Basso's daughter tells of abuseby mother now on death row
Jason...@virgin.net
September 03, 1999, 07:10 p.m.
Basso's daughter tells of abuseby mother now on death row
By STEVE BREWER
Copyright 1999 Houston Chronicle
Anyone expecting Christianna Hardy to cry for her mother, who was sentenced to death last week, wasn't there 19 years ago in a tiny Houston apartment.
As Hardy told the tale, Susan Basso made her daughter and son undress one day when maintenance men came to fix something, then offered her naked children as sexual playthings. One of the workers fondled the 7-year-old girl as Basso watched, but took the sick game no further.
In a childhood filled with indignities, said Hardy, now 26, that was her worst moment. It was just one of the many episodes that would eventually kill an odd mother-daughter relationship.
"She told them they could do anything they wanted to us," Hardy recalled Thursday as she sat in her home in a working-class neighborhood in southwest Houston. "I don't know why she did it. For amusement, I guess."
It's one of the snapshots that passed through Hardy's mind Wednesday, the day she declared outside a Harris County court that she would drink champagne when the state puts Basso, 45, to death for Louis "Buddy" Musso's murder.
She explained in a later interview that Musso's death at the hands of Basso and five confederates was the final act of abuse that Basso had inflicted on her family and the outcasts she brought home over the years. Hardy said that her mother had been practicing on her kin, honing the skills that have made her the ninth woman on Texas' death row.
"Unfortunately, (Musso) was the biggest thing she got ahold of. We were her conditioning for that," Hardy said. "What she did to us empowered her."
The body of Musso, 59, was found in a Galena Park ditch on Aug. 26, 1998. The corpse was a road map of torture -- a fatal skull fracture, broken bones, bruises, lash marks, burns and signs that he had been bathed in a skin-peeling mix of cleaning fluids.
Testimony in Basso's capital murder trial showed she had lured Musso, a man with the mind of an 8-year-old, to Texas from New Jersey by promising to marry him, though she was already married to the father of her children, James O'Malley Sr.
Musso found instead a life of servitude as Basso took control of his money, tried to seize his Social Security benefits and eventually concocted a plan to cash in on an insurance policy that paid extra if Musso died a violent death.
To carry out her plan, Basso fell back on what Hardy said were old habits -- manipulating and charming a group of weak-minded misfits into doing her bidding.
Now, four of Basso's five accomplices, including her son, James O'Malley Jr., who is Hardy's brother, are in prison for murder. A fifth is awaiting a retrial.
Hardy said if she hadn't cut ties with her mother, for the sake of her sanity and for her three young children, then she and her husband might have been drawn into the mess surrounding Musso's death.
"She would have drug us into it somehow. ... She would have found a way," Hardy said. "Her attitude is, `I'm not going down by myself. I'm taking everyone with me.' I don't feel like to this day that (her accomplices) know what she did to them."
Hardy said she knows because she saw Basso's ruthlessness up close at an early age.
Hardy was born Mary Anne Margaret Peek in June 1973 in Saratoga, N.Y. At the time, Basso was known as Suzanne Burns Peek and her husband, a U.S. marine, was James David Peek. The couple had met and married in April 1972. Both came from working-class families, despite Basso's later claims that she was a wealthy heiress.
James O'Malley Jr., born Harold John Peek, followed in September 1974.
Hardy said she knew little about her mother's childhood in New York state, only that she sensed it was rough. Relatives and psychologists would later confirm that Basso was subjected to physical and sexual abuse.
Hardy said one story from Basso's childhood, often repeated in family circles, is about the time her mother caught her with a pack of cigarettes. Basso's mother didn't make her smoke them to teach her a lesson. She forced the girl to eat them.
Basso's mother still lives in New York. She didn't want to talk about Basso's childhood and hung up on a reporter when called by the Houston Chronicle.
Efforts to contact James O'Malley Sr. failed. He appeared at his wife's trial and would say only that he was sticking by her because he loved her.
Hardy said she knows Basso got into trouble as a teen-ager for skipping school, having sex and stealing. That resulted in a stint in a Catholic boarding school in Albany, N.Y. Despite claims later in life that she had an extensive education in Europe, Basso never went to college or to Europe. She was, however, a gifted seamstress.
But sewing lessons are not what Basso had in mind for her kids.
Hardy's first memories of her mother are when the family still lived in New York. Basso would bring men home and have sex with them while her husband and kids watched.
Hardy remembered once when Basso took her children with her while she visited a man.
"I remember being embarrassed," Hardy said. "J.D. (her brother) and I were sitting at the kitchen table in this stranger's house, and our mom was in the other room having sex with him."
Basso also physically and sexually abused her children, an accusation Hardy leveled during her mother's trial. Basso would also kick them, slap them and handcuff them to furniture and in cars.
This was in stark contrast to the facade that Basso wanted others to see, Hardy said.
As one thumbs through family photo albums, there is a superficial sense that the family is normal. There are snapshots of smiling children on their parents' laps, Christmas Day photos and pictures of trips to the zoo.
But Hardy said it was an act, orchestrated by Basso, a domineering matriarch who showed kindness only when she wanted to make up for the abuse.
Basso also had a tendency to occasionally "get religion," Hardy said. Basso would become immersed in the Bible and read it to her children.
The emotionally chaotic atmosphere was made more strange by an odd need for order that Basso and her husband imposed. Hardy said they forced the kids to march like soldiers, stand at attention and sing the Marine Corps hymn. Several pictures in the albums show the kids standing rigidly, and they also show Hardy's brother frequently dressed in military clothes, something Basso loved.
"They would put on white gloves and go through our rooms," Hardy said. "It was inspection time, and Sue would stand there and help our father while he checked our beds, dumping everything we had on the floor."
The family left New York when Hardy was 5 and moved to North Carolina. Hardy's father had left the Marines and supported his family by working a series of jobs. The abuse continued after the family moved to Houston in the late 1970s.
It was in a Houston motel room that Hardy said she was sexually abused for the first time by her father, who called her into his room after he had had sex with Basso.
Hardy said the abuse became regular and that her mother knew about it and would sometimes participate, when she wasn't molesting Hardy's brother.
The family eventually went back to North Carolina, and Hardy, then 9, remembers a day when her parents were arguing violently, a common occurrence. Basso left and returned to find her husband molesting their daughter.
This time, she called the police.
Hardy's father spent 11 months in a North Carolina jail on a charge of taking indecent liberties with a child. He was convicted in August 1982 in Onslow County, N.C., according to records in that state.
By the time James O'Malley Sr. got out of jail, the family had shattered. Basso gave up her kids, and they spent the next few years shuttled between foster homes and different relatives.
During that time, Basso would see the children infrequently but send them gifts and cards.
Eventually, the children were separated. Hardy went to live in New York; by age 16, her brother had drifted back to Texas to live once again with his parents.
Hardy joined the Marines, and at 18, she decided to forge a new relationship with her mother.
On leave, she came to visit her in Texas. What she saw horrified her.
The first thing that struck Hardy as odd was that Basso wanted the family to change its name from Peek to O'Malley. The reason? It had been stipulated in the will of a family member. Relatives have said that is probably another Basso lie.
But Hardy went along because she never liked her name. That's when she became Christianna.
Hardy never took the O'Malley surname because Basso already had introduced her to her future husband, Scott Hardy. The two had a whirlwind courtship and got married.
Hardy now said that introducing her to Scott Hardy was the only good thing that Basso ever did for her.
The other thing that shocked Hardy, who was eventually bullied out of the Marine Corps by her mother, was the change in her brother, now known as James David O'Malley Jr. or "J.D."
"He was violent. He was angry," Hardy said. "She had spent her life molding him. She turned him into what he became. He was her personal servant, and she made money off him (by receiving his disability benefits). ... She had turned him into a lethal weapon."
Basso still dressed her son in military garb, refused to buy him civilian clothing and encouraged his paramilitary fantasies. Hardy said the abuse of her brother was continuing.
As Hardy started her own family, she watched as her mother's behavior became more bizarre.
Basso took a new lover, Carmine Basso, with the knowledge of her husband. Carmine Basso eventually even moved in with Basso, her husband and her son.
Carmine Basso owned a security company, and Susan, now a security guard, worked for him. The two became so entangled that they became "engaged," something that Hardy is still at a loss to explain. Hardy's mother took Basso's name.
That's when Basso put a large engagement announcement in the Chronicle. The ad raised eyebrows because it was so odd.
In it, Basso repeated all the fantastic claims about being a well-educated oil heiress and even said she was an ex-gymnast, something that strained credibility, considering she weighed more than 300 pounds.
Basso also claimed to have children by Carmine Basso. Those children, of course, didn't exist. But Hardy said Basso was constantly creating fake children and siblings.
Hardy and others said such things were common for Basso, who kept numerous fake birth certificates and bogus IDs and legal documents handy, including one that carried the name of a family pet -- Bootsie the cat.
In the ad, which was written by Basso, were also strange claims about Carmine, who was described as a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.
Carmine never won the nation's highest military medal and even he, who was used to Basso's lies, was amazed by the ad.
"I remember sitting in his office one day and he pulled it out and said, `Have you seen this?' " Hardy said. "He just shook his head."
Carmine Basso was found dead in his office in May 1997. The autopsy cited natural causes, and subsequent police investigations have not resulted in any charges against Basso. But Hardy believes her mother played a role in the death.
Testimony in Basso's trial showed she repeatedly told others that Carmine had been murdered and that she lied on her state applications to obtain security licenses.
Basso took over Carmine's security business after he died, and Hardy said she turned down an offer to join her. Hardy said she just saw it as another one of her mother's schemes to make money.
By that time, Hardy said, she had started to distance herself from Basso. She didn't like the way Basso talked to her children. She wanted to break the cycle of abuse that had dominated the family.
The next time she heard anything about her mother was in August 1998, when Basso and her five accomplices were on TV. They had been charged with capital murder.
Now that the trial is over and Musso's final torment has been explained, Hardy said she feels some sense of relief.
She said she testified against her mother to face her fear of the woman who was such a malevolent force in her life. She's still scared of Basso, even though her mother appears to be just a shell of the towering presence that she once was.
Basso lost more than 200 pounds in jail, and jurors saw a sickly woman who looked twice her age. She sat in a wheelchair, claiming to be paralyzed. She also claimed during the trial that she had regressed to her childhood.
Hardy said it was an act to try to influence jurors. Uncomfortable as it may sound coming from a daughter's mouth, she said she is happy the jury didn't buy the "act" and sentenced her mother to die.
Hardy believes Basso got what she deserved. Besides, the prospect of her mother being given a lethal injection is the only thing that Hardy said helps her sleep at night.
She lives in fear of her father and mother returning to terrorize her, her kids and her husband.
"If she had gotten off on this, somehow, she wouldn't have stopped at Buddy Musso. She would have been another Rafael Resendiz-Ramirez," Hardy said, referring to the alleged serial killer who, like Basso, has a love for aliases. "She's capable of anything. If she's capable of killing a grown mentally handicapped man, think of what she would do to my family."
Hardy also carries a good deal of anger about what Basso did to J.D., who is serving a life sentence for his role in Musso's death. She said her mother's treatment of the boy is a lot like her treatment of Musso.
Basso cut both men off from any support system that wanted to help them; she abused them, used them for money and ridiculed them, Hardy said. The only difference was that Basso used her son as a weapon, while Musso became a victim.
So Hardy advises those who might cringe at the joy she showed over her
mother's death sentence to consider where she is coming from, and the effort
she's made to have a normal life.
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stories like this are incomprehensible to many. although moved to tears by the horrifics suffered by Buddy Musso, i find myself wondering and asking -
what prompts someone, perhaps someone who might not be too different than you and i, to cause such mayhem? i think back to the perpetrator's own childhood. Ms Busso suffered abuse from her own caregivers. then she perpetuated the abuse, the fear, and all that self-loathing on her own children.
but there's a flip-side to this explanation. Ms Hardy didn't perpetuate the violence of her mother's abuse, so that's the positive bent on this story. unfortunately i don't believe most stories bend that way.
