The Most Dangerous Animal of All (15 page)

Snook swerved to avoid hitting the rear of Loyd’s vehicle and watched in horror as Loyd’s car flew through the air and landed in a ditch. When he wrenched open the door, he was stunned by what he saw.

Sheryl was lifeless, although there was not a drop of blood on her tiny body. Leona’s mangled legs were pinned under the dashboard, and Loyd was bleeding profusely. Evelyna and Loretta, safer in the backseat, had not sustained serious injuries.

Uncle Snook and Aunt Dorothy rushed Sheryl to the nearest hospital, praying all the way for a miracle. Loyd, tears mixing with the blood on his face, held his wife’s hand as he waited impatiently for paramedics to remove Leona from the wreckage.

For the next few days, Leona remained in a coma. When she finally regained consciousness, she asked for Sheryl.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” her mother said. “Your baby died in the crash.”

“And Loyd? Where’s Loyd?” Leona screamed, struggling to sit up.

“Loyd’s fine. He’s in the hospital, but he’ll recover,” her mother said. “Now, be still. They don’t want you to move.”

Leona lay back in the bed, unable to control the sobs that shook her body. She had waited so long for a baby, and now the little girl who had brought so much love and light into her life was gone.

Leona’s hip, knee, and pelvis had been shattered in the accident. When orthopedic surgeon Moss Bannerman examined her, what he found frightened him. He informed her family that although she might not survive the ambulance ride from Opelousas to Baton Rouge, she needed to be transferred to Baton Rouge General Hospital right away. Bereaved over the loss of his daughter, Loyd signed the consent form to have Leona moved, fearful that he would lose his wife, too.

Loyd and Leona were both still hospitalized when family members gathered to bury their baby. For both of them, the pain of not being able to attend Sheryl’s funeral was unbearable.

As she lay in her hospital bed day after day, Leona wondered why God had taken her baby away. “God must have decided I’m not fit to be a mother,” she told Loyd.

“Nonsense. You can’t think like that. You were a wonderful mother,” Loyd reassured her, although he wasn’t feeling any better. Inside, he was feeling guilty because he had resisted the idea of adoption at first. He wondered if he was being punished, but he kept his thoughts to himself as he held his wife’s hand.

Understanding how this tragic loss would affect his son and daughter-in-law, Boone Stewart visited the child welfare office where his other daughter-in-law, Margie Stewart, worked. He appealed to her and to anyone else who would listen, telling them that they needed to place Loyd and Leona back on the prospective adoptive parents list, even though they were still in the hospital.

Over the next few weeks, Leona was pieced back together by the orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Bannerman instructed Loyd, who had been released from the hospital, to build a makeshift traction bed out of plywood and two-by-fours set on an angle and tilted sideways so that he could hang the counterweights of traction at different angles. The doctor needed to stretch Leona’s broken body to equal lengths if she were ever to walk again.

Boone went to Goudeau-Huey Hardware & Paint Company, on Plank Road, and bought the wood and twelve-penny nails needed to build the bed. “We’re moving Leona into our house,” he informed Loyd. “We’ve got more room there, and we can help get her through this.”

Loyd went to his parents’ home to help build the bed, but he gasped when he saw his father driving nails through the two-by-fours and right into the beautiful hardwood floors in the living room.

“Daddy, what on earth are you doing? You’re going to ruin your floor,” he said.

Boone looked up at his son. “It’s only wood, son. It’s only wood.”

When she was released from the hospital, Leona began her recovery in her father-in-law’s living room. Every day, Boone and Loyd twisted and turned and adjusted her as she lay in that bed, unable to walk. Every day, Leona’s screams of pain could be heard throughout the house. There were times Loyd and Boone thought they were killing her, but they followed the doctor’s orders meticulously. And each day after they got her settled down, they went outside to cry. They could not let her see how much her pain was hurting them. But their efforts paid off.

Leona was just beginning to walk nine months later when, on August 21, 1961, she received a phone call. “Loyd, come here,” she yelled when she hung up the phone. “We’ve got a baby. We’ve got a baby girl,” she cried into his shoulder as he hugged her tightly.

Together they welcomed another child, whom they named Cindy Kaye, into their new home in Baton Rouge, both feeling very blessed that they had been given a second chance. Loyd and Leona showered Cindy with love, allowing their beautiful new baby to fill the void Sheryl’s death had left, but no amount of love could heal the emotional wounds they had sustained from her loss.

Almost two years later, Leona received another call.

When his wife told him the news, Loyd rushed into the shower to get cleaned up. His heart was pounding as he scrubbed the sweat from his body. He had lived with the weight of Sheryl’s death for so long. He had berated himself, wondering whether, if he’d paid more attention, maybe driven a little slower, his daughter would still be alive. He had challenged God repeatedly, asking Him why He had allowed this to happen. The whole town of Krotz Springs had attended the funeral at the First Baptist Church. Everyone but he and Leona had been able to say good-bye to their little girl, who looked so much like the Gerber baby. He had not understood how God could do something like that to them.

And then, when he had gone to Opelousas General Hospital and seen his unconscious wife with tubes and wires and bandages covering her bloodied body, again he blamed God.

However, he had listened when God spoke through the opening of Leona’s eyes, through the movement of her hand when it had gently squeezed his, and then when she walked for the first time after the accident. He’d heard when God blessed them with Cindy, and now He was speaking to Loyd again.

Giving him another gift.

A son.

Leona had called Loyd’s parents, and the two couples drove to the restaurant together. Boone pulled up next to a white van with a round decal denoting that it was a state-owned vehicle.

Loyd opened the back door and took Cindy from Leona’s arms so she could use both hands to maneuver her way from the car. After handing Cindy to her grandmother, Loyd reached into the car, putting his left arm under Leona’s legs, moving them outside onto the pavement. He squatted down, put his right arm around her waist, and gently pulled her onto her feet. Once she felt stable, they walked toward the van.

A lady holding a blanketed bundle emerged from the vehicle. Loyd saw me first, then Boone, and finally Leona.

“Look at those blue eyes,” Loyd said. “And that strawberry blond hair.”

“And he’s smiling. Look at his dimples, Loyd,” Leona said.

“He’s precious,” admired Evelyn.

Boone couldn’t even speak. He just stared at me, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

“We don’t have much information about him except that one of his parents loved music,” offered the social worker as she handed me to Leona. “We called him Philip while he was in foster care, but I’m sure y’all will want to give him a special new name. He’s kind of colicky, and we’ve got him on goat’s milk. Seems to agree with him better than anything else. Must’ve been plenty music around his home before, because sometimes when he won’t stop crying, if we hum or sing to him, he calms right down. We’ll check in with you in a day or two. If you have any questions or need anything, you know how to reach us. Congratulations.”

There was no mention of Baby John Doe, no mention of my parents or the train ride. There was no mention of the stairwell. Loyd’s sister-in-law, Margie, who had been instrumental in placing me with Loyd and Leona, didn’t tell them that she had pulled me from my teenage mother’s arms. She couldn’t; it was a closed adoption, and Louisiana law forbade her from saying a word about my background. Loyd and Leona had no way of knowing what I had already experienced in only three months of life. All they knew was that God had given them another gift, and they were going to cherish me.

My new family walked into Piccadilly Cafeteria for dinner and a celebration. Leona kissed me on my forehead and pulled me close to her heart.

My new parents named me Gary Loyd Stewart.

Back in San Francisco, my real name was not mentioned again. That had been forbidden by Judy’s mother. It was time for her to move on, to forget her past.

Three years later, on October 3, 1966, Leona miraculously would give birth to a baby girl, Christy Lee Stewart, after medical experts said her crushed womb would never support the birth of a child. Doctor Miller had once told her she could have children, but Leona and Loyd had long since given up on that dream. God had blessed them yet again.

21

In San Francisco, Van’s troubles were mounting, but Earl went to bat for him. Convinced that his son must have some kind of mental disorder, Earl decided that Van did not belong in prison and that perhaps a mental health care facility might be the better consequence for his actions—a place where his son could get the help he needed. He suggested that Van write to South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond and ask the senator to act on his behalf. Thurmond agreed to speak with Superior Court Judge Norman Elkington, because Van was the son of a military commander. The judge would later state that he “wasn’t swayed at all by Thurmond’s letter asking that he look carefully into the case,” according to the
San Francisco Chronicle
.

“Thurmond, former judge and a former governor, was ignorant of a number of aspects of the case, including the fact that California’s statutory age is 18, not 16,” the article stated. “These statutory cases are usually just young love,” Thurmond’s aide, Ed Kenney, tried to explain.

Others also stood up for Van—Reverend Hubert Doran, who testified before the court that Van’s character was quite good, and Van’s high school teacher Norval Fast, who stated that Van had never seemed like a common criminal.

William Lohmus, still upset with Van for not helping him at own his court hearing, refused to testify for his old friend. William eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for driving Van and Judy to the airport the first time they ran away and was sentenced to probation—a stigma that would follow him throughout his career.

In a plea bargain orchestrated by Van’s attorney and Earl, my father was sentenced to one year of confinement for the rape of a female under eighteen years of age, which was reduced to time served and four years’ probation.

Two charges of fraud by wire had been lodged against Van in U.S. District Court in New Orleans at the same time he was facing rape charges in San Francisco. The U.S. Marshal’s office soon began following the paper trail of bad checks and forged documents he had left across the country while on the run. Marshals discovered that Van had misrepresented his identity when he had bought and subsequently sold documents to finance his adventure with Judy. In San Francisco, he was charged with document fraud and fraud by wire. Van was sentenced to three years in San Quentin State Prison. Soon, Lompoc, California, would file another charge of fraud by wire against him.

The judge honored Earl Sr.’s request and first sent Van to Atascadero State Hospital for ninety days to cure him of his obsession with Judy.

Located between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Atascadero is a maximum security facility for sexually deviant, criminally insane males. Opened in 1954, this psychiatric hospital features a security perimeter to protect the outside world from the patients, whose mental disabilities might pose a threat of danger. The thought of being perceived as “crazy” did not sit well with Van, who preferred to think of himself as intellectually superior.

At Atascadero, doctors designed an intensive regimen of electroshock therapy and drugs to exorcise Van’s pathological need for Judy. Although his senses became a little duller with each passing day, Van resisted therapy, preferring to cling to his thoughts of the beautiful blonde who had ultimately betrayed him.

Behind the halfhearted smile he gave his doctors, rage, menacing in its intensity, boiled inside him. William would later say, “If Van wasn’t crazy when he went to Atascadero, electrodes frying his brain for so long guaranteed that he was crazy when he came out.”

While Van was “being cured of his obsession,” San Pedro, California, filed another charge of fraud by wire against him.

Upon his release from Atascadero, he was sent to San Quentin State Prison.

The oldest prison in California, San Quentin is surrounded on three sides by San Francisco Bay. Built by inmates in the early 1850s, it’s the only prison in California that has an execution chamber, and all prisoners sentenced to death in the state live on Condemned Row. For those like Van, small, narrow cells with uncomfortable beds made of metal and a toilet against the wall became home. Murderers, robbers, and rapists peered out at passing guards from behind the vertical bars that kept them locked away from proper society. Prisoners, taken outside for periodic exercise, could view the hills of San Francisco from the yard—freedom, almost close enough to touch, yet so far from reach. For Van, the view was excruciating. He knew Judy was out there, somewhere in those hills, living her life without him.

For the next year and a half, he bided his time, planning how he would win her back and protecting himself as best he could. Labeled a pedophile, Van could not have had an easy time in prison, as many inmates view child rapists as suitable prey for their aggression.

He was paroled on July 12, 1965, two days before his thirty-first birthday.

It had been a little more than two years since he last saw Judy, and finally he was a free man.

22

In 1964, while Van served time in San Quentin, Rotea Gilford, a tall, thin African American man, one of the few black men who served on the San Francisco Police Department, sat at his desk in the Hall of Justice, not quite believing what he had just heard. He had just earned a promotion. Never before in the history of the department had a black man been promoted to inspector in the robbery division.