My Sister Melissa

(I wrote this over 6 years ago, however no one has wanted to publish it...so here it is)

My sister Melissa has crystal blue eyes that have become more piercing and accusatory as she has aged. You catch her just staring off into space and wonder what is going through her mind. Is it vivid memories of all the abuse, the abandonment or the cruelty she has suffered? There’s little joy in her eyes or her face; she will laugh from time to time but the laughter fades quickly and she is back to being blank again. I don’t know how you go through life when one horrific thing after another has happened and there isn’t any solace in your family or your home or your work, because you don’t have any of those things to comfort you.

Until 2009, I didn’t have much of a relationship with Melissa, she’s my half-sister and we weren’t raised together, she was raised in foster care and I was adopted. There are fifteen of us brothers and sisters, and we were either raised in foster care or adopted. Ten of the brothers and sisters are the Missouri crowd and five of us are the California crowd. Our birth mother left Missouri and her ten children, with my older sister Deborah in tow, stopping long enough in Tulsa to have me and then headed for California. It’s complicated and whenever I have tried to give someone the details their eyes glaze over, it’s way too much information.

Suffice it to say, our mother “Flo” didn’t do any of us any favors. At fifty-nine, still struggling with the damage of my childhood, I joke that Flo is the gift that keeps on giving.

Melissa is the last of the children (we believe) and is developmentally disabled. She has lived her life with varying degrees of success, managing to live independently but needing supportive resources, such as a payee to pay her bills and dole out a weekly allowance to her and a social worker who would make monthly visits. Her mental disability poses challenges in that she has a short attention span and cannot sufficiently project future outcomes of decisions. Melissa has a distinct understanding of right and wrong and is incapable of intentionally harming anyone, however, she does have a quick temper and the vocabulary of a sailor when she is stressed or upset. I tend to think this might be a genetic trait as it is something all of us sisters seem to share.

In the summer of 2009, my sister met the son of one of her neighbors and within a couple of days he moved in with her. A few days after that, he began to beat her. Over the course of sixteen weeks Robert Matthews savaged her; he broke her nose twice, knocked out her front teeth, beat her so hard with a telephone cord he broke the skin and drew blood, blackened her eyes on several occasions, kicked her repeatedly in the ribs, choked her, tried to drown her, bit her, and sexually assaulted her with a beer bottle. Like most abusers he alienated her from her friends and family, not allowing her to see or call them. Matthews threatened to kill her and her friends several times and he threatened to kill her precious little dog,” Lady.”

On a warm September night, Matthews had polished off a case of beer and was punching Melissa in the head, calling her “retard” and “stupid.” Melissa picked up a steak knife and stabbed him once in the chest and killed him. Two days later, my older sister Deborah called to tell me that Melissa was in the Tulsa County jail, charged with first degree murder. These events triggered a journey for Melissa, my sister Deborah and myself, that none of us will ever forget or from which, completely recover.

Tulsa World ran this headline “Tulsa Woman Arrested After Boyfriend Stabbed to Death.” The story said she was kneeling over his body when the police arrived and she told them she was sorry but she was “tired of him beating on her.” It also said they had been “arguing” and she went into the kitchen and got a steak knife and stabbed him once in the chest.

That is where the story jumps off “she went into the kitchen, she went into the kitchen.” Online comments speculated that her going into the kitchen was a sign of premeditation. One of our brothers infuriated me when he said “that burning bed defense don’t work anymore, she left the room, she went into the kitchen.” Thousands of miles away, Deborah and I didn’t have the facts, we didn’t know what was true, all we knew is what the local television channels and the newspapers were reporting. And everyone in Tulsa was calling for her execution.

I spent a few agonizing days asking myself what my role should be in all this. I didn’t know Melissa, in my lifetime I had spent a couple dozen hours with her. Deborah on the other hand had helped raise her and knew her intimately. I struggled with whether I should even get involved and wondered if I would come to regret it. Then it dawned on me that I’ve spent my life helping total strangers, it was my duty to help my own sister.

In early October, Deborah flew into Tulsa from Washington state and I flew into Tulsa from Maryland. We arrived with an agenda to find out as much as we could, meet with the Public Defender and hire a lawyer to represent me and Deborah. Melissa’s ex-boyfriend, Sam, gave us a list of names and contact information for her friends and neighbors. Deborah and I decided we would talk to these people, get the story and take it to the Public Defender; we knew that Melissa was not going to be good at telling her story; we had to tell it for her.

Our first stop was the jail to visit Melissa. Although it wasn’t visiting day, we were given a special visit because we were from out of state. Once we were cleared we were instructed to go up a flight of stairs and take what seemed like an endless corridor to a certain door that would lead us down to a visiting room. Both Deb and I thought it so strange that there was not a person in site, not a corrections officer or jail personnel, just an empty corridor.

We finally got to the visiting room and it was nothing like what I had expected. It was dark with chairs and windows, Melissa sat on the other side of the window, she smiled when she saw us and her first words were to my sister Deborah “Boy you’ve gotten gray!” I don’t think Deb appreciated it. Once the hellos were over, Melissa began to cry.

It was then that we heard the tale of the sixteen weeks of abuse, how he would punch her in the head and call her stupid. She showed us the bite scar on her arm and her front gums that had once had teeth. She cried and shook “he ruined my life,” she said. I didn’t want her to talk about the stabbing and when she veered in that direction I tried to change the subject, I knew that everything was being recorded and could be used against her.

During the visit we learned that everyone, everyone, even her apartment manager, social worker and dentist, knew of the abuse. This explained what we learned a few hours later, that the apartment manager had told some residents that she would have us arrested if we went snooping around. She didn’t want us to find out that she knew of the abuse, because she understood that Melissa’s disability required her to report it.

We were given a good long visit which I thought was unusual, but finally the lights flashed and we had to go. We told Melissa that we loved her and we were going to try to help her. She cried and shook her head and waved us goodbye.

Our next stop was to track down some of the people Sam had told us about, people who were Melissa’s friends at the apartment complex. Because of the manager’s threat of calling the police, we snuck into one woman’s apartment through a back sliding glass door. In another instance, one of Melissa’s friends, a tall black woman named Tina, met us at the front door of the apartment building and very bravely escorted us to her apartment.

The apartments were occupied solely by the elderly and disabled, they had a retirement home atmosphere with common indoor areas where the residents would meet to play games, attend church services or have communal potlucks. Tina, Billie and BJ, Melissa’s friends, each told us what they knew of the beatings and how he had threatened them. They confirmed what we knew, that the management was very aware of the situation but failed to report it to law enforcement. They also gave us the names and phone numbers of others who knew or saw the abuse, among them was a couple who were with Matthews and Melissa in the elevator when he punched her and broke her nose.

The apartment complex was in a twitter with people standing along the halls watching us as we left. A man, “one-eyed Mike,” was on his way to grill steaks in the common area when he stopped us with “Are you Melissa’s sisters?” He then told us how he had seen Matthews raising his fist, hitting Melissa in the head and yelling that Melissa had to do what he told her. One-eyed Mike shook his head, “I told her, you don’t deserve that Melissa, you need to get away.”

Our next stop was at criminal defense attorney Kent Hudson’s office. I had researched defense attorneys in Tulsa and picked him because I couldn’t find anything negative about him. There were a few others that were apparent grand standers and the last thing I wanted to do was irritate the Public Defender, we had to have him on our side.

My mission in securing an attorney for me and Deborah was that I felt strongly we needed someone to guide us through the legal system and Tulsa politics. We needed someone who could pick up the phone, call the Public Defender and then relay to us what was going on. We couldn’t afford to launch a private legal defense for Melissa, but I felt much better knowing that Kent was “there” and we had “privilege.” And I wanted to make sure that we didn’t make the situation worse by saying or doing something that would jeopardize Melissa’s chances.

The next morning we went to see the Public Defender, Brian Rayl. In the meeting was also a criminal defense investigator, Roger Roberts. We told him about our visit with Kent Hudson and Rayl expressed that he and Hudson were friends. We laid out the story, we told him about Melissa’s disability, we gave him names and phone numbers of potential witnesses.

At one point, Brian turned to his computer and pulled up Matthew’s criminal record, there were nineteen arrests, just in Tulsa. Some of which were assault charges, not to mention his two stints in state prison for drug dealing. Roberts looked at Matthew’s mug shot and said “I know this guy, he’s a homeless guy.” He then looked at us and said “I guess he found himself a paycheck.”

That statement turned my blood cold. It was the way Roberts said it that made us really understand what a target of opportunity our sister had been. There she was with a roof over her head, a monthly Social Security check and food stamp vouchers. Her disability was the icing on the cake.

I’ve known brilliant, professional women who were victims of domestic abuse who didn’t have the courage or resources to leave the situation. Melissa’s disabilities made it that much more difficult, compounded by the fact that everyone knew what was going on and no one tried to stop it or offer to help her get away.

Brian Rayl asked us what we wanted, knowing that Melissa was facing a possible first degree conviction that would carry life in prison, maybe even the death penalty. We told him that we hoped she would get a lesser sentence and be placed in an institution rather than a prison. The meeting ended with Rayl giving me his card with his cell phone number and telling me I could call anytime. Deborah and I both agreed that we liked Rayl and Roberts and we silently prayed they would do a good job defending Melissa.

The one thing we hadn’t done was see the apartment where they had been living. Melissa had moved two weeks prior to the night of the stabbing to an apartment complex just up the street. This complex was like the other, the same clientele, elderly and disabled; the same feel of residential care. We later learned the reason for the move, the apartment manager where she had been living knew of Matthew’s felony record and was threatening to evict Melissa if he continued to stay there. The manager at the new apartment told us that Sam had permission to enter the apartment and had done so to get some of Melissa’s things, so if we wanted to go in we’d have to do so with Sam. Our time was short as we both had planes to catch and it took us a while to get Sam to the apartment, finally we were able to go in but we only had about twenty minutes to spare.

The first thing that struck me was how small it was, one room and a bathroom.

as no kitchen to go “into,” it was a sink, stove and refrigerator four feet from the sofa. There was the door coming in from the hall and the sliding glass door on the other side of the room with the sofa between the two exits, the sofa where he sat when she stabbed him. Simply put, on that night, there was no way out, the room was so small he would have stopped her before she could have gotten out.

Seeing that apartment completely changed my perspective and I realized that Matthews was on his way to killing my sister. He may not have done it that night or even the next weekend, but I believe he was days or weeks away from killing her. That one single stab that killed him was a miracle, had she hit him on the other side or been an inch off, she would have wounded him but not killed him and he surely would have killed her, maybe with the same knife.

Frantically we dug through piles of clothes and garbage, the place was a mess from the police investigation and from Sam combing through things to find her personal belongings. We wanted to find paperwork or personal pictures we knew Melissa would want. I found two receipts from counseling visits Melissa had with her social worker and her social worker’s card with “Melissa, what happened, call me?” that had been left only nine days before the incident. I found a card for a psychiatrist that Melissa had an appointment with in September, had she made that visit? Had she told the psychiatrist?

I found a note from a woman looking to score drugs. Melissa had told us that people came at all hours of the night and she had told him he needed to stop drinking and doing drugs. We found hundreds of unused cigarette filters and that puzzled me. “Why all the cigarette filters Sam?” “They use them for drugs,” he said.

There was still blood on the floor and I did what I could not to look at it. I couldn’t imagine the horror of that night. In the police report Melissa said they were watching football and that Matthews had drank a case of beer. Melissa said something about an ex-boyfriend and Matthews called her a “bitch” and a “slut” and “then he took his fist and started hitting me in the head real hard and slapped me.”

She then describes getting the knife and stabbing him one time, he fell to the floor and Melissa called 911, they told her to put pressure on the wound, she says he came back to life and then the “ambulance said he was dead.” The Tulsa World quoted her as saying she “was tired of him hitting on her all the time.”

I couldn’t wait to get out of Tulsa and go home, the five days we had spent there had been a roller coaster ride of emotion and worry. Deb and I found ourselves among people and in circumstances we never would have chosen, an underbelly world of people with nothing to do all day but collect their disability checks and create arguments between themselves. Now it was just a waiting game as October turned into April of the next year.

During those many months there was a lot of drama as we learned about the prison system. I have never felt sorry for people who’ve committed crimes and certainly not felons, but the exploitation of prisoners and their families shocked me.

Each prisoner has what they call “books” which is an account which family members can put money in to allow them to buy items from the “commissary.” The “books” issue became big for Melissa, she was always asking people to put money on her books. I sent Sam some money to put on her books, another sister sent her a check for her books, there were friends who put money on her books, but she was always out of money.

For one thing, she wouldn’t stop making phone calls, with phone cards she purchased at the commissary, phone cards that charged $2.50 per minute. She wanted to buy special meals, like hamburgers with fries and a coke; that ran around ten bucks. If she needed shampoo she had to buy it at $3.00 for two ounces, if she wanted to write a letter she had to buy the pencils. She had to buy tampons. In one heated exchange with the jail staff I told them what a rip off I thought it all was and was met with “we take good care of the inmates.”

Finally Deb and I told everyone in the family (and her friends) to stop putting money on her books. Her lawyer, Brian Rayl told us to tell her to stop talking. The jail told us that if she didn’t have any money on her books for two weeks she would be declared indigent and then they would provide her with her necessities like shampoo, deodorant and sanitary napkins.

The height of this “books” experience was when Melissa was taken to the infirmary complaining of pain in her side and chest and was given antibiotics because the medical staff thought she had a bladder infection. And because she had about $30 on her books they charged her $8 a pill until her money ran out. I was furious. Even my husband who is very conservative and a “law and order” guy, asked “Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty?” It was a lesson for all of us involved.

As time wore on and Melissa’s court dates kept getting postponed or held over, she became agitated. “I’m just going to plead guilty,” is what she told Deb. “I’m going to fire my lawyer, I don’t like him.” Deb had to explain that she couldn’t fire her lawyer, she hadn’t hired him. We began to realize that Melissa thought that if she just pled guilty it would be all over and she could go home. Deb spent hours explaining to her that she was staring down life in prison.

Melissa said we should just post her bail, which was at $5,000 and that she had money in her account at Volunteers of America, her social security payee, and we should just post her bail. Deb had to explain that her bail was $500,000 and no one in the family had $50,000 to post bail for her. It went round and round.

Finally I found Sharla Yoder at Redeeming Love Prison Ministry. Sharla promised to look up Melissa the next time she was at the jail. It worked, Melissa got the attention she wanted, went to church services and found some friends. The frantic outbursts became less frequent although they never did go away.

I began a greeting card campaign, sending Melissa a card each week telling her I was thinking of her, that her lawyer Brian was a good man and that she should do what he told her to do. Melissa had never called me because she didn’t have my phone number, several times I was tempted to write it in the letters, but didn’t. I couldn’t stomach the thought of getting those phone calls.

Kent Hudson called me in early March to update me. There was a possibility Melissa could get a suspended sentence and be put on probation, in that case Deb and I had better be in Tulsa for the hearing. If her sentence was suspended, Melissa would be given her clothes and shown the door and Melissa had no place to go and had lost most of her belongings. Equally distressing is what she didn’t know, that her dog, Lady, that she had loved so much, had been given to a neighbor and she wouldn’t be getting her back.

The hearing was April 27th, so I set about trying to find a place for her to live.

I called several social services organizations, none of which could or would help me because Melissa would have a felony conviction. On top of that, Melissa would no longer be eligible for Section 8 housing because of a felony conviction, so trying to find her affordable housing was a nightmare. I called dozens of apartment complexes none of which take felons as renters because in Oklahoma, if a renter is arrested selling drugs, the police can confiscate all the renter’s belongings and the state could confiscate the entire apartment complex. At one point I called the probation department and was told “Just tell them her felony is not for drugs,” to which I replied “Yeah, that’ll work, its only manslaughter.”

I called the Salvation Army, Melissa could check in each evening and would have to check out each morning but there was an adult “daycare” facility next door where she could spend her days. I could see Melissa, essentially homeless, wandering around the streets of Tulsa all day being the perfect target for the next man to abuse her. I was at my wits end, sobbing several times as I hung up the phone after one more frustrating dead-end. Everything else we could fix, we could get her furniture and household goods and clothes, but I couldn’t find her housing.

Finally, in a conversation with the investigator, Roger Roberts, he gave me the contact for the Mental Health Association. The Tulsa Mental Health Association provides housing for people with mental health issues. I called the contact and I pled Melissa’s case. She does not have a violent history, she was brutally abused by the man she killed, she has nowhere to go, she has no relative with which to stay, I’ve called at least one hundred places. The fellow admitted that he had a waiting list and then he said “I have an apartment for her.” If I could have reached through the phone and given him a big kiss, I would have. Instead I cried some more.

Deb and I arrived at the courthouse and were greeted by Brian Rayl and Kent Hudson. After a while they brought out the prisoners, the men were placed in the jury box and the four women standing trial were handcuffed together and seated in front of the jury box. Melissa smiled when she saw us and whispered to her prison mate. Gestures went back and forth and in one gesture Melissa ran her finger across her throat to let us know, what she had said on several occasions, that if she were sent to prison she would kill herself.

One after another the other prisoners were either sentenced to prison or given probation. During one break, Kent laid out the territory for us. The judge was up for re-election. The review board had recommended that Melissa be given a suspended sentence and probation. The probation department had recommended she be sentenced and sent to state prison. Kent told us that Robert Matthews mother and sister were going to testify that Melissa receive no prison time. This worried me because Melissa had received threats from Matthews’ two remaining brothers that if she were released from jail they were going to kill her. Were the mother and the sister trying to ensure that this could be done?

There was some scrambling on behalf of the District Attorney when Matthew’s mother and sister didn’t appear in court even though requested by the District Attorney. The mother and sister appearance was designed to give cover to the D.A. for agreeing to a suspended sentence and to the judge who was up for re-election. Kent came to us and said we would have to come back Thursday. I told Kent that didn’t work because if Melissa were going to be released we had to get her set up with clothing, furniture and an apartment.

Kent went back to the judge’s chambers and laid out our dilemma. The judge released Melissa to us, saying “It’s going to take a while to process her out of jail, I’m sorry that the bureaucracy takes so long.” He then told Melissa that she had to appear in two days for her sentencing.

I was amazed, somehow the system had worked, everyone involved understood what Roger Roberts had understood, it wasn’t Matthews that was the victim.

The next couple of days were a frenzy of activity. Melissa was released at ten p.m. that night. Our first stop was a diner where she ordered a plate of fried food and a Dr. Pepper, then she had dessert, a chocolate sundae. Deb wanted to tell her about Lady immediately and I said, “Let’s just give her tonight to rest.” The next day we put a deposit on her apartment, met with her payee, Volunteers of America, met with another lawyer and then went to lunch.

After lunch, Deb and Melissa were sitting in the car and as I came up I saw Melissa crying and I knew, Deb had told her about Lady.

We went shopping at a thrift store to get her a few items of furniture, household goods and clothes, then we went to Walmart to find what we hadn’t at the thrift store. The next morning we were back in court with Melissa looking very cute in a purple blouse and a pair of new jeans. During the course of her eight months in jail Melissa had lost about sixty pounds and was now a size 9, she was shorter than me but now she just looked so small. Matthews’ mother and sister did show up and did testify that they did not want her doing jail time and Melissa received a ten year suspended sentence with probation.

As we were walking out of the court house on our way to set up her probation, Melissa said something nasty to me (I can’t remember now) and I whipped around on her and said “You know I can change my plane ticket right now and be out of here.” Later she apologized. But I wasn’t convinced that she truly understood what a huge bullet she had just dodged.

I was irritated all day and after we got back to the hotel from dinner, I pulled up my chair between the two beds and said to her “Melissa, we’re going to have a come to Jesus meeting.” Deb was the one who typically lost patience with Melissa because she had a “big mouth.” I asked Deb the first night we were in Tulsa just to let it ride, not to do that dance that the two of them had done all their lives where Melissa would say something and Deb would cut her down. Deb had been great, biting her tongue, looking at me and rolling her eyes, and now it was me about to give Melissa a tongue lashing. Deborah found it highly amusing.

I went point by point over the terms of her probation. She could no longer see her old friends because they had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, she couldn’t even talk to them. She couldn’t even spit on the street or jaywalk or she would go straight to prison. She had to keep her mouth shut so she wouldn’t get into verbal battles with people or she might go to prison. She better find a church and make regular visits and find a new crowd of people. She was actually required to find out if someone she was associating with had a felony record and if so, immediately disassociate. She could not be in bars or taverns (that one didn’t worry me because Melissa didn’t drink). She’d better show up for every probation appointment or she would go to prison.

At one point I said, “You said to me that you could never repay me. Well actually you can, keep your nose clean, don’t hang out with loser men, stay out of the drama and stay out of prison. And if you are not willing to do that then start sending me and Deb a check for $200 a month until you pay us off. We are not doing this again.”

Later that evening we searched Craigslist to see if we could find Melissa a new dog. We knew how she would fuss over a dog and walk one several times a day and we felt it would be important for her to have that to do as well as have a companion. We found a beautiful Pomeranian mix named Toby and the next day we took Melissa and Toby to their new home.

Melissa was actually anxious for us to get on our respective planes and go home. It amused me somewhat. She had been in jail for eight months and the last few days weren’t much different with me and Deb telling her where to go and what to do. She cried as she hugged us goodbye and she thanked us profusely. I was a bit worried as we left and said a prayer, but I was also reminded that for forty-six years Melissa had been able to manage her life somewhat well given her disability. My bigger worry was that she would run into another Robert Matthews.

Deb and I both admit that we learned a lot during this ordeal, most of which we now wish we never knew. But one thing I have learned is to be careful about pre-judging. All those early posts on the Tulsa World website, people speculating, saying that she should fry or hang, really hurt me because that was my sister they were talking about.

People leapt to conclusions, even in my own family, that wasn’t helpful and certainly didn’t advance a positive outcome. One of the more helpful people in this was my husband who kept reminding me, when I was doubtful, after all she went into the kitchen, “You don’t have all the facts, you don’t know what went on that night.”

I understand that there are evil people in this world but I didn’t understand that someone in my own family could be brutalized so terribly. I learned there are amazing people out there doing amazing work, like the Tulsa Mental Health Association, Sharla Yoder at Redeeming Love Prison Ministries and Volunteers of America. And I’ve learned that sometimes there really is justice.

Melissa and I talk from time to time, she now laughs again and jokes. She has days when she is sad but also has a trauma group that she attends. She goes to church here and there and especially loves when they have potluck. She tells me she has really gained weight since getting out of jail. I tell her to stop eating junk food. I order her groceries from time to time, and that worries me, because I know she is feeding some man.

I’ve determined that I will never go back to Tulsa, except to pick up her body or ashes and take them to the family gravesite in Missouri. And while she is eight years younger than me, I suspect I will be doing that at some point. Or maybe she’ll outlive me. We’ll see.