Broken Doll Read Free Page B

consequences at home, and yet she came home straight off the bus.”
    Advised by Gelo that skipping class was not a prudent decision, and one that entailed consequences, Feather had no objections. “She was not the least defiant,” said Gelo. “She was pleasant and cooperative.”
    Spring break started that day, and Feather was put on restriction. “Again, there was no arguing, not even the sullen look that I would have seen from any of my other teenagers. Saturday morning, she got up very compliant, asked me, ‘What can I do to help you today?’”
    Feather helped with the children while Gelo went grocery shopping. “She asked if she could go outside and rollerblade, and my husband said it was okay as long as she was on the corner of our house, and not across the street. That was fine with Feather, it seemed. She soon returned, and my husband suggested that they go downstairs and watch a movie together. He went on down and waited for her, but she didn’t come down.”
    He looked upstairs, and out on the deck, but Feather wasn’t there. “He looked out the living-room window just in time to see her rollerblading by our house with a backpack on her back and a little bag in her hand. And a few minutes later,” said Gelo, “my nineteen-year-old daughter, Faith, came to our house and she had seen Feather down at the 7-Eleven with what looked like a cigarette in her hand. By that time, I had come home, and we went down looking for her and she was gone; we couldn’t find her. And,” said Julie Gelo, in 1997, “that’s the last time anyone has seen or heard from her.”
    Rather than again relive her childhood trauma, Feather packed basic belongings into a backpack, then rollerbladed down the block, around the corner, and out of sight.
    She would never be a witness for the prosecution against the man charged in the brutal, sexually motivated slaying of seven-year-old Roxanne Doll—the big man from the dark garage whose fractured family, abusive upbringing, and interpersonal malaise were tragically similar to her own—a young man who manifested each stereotypical trait of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: Richard Mathew Clark.

Chapter 2
    Richard Mathew Clark entered the world as the fruit of an adulterous womb, on August 18, 1968, and was the youngest of three children. His mother, Kathleen Ann-Marie Feller, had married George Walter-Burton Clark Jr. when she was fifteen years old and already pregnant. The age at which Kathleen began drinking is unknown, but her adult years were spent ceaselessly under the influence.
    â€œWhen my mom got pregnant with me,” said George Clark II, “her folks didn’t approve of my father or my mother’s actions, getting pregnant out of wedlock and such. I believe they held it against us, maybe me, but they didn’t have much to do with us.”
    There was an inarguable difference between Richard, his sister, Leslie, and four year older George Clark II. Richard Clark’s father was Gordon Nickel-son. This parental faux pas contributed to the Clarks’ separation when Richard was sixteen months old, and their subsequent divorce. Carol Clark, the children’s aunt, good-hearted and protective, often looked after the youngsters.
    â€œShe came and stayed with us when Richard was first born,” recalled George Clark II. “She was a good cook, and I always had lunch for school.”
    The home was not long without a father figure or Kathleen without a man. Neither did her reproductive system remain idle. Commuting to the eastern Washington town of Moses Lake to drive a potato truck, Kathleen met Norman Hastings.
    â€œWhen she came back from Moses Lake, he would come over and visit, stay the weekend,” recalled George Clark II, “and that’s how my younger sister Jennet Hastings came about.”
    After the relationship with Hastings petered out, another man entered