Katie Beers (13 page)

The scene outside the precinct in Hauppauge was as big a news stakeout as it gets. Cameramen toting bulky Betacams on that raw rainy night didn’t dare put them down for fear Katie would walk out any moment and they would miss the coveted shot. Linda arrived in a wheelchair, with an entourage of extended family,
Beauty and the Beast
balloons and candy for Katie. And Marilyn, who needed to hitch a ride to the precinct from a detective, arrived poised for a reunion with Katie. It never came.

After hours of waiting in her wheelchair outside the detectives’ squad room, Linda could be heard both inside and outside the building hollering, “I want to see my daughter! This is a rotten thing for you to do
to me!” Cops closed the door to the room in her face.
¹⁷

Katie emerged finally, a diminutive figure in a two-toned blue oversized slicker, clenching an open bag of potato chips. Police snuck her out of a back door. Neither Marilyn nor Linda ever got a glimpse of her, but the media had all exits covered. This was not a shot to be missed. She seemed to sport a smile as flashes erupted and camera shutters furiously clicked. County attorneys were already drafting court documents for Marilyn to sign, seeking temporary custody of Katie, intent that neither woman would ever lay claim to Katie again.

John Esposito, the next morning, stood still with closed eyes, as his attorney asked the judge for special accommodations.

“Your Honor, I would ask that the defendant be placed in protective custody and segregated from the other prisoners due to the notoriety this case has received. I’d also respectfully ask the court that Mr. Esposito receive medical attention due to the stress that he has undergone. I would also add, Your Honor, that Mr. Esposito has family here today —they are concerned about his well-being— and very much support him. I ask the court to again consider setting some kind of reasonable bail.”

Ferris then interjected with what nearly everyone at the arraignment had to be thinking. “Your Honor, there is no
mystery
. Katie Beers was secreted in his house the entire time when the realization occurred to this defendant we have a strong case and he stands to face substantial state time.”

Judge Barton ordered Esposito held on half a million dollars bail. No one posted the money, so he remained behind bars at the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead. He was placed on a suicide watch, his jailhouse cot lined only with tissue paper. In protective custody, as requested, he was shielded from a different form of justice. Inmates have their own due process for child molesters.

Outside arraignment court, a crush of reporters, cameras, microphones and tape recorders pressed into Andrew Siben.

What did you mean by that, wasn’t it your client that put Katie in danger in the first place?

“I have no comment on that; I would simply say that without Mr. Esposito’s cooperation this child may not have been found.”

Why isn’t he being charged with Kidnapping First Degree? Why is
it Kidnapping Two? Was there some kind of deal worked out?

Kidnapping in the first degree carries a maximum life sentence. Kidnapping Two is eight to twenty-five years. The distinction is that Kidnapping One involves some kind of sexual abuse or torture. Esposito denied to his attorneys that he had ever touched Katie.

“I think it’s significant that police and the DA’s office only felt it warranted a charge of kidnapping in the second degree. I think that is significant.”

Was any kind of arrangement worked out with the District Attorney’s office?

“I will not comment on any conversations I had about this case. This case or any case.”

How much time was it in-between when you learned that Katie was alive and when she was freed?

Siben half smiled. He had to see that one was coming.

“I can only say that yesterday I received a phone call from a client. And he informed me that he had information on the whereabouts of Katie Beers. I felt it was incumbent upon me to notify the District Attorney’s office to see to it that the child was safe and sound. And I do feel that we helped save a human life. The end result is that Katie is alive and well.”

Katie was indeed alive. But she would soon tell the Suffolk County Grand Jury she was a far cry from well.

The drive to the police precinct seemed to take forever. When we pulled in, it was night and the flash of cameras hurt my eyes which hadn’t yet adjusted to life. I was so embarrassed. I hadn’t showered in over sixteen days, and I was wearing a soiled nightgown and swam in a man’s extra-large jacket.

The cops brought me down to the police station basement where I talked endlessly to a uniformed woman named Debbie. First I needed fresh clothes. She handed me a neatly folded pile: yellow sweatpants and a T-shirt. They draped my frame but I was relieved to finally be out of the urine stained Dalmatian nightgown I had worn for over two weeks. Then police prodded me for details—lots of them. I don’t remember how long we talked or much at all about what was said, but the questions kept coming at me and so did the snack food. I was starved and the fluorescent lights burned my now-aching eyes.

After Debbie and her barrage of questions, I was brought to what I now know to be Schneider Children’s Hospital in next door Nassau County for what I was told would be an evaluation. I remember everything was hurried—a blur of hospital staff rushed me into an exam room right away. They had cops standing outside the door at all times. I asked a nurse if I could bathe, and she told me that as soon as I was done being examined, I could shower. They took some vaginal swabs and took blood from a big needle stuck into the crook of my little arm. I now know they even took a pregnancy test.The nurse brought me some orange juice in a paper cup, and it was the best tasting liquid I have ever had. Even so, I was skeptical, being poked, my legs opened, my insides checked. I didn’t exactly know if I was in safe hands.

It was around midnight when I was brought to a private hospital room and uniformed cops were posted inside and outside the door. The curtains were drawn and I was told not to open them, not even in the morning. Someone asked me if I was hungry and what I wanted, saying that they would open the hospital cafeteria for me to get something to
eat—but I only wanted Chinese food. Pork fried rice and wanton soup. It was the first real food I had eaten in seventeen days. It appeared and I devoured it.

Sleep came fast and hard. I woke after a deep long rest, and someone broke the news to me. At first, I thought I didn’t hear it quite right.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

“You’re going to a foster home for the time being, Katie. That means you won’t be going home… yet,” one of the social workers said.

Not going home to Marilyn and Little John? I would not be seeing Grandma Helen either? I didn’t understand. What had I done wrong?

Now the guilt resurfaced. I had done wrong and was being punished. It was my fault I was kidnapped and Big John wanted me. I was dirty. My stomach churned and my breathing quickened. I was very upset because Marilyn’s home was the safest place I thought I could be. The tears came next. I wanted to go home, even though I wasn’t sure which place
was
home.

Home was an ever-changing concept for me. The Inghilleris, who had said they were boarding with us temporarily, were in Grandma Helen’s house at 12 Higbie Drive to stay. And there, Aunt Linda’s wrath would surface regularly. When one of her Blue Pomeranians, LuLu or Tiki, got out of the house, Aunt Linda would scream her head off, chasing the dogs trying to catch them. That was when she still had both her legs. I would stand frozen, inside the house, scared to say a word as she fumed. She looked back at me once and yelled, “You little bitch, come help me catch Lulu.”

I hurried outside of the house and tried to catch Lulu, but the dog darted into Udall Road, a busy county road one block away from our side street. Aunt Linda ordered me into the street. Lulu was in the middle of the road, with cars flying past her on both sides. Aunt Linda gestured to the road and ordered me to go fetch. I tried to explain that I was not allowed to cross the street without someone holding my hand.

“Get the fuck in the road and get the dog,” she barked.

So I braced myself for a mad dash, ran out into Udall Road between the rush of cars, grabbed Lulu, and then raced back to the sidewalk where
Aunt Linda was simmering as she watched me. As I handed her Lulu, she pulled my hair and told me that if I ever disobeyed her, she would beat the crap out of me again.

After she lost her leg to diabetes several years later, I became her little errand girl. Beginning at four years old, I would do all of the cleaning. I had to dust and clean the floors on my hands and knees, bathe the dogs and clean the bathrooms with a nauseating batch of bleach and ammonia that I was ordered to mix myself. From her upstairs room, Aunt Linda would summon me with her errand demands and I would dutifully comply. If I weren’t in the house when she needed me for a chore, she would scream out the window for me. Sal and Linda always found a reason to yell at me. Sal would yell for not being his servant in a timely manner or for not being “available” when he wanted me to touch him. And Linda usually yelled because she was too lazy to do anything for herself, if I didn’t bring her the right snack or didn’t fold the laundry properly.

The pizza place was a frequent detail. It was across the street and down one block in a small strip mall on Udall Road. Her standard request was Sicilian slices with pepperoni. But one day, without warning, her standing order changed. She wanted plain pizza this time—cheese only. After I paid for the pizza and left, I realized my terrible mistake. I had accidentally ordered the slices with pepperoni, out of habit. I started to cry while I was walking home, knowing I’d be in big trouble. So I stopped at Harry’s, the strip mall deli. The girl at the counter asked me why I was sobbing, so I told her that I messed up Aunt Linda’s pizza. Together we picked off all of the pepperoni as she assured me it would be just fine.

It wasn’t fine, not at all. Aunt Linda immediately noticed the cheese was missing in some places and beat me. She commanded me to come over to her, yanked me by the hair, and hit me with solid punches to the back.

I spent so much time at the stores at the strip mall that everyone knew me. I was good friends with Harry at the deli. When a gun shop opened, I soon became friends with the people who worked there too.

Harry’s was a frequent stop and one time Aunt Linda wanted a dessert cake from his deli. Her request was a pack of Yodels, but when I got there, they were out of Yodels. I picked her up a pack of Ding Dongs
because they were basically the same thing, just a different shape. I brought them home and explained to Aunt Linda that they were out of Yodels. She was not happy about that. She grabbed me by my pony-tail and beat me with both sides of a paddle hair brush —the wood side first, then the bristle side. She beat me for over five minutes because they didn’t have the right snack cake. I was crying and between breathless sobs, explaining there was nothing that I could do because they simply didn’t have what she wanted. She screamed back at me that she didn’t give a shit; I should have gone somewhere else to get her what she wanted.

“The closest store is across the highway!” Even I knew I was too small to cross Udall by myself. She then threw the Ding Dongs back at me and ordered me to get her what she wanted. When I got to the bottom of the staircase, Little John was there. He had heard the screaming and offered to walk with me across the street to get Aunt Linda the right snack cakes. I had welts all over my arms, legs and back because of the beating. My brother hoisted me up on his shoulders and held onto my legs tightly as we crossed Udall together, without saying a word.

Marilyn needed to work two jobs to pay for everything in the house, since Aunt Linda and Sal lived there for free. In between her day job, driving the taxi, and the night job, watching the old lady, she was dead asleep in the room she had grown up in upstairs. She would always leave John and me an allowance every week, usually five dollars, for whatever we wanted. I would usually use my allowance to buy Aunt Linda a pack of Virginia Slims. Yes, the stationery store around the corner would sell cigarettes to a five-year-old because Aunt Linda had written me a note once saying that the cigarettes were for her and not me. The cigarettes were usually around three dollars, so I had about two dollars left over. Most of the time, with whatever was left from my allowance, I would buy M&Ms for my grandmother. Everyday Grandma Helen would sit in front of the TV, from the morning test pattern to
The Tonight Show
, downing beer and frozen M&Ms. Sometimes I’d buy a magazine for Little John or a trinket for Marilyn—something that said “Mom” on it. I don’t call her “Mom” now. I know it’s a title she doesn’t deserve.

Aunt Linda and Sal bled every penny out of that house in West Islip and eventually my grandmother had to walk away from it with next to nothing. Marilyn allowed them to come live with us because they said
they would help out with the bills and help watch John and me —but neither Marilyn nor my grandmother ever saw a nickel from them. Aunt Linda rarely went downstairs. If she needed something from downstairs, she would either scream for me, or use a broom to beat on the floor to get my attention and summon me for a chore. She would walk from “her” bedroom to the upstairs bathroom naked, her fat and breasts hanging loosely. She’d walk to the bathroom to get into the shower to “cool off,” and she would do that several times a day. When she was done using the shower, she would walk back to the bedroom without drying herself off, dripping water everywhere. Eventually, the bathroom floor rotted from the ever present puddles and literally fell into our living room below.

No one had enough money to pay for the repairs, so Sal took out a loan, with my grandmother co-signing, using our house as collateral. But the loan was larger than Sal needed to make the repairs on the living room ceiling and bathroom floor. We got the upstairs bathroom repaired, but there was a lot of money left over, enough to make the minimum payments for a few years. Instead of using the money to pay off the loan, though, Sal bought a new tow-truck and lots of porn. My grandmother and Sal got into constant fights because she wanted Sal to pay back the loan, always arguing that Aunt Linda was the one who “broke” the house. But Sal never gave in and instead used the money for himself. A few months later, unable to make the payments, Grandma Helen had no choice but to put the house on the market. We stayed as long as we could, even after the new owners took title. Eventually, we were evicted from the house that my grandfather built.