TTSOML #111: Solid Proof About Christa Schneider

I forgot, before moving forward to stay in Wenatchee, the few other things that happened in Portland which are noteworthy. I've sort of mentioned them before, but one thing was that I got even more solid proof Christa was part of the leak, and secondly, I want to write about what I would call "the last supper".

After litigation was sort of winding down, more than a year before I moved to Wenatchee, Christa was working at becoming a writer. I thought this was a big thing we had in common. She had gone through Portland State University's program herself, after dropping out of Pepperdine due to what she said was bulimia rehab.

She introduced me to a woman, Jan, whom she'd said was her mentor, who lived in a huge house on a lot of property in West Linn. She pointed out how Jan said she'd bought one of my mother's horses, Lexie, a year before, or right around the time I met Christa. Lexie was, I think, an Arabian and had a really smooth gait. My mother had too much to keep up with at the time so she sold her, and Lexie was a fairly good horse, with some dressage training from my mother's riding lessons. I thought it was so crazy that the same woman who bought my mother's horse knew Christa well. Christa claimed she later got rid of Jan, but then I heard conflicting things. Jan was highly educated and had a degree in philosophy and did some writing and lectures. Christa told me, I think, that Jan had formerly been Catholic and I'm not sure, but used to have a correspondence with a monk or a nun or something and almost became a nun herself and then got married. She and her husband had a bunch of kids.

I was introduced to them. Later, I met some of Christa's best friends, The O'Neal (O'Neil) Family. They had also been baptised Catholic, and though the parents divorced, I guess the mother had dated former Gov. of Oregon, I'll have to remember the name, but the guy with the mustache who wore jeans and cowboy boots. Christa's best friend was Lindsay O'Neal, who lived in FL or some coastal town and then moved to NYC to start her own children's clothing line.

At some point, Christa moved to Eugene, Oregon, for a year, to waitress while she took classes and was closer to her boyfriend, Ryan _______, a philosophy major at University of Oregon who had won acclaim for his ideas and papers, and whom she'd approached at a wedding. I had tried to discourage her from losing her virginity lightly, but said it was up to her. She'd said, when she first met me, she was a virgin. So she lost her virginity to Ryan, she said to me. Later, she claimed he was impotent. He was highly dedicated to his studies and she was upset he didn't spend more time with her. Much later, she gave me the link to his website.

Around this time, she met an English writer. Oh, it was in Portland, at a hotel she worked at as a masseusse. His name was Simon _________ and he was a famous writer who worked for National Geographic. He was working on something in California and she told me he'd invited her to be his editor or assistant. She said he was attracted to her, but that she could really use a recommendation from someone like him, because she wanted to get into a writing school, preferably New School in NYC. She decided to drop out of Portland State University for getting her Master's in English Lit, about the time I told her I was dropping out and moving. She didn't end up getting into New School (if I remember correctly) and went to another writing school in NYC instead.

I sometimes wondered if Christa was using my writing material for her own ends. I wondered, because when I was first going to PSU, and she was still an undergrad, or maybe it was when I was at PCC still, she laughed about a story I told her about my grandmother on my father's side, who was full of life and had thought marrying my grandfather would get her out of the hills, and instead he wanted to move to the forest to be a forest ranger in Idaho. I laughed at how my grandmother had shown me photos of their honeymoon, one where my grandfather was holding a giant fish, in front of my grandmother, blocking her from view. It was all about the fish. Then, he decided to have a farm and thought she knew all about chicken farming and one day cut heads off the chicken and they were running around headless and my grandmother was instructed to strip them of their feathers, which were cooking on as they were thrown into a bathtube of scalding water. Christa took this story and wrote something up for her class, she said, and then she read it to me. It was strange, I still remember, because the entire thing was in a mocking tone, and at that time, she was always asking me if I was bulimic (I never was) and writing about some woman who was gagging herself in the shower with a spoon from her bowl of oatmeal. I had told Christa about the time I ate oatmeal in the shower (when pressed for time). I had a bad feeling about it then, but what could I say. Instead of making a big deal about it, I praised the lines I thought were written well.

She always wanted me to send her my stories and funny anecdotes. I really don't know whatever happened to them. She could have been plaigerizing them, using them for her own material, or maybe just laughing for amusement over them, or passing them onto others. I don't know. She just asked for more and more, and I willingly obliged. I wrote some damn funny things. I also wrote some very good original poetry. One, I couldn't believe I'd written it myself, and no one else could either. I was told, "If you wrote THAT, you should be a writer". The strange thing, too, is that I wrote it in 15 minutes flat. It fell out of me like water comes out of a faucet. It was poem about Dick Whittemore, a deliberate shakespeare-style satire entitled, "Ode To An Underwater Entertainer" (in reference to the discovery I made that he was dating a synchronized swimmer from California).

I got the information about Whittemore's romance, from Christa. I was devastated after the Willamette Week article came out about me, which was so blatantly defamatory. Christa met me for a drink and after a moment's hesitation, I guess she decided for once in her life, to throw me a bone. She told me, very seriously, she could tell me something about Whittemore that might make me feel better. She called him an asshole and then said I would have to SWEAR never to tell a soul. It was life or death, and now I realize this was because she was working for them and it would get back to them and she'd be in trouble. So she told me he was dating a synchronized swimmer, and she cracked up laughing, making breaststroke moves with her hands and then plugging her nose. She said she only knew because she had a good friend whose mother was best friends with Whittemore. But now I think she knew him better than that. She yelled veiled threats at me later, after I sent a copy of my poem to his offices. There was no way I could keep this bit to myself, and after writing such a great poem about it, I couldn't resist. Christa found out and her threats to me were extremely passive-aggressive, but, like an idiot, I tried to write it off. I didn't know for sure if she was really the source of all my leaks or not yet. But I wondered at how she was close to Whittemore and never once told me before. In all the years, she never mentioned having a friend whose "mother" was best buddies with him.

The next thing that happened, aside from all the times she tried to pull me away from making important deadlines by asking me to go out with her, was that I told her I was going to file a removal and change of jurisdiction motion in the U.S. Bankruptcy court in Oregon. The Archdiocese has thrown all of the civil complaints into the pool and plaintiffs had the right to request they be returned to the original venue. I decided this was what I wanted to do, because it didn't sound like there was going to be a trial on the merits of the cases when they were all lumped together. I also felt my claim would get lost. I had a shot, possibly, by trying to get things out in Marion county. Not only that, it was a way to stall for time while I tried to file bankruptcy in Washington state to get rid of the Abbey lien of $40,000 against me, and then collect my P.I. money for my knee injury. By that time, if I could hold things off enough, I might be able to afford a civil rights attorney. They KNEW I was more than willing to spend all $50,000 on a lawyer to repair damages to my reputation, and they knew, if there was a lawyer backing me, they were gong to lose, and lose big.

So Christa was the only one I told, maybe my ex boyfriend (the one who told me he was bi), about how I was going to file for removal. She asked when and I told her first thing in the morning, and what day. When I showed up, I was late, but a process server was sitting there. I walked into the office and he stood up, and as I was trying to file my motion, and had my hand putting the motion on the counter, he said, "You're served!" in a nasty voice. I think he didn't confirm who I was, so I tried to use this, and I continued to file my motion for removal, but instead, they'd already filed this thing to block me from doing so. That maneuver right there was the biggest dead giveaway about Christa.

First she just-so-happens to know Whittemore through a "friend" and then someone is waiting for me at the exact time I said I'd be at the courthouse. The FBI guys I met, I met after that, after telling Christa how I wanted to join the FBI. I met Bujanda in the same courthouse I told Christa I was going to if another case was dismissed.

I felt I still needed a little more proof. I knew, pretty much, by then, and it seemed she was getting sloppy and didn't care that I knew. But I wanted to pretend I was completely obvlivious. I did confront her about how there was a server waiting for me and she wanted to get off the phone and said nothing. So then I decided to play dumb and just go along with things to see what else she would try to throw my way.

When I was ready to leave, it was after I'd reported Bujanda. Christa had begged me not to and I think no one counted on it. I'd been assaulted so many times, in the same manner, and never knew it was illegal and didn't report it. This was magnified, to me, by the fact that they were FBI and had been telling me they were recruiting me for the FBI and had coerced their way into my house. I also felt there was a catholic church connection with what they were doing, and that it had been a deliberate set up to cause me distress. Who knows, maybe they also got in so they could remove bugging devices before I left the apartment and the state, and that's why they wanted to get into my apartment so badly. I don't know.

Christa wanted me to go out with her and some friends for drinks. I showed up a little bit early, while they were still having dinner. It was a group of people, some of which I knew and others that I didn't. I felt a very cool draft when I walked in. They looked at me in silence, like they hated my guts. I played it off, cheerfully talking and trying to engage people like I didn't notice the vibe or the expressions. They were silent for a long time, just staring at me and then at eachother. The guy who was Christa's boyfriends best friend was there, whom I'd left after he shouted at me not to drive "drunk" but had tried to have sex with me. His name, recalling perfectly now, was Devin. Other friends were there, including Ryan Barnes. I later found out, practically every single one of her friends was Catholic or baptised Catholic. Which wouldn't be a big deal, if all the other things connected to her were not happening.

After dinner, we went to another club. I was completely knocked out with two drinks and didn't mean to become drunk. I remember Christa lit a cigarette and smoked and Ryan said he didn't know she smoked. She looked at me and got nervous and said yes she did. She'd been telling me she did, and wanting me to smoke with her in the past. But Ryan was her boyfriend and had never seen it (this is a second Ryan, not the one from University of Eugene. This Ryan, Ryan Barnes, formerly worked for Merril Lynch and Wallstreet and knew Japanese as a second language and had international contacts and then moved into hedge funds.)

I remember, smirks going around the table while we had drinks. After they knew I was a little tipsy, this one guy from their party came onto me. I remember walking down the stairs and seeing Christa and Ryan glaring up at me and smirking to themselves. They whispered to eachother, looking at me, laughing and rolled their eyes at eachother. I played it off and they changed their expressions. The entire group said goodbye to me and left in a taxi, leaving me behind with this guy. I also noticed a Portland police officer there. He was watching ME and glaring at me and when he drove by me and this guy, the officer looked at him and the guy said everything was fine and waved him on. It wasn't like the officer was looking out for the guy, he was positioned outside of the club, to notice and watch me. I said I'd hang out with this guy and followed him in my car to his house. The whole police thing was noticeable. That officer and this guy knew eachother, or that officer knew people in the party I was with. I realized later, his house was only 2 houses down from Dick Whittemore's house. It was right next door, within visible distance. I refused to sleep with him, and after he wouldn't leave me alone and just talk, I left.

I remember, this was the first time Christa went out with me, after the process server met me at the courthouse. She wouldn't go out with me, alone with me afterthat. She didn't say she wouldn't, she just made excuses. The last time I saw her in the flesh, she was surrounded by her friends, and even there, she made a point of not sitting next to me and being at an opposite end of the table and flanked on either side by her guyfriends. I think, looking back, she was worried about how much I knew, that I was catching on, and was concerned at what my reaction might be if I knew the extent of it.

I decided I wanted more information and I wasn't going to let her go so easily. So I played stupid and made attempts to continue a correspondence from Washington state, as if nothing had ever happened.

By this time, too, Christa had lost her entire act about being "born again". She mocked Protestantism and evangelical christianity in particular. I know plenty of people who do, including myself, but she really pushed it. She told me she was going to an Episcopal church in NYC and encouraged me to go Episcopalian. That's what she told me at least. I met her sister at her house, her parents house, years before and her sister was so rude to me I wondered why. Christa and I were friends, I thought. Her sister lived in Texas and sent her kids to a spanish-speaking school.