Messer Brothers: Who’s accusing who?

As many of you are about to enjoy Thanksgiving and celebrate the many amazing things that God has wrought in your life I am hesitant to interrupt the joys of celebrating God’s blessings, but I am reminded that we are to be thankful in the storms that even the pains and punishment of God are to be celebrated for in His refining fire we are purified. As the title no doubt informs you this post will not be gentle. If you are fascinated by the story of my mother, her life, disappearance and death, you will no doubt have already weighed and wondered many possible albeit ugly hypothesis of her demise. I will not feed your suspicions I will not make accusations or stoop to lay blame where blame is undue here today.

However there is a great deal of misinformation in the public arena. This is only complicated by the ongoing tales woven by those eliciting your sympathy. I do not seek your sympathy and while I covet your prayers I would ask that above and beyond your prayers for comfort and restoration, which we do need, that the truth will be made clear and that where misrepresentation and falsehoods are being spread that truth will take its place. As believers our family has sought to hold each other accountable through the body of Christ and our churches. Repentance while sought from those who have wronged us remains out of reach. In fact rather than acknowledge the wrongs committed the offender has attempted to blacken the reputation and tarnish the credibility of those of us who have suffered the offences.

While we all await the actual adjudication of evidence to acquit or condemn my father of any wrong doing in my mother’s death, real harms have been committed. It is with great hesitancy that I make this plea public and that I ask you our supporters, challengers, friends, family and strangers to judge for yourself which accusations are just and which are not. Be it as it may, my brother Abram carefully weighed the consequences of confronting my father over these matters and found himself seeking shelter for his family cast out from his home. It is only knowing that a similar fate may fall myself and my children and not without concern that I make these posts, but rather in spite of and only through overcoming my fears that I am compelled to do so. The truth is far more important than a roof over my head.

There are three areas of deception and deceit that my father has blatantly perpetrated upon the public and my family. These areas have caused immeasurable harm to my mother’s reputation and memory, the wholeness of her family, the body of Christ, and the ministry of Missouri Family Network. These three areas of deception are a deliberate attempt to hide and cover up my mother’s struggle with depression from detectives, the public and her family. Inexcusable lies about the note that my father reports to have found; its content, to whom it was addressed, and to police about it and his forthrightness regarding the chain of evidence. And finally the devastating revelation of how my father has concealed his relationship with Spring Thomas. All three of these key matters have been and continue to fuel suspicions and accusations of wrong doing and possible complicity in the disappearance and death of my mother towards my dad.

All three of these issues center on one idea, honesty. Our father Kerry has lied and deceived every member of my mother’s family explicitly in regards to these three areas. These lies are not simple misunderstandings; Kerry has crafted a narrative for what purpose I do not know. But the truth is not what he has said. I am going to speak the truth, the plain truth and boldly call as my brother has for my dad to come clean. My request for transparency, and honesty, is both a plea for a public apology and repentance on his part, and a request that he admit to himself that no one has perpetrated, attacked, besmirched or tainted our opinions of him or his actions but that his actions alone have indicted and isolated him.

My father posts often and frequently speak of accusations and rails against us as processing grief unhealthily when we challenge him to be honest instead of deceptive. His reaction to dozens of private requests for honesty and moral challenges presented from deacons, pastors, and advisers to the corruption of his own moral values through his actions has and continues to remain unrepentant. My dad will not confess in private or in public his wrongs albeit in private conversation with his sons he has attempted to justify his lies as being well intention-ed. He wields scripture as a bludgeon to condemn his accusers while never calculating his own sin. If there has ever been a greater example of having a log in one’s own eye than my father at this moment I know not of it.

We have confronted him privately, we have taken witnesses with us and challenged him and asked for his repentance, wise men have expressed their reservations, frustrations and admonitions with him privately. We have attempted to bring him before his church for public discipline as scripture admonishes and have been unsuccessful in having him held accountable by his church as his pastor has refused to do so. Now you have heard accusations, you know the grumblings. How can anyone not grasp that the spouse of a missing person may be a suspect in their disappearance? When her body has been found of course the public and skeptics wonder aloud mightn’t he have played some role?

We are not talking about what happened to my mother. That’s right we are talking not about what did or didn’t my dad do too my mom, but rather what has he done to his family since she disappeared. This call for repentance this challenge to come clean has nothing to do with what happened to my mother directly but how Kerry has purported himself for the 2 years, 3 months and 3 weeks she was missing.

Dad, as I know you are reading this you need to know not one of us has ever been persuaded or confused by police into believing that you have killed mom. You’re continuing to label us as mudslingers, false accusers, of abandoning you, criticizing you, ridiculing you, betraying you, living in the mire of misery, when we only speak the plain and simple truth of what you have done to us, and how you have lied about our mother, of us, how you have lied to us is unacceptable. We will seek the truth we will speak it openly and displayed for all the world to see.

If you would choose to seek restoration with and in your family repentance must start with you. You must confess your public lies with public repentance, you must admit that no matter your excuse, no justification can be had for hiding this relationship with Spring, for refusing to seek true council about that relationship, for ignoring our advice, for hiding important evidence about our mothers disappearance, for lying to detectives, for having driven your entire family away. You have offended and hurt the family of the woman, your bride whom you claim to love more deeply than anyone else. It is not the words of detectives working diligently to find the truth that have torn your family apart but rather it is your lies that have done that.

You have isolated yourself from us with those lies. You have driven us out of your life by choosing to hide the truth. Truth is what matters and not your excuses. Come clean dad, come clean and we can walk the path to healing. But you are the only one who can start this process you are the one who must repent not only for the lies you have told but the ones you continue to tell about us.

For you the public I will be supplying you with three detailed articles this week. They will cover who my father’s girlfriend Spring Thomas is and exactly how my father has developed and executed his relationship in secret that is truly offensive to his own family. Next we will speak frankly about the note my father found and how his lies about that note have driven a wedge in our family. Finally I will address for you my mother’s mental health the fact that Kerry has known and has privately acknowledged her struggle with depression through the years and how he has sought to silence anyone who has speaks regarding that depression and how he had ignored her worsening depression and suicidal thoughts, words and actions in the years, months, and days before her disappearance.

I repeat again I do not say any of these things to darken Kerry’s name or cast dispersion upon my father but rather because each of his actions in doing these ills has wronged our family and driven us apart. He has chosen to live and speak falsehood when the truth was uncomfortable. Each of us has asked for reconciliation with the other but so long as the truth remains in the dark and Kerry having harmed us refuses to come clean no reconciliation will happen. Just this week after long consideration I spoke bluntly with our family and it was clear, no matter the outcome of the investigation into my mother’s death, healing in our family will only begin once my father is willing to come clean about each of these deceptions that he has perpetrated upon the public and my mother’s family.