Daughter of the Damned

Preface and Purpose

          How many people in this world are truly honest people? In a Westernized society, most people we know have been taught honesty as a "Golden Rule" from a young age.

The thing about honesty is that people can be truthful about something minor and lead a double life without anybody ever knowing. Even Ted Bundy helped catch killers and worked for the suicide prevention hotline. Truth and lies can intermingle.

Or maybe they're telling the truth about a huge incident, but little white lies build up like bones, until skeletons dance in the closet.

Sometimes, people lie, and everyone believes them. That's nowhere near as horrible as when the truth is told, but nobody believes it. Worse still? When truth is believed by the wrong people. People who snuff it out so nobody else finds out. Until it's too late. Ignorance is bliss.

"Bundy and Dahmer had marvelous lives when they were young! They were just psychos!" Or "Wuornos had every reason to do what she did, given her abusive past. She should've just gone about it differently!"

Some killers have movies based off of them. Ed Gein has four of them; Silence of the Lambs and Texas Chainsaw Massacre being the most famous. Others have books based around them. "The Stranger Beside Me," "Zodiac," "My Friend Dahmer," and "Green River, Running Red," are only a few of many examples.

And of course, anybody with the interest just to read the preface of this book has likely seen a number of documentaries centered around true crime, or horror movies, whether wholly fictional or based on true stories. There are many prolific killers with documentaries around them.

But... What of their children? Many of them knew something was... off, with their parents. Some of them had glorious upbringings. A few were targeted and never got to tell the tale. Others were morbidly abused. Some learned the truth when they were far too young, others when they were fully grown.

It's not easy to grow up in a world where people hate you because of something that had nothing to do with you. To live in a family broken by something that nobody would ever WANT to help you with, out of their own fear, not FOR you, but OF you. Some of them change their names. One married a man who applied to be a cop, but wasn't allowed to because he married the child of a killer. Many lose a source of income and have to scrounge and squabble for cash while their whole world falls apart... and nobody would give them the time of day.

Sometimes there's a kid who sees nothing wrong with their murderous parents. People like Matthew Ridgway, son of prolific Gary Ridgway, had such a decent upbringing and relationship with his serial killer parent that even in the midst of the investigation he assumed his father was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; an innocent.

It wasn't until it was revealed to him that his father used pictures of him as a young boy to lure in victims that he began to realize how sick the man was.

The betrayal was magnanimous. Matthew had grown up close to his father. Gary was a fun, loving soccer dad who'd been there for Matthew his entire life. Even after the man's arrest, Gary Ridgway attempted to help his beloved son by getting him to laugh, just a father trying to cheer up his broken little boy.

Fred and Moors West, a notorious couple, had sexually, physically, and emotionally abused their offspring, and even gotten other family members involved. Plus? They killed two of their kids before they were ever caught. One of the girls (now alive and married!) Remembers playing dress-up with strange clothes she found in the house. Clothes of her parents' victims. The same daughter visited her mother in prison, but was manipulated before breaking her family ties.

The daughter of Keith Jesperson watched him torment kittens, and open harassment of women. Not only that, but he openly admitted to her when she was young that he couldn't tell her what he was up to, or she would call the police. Even worse? After his capture, the man had admitted he'd thought about killing her, as well. That was when she shot down that relationship.

However, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum? Some of these kids have found forgiveness, hope, and reached for a light.

Dennis Rader was a notorious killer who titled himself BTK before a floppy disk snared his decades-long reign of terror.

Daughter Kerri Rawson was actually rather upset that renowned author Stephen King wrote a book about her father, declaring to the Wichita Eagle "Great- now Stephen King is giving my father a big head. Thanks for that. That's the last thing my father should get."

Ms. Rawson wrote a book of her own. "A Serial Killer's Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming." The woman claimed that she had been rotting away inside. She found her healing in her own faith in Jesus, and says that she hopes to see her father in heaven one day. Ms. Rawson also said that she forgave her father, not for him, but in order to heal her own heart from the withering rot.