The Red-Headed Cook of the Desert: Meth, Murder and Motherhood

By Judy Muller and Cheri Mathews

When journalist Judy Muller first met Cheri Mathews, a woman serving "lifetime parole" for murder, she knew immediately that Cheri had a story worth sharing. But she could not have foreseen how their year-long collaboration would have such a profound impact on both of their lives. Despite their disparate pasts, they learned that they shared the common bond of alcoholism and addiction, a bond that would be both enriched and strained during Cheri's deep dive into a brutal past.

"The Red-Headed Cook of the Desert" follows Cheri from an abusive childhood, where her alcoholic father taught her to live by a brutal "code," to an outlaw lifestyle in the California desert. When Muller first sat down with Mathews at a diner in their rural Colorado community, she said, "Why don't you just begin by telling me about the murder?" Mathews replied, "Which one?" And Muller was hooked. Get ready to experience this roller-coaster tale of a talented, smart woman who gets hooked on the outlaw world of meth and hits one bottom after another. This is the story of a woman who says her life was saved by prison, where she became a drug and alcohol counselor, and a person determined to make amends to her children. If only it were that simple.

Cheri's life is a study in paradox: she is convicted of murder, yet voted Humanitarian of the Year by fellow inmates, she is a young Army soldier who goes AWOL not once, but twice, only to earn many commendations before earning an honorable discharge, she admits to killing two men, but she has a reputation for standing up to bullies and saving lives.

The book takes readers on a journey into Cheri's complicated life, through her ill-fated attempts at marriage and motherhood to her love affair with meth to the murder that landed her in prison. And, finally, to her life now as a free woman, where she learns, with Muller, that there is no "happily ever after" for addicts and alcoholics. Unless, that is, you know how to live 24 hours at a time.

Muller is an Emmy and Peabody award winning journalist, and professor emerita at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism. She lives in Norwood, Colorado. Mathews is the woman whose story brought Muller out of retirement and into a deep, abiding friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667826592

Book preview

Prologue

What Do You Think?

"By the time I was in High School, the physical abuse was over. But the emotional abuse was worse and it lasted throughout Junior High and High School. Every day. Every day. Dad would come home from work, start drinking, and call me out. ‘What do you think?’ he would ask me, over and over. ‘What do you want me to think?’ I would ask. There were no right answers. He told me I was stupid and an idiot and he wanted me to think. ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’

I would start crying. And he would say, finally, ‘You don’t think, that’s your fucking problem.’ And then there were those times he would get really angry and say, ‘You’re going to be a whore just like your mother!’

One night, I finally stood up to him. ‘What do I think? I think you’re driving me crazy!’

And I got up and walked away.

—Cheri Mathews

Chapter 1

First Impressions

I met Cheri Mathews just before the pandemic closed down our little community in rural Colorado, in the Spring of 2020. Cheri was working as a waitress at Kristi’s Kitchen, a favorite eatery attached to the local saloon, The Lone Cone. In Norwood, a town of about 600 people, any new face gets noticed. So I paid attention when my brother, who also lives here, said to me, "If you’re looking for a good story, I think you should meet the new waitress at Kristi’s Kitchen. She has a great personality, she’s good at her job, and everyone really likes her. Also, she says she is on lifetime parole for murder."

I had never met anyone serving lifetime parole, so I rose to the bait. I found myself at Kristi’s for lunch soon after that, introducing myself to Cheri Mathews, the parolee in question. She was, indeed, a likeable, energetic, outgoing woman in her fifties, with a striking physical presence: tall and fit, with red hair and a winning smile. My brother had told her I might be interested in her story, and she didn’t flinch at all from the prospect. Could we have lunch on her day off, I asked, perhaps in her nearby town of Nucla?

And so I found myself seated in a booth at Nucla’s Fifth Avenue Grill (absolutely no similarity to any restaurant on the famous avenue of the same name), under the gaze of numerous antlered heads on the walls, my notebook and pen at the ready.

Unsure of where to begin, I went with the obvious: Why don’t you start by telling me about the murder?

Which one? she replied.

And I was hooked.

So began a conversation that spanned several months and traveled down some very dark roads, weaving Cheri’s recollections with those of her family and friends, adding up to an against-all-odds story of redemption. What follows is a pastiche of remembrances from different sources, but primarily from Cheri’s own extensive prison writings and our many months of intimate conversations. One of her former bunkmates from prison responded to my request for a phone interview with a sentiment I would hear more than once: I always expected I would get a call like this one day. I just knew someone would write her story.

An Easy Guide to Reading Our Story

Because this narrative is a compilation of a variety of voices and memories, I offer this simple guide to understanding who is speaking at various times.

If the narrative is in bold typeface, it comes from conversations between Judy and Cheri, conversations that primarily occurred over the phone during the pandemic.

If the narrative is in italicized typeface, it comes directly from the extensive autobiography that Cheri wrote during her incarceration, from her English class essays in prison, or her other written remembrances and letters.

Chapter 2

No Thanks for the Memories

Cheri Shaw was born on Thanksgiving Day, 1960, in Northridge, California into somewhat thankless circumstances. Her parents, Robert Shaw and Carole Sue Lennon, married because of the pregnancy, and their brief time together was marked by violence, both verbal and physical. Cheri’s entire childhood, until the age of 18, was spent in the San Fernando Valley, where – in the words of her childhood friend- all those cities blend together, a vast landscape of wide streets, little shade, endless strip malls, imposing intersections, a numbing geometric sameness broken only by the interruption of cement flood control channels, where trash was more plentiful than water. Cheri’s house, in Van Nuys, in the center of the Valley, was not all that far from the treelined streets of the upscale community of Encino, on the posh side of the 101 freeway. Not far, that is, when measured in miles, but a world away when measured in expectations and opportunities.

Cheri has, of course, no memories of her first few years living with her parents in Van Nuys. But she pieced together an account of the family history as it was related to her by her parents, and which she recounted in a lengthy biography (27 pages, single-spaced) that she wrote during her incarceration, decades later. We pick up that story in 1963, when Cheri was three.

While my mother was pregnant with my sister Susie, her brother came to stay with us. Uncle Ray, a big red-headed guy who I am told was very sweet to us, moved into my bedroom. I don’t remember this, because I was very young, but my father told me that Ray left a goodbye note one day, saying he was going to Arizona where his estranged wife was living with her parents.

While in Arizona, Uncle Ray killed his wife and her parents, shot them to death. I learned about this years later. My father told me the police came to our house in Van Nuys to look for Ray, broke down the door and came into my room with guns at my head until they realized it was me in the bed and not Uncle Ray. Police eventually tracked him down. Ray was convicted and sentenced to life in the Arizona State Penitentiary.

It would not be the last encounter I would have with Uncle Ray. Or the police, for that matter.

This was the same year Kennedy was assassinated. It was also the year my mother left.

I was three and Susie was just a baby. Years later, Mom told me she left because she was abusing us, shaking us, and going into rages. It was for our own good, she said. My father never really got over it. He loved and hated her. He was obsessed with her. I looked like my Mom, so I would get that rage directed at me. He told me, over and over, for years, what a whore she was and that I would be like her.

My father hired a babysitter, Diane Penny Potter, to watch us during the day while he was working at the family’s Chevron station. Penny was a topless dancer at a Canoga Park bar and she would take us there if she had to work a shift. We would help the bartender wash dishes, hiding behind the bar. When my Dad married Penny, she did her best to become a mother and a homemaker. Our home had to be meticulous, and we were given chores to do. But a neat home could not protect us from my Dad’s moods. Penny tried to be our Mom, but she was codependent and he came first. Money was tight and Penny did her best with the allowance given to her by Dad. I remember her saving coupons, washing clothes at the laundromat, and shopping at thrift stores for our clothes. We always had everything we needed physically, just a little bit lacking in the healthy communication department.

Penny tried her best, but her best could be pretty rough. When I did something wrong, like walking home in the rain from elementary school, she spanked me with brushes, wooden spoons, and metal spatulas. Looking back, I believe she was acting out of fear. It scared her when she couldn’t find me, and her fear would turn to anger.

When I was 12 years old, Penny caught me smoking at the park with an older girl. I had told the girl where I lived, because we planned to run away together. That night, she sneaked up to the side of my house, but she mistakenly looked through my parents’ window, instead of mine. My dad jumped out of bed naked, grabbed his shotgun and hauled ass outside. Penny called the cops but the girl took off. Penny put two and two together pretty quick, and told me I was going to start looking like a 12-year-old instead of a teenager. So she cut my hair short and cut up my hip huggers and short tops. And she made me wear her old dresses to school, which I hated.

Once, she fed me horsemeat, even though she knew I loved horses. She told me what it was after I had eaten it. We were pretty poor back then, so maybe that’s why she did it. But I cried and gagged until she let me go to my room without having to finish it.

But Dad was worse. When we were little, the abuse was physical. He scared us to death. If Susie or I walked in front of the TV while he was watching, he would kick us to get out of the way. We stayed in our room or outside. Not only was I afraid of Dad, but I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I was basically a good kid. I got good grades, I helped around the house, and I loved our animals.

But I did have a problem: I was already developing addictive tendencies and I had zero impulse control. I was addicted to sugar and would steal as much brown sugar as I could get away with. I stole candy from the store and I would sneak into my parents’ room while they were sleeping to steal money from my dad’s wallet. This would escalate into other addictions in later years.

I also became an escape artist from reality. I used to retreat into my fantasy world, a desert island with just my dog and a herd of horses. I would figure out how to survive, with weapons to hunt and fish and I could just stay there forever. I went there all the time. When my Dad would pull up to the house in his truck, my stomach would go into knots. I’d be in my room and I would go away. But at dinner, Susie and I had to walk past him in his chair to get to the kitchen. Susie and I would sit at a counter in the kitchen while Dad and Penny ate on TV trays in the living room. When I was in trouble, the anger would come off him like waves, and he would clench his jaw. I would never know when he would lash out. He would tell me he loved me after he beat me. He wasn’t one for affection, but we had to kiss him goodnight every night.

I remember once when he caught me in a lie. He took me into the garage and he put my hand on a block and took the axe and acted like he was going to cut off my hand for lying to him.

This was in elementary school. I had written a note to one of the boys calling him a fucker, and my dad wanted me to confess to it. I lied all the way to the chopping block.

That was a bad day.

Judy: I know he didn’t follow through on that threat, but the terror must have been visceral. When you talk about your childhood, I find myself wishing I could go back in time and rescue that girl, who simply had the misfortune of being born to a mother who abandoned her and an abusive father.

Cheri: Oh, no, no, no! I loved my father. Idolized him. Yes, he was emotionally challenged. But I always thought of him as that rock-hard man I idolized. He just had no parenting skills, no coping skills.

Cheri with her father, Robert Shaw, and sister Susie

Cheri’s rationalization of her father’s lack of parenting skills is inextricably linked to her unconscious sense of responsibility for the underdogs in life. Her automatic response to bullies is also deeply rooted in her protective attitude towards her younger sister, Susie. Because that sister has caused so much turmoil in the family over the years, Cheri’s emotions are still somewhat mixed. Susie was not beaten and ridiculed in the same way Cheri was, but her life was pretty much a living hell from the get-go.

My sister Susie did not suffer the same kind of treatment. Her abuse took the form of neglect. I remember being lectured in the kitchen, while Susie was in the bedroom banging her head against the wall, over and over. She had serious behavior problems for as long as I can remember. She screamed and pulled her hair and scratched her face. She wet the bed until she was in her teens. They punished her for that. She was forced to sit in the front yard with wet sheets over her head. I had to bring her with me anywhere I went, and if I tried to leave without her, she would scream and cry until I went back for her. This stunt saved my ass one day. We always took the alleyway to the elementary school and one morning I walked ahead of her. Susie threw herself down in the usual fashion, but I wasn’t giving in so easy. I figured I would walk to the end of the alley before I would go back for her. A pickup truck drove up and stopped suddenly. A man jumped out of the driver’s side, his dick out of his pants, and grabbed me. Susie let out a scream and stopped him in his tracks. Once he saw her, he jumped in the truck and took off. But before we could get out of there, the son of a bitch flipped a U-turn and was coming back at us. I pushed Susie into a car port and was ready to jump a fence, but the dude kept going. We ran to school and told a teacher, who called the police. I don’t think my dad ever got over that. He became obsessed with teaching me how to defend myself. That was in junior high.

When I got older, in my teens, I was too big to physically punish. So the emotional abuse got much, much worse. After Dad would drink in the evening, he would launch into his What do you THINK? attacks. Even though I knew where it was headed, with him concluding that I would end up a whore, like my mother, I was expected to sit there and take it. He would go on and on about her, never mind that Penny was hearing all this. She would try to intervene, but he would tell her to stay out of it because she wasn’t my mother.

On the flip side of those interrogations, he would lecture me on the code:

Never be a coward

Never be a snitch

Never back down and run away, because if you run, they will come after you and kill you

Never point a gun and not use it

Never shoot someone and not finish it

Sometimes he would teach me how to kill people, if I had to, including how to crush the larynx and use the heel of my hand to drive the nose cartilage into the brain, how to bite and take off the nose or rip the throat, how to use a knife so your attacker can’t take it away, and how to put my fingers through eye sockets and drive them into the brain.

This started in junior high school. I would just sit there and disassociate. I don’t think I took it outside our home, because keeping family business private was another part of the code. My friends all loved my Dad, because they never saw that side of him.

Christina Karlen was one of those friends. She agreed to speak with me on the phone about those days when she and Cheri were close pals.

I envied her family life, because I didn’t know about all the punishment. I just knew she lived in an immaculate home, and she had chores and responsibilities. She was grounded for a whole summer because she was caught kissing a boy. I thought that was harsh, but I also wished my parents had given me more punishments, showing they cared. I thought her Dad was cool. He was good-looking and fun. The summer that Jaws came out, we talked about how the part played by the actor Robert Shaw was like her father, who had the same name. She talked about her Dad with a tone of hero-worship. Years later, after we reconnected and I learned about her scary life, I thought, ‘How could this happen? She was in honors classes, MVP on the swim team, the smartest person I knew.’

Chapter 3

Swimming Upstream

Cheri’s school years were tumultuous. She attended four junior high schools, getting suspended repeatedly for smoking or fighting. And yet, she was an A student.

Judy: How in the world did you manage to maintain an A average?

Cheri: I crammed. I have gotten away with it all my life. Even the drug and alcohol counseling classes in prison. I was named Salutatorian. But I had trouble with my memory, lots of problems. I would forget what I learned in about a month. ‘Use it or lose it’ fit me to a T.

A lot of my anger from home followed me to school, and I fought a lot. I had a hero complex, and I hated bullies. So when I saw someone getting bullied, I stepped in to defend them. I had bad acne at that time, which made me feel ugly, different, ashamed. I had muscles, so I wore long sleeves to hide my arms. The truth of it was, I became the bully when I fought the bullies. After getting kicked out of public schools, I had to go to a Baptist school, which was tough. I mean, my dad claimed to be an atheist and my favorite singer was Alice Cooper. But I was on the softball team, and I was a really good player. My coach was also my Bible teacher. He was very prejudiced against Adventists, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. At the time, Penny was meeting with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the afternoons at our house. I don’t remember if my dad knew or not. So when I wrote essays for my bible class, I just copied articles from Penny’s collection of Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower pamphlets. The teacher never caught on, and always gave me A’s.

Judy: So you were getting good grades there, doing well on the softball team. What went wrong? Why did you leave?

Cheri: My Dad got involved.

My coach was going to take me to the athletic awards ceremony, but when my Dad heard that, he flipped out, accusing me of wanting to hook up with a guy the coach knew. One day after practice, Dad showed up at school and piled the team into his pickup to take everyone to the Pizza Parlor. Dad was drunk and while we were there, he punched my Bible teacher.

Next day, I’m in Bible class and the teacher has a black eye. And he says, We’re going to pray for Cheri’s Dad.

I said, Fuck you. And by the way, all my essays came from Watchtower pamphlets.

So I got sent to the principal’s office. He gave me a choice: suspension or swats. I chose the swats, which were delivered with a sawed-off oar. He hit me so hard I slammed into the wall, harder than I had ever been hit at home.

FUCK YOU, I screamed. And so I was suspended anyway.

I was afraid to go home, so I talked my best friend into running away from home. We ended up in a garden center where they grow trees and tried to sleep there. It was scary, so we called home. My first day back at school, someone told on me for smoking in the bathroom and I was expelled.

I was 12 years old.

I was allowed to go back to one of the junior high schools, Mulholland, where I had been suspended for fighting before. But only on the condition that I would agree to counseling. That didn’t have much of an impact, since part of our family code was that when you left the house, you didn’t talk about the family business. I defended my Dad, no matter what.

Cheri’s best friend- Christina Karlen (nee Olmstead)- went to a different school, but they bonded over shared adventures, which began in the 4th grade. Cheri remembers it vividly. But then, Cheri remembers almost everything vividly, which is somewhat astonishing, given the never-ending turmoil of her life, including years of drug abuse.

Christina was literally in the gutter when I met her. One of those tunnels near a flood control channel. I said, How did you get down there? She guided me down there – and we made a plan to return with flashlights. We learned that if we crawled on our bellies, we could get to a storm drain that led to the aqueduct and the L.A. River. There was some pretty greenery around it and that’s where we would hang out.

Christina: Cheri always had the courage to see an idea through to completion. You know that bridge that crosses White Oak and Victory? We were out there with our dogs and another girl, who agreed to watch the dogs while we tried to climb under the bridge. I was the acrobat, the gymnast, so I figured out how to do it. We climbed up the side wall of the aqueduct, grabbed the support beams to swing over the middle, under the bridge. The flood channel was far below us. We got