Four Updates: Christopher Savoie, Parker Schenecker, Crystal Clark, Amber Portwood

I first posted a piece about Christopher Savoie here .  He’s the Tennessee man whose ex-wife abducted their two children to Japan in 2009.  He traveled there briefly to try to get them back, was arrested, released and returned empty-handed to the United States.

A court in Tennessee awarded Christopher full custody and issued a warrant for his ex’s arrest, but as all know who read this blog, Japan is a safe haven for mothers who wish to abduct their children.  Despite international pressure to do so, it has never signed the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and its domestic laws so favor maternal custody that Japanese mothers know that they’ll suffer no consequences there.

That’s in spite of the fact that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has specifically found parental child abduction to be child abuse.

Christopher Savoie filed a civil suit some months ago to obtain monetary damages from his ex-wife for the abduction of his children.  This article tells us that a Tennessee court has awarded him a judgment against her in the amount of $6.1 million for taking the children (Sacramento Bee, 5/11/11).

The chances are, he’ll never see a dime of that money, but you never know.  A civil judgment can have the effect of restricting where she travels, how and where she invests money, etc.  So it’s not impossible that at some point in the future, she’ll be forced to pay him at least some of that judgment.

Speaking of civil suits, this article tells us that Col. Parker Schenecker, soon-to-be-ex-husband of Julie Schenecker has filed a wrongful death suit against her for her apparent murder of their two teen-aged children, Calyx and Beau (Tampa Tribune, 5/10/11).  Information on that case to date has Julie Schenecker purchasing the murder weapon days in advance of the killings and planning the crime.  Prosecutors have confiscated her home computers and phones to see if there’s further evidence of planning on her part.

The civil suit will be easy enough to prove.  There seems little doubt about who killed the children and therefore, Parker should be able to get a judgment against his wife.

But the suit has at least as much to do with the division of the marital estate in the divorce case.  Apparently the two together are worth about $2 million, so Parker is clearly trying to make sure that Julie doesn’t walk away with half of that in the event she avoids conviction and prison.  My guess is he’ll succeed.

Remarkably enough, Parker Schenecker may end up paying his wife’s legal bills in the divorce case.  It seems it’s common in Florida for the higher-earning spouse to do that and it may happen here even though she apparently murdered their children.

In a particularly sick twist, the article tells us that after she had shot the children, Julie emailed Parker who was deployed in the Qatar,

telling him to “get home soon — we’re waiting for you!” and discussing the children’s grades: “calyx has all b’s and a’s =yipps i” and Beau had Cs and a couple of As. 

Meanwhile, in neighboring West Virginia, this articletells us that Crystal Seigler Clark has been returned to Mingo County where she’s in jail without bail (WSAZ, 5/11/11).  I guess that’s what happens when you flee the state; judges tend to conclude you’re a flight risk.

Clark is accused of murdering her husband, David Clark, and abducting their daughter Chloe.  She made it as far as Memphis before turning herself in to authorities.

What’s interested me about the case so far is the media’s wholesale lack of concern about the deceased.  It’s been over two weeks since he was killed and, until the current article, not a single reporter had thought to ask friends, relatives, neighbors or anyone what sort of person David Clark was.

Well they’ve finally gotten around to that, albeit briefly, and here’s what they’ve come up with:

Crystal’s friends and family say he was a great husband and father, and that’s what makes this entire ordeal even harder to understand.

“To us, he was a good boy,” Starr said. “We didn’t see — we just don’t understand. We don’t understand.”

That’s it.  It’s better than nothing I suppose, but it’s pretty light on substance.  And it’s a small island in a sea of Crystal Clark’s relatives extolling her virtues and telling all who will listen how inexplicable it all is.

Finally, in one of the most tawdry cases  in a long time, Gary Shirley, sometime boyfriend of “Teen Mom” participant, Amber Portwood has gotten custody of their daughter Leah.

Portwood is famous now and she owes it all to her spates of domestic violence against Shirley caught on film and showed to nationwide audiences.  Even though her attacks were common knowledge, it took local police some six months to arrest and charge her.  The incident was almost a year ago and Shirley’s just now getting custody.

Amazingly enough, according to this article, it has nothing to do with Portwood’s violence towards Shirley (TMZ, 5/11/11).  No, apparently someone’s recently vandalized Portwood’s house and car, so CPS thinks Leah would be safer with Shirley.

I don’t know if Leah is safer away from Portwood, but I know Shirley is.