Tales of the Crazy

by Charles L Cole

  There was a complete absence of decency or any shame for what he had done. I knew this guy would be in and out of the legal system for the rest of his life if he didn’t straighten out. He had to go through mandatory drug testing when released, but he bragged to us how he had hidden a joint and lighter in a plastic bag under a boulder next to the Washtenaw jail. His plan was to celebrate his short-lived freedom by getting high when released. What a fool.

  When we arrived at the court, the cops led us into jail cells that held six people each. They unchained us but kept the handcuffs and leg shackles on.

  At nine thirty, it was my turn to be arraigned. A cop led me into the courtroom; I was still wearing the prison jacket, handcuffs, and leg shackles. My parents watched me from the back of the courtroom when I was brought in. My mom was crying, and my dad was very upset. Being led out in chains to court in front of my parents was very hard to take, but at this point, I was emotionally drained and numb. I had tried to do the right thing by staying true to my marriage vows to God and not ending the marriage; being thrown in jail was the consequence of not divorcing her sooner. Keeping my marriage vows had done nothing but cause misery to me and my family due to her unrepentant lying and out-of-control behavior.

  The arraignment was very brief and took only five minutes. Jess was there, standing next to the prosecutor. She argued with the prosecutor that this was all wrong and I should not have been put in jail. The court ordered her to be quiet. There was absolutely no consideration from the court that I could be innocent. The judge, Charles Pope, scheduled another court appearance for August 11 and set a $5,000 bail, but 10 percent paid would release me immediately. I also got a no-contact order with Jess and was banned from my home. I had to submit to a drug test. Dad paid the $500 bail right away. I thought I would be released right then, but I was transported back to the jail in chains with the same group I had been brought in with.

  Judge Pope was the magistrate who had ruled on the old small claims case with Jess’s store. I wondered if he recognized Jess and me.

  When I was taken out of the chains and put back in the jail’s common area, a bunch of people surrounded me and wanted to know if I had gotten off with a PR or not. It was clear that they were expecting me to get off with the PR or even be released with no charges because I was white. Their hostile attitude toward me was very evident. I held up the arraignment paperwork showing a $5,000 bail, which also showed that I had to take a mandatory drug test within a week as a condition to continue being out of jail on bail.

  They were shocked. One guy, who seemed to be the loudest ringleader of the group, yelled, “What the fuck!” He pointed at me and then addressed the rest of the people in jail and said, “This nigger right here—never been arrested, never done anything wrong in his life, but these motherfuckers just want his money just because he is rich.” He pointed at the cops behind the counter when he made the money comment.

  Many others came up to me to say things like, “We got your back, nigger; those assholes are just fucking with you.” This was the first time I had ever been called a “nigger” by black men or anyone else in my life. The situation went from them being hostile, thinking I was going to get preferential treatment because I was white and rich, to them thinking I was being screwed by the system because I had money the county could take. My situation reinforced their belief that there was no justice. It was a very surreal experience. The guy who had torched the construction vehicles got off with a PR, even with a previous arrest record. He was unemployed with no income. This was unreal, and there was a lot of truth in what the other guys said that I got screwed only because I had the means to pay.

  After being transported back to the jail, I was supposed to be released. That didn’t happen until eight hours later. The court sent my release paperwork to the jail within an hour of the arraignment, and I saw my folder containing the release order on the counter. The cops did nothing, and the paperwork just sat there. They knew my seventy-nine-year-old parents were waiting there to pick me up, but they refused to do anything about it. I asked what the holdup was, and the only response I got was, “I don’t know.”

  Another four hours went by, I asked again and reminded them that my seventy-nine-year-old parents had been waiting all this time, but they still did nothing. Other inmates were also getting angry because they were supposed to be released too. A couple of them were so outraged about my situation, since they knew I was being “fucked” by the court and the cops, that they even told the cops I should have been released by now. The real reason was that the cops waited for the next shift to take care of it. My view of the police really went downhill, and I thought of them as a bunch of lazy assholes.

  It was clear that they didn’t care about following the court order to release me. They were ordered to release me, but they held me in jail in violation of the court order. I fully understood a reasonable wait period to process paperwork, but eight hours was pure negligence on their part. After experiencing all these events, I understood the other inmates’ hatred of cops.

  At 6:00 p.m., they finally released me. I hadn’t been given anything to eat that I could have for twenty-four hours. I had only a carton of milk and an apple the whole time. Earlier, I had told the sergeant in charge that I couldn’t eat all the sugary food, rice, and starch they gave everyone due to my high blood sugar, but nothing was done. I even asked if I could get some peanut butter, but he ignored me. Asshole.

  I asked my parents if they knew why the cops had held me so long. Dad said they had asked the cops multiple times. The cops had given them same lame excuse, saying, “I don’t know.” This further reinforced my thoughts of them as assholes—this time lying and lazy assholes. I was definitely not in a good mood.

  Because the court had banned me from my own home and given me a no-contact order, Dad had gone to the house earlier to get clothes and personal items and to drive my pickup to the jail so I could stay at their home. My parents told Jess about the no-contact order, but she drove up to the jail anyway with other things she thought I might need. I was sitting in Mom’s Ford Escape in the parking lot at the jail while Dad got the stuff Jess had put in her car for me.

  Jess was crying and came up to my window. She said, “This isn’t my fault.”

  Still sitting in the passenger seat of the Escape, I held up the no-contact order and said that I had been ordered to have no contact and she couldn’t be here. She replied it was not fair and again said this was not her fault. I felt nothing but contempt for her, due to all the problems she had caused for my family and me. Her tears meant nothing. Her words were just the same thing I had heard repeatedly throughout the years from her: “It’s not my fault.” The thing was, it was her fault; it always had been, but she would never change and would always play the victim card.

  Being out of jail was a relief, but I had a lot of stress knowing there was a long, hard road ahead. I was not sure of my future. If this DV charge didn’t go away, I could lose my job—I could lose everything. I had to plan my next course of action very carefully. I went to work the next day, Friday, and told people what had happened. They could not believe this could happen to someone like me. I was worried some might ask if I had ever been violent to Jess. But everyone told me there was no way I could be capable of this, and they all believed I had gotten caught up in the system because of Jess. Some women came up to me over the next few weeks and said that, even though they had met her only once or twice, they felt something was wrong with Jess.

  After work, I called for a civil standby at our house. This is when a police officer must be present for a person to come near another person when there is a no-contact order. I had to get my computer, clothes, and other personal items for a long stay away from the house. Jess wanted to give me a hug after I packed my things, but the cop said no and told her she had to keep her distance. Jess knew I was very upset and pissed off, so she didn’t say much. She tried again to explain that this was not her fault. She told me she had left the house
only to talk with Laura, Travis’s wife, and had been very angry that I wouldn’t talk to her the night I was arrested. Jess claimed that Laura had called the police, and it was because her husband, Travis, was a cop that I was arrested. Jess claimed she hadn’t said anything that would get me arrested.

  I got my stuff packed in my F-150, and when I left, Jess said we would work this out and she was on my side. Part of me wanted to tell her that I didn’t believe a word she said, but I had to play it cool until this DV mess was over. I had to keep her on my side for now to get the charges dropped. I told Jess we would work this out together and I’d be home soon.

  I spent the weekend trying to come to terms with what had happened. I went to church on Sunday. Jess was not there. Good. I didn’t want to see her anyway. I told a couple of people what had happened, and they were shocked. One person walked up mid-conversation and asked, “What did Jess do now?”

  I got nothing but support, and they all knew Jess had caused this. It was a great relief knowing I had so many people who knew my character and had no doubt that I had done nothing wrong. I asked if they knew any good attorneys and got some recommendations. One man at church, Stan, was an attorney, and I asked him about this situation. Stan confidently said he could take care of this. He also said this was not about guilt or innocence; it was all about the amount of money the county could take from me and about the prosecutor getting another successful prosecution on her record. More successful DV prosecutions would get more federal dollars coming in. I told Stan, “Let’s do this,” and he took on the case as my defense attorney.

  Back at my parents’ house, I started writing a detailed diary on my PC, beginning with the Kansas incident. I had to keep a detailed and accurate time line of what had happened to use as part of my defense. Mom wrote a letter describing what had happened in Kansas as an example of Jess’s out-of-control behavior and the way she started conflicts. This last situation with Jane was what had sent Jess off the deep end. Mom told me Jess was claiming it was Jane’s fault I’d been put in jail. What the hell was this woman thinking to justify this line of reasoning? It was crazy, and Jess was in complete denial of what she had done.

  Both Mom and Dad were talking on the phone to Jess, trying to get information for me. They said Jess was blaming everyone else for this situation. Mom was very worried for me and upset at Jess for whatever lies she had told that got me arrested. We didn’t know what Jess had said to the cops yet, but I expected the worst from her. Mom said Jess would not fess up to what she had told the cops, and then Mom told me not to believe a word Jess said. We all agreed that if Jess had told the truth and acted sane, this arrest would not have happened. Mom was still upset at Jess for not apologizing for her out-of-control behavior, yelling profanities and obscenities at Jane in Kansas, and putting her between Jess and Jane. Jane did apologize to Mom and said she should have handled it better.

  The dangerous fact now was that I believed Jess had convinced herself that her fantasies and lies were the truth. She was not capable of seeing reality at this point and was in a full-blown victim mentality, hating anyone who did not believe her.

  Before all this mess, Mom really had tried to be a counselor to Jess, and she had kept a lot to herself because she wanted my marriage to work. With Mom being raised Catholic and then becoming a very conservative Lutheran, she never wanted me to divorce Jess, but at this point, even she knew it had to end or my life would be destroyed. Mom and I spoke at length about how I had honored my vows, but Jess had not.

  Mom showed me an e-mail Jess had sent to Stan on Friday, August 1, the day after I was released on bail. Jess had forwarded this e-mail to Mom, trying to prove she was trying to help me. I had no idea Jess had been talking with Stan about this DV case. Her rambling e-mail was pure madness. She started off with four different links to articles about diabetes and mood swings. She also wrote this:

  3.Prosecutor just called, she is really out to get him...she didn’t not listen to me at all. She said that she only listening to the police report which I asked her for a copy, but she refused to give it to me before the hearing day. She said something about he broke my neck... he never done such a thing. That was on a police report.

  4.Is there any way that I can get the police report, because it sounded like police exaggerated the report.

  5.I asked them to talk to my husband, not arrested him. The police lied to me that I can drop the charge, but I’ve never signed any paper. They tricked me in some questions.

  In the last paragraph of her e-mail, Jess claimed I had an illness and needed help. She thought she had not done anything wrong. She seemed completely delusional and incapable of realizing she was the cause of this mess.

  She wrote in the last paragraph, “My ex-husband whom was very abusive...I married him for a wrong reason. I ran away before I married him and ran away during the time I was married to him. The time that we actually spent together was less than a year. If you asked me why I stay with my husband for 13 years, because there were so many good years and many good days. I am looking for the day that he is aware of his illness and get help, so we can have many more good years.”

  Ten

  From Bad to Worse

  The drive back and forth to work in Dearborn from my parents’ house in Hartland was horrible. By leaving at 5:30 a.m., I could get to work in an hour, but coming home in traffic took an hour and thirty minutes. It sucked. It was forty-five miles one way, and driving my F-150 in city traffic was a lot more expensive with fuel costs. I was considering selling the truck and getting another Focus to save money. I normally commuted to work in our 2003 Focus. It was a great vehicle, got good fuel economy, and had no major mechanical issues.

  I sent Pastor Dannor at St. Paul an e-mail wanting to get in touch with him and talk about everything that had happened. He did a lot of marriage counseling at church.

  Mom had laser surgery on her throat on Monday, August 4. She had a tracheotomy tube put in so that she could breathe while healing. Thirty years earlier, she’d had thyroid cancer, and scar tissue built up in her throat after she had surgery to remove the thyroid gland. She’d had a laser procedure done fifteen years ago to remove this scar tissue, but it had come back again. I was really worried that the severe stress she was under with my DV case would create complications.

  I was at work when Dad took her home two days later in the morning. Later in the afternoon, my dad called me. He was hysterical and crying. Something had come up from her lungs, lodged in her throat, and blocked her airway. Her heart had stopped, and the paramedics were rushing her to St. Joseph Hospital. I left work immediately to head to the hospital. The weight of this, combined with the past few days of dealing with my false arrest, hit me hard, and I was crying during the drive to the hospital. The thought of losing my mom was horrible.

  When I arrived at the hospital, I found out what had happened. A hard mass of mucus had blocked her airway below the tracheotomy opening, and the suction machine my dad and mom had for her throat had not been able to remove it. She had collapsed from lack of oxygen, and my dad had immediately called 911. Her heart had stopped, but the paramedics were able to restart it. The paramedics had a difficult time getting the throat clear to get air in her lungs, and it was possible that she had been without oxygen for up to twenty minutes. Her brain shut down during transport to the hospital due to lack of oxygen.

  When she arrived at St. Joseph, they immediately cooled her down to ninety degrees to help prevent further brain damage and to aid healing. At this temperature, brain function is minimized, and brain healing will best occur. The nurses carefully monitored her vital signs, and they administered medications to prevent shivering. The plan was to keep her at this cool temperature for twenty-four hours, and then the warming process would begin on Thursday, August 7, to bring her up to her normal body temperature. This warming procedure would take eighteen hours, and then they would perform preliminary exams to determine the extent of her brain damage.

  I called
Jane and told her what had happened. I’ll never forget her starting to cry over the phone with her repeating, “Oh no, Mom…” I told her it didn’t look good and that she needed to get here right away. An hour later she called me back and told me she was driving up from Kansas and would leave in the middle of the night. Elizabeth, her daughter, would not give a straight answer about whether she was coming with her. Jane wasn’t going to go back and forth with Elizabeth trying to get an answer, so she was leaving without her to come up and be with Mom.

  There was nothing else my dad could have done without specialized medical equipment. The paramedics and doctor told him he had done everything right, but my dad was torturing himself with guilt, thinking he should have done something more. I just held him, and we cried in each other’s arms. Jane arrived, and we spent the next two days in the hospital with Mom. Jane and I went back to their house at night, but Dad stayed by Mom’s side at the hospital.

  Jess wanted to come and see Mom, but with the no-contact order, she couldn’t be there when I was around. Dad and Jane didn’t want her there, but they knew they had to arrange to let Jess see Mom or she might go into vengeance mode and purposely worsen my legal troubles. I didn’t want Jess there either. We arranged a couple of times when I would leave for a while so that Jess could see Mom. Jess loved Mom a great deal and was heartbroken over what had happened. She considered Mom more than just her mother-in-law; Mom was her best friend.

  The doctor performed preliminary exams on Friday, August 8. Mom was completely unresponsive. They were to do another round of tests on the tenth, but the doctors told us that in cases like this, there was very little chance of recovery. We had to come to terms that Mom would never recover, and it was emotionally devastating for all of us. Mom was gone; only her body remained functioning on life support. Dad was an absolute wreck. The next day Jane and I spoke about getting Elizabeth up here to see Mom before we had to disconnect life support. Jane didn’t want Elizabeth to feel that it was Jane’s fault for not bringing her up to see Mom before life support was disconnected. I booked a flight for Elizabeth to come up the next day, and I told Jane I’d pay for it.