The Graveyard
I don’t know what I had expected.
He was sick, terminally ill in fact: soon to be deceased. That was the only reason I’d allowed myself to be persuaded into making the four hundred and ninety miles, one-way trip from Middleton, Texas, to Huntsville to visit him: that he was dying: and it would not be long before he was forever gone from my life.
I think maybe what I expected was to be escorted by a prison guard with a baton and stun gun and mace or something into the prison infirmary, and that there would be rows of inmates strapped to their cots or some such thing. Or that there would be a bulletproof glass wall between us, and we would speak to each other via telephones, or through a small circle of holes in the glass that had been drilled for that purpose. But the prison guards had set up a small table in an otherwise empty, white room for our meeting. I sat on one side of the table and he was rolled in in a wheelchair and parked directly across from me.
His face was both sallow and ashen: another thing that was not as I expected.
There was a small bottle of oxygen attached to the back of his wheelchair and tubes in his nose. I speculated that the oxygen had been placed strategically beyond his reach so that he couldn’t snatch it up and use the metal canister to bash someone across the head, me, or the guard. But in hindsight that was probably fanciful. He was also accompanied by a saline drip hanging from a hook on one of those rolling stands. I assume it was saline. Maybe it was water simply to keep him hydrated. Maybe it was drugs to keep him sedated so he wouldn’t rip the oxygen tank off his wheelchair and go on a rampage.
“I don’t want to be buried in the prison cemetery,” he said, struggling to speak after the usual salutations people share upon meeting.
He was a large man, lanky, with huge, boney hands. It was not difficult to imagine those hands closing around the throat of my sister and then her child. In fact, I could not prevent the image from popping into my mind. He reminded me in a way of an old dog that seems like it would be beyond doing any harm to anything or anyone, except for something in its eyes that screams otherwise and a person knows to just leave the old dog alone.
“And that’s exactly where I’ll be buried unless somebody claims my body,’ he said.
“Is that why you summoned me?” I asked.
“There is no one else,” he said. “Do you honestly think that I would put myself through the trouble, and expense...”
“I have the money,” he said hoarsely before I could finish my sentence. “And a significant sum left over for you if you’ll do it.” His eyes were deep set in his skull, so deep I almost had to look for them. There were two little pins of light, way, way, way back in darkness... almost like they were retreating already... fleeing the light into the blackness.
“You killed our sister,” I said, and our nephew...”
“It was never proven,” he said. “I don’t look anything like the eyewitness’s description...”
“Don’t start that,” I said, trying to cut him off.
“You resemble the eyewitness description more than I do,” he said.
I started to rise from my chair.
“I was out of my mind on drugs...” he said. “I was temporarily insane. I was mentally ill. That is a matter of record and fact...”
“Like you were mentally ill with all the ones before her,” I said.
“None of those were proven either,” he shot back.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “The cops just needed to close the case. And you were framed and a victim of circumstance...”
“Pick your poison,” he said. “Will you do it or not?”
I hesitated for a few seconds before I answered, for dramatic effect I suppose. I felt spite rising up from my chest, into my throat, and begging to roll off my tongue.
“They call it Peckerwood Hill,” he said, “for all the inmates who died and were too poor for a proper burial or couldn’t get out any other way. I’ve served my sentence,” he insisted, “done my time, all that shit. I was sentenced to life in prison, not afterlife in prison. I want to be free of this place,” he said. “Will you get me out not?”
“Sure...” I said in my sincere, fake voice, “Why not?”
“You’re lying,” he said and took a deep breath, and exhaled.
I could hear a rattle in his lungs. And the air that came out of him was foul.
“They call it Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery,” he said. “On account of it was just a bunch of unmarked graves before Captain Joe Byrd, who was an assistant warden organized it and cleaned it up and turned it into a real cemetery.”
Larry and I sat there in silence for a few seconds, eyeing each other directly across the table.“There’s no fence or wall around it,” he said. “I guess so that so the inmates who know they’re gonna end up there don’t feel like they’re gonna still be incarcerated... ”
“Well then,” I said, “I guess there’s no reason for you not to feel like you’re gonna finally be free.”
It’s a weird thing being the younger sibling of a serial killer.
They’ve been around for a long time; “serial killers” have, certainly at least since Jack the Ripper. Although the term serial killer didn’t become popular in broader American usage until the 1980s, what some have referred to as the “golden age of serial killers.” The media and folks in Hollywood became fascinated and even obsessed with the phenomena in that era.
I did my share of research.
There are all kinds.
They may exhibit mental illness or psychopathy or they may not. They may enjoy setting fires as children or killing animals. Some of them wet the bed. Some of them may engage in necrophilia or fetishism or cannibalism, paraphilias they call them, and some of them seem perfectly normal. It was hypothesized by some experts that serial killers are born and not created, particularly because a couple of well-known serial killers, Richard Speck and Bobby Joe Long had extra chromosomes: one had an extra X and one had an extra Y. That is not a particularly encouraging theory to someone who is directly related to a serial murder.
Most agree that in general, serial murderers have average to low average intelligence. That was not the case with my brother, he was very intelligent, probably too smart for his own good. He was very manipulative and very charming when he wanted to be.
One of the things that has always intrigued me about serial murderers is how so many of them marry after they have been discovered and prosecuted and sentenced to prison: Charlie Manson: Ted Bundy, The Night Stalker himself, Richard Ramirez. And naturally, the fact raised the question for me- why had my brother not? He was a pretty good-looking guy when he was young. And he was actually highly intelligent and charming. And if he had married, he’d have had someone to carry out his wishes and keep his body from the worms of Peckerwood Hill. And he’d have had someone to pass along his money to; which was not a fortune, but still, a tidy enough sum that someone would not want to pass it up, except for me. I didn’t want anything to do with it. It felt like a payoff.
I also suspected that maybe the reason my brother didn’t marry in the penitentiary, as far as I was aware, was because he was not famous like Dahmer or Ridgeway or Pogo the Clown and so the serial murder groupies did not seek him out. By some estimates, there are between 2000 and 4000 active, unknown serial killers in the United States at any given time. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact number because the smart ones stay out of the limelight so they don’t get caught. And there are dozens and dozens who do eventually get caught but sort of fly beneath the radar in the media. Even though the United States only has 5% of the world’s population it is estimated to have 67% of the world’s documented serial murderers.
Another weird thing about being the sibling of a serial killer... I’ve heard it’s psychologically similar to being the child of a schizophrenic: one wonders if it runs in the family, the mental disease or the malady, or whatever it is. There is estimated to be approximately an 80% inheritability with schizophrenia. It’s almost impossible not to wonder, “Am I going to become one too?”
I wanted to see the prison cemetery before I left, maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was because somewhere, deep, deep, deep inside, I was actually considering claiming my brother’s body. And I was on my own time schedule since I’d chosen to drive instead of fly: a decision that I was starting to regret even though I enjoy road trips and the scenery is beautiful.
It was overcast and foggy that morning, which is not uncommon in that part of Texas. The fog had cleared off but had begun to settle in again by the time I was ready to view the cemetery and then leave town. Visitors may enter the graveyard from just about any direction since there are no fences or walls, but there is a large white sign that identifies it as the ‘Joe Byrd Cemetery’ and seems to be the official place to go into the graveyard.
I saw rows and rows of simple, small white crosses that traveled away from where I’d entered, into the gathering mist and vanished over a gentle slope which was sort of eerie. The grass was well-kept but patchy in spots. There were trees here and there and shrubs and monuments. When I got closer to the white crosses, I noticed that some of them had a date on the upright part of the cross, presumably the date of death, and then on the horizontal part, there were numbers, presumably the convict’s prison identification number. But as I walked in further, I saw that some of the graves had round markers, instead of crosses, upright headstones basically, with not only the date of death and inmate’s identification number but the convict’s name.
One of the small round stones had HENRY LUCAS etched into it at the top and 830114 etched directly below it, and then 3.12.01 etched below that, just above the ground. He was famous of course, or infamous is more accurate, for claiming to have been involved in 3,000 or 4,000 murders, when in reality he likely only killed his mother and two Jane Does: so I recognized his grave immediately. But then I especially recognized another grave.
After walking another 20 or so yards into the cemetery, a couple of prison trucks materialized from the fog and stopped approximately 150 feet from me. A handful of inmates climbed out of the bed of each truck and removed coffins. I assumed that it was the prisoners who kept the cemetery grounds presentable, but I was about to learn that they also carried out the internments, as well as provided brief ceremonies. I inadvertently redirected my path so that I would get closer to the event. However, I halted dead in my tracks, no pun intended, when I saw the name KC Welch etched into one of the stones with an inmate Id number etched below it and the date of death etched below that- 7.13.11.
It is an uncommon thing for a person to be related to a serial killer or know or had contact with one, other than police and law enforcement, and judges. It is much more unusual for an individual to have had first-hand experiences with two. KC Nash was a pedophile, as horrendous as they come. The precise number of little boys that he raped was never known. And the amount of emotional scarring that he caused cannot be calculated. The physical damage that he did to his victims was beyond comprehension. It was suspected that there were many more victims that never came forward either from shame or fear. And the physical suffering that he inflicted upon his victims was horrendous, beyond the usual physical harm a pedophile general inflicts because KC was also a sadist. It was reported that he put model airplane glue into the ears of one of his victims as well as the end of his penis. He was said to have forced enemas on some of his victims with household cleaning liquids as well as corrosives. It was because of me that he was found out and sentenced to prison. He was ultimately beaten to death by other inmates who were never charged.
I had put the police onto KC because of a boy I knew he was molesting. He swore vengeance upon me once. He managed to call me from prison somehow and tell me that he would have his revenge, in this life or even the next if necessary.
“Are you here for the service?” a voice said, shocking me from my introspection.
“What?” I said and jerked my eyes away from the grave marker and up to face the individual approaching me from the fog.
“Are you here for the funeral?” the man asked and pointed in the direction of the graveside service that was organizing itself. It was clear by the way he was dressed that he was one of the inmates.
“No, no,” I said. “I came to visit someone incarcerated here and was just leaving.”
He pointed in the direction from which I’d come. “It’s that way back out,” he said, “If you’re turned around.”
“I’m not turned around,” I said. “Who are you burying today, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Rufus,” the inmate said, “Bridgewater. He was a rodeo clown. Rufus caught his best friend hanging his meat in his smokehouse, if you know what I mean, and killed him.”
I knew what he meant: he caught the man screwing his wife.“Hell of a rodeo clown,” he said, “but not much of an escape artist.”
“What do you mean?”
“He tried to break outta here twice,” the inmate said. “But they caught him both times and brought him back.”
I did not know how to respond to that. I didn’t know Rufus Bridgewater, the Rodeo Clown, or much about prisoners and their efforts to escape. Anything I said would’ve been superficial and small talk. So I just looked at the inmate and said nothing. He was a curious-looking fellow in a way: small eyes and a sharp nose.
“But maybe three times a charm,” he said.
