From the W nin Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James, and this is two Main Street.

We'll have someone in your family suffered a mental breakdown, severe depression, anxiety, or even attempted suicide.

If so, you are not alone.

Recent statistics tell us that one out of five adults in the US have experienced a mental health condition.

Women, more than men, are diagnosed with serious mental health issues and suicide is now the second leading cause of death among children 10 to 14.

It's the third leading cause of death among teenagers, behind accidents and homicides.

Each family has a compelling story to tell.

And we are going to hear about a mother's violent death and a daughter's search for answers in small town America.

Candace Delaine Davis grew up in Crossville, Illinois, and is the author of out of the Night That Covers Me.

It's a family memoir about a quest to find the truth.

Sifting through dozens of saved letters, visiting a mental hospital, navigating the court system, and wondering all along if her mother's suicide was actually a homicide.

Was she murdered?

Candace Delaine Davis, welcome to two Main Street.

I enjoyed your book.

Thank you, David, I appreciate it.

And your book is both a mystery and a look at what goes behind closed doors, a kind of a breeding ground for mental illness.

Yes.

Yes.

So what went on behind closed doors where you grew up?

It did.

I think that was probably true of a lot of families in those years.

You know, my mom started to become ill in, I think, her late teens.

So this would have been in the late 1940s and, you know, talk of sharing family secrets.

You know, that just wasn't a thing.

Well, the stigma there, huge stigma still is.

Now you start the book with this prolog.

My parents met at a hospital for so-called crazy people.

I was six when my mother killed herself.

It wasn't in a normal way.

So how did your mom, Mary Ellen Davis, die?

My mom was found, in her bed, with a knife in her chest.

And, it was determined by the local coroner that that was self-inflicted.

And there were also some tentative wounds.

And so, I learned later on that that was obviously suspicious.

Now, was this a kitchen knife or what kind of knife was this?

You know, you know, I, I don't know the answer to that.

There isn't a lot of detail in some of the, paperwork that I have, so I don't know, but I would assume it was a kitchen knife.

Okay.

Now, you say this book is about my family in hopes that other struggling families will have a better outcome.

Is that why you wanted to reveal all these family secrets?

Well, revealing it was a difficult decision because I knew that there would be information coming out, that there were some people in my family who, would be shocked by it.

Some of my cousins who were close to my mom, she was their aunts didn't know really how she died.

I think that they knew it was suicide, but they probably believed it was in one of the more common ways pills, for example.

So, my my motivation was multifaceted, but, it was a lot about honoring my family who tried so hard to help my mom.

And then, of course, if something good could come out of it for the greater public, that's just icing on the cake for me.

Let's learn more about this title out of the night.

That covers me.

Where that come from?

So that is from a poem by William Ernest Ernest Henley.

That was a poem that my grandmother, who eventually raised me, loved and studied in college and found great inspiration from and the poem is, is about a struggle that William Ernest Finley had in his life.

He was very ill.

He had had one leg amputated, was about to have the second leg amputated.

So it's kind of, a survivor's anthem.

And that was something that my grandmother needed in her life.

So how did you come up with that?

Did you just just come to, you know.

You know, I struggled desperately with the title, over the period of eight years that I wrote the book.

I, I probably proposed 20 different titles to editors and publishers and friends and almost every one of them people kind of shrugged, like, yeah, it's okay, it's okay, but that's not it.

And so I finally went back to the poem and pulled that line out of the poem.

And and it felt good.

Tell me about the cover of the book.

It's got a couple on there.

There, embracing each other there.

Looks like they're walking toward the Stein Motel.

Yeah, in Crossville, Illinois.

That's right.

So the Stein Motel was the, little roadside lodge that my grandparents opened during the oil boom in southern Illinois, which was a huge, big deal.

And our motel was full, you know, of oil guys for many years, made a decent living for my grandparents in an area where you have to find your own way to make a living.

There's, you know, there's not a lot of industry going on innately there.

So, yeah, the cover is, is is kind of showing the Stein Motel sign that was sort of one of those old school neon things, red and white and blue.

And then my mother, the back of her walking down the sidewalk, of our property.

My grandparents also owned a filling station on our property.

So she's walking, with her first husband, Johnny, who she married at 18 and was just a great guy.

It is, showing them from the back, walking up, up the sidewalk.

Now, I went to Crossville looking for the Stein motel, a few weeks ago, and it's no longer there.

It is.

It is no longer there.

You you can't tell that we were ever there.

You really can't.

That area was at one time known as Stein's Corner.

So you kind of come around the bend from the four way stop, and you're heading towards Carmi, which is a whopping town of you know, 5000 or something like that.

And Crossville is only 900 and maybe probably not that now.

But yeah, that area was, that corner was purchased from my family and, and subsequently all of the buildings were torn down.

So, it's history.

So this is White County, Illinois.

And, tell me about growing up in Crossville, Illinois.

Is that where you were born?

I was actually born in El Dorado.

My dad is from El Dorado.

When he met my mother at the Anna State Hospital in 1969, he was there as a patient for alcoholism.

And so El Dorado is a town?

Probably 30 minutes from Crossville.

Okay.

But my mom was family for generations back.

Girl from from Crossville in White County.

So we went to to, I guess elementary school there.

High school?

Yeah.

Crossville was, very unique.

You know, we had one grade school.

One high school.

I went to grade school K through 12 with the same people.

Oh, hi.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, we went to high school.

You know, there's one English teacher.

There's one math teacher.

There's there were, 22 people in my graduating class, which was kind of a bigger class, and 87, I think there were 87 kids in the high school the year that I graduated.

And then the next year was the last year of the school.

But they had sports teams, didn't they?

We did.

I mean, I don't we weren't competitive in all sports.

We had a very competitive, girls softball team, had a great coach named Larry Garrett, who took us nearly to the state every year.

So you're a player?

I did play.

Yeah.

What position I was.

Well I started in left field as a freshman and and then I moved to second base and I think I played second base sophomore junior and senior year.

Yeah.

Any great moments you want to recall?

A home run grand slam.

I was stolen base.

I was not a home run person, David.

I was wasn't, but.

Nope.

You get on base person.

You know, do whatever you have to do to get on base person.

We were, we were reminiscing over the weekend when I was in Crossville for the eclipse about some old softball stories.

And, here's something that talk about old school that would never happen today.

Our coach actually would have us.

This is terrible practice.

He would stand with the pitching machine, and he would have us practice leaning in with our elbow, getting hit with the pitch to get on base.

Right?

Right.

Which is completely unethical and horrible and probably unsafe.

And yet, you know, nobody's parents cared or complain.

So did the town turn out for these games?

They did.

Yeah, I remember where I think we once we won regionals or something one year and we got on the fire truck and nice.

Yeah.

That's the the school is the center of small towns, you know.

Now they're still elementary school there, right?

Is that right?

You know what?

I don't believe they bring kids to the school anymore.

When when the school closed in Crossville in 1988, they did bring kids to Crossville from Carmi for a few years.

But I don't think that that's happening anymore.

People have privately bought those buildings and we have alumni events there.

So that is going on.

But really, the heart of the town kind of died when those schools closed.

That usually happens in.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Now on the back cover of the book.

Photo of you and Graham.

And the book is dedicated to Graham.

Tell me about Graham, Okay.

I'll probably get a little.

You know, Graham raised you right.

She.

Yeah.

That's okay.

I read the book.

I know, I know, there's a personal connection there.

Yeah.

And she really saved you from.

She had saved me.

She has, you know, this.

I've done a number of these interviews, and this is always the point that it that it gets difficult for me because, I think it's a happy, sad sort of thing.

She, really sacrificed her entire, retirement raising me.

She got me when I was, seven, but cared for me a great deal before that.

Even before my mom died, because my mom was really not able to care for a child.

She was so sick.

And so, my grandmother was, in her 70s when she became my guardian and was just an amazing person.

She had gone to college at Southern Illinois University in 1926.

You talk you have some, stories about her, her, her younger life, too.

Yeah.

How she met people and and train depot was really some.

Yes.

Some good stuff.

Yeah.

She was a really bright woman.

She was a well-read woman.

Worked like no one I've ever known in my life.

And, you know, just.

I mean, she wasn't a saint, but she set an amazing example for me, you know, and she dealt with, things that are unimaginable.

I mean, having a sick child has got to be one of the most heartbreaking things that can happen to, to a parent.

And, you know, I think she wondered every day of her life if it was going to be the day that my mother was going to end her life.

And she thought about this constantly.

And then I think when I came along, she was just probably worried about the same kind of thing.

Not I think she probably saw early on that emotionally I was okay, but probably worried about a slew of other things that could have been wrong with me, given sort of my parents, you know.

Well, and, your grandfather was a kind of a tough character to get along with.

Wasn't it?

Yes.

So there was some tension there in the home, a lot of tension.

And Graham had to calm things down.

Well, she I would say she was not the typical I hate to label her as an abused woman because that to me is, like a victim.

Yes, and I don't she wouldn't probably love that.

All right.

But, she certainly was in a circumstance that was really difficult that she didn't think she could get out of.

And he was very unkind to her.

Okay.

Yeah.

Let's go over the timeline now.

We're talking to, Candace Delaine Davis, author of out of the night.

That covers me.

Now, let's go to the timeline.

Now, you became an orphan in 1976.

We talked about being raised by your grandparents.

They ran the Stein Motel and the gas station, talked about the tension there.

And, what did your grandparents tell you about your mother's death?

Nothing really.

Not much.

I mean, she just.

She wasn't there, so I knew she was dead.

And there would be reference to when your mother died.

So it wasn't complete silence around that topic.

But I knew I just could feel that she didn't die in, she didn't have a heart attack.

I mean, I could feel that there was something there, and I didn't ask, and they didn't tell me.

So there was no chatter among the kids at school or the.

Well, I parents, you know, I had a clue.

As I talk about in the book, I had a clue when I was at Sunday school one day and a little boy said to me, your mom killed herself.

And I thought, is that true?

And I didn't know.

I had no idea.

Sure.

Went home, shared it with my grandmother and I. I realized when I saw her face that it was true because she was devastated.

Yeah.

So when did you get suspicious about your mother's death?

Do you mean about the possibility of them?

Well, I'm sorry that you realize that, okay, this wasn't a normal.

Yes.

Yes or.

Right.

Cut her wrists or something.

Yeah.

So I was 18, when I read her death certificate.

My grandmother, for all of her wonderful qualities.

Was not able to talk to me about these things, which I understand.

So she had me read the contents of my mother's safety deposit box, which included her death certificate.

Okay, so I was 18 when I learned, okay, your book is about a quest for answers.

After talking to family members, you go to Anna, Illinois, where your mother received treatment for her mental illness.

And, tell me about the hospital in Anna, Illinois.

Well, gosh.

Okay.

In a state hospital, was built in the 1800s.

Late 1800s, I believe it was.

And it was this huge Gothic hospital when my mother was there in the 60s, it was housing, like 2000 patients.

So when we visited in, I believe it was 2018, most of those buildings were closed, the windows were boarded up, covered with wood.

Some of them had very decrepit looking, window air conditioning units in them.

I think that the state of Illinois was operating some type of state run programs in some of those buildings that didn't have anything to do with the hospital itself.

But so we drove around for a minute.

I'm a nervous wreck.

Of course.

You know, I've heard stories about this place.

It's listed on all the registers of the most haunted, you know, insane asylums, all that kind of stuff.

So we go in the main building and, you know, you could hear a pin drop.

It's.

It's nearly falling down and couldn't really find anybody.

Finally heard a voice.

Somebody came out and helped us.

And kind of the only thing going on, there was a small records room.

And I have learned since then that they do house a few patients who are, kind of criminally insane, abandoned by families, very hard cases.

Right.

Well, were you trying to find out what what what we were looking for my mother's, records of treatment.

I felt like in researching this book, because really, one of my goals was to figure out how does my mom get from being this really healthy, popular, pretty, smart, successful high school student to ending her life with the knife?

How does that work?

And so I thought that looking at her records would help me realize if she ever had a diagnosis, what was wrong with her?

Because I don't think any of us ever really knew what her condition was.

Well, now, what were your mom's days like at the hospital?

I know there's some correspondence that Graham saved.

Is that right.

Yeah.

I have some letters, that she wrote, to my great grandmother actually, and some letters that she wrote to my dad when they were hospitalized together.

So in terms of detailed, day to day stuff, you know, I was able to kind of theorize some scenes and, create some dramatizations around that, just based on research.

But I think a lot of it was what we probably today would say fell into the occupational therapy realm, making things, keeping yourself busy.

And I think a lot of it, unfortunately, was focused on just medicating people.

Right.

And she was a frequent patient there.

She was a frequent patient.

Yeah.

As far as the total number of hospitalizations and Anna, I'm not sure.

But all told, with other hospitalizations in the area, she was over 100.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

And some of these were very long, you know, months long because institutionalization in those years was the only option.

There was no private option for treatment.

Okay.

So state run facilities were it an institutionalization, you know, up until, I don't know the exact years, but it would have been after my mom began to be hospitalized.

Hospitalized, that institutionalization fell out of favor.

But before that, it was thought to be the right thing for people.

She met your dad?

She did.

How do you think about that meeting?

How they met?

Don't don't don't you don't you wonder how that happened?

I mean, I, I think in those years they had all kinds of patients at Anna, so they had, homosexual patients who had been committed by their families against their will.

They had, people who were criminally insane.

They had people who struggled alcohol, like my dad.

They had chronic depression patients like my mother.

And so you know, you can imagine this kind of cast of people, it's kind of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I had this vision of that I do, too.

I hope it wasn't really like that.

Yeah.

I, in looking at her records, it feels to me like most people were trying to help her and do the right thing.

So, I don't know if it really was One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, but there were mentions of things that nobody would ever say today.

Like, one note was she cries for no reason.

Well, nobody cries for no reason.

And kind of hysterical woman type stuff.

Okay.

And she was admitted to the hospital for prior suicide attempts.

Is that correct?

A few times it was for suicide attempts.

A few times it was for, issues with pills.

You know, my grandmother would find her wandering around in the yard.

She would pass out at the beauty shop.

Yeah.

Because she she had some trauma very early on in her life.

And, you know, if people read the book, they will learn kind of about some of that trauma.

But, you know, the go to thing in those years was, oh, okay, here's some Valium.

You're nervous.

That was what the condition was labeled at at the time.

You're nervous.

Here's Valium, and then my mom, you know, was on that for a long time and many other drugs.

And your mom was married several times.

She was married several times.

How many times?

If you, counted.

My mom was married four times.

Okay.

Married four times?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Oh.

For four.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you know, looking at her struggles, that's that's not surprising.

But she also didn't always have the best tasting guys.

Okay, now now we're searching.

You're searching for answers.

Medical records.

And so you needed legal help to get permission from the courts to get those medical records.

And you didn't go alone to Anna, did you?

I did not go alone.

No, I took my partner, Lisa with me.

Lisa is, thankfully, is an attorney, and that helps.

She.

Yeah, right.

She is not an estate attorney, but, you know, she knew enough, certainly, to help me get through this and was incredible, you know, emotional support throughout the whole thing.

But when we visited the Anna State Hospital and wanted to get the records, we learned that we had to, go to the courts and, and petition them and ask for the records to be released, because even though these people are deceased, you still have to go through this, this arduous process.

And you explain that very well in the book.

It's, it's the bureaucracy is incredible.

It, it, it was incredible.

And the incredible thing was that the, the people at the records office and Anna said that we were the first people who would ever, ever ask them how to do this.

Wow.

Okay.

Now record keeping in white County, Illinois.

Did you try to get some records there, too?

Yeah.

So, Carmine is the county seat.

Carmine is the county seat.

Okay, so when I started this process of learning about my mom and thinking I would document it, maybe in a book, I, I, you know, thought, well, okay, I can tell the story, but what's the end of this book?

Because, you know, how am I ever going to find out really, if my mom died by suicide or what happened?

So I just needed more information.

I went to the county seat in Carmi, and I was informed that the records had all been destroyed in a flood.

I went to the state.

They had nothing, so I was.

I just had nothing.

Wow.

Okay, now tell me about Doug, your half brother.

He's mentioned in the book, maybe he was a suspect.

Maybe in your mother's death.

So.

Right.

What the impetus of of starting the book.

You know, I had thought about documenting our family's story for many years before, but in 2015, I discovered a little article when I was going through some family things that indicated that there had actually been an inquest into my mother's death at the time she died.

And even though that makes perfect sense to me at this time in my life.

After I read that she died by suicide, I kind of packed that away and it, I didn't really ever think about could someone else have been involved, even though now I look at it and I think, well of course naturally you would wonder that because it is so common for someone to use a knife and in a suicide, I can't.

I tried to research that, incidence of that and, I don't think I found it.

Oh, it's, there, there's a statistic that I found, through the National Institutes of Health Health, that 3% or less of people die by other means.

Okay?

And that's so that would be one of them.

But that's still a very, very low number.

So once I read the article, and it and the article indicated that, you know, the death was suspicious and I thought, you know, I never knew there was an inquest.

It is suspicious.

And I think for my own peace of mind, I need to try to figure this out.

Now, was Doug at home when you were growing up?

He was not.

Doug was born.

His father was Johnny, who is pictured on the cover of the book, Johnny Myers.

And it was your mom's.

That was my mom's first husband.

Correct.

And Doug was 19 years older than me, so he was her first child.

And then I was born when she married my dad.

So he was already out of the house?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, yes.

But, as you as you know from the book, David, he was the last person to see my mom alive.

They had an argument.

It is written in a police statement.

And he acknowledges that they had a very contentious relationship because he was very worried about how she was going to care for me because he had had a very difficult childhood with her trying to raise him.

And so, yes, it was in 2015 that I started to think, you know, man, he is not the kind of person that would do that.

But I think there are moments when most of us could be pushed to the edge of violence.

If we are worried about protecting a family member or someone that we love.

What happened to Doug?

So unfortunately, in 1997, Doug also died by suicide.

It was a complicated situation.

It was not exactly straightforward.

He, did shoot himself on the balcony of his home, unfortunately.

But he also, was dying of pancreatic cancer.

Okay, so I think he struggled with depression and alcoholism.

But did he and end up doing it because he was dying anyway?

But of course, it entered my mind that there could be guilt involved.

Okay.

Now, you mentioned in the book that you were seeing a therapist.

I can see why, and and you talk about the healing touch.

What's the healing touch.

Yeah.

Well I had been seeing the same therapist for a long time.

And when I got into my mom's medical records.

Even before I got into them, I was just incredibly anxious about what I would read, obviously.

And I imagined the worst case scenario.

What did they do to her?

Did she have shock treatments that were so traumatizing?

All these visions in my head and my therapist, suggested a treatment called Healing Touch.

Yeah.

Which is, I think it's a newer practice.

And, there was a woman who was certified in it, and it it I actually, to this day, even though I've had it, I'm not sure that I understand it, but, it is a person touching you, you know, in a, in a very kind way, in certain areas of your body.

And it's an exchange of energy thing.

And you can tell that I just signed up for it, not having a lot of information about it, but I trusted my therapist.

I was kind of desperate.

I needed to calm my nervous system down.

And so we did the healing touch.

Did it work?

Well it helped okay I think I mean, how do you measure that?

I don't know, but here it could have heard anything.

I'm here.

Yes.

Right.

So did you worry about possibly inheriting some kind of.

Oh, yeah.

Genetic.

Yeah.

Well, how could I not?

Yeah.

How could I not?

You know, I, I will say I probably didn't until I started to probably get into my 40s.

I don't think that that was something, you know, you're, you're in you're a teenager, you're in your 20s, you're busy, you're doing things you're not thinking about heavy things like this.

And then something happens.

You start feeling your age, you start looking at the past.

And so, yeah, there have been times when I've had situational depression that I worried wouldn't go away.

And you know, I eventually do talk in the, in the book about a period when I had some very intense in nearly really life threatening depression that was medication related.

So yeah.

What were the symptoms of depression for me personally?

Well, I don't think that mine are textbook because they were medication related.

I was, coming off of a large dose of a medication I had been on for a long time for pain called gabapentin.

So I had very intense feelings of panic.

Okay.

Hyperventilating.

Fear.

Fear of being tremendous.

Fear of being alone.

And I will say, I'm a person that likes to be around people, but I don't regularly have a fear of being alone.

And, you know, even I would ask Lisa not even to go to the grocery store.

I mean, I would literally have to go with her everywhere.

And I can't even tell you what that fear was about.

It was, a physiological feeling that I've never experienced, but it gave me it gave me about a year long window into what people with chronic depression experience.

And it is gut wrenching.

Well, sounds like, Lisa's a big part of your life.

How did you guys meet?

Oh, I met Lisa many years before we became a couple.

Really?

She's was at Saint Louis native and was, we had mutual friends, and she would come in for Christmas, and we would, you know, I would see her out with other friends, and I would think, oh, she is so nice and cool and interesting and pretty and all these great qualities.

And, you know, at one point she was back in town and things just worked out romantically.

But, yeah, she's, she is the most even keeled person I know.

And for somebody who can get spun up like me and somebody who has all of this family drama, it's a great quality.

Through collection of saved notes and letters, we follow a family's journey dealing with mental illness and the violent death of Candice's mother.

A knife in the chest.

Was it suicide for some?

Did someone kill her?

The search for an answer.

And we're going to hear if finding that answer, the truth can set you free.

We'll find out.

But first, there was a full life before my guest started looking into her mother's death.

So, Candace, when did you leave Crossville to go out on your own?

Well, I flew out of Crossville as fast as I could.

I thought it was a little too slow paced for me when I was 18, so, I left, came, to school here in Evansville for a while.

Went to music school here and realized pretty quickly that I did not have the commitment to practicing.

That is necessary to get a music degree from the University of Evansville.

And I was young.

And just as your instrument that you play trumpet.

Oh, you play the trumpet.

Okay.

Yeah.

But as you can imagine, in Crossville, I was not, exposed to private lessons.

I mean, you know, I could certainly hold my own in our high school band, but I didn't have the benefit of the kinds of training that would have been really helpful.

And I could have made it in Evansville.

The professors were great and helpful, and they knew that I had come from a small school, but, I ended up at, sorry, Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, had a great experience there, got an education degree, taught high school in the Saint Louis area, for six years, which was great, and I loved it.

I had the theater program at a really big high school.

Wow.

Yeah.

Marquette High School, which is, about probably three times the size of Crossville.

Yeah.

So a lot of, a lot of school productions, a lot of late nights, a lot a lot of late nights, lot of grease and Guys and Dolls and everything else like that.

But it was great fun.

Oh, I bet it was.

And then you got into the the, culinary world I did.

Yeah.

I wanted to take a break from teaching.

I was kind of struggling at the school.

I was that I was at a, school that was, in a very, very wealthy part of Saint Louis.

And as you can imagine, growing up in a rural area, I mean, our family did fine, but nobody in the small town, whether they have money or not, acts like they have money.

Right.

And there was a tremendous amount of privilege there.

And just I just struggled with principles.

So I had always wanted to cook.

I grew up helping my grandmother cook.

She hated it.

She was tired of it.

Poorly.

Yeah.

So, I decided that I would, just get into that world and was able to watch people and learn from them.

I got some training from the Culinary Institute of America, and that was the beginning of that as well.

There's a campus in Hyde Park, New York, and then there's a campus in California.

Fortunately, they had a training program for people already in the profession, because there are a lot of, chefs who who are in the field and they want a certification, but they're working and they don't have time to, you know, I'm not going to go to Hyde Park, New York and get a degree and live there for two years, you know, so they had what was called a pro chef training program.

So I, I participated in that.

And, anyway, what's your signature dish?

Probably spaghetti bolognaise maybe.

Are you familiar with that?

Yes.

Yes, yes.

Sounds very good.

Well, I'm a carbonara guy, but you're you're a cream based guy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I can respect that.

I mean, everybody loves butter and cream.

Yes.

You know, ground pepper.

Oh, yeah.

And ground pepper.

Yeah.

That's a great dish.

Boiling eggs is fun to make.

I like to do it.

You know, the slow old school way.

Not the fast Instagram way.

But you're also, known for your tacos.

Yeah.

So in 2008, that's not true.

I think it was 2010.

We're in the vicinity.

Okay.

We're in the vicinity.

I had been on a long term catering contract where I was feeding the physicians at a local hospital, and that was a great gig because it was Monday through Friday.

I could.

Yeah, I could make whatever I wanted.

They loved the weirdest food.

It was awesome.

It was a great job.

8 to 4.

I mean, it was spectacular.

Wow.

Yeah.

We got a new president of the hospital, and she didn't think that spending a whole lot of money feeding doctors fancy food was a great use of money.

So at that point, catering was in the tubes and taco trucks were taking off.

And so I opened at that time one of the first, taco, sorry, first food trucks in Saint Louis.

Well, tell me about that process.

You had to go buy a truck and had to go buy a truck.

We found a truck in my.

Found a truck builder in Miami.

Flew down there multiple times.

That was an experience I.

But, yeah, that's the hardest place on Earth, I think.

But, you know, ended up having a great run.

Our business was called chow Chow chow.

But, you know, we had to really begin the regulatory process in the city.

They didn't know what to do with us.

The restaurants were mad, even though we weren't.

We were really not trying to directly compete with them.

But they were upset.

We were trying to find a place where we could park that wouldn't be pulling from them, but a place that the city would allow us to park.

It was it was complicated.

So did you go to festivals or just fine.

Well, we we did lunches around, places like Barnes-Jewish, Wells Fargo for probably our first five years with some private events.

But at this point, the business has gone to almost primarily private events.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

So and you had a private event on the eclipse day in your hometown across.

So tell me about that.

We did.

So, you know, we were in the path of totality, of course, like other areas around here.

So they had, a little, little celebration in town.

We did a lot of things, games that used to be popular at the, Fall Festival, which was in October every year and doesn't exist anymore.

So a lot of nostalgia, and they needed food vendors.

So I said, okay, I'll come and make some tacos because people from town have been so kind and wonderful about the book and have told me so many stories about my family that I didn't know and so well.

That leads me to my next question.

What's been the reaction to the book?

It's been overwhelmingly positive.

I was very, very nervous, I bet.

Yes.

This is private stuff.

It's difficult stuff.

And it's a tiny little town.

And my grandmother was a very private person, and so I wrote it as respectfully as I could.

I wrote it with as much, I guess class might be the word as I could, but there are some difficult things in there, that I had to include in order to kind of show how desperate my mother was at times in her life, and how desperate my grandmother was at times in her life.

And so I was worried that there would be people from Crossville who might say to me, how could you do this?

Why would you do this?

And so I spent a lot of time thinking about what my response to that would be.

But there hasn't been any of that.

It's just all been, mostly my son is bipolar.

Thank you for writing this.

Or I was hospitalized as, a teenager, and I've never told anyone I was hospitalized for depression.

That someone, a woman, told me in Crossville recently that she was hospitalized at Deaconess as a teenager for major depression.

And she I don't know that she had ever told many people.

So that makes me feel wonderful.

Let's go back now to the, the quest for the truth in the death of your mother.

Break in the case comes from coroner Chris Smith.

Tell me about Chris Smith.

So that is an alias.

But the current coroner, I believe he is still in office now.

Was incredibly helpful in getting to the bottom of what happened with my mom.

It was I was nearing the end of my writing process, and my editor was saying to me what?

What's the end of this book?

Sure.

Because, you know, you're just not going to know whether she did it or whether your brother was involved.

You're not going to find that out.

And I didn't have an answer for her.

And I, I just couldn't imagine one of those endings that we all hate in movies where you have no closure, you know?

So I decided I would make one last attempt to contact somebody at the courthouse and find out if they could find any documents related to the inquest that might tell me, you know, why.

What what what were the detailed circumstances?

I mean, I know she died of a knife wound, but I don't know anything else.

And ultimately, the coroner ruled it a suicide.

So how did you land at that?

And what was suspicious about it?

Other than the obvious?

So, I had a friend.

Family friend in Carmi who went to the courthouse frequently.

He had been the mayor of Carmi, and he said, I'll check in with Chris and have him look around one more time, because, as we discussed before, I had heard that these documents were all lost in a flood, I think.

And so very unexpectedly.

And this is absolutely the truth.

It was World Suicide Prevention Day.

I received a text from my friend who said, Chris is going to call you.

He may have found something and immediately I heard from him.

He asked for my email and he said I looked through a closet I hadn't been in the previous coroner was in office so many years.

I had a lot of documents I needed to go through.

I found something in the closet related to your mom and he sent it to me.

And it was the transcript of the inquest.

Unbelievable.

I'd been waiting for it, looking for it.

Had decided I'd never get it.

You know, this was an eight year period that we were looking for this.

So, it mentions all the witnesses who appeared as all the witnesses and their statements and their statements and, Lisa read it to me.

I, I wanted her to read it to me because I was afraid that there might be things in there.

I wanted her to edit it on the fly, I guess, in case there were things in there that I wasn't quite ready to hear.

So.

So, she read it to me and, you know, I felt after hearing it that I, that I thought I knew what happened.

Do you want me to say what I think happened.

Please, please.

Yeah I, I, I, I am fairly certain that my mother did it herself.

Okay.

There were, there was nothing disturbed in the home.

There was no sign that there had been any kind of a struggle.

And based on her history and based on the testimony of other people, and how desperate she was that night, I think that that was the only method she had available to her.

My brother had flushed your pills down the toilet.

She did not own a firearm.

Probably wasn't able to get one, or my grandmother had confiscated them if she ever had one.

And so I think that the knife is all she had.

Now, what was Graham's reaction to this?

Oh gosh.

Well, I was six at the time, and, my grandmother found her at 5:00 in the morning.

If she found the body, she found the body.

Okay.

Yeah.

We lived on my grandparents property at that time, and my grandmother looked across the property to where my mother and I lived and noticed that our light was still on.

And my mom was not an early riser.

She stayed up late, and she slept late.

And, I know from my aunts, my mom's sisters that my grandmother saw that and said, I believe in my grandfather's testimony.

He acknowledges that.

She said, I'm afraid Mary Ellen's done something to herself.

And, asked my grandfather to go.

And in the inquest he admits that he would not go and she had to go.

Okay.

Oh.

Which tells us.

Yes.

Something about him.

That's right, that's right.

So do you have closure.

I do, you do.

Yeah.

There's there's no doubt this was even before I found the little inquest, article that made me really wonder if he was involved.

It was just something I was so unsettled about.

Like what?

It.

Because you're worrying about your own mental health.

And I'm wondering all the time, like, you know, just what happened to my mom.

All right, well, this reminder there is help, for someone struggling out there.

Just a phone call away.

It's nine, eight, eight.

That's the suicide and crisis helpline.

My guest has been Candace Delaine Davis, author of out of the night That Covers Me, a family memoir that will hopefully bring some comfort and maybe guidance to other families dealing with mental illness.

Thanks, Candace.

Thank you.

I hope it does bring some guidance.

I appreciate it.

I'm David James and this is two Main Street.