A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel Page A

took him right home that day to Kathie. His memory underscores some differences in how the children saw their parents, and the strife. But Mitchell does concede there were family problems, to the point that he says that when he was in third or fourth grade, after his parents split, he asked to live for a year with his babysitter “because of the drama.”
    “I kind of threw down the gauntlet as much as a little kid can, and told them ‘I don’t want to live with either one of you,’ ” he recalls.
    For his part, Michael, Terryl’s older brother, remembers the violence starting when he was five and Terryl was four. Danny “beat on me until I was eighteen, and then one night at the wrecking yard, he was drunk and started to get violent with me and I pushed him hard (I was a bit bigger by then) . . . he said he was going to get his gun . . . I could not allow that,” Mitchell wrote in an email to Terryl, reflecting on their childhood. He wrote that he and Danny got into a terrible fight at the wrecking yard. In another email, he wrote of how Danny would tell him and Terryl he wasn’t their father. “When he was saying these things he usually had me slammed up against a wall yelling in my face with his putrid booze breath.”
    ON THANKSGIVING DAY OF Terryl’s senior year in college, she recalls that she and Kathie went for a walk on the beach. Kathie had news. Terryl’s real father had made contact, along with his new wife. The pair and Kathie had dinner. Kathie showed them pictures of Terryl and Michael. Terryl says Kathie told her that the man was curious about how the kids turned out but didn’t want to be a father to them.
    Terryl was furious at her mother for showing her picture to a man who didn’t want anything to do with her.
    HOW WAS SHE GOING to escape this life? It followed her, even in her dreams. Was there a way for the bubbly and optimistic to overcome the terror and loneliness?
    One thing was for sure: There would be no family for Terryl, no marriage. Earlier in her life, she’d told her diary that she was going to have a family and get married in the Mormon temple. But she’d changed her mind. She couldn’t risk putting a child through what she had experienced. There was just too much she couldn’t control.

CHAPTER 9
    REGGIE
    T ROOPER RINDLISBACHER MADE PLANS to do follow-up interviews with Kaiserman the farrier, and with Reggie.
    A few days after the accident, he called Mary Jane to set something up. It was around nine in the morning, right before she was going to go out and deliver the day’s mail.
    “I don’t feel good about doing this without a lawyer,” she told Rindlisbacher.
    She remembers the conversation went sharply south. “He started to accuse me about knowing something,” she says, looking back.
    He asked if Reggie was texting at the time of the accident.
    Mary Jane says she was offended by the substance of the accusation — and by the tone. Trooper Rindlisbacher was “awful,” she says. “I’ve never been treated so nasty in my life.”
    She sensed a chip on his shoulder. What’s with this guy? It rankled Mary Jane because she had such respect for law enforcement.
    As to substance, she truly believed that the accident had been caused by the weather, hydroplaning. She got off the phone in tears, “scared to death.”
    Still, the two of them had managed to set a tentative plan for a follow-up interview with Reggie.
    A few days later, Rindlisbacher drove to the Tremonton City offices and met with Kaiserman. The farrier went through detailed drawings of what had happened. He was upset, pained at having been part of the tragedy.
    Then it was time to meet with Reggie. Rindlisbacher’s phone rang. It was an attorney hired by the Shaw family. The lawyer told him that Reggie wouldn’t be coming for an interview and that he, the lawyer, would answer all questions.
    Rindlisbacher was irritated. He remembers thinking of Reggie: “He’s lawyered up, and he’s not going to