A Murder in my family. My story. Part 1

The media wanted to talk to us, but we were all too shocked to even speak with them. It’s been nearly three years now and I am ready to talk. I don’t want my posts to be too long so I will need to break up the story into a few parts.

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THE BACK STORY

My family has always been very close. We go camping together and take trips together. We have many family parties over the year. We all live in the same little town we grew up in. I am the oldest of five children, three girls and two boys. I am a widow. My husband took his own life in 1996. I have two amazing sons, a stunningly beautiful daughter-in-law and eight nieces and nephews. All of the young cousins like getting together and playing or having sleepovers at each other’s houses.

My brother Chad had purchased an old Dodge Charger.  His dream car since he was 8 years old was the ‘General Lee’ from the old ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ show.  His marriage wasn’t doing well and he was separated from his wife off and on. He had sold his home quickly, as he was in danger of losing it. With the small amount of money he got from that, he decided to build his dream car. He worked on the car in my dad’s huge garage. It seems like the better part of a year they worked on it. I would go down to mom and dad’s to watch Chad’s children while they worked on the car. Many people came to help work on the car off and on. The main helper was my son, Damon, for 90% of it he was right by my brother’s side helping him with it and learning. They were both so excited about it. Well, we all were. Once the car was finished and painted my brother liked to share the car in car shows and parades. Every time he drove it to the store or anywhere… people would stop him and ask if they could take a picture with it. He would let people sit in it and check it out. He said he built it for people to enjoy, it made him happy to share it. He allowed my son, Damon, to drive it several times –  even to High School. This honestly made me nervous… I worried about the car getting scratched or worse. My brother had a really bad temper and it scared me to think what might happen if his prized car got damaged. I grew up with his temper and it was scary. Damon soon bought his own ‘69 Charger to restore. He spent days searching for parts for the car, we had shipments coming in from all over the nation with odds and ends he needed for his new project. It seemed nobody was interested in helping him with his project, not like they were with Chad’s car…eventually his car ended up in the back of the property.

Home life for us was a little different than in most families. My mother passed away in 2010 and after 6 months or so… since I was always at ‘Dad’s house’ when I wasn’t at work, we decided it might be a good idea for me and my youngest son, Damon, to move in. It’s a large home with 6 bedrooms, most of the rooms were not being used. Moving in with my dad meant I would be able to do cooking (the only thing dad can cook is popcorn in the microwave) cleaning, laundry and paying him rent to help him out. It was nice to not have him living all alone too. Losing my mom, after so many years of marriage would certainly be a hard change.

Skip to a few years later. My brother Chad moved in as well, he was in the process of a divorce. Between lawyer costs, child support, therapy, etc… he needed to move in for the time being. Family was extremely important to Chad. When he was a little boy, he was asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” His answer wasn’t a Fireman or a Doctor… he answered, “I want to be a daddy.” He loved his kids so much. He has 4 of them. One from a previous marriage and 3 from this last marriage. We all loved having the kids over at the house, they visited often. We (the whole family) built a little playhouse for all the kids in dad’s back yard, with a loft and windows… even a dutch door. Chad helped me set up a giant pool in the yard for the whole family to enjoy, we have had hours of fun with it… it is still up today after 5 years. It was well worth the money. Chad was a great dad. He loved to dress-up along with the kids on Halloween. One year he dressed as Darth Vader and stood in his driveway. He would hand a lightsaber to the neighborhood children as they walked up and make them battle him before he gave them candy. Often I would walk into the Livingroom and see Chad in the recliner with all three kids piled on top of him watching a movie. He spent quality time with his kids. He took them camping, on trips, and made fun YouTube videos with them. The kids adored him. I especially loved having the kids visit. I am an awesome auntie and love to teach them to bake things and make crafts.. just fun and happy things to do together. I would take them shopping to pick out an outfit from time to time. Chad would always appreciate this, he was strapped financially so this helped him out a little and I loved spoiling them.

Over time little things would start to annoy me. I think that is probably normal when many adults are sharing a house for long periods of time. I’m sure I am no picnic to live with myself. I cooked the meals for everyone most of the time. One thing that really bothered me was my brother making a huge meal for his kids or for all of us…then promptly go downstairs and leave the mess. Sometimes I would wait for a couple of days to clean it up, in hopes he would clean it up himself. But he never did. This would happen about once every week. After a couple years, it just really annoyed me. The dumb thing is, I didn’t dare to confront him about it because I was worried about how he would react. With his job, his finances and his family falling apart. I didn’t want to say anything to make him snap. I’m not saying I am an award-winning house-keeper, but I do not enjoy cleaning up other people’s messes over and over. My brother was a great guy. He was always there to listen if anyone was going through a rough patch. He usually had good advice. He had tons of friends, they all have great stories about him. He had a great sense of humor and could make anyone laugh. He had a lot of imagination and creativity. He was great at making videos for YouTube. He also had started doing wedding videos for friends and family. He was really good at it, he loved doing them. I could go on for pages about what a great person he was. He had worked his way up over the years and was a Sergeant at a correctional facility. It’s about an hour’s drive from home. He liked his job, but I know it took its toll on him emotionally.

My son Damon was working at Walmart in the seasonal department. He moved up quickly to the manager. They were very impressed with him right from the start. We were all very proud of him and felt lucky that Walmart could see his potential. Damon was really quiet and shy around most people. He had ‘social anxiety’ which I could relate with. I think I had it as well in my younger years, I was never diagnosed though. He didn’t like to be in crowds of people, especially people he didn’t know. When he set his mind to something, he would always achieve it. One year he was folding up pieces of paper into shapes. We would ask what he was doing and he would give a silly answer. Eventually the shapes he was folding turned into a life-sized replica of Master Chief from the XBOX Halo games. He loved that game and played it often. He put Bondo and other stuff on it, painted it, and could even wear it as a costume. It looks amazing.  You would never guess it started out as paper. The local ‘Game Stop’ store had him come in costume for the release of one of the Halo games. Dozens of their customers took pictures with him and posted them on Facebook. He was very proud of it. It is now put together and stands as a statue in our basement family room. One day in 2016, something happened at Walmart, I still do not know the whole story. Something angered him and he just walked out, just quit! I noticed he hadn’t gone to work for a few days. I questioned him and he said he walked out. He didn’t really want to talk about it. Damon had a large savings account and didn’t seem in a big hurry to find another job. However, he continued to pay rent to my dad every month without fail. He spent a lot of time in his room playing video games and playing with our 2-year-old Husky. Even though Kato was my dog… He favored Damon. Damon was his ‘person’. He would go hang out with friends or my older son, once in a while. He would also go target practicing with his gun. Twice a month he and I would go out to dinner and talk. I looked forward to our dinner dates. He used to send me flowers a few times during the year, I loved those surprises. Damon would do anything for his grampa, my dad. He made sure the lawn was mowed and trimmed every week without being asked. It was a big job, it takes a few hours to take care of that big yard. I make greeting cards as a hobby. He used to sit at the table with me and visit while I worked on the cards. I would get his opinion when I couldn’t decide on a color or a pattern. While he sat and visited with me he would be tossing the ball into the living room for Kato to fetch. He had bought an old Blazer from my youngest brother. He did quite a lot of work on it, even rebuilt the transmission all by himself. I was always impressed by Damon and the things he accomplished. If we couldn’t get the BlueRay or the printer to work, he could always fix the problem. He was a sweet and smart young man.

Mid-2016 I started to notice Damon acting strange towards Chad. For example, if the whole family was getting together for a party… he would ask if Chad was going. If I said, “yes he is”… Damon would decide not to attend the party. As Christmas came closer and we were decorating the house Chad had asked Damon to move ‘Master Chief’ so he could put up his Christmas tree in the basement family room. Damon refused and replied, “Squatters don’t deserve to have a tree”. Obviously, the fact Chad hadn’t been paying rent to my dad over the months was eating at him. Chad came upstairs to find me and let me know what was going on. Damon followed behind. When Chad told me what Damon had said… my heart sank… I knew Chad was going to lose his temper any second. The next thing I knew Chad had Damon by the collar screaming in his face. Chad’s face was beet red. Damon was laughing… saying “Go ahead hit me! I’ll have you lose your job in minutes!” Chad then went downstairs and a few minutes later he called for me to come down. He was really upset and said something along the lines of “I’m done. I’m going to kill myself.” Knowing we have guns in the house, I immediately called 911. I didn’t know what else to do. I was scared and felt this was way more than I could handle. They came and took Chad somewhere overnight. Skip to Christmas morning, while the entire family was over to exchange gifts and have breakfast… Damon refused to come out of his room and join in. He didn’t open his gifts for a week. One of the gift’s I gave him was a tailgater, I have one and he used to use it all the time… he didn’t even take it downstairs to his room. He ‘unfriended’ ME on Facebook soon after Christmas. I still don’t understand that one, because we still got along like normal. I just assumed he was in a ‘mood’. After that, things seemed to go back to normal for the most part. Until they didn’t…