House of Secrets (42 page)

Later, several jurors would say they found all the siblings lacked credibility. After Skipper, the state rested and Terrana launched his defense. It would consist of only two witnesses. He’d already been building his theory in cross-examination, that Willie and Pixie had killed Good to hide their involvement in the death and burial of baby Skipper Lee. Pixie not only set up Joel’s ambush, she’d probably stabbed her husband as well. Earlier, a medical examiner acknowledged some of the holes in Joel Good’s skin might have been superficial stabs, but most likely, she insisted, they were part of natural decay.

He also had the puncture marks on his left hand. No one, however, testified to seeing any blood on Pixie Good. The stabbing dispute drove home the gruesome nature of the crime. Pruner brought in Mike Willette to introduce a box of Good’s clothes, the detective insisting he’d seen no knife holes in the material. The box remained closed as Judge Mitcham told the jury they could examine the clothes later. But he had a warning. He complained he could detect a “very strong stench and odor” from the box. He warned the jury to use rubber gloves if they chose to examine the clothing during deliberation.

Sherri Sexton took the stand on behalf of her father, detailing Pixie’s arguments with Joel, the gasoline parties, Pixie beating her baby, and events the day of the death. She said she’d seen Willie and Pixie have sex “a lot.”

“Describe the events leading up to [Pixie, Willie and Joel] going into the woods, if you know,” Terrana said. “They asked Joel if he wanted to go get some wood with them.”

“Who asked Joel that?”

“Pixie and Willie. And Joel said no and then Pixie forced him to go … She grabbed his arm and made him go.” Later, she heard Joel yelling, “Ed!” She told her father that her brother and sister were “hurting Joel” when he returned from the picnic. The patriarch saying, “Oh, shit!” That night, Pixie told her she sliced Joel’s wrist, Sherri swore. “She was happy,” Sherri said. “She said that she was glad that he was dead.”

“What was your dad’s attitude toward Willie Sexton?” Terrana asked.

“He was mad and upset.”

“Did your father ever talk to Willie or say anything to Willie to express this feeling he had?” Sherri said, “He said if anybody else gets killed he’s going to call the cops.” During cross, Pruner asked, “As a matter of fact, you hated Pixie growing up and even while you’re down here, right?”

“Yes,”

Sherri said. Pruner had her tell the jury about her flight to Florida with her son to avoid a blood test. The incest. “On at least one occasion [your father] made you have sex with an uncle, correct?”

“No.”

“Uncle Dave? No?”

“My Uncle Dave raped me and I told my father about it.” Pruner made several more points. She admitted she’d only seen Willie with a machete. She didn’t see Pixie with a knife. She admitted her father was worried about Joel going back to Ohio. “Your father often said a good snitch is a dead snitch, right?”

“Yes.”

“And after Joel’s death, your father referred to Joel as either a rat or a snitch, didn’t he?”

“Yes.” Terrana finished with one more witness, Jean Sexton, who confirmed the beating of Joel Good. Eddie Lee Sexton did not take the stand. In some ways, Terrana figured, the jury got a good look at his witness in the video, without a cross-examination. Several jurors later said they thought he sounded believable on the videotape.

After lunch, the attorneys gave their closing arguments. Jay Pruner began with the video. I would gladly die for my country because my family is my country.” Those are the words of Eddie Sexton captured on the videotape that he created for President Clinton. And no truer words were ever spoken by Eddie Lee Sexton, because he ran his family as a dictator would a country. He wasn’t a benevolent dictator either … “Much as the forefathers of our country blew holes into the mountains for transportation for the train system, Eddie Lee Sexton dynamited the bedrock of the personality and the will of his children through the incessant bombardment of abuse … Why? To preserve the national security, the security of the family, to preserve the national secrets, the family secrets, the secrets that he spoke to his children, his daughters who then became his wives.” But there was a traitor in their midst, Pruner argued. Joel M. Good. And for that, he faced the penalty of death. Terrana’s argument didn’t skirt the family history.

“I suppose if he were on trial for all the other things we’ve heard about, being a dictator, sexual abuse and on and on and on, and being the worst father of the century, I would tell each of you, yeah, the state’s proven its case. But Mr. Sexton stands trial for his life for a crime he did not commit. He stands trial for first degree murder.”

Simply, he argued, motive didn’t support the state’s theory. What did Eddie Lee Sexton have to fear from Good disclosing his son’s death?

There’d been no testimony that he’d ordered the baby killed. He wouldn’t have been charged. But, “Pixie Good had her husband tortured.

She tortured him. And when he was speaking his last words because she loved him so much, he didn’t call for her. He didn’t call for Willie.

He didn’t call for Skipper. He called for the man sitting at the table right there, Eddie. He called for Eddie, the man who hated him, if you believe Pixie Good. That’s who he called for in his last-ditch attempt to stay alive.” Pruner answered in his rebuttal. “Joel Good yelled for Ed. Does that surprise you? Who ran things? Who was the arbiter?

Who was the one who had physical domination and control?” The reality of their father on trial for his life, seemed to open a new gate back at the Holiday Inn. The siblings, including the oldest halfbrother Patrick, talked deep into the night with authorities staying in nearby rooms. The house on Caroline Street was a temple dedicated to meeting their parents’ insatiable carnal needs. Shelly and Matt told of taking a candy bar out of the master bedroom and being punished by being locked up in their rooms without food for three days. Food from the locked refrigerator was used to show favoritism. Once, when boys brought back regular Kentucky Fried Chicken instead of “extra crispy,”

they were forced to eat nothing but chicken for days. Their parents locked them in closets for wetting themselves as young children, then beat them when they were let out the next day. The Christmas tree was taken up and down during the holidays, the holiday canceled. Once, their father threw it across the room. The patriarch ran around the house naked, draped in an American flag. He claimed to have an 11-inch penis, calling himself “Super Dick.” He flashed them every day.

The father sent Patrick out to buy condoms and “hard-on” cream, a numbing lotion to deter male orgasm. Eddie Lee had a blow-up sex doll.

Girls went to the master bedroom for “private talks.” He raped some of them with the hardon cream. He used a hand-held dildo and a strap-on.

Both parents shaved the girls’ pubic hair. They instructed the children on how to have sex with one another. When Pixie testified her mother knew about the murder, the children became agitated. They said their mother knew “everything” going on in the house and on the road.

Their mother sometimes restrained them during their father’s sexual assaults. Sherri said her mother was present during her rapes, three or four times a year in the master bedroom. She’d ask for her mother’s help, but the matriarch would only laugh. She was lured to the bedroom after being accused of telling family secrets at school.

Sherri described the marriage ritual. She was 17 at the time, she said. Her father read vows from the black book with a “star” on it.

Her mother took photographs. Lana and Kim were married, too. Shelly became very emotional. She said she was made fun of by her parents because she was not as sexually developed as her sisters. She began crying, saying every time she looked in the mirror she saw a “monster”

because of the trauma she’d been through. She felt the whole world could see it, too. Judee Genetin later would decline to discuss the details of the hotel room sessions, but talked about the impact after the bodies were discovered and her Florida trip. In the two years she’d spent on the case, she’d had doubts about some of the most outrageous stories, believing some disclosures were “one step beyond reality.” But no more. The true evil was not in the rituals. It was much more basic. “For the most part, I think my children have the nicer things,” Genetin would say. “For the Sextons, it was all under lock and key. It was all backwards. Everything, and every child, was kept to benefit them. ” Genetin, and others, had also discerned structured roles within the family madness. Eddie was the patriarch.

Pixie was his lieutenant, his watchful eyes. Skipper was his sergeant, a wily enforcer. Willie was his muscle. Lana was his mystical figure.

Christopher, the loved one. James, the runt. Shelly, the outcast.

Kimberly, the innocent mascot. Matt, the quiet one. “Sherri,” Genetin would say, “was pure victim.” That left the matriarch. As the trial wound down, Genetin was thinking about May Sexton. Back in Ohio, there appeared to be no solid plans by the Stark County authorities to pursue more charges. “She’s worse than him,” Genetin later said. “She’s such a liar. She knew all this was going on. She participated in it. She was part of it. She tried to latch on to this battered woman thing, and that’s just crap. She was no battered woman. She was part of the plan.” The jury began deliberations the next morning. They lasted only 2 hours and 35 minutes. Jay Pruner and others thought the fast deliberation meant they’d rejected the state’s entire case. As the verdict was read, Eddie Sexton sat impassively, his head slightly bowed. Sherri Sexton broke into sobs in the audience. Otis Sexton hugged Sherri and his sister Nellie, then crossed the aisle and whispered to Teresa Boron, “Congratulations. We got him.” Later, one after another, the jurors told Rick Terrana and reporters why they’d convicted Eddie Lee Sexton. It wasn’t Pixie or her siblings or the stories of graphic abuse that tipped the scale of justice. “It was the greatest single lesson I’ve ever learned in the practice of law,”

Terrana later said. The reason was the only emotional witness sandwiched between all the Flatliners. It was Gail Novak, the librarian. “She had no reason not to tell the truth,” one said. The next day, on October 7, after three witnesses testified to Eddie Lee Sexton’s character, the jury met for another 2 hours for the trial’s second phase. Their vote was 7-5. One less, and the law would have required Sexton be given mandatory life imprisonment. The patriarch stood calmly, chained, wearing prison overalls, as the punishment was read. When he left the courtroom, he was taking his first steps toward Old Sparky, Florida’s electric chair. Afterwards, Sexton’s sister Nellie, who’d testified on her brother’s behalf in the penalty phase, said if all the stories she’d heard were indeed true, there was a place for his wife Estella May Sexton. Nellie said, “She ought to be sitting on his lap.” Eddie Lee Sexton squatted on the concrete floor like a catcher in the triangular holding cell at the Hillsborough County Jail, fielding questions from St. Petersburg Times reporter Bill Duryea in the patriarch’s only interview in the days after the trial. Sexton had been sentenced not only to death on October 6, but given 15 years on the conspiracy to murder charge. Later, Estella Sexton Good would be sentenced to six years in prison. She broke down sobbing, the first public emotion she’d shown through the entire Sexton ordeal. Duryea, who’d covered the trial, was struck by Eddie Lee Sexton’s hands. They were as smooth as a surgeon’s, and his long fingers made the kind of graceful movements people expect from an artist. Eddie Lee Sexton likened himself to the Savior. “I know what Christ felt on the cross,”

he said. “He was condemned to death for something he never done.” An analytical savior. Sexton said he believed he knew what had happened.

The jury had convicted him for outrageous stories, the “lies” his children had told. He claimed to have an IQ of 160, saying “I’ll match my IQ with anybody.” He said, “I’m innocent of anything and everything.” He denied rituals involving dead babies. “My God, no,” he said. “That’s ungodly.” Pixie and Willie had planned the murder, he claimed. She was not the girl he raised. “She was always a good child,” he said. “It started after she married Joel.” Duryea asked him about the drills, the instructions on how to make a garrotte. “I was teaching my one young son how to protect himself from sex offenders,”

Sexton said. They were discussing why the jury had convicted him when Sexton said something rather odd, or perhaps telling. “Let’s take the Menendez brothers,” Sexton said. “They killed their mother and father.

It was a vicious act. Their defense was sex abuse. But society accepted it.” Eddie Lee Sexton had never claimed to be a victim of sex abuse in his criminal defense or during the penalty phase of the trial.

He didn’t claim it with Duryea, either. He’d only admit he’d erred in his fatherly role. “I don’t know where I went wrong,” he said. “But evidently I went wrong somewhere. Maybe I was just too good to them.”

He added, “I’m guilty of one thing. And that is trying to preserve and protect my family.” For months, the conviction split the extended Sexton family into two camps, everybody versus Otis. The whole affair just didn’t square with the Eddie Lee they knew, some of his own siblings said. Sexton’s 65-year-old sister Nellie Hanft had taken the stand in the penalty phase. She told of comfortably taking her granddaughter over to visit the house on Caroline. She’d seen one child spanked, Patrick with a belt, for stealing a walkie-talkie.

Eddie was a “jolly” man, she said. He cut the hair of her husband, a stroke victim. He and his boys fixed things around her house. He played Santa Claus, bringing gifts to her daughter’s children. Eight months after the trial, Nellie Hanft sat near a framed, vintage portrait of her parents in her neatly kept Canton home and explained to a visitor the childhood she remembered. She was 13 when Eddie was born. Her mother Lana was 42. All her mother’s children were born at home, not unusual in the remote hollows of southern West Virginia. A doctor for the Island Creek Coal Company signed his birth certificate five days after his birth. Eddie Lee was born in a small house just up the hill in a little group of homes called Baisden Bottom, a half mile from the Verdonsville, West Virginia, post office. Most of their lives, the large family made do in three-bedroom homes. “I suppose we were poor,” Nellie said. “But we didn’t know we were poor, because everybody around was poor, too.” The family was frequently on the move, William Dewey Sexton taking new jobs. They stayed in the counties that hugged the rivers, the Big Sandy and the Ohio, America’s Bible Belt. They left one house in Logan County after a house fire. Their father served a stint as the sheriff of Pike County, Kentucky. When Eddie was seven, the family moved to Ironton, Ohio, just across the Ohio River from Ashland, Kentucky, where he preached in a mission.