The Evil That Men Do Part 26

Eventually, Debra did acquiesce to Rhoades's insistence that they try group s.e.x. "He was my Prince Charming," she explains. "He rescued me. He was going to fix everything, and make it okay. My whole life had been a disaster. I was willing to do this for him."

There were limits, however.

She agreed one Halloween to attend a costume party as a dominatrix, leading Bob, her collared s.e.x slave, on a chain.

"We won first place," she says.

But she vehemently refused any more radical s.e.xual experimentation. Bob wanted to introduce bondage into their s.e.x life, and sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic devices, such as nipple clamps.

"He'd bring those things home and I'd tell him to get them out of my d.a.m.n house."

One day, an odd-looking stranger appeared at the front door and announced that he was the love slave Bob had ordered for her. Debra hardly knew how to respond, except to shove her visitor back out the door, telling him there'd been some sort of mistake.

Bob read a lot of books and magazines, much of it violent p.o.r.nography, which Debra found hidden around the house, along with the enormous phone-s.e.x bills that Rhoades ran up.

She also began to sense that Rhoades connected s.e.x to violence and pain in ways she could not previously have guessed. When she developed sick headaches, he sometimes would lie down with her, just to watch Debra suffer. When she was diagnosed with lupus and hospitalized, her evident pain and discomfort s.e.xually aroused him. Once, Rhoades climbed into Debra's hospital bed to have s.e.x with her.

Her first halfhearted attempt to break free came in late 1986, when Bob was on the road in his rig for three straight months. "I found out that I could make it on my own," she says. "I didn't need any help."

She began to signal her independence during phone calls with Bob, sounding less meek and more self-a.s.sured. Not coincidentally, Debra believes, an avalanche of love letters started arriving from Rhoades.

Bob was highly sensitive to her moods when he chose to be.

"It's true there are other things in my life," read one letter he sent from the road, "but for the life of me I can no longer find any value in them without your warmth; the nights are dark without your fire."

"I guess he felt like he was losing me," says Debra. "He came home and we got married in two days, on Valentine's."

She stayed with him for two and a half more years.

"His thing was control. It drove me nuts. Even when we had s.e.x he never lost control. He could drink all night and never get drunk. He never lost control."

Rhoades spent a year off the road, recovering from bone graft surgery to repair an arm he'd broken in an industrial accident.

Debra remembers him coming out of surgery, groggy from anesthesia, but collected enough to yank the IV tube from his arm.

"I had to sit with him in the hospital to make sure he didn't do it again," she recalls.

"He refused even to take pain medicine, because he was afraid of losing control."

It was a night in October 1989 when Rhoades finally stepped over the line. Bob demanded a.n.a.l s.e.x. Debra refused him. So he raped her.

"He really lost it," Debra says. "He beat the h.e.l.l out of me.

"I got up and looked him in the eye and said, 'Are you through?'

"He said, 'Yeah,' and went in the living room.

"I'd been sleeping with a baseball bat underneath my bed for a while. I went and got it and walked out and hit him in the arm.

"Then I said, 'Now I'm through,' and I packed my bags and left. After I slammed the door, I could hear him breaking things in the house."

Debra believed she'd cut the cord, hardly realizing that in some ways her trials hadn't yet begun.

About a year later there came a telephone call from Arizona. It was Bob. As Debra would learn, her ex-husband had been parked in his rig on the shoulder of Interstate 10 in Casa Grande, south of Phoenix, when a patrol officer happened along. Concerned that the big truck was stopped too close to traffic, the policeman pulled out his flashlight and climbed up to the cab, expecting to find the trucker asleep.

Instead, he discovered Bob Rhoades in the rig's sleeping compartment with a young girl, who was nude and crying uncontrollably. There was a horse bridle strapped to her neck, with a long chain attached to the bit. The hysterical teenager was handcuffed, too, and there were red whip marks on her back. When she saw the policemen, she burst into screams.

This incident was going to cost Rhoades six years or more in an Arizona prison. But much more serious jeopardy prompted his call to Debra. He asked her to rush to his Houston apartment and clean the place up, throw everything out.

The authorities, however, beat her to it. They already had tossed Bob's place, where they discovered evidence suggesting that the incident in Arizona was not isolated.

Far from it.

They found women's underwear, articles of clothing and shoes and jewelry, violent p.o.r.nography, and a giant d.i.l.d.o. The police recovered a single handcuff, too, an ominous mystery. How had it been snapped from its mate?

Rhoades obviously had been busy. There was a bondage rack in the apartment, too, and nearby a white towel drenched in blood.

Also recovered in Rhoades's apartment were several sets of photographs of a young girl, who turned out to be Regina Kay Walters of Houston. Walters had vanished in February 1990, several months after Debra walked out on Rhoades.

The teenager's desiccated remains were found in late September 1990, hundreds of miles away in an old barn near Greenfield, Illinois. She'd been strangled with a piece of wire twisted around her neck fourteen times, one twist for every year of her life.

Rhoades's photos sorted into several groups. The first pictures were nudes of Regina. She was chained inside his truck cab. Her hair had been cut, and she was handcuffed. There was a choke chain around her neck. He had shaved Regina's pubic hair, too, and pierced her c.l.i.toris with a ring, also attached to a chain.

The second group of photos, taken out of doors, depicted the girl, both dressed and undressed, in a variety of poses. Her fingernails and toenails were painted bright red, and she was wearing bright red lipstick, too.

In the final set of pictures, evidently taken in the old barn just before he murdered her, Regina's eyes express exactly the same silent, frozen terror that Harvey Glatman's victims had in his photos more than thirty years before.

Like Glatman, Bob Rhoades scared his victim half to death, then killed her.

He was extradited from Arizona to Illinois, where he pleaded guilty to the Walters murder. He was given a life sentence in Illinois, and is a suspect in a number of other abduction-murders in other states as well.

In the aftermath of her experience with Rhoades and the disclosure of his crimes, Debra fell into a disastrous third marriage, and attempted suicide for a second time.

"I was having a real rough time with it," she says. "I was feeling lots and lots of guilt. My way of thinking at the time was that if I'd just stayed with Bob, that young girl would not be dead. It would have been better if I had died. I felt that if I loved this evil man, then / must be an evil person, too."

As she recovered, she heard from local FBI agent Mark Young that Roy Hazelwood would like to speak with her for a survey he was conducting. Debra agreed to cooperate, and told Hazelwood her story.

"Roy had this big book of questions," she recollects, "and he started asking me questions about childhood and about my family. It seemed that once I started talking to him, I finally could talk about it. No one ever wanted to listen before.

"And the whole time he kept rea.s.suring me that I was a victim, that it wasn't my fault, that I didn't do anything wrong. The more he made me understand, the better I felt.

"It was so important for me to hear that from him. Roy made me realize what really had gone on, that I wasn't a bad person just because I loved a bad man. Roy gave me the courage to take control of my life."

Debra regularly speaks on spousal abuse to audiences in the Houston area. She also counsels physically and s.e.xually abused women. The last thing she heard about Bob Rhoades was that he'd developed colon cancer.

"And when I heard that I just busted up laughing," she remembers. "Mark Young asked me, 'Debbie, are you all right?'

"I said,' Yeah, I'm fine!'

" 'Why are you laughing?'

" 'Well, after all these years, I couldn't get him, but G.o.d did. I hope he has a long, painful time. He deserves it.' "

Mich.e.l.le Townsend* wishes her tormentor agony in equal measure, but lives in constant dread of him.

Her story begins in the autumn of her senior year in high school, when Mich.e.l.le, seventeen, was a slender, green-eyed schoolgirl.

Jack* was thirty-five, a Vietnam vet who managed the business where one of her sisters worked.

Mich.e.l.le at the time was unhappy and confused, still mourning an older sister who'd died in a car accident, and perplexed over her s.e.xual orientation.

"I didn't have much experience with men at all," she explains. "I found him both intriguing and mysterious. He was charismatic and attentive. Four days after we met, he proposed.

"I wasn't in love, but I saw this as a way to escape my problems. I thought I could eventually fall in love with him, and rid myself of feelings for other women."

Self-destructive emotional currents guided her thoughts as well.

"I have problems with boundaries and saying no," she says. "I feel guilty when I say no, like there's something wrong with me."

Approximately six weeks after he proposed, and one day after her eighteenth birthday, Jack and Mich.e.l.le were married by a justice of the peace.

"He was real attentive at first. I was like on a pedestal. I was his showpiece. He picked out and bought my clothes. He had me change my hair to blond, and grow it out. He had me start wearing makeup. He put me in mostly high heels and boots."

Jack, who was large, over six feet, demanded total power over her.

"He controlled everything," she says, "everything that came out of my mouth, every thought I had.

"He said I was like a new book, and he was going to write all the pages."

Jack and Mich.e.l.le spent a trouble-free first three months of marriage in the old farmhouse he was renting. Then one day she decided to clean and straighten Jack's "War Room."

"It was his personal shrine to two tours of duty in Vietnam," she says. "The walls were covered with certificates, maps, guns, ammunition belts, knives, and photographs of dead Vietnamese soldiers."

As Mich.e.l.le was cleaning, she came upon a ratty old reddish pink suitcase in a closet. She opened it to find it stuffed with sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic p.o.r.nography, most of it depicting women being s.e.xually brutalized. She found Ace bandage rolls and scalpels in the worn suitcase, too. There also were broken arrows. She'd soon learn their use.

Her new husband walked into the room at just that moment-it might not have been a coincidence-and exploded in a rage. Jack roared that Mich.e.l.le had violated his privacy. He demanded an immediate divorce.

Mich.e.l.le pleaded that she'd made an innocent mistake, and begged Jack for another chance.

Suddenly he seemed to reconsider, and presented to Mich.e.l.le what she took to be a nonnegotiable demand. She could redeem herself by helping him act out certain fantasies suggested by the materials Mich.e.l.le had discovered. Or he'd find another woman who would.

Mich.e.l.le agreed to cooperate.

"I was told that what I'd discovered was practiced by all married couples, only not talked about," she says. "He told me that all normal people do these things, and he wanted to teach me all about it. He said it was a need of his that must be fulfilled every once in a while so that he could control his temper.

"I wasn't into it, and I didn't understand it, and I couldn't imagine being turned on by what appeared to be hurting one another. I felt there was something wrong with me, however. I didn't want to fail him as his wife.

"He a.s.sured me it was only a game, and that no one really gets hurt."

Jack explained what he required in detail. He called his fantasy "the Games," and said they unfolded in five episodes: (1) Capture, (2) Struggle, (3) Torture, (4) the Final Kill, and (5) Postmortem Rape.

The moment he began describing what he wished for her to do, Mich.e.l.le had the feeling that Jack had done this many times in the past-that "the Games" were really a reenactment.

"I always felt deep in my heart that he'd done this before, that he'd killed women," she says. "I felt I was rehearsing for my own death."

In part one, "Capture," Mich.e.l.le was to costume herself in loose-fitting garments, such as an old dress, that would be easy for Jack to tear from her body. She was then to a.s.sume some sort of preoccupied pose, such as combing her hair, or dancing in a room by herself.

As she did so, Jack would creep up from behind-always from behind-and violently grab Mich.e.l.le, one hand over her mouth, the other around her neck, and pull her face to one side.

Then came "Struggle."

Mich.e.l.le was to respond in terror, communicating that fright with her eyes as she struggled with him, before falling into unconsciousness. Sometimes she was told to add verisimilitude to "Struggle" by going outside and smudging her face and arms with dirt.

They rehea.r.s.ed the scene again and again, often working on it all day. Sometimes Jack would have Mich.e.l.le smoke a joint to relax. Sometimes they'd watch slasher movies together. Mich.e.l.le was instructed to carefully study the female victims for tips on how she was to behave.

Sometimes "the Games" were played under strobe lights to the accompaniment of sixties-era hard rock. Mich.e.l.le remembers hearing Iron b.u.t.terfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" on the stereo again and again and again.

In the midst of "Struggle," Jack tested Mich.e.l.le for limpness, lifting and dropping her arms and legs and rolling her from side to side. The more lifeless she seemed, the better. Next, she was to regain consciousness and beg for mercy. Often, Jack would demand f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o at this stage. After she again begged for her life-"Please, don't kill me, master! I'll do anything!" according to the script she memorized-Jack would throttle her. Mich.e.l.le was to feign asphyxiation, and fall unconscious again.

Then "Torture" began. Jack inserted the broken arrows so it would appear they'd been brutally jammed into her a.n.u.s. Then he'd carefully photograph her.

On one occasion, he purchased a plastic child's sword and modified the toy using a coat hanger so that it would appear Mich.e.l.le had been run through with an actual weapon. This Jack photographed as well.

Other times he placed his hunting knife between her legs and ordered Mich.e.l.le to grasp and hold its blade with her b.u.t.tock muscles.

After removing it, slowly, Jack ran the sharp blade over Mich.e.l.le's body, urging her to quiver and jerk as he did so, sometimes heightening the experience for him by smearing her and the weapon with theatrical blood.

Mich.e.l.le recalls that this routine occasionally was varied with threats to "roast me like a pig." Jack would insert a cold metal rod into her so that she resembled an animal to be roasted on a spit, and he'd talk of how "tender and juicy" she was.

At last came "the Final Kill" and "Postmortem Rape," in which Jack would pretend either to stab or to strangle Mich.e.l.le to death, usually as she hung nude from pullies over their bed, or from a large metal hook he'd installed in the living-room ceiling. This scene also was rehea.r.s.ed repeatedly.

Mich.e.l.le once more was to beg him for her life, wide-eyed with terror. Then she was to expire at his hands, realistically "gurgling, begging, jerking, and quivering," she says.

Although Jack at first said "the Games" would be an infrequent thing, in time they became nearly constant.

The only interruption occurred when Mich.e.l.le conceived. Although Jack was unhappy about the pregnancy, for the period of time Mich.e.l.le carried Sarah* he was marginally less abusive. "He pushed me around, but he wasn't as physical, as rough," Mich.e.l.le recalls.

At about this time, according to Mich.e.l.le, Jack quit his job, or was fired-he never made it clear to Mich.e.l.le-and turned to dealing drugs. Once in a while, he allowed her to take jobs, but only temporarily.

He introduced her to group s.e.x with other women.

"We'd find them in bars, truck stops, once in a restaurant," she says. Most of their recruits were young girls, to whom he'd introduce himself as Bill.

Some were brought home. Others were taken to motels. Jack's ultimate fantasy, he told Mich.e.l.le, was to kill one of the girls. Only one of them.

"He used to try to talk me into picking up a female hitch-hiker and having our way with her. He explained that when we were done, we would dispose of her body along the roadway. I always refused."

Jack also mentioned from time to time his interest in providing Mich.e.l.le with a s.e.x slave, whose tasks would include serving as her surrogate during "the Games."