No One Can Hurt Him Anymore. Scott Cupp
Right.
(Waites told her about the interviews conducted that morning with some of her neighbors and asked if there were any problems that could have been misinterpreted by anyone.)
Jessica (exasperated): If I was gonna do something that shouldn’t have been seen, I would have done it in the house, I guess.
After a while, she admitted—almost proudly—that, yes, she sure was loud and, yeah, pretty much always yelling at someone or another. But other than that, well, no, she couldn’t think of anything.
Waites rephrased his question, wanting to make certain that Jessica had the opportunity to admit that maybe her behavior, on occasion, might be the kind that a neighbor could possibly misunderstand.
Cupp could almost see her shrugging.
Jessica: Right now, I really don’t think so.
Jessica may have been crude and loud, but she wasn’t—Cupp decided—dumb. She made certain that Waites was aware that she and David had inherited damaged goods three years earlier.
According to Jessica, when A.J. came to live with them, he was hyper, abused, inattentive, mischievous, untrustworthy, and conniving.
But none of that went very far toward explaining why A.J. was dead. Or perhaps it did.
“What about chores?” Waites asked. “I mean, was he made to, like, say, do the yard or . . . ?”
Jessica answered eagerly, “Yeah, he did the yard. Last time, we all did the yard. Time before that the lawn mower broke. He did trim—trimmed the garden.”
Cupp listened closely, remembering the neighbors’ comments about A.J. trimming the lawn with scissors.
Jessica continued, “David would borrow somebody’s lawn mower, you know. The grass wasn’t that, well . . . We’ve only been doing the lawn for . . . A.J. would do the garden. The girls did the back garden until the dogs ripped them up, and…”
Rambling, dodging, searching. Scott Cupp knew that Waites was waiting her out.
Eventually, knowing better, Waites asked, “As far as the trim, it’s something he would do with a weed-eater?”
Jessica: Yeah.
Waites: Or a small pair of hand shears or . . . ?
Cupp leaned closer to the tape recorder.
Jessica: Okay, he’d start out with the weed-eater, and he’d run around the yard with the weed-eater for maybe ten minutes; then he’d put it away, and none of it was done. So then he’d go out with the clippers, and it still wasn’t done. And then one time, he went out there and weed-eated the whole backyard to where there was no grass. I mean, no grass. The trim wasn’t done, but the yard was all whacked down, and he was very proud of that. He . . . he . . . he [said], “Look what I did! Look what I did!” And I looked and there was nothing but dirt.
Cupp had listened to hundreds of witness interviews and conducted a hundred more himself. Guilty parties, invariably, shared a common trait. Either they don’t say a word, or the words just roll off their tongues—out of control. Jessica was a poster child for the latter. Guilty of what was the question.
Waites: Was he fairly well coordinated? Accident prone?
Jessica: No, he was . . . He’d trip over his own feet a couple of times a day, but nothing serious. I mean—Waites (prodding): “I mean” . . .?
Jessica: Oh . . . I got called on child abuse two months ago because I was in the house—Jackie and him were outside. He was putting Jackie’s bike away, and he must have tried to ride it, and he smashed his nose into the handlebars. When he came into the house, there was no bruises. There was no blood, but his nose was growing. And it sounds horrible right now, but I laughed because his nose was growing right in front of my face. And I gave him some ice, and it was fine. I said, “Does it hurt?” And he said, “No.” And he went on playing. Waites: Okay.
Jessica: And then the next day when he woke up . . . well, I woke him up for school . . . and when I went into his room . . . when I shook him a little and he turned over, his eyes were black. His nose was black and blue, and I had to wash his eyes out to open them. I mean they were swollen shut—just about. So I kept him home from school. We went to JFK (hospital). I couldn’t even park in the parking lot—I had to park on the side street. That’s how busy this place was. So I spoke to a doctor and I said, “Here’s what happened. Here’s the child. If I sit here and wait for five hours, are you gonna do anything?” He went, “No, just take an X ray.” So I took him home. Took him to the doctor. The doctor set up the X ray. He got an X ray taken, and that was it. Put ice on it. And that was it.
Waites: Had you ever noticed any bruises that—
Jessica: He showed me a few bruises on his legs and his arms.
Waites: I mean, things that wouldn’t be normal for a ten-year-old? Like, if he’d fallen off the bike or fallen on the playground or, you know, maybe look like he’d been in a fight with another kid or . . . ?
(Jessica answered that she had only seen him fighting once, on the way home from school, and that he had had a few bruises on him.)
Jessica: I think the last time I saw that boy naked was well over a year ago. Um, he showed me one or two bruises. He’d get them here on his legs. He showed me a wicked one on his leg once, and I . . . I said, “How’d that happen?” He said, “I don’t know.”
Waites: But, I mean, like on the forearms and maybe the chin area, the knee area? Those type bruises.
Jessica: And his thigh, you know; when he was wearing shorts, I saw it.
Waites: The front part of the thigh? The back part of the thigh?
Jessica: The side.
Waites: Okay. You were telling me you found him in the garage a couple of weeks ago?
Jessica: Last week.
Waites: Last week?
Jessica: Yeah, he was making noise in the garage and hit himself in the head with the cane. I had a cane left over from my knee surgery.
Waites: He was hitting himself on the top of the head or—Jessica: Just banging.
Waites: All over?
Jessica: Yeah, he was just . . . and I’ve never seen that behavior on him before, so I guess I should have smartened up right then. (She paused and continued after a moment.) I noticed he didn’t get angry when he should have. He didn’t talk. He didn’t know he was allowed to get angry. I told him, “If you have a problem with me, or the girls, or at school, or kids, let us know. And if you have to yell, you have to yell.” He was never allowed to do that.
Scott Cupp made a note to have Waites talk to the natural mother as soon as possible, even though he was sure the detective already had that on his agenda.
Waites: How was A.J.’s attendance at school?
Jessica: On and off. When he first came, it was bad— then it got good. Then he got bad again. He kept getting earaches. And he’s so skinny that when you gave him medicine, he’d get sick. So we went to the doctor’s a lot of times and then you get him home, give him the medicine, and he’d throw up. And then he never got a temperature of hundred and one—it was always a hundred and three. It was either normal or very high.
(After they discussed several of A.J.’s friends, Waites brought the interview back to the neighbors.)
Waites (as if it were the first time): Have you ever had any problems with your neighbors?
Jessica (sounding surprised): Oh . . .
Waites: Have they ever called HRS or anything like that?
Cupp had battled long and hard with Health and Rehabilitative Services over the years. They were notorious for letting cases slip through the cracks. And A.J.’s