Monday, April 25, 2011
Associated Press
NEW CASTLE, Pa.
Chris Brown climbs into his pickup nearly every day and drives 90 minutes from New Castle to see his son.
Jordan Brown, 13, is in an Erie correctional facility. Police arrested the boy more than two years ago on charges he placed a shotgun to the back of his father’s pregnant fiancee’s head as she slept, pulled the trigger, returned the gun to his bedroom, then walked outside to catch the school bus, pausing only to toss the spent shell. Kenzie Marie Houk, 26, and her unborn baby died instantly.
While Brown drives to Erie, Houk’s parents, Deb and Jack Houk, make trips to nearby Venango — to their daughter’s grave.
“I feel their heartbreak, but I don’t think that they feel mine,” Brown said in an 80-minute interview with the Tribune-Review, his first conversation about his life since the murders. “I don’t think they have yet to acknowledge that I am probably the biggest victim in all of this. Everything is focused on them and their family, which is fine. I mean, I’m not looking for sympathy; I’m not looking for anything like that.
“[But] it’s no secret what I went through. I don’t think a lot of people know how heavy that is and how tough it is to get through something like this. And I’m still not through it. ... We’ve all lost a lot. We’ve all endured pain nobody should ever have to go through.”
On Feb. 20, 2009, a state trooper called Brown at his job in a Steelite International USA warehouse and told him to go home. That night, as Jordan Brown slept with his head on his dad’s chest, police arrested the boy on two counts of homicide. Houk’s daughters — ages 4 and 8, who live with their grandparents — were home when the murders happened, police said. The younger girl found her mom’s dead body.
Brown knew the Houk family for nearly 20 years and became friends with Kenzie years before they started in dating in 2007. He proposed Christmas Day 2007, he said.
“Like living in a nightmare and not waking up,” Brown said about the day of the killings. “You get up and go to work in the morning and then get a phone call three hours later, and you lose your whole family. Not just Kenzie and the baby, but I also lost two daughters who loved me very much, the same as I loved them. And my son. I face losing him for the rest of his life.”
Brown, 38, doesn’t believe his son is guilty. He doesn’t know who killed Houk, but he thinks it might have been an intruder. A lock on the back door wasn’t working, he said.
Brown no longer works. He has received death threats, he said, and carries a gun for protection. He has difficulty sleeping. He hopes his son will be released but acknowledges he does not know what they’ll do if that happens.
“There’s been questions about whether we relocate or stay,” he said. “If you ask Jordan, he can’t wait to get back to Mohawk and play football with his friends — you know, as any child that age would want to do. But I don’t know yet.”
He added: “I’m sure [Jordan’s] going to need a boatload of counseling. No doubt about that. You put a child through hell for a couple, three years of his life, whatever it’s going to be; that’s pretty traumatic. I know what I’ve gone through the last couple years, and I can imagine how heavy it’s been on him.”
The Houks have little sympathy.
“He can still see his son,” Deb Houk said. “I’d give anything in the world. Even if she were behind bars, at least I could still see her.”
Brown won’t say how often he visits Kenzie’s grave. “I’d rather not answer that,” he said. “That’s personal. I go when I feel I need to go.”
Deb Houk goes regularly.
“It gets harder and harder every day,” she said. “I wish I had a shovel just to dig her up and give her a hug. And now, he says his son is going to need counseling? Those girls have needed it from day one, and they’ll need it for the rest of their lives.”
Jordan Brown’s case remains in pretrial status.