Eat Thy Neighbour (33 page)

When Clarice Sappington’s son, Marc, was born in 1980, she vowed that no matter what it took her boy would be brought up properly. She knew from the start it would be an uphill struggle all the way. Marc’s father had disappeared before he was born and Clarice, although a good church-going, hard-working woman, was plagued by recurrent bouts of mental problems. As often as possible she took, or sent, the boy to church, provided for his needs in every way she could and on those occasions when she had to attend the mental hospital, she sent him to stay with her parents who loved him as much as she did.

To all appearances Marc Sappington looked like one of those rare few who might actually escape the worst effects of the ghetto. He was never a brilliant student, but he did well enough at school and was liked by everyone who knew him. He was charming, articulate, funny and always greeted everyone with a
smile. A former classmate remembers him as the class ‘goofball’ who joked a lot but was always ready to defuse a tense situation by quietly quoting a passage from the Bible. A neighbour once described him, saying ‘nobody was afraid of him’, which, in the violent youth culture of Kansas City’s north side, was a compliment indeed. But his mother’s schizophrenia, and the death of both of his maternal grandparents while he was still an adolescent, took a huge emotional toll on Marc. Still, he loved his mother and had the support of a few good friends. Chief among his buddies were Terry Green, who was four years his senior, Michael Weaver, who was in Marc’s class at school and Alton ‘Freddie’ Brown, a skinny neighbourhood boy who was five years younger than Marc and looked up to him with the worshipful eyes of a kid brother.

By the time Marc graduated from high school in 1998, he had matured into a muscular, 5 foot 11 inch, 12-stone (170lb) man with the smiling face of an ebony cherub. But ultimately, the poverty of the ghetto began to take its toll on Marc. Unable to find work and bored out of his mind, he slowly drifted into drug use. He began smoking ‘danks’, cigarettes soaked in embalming fluid, and worked his way up to the deadly PCP, known as ‘angel dust’, which can have longterm, if not permanent, mental and emotional side-effects. His reliance on drugs reached a point where even those who had always supported and defended him were forced to admit he was a ‘heavy smoker’. What no one could possibly know was that Marc was developing other problems, too. He had inherited his mother’s schizophrenia and it was slowly eating away at his mind.

While wandering the streets one day early in 2001, Marc, now twenty-one, ran into sixteen-year-old Armando Gaitan, a casual acquaintance who was everything his mother had warned him against. Gaitan was one of those violent, foul-tempered tough guys who was well on his way to becoming what black youths refer to as a ‘gangsta’. Wandering along
the streets, getting deeper and deeper into conversation, Gaitan tried to enlist Marc’s help with a little problem. It came out that Gaitan had bought a car from another kid named David Mashak but that only days later the car had been impounded by the police and Gaitan had been unable to get satisfaction from Mashak. With Marc’s help, he was sure he could force Mashak to give him his money back. A year or two earlier, Marc would have turned him down flat, but now, for some reason, all he did was ask for more details. What would he have to do? Warming to his subject, Gaitan took Marc to where he had stashed an AK-47 assault rifle, showed it to him, and told him that together they would confront Mashak. All Marc had to do was stand there holding the gun while he, Gaitan, did all the talking. He assured Marc that once Mashak saw the gun there wouldn’t be any trouble. Foolishly, Sappington agreed.

On the afternoon of 16 March 2001 Marc and Armando Gaitan confronted David Mashak while he was eating lunch in his garage. Gaitan threatened Mashak. Mashak threatened Gaitan and then, for no apparent reason, Marc Sappington opened fire with the AK-47. As the torrent of bullets sprayed across the walls of the garage, one of them ricocheted, striking Mashak in the back. As if the hail of gunfire was not terrifying enough, the look of pure glee on Marc’s face sent Gaitan fleeing from the scene. He did not stop running until he reached Texas. Two hours after the assault, David Mashak was pronounced dead.

The long-running argument over the car soon led police to connect Armando Gaitan with Mashak’s murder and only a few weeks later he was arrested and shipped back to Kansas City. Under police questioning, and later at the juvenile detention centre, he admitted his own, secondary role in the killing, but refused to give the name of the other man who had been seen entering Mashak’s garage with him. The police assumed it was some ‘honour among thieves’ thing that kept him from talking.
It wasn’t. Remembering the maniacal look on Marc Sappington’s face as he wielded the AK-47, Gaitan was simply too scared to give them Marc’s name. It would be a lot safer in prison than to risk coming face-to-face with that crazy man again.

If the Mashak killing was a disaster for Mashak and Gaitan, its effects on Marc Sappington were more subtle, but no less profound. In those few seconds, something inside him had snapped. Whether it was the incipient schizophrenia, the effects of the danks and the PCP, or a combination of the two, may never be known, but only days after the killing, something began talking to Marc. Something inside his head. And it was saying very frightening things.

Curiously, according to psychologists and psychiatrists, most people whose mental state is such that they imagine voices will ascribe the source of the voices either to God, the devil, or some kind of demon. If their background is religious, as Marc’s was, they tend to believe that they are either being directed by the Almighty, or threatened by Satan. Marc was never able to determine who the voices belonged to, nor did he seem to care: all that mattered was that they were threatening him. If he did not do what they told him to do, they were going to kill him. It was as simple as that. Terrified, Marc agreed to do the voices’ bidding. That’s when they told him to kill people. They also told him there would be other things to do later, but for now, all he had to do was find someone to kill. In compliance with his orders, Marc began stashing weapons in a corner of his mother’s basement, the one area of the house that was his and his alone. He gathered a shotgun, knives, an axe, all kinds of weapons. When he seemed to have enough to cover any possible eventuality, the voices told him it was time to go hunting. They did not, however, offer him any specific guidance. He would have to select the victim himself.

For days he wandered the grimy streets of the north side, staring at every passer-by, appraising their suitability and asking
the opinion of the voices in his head. Him? How about her? What about him? But after three weeks of looking the voices remained steadfastly silent. Marc did not know what to do. If he didn’t find a sacrifice soon the voices might make good their threat to kill him. Finally, pure chance made the decision for him.

On the afternoon of 7 April, his old friend Terry Green, now twenty-five, dropped by at the Sappington home to spend some time hanging out with Marc. Marc had barely opened the door when the voices told him this was the one. Nervously, Marc invited Terry inside and led him to his own, personal space in the basement. Minutes later, Terry Green lay dead on the floor, bleeding profusely from multiple knife wounds. His friend, Marc Sappington, was leaning over the body, furiously lapping up the spreading pool of blood as it oozed from Green’s body. As the gore smeared across his face and hands, Marc looked up. He was sure he had heard a noise. Had his mother come home from work early? He was confused, but the voices told him to be calm and get rid of the body as quickly as he could.

Wrapping Terry’s carcass in an old tarpaulin, he lugged it out of the house, heaved it into the boot of his mother’s car, and drove through the city, across the Missouri river into Kansas City, Missouri, and then to a nightclub he and Green liked to frequent. Even at this early hour there were a few cars scattered around the edges of the car park. Marc tried one after another until he found one that was unlocked. Pulling up alongside the car, he lugged Terry’s body out of the boot and into the back seat of the other car. He tossed the tarpaulin over the body and drove away.

When the body was found a short time later, Kansas City, Missouri Police assumed it was a Missouri murder, but alerted the police across the river in Kansas City, Kansas. The Kansas police were more than happy to leave the matter on the Missouri side of the river; they had plenty of murders of their own to
deal with. It would be three days before Terry Green would be identified as a resident of Kansas and his connection with Marc Sappington would come to the investigating officers’ attention. In those three days, Marc Sappington, and the voices living in his head, would be very, very busy.

On 10 April, a mere three days after Green’s murder, Marc was wandering up and down the streets looking for the next person to sacrifice to the voices, but the voices had not been any more help today than on any other day. No one seemed to please them. Finally, wandering around the neighbourhood, he spotted his old classmate and friend Michael Weaver sitting on the front steps of his parents’ house, so he stopped to chat for a while. They talked and laughed and agreed that they were both bored silly. Finally, Marc suggested they go for a ride in Michael’s car. At least it was better than standing there on the street. Weaver agreed. They were still negotiating the narrow alleyways near Michael’s house when Sappington pulled out a hunting knife, killed his friend and began drinking his blood. He had to. The voices told him to do it and he had no choice. But only moments after the horrible deed, he panicked, jumped out of the car and fled on foot. As he ran he cleaned himself up as much as possible. Finally, his feet slowed to a walk and headed towards home.

Making his way homeward he passed the house of Freddie Brown, the teenager who idolised him. The voices spoke to him again and, acquiescing to their demands, he went to the house and invited Freddie to come home with him. Thrilled, the unsuspecting sixteen-year-old followed him. The pair went straight to Marc’s basement where, when Freddie’s back was turned, Sappington pulled the shotgun from its hiding place in the corner and shot the boy in the back. The roar of the gun was terrific as its deadly pellets splattered a cloud of pink gore all over the walls and ceiling. Even with his ears ringing, Marc could hear the voices inside his head. ‘Do it!’ they told him. ‘Do it now.’
In a frenzy, Marc grabbed the axe and began hacking Freddie’s small body into six huge, blood-covered pieces. When the body of his friend was dismembered, he grabbed a steak knife and hacked a large chunk from his thigh. He cut off smaller pieces, jamming one after another into his mouth, chewing and swallowing them as fast as he could. Then, picking up the dripping slab of meat, Marc wandered upstairs to the kitchen where he fried and ate slices of Freddie Brown. The rest of the meat was shoved into the freezer for a later time.

Returning to the basement, Marc stuffed the remaining pieces of Freddie into several garbage bags but decided to leave the bags open, along with the horrible smears of gore and bits of flesh that were scattered everywhere. Then, calmly, he walked out of the house for an afternoon stroll through the north side of Kansas City.

A few hours later, just after 6pm, Clarice Sappington came home from work as usual, but became frightened when she saw the droplets and smears of blood on the kitchen floor. Afraid that something terrible had happened to her boy, she followed the trail of blood down the steps and into the basement, even though it was Marc’s private domain. Somehow, by sheer force of will, Clarice fumbled her way back upstairs to the telephone where she called 911 for the emergency services. Nearing hysterics she described what she had seen protruding from the trash bags in the basement. By the time the police and ambulance arrived, Clarice had descended into another of her occasional psychotic states. This time, she would remain in hospital for a very long time.

Even without Clarice’s help the police knew their first order of business was to find her son. Witnesses who had seen Armando Gaitan enter the garage of David Mashak had described Gaitan’s companion, and the description sounded very much like Marc Sappington. Up to now the police did not have enough evidence to link Sappington to the Mashak killing, but the mess in the
basement made it clear that Marc was involved in something very, very bad. An APB (all points bulletin) was immediately put out for the arrest of Marc Sappington, aged twenty-one.

It was only a short time later that a local police cruiser spotted the suspect walking along one of the busy business streets of the north side. They jumped out of the car and hailed him to halt, but Sappington panicked and fled. When a nearby car pulled up to stop at a red light, he jerked open the driver’s door, shoved the woman across the seat, jumped in and tore off through the heavy traffic. Minutes later police cars closed in from all sides, forcing Sappington to a halt. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and taken to police headquarters. His terrified hostage was released uninjured.

The interrogation of Marc Sappington was turned over to Detective Lieutenant Vince Davenport and two plain-clothes officers. For more than two hours that evening they tried one ploy after another to get Marc to tell them something about what had happened in his basement that day. By now, Sappington had not only been tentatively connected with the Mashak killing but also with the killing of Terry Green, whose body had been found in the back seat of a car in Kansas City, Missouri. Davenport was an expert at getting suspects to talk. He knew that sometimes it was best to use the good-cop–bad-cop routine and sometimes it was better to use gentle persuasion. One way or another he always got results, at least until tonight. No matter what he said, Marc Sappington refused to utter a syllable. Finally, tired and frustrated, Davenport decided to go home and sleep on it. Maybe by tomorrow he would think of a new ploy. Getting up from the chair, he started to put on his coat when he thought he heard Sappington mumble something. ‘What? What did you say, son?’