A child's final hours

Regina Garvie
The Tuttle Times

TUTTLE May 02, 2006 01:44 pm

— Monday was a fun day for Audra.
Her last full day of life was marked by a trip to Schrock Park for the fifth grade’s annual spring fling. Audra was, by all accounts, a feminine girl who preferred playing quietly to running and jumping, but she had taken her turn at bat during the baseball game. She swung, and missed. She didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly.
But then her sweet, young, beloved teacher, Miss Woods, stepped up to the plate. She wrapped her arms protectively around the little girl and helped her hold the bat with a strong grip. Audra smiled at her teacher and stepped back into the game with just a bit more confidence in herself.
As she rode home after school, she may have relived the moment in her mind. Probably her thoughts were nearer to her mother, who had been in California for more than a week, visiting relatives and trying to get the family’s former home sold.
She talked to her mother, Linda, that night on the phone, and Linda told Audra that she was staying a few more days. Linda’s half-sister, Beatrice, had flown out from Texas to California as a surprise. Beatrice had never been to California and wanted to visit Lake Tahoe, so Linda offered to take her out there, then come home before the end of the week.
“On Monday, she asked if I was coming home tomorrow,” Linda recalled. “She said, ‘Mommy, please come home now. I don’t want you to wait.’”
But Linda waited. Her little daughter asked plaintively, but Linda knew another day or two wouldn’t do any harm.
Of course Audra missed her, but they would be back together shortly.
“I postponed going home because Beatrice wanted to go to Lake Tahoe, and then the nightmare happened,” Linda said. “I’ve lost so many nights of sleep over it. It’s just a big nightmare that Audra got lost in.”
Audra Lynn Matheny was dead at age 11.
Before the week was out, her stepfather, Steven Wilson, was arrested for her rape and murder, and Audra’s body was buried. The funeral was held on Saturday, May 15, 1982 - five years to the day after Steve and Linda Wilson were married. Audra was laid to rest in the Pine Grove Cemetery in Bastrop, La., the same bayou town where her parents had courted.
Charles Matheny and Linda Bingham were both teenagers when they met and began dating in the late ‘60s. Charles’ family was solidly middle class; Linda’s struggled a bit more. They had a large family, and Charles remembered her father sold vegetables out of the back of a truck for a living.
“The first time I went to Linda’s house to date her, I needed to use the bathroom and they pointed to the back door. Some of the older houses back then didn’t have indoor plumbing and they’d build the bathroom on the back porch,” Charles said. “I went out on the back porch and there was a door, but when I opened it, there was a big old pantry, with canned goods. I heard the back door open, and Linda pointed out towards the yard, and I looked out there, and there was an outhouse out there in the yard. They didn’t have an indoor toilet. That was in 1969.”
Regardless, he was infatuated with Linda, and on March 6, 1970, they became man and wife. He was 19 years old; she was 16.
“I think Linda married me to get away from home more than anything else,” Charles said later. “And I was probably too young too; I didn’t really know anything about being married.”
Linda became pregnant within a few months, and the couple was happy.
“It was an easy pregnancy,” she said. “I was 16. A child having a child. That was all I ever wanted.”
Their only child, Audra Lynn, was born March 9, 1971 at Morehouse General Hospital.
“When she was a little bitty baby, she cried a lot,” recalled Charles’ sister, Glenda Reynolds. The family held a 25th wedding anniversary for Audra’s maternal grandparents, and the infant Audra cried the entire day. Adding insult to injury was the fact that her cousin, Shannon, who was three months older, sat on the couch and was good all day long.
Audra’s mother was quick to gloss over her baby daughter’s tearful stage.
“She was a little colicky at first, but she grew out of that fast,” Linda said. The baby had few other problems, other than having to be fitted for special shoes to straighten out her crooked feet when she was nine months old.
Charles worked at the paper mill in Bastrop while Linda watched little Audra. The paper mill emitted a foul odor, and the young family lived only a few blocks from there.
“He walked to work,” Linda said. “He’d just breathe deep and say that it smelled like bread and butter to him.”
Charles remembered his little girl as being a little stubborn when she was small. Audra was about two years old and playing with her toys when bedtime rolled around one night.
“Like a baby, she had toys scattered all over the room, and she had gotten old enough that it was time for her to learn that before she goes to bed it was time to pick up her toys,” Charles said. “So about bedtime, I said, ‘Audra, you ought to pick your toys up.’” But Audra said no.
So Charles asked again. “‘Audra, hon, pick your toys up,’ I asked, and she just flat told me no,” he said. “I had to take her little hand and pick up each toy and walk to the toybox and put it in the toybox. It probably took close to an hour to get her toys picked up, and then we put her to bed. Of course, I felt bad about it.”
But Charles felt a little better the next night, when he asked her to pick up her toys before bed.
“She jumped up right then,” he said. You never had to tell her but once after that to pick her toys up and she’d pick them up and put them in her toybox. But it was hard that first time. Audra had a mind of her own.”
Charles also remembered the time Audra had to have a shot at the doctor’s office, and it took three adults to hold her down. “After the shot, you know, she just sat up and said, ‘Oh, that didn’t hurt,’” Charles said.
Audra was three years old when her mother left Charles. Linda later moved with Audra to California.
“We were married about three and a half years,” Linda said. “I’m the one who broke the marriage up. I didn’t really love him the way people are supposed to love their husbands.”
Although Linda and Audra were living across the county, Audra still saw her father’s family often, visiting Bastrop on various holidays and in the summer. Audra was six years old when Linda started putting her on a plane by herself. She would visit with a relative of her dad’s during her Ft. Worth, Texas layover, and then get back on the plane for the flight to Monroe, La., only a short drive from Bastrop.
“Linda always made sure Audra got to come visit,” said Charles.
Linda met Steve Wilson in California, and the pair was wed in 1978. Audra, who was six at the time, loved her “Daddy Steve.” Not long after, Audra was thrilled to become a big sister as her brother, Sean, was born. Sean, who was asleep in his parents’ bed when Audra was killed, is now a pilot in California. He still remembers with clarity the sister he lost so long ago.
“She was always really, really good to me,” he said. “She mothered me a lot.”
One of his clearest memories is of Audra’s big Barbie doll head toy, and the way Audra patiently tried to teach him to braid the doll’s hair. He also remembers the two of them baking chocolate chip cookies and ending up sitting and eating the raw dough together.
“She was just a great big sister,” he said. “She was awesome. On our last Christmas, my parents bought me a big styrofoam airplane. She would play with that with me. We’d play with kites. She was just always really cool...and then she was gone.”
Sean suffered the agony of not only losing his sister, but losing his father as well. He remembers his father being handcuffed and led away.
“It’s like somebody just takes your whole world away. My sister’s gone and my daddy’s gone,” Sean said. “It’s like one of those really good dreams that you have - and then you wake up.”
Sean said his mother was also lost, in a sense, for many years while she worked through the tragedy. She was there physically, but seemed distant much of the time, caught up in her own despair.
Linda’s agony was compounded by the fact that she had known Steve could be violent.
“He choked me once on the ground, right there in the backyard in Tuttle until I thought I was going to die,” she said.
Linda said that he was abusive to her, but since she had never seen him hurt the children, she believed they were safe with him.
“He was mean to me, but he never hit Audra. He never pushed Audra. He never laid a hand on Audra.” Linda said.
The police came out to the house after the backyard incident, and Linda said she was afraid to tell them anything. Linda said that Steve apologized profusely to the police, but when they weren’t looking he glared at her - just daring her to say something. She kept quiet.
“I remember a few weeks before she died, Steve had gotten violent with me,” Linda said. The next day, a cold, rainy afternoon, Linda picked up Audra in front of the school. Linda was wearing sunglasses to hide the fact that she’d been crying, but Audra wasn’t fooled.
“She said, ‘Mommy, listen. Why don’t we just go home and pack a few things and go? Mommy, he’ll never hurt you again.’” Linda recalled. “And I said, ‘Honey, I wish it was that simple.’ But it could have been.”
Linda said she did threaten to leave Steve, but he told her that he would kill her before she took Sean from him.
So she stayed. And things started to run a little smoother at home. According to Linda, she and Steve were getting along, and things were about as normal and calm as they got in the Wilson home. The couple’s house back in California still hadn’t been sold, and Linda asked Steve what he thought about her flying to the west coast to wrap up the loose ends.
“If I could turn back the clock, I never would have left her there,” she said.
But they agreed it was the best idea, and Steve stayed in Tuttle to take care of the children and to get Audra off to school each day. Linda flew out, talked to the realtor, and had the price on the house lowered. That was when her sister came and surprised the family. And that was when Linda decided to stay another couple of days.
“I wasn’t home, and the truth is, I blame myself,” Linda said. “If I had never left, she would still be alive. I would have died in her place. Moms are supposed to protect their children, and I couldn’t.”
Looking back, Linda said the biggest red flag she remembered was when she came home from work, tired from a long day not long after the police were called out.
“At the time, I thought he was just dominating me,” she said.
Steve, who was trying to get a business going producing casket liners, was supposed to take care of the house. But when she got home that night, the house was messy and the kitchen was cold and quiet.
“I was trying to be careful. I didn’t want to make him mad,” she said. “There was nothing for dinner, so I said I’d go to the store. I went to ask Audra if she wanted to go with me and Sean, and he followed me down the hall. He’s 6’2”. I’m 5’1”. I weigh like 102 pounds.”
Linda remembered that Audra said she wanted to go, but Steve came right up next to Linda and stood next to her, intimidating her. Linda said that Steve wouldn’t let Audra go, saying that she had homework to do. But Audra loved school, and always did her homework.
“I don’t see why she can’t go,” Linda had said, but still he refused. “But Sean went, no problem. I remember thinking ‘I hate him so much,’ but I thought he was just being mean to me. Not for one second did I think he would molest her while I was gone.”
The Mathenys believe Audra was almost saved during her last trip to Louisiana. The little girl visited in late April, a month or so after her 11th birthday. Since her dad’s relatives had missed the celebration, they held another one for her in their town. Charles Matheny had remarried, and his wife Katie brought her two young children into the marriage. Charles and Katie held a skate party for Audra, then returned to her grandparents’ house for cake and presents.
“She enjoyed opening her presents and cutting her cake herself,” said Glenda Reynolds. “She was really beginning to be quite a young lady.”
Audra always had a hard time leaving Bastrop, but this time was different. She begged her family to let her stay.
“When Audra came that time for her birthday, there was something wrong with her, and we knew it,” said Glenda. “Mother even carried her up to the farm from Charles’ to talk to her and try to get her to tell us what it was. We knew there was something wrong, but she wouldn’t tell us. She didn’t want to say anything.”
Katie Matheny said that Audra came to her and asked if she could come live with her dad and Katie.
“She came to me, and was trying to tell me in so many words that she wanted to live with us, and she wanted to know how she’d go about doing that,” Katie said. “I told her, ‘Well, we’ll just have to talk to your daddy, and see what he says, and we’ll work things out thataway.”
Charles spoke to Linda when he brought Audra back and told her that their daughter had asked to move to Bastrop. “I said, ‘Audra wants to stay here and finish out the school year with Amy and Stacy [her stepsister and stepbrother].’ I said, ‘Now you know when Audra reaches 12 years old, she can live with whichever parent she chooses, and you know what she’s going to do. She has wanted to be able to do it for a long time,” he said.
Charles said that Linda told him she couldn’t live without her little daughter.
So Audra went back to Tuttle.
“We didn’t feel good about letting her go,” said Glenda, “But we never imagined this.”
Less than a month later, Audra was back in Bastrop, during her funeral at the Central Church of Christ and subsequent burial at Pine Grove Cemetery. Today, ceramic angels perch on the edges of her headstone, and flowers are often placed at her grave.
Her father’s family leaves some, and although her mother does not live in the state, Audra’s other maternal relatives bring by their tributes.
Both sides of the family wonder what her life would have been like if she had lived. The Mathenys look at her cousins - especially Shannon, who was only three months older than her. Every milestone Shannon reached - birthdays, graduations, marriage - reminded the family of what they lost even as they honored his accomplishments. Twenty-four years later, the families still mourn what was lost.
Audra would have been 34 years old today, on March 9. Instead of celebrating that day, her family is left full of questions - and dreams about what might have been.

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