House of Secrets (26 page)

They were being cashed at First National Bank and Citizens Saving in Massilon. They were endorsed by the Sextons. The detective called both banks. Yes, the Sextons had an account, a First National banker said. But it hadn’t been used in some time. Citizens had no record of an account. The Sextons were probably driving in for their checks, Ready reasoned. But from where? When the Ohio Bell records arrived, Ready found numerous calls charged to their number on Caroline Street from Afton, Oklahoma, to Jeffersonville, Indiana. He called the Oklahoma number and reached a motel called the Grand Lake Country Inn.

He described the Sexton vehicles to the clerk. Asked if anybody had registered under the name of Sexton or Good. No luck. Ready also saw calls to Hudson, Florida, Dave Sexton’s number. He’d already been calling Dave Sexton for months and still was getting the same results.

“No, Sherri’s not here.” Indiana, Ready thought. They had to be in Indiana. Ready called up the Bureau of Motor Vehicles for the state.

Soon he had a fax of an accident report. On January 16, a vehicle driven by Ed Sexton, but registered to Tuck Carson, had been in an accident in Jefferson Township, Clark County. He saw Estella “Pixie”

Good’s name as a passenger. Ready called the ambulance company that transported Pixie and Ed Sexton to an Indiana hospital. Sexton had given Caroline Street as his address, Pixie her old apartment in Bolivar. No luck. Ready found a police report in Canton filed by Patrick Sexton early in the year against his father. In January, his father “swung at him” in Monument Park and issued verbal threats, the report stated. Patrick Sexton told Canton Police his father could be found in Charleston, Indiana. Ready called the Clark County Sheriff’s Department again. No, his contact said, he hadn’t seen any vehicles, and they were checking. He’d talked to the Carsons. They claimed they hadn’t seen Eddie Lee Sexton. They had to be in Indiana. Steve Ready was four months behind the Sextons, he’d later learn, but closing.

Eddie Sexton had found a new dream house. It wasn’t Skytop Ranch in Montana anymore. It was the stone home with the pool only a hundred yards from the small trailer on Treaty Lane. The patriarch began spinning big plans for the property. They’d buy the house and all get four-wheelers. They could hunt and fish and shoot and put an off-road track on the back property. If only the renter would move out. “We were going to stay for eternity,” Skipper later recalled. Running concurrently with plans to settle down was Sexton’s obsession with the family’s capture. The patriarch stepped up the drills. They could practice shooting their weapons in Shady Hills. Sexton carried a pistol in his belt. He drew red hearts on trees and the boys fired away at the targets. He taught them to make head shots, and neck shots. When the FBI came, he predicted, they’d be wearing bullet-proof vests. On his trips to Ohio with Willie and Pixie, sometimes Skipper, Sexton took shotguns. They made the drive every two weeks, coinciding with the government pay periods. They were grueling, 2,000-mile round trips up and down I-75. He appeared to envision himself as public enemy number one. He eased the tension by mixing beer and pain pills, but became more paranoid at night. He was convinced the FBI assault would come after dark. Sexton came up with a night plan. Eddie, Willie, and Skipper wore dark clothes. If the law came, Chris and Matt were to flee with their mother to Dave’s house. The boys were to stay low in the weeds, take the cops out with sniper fire. Night after night, Eddie and Willie sat on the porch, watching the rural darkness with their guns. “No one was supposed to get in, no one was supposed to get out,” May Sexton would later say. “He swore he’d never be taken in alive.” Sexton still excluded Joel Good from the drills. He was a “female,” the patriarch said, spending too much of his time around the women, caring for his kids. Skipper was spared such remarks, though he liked to hold and play with the little baby, Skipper Lee, his godson and namesake. Joel and Willie seemed to get along well, their relationship cemented, perhaps, by their fear of the patriarch and their low IQs. Willie remained the one son still regularly beaten. A hesitation in following an order was all it took to “get the fist.”

Some siblings would later say Joel and his father-in-law seemed to like one another, Joel calling the patriarch “Mr. Sexton” and “Dad.”

“Well, Joel would do anything for my dad,” Christopher would later say.

“He was scared of him.” Matt, describing his father’s relationship with Joel as “excellent,” would add, “Yes, he’d treat him good. He didn’t actually like him, but he’d treat him good when he was with him.”

Sexton had brought on the road the photograph taken of Joel Good after he’d been beaten back in Canton. Some of the boys would later say their father ordered the beating and photo as a way to keep Joel in line. If his son-in-law began thinking too independently, the father would have one of his sons show Joel the picture. “You see that? See what you look like?” one of the young henchman would tell him.

“You’re going to look twice as bad next time.” Joel fared no better with Pixie. He complained to her siblings she refused to have sex with him. Pixie carried all his personal ID. They argued frequently.

Later, none of the siblings seemed capable of detailing other subjects that fueled the arguments. Alcohol and drugs were added to the mix.

The older siblings started scoring pot in the neighborhood. Joel and Pixie bought sixpacks. They partied when the patriarch was away.

Joel, already ridiculed by Ed Sexton to his kids, found himself the butt of jokes and pranks. Sometimes the booze and pot escalated his role to that of a punching bag. Skipper attacked him one night.

Another night, he was jumped by several brothers. Good would lay motionless, badly outnumbered. One time, Pixie came to his aid. Then, Pixie turned on him completely, other Sextons would later recall. She began telling siblings he’d had sex with her two children, Dawn and Shasta. Even little Kimberly heard the accusations. Her only evidence, Shasta walking out of a bedroom, blood dripping from her rectum, with Joel standing nearby. The talk of a deadly insurance fraud began again. Sherri Sexton would later say in a sworn deposition that she watched Pixie call various insurance agents, getting quotes on policies for Joel Good. Matthe noticed that Willie and Pixie were spending a lot of time together, talking secretly. After one such conversation, Matt pestered Willie to reveal their secret. “I swore I wouldn’t say anything,” Matt later said. “He told me that him and Joel were supposed to be fixing the brakes on the Grand Prix, and he was supposed to rig it up so Willie was supposed to bump the car and the car would fall on Joel.” Willie and Skipper also were drawn to the occult. They found a cassette tape of Satanic chants under the trailer.

Their father showed them how to draw a pentacle in the earth, the five-pointed, circled star. Perhaps not coincidently, the Satanic symbol was very similar to the Fraternal Order of Police badge logo on the bumper stickers of the Sextons’ cars. One night Skipper and Willie ventured out to a nearby sand pit, drew the pentagram, and placed a cat in the center. “We stabbed the cat,” Skipper later recalled. “It died.

Then we played the tape.” They tried to burn the cat with a cigarette lighter, but it wouldn’t light. They went back to the trailer, covered it with paint solvent, then lit it. “Caught that bitch on fire,”

Skipper would recall. “It went up. I’ll tell you, that was scary.”

Christopher later confirmed similar accounts. He said Willie frequently drew pentacles. Chris said Willie had been taken by his father once to West Virginia where they’d been presented with a Satanic book by an old woman. Other Sexton children would later talk of a “Satanic Bible.” One description had it with a pentagram, another with a serpent wrapped around a cross. The black magic did nothing to ease a persistent problem for the clan. With Sherri and her child now part of the brood, money was running low. Sexton started pawning valuables, including some of his arsenal, siblings later said. Within weeks after they moved in at Treaty Road, the Sextons’ neighbors began reporting problems. Robert Wilson, a cooling contractor who’d rented Sexton’s stone dream house, and another nearby neighbor, Angie Danser, would later maintain they called Pasco County sheriff’s deputies a half dozen times to report suspicious behavior. Danser said family members tramped around in her woods almost every night. They kept their front gate locked with a thick metal chain and padlock. Oddly, Wilson later reported a boy he’d been told was Joel Good, “the cocky one”, told him to stay away. Buried spikes were waiting for anyone who came into their yard, Good said. Wilson also would say he heard a baby’s high-pitched screams one night. The only police report on file with Pasco County would be dated August 13, when Robert Wilson called deputies to his house to file a formal complaint. The family wanted to rent his house the same time he did, he told a patrolman. The neighbor seemed to resent him living in the house. The night before, the report stated, someone had broken the windows in Wilson’s Ford Escort and Dodge van, and taken a cassette deck and a necklace from the car. The plates on the cars were also gone. Now his daughters said they’d seen a juvenile at the trailer wearing the jewelry. Nobody in the family seemed to have jobs, Wilson added, but they were always bringing new tools and home improvement items to the trailer. Police dusted the cars and found a partial print. They noted on their report that distinctive boot prints were all around the cars. They found the same prints around the Sexton trailer when they approached the residence, but no one was home.

It was not a high priority crime. The stolen goods were valued at less than $50. But later that week, a detective named William Shallwood returned to Treaty Road to investigate again. He found Estella “Pixie”

Good at home. She said her father was out of town, but would be back in early September. She allowed him to search the house. He noted serial numbers on new tools. But he didn’t find any stolen property at the trailer or the pawnshops he later checked. Ed Sexton stepped up the patrols, warning his young sentries he was convinced cops were watching the house. Then, frustrated that Wilson had not moved out, he was trying to convince another neighbor to sell him some land. When he didn’t, he ordered Willie, Skipper, and Matt to torch the abandoned trailer on the property. Soon, a fire marshall showed up, interviewing the Sextons and other neighbors. Matt would later say the arson investigation put a stop to all plans for Joel Good’s accident for the life insurance. Later, police never were able to determine whether a policy had actually been taken out on Good. On September 20, the Pasco department marked the original burglary file “inactive.” The Sexton family hadn’t hung around to find out they’d been cleared. By then, they had already moved from Treaty Road. Colleen Carson had bought the silver 93 Nissan just about the time the Sexton family came to stay in Indiana. Her brother-in-law had noticed the Sentra, complimented her on it. But she’d wondered out loud if they really needed it. They already had four vehicles in the driveway as it was. She later explained what happened. In the summer, Eddie Sexton called from Florida. He was coming back to the Midwest for business, he told her.

The Canton house was sold now, he said. He had to go to Ohio for the closing. But they were having car trouble. “May really likes that car of yours,” he said. After he offered to take over her payments at the bank, she talked it over with Tuck. Colleen felt sorry for them, she said. “We try to help anybody,” she’d later recall. “Anybody that needs help, we help them. That’s the way we were brought up.” Tuck said fine, but he didn’t want to transfer the title until they paid the loan off. He also wanted some assurance they would be responsible for the car. When Eddie and May showed up back in Indiana, they had a typed sales agreement, promising to take over payments and cover the insurance. It was witnessed by his nephew, David L. Sexton, Jr., and dated August 25, 1993. Dave Jr. apparently had driven them up from Florida. Eddie asked for the payment book. There was nearly a $10,000

balance. “I’m going to make the first payment, and after that I’m going to pay it off entirely,” he said. Colleen said, “Maybe you should go to the bank and have the loan put in your name. Make it legal.” Sexton smiled, saying, “We’ll be paying it off next week anyway. They sold my house in Ohio. The only thing I have to do is sign the paperwork and get my money.” She gave him the keys. But sometime later, Eddie called her again from the road. He wanted Colleen to meet him at the local license bureau and transfer title.

Not until he paid for it, Tuck said. Then, after Tuck left for the road, May Sexton called. “These tags have run out and we can’t go anywhere with these tags expired,”

May said. Colleen held her ground, saying, “Well, if you’re getting money for the house, you’ll have plenty of money to get those plates.”

Jean Sexton later said she drew up a contract when Pixie, Joel, Willie, and Sherri said they wanted to rent the middle mobile home. No fighting. No alcohol. No dope. No cursing. No arguing. The price, $275 a month. The Challenger motor home, the Pontiac, and soon a Nissan were parked at the Dave Sexton compound, Eddie saying that he’d had to move from Shady Hills because of trouble with a neighbor. Eddie and May went back to Ohio, presumably to pick up their checks. The parents gone, all the siblings ignored the rules, scoring more reefer and more booze. They’d also discovered the brain-twisting high of sniffing gasoline. The results were later revealed independently by several Sexton teens. During one party, Joel Good was fed a live goldfish. Matt held his mouth open. Skipper dropped the fish in.

Another time Joel was stripped, a funnel inserted into his rectum and hot sauce poured into his bowel. Another time, Skipper tried to force a broomstick up Joel’s backside. Pixie didn’t try to stop him that time, Matthe later said. Sherri, who refused to take part in the sessions, would say Pixie was the ringleader. Matt would say it was Skipper who usually instigated. Plus, Joel wasn’t a Sexton. He was an easy target. He never fought back. “Because he loved Pixie,” Sherri later said. Most agreed Skipper Lee, little “Ewok,” also suffered. When the baby cried for food or attention, Pixie slapped it in the face a couple of times, stunning it into silence, both Sherri and Matthe later said.