Father's Convictions Still Haunt Son
Anne W.
Father's Convictions Still Haunt Son
By Amy Sherrill
Monday, May 2, 2005 8:37 AM CDT
Times Record • Asherrill;@swtimes.com
Tyler Vines expresses mixed emotions as he talks about his dad,
convicted killer and rapist Charles Ray Vines.
He remembers how his dad used to take him hunting and fishing,
something Tyler Vines, 19, of Barling still likes to do. He remembers
that his dad helped people whenever he could. For instance, if a
friend or neighbor needed help building a fence, his dad was there.
Tyler Vines is like that too. He likes to help others.
"I know he did have issues and problems, but he was a pretty good
dad," Tyler Vines said.
Charles Ray Vines, 41, is serving life without parole in the Arkansas
Department of Correction for murdering Ruth Henderson of Crawford
County in 1995 and Juanita Wofford of Fort Smith in 1993. Authorities
linked him to the murders after he was caught raping a 16-year-old
Crawford County girl in 2000. Vines also admitted to raping an elderly
Fort Smith woman in 1993 months before he raped and killed Wofford.
Crystal Winton of Pocola, Charles Ray Vines' ex-wife and Tyler's
mother, said her ex-husband used to do nice things for her.
"He'd build me a flower garden, and you know it was beautiful," she
said.
Charles Ray Vines was the kind of guy a person would want to have as a
next door neighbor, said Anita Hudson of Barling, his
ex-mother-in-law.
"He would take things out of his garden and give to his neighbors,"
Hudson said. "He would come over and do things for people."
And when Vines and Winton divorced in 1989 after four years of
marriage, he never missed sending a child support check for his two
boys, Tyler and Kyle.
"He always paid child support, all the way up until he got put in
jail," Tyler Vines said. "It was there every week."
But the darker side of Charles Ray Vines caused his family a lot of
pain.
Tyler Vines was beaten up, threatened with a gun and stabbed with a
knife by his dad. He rolled up his sleeve during a recent interview at
the Times Record to show the scar on his elbow from when he was
stabbed.
Once the two went squirrel hunting following an early morning
argument. Tyler Vines guesses that his dad was still mad at him.
"It was a .410 (shotgun) and I was a pretty good distance away, but I
still got peppered pretty hard with pellets right in my lower back,"
Vines said. "He hit me and, boy, I hit the ground."
Winton said her ex-husband started abusing her shortly after they got
married in 1985. She waited until after their second son, Tyler, was
born and then she left him, she said.
A Rocky Marriage
"He did beat her up a lot when I was younger," Tyler Vines said. "Oh
yeah, I seen it. He's pulled a gun to her head. When she was pregnant
with my little brother he threw her off the porch. He used to lock her
up in his shop. He used to lock her in the house where she couldn't
get out."
Winton hadn't know Vines very long when she married him. They met in
Charleston, where she grew up, she said. He came along just as she had
broken off a nine-year relationship. Vines was very different from her
previous partner.
"Everything he wasn't, Charles Ray was," Winton recalls. "He was a
biker. It was a different life than I'd ever known. I just rebelled
and I married him, and I didn't know what I got into."
After they got married they rarely shared a bedroom, she said. She
wonders now if maybe she was just too young for him because he seemed
to have an inclination toward older women.
Vines went on to later marry a woman who was several years older than
he, but the marriage lasted only three months.
Hudson, Winton and Tyler Vines all agree that they are lucky Charles
Ray Vines didn't kill them.
Winton and her eldest son can't remember how many times Vines pointed
a loaded gun at them and threatened to shoot.
"One night he pointed a gun at me, and told me he ought to just kill
me," Tyler Vines said. "I said, ‘Just do it if you're going to do it.'
He'd kind of laugh and carry on about it, and then he'd go back
downstairs. I didn't think he'd ever do it. Sometimes he was a
blowhard. But I thought if he does it, he just does it. There ain't
nothing I can do to stop him."
Alcohol And Drugs
The dark moods and the violence occurred more often when Charles Ray
Vines drank alcohol. In his confession to local authorities, he said
that's when he raped and killed too. Sometimes he added illegal drugs
to the mix.
"I seen him drink enough times to know that he liked the effect that
the alcohol gave him," said Hudson, who works in alcohol and drug
rehabilitation. "It made him a big tough guy. He was a bully at that
point."
Although she saw Charles Ray Vines abuse alcohol, she doesn't believe
he was ever dependent on it.
"I didn't see a dependency, but I saw the abuse and he drank for
effect,' she said. "He wanted to feel that way. And the alcohol done
that for him."
She also believes he would have never committed the heinous crimes he
did if hadn't been drinking.
"I don't think he would have ever done it sober; he didn't have the
guts," Hudson said. "I just think that the drinking was the cause of
it, but, you know, he chose to drink."
Drug abuse was something his ex-wife and mother-in-law never saw.
But Tyler Vines witnessed it and was even forced to participate.
"It really messed with my head pretty bad that he made me do stuff
like that," he said. "I knew it was wrong at the time, but if I didn't
do it something bad was going to happen."
When Vines was arrested in 2000, his two boys suffered excessive
teasing at school. Their house was vandalized, Winton said. And life
got rougher in a way.
Tyler Vines, who was living with his dad and going to Cedarville
schools at the time of Charles Ray Vines' arrest, moved to Pocola
where he got into a lot of fights over comments made about his dad.
"Everybody told me I was going to end up being just like him," Vines
said. "At school people would do that, and they would see how mad I
would get because I have a pretty bad temper. I'm kind of like my dad
in that way, but I'm not going to go as far as kill somebody. I mean,
that's just not sane."
Eventually, he got hardened to the insults, and he heard them less and
less.
After he graduated from high school, he went to work in oil field
industry where he works on natural gas compressors and gas wells.
Constant Reminders
For the most part, he doesn't hear the taunting about his dad that he
once did in high school. But there are always little reminders of who
is dad is.
On April 19, A&E's "Cold Case Files" presented a 30 minute segment
about Charles Ray Vines and his crimes.
"Why his story?" Vines asks. "Why did it have to be on A&E?"
Knowing many of the people his dad hurt makes things worse for Tyler
Vines.
The 16-year-old rape victim went to school with Tyler. The first rape
victim, an elderly Fort Smith woman, went to the same church as Tyler,
his dad and his dad's parents.
"My dad did go to church with us for a long time over there, and then
you know about the time that happened to (her) he stopped going to
church," he said.
At the time, Ruth Henderson lived just a quarter mile from where his
dad was building his house on Dripping Springs Trail.
"All the people up there that I knew, we'd talk about it (the
murder)," Vines said. "I thought, man, that's crazy. It happened right
there and this whole time it ended up being my dad."
Hudson said Charles Ray Vines frequently visited a neighbor of
Wofford's in Fort Smith. Vines knew her because he worked on
motorcycles with a friend who lived nearby.
"These women could have been his own grandmother," Hudson said.
Hudson said Vines is where he needs to be because if he were out he'd
just drink and do more harm.
She keeps in touch with him because she told him just after he was
arrested that she would support him if he confessed and took a plea
bargain, so the boys and the victims' families would not have to be
put through anything more. She told him if he pleaded out she would
help him in any way she could.
Every so often, she writes him, updating him on his two boys. Vines
also calls collect about once every month or two, and she accepts the
calls.
"He's always pretty cheerful unless he's felling bad, but he's usually
pretty cheerful."
Hudson said she also supports her two grandsons no matter what
decision they make about writing or visiting their father. She thinks
they should make up their own mind.
"I don't particularly have a lot to do with my dad because of what
he's put me through — all the pain and anguish," Tyler Vines said.
But it doesn't bother Vines to talk about his dad. In fact, it even
helps, he said. That way he doesn't keep it all bottled up. Counseling
helped him with that and his anger-management problem, he said.
What does bother him is being judged for what his father has done.
"It does hurt because a lot of people know about it," he said. "I wish
people would judge me for me and not for what he has done."
Even though he shares his father's first and last name (Tyler is his
middle name), many of his facial and physical features he hopes that
one day people will get past who his dad is.
http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2005/05/02/news/news01.txt
--
Anne W.
indigoace at goodsol period com
http://www.goodsol.com/cats/
amanda...@gmail.com
My point is this. Just because your father did something so hanious, doesn't mean you're going to turn out the way he is. You did the greatest thing from the time he went to prison! You went and got yourself help. Got your anger in control. You've proven to yourself that you are not the monster that your father is. And if the people in your community can't see that...then forget them! They're not worth the time wasted thinking or caring about what they think or how they feel! Surround yourself with the live of the rest of your family, get more therapy if necessary and hold your head high! The only one that should be judging you is God himself! He's the one one that counts. Not the idiots that can't see how wonderful you turned out to be. You're not a statistic. You're a human being that has turned things around and deserves respect. You didn't do the awful crimes your father committed. He made his choices. You don't have to pay or answer for them. You have my full, total and complete support. God Bless you dear sir! I pray all of the blessings God can bestow upon you and your friends and family.
Greg Carr
> I just wanted to say something to Tyler Vines. When I was a child, I was physically, mentally, emotionally and sadly sexually abused by my father. My mother treated me the same way, with the exception of sexual abuse. She just prided herself at humiliating me to my friends and family at my expense. For a while in my young adult life, I didn't want to have children. I was afraid that I would be abusive to them like my parents were to me. But, when I found out I was expecting my son, I made a promise to him. I told him everyday that he was a blessing from God. And that there was a purpose for me being his mother. And that, I was going to be the best mother I could be. I wasn't ever going to hurt him or any siblings I gave him any of the ways that I was hurt. And I wouldn't let any member of my family or my husband hurt him either. The first time I held him I cried. I asked God "how could any parent hurt or hate such an innocent and precious child that they've brought into this world?" I didn't understand it. It was then that I decided to talk to a therapist. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be the monster that my parents were to me. And you know what? I haven't been. Now, I've disciplined my children. And it's always been the hardest thing I've had to do. But, I've never beaten, abused emotionally, physically, mentally or sexually. I've never let anyone do that to them either. Every time I've gotten really angry with them, I've excused myself and just remembered how I felt when my parents would abuse or say t gongs to me or each other about me. I could never make my children feel the way I felt. My children are the two most beautiful, smart, respectful, well behaved, well adjusted and loved children in this world.
>
> My point is this. Just because your father did something so hanious, doesn't mean you're going to turn out the way he is. You did the greatest thing from the time he went to prison! You went and got yourself help. Got your anger in control. You've proven to yourself that you are not the monster that your father is. And if the people in your community can't see that...then forget them! They're not worth the time wasted thinking or caring about what they think or how they feel! Surround yourself with the live of the rest of your family, get more therapy if necessary and hold your head high! The only one that should be judging you is God himself! He's the one one that counts. Not the idiots that can't see how wonderful you turned out to be. You're not a statistic. You're a human being that has turned things around and deserves respect. You didn't do the awful crimes your father committed. He made his choices. You don't have to pay or answer for them. You have my full, total and complete support. God Bless you dear sir! I pray all of the blessings God can bestow upon you and your friends and family.