Most Monsters

40 years after he tried to kill my mom, I faced my father in court

When I was young, I loved watching horror movies. The villains are almost always men.

Deep in the cinematic underbrush of horror films is the slasher film, which typically tells the story of a psycho-killer who goes after a string of victims, with one primary target at the top of his kill list.

The best bad guys cover their heads with a mask — the mystery makes everything so much more scary.

Jason never screams, or yells, or so much as speaks in Halloween — he just cocks that white face to the side and strides confidently toward his victims. Ghostface in the Scream films is a little more whimsical — still, when he slashes his victims, he does so without ever deviating from the Van Gogh-like howl on the mask he wears. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Leatherface wears one of the three masks (each crudely stitched of human skin) to suit his mood. There is, of course, one for killing.

Expressionless and devoid of all emotion, bad guys seem subhuman when they don a mask. When you can’t see who they are, you imagine them to be something supernatural.

All my life, I had heard people refer to my father as if he were one of those villains: “He’s evil.” “He’s a monster.”

I lived without seeing his photo and only ever knowing him for the One Terrible Thing — the only thing that ever mattered — so for most of my life, he was an almost larger-than life apparition: someone who came to me in dreams, or in fleeting moments when I heard a strange noise outside my window.

I found out he shot my mom when I was around five years old. Up to then, I had convinced myself he died in a car accident. I thought he and my mom had been in the car together — he hadn’t survived, and she had hit her head and lost her eye. Her eye had flown out the window, I would tell people.

One day, I had the idea to write him a letter and put it in a balloon, which I would release into the sky. He would get it in heaven, I told my mom.

That’s when she told me he wasn’t in heaven. He wasn’t dead. There had been no car accident. There had been a shooting and he had been the one holding the gun. She lost her eye because of the gunshot.

He wasn’t in heaven because he was the devil.

He was the villain — the monster in my origin story.

I never thought I’d face the monster. If I did, I assumed it would be because he had found me — that he had come to finish what he started with my mom, or come to take his residual rage out on me. There’s always a sequel when it comes to slasher films, after all.

For a brief moment, he did resurface — tormenting us with vaguely threatening Facebook messages when he got out of prison a little over a year ago.

He was in and out of prison my entire life. He was charged with aggravated assault for my mom’s shooting — the maximum sentence was 20 years but he got out in six, though he’s been incarcerated a dozen times since. But when he started writing my mom Facebook messages a year ago, it felt like I was living in a horror movie. The call was coming from inside the house.

I didn’t know where he was — if he might show up, if he was hiding in my bathroom. If he would kill me.

I debated getting a restraining order but knew that my mom had one when he shot her. Maybe that would only make him more angry, I thought. 

As I debated what to do as the litany of messages rolled in, they stopped. Just for a week or so. Was he driving to find us? I wondered.

And then, just like that, I learned he had stabbed another woman — a woman he had briefly dated, who broke up with him, and then called the police to look into getting a restraining order. Court documents show he walked into a Lowe’s hardware store, bought a knife, then walked across the street to her workplace and stabbed her six times in full view of the customers. Then he walked to a Kroger grocery store next door, and changed his clothes so he could escape undetected. He donned his metaphorical mask then tried to disguise himself as a regular person.

An off-duty police officer got the call and happened to be driving by. He saw him and cornered him. The officer was so new to the police department that he didn’t even have a radio in his patrol car. He had to ask a passerby to call 911.

My dad then stabbed himself in the stomach three times, slashing at his wrists as he realized he was about to be apprehended. People nearby took photos and videos as he lay bleeding on the ground, finally still enough to be handcuffed.

He and his victim were taken to the same hospital. He was read his Miranda rights in the hospital bed and asked for a lawyer.

Months later, I was contacted by the District Attorney prosecuting the case. Initially, he wanted to subpoena my mom for her testimony but ultimately, my dad pled guilty, averting a trial altogether.

Still, there would be a sentencing — he was charged with attempted murder, which comes with a maximum 30-year sentence, but he could serve as little as 10.

So, the DA asked both my mom and I to appear at the sentencing and read statements about how his shooting had affected our lives. The hope would be that the statements might illustrate to the judge why he shouldn’t be free.

Of course, it also meant facing the monster.

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The days leading up to the hearing were some of my most nerve-wracking. I didn’t sleep for days leading up to it, my fear often getting so strong that my Oura ring alerted me my heart rate had changed.

We arrived to court at 9 AM and the foreman made an announcement that my dad was being brought over from the nearby prison, which meant it would be several hours before his sentencing hearing began.

We were told to leave the courthouse for a few hours and try to take a breath while we waited.

The next several hours I spent either pacing or lying down. I tried to throw up. I failed. Then the victim advocate texted me that the hearing would likely begin soon, so we headed back to the courthouse. We sat down and then I had the thought that I should run to the bathroom quickly before he arrived, in case I did vomit. But the exact second I walked out the doors, I heard the judge say his name — the same last name as mine — and I abruptly turned to head back in.

And as I turned around and reentered the room, things moved in slow motion. There he was — walking in and surrounded by four armed guards: my monster.

Shackled and small, he shuffled in with the skin and stature of someone much older.

He was short. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, his eyes darting everywhere in the courtroom except in my direction.

Surrounded by the four much larger armed men, he appeared remorseless and pitiful.

That’s the truth of most villains, I think. The people you build up in your head to be absolutely evil and without a moral compass and subhuman — when you get the chance to see who they really are, their mask slips off.

And this is the truth of all the bad guys you’ll ever fear:

Most monsters are just some guy.

When my mom’s name was called to deliver her statement, she walked to the podium to face the judge, and deliver her statement.

The bullet struck me in the right side of my head, and my life has never been the same since.

I sustained an open traumatic brain injury, which means my skull was fractured, exposing the brain tissue. A year after the shooting, a plate was placed in my head to protect my brain, but I still live in chronic pain. 

I suffer from memory loss, seizures, anxiety, depression, and mixed emotional features. I have trouble focusing and trouble making decisions. I cannot drive or cook or take care of myself. I become easily disoriented and irritable. I get confused often and have trouble paying attention to books and tv shows, and even conversations with my own daughter. 

I lost nearly my entire sinus cavity, which means I lost my sense of smell and a great deal of my sense of taste.

My face is deformed due to the injury. I underwent major facial reconstruction due to the injuries to my sinus cavity from the shooting. Part of my nose had to be removed, and part of my scalp had to be grafted to my nasal cavity in order to create a nose for me.

My self-confidence is very low. I feel like some children are even afraid of me due to my appearance.

I no longer feel safe in life. I live with an underlying fear of trusting people. I feel very intimidated when speaking with people. I fear that the things I say will trigger anger in others, as they did with him.

I still have vivid dreams of the abuse that I suffered at the hands of the defendant, and I am still terrified of him. I was pregnant with my daughter most of the times I was being abused. My daughter was 6 weeks old when he shot me so my mother raised her. I do not know how NOT to be afraid of him. I live with the effects of his abuse and attempted murder of me every single day.

And then it was my turn.

My name is Virginia Chamlee and I am Monica’s daughter. In many ways, I am also her mother.

I was born on January 29, 1985. Six weeks later, the defendant shot my mother in the head. 

The defendant did not kill my mother, but he still took her from me. The traumatic brain injury she endured made her a different person — one who could not take care of me. Instead, I now take care of her. My life revolves around being her caretaker.

Growing up, my mom was more like my sister — because of the shooting, my grandmother had to raise me and also raise my mom, for a second time. 

I was very lucky. My grandmother was my hero. She did the work of a father and a mother and so much more — she pushed me to follow my dreams, to pursue an education, and she quietly ensured I was as safe as possible, even building a room in our home that had no windows and a row of panic buttons on the wall, just in case the defendant ever tried to find us.

I was not shot nor stabbed by the defendant, but I did not get out unscathed. What he took from me — my childhood, my mom, the recent years I have spent as a caregiver — cannot ever be replaced.

My mother and I are both stuck in a holding pattern — she, by her physical disabilities, and me, by the knowledge that I can never fix her, no matter how hard I try.

My mother has now lived 40 years as this version of herself. She only got 20 as the woman she was before and it is a tragedy that I will never know that person.

There are multiple victims in the courtroom today and most of them have two lives: their lives before the defendant, and their lives after. Unfortunately, all I have ever known is the after. The defendant robbed me of my mother, my trust in others, and my ability to live a normal life.

My dad spoke at the sentencing, too. He claimed he had no idea my mom had been so gravely injured, or that the shooting had so affected my life. He claimed he simply shot at the car and fled, without knowing whether anyone was shot.

But he left us all for dead, like any monster would.

When the District Attorney delivered his closing statement moments later, he quoted me, saying that the defendant’s own daughter offered a case for why he should be locked away for life. Then came the judge, who also quoted my statement in handing down his decision that the defendant should receive the maximum sentence: 30 years, meaning, most likely, the rest of his life.

If you’ve seen any classic horror movie, you know how they usually end: there’s always a Final Girl. The last woman standing, who finally meets her monster. He spends nearly the full film tormenting her until those last fateful moments: He corners her, tries everything he can to pin her down. But ever resourceful and tenacious, she slips away.

She is chased, cornered, wounded.

She screams, she runs, she cries, she falls.

She rises again.

She fights for her life.

Covered in blood — her own and the blood of those he killed before her — The Final Girl slays the monster.

She survives what no one else could.

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Thank you for allowing me to share. For more on my personal life, see below. Back to regularly scheduled, more fun stuff, next. Promise.

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I’ll leave you with this….