27 October 2003
Dear Parole Board,
I have been asked many times to write this letter. Unfortunately, I have put it off. I wanted to wait until I can write what I truly feel you need to know.
For 21 years now, I have lived with this horrible guilt and shame. I did nothing to be ashamed or guilty about, and yet I do. It might be because in the years after this incident, I often heard people say, �Well, what did your mom do to this guy to make him kill her?� and �Why didn�t you get help?� and a million other questions asked innocently but conveyed to me, that I, my mother and my sister had responsibility for us being attacked.
I also heard comments, when people thought I wasn�t listening, that my mother had asked for this to happen. People blamed the victims. I didn�t hear, very often, that Rodney was the blame. He was driven by drugs, or rage. But he was just a victim of his own emotions. Poor Rodney. He picked up the knives, he savaged us. Rodney took my mom�s life and changed my very destiny by playing God. And yet, people will blame the victims. I have only begun to see that my mother, my 4-year-old sister, nor me had any blame. See, we didn�t hurt other people, we didn�t kill anybody. We were just trying to be a family.
That night in April,1982, I remember, my mom being upset. Phone calls from someone, threatening her, her, and us. She tried to soothe us children. I know that I took the calls seriously, for I told my mother, as she tucked me in, �something bad was going to happen�. She smoothed my hair and handed me my teddy bear. I had told her this every night that week, but she didn�t want me to worry. She was the mom, after all. The last time I saw my mom alive, she was sitting at the foot of my bed. Her long black hair cascading down, a beautific smile she saved just for Renee and me on her face. She smiled at me, told me she loved me, and after a pat on the blanket, she rose from the bed and was gone. I fell asleep.
Blood-curdling screams and a loud thump woke me from my sleep. I blinked and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and right in front of my bed, stood a naked Rodney. I couldn�t quite remember his name, for my mom had known him some months before, but he was a friend of my mom�s. �What was he doing in our house?� I wondered.
Oh, but what was this? My mom was lying on the floor, and there was blood on the walls, the floor, spattered on my blanket. I didn�t understand. I started to believe I was having a nightmare, but I was groggy too. There was no sense in this.
�Why is she on the floor?� I asked Rodney. He stood motionless for a second; I think he wanted me to look at his privates. I averted my eyes back to my mother.
�She�s sleeping.� He replied. It was the same tone of voice one would use to say, �The bus is late� or �Pass the peas�. He scooped me up in his arms. He carried me into my mom�s room. A little turn in my stomach told me something was not right. There was more blood in her floor, and on her bed. I know there were other horrible things in there, like her nails, and hair, but I cannot remember.
Calmly, he removed my pajamas. This was bad, I told myself. I knew that no man was supposed to see me naked, and yet, he was my mom�s friend. I was very confused. He lay me down, and straddled me. I was very uncomfortable. He was a small man, but he was still heavy. I started to protest, and he started touching me. He talked, but very little, and he was very calm. Since he was calm, and not angry, maybe nothing bad would happen.
I remember a pillow being placed over my face while I lay scared and shaking beneath a naked man. I kept knocking the pillow off my face. He tried to smother me but lost his nerve. But when I kept fighting every move he made, I guess he got angry.
All of the sudden, I saw a glint of light by his leg. He was holding a knife, I knew it. This was very bad. That�s when I got really scared. It began quickly, and to this day, I�ve never been that scared. It seemed like forever, but he kept stabbing me. Every way I turned, he�d hit me hard with that knife. I couldn�t get away. I knew that I might die. I remember thinking, �I�m only 7 years old, and I�m going to die. I won�t make it to the 2nd grade.� I was a bookworm, I loved school. I was very sad. I loved my mom, and my family. This was going to change everything.
I played dead. I don�t know why, but I did. He didn�t fall for it..he immediately stabbed me in my chest. He was going for my heart, but instead, he punctured my lung and caused it to collapse. I immediately got very dizzy..and that helped me to be a convincing dead person, because he stopped.
I kept my eyes closed while I felt the bed easing up. I knew he had left the bed.
It seemed like a while, but it must�ve been a short time. I gathered my strength to rise up and see where he went. A wave of nausea washed over me.
From my place I could see him washing off the knife. It was so odd to see a naked bloody man in my kitchen. I could see my mom from where I was also. She was exactly where she was when I first woke up.
My sister�s bed was about 10 feet from my mother�s bed. I decided to crawl under her bed. My cuts were stinging, I wanted to cry but bit my lip. I planned to get my baby sister under the bed with me, but he came back into the room just as I got under the bed. I will always regret not being able to help my sister.
I heard a bark, and my dog Trixie tried to bite this man. She had been hiding but now was growling at him. Without hesitation he kicked her like a football across the room. With a yelp, she ran to me under the bed.
From this location, I could see my mother. She was just a few feet from the bed. She lay face down, in a pink (I think) sheer nightgown. A pool of red liquid surrounded her. Blood, I knew. I saw his feet walk over to her from the kitchen. He unceremoniously stomped on her head. She didn�t move. He kicked my mother�s lifeless body, again, no noise. No protest. I watched the feet walk into my mother�s bedroom. A quickening in the step..oh no, he was looking for me. I saw the feet coming toward my sister�s bed, and I started to cry silent tears. I was very afraid. Why couldn�t someone help us?
Rodney spoke to my four-year-old sister. She had been pretending to be asleep, as to not warrant his rage. When she couldn�t tell him where I was, he attacked her. I knew he had the knife.
Little drops of liquid hit the floor and spattered on me. At first I thought it was water, but I knew, it being warm, that it was blood. My baby sister�s blood rained down onto the linoleum. He knifed her. He slit my 4-year-old sister�s throat. He did other things to her that I know of, but my mind will not let me remember after that. He threw her, when finished; back onto the bed, quite like a rag doll. I imagine, at 4 years old, she probably weighed 30 pounds or less. Not really heavy, but heavy enough to remind one that this was not a baby doll being savaged, but a real baby.
Trixie, my dog, stayed at my side. Sometimes during that long night I cried, sometimes I slept. It was quite possible I passed out from the loss of blood. My mom�s habit of putting the winter blankets underneath the bed saved my life, for I was able to pull a blanket up over me. The wounds finally clotted.
One time, when I came to, I smelled cigarette smoke. My mom didn�t smoke. I could see into my mother�s bedroom. Oh, the TV was on. Maybe this was all a bad dream, and Mom was up watching TV.
But Mom was in the same place, on the floor. And Rodney, pale and naked, perched on the end of her bed, was smoking and watching TV. Eventually, he left.
I woke up, and was horrified to see a broom sticking out of my mother. He had impaled her on it. After gulping down vomit, I crawled out from the bed. I wanted to get help, but I was just so tired. Everything hurt. I crawled into my bed.
When I awoke, my baby sister was crying softly. �Sissy, sissy�. Renee called me that. I slowly sat up and fought off a wave of dizziness. Renee said, �I�m thirsty�, so I went to get her some water. As I walked into the kitchen, I stopped to wake mom. �Mommy, � I shook her shoulders, but she wouldn�t get up. I knew she was dead. The phone, it was ripped out of the wall. Oh. I walked into the kitchen and vomited. I felt so helpless. The door�the latch was too high. So, I got my sister some water in a tin cup. Later, the police would find my little bloody handprints on the sink.
Weakly, I teetered back into our bedroom and took Renee the water. She took it from my hands, and took a drink. It started coming out of this huge slit in her throat. She cried. I cried. It seemed so hopeless.
I got back in my bed. My mother was dead, and my sister was crying for Mom. I couldn�t help her. I couldn�t stay awake.
Some time later, my uncle Nate found us. Renee was moribund, which means, cold and blue and death was eminent. Renee and I, after multiple surgeries and blood transfusions, survived. Mom didn�t. The ambulances didn�t take her.
She died after, I believe, 30 or more stab wounds. No one has a number to give me.
She was also, I believe, raped. She was sodomized. She fought this killer, losing her own natural nails, in the battle. She knew he�d kill her children. My mother died trying to protect us.
I watched her funeral on TV. From me and Renee's hospital room. It seemed there was no end to the indignities.
What is surviving? I am blessed I know, but I don�t always feel it. After all, the trauma to my mind alone is something I battle every day. I�ve had therapy. I�ve talked about it over and over. I�ve filled 8 journals with my thoughts. I have my spirituality. And yet, there is no balm for my soul. It is jagged and raw.
I don�t think I will ever come to peace with what happened. Sometimes, I am scared. There are many Rodney's out there. I am protective of my own child. My own daughter who has never met her grandmother. She never knew how wonderful her grandmother was.
My sister, well, she is an angry sad person. She never really felt like anyone understood her. She is bitter over the loss of the only person that loved her unconditionally. She has continued the cycle of violence in her choices of life mates. She thinks, a man must love her if he hurts her. After a few close calls, I have finally convinced her that abuse can kill women. She�s trying to heal now.
I have lived with 13 scars; evidence that once, a man tried to kill me. A man I knew as a friend of my mothers. I had only met him once, but he was, what us military term as, a friendly. One of these scars is a large abdominal one. Rodney did not stab me with the knife there, but he did cause it. At the end of the attack, he knifed me in my private place, and it ripped me inside out. When I was later taken to the emergency room, the doctors determined that I would not be able to have normal bowel function, and I also was going to need vaginal reconstruction surgery. So, at a later date, I was opened up, and my bowels were temporarily relocated to my abdomen. I also had to endure the surgery for vaginal reconstruction. So much pain was associated with the very essence of being a girl, and was to later convince me that I was a dirty disgusting person.
As if the shock of surgery were not enough, for a period of months I had a colostomy bag on my side. The incisions, known as stomas, quite often became raw and hurt.
This scar, where they eventually closed the stomas, is an ugly reminder that I see every day, that I was savagely attacked. It, like my soul, often becomes raw and irritated.
Then we have, the search, the fear. Is he going to come back? I have been traumatized, and I cannot remember his name. I call him, �Billy� because we know a lot of men with that name in our neighborhood. The nightmares..they started the day after, and continue until now. They cannot find him and he�s coming back! I do a sketch with the police artist. My aunt recognizes it as being Rod, a man my mother had dated some months before.
The detectives, Rambo and Lugoon, take me driving. Somehow, we find the park by Rod�s mother�s house. A little detail I gave them turned out to be the defining clue.
Rod is found. He is in jail. Thank God.
This happened 21 years ago, and yet, in my mind, it is still happening. It�s something I have never been able to make peace with. In the immediate years after, I seemed like I was emotionally healthy. But around the age of 12, not only did my Aunt Rachel die (who took Renee and I in), but also I started showing signs of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I was suicidal at the age of 12, and have been 4 times since 1982. I began feeling very sad and hopeless. It didn�t help that I was now living in an abusive home.
I grew up feeling sad, unwanted, ugly, scarred and lonely. I never really felt happy for too long. I missed my mother always. We could never find a home where we didn�t drive people crazy. Renee and I had so much baggage. It seemed like we would never be accepted or understood. We don�t blame our family, we blame Rodney. He was the one who started this snowball of negative life events for us.
Now, my life is more positive. I�m on medication to regulate my moods. Without them, I am a scared, paranoid, angry person. I have love in my heart. However, it�s hard to trust anyone. Those I love, I sometimes test them. I�m mean to them. I don�t mean to be, but it�s hard for me to get close to others. I�m working on it. I want to be well for my own daughter. She�s almost 7. She�s my life. I�ve given her things I didn�t get emotionally as a kid. Acceptance, boundless love, kindness, and understanding. She has her spirituality. I was told I�d never have children, but I knew God would give me one. I�d give my very life for this child. When I think about it, this must�ve been the way my mother felt about me. She tried to protect us..and her very last thought, I�m sure, was that this man was going to hurt her babies.
I can�t think of anyone hurting my daughter. I think that was the cruelest thing that Rodney did, was hurting me while my mother was dying. She must�ve felt so helpless. Her very instinct to protect us couldn�t help her.she was dying to the soundtrack of my screams. I can�t imagine what my mother went through.
However, I know what I know. I remember that night. I remember the cold calculated way that this man attacked me. I will remember it for the rest of my life.
I am haunted by that night. It is a night that is happening over and over, somewhere in my head. Sometimes I ignore it. Sometimes, I can�t.
I have night terrors. It�s very unusual in someone my age. I�m being treated for them, but once in a while, I have another night, where I am running from Rodney. Only in these dreams, he�s after my own daughter. In another place; I am still 7. My sister is still 4. My mom is still here..and we are happy. Rodney never hurt us. We live together. It�s a happy dream.
My reality is that Rodney could serve 30 more years and I�d never sleep any better. He could get the electric chair, and it wouldn�t be enough. He could �serve his debt to society� and yet never repay me or my splintered family of survivors.
Rodney, a cold-blooded killer, thinks he is smarter than us. He thinks he can walk free. He thinks he can never admit what he did and get away with it. He has disassociated himself from it. He still calls me a little girl. I�m 29. Isn�t that alarming?
Please, I don�t want to see another JoAnn Tate. See, he killed before my mom. A guy in a park. He will kill again. It� s in his blood. He is a true psychopath. No remorse, no mercy, no 2nd chances. My mom didn�t get a 2nd chance, and neither should he.
Please keep him where he belongs. For my sake. I�m just now rebuilding my life.
Someday, I hope to sleep a contented slumber. If he got out, I could never do it.
I�d be in fear. Because I know exactly how vicious he is.
Sincerely,
Melissa
10:04 a.m. - Monday, Oct. 27, 2003
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