Lindsey Hanks – Part I

What you’re about to read is not for the faint of heart. This story is about dirty deeds: murder, child sex trafficking, addiction, gangs, street life and how society thrust all of it onto one teenager. This is the true coming of age story of a blonde-haired, green-eyed girl raised in the suburbs of Austin, Texas; Her name is Lindsey Hanks.

In January of 2020, I glided a Tesla into the Cedar Valley Middle School parking lot facing the football field in Round Rock, Texas. 

It was a rental; intended to investigate whether Elon’s pride could accommodate my circular frame. In the passenger seat lay an inch-thick (or thereabouts) manuscript, typewritten with court headings.

The State of Texas
Vs.
Da Ryan Simms

(Testimony of Lindsey Hanks)

Whilst grabbing the door handle on my left, I leaned to the right so that my right hand laid hold of the manuscript and simultaneously became a support beam as I rotated and shoved myself out, in one fluid movement, into the Texas cold. My eyes fixed on the trees in the distance beyond the field, watching them shiver when the cold wind drove through their branches and leaves, dancing in asynchronous unity.  With the manuscript cylindered in my hand, I walked towards the field. 

What was once a hallowed and revered arena had been reduced to sparse grass, dirt and rocks. Maybe it was the season, but it was out of the norm given the manicured treatment these grounds typically get in the football state.

Exhaling into the wind and seeing my breath gave the moment a nearly haunted feel, like walking into a cemetery. The field might as well have been a graveyard, for all the harm it caused. I gingerly climbed the bleachers, cautiously guiding my feet by leaning against the guardrail, only stepping when I knew my footing was true. After a 12-year career in football followed by a life-threatening auto accident, I sometimes struggle to walk. 

Tossing Lindsey’s testimony on the bench, I swiveled 180 degrees and sat down, once again one fluid motion; it minimized the pain of having to stop a body’s momentum.  The top right pocket in my denim jacket had a pack of American Spirits, the dark blue kind. It was a new pack, which I hastily packed down, and freed of the cellophane wrapper. I had quit smoking years beforehand, but reading this would be a special occasion; One that might suggest strongly, or even oblige me to revisit my old habit.

Now seated and with cigarette lit in mouth, my eyes began to pry open the file. Rotating between a trance-like stare into the woods and vociferous word dissection, it took around 6 Spiritual cancer sticks before I had finally finished the manuscript. 

The gist of it was thus:

On or about September 5, 2014, Lindsey Hanks, a prostitute, scheduled an appointment with Jerrod Stanford, a 33 year old white male from Lubbock, Texas, to exchange money for sex in his Chandler Crossing/Round Rock, TX home. Sometime during this engagement they injected methamphetamine. The engagement ended with two of Lindsey’s pimps, Da Ryan Simms and Kendall Ellis, breaking into Jerrod Stanford’s home and threatening him at gunpoint. Summoning his inner Texan, Jerrod did not surrender, resulting in Da Ryan Simms shooting him twice, execution style- at gunpoint, ending Jerrod’s life.

Da Ryan then proceeded to threaten Lindsey at gunpoint, forcing her to assist him in his attempts to lazily and sloppily cover his tracks.

Approximately 1 week later, upon her arrest for DUI, Lindsey Hanks was jailed. Eventually, the ensuing investigation into Jerrod’s murder resulted in Lindsey’s transfer to Williamson County, where prosecutors immediately charged her with Capital Murder. Although she didn’t commit the murder, didn’t plan the robbery and didn’t have any say whatsoever in the events, Texas’ system has something called accomplice liability (AKA the Felony Murder Rule). This allows prosecutors to abolish the difference between accomplice and murderer and consider them one and the same. Thus, prosecutors can and did charge Lindsey for Capital Murder.

In exchange for her testimony, the prosecution dropped the murder charge and Lindsey plead down to aggravated robbery, with a cap of a 40 year sentence; this offense is typically punishable by 5-99 years in prison. 

Lindsey had been imprisoned since she was 22. On December 6, 2019, at 27 years of age, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison for aggravated robbery. She will not be eligible for parole until she has served at least 17.5 years. 

I ripped my eyes away from the court record and stared at the treeline again; branches shifting and swaying in the breeze mimicking movement, but remaining planted deep in the earth. 

An owl hooted into the night. ‘What wisdom do you have for such tragedy?’, I wondered silently, a lazy attempt at being poetic. I blew my breath’s vapor in front of the treeline, threatening to cloud it out of my sight if it dared not to answer, before stifling the cigarette out on the bleacher. 

I picked up the manuscript again. Maladroitly as a tap dancing duck, I waddled-skittered down the bleachers, using momentum to my advantage, until I was all the way in the middle of the field. With as much discontent as I could muster in my heart, I peed on the field, in defiance and hatred of everything it stood for. A quick lumber stumble back to the Tesla and I was greeted with the warmth of the pre-heated car.

One last look at the treeline manifested the thought: “These trees bore witness to this tragedy.” In a childish way, I wished them alive, to feel the guilt that we all should feel: bearing witness to such evil and declining to act.

This resentment was nothing new; I had felt it many times before. But reading the testimony left a certain aftertaste in my mouth that stubbornly refused to go away. 

The next day was spent driving between and through all of our teenage stomping grounds. I drove down Avery Ranch, where Robbie Ruiz and Ariel Solis were killed in a drug-fueled accident at 13 and 15 years of age; down the highway where Dylan Massingill’s body was found face-down in a field, overdosed at 23; past the crash site where Caleb Koke, the son of a pastor, had planted his car into a tree, having fallen asleep at the wheel while on Xanax, at just 17; past the house where Bryce Gwynn, at 25 years of age, committed suicide via carbon monoxide after sending a video to his son. Every inch of driving was a struggle. Rounding the corner of every neighborhood I had walked so frequently, nearly two decades prior, pressed my heart into hot coals. Searing, sickening memories splashing about the neighborhood pool where we swam, swinging in the swings where we swung, hiding under the trees where we explored; they clouded my sight of the present. 

It dawned on me: I subconsciously avoided these neighborhoods. Even though my house was located in the Canyon Creek subdivision at Anderson Mill and FM 620, I would frequently avoid traveling on Anderson Mill altogether; opting instead to go the extra long ways through Four Points or Little Elm.

Almost out of instinct, I pulled into the abandoned corner store on the right of Broadmeade right before it dead-ends on 620. I began to reminisce: in my youth, this mart was an authentic Southern corner store, with no working gas pumps and special varieties of chips or drinks- all featured at lower prices not found at a typical run of the mill gas station. The inside used to smell like urinal cakes exfoliating in a wet sauna. 

A common feature among most of these stores was they didn’t ID you if you wore your Varsity football letterman jacket. One could buy a 24-pack of Keystone for $12-$15, which left room for all the Swisher Sweets, White Owl’s, Backwoods, Phillies, Zig-Zags, Black & Milds,  Special Blends, Copenhagen (or Grizzly for the poor kids) and Newports a boy could carry to a party. 

Awakening back in reality, I saw the hollowed out shell of its former self, serving as an industrial tombstone, whose death was foreshadowed by my friends’ premature departures. 

Simmering in these thoughts, I was suddenly struck by a jolt of enlightenment. I exhaled aloud in the Tesla, feeling a bit of hope at potential relief. Turning the thick testimony over in my hands and plucking a silver Sharpie out of the center console, I wrote,

SUICIDE

• Bryce Gwynn – 25
• Keyth Talley – 29
• Zach Petterson – 23
• Zachariah Gietl – 21
• Garrett Marshall Brown – 16
• Meagan Allen – 15
• Jim Prior
• Jonathan Demarco – 20

DRUGS

• REDACTED
• Miles Mcentee – 24
• Grant Wishard – 23
• Mason Brock – 25
• Dylan Massingill – 23
• Brent Waldman – 19
• Tyler Short – 23
• Joey Sheehy – 16
• Ariel Solis – 15
• Robby Ruiz – 13
• Caleb Koke – 17

It took a second to ingest my work. I did so with pride. But the self-approval was fleeting and once withered, in its place hopelessness returned. Dejected, I reclined whilst exhaling. If only writing their names down under their causes of death had been cathartic; confronting their ghosts should have forced their faces to cease haunting my memories. Yet, the unpleasant palpability of Lindsey’s testimony clung to my guts and threatened to expel my entrails. 

“What’s actually bothering me?” I wondered silently. I picked up the pack of American Spirits; cigarettes which were casually tossed to the floorboard after an arrogant presumption they would no longer be needed. Cracking the Tesla’s windows, I lit the stogie and attacked the word soup of testimony again, appetite renewed. A dozen or so squares later, I had read it cover to cover 3 more times. “Something is missing in this gumbo.” I smacked my lips- a physical agreement with the preceding thought. “It’s too bland.” 

The testimony did little to spell out who anyone was. Sure, it described a moment, a series of moments, a story of events even. But without having known him, some might have even dismissed the victim as a drug addict himself; one that became a number sooner rather than later; a victim of his own decisions. “Empathy,” I thought to myself; my therapist has paved large inroads in an attempt at neutering my Autistic tendencies; one of which is the reduction of humans to binary. After all, no one deserves to be murdered. 

Still, in the words of the late, great Mr. Louis Armstrong “All that meat and no potatoes… just ain’t right.” 

I struggled to find a harmony that would allow me to live at peace with this. When I began to re-read the testimony again, it hit me. I wasn’t the first one to reduce the people involved to numbers. No, that award belonged to the prosecutor. Cross-examining his cross-examination, the indifference leaked out of the paper. His interrogation tactics reduced all humanity and emotion from the highly emotionally charged scene. 

I imagined the victim’s family, Lindsey’s family, maybe even the murderer’s family: all waiting, pensively; filled with baited breath and anticipation. All parties forced to consume this verbalization of the most painful event of their lives: Their son had been killed, their son was a murderer, their daughter was a prostitute. 

I couldn’t help wondering if they also found any peculiarities about it:

To listen to a chronology of events, which had completely destroyed their loved ones’ lives, derived from a methodology purposely designed to extract facts; all without feeling, context or background. It was a play, the prosecutor its Hamlet; wandering around the court room, his thoughtfulness on full display. His duty was to star and direct the play. His ego was his own audience.

Yet, I couldn’t be upset with the prosecutor, he was just doing his job; a performance worthy of 2 separate encores. He is the pallbearer of Lady Justice’s throne: a casket with corpses entombed; upon this she rules.

I understood why he serves this cruel beast: our society demands it. Our society tolerates those who carry their pain silently, turning away partially blind, yet judgmental eyes. However, woe be unto those whose pain is so great that it manifests itself in moments of corruptible passion or lifetimes of torment. “If addiction enslaves you, you will wish it hadn’t!” our society terrorizes its weakest members; “We will forcefully impress upon you how to feel, how to think, how you are permitted to be. Existence is a privilege whose torment you must enjoy… or else!” 

Of course, the prosecutor didn’t say these things. Hell, I can’t imagine the day was in any way uniquely distinguishable to him. Just another science fair: presenting the facts to a different audience. Dissecting a frog with the cold hands of inconsequence. But who could blame him? It was his job to slice open the skin of the case, and tear out its most vital organs of fact. To feel would only make him less efficient at his task. 

This didn’t stop me from screaming I KNEW HER! at the paper; As if my voice could bend all laws of physics, transmit themselves through the paper, back in time and into the prosecutor’s ears. A rock of hurt lodged itself into my throat; it was my recognizing that perverted bastard of a child that this justice system is keenly adept at spawning- It’s name: cruelty. But only a few souls outside of mine own bore witness to any of the events leading to Lindsey’s testimony. It was almost exclusively those of us who had to endure it as classmates, peers, friends and siblings. 

Then there was the trees. Those damn trees. “You offer shelter, but bore witness to this evil. Here you still stand, unmoved. No action. Only stillness. Just another statistic swallowed. Just another corpse for you to feed on.” Of course, I didn’t hate the trees themselves… (Well maybe the cedars)… They couldn’t speak out. They couldn’t rise from their places of slumber and force the world to account for this loss of lives. These trees bore no more guilt than infants. 

And here I sat, in the guilty comfort of the Tesla’s ‘leather-free’ seats, listening to Phil Ochs’ inspirational ballad When I’m Gone; serving as an impetus- a demand of action while I still lived. I blinked through the newly formed droplets easing themselves out of the corners of my eyes before accepting the decision impressed upon me to carry this cross. It was this torrential downpour of emotion that culminated into these vows:

I refuse, even to my dying breath, to let these injustices go unanswered, unheard or unseen.

I refuse to allow the machine to silently feast upon their corpses, rapidly forcing their corporeal forms and living memory to exit existence; like a deer disappearing into the woods at the first sign of light.

I will fight to keep the machine from erasing their personhoods, their futures, their legacies;

I will strive to protect those whom are hunted by this system, even now.

In defiance of the system, I WILL remember Lindsey, but I won’t stop there. I’ll remember all of my friends.

I will tell their stories, the stories of Austin’s discarded youths, to anyone that will listen. If society again refuses to listen, I will shout louder. And if it places its hands over its ears, then I suppose I don’t care to be a part of it. For what purpose does a society exist, if not to provide for and protect its children?

I will remember aloud. 

Please, hear my words and share my thoughts. Remember their stories with me. Feel their families’ grief with me. Don’t just limit yourself at mere understanding, or empathy and remain idle. This only condones it and continues the cycle. Experience it firsthand, as I did. And if it does not drive the axe home, felling all complacency and chopping up such emotion in us as to compel us to action, then may the machine consume us one and all. 

For we would most certainly deserve it.