Neighbors Ostracize Girl as Angel of Death

Tragedy followed Jenny Waldroup back to Robbinsville, and the people of this tiny mountain town wanted none of it.

They were afraid. Mothers would not let their sons talk to her. One paid a high schooler $20 a week to protect her daughter on walks home from the bus stop after she and Jenny squabbled.

They were angry. They blamed Jenny for what happened 20 months ago to the two people she loved most--Josh Rogers and Kevin “Peck” Hyde, 15-year-olds who died in a suicide pact in which Jenny too was supposed to die.

But Jenny didn’t die. Now, all of 14 years old, she is a pariah.

Jenny’s brother overheard classmates in the halls. “Jenny should have shot herself,” they whispered.

Josh’s cousin confronted her at a friend’s house. “I hate you!” he shouted. “You killed Josh!”

“I didn’t!” Jenny yelled, breaking into tears and running out of the house. She jumped a split-rail fence and scrambled hand over hand up the wooded mountainside, not stopping until she ran out of breath.

But in a town of 750 people, there is nowhere to hide. And when three other young men killed themselves, this blond-haired girl was treated as if she were Robbinsville’s own Angel of Death.

No angel has ever had to endure a life like Jenny’s.

She would lock herself in her room for hours, afraid of her father, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some nights, he would roam the house with gun in hand, believing he was still fighting in the jungles. And she always seemed to be fending off an older brother, who would hit her like his two older brothers had hit him.

Often, Jenny scratched her skin with a pin or a staple until it bled.

Then she met Josh and became infatuated with the bashful boy who called her “Pooh Bear.” But Peck--Josh’s best friend--also loved her. One afternoon in April, 1996, he demanded that Jenny choose between the two. She chose Josh, and that’s when their lives began to unravel.

They had cut classes, and they were afraid their truancy would bring them trouble. So they stole a car and took off down a mountain road, determined that the only way they would return would be in a box.

Peck had his father’s gun. Hungry and out of money, they held up a gasoline station. In three days, they got as far as Arkansas. When police noticed them driving erratically and tried to pull them over, Josh pulled out the gun.

The suicide pact had called for one of the boys to shoot Jenny before they shot themselves. Jenny survived because neither could take the life of the blue-eyed girl they adored.

Jenny spent the next month in a mental hospital on suicide watch.

She was released to attend the funeral. Josh’s father and grandmother invited Jenny to sit with them, but Josh’s mother refused to enter the church as long as Jenny was inside. Finally, the minister coaxed her in.

In the coffins, Jenny placed angel figurines and her cherished dream-catcher earrings and necklace.

The church was packed.

“Mama, I wish they could see how they were loved,” Jenny whispered. “If they had only known.”

“Yes, Jenny,” her mother said. “This town loved them.”

The fact is, both boys were troubled.

Josh lived with his father and was often at odds with his mother, who lived across town. And though Peck often appeared boisterous and outgoing, he grieved for his mother who had died a year earlier. Since then, he had tried twice to kill himself.

Nonetheless, the townspeople blamed Jenny. She was a living symbol of out-of-control youth, of everything parents feared for their own children.

Jenny was no innocent, people gossiped--she had pitted two fine boys against each other. Though police ruled the deaths suicides, some people believed Jenny pulled the trigger.

And look how she went to that school dance so soon after the suicides. Going on with life as if nothing had happened!

Like many small towns, gossip spreads fast here, at the local uniform factory and furniture mill and after church on Sunday.

“She was branded, marked. That was it,” said Janie Wiggins, one of the few parents who stuck by Jenny. “People don’t let you live things down here.”

For a while, Jenny fought back. She threatened to beat up her oppressors. She could swing hard. She had learned from her brothers how to fight. She sneaked cigarettes and started drinking alcohol. School officials recommended she transfer to a school for troubled youths, but her parents objected.

“I lost everything in a minute that was important to me,” Jenny said recently. “When I got back, death itself didn’t scare me no more ‘cause I didn’t care. I had so much in me I wanted to get out and I didn’t know how.”

She found solace in writing poetry. “That’s the only way I can stay alive is to write. When I’m writing, it’s like taking one ounce of pressure off me.”

Jenny didn’t bother with proper spelling and grammar; she just let the words flow onto scraps of paper.

*

It’s a cold world

Its filled with empty dreams.

Things I use to love.

Friends who use to love me.

It’s a cold world

Filled with hate.

The thing that could set me free.

Fled from this cold world.

*

Time has not brought healing. Instead, a string of tragedies has left Robbinsville parents even more fearful that Jenny might suck their own children into suicide.

When Josh and Peck died, suicide was an anomaly in Robbinsville. But within the year, three other young men shot themselves.

First, a man in his 20s killed himself after his girlfriend broke up with him. Then a 16-year-old died when he was playing a form of Russian roulette with friends--apparently looking into the barrel before he fired each time. It was ruled an accident, but parents were terrified.

And just a week before the anniversary of Josh’s and Peck’s deaths, one of Peck’s best friends told Jenny that he wanted to die. Coy Phillips had been depressed since his mother died, and he had been sent to a foster home.

“He knew I knew what it was like,” Jenny said. “I told him not to do it, and he wouldn’t listen to me. I told him it wasn’t the right way. It was wrong and it does hurt.”

She told school counselors that Coy needed help. They called him in, but the 15-year-old went home and shot himself anyway.

After that, rumors flew that Jenny was recruiting people for suicide pacts, that she played with a Ouija board to contact Josh and Peck.

When two girls absconded with a car from their parents’ driveway for a joy ride, they blamed Jenny’s stolen-car escapade for giving them the idea.

“People want to blame me for every kid that dies,” said Jenny, her sweet Southern drawl quivering. “I walk down the street and they look at me with hatred.”

One Sunday, Jenny’s Baptist minister preached that anyone who committed suicide would go straight to hell. The thought of Josh and Peck burning in the fires of hell terrified Jenny. She mustered all her strength to remain in her pew.

But she couldn’t find the fortitude to stay in school. Last spring, with two months left in the school year, Jenny dropped out.

“It’s not worth it here,” Jenny said. “Everybody goes around saying this is heaven because it’s so isolated. But to me and people who have problems, it’s hell because of the isolation.”

The only solution was to leave Robbinsville, she decided.

“Robbinsville ran Jenny out of town,” said her father, Kenneth Waldroup, still bitter at the town that he said showed little compassion for his child.

Earlier this fall, he and Jenny moved to the Knoxville area--a two-hour drive. They rented an apartment and Jenny enrolled in eighth grade while her mom, a teacher, remained in Robbinsville to support them.

It was a fresh start for Jenny. She made friends who didn’t know about her past, who didn’t judge her, who weren’t afraid of her. The first day of school, she exchanged 32 phone numbers with students who seemed genuinely interested in being her friend. She could walk with her head up, smiling unabashedly on campus.

But then her father had a stress disorder relapse. He couldn’t take care of Jenny, much less himself. He needed his wife and Jenny needed her mother, he decided, so they moved back to Robbinsville in October.

Jenny tried to look on the bright side. She had been missing her mother and a couple of loyal friends, anyway. Besides, maybe she would be accepted this time.

On a recent weekend home, the mother of one of her friends had invited her to dinner and apologized for refusing to allow her daughter to socialize with Jenny.

But on Jenny’s second day back at school in Robbinsville, her mother received a phone call from a worried mother. Was it true that Jenny was going to be paid to beat up her daughter, the mother asked.

The next weekend, Jenny invited a few girls over for a slumber party. The father of one called Jenny’s father. He had a question:

“Will my daughter be safe here with Jenny?”