Crazy woman kills herself and son...

[tominator89 0]

Coach endures unthinkable loss one second at a time

Jan. 9, 2008

By Gary Parrish

 

 

THATCHER, Ariz. -- Tim Parmeter pulled into the driveway and clicked and clicked and clicked his garage door opener, probably pushed the thing four or five times, best he can remember. But the door never opened. So he shook his head.

 

He just thought his estranged wife had changed the code like she had changed the locks, because that's the kind of stuff people do when they're going through a divorce. And it was a messy divorce.

 

It's hard for Parmeter to concentrate on winning after his terrible loss. (Provided to CBSSports.com)

There were arguments and fights, countless phone conversations resulting in hang-ups. There were threats, both silly and serious. But the bad moments always seemed to pass with time. And so even though Tim had argued with Paula the previous afternoon and didn't hear from her the rest of that Friday, he didn't really think much of it and, at the time, he figured he'd just stop by the house Saturday morning to see his 2-year-old son, Ryan.

 

"I was kinda surprised she didn't call that Friday night," Tim said. "But in some ways I was just relieved to not be arguing on the phone."

 

But now it was Saturday morning and Tim was in the driveway and his clicker still wouldn't work and he was starting to worry. He dialed the home phone. Nobody answered. He dialed Paula's cell phone. Nobody answered. So he finally called Bryana Flynn, the family babysitter, and asked for help entering the home.

 

She told him the spare key was in the back. He grabbed it from inside a toy chest.

 

He unlocked the door. He walked inside.

 

"And I was still on the phone with Bryana as I was going through the house, and it was a mess," Tim said. "I checked Paula's office. Checked the bedrooms. Nothing. Ryan's stuff was scattered all over the house and I was asking Bryana 'Where did they go?'"

 

That's when Tim opened the door that leads to the garage.

 

He immediately saw Paula in the backseat of the car, slumped over to the side.

 

She was dead.

 

"He was just yelling into the phone," Bryana recalled. "He was yelling, 'Oh my God! Where's my f---ing baby?'"

 

When Tim got closer to the car he looked inside.

 

Ryan was lying in the back floorboard.

 

He was wrapped in a blue blanket.

 

"I remember yelling into the phone," Tim said. "I just remember yelling, just screaming, 'She killed herself and she killed my baby!'"

 

 

• • •

The college basketball schedule is loaded Wednesday night and highlighted by a pair of Top 25 matchups.

 

North Carolina is playing, as are Duke and Pittsburgh and Xavier and Vanderbilt. And then there's a Pac-10 showdown between Arizona and Arizona State in Tempe that will dominate local headlines as Kevin O'Neill tries to get a road win that could push the Wildcats back into the national rankings.

 

With less hype, Tim Parmeter will be coaching too.

 

He'll be 153 miles away from Arizona-Arizona State, 153 miles away at Eastern Arizona, a junior college in the shadows of Mount Graham here in the Gila River Valley. His opponent will be Arizona Western, a league rival coached by a close friend.

 

And if Tim makes it through the game without breaking down it'll be the upset of all upsets, given how at halftime he'll formally announce a scholarship in the name of his son, Ryan Wrigley Parmeter, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning Dec. 29, 2006, in what police ruled was a murder-suicide initiated by Tim's estranged wife and Ryan's mother, Paula.

 

"The game is going to be emotional," Tim said as he sat in his office two weekends ago, exactly one year to the day after he found Paula's and Ryan's bodies in the backseat of the family's black Volvo.

 

"I'm just happy I'll be coaching against a friend," Tim added with a half-hearted smile. "Maybe he'll be messed up, too."

 

A coach's son from Indiana, Tim followed his father into the profession after playing at Truman State. He worked at Central College in Iowa, then at Iowa State for Tim Floyd before landing at Scottsdale Community College, where he fielded a competitive team -- despite not having the luxury of scholarships or dorms -- and even found time to take in Trivia Night at a local establishment every once in a while.

 

That's where he met his wife, an Arizona State graduate.

 

"She was with a big group and I was with a big group and we met over Cubs trivia," Tim said. "The question was about Hack Wilson's record for RBI in a season and we both shouted the answer from opposite sides of the room. And then it was like, 'How'd you know that?'"

 

Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000. Two years later, Tim got the head coaching job at Eastern Arizona, where he had a real campus and real dorms and a career heading upward.

 

Meantime, Paula got pregnant. The baby was born Aug. 31, 2004. They named him Ryan Wrigley Parmeter.

 

Wrigley was for Wrigley Field. Ryan was ...

 

"Just a name we both liked," Tim said.

 

The rest was supposed to be the picture-perfect life with family vacations and holidays spent together. Alas, too few unions go that route these days. In September 2006, Tim filed for divorce, which sent Paula into a state of despair. She sought professional help and was placed on medication.

 

"I considered Paula a friend, as well as my boss, and she was a nice person," Bryana said. "But she just couldn't handle going through the divorce."

 

Tim moved from the family's home shortly before Christmas 2006 and stayed in Arizona while Paula and Ryan visited her family for the holiday. Tim picked them up at Tucson International Airport late on Dec. 27 and drove them home. He put Ryan to bed and was planning to leave when he said Paula asked him to stay the night so they could enjoy a present-opening session the following morning.

 

"I wasn't going to stay, but then she looked at me and said, 'I'm so over you. Don't worry about it,'" Tim recalled. "So I just stayed and then we woke up the next day, had Christmas and had lunch. And then I was going to get out of there because I knew once she laid Ryan down for a nap she'd want to talk."

 

So Tim got out of there. But Paula called as soon as Ryan fell asleep.

 

"She was sitting in my closet, which was empty, crying and asking why I took all my clothes," Tim said. "I told her it was because I moved out, that we had talked about this. So that went on for a while and she finally said, 'I can't go on any more. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Please take care of Ryan.' And then she just hung up."

 

Worried, Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. Then Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. And this went on for hours on into the night until Tim said Paula finally calmed down. But when Tim woke up the next morning he was still bothered by the tone and decided to call Paula's counselor to "just tell him all the stuff that had happened since she had been home from Chicago," Tim said. "I was like, 'Somebody is going to die. I don't know who. But somebody is going to die.'"

 

The counselor immediately called Paula, who immediately called Tim and "that conversation digressed into the nastiest, most vile conversation I've ever had with anybody," Tim recalled. "I was just listening, not really saying anything. And she said, 'I bet you want to go, don't you?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Are you sick of this?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Then why don't you just hang up?' And I said, 'Because you'll just call back. So I'll just wait and let you get it all out.' And then she goes, 'Well, I'm done. I'm not calling you back.' And I said 'OK.' And she said, 'I'm not calling you back. You'll really never hear from me again.' And that was at about 1 p.m. on Dec. 29th."

 

That was Tim's final conversation with Paula.

 

What he later learned from police is after she hung up, she wrote six suicide letters addressed to six different people and mailed them all to her brother. Afterward, she placed Ryan in the backseat of the car with six stuffed animals, some toys, a few books, a sippy cup filled with milk and some chocolate candy. She crammed towels in every crack of the garage door and unplugged it, which is why Tim's opener wouldn't work. Then she rolled the windows down in the car and opened the sunroof before starting the engine and beginning the process that would kill herself and her son.

 

"He was just sitting in the backseat with Mom, reading books and playing," Tim said. "He was just having a good time. What did he know?"

 

Paula also left a digital camera in the car. When Tim uploaded the pictures there was a final image of Ryan.

 

"There he is in the car," Tim said as he pulled the picture up on his computer. "See how his lips look swollen? The police said that's from the carbon monoxide."

 

By the time Ryan was buried the police had all six suicide letters. One was addressed to Tim. It was given to him after the memorial service. He sat at a table with two officers. Before reading it he asked a question.

 

"I asked them, 'Is this going to piss me off?' And one of them just said he had never seen anything like it. He said it was pure evil."

 

The letter was three pages hand-written.

 

It reads, in part: Don't ever try to convince yourself otherwise -- this event is absolutely, completely your fault. You created it. You could have prevented it. You encouraged it. You found our pain funny. ... If I have the opportunity to haunt you, I will. ... I pray you will see our faces in your mind's eye and wonder what Ryan could have been and what we could have had if you had only chosen love.

 

"There is no remorse," Tim said. "It's the opposite of remorseful."

 

The note is signed Paula.

 

Beside her name is some scribbling. It's clear she also had Ryan sign the letter.

 

To the side she wrote, "That's Ryan saying bye-bye, Dada."

 

"That's the part that really gets me," Tim said, his voice cracking as he placed the letter back into his bag. "That part still gets me to this day."

 

 

• • •

Coaches spend much of every season talking about taking it one game at a time in an attempt to win it all. That's why this story is different, because it's about a man taking it one second at a time, about a man having trouble focusing on winning anything because he's still trying to come to terms with everything he's lost.

 

It's a slow process.

 

A year to the day after finding the bodies, Tim Parmeter parked in the same garage and sat in the same house, a place where not much has changed.

 

 

Wrigley Field isn't just a stadium, it was also young Ryan's namesake. (Provided to CBSSports.com)

Ryan's room is still mostly as it was, replete with baby blue walls, a diagram of Wrigley Field and a stand holding his three favorite books, Goodnight Moon, The Going to Bed Book and Pajama Time!. Beside that is a red chair, the same red chair Tim used to sit in while reading to Ryan. He still sits there sometimes, still reads those books. There's a box of Kleenex on the floor next to the chair. It never moves. It just stays there until it's empty. Then another box replaces it.

 

In the den, Elmo still sits next to the TV.

 

In Tim's room, Cookie Monster still sits on the bed.

 

In the kitchen, the high-chair still sits next to the table.

 

And the obvious question is why, why remain in this house where an unthinkable act tore a life to pieces?

 

"People ask that all the time," Tim said. "They say, 'I can't believe you're still here. How could you still live here?' But this is where my son lived. So I have a harder time imagining not being here, a harder time imagining moving out of here because though I have one bad memory here, my mind mostly floods with good memories."

 

Which is not to suggest his mind doesn't slip. It does. Bad times come without warning and can be triggered by anything.

 

Sometimes it's things as obvious as pictures, which decorate the walls of his home and office. Other times it's less obvious things -- like cows (Ryan loved cows) or Subway (Ryan would get bread from there to feed the ducks at a nearby pond) or the No. 1 (Ryan, for reasons Tim still doesn't understand, refused to say the No. 1 when counting) or that Rodney Atkins song Watching You (it's about a father and son) or even something as simple as a Pop-Tart.

 

"I got a Pop-Tart the other day," Tim said. "I took one bite and cried because it reminded me of Ryan."

 

Breakfast, in general, reminds Tim of Ryan.

 

"A perfect example is when my family and I all went and stayed with Tim after it happened, and we got up one morning to fix breakfast," said Arizona Western coach Kelly Green. "So I went to the store and got a bunch of stuff and fixed breakfast, and then when Tim got up I told him to join us. But he couldn't do it. He just went outside and sat. So I went out there and talked to him and asked what was wrong, and he said he just couldn't do it because that's one thing Ryan and him used to do together. He used to get up and fix Ryan breakfast and then they'd just sit there together. So now breakfast is difficult."

 

"It's crazy what he's been through," added Kris Dunn, a college teammate of Tim's. "But what I'm proud of most is that Tim has never really melted."

 

He has had moments, though. It took a month before he could even go back in his garage, and moving the black Volvo for the first time (Tim ultimately sold it) nearly caused a panic attack. One time he was watching film of an old game and saw Paula and Ryan in the crowd. That was rough because he wasn't prepared to see them.

 

But in low times he pulls Paula's suicide letter out from that bag and reads it because, in some warped way, it makes him stronger and helps move him along.

 

"That letter makes me realize that giving up in whatever sense that I would give up would be letting her win," Tim said. "If I killed myself or quit coaching, then I think I would be letting her win because that's what she wanted. She obviously wanted to hurt me. And she did. But I'm gonna try to keep going. I'm just gonna try to keep doing the best I can."

 

One of the things Tim remembers about the day he discovered the bodies is that it was 11:12 a.m. when he walked into the garage. So on Dec. 30, 2007 -- one year to the day -- he scheduled practice for 11 a.m., and it was easy to figure out the motivation.

 

"Practice gave him something to do, something to help get through that time," said Eastern Arizona assistant Anthony Owens. "It was important for him to be here at that time."

 

So Tim was there at that time -- standing in black pants, a gray shirt and white shoes while his players sat in a circle at midcourt, stretching, grabbing their toes and counting: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... clap ... clap ... clap.

 

When 11:12 came, Tim was leaning against a brick wall, no expression, no words. He just stared at the clock above and watched the seconds slowly tick away, each as hard as the one that preceded it.

 

http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/10567327

[theintensifier 0]

Good lord.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Wow, that's just terribly awful.

[Matt Young 0]

People disgust me sometimes.

[Maztinho 0]

I cried.

[Nighthawk 0]

If it were me, I would have been glad to get the note, cause then I could be like "Whew... at least she was crazy. Now I know I don't have to blame myself at all."

[Gary Floyd 0]

Goddamn.

[Guest LME]

"Demons I can understand, but people? They're just crazy."

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000.

Note to self: do not mention my love of the Cubs and my appearance on the Bozo Show to unstable girls I like.

[Mik 0]

And I'm guessing you know/like a few unstable girls?

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Only kind that can stand me even for a while.

[The Niggardly King 0]

Damn shame, simpin ass muthafuckas invest so much of their happiness into the value and validation of others instead of themselves.

[King Kamala 0]

Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000.

Note to self: do not mention my love of the Cubs and my appearance on the Bozo Show to unstable girls I like.

 

Czech, you were on the Bozo Show?

[Nighthawk 0]

He's mentioned it before. It's a pretty good story.

 

You know, I was thinking... I'd like to get the full content of the suicide note from this story. I'd often considered doing some spoken word recordings of suicide notes over various feedback and distortion, and this sounds like a pretty sick one.

[fazzle 0]

blahblahblahblah people dead blahblahblah HOLY SHIT! THE BASKETBALL SCHEDULE IS PACKED ON WEDNESDAY! blahblahblah dead people blahblahblah

[Mik 0]

The thing that sorta scares me about shit like this is that she seemed relatively normal until things started going wrong. Unlike Czech, I do my absolute best to avoid crazy.

 

I don't know how I would be able to deal with something like this.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Since I'm not marrying any of you, I'll repeat myself.

 

November of 1994, 3rd grade, and my family had been on the waiting list for tapings of the Bozo Show practically since I was born, and it indeed took about eight years to get our tickets. So I got to miss a day of school so my family could watch a taping of the Bozo Show. However, due to decreasing ratings in the morning time slot, channel 9 moved the show from weekday mornings to Sunday mornings, so it wasn't quite the same, I guess. Cooky was long gone by then because he kept having heart attacks or something, and replaced by some other clown named Rusty that just wasn't the same as Cooky, no matter how hard he tried. So I kind of got ripped off by getting the "Super Sunday Show" and not the real show.

 

So we got to Bradley Place and were waiting in line for a while when some coordinators asked if anyone wanted to participate in a game on the program. My parents urged me to go do it, even though I was kind of intimidated by the whole thing. It turned out to be a relay race involving balancing a prop book on your head while doing a serpentine weave around some cones or something. Being the uncoordinated yutz at age 7 that I still am at 21, this task, easy for so many other kids, was a quite daunting task indeed. The first sign that this was not going to go well was when a producer yelled at the coordinators for picking boys, as the prizes earmarked for this game were gender-specific. They said don't worry, I could still be in it, and we took our seats, now upgraded for easier access to the stage when the time came.

 

I was crossing my fingers that I'd be randomly selected for the Grand Prize Game, since for years, aware of my inevitable appearance on the Bozo Show, I had been honing my craft at the local video arcade in Arlington Heights (the arcade and its mall long since demolished), pitching ping-pong balls into buckets till my muscle memory belied my otherwise lamentable motor skills. I wasn't selected, so I was forced to settle for this stupid relay race that I'd have no chance of winning. I went up there with the rest of the kids, and got in line. Under the pressure of team competition, and the heat of the studio lights, knowing that I was in no way qualified to participate in this exercise without fucking failing miserably, I decided to cheat.

 

Cheating is par for the course when you're a kid on the Bozo Show. We've all seen the bloopers of the kids that just stroll up to Bucket No. 6 and drop the ball in like it ain't no thang, to the giggles of the crowd and the knowing chuckle of Bozo. Why not me? So as the other kids adeptly and adroitly balanced the fake books on their heads, as it was handed off to me, I took the book, placed it atop my head, and just held it there as I walked down the serpentine line and back, handing it off to another kid who, unlike me, was capable of this. So there I was (or would be, as this aired around Valentine's Day '95) on local and national television, flagrantly trampling the very concept of a balance-a-book-on-your-head relay race. However, the cheating paid off, because my team won! We won:

 

1. The Little Mermaid Tiger Handheld Game

2. A bag of Matt's chocolate chip cookies (and everyone in the audience got a free cookie too!)

 

I had no use for a Little Mermaid handheld game, so I just gave it to my sister. I think the other team won Uno Stacko. I would've rather had Uno Stacko, but I don't recall if the losers got the Matt's as well, so the efficacy of the childhood cheating is disputable. After that, we did the Grand March where we all march out of the studio and wave to the camera, and I remember not being too jazzed about it and kinda looking at my feet or grabbing my crotch or something completely oblivious. After the taping, we posed with Bozo and the other clowns, and I proudly held my box of Matt's c.c. cookies with a very serious face, all "don't step to the winner of these cookies" and so forth.

 

And that's the story of how I was on the Bozo (Super Sunday) Show. It's too bad that there's no real place left in television for local programming like that, especially at WGN, which had a long tradition of producing its own programming (and doing a damn fine job at it, pretty much writing the book on how to broadcast a baseball game) until all the independents were swallowed up by the WB and UPN in 1995. It was really cool to not just attend the taping of, but actually be a part of the show, and it's a shame that that experience, once a highly desired one among Chicagoland families (as evidenced by waiting eight goddamn years to get tickets), is no longer available to kids today, because it's not cost-effective enough to produce shows like that.

[Nighthawk 0]

Man, I should have done that. It would have been a day trip for me, since I was farther south in Illinois, but since I'm a little older than you I might have gotten the real show.

 

I like the Little Mermaid, but all of those Tiger Handhelds sucked.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Matt's cookies are great in small doses, by the way. Ugly, lumpy, chewy, and delicious.

[Slayer 0]

Since I'm not marrying any of you

You cad

[AboveAverage484 0]

That was Czech's greatest post ever. I think I had the Home Alone Tiger hand held.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

thanks, I make that same post like once a year