My mother chooses to live a life of pain. A stumbling, non-functioning alcoholic, she attempts to drink away the numerous rapes she experienced, the severe abuse by her father and step fathers, the torture each of her husband’s have inflicted on her, and the shame of abandoning each of her children.
Every day without regard for time, without holiday or respite, she drinks herself unconscious. She blurs reality by blurring her brain with a substance that eventually will kill her, a fact she has come to terms with in recent years. If I lived in my mother’s world, I might drink my way into oblivion.
My mother chooses to cohabitate with her mother’s ex-husband. When my grandmother was married to the man, Jim O’Connor, he beat my grandmother nearly to death on regular occasion. The story goes that when my grandma tried to leave Jim, he stalked my great grandmother and took pictures of her so his wife would know he could kill her at any time. The police took no action.
After years of inflicting abuse on my grandmother, my mother decided he was quality companion material. Since he has taken over boyfriend duties for my mother, she has suffered a series of “accidents” that forensics can’t explain but the police in her area seem to believe.
One of the more severe incidents occurred when four of my mother’s fingers were almost entirely severed off. (Yes, they were able to reattach.) My mother told the police that she had done it herself with a steak knife when she repeatedly stabbed a door. I sat, playing forensic investigator, doing my darndest to figure out how she could have used a steak knife to do what she said happened. I couldn’t figure it out. The police took no action.
Now Jim has turned his attention to my sister. When my sister calls to check on my mother or my mother calls my sister to check in, Jim gets on the phone and harasses my sister. He has called her on numerous occasions and told her how he is going to kill my mother. Once he even called my sister and told her my mother is already dead and recounted how she died as my sister wept. When my sister realized he was just toying with her, she called the police. The police took no action but my sister didn’t really expect that they would.
You see, my sister had experience Jim’s menace first hand. One day, my sister went to get my mother after Jim threatened to kill her. When she arrived, with two witnesses, Jim grabbed a pot of boiling hot oil and held it over my sister’s head. As the other people restrained themselves to prevent any accidental spillage, Jim and my sister stood as he thought about killing her. Eventually he decided not to kill her. The police did not act.
One day Jim called the police in Straton, CO, and told them that my sister had threatened him with a gun. Even knowing what kind of person Jim is, the police made a felony traffic stop against my sister, pulling her from the car, throwing her on the ground and handcuffing her. They did not find a gun because she did not threaten him. She couldn’t have, he had stolen the gun she had for protection against him. The police didn’t act against Jim.
The police didn’t stop at not acting; they encouraged another police department not to act. The Sheriff’s Department of Cheyenne County Colorado was contacted by the Englewood Wood Police Department. The story the Sheriff told my sister is different than the one he told the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The story the Englewood Police told the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is different than they told me. They all differ from the story my sister heard from my mother. I am going to tell you the story as best I can figure it out.
After the murder of his friend, Jim began to threaten to kill people. Sherriff of Cheyenne County Virgil Drescher told him to leave town, even though he knew Jim was drunk. Jim then started the two hour drive from Cheyenne Wells, CO to Denver, CO. Between those two points is a city called Englewood. The Englewood Police stopped Jim for driving drunk after he brought himself to the police’s attention when he made an illegal U turn. Jim convinced the police officer that he was distraught from the death of his son, who had been murdered recently. The police officer called Sheriff Virgil Drescher who told the police officer that there in fact was a murder and he in fact sent Jim out of town. Taking compassion on Jim, the police officer did not impound his truck, did not arrest him, and wrote him a ticket for not having insurance. He then drove the Jim to a friend’s house.
The Sheriff, Virgil Drescher, was not only unable to make an arrest, he prevented a legitimate one from being made. This isn’t the first time the police have let us down. A number of years ago I called the Yuma County Sheriff, whose name I can no longer remember, because Jim had a warrant out for his arrest in his county. I was told, “He is too expensive to house. We can’t afford the eye surgery he needs.” Jim did not need eye surgery, he needed to be arrested. We called the Wisconsin State Police to come and pick him up on a warrant they have for his arrest there. They told me they don’t extradite over misdemeanors. What is the rumor about what passes for a misdemeanor in Wisconsin? Jim held people hostage in a trailer. Even if regular old trailer trash doesn’t warrant a felony, doesn’t a police officer? One day Jim held a gun to a police officer in Straton. Eventually the felony menacing charges were dropped.
I only have one true family member, my sister. We have been abandoned by every person who was supposed to care for us but we have always had each other. I would do anything in the world to protect her, anything.
Jim has started another cycle of terror against my sister. We have begged the police to act. We begged the Mayor of Cheyenne Wells to act. We asked the City Employees to act. We asked the County Council. We have begged legislators to make them act. We have begged the governor to act. In Colorado the police aren’t even responsible to enforce restraining orders. It is every woman for herself in Colorado. No one will act. Reasonable efforts have been made and now decent people like me are left with nowhere to turn and only indecent options left.
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