House of Secrets (39 page)

“I told him I accept his apology, but it ain’t going to bring nothing back.”

There was no objective, outside observer of this family, Terrana discovered. Park rangers and others described the family as placid and well-behaved. Terrana would argue that the new stories about dead infants and rituals in Canton should not be heard by the jury. At the same time, he believed they were symptomatic of their credibility. The state was about to base a death penalty case on accounts from what Terrana called “the most dysfunctional family in America.” Sherri Sexton was under psychiatric care when Terrana took her deposition in August. A psychiatrist had prescribed her Depakote and Xanax. She said she and Pixie were not close. She maintained Joel and her father got along well. He was always trying to counsel Joel and Pixie, help their marriage. She remembered her father’s reaction when he arrived from the picnic, Pixie reporting that Willie had killed Joel. “He said, Shitshe recalled. Willie and Pixie blamed each other in an argument just after the murder. In the following days, Sherri heard her father tell Willie, “You shouldn’t have done it,” and “I can’t believe you did it.”

“Do you remember Willie’s response?” Terrana asked. “He never said nothing,” Sherri said. “Why do you think Willie killed Joel?”

“He was afraid that he’d tell about the baby’s death … I feel Willie and Pixie got together.” Pixie was no helpless victim, Sherri also said. “I feel she was in love with my dad,” Sherri said. “Because I read a note once.”

“And what did that note say?” Terrana asked.

“There’s nobody like him. She really loves him, wants to have kids by him, and she would like to marry him.” Sherri said she’d found the note after her parents were arrested, in the motor home’s safe. Then she burned it. Charles “Skipper” Sexton’s deposition in August also produced for the defense. Skipper painted a damning portrait of Pixie, saying she was Willie’s sexual partner. He’d seen them having sex in Florida by peeking through a window with Matt, and another time in the motor home. In a deposition hours earlier, Matt had denied this, saying he only saw Pixie having sex with one of Dave Sexton’s sons.

Pixie spawned the atmosphere for the beatings of Joel by accusing him of sodomy, Skipper said. Willie pushed the plan to kill Joel, Skipper said. His father told Willie he was “crazy.” He recalled an Ohio trip after the baby’s death and more discussion. Willie was saying Joel was going to get “the heat” on them, “We should take him out.”

“Was there any response by either Pixie or your dad or you at that point?” Terrana asked. “You know, Pixie had a smile on her face because she was wanting it done.” Skipper continued feeding Terrana what he needed. Pixie called Joel an “asshole,” wishing he was dead.

Pixie tried to solicit him to do the killing the day of the murder, Skipper swore.

“She said, I’ll give you a million dollars if you kill Joel.” I was like, You’re stupid.”

” Skipper said when they drove to get the shovel, Pixie told him, “I’m glad it’s finally done.”

“And what did you say?” Terrana asked. “I called her a sick bitch …

Uoel] was like a brother to me, you know.” But Skipper’s story also shifted during the deposition. He said Willie had told him that “Dad thinks I should do it,” when Willie brought up the plan a couple of days before the killing. His father told Pixie she would be “erased”

if she didn’t stop “running her mouth” about the murder. Terrana had compared Skipper’s statements to Steve Ready with a previous conversation he and the attorney had. “Charles, you’ve given me a statement about the death of Joel Good today that’s now different …

Now, in my head, you’ve told me four stories. Why should I believe what you told me today?”

“Because that’s for me,” Skipper said. “The other stories wasn’t for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The story I gave you today, that’s a true story.”

“The stories you gave Ready weren’t true?”

“Half and halœ” A jury would appreciate that kind of honesty, Terrana thought. He had scores of inconsistences to shoot at in cross-examinations with many of the state’s witnesses. Rick Terrana couldn’t wait. She was back, this time with her 3-month-old daughter, Courtney, needing a place to stay again. Anne Greene looked at Shelly Croto. She’d gained at least 40 pounds. She bared little resemblance to the frail girl with the pleading blue eyes. Anne had attended her baby shower, showed her how to nurse in the hospital, and counseled her on marital problems. Now, on a warm day in July, Shelly Croto was telling Anne that her husband had smacked her. She was leaving him.

She also thought she might be pregnant again. The Sextons had turned Anne’s life upside down. Over the past two years, they’d endured one Shelly crisis after another. Anne thought, and what was Shelly doing?

Was she getting therapy, or ioining an incest survivors group? No, she was living in what appeared to be an abusive situation and having babies. Just like her mother.

One more time, Anne decided. Anne made arrangements to find the young mother housing. She lined up other support services. Then, after two days, Shelly left, calling Anne from a pay phone, telling her she was at the bank, telling her she was doing errands. Then nothing. Anne called Steve Ready and they went looking for her. They stopped at her trailer and looked around Bolivar. By the time the night was over, they learned she was back with her husband. Anne called local social services. Machelle had told social workers a different story. No, she hadn’t been abused. David Croto, meanwhile, was saying he’d never touched her, and never would. Shelly had told him she’d gone to visit an aunt. Shelly seemed to be playing Anne and Dave against each other, the allegiances always shifting, just like in the house on Caroline Street. Dave Croto later said sometimes he felt like he was living with three or four different people. “She exaggerates, sometimes makes up stories,” he said. “Sometimes for no reason. Simply to get attention.

” Maybe, Anne figured, it was because the trial was approaching. Maybe that’s all she knew how to do. Maybe she needed more emotional support to face her father in court. Shelly Sexton Croto, Anne decided, would have to find it somewhere else. Anne Greene had nothing left to give.

He reached out with letters and phone calls, writing almost daily-to May or Pixie, Eddie Jr. or Skipper or Sherri. He told his correspondents to pass his words along to those he could not reach directly. Eddie Lee Sexton had plenty of money for stationery. He was still getting compensation checks. He paid Dave and Jean Sexton $500

to retrieve his backlog of checks from his Massilon post office box and deposit them into his inmate account. The letters were a study in manipulation, half wths and changing alliances. In his early letters, he called Pixie his “Little One.” He sent her money, gave gentle fatherly advice, and promised exoneration. “Don’t worry, honey, they are not going to convict you on the baby or Joel, cause I will go all the way with you,” he wrote. He extorted her to tell only “the truth.”

But in all the letters, he reviewed “the truth.” Writing, “I told them that Joel and Willie was suppose to take the baby to the hospital to get a certificate of death and make sure it wasn’t in a coma, and they left in the car and came back in about two hours … it was about three or four days later that they told us that they buried it.” Or, on Willie killing Joel, claiming it was Willie’s plan[Willie] said I told him to hurt Joel, but you know that I didn’t, and I know you that you didn’t know either … Little one, you are not to blame for Joel.

Willie made that decision on his own.” He wrote that Willie was in Otis’s camp, that Otis had secured power of attorney and was receiving Willie’s Social Security checks. Willie was telling “lies.”

He told her to “keep her chin up” during her psychological collapse.

He advised her to take a plea deal for manslaughter on the baby, writing that a prison term of “two to five years won’t be bad.” The tone was always serene, except one letter sent on Valentine’s Day.

Investigators had just taken Sexton’s blood. The search warrant had tipped him that she’d accused him of rape and incest. Sherri and Machelle had accused him as well. “Honey, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” he wrote. “Let me know if it’s any truth or not.” When it became clear she’d turned on him, he went to work on Willie, through letters to Eddie Jr. Tell Willie, he wrote, that Pixie had “turned state’s evidence.” Tell Willie, “Why don’t you involve Pixie? Are you going to let Pixie lie on you and get out of it, or are you going to tell?” Then he came right out with it. “Willie, if you want a good defense, use the fact that Joel molested the kids Roach and Tigger and you and Pixie wanted to stop it …” He pushed different buttons with each child. He called Skipper “Running Bear,” writing from “Big Running Bear.” He promised him money, saying he was being offered “from $50,000 to $75,000” from Maury Povich, Montel Williams, and Geraldo Rivera, but “I have to put it in your name.” He made it sound like the rest of the siblings were supporting him. “I guess the only one against me is Sherri,” he wrote Skipper in an August letter.

“Remember son, I love you and trust you.” In another, he made Skipper feel like the chosen, writing, “I guess I can only depend on you.”

Eddie Lee Sexton had a name for his pending murder trial. He wrote Skipper, “I’m sure that I’ll beat The Big One… Soon we’ll be on that highway, heading for parts unknown.” Dave Sexton rolled into his Tampa deposition in a wheelchair, black sunglasses on. He told attorneys he was “legally blind.” It was an odd inconsistency, considering that in a later interview he’d say he “saw” the burn and whip marks on Joel Good’s back. His interviewer also noticed in their session that he appeared to be watching an Elvis concert on his living room TV. But Dave Sexton told the attorneys he “knew” all about Joel’s beating and Pixie’s involvement. He also said he didn’t know Eddie had any “legal problems” when he showed up in Florida. Dave Sexton also would maintain Sherri had never been raped when she was staying with the family. Pixie had not had sex with anyone in his immediate family.

“My sons wouldn’t do nothing like that,” he said. He implied the family’s problems were all his brother Otis’s doing, saying “I wouldn’t turn my back on him.” He had a running feud with Otis Sexton as well, he said, claiming Otis once called his wife “a whore.” Pruner found “The Ice Man,” Paul Shortridge. From a prison phone, he denied any involvement with any of the Sextons. He told Pruner, “I wouldn’t believe a damn thing Eddie Lee Sexton said.” But as the heavy heat hit Tampa Bay, it was not Dave Sexton who had Pruner concerned. His best witnesses to the immediate aftermath of the murder were in trouble.

Pixie suffered from continuing psychiatric problems. And Charles “Skipper” Sexton’s impeachability was growing by leaps and bounds. In the spring, after a police foot chase, he’d been arrested and confessed to a home burglary in Massilon. He faced certain conviction. His address now was the Stark County Jail. The state had only one outside observer of bizarre behavior by the Sexton Family Robinson, Augusta Townsend and her story of the Sexton’s stay at her Canton home after the standoff. But she was emotional, flamboyant, and furious at Eddie Lee Sexton for scamming her out of money. “She was a walking mistrial,” Pruner later said. Pruner feared the siblings wouldn’t hold up on the stand, their father only feet away. Pixie and Skipper had handed over some of the letters they were receiving from the patriarch.

It didn’t surprise the prosecutor that Skipper seemed adrift. Pruner began to focus on the disabled camper named Ray Hesser. As the accounts of the planned kidnapping unfolded, it occurred to the assistant state attorney that all the elements were in place for another case. On June 22, the state filed a conspiracy to murder charge against Eddie Lee and Willie Sexton. If Pruner could try the conspiracy before the capital case, it would be a telling dry run, and more. It was another calculated gamble. “This a nineties’ word, but we had the potential to ‘empower’ those kids,” he’d later recall.

“They see that they can testify and convict Daddy, Daddy’s hold over them is, maybe not cut, but less. The flip side is that if they testify and Daddy walks, I’m shit out of luck in the murder trial.” On Tuesday, June 28, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Bob Mitcham brought all parties together in another of several hearings on the growng rexton case. Judge Mitcham, known as “Brother Bob” among his admirers and adversaries, was one of Tampa’s most formidable defense attorneys before joining the judicial ranks. As a jurist, he sometimes quoted scripture and posted passages on his office wall. The white-haired judge also was known for his folksy humor as he sent scores of defendants off to prison or freedom in one of the county’s busiest courts. There was nothing funny about Willie Sexton as he sat rigidly in the jury box next to a uniformed deputy, shackled and wearing jail blues. His left arm was bandaged at the wrist. In jail, he’d tried to slash his veins with the broken parts of a radio headset. His attorney Nick Sinardi was asking for additional funds for more psychiatric exams. Mitcham granted the request, and also granted a request by Sinardi and Terrana that Willie and Eddie Lee be tried separately.

Sinardi had argued his client was terrified of his codefendant in the case. There were a couple more matters. Mitcham set the first murder trial for September 26, then the conspiracy trials for August 29, saying the conspiracy should be tried first because the state could use the outcome as an aggravating factor in seeking the death penalty.

Judge Mitcham also was prepared to rule on a request made five days earlier by Eddie Lee Sexton. The patriarch wanted his guilt or innocence to be decided by the tribal council of the Eastern Allegheny Indian Nation. He claimed to be a member of the tribe. He’d presented Judge Mitcham a membership card with his Indian name on it, “Running Bear.” Mitcham ruled Indian status didn’t apply to a murder case.