Katie Beers (8 page)

“I’m gonna keep you down here forever until people forget about you. They’ll forget.”

“What about MY life? MY future,” I demanded. “Like going to college and getting married and having children and having a normal adult life? WHAT ABOUT THAT?”

“You’ll marry me. You’ll have children with me. You won’t have to go to college ?cuz I’ll take care of you, Katie, forever.”

He would try to muster a smile at these times. His transparent attempt at courtship made me even sicker.

I told Big John that if he kept me in the dungeon forever, I would
not be a normal child. I told him that if he let me go, I would protect him, no one would ever have to know what happened to me. I would tell the cops and family that I had run away because of Sal. I told Big John that he could let me out of his house in the middle of the night, and I would run through the woods to the highway and no one would ever know that he kidnapped me. After he let me go, I would stay in his life. I would come visit him all of the time.

Hundreds of times I told John I loved him, that I cared about him, but only if he released me. I thought it would soften him, make him pity me and let me go.

“I love you, too, Katie. That’s why you’re here. I took you to protect you,” he said.

“To protect me? How am I ever gonna grow up living down here, locked away in this box?” I said it so many times, I lost count.

“I’ll teach you everything you need to know. You don’t need anyone else. I’m the only friend you’ll ever need, Katie,” he said.

“You can let me out the back door! I’ll run far away from the house and I won’t stop until I’m miles away and then I’ll call for help. Big John pleeeaaase—I wanna go home!”

“You’re not going anywhere, Katie—you’re staying here with me forever. Maybe when the cops stop looking for you, you can live upstairs with me.”

“But I want to have kids. What am I gonna do about having children?”

“You’ll have kids with me.”

This thought repulsed me and this conversation was repeated over and over.

I had been held captive my whole life. I wanted to be free. I was a maid to Linda, a sex slave to Sal and now a prisoner of Big John. I had never felt sorry for myself, until then.

No attempt at reasoning or psychology with Big John seemed to make a bit of difference. I tried every personality, every attitude I could think of. I tried being nice, devil’s advocate, mean. Maybe if I were mean, he wouldn’t like me anymore and would let me go. I even kicked him once, and he hit me across the face. The questions that I posed seemed to make no impression on him. He had an answer for everything and he was
very focused on one thing. During this entire time, I remember Big John “pleasing” me regularly. Maybe it was every day.

Day three, or so it seemed, I may have dozed off for a minute or two. I woke up to the sound of a news anchor and a sad realization.

“Good Morning. It’s Wednesday, December thirtieth, nineteen ninety-two,” the newscaster said in a perky voice. I missed my birthday. I missed my tenth birthday. I cried over and over again.

My picture was on every newscast, every hour. So was Marilyn, lying on what looked like a child’s bed, decorated in
101 Dalmatians
bedding, holding a pillow, and crying. The news report said that the room was in Aunt Linda’s house, and that it was my room. My room at Aunt Linda’s consisted of one of those little chairs that flips out into a really small bed with a hamper. I don’t remember having toys in the room— I didn’t have many toys at all. This new room looked like the Disney catalogue. It had a beautiful day bed with a Dalmatians comforter, shaped pillows, curtains, an area rug and lots of toys. This room was not mine. It was a fabrication. And yet on the news report, Aunt Linda was telling the reporter how sad she was that I was missing and she wanted me home.

On this birthday, Big John told me that when I turned eighteen, he would give me his red and his black Camaros. And he would give me one hundred dollars for every day that he kept me. I would be rich by the time I was all grown up.

Neighbors didn’t hesitate to come out of their homes to bask in their fifteen minutes of fame. They added obscure pieces to a puzzle that was taking shape as a grotesquely distorted image behind the veil of normal suburban family life. On Marilyn Beers’ block, yellow ribbons hung, or rather flapped, from tree limbs as if they had been randomly scattered by the gusts of a nor’easter. On one home, the words “Prayin’ for Katie” were scribbled in crayon on cracking window trim.

A young mother with a big-hair perm seemed to mean well. Standing on her driveway in a grey sweatshirt, she had no trouble fielding questions about her little neighbor, Katie.

“I was standing by my sliding glass doors and Katie had axed my daughter why don’t you see your Daddy and she just said because I don’t. And Katie axed ‘Does he touch you in any sorta way?’ And my daughter said ‘No.’ Katie just turned around and said ‘Don’t ever let a man hurt you, ‘cuz they hurt you a lot.’ So I went over to the pool and I said, ‘Ya know, Katie, if yous ever have a problem, ya know, I’m a Mom, ya know, you can tawk to me,’…and she just axed me not to say nothin’ to no one and I couldn’t go tell the mom ‘cuz, ya know, there’s an ongoing problem.” She shook her head. “So there wasn’t nothin’ I could do.”

How about calling the police—did you ever think to do that?

“Yeah, I thought about that but, ya know, I had a problem with the court system myself with my daughter’s father so, ya know. …as far as I knew with the schools and all…” her voice trailed off as she changed the subject. “Katie was a well-kept child—a well-kept child.” She emphasized the word “well”, as if to convince herself and reporters she hadn’t overlooked blatant clues.

It was quite obvious that Katie had fallen through so many walloping cracks, it was hard to keep all the gaping crevices straight and pack the disturbing details of the unfolding travesty into the limited time we could devote each night to the story on the evening news. Neighbors suspected the little girl had been sexually abused; schools were aware she
was chronically absent and had dropped out altogether soon after starting fourth grade; merchants were troubled for years by her abominable hygiene and lack of supervision; Suffolk County’s Child Protective Services had been to Katie’s house at least twice and in one visit claimed Linda hollered and chased the caseworker out;
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police not only had a confession from Sal Inghilleri, her godmother’s husband, that he had molested Katie but also had a sex abuse allegation against John Esposito, a close family friend. Astonishingly though, Katie continued to live as a ward of the same adults who seemed to have undeniably placed her in harm’s way. It was as if an entire community witnessed a hit and run, turned its collective head, and kept driving.

With a virtual rogues’ gallery of misfits and accused perverts in her life, it also seemed inconceivable that Katie could have the uncanny bad luck of having been abducted by a complete stranger. But this was Long Island.

Allan Binder, a Suffolk County legislator who headed the Committee for Health and Human Services, called for hearings into the apparent missteps by public agencies and schools. Binder could be counted on for an on-camera interview, even now, when he knew he’d be on the defensive.

“The question is whether our Child Protective Services is following up and doing the job it should. We will be looking at this case and looking at other cases. We’ve been getting a flood of calls from people who have had similar problems.”

A flood of calls? What are “people” saying?

“They are saying they had instances where they have let CPS know about something and there wasn’t any follow-up and if there was an initial follow up, it ended there. That maybe a child died or was hurt. We are hearing these kinds of stories. They haven’t been confirmed. Obviously we have to investigate.”

Obviously.

More than a week into a criminal mystery, a journalist’s job is not entirely unlike that of police. One runs at every lead, hoping it will be a big break in the case. To cover a story is one thing. To have an exclusive, that’s pay dirt. So when a promising call from one of Katie’s neighbors came into the newsroom, I ran.

A man with an Indian accent and thick bushy mustache welcomed reporters and camera crews into his small kitchen. This was apparently no exclusive, but he said he had a valuable clue and was willing to share it.

He gestured to an answering machine on the counter and waited until the crews indicated they were ready to roll. Then he hit play.

It was almost too quick to decipher, so he played it again. And again. It sounded like a gasp.

The problem was, lasting only one second, it could not definitively be characterized as a human gasp. Maybe it was that of a child. Or a dog. I couldn’t be sure. The man said the gasp came into his answering machine between nine and eleven-thirty that morning. His niece, he explained, was a school friend of Katie’s.

Why do you think Katie would call here?

“I think maybe because my niece is her friend.”

Has Katie ever been here?

“No…um, no.”

Did Katie have your number?

“Maybe my niece gave it to her.”

Reporters, huddled around the answering machine with microphones, gave each other disheartened glances that said, without words, this was a total waste of time, a vital commodity that was in short supply if Katie were to be found alive.

John Beers, surrounded by a group of a dozen friends, took deep, long drags of a cigarette. His jet black hair, styled into a nineties mullet, was tinged with scattered pink highlights slicked with hair gel. He had shed his KISS hat and now wore silver chains around his neck, several of them, and a leather motorcycle jacket. Reporters gestured subtly to their cameramen to come quickly. Run. It’s an essential skill in television journalism that takes some practice. Request that the photographer pick up the camera immediately, aim and shoot, without interrupting the focus and flow of a productive conversation with a news subject.

Thankfully, John kept talking.

“That’s all lies, really.” I came in mid-interview with a radio reporter. “We don’t know anything about what happened to Katie.”

He took a hard drag of his cigarette.

You told me last week John Esposito had abused you. Now you’re being more specific. How old were you?

“About seven years.”

How long did it go on?

“Years.”

Did you ever tell an adult about it?

“No.” he took another hard drag of the cigarette, holding it with his thumb and middle finger.

Why didn’t you ever tell anyone, you were ashamed….?

The question went on circuitously while John dragged hard on the butt. You could see smoke curl up out of his mouth and into his nostrils. He exhaled and responded obliquely, “I just didn’t want to.”

What do you want to happen to John Esposito now? Do you want to see him punished for what he did to you?

“Yes and no. I do and I don’t because…he’s a friend.”

You still consider him a friend despite what you say happened?

“Yes.”

Is that because he bought you gifts and did things for you?

John nodded no.

So why would you call him a good friend if he did those things to you? Did you talk to police?

“I talked to police,” he said, exhaling smoke.

At sixteen years old, John had movie star looks. High cheek bones and big blue eyes, cupid bow lips, a slightly oversized nose too large for his sculpted face. But he lived in Mastic Beach, dubbed “Appalachia without the mountains”
⁷
by one late-night TV comic, and all of his beautiful looks were packaged in a coat of street grime and dime-store pleather.

Did they do anything. Did they investigate?

“Not really, I didn’t tell them what he did.”

Do you think John Esposito would want to hurt Katie?

“I don’t think so, no.”

Do you think Sal Inghilleri would hurt Katie?

“I’m not sure about him. I don’t like him.”

Why not?

“He’s a liar, a two-faced fat slob.”

One of John’s friends giggled loudly and John revealed a smile of chipped broken front teeth, chiseling away at the movie star charm.

Well, he’s suggesting that the family here in Mastic was involved in rituals
.

“No, we were not involved in rituals or Satanism.”

Why pick now to say something about what John Esposito did to you
?

“I think it’s the right time to say something.”

Help me understand more on that.

“That’s all I’m saying.”

Another reporter pushed beyond the comfort zone.

You realize by saying these things about John Esposito in Bay Shore, you are taking the focus off you and your family here in Mastic? You know this is an extensive investigation into where your sister is. People are confused; they want to know if something happened to her here instead of with John Esposito who was the last person to see her?

Now John was glaring at the reporter.

“I don’t know if anything happened to her out here. All I know is she said Sal did something to her.”

No one told her to say that because there was a custody dispute?

“No.”

You say John Esposito molested you. Do you think he would have done that to Katie?

“I don’t know.”

Is it possible?

He blinked, “Yeah, it’s probably possible.”

Why do you say that?

“I don’t know. It’s just my gut feeling. I don’t know why. Strange feeling I have.”

Almost ten days after Katie’s disappearance, the press, the public, and most significantly, the police were truly baffled. Privately they were telling reporters they were split as to whether she was kidnapped or killed.
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It couldn’t be established if Katie was ever at Spaceplex. No one saw her there. What’s more, no one had seen John Esposito in Spaceplex either, until he claimed she went missing. The infamous “man with a knife” phone call was made, it was determined by police, at 5:06 pm from a phone booth across the street from Spaceplex in Nesconset. Eight minutes later, John was imploring the arcade manager to page Katie. Eight minutes. Those crucial eight minutes haunted detectives, their instincts relentlessly reminding them that there was no accounting for John Esposito’s whereabouts at the time Katie’s voice was being left on Linda’s answering machine.