"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."
--Robert Louis Stevenson
SEATTLE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES
CASE FILE #MLM-107-10538-1
CASE PROFILE: Connie Bangs
CASE WORKER: Catherine Black
DATE: 6-10-1997
STATEMENT:
Late one December night last year, Seattle police officers discovered Ms. Connie Bangs (32) walking in the middle of a residential street. Their report of the incident said that she was walking as if on a tightrope, her eyes blank and glazed over. She repeated the words "Gotta stay on the line...gotta stay on the line..." over and over again, as if she were in a trance.
I first met Connie when I came in to work the next morning. Her older siblings, Larry and Ruth, had either accompanied her or brought her in, and I could tell from her frazzled eyes that she badly needed their support.
I still remember the first words she said: "Did they tell you anything about my problem?" I tried to point out that it was her father's problem, not hers, but she stated flat-out that I'd never believe her. When I asked why, she shot back, "Because of who he is: 'Joe Bangs--Chamber of Commerce.'" She then broke down, frustrated, and revealed that she'd been keeping this quiet for twenty-three years.
This has been going on ever since she was eight years old.
Immediately after they left, I went to see Rhonda Preshutski, the Assistant District Attorney. I didn't get my hopes up too much, but she was completely unhelpful as a professional. I could tell, though, that she was disgusted at the way the deck was stacked against Connie.
I can't hold her reluctance to help me against her: she warned me that I was about to walk a tightrope, and if anything went wrong with the court case, I could be in for some serious trouble given Joe Bangs' status.
Still, I pressed my case. I warned her that, if she didn't help me, then I would get a grand jury. "If that woman's father isn't put away," I said, "then this is going to go on for the next twenty years...or somebody's going to die." She relented, offering to schedule a psychiatric evaluation.
Later that day, a familiar face greeted me at my office: Bob Bletcher. I had left a message on his answering machine, and he came to see me because of how I sounded on it. He told me he went to the Assistant D.A. as well, and that she didn't like the sound of the case. I pointed out that there was a young girl of about eight years old living there as well...and that's when Joe started in on Connie.
Bob pointed out that Child Protective Services could go in. I told him what the ADA told me, that CPS would need psych paperwork on Connie. Neither of us liked it, but our only option was to go to the Bangs home ourselves.
...So that's what we did. I rang the doorbell to no reply. Then I knocked. A quiet voice said, "Go away." After a moment, the door opened. It was Mrs. Bangs.
I introduced Bob and myself to her and asked if Joe was at home. She said no, and wasn't sure when he'd be back...I suspected she was lying.
I asked about Sara, her daughter, when Joe appeared. My first impression of him was that of an enraged "bull" from one of Jordan's cartoons. "Get off my property!" he screamed, his face beet-red. When we got far enough away from the front door, he slammed it so hard that one of the glass panes around it shattered.
I looked up and saw Sara, the eight-year-old daughter, look down at us from an open window. Just then, Joe's hand reached out, yanked her back, and slammed the window shut. I took this as our cue to leave.
(If anyone needs a psych evaluation, it's Joe Bangs. I recommend heavy sedation first.)
We headed back to Rhonda's office to share our encounter. She was on the phone, but when she got done, she promptly accused us of putting a hole through the door when we went to the Bangs' house. Bletch said, "You've got to be kidding." When Rhonda heard that, she realized that there was more to the story than what she'd just heard on the phone.
Then she dropped a bombshell. The psychologist sent out a report on Connie, and he wrote in his notes that Sara, the young girl we saw at the house, may be Connie's. Suddenly, a horrifying thought crossed my mind and left my mouth: Joe Bangs is Connie and Sara's father.
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Frank came by the next morning. He saw me sleeping on a couch in my office and asked if I was all right. "What time is it?" I asked, and he said, "6:30 in the morning." Last I remembered, I planned to close my eyes for a moment. He must have seen a flash of concern in my eyes, because he told me that he asked our neighbors, the Merediths, to look after Jordan for a while.
A lightning bolt hit my head as I suddenly remembered that I needed to talk to Connie's siblings that day. Right as I was about to fly out my office door with neither my shoes nor the case file I needed, Frank handed me both, a wry smile on his face.
I got to Ruth's house in the middle of a downpour, which, in Seattle, is only to be expected. Ruth greeted me at the door and asked if I'd run into Connie while I was on my way. She'd gone out for a walk to clear her head a half-hour ago...I can't say I blamed her.
Anyway, Ruth revealed quite a bit about her family life. She knew about Connie ever since she was eight. "I know the story, all right," she said. "How he confuses you and makes you think you're the special one because you're too young to know what he's doing. Because you think it's just Daddy and he loves you. As for me, I got really sick and...I had to go away to a special hospital. When I came back, he didn't want me anymore."
Before I could ask her to go on, we heard a car pull in. Mrs. Bangs was driving, and Connie and Sara were with her. Connie was strangely reticent, insisting that everything was just fine and that she wanted to be by herself for a while. That was the end of it...and I'll bet anything that her mother said something to her, got under her skin somehow.
After all that, I just wanted to go home. The second I opened the front door, a tiny whirlwind hit me square in the chest. Poor little Jordan missed her mama so much! When I asked her where Dad was, her little smiling face turned serious. "He's in the living room, talking with Mr. Bletcher," she whispered.
Bob wasn't happy, not at all. "The DA's office is getting a lot of pressure from City Hall," he began. "They want this matter cleared up."
Indignant, I shot back: "Cleared up or swept under the carpet?"
"I'm not kidding," Bob said, trying to keep our tempers flaring too much. "Your job's in danger, because of your obsession with this case. They think you're rattling the wrong cages, that you're driving this forward against all good sense."
I told him exactly how I felt: They're all trying to hide their heads in the sand because it's so much easier than having to deal with things. With that, I excused myself and headed for a shower.
Frank told me what Bob said to him after that: "Tell her I'm still on her side, will you?"
Later that night, Frank and I were talking. He said, "Jordan wanted to know why I didn't protect you from Bob." I asked him what he said, and he replied: "I told her that you didn't need protecting, that you knew how to protect yourself."
I wondered aloud if Bob wasn't right, that I'm taking it too far. Frank reassured me that I wasn't taking it far enough.
Then the phone rang. I answered. There was terrible news at the other end: Joe Bangs had disappeared with Sara.
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Frank, Bob, and I joined no less than four police cars at the Bangs' home. It was about 11 at night.
We found Mrs. Bangs at the dining room table, disgustingly calm and lighting up a cigarette.
I let the boys have a look around, and joined her at the table. First, I apologized for all of this.
"Could have been avoided," she said, her breath reeking of tar and nicotine.
"Are you aware how your daughters feel about him, Mrs. Bangs?"
"Everything seemed quite all right for the past thirty-five years. Now you're an expert?"
"...Did you ever have a secret? Something you didn't want to tell because you were afraid someone might use it against you?"
"No."
"We all have secrets."
"Maybe that's what they're best kept as." Her final reply chilled me to the bone as she stubbed out her half-burned cigarette and made to grab another one. It became clear to me that Mrs. Bangs was not only apathetic; she was also thoroughly impenetrable. Nauseated by her smoking and by her denial, I got up and left her.
Frank came downstairs and announced that he knew where Joe and Sara were headed: a cabin they rented every year around the holidays. He also said that their son told him that Joe had a gun, and that it wasn't where he usually hid it.
Am I to blame for all this? Frank and Bob don't seem to think so, but...I still have my doubts, even to this day.
===================================================
We got to the cabin. It was deserted, but Bob found bread, peanut butter, and milk in the fridge. All were fresh and just recently opened. Meanwhile, Frank was outside, poking around in the forest. He found fresh tire-tracks in the mud and followed them to a conveniently-placed mound of leaves and branches. Underneath was a van.
Suddenly, the van started! It bore down on Frank, hellbent on either killing him or breaking his legs. He only just managed to get out of the way when it pulled into reverse and came barreling down like that.
Bob organized a line of officers to block the car's path, but it continued on its insane path and tried to plow straight through those officers.
I was driving the Jeep, trying to find Sara and Connie. The other car came hurtling toward me and slammed hard into the passenger's side. We would have to get that fixed, but at least I wasn't hurt.
While Bob dragged Joe out of the car and put him into handcuffs, another officer opened the van's side door and helped young Sara climb out. She immediately ran into my arms.
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The next day, at the King County Superior Courthouse, Connie testified against her father before a grand jury. Her real challenge came five months later, when she testified before a packed courtroom...with her mother and father present.
I found a real challenge, too: The DA's office looked at Connie's psych profile and couldn't find evidence of sexual abuse. This news could sway the jury in Joe's favor. Worse yet, they also expressed reservations about her ability to stand before her father and testify against him.
Worst case scenario: They could strike a plea with his attorney and reduce his sentence to eight years maximum. If he got parole for good behavior, he could be out in three years.
That day in the courtroom, Judge Ruby asked Joe's attorney if he wanted to compromise any further. "We want nothing less than an acquittal," he said. Before the judge could call the prosecution, the attorney recalled Joe to the stand. Of all the dirty tricks...!
When Joe got to the stand, he made the blatantly false claim that Mrs. Bangs slept with another man, and that Connie was born from that union. Outraged, the Assistant D.A. called an objection; the judge sustained it and strongly cautioned Joe against saying anything more like that.
Finally, the shining moment: Connie went to the stand. At first, it looked like she couldn't do it, not without some kind of support. Judge Ruby called me to the stand despite the attorney's objection. Once I got there, she spoke:
"He told me that I was his special one, that he loved me more. And he had this special way of showing it. He said that, if I told, he would kill himself. He had a gun. He would take it out with us every time....He put a lock on my door. He said it was to keep me safe....He was supposed to be my protector...Why couldn't you just love me for me, Daddy? What kind of a man does this?"
That was all Mrs. Bangs could take. She leaped up and screeched for her daughter to shut up. The judge pounded his gavel, calling for order....
==============================================================
It's safe to say that Joe Bangs is still in jail. A little while after the trial, I ran into Connie and Sara again at a reservoir overlooking a waterfall. I presented to her the old, well-worn lock from her room.
We headed toward the spillway, and I watched with no small amount of pride as Connie took the lock and hurled it into the water below.
At last, she could put the last 23 years behind her.
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"The Well-Worn Lock" marks three firsts for
Millennium. First of all, it's the first episode in which no-one physically dies, although the slow death of Connie Bangs' soul is far more gruesome than any of the murders we've seen up to this point.
Second, it allows Catherine Black to break out of her typical role and get a chance to shine. We get to see her at her job at Seattle Human Services, and while some may grouse "oh, how typical to put her in Human Services," it's actually an ideal place for her as a character and as a contrast to Frank Black.
Frank works for the shadowy Millennium Group, which seems to only emerge when a serial killer is on the loose, and which seems to be beyond public accountability. Catherine works for the more immediately recognizable Seattle Human Services, which, being a government agency, is
very accountable to the general public. While she never directly enters Frank's world, she works around its edges, and sometimes she has to help the families of a killer's victims (something we saw in "Blood Relatives").
Catherine is Frank's equal and opposite, but she is also very similar to him. In "The Well-Worn Lock," she has as much drive for justice as Frank does, as shown in the scene where she threatens to go over the District Attorney's head for Connie Bangs' sake. She could very easily have stayed within the boundaries of her job, but Connie's case horrified her so much that she would have risked her career for one young woman with a secret that she's kept for twenty-three years.
Finally, this is the first time we ever get to see on
Millennium justice carried out to some degree. Yes, the "Villain of the Week" is usually seen to be put in handcuffs and dragged away, but it's unsatisfying. After all, what's one killer in a world full of them?
"Lock" plays with the normal resolution a little. Joe Bangs' trial and punishment occur offscreen, as usual, but at least there's a feeling that a genuinely bad man is about to pay for what he's done, and in his absence, growth and closure can take place. At the end, when Connie hurls her old bedroom lock into the river, it's a symbolic action: she no longer has to live in fear.
Now...What of the episode itself? It begins with the quote, "The cruelest lies are often told in silence." I would add to this, "Outside appearances can be deceiving." The Bangs family, a fairly well-to-do middle-class family, appears to have it all...but inside their home, behind closed doors, there's a terrible secret.
The standout line for me, and the counterpoint to Stevenson's quote, goes to Joe Bangs: "When lies pass for the truth, then the whole world will have gone crazy and there won't be a damn thing that matters." On one level, he's right (in fact, one could apply it to Fox News Channel...heh-heh-heh), but in context, it's entirely self-serving. He's already established himself to be a Very Bad Guy, but he'll use every ounce of his worldly power to maintain the bigger lie that his family is 100% A-OK, and prevent the real truth from getting out.
Had he kept his composure throughout the episode, maintaining that fiction might have worked...but he just about shoots himself in the foot every single time we meet him. From slamming his front door so hard that one of the glass panes around it breaks with the impact, to attempting vehicular homicide, he does absolutely nothing to show himself in a good light, except tell lie after lie after lie. The glass pane? He blames that on Catherine and Bletcher. Connie? He convinces her that it's
her problem and makes her feel guilty for finally standing up for herself. Finally, in a stunning display of psychological projection, he describes the District Attorney's pursuit of justice as "
McCarthyism."
I'll let you look at the article yourself, but I will say this: The DA's office is waging a
legitimate campaign against Joe Bangs,
and Joe Bangs alone. Were this McCarthyism, the DA would go after everyone in the Chamber of Commerce.
The only things which protect him are his social status at the Chamber of Commerce and his craven wife, who chain-smokes to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay. She is a hag, in appearance and personality. Though it's clear she doesn't like what her husband does, she does nothing to stop it, preferring to live in denial and chain-smoke her lungs away.
As for the whole "Chamber of Commerce" thing, his social status is wholly informed. The usual rule is "show, don't tell," but in this case the "tell" makes his status relatively meaningless. What, exactly, does he
do as a civic booster? Not much, probably, outside of being a successful realtor. It's entirely likely that he bullied his way into the Chamber and still intimidates everyone into giving him what he wants. To be honest, I kind of wish we had seen a little more of this, because I feel like he's that one guy whom nobody really likes, but actually doing anything about him would be career suicide for everyone on the Chamber because he's got so much clout. As much as they'd like him gone, they'd also like to pay their next mortgage and send their kids to college, so they keep quiet.
The only one with nothing to lose is Connie. Tired of keeping the secret, tired of fearing for her daughter's life, she finally stands up and reveals the man behind the locked door. She is empowered, and he is utterly shamed and humiliated.
In the final scene, she throws the lock into the river, symbolically allowing her past to drown. This is healing, something
Millennium doesn't show a lot of.
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Ho boy...I got up to the eighth episode. I can tell you this much: The
Millennium project has not been easy. The fan transcripts helped, but it's still a matter of deciding the most important events, and figuring out what I can easily condense into a few words. On top of that, rewatching the episodes has been gut-wrenching, and it's only going to get harder from here on.
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(Millennium copyright Ten Thirteen
Productions and 20th Century Fox Television. All screenshots are
property of Ten Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.
All rights reserved. Special thanks to
Millennium--This Is Who We Are for episode transcripts, which helped me adapt the episodes.)
