Читать книгу The Green River Serial Killer - Pennie Psy.D. Morehead - Страница 4

Judith Lorraine Mawson (Ridgway) was born on August 15, 1944. Her eighteen-year-old mother, Helen Downing, quietly delivered her at only seven months into the pregnancy, alone, at the St. Helens Hospital in Chehalis, Washington.

During the years flanking Judith’s birth, it seemed the world had gone mad. In 1939 the U.K. and France had declared war on Germany, pressing the start button for World War II. Canada followed suit in September of the same year. 1941 brought a shocking and deadly attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7^th. The United States officially declared war on the Empire of Japan December 8, 1941. Just two months prior to Judith’s birth, United States soldiers waded onto the beaches of Normandy, France, under devastating enemy fire. And, like the soldiers in Normandy, Judith’s father was far away from home, a nineteen-year-old soldier himself, battling for America in World War II. American soldiers and their anguished families had no means of predicting that World War II would end in 1945 after the U.S. bomber, Enola Gay, would drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. And they, in their wildest dreams, hadn’t foreseen that the United States would be back at war just five years later in Korea.

Helen did not know the location of Judith’s father when she gave birth to their baby. In fact, as she lay in the hospital bed with no smiling, well-wishing visitors, no flowers, and no gifts, she did not know if Wesley Mawson was living or dead and whether he would ever come home and meet his new daughter. Her chest ached with worry for her new baby and for the life of her lover. Of course she would write him a letter… tell him the good news…it would take weeks to reach him.

What the new, young mother acutely knew as fact was that she had just become the mother of a premature baby girl, that she was not married, and that she had only one living soul to help her survive and to care for the new baby: “Uncle Si.”

Uncle Silas was a man who had executed multiple roles in his life. Had he volunteered for the challenging roles in a benevolent spirit? Or, had he accepted the roles with resentment when they were rudely thrust upon him? The answer is not known. But Uncle Silas, a carpenter and widower with no children of his own, took custody of Judith’s mother, Helen, when she was sent to him at approximately three years of age. Helen’s biological mother had become erotically active by the age of thirteen and was drinking alcohol excessively. She married six times and gave birth to several children. She abandoned Helen to pursue men, and later, committed suicide after four failed attempts. The identity of Helen’s father was unknown, and her maternal grandparents had been killed in a car accident. Uncle Silas was the brother of Helen’s grandfather who had died in the car accident.

Great Uncle Silas became both mother and father to Helen while he worked in his trade as a carpenter. Young Helen and aging Uncle Si lived together near the tiny town of Vader, Washington, in a small, modest home that he had built with his own hands on five and one-half acres of fertile land—land that he had made claim to when he came to the area as one of the early settlers. The simple, square home had no indoor plumbing and no running water, but it was a cozy home and the occupants were mighty thankful to have it.

Vader, Washington, at the time of this writing, has a population of approximately 600; however, the town is considered to be a semi-ghost town. Incorporated in 1906, the town covers a total area of approximately one square mile and is located twenty miles southwest of Chehalis, Washington, along the Interstate-5 corridor that runs north and south in western Washington, on state route 506.

Vader experienced its paramount energy in the early days with a steady, dramatic, decline until present day. The community rose up from nothing in the early 1800’s when settlers arrived from the east. A post office, general store, hotel, and a one-room school gave the town a fresh, new face— a face that would later be blemished by brothels and saloons.

Helen and Uncle Si worked together as a competent team during the years that Helen grew through childhood, adolescence, and then as a young mother. Si’s modest income from his sporadic carpenter jobs and his skills as a handyman supported the basic financial and maintenance needs around the home. A well on the property supplied all of their water. They fed themselves with locally butchered meat and plentiful vegetables that they nurtured each year in their expansive garden. Potatoes served as a major staple for the household as they were easy to grow, easy to dig up in the rich, dark, loamy soil, and they did not require much for preservation—simply a dark, cool, area for storage. It seemed they ate potatoes as a part of every meal. They even ate raw potato wedges for snacks. Fruit trees on the property yielded abundant crops each summer. Helen treasured the once-a-year pleasure of tasting fresh, sun-ripened fruit. Most of the fruit was preserved to last the remainder of the year. It was endless, backbreaking labor for the duo, but somehow they made it work. They had all the basics for survival: water, food, shelter. But most importantly, they had each other.

When Helen was sixteen years old, Uncle Si sent her to work as a riveter at a Boeing airplane factory in nearby Chehalis. It was wartime and the United States needed more airplane riveters just as much as Uncle Si needed more cash. Helen went to work at her first paying job without question, and quietly slipped out of school, never to return.

At seventeen, Helen discovered who her biological father was and that he was living in California—a universe away from Helen’s small world in Vader. Uncle Si encouraged Helen to go meet her father. So, Helen left Uncle Si and the mini-farm in western Washington and courageously went to live with her newly found father who was, in fact, a total stranger to her. During her one-year stay in California, she worked at a purse factory and began a relationship her father. Then, at the end of the year, Helen felt a powerful yearning to go home to Uncle Si. Uncle Si welcomed her back, and the duo picked up where they had left off: working in the yard, tending the garden, hauling water up to the house, chopping wood, and preparing and preserving food.

At eighteen, when Helen realized she was pregnant after getting involved with Wesley Mawson, a handsome, restless, and charismatic young man she had met while hanging out at the local train station (one of the few sources of entertainment in the tiny town). Neither Uncle Si nor Helen had any experience with pregnancies or babies to reference. However, they did not panic. They simply continued moving forward, calmly accepting that they would just figure it out, like everything else they had faced in life. In the meantime, Wesley had already been drafted into service for World War II.

Helen’s pregnancy developed normally while she performed her usual chores with Uncle Si. With no woman available to offer advice and experience about pregnancies and birthing, Helen observed, with fascination and a child-like delight, her belly growing tight and round, and she felt movement from strong kicks by the baby. Once, she exclaimed to Uncle Si, “You know, it’s just like when a calf kicks inside the mother cow…my gosh, it feels like there’s a baby cow inside of me!”

Labor began unexpectedly and early at seven months when Helen slipped and fell over a large rock while crossing a creek near their home. The jolt to her swollen abdomen initiated labor, and the very worried Helen and Uncle Si walked quietly together down their long driveway and then down the first dirt road to neighbors who owned a car. The neighbors drove Helen to the St. Helens Hospital (named for Mt. St. Helens, an active volcano that would violently erupt in 1980) in Chehalis and dropped her off. Uncle Si walked back home to wait for news from the hospital.

Premature baby Judith was born and placed into an incubator. She was tiny but thriving. After sixteen days, Helen and her baby were discharged from the hospital. A staff person at the hospital kindly offered Helen and the baby a ride home. But they were gruffly dropped off at the mouth of Uncle Si’s driveway as the driver did not want to attempt to maneuver the car up the perfidious terrain. Helen, weakened from inactivity for sixteen days, thanked the driver for the ride home and then slowly carried her tiny bundle up the long, nappy driveway and introduced the sleeping baby Judith to Uncle Si.

The duo became a trio.

Shortly after Helen returned home from the hospital, a woman from the Red Cross paid a visit to the new mother, offering chatty, warm, advice and a layette, a starter kit for a new baby including diapers, blankets, and some clothing. Someone at the hospital had noticed that Helen did not have any supplies for her newborn. Uncle Si had polished up the wooden cradle that he had constructed years ago for Helen to sleep in when she first came to live with him. Carefully, Helen gently placed her baby Judith in the same cradle. A second baby girl began life in Uncle Si’s hand-crafted cradle.

Uncle Si and Helen silently stared down at the new miracle, watching her sleep, each fast-forwarding in their mind’s eye to the infant’s life ahead, wondering what kind of person she would become. Would she look like her mother or her father? Would Uncle Si live long enough to see her graduate from school? Marry? Neither Uncle Si nor Helen had a whisper of a premonition that little Judith would grow up and marry a notorious, dangerous, serial killer.

Just one day short of Judith’s first birthday, the Japanese surrendered to allies on August 14, 1945, ending World War II. Wesley Mawson came home shortly thereafter with his U.S. Army combat engineers battalion, based in Fort Lewis, Washington. He met his one-year-old daughter, instantly recognizing his eyes and nose on her little face. He asked her mother to marry him.

Having been raised a Mormon Wesley Mawson married Helen in a Latter-day Saints Ward in Seattle, Washington, about one hundred miles north of Vader. He and his new family began a life together, staying with Uncle Si. Wesley quickly found work in the booming logging industry very close to home. But Wesley, feeling restless and hungry for more excitement, grew weary of the mundane logging job in the first year of employment. Like so many other returning soldiers, he may have been having difficulty transitioning into normal life after fighting in the war. One day in 1946, Wesley abruptly packed up his family and moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, leaving Uncle Si behind. Judith was a two-year-old toddler. The young family lived with Wesley’s parents, and Wesley went to work in a cement block yard. Helen began to observe the Mormon ways of life.

Again, Wesley did not bond with the colorless work routine, so he moved his family back to Vader, Washington. Again, they lived with Uncle Si. Wesley worked off and on at different jobs and began a new pattern of behavior that afforded less and less time with his wife and daughter. It seemed to Helen that her husband was always away, searching for something. Helen confided in Uncle Si that she felt like she had an exciting lover to meet occasionally for dates but not a husband. Uncle Si was not pleased with what he saw in Wesley’s behavior. Wesley had developed a reputation as being a highly excitable Tomcat, always on the prowl for mates. No, Uncle Si’s women deserved better.

In 1949 Helen’s father moved from California to Kennydale, Washington, and he invited Helen and little Judith to live with him. Helen agreed. She thought it was time to leave Vader, try something new. By now Helen’s husband had severed all contact with her.

Helen’s father, according to gossip, was doing well financially. Maybe he could help Helen with Judith’s upbringing and offer her opportunities that were not available in Vader. Uncle Si, she reasoned, was getting on in age and perhaps it was time to bless him with some well-deserved quiet in the home.

Judith’s first memories of her life originate in her grandfather’s home, a new rambler, in Kennydale, a suburb of Seattle. Even at Judith’s young age, she understood the significance of living in the first home on the block with a television set. She sat, motionless, enthralled, watching her favorite shows in black and white: Wanda Wanda and Howdy Doody.

Five-year-old Judith entered kindergarten and her mother got a job, again with Boeing, at the Renton plant where she hand-painted numbers on airplanes.

Life was good for Judith in grandfather’s house. They enjoyed modern appliances and indoor plumbing. Grandfather’s new wife prepared hearty meals of store-bought food. Frequently they shared meals with interesting guests seated all around the table. The adults showered affection upon the only child in the group, little Judith, in an attempt to fill in for her absent father. The adults indulged little Judith by laughing at her antics and listening intently whenever she interrupted the adults.

Grandfather owned a beautiful, shiny, black car. Judith and her mother enjoyed a fantastic new sense of freedom and great fortune as they traveled about the busy Seattle area by car, always driven safely by grandfather.

In 1950 Helen had saved enough money from her earnings to make a down payment and purchase a small home in Renton, very near the Boeing plant at which she worked. She could walk to work and save bus fare. Home ownership for a single, young woman in the 1950’s was unusual. However, Helen was determined to forge ahead and do whatever necessary to secure a sense of stability for herself and Judith. Helen and Judith left grandfather in Kennydale and moved into their new home. For a brief time, mother and daughter lived alone together, without any men. Helen worked a full schedule at Boeing, managed all of the household chores, cared for Judith, and tended a small garden in the back yard. Naturally, she grew potatoes like she had at Uncle Si’s place. Evening entertainment for the two was curling up together on the sofa, in pajamas, watching television and munching on bite-size pieces of raw potato.

With no other people in the house, Judith began to receive undiluted attention from her mother. “No” was not a word that Judith recognized. Helen dropped what she was doing to play with Judith, giving in to her demands. Judith had no rules to abide by in the home. She could freely jump on the furniture, spill food on the floor, and get into her mother’s things with no consequences. In a generation when “spare the rod, spoil the child” was advocated as good parenting wisdom, Helen chose to throw out the rod.

In June of l950 President Harry Truman authorized General Douglas MacArthur to send U.S. military support to South Korea. The Korean War had begun. Wesley Mawson re-enlisted as soon as he heard the news. He was going to be a soldier again.

On September 2^nd of the same year, Sgt.Wesley Mawson stepped on a land mine near Seoul, Korea. His body was decimated, leaving scant remains to send home to his parents in Utah. Judith would not know until she was a sixty-one-year-old woman, while doing a genealogy search on the internet, that her grandfather, Wesley’s father, desperate to end the sickening grief he had felt after losing his son, walked out to the barn behind his house in Utah and fatally shot himself in the head on the two-year anniversary of Wesley’s death.

Judith became a six-year-old fatherless child and Helen a 24-year-old widow. Immediately, without contemplation, Uncle Si decided it was time to sell his home and land in Vader and, shortly thereafter, he moved in with Helen and Judith in the little home in Renton.

Judith seemed upset when she was told that her father had been killed in the war, but having only interacted with him for about six months out of her six years of life, she did not have any memories of her father that she could cling to. Helen gave Judith a wallet size, black and white, head and shoulders photo of Wesley—the only tangible evidence to Judith that she had ever had a father. She only knew that she had suffered some kind of loss and that her mother seemed to be sad. The mutual loss worked to reinforce the bond between mother and daughter.

When Uncle Si moved in, Helen transferred Judith out of her small bedroom and into Helen’s bedroom to allow Uncle Si his own room. Judith and Helen had to walk through Uncle Si’s bedroom, however, to access the tiny bathroom. Quarters were close but they moved around each other with respect for one another’s privacy.

The trio was together again.

In 1952, when Judith was eight years old, a group of boys from the neighborhood coaxed her into the little playhouse that had lived up to its name thus far—a cute little house that Judith played in. The playhouse was only steps from the house in her back yard. Having successfully isolated Judith from view of her mother and Uncle Si, the bigger, older boys shoved Judith down on the floor and quickly stripped her clothing off from the waist down. They slapped her across the face repeatedly and threatened her with serious injury if she cried out. The boys pressed her firmly down, arms above her head, yanking her legs apart, as they each attempted penis insertion. Penetration was not possible, and this disappointment enraged the boys who slapped and punched Judith even more violently. Having their goal of gang rape foiled, the boys ran off, leaving a beaten, shocked, eight-year-old lying on the floor of her beloved playhouse, naked on her bottom half.

When Helen discovered what had happened, she rushed Judith to a doctor who examined her and confirmed that her hymen was still intact. Good news, Helen thought. Meanwhile, Uncle Si smashed the playhouse with a heavy sledgehammer, swing after angry swing, until it was a pile of disarrayed pieces of lumber. Judith’s physical wounds healed quickly. The actual memory of the attack was sent away to a distant corner of her brain where it would be repressed.

Judith was not disturbed by the memory of the assault from the neighborhood boys, however, she was disturbed about her lovely little playhouse being destroyed. One day she marched out to the back yard to discover that her playhouse was gone. Demolished. Her mother and Uncle Si gave no explanation. Judith wondered for the next fifty-four years why her playhouse had inexplicably fallen down.

And so, with one vicious attack to Judith’s body and soul, a course that would take her through a series of tragic happenings was set.

Uncle Si, now in his eighties, spent most of his time sitting at the kitchen table in their house. The table and chairs were l950’s diner-style with chrome framework and red vinyl seat covers. A toaster—the kind that opened up in the middle for placement of bread—resided in the center of the table. Uncle Si prepared himself toast at the table throughout the day. Dressed in either denim overalls or jeans with suspenders and a cotton shirt, the toothless Uncle Si sat for hours at the kitchen table chewing tobacco and spitting into a coffee can on the floor near his feet. He was bald with a white goatee beard that hung long and thin from his chin. Wire frame glasses anchored over the top of his large ears and balanced on his strong, pointed nose. Unfortunately, Uncle Si’s declining health prevented him from doing household chores or helping in the garden, but Helen and Judith weren’t concerned. Uncle Si was never a burden. His energy and humor sparked laughter and warmth in the home.

Judith would always remember her mother carrying in potatoes from the garden in the back yard. The garden had one, large, signature, yellow sunflower each year that rose up so high, Judith had to look up toward the sky to get a good look at it. Judith stomped up the back porch and through the screen door that opened into the kitchen, carrying in produce with her mother from the garden for dinner. Countless times she watched her mother’s hands holding potatoes and deftly peeling potatoes with a small paring knife. Sometimes Helen declared, “This potato is just too small to waste my time on,” and she would discard it. Potatoes, it seemed to Judith, brought a sense of normality and continuity to her life and to the household.

On a few thrilling occasions, Judith got permission to run the two-block distance from their house over to Katie’s Corner, a small grocery store, where she would purchase a few pieces of penny candy. Then, she slowly walked home, sucking on something delicious, while happily flicking her skirt in a circular direction around herself with her hands.

Judith felt excited and downright giddy while running down the sidewalk to the end of their street to meet “Clyde” the mailman. She skipped along next to Clyde and prattled at him while he delivered mail to the houses on the block until they reached Judith’s house where they would say goodbye until the next time. Clyde was a nice mailman and one of the characters Judith held dear in her tiny world.

One summer afternoon, Judith was pleasantly surprised when a traveling band of sales people came to the door of their house offering to take pictures of Judith while she sat atop one of their rental ponies in the front yard. They had cowboy hats and related costume garb available for an additional small fee. Helen said yes, of course, always wanting to make life better for her daughter, so Judith donned the cowboy gear and joyfully posed on a pony for a photo.

Uncle Si looked after Judith while Helen went out on occasional dates. Helen had finally accepted her title of “widow” and believed enough time had gone by for proper grieving. She dated casually but always kept her guard up. It would not be easy for any man to penetrate the invisible safety barrier she had constructed around her precious family trio.

One date, however, in 1953, brought a man named George Pillatos right through the front door of their lives. Helen had been set up for a blind date with George by a female co-worker at Boeing. George was the co-worker’s brother-in-law. After a few more dates, it seemed like they had always known George and he slowly became part of their new normal life. Judith liked George very much.

George and Helen dated exclusively over the next two years and George became a welcome, extra hand and sounding board for Helen as she faced a twofold difficulty: One, Judith growing into a bigger girl who was becoming more forceful, physically, in getting what she wanted. And two, Uncle Si’s heart condition. Could Helen continue to manage both issues?

George assisted Helen in moving Uncle Si into a nursing home facility so that he could receive daily medical care and the additional help he now required for bathing and dressing. Fortunately, the proceeds from the sale of his home and land were available to cover the costs for Uncle Si. His heart was failing, and it broke Helen’s heart to see it happening. Uncle Si had been her mother and her father and her everything for her entire life. She closed her eyes tightly and cried whenever she imagined life without Uncle Si. She leaned heavily on George during this time and, with his reassurance, felt convinced moving Uncle Si out was the right thing to do. The couple regularly took Judith to the rest home to visit Uncle Si.

George tried to lighten the mood for his new women by taking them on car trips for fun. They regularly visited “the cow,” otherwise known as Herfy’s Hamburgers in Renton for 19-cent hamburgers. The restaurant had a very large cow statue mascot in the parking lot. It was a fabulous treat for Judith when they got to go to “the cow” for hamburgers.

Occasionally, George drove Helen and Judith to the middle of the state, near Kennewick, Washington, to visit his family. It was on one of these trips that George inadvertently injured Judith. It was August 1954. Judith was ten years old. George was swinging her around in a garage with a cement floor in a playful, familiar exercise they had developed over the past months. On George’s cue, Judith would jump up and wrap her legs around George’s waist. He would then hold her hands while she tossed her head backward, away from his chest, and flipped her legs along after her head, through her arms, making a circle back to the ground, over and over again, squealing out laughter the whole time. “Let’s do it again George. I want to do it again!” Judith begged. On this occasion something went wrong, George lost his grip on her hands, and Judith smashed her head down on the concrete floor with a horrible clunk sound. Judith immediately felt a large bump on the back of her head. Then she had nausea and vomiting.

Short, robust, Judith, with yellow-blonde hair, trusting eyes, and a wide smile, held no anger toward George. She simply viewed it as a bad accident, just like her mother said it was. And she fervently continued to wish he would be her father.

Two months after the accident, a brain seizure disturbance began. Suddenly, the good times ended. Seizure episodes in Judith terrified Helen for years and left Judith with too many gaps in memory, pieces of her childhood forever lost.

Helen took her little girl to see a very special doctor, a neurologist, in Seattle. The two traveled by bus, as Helen had never cared to learn how to drive a car. Judith was put through a series of neurological tests that included gluing wires all over her head. It was all strange and frightening to Judith. She knew that something was terribly wrong with her, and she had never seen the strained, pale look on her mother’s face that she was seeing now. The neurologist diagnosed “petit mal seizure disorder” and prescribed Dilantin. Helen and Judith walked to a Bartell’s Pharmacy and sat at the soda fountain, sipping on delicious tasting ice cream sodas in tall, frosty glasses while the prescription was filled. A bus ride home finished the day.

The seizures diminished in frequency for a while. The medication was apparently working.

In 1955, at age eleven, Judith’s wish came true. A Justice of the Peace married George and her mother, and then George moved in with his new wife and stepdaughter. The newlyweds took Judith along on their honeymoon to Kennewick where they visited with George’s family again.

Judith could see how happy her mother was, and this knowledge, in turn, made her feel very happy. Finally, Judith had a real, complete family. She began calling George “Daddy.”

A new trio was formed.

George took his responsibilities of stepfather to heart. He immediately implemented new, strict rules in the household, including asking Judith to finish eating the food on her plate and not to interrupt adults while they were talking. It was no longer acceptable for Judith to jump on the furniture like a rambunctious puppy. A sense of structure and order came into place with regular bed times. More rules. And— punishment for Judith when she broke the rules? George spanked Judith in the hallway of the house when she disobeyed the rules, and he sternly, with an authoritative voice, delivered lengthy lectures to Judith on why she must not break the rules. This change of rules planted some seeds of conflict in Judith. On one hand, she had wished for a father with all her being—and got one. On the other hand, this new father unleashed awful rules upon her—something she instantly loathed and rebelled against. Why couldn’t she just have a daddy and keep living the way she was before with her mother? Why did everything have to change? None of it made sense. It was a great relief to Helen to be able to share the responsibilities of raising a child with another able adult. With her new husband in the home, she possessed more hope for the future and felt optimistic that things would somehow work out for the best.

In 1956, twelve-year-old Judith began menses. With the onset of her periods, the Dilantin, unfortunately, no longer controlled the seizures. Seizures fired up again, with, curiously, an increase in seizure activity around Judith’s periods. Sometimes her periods would last for three whole weeks with heavy flow the entire duration. With seizures manifesting while Judith was in school, her classmates witnessed behavior they had never seen before—dizziness, Judith falling down to the floor, wetting herself, making strange noises, acting goofy and disoriented afterward. The children did the only thing they knew to do—they teased Judith mercilessly. She was deemed a freak. In addition to the health difficulties in school, Judith was only reading at a fourth grade level when she was in the seventh grade, inviting further mocking from her peers when she was asked to read aloud in the classroom. Judith began lashing out in anger at her classmates when they teased her. Teachers took note and made reports to the school counselor and principal.

The next year, at age thirteen, Judith watched her world and the new trio explode painfully, like a firecracker in her soft hand. Judith became a big sister. Her mother and George had their first child together—a baby girl named “Georgette.” While it was, at first, wonderfully exciting having a cute little baby to study with fascination, Judith quickly began to realize that this baby was ruining her life. She was losing her mother to the small, needy, bawling, creature. Her mother was completely wrapped up in the baby’s needs. Helen had quit her job at Boeing to focus on caring for her new daughter. George earned a decent living for the family at Bethlehem Steel in Seattle. It had been thirteen long years since Helen had given birth to Judith, and she needed to re-orient herself to caring for a newborn. Naturally, George and Helen were on top of the world with joy in producing a child together. But Judith felt as though she were pushed to the outside, looking in on this newly-formed trio.

A trio that no longer included herself.

George and Helen sold the small home in Renton and moved. Judith had to leave behind her neighborhood with all its familiar happenings; had to leave behind the lovely garden with the tall sunflower; had to leave Clyde the mailman. The family moved into a single-wide trailer home, situated in a mobile home park in Federal Way, directly across from the Lewis and Clark Theater, very near Highway 99—the strip of highway that would later be famous for being the highway that Gary Ridgway cruised in search of sex acts with prostitutes and candidates to murder.

Then Uncle Si died. He passed peacefully in his rest home in 1957.

As Judith and her mother adjusted to Uncle Si being gone forever, Judith realized the big sister thing really wasn’t working out for her. Not only did her mother love the baby more than her, Judith wasn’t permitted to babysit or even hold the baby because she could go into a seizure at any moment and drop the baby. Everyone knew it was dangerous for Judith to be around the baby. The damn seizures were ruining her life. Sometimes, in fits of sheer frustration, Judith poked baby Georgette or pinched her to make her cry. One time she roughly shook the baby. Judith was in big trouble with her parents.

Judith’s childhood entered a long tunnel of darkness. She was kicked out of school in the eighth grade as, in addition to her seizure disorder, her anger and aggression had increased to an unacceptable level. Teachers complained that “Judy” would do almost anything or create any kind of a disturbance to gain attention, especially where boys were concerned. She destroyed property, broke rules, and slammed her desk to the floor when challenged. She often acted ridiculously silly. Ultimately she was suspended from school for exhibiting indecent behavior in school.

The young, blonde, teenager with a body that was beginning to blossom into the full flower of womanhood, posed in front of a much nicer trailer home, probably the fanciest one in the park, while the man took pictures of her. She wore a bathing suit for him and posed for the camera. He told her that she was very pretty. He wanted to take some photographs of her so that he could have them to look at.

His yard was lovely with neatly landscaped flowerbeds, colorful flowers, a big tree stump. She felt beautiful, posing for the nice man in the pretty flowers.

But then mother found out and got so angry with her! She shouldn’t have gone down to the man’s trailer. Mother told her to never, never go there again. Why did she have to ruin something so nice?

Helen made an appointment for Judith to see a hypnotherapist in downtown Seattle. George and Helen walked Judith into the large, brick building. They waited in the waiting room while Judith was with the hypnotherapist. Judith sat face to face with the therapist, defiant, arms crossed in front of her chest. Nobody was going to hypnotize her! The doctor went back to the waiting room and shook his head. It hadn’t worked. George and Helen asked themselves what they could try next.

A subsequent visit to the hypnotherapist was more successful. While in a moderately deep hypnotic state, the therapist asked Judith to describe a perfect life. Judith, relaxed, compliant, verbally outlined her vision. She fancied herself out parked in a car with a boyfriend, in lover’s lane, and his arms would be around her, and he’d be kissing her gently, placing a ring on her finger and asking her to marry him.

One night Judith woke her sleeping parents and said she had something to tell them. Could it wait until morning? No, she had told them. She went on to describe to her parents’ stunned faces that George’s nephew had repeatedly molested her. She offered matter of fact details of how he had done it. Many times, Judith asserted, when the families got together, the nephew had insisted that she put her hand inside his open trousers and manipulate his penis with her hand. At other times, he had demanded that she take her pants down. Then he lay on top of her, rubbing his erect penis against her pubic area. She said all of this bothered her, and she knew it was wrong. She wanted to tell them about it. George, highly skeptical, asked Judith, “If you really saw a penis, what did it look like?” Judith replied that she couldn’t really explain it but she could draw a picture. After being given pencil and paper, Judith sketched a remarkably life-like image of the male genitalia. George and Helen instructed Judith to go back to bed. No follow up took place after the nighttime confession. It was not spoken about again. Later, Judith wondered if she had simply dreamed the whole thing.

Two years later, at age fifteen, Judith became a big sister again. This time Helen delivered a son, Wesley, named after Judith’s deceased father. By now the family had moved into a house in White Center, near Seattle, so that George could have a shorter commute to his work at Bethlehem Steele in Seattle. Judith retained no memory of the event, however, her mother later explained to her that once she was allowed to hold Wesley when he was a tiny baby. Unfortunately, Judith dropped him like a slippery bowling ball onto the floor when a seizure started. Years later Wesley accused Judith, tongue-in-cheek, of causing his own “grand mal seizure disorder.” In fact, his lifetime of seizures began at the age of ten after a passing car in front of their house had struck and nearly killed him.

Shortly after Wesley was born, with Judith’s temper tantrums escalating and deemed to be utterly dangerous to those around her, Judith’s parents admitted her to the Ryther Child Care Center in Seattle, November 23^rd, where she would live and have round the clock care and monitoring. A clear message had been sent to Judith that she was now too dangerous to be around her own family.

Her parents had heard of the Ryther facility and decided they had no choice but to give it a try to see if something changed in Judith. The public school system would not take her back. She was becoming impossible to manage at home with her frequent seizure activity and horrible outbursts. And it was more and more difficult to keep her in the home, safe, with so many boys noticing her maturing, curvy, body and all. Judith thoroughly enjoyed mowing the lawn in her bathing suit, but Helen and George told her she could no longer do that in the front yard. It wasn’t right for a young lady to display herself in that way to the neighbors. Judith had been caught smoking cigarettes behind an abandoned building with boys. She was beginning to engage in sexual activities with young men—something respectable girls absolutely should not do. Judith was undeniably running wild. The Ryther Child Care Center, her parents were advised, had a reputation as being a home with firm, but loving discipline, and nothing but the best intentions for wayward youths. Helen and George were hopeful that this would be the winning ticket for Judith.

Founded in 1883, The Ryther Home was created by “Mother Ryther” (a.k.a. Olive Spore Ryther) who had a vision for a warm, safe home in Seattle where prostitutes, orphans, runaways, pregnant girls, and the like could live and be free from the dangers on the city streets. But the home was more than mere shelter. Mother Ryther insisted that everyone be responsible for household chores; she taught new mothers the skills needed to care for babies, and her ultimate goal was for every guest to reach a point of self- sufficiency. She encouraged everyone in the home to learn skills that would increase chances of finding employment.

In 1934, at the age of eighty-five, Mother Ryther died, having mentored over 3,100 children in her house. However, successors to Mother Ryther continued her work and the facility was open in 1960 when Judith’s parents checked her in. At the time of this writing, the Ryther Child Center remains open in north Seattle, funded by public and private donations, and serving adolescents with chemical dependency, mental disorders, and criminal histories. Prostitution, pregnancy, physical and sexual abuse, and general neglect cases are also admitted.

Judith lived at the Ryther Child Center for approximately twelve months. Most of Judith’s memory of the habitation is blurred by numerous seizure episodes. Judith did not know how long she would have to stay there. Even though she felt estranged from her family, she did miss them and longed to go home. It hurt her deeply to be sent away, but Mother and George had reassured her it was for her own good that they were doing this. Judith believed her parents thought they were doing the right thing. And they were faithful in visiting Judith on the weekends. Helen and George brought the little siblings, all dressed up. The family posed for photos on the sidewalk in front of the Ryther facility, trying to look like an ordinary family.

Judith recalls sharing a room with approximately five other girls, dormitory style. A separate boys’ dorm was on the other side of the home. She was required to attend high school classes. A heavy-set, black woman, named Chaney, worked as the cook for the facility. Judith instantly bonded with the woman, proclaiming she was the nicest woman in the whole world. Judith slipped away whenever possible to share a few moments of conversation and hugs with Chaney. Even on Judith’s darkest days, Cook Chaney could lift her up with kind words and loving smiles.

Judith ran away from the Ryther home on several occasions, only to be rounded up and brought back. She never stopped plotting to escape and go home. During one runaway episode, Judith attempted to hitchhike her way home, even though she wasn’t sure which direction home was. All she knew was that she was going home. A man picked her up at the roadside, and the next thing Judith remembered was trying to escape from his vehicle like a bunny rabbit from the open mouth of a wolf. Between the time of being picked up and crawling frantically out of a back window of the car in her escape, Judith’s memory had vanished. Judith was found and taken back to the Ryther facility. Later, she wondered if she had had a seizure in the car with the strange man. What had he done to terrify her so?

After twelve months of receiving counseling and attending classes at the Ryther Center, sixteen-year-old Judith gratefully went home to live with her family November 15^th of 1960. But, by the next year, at age seventeen, her life was tumbling ferociously toward the edge of a cliff. She was about to receive yet another little sister, Lori, and a new home—Western State Hospital, a mental facility, where she would live, with no chance of escape, (it was assumed) for the next year.

Meanwhile, Judith’s parents and three young siblings moved to a larger home in Lake City, near Seattle. Living space was getting tight.

Western State Hospital, in Tacoma, Washington, a funny farm, a nut house, a lunatic asylum, was a hospital in the 1960’s where the very mentally disturbed were checked in and did not have the option of leaving. Established in 1871, it was first called an “insane asylum” and was located on the site of Fort Steilacoom. Most mental patients were deemed a danger to society and were locked up, having little chance of ever leaving the facility. Many served life sentences there. Radical treatments such as ice water immersion, frontal lobotomies, and electric shock therapy had been practiced on patients at the insane asylum for years. However, the 1960’s brought in a new wave of treatment for the mentally ill—anti-psychotic drugs, which tipped the treatment scale heavily toward drug therapy. The 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” starring Jack Nicholson, later dramatized the life of patients in mental institutions such as this. For the first time, the public got a peek into the mysterious, daily, at times horrifying, happenings within the walls of a mental hospital. Today, with new treatments available, Western State Hospital continues to treat the mentally ill and evaluates the alleged criminally insane.

How is it that young Judith became a patient in such a facility? She was “voluntarily committed” at seventeen years of age, and was coaxed into signing a voluntary commitment form.

Judith does not remember much about May 19, 1961, just three days before her sister Lori was born, when she was left at Western State Hospital. She cannot remember the majority of her stay at the hospital. One day, mother simply told her, “Okay, Judith, it’s time to go to the hospital now.” Very pregnant mother and George swiftly loaded up Judith and the young ones into the car. The next thing Judith knew, having no idea how many miles they had driven—they could have traveled into another state, according to Judith’s perception—she was looking out the car window at an intimidating, large, brick building. It was the biggest building she had ever seen. She was told that she would be living in this hospital, just for a while, so that doctors could experiment with strong medications to help get rid of her seizures. To Judith, it sort of felt familiar, like just another visit to a doctor, an exercise she and her mother had been performing most of her life. They never stopped hunting for a “cure” to her ailment. If mother told her that this place would help, then it was just the next stop in a never-ending series of medical appointments. Judith did not protest or cry or ask questions. At the hospital, she silently followed medical personnel, away from her mother, stepfather, and young siblings. She was introduced to her small, dormitory-style room, with a narrow rectangle shape. Judith felt like she was stepping into a skinny shoebox. A single bed was situated parallel to the right wall of the room, with a small cabinet on the left side for her clothing. Everything looked stark. I don’t see anything here that looks like home. Judith knew in a moment that this place was nothing like the Ryther Child Center. No, no. Authority was thick in the air. A much bigger authority than the Ryther Child Center had. And the place was gigantic! Judith worried about getting lost in the endless hallways. She looked up and down, left and right, with her eyes; she was certain there were other eyes in all the walls and ceilings looking back at her. Man. There’s no way I can run away from here.

Judith retained only a few, crystallized memories of her eighteen-month stay. She retained a powerful memory of being viscerally afraid of the nurses. Early into her stay, she had formed the impression that the nurses were mean spirited toward her, even—astonishing as it was to Judith—accusing her of faking the seizures. Judith worked to avoid interaction with the nursing staff whenever possible. She had been firmly coached by the nurses to ring a special bell that was situated near her bed whenever she felt a seizure coming on so they could come in the room and observe Judith during seizure activity. But Judith wasn’t inclined to ring the bell: she dreaded the wrath of the nurses after a seizure. It was easier to just “go out” alone.

Judith got a great surprise in the hospital. She noticed and then recognized a young female patient as a classmate she had attended school with for a brief time back home. Oh, so there are other girls like me having problems. Maybe we can be friends! But the surprise quickly turned ugly. Judith noticed that the girl had only hostile energy toward her. One day, while working in the laundry room, a duty that the girls were expected to perform routinely, the ex-classmate switched some of the clean, folded laundry around, relocating the piles to incorrect bins. When the staff discovered the switch, Judith was squarely blamed for purposely placing clothing in the wrong patient bins, just to cause trouble. Judith was outraged. She angrily cast her protests of innocence up against faces of stone. She was told she must be punished for her disrespectful prank, and Judith was placed in “solitary,” a tiny room, approximately four feet by six feet, with only one little window, about he size of Judith’s face, that she could look out if she rose up as tall as possible on tip-toes. Solitary confinement went on for four agonizing days. Judith screamed hysterically at the guards through the door. It wasn’t fair! The other girl did it! Judith asked herself over and over, Why would anybody do this to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why would anybody do this to me…why would anybody do…why would anybody…why would…why…until she slipped into another seizure and then—nothing.

Many years later, Judith would connect her extreme claustrophobia to being locked up in solitary.

Some days in the mental hospital were pleasant for Judith. Every other weekend, her parents and little siblings made the drive over to visit her. At each visit they gave Judith five dollars so that she could make purchases in the hospital store if she needed something. As soon as the family left, Judith hustled over to the hospital store and spent all the money on Payday candy bars. She thought they were especially wonderful candy bars: Salty globs of peanuts and something chewy, pure heaven to Judith’s tastebuds.

When the family came for visits, Judith was allowed to stroll the grounds outside with them. Western State Hospital, with its original core brick building and multiple add-on buildings stood, side by side, like a row of tall people holding hands on acres of neatly trimmed grounds. In 1868, Fort Steilacoom officially closed and the site and building were given to the Washington Territory (Washington State had not yet been established). In 1871 Washington Territory used the facility for housing “lunatics.” In 1948 Washington State remodeled the building, making it a state-run insane asylum. Over subsequent years the building was expanded to become the present complex of multiple buildings and parking areas. Just adjacent to the hospital on the east end, original Fort Steilacoom officers’ quarters remain. The doors are open to tourists. Old cannons sit, rusting, along Cottage Row.

Judith and her family, on visiting weekends, sat on picnic tables scattered across the green lawns. It was as if the quiet calm and order of the park-like grounds on the outside of the facility offered balance to the illness and disharmony on the inside of the facility.

One day, Judith was going through the movements of a typical day as a patient at Western State Hospital when she suddenly froze, staring blankly down at her hands for a long while as a realization set in. Today is my eighteenth birthday. I guess I’m not like other teenagers. I’ve never been to a dance…I’ve never driven a car…I didn’t even get to graduate from high school. While Judith denies memory of it, her Western State Hospital medical record documented escapes or “unauthorized leaves”.

“July 8, 1961. Return from unauthorized leave. Returned from unauthorized leave by a state car this p.m. Having been apprehended in Vancouver, Washington, and detained in a Vancouver hospital since 7-6-61. Ran away from hospital auditorium, a high school girls gym class, because she was unhappy with staff criticism of her behavior (i.e., flirting with boys), claims hitchhiked for several miles then met a friend who took her to Greyhound Bus and bought ticket to Vancouver. Friend, Jack, claims he gave her five dollars (to buy eats) so she bought a new purse. In Vancouver, met a taxi driver who directed her to a State Patrol officer and he, in turn, to Vancouver General Hospital. She was there two days and today picked up and returned to WSH by hospital staff…abrasions on her legs and ankles…”

During hospitalization at Western State Hospital, nursing staff alleged that Judith was faking her seizures. Doctors decided to perform some tests.

“July 18, 1961. 5 days ago Dr. Barber and I decided to discontinue patient’s Phenobarbitol and Dilantin. Since that time she has had 6 or 7 grand mal seizures according to the nurse. She described l this morning as a generalized seizure lasting 3 minutes, manifested by a shaking movement of her arms and legs, turning of the head to the right, dilation of the pupils, which failed to react to light and confusion of a few minutes afterwards, followed by 10-20 minutes of sleep. There was no tongue biting or voiding at this time. This sounds like a pretty good description of a grand mal seizure and I think that we can state definitely that the patient has a seizure disorder as well as a strong tendency to feign seizures. Accordingly, at Dr. Parrott’s request, I have suggested that her Dilantin be resumed at the rate of Grs. 1 ½ t.i.d. I would expect a good control of her grand mal seiures on this medication…”

Judith escaped yet again. “October 25, 1961 unauthorized leave. October 26, 1961, returned from unauthorized leave.” She was clearly not happy in the mental hospital.

Another chart entry described Judith as “quite aggressive, active, and at times, mischievous in behavior. Must be told every day in order to get routine duties done…is constantly seeking attention by these spells and other attention getting devices…recommend close supervision…”

As the months ticked by, chart notes indicated signs of improvement in Judith. Finally, a chart note read, “November 24, 1961, it is felt that the program of group therapy and school activities is of help to patient. The length of time patient will need to profit from this to the degree which would make for essential changes is seen as several years. It appears unreasonable to have patient hospitalized for this length of time seeing the fact that the help needed could be provided by any out patient clinic and/or epileptic clinic…”

Then, miraculously, one day in December of 1962, at the age of eighteen, Judith was released from Western State Hospital, back into the care of her family. Doctors had her seizures under fairly good control now with two effective drugs: Dilantin and Phenobarbitol. Helen was instructed to make sure that her daughter take her medications four times daily without fail. Judith would hear her mother say hundreds of times for the next several years, “Judith, did you take your medicine? Remember, 8:00 am, 12:00 noon, 4:00 pm, and 8:00 pm; 2 capsules and l pill.” This reminder reverberated in Judith’s head for six more years.

To say that Judith’s feelings about going home were complex would be a gross understatement. She had lived in a mental hospital, witnessed the behavior and treatment of some of the most deranged individuals, endured the abuse (she was sure of it) of hospital staff, and lived like a prisoner, with bland food (except for the Payday candy bars) and none of the freedoms she had known before. She hadn’t been allowed to have her only material possessions, a few record albums, with her. Oh how she had missed listening to Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson and Pat Boone. One would think she might be euphoric or even downright giddy moving home, back to her family and things. But as Judith slowly and quietly acquainted herself with the newer home her family had moved into while she was in the hospital and cautiously observed her two little sisters and one little brother who had grown taller and much more clever over the last year, she wasn’t sure she fit in anymore. It looked like this healthy, growing family was moving forward, without any need for her presence. Judith felt like she was standing outside, utterly alone, looking in through a window to her home, realizing she was invisible to her family.

Maybe I do belong in a mental hospital.