KARLY SHEEHAN-Karen Spears Zacharias

sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com.

The book that we're featuring this evening is Carly Shean True Crime of Carly's Law with my special guest, journalist and author Karen Spears Zacharias. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Karen Spears Zacharias, Thank.

right into this. Oh, you're welcome. Let's get right into your as we talked about in the introduction, your proximity to this case, tell us how you know Sarah, and tell us just to tell us about your relationship with Sarah and her parents and how you came to get to know her and how you got to know Carly.

was noticeable. But she was also chrismatic and engaging and sweet. She just had a very sweet kind of vulnerability to her, so that anybody, and there were plenty of people, not just me, There were plenty of people in the community in which Sarah lived and I lived that surrounded her and encouraged her in a mentoring way. So that's where I first met Sarah, and we developed that kind of

mentoring friendship. Not I mean it listened. There were we had four kids of our own, my husband and I. There were kids in and out of our home all the time. Sarah just became one of those kids who was in and out of our homes. We didn't know when I first met her, but we attended church with sarah parents, Jane and Carol Brill Sarah. I learned over a course of time that Sarah had been adopted. She was adopted as a baby, and she was the oldest

of Jeane and Carol's kids. They went on to have two children of their own, not through adoption but through natural process, and so I knew Sarah's brother, I knew of her sister. I didn't know her sister that well. Her. I believe her brother had been a student of my husband's, but we all went to the same church, and we didn't know that initially that we learned that over time. Sarah's mother worked at the junior high so I had

had some encounters with her. Sarah's father was in the medical business, so I knew of him that I didn't know him that well. Uh. Sarah would come in and out of our home and developed a friendship that way, just that mentoring. She felt like a kind of like a I had three daughters of my own, so kind of like a fourth daughter to me, and I regarded

her that way. When Sarah graduated from high school, she was a fabulous runner and very well read student, but not necessarily because of her own discipline issues, not high achieving student. But she had earned a scholarship to I believe it was Michigan, but her parents didn't want her to go, so she ended up going to the local community college there in Pendleton, Oregon called Blue Mountain Community College. And during that first year at Blue Mountain Community College,

Sarah showed up at our house. What are you being? Told me that she was pregnant and asked if my husband and I would be willing to adopt that child. I was quite taken back by that. Of course, my youngest was ten years old. My husband was all on board. My husband would have adopted thirty children if I just stay home and take care of them, right, He used agree with kids, and I loved kids as well. We had four of them, and like I said, they were

in and over our home. But the notion of adopting a baby was daunting to me because my youngest was ten and I had gone through that stage with my children, so I wasn't quite as eager about it as my husband was. But of course I was willing to help out anyway, even if that meant But as I told Sarah at the time, you know, sure, we're willing to do this with a few caveats. If if we adopt this child, we want you involved in this child's life.

We want our relationship with you to continue. But lastly, the one qualifier for us was that if we were going to raise jan in Carol's grandchild in that small community. We wanted gen and Carol Burrill's permission to do that or blessing, because I you know, I knew how I would fill as a mother if this were my daughter, So I put that requirement. We put that requirement in place, and Sarah was annoyed by that. She did not understand why in the world we would need Jeene and Carroll's permission.

But when she asked her parents about it, of course they were not supported, but that in any way because it would be mostly hard, difficult for them, I'm sure. So Oddly enough, it seemed on to me at the time Sarah went off to come to Washington to a home for unwed beatherds, and that just seemed to me to be a pretty archaic approach too, you know, a problem that's existed since human kind came around, So teenage

pregnancy at that time, this was the late nineties. At that time, I just I mean, Sarah was nineteen years old, so it wasn't like you're daily with a fourteen year old at that time. She was nineteen, she was in college. I saw no reason at all for her to go to a home for unwed mothers. I was not involved in that decision. I don't know how it came about, but once I found out that's where she was, I made several trips up to the home myself and visit

with Sarah. It just seemed a very depressing place to be. Sarah seemed completely out of sorts there. I didn't know if it had been her decision to go there or her parents' decision that she go there. It seemed to fill her with shame, and I was loath about the whole thing. You know, we explained to Sarah that we could not adopt her baby because we couldn't live in the town with her parents knowing all of that. So we left that.

I know about this couple. Would you like to meet them? And I made arrangements for her to meet with this mother. And this happened in a small town on the coast where my sister lives in Washington State. So we all met there and they hit it off right off the bet. So it was an interesting moment for me because it was like I was grieving a baby that I wasn't going to have. But I was happy first there because I could tell that she connected with this mom, So

that was great. But what happened then is Sarah went into labor and she called me. She was in Tacoma. I was in Pendleton. She called and asked me to come up, and I said, is your mom there? And she said yes, and I said, Sarah, I'm not coming up. If your mom is there and miss she is there, I don't belong there, right And Sarah was very upset that I would not come up, But I just felt I was just trying to be respectful of every you know,

her mom's feelings and Missy's feelings. I didn't feel like I had a place there other than, you know, to be that emotional connection with Sarah that up, said Sarah that I didn't come up a few days, so I didn't see her interaction with the baby to begin with. A few days later, I got a phone call from Missy. Sarah was getting ready to check on the hospital and she didn't want to let the baby go. And I

was of two minds on that. Right, Like, I felt like Sarah was completely capable, well at age nineteen, of taking care of a baby on her own. If that's what she chose to do, I knew that she would do it. I felt at that point that she would

do a good job. Missy was distraught in that way that adopted moms can get sometimes in those situations, is so full of emotion, and so I just said to Missy, listen, why didn't you and by Sarah home, because I mean, you know, we Sarah had been living with us through part of our not at that time, but we had opened the door and said to her after the baby's born, why don't you come live with us, you can go to college here, you can live with us, because the

situation between their and her mom had deteriorate it badly through those fragnancy and so we had opened that door. But Sarah wasn't ready to let call the baby. And I mean I didn't care whether she let call the baby or not. I didn't have a vested interests at that point other than I wanted it all to be Sarah's choice. Let her make the decision, because she was the one that would have to live with the consequences

of it. And so Kathy, Kathy and Missy and Chuck invited Sarah to their homes and Sarah went home with them for about two weeks, long enough for the baby shower to happen. And that is when I first encountered Sara with the baby, and she was very tender, She seemed very attentive, actually very concerned, but she, like any girl in that situation, was confused about what she really wanted, and I think she found a lot of pressure from

Missy and Chuck on what to do. Eventually, she did leave their home and she came to live with them, and she left the baby with them.

the focus goes on that child. My focus from the get go had always been on Sarah and less on this baby. That I was not adopting. Apparently there had been an exchange of uncomfortable words between Sarah and Missy a since where Missy felt like she had given Sarah opportunity to build a relationship with this infant and Sarah didn't take advantage.

found myself in similar conflict. So I was extremely protective of Sarah and annoyed, I think at Missy's comments, and I felt a little bit like Sarah had been used and I didn't like that. So there came a point where where I cut off, where we mutually, I think came to I think Missy had written me a letter and kind of cut things off. I think there had been an exchange of letters back and forth, and so

that was fine. Sarah continued to live with us for about a year while she was attending the local community college. She dated off and on during that time. Uh, we had a nursing loving relationship. Absolutely loved Sarah and she knew that I did, and so did my kids, our whole family did. She was part of our Christmas card that year. We both loved reading and writing, so we shared that. And she was just always so much fun.

But I was troubled by her relationship with men. She had started dating someone in town that I felt like the reason she was dating him was for selfish reasons, for materialistic reasons. Sarah was fun and she loved to party. She at that time partied to me, Joseph, you know, hanging out. I didn't. I was unaware of any drug use or alcohol used. We didn't drink in our home. We had had taken in other kids prior, and so the rule of the house had always been, you know,

no drinking, no drugs. If Sarah was using anything or abusing anything at that point, I was completely unaware of it. But I did feel like she was leading. She would inter really reationships with men, young men and lead them on and used them, and I saw this as a pattern throughout that year and it concerned me greatly.

She went down to is Shoe. I was working as a reporter and journalist, had four kids teenagers on my own at that time, was working on some other book projects as well. This was a very busy time of life press. But one day we get this phone call from Sarah saying she had somebody she wanted to bring by to meet us, and it was a fellow by the name of David she Han, and he was from Ireland. And my husband, who had grown up in Ecuador, is a big soccer fan, and so was David she Han.

So when Sarah brought David to the house, we adored him from the get go. Oh my gosh, I couldn't I couldn't have been more happy for Sarah that this was a guy she met, She was married and they were moving to Ireland, and I was ecstatic because I felt that David was funny and kind and absolutely adored Sarah.

And I felt like that emptiness that she felt in her soul having been adopted and then adopting out a baby, I felt like David would bring healing to that, and she seemed genuinely happy at the time they both did. They did go and live in Ireland for a while. I can't remember. I think it was about eighteen months they came back to Corvellis and Sarah got pregnant with Carly she had. I first met Carly right around her christening day. I think she was about six weeks old.

When I first could get away to get down to Corballis to see Carly, and my daughter was with me, and when they knew we were coming, when we arrived, only David was there with this infant daughter, and Sarah had gone out golfy, and I thought that was strange that Sarah would not be there knowing. I mean, she loved my daughters and she loved me, and I just thought, well, this is just odd. And we spent the afternoon with Day and with Carling. She was wonderful and sweede and

all of those things. We had a great visit. And during that time period, I had a book published, so we were we were very, very busy. We ended up moving that year all of those things. Somewhere during that year, about when Carly was a year old, Sarah called me and in the new town we were living in Hermiston, and she said that she wanted to talk to me.

It was a very tumultuous time in my life. I was working on a memoir about my father's stuff in Vietnam, and I was literally in the throes of quitting my job and going to Vietnam. Like I was leaving that next week for Vietnam. And this was during the time here of the war in Iraq, and so it was very chaotic for a news journalist like I was. Sarah called and we were just I just had an upsetting from call at work, and then I had this call

from Sarah, so I know exactly where I was. I pulled over to talk to Sarah and she told me that she was leaving David. And you know, probably because of where I was emotionally myself working on the memoir about my father's death, and as much as anything, I just blew up at Sarah. I was like, what do you mean You're leaving David? Like David's like the best thing that's ever happened in her life. Why would you

be leaving him? And she said, I'm just bored, I'm not happy, and I was really like, I lost it. My youngest saugh was home, my other three kids had come off to college at that time. Was just I think a combustion of a lot of bad Carmen at that point. I had never ever yelled at there before. I had never I mean, she did things like anybody when you're living together, there'd be things that agitate you. But I'd never been dreamly upset with her over anything.

But that day over Carly. I just had this sinking, sick feeling, not that any harm would come to Carly, but that it would be the worst decision ever for her to leave Dave and for her to be the parent of Carly, because I think I knew in that moment that and I'm probably had a sense of that throughout the years that Sarah's big struggle had always been that Sarah put Sarah first, and so I just told her that she couldn't do this, that Carly needed her dad. We just had a big fight. That's just what I

built down to. I left for Vietnam the next week. That was I can't So that would have been in February, I think of two thousand and three or four three, yeah, three, And I did not see Sarah again per years, did not even speak to her again for years.

And I guess that was part of the insult. And you didn't speak to her again it was till two thousand and seven when you say you made a trip with your husband Tim to Bend, Oregon March two thousand and seven to visit two of your four children, Stefan and Connie, and you found that day's newspaper and you saw Sarah's photo holding up holding up a burnt dollar bill. It didn't have a name there, but you saw, you recognized,

and you all recognized Sarah's photo. So tell us what happened that eventful day from them.

moved there and my son was already living there. And of course, because I had not been in contact with Sarah, nobody had been in contact with Sarah and yes, I had been very blunt was Sarah about trading off on her looks, because I knew that that was a pattern when she lived with us and had continued to be a pattern. And so I said, is she living here?

And nobody knew. I didn't have a phone number, for by this time, we're all using cell phones, and it's not like you could go look somebody up in the elephant, you know, white pages. So I prayed that morning in the shower, God, you know stairs here, let me run into her, which is just kind of a ridiculous prayer on some level, but it's just, you know, the way

I operate my life sometimes. And so that afternoon we were out for a walk in bend Orgon and literally two blocks from my daughter's house, there is this girl in these high hills, which is an unusual site in Bendorgon. This was kind of a it's an outdoors areas most people have on sneakers or sandals, so to see a woman in high hills at ben Doregon was incongruent. So

I know her. I know her high hills before I noticed her, and I walked up and it was my daughter saw her first, and she goes, Mom, it's Sarah, and I'm like, you're kidding now, it was her, and

we ran into each other. She was there with a relator looking at this house around the corner from my daughter's house, and we hagged and she was very effusive and said to the religor excuse me, but this is my family, because that's how she considered us, and I, you know, we made plans to meet at my daughter's house when she was done with her business. She came up not very long afterwards. We're seeing around talking and my husband said that he could tell something was wrung

right away, but I didn't. I couldn't, you know. I was just so happy to see her and to kind of restore that brokenness that had happened between us, because I'm not the kind of person that goes for years without speaking to my friends. I stay in touch with lots of people, and so I was just chatting to tell me what she was doing. We talked about all

the kids and about my dad. You know, this memoir about my dad published and so my you know, in my head, I'm figuring out how old Carly is, and I'm thinking, okay, she would be you know, at this point she would be five, so she would be in school. So I said, I made the assumption that Carly was living with David and going to school in Queer Valence.

And so I said, just Sarah something along that line as Carly with her dad, and the whole like this silence just fell over the room like it was I can still just you know, it's so real to me still, that kind of silence I've only encountered one other time, and that was when my dad died. And Sarah said, she started twisting her hair, which I knew was a nervous tick of hers, and she said, Carly is dead and I'm having a very hard day, so I don't

want to talk about it. Wow, you know, I just I just looked at him, and he looked at me. And the thing is, I had been traveling around the country with a photographer from New York. We were interviewing a lot of gold Star families at that time. These are women and children who had lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan by two thousand and seven. And I just come off that gig. So when a gold Star wife says to me she can't talk, I know to

respect that. So I allowed Sarah that same respect that whatever happened she did not want to talk about right then, and that was okay. I would give her that space. I had no idea what it happened. I didn't know if Carly had died of a brain tumor you know, childhood lukem Yord been killed in a car wreck. I had no idea. We made plans to go out to dinner that night. We went out to dinner, and we had a good time, and everything was just restorative. Really,

it was just like it had always been. She was part of our family and we loved her. But that night, after dinner, I said to you know, my daughter, and then to my husband, whatever has happened to Carly. She feels guilty about it, and I, you know, it's got a different kind of guilt that you are since that you have. Maybe through my years of reporting, I could tell the difference between something that happened where a parent wasn't responsible versus where a parent felt that they were responsible.

And I could tell that Sarah felt that responsibility. The next morning she called me. We made plans to get together again. I apologized to her and told her I was sorry I had not been there with her through that time of losing Carly. I felt horrible about that. We get in the car, my husband and I are driving home. It's a long drive. We didn't have iPhones at that point. But I said to my husband, whatever happened to Carly? I don't know that Sarah feels bad

about this. It's like she thinks it's her fault. And in my mind, what I'm thinking is that she has been on her phone or she had been in some sort of car wreck and that had caused Carly's death. And my husband said, that's not what happened. And I said, well, how do you know what happened? He said, because Stephen looked it up last night. And I said, well what happened? And he said, you don't want to know. And I said, Tim, you have to tell me what happened. I'm a jernalist.

As soon as I get home, I'm going to google this myself. So tell me what happened. And he just really was reluctant and took him a few minutes, and he said, Carly's boyfriend tortured and murder Carly, or Sarah's boyfriend torture to murdered Carly. I literally couldn't breathe when he told me. I just I was physically ill at that moment. I just felt like all the air had been sucked out of me. I could I just I

couldn't get my mind around it. I was shocked, absolutely shocked, walked by it, and then we had that four and a half hour drive home. I did not google it. I didn't google it for months. But what I did do was I called David right away because, as I could sing, this murder had happened in two thousand and five. Well, two thousand and five was the year the memoir and

my Dad came out. And I had only been home six weeks out of that whole year because I was traveling and speaking so much about Warren It's impact on children and families. So I hadn't seen the news. And my kids had seen it, but they had put it together like they had seen, you know, that a child had been killed, but you know, they just had not put it all together. And so I called David first

thing and said I want to come see you. We made I literally got in the car and droped down there the next day and uh David, I met per coffee and I told him, then I will write the story if you give your blot saints and he did, and I wrote the story of what happened to Carly? What of our things?

and invites them to apply to your job. These invitations have revolutionized how you find your next hire. In fact, eighty percent of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. And Recruiter doesn't stop there. They even spotlight the strongest application you receive, so you never miss a great match. The right candidates are out there. ZipRecruiter is how you find them. Businesses of all sizes truck trust ZipRecruiter for

their hiring needs. Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free. That's right free. Just go to ZipRecruiter dot com, slash murder. That's ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Zip recruiter the smartest way to hire.

break to get information from a defense attorney. So we'll talk about that when you think it's appropriate about that information that you gained from that and how unusual that is. So how did you once you knew that there was this murder? And again you said you didn't even look online, google anything for a few months. How did you first start to undergo to do this book? The research necessary?

divorce was not a big dale to him. By that time the divorce came around, he was so exhaust said was Sarah, that he was happy to be shunned of her because Sarah, as I would come to learn through my research and my own you know, memories of her was a narcissist, and that narcissism can just be exhausting

to deal with senna gambling habit. She had a lot of problems, but David had been Carly's primary caretaker, so I had not That's why when I was there just you know, a few weeks after her birth, David was

the one there and Sarah was gone from infancy. From as I would learn from the medical records, from even the very first hours after she was born, a nurse made notes in the medical records that Sarah was an interested in Carly, that David was the primary caregiverer even at the hospital, right, so the you know, after talking with David, the first place I went to was the Bent County Courthouse and pulled as many records. I you know, I'd been a cop reporter, so I knew how to

pull records. I went and pulled all the records I could get through the county clerk, who when she handed over you know, when we got to the document stage, she even she pulled me aside and said, listen, because you know this family, because you know this child. I'm just warning you that when you get to the picture phase of this you need to be very careful about what you look at because of your her own emotional health, and so I went I just did the basic footwork.

I did not contact the reporter of the newspaper who had covered this story because I did not want my writing and my research to be tainted by those stories in the paper. I wanted to get my own research, so I started calling all of the parties involved, the police officers who had responded to phone calls, the DHS worker, the daycare provider, the prosecutor in the case, the defense

attorney in the case. And I had been a cop reporter or so I already had a pretty good working relationship in the state with Oregon State Police, the lieutenant and Pendleton was a good friend of mine socially because our kids dated. Pendleton's a small town, so we knew each other. And I had good working relationships with both

defense and prosecutors in New Mantila County. So it was actually one of the defense attorneys in New Mantila County that had said to me when he knew what I was working on, listen, if anybody needs a reference, have him call me. He was one of the most well respected defense attorneys in the state. So that's what I did, is, you know, I would just go in and introduce myself and say, if you need a reference, here's some people

you can call. I did that with the defense attorney in this particular case.

the right things. I can't. I mean, I often hear from readers about how many people messed up, and they're there's plenty of reason for readers to think that, But I think it's important to note that of all the people involved, the daycare provider did everything within her power to protect Carly. She did all the right things.

So tell us about this investigation prompted by this health care provider. De Lean his allor.

work on those projects. But David had not become a United States citizen at that point. He is a citizen now, but he wasn't then, and so that comes into play in those stories. David, Carly goes Ireland. They have a wonderful trip. During that trip, Carly's just vibrant and fun and sweet and all of the things that make up who Carly was. When they came back from Ireland, David and Sarah had agreed to a shared custody at least eighty percent of the time. David kept Carly anyway, because

Sarah didn't. She was too busy. She wanted to go out with her girlfriends, she wanted to golf, she wanted to party. So they had this arrangements, you know, as part of the divorce proceedings that they had agreed to. I've shared custody. Sarah would have her so many days. David would have her so many days. Most of the time, David had her up until September of two thousand. For Sarah met a man by the name of Sean Field. Shaun Field was a local Corbalacet boy. His dad worked

for Hewitt Packard. He had had a thirty year career with Ewitt Packard, and his mom was stay at home mom. Sean had lived on the north side of town, in the more upper class section near the golf course. He came from a well to do family. They owned Shones and her Valas and in central Oregon and in Arizona. Sewan has had an older brother who died of a heroin overdose several years before. Sarah mount Shawn at a

place where she worked. She worked at a pizza company and bar, and she mostly worked the bar, and they had met and within two weeks of meeting had moved in together. Now during those times, Sarah kept her own apartment. Throughout all of this, Sarah kept her own apartment, so it was never a situation where financially she needed to depend upon shot. Sarah had came from an upper middle class family. Herself and her parents often paid for things

and provided for her. David had helped provide for her, offering even to send her back to college, because in David's mind, a well educated mother makes for a better mom. So there, I can't stress enough because in times, the perception is that child abuse happened to poor women who find themselves financially dependent upon the abuse of men. That was not this case, And oddly enough, the fact that it wasn't played against the investigation because it didn't fit

the stereotime. Within two weeks of Carly at being home and now Sarah has This is mid September, and she has introduced her daughter to a man she barely knows. He has told her that he's got several master's degrees, that he you know, works all these different jobs and yet he never really works.

of abuse that's never even taken place. But Carly. During this time period, that four weeks time period, Dlynne Zolar, her daycare provider, starts noticing changes in Carly's appearance and her demeanor she comes to daycare. She's more tired than normal, she seems depressed, doesn't want to engage, isn't her light lively self? She has odd bruising and her hair seems to be sinny, and Carly had beautiful blonde sohead hair, but it was never like really sick to begin with,

but now it's stanny. And so one day Dylanne is talking to Carly about some scratches that she sees, and Carly says, my daddy did this, And d Lynne's like, what, she knew that David would not be that person to do this kind of thing, and she said, my daddy hits me, my daddy pulls my hair. And to Lynne, you know, she does the appropriate things. She contacts DHS, the States Offices of Abuse, she calls the Abuse Outline Number reports it. David and Sarah are ordered to meet

with the pediatricians. Now, the thing about it is that Carly's doctor also happened to be Sarah's primary care doctor. So this is you know, this is a doctor Sarah saw when she was pregnant with Carly, and so she's already got an established relationship with this doctor. It never occurs to the doctor. Because here's where the things that came into play, Right, Why would a mother lie about

those source of troublesome signs on her daughter? Why would an educated, beautiful, smart intelligent woman, why about such things? It just never entered her mind that Sarah would be lying about Carly's welfare. Why would any mother do that? So DHS looks into those early on in October, comes back with the ruling in November and says that there's, uh, it's inconclusive that they can find those signs of abuse.

That maybe, you know, Carly's got some health issues. So the doctor's running all of these tests looking for health issues. There is a disorder that children can get where they tear out their own hair. Sarah learns this, and she begins repeating them, saying that Carly is doing those to her herself, right and all the while the abuse is continuing all the while and Carly. I asked the doctor during the course of this investigation, why did Carly never

tell anybody what was happening? And she said children don't tell because they love their mother. And that just kind of blew me away to think about it. Part of writing Carly's story is to talk about how the court system and the law enforcement system is bringing its own biases to bear in that we assume that moms are the better caretakers and the least likely to abuse children,

and that is just statistically not held up. And in fact, mothers acting alone are more likely to abuse their own children than fathers than boyfriends, and that just goes against everything all of us to have assumed and believed. The fact.

This is early December. Now Carly is not feeling well, so can I bring her to your house today instead of meeting you at Starbucks David's thinking Carly has a flu, and so David says, sure, you know, fine, bring her by. Sarah shows up with Carly. Carly is completely bald, she has no hair at this point. She has bruce marks all along the side of her head. Fingerprint bruce marks all along her head. She looked. I've got pictures of her, you can find them online. She look like a chemo patient.

When Sarah opened. When David opens the door and he sees Carly, he's incomplete and utters shock and of course outrage, and he just says, there, what the hell has happened here? And Sarah said, this is on me, and that's all she said, and she leaves. Well, David's concern immediately turns to Carly. But now he's in a situation where, number one,

he's not a US citizen. Number two, he's just had a DHS investigation in which, you know, Carly has told her or at least you know, the report from Dylann is that Carly had told her that her daddy had been abusing her. Now he's got this child that absolutely has been abused. There's no question in his mind she's been abused. But nobody's seen the exchange take place. So how do you call the cops and tell them.

catch twenty two. So what he did do was go to a neighbor's house, a good friend of his, to say, you know, to ask what should I do. This was a married couple that had been friends with him and Sarah, who knew Sarah very well. And what he didn't know is that she was having a baby shower that day for a friend of her and among that crowd was a teacher, and teachers are mandatory reporters. When tho those women saw that baby in that condition, that mandatory reporter

called the Corvellis police and reported it. Carly didn't let debt. Her dad sent her down all day long, even to go to the bathroom was a problem for him, not Carly, because she just didn't want to let cover dad. He finally gets her to bed eleven o'clock at night. Here comes this officer from Corvelli's police department beating on the door, demanding to see Carly, whom David has just recently gotten

to bed. He goes Cox, goes in there with a flashlight, pulls the covers back completely, shucks an already traumatized girl, accuses David of this abuse, leaves there and goes to see Sean and Sarah and interviews them together separately, then

writes a very cursory report, again pointing fingers. Said David along terms a female cop who has been reading all the headlines about Catholic sex abuse that's been reported in the Portland papers at the time, and David is a devoted Catholic, and this female cop and this DHS worker from that point on start pointing everything at David, and of course Sarah leads them to continue to think that.

all the right decisions? David would tell you, first of all, like Curly's dead, Like there's so many things he would have done differently now, but he didn't know. You know, it's easy for any of us to go back and judge, in hindsight, what way we do differently to stop the death of a loved one? Right, if we could do that, David believed in this system. David believed that if they did their investigation the right way, that they would find the proof. He believed in his heart that Sean was

abusing Carly. He interrogated Carly over and over again. Carly would never say that Sean was abusing her. She never said that. And when you ask professionals why children don't tell, well, I mean, this is why the bulk of child abuse takes place four children ages four and under, because they can be controlled. A lot of them aren't articulate. They are afraid. We don't know what kind of things Sean said to Carly to keep her quiet. We don't know what threats he made. Did he tell her that he

would kill her daddy if she's said anything? She never said, And David asked over and over again. That made him second guess everything, because Carly was articulate, She was a bright girl, She had full sentence structures. She could have put it together, but she would And he never could quite grasp why if this man is hurting her, why she's not saying that. But like I said, we don't know the threats that Sean made to Carly that she believed. So David trusted the system in a way that he

should He knows now he should never have trusted. He didn't understand the internal biases. He couldn't. He's such a good guy that he couldn't believe that anybody would actually think he would abuse his own daughter, right, Like, this was his life. So the concept that anybody thought he was guilty of hurting the one thing he lived and breathed for was just so foreign to him. And then you know, he had been married to Sarah. He loved her. He wanted to believe that she would not put her

daughter in a situation to be harmed. It was a very confusing time for him. He just didn't he didn't appreciate the forces working against him. He had some sense of it through the DHS investigator and through the female cop Karen I can't think of her last name right now, daughter the slaughter I don't name right anyway, So he just he had some sense of it because Stoddard was so aggressive in her approach to him, and but that just you know, if it were me, as someone came

at me like that, I would push back. And I'm a US citizen, so I don't live with the fear being deported.

apartment with her friend Shelley. But at the same time, she had said in these DH meetings that she had just moved to this apartment with Sean Field. And from that point they attributed Carly's strange behavior pulling out her hair or hitting herself. They said that she hit herself all self inflicted with right, But one of the crucial things to gain trust with the doctor Desosa and to and with everyone was the promise that she was going

to move out. Tell us about this promise and tell us about the reality.

I mean, the finding itself is unbelievable. When you see the pictures, you're like, well, everybody were said he had just as stupid if they think a child could do those to themselves at age three. So uh yeah, so Sarah has lied, Like that's why I bring up the diary in October. Sarah started lying against David as early as four weeks after moving in was shot, and so she makes some of those diary entries from that point on.

There is this whole pattern of line. Every step of the way she lied to protect herself and to protect Sean. She never wants lied in favor of protecting Carly, not once. When I went to the prosecutor and asked, you know, the big county prosecutor, why did you not charge Sarah. I mean, there's so much evidence that she was complicit in the depths of her own daughter. Why in the world did you not charge her with anything? Neglect, abuse, anything?

And he said that he thought that she had suffered enough. It was in that moment that I knew. I already knew that the courts were slanted toward mothers to begin with, But when he said I thought that Sarah had suffered enough, I knew that he had made that decision in a hate moment of haste to get the goods on Seanfield, which, by the way, Sarah never really gave up. The goods on Seanfield came from a good investigation post mortem, you know,

not prior. It came later Sean Field maintained up and then forever that he had was not involved in this. There's a time lapse even when Carly is found dead, and how long had Fair been home before that nine to one one call had been played? Right, So I'm distilled to this day undecided on whether she contributed physically to the abuse of her own daughter. She certainly contributed in a complicit way to the abuse of her own daughter.

She had DHS and said, look, we don't know whether your daughter is being abused or not, but she's clearly if she's not being abused and she's doing this for herself, then you need to quit being with this boyfriend because it's not healthy for your daughter. And Sarah agreed to that again, lied to do that. She didn't. She never quit seeing Seanfield through all of them, she never quit

seeing him. And so there was a time period where she quit taking Carly around him for about two months, but by Easter of two thousand five she was taking Carly around Schonfield again. And she claims that she had broken up with Seanfield. And again, you know, initially one of the prosecunion he had wanted me Joan Demerost had wanted me to believe that Sarah was that Sean was abusive of Sarah. There's no evidence anywhere that Sean was ever abusive of Sarah.

But tell us about the water, the water bill and the anger and her bar work that evening and when she actually came home after that shift tell us all about June second.

a huge fight. I think that Sean, you know, if I had to guess, I would have to say that he was by sexual, but he came from a fundamental's home. If his parents had thought for a moment that he was by or gay, his parents would have disinherited him. And not having access to his parents' money was a huge motivating factor for Sewan because as the soul surviving child, he and he would inherit everything as parents had, and

it was sizeable. And so he said to Sara at that point they had a big blow up fight and he said, you ruined everything. She took Carly and left and went back to her own apartment and did not have anything to do with him for a couple of weeks. That's where she tells the investigators she literally finally broke up with Sean. But on June's second, she's back over at Sean's and she has to work and she needs a ride, and he's yelling at her about you know,

the water bill. Apparently they shared you know, the bills at his place too, and he had given her the money. I can't remember exactly how that went. He had given her the money to pay the water bill and she had not paid it, and they had cut out the water or threatened to cut off the water, and so she had gone down to the city to pay the bill, and that had not gone well. And there was just

a lot of chaos over that water bill. And yet even in the midst of all that, Sarah had to work a shift that evening, and instead of calling anybody else, she knew that Sean Field was furious at her over that water bill. And yet she left Carly Sean that night and she went to work. And I mean, it

was just a stupid waitressing job. It was than anything where Sarah needed to work, had to work, was in a situation where she couldn't have said, I'm calling in, I'm not going in tonight because i want to be with my daughter and I'm not about to leave her in your care when you're this angry at me. There was none of that.

just doesn't want to be alone with him. And Sarah goes off to the pizza place in the bar and she's only supposed to be goun for like four hours, but she doesn't come home to well after midnight, And.

And in that picture you see that Carly has a ruptured eyeball. It is I mean, she looks like Muhammad Aille after a bad fight. Her eye is swollen, shut, completely ruptured, bloodied. There are bruises all over her feet. Sarah asked Sean what happened. Sean says that Carly was jumping off the bed, the bunk bed and heard herself. Sarah does not call for help. She has Carly called her dad and her David didn't answer the phone, and Carly leaves a message and tells him that she doesn't

feel good that she misses him. Sarah calls her own father and says, Carly seems to have an eye allergy. There's no way in how that looks like an eye allergy. The eye is ruptured. Even if Carly had lived, she would have been blinded in that eye. The doctor testified to a gourd incredible, and Sarah leaves her again. She does not take her to the hospital, She does not call a friend, she does not seek medical help for

her daughter. She in fact puts Carly in front of the TV with a handful of granola for breakfast, and she goes and has sex with Sean Field Sure, and then she leaves her daughter again to go work another shift at the pizza place. When she comes home, Carly's dead on the floor in the other room, or she comes home and there's a time lapse and in that time lapse, Curly dies. That's never really made clear.

the other room and not, you know, doing well. Sarah coozo in there and Carly isn't breathing, and so during this nine to one one call, they're telling her how to do CPR. Nobody ever did CPR, and Carly not

till the mts arrived. When the MT's arrived, they knows Sarah because she is a party girl in town and they all she's beautiful, they've all had some of them have had relations with her, and so they know her and they make excuses for her right off the bat, not looking at her as a potential person involved in the murder of a child, but hey, that's our friend, Sarah. And Sean Field's response is he's concerned. He's taken all these chairs in the table and he's pushed them up

against this closet door. Not concerned about Carly, not the fact that he has a dead child on the floor in its home, but concerned because he has a marijuana grow in the closet and he's worried that if the police come across the marijuana grow, he's going to be arrested. Not worried that he has a dead child on the floor that needs to be accounted for, and so the MP's get the baby to the hospital. David gets a phone call. He's at work in Portland. He gets a

phone call, you know, saying something's happened to Carly. He needs to get to Corvallis right away. It's an hour and a half drive. He leaves work and heads back and he's calling the hospital to find out what happened, and the doctor tells him and a very ugly manner, that currently is dead. That's how he learns that that his daughter is dead. It is through a doctor who's angry. But he's angry because Sarah has told the doctor and the staff that David did.

We can't go into all the heartbreaking stuff like the photo on the post mortem table table that was used when Sarah was on the stand and dramatic testimony, well not dramatic, but it's heartbreaking again for a ten year old Sean Field's daughter who lived in the home with them and knew Carly was forced to testify. So we don't have all that time to go into all of those things. Suffice to say that he was finally incarcerated, wasn't he?

you know, you had two very narcissistic people. And there's an excellent book I recommend it to anyone, especially in today's world, to read, called The Narcissism Epidemic, which I did read during the investigation here. But this investigation, they just Sarah and Sean had a chemistry that was an uncommon chemistry and inexplicable in many ways, and it was

like two cons trying to out con each other. Was how one of the cops put it to me, two cons trying to outcnt each other, and what they're bartering with as a little three year old girl in the process. And what the curly story reveals to it is that we have big misconceptions about how child abuse happens in our society. I had been so focused on war and its aftermath for so long because of my own childhood experiences.

Then it never you know, during that time period, during that ten year time period that we'd been at war in Iraq in Afghanistan, we'd lost somewhere around sixty eight hundred soldiers, mothers and fathers. But if you went and lined up all of the kids who died of child abuse during that same ten year time period and laid them out in quilt covered caskets instead of flag draped ones here on us soil, we would have seen twenty

thousand caskets. We lose fifteen hundred children a year to child's abuse in this nation, fifteen hundred that we know about. We lose five children a day. If Disneyland had to ride that lost five children a day, we would shut Disneyland down. The first day. But here in this country children are living in fear daily. These are just the children who die. I get letters weekly from people who live through this kind of horror. Thankfully they live, but

they don't come away dscaped. I think a post traumatic stress disorder is something that soldiers live with, but in truth, children who've been abused live with it every single day, and there are more of them than there are soldiers who are dealing with it. That's how prevalent child abuse is. And the wealthier you are, the more educated you are, the higher you are up in society, the less likely your child is going to be believed when they do report the abuse, if they ever get around to it.

And you know, I just encourage everyone to be more alert, to pay better attention, to think about her own biases, and to realize that moms are not always what we think they are. And you know, just because a woman is beautiful does not make her good hearted. It does not. That's not to put anyone down for being that, but in Sarah's case, her beauty was the thing that made her stumble.