A Silence of Mockingbirds (16 page)

E
mmet Whittaker was in the south of France, two months
into a six-month trip around the world, in June 2005 when
he received a disturbing e-mail from his good friend David
Sheehan.

It wasn’t so much wanderlust that took Emmet away from his job at
HP as it was this nagging feeling that there had to be something more
purposeful to life than work. Emmet wasn’t yet sure if he wanted to settle
in the U.S. He had come to Corvallis in 1996 along with David Sheehan
and a host of other Irish natives for training at HP’s headquarters, and
he’d fallen in love with a girl named Sanna, who also worked at HP.

When Emmet’s tenure on the green card was up, Emmet took
Sanna home to Dublin, where he continued to work for HP. But while
Sanna loved Emmet’s Ireland, it wasn’t home for her. Sanna went back
to HP in Corvallis, and Emmet took a leave of absence from work and
set out to see the world.

Keeping in touch with friends, even good friends, can be difficult
when traveling.

“Dave and I are the kind of friends who like to sit down over coffee,
breakfast or a pint and discuss life a bit,” Emmet said. His distinct
Dublin accent carries a weightiness of wars fought and lost.

As he traveled, Emmet kept in touch with David primarily by
e-mail and the occasional phone call, but David had not told Emmet
about Karly’s deteriorating condition, the state’s investigation, or
Sarah’s new boyfriend. Nor had David discussed with Emmet his fear of
deportation, although it’s a common fear among immigrants.

“If you are on a green card, you are a guest of that nation,” Emmet
said. “If you show up on the radar for anything, even if it’s unwarranted,
you can be deported. It’s a very real fear.”

Still, Emmet knew nothing of the terror Karly had endured or
the fears David left unspoken until the bright June day in 2005 when
Emmet received a phone call from an HP coworker who told him Karly
was dead, and shortly thereafter an e-mail from David, telling him the
same. Emmet sat down before a computer screen in an Internet café in
the south of France and logged into his e-mail.

“I was greatly shocked,” Emmet said. “The e-mail was quite short.
He said Karly was dead. I believe he said she was murdered. I was
absolutely horrified.”

Emmet left the café after sending David a note back, telling him if
he needed anything at all that Emmet was there for him. Then Emmet
when straight to the home of his goddaughter and her mother, where
he’d been staying, and wept freely for David and Karly.

“I was horrified by it, thinking about Karly. It was gut-wrenching.”

Emmet followed the news of Karly’s murder from afar, reading
the local newspaper reports in the
Gazette Times
. He called Sanna and
asked her to go to David, to see if there was anything she could do to
be of help.

News of Karly’s death spread rapidly through the offices
and hallways at Hewlett-Packard. Although Liz Sokolowski and David Sheehan
worked for the same company, the two had never spoken. Still, she knew who
he was, knew he was married, or had been. When she heard about Karly’s murder
from her friend Sanna, she was staggered by the news.

“You have this perception that those things happen, but not to anyone you
know,” Liz said. “There was this disbelief that it could happen at all, but
that it happened to someone I’d seen around, who seemed like a very gentle
and kind individual… you don’t expect that.”

Tragedy is the unseen sibling of every Polish child. Liz had grown up in Chicago,
a member of one of the largest Polish communities outside of Warsaw. Sacrifice
and suffering were common topics of discussion at the dinner table, as her
parents told and retold the story of how Liz’s great-grandmother had been
a POW in Siberia. Soldiers had marched into the house and snatched her away
from her terrified children. Twice Poland has been completely wiped from the
maps, first by the Germans and then by the Russians— their daughters and mothers
raped, their sons and fathers slaughtered. “I heard all those sad things growing
up,” Liz said.

It’s a gift, knowing where you come from and who your people are.
It enables a person to see a connectedness from country to country,
from generation to generation, from person to person, and it keeps us
from being too self-centered, too self-interested.

Liz was shocked and horribly sad for David, but she didn’t know
him well enough to approach him, to tell him how terribly sorry she
was for his loss, to give him a hug, the way she’s prone to do for anyone,
any time they are hurting. The hearts of so many people at HP and in
the broader community of Corvallis went out to David, but it’s hard
to know what to say, what to do, when a child is murdered. They wept
and prayed for him, they sent hundreds of condolence cards, and they
swore that from here on out they would be more watchful, for all the
children’s sakes.

D
istrict Attorney Scott Heiser was buckled down writing
search warrants for the Benton County Major Crime Investigation Team, per
their request, and getting updates from the
detectives at the scene. Two things in particular concerned Heiser: Why
was Shawn Field taking photos of Karly Sheehan? And what was up
with Sarah Sheehan?

“Sarah’s demeanor was almost across the line,” Heiser said. “She was
so hysterical you had to wonder if she wasn’t involved in this somehow.”

Heiser drafted a warrant to seize Shawn Field’s camera.

Investigators found photos of a very battered Karly on the
camera’s disc. Heiser wasn’t yet sure about all the details of Karly’s death,
but by midafternoon, Heiser was certain Shawn was their guy.

And he thought the motive was the same issue that had plagued
Sarah her entire adult life: money. Investigators theorized Shawn was
abusing Karly and documenting the abuse with photographs for the
purpose of extorting money from David.

David had not made child-support payments to Sarah because with
her gambling problems, Sarah couldn’t be trusted to spend the money
on Karly. David paid for everything Karly needed: childcare, clothing,
and medical care. In addition, David was paying off thousands in
gambling debt that Sarah saddled him with in the divorce agreement.

David set up a college fund for his daughter. He had even discussed
paying for Sarah to complete her college education, reasoning that the
better educated Sarah was, the better a mother she’d be to Karly.

Sarah had attended college off and on for ten years, ever since she
had left our house and moved to Corvallis, but in all that time, she had
never completed her degree. David wanted Sarah to pursue a profession,
to be a good role model to Karly. He was willing to help underwrite
Sarah’s education to make that happen.

From the beginning of the police intervention, Sarah and Shawn
were both fingering David as the primary suspect in Karly’s death, even
though David hadn’t even seen Karly in nearly a week.

Investigators, however, suspected Sarah was complicit in her
daughter’s death, theorizing that she was out to “prove” David Sheehan
was beating his daughter. Then Sarah would get full custody of Karly—
and the regular monthly child-support payment that went along with
custody. David was making plans to move to Portland in August with
Karly. Investigators learned that Sarah had borrowed $1,000 to hire an
attorney to fight for custody. Sarah said she was worried that David
would take Karly and move out of the country.

She saw an attorney, Hal Harding, in early 2005, and had taken along
that sketchy four-day diary that she’d kept, supposedly documenting
the ways in which David was abusing Karly. But she told Detective
Wells that instead of using the money to hire a lawyer she had used it to
pay some bills or something—she couldn’t remember what she’d spent
it on exactly.

Detective Harvey finished his last interview with Shawn shortly
before 7 p.m. on Friday, June 3, 2005. Shawn said he was tired and asked the
officer if there was some place he could lie down. He was shown to a quiet
room with a sofa, where he rested until 9 p.m., when Shawn told Harvey he
was ready to leave. Harvey arranged for a patrol officer to give Shawn a ride
anywhere he wanted to go.

After Shawn left, Harvey informed Heiser that during his
preliminary interviews, Shawn “blamed David for everything. At no
time during this interview did he blame Sarah for Karla’s injuries.”

Heiser told Harvey to arrest Shawn—not for murder, but for
manufacturing a controlled substance. At approximately 9:30 p.m. on
Friday, June 3, 2005, Shawn Wesley Field was arrested as he got out of a
patrol car in front of the police station. The charge was manufacturing
and delivery of a controlled substance within one thousand feet of a
school.

That charge was updated on Monday, June 6, 2005, when Shawn
Wesley Field was charged with the murder of Karla Sheehan.

Detective Harvey had earlier read Field his Miranda rights, so he
just cuffed him and booked him into custody.

G
od stopped the abuse.

That’s what Delynn had told me the day we met at the bakery. “God was the
only one who could stop it,” Delynn said. “We were all failing. Everybody
was failing her. I know God intervened because of Karly’s prayers.”

The community learned about Karly’s prayer from Sarah, who
testified about it. Sarah said Karly had woken up complaining that her head
and tummy hurt. Sarah had not been home on Thursday, June 2, 2005. The bar
where she worked had a promotional event that night, and Sarah, who was scheduled
to work from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., had left Karly with Shawn earlier that afternoon.

Shawn was angry when Sarah drove off. Livid, Sarah recalled.
They’d had a fight because she’d failed to pay the water bill and the water
had been shut off. He threatened that if she didn’t get over to the city
water department and have the water turned back on she’d be sorry
she’d ever met him. When Sarah pulled out of the drive, she looked in
her rearview mirror. Shawn was holding her daughter.

“Karly looked fine, physically,” Sarah recalled. “But emotionally, she
just looked defeated.”

Sarah paid the water bill, but didn’t have enough money to pay the reconnect
fee. She hurried back to her own apartment, changed for work, borrowed some
money from her roommate Shelley, and then rushed back to the water department.
She paid the reconnect fee and begged the city staff to
please, please
turn the water back on before closing for the day. They assured her they would.

Despite leaving her
defeated-looking
daughter in Shawn’s care, Sarah
did not return to Shawn’s until shortly before midnight. She’d clocked out
of work at Suds at 7:45 p.m., but instead of rushing back to look after Karly,
she stayed for the party. She drank several beers and went to the parking
lot with one of the beer distributors, where police reported the two participated
in fellatio.

The jury, however, did not hear the specifics of what Sarah did
on Thursday evening after her shift ended. The prosecuting attorney
argued in pre-trial, “The fact that Sarah remained with a patron after
clocking out is only relevant in that it shows Karly was alone, except for
the defendant’s nine-year-old daughter, during which time Karly was
beaten severely. Evidence regarding with whom Sarah spent her time,
in what activities she engaged, what she drank, what she ate, how many
times she used the restroom, etc., is all irrelevant to the issue at hand.”

The judge agreed, if the wider world does not.

Sarah had broken up with Shawn two weeks before Karly’s death
after finding gay pornography on Shawn’s computer. She claimed the discovery
left her feeling “really shocked and sick”—not because she thought being gay
was a bad thing, but because she was worried there might be child pornography
on the computer as well. Searching quickly through Shawn’s files, Sarah was
able to determine the sites did not involve any child porn, but she did find
several e-mail exchanges between Shawn and men he met online.

Shawn’s ex-wife, Eileen, testified that she had made the same sort
of discovery after breaking into a safe belonging to Shawn. “I knew he
was hiding something,” Eileen said. What she found inside the safe
shocked her. There were photos of men in various states of undress and
an e-mail from a man who claimed he was having a relationship with
Shawn. “He said if Shawn didn’t pay him money, he was going to tell me
about the relationship,” Eileen said.

Like Eileen, Sarah confronted Shawn. He was incensed.
“Irate. Outraged,” Sarah said, describing that moment. “He kept
saying I’d ruined everything. He screamed at me to get out, to get my
shit and get out. ‘Leave,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you did this to me.’ He
was angry. He sat down at the computer and screamed ‘NO!’ and looked
at me in a scary way.”

After Shawn’s arrest, a prominent Oregon State University employee
came forward to police, worried his dalliances with Shawn would be
made public. Investigators assured him he had nothing to worry about.
His sexual encounters with Shawn were not deemed relevant to the
murder of Karly.

As a teen, Shawn had been grossly obese, hitting over three
hundred pounds. This was a point of consternation for his father Hugh, who
had also struggled with his weight as a child. Hugh is a highly disciplined
man, a math professional who spent a career working at Hewlett-Packard. He
and his wife Ann were devastated when their eldest son, Kevin, died of a drug
overdose. In the aftermath of Kevin’s death, Shawn became focused on his own
health. He began to exercise regularly, and switched his fare of pizza and
hamburgers for low-fat buffalo and other healthy food. Shawn relished the
attention his new physique brought him. He became obsessive about his hygiene,
his weight, and his workout schedule.

Shawn was collecting thousands of dollars a year from his parents’
estate, all part of Hugh’s plan to ensure their only living child wouldn’t
have to pay high inheritance taxes. But had his parents known about
their son’s homosexual activities, they would likely have cut Shawn off
financially. That alone was reason enough for Shawn to want to hide his
sexual encounters with other men.

Shawn was not teaching at the university as he had claimed. In fact,
even though he was thirty-three years old, he had never held down
a full-time job for any consistent period of time. His primary source
of income came from his mom and dad. Eileen and Sarah’s accidental
discovery threatened the matchstick house Shawn had so carefully
constructed.

During the trial, the prosecutor attempted to portray her as a victim,
a woman manipulated and so emotionally abused by the man she lived
with that she couldn’t possibly think rationally. The prosecutor hoped
it would help explain why Sarah repeatedly left Karly with Shawn for
extended periods of time, despite having promised David and others
that she wouldn’t.

Members of the jury I spoke with said they wholeheartedly rejected
the notion of Sarah as a victim. Several stated it was likely they would
have found Sarah guilty of neglect, reckless endangerment or more had
the district attorney charged her.

Although she had left her daughter in obvious distress, Sarah
did not check on Karly when she got back to Shawn’s Thursday night. She said
Shawn didn’t like it when she went into the girls’ room after they were asleep
because he didn’t want her waking them. Sarah testified that Shawn had told
her Karly hurt herself that night by jumping from the top bunk and hitting
her head. Still Sarah did not bother checking on Karly to make sure she was
okay.

The next morning, Friday, June 3, 2005, Karly woke with her left eye
swollen shut. Doctors would later declare it ruptured. Shawn reminded
Sarah about the “fall” that had happened while Sarah was at the bar
Thursday night. After a prompting from Shawn, Karly reportedly gave
her mother a weak “Ta-da,” like an acrobat performing a circus act.
Neither Shawn nor Sarah sought medical attention for Karly, even
though the girl was in glaring physical distress, crying red tears—
literally blood.

Once Kate left for school, Sarah gave Karly a handful of trail mix
for breakfast and then joined Shawn in the bedroom. The two had sex
while Karly sat on the floor of the living room, sick to her stomach,
fighting a headache, watching cartoons, one eye blinded.

Afterward, Shawn left for the athletic club, and Sarah turned her
attention to cleaning. She wiped down the baseboards and vacuumed,
trying to rid the place of cat hair, she later explained in court.

Karly sat on the couch, or on the floor, unable to walk because the
soles of her feet were badly bruised. Sarah had noticed Karly’s swollen
feet when Shawn brought her to Sarah earlier that morning. But when
Sarah asked Karly what had happened, Shawn interrupted, “Remember?
I told you she was jumping off the bunk bed last night.” Sarah didn’t ask
any more questions.

After she finished cleaning, Sarah picked up Karly.

“She was just really clingy,” Sarah said. “She wanted to be held a lot.” Sarah
carried Karly into Kate’s bedroom. “I was going to lie down with her for a
little bit. There were some stuffed animals on the floor and Karly looked
at me and said, ‘Mommy, I want to go see Jesus.’”

Picking up a couple of the plush toys, Sarah tried to engage her
daughter in a bit of role-playing. It was a technique a counselor had
taught Sarah: a tool to get Karly to talk about things.

Sitting on the floor, stuffed animals in hand, Sarah asked Karly if
she wanted to pray.

“Yes,” Karly said.

Sarah prayed aloud for Jesus to come and heal her daughter, to
make Karly’s tummy and head feel all better.

Then Karly prayed: “I want to go be with Jesus. Amen.”