Elijah Evans was brought into the world as his mother was taken from it in a death so violent it stretches the perceptions of human viciousness.
But now he is nearly 250 miles away and more than two years from that beginning, living in the country on what was a hog farm about 14 miles east of Downstate Lawrenceville.
He sleeps in his own bed. His big brother, uncle and grandpa sleep a few feet away. He is surrounded by family photos on the walls, toys and videos. His aunt and three cousins live next door. On a shelf behind a box is his great-grandfather’s painting of Jesus’ resurrection. In the barn is an appaloosa named Pistol Pete and 17 acres of his grandpa’s land to explore.
He is too young to comprehend his history. But those who do know the cataclysmic events that put him in this pastoral setting–the events his maternal grandfather, Sam Evans, wrestles with daily–will hear them unfold again Tuesday, when opening statements are scheduled in the trial of Jacqueline Annette Williams, the first of three people charged with Debra Evans’ slaying.
Elijah Evans’ birthday is Nov. 16, 1995, the day he was cut from his mother’s womb in the attack that killed her. His older sister was stabbed to death in her pajamas in the family’s Addison apartment during the attack. An older brother was abducted, stabbed to death and dumped in an alley the next day. His only living sibling, older brother Jordan, was found splattered with blood but unharmed in the apartment.
His father, Lavern Ward, 26, of Wheaton, is one of the three charged in the crimes.
“There’ll be a day when I have to tell him,” said Sam Evans, who is raising “Eli” and Jordan, “but not today, not today.”
Day to day is all Sam Evans can cope with, and even that gets overwhelming.
“Sometimes, yeah,” he said, nodding his head of shoulder-length graying blond hair. Evans, a stout man who favors T-shirts with images of country/western performers, jeans and sneakers, is a soft-spoken 49-year-old Vietnam War veteran who teaches sociology and truck-driving part-time at Wabash Valley Community College in nearby Mt. Carmel.
When the boys came to live with him, Evans returned to church after many years. He began attending New Hope Christian Church in Bridgeport with his grandsons. In February, he sat down with his new pastor, David Stevenson, for nearly an hour, talking about the financial strain and his need for a church family for spiritual and emotional support.
The 150 or so parishioners will shower them with compassion and give them security, Stevenson added. Sam Evans, however, is experiencing enormous grief, Stevenson said.
“This is something that he’ll never get over,” Stevenson added. “I know it’s had to change him in a lot of different ways, but Sam is strong enough and determined enough where he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.”
Those who know Evans say he is a resilient man who has endured–in addition to the slayings–a tragic car wreck in which his cousin died in his arms, two divorces and the destruction of his home in recent years.
A graduate of Judson College in Elgin, Evans worked as a youth pastor and construction worker, raising five children with his wife Jacque. The two divorced in 1988. He then moved Downstate to be closer to elderly relatives.
He has experienced adversity, but nothing to prepare him for his life since his daughter’s slaying.
“There are times when I storm out of here,” Evans said, “walk to the end of the property, and I’m swearing, I’m kicking stones all the way there and back. But that’s how I’m able to vent all my feelings to God, and that’s how I’m able to vent all of my feelings to myself.”
When he returns it is to a gray, corrugated tin shed known as a pole barn that Eli, Jordan and Evans’ youngest child, 16-year-old Jeremiah, have shared since about November. In June 1997, shortly before Evans took formal custody of his grandsons, fire destroyed the ranch home that had stood about 30 feet west of the pole barn.
For months, the family lived in the three-bedroom house of Evans’ mother in Lawrenceville, as Evans fashioned a home from the pole barn by hammering 2-by-4 studs inside, installing insulation and nailing particle board in place to erect walls and the dropped ceiling.
The carpeted living quarters at the pole barn is about 15 feet wide by perhaps 40 feet long. One large room serves as a kitchen, den and Evans’ bedroom. He carved a bathroom in one corner and erected a wall to form the bedroom, where Jordan shares a bed with his uncle Jeremiah and Eli sleeps alone.
It is cramped but neat. On the metal front door are a list of phone numbers scrawled in pencil. Next to a doorway are two paper plates cut into heart shapes with smiling faces drawn on them. There is a large color TV, a stereo and a cabinet where Evans displays his china bells.
A field mouse occasionally visits the bathroom. Until early February, when parishioners at their church gave them a stove, the Evanses were cooking on a two-burner hot plate.
The boys “are pretty normal, everyday kids,” Evans said. He rejects media requests to see or talk to them.
Jordan, 4 years old, loves pizza, electronic games and playing with his little brother. They are in day care three days a week. Evans watches them the rest of the time. They look forward to Saturday trips to Wal-Mart, where Evans lets them play with toys, and they marvel at the garden supplies, Evans said. They attend Sunday school.
Their tragic history surfaces from time to time, and Evans believes in allowing an open discussion of it, to a point. It’s understandable.
Authorities allege Ward, a one-time boyfriend of Debra Evans, his cousin Williams, 31, and her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 25, both of Schaumburg, entered Evans’ apartment late Nov. 16, 1995, with the intention of murdering her for the unborn baby because Williams and Caffey were unable to conceive a child. Joshua Evans, Debra’s 7-year-old son, allegedly hid and witnessed his mother’s shooting and stabbing and heard his sister Samantha being killed.
Afterward, he ran toward Williams seeking protection, authorities say. The next day, investigators contend, Williams grew suspicious that the boy would tell police about the crime. She, Ward and Caffey are alleged to have stabbed him to death before dumping his body in a Maywood alley.
Yet Joshua might prove to be a critical, perhaps heroic witness, even in death. His comments about the crime to a friend of Williams before he died will be allowed as evidence.
It remains a complicated case, however, in part because the crime took place over two days and might have occurred at three or four locations. Also, a handful of peripheral players in the crime are shrouded in question.
It also remains a complicated path for the fledgling, reconstructed Evans family.
A year after the slayings, Jordan awoke in a panic in the middle of the night. Sam Evans found him standing at Elijah’s crib, stroking the infant’s arm and saying something about “bad guys” shooting his mother and taking away Elijah.
At Christmas, when a relative placed an angel at the top of the tree, Jordan wondered aloud if his mother had a set of wings that nice, Evans recalled. When Jordan says he does not have a mother, Evans corrects him and says she’s in heaven. But the grandfather does not correct Jordan when he says he is fatherless.
Evans said the tragedy, however regrettable, is a part of the boys’ history. He doesn’t want them to wonder about or fear the truth, although he glosses over the most graphic details.
“I don’t want him to ever feel like he cannot ever talk about his mother, brother or sister,” Evans said of Jordan.
And then there’s the painful matter of marking Elijah’s birthday.
The first year, the family held a party that evolved into a memorial. Evans wanted to avoid that on Elijah’s second birthday. He held a small party about a week after the boy’s actual birthday.
“I just didn’t want to associate the two things together,” Evans said. “His birthday should be a time for celebration, not for mourning.”
The family survives on Evans’ salary, although he said he is unsure how. A fundraiser in Chicago in late February generated about $3,000 for the family’s stay in Chicago during the trials.
“In the last couple of years, Sam has aged probably 20,” said Evans’ half-brother, Mike Nord. Still, when Evans does get down, “he just says he’s gotta go on,” Nord said.
Linda Pinnick, a waitress at Gray’s Restaurant in Bridgeport who has known Evans for years, struggled to explain his resiliency, “but he wants to protect those children. I know that. He could have at any time let them go to the state, but he refuses to do that. I think Sam is going to raise those boys to be able to cope and survive.”
For now, Evans is hoping to survive the trials and postponing part of his grieving until they end.
“I really can’t think that far ahead,” Evans said when asked what he hoped for the boys five years from now.
Then he pulled his father’s painting of the Resurrection from the shelf and swept dust from its surface.
“I’ve gotta find a frame for this,” he said. “I ought to hang it up.”
