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Thoughts From a Broken Heart

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libby's daddy & lindsay's hubby

Bill Wagoner


Last Updated: 4/8/2009

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21 Dec 07 Friday 

Current mood:  tired
so
 
its sunday night, and we go to bed with freezing rain falling and collecting on trees very rapidly. we didn't sleep well that night, and then the power went out at about 6am monday. we got up around nine and showered in the diminishing warmth of our powerless house (thankfully we had hot water and a gas stove). i went to work at about 11am, but lindsay stayed home from work, as her boss had lost power at his house where she works. unbenounced to me, at about noon my wife and my ex-wife took off on a road trip in search of a heater for my ex and the girls, and a surprise for lindsay and me (only a surprise to me).
 
as for me, i went to work on what turned out to be the busiest day i have ever been a part of. as i drove in to work i literally watched limb after limb fall from trees and generally mess things up alot. all day i was busy delivering hot pizza to people who had lost power and were hungry. on my second delivery of the day i had a bit of excitement of my own. i had just made a delivery to a house and was walking back to my van when a branch crashed to the ground about ten feet from me. as i was driving away from the house a huge limb (about half a tree) fell and clipped the very back end of the van, leaving a small dent at the very back. had i not moved the eight feet or so i had moved away, the limb would have smashed my van in half and probably killed me. i could tell it would be an interesting day :)
 
i made deliveries like crazy til about 5pm or so. it was monday and we had our monday carry-out special and with the weather and that for some reason (the fact that we were one of only three stores open in the whole city) we got totally fucking slammed that night. people came from all over the city to get pizza on what turned out to be a 1500+ order night that they had to shut down at 8pm to be able to get everything cooked and out by 11pm. i have never seen that many orders in one store ever. there were very few delivery orders for what turned out to be many drivers there that night. many boxes got folded and many dishes washed, but mostly the drivers stood around in the back and talked. the cooks and managers were doing all the cooking, cutting, boxing, and getting orders to the fifty or so we had in line all night long.
 
so, i cut out at about 830pm and went home to collapse and rest. i came home to darkness lit by a few candles. i discovered my surprise by knocking down a barrier set up by the front door when i came in. i cussed and grumbled a bit but then i saw the new addition to our family. i really couldn't see her very well, and was more concerned about what she cost. lindsay had bought a brand new 2 week old chinese charpei puppygirl, and i was pissed. so i went back to the bedroom to change into warm clothes and calm down a bit. by the time i got changed the cold was really seeping thru the walls, and i quickly got over my grumpiness when i met little miss hannah. she is absolutely adorable, and my wife's christmas present. i am off the hook :)
 
that's about all the good news i have about things, as while i was at work a big limb fell in the back yard and knocked down our power and cable wires, and damaging our electric meter box, so not only was the power out, it was out til i could get an electrician out to put it all back together. so we spent the night bundled up in the living room listening to the radio and to the sound of limbs breaking and falling all over the dead quiet neighborhood. it was quite eerie sitting in the semi-dark, breathing the cold air, having colds and feeling quite crappy. so we slept in our bed, piled high with blankets and really slept quite well aside from the crack and crash outside all night.
 
we woke up tuesday morning and it was freezing, of course. we took our hot showers and quickly dried off and dressed. i went to work at 11am again, and lindsay again stayed home. she made some calls, but otherwise spent the day playing with elizabeth's gameboy, listening to the radio for storm updates and such. work was a real pain in the ass. the computers were down so we had hand written tickets and orders called in from the call center to cell phones. it was a mess and other than the rain and temps that eeked just above freezing started the trees a melting, so the sounds of cracking and falling were fewer and further in between. i left work at about 5pm, went to the store and bought a crapload of food in cans and boxes, then went home and spent the quiet night alone with lindsay, getting to sleep around midnight. my boss called at around ten to let me know the store had no power and would not open the next day.
 
so on wednesday morning, lindsay and i went in search of needed supplies to get us through what was quickly looking like a long term power outage. we drove south first, stopping to find generators, heaters, and other such things all bought out. we ended up about an hour south of tulsa, at a wal mart, walking in just in time to buy a big 5700 watt generator right off the truck. we barely managed to get the thing into lindsay's car, but did, and took it home. after we got home and unloaded, i went in search of gas cans and gas. i ended up driving around for about an hour before i ended up at the first store we had stopped at that morning and they had the cans. i took off and headed back towards home, knowing i had to get the gas on the way. i decided to stop at the store closest to my house, but they ran out of gas just before i got there. luckily i was able to fill up the cans and the van across the street at the shell station, and made it home to set up the generator. i thought i could set it up in the garage with the big door propped open about a foot and the back door propped open, but the garage filled up with very smelly smoke, and we decided to tough it out in the cold for one more night and tackle the problem in the morning.
 
i woke up wednesday feeling icky, and the traveling around and hauling the gasoline and whatnot made me really sick. i woke up thursday feeling like crap, and called my boss to let her know, i got her voicemail and left a message. lindsay's boss called her to tell her he had power and some work for her to get done so she went to work and i stayed home and slept most of the day. i woke up and got some things done around the house to get ready for the generator being moved out back under the eaves. lindsay called me at about 230 to ask my help with her boss's computer, so i went there with laptop in tow and set them up and used the network to update the checkbook and a few other things. when lindsay was done we went to wal mart to get an electric heater and some other supplies, then home to set up house.
 
we powered up the generator and hooked up the cords and turned on the heater, a small tv and dvd player, and a few lights. all the frozen and fresh food we had was already in the garbage, so we had no need to power up the refrigerator and no way to power up the furnace. we spent the evening and the night watching movies, huddled in front of the heater with the dogs, just passing the time. it was a really nice night, actually. temps were above freezing so all the ice was gone, and the recovery work was underway, but everything was freaky quiet outside. we slept with the heater in the bedroom and actually had to take a blanket off the bed :)
 
we both worked on friday, and came home to our little livingroom space, blankets stapled up over doorways to keep the space warmer. we watched some local tv, remembering why i watch re-runs rather than prime time tv. we watched movies all weekend, it snowed on saturday a bit, and sunday i watched football all day. our little adventure was becoming sort of routine, tolerable but not very much so.we had enough power to wait out the time it would take to get it back on. we could run the generator for about ten hours on five gallons of gasoline, and i had two five gallon gas cans. i went to the gas station every night and filled the cans, and used the generator all day saturday and sunday. the electrician came out on monday and replaced our meter box and pole, then hooked up our power wire. we had to wait til tuesday afternoon while we were both at work before the power came back on, but it did come back on, yay! the cable people finally came out today, thursday and hooked our cable back up, and so i thought i would write it down.
 
so here we are, sitting in our livingroom watching tv, we like re-runs. the storm took only about twenty four hours to knock most of our whole state out for a week or more, but okies are tough, we bounce back. alot of oklahoma, especially in tulsa, looks like a war zone, trees down everywhere, it will be a long time before things look right again. i guess we'll just have to get used to it.
 
oh, merry christmas and all that crap.
 
g'nite.
3:36 AM 
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03 Dec 07 Monday 

Current mood:  sad
so

its been over a year since i have written anything, so maybe its about time for me to do so now.

last night (2 dec) lindsay and i had to take our beloved pug, raven, to the emergency vet. she was drooling heavily and was having difficulty breathing. after tests and x-rays the vet told us that she was suffering from a thing called pug dog encephalitis, a genetic disease only pugs have, that is inevitably fatal. lindsay and i made the painful decision to have her put to sleep, rather than take her home to die slowly. we got raven shortly after elizabeth was murdered, and in twenty short months she became a bright light in our lives. we miss her so much.

not much else is going on in our lives. lindsay and i do not do very much. while life has gone on for the rest of the world, lindsay and i have just been sorta stuck in neutral. rae's death brought libby's death right back to the front of our minds again, and it hurts more than i can describe. there are not enough tears to cover this ache, but there are still plenty.

the phones stopped ringing a long time ago. the inboxes are usually empty. there are a few that have remained close, but for the most part nobody bothers with us anymore. i really should not complain, as i have not made many efforts at reaching out to people. i guess i really don't have much to say. everything hurts. my thoughts and feelings are still stuck in the past. its like i am still in that alley looking down on my baby's body, feeling the life drained out of me. this is a terribly lonely place to be stuck, but here i am.

i won't be celebrating christmas this year. what money we had for christmas we spent on the vet, and what little heart i had for the holiday is also spent.

this really sucks.
5:57 PM 
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29 Nov 06 Wednesday 

Current mood:  sad
so

today marks eight months to the day and date that our baby girl was murdered. tuesdays are always hard for us to bear, but they are especially hard when tuesday falls on the 28th. there is not enough drugs and alcohol to numb this ache we are feeling, we miss libby sooooooooo much. we are fortunate to have alot of video of her and alot of pictures as well, but they dont even come close to being enough for us, we want her to come home.

my wife and i both work, which is a mixed blessing. neither of us can take much time alone at home, wallowing comes too easy when we are alone. working helps fill the time, but can be a hard place to really feel what we need to feel at the moment. the folkes we work with have been great tho, and that makes passing the time working just a tiny bit more pleasant.

we have been having absolutely gorgeous weather this fall but thats gettin ready to change, thursday it is supposed to snow. libby loved the snow; snow angels, snowmen, and snowball fights were always big fun for her. the winter weather aught to make work interesting, i deliver for a living.

my wife and i are both amazed that it has already been eight months since libby's murder. we both wonder how we have been able to make it this far. life seems to have no purpose for us, no real direction anymore. still, each morning we wake up and start the day, and every night we end the day. they come and go one at a time, just like always, but when every second hurts the day seems to drag along oh so slowly.

the silence in our home is deafening. we turn the tv on first thing, just to fill the emptyness of the silence, and keep it on all the time when we are home. i find that i am unable to listen to music anymore. i still listen to talk radio at work, but music aint for me just yet. right now we are watching "dirty jobs" getting ready to turn it to "nip tuck" in a few minutes. the tv schedule and whats on where is a big part of our lives for now, and we have found out that most of television is crap. (big surprise, huh?)

we still have not quite realized deep down that the legal part of our case is finished. when a crime like this occurs it is usually over a year before the trial even starts. originally we were bracing ourselves for the long and drawn out ordeal, but that ended when we offered the plea bargain. we traded a long trial and endless appeals for the death penalty for no trial and life plus thirty five years. sometimes i am grateful that we will not have to deal with a trial, then sometimes i wish i would have the chance to watch daniel arlen johnson strapped to a table being given a lethal injection; its a tough trade, huh?

september is libby's birthday, october is halloween, november is thanksgiving, and december is christmas. these are really hard months to bear. we cried for elizabeth on her birthday, went to lindsay's boss's house for halloween, and we ended up seeing "borat" and having dinner at denny's for thanksgiving. big fun, huh? for christmas we are being taken on a cruise with lindsay's mom and step-dad, so that'll be nice. maybe we'll survive it afterall.

one of the hardest things we are dealing with is the absence of our friends and family in our lives. for a while after libby's death our friends were here constantly, and family stayed close to us. as time has passed everyone's lives have returned to normal, or as normal as they can be, but we are sorta stuck in neutral, not having a "normal" to return to. it is hard to not get angry at friends and family, but trying to understand their distance is very hard. i feel sorry that it is hard for people, but damnit, we miss them all so much it hurts.

i am damn sick and tired of all the friggin christmas commercials on tv, they make me want to scream. we have chose to not observe the holidays this year, and we hope everyone understands, but if not, too bad. i honestly do not know if we will ever have it in us to celebrate special days ever again, but we have decided that we are going to follow our hearts, rather than what anyone thinks we should do.

oh well. all in all i pretty much feel like shit all the time, i have just gotten really good that pasting the old plastic smile and forcing my way thru each day. i really hate living without libby, and i hate watching my beloved lindsay suffer her death every day. but live we will continue to do, that animal already took our baby's life, i'll be damned if i am gonna let him take ours too.

life goes on, whether you like it or not, and that really sucks.
2:25 AM 
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20 Nov 06 Monday 

Current mood:  sad
i was in he shower, getting ready to go to work, when my then girlfriend reached thru the curtain with a pregnancy test in her hand. the test showed positive. lindsay and i had both left failed marriages just a month prior, and i was neutered years earlier. lindsay's ex decided that he was not the father as he did not want the responsibility. it worked out as far as i was concerned as i made the choice to be a daddy again the moment i saw that test stick. it was a decision that i was soooo happy about, as i just love being a daddy.

lindsay and i almost split up several times over the next months, but we always seemed to overcome everything in our path. elizabeth, who we call libby, was born at 11pm on the 2nd of september 1995, and i was right there watching her birth and holding my lindsay's hand. it was so funny a moment when libby popped out, as almost all the amneotic fluid was backed up behind her and the intern who caught her got quite the soaking. we were expecting a boy, but i was quite happy to have a fifth daughter. it only took a moment or two for lindsay to go from "i wanted a boy" to "my beautiful baby girl."

libby was one of those babys a parent dreams of. she slept thru the night from the beginning, and she always was so happy. she was definitely not a fussy baby in any way, and she made parenting a breeze. lindsay and i were not married at this time, she was divorced but i was still legally married. that was probably the hardest hurdle we had to deal with, along with my kids and our schedules. we always seemed to have the time for the kids, and especially for libby.

we had been together for almost two years when lindsay met another man and we split up. we worked out an arrangement whereby i would take care of libby in the daytime while lindsay worked, and she in the evenings while i worked. i also had custody of my other kids worked out nicely with my ex as well. lindsay's new relationship lasted only a few months as she realized that she wanted to be with me instead. during the time we were separated libby was a rock for both of us. she would hold me as i cried and missed her mommy, and did the same for lindsay.

lindsay and i eventually got back together and eventually my ex and i divorced, and lindsay and i were married. libby was our flower girl and my two girls stood up with lindsay and i. my older step daughters from my first marriage were there, as well as my ex and her ex (father of my step girls). lindsay's whole family was there and my mom, sister, and brother flew in to be with us. it was a beautiful garden ceremony, with libby charming everyone present.

libby started school at the neighborhood school, and was a model student from the beginning. she won awards and accolades, always humble about it all. her principal called her a "teacher's dream," andf her teachers all felt the same way about her. libby was a girl scout and active in the church, always keeping her nose to the grindstone. libby took karate classes and worked her way up to a brown belt, played soccer and softball, and still had time for her mommy and i. libby was very popular with the other kids as well, always seeming to be everyone's best friend.

libby was probably the most responsible child i have ever known. she had a hamster and hermit crabs, all of which she was quite dedicated to caring for. she trained her hamster to be comfortable being held, and never gave us any hassle about taking care of their cages (hamster and crabs). libby loved using the computer. she started out by playing with my machine while sitting on my lap, and turned into a real computer geek kid :) she spent a lot of time on the computer as she was a big teen titans fan, her fav character being "raven." she was active in the chat rooms and message boards on fan sites, never minding her mommy and i looking over her shoulder to make sure all was well.

i remember picking libby up from school the day she was murdered. i asked her if she wanted a peppermint, and she said "no thanks." when she got home she started right away with her homework. after she was done she asked if she could take her walk. i was getting ready to head back to work (i worked split shifts at the time) and i gave her a hug and said goodbye, and took off for work. i was working when i realized that i had left my phone at home, so i went by to pick it up. that was when i found out that libby had not returned from her walk, it had been almost and hour.

the police were already looking for her, and i went back to worked and clocked out so i could find my baby. i had been looking for about 15 or 20 minutes when i pulled into a parking lot behind a shopping center. a man was there and he told me he thought he had found a body or something. i ran up to this bundle that was tied in a blanket and opened it to find the cold and lifeless and bound body of my baby girl. i do not know how i managed to call lindsay but i did and she came fast. i stopped her from running all the way to where libby's body was as i did not want her to have to deal with what i had seen and have to deal with.

we were ushered into this bar that was right there near the scene, where we waited and lindsay made those awful phone calls to friends and family. i was of no use at all at that point, i was just in shock and sat there staring at the floor. i was not able to call my family until the next day, i just did not have it in me. we had been in the bar for what seemed like forever before we were taken home by the police chaplain, the police drove our cars home for us. we got home and were quickly visited by the police cyber crimes unit and detectives from the homicide unit. they quickly gathered what evidence they thought important, including libby's computer and left us with friends.

the entire police force worked that night to find my baby's killer. a fingerpring specialist was able to lift a clean pring from the duct tape libby was bound with, and the print matched up with her killer who had a police record. we woke up early the next day to a phone call from the police chaplain telling us they had caught the slimebag who murdered our baby. it took the police less than 12 hours to solve my daughter's murder. the courts moved just as fast. we offered up a plea deal whereby the scumbag would plead guilty to all charges and avoid the death penalty. i had no aversion to the possibility of him being executed, i just did not want my family and i to have to deal with a trial if it could be avoided.

so, it was on the three month anniversary of her murder that her killer plead guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life with no parole plus 35 years. nothing will ever bring back our baby, but we are comforted by the knowledge that that creep would never harm another child. what really sucked for us was finding out that the dirtbag had a warrent our on him for failure to appear in court on a drug charge just ten days before libby's murder. had he been picked up and disposed of properly our baby would still be alive. the scumbag was on meth at the time he killed her. we do not hold anyone but libby's murderer responsible for her death, other than when we blame ourselves. both my wife and i have intellectually accepted that her death was not our fault, but wrapping our emotions around that truth is much more diddicult a process. we are slowly getting better at it.

nothing will ever bring our baby back to us, but we are quietly thankful that our legal ordeal is over and we do not have to suffer the awfulness that so many other families have to go thru. it is also strange, tho, as we were originally braced for a long and drawn out legal battle which never materialized, leaving kind of a hole we did not know what to do with. we have since wished we had gone for blood with this creep, but not often, as we both know things worked out as libby would want them to for us. we all miss her so.

lindsay and i spend most of our time just trying to live each day. friends and family have faded into the woodwork, with just a few good friends who still hang in there with us. when people find out who we are you can see the tension in their face and body. its like they want to run away from what has happened to us, perhaps deeply afraid that it could happen to them. we are both on meds for bi-polar syndrome and depression, and we both drink too much. sadly at this point neither of us care what happens to us, other than still wanting to be there for each other. both of us live in terror that we will lose the other and have to face the rest of life truly alone. it is the deep lonliness that eats at us every day, making mornings hard for me and evenings hard for lindsay. we watch too much tv, but there is not much else we feel up to doing. maybe if our friends had time for us things might be different, i just dont know.

each day dawns new but feels very old. not much keeps us going. we will not be observing thanksgiving or christmas this year or maybe ever again. lindsay's mom is taking us on a cruise for christmas to get us out of town for a while. we will be at sea all day christmas day, so i hope that we will be able to relax and suffer just a bit less. libby was really into holidays and birthdays, and that just makes it harder for us to cope with them. my ex came by with pumpkins on halloween eve which we carved together. we were not asked if we wanted to do it, it just landed on us, so we made the best we could of it. it was actually not too bad a night, but given our druthers we would not have done it at all. we know everyone means well but we just dont have the heart for it, so we wont even try.

i really miss my baby girl
2:16 AM 
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30 Sep 06 Saturday 

Current mood:  sad
my beautiful daughter was cruelly murdered by a neighbor on the 28th day of march, 2006. this is a partial rendering of the story of her murder.

we live in a very quite midtown neighborhood. libby was in the habit of taking daily walks around the block before she used the computer. at the time i was working split shifts (11-2 and 5-8) and she left for her walk just before i went back to work. while i was at work i realized that i had forgotten my phone, so in went by the house to get it at about 6, and lindsay was outside waiting for the cops.

i started looking for her by driving circles around the blocks until i made it all around to the area where i found her. elizabeth had a definite route she was allowed to follow and knew she was not to deviate from that course. she was a brown belt in karate and was very very well trained about strangers. she would not have gone willingly with this maggot, but we have no idea how he got her into his house. it was well away from the corner she came around, so we think that the maggot was somewhere near the corner and he somehow (knife, gun, etc) forced her to go with him.

there were no witnesses to this, nobody saw anything, so we have no way to know for sure. he killed her in his house and dumped her body after his wife came home with their van and was in the shower. she did not know what he had done and was unaware that he had gone when he dumped her off. he apparently had her body hidden in the garage until he took her where he dumped her. it was about an hour and a half after she disappeared that i found her body.

elizabeths last moments on this earth are a nightmare for lindsay and i. we do not know exactly what happened, but we know that it was horribly violent. we do not know how long she suffered, but we are certain that she suffered, and that eats at us every day. we both have wandered through the stage of self-blame, and most of the time lindsay stays there. we both know that this is ALL that creep's fault, but sometimes that knowing is impossible to accept, so we blame ourselves. we do not blame each other, and we both remind each other of who is to blame over and over again.

elizabeth was bound with duct tape. she had it wrapped around her eyes and her mouth. her arms were bound behind her back and her knees were pulled up to her chest and bound as well. she had a leather cord tightly wrapped around her neck. i know these things because i was the one who opened the blanket she was wrapped in. when i pulled up a man had also just pulled up and he told me he thought there was a body next to the dumpster. i ran up and untied the blanket and looked down upon the lifeless and cold body of my little girl. even in my agony i had enough sense to keep my hands off, only touching her neck seeking a pulse.

i could only look at her for a few seconds then i ran to my van to call lindsay who was with two cops. before i ran to the van, the only thing i can remember besides her dead body was looking to the sky and asking god "haven't you taken enough from me?" my oldest brother died when i was ten, my father when i was twenty. when lindsay arrived with the police i ran to her to keep her from seeing what i had seen. that memory is permanently burned into my memory, and i did not want that for my beloved.

after lindsay and the cops arrived she and i were herded into the back door of a bar that was at the end of the parking lot where we waited for the police to secure the crime scene, deal with the media, and take us home. sitting in that bar was just awful; all i could see, eyes open or shut, was libby's body. all i could think of was what she had to have gone through to end up in the state i found her in, and how much i wanted to find the bastard who did this to her and take my revenge.

lindsay called family and friends while we were in the bar, as i was in no condition to do it. eventually the police chaplain arrived and prayed over us and cared for us. it was he who drove us back to our house and stayed with us until people started arriving. the police collected evidence and gently asked us the questions they had to ask and were gone as fast as was possible. the chaplain said one more prayer for us and he left too.

it was a good thing that i kept my hands off libby's body, because a police fingerprint expert was able to lift a clean print off the duct tape. after a fitful night trying to sleep, we were woken up by the telephone. it was the police chaplain calling us to tell us that they had caught the bastard. it took less than twelve hours for the tulsa police to find and apprehend the sicko. as horrible as we all felt, it was the best possible news we could hope for. we later found our that the entire police department was called in to support the investigation, and all of them came in. they did an incredible job.

over the next few days family came in from all over the country, some of which i had not seen or communicated with for over twenty years. they stayed a few days and attended libby's viewing, and her memorial service. both the viewing and the service were beautiful, tho we were in no shape to really appreciate beauty at the time, it still helped. libby's memorial service was held at the boston avenue united methodist church, where elizabeth and lindsay were members. this church is huge, quite huge, and it was standing room only for the service. tulsa really came out in support of my family.

we have the memorial service on tape. the church never records funerals and memorials, but in our case they made an exception that we didn't even ask for. i have not been able to sit down and watch the service yet, its too soon. there are still places i cannot go to, as they remind me too much of libby. i cannot listen to the three songs i shared with you without falling apart. i have managed to digitize all of our home movies and copy them to dvd and scan a bunch of the photos we have of her, tho i still have a load of them to do. lindsay has remodeled our living room and basically turned it into a memorial to elizabeth, and i have turned the den into my memorial to her.

there is much more of this story to be telled, but right now i am worn out from just telling this much. at some point i will find it in me to tell the whole thing, but not now.
7:24 PM 
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