COPYRIGHT 1999 SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN
JACKSON -- The sophomore at Jackson High School was home watching TV one Friday night in March when a call came inviting him to join some friends for a party. His mother, Bobbie Venable, questioned whether he should go, especially because she knew he didn't much like the boy who called.
But a closer friend was to be there, so at 8:30 p.m. the youth left the Venable house in one of the city's newest subdivisions and drove head-on into three hours that have changed his life forever. This is his version of the events.
Arriving at the house where the party was supposed to be, he was surprised not to see any cars parked outside. The father of the classmate who had called with the party invitation opened the door and directed the boy to the basement. Only the man's son and two girls were there. He played a video game and some pingpong with the other boy for a few minutes, then went upstairs to see where the girls had gone.
Looking into the family room, he was confronted by someone dressed in black with a hood over his face. He pushed the person away. "What the hell's going on?" he said as other masked figures in black surrounded him.
The youth heard the boy in the basement coming up the stairs and yelled for him to get away. He cried out for help to the father watching TV in the next room. There was no response.
"I didn't know what was happening to me or why," he said later.
The boy from the basement provided a clue. "Come on. Let's get him," he shouted.
The boy tackled him, and when he got up body-slammed him to the floor again and started giving orders to the others.
They began binding his arms and legs with duct tape. He was a 6-foot, 180-pound football lineman. He fought back and head-butted those closest to him, but he was overpowered. Five of them worked on him while two others watched. They put tape over his mouth.
Before his head was covered with a pillowcase, he managed to pull off one of his assailants' masks. It was one of his friends. From their builds he could tell others were his friends too.
They carried him to a van and drove away. He could see them through the pillowcase. The radio was turned up loud, but he could hear them laughing at him. Someone removed the pillowcase from his head and the tape from his mouth because he was having trouble breathing. He joked and sang loudly during the drive. "I was just trying to cope with it," he would say later.
When the van stopped, the leader of the group started pulling him out of the van and, the boy says, grabbed his genitals. He reacted by biting the other boy's chest. The leader threw him to the ground, grabbed the boy's genitals again and kicked him, he recalls. And someone spit on him.
They put the pillowcase back on his head and carried him to a spot near a blazing bonfire. As he lay defenseless on the ground on his side, one of the youths started a chain saw and began gunning it beside the victim's head while others danced around him in a circle and war-whooped. He didn't know at the time the chain saw had no blade.
Finally, they positioned him face down and put atop his back an 8-foot-tall wooden cross made for the occasion. They tied the boy's arms and legs to the cross then lifted him and cross up, placing the bottom of the cross into a hole that had been dug. Whooping and celebrating ensued.
He bucked against the ropes that held his arms. At times he smiled. He was, he recalls, trying to put up a good front. He had known some of these boys as long as he could remember. And the two girls who were at the first house were here watching.
"I wasn't going to cry," he later told his mother. "I wasn't going to let down in front of those girls."
The girls weren't the only other spectators. The cross was erected at one of the boys' houses. His parents were present and helped the boys prepare the prank. They had taken the blade off the chain saw to make sure no one got hurt.
At one point the leader poured a cup of liquid on some firewood at the base of the cross and said that it was lighter fluid and that he was going to burn him, the boy recalled. He also was told they were going to urinate on him.
At another point, the boy on the cross recalled, the mother of one of the other boys said, "Everyone gather around him and I'll take a picture."
When the ordeal was over at 11:30 p.m., he refused the ride to his car offered him by some of the boys. Instead, he went into the house of one of his kidnappers and called home. His mother, Bobbie, didn't understand why he couldn't drive his own car home.
"Come and get me," he repeated. She knew he was holding back tears.
Once in his mother's car, the boy began sobbing uncontrollably. He told her the story: the kidnaping, the chain saw, the cross. His friends betrayed him, he said. He wanted to move away.
She drove him back to the first house to get his car. He had to go inside to get his keys. His friends were already there, watching a videotape. When he came back outside he spat on the windshield of the leader's car.
Stuart Venable, his father, was asleep when they arrived home. Bobbie stayed up with her son talking about the Bible and forgiveness. He was having none of that.
All Bobbie could think about that night was she had to get her son calmed down. He finally went to bed at 3:30 a.m.
The next morning at breakfast, he had a lacerated lip and was still angry at his friends.
Stuart, the father, heard a much-abridged version of the story: friends kidnapped his son, kicked him in the mouth, grabbed his genitals and threw him in a van. Stuart told him never to get involved if they thought up something like that again.
Later that day, one of the boys came by to apologize. Others called. The adults who owned the house where the cross was raised also phoned. They said that they were sorry, that they didn't realize he had taken it so hard. They invited him to dinner that night. He went.
While he was there, the leader called the house and wanted to know why he hadn't been invited. His answer was a click. A few minutes later, the leader walked into the house without knocking and demanded to know why he was being singled out for blame. Because he'd lied to all of them, he was told.
The plan for a kidnapping had been hatched over the buffet at a restaurant in Cape Girardeau. Another friend was the original target, but they decided on the Venables' son instead.
Days before the prank, the leader asked the Venables for permission to kidnap their son. The parents responded, "Absolutely not." They were concerned their son would fight back and someone could get hurt. Besides, Bobbie said, "I don't get where the fun is in this" for her son.
But the leader told the other boys and parents that the Venables had given their permission.
When accused of lying that next day, the boy says the leader became irate and said, "I'm going to beat you down." The parents made him leave.
The group of friends had been pulling pranks since they started getting their driver's licenses, the parent of another boy involved says. "This was just another prank."
He conceded that this one "started getting a little out of hand, but they were pranks. There was never any malicious intent involved."
The youths remained friends immediately after the incident, the boy said. The killings at Columbine High School occurred a month later. "That's when everything hit the fan."
During the month following the prank, the Venables saw their son's grades drop from A's and B's to C's and D's. He wasn't sleeping. He was losing weight, and he began missing school. "I was very concerned," Bobbie said.
She continued talking to him about forgiveness. They sought counseling from their minister.
The boy remained adamant that he didn't want his friends to get into trouble.
A psychologist told the Venables rape victims sometimes take the same attitude. Stuart said he did too. "I just wanted it to go away."
But, in the turmoil of trying to help her son forget and forgive what had happened in March, Bobbie had forgotten a detail he told her about that night. He said he saw a light. He said it looked like a video camera.
SUNDAY: Adding insult to injury.
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