speak

~ katiecoolady ~ 2 Comments

You can have crawled through your own fires of Hell, created a beautiful wonderful current life, and still be sharing about what you recovered from for your own reasons, that you don’t need to explain. This does not mean you are “stuck” or “unhealed” (although you can be, fires of Hell can sometimes take a lifetime of continual healing).

You can also choose to be silent about what you went through, which does not mean you haven’t dealt with it. It’s just your way. Both are valid.

I’ve said before, you can have been victimized, but not make your entire identity as “victim” in the way people will criticize others for.

Living your best life, while speaking out about what you survived and continue to survive, can be occurring simultaneously.

For some, it’s hard to hear the voice of your trauma for their own reasons. For others, it’s the life raft they need to keep going. Yet, it’s ok to speak and keep speaking for yourself, knowing it’s part of your own healing path. When your words fall in the right place to help someone else, well that’s a bonus.

I once described my speaking out about a particular issue as a “splinter in my soul” that needed to dislodge in that way. I was asked to erase my words, which to me meant re-inserting that splinter that was already out. Why would I do that to myself?

With that being said, if you are called to tell your story, tell it. If you feel pressured to tell it, but prefer to keep it private, do that for yourself. Let your own needs for the telling/not telling be your compass.

I’ve moved in to what I believe are the best years of my whole life now, because I’ve spoken and re-spoken on certain things. I’m clearing myself. And it’s reinforcing that others find inspiration in watching me rise.

With all that being said, I’m hoping my words from a seven hour interview are cut and strung together tonight in a way that match my intent. And that they tell Cindy’s story with respect and understanding. I liked this production crew (British) and think they are keeping respecting her at the forefront. I felt that from the beginning. And they didn’t even try to reach out to the killers. This is more about Cindy’s story.

I’ve been invited to a Q and A discussion about the episode tomorrow night on Youtube with a true crime channel who I greatly admire. She chooses to maintain her anonymity for her own reasons, which I also greatly admire. She simply goes by the name Fanci Fiction and I think she’s brilliant, so am honored she invited me on for this.

Here is the link for that live broadcast which will be at 7pm EST tomorrow (Monday).

In the first comment below I’ll place a link for places you can catch the episode tonight at 9pm EST. Again it’s the show American Monster on the Investigation Discovery channel. Also on the Discovery Plus app.

I appreciate you tuning in for Cindy’s story. There will be video and audio and photos you’ve never seen before.

I appreciate all of you who still remember and care about our sister, who we will never, ever forget.

another intrusion

~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

some flowers I saw at Pike Market yesterday as some brightness before what you’re about to read

I realized this week that I’ve been dealing with issues around Cindy’s murder for over half my life now. Not just the grieving process, but the constant intrusions by the men who killed her and those who champion them (most likely them to be honest).

This week was no exception.

Once I decided I was finished with my writing for this visit, and taking a little transition break for myself doing some fun things, DING DONG, not so fast.

I was contacted by my Victim’s Rights Attorney in Phoenix about yet a new wrinkle in this fully-wrinkled map that was created in 1988.

Some background.

When we went to trial in 1990, the AZ Victim’s Bill of Rights was pretty new and of the many protections, one was that representatives for the killers could not contact us, as victims, without going through a representative for us. Some of you may remember the woman the Federal Legal Defender’s office sent to my doorstep one cold mid-December day–the day I had hauled out my decorations for my house–and sat in my living room trying to get ME to help THEM get leniency for Cindy’s killers. I was so disoriented as to who she was, as I trusted the mandate that I could not be directly contacted. I thought she was someone for our side when I let her in from the cold. But no, when I confronted her on that, she had the loophole she slipped through on the tip of her tongue. I kicked her out of my house and she left me her card.

I contacted our prosecutor who put me with the AZ Crime Victims Legal Assistance Project, who represented me, then used that invasion as an example to close that loophole, which was successful. Keli Luther, may she rest in peace (gone too soon), was who championed that cause. There is a whole chapter in my book that details this story. Likely the most egregious event that happened to me after the murder–driven by those who champion the killers.

Well, guess what? That statute has been overturned. Apparently they argued that it doesn’t matter who contacts a victim–the prosecution or the defense. Or who ambushes them in their home, the trauma is the same,

Yeah, no.

So, I’m being asked to retell that story in order to help the AG’s office appeal this reversal, which I will do.

Once I think I can compartmentalize this stuff, there it is again, reminding me of its ever presence. For the first time in over thirty years, I found myself wishing Michael Apelt would be executed, die of natural causes in prison or otherwise just disappear. I’ve not for one moment been invested, but as his execution looms, so do these traumatic invasions. I’ve been pretty neutral and detached about his execution, but these folks fighting against it are making me a staunch desirer for this sentence to be completed as ordered. Guess that backfired, huh?

I’ll do my part. But living in a mine field requires a certain type of resilience and I’m just tired.

Anyway, that’s that.

I just found the listing for the show they are doing on Cindy:

AMERICAN MONSTER

New Episodes Premiere Sundays at 9/8c on ID and Available to Stream on discovery+

If you looked into the eyes of a killer, would you know? Yet, on any street, behind any smile, lurks an AMERICAN MONSTER. Never-before-seen-video footage looks straight into the eyes of a killer, hidden in plain sight. Mom next door; dad across the street; the kid who never broke the rules. Anyone can be a MONSTER.

· Brothers and Sisters Premieres Sunday, November 20 at 9/8c on ID

Cindy Monkman turns heads wherever she goes, but by age 30, she’s looking for something more serious. Michael Apelt, a handsome German businessman, seems to be the answer to her prayers… until their first Christmas together turns into a horror story.

It’s interesting they titled it Brothers and Sisters. That’s the first I’ve seen that.

I have a Youtube channel now that I’ve done nothing with, but I have a potential upcoming project that I will be using it for.

I may schedule a live chat to talk about this episode after it airs.

Let me know if that is something you might want to participate in. Like just a “filling in the blanks” or Q and A or simply gathering for support.

Love you all out there continuing to care and read.

Kathy

I went to Biscuit Bitch today in Seattle.

I really look forward to the day when I can just enjoy my life vs. enjoying it in spite of…..

updates

~ katiecoolady ~ 3 Comments

yesterday was my birthday, so I treated myself to a ride on the ferry to get a crepe across the way

Sharing a snippet today detailing a piece on one of dozens of cons the Apelt brothers pulled off while in the Phoenix area for that brief three months before killing Cindy. From telegrams announcing each others’ deaths to glean money, to stealing cash, to constant stories about their wealth and snafus getting it, they got thousands of dollars in a short time.

But before, that, in other news, another TV program is doing a show on Cindy. They approached me last Spring about it and explained it is a victim-centric show, diving in to who the victim was and detailing their life. Since that is also the theme of my book, it resonated with me, although I think this show has a pretty awful name: American Monster.

The show will air on the Investigation Discovery Network on Sunday Nov. 20, at 9pm EST. Most channel lineups have this channel. It will also be available on the Discovery Plus app. after that.

They interviewed me for about seven hours, asking detailed questions about our upbringing, Cindy’s life/education/jobs/relationships/travel on and on…

They also interviewed Cathy Hughes, our prosecutor and Ron Davis, one of the detectives. As well as some of Cindy’s friends.

Once again I went on an odyssey of discovery of videos and photos to use. In 1988 times were different without cell phones or even many home video cameras, so it is limited. So we will see what they piece together.

We can join together to discuss the next day if you want.

So that’s that.

Now here is my snippet for today:

During the few hours the brothers stayed at the Rubenstein home, they convinced Cher and her husband that they had been robbed of five thousand dollars from their hotel room the day before. Rudi was still maintaining they were in the wind surfing business and Michael claimed they worked for the MARS Corporation.  Cher testified that she believed they worked for the corporation that made the Mars candybar. She filed a report with the Mesa Police Department the following day to report the “robbery”, but they declined to pursue it.

“They said they were very rich,” she testified.

A few evenings later, Cher went to dinner with the brothers alone, where they convinced her that they were having trouble getting their Mercedes transferred over to the States from Germany. They were dining at Black Angus restaurant and Cher had four hundred dollars cash tucked in her wallet, ready to pay some bills with. During the course of that meal, Rudi successfully convinced her that their Mercedes was stuck in Customs and they needed money to get it out. Cher forked over all of the cash in her wallet in the parking lot after the meal. She described Michael as “quite elated” when he discovered they now had the cash to obtain their car.

“Thank you very much. Friends for life,” he said, pleased.

Today is my last day in the Studio before I move in to Seattle to await my husband (who is on a cross country train!) for a few days. So today is my last writing day for this time.

As always, thanks for being out there, reading and caring.

healing

~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

I took this photo, unfiltered, this morning–wow what a view

This last year has been tough.

Dad died leaving a complicated estate for me to wade through and I’m still not done. My brother and I came way too close to losing access to our entire inheritance thanks to Marjorie–thankfully detected and corrected before Dad died. That was just the beginning of the gauntlet of complex banking and property/insurance/trust issues I’ve been working through for over a year now. I detailed that harrowing experience in the book so stay tuned for that story.

Plus my brother has been hospitalized twice, so managing him and taking care of our own lives with Lillian so she didn’t get lost in the shuffle; it’s just been a lot.

I told my husband this morning that I came on this trip as much to heal as complete the book. Don’t get me wrong, I’m writing, editing and re-organizing things for a few hours each day, but there is no urgency to finish things up as I’d planned. This is therapy for me, as is being here in Edmonds which is like a familiar safe cocoon. I love this little cozy studio and it has everything I need. I have my favorite haunts like restaurants, the Korean spa, the ferry and this view of course. It all nourishes me.

I think once Dad died, it really set me free to more deeply explore the abuse we experienced as kids and the impacts on each of us. It’s always been so much easier to focus on Marj, as we just didn’t love her, but the betrayal of our father, that’s the sting. With his being gone now, I no longer feel like I’m betraying him, by looking at how he betrayed us if that makes sense.

I keep finding myself winding back in to the chapters related to those traumas–adding, editing, honing in on what’s important and in what order to reveal it. It’s so important to me to at least look at our childhood trauma as a backdrop for the fatal choices Cindy made. It all fits together so clearly in my head and I hope I’m conveying it on the page.

Here is a snippet I’ve been working on this morning:

This juxtaposition of a life, led us to focus on the good times, while doing our best to deny and avoid the violence, desperately trying to cling to a vision of normalcy. At that age, the only thing you really want is to fit in and be normal. This very style of coping is evident in Cindy’s journal years later, when the stakes were far higher. Life and death, literally.

I’m in a whirlwind situation with so many confusing feelings. I need more than ever to give myself positive self-talk. I feel opposition in what I am doing and am not comfortable covering up the truth of what my new relationship with Michael is. It’s like I’m living two lives.

Cindy and I created our own little world, our own languages, our own forms of blocking ourselves off to Marj’s invasions, which angered her even more.  “No one can get close to you girls” she would say, blaming us for her emotional distance. 

Cindy warned me not to share too much with her, definitely not secrets.  “She will use it against you some day” she intuitively seemed to know as a tween.  Cindy was right, not that I always heeded her advice.  Marj, a social worker, did have a skill in extracting people’s most intimate stories.  She was easy to talk to. Yet in our case, she would stockpile the most vulnerable aspects of our inner suffering, then hurl them at us sometimes years later in the form of words like “well, as we all know, you’ve had problems with insecurity your entire life,” she’d say with a sympathetic looking nod. A passive-aggressive confusing message which made you think she was trying to help you, while feeling like shit at the same time. At one time or another, Marj heard from each of us the question “Why do you always need to see me in the most screwed up way possible?”. 

It was like our problems/insecurities/struggles gave this woman life.

I’ve been up writing for hours now, so time for a break. It’s a blustery day outside, so I’m enjoying staying in watching these amazing textured clouds float over the Puget Sound.

I was going to run some errands, like getting the tire light checked on my rental car, but I’m thinking I may just take a wander over to my friend DoorDash and be an inside girl all day today. It’s so nice to have no schedule and no plans.

It’s one of my favorite ways to live.

me. at the movies last night to see Tar with Cate Blanchett

why?

~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

One of the main reasons I am writing this book, in the way that I’m doing it, is to explore the story behind the tragedy of Cindy’s murder. What set my sister up to be the victim that she was, in spite of the glaring warning signs flashing before her eyes? She was a beautiful, popular, well educated woman who walked right in to a trap filled with red flags. Why?

I woke up today with a clear thought about something. About how we coped in our childhood home, that had become this juxtaposition of really fun times with a life-of-the-party father and a new “mother” who turned out lives inside out with Behavior Modification programs peppered with violence. How we learned to deny the danger and focus on the fun, desperately clinging to a sense of normalcy. I suspect this is common with trauma survivors.

I wrote about Cindy not being able to discern, as an adult, that danger was, in fact, dangerous. The other part of this is that when trauma is the norm during your development, a person will unconsciously be drawn to drama.

The patterns established early on in our lives, and how we coped, set her up for a sociopath to hone right in on that weakness. That’s their super power. Quickly zero in on vulnerabilities and instantly start using them to their advantage. That is evident with Michael Apelt whether it was a bank manager, a luxury car dealer or the multitudes of women he was courting.

The most common word Cindy used in her journal during that period up to her death was confused. It’s heartbreaking.

She was off balance and thinking she was balancing, only to be knocked off again. That describes many years of our childhood after Marj entered it. Confused about why she turned our lives so incredibly different so suddenly. Confused about why she sparked in to these uncontrollable rages at us, beating us with hairbrushes/hangers/kitchen utensils. Confused why Dad didn’t intervene. We were tweens when this began and had never been hit other than a smack on the butt way earlier in our lives.

So we coped by just getting through it and letting Dad be our guiding force, while bracing for the next trauma from Marj. Never telling anyone.

Anyway, this is a piece of what I just finished writing this morning:

Anke and Rudi were not at the party, of course. We all believed they were back in Germany and Michael reinforced that.

A strange incident happened after I left that night, where a young man came trying to “drink our free beer,” Michael later claimed. An altercation broke out between this man and Michael and a knife was pulled. Michael sustained a flesh wound to his shoulder.

I thought “there is way too much drama around this guy,” while restraining my opinions. Cindy and my relationship was too important to let the likes of him get in the way. I just had no way to predict the devastation that was coming. The worst I could imagine was a nasty breakup, and we had all been there before.

Cindy kept pushing forward–still ambivalent–but trying to make it work. Still trying to craft some kind of normalcy from all of this. Just like we did in childhood.

From the date of the party, Cindy had just thirteen days left to live.

11/2/1988

Confused about what I am doing

What do I want?

How can I please myself and everyone else at the same time (Michael, Kathy, people at both jobs)?

full beautiful day

~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

I woke up yesterday morning and wrote the story of Dad’s death last October. In many ways, for many reasons, I’ve only begun moving forward with the grieving process. Writing is helpful.

I reminded myself of the distinct difference in losing someone in a tragic way, long before it should be their time, to losing someone in the natural rhythm of life.

I’ve not gone back to what I wrote yet, but I will. Not just yet.

before

The mask making class was fun and wonderful to dive in to the timelessness of creative immersion. Here’s what I made. I’ll enjoy it in the Studio here for the week, then send it as a surprise to Lillian. I made it with her in mind. It’s a kitty cat!

after

As I drove back from downtown Seattle, I longed for a ferry ride, so that’s just what I did.

Edmonds behind me

A round trip with an immediate turnaround so I could catch the beautiful sunset. I so take to this life in the Northwest. I once again started dreaming of my screenplay idea involving a couple meeting on a ferry.

Came home and got enjoyed some Malbec and snacks and a fire.

All in all, a beautiful day. Just as my Dad would want for me.

snippet

~ katiecoolady ~ 2 Comments

snow on the mountains across the Sound

I finally got clear of my medical dramas for the most part (still coughing so staying sequestered for the most part–I hate being disruptive in places like restaurants or movie theatres with a cough).

I’ve been digging in to writing, ordering takeout and reading everything I’ve written thus far. I like it.

my favorite, shredded, writing sweater

I’ll share a snippet this morning that I’ve been editing about my police interview. I flew back from IL to AZ for one day–not even an overnight–to be interviewed before the brothers were arrested. I was too scared to stay even one night knowing they were out there on the loose.

Here is one snippet from that chapter:

I carried my purse and paper bag lunch up to the homicide department floor at the Mesa police station and Debbie met me there. She waited in the open waiting area as Davis escorted me to a small interview room. I ate my tasteless, crumbly sandwich in there alone, waiting a long time for the detectives to join me. I wondered why Debbie couldn’t just hang out with me while I ate and waited. The whole thing was oddly strained and awkward. Later, I wondered if they’d been viewing me through some kind of one-way mirror or hidden camera. I got about half-way through the disappointing sandwich, which was all I could stomach, then stuffed the remainder back in the white paper bag and waited.

Ron Davis finally returned with Homicide Detective George Felger who I met for the first time, although had spoken with numerous times on the phone in those five days. They sat at the bare table with me, turned on a small cassette tape recorder and started asking me questions. They started with the basics then the questioning directed fairly quickly toward Mark Maurer. I referred to the pages of notes I’d made on the plane.

KM: So back to the conversation with Mark, I, I just wrote down things that I, I put ‘em in quotes as they, as I remembered the conversation, that’s what I wrote down.

RD:  That’s fine. Go ahead.

KM: “I told him I was still married but that I still loved him” That was something that she told me several times in the conversation, that she felt good about that, like she was, because she was, it was like in a way that he was upset and she wanted to console him, so she told him, it’s not that I don’t love you anymore, but it’s that I’m married to somebody else and we can’t be together’. And that, she said, ‘I felt good about that because then he wasn’t so upset.’ You know, it was like comforting him was the way she was feeling really good about the fact that she said it, ‘well, at least I was honest and I admitted the truth that I still care for him and I’m, I still love him’.

I could not impress enough on these investigators that Cindy believed Rudi and Anke had been back in Germany for weeks, and the fact that they were in Mesa holed up in the Village Motel together the whole time, was the biggest clue that they were all involved in this.

**************

After spending a few hours with this this morning, I’m headed to this cool spot downtown Seattle for a fun break–a flower mask making class. I’ll post pics later of how mine turned out. I’m going to box it up and send it to Lillian as a surprise–it will keep as we are working with dried flowers.

As always, thanks for being out there and caring,

Kathy

back in Edmonds

~ katiecoolady ~ 5 Comments
took this the day after the smoke cleared–I couldn’t even see the Sound for two days prior

Hello!

I’ve returned to my happy place, Edmonds, WA to finally finish this book.

I had a bit of a rocky re-entry though. I was quite sick the week before leaving, got a positive Covid test, got better quickly and made the cut for traveling post-Covid symptoms, so I was able to travel on this long awaited and planned trip. Also, my brother went off his meds again, and was admitted to the hospital the week before I left, so I had a lot of involvement with that and setting up a likely discharge plan for while I’m gone. Never a dull moment.

I landed in Seattle during an air quality issue, rendering it “the worst air quality in the world” (!). This kicked up my lungs again, landing me in an Urgent Care center for more albuterol for my nebulizer my husband wisely forced encouraged me to pack.

I started to hunker down and start my reading/writing process, only to come down with my first, aggressive, full-body case of the hives three days after arriving. Concerned this might be a reaction to my three-times-a-day albuterol treatments, I landed back in the Urgent care who also couldn’t figure out this new twist. It was kind of scary honestly, as it came on quickly in the evening, and Dr. Google kept talking about anaphylaxis, which just the mere mention of it caused my throat to constrict (ugh–I’m so suggestible). After a dose of Benadryl, I succeeded in knocking it back and knocking myself out and having a day-long hangover the next day, rendering it impossible for me to think clearly, much less read or write.

So I caught up with my obsession curiosity with the NXIVM case, watching and rewatching some episodes about it. As coercive control is an element of my book, this kind of thing is something I study. It’s fascinating and terrifying to realize how vulnerable very smart people can be to this kind of manipulation. Just as Cindy was. It’s not about intellect, usually. It’s about vulnerability. It’s still mind boggling, to me, how long these strings of influence can have over a person, and how damaging they are.

It’s a beautiful cloudy and cool day here in Edmonds, and I have a dinner date tonight with my cousin, so I’m making good use of my brain and this time to read everything I’ve written so far on this book and taking notes.

During my first days, I read Ruth Markel’s true crime memoir about her son Dan’s murder which was very good/heartbreaking/sad/inspiring. It was a perfect way to set my trajectory to getting back in to my writing. I realized I was missing some tonal aspects, and frankly, was just good to feel the solidarity with someone who is ensconced in the same web of murder survivorship and the legal process. I’ve been following that case closely, watching the dominos fall toward justice.

I’ll likely start writing some more tomorrow and share some snippets.

Oh, also they are doing another show on Cindy’s case, which will be airing on Investigation Discovery sometime this Fall or early Winter. I’ve been very involved in that, being interviewed for it, providing lots of video and photos and other material, so that’s been a project. I’ll definitely post when I have more information about when it’s being aired.

Here is one photo I found that I shared with them–not sure it will make the cut for the show, but it was taken on our last family trip to Maine the year she was killed.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned. And, as always, thanks for being there all this time and caring.

I’m still here.

~ katiecoolady ~ 11 Comments

Just a quick update about the book. I have not abandoned it. Life just got very complicated with Covid, moving my father and brother to a retirement community near us in PA (which was not an easy task) and then our father shortly thereafter having a stroke and passing away on October 10, 2021.

In addition to assuming full caretaking of my brother, I’ve been consumed with a complicated estate settling and of course the grieving process of losing my father. While at the same time selling our family condo in Sedona, my Dad’s place in AZ, buying a large lake house in PA and moving all of that. As I said, it’s been a time. Good, hard, sad, glorious, all of the above.

Also, did I mention here that Rudi Apelt died in prison this Spring of natural causes? That has changed my life dramatically as I will never, ever have to attend a parole hearing again. Major. Thank God he’s dead.

But a couple of updates.

A production company out of the UK contacted me a few months back and they are doing an hour long TV show on Cindy’s case. I was interviewed for seven hours a few weeks ago, which was a bit of everything. Part of the reason I say yes to these projects, is I can’t tell you the healing that occurs for me because of participating in the process.

For this one, they needed as much video and audio footage that I have of her, so that pushed me to convert VHS and cassette tapes in to CD’s and a flash drive to preserve them. Also the hunting down of those things–plus photos–kind of forces me to open doors that are ultimately good for me to do. I think many survivors of homicide kind of box things away, and the grief gets lost in the violence. At least that’s happened for me.

This project appealed to me because there is a huge emphasis on telling Cindy’s story, which is really the point of the book as well. There is little focus on her killers and more on knowing and understanding her as a person. They asked me so many questions about our childhood/upbringing, how she was all throughout her life, our relationship, on and on.

In many ways, it’s been easier for me to focus on the crime, than on the loss. This pushed me to the latter and it was so good for me. Of course it’s not easy, lots of tears and pain comes to the surface, yet as I say, it’s better out than in. As any of you out there who relate, it’s always there. No closure ever comes. It’s just how much we are feeling it any given day.

So there’s that. I’ll know more soon about the air date but they said late Fall or early Winter.

Now to the book.

I’m headed back to Edmonds this Fall for three weeks to complete it, tweak some things and make a serious push for an agent/publisher. I’ve had a couple interested and frankly just blew it off as I just couldn’t put my energy there. So I’ve got a nice long expanse in my writing paradise to get this wrapped up.

I love my life in PA so much that it doesn’t make as much sense to leave it now, but Edmonds is where I’m doing this book and where I will finish it. Plus, it’s one of my major happy places on the planet and I can’t wait to get back in to that ferry riding, Puget sound, Pike Market, Olympus spa life and see my friend Pat again.

I hope you all are enjoying your summer. We are doing well. Well, I should say I’m crawling back out of exhaustion of the last couple of years. I actually cancelled all my summer travel and postponed my Dad’s rather large memorial service I was planning in Maine because I was just flattened. Rest has been my friend this summer (but still continual work settling my Dad’s affairs–sometimes it feels like it will never end).

My brother is doing especially well after a rough patch a few months ago. We got him some additional support and he’s living alone in the duplex we moved him and Dad in to with lots of activities and he’s really taken to it. He also comes up to the lake house with us and we will spend all our holidays as a family up here. It took some work and learning to get him to his highest functioning but I think we’ve landed there. He’s doing lots of cooking and baking from scratch lately–lasagna, blueberry buckle, strawberry pie. It’s great to see.

Of course, we all enjoy our family life with our darling ten year old Lillian who is just the sweetest kid and such a blessing in my life.

I’ve been gardening as usual–flowers and veggies–the tomatoes are coming in hot now. So I made and froze some homemade marinara sauce and told my brother it’s for him to make us a lasagna for Christmas Eve.

I’ll keep you posted on that show–and expect updates in October as I dive back in to the book.

It’s time.

Cheers–and thanks for continuing to care,

Kathy

gone

~ katiecoolady ~ 2 Comments
This is innocence

Rudi Apelt died of natural causes in prison this morning. Those are all the details I know. My attorney was informed and called to tell me. Over thirty years of having to deal with this evil; it’s over.

I cannot tell you the instant feeling of relief I had that has only deepened over the last three hours since I found out. My shoulders are dropping back to a place they have not visited in a very long time. I feel so free. I didn’t know how deeply I was carrying this trauma that just kept resurfacing, now that it’s gone.

This means no more parole hearings, ever. No more intrusions from his team of champions (although once they got him off death row they did exactly as I predicted in my impact statement–dropped him like a hot potato–not one, literally not ONE of them ever showed up at a parole hearing after spending about a decade fighting for him and his “intellectual disability”).

Michael, although having just launched a huge long appeal, while being on a list of 20 inmates who “have exhausted all appeals” (yeah try and figure that one out) will never be up for parole. So I’ll only have to deal with him sporadically as his appeals present themselves, but not every year like I did with Rudi.

Anyway, he’s dead. Thank God. I just wish my Dad had been here to experience this relief. He missed it by six months. Dad, he’s gone.

No press release yet, but here’s an article about one of his parole denials.

https://www.pinalcentral.com/casa_grande_dispatch/area_news/former-pinal-death-row-inmate-denied-parole-in-gruesome-1988-murder/article_bab97677-7dbc-534f-938a-7047d6252c6a.html?fbclid=IwAR02fc0AUzCYjRd0xIyZoXBItmGyyRqxpp4Bqp95m6xgb5NZryTEjtXnHs4