Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

  “OK. Thank you,” Dawn Spens said as she stood, trying to smooth the wrinkles on her clinging purple dress.

  97

  Clearly our stories must contain aggression. The common denominator amongst most inhibited patients was aggressive and destructive fantasies toward adults, whom they imparted with evil and villainous characteristics early in the story and subsequently destroyed …

  —W. ALAN CANTY,

  Therapeutic Peers

  Two weeks after Judge Sapala’s verdict, the same Recorder’s Court Psychiatric Clinic that Alan Canty, Sr., had headed for many years diagnosed John Carl Fry as a “textbook” psychopath.

  “He can mimic emotions, feelings, and even guilt, but has no capacity for real empathy or compassion,” its report stated. “Guilt is an emotion that is foreign to him. We can only recommend the maximum period of incarceration by sentence.”

  It was a moot point. Lucky Fry faced a life term, with no allowance for parole, under the state law covering first-degree murder. Judge Michael Sapala, however, had ordered the report done to aid prison officials.

  On a Monday morning, December 23, Fry returned before the judge for the formalities. Jay Nolan had a few words for the record.

  “My client stands before the statutory gallows of this state now … I mean no disrespect of Dr. Canty’s family, and I take note that John Fry’s life has been disaster and tragedy. He has been a man of great capacity and still has those capacities. He at one time owned three gas stations in Pontiac and was a successful businessman. We are now faced with devastation.”

  “Mr. Fry,” Judge Sapala said. “Is there anything that you would like to say before the court passes sentence?”

  John Fry, his hands clasped in front of him, looked up at Sapala and said:

  “Throughout this whole trial I have been betrayed as a cold individual. I have a lot of regrets about the way things happened. I regret for Dr. Canty and his family. Anytime an individual’s memory is sold, it’s a shame to humanity.

  “My main regret is to Dawn Spens. She was subjected to jail and possible prison. Anyway, I ask the court for mercy, not for myself but for Miss Spens.”

  Ten days later, on January 2, Dawn Spens needed a little charity. The probation department and the psychiatric clinic recommended a prison term. Sapala had before him a psychiatric clinic report that suggested she wasn’t really “regretful” about the incident, indicating “her remorse most likely is situation-specific, namely, it probably would disappear as soon as she is released from custody.”

  Her attorney Robert Zilkowski objected strongly to both the probation and psychiatric reports. And Jan Canty, in an interview with the probation department, said she saw Dawn as a “victim” and didn’t object to probation, as long as she went into a rehabilitation program.

  There were hardly any burial expenses Dawn should have to pay, Jan also indicated in the report. There was hardly a body to bury.

  Judge Sapala asked the prostitute if she had anything to say before sentencing. Dawn, dressed as she was during the trial, looked up at the judge.

  “I would like to say I am sorry to Dr. Canty’s family and my family for all the pain they have suffered.”

  Dawn was speaking in a low, barely audible voice. The chatter in the courtroom was high. It was just another Thursday morning in Recorder’s Court, with attorneys coming in and out with paperwork for the clerk. Gone was the fanfare of the Canty trial. By the time Sapala ordered the courtroom silent, the court reporter had missed what Dawn said next for the record. But it was heard by a journalist covering the sentencing.

  “But,” said Dawn Marie Spens, “I feel like I’m a victim too. I would greatly appreciate another chance to prove myself, that I can live in society without getting into trouble.”

  Judge Sapala decided to spare Dawn Spens the penitentiary. He gave two reasons for not imposing the five-year sentence. One was the overcrowding in state prisons, a condition that often caused the early release of felons. The other was that he wanted to see her get help.

  “Even if the maximum sentence were imposed, I am satisfied given their policies, she would probably be released fairly quickly … Frankly, I don’t have much confidence in their programs that might exist to help people with drugs and alcohol and emotional problems.”

  Sapala said he thought Dawn Spens was a “retrievable human being.”

  “I have been here long enough to have most of my optimism stripped from me, given what I see every day,” Sapala said. “But I still think there is a chance.”

  Prosecutor Robert Agacinski objected, saying incarceration was in her best interest as well as society’s. But Sapala had tailored a sentence especially for the prostitute.

  She would be on probation for three years, the first ten months to be spent in the Wayne County Jail. With time served before and after the trial, Dawn Spens already was more than halfway home. After her release from the jail, Sapala ordered, she was to enter a drug rehabilitation program and undergo periodic urinalysis. If it was an outpatient facility, she would have to do one hundred hours of community service. If she went to an inpatient drug program, she would have to remain there until medically discharged.

  “Thank you, your honor,” Dawn said.

  “Good luck,” said Judge Sapala. He said it twice.

  Dawn Spens was ecstatic with the sentence. As she waited for her out date, she wrote John Fry more love letters, thanking him “for helping me out.”

  Fry was headed for Jackson Prison, but he still had some bargaining power left. The county sheriff’s department wanted information about its own security problems during Fry’s attempted jailbreak. Soon Fry’s escape charges were dismissed. Lucky also secured a face-to-face meeting with Dawn in mid-January, the day he left for Jackson.

  They were left alone together in the jail’s old lineup room. Fry was in irons. Dawn sat on his lap, kissing him and rubbing his balding head. He was nearly forty years old. He’d already spent a quarter of his life in prison. Already he had plans not to spend the rest of it there as well.

  A day later Dawn wrote:

  “John, when it comes down to it, you are one hell of a man, and after being with you, I know that even if I were to look—which I’m not—I would never be able to find a man who could show me the love and affection you have.”

  But her recent letters no longer bore hearts and adolescent drawings. They were on legal stationery and were often printed in boldface. She promised she would visit him and “do things” for him on the outside when she got out. If her probation officer wouldn’t let her visit him, she would correspond with him, she promised. Then she repeated one more promise:

  “I just want you to know how I feel, so maybe you can understand me a little more. Remember that promise I made you yesterday? If my feelings ever do change, I will tell you face-to-face. I owe you at least that.”

  Fry went to Jackson, marked a year in Huron Valley Men’s Correctional Facility, and finally ended up in the drafty cells of Marquette, a maximumsecurity prison at the northern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He worked on his appeal and boasted how he had “taken the weight” for his girlfriend, claiming she had helped package the body parts.

  Two years after his last letter from Dawn he’d yet to hear a word from his old girlfriend.

  “It’s spelled s-u-c-k-e-r,” Lucky said. “I guess that’s how much I loved the bitch.”

  On March 19, Dawn Spens was released from the Wayne County Jail and transferred to a small holding cell behind Judge Sapala’s courtroom.

  She waited there for the director of Dawn Farm, an inpatient drug treatment facility forty-five minutes west of Detroit. Earlier she’d tried to get into a program in Windsor to be close to her mother. The plan was abandoned because of restrictions against convicted felons crossing the Canadian border.

  The director of Dawn Farm arrived with a couple of former addicts. The young women were Dawn’s age and had eyes bright with recovery. They would be her company for t
he ride back to the treatment center, set on a farm in a rural section of Washtenaw County. It was a nine-month residency program.

  Dawn immediately began chatting with her companions as she walked from the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. She was twenty-one years old when she sucked in her first breath of free air in eight months. It was a rainy, blustery day outside.

  Dawn Marie Spens didn’t have a coat. She wore her purple dress and the traces of her last three years etched in circles on her legs.

  The rest of her belongings she carried in a brown paper bag.

  98

  Gladys Canty was troubled by the sentence given Dawn Spens, but even more so by the unanswered questions surrounding her son’s death. Did he try to stand up to a threat of blackmail, or did he simply pick a fight with John Fry?

  She couldn’t fathom her son willingly turning over large sums of cash to the pair. She wondered if the sale of his coin collection might have precipitated his breakdown and hospitalization. She faced other mysteries, one in particular that troubled her for months.

  By tax time in the year following his death, she still hadn’t received an interest earnings statement from one of her certificate of deposit accounts. The ten-thousand-dollar CD had been gathering interest for two 3-year terms in a bank in Grosse Pointe. Buster had helped her invest it there; his name was on the certificate as well.

  Finally, when she inquired by telephone, an assistant banker told her the account had been closed some time ago, but he couldn’t provide a date. She would have to come in so the staff could pull the records.

  Gladys couldn’t remember cashing that CD. Then she thought of her son, his loans, and the whole sordid story. Later, a friend proposed they both go to the bank, pull the records, and see who cleared the account. The CD would have matured to more than fifteen thousand dollars. She agreed, then changed her mind the day before the planned trip to the bank.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t believe I want to go through with this. Buster’s name has suffered enough. I can’t help but think I did withdraw it and invest it somewhere.”

  One day in spring, Gladys Canty heard a gentle rapping at the side of her bungalow. She opened the door to find a girl in her thirties standing there in her driveway alone, the sun casting highlights on her raven-black hair.

  When the woman introduced herself, Gladys realized it was a former patient of her Alan’s, a Greek girl who had been calling her periodically on the phone. She invited her in for tea. They sat and chatted for a couple of hours. The former patient was very emotional, telling how much she admired her son, how much he had helped her through ten years of therapy. She’d first met Alan when he taught her psychology class at Henry Ford Community College. She missed him dearly, she said.

  The girl was one of two sisters who lived with their mother, a widow. Soon not only the patient was calling, but her mother as well.

  “How are your nephews, how is your sister?” she would ask.

  Gladys could see they were trying to befriend her or maybe were looking for her to fill a void. The entire family had been in therapy with her son at one time.

  One Sunday, the entire family proposed that they come out and visit her. Maybe they could have dinner together that night.

  “I don’t cook dinners anymore,” Mrs. Canty said.

  As a compromise, Gladys agreed to meet them later in the week. On a Thursday evening they picked her up at her bungalow and drove her back to their house on the west side. They prepared a beautiful meal for her, a main dish of chicken and rice. There was a lovely salad and a beautiful dessert of strawberries made by the patient with the raven-black hair.

  “A fine man, Dr. Canty was,” the girl kept saying. “Such a tragedy. Such a tragedy.”

  The whole family was quite animated. The mother kept saying in a mourning voice, “Your son, he was a good man. He was such a very good man.”

  “Such a tragedy,” said the girl.

  The mother sat next to Gladys at the table, patting her and gesturing as she spoke. Gladys felt very uncomfortable, and she was such a long way from home.

  I have so very little in common with them, she thought.

  Later she wrote them a letter. She told them she really didn’t know them until after Buster died. Now, the memories were too painful. She believed it was in both their best interests that they didn’t see one another again.

  Gladys Foster Canty wasn’t 100 percent certain about the decision. She wondered for a long time if it was the Christian thing to do.

  99

  I am equally grateful to my wife Jan-Jan, whom I first met through her work on the project … The greatest debt of all is owed to the many dedicated young women who have served as Indianwood guides from 1962 to the present. Many … spent long tiring sessions rehearsing and performing—often with no feedback from children. Some left the program after great dedication with little awareness of their impact on autism. These tireless efforts have touched me more deeply than they can ever know …

  —W. ALAN CANTY,

  Therapeutic Peers

  Jan Canty was a widow, but she was only thirty-five. Al had counseled her that in this situation she should remarry, but what Al had told her really didn’t matter much now.

  The questions and answers came in waves.

  One day she found herself reaching for the telephone, ready to call Al’s first wife. “Tell me,” she wanted to say, “just who is this man I married? Can you tell me that, please?”

  On another, she tried reaching Dr. Lorraine Awes but found she had moved to Alaska. Jan knew she could probably find Al’s therapist, but what’s the point? she thought. What could it possibly change?

  She spent more time talking to Ray Danford, who filled her in on what he knew. Later another friend came into her life. He wanted to dig out everything he could find and put the entire fragmented story together. At first she was reluctant, but then she became more comfortable as she began to understand. As she heard stories from Al’s exploits, she found herself still disbelieving.

  “That just doesn’t sound like Al,” she’d say. “It’s totally out of character.”

  Then her own words would hit her. “Character” had become a relative term.

  How, she thought, could he have compartmentalized his life so thoroughly? For more than ten years she only knew part of him. An Eve, a Sybil, a true split personality would be easier to accept. What energy it must have taken to keep everything so separate, she thought, to run concurrent narratives of so many, many lies.

  “In retrospect, I hardly knew him at all,” she told a friend.

  Then came the implications concerning her own judgment. What, she asked herself, does this say about me? I am not naive, damn it. I do not suffer from delusions. It was not me that did this. I only was in love with him. She didn’t know whether she could love and trust a man again that much.

  Then, over time, the question began to arise about the very project that had brought them together—the little book about the troubled children and the skits.

  She kept waiting for mail, for something, from the hospitals where Al had said he sent his tapes from Project Indianwood. She knew the videos had been made. She had a dozen of the originals on three-quarter-inch tape.

  She searched for sales records of Therapeutic Peers, the paperback book she had typed. She knew Al had distributed them to some bookstores, but certainly there were no royalties or the seven printings he claimed had funded her education. Then her friend pointed out Al published the work himself on a vanity press. Anyone could do that with any work, as long as they had the money.

  She thought, maybe that’s what Al meant during his psychotic break: “They’ll find out Indianwood is a fraud.” Did he mean the tapes and the book sales? Or was there more?

  The revelations darkened as her friend searched for answers. Leading experts and longtime counselors in the field of autism had never heard of W. Alan Canty; some reported they were puzzled by newspaper reports that he was an expert on t
he childhood disorder. Al’s claims of a high success rate with his Indianwood techniques drew scorn.

  “Believe me, word travels like wildfire in this field, parents are so desperate for help,” said Dr. Joseph Fischhoff, director of psychiatry at Detroit Children’s Hospital and a longtime leader in the field. “It’s just not true. If somebody had a 70 percent success rate with autism, he would have the Nobel Prize.”

  That explained why Al refused to go to professional conferences, Jan thought, why he often criticized such gatherings. He couldn’t talk about his work there.

  Indianwood guides who worked for Al in the 1960s were located. All reported skits and readings of violent fairy tales. All were told their work would be presented to autistic children. All performed for the same audience of one—W. Alan Canty, his theater seat his chair in the Fisher Building suite.

  One former boyfriend of a girl involved in the project from 1964 to 1967 explained what he knew and saw. At the time, Al’s first marriage was floundering.

  “It got to be a joke around a clique of mine,” he said. “He always had the cutest girls. They did a lot of dying for him. We knew something wasn’t right, even at sixteen. But the girls really didn’t care. Nobody was paying that kind of money, five dollars an hour. And he never once made an advance at them.

  “The funny thing was, I was in therapy with him at the time because of personal problems and a bad trip with LSD. He really did help me. I’d have to say he was a very good psychologist, despite his strange behavior concerning the girls.”

  Jan began to wonder if there ever were any children, then about her true role as a young applicant for the project. She thought, Did our entire relationship evolve from an initial deception, grow into a quirk in some kind of ongoing psychodrama?

  Therapeutic Peers mentioned only one other professional who knew about Al’s research—James Clark Maloney—but he’d died before the work was published. The rest of the participants were children. There were only first names, and the story of an Indianwood guide called only Connie.