For mother, slayings bring back memories

By Ron Jackson

Published: June 12, 2008

BRISTOW — Phillis Middleton is haunted daily by her youngest daughter's abduction and strangulation three years ago in Okfuskee County.

Now, painful images of her "9-year-old, blond-haired cutie,” Katie Daylynn, flash in her mind in light of Okfuskee County's latest tragedy — the abduction and fatal shootings Sunday of Taylor Dawn Paschal-Placker, 13, and Skyla Jade Whitaker, 11.

"What kind of crazy world are we living in? Those poor families. I know exactly what they're going through — hell,” she said.

The murders have again left Middleton overwhelmed and depressed.

"My heart goes out to those poor families,” a sobbing Middleton, 34, said Wednesday inside her tiny Bristow apartment. "I heard about the murders on TV, and I turned to my boyfriend, Preston, and said, ‘That's only 20 miles from where my baby was murdered.'”

Katie's abduction occurred nearly three years ago — Aug. 5, 2005 — on a sweltering summer afternoon in Okemah. She was walking to a local grocery store when authorities said she was picked up by William Franklin Dobrovolny, a drifter who had been "living out of his car” between Okemah and Wetumka.

Dobrovolny, then 22, was visiting a sister who lived in a small shack behind the Middletons' house the day Katie disappeared. He strangled Middleton with a rope or cord, then dumped her body near a moss-covered pond on a desolate dirt road southeast of Okemah.

Investigators later found Dobrovolny covered with scratches — marks likely made by Katie as she struggled for her life.

Dobrovolny is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

"There are days I just don't want to live,” Middleton said. "I don't even want to get out of bed. Why couldn't it have been me instead of her?”

Middleton noticed an eerie similarity in the locations of both killings. She mentioned the desolate dirt road where Paschal-Placker and Whitaker's lifeless bodies were found and said it reminded her of the road where Katie's body was recovered.

"I hope they catch whoever did this,” she said.

In March 2006, the Department of Human Services took her eldest daughter — Desziray, now 14 — away from her and placed the child in the home of her former in-laws. A month later the state agency took away her son, Darren, who is now 10. He lives in a foster home and has no contact with his mother.

"My life has been hell ever since,” Middleton said. "My family is in a thousand pieces, and I don't know if I have the strength to pick up the pieces.”