Amanda Brown's Mom NOW Feels Remorse
On Topic Panuchi
Mother struggles with guilt as search for
girl ends in murder
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Some days, Kathryn Hartman is overwhelmed by
despair, imagining her 7-year-old daughter, Amanda Brown, floating
lifeless in Tampa Bay near crab traps and fishing boats.
Other days, her heart assures her the talkative second-grader
might
still be alive, somewhere, just waiting to be found.
But each day, the same guilt gnaws at Ms. Hartman - the shame of
believing she is the one who opened the doors of her home and
invited danger inside to meet a trusting child.
``How could I be so stupid?'' she says now. ``What was I thinking?
Why didn't some sort of instinct kick in?''
A convicted child molester named Willie Crain, Jr. made his first
court appearance Friday on charges of first-degree murder and
kidnapping in Amanda's disappearance three weeks ago. He's being
held without bond in a county jail and his arraignment is expected
next week.
Amanda's body has not been recovered. But police found blood
consistent with Amanda's DNA along the toilet rim and on tissue
inside the toilet at Crain's trailer. They believe he dumped her
body,
perhaps in Old Tampa Bay where, as a commercial fisherman, he set
his crab traps.
Ms. Hartman, a single mother, had met the crabber at a bar where
his daughter worked and invited him to her home last month.
Detectives say he gave Valium tablets to Ms. Hartman, then crawled
into bed beside her and Amanda as she drifted off to sleep.
Ms. Hartman awoke to her blaring alarm at 6:12 a.m. and discovered
Crain and her little girl gone.
At the police station, she learned the truth: The man she met just
two days earlier was sent to prison for seven years for raping
five
girls, all roughly her daughter's age.
``I didn't know what kind of man he was,'' she says, crying.
Some signs, she admits, were there. But somehow, she neglected to
see them or just plain ignored them. She dismissed a gut feeling
that
Crain was a bit strange, instead believing his daughter who
described him as a good man looking for the right woman. Maybe,
Ms. Hartman thought, they could be friends.
On the night Ms. Hartman last saw her daughter, Crain spent the
evening helping Amanda with her handwriting homework. Then he
ate a spaghetti dinner and invited the pair to his trailer to
watch the
movie ``Titanic.''
They never watched the video. Instead, Crain called his sister and
put Ms. Hartman on the phone with her. When she hung up, she
realized Crain and Amanda were behind closed doors, in his
bedroom.
She opened the door. Amanda stood between Crain's knees, his
arms wrapped around her as he showed her how to use the remote
control.
``It just didn't look right,'' Ms. Hartman said. But she didn't
speak up,
instead separating the two and suggesting it was time to head
home. Crain followed along.
Back at her trailer, about a mile from Crain's in the town of
Seffner,
just east of Tampa, she ignored another voice telling her to send
him home.
``He would not take a hint. Finally, I said, 'Look, we're going to
bed.
You can lay down on the sofa if you need to sober up.'''
Crain instead followed them into the bedroom, laying down, fully
clothed, on the bed with her and Amanda. Ms. Hartman didn't like
that a bit. But again, tired from the prescription sedative he
offered
her to help her back pain, she didn't say a word.
By morning, it was too late.
``If I could have done anything different, this never would have
happened,'' she says.
Amanda's father, Roy Brown, bitterly agrees.
``I blame her,'' he says. ``You bring a man you don't even know
into
your house and you've got a young girl there. Tell me you're not
accountable.''
Crain, a second-grade dropout, was imprisoned in 1985 on five
counts of sexual battery on girls under age 11. He was sentenced
to
20 years in prison, but that sentence was whittled down bit by
bit. In
the end, he served only six years in prison and one year under
house
arrest.
He has said he has no idea what happened to Amanda, and people
should allow him to put his past behind him.
``There is no comparison of what I am now to what I was 14 years
ago,'' he told the St. Petersburg Times before charged Thursday
for
Amanda's death. ``I was bad back then. I was fighting the world.
Now, I am a human being.''
For Amanda's father, Crain's words are meaningless. Brown had
spent the previous day with Amanda, who had wiry blond hair and
loved country-western music and her pink and purple bicycle.
She drew her father a picture of his favorite cartoon character,
Tweety Bird. And they played together a little too long in the
morning, making her a few minutes late for school when he dropped
her off.
``Amanda told me she loved me and that was the last I saw of
her.''
He spent days along the Courtney Campbell Causeway last month,
as police divers searched the bay and peered into crab traps for
signs of his little girl, a child he described as his best friend.
Back at home one night, he pulled out a box of old pictures. Right
at
the top, Amanda's face smiled back at him. They were together at
that same spot along the causeway, a popular waterfront beach,
flying a kite.
``I could take her hurt. I could take her any kind of way, if only
I
could just take her home,'' he says. ``I need Amanda.''
Copyright 1998 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
PHyatt1962
This story is sickening.
What kind of woman takes home a strange man, lets him in her bed, takes his
prescription medicine:
all while her daughter is there?
What a jerk.
PH
Jonathan Blaque
> What kind of woman takes home a strange man,
> lets him in her bed, takes his prescription medi-
> cine: all while her daughter is there?
Only the girl of my dreams, sister.
Cheers!
Vomit(II)
Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter
"If you are starting to believe that the vast bulk of
humanity is a worthless morass of lying, defecating
chimpanzees, then I've done my job."
-- Citizen Ted
PHyatt1962
Only the girl of my dreams, sister.
Cheers!
Vomit(II)
Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter
"If you are starting to believe that the vast bulk of
humanity is a worthless morass of lying, defecating
chimpanzees, then I've done my job."
-- Citizen Ted
http://www.eGroups.com/list/blaques-dungeon
Mother of the year?
For Father of the Year, I am considering Monica Lewinski's Dad....he seems to
have given her the love and security she needed....
Kris Baker
>This story is sickening.
>What kind of woman takes home a strange man, lets him in her bed,
>takes his prescription medicine:
>all while her daughter is there?
>What a jerk.
>PH
What kind of woman?
A trailer-trash, dope-taking, low morals, man-chasing, big-hair
wearing SLUT!
Kris
glas
|
|This story is sickening.
|
|What kind of woman takes home a strange man, lets him in her bed, takes his
|prescription medicine:
|
|all while her daughter is there?
|
|What a jerk.
I agree. What kind of a mother (and I use that term loosely in this case)
would let a man sleep in the same bed that she shares with her young
daughter? Matter of fact, it could be daughter or son and still be an
incredibly stupid thing to do. Too bad the child was the one that paid for
this woman's stupidity.
glas
