by Leslie Rule
Dee also loved horses, and when she was a teenager, she often skipped school to ride Patches, the family’s black-and-white horse. “Dee didn’t like school,” Camila recalls. “She didn’t do the work, so she flunked a grade and ended up in the same class as one of our sisters who was almost a year younger. She wasn’t dumb, but she had trouble in school. She was restless, and it was hard for her to focus.”
Dee fell in love with Greg Carowe, who was a couple of years ahead of her in school. They married when she was eighteen and soon had two sons. Dee was excited when they bought a cozy house with a yard for the boys to play in. The new home was in Comstock, Michigan, on Azuba Avenue, a quiet street, shaded by trees. Greg worked as a cook at a psychiatric institution, while Dee cared for their sons. One night, Greg failed to come home, and Dee was frantic with worry. “She tried to find him and called his relatives,” remembers Camila. “They told her he was okay but wouldn’t tell her where he was. She never saw him again.”
Greg abruptly stopped supporting his family and filed for divorce. He moved to Florida and married a woman Camila suspects he’d been carrying on with while married to Dee. History was repeating itself. Dee’s husband had left her and the children, just as her father had abandoned his family. Not only was Dee emotionally shattered, she was all alone with two small boys and no way to support them. She lost the house, applied for welfare and moved to an apartment.
When Dee met Alva Jenkins, six years older than she was, he might have told her he was one of ten kids, but he probably did not mention that he was an ex-con. A few years earlier, in November 1967, he’d been convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child and had spent nearly three years behind bars. The age of Alva’s victim is unknown. Perhaps he’d molested a small child, or maybe he’d been intimate with a teen just weeks shy of the legal age of consent. These are two entirely different types of scenarios, and without more specific information, Al’s trustworthiness in interacting with children is difficult to gauge. But that wasn’t the only issue. He was a violent alcoholic. That alone was a good enough reason for Dee to avoid him. If she recognized that Al had problems, she might have believed she could help him. She was, after all, “The fixer.” While he appeared sweet in the beginning, she soon realized he had a temper and no qualms about hitting women. Dee came to fear Al, but it seemed safer to stay with him than to test the limits of his rage by attempting to flee.
“They didn’t have shelters for battered women back then,” Camila stresses. When authorities became aware of Al’s abusive presence in Dee’s home, they took her sons away. Greg’s new wife didn’t want the boys, so they were placed in foster care. Dee was devastated. She wanted her sons back and tried to break up with Al. It was a difficult situation. She had lost her welfare benefits when the kids were taken, and Al was supporting her with his job at a foundry. Dee couldn’t go home because her mother was furious at her for “living in sin” with Al.
Sometimes Dee got her hopes up when Al promised to change. He would quit drinking. He would never hit her again. Together they would fix everything and bring her boys home. But he always broke his promises, and she blamed herself for making him mad. “It’s my fault,” she told one of her sisters. “Everything that’s happened is my fault.” As much as she wanted her sons with her, she may have felt they were better off in foster care.
Dee’s situation became more complicated when she got pregnant again. “But Dee was excited when Shanna Kay was born,” says Camila. “She was so happy to have a daughter.” The birth of his daughter brought out a tender side of Al. He adored Shanna Kay and was gentle with her. The little girl was still in diapers when Dee got pregnant with George. Camila insists Al was good to the children, but he was cruel to Dee. The smallest thing sent him into a rage.
Dee often asked her sisters to come get the kids so that they could play with their cousins. Camila believes she did this to prevent her toddlers from witnessing Al’s drunken rampages. But the children did witness violence. Even if they were in another room when he attacked their mother, the little ones heard Al’s shouting and Dee’s shrieks when he hit her. Once, when Camila and her husband, Gary, were picking up Shanna Kay and George, Dee handed Camila a change of clothing for the kids. Al barked, “I don’t want them wearing those old clothes!”
“They’re going to be playing outside,” Dee explained. “I don’t want them to get their nice clothes dirty.”
“He hit Dee hard in the face,” Camila remembers. “I started crying, but she told me, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.’ My husband told Al that if he ever hit Dee again that he’d beat him up.” Al backed down when Gary challenged him. But Gary couldn’t always be there to protect his sister-in-law, and Al didn’t change his ways. Sometimes Dee feared Al, sometimes she pitied him, and too often, she blamed herself for making him angry.
One of the most traumatic moments of Camila’s life was identifying her sister after the accident. She recognized her only by her hair style and was still reeling from the shock when her family gathered at the hospital. The ambulance had brought Dee there, even though she hadn’t survived. “My little nieces wanted to know where Dee was,” remembers Camila. “I tried to comfort them and said, ‘Dee passed away. She’s in Heaven now.’ ”
“Don’t lie to them!” Ruthie Anne snarled. “She is in Hell!”
Camila stared at her mother. How could she say such a horrible thing about her own daughter? Why couldn’t she forgive her, even in death? Did she really believe that kind hearted Dee was in a place so horrible that their mother had had to scratch the word for it off the record album cover?
Camila was overwhelmed with grief over the loss of her sister, and it hurt even more when the facts came to light. She alleges that her sister’s tragic death was not covered in the news and that Troy Samuels faced no criminal charges because his family was influential in the Kalamazoo community. “The Samuels were from Illinois. Troy was not allowed to drive there because of his seizures. They moved to Michigan so that he could get a driver’s license, and he lied on the application about his medical condition.”
Dee’s family sued the negligent driver. “My mother asked for $50,000, and the settlement was to go to Dee’s children. But Troy’s attorney stood up in court and said my sister wasn’t worth anything.” Camila was standing near the attorney, and when she heard him make his callous statement, she was so infuriated, “I smacked him in the face.”
Troy’s insurance company settled for $20,000, but it’s unknown if the money was set aside for Dee’s kids. Grandma Ruthie Anne and two of Dee’s sisters wanted to adopt the kids, but the social workers refused to allow any of them to see the children again. Dee’s sisters claim that Troy Samuels continued to drive and worked delivering beverages for his parents’ business. Dee’s sister, Victoria, ran into him once at the grocery store when he was making a delivery via his van. “He was so shocked to see me, he dropped the case of drinks he was carrying.” Dee’s family is understandably bitter about her fate, but no documentation has been found to prove or disprove their allegations.
Victoria was the last to glimpse Shanna Kay and George. Weeks after Dee’s death, Victoria was at a Kalamazoo bowling alley when she heard the sweet peal of children’s voices, calling “Aunt Victoria!” She turned to see Shanna Kay and George, running toward her, their faces lit with joy. The children threw their arms around her knees, but an angry woman was right behind them and roughly grabbed the kids by their arms, “yanking them away.” She spoke harshly to Victoria, “You stay away from them!”
Victoria stood frozen, dumbfounded, as her niece and nephew were dragged away. The children were sobbing and must have been so confused. Their entire family had vanished from their lives, and they had been so excited to see their aunt. Victoria assumed that the hostile woman was the children’s new foster mom, but there hadn’t been time to ask questions. Victoria never saw the kids again.
If Alva Jenkins tried to get custody of the motherless children, Camila and
Victoria never heard about it. Despite his alcoholic stupor, he surely must have been aware that his prior conviction and history of violence would preclude him from gaining custody. While online records of his address history are unclear, Camila insists that Al stayed in the apartment he had once shared with Dee—that for nearly three decades he mourned the woman he’d mistreated, eventually “drinking himself to death,” as the walls closed in around him. Whenever Camila ran into Al around town, he was always drunk and mistook her for her dead sister. Overcome by emotion at the sight of Camila, Al cried out, “Dee! Dee! I miss you, Dee!” It was a pitiful display and made Camila extremely uncomfortable.
If the man carried a crushing guilt, it was well deserved. Dee had lost all four of her children because of his abuse, and probably would not have been on the sidewalk at that deadly moment if not for that. Dee had, after all, gone to the laundromat as part of her preparation for the children’s return.
But when it comes to fate, so many things must occur to achieve a particular outcome, and the smallest event can change everything. If Dee had dallied at the laundromat another moment, she would likely be alive today. Nothing can change the past, though Shanna Kay’s aunts wish that they had the power to alter it. They were surprised to learn that their niece eventually ended up with the Parsnoll family in Battle Creek, Michigan. Not only did they know of the Parsnolls, Victoria had been to their home on more than one occasion, and had met foster parents, Jack and Nannette Parsnoll, but it had never occurred to her to look for Shanna there.
Before Shanna landed at the Parsnolls’ home, she first spent time with at least one other foster family, and many years later, she would claim she suffered abuse in at least one of the homes she’d been placed in. If indeed she had been abused, it probably did not occur at the Parsnolls’ home. Victoria knows for a fact that Shanna didn’t live with the Parsnolls until at least a year after Dee’s death, because in a strange coincidence, Victoria’s own two daughters were placed with the Parsnolls before Shanna Kay was sent to live there. Victoria realized only recently that the niece she’d spent so many years searching for had lived for most of her childhood with people Victoria had met.
Shanna Kay’s aunts claim that a male social worker, who was later accused of abusing children, had unfairly picked on their family, removing some of their kids because of urine stains on mattresses and other so-called offenses they consider minor. Victoria’s two daughters, Christie and Gillian, were sent to the Parsnolls’ home, and Victoria was allowed to visit them there. “I can’t say the Parsnolls abused us,” says Christie, who was not yet school age when she spent months living there. “But they were kind of unusual.” She recollects that her little sister was forced to stand in the corner, facing the wall because she refused to eat the split pea soup they had served for dinner, and was later sent to bed hungry. Christie also recalls that Patsy Parsnoll, Nannette and Jack’s biological daughter, picked on Gillian. Whenever Patsy pinched Gillian or pulled her hair, Christie rushed to protect her little sister and retaliated by doing the same to Patsy. But Christie usually got caught and ended up getting punished.
The most upsetting thing to occur in the foster home nearly cost Gillian her life, though Nannette Parsnoll claims she doesn’t remember the incident. An older foster child, Shelly, a girl of about nine or ten, allegedly tried to drown Gillian in the bathtub. According to Victoria, Nannette Parsnoll walked in and discovered Shelly, holding the little girl’s head under the water. “Gillian had turned blue,” Camila remembers. “She went to the hospital by ambulance.”
When Victoria learned her daughter had nearly died, she raised a ruckus, and says the disturbed girl was removed from the Parsnolls’ home. Prior to the near drowning, the Parsnolls were apparently unaware that Shelly was dangerous, and Victoria doesn’t blame them for what occurred, but she was very glad to regain custody of her children. Shanna Kay’s aunts insist their children were safer with them than in any foster home, and they believe that Shanna Kay would have been far better off with family than with strangers.
But Shanna’s aunts concede there may be a genetic component to their family’s violence, for she is not their first relative to be incarcerated for brutal crimes. While several male relatives have violent histories, it is interesting to note that Shanna has a first cousin, a few years younger than she, who is currently serving time for a vicious attack. Henrietta was arrested in Michigan in 2016, a few months before Shanna. At one time a beautiful woman, fresh faced with even features and long, dark hair, a series of mugshots show a quick progression of aging, probably a result of hard living. In the summer of 2016, Henrietta attacked her boyfriend, Bob, with a board, splitting his head open and breaking his ribs.
“He pulled a knife on her first, and they were drunk,” Henrietta’s mother, Jean, explains. “Bob didn’t want to press charges, but it wasn’t up to him.” Henrietta was given a maximum sentence of ten years. Bob has forgiven her, and he is patiently waiting for her release. He is about thirty years older than Henrietta, but only five feet tall, and at 5′8″, Henny not only towers over him, she outweighs him by seventy pounds. “I don’t know what happened to her,” Jean says sadly. “She used to be normal. She was in the Peace Corps.”
While Jean recalls that her daughter was once a gentle soul, another relative remembers that this was not the first time she reacted violently, and they claim that when she was a young girl, Henrietta once hit another child with a shovel.
While Shanna’s biological family seems to have more than their share of dysfunction, there are a number of relatives who were very good people, including Camila’s only daughter, Sherry, and granddaughter, Arianna. Camila lost both in separate accidents, just one month apart in 2014.
Arianna would literally give someone the shirt off her back. The teen was waiting for the school bus one icy morning when she noticed a girl, shivering, without a coat. Arianna peeled off her sweatshirt and gave it to her. When Arianna was only twelve, she heard about a campaign to encourage people to become organ donors. She immediately wanted to sign up, and she took it upon herself to get the paperwork and fill it out. At her young age, parental consent was required, so after her mother signed, Arianna mailed the form.
When Arianna lost her life at age fifteen in the car accident, several people’s lives were saved because she was an organ donor. Camila is rightfully proud of her granddaughter. She taught good values to her kids and granddaughter, and she believes that if she had been allowed to raise Shanna, things might have turned out differently. If indeed Shanna’s problems are a result of both nurture and nature, it’s possible that the right nurturing could have made a difference. Would Shanna have lived a more gentle existence if her Aunt Camila had raised her? No one will ever know.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN THE WIND IS RIGHT, Battle Creek, Michigan, residents can step outside and inhale the sweet scent of toasting cornflakes. The brothers Kellogg invented the cereal by accident in a Battle Creek sanitarium in 1894 while trying to create healthy meals for patients. Will left some boiled wheat out too long, and when it got stale, he and brother John tried to turn it into dough but ended up with flakes. They toasted it, the patients loved it, and breakfast of the future was born.
Also known as Cereal City, Battle Creek is still the headquarters for Kellogg’s, the breakfast giant currently employing over 35,000 worldwide. Over the years, thousands of locals have toiled in the Battle Creek plant, including Shanna’s foster father, Jack Parsnoll. He and Nannette raised a houseful of kids, most foster or adopted, and Shanna would one day complain she felt stifled by her foster mother’s religious views. It couldn’t have been too uncomfortable, however, because Shanna continued to depend on the family into adulthood, even living with them for a while after Kellogg’s transferred Jack to Omaha in the mid-1990s.
The Parsnoll family had suffered losses over the years, and Nannette credits her faith for giving her the strength to get through it. She was a teen in 1975 when she lost her older si
ster in a snowmobile accident, and the family was rocked again when Shanna’s foster grandmother, Elsie Parsnoll, was murdered at age forty-six in January 1981. Elsie’s ex-boyfriend, Drake Leeds, was ten years her junior, and in what sounds very much like stalker behavior, followed her into a Battle Creek lounge, pulled out a gun, and shot her in the side. Elsie was rushed to the hospital but died during surgery. Leeds pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to ten to fifteen years in prison. Shanna was five when her foster-grandmother died, too young to fully understand the tragedy.
When Shanna was barely twenty, she married Arthur Drune, and the couple lived for a while in Delton, Michigan. She was divorced by the time she was twenty-two, but didn’t bother to mention her past to Raymond Strahan when they began dating. Raymond had always trusted the opinions of both his mother and his stepmother. They were smart women, and he knew they had his best interest at heart. He appreciated their advice—until the day he introduced them to his new girlfriend. Neither of them liked her.
It was the spring of 1997, Raymond was twenty-two and infatuated with the dark-haired lady, so petite he says “she weighed ninety pounds, soaking wet.” He thought the elder ladies were wrong about Shanna, and he was offended. Shanna, too, was insulted when he relayed their comments to her, something he now realizes was not his smartest move. “At the time I was naïve,” he recalls. Shanna was mad when she learned his family didn’t like her, and her interactions with them grew more tense.
