Young Killer's Pleas Went Unanswered
Boy who got little help before killing his abusive father will get counseling in family-style setting.
By Rob Schneider
Originally published in the Indianapolis Star, April 26, 2001
MARION, Ind. — Wayne Salyers Jr. doesn't have much reason to trust adults.
His father regularly beat him. His family failed to protect him. School officials did little. Not when he wrote a counselor, describing how his father beat him with belts and boards. Not when he threw himself around his principal's ankles, begging her not to call his father to report a behavior problem.
No one, it seemed, would help him. So on a night last August, he abandoned his Hot Wheels, grabbed a .44-caliber Magnum from his parents' bedroom and killed his father.
On Tuesday, Wayne turned 11. On Wednesday, the Fairmount boy walked into the Grant County Courthouse in handcuffs and leg shackles to see what adults had decided his future should be—a stay of undetermined length at a facility where he can receive counseling and live in a family-style environment.
But those close to the case said it never should have gotten to this point.
"What we have here was a boy that was crying out for help and didn't get that help," said Paul Mones, a Portland, Ore., attorney who helped represent Wayne.
As early as second grade, teachers at Park Elementary School became concerned about Wayne's behavior. He was acting out, calling other children names and getting into fights.
School counselor Donna Hull told investigators she tried to determine if anything at home was contributing to Wayne's problems. She questioned the boy but had no success. Whenever the subject of his home life came up, she said, his reaction was one of fear.
Any chance to follow up ended in March 1999, when the school received a letter from Wayne Salyers Sr. stating that he didn't want his son, then a third-grader, talking to the counselor without his or his wife's consent.
But last year, Wayne Jr. contacted the counselor on his own. On wide-ruled notebook paper, the fourth-grader wrote:
"I need to tell you something very important and it is about my dad. My dad abuses me and my mom and my sister. He abuses me with leather belts, boards and two by fours. Please contact me as soon as you can. Sincerely Wayne Salyers."
But by the time Hull contacted Wayne, the boy had changed his mind about the note and wanted it back.
"I didn't push the issue when he said he changed his mind and he didn't want to come in," Hull told investigators. She said she had been told by the school principal not to see Wayne anymore.
There were other troubling signs.
Wayne's third- and fourth-grade teachers told investigators the boy would become frightened if he learned school officials were going to call his father to report poor behavior.
Principal Lynn Wilson recalled one instance in which Wayne began sobbing hysterically at word that a call home was imminent. "He ended up on the floor, holding onto my ankle, begging me not to call his father," she said.
Yet when Wayne's attorneys checked with the county's Child Protective Service, they found no record of the incident.
The agency was contacted in April 2000 when Wayne showed up at school limping. His father, he told Wilson, had thrown a fork at him, stabbing him in the foot.
But even that report yielded no results. Wilson said she was notified by Child Protective Service officials that the case had been investigated, and the incident was "unsubstantiated."
Wayne's sister later told investigators that Salyers had told his son to say he had stepped on nails while playing at a friend's house.
Charles Osterholt, director of the Grant County Division of Family and Children, declined to comment on the investigation of the fork incident. But he said that during an internal review after the shooting, the agency "took a hard look at what we did" and determined that it had "stayed within the guidelines."
"This is just a very difficult circumstance," Osterholt said.
Martin Lake, Wayne's primary attorney, believes that if the school had mentioned the boy's prior emotional outburst or his note to Hull, the agency's findings might have been different. "I think had they done that, the Child Protective Service might have taken some action," he said.
But Fred Herron, an assistant superintendent of the Madison-Grant School Corp., said the school's policy on reporting suspected child abuse is simply to follow state law. He said the school followed that policy in its dealings with Wayne.
Beaten weekly
How often Wayne was punished varies depending on who is asked. Few saw bruises, though photographs of the boy taken the night of the shooting reveal redness and bruising on his buttocks. Psychologist Stuart Hart, who examined Wayne and reviewed statements from friends and relatives, estimates the boy was whipped or beaten by his father an average of once or twice a week.
The abuse wasn't limited to Wayne.
When he was an infant, his half sister was removed from the home by child welfare authorities because of allegations of physical abuse. Salyers responded by ransacking their home and burning clothes belonging to his wife, Angie, and stepdaughter. Angie Salyers told an investigator for the public defender's office that her husband was supposed to get counseling but never did.
It took little to set off Wayne Salyers Sr., she said.
"If he ever smelled cigarette smoke on my face, on my breath, it was, it was just hell to pay," his wife told the investigator. "He would throw something at me or hit me on the head." She said he broke the windshield of her car with his fists.
Yet no one who knew the family called the police—not even when Angie Salyers showed up to work with black eyes. When questioned, she said she had walked into a bedpost.
Wayne did his best to divert his father's anger away from his mother.
"He would say, 'Dad, can you come and help me on this, help me on this game?' He'd get him sidetracked.'" his mother told investigators.
Once, when Wayne found his mother sleeping on the couch, he told her, "It'll be all right, Mom."
But it wasn't.
On Aug. 25, Wayne was whipped for leaving his yard. After supper that night, he began thinking of something he said he had never considered before—hurting his dad.
He told the State Police how he went into his parents' room, stood on some guitar cases and pulled the gun out of a holster on top of a cabinet.
"The first time I got (it) I said, 'I can't do this' and then I put it back up. And then I said, 'But I have to 'cause … I'm tired of getting whipped.'"
Wayne told the detectives that before that night, he had wanted to kill himself. As he ran from the house after the shooting, he thought: "Why him? I should have killed me instead."
Psychologist Richard Lawlor, who assessed Wayne, said that, ultimately, the boy ran out of options.
"The only alternative he saw was an endless series of abusive events occurring into the future."
The Grant County prosecutor's office didn't see it that way. It charged him with voluntary manslaughter, then upgraded that charge to murder in December.
A plea agreement reduced the charge back to voluntary manslaughter, which Chief Deputy Prosecutor James Luttrull said Wednesday was appropriate once all the evidence was weighed.
State Police Detective Brian Buroker said the initial investigation "was pretty complicated" by the time Salyers' disciplinary methods, and their effects on his son, were considered.
"I've been involved in numerous homicides," Buroker said. "None of those can even compare to a 10-year-old."
"A very good brother"
Family members say Salyers wasn't the villain others paint him to be. A stay-at-home father since a motorcycle accident in 1994, the former mechanic volunteered as a Scoutmaster and attended his son's baseball games. The two went on camping outings and trips, and attended gun-safety classes together.
His sister, Nancy Elswick of Cleveland, Va., said her brother and nephew visited her just weeks before the shooting. She said she saw nothing amiss.
"He was a very good brother. He was a good man, as far as I could tell," she said.
As for himself, Wayne Jr. admits he wasn't perfect.
He misbehaved at times, especially when he hadn't taken his medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Sometimes his grades slipped. He mooned a neighbor who complained that Wayne was throwing rocks at his garage.
"It seemed whether I took the straight path or the crooked path, I always got in trouble," he recalled in an interview last week.
Now he spends his days thinking about ways to stay out of trouble.
He has plenty of time for that. Since his arrest, he has been held at the Grant County Juvenile Center, where he spends his time playing solitaire.
When asked what he wanted for his 11th birthday, he replied, "Just to go somewhere in a nice facility."
He misses the fresh air, sleeping in his own bed, ice cream, candy, his friends. And, mostly, home.
But he tries not to dwell on what happened.
"I think of it as something that is already done and over," he said. "You can't change anything. Crying is not going to help … It's just going to get me feeling even worse about it."
Hart, one of the psychologists who evaluated Wayne, said what happened to the Salyers family could have been avoided if people had paid attention to the signs of abuse.
But Wayne shows no apparent bitterness toward those who failed him. "I don't think anyone could help my dad to stop abusing me. I don't think anybody could have helped."
