House of Secrets (35 page)

Her father walked into the woods to help Willie. She knew they were going to bury him. Burton went back to her baby’s death. Yes, there was Nyquil and aspirin and Tylenol, she said. But the baby wouldn’t stop crying. Her father became angry and told her to keep the baby quiet.

That’s when she put her hand on its mouth, she said. Afterwards, the detectives compared notes. “Zombie-like personalities,” Burton said.

Later, as they met more Sexton siblings, they came up with other nicknames. “Not zombies,” somebody said. “Flatliners.”

“And they’re the Sexton Family Robinson,” Mike Willette said. When they lost the sun at nine, evidence techs packed up their gear and suspended the search at Little Manatee. They left behind three small flags in the leafy cover of dead cyprus and ferns 50 yards behind Campsite Number 18, places where the dogs reacted. They left behind a deputy in a county cruiser to preserve the suspected crime scene. Just before midnight, a detective’s car returned to the campground, park ranger Yale Hubbard following behind. Soon flashlights pierced the woodsy darkness as a small contingent of deputies and detectives gathered at the campsite’s edge. It was a cold night, the temperature heading toward the 30s. Somebody was trying to find a spare pair of gloves for the young man who had agreed to go to the crime scene with police. Moments later, they all walked into the woods. The young man stopped at a 30-foot-long tree not 100 feet from the camp picnic table.

He turned and bummed a cigarette from Yale Hubbard. “This is where I did it,”

Willie Sexton said. “Did what?” Hubbard asked. “This is where I strangled him,” Willie said. They continued into the lowlands behind the camp, stopping at the bank of a flood plain. Willie pointed. It took two deputies to remove a pile of rotting cyprus stumps from the spot. “How the hell did you ever get those big logs on there by yourself?” Hubbard asked Willie. “My dad helped me,” he said. The deputies stopped digging only three inches into the peat. The bottom sole of a white and blue running shoe faced upwards, as if someone had taken a shallow dive into the black earth. The rest could wait until morning. At 8:30 a. m. the next day, Friday, an evidence crew slowly unearthe the body as a crowd gathered not far from the police tape strung around Campsite Number 18. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department had dispatched Jack Espinosa, its affable media spokesman to handle reporters, photographers, and TV crews arriving at the scene.

The Sexton story was breaking in Tampa and St. Petersburg with the arrest of Pixie and Willie Sexton the night before. Joel M. Good’s head was three feet into the dirt, his face in the water table. The day he died, he’d layered himself in blue plaid flannel, a sweatshirt, and a pair of white denim pants. A crudely made garrotte of two tree branches and hardly pencil-thick twine remained twisted tightly around his neck. There was a chop wound just above his right wrist. Lesions dotted his body, likely caused by decay. Short vertical puncture wounds were on the back of his left hand. Joel M. Good was only a few weeks shy of his 24th birthday when he died. Now he looked I,000, his skin like a mummy’s embalmed with black, wet Florida peat. That afternoon, Good’s body would join his son’s remains at the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s autopsy room. Little Skipper Lee Good had been found inside the duffle bag just as he was buried, the pacifier still in his mouth, the rattle clutched in his hand. The medical examiner noted no bruises on the face or “acute traumatic injuries.”

Oddly, while Pixie and Willie said the baby was given Nyquil just before it died, a toxicology report showed no alcohol in the baby’s system, its stomach empty. Joel Good, however, had traces of alcohol.

The medical examiner would rule that the infant’s death had been by suffocation. Joel Good had been strangled to death. Not 15 minutes after the excavation of Good’s body began, Mike Willette and Willie Sexton were sitting in a sky-blue room at the Criminal Investigation Bureau in Tampa. Willie sat alone at a table with a cup of coffee, but his arms hung at his side. Tape was running in a video camera as the two went over the details of the homicides again. Willie’s version of Skipper Lee’s death contradicted his sister Pixie’s. He’d seen her give the baby Nyquil and “jap slap” the baby from his bunk across the aisle. Then smother it. He kept using the term, “jap slap,” like an adolescent who’d discovered a new, hip word. Finally Willette asked, “What do you mean by jap slap?” Back and fori with the hand, 10 times, Willie said. Willette moved on to Joel. Joel wasn’t happy about his son’s death, Willie said. Really, Willette thought. “At some point, it’s decided that Joel doesn’t want to cooperate anymore … is that correct?” Willette asked. “Yeah,” Willie said. “Something comes up to do something to Joel? “Yeah.” Willette asked, what was that? “What my dad had planned at first, he had it planned at Hillsborough, before we moved.”

“Had planned what at Hillsborough?”

“To take Joel out.”

“When you say take Joel out you mean … “Murder him.”

“Who was going to murder him?” He, his father, and Pixie talked about it, he said. The father walked him and Pixie around the campground, and talked about murdering Joel. One idea was to take Joel back to Ohio and shoot him, bury him up there. The threesome talked about the murder during several trips back to Ohio, he said. Willette wondered about the trips, why Pixie always went along. She had old state ID

with the name Estella May Good, the same as her mother’s, he said.

She’d cash the checks made out to her mother for Willie’s Social Security. “What else happened on those trips?” Willette asked.

Willie froze. “You can talk about it,” Willette said. “It’s all right.” He mumbled something.

“What happened?” Willette asked again. “They had a relationship in the back of the car.”

“What kind of relationship.” He froze again. “They have sexual intercourse?” Willette asked. “Yeah.” Willie said he was driving.

It was on the interstate, during a trip from Indiana. They had a blanket with them in the backseat. Willette asked, “Did your sister agree to this?”

“Yeah, she agreed to it.”

“Did your dad have sex with anybody else in the family?”

“That’s the only one I know of. I heard a lot more things.”

“From who?”

“My uncle Dave. My dad told my uncle Dave.”

“And your uncle Dave told you?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of stories were those?”

“When this first started, he sent my sister Sherri to Uncle Dave’s because he didn’t want no blood tests taken. Because Sherri’s baby happens to belong to my dad.” Willette moved back to Joel Good’s murder. “Let’s go back to Hillsborough State Park. What was Joel bitching about?”

“My dad was afraid of him getting loose and calling somebody and telling somebody about his son.” Willette wanted to know what Willie thought about the prospect of murdering his brother-in-law. “I didn’t think it was right,” he said. Willette moved to Manatee. “Were there more conversations about Joel?”

“Yeah.” More with Pixie and their father, he said, adding, “They decide to take him out up there.”

“Who decides this?”

“My sister and him.”

“And they tell you how to do this?”

“Yeah. My dad tried to teach me how to use my arm, to choke him.” His father had learned it in Vietnam, he said.

“What was the final decision on how to kill Joel?” Willette asked.

“With a knife or rope.” The detective moved to the day of the murder.

Willie said he was watching TV with Joel, his sister Sherri and Pixie, while the rest of the family was on the picnic. “My sister Estella came out, took me around the corner of the motor home so Joel Good wasn’t there, and she told me, Willie, this is the day to take Joel out.”’ “Was this pre-planned?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Who planned that?”

“Probably my dad.”

“And dad your was going to take other people off for a picnic?” Willie nodded. “Did your dad tell you this?”

“Naw.”

“Estella told you that?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do then?”

“I said, “Can’t you?” Like, Do I have to? Joel didn’t tell anybody.”’

“And?”

“She said, no.”

“What happened next?”

“She says take him back there and do away with him.”

“Where?”

“In the woods.” Willie said he had rope in his side pocket. “How did you get Joel to go in the woods with you?”

“She told me to tell him there was a lot of stolen stuff in the woods that they needed to get rid oœ” Willette asked, “How did Joel die?”

They were walking, balancing on a fallen tree, horsing around like young boys. He took the rope out. “I was thinking of everything my dad and my sister told me to do, you know. Then I wrapped it around his neck.”

“You were behind Joel?”

“I think I had the rope in a knot. With a stick in it.”

“But you don’t remember?”

“I think I did have a stick in that rope.”

“Does Joel know this is coming?”

“No.” He wrapped the garrotte aroundjoel’s neck and crossed it, pulling. They both fell off the tree, Willie landing on top of Good.

Willette wanted to know what Joel did.

He yelled “ahh” real loud, Willie said, adding, “My sister thought he yelled Eddie’.”

“Were your sisters out there?”

“That’s when they heard.” They came out in the woods, he said “How long did he struggle for?”

“Like a minute. Then I went all paranoid.”

“You went all paranoid?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do?”

“Tried to blow my breath back in his mouth. Make him come back alive.”

“But he was already dead.”

Willie moaned, his only emotion during the interview. His sisters went back to the campsite and got his dad, he said. “My dad got there awful fast after that.”

“What happened then?”

“He says, Oh my God.”

“Then what happened?” Pixie went to Walgreen’s in Sun City to buy a spade after nobody could locate the army shovel used to bury Skipper Lee.

“Who carried Joel back there [to the grave]?”

“Me and my dad.”

“Did he get stabbed or cut or anything else>” On the wrist, Willie said. “Why?”

“Because my dad told me to chop his hands off so there was no identification. “

“Did you cut his hands off?”

“Just a little cut. I couldn’t do it, because I was getting sick.”

He’d tried with a machete, Willie said. The machete was still under the seat of the motor home.

The night before, Skipper Sexton had told Willette about the plan to abduct Ray Hesser. Willette also committed Willie’s version to tape.

Pixie was involved in that plot, too, he said. “My dad was talking about switching his ID, his whole lifestyle,” Willie said. He added, “Estella got fresh with him.”

“Did she have sex with him?”

“No. She was going to. They was close.” She’d only kissed him, he said.

Willette wondered if there were any other homicides or assaults Willie knew about. “Has anybody else been hurt in this thing?”

“No.” He wondered if his father had ever sexually assaulted him.

“Ever put anything on you, William?” Willette asked. “No,” he mumbled. “You can tell, William.”

“Naw.” Willette paused. “Anything else you want to say, William?”

Willie paused for a couple seconds, then said, “Yeah, I wish I could take Joel’s place.” It was too easy. In a way, even the seasoned homicide detective felt sorry for the kid. Minutes after he finished with Willie, Willette met with Eddie Lee Sexton in another interview room. Face to face, he seemed hardly the bigger-than-life figure portrayed by his children. He’d been booked into the jail measuring only 5-foot-9, weighing only 140 pounds. Age 51. Hair, brown. Eyes, hazel. Not black and piercing as others would describe him in many interviews to come. Sexton signed a consent to interview form, and soon was explaining a litany of physical ailments, multiple Sclerosis, back surgeries, cancer between his shoulder blades. The baby died in its sleep, possibly SIDS-related, he said. Willie, Pixie, and Joel left with the baby, later telling him they’d buried it in Hillsborough State Park. Sexton said he’d discovered Joel’s murder when he’d returned from a family picnic. Sherri and Pixie had told him. He went in the woods and saw Willie with the body. Sexton told him Willie said, “He was going to tell on me.”

“About what?” Willette asked.

“Sir, I have no idea,” Sexton said. Willie done it. Willie buried him.

He didn’t want any involvement in the whole matter, he said. The whole sad situation was the fault of the FBI and the criminal justice system, he added. They were the ones who had them on the run. Even before Willette studied Sexton’s prison record, he had the impression. He’d seen it hundreds of times with hundreds of subjects in interview rooms.

“Ex-con trying to paint the best picture of himself,” he later said.

But as interviews with children, relatives, and other fire and police authorities would continue over the next five months in Tampa and during a half dozen trips to Canton, Ohio, Willette would amend his description of the soft-speaking, pity-seeking hypochondriac. “Eddie Lee Sexton is the devil,” Willette said. Later that day, they searched the motor home parked at Dave Sexton’s compound and found the machete under the driver’s seat. Willette tried not to breathe through his nose in the Challenger. Odors of smoke and urine wafted up from the carpet and beds. Boxes, pots and pans, shoes, toiletries, and clothes were crammed in every nook and cranny. A cross was draped across the driver’s seat. Clothes also were piled a foot deep in the aisle.