Category: Moving & Kids

  • Hiding in Alaska with a Criminal Past

    Hiding in Alaska with a Criminal Past

    It is dark as night and 14 below zero on this winter morning in Alaska, and I’m driving my son to school.

    There are no streetlights on the highway we take into town, but this morning there is a huge full moon lighting the way. The moon hovers just above the tree line. A creeping mist and the silhouette of the passing forest creates a spooky effect.

    “Wouldn’t this be this be the perfect setting for a horror film?” I ask Anders, a huge Hitchcok fan. He nods, staring out the window.

    “Let’s listen to our podcast,” he says, grabbing my phone.

    Our podcast is “My Favorite Murder,” stories of horrible true crimes told by two female hosts who have a great comedic edge. Due to its graphic nature and highly inappropriate language, the podcast has become one way this mother and son bond.

    Coincidentally in this latest episode, the case discussed is about an Alaskan serial killer known as, “The Butcher Baker.”

    https://myfavoritemurder.com/204-periodical-time-tables/

    The Butcher Baker was actually a baker who probably made fantastic muffins and pastries. Unfortunately his alter-ego was a psychopath. One who brought women to his cabin which was so remote, it was only accessible by boat or float plane. There he’d strip and torture them, then send them out into the woods and hunt them down like prey. He was able to get away with murdering at least 17 women before he was caught. It was a real life horror story turned into John Cusack/Nicholas Cage movie. https://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Ground-Nicolas-Cage/dp/B00EQ1187S

    One of the hosts of the My Favorite Murder podcast, takes a detour from the telling of the Butcher Baker story to expound on how Alaska is the perfect place for a criminal “to get lost.”

    Do people come to Alaska to “Get Lost?”

    There is a saying that anyone moving to Alaska is running away from something. For me that something was a small laundry room with no place to fold, but for others could that something be the law?

    Upon hearing the news that we were moving to Alaska our friends fell into two camps; the ones who envied the adventure. And the second and much larger camp, the ones who were horrified. Weren’t we worried about the remoteness, and the cold, and the dark, and seasonal affective disorder? And, surprisingly, a couple people asked if we weren’t we worried about the criminals? It didn’t occur to me that that was even a thing. “You should check the sex offender registry before you move,” one of my more concerned friends advised.

    I didn’t check the National Sex Offender Public Website before I moved because, well, perhaps I didn’t want to know. It wasn’t going to change anything for us. I exercise caution and remind the kids to do the same wherever we are. But I checked the site today, six months after living here, and I compared it to our previous residence in Boulder, Colorado.

    As of January 15, 2020, here were the numbers:

    Boulder, Colorado. Population around 108, 000. Number of registered sex offenders, 11.

    Soldonta, Alaska. Population around 4,500. Number of registered sex offenders, 44.

    If the site’s map is accurate, there are two registered sex offenders on our lake alone.

    Given the numbers, do I feel less safe here on the Kenai Peninsula than I did in Boulder? If we’re talking less safe from wildlife the answer is yes, but people? No, for some reason, I don’t. Of course being surrounded by such beauty makes it easy to feel a false sense of security. I try to be careful not to let my guard down because even in Narnia there is evil. And these days, Soldotna is Narnia.

    Narnia by Day
    Narnia by night. No wait, this is also day, full moon at 10am

    Next to the year I lived alone in a raucous, rent controlled apartment building in Los Angeles, there is only one period of time where I felt on edge about who lived next door. Or in this case, across the street and two houses down.

    I remember the moment a neighbor in Boulder told me a convicted Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) had been released after 14 years in prison and was now living with his mom across the street.

    I had never formally met his mother, but I knew she had lived in our neighborhood forever. She and I exchanged hellos over the years whenever I was outside while she was walking her dog. She would often stop and ask how my kids were doing.

    She was so nice, surely her son’s crime couldn’t have been that bad.

    It was bad.

    Years earlier and armed with a gun, Christopher Lawyer had attacked several strangers. He had broken into the home of a female college student injuring her before she was able to escape. He then came across a young female mail carrier, and dragged her into his car. He duct taped her mouth and eyes before he drove her some place remote, and raped her for hours at gun point. Afterwards he apologized to the woman for the fact that their first date, “had been a little awkward.”

    Sexually Violent Predators vs Sexual Offenders

    There is a difference between a sex offender and an SVP. The definition of an SVP is much more narrow. This is the legal description https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/sexually-violent-predator/: SVP or Sexually violent predator is a person who has been convicted of or charged with a sexually violent offense. An SVP must be diagnosed with a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person a danger to the health and safety of others if not confined in a secure facility.

    Given their mental diagnoses, SVPs are capable of attacking total strangers, which makes their future targets hard to predict.

    “I wish I could make you feel better about this,” my smart, bad ass sister-in-law who is a New York City District Attorney said after reviewing Lawyer’s profile, “but I don’t know how this guy ever got released.”

    How did he get released? And why wasn’t the neighborhood notified? Why weren’t his victims who still live in the area notified? He had already been living there a week before anyone knew and in the meantime the elementary and high school buses were making their usual pick-up and drop-offs directly in front of his house. No more that 200 feet from his front door.

    Everyone was concerned including the Boulder police department, this was the first time someone with an SVP status had been placed in the city of Boulder. One day two parole officers stopped by my house after checking in on Lawyer. They had noticed my 13-year-old daughter and her friend chatting outside in our front yard and felt compelled to come over to warn us. I remember the female officer looking me in the eye and saying, “If I had kids and lived here, I would not let them hang out outside.”

    At the time I was on the HOA board and our meetings usually looked like this; eight of us sitting around a kitchen table, snacking on cheddar cubes while debating appropriate punishments for neighbors not tending to their dandelions. That all changed with Christopher Lawyer’s arrival. We had to start booking a room at a conference center for the HOA meetings because suddenly everyone in the neighborhood was attending the meetings, including Christopher Lawyers mom. The truth was, like any other parent she was just trying to do the best by her child. It was sad to see her try to assure the room he was a non-issue. She calmly admitted that yes, a long time ago her son “had a bad day” (he wasn’t the only one) but that he was totally rehabilitated and it was silly to think of him as a threat. She went on to say he was very being very helpful by planting herbs in her garden. Responses to her ranged from sympathy to anger. I specifically remember a father and ex-cop from Australia seated behind her, he was having none of it. “It’s not a matter of if he will re-offend, but when!”

    Lawyer Vs. Lawyers

    Being placed in a close suburban community run by an HOA wasn’t ideal for someone like Lawyer; someone trying to fly under the radar and blend back into society. For one, practically half the neighborhood he had moved back to were lawyers too, but by profession. A team of them searched out the answer as to why someone with Christopher’s history was allowed back in the community. Eventually they got what at least felt like an answer; Lawyer’s mom had professional and social connections to multiple people who served on the parole board that granted her’s son’s release. These were the same people she planned to call when he was taken back in for parole violations.

    https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/investigations/boulder-sex-offender-christopher-lawyerrs-connected-mom-tried-to-get-leaner-parole-after-violation

    I do think if Lawyer had moved to rural Alaska, his chances of flying under the radar would have been a million times better. That being said, if he violated probation by trespassing on another’s property in Alaska, he’d be more likely to be shot on site. With little to zero community outrage over the fact.

  • Fooled by a Dummy

    Fooled by a Dummy

     

    How I was outsmarted by a dummy:

     

    In the bestseller “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/organizing-tips/a25908482/marie-kondo-book-life-changing-magic-of-tidying-up-tips/one of Marie Condo’s basic rules is to get rid of anything that does not spark joy. While my daughter took this to a whole new level whittling down her belongings to basically the clothes on her back, my son got rid of one broken Iron Man action figure and called it a day.

    And so, because I’m a mom who has chosen to buck the trend of at least trying to raise independent and self-sufficient kids, I packed up my son’s room. It was fairly easy going until I got to him. The puppet had been a birthday gift to my son from my in-laws a few years back, and he was a hit. I hadn’t seen my son play with him for a while though, and for sure the puppet’s tux and top hat were long gone.

    While I felt certain the stripped puppet no longer sparked joy, I also felt if discarded the puppet would find a way back and kill me in my sleep.

    In an attempt at a compromise, I put him in the box of stuff to donate. “I wish you well as I send you out into the world to make another kid happy,” I said, and there is a chance I said this out loud so he could hear. I then backed slowly out of the room.

    Well, what do you know. I was sure myself or my husband had set out all boxes for donation out on our driveway for pick-up back in Colorado. But, we are now in Alaska and curiously I opened this unmarked box and there he was at the top of the pile. 3,364 miles later. Ah, well played, sir.

    And on the opposite end of the spectrum, my daughter.

    When it comes to possessions my daughter makes Marie Condo author of “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” look like a packrat.

    If we all have past lives, my guess is my daughter was a train hopping hobo during the Great Depression. One who could write something like, “An Expert’s Guide to Riding the Rails” if only a pen and paper didn’t take up so much space.

    Prior to our move to Alaska, the rest of us spent weeks sorting and filling bins and boxes. It took my daughter fifteen minutes to pack everything she wanted, and it all went in one backpack. One that met airline carry-on size restrictions.

    As anyone with a teen daughter can totally not relate to my daughter likes to shop but not buy. I will press a credit card into her palm, drop her off at the mall, and beg her to buy back-to-school clothes only to return hours later for pick and see her with zero bags in hand. She’d hop in the car and hand the credit card back to me explaining everything was either too expensive or nothing she wanted. Sometimes I think my daughter is an alien posing as an American teenaged girl, one that could have used a few more hours of cultural instruction before the big pod drop.

    Now you might be wondering about stuff that isn’t clothing? A couple of years earlier my daughter spent a day ridding her room of anything extraneous which appeared to be almost everything. Old photos and greeting cards, her stuffed animals and old dolls, a porcelain piggy bank from Tiffany’s (a baby gift from a good friend) and all her books including yearbooks.

    I was startled when I saw the yearbooks in the recycling bin.

    “Why would you get rid of your yearbooks?” I asked

    “I never look at them,” she answered.

    “Don’t you think one day you’ll want to look at them, just to remember middle school?”

    “No,” she answered, looking at me like I just asked the stupidest question ever. And maybe it was.

    While my husband admired and cheered on her ruthlessness I could help but feel a little sad. The cold and swift removal of so many icons from her childhood was something that was hard for me as her mother to not take a little personally. So in the aftermath I admit, I went to our curbside trash bin in order to rescue a few things. The piggy bank, photos that were still pinned to a pink sequined framed bulletin board, and one lime green, big eyed-stuffed dinosaur. It was a stuffed animal that still “brought joy” to me at least, because it had been the very first toy I bought for my baby on the day I had an ultrasound and learned I would be having a human girl.

    End note:

    Perhaps I should be thankful for the stowaway. Two weeks into our move to Soldatna, AK and my son’s puppet is still his only friend.

    Puppet
    Do you promise we will be very best friends forever?
    Yes. Do you?
    Yes.