Karen Michaels

Chapter One - The execution rolled across the walls of his bedroom

The first night was unbearable. He was in shock and panicking. Trying to sleep was a cruel joke. Every time he closed his eyes, the blinding flash and soul-piercing bang, followed by the odor of acrid smoke mixed with the sickening smell of gunpowder and flesh, haunted him. He longed for the respite of sleep to erase the pictures of the night. The living nightmare kept him awake when all he wanted was to drift into an endless sleep.

The execution rolled across the walls of his bedroom. The walls pressed in on him. He was trapped in an IMAX theater, a prisoner to his own horrendous deeds engulfing him in the wretched scenes playing in 3-D slow motion. Yet, his conscience would not let him wish it away or pretend it never happened. There was no escaping the reality of what they did.

The boy was in disbelief of the moment in his life. He couldn't reconcile who his parents raised him to be in their suburban town. His Christian family of do-gooders consisted of star athletes, successful students, active church members, future farmers, lawyers, and accountants. He was stuck between the image of how people saw him versus the mobster he wanted to be. The blank space between both worlds was where he executed the darkest of deeds.

He lay there, trapped in the prison of his mind. How would he survive basketball practice tomorrow, preparing for the run at the State Championship and act normal? How could he sleep with the bag of bloody clothes stashed under his bed? The clothes breathed with the metallic, bloody stench of recent life. He envisioned the rotting flesh of his victim. He imagined the blood rustling in the plastic bag as it oozed. He needed to get under his bed to check it but was too terrified of the remains of a life he might find in the darkness. He lay there in silence and watched those movie images roll across his walls.

The victim's blood dripped from the ceiling at one point as he watched himself and his partner struggle loading the body. Desperate, he prayed to a God he pretended did not exist. Instead, God answered with every detail of the night flickering in his mind's eye--bang, flash, thud, smoke, fear, stench, ooze, wet chunks, silence.

Chapter Two - Nefarious doings came knocking

We close our eyes and can hear our childhood. We remember the conversations with our family unit, and we cannot forget the warm smells lingering from Momma’s kitchen. At times we can hear a crack forming in the foundation.

Seemingly plucked from the series Twin Peaks, our sleepy mill town, Franklin, Virginia, with a population of 8,000 people, was rife with odd-ball characters and a noticeable local dialect. A man shot his estranged wife and her lover in the parking lot behind Daddy’s drugstore when we were in elementary school. We watched him toss the murder weapon into a drain along the sidewalk as we walked with our Momma, who was on the way to make Daddy’s deposit at the bank. That was probably the first time we discussed murder as a family.

Our mother testified at the disgruntled husband’s trial. It was a terrifying experience for her and for us. Driven by fear, Momma asked if she could wear a disguise on the witness stand at the trial. We spent a week helping Momma pick the perfect, stylish floppy hat, scarf, and sunglasses in case they granted her wish. Unfortunately, Momma never got to wear her Hollywood style disguise, as her request was denied.

Thankfully, the man was convicted of his heinous crimes. He was locked away and we didn’t think of him again.

A short time later, a local business owner was assassinated in his jewelry store in the mid-morning hours. His name was Jack Smith. He was a friend, and we regularly frequented his family-owned jewelry store. That day, the devil himself, Willie Turner, walked in off the street carrying a shotgun in a pillowcase and wreaked havoc on Mr. Smith in the name of greed. He killed Mr. Smith in the store in front of customers and a local police officer. His killing started one more family conversation dealing with murder in our small community. Daddy could have been the target of such a senseless crime as he owned an independent drug store not far from Mr. Smith’s store. As curious teenagers, we would create reasons to go into the jewelry store after the murder. Spotting the blood stain on the carpet or the bullet rumored to still be lodged in the back wall was our mission.

In the early 1980s, murder hit closer to home. A tenth grade classmate of Karen’s killed a substitute mail carrier on an afternoon after school. Karen canceled plans to study for their Geometry exam with the boy before the end of school due to her priority of sun worshiping at the local country club. The boy kidnapped the young woman in her car with his hunting knife and savagely stabbed her. He was arrested the same night. Our parents broke the news to us the following morning. We got dressed, completed our morning routines and went to school. Karen took her exams, and we never mentioned it again. This was not a murder we discussed as a family. It was too close to home to imagine what could have been. We didn’t discuss it until many years later as adults.

By the 1990s, we both moved away from town to pursue our futures. During one of our routine Sunday night calls with Daddy in the summer of 1992, he broke the news of another unimaginable crime. A local high school boy went missing a couple of years before. The news of a person in our social circle committing his murder stunned us. We read the local newspapers Daddy sent us in the mail, dumbfounded a deed as heinous as the premeditated, intentional execution of a high school boy could take place and go unsolved for such a long time.

In 1997, we thumbed through a People magazine and stumbled upon an article featuring an 88-year-old woman from Franklin, who killed her 52-year-old live-in boyfriend!

Si was hard to forget. She drove a red sports car with Washington Redskins (now the Washington Commanders) flags flying from her side mirrors. She usually wore short dresses and go-go boots. She was a real character and as sweet as can be. Shockingly, Si used a baseball bat to kill her boyfriend. She was the oldest woman in Virginia to be convicted of murder at the time. She served her time on house arrest. Surprisingly, the New York Post covered Si’s story!

Murder was not the only crime on our family’s minds. One night, nefarious doings came knocking on our door— not our house door, but Daddy’s drug store. In the dark of night, thieves cut through three cinder blocks of the store’s back wall and crawled through the bookkeeping office. They made their way to the pharmacy area and ran off with various drugs, watches, and cigarettes.

Next, they attempted to steal the cash register. Picture a non-electric, steal-based cash register with round push pegged buttons. Pushing the buttons in the right combination rendered a sale. They tried to open it but couldn’t (all they needed to do was push the total button). They tried to pry open the steel drawer with scissors. The scissors were no match for a dinosaur cash register’s reinforced steal money drawer. They hoisted the monster and tried to carry it through the hole in the back wall. Unfortunately for them, the gap was big enough for a grown man to crawl through but not big enough for Big Ole Bessy, the cash register. She was found lying on her side in the bookkeeping office next to the hole. Afterwards, we finally graduated to an electric adding-machine style cash register. We will never forget the endless fingerprint powder left after the police investigation. Luckily, the robbers never got to the drawer with the locked narcotics or the highly prized Spiro Agnew commemorative watches we kept well into adulthood.

On the one hand, it seems like forever since those times, and on the other, it seems like it was yesterday. They say hindsight is 20/20. When we look in the rearview mirror, sometimes we see a trail of horror woven into the town responsible for many of our childhood memories.

Chapter Three - The clicking blinker mimicked the sound of the gun’s hammer

Driving home in a seemingly glass car, Mike exhibited the blood of his classmate inside his trunk for everyone to see. He didn’t count on there being so much blood. It surprised him how it oozed around the tarp.

He could not focus on driving. He obsessively envisioned the blood in his trunk. If he slammed on the brakes, would a tsunami of blood crash into his back seat? It seeped toward him like a slow river of sticky tar. Maybe Mike shouldn’t have offered his car for the transport. He volunteered the vehicle purely because of spite for his family. The car was a gift from his mother the first Christmas they celebrated after his father died. Mike’s rebellious heart interpreted the gift as a bribe. A bribe to compensate for his family keeping his dad’s terminal illness from him until the last minute, robbing him of precious time he could spend with his father. What better way to sully his car than to put a dead body in it? Of course, his family could never know, but Mike would carry around the dark secret, a weapon that would permanently wound them if they ever found out.

His mind was going sideways. He was running late. He kept driving his see-through car, parading the blood through the streets. Every curve released another stream of blood flow. Turning into his driveway, the car’s clicking blinker mimicked the click of the gun’s hammer pulled back and forth.

He needed to find a way to quiet his mind so he could park the car and stroll into his house as if nothing happened. Somehow, he did. He walked in the front door and climbed upstairs to change his clothes, like a normal evening. The silence of the house and his mother’s absence showcased his solitude.

He flipped on the light to his bedroom, and the reality of his actions popped on like a floodlight. He ran his hands along his pant leg, trying to brush off what felt like mud. It stuck to his fingers. It was not mud at all. The spongy gelatinous flecks of brain were now stuck on his fingers. The brain matter of his victim was splashed on his pants. He ran to the bathroom to wash his hands.

When he passed the bathroom mirror, he saw brain chunks in his hair. But as he clutched at his head, his fingers grasped only hair. Blood and what he now realized was brain matter covered his pants and shirt. As much as he hated his mom, he couldn’t throw his clothes in the laundry and force her to deal with his mess. He couldn’t look her in the eye and lie. He would remove the spatter himself.

It wouldn’t budge. The daunting task was taking too long. No matter how much he scrubbed, the stain got worse. As the water flowed from the spigot, it kept changing into a bloody waterfall. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. But every deep breath brought in the nauseating copper odor. The do-it-yourself laundry plan was taking way too long. He finally gave up. He was on a schedule, after all.

He stashed the clothes in a bag, threw it under his bed, and jumped into clean clothes. He then retraced his steps, back downstairs, through the front door. He climbed into his car that was now his blood carriage and headed back into the Friday night.

He didn’t want to drive through town and risk anyone catching onto his murderous deeds, but he needed to be seen.

Ironically, he really did not go out that much anymore. Still, tonight he needed to find a group of friends who would remember him partying with them.

He wanted to do nothing more than to drive to the police precinct and tell them what happened—no, tell them his part of the murder. What a conundrum!

The problem was, he couldn’t tell what happened without implicating anyone other than himself. Back to the original plan. Get seen by several people.

Luckily, a group of girls stumbled through the threshold of a favorite secret drinking spot. Noticing their intoxication, Mike pulled to the corner, parked the car and joined in with the giggling, drunk clan. They bought it, or they didn’t take note. Either way he appeared to be partying with friends.

Alibi established. No one would be the wiser.

Now he could get home and retreat to the haven of his bed. But soon, he would find the shelter he sought in the sleepy little town was his worst nightmare.

Chapter Four - Where in the hell is Franklin, VA?

Franklin, VA, is a small town in the Tidewater region of Virginia. If you drive two hours south, you arrive in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Virginia Beach is an hour or so to the east, and Williamsburg, Virginia is an hour north.

Franklin sits on the Blackwater River and has always been successful in the business of agriculture. The City of Franklin is adjacent to Southampton County. Southampton County is Virginia’s top county in the production of cotton and peanuts. Pig farming is a lucrative operation in the county as well.

In the late 1800s, brothers from the locally rooted Camp family bought a sawmill on the Blackwater River. It was a small mill, but the Camp siblings turned it into a booming multi-million-dollar business. In the mid-1950s, the Camps merged with a bag and paper company in New York, forming Union Camp, a huge pulp and paper company. If you ever drove through or near a paper mill city, it’s unlikely that you’ve forgotten the sulfuric smell of a mill. Anytime an outsider called our city stinky, we would tell them the offensive smell was, in fact, the smell of money.

The Franklin, VA, of our youth was a thriving paper mill city. If you came through on a particularly humid summer day, you might have seen white flakes falling from the sky. Chapter Four19 That was no snowstorm, my friend. It was life in a paper mill city. One perk of living in the mill pollution was the free car wash in one of the parking lots where mill employees parked. As employees got off work, they could drive through the car wash and rinse the pollution from their cars. Sometimes, we would sneak into the lot and run our vehicles through the car wash. The car wash was not covered and offered no brushes, soap, or fun lights. It consisted of a bunch of metal pipes spraying water on your car as you rolled through. Even without the pomp and circumstance, we loved driving through under the cloak of night as if we stole a luxury car spa.

The Camp family pumped the fruits of their labor back into Franklin and paid their workers well. Although the paper mill has since been sold and considerably downsized, the Camp family name and generosity remain.

Paul D. Camp Community College was founded in 1970. The school sits on property the daughters of Paul D. Camp donated to the city. The campus opened to students in 1971. The community college still offers students degree programs, advanced skills, and trade pathways.

We both took ballet classes at the community college as youngsters. An instructor from a ballet school in Norfolk, VA, came a few times a week to teach students how to dance ballet and tap. We hated taking those classes, but Momma wanted us to have the experience and poise.

Momma enrolled us in a modeling class as teenagers. The instructor taught us how to pose for pictures, walk a runway, and choose what outfits to wear for a photo shoot. In addition, a professional came into the class for a session on makeup application for modeling events. We got our own photo session, resulting in slides we could turn into pictures. We chuckle when we think of the experience now, but it was a class we would have never gotten to experience if not for the generosity of the Camp family.

The YMCA in Franklin also came from the donations of the Camp family. Aptly named the James L. Camp, Jr. YMCA. We hold great memories of Halloween festivals, swimming lessons, and gymnastics at the YMCA. We referred to it simply as “The Y.”

One memory we sisters share is our induction into the swimming pool as youngsters. We shared the same swim instructor and experienced a deathly fear of the diving board. To pass the polliwog class, students jumped from the diving board into the pool’s deep end and swam to the ladder on the side. Now, for one to advance to a tadpole, a polliwog leapt independently off the scarily sky-high board and swam to the ladder. You could not pass the class without accomplishing the goal of flying high into the water. We girls are not failures. We are happy to report with much sputtering, crying, and shrieking, we successfully morphed into tadpoles. However, we both refused to jump into the pool from the board. Our instructor walked with us on the diving board and nudged us to jump. Each of us, on separate occasions, managed to pull the instructor into the pool as he tried to push us to jump. We feel confident he was grateful our family moved on to lessons at the country club.