I nitially I assumed
that I would be going home with my
mom once we were released. I
didn’t know what to think of
this prospect. Honestly, I
was doing what I had always done
and was just going with the flow. I had absolutely nothing but
the clothes I was
wearing, my girls, and
$500 that T odd
gave me from one of his family members. So I had a total of
$500 to my name. My
initial reaction to
this money was
disbelief that a perfect stranger would give me so much. My
thought was, “Why
would a
perfect stranger want to
help
me?” Officer T odd
replied, “People just want
to help you.
There will be many more.” Officer Beth got us toiletries and
pajamas the first
night of our
release, which I
was very
grateful for. I was
scared of everything, to say the least. But
deep inside
something that had been dormant for so
long
was finally
getting the chance to grow and
I felt it glowing
inside me. A light that I
thought had been extinguished was
slowly coming back
to life. Every
time things seemed
overwhelming, I would
look at my
mom and that
happy
feeling came back and the warm light inside grew bigger.
I was told there was
a reunification specialist located a
couple of hours away from the hotel we were staying at who
was willing to work
with me and my family.
I wasn’t sure
what to say
about this offer.
Traditional therapy did
not
appeal to me.
The therapy I kept
envisioning consisted of
me and a
small room and
someone I didn’t
know, which
was the last thing I
wanted. I felt I had worked through what
had happened to me and I
had always kept my own counsel
and thought I was
my own best therapist. I
didn’t want to
meet another stranger.
In the day and a half, I had
met so
many new people that I
was really overwhelmed.
Ultimately, what
convinced me to seek
the help of
this
person was the mention of horses. The impression I got of
this person was
that of an
older lady with
a ranch and
horses and plenty of room for us to come and get our feet
on the ground
for a few
days. She was
one of a few
professionals
specializing in the
field of reunification
in
abduction cases. I
have to confess that part of me wanted
to do something
for my oldest
daughter that Phillip
had
always promised her
he would do
and never followed
through on, and
that was arranging
horseback riding
lessons. I figured
if this person had horses, then chances
are I could
probably arrange some
lessons. I have
loved
horses since that
summer at Lake T
ahoe with Shawnee
and that summer that we planned to work on the dude ranch
together.
I had another reason
for wanting to talk to a psychologist,
too. That being I
wanted to tell her all about Phillip and ask
her professional opinion. Everything I had been through with
Phillip was so
confusing, and I
had always wanted
a
professional’s
opinion because in
my opinion the
psychiatrist he was seeing was doing nothing to really help
him, and day-by-day
he was increasingly paranoid. Even
when Phillip told his psychiatrist that he was hearing
voices,
nothing changed. Therapy
did nothing to
help him and
certainly did nothing
to help us
who had to
live with his
continued
delusion. So many
things confused me
about
Phillip and the things he would say.
I could never believe
Phillip was anything but sane and thought about each and
every thing he
did before he did
it; I felt
that something
about him was just not right. For example, I had always had
my doubts about his special
“ability” (i.e.: using his black
box to let
others hear him
speaking with his
mind). He
always made everything sound totally logical and explained
himself in all respects, but I still had my doubts. And all his
preaching about how
the angels control our thoughts and
how they use Satan as a tool to control our minds.
I ’ve learned that Phillip has never taken responsibility
for
his actions, so
he invented a
way to explain
everything
away. That being, his
“angel theory.” Over time
this theory
evolved into him
thinking that since
he could hear
the
angels in his mind, he figured that others should be able to
hear his voice
in the same
manner, too. After
that the
creation of the
black box started.
The black box
was a
black case with a cassette
recorder inside that contained
recordings of such
sounds as football
game cheering,
random static from
the radio, and
other various sounds
from the television
that he would
mix down into
one
cassette tape that
he would play and
amplify through
speakers in the box. He would also use plastic cups from
fast-food restaurants and glue them in the box to make the
sound different. Then he would hook up the headphones to
the box and take it with him
to let others hear his “ability.”
He used to make me sit in front of the air conditioner with
headphones and one of
those sound amplifiers
called
Bionic Ears and
just sit there and
listen to that
sound for
hours. He called it “tuning in.” He would leave me sitting
in
front of the air conditioner for hours trying to condition
me to
hear his voice coming out of
it when he returned. He said
since he could hear his voice and the angels’ voices in his
head, that by
using an outside
device like the
sound
coming out of
the air unit
or the big
overhead lights in
warehouses like Costco
and Sam’s Club
emitting a
humming buzzing sound,
that allowed him
to hear the
voices coming from those things as well. I didn’t know what
to make of all he said. On the one hand, I couldn’t just come
out and say,
hey, you’re crazy,
I don’t hear
a thing. I had
enough sense to
know this would not go well for me. So
I
tried to hear what he wanted me to hear. I really did try. I sat
there, and when he came back and sat in
front of me and
moved his lips to the words “Can you hear me?” I really did
try to hear it.
I asked him, “I f
the sound comes
from your
mind, why do I need
to look at your lips?” He said that my
mind needed something to visually interpret into words. For
some reason, I
accepted this explanation and sat there until
my legs fell asleep, trying to hear anything remotely like
his
voice.
One night, I was so
tired I thought
I did hear something.
He had switched
from the words “Can
you hear me?” to
counting “One, two,
and three” and
I thought I
heard the
vague sound of him counting. He told me to hold on to the
fact that I had heard
him because in the days to come, the
angels would make me doubt myself. That was the one and
only time I heard
him, and now I think I was just so tired and
I thought if
I told him
I heard him,
that it would
end his
obsession. So I convinced myself I
heard something that
wasn’t there. I t was
the same thing with all our
Printing for
Less clients, too—they heard what they thought they should
hear. I t was a “shared delusion,” I ’ve come to learn. But
my
hearing him didn’t
end his obsession.
I t only seemed
to
make him more determined for others to hear his “ability.”
He started to
think God had given him this ability to help
others, specifically
those individuals that also hear voices
but do bad things, such as the woman who threw her three
children into the bay. He cited this case
frequently as why
we needed to “get going” and help these people. So that
became our focus and I
did try to help him with his cause. I
typed flyers and sent emails to mind-control victims as well
as others he
thought would champion his
cause. I did
all
this while maintaining
the printing business. When
I would
question Phillip
about why he didn’t
go to pastors
in the
area and tell them his new knowledge that he was gaining
from the Bible, it always ended with some excuse as to why
things had to be
done in a certain order and that
it wasn’t
time. Phillip’s “mission” continued right up until the day he
brought us to
his parole office
appointment. Then
everything changed.
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