For Laurel. And for me.
I swung the ax with ten years’ worth of rage, with ghostly hands lending me strength, and sank it deep into Don’s neck. A bullet clipped my shoulder, exploding pain, but what was pain to me? I wrenched the ax out and chopped until Don’s blood flew, until his muscles gave, until his expression locked in shock forever, and his head tipped toward his shoulder. He tumbled to the floor.
The room exploded.
FBI agents rushed me, shoving me to the ground, twisting my throbbing arms behind my back, their shouted orders blurring into a wall of noise. But I didn’t look at them. I didn’t even look at Don’s body next to Laurel’s, close enough to touch.
I looked at Jamie. He’d fallen to his knees, lips mouthing a silent word.
“You have the right to remain silent,” said an agent, snapping sharp handcuffs on my wrists. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.”
“Why?” Jamie breathed. His eyes were distant in a way I recognized, the dissociation that came with shock.
The agents pulled me to my feet, but I kept locked on him until his eyes rose to meet mine.
“Why?” he shouted. “Why are you smiling?”
Was I? I hadn’t even felt it start.
The agents shoved me forward, one in front, two flanking my sides. My face dripped with blood. I could almost see myself: a living, breathing painting. Abstract expressionism, like a Pollock, art I’d made of myself.
I tipped back my head and laughed. Turned to Jamie and gave him the only word I had, the only one that could explain. It lingered behind me, filling the room as I finally made it up that dark staircase. It lifted my shoulders, stiffened my spine, as I climbed out from the depths of Don’s basement, out of the doors of his house, into the wide, wide world.
Free.
Epilogue
Transgressions, Episode 705, official transcript: “The Pater Society, Part One,” aired January 3, 2023
JAMIE KNIGHT: Welcome back to Transgressions. I’m your host, Jamie Knight. On September 26, 2022, this show aired an emergency episode, sharing snippets of recordings taken over the course of weeks by Shay Evans, then Shay Deroy, who infiltrated the Pater Society, a violent, patriarchal cult operating in secret across New York. Members included prominent New Yorkers such as then-Governor Alec Barry; financier Kurt Johnson, who used the aliases Don Rockwell and Nico Stagiritis, among others; and Westchester Chief of Police Adam Dorsey. The group was responsible for the deaths of several women, the exact number unknown at the time of airing. The FBI has since recovered the remains of five bodies from a Pater-owned property known as the Hilltop, including the body of Laurel Hargrove, a woman believed to have committed suicide a month earlier. Listeners will remember I featured Laurel on an earlier episode, calling attention to the suspicious circumstances of her death. Obviously, I’d only scratched the surface.
We did something extraordinary the day we aired our emergency episode. We not only asked you to listen, but to weigh our evidence, trust us, and help us bring down the Paters. We asked you to be part of the story.
You responded in an incredible show of solidarity, flooding social media and law enforcement phone lines, calling for exposés, sharing your own stories of abuse and harassment. You may have technically been in your homes or your cars, but for all purposes, you stormed the castle. And now you know—the whole country knows—that you not only brought down the Paters, but you helped save Shay Evans’s life.
In the aftermath, we’ve witnessed a reckoning. There was the immediate resignation and charging of Governor Barry and key members of his staff, along with prominent figures on Wall Street, in the faith community, and in higher education. The DNC has assembled a task force to determine whether anyone in the organization turned a blind eye to Barry’s involvement with the Paters. Mountainsong Church, whose former pastor Michael Corbin was outed as a Pater, has all but crumbled after congregants fled in droves. The Westchester County Police Department has been placed under a consent decree by the DOJ, with disturbing allegations that many rank-and-file officers were aware of the existence of the Paters, if not actively involved.