A Silence of Mockingbirds Read online

  M P Publishing

  in association with

  MacAdam/Cage

  presents

  A Silence of Mockingbirds

  — the memoir of a murder —

  by KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS

  MacAdam/Cage

  155 Sansome Street

  Suite 550 San Francisco

  CA 94104

  www.macadamcage.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Karen Zacharias

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:—

  A silence of mockingbirds: the memoir of a murder / by Karen Spears Zacharias.

  45 chapters+epilogue

  hardcover ISBN 978-1-59692-375-1

  1. Murder—Oregon—Case studies.

  Book design by Dorothy Carico Smith.

  First edition, April 2012

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-807-7

  E-book presented by:—

  M P Publishing

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  British Isles

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  Author Karen Spears Zacharias has been featured on Huffington Post, Good Morning America, and CNN. Her commentary has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and on NPR. Karen blogs at Patheos.com and teaches journalism at Central Washington University. Karen wrote this book while serving as writer-in-residence at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, Fairhope, Alabama. She divides her time between the Columbia River in Oregon and Mobile Bay in Alabama.

  Author photo by Stephen Savage, Fairhope AL

  Investigative journalist and author Karen Spears Zacharias never anticipated that she would become one of the characters involved in a high-profile murder. But when she reconnects with a young woman named Sarah, who lived in the Zacharias home at one time and was treated like family, Karen discovers that something unspeakable has happened to Sarah’s daughter, Karly. Compelled to consider her own culpability in this tragic case, Karen pieces together what happened to Karly through court documents, investigators’ interviews, and interviews with friends, family, law enforcement officials, and key witnesses. As the terrible story unfolds, the hard question emerges for everyone involved, indeed all of us: Why was no cry raised to protect Karly?

  Once a mockingbird stakes out its territory, it will defend that territory against all intruders, including animals much larger than itself. The size or type of opponent does not seem to matter, but the bird is not always successful in driving away the intruder.

  — Texas Parks & Wildlife Department

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Note to Readers

  Author's Note

  With great love for

  Karly Isabelle Ruth Sheehan

  &

  David Sheehan

  Chapter One

  The envelope on my desk is addressed to Inmate 16002306. Inside is a letter of request. It is not the first one I’ve sent, and I don’t expect it will be the last. I am tempted to mail one every day until I get what I want: a face-to-face interview.

  In the military, the enlisted are most often referred to by their last names, not their serial numbers. I don’t know what the appropriate protocol is inside the slammer when referring to an inmate. Do they call him by his first name or his last name? Or do they call out to him— Hey, Baby Killer!—the way so many protestors did to those American soldiers who were fortunate enough to return home from Vietnam?

  I don’t know Shawn Wesley Field personally. I only know what I’ve learned about him from plowing through thousands of pages of court documents, or from talking to others who’ve known him, or from listening to the audio tapes of the police interrogations.

  It is uncharacteristic of David Sheehan to speak unkindly about anyone, even when it is justified. David refuses to speak Inmate 16002306’s name. He refers to him as a monster. There’s no question that David has earned the right to call Shawn Field any name he damn well pleases. There’s not a jury in this land that would have convicted David of murder if he had taken a baseball bat and beaten the life out of Shawn.

  Born and bred in Ireland, David Sheehan displays few of the archetypical behaviors often attributed to the Irish. He’s neither loud nor boisterous. While he enjoys a good party, he doesn’t need to be the center of attention. He’s humble, soft-spoken, kindhearted and a hard worker.

  It was his job with Hewlett-Packard (HP) that lured him to America. He came straight out of Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. In 1996, David, an engineer, joined about two hundred other Irish, employees of HP and their families, who came to Corvallis for training at HP’s campus.

  It was not, however, his first trip to America. That took place when David was only six years old. Even then, his mother suspected the day would come when her oldest would leave Ireland and make a new home across wide waters. David was a boy born to adventure, always lining up his cars along the fireplace and imagining the journeys that awaited. But no child or adult imagines the sort of terrors the grown-up David would encounter in Oregon.

  David Sheehan is the father of three-year-old Karly Sheehan, who was murdered by Inmate 16002306, Shawn Wesley Field.

  Located west of Oregon’s main north-south drag, Interstate 5, Corvallis literally means “heart of the valley.” In 1845, Joe Avery staked out his own emerald plot at the junction where Mary’s River slips into the Willamette. For a short time, the city served as the capital of the Oregon Territory.

  Corvallis is the proud home of Oregon State University. There are more highly educated people per capita living in Corvallis than any other city in the state. You hear it often in the post office, at the library, or at the local bakery. Everyone’s said it and it is true: Corvallis is a good place to raise kids.

  This college town became my first home in Oregon. A transfer student from Berry College in Rome, Georgia, I came to Corvallis in 1975 to attend Oregon State University. My family had made the move west a year earlier.

  The community of Corvallis wrapped my eighteen-year-old self in an OSU orange-and-black blanket and drew me in close. It was as a student of Professor Thurston Doler that I first found my voice. It was while sitting in the pouring rain cheering on the Beavers, and in the pews of First Baptist Church singing songs from a hymnal, that I made lifelong friends. It was under the tutelage of Corvallis High School’s Rick Wall
ace that I learned the skills I would need to teach. It was in the springtime that I first fell in love with the boy who would become the man I still love. And many years later, because I knew Corvallis to be a good community where a wounded girl could heal, I would urge Sarah Brill to move there and to seek her education at Oregon State University.

  In October, maples drop their golden parchments into the Willamette River, where they are carried downstream, letters for the beavers. Fog rises up from the still water as some unseen coxswain calls out strokes for OSU’s crew team. In June, the town’s pace slows. Dozens of bone-white blossoms unfurl on the magnolias in the campus quad, like sunbathers seeking an early tan. Students squirrel away grocery-store boxes filled with belongings—textbooks, puffy down coats—as they prepare for summer jobs on Alaska fishing boats or driving hay trucks on their uncles’ Eastern Oregon farms.

  Downtown on the courthouse square, roses pink as cotton candy cushion the flat white-plastered brick. From her perch above the entry stands Themis, Goddess of Justice, the quavering balance in her hands. The eight-foot-tall statue is not wearing the traditional blindfold. There’s a clock tower above the lady, and directly above high noon or midnight is the word “OF.” It is part of a longer statement— THE FLIGHT OF TIME —etched into the sides of the four-sided clock tower.

  It was here at the Benton County Courthouse, through the heavy doors, past the security checkpoint, and up a musty oil-polished stairwell that Judge Janet Holcomb presided over the trial of State vs. Shawn Wesley Field. Shawn was charged with twenty-three counts for the June 3, 2005, murder of three-year-old Karla “Karly” Isabelle Ruth Sheehan, the daughter of David Sheehan and Sarah Brill Sheehan.

  The prosecution’s opening statements were made on September 25, 2006. The defense made its closing statement on Halloween. The trial was contentious, fraught with mind-numbing details and a cast of characters that would confound even CNN’s Nancy Grace.

  Addressing Karly’s killer during the sentencing phase, Judge Holcomb also issued an admonishment to the citizens of Corvallis:

  As a community we have to do some deep soul-searching about how, or if, we might have responded sooner. Might there have been an intervention that could have saved this child’s life? I don’t know. But after hearing all the evidence it seems there was a continuum of failure after the first hint that there was something terribly, terribly wrong.

  That failure is something former District Attorney Scott Heiser said will burden him forever. “This homicide was preventable and we in the system failed, and I’ll carry that around for the rest of my life.”

  Ruefully, he adds, “I was the chief law enforcement officer for the county. It was my task-force team. I’m not going to point fingers at one of my staffers. We set protocol and we didn’t follow it.”

  There’s plenty of blame and guilt to go around in the case of the death of Karly Sheehan. Like Scott Heiser, I’ve got my own burden to bear. More than one person had the opportunity to make a different choice, a choice that may have saved a sweet child’s life.

  Still, as far as the prosecutor was concerned, only one person is responsible for the death of Karly. That man is Shawn Wesley Field. But some people—jurors, investigators, medical professionals, bartenders, and community members, me included—wonder if there isn’t another person who ought to be sitting in a prison cell for Karly’s death.

  In his closing remarks to the jury, Clark Willes, co-counsel for the defense, said, “The facts tell you something happened with Sarah Sheehan, and she has not been honest with you. The fact is every time she turned around, she did not tell police, she did not tell authorities, and she did not tell Children’s Services what really happened.”

  Only three people really know what happened at 2652 Northwest Aspen Street that bright June morning.

  One of them is dead.

  One of them is in prison.

  And one of them blames me.

  Chapter Two

  I click the icon on my laptop—the one on the desktop marked “Field/Sheehan 911”— and I hear her alternately gasping, screaming and crying. On first listen, it sounds exactly like what you’d think such a call would sound like: a woman in shock.

  A full forty-five seconds passed before seasoned dispatcher Andy Thompson could make out the nature of the call.

  Forty-five seconds. The time it takes to plant a tulip bulb, to steep a cup of weak tea, to floss one’s teeth, or to draw one’s last breath. For emergency personnel like Thompson, forty-five seconds can seem like the implacable drip of water torture, the danger and risk growing with each passing pause. He later told Corvallis Police Sergeant Evan Fieman that the caller was screaming so hysterically he couldn’t understand her.

  “911. What’s your emergency?” Thompson asked.

  “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” came a female voice.

  “I need you to calm down. Where are you?”

  Inaudible, hysterical crying.

  “HELLO? I need you to stop crying.”

  “Tww…gasp…Tww…sob. Northwest Aspen Strrrreeeeetttt!”

  “I can’t understand you.”

  “Twenty-six-fifty-two. Twenty-six-fifty-two Northwest Aspen Street. Twenty-six-fifty-two Northwest Aspen Street. Aspen Street. Twenty-six-fifty-two Aspen Street.”

  “Twenty-six-fifty-two Aspen?” Thompson repeated back.

  “Yes. Yes. Northwest. Right across from Hoover.”

  “What’s the problem?” Thompson asked flatly, trying unsuccessfully to calm the caller.

  “Karla! Karla! Come back! Karla! Come baaaack!”

  “I need you to calm down,” Dispatcher Thompson said sternly, authoritatively. “What’s the problem?”

  “Karla. Please hurry. I don’t know what to do.”

  “What—is—the—problem?” Thompson repeated his question. “I need you to calm down. What’s the problem?”

  “SHE’S NOT BREATHING!” the woman screamed.

  Records place the call at 1:53 p.m. Friday, June 3, 2005.

  The caller was Sarah Brill Sheehan.

  David’s ex-wife.

  Karly’s mother.

  My daughter.

  To clarify: Sarah was not my my daughter in the literal sense, or even in the adopted sense, but in that way people choose others as “family.” For a precious time in our lives, I chose Sarah and she chose me.

  She had in every way imaginable been a part of our family. During a very unsettled time in her life, Sarah slept under our roof, ate at our table, did her homework at the kitchen island, and sat curled up next to me on the couch as I read to her from Nappy Hair, a book I’d bought to help celebrate Sarah: Everybody is talking about little Brenda’s hair—the nappiest, the curliest, the twistiest hair in the whole family. And by the time Uncle Mordecia’s done celebrating, everyone’s going to want hair just like hers.

  Sarah loved the book, as did my other three daughters. They would beg me to read it over and over and over again. And I would, over the echoes of laughter that the story and the telling of it evoked.

  But that Sarah, the girl whom I had loved so well, had long been lost to me, and I to her. I am reminded of that every time I click on that 911 call on my laptop and hear the screams of a woman I don’t recognize.

  I’m a former cop reporter. I spent years tracking the daily logs of the Oregon State Police, Pendleton and Hermiston Police, and the Umatilla County Sheriff ’s office. I followed the petty thefts, the domestic brawls, the barking dogs, the drunk drivers, the disorderly conducts, the car wrecks, and the sex abuse cases. On rare occasions, there were murders, kidnappings, and at least one shootout.

  I know that criminal activity isn’t just law enforcement’s headache and taxpayers’ burden; it is somebody’s nightmare. A worried father. A distraught mother. A praying sister. A brokenhearted brother. A frightened wife. A desperate husband.

  I’d interviewed these folks and I’d included their quotes in the stories I wrote about how their loved ones ended up impr
isoned—or worse, dead.

  Just up the road from where I live now is a family who misses the young son they lost to alcohol poisoning. The parents allege that a friend’s father plied their son with vodka. An investigation was conducted but no charges were brought.

  Down the road in the opposite direction is the school where two young girls won awards for scholarly achievements. The older of the girls crouched in the aisles of a convenience store the night her daddy, in a standoff with police, was shot dead. The younger girl was born after their father died.

  In a trailer not three miles from here lives a one-armed woman named Karen whose son was charged with and convicted of a murder-for-hire plot. He’d paid to have his ex-wife murdered. Her two-year-old quadruplets were discovered naked and smeared in their mama’s blood. She was lying on the kitchen floor in her Florida home, shot in the face, her throat sliced like a deer.

  And thirty miles down the road from where I sit typing is the prison that has become home to Shawn Wesley Field. I’ve been inside the doors of Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. I interviewed female inmates about how difficult it is to be away from their children during the holidays. I talked to the inmates who work in the woodshop crafting items that are sold to raise funds for the American Cancer Society. I’ve heard the convoluted tales of how women became victims of domestic violence, then went on to endanger their own children through their own crime sprees.

  I get it.

  There’s more than one face behind every crime and there is more than one heartache behind every headline.

  I never expected the face, or the voice, behind the crime to be anyone I knew. And I certainly never expected the heartache behind the headline to belong to anyone I loved.

  Chapter Three

  That’s not to say that I didn’t have some premonition. The minute Sarah told me she was leaving David, I knew. I knew. I knew. Deep down in the volcanic depths of my soul, I knew that her decision was going to put Karly at risk, but I never thought for one minute that it would result in Karly’s death.