House of Secrets (27 page)

The parties sometimes turned sexual. Later, some siblings said Pixie had sex with Willie, and another time with a cousin, emerging from the bedroom with rug burns on her backside. But Sherri also would later admit she’d had sex with Skipper. “You’re father encouraged that as normal among family members, correct?” an attorney would later ask Sherri. “He didn’t know we was doing it,” she’d answer. Neither did landlord Jean Sexton, not to mention the rest of the gas-driven mayhem.

Jean Sexton was running an errand when Joel Good staggered up shirtless to Dave Sexton’s trailer about 10 a. m. one hot September day. Dave let him into the house. He had lash marks all over his torso and burn marks on his back. “Don’t let them get me,” Joel said, whimpering.

“Don’t let them get me. Until Dad gets home.” Dave asked Joel what happened. He’d been held down and whipped with a belt and a sweeper electrical cord and burned with cigarettes. He’d been hit in the head with a frying pan. Dave asked, by who? “Pixie and the rest of them,”

Joel said. The rest of them were Skipper, Matthe and Willie. They held him down, he said. Pixie did the whipping and burning. Little Dawn and Shasta also joined in, as well as one of Dave’s granddaughters from the other trailer. Dave went to the middle trailer, demanding an answer. Only Pixie would admit to the beating. She didn’t mention they’d been sniffing gasoline all morning. She said Joel had sodomized her two daughters, apparently weeks earlier, on Treaty Road. “That’s something you need to take up with the law,” Dave later told them.

“You shouldn’t take things into your own hands-especially not on my property.” Dave warned her that their father was going to hear about it. Pixie begged him not to tell. Some of the Sexton children asked their uncle to send Joel back over to their trailer. “No, you’re not getting that boy,” Dave Sexton said. When Dave returned to his home, he sat Joel Good down. “I offered to put him on a bus so he could go back to Ohio,” Dave later recalled. “I said, you don’t have to put up with this.” But Joel Good wanted to stay. “Dad will take care of it,”

he said. “He’ll take care of it when he gets back.” When Jean Sexton arrived home and saw Joel she was furious, particularly after she found out her granddaughter had been encouraged to beat Good as the older boys held them down. So had Sherri’s little boy, Christopher Lee, only 3 years old. She stomped over to the middle trailer, found them all sitting around inside. Jean asked Sherri, “Why in the world would you stand by and let this happen?”

“He’s not my husband,” Sherri said, shrugging. “Why should I care?”

Jean turned to Pixie, demanding answers. Pixie said she’d once found blood coming from Shasta’s rectum, believed it was Joel’s doing, he had to be punished. “If that’s the case, you should have taken the child to the hospital and called the law,” Jean said. “But don’t you ever use any of my grandkids to do your dirty deeds,” Jean said.

“Furthermore, you get your stuff and all of you get out of this trailer!” When she left the trailer, she noticed a pentagram drawn in the dirt in her backyard. Some fundamentalists believe in a specific prayer when faced with overwhelming evil. It is called a “Jericho March,” named after the story of Israelites circling the Jericho seven times and bringing down its walls. “I felt the Lord telling me to put on my shoes and go do a Jericho March,” Jean later recalled. “I went around that trailer seven times, praying in the spirit [tongues]. I’m going to tell you, people don’t believe this, but when I finished, all the doors and windows in that trailer were open and they were gone.”

They moved back into the Challenger. They’d lasted only two weeks on their own. They were banned not only from the middle trailer, but Dave Sexton’s mobile home as well. Dave Sexton later recalled the tongue-lashing his brother Eddie gave the children when he returned from Ohio. He called Joel, Pixie, Willie, and Sherri into Dave’s mobile home, where they admitted to the beating. “Eddie said, This boy did nothing to you at all. Keep your hands off him.” He said to Pixie, This is your husband. You’re supposed to love him and honor him.”

” Other siblings would say their father told them privately the abuse of Joel Good had to stop for another reason. As Matt later recalled, his father said, “We don’t need him running off and telling people that he was getting beat.” From now on, the patriarch said, anybody who beat Joel would have to answer to him. Dave Sexton later told his younger brother he noticed a pattern during their stays at his compound. “When you were gone your kids were very disobedient,” Dave said. “I have warned my kids not to be disobedient to their Aunt Jean and Uncle Dave,” Eddie said. “You know I expect my kids to be obedient. “

“I know that,” Dave said. “But I just can’t understand it. When you’re home, they’re obedient. When you’re gone, it’s like a prison yard.” Eddie Sexton began talking about moving on. Dave later recalled he counseled his youngest brother. “I said, Eddie, for heaven’s sake.

Get rid of those kids. Grown kids. With the trouble they’re causing you, you’re going to end up in jail.”

” Eddie Sexton said, “I took care of them all my life.”

“I said, Well, it’s time to separate from them. The time has come to let them go on their own.”

” As the Sexton caravan left Moon Lake and Pasco County in late September, it was clear Eddie Sexton had no intention of taking his advice. The state park sprawled along the Hillsborough River, 15 miles northeast of Tampa, 2,994 acres of hardwood hammock, flood plain forests and pine flatwoods. Cyprus swamps hugged the river and Spanish moss hung from the trees. Some 200 species of birds perched in the park through the seasons. In fall and winter, the most common large birds were the vultures and ravens that swooped to pick at roadkill and scraps left in vacant campsites. Hillsborough River State Park had 114

campsites, a pool, a snack bar, and a canoe launch. But in the cooler fall months, the pool closed and only a third of the campsites were occupied, where campers with water and electrical hookups paid $16.50 a day. The Dodge Challenger rolled into Hillsborough and registered on October 5. The Sextons parked the motor home in Campsite Number 89, one of 32 spots in a large traffic circle surrounded by pines and palmetto trees. Campsite Number 89 was on the woodsy side. Estella Good registered. The title to the Challenger now was in the name of William L. Sexton, the transfer apparently forged sometime on the road. The patriarch announced new rules. The park limited each campsite to eight people, excluding children under five. Fourteen people were making their home in a 24-foot vehicle built to sleep eight. Eddie, May, and Kimberly slept in the double fold-out bed in the front. Pixie, Sherri, and the little children doubled in the bunks in the back. Joel, Willie, Christopher, Matt, and Skipper took turns sleeping in the remaining bunk and the two cars, and on the green shag carpeting that covered the camper’s floor. By day, no one left the mobile home without permission, not even for a trip to the bathroom. The youngest children were not allowed to play outside. Older children were allowed to walk only a couple at a time. Sexton relieved the pressure with two small televisions, one in the camper, one just outside. They had “picnics.” Eddie and May packed lunches or dinners and took some of the children to eat at distant picnic areas, so as not to associate everyone with the campsite. They always had picnics when Sexton returned from the Ohio road trips. At night, they had campfires. If rangers asked questions, some of the Sextons would say they were visiting. The strategy largely worked. One ranger would later say he never saw Eddie or May Sexton on his routine patrols, only Pixie and her kids. Another noticed more people, noting the group always seemed to casually walk to the back of the motor home every time he drove past. There were no complaints about the family or violations of a noise curfew called “quiet time.”

“All noises,” the camp brochure stated, had to be held to a minimum after 11 p. m. October in south Hillsborough County would be one of the wettest on record. Seven inches of rain would fall that month, four inches above normal. On a Saturday 11 days after the Sextons arrived, nearly three inches poured from the clouds in one day.

On clear days, Sexton drilled the boys at distant locations. On others, the TV was perpetually on, the motor home hazy with smoke.

Cigarettes burned between the fingers of Eddie, Pixie, Skipper, Willie, Sherri, and Joel. At night, the boys listened to the radio in the Nissan. Ed Sexton continued nightly Bible readings, then groused about the “sonsabitches” in Ohio and brainstormed ways to defend against an FBI assault. Though Sexton had been talking about the FBI as far back as Indiana, the bureau was not chasing him. In Ohio, there wasn’t even a warrant for Eddie Lee Sexton’s arrest. And the Sextons were no longer the same spit-shined military crew that had first left for Oklahoma. Eddie Sexton wore an old army jacket. The boys still wore camouflage, but the uniforms were fading, their hair home cut and disheveled, their boots dull with Florida dirt. The siblings’ accounts of what happened two weeks into the Sextons’ stay in Hillsborough River State Park would vary somewhat with each witness. But certain facts would remain undisputed. It started with little Skipper Lee Sexton, Joel and Pixie’s “Ewok”, by most accounts, the only child who carried genes from outside the immediate Sexton clan. Or maybe it started with Eddie Lee Sexton’s growing paranoia. Or Pixie’s penchant toward child abuse. Little Skipper Lee was “sick,” everyone would later say. For two weeks the baby hadn’t been able to hold down solids. Awake, he was either listless or fussing, sometimes having cold sweats. A later examination would reveal the infant was teething. Pixie gave the baby Tylenol and rubbed crushed aspirin on his gums. Aspirin has no topical analgesic value, but could become toxic in infants. The baby’s other symptoms were likely related to another Sexton solution. For at least two weeks, Skipper Lee’s mother and grandfather were pouring at least a capful of adult-strength Nyquil into Ewok every day. The green mix of alcohol, decongestants, and antihistamines not only would make the child listless and nauseous, but produce cold sweats, one physician later said, calling it “a gross overdose” of the intended use of the cold remedy. Pixie would later say she wanted to take the child to the hospital. Her father said that was impossible. They were fugitives.

“We’ll all be busted,” he said. Skipper took Pixie aside about the Nyquil, he later recalled. “It says adult Nyquil on there. It doesn’t say child Nyquil. It doesn’t say teething medicine. I says, you’re gonna overdose it. I said, look, the kid is sleeping 17 hours a day.

No baby sleeps 17 hours a day. You’re gonna kill it, then what are we gonna do? And she says, Oh no it won’t. Dad says it’s okay.”

” On a cool Saturday night in mid October, Pixie prepared Ewok for bed.

A half cap of Nyquil, then mother and child curled up in a back bunk.

Willie was on a bunk across the aisle, Sherri in another with Little Bear, Joel Good further to the front of the camper on the floor. Ed, May, and Kimberly up front. Skipper, Christopher, and Matt in the cars outside. The only witnesses to state what happened at about 4 a. m.

the next morning would be Pixie and Willie Sexton. The baby woke up crying, and wouldn’t stop. Pixie would say she tried to cradle Ewok, feed the baby a bottle, but the child pushed it away. Willie woke up, turned his head, and watched. Pixie gave Skipper Lee another half cap of Nyquil, he’d say, but the crying continued. Pixie would say the crying lasted a half hour. But neither Sherri, May, or the boys outside, sleeping with open windows, would say they heard anything that night. Pixie would say her father’s voice boomed from the front of the Challenger. “He told me to get that baby quiet or he would come back and do it,” she’d say.

Willie would recall, “Then I seen my sister jap slap the baby.” Slap it back and forth using both sides of her hand. Maybe 10 times, he later said. Then, Pixie Sexton took her hand and covered the child’s mouth.

Holding it there. When she removed her hand there was silence. She placed little Skipper next to her in the bed. And went to sleep.

Skipper heard his sister Pixie screaming, “Dad!” at twilight.

Christopher and Willie, who were outside tidying up the campsite, heard it, too. Skipper was waking in the Nissan, the windows open. He pulled a knife from his boot and ran inside the motor home. He thought a ranger was busting his father inside. Inside, the baby was laying on his parent’s bed. Pixie, his father, and his mother were standing over the child. The baby’s face was grey, its eyes open and vacant.

Skipper turned to Pixie, saying, “What happened?”

“It just died,” his sister said. His father turned to his mother and said, “It’s crib death.”

“He just can’t breathe,” Skipper said. It was his namesake, his godson. “No baby’s going to die,” he said. Skipper pushed a finger into his mouth, clearing the mucous. He pushed on the baby’s chest, then breathe into its mouth, attempting a crude version of CPR. He would remember trying for a minute, maybe two. Sherri was up now, other family members coming into the camper. When Skipper stopped, when Ewok wouldn’t come back, he looked up and saw mostly stares.

Pixie was crying. His father, he would later say, was “calm as all fuck.” Strangely, in later statements, Joel Good, the baby’s father, was never mentioned as being a participant in the scene. Skipper looked at the baby. “A tear came out of its eye,” he later said. “And that really ticked me oœ” It was the morning of October 19, Estella “Pixie” Good would later recall. She’d be the only Sexton sure of the date. After all, she was the baby’s mother. Somebody said, “Now what are we going to do?” On a sunny Sunday 1,200 miles away in East Liverpool, Ohio, Lana Sexton and her foster mother Tabatha Fisher began what looked like a very good day. The foster family went to an apple orchard. They sipped cider and bumped along on a hayride. The orchard had a face painting artist. He painted a fluffy grey cat on Lana’s cheek, not black. As fundamentalists, the Fishers didn’t celebrate Halloween, less than two weeks away. That night, the family got ready to go to a home Bible study. Lana liked attending them. This night she said, “No, I don’t want to go.” ‘