S1:E2 Small Town Girl Living in a Violent World

Panic Button

In this episode we go back in time to 1980's Kellyville, Oklahoma where April grew up. Then we follow her to the car lot where she met Terry. We will hear the tape that April recorded of a fight between she and Terry after their trip to Italy. On the trip he beat her threatened to and throw her out of their hotel room naked, only to be caught by one of his fellow travelers on the trip. We are trying to categorize the time and place of April and Terry's relationship, and look for patterns of abuse, which escalated as law enforcement continued to turn a blind eye.

Resources:

• For pictures of April as a kid, her wedding, the early years with Hunter, and pictures introduced at trial of April and Terry's international trips, visit okappleseed.org/episode-2-show-notes
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• LA Times article about Don Carlton's bribery scandal: https://web.archive.org/web/20211117194929/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-16-fi-34784-story.html%C2%A0
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• TIME Magazine story on Honda scams: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,3976,00.html
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• Instagram post containing the Affidavit of Federal Judge Claire Egan: https://www.instagram.com/p/CQWQJrUDy-m/
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• Detailed Timeline of Events in April's Case: https://aprilwilkensblog.wordpress.com/2022/02/12/timeline-of-events/
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• Sign the Change.org petition to support April's release: https://www.change.org/p/oklahoma-pardon-parole-board-commute-the-life-sentence-of-abuse-survivor-april-wilkens?signed=true
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• Donate to keep our work going!: neappleseed.org/okappleseed
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• Learn more about Oklahoma Appleseed: okappleseed.org
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• If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, use a safe computer and contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at www.thehotline.org or call 1-800-799-7233. You can also search for a local domestic violence shelter at www.domesticshelters.org/.
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• If you have experienced sexual assault and need support, visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) at www.rainn.org or call 1-800-656-HOPE.
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• Have questions about consent? Take a look at this guide from RAINN at www.rainn.org/articles/what-is-consent.
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• Learn more about criminalized survival at www.survivedandpunishedny.org/.
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• Learn more about the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act at www.nysda.org/page/DVSJA.
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• Follow the #freeaprilwilkens campaign on Instagram at @freeaprilwilkens, on Twitter and on their webpage at https://aprilwilkensblog.wordpress.com/.
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Colleen McCarty is one of the hosts, executive director of Oklahoma Appleseed, and producer. Leslie Briggs is the other host who is a civil rights and immigration attorney, and producer. Rusty Rowe provides additional production support. We're recorded at Bison and Bean Studios in Tulsa. Additional support from Amanda Ross and Ashlyn Faulkner. Our theme music is Velvet Rope by Gyom.

Panic Button is created in partnership with Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice and Leslie Briggs. Follow OK Appleseed on Twitter and Instagram at @ok_appleseed.

If you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, please join our Panic Button podcast community on Bookclubz at bit.ly/3NRHO8C.

TRANSCRIPT

Leslie Briggs 00:00

Glenda McCarley had tried to get the badge number of Officer Aaron Tallman just a few months before the shooting of Terry Carlton. She said his response to April Wilkens, her neighbor across the street on Quincy, was, quote, "infuriating." Glenda had seen numerous times Terry stalking around April's house in the late winter of 1997 and early spring of 1998. She said quote, "it was almost a joke, I think, among the neighbors, how he had the timing down so that he could always just leave and two seconds later, they'd round the corner." The he that the neighbors joked about was of course the decedent in this case, Terry Carlton. Regardless, when Officer Tallman arrived to find April sitting on Glenda's porch in the spring of 1998, waiting for help from yet another violent encounter, he walked up to the porch, looked at April and said, "You're beginning to annoy me." This is Panic Button. I'm Leslie Briggs.

Colleen McCarty 01:05

And I'm Colleen McCarty.

Leslie Briggs 01:06

And this is episode 2: Small Town Girl Living in a Violent World.

Colleen McCarty 01:14

Many years before Glenda McCarley asked for Officer Tallman's badge number, April was just a kid from Kellyville, Oklahoma, a small town southwest of Tulsa on the I-44 Turnpike. The town had a population of 960 in 1980 when April was 10. Kellyville is on old route 66. Local landmarks include a cotton gin and oil derricks dotting the town's main street. The cotton gin has since been demolished. Local high schoolers would go out to Cry Baby Bridge, which was ironically rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of a woman who was fleeing her abusive husband and her baby. The two wrecked and the baby's body was never recovered. So the legend goes, you can hear the baby crying from the bridge late at night. April was an average teenager in Kellyville. Her parents worked at a local orthotics and prosthetics clinic. Her father, Rex, was an amputee himself and had learned the business due to necessity. April was a cheerleader. But even though everything looked perfect from the outside, like most Oklahoma homes during this period, there was strong discipline. And like any family, some dysfunction.

April Wilkens 02:26

My upbringing made me susceptible. And I know my parents just did what they knew. They grew up in abusive childhoods. So I know, my dad, he had a tough upbringing. You know, his dad - his dad used to beat his family. And, you know, he was a preacher and my dad felt that was very hypocritical. And, you know, my mom, dad leaving the family. And she grew up being abused. That influences children. And I want to honor their memory. Because even though, yes, there was violence and abuse, I know that they did what they knew. That's how it is. And my sister, she's always - she wanted to write a letter talking about the abuse and all of that. And my mom got mad, and then she didn't put it in there. But she's always encouraged me to talk about it. So, I'm really talking about it for the first time.

Terry Carlton 03:23

April and Mary are actually half sisters. They share the same mom and Mary spent a little bit of time talking with us about her mother's history of domestic abuse with her biological father. And then of course with Mary stepfather April's biological father, Rex. April and Mary's mother often played out these cycles of abuse that we see repeating themselves in April's relationship with Terry. She would leave and return and leave and return and get hooked in with an abusive partner until it got to be unbearable, and she would flee. Mary gave us a little glimpse into what it was like growing up with both her biological father and then with April and Rex and her mother.

Mary 04:07

He grabbed us and my grandmother - I did not know my grandmother called him at work. He worked right down from the house, and she called him. My mother was trying to leave with us. We lived with them. And he threw us in the bathroom. And he had a gun and he said he would shoot us before he'd let her have us. He didn't want us. I know that, you know, as an adult. He just thought she would stay if he did that.

Leslie Briggs 04:29

Eventually, Mary's mother left for good leaving her and her little brother behind with their biological father, who was an alcoholic, extremely physically and emotionally abusive. Mary didn't see her mom for about two years. When she did, she learned she had a little sister. April.

Mary 04:46

She was two, actually, when I met her. My mother had left my father again. I didn't even know I had a two-year-old sister. Like me having a live doll.

Leslie Briggs 04:54

Here's how Mary describes the car ride home after meeting her stepfather, Rex, for the first time.

Mary 04:59

He hit my brother in the mouth on the way to their home, in the car. They just showed up to pick us up. We didn't have any warning or anything whatsoever. And it was so cool to see my mom again. You know, I had nothing but good memories of my mother or love for my mother and I was just, like, so excited. Yes, he hit my brother in the mouth. My brother answered my mother. She asked him something and he simply answered her. I don't remember it being snarky or anything when he ?? He said, "Don't talk to your mother that way," turned around and smacked him in the mouth that made his lip - hit his lip up against his teeth, I guess, and because his mouth bled. I never stood up to him. I was too afraid of him. And he made me kind of crazy. And I stood up to him as an adult, but on the way home, I was just like, really, this cannot be happening again. But it was.

Colleen McCarty 05:45

Throughout the trial, April was hesitant to reveal her childhood. She didn't want to shame her parents. Even though her childhood had episodes of violence, there was a lot of happy memories too. She remembered both her parents standing by her throughout the entire trial and supporting her in the years afterwards. Even though her sister wanted to write a letter to the parole board much later detailing the family abuse, April refused.

Leslie Briggs 06:11

There's even a moment on the stand when the district attorney Tim Harris alleges that April was hospitalized for drug abuse when she was 15. April, in her testimony, does not do a good job of refuting this simply because she was balancing the fact that her parents were in the courtroom listening and she didn't want to make them look bad. The truth was, she had stayed out all night with her friends and her mother had dropped her off at St. John's to get a drug test. Her mother could only conclude that April must have used drugs with her friends. There were of course no drugs in her system. But the doctors asked to keep April overnight due to suspicions of anorexia. Here's how Mary remembers April's eating disorder.

Mary 06:49

No, we all knew something was going on. And I think it was something she could control. Forgive me, but I learned in psychology - now, remember I'm gone and I only come back and visit once in a while and why I can back to visit who knows - but she would go to the strangest phases, bless her heart. She would eat - buy a whole loaf of bread and eat the hearts out of the bread and leave the crust. And then the next week she might just eat the crust and not eat the hearts of the bread. It was just so - the things she would do are so strange, honey. But it was something I think that she could have control over.

Leslie Briggs 07:20

Now of course, April told us that the anorexia was really a function of her home life. Mary shared with us just a small story about how Rex, her stepfather and April's biological father, would speak to them about their eating habits.

Mary 07:36

I never hardly ever brought friends home. But I brought a friend home one time that down the road who was in an abused home just like I was. Some - we attracked each other you know how that is, I'm sure, somehow. But I went in the kitchen and made us some peanut butter and honey was - we were gonna eat it on crackers. And I made enough for two people because I had a friend there with me. And he came into the kitchen, and I was a pig and I was never going to get married. No man was ever going to look at me. How could I eat that much? And I was skinny - I mean, I was so skinny it was ridiculous. Because I could - I could eat whatever I wanted you know what I mean? And not get - Anyway, I stood there and took it. Went into the bedroom, sat down, ate that. She said, "So this is why you don't ever ask me over?" I said "Uhuh." I just didn't. Why would you? I was humiliated. You can only imagine -

Leslie Briggs 08:25

Ultimately, they diagnosed April as anorexic at 15 and sent her home with little information or treatment resources. But April was always incredibly intelligent. She graduated high school two years early, went on to Oklahoma State University for undergraduate studies, where she majored in clinical dietetics. She later attended an accelerated program in orthotics and prosthetics at Northwestern University in Chicago. She graduated with her Master's in 1991 when she was just 21 years old.

Colleen McCarty 08:55

In 1990, when she was 20, she met Eric Wilkens and got pregnant with Hunter. She was attending her Master's program in Chicago while Eric went to undergrad at the University of Oklahoma. They were married. Eric and April then divorced in 1993 after the long distance relationship had taken a toll. They'd grown apart. And April would later say that she was too young to appreciate a good man like Eric. We talked with Hunter, April's son, recently about the divorce and what he remembers about his mom in those early years.

Hunter 09:28

I was five years old. And you know, it was a clean split up. I think they had joint custody at the time. So I was spending a week at my dad's, a week at my mom's. Completely normal. My mom's house was awesome. I had the entire upstairs to myself. I had a TV hooked up to an N64. I had a computer in the mid 90s, which was awesome. I don't even think there was internet to it. It was just a computer that you could do things with. I think there was sometimes you'd get internet to it or not. I had a Batcave and I red racecar bed, which was super cool. The Batcave had a zipline, where Batman could slide through. Living at my mom's house was really nice. Like, it was really cool that she was - she was - she spoiled me rotten. My dad did not like it at all. The only thing I did not like about my mom's house is that she made me eat healthy and soy stuff.

Colleen McCarty 10:48

Hunter remembers that April was a good mom.

Hunter 10:50

She was a parents. She was good parents. She - she told me to do everything that I needed to do. I did everything she that she told me to do. And she you know she - we had a good time. She she took me out places and I mean we had a good time. It was it was it was great.

Colleen McCarty 11:06

During the early 1990s April was a working single mom with not too much drama in her life. As you can see, April is not the typical criminal defendant in a murder case. She's a woman. She's white, and she's highly educated. This demographic is not typically who you would see sitting behind the defendant's table. By the nature of the system, most defendants are impoverished with a high percentage being people of color. Most defendants have not completed any college, most prosecutors would not want to prosecute someone like April. She is what we would call sympathetic to an extreme degree.

Leslie Briggs 11:44

Which is a whole separate level of fucked up that we're going to get into throughout this podcast, but it's the truth. Interestingly enough, Terry was also growing up in Tulsa, about 20 miles away from Kellyville. In 1989, the year of his first stint in drug rehab, he was 31. And there's a 12-year age difference between Terry and April that doesn't get discussed much but it's certainly an element to issues of power and control and abuse in this relationship. Terry had gone to the University of Oklahoma, and he was described as a good athlete and a talented musician. Terry's father, Don Carlton gained some notoriety, or infamy depending on how you look at it, for offering a Honda executive and briefcase with $250,000 in cash in 1983 in order to secure the rights to his own dealership. Now ultimately, Don Carlton was not prosecuted in that matter, but the man who took the bribe was. And the scandal was profiled and Time Magazine as well as the LA Times and we're going to drop links to those articles in the show notes. So, from 1991 to 1995, April and Terry are just living their lives separately unaware of each other's existence. Also in the late 80s and early 90s, Terry's ex wife Sherry Blanton and another ex-girlfriend, Melinda Wallace, would go on to make police reports about Terry getting abusive with them toward the end of their relationships.

Colleen McCarty 13:01

In September ish of 1995, April goes shopping for a car. She winds up at Don Carlton Acura of Tulsa. This is at about 47th and memorial. She meets with the sales guy...