Canyon of secrets

So much is wide open in New Mexico. But so many family secrets out here can remain hidden, coiled like a snake—secret, and sometimes, lethal.

Soon there was talk, whispers of how cold and calculating the killings had been, how the boy had planned, executed and covered up the crime. But there were also rumors that the seeds for this violence had been planted long ago.

Slim Brittan, cowhand: The West is kind of tight-lipped about things like that...

Slim Brittan is a tough-talking cowhand, worked for Paul Posey for eight months on the Donaldson ranch.

Brittan: In the West, you just don’t talk about it. I mean, you just don’t, it’s just not something you put around.

What he didn’t “put around” was what he says he saw happening on the ranch. A cruel, angry Paul Posey, abusing an obedient but battered son.

Brittan: He rides up to him, and hits him. "Whack" with the rope, just right in the back.  You’re out of the drive.  Whack.  Right across the back.

John Larson, Dateline correspondent:  This is with a coiled rope?

Brittan: Yeah. With a coiled rope.

Slim was let go a few months before the killings. But says he saw trouble between father and son almost every day, excessively harsh words and sometimes, beatings.

Brittan: I never saw a hand laid on him in love.

Larson:  Never an arm around the shoulder?

Brittan: Never.

There were others who said they saw it, too.

Jim Forrester: He was mean, real mean on his family.

Jim Forrester remembers putting in a new heater for Cody’s dad, Paul. Cody was just a baby in diapers and not understanding his dad’s order to move:

Forrester: And all of a sudden Paul just leaped and whipped his belt off and grabbed that kid by the arm and just went to warpin’ him down across the head and ears and face and neck and back.  The kid was just screaming you know, bloody murder, big, wide cowboy belt.

Cody’s mom pulled the baby away. A short time later she and Paul divorced, and mother and son left to live together.  But in 1994, his mom joined the navy. A 4-year-old Cody was sent back to live with his father, this time with his second wife, Sandy.

Sandy, Paul Posey’s ex-wife: Oh, he was a dear little boy.  Everybody loved him.  He was sweet and kind and polite. You know, he was my son.

Sandy adored Cody and cared for him as if he were her own: birthday parties, friends, lots of love. But she says she had to keep Paul from hitting Cody.

Sandy: He would yank him out of the bed, the bunk bed on the top, yank him off on to the floor.

Larson: Just pull him all the way from the floor—

Sandy: Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

Larson: Slam him down on the floor?

Sandy: Yes.  Yes.

But one time, she said she came home from work and found the father beating his son with a board.

Sandy: I said, “Paul, that’s enough. That’s enough.”  And he stopped.

Cody was just 7 years old.  His mom, home on leave, saw the bruises, and called police. There were pictures and a hospital examination but no charges were ever filed.

Meanwhile, Paul, Cody’s dad, moved on to his third wife, Tryone, and took 9-year-old Cody with him.  Tryone had a daughter—Marilea Schmeed. She became Cody’s stepsister.  So the four became a new family: Paul, Tryone, Marilea, and Cody.

But Cody longed to be back with his biological mom. So when she retired from the navy, his dad gave Cody back.  The boy was 10 years old and he, his mom, and her new husband took off in their pickup for a new job.  But the trip turned deadly...

There was an accident, and Cody’s mother was thrown from the back seat and was dying in Cody’s arms.

Cody’s life had been blown like a tumbleweed through New Mexico’s pinion and dry cottonwoods, out of control, spinning. He was blown right back to the old life with his father. There was old hurt, but soon with fresh wounds.

Alvera Lerma: I remember Cody pulled up his sleeve and he had burn marks from cigarette marks.

Alvera Lerma saw a lot. Her Spanish-speaking husband worked for Cody’s father, and she was often with both of them, translating, since Paul Posey didn’t speak Spanish.

Lerma: And he was violent when he would get mad.

At one point, Alvera told her husband something that now gives her chills.

Lerma: To me, "I feel that something’s gonna happen to that family, either Cody’s gonna kill Paul, or Paul’s gonna kill Cody."

Four months later, three people were dead and Cody was in custody. For many, the stories of an abusive, violent father were so convincing, they were ready to forgive the killer— even the father of Marilea Schmeed, Cody’s stepsister and third victim.

Larson: What do you think now that you know Cody was responsible for taking your daughter’s life? 

Jake Schmeed: Cody doesn’t need to be punished for this.  He didn’t do it. Paul and Tryone did this.

Larson: We know that Cody pulled the triggers.

Schmeed: Paul and Tryone made him do it, created him and made him the weapon that caused their death and Marilea’s death. 

On the other hand, Cody had confessed, he’d tried to cover up the crime by burying the bodies in the manure pile. And as for the abuse, some people around the area started thinking that somehow Cody’s stories didn’t quite add up.

Verlin Posey, Paul Posey’s brother: I mean you basically have nobody to contradict his word.

Paul Posey’s older brother, Verlin, says the stories didn’t add up, because the abuse never happened. It was just an excuse implanted in Cody by his mother.

Verlin Posey: Anytime he got a spanking that was abuse.  He was told that was abuse. Every time he got in any trouble, he was disciplined by my brother.  His mother’s family told him that was abuse.

The uncle questioned why no teacher, principal, or school counselor had ever reported any evidence of abuse.

Verlin Posey: How do you hide it?  This kid ought to have enough scars on his face that look like a roadmap. If you listened to Cody, he took as many licks as Muhammad Ali. 

Finally, Posey says his brother loved Cody.

Verlin Posey: But Paul would have given his life for that boy and Marilea.  So I don’t know. And if at some point he wants to talk to me, I hope at some point he wants to, it’ll be down the road before I probably can do it.

And there was another question: If Cody’s father Paul was so violent, wouldn’t he have taken some of his anger out on his ex-wife, Sandy?

Larson:  Did Paul ever hit you?

Sandy:  No.

Larson:  Never?

Sandy: Never.

Larson: So, we’re supposed to now believe that this man is some sort of controlling, abusive, violent monster, that he beat his son so badly that he would somehow be forced to murder.  But he never hit you?

Sandy: No.  He never laid a hand on me.

It didn’t sound as if Cody’s stories of abuse would be enough of a defense, unless you know what happened on the exact same ranch 40-some years ago...

There was another murder  — a wife shot a husband at point blank range and she even confessed.  But when it came time for her trial, her defense tried something almost unheard of in these parts at the time: a battered wife defense. And it worked. The jury acquitted her. Now Cody’s attorney wondered, with a triple murder, how would a jury respond to these stories of abuse, could a battered child defense work?

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