Anne

by M. William Phelps

  He was in Missouri, but a month later he moved here to Alabama. He treats me like a queen. He is always there for me. He loves my family like his own. . . . I finally found a man who respects who I am and that I do have a brain, and someone who always tells me how beautiful I am and how much he loves me. I can’t ask for much more in life.

  Jimmy Williams was indicted in August 1999 under an assault charge that claimed he “did, with intent to cause serious physical injury to another person, cause serious physical injury to [Anne] Bridges, by means of a deadly weapon, or a dangerous instrument, to-wit: a shotgun. . . .”

  The charge was Assault I. Jimmy, then thirty-eight years old, pleaded not guilty.

  It took another eight months before Jimmy saw the inside of a courtroom and jury. But on April 5, 2000, nearly two years after the incident, Jimmy was found guilty after the jury deliberated just forty-five minutes.

  Jimmy’s attorney argued that Anne had told different stories during the three-day trial, and the prosecution had a terrible lack of evidence to support any of it.

  The jury, obviously, believed differently. On June 28, 2000, James “Jimmy” Williams Jr. was sentenced to ten years behind bars (with the credit for the two years he’d been in jail since his arrest), ordered to pay $4,551.76 in restitution, all the costs of the case, and a whopping $50 to probably the most important institution within it all: the Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Commission.

  Jurors were given the opportunity to find Jimmy guilty of Assault One or Assault Two, and as those in law enforcement had suspected all along, they chose the lesser, Assault One.

  The verdict and sentence were upsetting to Anne.

  I definitely do not think Jimmy was punished sufficiently. He hurt not just me, but so many others in my life. I never did anything to cause this act of pure violence. Not one cruel word came from my lips, nor one cruel act. I just wanted to go home—leave his house that night.

  I did not receive notice of his sentencing hearing in time to get there, so my voice went unheard—imagine, my voice, the one that counts. How could they have given someone a mere ten years for attempting to kill another human being?

  EPILOGUE

  This book started for me when I opened my in-box one morning and found an unsolicited e-mail from Anne Bridges Johnson’s second husband, Tom Johnson, who wanted his wife’s story told. Anne and Tom married in October 2013.

  Hello, Sir,

  My name is Tom Johnson. I’m from Linden, Alabama. My wife is Anne Johnson. I understand you are a very busy man, but my wife . . . was shot, held captive by a madman. . . . The story goes on and she could tell you much more. The trial was a laughing matter, rural county Alabama. The man’s mother tried to meet with Anne. . . . The man only got ten years. . . . I hope that I have piqued your interest enough to at least talk with her.

  Thanks for your time.

  Regards,

  Tom Johnson

  Since Tom initiated this project, I asked him for a final comment:

  Anne told me the story of what happened to her, one night on the phone when we first started talking. In high school Anne and I were a couple years apart, Jimmy Williams a couple years behind me in school.... I just remember crying for hours that night after we talked, and I could not believe, out of all the people I knew, Anne Honeycutt Bridges had been shot by Jimmy Williams.

  Anne was always one of the “beautiful belles of the ball” in Linden; at one time I carpooled with Jimmy Williams to junior college. They were two people who would never cross paths in my mind.

  Jimmy doing something like this was no surprise, but his victim being Anne was a complete shock. He has gotten away with so much in his life and never had to pay for it.... I have news for Jimmy: God has your Ultimate Sentence waiting on you.

  Anne Johnson: You are the love of my life. I am so blessed that God placed us together. I love you the mostest!

  This is my third book in the She Survived series. Each book has told a different story about violence against women and yet there is a common denominator in all three of the cases: the unreserved will to survive. This might sound clichéd, but please think about that statement in the context of the story you’ve just read. Anne was shot in the back; her lung, liver, and diaphragm were pierced by steel BBs, a wound in her shoulder just a whisper from a major artery. Not only did she survive those severe wounds, but she also spent hours with a pistol trained on her. She survived with the hope she would somehow get out of the situation and make it to the hospital in time. That, alone, is the definition of will. We can learn so much from someone like Anne.

  I will never forget April 17, 1998. Never in my entire life would I have ever imagined this would have happened to me. Isn’t that the way we all think? I remember asking the Lord to forgive me of my sins, while at the same time asking Him to help me. All I could think of was that I would never get to tell my son good-bye and he would never realize that he was my reason for being. I could not imagine what his life would have been like if I had died in Jimmy’s house or during my weeks of being in a coma. His grandmother and I were the only constant people in his life.

  Every time I wanted to go to sleep, I would stop myself. Every time I needed to breathe, I willed myself. Everyone’s faith is not the same, but my faith tells me God was not through with me and there was more for me to do in this world.

  All of the survivors I have interviewed, even beyond this series, tell me something similar about the trauma they endured: Yes, physical wounds hurt, and the pain was the most intense they had ever felt; yet it is the emotional scarring, the memories, the night terrors, and the PTSD that hurt and paralyze more than anything else.

  Yes, it was a night I will never forget. Not just the physical pain and scarring I went through, but most of all, the emotional turmoil and trauma during and after the incident—even to this day, some twenty years later, as of this writing. I can cover up the physical scars, but my emotions are on the table. It has not changed the fact that I will always try to help someone, but I am much more cautious about who I help.

  At first, I felt so much guilt that I had gotten myself into such a situation, but time changed that for me. I have a closer relationship with my son. Being sixteen is difficult enough, but even worse when you think that your mother might die. I became a speaker for several organizations. I began working with teenage girls in the ministry field and high-school students in a Christian organization and even met the man of my dreams.

  Jimmy Williams may have brought me down, but my strength from my Lord lifted me up. Jimmy will not victimize me over and over again. I will not give him that.

  I am a survivor.

  I asked Anne to speak directly to victims of violent crime. Some words of empowerment for that victim out there suffering alone, in silence, just waiting for the right moment to come forward, extend a hand and ask for help. Mainly, why is it so important to tell your story—not necessarily in book form like this, but to authorities and your loved ones.

  So many rumors were flying about what happened and how it happened, that is one reason why I wanted to publish this book. Everything you read here is the truth. Now everyone knows. The most important reason for me to speak out, however, is to help other victims. First of all, please remember—beyond anything anyone will tell you, including that voice inside your own head—it is not your fault. I am fortunate that I had a lot of family and friends supporting me. But I would also suggest you talk to someone you trust and who genuinely cares for you.

  Whatever your faith may be, rely on it, lean on it, utilize it. Being a violent crime survivor (I don’t want to use the term “victim”) does not suggest you came from a bad home life, or that you are destitute, or uneducated, or a drug addict, or an alcoholic. I was none of those. I was someone who trusted an individual. Last, but not least, never, ever give up. There is always a reason to live.

  Lastly, Anne wanted to mention and honor Robert Henry, who worked for the DA’s office handling her case. Mr. Henry died
shortly after the trial. He was jogging one afternoon in the Selma Memorial Park and dropped dead from a massive heart attack.

  “I would have never gotten Jimmy convicted if it wasn’t for Robert. He was so good to me and made such nice remarks about me in and out of court. My heart breaks every time I think of his death. He was a good man.”

  In case you missed the first book in the She Survived series by M. William Phelps, here is a sample excerpt from She Survived: Melissa. Keep reading to enjoy the dramatic opening pages of this courageous woman’s story....

  CHAPTER 1

  BAD FEELINGS

  It was Valentine’s Day. Melissa Schickel found herself in a rough spot. She and her boyfriend weren’t getting along. The last time they talked, the conversation had not gone well. Melissa was thinking he wanted to end the relationship.

  Melissa had a profound stubbornness about her that she’d learned to embrace—as opposed to grappling with—over the years. She understood who she was and did not fight it. On Valentine’s night, 1992, Melissa had gone out to a hockey game. As she sat and looked on, not paying too much attention to the play, she contemplated the idea of going out to one of the bars she and her boyfriend generally frequented. Maybe she’d run into him. They could talk things out.

  “Don’t go,” said a little voice in back of Melissa’s mind.

  Her fear, deep down, was hitting the local hot spots and then running into the guy as he sat with his arm around another girl. It would be uncomfortable, to say the least. There would no doubt be a scene.

  The guy had money. Melissa later described her socioeconomic status at that time as being “from the wrong side of the tracks.” In this way, she thought, they were not compatible. It would never work. She thought the relationship was doomed from the beginning.

  “And I figured that was what came between us.”

  She never went out to the bars that night. To forget about the guy not calling and the silence between the two of them, pigheaded Melissa got up the next morning and took off to Florida for a few weeks to visit family.

  It was a nice little getaway in the middle of winter from a place—Indianapolis, Indiana—that could yield to snow piling up by the foot. In an age without cell phones and e-mail, Melissa never really considered not hearing from her boyfriend to be anything more than the two of them in a standoff. The time and space was good. She was hurt bad, but maybe this was the way it had to be.

  She had no idea, of course, that the news awaiting her at home, after that brief visit to Florida, would alter her perception of life and how silence on another person’s part is not always what it seems.

  CHAPTER 2

  COLLISION COURSE

  A life can be altered in an instant. Melissa would learn this firsthand as she arrived back home from Florida and went about her life.

  At “four feet, nine and a half inches,” Melissa knew how tall she was “exactly,” because she had recently auditioned for a spot at Disney. MGM Studios theme park had held open auditions to play various characters. Melissa made the cut. However, she was not tall enough to play the main “princess” character, so they offered her work at Disney World playing Mickey, Minnie, Chip, or Dale. Thus, exemplifying the word “petite,” at 105 pounds, Melissa was just a tiny little thing. Hazel eyes, a natural blonde, twenty-five year-old Melissa Schickel was pretty, smart, athletic, and eager to take on the world as a young woman of the ’90s. She had been going about her days just outside Indianapolis with a profound sense of not really knowing what she wanted to do with her life. Florida and Disney looked good on paper, but did she really want to stand around all day, giving high fives to little kids and posing for photos, sweating her ass off in a felt costume?

  Melissa was grateful for what she had, certainly. She never questioned the way things happened, and certainly never wondered about the course her life took. Yet, at this moment in time, she did find herself standing at a crossroads.

  “I had graduated Ball State University in 1988 with a BS degree in business (half in management, half in insurance),” Melissa said. “I had worked three jobs while going to school, so by the time I graduated, quite honestly, I was just burned out and wanted to find a job. Unfortunately, the economy was shaky, and even with a business degree I was finding it very difficult to find a job.”

  All she heard during the course of job interviews was “You don’t have enough experience.”

  When she returned from Florida, Melissa felt she could think through things a bit clearer. There were no messages from her boyfriend. As much as she might have hoped he’d called or asked about her, she had not heard from friends that he was wondering where she had run off to, what she was doing, or had been trying to track her down.

  But it was okay.

  “I still didn’t think anything about it when he didn’t call,” Melissa remembered. “I just figured he’d moved on.”

  In early March 1992, Melissa went out to one of the bars she’d gone to with her former boyfriend and other mutual friends quite frequently. As she sat, nursing a drink, every time the door opened and someone walked in, Melissa secretly hoped she’d turn around and see him. They could sit, chat, patch things up, and maybe move forward. She did love the guy. She thought he had strong feelings for her also.

  The bar was in an affluent area of town, where her boyfriend lived. A friend of theirs moseyed over to Melissa and sat down next to her.

  They had a drink and talked about old times. At one point the woman looked at Melissa and said, “Isn’t it such a shame about Steven (pseudonym)?”

  The comment caught Melissa off guard. She had no idea what the woman was talking about.

  “Excuse me?” Melissa asked.

  “Wasn’t it such a shock about Steven?”

  “Steven who?” Melissa asked. She was confused. Was the woman referring to her Steven, the boyfriend she’d been thinking about now since that Valentine’s Day decision to take off to Florida and run from the memories of him?

  “Our Steven,” the woman clarified.

  “What are you talking about?” Melissa responded.

  The woman took a pull from her drink. “The car crash, Melissa.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “What. Are. You. Talking. About?”

  As Melissa’s head began to spin, the woman explained that Steven had died in a fiery car crash.

  Melissa recalled the entire bar, “same as in a movie,” spinning around her in slow motion as she was being told the man she loved was dead. It was as if she had been hit on the head. It all made sense. That was why he had never called. He was dead. No one from his family had called her because they really didn’t know about her, the two of them being, Melissa explained, “from different sides of the tracks.”

  Leaving the bar, Melissa wondered how her life and the pain she was now experiencing—the sorrow and remorse and all those thoughts about what could have been—could get any worse. Could life deal her a more devastating blow than this one?

  CHAPTER 3

  LITTLE PRINCESS

  Melissa landed a job managing a small independent video store in that affluent area of Indianapolis where her late boyfriend had resided. Living in Anderson, Melissa decided to move closer to the city and into Indianapolis. She found an apartment in a place she believed to be “okay.” It wasn’t the Fifth Avenue district, but it wasn’t a ghetto, either. She was content in moving on and living a low-key life.

  “If you would have asked me thirty years ago,” Melissa recalled, “if I could have mentally survived all I went through, I would have told you that you would have to lock me away in a padded room for the rest of my life.”

  This strange year of her life had kicked off after the midnight fireworks popped and banged in the New Year, 1992. Her boyfriend, the divorced father of a daughter, was dead. That video store job, which she thought seemed promising at first, didn’t turn out to be so great. So she quit the positi
on and was now looking for another full-time job. It had been the customers and the area where the video store was located, mainly, that made Melissa uncomfortable and ultimately change her course.

  “I was very neurotic,” she said. “I was the only child in grade school and high school with ulcers. But you never know what you can handle until you are actually faced with it.”

  In the months before her attack, Melissa was crowned one of the princesses of the “Little 500.” (Photos courtesy of Erin Moulton)

  From there, as the hammer fist of life smacked her around a bit, showing Melissa that even the simple daily chore of a car ride can alter the lives of so many, she began working two to three part-time jobs to make ends meet. She was commuting to two different cities, keeping busy, not allowing the sting of depression to engulf her. Things started to look up by the time May of that same year came around.

  “The Indianapolis 500 is obviously a huge event,” Melissa recalled. “But there is the Little 500 in Anderson the night before, which is the big sprint car event every year.”

  As it turned out, Melissa was crowned one of the princesses of the Little 500 that year.

  “So I spent a lot of time holding court and attending several events associated with the races. It was fun.”

  And it kept her busy.

  As the summer season began, Melissa felt as though life was getting somewhat back on track and normal, whatever that was. She knew she’d find a full-time position sooner or later, and would fall into the routine of a job she adored. It was only a matter of time. What’s more, she had been thinking about moving out of her apartment and into a better neighborhood. She’d even found something in a quieter, what she deemed to be a “safer,” neighborhood and was two weeks from packing her final bags and walking out the door for good. That old place she was in had some bad karma, anyway. It was a symbol of things in her life she wanted not necessarily to forget, but definitely to move beyond.