If Jason had all his camping gear, Ryan figured Jason’s mom had helped get it back. She’d bailed him out thousands of times. So, cool, they’d go in the morning. They planned until about eleven, and then Jason took off, saying he’d call Ryan by seven thirty.
Sara was grateful to see Jason looking so healthy, to see how genuinely excited both he and Ryan were about getting back to the woods, this time without alcohol and whatever else. They were going to drink water and bring a picnic and eat real food and go arrowhead hunting like normal people. A relief. Sara worked with special-needs kids, and there was no way she could be associated with what had been going on the summer before. Sara could see Ryan was relieved, too; as they cleaned up the dinner dishes, he kept saying, “I have my friend back, my normal, healthy, good friend. This is going to be normal like before all the crap happened, and we’re going to get back to being normal people.”
Jason walked a mile to his aunt’s house on Southwest Coquille Drive. She and his mom were still up watching TV. Jason talked with the sisters and then headed upstairs. He turned on the History Channel. He did not check his phone messages. Amanda had gotten in the habit of calling him late at night to say he had ruined her life or whatever she was upset about; that or she hung up, called, and hung up. If she called tonight, he was not going to answer.
Christine Duncan looked in on her son a little after midnight, saw he was asleep, and turned off the TV.
Ryan had set his alarm and was ready to go in the morning. But there was no call from Jason. Ryan tried his friend a bunch of times. Jason’s voice mail was full, as it always was. It seemed weird, though, that he wasn’t answering; Jason had been so excited the night before. Sara had seen it too, right? Sara assured Ryan that Jason had seemed ready to go, that Ryan had not misunderstood the plan.
Ryan’s anxiety ramped up as he called and called Jason’s phone—still to voice mail. Maybe he was falling back into the pattern of taking part in his friend’s crises, but Ryan felt there was really something wrong. He kept saying to Sara, “This is not normal. This is not right.”
Jason called just before eleven.
Sara heard Ryan in the hallway saying, “What are you talking about?” He was holding on to the wall, and then he was sliding down the wall, saying, “No, no, no, no, no.”
Sara reached for him, and the first thing she thought was, it’s Amanda. She’s done something; it was only a matter of time.
7
A scrum of people waited outside the Multnomah County Courthouse at 8:30 a.m. This was not the courthouse where Amanda had been arraigned the week before. That building, across the street, had a glass-faced lobby and the antiseptic feel of a corporate hotel. County court, by contrast, was a pile-on. News vans hogged the curb. Lawyers talked on their phones as they pulled open the heavy wood doors. Inside the entrance, a man in a Panama hat auctioned tax-foreclosed properties, and people waiting to go through security dumped backpacks and diaper bags onto the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt as though being here was a casual chore, like checking out at the grocery store. Matters as small as parking fines were settled here at circuit court, but so were death penalty cases.
The records room on the first floor looked like it had not changed much since the courthouse opened in 1914. A stack of paper slips waited to be filled out with half pencils, while young female clerks fetched files and made copies.
The file I requested was insubstantial. Its start date was May 23. Amanda’s intake papers included her birth date, 06-05-77, that she was female, and that she was white; she was in fact part Filipino, from her father’s side. The sections for Housing, Relationship, Alcohol/Drugs, Employment, and Mental Health were diagonally slashed and noted with the word “Refused.” Under Victim Relationship, it said, “vic’s are Δ’s children.” Amanda was Δ. A summary in full read, “Δ refused interview. Δ stated she did not want media attention and did not want the information to be public information. Δ has no prior criminal convictions.” The intake papers listed the eight charges against Amanda and the respective amounts of security: “NO BAIL + NO BAIL + NO BAIL + NO BAIL + NO BAIL + $250,000 + $250,000 + $250,000.” She was five feet five inches tall and weighed 120 pounds.
If Amanda had refused an interview, if “Δ stated she did not want media attention and did not want the information to be public information,” her actions spoke otherwise. Killing children in public said “spectacle.” Amanda made sure, whether she would live to see it or not, that she would be acknowledged.
The adjacent room, where I read Amanda’s intake file and made notes, was the size of a janitor’s closet, with a cafeteria table that took up most of the space and a copy machine that took quarters and which I had been told I could not use. A blonde in what looked like a homemade blouse moved from table to copy machine, apparently under no such constraints.
“Because I’m a paralegal,” she answered when I asked why she was allowed to make her own copies. I asked if additional records were housed elsewhere in the courthouse. She said there might be some on the second floor.
There were no additional records on the second floor, and the file I had covered only the events of the past week. Earlier records of Amanda and Jason’s separation and custody issues regarding Gavin were available at courthouses in neighboring counties. These and other documents showed the spiral of the past year. Jason moved out in June 2008. Amanda was left without resources. Jason and his mother suggested Amanda go on welfare. Jason began to take Eldon and Trinity to Eugene on weekends; on February 14, 2009, he did not bring them back as planned. On February 27, Amanda awarded sole custody of Gavin to his biological father, Nathan Beck. On March 2, Jason enrolled Trinity in school in Eugene. On March 20, Amanda filed for legal separation from Jason, citing irreconcilable differences. She also filed a temporary protective order of restraint, stating that “on or around February 10, 2009, Respondent [Jason Smith] and his mother took the children from my home down to Eugene to his mother’s home. The children have been there since that time. I did not give Respondent or his mother [permission] to move the children.” On March 23, in response to Amanda’s filing, a judge ruled that “until custody or visitation is determined by mediation or further order of the court,” the children’s schedules and living arrangements were not to be disturbed by either parent; they would stay with their father for now. On April 6, Amanda, her sister, and a police officer brought a court order to Trinity’s new school, took the girl, and registered her in a school near Amanda’s parents’ home, telling an administrator the “enrollment was to be kept confidential and her father was not to know where she was.” On April 21, a judge granted a temporary order of custody of both children to Jason. Amanda was given every-other-weekend visitation and permission to speak to her children by phone each night. She was not to see the children without Jason’s permission.
The progression showed children pulled from their home, from their half brother, from their mother; it showed Amanda losing ground and her retaliatory moves backfiring. Was it strategy or coincidence that Jason left her on her birthday, that the children were not brought home on Valentine’s Day? Why did she give up custody of her oldest child? As recently as August 2008, Amanda had gone to court to deny Nathan Beck additional time with his son. She had represented herself, countering family members who testified against her: her brother-in-law, who said she had a history of drinking and driving with the kids in the car; her grandmother, who said of Amanda, “She used to be a really good mother, and I’m sure she could be a good one again, but she’s going through problems and she’s drinking on a steady basis.” Amanda dismissed their concerns as “rubbish.”
“I think a glass of wine is good for the heart on occasion,” she had told the judge. “There’s nothing wrong with having that, just like Jesus did.”
This incident suggested an out-of-control woman, as did what appeared in the Oregonian on June 3, eleven days after Amanda’s arrest. An article titled “Police release timeline in the Amanda Jo Stott-Smit
h case” stated, “Interviews, public documents and timelines released by two city agencies reveal what investigators say was a fatal act of revenge against Stott-Smith’s estranged husband.”
Revenge made as much sense as anything else. It was neat, it had fire; we could roll it around in our mouths and feel the shape of it. Whether the families believed revenge was the whole story, part of the story, or not helpful in understanding the story, the public would not know. Through a third party, Jason released only a statement thanking the rescuers and saying, “His daughter is doing very well and he considers her recovery to be a miracle.” Nathan Beck’s attorney quoted Nathan as saying, “We are all saddened and shocked by the events that have taken place. Our prayers are with all the families involved in this tragedy.” Amanda’s family said nothing; there were no photos of them avoiding or confronting news cameras. None of Amanda’s friends came forward to express shock or condemnation. As to the kind of parent she was, we had only Amanda speaking on her own behalf from the court filing on March 20, 2009, nine weeks before Trinity and Eldon were dropped from the bridge.
“I am a stay-at-home mother,” she wrote. “In the afternoons I fed Eldon lunch, and played with him until it was time to pick his sister up. Many afternoons the three of us would go to the library together. I cared for my children 24 hours a day.”
8
May 26, 2009, Tualatin, Oregon
Sabrina Trembley pulled her car to the end of the car line for Living Savior Lutheran Preschool. If the car line had always bugged her—these were preschoolers, for goodness’ sake, so why in the world should parents not be allowed to walk their four-year-olds to class?—today she was especially annoyed. It had been only two days since Eldon was killed; were they expected to stay honeycombed in their cars and interact as little as possible?
Sabrina couldn’t do it. She couldn’t drive up like everything was normal and drop off her son. She swung the car around and parked in the church parking lot. It was a beautiful clear morning. She opened the car doors and sat there with Max. The car line looked longer than usual because the school doors had not opened on time. Sabrina was under the impression that teachers came early to pray together before school started. What could that have been like this morning, absorbing the news about Eldon while planning how to keep the kids happy all day?
When the doors opened, Sabrina saw how strained things were. The teachers wore grim half smiles while trying to sound ordinary: “Hi, Daphne. Oh, here’s Athena.” Their former classmate had been murdered by his mother, and yes, what Amanda had done was unspeakable, but did that mean they were supposed to act as though it had not happened?
Sabrina thought the email the school sent over the weekend, essentially a “we regret to inform you” note, had been vastly inadequate. Any sentient parent knew what happened. Amanda’s mug shot had been in every newspaper and on television. What disturbed Sabrina about the email, and again watching the children being escorted inside, was the sense that the murder was not going to be talked about. Did the faculty think that just because Eldon had been taken out of school in February—Sabrina was not sure why; something about his father taking him to Eugene—the children would forget him?
Max would not forget, and though Sabrina could not know as much in the car that morning, he never would. Six years later, he would cry in the back of a different car after being reminded of Eldon, of whom he would say, “He will always be four.”
Eldon had just turned four when the boys met at the start of the school year. There were seventeen children in the class at Living Savior. All the boys were rambunctious, grabbing each other and making loud noises, except for Max and Eldon. Both boys were on the small side, blond, quiet, and rules oriented. After a week or two at school, it became clear to Sabrina that her son had found his first best friend. Max came home jabbering about Eldon, how he had “the coolest lunchbox ever,” and could Sabrina ask Eldon’s mom where she got it? It had an alien on it. Sabrina had once watched the boys during chapel time; they took their spots on the little carpet squares the teachers laid out, while the boy next to them threw himself all over the floor. Sabrina had a photo of Max and Eldon in the Christmas pageant, standing over a cradle holding the baby Jesus, a Cabbage Patch doll in this incarnation.
Sabrina kept the preschool class photo on the refrigerator at home. Eldon, she thought, was the most adorable of the whole class, a cherub with big, round dark eyes and the apple cheeks of a young child. He looked a lot like his mother. Sabrina did not know Amanda well, only what she had gathered by attending class meetings with her. Amanda was striking, with a Native American or Hawaiian or Polynesian look and that beautiful hair. The first time Sabrina spoke with Eldon, she ran her hands over his hair; it was clipped very short, prickly, and soft. She was so happy to meet this boy her son was taken with, and she said, “You’re Eldon, hi!” And he had been sweet and quiet, very quiet.
Sketch courtesy of Sabrina Trembley
Only later would Sabrina think he was perhaps too quiet. Eldon had been so rules oriented, it made her wonder if he wasn’t a classic example of a child who was being hit. Sabrina had never seen any marks on him, but she knew about being silent, about trying to be invisible. Her own mother had been a teenager when Sabrina was born, had been immature and violent and used Sabrina as a pawn during a bitter divorce. Growing up with a volatile parent made you walk a tight and narrow path and read people quickly, and Sabrina wondered now whether every time Eldon had seen his mother, he’d had to read her in an instant to know if it was going to be a good moment or a bad moment. Or maybe there were issues with the father, whom Sabrina had never seen at school. The thought that Eldon might have been navigating abuse, without Sabrina keying into telltale signs, ran inside her like a hot river. If the school, or the other parents dropping off their kids this morning, did not feel compelled to memorialize him, she did.
The email from the school informing class parents of Eldon’s tragic death had arrived a half hour before Sabrina’s husband was leaving on a business trip for Europe. They had little time to discuss how they would tell Max. Sabrina waited until her husband got in the Town Car and drove off, and then she sat Max down. She made it as simple as she could. She said, “I have some bad news.” He asked her if that was why she was crying. She said yes and that she wanted to let Max know that Eldon had died. He was up in heaven, and he could not come back.
Max started to cry and asked what happened. She said that Eldon had drowned in the river. She did not go further than that; it just seemed pointless. Max was crying in a way she had never heard, and she realized her five-year-old was in mourning. Everything about this was wrong. Then he said, “Can we write a letter to his mother? I want her to know how much I liked Eldon.”
Sabrina let this sink in and said yes, and did Max know that people could get mail in heaven? She was winging it—she sent Max to a church school out of convenience, not conviction—but what could she say?
The next day they bought three balloons and drove to the Sellwood Bridge. It was not fun being there. The walkway was stupidly narrow, and Sabrina could not see Amanda walking there at night with her children. It was a long enough slog in the daytime, holding her son by one hand, the balloons in another. She could not imagine this walk if Max had been tired or resisting, and she flashed on an image of Amanda on the phone with her husband: Amanda screaming, and in a snap, stopping the car . . .
Max stopped. It was time to let the balloons go; he had tied his letter to the strings. He released the balloons, and they flew straight up, as though they had been plucked into the sky.
“My sadness,” he said, “flew away with the balloons.”
But Sabrina knew he was angry, too, because he said to her later, “Why did his mom let him swim in the river? Why wasn’t she watching him?” He was asking Sabrina why Eldon’s mother had not been doing her job. What could she say? That this will never happen to you? Sabrina could not fathom that Amanda thought this would happen to her children. Unlike t
he class mother who later wrote that she “got an immediate gut feeling that she [Amanda] was a very bizarre woman—her behavior was very strange,” Sabrina did not see Amanda as strange. She saw her as a broken person, someone who did not believe anybody loved her; someone who threw everything she loved off the bridge in order to punish herself, to punish her soon-to-be ex-husband, to punish life.
Six days after Eldon’s murder, there was a graduation ceremony for the preschool class. Sabrina could see not announcing Eldon’s death, but not even a subtle honoring of the fact that he had been their classmate? No. Eldon’s name had been taken off the list. When the pastor spoke, he made no mention of the loss of a child, no “let us remember those who aren’t with us,” nothing.
After the ceremony, Sabrina went to the classroom, to a wall of more than two hundred photos of the children. At the end of the year, parents could take any they wanted. Sabrina knew there were pictures of Eldon; she had seen them throughout the year, including one of him sitting in Amanda’s lap the first day of school. What she found was that all the photos of Eldon had been removed.
9
An estimated five hundred children are killed by their parents each year in the United States, according to homicide data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This number has been static for decades. It is also unreliable and certainly low. The picture of parents killing their children is anathema to most people and makes us susceptible to seeing even the suspicious death of a child explained away: the infant died in her sleep, the child struck his head falling off the coffee table, and who are you to say it did not happen this way? Unless a filicide, the killing of a child by a parent or stepparent, is committed in public, we may not hear about it at all, the circumstances of anonymous people killing their kids too tawdry, too sad, too somehow private to report on. The news you read this week is unlikely to include ten children being murdered by their parents.
To the Bridge Page 4
