We came home around 5:10 that evening. Brian had been getting his car fixed, and I had picked him up about twenty minutes earlier. I had talked to Mason on the phone before that, and he sounded fine, perfectly natural. No problems.
No concerns. We walked into the house. The house was fairly dark. Brian went one way, I went the other.
We called for the children, and nobody answered. Finally, I went to the basement and decided to have a look downstairs to see where they were. I went partway down the stairs and looked to my left. I saw a body.
I called 911. I told them there was blood across the family room floor, that it looked like there were two kids. My husband couldn’t even speak. I could see Jennifer lying there on the basement floor.
She wasn’t breathing. Her head was covered in blood. There was no life there at all. The dispatcher tried to walk me through CPR, but it was too late.
I knew it. I just kept saying her name. Jennifer. Oh, honey.
And Mason was gone. We had no idea where he was. For all we knew, he had been shot too, or he was lying in a bush somewhere in the backyard. We didn’t know.
Ten years ago, on January the 6th, our daughter Jennifer was murdered in our home. She was 18 years old. She had been shot three times in the right side of her head and twice in the chest. It was a horrible act of violence.
Our lives changed horribly from that time on. After the tragedy, it left us with just Brian and me and Mason to put the family back together as best we could. But that was a difficult task, given the fact that Mason was 20 at the time. And after the murder of Jennifer, he was arrested, tried, and found guilty of murdering his sister.
From the very beginning, Mason was adamant that somebody else had committed this murder, that he was an innocent victim. He told the police a story about a white van pulling into the driveway, four males coming out, two of them carrying weapons. He claimed they took him away, kidnapped him, and that he never saw what happened to Jennifer. The police had some concern with that story.
It frankly didn’t have a ring of truth to it. Brian and I chose to support Mason. We decided as a family that we were going to support him. People asked us why we would even bother with our son after what he had been convicted of.
But you just don’t throw your family away. He’s our son. Jennifer is our daughter. Right from the start, the police didn’t allow us to grieve properly.
Most families who have lost a child are allowed to grieve. We weren’t. The police repeatedly called us in for questioning. What was worse, they wanted us to say things that would help them convict our son.
That’s a horrible thing for a parent. We had to deal with the funeral arrangements while still being questioned. Jennifer was a little perfectionist. She was slow and methodical.
The kids called her Pokey. We needed to keep her pretty for the funeral. Brian was trying to rack his brain to understand why. I told him we couldn’t worry about why right then.
We had to get through this. The trial went on for three years. Mason was struggling with the criminal justice system, and we were struggling with a fight just as devastating. After the murder, we knew we needed to go out and be in public so we didn’t feel ashamed.
But acquaintances would stop dead in their tracks and go the other way. They saw us 50 feet away and it was clear they went the other way to avoid us like the plague. Some of the family could escape the stigma. Brian’s sisters, for example, had married names and lived out of the city, so no one knew they were connected to the case.
But for Brian and me in Chadam, there was no escape. We sort of are in prison because we can’t get out of this life. In a way, it’s a life sentence for us, too. Jennifer was murdered in this chair.
The chair was exactly where I’m sitting. The large wing chair sat right behind me. She was doing what she loved to do: eating popcorn and watching her soap. The TV was over to the right of the room.
And she was murdered. People have approached us. Why in heck would you want to stay in the house? Well, that’s our home.
It’s all our good feelings, and we’ve been here for years. I never gave a second thought about living anywhere else. One night, the police came to the house. They told us they were going to yank their people out of there, which meant the house would be free and clear for us to go in.
They wanted to know if we had a problem with them cleaning up before we went in. Brian went off. “I got to get back there. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?
So DON’T YOU TOUCH A GODDAMN THING. I don’t care if you [ __ ] in the place and all over it. It’s our home. We got to grab on to every inch of anything that we got here to keep this thing sane.
”
Brian has really suffered and aged. He lost over 100 pounds. He developed diabetes. He used to be so jovial and happy and bubbly, always the joker.
Now you can tell he really has to try. I remember holding him while he sobbed and he said, “I’ll never be able to walk my baby down the aisle. ”
Mason went to prison, and the appeals continued for several more years. From our initial meeting with him, he was adamant he did not kill his sister.
He never once changed his story. He was not responsible. He was going to appeal. He was clearly wrongfully convicted.
He was innocent. During the course of the trial I asked Mason, “Do you have any idea why he did it? ”
“I think it was myself. I think it was just a terrible, terrible freaking accident.
”
That was the first time he hinted at the truth. For me, it was more freeing simply because now he was telling the truth. Brian had put much more into the belief of innocence. Although I had already put the closure to admitting to myself that our son did kill our daughter.
That’s good enough for me. That’s as good as it gets for us to move on as a family unit. The police theory was that Mason intended to kill us all. They found two wills on the dining room table.
Both documents stated that if we died, everything went to our son, Mason. They thought that was his motive. But Brian and I never really believed he meant to murder us. We thought it was an accident.
We just couldn’t believe he could do such a thing. He had been in trouble before, stolen cars, things like that, but he had never, ever assaulted anyone. The violence part. Never.
Ever. Years later, during a prison visit, we finally asked Mason to explain what really happened that night. He said he had planned to kill us. He had the gun loaded by the back door.
He spent the whole day with his dad and couldn’t do it. When his sister came home, they talked normally about her school day. She went downstairs and sat in the chair beside the TV. He grabbed the rifle to put it in the garage because it was loaded.
That’s when the accident happened. “I put the rifle on top of the coat rack. I hit the rifle and the rifle went forward. When I grabbed the weapon, the weapon went off.
That was the initial shot. She gurgled and moaned in pain. I saw blood coming out of the side of her head. She was still alive.
I just wanted to stop the pain. I shot her again. I kept unloading the gun. Just wanting it to stop.
”
He said he panicked. He didn’t call 911. He thought he would make it look like somebody else did it. He went upstairs and grabbed his gun.
He shot her multiple times to make it look like a gang had done it. He wrote a note. He hid the gun. He dragged her body down into the basement from the living room, leaving a trail of blood.
When we heard this, the horror of how Jennifer must have suffered was overwhelming. I just wish Mason would have said this at another time. Brian has been very, very sick. He needs his strength and his mind to get better.
The news of the intent to kill us all was painful, but we weren’t shocked by the confession. We already knew the truth. We knew he was responsible. Brian and I still visit Mason in prison.
People still shake their heads. Why are you even bothering with your son? Well, these visits are as good as it gets in our life as a family. The three of us getting together, keeping in mind what happened, but trying to enjoy the day.
That’s as good as it gets for us. On the anniversary of Jennifer’s death, my mom and my dad and I set time aside. We make sure we have contact that day, that we all speak. When it’s a nice sunshiny day, we call it a Jennifer day.
Because she just liked that. That was her spirit. Mason told us on a visit, “All she did was love me and care for me. She was going places.
Jennifer is the child that everybody wanted. I’m still alive, and I shouldn’t be. She should be. ”
He said, “Although I’ve been convicted of the murder of my sister, that doesn’t change our relationship and that I loved her.
”
Brian and I have said to Mason we would just like to hear the truth so we can all live with it and put it behind us. He’s our son. We raised him. We love him.
Jennifer is in our hearts every day. But our only living child is Mason. We still have our mothering and our fathering to do with him, regardless that he’s in prison and he’s murdered his sister. It’s never ending.
It’s never going to end. But we just go on a little blind faith. We go with our gut instinct and our love for our children. We take a piece each time and say, “This much I need to know.
This much I don’t need to know. ” We keep chipping away. We don’t forget Jennifer. But we try to move past the pain, to get this big elephant out of the room.
We want to continue on. Not to forget, but to get it on the table and move past it.
