Why couldn’t he have been a stronger swimmer? If only he could go back in time and change any one of these circumstances, Jimmy could possibly still be alive today.
Jake spent countless months after the incident in which he remained depressed, sluggish, unmotivated to do much at all. That is, until he met Kristin Ramey. Jake and Kristin met in high school when Jake was a senior and Kristin was a junior. They were classmates in Biology and US History and were in the same Home Room. Kristin was a cute, bright eyed, long haired brunette from North Kingstown and was quite taken with the small-town boy at the back of the class.
Jake and Kristin became friends quite naturally and by the mid-semester point they had become a couple - the traditional high school sweethearts. He was a starting linebacker on the varsity football team and Kristin was on the cheerleading squad.
Kristin was the missing link in the young man’s life. She offered him the caring and concern that he lacked and needed. This sustenance was something Jake’s stoic New England family could not or did not provide. His parents rarely spoke, hugged, or showed any type of emotion. Later in life this demeanor would be adopted by Jake as well. But back then, he gratefully absorbed every drop of devotion and attention that Kristin provided.
The last time Jake saw Kristin was in June, the month after he graduated high school. Jake was 18, Kristin 17, and he was about to set foot on the plane that would take him to South Carolina to begin his life as a Marine. The couple vowed that they would keep in touch, that this was not goodbye, just a temporary setback in their lives, this would be a true test of their relationship which would most likely make them long for and want to be with each other that much more.
Jake began his tough, regimented Marine training and quickly found himself back in a similar state of melancholia as he was after the Jimmy tragedy and before he happened upon Kristin. Clouds constantly hovered above him, doubt and insecurity following his every move. Being away from his home, family, Kristin; and facing a new challenge– conditioned him this way.
And as if he wasn’t already down in the dumps enough, now there was a new ultimatum Jake would encounter. One requirement Jake had overlooked and not anticipated could now stand in his way of achievement; his class had just been told that they would have to demonstrate their ability to swim well, in waters deep, over long distances and for great lengths of time.
Jake wasn’t much of a swimmer even before the Jimmy incident, and for years afterward he never cared to go back out into the water at all. But now and at this point in his Marine training, he would have no choice in the matter.
At that point, Jake had to make a conscious effort to overcome his weakness, to ignore the images he still had of Jimmy’s limp body submerging in the lake water. Jake challenged himself to persevere and was able to transform himself into a more than adequate swimmer, successfully completing the rigorous and grueling amphibious assault training that the Marine Corps offered.
Earle Cabell Federal Building and U.S. District Court, Downtown Dallas (Present Day) Now the former Marine and Dallas Police Department Sergeant sat in the def endant’s chair, dressed in his black and white horizontal striped jumpsuit, ankle shackles restricting his leg movement and an electric shock wire strapped around his abdominal region.
This device was controlled remotely by sheriff’s deputies guarding Ha thaway, to be activated should he attempt to flee. A 50,000-volt jolt of electricity would convince anyone to revisit their initial thoughts of escape.
United States Prosecutor Michael Ferron had been assigned the task of presenting the facts of this case before the chosen jury. His goal was to secure a guilty finding by the jury and in convicting Hathaway of the multiple murders he was accused of.
Ferron had already spent the last nine weeks presenting evidence in the case and introducing witnesses and‘experts’ to testify against Hathaway, and he now addressed the jury with his closing arguments.
“Ladies and gentlemen of t he jury, I stand before you today representing the people of the United States of America. More specifically, the people of Dallas County, Texas. And furthermore, I speak for the two persons who cannot be here to speak for themselves; Richard Hathaway and Holly Ann Jones - Hathaway, were so callously taken from this world in the primes of their lives on that fateful February eighth.
“I want to thank you all for the time and attention you've put into this case. I think we can all agree that yours has been a very difficult and trying task. This case has been different from most cases, actually very different from any other case.
“For the last three weeks you each have had to live with these details and images you have been introduced to. These have been some of the most horrific crimes, with some of the most graphic violence, ever perpetrated against any other human beings. It's unfortunate that we must deal with crimes of this nature and that you have to view these horrific photographs, hear the witnesses’ grizzly first-hand observations and descriptions of the devastation and killing.
“Although we may be able to take some solace in the fact that our lives will never be as irrevocably affected as those of the victims and their families; we are all victims here. Every resident of Dallas has been taken advantage of, short changed and cheated by this defendant who appears before you.”
Ferron continued; “Jacob ‘Jake’ Hathaway is a man who swore before you when he took his oath of office as a Dallas Police Officer that he would do everything in his power to protect life and property and the rights, liberties and freedoms we have all been afforded as citizens of this great city and country. Well, he lied to you all. He betrayed the trust you all instilled in him.
“So now all of you have been assembled here to do one thing, to hand out some justice. Each one of you is here in part because you told this court under oath that you could base your decision in this case on the evidence brought before you-the evidence that came from the witness stand, documents, and photographs, everything that was presented to you during the trial.
“This is the information you must weigh and base your decision upon. Our duty as prosecutors and representatives of the State is to prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that Jake Hathaway is guilty of all charges. Use your common sense, apply it to the evidence that you've seen and heard; and you will recognize that we have proven our case.
“The defendant is charged with three crimes; you j ust heard them described by Judge Parker. He's charged with two offenses of capital murder and with one count of kidnapping - all felonies. And, folks, we are here to assert that justice in this case calls for guilty verdicts on every one of these charges.
“Now I would like to spend some time with you talking about all of the elements of the two capital murder crimes. As Judge Parker mentioned to you, when a person murders more than one person during the same criminal transaction, it is considered to be a capital murder, punishable by a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or by death from lethal injection. It is alleged that Jake Hathaway committed these ruthless, brutal murders.”
Ferron’s words were just white noise to Jake H athaway, who sat in his designated defendant’s seat, wondering and praying that this was all just a very bad dream. Or could these be hallucinations? Jake frequently experienced these as a result of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that he acquired during his tour of duty in Iraq during Operation Everlasting Freedom.
In March of his ninth year in the Corps, Jake was still enlisted and active in the war, but found himself wallowing in depression. He was unable to function or perform even the simplest of everyday tasks without breaking down mentally. He often heard rambling, cryptic voices inside his head. Soon afterwards Jake found himself honorably discharged from the Marine Corps.
In his current state of bewilderment and confusion, Jake was unable to comprehend what was transpiring around him, unable to communicate with his defense attorney or to inquire about the way this trial seemed to be playing out.
Nothing that occurred since the birthd
ay party and through the current trial procedures made any sense to Jake. That whole period had been like a blur - as if Jake had been teleported to a different time or place.
He had seen similar scenarios before on some of those classic Twilight Zone episodes and Planet of the Apes movies. Where people voluntarily or involuntarily traveled through time, either into the past or the present, via time travel experiments or by some unknown factor or force of nature. Jake would not have been surprised if at any second, a six-foot gorilla soldier in military garb and battle gear appeared on horseback, breaking through the courtroom doors and chasing him about, cracking a large horsewhip in Jake’s vicinity.
Jake recalled earlier in the morning seeing a large statue beside the front steps leading to the courthouse. Having not paid close attention to that landmark at that time, he now wondered if the bronze cast might have been Lady Liberty herself buried up to her navel in sand and pebbles accumulated over a time lapse of several centuries.
Something had changed in the world, something seriously wrong was going on here, and it could not all be taken back and made right again with the push of a button on a remote control. Equally stunned, sitting at the rear of the courtroom, was a young man in his mid-twenties. His name was Kelvin “Mack” McElroy, and he was a fellow police officer and co-worker of Hathaway’s. McElroy was trained by Hathaway in more than one phase of the four phases of a six-month long Field Training Program instituted by the Dallas Police Department.
McElroy began to reflect upon some of the better days he and Hathaway had together, and Mack also wondered where he would be right now had Hathaway not influenced his training and life the way he did….
Chapter Two “X” Marks the Spot
Kelvin McElroy was the product of an interracial marriage, and he grew up a small southern town kid from Pass Christian, Mississippi. He spoke with a slow, down-south drawl and, as some southerners are known for, he too was known to throw around a colorful phrase now and then to express himself in a way those from other parts don’t always quite understand.
His father being African American and his mother being Caucasian, he was occasionally picked on and sometimes bullied as a youngster. He recalled being in town with his mother and hearing his mom being called names from ignorant townfolk. But he wasn’t one to let these things bother him much and he still had his share of good friends of both black and white races. Friends with whom he shared time within various forms of recreation such as fishing, football, playing dominoes, hanging around and sometimes getting into minor trouble as kids can do.
He became heavily involved in sports as a teen and played on his Pass Christian High School Pirates’ baseball and football teams and became affectionately nicknamed ‘Mack’ by his teammates.
After high school, he attended a local junior college for a couple of years but really had no clue what direction he wanted his life to go in. That was until one day he heard that a Dallas Police Department recruiter was going to be in town at the local Marriot Hotel.
After he met with the recruiter, McElroy liked what he heard. Being a police officer was his opportunity to be able to help people in need, to protect them from others who would victimize those older, smaller, or weaker - basically anyone they could take advantage of in order to make a buck or benefit in some way.
This sounded like a great chance for Mack to find a career that would challenge him and one that he could be proud of. Mack flew to Dallas a month later for three days to undergo DPD’s thorough hiring process, which consisted of a written exam, a physical agility test, a polygraph test, drug screen, medical checkup and psychological evaluation.
The physical agility test proved to be a particularly memorable experience for the young police officer applicant, as one of the tests was a fifty-yard dash which was conducted in the basement of an old downtown building that used to be the Dallas Police Headquarters. It was in this very underground basement back on November 24th of 1963 that Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F Kennedy.
McElroy returned home to await the test results, and about three weeks later he learned he had passed every step of the process. So, at the tender age of twenty-one years old, Kelvin McElroy was hired by the Dallas Police Department, and his world was about to flip upside down. This tiny-town kid was about to be paid to police one of the largest metropolitan areas of the country.
It was a cool, rainy December day when McElroy rolled into ‘the Big D’ with all of his worldly possessions in the back of his grey Chevy S-10 pickup and the small white and orange six-foot-long U Haul trailer being towed behind it.
McElroy had already made quite a name for himself back in his hometown, being the first in his family to get a college degree, let alone the first to attend college at all. So, it was also quite a monumental achievement for him to be moving to Dallas to start a new exciting career and to begin training in the Dallas Police Academy.
Dallas Police Academy Class 226 consisted of twenty-six recruits, twenty men and six women of all races and ages and hailing from all parts of the United States.
On day one of the academy, Mack instantly noticed one of the other twenty-six recruits. Her name was Megan Anderson. Everyone noticed her. This twenty-year-old, captivating Caucasian female had long, flowing, naturally curly dirty blonde hair. At 5’3 and 115 pounds, she was an avid Crossfit and weight trainer and was equally as excited about her tattoos. Approximately one third of all of her skin was currently canvassed, and she had one or two more ink projects pending as soon as she had the money to pay for them.
Mack graduated from the academy with the highest grade-point average in his class, and he and Megan, along with three other rookies, were assigned to the downtown area known as the Central Business District, on foot patrol.
The Central Business District, or “CBD,” consisted of an area on the west side called, quite appropriately, the “West End,” another section on the east side called “Deep Ellum,” and a Farmers Market to the south.
Mack was slated to be trained by Sergeant and Field Training Officer Jake Hathaway, who was advised he would be reassigned to the K9 Unit after McElroy’s training was completed. Mack felt very fortunate in having been assigned to Jake Hathaway for the first and last phases of the four total phases in what is a six-month long Field Training Program. Senior Corporal Hathaway had the reputation of being a great, hardworking street cop who had a nose for sniffing out criminal activity.
His reputation as a no-nonsense, tough, training officer preceded him, and was one which the rookie officers in the academy gossiped about and feared. For he had failed many a rookie officer in the Field Training phase when they fell short of his stringent standards. On the other hand, he had played a prominent role in the instruction of more than one new officer being nominated by their peers as the outstanding Rookie of the Year.
On the first day of field training, Mack showed up forty-five minutes early. He had left his house very early, not wanting to risk the chance of running into some bad traffic and being late on his first day. His navy blue Blauer uniform pants and shirt were freshly pressed, his 5.11 black tactical boots polished, and spit shined, with his hair cut short and high. His Glock was still coated in the factory oil and his Taser brand electroshock weapon was new and as bright yellow as a bumble bees butt.
Some of the senior officers (often referred to as ‘old heads’) around the station observed Mack and his academy classmates lined up in the hallway and began to cut up, laughing and joking about how they “looked and smelled like fresh new rookie cops straight out of the academy.”
The first couple of weeks in the Field Training Process allowed for trainees to primarily observe their trainers on the job, giving the rookies time to get acclimated to their new beats. It didn’t take Mack long to learn the Central Business District.
M ack soon came to learn that “Deep Ellum” was best known for its live music, hole-inthe-wall bars and performance halls, as well as
its many tattoo parlors. Hathaway and his rookie would eventually spend many Friday and Saturday nights patrolling this area, breaking up fights and investigating car burglaries, pick pockets, and robberies each night until, like clockwork, one of the clubs would blast the song “Closing Time” through its indoor and outdoor patio speakers at 2 a.m.
But most of McElroy’s training would derive from the many hours he and his trainer would spend patrolling the West End. This was an area that consisted of restaurants, a mini indoor mall that also had a movie theatre, as well as office buildings and a Greyhound bus station. More notably, though, were the Dealey Plaza Historic District and Sixth Floor Museum, as well as a Holocaust Museum.
Many historians believe the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy had been fired from the southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository (now known as the Sixth Floor Museum), and that an assassin fired the shots. Texas Governor John Connally was also severely wounded in the assault, as the gunman fired upon a presidential motorcade that drove through the now-famous Dealey Plaza on the early afternoon of November 22, 1963.
Although most believe the shooter in this case was Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository, others speculate Oswald was merely the sacrificial lamb offered to conceal what was in reality a United States government involved conspiracy.
Nonetheless, in its present state, the Sixth Floor Museum, which is located on the sixth and seventh floors of the building, explores President Kennedy's life, legacy, and various theories about his murder.
Mack had to chuckle to himself every time he thought about walking the beat with Jake in the downtown area, often having tourists walking up to them to ask where Kennedy was shot. This would be Jake’s cue to sarcastically take his own right index finger, point to the back of his head, and exclaim “right about here!”
Wicked Awake Page 2
