REEDSPORT — The bus ride to Tennessee took days.

But it seemed like eternity to Jessica Readen, as she rode to Dyersburg to gather her 15-year-old daughter from foster care.

Stevie Milburn had called a few days before. Her father, Christopher Milburn, had reported her missing. She had run away from his home.

“She couldn’t take what her dad was putting her through anymore,” Readen said.



Readen asked if he had beaten her.

“‘No mama,’ she said ‘he’s raping me,’” Readen recalled, pausing as she forced out the words. “Her dad told her that if she told anyone, he would kill her.”

Readen promised to bring Stevie home.

The police were already on their way.

Deciding to use her rent money for a ticket, Readen jumped a Greyhound on July 29. In the meantime, law enforcement moved Stevie to a foster home.

“Little did I know, it was only two doors from his house,” Readen said.

Sitting in her sister’s toy-strewn backyard in Reedsport on Wednesday, the 32-year-old held her youngest son, Brock, in her lap.

He circled his arm around her neck, trying to comfort her as she wept and retold the story of her daughter and the trip that ended two days too late.

Taken away

Milburn and Readen had been roommates. They never really had a romantic relationship. She said he didn’t even consider Stevie his until he took a paternity test after her birth.

“He had never been in her life,” Readen said.

Stevie is her second-oldest child. She’d lived with Readen in Reedsport until 2002. The 8-year-old went to Highland Elementary School. Then, during a visit to Dyersburg to see her father and half sisters, and to give Readen a break while she handled a divorce, Milburn decided to keep Stevie.

“I got court papers saying he was filing custody for her and that I needed to be in Tennessee,” Readen said. “I guess in my head I thought she was in a better place. ... I guess I was just young and stupid.”

Without money for a lawyer or the flight, Readen gave in. And so for six years, the mother and daughter remained separated.

Eventually, Milburn forbade Stevie to talk to her mom. They learned to communicate on the sly with a prepaid cell phone, and then a MySpace page under a false name.

“We didn’t realize how bad it was, what she was going through,” Readen said. “She never said anything about abuse — just that he was controlling.”

The bus ride

On Aug. 2, while Readen rode the bus to Dyersburg, she and Stevie spoke again via cell phone. The girl had been to church and said she was with good people, Todd and Susan Randolph. Readen expected to be in Dyersburg in about two days.

That was the last time they spoke. That night, Readen’s cell phone died.

On Aug. 3, she bought a phone charger at a truck stop and called her oldest daughter, Aundrea. The 16-year-old said police had visited Readen’s home in Florence, and her sister’s in Reedsport.

“They wanted to talk to me,” Readen said. “At that point, I knew something was wrong.”

On the phone again, as Texas landscape passed her window, Readen spoke with police in Dyersburg and begged for an update on Stevie.

“I asked him over and over again ‘Just tell me my daughter’s OK.’ He said “I cannot discuss that information with you over the phone. All I can say is you need to get to Dyersburg as soon as possible,’” Readen said. “Every thought in my mind was going.”

Maybe he kidnapped Stevie.

That would be the worst, Readen thought.

Family and friends searched the Internet for any kind of information. They soon learned that on the night of Aug. 2, a 15-year-old girl, her foster father and foster mother had been shot, Readen recalled, stopping. She put her hand over her mouth as tears streaked down her cheeks.

Only one survived, Readen remembered, but no name was listed. Then, came the next report: The girl had been pronounced dead at the scene.

With no official word from the police, Readen ditched the bus and caught a plane to Memphis. A sheriff’s deputy and a chaplain met her and explained everything. Milburn had shot the Randolphs — his close friends — outside their home. He went inside to murder Stevie and then committed suicide about a block away. Susan Randolph is the sole survivor.

“I remember just not being able to breathe,” Readen said, twisting a plastic wrapper tightly between her fingers.

Her next stop was the morgue, where she saw her child for the first time in six years.

“I don’t think anybody can describe what it feels like to see your baby in a body bag,” Readen said. “I promised her I was going to bring her home.”

Two funerals

Members of the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Dyersburg took Readen under their wings. They set up a fund to help her bring Stevie home, and she held a service there so the teen’s friends in Tennessee could say good-bye to the goofy girl, who loved to sing and dance.

“She made everybody smile,” Readen recalled.

Back in Reedsport, Readen held a funeral service on Aug. 14. The family showed videos of Stevie as a little girl, and listened to some of her favorite songs, including “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” because that’s what her grandma sang to her, said Stevie’s godmother, Missy Ruddy.

“We thought it would be fitting,” Ruddy said.

 Readen described her daughter as an old soul. She had dark eyes, just like her mother. She liked being near adults, and especially loved her big sister. When Aundrea started kindergarten, Readen said, Stevie cried all day long.

“The two of them were inseparable.”

They, too, were apart six years.

Coping

Since Readen cremated her daughter’s body, she’s been trying to cope with the loss, guilt and confusion left in the wake of Milburn’s attack. She got a memorial tattoo on her right arm of two nestling doves and the words Stevie R.I.P. The rest of her children are taking a trip down to California to step away from the situation for a while.

“There’s a lot of guilt that I should have brought her home a year ago. I didn’t get there fast enough,” she lamented. “An innocent man doesn’t go out and kill people. If the allegations weren’t true, you would think he’d get a lawyer ... not go and shoot up the whole neighborhood.”

Ruddy said she’s extremely angry especially with how the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services handled Stevie’s foster care.

“I’m baffled. Two doors down gets me. Why didn’t they just put her back in the house?” Ruddy said sardonically. “That’s not protected custody. I keep telling myself I have to forgive, but I’ll never forget.”

Readen, too, can’t understand the decision.

“I haven’t slept a whole lot, and when I do, I have nightmares of him,” Readen said.

It won’t be easy to put her pain and regrets at rest, but she hopes counseling and spreading Stevie’s ashes will help. Readen plans to sprinkle some in the sea because Stevie was a certified SCUBA diver.

The family will keep the rest in necklaces that Readen and her four surviving children will wear. That way, Stevie will be with them forever.