Will Busenburg, at the referral of Sharon Willis, met on August 19, 1989, with J. D. Ezell, PhD, for a psychological evaluation. With achievement tests and Rorschach tests at his elbow, Ezell wanted to know why Busenburg couldn’t get along with his parents or anyone else the teen tried to live with.
The boy appeared older than his years to the psychologist.
“I like doing things as long as I don’t have to do them,” said Will. “I like always having a choice.” He laughed nervously and compulsively. He seemed distracted. “I fear going to Hell. God’s an angry, punitive God.” He also appeared to be blocking certain thoughts from his mind. “I love guns, and I want to be a cop because of that.”
Busenburg repeatedly told the psychologist, “I don’t know myself. I’m trying to figure out who I am. I’m trying to form myself, to be what I am. I don’t know who I am.” Busenburg was only fifteen years old and asking the questions of a man in a midlife crisis.
He complained of having trouble falling asleep and of having trouble staying asleep, constantly waking in the early-morning hours. Again he talked about his stomach problems and said he had appetite disturbances. Busenburg had downplayed those pains to the doctor.
He was tense and anxious as he reached for a pencil to begin the achievement tests. He scored 109, average to bright average, on his IQ. Ezell thought Will was really smarter than that. He thought Will’s anxiety over the tests had reduced the boy’s scores.
Ezell wrote, “[Will] reveals that he has difficulty dealing with expectations, authority, and structure, and it appears that he is apt to rebel against performance expectations, confident in the knowledge that he has the ability to succeed if he applied himself, which is of course how he rationalizes his underachievement.”
Ezell’s personality evaluation of Busenburg revealed no severe emotional disorders or serious personality disturbances. Busenburg seemed pretty much the typical teenager. However, he was “moralistic and disapproving of his parents’ lifestyle, and his implicit devaluation of them mirrors his own feelings of being devalued and rejected by his parents.”
Busenburg’s attitude toward other parent-authority figures, Ezell thought, was currently ambivalent but could turn hostile. His religiosity, reported Ezell to Willis, conveyed both externalized anger or judgmentalism, and internalized, self-punitive anger, or excessive guilt complexes.
“It is doubtful that he can reconcile his newfound religious convictions with his basic feelings and attitudes, laden with so much hostility, and he is certainly in need of some sensitive and informed counseling to help him sort through these issues,” said Ezell.
On September 7, 1989, as the summer days were beginning their melt into fall, Will Busenburg moved into the Texas Baptist Children’s Home—a series of neat cottages and a simple limestone chapel.
He was assigned to caseworker Chuck Lentz and houseparents Terry and Kay Williams, the “pop” and “mom,” as they were called, of cottage number 9. There was a piano, a living room that wasn’t used much, a dining room with several dark-toned tables combined into one huge dining table, and chairs propped atop the tables. “Everyone eats together, just like a family,” he was told.
Busenburg quietly looked at the simple ruffled curtains, the cheap but comfortable carpet that wouldn’t show stains, and followed the aroma of baking into the large, spotless kitchen. There were two refrigerators that assured him that this wasn’t a typical home. He walked on through the house, saw the laundry room with its row of washers and dryers. “Everyone has his assigned chores and is expected to do his own wash.”
He set down his things in the homey bedroom he was to share with one other boy. There was a desk for each, drawers beneath the two beds, and small closets. Everyone would have to share the bathroom.
In the den, TV and Nintendo were ready. Most of the boys spent their time there laughing with each other, or in the kitchen. This could be a home. Busenburg appeared to make an easy entrance into his cottage of six boys.
That very night, he left his newfound family and went to a play with his “thespian club.” By the next day, he was asking when he could go to “his church.”
Six days later, Kay Williams reported that it appeared there would be a lengthy adjustment period.
Seven days into the young man’s stay at TBCH, Will Busenburg came home from school early due to a queasy stomach, dizziness, and a sore throat. He said he was nervous about his parents going off duty for a few days. The following day, he threw up four times at school, but stuck through the complete school hours.
When school had opened that late summer, Will Busenburg had enrolled in Junior ROTC and was on the ROTC drill team color guard. Through ROTC, he was making friends with Chris Hatton and Glenn Conway. He often told people that Chris was his best friend.
Nine
The sun’s rays were slipping into the sloping angles of autumn as the occasional cool front finally blew through Texas and lowered the temperature below 90 degrees.
On September 22, 1989, before Will Busenburg left the Children’s Home to spend the weekend with his sister, Will and “mom” Kay Williams sat down to discuss his progress. Kay looked at his theater arts grades of 58, the low 60s, and 86.
“Why are you failing the class?” she asked.
“I have a memory problem,” Busenburg answered. “I can’t memorize vocabulary.”
Williams looked at his Spanish grades and did a quick mental tally.
He has a 97 or 98 average, and Spanish is another class requiring memorization.
“If your memory is so bad, how do you explain this eighty-six?” She pointed to his one good theater arts grade.
“A girl sitting next to me gave me the answers,” he replied. “I’ve gotta succeed at any cost.”
“That’s cheating,” Kay answered.
Rather than a problem with memory, Will Busenburg has a problem with ethics.
“It’s not dishonest or cheating,” he said. “It’s only success or failure.”
Kay Williams walked away to write in her daily report that Will seemed more interested in being treated as a special case than in striving for real accomplishment. To ensure that he was treated special, she believed Will attempted to manipulate others and situations and made constant requests for outside intervention—such as doctor’s appointments and medicines for his stomachaches, his headaches, his bad eyesight, which was caused primarily by the fact that he refused to wear his eyeglasses.
The following Monday night, Round Rock schoolteachers filed into the Children’s Home gym for the Home’s annual open house. The residents, including Will, had asked their teachers to the event by presenting them with a lollipop and a written invitation.
Two of Busenburg’s teachers showed up, ready to sip punch, eat cookies, and tour Will’s cottage, with Will leading the way. He smiled and seemed to be adjusting better to cottage life.
One of Busenburg’s teachers tugged on Kay Williams’s elbow and motioned her over to the side. “I’m very disturbed and concerned about Will,” said the teacher. “Can you come see me Thursday morning?”
Busenburg must have watched and overheard, because the next morning, when he woke, he was depressed, and he showered his depression on everyone. By the time school was out, he was ticked off at Kay Williams—she wouldn’t let him leave the Children’s Home campus like he wanted.
“You can’t go off campus anytime you like,” she explained. “The rules that apply to the other children here, apply to you.”
“I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do!” Busenburg flared.
Twice that day she had to talk to him.
“My sight’s not good and my glasses don’t help much,” he griped. “And the school nurse told me I need a tetanus booster.” He turned away. “I don’t feel anything anymore. I’m harder than ever. What anybody does to me, I pay back double. I care about those that care about me.”
That night, he settled down, and was in relatively good spirits the next morning. On Wednesday evening, he went to chapel at the Children’s Home rather than at First Baptist Church. He walked in, sat down with the other kids and houseparents, reached for a hymnal, and began to sing and pray as he stared at the stained-glass windows—the story of Jesus on the western windows, the stories of parentless children from the Old Testament on the eastern windows.
On Friday, September 29, 1989, Busenburg strolled into the Round Rock High School football stadium to watch his team, the Dragons, battle it out on the field. Fans screamed, bands blasted their fight songs, and cheerleaders tried to dance their sexiest.
After the game and the dance that followed, Terry Williams drove up to the school to see Busenburg walking toward him, his hands dramatically grasping his side.
“This black guy jumped me at the football game.” Will breathed hard. “And I didn’t do anything to cause it. It was totally unprovoked on my side. He kicked me in the ribs. And I bloodied his nose and laid him out.”
Within fifteen minutes of returning to the cottage, Busenburg walked into the kitchen and moaned to Kay. “He kicked me in the ribs and hit me in the face between my left eye and ear.”
Kay wiped her hands on a dish towel, reached over to the boy, put her hands on his face, and looked closely. She saw a tiny red mark between his eye and ear, but she wrote that up as just typical Busenburg exaggeration.
On Monday she watched Will scrubbing dishes spotless before putting them in the dishwasher. “You only have to rinse them off,” she said.
He continued scrubbing madly. Again she told him to just rinse. Still, he scrubbed. Again she said rinse only.
Finally he raised his head. “I was obviously half asleep when you told me, out of it.”
Later he asked Kay and Terry not to use big words around him. “I don’t understand them,” he said. He reeled off some words he didn’t understand. They were very common words.
The following day, Busenburg asked Kay Williams to help him with an English assignment that was late. “I need you to help me identify the parts of speech,” he said. “I don’t know any of them.”
Kay looked at the paper. The boy didn’t appear to know nouns and verbs. “How did you get to the tenth grade without learning some of these things?”
He smiled slightly. “I always went with the right girls. They would do my homework. And I copied from other people’s tests.” Then he talked again, on and on, about his memory problems.
Will Busenburg was supposed to catch an early school bus for a meeting of his thespian club, but he was late finishing one of his chores and missed the bus. Furious at himself, he clenched his teeth and stomped out the cottage back door.
That night Busenburg was still angry. “I need to go to school early tomorrow,” he said. “I have to retake a test that I made about a thirty on.”
When Kay Williams pointed out that his teacher was trying to work with Will and help him, Busenburg responded with derogatory remark after derogatory remark about teachers.
Kay Williams wrote in her cottage report: “Will has told me that he’s been on his own since he was 12-years-old. At that time, he said his dad rented an apartment and Will cared for himself and lived there alone with his dad checking on him about once a month. Will says that’s exactly why he doesn’t like anybody telling him what to do.”
A few days later, he was telling other boys in the cottage the same story, and he added that he had been dealing drugs.
One thing is certain,
thought Williams,
Will has a lot of anger inside.
His English teacher passed him with a 70.
On October 10, 1989, caseworker Chuck Lentz noted in his plan of service for Busenburg that neither Will nor Will’s father was open to therapy. Lentz thought it was necessary to clarify the father and son’s relationship. He planned to work with the teen to eventually urge Will and his father into counseling.
On her cottage report the same day, Kay Williams wrote, “Will has
very poor
eating habits.” He ate only meat and potatoes, sometimes fruit cocktail, and lots of sugar. She often caught him eating fistfuls of cookies, cake, or whatever sweets he could find.
The following day, Williams sat down again with Busenburg and enumerated lie after lie he had been telling.
“I didn’t remember things right,” he said, and then snapped his mouth shut, refusing to say another word, with a look on his face that was harder than Texas marble.
The next morning, when he walked into the kitchen, he still refused to speak to Williams. He refused to speak to her through breakfast or as they cleared the table. If she asked him a question, he muttered a quick reply.
Busenburg oozed negativity.
“I hate this place,” he said. “I hate it. I hate it.”
On October 24, 1989, two days after Will Busenburg’s sixteenth birthday, he turned to Terry Williams and asked, “What would it take to go live with my mother?”
“To begin with,” Terry replied, “it would require her contacting Chuck Lentz and discussing the matter with him.”
As central Texas waited for its first frost, the Texas Baptist Children’s Home waited to hear from Will’s parents. And they waited.
In mid-November, Busenburg’s caseworker, Chuck Lentz, sent Fran Wallen a letter telling her he had tried to phone her a couple of times at her office and that he “very much” would like to talk with her about Will.
“Will, from time to time, mentioned he might be able to come live with you,” wrote Lentz, and Lentz wanted to sit down with Wallen and see what she saw as a plan for her son. Lentz wanted to have that meeting just after Thanksgiving.
Busenburg spent that Thanksgiving with his sister Michelle.
By December 1, 1989, Will Busenburg was doing better at the Children’s Home. He agreed to see a counselor. On a cottage deer hunt, he shot two does.
Days later, three hundred people packed the Children’s Home gym. Will stood anxiously in an elf costume and watched his brother, sister, and brother-in-law take their seats in folding chairs that crowded the floor. They were there for the Home’s annual Christmas program, and Will was to recite a few lines.
He stepped in front of the audience. He barely bobbled a word. The crowd smiled. Terry and Kay Williams smiled. Will Busenburg fumed. “I forgot my lines. And in front of my brother-in-law who was there to see my major screwup.”
“I thought you did a great job,” Kay reassured.
Will stomped off.
He left the Home on December 15, 1989, to spend his Christmas holiday at Michelle’s. Two weeks later, on New Year’s Day, 1990, he returned in a good mood, to the shock of almost everyone.
Around the first of the year, his girlfriend dumped him. He even handled that well. Three weeks later, he was still in a good mood and expressed a desire to have a meeting with his father.
The last day of January 1990, Ray Busenburg called to check on Will. He seemed genuinely concerned about his son’s well-being. Will didn’t become angry, as he usually did, when told that his father had phoned.
The next day, February 1, 1990, Will Busenburg started work at a local McDonald’s. A few days later, he called his dad and talked for a half hour. That weekend Will asked Terry Williams if he could call his father and go out for dinner.
“That needs to be cleared with Chuck Lentz,” said Williams.
When Williams and his wife left for the evening, Will Busenburg grabbed the phone and called his father, who drove over to the cottage for a visit.
Busenburg went out to dinner with his father on February 9, 1990.
Kay Williams believed he was politically posturing himself to live with anyone. “I want to be with a family,” he told her. He saw his father as the most likely candidate.
Will Busenburg was caught weeks later taking the “gentlemen” sign off the men’s room door in the gym. When confronted, he denied it, then said, “I took it as a joke.” To his Christian houseparents, it wasn’t funny.
By March, Will and Ray Busenburg were seriously discussing the possibility of Will moving back in with Ray, his wife, and two children. The plan was for some time after the school year ended.
Terry Williams sat down with Will and discussed the importance of emotional preparation for the move. He had the same conversation over the telephone with Ray.
Ray and Will agreed to start meeting jointly with a therapist.
On March 8, 1990, Chuck Lentz prepared his six-month evaluation on Busenburg. He thought the young man was doing well. He planned to do another evaluation in another six months.
Terry Williams wrote on March 9, 1990, in his cottage report, “Will Busenburg is in a holding pattern waiting to go home with [his] dad. He has started putting as much distance as possible between himself and the cottage. I believe that real preparation needs to start towards Will’s return to [his] dad’s home.”
On March 20, 1990, Busenburg came home from school early. “I need to go to a doctor,” he said. “I got mad and hit a wall at school.” It was his right hand, the hand that he had said had been hurting him for years. “I can’t move my little finger and ring finger.”
A week later, Will and Ray Busenburg came by the cottage to pick up Will’s belongings.
That same spring of 1990, through First Baptist Church Round Rock, Will Busenburg met Emily Eaves. Emily was a smart, pretty, hardworking, down-to-earth young girl with a devoted family and a devoted life to Christ. She had shoulder-length brown hair, a slim, taut body from running cross-country and track, and seemed to be running her life on a smooth track.
Eaves and Busenburg started dating. Sometimes they double-dated with the shy, good-looking Chris Hatton. Like others, Emily believed Will and Chris were best friends.
Sometimes, but rarely, Busenburg talked about his father. “He’s abusive and uses drugs,” he said, without ever going into much detail. Emily, a ninth-grader seeing a tenth-grader, met Ray Busenburg only once. The rest of the family, Will never mentioned.
“I used to use drugs,” he said. She looked at him in horror. “But that’s all in the past,” he reassured. Emily Eaves certainly never saw Will Busenburg use drugs. They spent their time at church events.
But Emily did hear Busenburg talk on occasion about his hatred for African Americans, and she heard him talk on occasion about killing someone. Emily Eaves didn’t take that seriously. She just thought her boyfriend was venting his anger. He did that sometimes. Sometimes he lied, too, mostly about other girls.
On occasion he tried to control Emily, but she didn’t think much of that, either. She thought that was just the way teenage boys and girls were. In her memory, she refused the attempts to be controlled by Will Busenburg.