Ah, Liam...
The continuing the story of Liam and where he is today
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I was speaking to Daphne this morning, and she observed something very profound about Liam. His entire life was traumatic. Once his life wasn’t full of trauma anymore, the only way he knew how to be ok was to perpetuate the drama himself. In the end, this was the only thing left Liam knew how to do. He no longer took care of anyone, worked, or really did much of anything other than create chaos as a way to have a sense of control over his life. Most people busy themselves with a hobby, a job, their home, their family, friends. Since the time of our divorce, and possibly for the last twenty years, Liam has busied himself primarily with perpetuating misery.
At the time he was two years old, Liam was adopted by Lana and Dennis. Dennis and Lana had three children, Liam, an older sister, and one younger brother. Lana and Dennis were strange and horrifying people as parents. I talk about meeting Lana in the post, Merry Christmas! She was an odd duck, at best, and a verbally abusive woman who knowingly tolerated her husband’s physical and sexual abuse of her children at worst. Dennis was the perpetrator. I have confirmed through internet searches that he did go to prison for sexually abusing Liam’s older sister. Liam once told me his father punched him in the face so hard that the teenaged Liam literally flew over a queen-sized bed and into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Liam recalled his sexual abuse, but his brother did not, though Liam assured me both of them were sexually abused by their father. However, his brother had a brain tumor that erased most memory of his childhood, and I suspect this was actually to his benefit. Furthermore, it caused his parents to treat him with kid gloves after that, also a benefit to him. This brother was about ten years younger than Liam, as well, which assuredly affected his different treatment.
At the age of eighteen, Liam fled Utah and went straight into the Navy, which isn’t exactly a place of coddling and kindness. He claims he wanted to excel there, and he did begin to exercise and grow from a whisp of a boy to a strapping man of impressive musculature in the Navy. His goal was to join the Navy SEALs, and to hear him tell it, he was approved to enter the training program. Just before starting training, he was home in Hawaii, and decided to go cliff diving to prove to himself he was brave enough to do anything, preparing for his challenges as a SEAL trainee. When he hit the water from one-hundred-twenty-five feet, at a speed of over sixty miles-per-hour, the impact on his spine was so jarring, he broke his back.
During the time he was in Hawaii with the Navy, Liam had met and married his first wife, Palo. A Samoan and dancer at the Polynesian Cultural Center, Palo was a beautiful, young woman. However, she was also a handful, to hear Liam tell it. He was almost kicked out of the Navy because she wouldn’t stop berating him and his superiors, begging for him to come home. When he was home, she would alternate between being alluring and horrifyingly physically and verbally abusive. I know the abuse part is true because I have spoken to Palo on numerous occasions, and even when she is being well-meaning, she is a handful. She is quick to threaten physical assault, with a willingness to follow-through, and her ability to string together swear-words in either English or Samoan is impressive.
Palo and Liam had two children, Daphne and David, the oldest of Palo’s nine children. When Daphne was born, her lower intestine was twisted and dead. Palo and Liam knew something was wrong pretty quickly, and Liam tells a story of grabbing up Daphne out of the Navy hospital in the middle of the night, whisking her away to the public hospital in Oahu for a surgery the Navy wasn’t approving fast enough to save Daphne’s life. To this day Daphne has a scar stretching from one side of her abdomen to the other, so I am sure the stories about her surgery are true whether the rescue stories are or not. Either way, I am sure it was a difficult and scary time for Palo and Liam, going through this horror with their first-born child. I am also sure this didn’t make Palo easier to deal with or Palo’s life any easier, being left alone with a baby recovering from surgery while Liam was in the Navy.
After Liam broke his back, he did try to stay in the Navy, but was returned to active duty, carrying large ammunition and other back-breaking labor sooner that his doctors recommended. As a result his back got worse, and between that and Palo’s continual interference in his career, he get a medical discharge from the Navy, which seemed for the best.
Not long after David was born, Liam did leave Palo. He made no effort, to my knowledge, to take the children with him in spite of her reportedly abusive and neglectful mothering. David and Daphne were often left, even as extremely young children, to fend for themselves or with Palo’s sisters. Daphne has a scar on her hand to this day from when Palo left a hot iron on the floor near where she was crawling and left the room. I try not to judge Palo too harshly, as I know as a fact she loves her children, but Palo did fracture Daphne’s jaw by punching her in the face even when Daphne was an adult, so I know she can be a handful at best. She is a loving, if not troubled, mother. I am impressed Daphne and David care for her so deeply and work to stay in her life, but as someone who loves and cares about their safety, I also encourage them to do so with sound boundaries. It’s a challenge to say the least.
Liam tells stories of leaving Palo, talking about how he had to climb through a window to retrieve his work clothes so he could go to work the next day. He was sneaking because he was afraid Palo or her family would beat the crap out of him. Not unexpectedly, as Liam tells it, when she caught him, Palo proceeded to attack him in the face and body with the heel of her stiletto. One of his last experiences as her husband occurred when he was sleeping the the car because they had an argument the previous night. When they had returned from a bar, her shrieking at him all the way home, he simply stayed in the car and went to sleep. He awoke to someone punching him in the face. Not knowing who it was, and coming out of a deep stupor, he reflexively punched back, suddenly realizing when the barrage of punches stopped that he had just punched his wife in the face. Palo was sporting a black eye, and Liam was sure her large, Samoan brothers were going to take the price out of his hide. However, when he arrived at a family event later that week, all the relatives congratulated him. The all told him it was about time he put her in her place. To hear him tell it, this was shocking to Liam, but also profoundly validating. Even they knew what Palo could be like.
According to Liam, not long after that, he left for California, where he went through a bunch of extraordinary drama involving being chased by drug dealers and all sorts of crazy things I don’t recall well. I can assured you the stories were very colorful and dramatic, however. And they end with him fleeing to Key West, where I met him, as described in Thus is Begins. Many would have saw these crazy stories as red flags, however having just gone through a lot of my own red-flag drama, I was happy to have found someone who wanted to push past those types of things, appearing to have the same dreams of pursuing the white-picket fence as I did.
When I met Liam, as I mention in the past Substack, we bonded quickly over our shared traumas, but also our shared goals to leave Key West. We both missed our kids terribly and wanted more meaningful, “normal” lives. I missed Melody and Crystal, and was having issued with John when trying to see them, and Liam claimed he had difficulty following Palo’s steps and finding Daphne and David, as Palo moved around regularly, often leaving the children with her family members. Liam claimed Palo’s family were actively hiding the children from him.
This will be the only time I give Liam credit given his later choices, but he did help me heal early in our relationship. He did show himself to be capable of kindness and great gentleness both with me, and with Crystal and Melody. Even my mom commented on how surprisingly kind he was to her. It was so refreshing during a time we all felt like we were experiencing overt cruelty from John on a constant and continual basis. The juxtaposition of the two of them was marked, and in the long run, ironic. Honestly, my time with Liam while in Key West, Daytona Beach, and North Carolina was mostly a breath of fresh air, and I really needed that. For a time, we really were as happy as we could be.
Though we had a lot of fun together in Key West, Daytona, and Charlotte, in retrospect, what kept us together was shared trauma. I didn’t know it then, but it seems that was the only thing Liam was able to connect with on a consistent basis. Exacerbating this was our a car accident in Daytona Beach, as described in Back to the Grind, when Liam started voicing issues with pain. The first few years of our relationship he was working and contributing. We often worked side-by-side. He contributed equally to the household financially and emotionally up to that point and did not complain of pain. But after the accident, though uninjured, he claimed to be suffering a lot of pain, and Daphne and I both noted that we often wrote off his periodic weirdness as someone acting badly because they’re hurting. It was easily to dismiss as a one-off early on. I mean, who divorces someone because, after three years of kindness they start having some difficult moments? I know I, for one, always expected it to be temporary. Daphne has said she felt the same way at first. Not to mention, the moments were small compared to the nice life we had. Even in Charlotte, we’d go to the park and play as a family, go to the pool, take the family water-skiing. We had friends and spent time in the community.
But things changed when Melody and Crystal disappeared. When Daphne and I were talking this morning, she remembered about how she would hear me crying when I thought no-one could hear me. Every. Day. People have said I have been through a lot, but that was the only experience I ever had where I felt emotionally crushed. It is difficult to describe what it feels like to, in the blink of an eye, not know if you’ll ever see your children again and to have no idea where they even are or where to start looking.
Daphne and I have noted that Liam must have consciously noted how much this whole experience affected me. I say consciously because after this point because our relationship shifted from something that soothed my broken heart to one that slowly made an effort to poison it. And the degree to which he worked to tell all of us - me, Daphne, David, Melody, Crystal - things aimed to break us when no-one else was around makes me believe there is no way it wasn’t conscious, especially by the time we were in Utah.
When we moved to Anacortes immediately after the kidnapping, Liam, in spite of all my family had done for us, began to reinforce any distrust I had towards them. I don’t blame him for my distrust, but his choice to double down on it was his. When I worried about the kids and how they were recovering from all their traumas, rather than trying to help us heal, he’d talk all of us down, making the situation seem even worse than it was. At first I didn’t notice, as I was so worried about the kids and our safety, his shared worry seemed logical. He was simply agreeing with me then doubling down on my concerns. This only got worse when he advocated we move to Utah to be with his family not long after we moved to Anacortes to be with mine.
In retrospect it is really odd I chose to move to be in the birthplace of so much abuse instead of with my family. It certainly underscores how vulnerable and mentally ill I was after the kidnapping of the kids.
Fortunately, there was nothing Liam could do to make me dislike my children, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of him trying. However, he did do a lot to undermine my ability to trust myself and work with the kids, especially David and Daphne, which absolutely breaks my heart. He was also doing all he could to undermine everyone’s ability to trust me. None of us knew it, but by the time we were in Utah, he was actively working each of us to isolate and traumatize us. It wasn’t until I spoke with Daphne this morning that I realized from the time we were in Anacortes after the kidnapping, creating drama was the only thing that Liam did in our home. He no longer took the kids on outings, helped with anything around the house, or worked. All he did was plant seeds of unrest.
I wish I knew what was going on in his mind to make him want to do that. He no longer spoke of improving our lives, as we did in Key West, Charlotte, and Anacortes. Those times were past. By the time we got to Utah, things took on a different tone. He claimed to be combatting evil, no longer dreaming of something better. Furthermore, what he was doing in the background was decimating. I write about his darkest choice, to become a child molester, in Utah, Part 3: The Ugly.
This all started after David turned 12, the same age Liam was when his father started sexually abusing him. In Utah, Liam would tell me things the children were doing and saying that I now know were likely false. He did the same thing to the children, telling them horrible things about me, assuring they felt unsafe coming to me for help. It was during that time I remember standing in the hall and crying out, “Why won’t anyone listen to me?!” Now I know why. It wasn’t because the children were traumatized when they came to live with us. It was because they were continually traumatized the by Liam while they lived with us. And that breaks my heart to no end.
Liam’s arrest, as outlined in Utah, Part 2: The Bad, was as fortunate as it was shocking. It allowed the rest of our family to break away from him both physically and mentally. However, when Liam got out of jail over a year later, he was even more unwell than when he went in. I didn’t know yet he was a child molester, but I could see he was sick. And as I describe in Post Traumatic Growth, I was no longer susceptible to his negativity. I no longer had any interest in staying in trauma, the chosen theme of Liam’s life. I was ready to move on, and he clearly stated to me he had absolutely no interest in happiness. Trauma and despair were his chosen path and he wanted nothing different. So we divorced.
Now, I am going to take a break here to say, the reason I tell Liam’s story is this: I think it is important for people to know that real monsters are not as usually portrayed in media, overtly terrifying and only and always terrible. They are people. They have parents, they often have wives, husbands, children. Most monsters don’t have evil seeping out of their pores or “monster” tattooed on their forehead. In fact, many of them say kind things, do kind things, and can be quite seductive. And, even more sad, many monsters actually want something different for a while, until the monstrous overtakes them. In an ideal world, all monsters would choose something different and overcome the demons inside. Whether that is possible is the subject of a lot of inquiry and research. The answers are still unknown.
As for me, I am glad, for Melody, Crystal, and Quinn’s sake, that our involvement with Liam basically ended not long after he got out of prison. However Daphne’s involvement did not.
Having been sexually molested by Liam before he went to prison, Daphne struggled tremendously while he was in prison. I was unable to adequately support her, completely unaware of what she went through. I talk about some of her challenges in Post Traumatic Growth and what she went through with Liam in Return of the Menace. Once Liam got Daphne alone, he graduated from verbally abusing her to actually punching her in the face and threatening her life. The sexual abuse also escalated, demonstrating how much he had devolved by the time he took her back into his custody.
As you know from my past posts, when her psychologist called me to say Daphne said Liam was abusing her, I put her on a plane to her mother in Hawaii within 24 hours. I cannot underscore what a delicate, though urgent, process that was. The potential threats to her safety meant I was having to manipulate her abuser into putting her on the plane while trying not to put her in harms way. I have no words how lucky I feel that it worked. (I’m almost in tears writing this.) Daphne, after that, was safe from him. It was tricky because, at that time, I had no way of knowing if Daphne was actually in danger, as the psychologist warned it may have been a false report. However, I was not about to place doubt on her or Liam without cause. It was tricky at best. Daphne was not yet in a place where she felt she could trust me or confide in me, thanks to Liam’s manipulation, so I did not yet know with certainty the abuse she experienced at his hand. Either way, she and Liam needed to not be living together.
A few months later, my house in Utah, where Liam and Daphne had been living, sold. Liam came to Anacortes to be closer to us. David moved in with him here, and Quinn chose to mostly live there also, though she had a room in both of our houses. Quinn didn’t live with Liam for long. She was quite young, in first grade. She really wanted to be with her dad, Liam, who adored her, so I didn’t stand in the way. That is something I regret knowing what I know now, of course. However, he never caused her harm, thank goodness.
I mention that Liam hadn’t worked for years, so I knew any court would require alimony as part of our divorce, so I did all I could to come up with an arrangement which would mirror what a court would hand him. Our divorce was amicable and we agreed on everything. I paid his rent and two thousand dollars a month with an agreement he would work for my company. I even bought furniture for his house for him, and because the children were there, cleaned it once a week. Seeing how depressed Liam seemed to be, and hoping his love of cars could aid his healing after his incarceration, I even bought him a Dodge Viper and made payments on his Dodge Charger SRT8. I even gave him a cat for comfort, though, to Liam’s chagrin, the cat chose to hide in the closet all the time, which was very telling.
When Mike moved into my house, Quinn chose to come live with us. As soon as the opportunity arose, so did the cat. Not long after that, Liam proceeded to start complaining about how there was “nothing to do in Anacortes.” He decided to move back to Utah with David. I found someone to take over his lease and agreed to pay his rent in Utah, in the basement of my business partner’s house in Utah County.
Not long after Liam moved to Utah, I was talking to my business partner (and dear friend who my husband, Mike, called “brother”), and he admitted that though he didn’t really know why I divorced Liam at first, he “now saw what I meant.” Liam seemed to never do anything but complain, was thoughtless, and a drain on the household at best. He didn’t live in that home for long.
I basically lost track of Liam after that. However, he did steal a car from me at one point. I had a butterscotch 1972 Dodge Challenger with a cream-colored soft-top which I sent to my business partner’s hot-rod shop. It needed a few final touches on the restoration. Liam went to the shop, stole the keys while my partner was out, and took the car. No-one ever found the vehicle, but because I had proof it was mine in divorce decree and title, I did report the car stolen and get fully reimbursed by insurance. I would rather have had the car, however. It was a beaut’. To this day, I have never seen the car, even on the internet.
Daphne came to see me not long after that and told me about all she had been through, as I describe in Return of the Menace. I was so proud of her for having the bravery to do that, and our relationship has only grown and progressed since then. David was no longer living with Liam at that point, having returned to his surrogate family, if memory serves. I honestly wasn’t that close to the situation at that time. However, I did make a point of calling that family to warn them after Daphne came forward, as they had daughters who I knew were potential victims for Liam. They didn’t believe me, but I had done my best to keep their children safe. It was all I could do.
Not long after that, I hear Liam worked as a bouncer in a strip club in the Salt Lake City area. I was told it was there he met his next wife, but I may be confusing her with a previous girlfriend. Anyway, she had two, young children. Daphne told me she warned the woman about Liam when she heard there were children in the household to no avail.
As I describe in Return of the Menace, about six years ago, I got a call from Liam’s wife. I had never met her and had no idea she even knew who I was. She had discovered Liam was physically, verbally, and sexually abusing her children and kicked him out of the house. He stole her car and, she believed, was on his way to kill me and my daughter. Now, this was a one-thousand-mile drive, so I had time to engage the possible threat. I also had time to do my best to comfort her, as she lamented not seeing what he was doing and not having protected her children. Needless to say, I empathized, and did my best to tell her his abuse was not her fault. Now that she had reported him to the police and was pressing charges, she was protecting them, and it was what she did going forward that mattered. I did not mention what was in the back of my mind, that Daphne had warned her. For one, I knew how charismatic Liam could be, and was sure he made her feel safe and like Daphne and I were the dangerous ones. Secondly, there was nothing to be gained by making her feel bad or at fault. It was more constructive to focus on encouraging her support of her kids going forward.
It is also worth noting that ever since I had known Liam, he built up the story surrounding his disability. It started with the back break in the Navy. When the Navy insisted his disability was 20%, Liam claimed it to be much, much worse. After the first accident we were in together, he complained about pain constantly, getting the 20% claim through the VA, but no doctor could ever find any injuries. This happened again after our second car accident, where I was badly injured, as described in Broken. What made this even more difficult was that, though Liam had broken his collarbone, he had no other injuries. However, Liam would tell people he had injuries no doctor ever found, a broken tailbone and injuries to his back. More and more he used his pain as a reason to do less and less and to be more and more ornery. By the time I spoke with his new wife, she told me he continued this pattern through their marriage, repeatedly complaining about crippling pain no doctor could ever justify. Eventually, he had obtained a wheelchair from her tribe, in spite of no medical validation, and often relegated himself to it.
When the new wife warned me of Liam’s threat and possible psychotic break, I notified the police and they were able to find and stop Liam in Puyallup, two hours from my house. As a result he turned around and went back to Utah. My understanding was that somehow he ended up driving to Key West at one point, but eventually he ended up back in Utah again and was arrested on multiple charges of object rape and forcible sexual abuse involving his young step-children.
The hearings and amount of time it took to hold Liam responsible for his crimes was very trying on Daphne, as she was asked by the District Attorney to participate in his prosecution. For a long time she was led to believe he would finally be held responsible for her abuse, even though it was now twenty years later. That never happened. However, in the end, it was her presence in the courtroom that made Liam’s defense almost impossible. He is in prison to this day being held in the Utah State Correctional Facility with no known release date. Below is his listing on the sex offender database.
I have often heard it said that by a certain age, a person’s personality can be seen in their face. I do think this can be now said of Liam. It has certainly changed a lot since he and I met. The smiling, hope-filled person I met in Key West is long gone, though he does still have my name tattooed on his neck.
Sadly, this is the story of Liam.
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