The Face of Evil

There is no shortage of fear among adolescents. Real or imagined, the horrors of this world may be as big as death or as small as a zit. My nightmares were fueled by the reality of a twisted man who slithered into homes, under the veil of darkness, for the sole purpose of molesting and beating the residents. Being the son of a career homicide detective, some small voice in my head wanted me to believe that I should feel safer than most. But, somehow, the world of violence hung like a shadow that pervaded our home. The cold cloud of death and violence seemed to cling to Dad’s person and some part of me feared that it was catching as if the hatred that he touched each day was contagious.

Each night I closed my eyes and crawled into the lair of faceless half-human creatures with long, sinewy arms that writhed and clutched at me. Who were they? Who would get me? Would it be some recently released killer seeking revenge on our family? Would it be some sick, crazy person who’d kill the family of the man who tirelessly hunted him down? Would it be some weird guy who pulled up and herded me into a van as I walked home from school? I heard these stories—real stories of things that happened to kids just like me.

These anxieties worsened when my parents divorced. Dad worked many nights, but he was home on some nights—but he wouldn’t be home anymore. The nagging sense of threat of years past fell away in the face of the prospect of facing every night with no one but my mother to offer protection. But, what may have appeared to be the unfounded paranoia of an imaginative 13-year-old, seemed prophetic in the spring of 1980.

As I munched on a Pop Tart, dreading school while wondering if I’d remembered to do all my homework the slick, smooth, morning news guy, solemnly offered sketchy details of a story that captured my attention.

“At this hour, HPD is not releasing the name of a woman who was assaulted in her southwest Huntsville home. Some time between two and three o’clock this morning, a masked intruder entered a home, in southwest Huntsville, where he assaulted the female resident. Details are limited, at this time. We do know that the victim was transported to Huntsville hospital where she is currently listed in serious condition. Police are still on the scene, and we’ll pass along further news as it becomes available.” A cold, sickening knot formed in my stomach. Where in southwest Huntsville? We lived in southwest Huntsville. What if he does it again?

Throughout the day, passages from the morning newscast dislodged everything else in my mind. By the time I slid into Dad’s car that evening, headed for baseball practice, questions about the woman on Penny Street gushed from me.

Dad’s voice, low and solemn, spilled the details. “It was bad, buddy. Real bad. . He tied up that woman on Penny Street, pulled her pants off, and beat her between the legs with the radio antenna from a car while her five year old son watched. He just likes to hurt people, but he’s getting worse. He’ll kill someone, eventually, if we don’t get him soon.”

That night ticked away as I lay in bed replaying Dad’s words in my head. What was that? My tired brain screamed in the darkness of my bedroom. It’s the icemaker, you silly chicken.” I had spent four hours in bed, staring at the ceiling in the red glow of the digital clock that now read 2:32 a. m.

It was the icemaker. Now, quit being a big baby and go to sleep.

It was only the icemaker that time, but what about the next time? Penny Street is only two blocks away. Do you think he couldn’t break in here? The vigil continued until the agony of anticipation melted into a deep but uneasy sleep.

After weeks of spending each night, half-sleeping and half-waiting to be attacked, I’d turned into an adolescent zombie. At breakfast one morning, Mom’s earnest voice and glaring eyes confronted me with an easy question that I couldn’t answer: “Why are you so irritable? Your eyes always have dark circles, your grades are falling . . . What’s wrong with you? Are you using drugs?” For that flash of an instant, I wished, with all my being, that it was as simple as using drugs; I could have stopped using drugs, but I couldn’t stop feeling scared and helpless.

“No! It’s nothing. Leave me alone.” I never admitted my fear to anyone; I saw no advantage in sharing my horror. It was a personal, private thing that belonged to me— like the wart on my hand that I constantly hid.

All summer long and on into the fall, every couple of weeks, the news reported another hapless assault victim, awakened from his or her sleep by this serial intruder whom the media had dubbed “The Southwest Molester.” He usually just used what cops call “weapons of opportunity” meaning that he’d grab anything he could find inside the house and use it as a weapon. But, it didn’t really seem to matter to him; as long as he was inflicting pain, the method or manner was immaterial.

I stayed with friends, whenever possible, or I had them sleep over with me. Although another kid my age didn’t represent much protection, they helped distract me from what might happen if this molester decided to pay a visit to whichever house I happened to occupy. The number of victims had grown to somewhere around twenty, and it seemed that this lunatic would never stop and that he’d terrorize the city forever.

By the winter of ’81, gun shops were enjoying record sales, karate and self-defense classes were booked solid, and people were buying dogs, burglar bars for their windows and installing dead-bolt locks on their doors. We couldn’t afford any of those things. I resorted to sleeping with a can of Raid by my bed, thinking that maybe I could spray him in the eyes and blind him before he could hurt Mom or me. Sometimes I’d fake an allergy attack as an excuse to chug Benedryl in hopes of it making me drowsy enough to drift off without listening and waiting for the sounds of someone slipping into our house.

An advantage of Dad’s job was that he often shared information with me before it appeared in the newspaper. March 15^th, 1981 had been an uneventful day. I dragged into our empty house as I did every other day after school. I assumed the ringing phone meant Mom’s 3:30 checkup call was right on time.

“Hello?”

“Buddy? Hey, it’s me.” I recognized the distant, bleary voice as that of my dad.

“Dad? Are you ok?”

“Yep. I’m fine. I’m just a little tired because I’ve been up all night. Buddy, we got him!”

“Got who?”

“John Paul Dejnozka—the molester. We got ‘im last night, and I took thirty-nine handwritten legal pages of confession from him between seven o’clock last night and five

“Oh Dad. Are you sure it’s him? What if . . .”

“Buddy, he has a photographic memory. He knows things he couldn’t possibly know unless he was there. It’s him.”

“Daddy, I’m proud of you. I’m so glad he can’t hurt anybody anymore.”

“Well, I’m proud of you too, Buddy. How’d you like to meet him?”

I tensed under the wave of sheer dread that struck me. My mind shouted, “No!” But I knew I had to face him or fear him forever.

“How? I mean isn’t he in jail?”

“Yeah, he’s in jail. But he’ll be in squad room tonight. I’ll pick you up at six, if you don’t think your mom’ll mind. Okay?”

I didn’t want to see him, but I needed to see him, and somehow I sensed that Dad knew that. “Ok, I’ll see you at six.”

The eighteen-month rampage, all told, left thirty-three homes and fifty people violated, scarred, and left with memories that time will not likely erase.

He’ll look like those guys on TV . . . A grubby, bearded recluse with wild hair and rotten teeth and his eyes . . . he’ll have crazy eyes like Vincent Price . . . He’ll be some crackpot who never had any friends. He’ll be chained up and cops and psychologists will mill around him like kids at the zoo. My trance-like state clung to me as Dad bantered and sang along to the radio while driving us to the police station. Seeing Dad’s hand reaching to open the door to the squad room jarred me from my meanderings.

The neat rows of messy desks stood empty, except the last two. An officer read the newspaper while a pudgy, middle-aged man with a thin covering of brown hair scribbled in a notebook. A blaze of fear flashed through me as I grappled with the thought that the horrific freak I came to see was not going to show. Dad walked briskly toward the pair of men.

“Bob, thanks for bringin’ John down here for me. You can go now.” The officer swung around in his chair and the man stopped writing to glance up.

“Oh, no problem, Sharp. So, brought a sidekick with you, did you? Your boy looks just like you.”

“Well, we won’t hold that against him, will we?” Dad said, ruffling my hair with this big, calloused hand. The officer laughed and patted my shoulder as he passed by on his way out. The door closed behind him leaving the three of us in a lull of nervous silence.

I glanced up at Dad, putting on the most quizzical expression that I could muster. He raised his eyebrows and nodded in the direction of the man who was again writing on the yellow legal pad in front of him. As I stared at the man scribbling on the pad, he lifted his gaze to me, his brown eyes twinkled, and he let a smile slip across his warm, thoughtful face.

“Detective Sharp, I’ll be finished shortly. You’ve got a fine looking boy, sir.”

“Thanks John. Take all the time you need.” A fresh fit of anxiety gripped me. Where was the monster? Witnessing his warm, polite and calm mannerisms fanned a smoldering ember of fear that that had been ignited many years earlier. As I stared at the grinning, pleasant man in front of me, the sweltering flames of fear flared up and raged inside my head. How could a monster live in the body of a person who seemed like a normal, friendly person? I could have seen this man on the street and walked past him without a second thought. On any given day, I could probably find ten men at the library who looked more menacing. How could such a man seem so average? Certainly, at age thirteen, I knew that “bad people” didn’t have beady eyes, pointy, discolored teeth, or wear black clothes and only lurk in the shadows cast by the full moon in the dead of night. I clung to the notion that I could identify real life ghouls as easily as movie or TV villains, but at some level, I knew better.

Dad prophesied, correctly, that Dejnozka’s sentence would exceed 400 years. That night, I knew I would never have to worry about this man again. Still, while extinguishing the burning fear of this one man, the experience opened another sense of awareness that amounted to snuffing a candle only to learn that the whole house was on fire. If this man could beat sleeping strangers to within an inch of their lives, how many other people walking down the street could, too? Sometime, the face of evil isn’t a wicked and grotesque façade that instantaneously incites fear and repulsion in all who see it. No. If this man could terrorize an entire city, the face of evil could take the appearance of any face, even mine.