Betrayal In Blood. Michael Benson

Betrayal In Blood - Michael Benson


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of that needed for basic living needs) to the church.

      Kevin’s family helped operate the church in Pittsford and members of Tabatha’s family were officials in the Greenwood church. Church activities, for both adults and children, allowed members of various churches to get together.

      “There are three churches in our area group,” explained Samantha Bassett. “There’s the Buffalo branch, the Rochester branch, and the Greenwood branch. We would get together every once in a while, as a church. We would have services together, and afterward we would have what we called pot luck. Everyone would bring a dish to pass and we’d all eat together.”

      Tabatha, known for her singing voice, did not sing in the church choir because there was no choir. The congregation was too small. If there had been a choir, there wouldn’t have been anyone left to listen to it. Tabby did sing solos during services, however, and after she moved away, her singing voice was missed by the other members of the church. Ginny Winebrenner has taken credit for Tabby’s love of music: “With all my kids, I sang them to sleep at night.”

      The Bassett girls were involved in their church in many ways—they would help set up before an event, help clean up after, and do just about any task that was asked of them.

      According to Kevin’s father, Vivian, and Tabatha’s uncle the Reverend Terry Smith (husband of Leroy Bassett’s sister Carolyn), the Bryants and the Bassetts had known each other for fifty years. Tabby’s grandmother Essie Bassett first met Vivian Bryant, Kevin’s father, back in the 1950s, and the two families had known each other through church get-togethers ever since.

      And so it was that one summer during the 1990s, Kevin Bryant, son of the minister of the Rochester branch of the Community of Christ Church, first took special note of a pretty blond teenager named Tabby Bassett, who was the granddaughter of his father’s longtime friend Essie Bassett.

      CHAPTER 10

      Tabby Gets Married and Moves Away

      In 1993, Samantha Bassett graduated from Greenwood Central School. “There were twenty-four kids in my senior class,” she recalled. That fall she attended Graceland University, the Community of Christ–affiliated school in Lamoni, Iowa, where her dad had gone and where she had attended church get-togethers in the summer. As it turned out, though, Sam only lasted at Graceland for three weeks. She was terribly homesick, missed her boyfriend, and back to Greenwood she came.

      Tabatha graduated from Greenwood Central School a year later, Class of ’94, and her senior class was no larger than Sam’s. Tabby had started life small, and she had stayed that way—even fully grown, she weighed barely one hundred pounds.

      Tabby was one of the prettiest girls in town, with her honey-colored mullet. However, she did have flaws, most obvious of which were her crooked and discolored teeth. There hadn’t been enough money for braces, but she didn’t seem self-conscious about the imperfection. She still smiled with her lips apart, but photographs remember her as a young woman prettier with her mouth closed.

      By the time Tabby finished school, she was already dating the man who was to become her first husband: Arnold Martin (pseudonym). He was a Canisteo kid, “about her age.” According to Samantha, “I think they met down at our neighbors. He used to go down there and hang out and that’s where they met.” Arnold was Tabby’s date for her senior prom.

      Following graduation, during 1995 and 1996, Tabby worked for two years as a waitress at J.C.’s Café, which was just a little diner on the main street. “She didn’t have to wear a uniform or anything like that. She could wait tables in whatever she was wearing,” her sister remembered. While waitressing she studied to be a nursing assistant but flunked the test.

      In August 1996, Tabby married Arnold at the Howard Community Center, in Howard, New York. Ginny was there for the wedding of her daughter. One guest brought a camcorder to the rehearsal, wedding, and reception. That video became the permanent record of the event.

      The Howard Community Center was used for dances and meetings. It was a rectangular cinder block building, all right angles and white paint. At one end was a window in the wall that opened to the concession stand. Above the window was a sign with a Coca-Cola ad at the top, and listed up there was the extremely limited menu and prices. At dances and the like, you could get hot dogs, pop, chips, junk food.

      The rehearsal for Tabby and Arnold’s wedding took place at 4:00 P.M., Saturday, August 24, 1996. There were lots of large windows and sun was streaming in. There were about twenty people there, dressed in sport shirts and jeans. Some were in shorts.

      A majority of the people there were over weight—in sharp contrast to the slender young bride-to-be, in her loose-fitting dark shirt and tight white pants. For the rehearsal the community center was set up for that night’s dance. The dance floor had been cleared. All of the furniture, folding tables and chairs, had been pushed up against a wall.

      Next to the concession stand was a white board, where management wrote, in black marker, an advertisement for whatever the next event to be held at the community center was going to be. For Tabby’s wedding rehearsal, the sign read, ROUND AND SQUARE DANCE BY THE STARLITE RAMBLERS ON AUG 24, 8-12.

      Arnold looked tall and gangly standing next to Tabby. He was skinny, too. He was on the shaggy side, needed a haircut, but at first glance a decent sort of young man—the Greenwood equivalent of a catch. Befitting the bride-to-be, Tabby was the center of attention at all times. She gestured broadly. Like a stage actress, her facial expressions were slightly exaggerated. She was playing to the crowd, relishing her moment in the spotlight. In contrast, Arnold seemed slightly embarrassed, like he would have preferred to be in the parking lot with his best man and ushers—fairly typical for a bridegroom at his own tense-but-dull wedding rehearsal. Someone had given Tabby a small bouquet, a compact bunching of short-stemmed flowers. It was really unnecessary but something for her nervous hands to hold during the rehearsal ceremony.

      The camcorder’s microphone couldn’t pick up intelligible voices, unless they were very close by, and the camera person chose to give the rehearsal ceremony some space, standing far to the side and at the back of the room. But the song after the ceremony—played and sung by a young man at a piano—came through, loud and clear. It was “Let It Be Me,” the beautiful Everly Brothers song, a sentimental favorite of the young couple.

      When the ersatz check-your-watch ceremony was over, Arnold and Tabby did an about-face and headed toward the exit—he walking fast, she skipping. No one else moved from his or her place. Tabby flung her bouquet over her shoulder without looking back. The flowers soared up in a high arc and then came down with an echoing thud, in the center of the empty dance floor.

      The tape goes all blue for a moment and then it is the next day, the real thing. The letters and numbers in the bottom right of the screen tell us that it is now Sunday, August 25, 1996, at one o’clock in the afternoon.

      A four-tiered wedding cake rested on its stand in front of the concession stand window. Replacing the casually clad handful of people who had been at the rehearsal was a full house of sharply dressed folks for the actual wedding. There were maybe eighty people there, sitting in ten rows of eight chairs apiece.

      And it must have been warm. Although no one was fanning himself or herself, it might have been a little late in the season for that, none of the men were wearing jackets. Arnold’s usher crew was wearing white shirts and clip-on ties. Those ushers were videotaped in action, helping little old ladies to their seats. They were taking their jobs seriously, obvious by their tightly erect posture. They were doing their best to demonstrate adequate gentlemanliness.

      Actually, there were two men in the room with jackets on—the minister and the lanky groom, Arnold. The groom was wearing a white tuxedo jacket with tails over black pants. It might have been the same outfit he wore when he took Tabby to her prom.

      The white board sign that had advertised the “Round and Square dance” now said, in a feminine hand, CONGRATULATIONS KITTEN AND CUDDLES. The bride had not yet entered, and the organ player was warming up the crowd with the theme from Gone with the Wind.

      The


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