Cruel Death

by M. William Phelps

  Then she told a story of having to drive to her daughter’s school on the day she heard the terrible news, pull the poor child out of class, and explain what had happened to her godfather.

  There was not a dry eye in the room.

  Joshua’s sister spoke next.

  Then Geney’s stepdaughter: “I called her ‘Mom.’”

  Next, Geney’s “little sister,” Anita Flickenger, stood and spoke her piece. She talked about the media wanting quotes and she being the least quotable person in the room. “But I would like to be quoted on this,” she said patronizingly, looking around, pausing for a brief moment, having a terrible time looking Erika in the face. “The fact that justice has been served in this action is due to the professionalism and the dedication of the lead detective, Scott Bernal, to that of Joel Todd and Scott Collins, the members of their staff, and to the twelve men, tried and true, the jurors of Frederick County, who saw the truth and rendered a just verdict.”

  Erika sat without saying or doing anything.

  “We owe each of you a debt, which can never be repaid,” Anita continued. “‘Thank you’ is so inadequate, but I say to each of you, thank you.”

  Later in her statement, Anita went straight at Erika, making a point of what perhaps many were feeling on that day, but no one had yet vocalized: “I believe that when Erika and her husband butchered Geney and Josh and placed their bodies in the Dumpster to find their way to the Hard Scrabble Dump, she completed the process she began in that awful [rest] room. It was not just Geney and Josh’s body you threw away, it was the last shred of your humanity.”

  Anita had struggled with the loss of her sister, as any sibling would. It was back during that week when Joshua and Geney went missing that Anita’s pain, Detective Scott Bernal later said, began to pull on the detective’s heartstrings. Anita had called one night shortly after the OCPD had found Geney’s car. Anita was certain Geney and Joshua were in the trunk of the car. She called the OCPD and asked if they could just bust it open and take a look. It was one of the hardest things Bernal said he had ever done: approaching that trunk and popping it open.

  The most vexing words of the day, spanking of a streetwise toughness that growing up in South Boston had likely played a hand in, came from Joshua’s brother, Mark Ford. Mark was angry, sure. He was in a state of total disbelief, having buried both a daughter and brother to murder in the span of eight months. But he was also, on this day, ready to point out for Erika what she could expect from life behind bars. In a certain way, although he probably didn’t plan it, Mark Ford made a case for abolishing the death penalty in lieu of allowing heinous criminals to suffer for the rest of their lives.

  “It is judgment day,” Mark said after introducing himself and calling Erika a murderer. “It is time for you to pay the consequences. Erika, today is the day that this honorable court holds you accountable for your murderous acts. Erika, today is the first day of your lifetime walk down Jessup Prison’s memory lane. You’re going to have lots and lots of quality cell time. In prison, you will experience the inner panic and terror of loneliness and isolation. Erika, you are twenty-five years old with a life expectancy of another fifty years, of which you are going to have plenty of time to think about what you did to Josh and Geney.”

  Erika sat and looked away, shaking her head slightly. She was incensed. It was clear from the twisted expression on her face. One courtroom watcher later said that Erika seemed to be seething at the core of her being. This was one situation well beyond anything Erika could control, and she was livid at the notion that people were allowed to say such things about her.

  Mark continued: “Erika, here’s some reality. Benjamin won’t be your cellmate at Jessup, and your backup death row husband (Jimmy) won’t be stopping by for visits, either. . . . You’re going to be locked up in a five-by-nine cell, hopefully painted purple, without a tanning booth and with no beach to sunbathe on, and you cannot bring your three pet snakes with you. . . . I don’t think they will be serving crabs and cold beer.... Erika, your special treatment time is over.” Erika was looking down and away. She didn’t want to acknowledge Mark’s comments by staring at him and showing any emotional reaction. As she did that, Mark said loudly, “Please look at me! . . . Please take a long look at me. Shortly you will hear Josh and Geney’s message to you, it’s judgment time. Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Mark walked back to his seat. There was total silence in the room. Some of Joshua’s relatives sitting there had worn vials of his ashes around their necks in solidarity and support and love. In some ways, this plain gesture of honoring the dead was a subtle reminder to the judge—although none was surely needed—of what was left of Joshua’s and Geney’s bodies.

  Cookie Grace stepped forward after the victims’ families had their chance to speak. With pure and dramatic tears, which were certainly genuine and heartfelt, Cookie said how sorry she was to the families of Geney and Joshua—and she meant it. She expressed her sympathies, then said, “I love my daughter and I wouldn’t trade her for anyone in the world.”

  Erika was sentenced to life in prison, plus twenty years. Judge G. Edward Dwyer called Erika a “Jekyll and Hyde” after steadfastly denying a request by Erika that she be placed in a mental hospital.

  “State prison,” the judge chided.

  Gavel.

  Epilogue

  Mitch Grace told me that he speaks with Erika by phone just about every day.

  “I leave my phone line open between nine and ten-thirty A.M. during the week, in case Erika calls,” he said.

  Throughout this project, I asked Mitch questions based on information I had uncovered, with the implication that he would talk it over with Erika during those phone calls. I never received a straight answer to anything important I had ever asked. Most of Mitch’s responses pertinent to the case—and what he wanted to share—are in this book.

  Can we blame Mitch, however, for not wanting to ruin his daughter’s chances on appeal?

  Near the end of the project, I asked Mitch one last time to talk to Erika on my behalf. “Explain to her that I am offering her a voice in this book if she wants it. But time is running out.”

  Mitch said he would, but that Erika’s lawyers would likely advise her to keep quiet.

  Which she did.

  I respect that.

  In light of this offer, Mitch asked if he could extend it to several of Erika’s fellow (and former) inmates.

  “Sure,” I said. “Like to hear from them.”

  And so . . . in came the letters. One batch of five. All of them had an “Erika is a loving and caring person” type of tone—that Erika was, more or less, nothing more than a “victim of love.” That she had hooked up with an abusive, controlling, manipulative man, who had fundamentally stolen her emotional identity and then convinced her to do the unthinkable for (and with) him. He baited her, so to speak, and then set her up to take the fall for those crimes.

  The evidence, of course, points to a far different scenario. Erika’s own recollection of that night in the condo with Joshua and Geney, as she explained it to Secret Service SA Carri Campbell, telling her that she had told BJ to “just fucking do it,” is, in and of itself, an entire contradiction to the story she would later refuse to let go of.

  I do, however, respect the loyalty, love, and friendship these women, who truly believe in Erika, showed by writing to me. Many of them displayed an eternal devotion to Erika. There’s a “you don’t know the real Erika Sifrit” sense to these letters.

  I cannot help but think that those of us who use the facts as our guide have been blinded somehow by our own ignorance. Is there a convicted criminal serving time for a crime—no matter what that crime is—who would ever condone the actions of a jury?

  I have not yet met him or her.

  One woman who wrote to me on Erika’s behalf, Leslie Johnson, articulated her thoughts about Erika in a way that touched me. I feel for women like Leslie and, believe it or not, all the others who wrote to m
e. Many of these women are doing time in prison solely because the men they loved either abused them or dragged them down into an abyss of criminal activity, for which they saw no way out. Many of these women have children on the outside who are being taken care of by their mothers, friends, and relatives. Many of these women committed crimes to protect their children, to feed their children, and to give their children a chance in life. I’ve met women like this throughout my career. They get mixed up with a criminal, have his kids, and end up taking the fall with (or for) the guy when the ride is over. It’s a sad American story played out in towns and cities across this nation, which usually involves the abuse of drugs and/or alcohol.

  Still, this is a separate issue when we begin talking about Erika Grace Sifrit. Despite the role she now plays in prison when housed with these same women, Erika doesn’t fit into this subsection of the criminal justice system.

  Erika is a convicted murderer. She was not abused by her husband in this same way.

  Leslie Johnson wrote, I’m sure you have heard many horrible things about Erika because of the nature of her crime, but she is not a horrible person to me.

  Emphasis on “to me.”

  Those are the two words that truly belong in the context of these letters.

  Erika Sifrit can be whatever and whoever she wants to be in prison: it is her domain now, her world. A place in which she is, essentially, preaching to a choir of women who will sympathize with her.

  I’m not saying she is 100% innocent in this matter, Leslie continued, but what she did was out of love and loyalty for her husband.... Some people, like myself, don’t know who they are and need a man in our lives to define ourselves. So why is everyone so hard on Erika?

  Erika Sifrit was not codependent. She wants us now to believe she was, but that is not the truth of the matter, at least according to all of the available evidence.

  I wrote to BJ Sifrit twice. I received a two-word response from him:

  Not interested.

  Mitch Grace and I went back and forth and spoke at length about his daughter’s case, Erika’s life before and after her arrest, his son-in-law, and a father’s desperate love for his only child—a daughter beyond the reach of his comforting arms. There is a pain in Mitch’s voice as he speaks—one that words on a page cannot convey. There is a part of his nature that screams of a father constantly questioning himself. Constantly wondering what tomorrow will bring. Constantly hoping that by some swipe of a magic wand, he will wake up one day and be told that his life for the past six-plus years has been a terrible nightmare.

  Mitch asked me once, “What if this happened to your daughter, Mr. Phelps? Would you be doing anything different?”

  I could not answer no.

  During one conversation, I asked Mitch to please consider the idea that his daughter could be responsible for these heinous crimes, of which there is no plausible explanation. No why. No purpose.

  I raised this person? I don’t know this person. Who are you?

  Although he steadfastly believes that BJ is fully responsible, and Erika was set up (but not totally innocent, either), Mitch Grace told me it wouldn’t matter if Erika committed these crimes. She is all that he and Cookie have, and they will stand behind her until they leave this planet.

  Erika should count her blessings that she has parents as loving and caring as Mitch and Cookie. She needs to stop lying to these people who raised her and tell them the truth so they can all move on from this and begin to heal.

  They have time. Why waste it in a chasm of lies?

  Mitch and Cookie deserve the truth.

  Mitch has had a lawyer “on my payroll,” he said half jokingly, for the past six years. As expected, Erika is exhausting every possible appeal and opportunity at her disposal to get out of prison. The Maryland Supreme Court rejected a 2005 appeal of her conviction and sentence.

  As of this writing, Erika awaits a court date on a hearing regarding that seemingly open-ended agreement she signed with the state’s attorney’s office, and the possibility that she had inadequate counsel, which also includes a filing that she couldn’t live without BJ and was abused by him and felt trapped into doing what he said—or else. Erika is claiming now that BJ had total control over her actions (the wizard behind the curtain). I’m told that the argument Erika will present in court is that she cannot be held “criminally responsible” for the murders and was incapable of conforming her own conduct because of the power BJ wielded—i.e., routine and constant spousal abuse.

  When I called one of Erika’s former supporters and told him about this development, he said, “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke! Has to be.”

  It is clear in the information I uncovered and presented in this book that the polar opposite of that very weak argument is true.

  Erika has new lawyers. Tom Ceraso and Arcky Tuminelli are out.

  In November 2007, BJ and his lawyers requested a new trial. When I heard this, I thought, Does this guy really want to roll the dice again with a jury? Seems to me, he hit the jackpot last time around and should maybe just let sleeping dogs lie.

  As Joel Todd told reporters back when BJ filed a motion for a new trial, this case is ongoing and seems to have no end. Just when you think you’ve learned something new about it, another bombshell regarding what happened is dropped.

  Then, in September 2008, BJ and his camp made another move. BJ dropped his bid for a new trial and asked a federal court to throw out his conviction. The argument, legal experts note, is a pretty good one. BJ’s new claim is that the state “violated his right to a fair trial by presenting a contradictory theory of how the crime occurred when it prosecuted his wife for the same slaying.”

  During BJ’s trial, in other words, the state argued that he was the primary killer, the man with the gun in his hand. At Erika’s trial, the same state prosecutors proposed the idea that Erika was the principal killer, bearing full responsibility for both deaths. In legal mumbo jumbo they call this a “federal habeas corpus petition.” On the street, however, we call it a smart way to kick out the back door and find an easier way out of prison.

  We shall see.

  Law enforcement close to this case that I spoke to are convinced BJ and/or Erika are responsible for a murder outside Ocean City with certain earmarks and signatures shared by the two of them, but another man now serves prison time for that crime—maybe wrongly so. I was never given a name, state, town, or any details about the case that would help me begin to look into it myself.

  I also spoke to one person who believes Erika and BJ could have killed in other states.

  Who knows?

  Once someone is convicted of a crime this evil, this gruesome, and this monstrous, the floodgates open and cold cases become hot.

  What remains clear to me is that the horror Erika and BJ perpetrated against two wonderful, kind, caring, and loving human beings in Ocean City on that Saturday night before Memorial Day is, at its core, an immorality of such gargantuan proportions that the true nature behind these crimes can never be fully explained, understood, or accessed emotionally. It’s hard to really wrap our minds around what happened in that bathroom after Geney and Joshua were so viciously murdered and, equally important, during the subsequent days when Erika and BJ were running around Ocean City seemingly celebrating what they had done.

  Erika has her supporters. Indeed, they will always be there to cheer her on. They stand behind her. Friends and inmates she’s met in prison. They claim the “real” Erika would never do something this despicable. That it “had to be” all BJ’s doing. That he brainwashed her. That he abused her. That he put so much fear into her, she would do anything for him—including murder and dismemberment. I heard Stockholm syndrome mentioned. Patty Hearst.

  But it must be understood that this is the story Erika promulgates behind those prison walls. I won’t deny her the right to survive that environment the way in which she sees fit.

  But it doesn’t make any of it true.

  The e
vidence, on the other hand, if truly looked at objectively, points directly to Erika’s culpability, responsibility, and involvement. And if you look really hard, staying in between the lines of reality, you might even take a stab—no pun intended—at saying Erika could have played a larger role in this entire crime than BJ, and that two juries returned just verdicts.

  Lastly, lives were ruined over this case. That much is a fact. But I want to point out that for the detectives involved—one of whom, entirely because of this case, no longer works for the OCPD detective squad—this case had an emotional impact on them the likes of which they will never be able to comprehend.

  In closing, I’d like to speak directly to my readers. This is my tenth true crime book. I am entirely grateful for your support throughout the years, along with the opportunity you’ve given me to write these books. I want all of you to know that I read every e-mail and letter I receive. Even if I cannot answer each correspondence personally, I am indebted to have such wonderful, intelligent, dedicated readers.

  I listen to your advice. I take into account the cases you suggest. And I always take the time to consider your thoughts.

  I am a lucky author to have such dedicated, loyal fans.

  I never take any of this for granted.

  If anyone wishes to contact me, please visit my Web site, www.mwilliamphelps.com, or write me at: