Katie Beers (33 page)

She screamed again.

“Don’t worry about, it…” “I promise, Katie, nothin’s gonna happen to you. Okay? I promise, I promise. I gotta go.”

“All I want is my family back!” “I would never hurt you… never,”
he said for emphasis. I wondered here if he said this for the benefit of the tape. He had to know it was rolling on the shelf beside him, but it made me wonder whether he was fully aware of it all the time. He had created an underground prison for a specific little girl. Was he now carefully writing the script with his own self-preservation in mind?

“Okay?”

No response.
“Alright? Gimme the bag. Oh I gotta go.”

“When is it gonna happen?”
she asked, still alarmed.
“Soon, any day, maybe any minute. Alright?” “Is your brother gonna know?” “The police will know.” “You’re gonna tell them?”
she asked with disbelief.
“Yeah.” “Okay, thank you so much.”

“Okay, I love you, I want you to know, that’s the only reason I did it. Don’t be mad at me, okay?”

“I’m not. The police are gonna know?”
she asked, unconvinced.
“Yes definitely, okay?” “Thanks for the ….”
What she was thanking him for was inaudible.

“You’re welcome, bye bye.”
Her voice, becoming more muffled, trailed off as the sound of hammering ensued. I was listening to a child being locked into a coffin-like box.

John yelled over the hammering sounds,
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

The shrill spinning of the drill could be heard as Katie was left alone in the box.

What came next was devastating to hear. It was so troubling, the secretary outside the conference room where I was alone with the tapes knocked on the door and inquired what on earth I was listening to? She thought I had been given access to debriefing tapes only. She, like everyone else, had no idea that actual tapes of Katie’s captivity existed.

It was unclear if John was drilling to get into the box, or if he were locking up after a visit. In either case, the piercing sound of drilling was interspersed with God-awful screaming.

“Oh God,”
she choked on tears, “
Help, help, help, help, help,”
she wheezed amid coughs.
“Help, help, help, help help me, help, help…”
It escalated to top of her lungs, caterwauling that intensified with each breath and each shriek of the drill.

“Let me out, let me out, let me out….”

They were dreadful howls followed by a diametrically opposite friendly exchange.

“Katie, are you okay?”

Banging.
“You have to go to the bathroom?”

The TV droned on in the background.

He was calm, his voice, childlike. He narrated for her step by step what he was doing.
“I have to close it now.”

“Alriiiiight,”
she moaned.

The grinding of a power ratchet could be heard tightening the bolts which locked Katie into the upper coffin. A second later on the tape was quite possibly the next day.

“Hey John, guess what?” “What?” “You’re just in the nick of time,”
she said defiantly
, “because I was about to run out of soda! And I couldn’t live without soda or something else to drink, because or else I would die!”

“I’m not going to let you die.” “I’m just saying if you don’t come or if you don’t feed me, I could die,”
Katie said, hanging on the last word.

“Okay. Feel better? If you get cold, do jumping jacks or something.”
I rewound to confirm he actually said that. Indeed he had.

There was then some explanation as to why he put a makeshift toilet
outside
the box he locked her in twenty-three hours a day.

“I tried to get the bathroom in there but I couldn’t,”
John said.
“You’re on the news,”
Katie announced abruptly.
“I wish I hadn’t done that,”
John answered.
“Why do you have to lie on live TV?” “What am I gonna tell ?em?”

Fragments of the conversation were discernible now with John explaining why he was antsy about what was “gonna happen soon.” His fingerprints, he told Katie, must be on one of the coins in the phone booth where he made the call to Linda and played the “man with a knife” recording.

“What’s gonna happen that’s so bad?” “They found the phone booth that I made the call from—remember the tape recorder? They think it was a tape recorder. You don’t want to stay with me?”

“No! I want to go home!” “Alright. If they find you, you wouldn’t say… if I let you go, you wouldn’t say that we planned it? To stay with each other?”

“No!” “So it would get me off the hook?”
Dejected, he added,
“I know, you wouldn’t say that,”
adding hopefully
, “if you said that—it would get me off the hook. And you see how everybody sees things, you really haven’t
been taken good care of and Mommy doesn’t love you and
…”

He paused but Katie’s answer, if there was one, was lost in the hiss of the two-decade old recording. John, though, was loud and clear.

“I know that’s not true, but we can lie a little.”

Nothing was heard in the way of a response.
“Alright,”
said John,
“I’m just sayin’,”
he paused
, “you know what I’m sayin’.”

The tapes moved without pause from hushed conversation to panicked plotting.

“I think I may be in trouble,”
he lowered his voice, as if others could hear
. “That’s why I say somethin’s gonna happen—I hope not. I’d rather be with you.”

“I was hoping you’d come down at some point today,”
Katie answered.

“Remember when they do find ya, Katie, that I love ya. Alright?”
Katie burst into tears and her cries nearly drowned out John’s attempts at encouragement.

“Remember what I said to you, when you get outa here. You’re gonna have a good life because you’re gonna be rich. You’re gonna tell your story, Katie. Okay? Remember you’re going on ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ You’re gonna be on that next Friday, if they find you before that.”
She wept as he obsessed.

“Somethin’s gonna happen and if they find that quarter with my fingerprints on one of those quarters. What am I gonna say? I wasn’t there? You’re gonna go nationwide. You’re a very populah kid now, you know that? And when you get out of here…”

“When I get out of here I’m gonna be on TV a lot.”
Katie seemed to like the idea.

“Everybody’s gonna want to see you. You’re gonna be a very populah kid. Everybody’s gonna say ‘That’s Katie Beers. That’s Katie Beers.’ People are gonna be looking at you from all over the world, not just from New York. I know. Nationwide, maybe worldwide. It’s syndicated. You’re gonna be very very polpulah. Just remember that I love ya.”

“Do me a favor then, when you do get out?” “What?”
Katie whined.
“Tell them that I didn’t molest ya.”

“Uh huh.” “Good girl.” “Whatchamacallit…Something happened twelve years ago?” “That’s true but it was ...a twelve-year-old kid...I was trying to adopt a kid and …I never really molested anyone except you.”
The words were clipped at the end, due to the auto-stop feature, distorting perhaps the most crucial line on the entire cassette.

“I may be back at the same time tomorrow, so you’re gonna be okay.”

“But John …” “Wanna wash your face? Want new underwear? I left them in there? They’re not wet, they’re brand new. Put them on. I know you don’t like them, but put them on.”

He talked to her as an accomplice, wondering aloud if fingerprints would even stay intact on the coin as it dropped into the pay phone coin box.

“We don’t even know,”
he said.
“It may not even be my quarter in there, I don’t know.”
John speculated that the phone company may have already cleared out the coin box, and then lamented,
“I didn’t think they would find the phone.”

She listened to his worries, plots to make police believe she was a willing participant, but never was she heard going along with his plans or quelling his fears.

“They’re not gonna find me.” “Yes they will. I think they’re gonna have those blood dogs coming.”

“They did that already.” “Really?” “They went through all the garbage; they did all that, three times.”

Then, the fragments began to suggest something even more sinister.
“Maybe you want to wear that instead—you can be cool.”
I remembered Katie told me that it was when she changed underwear or went to the bathroom that John would molest her.

“Gotta go?”
he asked.
“I can wipe it myself,”
Katie answered.
“Oh yeah, by the way, Big
John guess what, they have bloodhounds, they’re gonna find me.”

“You lose your scent within the hour. They took everything, they took your coat and hat and pocketbook.”
But then he drifted back to his own fate.
“If they find out I went to the phone booth, I’m gonna say ‘yeah I did.’ I played that message because me and Katie were gonna get away from the whole family.”

“NO!”
she yelled.
“And I’m gonna say,”
he paused and reversed himself.
“I won’t say that. I’m gonna say where you are. This is my life. You know what I mean. I am gonna kill myself.”

The conversation became hushed here and only scraps of words survived the years.

“If they find me …they’ll put you away
,” Katie said.
“I know,”
John said.

What came next was barely audible, but it seemed apparent what was going on while the tape recorded Katie’s soft whimpers.

“I’ll try not to hurt you too much, alright?”
John said.
“Oooo,”
Katie cried.
“I know. The smell.” “Ooohhh.” “You’re gonna be okay.”

When he was done with whatever unseen act on the child had taken place, he said,
“I’m gonna close it okay?”

And as John tightened the bolts to the vault that held her, he shouted over the churning of the ratchet,
“I’ll see you in a little while okay? Love you.”
Then he added, blithely, “
Sorry!”

Banging. Hammering.
“You okay? See you tomorrow baby. What?”
Even he had a hard time hearing Katie’s words from within the cramped box.

“See you tomorrow,”
he yelled again.
“What??See you tomorrow!”

Loud drilling.

Screaming.

Crying. The tape slipped on, into another day.

John was at once trying to play the role of a boyfriend to Katie, lover and savior. He sounded like a nervous wreck, consumed with what
he was slowly accepting would be his inevitable arrest. But most of the next twenty minutes of the recording was filled with loud, unyielding, heart wrenching sobbing.

“Nooooooooo.” “Heeeeeeeeeeeeelp.” “Katie, you up. Katie, you up?”

Banging.
“Katie, you up? Get up quick!”

The box door was unbolted and John was breathless again.
“I’m gonna go somewhere. I’m not gonna tell you because you’re gonna tell them. It’s gotta be where nobody knows. And when I’m gone, I’m gonna call up and say where you are, and that will be it. They’ll think you’re dead and then you’ll pop up and be very populah.”

John paused and then added,
“I love you.”

As the counter indicated that I was nearing the end of the one hour, I could make out,
“Are you okay?”

“Noooooo!
” Katie responded.

The TV background noise was ever-present.
“I’m sick!”
cried Katie.
“Why are you sick?”

I couldn’t make out his answer but Katie repeated, this time more convincingly,
“I’m sick!”

“Want some soup? You want a thin blanket? How you feel—huh? You okay?”

“Oh John, I wanna go home!” “I know, you will go home.”

There was a conversation about being sick but it was mostly drowned out by the television. I could ferret out a few words spoken by John.

“
I’m gonna have to think of a way I can leave and you can go home.”

“You can always put me on a plane!” “If I’m gone, I can’t be alone with you. As soon as the detectives get out of here I can see you more and more. Then you can spend more time with me”
He wasn’t giving up.

“I’m sick!”
she said again with urgency.

“I gotta go, alright?”

As he departed, over the sounds of newscasts and hammering, he said,
“Now you be good. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? What? What? I’ll see you tomorrow, what?
When? I dunno, probably tomorrow night. Soon as we get outa here, I can see you more and more, alright?”

The bolts were tightened. Now Katie was alone again, crying and screaming. At first, it was hard to understand the word she yelled at the top of her lungs. Then, it was horribly clear.

“Lindaaaaaaa!” “Ahahahah….Linda…Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda Linda…ahahahahahahahah….”

The endless string of Lindas was an assault on the ears and the soul. My fingers moved quickly to type every word the recorder spit out, but my brain could barely comprehend the anguish behind the blood curdling screams. There was not even a breath between them. The enunciation of the name Linda alternated, some with high-pitched intensity, others uttered with exhausted whimpers.

Then, the words became unintelligible for a long while and, for what seemed like forever, there was nothing but guttural screams. Words reemerged several minutes into the soul-deep sobs.
“Big John, Big Joooohhhnnnn, Biiiiiiig Joooohhhhhn,”
over and over and over.

This went on for at least ten minutes
. “Big John, Big John, Big John…”
on the voice activated tape that may have taken hours, perhaps days to record.

It was very hard to bear. Each “John” scream was stretched into four or five syllables and lasted just as many seconds. In between the Johns, there were sorrowful, hopeless gasps.

“Big Jooooohhhhnnnnn. Joooooohhhnhhhhnnnnnnnn.”

With time, they became more forceful, not less. As her strength should have been waning, her voice neither weakened nor waivered.