Before her children wake up Saturday, Susan Mathews will walk through the Arizona desert, watching the sun rise.
"I will pay attention to the sights, sounds and scents of the desert, feel the breeze, stretch my body, and celebrate Carol's life through this enjoyment of nature, just as she always did," she said.
That day, her sister would have turned 44.
But Carol Seddon was killed by Dennis Rodgers in November, strangled in her Colorado Springs home.
With his arms tied behind his back, Seddon's 13-year-old son manages to ring the neighbors' doorbell.
The man who answers thinks it's a prank, until he and his mother notice how thoroughly the boy is bound.
His mouth is stuffed with a rag. A ripped T-shirt is wrapped around his head and mouth, covered with at least three layers of duct tape. Earplugs cram his ears.
His wrists are tied with rope and tape so thick the neighbors can barely cut it.
They uncover his mouth, and he frantically speaks:
"My mom is dead. Her exfriend killed her and himself. He was hiding in the living room when I got home from school. He pointed a shotgun at me, made me crawl to my bedroom, and tied me up. My 2- year-old nephew is inside."
The neighbors call 911. It's almost 7 p.m. Nov. 30.
Two Colorado Springs police officers step inside the west-side house with their guns drawn. "Police!" one of them yells. No one answers.
The living room and kitchen are empty. They go down a small hallway to blood spatter on the walls.
To their right, in the master bedroom, Seddon is dead. A cord lies under her neck. Dennis Rodgers, 47, is dead, too. A shotgun lies next to him on the floor.
The officers hear a child's cry from another bedroom.
Pumpkin and cherry pies stayed on Seddon's kitchen counter for more than a month.
As Mike Pitts packed up his best friend's house, he couldn't toss them out. She had baked the two pies for a special dinner with her family, Pitts and his son.
"They stayed there until they were the god-awful ugliest mold," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to throw them out. I don't know why, probably because she made them."
It's been six months, but Pitts, 49, recalls memories every day as if she's alive.
"She is still here," he said. "I just can't go over and knock on her door and say hi."
Days after her death, he sat on her bed for hours. He picked up her clothes, smelled them and thought, "There you are."
He took her jacket home, put it on his pillow and slept next to it.
Pitts told her family he'd pack up her house for them.
"Sometimes I could last for 30 minutes, sometimes for a few hours," he said. "Sometimes I was so overwhelmed I had to leave when I got there. It's the hardest thing I've had to do."
He preferred to do it alone so he could talk out loud.
"What the hell are you doing with all of these bread ties?" he asked one day, then laughed out loud.
He'd come across a whole drawer of them, a reminder she didn't throw out much and recycled whatever she could. If she spotted a plastic bag at Pitts' house, she'd slip it in her pocket, knowing it would otherwise end up in the trash.
Pitts last saw her Nov. 27.
The last thing she said to him as he left her home after Thanksgiving dinner, after they ate pieces of those pumpkin and cherry pies: "We should do this more often."
Three days later, she was dead.
Rodgers drinks Fat Tire beer as he waits inside Seddon's house.
He gags and binds her son, Jarrod Norcross, about 4 p.m. after he gets home from school.
About 30 minutes later, Seddon leaves her job as an X-ray technologist at Memorial Hospital, stops to pick up her grandson from day care, then heads home.
Jarrod hears his father, Mike Norcross, knocking on the front door near his bedroom to pick him up to spend the night.
The knocking stops. It's about 5:40 p.m.
Norcross leaves to buy flowers and a card for his and his wife's anniversary that day. He returns to Seddon's house 15 to 20 minutes later and finds her sport utility vehicle in the driveway.
Still, no one answers the door.
At some point, Rodgers puts Seddon's grandson in a bedroom and closes the door.
He makes Seddon take off her clothes and strangles her. At the foot of her bed, he shoots himself in the head.
Jarrod hears the blast across the hall soon after the last knock at the front door.
He finally breaks free after taking off his shoes and wiggling out of the rope, then runs for help.
Mathews got the call at 3 a.m. in Tucson, Ariz.
"The police just left," her stepfather told her. "Carol was murdered."
Mathews dropped to the floor and sobbed. She doesn't remember what else was said.
Her baby sister was gone.
Just a week earlier, she and Seddon talked about spending Christmas together, a tradition for the past few years. It would have been one of the few times Seddon made it out to her sister's home.
She and Mathews were the only two of six siblings who remained close.
"She just had this way of showing me who I was in a way I couldn't see for myself," said Mathews, 47. "I just appreciated myself more. She, in so many ways, was like a big sister."
Seddon's co-workers described her as the one who always greeted them with a smile, a great listener, the goto person if they had problems to talk through.
Nature grounded her. She'd return from hikes with her pack and pockets filled with rocks. She'd bring back twigs and plant them.
This summer, instead of taking an annual camping trip with her sister, Mathews will gather in Colorado with family and friends to scatter her ashes.
Saturday, like most days, her sister will flood Mathews' thoughts.
She'll think about how Seddon would've liked to have been there in the desert, walking beside her, picking up pieces of the earth.
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0366 or awillett@gazette.com
MURDER-SUICIDES
A 2002 study, "American Roulette: The Untold Story of Murder- Suicide in the United States," reviewed murder-suicides between January and June of 2001.
Of the 662 deaths, 293 were suicides. Twenty of the deaths were in Colorado.
The study, the most in-depth of its kind, found:
Most involved a gun.
Most of the killers were men and older than their victims.
Most involved an intimate partner.
Most happened in the offender's or victim's home.
The gender of the killer made a difference; women tend to kill their children and themselves.
Police officers may have higher-than-average murdercide rates.
SOURCE: Violence Policy Center in
Washington, D.C., www.vpc.org/studies/amercont.htm
Murder-suicides in El Paso County since 2002
October 2002: Karri Frazier, 20, was shot and killed by her former fiance, Keith Warren, 24, who then shot himself at her workplace.
December 2002: Roberta Arenas, 48, and her boyfriend, Don Pharr, 42, were fatally shot by Arenas' former boyfriend, Larry Francis Jr., 40, at the couple's home. Francis then shot himself.
December 2002: Ernest Hernandez, 40, shot and killed his wife, Tosha Wasserburger, 29; his daughter, Michaela Hernandez, 8; and their 4-year-old son, Mykal Wasserburger, at their home. He then killed himself.
June 2003: Shannon Frye, 42, was shot and killed by her former boyfriend, Stephen Boucher, 44, who then shot himself at her home.
September 2003: Rutendra Raghunandan, 32, shot and killed his estranged wife, Lolita Raghunandan, 32, and their sons, Akash, 10, and Rene, 5, at Lolita's apartment. He then shot himself.
July 2004: Nicole Nesbeth, 11, was shot and killed by her mother, Gabrielle LeBron, 48, who then shot herself at their home.
November 2004: Carol Seddon, 43, was strangled by her former boyfriend, Dennis Rodgers, 40, who then shot himself at her home.
May 2005: Gabriel, 12, and Nathan Rifkin, 13, were fatally shot by their mother, Julie Rifkin, 41, who then shot herself at their home.
DENNIS RODGERS' LETTER TO HIS MOTHER
Mom,
I'm deeply sorry. What's her name made me angry, but it's really the whole picture that made me lose it. I've been fighting the same demons all my life, and I'm tired, too tired. Happiness is a pretty fleeting thing for me. Pain, anger and sorrow are constant. I wouldn't want anyone else to live this way. I hope you wouldn't expect me to. You have been a great mother, without your support I'd have never made it this long. I love you. I know what I have done is wrong. I just could not do it any other way. Cremate me and toss the ashes somewhere cool like Garden of the Gods.
Dennis
Copyright 2005
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