at least it appeared that way, maybe they were just tired. They reminded me of the three blind mice in the old cartoons. When they came back into the house, my Uncle Wendell told my Aunt Francis that they had dug up the body and reburied beneath the culvert (pipe) that ran under a road (which could not have been far from where she was originally buried). Then he said “no one will ever find her there, no one will know what happened”. Later that evening, I went up to my Aunt Francis to apologize to her for what had happened, and she told me get away and said that “It’s all your fault Forrest”. I cannot put into words how that made me feel at that moment, but the feeling has never left me, and I think it may have set the tone for what was to happen to me throughout my life after that.
Eventually, my mother arrived, maybe the next day, picked me up, and we left the ranch. On the way home, she repeatedly asked me what was wrong. I think that maybe she might have called Aunt Francis and got the story of what happened from her. It was obvious that something bad had happened to me, and it bothered my mother, and that’s why I think she might have called.
I do not know for sure where we ended up. My father had died what seemed to be a few months earlier, and I don’t think my mother was settled anywhere in particular, and that’s how I ended up at the ranch by myself in the first place. I thank god that none of my three sisters were there when they attacked us, or the same thing might have happened to them.
The house where we were staying was an old depression era house, it even had the bed that folded down out of the wall. There was an open entry way with a door that went into a bedroom. That’s all I remember of that place, though I keep thinking it may have been in Rodeo, California or somewhere else in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was morning, there was a knock on the door, my mother opened the door and there was the bad guy and Bill in their navy uniforms and pea-coats. They walked inside and stood on either side of my mother in what would be the foyer. Then they grabbed my mother, and dragged her into a bedroom off the foyer and shut the door. I heard a struggle and my mother screaming. Then the screaming stopped. The door opened, and my mother and the two attackers walked back into the foyer. My mother’s robe was torn open, and her breasts were exposed. The bad guy had his shirt torn open. The bad guy was laughing, my mother slapped him, but he continued to laugh. Then, Bill walked up to me and knelt down so that only I could hear him, and he said “If you ever tell anyone about what happened up there, we will do the same thing to your mother that we did to that girl”. He then asked me if I understood, and I nodded yes, and then I said “Please don’t touch me anymore”. He quietly said “ok, I promise”. He then stood up, and he and the bad guy left. My mother did absolutely nothing about it. how shameful of her.
This experience taught me so much about human behavior. There are only a few good people in this world that will stand up for one that is suffering, and defend that person at any cost. The others will abandon you, and leave you to whatever fate awaits you. It has taken me a long time, but now I stand up for myself, and I never expect anyone to stand up for me, or to even stand next to me. I simply do not trust anyone to do something like that. Especially the ones that say they will always be there for you, they are the worst.
Soon after Bill and the bad guy left, four or five policemen showed up at the door and wanted to talk to me. My mother let them in (and she still didn’t do or say anything about what had happened earlier), one nice looking policeman came up to me to talk, and I backed right into the corner of the foyer where I was standing. The policeman came closer and crouched down to talk to me (he had sandy brown receding hair, greased and combed straight back, plain looking, but nice looking). He asked if I could tell him anything about what happened at the Elzigs ranch. I was so frightened at the prospect of the bad guy and Bill coming back to rape and murder my mother that I just started hitting him while screaming and crying for him to leave me alone. The tears were falling like rain from my eyes, and I could never figure out why he couldn’t tell something bad had happened to me. I must have embarrassed him, because he stood up, said a few words to my mother and left. I always wondered why he never came back. I really wanted to tell him what happened, and all it would have taken was a little coaxing. I wanted to tell him everything. The one thing I realized through all this is that no one really seems to care as long as it does not directly affect them. The complacency and indifference of this world is nothing new, it probably goes back to the cave man.
This is where the story ends at this point in my life. I learned how vicious adults can be and what coward’s they really are. They are consumed by ignorance, fear and cowardice, and don’t have enough sense to save their own asses. I think I know where my guardian angel is buried, or close enough that I think I can find her. Ever since this event, I have had many thoughts as to why I was spared. I have always had a knowing feeling that I owe a debt for my life being saved by her, and I think that debt repayment will come when I find her and give her a proper burial. I will pray and cry over her like she deserves.
As for Bill and Jake, Jake became an alcoholic and died a troubled man in the 1970’s or 80” s. As for Bill, for about ten or so years, I had to occasionally interact with him. He had children that were our age, and we would visit them sometimes. Once when I must have been about ten years old, and we were staying at the Munroe’s rental house in Mountain Ranch, California, Bill was wrestling with my cousins and my sisters, he then turned and grabbed me to pull me into the wrestling match. I freaked out, backed away from him, and said to him “you promised”. He stopped immediately and said “oh yeah”, let me go and turned to continue wrestling with the other kids.
Bill and his family eventually moved to the state of Oregon, and he died there in 2001. Throughout my life I would hear stories of what a crook he was, and was not to be trusted. Every time my mother would hear his name after the incident at the house, she would start getting very angry and talking very hatefully about him, though she never told anyone of authority about what Bill and the bad guy did. Instead, she would take it out on me. What a coward.
I still don’t know who the bad guy was (although he looks a lot like someone who worked for the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department, but I do not want to accuse someone without more proof). I am still looking for him, “the Bad Guy”, “The rapist”, “The pedophile”, “the murderer”, the one who triggered the end of what might have been for her and I.
But as you will see, no one cares about something that happened years ago. Her murder was covered up through fear and intimidation. After what they did to my mother, I can just imagine what they did and/or said to the girl’s aunt. There seemed to be no reference to my babysitter being missing in the local newspapers, but when you think about he fact that maybe she was kept out of the local newspapers intentionally, it makes sense. I have gone to the museum and archives in Calaveras County twenty times now (in 1991, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011,2012,2013,2014). I read every newspaper, from 1954 through 1957, and I can find no reference to her disappearance. I may have made some headway by reading the Oakland Tribune’s microfilm collection (I have read more than 1,000 newspapers, cover to cover) at the City of Oakland Main Library. But again, I don’t want to rush to conclusions without more information. I just need more information. If I am right in my suspicions, then the Calaveras Sheriff’s Department and other agencies may have been complicit in the cover up of her murder.
My Uncle Wendell was a member of the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Posse, so I think he was able to convince all interested parties that she had run away, got lost in the woods, and died there. So there was no sense in looking for her. Maybe he was right, maybe no one will ever find her. She was from the San Francisco Bay Area, that much I remember my aunt saying. But that’s it. There was never a missing person’s report filed (thanks to the bad guy and Bill, I assume), and the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department threw away any and all records of her disappearance and the arrest of the Bad Guy. Her life just seemed to disappear into thin air. Looking back on all that has happened, I think everybody would have been happier if I would have died on that day as she did. But I didn’t, and I remember her, she saved me three times, she is my guardian angel, and I feel that she keeps me alive until I find her, and fulfill an oath that I have sworn to her, myself and to god. I really don’t
