Читать книгу Dead And Buried: A True Story Of Serial Rape And Murder - Corey Mitchell - Страница 27

SEVENTEEN

Rex Allan Krebs came into the world on a cold, blustery day of January 28, 1966. He was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, in the northern panhandle, approximately five hundred miles north of Boise, Idaho, and less than twenty miles south of the American-Canadian border. His father, twenty-year-oldAllan Krebs, and his mother, nineteen-year-old Connie Krebs, had only recently married due to Connie’s pregnancy. It was the first marriage and child for Allan. It was the second of each for Connie. Her first child, Lecia, was born three years earlier when Connie was sixteen.

At the time, Sandpoint, Idaho, was a tiny rural town with less than three thousand people. Shadowed by the 6,400-feet-highSchweitzer Mountain, known for its excellent snow skiing, the town was primarily a farming community. Most Sandpoint residents lived on large farms spread out across vast distances from one another.

Allan grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Sandpoint. Connie had grown up in town. Allan met Connie at Sandpoint High School.

Connie, who struggled as a parent, would often nip at the bottle. Connie seemed to struggle quite often. On January 31, 1963, at the age of sixteen, she gave birth to Lecia. The father was not Allan Krebs. By 1965, however, Connie ran into Allan again and the two began to date. Soon thereafter, Conniegot pregnant for the second time. Allan decided to make her an “honest woman,” so they got married in Sandpoint on June 22, 1965. After Rex was born, Allan, Connie, Lecia, and the newest addition moved in with Connie’s mother, Arleta Howell, on Walnut Street.

The Krebs family lived here for a short period before they moved in with Allan’s mother, Florence Krebs. The family then moved to Allan’s father Alfred Krebs’s farm on Colburn Culver Road, located fifteen miles north of Sandpoint. Alfred Krebs, “Grandpa,” was a quiet man, with a quick temper, who worked hard on his dairy farm.

Allan Krebs got a job with the Burlington Northern Railroadcompany. While Rex was still an infant, Allan uprooted the family and relocated to Lester, Washington, into a house built by the railroad company. Not the largest man, Allan held his own. He was able to do heavy lifting and always managed to stay in top physical shape. Allan would usually wind down from a hard day on the job with a bottle of liquor.

Preferably vodka.

According to Lecia, the Krebs family lived at four or five different locations during the first five years of Rex’s life. The uprooting of the family was always a result of Allan’s sporadicsuccess with employment. He was not one to remain gainfully employed. Allan worked numerous jobs from the railroad to farming in such different locales as Spokane, Washington, and Thompson Falls and Plains, Montana. Despiteinitial feelings of prosperity whenever a new job appeared on the horizon, the result was the same: Allan would somehow find a way to screw things up. As a result the unstableKrebs clan always seemed to be packing up their belongings and hitting the road for the latest pipe dream.

After another firing the Krebs family returned to Sandpoint.They moved back in to Alfred Krebs’s farm and helped Grandpa Krebs with the dairy.

The uncertainty of Allan’s work situation was a major source of frustration and anxiety for Connie. Having nowhere else to turn, she directed her anger toward her husband. Their tongue-lashings often took place in the bedroom, behind thin doors through which the children could hear. Their heated discussions usually centered on her disappointment in her husband and his failure to provide properly for her and the children. Her screams usually resulted from the punches he threw in her face when he could not stand the attacks.

Lecia Dotson recalled several instances when Allan Krebs brutally assaulted Connie Krebs. She remembered “when she’d come out from their bedroom, she’d have a huge black eye or her face would be swollen or her arm would be black and blue from him grabbing her and throwing her around.”

Lecia remembered how she and Rex responded to the unrestin their home. “We were usually frightened. We spent a lot of time together, you know, trying to avoid it.”

It was impossible, however, to avoid.

Arleta Howell, Rex’s grandmother and Connie’s mother, recalled a horrifying incident outside her home after Connie and she had returned from the grocery store. Allan wanted them home by 4:00 P.M. They were thirty minutes late. As the women pulled up into the driveway, Allan blasted outside to confront them.

“He came around the car and opened the door,” Howell rememberedclearly. “He jerked Rex out of my arms and Rex screamed, like any baby would scream. I told him, ‘You’re hurting the baby!’ And he said, ‘Who cares?’ ”

Howell was ready to get out of the oncoming bad situation, but she realized it would be better to stay, just in case somethingmight happen to her daughter and grandson. She saw her daughter and son-in-law walk toward the house on either side of the car. Allan was holding Rex in his arms. Suddenly, without warning, Allan yelled out to Connie, “Catch him,” and he threw Rex over the top of the car. “Luckily, she caught him,” Howell recalled.

After the baby-tossing incident, Arleta Howell became truly worried. “From then on, I was really scared for Rex and Connie both, and Lecia also, because you never really knew what he was going to do.”

Especially as more children were born. Two more sisters, Tracy and Marcia, cluttered up the tiny Krebs household and made life even more difficult for Allan Krebs. Tracy, a healthy girl, was born in January 1970. Sister Marcia was born the following year in January, but to add to the difficultiesin the Krebs household, Marcia developed a nasty fever when she was less than one year old. The family doctorinitially diagnosed the problem as an ear infection; however, it was much worse. The undetected fever lasted for several days and caused permanent brain damage to the youngest Krebs sibling. To this day she has the mental capabilityof a thirteen-year-old.

As the frustrations mounted in the Krebs household, so did the violence. In April 1970 tragedy struck hard. Allan’s sister was murdered in Spokane, Washington. The thirty-year-old woman had been shot in the head and her body stuffed in the trunk of a car.

Allan’s brother, Art Krebs, believed the homicide was the beginning of the long, downward spiral for his brother and family. “It seems like ever since my sister got murdered, our family was cursed. It was like that was the beginning of the family plague.”

After his sister’s murder Allan became worse. He continuedto drink heavily and he continued to beat his wife.

“Allan was very good with his hands—very good,” Connie recalled.

Connie spoke of how Allan used to beat her. His favorite method of control was to slug her. He would punch her while the kids were in their rooms. They did not see the violence at first, but they always heard it. Allan also used to kick Connie.

“If you were lucky, he wouldn’t kick you with his boots. I pray to God they didn’t see that. I’m sure that they heard it.”

One time Allan had beaten Connie up so bad that she moved all of the kids into the house across the street from her mother on Walnut Street. One night Allan decided to pay his family a visit. Connie and Marcia stayed in one room. Rex, Lecia, and Tracy all had their own rooms. Allan angrily walked over to the house, stormed up the sidewalk, and banged on the front door. Connie, with Tracy in tow, went to the front door. She knew that it was her husband and that he was furious. According to Lecia, her mother asked Allan to leave and he refused. He somehow made his way inside and began to attack Connie. He tossed Tracy aside, grabbed Connie by the wrist, and dragged her into the bedroom. Repeatedlyhe pummeled the defenseless woman in the face with his fists. When she was as limp as a rag doll, he raped her. Lecia heard everything. So did Rex.

Lecia also recalled another instance when Allan caused a big scene that escalated into violence. While separated from her husband, Connie became smitten with a coworker, a young man by the name of Bob Jackson. Connie thought Bob was a strikingly handsome, sweet, fun guy.

Soon the two became a couple.

One afternoon Bob and Connie went to the Laundromat in Sandpoint to wash several loads of dirty clothes. All of the kids were there. The noneventful day would suddenly change with the appearance of Allan Krebs. The father, furious when he saw Connie with another man, decided to take it out on Bob Jackson. The angry Krebs pummeled the living tar out of the scrawny Jackson in front of the kids and the customers in the Laundromat.

Neither Connie nor Bob Jackson filed charges against Allan. “You did not mess with Allan,” she explained. “You just didn’t. You stayed as far away from him and gave him as little stuff as possible so he would not come after you. It just wasn’t done.”

Connie had enough of Allan’s abusive behavior. She filed for divorce in fall 1971, was granted custody of the children, and attempted to make a life for herself and her kids with Bob Jackson. The new clan lived across the street from her mother’s home.

Allan Krebs, however, was not out of her life just yet.

On the night of February 23, 1972, Allan showed up at Connie’s house in a rage. He was furious because their divorcehad come through earlier that day. Allan came up to the front door and knocked. Connie answered it and let her ex-husbandin. She told him that Rex and Lecia were upstairs in their bedrooms, Marcia was asleep downstairs, and Tracy was sleeping in a crib in her room.

Allan made sure to visit each room and spend time with each of the kids. He then went into Connie’s room and asked to borrow her Polaroid camera. He wanted to take some picturesof his children, he explained. Connie shrugged her shoulders at the suggestion and turned to reach for the camera,which was located above her daughter’s crib. Allan quietly sidled up behind his wife, grabbed her shoulders, and effortlessly tossed the woman onto the bed. He punched her repeatedly in the stomach; he assumed she was pregnant again.

Then he began to choke her.

Luckily for Connie, her brother Roy “Gene” Howell and some of his friends saw what was going on. Gene recalled the scene of his sister lying underneath Allan Krebs. “Both eyes were blackened when we got there. I walked in on them and he was on top of her in the bedroom and I asked him what he thought he was doing.” Gene stated that Allan got “very nervous”and then Gene’s friends called for help. The Sandpoint police arrived and put an end to the abuse. Connie filed a reportwith the officers, but despite being bloody and bruised, she did not file charges against her former husband.

She had other plans.

Less than a week later, Connie, along with all four children and Bob Jackson, packed her car with the barest of necessitiesand slithered away into the cold Idaho night, away from her torturer. They were on their way to Nevada. They escaped the clutches of a demented alcoholic under the darkness of night.

Or so she thought.