Chapter Twelve:Kathy Kohm:A Naive Country

 

Chapter 12

    Kids who grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s will typically remember all the good things.  That is only natural. Everyone of every age wants to remember only the good parts of the past. We all want to treasure the comforting and wonderful things in our childhoods.  I also remember my own childhood as largely idyllic.  We lived on a farm and had lots of room to roam about and play. I remember playing in the creek in the warm months and playing in the snow in the cold months. I remember pleasant family holiday gatherings. I try not to remember how my Dad beat us and how none of us could bring our Mom out of her bouts of crippling depression when those dark periods would take her.  Mom would have her bright periods too.  She finished a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and began working in the early 1980’s and that gave her a great amount of satisfaction.  I like to think about her during those happy times rather than the low times.

    People are complex.  We were all afraid of our Dad but we also loved him.  When things were good they were very good. Dad would take us swimming in the old coal mine pits that were now filled with water and stocked with fish. We would pretend it was a tropical beach. Sometimes we would get to go to the roller rink in Evansville or the one at the Vanderburgh County fairgrounds and skate. There were snow days and school breaks, sleepovers and holidays. We loved school.  As isolated farm kids, school gave us an opportunity to make friends and socialize.  We loved our teachers. School was a calm and predictable place. We knew nothing of crime and the larger world. 

   In the late 70’s and early 80’s we weren’t seeing the missing kids on the news every night yet. If we worried about anything it was probably nuclear war with the U.S.S.R.  That was the biggest doom and gloom story on the news at night. But, the stories about missing and murdered kids were coming.  We just didn’t know it yet.

   Three girl scouts at a camp were murdered in Oklahoma in 1977.  Their tent was the furthest away from all the others. Some man saw how vulnerable they were so far away from the rest of the group and he struck in the middle of the night. Their bodies were discovered the next day.

   Our local girl scout camp in Boonville, Indiana was immediately changed from an overnight camp to a day camp.  Instead of different weeks and smaller groups; all the girl scouts would be there from many communities with lots of adult supervision and activities throughout the day for only one week.  I remember being disappointed because I really wanted to camp in a tent.  Of course, I had no idea what had happened in Oklahoma. That tragedy was seen as an outlier.  But our local scouting officials felt it was better to be safe than sorry. 

    Missing kids would be on the nation’s mind in a big way again the summer of 1979.  Etan Patz was a 6 year old who had disappeared on his way to school in New York City.  That Summer and Fall his story was in every paper in the country and on the national evening news. Local New York authorities even contacted Interpol in case Etan had been taken out of the country.  Every kid knew his name and his picture. It would be 45 years before we would all find out that he was buried in a basement in his own neighborhood the whole time. He was the victim of another male predator. As a kid myself then, I was sad and prayed and worried for him.  But, I thought that this was a big city crime.  It could not possibly happen around my town. Crimes like that happened in far away places.   

   One would think that the public and the police would be better prepared and less naive.  Hindsight is 20/20.  We just weren’t.  None of us were.  People often disparage the police of the 1980’s but we all just had no idea what these predators were like. The crime was happening in real time and the criminology books had not been written.  There was no 24 hour news cycle constantly updating us all. Even the FBI was still developing ways to study these type of crimes. It’s easy to know the scope of it all now. We had no idea that there were so many.  I think most policemen thought these guys were statistical outliers. And they were outliers.  Statistically, most people were safe. It is easy to look back and see the patterns of crime and violence now.  But at the time no one had the benefit of this knowledge.

   I remember watching the news coverage of Ted Bundy’s trials in 1979. It seemed very difficult to believe that he could be guilty.  He was on trial for murdering 2 women and injuring 3 others in a vicious attack in a Florida sorority house. The crime was horrific, shocking and disgusting.  But this guy seemed so clean cut, well spoken and nice. He smiled and was charming. He was almost a lawyer after all. How could he be the murderer? He was found guilty after being identified by another woman who saw him leaving the house.  His distinctive bite marks on the victims also matched his dental records. Bite marks.  Let that sink in. 

   In January of 1980, Ted Bundy would stand trial once again.  This time for the murder of his last victim, 12 year old Kimberly Leach. He would again be found guilty.  Decades later we have more information, more details about Bundy’s behavior and his crimes.  But that full picture of what was going on just was not there in 1980. 

   In February of 1980, John Wayne Gacy would go on trial for murdering 33 young men and boys. His crimes had been in the news since his arrest in late December of 1978.  I remember the news footage of police investigators digging up the crawl space and bringing body bags out of his split level ranch style suburban Chicago home.  I look back and wonder now how any of us could watch the news and still think that this could never happen to us. 

    I think we all like to believe that we are different, smarter, better and somehow magically protected.  But bad people are out there. Bad things happen.  

   On May 18th, 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted suddenly and violently.  The eruption sent half the mountain sliding down and spewing ash high into the atmosphere. Seismic activity had been building in the weeks before the eruption and scientists had placed cameras hoping to capture anything on film. In those weeks before the pyroclastic eruption, a noticeable bulge had appeared on the side of the mountain.  Locals living nearby were ordered to evacuate and most people did. Even with the advanced warning, 57 people sadly lost their lives in the disaster. The ash cloud drifted eastward across the entire country and ash fell like snow flurries in Indiana a few days later.  It seemed like an other-worldly event. Many people swept up some of the ash to save as a souvenir of the event.  In my anxious kid mind it just solidified my belief that anything could happen.    

   August 17th, 1980, “The Stranger Beside Me” was published.  Author Ann Rule had known Ted Bundy and considered him a friend.  She wrote the book as she began to understand that there was another side to Ted.  The things he was accused of were indeed things he had actually done.  At first she wanted to believe that they had the wrong guy.  But, as time wore on, she realized that she could know a person, work and socialize with them and still never really know them. 

    Jimmy Carter was the President and 1980 was an Olympic Year. The 1980 Winter Olympics had been held in Lake Placid, New York that February. The United States Men’s Hockey team would pull off the “Miracle on Ice” and defeat the U.S.S.R.  Siblings Beth and Eric Heiden would both medal in speed skating in Lake Placid. Beth would win a bronze for the U.S. and Eric would win 5 gold medals. Americans were extremely excited about the Olympics after that Winter.  But the coming Summer the games were to be held in Moscow. The United States made the decision in March to boycott the Moscow Games. The U.S.S.R. had invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and President Carter felt that holding the games in Moscow was a tacit approval of that aggression. Americans were disappointed by the decision. The Olympics were always an exciting spectacle and in those days they only came once every four years.  For many athletes this would be a huge lost opportunity to compete.  The Cold War was always looming in those days. The worry of nuclear annihilation was always under the surface.  We busied ourselves with diversions and tried not to think about it.

   “Dallas” was the big hit television show that year.  All Summer long people waited for the next season wondering “Who Shot J.R.?”  Kathy Kohm’s family would attend a Dallas watch party that November 1980.  In the photo all the kids are dressed in their best cowboy attire and they finally got the answer to that very successful ad campaign.  Kathy and her friends look so happy and content in the photo. 

   Only a month later in New York City, John Lennon would be shot and killed outside his apartment building.  He had very recently donated money to buy bullet proof vests for the NYC police.  The entire world was stunned and saddened by his death.  It was so senseless.  The Beatles had been the soundtrack for our lives.  John had espoused peace and non-violence. He was a symbol of the anti-war movement.  People who lived through the JFK assassination can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard.  It was the same with Lennon’s death.  Christmas had a dark cloud over it that year.  We hoped the New Year would be better.

   In the Spring of 1981 people were still very much mourning Lennon’s death.  The songs on the radio had a somber theme.  But there was a glimmer of hope.  People had to move on.  Lennon had been working on an album at the time of his death and many of his songs were on the radio that Spring.  

    Early in 1981 the news of the Atlanta child murders began unfolding.  Each day and week brought forth more gruesome news. But, in my small town, nothing changed. Atlanta was a world away.

    On March 30th, 1981 President Reagan was shot on the street as he approached his limousine.  He suffered a broken rib, punctured lung and internal bleeding and was near death when he arrived at the hospital. Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and D.C. Police Officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded but survived.  Brady would suffer brain damage and permanent disability.  Brady would later lobby for gun control laws and in the 1990’s a 5 day waiting period law would be passed bearing his name. The N.R.A. would later lobby to overturn it. But Reagan was still recovering in early April and getting over a fever but improving as an April 5th article reported.

  I wish I could say I remember exactly where I was when I heard about Kathy.  I just can’t remember.  I was probably in our dark wood paneled living room with its wood flooring and area rugs from Sears.  We had heavy gold colored curtains and decorations on the wall acquired from home parties from a company called Home Interiors. Every house of my friends had the same decorations on the walls.  We were probably watching the news on our big wood encased television console.  It would have been the local t.v. news out of Evansville.  Outside there would have been tiny green buds on the trees and daffodils popping up.  Easter was coming in 14 days.  I can’t say I remember the details of hearing about Kathy but I do know that once I heard about it I was thinking about it a lot.  I remember praying for her to find her way back home.  I imagined that she had gotten lost.  We had a farm of 35 acres and part of it was wooded.  It was not enough to get lost in but I think I imagined that she must just be lost.  

    We had a little dog named Pokey that had disappeared for a few days and came home miraculously missing a leg. She had gotten caught in a trap and had to chew her own leg off.  But she did come home.  She was starved and sick and injured but she did come home.  Maybe this would be like that. 

    Kathy’s disappearance affected the kids I knew at school. We all worried about her. We had seen her picture on t.v.  She looked like us.  She might have lived in a more affluent area but she was one of us.  She lived just a few small towns over.  It was a very short drive from Lynnville to Santa Claus. We had all been to the theme park there, Santa Claus Land. Our school district reached almost but not quite to Dale, the town where she went to elementary school. As the weeks went by it just seemed impossible that she was not yet home.  What could have happened?  Where could she be?

    We began to worry as the weeks went by about ourselves. All kids are naturally selfish. Could this type of thing happen to us?  Was there someone out there taking kids?  It made us more guarded and more wary.  

    Our teachers took time to warn us to watch out for strangers.  In our small town it was rare to see someone that you did not know.  As an adult, decades later, I would notice that I did not do introductions very well in social situations and I realized that this was probably because the people around me almost never needed to do that as a kid. Everyone already knew everyone else.  I had no practice.

    As adults my generation would be chided for being “helicopter parents”.  Our kids did not play outside alone.  Our kids did not walk to school alone.  Our kids did not have paper routes. People still make a bit of fun of how protective we were but can you blame us?  In the mid 80’s we would try to memorize the faces of missing kids on our milk cartons in case we might see that kid somewhere.  We imagined ourselves recognizing a new kid at school and bravely reporting it.  We imagined our joy as we saw this kid reunited with their family. We were so naive thinking that the people who kidnapped kids might enroll them in a new school and raise them lovingly themselves.  But there at the breakfast table; we had hope looking at those faces. 

    When May came and there was still no sign of Kathy we began to lose some hope.  I remember feeling guilty about moving on, having fun.  But I was also a kid and had the selfish kid ability to put that out of my mind.  School kept us busy and occupied.  We had our usual field trip in the Spring. We rode the bus, did our homework, and looked forward to Summer Break.  We also hoped against hope and waited for news of Kathy.  

 Before we knew it, Summer was here.  School was out.  I think about the person who had to clean out Kathy’s desk and her locker and take those things to Kathy’s parents. I think about her classmates and the kids she rode the bus with.  How could a school year be over and she still was not back?  Kathy’s parents must have been devastated.  How do you muster any hope as those agonizing weeks go by.