In God's House (28 page)

Mo made my reservations for Washington, DC and spoke with Father Patterson’s office at Hope House in Virginia in the suburbs of Washington. A meeting was set for Saturday morning. As I packed, I got a call from Zeb. He shouted, “Bishop Covers Up Priest’s Crimes For Decades!”

“What?”

“That’s the headline in the Baton Rouge paper this morning. Check out New Orleans – ‘Bishop Moves Child-Abuser Priest Parish To Parish’. The story is not out of the state yet, but it will be running on the wire for the first time today. Naturally,
The Thiberville Register
did not run anything at all this morning. But the story is out there now. It’s clear what role the bishop played. It’s also clear Father Dubois was abusing kids before ordination and in every parish he served in. Christ, Monsignor Gaudet’s appalling attitude toward victims is unbelievable. It’s all beginning to come into focus now. It’s not just a sicko priest story anymore. There’s a sicko monsignor and a sicko bishop in the mix.”

“What the hell happened? How did the story get out? The depositions weren’t even supposed to be filed with the court.”

“Well, between us… but I don’t think it matters if it stays between us, because by noon probably everybody will know. When all of you left Chaisson’s office, he had an informal press conference and he passed out business cards for the court reporter. The court reporter had everything printed and copied by ten last
night. He sold all of us copies of Monsignor Gaudet’s deposition, the partial deposition of Bishop Reynolds and the personnel file of your client that was attached to the bishop’s deposition. I stayed up half the night reading. All that stuff and the proposed stipulation of liability agreement between Chaisson and Blassingame is damning for the diocese.”

All I could say was, “That’s good.” I was running late for my meeting with Johnny Wilcox and rang off. As I drove out of the driveway I thought about it and all I could think was
That’s good.

Turtle was humming a spiritual song when she put coffee in front of us. Wilcox looked at the coffee and said, “Now, Turtle, just suppose I had wanted juice instead of coffee this morning? What would you have done?”

“Me? Honey, I woulda just changed yo mind.”

When Turtle went off to decide what we wanted for breakfast and load it onto a tray, I asked Wilcox, “What ya got, Johnny?”

“I got two dead kids. Brothers. In a parish in Willow Springs. First kid supposedly committed suicide in 1971. The brother supposedly died in a bicycle accident a few weeks later, a
one-bicycle
accident at that. Ever heard of a fatal one-bicycle accident?”

I shook my head.

“This Father O. D. Ellison disappeared shortly after the second death. He was treated in two places and then he was in a monastery in Kansas for almost ten years. Now he lives in a home for retired priests just south of Sarasota, Florida.”

“Break it down.”

“First kid is supposed to have killed himself in the rectory of Ellison’s church while Ellison was away from the property. The priest told police that the boy was upset about school, his friends calling him names at school because he liked all the things girls
liked and didn’t like anything the boys liked. The kid was only nine and allegedly distraught about being called a sissy and kids calling him ‘BobbaLou’ rather than Bobby. Ellison said he had to go visit a sick parishioner in the local hospital and he left the boy in the small chapel in the residence and told him to pray until he returned. The cops found it checked out that the priest gave communion to a patient in the hospital that afternoon. Since they confirmed his story, no one with the local police suspected the priest of having killed the boy. Almost no one in Willow Springs suspects that it was murder to this day. Only a couple of retired deputies believe it was murder. They could only whisper about it because he was a priest. Suicide was impossible.”

“Meaning what?”

Before he could answer, Turtle delivered a fabulous breakfast for both of us, better than we would have ordered for ourselves.

“The sheriff’s office had photographs. A fellow who was a state trooper with me when I was a rookie is the sheriff’s top administrator up there. It took him damn near a week to find the pictures in a file box stored in the basement of the sheriff’s office. I have photocopies of the pictures with me, but I don’t think you want to see a kid hanging while you’re eating.”

“Did you see the scene?”

“You bet. Rang the rectory doorbell and a big fat black woman answered. I asked for the pastor and she said he was at a meeting at the diocese offices in Providence. When I told her I was a building inspector for the Diocese of Providence and I needed to inspect the property, she let me in and made me coffee. I asked if any changes had been made to the rectory since it used to be in the Diocese of Thiberville in the seventies and she said, ‘No suh, I been here since President Kennedy came through here making votes ’bout 1960. There is nothing ever changed here except some paint.’”

“So you saw the scene?”

“Renon, the scene doesn’t tell you anything the pictures don’t tell you. It would have been virtually impossible for this boy to
have situated the rope over the rafter in the small chapel and elevated himself to the noose – he would have had to have levitated. There was nothing to stand on and knock out from under him. The cops thought he stood on the back of a pew, but there is no way that was physically possible. This boy was strangled and then hung up, hoisted up, like a side of beef.”

“What did the maid say?”

“I asked her if she was there when the little boy died in 1971. She said that it was her day off, but she never stopped praying for that little boy. She said his name was Bobby and he came to the rectory almost every day and when he left, sometimes he was crying. She said, ‘That boy had lots of troubles. He was crying a lot.’”

“You have no doubt?”

“None. Father Ellison killed Bobby sure as Turtle is going to forget the biscuit you asked for. It was murder.”

“The brother?”

“The scene of his death has completely changed, doesn’t resemble the photographs taken at the time. What supposedly happened is that this kid, Dwayne, was riding his bike on the edge of a narrow country lane bounded by a steep drainage ditch on one side. This was a few weeks after his little brother hung himself. And… and he got a tire off into the ditch and crashed down the embankment and died of a massive head wound.”

“Well, it could have happened that way, couldn’t it?”

“The scene has changed. Now the ditch is lined with concrete, paved on the bottom and up both sides. Even the pecan tree that marked the site in the photographs has been cut down. The body was discovered about mid-morning on a Saturday, but the coroner put the time of death at about two a.m. The photographs, grainy black-and-whites, show a smooth, muddy surface. The photos show no evidence of there being a rock or other object for the kid to have struck his head on. There is no damage to the bike. The fall didn’t even twist the handlebars.”

“So what is a young kid doing riding his bike on a country road at two in the morning?”

“He wasn’t going home. He lived two miles in the other direction, in a trailer park with his mother. And no one knows where he was coming from.”

“No one?”

“I found the mother of the boys living in a mobile home park in Duval County, Texas. But she’s not talking. She wanted to ask me questions, wanted to know what I was doing bothering her. I was honest. I said I was investigating the deaths of her sons. I asked her where Dwayne had been going on his bike at that hour on a Friday night. She shook her head and told me, ‘Nobody knows. Maybe he was running away. He had never been right in the head, not since Bobby hung hisself.’ I asked her why she thought Bobby killed himself.”

“And?”

“You’re not gonna believe what I tell you.”

“Try me.”

Wilcox reached into his briefcase and pulled some typed sheets out. “I was wired in every conversation I had. All the tapes were transcribed by my wife. It’s all here for you. It’s a pretty big file. Think I made at least a new boat trailer on this investigation. But here is what the lady said. I’m quoting directly. She said, ‘Bobby killed hisself because of the bad things he was telling me ’bout the priest, Father at the church. Bobby didn’t have no daddy because he run off with a young girl after Bobby was born. Bobby never even saw him and it don’t seem Dwayne could remember him neither. So I was the daddy and momma and I took to Bobby with a yardstick and whipped his little butt till it looked like it was going to bleed. Did that three days in a row ’cause he was lying on the priest and saying the priest was pulling his pants down and making Bobby do things with the priest’s pecker and that the priest tried to put his pecker inside Bobby in the back. And I knew he was lying and he jus’ didn’t wanna be no altar boy no more and I think he killed hisself because of the whipping I was giving him. And then… then when Bobby is dead, don’t you know, Dwayne started trying to tell me Bobby was telling the truth about the
priest and that the priest was doing these things to Dwayne too. Right before he died, Dwayne said to me he was going to talk to that Father and tell him to stop or he was going to go to a teacher and tell the teacher. I couldn’t whip Dwayne’s butt. He was too big for that, but I whipped him with my mouth and told him if he told lies on the priest to a teacher, he would burn in hell, but first he would be out of my trailer. But God took Dwayne. Bobby was lost in heaven and Dwayne went to find him. They both went to Jesus.”

I was silent. I had stopped eating. “Is this it? You got it all in the briefcase? Copies of photographs? Transcription of interviews?”

“Nope. This isn’t all of it. You said I was gonna make enough for a new bass boat on this stuff. You gave me no budget and I have been spending your money like a drunk Indian. I even flew first class to Sarasota and rented a deluxe convertible automobile.”

I nodded as if to say go on.

“Finding Father Ellison was hard. Seeing him was easy. He met me in the lobby of this old folks’ home. He’s a strange-looking guy. Lousy teeth. Straggly hair, mangy looking. Lots of dandruff. Chunks of it, like snowflakes. I posed as a former parishioner from Willow Springs. Told him I never went to church much but that there was something from that time that had stayed with me. The priest took me outside to the end of a veranda that overlooked a small inlet. We sat in chairs. His voice was not strong, so I pulled my chair close to his.”

Wilcox reached into his briefcase again and said, “Here. I’ll just read the pertinent part to you.”

I sipped the now ice-cold coffee.

After clearing his throat a bit, Johnny Wilcox began to read. “It’s me talking first, Renon. ‘Father Ellison, when I lived in Willow Springs there were two little boys who died, brothers. One hung himself and the other fell off his bicycle. I’ve completed an investigation into these deaths, Father Ellison, and I am convinced you murdered both of these children.’”

“You don’t beat around the bush, Johnny.”

“In a deal like this with a man like this, there ain’t no point in
beating around the bush. Your best chance of getting anything at all is in a frontal assault.”

“And what did you get?”

“I got this,” Wilcox said, as he pulled another page of transcript from his briefcase.

“What Father Ellison said to me was, ‘I’m an old man. I deserve to die in peace. I have not had any peace for a long time. Now I wait for death. I will say nothing about this to you or to anyone. What is done is done. Nothing can bring those boys back. Nothing can increase my suffering. You, Mr. Wilcox, you go in peace now.’”

“That was it?”

“That was all he said. Then he got up and slowly walked off the porch and down a long hallway. I saw his face and his eyes, and I heard his voice. If you listen to the tape of his voice, you will know Father Ellison murdered both Bobby and Dwayne. Probably he killed them because they were getting out of control – out of his control. A month after he said the funeral Mass for Dwayne, our Father Ellison was removed from Willow Springs. He left two corpses in Willow Springs, but who knows how many live victims he left there. The first place he went from there was a Catholic treatment center in the northeast. Then he was transferred to a treatment center run by an order of priests in New Mexico. After a couple of years in nut houses, he moved into a monastery on the plains in Kansas and finally he retired to this place in Florida. There’s no doubt about it. Father Owen Dante Ellison murdered two of the boys he molested.”

I was suddenly so sick I felt I was going to faint. I had vertigo, wanted to vomit. Johnny saw my distress. “Close your eyes, Ren. Breathe from your diaphragm. Slow, full breaths. Easy.”

I leaned against the wall, weak to the point of fainting. Johnny came over to the chair next to me, put a napkin in ice water and placed it on my forehead. It was a few minutes before I could open my eyes. Everything seemed to have a blue-green tint.

I excused myself and kind of wobbled to the men’s room, where I splashed water on my face. I felt an almost murderous
rage and I knew who I wanted to kill. It was the man I had an appointment with in one hour.

I walked straight into the bishop’s office and found Monsignor Moroux sitting in the desk chair, staring out the window at the place he had once referred to as the bone yard. I softly said, “Monsignor?”

Startled, he turned abruptly. “Yes? Oh, Renon.”

“I’m on my way to see Father Patterson, the priest-psychiatrist in Virginia, this weekend.”

“Thank you,” he said. A genuine expression of relief flooded his features. “Thank you, Renon.”

Monsignor Moroux stood, motioned for me to join him as he walked toward the wall of big windows. “There’s your friend,” Moroux said, pointing to the old man with his dog.