House of Secrets by Chris Columbus & Ned Vizzini

Author:Chris Columbus & Ned Vizzini [Columbus, Chris & Vizzini, Ned]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult, Adventure, Childrens
ISBN: 9780062192462
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

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The communities had informal names: Moon Lake and Shady Hills. There were no local units of government, no town centers. These areas of Pasco County had swamp-choked lots, rusting mobile homes, and satellite dishes. Shady Hills had a couple of adopt-a-road signs sponsored by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Not even Pasco County sheriff’s deputies felt comfortable venturing into some neighborhoods after dark.

This was not the Florida northerners saw on travel and real estate brochures. For years, Pasco County natives had considered the 20-mile-wide stretch of lowland between Gulf of Mexico beach towns and the ranches near Dade City to be mosquito-infested and unfit for development. Then the boiler rooms went to work. By the 1990s, the result was a continuous, car-choked 25-mile stretch of strip development along US-19 out of Glearwater to New Hudson—and inland, the haphazard development of places like Moon Lake and Shady Hills.

Dave Sexton and his wife Jean lived about 10 miles from New Hudson, on a chain-link fenced lot on a stone road in Moon Lake. Sexton had three mobile homes in his compound, one for him and his wife Jean, the other for his son’s family, the third used by Sherri Sexton and her boy Christopher for a spell. The couple had moved to Florida in the 1980s from Canton, Ohio.

Dave and Jean Sexton would later detail their encounters with Eddie Lee Sexton’s family in sworn depositions, court testimony, and an interview.

Jean Sexton said she was a long-time evangelist and an active volunteer in a local Pentecostal church. Dave Sexton, 56, said he’d served 23 years with the Air Force and retired on a military disability.

In fact, all the living Sexton brothers were on government relief. Eddie Sexton had his back problems. Otis received Social Security for rheumatic fever. Back in Canton, Orville Sexton was disabled in a coal mining accident after a mine caved in on him in West Virginia. Dave Sexton was asked the nature of his physical problems in a 1994 deposition.

He answered: “I have MS. I have epilepsy. I have heart trouble. I have high blood pressure. I’m—I’m neurotic.” He also said he was legally blind.

The Challenger and the black Pontiac Grand Prix rolled up to Dave Sexton’s compound on a stifling Sunday night in June. Though Sherri Sexton had been with his family nearly six months, Dave maintained he had no idea what kind of problems his brother faced back in Stark County with the DHS. He said his brother called him back in April of 1992 and asked if Sherri could move there “so she could start a new life for herself.” That new life included a place on the Florida welfare roll for Sherri and the boy who’d been nicknamed “Little Bear.” Shapely and attractive as a young teenager, at 21 her eyes had become dark and brooding, her figure heading for 200 pounds.

Dave and Jean Sexton said they were a close “religious family.” Their son David Jr. and his small family rented one of the mobile homes.

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