Cruel Death

by M. William Phelps

  She claimed that she had “made love” to only BJ, but she wrote that she had been with around 25 guys.... And she was scared of not being able to satisfy Jimmy because, she believed, he said he had slept with at least two thousand women over the course of his life, and had probably done everything there was to do. Still, Erika was never one to back down from a challenge and became determined to get it started, even from behind bars, promising Jimmy that she would soon write him “paper sex.” She signed off, I love you.

  After describing how tight her vagina was, she wrote how she was going to do everything and anything Jimmy wanted when they got that house on the beach and did it 5–6 times a day. Erika told Jimmy she was disappointed that her mother couldn’t send him anything. Apparently, Erika and her mother had sat during a visit that weekend and discussed all the different items they were going to send Jimmy for his birthday in a “care package.” The prison had said no. Mitch even called and asked, but he was turned down.

  Yes, I have a beautiful plump [vagina], Erika wrote. It was sickening, she added, how I fantasize about you all day.... She explained how her huge [vagina] lips for you to suck on . . . then open with your fingers . . . always shaven clean, fresh pussy. She wanted to know if Jimmy got “hard” reading her letters. In her cell while writing them, Erika wrote, she had to squeeze my thighs together + feel my pussy throbbing. . . .

  Clarifying what was truly important to Erika, even as she sat in prison facing life, she wrote page after page on the topics of diamonds and clothes: her likes and dislikes in those areas. She was obsessed with jewelry, sure, but it was clear from these letters that expensive diamonds satisfied and even fed a part of her soul.

  By the next letter, Erika was calling herself “your wifey,” signing off the letters by saying that Jimmy could have her for the rest of his life if he wanted. She wrote that he could stick his chocolate cock in and out of me anytime he pleased. Then, in another letter, she talked about how she had taken on two guys at the same time before, and even once had two women: Only did it that one night . . . I had double penetration. . . . It was awesome.

  Erika’s handwriting varied from perfect printing to scribbled cursive; large letters to small; absolutely fine penmanship, with flawless margins, to chicken scratch that was hardly legible. From reading these letters and studying the context and motivation, and the telltale signs her handwriting leaves, it could be presumed that Erika Grace Sifrit was, at best, totally on board with the notion that she had screwed her life up and knew it; and, at worst, that she honestly believed she had done nothing wrong other than marry BJ Sifrit and love him.

  It was odd that Erika continued on and on about how ignorant and gullible she was for falling for a “pretty face” and navy SEAL, so taken by the uniform and title, and yet she was telling Jimmy how much she had loved him and adored him and would spend the rest of her life with him, but she hadn’t yet seen or met him. All she knew was the guy on the page sending her these incredibly well-written love letters.

  Her language, too, was beginning to show signs of her environment. She explained to Jimmy how she and BJ had run a business and sold stolen Hooters merchandise on eBay and were making upward of $1,500 a week, with that gig alone, but of course the shit was hot hot hot hot—feel me? In the same breath, she mentioned that she was convinced there was still about $300g worth out there . . . I don’t know where it is no longer . . . feel me?!?! She was finished stealing, she wrote, ... even though the cash was sweet.

  She said her parents were going to be broke by the time all was said and done. The “total tab” would be “about half mil.” At the same rate, however, she wrote Jimmy: If you need cash . . . my parents [will send it].

  By September, Erika was concerned that Jimmy’s parents in New Orleans would not accept her because she was white. She worried how they would react to a “white chick” Jimmy brought home, adding, “I’m no ho.”

  According to Erika, her dad was now sending Jimmy $50 money orders. Sometimes $40. But they were being sent pretty regularly, and Erika was promising Jimmy that more were on the way.

  Heading into November, Erika had written Jimmy fifty-nine letters, all of which she numbered. There were letters in which all she talked about was her OCD; others that she went on and on about how much of a “snob” her mother was, and how she didn’t want to come across that way but probably did; and still others in which she went into graphic detail about what she was going to do to Jimmy during the first opportunity she was alone with him. She’d write what she called “sex stories,” in which she’d make up a scenario—a favorite was returning to a fictional locker room after a ball game, because she forgot something, only to run into Jimmy, who would be taking a shower—the sexual innuendo and promises in these letters were graphic and vile.

  As the letters progressed, Erika wrote, she was falling deeper and deeper for Jimmy and it scared her shitless. Every letter, every word . . . every thought . . . I fall more in love.... To Erika, there was no doubt about it, she had finally found her “soul mate.” There was only one other man she had viewed in that respect: a friend of the family her father had hired.

  She was now calling Jimmy’s penis “Mr. Chocolate,” writing she would attend to him 24/7 @ his request . . . if he waits for me. . . . Don’t break my heart.

  What was interesting became how Erika referred to BJ in one of her later letters as her “serial killer ex.” Did this mean there were other murders she knew about? Was it a slip? Why would Erika call her husband a serial killer if he killed only two people, both at the same time, essentially?

  In October, Erika was promising Jimmy a “steamy” Halloween letter. On the other hand, in another letter that month, she wrote how she was upset because two television shows she had just watched, CSI and JAG, had portrayed SEALs as good guys. Seeing the show brought it all back for Erika. She said she was sick and tired of people treating SEALs like heroes. None of them were honorable, she ranted. She got so “pissed,” she claimed to have shattered the pay phone outside her cell. She wrote she was livid that her crazy f-ing lock-picking “honorable” Navy SEAL is going to kill more innocent people when he walks away laughing at Joel Todd. . . . The only thing that had calmed her down that night, she said, was dreaming of Jimmy and Days of Our Lives character Nick Fallon “double-teaming” her.

  From there, she carried on for two pages about perhaps getting a boob job when she was released. She wanted to know how Jimmy felt about it.

  One of the guards had come up on Erika as she was writing one night near Halloween and “raided” her cell. The guard ended up finding “a stash of pills,” according to Erika. This translated into twenty-plus pills, according to police.

  Jimmy gave Erika a good solid tongue-lashing in one letter, letting Erika know that he could see right through her “snobbish” veneer. He was upset that she had lied to him—this time about being sober. The raid on her cell told Jimmy she wasn’t.

  Erika answered back, saying she couldn’t “help” being “spoiled” all her life. If she had those pills in her cell right at the moment she was reading Jimmy’s angry response, she said, she would have taken all of them. No one knew, she insisted, how tough she had it. Jail was the easy part of her life, she explained. It was living with the notion that her husband was framing her for murder that was tough. That and the horror she had witnessed. Do you think I feel good . . . , she wrote, that he ... fucked a headless, lifeless woman . . . and then said it was better than me?

  Prison time was getting to her. She was having panic attacks over her upcoming court dates and potential sentence. She couldn’t do life, she said. No way. It was too much. But not because of the time, or the idea of spending the rest of her life behind bars; instead, Erika wrote, she was worried about losing her figure, her youth, my body, [and] . . . 99 % of the fear was that she had found the perfect man of my dreams and I’m facing life.

  By Monday, October 21, 2002, Erika was sleeping during the day and staying up all night writing lo
ng, tedious letters to Jimmy about everything from the fashion magazines the guards were sneaking into her cell for her, to the fact that she didn’t like the idea of being videotaped having sex. However, being in the middle of a room, during a party or gathering of some sort, while she and Jimmy went at it like bunnies, didn’t bother her one bit.

  It was her mom’s fifty-fourth birthday, she wrote, which meant that it was BJ’s twenty-fifth; they shared the same birthday. Erika had just gotten word that her trial was supposed to begin on December 2. Erika had had a visit with her parents earlier that same day—and as she was leaving the visit, she got up and turned, and there was BJ. She wrote, He somehow knew I was coming. . . .

  BJ was apparently waiting by a window (both jails are connected), staring at her with that wide-eyed face, she wrote, when he’s all jacked up + grits his teeth.... This was fighting mode for BJ, she knew. She was sure he was trying to intimidate her.

  She was scared of BJ even more than she had ever been. Erika told Jimmy she spent that entire day and night underneath the covers. Seeing his face, that stare, those steely eyes, she considered that he was going to get out and kill her family. She said she couldn’t even think about it anymore without having anxiety. It was his face and his eye + his disgusting erection while he committed these crimes. . . .

  After describing how terrified she was after seeing BJ, and thinking of what he might do to her family when he got out of prison—and, she was certain, if BJ made up his mind that he was getting out . . . well, he had a plan—and would be looking for payback. Next, Erika started in about her reptiles again. She went on and on about how “awesome” they were and how “crazy” she was about her snakes and crocs and couldn’t understand how people were scared of them.

  In another letter, as Erika started meeting with her attorneys—Arcky Tuminelli and Tom Ceraso, an attorney Mitch had recently hired to help Arcky out—Erika told Jimmy she felt her parents had “deceived” her: . . . they taught me marriage was the one guarantee in life....

  It was the first time she had met with Ceraso. He got 2 thumbs up, she wrote later that night.

  Before they had even sat down to talk, Erika asked him, “Who killed the two victims?”

  Ceraso’s “immediate response,” Erika said, was “Your husband, of course.”

  “Let’s talk,” Erika said after that, sitting down.

  Jimmy had convinced Erika to keep a notebook of “details” pertaining to the murders—everything she could recall. Erika gave that notebook to Ceraso.

  What was clear from the meeting, Erika wrote, was that her best defense was a good offense: abused wife.

  If there was one common theme throughout all the letters Erika wrote to Jimmy, it was that she was certain BJ would, in her words, “get off.” She felt the system was a rotten organization of prosecutors out to get her and allow BJ to skate.

  Ceraso had returned to tell Erika they were motioning the court for a postponement of her trial and a change of venue. Either way, Ceraso said, he was hopeful that the court would allow Erika bond.

  As the new year dawned, Erika’s letters to Jimmy were more conservative and pointless, really. They centered again on television and likes and dislikes. Her lawyers must have told Erika to lay off talking about the case, because she rarely mentioned it. But then, Erika was never one to take on an authoritative slap in the face with any humility. She knew damn well what was best for her, but she insisted on doing things her way, perhaps taking the position that she was going to walk because she had, as she explained to Jimmy, God on her side, and BJ didn’t. She began to feel that everyone—the press, the prosecutor, her own lawyers, and anyone else who didn’t believe her—was against her and with BJ. “Why?” became one of Erika’s favorite questions to bounce off Jimmy. Why me? Why now? Why not look into BJ’s “past”? The answers would be quite obvious.

  She said repeatedly that she did not kill those people.

  He did.

  I have less hope everyday....

  Later, I’ve already disgraced my entire family.... They can’t save me this time.

  80

  Mind Games

  According to several people close to BJ Sifrit, his favorite book was Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, a centuries-old treatise about the art of how “a ruler can retain control of his realm.” In other words, BJ was good to his SEAL training in that he believed in—or at least studied and was fascinated by—mind control, manipulation, and total supremacy over another human being. The Prince was just one more way for BJ to feed what several later said had become a Communist-slanted way of thinking he had developed over the years.

  Two additional books detectives later found in BJ’s possession were Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National Alliance (the X in the title is depicted as a swastika) and The Anarchist Cookbook. Explosion has section titles that explain perfectly where BJ’s head was at, if this was bedside reading: “Thriving on Hate,” “Bonds with Other Bigots,” “Exploiting the Internet.”

  The Anarchist Cookbook was no different. With section titles along the lines of “Drugs,” “Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance,” “Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons,” and “Explosives and Booby Traps,” the book outlined recipes to make bombs and start drug factories; how to scramble electronics and broadcast free radio and build natural weapons and gelatin dynamite; how to make homemade hand grenades, conduct successful bridge destruction, time delay devices; and so on and so forth. This is something a terrorist might have in his library as a user’s manual.

  Another book BJ favored was Masterpieces of World Philosophy, a compilation of essays from the likes of Tao Te Ching and Karl Marx, with titles that, again, spoke to how interested BJ had become in things like “Human Nature and Conduct.” This coincided with pages upon pages of humans keeping their fellows in bondage—of which, a former friend of BJ’s later told a Baltimore Sun newspaper reporter, BJ had highlighted many passages detailing the most violent behavior known to man. What was interesting about BJ’s copy of the book was that those passages he underlined and highlighted regarded the treatment of females. In one, the author had called women “half human,” which was apparently a point of view BJ favored.

  BJ envied the manner, he told another friend, of snakes and other reptiles, including crocodiles—so much so, he bought both and would spend hours sitting and watching their movements and behaviors. He was particularly interested in their “savagery,” an acquaintance of BJ and Erika’s told the Baltimore Sun. Moreover, it was well-known inside BJ’s close circle of in-laws and friends of Erika’s that he was taken by Hitler “for the power he amassed.”

  BJ was into mind manipulation. He once asked Mitch Grace if Mitch would hire a friend of his. Mitch’s construction company was always looking for good help. BJ said he had somebody in mind.

  “Send him over to the store,” Mitch told BJ.

  A day later, BJ and his friend showed up at Memory Laine. BJ’s friend, Mitch noticed, had parked outside the store by the curb in an area not zoned for parking. It was clearly marked by a yellow line. This tiny detail told Mitch “two things,” he later said. One was that the guy obviously had “no respect for right and wrong.”

  After BJ’s friend left, BJ asked Mitch if he was going to hire the guy.

  “I don’t think so,” Mitch said.

  BJ had that cocky, almost “I knew it,” look on his face.

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” Mitch explained, “your friend parked in that no parking zone, which told me a lot about his ability to follow rules.”

  BJ smiled coyly. “No kidding . . .”

  “It also showed me that he’s probably lazy, too, because he didn’t want to walk from the parking lot into the store.”

  BJ walked away.

  As the next week unfolded, it was clear to Mitch that BJ had derived something from the conversation. Because for every day he showed up at the store afterward, BJ parked on that same yellow line, in the no pa
rking zone. He never said anything. He just parked his car and went into the store as a normal course of his day. Mitch noticed it immediately, but didn’t say anything—that is, until he couldn’t take it anymore.

  “BJ, can you stop parking there!” Mitch said one day after about two weeks. Then Mitch grabbed BJ’s keys and moved the car.

  BJ never said a word. He was testing Mitch. Seeing how far he could push him. Seeing how Mitch would react.

  There was another time, Erika later explained to a pen pal, when BJ was outside the store looking in through the window. Erika was busy doing something and hadn’t noticed two customers in the store. As BJ watched, he apparently spied them shoplifting several small items.

  Finishing up what he was doing outside, BJ walked into the store, locked them all inside, and then pulled out his gun.

  Walking around, waving the weapon, he told the couple, who were pushing a stroller with a child, to put everything on the counter.

  They were terrified.

  “Put it on the counter and pay for it all,” BJ insisted, Erika later said.

  “What?”

  “You wanted it—well, you’re going to buy it all now.”

  Erika further explained that the couple was down to “pennies” in the bottom of the woman’s purse to pay for it all.

  81

  Dead Serious Talk

  Erika was in a terrible spot—being in prison and not being able to control her life outside the barbed wire. She had put so much trust in her lawyers, and they were doing all they could, but now she apparently felt that the only way out of this mess was to take control of things herself.

  Writing once again to Laurie, her friend from high school, Erika began a letter with DEAD SERIOUS TALK, written in bold letters at the top of the page. Erika was livid. It was time, she wrote, to start fighting fire with fire.

  In her nondescript, wink-wink type of tone, she wrote to Laurie that she never wrote this letter.... She asked Laurie to “memorize” and then “tear” it up. Flush it down the toilet, she penned, whatever Laurie had to do to get rid of it. A trash bin wouldn’t work, Erika said. Then, You’re my girl.