Sleep My Darlings

by Diane Fanning

  Parker approached Billy Grimm, the president of GrillSmith, about planning something special for the six locations in the Tampa Bay area. Billy agreed and they designed the Back to School Week fund-raiser in memory of the two children. School started on Tuesday, August 23, that year, and the event ran seven full nights, from Monday through Sunday.

  GrillSmith decided to donate 100 percent of the proceeds from the sale of Calyx’s favorite dish, Caribbean Pumpkin Crab Bisque soup, “rich and creamy with toasted almonds and a dollop of cream,” and Beau’s favorite appetizer, Spicy Thai Shrimp, “lightly battered, flash-fried shrimp tossed in sriracha aioli, served with a hot and sweet honey glaze.” Billy Grimm announced the plans and said that by donating all proceeds from the kids’ favorites at GrillSmith to their memorial fund “we not only bring awareness to the fund itself but also shine a light on the two amazing kids that, quite frankly, were taken away too soon.”

  Parker added his comments to the announcement, too:

  Calyx and Beau were devoted friends, classmates and teammates. They were everything a parent could ever ask for—responsible, loving and connected to those around them. Both were model citizens, standouts in the classroom and on the sports fields, and big fans of GrillSmith. My family and I would like to thank GrillSmith for their generosity and support. Relationships were ultimately important to Calyx and Beau and this opportunity along with friends to celebrate the lives of my exceptional children will be a fitting tribute to them. Calyx and Beau would be so humbled and honored by the generosity of so many.

  The event kicked off Monday night with a small group of teachers, principals, and students who knew Calyx and Beau gathered in a private room at the location both children liked to visit near their home. Parker was the host and his mother, Nancy Schenecker, was there to assist and honor her grandchildren.

  No one mentioned the horrible way that Calyx and Beau died. No one even whispered Julie Schenecker’s name. At Parker’s insistence, it was a celebration of his son’s and daughter’s lives: “Your presence tonight states a lot to us. It tells me your continued love for two people who I know loved you and you know loved you.”

  Saturday night was King High Day at the GrillSmith near the Shops at Wiregrass mall. It was a busy time for the staff at the restaurant as Caribbean Pumpkin Crab Bisque soup and Spicy Thai Shrimp flew out of the kitchen.

  Throughout the weeklong event, the six GrillSmith restaurants served 885 orders of Calyx’s favorite soup and 938 orders of Beau’s favorite appetizer, raising $10,500 for the memorial fund. “It is our privilege to be able to help in whatever way we can,” Billy Grimm said. “Our hearts certainly go out to the entire Schenecker family who are trying to heal from this tragedy.… Thank you to all who came out to support the memorial fund and celebrate Calyx and Beau’s lives.”

  * * *

  If life had gone on as it should have done, Calyx would have celebrated her seventeenth birthday on September 12, 2011. Her friend Sara Wortman repeated her actions from the year before, bringing red velvet cupcakes that she and her mother baked to school in honor of Calyx’s special day.

  On September 29 that year, Beau would have celebrated his fourteenth birthday. In honor of that day, Parker wrote a brief poem to his son, which he later shared on tribute Internet sites. He wrote that his son was missed by many and that he was proud to have been his father. He figuratively gave him “A box of 14 Krispy Kremes with a bow on it.” The last line of the poem harkened back to wonderful memories of their time together: “I love you son, Infinity + 1.” He signed it, “Love, Daddio.”

  CHAPTER 44

  On December 5, 2011, Ed Brennan and Arnold Levine filed a response to the civil case brought by Parker against their client Julie. In the first section of the complaint Brennan and Levine admitted the jurisdictional scope of the court and the paternity of both children but denied Parker’s role overseeing the estates of Calyx and Beau and asserted Julie’s Fifth Amendment privilege to not issue an answer about the way the two died.

  In the statement of facts, Julie agreed to the first two regarding her and Parker’s military service and marriage but denied that she and Parker agreed that Julie leave the army “to nurture and raise their children” and that he would make a career in the army.

  She claimed to have no knowledge of Parker’s military career, his deployments, and the need that created to relocate the family on several occasions. She acknowledged that the couple had purchased a home in Tampa but denied the agreement on which home to buy. She also denied that she and the children communicated with him by telephone during his recent absence.

  She again claimed Fifth Amendment protection for the facts relating to the purchase of the gun and the deaths of her children. She denied speaking to Parker on the telephone on January 24 or 25 and claimed no knowledge of the e-mail he sent about his arrival in Qatar or of his actions after the children had died.

  As to the counts filed in the suit, she claimed privilege on most points and, in addition, denied any knowledge of Parker’s emotional distress. At the conclusion of that section, Julie demanded that “the Plaintiff take nothing by virtue of the complaint” and that she be awarded “the reasonable costs incurred by her in connection with the defense of the suit to date.”

  The affirmative defense claims followed. The first one asserted that Julie “by reason of a mental disease and defect, did not know the nature or consequences of her actions and was incapable of distinguishing that which is right from that which is wrong.”

  Then, the bomb dropped.

  In her second affirmative defense, the document cited the “contributory negligence of Parker Schenecker.” Julie alleged that any damages suffered by her husband “were proximately caused by Plaintiff’s own negligence, both individually or as a beneficiary, [and] should be either barred or diminished in accordance with the degree of Plaintiff’s own negligence.” Parker, she claimed, bore responsibility because he left her “alone to care for their children … even though he was fully aware that…” she “had suffered for many years from mental disease or defect.”

  Following that claim, the document iterated the history of Julie’s marriage from her initial diagnosis during the year they were married, through all the occasions of hospitalization, drugs, and mental health treatment, to the expanded diagnosis ten years later. It stated that Parker further demonstrated his awareness of her diminished capabilities when, less than two weeks before the deaths of Calyx and Beau, he sent an e-mail to the family describing Julie as having “the judgment of a 10-year-old.”

  The document concluded with a damning statement:

  Because of Parker Schenecker’s knowledge of Julie Powers Schenecker’s mental infirmities, and because of their relationship as husband and wife, and as parents, Parker Schenecker owed a duty of care to Julie Powers Schenecker, Beau Schenecker and Calyx Schenecker, to see that Julie Powers Schenecker received proper care for her condition and infirmities. Parker Schenecker breached this duty by leaving Julie Powers Schenecker and his children all alone while he traveled overseas, thereby, by his conduct, creating a foreseeable zone of risk and harm to his children.

  After the filing, attorney Paul Sullivan told the St. Petersburg Times that they had hoped to not file a response until much later “to keep from riling up all the hard feelings,” but Julie needed to put up a defense:

  It was our sad duty to point how seriously mentally ill Mrs. Schenecker had been for so many years.… All through his marriage, he relied on people to help when she’s been bad off, but this time he didn’t.… It was partially negligence on his part that led to these children being left alone with their mother at a time when the dad, according to his own emails, could clearly tell she was a danger to herself and others.… At a period when she was perhaps at the very worst she’d ever been, he just left the country and took zero action to have anybody around to look after the children and look after Ms. Schenecker.

  The bluntness of his next comment shocked many: “
He sued his wife for divorce and sued his wife for wrongful death. It’s regrettable to come to this, but our position’s quite simply had he done something to help his wife in her hour of need, his children may not be dead now.”

  Lawyer Ed Brennan, speaking to the Tampa Tribune, added: “If it is determined that Julie has liability for the wrongful death of those children, then Mr. Schenecker has some culpability for the death of those children.… Why would you leave her alone? Nobody knows why he did what he did.… He had a drowning situation and rather than throwing her a life preserver he threw her an anchor.”

  Parker’s spokesperson dismissed the accusations from Julie’s civil suit legal team in a new statement release:

  While not surprised at Mrs. Schenecker’s response yesterday, Mr. Schenecker will continue to hold his ex-wife responsible for her horrific actions when she murdered their children last January. He remains undeterred in his efforts to forever honor Calyx and Beau’s memories through the foundation he created just days after their deaths. By court filing, it confirms Mrs. Schenecker would prefer to point the finger of blame at others while invoking her Fifth Amendment right. Mr. Schenecker is simply seeking justice to be served for his children and that their murderer be held responsible for her actions. So that he can truly focus on honoring the way they lived and by spending his time involved in things that were important to them.

  * * *

  The attack on Parker’s image did not send him into hiding. Ten days after the filed document became public, Parker appeared for a special presentation at Liberty Middle School.

  The student body, led by the efforts of the National Junior Honor Society and the Future Business Leaders of America groups at the school, had raised two thousand dollars that fall selling Butter Braid pastry. With Parker’s promised matching donation, it brought the total of their contribution to the foundation to four thousand dollars.

  About a hundred students attended, many far more dressed up than they would be for classes, along with school officials for the presentation for the oversized facsimile of a check. Parker was obviously moved. He had to pause during speaking to collect the overflow of his emotions. “Just remember that they are here with you. I cannot thank you enough.” Before he could finish, Parker’s voice cracked. After clearing his throat, he continued, “Let’s hope 2012 has calmer seas.”

  Parker left the ceremony with a difficult period of time lying ahead of him. In ten days it would be Christmas—the first Christmas in twenty years that he had no spouse by his side and no children bouncing with eager, energetic anticipation of the special day. The anniversary of two loved ones’ deaths, the one Parker would face in a month and a half, the birth dates of those deceased, but often most of all the Christmas holidays—these were land mines awaiting anyone in the throes of grief, and the first time they were experienced was the most challenging of all. Parker had to face his first experience with the holidays in December and then the first anniversary of his children’s deaths in January. It was not an ordeal anyone would envy.

  CHAPTER 45

  The advertisement for the house at 16305 Royal Park Court read: “Tampa Palms Beauty! Move-in ready. NOT a short-sale. Can close quickly.” It did not mention the tragedy that occurred there in January 2011. Although many people would consider it a material fact, something that would affect the buyer’s decision to purchase or the price offered, existing Florida law demanded that a murder committed in the home did not need to be revealed unless a direct question was asked.

  Stigmatized properties, like the Schenecker home, have had a long history of difficulty on the real estate market. The Clutter home, depicted in Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, may never sell at full value. The nine-thousand-square-foot villa with a swimming pool and private tennis courts where thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult drank vodka-and-barbiturate cocktails to end their lives in order to ascend to a spaceship riding along with the Hale-Bopp comet was valued at $1.6 million. When the owner could not move the property he gave it back to the bank. The bank sold it for just $668,000. After the sale, bulldozers moved in and demolished the home.

  In Colorado, the home where JonBenét Ramsey lived and died continued to be a white elephant on the market. Family members were the initial suspects after the death of the little girl on December 26, 1996, but even after they were cleared of any role in the crime the house remained tainted.

  Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz told USA Today, “People are superstitious. They’re afraid of bad luck or ghosts or that the house is cursed. Or they have a more rational concern that the tragedies will be more salient to them. It may be on their consciousness and decrease their joy in living.”

  That is one reason that some murder houses do not make it to the marketplace. In 1979, John Gacy’s house, in Norwood Park Township outside of Chicago, where he hid the bodies of twenty-nine of victims in the walls and crawl space, was totally demolished as law enforcement searched for every possible corpse. Nonetheless, even the empty lot sat unwanted for years before someone finally built a new house on it in 1988.

  Nearer to the Schenecker home, in Homosassa, the mobile home where John Couey raped and held Jessica Lunsford captive for three days was destroyed nine days before the fourth anniversary of Jessica’s abduction. It burned to the ground in a fire deemed suspicious by Citrus County officials.

  In St. Petersburg, just three days before Julie murdered her children, Hydra Lacy Jr. shot at police officers Jeffrey Yaslowitz and Thomas Batinger and a federal agent before killing himself. Yaslowitz and Batinger died from their injuries. Mayor Bill Foster ordered the demolition of the home because of both the health and safety issues it created as well as the desire to obliterate the constant reminder of the community’s loss.

  When a traumatic event like murder reverberated in the media, the sale often took a long time and reduced a home’s value by up to 25 percent. Overlay that fact with the down real estate market in Florida and Parker had a major challenge on his hands in his attempt to unload the family property.

  All things considered, he did very well. A home he paid $448,000 for in 2008, which was valued at $261,000 in 2010, was purchased by Anthony and Christine Betts, in late 2011, for $385,000, just a bit over its estimated worth.

  CHAPTER 46

  As if there were not enough distractions for the multiple courts involved in the Schenecker tragedy, another roadblock was revealed in the criminal proceedings on January 18, 2012. The state digital forensic lab had pulled ninety-three discs of data from the computers in the home. Both the prosecutor and the defense received full copies of these DVDs, but neither could read the data contained on them. By law, the state needed to provide all the evidence they had to the defendant—and when the formatting made the material unintelligible it was the equivalent of withheld information.

  The development bothered Judge Ashley Moody, who said, “My concern is in this new age of electronic data we’re not giving the defense so much data that it’s unsearchable.” She gave both sides an additional forty-five days to work on the problem, ordering them back to court on March 14 with progress reports.

  The state planned to process the data in-house using EnCase, the software for digital forensics that has been used by authorities across the country. The public defender’s office did not have access to that program or the staffing needed to extract the material or the funds required for both the previous requirements to perform that task themselves. They had no recourse but to turn it all over to a private firm to decipher.

  Before dismissing the court session, the judge reminded the state, “The defense needs data that is searchable and understandable.”

  The March date came and went without any progress. Everyone gathered back in front of Judge Moody on May 31. The judge wanted a strategy and time line. Julie’s attorneys were discouraging about the progress of the exploration of the contents of the computer. They complained about the seemingly infinite number of e-mails, searches, Facebook interactions, and mi
scellaneous items retrieved from the computers in the Schenecker household.

  The judge cut to the chase, asking the defense how many of the items they had read to date.

  Assistant Public Defender Robert Frasier said, “I read several this morning.”

  Judge Moody was clearly disturbed. “This morning? It’s been five months and you cannot even tell me what you’ve got?”

  “This is completely unprecedented. The manpower needed is almost impossible to predict,” Frasier said.

  “You tell me you just started looking this morning,” Moody chastised. “We need to make this a priority. Please put manpower on it. Put in the time that’s necessary.” She then ordered the defense and the prosecution to report back to her on July 12 about the data that they felt needed to be blocked from public release. She reminded both sides, “Deadlines are not requests. They are orders.”

  In early August, the judge finally had an answer to the volume of data in the five Schenecker computers. “The defense estimates 1,140,087 files will take approximately 2,071 hours or 51.78 weeks.”

  Judge Moody granted the Public Defenders’ Office one year to complete their review. No one knew, though, if it would be worth the effort. Would anything of evidentiary value be uncovered in the data? Would there be any new material that would further the state’s case or add to mitigating circumstances for the defense?

  * * *

  The one-year anniversary of the deaths of Calyx and Beau Schenecker arrived on Friday, January 27, 2012. The evening before, Betsey Giammattei uploaded a video of “Strange Little Running Girl,” with lyrics by Jacob Gassen and the music she had composed. The visual part of the presentation included illustrations created by Calyx’s good friend Jena Young. Beneath the screen, Betsey wrote: “It’s been a year, and a long year at that. We miss you both every day. Prayers go out to the Schenecker family, especially you, Mr. Parker. We love you so much and are amazed at your incredible strength.… This one’s for Calyx and Beau and your Harry Potter, running love.”