Читать книгу Betrayal In Blood - Michael Benson - Страница 12

CHAPTER 5

Baby Girls

The story starts a generation before when the victim’s mother, waitress Virginia “Ginny” Hentges, got together with the victim’s dad, college student Carroll Leroy Bassett—and they were known to everyone as Ginny and Leroy.

Ginny grew up on a farm in Elk River, Minnesota, until she was thirteen. She was the sixth of eight kids. They were, oldest to youngest, Sharon, Roy, Jerry, Sue, Chuck, Ginny, Russ, and Denise. Her dad worked his whole life for the same company in industrial hard-facing.

“They built a new plant down in Iowa when I was thirteen, and that’s when we moved,” Ginny remembered years later.

Being a rather typical teenager, academics were not at the top of Ginny’s priority list: “I went to the first semester of tenth grade, when I quit. I was young and stupid and bored out of my mind, so I didn’t finish school then.”

Instead, Ginny took a job waiting tables at a restaurant when she was fifteen. “I was a truckin’ waitress,” Ginny said. “I worked at the same place as my sister Sue. She was living in Lamoni, Iowa, at the time and I was living there.”

She met Leroy Bassett because her sister Sue married his roommate in college, Graceland University. The school was affiliated with the Community of Christ (C of C) Church. That was Sue’s first marriage. Sue didn’t go to Graceland, but her first husband did. Ginny met Leroy in 1974 and they got married in 1975.

Leroy was from the Southern Tier Region of New York State, south of Lake Ontario and north of the Pennsylvania border. He was the son of Essie and Carol Bassett, of Greenwood, New York, who were likewise affiliated with the Community of Christ Church. Carol had the same name as his son, but they spelled it differently. Essie and Carol had had five children—four girls and Leroy, their only son.

Ginny and Leroy had their first baby on March 20, 1975. The baby girl, whom they named Samantha, nicknamed Sammy, was born in Leon, Iowa, the county seat of Decatur County, which borders Missouri. It is about twenty miles south of Osceola.

A year later, Tabatha “Tabby” Marie Bassett was born in Mount Ayr (pronounced like air), Iowa.

Ginny chose the names Samantha and Tabatha for her daughters. Pretty names, but the fact that Ginny chose those two names in particular is revealing. Those names exist in combination in popular culture. They were the names of the mother-and-daughter witches in the 1960s TV comedy series Bewitched.

The show ran from 1964 through 1972. It was about a mortal man who married a witch. The husband didn’t want his wife to use her magic because he hoped to live a normal suburban existence, but each week the comedic situation inevitably led to Samantha using her powers to resolve the plot. In the end, Darrin loved her anyway.

Actress Elizabeth Montgomery played Samantha Stephens. On January 13, 1966, during episode fifty-four, the Stephenses had a baby, to coincide with Montgomery’s real-life pregnancy.

On the show the Stephenses had a daughter and named her Tabitha, with an i. But, on the credits that ran at the end of each episode, the baby’s name was listed as Tabatha, with an a.

It was Montgomery’s idea to name the character Tabitha. In an interview published in the February 1967 edition of Screen Stories, Montgomery said, “The name was my idea. I loved it, because it was so old-fashioned. I got it from one of the daughters of Edward Andrews, the actor.... But, somehow or other, her name came out ‘Tabatha’ on the credit roll, and that’s the way it’s been ever since. Honestly, I shudder every time I see it. It’s like a squeaky piece of chalk scratching on my nerves.”

After twenty-one episodes of mystery, it was revealed, to tremendous ratings, that the baby, like her mother, had supernatural powers. In 1967, at Montgomery’s insistence, the spelling of the character’s name was changed to “Tabitha” on the end credits—a correction that Ginny Bassett apparently did not notice.

When her second daughter was born, Ginny named her Tabatha, with an a. Ginny had named her daughters after TV witches, beautiful and benevolent witches, for sure, but witches nonetheless.

According to Ginny, “You know, I didn’t watch Bewitched that much, but I loved the names. If I would have had another girl, she would have been Sabrina,” Ginny said, referring to the name of a fictional witch, this one first appearing in the Archie comics, and later the subject of an ABC-TV show, Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

“It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have four girls, because the only one left was Endora, and she would have killed me,” Ginny added, referring to the character of Samantha’s highly flamboyant and somewhat villainous mother. Endora, played by Agnes Moorehead, encouraged Samantha to act like a witch and could never get her son-in-law’s name right, most frequently referring to him as “Dur wood,” instead of Darrin.

Ginny remembered those first few years with her baby girls. She remembered them clearly, because they were the only years she had.

“Sammy was first. She was—they were both wonderful babies. Neither one of them gave me problems. Sammy would get sick. She would catch a cold. When Sammy would teethe, she would get such a fever on the inside that, when it came out, she would just pass out on me. Scared me to death. But, as soon as the tooth came in, she was fine. There was nothing. It was just one big scare and that was it.”

In the meantime, Leroy had left college and had taken a job that involved considerably more travel. He joined the army. With a baby to take care of, Ginny saw her husband rarely, but it was better than never. After one visit from Leroy, Ginny found herself expecting a second blessed event.

“Tabby was born small,” Ginny said. “She weighed four pounds twelve ounces. The doctors told me she was two months premature, but trust me, she was born nine months to the day. And I know because I only saw my husband once during the time I got pregnant. He was in the service at the time. Even though she was small, there were no health problems. They had her on premature formula for a little while, but she didn’t need it.

“We brought Tabby home in a boot box, if you can believe that. The hospital wouldn’t let me take her home unless we had a warm blanket. Well, she was born in October and I didn’t have a warm enough blanket that the hospital thought was appropriate, so we cut holes in a boot box and wrapped her in a little receiving blanket, and that was how we took her home.

“When we got Tabby home, Sammy took one look at the box and said, ‘Present for me!’ I opened the box and she goes, ‘Mine!’ Tabby was basically Sammy’s from that point on. She helped me hold her. They were definitely close. Both girls were healthy, happy babies.

“Tabby was bubbly. Right from the moment she got up in the morning. She was disgustingly happy in the morning. I’m a grouch in the morning. It takes me an hour or so, a cup of coffee and a cigarette. When Tabby was just little, she would jump on me while I was still asleep and she would say, ‘Up, Mommy! Up!’ She wasn’t just a morning person. She was an all-day person. Even when she was older and she would come to visit with the kids, she would wake them up in the morning by jumping at them.

“She would lay in bed with me, with her face about three inches away from mine, and she’d say, ‘Good morning, sunshine. Time to get up.’

“I would say, ‘It’s morning, ‘Tab,’ there’s nothing good about it.’

“And she’d say, ‘Yes there is. I’m here.’

“Sammy is more like me, a little bit slower to get started in the morning—so you can imagine what a trial Tab was for us first thing in the morning.

“I do crafts and I made a sign that I hung in my dining room in Iowa when Tab would come to visit. The sign said, ‘Cheerfulness in the morning is strictly forbidden. All violators will be shot!’ In response, Tab sent me a T-shirt that said, ‘Instant human, just add coffee.’”

But that was years later when mother and daughter tried desperately to make up for lost time; so much time had been lost. Baby Tabby went to stay with her paternal grandmother off and on from the time she was nine months old. Then Leroy was transferred to Germany and Ginny didn’t want to make the trip with him, so they broke up.

Ginny was moving on with her life. In 1979, when Samantha was three and Tabby was two, they again went to live with the Bassetts. This time the move from Iowa to Greenwood, New York, was permanent.

According to Tabby’s aunt Lorraine Warriner, Leroy Bassett’s sister, “My mother raised her because my brother was in the service and traveled a lot.”

Here’s how Ginny remembered it: “My husband went to Germany and I was working two jobs at the time. I was working at an art store during the day and at a restaurant during the weekends. Leroy was going to New York to visit his parents and he asked if he could take the girls with him, and I said sure. Leroy and I were already having problems at that time. And, he didn’t bring them back. By the time I got up enough money to go to New York and pick them up, I found that New York had a law that you can’t take children out of a house that they’ve been in for longer than six weeks without a court order—or something along those lines—even if you are the children’s mother. I was young and dumb. I was nineteen at the time, I believe. Leroy and I divorced soon after that. We just couldn’t get along.”

Hearing of Ginny’s claims that she didn’t give up the babies, but rather sort of lost them, Samantha huddled with Grandma Essie, and they said the claim was simply not true.

“Dad and Mom brought us to Grandma’s and Mom was going to come back later after she got settled in her new home,” Samantha said. “Dad was going to Germany in the army. Mom told Gram to get custody of us because she was going to be a trucker, and so Gram did. Then she was mad that Gram did. Mom asked to take us to her parents, but Gram wouldn’t let her because she didn’t know if she would get us back. Gram did not tell her to get a court order if she wanted us. She asked to take us to visit, but not to keep.”

However they got there, the girls were at the Bassetts’ to stay. They would be brought up in a strong religious atmosphere. The entire Bassett family was very involved with the local Community of Christ Church in Greenwood. Ginny was a Catholic girl.

After the girls moved to Greenwood to live with Grandma Essie and Grampa Carol, Ginny remembered: “Surprisingly, we all got along pretty good. The only time we had a problem was when Essie first started taking care of the girls. I got over my mad and we talked. She never stopped me from calling the girls or anything else. I always called the girls once a month, on the first Saturday after the first. I could only afford to call them once a month. We would talk for an hour. I also called on their birthday, on Christmas, you know. . . .”

Greenwood, New York, is a tiny village south of Hor-nell, located along a creek. When you come into Greenwood from the north, you cross a little bridge that goes over a small creek, with a pretty waterfall. The town is located at the junction of Route 248, the north-south thoroughfare, and Route 417, which runs east-west, in the western part of Steuben County. Although it was formed back in 1827, it remained so small that there were no restaurants, traffic lights, or gas stations. In 2000, the Greenwood population was 849 residents. That number has not changed much over the years.

Samantha referred to Greenwood as a “tiny little town where there wasn’t much to do.”

Said Tabatha’s aunt Lorraine, “It’s one of those little communities that if you blink as you go through it, you’ll miss it.”

The Bassett home was right on the main road, Route 248, a two-story wooden house on forty acres of land. It was located about halfway between Canisteo and Greenwood, but it was considered both in the Greenwood postal district and the Greenwood school district. It was a big house, but nonetheless it was often crowded.

Asked who lived there, Samantha recalled, “My grandma and grandpa. Tabby and I. My grandma had a couple of foster kids that lived with us for a while. My aunt Linda, my dad’s sister, and her husband and their family. They lived with us off and on a couple of times. They had four kids.”

Using recent statistics, the median household income is around $30,000 a year and the average house goes for $45,000. Like most of the town populations in that region, almost everyone is white. Of those, the heritage was split evenly between Irish, German, and English. Only sixteen residents of Greenwood listed their ethnicity as anything other than Caucasian, and eight of them were of Native American heritage. The remainder listed their race as a mixture of two or more races.

It was not a rich community. Three out of four adults in Greenwood had graduated from high school. Only one out of ten had earned a four-year college degree, well below the state average. Another one out of ten was out of work, about normal.

It was a family town. Although a quarter of the adults had never been married, only 8 percent were separated or divorced. Well over half were married.

The only noteworthy landmark, and it didn’t exactly bring in the tourist trade, was a spot just west of town where the first gas well drilled on state land was located.

Spectacular, no—but pretty, yes. A lovelier spot you won’t find anywhere in New York State’s Southern Tier. About Greenwood, local Robert Huff (pseudonym) said, “I’ve lived here all my life, except when I was in the Air Force. I came back because this is where you raise your kids.” Huff, who was an athletic coach for combined Canisteo-Greenwood sports teams, added, “They can go up to the school at ten o’clock at night and skateboard, and you won’t worry about them.”

The largest building in Greenwood was five miles down the road from the Bassett home. It was Greenwood Central School, which housed all students, from pre-K through seniors in high school. The total enrollment for all twelve grades was usually around three hundred. This was the only school Tabatha Bassett would ever attend.

In 2004, the Greenwood school district and the Canisteo district, to the north, merged for activities, such as sports and clubs—but back when the Bassett girls went there, that was not the case. Because of this, often there were not enough kids for certain activities to continue. That same year, testing results revealed that only 21 percent of Greenwood’s eighth graders were meeting or exceeding grade-level standards in English Language Arts. More encouragingly, 57 percent were meeting or exceeding standards in math.

To get to the highest point in Greenwood, one climbed to the top of the New York State Highway System sign. It wasn’t that the sign itself was so tall, it’s just that it rested atop Greenwood Hill.

Canisteo, the larger town to the north of Greenwood, is best known for its “Living Sign”—an arrangement of pine trees on the side of a hill that spells out “Canisteo.” When you enter Canisteo by car, you pass a road sign that says, “WELCOME TO CANISTEO, HOME OF THE WORLD FAMOUS LIVING SIGN.” The living sign is pretty impressive, and everyone who has seen it remembers it, but to call it world-famous is a bit of a stretch. Most travelers figure it’s truly famous only about as far as Elmira.

After moving in with their grandparents, Samantha and Tabatha didn’t see much of their parents. The girls had switched homes, and visits from parents were infrequent, such as one might expect from a distant aunt.

“We saw my mom once when I was in seventh grade and Tabby was in sixth,” Samantha recalled. “She would call every once in a while. She called once a month for awhile, but then she didn’t.”

Visits from her dad were equally rare.

“We would see my dad about once every two or three years,” said Sam. “He’d visit when he was on leave from the army. One time it was two years without seeing him, and another time it was three years.”

Among the townfolk, Tabby was not known as a shy girl. She was the girl with the funny laugh. When she laughed, everyone laughed. She was effervescent, always on the move. She was the girl who brightened a room.

Greenwood locals remembered Tabatha as a girl who, no matter what she was doing, seemed to be having fun. History was her favorite subject. Her favorite teacher was Mike Bronson, who taught history.

Like many sisters who are close in age, Sam and Tabby did not always get along.

“We didn’t always have the greatest relationship, and I really regret that now,” Sam said in 2005. Samantha and Tabatha were both active in school, but they weren’t drawn to the same activities.

“I was in the yearbook club, taking pictures. And I played a year of basketball, even though I wasn’t very sporty. Tabby did other things. She was a cheerleader, and she played softball, although I don’t remember what position she played.”

These weren’t intramural sports, either. The girls’ basketball and softball teams played games against other schools. Because the talent pool in Greenwood was what it was—that is, tiny—it was not very hard to get on a team.

“There weren’t any such thing as tr youts,” Samantha remembered with a laugh. “If you showed up, you got to play.” There was always a chance, before each game, that not enough would show up to play, so participation by all was highly desirable.

During the summers, Samantha and Tabatha always went to church camp. They spent several weeks each summer attending Community of Christ events held for children and teenagers.

“We would go for one week to a camp for our age group,” Sam said, “and then later in the summer we would go for another week, Reunion Week, for the whole family. The camp was in Pennsylvania.”

That was about a four- or five-hour drive, and those trips were often elongated by extreme tension.

“That’s because Tabby always got car sick,” Samantha remembered. The family learned the solution was in conking Tabby out. “One year they gave her a motion-sickness pill and she slept the whole way. It was better than throwing up.”

Once, the church reunion was at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa—the same school that the girls’ dad, Leroy Bassett, had attended—which put them within driving distance of their mother. Ginny remembered all of the times she had seen her daughters. Sadly, they were few and far between.

“When the girls went to Graceland, I would go see them or they would come over and visit me. I would go pick them up, we’d visit for a couple of hours, and then I’d take them back to the college. Tabby came here to visit for a week when she graduated. Sammy went to Graceland for a short time, so I had an opportunity to visit her then.”