The Marriage Falls Apart

It all started when an old friend, Travis, came back into Christie's life. She was working as a waitress at a restaurant, where he would come in and spend time at t􀀎he bar. Christie began to come home later and later from work, sometimes not until three or four o'clock in the morning, sometimes drunk. I would be home with our son Michael, and usually Ryan (my son from a previous relationship) on the weekends.

On New Year's Eve 2006, we were still living at Dennis and Carolyn's house. Christie promised the boys she would be home to watch the ball drop with them but did not show up until four o'clock in the morning, long after they were asleep. Christie and her mom got into an argument the next day about this. Carolyn told her that if she ever got arrested for drunk driving not to call the house because she would not come to pick her up.

We moved into our new house on Saturday, February 4th, 2006 and the very next Saturday she came home drunk at about 3:30 in the morning. I met Christie at the door and asked her where she had been. She told me that it was none of my business and then hit me in the face with her purse, which forced my head to fly backwards into the corner edge of the wall. I extended my hand out in front of me and held her back by her neck while she continued to hit me. I pushed her away and she ran into the bedroom. She attempted to call the police, and I said "go ahead, and you will be arrested for drunk driving!" She then hung up the phone and went to sleep.

Christie never mentioned this to anyone, not even Dennis or Carolyn. My mom and dad were visiting and were in the other bedroom asleep, but heard none of this. After the tragedy of June 27, Christie told the DA that I had choked her until she couldn't breathe and that she tried to call 9-1-1 but I took the phone away. She completely left out the fact that she was drunk, had assaulted me (more than once), and that my parents were there. Surely if her version of events were true, my parents would have heard or she could have run to them for help. Even afterwards, she would have told her parents. This pattern of fabrication and distorting the truth just continued to get worse and worse, especially during the trial.

The signs of her having an affair did not become evident until one night in early April when I got our phone bill in the mail. On it were daily calls to this one number which I didn't know, so I called the number. It was Travis. He did not answer, so I left a message on the voice mail asking him to call me. I then called Christie and asked her who Travis was. She panicked and got upset, and said that they were "just friends." I. then called Travis and he answered and he told me that they were just friends. Of course they were both lying.

I then called Dennis and Carolyn and told them of the phone calls and my suspicions of Christie having an affair. They immediately came to our house and wanted to see the phone bill. The pattern of the phone calls showed that Christie would get up in the morning, call me at work for a few minutes, and then talk to him multiple times each day. I vividly remember Carolyn sitting at our dining room table crying hysterically over this, her whole body was shaking. Dennis just walked out the door and stood on the front porch. If they were this upset can you imagine how I felt?

I called Christie back, and she came home right away from work. She denied any affair, telling Dennis, Carolyn, and me that Travis and her were "just friends." They did not believe her, but for some reason, I did. Dennis suggested that we go to marriage counseling and Christie found one where we went on Monday nights. on April 10th, Christie made a promise to our marriage counselor that she would not call Travis for a week and I had to promise not to question her about it for a week. It was only 5 days later, on Saturday April 15th, that I caught her on the phone with him, which then led to the first suicidal incident ( see Where It All Began elsewhere on this site) and the subsequent collapse of my mental and emotional foundation.

***** Most of this information can be found under Sentencing