House of Secrets (25 page)

He said his children had been abused in the foster homes. He said he’d only staged the standoff to draw attention to his case, after becoming convinced the DHS planned to take his children away from May again.

Before the standoff, his wife had just returned from a little vacation, showing his children Fort Knox, “where I did my basic training,” and the General George C. Patton Museum. He was particularly critical of Bonita Hilson, saying, “I just don’t know what was wrong with her. She had no kind of inner feelings whatsoever. She’s the kind of individual who is ironclad within herself. I feel that she has got a problem. I don’t know what her marital status is, but I’d rest assured to state she’s probably not married. I understand she has children. I don’t know how many. But I figure she’s had a bad time of marriage. I figure psychologically and mentally she has suffered and she has got a mental problem herself. And now anybody that has married and has children, she’s going to make them suffer.” After Sexton’s soliloquy, the camera was paused, and May Sexton appeared in the same chair, cradling a Styrofoam cup. Her dark hair was short and slicked back, a bright green sweater covering her stooped shoulders. She covered a list of subjects, confirming her husband’s account, her eyes rolling up to the right as if she were checking off a mental list. She mentioned nothing about being pregnant. In fact, that subject, and ostensibly the pregnancy, if there was one, had disappeared as quickly as it came.

Her children were abused in the foster homes, May claimed. She described a meeting with Lana at Harmony House, the neutral facility for DHS-supervised visits. As she described alleged foster care conditions, the details had a familiar ring. “While we were at Harmony House, she [Lana] was showing us some bruises on her arm, ones that the foster family had put on her, ‘cause she was being rebellious. And Bonita [Hilson] said she couldn’t let the children be rebellious. And I wanted her out of the foster home … Lana told her how they were treating her. They were wanting her to do housework. She was only 12

years old, and I don’t think children like that should be treated as maids. She wasn’t treated that way at home. And while Kim was in foster care they tried to run away twice. They were locked in bathrooms with the lightbulbs taken out. They were even locked in closets. The boys were being worked like farm animals in the foster homes. They all were being mistreated … and I’d like to see them back home where they belong. ” The show went on. Eddie Sexton tried to switch from host to interviewer. One by one children took a seat next to him at the table, Kimberly, Pixie, Skipper, Christopher, Willie, and even Joel Good. But Sexton continued to carry the narrative, methodically stating the facts, the kids most of the time confirming with a single “yes” or a nod of the head. Several themes ran through the interviews. There was no profanity or pornography in his house. There was no sexual contact. There were no beatings. The extent of punishment was grounding children to their rooms. All preferred life on the run with their parents to returning to foster care. The children’s body language often was more intriguing than the few words from their lips. Kimberly, or “Hoggie,” her long dark hair in a single, side ponytail, chuckled and swivelled in her chair like a typical 8-year-old. But her eyes frequently searched for her father’s approval. She missed her sister Angel, she said. “She’s going to be coming home pretty soon,” Sexton promised. Pixie, in a smart tan, white and black sport shirt, sat next to her father, facing the camera, their body language mirroring one another. Her arms were folded across her breasts. Sometimes she smirked at someone off camera. She was attractive, and would have been more so, save the dark circles under her eyes. She looked starved for sleep. Her father said, “I have to thank you in front of everybody that’s going to hear this tape for the assistance you’ve given me though all this. I can’t thank you enough for bringing me my medication … I was really supposed to be in a wheelchair … The doctors have informed my attorneys and so forth, my life span isn’t too long right now, are you aware of that?” Pixie nodded. She nodded for the next five minutes as Sexton rehashed details of his case. He concluding by asking, “What was your childhood like?”

“My childhood was good,” Pixie said. When she finished, Pixie had hardly said two dozen words. The boys took their turns, Sexton portraying them as careerminded teenagers who were planning on forming their own country band before the troubles began. Christopher wore an army green T-shirt with a white bulldog across the chest. He had few words and showed little emotion. Pointing out that Christopher was his last son, Sexton asked, “Which one are you?”

“Seventh,” Chris said, smiling, his eyes lighting up. “Seventh son of the seventh son,” Sexton said, grinning himself. “I’m the seventh son, and my father was the seventh son, so that’s pretty good.” . Sexton questioned him about his goal to one day play professional football.

Sexton, however, with one question seemed to indicate he himself had never attended a game.

Sexton, smoking a cigarette now, asked, “What were you trying to strive for, son, in football?”

“I just wanted you to be proud,” he said. “And I was,” Sexton said, smiling. Skipper seemed to enjoy the camera, smiling frequently. He directly contradicted later interviews, saying he’d seen no guns during the Caroline Street standoff. The kids were playing Nintendo during the ordeal, he said. Sexton apologized to Skipper for the disruptions in his school life, then gave some fatherly advice, “The only thing I can say to you, and I’ve told all you children … there will be trials that will come into your lifetime.

Take this one and cope with it. Don’t hold real hard feelings for the rest of your life. It will only cause you to become nervous and create problems in your older life. Just take it one day at a time.” Joel Good looked like only a shadow of the boy in his prom photograph. He wore a black T-shirt. His hair was hardly an inch long, his face dwarfed by a pair of oversized plastic frames. His eyes were on the table through most of the appearance. He picked at his fingernails.

Sexton did all the talking, Joel occasionally saying “yes” or “right.”

Sexton tried to get him to disparage Machelle’s character in high school. “What was she like?” he asked. “She was hyper,” he mumbled, but went no further. Sexton told the camera that neither Pixie nor Joel had “aided or abetted” his flight from Ohio and said they’d be going home to Canton soon. When Willie Sexton, dressed in a black T-shirt, took Joel Good’s place in the chair after a pause, the physical difference between the two young men was striking. His stature dwarfed his father’s, his biceps bulging. Willie repeated the charges his father had made against Uncle Otis, saying he wanted custody of the kids for their support payments. He didn’t stutter, but spoke in short bursts. Sexton talked about the confrontation with the DHS. “That was a long trying period, but we endured it,” Sexton said.

Willie nodded passively. Sexton concluded the show alone in front of the camera. He produced family portraits of his other children, making his most passionate plea. This was an all-American family and he was a good American, he said. He’d served in the military. He’d personally written to former President George Bush, volunteering to serve as a chaplain in Desert Storm. He wanted only his children returned to his wife, he said, the family returned to its “normal” life back in Jackson Township. “I’m not seeking anything for myself,” he said. At one point, in conclusion, he said, “I hope this gives you some insight or impression of the family and children and the conditions we are in at this time … Now,

have taken my children and placed them before you. I have placed my wife before you. I have placed myself and jeopardized myself. I know you will know I have violated the law, and I admit it. “But I will continue to violate the law for the protection of my family and the preservation of my family. Just as I stated before, would gladly give my life for my country. I would gladly give my life for my family. Because thatis my country. Yourfamily is your country.

Your family is a country, the future of the United States.” Some family members would later say Sexton wrote out their parts, then rehearsed them for several nights. A bitter argument also broke out between Ed and May after her segment was shot. Sexton didn’t like May’s performance. But on tape, all was folksy and serene. Pixie Sexton mailed the tapes in mid August, postmarked from Hudson and New Port Richey, Florida. They would come back to haunt the seventhson-of-the-seventhson one day. The judgement came from Judge Julie Edwards on September 20, awarding DHS permanent custody of all the minor Sexton children. One of DHS’s first acts as the official, legal parent was to contact the Stark County Sheriff’s Department. DHS

attorney Edith Hough wanted to file a missing persons report for Kimberly, Matthe and Christopher Sexton. Steve Ready received a call from his captain. “Every large department has its top detectives,”

Ready would later recall. “They get the high-profile cases when they come through, and it should be that way, because they’re usually good investigators. , … leads.” This case did not come to me that way.

This was part of the slush pile. When the missing persons reports were filed, they figured, just send it over to Ready. He’s already over there at human services anyway.” Steve Ready now officially had the Sexton case. Eighteen months had passed since Machelle Sexton’s original disclosure, eleven months since Eddie Lee Sexton had barricaded his house. It was no longer Jackson Township’s case. From the little he’d learned chasing the Sextons earlier in the year, Ready still was only sightly intrigued. He had 20 other cases that demanded immediate attention, cases with victims and perpetrators and witnesses and physical evidence, cases that had to be prepared for court. He began working the phone at 7:15 a. m. Monday morning. He’d find these people, he decided. If the prosecutor could get them charged with Lana Sexton, they’d get felony warrants and get the FBI involved. Find the Sextons and their children. Get a subpoena for blood tests and prove the incest. The DHS already had custody. Take Eddie and May to trial.

Case closed. Edith Hough had given the detective two names, one was Orville Sexton, the other Otis Sexton. He also had Eddie Sexton, Jr.‘s phone number. “This Uncle Otis,” Hourh said. “I think he might have a few Ready called Eddie Jr. He said maybe his mother was with her brother in Jeffersonville, Indiana. He gave Ready the number of Tuck Carson. Moments later, he had Otis Sexton on the phone. Then he drove to the uncle’s house. The two men were mistrustful of each other at first. There was the sexual assault allegation made by Machelle at the prosecutor’s office. But the prosecutor had decided not to pursue the matter, considering the fluid dynamics of the entire Sexton case.

Machelle later said her parents made her file the false charge. Otis later said, “I was so disgusted with what had happened with Jackson police and everybody else. When this Steve Ready showed up, I figured, okay, here’s another disappointment standing at my door. I was very wrong.”

“Look, you can’t blame Glenn Goe,” Ready told Otis. “This girl recanted. If you don’t have a victim, you don’t have a crime. His witness backed out on him. What do you expect him to do?” Ready also began wondering, why is this guy so jazzed up? He was on disability.

He had a stable of personal lawyers. He was a former preacher. It was difficult not to draw some comparisons with his brother Eddie. Ready thought, does this Otis Sexton have some kind of hidden agenda of his own? But within weeks, phoning or visiting Otis Sexton would become a daily routine for the detective. Otis was a library of knowledge, but he seemed to loan it only a chapter at a time. Finally, the detective gave the uncle his home phone number. He’d never done that in his entire police career. During their first meeting, Otis detailed his suspicions about incest in the family, but he didn’t know his brother’s whereabouts. He did have a lead, however. He said his brother was still getting his workman’s compensation checks and Social Security checks for his children. He believed they were being mailed locally to his brother Orville, who passed them on to Eddie. Ready decided not to visit Orville Sexton, concluding an interrogation would only burn the lead. If Orville was Eddie’s ally, a visit would only alert Eddie Sexton that Ready was on his trail. Instead, back at the office, he suggested the DHS make another run at the workman’s comp records. Get the canceled checks. Maybe they’d show where they were being cashed, Ready said. He also asked the prosecutor’s office for a subpoena. He wanted the phone records for the house on Caroline Street in the last months that Pixie Sexton was living there. Ready also knew that Judee Genetin was working with an assistant prosecutor on the grand jury for Lana. Ready met with attorney Edith Hough again. “We have got to get those criminal charges filed and get those warrants,” he said. Two days on the case, and something about Eddie Lee Sexton already was irritating the detective. Sexton exploiting his own children was bad enough. Ready had two daughters. But he tried not to get too emotionally involved in any case. That wasn’t healthy. But Sexton running his own little sex club at the taxpayer’s expense? Now maybe picking up the money on county turf? That wouldn’t sit well with any cop. Ready called a social worker in Clark County, Indiana. She agreed to make a sweep of Jeffersonville schools for the Sexton children and

eye the Carson home for the Sextons’ motor home or cars. Ready called a lieutenant in the Clark County Sheriff’s Department. He also agreed to check on the house for vehicles. He said while he was at it, he’d stop by and have a chat with the Carsons, too. Ten days later, the workman’s comp bureau reported back. Ed Sexton had been collecting comp payments for nearly 18 years. In 1975, the board had ruled his eligibility “permanent and total,” meaning there was no way to stop the payments. Under Ohio law, he could collect in prison if it came to that. Sexton was receiving $376.70 biweekly. The checks were being mailed to P. O. Box 1305 in Massilon. May Sexton also received money for nursing her husband. Ready checked the signatures and endorsements.