To the Bridge Read online

  What had replaced it is what troubled him. When Hadley started practicing law, all aggravated murders in the state of Oregon carried a life sentence, but there was no minimum sentence. Parole boards, in his experience, usually paroled murderers—if they stayed out of trouble in prison—after seven to ten years. Hadley believed in giving people a second chance. The public evidently disagreed. People thought judges and sentences were too liberal, and when given an opportunity to get tougher on crime, they took it. Measure 11 passed in 1994 and required a minimum twenty-five-year sentence for murder, with no possibility of parole prior to the full sentence being served. Hadley hated this law and knew the liberal line to be fantasy. He’d spent more than forty years looking for these liberal judges and said he had found “darn few.” He believed murderers could change for the better, could become good citizens. The belief was not academic. Hadley told me several times about a client whom he’d helped to have acquitted. The man went on to get a college degree, to have a family; he and Hadley went fishing together. There would be no fishing for Amanda, or at least not until she was a senior citizen. So, yes, he had saved her life. She would not spend the next decade or two shunted through the death row legal maze, but a thirty-five-year sentence also obviated hope and canceled the future. When Hadley said Amanda’s sentence was not a good outcome for anyone, he was likely including himself.

  Jen Johnson was in the middle of a craft project with her young daughters, not paying attention to the TV in the background, when she heard the newscaster say, “Amanda Jo Stott-Smith.” Then he said it again. The name sounded familiar. Johnson looked up and saw the mug shot.

  “That’s Mandy Stott!” she said.

  Johnson knew Amanda in college. They’d been part of the same casual group of friends and had occasionally stayed in touch over the years. The last time Johnson saw Amanda, she had been pregnant with Eldon.

  The day after Amanda was sentenced, Johnson found some old photos from George Fox University. She, Amanda, and some other friends were standing on a wide green lawn. There wasn’t a murderer in any of those pictures, she thought. She disagreed with what the judge had said, that what Amanda had done was truly incomprehensible. A former social worker, Johnson stayed up late at her computer reading the DHS reports. The Smith family’s troubles were like dozens of cases she had worked on, call after call logged about Jason and Amanda, and likely more instances where calls were not made. Very little had been done. Indeed, Johnson knew, there was very little the department could do. Whether people closer to the situation sensed the family sliding toward disaster, who could say? From what she read, Jason and Amanda sounded like a toxic pair.

  Johnson looked again at the photos. Her life and Amanda’s, at one point, had essentially been the same, and now they could hardly be more different. How does that happen?

  PART TWO

  Mug shot of Amanda Stott taken in July 2000, following a domestic dispute with then-boyfriend, Jason Smith

  19

  Hadley was waiting, out of a hard rain, in the entryway of Elmer’s Restaurant.

  “Maybe we ought to buy the joint,” he said.

  Our first breakfast here, in June 2009, had been nearly a year ago to the day. This was our second, but there had been drinks and coffee and lunches elsewhere, including a 1960s-era Chinese restaurant whose signature feature had been gloom. That lunch happened in January 2010, three months before Amanda’s sentencing, when Hadley could give me nothing but his time. It had been an awkward lunch.

  Elmer’s today was cheerful. Warm air venting from the kitchen made the place smell like hash browns, and retirement-age customers read newspapers and chatted at a pitch that made the place sound like a bird colony. Hadley had me angle my chair toward him, saying his hearing aids were picking up too much background noise.

  It had been five weeks since Amanda was given a life sentence, five weeks during which I’d learned that a fear of influencing the outcome, maybe, had kept some people from speaking until the proceedings were over. With Amanda’s fate set, I started to receive calls, texts, and emails. People sometimes contacted me late at night. I had become accustomed to standing in my home office in my nightgown and listening as disembodied voices told stories. I wanted to run some of these stories past Hadley.

  I had, for instance, been told about an incident that might or might not be explained by grief. The person telling the story did not want to be identified. The person said Jason had taken leave from his job at Ricoh after Eldon was murdered. After several months, Jason returned to work, commuting from the rural home outside of Eugene he now shared with Trinity and his new wife, Keli Townsend. The place had once belonged to Keli’s grandparents, and the family lived there rent-free. In May 2010, Jason’s family learned that he had not, in fact, gone back to work at Ricoh—“not one day,” the person said—and that the joke around the office had become, “Is Jason coming in today?” Where he had gone each weekday for several months was unknown. The deception was revealed at a Mother’s Day party attended by both the Smith and Townsend families. After Jason’s mother said it was not the time to discuss Jason’s employment or lack thereof, the matter was dropped.

  Hadley no doubt knew more than I did about what unpredictable behaviors can follow in the wake of murder. I knew some of the escapes people sought from unbearable pain: walking great distances, folding one thousand paper cranes, sleeping. But the fake commuting was something I had only ever read about, in Emmanuel Carrère’s The Adversary, the true story of a man who pretended for years to commute to a prestigious job and who took over the financial investments for his family. About to be exposed for never having had a job and having spent the family’s money, he murdered his wife, children, and parents rather than face their contempt and disappointment. He preferred murdering to being exposed as a fraud.

  Hadley did not venture a guess about where Jason had gone. He did say he knew a great deal “about Jason’s history, as did the judge and DA,” and that if Amanda’s case had gone to trial, “it all would have come out, and his family likely knew this.”

  “Another reason they were willing to settle. They hated Amanda,” he added, though in his opinion “it was Jason who ruined Amanda’s life.”

  Jason’s mother had commended her son at sentencing for “taking the high road,” for allowing a settlement to move forward rather than having Amanda stand trial. Looked at this way, the Smith family had spared Amanda the possibility of execution. Another way to look at it was that the family had been through enough and was not going to submit to the scrutiny a trial would bring.

  Hadley told me he thought Amanda would have a hard time at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, a minimum- and medium-security facility twenty miles south of Portland. There was a hierarchy in any women’s prison, where, he said, “they hate mothers who have killed their children, because they need someone to hate.”

  I asked if he knew that the Smiths had banned the Stotts from attending Eldon’s funeral. Hadley did know this. He agreed the threat that they could be arrested was a cruelty to the Stotts.

  We approached the subject of how Amanda found herself on the bridge, how she determined she would kill her children. I told Hadley my thinking had gone in many directions—she was desperate, she was fragile; she wanted life as she knew it to end.

  “There’s something, too,” he said, “to ‘You took my joy; now I will take yours.’”

  Hadley would not let me pay for breakfast. He suggested we keep talking in his car. We made a break for it through the rain and were half-soaked by the time we got in his Cadillac. He told me Amanda’s family had sent him “lovely notes” after she was sentenced. I told him I heard they had repeatedly checked Amanda into treatment in the months before she drove the children to the bridge. Hadley said this was true and that she’d been released with at least three different medications, including some “in a black-and-orange box, with the warning that said, ‘You might go out and kill someone on these, but otherwise, have fun!’” I
later looked up what these pills might be. Possibilities included Prozac and Paxil; neither listed aggression as a likely side effect. Hadley agreed the media had, for the most part, not looked past what they were told by the police, and that there had been a marked lack of digging into the case.

  “I don’t consider you part of the media, by the way,” he said.

  The downpour was making the front seat of the Cadillac feel like a cocoon. Hadley and I watched as a cyclist skidded out in the flooded gutter and slid into a car door.

  “When I hear them on the radio going, ‘I ride my bike even though it’s raining because it’s ride-your-bike-to-work day,’ I think, ‘Get in the fucking car,’” he said.

  I told him the greener-than-thou thing drove me batty, too, and I thought, we are sitting in his car because we do not want what we have been building for a year to break, not yet. He told me he would be driving five hours back to Baker City. I told him I would bring him some books on tape for the next drive. As I did, I looked at what my foot had been resting against on the floorboard. I picked up the box of shotgun shells.

  “Oh, yeah, this is new,” he said. He opened the console between us and took out a gun. He said that while it was a revolver, it used shotgun shells. He pointed to the barrel, to where El Juez was etched. He kept the gun between us. I could have held it if I wanted to, but I had never handled a gun, and the space was so enclosed I was afraid I might accidentally blow a hole in Hadley’s dashboard, or his knee.

  He put the gun away. It felt time to go.

  “I hope we see each other again soon,” I said.

  He said, “Sure, sure we will.”

  That night I told my husband about the gun. He looked it up online.

  “Maybe we’ll get one,” Din said. I read over his shoulder that el juez meant “the judge.”

  I emailed Hadley to say, thanks, as always, and that we might get the gun.

  He wrote back, “Maybe we’ll make a cowgirl out of you.”

  Seven days after Amanda was sentenced, the state of Oregon released its Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) Final Report on Eldon Smith. The CIRT was mandated any time there was a homicide of a youth in Oregon. The twelve-page report included ten occasions on which the Oregon Department of Human Services checked on abuse or neglect incidents involving Jason Smith and Amanda Stott-Smith, starting in June 2000 when Amanda told police Jason had restrained her and his arrest for assault IV, and ending in October 2008, with Gavin telling a Child Protective Services worker that “he was pretty sure the marks on his arms were caused by his friends and not his mother.” The report detailed each incident involving the children, including Amanda leaving them in a hot car when the family lived in Hawaii in 2006, as well as arriving so late to pick them up from swim lessons in Portland in August 2008 that police were at the pool when she returned. Amanda told police then she’d been “getting snacks for the children and was involved in an automobile accident which caused her to be late.”

  On August 30, 2010, the state released additional records, in response to a request by KGW-TV for “all DHS records” having to do with the incident and the aftermath. The records ran more than one hundred pages and included medical information about both children. Eldon’s cause of death was listed as “Asphyxiation By Drowning.” Other significant findings included “Blunt Head Force Trauma.” Because it was hypothesized that Amanda drugged the children before dropping them, blood and urine samples were taken. Results showed there were no controlled substances, alcohol, or common pharmaceuticals present.

  Trinity was admitted to Oregon Health & Science University Emergency Medicine at 2:30 a.m. on May 23, 2009. Upon arrival, she was “talking and somewhat hysterical.” She was hypothermic but quickly warmed “with bear hugger, warm blankets, gastric lavage.” She underwent surgery for a sternal fracture. On May 25, “Trinity was smiling and playing with dolls.” On May 25 or 26, Trinity asked Detective [Lori] Smith “where her mother and younger brother, Eldon, were.” The report does not note whether Trinity received an answer. On May 27, Trinity was released and sent home with Ibuprofen 100 mg/5 ml Oral Suspension for pain, and oxycodone 5 mg/5 ml Oral Solution for moderate pain as needed, a follow-up appointment in two weeks, and the instruction that it was “okay to play on playground as long as chest doesn’t hurt.”

  The report included a summarized “verbatim account” of an interview with Trinity on May 26, conducted by a social worker and observed by several detectives:

  During her videotaped interview, Trinity indicated that she had been in the hospital because she got hurt. When Trinity was asked how she got hurt, she said that she had been sleeping in her mother’s car and then she realized that she was in the water. Trinity said that she did not know how she ended up in the water and reported that earlier in the evening she and her mother and her brother, Eldon, had been trying to find a parking spot at the Rose Garden so they could watch the fireworks. Trinity said they were not able to find a parking spot and that later she fell asleep and that when she woke up she realized she was in the water. Trinity said that it was scary being in the water and that she was all alone. When asked where her mother was, she said she was in the car. When asked where Eldon was, Trinity said he was with her mother. Trinity said that when she was in the water it was really, really cold and she couldn’t get close to the sidewalk on either side of the river. Trinity said some people then came in a boat and took her to the hospital.

  Trinity said that she lives with her father and she had begun to visit with her mother earlier in the day. Trinity said that the first thing she did when she was visiting her mother was give her a hug. She said that [redacted] then came. Trinity said that she was at her mother’s house and she and Eldon played. Trinity said that she talked to her mother about how much they missed each other and her mother told Trinity that she really, really missed her a lot. Trinity indicated that her mother was smiling when she told her this. When asked what else they talked about, Trinity said she didn’t really know. Trinity said that they ate Cheesits [sic] and crackers and that they were probably in her mother’s house for about 10 minutes before they got in the car to drive to the fireworks. When asked what they talked about in the car, Trinity said they didn’t really talk because she and Eldon were kind of sleepy. Trinity states that her mother was on the phone talking with [redacted] and that she seemed happy. Trinity said that when they were driving around she saw some fireworks and the “usual” things you see at night such as a bunch of buildings and some stars. . . .

  Trinity clearly states that she had fallen asleep in the car and that when she woke up she realized she was in the water. She did not make any other statements about any unusual events during the evening that provide much insight into this tragic incident.

  A summary of interviews Detectives Bryan Steed and Michele Michaels conducted with Amanda was also part of the report. It was not redacted and read in full:

  During the interviews, Ms. Smith indicated that after picking the children up for visitation at approximately 8:00 p.m., she was going to take them downtown to see the Rose Festival fireworks and she ended up driving around unable to find a parking place. Ms. Smith also told the detectives that the children said after their father dropped them off [at the house] in Tualatin . . . he was going to a barbecue at a friend’s house but the mother wasn’t supposed to go to the barbecue. Ms. Smith acknowledged being upset after the children told her this. Ms. Smith told detectives that after driving around she eventually made her way to the Sellwood Bridge where she stopped midspan where the incident took place. Ms. Smith indicated that she was familiar with the Sellwood Bridge because the children used to take swimming lessons at Sellwood Pool. Ms. Smith said the reason she put the children in the water was to “end their suffering” in an apparent reference to the mother’s perception about an ongoing custody conflict with Mr. Smith impacting her children.

  This record was made public on August 30, 2010. KGW-TV aired a short piece mentioning as much on September 2. Th
e segment received no online comments. No other news outlet picked it up. “End their suffering” required effort, required that we expand what we took to be Amanda’s motivation. It did not grab the attention like “revenge,” a word that did not appear in Amanda’s interview. If withholding “end their suffering” from the public for 464 days might be seen as lying by omission, might have ramifications, might incite or codify hate, at least the killer was already in jail. What more did people need to know?

  I needed to know: What suffering?

  20

  May 23–25, 2009, Oregon Coast and Portland, Oregon

  Tiffany Gray and her husband, Shanon, were at the Oregon Coast with another couple. The kids were asleep; the adults were playing cards and having drinks when Tiffany heard Amanda’s name on the television news. She looked over. The newscaster said Amanda’s name again, but it made no sense because the mug shot was not of Amanda; Tiffany did not know who was in that picture. Then she did. She started saying, “Oh my god, oh my god,” and then she grabbed her phone and called April on repeat. Tiffany did not get through to her until the morning, when she told April, “You need to sit down. Something really, really, really, really awful has happened.” Tiffany told April what Amanda was accused of doing. April said, “Gavin, where’s Gavin?”

  Tiffany and Shanon loaded their daughters into the Land Rover and barreled back to Portland. Shanon was a former DA, now in private practice. Tiffany wanted him to get to Amanda before another attorney did, not for the job so much as support, someone who could maybe protect her, from whatever additional horrors were on the way.