Scott's own daily beatings happened from the time he could
remember. Sometimes they had a "reason" (Marytwo would often not do her
chores and blame it on Scott), sometimes not ("I'd fall down and he'd get
mad"). His father's drinking played a large part in their severity. "When
he was sober he would hit you, but when he was drinking ... that's when
he really started swingin'."
Scott maintains that his father loved him even though he told him
he was "no good." Marytwo would often treat him "like a dog. Get me a
beer. Clean the porch. Chop the potatoes." She made Scott get rid of his
big dog, a precious companion, because she preferred little dogs.
Weekends were unmitigated hell. On an average day his father would
start drinking at one and not stop until he passed out. On Saturdays and
Sundays, the father and Marytwo "partied" and went to bars, leaving Scott
in the car. When he was younger, he was scared by being left alone. As he
got older, he resented all the time it took away from him. Scott
considered being beaten better than being left alone.
The most severe beating took place when Scott tried to run away but
returned home when he became concerned that his parents would be worried.
When he walked in, they were both asleep. Upon awaking, "Marytwo beat the
shit out of me until one o'clock that morning. She was swingin' and
punchin' and slappin' me and everything else." The following morning,
Scott's father took his turn. "He beat the shit out of me, too. He hit me
in the stomach, face, everywhere." The beating was so severe that Scott's
father wouldn't let him go to school for a few days because the boy had
"knots" on his head.
A month before the homicide, Marytwo "ran off" with one of Mr.
Anders's male friends. Scott's father blamed his son for Marytwo's flight
and told him, "Things are going to get a lot worse." With Marytwo gone,
Scott was expected to do all the cooking and cleaning. Mr. Anders was
unable to work because of a physical disability. No longer able to
tolerate drink, the father turned increasingly to drugs. He also became a
lot more violent. "My father started to tell me he was going to kill
me."
The night of the homicide, Scott and his father argued about
Scott's not being able to be in the house alone (he had to wait outside
until his father returned). He kept "yelling and yelling and when I tried
to run out he said, 'You better not go nowhere.' I was scared, and I just
hauled ass. When I came back I saw the gun."
While there was no immediate threat, the parricide was the end of a
long build-up. Scott remembers firing the second shot because he was
afraid "what his father might do to him" after he fired the first.
Until the seventh grade, Scott had tried to get help by telling his
friends and grandparents about the physical abuse. But "nobody wanted to
get involved." Later, he told little even to his closest friends because
he didn't want them to know the truth. Scott said he hated the term
"child abuse" because he hated what it implied about his father.
Tags:
alarming trend,
atrocity,
child abuse,
city teenagers,
constraints,
drug money,
everyday horrors,
family,
fbi,
inner city,
killers,
matricide,
mother father,
murder,
parenting,
parricide,
patricide,
son and daughter,
supplementary homicide report,
tabloid television,
turbulence,
undercurrent
