Date With the Devil (2 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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C
HAPTER
2
“T
HIS
I
S
M
Y
S
ISTER
”
One hundred miles southwest of Daggett, where California coastal breezes cooled the atmosphere, Robin Henson sensed something terribly wrong. Kristin, her younger sister, hadn't responded to e-mails, phone calls, or text messages for more than a week. It certainly was not the first time they had been out of communication for extended periods of time, but this separation felt different. Through their shared childhood, their young-adult years, and into their thirties and early forties, Robin and “Kristi” had always been connected by more than personal visits, telephones, texting, or old-fashioned mail correspondence. Affectionate bonds between them transcended the physical and bordered on telepathic transmissions. But even those circuits had gone strangely silent.
In Robin's home, near the western border of Los Angeles County, and a fifteen-minute drive from the ocean, an ethereal emptiness filled the rooms like a gloomy fog. It gripped her heart and soul. Psychic links between the pair had existed since their early childhood in New York and Massachusetts. Robin's young-adult daughters, Jessica and Julia, also felt the melancholy vacuum.
Troubling prescience for Robin had started on Thursday, May 31, 2007, Memorial Day, sixteen days before Allura McGehay found herself in desert danger. The date also happened to be Jessica's twenty-first birthday. Robin had wanted to invite everyone to a family celebration for that holiday, but Kristin hadn't responded. That didn't fit her normal pattern of enthusiastic participation in family functions.
In the following days, Robin's growing worry turned into deep anxiety. She and her second stepfather, Peter Means, who remained connected to the now-grown children, spoke by telephone or text-messaged daily, praying that nothing disastrous had happened. They hoped that rough spots in the life of Kristi, also known as “Krissy,” had been left behind her.
Early childhood for Robin and Kristin had been difficult, exacerbated by frequent moves and family turbulence. Their mother, Marie, had delivered Robin and her male twin, Richard, in Glens Falls, New York, three years before Kristin arrived on May 6, 1969. Later recalling the beauty of her baby sister, Robin said, “She was just this cute, chubby little thing with gorgeous hair, plump cheeks, and a great smile. Sugar and spice. Sweet and nice. We had the chicken pox when Kristin was about six months old and she had only one teeny-tiny pockmark on that darling little face.”
Their father, Rick Arlington, found it necessary to repeatedly uproot his wife and kids, due to his job, and migrate to different cities. They lived in Lake George, Utica, Syracuse, and Albany before moving to Massachusetts. Working as a nurse, Marie hated the ongoing failure to settle down and find stability somewhere. Stressful disagreements between Rick and Marie grew into irreconcilable differences, and before Kristin's second birthday, led to a divorce. Marie soon remarried and the children began adjusting to a father figure with a different surname: Baldwin. They also gained a new sibling in 1972, another girl. Stephanie's birth would be the final addition.
The second marriage also crashed and burned within a few years. Painful discord between parents overflows onto children, making their existence miserable too. Living in New Hartford, New York, they longed for a place of peace and serenity, where they could live like other kids they met in school. Fortunately, it came with their mother's third husband.
Marie had grown up in Vermont. In the seventh grade, she had met classmate Peter Means and later dated him while they attended high school together. After the Baldwin marriage ended in divorce, Marie attended her high-school reunion, where she and Peter felt the embers of romance warm up again. Means would later recall, “I was living in Massachusetts, working for a company that made equipment for video recording and motion pictures filming. Marie and I began telephoning each other, and I made some trips to New Hartford.”
They exchanged vows in 1974, when Kristin was about five years old. According to Peter, all four of the kids were a “lively group,” but she was the bubbly one. The twins, Robin and Rick, and even little Stephanie, were relatively quiet. Kristin had a gregarious personality, liked people, and loved to laugh. When she began attending school, said Peter, “she did reasonably well but could have done better. She was very social, and her peer groups were more important to her than her grades. Not that she did poorly. She was just very lively.”
Peter took his new family to a home in Bolton, Massachusetts, located in the suburbs of Boston. “It was a small town, maybe five thousand people, and great for kids, with good neighbors. Everyone had two or three acres of land, giving plenty of space for children.” Kristin's congenial personality made it easy to meet and befriend other families.
An expert skier, Peter also taught the sport. “I got them involved in skiing, and Kristin took it up with wild enthusiasm. In my job as ski instructor, at a place near Leominster, I could get them on the slopes for free. When you teach young kids, they take it up easily because they have no fear. Kristin was one of the better ones, absolutely fearless. She loved going straight down the hill, objecting to making any turns. The faster she went, the more thrilled she was. The other three kids were a little more cautious. Remember, she was just a young tyke, six or seven. I still laugh when I recall one of her antics. I taught ski racing, and Kristin loved that. She noticed people on the Poma lift, a device to pull people up the hill. You straddle a bar that is attached to a moving cable, and lean back against a small platter, which rests against the back of your thighs. Kristin thought the spacing of people on the Poma lift looked like gates on a slalom course. She got up to the top, and started skiing down, zigzagging between them, ducking under the cable. Of course, the ski patrol spotted her, and they kicked her out for the day. She hadn't hit anyone, but they didn't appreciate her scaring the bejesus out of people going up the lift. Yeah, she was very exuberant.”
Peter Means ensconced himself in the hearts of his new brood of kids. Robin still spoke of her second stepfather with a special reverence in her voice. “Peter Means was the one who raised us and was the only man in my life I consider my father. My birth name was Arlington, but I have never talked about it. We were so attached to Peter. He was our dad. We needed some normalcy, and he gave it to us. All of us kids took his name. He treated us like his own, but he related really well with Kristin.”
Rick, Robin's twin brother, in reminiscing about those childhood years, said, “I was really close to Kristin, even though she was three years younger. Sometimes, though, like most brother-sister bonds, it would be like a love-hate relationship. We were totally best friends or we were pissed off at each other.”
In 1978, Peter's employer offered him a promotion by moving to the West Coast. He realized that Marie and her children had lived a nomadic existence and wanted to put an end to their frequent relocations. Peter bought a home in one of the most attractive and affluent residential sites in Southern California, packed his family into a vehicle, and headed to the “Golden State.”
Speaking of the trip to the West Coast, Rick recalled, “Kristin and I were not allowed to sit next to each other because we had too much fun. It was like, ‘Hey you guys back there, be quiet!'”
Westlake Village is located at the westernmost edge of Los Angeles County and overlaps into neighboring Ventura County. It is separated from Malibu Beach by only a dozen miles across the Santa Monica Mountains. Nestled against picturesque hills, the tree-laden community surrounds a man-made lake. Personal boat harbors lie within a few steps of waterside homes, and a luxurious golf course is nearby. The quiet, spacious ambience lured numerous celebrities from the world of sports, entertainment, and business. Legendary football star Joe Montana, Los Angeles Dodgers' announcer Vin Scully, and former wrestler Hulk Hogan bought homes there, as did film stars Robert Young, Martin Lawrence, George C. Scott, and Mariel Hemingway, among many others.
The new two-story, five-bedroom house acquired by Means occupied the Ventura County side. Diagonally across the street lived a girl born just a few weeks sooner than Kristin. Jennifer Gootsan, a native and lifelong resident of Westlake Village, would eventually become almost like another sister to Kristi, but not at first. Recalling their shared childhood, Jennifer said, “When Kristin and I first met, we actually didn't get along at all. It's weird how we became the-best-of-the-best of friends, and extended it later on in our lives. At first she and I clashed over silly, girly things, just teenage stuff. It wasn't about boys. They were not really an issue. It was more about whose hair looked better that day or who had the cuter clothes.”
In the upscale neighborhood, the children reveled in their newfound lifestyle. “There were lots of big families. Lots of block parties. At Christmas, we had a piñata,” Robin described. “All the neighborhood kids came to our garage. Most of the families in the surrounding area were there, not just one or two kids. Jennifer was friends with Kristin, and her younger brother was friends with my youngest sister. Same with several other families, lots of friends. Several of us ran track and played softball together, and everything was always about the neighbors.”
Looking back fondly at those years, Peter Means smiled as he told of Kristin's debut as a “singer.” “We went down to San Diego for a vacation and stayed on Harbor Island. In the hotel, they had a karaoke-like event, which turned out to be more of an impromptu talent show. Kristin was about eleven or twelve and decided she wanted to go up and show off her skills. She sang ‘Tomorrow,' the big song from the Broadway show
Annie,
and she did it in a very animated way. She brought the house down. I don't know that she was a particularly natural singer, like some of those remarkable people who show up on
American Idol.
She did well, but it was her animation that wowed the audience. And she won the contest. She liked belting out that song. That event followed her around from then on.”
In the summer during school holidays, the kids spent as much time as possible at Malibu or Zuma Beach. Kristin fell in love with the ocean and became a dedicated beach bunny. A deep tan became her trademark, and she gradually mastered surfboard skills in the crashing Pacific waves.
Several summers included visits to a relative's farm in Vermont, where Kristin and her siblings learned to ride horses. Always athletic, Kristin adapted to the saddle as easily as she did to skis and a surfboard.
While Robin and her twin, Rick, entered Westlake High School, Kristi and her friend Jennifer enrolled at nearby Triunfo Elementary School. “Jennifer lived close to us,” Rick said, “and I used to mow her lawn. I mowed everybody's lawn on that street because I was a real entrepreneur.”
With misty eyes, Jennifer recalled, “Kristin and I were classmates and could walk to the school together along paved, tree-shaded paths. I remember her in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, and then later in seventh and eighth grades at Colina Middle School, in Thousand Oaks. It's a blue-ribbon school. And then we moved over to Westlake High. By this time, we were great friends. She spent a lot of time with my family too. Like, if Kristi and her mom would get in a little fight or something, she would come over and stay in our guest room. My mom looked at her like another daughter and always sided with Kristi when we had fights. I was the wild one. In high school, I had a boyfriend right away, like when I was fourteen. And I don't remember exactly who she dated, but I know all the guys wanted to go out with her. She was so outgoing. This is one thing I can tell—she was always the life of the party.”
Rick acted as big brother and covert protector to Kristin. “I was a senior and she was a freshman. She was cute and a lot of guys liked her, but I let them know that I was there to see that nothing happened to her. I don't think she ever realized that.”
If Jennifer took on the role of another sister to Kristin, then her real sibling Robin soon became a de facto mother. It came about as the result of yet another divorce.
Peter recalled the breakup. “Marie and I separated and went our different ways. I moved out and took only what I could carry in my car. All the kids were teenagers at the time. I stayed around the area, of course, and got to see them a fair amount.” He resettled in Simi Valley, about fourteen miles northeast of Westlake Village, and eventually took a beautiful new bride named Sue.
Looking back, Robin recalled, “When I turned eighteen, my parents were getting a divorce, so I was sort of the mom for Kristin and my little sister, Stephanie. My mother, newly divorced, went back to work and spent time finding herself. This put me in the motherly mode. It was no problem for me. Instead of being sisters, it was more like a mother-daughter relationship with both Kristin and Stephanie. They needed me and accepted me in the role of mom.”
To Rick, the divorce meant fewer restrictions on the kids. “Mom worked at night and usually didn't get home until about three o'clock in the morning. So we pretty much had the run of the house. Our friends discovered this, and a lot of them would come over and hang out. It was like the neighborhood party house. All hell would break loose, especially in the summer when school was out.”
At Westlake High School, the camaraderie between Jennifer and Kristin grew even stronger. “We took the bus together. She was an excellent student and was very smart—always pleasant, very witty. It's no exaggeration to say she was always one of the most gregarious and admired kids. In our yearbook, Kristi was singled out as the most popular girl. She had a million friends.”

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