Was your family the kind of family that had a tag-along? You know the one, the girl that came on all of your family vacations, slept over with your older sister, went everywhere, and did everything? That, for me, was Bessie Smith. She was my sister's best friend. She was the one that followed my family around like she was a member. She was my sister's best friend and eventually my brother-in-law's too. She was my sister's college roommate, her partner in crime, and the girl that was always in on using me, the kid brother whenever she could. Part of their relationship that I tolerated simply because I was the brother and they needed me to wash their car, write their reports, provide them with the alibi, or simply be the one to blame. You know, kid brother stuff.
This crime has now, eaten me alive and all I did was get sober, save my money, and lend it out as freely as I could to my sister's family whenever they asked. I grossed about $3600 for eight years and lived on $200/month in $50 envelopes once a week. The rest we put into a savings account that only my mom and I had access to. I lived in my parents' other home and the money was taken directly from my account and the rest was saved. Over time that account grew and grew, but because I had Lori Jean LaFond stalking me, I didn't want to know how much was in it. Oh, I deposited money into it all the time. Full paychecks. Social Security checks, everything went into it.
When Bessie Smith, a longtime friend of my sister showed up in my life again after 35 years...reportedly to help my family with Lori LaFond. No, she didn't come to me after years and years of torture. Bessie, it seemed, had watched my life spiral but not because of drug use, because of "brain linking". A worn-out unsophisticated communications system was implanted into the Marine Corps youth from Okinawa, Japan, and 29 Palms. My family, not the military, was completely blindsided by this in ways that only the LaFond family could dream up.
First, there was my father's arrest on sexual molestation charges. Lori's dream of framing my father for a homosexual relationship with a student. She planted evidence. Told the boy's parents. Knew a version of a story because she watched the boy and dreamed up sexual deviancy all the way into a trial. Since the story was untrue, all the allegations false, my dad was rightfully acquitted. My mom was, at first devastate, then elated, but my torture had just begun. You see, Lori LaFond had much bigger plans for my sister and she used me to get at them. My sister was friendly with Lori, Jackie LaFond knew her sister had set up my father, but I'd lost my father, at least the one I should have had. He wouldn't coach me in basketball and he was diminished. I had to live with the shame of the accusation, which I knew wasn't true, my whole life. Lori seized on that on my first day of school. She preyed on me with her druggie friends, every minute of every single day, even after she left school and I was a senior.
When I was in college and home from the first year, Lori lured me to Palm Springs using someone. She knocked me out and infected me with HIV and stuck an implant in my head. My brother-in-law was already implanted so she had my sister surrounded. Lori would then have me followed everywhere I went from the time I went back to college after she infected me until I was shot in San Diego, California, by her brother Brian at Lori's command. "I want him dead by my birthday," she texted Brian. Lori wanted to become some kind of pseudo-family member that she thought my sister and she would be if I was dead. Of course, if I was dead, my sister wouldn't have to hear about how she'd followed me everywhere and with hundreds of people. Lori would listen in on the night of the shooting and hear that her brother missed, for which she was furious, living in Palm Springs, but ordering the hit.
"It was probably a drug thing, "she told people. Later she would claim not to know anything about me since high school, but the opposite was the truth. Lori got caught sending letters to my then-boyfriend, Ashley on her father's letterhead. Threatening him with exposure if he didn't break up with me immediately for being gay in the military. She told him about my HIV infection leaving out how she knew that she'd given it to me long before I had sex and I never used needles. My really happy relationship with my best friend was demolished, but Lori wasn't finished...nope. She wanted blood. She wanted revenge because my father wasn't convicted. She told any and everyone that I was lying on the witness stand as a 12-year-old. Bessie Smith watched on and said nothing. She literally let Lori cause my brother-in-law's death and then the attempt on my life and never said a single word to my sister or me or her own military father.
So you can imagine my amazement that she would ruin my investigation into my own rape in Palm Springs and show up at my sister's doorstep asking for a bank account that she could only know about from this very system. Only my mom and I talked about this money. It was something that we built together. Mrs. Katzenberg knew it was true too. I explained that saving money with Lori around in a bank account that she couldn't get to was the smartest thing a person like me could do. It provided me with an escape. Just in case Lori went crazy on my life again. It provided me with a way to help my brother-in-law's kids; a promise I made to him long ago when he told me that Lori Jean LaFond was HIS DRUG DEALER and that I had to protect myself and my sister. Oh, I told them all I had a stalker, but none of them listen to the gay guy in the family. How could a former U.S. Justice Department employee know anything about the law?
My family still thinks I'm the drug addict that Lori made me into. My sister won't even admit to all the calls that Lori made to my father and my sister not to mention my mom; just like she did to my father's accuser when I was in the sixth grade. It would be like me thinking my dad was a homosexual father because Lori told everyone he was...I am not afforded the same luxury as he was. I am a god damned drug addict forever in their eyes because Lori told them I was. The truth is, I could never hold a candle to the addict she is. I partied because I was being followed so much that I couldn't cope so I turned to drugs...I couldn't possibly do drugs all the time because I was in court all the time. My sister, as usual, believed the worst, like she always does with me. I could earn and save $38,000 to help her kids and she still wouldn't give me a break. My sister could steal and lose that money and I'm still the worst person for using drugs, which I hadn't in a very long time. I'm still the bad guy and I always will be.
For Bessie Smith to have watched her friend Missy Erickson and Lori LaFond do what they did to me every single day in Palm Springs, then come and steal this from me? It's unfathomable. For my sister to have stolen it away and handed it to a complete stranger...I would never have believed you. But the nail in our siblinghood was when she denied it ever existed. Ever since then, I've been playing the unconcerned brother, but I'm biding my time until I can have her arrested for it. To tell me that all the years of scrimping and saving were for nothing was not as bad as watching my mom crying on the floor saying, "Kevie, I wouldn't steal your money, I swear to God I wouldn't!" I'll never forget the hate, pure hate, that I felt for Jeffrey Katzenberg from that day on. Every day in the pit of my stomach, I agonize about how I am going to pay his family back for what he did to my mother.
Now I have to move again. Now I have to pretend that what they did to me, Bessie, and my sister, doesn't bother me. I'll play along like some loser that never did anything good until my time comes to put them both in jail. She would do that to me. All I can hear is, "There is no bank account," from my own sister's lying mouth. She stomped out my dreams and left me here to die, just like my boyfriend did fifteen years ago. I can't believe she hates me so much that she would steal and lie to me, then keep the money for herself.
