Pam Read online

  Pam

  by

  Jacqueline Druga

  Pam by Jacqueline Druga

  Copyright 2012 by Jacqueline Druga

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Pam Cover Image - © Andreas Gradin - Fotolia.com

  Special thanks to Rita Knits and Sonia Rudolph

  Chapter One – Sharon

  ‘They’re dead. They’re dead. They’re all dead. Oh, God. They’re all dead.’

  I got the message. Had it not been for the desperation in her voice, I would have thought it was a joke. Pamela’s voice quivered and was barely understandable through her emotions.

  I remembered the time specifically. 5:48 pm.

  “Oh, God,” she sobbed over the answering machine.

  “Pam, put the phone down now,” said a voice in the background.

  “They… they … think … they think I did it.”

  Click.

  I rewound the tape and listened again. My jacket was still over my arm. I hadn’t even settled in from work. I had my own routine, walk in, hit the machine, toss my jacket, and figure out what I was going to eat for dinner.

  But not that day.

  The message was still playing the second time when I flew from my home.

  October 7, 1986. A day I’ll remember for the rest of my life. My day of infamy. It changed me, the whole ordeal changed me.

  My life, I’d say, was marred by tragedy from that day forward, and all I could do was run. Keep moving, never stay still. Death and bad could never find me if I ran.

  That’s what I thought.

  And that day I ran to my car and drove frantically to Pam’s house. It was a time before cellular phones, when you couldn’t just contact anyone at anytime. If I could, I certainly would have called my father. He was the chief of police in Willow Brook.

  Who was dead? It could have been anyone. And of all people, why would Pam be immediately accused? I had known her since high school.

  Pam was ‘that girl’ who got pregnant in high school. Back then, no one really got pregnant in school. If they did, we didn’t know about it; they mysteriously dropped out. Not Pam, she was showing when we graduated and married Richie, the baby’s father, in a quick summer wedding.

  We joked about the fact that Richie was my first boyfriend in junior high. I dumped him because he started getting acne before everyone else. And how she ignored the acne, gaining a handsome guy.

  Richie was a good man.

  But who was dead?

  I kept thinking her mother or father. Maybe her sister. I didn’t know. But Pam was hysterical so it had to be someone close to her.

  Willow Brook, Connecticut, wasn’t a big town, so getting to her house didn’t take long.

  A few turns and a couple blocks at high speed got me there before I got a third of the way through my cigarette.

  I couldn’t get close to the house. There were three local police cars, Willow Brook’s entire fleet, and one State Police car. A black van parked in front of the house, as well.

  My cigarette burned in the ashtray as I hurriedly parked the car and jumped from it. The beat of my heart increased and my stomach knotted, not just from the sight of the police, but from the balloons that floated on the porch. Tied there.

  Mandy’s sixth birthday.

  Pam was having a family party for her that night, then Mandy was going to have a sleep over. I was supposed to go to the party but declined because Richie and I had another fight. We were always fighting. The most recent was over the fuel line he replaced in my car.

  Pam had used the word ‘they’re’, meaning more than one was dead.

  I ached inside, fearful of who ‘they’ might be.

  How tragic it was, happy colored balloons dancing about amidst the tragedy of police.

  I ran toward the house.

  “Stop.” The one officer held me back. He knew me. “Sharon, just stop.”

  “My friend, that’s my best friend’s house.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry, you can’t go any further. Just … wait.”

  “Is my father in there?”

  He nodded.

  “What happened?” I asked, frantic. “She called. I didn’t understand her message. What happened?”

  His nonverbal response told me a lot. His swiped his hand over his face with a sickened expression, then slowly shook his head; he turned his back to me.

  It was then I saw them carry out the first body bag. It was large; it had to be Richie or another adult. Then I dropped to my knees as three more bags were brought from the house. Those were small.

  My knees banged against the pavement in my emotional collapse and I sobbed, “The babies. The babies.”

  Pam had three children.

  Mandy. Doyle who was four, and then Lizzy, who had just turned six months.

  Three small body bags left no room for guessing errors.

  “Sharon!” Pam called my name and my head lifted. I weakly stood, but I found it impossible to think or hear clearly through the rushing sounds of my own adrenaline.

  I saw her and wanted to vomit.

  Pam was covered in blood from head to toe. “My children, oh God, my children.” Pam cried hysterically as they forcefully led her to the squad car. “I didn’t do this.” They tried to shove her inside the car. But fighting them, she aimed her voice toward me. “I wouldn’t hurt my babies. Sharon … help. You know who did this. Tell them...”

  Every ounce of my breath escaped me when she said that.

  Her words, ‘you know who did this’, emerged as they closed the door of that squad car. I watched them pull away. Her head was down, her long hair drenched with blood. Her shoulders bounced, heaving up and down; I knew that was from crying.

  How would I have a clue who did such a horrendous thing, when I didn’t even fully understand what all had occurred in that home?

  All I knew was my best friend’s children were dead, her husband or someone else was dead, and immediately, without investigation or hesitation, they took her way.

  I was unable to think, to move, or even to get in my car and drive. Bowled over by emotion, I just stood there like an onlooker. Like the dozens of others who watched. But I was more than just a gawker. I was impacted. Pam’s family was like my family and I was devastated.

  Chapter Two – Pam

  Acquittal doesn’t mean immediate. It’s not a matter of new evidence was found, open the door, and you’re free. It takes days, maybe weeks. Weeks of waiting to get out.

  It doesn’t matter to me.

  I just want to know with the evidence found that clears me, if any was found that indicated the identity of the real killers.

  Of course when I asked that, I was told that it didn’t lift suspicion on me, only overturned the verdict.

  That made no sense.

  I was found guilty over three things: My demeanor, an eyewitness testimony, and a scratch, one that graced my left arm that I got it when I tried to fix the kitchen drawer.

  Mandy, they say, fought whoever it was that came into our home. She scratched this person; skin was found under her nails.

  Back then DNA testing wasn’t known. It didn’t make its first appearance for two years. So there was no way to pull that skin and know whose it was. And because of that scratch on my arm, the shocking eyewitness testimony, and my silence in the courtroom, I was sentenced.

  The eyewitness testimony was out of control, bogus. How could there be an eyewitness to me murdering my children and my mother when I didn’t do it.

  But when Richie said he saw me do it, that sealed the deal.


  Even with witnesses placing me at the grocery store, the bank, and the local bargain shop around the time of the murder, I was found guilty.

  You know what? I didn’t care. The worst part about it, I was pregnant and didn’t care if I lost that child or not.

  What could be worse than losing your entire family? Seeing what I saw? I loved my children with everything I was. They were all I had and lived for. I didn’t know the baby in me. Not yet. My grave error was never acknowledging the child within me.

  When the guilty verdict was read and I appeared for sentencing, I pleaded for the judge to kill me. Put me out. Kill me. I didn’t want to live.

  Because I proclaimed my innocence and asked for death in the same breath, I was ordered for mental evaluation. No wait, that’s not all true. In the four months that I awaited trial, I was in isolation for fear the other prisoners would hurt me. Not a fear of mine. Again, I didn’t care.

  Guards said I ate the minimum, didn’t speak, and just stared out.

  No shit. I lost my entire family. What I saw that day when I walked into the house destroyed me. I was in shock and mourning. I was hurting so badly that I was convinced there was nothing that could hurt worse.

  Nothing.

  The evaluation showed that I was delusional, and after being diagnosed as a dangerous schizophrenic, I was sent to Norwich Institution. I was under constant evaluation.

  Three months after I got there, I gave birth. I never saw the baby. The state took it.

  Things have changed since I entered that particular institution. For some reason, the diagnosis never changed, and I never went to prison, was only shipped to another institution after Norwich closed.

  I was under constant observation.

  I was convinced at first that their diagnosis of me was to cover up the error in the investigation.

  Then for the longest time I aided them in keeping me, not on purpose, but because I did doubt my own sanity.

  What if I did do it? What if the heinous nature of my acts caused me to block it all out. The doctors all said that; hell, they tried everything. Hypnosis, shock therapy, medicine, everything to get me to remember.

  I swore I wanted to remember. Even if I committed the crimes, I wanted to remember because then I would know. I would have closure. But I didn’t remember. That was because I didn’t do it.

  I couldn’t have done it.

  They even tried to pin a murder in Hartford on me because I happened to be in Hartford the same week as the murder. I also happened to have gone to school with the girl. She was pregnant, murdered. Her six-month fetus was cut out of her belly and stabbed. Stabbed? It wasn’t bad enough that they removed the child, but they had to make sure it was dead? Adding to the sadness of the story was the fact the she wasn’t found for over a month, so it was hard to say when she was killed.

  They didn’t have enough evidence to charge me with that.

  They tried, though.

  The more I stared at just four walls, alone, no one to talk to but those doctors, the more I second-guessed my mental state.

  I struggled with that every day of my life. Every single day. Norwich didn’t help; it was old and dirty and I was in a room that I rarely left. And when I did leave, I was in restraints. Even when I delivered the child, I was removed for no more than eight hours, taken to the infirmary, and then brought back to my room.

  Once they moved me from Norwich, I was relieved of the restraints, but my time with general population was limited.

  They moved me because Norwich was closing down, not because they felt I was better.

  Then in 1999, I was visited by a representative of a project that worked on freeing the wrongly convicted. They had been contacted by my sister about my case. I don’t know what possessed her to do so. It wasn’t like my sister proclaimed my innocence. At least not to me. She came to see me at the hospital. But my visitation was limited to once a month and her visits were short. Then again, at times I was so heavily medicated, I barely could speak.

  She didn’t even come to the trial. But Project Freedom told me she presented her own suspicions that perhaps my case wasn’t an isolated case and was related to other murdered families and women.

  Oddly enough, these murders occurred in the same places that Richie had moved.

  It would be like my sister to uncover all this. She told Project Freedom in a letter that she had always suspected Richie, and like a stalker she followed him for years, watched his every step.

  She even had a restraining order placed against her.

  But that didn’t stop her. The problem still remained … the scratch.

  Richie and the scratch had sealed the deal. I had a mark on my arm; he didn’t.

  It took years of interviews, finding old witnesses, getting the evidence back from the case. There was even a chance the evidence had been destroyed.

  Finally, they got it. I only wish my sister had lived to see the outcome. She was killed in a car accident just two weeks before the DNA results were known.

  It didn’t match me. Not at all. It did, however, match DNA found at a murder scene in Maine. An unsolved murder.

  Richie, however, had died in 1996. They were able to exhume his body, obtain a culture to get a DNA sample.

  It didn’t match Richie, either.

  Why he would say I murdered my family would forever be a mystery, and he took that to his grave.

  But I was acquitted. After eighteen years, I was going to be free. I was told my diagnosis of mental illness remained and I needed treatment, but that diagnosis of schizophrenia was no longer a viable reason to keep me, especially since I was no longer deemed a danger.

  I had no one left, only one friend I could call. If they were still a friend. That was it. Despite having no one, I did have one thing. Motivation.

  I was leaving, but I was determined, if it took the rest of my life, that I would find out who killed my family.

  Chapter Three – Sharon

  I didn’t want to take the stand at the trial. After all, what did I have to say? But they called me anyhow.

  My father told me, “Sharon, I know you don’t want to believe this, but Pam is guilty as sin.”

  All I kept thinking was, why? Doesn’t a murder need motivation?

  Sometimes a fit of rage and desperation is all the motive that is needed.

  I hated the smell of the District Attorney. He smelled like cigarettes and gin. As if I didn’t know he stopped for a drink during lunch break.

  “You know who did this?” he said. “That was what she told you. Officer Jones said so in his testimony. Why do you think she said that?”

  I looked at Pam, her head down; she didn’t even look up to me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t it true that Mrs. Perkins believed that a ghost of a murderer wandered her home and she told you she was scared it would possess her?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Can you explain that?” The district attorney asked.

  “It’s silly. We often had séances, and one night we thought we made contact. We were trying to contact the reverend in the Rockland murders.” I shrugged, trying to pass it off. But I believed we made contact, because things flew about the room.

  “Since the court doesn’t recognize séances, can you tell us what you and Mrs. Perkins believed?”

  “That we made contact. Pam … swore she kept seeing him and hearing him.”

  “Did she mention the things he said to her?”

  I shook my head. “I was too scared to ask. We believed in that stuff.”

  “No further questions.”

  Then her defense attorney took his turn with me. Asking how long I knew Pam. Eventually getting around to the question, “Did you see Mrs. Perkins the day of the murders?”

  “Yes, I did. She stopped at the bank.”

  “They say the murders took place sometime between three and five pm. What time was it that she stopped in the bank?”
/>   “Just before three pm.”

  “Mrs. Perkins says it was after three. Are you sure you aren’t mistaken?”

  “No. I had a doctor’s appointment, and I left at three. It had to be just before that.”

  He tried to come at me again with the same question using different phrasing, but I held firm. As much as I loved Pam, I wasn’t going to say I saw her later than three.

  I don’t think I truly believed she murdered her mother and children until Richie took the stand.

  They told him they knew it was going to be difficult testimony, but they’d be patient.

  He recanted that day with tears in his eyes, breaking down occasionally to sob.

  “I blame myself,” Richie said. “I blame myself. We are argued. I told her I was leaving. That there was someone else. That I also knew she had been unfaithful and that the baby in her belly wasn’t mine. I knew it.”

  I believe that was the one and only time that Pam lifted her head.

  Richie continued, “I told her that I was leaving the next day after Mandy’s party. I didn’t want to ruin it. But I told her I was gonna take the kids. We fought. It was heated. She said … she said that I’d never take the kids. Ever. I didn’t want the kids or her mom to hear any more …So …I left. I went out to get some beer, and when I got back ….” He broke down.

  Admittedly, I closed my eyes and tried not to hear him. He cried through the entire testimony. How he found his mother-in-law dead, and she was holding the lifeless baby. Doyle was on the stairs, dead. And he heard Mandy screaming. He said he tried to run up the stairs fast enough, but the cries stopped, and Pam, despite the fact that Mandy was dead, repeatedly stabbed her.

  The look of a mad woman.

  Blood all over her.

  He even said she laughed and then collapsed.

  They played the dispatch tape.

  Willow Brooks Police Department; what is your emergency?

  *sob*

  What is your emergency?

  My wife just killed my kids. She killed my kids.

  The closing argument was even harder to hear.