urged everyone to wear green attire in general, Harry Potter gear, their rubber Calyx wristbands—anything that indicated their support for Calyx. One hundred and sixty-one teenagers planned to do just that and go to the midnight showing at Muvico in New Tampa as July 14 bled into July 15.

  * * *

  The most monumental announcement, since news of the murder filtered out of Tampa Palms, arrived on Friday, August 12: Prosecutors submitted a terse statement that changed the complexity and time line of the criminal proceedings: “The State of Florida … gives notice to the defendant of the State’s intent to seek the death penalty for the murder of Beau Powers Schenecker and Calyx Powers Schenecker.”

  Traditionally, it has been difficult for prosecutors to get a death penalty sentence against any woman, and even more challenging when that woman was white and middle-class. Only 51 women have been executed in the United States since 1900—compared to 8,879 men. In addition, jurors have balked at deciding to give the most extreme punishment to women who kill their own children.

  Florida, one of thirty-five states with the death penalty, has shown no reluctance to enforce that sentence against convicted male inmates. However, although thirty women in Florida have been given a death sentence, to date only two have actually had the penalty executed—the sentences of the majority of the women were commuted to life.

  The first was Judias Goodyear Buenoano, nicknamed “The Black Widow.” She was sentenced to death for the 1971 arsenic poisoning of her husband. She also received a life sentence for the drowning murder of her paralyzed son in 1980. He was rendered a paraplegic after he’d been poisoned with arsenic. She was also convicted of the 1983 attempted murder of a fiancé and is suspected in the deaths of several of her boyfriends. She died in the electric chair on March 30, 1998.

  The second was Aileen Wuornos, in 2002, the first female to ever fit the FBI profile of a serial killer. She worked as a prostitute and, on at least seven occasions, chose to make money by killing and robbing her customers instead of or in addition to providing the agreed-upon services. She was convicted of murdering six of those men and received a death penalty sentence for each murder. She claimed that her victims had attempted to rape her and she only killed them in self-defense. She died of lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

  For a while, Tiffany Cole was the only woman on Florida’s Death Row. She went there in 2008 for the murders of a sixty-one-year-old couple, Carol and Reggie Sumner, whom Tiffany had buried alive after stealing their credit cards.

  The three other women now on Death Row made their appearance there in 2011: Margaret Allen, for torturing and killing her housekeeper; Ana Maria Cardona, for the torture murder of her three-year-old son, the first time in twenty years that a Florida woman received the death penalty for the murder of her child; and Emilia Carr, for the kidnapping and murder of Heather Strong, the ex-wife of her co-defendant, and disposing of her body in a shallow grave beside a storage trailer.

  Now Julie Schenecker faced the possibility of joining them on Death Row. Would her life be spared because of her social status, her military credentials, or her mental illness? Or would she become one of the small, infamous group of women sentenced to die for their crimes?

  * * *

  After receiving the decision from the prosecutors, Judge Ashley Moody gave the defense an additional five days to file their decision on whether or not they would pursue an insanity defense. Julie’s attorneys must have seen it coming, because they were ready. They filed that same day.

  The defense informed the judge that Julie could not discern between right and wrong when she shot her children on January 27: “She did not know what she was doing or its consequences. She did not know it was wrong and this was because the defendant was suffering from a mental infirmity, disease or defect, to wit: Bipolar Disorder with psychotic features.”

  Forty-six states—the exceptions being Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Kansas—allow some version of an insanity defense. The basis for most of these laws, including Florida’s, is the M’Naghten Rule, named for a Scottish woodworker, Daniel M’Naghten. He traveled to 10 Downing Street in London with a plan to assassinate Prime Minister Robert Peel, because M’Naghten believed that he was a target of a conspiracy between the head of the British government and the pope. M’Naghten inadvertently killed the prime minister’s secretary.

  Several psychiatrists testified at his trial and M’Naghten was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1843. An outraged public, which included Queen Victoria, led to the formation of a new legal standard: “In all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane … until the contrary be proved … and that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” In other words, acquittal was only possible if the defendant was mentally ill enough that he did not realize what he was doing was wrong.

  In Florida, recent legislation has made the task of the defense in this plea even more onerous by the adoption of that presumption of sanity clause. This amendment shifted the burden of proof in a case like Julie Schenecker’s from the prosecution to the defense, who are now required to demonstrate their client’s insanity with “clear and convincing” evidence.

  Many have questioned why we even need an insanity defense in the belief that all perpetrators should be treated the same in the courtroom. On her Fox TV show, Judge Jeanine Pirro said, “Insanity should not be used as an excuse for murder. It should only be considered in the sentencing phase after a verdict has been reached. At trial, the issue should be: Did she do it or didn’t she? If yes, find her guilty and convict her, then deal with the mental illness in the penalty phase. If we don’t and we turn our courts over to psychiatrists,
we are then ruled by the laws of madness.”

  We do, however, already treat those who commit the same crime in different ways when we view their responsibility or reasoning to be diminished. For example, a child who accidentally started a fire will not be prosecuted as an arsonist, even though the damage done could have caused a multiple loss of lives. The insanity defense provides the same type of moral balance in the justice system by allowing judges and juries to determine whether or not the mentally ill defendant was as “criminally responsible” as someone who was without that organically disordered thinking.

  Public perception has tended to be that the defense has been abused as a lame excuse for wrongdoing. To the contrary, the insanity plea has been entered in less than 1 percent of cases and acquittal has resulted in only 15 to 25 per cent of those cases.

  Adding to the limitations of the possibility of success for an insanity defense has been the fear that the verdict would release the defendant back into society. Time and again, expert commentators have spoken of jurors’ concerns about the societal cost of releasing a person back into the community when the individual’s mental illness seemed to indicate a strong probability of a reoffense. Typically, however, the insanity determination has been the equivalent of a life sentence more often than not. M’Naghten himself died after twenty years in a mental asylum.

  One thing was certain: Unless a plea bargain or some other event stopped the trial before it started, the clash would be epic. The death penalty, the most difficult prosecution goal to achieve, and the insanity defense, the least successful defense tactic, would do battle in a Florida courtroom for the life of Julie Schenecker.

  CHAPTER 43

  The favorite restaurant of Beau and Calyx Schenecker was the Grillsmith New American Grill in Wesley Chapel, beside the Shops at Wiregrass mall. Parker wanted to involve the restaurant in his fund-raising efforts for the Calyx and Beau Memorial Fund that he’d established through the Community Foundation of Tampa to recognize Bay area teenagers for their leadership, athleticism, and performing-arts abilities.