When you write about child murder by a parent, as I have, people link you these stories. If you have not walked the territory, the killings make no sense. It's stating the obvious that to the person who commits the murder, it makes sense in the moment. You walk to where you get to. I had something small happen yesterday that sent me into a tailspin. Luckily, by temperament, and the steady voice of reason from the boyfriend, it flushed from my system in 10 minutes. But what if you have neither? What if you let the worm turn? People whose "rightness" depends on another being wrong do not realize they are filling the environment with figurative carbon monoxide, a poison they will find themselves defending; they will stay in conference with it, it will tell them what to do. Some might call this the devil, or mental illness—we are quick to label such acts as "evil" or "crazy" because then there is no longer a reason to look deeper, and I support not wanting to look deeper. There is so much sorrow in these stories, and to lavish any attention on the perpetrator does not seem like a good use of heart and time. I can tell myself I have done so mostly to honor the little ones, and that's true. I think I am also transfixed by the flashing warning signs that people misread, or ignore, or find ways to justify because looking at them for what they are makes no sense. But to the transgressor or the killer, the acts axiomatically do make sense. I'll tell you of two instances: when Rebecca Recht was murdered by her mother Laurie, who committed suicide, I spent time looking into their lives and writing about it. Laurie had Munchausen by Proxy, and spent years walking, to so speak, to where she overdosed herself and her 14-year-old daughter. After the story was published, I dreamed I was on the ocean floor with Rebecca. We were having a tea party and she told me, she was okay with what had happened, that she loved her mother, which in life was true. This is not me letting Laurie off the hook; she did horrible things to Rebecca and there is no part of what she perpetrated that is okay. And maybe the dream was just some comfort I needed to take, I don't know. I do know it felt necessary to tell her story…
Sacrificing Rebecca
For 14 years, Laurie Recht struggled with her daughter’s illness. At least, that’s what she wanted people to believe.
At 7 pm on Thursday, Oct. 11, Sarah Starr asked her husband to make a detour on their way to Borders—it was their sixth wedding anniversary, and she wanted books—so they could drive by the Vancouver, Wash., home of Laurie Recht and her 14-year-old daughter, Rebecca.
Starr was concerned about Rebecca and she had not heard from Laurie since Monday, highly unusual for a woman in the habit of calling five times a day.
Pulling in front of the small rental home in Fishers Landing, Starr could not tell whether Laurie’s Ford Taurus was in the garage. The lights were out inside the house; the shades were drawn. Starr rang the bell, knocked, called out. No answer. She asked a neighbor if he’d seen Laurie. Not since Monday, he said, trash day. Since she’d quit paying her garbage bill, he’d allowed Laurie to stow her trash with his for pick-up. But he had a key to Laurie’s house, and he let in Starr and her husband.
Inside, Starr could hear a television. Before she walked the steps to Laurie’s bedroom, before she felt the cold air from the room’s air conditioner, she sensed what she’d find. Laurie was on the bed, blood on her lips; beside her was Rebecca, so slight she barely made a dent beneath the covers, dried vomit around her mouth. Starr and the neighbor called 9-1-1. An EMT told Starr the condition of the bodies indicated the pair had been dead several days. Clark County Sheriff’s Department Detective Rick Buckner put the probable date of the deaths as Wednesday, Oct. 10. Starr says she knew, in her “heart, it happened Monday.”
Monday, Oct. 8, was supposed to be a banner day for Laurie and Rebecca. As in previous years, they were guests of honor at a concert by Peter Yarrow of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul&Mary. Yarrow had come from New York to sing for Rebecca at Park Academy, the private school for the dyslexic she attended in Lake Oswego. Through a series of benefits, Yarrow raised part of Rebecca’s $14,000 annual tuition. As she had in the past, Rebecca joined Yarrow onstage, where they sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” as classmates cheered and The Lake Oswego Review took photos. Following the concert, Laurie drove Rebecca home and, at some point, gave her daughter a fatal overdose of prescription drugs and swallowed the same herself.
The deaths blindsided many in the Portland area. Former and current teachers, parents and therapists struggled to make sense of how a mother so outwardly devoted to her disabled daughter could take her life and then her own. The Oregonian story about the murder-suicide was headlined “Vancouver mom spent her life trying to get best for daughter” and included a photo of Rebecca singing with Yarrow, noting that the girl “had cerebral palsy and dyslexia.” The story mentioned how Laurie, a single mother, “couldn’t hold a job given the time needed to care for Rebecca” and due to her own pain from fibromyalgia.
In the coming weeks, there would be memorials. At Clark County Chabad, Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg spoke of Rebecca’s piety, her enthusiasm. After services, attendees shook their heads. Laurie had fought tenaciously, they said, for the child born prematurely and burdened with a nearly unfathomable number of illnesses and disabilities. This little girl and her mother had survived so much, and for this to happen, none of it made any sense.
What no one knew was that Rebecca’s mom had made much of it up….
Keep reading, “Sacrificing Rebecca”…
The second instance also came in a dream. I had published To the Bridge, A True Story of Motherhood and Murder, about Amanda Stott-Smith, who threw her two young children from a bridge in Portland, Oregon, killing her four-year-old son Eldon. I never met Eldon, but I did spend years learning about him and who he was. Not look after the book came out, I dreamed I walked into a kindergarten. I sat on a little chair at a low table with Eldon. We talked a bit, and I asked if he could write his name for me on a piece of construction paper. He did, with industry, and then showed it to me, in a way I took to mean, “Remember me.” Which I hope I have done.
I am not really sure why I found myself writing this at 6:30 in the morning. It started with the idea that we always have a choice with what anger or grace we handle events. The father in this tragedy cultivated a taste for poison and listened to it whispering, “You are right you are right you are right.” I will still write the terrible stories—I am writing one right now—but no more tailspins ever.
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