Captain Phil Harris (15 page)

There was no escape for the boys. Phil was in Alaska much of the year and their mother, claiming her visitation rights had been sabotaged by Teresa, didn’t see her sons for the next fifteen years.

Mary said Teresa got in her face when they first met, telling Mary, “I know a good thing when I see it. Your loss is my gain. You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Why don’t you just kill yourself and save us all the trouble?”

Mary said the court allowed her to see her kids if the visits were supervised, but nevertheless, according to Mary, Teresa lied constantly to keep her from Josh and Jake.

“Teresa would call me,” Mary said, “saying that the visitation date had been changed, then make it appear that I was a no-show. She would tell the boys, ‘I guess your mother just doesn’t care about you anymore.’ Teresa told Phil that I never even called the boys.”

Mary said she did call, but that only resulted in the most painful moments of her separation from her sons.

“Teresa would answer the phone,” Mary claimed, “and say the boys weren’t there. I would say, ‘I can hear them. Please, just let me talk to them.’ Instead, she’d lie, yelling at me over the phone, ‘What? You want to kill us and burn our house down?’ I’d say, ‘Teresa, what are you doing?’ ”

Mary said Teresa would then call the police, telling them Mary
was a danger to the family. As a result, a judge issued a restraining order against her, forcing her to stay away from her boys.

“Even murderers get to see their kids,” Mary said. “I had never done anything wrong. I couldn’t believe Phil was letting this happen.”

Asking Mary about Teresa is like asking a crab fisherman about the Bering Sea. There are many tales to be told. In Mary’s case, there is no way to verify some of them, since both Phil and Teresa are dead.

Mary alleges that Teresa tricked Phil into marrying her by claiming she was about to receive $5 million in a divorce settlement. Teresa also said she was suffering from terminal cancer and, when she died, she would leave Phil the $5 million. The money, said Mary, never appeared and, after Phil and Teresa exchanged vows, the cancer disappeared.

Mary also claims she heard Teresa had hired a hit man to kill her. Mary didn’t take the rumor seriously until a stranger approached her on the street and told her he had indeed been offered money to make her disappear permanently. He said he was promised five thousand dollars up front and five thousand more after eliminating her, but had told Teresa he wasn’t interested.

That didn’t mean, he said, that someone else wouldn’t accept Teresa’s offer.

“What am I supposed to do?” asked an alarmed Mary.

“Watch your back,” said the stranger before going back into the shadows.

Mary went to the Bothell Police Department but was told there was nothing they could do unless they had more details.

“Well, if I wind up dead,” Mary replied, “at least you’ll know where to start looking for the killer.”

•   •   •

Josh and Jake have their own horror stories about Teresa.

Having endured Phil’s long absences at sea, she was desperate for attention when he returned home.

“She wanted all his time,” Josh said.

His sons, of course, wanted a share, even if just a small share, of their dad’s affection as well.

“She’d get pissed that we were even around,” said Josh.

So, before Phil arrived, she’d physically abuse the boys, warning them that they’d get more of the same if they tried to horn in on her reunion with their father.

When he was alone with Phil, Josh tried to tell him about the horrors he and Jake had to endure while the captain was off catching crab.

“She not only beats the fuck out of us,” said Josh, “but she gets out of control on drugs and spends all your money.”

Phil was sympathetic, but he told Josh, “Don’t ruin this for me. I’ve got a great house and nice cars. I’ve worked my whole life for this. If I get divorced, she’s taking half of it.”

Phil had done everything he could to make Teresa happy and his long trips more palatable. He had bought a home on Echo Lake, just east of Bothell, landscaped it, put in a pond, a large swimming pool, and a dock for lake access. He also turned one room into a beauty salon to make it easier for Teresa to do her work as a beautician.

“You’ve just got to maintain yourself,” Phil told Josh.

Teresa had her own story to tell Phil about his boys.

“These kids are out of control,” she said. “I have to beat them and it doesn’t even faze them.”

What did faze them was watching Teresa become a chemically induced monster.

“She turned to drugs,” Josh said, “because she was lonely with my dad gone so much, and that only made it worse for Jake and me.”

One time, Phil came home to find both his sons with black eyes and scratches on their necks. Teresa demanded that Phil mete out even more punishment because of their alleged misbehavior.

“Finally, Dad got it,” Josh said. “Finally, he came to accept the fact this whole situation wasn’t right.”

Phil took the boys into their bedroom while Teresa sat at the top of the stairs and listened, waiting for her husband to fulfill her desire for even more abuse.

Phil loudly screamed at both boys, but then, behind the closed door, he quietly whispered to them, “Listen, I’m going to whack this bed, and when I do, both of you are going to scream like I’m beating the living hell out of you.”

Phil started smashing the wooden bed frame while yelling, “Don’t you ever disobey. You hear?”

Listening out in the hallway, Teresa reveled in the sound of the blows and the screams of the boys, though she didn’t know they were as phony as the whipping they were supposedly undergoing.

When he was done, Phil came out with a look of satisfaction, telling her, “I took care of that.”

The boys peeked out of their room and, as soon as they saw Teresa was gone, started giggling and ran downstairs and out the door to play as if nothing had happed. Because nothing had happened.

The smile on Phil’s face was quick to fade after moments like that. He couldn’t just run out to play and forget about his problems. He still had to deal with Teresa.

“She drove my dad into depression,” Josh said. “That’s when he started building birdhouses. It was his way of getting away from her. He’d head out to a little toolshed he had built in the back so he wouldn’t get yelled at. He’d hang out there all day and night, working on the birdhouses. That’s why they turned out so intricate.”

“We’re not just talking about a tiny wood house with a hole in it, the kind of thing you think about when someone mentions a birdhouse,” said Russ Herriott, Phil’s business manager. “His houses had shingles, lawn furniture, even a Jacuzzi.”

“Making birdhouses was the last thing in the world I ever thought he would do,” said Grant, Phil’s father. “He never seemed to be interested in woodworking when he was growing up.

“But he started making a few birdhouses and people wanted to buy
them. He was amazed those little houses were in demand. I could see why. Every one was totally unique, different from any of the others.”

Phil was inspired by more than just public demand. Every time he thought about going back into the house to face Teresa, he decided he needed an added feature, a fancier roof, a bigger porch, anything to justify staying right where he was.

Or staying out at sea, the place where he had always found solace. And now, it was also the one place where he could still bond with his sons.

From the time he could walk, Josh knew there was wealth to be found below the surface of the water. He knew it as a child because that’s where Daddy went to earn the money that provided him and his brother with all their material needs.

And when Josh was just ten, Phil told him that, if he wanted new clothes for school, he was going to have to go fishing himself in order to pay for them.

That summer, Phil took his son on a gillnetter, a boat so named because it employs nets that entangle fish by their gills. In three months, Josh helped catch enough salmon to make six hundred dollars.

More than enough for clothes, plus piles of candy. In Phil’s mind, since Josh had worked like an adult, he had also earned the right to act like an adult.

“My dad put a cigarette in my mouth, bought me my first drink, and I saw my first
Playboy
magazine,” Josh said.

Like his father and so many others who went on fishing boats when they were young and had tender stomachs, Josh got seasick his first time out.

And he got a bad taste in his mouth that lingered for the better part of two decades. His first morning at sea, he was given eggs. With the boat rocking, he vomited so violently that he couldn’t bear to eat eggs again for sixteen years.

Yet he didn’t get seasick again, and he soon learned to love the time with his father.

“We’d get fish that were bigger than me,” Josh said. “When I would pick them up and try to throw them into the fish hold, they would whack me in the nuts. My father would laugh and laugh. He taught me how to drive the boat and set the anchor.”

He also taught Josh about both toughness and determination on one unforgettable night. The two of them were fishing on a small boat in the middle of a storm. Phil, concerned that his son was not getting enough sleep, insisted that Josh take the only bunk on the craft while Phil slept on the floor.

The boat had a small wood-burning stove in the cabin and, that night, a pot of boiling coffee had been left on it.

When the boat was hit by a jarring wave, the stove came crashing down, coffeepot and all.

The hot coffee splashed squarely onto the face of the sleeping Phil, awakening him to extreme pain, with blisters soon forming on the scalded skin.

He may have been in agony, but that didn’t stop him from fishing. He didn’t even consider heading back to port.

While Josh was enjoying life on the water, Jake, two years younger, was stuck at home. Always diminutive in size, he had to wait until he was eleven to be considered big enough to fish. He quickly proved he was good enough as well.

“Jake did a really great job his first year up there,” Josh said.

So good that Phil goaded his older son. “He’s doing a better job than you,” Phil told him. Josh responded with work rather than words, putting in the hours and the effort required to become a successful fisherman.

•   •   •

But while Josh’s life at sea grew brighter with every voyage, his life at home became bleaker every time he returned.

Josh had grown too big for Teresa to punish him physically, so she turned to verbal abuse ever more frequently. It became an endless battle between the two until finally, when Josh reached fifteen, Teresa ordered him out of the house. Phil, all the fight taken out of him by the fear of a financially devastating divorce, wouldn’t intercede on Josh’s behalf.

“Well, I was out when I was young,” said Phil, who had also left home when he was fifteen, “so you’re out when you’re young. And that’s just the way it’s going to be.”

Josh didn’t argue.

“I was fifteen,” he said, “and I was just going to have to find my own way.”

It was a difficult search. Sometimes, he stayed with Grant, his grandfather. Sometimes, he slept on friends’ couches.

Josh still came back to the house to see his father, and one particular visit will forever stand out in his mind. Phil was standing on the roof of his fifth-wheel motor home, parked in the driveway, in order to clean it.

“Like an idiot, he took soap and sprinkled it all over the top,” said Josh.

Phil’s plan was to blast the soap off with a pressure hose, but when he tried to take a step on the slippery surface, the result was predictably disastrous.

He slid off the roof and onto the concrete driveway twelve feet below, landing face-first.

Running over to his father, Josh was horrified at what he saw. There was blood coming through Phil’s hair and streaming down his forehead. One leg was bent awkwardly and his breathing was labored. His sunglasses were cracked in half, still hanging from his ears but drooping down under his chin, the glass shattered.

Still, he was determined to play the role of tough Captain Phil, especially with one of his sons watching. He staggered to his feet, waved Josh off, and, his voice cracking, said, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

Phil then tried to take a few limping steps but conceded, “It really hurts.”

“Dad,” said Josh, “we need to get you to a hospital.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Phil insisted.

Josh, too young to possess a driver’s license, went into the house to get Teresa.

“You need to take Dad to the hospital,” he told his stepmother, who turned to him in an obvious state of drunkenness.

If Josh was expecting sympathy from Teresa, he should have known better. Coming outside, she spotted Phil in shaky condition, dragging one leg as he stumbled around, and yelled at him, “Quit being a pussy. Walk it off.”

When Teresa refused to help her husband, Josh went to a neighbor, who drove Phil to a nearby hospital.

Diagnosis: six broken ribs, a broken leg, a massive cut on his head, and a concussion.

For most people, outside of maybe stuntmen and hockey players, that would mean a long recuperation. Phil behaved himself for a week. Then he took the family to Washington’s Lake Chelan, east of Seattle, where he yanked off the cast on his broken leg and went water-skiing.

“You could never stop my dad from doing anything,” said Josh.

Teresa was the same way. Those who spent time around her sometimes felt there was no way to stop her from drinking to excess.

Mike Crockett, one of Phil’s old friends from Bothell, remembers the time he and his wife, Susan, and Phil and Teresa went to a John Cougar Mellencamp concert in a gorge in eastern Washington. While Mike drove his motor home down the narrow, tree-lined back roads to the gorge, he and his three companions entertained themselves with alcohol and drugs.

Then, glancing in his rearview mirror, Mike sounded the alarm.

“Time to behave yourselves,” he yelled to the others in the back. “There’s a sheriff’s car right behind us.”

“Teresa was really freaking out,” Mike later recalled.