Kenny the Making of a Serial Killer 1

by Patrick Laughy

  Despite being physically active enough, he tended to be a little overweight in those first few years.

  Edith, his grandmother on his mother’s side, lived alone in one of the gracious turn-of -the-century mansions nestled in the treed, prestigious neighbourhood of Shaughnessy in Vancouver. She had inherited it from her parents. It was a big rambling place that required staff to keep it up, but she could afford it. Her father had been in sugar and she still owned the controlling interest in the company her grandfather had formed in the late eighteen-hundreds.

  Edith had been born into a privileged environment and raised to fulfill her station in life, with little consideration for her ever having to make her own way in the world. Naturally she had married well. Early in her marriage, she and her husband had purchased a villa in the south of France and Edith now spent six months of each year living there and, despite her age, still played her part in the higher level of society life, when very comfortably ensconced in either of her residences.

  While she felt affection for, and enjoyed, the company of her grandchildren, she had grown up in an era where, for the most part, children were seen and not heard, cared for by staff and experienced in short visits and only when convenient.

  Kenny’s father’s parents also had money, but it had not been solely inherited. What they had been left when their parents passed had certainly entitled them to be considered as well off. However, for the most part their wealth had come as a result of a good deal of hard work. As a team, the couple had created a timber and sawmill empire that had grown exponentially over the years. A few years before Kenny’s birth they had received an offer they couldn’t refuse and they’d sold their holdings off to a larger firm.

  Although they were getting on in age, and didn’t need to work in view of the fact that they still held a large block of shares in the purchasing firm, they were not the retiring kind. Instead they’d gone on to create a small tree trimming business which currently provided enough income to let them live very comfortably, without the need to draw on any of their other investments.

  Just after selling off their large company, they’d purchased forty acres of forested waterfront property on Indian Arm. The parcel of land was thickly covered by mature second-growth evergreens, here and there interspaced with the odd copse of deciduous trees. It was in the undeveloped eastern portion of the Vancouver suburb of North Vancouver.

  At the time of purchase, the property had only been accessible by boat, but a couple of years later, in conjunction with ten other owners who lived or had property on that section of the waterfront, they’d anteed up the cash required to put through a gated, private road which connected them with the populated areas of North Vancouver to the west.

  Once the road had been built, they’d cleared just enough land, up on the small bluff overlooking the ocean where killer whales often frolicked and pleasure craft plied the open water, to build their dream home.

  After the house was finished, his grandfather had built a chicken house and run so they would have fresh eggs and chickens to eat when the hens got too old to lay. He’d also constructed a fair-sized piggery to produce pork, both for their personal consumption and some commercial sales. Attached to the building where the pigs could get inside in inclement weather, was a workspace grandpa used when he butchered pigs, and a couple of big freezers to keep them in once they had been cut up and wrapped in brown paper.

  That accomplished, he and grandma moved on to clearing an area at the inland border of the property, just off the private access road, creating a paved, chain-link-fence enclosure to house their new company’s small fleet of trucks and chipping equipment. Once the yard and fence were in place grandpa built a small workshop with its own bathroom and a row of garages to house the trucks and chippers when they came in each night after work.

  They had planned to leave the remainder of the land in a mostly natural state, but because they liked to keep physically active, they’d soon decided to take on the task of leveling the parcel of any grossly uneven land, while endeavouring to leave the remainder in its natural state. They also planned to do some future landscaping around the house, along the edges of the long driveway, as natural screening between the house and the pig and chicken pens.

  Some idea of how to do this without the removal of any of the old growth trees, which neither wanted to take down, held them up for a short period of time, but in the end, they decided to accomplish this by filling in and levelling all the natural depressions on the property utilizing the product from their company’s wood chipping machines. They figured they could accomplish that by slowly working their way through the standing timber wherever possible.

  To simplify the work required, they’d purchased a small excavator for use on the property. Kenny’s grandfather now used the compact machine each day to spread the loads carried in by the trucks from the cleanup of the company’s various jobsites and hauled back each night by the employees to be dumped in the storage yard compound.

  As he grew a little older, Kenny became very close to the pair and loved to spend time with them on the property.

  He could help grandma feed both the chickens and the pigs when he and his sister visited and unlike Leanne, he watched when Gramps selected the older birds for the table, then got out the chopping block and the axe and cut their heads off.

  The chickens were still alive for awhile after the axe had done its job, and they ran around like crazy, spraying blood everywhere. His sister found the whole process kind of gross and unsettling. She hid here eyes and cried the first time and after that she didn’t take part. Kenny found it exciting to watch. When it was over, he would find himself eagerly anticipating the next time the culling process would take place.

  Once he was finished with the chopping job, Grandpa would take the chicken heads and legs down to the pig pen and throw them over the fence. Kenny didn’t think the animals would eat them, but Grandpa just laughed and told him that those pigs would eat anything.

  He was right. The pigs gobbled them up.

  On these visits, his grandfather would also let him help drive and work the trucks and the excavator.

  They visited regularly, Grandpa and Grandma Simpson happily taking the young fellow and his sister in for weeks at a time, unlike Grandmother Edith, who only occasionally had him and his sister, accompanied by their mother, over for afternoon tea.

  Grandma Simpson was his favorite grandparent. She was a practical, down to earth, no nonsense woman, but very caring and she adored him, lavishing him with love and steadfastly granting his every wish.

  At this early point in his life, Kenny may have had some problems, but then what kid didn’t?

  He had been born into the good life and in those first few years, he certainly gave no outward indication of becoming the monster he would eventually turn out to be.

  At the time Kenny was born, Dave Richards was twenty-five years old.

  He stood six-two, was strongly built, and weighed in at one hundred and ninety pounds. He had recently graduated from the Vancouver Police Department Academy and was currently undergoing practical training under the supervision of a senior constable.

  Dave wasn’t what most people would describe as handsome, but his chiselled features, thick brown hair and blue eyes, coupled with his physical bearing, often drew a second look. He was happily married to his wife Jennifer, who was a stay-at-home mom. They had two kids, a boy, Philip who was four, and a girl, Alicia who was two. They lived in a new three-bedroom bungalow in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, which they shared with a cat named Murphy.

  Prior to joining the police force, Dave had been a member of the Canadian armed forces working as a radioman. He’d spent four years on the east coast while serving in the Navy but had never gone to sea, instead being posted to the large naval radio station situated just outside of Halifax.

  Looking for employment more rewarding, and a return to the west coast where he had been born and had family, and at the suggestion of an u
ncle who was a member of the Vancouver force, Dave had talked it over with Jenny and they had decided he should give the police force a try.

  From the day Dave applied to join the force he’d loved every second of what that meant. He seemed to be a natural and looked forward to every day he went to work.

  Everything wasn’t coming up roses of course, but he was a realist and didn’t expect that kind of perfection from life. Dave had always been able to roll with the punches. There were bound to be ups and downs and his new job would certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea.

  That said, all and all he found the job both challenging and rewarding. His first posting was to what was designated as District Two, one of the four police districts covering the City. This north-eastern section of Vancouver had long ago been coined the ‘Downtown East Side’ and contained the skid road zone, most of the drug activity, and was rampant with run-down hotels, cheap flophouses and homeless - and of course the addicts, or, in police jargon, the ‘hypes’.

  Eight marked police units served District two. The eight cars were designated with call numbers seven to fourteen. This was without doubt the toughest part of town. All the cars in D2 were two-man units, except for car seven which was a small one-man wagon. The city’s biggest wagon, a large and much employed two-man van, was also part of the district.

  Dave was assigned to do his practical in car nine and his partner was a grizzled old veteran, by the name of Jack Edwards. Edwards was long divorced and had been passed over for promotion numerous times. He also had a serious drinking problem, which he managed to keep under control when on duty for the most part, with some exceptions.

  Jack had long ago come to terms with the fact that he was going to stay a constable until he retired and it could be argued that he was just ‘putting in his time’. Initially that’s what Dave thought, but after they’d worked together for a few months, he changed his opinion about that.

  It quickly became apparent to him that Jack lived for his job simply because he really had no other life. The realization was a little depressing and sad when it first sank in, but eventually Dave figured it was as good a reason as any and it drifted to the back of his mind.

  Jack didn’t look for trouble, but he didn’t back away from it either. He was prepared for what was necessary, and was very streetwise and a pretty good role model for a new cop.

  Dave had to laugh when he related to others what had happened the first time he and his partner had climbed into a black and white.

  Jack had paused at the back of their assigned unit, a seventy-six Chevy that had seen better days, and dangled the car keys in front of him. He then spoke for the first time since their introduction in the squad room.

  “I’ll be doing the driving, son. You can sit in the front seat beside me for now, but if you even think about touching either the emergency switches or the radio mike, you’ll find yourself riding in the back so fast it will make your head spin. We clear on that?”

  Over time, it got better.

  After a month of observing what went on inside the unit, Jack tossed him the keys one morning. Dave, who hadn’t been expecting it, damn near dropped them. Jack managed a small grin.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do kid. I’ll be watching you. Oh, and what I said before about the emergency switches and the mike still goes, for now.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  - December 1984 –

  At the tender age of five, Kenny suffered what was unquestionably very serious trauma, both in a physical and psychological sense. He was involved in a serious road accident and, as a result, his life changed exponentially.

  When they’d set out on that fateful day Kenny, as usual, had fought against wearing his lap belt. In the end, he had only agreed to wear it if it was fastened very loosely and not restricting him too much.

  Looking back on it later, he would come to realize that demanding that slackness had probably saved his life. If the belt had been as firmly fitted as his mother had originally ordered, he would very likely have suffered the same fate as the rest of his family.

  The details of the accident would repeatedly haunt him for the remainder of his life. He would suffer routinely from flashbacks of the entire incident, haunted by horrible, detailed and highly animated recollections, which varied little over time.

  The initial screech, coupled with the smell of tortured, burning rubber as his father fought to control the careening car. The rending shriek of metal grinding against metal as the vehicle struck the guardrail. His loss of balance as the car tilted slightly as the wheels on the driver’s side lifted clear of the pavement. The sensation of helplessness as it scraped along the length of the extended barrier.

  The sounds, sights and smells of it once again overwhelming his senses. The inability of his young mind to take it all in. The whole thing becoming surreal. Time dragging and, from that point onward, everything happening in slow motion.

  Recalling becoming physically sick as his stomach knotted up with fear.

  His mother in the front beside his dad. Both she and his older sister, who was seated next to him in the back, were screaming. His father was frantically struggling with the steering wheel in an ineffectual attempt to bring the heavy vehicle back down onto all four wheels. One of the guardrail posts finally succumbing to the intense pressure and snapping under the strain, shearing off and rocketing through his sister’s window. It struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder before narrowly missing his own head as it flew past him and hurtled out through his window.

  That initial impact of the thick post had been enough to shove the car back onto its wheels and when the spinning rubber had grabbed at the road surface again Kenny had been thrown up and sideways, slipping out of his belt and to his horror, following the path the post had taken, out through the shattered side window.

  Kenny had come down hard on the pavement and then rolled into a lifeless ball.

  Even when Kenny reached adulthood he’d often relive every little detail of the accident. Mostly it was in nightmares, but sometimes the recall seemed to be triggered when he was fully awake, when he was under any kind of stress.

  After the fact, he’d learned that at he time of the accident his head had taken a serious hit on his forehead, knocking him unconscious. As a result, he’d been left with no first-hand recollections of the large car nosing into the next post, nor that it had then lurched upward and gone ass-over-teakettle up and over the remainder of the barrier; before becoming fully airborne and silently arcing out into the yawning emptiness of the nearly two-mile plunge to the floor of the gorge below.

  Kenny had awakened in the hospital three days later. When he did, he had no memory of anything after he’d hit his head on the road. He had no idea of what had taken place after he’d been thrown clear of the big car.

  His Simpson grandparents had been at his bedside in the hospital when he’d finally opened his eyes. He noticed immediately that they had both been crying.

  They didn’t tell him anything about the accident that day and for some reason he wasn’t inclined to ask about it.

  It wasn’t until they could take him home a few days later that they told him everything. By then he’d already begun to get flashbacks and already had a fair idea of the important parts. He no longer had a mom, dad, or a sister, and everything had changed for him.

  His grandparents had taken him home from the hospital, to their large house on the water. He’d been there several times before and he had enjoyed each stay. It was very big and nice, but it wasn’t all fancy and fussy the way his real home had been. There was no pool, but in the summertime, he could fish and swim in the ocean under the watchful eyes of his grandfather.

  This was to be his house now too. Grandma had told him so when they’d come home from the hospital.

  Shortly after they had entered the house, she and grandpa had sat him down on the long couch, in what grandpa called the parlour. That’s when they’d told him about what had happened after he’d been kn
ocked unconscious and told him that he would have a new life now and that he would be living with them.

  When they’d got to the part about his family being dead, Kenny sensed from their hesitancy and expressions that they expected him to cry, but even when he tried very hard to make them come, the tears just wouldn’t flow.

  He was mildly disappointed at his inability to be reduced to tears, but for some strange reason it just wouldn’t happen.

  Maybe that would happen later, he couldn’t remember how those things worked. Anyway, it didn’t seem all that important and he soon pushed that concern to the back of his mind.

  Over the next nine months Kenny settled into his new lifestyle. Initially he’d spent almost all his time with at least one, and often, both of his grandparents.

  The nights were the worst. That’s when the nightmares were most prevalent, especially in the first month or so. Several times a night he would wake up, screaming, soaked in sweat and unsure of his surroundings. They had given him the bedroom just down the hall from their own and whenever the horrific dreams woke him, one or the other would quickly enter his room to comfort him.

  It was about this time that Kenny had begun to wet his bed regularly. That really embarrassed him but he couldn’t seem to stop, no matter how hard he tried. It began to register on him that he seemed to have less and less control of his life each day.

  His grandmother told him not to worry about it, that he would grow out of it, but to Kenny that didn’t make a lot of sense. He hadn’t wet his bed before the accident. Heck, he had stopped that a least a couple of years back. It didn’t make any sense to him that he was doing it again now.

  These things aside, Kenny’s days were cool though.

  Each morning when he got up, he would have a long bath and by the time he got back to his room to get dressed, Grandma would have changed the bed, fed their calico cat, Fluffy, and would already be clattering around in the kitchen getting breakfast together.