Hell in the Heartland

by Jax Miller

  Thanksgiving came before the Freeman family could realize just how close they were to the holidays. Shane’s grandfather and Danny’s father, Glen Freeman, drove up with his wife (Danny’s stepmother and Dwayne’s mother) from Louisiana, a twelve-hour journey. Accompanying them were ice coolers of crawfish and crabs, dirty rices and gumbos. I imagine the faint whiff of Cajun spice filling the Freeman trailer as they took turns putting every meat and side into one large bucket and letting everyone pick their favorite parts of a jambalaya holiday. Shane made a guest appearance, wearing a smile, splitting the holiday between the Freemans and the Greens. While the rest of the family went on with their casual conversations over dinner, Shane noticed a tinge of worry behind Ashley’s eyes. He squeezed his sister’s knee under the table and leaned into her ear. “Everything’s OK, Ash,” he reassured her. “I love where I am.” Ashley, doting on her big brother, smiled back at him. “You don’t be worrying, all right?”

  “Me? Worry?” She crossed her arms and jokingly puffed her lips. “About you?”

  “Come here, brat.” He pulled her in and rubbed her scalp with his knuckles before their arms comfortably landed wrapped over each other’s shoulders.

  That Thanksgiving Day, November 26, was the last day he’d see his parents, sister, and extended family.

  Around this time, Justin Green’s mother rented an apartment for the two boys to share. It was minimal, at best, but it was a Christmas dream come true, furnished with the hijinks of two teenage boys eager to be grown-ups. Though life was seemingly easier for Shane, he took with him his demons. “He had a lot of issues,” says Justin, “because of the hand he’d been dealt in life.” The burglaries in Welch continued, though Shane was consistently attending school. His life was punctuated with what were later perceived as manic spells and bouts of depression, and the pleasures of living without supervision were short-lived. But some people in town maintained that the only reason he committed those crimes was to get away from his father, that jail was a better alternative to an eggshell house and an explosive father.

  A week and a half after Christmas, on January 4, before he was due to go back to school after winter break, Shane took Justin’s truck without permission, along with a large gun (Justin claims not to know from where he got the gun). He showed up at Grandma Celesta’s house at eight fifteen a.m. in a frantic state, saying that if he didn’t get somewhere in thirty minutes, he’d be killed.

  “Who’s going to kill you?” Celesta asked. But he wouldn’t say. Instead, Shane repeated himself, pleading with her for the keys to her pickup. Celesta hesitated. “Well, whatever’s at you, you shouldn’t have that gun. It’s only gonna get you in trouble.”

  Shane sat inside the trailer and held his head in distress. “They’re going to kill me if I don’t get somewhere.” Giving in, Celesta handed over the keys and watched Shane drive away, not knowing it’d be the last time she’d see her grandson. I will never learn if Shane was only trying to scare his grandmother into giving him the keys to the truck, or if there really was someone who was after him … Whatever it was, Shane’s cool started to unravel.

  “Pick a song,” I ask of Justin Green, trying to get him to paint a picture of his best friend. “What was his favorite song, something he may have played?”

  “‘Truly Madly Deeply’ by Savage Garden,” he answers.

  “You’re so full of shit.”

  “‘Tootsee Roll’?” We have a laugh.

  What followed was a four-day-long crime spree that seemed to illuminate Shane’s mental state—he tried, in the end, to run off, presumably for Louisiana, where his grandfather and his aunt lived, but he didn’t make it far. In these short, crime-filled days, he became a fugitive and earned the name “the Red Light Bandit.”

  After Celesta gave Shane the keys to the blue 1985 Chevrolet pickup, the very one I’d sit in, Shane wound up in Afton—about a twenty-minute drive northeast from his grandmother’s—where his mechanics class at the vo-tech was, but he never attended class. For the next few days, Shane’s whereabouts are disputed; he was on the run, in and out of hiding and not in regular contact with any one person. Bursts of mania and indecisiveness plagued him as he rampaged his way through a sweat-stained crime spree that came to an abrupt halt half a week later.

  When I asked everyone I interviewed, no one close to Shane had a guess as to what sparked his spree.

  “It was DHS,” Justin admits to me, disclosing this twenty-year-old secret that seemed to elude Shane’s family and friends alike. According to Shane’s best friend, the cause was the Oklahoma Department of Human Services coming to their new apartment the morning he went on the run. “Danny couldn’t stand that he wasn’t at home, under his control, so he kept fighting to get him back.” Being that Shane was still seventeen years old, he was not legally allowed to live on his own, so a social worker came, telling Shane that he had to return home. “And that just wasn’t happening.”

  It is also hypothesized that social workers were planning to place Shane in foster care.

  At some point in the chaotic intervening days, Shane found an unoccupied animal-control vehicle in Craig County and swiftly stole the officer’s jacket and ticket book. It gratified the desire for that high, the thrill, but he was also teeming with the nerves and anxiety that he had difficulty coping with. He also still had the red light from an earlier, undated burglary.

  On January 5, when Shane was next seen, he visited one of his girlfriend’s houses and left at about five thirty p.m. Several attempts by me to reach this girlfriend went unanswered. Later that evening, Shane attended his girlfriend’s basketball game at her school in Afton, leaving at ten forty-five. Overnight, a cold front fell over Oklahoma, bringing with it a terrible winter storm that brought golf-ball-sized hail and winds that took down signs. Out there on the pitch-black back roads that Shane had to drive to reach his next destination, he somehow weathered the floods and ice and howling gusts; he seemed preconditioned to weather most things that life could throw at him. Around then, Shane was entered into the NCIC and reported as a runaway.

  On Wednesday, January 6, Shane was spotted by several locals in Bluejacket, driving his grandmother’s truck.

  Later that evening, between seven and seven thirty, seventeen-year-old Sabrina Chivers and her girlfriend were driving up the 3500 block of North Main Street in McAlester, about one hundred fifty miles from Welch, when the flashing of a red light caught her attention in the rearview mirror. Unsure how they could have warranted the attention of a cop, the girls pulled over. A young officer approached the driver’s-side window and bent down to eyeball Sabrina and her friend. “Hello, ma’am,” he began. “License and registration, please.”

  Sabrina did as she was told. The officer thanked her, and she watched him in her side-view mirror as he returned to his vehicle with her documents, then sat in the truck for a few minutes before returning.

  “Ma’am, could you walk with me back to my vehicle?”

  Apprehensive, Sabrina looked over to her friend, convinced that something was off. But she obliged. As traffic continued on the main street, Sabrina climbed into the passenger seat of the truck. She stared at the cop as he pretended to talk into a police radio on the shoulder facing away from her. “Do you have any alcohol in your vehicle?” he asked her. She shook her head. “All right, wait here, ma’am.” The officer exited the vehicle once more, leaving Sabrina in the truck. She watched him search the backseat of her car for a moment before he returned to her.

  Noticing how remarkably young he looked, Sabrina cleared her throat. “How long have you been on the job?”

  “Two weeks,” answered the officer.

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Deputy Shane Freeman, ma’am.”

  Shane decided that Sabrina was free to go, but as she made her way out of the truck, a police officer pulled up to the scene, after a passing motorist thought that the whole thing looked suspicious and alerted the cop. Shane punched the blue pickup into
gear and engaged police in a pursuit up Main Street and into the outskirts of McAlester. He weaved heavily but precisely through traffic, riding on and off the shoulder at high speeds until the storefronts dwindled and the road headed into the trees. There, he braked hard in the middle of the street, jumped out, and continued to run from police on foot. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol and a K-9 unit were summoned to help search for the boy in the Gaines Creek area, just east of McAlester between Seven Devils Road and Robbers Cave State Park. McAlester Police sergeant Cecil Day was quoted in the Tulsa World, saying, “He went into a wooded area, bailed out of the truck, and took off in the woods. We went after him with tracking dogs and lost him.”

  I contacted the McAlester Police Department, and they explained that they didn’t keep records that old.

  Those old jokes Shane had made about outrunning the police on Cops turned out to be an accurate prophecy.

  Back at the abandoned truck that belonged to his grandmother, police recovered two loaded guns. For unknown reasons, police believed that Shane was still armed with a .357 Magnum revolver. But Shane braved the forests, scratched by brambles and bare twigs, and took shelter. Overnight, he found another truck, with the keys left in it, one belonging to a man who passed away of old age in 2008. It was a 1989 Ford F-250 XLT four-wheel drive. It was reported stolen from the small town of Krebs, Oklahoma, on January 7. After stealing the Ford, Shane made the decision to leave Pittsburg County.

  Even today, nobody can know for certain why Shane opted to return to Craig County instead of continuing southeast toward Louisiana, which his family assumes was his intended destination.

  Shane needed supplies, and back on home territory, the next house he decided to raid, on January 7, belonged to the Bible family. He’d spent the night sleeping in his truck on a rural driveway across from the house, until Jay and Lorene each left for work. According to Lorene, he entered the house at about nine a.m., ordered several pornos on pay-per-view, ate from their refrigerator, took a shower, and selected a few things to take with him. He stole some blankets, but most of what he took came from Lauria’s room, including her pillow and bedspread, sixty-seven dollars, a shirt, and gym pants. Lauria was reported saying her mom would have killed him just for eating leftover fried chicken off the good china.

  He also took several guns from the Bible home, and he left at about three thirty that afternoon.

  “He took with him enough ammo to hold off Coxey’s Army,” said Lorene. She filed a statement along with her husband, Jay, at the Craig County Sheriff’s Office.

  “None of these farmers were worried,” Danny was quoted saying in a January 1999 article in the Tulsa World. “He was a well-mannered kid … He did some stealing, but he just wasn’t violent.”

  On January 8, 1999, Shane wore a camouflage jacket, blue denim jeans, and sneakers. Near the intersection of 4430 Road and 40 Road, about ten miles from his home west of Welch, Shane’s stolen truck finally broke down. Out there, it was eerily quiet, with no sign of mankind until he’d hear the tires scrape from far away. Bleak in winter, the surrounding fields were filled with crows and Limousin cattle, frostbitten straw, and a chill that found its way into the marrow of his bones. Icy winds hoisted and dropped. Shane was good at thinking on his feet, and he went across to cut a section of nearby wire fence, to see if he could rig the tie rods back together. At this time, a local farmer, Terry Layton, whose house you could see if you squinted hard enough without the January wind in your eyes, called the sheriff’s office in Vinita to report the location of the Red Light Bandit.

  Arriving on the scene at precisely 4:20 p.m. was CCSO Deputy David Hayes, the older brother of Undersheriff Mark Hayes. Mark Hayes, therefore, was his older brother’s supervisor. Operating on the basis that Shane was a fugitive and thought to be armed, David took with him his dash-mounted shotgun from the patrol car, which he parked in front of Shane’s truck so that the vehicles were facing each other.

  David Hayes had only been with the sheriff’s office for two days.

  Reports will vary over the next few days, months, and years, but the official report is that within the very minute of David Hayes’s arrival, Shane, standing at the driver’s-side door of the truck, reached into his waistband behind him, raised his hand, and pointed a gun at the deputy. David went on to raise his shotgun and pump it upon seeing that Shane had a pistol pointed directly at him. He advised the boy to drop the gun and reportedly found himself “looking down the barrel.”

  Then, at 4:20, less than a minute after Hayes arrived at the scene, the sound of a shot fired.

  Today, in the wider community, more often than not, Welchans seem to have forgotten about the boy’s death. Sounds familiar. I think I remember something like that. All that exists from immediately after Shane’s death is a brief article in the Tulsa World. While roaming the halls of his high school, I dig up a short piece when sifting through the school’s dusty yearbooks. In there is a black-and-white picture of Shane as an infant playing with a toy pickup truck.

  My grandchildren. I had six—an even half dozen. A boy and girl, a girl and boy. Then a boy and girl. I told everyone each of mine has two. Now one of mine is missing from my sight, but never from my heart and never from my mind. I can always hear “Hi, Grandma” anytime I choose, from the special first one. Love, Grandma Chandler.

  On another page, the high school version of an obit reads:

  Shane Freeman was born on November 6th, 1981, and died on January 8th, 1999. He moved to Welch in 1995. Shane played football and basketball and ran track. He was also a member of FHA [Future Homemakers of America] and TSA [Technology Student Association] and was a student at vo-tech, studying autobody. No matter what, Shane always had a big smile on his face. He was always the center of attention with his funny jokes and outgoing personality.

  No official obituary could be found.

  Nor police report.

  Nor autopsy.

  It was just the beginning of hell for a family who sought answers regarding the death of their only son and brother, a hell that would boil over between the Freemans and the police until the Freemans’ untimely deaths at the end of the year. And standing here, west of Welch, is my way of sifting through the relatives’ emotions, which seem to cloud the memories of Shane. On this rural road, the redness of anger toward deputies and the green of sickness over what happened a year later dissipates, and I can see Shane for exactly who he was, who he should have been: a seventeen-year-old boy with his whole life in front of him.

  12

  * * *

  THE ALLEGED COVER-UP OF SHANE FREEMAN

  * * *

  I swim through starry oblivion nights, humming the song “Oklahoma!” where the waving wheat can sure smell sweet. I wonder why Oklahoma wants to kill me, as I’m nearing a dozen panic attacks a day. I remind myself to breathe from my belly when the light-headedness comes. Inhale for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for eight. It sometimes feels like a watering can against a forest fire. And then I shake off the smell of meth and the warnings coming my way to remind myself of the girls’ laughter I’ve never known and their olly olly oxen frees. I sit and obsess over the changing stories of the addicts who deny all knowledge and the cops who think I’m stupid to even try. And maybe I am. But at least I’m here, and very few seem to be in a story that hardly makes news outside the small, gossip-slick towns of Oklahoma. I wonder why.

  “I advise you to tread carefully on your project,” a member of law enforcement publicly writes on my Facebook wall, and never communicates with me again.

  “They won’t think twice about killing you,” says another source.

  But who are they?

  The calls with the heavy breathing and the cryptic messages from obviously fake Facebook accounts come about a year after I start this project.

  I struggle to describe this all-consuming fear of my own body while in the midst of it, of the way it betrays me. It is that stigmatized nervous breakdown that is the rot of my family tree. The
sweats, the racing heart, the painful flu-like symptoms, the horrible fuzzy head, the feeling that I am being poisoned to death, the cold-shock mornings that chain me to the bed, the loss of appetite, the shitting and vomiting that lead to my losing thirty pounds in one month. My sour stomach cramps, the pins and needles all over my body, the nonstop peeing, the heart palpitations, the inability to take a much-needed deep breath, and the dreaded scalp-prickling headaches. I don’t understand what’s happening; I’ve always been strong, fearless. I’ve jumped out of planes and faced loaded guns without flinching, so why is this happening now? Why am I dying? And why can’t anyone tell me what I’m dying from?

  A shadow follows me everywhere I go, a figure of a monster in the shade of every distant tree on the plains, in the blind spots of Oklahoma’s bright sky. His name is Fear, and he’s always ready to pounce. Still, I can’t leave, not until I can see some possible semblance of resolution of the case of two beautiful girls whose voices I concoct in my broken mind, and whose families will wait until the end of time to find them. And in the times I want to walk away, I remind myself that there are two families who don’t have that option. They are the ones familiar with the actual sound of the girls’ laughter, and the feeling of the girls’ hair on their chests from when they held them so long ago. In these minute reminders, I want to siphon some of Lorene’s strength, that maternal drive fueled by a mother’s first look into her daughter’s eyes and the last words she heard her speak.

  I come to learn that there is no real difference between being brave and pretending to be brave. Maybe a cure will present itself tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.