This story has been trying to come bubbling up from my cauldron for over a year. You are probably not going to like this story any more than I like this story. But it has to be told. It is still in rough form, but I couldn't sleep last night for the haunting of
Suede Brown. I may not be back here for a few days as I want to work on my upcoming trial and all the other stories that are trying to be written.
WHO MURDERED SUEDE BROWN?
From The Book Of Nightmares
I met Suede Brown when he was a little boy, the day before his
house burnt down to the ground. I was
visiting my sister at the time, and she took me to their house because she
wanted me to meet her best friend Carry, the mother of Suede. It was pretty freaky to meet them one day and
to see their house in flame from the freeway by that evening. Lucky for the whole family, they were away on
a houseboat when it burnt. Suede was my
nephew Taran’s best friend, and my sister loved him as a second son.
I saw him again two springs ago in 2010 and got to play guitar
and sing with him and my nephew on another visit to my sister. That was in May or June to my recollection
and by August he was dead. My memory of
that musical evening and following morning is still vivid and fresh in my
mind. He was a good looking charming
young man who seemingly had his whole life ahead of him. He had a girlfriend, job, and was expected to
go into the service later in the year.
His death was ruled an accidental suicide. He took an antique pistol he had been
carrying around, went to the picture window of the house, tapped on the window
to get his girlfriend’s attention, smiled and then pulled the trigger that
resulted in his death. They examined the
bullets left in the gun and determined there had been several misfires that
marked the casings of the unused bullets. There is a good chance that Suede was just
fooling around and did not know the gun would fire. I have spoken with my sister, my nephew and
even a phone conversation with Suede’s grandmother and I can safely say that
the more I hear, the less it makes sense…that is going by what others have
said.
The last conversation I had with Suede was lighthearted. I asked him at one point if he was gay. He said No, but it is kool if you are! We laughed and that was the end of that. I knew he was lying and I thought I
understood why he lied, and I forgave him for it. I grew up a few miles from there myself, and
know first hand it is not a safe place to “come out” if you are homosexual.
My sister took Suede’s death very hard. She was very sad, and just could not pull
herself up out of her grief. I talked
with her over the phone for a couple months and I was alarmed at some of the
things she was telling me. My nephew who
was grieving in his own way was acting out in threatening ways towards my
sister, demanding money while calling her bitch. He had secured the combination of her gun
safe from his father (her x) and managed to get the key out of her purse and
rob the safe after creating a scene that caused her to leave the house without
her purse. I determined that she needed
to make a stand and I decided to move in with her through the winter in hopes
that she would gather her strength and do what was necessary for her
safety. My nephew and Suede Brown had
been hanging out with a local crystal meth nest, and all that goes with
that. My sister was in trouble and alone
while the meth nest was ever on the hunt for new places to rob, and the general
mischief and desperation that happens almost simultaneously with that
particular substance.
I moved in and my sister reversed her decision to not
participate in the use of that chemical.
So there I was in the way of the regularly scheduled drama intrinsic to
the crystal meth crowd. I didn’t know
she was using, but I did know something was wrong. I tried my best to keep communications open
and be as supportive as I could be without advocating and pretending that
crystal meth could be used recreationally.
It was sometime in late December that I began receiving
threatening emails from Dee Ames my X’s X who’s two girlfriends had shot
themselves with Dee’s service revolver, resulting in one of their deaths. Dee was not a safe person for me, and so was
not permitted in my X and my home. We
fought about it, and I won that battle.
I don’t let “offenders” into my safe space. I can’t.
If I permit that, then it is no longer a safe space. So when Dee began harassing me by email, I
realized my X was using her as a tool to get to me, as she had run up a $160
phone bill after I moved that was on my credit report. I was taking her to small claims court over
that, and so she sicked Dee on me.
Dee’s emails were pretty sick and very threatening to me, so I
contacted the appropriate authorities and requested they call her and ask her
to stop. As a courtesy to my sister, I
showed her the emails. I didn’t want to
jeopardize her safety in her home. Even
though I suspected Dee was just a blow gut, I still felt my sister needed to
know just in case Dee might try to come out and make trouble. My sister read some of the emails and made me
copies of them in case I needed to take them to the Columbus prosecutor’s
office. I thought that was probably the
end of it, so I was amazed when my sister asked me a few days later “Do you
want me to take care of Dee Ames for you?.
I didn’t catch what she meant at first.
She followed up by telling me she knew some people in a local (Russian)
gang that would do it for $5000. I
quickly knew what she meant and told her it was not necessary. Dee had stuck her nose in something that
wasn’t any of her business and Lori was using her as a tool. I assured my sister that I was taking care of
it myself and I was sorry I burdened her with it.
The next few days we joked about Dee speculating how even if she
had a GPS in her SUV she wouldn’t be able to find us as those systems don’t
work out there! We laughed because Dee’s
vehicles have no scratches, and she washes her SUV every time it gets a little
mud on it. My sister’s roads are very
hard on even 4 wheel drive vehicles. My
muffler was falling off from just the vibration of the road and all of the pot
holes. Mud was a given. So we made fun of her my sister and I and I
put the matter to rest and concentrated on my upcoming hearing about the phone
bill.
Several days later I found my sister smiling on the phone, and
she looked up at me and asked me “Is Dee Ames A Lesbian?”. I said “yes, of course she is”. She went back to her phone conversation,
smiled some more and nodded her head.
She pause and looked up at me still smiling and said “they say they will
do it for nothing”.
It was at that very moment that I knew who had killed Suede
Brown. My sister had killed him. My nephew had killed him. His parents had killed him. The whole community had killed him just as if
they had loaded that pistol cocked it and put it to his head. It was not safe to be who he really was…not
even around the people he loved.
Since then I moved out, and moved on. I think about how sad, frightening it all
was, and is. I think about Dee Ames and
how if she was to be so stupid as to go out there and try to find me…She would
have no doubt been invited to what they call out there The Frazeysburg Pride
Parade. They would have tied her to a
truck with a rope and drug her down the parade route Matthew Shepherd
style. If she would have lived through
that, she would have begged them to put her out of her misery. If she didn’t live through the parade, they
would have put her with all the Pride floats from previous such parades. I resent my X for putting Dee in that sort of
mortal danger. Neither of them know
about the intolerance and hatred towards gay people out there and what sort of
things happen to gay people out there. I
lived there for 16 years and never met a gay person. In fact the only gay person I ever met out
there was Suede Brown, and he is dead and gone his secret buried with him in
The Frazeysburg cemetery.
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