A Long, Strange Trip To Go and Sin No More
Part 1: A Straight Line is the Shortest Line Between a Serial Killer and Death Row...
If there were a stranger legal matter in the history of Lofton County, VA than the sentencing and disposition of Ms. Darcy Bowler, it would require a better historian than most to discover it.
One would think the trial and its outcome should have been cut and dried. All the facts of the case were known.
Eleven countries could have put out warrants for extradition. Yet they were all so embarrassed by their ten-year failure to catch Ms. Bowler and her fellow Beauty Killers, and the subsequent exposure of harboring the criminals the Beauty Killers had come through to kill, that they decided to be content with the U.S. legal process.
After all, most of the people killed were ex-pats – really fugitives from justice – who were citizens of the United States, and the rest were the fluff of grifters and pleasure-seekers who gathered around the money such people brought with them.
The ex-pats had all been principals and top consultants in BeautyBelle, a multi-level marketing company that had collapsed, leaving its bottom-level consultants in thousands of dollars of debt while the principals and top consultants had escaped with $17 billion.
Families had been wrecked by BeautyBelle before and after its collapse. Divorces, suicides, and murders had followed in its wake, leaving hordes of neglected, traumatized children.
Three of these – Darcy Bowler, Gertrude Baskerville, and Barbara Greenwich – had grown up and decided to go hunt down those who had profited from the destruction of their families and the families of their friends. All three of them had blossomed into gorgeous young women who were able to work their way into the circles into the people they intended to destroy – hence, the names that stuck: the Beauty Killers, beautiful people killing off beautiful people around the world.
The Beauty Killers wiped out all of the ex-pats – every last one, with their families – in ten years of mass killings that represented the violence done to their families. They also had found and hacked the bank accounts that had the $17 billion, and stolen it – stolen it back, from their perspective.
But in the meantime, the remaining survivors of BeautyBelle who had not fled the United States decided to form a new multi-level marketing company after BeautyBelle's model. In the course of time, the new company also decided to return for its 2020 convention to the place where, 30 years earlier, the mothers of the Beauty Killers had been sucked in: Skylark Hall, in the elite Skylark neighborhood of Big Loft, VA.
It had been at this point that Ms. Bowler had begun to diverge from the other two Beauty Killers. She had not actually been raised by the mother that had been sucked into the MLM: her father, marine Captain Darius Bowler, had divorced her mother quickly when she had begun to disrespect him and abuse their daughter, and had obtained sole legal custody just as quickly because it was not worth Ms. Bowler's time to look away from her “business” to even come to court. Thus, Ms. Bowler had been raised by her father from toddler years onward.
Ms. Bowler had her father's tactical sense. She knew that Interpol had been called in on the case and had found out that one of its best investigators – Jean-Paul Dubois – had been on their track for four years already. She also knew that Lofton County's law enforcement had been enriched by two of M. Dubois' excellent former colleagues in the Judge Advocate General wing of the U.S. Army, and that Big Loft itself had one brilliant homicide detective. That combination, plus the known history all of them would have to work from in Lofton County, would lead to the Beauty Killers being detected and identified at last. She knew this.
In response to all these facts, Ms. Greenwich and Ms. Baskerville showed Ms. Bowler for the first time that they no longer had any control over themselves in terms of thirsting for blood. None of them had fired a single shot. Ms. Bowler had done all of that. Yet they wanted more – and indeed, the job was not yet done.
To Ms. Bowler, the whole thing was a mission. Indeed she was a narcissistic sociopath, like her mother, but she had been molded into the image of her honorable Marine father. This had led to her being perfectly insane, because those two elements of her background could no more be held together properly in one human mind than that ill-conceived marriage of her parents could stay together. Yet and still, the influence of Darius Bowler had left his daughter still more rational and moral than her two accomplices.
There were exactly 53 more people that had to be killed from BeautyBelle. There would be a panic, and therefore collateral damage – mass shootings always caused that. Unfortunate, but accounted for: Ms. Bowler's methods had always kept as many innocent bystanders out of the way as possible. The point was that she, from the beginning, was counting down. There was a set number of people to be killed, and afterward, the mission would be complete.
Darcy Bowler had an entire legitimate life that was more than a cover: in every respect but one, she was a model and productive citizen of her country and the world. When the mission was done – because there was no cognitive dissonance in her insane mind that would trouble her – that life awaited her, and she fully intended to get on with it.
But in the meantime: the three Beauty Killers had joined BeautyBelle's successor organization, LookyLou LookatYou, and had started working their way up. All three of them were the daughters of veterans, so they recruited heavily among their fellow military women – daughters, wives, Reservists, and veterans. These women came in on a mission as well, and the Beauty Killers unit swiftly began moving up the ranks in terms of team size and sales. Ms. Bowler knocked off a rival team leader here and there at need – unfortunate, but necessary to the mission.
All of this was to make sure that when in January 2020 the convention at Skylark Hall took place, the three Beauty Killers would be in place to do what they had come to do all along. It worked as it always had, right down to Ms. Bowler making sure that the people in their downlines were positioned by the exits and the innocent caterers were out of the building before she took out the last 53 people on the list. BeautyBelle, at that point, was nothing more than dead bodies lying in pools of blood, all the way around the world.
Almost. Captain Darius Bowler had trained his daughter in thoroughness, and she had realized her count was off by three even before the mass killing at Skylark Hall. There were three more people connected to the destroying legacy of BeautyBelle, two of which wanted to destroy some more even after there would be no further cause.
As it had been with their own mothers, Trudy Baskerville and Barbara Greenwich were addictive personalities, and had been sucked into their own cult of killing. They were psychopaths, not sociopaths; they enjoyed the plotting and deception of their future victims before Ms. Bowler did her part. They had enjoyed seducing many of the men they would destroy; they had gifts and trinkets from and had been on trips with and had recordings of reducing these men to being lust-drunk and begging for their bodies. The encounters had been “super-hot,” because these two “got off” all the more from knowing they were going to have these men killed.
Even the thought of settling into a genteel life with a third of $17 billion did not appeal to Ms. Baskerville and Ms. Greenwich, even though Ms. Bowler brought it up many times as a fine ending to the mission. They did not want that, and thus Ms. Bowler realized that she was not like her accomplices. They were without limit, just like the other 256 people they had worked together to destroy.
Ms. Bowler also realized her accomplices were not as smart as they thought they were. Never had they stained their hands with blood, but they were defying the one who had done all the bloody work. They had seen Ms. Bowler snuff out human life like they might smash a gnat, and feel nothing about it, and yet, they had not learned the difference between her and them, and did not remember: the last three people with a connection to the destroying nature of BeautyBelle were Darcy Bowler, Barbara Greenwich, and Gertrude Baskerville. Ms. Bowler had always kept the list. The day came when she realized that the mission was not complete until it was cleared of all who were on the list.
Ms. Bowler gave fair warning: she told her accomplices that Skylark Hall would have to be the end because they would need to separate and get out of the United States as soon as possible to avoid detection, and that there was no logical reason for them to do anything else. Her accomplices hemmed and hawed – strike 1, as her baseball-loving father would have said.
During the shooting at Skylark Hall, Ms. Bowler had grazed Ms. Baskerville as part of the act, for Ms. Baskerville had been on stage with the dozen who were doomed to die, and it was necessary for her to be wounded and then helped out of the building by Ms. Bowler herself. That was their way into an ambulance and out of the area before anyone could arrive to question them. Yet it was also a warning, as Ms. Bowler had openly shared with her accomplices later: “If I were as interested in killing to be killing as y'all are, I could have just added you, Trudy – but that's not the point. We're done with this now.” Trudy and Barbara hemmed and hawed and started reliving the killings – strike 2.
Then, word came that the survivors of LookyLou LookatYou were planning a rally to put the company back together and somehow continue on. Ms. Bowler had looked at the social media announcement and had at first started laughing because the whole idea was ridiculous. LookyLou LookatYou had been a house of cards in MLM form anyway – reports of messed-up inventory, consultants in massive debt, and lawsuits galore coming upon the company were likely to sink it anyway in 2020 even without the Beauty Killers pushing it into the grave prematurely. The idea of trying to resurrect the company was ridiculous, but, that's what went with being in a MLM-style cult.
But then, Ms. Bowler thought about the matter a little more. If there was no one actually left that could have given these desperate and yet helpless women direction, then whose idea was it to have this rally anyway – and why? Ms. Bowler's mind went back to the law enforcement on the case, and sure enough, Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee of the Blue Ridge precinct of the Big Loft police, Lieutenant James Hummel from Homicide in the same department, and Jean-Paul Dubois from Interpol had linked up.
Lee and Dubois had been Colonel Lee and Major Dubois in the U.S. Army's JAG, and the colonel had brought over with him from his start in Special Forces his knowledge of Psy Ops – thus, one had a police captain in Big Loft with full knowledge of Psychological Operations.
Captain Lee had worked out, from looking at all the data Chief Inspector Dubois had brought him, that there was one Beauty Killer who simply would not do unnecessary damage, ever, while the other two simply did not care who they killed.
So, Captain Lee and the rest had worked out an impossible situation for that one killer: a rally of LookyLou LookatYou survivors. That rally would be an irresistible target for two of the three Beauty Killers, but ONE, given her psychological profile, could not let those people who had no connection to BeautyBelle be killed.
It was as if the spirit of Darius Bowler had found the one man in the world – Captain H.F. Lee – who could have found a way to reach his daughter and say, “That is enough, Darcy!” It had just that much impact. She had never disobeyed her father in any serious matter, as long as he lived. He had been her conscience, and he had been a Christian man who had died in New York City on September 11, 2001, in his last service to his country.
Captain Bowler had known he was going to die in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center because his failing heart was not going to take the stress, but if it was good enough for his Savior to sacrifice His life to save others, it was good enough for Captain Bowler. He had helped to save the temporal lives of a dozen people before dying on the spot of a massive heart attack.
To the last day, Captain Bowler had held the standard up for his daughter, and she, though not knowing Christ, had obeyed – lost, but guided well. Thus, Darcy Bowler had been an exemplary little girl well into adulthood. She had always been a Daddy's girl, and it was one of the reasons her narcissistic mother had hated her from the beginning – babies know who loves them, and from the beginning, Captain Bowler's warm love and empathy had been the only source of light to his daughter's mind and heart.
But when the guide had died, Ms. Bowler had followed her natural inclinations until she heard her father's voice for the first time in 18 years – or at least she thought she did.
“That is ENOUGH, Darcy!”
The only way that Ms. Bowler could make sense of that was as her father's voice, and it was such a shock that she blacked out. She woke up to the phone ringing. It was her fellow Beauty Killers, calling on three-way about the news of the rally on social media, and wanting to plan to get over there and do some more killing.
Strike 3. Ms. Bowler had already said to stop. They didn't want to stop. Too bad. Three strikes, and you're out. The only question was when and how.
After getting off the phone, Ms. Bowler saw something else on social media – a church in downtown Big Loft was opening its doors to all people who had survived the shooting, all the rest of the week – the church was offering services, prayer teams, counselors, and dinner to all who came. Ms. Bowler took the initiative to call her accomplices back to see if they had seen that. They had, but pooh-poohed it – “Nobody is going to that sob session for weaklings,” Ms. Baskerville had said.
Ms. Bowler went on the very first day – a Wednesday. She had always loved church. Her father, though broken-hearted by how his marriage had ended and how the wife he still loved had committed suicide after the collapse of BeautyBelle, had always gone to church and had loved singing the hymns. There, he was happy, and his daughter was safe and happy too – into college days, she went to chapel. She had only stopped after becoming a killer.
But now, she knew she was going to stop the killing, so it was all right to go back to church. The rally was to be on Friday, so she came Wednesday and Thursday to the services and looked over the other daily ministries the church had, such as the one for battered women. On Thursday, she drew down her bank accounts and gave the entire amount in cash to Ms. Onyx Baxter, wife of one of the co-founders of the church, to put to the use of that ministry.
On Wednesday she heard sermons by Rev. Baxter and on Thursday sermons by Rev. Gordon – sermons about good, evil, law, grace, man's fall and God's judgment, God's grace through Jesus Christ and the Gospel that led to salvation. None of that made a difference to Ms. Bowler yet. She had grown up hearing that, but a narcissistic sociopath had no feelings about right and wrong. What her empath father had given her, though, was the ability to sense when people truly practiced what they believed. The church was a safe place for sinners to come when they wanted to change, and the two ministers were veterans and good men like her father.
Which is why the facts of the case were clear: on Friday, Ms. Bowler asked to speak with the two ministers, and, in their office, with the door open, had asked them to call Captain Lee of the Blue Ridge precinct and tell him Darcy Bowler would like to speak with him. He had come, and in that safe environment, Darcy Bowler had confessed to all of her crimes, in crystal-clear and horrifying detail. She had turned herself in to clear the list of destroyers connected with BeautyBelle.
Ms. Bowler had also turned in her accomplices as well and brought them to justice, but had skipped the legal process. She had given Captain Lee permission to go into her trunk, and there they were. She had driven up to their home that afternoon like they were all going to the rally, loaded up her gun and silencer while they were talking about the fun it was going to be to “scatter those little fools like scared chickens, but roast them all the same,” and then shot both women through the head.
Ms. Bowler was a fit six-feet-four, a former college basketball star who had become a world-famous teacher of self-defense for women. She had packed up her former accomplices like her college road bags into her trunk and brought them to the church with her. Mission accomplished. The world had been completely cleared of the legacy of BeautyBelle, at least provisionally. The world would be clear in fact when Ms. Bowler reached the front of the line on Virginia's Death Row.
Part 2: But Four Left Turns Will Only Take One Around the Block
Yet Ms. Bowler's journey to Death Row took a left turn just a week after Captain Lee had walked Ms. Bowler to booking and booked her himself. The problem was that a killer like Ms. Bowler was not supposed to be held at the city or county jail – she was the most dangerous prisoner in custody in living memory. It would be like leaving Hannibal Lector in general population – you just didn't do that.
The other problem was that the sheriff's department in Lofton County had a rogue deputy in charge of transporting prisoners here and there. He especially loved transporting female prisoners by his house asking for favors in exchange for favors. He already had 47 victims under his belt when Ms. Bowler needed transport to the special facility the county maintained for prisoners like her awaiting trial.
One thing led to another, and, of course, Deputy Joe Randy got added to Ms. Bowler's kill list. But this was self-defense! Ms. Bowler had also turned herself back in and brought evidence of the deputy's crimes with her. This changed the entire narrative around Ms. Bowler. Instead of her just being a crazed killer, the story began to go around that she was a mentally troubled young woman who had been damaged by her mother's abuse, was triggered by abusers of all types, and had a strong need to rescue the helpless. BeautyBelle and LookyLou LookatYou both fit into that narrative.
All the women that still loved Darcy Bowler in spite of everything – because she had taken care of them – whipped up the #metoo fervor around the new narrative. It didn't hurt that Darcy Bowler fit the profile that Virginia and the nation, in total, just didn't want to throw the book at. She was a beautiful woman with big blue eyes, oodles of curly blond hair, and still, at 39, seemed virginal and innocent in person. She could have been the Virgin Queen, or Joan of Arc, or Queen Boadicea, or any other famous woman of European history who had to fight her way through, with the stature of the Statue of Liberty combined with the appeal of Marilyn Monroe.
Even pleading guilty – which Ms. Bowler did – was not enough to get done what one would think justice would demand for anyone who had murdered 258 people. No! All those women from LookyLou LookatYou who loved and sympathized with Ms. Bowler had money – they were the only ones who had ever really succeeded at the business because Ms. Bowler and her accomplices had put all their money back into building their team. They pooled that money and hired a crack legal team for Ms. Bowler, and the crack legal team set to work finding every loophole there was.
Sure enough: there was precedent. The month before, the same court had “let off” Dorian Anderson, a killer with a record eerily similar to Ms. Bowler's – another sociopath who had confessed his crimes once a sense of family had been restored to him, and had turned in his accomplices. They had been alive, however; Dorian Anderson had not been a serial killer, but an assassin for hire with the moral and emotional development of a five year old. He had been a veteran also, so, PTSD had been in play as well. He too could have gone to Death Row, but instead, he had been remanded to the special facilities that the Veteran's Lodge hosted for such veterans.
Darcy Bowler was the daughter and only surviving relative of a Marine who had served admirably to his last day on earth, and thus would be eligible for consideration to be remanded to the Veteran's Lodge – but the first hurdle to be cleared was a finding of criminal or functional insanity at the time of her crimes. Because she had pled guilty, there was no trial to do this in, so it all came down to the sentencing portion.
The crack legal team came along with their psychological reports and experts, and even a surprise witness that just burned the prosecution up: they subpoenaed Captain Lee as a defense witness in the sentencing hearing because of his background in Psy Ops.
Captain Lee was deeply unhappy with this turn of events, but with his usual professionalism provided weighty testimony on the side of the defense: the very psychological profile by which he induced Ms. Bowler to turn herself in was based on the fact that Ms. Bowler was not an ordinary serial killer.
Captain Lee confirmed what the defense was alleging: it required a very specific set of triggers to induce Ms. Bowler into wanting to kill, and they had to do with unaddressed abuse of power consistent with her own background as an abused child. Her understanding of evil was limited, but she knew it had to be punished, and its victims rescued. This had been further demonstrated when, after killing Deputy Joe Henry in self-defense, she had made no further attempts to kill or even escape from justice, but had again turned herself in to Captain Lee at the Blue Ridge precinct, and brought evidence showing what Deputy Randy he had done to the 47 women before her.
Captain Lee's testimony in combination with the many interviews that had been done with Ms. Bowler showing the workings of her mind would end up being enough to keep her off Death Row – but before that decision was actually made, she was ordered up the road from Big Loft for an advanced psychological examination in Roanoke, VA.
But, again, transport had turned up a deputy sheriff taking a left turn AGAIN – this time, the deputy driving the transport vehicle forgot what he was doing and got involved in a high-speed chase. He had just wanted to be a hero, and to rescue the department's reputation.
Nope. The deputy's vehicle, the criminals' vehicle, a motorcyclist exuberantly changing lanes and a 16-wheeler whose driver didn't see any of this coming into his blind spot as he merged onto the highway led to an injured motorcyclist in a ditch, the truck driver coming to a halt and jumping out to help him without even looking behind him to see the carnage in his wake – the deputy's car crushed in the front, the criminals' in the back, and thus a dead deputy and two criminals who were shaken up but unharmed, and so thought they were going to hop in the truck and get away scot free.
They had not looked behind them to see Darcy Bowler, unharmed in the back of the deputy's vehicle and thus getting out of the car, snapping her handcuffs over the exposed engine block of the deputy's car and then doing a handstand to do the same for her leg shackles. Average-woman size and strength in such things such wasn't going to hold her in an emergency.
Thus, the truck driver looked back in time to see Darcy Bowler dragging the lead criminal out of the driver's side of the cab, throwing him to the ground, and punching him out. He would remember and testify to what she said to that man while punching him out: “I've got bad habits, but Dad and Rev. Gordon and Jesus said I am to sin no more!”
The other man tried to run. Big mistake. Ms. Bowler ran and jumped and drove him like a pile into the asphalt – and he was out. Both men, however, would survive, being the first two that Ms. Bowler had ever taken on that would do so.
“Uh, would you like some help, miss?” the truck driver said as he finally got back to the scene.
“Please,” Ms. Bowler said. “They need an ambulance, and I think that poor deputy is dead, and I've got to get back to jail.”
And so Ms. Bowler turned herself in a third time, at which point the focus shifted to her heroism, the ineptitude of the sheriff's department, and whether she should be in the county's custody at all.
The question for the hour from the public about a serial killer who when given perfect opportunity to kill again had not done so, was: “Captain Bowler we know of and Jesus we know of, but WHO is Rev. Gordon?”
Rev. Gordon was the co-founder of The Church in the Midst of Life in downtown Big Loft where Ms. Bowler had turned herself in the first time – essentially, he had become one of her two pastors, and had come regularly to see Ms. Bowler at the county jail since her arrest. He had started bringing Mrs. Gordon with him around the time of the trial, and it had been observed that Ms. Bowler greatly enjoyed the time she had spent with the Gordons – she modeled her behavior after them, more and more.
Now of course Ms. Bowler was a chameleon, both consciously and unconsciously – consciously when she infiltrated the circles of people she would eventually destroy, and unconsciously when around people like her father. This was natural behavior for a sociopath who had so few feelings of her own; she literally had all kinds of room emotionally to take on whatever was around her. Her mother had been a chameleon too, mirroring Captain Bowler's behavior long enough to make him think she loved him and would make a good wife. He had never seen the change coming, just as he had not known his daughter would become a serial killer after his death.
BUT, here was the difference. As Captain Lee had figured out, Captain Bowler had passed on the capacities – recessive, but present – for love and loyalty to his daughter. She had loved her father, and still loved him. She loved Captain Lee, at first sight, because he was so like her father. She loved the Gordons. This was not a grown woman's type of love, though … there were some “arrested development” issues happening with Ms. Bowler, but, be that as it may, the result was that the right kind of people around Ms. Bowler could essentially turn her back into a sweet, submissive little girl.
Another crazy turn of events: the trial judge on Ms. Bowler's case had gotten into a car accident just before he was supposed to make a sentencing decision – so, old Judge Jonathan Wainwright had gotten the call to take over the case.
Judge Wainwright was trying to be retired – 75 years old, grumpy, on call only for emergencies, and had seen what he thought was it all.
Nope. Ms. Bowler's case was new. It had new wrinkles even on top of Dorian Anderson's similar case the month before.
“Where are we getting all these messed-up kids from in Lofton County – or, maybe the country is messed up, and we're just surfacing it here – but why?”
The image of Charlottesville, and of men around both Darcy Bowler and Dorian Anderson's age descending with Tiki torches to talk old racial nonsense as if they should be wedded to it in the 21st century and as if that wedding would serve them well in competition within an increasingly global society – the image of fire at the Gilligan House in nearby Tinyville. VA, and all the rogue police officers who had died or were captured there at around the same age … the image of Bruce Deadwood, hitman turned mass arsonist in the Ridgeline Fire and its destruction of three of the most elite neighborhoods in Big Loft … same age … all this came to Judge Wainwright's mind.
Of course, even among all that, Ms. Bowler stood out, a woman alone in the midst of all of this destruction, coming second only in killing to Bruce Deadwood and the power of fire on a windy day.
“What happened to you, Ms. Darcy?” he said, and dug into the background.
And still, in the foreground – the sheriff's department. What a mess that was! Ms. Bowler had brought back stories of 47 rapes on transports in ten years, and of course the department in this “sleepy” county had NEVER prepared for doing any more than what it historically had done best.
“I'm not a great fan of the Negro,” Judge Wainwright had once said, “but the thing is, if we would stop assuming his criminality, we would find him no more inclined to crime than we White people without good access to resources in the county. Poor people face more daily temptations than rich people do, but, the bigger crimes take more resources – and thus, we do most of those.
“I'm also not a great fan of the so-called liberation of women, but I'm also not for putting them back in their place by brute force should we catch them where we think they ought not be. Criminal consequences are bad enough for women without law enforcement officers working off both their resentment and carnal urges in dealing with women who come into custody.”
Clearly, the department had not been ready to handle the outbreaks of real crime in the past eight months – it was frankly embarrassing how they were flopping around in the old paradigm.
So then, what to do with Ms. Bowler until Judge Wainwright could get a grasp on how to sentence her?
Before he could even get a good grip, there was a FOURTH left turn in the matter. Three retired deputies who had been friends with Deputy Joe Randy had decided to use their old fobs to go pull out the mere woman who had killed their friend and deal with her – three on one. They figured their friends who were the night guards after the women staffers went home would back them up. They forgot that one of the night staffers had a bone to pick with all three of them, and he was on duty that night.
It is one thing to attack a lioness if you can corner her in her cage. It's another thing if she knows you are coming. By the time Sheriff Nottingham made it to the scene, all three of his former deputies had their broken arms wedged between the bars up to the elbow, stuck tight while still alive and screaming.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bowler made herself some ear buds from mattress fiber and went right back to sleep, and she still looked like a sweet little girl dreaming a sweet little dream while the bars were cut to get the former deputies out. Who dared to wake her, after all?
That was enough for Judge Wainwright, who made a decision, a few phone calls, and another decision. Four left turns took one clear around the block. Darcy Bowler was still at the county jail she wasn't supposed to be in, and, as expected, folks who bothered her were getting carried out on gurneys. It was time to go in a completely new direction.
Part 3: New Direction, New Destination
10:00am, February 13, 2020 – the time of a hearing in Judge Wainwright's chambers with Neville Milquetoast, assistant district attorney, Lydia Feldman, Darcy Bowler's lead attorney, and Sheriff Nottingham, looking as tired as he could be after that long, long night of compound fractures at the county jail. The attorneys were surprised when Rev. Gordon of The Church in the Midst of Life also arrived and sat down.
Judge Wainwright's expression was unreadable, but the fact that his clerk started out by passing out his crisply written gag orders meant that he was about to drop a legal bombshell.
“It is still going to be another few weeks before I make a decision on the final disposition of Ms. Bowler's sentencing,” he said, “but before that I am going to make an order about what custody she is going to be in while she waits. I am leaving her in joint custody of your department, Sheriff Nottingham, but I am remanding her to the home of Rev. and Mrs. Gordon to await her sentencing, under the guard of your department outside the house.”
The two attorneys and the sheriff said, together: “What?”
“Unless Ms. Bowler is in proper care, she will continue to violently harm or kill others. Your department does not seem to be able to provide the proper care, Sheriff.”
Sheriff Nottingham had known Judge Wainwright a long time. He knew better than to answer back.
“Rev. Gordon and Rev. Baxter run the city's finest re-entry program out of their church,” the judge said, “and even have good results with the violent criminals they receive. Recidivism is below 10 percent from their program; 90 percent return to being or become for the first time productive citizens in our society. Although Ms. Bowler will never be a candidate for re-entry, I am comfortable with Rev. Gordon and Rev. Baxter's plan for a personalized safe-care program for her until her sentencing and final disposition.”
“Surely the law does not say you can do that!” Neville Milquetoast piped up.
“It also doesn't say I can't. Given that you began with a defendant who began by pleading guilty to 258 counts of first-degree murder, and yet and still were outmaneuvered to the point that all that she has been convicted of is 258 counts of manslaughter, we cannot take you as our legal eagle of the day, Mr. Milquetoast. Extra demerits for you letting Captain Lee, who would have been your star witness at trial, get subpoenaed and have to testify for the defense in the sentencing hearing. Unbelievably sloppy legal handling.”
Ms. Feldman's eyes sparkled, but she was wise enough to restrain her laughter.
Sheriff Nottingham was not so wise, and guffawed, and instantly regretted it.
“I don't know why you are laughing, Sheriff,” Judge Wainwright snapped. “If the law let me do it, Sheriff, I would have you and your entire department thrown into the county jail for just contempt of the positions you hold and the county you serve by means of gross negligence. But keep laughing and acting like an old fool in here – contempt of court will do.
“I'm disgusted with all of you but Rev. Gordon. Ms. Feldman, you and your team have done brilliant work on behalf of the worst killer ever to be brought to court in Lofton County – brilliantly disgusting. Mr. Milquetoast, if the law let me do it I'd just throw you into prison next to the sheriff here, because you two in your shabbiness deserve each other.
“All of you have forgotten how to handle real crime and real criminals because you have spent too many years running Black people through the system for profit – you jacked up misdemeanor criminals for felonies, and now have come to the point that you need serial killers to turn themselves in again and again while tracking down your quarry and weeding out your rogue associates – female serial killers, even! How you look at yourselves in the mirror as men in the morning, I do not know.
“Meanwhile, Rev. Gordon has had so much good effect on Ms. Bowler in his twice-weekly visits that this serial killer has changed her serial behavior. She has had six occasions to kill, and has only killed in self-defense one time. In order that she and the public be safe, I have no choice but to put her in the best custody. Your department, Sheriff, will assist in providing a 24-hour guard on Rev. Gordon's home, which is adjacent to his church.
“Ms. Bowler will be fitted with a location bracelet keyed to the vicinity of the church and the duplex parsonage, but she has proven over and over that she is not a flight risk. That is just a concession to your department, Sheriff, in case your deputies feel the need to make doughnut runs while on duty – as long as that bracelet doesn't go off, I won't be calling you to fill in for your deputies.”
Sheriff Nottingham turned red, but kept quiet.
The judge finally turned to Rev. Gordon.
“Is all prepared?”
“Yes, sir, it is. We can receive Ms. Bowler at the court's pleasure.”
“I have asked a member of the Big Loft police force to do the transport today, in assistance to the sheriff's department, and he will be here at 11:00.”
Judge Wainwright summarized his order, and his clerk handed copies to all present, and that was that.
Atty. Feldman turned the knife in the hearts of Sheriff Nottingham and Atty. Milquetoast as she passed them in the hallway of the courthouse on her way out.
“Well, gentlemen,” she said with a smile, “some you win, and some you lose.”
Rev. Gordon passed them as well, being in a hurry to get over to the county jail – it was already 10:35.
Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee arrived in a Big Loft police car at exactly 11:00. The sight of him and Rev. Gordon together caused Ms. Bowler to smile so big and beautiful that all men in the vicinity forgot about the sun for a few seconds, looking at her.
Thirty minutes later, Mrs. Gordon and Ms. Bowler were in the kitchen at the parsonage, cooking. They had been talking about all the things Ms. Bowler had never learned from her mother, and Mrs. Gordon had promised that as long as Ms. Bowler was her guest, she would help her learn.
“I can't believe I'm about to eat a serial killer's cooking,” Rev. Gordon said to Rev. Baxter.
“We're putting it all on the line, for real!” Rev. Baxter said. “Onyx and I will be over by 6, so, if we're going to Heaven, we're all going together!”
But it came out very well, and this was Ms. Bowler's introduction to the community around the Gordons, the Baxters, and the Church in the Midst of Life as yet another sinner, learning how to live in a new way. Ms. Bowler had a knack for project work – of course – and it would soon be put to good use.
Later that night, Rev. and Mrs. Gordon compared notes.
“Who but God woulda thunk it!” Mrs. Gordon said.
“It's crazy,” Rev. Gordon said, “but it's a crazy world. What did you learn about her today?”
“She's changed, a lot – I don't think she fully understands being a Christian, because she just doesn't understand right and wrong on an internal level. She is a sociopath. But here's the thing; she's stopped killing. Five times down, and she hasn't killed when she could have, and she said Jesus told her not to. He doesn't talk with people He doesn't know as Savior.”
“That's sort of the same feeling I have about it,” Rev. Gordon said. “She'll only be here a few weeks at best, but we will do what we can to give her the best understanding possible, and then it is in the Lord's hands from here.”
Nobody knew that Covid-19 would make this arrangement last longer than anyone intended. Owing to the gag order, no one in the public knew that Darcy Bowler, mass murderer, was living in a private house and learning how to do good. She disappeared and was forgotten in the crush of later news events, for Covid-19 was a greater killer than she.
Yet this is how it occurred that, on a unexpected stop on her journey into a lifetime of judgment, the woman who knew evil without regret also had a chance to learn how to stop doing evil and learn to do good, and gain power to do good that she had never had before. She would never understand moral and ethical things as deeply a normal human being would, but, for a serial killer to sin no more in her most infamous way of sinning – that was progress, miraculous progress, all by itself.
Fabulous story! Coming back tomorrow for a second look!
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Thank you so much!
Wow, this is a lot of work :)
Yes, this took more work than a five-minute freewrite would!