IMPORTANT NOTES FROM THE ANTI-PHELPS UNDERGROUND
PLEASE MAKE 10 COPIES OF THIS THIS FILE AND GIVE THEM TO THOSE WHO FIND
THE ACTIVITIES OF FRED PHELPS UNCONSCIONABLE.
On June 29, 1994 Jon Michael Bell, a former reporter hired to
investigate Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church by Stauffer
Communications, Inc.,filed a lawsuit in Shawnee County District Court in
Topeka, Kansas against Stauffer Communications alleging the Topeka
Capital-Journal owed him compensation for overtime and to clarify
ownership of his notes and work product. The work product in question,
"Addicted to Hate" chronicling the life and times of Fred Phelps, was
attached to the lawsuit as Exhibit A making it, therefore, a public
document. Learning of the suit, members of Topeka's anti-Phelps
underground delivered a certified copy of the lawsuit to a copy shop
near the courthouse.
Within 48 hours, Stauffer Communications had written all area media
outlets and issued veiled warnings about using the information contained
in "Addicted to Hate". A rival Topeka newspaper, the Metro News,
announced it was considering publishing the lawsuit in it entirety. The
Kansas City Star abided by Stauffer Communication's wishes, but several
other media outlets aired or printed portions of the manuscript. Within
48 hours of the filing, Stauffer Communications persuaded a judge to
seal the suit so the Clerk of the District Court could no longer make
copies for the public. No matter - no such order was issued to the copy
shop or to the hundreds of citizens that already had copies.
On July 8 the Capital-Journal, which had deep-sixed the Phelps project
and fired the publisher who authorized it when it was completed last
fall, suddenly began its watered-down, copyrighted series on Phelps
that they had earlier claimed they wouldn't print. Bell also withdrew
his suit the same day.
By this time, however, TV networks, wire services, and eastern
newspapers had obtained copies of the manuscript, and Stauffer's
unprecedented attempt to suppress media discussion of the document
attracted the interest of several major East Coast newspapers on First
Amendment grounds.
Phelps, a self-proclaimed advocate of the First Amendment, whose 'free
speech activities include libel, slander defamation of character,
intimidation, obscene language, battery, promptly denounced Stauffer
Communications and denied the allegations of child abuse, spouse abuse,
and other illegal activities. Anyone familiar with Phelps and his
children who remain loyal to him, however, can clearly see these adult
children and his wife suffer from the grotesque and obvious behaviors
symptomatic of severe, long-term abuse. Where and how the twisted saga
of Fred Phelps will end is anyone's guess.
DISCLAIMER
The volunteer distributors of this file wish to emphatically state that
Jon Michael Bell did not suggest, encourage, or take part in the
transfer or distribution of his typewritten manuscript (Exhibit A) to
ASCII format. Volunteer distributors make no guarantees either expressed
or implied and cannot be responsible in the use of this file.
Jon Michael Bell, one of the authors of "Addicted to Hate", seeks no
compensation for his work. If, however, after reading "Addicted to
Hate", you would like to make a contribution in his name to
organizations in Topeka assisting AIDS victims, abused children and
battered women, please send your donations to:
1. Hospice for AIDS Victims
c/o Topeka AIDS Project
1915 S. W. 6th Street
Topeka, Kansas 66606
2. Project Safe Talk
200 S.E. 7th Street
Topeka, Kansas 66603
3. Battered Women Task Force
225 S.W. 12th Street
Topeka, Kansas 66612
Let the word go forth that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Topekans
and Kansans DO NOT support Westboro Baptist Cult and Fred Phelps' hate
campaigns against all who disagree with him. The District Attorney in
Shawnee County (Topeka) has filed several criminal cases against members
of the Westboro Cult ranging from disorderly conduct and battery to
felony charges of aggravated intimidations of victims and witnesses.
Prosecution
of these cases are delayed pending the outcome of the second of the
lawsuits filed in federal court by Phelps Chartered. There will
probably be more. Fred and his lawyer offspring and in-laws continue to
abuse the judicial system much as Fred did before his state and federal
disbarments. The case is expected to be heard in federal court in early
fall, but few expect that this will be the end.
Please let Topeka officials and Federal Judge Sam Crow know that many of
Fred Phelps' and WBC activities (as outlined in the above paragraph and
documented by both "Addicted to Hate" and the Capital-Journal series)
are NOT protected by the First Amendment and encourage them to take
whatever steps are necessary to prosecute Phelps for those activities
which are clearly crimes to the fullest extent of the law. Please do it
today!
The Hon. Sam A. Crow
Frank Carlson Federal Courthouse
444 S.E. Quincy
Topeka, Kansas 66603
(913) 295-2626
Joan M. Hamilton
Shawnee County District Attorney
200 S.E. 7th Street Suite 214
Topeka, Kansas 66603
(913) 233-8200 Ext. 4330
Commissioner Don Cooper
Chairman, Board of Commissioners
200 S.E. 7th Street
Topeka, Kansas 66603
(913) 233-8200 Ext. 4040
The Hon. Butch Felker
Office of the Mayor
215 S.E. 7th Street
Topeka, Kansas 66603
(913) 295-3895
Chief Gerald Beavers
Topeka Police Deaprtment
204 S.W. 5th Street
Topeka, Kansas 66603
(913) 354-9551
...............COURT DOCUMENT FOLLOWS................
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF SHAWNEE COUNTY, KANSAS
DIVISION 7
JON BELL,
Plaintiff,
vs.
Case No. 94CV766
STAUFFER COMMUNICATIONS, INC.,
Defendant.
PETITION FOR DECLARATORY RELIEF
(Pursuant to K.S.A. Chapter 60-1701 et. seq.)
COMES NOW the Plaintiff Jon Bell and states:
1.Plaintiff is a resident of Kansas.
2.Defendant Stauffer Communications, Inc. is a corporation organized
under the laws of Kansas and may be served by serving its resident agent
The Corporation Company, Inc., 515 S. Kansas Ave., Topeka, Kansas 66603.
3.Plaintiff was an intern and employed by Defendant to work for its
newspaper Topeka Capital Journal, in Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas.
4. As part of his work he was assigned by the managing editor to
prepare stories and/or manuscripts concerning one Fred Phelps, pastor of
Westboro Baptist Church, Inc.
5. That Plaintiff's employment was originally undertaken for
compensation of $1300 per month (37 1/2 hours per week at $8.00/hour).
As the scope of the Phelps project expanded to book length, Plaintiff
indicated his willingness to do a book for the compensation he was being
paid. It was represented to him by the managing editor, Mr. Sullivan,
that the publication of the book would have such value to Plaintiff's
reputation as an author that the publication plus the salary was just
compensation.
In reliance upon the representation that the book would be published by
Defendant, he continued with the project to the point of final
manuscript and dedicated overtime hours (for which he was not separately
compensated) having a reasonable value in excess of $10,000.
6. Plaintiff has been advised by Mr. Hively, the publisher of the
Topeka Capital Journal that Defendant does not intend to publish the
book or any portion of it.
7. Plaintiff has been separately advised by the defendant's attorney
that Defendant does not grant Plaintiff permission to publish the book
(Ex. B attached).
8. Plaintiff claims that he has intellectual property rights in the
manuscript and desires to publish it and that in the absence of
compensation for his overtime or because of his reliance on Mr.
Sullivan's representation if Defendant chooses to waste the work that he
has the right to publish the book.
9. In that Defendant has asserted superior rights to the manuscript,
but, has likewise has declared an intent not to publish and the fact
that the material may become dated, or alternatively, lose its
timelessness (the subject of the manuscript is currently running for the
Democratic nomination for Governor of the State of Kansas), it is
important to resolve the rights of the parties in and to the manuscript
as it relates to the contract of employment which previously existed
between Plaintiff and Defendant, and terminate the controversy over
rights to the manuscript which gives rise to these proceedings.
10. Plaintiff feels uncertain and insecure of his legal position in the
absence of a judicial declaration of his rights, and for that reason,
brings this action.
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays that the Court construe the terms of his
employment and his rights to publish the manuscript marked as Ex. A and
attached hereto, and permit the Plaintiff the right without restriction,
and subject to any fair accounting to Defendant, to publish the
manuscript.
(Signature of Jon Bell)
Jon Bell, pro s 82
(Home address intentionally omitted)
Lawrence, KS 66044
(Document contains the seal of the District Court of Shawnee County,
Kansas and the signature of Leslie Miller, Deputy Clerk of the District
Court of Shawnee County, Kansas and dated 6-29-94.)
EXHIBIT B
(Letterhead of the law firm of Goodell, Stratton, Edmonds & Palmer)
515 South Kansas Avenue
Topeka, Kansas 66603-3999
913-233-0593
Telecopier: 913-233-8870)
June 2, 1994
Mr. Jon Bell
(Home Address Intentionally Omitted)
Shawnee, Kansas 66216
In re:Topeka Capital-Journal
Our file:31143
Dear Jon:
I understand that you are in some way marketing or trying to develop an
interest in the Capital-Journal's investigatory work on Fred Phelps.
Be advised that you are not authorized to engage in this activity. This
work is the property of The Topeka Capital-Journal, and does not belong
to you. My client will make all decisions regarding the piece. You are
not authorized to speak on behalf of The Capital-Journal regarding this
work, or even to reveal its existence for that matter. If you are taking
any steps to develop a market or other interest in this work, you are
required to cease immediately.
Meanwhile, please advise Pete Goering at The Capital-Journal of any
steps you have taken in this regard.
Very truly yours,
(Signature of Michael W. Merriam)
Michael W. Merriam
MWM:ah
cc: Mr. Pete Goering
(Note: This document contains the time stamp of the Clerk of the
District Court, Shawnee County, Kansas showing the document was filed
with the Clerk at 1:05 p.m. of June 29, 1994.)
EXHIBIT A
ADDICTED TO HATE
By Jon Michael Bell
with Joe Taschler
and Steve Fry
(Note: The contents of the following document shows the time stamp of
the Clerk of the District Court, Shawnee County, Kansas and shows that
the document was filed at 1:05 p.m. on June 29, 1994.)
"And be sure your sin will find you out."
(Num. 32:23)
A frequent quote of Pastor Fred Phelps
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND PHELPS FAMILY TREE
Reverend Fred Phelps: lawyer and Baptist minister; head of the Westboro
Baptist Church; 64 years old. Disbarred.
Marge Phelps: wife of Fred; mother of his 13 children; 68 years old.
WBC member.
1. Fred Phelps, Jr.: lawyer and employee at the Kansas Department of
Corrections; 40 years old. Oldest son. WBC member.
Betty Phelps (Schurle): wife of Fred, Jr.; lawyer and owner-operator of
a day-care home; 41 years old. WBC member.
2. ***Mark Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from
the family cult; 39 years old. 2nd son.
Luava Phelps (Sundgren): wife of Mark; childhood sweetheart; 36 years
old.
3. ***Katherine Phelps: lawyer; suspended from the bar; living on
welfare; 38 years-old; oldest daughter. Not in WBC.
4. Margie Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Kansas Department of
Corrections; 37 years old; 2nd daughter. WBC member.
5. Shirley Phelps-Roper: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 36 years old; 3rd
daughter. WBC member.
Brent Roper: husband of Shirley; lawyer and businessman in Topeka; 30
years old; WBC member.
6. ***Nate Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from
family cult; 35 years old. 3rd son.
7. Jonathon Phelps: lawyer; 4th son; 34 years old; WBC member.
Paulette Phelps (Ossiander): wife of Jonathon; 33 years old; high school
graduate; WBC member.
8. Rebekah Phelps-Davis: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 32 years old; 4th
daughter; WBC member.
Chris Davis: husband to Rebekah; 38 years old; raised from childhood in
the WBC.
9. Elizabeth Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; night house manager
staff at Sheltered Living, Inc. Topeka; 31 years old; 5th daughter; WBC
member. Former counsel for the Shawnee County Sheriff's Department.
10. Timothy Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Shawnee County
Department of Corrections; 30 years old; 5th son; WBC member.
Lee Ann Phelps (Brown): wife of Timothy; lawyer and employee of Shawnee
County Sheriff's Department; 27 years old; WBC member.
11.***Dorotha Bird (Phelps): lawyer practicing independently in Topeka;
6th daughter; not a WBC member; changed her last name to avoid family's
notoriety. 29 years old.
12. Rachel Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; YMCA fitness instructor;
28 years old; 7th daughter; WBC member.
13. Abigail Phelps: lawyer and employee at SRS-Youth and Adult
Services, Juvenile Offender Program; 25 years old; 8th daughter; WBC
member.
OTHERS
Fred Wade Phelps: the Rev. Phelps' father; he lived in Meridian,
Mississippi. He was a railroad bull.
Catherine Idalette Phelps (Johnson): the Rev. Phelps' mother; she died
when he was a small child.
Martha Jean Capron (Phelps): the Rev. Phelps' only sibling; a former
missionary to Indonesia, she now lives in Pennsylvania; the brother and
sister have not spoken for years.
***Denotes a Phelps child who has left the family cult.
(Note: The next portion of Exhibit A contains some handwritten notes
denoting ages of the Phelps' children, some names of some of the non-
Phelps WBC members (George Stutzman, Charles Hockenbarger, Jennifer
Hockenbarger, and Charles Hockenbarger), names of some of the Phelps'
grandchildren (Benjamin, Sharon, Sara, Libby, Jacob, Sam, and Josh), and
2 items pasted onto the document which are published documents showing
the Phelps family tree and a map of the area surrounding Meridian,
Mississippi.)
(Preface)
He rang the doorbell. It was winter, and with his thick gloves he could
barely feel the button.
No answer.
He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside, walked
along the porch rail. Toward him.
He watched it.
In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban sleigh
bells, the chains on its tires chimed rhythmic into the pounded street
snow.
No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.
He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred more when
he tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his thick
coat.
He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.
When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...
Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching the eyes
widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately struggle. For a
long time struggle.
Watching.
The lids droop slowly down. The light pass from the eyes.
He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.
Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed. Flooding the
look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.
A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could feel it.
Guilt.
Or was it love. Yes, warm love for this tiny being.
But...
I want to do it. Again. Now.
Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.
He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he felt the
same pity again warm flooding him.
And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.
And when it was over he...
But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal ferocity and
writhed free.
He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake somehow...as it
ran from him...yes, he was awake now...
And terrified
Had anyone seen him? Would they know?
In a panic he ran
Home to his father's house...
CHAPTER ONE
"Introductions All Around"
A TIME magazine article from 1950 hangs framed on the wall. It's about a
college student's crusade against necking on a campus in Southern
California.
That student's office in Kansas today is aclack with fax machines and
ringing phones, but the chair behind the great mahogany desk is empty.
When the former campus evangelist finally bursts in, he is trailed by
grandchildren-so many sixth-grade secretaries-gophering, sending faxes,
fetching papers-and a glass of water for the reporter.
Thoughtful. It's 93 outside.
"Sit down," says Fred Phelps, rumored ogre, with an effusive Southern
graciousness. "But I got to tell you, you know we're going to preach the
word, the same thing I've been preaching for 46 years, and it's
supremely, supremely irrelevant to us what anybody thinks or says. "You
get a little bit of this message I'm preaching, you can't ask for
anything more. God hates fags-that's a synopsis."
Phelps, 63, a disbarred lawyer and Baptist preacher from Mississippi, is
on a mission from God. His face lights up like a kid's on Christmas
morning when he talks about how the nation is reacting to his anti-
homosexual campaign. He contends the Bible supports the death penalty
for sodomy:
"I'm not urging anybody to kill anybody," he adds, then matter-of-factly
explains how his interpretation of the Bible calls for precisely that:
"The death penalty was violently carried out by God on a massive scale
when the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire
and brimstone," says Phelps. "I am inclined to the view that the closer
man's laws come to God's laws, the better off our race will be."
Phelps has found the national spotlight by disrupting the mourners'
grieving at the funerals of AIDS victims. His followers carry picket
signs outside the services with such stone-hearted messages as GOD HATES
FAGS and FAGS 3DDEATH.
Last spring, he and his tiny band traveled to Washington, D.C., to taunt
the gay parade, creating a near-riot. Since then, Phelps has been the
subject of a 20-20 segment, appeared on the Jane Whitney Show twice to
mock homosexuals, and is now regularly interviewed on both Christian and
secular radio across America.
Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in the Kansas capital
of Topeka, since 1990 has also been an unsuccessful candidate for mayor,
governor, and United States Senator. Currently he is negotiating his own
radio show-one that will be heard throughout the Midwest.
His message is simple: God hates most everybody and He's sending them
all to hell. Makes no difference how they lived their life.
For the Pastor Phelps, except for a handful of 'elect', the human race
is composed of depraved beasts. God hates these creatures and so do His
favored few. The world is divided sharply and irreversibly between the
multitude of the already-damned (called the reprobate or the Adamic
Race) and those chosen by God to attend Him in heaven. Those selected to
be elect were tapped, not for the rectitude of their lives, but by what
could best be described as the Supreme Whim of the Deity.
While this is the theology of predestination, one that in less vengeful
minds is a mainstay of many Protestant sects, in Fred Phelps' mind it
has become a green light to hatred and cruelty.
Recently, Pastor Phelps has added a corollary to this thesis that God
hates the human race: God reserves His most pure and profound hatred for
the homosexuals among the Adamic race.
At 63, Phelps is a triathlon competitor who bikes or runs every day. The
strongest thing he drinks is what he calls his 'vitamin C cocktail',
consisting of Vitamin C, Diet Pepsi, and water.
The pastor basks in the heat of the outrage triggered by his campaign
against homosexuals.
"If you're preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate you," he
grins. "Nobody has the right to think he's preaching the truth of God
unless people hate him for it. All the prophets were treated that way."
Phelps delivers this with all the drama, fire, and brimstone of a man
who used to be a trial lawyer and is still a preacher. His voice and
tone are spellbinding and chilling. He doesn't stumble over his words.
Clearly, he believes he is a modern day prophet.
Phelps says he and his family have been hated and persecuted almost from
the time they arrived in Topeka in 1954.
"The more opposition we get, the more committed we get," says Liz
Phelps, one of the pastor's daughters. "Nothing, short of the
elimination of homosexuality in the world, will make us stop," announces
the pastor. In an unexpected reprieve from the anticipated 'sodomite'
label pasted on all who disagree-especially the press-the former vacuum
cleaner salesman gives his visitor a warm smile and immediately takes to
calling him warmly by his first name. He leads a brief tour through
his church. It adjoins his office: a long room, with a low ceiling and
a rusty red carpet and dark, oaken pews. It has enough seating for twice
the current congregation of 51.
The reporter asks to go to the bathroom. A stocky teenage grandson with
training in judo is sent along. He waits outside, no dummy, for the
reporter to finish. Then it's upstairs to the study, a high, spacious
room filled with books of biblical exegesis dating back to the
Reformation. Fred is eager to prove his Bible scholarship, and perhaps
frustrated, even contemptuous, when he realizes he is talking to a
Bible-ho-hum humanist. Downstairs, the pastor leads to the garage
where their wardrobe of picket signs is kept. Stacked high against the
walls are messages for every occasion-all of them gloomy. No good news
here.
Outside, one would never guess they were at a church. Westboro Baptist
is actually a large home in a comfortable Topeka neighborhood. In fact,
Phelps and his wife have lived in the house for almost 40 years, and
raised their 13 children within its walls. For many years, his law
office was also located in the residence Fred Phelps insists is still
his 'church'. The pastor's large family has always composed nearly all
of his congregation and loyal following. As his children grew up, they
bought the adjoining houses on the block, creating a tight compound
around the church. Today, one finds a citadel of modest homes joined by
fences, sharing a common backyard.
In a small revolution in urban design, the space behind their houses has
not been sub-divided, but made into a wide grass park, complete with
swimming pool, ball court, and trampoline. The grandchildren wander from
their separate houses to play together. The effect on the nervous
reprobates outside the walls is a sense of Waco in the air.
>From his compound, like a knight sallying forth from the Crusaders'
citadel of Krak, Pastor Phelps and his child band make war on the Adamic
race. When not doing TV talk shows, radio interviews, or appearing on
the cover of the national gay magazine, The Advocate, Phelps lays siege
to his hometown, nearby Kansas City, and local universities.
The Westboro congregation pickets public officials, private businesses,
and other churches, many of whom have had only tenuous connection to
some form of anti-Phelps criticism. Until a city ordinance was passed
against it, the Westboro warriors even picketed their opponents' homes.
For the last two years, this tiny group, by virtue of their tactics,
dedication, and discipline, have held the Kansas capital hostage. Fred
Phelps has been able to intimidate most of the residents of Topeka into
a fearful silence, though he himself is a shrill and vigorous defender
of his own First Amendment rights. Those who would disagree with his
brutal remedies to his perception of social ills face a three-fold atta
ck: Lawsuits: If the rest of America has justly come to fear the
anonymous lone nut with a gun, it has yet to experience a community of
eccentrics stockpiling law degrees. Picketing: One prominent
restaurant in Topeka is now failing after being picketed daily for
almost a year. "Patrons just got tired of the harassment," sighs the
owner. The cause of the pickets? One of the restaurant's employees is a
lesbian.
Faxes: Phelps has gone to court and won on his right to fax daily almost
300 public officials, private offices, and the media with damaging and
embarrassing information from the private lives of his opponents-most of
it false, wild, and unsubstantiated. One city councilwoman was called
a "Jezebelian, switch-hitting whore" who had sex with several men at
once. A police officer saw his name faxed all over town as a child
molester, one who had lured young boys to a park outside the city and
had sex with them in his patrol car. Despite his daughter Margie's
assertions that Phelps has the evidence to prove such accusations 'big
time', no such proof has ever emerged. Over the weeks, one learns
about the family. Of Fred's 13 children, nine remain in the community.
Five of them are married and raising 24 grandchildren. All of the
members of Westboro Baptist-children, in-laws, and grandchildren-
participate in the pastor's anti-gay campaign. Despite their image
from the pickets, most of the adults are friendly and socially
accomplished. Each of them has a law degree, and some have additional
postgraduate degrees in business or public administration. The adults
pay taxes, meet bills, and obey the laws. The grandchildren are perhaps
less demonstrative than most children, but in an earlier day that was
called well-behaved. Many of their parents hold or have held important
jobs in local and state agencies. The pastor's first-born, Fred, Jr.,
and his wife, Betty, were guests at the Clinton inauguration. The former
northeast Kansas campaign manager for Al Gore in 1988 has a stack of VIP
photos, such as the one of him, Betty, Al and Tipper, and even soon-to-
be Kansas governor Joan Finney smiling and yucking it up at the Phelps'
place just a few years ago. Clearly these are not streetcorner flakes
taken to carrying signs. The only discordant note here is the Pastor
Phelps, pacing about in his lycra shorts and windbreaker, looking like a
triathlon competitor who made a wrong turn, ended in a bad neighborhood,
and had his bike stolen. But he can easily be discounted while listening
to his wife reveal just exactly how she managed to raise those thirteen
kids. How? Well, for starters, the woman born Margie Simms of
Carrollton, Missouri, had nine brothers and sisters herself. Her own
tribe she raised by the same five rules she grew up under: keep their
faces clean, their hands clean, and their clothes clean; keep the house
clean and keep 'em fed. No Game Boys, college funds, and cars on
sixteenth birthdays. She did most of the cooking at first, and her
grocery bill, she estimates, would be over two thousand a month today.
Many of the 24 grandchildren still spend time at Gramp's house, she
said, and their food costs are over a thousand a month, even now.
Mrs. Phelps smiles. Before the kids got old enough to be finicky, she
could fill one tub and bathe them all, then line them up to brush their
teeth and clean their fingernails. They had six bedrooms furnished with
bunkbeds, and everyone wore hand-me-downs. Her laundry pile was so huge,
she needed two washers and two dryers: "I'm afraid that Maytag
repairman wasn't lonely with us. He was always out at our house. We went
through washers and dryers every three years. They worked all day long.
"The part I dreaded most about raising so many children? When they were
sick. Then you had to pay all your attention to that one-and hope the
others would make out all right." Later, she adds, the older kids took
over most of the chores and her job became considerably easier.
The children used to listen to their father preach twice on Sunday, says
daughter Margie. Once at eleven and again at seven that evening. "But
there's too many conflicting schedules now. So we only have the one
sermon at eleven-thirty," Margie tells how their household was abuzz
with political bull sessions. All the candidates and wannabes came
through there: "My dad was complete activity and whirlwind. My mom was
the calm at the center of the storm. She's the one who inspired our
closeness. Getting us to look out for our brothers and sisters; bond
with each other." Mrs. Phelps describes how everyone had to take piano
lessons. They had two pianos in the garage and three in the house.
(Chopsticks in fugue-five as a backdrop to any childhood might explain
why the adults seem so tense today.) Margie tells of their family
choir. How they practiced a cappella and harmony. Even today, their
counter-protestors grudgingly admit the Phelps sound good when they
raise their collective voice in hymn from across the street. Once for
their father's birthday, says Margie, the children learned to harmonize
"One Tin Soldier", the theme song from the film, "Billy Jack". She
laughs at the memory. "He was of two minds about that: flattered that
we'd done it. And not too pleased by the lyrics. ("...go ahead and hate
your neighbor...go ahead and cheat a friend...do it in the name of
heaven...you'll be justified in the end... ") "We had good times...lots
of good times," says Mrs. Phelps. "I would not have had any other
childhood but that one," adds her daughter. If they're not holding
harassing signs saying, 'God Hates Fags', calling deaf old dowagers
'sodomite whores', or bristling at startled churchgoers, Fred's kids are
back at home being model parents and neighbors, attending PTOs and
Clinton coronations. The stark contrast of the two masks-decent and
repulsive, hateful and considerate, forthright and devious, stupid and
clever-creates a polarity that begins to weigh on the observer.
Contrasts frequently are the visible edge of contradiction. And
contradictions sometimes arise from very deep and secret undercurrents.
Currents of pain. One day in the pickup with the pastor and his wife,
driving the signs to the picket line, Fred suddenly jams on the brakes
and pulls over.
"Why'd you do that?" asks the mother of 13. "We're gonna make sure
those kids are safe," the pastor replies. The objects of his concern
are in the yard across the street. There is absolutely no chance he
could have hit them. It's odd and unnecessary and exaggerated behavior.
His wife knows it; even the children know it-they've pulled back and are
watching the truck suspiciously. Mrs. Phelps gives her husband a
strange look. As if she had some secret knowledge. It's obvious Fred
intended this as an awkward display of altruism for the press. The
message is: "The pastor loves kids". But the message one gets is a
warning from Hamlet: "The play's the thing wherein we'll catch the
conscience of the king." Because that boy, now a man, ran home to his
father's house. The house of Fred Phelps. Where all good things end.
Where any family counselor will assert that a child who strangles pets
has almost certainly been brutalized as well.
CHAPTER TWO
"Daddy's Hands"
Mark Phelps feels nauseated whenever he remembers that night. He was hit
over 60 times and his brother, Nate, over 200 with a mattock handle.
Nate went into shock. Mark didn't. A boy who became a compulsive counter
to handle the stress, Mark counted every stroke. His and Nate's. While
their father screamed obscenities and his brother screamed in pain.
Every 20 strokes, their mother wiped their faces off in the tub. Nate
passed out anyway. That was Christmas Day.
Though he believes he should be the next governor of Kansas, Pastor
Phelps has never believed in Christmas. A mattock is a pick-hoe using
a wooden handle heavier than a bat. Fred swung it with both hands like a
ballplayer and with all his might. "The first blow stunned your whole
body," says Mark. "By the third blow, your backside was so tender, even
the lightest strike was agonizing, but he'd still hit you like he wanted
to put it over the fence. By 20, though, you'd have grown numb with
pain. That was when my father would quit and start on my brother. Later,
when the feeling had returned and it hurt worse than before, he'd do it
again. "After 40 strokes, I was weak and nauseous and very pale. My
body hurt terribly. Then it was Nate's turn. He got 40 each time. "I
staggered to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a towel to swab my
face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock and my brother was choking and
moaning. He was crying and he wouldn't stop." The voice in the phone
halts. After an awkward moment, clearing of throats, it continues:
"Then I heard my father shouting my name. My mom was right there, but
she wouldn't help me. It hurt so badly during the third beating that I
kept wanting to drop so he would hit me in the head. I was hoping I'd be
knocked out, or killed...anything to end the pain. "After that...it was
waiting that was terrible. You didn't know if, when he was done with
Nate, he'd hurt you again. I was shaking in a cold panic. Twenty-five
years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my stomach comes
back now..." Did he? Come back to you?
"No. He just kept beating Nate. It went on and on and on. I remember the
sharp sound of the blows and how finally my brother stopped screaming...
"It was very quiet. All I could think of was would he do that to me now.
I could see my brother lying there in shock, and I knew in a moment it
would be my turn. "I can't describe the basic animal fear you have in
your gut at a time like that. Where someone has complete power over you.
And they're hurting you. And there is no escape. No way out. If your mom
couldn't help you...I can't explain it to anyone except perhaps a
survivor from a POW camp." Last year, Nate Phelps, sixth of Pastor
Phelps' 13 children, accused his father of child abuse in the national
media. The information was presented as a footnote to the larger story
of Fred Phelps' anti-gay campaign. But the deep currents that lie
beneath the apparent apple-cheeks of the Phelps' clan were stirring. A
series of interviews with Nate resulted in an eyewitness account of life
growing up in the Phelps camp. These reports contained allegations of
persistent and poisonous child abuse, wife-beating, drug addiction,
kidnapping, terrorism, wholesale tax fraud, and business fraud. In
addition, Nate described the cult-like disassembly of young adult
identities into shadow-souls, using physical and emotional coercion-
coercion which may have been a leading factor in the suicide of an
emotionally troubled teenage girl.
The second son, Mark Phelps, who according to his sisters was at one
time heir to the throne of Fred, had refused comment during the earlier
spate of news coverage. He and Nate have both left the Westboro
congregation and now live within four blocks of each other on the West
Coast. But, like the icy water that waits off sunny California beaches,
the deepest currents sometimes rise and now Mark has surfaced with a
decision.
"My father," says the 39 year-old, now a parent himself, "is addicted to
hate. Why? I can't say. But I know he has to let it out. As rage. In
doing so, he has violated the sacred trust of a parent and a pastor.
"I'm not trying to hurt my father. And I'm not trying to save him. I'm
going to tell what happened because I've decided it's the only way I can
overcome my past: to drag it into the light and break its chains."
Mark believes that Fred Phelps, no longer able to hate and abuse his
adult children if he hopes to keep them near, by necessity now must turn
all his protean anger outward against his community. Mark has decided to
tell the truth about his father so that others will be warned. He and
his brother have now come forward with specific and detailed stories,
alarming tales, ones that could be checked and have been verified.
Mark's testimony supports Nate's previously, and both men's statements
have been confirmed by a third Phelps' child. In addition, the Capital-
Journal has uncovered documents which substantiate this testimony, and
interviewed dozens of relevant witnesses who have confirmed much of this
information. "One of my earliest memories...," the voice in the phone
pauses, painful to remember: "was the big ol' German shepherd that
belonged to our neighbors. One day it was in our yard and my father went
out and blew it apart with his shotgun."
Mark says he has no memories prior to age five. "Living in that house
was like being in a war zone, where things were unpredictable and things
were very violent. And there was a person who was violent who did what
he wanted to do. And that was to hurt people, or break things, or throw
a fit, or whatever he wanted to do, that's what he did. And there was
nobody there to say different."
One day when Mark was a teenager, he came home to find his mom sitting
on the lip of the tub, blue towel on her head, her lips pursed with
anger and hurt. "Do you know what your father did today?" she asked.
To Mark, it felt surreal. His mother never spoke out nor vented her
emotions. She seemed quite different just then.
He looked at his father. Pastor Phelps was standing across the room with
his arms folded, smiling (the bathtub was in the parents' bedroom).
"No," said Mark. "I don't know." His mother stood up and whipped the
towel down her side. "He chopped my hair off," she announced, tears
coming to her eyes. The son stood aghast at the grotesque head before
him. His mother's former waist-length hair had been shorn to two inches-
and even that showed ragged gouges down to the white of the scalp.
"Why?" he asked. "Your father says I wasn't in subjection today," she
replied. According to Mark and Nate, all of the Phelps children were
terrified of their father: "Usually we had to worry what mood we'd
find him in after school. You didn't make any noise or racket, or cut-
up; you had to walk on eggshells, tiptoe around him; you didn't fight
with your siblings; you did your jobs, performed your assigned tasks,
and hoped not to draw his attention." If you did draw it and he was in
a foul mood, say the boys, summary punishment at the hands of the dour
pastor involved being beaten with fists, kicked in the stomach, or
having one's arm twisted up and behind one's back till it nearly
dislocated.
Sometimes Pastor Phelps preferred to grab one child by their little
hands and haul them into the air. Then he would repeatedly smash his
knee into their groin and stomach while walking across the room and
laughing. The boys remember this happening to Nate when he was only
seven, and to Margie and Kathy even after they were sexually developed
teenagers. Nate recalls being taken into the church once where his
father, a former golden gloves boxer, bent him backwards over a pew,
body-punched him, spit in his face, and told him he hated him. Mark's
very first memory in this life is an emotional scar: their mom had gone
to the hospital to give birth to Jonathon. Mark remembers being very
upset, since now they would be alone in the house with their father, his
threatening presence left unmitigated by her maternal concern. Though
only five, already Mark could use the phone and, one day while his
father was out he dialed the number she'd left.
When he heard her voice, he told her, "Mom, I'm scared. I need you." But
before she could respond, the Pastor Phelps came on. He had gone to
visit the new mother. "What the hell are you doing calling here?" the
father shouted into the phone. "Don't you ever call here and bother her
again!" That is Mark Phelps' earliest memory. That, and the feeling,
when his father hung up, that there would be no rescue and no escape
from the fear and pain contained in the word, 'daddy'. When Fred
Phelps came home, he beat the little boy's first memory of the world in
to stay. From that moment, Mark whispers softly in the phone, "I
resolved to be a total yes-man to my father. If I couldn't escape his
violence, then I'd get so close to him he wouldn't see me. I'd survive
that way."
"We had clothes and food," adds Nate. "What we didn't have was safety.
He could throw fits and rages at any moment. When he did, the kids would
respond by turning pale and shaking, standing there shivering and
listening-Mark would pace and count the squares in the floor." "But I
learned exactly what I had to do...to stay safe around him," continues
Mark. I did a good job of it." He admits he used to beat his brothers
and sisters if his father ordered
him: "If you fell asleep in church, you got hit in the face. Once I hit
Nate so hard, it knocked over the pew and blood splurt across the
floor." After a moment, he tells us quietly: "My brothers and sisters
are entitled to hate me." Physical abuse? Nonsense, say sisters
Margie and Shirley. They laugh.
Well, maybe during their father's period of preoccupation with health
food. Every morning they were required to eat nuts and vitamins, curds
and whey. "I hate nuts," says Margie "We'd take the vitamins and drop
them in our pockets. Throw them out later." She adds: "Little Abby was
the only one who liked curds and whey. Poor kid. She'd have to eat every
bowl on the table when my dad wasn't looking."
Against this charming story is set another. For all her reputation as a
minotaur of the Kansas courtrooms, Margie Phelps was like a second mom
to the younger children. Today, she remains well-liked by her siblings,
including Mark and Nate. When her father was beating someone and
screaming at the top of his lungs, frequently Margie would take her
terrified younger brothers and sisters away for several hours. When they
thought it was over, they'd come back like cautious house cats, sneaking
in softly, Margie on point, to see if the coast was clear. The boys
tell how one day their father was in a barbershop and noticed the
leather strap used to sharpen razors. It struck his fancy as a backup to
the mattock handle, so he had one custom-made at a leatherworker's shop
near Lane and Huntoon.
"It was about two feet long and four inches wide. It left oval circles-
red, yellow, and blue," says Mark. "Usually the circles would be where
it would snap the tip-on the outside of your right leg and hip...because
he was righthanded." According to Mark and Nate, their father wore out
several of the leathermaker's straps while they were growing up. As
Mark Phelps became the angel-appointed in Fred's family cult, Nate was
assigned the role of sinner. For Mark, his brother was the needed
scapegoat. For the rest of the family, Nate was a problem child, the
delinquent of the brood. Brilliant like his dad (Nate's IQ has been
measured at 150), the middle son followed another drummer from the time
he was a toddler. When he was five, he remembers his father telling him,
'I'm going to keep a special eye on you'. The regular beatings started
shortly thereafter.
Nate endured literally hundreds of such brutalities before walking out
at one minute after midnight on his eighteenth birthday. His siblings
both inside and outside the church agree that Nate got the lion's share
of the 'discipline'. "Nate was a very tough kid," says Mark. "I don't
know how he endured it, but he did. He'd get 40 blows at a time from the
mattock handle. He was just tougher than the rest of us and my father
adjusted for that."
Today, raising his family in California, Nate is a devout Christian and
a warm, friendly, considerate, mountain of a man. But at 6'4" and 280
pounds, it would be...instructive...to see father and son in the same
room today with one mattock stick between them. "I sensed early on
this man had no love for us," says Nate. "He was using us. I knew it.
And I always made sure he knew I did."
in fact, Mark adds, Nate's obstinate resistance so angered his father
that, by age nine, when a family outing had been planned, frequently
Nate not only missed it, but Fred would remain behind with him. "And
during the course of the day, my father would beat Nate whenever the
spirit moved him. " Mark remembers the family coming back once to find
Pastor Phelps jogging around the dining room table, beating the sobbing
boy with a broom handle; while doing so, he was alternately spitting on
the frightened child and chuckling the same sinecure laugh so disturbing
to those who've seen him on television. When he wasn't allowed to go
along, says Mark, "Nate would literally scream and chase mom as she
drove off with us kids in the car. He knew what was coming after we
left." The older brother remembers the little one racing alongside the
windows, begging for them not to leave him until, like a dog, he could
no longer keep up. Mark sorrowfully admits he felt no empathy for him,
only relief it wasn't happening to himself. "I just stared straight
ahead. I didn't know what he was yelling about. I was just glad to get
the hell out of there." But how could their mom tolerate that?
Wouldn't the maternal instinct cut in at some point? Wouldn't the
lioness turn in fury to protect her cub?
It turns out Mrs. Phelps was herself an abused child, according to her
sons. "The only thing she ever told us about her dad was that he was a
drunkard who beat them. She said she'd always run and hide in the
watermelon patch when he was raging." Though most of her nine brothers
and sisters either settled in Kansas City or remained in rural Missouri,
Mrs. Phelps has had virtually no contact with them during the last 40
years. Not since she married Fred. "My father was very effective at
jamming Bible verses down her throat about wives being in subjection to
their husbands," Nate says. "She was a small woman and very gentle. She
felt God had put her with Fred and she had to endure." "Oh, mom would
try to interfere," adds Mark. "She'd come running out, finally, into the
church auditorium as the beating would escalate, and yell wildly, 'Fred,
stop it!" You're going to kill him!' "And then my father would turn on
her. I remember him screaming, 'Oh, so you want me to just let them go,
huh? You don't believe in discipline, huh? Why don't you just shut your
goddam mouth before I slap you? Get your fat hussy ass out of here! I'm
warning you, goddamit, you either shut up or I'm going to beat you!'
"And then," Mark continues, "she'd shut up till she couldn't take it
anymore, then she'd start again. When she did, he'd start beating her
and hitting her with his fist, and sometimes she'd just come up and grab
him. Sometimes she'd run out the front door, and sometimes he'd just
slap her and beat her until she'd shut up. "I can remember times when
she'd get hit so hard, it looked like she'd be knocked out, and she'd
stagger and almost fall. She would give out this desperate scream right
at the moment when he would hit her.
"Sometimes, after he'd get done beating her, he'd have forgotten about
the kid. Sometimes he'd go back to the kids and beat even harder. Then
he'd blame the kid for what had happened." The phone line falls
silent. "Out in public," recalls Nate, "she wore sunglasses a lot."
Mrs. Phelps was beaten even when she wasn't interfering. After Nate and
Kathy, the boys figure their mom was victimized the most. They
remember their father finishing one session by throwing her down the
stairs from the second floor. "It had 16 steps," says Mark. "And no
rail," continues Nate. "Mom grabbed at the stairs going over and tore
the ligaments and cartilage in her right shoulder. The doctor said she
needed surgery, but my father refused. We had no medical insurance back
then. She's had a bad shoulder ever since. My father often chose that
same shoulder to re-injure when he was beating mom. He'd grab her right
arm and jerk it. She'd yelp." The voice in the phone sighs: "But...I
guess I do still feel that very deeply...that she betrayed a gut,
primitive bond when she drove off and left me. I do love my mom. But I
wish she'd put a stop to it. She could have and she didn't." Pastor
Phelps denies beating his children or his wife. "Hardly a word of truth
to that stuff. You know, it's amazing to me that even one of them
stayed." He grins, referring to the nine daughters and sons who remain
loyal to him. Why?
"Because teachers have the kids from age five. And children are besieged
by their own lusts and foreign ideas. "Those boys (Mark and Nate)
didn't want to stay in this church. It was too hard. They took up with
girls they liked, and the last thing them girls was gonna do was come
into this church. "Those boys wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin for
a season. I can't blame them. I just feel sorry for them that they're
not bound for the promised land." Margie is the second-oldest daughter
and the fourth Phelps child. Her mom goes by 'Marge", so she is
'Margie'. Some say Margie is the de facto head of operations for her
father's war on the community. Anticipating bad reviews from Nate, at
least, she explained: "My brother is furious with his father because he
(Nate) is married to another man's wife. My dad and our whole family do
not accept that."
On the abuse issue, her denials take a softer tone: "There were times
in our childhood when each of us had bruises on our behinds. My dad had
a capacity to go too far. In what he said even more than what he
did...yet, as obnoxious as he can be one minute, he's the most kind,
caring person another minute. "I have a marvellous relationship with
my father as an adult. He respects me. He listens to me. And he helps
me. Most people, when they get older, they don't have that kind of
relationship with their parents." Margie, as a single woman, adopted a
new-born infant boy nine years ago. "Jacob doesn't have a father," she
says, "and my dad fills in there. He's one of Jacob's best friends. He's
just a wonderful grandfather to him." For his part, Nate remembers
Marge bringing home bad grades one day and going running to avoid a
beating. When she got back, she was in an exhausted state. Fred beat her
anyway. So badly, she lost consciousness and lay in a heap on the floor.
The Pastor Phelps kicked his daughter repeatedly in the head and stomach
while she out. "I saw her interviewed on television," adds Nate. "And
she said we weren't abused, just strictly brought up." He was
concerned when he heard her say that: "If she remembers that as a
'strict upbringing', then there's no moral suasion there for her not to
'strictly bring up' her own child, the adopted Jacob. "Nate would
have ended in the penitentiary without his father's discipline," says
his mother. "I believe it's him who's the bitter one. He needed a lot of
discipline." That's fair. All large families have a black sheep. But
this one has four: Nate and Mark rebelled, accepting they'd be turned
back from the gates of heaven by their father who was acting as St.
Peter's proxy. They later received an official letter from the Westboro
Baptist Church, informing them they had been 'voted out of the church
and delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh'. Katherine
and Dottie suffered the same fate but continue to reside in Topeka.
"Dottie only cares about her career," says her mom. "Family is an
embarrassment." And Kathy? "She's been a bitch since high school,"
says Margie.
"Mark," reflects Mrs. Phelps, "was always well-behaved. Of the ones who
left, he was a surprise." According to Mark and Nate, fathering to
Pastor Phelps meant the rod and the pulpit. "My dad never once stood
with me, or sat with me, or worked with me to teach me anything about
the practical life of a Christian," says Mark. "It was just preach on
Sunday. There was no focus on the human heart or being a human-you know,
how we were supposed to do that."
When it came to their formal education as well, Fred's input to the
curriculum was limited to the rod and the wrath of God. "Our dad had
no use for education. He wanted us all to be lawyers, and for that we
needed good grades. But he would sneer at our subjects, never helped us
with our homework, never went to any school meetings and skipped our
graduations. All he cared about were the grades. On the day they
arrived, that was the one day he got involved in our education-usually
with the mattock." "The only time he met our teachers," adds Nate,
"was when he was suing them ." Mark remembers a day when the boys had
gathered in one room to do their homework. They'd been working quietly
for some time when the dour pastor walked in.
After staring in simmering malevolence at each of them, he intoned: "You
guys think you may be foolin' me. But on a cold snowy day, the snow will
be crunchin' under the mailman's tires, and under his boots, when he
puts that letter in our box. Your grades. And that's when the meat's
gonna get separated from the coconut..." When the report cards
arrived from Landon Middle School one day in January, 1972, it wasn't
snowing. But Jonathon and Nate's grades were poor and the meat got
separated from the coconut. The beatings were so severe, the boys
were covered with massive, broken, purple bruising extending from their
buttocks to below their knees. Neither Jonathon or Nate were able to sit
down, and the blows to the backs of their legs had caused so much
swelling they were unable to bend them. Today, Nate has chronic knee
complaints whose origin may lie in early trauma to the cartilage. And
after the beatings came the shaming. It was 1972-the age of shoulder
locks. Both boys had begged their father not to have crewcuts. They
already felt exposed to enough ridicule as the odd ducks whose father
didn't believe in Christmas, whose home no one was allowed to visit, and
who were forbidden to visit others' homes. Jonathon and Nate had a
teenage dread of braving the corridors with flesh-heads in an era of
long manes, and their father had relented. Their hair had been allowed
to touch their collars. But when the grades turned bad, out came the
clippers. No attachments. Brutally short. Shaved bald. "It was not a
haircut," says Nate. "It was a penalty. And a further way of cutting us
off from the outside world."
On the following day-a Thursday-the boys came to school wearing red
stocking caps. When asked to remove them in class, they declined. This
upset their teachers almost as much as their refusal to take their
seats. One instructor demanded Nate remove his headgear. Finally,
Nate did. The teacher stared at his bald head. So did his classmates.
"On second thought," said the charitable man, "put it back on."
For gym class that Friday, the boys had a note from their mom excusing
them all week. By now, the faculty had a pretty good idea what the
clothes, notes, and funny hats were covering, and Principal Dittemore
asked Jonathon to come into his office. Waiting for him were the school
nurse and a doctor from the community.
They asked the 13 year-old to show them his bruises. He refused.
Feeling their hands were tied, the staff released Jonathon, only to have
the pastor himself show up a few hours later. During a stormy second
meeting, Phelps accused the school, first of slackness and poor
discipline, then, paradoxically, of beating his sons and causing the
bruising themselves. He threatened to slap a lawsuit on anyone who
pursued the matter.
Not a man to be intimidated, Dittemore reported the suspected child
abuse to an officer of the Juvenile Court. On Monday, the same routine
occurred-unable to sit down and insisting on the stocking caps. Until it
came time for gym once more. The note had excused them for a week, but
now the coach demanded they show it again, saying he'd thought it was
only for a day. The boys had left their note at home.
The coach took Nate into the locker room and stood there, waiting for
him to get undressed. Nate refused. At that point, the faculty
relented, and Jonathon and Nate thought they were off the hook. But,
as they walked out of Landon to their mom's station wagon after school,
they saw two police cars waiting. One of the teachers pointed the boys
out to the officers. Before he knew it, Nate was in a squad car on his
way downtown. "I was terrified. Not because I was afraid of the
police. I was afraid of my dad. I kept thinking it was all over but the
funeral. What would my old man do? This was my fault and he was going to
beat the daylight out of me and I could still barely walk from the last
one." At the station, Nate remembers everyone was very kind to him.
They spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to allay his
fears and coax him to allow them to photograph his naked backside.
Finally he did. When the police allowed Mrs. Phelps to take her boys
home, Nate's worst nightmare came true. After nearly getting arrested
for delivering a tirade of obscenities and threats to the juvenile
detectives, the dour pastor rushed back to the house and delivered a
fresh beating to his exhausted sons.
For the moment, however, it had gone beyond the pastor's control.
Police detectives investigated the matter, and it was filed as juvenile
abuse cases #13119 and #13120. Jonathon and Nate were assigned a court-
appointed lawyer, as a guardian-ad-litem, to protect their interests.
The assistant county attorney took charge of the cases, and juvenile
officers were assigned to the boys.
In his motion to dismiss, the ever-resourceful Phelps filed a
pontifically sobering sermon on the value of strict discipline and
corporal punishment in a good Christian upbringing. "When he beat us,
he told us if it became a legal case, we'd pay hell," says Nate. "And we
believed him. At that time, there was nothing we wanted to see more than
those charges dropped. When the guardian ad litem came to interview us,
we lied through our teeth."
Principals involved in the case speculate the boys' statements, along
with superiors' reluctance to tangle with the litigious pastor, caused
the charges to be dropped. The last reason is not academic
speculation. The Capital-Journal has learned through several sources
that the Topeka Police Department's attitude toward the Phelps' family
in the '70s and '80s was hands off-this guy's more trouble than it's
worth'.
Three months later, the case was dismissed upon the motion of the state.
The reason given by the prosecutor was "no case sufficient to go to
trial in opinion of state". The boys were selling candy in Highland
Park when they learned from their mom during a rest break the Pastor
Phelps would not go on trial for beating his children. "I felt elated,"
remembers Nate. "It meant at least I wouldn't get beaten for that."
But if Nate's life was so full of pain and fear, why didn't he speak up
when he was at the police station and everyone was being so nice to him?
Nate laughs. It's the veteran's tolerant amusement at the novice's
question. "We'll do anything not to have to give up our parents," he
answers. "That's just the way kids are. That's the way we were."
"Besides, when it (abuse) occurs since birth, it never even crosses your
mind to fight back," interrupts Mark. "You know how they train
elephants?
They raise them tied to a chain in the ground. Later, it's replaced by a
rope and a stick. But the elephant never stops thinking it's a chain."
The loyal Phelps family are of two minds on the case. Margie admitted
it had occurred. Jonathon denied it. The pastor never decided. Instead,
he launched into a lecture on the value of tough love in raising good
Christians.
Since their juvenile files were destroyed when the boys reached
eighteen, but for their father's vindictiveness, there might have been
no record of this case. As it was, he sued the school. This caused the
school's insurance company to request a statement from Principal
Dittemore, who complied, describing the events which led to the
faculty's concern the boys were being abused. The suit was dropped.
When contacted in retirement, Dittemore confirmed he'd written the
letter and acknowledged its contents. The family now accuses Nate of
fabricating his stories of child abuse. They claim he is spinning these
lies out of the malice he has over their opposition to his marriage
(Nate's wife is divorced). But Nate was married in 1986. The described
case of abuse was a matter of record 14 years earlier-and 21 years prior
to Pastor Phelps' controversial debut on national television. The
Phelps family has since maintained that, while the case did exist, the
charges were invented by the school to harass their family. They say
they were raised under loving but strict discipline, and that is how
they're raising their children. Jonathon Phelps, who admits he beats
his wife and four children, for emphasis reads from Proverbs, 13:24:
"He that spareth his rod, hateth his son. But he that loveth him,
chasteneth him betimes." Yes...but...where does it say the purple
child is a child much-loved? Betty Phelps, wife of Fred, Jr., glowers
at the questions. Anytime you spank a child, you're going to cause
bruising, she explains. And sneers: "I'll bet your parents put a pillow
in your pants." Jonathon, staring straight ahead and not looking at
the reporter, states in a barely controlled voice of malevolent threat
that, should the reporter tell it differently than just heard, said
scribbler is evil and going to hell. Assuming there'll be space, the
doomed dromedary of capital muckraking must tell it differently.
To begin with, the reporters on this story were raised in the same era
and locale as the Phelps boys. They also grew up under strict
discipline, and one of their fathers was, at one time, a professional
boxer. Daddy's hands sometimes swung a mean leather belt, but only a
few strokes, and it left no bruises. After a few minutes, one could sit
down again. The moving force behind the pastor's hands was not 'tough
love', as he so often claims, but malice aforethought. The Capital-
Journal has established from numerous sources conversant with the case
that the injuries to Nate and Jonathon Phelps in January of 1972 went
far beyond the bounds of a 'strict upbringing'-even by the standards of
the strictest disciplinarian. Those injuries would have been seen as
torture and abuse in any era, at any age, in any culture.
Mark's front porch tale is instructive. Any psychologist hearing the
story about choking that cat today would know immediately to investigate
the child's home life for abuse. Back then it was not the case. That
child would have been left to find his own way out of the terrible
subterranean world another had made for him. Most don't. Research
shows nine out of twelve die down there.
In their heart. When the light in their soul goes out. If their bodies
live on, they grow up mangled and mangle those closest to them. And it
all takes shape down there. In the dark new universe of a young child's
mind. Mark Phelps escaped.
His father did not. That man came to the Kansas capital instead. And,
after 40 years, he still haunts its porches, tormenting its innocents.
The Capital-Journal went south...Mississippi...to see if it could learn
where and when...perhaps how...the light went out for Fred Phelps.
It followed him to Colorado and California, Canada and New Mexico. For
three months, it turned every stone in Topeka, seeking the truth about
this man. What follows is the monster behind the clown, the
streetcorner malevolence mocking the cameras.
CHAPTER THREE
"God's Left Hook"
The air hangs heavy, torpid, and hot. Pulling the warm steam into one's
lungs leaves only a disturbing sense of slow suffocation. Under the
harsh subtropic sun, the magnolia blossoms slip from the black-green
leaves, falling like wet snow-petals to perfume the red-clay earth. In
the heat, it leaves a heavy, hanging smell...the wealth of Dixie. Fred
Phelps spent his first years here.
Outside the courthouse, flags sag limp and breezeless. Above the doors
are cut the words: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy
Neighbor It's Meridian, Mississippi, town of old store fronts,
mouthwatering cornbread, and 40,000 people. Surrounded by 100-foot pine
forests, its business is lumber. Trucks and flatbed railcars loaded with
freshly cut logs rolls slowly by. To the sensual fragrance of the
magnolias is added the sweet aroma of pine. While great pyramids of logs
await processing into lumber at the plant on the west side, Navy jets
roar overhead...the other source of revenue. The federal government
threatens to close the base down; the locals fight to keep it.
Meridian was sacked by General Sheridan during the Civil War. The
implacable bluecoat burned the town and tore up what, till then, had
been a rail hub of the South. The town has since recovered. The
railroad did not. In the cemeteries can be found gravestones of the
Confederate dead. Among them, a more recent marker reads: Catherine
Idalette Phelps, Age 28 Fred's mother used to open all the windows in
the house and play the piano, according to Thetis Grace Hudson, former
librarian in Meridian and a neighbor of the Phelps family during the
Depression. The other households on her street were too poor to afford
any entertainment, she says, so everyone remembered Catherine Phelps for
her kindness.
Apparently she played well. Whenever she was at their house, Hudson
remembers she used to ask Mrs. Phelps to play the hymn "Love Lifted Me"
on the piano. Fred's mother always obliged, even if she was busy. But,
after an illness of several months-those who still remember the family
say it was throat cancer-Catherine Phelps died on September 3, 1935.
Fred was only five years old. Since the little boy's uncle was the
mayor of nearby Pascagoula, and his father was prominent in Meridian,
the honorary pallbearers at her funeral included the local mayor, a city
councilman, two judges, and every member of the police department. Ms.
Hudson says young Fred was bewildered at the loss. After his mother's
death, a maternal great aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his
younger sister, Martha Jean. "She kept house for the daddy," adds a
distant relative who declined to be identified. At times, work caused
the boy's father to be away from home and Jordan raised the children.
The woman Fred Phelps has referred to as 'his dear old aunt' died in a
head-on collision in 1951 as she was driving back to Meridian from a
nearby town. The boy had lost two mothers before he'd turned 21.
Family friends remember Fred's father was a tall, stately man. A true
Southern gentlemen, they say. And a fine Christian. But the elder
Phelps also had a hot temper, according to Jack Webb, 81, of
Porterville, Miss. Webb owns a general store, the only business in
Porterville, a town of about 45 elderly people. "If he got mad, he was
mad all over," said Webb. He was ready to fight right quick. He was mad,
mad, mad." Webb is a frail man, slightly hard of hearing. Walking into
his general store is like stepping back into the 19th century. The
shelves, all located behind a 100-foot wooden counter, are stocked with
weary tins of Vienna sausage and dusty bottles of aspirin. Coke goes for
30 cents. Glass. No twist-off.
Despite the temper, Webb adds, the elder Phelps was an honorable man. In
Meridian, he had been an object of great respect. Fred's father was a
veteran of World War One, and throughout his life suffered from the
effects of a mustard gassing he'd taken in France. He found work as a
detective for the Southern Railroad to support his family. The railroad
security force or "bulls", as they were called, had a reputation for
brutality when they patrolled the yards to prevent the itinerant
laborers, washed out of their hometowns by the Depression, from riding
the freights. "My father," says Pastor Phelps, "oft-times came home
with blood all over him." Suddenly he stands up, turning his face
away, and exits. Several minutes later he returns, smiling, apologizing:
"You got me thinking about those days," he offers, then bravely charges
into a round of the town's official song: "Meridian, Meridian... a
city set upon a hill; Meridian, Meridian... that radiates the South's
good will."
The elder Phelps was a "bull" throughout the Depression, says Thetis
Hudson, and the pay was good. The family lived comfortably at a time
when the other families in town were being ravaged by hardship. What
was the son like? "Fred Phelps had as normal and beautiful a home life
as anyone ever wanted," commented a relative who didn't want their name
used. "His childhood was very good," says Hudson. "There was nothing
in his family out of the ordinary." "All I know is it's a tragedy, and
it stems from within Fred Phelps," adds the anonymous relative,
referring to the homosexual picketing. "It has nothing to do with his
upbringing."
As a teenager. Fred was tall and thin and sported a crewcut. He was
extraordinarily smart, but thought to be a bit overbearing about it at
times. A reserved and serious high school student, he never dated anyone
while there. "He was not a real socializer, but he knew a lot of
people. Everyone had the greatest respect for him," says Joe Clay
Hamilton, former high-school classmate, now a Meridian lawyer. The
future Pastor Phelps earned the rank of Eagle Scout with Palms, played
coronet and base horn in the high school band, was a high hurdler on the
track team, and worked as a reporter on the school's newspaper. In a
class of 213 graduates, he ranked sixth. When he was voted class orator
for commencement of May, 1946, received the American Legion Award for
courage, leadership, scholarship, and service, then honored as his
congressman's choice for West Point, Fred Phelps was only 16 years old.
A year later this young man, touted as the quiet achiever, had turned
his back on West Point, his former life, and his future promise. The
summer of '47 would find him a belligerent and eccentric zealot,
antagonizing the Mormons in the mountains of Utah. Because of his age,
Phelps had to wait one fateful year before entering the military
academy. During that time he attended the local junior college. While
waiting for his life to start, Fred, along with his best friend, John
Capron, went to a revival meeting at the local Methodist church. It
was there the budding pastor felt the 'call', and the dreams of going
north to West Point melted like the river ice washed down and marooned
on the hot mud of the Mississippi banks.
Fred Phelps, by his own description, "went to a little Methodist revival
meeting and had what I think was an experience of grace, they call it
down there. I felt the call, as they say, and it was powerful. The God
of glory appeared. It doesn't mean a vision or anything, but it means an
impulse on the heart, as the old preachers say." The revival had a
profound effect on both Phelps and Capron. "The two of them 'got
religion'," said Joe Hamilton. Friends and relatives claim the two boys
became so excited, they were unable to distinguish reality from
idealism-they were going off to conquer the world. One relative still
in Meridian described it this way: "Fred, bless his heart, just went
overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram it down your
throat."
Was this radical change in behavior a characteristic of the conversion
experience? Or was there something hidden in the young man's character
that drew him to the experience and its consequent license for loud and
abusive behavior? If the latter, then some heart should be heard
pounding beneath the floorboards in the old Phelps' house. Yet, there is
little to be heard.
Fletcher Rosenbaum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force
who lives in Meridian, went to high school with Phelps. "He was good at
whatever he tried," Rosenbaum says. "He was a first-class individual. I
would be surprised if he wasn't a top-notch citizen in Topeka."
Picketing AIDS funerals and the fax attacks on members of his community
by Phelps surprised Rosenbaum: "He was very reserved in high school.
Very quiet. I'm surprised he would be involved in aggressive activities.
To me, it would be out of character for him." This observation may not
be entirely accurate. One woman, a librarian at the Meridian Public
Library, said she remembers Phelps and went to school and church with
him. "He doesn't bend," she observed. "He never did." She also described
him as "spooky", "different", and "a preacher prodigy." "You tell him
not to do it, and he'll do it," said another Meridian woman. "He was a
very determined person. That's to be admired, but it can be taken too
far." Even Fred himself remembers differently. He was a boxer
throughout high school and, reminiscing briefly about his days in
Meridian, he chuckles to himself. If any of the other boys came to
class with a puffy face or shiner, their friends would ask if they'd
been sparring with Phelps. He always left his mark on them, he tells
me proudly.
Sid Curtis, a grade-school classmate of Fred's, remembers the future
pastor drew well, even then. What did he draw? Boxers.
A golden glove contender in high school, Fred fought twice in state
meets, winning matches which, according to him, were head-on slugfests.
Not aggressive? Not the Bull of Topeka yet, but clearly it was in his
character. A story in the high-school paper, predicting the futures of
Phelps and his classmates, reads: "Fred Phelps will box in Madison
Square Garden next June, 1954. Young Phelps will fight for the world
championship." One can only wonder what deep currents rose in the
teenager whenever he climbed into the ring. Recalling the earlier
testimony of his sons, Nate and Mark, and remembering that research has
proven abusive behavior is passed with high probability from one
generation to the next, the question must be raised: Was the Pastor
Phelps equally abused as a child? In the South, there is an unwritten
code you don't bad-mouth one of your own. Strangers are welcome unless
they ask too many questions, or speak ill of Southern folks and ways.
In fact, if ET had come down in Meridian instead of Southern California,
and a yankee inquired about that today, folks would probably scratch
their chins, figure the carpet-baggers with a knowing eye, and say he
was a quiet boy, little short for his age...but had good hands for the
piano... If the stories his sons have told are true, the outside
observer has two choices in understanding Fred Phelps: either there's a
pounding heart under the floor in that old house or the teenager's Saul-
into-Paul experience produced the character change. However, many
Christians might find it difficult to believe that discovering Jesus
would render a good-natured, quiet lad into the bullying hostile whose
trail we will shortly follow from Vernal, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. If
something did happen to throw Fred Waldron Phelps off track, something
that mangled him for life, no one in Meridian wanted to say. Doing that
no doubt would be to speak ill of the dead-something Pastor Phelps also
was taught to avoid.
Yet, suddenly at 16, the child has become the man: fanatic, unempathic,
combative, and vindictive. If there is an answer to the question, 'why
does Fred hate us all so much?', perhaps it lies in those years, age
five to 15, when his father was largely absent and Fred and his sister
were cared for by Irene Jordan.
"If he were dead, I'd talk," says Fred's sister, Martha Jean Capron, now
residing in Pennsylvania. "But as long as he's alive...that's up to
him..." Following the revival experience, Phelps abandoned plans for
West Point. He moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, where he attended Bob
Jones College, a non-denominational Christian academy.
John Capron went with him. While Fred and his boyhood chum would
eventually separate over religion, Martha Jean and Capron never would:
they were married and moved to Indonesia as missionaries. John was a
minister there for ten years. Later he would smuggle Bibles into
Communist China. Pastor Phelps' brother-in-law died of a heart attack
in 1982.
Perhaps it's a shame Phelps didn't go to West Point. An army career
could have provided a healthy outlet for his aggression, been more
compatible with his demanding and commanding nature, while his strong
body, mind, and will would have been an asset to the service and his
country. If he'd survived Korea as a 2nd lieutenant, probably he'd have
been a lieutenant colonel by Vietnam. There he'd almost certainly have
chipped his Manichaean mandibles of dualism on that war's hard bone of
moral ambiguity. Either he'd have ended on a river somewhere, whispering
"the horror...the horror..." to bewildered junior officers, or gained a
wider horizon and returned home to retire an urbane cynic and Southern
gentleman. But in 1946, Fred Phelps had a year to kill instead of
Nazis or North Koreans. The revival took him from Meridian to Bob Jones;
from there the future pastor found another outlet for his anger. This
one gave instant gratification and conferred adult license to abuse
almost overnight: lip-shooting preacher; revivalist minister. And,
unlike Vietnam, here God was unequivocally on his side...
As part of a Rocky Mountain mission assignment in summer, 1947, Phelps
and two other students from Bob Jones were to seek out a fundamentalist
church, convert non-believers to Christianity and steer the converts to
that church. The three men chose Vernal, a town in northeast Utah. They
would be working to convert, not secular hedonists, but a population
that was predominantly and staunchly Mormon. When Fred and his friends
got there, they set up a meeting tent brought from Bob Jones in the city
park. A local Baptist minister provided them food and lodging (B.H.
McAlister, who would later ordain Phelps). During the day the do-it-
yourself apostles went door-to-door, seeking converts to the good news.
At night, they conducted revival meetings in the tent. Only no one
came.
So Ed Nelson, one of the trio, had an idea. He went to a local radio
station and asked if he might buy a block of time. Nope, was the reply.
Not if you're going to attack the Mormon church. Ok, said Ed, can I
announce I'll be giving an address tonight at the tent?
Sure. So Ed Nelson announced on the radio he'd be doing just that. And
the title of the speech? 'What's Wrong with the Mormon Church?' says Ed,
over the air. That night, continues Nelson, now 69 and a traveling
Baptist evangelist based in Denver, a huge crowd arrived. It was so
large, the trip had to roll up the sides of the tent. Ed was nervous,
but he gave his speech. The crowd listened politely. When the young
evangelist was finished, a man in the crowd asked would there be
questions. Sure, said Ed.
But the very first one stumped him, Nelson confesses disarmingly, and he
panicked. Flustered, he announced there would be no more questions.
Several in the throng protested, saying that, after sitting in courtesy,
listening to their religion attacked, they weren't going to let the
young men off so easily-that they should be willing to answer the
crowd's questions.
At that, Fred rushed one of the men speaking and started to throw a
punch, but Ed grabbed his arm and shouted: "Fred! Fred! No! Don't you
do it!" "And," Nelson recounts, "Fred looked at that guy and he said,
'you shut your mouth, you dirty...' something or other."
Which, to Ed, only compounded their troubles. Fred's companion then
raised his arms and shouted, "Folks, the meeting's over! It's over!" And
he rushed out and killed the lights inside the tent. This discouraged
any further theological discussion.
It would seem this format-speak one's mind, then take violent offense at
anything less than complete agreement, and suppress all opposing views
by any means handy-was the major life lesson learned by Fred Phelps
during his sojourn among the Vernal heathen. "He was hot-headed and
peculiar," remembers Nelson about Fred then. Eventually the minister
decided to cease his association with Phelps because of his hostility
and aggressiveness. "The last time I saw him, he was traveling through
(on the road preaching). My wife and I gave them a hundred dollars and a
bunch of handkerchiefs." When told of what Phelps was doing today, Ed
said: "I'm not surprised. He was heading that way. He was so brilliant,
he was dangerous. He was getting involved in the idea that only he was
saved...going into heresy..." Though vandals damaged the tent, the
boys from Bob Jones continued to hold nightly meetings there during the
rest of their vacation. No one came, but Nelson reports they did manage
to convert two teenage girls-at least for the summer.
At the end of their stay, Fred got ordained. Ordained? At 17? Isn't
that too young? "No, it isn't," replies B.H. McAlister, who did the
ordaining. "If he can pass the test, he is eligible. I don't think the
word of God is bound by age."
Phelps was at least three years younger than most when they become
ministers. Southern Baptists do not require a candidate for the
ministry be a graduate of seminary. McAlister, who has helped ordain
hundreds of ministers, said an examination board of 10 to 20 ministers
would ask a candidate questions about doctrines and scriptures. Not
everyone passed. Fred Phelps did-but only after McAlister and a
missionary convinced the teenager he was wrong on a scriptural fine
point. Which point was that? According to McAlister, Phelps
considered the local church to be more than a place of fellowship-for
him, membership in the local congregation directly corresponded to
membership in the Body of Christ. Phelps may have conceded the point
to be ordained, but, for 40 years, his family and church members in
Topeka have been controlled by his threat that, if they depart his
congregation, they must carry a letter of permission from him. In
addition, they must join a congregation that he approves. Otherwise, as
with Mark and Nate, the pastor Phelps draws up the dreaded missive
ordering the straying sheep to be 'delivered to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh.' "We barely knew him," admits McAlister, who
settled upon Fred the distinction of having been both baptized and
ordained in a single eventful summer.
Phelps returned that autumn to Bob Jones, but left after a year without
graduating. Later he would say he did so because the school was racist.
In 1983, the IRS revoked the tax exemption of Bob Jones, accusing it of
practicing racial discrimination. From there, Fred went north to the
Prairie Bible Institute near Calgary, Alberta. But after two semesters
he moved on.
Sources have disclosed the head of the college felt pastor Phelps might
be clinically disturbed. Compatible with that diagnosis, Fred's next
stop was Southern California. There he enrolled at John Muir College in
Pasadena.
Campaigning to change community sexual mores with a sign and a sidewalk
harangue has been a four-decade effort for Fred. His implacable efforts
at John Muir to root out necking and petting on campus and dirty jokes
in the classroom reached the pages of TIME magazine (11 June 1951).
After being forbidden to preach on campus and getting removed at least
once by police from college property, Fred finally found a following
that cheered his defiance of authority when he returned to harangue from
a sympathizer's lawn across the street. TIME speculated it might
presage a movement back to more solid values by the younger generation.
Phelps cashed in on the notoriety of the TIME article to become a
traveling evangelist again-this time with more success than in Vernal.
In return for spending a week or two preaching at an established church
or giving a revival, he would receive a bed, his meals, and a small
stipend for gas to the next assignment. It was during one such ministry
in Phoenix that he met his wife, Marge. She was a student at Arizona
Bible School and an au-pair with the family that took in the itinerant
evangelist. Today's Mrs. Phelps remembers being curious about the
minister who'd been in TIME magazine. Laura Woods, the mistress of the
house who gave voice lessons during the day, remembers Fred was the
perfect guest. He helped build a room, mowed the lawn, made the beds,
and washed the dishes, she said. When the couple decided to get
married, Mrs. Woods made Marge Simms two dresses-a wedding gown and an
outfit to travel in. They were married May 15, 1952. Laura and her
husband, Arthur, remain friends today with Fred and Marge Phelps. The
couple moved to Albuquerque for a year, where Marge kept house while
Fred traveled a circuit around the Southwest-one that took him from
Durango, Colorado to Tucson, Arizona. Fred Jr., the first of their
thirteen children, was born May 4, 1953.
The family then lived in Sunnyslope, Arizona for a year while pastor
Phelps continued his itinerant ministry. Mrs. Phelps was eight months
pregnant with Mark when Pastor Leaford Cavin at the Eastside Baptist
Church in Topeka invited Fred to come and preach.
On Fred Jr.'s first birthday, the family arrived in the Kansas capital
to find it an auspicious day indeed: May 4, 1954 was the day the U.S.
Supreme Court handed down its historic decision, Brown vs. Board of
Education of Topeka, the landfall desegregation case which ruled
separate but equal schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional.
The Pastor Phelps saw the coincidence of the Brown decision -just as he
was deciding where to settle-as a sign telling him that Topeka was The
Place. On that watershed day for America, if the new arrivals visited
the state capitol building, perhaps Phelps was struck by the dramatic
mural of the raging giant on the burning prairie, rifle in one hand,
Bible (law book) in the other. Perhaps, as he has hinted, Pastor
Phelps came to Topeka, saw it had become a national forum on black civil
rights, saw the power of the legal profession, and decided it had fallen
to him: Kansas would have a new John Brown.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Dog Days for the Pastor"
Before greatness could be thrust upon him, however, this new John Brown
would suffer his dog days. At first, the new arrivals sailed smoothly
into the Eastside Baptist community. Fred was roundly admired for his
thunderous preaching, and was quickly hired an associate pastor. The
ladies at Eastside all liked Marge and made the young mother welcome in
their circles.
Things went swimmingly. The Eastside congregation was planning to open
a new church across town, and it seemed natural when their pastor,
Leaford Cavin, asked Fred to fill the job. The Eastside church issued
bonds to purchase the property at 3701 12th Street. To help Brother
Phelps get underway, the congregation re-roofed the building, painted
it, and bought the songbooks necessary. A start-up group of about 50
former members of Eastside volunteered to attend services at Westboro.
The church formally opened on May 20, 1956. Fred had it all. A fine
church and a congregation of his own. What went wrong?
What did provides an insight into the man who craves a greater and
greater role as a moral arbiter of our times. "We gave him his church;
painted; roofed it; even bought his songbooks; and after only a few
weeks, he turned on us," says a long-time member of Eastside.
Apparently not everyone in Leaford Cavin's church was enthusiastic about
Phelps. One from that time recalls Fred, Marge, 2 year-old Fred, Jr.,
and 10 month-old Mark were in the pews one Sunday with the rest of the
congregation, listening to Cavin preach. Mark began squirming
suddenly. To the appalled amazement of his fellow worshippers nearby,
the junior pastor repeatedly slapped the infant across the face with an
open palm and backhand, snapping Mark's tiny head to and fro.
Afterwards, several of the men in the congregation confronted Fred and
told him never to do that again. Mark Phelps laughs to hear that story
relayed: "My mom once told me-proudly, as if she'd effected a big change
in his behavior-that my father had beaten my older brother when he was
only five months old. She said she'd argued with him about it and he'd
agreed to hold off beating the kids till they were a year old."
"Phelps was wrapped pretty tight, even back then," recalls an old member
of Eastside. "He was very severe with his children and a lot of people
didn't care for him. But we all thought he was a man of God."
Within weeks after receiving his new status, building, and congregation,
Fred Phelps warmed on the hearth of Eastside's hospitality and but the
hands that had helped him. He and Leaford Cavin had an almost
immediate falling-out over whether God hated the sinner as well as the
sin. "Today, Fred will tell you it was theological differences," says
an acquaintance of Cavin, "but those differences didn't seem to bother
him when he needed out help." Adds another: "Theological differences?
Brother Cavin was a very staunch Baptist." But not staunch enough for
Fred?
"I don't know if there ever was a man more strict than Leaford Cavin.
Really, it was the anger in Fred, not doctrine, that caused him to act
the way he did." When a man in Fred's new congregation came to him for
marital counseling, the pastor recommended a good beating for the wife.
The man followed his spiritual guide's advice.
Later, he called the pastor to ask for bail: apparently separation of
church and state didn't apply to assault and battery. Phelps paid the
confused Christian's bail, but stuck to his guns: a former members of
the early Westboro community remembers the following Sunday Pastor Fred
was fiery in his message that a good left hook makes for a right fine
wife: "Brethren," preached Phelps, "they can lock us up, but we'll
still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to
obey, or we're going to beat them!" "Leaders," observes B.H.
McAlister, the minister who ordained Fred, "break down into shepherd and
sheep-herders. The first lead, the second drive the sheep. If love is
absent, the pastor is one who drives the flock; with love, he leads it."
Mark remembers his father used to frequently tell of the time he
purified the flock and paid the price for his courage. Apparently a
female member of that early Westboro congregation was discovered having
an affair with a soldier from Ft. Riley. Only the males in the
congregation were allowed to vote, and the pastor prevailed upon them to
cast the magdelene from the midst. Away from the effects of his heated
rhetoric, however, many of those swayed felt first remorse, then disgust
at their part in the moral lynching. Mark remembers his father always
referred to this incident to explain why his congregation had deserted
him.
In later years, Phelps was convinced he was alone in his church with
only his children to listen because those who'd opened Westboro were too
weak for the harsh truth of God: that He hated sinners as well as the
sin; and therefore His elect must also hate the sinners-even those who
might be assembled with them. If the local Baptist churches were still
unsure about the new fire and brimstone brother from Arizona, shooting
his neighbor's dog didn't help. Aside from etching one of his children's
earliest memories, shotgun-blasting the large German shepherd that had
wandered into his unfenced yard quickly got the novice pastor notice in
his community. The incident was discussed in the papers, and the dog's
owner sued the arrogant minister. Fred defended himself and won, an
action his son Mark believes may have encouraged his father's turn to
the law.
But the irrationality and violence of the act sent the last of his
congregation scurrying back to Eastside. For weeks after the shooting,
one church member recalls, someone placed signs on the lawn in front of
Westboro at night that declared prophetically: "Anyone who'd stoop to
killing a dog someday will mistake a child for a dog." Soon it was
clear no one wanted any part of Fred's god not if he hated like Fred.
And that posed a problem for the Pastor Phelps: he still owed 32 dollars
a week on the bonds for the church, and no one was paying for his hate
show on Sundays.
To cover his mortgage and support his family, the failed pastor turned
his pitch from God to vacuum cleaners. During the following five years,
he went door-to-door in Topeka, selling those and baby carriages and,
finally, insurance. In a pattern that held ominous overtones for the
future, Phelps at some point sued almost everyone who employed him
during that period.
He also carried on a running feud with Leaford Cavin at Eastside
Baptist. Cavin spent several years trying to discover how to repair his
mistake and stop the nightmare unfolding at the Westboro church.
"Eastside held the mortgage on Westboro," remembers one churchgoer who
was involved in the finances there, "and we always hoped Fred would miss
a payment so we could foreclose. But he never did."
To save money, the pastor moved his wife and children into the church.
Since the congregation at Westboro was essentially the Phelps family,
Cavin convinced John Towle, county assessor, that Westboro should be
taxed as private residence. The controversy was covered in the media,
and the exemption for 3701 West 12th was lifted. But again the fighting
Pastor Phelps taught himself enough about the law to successfully
contest the decision before the Board of Tax Appeals. For good
measure, he sued Cavin and Stauffer Communications for libel. He lost
the suit, but the lines of his future had now been drawn: Fred Phelps
had his castle and his church and he'd learned how to defend them.
His chosen community detested him, but that was to be expected when one
was elect and immersed in a world of damned souls. Fred was content
that his god hated those who questioned him. And he was content to
remain in his private La Rochelle and sally forth occasionally to smite
the reprobate. One old member of Eastside is philosophical about the
feud with Pastor
Fred: "I'll tell you one thing, we can feel awfully lucky he turned down
that slot at West Point. Right now, he'd probably be a general-with his
finger on the button." It was during this period that the Pastor
Phelps cut the final ties with his original family.
When talking with friends, Fred's father never discussed the son he had
in Topeka, says Fred Stokes, a retired army officer who lives outside
Meridian. Stokes was a close friend of the elder Phelps and a pallbearer
at his funeral in 1977: "He had some fundamental beliefs that were
unshakeable, but he didn't force them on anyone." In his later years,
Stokes says, Fred's father was active in the Methodist Church. "He was a
very kind, grandfatherly person. He was at peace with himself and didn't
have any rancor toward anybody at the time of his death." Marks tells
how his grandfather, Fred, (whose name he learned only recently from
Capital-Journal reporters) once came to visit them in Topeka when Mark
was a child. What he recalls most vividly is standing on the platform
at the railroad station with his father and grandfather. As they waited
to put him on the train back to Meridian, the preacher told the weeping
old man never to come back, not to call, nor to write. "I remember my
grandfather was crying. He told my father to get back in the Methodist
Church and stop all this nonsense."
Pastor Phelps admits there was a rift between him and his father. "He
was disappointed when I didn't go to West Point, which is
understandable. He worked hard to get that appointment for me, and he
was a very active Methodist, so he was disappointed in that. But my dad
was a super guy that I loved deeply and I miss him." Relatives in
Mississippi said the elder Phelps never really got over his abandonment
by his son. "It grieved him a lot," remembers one.
When Pastor Phelps was 15 and in his last year of high school his
father, 51, married a 39 year-old divorcee named Olive Briggs. The son
would leave home soon after and grow up to be a fierce critic of
divorce. Olive's sister, who didn't want her name used, said Olive was
a kind Southern lady who never had children and treated Fred and his
sister, Martha Jean, as if they were her own. The new Mrs. Phelps
often talked to her sister about the trouble between the former railroad
detective and his son, the Baptist preacher. "Olive would say he grieved
over that every day of his life. That he never would have parted ways.
It was his son who parted ways."
Other relatives recalled that, each year, the grandparents sent birthday
and Christmas presents to their grandchildren in Topeka. Each year they
were returned unopened. Photos of grandpa and grandma the pastor gave
his extra touch: "When they once sent him pictures of themselves for us
kids to have, I remember watching my dad cutting them meticulously into
little pieces with a pair of scissors. Then he placed them in an
envelope and mailed them back."
When the elder Phelps died in 1977, and Olive Briggs in 1985, of the
two not inconsiderable wills, Fred's father left him one-eighth and his
sister, seven-eighths. Fred's stepmother left her entire estate to
Martha Jean. There would be no relatives dropping by from mother's
side either. Though Marge Phelps had nine brothers and sisters still
living in rural Missouri or nearby Kansas City, with one notable
exception, her own children never met them or so much as knew their
names. And the firm pastor forbade his children to play or talk with
the rest of the youngsters in the neighborhood. Says Mark: "I wanted
friends to share with and talk to, but felt it was the wrong thing and
felt guilty. They would initiate conversation or want to play, and I
would feel real scared and not know what to do or say. Sometimes I
couldn't avoid talking, and it made me feel real uneasy and scared that
I would get caught. "My dad used to make me go and tell the neighbor
kids they couldn't play by the fence, or talk to us, or come in the
yard. He'd say, "I'm tellin' you, if those fucking kids are in this yard
again and I catch them, it's you I'm going to beat!"
"I used to have to fight the kids sometimes, or yell at them, or push
them out of the yard; or I'd turn my back and ignore them so they
wouldn't want to talk or be friendly and get me in trouble." While
this is in keeping with the 'fortress Phelps' mentality the pastor
embarked on shortly after opening Westboro, it is interesting to
speculate how much of the strange goings-on within the fortress the
pastor feared his children might reveal had they been allowed outside
confidants. When Fred's sister, Martha Jean, and her husband, Fred's
teenage best-buddy, John Capron, returned to the U.S. on a year
sabbatical from their Indonesian mission, they came to see Fred. In
part, they'd come to arrange a reconciliation between the brittle pastor
and his devastated father.
They never got started. "He wouldn't even talk to me," Fred's sister
told her nephew, Mark. The good pastor bid her also leave and never
return. Mark remembers riding his bike along in the street, both
curious and embarrassed, watching his aunt go weeping down the sidewalk
for three blocks from their house.
With that, the vengeful minister had succeeded in cutting all lines
leading to his captive congregation. Anyone in the outside world who
might know of their existence or be concerned for their welfare had been
driven off. After he had sold insurance for several years, Phelps had
amassed enough commissions off the yearly premiums to allow him to stop
working and go to law school. He had already transferred credits from
Bob Jones and John Muir to Washburn, then taken coursework there to
receive his degree. Fred Phelps had guts. When he entered Washburn Law
School, he had a wife and seven children. When he graduated, his family
had grown by three.
Phelps was editor of the Law Review and star of the school's moot
court. He is remembered by some of the faculty as perhaps the most
brilliant student ever to pass through Washburn Law. If the public
performance was impressive, however, the private life grew even more
dark.
"It was a very rare occasion," says Mark, "when he would come anywhere
in the house that the kids were. While he was studying the law, he'd fly
into rages because we were making noise. Mom would hide us-for the good
of all." In fact, Phelps began to spend more and more time in his
bedroom, cut off from his family except when they were needed to run
errands for him; cut off except for his wife, whom he forced to remain
with him in his bedroom for days at a time. Apparently the pastor's
sexual appetites were voracious, and his emotional dependency even
greater: Says Mark, "Mom had to spend the major portion of her day
sitting next to him in bed, trying to say the right things to keep him
calm, while he bitched and moaned and complained and railed and carried
on. "He left the older children to take care of the younger ones while
he monopolized our mother's time and attention. We were literally left
on our own for the major portion of our childhoods." While the pastor
lolled now grossly overweight in his bed like some Ottoman pasha,
rolling in his law books and 100 pounds of excess blubber, lecturing the
wife and walls on the evils of the reprobate, wallowing in gluttony and
goat-like sexual appetites, he resembled, not so much the John Brown of
his earlier ambitions, as he did an esquired Jabba the Hut.
"The kids would sit in grime and scum and filth for hours at a time,"
says Mark, "tied into their high chairs or strollers by mom, for their
safety, until she could sneak away from him to give them a diaper
change, redo their ties, and set it up for the older kids to feed them,
so she could get back to him.
"I remember when she'd come downstairs, all the kids would cluster
around her like a swarm of bees, just to touch her and talk to her."
Mark goes on: "I started doing most of the grocery shopping, by bike,
with my brother Fred when I was only seven or eight, because our mom had
such a hard time getting away. We had baskets on our bikes. We were
given money but it was never enough. It was humiliating because we would
hold up the line at the checkout while the cashiers would ask us what we
wanted to keep or take back, and then they'd do the figuring for us,"
Mark sighs in the phone: "When he wanted a chicken dinner, he'd stay
in bed and have me ride my bike two miles each way to get him one. He
never thanked me. "We'd run errands for that, or he'd send us out for
a piece of apple pie with cheese on it. And we had to get back fast.
Damn fast, or he'd complain his apple pie wasn't hot enough. "It was a
mile or two back, the pie riding in a mesh basket, and we had to get it
to him hot." Mark pauses. "It's pretty unbelievable when I think
about it. At breakfast, my father got bacon and eggs; the kids got
oatmeal and grits. At dinner we'd have beans and rice while he ate
chicken or hamburger. Now that I'm a father myself, that just seems
incomprehensible to me. "My father had to take care of us each year
when my mom went into the hospital to give birth. Whatever he had to do,
he'd always lose his temper and start screaming.
"We'd be too scared of him to eat-and then he'd beat us for not eating.
My saliva would not work when he was in the room and mom was gone, so,
to clean our plates, we'd throw our food under the table or into our
laps and flush it down the toilet later. "When he took care of us, I
tried to stay out of the same room with him at all times. He would be
real hard on the little ones when he dressed them. He'd push and jerk
and tug real hard. My father was so impatient and unpredictable. You
never knew what to expect or how to act." When the children did run
into Jabba-the-Dad out of his bed, it was usually unpleasant. Mark tells
of one such time: "The day my brother, Tim, was born, Fred, Jr., and I
were in the dining room fooling around and Fred started to chase me out
the back door. I ran right into my dad."
According to Mark, the pastor started screaming at them not to horse
around. He punched both boys several times and ordered them outside to
work in the yard. On his way out, Mark rounded a corner and
inadvertently stumbled into his father a second time. Enraged, the
pastor connected with a hook to the side of his son's head. Mark fell
down dazed and stunned. The pastor began to kick him, and kept kicking
him, but Mark couldn't get up. His father screamed at him to go out in
the yard, but the boy's legs felt like jello and "the room was rolling
in vertigo". Finally, his father left him there, sprawled and dazed
like a defeated boxer. When Mark could stand up, he joined his older
brother already at work.
Three hours later, their dad called them in. "He told us to get into
bed and not to move. He told me to turn my face to the wall. For hours I
lay like that, too scared to roll over because I thought he might still
be standing there, watching me. Finally, I fell asleep.
"When we woke up the next day, we found he'd been at the hospital with
mom the night before. And we had a new baby brother." Their father
often slept all day and got up in the afternoon, remembers another
Phelps child. "And then everyone would hide because 'daddy was up'.
"He habitually had violent rages that included profane cursing, beyond
any sailor's ability to curse, where he threw and broke anything he
could get his hands on," states Mark. "My father routinely demolished
the kitchen and dining room areas, as well as his bedroom. He would not
only beat mom and the kids, he would smash dishes, glasses, anything
breakable in sight; he'd even throw everything out of the refrigerator.
"He'd literally cover the floor with debris. I remember seeing so much
broken crockery once it looked like an archeologists's dig. There was
ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise splashed across the walls, cupboards,
and floor like a paint bomb had gone off in there. "Afterwards he'd go
upstairs to the bedroom-and force mom to go with him. It would take
hours for us kids to clean up after his rages. He never helped-he'd just
dump on us and leave.
"But he wouldn't stop raging. While we were cleaning the mess
downstairs, he'd force mom to sit at his bedside upstairs while he
continued to curse and complain to her about whatever had gotten his
goat." Nate and Mark confirm the pastor's dish tantrums occurred
regularly, usually once or twice a month. Sometimes there'd be several
in one week.
"It established a life habit for me," says Mark. "Even today, the moment
I get home, I'm thinking 'Is Daddy mad?' "Our walls were stained with
food," he continues. "And my mom used to cry because she couldn't keep
good dishes. My father would also bust holes in the walls and doors. If
they were on the outside, he'd fix them quickly. On the inside, he'd
leave them unrepaired for months.
"And, remember, whenever my father was beating us, or if he was tearing
up a room, the violence might only last a few minutes, but he would keep
up his tirade for hours on end. "I'm not exaggerating. My father would
literally scream-not talk-scream-of-consciousness non-stop insults at us
for hours. "His mouth was, for all the years I knew him, the most
foul, vulgar, cursing mouth you've ever heard. There's nothing he
wouldn't say, including cursing God openly. I watched him, one day,
stand at the back of the church auditorium just outside the kitchen
door, and literally jump up and down and scream curses at the top of his
lungs, like a grown-up two year-old man." The content or nature of
those tirades is instructive. If, in fact, Phelps did maintain this kind
of vitriol for hours one end, it indicates an individual who is
seriously clinically disturbed. Since one man's scandal might be
another's vernacular, the Capital-Journal asked Mark and Nate for a
sample of one of their father's marathon four-hour tirades. The
following, if read in a loud and angry voice (not everyone can scream),
will have a very different effect on one than if it is only scanned. It
offers a sudden and shocking subjective experience of what it must be
like inside the pastor's head-of the twisted rage and volcanic hate that
must seethe in there-assuming the sample is accurate. Most functioning
individuals are able to carry on the following Fauve impressionist
vitriol for only a minute or so...Phelps reportedly maintained it for
hours:
Shitass, Goddam, tit-ass, piss-ass Goddam, ass-hole bastard, piece of
shit, dick, son-of-a-bitch God forsaken filthy measly-assed piece of
fucking shit Goddam horses ass. You're not worth shit. You're a no good,
no account, God forsaken piss-assed little bastard. Get your ass in
there and lean over that Goddam bed, you're going to get a licken.
Bitch. Fucker. Prick, Fucker, Prick, Goddam fucker, Goddam prick,
asshole, prick, prick, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fuck you, you
Goddam fucking piece of garbage. Go to hell. Fuck you. Go to hell.
Prick. Fucker. GODDAMN YOU, you fucker. You worthless piece of shit.
Goddam you, you worthless piece of shit of Goddam fucking shit. Fuck
you. Go straight fucking to hell you Goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch. God
Damn You! God Damn You!!! God Damn You!!! You Goddam asshole son-of-a-
bitch. God Damn You! How dare you, you asshole bastard prick turd. You
turd. You lying, mother fucking stinking piece of fucking shit. Fuck
you, you lying sack of shit, you. Get the fuck out of my face. Go to
hell. I hate you, you bastard. I hate you, you asshole. You Goddam prick
asshole bastard, dick, piece of fucking rank stinking fucking garbage
that's as full of shit as anyone could ever be. Get the hell out of
here, you fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Go to fucking hell you bastard. Piss-
ass. Horses ass. Goddam fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker.
FUCKER! FUCKER! FUCKER! Asshole. You bastard. You sick Goddam son-of-a-
bitch. You worthless little bastard. You Goddam asshole prick bastard.
God Damn It!! God Damn YOU!!! GOD DAMN YOU!!! Fuck you, you bastard.
You're going to hell. You little Tit-ass. Shit-ass. Fucker Tit-ass. You
little Shitass. Piss-ass little bastard. You Goddam little bastard, I'm
going to teach you. Get the hell up there. Why did you do this to me?
Say!! What's the big idea? What the hell do you think you're doing,
bringing reproach on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ? I'm not going
to put up with your sissified wimpy asshole ways. Shut up. God damn it.
God damn it. God damn it. Keep those Goddam kids quiet. I'm not going to
tell you again. What's the big idea making all of that Goddam racket?
Say! Didn't I tell you to not make a fucking sound? You think you're so
Goddam smart thinking for yourself, when I told you what the fuck I
wanted. Keep those Goddam kids quiet or I'm going to beat the hell out
of all of you, you bitch. You bastard. You bitch. Fuck you. Fuck you,
God damn it. I'm going to beat the hell out of you; I warned you and now
you're going to catch it. Where do you think you're going. Get the fuck
back over here you son-of-a-bitch and take your beating like a man.
Fucking asshole bastard son-of-a-bitch chicken shit piece of crap, no
good little bastard. What the hell do you think you're doing, for
Christ's sake? I'm not going to put up with you, do you understand me?
Do you? I won't tolerate this bullshit. God Damn you!! I'll beat the
living shit out of you. Watch it. I'm warning you. I warned you what I'd
do. It's your own God Damn fault. I warned you, for Christ's sake.
What's the big idea getting this family in trouble like this? I'll beat
you until you can't stand up or sit down. God damn son-of-a-bitch,
asshole. I told you what I'd do if you didn't get them Goddam grades up.
You little prick. How do you like that? Does that hurt, does it? Goddam
it, does it hurt? It better hurt. If it doesn't I'll make sure it hurts.
Are you fucking crazy? Are you crazy? You must be insane. Jesus Christ,
how many Goddam times am I going to have to beat you? When are you going
to learn? Say! Say! Is that right? Is that right? When you are going to
learn? You no account little bastard. In the old testament they used to
take kids like you out and stone them to death. That's what you deserve.
You ought to be taken out and stoned. At least parents in that time had
some Goddam solution to a problem like you. That's what would cure you.
You've been nothing but Goddam grief to your mother and I since the
fucking day you were born. I wish you were dead. I hate you. Jesus
Christ, I hate you. I can't stand you. I can't stand the sight of you.
You're sniffing after some whore, for Christ's sake. You got your dick
wet and now you've just gone crazy sniffing after that fucking whore.
You hot blooded little bastard. Keep your Goddam pants on and keep your
fucking dick inside. Horse piss, bullshit, balderdash, crap, lying
bastard, son of belial, reprobate. ballamite, Goddam Horses Ass! God
damn you God, you lying asshole letting them do this to me. God damn You
God, how could you let them do this to me! What the hell do you think
you're doing? God damn you God. You son-of-a-bitch. Hey you bitch, got
any good words for me? You better say something or I'm going to kick the
living shit out of you. Speak up. Say!!! What the hell good are you?
Say, what the hell good are you? What the hell is on your Goddam mind?
Speak the hell up. I'll slap the living shit out of you until you
fucking can't see straight. You pussy whipped little bastard. You horse
manure. Fuck you. Go to hell. You're going to hell. Go to hell. Shitass.
Bastard. Bitch. Horses ass. God damn chicken shit bastard son-of-a-bitch
little fucker, get the fuck out of my sight. You little chicken shit.
You piece of garbage. You're God damn worthless. You'll never amount to
a God damn thing. You're a loser and always will be. You go along fine
for a while and then you do something like this to fuck it all up. You
little asshole. You'll never amount to anything. You're a God damn
loser. You'll end up in jail you God damn deadbeat. Shut your big dumb
ape mouth, you look like some kind of fucking idiot with your big Goddam
dumb mouth hanging open. I'll beat that foolishness out of you. Look at
that foolishness leaving him, I can see it with every hit of this Goddam
mattock. It does my heart good to hear those screams and see that
foolishness leaving. What's the big idea doing that to me? Say! Why did
you do this to me Say! Say! How could you treat me this way? How could
you treat me this way you little bastard? What's the big idea? Say! I'm
not going to put up with this kind of bullshit. You're going to get a
beating. Lean over there Goddam it. You think I'm going to put up with
you? You think I don't know how to deal with the likes of you, you God
forsaken little bastard? We know how to deal with asshole kids like you.
I'll beat you. I'll beat you like the Bible says to beat you and you
won't die. Dammit woman, you know the Bible says that if you beat your
child they won't die, so shut your Goddam mouth or I'll slap you. Do you
want me to beat you fat ass? You Goddam hussy. You fat Goddam hussy.
You'd think you could give me some Goddam fucking support instead of
always fighting me and causing me all of this Goddam fucking grief. I'm
not going to put up with your Goddam sassy mouth talking back to me or
telling me what to do, you fucking bitch. I'm telling you; Goddam it;
I'm warning you, I'm going to slap the hell of out of you; you're going
to catch it if you don't shut your Goddam God forsaken mouth and back
off. I'm not going to tell you again. The next time I'm going to turn my
Goddam attention to you and you're going to be sorry. I'll cuff you
around and give you a Goddam beating. Don't interfere with my beating of
this Goddam bastard one more time. I want this fat off of that ass. I'm
not going to put up with that fat ass. If you don't lose by tomorrow,
you'll get another beating. I want that fat ass off of you, you fat
bitch, you Goddam fat slut, do you get it, you think headed bitch?
"My sisters and brothers just stood around and shaked and farted and
looked scared when dad was throwing a fit," brags Mark
uncharacteristically. "but I learned how to control my fear by working
with my hands and getting things done. "I used to stand in the back
room of the house, which was called the dryer room, and fold clothes for
hours upon hours. I learned to feel secure if I was getting something
done that was bottom line."
The voice pauses. "Still, he'd wake us up at night with mom screaming
from fear as he threw his fits. I'd come awake and lie there feeling
afraid and upset. "I wasn't worried about being woken up, that he was
upset, or even that he was hurting mom. I was worried about survival.
About what could happen if it got worse. I was thinking about lying
still in case he came in, so he wouldn't know I was awake. "Because,
he was so crazy, we didn't know that someday he wouldn't kill us all."
Back in those days, during the '60s, when Fred was in law school and
then a young lawyer, the neighbors would often see Marge on the porch.
"She'd just be sitting out there, crying her heart out," remembers one
former neighbor. "We all felt so sorry for her. But none of us ever went
over there to comfort her. Her husband had us all intimidated." But if
life with father was bad already-it was about to get worse. According
to Mark, who was 10 when his father graduated, Fred Phelps became
heavily dependent on amphetamines and barbituates while in law school.
Every week for 6 years, from 1962-1967, their mother would give Mark a
20 dollar bill and ask him to go down and pick up his father's 'allergy
medicine'. Mark always got the bottle of little red pills from 'the tall
blond man' at the nearby pharmacy. He was told they were to 'help daddy
wake up'.
He also picked up bottles of little yellow pills that were to 'help
daddy get to sleep'. But the beast already so poorly penned within
Fred now came out. Under the conflicting tug of speed that wouldn't wear
off and the Darvon he'd taken to sleep, the Pastor Phelps would often
wake his family in the middle of the night while doing his imitation of
a whirling dervish whose shoes were tied together: "With all the
drugs, he had very little body control," remembers Mark, "so we weren't
really scared of him then. But he would fall and break the bed apart;
get up and knock over all the bedroom furniture. "Mom would start
screaming and call Freddy and me to help her get him under control and
put the bed together.
"My dad's face would look totally stoned, and he couldn't focus his
eyes. He couldn't walk in a straight line, and sometimes he couldn't
even get up off the floor." Adds Nate: "Another time when he was
stoned on drugs, my dad started going after my mom. She was yelling for
help. My two older brothers, probably 12 and 13 at the time, went
running upstairs and tried to force my dad back into his bedroom. He was
ranting and raving like a lunatic. "They managed to get him inside his
room and slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside. He
started pounding on the door and screaming incoherently. "Finally, he
actually broke the door down. That seemed to calm him a bit, and he fell
back on the bed and passed out."
Without referring to his records, the pharmacist named by Mark
immediately denied he had ever filled any kind of prescription for the
Pastor Phelps-except once. Blessed with preternaturally accurate
recall, the pharmacist claimed that, since 1962, he'd only filled one
order for the pastor-a skin cream several years ago.
Questioned again later, the pharmacist admitted he'd been filling
prescriptions written to Mrs. Phelps for decades. But he denied ever
selling her amphetamines. According to Mark, the physician who wrote
those prescriptions delivered all or most of the Phelps children, and
was their family doctor when they were growing up. During the period in
question, he at least twice reported his doctor bag stolen and its
narcotics missing. The thieves were never caught. When this physician
shot himself in a Topeka parking lot in 1979, he was under investigation
for providing drugs illegally to his female patients in exchange for
sexual favors. What kind of drugs?
Amphetamines. "There was fighting one night," Mark recalls. "In the
middle of the night. Dad was stoned on drugs again. He shot the 12-gauge
into a roll of insulation.
"It was probably a suicide attempt. Only my mom and he were in the
bedroom, and it was during the middle of the night. "What I think
happened was, he was so under the influence, he was so screwed up, and
he was so mad that he was doing one of those things...you know...I'll
show all of you...I'll just get rid of this whole problem by killing
myself.
"And I think he just did it. I think he did it for the dramatics of it-
of course, he missed. "After the incident, that roll of insulation sat
in their bedroom for almost a year. "Our mom tried to keep things
quiet and keep things contained," says Mark. "She acted as a mother to
him as well as us. Having him in our family was like having a little 2
year-old in an adult's body-with an adult intellect. But it's a 2 year-
old that can do whatever it wants, because there's no adult discipline,
instruction, or correction involved. My father does not subject himself
to accountability of any kind. "He didn't care about our mom, except
for how she could meet his needs. He treated her like an animal.
"We had two dogs-Ahab and Jezebel. I used to throw rocks on top of their
dog house and Ahab would viciously attack Jezebel. I thought it was
funny. "That was the way my dad treated my mom. If anything would
happen that my dad didn't like, he would beat on her, blame her, make
her life miserable, and take it out on her-even if it was out of her
control.
Mark remembers one morning when he was downstairs and heard a tremendous
racket coming from their bedroom above. Furniture crashing. Fred
screaming. Their mother begging him to stop. Then her screaming too.
This went on for 20 minutes until finally his father stormed out. All
quiet.
Mark stole up the stairs, afraid his father would come back. He peeked
in. (At this point, Mark's voice breaks. It takes him a long time to
describe this, speaking in short phrases, interrupted by long pauses to
control his emotions.) The mattress was thrown from the bed. Sheets
were ripped away. Drawers were flung out of the dresser, and the dresser
kicked over. Lamps and tables, everything was smashed and strewn about
the room.
"Mom?" he called. He couldn't see her. "Mom?" Mark heard a sob. Then
a long, low agony moan. He walked stiffly into the mess. Picked his way
across the floor. In the corner, behind an open closet door, he found
his mother cowering. Her face in her hands as the sobs wracked her body,
she told her frightened child over and over: "I can't take this
anymore...I can't take this anymore...I can't take it...I don't know
what I'm going to do..." For awhile she did nothing.
Mark remembers there were times when his mother would get out and go to
the store, especially when his father was asleep: "She'd go to
Butler's IGA. And after she'd go to the bowling alley and the little
coffee shop there. Four or five times I saw her in there when she didn't
know I did. It made me feel sad, because it was such a lonely thing to
see her, sitting with that coffee and donut, and know it was her safe
harbor, the only time she had alone. She looked so unhappy and
despairing, sitting there staring at nothing, the coffee getting cold
and the donut untouched." Then one winter Saturday afternoon when Mark
was 9 years old, his mother called him over to her. She whispered: "I've
had it. I can't take it. Would you get the children's clothes and load
as much as you can in the trunk and the back seat?"
Mark packed the clothes in the old white Fairlane 4-door. When the
pastor, luxuriating in his bed upstairs, fell asleep around 4 p.m.,
their mother came down softly. She had Mark gather the rest of the kids.
"We're leaving," she told them. Somehow they all fit inside the car,
the mother behind the wheel, and the 9 kids wherever they could find
space.
"We looked ridiculous," admits Mark. "And I remember the toll-takers at
the turnpike laughed at us. But I'll never forget that day...the feeling
I got as we drove away from that house. "It was a cloudy day, and
cold, but I remember feeling hopeful. Thinking we were headed to a new
life. And it was going to be better than the one behind us."
Marge fled the good Pastor Phelps with her flock to Kansas City. She
went to her sister Dorotha's apartment. Most of her original family
hadn't seen Marge in 15 years, not since she'd left for school in
Arizona. Dorotha's Profitt's husband drove a truck for a renderer, a
business that collected dead animals for glue. Marge Phelps' sister no
doubt gave her the bad news: driving for a rendering company didn't
bring in enough to feed 10 extra mouths; and the apartment couldn't
possibly hold them all; she couldn't stay there... In fact, there was
no place for a pregnant woman with 9 children to run except back to the
man who beat her, but paid the bills. Mark remembers his mother
stoically dialing the number for the Westboro church. Silently, the
children crawled back into their niches among the clothes-filled car.
When they arrived home that night, the pastor was waiting for them.
His son recalls he had arms folded and he was smiling. It was a cold
leer that Mark will never forget: "It was smug, it was cruel; and it
said, 'there is no escape'."
CHAPTER FIVE
"The Children's Crusade"
The pastor's heavy drug use continued from 1962 until late 1967 or early
1968, according to Mark Phelps. Confined to itself and tormented by an
increasingly explosive, abusive, and erratic father, the family hung on
day-to-day. Finally, Fred's system could no longer withstand being
wrenched up by reds in the morning and jerked down by barbituates at
night. One day, he didn't wake up. Mark remembers seeing the long,
gray ambulance in the driveway. His father had slipped into a coma from
toxic drug abuse. Fred Phelps remained in the hospital for a week,
while Mrs. Phelps told the children he had suffered an adverse reaction
to an 'allergy medicine'.
When he emerged, Phelps was drug-free and powerfully resolved to regain
control of his body. If it was the temple to his soul, he had neglected
it. With an astounding strength of will, he immediately plunged into a
water-only fast, dropping from 265 to 135 in 47 days. During the fast,
"he looked like a scarecrow," says Mark. "He stalked about the house
with a scarf around his head, clutching a bible to his chest." But the
Pastor Phelps broke his addiction and never relapsed. To keep his
weight down, he turned first to health foods and then to running.
Emaciated at 135, Phelps today is a trim 185 on a 6'3" frame. One day,
after he had been running for some time, the pastor read about the new
science of aerobics on the back of a Wheaties box and decided the entire
family should join him. Fred loaded the ten oldest children in the
station wagon, drove them to the Topeka High track, and, not unlike
Fred's Foreign Legion, ordered them to march or die. Actually, they were
told to run or get beaten. Their ages when this concurred were 5, 6,
7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 16. Of the three youngest, two were little
girls. They were forced to run five miles a day-sun, rain, or snow-and
then the pastor upped it to ten. By the summer of 1970 a year later,
Phelps decided they were read