My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem (21 page)

Todd was more upset about my breast cancer diagnosis than I was. He was terrified of losing me. I remember he kept saying, “You are not leaving me behind.” Time and time again, I reassured him I was not dying.

Todd’s life hadn’t been easy, either. From the moment he was born I’d tried to protect him, first from Dad, who claimed that Todd was someone else’s child, then from our stepfathers. Todd was big for his age and clumsy, forever falling out of trees and having accidents. Like me, he’d made up for his awful childhood by vowing to become the best father ever. He adored his children son Todd Junior and daughters Christina and Tara, by his first wife, Sherry, along with Corey and Bobbie, his sons by his second wife, Janice. In the way that I spoiled Marshall and Nathan, smothering them in love, Todd did the same with his children. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them. But, just as Marshall did, his kids rebelled in their teens.

It probably didn’t help that he’d spent seven years in jail after killing Janice’s brother Mike Harris in self-defense. Todd had never been in trouble with the police before, but Harris had driven him to the brink. As I discussed earlier, Todd had grabbed an antique gun to defend himself, shot Harris, and had then gone straight to the nearest police station to hand himself in. He refused to plead temporary insanity—he knew he’d killed in self-defense. But, after a two-week trial, the jury disagreed. He was sentenced to a total of eight years in jail—five for manslaughter and three for gun possession. I was in shock as the verdict was read out. I’d found the trial process very disturbing—in particular I was very unhappy about the choice of witnesses, the evidence heard by the jury, and also the lack of a transcript.

It was a living hell for my brother. He was moved constantly; each prison was worse than the previous one. There’s a certain type of person who picks on bigger people. Todd was picked on constantly, by other inmates and by the guards. When fights broke out, he often got the blame. He was placed in solitary confinement and—on one occasion—a cage. The segregation cells were windowless concrete boxes, barely six feet wide. After forty-eight hours in one of those, psychosis sets in.

I did my best to keep Todd’s spirits up. The worst year was when Nathan was taken into foster care. I flitted between Missouri and Michigan, trying to see both of them. I spent so long in prison visiting Todd that often I felt as though I were an inmate, too. I could tune into his pain.

I contacted Amnesty International about the prison conditions. I’ve been an active member ever since. It isn’t just the Third World that mistreats its prisoners. America, in my mind, is one of the worst offenders. And the politicians wonder why so many of our prisoners come out of jail worse than before they went in!

When Todd was finally released after serving almost seven years of his eight-year sentence, he was a broken man. His health was terrible after years of prison abuse and lack of medical treatment, but he vowed to start anew.

His marriage broke up after his release. He moved in with Nan and cared for her until she died in 2000.

He inherited her house. I was so happy she left it to him. It helped him get a foothold. He started his own heating business and threw himself into the music scene. He had a band called Nemesis and wrote all their material. They were beautiful songs.

Todd helped me through some of my worst moments with the press. He defended me time after time. Much was made of Marshall’s dysfunctional family—and Todd’s imprisonment was used to add street credibility to Marshall’s hard-man image back in

1999 and 2000. But just as he did with me, Marshall vented much of his anger on Todd. He accused him of selling stories to the media and his precious belongings on the Internet. Yet Todd defended him, telling anyone who would listen that Marshall and I had enjoyed a close, loving relationship until Kim came along.

“A daughter is a daughter for life. A son is a son till he takes a wife,” he told Salon.com in a 2000 interview explaining how Marshall and I had become estranged.

Todd fell in love with a woman called Kathy, a friend of my sister Tanya, who had introduced them. They were so happy together, and he became a father to her two teenage children. But she ran off with one of his band members. Then he met another woman also called Kathy, who had a young son. He aimed to start a new life once again. He finally bought a place up in northern Michigan with five acres of land, and he planned to completely revamp all the wiring, plumbing, flooring, and so on, to make it a beautiful home.

Because Todd’s health suffered so much in jail—he had suffered a severely dislocated shoulder and several broken shoulder bones inside and had serious liver problems—he got into debt paying his bills and was forced to sell Nan’s house for $45,000. It had been in the family for fifty years, but I understood why he needed to sell it. The buyer promptly put it on eBay for more than a million. Marshall was furious, and got madder still when Todd appeared on a DVD about him called
Behind the Mask
and set up an Eminem Web page.

Todd also started to write a book. It was about his life and the horrible things that had happened to him in jail. Interviewed by the local
Macomb Daily
in

2002, Todd admitted his actions hadn’t gone down well in the family.

“He’s [Marshall is] mad. They’re all mad at me, everyone in the whole family. But I do what I have to do.”

When Todd first came out of prison and his marriage broke up, he was depressed. His poor health didn’t help his state of mind. But suicide was not something he even considered. After selling Nan’s place, he and Kathy had focused on creating their new home together. He was happier than I’d seen him in years, although he then decided to sell his place up north and travel by motor home across the country. In September 2004, he was arrested twice. Todd, who rarely touched alcohol, had broken his hip and was awaiting surgery when the police pulled him over. He was asked to stand on one leg—part of the sobriety test that involves checking a person’s balance. My brother explained he couldn’t do it because of his injury. He was held overnight in the local jail, where his captors played Eminem music loudly over the intercom.

After he was released on bail, I took him to the hospital, where he underwent surgery to have five screws put in his hip. The doctors had fears that he might have contracted hepatitis C, and Todd said he’d been treated like a leper as a result. On the way home his girlfriend, Kathy, called to say she and her son were trapped in the house by a neighbor’s Rottweiler dog. They’d been having problems with the family, so Todd defied the doctors, who had told him not to drive, and went straight over there.

The dog chased Todd’s car, then ran off. The neighbors claimed he ran it over, there was an altercation, and the police were called. The following week he was charged with cruelty, torturing, and abusing an animal. It was all totally untrue—in fact, I found out later that the dog was fine—but if found guilty, Todd faced five years in jail.

Todd loved animals and was terribly upset he’d been accused of harming one. I offered to sell my property in Missouri to pay for a decent lawyer, and while Todd stayed at my house in Michigan, as a condition of his bail, I set off to sort out the sale. The 17th of October was Marshall’s thirty-second birthday.

As always I sent a card, along with a cherub. And as usual I heard nothing back. I arrived in Missouri after a two-day drive from Michigan, just before midnight, switched off the phone, and went to bed. At 1 a.m. I was awoken by my brother-in-law Lynard and nephew Jonathan banging on my door. They were screaming that Todd had been shot. Todd was back at the hospital, in intensive care. The doctors said he would not recover. At 4:40 a.m. the decision was made to take him off of life support. Todd died twenty-three minutes later; he was just forty-two. To date I have never forgiven myself for not taking him along with me when I went to Missouri. Maybe he’d still be alive; I know he would.

In the dark days that followed, I tried to find out what had happened. But everyone, including the police, gave me the runaround. Todd’s death was ruled a suicide. He was said to have been depressed about the problems with his neighbor’s dog, along with an arrest for allegedly drunkdriving, and had shot himself in the face.

I didn’t buy that for a second, nor did his girlfriend, Kathy. He’d been in great spirits, calling her at 3:30 p.m. from a friend’s house to say he was trying to persuade someone to give him a lift, because he didn’t have enough gasoline to pick up his son from his ex-wife, Janice, and return home.

Then, at 12:30 a.m., Junior, as we all call Todd’s eldest, phoned 911 to say he’d found his father parked outside his house in New Baltimore. He was in the driver’s seat, unconscious. I was told he had shot himself.

One of the first of many unanswered questions I asked was what was he doing way down in southern Michigan at his eldest son’s house when he hadn’t had enough gas to drive to his ex-wife’s home earlier on. There was no suicide note on him, although a piece of paper with the words “Nate’s life” was in his pocket. The detectives seemed to think that was relevant. In fact, it was the password to my computer. Todd had been using my Internet to research his upcoming legal cases. Other so-called notes were in the glove compartment. One note was addressed to “Mother.” Not only did it not resemble Todd’s writing; he’d never usually addressed her as Mother—it was Maw or Mom.

One of the most upsetting things was the reaction of the local paper. It printed a front-page piece dredging up the fact that Todd had killed his brother-in-law Mike Harris. The article was in bad taste and added insult to injury at a time when we were all so upset. I was in tears when Marshall called me. I hoped he’d know what to do.

But the old anger returned.

“I’ll pay for that piece of shit’s funeral, but don’t ask me to attend,” he said.

“Why are you being like this?” I wailed at him. “He bashed me all over the media,” Marshall said.

“Todd loved you,” I told him.

Marshall ignored that. He just told me to put a cap of $7,000 on the funeral expenses. He had no intention of paying any more.

The funeral home was packed. We had an open casket so people could see him. Then, after a short cremation service, Todd’s ashes were placed in an urn at the foot of Ronnie’s grave in Saint Joseph. It was all over so quickly. Kathy returned home to discover that the house where they lived had been broken into during the funeral. Among the things stolen were Todd’s computer, with his almost-finished book manuscript on it, and lots of Marshall’s drawings. The police didn’t even bother to investigate. Todd’s will was also destroyed. I’d notarized the first one in 2001, and he showed me the one he drew up in 2003. It was never recorded, yet he told everyone close to him where to find it if anything ever happened to him. Someone broke into the lock-box it was in and destroyed it.

The police swept Todd’s death under the carpet, too. When I rummaged through the car glove compartment I found a large manila envelope with all his papers and registration in it. I phoned my mom, as some of the papers were addressed to her, and she wanted to see them, so I made copies, also informing the officers—who threatened to charge me for tampering with evidence if I didn’t give it up. When I asked time after time why there was no blood on the ceiling of the car, they just ignored me. Apparently there were no pictures of this. I had too many questions. I was told the passenger door had to be pried open, yet they claimed it was never opened. I knew better—in the past, Todd had carried passengers who’d used that door to get in and out of that side. There were way too many things wrong.

Todd was six feet tall and a 185 pounds. He had long legs, yet the driver’s seat was pulled forward, so he would have been scrunched up over the steering wheel. There was blood on the headrest but none anywhere else. The impact would have sprayed blood everywhere. Todd had used a gun once—and paid a terrible price for it. After killing Mike Harris he was rightly wary of firearms. He had a criminal record and could not be around them. When Nan died, he gave me her antique pistols, since he didn’t want them in the house. To this day, it is not clear where the rifle that killed him came from. Todd was said to have got it at a pawnshop on a Sunday night in exchange for his beloved guitar; then he was supposed to have borrowed it from a friend. It was a gun used for shooting animals but was unlikely to kill a human.

According to the police, Todd was found in the driver’s seat with the engine still running and all the doors locked. The rear window on the driver’s side had been smashed through. Todd was strapped into his seat belt clutching the rifle, which was underneath his jacket, to his hooded sweatshirt. He was supposed to have fired upwards under his chin. I’ve had several six-foot-tall, average-built men scrunch into a car with the seat pulled forward to try to recreate that scene. It’s not possible. And the gunshot wound was to the back of his head, not his chin.

I have constantly asked the police for a copy of the 911 tape and for pictures of the crime scene. They just give me the runaround. I was sent the wrong 911 recording tape. When I asked for the right one, I was told it had been erased. And they couldn’t show me the gun either.

One officer actually asked, “Who the hell was this guy anyway? He was no one.” Another claimed the opposite, saying Todd’s death wasn’t going to be investigated because of who he was. I assume it was because he was Marshall’s uncle. Then the officer asked me if I could get signed posters for his kids.

One of the officers had lived near Todd once. He seemed to have a massive downer on the entire family. I found him especially hard to deal with because he was so negative about everything.

December was the hardest: it would have been Todd’s forty-third birthday; then there was Christmas. Todd had always loved the holiday season, and we usually spent it together. I felt as though I’d lost everything precious in my life.

There were so many unanswered questions. Just a month before he died, I’d been at his hospital bedside when he came around after the hip surgery. He said then, “Sister, I’m so glad to see you. I thought I’d died,” as he squeezed my hand.