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Father struggles for answers in son's slaying

A grieving father needed to know: What kind of man was my son?

By Ben Montgomery, Times staff writer
Published March 2, 2008

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OKLAHOMA CITY - Ice covers the plains. It hangs heavy in the trees and knocks the prairie grass flat and smothers the red dirt like frosting. Three waves of sleet and snow have torn through central Oklahoma, knocking out power, stunting life. In a nice subdivision, on a quiet street, David Bonham cracks the front door and steps into the bitter cold.

He walks past the patch of concrete near the porch where you can still read a boy's inscription. A stick in cold concrete.

Wesley Bonham.

He remembers Wes everywhere.

The sweet gum tree: a boy climbing the branches.

The lake: a teenager taking dad's boat in secret and filling the gas tank so he wouldn't know.

The driveway: a young man muscling a piano up a ramp as his dad guides it into a trailer.

David opens the doors on the piano trailer and steps inside to clear room for Wes' stuff.

This is the wrong day for a journey. The phone is still ringing. Wrecks kill 12, says the morning paper. Only the brave and stupid are on the roads.

If David wants to make it 1,360 miles to Tampa by tomorrow, if he wants to get his son, he has to go.

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What happened, Wes? What the hell?

The detectives aren't saying much.

Was it a drug deal, Wes? Were you doing drugs? Did you get tied up in something you couldn't tell us about?

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Southbound. Interstate 35 toward Dallas.

Traffic is a mess. Cars in ditches. Stoplights out. Old, empty trees, splintered.

David is driving, slow and steady, the roads slick, frozen.

His daughter, Serena, and her boyfriend are in the back. Serena keeps crying.

The phone call is still fresh.

Four days earlier, Dec. 8, David rented out his Steinway for an event. He stood in a parking lot and opened the doors on the trailer. Gray light hit the Steinway, his baby, the same piano he has had since Wes was a tyke.

His cell phone rang. California number.

Strange.

Are you sitting down?

It was his ex-wife's boyfriend.

Should I be?

I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, the man said. Your son has been the victim of a homicide.

The words rushed him. He couldn't understand. It didn't translate.

Wes?

He felt like he was falling, crashing. He couldn't breathe.

His wife was watching him.

What happened? she asked.

I just want to finish this job, he said.

Together, they wheeled the piano inside. They lifted it from the dolly and fixed the legs in place. They tested the keys.

Back in the truck, David broke down.

The hours that followed were wicked, filled with cold facts and little context.

His son's body was found wrapped in a comforter.

Eighteen stab wounds. Throat slit.

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Anger is a reaction to fear. I'm getting angry.

I thought I knew your heart, Wes. I thought I knew it well. But I can't reconcile your end with your beginning.

Who had you become?

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David studied psychology and social work in college, but he made his living off pianos, moving them and tuning them, bringing accord to the chaos under the lid.

From the time he could walk, Wes helped him move pianos. He would toddle to the trailer carrying Steinway legs.

The two moved hundreds together, so many they could do it without talking. They could dismantle a grand piano, just the two of them, and load it into the trailer in six minutes, a feat that's hard to appreciate unless you've seen it.

David saw the piano as a metaphor for life.

Under the hard-polished lid, 230 lengths of steel are stretched taut under 40,000 pounds of pressure, each being struck by a hammer at upwards of 60 miles per hour, zinging somewhere from 50 to more than 10,000 vibrations per second. If one length is out of tune, the sound is ruined.

The tuner's job is to make each string do what it should, so the result is beautiful music.

The business cards in his wallet say, "Seeking harmony amid tension."

This?

This is discord.

David has so many questions. He has to put his fears to rest.

Near the Texas border, the sleet turns to rain.

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Were you gay, Wes? Not that it would matter. It wouldn't. Not at all. But why would you keep it a secret? We didn't keep secrets.

Did you know this guy? Did you have a relationship with him? What went wrong?

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David heads southeast out of Shreveport to New Orleans, then east on Interstate 10. The rain stops falling. Each stop for gas station crappuccino and it's a few degrees warmer, a few miles closer to Wes.

Tampa was supposed to be a fresh start for the kid who never lived outside Oklahoma. Maybe on his own, he would grow up.

One of Wes' friends had moved to Tampa to work at a fitness center. The friend called Wes and offered him a job. Said it was easier to sell memberships in Florida because people were body-conscious. He said Wes could crash with him until he found a place of his own.

That's what Wes was looking for: a new opportunity, a chance to hit reset.

Just before he moved, he was interviewed by the local paper, the Edmond Sun. Wes was bachelor of the month.

He was asked about the most daring thing he'd ever done.

"I currently have an opportunity to take a job for Lifestyle Fitness in Tampa and I feel that this is my risky endeavor that currently awaits me," he said.

David could have talked him out of it, even if his boy was 27, but that wasn't him.

David believed that only a father who gives his child to the world should be called a father. You can house their bodies, not their souls.

That was the theory. Teach your son well, then give him permission to live, and to make mistakes.

Wes made mistakes.

At 10, he stole a microphone from church. He cried when he had to return it and apologize.

He wrecked several cars and had to work hard hours saving the money to put them back on the road.

He smoked pot in high school.

He drank. His grades dropped so low at Oklahoma State University that David cut off Wes' access to his college fund.

He got a DUI, then another. For 16 long months he rode a bike or took a taxi to work, not cool for a kid in his mid 20s.

These things David knew because he and his son talked about them.

The trouble was disappointing. But what would have been more disappointing is if Wes had withdrawn. If he internalized it or pretended it never happened.

That was part of their relationship. You couldn't know joy without sorrow.

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What happened, Wes?

They caught a guy in Texas, driving your car. He ran when the officer cranked the sirens.

Who was he? How did you meet him? How did he get inside your apartment?

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David turns south on Interstate 75. The clouds are gone, the sky bright, palm trees whizzing by on the shoulders.

Wes loved palm trees.

He loved Florida.

He sent cell phone photos from Clearwater Beach. He talked about riding water scootersin the Gulf on his off days. He bragged about the weather the way Floridians do.

He texted. Always texted.

I am very thankful for you. I miss and love you very much.

David still worried.

Would people accept Wes? Would he get enough to eat?

What if Wes fell in love with Florida? What if he got married and settled down and raised David's grandchildren a thousand miles from home?

David steers the truck onto Interstate 275 toward Tampa, joining the white-knuckled flow of humanity. He pulls off the highway, puts the windows down, tries to feel what Wes felt.

Warm air fills the cab.

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What kind of life did you live, Wes?

Were you happy? Were you a good man?

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David drives to New Tampa, parks his truck outside Lifestyle Family Fitness, where Wes worked, walks through the doors, into a room with sandwiches and child-sized chairs and about 40 people who knew Wes in a different world.

They sit in a big circle. One by one, they talk about Wes.

All the salespeople complain,but I never heard Wes complain.

He was always smiling.

He always texted messages of encouragement.

An employee says she spilled coffee on her company shirt just before Wes' shift ended. Wes gave her his shirt and road his bike home bare-chested.

One woman, a student at the University of South Florida, says she told Wes she was worried about an upcoming test. They didn't speak of it again for three weeks. On the morning of the test, she got a text message from Wes.

Good luck on your test.

Tears run down David's face.

The employees tell David about Wes' final act.

Wes went to Peabody's to pick up lunch. He always said hello to everyone inside. That was Wes.

This time, someone followed Wes back to work.

No one knows exactly what was said, but a few minutes after Wes returned to the gym, a young man was standing inside, bloodshot eyes, asking to meet with him. Police would later say the man was Joshua Wilkins.

Wes talked with the man for about an hour. He told his co-workers the man was a drifter, looking for a place to stay.

That night in early December, Wes, who never had much extra money, fed the man dinner. He invited friends from church over to pray for him.

Wes invited the stranger to sleep on his couch.

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David pulls the truck up to Wes' apartment in New Tampa, off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

The apartment manager meets them.

They've painted the walls, she says.

Door open. Deep breaths.

The smell of fresh paint.

The carpet is torn. Sections have been cut from the floor. Fabric from the couch has been removed, revealing white stuffing.

Wes had fought.

David feels Wes among his things: Clothes. His mountain bike. A Devil Rays pillow case. A John Denver record called Back Home Again.

David packs his son's belongings and hauls them to the piano trailer.

The next day, they drive to a funeral home and get Wes' ashes.

They wanted a quiet minute with Wes by the water. David drives through neighborhoods until they find a spot where they can see Tampa Bay. They get out of the car. The air is warm, wet.

Individually, Wes' small acts seem minor, insignificant. Collectively, they give a father a picture of who his son had become.

In Wes' last act, he fed a stranger and gave him a place to rest. It cost him his life.

They put Wes in the back and drive him home, to Oklahoma.

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The house in Oklahoma, where a little boy's name is written by the front porch in the concrete, where his pictures hang on the walls, is quiet.

David sits in a rocking chair. He cradles a small cardboard box bearing a sticker.

Cremated Remains of Wesley Bonham.

Finally home.

In the following weeks, David would rise early each morning to plan a memorial that 450 people from across the country would attend, where they would talk about the small ways Wes had changed them. He would tell them about his son's triumphs and troubles. He would tell them how, on a journey, he had found harmony again.

Here, now, he rocks in his chair, and he talks to Wes.

Well, he hears his son say. This is interesting.

Yeah, David replies. It's kind of bizarre, isn't it?

He notices how the box feels in his arms.

You know, he says to his son, you weigh about the same as when we brought you home from the hospital.

He fetches a scale from the bathroom. Just under 8 pounds.

Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or 727 893-8650.

[Last modified February 29, 2008, 18:16:00]