Gitchie Girl: The Survivor's Inside Story of the Mass Murders that Shocked the Heartland

by Phil Hamman

  Grandpa didn’t have any hobbies or spend any time relaxing except for late in the evening. He collapsed in his favorite chair each night, and Sandra would climb up on his lap. She wasn’t aware of the aged changes occurring in his body since he performed the difficult farm work without complaint. “Sandra, did you save any animals today?” He was truly interested and not just indulging her childhood obsession.

  She nodded seriously. “Three worms and one grasshopper. They were lost in the grass so I put them in the garden by a big flower.”

  “You’re a kind girl. God did good with you.”

  He was right. Even when she wasn’t completely good, she was never too naughty. She’d never even been spanked. She occasionally took advantage of being not only the youngest but the only girl as well. Especially on bath night. Grandma would fill a big galvanized tub with hot water from the stove. The tub was in the kitchen, the warmest spot, and Sandra got the first bath. She would take her time sudsing and playing until Grandma would finally pick her up out of the tub in exasperation. Each brother to follow was left with colder and dirtier water than the one before. Then snug in her pajamas, Sandra would take off in search of Grandpa, who would of course be in his chair, and crawl onto his lap.

  The happy, hard-working life continued without a problem except that the children rarely got to see Lolo. They were up at dawn, had become proficient in their little chores, had plenty to eat, and plenty of love to go around, which allowed them to focus on what they did have rather than what they didn’t have, which was also plenty. Before Sandra turned four, she and her brothers were able to rejoin Lolo in a nearby town, and a few months later, Grandma sent word that Grandpa had died in his sleep, sitting up in his favorite chair.

  The four children spent hours together entertaining themselves since Lolo had earned a two-year nursing degree and worked long hours before returning home to an evening of keeping up a household. She didn’t earn nearly as much as a registered nurse and with four kids and loans to pay the family qualified for some government assistance. Each month Lolo would pile the kids into the car, and they’d go together to pick up a box of commodities, usually containing things they loved like cheese and peanut butter. She could have picked up the food on her way home but wanted them to know where it came from.

  “I’m so grateful for this food,” she’d remind them each month. This focus on thankfulness would stick with Sandra and be a key to helping her deal with future struggles. There were few complaints from Lolo no matter what life threw her way. She didn’t judge people, she tried to understand them, and all her children absorbed this philosophy.

  At Christmas Lolo made a trip to the local fire station with the four kids in tow bundled in their winter wear, clean but a little too snug. The air was buzzing with childhood expectations as they waited excitedly in line to receive a present. “Merry Christmas!” a spirited fireman eagerly greeted them before handing Sandra a doll and each of her brothers a truck. Though amazed by the gifts, none of them needed prompting to say thank you, which gave Lolo warm satisfaction. When they got home, one of the boys hurried the others into a bedroom and shut the door. “We don’t have anything for Mom. She’s not going to get a single present!” So they huddled together on the floor around a piece of paper and made her a card. That night the family passed the time singing Christmas carols, eating hot tuna casserole, and reflecting on the excitement of getting these unexpected gifts. While the boys whooped and hollered around her, Sandra escaped to a quiet corner with her new doll, where she spent the night playing nurse and fixing her doll’s imaginary broken bones with toothpick splints she’d taped onto the legs.

  With Lolo working long hours, the children took on responsibilities at an earlier age than most of their peers and learned to depend on each other. Wherever Bill was, Sandra was close behind. The kids were unaware of their dearth of material possessions so this had no effect on their happiness. Her brothers were boys to the core and proficient at their mischief, frequently harassing Sandra with various pranks. One night she went into her bedroom and reached for the dangling pull string to turn on the overhead light. Instead of the pull string she felt something squishy and hairy in her grasp and let loose a marathon of shrill screams. Lolo screamed as loud as Sandra, but it was directed at the boys when she found out they had tied a dead mouse to the light cord.

  Family was so important that the strong bonds between Grandma Cheskey and her grandchildren sustained time and distance. When Sandra and her brothers returned for a visit, they took to the farm as if they’d never left it. The farm had remained untouched by most modern conveniences. It still lacked indoor plumbing, and the children quickly adapted to making the jaunt out to the weathered-wood outhouse with its stacks of Sears catalogs perched on the bench seat next to the obligatory hole. It was too dark and cold to stumble out there at night, so Grandma gave each of them a large juice can to use instead. In the mornings, they were responsible for dumping the contents of the can into the hole in the outhouse, which Sandra would do immediately upon rising. Her brothers weren’t as consistent though, and Grandma would regularly find an undumped can in a bedroom upstairs.

  “It’s not mine!” her brothers would all claim, and with Sandra being the youngest, Grandma always believed the boys and assumed her little granddaughter had simply forgotten. Out she’d walk holding one of her brothers’ cans with her arms stretched out in front of her as far as she could and pouting all the way while they tried to silence their teasing laughter. They loved Sandra, but she quickly learned how to match their playful scheming. The farm left Sandra with memories of love that would empower her in times of hopelessness.

  1971-1972

  By the time Sandra started school, Lolo had found a new man to share her life. As the years went by with all of them under one roof, the stress of four children began to cause problems. Sandra’s brother Bill, longing for the independence typical of someone on the cusp of teenhood, especially despised this new man in their lives. “You’re not our dad, you son of a bitch! I hate you!” he would scream. The fighting became a daily ritual that upset Sandra deeply even though this new man mostly ignored her.

  Years of friction came to a head one day when Sandra arrived home to find that she and Bill were being sent to live with separate foster families. She was confused. A relative said it was because the kids were not minding the adults and that there was underage drinking. Sandra hadn’t been drinking, and she wasn’t a discipline problem. The only thing she could think of was this new man was not able to deal with all of the children.

  Sandra was whisked into the home of a foster family. But not for long. She sobbed into the phone recounting for Lolo how the foster parents had severely beaten their own child with a wire coat hanger. Lolo made arrangements for Sandra to be removed. It was a short-lived relief. Within days Sandra arrived at the doorstep of a second foster family yet held her head high, supported by the empowering words of her father, “You’re going to be my little Miss America someday!” It was one of the few memories she retained of him. But the distant words turned powerless in the hands of this cold, uncaring foster family. The family members rarely talked to or even acknowledged her. She felt more like an unpaid hired hand than a child.

  “I miss my friends,” she’d complain softly to her mom on the phone. “Plus they make me do all their work. I have to get up before dawn, do their laundry, and paint buildings.”

  “This will be better for you in the end,” her mom explained.

  Sandra hugged her pillow tightly at night and occasionally hot tears would join her muffled sobs. She’d been torn from her friends, her family, her school. She felt like an intruder, like an insect they’d just as soon swat away if it weren’t for all the back-breaking chores she did for them. But Sandra was persistent. She tried to believe the family meant well as her mom had assured her. Still, she kept needling away at her mom during their weekly calls, relaying both subtle hints as well as desperate cries for help. She knew her mom missed
her as well, and Lolo finally relented.

  “Okay,” Lolo sighed one day when she could no longer resist her daughter’s pleas.

  Sandra squealed into the phone then lifted her hands high in the air while doing a little victory dance under the disapproving eye of her foster mom. Bill was allowed to come back soon also, and Sandra was waiting at the door to greet him with a sisterly hug. She was grateful that the experience Bill had in foster care had been completely different from her own. He had been placed with a police officer who’d welcomed Bill into his family and helped him with any problems that cropped up.

  It was good to be together again. But the joy didn’t last. Although Lolo would have allowed her children to stay home, she wasn’t the one calling the shots. The new man in her life vetoed the decision. Since the children had Native bloodlines, Sandra and two of her brothers were sent to an Indian boarding school.

  This shamefully weather-beaten school, located in a sparsely populated area of South Dakota, contained an assortment of Native American students who’d brought with them the psychological baggage that can result from living on the “Rez,” a term used for the reservation where they had endured poverty and hardships on par with that of a third-world country. Sandra found herself in this Mission school that loomed over the open South Dakota prairie with its aged brick buildings and curls of paint peeling from the wood trim. She slept in a large dorm room with several other girls. The cots and bunk beds were lined up along walls painted a drab green color. The girls shared a common toilet and shower area with little privacy. There never seemed to be enough hot water for showering, so Sandra often had to endure a miserable quick, cool shower. This was especially uncomfortable in winter when the dorm buildings seemed as cold as the barren fields outside. The food was meager except for the one cinnamon roll each girl was allowed to have following Sunday morning church service. Nuns ran this school with strict expectations for good conduct. Sandra tried hard to fit in and follow the rules, but most of the students viewed her as being too white. In spite of her bubbly spirit and natural ability to make friends quickly, she soon became a target and an outcast.

  It wasn’t long before Sandra encountered her first bully there. Each morning began with the ringing of a bell announcing wake-up. A dorm rule required a neatly made bed for inspection prior to breakfast. For days this mean girl had been stealthily tearing the covers off Sandra’s bed. One morning, the girl openly tore Sandra’s bed apart the moment it was made. Sandra pursed her lips together and without a word made the bed again, giving the girl a threatening look. When finished, she stood and faced the girl, fists ready at her side, her sense of justice stubbornly refusing to let this act go unchallenged. The girl smirked, then pushed past Sandra and again ripped the covers off with a few hard jerks. A screaming brawl erupted, and the girls went flying into one of the portable lockers that stood between each set of bunk beds, sending it crashing to the floor. When the fight ended, Sandra stood shaking, but only on the inside, fearing she’d now have her first experience with the “Circle of Discipline.” During this almost daily occurrence, students from one dorm would stand in a circle around the offender who had to confess her infraction, at which point a nun would break through the circle and begin whipping the student with a leather belt. In this case, the nuns ferreted out the truth, and Sandra was only required to stand in the circle and confess her wrongdoing to a group of students from her grade.

  The other girl admitted her violation then braced herself bravely for what would happen next.

  A stern nun lashed the girl’s rear several times. She held in her tears, not giving satisfaction to the nun or the other kids intensely watching for weakness. It had been a close call for Sandra though. The strain of constantly watching her back along with the demoralizing atmosphere gradually dampened her bubbly spirit.

  At night, atop a thin, lumpy mattress that smelled of must and old urine, Sandra curled herself into a tight ball and fell asleep trying to remember every detail of her friends back home: how they’d laughed, how two friends would each hold one end of a long rope while the third girl jumped, all of them singing a catchy rhyming song about “Cinderella dressed in yella.” And how they were all kind to one another. Had the plastic handles of the jump rope been blue? No, green, she remembered, and one handle had a crack that would pinch your skin if you didn’t hold it just right. This attention to detail helped her focus on something besides the fact that it was still over a month until she could go back home for Christmas.

  Sandra was able to avoid the Circle of Discipline, although the fear of it loomed heavily. Her gut ached every time the belt cracked against another child’s thin pants with a slap and a whoosh even when it was someone who’d been less than kind to her. Her gentle heart couldn’t stomach the fear and injustice. The cold stares and taunts of “white girl” followed her every day while she sat in a colorless classroom surrounded by jeering whispers and constant ridicule. She met each insult with a brave face, and in quiet moments daydreamed about the shocked looks they’d have on their faces one day when she received her Miss America crown on television as the audience applauded wildly in the background. She knew it was unlikely to ever happen, but she held onto these dreams, one of the only things that hadn’t already been taken from her.

  What she felt wasn’t anger, it wasn’t animosity; it was overwhelming loneliness, especially since only sporadic phone calls home were allowed. Sandra waited, counting the days until she’d see her mom again. She marked off each day in her head until there were only two left. Once home, she planned on badgering, explaining, and pestering until she could convince her mom to take her back. But then, the day before Christmas break, she found out the bad news.

  “You’re not going home,” a stern nun explained when Sandra inquired about a bag or suitcase for her belongings. Sandra didn’t have much at the school but intended to take it all since she had no plans of returning. The next day, some of the students left to spend Christmas at home while others stayed. Sandra never found out why she was a part of the latter group.

  There was little to do around the boarding school during the break. She slipped into a blue fog, with each day stretching endlessly. After the break ended and everyone returned from their homes, life continued on in its own dismal and disconcerting way. The only thing Sandra knew was that she had to persuade her mom to let her come home once and for all.

  When the school term finally ended and Sandra and her brothers did get to go home, Lolo was waiting for them at the front door. Sandra raced past the others, throwing her arms around her mother. “My baby girl,” Lolo whispered over and over, stroking Sandra’s hair. Neither had to say how much she’d missed the other. With a simple touch, the bond between mother and daughter was once again sealed.

  Over the summer, Sandra pleaded with her mother, who adored her only daughter. Sandra’s well-worded complaints finally convinced her mother not to send her back to the Mission boarding school. Sandra was relieved; her boarding school nightmare was finally over. The family was back together. The fighting in the house had calmed down. It looked as if the worst was behind them.

  Sandra and her brothers had settled into a comfortable summer routine of lazy afternoons at the nearby swimming pool and neighborhood games of kick-the-can at night. She was close with her friends, and all of them were looking forward to starting eighth grade that fall at the junior high, which was within walking distance of Sandra’s house. Life was finally good again.

  Then out of nowhere, Lolo gathered the children to inform them that due to a job change they would be moving from Minnesota to a tiny town in South Dakota. The kids had never heard of Tea, South Dakota. Despite well-worded protests—none of them wanted to get sent away for causing a problem—the moving van was packed and they were on their way. The children, now in their teens, except for Sandra who would turn thirteen in a couple of months, were crushed over leaving familiar friends.

  Chapter 3

  Summer 1973

  Th
e family settled into a large farmhouse outside the small town of Tea, South Dakota. Sandra and her brothers often walked the half mile into town for something to do throughout the remainder of the summer. Sandra quickly met several friends, including a girl named Debbie who lived just down the road. Even though Debbie was three years older than Sandra, the two were drawn to each other through their love of animals, music, and watching movies. Debbie had a sister as well and sometimes, due to the proximity of their houses, the three girls all hung out together with Sandra’s brothers. They were a bubbly group and would spend hours together talking, laughing, and making batch after batch of Kool-Aid to quench their thirst in the hot, waning days of summer.

  One Friday night before Sandra started school in nearby Harrisburg, she was watching The Brady Bunch while sitting cross-legged on the couch with a bowl of buttered popcorn on her lap that she was eating one piece at a time. The television was cranked up louder than necessary, as it usually was, to account for the noise that came from having a houseful of kids.

  Ring ring. “I’ve got it!” she yelled, jumping off the couch and half dropping the popcorn bowl onto the coffee table, where it spun nearly to the edge. “It’s for me,” she yelled again before answering the phone. If one of her brothers answered, they would jokingly hold the phone out of her reach or say something embarrassing to the person on the other end before giving her the phone.

  “Hey, Debbie!” It was her good friend who lived down the road, and the two talked every day.

  “You’re watching The Brady Bunch, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Sandra laughed. “Yes, so why did you call now?”