Welcome to SheKos! SheKos is a diary series for all Kossacks to explore issues related to feminism, women's history, and equality. We seek to find solutions within and beyond the Democratic Party to improve the lives of women -- and men -- regardless of race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We believe that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights.
This is my second SheKos diary dealing with domestic violence. The first examined as an overview the disturbing phenomenon of murders of women by their intimate partners, analyzing statistics, facts, and figures provided by U.S. agencies and organizations. This diary takes a more personal, case-study approach to the same topic.
All James Lund wanted that day was to complete a pre-employment drug screening and be on his way. Probably, he was like most people - a little uncomfortable, embarrassed by the process and anxious to get it over with. The episode was about to end, abruptly and very differently than he could ever have expected.
First, there was the thunder of gunshots and then it was raining broken glass. In fact, every window in the front of the Legacy Metro Lab in Tualatin, Oregon had been shattered.
"As I was looking at the glass, I looked back up and the gunman was coming in the door with a rifle," Lund said. "He basically told me to 'Get the ---- out' and I didn't argue with him."
(snip)
"Truthfully, fight or flight kicked in," Lund said. "It was like the first thought I had was to get out or you're going to die. Straight up, you're going to die. And I wasn't in the mood to die today."
James fled to find cover behind a van in the parking lot of the facility. Inside, shots rang out as the gunman continued his rampage. James hailed a passing motorist and told him to place a 911 call.
James wasn't the only person to survive the attack by Robert Beiser, but he was the luckiest: he escaped without injury. Rob had come on a deadly mission, intent on murdering his estranged wife, Teresa, who worked at the lab. He clearly wasn't out to harm innocent bystanders, but he didn't put lots of effort into avoiding doing so.
Tony Ochoa and Brittany Lore were working with Teresa Beiser at the lab that morning. Tony had been hit in the initial window-shattering barrage, struck by a rifle bullet that passed through his hand and entered his chest. When the windows blew out he, Teresa, and Brittany dropped to the floor and sought shelter under a desk. It was a good idea, but Rob wasn't detered and quickly found their hiding place.
He had a mission to complete.
Rob shouted at Tony to get out of the office, several times, and Tony began crawling toward the door. Brittany followed him, as did Teresa. Seeing his wife's attempt to escape may be why Rob opened fire again, even though Tony wasn't yet out of the line of fire.
"I stood up just as a shot hit Tony in the knee causing him to fall to the ground," Lore said.
As the gunman opened fire, Lore ran for the door. But before reaching it, she fell to the glass-covered floor.
"I got back up and ran through the door that had been shattered and I drug my foot along the bottom of the door frame, cutting myself on the jagged glass," Lore said.
Once outside of the building, Brittany dashed - covered in blood from her many cuts, some of them deep - toward the street, flagging down a passing truck and getting a ride to the nearby Subway restaurant. There, people pressed napkins to her wounds to slow the bleeding while awaiting paramedics.
Meanwhile, Tony Ochoa was still desperately trying to escape the bloodbath. He'd been hit again, this time in the leg. He had also been injured by shrapnel from the blasts as Rob hunted down his wife with a 12-gauge pistol grip shotgun and .308 assault rifle. As he dragged himself toward the door with his one good hand and remaining good leg, Tony sustained numerous cuts from the shards of glass that littered the floor.
Somehow, Tony managed to crawl out of the lab and to the door of the business next door, where a man performed first aid, working hard to stem the bleeding of the chest wound and fighting to keep Tony alive until the paramedics could arrive. It turned out to be a long wait; it took police about twenty minutes to declare the scene secure and allow medical personnel access.
Tony got the help he needed, eventually being lifelined to a Portland hospital. For Teresa, it was far too late. Police found her lifeless body near the front lobby - probably about where she was when Brittany fled the building - shot multiple times. Rob had used both the rifle and the shotgun on her before retreating to a collection rest room in the back of the lab and fatally shooting himself. I haven't been able to find documentation of what weapon he used for his suicide, but it seems likely it was the semi-automatic Colt .45, the last of the three firearms he'd brought to the scene.
So, here we have a man so tormented, so angry, so far beyond all reason, that he drives to his estranged wife's workplace with an arsenal that could have wiped out most of the workers in the entire office complex. He shoots out the windows of his wife's lab, but allows a hapless customer to leave unscathed. He orders Tony - yes, he called him by name, he knew the guy - to "get out of there," and apparently intended to let him and Brittany leave without harm. But the depth of his rage at Teresa seemed to override his obvious commitment to leaving others out of this grisly family business.
It's unclear what exactly might have been the precipitating event, the thing that finally pushed Rob over the edge, but there's ample anecdotal evidence that he had been camping out in the vicinity of that edge for quite some time. Teresa, a part-time fitness instructor and a bodybuilder, confided in her personal trainer, Thom Bowser, about the problems in her 15-year marriage.
Robert Beiser did not approve of Teresa Beiser's body-building or spinning classes, Bowser said. Teresa Beiser often said her husband was calm one day and angry the next.
An acquaintenance of mine knew Teresa very well through work, and he also mentioned that the marriage was marred by strife, mostly from Rob's "trouble with depression." Although the Beisers seem to have presented a happy, united facade to outside observers, the inner reality of their marriage was much rockier. She even told Thom that Rob was unstable, displaying erratic and troubling mood swings.
"Oh yeah, she did say that one day he would be OK and the next day he would be just angry and mean-spirited.
Early in the summer, the Beisers decided to separate. According to my friend, Teresa said it was a decision they arrived at mutually during a family camping trip. Rob moved out of the family home soon after. According to members of Teresa's family, he had moved into a trailer with his mother in Clackamas, another suburb of Portland.
At first, both Beisers were trying to move on, making new lives for themselves. Rob, who worked as a vehicle claims adjuster, dated other women, even using online matchmaking services. For her part, Teresa confided to my friend that she had been stunned at the attention she'd received "once people found out she was single."
But it was Mike Klettke, a friend she knew from the gym where they both trained for bodybuilding, who captured her attention. He had been asking Teresa to be his training partner - for bodybuilding competitions - for three years before she agreed. But it was only after her separation from Rob that Mike acted on his romantic feelings for her.
"We knew that we were attracted to each other, and I was just trying to stay out of their separation and divorce because they had planned on - they had separated before we decided to start training. So that was already in motion," he said.
Soon, Mike and Teresa were more than just training partners; they became "inseparable."
Even after the separation, the Beisers seem to have presented an amicable front to the world at large. Both were devoted to their two children, a 14-year-old girl and an 11-year-old son, and appeared jointly at recreational functions. Teresa's divorce filing sought joint custody and seemed to be mutually agreed upon.
"They are -- were -- amazing parents," said Lana L. Traynor, a Portland attorney who has worked with the family. "They were very united for the kids."
Teresa encouraged her daughter to be competive in her study of tae kwon do, and both she and Rob attended their daughter's practices, even after they were separated. Al Dorsey, the tae kwon do instructor who has taught the daughter for several years, even thought that "they were on good terms."
Dorsey talked often with each of the Beisers and said that there was no indication that Rob would be capable of the kind of violence he inflicted on Nov. 10.
Dorsey said he and Robert Beiser had discussed some recent shootings in the news, sharing their concerns. "He even said, 'There's nothing that bad that would make you want you to do something like that,'" Dorsey said.
And yet, even this man who thought the Beisers were handling their breakup well picked up on some disturbing clues to Rob's state of mind. He was concerned by Rob's sudden gun purchases, for one thing.
"He never had guns, and all of he sudden he buys guns," said Al Dorsey, who has taught the couple's 14-year-old daughter tae kwan do for several years.
But when Robert Beiser recently showed an interest in guns and wanted to go to a shooting range, Dorsey — an Army veteran — was wary.
"I told my wife, 'I don't feel comfortable going shooting with anybody that's going through a divorce,'" he said.
"It struck me as odd that he wanted to go shooting, but what struck me was that for some reason, I knew he was going through a divorce and even though he didn't display any type of problems I just didn't think it was a good combination," Dorsey said.
And while there was public evidence that Rob was adjusting to his wife's new romantic interest, including a tae kwon do competition that all three attended together in support of the Beiser's daughter, things were more turbulent behind the scenes in recent weeks. Especially after Teresa filed for divorce - one week prior to the shooting.
"When the separation and the divorce started coming into play, he became more hostile and lots of fights ensued and more threats were made," Klettke said. "He kept telling her he was going to buy some guns.
Teresa's trainer confirms this.
"She was scared," said Bowser, who told Teresa to report her concerns to police. "She definitely had big concerns about him."
Yet all of this smoke doesn't add up to fire, in a legal sense; there's nothing really actionable from a law enforcement perspective. In fact, Teresa told my friend that she had consulted police about the threats and the gun purchases, but got the familiar response - until he broke the law, there was nothing they could do.
Even Teresa's own brother, Dale Wilson, a police officer himself, was uneasy about the situation but didn't think violence was imminent. Teresa had called him with her growing fears, especially in light of the gun purchases.
"There were things said that made her scared sometimes," Wilson said. "You know, that made us worry something could happen eventually."
"I know she was scared and a little nervous for a while. Especially after she noticed that he purchased some guns recently. Three or four guns right after they split up. That was a clue for me. So, I told her, 'You need to be careful and make a report,'" Wilson said.
And yet,
He said Robert never showed any real signs that he would go to his wife’s office and open fire.
Wilson said he has no idea what could have sent him over the edge. "He didn’t call anybody, tell anybody. You know, he had lunch with his daughter the day before and nobody had a clue," he said.
Even Mike Klettke admits that "Just looking at the guy, you would never know he was violent. ... He didn't look like he would hurt a fly." But Teresa told him that after she filed for divorce, Rob had issued a warning over the phone: "watch out."
Teresa's brother Dale convinced her to report her concerns to the Gladstone police department. A representative of that department said "she couldn’t confirm whether Teresa filed reports, but she did say the department did hear from Robert who asked how he could transport his firearms legally in a vehicle."
Now, about this time, some readers will be fuming at the failure of the system to protect Teresa Beiser from a husband who showed clear signs of being a danger to her. Others will be doing a slow burn at what they think is yet another unfair vilification of a man when the true facts are unclear at best. In truth, I feel the "system," if one can call it that, failed both Beisers, as well as their children.
If we accept the admittedly hearsay evidence that Rob had emotional problems, then the central issue in this case is that Rob needed help. Given that he chose to end the marriage by ending both their lives, I'd say he needed serious help. It sounds as though he was tormented by depression, at the very least. He tended to be a loner, with no real circle of friends. High school classmates described him as "shy" and "easy to miss." Teresa's brothers characterized him as "a homebody who spent most of his free time in front of the television."
Compare this to friends' descriptions of Teresa and there is a striking contrast. Her trainer, Thom, saw her as "a picture of life."
"She was never down," said Bowser. "She always popped into the gym with a big smile, a big hug."
In addition to her job at Legacy Metro Lab, Teresa taught a spinning class at a local fitness center, trained as a bodybuilder, and was an avid cyclist.
Rob's second job was as a newspaper carrier, working a solo route in the early morning hours.
The point I'm trying to make is not that they had such different personalities that it was natural they would grow apart. Lots of couples with radically different personal styles have happy marriages. No, the issue here is not that Rob was a wallflower married to the belle of the ball - it's that he was desperately unhappy and probably in need of therapy.
In fact, sometime after their separation, Robcommunicated to Teresa his profound unhappiness with the situation, according to my friend. He says Teresa asked Rob if he would like to get couples counseling, but that apparently didn't happen.
It would be easy to say, having read skads of articles about this event and develped a well-rounded picture of all the things that lead up to it, that it should have been obvious to all that Rob was about to do something catastrophically violent. The fact of the matter is, it was not obvious at all. It was a series of hints and clues, vague worries about specific things like an out-of-character sudden interest in guns. Rob was troubled and volatile, but had no history of domestic abuse and was a devoted father who appeared in public with his separated wife and her new boyfriend. It is frighteningly easy to see how all this added up to no police report, no restraining order, and a murder-suicide.
Even Teresa's brother, Ron Wilson, feels the loss of Rob as well as Teresa.
"You know it's unfortunate what he did, but it doesn't change the fact that he was still in our family, and I love him and I'm going to miss him just as well," he said.
If the victim's own family can retain a nuanced outlook on this tragedy insteading of vilifying Rob Beiser, it would behoove us all to try to do the same. Even in light of his horrific last act, Teresa's family feel the pain of losing Rob. This would tend to suggest that he wasn't a "bad man" so much as he was a troubled man, a suffering man who simply could not find a way to cope with his changing situation in life.
So while I firmly believe that we need, as a society, to be asking what we can do to better protect women from violence by intimate partners, I also believe we need to be asking what society can and should be doing to assist those intimate partners before they commit unspeakable acts of violence. The rising tide of men reacting to the end of relationships with violence probably says less about the inherent violent nature of men than it does about the failure of our society to teach men and boys effective emotional skills.
Clearly, there is a failure at some point - maybe lots of points - to teach them how to deal properly and safely with failure or adversity in romantic relationships. How might we be inadvertantly teaching men to equate a woman leaving them with emasculation? Is there something we can do to identify men in this sort of emotional crisis? What sort of system should we be constructing to get such men the care and help that they clearly need?
The possibility that men are subject to outlandish pressures of so-called masculinity was driven home to me by this quote from James Lund, the man who escaped Rob Beiser's assault on the lab:
Lund said he feels fortunate to escape with no significant injuries, but wonders if he could have done more to help others.
"I'm ex military and the only thing is, I still have a problem with the fact that I didn't wrestle the rifle away," he said. "Why did he let me go? He shot two other people that were in the building and the other lady. Why did he let me go? I don't know."
So because of prior military experience, James is apparently tormenting himself over survival decisions he made in a matter of seconds during a completely unforeseeable violent attack in a civilian situation. And I have to admit, I had a similar reaction myself when I first read of his encounter with Beiser. He just ran away? I thought. He ran away and left a nutjob to shoot up unarmed people?
Yeah, he did. And just what do I think I would do under those circumstances? And what the hell was an unarmed guy supposed to do against someone bearing an assault rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol, anyway? What the hell are we teaching men and boys about the realities of manhood? And is James' disappointment in himself part of a spectrum of male self-expectation that includes the types of action Rob Beiser took on that fateful day weeks ago? Is one man's belief that he should have been able to disarm a man in a murderous rage the result of the same societal pressures that cause men like Rob to deal with life changes beyond their control with violence?
And what cues is society giving to men that sanction some primal belief that if their women don't do what they want them to do, killing them is somehow a logical consequence?
I'm afraid I don't have any answers, and from my research, it seems that no one really does as yet. Most domestic violence programs focus on the women and on protecting them after abuse has already occurred, and on punishing abusers. But I think we really should be looking deeper, trying to figure out what societal messages and pressures are at work, propelling abusers to escalate to murder and driving previously non-violent men to lash out in homicide.
Meanwhile, the lives that didn't end on Nov. 10 are irrevocably altered. Mike Klettke mourns the woman ("She was my princess") he had loved, until recently, from afar, and the life they had been about to begin together; shortly before her death, he and Teresa had discussed moving in together. Far more tragic is that Rob's actions have left two minor children without parents. Teresa's brother Dale is working to obtain guardianship. Funds to benefit the Beiser children have been started by Legacy Health Systems and the gym where she worked and trained.
But no matter how much money is collected, it can never restore their world. For the Beiser kids, safety and security has been exposed as a fragile illusion.
And so while this diary is part of a series about women's rights, this story demonstrates that "women's rights" are not a thing that stands apart from everything else. Women's rights, men's rights, children's rights - they all intersect and intertwine within the greater concept of human rights. A violation of one woman's human right to life has a devastating impact on her children's lives, her family's lives - even the life of her estranged husband.
This is why everyone needs to care about women's rights. This is why we keep trying to bring the conversation back to women's right to control of their minds, their bodies, and their lives. And it's why we started this diary series. Because, to quote our mission statement, "women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights."
SheKos is open to your submissions. Please email the fabulous Angry Mouse at angrymouse.grrr@gmail.com with your ideas.