The questioning went on and on. Their frustration with me was
getting obvious. I knew not to say one single word. I just sat there and kept staring at the wall. They told me that I was only hurting myself. Then they walked out of the room. Three days later, I was transferred from the hospital
to Hamilton County Jail in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.
My incarceration didn’t come with any kind of surprises. I had
already suffered over thirty arrests and or run-ins with the law. So I knew the
drill, and I knew how things worked.
I just wanted to get booked, so I could bail out. I did the only thing I could do to help myself which was call my mother. My mother was already ten steps ahead of me. She already knew how much my bond was and was prepared to pay it. She had already talked with Phaedra who informed us to just be cool and not speak to anyone. But there was a problem. Although I did in fact have a bond, I also had a hold in Clayton County, Georgia for the
fraudulent car titles.
If my mother paid my bond, I would be released but they would
release me to the Clayton County, Georgia authorities. My charges in Hamilton County, Tennessee were all associated with the false identity. These charges were serious, just not as serious as the charges I faced back home in Georgia. Another problem my mother would probably encounter in trying to pay my bond was the fact they could argue that I was going to be a flight risk since I lived in another state. I was in a world of trouble and I knew it. I told my mother to hold onto her money because I knew she was going to need it.
I decided to sit, and wait for Clayton County.
Knowing that I was going to be there for a while, I worked toward
making myself as comfortable as possible. I was getting acclimated to my surroundings when a few days later, my name was called over the loud speaker. I thought it may have been my mother coming to see me. It wasn’t. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) paid me a visit. They handcuffed me, placed me in the back of their vehicle, and transported me to another
location.
I was riding in the back of their vehicle, and couldn’t figure out for
the life of me why they had me. What did they want from me? I had never had any dealings with the GBI and the FBI. My stomach was doing flips, and my mind was racing as I kept wondering what this latest development was about.
Lord, Lord, what have I gotten myself into now?
Chapter Six
A Bottomless Pit with No Way Out
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13 (NIV )
I was placed in a small room with a long table at the end. My
handcuffs were removed then I was offered coffee and cigarettes. Coffee…? Yes, but cigarettes were definitely not my thing. I hated the way they tasted,
the way they smelled, and the way they made you feel.
Special investigators had never questioned me before so this was
very scary for me. I remember watching how these interrogations went on television cops and robbers movies. Mentally preparing myself for the whole good cop, bad cop scenario, I would be ready.
Through it all, I believed I remained as strong as I could. What was
done was done. It made no sense crying over spilled milk. So let us do what we have to do, and move on from this. These thoughts were flowing through my mind while I waited. I had resolved to push through this barrier. It was working just fine until the bad cop opened his mouth.
“Ms. Stanton, let’s cut straight through the BS! Tell us all about Leonard!”
“Leonard? Who the hell is Leonard?” I asked, staring wide eyed at
him.
The detective was short and stocky. He looked just like one of the
kids I had picked on in school. Except he was grown up, and was about to pay me back for every name that I had ever called him. His receding hairline, and overgrown beer belly made me look at him with a more serious attitude. He was the type of person that needed just a little bit of authority. And I didn’t think he had been around too many black people in his life. In my mind I placed myself back at the chessboard with my dad, remembering every move
he had ever taught me, before I started speaking again.
“I don’t know anybody named Leonard!” I yelled.
The detective looked at me in disgust as if I had just murdered his
only child right before his eyes. Without hesitation, he slung a manila file folder as thick as the yellow pages with Shaheed’s picture on the front of it. I watched it as it slid from his end of the table all the way across the table, and down toward my end of the table. It abruptly stopped in front of me.
Befuddled, I didn’t know what to think. Maybe they had been
watching us, and had pictures and paperwork from monitoring our every move. I didn’t know what the hell was going on until I looked at the picture on the front of the folder. My mind was whirling in the wind of possibilities when glanced at the detective. With resentment in his eyes, he stared at me and calmly said, “Ms. Stanton, if you want to ever see that baby you’re carrying, you will tell us everything that we want to know. We don’t take
threats taken out on federal agents lightly.”
I was shaken and really couldn’t figure out what was going on. Still
in shock from learning that Everett and Phaedra had sent me back to the same car lot they had just burned, I felt like this was all part of a set up. They had been driven by greed. This situation with Shaheed had me scared and confused. I was still trying to figure out how the detectives knew about Shaheed. The detectives seemed to know more about me, and my life than I did. I was scared to death, and felt very ignorant. Everybody seemingly knew
what was going on, except me. I realized that I was in way over my head.
My mind kept drawing blanks. I was at a total loss for words.
Reality had me so shook that for a minute everything seemed blurred. Finally, I slowly came back around, but was still stuck trying to comprehend what exactly the detective was saying. It did sound like he had just said Shaheed
threatened a federal agent.
O-o-okay! If he did, what did that have to do with me? I was being
held for auto theft, and giving false information. Even more surprisingly, how did they link me to Shaheed? Someone was talking, and it wasn’t me.
Shaheed had nothing to do with why I was in Tennessee. Who was talking
to these detectives or had they been just watching us? This sh** was crazy!
“I thought his name was Shaheed,” I said, trying to keep my tone
even.
I didn’t want them to see that I was totally flustered. The agents
glanced at each other. Then they looked back at me. Attempting to read me, and all the while trying to figure out whether or not I was being truthful. The reality was that I was telling the truth. I couldn’t believe it. I was pregnant, in
love, and in a relationship with someone I didn’t know at all.
“Ms. Stanton, do you have any idea what’s going on here, or who
you’re involved with?” the detective finally asked. I sighed in resignation,
burst into tears, and said. “No, obviously I don’t!”
Minutes slowly turned into hours, and my whole life changed in
seconds. I felt as if I was inside of the movie ‘The Matrix.’ It was obvious that I had taken the wrong pill. I was anxiously waiting for someone to wake me up on the other side. This dream was the worst nightmare I’d ever had. I had no choice but to listen as they shared horrific details of alleged murder cases they had against the man I loved. The man I didn’t really know at all. They explained how all the witnesses in the cases against him disappeared or ended up dead. And they pointed out t
o me that every time they pinned him
for murder, he somehow manage to beat the case.
I had heard the stories about Shaheed on the streets, true enough. Hearing it on the streets and hearing it from a federal agent were two totally different things. Sh** got real, quick-fast, and in a hurry after that. It didn’t get any realer than this.
I was aware of his notoriety, but I knew nothing about Shaheed’s
actual business. I really got offended that these detectives were questioning me about him. If Shaheed had committed all the murders they claimed, and witnesses were disappearing, then what in the hell made them think that I was
interested in becoming one of those witnesses?
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything about a hit out on a federal
agent. I did not even know his name was Leonard,” I said in tears.
I was an emotional wreck by then. My thoughts were in anguish and
there was no avenue of escape. My situation was dire, I was pregnant and stuck in jail. And now I was finding out that my pregnancy was caused by a man I didn’t even f**king know. It was obvious to me that Shaheed was a
man who had been living a double life.
Was this sh** real? At this point my mind was in a state of conflict. The denial in me was fighting with my sense of realism. I was confused, overwhelmed, and felt betrayed. It was just too much going on at that moment. I just needed to pray. Pray and go to sleep. Maybe when I wake up this will all
be resolved. I’ll be able to climb out of the rabbit hole.
I awoke the next morning, and realized to my dismay that I was still
stuck in this horrible place and the nightmare was far from over. No matter how hard I pinched myself, and pleaded for my Lord and Savior to come to my rescue, I was still trapped. The law had caught me inside a maze of illegal
activities with no way out.
The federal agents’ interrogation from the day before, replayed
nonstop in my mind. I had to digest all the facts and the pictures they had showed me. While strategizing and reliving my relationship with Shaheed over and over again, I was connecting all dots. I had to figure out how I was
going to explain all this to my unborn child.
Maybe it was my sense of helplessness, but something about
this dreadful situation pushed my mind back to the horror story my father and mother told me repeatedly throughout my life. It was one of the most shocking murder scenes which occurred in Buffalo, N.Y. The gruesome incident happened in 1978, and my family couldn’t get away from it. It made headlines throughout the east coast. No matter what television channel you turned to, it was on. And for the next several years, this terrible incident was
the talk of the town. It left a bitter taste on the lips of my family members.
October 31, 1978, was the day my first cousin, Gina, was violently
murdered. It was a day that my family will never forget. At eleven years old, Gina was the prettiest child anyone would dare see. Her perfect milk, chocolate skin was accented by almond shaped eyes, and she had the perfect button shaped nose. Gina was a ballerina, and I was told how much she always loved me. My mother often told me that I was Gina’s baby. Gina ironed my clothes, fed me, bathed me, and played with me. I was only a year old at the time of her death. My mom, my dad, my brother, my Aunt San, my cousins Gina and Kevin, and I all lived in the same two-family house located on 27 Girad Street. We were a very close-knit family and nearly all of us were
raised in this home.
It was on a condensed street in Buffalo, New York. All the houses
were right next to each other, separated by no more than six feet of yard space. If a fire was started in one home, the entire neighborhood would be burned down. On any day you could open your window and hear what your neighbors were watching on television. The houses were built the same way. They had the same height, foundation, and structure. They were just painted
in different colors.
The father of my aunt’s children, Lonzia Moss, practiced martial
arts. He was a black-belt karate expert, who had perfected the art of his choice. Then one day he snapped, and decided that he was not only going to
just kill himself, but take out everyone he had brought into this world.
My father was at work, but the rest of the family was home on this
fateful day. All of a sudden there was a loud knock on the door. Lonzia stood outside the door. He wanted to take his children to eat at McDonald’s. No one was aware of the shotgun he had hidden at the side of the house. My cousin Kevin, nine years old at the time, was asleep in the bed next to my brother, Lee. Even though Kevin was awake, Gina was the first one out the door. Then Kevin followed behind her.
It was over as soon as she stepped off the porch. Gina was shot once
in the chest with a double-barrel shotgun. She was murdered by the man who had given her life! She was fragile and her body could never survive a blow of that enormous magnitude. As her life was blown away, Kevin wasn’t given a chance to react. His father’s gun ran out of bullets, but that didn’t stop the deranged killer. With the butt of the murder weapon, Lonzia beat his nine year-old son, Kevin, into a coma.
Aunt San, my dad’s younger sister, ran out the door with every bit
of courage she could muster. Knowing she was no match for a black-belt, oh God, she put up a brave fight. Those were her babies! The man she once shared love with broke the shotgun on her face. Then he left the woman who had given birth to his children critically injured. She was lying in her own pool of blood right next to her children. My mother fought him off. Surprisingly she wasn’t harmed, but he wasn’t there to hurt her. Then the
coward ran off before anyone had a chance to torture him.
When my father returned home, Gina’s mangled body was still lying
in the driveway. His niece was dead, his sister, and nephew were critically injured. My mother lost it, my brother was taken to a neighbor’s house, and I was at the window watching, but I was unable to talk about what I had
witnessed. I wasn’t old enough to understand what I had witnessed. Or was I?
I have often wondered if something followed me from my dreaded
past. How and why did Shaheed end up in my life? And now my child, just like my cousin, Gina, was to be the child of a psychopath? The similarities were mind boggling. Shaheed was a black-belt. He was a master of his art of
choice. It was no secret that he could kill with his bare hands.
Would he ever do what my cousins’ father did? I instantly felt a
connection with my aunt, and started wondering how our lives placed us on similar paths. One thing was for sure. I decided then and there that I would learn from Aunt San’s own experience. I was going to get the hell away while I still had a chance.
During the next forty-five days while waiting for my inevitable
transfer to Clayton County Jail in Georgia, the last free moments of my life would constantly rewind in my mind. It left me thinking about what I could have done differently. I began wondering if Sheree told me everything she knew. Did she set me up? What was E thinking? Did he believe I set him up when he was told to return to the hospital? Who was giving these agents all the information? Why was I being questioned in Tennessee about Shaheed, when we both resided in Georgia? How did they know about my involvement with Shaheed? Was Phaedra going to stick to her word about representing
me? Was I going to be out before my baby was born?
The bevy of questions was rampant. There were just so many
possibilities rapidly running through my mind at one time. So many questions left unanswered, not even I could provide an answer. I couldn’t find peace
anywhere. The desperation of my situation constantly haunted me.
I was an emotional wreck by the time the date of my transfer had
rolled around. The ride from Tennessee back to Georgia was long overdue. Even though
I was still incarcerated, at least I was closer to my family. I was also getting closer and closer to my due date. Being transferred to Clayton County came with some rewards. If I did have the baby while I was incarcerated then my mother could come right to the hospital, and pick her up. The jail was only fifteen minutes away from my mother’s home so I would have visitation every week. Yes, I will say that I thought I had the whole thing figured out.
It happened like clockwork. Every week, my mother came to visit
me. Just like any good mother, she was at all my court appearances supporting me one hundred percent. I had been in Clayton County Jail for nearly two weeks now, and it seemed like no one could get in touch with Phaedra. She was avoiding every person that tried to contact her on my behalf. All the calls to her personal cellphone and home number went unanswered and were never returned. So I had my cousin, Scott, call attorney, Ronald Freeman’s office
on a three-way phone call from jail. I spoke directly to Ronald myself.
“Ron, what’s up with Phaedra? I mean she is avoiding all my calls
when she knows what’s going on with me. I don’t know what is about to happen, but I know she promised to represent me. Now, she doesn’t want to
answer the phone,” I said.
Ronald Freeman was well aware of the criminal activity that existed
between Phaedra and me. Phaedra Parks shared an office with him on Spring Street. I knew for a fact that he definitely did not want to be implicated in any kind of way. Ronald briefly placed me on hold. Moments later, Phaedra was
Lies of a Real Housewife: Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil Page 8
