Chapter 7: Sheila & Jonnie

Previously on missing in Hushtown. He called me for two weeks when she disappeared with Johnny. He has never never asked me to help him find beth In me now. She seemed like she had a little bit of figure. I think she was coming down with something. But too she was going around to everybody in the house, you know, even the kids, and saying, you know what, if Daddy didn't bring me back. Do you believe that by Fanny ever left Arkansas? I do believe she left Arkansas because she called me on the phone and it came from Gleason, and you know that because it showed up on the caller ID. He broke my nose one night he came. I was sleeping in the bed and when we heard him come up, so we were trying to act like we were asleep while he came in and leaned over and grabbed me by the hair of the head and pulled me up out of the bed. I didn't do nothing. He just comes in and it's like he is, I don't know if he's taking something out on me what. But he hit me in the nose and he broke it and there was blood everywhere. He said, uh, I think I just broke your nose. And now you're all caught up, So let's go. This is missing in Hushtown Season two. Bethany Markowski. I'm your host, Jules, Welcome back. One note before we begin, you may have noticed at the end of the last chapter that Sheila's voice was being read by our wonderful producer, Rachel Holloway. Sheila's phone service was cutting in and out during our interview, and unfortunately the audio quality was not able to be salvaged. So you'll hear Rachel read for Sheila. Each word is verbatim from Sheila's interview transcript. We're going to include long interview clips in this episode as well. We think it's important for you to hear the women think out loud and improcess the recollections with us right alongside them. I mean, Sheila and I could both probably sit here with you for twenty four to seven for a month and never get out every story. There's just not enough time. I think Jenny summed it all up when she said, you know, he was a good dad when they were little, he was with Bethany, and then once they found their voices, he I don't even know. I don't know if he hated the kids and hated me and she, or if he loved us and it was just his warped way of expressing it. And think about this. We're two grown ass women, right and we are scared to death of him. Think about an eleven year old little girl for everybody that knows him now. I hope he is a changed man. I hope he's not the monster that we had. Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses physical assault, verbal assault, sexual assault, and rape. Listen responsibly please. This episode contains first person narratives from individuals providing their recollection of their truth and are not the opinions of the podcast or its producers. So he got mad at me. I had my daughter, Emily, and he told me to get her the f out of the house. First of all, he set us on the couch and went through the house and tore up all the pictures of me and my kids in front of them. And then I called my mom to come get my daughter. I had to run and walked down to the little grocery store. My mom came and got her. Mama kept saying, getting the car, get in the car. I'm like no, no, no, huh uh no, I'm not going to put you in the middle of this. And he threw all my clothes out in the rain and just crazy stuff he got. He Jimmy, like Sheila said, he bought me things. Yeah, but I would say ninety percent of the time he took them back. I always used to say, the bigger the bruise or the fracture or whatever, big hunks of hair gone, the bigger the diamond. And he had made me take all my rings off one time, and he was choking me in the bathroom and he stuffed them all in his mouth and was like, oh, chewing on him. It's a wild man, Daniel. So he was asking Larry, Span was asking her neighbor, you know, this ring got caught in the warshier. What happened to you know? Can I get it fixed? And Daniel said, uh huh, Daddy, you chewed on it. But then that one time, I was sleeping the floor because I had to have the kids fed and in bed by the time he got off work at eleven at night, and then I had to have his food ready for him. I was making sure the house was clean. It was just barely dusk the kids were still up and stuff. But I went to the back door because I was sweeping, and I fill up my neighbor, he said, Johnny, he was standing at his back door, and he said, I hear what goes on over there. I see you screaming. I mean, I hear you screaming. And he said, I just want you to know then, I've put a gun a pistol under my seat, my couch cushion in the living room, and this door will never be locked as long as you live next to me. Today's episode brings Johnny and Sheila together to share their sides of the story as a united front for the first time. Johnny met Larry while he was still married to Sheila, although Johnny was told otherwise. Both women will bravely share their darkest experiences with you, the listener, in hopes to paint an accurate picture of their reality during the time vulnerability as brave, and we encourage everyone listening who may be experiencing similar situations or know someone who is, to please reach out to the Domestic Abuse Hotline at one one hundred and seven ninety nine seven two three three, or call your local law enforcement for help. What you were about to hear throughout this chapter from Sheila, her daughter Jenny and Johnny is not love. I repeat, this is not what love looks like, sounds like, or behaves like. I had long hair. He choked me and then he drugged me by my hair in front of the kids upstairs, made me strip and stand there and ask me if I was embarrassed, and I was crying. I said no. And the whole time he was raping me, he was choking me and asking me, do you hate me now? And I was like, yeah. Well, the next day we were in line at some restaurant and he just kind of flipped my hair back and he said, what happened to your neck? And I was like, that's where you choked me yesterday, And it was almost like he didn't believe that it happened. Johnny will continue to share about that memory later on, Like I. Said, I don't remember what started it, but he spawn was like beating the snot out of me. And Sheila was dropping the kids off and one of them ran back to the car and told her daddy's beating Johnny up or killing or whatever. She looked come running in the house and try to get him off. To get him off of me, but he beat the snot out of both of us. He hit me so hard at knocked one of my earrings the back and everything completely out of my ear and he got she looked pretty good. Yeah, he said we were both alike, We were both bitches and whores, and we were just like each other. And I mean, I don't know for somebody that that hates us and calls us every name in the book, but he sure won't let go. Oh, you know, why did you go in there? Did you know you were gonna also get beat then too? I mean, I really didn't care. I was just trying to get in there to help Johnny because I knew that the way Larry was, and I wasn't going to let her sit in there and get hit. On if I could do something. Now, it should be noted once more that the production team did reach out to Larry again, actually numerous times, to hear the interviews that will be playing in today's episode and to give him a chance to provide either a response, statement and interview, etc. But he declined. Once more. His daughter he shares with Sheila, Jenny Bethany's older sister, will share very vulnerable stories of her traumatic childhood, and Jenny had me reach out to Larry and invite him to speak with her about what she is going to discuss in this chapter. So I asked Valerie in text if he would consider this, Jules, has Larry made a decision about a statement or a full un edited interview or meeting with Jenny as before, I'll bring everything we're talking about in future episodes to him to address as well. Valerie. We've been discussing it on and off for the last couple of days. I do know Larry does not want to talk to Jenny. He has a lot he would like to say, but sometimes things are just better left unsaid. Jules, okay, Well, that at least lets her know that there is an answer that I can pass on to her. Larry's ex wife, Sheila sits on the other side of the camera at her daughter's kitchen table, her hands fidgeting now. She looks around at Jenny, who moves across the room, quieting her kids in the background and helping adjust a volume on the phone. Sheela's agreed to interview today to help find Bethany and get her truth out there. Sheila's truth matters, Sheila matters. Producer Rachel and I scheduled an interview for Johnny and Sheila to sit down together and have this conversation about the events in their lives which overlapped. This is something they have never done. The past few decades have been focused on solely finding Bethany and surviving for their other children Bethany's siblings, But here they find themselves coming together to share their own truths. Johnny and Sheila may share an allegedly abusive ex husband, but they share something bigger than that, something beautiful from the ashes, a love for Bethany. Sheila helped take care of Bethany for many years. Oftentimes Larry would take Bethany away from Johnny if Johnny did something that upset him, and he'd bring Bethany right to Sheila. Sheila would love on Bethany like her own daughter. So this Bethany's disappearance isn't just about her daughter and sons missing sibling. It's about a little girl whom she shared a beautiful connection with as well. Okay, let's start from the beginning. Sheila nods and takes into breath and begins to tell us about the early days she was with Larry. He just said he didn't have no place to live and he was just living and sleeping in his car. Well, my mother lived on Sixth Street in Union City. Well, I would raise my bedroom window and he would sleep in my closet, and he got I didn't know. My mother knew it, but she she found out. I think Larry was working at the nursing home. He had came in and my me and my mother was up in the attic. Well, the steps were down, and my mother what she hated Larry, and she was they got into it. Well, my mother was walking up the steps. Well, Larry had swung to hit my mama, but he hit the wall and put a big old hole in her wall. Well, she turned around and took her foot and kicked him right in the chest and knocked him down. And she told him, she said get out of this house now, because she was fixing. She she was gonna call the police, you know, And I told her, I said I'll get him out. So he got out of the house. Of course we were we were already married then. But he had got he had come in from he went to Goodyear. He had come in from Goodyear and he had got a curtain rod and he beat me with that curtain rod. I had welts all over both my legs. Uh. I mean it was like you could see the mark of the curtain rod and it had blood coming out. And then he would get me on the floor and stomp on my head with steel toad shoes or or kick. Me with him. Uh. I mean, I know exactly what Johnny went through. And I mean I think I even tried to tell her, you know that he's not He's not what you think he is. I mean, we could be riding down the road and he'd just haul off and back hand me, and it's like, I mean, you don't even have to do nothing. The women continue to share stories other experience as Larry's wife, and although we don't include all of them, we will forever be shaken by all that we heard. Like Johnny, Sheila also share stories of her alleged abuse at the hands of Larry like it was just another day, because to her it was. She also didn't know any different. Oh, you can have your head turned, and he accused you of turning your head so people passing by can see your face. Know if he ever did this to you shed a little bit. One of these things he liked to do. You know how you set with your knees together and you sit on the back of your heels. But he he would make you like put your hands I don't know, if you're to see me. He would make you put your hands behind your knees and then sat down, and then he would sit in front of you and you would have to look up at him, and then he'd ask you questions whatever, and then he just slapped a shit out of you, and there's nothing you can do. And I remember one time, I think it was probably the hardest he ever slapped me. Is he was just in my face, cautsing and spitting, and he called me Sheila. And when he did, I just looked that up at him and I kind of, I don't know, smirked or something. I had Bethingy in my lap one time and we were in that van, that white van. He always had creepy vehicles. But I had her in my lap and there's nowhere to go. And at first I had her over here and he reached over and back handed me in the mouth. I was bleeding, so I moved over here because he hit her in the head one time, but there's nowhere for me to go, and he was just bam, bam bam right in my mouth. We lived in Wooden Mills and my sister Ronda was staying there, and when we got out of the van, he said, you better not tell her what the f happened. You tell her Bethany had budded you. So I looked like, you know, daddy up for a few days because I don't know why. I can remember times like when, just different flashbacks when we would me and his kids and Bethany'd be sitting watching TV and laughing and stuff, and he would look at me and say, fuck, have you got to be happy about I'm like, I don't know, you know. Or he would look at me and say, what's wrong with you? You in a bad mood? You want me in a bad mood? Is that what you want? No, don't don't don't want that, you know. So it's like Sheila said, he would flip on a dime. He would be even with the kids, right, he would be black and joking and playing around and then all of a sudden he's just lost his freaking mind and nobody knows why. But you know what, you know what's your fault, but you really don't know why, but it is your fault. When Larry moved Johnny into his house he had shared with Sheila, he was moving Sheila out at the exact same time. However, he continued his control over Johnny, and even though Sheila wasn't living there anymore, he still controlled Sheila as well. Here's Sheila. He used Bethany against Johnny. I had moved to Sharon, but he still tried to control my house and their house. And every time he got mad at Johnny, he would bring Bethany to me. And I mean, I mean a lot of the times I would be at the car, I washing my clothes at the laundromat, and I'd have Jenny and Daniel with me. Well, they would drop off Bethany. And I mean a lot of people already had already thought I didn't know you had another baby, and I said I didn't, and of course we would have to try to explain, you know, and I said, look, it's it's not Bethany's fault. And I love Bethany like she was mine. Of course I wouldn't have done anything to hurt her. And actually it wasn't Johnny's fault at first, you know, yeah, I didn't really hate john but it's like he was doing and giving her things that he had promised to do for me. But I know how Larry is. I mean, so I hated it, but I knew that it was something was coming, because that's. How he is, you know. He he would say that he was going to do this and that for the kids. We'd get somewhere where we was going to go, and then he would just turn around and we'd go back home. The kids would be crying, and then he'd be hollering at them to shut up. And I'd say, Larry, you've been talking about taking them to a water park all this time, and then we get here and now you just want to turn around and go out, go back. But it's just a I don't know. Larry's like he's got two sides to him. He can be so nice and funny and and then all of a sudden, hell, he had just he'll just turn I mean, I don't know, but he's he's got he's got a problem, and he don't he don't see what he does. He thinks everything he does is right. I think one of His favorite things to tell me is you're the ugliest woman I've ever met. You got a big nose, you don't have any titties, don't have an ass, You ain't nothing but to hold a jack off in and you're not even good at that. But he he wanted you, though, didn't he. Well, no, well, I don't know if you. I don't know what he wanted. He wanted us both. But but he implied, but never really said it, that he was still having sex with Sheila when we were married. I know one time, one time he came the house and he forced me. I don't doubt that at all. That was only one time, and that was in Jenny's room. But we have to pause the interview to share some text exchanges between myself and Larry's current wife, Valerie. Valerie was relating to me what Larry's responses were when I brought to him the allegations of physical abuse Jules. So, Johnny and Sheila did a joint interview for the first time and share about the abuse that they experienced from Larry. Valerie. Larry was young and did whoop Sheila because she couldn't keep her pants up. He said he was young and stupid. He said he never abused Johnny. He said he did hit her one time out of red light because she hit him first over some girls that pulled up next to them. I guess she thought he was looking at him and it was just a quick reaction because she hit him. Jules. Did Larry ever hit his children Valerie. He whipped Jenny with a belt because Jenny had hickeys all over her breast at the age of thirteen. Johnny is the one who found them. Larry popped Daniel in the mouth because Daniel and Johnny were arguing and and Johnny told Larry you better do something with him, so Larry popped him in the mouth and it cracked his lip a little. Larry couldn't do anything for his children without Johnny getting upset. Larry bought his son a gun, a three hundred Magruger, and Johnny got pissed about it. She put that in a letter, saying Larry did it behind her back. Larry said it's his son and if he wanted to buy him something, he could. He didn't need permission. Larry said most of the arguments were over Daniel and Jenny, but those were his children. He was gonna do for them no matter what Johnny said. Now, when Johnny was asked about the gun, she related to us that she was absolutely upset, and that was because the gun accidentally went off in Daniel's room and Bethany's room shared a wall with his. She was terrified that a bullet could have hit her daughter. It wasn't about giving d Daniel a gift. It was that Bethany could have been accidentally shot. And Daniel, Larry's only son, respectfully declined to interview for this podcast, but we do want to say that we know Daniel and we respect Daniel. We've met him out a vigil for Bethany, and Rachel and I were able to spend a few intensive days beside him on a foot search for his sister's remains, which we will go into more detail about in the last chapter of this podcast. Daniel does care so deeply for justice for his little sister, and to this day he has nothing to do with his father, Larry Markowski. Larry's oldest daughter, Jenny, has shared extremely vulnerable parts of her life with us in previous chapters, but what she is about to share in this chapter is something that we wish nobody ever had to experience. We wanted to give her the space to share her truth. Jenny addresses the time Valerie mentioned in her texts when Larry says Jenny had Hickey's on her breast, and Jenny's first recorded interview, she didn't share about this event. However, I guess she took a few days and thought about it, because she came back to us asking us to do another interview and that there was something she was ready to finally share. A note, as producers, we exercised our judgment to remove some of her interview out of respect for Jenny and her trauma. Here's Jenny. He had just heard that I was having sex. I was not. I was thirteen. I might have been, you know, doing what thirteen year olds do, you know, liking boys, having crushes on boys, things like that. But small towns talk, and I guess somebody told their parents in said Ania that I was having sex. And he made Johnny strip search me. He made her take me in the bedroom and take my clothes off and everything and. Check me over. Yeah, I had a hickey on my neck. He told Johnny and Bethany to go outside and not to come back into a yell for them, and he kind of just told me to sit on the floor on my knees in front of him while he was sitting on the couch, and he stood up, pulled his pants down, took his private out and. Told me to touch it. He said. He was trying to prove to me that there was nothing to a man's private part and that I should not even be thinking about having sex at my age. And once he pulled his pants and that was it. At once he pulled his pants up. I was crying, of course, and thinking like what is about to happen? But and then he just. Casually told me if I told anybody, he would knock my ass to the wall. And then, like I said, maybe the same day or or the next day. I remember Daniel being in the garage and he told Daniel to leave and called me in there, and he told Daniel to leave and he said, you see that right there, and he pointed up to the ceiling of the garage. He said, I'd rather you hang yourself. And he said it really calm, nice, sweet, like that's what a good father does for his daughter to keep heart from dating a black guy, African American guy. He said, I'd rather you hang and kill yourself than the data inward. What did you do? What did you stood there shocked crying? He saw you cry? Oh yeah, how am your howled? About thirteen, Jenny dives deeper into what she observed to be Larry's views. Well, I mean I remember him saying, it's okay to play with them at school, but they don't come home with you. You don't sleep with them, you. Don't eat with them, you don't go to their house. That's the way it kind of said it. And that was when I was younger. When I was around fifteen is when I started dating my ex boyfriend, who was African American. And I remember. I couldn't drive, So I think I was about fifteen, me and him and his best friend, he was white. Larry was making me come down there, and I'm like, I. Don't know how we ended up in Sidonia. I think I went down there to let introduce him to them and ask if I could ride around with them and stuff. But we introduced the white boy as my boyfriend because you know, he never knew. But then when I got about seventeen, I was tired of hiding, so I just was like. I don't care anymore. He can do what he wants to do. I just got to the point where if we went to the movies, I would, I would. I remember one day specifically, me and my ex were at the movies and I grabbed his hand and he was like, what are you doing because back then you didn't do that. I mean, so many people knew you. When we go back and talk, and I said, I don't care no more. I don't even care. And we ended up being together for like thirteen years. By the way. She recalls a point of sick irony when she was eighteen and Larry came to visit her, and. I remember him being up there giving us lectures because you know, we were young. We you know, we had some. Fights, me and my ex, and he wasn't abusive by any means, but we did have some altercations, you know. And I remember Larry up there telling him, you don't ever put your hands on my daughter, and we don't, you don't do. That, and blah blah blah. And I remember just laughing, like thinking it was hilarious, Like how are you gonna sit here and be trying to be father of the Year and give somebody else a lecture after all the stuff that you've done. Johnny and Sheila's voices drift off together while I sit in my office, trying to focus on their words, but fighting back that lump in my throat. I don't want to cry in front of them. Here are two women sharing the worst parts of their lives with the world, all the help paint a holistic picture Bethany in the world around her when she was taken in two thousand and one. Can I ask a question, Sheila, do you ever think Larry will own up to it, to what happened to Bethany? Do you think on his dying bed he will confess what happened? Do you think he would tell it to save his ass from rotten. In prison if he was fixed and to die. He may just to make sure that we're hurting. But that would be the only only only way that he would admit it, unless he was his mind was going, and then he would admit it. But then I think he would start talking knowing that he's he's going, you know, But. I think he I don't think he would ever tell just to make sure that that I'm still hurting. We're everybody that loves Bethany is still suffering. That's why I said if if, if his mind is going, you know, he may, But other than that, I don't. I don't think he would because of the family he's got right. Now, pretty perfect family right now. He's a family man. He just loves hanging out with the family and doing family things. He's not a monster. He's he's a good man for everybody that knows him. Now. I hope, I hope he is a changed man. I hope he's not the monster that we we had. I've never met anybody that's ever met him that they came out with a good experience. Never next time on Missing in Hushtown. I mean, I love Larry, but he you know, he wouldn't leave his wife. And I shouldn't have expected to him. I should never stayed that long. But I was so crazy about him that no matter when he called on me, I you know, I was there. I've been to this kid's house. I mean a relationship with his old one of his daughters. We talked on the phone and stuff like that. We just, you know, it's what can I say about that. It's not a part that I'm proud of. Missing in Hushtown Season two is executive produced in partnership by Fireeyes Media LLCs Jules Thorpe and Gen Rivera, as well as Momcast Productions Rachel Holloway and Heather Northcraft. The script is written by Jules Thorpe and edited by Heather Northcraft. Project lead is Rachel Holloway and master editing and audio production is done by John Rivera. Jules Thorpe is your host Fire Eyes Media. My Mom has raising voices while raising kids