Читать книгу All About Janet, the Murder of my Guardian Angel - Forrest Canutt - Страница 4

It always starts the same, a man at the foot of the bed, he has on white pants, his shoes are off and he’s taking off his white tee shirt and pants, Then, I notice that there is a young girl in bed next to me. She looks about 12 or at the most 13 years old. She has medium to light brown hair that is combed and tied back in a ponytail. She is wearing a nightgown, and is looking at the same man as I am. The man comes around to her side of the bed and climbs in next to her. At that time, I thought it was my cousin, so I was happy about that, but soon realized it wasn’t him. He climbed up on the young girl and began to fondle her, she began to cry, and then I began to cry. He then sat up on his knees, grabbed me by the hair, swung my head left, then right really hard, throwing me out of the bed and up against the wall. She started yelling for me to run, “run Forrest, run Forrest” (this is one of the reasons I would not watch that movie Forrest Gump for a long time. When you hear it for real, it takes the comedy right out of it). I got up and ran as fast as I could right out of the house and stopped on the walkway. I was still dressed in my pants and shirt but had no shoes or socks on. That was the first time that she saved me.

I did not know the man who attacked us, and I don’t believe the girl knew him either. Since I don’t know his name, for purposes of identification, I call him the “bad guy”. He looked about 6’ to 6’2”, about 200 to 220 pounds, short, wavy dark hair combed straight back, light olive complexion, and wore bright white navy pants like you see them wear on the ships.

I was staying at my Aunt and Uncles ranch in Calaveras County. It was called the 44 Ranch. Since my father’s death, I guess my mother shipped all five of us kids in different directions and to different relatives for a while, but for some reason, I was there alone that night with just the babysitter to watch over me. The ranch was one square mile in size, and three miles from town. The ranch was very dark and very scary for a little boy only 5 years old. There were two houses opposing each other in the wide driveway. Barbed wire fence surrounded the two houses, and there was a gate at the top of the driveway. The fencing and gate established a secure compound for keeping cows, large animals and unwanted people out. The house I was in was very old and was used as kind of a bunk house for visitors. When you first entered from the walkway, there was a screened in breezeway about six feet wide that went from the front of the house to the back. It was used for storage, washing clothes. Etc. Once entering the breezeway, you turn right, and enter the kitchen. The kitchen is square, with a small rectangular dining table and chairs in the middle, an old wood/gas stove was on the left. On the right is a pantry with shelving that is about the size of a walk-in a closet. Just beyond the pantry was the counter and sink. There was a door on the far left end of the kitchen that lead to a sizable bathroom with a claw foot bathtub in it. If you went through the bathroom door directly across from the kitchen entrance, you would enter a bedroom. Across from the kitchen entrance, was a wide entrance to the adjoining dining and living rooms. The entrance did not have a door. The entrance was on the left side of the wall opposing the kitchen entrance. Passing through that entrance, you would enter into the dining/living room area. This is where the bunk house ambiance took effect. Beds were scattered about the living room and dining room areas. Most were double beds, but there were small beds lining the walls in some areas as well. The bed where the young girl and I were sleeping was in the dining room area, next to where the dining room and living room intersected, and a couple feet from the far wall. There was another breezeway on the other side of the exterior wall that had a living room entrance only. It contained a swinging couch and a bed as well.

There I was standing on the walkway just outside of the old house, screaming and crying. This young girl that I didn’t know was being attacked by a man I didn’t know, and I was freaking out. From out of nowhere, two of my uncles came running up. I had no idea they were there, for one thing, I have no memory of anything before the bad guy showed up. They were shouting and asking what was wrong, and I told them about the man hurting, the young girl in the house. Like a fool at only 5 years old, I believed the girl and I would be saved and everything would be alright when they came running up.

The two uncles didn’t live at the ranch, but were only visiting. One uncle was named Jake Fisher (Jake). He was tall, dark haired, thin, and when I think of him, I think of Icabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow. He was from Texas, and had a Texas manner and drawl about him that said he was easy going, and maybeeven nice, but he wasn’t. I believe that Jake was in the Air Force and may have been wearing his uniform with his pointy cowboy boots on that night. The other uncle was named William (Bill) Bates Munroe. He was short (about 5’ 6”), hairy looking, evil looking, and mean looking. As soon as you saw him, you wouldn’t trust him. When I think of Bill Munroe, I think of Napoleon. Bill was in the Navy, and had his Navy uniform on that night. Turns out that Bill and the bad guy were both in the Navy together and had driven to The Elzigs Ranch that night, together. From where, I do not know.

Right when I started to tell them what was happening, the bad guy came running out of the house. He was wearing only pants, with no shoes or shirt on. Immediately, an argument ensued between my uncles and the bad guy. It seemed as though they were mad enough to beat him up, but I think both of them were just cowards, and did nothing. Then, in the middle of their arguing, all of a sudden, the bad guy seems to get some great idea, and starts telling my two uncles his great idea, and then they start to agree with him and get excited too.

The next thing that happened, I consider to be my first crash course in betrayal, but not my last. The bad guy, and my two uncles then all went into the house. Within seconds, I heard them slapping the girl, her screaming, and them yelling at her. I was still standing on the concrete walkway when they went into the house. I could not believe what was happening, so I started crying and screaming.

Within seconds of starting to scream and cry, Jake came running out of the house, ran up to me, and kicked me square in the stomach. I must have been thrown about 4 feet with the force of his kick, and landed on my back in the dirt with the wind knocked out of me. My Uncle yelled at me to shut up, and went to join the others in their gang rape of my babysitter. I was in agony from the kick, but the most horrible thought to me about the kick, was that he was wearing really pointed cowboy boots, so I was sure that his boot stabbed into me like a knife.

I lay on my back with the wind knocked out of me for a few minutes, and before I could get up, Jake came back outside, picked me up in his arms, and started carrying me up the driveway. I think he might even kind of apologized for kicking me, but still blamed it on me at the same time for yelling. We arrived at the gate to the ranch compound (which was about 150 to 200 linear feet from the walkway where I was originally standing). We went through the gate and walked up to an old pickup or flatbed truck. He opened the door of the truck and put inside. He then told me to stay there and to keep my mouth shut. He then closed the door and walked back towards the gate. It was dark out so I couldn’t see very far, but I heard him go through the gate. I sat in that truck in the darkness, whimpering and crying quietly. I was so scared and confused. What was happening? These are my uncles and they are supposed to save the day, and not be the evil monsters they turned out to be. I did not know the word betrayal at that young age, but I felt the knife of betrayal in my back none the less.

I remember calling out to my father (who died several months before) to come down and save me, and I called out for god to come down and save me. But they could not and did not.

After a measure of time that I am not sure of, the door to the old truck that I was put into, swung open, and standing there with a beer in his hand was Bill. He was unshaven, smelled of alcohol, and was drunk. He started saying things to me that I did not understand or cannot remember. He was talking like I had done something wrong. The next thing I know, he throws me on my back on the seat of the truck, opens my pants, and pulls them down to my ankles. The next part of this is hard for me, as it is humiliating, shameful and embarrassing.

He then continues to talk and ask questions like I had done something wrong. Then, he reaches down between my legs, and starts squeezing my genitals very hard. The pain was unbelievable and indescribable to the point, I thought I did or was about to lose consciousness. He kept asking questions and squeezing me real hard after each question. This continued throughout the night. At times he would put his mouth on my genitals, it was horrible. I was being tortured and molested, and it was the most terrifying and humiliating thing to this day that I have ever endured. Not the only time I was molested, but the worst. After what seemed many hours of torture and molestation with a few breaks in between, he turned me onto my stomach, and sodomized me. It did not last a long time because it hurt so bad, thatI kicked out and kicked him in the balls (not on purpose). He doubled over in obvious pain, I dove onto the floor of the truck and crawled beneath the truck’s heater and doubled up into a ball. I was sure he was going to kill me. But instead, he closed the door of the old truck, and went away.

Throughout all the torture and molestation, Jake would come up to the old truck now and then. He would come up to ask Bill what he was doing up there. When Bill would hear him coming, he would make me pull up my pants and sit up like nothing was wrong. Bill would say he just came to check on me, and then they would go back to the house together. I think this happened about four times, but I don’t know if Jake was ever suspicious about what was going on.

It was after one of their trips back to the house that I heard the girl scream the most blood curdling scream I have ever heard. I want to say that based on what I know now as an adult, that she was being sodomized, but they could have been performing some other type of torture or just hurt her somehow.

I thought they had killed her, so I started getting really upset and screaming and yelling and crying. A couple of minutes later, Jake and Bill came to the truck and asked me what was wrong. I started accusing them of killing her, that I heard her scream, and that they had killed her. They started laughing at me and said “no, no, no, we didn’t kill her”, she is ok. But I didn’t believe them, so I kept accusing them, crying and sobbing. Then they offered to take me down to the house and show me.

They took me out of the truck and carried me back down to the house. When we went inside, I could not see her at first, but then I saw her sitting on her knees on a couch. She looked at me and then smiled at me. I’ve seen that same smile in the films of the Nazi holocaust that you see on public television. They look like they are smiling, but it’s generated by their terror, it just looks like they are smiling, but they are not. Then again, maybe she was smiling at me because some one cared enough about her to stand up to three evil men and try to protect her, even if the person was only five years old. The bad guy was laying on one of the beds in just his underwear. He was drunk and rolling around on the bed and laughing. He then ordered me to come to him, and I did. He then grabbed me by the hair, and started to force my face down to his underwear and laugh. Both of my uncles told him to stop, which he did. A few minutes later, Bill picked me up and began to carry me back out of the house, to the truck. As we were going through the house, I could see that Jake was now in his underwear, and was lying on top of the girl and kissing her. We continued out of the house, and Bill carried me back up to the truck where he put me back on the seat, pulled my pants down, and began torturing and molesting me again. It wasn’t long after that that he sodomized me and I delivered the kick that would drive him off for the rest of the night.

After Bill had left, I fell asleep. The next thing I know, it was daylight, and I was dragged out of the truck and dropped onto the gravel road. I was surrounded by all three of the attackers, and they were all laughing at me. I was so embarrassed and humiliated; I don’t know if they knew what Bill did to me or if it was the way I looked (probably that). I had no shoes on, and the cold gravel really hurt my feet. It must have been fall (like Indian summer with cold nights and warm short days), because the grass was dead, and there was a mist or light fog in the air (you could see wisps of it drifting over the open fields).

The bad guy then went to a parking area next to the old barn, got into his pickup truck, started it, and drove up to where we were standing. I think the pickup truck was a 1955 Ford Pickup, stepside, with the small window in back. The color was canary or butter yellow or something similar, and it looked like new although it may have been used, but just looked that way. The three attackers continued talking for a few minutes, and then Bill went to the house to get the girl.

The girl was barefoot when she walked up to the truck. She was wrapped in an OD (olive drab) wool Army blanket (it was one of the ranch owner’s blankets). I could tell she had her night gown on underneath. Her hair looked a lighter brown (almost blond) than I remembered when they took me to see her in the middle of the night (it looked darker then). They brought her around to the passenger side of the pickup truck and made her get in. Then Bill picked me up and set me in the truck beside her.

As we sat there together, I asked her if she was ok, and she said yes (I think she said that because she didn’t want me to be frightened). I then asked her if they had hurt her, and she pulled up her night gownand blanket, and showed me a very large and dark bruise on her inner left shin and calf. I asked if it still hurt and she said yes.

The attackers were preparing to get in the truck to go somewhere, and Bill was trying to push me over so he could get in. I’m not positive, but I think the girl suggested that they leave me there at the ranch house (she knew what was coming, we were going to be murdered and she still did her best to try and save me). I could be wrong, but I still now and have always given her credit for such courage, because even if I am wrong, she deserves it, and since I can’t truly can’t remember who said it, then, I am saying it was her, and this was the second time she saved me.

I was removed from the truck, and picked up by Jake, and carried back down to the house. We were just about to enter the house, when the pickup truck, backed down the driveway to where we were standing. They were either having second thoughts about leaving me or had forgotten something (like the murder weapon, her belongings, or both). Bill jumped out of the truck and ran into the house, and a minute or two later, ran back out and got back into the pickup truck. Then the truck began to pull out forward. That’s the last time I saw her. I remember how little she looked between the two attackers. I could just see the top of her head through the rear window of the pickup, while the shoulders of the two attackers on either side of her protruded well above the bottom of the rear window. They drove up the driveway, out the gate, and for her, into oblivion.

Jake took my hand and we walked into the house. He had me just stand there while he made himself some coffee, sat at the table and leaned his chair against the wall. I asked him where they were taking her, and I’m really not sure what he said, but I know I asked. I was so scared, maybe what he said did it, but some how I found out and knew they were taking her to kill her and that I would be next. I freaked out, and started begging for my life and asking him not to kill me. He would just lean back against the wall in his chair and smile. He wouldn’t say a word, but seemed to enjoy my uncontrollable fright and begging. I kept pacing around the table as far as I could go one direction (he was blocking one end), then I would turn and go the other way. All the while, I was begging him not to kill me. I was trying to come up with reasons not to kill me, like I won’t tell anyone and things like that. How shameful I was being by offering to help hide the horrible thing they were doing. Even though I was only 5 years old, I knew what I was doing was wrong. I was being a coward and I am shamed for the rest of my life for saying such a thing. But I wanted to live.

This went on for a couple of hours. Even Jake was getting up and pacing around, and complaining out loud that they should have been back by now, and where were they. A little while later, we could hear Uncle Wendell’s bulldozer start (I loved that tractor, so I recognized it when it started, and so did Jake). Jake jumped up and said “what the hell is going on”, and began pacing again. We could hear the tractor engine straining as it was doing some kind of work. A few minutes later, Jake and I heard the tractor shut off, which meant to me that they were done and coming back.

Jake never answered me or said anything the whole time I was begging for my life, so I began getting even more frightened, because my pleas had fallen on deaf ears. A few minutes later, the bad guy’s truck pulled back into the driveway. Only the bad guy and Bill got out of the truck. She was gone.

They came into the house in a happy and excited mood. Bill headed for the pantry saying he was hungry, and the bad guy went to the sink and began washing his bloodied knife (navy style). He was washing and scrubbing his knife, when he turned to me and said “and your next”, then he started laughing really hard. I guess he thought that what they were doing was fun and funny. After the bad guy finished cleaning his knife, he joined Bill and Jake in the pantry. Jake asked what they did, why it took the so long, and what were they doing with the tractor.

Bill proudly answered his questions. Bill said they took a long time, because they raped her again, then he said she tried to run and get away, but Bill caught up with her and tackled her. He then spread her arms wide, and then while he held her, the bad guy came up to her and drove his knife into her heart. Bill then started laughing and bragging excitedly that “she died just like a deer, just like a deer”. Then Jake chimed in and said “that’s too bad, because she sure was some sweet sugar, yep, she sure was some sweet sugar”.

Bill went on to say that they threw her body in an erosion ditch in the back of an area called the flats (the rain water would cut deep gouges into the hillsides, to depths of four or five feet by three to four feet wide), and covered her over using the tractor. The erosion ditch they were talking about was right next to the tractor. I remember because that tractor just sat there in the same place for years after this incident. They then made their breakfast and sat down to eat. They offered me no food or drink, I guess because they were about to kill me anyway, so why waste the food.

They began discussing what to do with me, and for a second, I felt a glimmer of hope. But Bill wanted me dead so no one would find out what he did to me and her. So he kept coming up with ideas and insisting that they had to get rid of me. Then Bill finally arrived at a solution. Bill suggested that they kill me, then cut me up into pieces, put me into a burlap sack with rocks, and throw me in the lake (that was just outside, no more than 40 or 50 feet from the house). Then Bill goes on to say “Then no one would find him, no one would ever know what happened to him”. They all agreed and resumed eating their breakfast.

Whenever something bad happens in my life, I always ask myself “what have you learned Forrest”. On that day, at that exact time, I learned that there are different levels of fear, and when you get to the highest level, it’s like a door opens and you pass through it. Reality ceases to exist. On that day, I passed through that door, but I didn’t die, and that door never closed all the way after that. I remember feeling my heart with my hand and wondering if it was going to hurt very much to get stabbed in the heart, and if I was going to die like a deer. I was so scared of dying, but the thing that frightened me even more than being stabbed in the heart and dying was the thought that no one would ever find me, no one would ever know what happened to me. I figured out later that the people that should have cared would have preferred that I did die and disappear on that day.

This fear is the reason that I have been trying to find my babysitters body for close to 20 years. Maybe because I survived, I have always felt that the only reason that I was allowed to live and still live today is that I have a debt that I owe, a purpose in life that is special to me, and that special purpose in my life is to find her, no matter how much of my life it takes. She is my guardian angel, and she needs to be found, and I owe it to her to try as hard as I can to find her, no matter if anyone helps, or what others may say, or how embarrassing it may seem to me. There is no price so great that I would not pay in terms of my suffering, to find her.

I have felt her with me throughout my life. She has kept me alive all this time. I have had guns put to my head, my heart, and my stomach. I have been held hostage at gun point more than once and no one has ever pulled the trigger even though it seemed like they really wanted to. I always knew they would not and was never afraid. I have been in spectacular car wrecks, and motorcycles accidents, and have never broken a bone, or received a serious cut. She has always been with me, keeping me alive until I became the man I am today, and I find her.

The three attackers finished their breakfast, stood up and started to clear the table in preparation for using it to cut me up on (good working height). I was within seconds of being stabbed in the heart and cut into pieces, when my now dead baby sitter, whom I now call my guardian angel, saved my life for the third and final time. I choose to say and believe this because I believe it is true. If there are no coincidences, then it is true. If there is a god, then it is true. Many times when people are in great fear, to relieve that fear, they will focus on someone else, as if their whole existence depends on the survival of that other. I believe that her concern for me was similar to that, in addition to that motherly instinct that is inherent in many women (who choose to embrace it). A mother can be courageous beyond belief. I believe that feeling was carried to her death with her and the events subsequent to this point will bear more reason to believe that I am right.

Just as they were about to throw me up on the table and begin dissecting me, a pickup truck pulled into the ranch compound. This was truly a miracle, and it is also the third and final time that my babysitter saved me, even though she was physically dead. On that day so many years ago, she became my guardian angel. The three evil monsters saw who it was, and immediately started freaking out, and trying to come up with something to say. There were two women in the pickup truck. One looked old, and the other looked middle aged, heavy set, brown curly hair, glasses (I think). Either Jake or Bill recognized who these people were. The heavy set lady was my babysitter’s Aunt. She had come to pick her niece up from babysitting me. The three attackers came up with a plan to tell them that the girl and I had gotten scared and run off during the night, and that they didn’t know where we were. So, the bad guy and Bill went outside to enact their plan. I heard them and remember the bad guy saying that the girl and I had got scared and had run off during the night.

All of a sudden, Jake say’s “Come Here Forrest”. He was standing at the screen door that leads from the house. He said it again with more urgency when I just looked at him. I finally went over to him after the second time he insisted. He said, “Get outside, get outside”, and pushed me out the door. I stepped out of the door, and onto the concrete step.

The heavy set lady, the bad guy, and Bill all turned and looked at me at the same time. You could tell it scared the lady, because seeing me meant those guys were lying to her, and that something was really wrong. I’m sure she could see the fear on my face as well. She talked to the bad guy and Bill for a few more seconds, and then got back in her pickup truck and left. I was led back into the house.

The bad guy and Bill came roaring into the house, screaming at Jake. I thought they were going to attack him. They asked him why he did it, and he replied that I “was his brother’s son that he wouldn’t let them kill me”, and then he said that actually, he didn’t really know why he did it, and I could tell that all of a sudden, he regretted what he had done. Through my life I have always given credit for this miracle to my guardian angel and god. Jake didn’t even know why he did that; he just did it. This meant that they could not kill me now because someone had seen me alive. I was saved.

A couple hours later, I don’t know what I or they were doing, the truck with the two ladies comes pulling into the ranch compound again. This time she is upset and crying, she knows they did something to her niece. She gets out of the truck and starts crying out “I want to talk to the boy”, meaning me. The bad guy and Bill go outside to meet with her, but instead of talking, they start throwing her against her truck and slapping her really hard. She was crying and yelling, “I just want to talk to the boy”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought they were going to kill her for sure. I couldn’t understand what the bad guy and Bill were yelling at her, but it didn’t matter, I could see they were getting their point across. After a long minute or two of yelling, slapping, crying and screaming, they stopped and threw her into her truck, and told her to get the hell out of there. So, she left, really upset. I think she knew right then in her heart, that her niece was dead.

After the two ladies drove away, they grabbed me and threw me back into the old truck at the top of the hill. I remember it was getting cold. I was still barefoot, with only a light shirt on, so I curled into a ball on the seat and tried to stay warm, and fell asleep.

After what seemed a couple of hours, I was awakened when a black and white police car pulls up, turns into the gate, turns left and stops just inside the ranch compound. A policeman gets out of the car, and the bad guy and Bill walk up to him. He was a giant police man with a Smokey the bear hat on. He towered over the bad guy, and Bill looked like a midget next to him. He started having words with the bad guy, then they started to argue, then the policeman grabbed the bad guy, spun him around, pushed him over the back of the car, and handcuffed him. He then put the bad guy into the back of the police car and drove off. I later found out the bad guy had gotten arrested for disturbing the peace for beating on my babysitter’s aunt, and I only recently figured out that the police man was actually a highway patrolman (the Smokey the Bear hat).

On that same day (Sunday) at around dusk, Francis and Wendell Elzig returned home from Reno (I overheard them say that they had gone to Reno to gamble). I was finally removed from the old truck and brought to the house, and I don’t remember anything from that night, I must have fallen asleep right away, but the next day was full of memory.

The following day, I guess they had already told The Elzigs what happened the day and night before that. They knew the girl was dead, and were very upset. We were inside the house across from the bunk house, which is the house the Elzigs used as a residence. It was a red clapboard house, 2 bedrooms, a small pass through (converted into a bar) between the kitchen and living room. They made me sit in a chair (bar stool) at the small bar and listen while Bill marched around and kept pointing at me. He was trying to blame me for everything. His logical thinking was that if I wasn’t alive, then I would not have needed a babysitter, then none of this would have happened, so it just has to be Forrest’s fault. They were pleading for mercy from the Elzigs. I think that it’s really sick that someone that could commit such heinous acts without any mercy or compassion for another human being and expects mercy and compassion when their life is on the line. I remember them saying something about being called a deserter and being executed for what they did. All the while, Bill, and now Jake too, were pointing at me and continuing to blame me for what had happened. They were blaming a 5-year-old little kid for everything that happened that night and following day.

They eventually arrived at a decision. My Uncle Wendell, Bill and Jake left the ranch compound together carrying shovels. Several hours later they came back. I could see them from the house. They were carrying the shovels, with heads bowed in shame, or at least it appeared that way, maybe they were just tired. They reminded me of the three blind mice in the old cartoons. When they came back into the house, my Uncle Wendell told my Aunt Francis that they had dug up the body and reburied beneath the culvert (pipe) that ran under a road (which could not have been far from where she was originally buried). Then he said “no one will ever find her there, no one will know what happened”. Later that evening, I went up to my Aunt Francis to apologize to her for what had happened, and she told me get away and said that “It’s all your fault Forrest”. I cannot put into words how that made me feel at that moment, but the feeling has never left me, and I think it may have set the tone for what was to happen to me throughout my life after that.

Eventually, my mother arrived, maybe the next day, picked me up, and we left the ranch. On the way home, she repeatedly asked me what was wrong. I think that maybe she might have called Aunt Francis and got the story of what happened from her. It was obvious that something bad had happened to me, and it bothered my mother, and that’s why I think she might have called.

I do not know for sure where we ended up. My father had died what seemed to be a few months earlier, and I don’t think my mother was settled anywhere in particular, and that’s how I ended up at the ranch by myself in the first place. I thank god that none of my three sisters were there when they attacked us, or the same thing might have happened to them.

The house where we were staying was an old depression era house, it even had the bed that folded down out of the wall. There was an open entry way with a door that went into a bedroom. That’s all I remember of that place, though I keep thinking it may have been in Rodeo, California or somewhere else in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was morning, there was a knock on the door, my mother opened the door and there was the bad guy and Bill in their navy uniforms and pea-coats. They walked inside and stood on either side of my mother in what would be the foyer. Then they grabbed my mother, and dragged her into a bedroom off the foyer and shut the door. I heard a struggle and my mother screaming. Then the screaming stopped. The door opened, and my mother and the two attackers walked back into the foyer. My mother’s robe was torn open, and her breasts were exposed. The bad guy had his shirt torn open. The bad guy was laughing, my mother slapped him, but he continued to laugh. Then, Bill walked up to me and knelt down so that only I could hear him, and he said “If you ever tell anyone about what happened up there, we will do the same thing to your mother that we did to that girl”. He then asked me if I understood, and I nodded yes, and then I said “Please don’t touch me anymore”. He quietly said “ok, I promise”. He then stood up, and he and the bad guy left. My mother did absolutely nothing about it. how shameful of her.

This experience taught me so much about human behavior. There are only a few good people in this world that will stand up for one that is suffering, and defend that person at any cost. The others will abandon you, and leave you to whatever fate awaits you. It has taken me a long time, but now I stand up for myself, and I never expect anyone to stand up for me, or to even stand next to me. I simply do not trust anyone to do something like that. Especially the ones that say they will always be there for you, they are the worst.

Soon after Bill and the bad guy left, four or five policemen showed up at the door and wanted to talk to me. My mother let them in (and she still didn’t do or say anything about what had happened earlier), one nice looking policeman came up to me to talk, and I backed right into the corner of the foyer where I was standing. The policeman came closer and crouched down to talk to me (he had sandy brown receding hair, greased and combed straight back, plain looking, but nice looking). He asked if I could tell him anything about what happened at the Elzigs ranch. I was so frightened at the prospect of the bad guy and Bill coming back to rape and murder my mother that I just started hitting him while screaming and crying for him to leave me alone. The tears were falling like rain from my eyes, and I could never figure out why he couldn’t tell something bad had happened to me. I must have embarrassed him, because he stood up, said a few words to my mother and left. I always wondered why he never came back. I really wanted to tell him what happened, and all it would have taken was a little coaxing. I wanted to tell him everything. The one thing I realized through all this is that no one really seems to care as long as it does not directly affect them. The complacency and indifference of this world is nothing new, it probably goes back to the cave man.

This is where the story ends at this point in my life. I learned how vicious adults can be and what coward’s they really are. They are consumed by ignorance, fear and cowardice, and don’t have enough sense to save their own asses. I think I know where my guardian angel is buried, or close enough that I think I can find her. Ever since this event, I have had many thoughts as to why I was spared. I have always had a knowing feeling that I owe a debt for my life being saved by her, and I think that debt repayment will come when I find her and give her a proper burial. I will pray and cry over her like she deserves.

As for Bill and Jake, Jake became an alcoholic and died a troubled man in the 1970’s or 80” s. As for Bill, for about ten or so years, I had to occasionally interact with him. He had children that were our age, and we would visit them sometimes. Once when I must have been about ten years old, and we were staying at the Munroe’s rental house in Mountain Ranch, California, Bill was wrestling with my cousins and my sisters, he then turned and grabbed me to pull me into the wrestling match. I freaked out, backed away from him, and said to him “you promised”. He stopped immediately and said “oh yeah”, let me go and turned to continue wrestling with the other kids.

Bill and his family eventually moved to the state of Oregon, and he died there in 2001. Throughout my life I would hear stories of what a crook he was, and was not to be trusted. Every time my mother would hear his name after the incident at the house, she would start getting very angry and talking very hatefully about him, though she never told anyone of authority about what Bill and the bad guy did. Instead, she would take it out on me. What a coward.

I still don’t know who the bad guy was (although he looks a lot like someone who worked for the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department, but I do not want to accuse someone without more proof). I am still looking for him, “the Bad Guy”, “The rapist”, “The pedophile”, “the murderer”, the one who triggered the end of what might have been for her and I.

But as you will see, no one cares about something that happened years ago. Her murder was covered up through fear and intimidation. After what they did to my mother, I can just imagine what they did and/or said to the girl’s aunt. There seemed to be no reference to my babysitter being missing in the local newspapers, but when you think about he fact that maybe she was kept out of the local newspapers intentionally, it makes sense. I have gone to the museum and archives in Calaveras County twenty times now (in 1991, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011,2012,2013,2014). I read every newspaper, from 1954 through 1957, and I can find no reference to her disappearance. I may have made some headway by reading the Oakland Tribune’s microfilm collection (I have read more than 1,000 newspapers, cover to cover) at the City of Oakland Main Library. But again, I don’t want to rush to conclusions without more information. I just need more information. If I am right in my suspicions, then the Calaveras Sheriff’s Department and other agencies may have been complicit in the cover up of her murder.

My Uncle Wendell was a member of the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Posse, so I think he was able to convince all interested parties that she had run away, got lost in the woods, and died there. So there was no sense in looking for her. Maybe he was right, maybe no one will ever find her. She was from the San Francisco Bay Area, that much I remember my aunt saying. But that’s it. There was never a missing person’s report filed (thanks to the bad guy and Bill, I assume), and the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department threw away any and all records of her disappearance and the arrest of the Bad Guy. Her life just seemed to disappear into thin air. Looking back on all that has happened, I think everybody would have been happier if I would have died on that day as she did. But I didn’t, and I remember her, she saved me three times, she is my guardian angel, and I feel that she keeps me alive until I find her, and fulfill an oath that I have sworn to her, myself and to god. I really don’t care if anyone believes me or tries to help me. I will find her myself, by myself.