Katie Beers (17 page)

Didn’t Linda’s husband sexually abuse Katie?

She knew Esposito was molesting her son?

“We are not going to try the case out here. We understand the media and the public has the right to know but we have to be very careful…”

We deal in truth and people do trust us, and we try our best to be accurate, and we take that responsibility seriously. What is it that she thinks we have been inaccurate about?

“There was an article that called Marilyn a whale, worst mother of the year.”

That was a column. What have we reported that is incorrect?

“But it appeared in the paper and people read that.”

But it was an opinion piece.

Teddy Rodriguez took a turn. He had been accompanying Marilyn
at every court date and now stood outside next to Kostas. His big blue eyes, identical to his son John’s, searched in vain, trying to offer examples of what he felt had been misreported. Finally, a somewhat defeated looking Kostas retreated to the pages in his hands, and read Marilyn’s rambling statement, condensing as he hop scotched in and out of questions and answers.

“I’m tired of the media twisting and misconstruing my words to suit their purpose. I would like to straighten out a few things for you, your readers and your viewers. The first thing is that I never gave Katie, my daughter, to Linda Inghilleri’s care when Katie was two months old. I love my daughter very much. I would give my life for my children. The second thing is that my life was threatened if I did anything to take my daughter away from Linda. I tried to do the best for my family. The third thing ….”

Who threatened Marilyn’s life?

“Sal Inghilleri did.”

When?

“The third thing,” Lenny continued. “Sometimes I get so frustrated, I feel like a victim of the system. They are using me as an example, for what reason, I don’t know why. I believe all this negative publicity is really hurting Katie deeply. I used to work long hours to support my family. I always tried to do the best for them. There is one paper I believe that said if I were a professional person, I would be considered ambitious, but as a working single mother I am considered neglectful.

“People think of me as a cold and uncaring person because I don’t show my emotions. I guess I am afraid to show my feelings to the outside world but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel anger, pain, love or happiness. I’m a person with very deep feelings. It’s hard for me to show them to people I don’t know. I am a loving and caring person. I have always tried to be there to help my friends, if they ever needed me. I let Linda and Sal stay in my mother’s home when they needed a place to stay. They were not giving us anything. My only mistake was the judgment of choosing the wrong people to care for my children, Katie and her brother John. I know the system believes it is doing what’s best for Katie, but I believe what’s best for her now is to be home with her family, which is where she wants to be. We all love her and we miss her very much.”

Lenny was a passionate advocate for Marilyn and continued damage control even after reporters and cameras had pulled away the mics and rushed off to edit their stories for the next newscast.

“She’s making a lot of positive changes in her life. She moved into a three bedroom apartment, and …” Some reporters lingered.

Are these changes for show for the custody hearing?

“Most people who have missing children don’t ever see them again. And if they do find them, they are not alive! She has an opportunity to do things over, and do them right! Marilyn Beers seems to be a real good person. She doesn’t project well in the media. Marilyn has a second chance here. And she is going for it. She will not give up.”

The court, meanwhile, had other concerns. It was sidetracked on an issue quite separate from the custody of Katie Beers. The media was petitioning to keep cameras in the courtroom, but virtually all the other parties wanted the proceedings closed. The judge got to hear from an adamant Katie herself on the matter, in a handwritten letter.

I Dont Want People to Know What HAPPENED to ME, because its None of THERE BISINES. A MEAN Little Boy Was Saying Things About ME Last Week And It Made ME Sad. If Everyone Saw MY life on TV it will Upset ME AALLOOTT. Please Dont Put MY CASE On TV, Its BBAADD Enough That Its In The Papers.

Judge Doyle’s decision allowed reporters and cameras to stay in the courtroom for the custody trial, but with limitations. Media would be excluded from the courtroom during Katie’s testimony and anything else he ruled “sensitive.” The county, unsatisfied, appealed the decision to the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division in Brooklyn. Until the case was assigned a date on the busy appeals calendar, the custody trial was on hold.

While the cameras in the courtroom debate took center stage, things were not going well for Linda. First, a judge ruled she could not visit Katie. Next, her custody petition was thrown out altogether. The court dismissed her motion ruling she had no standing in the case and was a “legal stranger” to the girl.

Katie’s wishes, at least concerning cameras in the courtroom, were heard loud and clear by the five Appellate Court justices in Brooklyn.
Katie didn’t appear in court personally, but attorneys for her, her mother and the county argued that cameras in the court, as allowed by New York State statute, could cause great harm to Katie. Assistant Suffolk County Attorney Robert Cabble argued, “Katherine…does not deserve to have her life brought out as an abject lesson in the workings of Family Court.” The attorney pleaded with the justices. Katie, he said, had already been hurt by public knowledge of her case.
²⁶

The decision of the panel was unanimous. The Katie custody hearings would be closed.

Thus, when all parties agreed to a settlement on June 12, 1993, reporters had to learn the specifics via sources and what little Marilyn would acknowledge. She was required to admit that she had been a neglectful mother, that her “lax” supervision had created conditions that made the kidnapping possible. The county, in return, would drop the abuse allegations against her. Marilyn was giving up custody, but just for a year, and was not giving up hope.

The arrangement was supposed to be periodically reviewed. But Marilyn’s makeover was short-lived. She was evicted from her new three-bedroom house for alleged failure to pay rent. Later, she faced misdemeanor charges for allegedly hiding work income to collect unemployment benefits. None of this helped her custody claim.

Eventually, lawyers closed the book on the Katie custody case. A small blurb, on the one-year anniversary of the kidnapping appeared in Newsday’s “Letters to the Editor” section. It was entitled, “Thinking of Katie.”

…After being an integral part of Katie’s life since she was an infant, I am now considered by the courts to be a complete stranger to her. Katie was not the neglected waif the media portrayed her to be; she was and always will be deeply loved by myself and my family—her family. Katie always had lots of clothing and toys, material possessions were as abundant as our love for her. Katie was always kept clean and well taken care of when she was with us.

Katie is still being held prisoner after more than a year. First by John Esposito; now, held prisoner by the county. She’s not allowed to make phone calls or write letters to anyone who shared in her first ten years of life. A year has come and gone since we celebrated Katie’s 10
^th
birthday—a
family celebration with all the trimmings, then an outing to the movies to see “Aladdin.” Two days later, tragedy struck. Katie disappeared. As the nation tensely awaited news of Katie, my family’s and my torment increased hourly.

Katie’s cries are not being answered now any more than when she was in that horrid dungeon. I will continue to petition the court for at least visitation of Katie. I will push to let Katie know we are still here, still loving her, and still waiting for her to be released from her captors.

Ann Butler

West Islip

The matter of Katie’s custody never made news again.

Like a scene from
Oliver
, I suddenly entered a picture perfect new life. I didn’t want that; I wanted to be back with Marilyn. I was scared to death, having problems breathing. But Uncle Tedd and Aunt Barbara, as they asked me to call them, immediately enrolled me in fourth grade at Springs Elementary School and treated me as if I were the newest member of the family—the youngest of their five children. They wasted no time. Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so the next day, a Tuesday, an unmarked police car waited for me in their driveway. Detective Brown drove me up to the Springs School and drove around to the back, taking me inside through the exit. He told me he would wait for me and that until further notice, I was to enter the school through the back exit. There were camera crews in the front.

I hadn’t been to school in a very long time and it smelled good.

I didn’t know it then, but the children were briefed on me. They had an assembly prior to my arrival and a letter went home with parents. They were not to ask me any questions about my kidnapping. That didn’t stop them.

“I heard you were held between the walls of a crazy man’s house,” one girl teased me.

“No—that’s not true,” I snapped back. I didn’t bother with an explanation. No one could possibly understand.

Mrs. McGintee showed me a seat in the front of the classroom. Jason, one of my foster “brothers” was in my class, and everyone else seemed to know I was coming. She showed me my cubby and where I could put my coat. The day moved quickly through music, art, gym and everywhere I went, I was warned never to walk through the front hall of the school. I would have to walk around the long way. There were large picture windows in the front and photographers, in the frigid cold, were camped outside what amounted to a giant fishbowl.

I was very far behind in school, especially in math, but Mrs. McGintee didn’t pressure me. She had her daughter, who was in seventh
grade, come in after school and during lunch to help catch me up.

Upstairs at the foster home, I shared a room with Cassandra, an eighth grader and the younger of the two daughters. Cassandra was very tall and equally pretty with blond hair, blue eyes, a muscular athletic build and ever-present pony tail that swung as she knocked the heck out of a volleyball. Rebecca, the oldest of the four children, was away at college. Jason, my age, was adopted into the family from foster care, and Jesse, sixteen, shared a bedroom with Jason down the hall. It was the first time in a very long time I had my own bed and at first, I was afraid to sleep. I wasn’t sure these people had good intentions nor did I understand why I wasn’t with Marilyn. Years later, I would learn I wasn’t the only sleepless person in the house. Barbara, having been warned I might run away, spent the better part of a year struggling to stay awake at night, to make sure I didn’t disappear again.

It was easier for me to talk to Aunt Barbara than it was to connect with the others in the house. I didn’t talk to the siblings very much at first. I always connected better with adults anyway. They were doing their best to assimilate me into my new life—they took me shoe shopping and clothes shopping —all new experiences. I had never had anybody caring just for me. These people were concerned about my hair and my clothes and my comfort—did that fit right, was I hungry, what did I like to eat, and was I tired? No one had ever before asked me anything about my comfort.

Despite their efforts, I felt very uneasy alone with Tedd at first, especially during any trip in the car with him. I remember he drove me to the dentist’s office, a forty-five minute trip, and I could hear my heart thumping as I edged as far away as I could from the driver’s seat. Just get this over with, I thought. Please don’t touch me.

This didn’t last very long. He treated Aunt Barbara with the utmost respect. I soon learned he was a gentle and caring man. The first one I ever knew.

As the newest member of the family, I had to learn basic hygiene. I had never been taught to brush my teeth and my mouth was a disaster. My teeth were yellow and rotting. Years earlier, Linda and Sal had taken me to an emergency room in the middle of the night because of an excruciating toothache. It turned out a gaping cavity needed to be filled. The long Novocain needle terrified me. I would not sit still, fighting the dentist and
the nurse, my arms and legs flailing. Someone went to tell Linda in the waiting room that I was resisting the needle and she instructed them to give it to me any way necessary. I had three people holding me down and the ER dentist stabbing at my gum with what felt like an ice pick. It was the last time I complained of a toothache.

Now, living under Uncle Tedd and Aunt Barbara’s roof, I was introduced to a new ritual: brushing teeth before bed, every night and every morning. I was given a toothbrush and told what it was and what I was supposed to do with it. Visits to the dentist came often. My fear of needles was respected. I would get all the work done with sweet gas. Needles were banished from my new life. My feelings mattered. And a steady diet of school was introduced.

School had previously been optional. The only grade that I remember attending on a day to day basis was kindergarten. Once Linda and Sal moved in with us, I stopped going to school with any regularity. Most mornings I would eagerly get ready for school. The bus would come, but Linda would bang on the floor with her broom and summon me upstairs to buy her a pack of cigarettes. Then she’d call school, tell them I was sick and send me to the stationery store to do her errands. Truancy called the house once in a while questioning where I was, so Sal would drive me, stopping at a desolate parking lot to pleasure him before dropping me off.

I always loved school. When I did go, I could be a kid. No wondering if Aunt Linda was going to need me, or if I would get in trouble because I didn’t hear her calling me to do a chore or run an errand. I could pretend for a small amount of time that I was child with no responsibilities. I wouldn’t have to worry about doing the laundry, cleaning the toilets, making the meals, or servicing Sal.