AGENT: She had a great many lovers?
MRS. PETERSON: Dozens. She was a vile woman. Very common-looking men. Always very common-looking. Dirty. Crude laborers. Her men drank a lot. Sometimes they’d stay with her as much as a year. More often it was a week or two, a month.
AGENT: This Howard Parker-
MRS. PETERSON: Him!
AGENT: How long was he with Mrs. Salsbury?
MRS. PETERSON: Nearly six months, I think, before the crime. What a horrible man. Horrible!
AGENT: Did you know what was happening in the Salsbury house when Parker was there?
MRS. PETERSON: Of course not! I’d have called the police at once! Of course the night of the crime-Ogden came to me. And then I did call the police.
AGENT: Do you mind talking about the crime?
MRS. PETERSON: It still upsets me. To think of it. What a horrible man! And that woman. To do that to a child.
AGENT: Parker was-bisexual?
MRS. PETERSON: He was what?
AGENT: He customarily had relations with both sexes. Is that right?
MRS. PETERSON: He raped a little boy! It’s . . . I don’t know. I just don’t know. Why did God make some people so wicked? I love children. Have all my life. Love them more than anything. I can’t understand a man like that Parker.
AGENT: Does it embarrass you to talk about the crime?
MRS. PETERSON: A little bit.
AGENT: If you can bear with me. . . It’s really important that you answer a few more questions.
MRS. PETERSON: If it’s for Ogden’s sake, like you said, I surely can. For Ogden’s sake. Although he never comes back to see me. You know that? After I took him in and raised him from the age of eleven. He just never comes back.
AGENT: The court records of that time were not properly explicit. Either that or the judge had some of the testimony altered to protect the boy’s reputation. I am not certain whether Mr. Parker subjected the boy to-you’ll excuse me, but it has to be said-to oral or anal intercourse.
MRS. PETERSON: That horrible man!
AGENT: Do you know which it was?
MRS. PETERSON: Both.
AGENT: I see.
MRS. PETERSON: With the mother watching. His mother watched! Can you imagine such a thing? Such a rotten thing? To do that to a defenseless child. . . What monsters they were!
AGENT: I didn’t mean to make you cry.
MRS. PETERSON: I’m not crying. Just a tear or two. It’s so sad. Don’t you think? So terribly sad. Suffer the little children.
AGENT: There’s no need to continue with-
MRS. PETERSON: Oh, but you said this was for Ogden’s sake, that you needed to ask all of this for Ogden’s sake. He was one of my children. Foster children. But I felt like they were my own. I loved them dearly. Loved all of them. Little dears, every one. So if it’s for Ogden’s sake . . . Well . . . For months, without anyone at all knowing, with poor little Ogden too afraid to tell any-one, that terrible Howard Parker . . . was using the boy. . . using. . . his mouth. And the mother watching! She was a vicious woman. And sick. Very sick.
AGENT: And the night of the crime MRS. PETERSON: Parker used the boy.. . he used . . . the boy’s rectum. Hurt him terribly. You can’t know the pain that boy suffered.
AGENT: Ogden came to you that night.
MRS. PETERSON: I lived right next door to them. He came to me. Shaking like a leaf. Scared out of his wits. The poor, poor baby. . . Crying his heart out, he was. That awful Parker had beat him up. His lips were cracked. One eye was puffed and black. At first I thought that was all that was wrong with him. But I soon discovered. . . the other. We rushed him to the hospital. He needed eleven stitches. Eleven! AGENT: Eleven-rectal stitches?
MRS. PETERSON: That’s right. He was in such pain. And he was bleeding. He had to stay in the hospital for nearly a week.
AGENT: And eventually you became his foster mother.