Rage (4 page)

Gray told Wildeboer and his partner to go to 90 Dawes and arrest all three boys. “If the parents are home and give you any trouble, just get the three guys into custody, and we can play the tape for them,” he said.

As soon as he got home, Johnathon ran upstairs to get the quarters from his room. He knew something was very wrong immediately. Kevin, Tim and Pierre were in there, drinking wine and smoking, and they had made a complete mess of the room. Johnathon looked at Kevin and said: “I’m telling mom and dad.” Before anyone else could react, Kevin grabbed his little brother by the arm and dragged him down the stairs.

Downstairs, Kevin and Pierre began to threaten the 100-pound Johnathon. They told him that they’d totally trashed the basement and that he wasn’t going to say anything to anyone because he wouldn’t be able to.

Johnathon just sighed. He’d lived through his big brother’s rages many times before. They both knew Kevin was much bigger, stronger and faster than him. Johnathon came up to his brother’s sternum, and his chest was no bigger around than one of Kevin’s thighs. There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t get away. He couldn’t fight back. Even if he managed to hurt his big brother, he knew instinctively that Kevin would never, ever give up. If he fought back—especially with Kevin’s friends watching—it would only get worse for him. Johnathon realized he just had to put up with whatever Kevin was going to do to him, and he prayed it wouldn’t be too embarrassing in front of the other boys.

Kevin said he was going to “kick his head in,” which was popular slang among their group for beat up, and something Johnathon would not have taken literally. Pierre seemed to like the idea of beating up Johnathon, and he quickly hooted his approval. Only Tim demurred, openly asking: “What’s the point?”

Sensing his chance, and attempting to defuse the situation, Johnathon asked to see what the boys had done downstairs.

As soon as Johnathon got to the top of the basement steps, Kevin slammed one of his outsized fists between his shoulder blades, knocking him down the stairs. Then he told Tim to go get a butcher knife from the kitchen. He did. Tim was very nervous by this point, and when he handed Kevin the butcher knife, he later claimed to have told him: “Just threaten him and get him out of here.”

Whether Tim said that or not, Kevin had other plans. He ran down the stairs and got on top of his much smaller brother, who was just getting up from the basement floor. After pulling it up behind his head, Kevin plunged the long, thick butcher knife into Johnathon’s face. Then he began pumping the knife back and forth, up and down for what seemed like hours, each time striking at his younger brother’s face and neck. Tim could see Johnathon holding his hands in front of his face out of instinct and Kevin slashing them out of the way.

There was almost no screaming. Johnathon was just too shocked. Pierre—who had fled to the living room—and Tim were too stunned to make any noise. And after Johnathon’s voice box was slashed and rendered useless, the only noise audible over the music was Kevin’s repeated pounding of the knife into his brother and Johnathon’s gurgling on his own blood and desperately gagging for breath.

After his brother drove the thick stainless-steel blade through his skin, muscle and bone so many times that Tim lost count, Johnathon was lying on the basement floor struggling for breath, bleeding out and dying.

Ralston Champagnie was a big, strong man. Though not very tall, he carried a solid 250 pounds on his stout, powerful frame. He had thick arms, big hands and wide shoulders. What’s more, he had eyes that seemed to convey a deep inner anger, a look that meant he was indeed not a guy to be messed with.

According to many sources, stepson Kevin Madden had messed with him a few times. The two simply didn’t get along. Ralston was a strict old-school disciplinarian, and Kevin had a very hard time fitting into his idea of how a household should run. Although nobody said that they had ever seen Ralston physically abuse Kevin, every source I spoke with—even those who described themselves as the man’s friends—acknowledged that Ralston rode him hard, often humiliating him in front of family and friends, and that Kevin bore him a profound and festering grudge. The pair had finally attended family counseling with Kevin’s mother, Joanne, and had come to a workable solution: from that point forward, Kevin’s discipline was to be Joanne’s responsibility; if Ralston found Kevin doing anything wrong, he was supposed to report it to Joanne and let her sort it out.

At work on November 25, 2003, Ralston was nervous about Kevin. Things had been extra tense at home since he had taken away Kevin’s computer privileges. He’d broken the agreement made about a month earlier, not to punish the boy, by barring him from the PC after a particularly galling display of insolence. Ralston later felt a need to extend the punishment when he caught Kevin on the computer after he was forbidden to use it. Kevin enjoyed his time on the family computer more than anything else and was deeply resentful that his stepfather had taken it away.

Ralston had overheard something about Kevin planning to skip school that day, and wanted to catch him in the act. He had phoned the house, but there was no answer. That could mean he was at school, or that he was smart enough not to pick up.

Ralston was angry and ready to deal with Kevin when he got home. But he wasn’t ready for what he found.

He drove up the alley behind the house, parked his old minivan and walked up through the back yard. As he made his way through the back yard up to the house, he noticed Kevin, a defiant look on his face, standing at the back window staring out at him. Although Kevin rarely stood up to him and never in any meaningful way, Ralston knew he was in for something of a fight, so he steeled himself for a confrontation.

Ralston didn’t have a key, so he motioned for Kevin to let him in. Kevin ignored him. Angry and confused, Ralston tapped on the glass and repeated the gesture. Kevin eventually complied, but when Ralston got to the door, Kevin blocked his way. Ralston was taken aback. He knew that Kevin had gotten big, but he had never been confronted with his strength before. Even so, Ralston—just as heavy, but about three inches shorter—pushed him aside.

Once inside the house, Ralston confronted his stepson. “You smell like smoke,” he said. Kevin was not allowed to smoke, and he knew he’d get in trouble if he got caught, so, out of reflex, he made up an excuse about hanging around with some kids at school who were smoking. The smell, he claimed, must have come from them.

Ralston sat down in the living room and was unnerved to see Kevin looming over him, nervous and expectant. Ralston could see wine glasses with cigarette butts in them scattered around the room and smoke in the air. Suddenly, a boy he didn’t recognize (Tim) came running down the stairs frantically. Kevin wasn’t allowed to have guests without a parent present and not at all when he was grounded, and Ralston became very angry. “What are you doing in my upstairs?” he yelled at Tim, more for Kevin to hear than the younger boy. Tim and Ralston locked eyes, and the frightened teenager, tears welling in his eyes, cried out: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and fled through the front door.

At about the same time, a very sheepish-looking Pierre emerged from the basement. That cut it for Ralston. Not only had Kevin been smoking, but he had two guests over, one of which had clearly done something stupid. Instead of losing his temper entirely, he decided to call Joanne, Kevin’s mom, who was at work. He told Kevin exactly what he was doing.

Kevin slapped the phone out of his hand, shouting, “No, you’re not!”

That was enough; Ralston knew he had to put his foot down before things spiraled totally out of his control. “What are you doing?” he bellowed.

That’s when Kevin lunged at his stepfather with the butcher knife—already severely chipped and scored after Kevin’s attack on Johnathon—stabbing at his heart. As it happened, Ralston hadn’t taken his winter coat off yet, and the knife got caught up in it, barely penetrating it to his skin, leaving a small but nasty scratch.

But Ralston didn’t know that. The shock of the attack and the pain of the impact convinced him that the knife had entered his chest, endangering his life. Aware Kevin wouldn’t turn back now that the stakes were life or death, Ralston leapt on his stepson, knocking the knife loose.

Then he bolted for the back door. Kevin grabbed him from behind and wrestled him to the floor. Convinced his chest had been opened up, Ralston thought he’d be no match for Kevin, who was enraged and beating him up while still struggling to get closer to the knife. Confused, Ralston looked up at Kevin.

“You’re trying to kill me?” he asked.

Kevin, his face red from the struggle, looked him in the eye. “Yes,” he said, “ . . . yes, that’s what I want to do.”

At that point, Ralston realized he’d die if he didn’t get away. He summoned all of his strength and managed to wrestle Kevin off him and down to the floor. He got up and ran. Kevin tackled him, brought him down, but failed to immobilize him. He grabbed his stepdad by the calves, shouting: “You’re not going out there; you’re going to die right here.” In the struggle, the button on Ralston’s pants popped open. As he was wriggling out of them, and Kevin’s grasp, he struggled towards the front door. Kevin, sensing he was losing his grip, shouted to Pierre: “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”

Up until this point, Pierre had been watching, stunned, as Kevin attacked Ralston, just as Tim had when Kevin hacked away at Johnathon. He stood, open-mouthed with the wooden baseball bat in his hands, shocked at what he’d seen, both here and in the basement. But something in the urgency of Kevin’s demand woke him out of his trance.

He pulled the bat behind his head and swung it at the prone man’s head as hard as he could. He did it again and again. Ralston held his hand up in the air, trying to protect his bruised, bleeding head. He looked Pierre in the eye and said: “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve never done anything to you.” The only answer Pierre could provide was a tearful “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and took a few more whacks at him.

Desperate, Ralston kept struggling. He wriggled out of his pants and crawled to the front door. Behind him, he heard Kevin yell: “Jesus Christ! He’s getting away!” Ralston managed to open the door and screamed for help. He noticed Pierre position himself on the stairway so he could hit him with the bat again. Kevin shut the front door, but Ralston kept screaming. With one more push, Ralston managed to open the door just enough for him to squeeze through. He lost his pants and jacket in the process.

Clad in just boxer shorts and a T-shirt despite the snow, and with blood dripping from his head, Ralston kept screaming. Unaware if anyone could hear him, he yelled: “Please help, They’re trying to kill me!” Luckily, a woman happened to be riding by the house on her bicycle exactly as he escaped. He stopped her and shouted, “Please help me! They’re trying to kill me!” She rode to a payphone and called 911.

Ralston ran to a nearby house, where he knew the residents. He recounted the story and the neighbors called 911 again. The calls were logged in at 5:39 and 5:42 p.m.

As soon as Pierre and Kevin saw Ralston and the bicyclist leave, they fled the house. Taking nothing—not even their weapons—with them, and with no more complicated plan than simply running away, they sprinted as fast and as far as their legs and lungs would allow.

Detective Glenn Gray began to listen to the tape Ashley and her friends had made. He had heard hundreds of death threats before, but was particularly unnerved and even a little sickened by this one. He later told me he “had never heard a tape so cold and calculated.” These kids were talking about murder as casually as someone else might talk about their day at the office.

He was about halfway through it when another cop asked him if he’d just sent some officers to an address on Dawes. He said that he had and the other officer told him about the two calls for an attempted murder at No. 90.

Within seconds, Gray ordered an emergency task force (ETF) to 90 Dawes. They were heavily armed and specially trained in assault and negotiation techniques, but they didn’t know who was inside the house, what they were armed with, and if they had any hostages or not. Gray also ordered more discreet teams to the addresses he had been given for Tim, Pierre and Ashley.

He then called Ashley’s house. He told her parents that the two big guys in the car parked in front of her house were his men and that they were there for their protection. If the phone should ring, he told them, pick it up, but don’t let any of the boys speak with Ashley under any circumstances. If Tim or any of the boys should come banging on the door, Gray told them to call him and he’d have his men in the car arrest him.

The ETF arrived at 90 Dawes at 6:30. They stationed a team out front, but the bulk of the men entered through the smaller, weaker back door. Once they determined that the house was secure, they searched the place. It didn’t take long to find Johnathon. The ETF team followed the sloppy trail of blood smeared on the floor and walls that started at the pool at the bottom of the stairs, went through the broken glass the boys had dragged him over and up to the tiny crawlspace they’d jammed him into, intending it to be his final resting place. The team saw his feet, with socks but no shoes, sticking out. They called to him. He didn’t answer. An officer opened the blood-smeared door and found Johnathon inside, his body in a fetal position and covered in blood.

Despite their training and experience with grisly matters, the officers who found Johnathon were shocked and sickened at their discovery. Crimes against children do tend to have more profound effects on police officers and the sight of Johnathon’s body, twisted and mashed to fit in the miserable little hole he was stuffed into, his face and throat covered in blood, horrified the officers present. At first, they hoped he was still alive.

The officers immediately called for paramedics.

Meanwhile, Tim had fled for home by bus. Seeing Ralston arrive had really spooked him. He vainly hoped that nobody would ever find Johnathon, who he and Kevin had shoved—still weakly fighting for breath—into the tiny crawlspace. He hoped that it would all just go away. He didn’t think about the ridiculous amount of forensic evidence they’d left behind. He didn’t think about whether Johnathon would live or die.

He’d been on the bus for one stop when it opened its doors again to take on two bloodstained youths. The other passengers on the bus did their best to ignore Kevin and Pierre as they shambled toward the back of the bus out of habit. They sat near, but not with, Tim. He looked at Kevin. The big boy nodded, but did not speak. Kevin and Pierre got off after two stops and walked into the woods of Taylor Creek Ravine.

But Tim didn’t think that much of it at the time. All he could think about was Ashley. He thought about how beautiful she was, how much he loved her, and how he hoped that she would provide him with the comfort he was sure he couldn’t get anywhere else.

When the bus finally stopped at the corner nearest his apartment, Tim ran home and straight up to his room. At 5:55, he called Ashley and got her father. Keeping in mind what Gray had told him, her father told Tim that Ashley wasn’t home, but perhaps he should try again a little later. Ashley’s dad later described the boy’s demeanor as nervous, but unfailingly polite.