On June 29, 1994 Jon Michael Bell, a former reporter hired to
investigate Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church by Stauffer
Communications, Inc.,filed a lawsuit in Shawnee County District Court in
Topeka, Kansas against Stauffer Communications alleging the Topeka
Capital-Journal owed him compensation for overtime and to clarify
ownership of his notes and work product. The work product in question,
"Addicted to Hate" chronicling the life and times of Fred Phelps, was
attached to the lawsuit as Exhibit A making it, therefore, a public
document. Learning of the suit, members of Topeka's anti-Phelps
underground delivered a certified copy of the lawsuit to a copy shop
near the courthouse.
Within 48 hours, Stauffer Communications had written all area
media outlets and issued veiled warnings about using the information
contained in "Addicted to Hate". A rival Topeka newspaper, the Metro
News, announced it was considering publishing the lawsuit in it
entirety. The Kansas City Star abided by Stauffer Communication's
wishes, but several other media outlets aired or printed portions of the
manuscript. Within 48 hours of the filing, Stauffer Communications
persuaded a judge to seal the suit so the Clerk of the District Court
could no longer make copies for the public. No matter - no such order
was issued to the copy shop or to the hundreds of citizens that already
had copies.
On July 8 the Capital-Journal, which had deep-sixed the Phelps
project and fired the publisher who authorized it when it was completed
last fall, suddenly began its watered-down, copyrighted series on Phelps
that they had earlier claimed they wouldn't print. Bell also withdrew
his suit the same day. By this time, however, TV networks, wire
services, and eastern newspapers had obtained copies of the manuscript,
and Stauffer's unprecedented attempt to suppress media discussion of the
document attracted the interest of several major East Coast newspapers
on First Amendment grounds.
Phelps, a self-proclaimed advocate of the First Amendment, whose 'free speech activities include libel, slander defamation of character, intimidation, obscene language, battery, promptly denounced Stauffer Communications and denied the allegations of child abuse, spouse abuse, and other illegal activities. Anyone familiar with Phelps and his children who remain loyal to him, however, can clearly see these adult children and his wife suffer from the grotesque and obvious behaviors symptomatic of severe, long-term abuse. Where and how the twisted saga of Fred Phelps will end is anyone's guess.
TABLE OF CONTENTSThe volunteer distributors of this file wish to emphatically state
that Jon Michael Bell did not suggest, encourage, or take part in the
transfer or distribution of his typewritten manuscript (Exhibit A) to
ASCII format. Volunteer distributors make no guarantees either expressed
or implied and cannot be responsible in the use of this file.
Jon Michael Bell, one of the authors of "Addicted to Hate", seeks no compensation for his work. If, however, after reading "Addicted to Hate", you would like to make a contribution in his name to organizations in Topeka assisting AIDS victims, abused children and battered women, please send your donations to:
1. Hospice for AIDS Victims c/o Topeka AIDS Project 1915 S. W. 6th Street Topeka, Kansas 66606 2. Project Safe Talk 200 S.E. 7th Street Topeka, Kansas 66603 3. Battered Women Task Force 225 S.W. 12th Street Topeka, Kansas 66612
Let the word go forth that the overwhelmingly vast majority of
Topekans and Kansans DO NOT support Westboro Baptist Cult and Fred
Phelps' hate campaigns against all who disagree with him. The District
Attorney in Shawnee County (Topeka) has filed several criminal cases
against members of the Westboro Cult ranging from disorderly conduct and
battery to felony charges of aggravated intimidations of victims and
witnesses. Prosecution of these cases are delayed pending the outcome of
the second of the lawsuits filed in federal court by Phelps Chartered.
There will probably be more. Fred and his lawyer offspring and in-laws
continue to abuse the judicial system much as Fred did before his state
and federal disbarments. The case is expected to be heard in federal
court in early fall, but few expect that this will be the end.
Please let Topeka officials and Federal Judge Sam Crow know that many of Fred Phelps' and WBC activities (as outlined in the above paragraph and documented by both "Addicted to Hate" and the Capital-Journal series) are NOT protected by the First Amendment and encourage them to take whatever steps are necessary to prosecute Phelps for those activities which are clearly crimes to the fullest extent of the law. Please do it today!
The Hon. Sam A. Crow Frank Carlson Federal Courthouse 444 S.E. Quincy Topeka, Kansas 66603 (913) 295-2626 Joan M. Hamilton Shawnee County District Attorney 200 S.E. 7th Street Suite 214 Topeka, Kansas 66603 (913) 233-8200 Ext. 4330 Commissioner Don Cooper Chairman, Board of Commissioners 200 S.E. 7th Street Topeka, Kansas 66603 (913) 233-8200 Ext. 4040 The Hon. Butch Felker Office of the Mayor 215 S.E. 7th Street Topeka, Kansas 66603 (913) 295-3895 Chief Gerald Beavers Topeka Police Department 204 S.W. 5th Street Topeka, Kansas 66603 (913) 354-9551TABLE OF CONTENTS
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF SHAWNEE COUNTY, KANSAS DIVISION 7 JON BELL,
Plaintiff, vs. Case No. 94CV766 STAUFFER COMMUNICATIONS, INC.,
Defendant.
PETITION FOR DECLARATORY RELIEF (Pursuant to K.S.A. Chapter
60-1701 et. seq.)
COMES NOW the Plaintiff Jon Bell and states:
1.Plaintiff is a resident of Kansas.
2.Defendant Stauffer Communications, Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of Kansas and may be served by serving its resident agent The Corporation Company, Inc., 515 S. Kansas Ave., Topeka, Kansas 66603.
3.Plaintiff was an intern and employed by Defendant to work for its newspaper Topeka Capital Journal, in Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas.
4. As part of his work he was assigned by the managing editor to prepare stories and/or manuscripts concerning one Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church, Inc.
5. That Plaintiff's employment was originally undertaken for
compensation of $1300 per month (37 hours per week at $8.00/hour). As
the scope of the Phelps project expanded to book length, Plaintiff
indicated his willingness to do a book for the compensation he was being
paid. It was represented to him by the managing editor, Mr. Sullivan,
that the publication of the book would have such value to Plaintiff's
reputation as an author that the publication plus the salary was just
compensation. In reliance upon the representation that the book would be
published by Defendant, he continued with the project to the point of
final manuscript and dedicated overtime hours (for which he was not
separately compensated) having a reasonable value in excess of $10,000.
6. Plaintiff has been advised by Mr. Hively, the publisher of the Topeka Capital Journal that Defendant does not intend to publish the book or any portion of it.
7. Plaintiff has been separately advised by the defendant's attorney that Defendant does not grant Plaintiff permission to publish the book (Ex. B attached).
8. Plaintiff claims that he has intellectual property rights in the manuscript and desires to publish it and that in the absence of compensation for his overtime or because of his reliance on Mr. Sullivan's representation if Defendant chooses to waste the work that he has the right to publish the book.
9. In that Defendant has asserted superior rights to the manuscript, but, has likewise has declared an intent not to publish and the fact that the material may become dated, or alternatively, lose its timelessness (the subject of the manuscript is currently running for the Democratic nomination for Governor of the State of Kansas), it is important to resolve the rights of the parties in and to the manuscript as it relates to the contract of employment which previously existed between Plaintiff and Defendant, and terminate the controversy over rights to the manuscript which gives rise to these proceedings.
10. Plaintiff feels uncertain and insecure of his legal position in the absence of a judicial declaration of his rights, and for that reason, brings this action.
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays that the Court construe the terms of
his employment and his rights to publish the manuscript marked as Ex. A
and attached hereto, and permit the Plaintiff the right without
restriction, and subject to any fair accounting to Defendant, to publish
the manuscript.
(Signature of Jon Bell) Jon Bell, pro s 82 (Home address
intentionally omitted) Lawrence, KS 66044
(Document contains the seal of the District Court of Shawnee County, Kansas and the signature of Leslie Miller, Deputy Clerk of the District Court of Shawnee County, Kansas and dated 6-29-94.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS(Letterhead of the law firm of Goodell, Stratton, Edmonds &
Palmer) 515 South Kansas Avenue Topeka, Kansas 66603-3999 913-233-0593
Telecopier: 913-233-8870)
June 2, 1994
Mr. Jon Bell (Home Address Intentionally Omitted) Shawnee,
Kansas 66216
In re: Topeka Capital-Journal Our file: 31143
Dear Jon:
I understand that you are in some way marketing or trying to
develop an interest in the Capital-Journal's investigatory work on Fred
Phelps.
Be advised that you are not authorized to engage in this
activity. This work is the property of The Topeka Capital-Journal, and
does not belong to you. My client will make all decisions regarding the
piece. You are not authorized to speak on behalf of The Capital-Journal
regarding this work, or even to reveal its existence for that matter. If
you are taking any steps to develop a market or other interest in this
work, you are required to cease immediately.
Meanwhile, please advise Pete Goering at The Capital-Journal of
any steps you have taken in this regard.
Very truly yours, (Signature of Michael W. Merriam) Michael W.
Merriam
MWM:ah cc: Mr. Pete Goering
(Note: This document contains the time stamp of the Clerk of the District Court, Shawnee County, Kansas showing the document was filed with the Clerk at 1:05 p.m. of June 29, 1994.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS(Note: The contents of the following document shows the time stamp
of the Clerk of the District Court, Shawnee County, Kansas and shows
that the document was filed at 1:05 p.m. on June 29, 1994.)
"And be sure your sin will find you out." (Num. 32:23)
A frequent quote of Pastor Fred Phelps
Reverend Fred Phelps: lawyer and Baptist minister; head of the
Westboro Baptist Church; 64 years old. Disbarred.
Marge Phelps: wife of Fred; mother of his 13 children; 68 years
old. WBC member.
1. Fred Phelps, Jr.: lawyer and employee at the Kansas
Department of Corrections; 40 years old. Oldest son. WBC member.
Betty Phelps (Schurle): wife of Fred, Jr.; lawyer and
owner-operator of a day-care home; 41 years old. WBC member.
2. ***Mark Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged
from the family cult; 39 years old. 2nd son.
Luava Phelps (Sundgren): wife of Mark; childhood sweetheart; 36
years old.
3. ***Katherine Phelps: lawyer; suspended from the bar; living
on welfare; 38 years-old; oldest daughter. Not in WBC.
4. Margie Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Kansas Department
of Corrections; 37 years old; 2nd daughter. WBC member.
5. Shirley Phelps-Roper: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 36 years
old; 3rd daughter. WBC member.
Brent Roper: husband of Shirley; lawyer and businessman in Topeka; 30 years old; WBC member.
6. ***Nate Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged
from family cult; 35 years old. 3rd son.
7. Jonathon Phelps: lawyer; 4th son; 34 years old; WBC member.
Paulette Phelps (Ossiander): wife of Jonathon; 33 years old; high school
graduate; WBC member.
8. Rebekah Phelps-Davis: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 32 years
old; 4th daughter; WBC member.
Chris Davis: husband to Rebekah; 38 years old; raised from
childhood in the WBC.
9. Elizabeth Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; night house
manager staff at Sheltered Living, Inc. Topeka; 31 years old; 5th
daughter; WBC member. Former counsel for the Shawnee County Sheriff's
Department.
10. Timothy Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Shawnee County
Department of Corrections; 30 years old; 5th son; WBC member.
Lee Ann Phelps (Brown): wife of Timothy; lawyer and employee of
Shawnee County Sheriff's Department; 27 years old; WBC member.
11.***Dorotha Bird (Phelps): lawyer practicing independently in
Topeka; 6th daughter; not a WBC member; changed her last name to avoid
family's notoriety. 29 years old.
12. Rachel Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; YMCA fitness
instructor; 28 years old; 7th daughter; WBC member.
13. Abigail Phelps: lawyer and employee at SRS-Youth and Adult Services, Juvenile Offender Program; 25 years old; 8th daughter; WBC member.
Fred Wade Phelps: the Rev. Phelps' father; he lived in Meridian,
Mississippi. He was a railroad bull.
Catherine Idalette Phelps (Johnson): the Rev. Phelps' mother;
she died when he was a small child.
Martha Jean Capron (Phelps): the Rev. Phelps' only sibling; a
former missionary to Indonesia, she now lives in Pennsylvania; the
brother and sister have not spoken for years.
***Denotes a Phelps child who has left the family cult.
(Note: The next portion of Exhibit A contains some handwritten notes denoting ages of the Phelps' children, some names of some of the non-Phelps WBC members (George Stutzman, Charles Hockenbarger, Jennifer Hockenbarger, and Charles Hockenbarger), names of some of the Phelps' grandchildren (Benjamin, Sharon, Sara, Libby, Jacob, Sam, and Josh), and 2 items pasted onto the document which are published documents showing the Phelps family tree and a map of the area surrounding Meridian, Mississippi.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
He rang the doorbell. It was winter, and with his thick gloves
he could barely feel the button.
No answer.
He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside,
walked along the porch rail. Toward him.
He watched it.
In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban
sleigh bells, the chains on its tires chimed rhythmic into the pounded
street snow.
No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.
He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred
more when he tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his
thick coat.
He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.
When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...
Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching
the eyes widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately
struggle. For a long time struggle.
Watching.
The lids droop slowly down. The light pass from the eyes.
He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.
Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed.
Flooding the look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.
A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could
feel it.
Guilt.
Or was it love. Yes, warm love for this tiny being.
But...
I want to do it. Again. Now.
Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.
He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he
felt the same pity again warm flooding him.
And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.
And when it was over he...
But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal
ferocity and writhed free.
He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake
somehow...as it ran from him...yes, he was awake now...
And terrified
Had anyone seen him? Would they know?
In a panic he ran
Home to his father's house...
"Introductions All Around"
A TIME magazine article from 1950 hangs framed on the wall.
It's about a college student's crusade against necking on a campus in
Southern California.
That student's office in Kansas today is aclack with fax
machines and ringing phones, but the chair behind the great mahogany
desk is empty.
When the former campus evangelist finally bursts in, he is
trailed by grandchildren-so many sixth-grade secretaries-gophering,
sending faxes, fetching papers-and a glass of water for the reporter.
Thoughtful. It's 93 outside.
"Sit down," says Fred Phelps, rumored ogre, with an effusive
Southern graciousness. "But I got to tell you, you know we're going to
preach the word, the same thing I've been preaching for 46 years, and
it's supremely, supremely irrelevant to us what anybody thinks or says.
"You get a little bit of this message I'm preaching, you can't ask for
anything more. God hates fags-that's a synopsis."
Phelps, 63, a disbarred lawyer and Baptist preacher from
Mississippi, is on a mission from God. His face lights up like a kid's
on Christmas morning when he talks about how the nation is reacting to
his anti- homosexual campaign. He contends the Bible supports the death
penalty for sodomy:
"I'm not urging anybody to kill anybody," he adds, then
matter-of-factly explains how his interpretation of the Bible calls for
precisely that:
"The death penalty was violently carried out by God on a massive
scale when the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by
fire and brimstone," says Phelps. "I am inclined to the view that the
closer man's laws come to God's laws, the better off our race will be."
Phelps has found the national spotlight by disrupting the
mourners' grieving at the funerals of AIDS victims. His followers carry
picket signs outside the services with such stone-hearted messages as
GOD HATES FAGS and FAGS 3DDEATH.
Last spring, he and his tiny band traveled to Washington, D.C.,
to taunt the gay parade, creating a near-riot. Since then, Phelps has
been the subject of a 20-20 segment, appeared on the Jane Whitney Show
twice to mock homosexuals, and is now regularly interviewed on both
Christian and secular radio across America.
Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in the Kansas
capital of Topeka, since 1990 has also been an unsuccessful candidate
for mayor, governor, and United States Senator. Currently he is
negotiating his own radio show-one that will be heard throughout the
Midwest.
His message is simple: God hates most everybody and He's sending
them all to hell. Makes no difference how they lived their life.
For the Pastor Phelps, except for a handful of 'elect', the
human race is composed of depraved beasts. God hates these creatures and
so do His favored few. The world is divided sharply and irreversibly
between the multitude of the already-damned (called the reprobate or the
Adamic Race) and those chosen by God to attend Him in heaven. Those
selected to be elect were tapped, not for the rectitude of their lives,
but by what could best be described as the Supreme Whim of the Deity.
While this is the theology of predestination, one that in less
vengeful minds is a mainstay of many Protestant sects, in Fred Phelps'
mind it has become a green light to hatred and cruelty.
Recently, Pastor Phelps has added a corollary to this thesis
that God hates the human race: God reserves His most pure and profound
hatred for the homosexuals among the Adamic race.
At 63, Phelps is a triathlon competitor who bikes or runs every
day. The strongest thing he drinks is what he calls his 'vitamin C
cocktail', consisting of Vitamin C, Diet Pepsi, and water.
The pastor basks in the heat of the outrage triggered by his
campaign against homosexuals.
"If you're preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate
you," he grins. "Nobody has the right to think he's preaching the truth
of God unless people hate him for it. All the prophets were treated that
way."
Phelps delivers this with all the drama, fire, and brimstone of
a man who used to be a trial lawyer and is still a preacher. His voice
and tone are spellbinding and chilling. He doesn't stumble over his
words. Clearly, he believes he is a modern day prophet.
Phelps says he and his family have been hated and persecuted
almost from the time they arrived in Topeka in 1954. "The more
opposition we get, the more committed we get," says Liz Phelps, one of
the pastor's daughters. "Nothing, short of the elimination of
homosexuality in the world, will make us stop," announces the pastor. In
an unexpected reprieve from the anticipated 'sodomite' label pasted on
all who disagree-especially the press-the former vacuum cleaner salesman
gives his visitor a warm smile and immediately takes to calling him
warmly by his first name. He leads a brief tour through his church. It
adjoins his office: a long room, with a low ceiling and a rusty red
carpet and dark, oaken pews. It has enough seating for twice the current
congregation of 51.
The reporter asks to go to the bathroom. A stocky teenage
grandson with training in judo is sent along. He waits outside, no
dummy, for the reporter to finish. Then it's upstairs to the study, a
high, spacious room filled with books of biblical exegesis dating back
to the Reformation. Fred is eager to prove his Bible scholarship, and
perhaps frustrated, even contemptuous, when he realizes he is talking to
a Bible-ho-hum humanist. Downstairs, the pastor leads to the garage
where their wardrobe of picket signs is kept. Stacked high against the
walls are messages for every occasion-all of them gloomy. No good news
here.
Outside, one would never guess they were at a church. Westboro
Baptist is actually a large home in a comfortable Topeka neighborhood.
In fact, Phelps and his wife have lived in the house for almost 40
years, and raised their 13 children within its walls. For many years,
his law office was also located in the residence Fred Phelps insists is
still his 'church'. The pastor's large family has always composed nearly
all of his congregation and loyal following. As his children grew up,
they bought the adjoining houses on the block, creating a tight compound
around the church. Today, one finds a citadel of modest homes joined by
fences, sharing a common backyard.
In a small revolution in urban design, the space behind their
houses has not been sub-divided, but made into a wide grass park,
complete with swimming pool, ball court, and trampoline. The
grandchildren wander from their separate houses to play together. The
effect on the nervous reprobates outside the walls is a sense of Waco in
the air.
>From his compound, like a knight sallying forth from the
Crusaders' citadel of Krak, Pastor Phelps and his child band make war on
the Adamic race. When not doing TV talk shows, radio interviews, or
appearing on the cover of the national gay magazine, The Advocate,
Phelps lays siege to his hometown, nearby Kansas City, and local
universities.
The Westboro congregation pickets public officials, private
businesses, and other churches, many of whom have had only tenuous
connection to some form of anti-Phelps criticism. Until a city ordinance
was passed against it, the Westboro warriors even picketed their
opponents' homes. For the last two years, this tiny group, by virtue of
their tactics, dedication, and discipline, have held the Kansas capital
hostage. Fred Phelps has been able to intimidate most of the residents
of Topeka into a fearful silence, though he himself is a shrill and
vigorous defender of his own First Amendment rights. Those who would
disagree with his brutal remedies to his perception of social ills face
a three-fold attack: Lawsuits: If the rest of America has justly come to
fear the anonymous lone nut with a gun, it has yet to experience a
community of eccentrics stockpiling law degrees. Picketing: One
prominent restaurant in Topeka is now failing after being picketed daily
for almost a year. "Patrons just got tired of the harassment," sighs the
owner. The cause of the pickets? One of the restaurant's employees is a
lesbian.
Faxes: Phelps has gone to court and won on his right to fax
daily almost 300 public officials, private offices, and the media with
damaging and embarrassing information from the private lives of his
opponents-most of it false, wild, and unsubstantiated. One city
councilwoman was called a "Jezebelian, switch-hitting whore" who had sex
with several men at once. A police officer saw his name faxed all over
town as a child molester, one who had lured young boys to a park outside
the city and had sex with them in his patrol car. Despite his daughter
Margie's assertions that Phelps has the evidence to prove such
accusations 'big time', no such proof has ever emerged. Over the weeks,
one learns about the family. Of Fred's 13 children, nine remain in the
community. Five of them are married and raising 24 grandchildren. All of
the members of Westboro Baptist-children, in-laws, and grandchildren-
participate in the pastor's anti-gay campaign. Despite their image from
the pickets, most of the adults are friendly and socially accomplished.
Each of them has a law degree, and some have additional postgraduate
degrees in business or public administration. The adults pay taxes, meet
bills, and obey the laws. The grandchildren are perhaps less
demonstrative than most children, but in an earlier day that was called
well-behaved. Many of their parents hold or have held important jobs in
local and state agencies. The pastor's first-born, Fred, Jr., and his
wife, Betty, were guests at the Clinton inauguration. The former
northeast Kansas campaign manager for Al Gore in 1988 has a stack of VIP
photos, such as the one of him, Betty, Al and Tipper, and even soon-to-
be Kansas governor Joan Finney smiling and yucking it up at the Phelps'
place just a few years ago. Clearly these are not street corner flakes
taken to carrying signs. The only discordant note here is the Pastor
Phelps, pacing about in his lycra shorts and windbreaker, looking like a
triathlon competitor who made a wrong turn, ended in a bad neighborhood,
and had his bike stolen. But he can easily be discounted while listening
to his wife reveal just exactly how she managed to raise those thirteen
kids. How? Well, for starters, the woman born Margie Simms of
Carrollton, Missouri, had nine brothers and sisters herself. Her own
tribe she raised by the same five rules she grew up under: keep their
faces clean, their hands clean, and their clothes clean; keep the house
clean and keep 'em fed. No Game Boys, college funds, and cars on
sixteenth birthdays. She did most of the cooking at first, and her
grocery bill, she estimates, would be over two thousand a month today.
Many of the 24 grandchildren still spend time at Gramp's house, she
said, and their food costs are over a thousand a month, even now.
Mrs. Phelps smiles. Before the kids got old enough to be
finicky, she could fill one tub and bathe them all, then line them up to
brush their teeth and clean their fingernails. They had six bedrooms
furnished with bunkbeds, and everyone wore hand-me-downs. Her laundry
pile was so huge, she needed two washers and two dryers: "I'm afraid
that Maytag repairman wasn't lonely with us. He was always out at our
house. We went through washers and dryers every three years. They worked
all day long. "The part I dreaded most about raising so many children?
When they were sick. Then you had to pay all your attention to that
one-and hope the others would make out all right." Later, she adds, the
older kids took over most of the chores and her job became considerably
easier.
The children used to listen to their father preach twice on
Sunday, says daughter Margie. Once at eleven and again at seven that
evening. "But there's too many conflicting schedules now. So we only
have the one sermon at eleven-thirty," Margie tells how their household
was abuzz with political bull sessions. All the candidates and wannabes
came through there: "My dad was complete activity and whirlwind. My mom
was the calm at the center of the storm. She's the one who inspired our
closeness. Getting us to look out for our brothers and sisters; bond
with each other." Mrs. Phelps describes how everyone had to take piano
lessons. They had two pianos in the garage and three in the house.
(Chopsticks in fugue-five as a backdrop to any childhood might explain
why the adults seem so tense today.) Margie tells of their family choir.
How they practiced a cappella and harmony. Even today, their
counter-protestors grudgingly admit the Phelps sound good when they
raise their collective voice in hymn from across the street. Once for
their father's birthday, says Margie, the children learned to harmonize
"One Tin Soldier", the theme song from the film, "Billy Jack". She
laughs at the memory. "He was of two minds about that: flattered that
we'd done it. And not too pleased by the lyrics. ("...go ahead and hate
your neighbor...go ahead and cheat a friend...do it in the name of
heaven...you'll be justified in the end... ") "We had good times...lots
of good times," says Mrs. Phelps. "I would not have had any other
childhood but that one," adds her daughter. If they're not holding
harassing signs saying, 'God Hates Fags', calling deaf old dowagers
'sodomite whores', or bristling at startled churchgoers, Fred's kids are
back at home being model parents and neighbors, attending PTOs and
Clinton coronations. The stark contrast of the two masks-decent and
repulsive, hateful and considerate, forthright and devious, stupid and
clever-creates a polarity that begins to weigh on the observer.
Contrasts frequently are the visible edge of contradiction. And
contradictions sometimes arise from very deep and secret undercurrents.
Currents of pain. One day in the pickup with the pastor and his wife,
driving the signs to the picket line, Fred suddenly jams on the brakes
and pulls over.
"Why'd you do that?" asks the mother of 13. "We're gonna make
sure those kids are safe," the pastor replies. The objects of his
concern are in the yard across the street. There is absolutely no chance
he could have hit them. It's odd and unnecessary and exaggerated
behavior.
His wife knows it; even the children know it-they've pulled back
and are watching the truck suspiciously. Mrs. Phelps gives her husband a
strange look. As if she had some secret knowledge. It's obvious Fred
intended this as an awkward display of altruism for the press. The
message is: "The pastor loves kids". But the message one gets is a
warning from Hamlet: "The play's the thing wherein we'll catch the
conscience of the king." Because that boy, now a man, ran home to his
father's house. The house of Fred Phelps. Where all good things end.
Where any family counselor will assert that a child who
strangles pets has almost certainly been brutalized as well.
"Daddy's Hands"
Mark Phelps feels nauseated whenever he remembers that night. He
was hit over 60 times and his brother, Nate, over 200 with a mattock
handle. Nate went into shock. Mark didn't. A boy who became a compulsive
counter to handle the stress, Mark counted every stroke. His and Nate's.
While their father screamed obscenities and his brother screamed in
pain. Every 20 strokes, their mother wiped their faces off in the tub.
Nate passed out anyway. That was Christmas Day.
Though he believes he should be the next governor of Kansas,
Pastor Phelps has never believed in Christmas. A mattock is a pick-hoe
using a wooden handle heavier than a bat. Fred swung it with both hands
like a ballplayer and with all his might. "The first blow stunned your
whole body," says Mark. "By the third blow, your backside was so tender,
even the lightest strike was agonizing, but he'd still hit you like he
wanted to put it over the fence. By 20, though, you'd have grown numb
with pain. That was when my father would quit and start on my brother.
Later, when the feeling had returned and it hurt worse than before, he'd
do it again. "After 40 strokes, I was weak and nauseous and very pale.
My body hurt terribly. Then it was Nate's turn. He got 40 each time. "I
staggered to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a towel to swab my
face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock and my brother was choking and
moaning. He was crying and he wouldn't stop." The voice in the phone
halts. After an awkward moment, clearing of throats, it continues: "Then
I heard my father shouting my name. My mom was right there, but she
wouldn't help me. It hurt so badly during the third beating that I kept
wanting to drop so he would hit me in the head. I was hoping I'd be
knocked out, or killed...anything to end the pain. "After that...it was
waiting that was terrible. You didn't know if, when he was done with
Nate, he'd hurt you again. I was shaking in a cold panic. Twenty-five
years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my stomach comes
back now..." Did he? Come back to you?
"No. He just kept beating Nate. It went on and on and on. I
remember the sharp sound of the blows and how finally my brother stopped
screaming... "It was very quiet. All I could think of was would he do
that to me now. I could see my brother lying there in shock, and I knew
in a moment it would be my turn. "I can't describe the basic animal fear
you have in your gut at a time like that. Where someone has complete
power over you. And they're hurting you. And there is no escape. No way
out. If your mom couldn't help you...I can't explain it to anyone except
perhaps a survivor from a POW camp." Last year, Nate Phelps, sixth of
Pastor Phelps' 13 children, accused his father of child abuse in the
national media. The information was presented as a footnote to the
larger story of Fred Phelps' anti-gay campaign. But the deep currents
that lie beneath the apparent apple-cheeks of the Phelps' clan were
stirring. A series of interviews with Nate resulted in an eyewitness
account of life growing up in the Phelps camp. These reports contained
allegations of persistent and poisonous child abuse, wife-beating, drug
addiction, kidnapping, terrorism, wholesale tax fraud, and business
fraud. In addition, Nate described the cult-like disassembly of young
adult identities into shadow-souls, using physical and emotional
coercion- coercion which may have been a leading factor in the suicide
of an emotionally troubled teenage girl.
The second son, Mark Phelps, who according to his sisters was at
one time heir to the throne of Fred, had refused comment during the
earlier spate of news coverage. He and Nate have both left the Westboro
congregation and now live within four blocks of each other on the West
Coast. But, like the icy water that waits off sunny California beaches,
the deepest currents sometimes rise and now Mark has surfaced with a
decision.
"My father," says the 39 year-old, now a parent himself, "is
addicted to hate. Why? I can't say. But I know he has to let it out. As
rage. In doing so, he has violated the sacred trust of a parent and a
pastor. "I'm not trying to hurt my father. And I'm not trying to save
him. I'm going to tell what happened because I've decided it's the only
way I can overcome my past: to drag it into the light and break its
chains."
Mark believes that Fred Phelps, no longer able to hate and abuse
his adult children if he hopes to keep them near, by necessity now must
turn all his protean anger outward against his community. Mark has
decided to tell the truth about his father so that others will be
warned. He and his brother have now come forward with specific and
detailed stories, alarming tales, ones that could be checked and have
been verified. Mark's testimony supports Nate's previously, and both
men's statements have been confirmed by a third Phelps' child. In
addition, the Capital- Journal has uncovered documents which
substantiate this testimony, and interviewed dozens of relevant
witnesses who have confirmed much of this information. "One of my
earliest memories...," the voice in the phone pauses, painful to
remember: "was the big ol' German shepherd that belonged to our
neighbors. One day it was in our yard and my father went out and blew it
apart with his shotgun."
Mark says he has no memories prior to age five. "Living in that
house was like being in a war zone, where things were unpredictable and
things were very violent. And there was a person who was violent who did
what he wanted to do. And that was to hurt people, or break things, or
throw a fit, or whatever he wanted to do, that's what he did. And there
was nobody there to say different."
One day when Mark was a teenager, he came home to find his mom
sitting on the lip of the tub, blue towel on her head, her lips pursed
with anger and hurt. "Do you know what your father did today?" she
asked. To Mark, it felt surreal. His mother never spoke out nor vented
her emotions. She seemed quite different just then.
He looked at his father. Pastor Phelps was standing across the
room with his arms folded, smiling (the bathtub was in the parents'
bedroom). "No," said Mark. "I don't know." His mother stood up and
whipped the towel down her side. "He chopped my hair off," she
announced, tears coming to her eyes. The son stood aghast at the
grotesque head before him. His mother's former waist-length hair had
been shorn to two inches- and even that showed ragged gouges down to the
white of the scalp. "Why?" he asked. "Your father says I wasn't in
subjection today," she replied. According to Mark and Nate, all of the
Phelps children were terrified of their father: "Usually we had to worry
what mood we'd find him in after school. You didn't make any noise or
racket, or cut- up; you had to walk on eggshells, tiptoe around him; you
didn't fight with your siblings; you did your jobs, performed your
assigned tasks, and hoped not to draw his attention." If you did draw it
and he was in a foul mood, say the boys, summary punishment at the hands
of the dour pastor involved being beaten with fists, kicked in the
stomach, or having one's arm twisted up and behind one's back till it
nearly dislocated.
Sometimes Pastor Phelps preferred to grab one child by their
little hands and haul them into the air. Then he would repeatedly smash
his knee into their groin and stomach while walking across the room and
laughing. The boys remember this happening to Nate when he was only
seven, and to Margie and Kathy even after they were sexually developed
teenagers. Nate recalls being taken into the church once where his
father, a former golden gloves boxer, bent him backwards over a pew,
body-punched him, spit in his face, and told him he hated him. Mark's
very first memory in this life is an emotional scar: their mom had gone
to the hospital to give birth to Jonathon. Mark remembers being very
upset, since now they would be alone in the house with their father, his
threatening presence left unmitigated by her maternal concern. Though
only five, already Mark could use the phone and, one day while his
father was out he dialed the number she'd left.
When he heard her voice, he told her, "Mom, I'm scared. I need
you." But before she could respond, the Pastor Phelps came on. He had
gone to visit the new mother. "What the hell are you doing calling
here?" the father shouted into the phone. "Don't you ever call here and
bother her again!" That is Mark Phelps' earliest memory. That, and the
feeling, when his father hung up, that there would be no rescue and no
escape from the fear and pain contained in the word, 'daddy'. When Fred
Phelps came home, he beat the little boy's first memory of the world in
to stay. From that moment, Mark whispers softly in the phone, "I
resolved to be a total yes-man to my father. If I couldn't escape his
violence, then I'd get so close to him he wouldn't see me. I'd survive
that way."
"We had clothes and food," adds Nate. "What we didn't have was
safety. He could throw fits and rages at any moment. When he did, the
kids would respond by turning pale and shaking, standing there shivering
and listening-Mark would pace and count the squares in the floor." "But
I learned exactly what I had to do...to stay safe around him," continues
Mark. I did a good job of it." He admits he used to beat his brothers
and sisters if his father ordered
him: "If you fell asleep in church, you got hit in the face.
Once I hit Nate so hard, it knocked over the pew and blood splurt across
the floor." After a moment, he tells us quietly: "My brothers and
sisters are entitled to hate me." Physical abuse? Nonsense, say sisters
Margie and Shirley. They laugh.
Well, maybe during their father's period of preoccupation with
health food. Every morning they were required to eat nuts and vitamins,
curds and whey. "I hate nuts," says Margie "We'd take the vitamins and
drop them in our pockets. Throw them out later." She adds: "Little Abby
was the only one who liked curds and whey. Poor kid. She'd have to eat
every bowl on the table when my dad wasn't looking."
Against this charming story is set another. For all her
reputation as a minotaur of the Kansas courtrooms, Margie Phelps was
like a second mom to the younger children. Today, she remains well-liked
by her siblings, including Mark and Nate. When her father was beating
someone and screaming at the top of his lungs, frequently Margie would
take her terrified younger brothers and sisters away for several hours.
When they thought it was over, they'd come back like cautious house
cats, sneaking in softly, Margie on point, to see if the coast was
clear. The boys tell how one day their father was in a barbershop and
noticed the leather strap used to sharpen razors. It struck his fancy as
a backup to the mattock handle, so he had one custom-made at a
leatherworker's shop near Lane and Huntoon.
"It was about two feet long and four inches wide. It left oval
circles- red, yellow, and blue," says Mark. "Usually the circles would
be where it would snap the tip-on the outside of your right leg and
hip...because he was righthanded." According to Mark and Nate, their
father wore out several of the leathermaker's straps while they were
growing up. As Mark Phelps became the angel-appointed in Fred's family
cult, Nate was assigned the role of sinner. For Mark, his brother was
the needed scapegoat. For the rest of the family, Nate was a problem
child, the delinquent of the brood. Brilliant like his dad (Nate's IQ
has been measured at 150), the middle son followed another drummer from
the time he was a toddler. When he was five, he remembers his father
telling him, 'I'm going to keep a special eye on you'. The regular
beatings started shortly thereafter.
Nate endured literally hundreds of such brutalities before
walking out at one minute after midnight on his eighteenth birthday. His
siblings both inside and outside the church agree that Nate got the
lion's share of the 'discipline'. "Nate was a very tough kid," says
Mark. "I don't know how he endured it, but he did. He'd get 40 blows at
a time from the mattock handle. He was just tougher than the rest of us
and my father adjusted for that."
Today, raising his family in California, Nate is a devout
Christian and a warm, friendly, considerate, mountain of a man. But at
6'4" and 280 pounds, it would be...instructive...to see father and son
in the same room today with one mattock stick between them. "I sensed
early on this man had no love for us," says Nate. "He was using us. I
knew it. And I always made sure he knew I did."
in fact, Mark adds, Nate's obstinate resistance so angered his
father that, by age nine, when a family outing had been planned,
frequently Nate not only missed it, but Fred would remain behind with
him. "And during the course of the day, my father would beat Nate
whenever the spirit moved him. " Mark remembers the family coming back
once to find Pastor Phelps jogging around the dining room table, beating
the sobbing boy with a broom handle; while doing so, he was alternately
spitting on the frightened child and chuckling the same sinecure laugh
so disturbing to those who've seen him on television. When he wasn't
allowed to go along, says Mark, "Nate would literally scream and chase
mom as she drove off with us kids in the car. He knew what was coming
after we left." The older brother remembers the little one racing
alongside the windows, begging for them not to leave him until, like a
dog, he could no longer keep up. Mark sorrowfully admits he felt no
empathy for him, only relief it wasn't happening to himself. "I just
stared straight ahead. I didn't know what he was yelling about. I was
just glad to get the hell out of there." But how could their mom
tolerate that? Wouldn't the maternal instinct cut in at some point?
Wouldn't the lioness turn in fury to protect her cub?
It turns out Mrs. Phelps was herself an abused child, according
to her sons. "The only thing she ever told us about her dad was that he
was a drunkard who beat them. She said she'd always run and hide in the
watermelon patch when he was raging." Though most of her nine brothers
and sisters either settled in Kansas City or remained in rural Missouri,
Mrs. Phelps has had virtually no contact with them during the last 40
years. Not since she married Fred. "My father was very effective at
jamming Bible verses down her throat about wives being in subjection to
their husbands," Nate says. "She was a small woman and very gentle. She
felt God had put her with Fred and she had to endure." "Oh, mom would
try to interfere," adds Mark. "She'd come running out, finally, into the
church auditorium as the beating would escalate, and yell wildly, 'Fred,
stop it!" You're going to kill him!' "And then my father would turn on
her. I remember him screaming, 'Oh, so you want me to just let them go,
huh? You don't believe in discipline, huh? Why don't you just shut your
goddam mouth before I slap you? Get your fat hussy ass out of here! I'm
warning you, goddamit, you either shut up or I'm going to beat you!'
"And then," Mark continues, "she'd shut up till she couldn't take it
anymore, then she'd start again. When she did, he'd start beating her
and hitting her with his fist, and sometimes she'd just come up and grab
him. Sometimes she'd run out the front door, and sometimes he'd just
slap her and beat her until she'd shut up. "I can remember times when
she'd get hit so hard, it looked like she'd be knocked out, and she'd
stagger and almost fall. She would give out this desperate scream right
at the moment when he would hit her.
"Sometimes, after he'd get done beating her, he'd have forgotten
about the kid. Sometimes he'd go back to the kids and beat even harder.
Then he'd blame the kid for what had happened." The phone line falls
silent. "Out in public," recalls Nate, "she wore sunglasses a lot." Mrs.
Phelps was beaten even when she wasn't interfering. After Nate and
Kathy, the boys figure their mom was victimized the most. They remember
their father finishing one session by throwing her down the stairs from
the second floor. "It had 16 steps," says Mark. "And no rail," continues
Nate. "Mom grabbed at the stairs going over and tore the ligaments and
cartilage in her right shoulder. The doctor said she needed surgery, but
my father refused. We had no medical insurance back then. She's had a
bad shoulder ever since. My father often chose that same shoulder to
re-injure when he was beating mom. He'd grab her right arm and jerk it.
She'd yelp." The voice in the phone sighs: "But...I guess I do still
feel that very deeply...that she betrayed a gut, primitive bond when she
drove off and left me. I do love my mom. But I wish she'd put a stop to
it. She could have and she didn't." Pastor Phelps denies beating his
children or his wife. "Hardly a word of truth to that stuff. You know,
it's amazing to me that even one of them stayed." He grins, referring to
the nine daughters and sons who remain loyal to him. Why?
"Because teachers have the kids from age five. And children are
besieged by their own lusts and foreign ideas. "Those boys (Mark and
Nate) didn't want to stay in this church. It was too hard. They took up
with girls they liked, and the last thing them girls was gonna do was
come into this church. "Those boys wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin
for a season. I can't blame them. I just feel sorry for them that
they're not bound for the promised land." Margie is the second-oldest
daughter and the fourth Phelps child. Her mom goes by 'Marge", so she is
'Margie'. Some say Margie is the de facto head of operations for her
father's war on the community. Anticipating bad reviews from Nate, at
least, she explained: "My brother is furious with his father because he
(Nate) is married to another man's wife. My dad and our whole family do
not accept that." On the abuse issue, her denials take a softer tone:
"There were times in our childhood when each of us had bruises on our
behinds. My dad had a capacity to go too far. In what he said even more
than what he did...yet, as obnoxious as he can be one minute, he's the
most kind, caring person another minute. "I have a marvellous
relationship with my father as an adult. He respects me. He listens to
me. And he helps me. Most people, when they get older, they don't have
that kind of relationship with their parents." Margie, as a single
woman, adopted a new-born infant boy nine years ago. "Jacob doesn't have
a father," she says, "and my dad fills in there. He's one of Jacob's
best friends. He's just a wonderful grandfather to him." For his part,
Nate remembers Marge bringing home bad grades one day and going running
to avoid a beating. When she got back, she was in an exhausted state.
Fred beat her anyway. So badly, she lost consciousness and lay in a heap
on the floor. The Pastor Phelps kicked his daughter repeatedly in the
head and stomach while she out. "I saw her interviewed on television,"
adds Nate. "And she said we weren't abused, just strictly brought up."
He was concerned when he heard her say that: "If she remembers that as a
'strict upbringing', then there's no moral suasion there for her not to
'strictly bring up' her own child, the adopted Jacob. "Nate would have
ended in the penitentiary without his father's discipline," says his
mother. "I believe it's him who's the bitter one. He needed a lot of
discipline." That's fair. All large families have a black sheep. But
this one has four: Nate and Mark rebelled, accepting they'd be turned
back from the gates of heaven by their father who was acting as St.
Peter's proxy. They later received an official letter from the Westboro
Baptist Church, informing them they had been 'voted out of the church
and delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh'. Katherine and
Dottie suffered the same fate but continue to reside in Topeka. "Dottie
only cares about her career," says her mom. "Family is an
embarrassment." And Kathy? "She's been a bitch since high school," says
Margie.
"Mark," reflects Mrs. Phelps, "was always well-behaved. Of the
ones who left, he was a surprise." According to Mark and Nate, fathering
to Pastor Phelps meant the rod and the pulpit. "My dad never once stood
with me, or sat with me, or worked with me to teach me anything about
the practical life of a Christian," says Mark. "It was just preach on
Sunday. There was no focus on the human heart or being a human-you know,
how we were supposed to do that."
When it came to their formal education as well, Fred's input to
the curriculum was limited to the rod and the wrath of God. "Our dad had
no use for education. He wanted us all to be lawyers, and for that we
needed good grades. But he would sneer at our subjects, never helped us
with our homework, never went to any school meetings and skipped our
graduations. All he cared about were the grades. On the day they
arrived, that was the one day he got involved in our education-usually
with the mattock." "The only time he met our teachers," adds Nate, "was
when he was suing them ." Mark remembers a day when the boys had
gathered in one room to do their homework. They'd been working quietly
for some time when the dour pastor walked in.
After staring in simmering malevolence at each of them, he
intoned: "You guys think you may be foolin' me. But on a cold snowy day,
the snow will be crunchin' under the mailman's tires, and under his
boots, when he puts that letter in our box. Your grades. And that's when
the meat's gonna get separated from the coconut..." When the report
cards arrived from Landon Middle School one day in January, 1972, it
wasn't snowing. But Jonathon and Nate's grades were poor and the meat
got separated from the coconut. The beatings were so severe, the boys
were covered with massive, broken, purple bruising extending from their
buttocks to below their knees. Neither Jonathon or Nate were able to sit
down, and the blows to the backs of their legs had caused so much
swelling they were unable to bend them. Today, Nate has chronic knee
complaints whose origin may lie in early trauma to the cartilage. And
after the beatings came the shaming. It was 1972-the age of shoulder
locks. Both boys had begged their father not to have crewcuts. They
already felt exposed to enough ridicule as the odd ducks whose father
didn't believe in Christmas, whose home no one was allowed to visit, and
who were forbidden to visit others' homes. Jonathon and Nate had a
teenage dread of braving the corridors with flesh-heads in an era of
long manes, and their father had relented. Their hair had been allowed
to touch their collars. But when the grades turned bad, out came the
clippers. No attachments. Brutally short. Shaved bald. "It was not a
haircut," says Nate. "It was a penalty. And a further way of cutting us
off from the outside world."
On the following day-a Thursday-the boys came to school wearing
red stocking caps. When asked to remove them in class, they declined.
This upset their teachers almost as much as their refusal to take their
seats. One instructor demanded Nate remove his headgear. Finally, Nate
did. The teacher stared at his bald head. So did his classmates. "On
second thought," said the charitable man, "put it back on."
For gym class that Friday, the boys had a note from their mom
excusing them all week. By now, the faculty had a pretty good idea what
the clothes, notes, and funny hats were covering, and Principal
Dittemore asked Jonathon to come into his office. Waiting for him were
the school nurse and a doctor from the community.
They asked the 13 year-old to show them his bruises. He refused.
Feeling their hands were tied, the staff released Jonathon, only to have
the pastor himself show up a few hours later. During a stormy second
meeting, Phelps accused the school, first of slackness and poor
discipline, then, paradoxically, of beating his sons and causing the
bruising themselves. He threatened to slap a lawsuit on anyone who
pursued the matter.
Not a man to be intimidated, Dittemore reported the suspected
child abuse to an officer of the Juvenile Court. On Monday, the same
routine occurred-unable to sit down and insisting on the stocking caps.
Until it came time for gym once more. The note had excused them for a
week, but now the coach demanded they show it again, saying he'd thought
it was only for a day. The boys had left their note at home.
The coach took Nate into the locker room and stood there,
waiting for him to get undressed. Nate refused. At that point, the
faculty relented, and Jonathon and Nate thought they were off the hook.
But, as they walked out of Landon to their mom's station wagon after
school, they saw two police cars waiting. One of the teachers pointed
the boys out to the officers. Before he knew it, Nate was in a squad car
on his way downtown. "I was terrified. Not because I was afraid of the
police. I was afraid of my dad. I kept thinking it was all over but the
funeral. What would my old man do? This was my fault and he was going to
beat the daylight out of me and I could still barely walk from the last
one." At the station, Nate remembers everyone was very kind to him. They
spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to allay his fears
and coax him to allow them to photograph his naked backside. Finally he
did. When the police allowed Mrs. Phelps to take her boys home, Nate's
worst nightmare came true. After nearly getting arrested for delivering
a tirade of obscenities and threats to the juvenile detectives, the dour
pastor rushed back to the house and delivered a fresh beating to his
exhausted sons.
For the moment, however, it had gone beyond the pastor's
control. Police detectives investigated the matter, and it was filed as
juvenile abuse cases #13119 and #13120. Jonathon and Nate were assigned
a court- appointed lawyer, as a guardian-ad-litem, to protect their
interests. The assistant county attorney took charge of the cases, and
juvenile officers were assigned to the boys.
In his motion to dismiss, the ever-resourceful Phelps filed a
pontifically sobering sermon on the value of strict discipline and
corporal punishment in a good Christian upbringing. "When he beat us, he
told us if it became a legal case, we'd pay hell," says Nate. "And we
believed him. At that time, there was nothing we wanted to see more than
those charges dropped. When the guardian ad litem came to interview us,
we lied through our teeth."
Principals involved in the case speculate the boys' statements,
along with superiors' reluctance to tangle with the litigious pastor,
caused the charges to be dropped. The last reason is not academic
speculation. The Capital-Journal has learned through several sources
that the Topeka Police Department's attitude toward the Phelps' family
in the '70s and '80s was hands off-this guy's more trouble than it's
worth'.
Three months later, the case was dismissed upon the motion of
the state. The reason given by the prosecutor was "no case sufficient to
go to trial in opinion of state". The boys were selling candy in
Highland Park when they learned from their mom during a rest break the
Pastor Phelps would not go on trial for beating his children. "I felt
elated," remembers Nate. "It meant at least I wouldn't get beaten for
that."
But if Nate's life was so full of pain and fear, why didn't he
speak up when he was at the police station and everyone was being so
nice to him? Nate laughs. It's the veteran's tolerant amusement at the
novice's question. "We'll do anything not to have to give up our
parents," he answers. "That's just the way kids are. That's the way we
were." "Besides, when it (abuse) occurs since birth, it never even
crosses your mind to fight back," interrupts Mark. "You know how they
train elephants?
They raise them tied to a chain in the ground. Later, it's
replaced by a rope and a stick. But the elephant never stops thinking
it's a chain." The loyal Phelps family are of two minds on the case.
Margie admitted it had occurred. Jonathon denied it. The pastor never
decided. Instead, he launched into a lecture on the value of tough love
in raising good Christians.
Since their juvenile files were destroyed when the boys reached
eighteen, but for their father's vindictiveness, there might have been
no record of this case. As it was, he sued the school. This caused the
school's insurance company to request a statement from Principal
Dittemore, who complied, describing the events which led to the
faculty's concern the boys were being abused. The suit was dropped.
When contacted in retirement, Dittemore confirmed he'd written
the letter and acknowledged its contents. The family now accuses Nate of
fabricating his stories of child abuse. They claim he is spinning these
lies out of the malice he has over their opposition to his marriage
(Nate's wife is divorced). But Nate was married in 1986. The described
case of abuse was a matter of record 14 years earlier-and 21 years prior
to Pastor Phelps' controversial debut on national television. The Phelps
family has since maintained that, while the case did exist, the charges
were invented by the school to harass their family. They say they were
raised under loving but strict discipline, and that is how they're
raising their children. Jonathon Phelps, who admits he beats his wife
and four children, for emphasis reads from Proverbs, 13:24: "He that
spareth his rod, hateth his son. But he that loveth him, chasteneth him
betimes." Yes...but...where does it say the purple child is a child
much-loved? Betty Phelps, wife of Fred, Jr., glowers at the questions.
Anytime you spank a child, you're going to cause bruising, she explains.
And sneers: "I'll bet your parents put a pillow in your pants."
Jonathon, staring straight ahead and not looking at the reporter, states
in a barely controlled voice of malevolent threat that, should the
reporter tell it differently than just heard, said scribbler is evil and
going to hell. Assuming there'll be space, the doomed dromedary of
capital muckraking must tell it differently.
To begin with, the reporters on this story were raised in the
same era and locale as the Phelps boys. They also grew up under strict
discipline, and one of their fathers was, at one time, a professional
boxer. Daddy's hands sometimes swung a mean leather belt, but only a few
strokes, and it left no bruises. After a few minutes, one could sit down
again. The moving force behind the pastor's hands was not 'tough love',
as he so often claims, but malice aforethought. The Capital- Journal has
established from numerous sources conversant with the case that the
injuries to Nate and Jonathon Phelps in January of 1972 went far beyond
the bounds of a 'strict upbringing'-even by the standards of the
strictest disciplinarian. Those injuries would have been seen as torture
and abuse in any era, at any age, in any culture.
Mark's front porch tale is instructive. Any psychologist hearing
the story about choking that cat today would know immediately to
investigate the child's home life for abuse. Back then it was not the
case. That child would have been left to find his own way out of the
terrible subterranean world another had made for him. Most don't.
Research shows nine out of twelve die down there.
In their heart. When the light in their soul goes out. If their
bodies live on, they grow up mangled and mangle those closest to them.
And it all takes shape down there. In the dark new universe of a young
child's mind. Mark Phelps escaped.
His father did not. That man came to the Kansas capital instead.
And, after 40 years, he still haunts its porches, tormenting its
innocents. The Capital-Journal went south...Mississippi...to see if it
could learn where and when...perhaps how...the light went out for Fred
Phelps.
It followed him to Colorado and California, Canada and New
Mexico. For three months, it turned every stone in Topeka, seeking the
truth about this man. What follows is the monster behind the clown, the
street corner malevolence mocking the cameras.
"God's Left Hook"
The air hangs heavy, torpid, and hot. Pulling the warm steam
into one's lungs leaves only a disturbing sense of slow suffocation.
Under the harsh subtropic sun, the magnolia blossoms slip from the
black-green leaves, falling like wet snow-petals to perfume the red-clay
earth. In the heat, it leaves a heavy, hanging smell...the wealth of
Dixie. Fred Phelps spent his first years here.
Outside the courthouse, flags sag limp and breezeless. Above the
doors are cut the words: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy
Neighbor It's Meridian, Mississippi, town of old store fronts,
mouthwatering cornbread, and 40,000 people. Surrounded by 100-foot pine
forests, its business is lumber. Trucks and flatbed railcars loaded with
freshly cut logs rolls slowly by. To the sensual fragrance of the
magnolias is added the sweet aroma of pine. While great pyramids of logs
await processing into lumber at the plant on the west side, Navy jets
roar overhead...the other source of revenue. The federal government
threatens to close the base down; the locals fight to keep it. Meridian
was sacked by General Sheridan during the Civil War. The implacable
bluecoat burned the town and tore up what, till then, had been a rail
hub of the South. The town has since recovered. The railroad did not. In
the cemeteries can be found gravestones of the Confederate dead. Among
them, a more recent marker reads: Catherine Idalette Phelps, Age 28
Fred's mother used to open all the windows in the house and play the
piano, according to Thetis Grace Hudson, former librarian in Meridian
and a neighbor of the Phelps family during the Depression. The other
households on her street were too poor to afford any entertainment, she
says, so everyone remembered Catherine Phelps for her kindness.
Apparently she played well. Whenever she was at their house,
Hudson remembers she used to ask Mrs. Phelps to play the hymn "Love
Lifted Me" on the piano. Fred's mother always obliged, even if she was
busy. But, after an illness of several months-those who still remember
the family say it was throat cancer-Catherine Phelps died on September
3, 1935. Fred was only five years old. Since the little boy's uncle was
the mayor of nearby Pascagoula, and his father was prominent in
Meridian, the honorary pallbearers at her funeral included the local
mayor, a city councilman, two judges, and every member of the police
department. Ms. Hudson says young Fred was bewildered at the loss. After
his mother's death, a maternal great aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for
Fred and his younger sister, Martha Jean. "She kept house for the
daddy," adds a distant relative who declined to be identified. At times,
work caused the boy's father to be away from home and Jordan raised the
children. The woman Fred Phelps has referred to as 'his dear old aunt'
died in a head-on collision in 1951 as she was driving back to Meridian
from a nearby town. The boy had lost two mothers before he'd turned 21.
Family friends remember Fred's father was a tall, stately man. A
true Southern gentlemen, they say. And a fine Christian. But the elder
Phelps also had a hot temper, according to Jack Webb, 81, of
Porterville, Miss. Webb owns a general store, the only business in
Porterville, a town of about 45 elderly people. "If he got mad, he was
mad all over," said Webb. He was ready to fight right quick. He was mad,
mad, mad." Webb is a frail man, slightly hard of hearing. Walking into
his general store is like stepping back into the 19th century. The
shelves, all located behind a 100-foot wooden counter, are stocked with
weary tins of Vienna sausage and dusty bottles of aspirin. Coke goes for
30 cents. Glass. No twist-off.
Despite the temper, Webb adds, the elder Phelps was an honorable
man. In Meridian, he had been an object of great respect. Fred's father
was a veteran of World War One, and throughout his life suffered from
the effects of a mustard gassing he'd taken in France. He found work as
a detective for the Southern Railroad to support his family. The
railroad security force or "bulls", as they were called, had a
reputation for brutality when they patrolled the yards to prevent the
itinerant laborers, washed out of their hometowns by the Depression,
from riding the freights. "My father," says Pastor Phelps, "oft-times
came home with blood all over him." Suddenly he stands up, turning his
face away, and exits. Several minutes later he returns, smiling,
apologizing: "You got me thinking about those days," he offers, then
bravely charges into a round of the town's official song: "Meridian,
Meridian... a city set upon a hill; Meridian, Meridian... that radiates
the South's good will."
The elder Phelps was a "bull" throughout the Depression, says
Thetis Hudson, and the pay was good. The family lived comfortably at a
time when the other families in town were being ravaged by hardship.
What was the son like? "Fred Phelps had as normal and beautiful a home
life as anyone ever wanted," commented a relative who didn't want their
name used. "His childhood was very good," says Hudson. "There was
nothing in his family out of the ordinary." "All I know is it's a
tragedy, and it stems from within Fred Phelps," adds the anonymous
relative, referring to the homosexual picketing. "It has nothing to do
with his upbringing."
As a teenager. Fred was tall and thin and sported a crewcut. He
was extraordinarily smart, but thought to be a bit overbearing about it
at times. A reserved and serious high school student, he never dated
anyone while there. "He was not a real socializer, but he knew a lot of
people. Everyone had the greatest respect for him," says Joe Clay
Hamilton, former high-school classmate, now a Meridian lawyer. The
future Pastor Phelps earned the rank of Eagle Scout with Palms, played
coronet and base horn in the high school band, was a high hurdler on the
track team, and worked as a reporter on the school's newspaper. In a
class of 213 graduates, he ranked sixth. When he was voted class orator
for commencement of May, 1946, received the American Legion Award for
courage, leadership, scholarship, and service, then honored as his
congressman's choice for West Point, Fred Phelps was only 16 years old.
A year later this young man, touted as the quiet achiever, had turned
his back on West Point, his former life, and his future promise. The
summer of '47 would find him a belligerent and eccentric zealot,
antagonizing the Mormons in the mountains of Utah. Because of his age,
Phelps had to wait one fateful year before entering the military
academy. During that time he attended the local junior college. While
waiting for his life to start, Fred, along with his best friend, John
Capron, went to a revival meeting at the local Methodist church. It was
there the budding pastor felt the 'call', and the dreams of going north
to West Point melted like the river ice washed down and marooned on the
hot mud of the Mississippi banks.
Fred Phelps, by his own description, "went to a little Methodist
revival meeting and had what I think was an experience of grace, they
call it down there. I felt the call, as they say, and it was powerful.
The God of glory appeared. It doesn't mean a vision or anything, but it
means an impulse on the heart, as the old preachers say." The revival
had a profound effect on both Phelps and Capron. "The two of them 'got
religion'," said Joe Hamilton. Friends and relatives claim the two boys
became so excited, they were unable to distinguish reality from
idealism-they were going off to conquer the world. One relative still in
Meridian described it this way: "Fred, bless his heart, just went
overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram it down your
throat."
Was this radical change in behavior a characteristic of the
conversion experience? Or was there something hidden in the young man's
character that drew him to the experience and its consequent license for
loud and abusive behavior? If the latter, then some heart should be
heard pounding beneath the floorboards in the old Phelps' house. Yet,
there is little to be heard.
Fletcher Rosenbaum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air
Force who lives in Meridian, went to high school with Phelps. "He was
good at whatever he tried," Rosenbaum says. "He was a first-class
individual. I would be surprised if he wasn't a top-notch citizen in
Topeka." Picketing AIDS funerals and the fax attacks on members of his
community by Phelps surprised Rosenbaum: "He was very reserved in high
school. Very quiet. I'm surprised he would be involved in aggressive
activities. To me, it would be out of character for him." This
observation may not be entirely accurate. One woman, a librarian at the
Meridian Public Library, said she remembers Phelps and went to school
and church with him. "He doesn't bend," she observed. "He never did."
She also described him as "spooky", "different", and "a preacher
prodigy." "You tell him not to do it, and he'll do it," said another
Meridian woman. "He was a very determined person. That's to be admired,
but it can be taken too far." Even Fred himself remembers differently.
He was a boxer throughout high school and, reminiscing briefly about his
days in Meridian, he chuckles to himself. If any of the other boys came
to class with a puffy face or shiner, their friends would ask if they'd
been sparring with Phelps. He always left his mark on them, he tells me
proudly.
Sid Curtis, a grade-school classmate of Fred's, remembers the
future pastor drew well, even then. What did he draw? Boxers.
A golden glove contender in high school, Fred fought twice in
state meets, winning matches which, according to him, were head-on
slugfests. Not aggressive? Not the Bull of Topeka yet, but clearly it
was in his character. A story in the high-school paper, predicting the
futures of Phelps and his classmates, reads: "Fred Phelps will box in
Madison Square Garden next June, 1954. Young Phelps will fight for the
world championship." One can only wonder what deep currents rose in the
teenager whenever he climbed into the ring. Recalling the earlier
testimony of his sons, Nate and Mark, and remembering that research has
proven abusive behavior is passed with high probability from one
generation to the next, the question must be raised: Was the Pastor
Phelps equally abused as a child? In the South, there is an unwritten
code you don't bad-mouth one of your own. Strangers are welcome unless
they ask too many questions, or speak ill of Southern folks and ways. In
fact, if ET had come down in Meridian instead of Southern California,
and a yankee inquired about that today, folks would probably scratch
their chins, figure the carpet-baggers with a knowing eye, and say he
was a quiet boy, little short for his age...but had good hands for the
piano... If the stories his sons have told are true, the outside
observer has two choices in understanding Fred Phelps: either there's a
pounding heart under the floor in that old house or the teenager's Saul-
into-Paul experience produced the character change. However, many
Christians might find it difficult to believe that discovering Jesus
would render a good-natured, quiet lad into the bullying hostile whose
trail we will shortly follow from Vernal, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. If
something did happen to throw Fred Waldron Phelps off track, something
that mangled him for life, no one in Meridian wanted to say. Doing that
no doubt would be to speak ill of the dead-something Pastor Phelps also
was taught to avoid.
Yet, suddenly at 16, the child has become the man: fanatic,
unempathic, combative, and vindictive. If there is an answer to the
question, 'why does Fred hate us all so much?', perhaps it lies in those
years, age five to 15, when his father was largely absent and Fred and
his sister were cared for by Irene Jordan.
"If he were dead, I'd talk," says Fred's sister, Martha Jean
Capron, now residing in Pennsylvania. "But as long as he's
alive...that's up to him..." Following the revival experience, Phelps
abandoned plans for West Point. He moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, where
he attended Bob Jones College, a non-denominational Christian academy.
John Capron went with him. While Fred and his boyhood chum would
eventually separate over religion, Martha Jean and Capron never would:
they were married and moved to Indonesia as missionaries. John was a
minister there for ten years. Later he would smuggle Bibles into
Communist China. Pastor Phelps' brother-in-law died of a heart attack in
1982.
Perhaps it's a shame Phelps didn't go to West Point. An army
career could have provided a healthy outlet for his aggression, been
more compatible with his demanding and commanding nature, while his
strong body, mind, and will would have been an asset to the service and
his country. If he'd survived Korea as a 2nd lieutenant, probably he'd
have been a lieutenant colonel by Vietnam. There he'd almost certainly
have chipped his Manichaean mandibles of dualism on that war's hard bone
of moral ambiguity. Either he'd have ended on a river somewhere,
whispering "the horror...the horror..." to bewildered junior officers,
or gained a wider horizon and returned home to retire an urbane cynic
and Southern gentleman. But in 1946, Fred Phelps had a year to kill
instead of Nazis or North Koreans. The revival took him from Meridian to
Bob Jones; from there the future pastor found another outlet for his
anger. This one gave instant gratification and conferred adult license
to abuse almost overnight: lip-shooting preacher; revivalist minister.
And, unlike Vietnam, here God was unequivocally on his side...
As part of a Rocky Mountain mission assignment in summer, 1947,
Phelps and two other students from Bob Jones were to seek out a
fundamentalist church, convert non-believers to Christianity and steer
the converts to that church. The three men chose Vernal, a town in
northeast Utah. They would be working to convert, not secular hedonists,
but a population that was predominantly and staunchly Mormon. When Fred
and his friends got there, they set up a meeting tent brought from Bob
Jones in the city park. A local Baptist minister provided them food and
lodging (B.H. McAlister, who would later ordain Phelps). During the day
the do-it- yourself apostles went door-to-door, seeking converts to the
good news. At night, they conducted revival meetings in the tent. Only
no one came.
So Ed Nelson, one of the trio, had an idea. He went to a local
radio station and asked if he might buy a block of time. Nope, was the
reply. Not if you're going to attack the Mormon church. Ok, said Ed, can
I announce I'll be giving an address tonight at the tent?
Sure. So Ed Nelson announced on the radio he'd be doing just
that. And the title of the speech? 'What's Wrong with the Mormon
Church?' says Ed, over the air. That night, continues Nelson, now 69 and
a traveling Baptist evangelist based in Denver, a huge crowd arrived. It
was so large, the trip had to roll up the sides of the tent. Ed was
nervous, but he gave his speech. The crowd listened politely. When the
young evangelist was finished, a man in the crowd asked would there be
questions. Sure, said Ed.
But the very first one stumped him, Nelson confesses
disarmingly, and he panicked. Flustered, he announced there would be no
more questions. Several in the throng protested, saying that, after
sitting in courtesy, listening to their religion attacked, they weren't
going to let the young men off so easily-that they should be willing to
answer the crowd's questions.
At that, Fred rushed one of the men speaking and started to
throw a punch, but Ed grabbed his arm and shouted: "Fred! Fred! No!
Don't you do it!" "And," Nelson recounts, "Fred looked at that guy and
he said, 'you shut your mouth, you dirty...' something or other."
Which, to Ed, only compounded their troubles. Fred's companion
then raised his arms and shouted, "Folks, the meeting's over! It's
over!" And he rushed out and killed the lights inside the tent. This
discouraged any further theological discussion.
It would seem this format-speak one's mind, then take violent
offense at anything less than complete agreement, and suppress all
opposing views by any means handy-was the major life lesson learned by
Fred Phelps during his sojourn among the Vernal heathen. "He was
hot-headed and peculiar," remembers Nelson about Fred then. Eventually
the minister decided to cease his association with Phelps because of his
hostility and aggressiveness. "The last time I saw him, he was traveling
through (on the road preaching). My wife and I gave them a hundred
dollars and a bunch of handkerchiefs." When told of what Phelps was
doing today, Ed said: "I'm not surprised. He was heading that way. He
was so brilliant, he was dangerous. He was getting involved in the idea
that only he was saved...going into heresy..." Though vandals damaged
the tent, the boys from Bob Jones continued to hold nightly meetings
there during the rest of their vacation. No one came, but Nelson reports
they did manage to convert two teenage girls-at least for the summer.
At the end of their stay, Fred got ordained. Ordained? At 17?
Isn't that too young? "No, it isn't," replies B.H. McAlister, who did
the ordaining. "If he can pass the test, he is eligible. I don't think
the word of God is bound by age."
Phelps was at least three years younger than most when they
become ministers. Southern Baptists do not require a candidate for the
ministry be a graduate of seminary. McAlister, who has helped ordain
hundreds of ministers, said an examination board of 10 to 20 ministers
would ask a candidate questions about doctrines and scriptures. Not
everyone passed. Fred Phelps did-but only after McAlister and a
missionary convinced the teenager he was wrong on a scriptural fine
point. Which point was that? According to McAlister, Phelps considered
the local church to be more than a place of fellowship-for him,
membership in the local congregation directly corresponded to membership
in the Body of Christ. Phelps may have conceded the point to be
ordained, but, for 40 years, his family and church members in Topeka
have been controlled by his threat that, if they depart his
congregation, they must carry a letter of permission from him. In
addition, they must join a congregation that he approves. Otherwise, as
with Mark and Nate, the pastor Phelps draws up the dreaded missive
ordering the straying sheep to be 'delivered to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh.' "We barely knew him," admits McAlister, who
settled upon Fred the distinction of having been both baptized and
ordained in a single eventful summer.
Phelps returned that autumn to Bob Jones, but left after a year
without graduating. Later he would say he did so because the school was
racist. In 1983, the IRS revoked the tax exemption of Bob Jones,
accusing it of practicing racial discrimination. From there, Fred went
north to the Prairie Bible Institute near Calgary, Alberta. But after
two semesters he moved on.
Sources have disclosed the head of the college felt pastor
Phelps might be clinically disturbed. Compatible with that diagnosis,
Fred's next stop was Southern California. There he enrolled at John Muir
College in Pasadena.
Campaigning to change community sexual mores with a sign and a
sidewalk harangue has been a four-decade effort for Fred. His implacable
efforts at John Muir to root out necking and petting on campus and dirty
jokes in the classroom reached the pages of TIME magazine (11 June
1951). After being forbidden to preach on campus and getting removed at
least once by police from college property, Fred finally found a
following that cheered his defiance of authority when he returned to
harangue from a sympathizer's lawn across the street. TIME speculated it
might presage a movement back to more solid values by the younger
generation. Phelps cashed in on the notoriety of the TIME article to
become a traveling evangelist again-this time with more success than in
Vernal.
In return for spending a week or two preaching at an established
church or giving a revival, he would receive a bed, his meals, and a
small stipend for gas to the next assignment. It was during one such
ministry in Phoenix that he met his wife, Marge. She was a student at
Arizona Bible School and an au-pair with the family that took in the
itinerant evangelist. Today's Mrs. Phelps remembers being curious about
the minister who'd been in TIME magazine. Laura Woods, the mistress of
the house who gave voice lessons during the day, remembers Fred was the
perfect guest. He helped build a room, mowed the lawn, made the beds,
and washed the dishes, she said. When the couple decided to get married,
Mrs. Woods made Marge Simms two dresses-a wedding gown and an outfit to
travel in. They were married May 15, 1952. Laura and her husband,
Arthur, remain friends today with Fred and Marge Phelps. The couple
moved to Albuquerque for a year, where Marge kept house while Fred
traveled a circuit around the Southwest-one that took him from Durango,
Colorado to Tucson, Arizona. Fred Jr., the first of their thirteen
children, was born May 4, 1953.
The family then lived in Sunnyslope, Arizona for a year while
pastor Phelps continued his itinerant ministry. Mrs. Phelps was eight
months pregnant with Mark when Pastor Leaford Cavin at the Eastside
Baptist Church in Topeka invited Fred to come and preach.
On Fred Jr.'s first birthday, the family arrived in the Kansas
capital to find it an auspicious day indeed: May 4, 1954 was the day the
U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision, Brown vs. Board of
Education of Topeka, the landfall desegregation case which ruled
separate but equal schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional.
The Pastor Phelps saw the coincidence of the Brown decision -just as he
was deciding where to settle-as a sign telling him that Topeka was The
Place. On that watershed day for America, if the new arrivals visited
the state capitol building, perhaps Phelps was struck by the dramatic
mural of the raging giant on the burning prairie, rifle in one hand,
Bible (law book) in the other. Perhaps, as he has hinted, Pastor Phelps
came to Topeka, saw it had become a national forum on black civil
rights, saw the power of the legal profession, and decided it had fallen
to him: Kansas would have a new John Brown.
"Dog Days for the Pastor"
Before greatness could be thrust upon him, however, this new
John Brown would suffer his dog days. At first, the new arrivals sailed
smoothly into the Eastside Baptist community. Fred was roundly admired
for his thunderous preaching, and was quickly hired an associate pastor.
The ladies at Eastside all liked Marge and made the young mother welcome
in their circles.
Things went swimmingly. The Eastside congregation was planning
to open a new church across town, and it seemed natural when their
pastor, Leaford Cavin, asked Fred to fill the job. The Eastside church
issued bonds to purchase the property at 3701 12th Street. To help
Brother Phelps get underway, the congregation re-roofed the building,
painted it, and bought the songbooks necessary. A start-up group of
about 50 former members of Eastside volunteered to attend services at
Westboro. The church formally opened on May 20, 1956. Fred had it all. A
fine church and a congregation of his own. What went wrong?
What did provides an insight into the man who craves a greater
and greater role as a moral arbiter of our times. "We gave him his
church; painted; roofed it; even bought his songbooks; and after only a
few weeks, he turned on us," says a long-time member of Eastside.
Apparently not everyone in Leaford Cavin's church was enthusiastic about
Phelps. One from that time recalls Fred, Marge, 2 year-old Fred, Jr.,
and 10 month-old Mark were in the pews one Sunday with the rest of the
congregation, listening to Cavin preach. Mark began squirming suddenly.
To the appalled amazement of his fellow worshipers nearby, the junior
pastor repeatedly slapped the infant across the face with an open palm
and backhand, snapping Mark's tiny head to and fro. Afterwards, several
of the men in the congregation confronted Fred and told him never to do
that again. Mark Phelps laughs to hear that story relayed: "My mom once
told me-proudly, as if she'd effected a big change in his behavior-that
my father had beaten my older brother when he was only five months old.
She said she'd argued with him about it and he'd agreed to hold off
beating the kids till they were a year old." "Phelps was wrapped pretty
tight, even back then," recalls an old member of Eastside. "He was very
severe with his children and a lot of people didn't care for him. But we
all thought he was a man of God."
Within weeks after receiving his new status, building, and
congregation, Fred Phelps warmed on the hearth of Eastside's hospitality
and but the hands that had helped him. He and Leaford Cavin had an
almost immediate falling-out over whether God hated the sinner as well
as the sin. "Today, Fred will tell you it was theological differences,"
says an acquaintance of Cavin, "but those differences didn't seem to
bother him when he needed out help." Adds another: "Theological
differences? Brother Cavin was a very staunch Baptist." But not staunch
enough for Fred?
"I don't know if there ever was a man more strict than Leaford
Cavin. Really, it was the anger in Fred, not doctrine, that caused him
to act the way he did." When a man in Fred's new congregation came to
him for marital counseling, the pastor recommended a good beating for
the wife. The man followed his spiritual guide's advice.
Later, he called the pastor to ask for bail: apparently
separation of church and state didn't apply to assault and battery.
Phelps paid the confused Christian's bail, but stuck to his guns: a
former members of the early Westboro community remembers the following
Sunday Pastor Fred was fiery in his message that a good left hook makes
for a right fine wife: "Brethren," preached Phelps, "they can lock us
up, but we'll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives
are going to obey, or we're going to beat them!" "Leaders," observes
B.H. McAlister, the minister who ordained Fred, "break down into
shepherd and sheep-herders. The first lead, the second drive the sheep.
If love is absent, the pastor is one who drives the flock; with love, he
leads it."
Mark remembers his father used to frequently tell of the time he
purified the flock and paid the price for his courage. Apparently a
female member of that early Westboro congregation was discovered having
an affair with a soldier from Ft. Riley. Only the males in the
congregation were allowed to vote, and the pastor prevailed upon them to
cast the Madeleine from the midst. Away from the effects of his heated
rhetoric, however, many of those swayed felt first remorse, then disgust
at their part in the moral lynching. Mark remembers his father always
referred to this incident to explain why his congregation had deserted
him.
In later years, Phelps was convinced he was alone in his church
with only his children to listen because those who'd opened Westboro
were too weak for the harsh truth of God: that He hated sinners as well
as the sin; and therefore His elect must also hate the sinners-even
those who might be assembled with them. If the local Baptist churches
were still unsure about the new fire and brimstone brother from Arizona,
shooting his neighbor's dog didn't help. Aside from etching one of his
children's earliest memories, shotgun-blasting the large German shepherd
that had wandered into his unfenced yard quickly got the novice pastor
notice in his community. The incident was discussed in the papers, and
the dog's owner sued the arrogant minister. Fred defended himself and
won, an action his son Mark believes may have encouraged his father's
turn to the law.
But the irrationality and violence of the act sent the last of
his congregation scurrying back to Eastside. For weeks after the
shooting, one church member recalls, someone placed signs on the lawn in
front of Westboro at night that declared prophetically: "Anyone who'd
stoop to killing a dog someday will mistake a child for a dog." Soon it
was clear no one wanted any part of Fred's god not if he hated like
Fred. And that posed a problem for the Pastor Phelps: he still owed 32
dollars a week on the bonds for the church, and no one was paying for
his hate show on Sundays.
To cover his mortgage and support his family, the failed pastor
turned his pitch from God to vacuum cleaners. During the following five
years, he went door-to-door in Topeka, selling those and baby carriages
and, finally, insurance. In a pattern that held ominous overtones for
the future, Phelps at some point sued almost everyone who employed him
during that period.
He also carried on a running feud with Leaford Cavin at
Eastside Baptist. Cavin spent several years trying to discover how to
repair his mistake and stop the nightmare unfolding at the Westboro
church. "Eastside held the mortgage on Westboro," remembers one
churchgoer who was involved in the finances there, "and we always hoped
Fred would miss a payment so we could foreclose. But he never did."
To save money, the pastor moved his wife and children into the
church. Since the congregation at Westboro was essentially the Phelps
family, Cavin convinced John Towle, county assessor, that Westboro
should be taxed as private residence. The controversy was covered in the
media, and the exemption for 3701 West 12th was lifted. But again the
fighting Pastor Phelps taught himself enough about the law to
successfully contest the decision before the Board of Tax Appeals. For
good measure, he sued Cavin and Stauffer Communications for libel. He
lost the suit, but the lines of his future had now been drawn: Fred
Phelps had his castle and his church and he'd learned how to defend
them.
His chosen community detested him, but that was to be expected
when one was elect and immersed in a world of damned souls. Fred was
content that his god hated those who questioned him. And he was content
to remain in his private La Rochelle and sally forth occasionally to
smite the reprobate. One old member of Eastside is philosophical about
the feud with Pastor
Fred: "I'll tell you one thing, we can feel awfully lucky he
turned down that slot at West Point. Right now, he'd probably be a
general-with his finger on the button." It was during this period that
the Pastor Phelps cut the final ties with his original family.
When talking with friends, Fred's father never discussed the son
he had in Topeka, says Fred Stokes, a retired army officer who lives
outside Meridian. Stokes was a close friend of the elder Phelps and a
pallbearer at his funeral in 1977: "He had some fundamental beliefs that
were unshakeable, but he didn't force them on anyone." In his later
years, Stokes says, Fred's father was active in the Methodist Church.
"He was a very kind, grand fatherly person. He was at peace with himself
and didn't have any rancor toward anybody at the time of his death."
Marks tells how his grandfather, Fred, (whose name he learned only
recently from Capital-Journal reporters) once came to visit them in
Topeka when Mark was a child. What he recalls most vividly is standing
on the platform at the railroad station with his father and grandfather.
As they waited to put him on the train back to Meridian, the preacher
told the weeping old man never to come back, not to call, nor to write.
"I remember my grandfather was crying. He told my father to get back in
the Methodist Church and stop all this nonsense."
Pastor Phelps admits there was a rift between him and his
father. "He was disappointed when I didn't go to West Point, which is
understandable. He worked hard to get that appointment for me, and he
was a very active Methodist, so he was disappointed in that. But my dad
was a super guy that I loved deeply and I miss him." Relatives in
Mississippi said the elder Phelps never really got over his abandonment
by his son. "It grieved him a lot," remembers one.
When Pastor Phelps was 15 and in his last year of high school
his father, 51, married a 39 year-old divorcee named Olive Briggs. The
son would leave home soon after and grow up to be a fierce critic of
divorce. Olive's sister, who didn't want her name used, said Olive was a
kind Southern lady who never had children and treated Fred and his
sister, Martha Jean, as if they were her own. The new Mrs. Phelps often
talked to her sister about the trouble between the former railroad
detective and his son, the Baptist preacher. "Olive would say he grieved
over that every day of his life. That he never would have parted ways.
It was his son who parted ways."
Other relatives recalled that, each year, the grandparents sent
birthday and Christmas presents to their grandchildren in Topeka. Each
year they were returned unopened. Photos of grandpa and grandma the
pastor gave his extra touch: "When they once sent him pictures of
themselves for us kids to have, I remember watching my dad cutting them
meticulously into little pieces with a pair of scissors. Then he placed
them in an envelope and mailed them back."
When the elder Phelps died in 1977, and Olive Briggs in 1985,
of the two not inconsiderable wills, Fred's father left him one-eighth
and his sister, seven-eighths. Fred's stepmother left her entire estate
to Martha Jean. There would be no relatives dropping by from mother's
side either. Though Marge Phelps had nine brothers and sisters still
living in rural Missouri or nearby Kansas City, with one notable
exception, her own children never met them or so much as knew their
names. And the firm pastor forbade his children to play or talk with the
rest of the youngsters in the neighborhood. Says Mark: "I wanted friends
to share with and talk to, but felt it was the wrong thing and felt
guilty. They would initiate conversation or want to play, and I would
feel real scared and not know what to do or say. Sometimes I couldn't
avoid talking, and it made me feel real uneasy and scared that I would
get caught. "My dad used to make me go and tell the neighbor kids they
couldn't play by the fence, or talk to us, or come in the yard. He'd
say, "I'm tellin' you, if those fucking kids are in this yard again and
I catch them, it's you I'm going to beat!"
"I used to have to fight the kids sometimes, or yell at them,
or push them out of the yard; or I'd turn my back and ignore them so
they wouldn't want to talk or be friendly and get me in trouble." While
this is in keeping with the 'fortress Phelps' mentality the pastor
embarked on shortly after opening Westboro, it is interesting to
speculate how much of the strange goings-on within the fortress the
pastor feared his children might reveal had they been allowed outside
confidants. When Fred's sister, Martha Jean, and her husband, Fred's
teenage best-buddy, John Capron, returned to the U.S. on a year
sabbatical from their Indonesian mission, they came to see Fred. In
part, they'd come to arrange a reconciliation between the brittle pastor
and his devastated father.
They never got started. "He wouldn't even talk to me," Fred's
sister told her nephew, Mark. The good pastor bid her also leave and
never return. Mark remembers riding his bike along in the street, both
curious and embarrassed, watching his aunt go weeping down the sidewalk
for three blocks from their house.
With that, the vengeful minister had succeeded in cutting all
lines leading to his captive congregation. Anyone in the outside world
who might know of their existence or be concerned for their welfare had
been driven off. After he had sold insurance for several years, Phelps
had amassed enough commissions off the yearly premiums to allow him to
stop working and go to law school. He had already transferred credits
from Bob Jones and John Muir to Washburn, then taken course work there
to receive his degree. Fred Phelps had guts. When he entered Washburn
Law School, he had a wife and seven children. When he graduated, his
family had grown by three.
Phelps was editor of the Law Review and star of the school's
moot court. He is remembered by some of the faculty as perhaps the most
brilliant student ever to pass through Washburn Law. If the public
performance was impressive, however, the private life grew even more
dark.
"It was a very rare occasion," says Mark, "when he would come
anywhere in the house that the kids were. While he was studying the law,
he'd fly into rages because we were making noise. Mom would hide us-for
the good of all." In fact, Phelps began to spend more and more time in
his bedroom, cut off from his family except when they were needed to run
errands for him; cut off except for his wife, whom he forced to remain
with him in his bedroom for days at a time. Apparently the pastor's
sexual appetites were voracious, and his emotional dependency even
greater: Says Mark, "Mom had to spend the major portion of her day
sitting next to him in bed, trying to say the right things to keep him
calm, while he bitched and moaned and complained and railed and carried
on. "He left the older children to take care of the younger ones while
he monopolized our mother's time and attention. We were literally left
on our own for the major portion of our childhoods." While the pastor
lolled now grossly overweight in his bed like some Ottoman pasha,
rolling in his law books and 100 pounds of excess blubber, lecturing the
wife and walls on the evils of the reprobate, wallowing in gluttony and
goat-like sexual appetites, he resembled, not so much the John Brown of
his earlier ambitions, as he did an esquired Jabba the Hut.
"The kids would sit in grime and scum and filth for hours at a
time," says Mark, "tied into their high chairs or strollers by mom, for
their safety, until she could sneak away from him to give them a diaper
change, redo their ties, and set it up for the older kids to feed them,
so she could get back to him.
"I remember when she'd come downstairs, all the kids would
cluster around her like a swarm of bees, just to touch her and talk to
her." Mark goes on: "I started doing most of the grocery shopping, by
bike, with my brother Fred when I was only seven or eight, because our
mom had such a hard time getting away. We had baskets on our bikes. We
were given money but it was never enough. It was humiliating because we
would hold up the line at the checkout while the cashiers would ask us
what we wanted to keep or take back, and then they'd do the figuring for
us," Mark sighs in the phone: "When he wanted a chicken dinner, he'd
stay in bed and have me ride my bike two miles each way to get him one.
He never thanked me. "We'd run errands for that, or he'd send us out for
a piece of apple pie with cheese on it. And we had to get back fast.
Damn fast, or he'd complain his apple pie wasn't hot enough. "It was a
mile or two back, the pie riding in a mesh basket, and we had to get it
to him hot." Mark pauses. "It's pretty unbelievable when I think about
it. At breakfast, my father got bacon and eggs; the kids got oatmeal and
grits. At dinner we'd have beans and rice while he ate chicken or
hamburger. Now that I'm a father myself, that just seems
incomprehensible to me. "My father had to take care of us each year when
my mom went into the hospital to give birth. Whatever he had to do, he'd
always lose his temper and start screaming.
"We'd be too scared of him to eat-and then he'd beat us for not
eating. My saliva would not work when he was in the room and mom was
gone, so, to clean our plates, we'd throw our food under the table or
into our laps and flush it down the toilet later. "When he took care of
us, I tried to stay out of the same room with him at all times. He would
be real hard on the little ones when he dressed them. He'd push and jerk
and tug real hard. My father was so impatient and unpredictable. You
never knew what to expect or how to act." When the children did run into
Jabba-the-Dad out of his bed, it was usually unpleasant. Mark tells of
one such time: "The day my brother, Tim, was born, Fred, Jr., and I were
in the dining room fooling around and Fred started to chase me out the
back door. I ran right into my dad."
According to Mark, the pastor started screaming at them not to
horse around. He punched both boys several times and ordered them
outside to work in the yard. On his way out, Mark rounded a corner and
inadvertently stumbled into his father a second time. Enraged, the
pastor connected with a hook to the side of his son's head. Mark fell
down dazed and stunned. The pastor began to kick him, and kept kicking
him, but Mark couldn't get up. His father screamed at him to go out in
the yard, but the boy's legs felt like jello and "the room was rolling
in vertigo". Finally, his father left him there, sprawled and dazed like
a defeated boxer. When Mark could stand up, he joined his older brother
already at work.
Three hours later, their dad called them in. "He told us to get
into bed and not to move. He told me to turn my face to the wall. For
hours I lay like that, too scared to roll over because I thought he
might still be standing there, watching me. Finally, I fell asleep.
"When we woke up the next day, we found he'd been at the
hospital with mom the night before. And we had a new baby brother."
Their father often slept all day and got up in the afternoon, remembers
another Phelps child. "And then everyone would hide because 'daddy was
up'. "He habitually had violent rages that included profane cursing,
beyond any sailor's ability to curse, where he threw and broke anything
he could get his hands on," states Mark. "My father routinely demolished
the kitchen and dining room areas, as well as his bedroom. He would not
only beat mom and the kids, he would smash dishes, glasses, anything
breakable in sight; he'd even throw everything out of the refrigerator.
"He'd literally cover the floor with debris. I remember seeing
so much broken crockery once it looked like an archeologists's dig.
There was ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise splashed across the walls,
cupboards, and floor like a paint bomb had gone off in there.
"Afterwards he'd go upstairs to the bedroom-and force mom to go with
him. It would take hours for us kids to clean up after his rages. He
never helped-he'd just dump on us and leave.
"But he wouldn't stop raging. While we were cleaning the mess
downstairs, he'd force mom to sit at his bedside upstairs while he
continued to curse and complain to her about whatever had gotten his
goat." Nate and Mark confirm the pastor's dish tantrums occurred
regularly, usually once or twice a month. Sometimes there'd be several
in one week.
"It established a life habit for me," says Mark. "Even today,
the moment I get home, I'm thinking 'Is Daddy mad?' "Our walls were
stained with food," he continues. "And my mom used to cry because she
couldn't keep good dishes. My father would also bust holes in the walls
and doors. If they were on the outside, he'd fix them quickly. On the
inside, he'd leave them unrepaired for months.
"And, remember, whenever my father was beating us, or if he was
tearing up a room, the violence might only last a few minutes, but he
would keep up his tirade for hours on end. "I'm not exaggerating. My
father would literally scream-not talk-scream-of-consciousness non-stop
insults at us for hours. "His mouth was, for all the years I knew him,
the most foul, vulgar, cursing mouth you've ever heard. There's nothing
he wouldn't say, including cursing God openly. I watched him, one day,
stand at the back of the church auditorium just outside the kitchen
door, and literally jump up and down and scream curses at the top of his
lungs, like a grown-up two year-old man." The content or nature of those
tirades is instructive. If, in fact, Phelps did maintain this kind of
vitriol for hours one end, it indicates an individual who is seriously
clinically disturbed. Since one man's scandal might be another's
vernacular, the Capital-Journal asked Mark and Nate for a sample of one
of their father's marathon four-hour tirades. The following, if read in
a loud and angry voice (not everyone can scream), will have a very
different effect on one than if it is only scanned. It offers a sudden
and shocking subjective experience of what it must be like inside the
pastor's head-of the twisted rage and volcanic hate that must seethe in
there-assuming the sample is accurate. Most functioning individuals are
able to carry on the following Fauve impressionist vitriol for only a
minute or so...Phelps reportedly maintained it for hours: Shitass,
Goddam, tit-ass, piss-ass Goddam, ass-hole bastard, piece of shit, dick,
son-of-a-bitch God forsaken filthy measly-assed piece of fucking shit
Goddam horses ass. You're not worth shit. You're a no good, no account,
God forsaken piss-assed little bastard. Get your ass in there and lean
over that Goddam bed, you're going to get a licken. Bitch. Fucker.
Prick, Fucker, Prick, Goddam fucker, Goddam prick, asshole, prick,
prick, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fuck you, you Goddam fucking
piece of garbage. Go to hell. Fuck you. Go to hell. Prick. Fucker.
GODDAMN YOU, you fucker. You worthless piece of shit. Goddam you, you
worthless piece of shit of Goddam fucking shit. Fuck you. Go straight
fucking to hell you Goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch. God Damn You! God
Damn You!!! God Damn You!!! You Goddam asshole son-of-a- bitch. God Damn
You! How dare you, you asshole bastard prick turd. You turd. You lying,
mother fucking stinking piece of fucking shit. Fuck you, you lying sack
of shit, you. Get the fuck out of my face. Go to hell. I hate you, you
bastard. I hate you, you asshole. You Goddam prick asshole bastard,
dick, piece of fucking rank stinking fucking garbage that's as full of
shit as anyone could ever be. Get the hell out of here, you fucker.
Fucker. Fucker. Go to fucking hell you bastard. Piss- ass. Horses ass.
Goddam fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. FUCKER! FUCKER!
FUCKER! Asshole. You bastard. You sick Goddam son-of-a- bitch. You
worthless little bastard. You Goddam asshole prick bastard. God Damn
It!! God Damn YOU!!! GOD DAMN YOU!!! Fuck you, you bastard. You're going
to hell. You little Tit-ass. Shit-ass. Fucker Tit-ass. You little
Shitass. Piss-ass little bastard. You Goddam little bastard, I'm going
to teach you. Get the hell up there. Why did you do this to me? Say!!
What's the big idea? What the hell do you think you're doing, bringing
reproach on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ? I'm not going to put up
with your sissified wimpy asshole ways. Shut up. God damn it. God damn
it. God damn it. Keep those Goddam kids quiet. I'm not going to tell you
again. What's the big idea making all of that Goddam racket? Say! Didn't
I tell you to not make a fucking sound? You think you're so Goddam smart
thinking for yourself, when I told you what the fuck I wanted. Keep
those Goddam kids quiet or I'm going to beat the hell out of all of you,
you bitch. You bastard. You bitch. Fuck you. Fuck you, God damn it. I'm
going to beat the hell out of you; I warned you and now you're going to
catch it. Where do you think you're going. Get the fuck back over here
you son-of-a-bitch and take your beating like a man. Fucking asshole
bastard son-of-a-bitch chicken shit piece of crap, no good little
bastard. What the hell do you think you're doing, for Christ's sake? I'm
not going to put up with you, do you understand me? Do you? I won't
tolerate this bullshit. God Damn you!! I'll beat the living shit out of
you. Watch it. I'm warning you. I warned you what I'd do. It's your own
God Damn fault. I warned you, for Christ's sake. What's the big idea
getting this family in trouble like this? I'll beat you until you can't
stand up or sit down. God damn son-of-a-bitch, asshole. I told you what
I'd do if you didn't get them Goddam grades up. You little prick. How do
you like that? Does that hurt, does it? Goddam it, does it hurt? It
better hurt. If it doesn't I'll make sure it hurts. Are you fucking
crazy? Are you crazy? You must be insane. Jesus Christ, how many Goddam
times am I going to have to beat you? When are you going to learn? Say!
Say! Is that right? Is that right? When you are going to learn? You no
account little bastard. In the old testament they used to take kids like
you out and stone them to death. That's what you deserve. You ought to
be taken out and stoned. At least parents in that time had some Goddam
solution to a problem like you. That's what would cure you. You've been
nothing but Goddam grief to your mother and I since the fucking day you
were born. I wish you were dead. I hate you. Jesus Christ, I hate you. I
can't stand you. I can't stand the sight of you. You're sniffing after
some whore, for Christ's sake. You got your dick wet and now you've just
gone crazy sniffing after that fucking whore. You hot blooded little
bastard. Keep your Goddam pants on and keep your fucking dick inside.
Horse piss, bullshit, balderdash, crap, lying bastard, son of belial,
reprobate. ballamite, Goddam Horses Ass! God damn you God, you lying
asshole letting them do this to me. God damn You God, how could you let
them do this to me! What the hell do you think you're doing? God damn
you God. You son-of-a-bitch. Hey you bitch, got any good words for me?
You better say something or I'm going to kick the living shit out of
you. Speak up. Say!!! What the hell good are you? Say, what the hell
good are you? What the hell is on your Goddam mind? Speak the hell up.
I'll slap the living shit out of you until you fucking can't see
straight. You pussy whipped little bastard. You horse manure. Fuck you.
Go to hell. You're going to hell. Go to hell. Shitass. Bastard. Bitch.
Horses ass. God damn chicken shit bastard son-of-a-bitch little fucker,
get the fuck out of my sight. You little chicken shit. You piece of
garbage. You're God damn worthless. You'll never amount to a God damn
thing. You're a loser and always will be. You go along fine for a while
and then you do something like this to fuck it all up. You little
asshole. You'll never amount to anything. You're a God damn loser.
You'll end up in jail you God damn deadbeat. Shut your big dumb ape
mouth, you look like some kind of fucking idiot with your big Goddam
dumb mouth hanging open. I'll beat that foolishness out of you. Look at
that foolishness leaving him, I can see it with every hit of this Goddam
mattock. It does my heart good to hear those screams and see that
foolishness leaving. What's the big idea doing that to me? Say! Why did
you do this to me Say! Say! How could you treat me this way? How could
you treat me this way you little bastard? What's the big idea? Say! I'm
not going to put up with this kind of bullshit. You're going to get a
beating. Lean over there Goddam it. You think I'm going to put up with
you? You think I don't know how to deal with the likes of you, you God
forsaken little bastard? We know how to deal with asshole kids like you.
I'll beat you. I'll beat you like the Bible says to beat you and you
won't die. Dammit woman, you know the Bible says that if you beat your
child they won't die, so shut your Goddam mouth or I'll slap you. Do you
want me to beat you fat ass? You Goddam hussy. You fat Goddam hussy.
You'd think you could give me some Goddam fucking support instead of
always fighting me and causing me all of this Goddam fucking grief. I'm
not going to put up with your Goddam sassy mouth talking back to me or
telling me what to do, you fucking bitch. I'm telling you; Goddam it;
I'm warning you, I'm going to slap the hell of out of you; you're going
to catch it if you don't shut your Goddam God forsaken mouth and back
off. I'm not going to tell you again. The next time I'm going to turn my
Goddam attention to you and you're going to be sorry. I'll cuff you
around and give you a Goddam beating. Don't interfere with my beating of
this Goddam bastard one more time. I want this fat off of that ass. I'm
not going to put up with that fat ass. If you don't lose by tomorrow,
you'll get another beating. I want that fat ass off of you, you fat
bitch, you Goddam fat slut, do you get it, you think headed bitch?
"My sisters and brothers just stood around and shaked and farted
and looked scared when dad was throwing a fit," brags Mark
uncharacteristically. "but I learned how to control my fear by working
with my hands and getting things done. "I used to stand in the back room
of the house, which was called the dryer room, and fold clothes for
hours upon hours. I learned to feel secure if I was getting something
done that was bottom line."
The voice pauses. "Still, he'd wake us up at night with mom
screaming from fear as he threw his fits. I'd come awake and lie there
feeling afraid and upset. "I wasn't worried about being woken up, that
he was upset, or even that he was hurting mom. I was worried about
survival. About what could happen if it got worse. I was thinking about
lying still in case he came in, so he wouldn't know I was awake.
"Because, he was so crazy, we didn't know that someday he wouldn't kill
us all." Back in those days, during the '60s, when Fred was in law
school and then a young lawyer, the neighbors would often see Marge on
the porch.
"She'd just be sitting out there, crying her heart out,"
remembers one former neighbor. "We all felt so sorry for her. But none
of us ever went over there to comfort her. Her husband had us all
intimidated." But if life with father was bad already-it was about to
get worse. According to Mark, who was 10 when his father graduated, Fred
Phelps became heavily dependent on amphetamines and barbituates while in
law school. Every week for 6 years, from 1962-1967, their mother would
give Mark a 20 dollar bill and ask him to go down and pick up his
father's 'allergy medicine'. Mark always got the bottle of little red
pills from 'the tall blond man' at the nearby pharmacy. He was told they
were to 'help daddy wake up'.
He also picked up bottles of little yellow pills that were to
'help daddy get to sleep'. But the beast already so poorly penned within
Fred now came out. Under the conflicting tug of speed that wouldn't wear
off and the Darvon he'd taken to sleep, the Pastor Phelps would often
wake his family in the middle of the night while doing his imitation of
a whirling dervish whose shoes were tied together: "With all the drugs,
he had very little body control," remembers Mark, "so we weren't really
scared of him then. But he would fall and break the bed apart; get up
and knock over all the bedroom furniture. "Mom would start screaming and
call Freddy and me to help her get him under control and put the bed
together.
"My dad's face would look totally stoned, and he couldn't focus
his eyes. He couldn't walk in a straight line, and sometimes he couldn't
even get up off the floor." Adds Nate: "Another time when he was stoned
on drugs, my dad started going after my mom. She was yelling for help.
My two older brothers, probably 12 and 13 at the time, went running
upstairs and tried to force my dad back into his bedroom. He was ranting
and raving like a lunatic. "They managed to get him inside his room and
slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside. He started
pounding on the door and screaming incoherently. "Finally, he actually
broke the door down. That seemed to calm him a bit, and he fell back on
the bed and passed out."
Without referring to his records, the pharmacist named by Mark
immediately denied he had ever filled any kind of prescription for the
Pastor Phelps-except once. Blessed with preternaturally accurate recall,
the pharmacist claimed that, since 1962, he'd only filled one order for
the pastor-a skin cream several years ago.
Questioned again later, the pharmacist admitted he'd been
filling prescriptions written to Mrs. Phelps for decades. But he denied
ever selling her amphetamines. According to Mark, the physician who
wrote those prescriptions delivered all or most of the Phelps children,
and was their family doctor when they were growing up. During the period
in question, he at least twice reported his doctor bag stolen and its
narcotics missing. The thieves were never caught. When this physician
shot himself in a Topeka parking lot in 1979, he was under investigation
for providing drugs illegally to his female patients in exchange for
sexual favors. What kind of drugs?
Amphetamines. "There was fighting one night," Mark recalls. "In
the middle of the night. Dad was stoned on drugs again. He shot the
12-gauge into a roll of insulation.
"It was probably a suicide attempt. Only my mom and he were in
the bedroom, and it was during the middle of the night. "What I think
happened was, he was so under the influence, he was so screwed up, and
he was so mad that he was doing one of those things...you know...I'll
show all of you...I'll just get rid of this whole problem by killing
myself.
"And I think he just did it. I think he did it for the dramatics
of it- of course, he missed. "After the incident, that roll of
insulation sat in their bedroom for almost a year. "Our mom tried to
keep things quiet and keep things contained," says Mark. "She acted as a
mother to him as well as us. Having him in our family was like having a
little 2 year-old in an adult's body-with an adult intellect. But it's a
2 year- old that can do whatever it wants, because there's no adult
discipline, instruction, or correction involved. My father does not
subject himself to accountability of any kind. "He didn't care about our
mom, except for how she could meet his needs. He treated her like an
animal.
"We had two dogs-Ahab and Jezebel. I used to throw rocks on top
of their dog house and Ahab would viciously attack Jezebel. I thought it
was funny. "That was the way my dad treated my mom. If anything would
happen that my dad didn't like, he would beat on her, blame her, make
her life miserable, and take it out on her-even if it was out of her
control.
Mark remembers one morning when he was downstairs and heard a
tremendous racket coming from their bedroom above. Furniture crashing.
Fred screaming. Their mother begging him to stop. Then her screaming
too. This went on for 20 minutes until finally his father stormed out.
All quiet.
Mark stole up the stairs, afraid his father would come back. He peeked in. (At this point, Mark's voice breaks. It takes him a long time to describe this, speaking in short phrases, interrupted by long pauses to control