All About Janet, the Murder of my Guardian Angel. Forrest Canutt
more than once and no one has ever pulled the trigger even though it seemed like they really wanted to. I always knew they would not and was never afraid. I have been in spectacular car wrecks, and motorcycles accidents, and have never broken a bone, or received a serious cut. She has always been with me, keeping me alive until I became the man I am today, and I find her.
The three attackers finished their breakfast, stood up and started to clear the table in preparation for using it to cut me up on (good working height). I was within seconds of being stabbed in the heart and cut into pieces, when my now dead baby sitter, whom I now call my guardian angel, saved my life for the third and final time. I choose to say and believe this because I believe it is true. If there are no coincidences, then it is true. If there is a god, then it is true. Many times when people are in great fear, to relieve that fear, they will focus on someone else, as if their whole existence depends on the survival of that other. I believe that her concern for me was similar to that, in addition to that motherly instinct that is inherent in many women (who choose to embrace it). A mother can be courageous beyond belief. I believe that feeling was carried to her death with her and the events subsequent to this point will bear more reason to believe that I am right.
Just as they were about to throw me up on the table and begin dissecting me, a pickup truck pulled into the ranch compound. This was truly a miracle, and it is also the third and final time that my babysitter saved me, even though she was physically dead. On that day so many years ago, she became my guardian angel. The three evil monsters saw who it was, and immediately started freaking out, and trying to come up with something to say. There were two women in the pickup truck. One looked old, and the other looked middle aged, heavy set, brown curly hair, glasses (I think). Either Jake or Bill recognized who these people were. The heavy set lady was my babysitter’s Aunt. She had come to pick her niece up from babysitting me. The three attackers came up with a plan to tell them that the girl and I had gotten scared and run off during the night, and that they didn’t know where we were. So, the bad guy and Bill went outside to enact their plan. I heard them and remember the bad guy saying that the girl and I had got scared and had run off during the night.
All of a sudden, Jake say’s “Come Here Forrest”. He was standing at the screen door that leads from the house. He said it again with more urgency when I just looked at him. I finally went over to him after the second time he insisted. He said, “Get outside, get outside”, and pushed me out the door. I stepped out of the door, and onto the concrete step.
The heavy set lady, the bad guy, and Bill all turned and looked at me at the same time. You could tell it scared the lady, because seeing me meant those guys were lying to her, and that something was really wrong. I’m sure she could see the fear on my face as well. She talked to the bad guy and Bill for a few more seconds, and then got back in her pickup truck and left. I was led back into the house.
The bad guy and Bill came roaring into the house, screaming at Jake. I thought they were going to attack him. They asked him why he did it, and he replied that I “was his brother’s son that he wouldn’t let them kill me”, and then he said that actually, he didn’t really know why he did it, and I could tell that all of a sudden, he regretted what he had done. Through my life I have always given credit for this miracle to my guardian angel and god. Jake didn’t even know why he did that; he just did it. This meant that they could not kill me now because someone had seen me alive. I was saved.
A couple hours later, I don’t know what I or they were doing, the truck with the two ladies comes pulling into the ranch compound again. This time she is upset and crying, she knows they did something to her niece. She gets out of the truck and starts crying out “I want to talk to the boy”, meaning me. The bad guy and Bill go outside to meet with her, but instead of talking, they start throwing her against her truck and slapping her really hard. She was crying and yelling, “I just want to talk to the boy”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought they were going to kill her for sure. I couldn’t understand what the bad guy and Bill were yelling at her, but it didn’t matter, I could see they were getting their point across. After a long minute or two of yelling, slapping, crying and screaming, they stopped and threw her into her truck, and told her to get the hell out of there. So, she left, really upset. I think she knew right then in her heart, that her niece was dead.
After the two ladies drove away, they grabbed me and threw me back into the old truck at the top of the hill. I remember it was getting cold. I was still barefoot, with only a light shirt on, so I curled into a ball on the seat and tried to stay warm, and fell asleep.
After what seemed a couple of hours, I was awakened when a black and white police car pulls up, turns into the gate, turns left and stops just inside the ranch compound. A policeman gets out of the car, and the bad guy and Bill walk up to him. He was a giant police man with a Smokey the bear hat on. He towered over the bad guy, and Bill looked like a midget next to him. He started having words with the bad guy, then they started to argue, then the policeman grabbed the bad guy, spun him around, pushed him over the back of the car, and handcuffed him. He then put the bad guy into the back of the police car and drove off. I later found out the bad guy had gotten arrested for disturbing the peace for beating on my babysitter’s aunt, and I only recently figured out that the police man was actually a highway patrolman (the Smokey the Bear hat).
On that same day (Sunday) at around dusk, Francis and Wendell Elzig returned home from Reno (I overheard them say that they had gone to Reno to gamble). I was finally removed from the old truck and brought to the house, and I don’t remember anything from that night, I must have fallen asleep right away, but the next day was full of memory.
The following day, I guess they had already told The Elzigs what happened the day and night before that. They knew the girl was dead, and were very upset. We were inside the house across from the bunk house, which is the house the Elzigs used as a residence. It was a red clapboard house, 2 bedrooms, a small pass through (converted into a bar) between the kitchen and living room. They made me sit in a chair (bar stool) at the small bar and listen while Bill marched around and kept pointing at me. He was trying to blame me for everything. His logical thinking was that if I wasn’t alive, then I would not have needed a babysitter, then none of this would have happened, so it just has to be Forrest’s fault. They were pleading for mercy from the Elzigs. I think that it’s really sick that someone that could commit such heinous acts without any mercy or compassion for another human being and expects mercy and compassion when their life is on the line. I remember them saying something about being called a deserter and being executed for what they did. All the while, Bill, and now Jake too, were pointing at me and continuing to blame me for what had happened. They were blaming a 5-year-old little kid for everything that happened that night and following day.
They eventually arrived at a decision. My Uncle Wendell, Bill and Jake left the ranch compound together carrying shovels. Several hours later they came back. I could see them from the house. They were carrying the shovels, with heads bowed in shame, or at least it appeared that way, maybe they were just tired. They reminded me of the three blind mice in the old cartoons. When they came back into the house, my Uncle Wendell told my Aunt Francis that they had dug up the body and reburied beneath the culvert (pipe) that ran under a road (which could not have been far from where she was originally buried). Then he said “no one will ever find her there, no one will know what happened”. Later that evening, I went up to my Aunt Francis to apologize to her for what had happened, and she told me get away and said that “It’s all your fault Forrest”. I cannot put into words how that made me feel at that moment, but the feeling has never left me, and I think it may have set the tone for what was to happen to me throughout my life after that.
Eventually, my mother arrived, maybe the next day, picked me up, and we left the ranch. On the way home, she repeatedly asked me what was wrong. I think that maybe she might have called Aunt Francis and got the story of what happened from her. It was obvious that something bad had happened to me, and it bothered my mother, and that’s why I think she might have called.
I do not know for sure where we ended up. My father had died what seemed to be a few months earlier, and I don’t think my mother was settled anywhere in particular, and that’s how I ended up at the ranch by myself in the first place. I thank god that none of my three sisters were there when they attacked us, or the same thing might