Originally Published: Thursday, December 20, 2007

Healing & Mercy

A new outfit, a routine errand, a paralyzing fear

Photo provided Kelly Deatherage's favorite part of school was performing for the Applause group at Christian County High School. The students staged music and dance variety shows at the Alhambra Theatre. Kelly was a member of Applause for three years and graduated in 1991.

By Jennifer P. Brown, New Era Deputy Editor

Early that morning two days after Christmas, 16-year-old Kelly Deatherage turned onto her family’s winding gravel driveway at Herndon and headed for the house.

Snow dusted the ground as she pulled up in her Honda Prelude.

Christmas of 1989 had been bitter cold. Pipes froze and burst in sub-zero temperatures. Car engines groaned but would not turn. People cranked up thermostats, triggering power outages as everyone tried to blanket the freeze.

Kelly parked and stepped into the chill. Walking inside, she didn’t see that she left the car’s parking lights on.

Kelly found her mother, Becky Dixon, packing up the Christmas decorations. Already there had been several house fires in the county. Becky wanted to get the tree down before it became a hazard.

She was relieved to have Kelly home. She needed to see that her daughter was safe.

The night before, Becky had awakened with an uneasy feeling. She couldn’t explain it, but she thought one of her girls was in danger. She thought something was lurking in a place she couldn’t see or understand. She thought something was after one of them.

Around midnight, while her husband, John, and her three younger daughters, Kristi, Kasey and Karson, slept, Becky got out of bed and went to each girl’s room. She had to check on them.

The girls were all asleep. They were fine. She touched Karson’s blanket and felt it rise with her breath.

Even though Kelly was spending the night with a friend, Becky went into her bedroom and turned on the light. Her beautiful daughter — a slender girl with golden brown eyes and a blondish-brown mass of long, curly hair achieved through hours with a blow dryer, comb and cans of hair spray — stared back at her from school dance photos on the wall.

Still uneasy, Becky turned and walked back to her room. Close to the bed, she tripped over her big sleeping Rottweiler, Bear.

“Sorry, boy,” she said.

But the feeling hadn’t left her. Something wasn’t right.

She dozed with Kelly on her mind.



Kelly’s parents met at the University of Kentucky. Bill Deatherage was in law school after serving in the Marines for three years. He had spent 13 months in Vietnam.

Becky’s family was from California and moved to Kentucky when she was in high school. She was an undergrad at UK, studying social work and psychology.

They were married on Dec. 29, 1970, and moved to Hopkinsville, Bill’s hometown, after he finished law school. Their first daughter, Rebecca Kelly Deatherage, was born in Hopkinsville on Sept. 19, 1973.

She was an easy baby for a first-time mother, sleeping through the night. And when the next child, Kristi, arrived just 12 days shy of Kelly’s first birthday, Becky could see that Kelly would become the leader in the family.

Once, Kelly stuffed pennies in Kristi’s mouth and called her a piggy bank. Later she tried to feed the baby a hot dog. When they could both walk, Kelly and Kristi teamed up to fill the toilets with their mother’s jewelry.

“It was wild with those two,” Becky says.

Another girl, Kasey, arrived on Jan. 8, 1977. The baby, Karson, was born on May 11, 1979.

Kelly was the kind of child who sometimes seemed to not even be around. She was shy and dependable. She didn’t require much attention. She didn’t need help with her school work.

Occasionally, she disappeared into her room to be alone. She loved to sing along with the radio and record her voice on a tape recorder.

But Kelly was the boss among her sisters. She tried to keep everyone in line. She reported misbehavior to their mother.

When they created little plays, Kelly was the director. If they played school, Kelly was the teacher.

Bill and Becky separated when Kelly was about 6 years old. In 1982, Becky married John Dixon, a Hopkinsville attorney who lived at Herndon. He was a federal court magistrate.

By the time Kelly was in high school, she and her sisters were sharing clothes. Mornings were crazy with battles over which one was going to wear this or that outfit.

Bear, the 150-pound Rottweiler, cowered under the kitchen table when the girls were getting ready for school. There were fights over clothes, shoes, belts — even the hairspray. One morning, Kristi took a blow to the mouth from Kelly as they wrestled over a can of hairspray.

“Oh, it was chaos over there,” says Kelly’s high school classmate, Janet Morris, laughing.

While Becky finished taking down the tree, Kelly changed into flannel pajamas. She had a part-time job at the Hallmark store in the Pennyrile Mall, but she didn’t have to be at work until 6 that night.

Later in the afternoon, she put on a new outfit her mother had given her for Christmas — a pair of baggy peach and green paisley pants, a matching peach sweater, peach flats and a leather jacket. It was cold, so she wore hose under the pants. She had a new gold necklace that her boyfriend, Jesse, had given her for Christmas.

Becky admired Kelly’s new outfit, then remembered her fitful sleep from the night before.

“Be careful,” she told Kelly before leaving the house to visit friends with her husband.

A few minutes later, Kelly called Becky and said her car wouldn’t start. The battery was dead. She needed to borrow Becky’s car.

“Sure,” her mother said. Again, she reminded her, “Be careful.”

It was a little after 5 p.m. when Kelly got in the car, a black four-door Mercedes. She drove toward town on LaFayette Road, then cut through Lovers Lane to Fort Campbell Boulevard.

The first time she noticed them was at a red light next to the Holiday Inn.

She looked to her left and saw the two men in an old car next to hers. They were staring at her. Both of them had long hair. One of them had a beard. She thought they looked rough and dirty.

The car was a dark, two-door 1979 Ford Fairmont.

She looked away. Ignore them, she decided. The light turned green and she drove away.

At a drive-through window, she picked up photographs from Save-More Drugs. Then she crossed the boulevard and stopped at the Revco store in the Wal-Mart parking lot. She needed to buy tampons.

The time was stamped on the store receipt — 5:38 p.m.

Kelly saw the men in their car when she walked out of Revco. That’s odd, she thought. Those are the men who were staring at me a few minutes ago at the red light.

The same men.

She didn’t realize she was in danger.

She stepped off the sidewalk.

She didn’t stop.

She kept walking toward her mother’s Mercedes.

She put the key in the door lock.

Then she felt it.

A knife at her throat.

——

Coming Tomorrow, Part II: The search.

___

Jennifer P. Brown can be reached at (270) 887-3236 or at jpbrown@kentuckynewera.com