Kill the Ones You Love (13 page)

CHAPTER 23

Gabe continued, “If you go through my past and you talk to people I've known, you go to Sydney, Australia, and talk to a number of families over there, they're gonna tell you the same thing. But we don't make paper out of it. You know what I'm saying? I don't put a medal on my chest. I mean, that's not what it's about.

“Like Michael Jackson, you know, doing crazy things. So, man, that's it! That's all there is to it. My motive? Protection of my family, because I'm not gonna wait for a judge to put some guy . . .” His mind went off on another angle. “Some guy, I believe in Bingham County, Idaho, raped his pregnant stepdaughter and been sent to some other county.” Gabe seemed to indicate that the person who raped her got off without any conviction.

Troutner said those kinds of things were frustrating to a police officer.

Gabe alleged that Bob Kennelly was about to rape Kalea. And then he said, “I'm not gonna let Kalea ever believe that at one point her dad would ever let anything like that happen to her. So if I have to die, if I have to go to jail, and have to spend the rest of my life in prison, I will do that for her, because she's the most important thing I've ever had in my life. No matter who takes care of her, she'll always know that she was loved.”

Troutner said, “Well, she's a beautiful, happy little girl.”

Gabe continued, “She'll always be. She'll probably teach the individuals that get to take care of her a whole hell of a lot more than they'll ever teach her.” Then he laughed.

Troutner said, “Yeah, some souls just shine and affect people around them for their whole life. I can certainly understand why you made such a positive impression on Doug and Judy. I mean, you're very well spoken. You're obviously very intelligent. You have a sort of calm demeanor that just sorta brings my blood pressure down and—”

Gabe did not let him finish. Instead, he said, “He's an amazing Creator, gentlemen, and that's the way He is. He is no angry individual who hates us all. You feel confident. You feel like everything is going to be just fine, and you feel like you wish that your kids would feel that way when they sit next to you. That everything is going to be all right.”

Coady interrupted Gabe and said, “I think Detective Troutner and I, we're not adversarial kinda guys. We're more into conversations. We're not here to be the bad guys.”

Gabe agreed and replied, “I didn't even believe that for a second. I truly believe you guys are here working to provide something for yourselves, for your own ambitions, for family. I mean, you're doing a good job. There's a lot of people out there, when I first started my career in law enforcement—I had a heart for seeing injustices. Shit, I've seen 'em my whole life. I think I poked my first dead body when I was seven. Oh, my gosh, it's horrible! I didn't even know what it was. I mean, you see that stuff and you realize we need the business of preventing it. We're in the business of cleaning up after fucking addicts. Sorry for my language.”

Troutner expounded on this code of conduct. “Um, you're called to do this, because you want to help. He thinks you can help, so He calls you to this protection like a preacher or something. You do this service at your own peril, because you have to see these things. You do have to interact with that part of society. I mean, you put yourself at risk. . . .”

Gabe interjected, “I think every man should be one. I think they should reach a certain age and they should realize that they're the only ones that have the ability to use their strengths and their manipulations to take advantage of anybody.” Then Gabe's following line of reasoning didn't make a whole lot of sense. “And there should be a community where people, if they want to do that, they're invited to leave. And if they voice it and they speak it and they show interest, then they're told to leave. And if they act on it, they're punished and not welcome back.”

Gabe went on, “Because, I mean, shit, you touch my little girl, you're probably gonna touch someone else's little girl, and, shit, man, I read psychological books. I've sat down with psychiatrists for, like, twenty million hours talking to them. They're the ones who go down to the state prisons and talk to people and ask, ‘Why did you do this and why did you do that?'”

Troutner said, “That's the thing, you know, especially the ones that touch kids—they don't ever stop.”

Gabe agreed and added, “I am not God's sword here on Earth to save the universe. I'm someone who pays attention to what He wants, and He says, ‘I'm not going to let anything happen to [your] girl.'” Apparently, God was talking to Gabe by saying, “‘So get to work, son.'”

Once again, Gabe quickly changed gears. “If someone around me is sick, and they do believe me, it will work. If someone wants to hurt anybody that I'm called to protect, I'm going to invite them not to do it. I'm going to say, ‘You best not do it.' I'm going to scheme against someone. ‘Hey, man, I feel your heart. I see what you want. Is that what you want? You like little girls? You like women? Show me what you got in your head.'”

Then as if he was talking to that person, Gabe said, “‘Let's have a couple of drinks here. Let's have ten. Because I don't mind ten shots of gin. I can make it through that, no problem.'”

Coady wanted to know if Gabe had confronted Bob Kennelly about something in this regard. Gabe said, “Yeah. He said, ‘I like porn.' And when he got really, really drunk, and when he got really, really high, he talked about it. He mentioned how he did like looking at smaller women. He talked about how over in Russia, they know their place. And, you know, he's sitting out there and bouncing around like all's good. He had a wife that mysteriously died. Come on, now, she had cancer from what?”

Troutner pushed Gabe on this. “So he's confirming what you're suspecting?”

Gabe said, “Yes, but who do I tell? Not someone who's going to give me eight months.”

Troutner added, “So you weren't going to wait for it to happen.”

Gabe replied, “No, it's not that. I'm not going to act until he makes a move, until I caught him putting poison in the food, until I catch him being physically active toward me.”

And then as if talking to Bob, Gabe said, “‘Okay, you're with my mother. I love her. You're a king, man. You're obviously a tough fella.'” And then that abruptly stopped, and Gabe said, “Okay, so here goes. Because the biggest charge against me is probably going to be homicide. Maybe two.”

Coady jumped in and said, “So, how'd that night happen?”

All Gabe did was sigh.

Troutner took his turn. “You said he [Bob] made a move. But you had a position, an advantage?”

Gabe responded,“Yes, I wanted to record his admission. And I didn't have a recording device. But I had the ability for Jessie to hear it. So she could overhear it and be a solid witness. And usually he kept a firearm with him. He had a concealed-weapons permit. He showed me more than one firearm he had in his home. And I knew that he thought that I was a threat, because I had showed him physically that he was not a threat to me. So oftentimes when men's egos get checked . . .” Gabe's thought ran out.

“I had overheard both my mom and him talking about taking advantage of us. They discussed it, and considering I have a four-year-old girl, I was going to talk to him and make him admit it. I had Jessie sleeping with Kalea in bed, and then one of them would be asleep. And so I approached him and told them to take me very seriously. I said, ‘Please understand I'm here.' He reached. He didn't have a gun, but he reached. He reached back. I think he reached for what wasn't there. But if you gentlemen, who are in a law enforcement position, and you're talking to someone who thinks they're gonna get you, and they reach, you've been trained to respond. And I did.”

Coady asked, “So you had a gun with you at the time?”

“Yes, I did.”

Troutner wondered, “Was it your gun or one of his guns?”

“It was one of his guns. It was the HK. So, I mean, the rounds that were there were the rounds that were used. He made a move after I asked him not to.”

Troutner asked, “Were you standing in front of him?”

Gabe said, “No, I was not. I was on the balcony. If you had the drawing, it would make sense.”

Coady said he would grab a piece of paper for Gabe to draw on. Meanwhile, Gabe told Troutner, “You've got an upstairs and there's downstairs a little plaza.”

Coady gave Gabe some paper and possibly a pencil. Then he asked Gabe, “You're not gonna give us any trouble, are you?”

Gabe responded, “Oh, gosh, hell no. I mean you know that.”

“Okay, give me your handcuffs.”

The handcuffs were removed and Gabe began drawing. “The house—there's, like, a doorway right here. You've got a stairway that starts up here. You've got the hallway, and you've got a bedroom here, and you've got a bedroom there. Kitchen here. Doorway there.”

Gabe then said, “They walked down through the front door. And they started talking. They're together and I come out and say, ‘Take me seriously! Have a seat!' And he came up that quick. He made a real quick move. Done.”

Troutner asked, “Could they see you were holdin' a gun at that point? Do you think that's why he reached?”

Gabe answered, “No. I mean, he made a move. And I don't know my mom. I've never known her. I don't know anything. I don't know what she's got.” (Author's note: Perhaps Gabe meant a weapon in her possession.) “I don't know how capable . . . All I know is she's making plans to hurt us and feed me rat poison. So he makes a move, and they're both dead.”

CHAPTER 24

Troutner asked, “You shot 'em?”

Gabe said he did. So Troutner asked, “Do you remember how many times?”

Gabe said that he didn't know.

Troutner added, “In that situation, a cop doesn't ever remember. You know. They just shoot until the threat goes away.”

Gabe replied, “My thought was, shit, make it not hurt for my mom. So hit, move down and make it not hurt. Enough shots to make 'em stop.”

Coady asked where Bob and Robin had been standing, and Gabe showed him on the diagram he had made.

Troutner said, “Do you remember where you shot them when you came downstairs?” Gabe drew on the diagram and said, “Robert Kennelly was right here. And Mom was there.”

Asked how Kennelly's last name was spelled, Gabe said, “Hell, I don't know.”

This drew a rejoinder from Troutner. “You didn't know that guy at all, did you?”

Gabe replied, “Not very well.”

Asked if his wife and daughter woke up at the sound of gunfire, Gabe said that they had. “And at that time, I wasn't hoping that anything would happen. I had some feeling, because there was a murderous intent already. My intent was to sit down and get them recorded, and get them to say a lot, and have a witness and make them stop. I had a little mic thing. And I had planned on having Jessica listen in. But the recorder wasn't on, and, like, all of this wasn't planned. Like, we were planning on coming back and talkin' to Bob and Mom. And there you go.”

Coady said that Bob and Robin, obviously, had been shot, “and you need to get your family out of there, because you don't want them involved in all of this. So, what happens next?”

“Okay, we go and get the car. See, now, gentlemen, this is where we start getting into motives and ‘why you do this' and ‘why you do that.' I know there is no one else, except for a handful of people, who love their children as much as I love Kalea. And if you guys are Christian and you go to church, you can think I'm nuts. But guess what? So is He. I'm not coming in here and saying, ‘I'm Jesus and I can cut people's heads off.' No, that ain't it. Motive for why you do what you do—well, does Kalea need to be in the possession of people who are gonna give her prescription meds to shut her the fuck up when she's supposed to? I said no. That ain't appropriate. That ain't even legal.

“So I gotta get Jessie and Kalea out of there, and let's find somewhere better than with the two of them. Whatever happens to me, I don't care. So, come on, gentlemen, if you're a woman, do you think you'd be a little bit intimidated by me? I mean, if you're small and have a kid. Yeah, it's going to be terrifying. And they might all say I'm a really nice guy, but at the same time it's scary.

“I mean, I've trained in martial arts since I was five or six years old, and I've done it intensely on my own with a master, with teachers, with people I've known. I've learned healing. I've learned praying. I've learned meditation. I've read books on anatomy and physiology. I've read books on botany. I've read books on just about everything there is out there so that I can better understand the world we live in. And what I've seen is an entire group of humanity steal and rob and take everything from everybody and then charge people a hundred dollars for just a fraction, when it's all out there and you put your hands on a woman who's been in enormous pain through pancreatitis for ten years going on.

“Kalea isn't going to have another human being in her life that can do that. So at least what I want to do is, I want to find someone that experiences this and have it happen to them. And then, maybe there are a few other people out there that Kalea . . .” Gabe then mumbled some unintelligible words. “It's hard to find anybody who will even let someone put their hands on you and heal you. They don't even want it. They want to be sick. They want their meds. The want their calm-down factor.

“You know, they want their security. They would rather have security, even though their whole household is miserable. Solutions to problems can't be charged. You can't make money on a solution. And I can't get paid. Right? If a doctor could do this, he'd be a jillionaire. He'd do it for Magic Johnson. He'd do it for someone else and someone else, and then he'd get paid.”

Perhaps to keep him talking, Troutner said, “I see what you're saying.”

Gabe was very irritated that he hadn't been paid for his “healing powers.” He said, “This ain't a paying job! I mean, I'm not going to say a lot more than what I've said, because you guys got it.”

The detectives didn't want him to stop there, however. Troutner asked, “What happened to the HK?” They were referencing Bob's semiautomatic handgun.

Gabe either lied or he truly didn't remember. He answered, “It's gone. I don't know. I seriously don't know. I forget. I think I threw it out the window somewhere. And, honestly, I drink. That's part of it. People want to say, like, I'm an alcoholic. Some guys are alcoholics. I've met those and they beat women and they're pretty nasty. Some people drink and there's a different reason why they drink.”

Troutner said, “You drink, like, to take the edge off?”

Gabe replied, “No. I drink to sometimes just shut me the fuck up so I can be faithful and just listen and stop getting my intellect and my ego and my dumbassedness and my forward planning and my . . . all my actions—why I sit there and ignore everyone around me—just to shut up!”

Coady asked, “Do you remember what vehicle you took?”

“I think it was a Dodge. Bob had a truck. White. I can tell you where it is, if you haven't found it.”

Even though the detectives knew it had been found, Coady asked Gabe where it was, anyway, possibly to see if he would tell the truth.

Gabe answered, “It's in Coquille. Near the front of the Eschlers' home.”

“A friend of yours?”

“I wouldn't say a ‘friend.' A past acquaintance. I mean, people knew me when I first joined the church when I was nineteen. And Fred was the one who baptized me.” Gabe left out a lot here, considering the fact that he had dated the Eschlers' daughter for years.

Gabe continued, “So I went to their home and I told them I was in trouble, and I said, ‘I need a vehicle. I need a firearm. I need some money.' And then Fred gave it to me.”

Troutner asked, “He have a gun?”

Gabe said that he did.

“Is that the Beretta?”

“Yeah, but I also had an HK with me.”

“Well, we're not trying to get Fred in trouble. We're just trying to keep track of guns.”

“Yeah, so I got the Beretta from Fred. I got the car. I got some money.”

“Did you trade him?”

Gabe said that he hadn't done that.

“You didn't give the HK, like a trade?”

“No, I did not. I did throw the HK out the window. I do know that. I just can't remember when or how. I remember I was looking for it. And thinking, ‘Man, why the hell did I throw it out the window?'”

The detectives wanted to know about Gabe's route after they left Coquille. Gabe answered, “We took a ride down to San Diego. We went to Oceanside. We stayed at a hotel down there. The gun—I mean, it's not going to be found, I guarantee you.”

Of course, it already had been found.

Coady said, “Well, that's my concern. I don't want a kid to find it alongside the road.”

Gabe replied, “No, he won't. I took the pieces apart. I'm pretty sure I did that.” Gabe was either lying or he truly believed he had done that. “I don't have anything to hide. I'm serious. I'm not going to lie about where the gun is. I'm certain I took the cylinder out. No kid is going to find it and shoot somebody.”

Troutner asked what Gabe's plan had been when he, Jessica, Kalea, Judy and Judy's brother were leaving, when they got caught. Gabe actually laughed and said, “I knew it was coming. But the safest way to do it was street style.”

Troutner asked, “Yeah, but why'd you take everyone with you, if you knew you were going to get caught?”

“Because you don't want to get a door kicked down and guys coming at you and surprising you. You stopped two vehicles, right? I was not with my wife and daughter. I'm with Judy, and Judy's a little bit more brave and courageous and just got healed, so she has faith. I know what to do in these situations at a vehicle stop. You know that you're in public. So there are people watching. If you shoot wrong, if you go into a house . . . well, a vehicle stop is the safest way to get picked up.”

Troutner said, “And you know you're not going to get shot, because there are witnesses?”

Gabe said, “No, no, no. It's just that I wanted everyone to get picked up safe.”

Troutner asked, “Did you know we were out there?”

Gabe said that he did, and he added, “I knew a few of you were. It was pretty easy. I mean, the white Explorer down the road and then there was that vehicle coming down a back street. And then I saw a fella in another little black one, but I wasn't running because I was afraid.”

Troutner said, “Well, they said you were very cooperative.”

“Yeah, and I didn't want to give anybody any trouble, unless they want to hurt someone. My daughter has finally found a place and she visualized it. She's been in the experience really strong, and it's warmed everybody's hearts. She's had a personal experience. I went up to the top of the stairs, and she was there, and she looked down on me and said, ‘I love you, Daddy.' It was, like, a really, really intelligent way of looking right at me.

“So it was like telling everyone, ‘Everything is going great. We're gonna go on a trip down to Florida to have a vacation. It's all gonna be good.' We were going to have a good time. And I knew that Judy's brother was a real sweet guy and he wasn't going to get anything out of me. And with Jessie, I was telling her, ‘Don't be foolish.'”

Troutner wanted to know when Judy and Doug figured out that he and Jessica were on the run. Gabe said, “They didn't. No, nobody ever thinks I'm wanted. They want a story. They want to think I work for the government. They want that, so I go along. Sometimes I do tell people different things to get them to feel relaxed and comfortable. They ask, ‘Why do you seem to know how to shoot?' ‘Oh, I worked for the military.' All right. Fine. Whatever you want to hear. Whatever makes you believe that your ego doesn't want to shoot me in the head because I'm a cop, and you can't shoot that well. Now, let's just say I worked for the military a long time ago. Who cares? I'm doing it because Tony (a person Gabe knew) comes back from Iraq and he's really enjoying this ability. And I'm a fine shooter. And I haven't been in the military, right? So him and his buddies want to talk to me about maybe having an accident on a training environment, to prove me wrong, or stuff like that. So, ‘Hey, guys, I've had training like you.' Don't trip out. I'm not like some hillbilly that learned how to do it better than you. I'm just better. ‘All right! I've got good training.' You know? Ego. It loves to get out there. So people hear you're in the military and that's intimidating. I mean, it's better than saying, ‘I'm the Son of God. I'm Jesus.' And I'm not.” By this point, Gabe was barely making any sense at all.

And then Gabe was off and running again. “That's the whole point. People want to say, ‘Oh, you know, this guy, he wants to hurt people.' I don't want to hurt anybody. All I want to say is the truth, which is very difficult nowadays. Because you have to have a bowl of truth to talk about the truth, and half the time the proof . . . Well, the proof is just what you can find and what a lawyer is paid to find, to find his side of the story. So either I'm crazy or I know what I'm doing. I'm not going to sit here and plead my case and say I'm innocent, because I know the shit is out there. I'm guilty of what I've done, guilty as charged of what I've done, and much more. I mean, you can go through my past. I lifted a gun when I was five. So, yes, that kind of stuff does happen, and we live in a world where you cannot go and heal a fella in a hospital who's got cancer. You cannot go and go and do anything without someone thinking you're nuts.

“I would like to find an environment where my daughter could grow up learning these things, because they're beautiful things. Where she can be safe. Unfortunately, here, I don't know where to find that. So I have to leave it in His hands, and I gotta deal with what I've done. Fair enough. I trust Him. He's the one who taught me how to do this stuff. So if He says, it's what to do, then that's it. I mean, there ain't no more motive. There ain't no more secrets.

“You guys probably have the stuff about what I've done or had around me. There are no people I know like me. There's a few I've seen in other countries. I mean there's some Polynesians. I've seen people who can do this.” (Author's note: Gabe was probably alluding to his healing abilities.) “I've seen it in movies. But, quite honestly, gentlemen, I've never met another human being who can do the stuff I do. Believe it, or don't believe it. I mean, I love you, and I wish you would believe me. I wish you could go into the night, and get on your knees and ask Jesus, God, in His name and say, ‘Hey, man, was this fella telling me the truth? I know we gotta do what we gotta do. We got a job, but, shit, man, what about my life? What about my kids? What about the people who are suffering? What about the next time I have a family member who goes down to the hospital and has cancer? Is that what I want to pay my money for and get into debt for? Or would I really like to know what it felt like for God to say, “Hey, why don't you come on over.”'”