Megan Kanka

Jesse's Tale

Richard and Maureen Kanka sat quietly in the courtroom as the bailiff set up a television and videotape player. Leanna Guido was at their side. For the next 13 minutes, the three, along with everyone else in the courtroom, would listen as Jesse's 33-year-old brother laid out in graphic detail — weeping at times — the sordid story of Jesse's life.

There was little chance that testimony would move the Kankas. They had lost their precious daughter at the hands of Jesse Timmendequas. And there was little chance that it would assuage Guido's pain and rage. She had once felt Timmendequas' fingers pressing into her throat.

But the defense hoped that maybe something in Paul Timmendequas' sobbing videotaped testimony would strike a chord in the jury. Lependorf wasn't hoping for compassion. Not really. All she hoped was that the jury would find that Timmendequas' past somehow mitigated his monstrous behavior — and spare his life.

The story that he told — prodded by a social worker who interviewed him not long after Megan's death — was a tale of horror that spanned three generations. It was a tale of neglect and crime, of alcoholism, psychological torture and sexual abuse. To add to the pathos, the defense periodically flashed childhood pictures of Timmendequas on the screen — always sad and a little scared — trying to convey to the jury an image of the killer the way one of his school teachers described him in a 1971 report — as "a frightened little rabbit with glasses."

Jesse Timmendequas, according to his brother's testimony, was one of 10 children born to his mother, Doris Unangst, by seven different men. Jesse's father, Charles Hall — he has since changed his name to James Edward Howard — was a convicted burglar who fled New Jersey in 1972 after stabbing a man in Piscataway. He sired one other child.

The social worker described Timmendequas' family life as a page out of "Tobacco Road."

Jesse's father named him after one of his personal heroes, the outlaw Jesse James. Even his last name reflected his father's criminal past, the social worker testified. Timmendequas — a bastardization of a Native American name he had either borrowed from a friend or stolen from a tombstone — was an alias Hall sometimes used.

When Jesse Timmendequas was a toddler, his father was convicted of burglary and sent to prison, Paul Timmendequas testified. He was paroled when Jesse was about 7 years old, the same age as Guido when she was attacked, the same age as Megan when she was murdered.

Paul told the jurors in his videotaped testimony that it wasn't long after Hall's return that the abuse began. At least once a week, always when their mother was out of the house, Paul Timmendequas testified, Charles Hall would sexually assault the boys. He would hold the boys' heads together, Paul Timmendequas testified, and force himself on them. Then he would turn his attention fully to Jesse, Paul Timmendequas recalled. Paul Timmendequas — four years younger than Jesse — remembered cowering in the next room as Jesse screamed while his father beat and sodomized him in the next room.

But that wasn't the worst of the abuse. Hall, whom he described as a filthy, wiry man with odd-looking eyes, once forced the boys to watch as he raped an 8-year-old neighbor girl in the back of his pickup truck, Paul recalled. He warned the boys never to speak of what they had seen. And to drive the point home, Paul Timmendequas said, Hall killed their pets. He drowned the family dog in front of them, Paul Timmendequas said. He killed their pet rabbit. He decapitated the family cat, Paul said.

Hall, who later moved to a remote trailer park run by a white supremacist group in rural California, was never charged with sexually abusing the Timmendequas boys, or the girl.

In an interview at the time of the trial with the Associated Press, Hall denied the allegations.

"All lies," he told a journalist at the time. "If I raped a little neighbor girl," Hall added, "where's the family? Where's the police report?"

Of course, he said, he takes some responsibility for what his son did to Megan. "Of course I blame myself. What father wouldn't? What was in my genes? I've spent hours and hours and hours, sleepless nights ... especially when it first started."

Perhaps it was a message to the jurors deciding his son's fate. Perhaps it was just a caustic pose to impress the reporter, but Hall added that he hoped the jurors would give his son the death penalty for his crime.

"I couldn't walk into a courtroom without putting my hands around his throat," Hall sputtered.