What follows is the original written narrative for the Investigators:
This period of time is the most cluttered mess in my head only overshadowed by the mess in my head about the couple of years of phone calls from Tiffany all about her other-dimensional take on this period of time.
Lisa had been telling me there was something wrong with Tiffany for years; in the months leading up to the divorce Lisa began telling me Tiffany was insane, after she filed for divorce Lisa was telling anyone that would listen that Tiffany was insane. I was certain Lisa was the one that was crazy and full of shit….but then all of the sudden Tiffany did go crazy, that was the last thing we needed and I figured we were fucked.
The only outside people I trusted at all during all this time during the divorce was: My Divorce Lawyer and his Assistant, Nissa, Bill , Martin McCoy… Maybe a few others. Even then I didn’t trust them enough to tell them Tiffany had gone crazy.
I believed nothing anyone outside could do about it that wouldn’t make it worse. I had by this time a very deep mistrust of the mental health and medical professions because of what I had seen for years in AA and lived first hand with Lisa.
The beginning of that nightmare is clear.
Tiffany had locked herself in the closet some time earlier in the day, that was strange, but not all that strange, she had done this before, only this time she had broken her previous teen age closet dwelling endurance record.
It was evening and I was sitting in the garage at the table smoking and listening to cassette tapes (telephone recordings). When Tiffany came out of the house, into the garage and sat down in the chair across from me at the small table, I turned off the tape and she sat in silence for a long time (I think she had even put her head down on the table). After quite a long time she sat up and started talking, talking very fast about her mother, Evan and Zoë, everything that was happening… So much so fast I couldn’t even follow, I just sat and let her talk until she was done. I don’t think I even said anything and then she said “Maybe I need my medication”. I think I said “huh?” and asked her to “say that again”.
She then explained that her mother had been giving her medication and showed me where it was in the kitchen broom closet up top in a box way in the back, I retrieved the box and took it out to the garage putting it on the table, she sat across from me as I went through all these pill bottles digging out ones with her name on them asking her which ones her mom was giving her, I had to shake pills out to see if she recognized which ones but she could not positively identify what her mother had been giving her so I put them all back in the bottles and the box. After a while I sent her in the house and maybe told her to go to bed… From here the sequence of each event is not clear in my head at all.
I think it was later that same evening I walked back in the house from the garage and Tiffany was in the living room standing about a foot away from the wall next to the entryway hall… She was talking to the wall. I couldn’t get her attention at first and I think I grabbed her shoulder and she startled and was like “What?” and I asked her what was up and she said “nothing”. She seemed normal then and I told her to go crash because it was late.
I think it was later that same evening that I met her in the hallway that led to the back of the house and the bedrooms (I think I was headed from my bedroom to the living room) Tiffany was standing in the hall wearing nothing but either pajama bottoms or maybe it was just panties, when I asked her what she was doing (At first I think I was under the impression that she was on her way to or back from the bathroom or something) but she pretty much just stared wide eyed and her response didn’t make any sense, I know I grabbed this T-Shirt I assumed she was sleeping in because it was on her bed stepped back into the hall, held it up between us and told her to put it on… She was not responding, I said “hey do you know what this is?” or something like “hey see what you’re missing here?” She said “That’s a flag” (I was like WTF?) and I went to put it over her head myself and she flipped out. I think I managed to get her in it but I know I physically stuck her in her room. I think she still had a bedroom door because it was later I kicked it off the hinges but I didn’t shut her in. I think I just turned off the light after she had lain down for a while.
I think that was all that happened and I think that was the first night she was showing signs of being crazy… I know I was already wiped out the first night.
The next day I know I confronted and interrogated her about it. The thought had not occurred to me to me at that point that she could have taken something from that box, I was under the assumption that she had simply lost it a little due to the stress from all the bad craziness that had gone on for so long. We were in the garage for this discussion and that was when she came up with the explanation that she had been “sleepwalking” and that was why it happened and why she could not remember it. At least a few times during the day she began to act oddly, like she was in and out momentarily.
I think it was that second night that all hell broke loose and tiffany tried to leave the house at like 2 am or whatever in order to walk to Camarillo and retrieve her brother and sister, I had to head her off several times and there was a physical confrontation, she went to blows and I had to restrain her a couple of times at least. In between that she acted like she was talking to people that weren’t there then stood or sat staring and would try to get out of the house again. Might have been that night she started screaming until she lost her voice too. I didn’t sleep (might have been the second day I didn’t sleep).
I think it was later this day I called the doctors office and asked about the possible reactions and or withdrawal symptoms from the drugs that were in that box. There was one I was told that could (as in almost never happen “could”) have withdrawals a little bit like what was going on with Tiffany. I did not tell them who I was calling about; I assumed they would assume it was about Lisa. I gave Tiffany a ½ dose of that medication and another one to see if that would settle it (They were ones with her name on the bottle).
She was lucid when I gave her these and again I had talked to her about what was going on, she denied any memory and denied any knowledge of what was wrong other than saying “I guess I was sleep walking” several times during the day she would flip out to one degree or another and minutes later when questioned “Oh was I sleep walking?”.
I think it was the next day but IDK, could have been the same day I called (…. Anderson? Not Edison…) and spoke to him about what was going on at length I explained everything I could including the fact that I could not let it out that she was behaving this way because it would lend credence to what Lisa had been telling everyone and that would bring everything Tiffany had said in and out of court about what her mother was doing into question. During this conversation he had me go through all of the medications in the box that Tiffany had directed me to. And when I got to this one big bottle (Jar) he told me that that particular drug was exactly what would be used to treat her symptoms inferring that “That was her medication” she was talking about and that she probably needed that. I was not convinced, the bottle was sealed and there was no indication of prescription at all. He eventually talked me into giving her a low dose explaining the side effects were minimal and if I didn’t do something I would need an antipsychotic. He also explained that giving her this medication was a felony and that he would deny even knowing who I was if I got caught.
I gave Tiffany ½ of the dose he recommended I give her, I explained to her that what I was doing was a felony and if anyone found out I would end up in jail and she and her brother and sister would end up with their mom. She did not want to take them and insisted that was not the medication her mom was giving her.
That night was not any better than the night before. She was intermittently psychotic or what have you and then she would seem lucid blaming her episodes and lack of memory on “sleep walking”. I remember dumping a container full of cold water on her when she was acting catatonic (I think it was this evening that happened). She was also screaming at me “If you won’t go get Even and Zoë I will” and again bolt for the door. At one point I decided that I was going to die if I did not sleep.
I had a pair of handcuffs… I put her in bed and cuffed her ankles… She wasn’t happy about that at all.
Later that night I got up and she was not in bed but on the couch, ankles cuffed and half undressed (I was thinking she had tried to change her clothes but couldn’t get past the cuffs) I got her up got her night clothes straitened out and when asked WTF? She said, of course, “Sleep Walking”… I put her back in bed ankles cuffed and I slept on the couch because it was kind of in-between the bedrooms and the way out the door in case I needed to head her off.
I called … (Shit…) and told him what had happened, giving him the whole rundown again and when I told him how much I had actually given her he insisted that he had told me to use a tiny dose and what I had done was give her too little to do anything.
I spent a lot of time talking to Tiffany that day about what was happening what she was doing and really grilled her As usual we were in the garage and she insisted that she had no recollection of anything I described her doing and kept calling it “sleep walking”… I think it was this day that she did say she had a dream that she had “given me a rainbow” and she explained that that was when a woman left lipstick on a guys dick (somehow I think it was in a prior conversation during this but I’m thinking it was all a shorter period of time than it seemed in my memory). I became very concerned with all of this as well as the suspicion that something had happened to her while I was at work or something in the past, as usual she denied anything beyond what she had already told me went on at home, she continued to call her behavior and not being able to recall it “Sleep walking”.
That day I gave her the dose I was told I should give her (I think it was 2 tablets twice a day but I’ll be dammed if I remember that or even what the name of the drug was) Again I cuffed her ankles that night and she wasn’t happy about that at all this time, I insisted explaining that I couldn’t have her loosing her shit and taking off in the middle of the night, I think we talked some I was still trying to get her to explain, still trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
ADDED: We discussed the possibility that Tiffany was schizophrenic ( I didn’t even want to think about that) and I think it was Seroquel (Quetiapine) I’m pretty sure they were white round tablets and that would indicate they were 50 mg tablets (from what I see on the Internet now). Another Thing Jennifer just posed this question as I’m sitting here: Could Tiffany have been the one that stashed that box? Collected what Lisa had stashed around? Hmm…
That night she was as normal as Tiffany gets and from then on, I continued to give her the medication. There were a couple of times she acted pretty strange for very brief moments like one time at church maybe that was even in that first week.
An incident that occurred in the middle of this
I found a cell phone in the bottom of my mail box, (it was a Nokia, one of those old bricks, it was blue unlike the ones Tiffany and I had) I was going to call the cops but decided to call Martin McCoy instead, Martin told me not to touch it and that he would be there right away (he showed up very shortly after we got off the phone, I didn’t even know he had a car and drove because everyone else drove him around and to meetings including myself) He took the phone out of the mailbox and we turned it on etc and it was indeed one of the phones that texts had come from to Tiffany and me.
Martin had been a detective (Ventura Sherriff’s and later the DA’s office) and he recommended I get as far away from that phone as possible and take no more action on it, he took the phone to get rid of.
I don’t recall ANY of the other phone bullshit happening at this time.
(Tiffany knew Martin McCoy as well, she had even been with me to his house at least once when I had gone to rescue him from drinking. Tiffany spontaneously started cleaning up his house that was a disaster. Martin protested and Tiffany in very Tiffany like fashion deflected and cleaned the place up… I was proud of her for being so helpful.)
I continued to give her the meds and she argued about taking it just about every time… Just about every time I gave her the pills to prevent her “sleep walking” and re iterated the whole thing about keeping quiet about it because it was a crime and nobody would be okay with it, both the fact that I was giving her a drug without a prescription and the fact she needed a drug because he mom was already telling the world she was crazy.
In a short time I began to decrease the dose because I was not okay myself with giving anyone let alone my kid psychotropic drugs, I watched her closely and eventually like a month later I was not giving them to her any more.
I attributed her period of “loosing her shit” to all the built up stress cause by her mother’s insanity and drug use and possibly coming off of something her mother had been giving her (I liked that theory it made sense to me and appealed to me belief concerning drugs).
I’ve always felt very guilty about medicating her during that time, I felt like a hypocrite and I felt like I had betrayed her trust, set a bad example, precedent and as time went on I thought I may have even caused her psyche more damage with the drugs.
I think this time came up as the subject of discussions I had with Tiffany every now and again but I don’t recall any in particular but the term “Sleepwalking” between Tiffany and I meaning her behavior and claims of not remembering them stuck.
When I recounted events of this period of time to anyone else I condensed it only covering her locking herself in the closet and having a bit of a breakdown that I attributed to drug withdrawals because Lisa had her unnecessarily medicated.