To the Bridge

by Nancy Rommelmann

It was true a former girlfriend of his named Keli Townsend told Amanda on the phone that she needed to know one thing about Jason: that he will never stop lying.

in April 2001, she and Jason, with Gavin in tow, made a quick trip to H...

She left her job as a receptionist at a marketing agency in downtown Portland around the time of Trinity’s birth

in March 2002. Eldon was born in August 2004. The family moved to several condos and apartments, rarely staying longer than a year. Jason was promoted at Ricoh, while Amanda, in her way, was demoted.

At the time of her arrest in May 2009, she had no Facebook profile or Twitter account; friends knew her to have no social media presence. Amanda lived in a tighter and tighter loop of communication, the criticism of a few people carrying the sort of weight that could change the way the outside world saw her and how she saw herself.

Though Tiffany seriously could not stand Jason and the way he spoke to Amanda, saying things to her like, “Are you retarded?” in a tone so sharp that Amanda would freeze and not even blink her eyelash for what seemed like weeks,

Tiffany thought, okay, one last hurrah.

Amanda? Jason said. How many times have you made these enchiladas? I don’t know, honey, she said. Maybe ten times? Well, you know what? They taste like absolute dog

shit. Our guests don’t want to eat these. Tiffany’s date practically choked. I love it, he said, I really love it. It’s totally fine. It’s delicious. I’m not really a very spicy guy. Do not try to smooth it over with her, Jason said. She needs to know this is not okay.

you were not paying attention to what you were doing. You need to go back and remake them. Tiffany and her boyfriend spoke at the same time, saying there was no need to remake them, it was eight o’clock, they were already sitting down, and the kids were starving . . . The kids can eat, Jason told Amanda. But you need to

remake them for us. Amanda went back to the kitchen to remake them.

Jason was not done yet. Trinity had taken three bites and refused to eat any more. Jason took her upstairs. Tiffany could hear her being spanked, which of course woke Eldon up. Now he was screaming. Tiffan...

and was trying to soothe him when she noticed Gavin had gone into the corner and was playing with his little cars; he had finished his food in like ten seconds because he knew. Tiffany and her boyfriend finally went into the kitchen. You don’t have t...

It was wrong of me. I was visiting. I wasn’t paying attention, and I really should have made more of an effort. No, Tiffany said. Look what you are doing to yourself. But Amanda was almost in a trance. She said, God said that you need to be a submissive wife, ...

Tiffany was still holding Eldon when Trinity came downstairs bawling. Jason sat her back down at the table. This is your choice, Jason told Trinity. You can eat, or you can sit there all night. So you decide for yourself what you want to do, because you’re a bad girl. A...

a battle of wills between a three-year-old and her father, who took her back upstairs for another spanking and then sat her back down at the table. She was still sitting there at midnight when Tiffany and her boyfriend left. Three days later, the Smith family moved to Oahu. T...

Jason’s and Amanda’s credit histories, which made renting a house difficult. Not until Jason’s mother interceded were they able to get a split-level home with a tiny side yard on a cul-de-sac in the Mililani neighborhood. ...

“She lived a classic abused life, more mental than physical,” he said. “Jason controlled her like a communist; he controlled her

like Nazi Germany. He didn’t want her to go anywhere and do anything. She was a prisoner. Where it really, really went sideways, it’s all about Hawaii.”

Reports show that the Department of Human Services and Child Protective Services received numerous calls between August and October of 2008 from people concerned about the children’s welfare. On September 12, Gavin returned from school to find he was locked out of the house. He went to a neighbor’s, who reported the situation to DHS. On September 17,

CPS worker interviewed Gavin and Trinity, who “denied drug or alcohol use by their parents, denied fighting by the adults in the home and denied physical discipline.” When asked about Jason’s substance abuse issues, Amanda “refused to provide the worker with any information.”

in fall 2008 was preparing to have her second child. Amanda called in September, sounding like her old self, sounding happy; Tiffany was glad to hear her voice and said,

come to my baby shower;

April gave Amanda a lift to the party. April was agitated when she arrived and took Tiffany aside. She told her, there is something really wrong with Amanda; on the drive here, I could not make sense of one thing she said. There was no direct line from ...

As the party coalesced, Tiffany and April tried to talk to Amanda, who was both amped up and spaced out, more than spaced out. Tiffany said, Amanda, wait, wait, wait, we are not following what you are saying. The people

at the baby shower were noticing, and they later asked Tiffany, was that friend of yours high? Was she wasted? Tiffany did not know

Tiffany had, for the most part, put what Amanda had done behind her. She had decided the murder was not about revenge and that Amanda never said anything like that to Shanon. No, instead it was, “I had nothing left. I had nothing. I was completely broken. I’d rather

have the kids be gone than be with Jason.” It was as simple as that. But Tiffany vividly remembered who Amanda had once been: a young woman who, at least for a time, had not been easily torn down; a woman who had a baby by a guy who committed suicide and still walked with joy in her step,

In the wake of Amanda’s sentencing, those who reached out to me had information they felt was substantive. Some of it was not. The offer of information was more about the need to tell the tragedy again and again. If a stranger on the other end of a phone line was all they were going to get, then okay. They would convey the doubts and

distress they had carried about Amanda, about Jason, but they wanted it understood that they had their own troubles. It wasn’t the caller’s job, he let me know, to fix these mendacious people, and even when he’d tried—and he had tried—he’d been foiled.

How you lived with the outcome, or how the caller lived, was to protect his family, stick to his faith, and make one late-night, beer-fueled, not-for-attribution phone call. Then maybe he could sleep.

There was Samantha Hammerly, Amanda’s friend from junior high school, who felt the

Lord had made sure she had been watching television the night Amanda’s mug shot was shown so that she might become reacquainted with her friend after seventeen years.

There was the late-night caller and his stories of Gavin as a drug mule and the fleeced paraplegic.

The paraplegic was named Brian Burr. He

When Burr was seventeen, he fell off a ladder and broke his neck. Burr retained some use of his arms. He was able to drive his own van and live independently.

around 2003, he met Jason Smith. Four years later, Jason began to do some work for Burr as a caregiver, helping him with light tasks, such as cooking and cleaning. Jason sometimes brought Amanda and the kids to Burr’s home. On November 7, 2008, Burr sent Amanda, via certified mail, a summons stating that she needed to “appear and defend the

complaint filed against [her].” Both she and Jason were defendants in Case No. SC082908. Burr, the plaintiff, alleged the following: “On or around January 2008, Plaintiff loaned Defendant Jason Smith $3000.00. On or around April 29, 2008, Defendants issued Plaintiff a check (c...

amount loaned to them.” The check d...

“On multiple occasions,” the complaint continued, “Defendants acknowledged owing the Plaintiff the original amount of $3000.00. On at least three occasions between April and

July of 2008, defendant Jason Smith showed up unannounced at Plaintiff’s home and offered Plaintiff cocaine in lieu of payment.

Jason Smith consistently harassed Plaintiff by calling him up to four times a day. Defendant Jason Smith verbally abused Plaintiff by badgering Plaintiff and making Plaintiff feel guilty for suing Defendant. . . . Defendant Jason Smith threatened violence to Plaintiff if Plaintiff mentioned

the money owed to any of Defendant’s family members. . . . Defendants’ acts consisted of some extraordinary transgression of the bounds of socially tolerable conduct and exceeded any reasonable limit of social toleration.

The complaint asked for repayment of the original loan plus ba...

well as relief and damages, plus court and attorney costs, for a total of $10,000. By May 23, 2009, Burr...

Lee remembered Jason contacting Burr afterward. “Jason called for relief, but I think Brian was going to

go ahead with the case,” he said. Brian Burr’s mother, Patty Bacon, did not think Jason asked for relief from the debt after Eldon’s murder.

“After the baby died, Brian didn’t have the heart to go through with it,” said Bacon....

Bacon did not know in what capacity Jason worked for her son. “He didn’t work for Brian very much . . .” She hesitated. “Look, Brian was on medical marijuana, and he [Jason] came over to smoke it.”

we could not ask Burr, who developed