People Narrate Their Beguiling Revenge Stories

“This story is about me, my wife, my youngest son Bill, my oldest son Dean, my daughter Patricia, and my wife’s ex-husband (the Psycho). To clarify: when I say ‘Psycho,’ I’m talking about someone who has at any given time at least five active lawsuits going against various states, individuals, and corporations.

He also once killed their family dog because it wouldn’t stop crying, and set fire to a neighbor’s garage after the guy annoyed him. He didn’t just threaten my wife, he’d threaten the kids if she stepped out of line. It took my wife a long time to get the courage to leave him because she was afraid of what he’d do to her when she tried. This is when he drained the family accounts and kidnapped the boys (and it is kidnapping when a parent refuses to let the other custodian contact their kids).

She’d flown to Korea and managed to get one son back via the Hague Convention but the other was (by then) legally of an age where he could choose to stay with his dad, and did so. She took her daughter and son to a small college town for him to do high school in one spot.

That’s where I came into the picture after I met her through a mutual friend.

I was just back from a deployment to Afghanistan and needed a place to stay, so I sublet a room from her. I enjoyed having actual home-cooked meals again, and she felt like her son Bill needed a decent male role model around.

I bonded really quickly with Bill, her/our youngest. He and I got along great. His one blind spot was his dad and his brother.

About 18 months after I met his mom, Dean and Psycho show up in our small college town in Montana to ‘save’ Bill from us (he was turning 18, so it wasn’t exactly an act of courageous intervention so much as ‘hey living with your mom must suck and there’s no legal hold on you, so let’s get an apartment and party all the time).

She had no idea of this plan until she saw Psycho randomly at a local shopping center. When she called me in a panic because Psycho was in town, we swung right into the action.

We armed her up, locked down the house, and started burning the candle at both ends with lawyers from all over the country.

Psycho lives like a ghost; pays cash for everything, has ID expired, lives month to month in trailers, etc. He’s off-the-grid as it’s possible to get, despite having pending judgments from FIVE different states.

This was the first time in years anyone knew exactly where he was.

We had to take advantage of this opportunity.

My sister-in-law had previously sued him for defamation and won a hefty settlement that he’d never paid. My wife had also sued him for substantial back child support, which never materialized. There were a few other folks and state agencies who had grievances against him.

We talked to them all. Once we got everything in order, I staked out the small downtown area until I spotted him, then tailed him to a coffee shop. I had a process server on standby not far away (who was very excited to serve papers on a jerk like this and happily waived his hourly rate while waiting on my call).

Psycho got served with ‘everything’. Civil judgments, criminal charges, attorney fees, notice for unpaid taxes, you name it. These were from other states, and they wouldn’t extradite for a contempt thing, but it meant if he ever got arrested or detained in his home state, he’ll face jail time.

She also requested a restraining order in Montana so he could not approach her or get within 500 yards of her.

We couldn’t get him on the other stuff (extradition’s not something most states will deal with outside of felony offenses). But we did get him to appear for the restraining order hearing.

He’s the sort of arrogant jerk who thinks he’s smarter and better prepared than anyone in the room. So he showed up thinking that the court would be a great platform for trying to intimidate his ex on the witness stand and show the boys that he was right all along.

(He’s the kind of guy who always acts as his own lawyer, and even signs paperwork as ‘Psycho, Esquire’.)

Among other things, my wife is extremely detail-oriented. She had kept every threatening letter, every hateful email, every mocking text message. Years of emails between him and his (then) underage kids.

A copy of the Hague Declaration. We had even printed out the entire 50 page manifest of the website he maintained, which was basically just a long tirade about how his ‘crazy ex-wife was completely obsessed with him. It was a couple of reams worth of evidence to sort through, so we did.

I am very good at analyzing huge chunks of information like that. So I took a few hundred pages of his written words and distilled it down to ten pages. I called it ‘Psycho’s Greatest Hits’. He showed up to court in jeans and a T-shirt with our two boys; we showed up with my daughter, my daughter’s fiancee, and our lawyer.

And we wrecked him in court.

Evidence, meticulously collated and filed. Evidence to support the evidence. Precise timelines and a full accounting of events. Our lawyer eviscerated him on examination. He blustered and panicked and our lawyer got him to confess to hidden income, intentionally violating parental rights rules and defiance of custody orders.

(We used his own testimony in a civil suit later to up the damages he owed us well into the seven-figure territory). Not to mention the fact that Psycho had no actual understanding of courtroom procedure and our lawyer ate him alive on every procedural violation.

My wife was terrified of Psycho trying to examine her on the stand. We’d prepped her for days, making sure she was ready. Up until the first question, she was still scared and not sure how she’d respond. Then he started talking and you could see the steel going into her backbone.

She wasn’t scared — she was mad. He opened up with his first question, trying to gaslight her off the bat:

‘Wasn’t it true that when we met, you had just failed out of college?

‘No.’

She stares him down – I’d never seen her look that angry.

I don’t think he had, either. He fumbles — and then HE BLINKS FIRST. ‘… uh er… but… yes you were.’

‘Objection!’

She stood up to him like a boss and made him look like a fumbling moron for the whole examination. Our entire family had spent days prepping and we ran circles around him while he interrogated us on the stand.

He could not fathom how to deal with someone he couldn’t bully or gaslight anymore. Even when counsel objected to his questions, she’d answer them anyway because she wanted it on record, under oath, that the story he was spinning to the boys had been — and always was — a lie.

And she nailed it.

(I got some fun in myself; the judge was an Air Force general and I was an Army vet. When Psycho started bragging about his eighteen-month stint in the Navy as a barnacle scraper, we shared a look and I knew he could also smell something fishy on the story.

I also went across the aisle during recess to talk to the boys, just as friendly and convivial as could be to show there were no hard feelings. I plopped my butt on Psycho’s paperwork with my back to him the whole time. He just sat there and sulked).

There’s no specific threat of violence (albeit a lot of implied ones) so the judge awards a ‘no contact’ instead of a proper restraining order. The judge clearly really hated how he was hampered from actually laying something punitive on Psycho because of the lack of any prior successful criminal convictions and his weasely language.

We were trying to make a case for a criminal charge of electronic harassment/stalking but it just didn’t stick. So the judge leans over the stand and says ‘Mr. Psycho, let me be very clear: I would have you thrown in jail if the law allowed. There is only one person in this courtroom who is trying to cause grief, and it’s you.

You are a poor example of a man and a father. And if I see you in my courtroom again for bothering this woman, I will personally see to it that you see jail time.’

A few weeks later, Psycho manages to persuade the boys to request a no-contact on ‘us.’ THE SAME JUDGE WAS PRESIDING.

He recognized the family name and said ‘I am not going to sit here and listen to a bunch of manufactured lies. You two are clearly dancing at the end of someone else’s line. I thought you two were smarter than this.’ He denied the order, but we did respect Bill’s request that we not contact him.

I’m generally a law-abiding person, but the one time I broke the law was to go to Bill’s high-school graduation. I told him I wanted to see him cross the stage, and I had his mom and sister and they’d like to sit in the way back.

He agreed to let us do it. That was the last we saw of him for a while.

(This is also the point in time where my wife and I went from being ‘close platonic friends’ to being romantically involved, but that’s another story).

SMASH CUT TO 18 MONTHS LATER:

We’ve moved to Bozeman and rented a really nice house, just the two of us. Our daughter’s married and living in Portland. I assured my now-wife things would work out, and we made the best of having the house to ourselves.

Then I get a phone call from my dad:

‘Hey, I met your son the other day.’

‘What?’

‘Bill, right?’

‘Uh… yeah? He’s still up north though.’

‘No, he’s here in Bozeman! Do you know my best friend from college, Kevin? He’s going out with Kevin’s daughter Gracie.’

(Kevin was ‘Uncle Kevin’ to me when I was very little, and his son and I have been friends literally our whole lives.

Gracie was a very late-in-life oopsie who came into the picture about 20 years later).

So I call Kevin and we talk. NOT ONLY IS HE HOSTING BILL, BUT DEAN ALSO CAME DOWN TO BOZEMAN TOO.

Kevin’s the sort of man who mentors and molds young men.

He’s done more than a few reclamation projects over the years. He tells me how much he likes them, and I give him a less adulterated version of the events of the last decade. We find out that Bill had a MAJOR falling out with Psycho over how Psycho treated Gracie (shockingly, Psycho’s also a misogynist jerk).

Also, Bill wanted to join the Marines, and Psycho tried to forbid him from doing it. Bill told Psycho to go shut up and move out of their apartment. After Psycho and Bill moved away, Dean followed his brother to Bozeman and rented a house less than a mile from where my wife and I were living.

At this time, my wife’s dad is very sick. I get word to Bill through Kevin that if he wants to see his grandad one more time, he needs to do it now. My wife stays at home for Bill’s visit to the nursing home, but I am there to mediate things.

Bill and his grandad talk for about an hour and his grandad’s literal dying wish is that Bill finds a way to reconcile with his mom. While they’re talking, I get to set the record straight with Kevin regarding The Story so far. I bid Bill goodbye, tell him I’m very proud of him for enlisting, and remind him that he can always call us if he needs us.

A couple of months later, Bill’s grandad is dying. No one knows how to get a hold of Bill because he’s in Basic Training and has very limited phone privileges. I send a Red Cross message to him (figuring if he decides to be serious about the no contact, I’m the only one who gets in trouble).

Bill doesn’t call me, or the nursing home, or Kevin. He calls his mom. They talk for a long time and the phone call ends with him asking us to come to his graduation from Basic Training. At this point, it’s been most of two years since my wife saw him.

He’s a different man than when we saw him last, and it shows on his face. And he is 100% resolved to put things behind him and make amends with his mom and they just hug each other for a solid minute when we show up.

We bring Kevin and Gracie with us and we have a little family reunion.

It gets better though. Dean is still around. He’s not sure what to do with himself. He wants to keep the fight against his mom going but his dad dipped out of Bozeman so Dean is going to school, working a part-time job, and also trying to keep up an exhausting hate campaign on his dad’s behalf.

Now, Gracie decides to get involved. Gracie is sneakier than all of us put together and decides to bully Dean into having a family again. We hatch plans to start bringing Dean back into the fold. It’s mostly me taking him and Bill shooting, going to the movies, etc. Dean gets invited to every family meal at Gracie’s, and as a starving college student, he’s not going to turn down a hot meal just because his mom is gonna be there.

It’s a little awkward, but everyone handles it so gracefully. He gets a little friendly teasing about it and no one lets him get away with being a jerk.

This all culminates with Bill getting married to Gracie (best DIL ever, y’all). The last big hurdle for Dean is coming into our home, which we bought from my wife’s parents when they moved into assisted living.

Dean spent a lot of summers there as a baby so there are some real mixed feelings about it for him.

It’s the day before Bill’s wedding to Gracie. I’m wrangling the groomsmen around, and we don’t really give Dean a choice; we drive to my house and get out of the car, and head inside.

Bill and all the groomsmen are in on the plan. Dean’s hesitating on the front steps, not quite sure what he’s going to do. Like he’s not sure if someone’s going to pick a fight or if he will be welcome in there. I clap him on the shoulder with a smile and say, ‘Dean, I’m only going to say this once.

This is Bill’s day. Don’t ruin it by being a little girl. Go inside, hug your mom, then we’re all gonna smoke and drink on the back porch like a family.’

And that’s what we did.

That’s when the levee really broke. Dean started coming around to the house more often for family game night, then dropping by on his own.

We always fed him well and sent him home with leftovers. He started asking me for advice with life stuff, trying to fill in the blanks where Psycho had given him a bad turn of advice. Then he started reconnecting with his mom again.

I knew Dean had fully flipped the script, come Thanksgiving.

He blows in the door like Kramer with a big grin on his face, the stress on his face going from 100% to 0% in just a few steps. He admitted to me later that he’d spent the early part of the day with Psycho, watching his old man trying to hustle his Veteran status for a free Thanksgiving meal at a diner.

I repeated what his mom had always said: ‘We’re always here when you’re ready to come back.’ We had him back 100%.

So as far as we’re concerned we’ve got everything we want. We have both boys back and they’ve set aside a troublesome relationship with their abusive former father.

But it isn’t quite done yet, and this is where slightly less abstract forms of revenge come into play.

Apparently, Psycho didn’t just enlist Dean’s verbal support in his schemes. He made Dean his co-conspirator and also made him do almost all the legwork. The legal paperwork, the defamatory letters, and websites, the lawsuits, all of it.

Dean had gone out and made amends with his aunt and uncle for his role in that and reconciled with the rest of the family over everything he’d done over the prior few years. I think he felt like someone needed to even the score.

Dean goes scorched earth. The thesis-size website defaming my wife and the extended family? Dean destroys it, trashes the backups, and scrubs all the accounts. He even has it removed from search engines and scrubbed from a few prominent Wayback sites. All the encrypted email accounts?

Contents archived stored offline, and then deleted. The various lawsuits? Forfeited and declared abandoned. He systematically demolishes over a decade’s worth of slander, libel, and illegal things that Psycho had put everyone through, and so thoroughly that Psycho has to rebuild his little empire of hate from scratch.

The icing on an already perfect cake — Dean admits he’s been ‘handling’ the cash for Psycho. Apparently, Psycho was so paranoid about the government that he made Dean the primary account holder for all those offshore accounts and all the gold investments. Psycho lost a pretty good amount to shady overseas investment firms, but Dean managed to protect a lot of it.

I don’t know how much, and I don’t want to know how much. He tells me this because he feels a little guilty about having the cash. It’s not like we need it; my wife and I are out of the red thanks to her hard work and extremely successful career.

I advise him to use it however he sees fit. I can’t imagine anyone else would be more responsible with it than him.

So he buys an ‘investment property’ south of town, and it just so happens that it’s perfect for his struggling, newly divorced sister and her horses.

She rents it at a very modest rate, keeps an eye on the house, and the rest of us are doing improvements and maintenance on it. Now he’s off on his own adventure as a military officer in a very prestigious, very selective engineering program.

My daughter owns her own business working with horses and my youngest son is an NCO and a real rising star in his division. The family’s well and whole again, and it’s because we always told the boys that no matter what when they were ready to come back, the door would be open.”