A Silence of Mockingbirds (6 page)

S
arah was not the first, nor the last, adolescent we welcomed
into our home, but all came with the understanding that we had
young children who would look to them as role models. Any
potentially harmful behavior—smoking, drinking, or drugs—were
taboo. Those who violated our rules were graciously asked to leave.

If Sarah abused our rules while living with us, I never knew of it.

Sarah adored our children. If not out of respect for us, then out of love
for them, she tried to set a good example. I appreciated that about her.

Sarah’s circle of associations was quite small, so I’m not sure where she
had met her latest beau, Steve, but they quickly became a steady item.

Steve was a plain fellow, orange-headed and bony thin, but he had
a good job and money to burn. He came to Pendleton to help establish
Wildhorse Resort and Casino. Steve was one of a slew of financial
people who swooped into town to help the Confederated Tribes of
the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) put their gaming business
together. He pampered her with lavish gifts and elegant dinners out,
spending as much time with her as his hectic schedule would allow.

They would pop in and out of the house, coming from somewhere or
going someplace else.

He was a nice enough fellow and always at Sarah’s side, but,
nonetheless, I was certain Sarah didn’t consider him a keeper. The
pickings of singles were slim in Pendleton if a girl ruled out cowboys
and ranchers. Steve was simply someone to keep her entertained until
she moved off to greener pastures.

At some point, perhaps while she was living with us, Sarah took up
gambling in a bad way. Video gaming became her drug of choice, an
addiction that would eventually lead to the break-up of her marriage
to David. By the time the two divorced, Sarah had put the Sheehan
household into tens of thousands of dollars in debt, most of it from gambling.

An estimated 2.3 million Americans are pathological gamblers, and
experts say another 5 million adults have serious gambling problems.
Research suggests those who suffer from attention deficit or hyperactive
disorders, as Sarah does, are more prone to become compulsive gamblers.

Gambling is a socially acceptable behavior. For most, it starts out
as harmless recreation. A compulsive gambler is expected to self-diagnosis and self-report. But the addict will resort to extreme measures
of manipulations and deceitfulness, hocking possessions, lying, and
outright stealing or engaging in other criminal pursuits to feed the
frenzy created by their addiction.

If a person is a meth addict, physical symptoms will make it
difficult to deny there’s a problem. Their complexion gets bad. Teeth
rot out. Muscle starts wasting away. It’s easier to mask a gambling
addiction than it is to mask a meth addiction. While many of Sarah’s
friends recognized she had an addiction to gambling, Sarah blamed her
financial woes on poor fiscal skills.

“I’m shitty with money,” she told Detective Wells.

That may have been the most truthful statement Sarah made in her numerous
interviews with the police.

Money was one of the issues Tim and I addressed with Sarah
during the time she lived with us. Sarah loved nice things. No sin in that,
but there were times when the manner in which she obtained the things she
wanted gave us pause. Sarah preferred easy cash to the hard-earned kind.

I didn’t blame Sarah for trading off her looks and using them to her
good pleasure. But over time, I came to question the extent to which
Sarah capitalized on her physical attributes.

My unease switched to alarm after Sarah made a trip to Corvallis
for a weekend and returned to Pendleton on a Sunday night driving a
spiffy new pickup truck, glossy white with lots of shiny chrome.

Tim was driving around in a beater at the time, and he had a full-time job. Sarah was working at the bank part time. We were more than
curious about how she could afford such a nice rig. But Sarah was
twenty years old, and we respected her privacy.

Not long after she arrived back home with that new pickup, I
started receiving phone calls from a young man asking for Sarah.
I took his name and number and passed his messages on to her. For
some inexplicable reason, Sarah refused to return his calls. The calls
continued, almost nightly.

At first, I assumed it was some other poor schmuck who was
smitten with Sarah, but there was something about the young man’s
tone that nagged at me. I kept telling Sarah to call him back. She never
did. Finally, one night, I up and said, “Son, it’s obvious to me Sarah isn’t
going to return your calls. Is there something I could help you with?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, sighing. “I loaned Sarah $5,000 of my school
loan money to buy a truck. Now spring term is here and I need to pay
tuition, but I haven’t heard from Sarah since she was down here.”

Holy crap.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” I said. “I’m afraid you’ll never see that money
again.”

I doubt Sarah ever repaid him, but he didn’t call our house anymore
after that.

One dark night while a heavy rain fell, making the streets slick, the
repo man came and towed Sarah’s new toy away. That is what happens
when you fail to make the monthly payments.

A year after Shawn Field was shackled and shuffled off to a prison cell for
the murder of Karly,
Glamour Magazine
named Sarah their 2007 “What
Are You Made Of? Reader of the Year.” They flew her to New York, where
they wined and dined her, and presented her with diamonds and a big fat check.

Sarah got the award for her work with the nonprofit, now-defunct
Karly’s Angels, a charity Sarah reportedly established to assist “single
mothers” like her. David found out about Karly’s Angels and the
Glamour
award via an e-mail announcement that Sarah apparently sent
to her entire mail group:

-----Original Message----

From: Sarah Sheehan [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 2:07 PM

Subject: karlys angels gets props

hiya - for those of you who aren’t in the know, KA (Karly’s Angels)
was recognized nationally n NYC recently. I still have a lot of updating
to do to the website, but now at least, i have some help! jilann’s work
donated a computer (awesome)! and my friend jaelyn, who is also
a single mother, will begin doing research next week. karly’s angels
is pulling it together, with the second annual golf tournament to be
held the first weekend in june. tbd. jilann, jaelyn and i travelled to
new york city last saturday for a few days of sight seeing, sleeping and
attending some really fantastic events.  i was chosen as one of three
glamour magazine readers as woman of the year and was allowed to
bring two guests. i chose jilann for all of the amazing support she
has given me throughout the trial, and for being such an amazing
friend to me since i moved here to bend and things weren’t what i had
expected. endless nights of vino and venting has fasted our friendship!
i asked jaelyn to join because she is affiliated with karly’s angels. we
stayed at the fantastic hotel mela, which is right in the heart of times
square. on monday we walked around the block to the conde naste
building that houses not only glamour mag, but the likes of GQ and
a zillion others.  security was pretty decent. i am enclosing the link
to the awards ceremony so that you may see pictures of it all. i would
like to thank each and every one of you who has supported KA. i am
excited to begin promoting for our next event, and with the generous
donations from many of you, and a seriously generous donation from
tag heuer and glamour mag, KA will be able to begin fulfilling our
goals of helping children of single parent families!  and that makes me
happier than any of you can imagine ;) god bless, S.

There’s more talk about the wine and the parties than there is
mention of the murder that gained her the attention.

David had asked Sarah to stop copying him in on her e-mails. He’d
even asked her to stop using Sheehan as her last name. That took me
by surprise because Sarah told me David had urged her to keep her last
name. She’d tagged that onto the conversation in which she’d told Tim
and me Karly had passed. At the time, I’d thought it odd that it even
came up in the conversation.

David called me shortly after he received Sarah’s e-mail. Usually,
David is polite, congenial, always the essence of calm, cool, and
collected. Not on this night. He was clearly and profoundly disturbed.

“What’s next?” he asked angrily. “
Time
’s Woman of the Year? The
Nobel Prize? It’s amazing a person with her background and trail of
destruction is being feted like a hero of society. I found it interesting
that nowhere in her e-mail did Sarah mention Karly except for Karly’s Angels.

“And how ironic that she would play golf on the first weekend of
June. Shawn commenced the final three-day beating ordeal while Mom
of the Year was at golf—although she indicated to me that week that she
would skip golf because she didn’t have a sitter. ”

I promised David that I would contact
Glamour
immediately. I sent
an e-mail that evening to Nikki Ettore, at
Glamour
; to Ulrich Wohn,
CEO at TAG Heuer, the diamond watch company that helped sponsor
the award; and to Kris Kaczor, video editor at 750 Productions. All were
people Sarah had copied on the same e-mail she sent to David.

It has come to my attention that Sarah Sheehan was recently
named a
Glamour
magazine reader of the year. Sarah’s daughter, Karly,
was tortured to death by Sarah’s boyfriend. Court documents are clear that
Sarah was, if not complicit in this crime, at least very neglectful of her
daughter. Before you highlight this woman as a
Glamour
girl, you
should take a moment to read through the court documents. I think you might
discover that there is much more to the story than just a woman and daughter
being victimized. It could lead to some very embarrassing press for
Glamour
in the long run.
Karen Spears Zacharias, author/journalist

A representative for
Glamour
magazine sent the following response:

Thank you for your e-mail. To clarify, Sarah was honored in a WHAT ARE YOU
MADE OF? contest, not a reader of the year.
Glamour
cannot comment on any
allegations that may be made against the winner. It simply picked the winner
based on her charitable efforts with Karly’s Angels.

DANA ARISTONE | FASHION MERCHANDISING DIRECTOR |

GLAMOUR MAGAZINE | P: 212-286-5392 | F: 212-286-4174

I passed
Glamour
’s response to David, who sent me the
following e-mail:

Karly’s Angels was founded on 8/16/07 (according to the web
site). Three months ago. Two weeks ago, she received donations from
Glamour
& TAG that would enable her to “begin fulfilling” their mission, emphasis
on “begin.” So what happened between 8/16 and 11/1 that would warrant receiving
an award? Where’s the track record? Did she receive an award because she got
a tax ID, and has a web site under construction?

Ulrich Wohn did not respond to me. He did, however, send
David a letter after David penned his own letter explaining how he had long
nurtured an appreciation for TAG Heuer and their watches, ever since he was
little boy growing up in Ireland. In fact, when David finally earned that
master’s degree he’d been pursuing the year Karly died, he’d rewarded himself
with a TAG watch. The
Glamour
award to Sarah dulled the sheen on
David’s long-held infatuation with TAG. He urged Wohn to take action. To his
credit, Wohn responded with compassion:

Dear Mr. Sheehan,

Thank you for your e-mail and bringing this to my attention.
First and foremost, I am writing to express to you on behalf of the entire
TAG Heuer organization my sincerest condolences on the tragic death of your
daughter Karly and deep sadness for the anguish you and your family have had
to endure.

With our recent awards, please know that TAG Heuer’s intention
was to honor women who have positively impacted their communities and to promote
charitable action and giving. The winners of the contest were chosen by
Glamour
Magazine
solely on the basis of the essays they wrote as contest entries,
as specified in the contest rules.

While we realize that no amount of money can compensate for
the pain of your loss, we have made a donation in Karly’s honor to The Retreat,
a wonderful charity for children who are the victims of domestic violence.

Again, I appreciate that you brought this very serious matter
to my attention.

Sincerely,

Ulrich Wohn

Photos of Sarah collecting her award were circulated via
the celebrity wire:

Early as it may have been, a perfectly coiffed Uma Thurman
seemed pleased to emcee TAG Heuer and
Glamour Magazine
’s first What
Are You Made Of? Awards breakfast last week. Thurman, who is a brand ambassador
for Heuer and appears in the company’s ads, joined Heuer North America president
Ulrich Wohn, Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive and Glamour vice president
and publisher Bill Wackerman and others at Condé Nast Publications Inc.’s
New York headquarters at 4 Times Square to laud three women who have positively
impacted their communities.

Sarah Sheehan received an honor for starting Karly’s Angels,
a not-for-profit network of resources for single parents…Thurman presented
each winner with an engraved diamond-studded Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph
watch.

— Sophia Chabbott

David was angry and unnerved by the manner in which Sarah
exploited their dead child for financial gain. “If Sarah had undertaken
five percent of her maternal responsibility, then Karly would still be
alive,” David said. “She has gotten away with so much. I can’t let her
rewrite history and make this artificial life for herself.”