She Survived by M. William Phelps

live by myself (I was still living with my grandmother).
    The judge did ask me if there was anything I wanted to know. So I asked, “Why? Why did he do it?” The judge (a big man with a deep, booming voice) asked Saxton: “Son, were you on drugs, or high, or something? What in the world made you do this?”
    Scott Saxton replied, “I had been drinking at the time, but I knew exactly what I was doing.”

    After the sentencing hearing Becky Buttram and Melissa Schickel stood outside in the hallway by the courtroom. As Saxton’s wife and parents—those “two old people”—walked out, Melissa took a moment and looked at them. It hadn’t really dawned on her, she said later, that they would be there, or that a guy like Saxton would have supporters.
    As they walked by, Melissa could hear Saxton’s wife, she claimed, say, “Yeah, that’s her!” She was speaking to his parents and referencing Melissa. This was alarming to Melissa. She had a revelation while standing there.
    â€œNot only did I realize I had faced him, but now I had to deal with his family, who were still free to do whatever they wanted, and, in my opinion, in complete denial of what happened,” Melissa said. “In fact, they were probably blaming me for his problems. And those thoughts, as I had them, terrified me.”
    Melissa and Buttram stood and chatted. “He’s lost a lot of weight,” the law officer remarked to Melissa.
    â€œI don’t care how much weight he’s lost,” Melissa said, always the one to bring the situation back into comic relief, “as long as Bubba still wants him, once he gets to prison.”
    The bailiff standing nearby burst out laughing, repeating: “As long as Bubba still wants him. . . .”
    Jeff Baldwin walked up to Melissa and said, “I am really sorry and I hope you can get on with your life. I wish you the best.”
    Melissa didn’t recall what she said to the defense attorney, but underneath her breath, she muttered: “Go to hell.”

    I was stunned. I couldn’t understand how he had the audacity. I asked the prosecutor how someone could even defend someone like that, and how did that guy sleep at night. He explained to me that Saxton’s attorney technically was there to only defend the guy’s rights, not his morality. He doesn’t necessarily agree with his client, he just has to protect his rights. An attorney I worked for later (and we did some criminal defense) put it in terms I understood: “Hey, the guy goes to jail, I go to lunch.”

    Melissa left the courthouse and put this chapter of her life behind her—that is, until she heard the name Scott Saxton once again.

CHAPTER 32
    OLD DOG, SAME TRICKS
    A year after beginning his prison sentence, Scott Saxton was charged with conspiracy to escape. He was slapped with another two years.
    When Saxton was released in 2000 (he served no additional time and was out ten years earlier than expected), he managed to keep his nose out of the neighbors’ windows for at least two years—or, rather, two years that he wasn’t caught in the act doing it.
    On May 13, 2002, however, all of that changed.
    A man was at home one night in his suburban Marshall County, Indiana, home when he happened to look out his kitchen window toward a female neighbor’s house.
    Something didn’t seem right.
    There was a man outside her window. The neighbor didn’t know it yet, but it was Scott Saxton. He was standing on the woman’s air conditioner unit, peeping into her bathroom window.
    The neighbor yelled to his significant other to phone the police, just before he took off out of the house, yelling at Saxton, getting a good look at him.
    Saxton ran away and the neighbor lost him around a corner.
    When he returned to his house, however, the neighbor spotted a truck parked in the front that he did not recognize. He felt the vehicle might