Stalking, threats and an unspeakable attack
Stalking
When he lost control over her, that’s when our world stumbled then crashed. My mother had a job, a home, and a car she could buy on her own. She was strong and independent and didn’t need him or want him. She stayed firm in her resolve. That’s when the stalking began. But we didn’t recognize it at that time as stalking; we thought of it as Stupid Sperry Tricks and would have a good laugh about it later.
We would watch as he parked down the street dragging a 10-foot ladder out of his car. He would skulk up the street hiding in shadows with ladder in hand, and then throw it over the fence to our backyard. We’d hear the thump as the ladder hit the side of the house under the kitchen window. The lights in the kitchen were off but he could see through to the dining room. I would sit on a chair hidden by a wall while my mother would laugh and pretend to sweet-talk someone in the room. He would go so ballistic and he’d fall off the ladder, while we giggled.
He did so many stupid, ridiculous things like that, my mother never took him seriously. She talked to him nicely, trying to tell him it was over, but she never got very far. He’d be back at the house pounding on the door. She’d call the police and they’d force him back into the house. It was an ugly revolving occurrence.
He was insanely jealous of her and was not going to be forced out of the lifestyle he clearly deserved. He was the man about town with a lovely woman on his arm living in a picture perfect neighborhood with all the trappings of built-in respectability. He forgot that, before she threw him out, he had already stolen my father’s life insurance money from her, written so many bad checks on her bank account the bank didn’t want to do business with her anymore, put her in debt for loans he had taken out in her name and maxed out her credit cards fraudulently. He had nothing left to control but her, and he wasn’t giving that up.
More stalking
We were the only house on our street that had floodlights on every corner. We lit up like Lunar Park at sundown. All the trees and shrubbery that matured over the years we lived in our home were cut down. There would be no more trees to hide behind or shrubs to jump out of when she walked to the door. She went to work; she came home. She didn’t leave the house after that.
He would call fifty to one hundred times a day, harassing her, begging her for a second chance, then threatening her. He told her how I (her youngest daughter of 14 at the time) looked so vulnerable standing at the corner in the morning waiting for my school bus. He questioned whom she was with at lunch. He told her he didn’t like what she wore to work that day, or days past. She knew he was following her and was becoming fearful of him. The police told her they couldn’t do anything to stop him because he didn’t do anything to harm her. Trying to run her off the road to force her to stop and talk to him, breaking into the house waiting in the dark to ambush her, slashing her tires, was still not enough for the police to get involved.
The intruder
During a rare weekend alone at home with my older sister, my mother visiting her sister up north, we heard odd and unusual noises in our backyard. It was extremely late in the evening when we heard a crashing sound in the yard. Kim, my sister, called the police as I ran to investigate. We had a German shepherd at the time, a gift from Sperry, who was barking and going nuts to get in the yard. So I opened the door and let him out.
The police found Sperry huddled under a blanket in the far end of the yard cornered by the dog. With him he had a meat cleaver, a hand drill, and a hacksaw. He had been trying to quietly cut through the deadbolt locks on the house when he fell into the metal trashcan. They arrested him for the first time.
Sperry had hated my mother’s daughters. She was a mother first and her girls came first. He resented the time and attention she gave us, and believed if he could get rid of her girls, she would then have nothing else to focus on but him. She would need him in her time of grief, and he was going to forgive her of all her sins, and be there to take care of her.
The charges against him were strong: attempted breaking and entering; attempted assault; attempt to do bodily harm, etc. and for the first time, Sperry might actually do hard time in prison. Not some dink county jail, but prison, and he was terrified of that.
The threat
Five days before his trial, he broke into the house. My mother was home from work that day because I was home from school, sick. He didn’t know I was there and when I heard him pound up the stairs I left my bed and crawled to the top of the staircase where I wouldn’t be seen, but I could watch and hear.
He screamed at her to drop the charges. He grabbed her arm as she lunged for the phone and twisted it so she’d drop it. He pulled her close to his face with and spoke with a voice that was so menacing I shook with terror. He told her if she didn’t drop the charges she’d never see court. He would have her disfigured so no other man would ever look at her again. He would be the only man to want her then. He would take care of her and she would be grateful to him. Then as if nothing happened, he casually walked out the door.
It has been 39 years since he spoke those words, but I still see him and still hear his voice. Gone was the mask of the smooth sophisticate, to be replaced by the rancid face of a sociopath. His true face, the face of a twisted monster, and I was terrified.
The attack
John Sperry hired someone to throw acid in my mother’s face. He mixed the acid with some sort of petroleum so when it hit her it would stick. The result was my mother, at the age of 39, was hideously disfigured. She lost an eye, her features ravaged, her neck, chest, arms and hands burned to the bone in some places. What she inhaled destroyed her lung capacity and would slowly cause deterioration in her ability to breathe, until it finally took her life years later.
John Sperry hid in a veteran’s hospital for a period of time because he was a coward, knowing the police couldn’t touch him while he was there. It took the middleman who Sperry hired to find someone who would actually do the atrocious deed to turn on him.
Sperry plea-bargained and was sentenced to seven years in prison, but only served three and a half. For all the years since he was released, I kept a close guarded watchful eye on him. He did not change his ways once out of prison. He was still conning and scamming and stealing. He hadn’t learned any new tricks that I was aware of. The old ones of stopping the mail delivery to its rightful owners, stealing checks, forging checks and embezzling, worked just fine for him in the past and they were working for him once out of prison. What I learned, and what I was able to do about it, is for another day and another story.
He died several years ago, and I can only hope he suffered long and hard trying to take his last breath.
What we missed
The signs were all there, but we missed what was staring us in the face. We missed them because we’d never been confronted with anyone like this. We missed them because we didn’t have the knowledge or education about what we were dealing with. We missed them because we ignored our own inner intuition, and I’m going to say something that I don’t think my mother would appreciate, but here goes: I think she missed them because acknowledging that he was a sociopath would mean there must have been something wrong with her for allowing him into our lives.
For many years, my mother was embarrassed about what had happened to her. If someone were bold enough asked her about her scars, she told a story of how she was pouring gas into a lawn mower with a cigarette in her mouth and it exploded. That explanation used to upset me, but I was too young to understand why.
Today, I understand perfectly. Joyce felt she was at fault by not seeing Sperry for what he really was. She was embarrassed to admit, and felt a great amount of stupidity, for getting sucked into his web. She was remorseful, second guessing, armchair quarterbacking as the years went by for not recognizing he was a sick, warped individual. Somehow, she had reasoned, another woman would have been smarter than her, would have seen through the lies and deceit; why didn’t she? It must be her fault. Instead, she’d rather people believe that she was 100 percent responsible for the “accident,” and close the subject. She took responsibility for his crimes for years before I’d finally had enough and forced her to come to terms with what really happened.
It took years for her to come out of hiding after this tragedy, but she did. She got remarried and lived many years as a whole person, no longer a victim but a survivor.
By sharing this with you, I hope someone else can be spared. I hope someone else who is living with someone like John Sperry recognizes the danger and gets the hell out.
For news accounts, read “The long criminal history of John R. Sperry, formerly John R. Gorbich.”