House of Secrets (2 page)

“Or hiding,” Bob Johnson said. Throughout the property, they found other disturbing signs. In the basement they found a twin bed mattress covered with graffiti, done in magic marker. The pictures were of erect penises and breasts and vaginas, not much more sophisticated than stick figures. They looked as if they were done by a child’s hand.

Two chains with metal rings hung from a basement support beam. One garage door was nailed shut. A hundred feet from the house was a little Dutch barn, a storage shed. Inside, there was an easy chair and a floor ashtray filled with cigarettes. Around it, a collection of stuffed animals. “I thought, something was going on here,” Edie told me. “This was some kind of special place.” And then they found another odd thing, large bundles of greeting cards from the Sexton children, proclaiming their love to their mom and dad. One area inside stood out, in that it didn’t seem to conform to the rest of the house.

The master bedroom looked as if it had been well-appointed. It showed no sign of some of the cruder carpentry and repairs the homeowner had obviously done after the fires.

There was a cove for a built-in TV. It had its own bathroom, the ceramic tile work professionally lain with sparkling white grout.

There was a new sink, a new toilet, and a large new shower stall designed for the handicapped. By then, they’d found the wheelchair in the basement and the hospital bed, which had gone unsold at the first auction sale. Bob Johnson found it curious. Eddie Sexton had never talked of any disabled children. And he’d certainly had no trouble walking around his lot. The Johnsons decided they’d gut the house.

Remove the flooring. Take the entire interior down to the studs and put up new drywall. New moldings. It seemed the only way to bring the place back. They took down the tarnished metal cross and sent the amputated Christ off in one of eight large Dumpster loads. Eventually, they learned the statue had once belonged to Eddie Sexton’s mother.

He’d brought it home after her funeral. No one knew whether it had its hands then or not. * When I first interviewed the Johnsons one night in 1995, social workers, police agencies, and prosecutors in Ohio and Florida had probed many aspects of life in the Cape Cod. Some investigations were still going on. Ironically, in researching the Sexton case, the newly renovated 8149 Caroline Street Northwest was one of the only times I felt entirely comfortable. The house was warm and clean and cozy. The Johnsons were gracious and hospitable. And they had nothing to hide. It seemed that every one of the many times I drove from my home in Michigan to this part of Ohio, the sun never shined. For nearly three years I visited filthy homes, cramped prison interview rooms, and the chaotic offices of reluctant authorities.

They were, perhaps, fitting settings to document rape and torture and murder, but trying conditions nonetheless. When I first began, even in my darkest imaginings, I never guessed the extent of the brutal darkness that once filled the house. The first hint came when I listened to the account of a former baby-sitter. It was a story about days of sunless skies and rain. When the Sexton children were grade-schoolers, she said, they would bolt into the front yard during thunderstorms. They would huddle like a flock, their small faces looking upward, the lightning flashing in their eyes. Finally, she asked them why they kept doing this. “They were saying Jesus is coming,”

” she said. “They were hoping He was coming to take them away …”

Take them from 8149 Caroline Street. They would get only the hapless statue. Real saviors were hard to find.

When I’]With You Terry Turify first noticed the girl in the well-waxed halls of the high school. Her only company was an armful of books.

She always looked as if she needed a good night’s sleep. One day in study hall, Terry walked over and introduced herself. She felt sorry for her, always sitting there alone. The girl said her name was Stella.

“Stella Sexton,” she said. Stella was wearing a blousy print dress.

It looked like it had timetraveled from the 1970s. Terry thought, go home and wash your hair. Don’t let it hang there in dark, oily strands.

Get rid of the dandruff on your shoulders. Don’t you know you could be very pretty? Not that Terry was a clotheshorse. God knows since Terry and her twin sister Traci had transferred to Jackson High School, they’d discovered plenty of those in the halls. Terry and Stella Sexton had that in common. They were both outsiders, Terry a transfer student from the Cleveland area, Stella on the outside simply because of the way she looked. No one in the school seemed to have the remotest interest in the girl. Terry tried to connect, trying harmless questions about their classes, their school, their studies. Stella gave one word answers, mostly “yes” or “no.” After a few minutes, Stella gave up a complete sentence. She said she’d been born and raised in the Canton area, but she was also part Native American. l “Really?” Terry said, always fascinated with Indian culture. “What kind?” Stella named a tribe. It was such an odd name, something Terry had never heard before, she later wouldn’t be able to recall the designation. “Do you know how to speak Indian?” Terry asked. Stella opened her notebook and spelled out Terry’s name in this tribe’s language. Her father had taught her the language, Stella said. He was involved with Indian tribes. He restored old furniture for Indian organizations. That’s how he made his living, she said. Stella handed her the notebook paper.

“Keep it,” she said. The next day, Stella brought her another sheet of odd-looking markings. She said it was the entire Indian alphabet. “We speak the language at home,” Stella said. “Hey, maybe I could come over to your house some time,” Terry said. “I’m really into this stuff.”

Stella’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“What do you mean, absolutely?”

“I can’t do that. My dad would not approve.”

“Why?”

“He’d be real mad if he even knew I was telling you.” Terry figured, some people are sensitive about sharing their cultures. But in time, she would learn Stella’s father was sensitive about a lot of things.

Throughout their junior year, Terry tried inviting her to do things.

“Hey, Stella, want to catch a movie?”

“No,” Stella said. “We could go to Canton Center Mall.”

“No.”

“How about Belden Village?”

“No.” She thought, maybe Stella didn’t have any money. “All right then,” Terry said. “How about you just come over to my place?”

“No,”

Stella said. She couldn’t do anything, she said. Her father would not approve. Summer vacation came. They didn’t talk again until early in their senior year. Terry saw her sitting alone at a big round table near the door in the high school cafeteria. Stella was wearing a blue and white sailor shirt. Her eyes beamed, her dark circles not so apparent as the year before. Terry saw her tummy. Stella Sexton looked pregnant. When Terry asked, Stella said the baby was due in October. She announced it proudly. Terry thought, now her ostracization at Jackson High School would be complete. Stella seemed oblivious to the ramifications. “I mean, she had that glow,” Terry would later say.

Terry pulled up a chair, asking, “Gosh, Stella, who’s the father?”

“He’s in the Navy,” she said. “Where?”

“Overseas.”

“Are you getting married?”

“I think so.” Terry looked into her eyes. “My God, Stella, what do your parents think?”

“They don’t care,” Stella said matter of factly. “They don’t care? My parents would kill me.”

“As long as I’m happy,” Stella said, “they don’t care.” Terry thought, Don’t care? Last year her parents wouldn’t even let the girl out of the house. It wasn’t until after she saw the blockbuster movie, Traci decided he was a lot like Forrest Gump. The slim, handsome boy was standing in the corner, his books cradled under his right arm, looking as if he was waiting for something, or someone. First period, government, Mr. Paul’s class. Every morning, Traci Turify killed 20

minutes with her twin sister Terry, both of them in the building early, waiting for school to start. She asked Terry, “What is he doing?”

Terry, leaning over, whispered, “You’re sitting in his desk.”

“Am I sitting in your seat?” He nodded. “Well,” she said. “That’s just too damn bad.” He said nothing, and didn’t move a muscle, as if he was entirely prepared to wait her out. She popped up, saying, “Just kidding.” He walked over slowly, setting down his textbooks, and looked at Terry. Terry said, “Joel and I are buds.” Joel M. Good.

That was his name, he said when they got to the formal introduction.

They called him Joey at home. But in school, people called him Joel, or just Joe. Right off, she sensed he was different, not full of bravado or the nervous energy common to other senior boys. Tracy wanted to know more. He was a transfer student, he said. He came from another suburb called Perry, between Massilon and Canton. Traci said that she and her twin sister Terry were transfer students, too. He said he came to Jackson as a junior, lived with his aunt and uncle now.

He said he used to live with his grandparents in Perry. “What about your mom and dad?” They were both dead, he said. They’d died when he was 13, his father from a heart attack, his mother from diabetes “Where you from?” he asked.

“We’re from Cleveland, the real world,” Terry said In fact, they were from a working-class suburb of Cleveland called Parma. It was only 50

miles due north on I-77. But the way the Turifys saw it, Parma was an entire world way. They were still having a hard time of it, even as seniors. Terry absolutely hated Jackson High School and most of the students. Traci had managed to make some friends. Jackson just wasn’t normal, they would tell people who bothered to ask. Normal schools don’t call their school auditoriums a “center for the performing arts.”

Normal teenagers don’t drive to class in BMWs and new Jeep Wranglers.

Normal teenage girls don’t wear Liz Claiborne blazers, and normal boys don’t strut down the halls in pink golf shirts and yellow Izod sweaters. Tracy had never been in a school before where the class bell signaled a stampede of Ralph Lauren horsemen down the halls. “In Parma, a prime car is held together with duct tape,” Terry would say.

“A pink shirt? That would be the same as committing suicide in our old school.” Jackson High School, the pride of Jackson Township, a suburb north of Canton, Ohio. Students from the west side came from homes that pushed a half million. They had clothes and money and worries about how many photos and club references they could stack in the yearbook index.

Their senior class called the yearbook, “What Goes Around Comes Around.”

“And they let you know itterry would say. “If you don’t have it, they let you know you do not belong. They look right through you in the halls.” Joel Good was more like them, one of the invisible people.

Traci Turify knew that right off, sitting in their corner before government class. As the 1988-89 school year unfolded she found more to like about the boy. He eventually took a job as a dishwasher at Don Poncho’s and enrolled in a class in the building trades. He rode a Schwinn 10-speed everywhere. He biked around his sub after school, visiting with neighborhood friends. Parents liked him. They were always inviting Joel Good to stay for dinner. He’d eventually buy a brown, rust-pitted Datsun hatchback for $400, feeding it gas a couple bucks at a time. It was always breaking down. But rather than complain, he’d just get back on the bike again.

Joel hung out mainly with underclassmen, kids from his neighborhood.

They went bowling a lot up at Colonial Lanes. Or Joel took them to a couple old drive-in movie theaters south of Canton. He avoided endless discussions about the world-class prep football being played in the Canton-Massilon corridor and the hottest new videos on MTV. He was satisfied with the hapless Cleveland Browns and liked bands popular in the 1970s, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Frampton. A neighborhood friend took him to his first concert, Cheap Trick. They stood in the front row. Joel complained he couldn’t hear for two days. At first, he didn’t make a big deal about girls and dating. He never made cat calls at them, hanging his head out of a speeding car in the school lot like Traci had seen others do. The closest Joel Good ever came to a date was a movie outing with a group of underclassmen. He hung around that night with another transfer student, a girl who was 75 pounds overweight. “He made me feel like a person,” the girl later said. “A sweet guy.”

“Very caring.”

“The nicest guy I ever met.” They described him that way, the few who took the time to know him. As for those who ignored him, Joel Good didn’t appear to care. He took each encounter as it came, seemingly unaware the preppies looked through him and that the burnouts thought he was a square. And he was funny, Traci often thought. The routines they found comic were not about others, but about mundane foibles of Joel Good’s own life. A story about his car breaking down could put them in stitches. He hobbled in one day. “So there I was stuck on the freeway.”

“So what did you do?” somebody asked. “I kicked it. That’s how I broke my toe.” It wasn’t the punch line. It was the delivery.

Straight-faced, and usually in a monotone.

Just like Forrest Gump. Traci learned they had much in common. Joel Good would turn 19 in January. He’d been held back a year in grade school and placed in the slower classes most of his school years.

“God,” Traci said. “You too?” Traci had trouble with numbers. “A form of dyslexia,” she explained. “Like a phone number. I’ll get one of the two digits all mixed up.” Math was difficult for Traci. For Joel, school was a struggle across the board. In his old high school he studied in a special curriculum. In Jackson, they appeared to have tossed him in with the mix, expecting him to fend for himself. His grades fell from B’s and C’s to D’s and F’s after he transferred. His aunt hired a personal tutor, who worked with him twice a week. Traci depended on Terry, who did her homework and coached her on tests. She passed her twin’s tips on to Joel. “Make up little skits in your head,”