In a crowded, old house with threadbare carpet, Frances Bernice Schreuder is remembering what it's like to be free.
After spending 13 years in prison for her role in the slaying of her millionaire father, auto parts magnate Frank Bradshaw, Schreuder is literally earning her way to the streets.She may not have pulled the trigger, but she now admits she created the atmosphere that "made it possible" for her son to murder his grandfather.
She secured a spot at the Parkview halfway house by applying to be a cook for the inmate residents. Her first trip to the supermarket, just two days after she arrived at Parkview, was a stark reminder that many things have changed for Schreuder.
"It's so big," she said with a wide smile. "There are so many new things on the shelves."
When she approached the check-out counter, the system looked so foreign that she didn't even know where to set her groceries.
"I was too embarrassed to say, `Where do I put them,' " Schreuder said. The clerk seemed to overlook her awkwardness by taking the groceries from her.
Though seemingly small, it's another hurdle cleared for this complex woman who says it's taken years and prison's bars to find the strength inside herself to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.
Schreuder's world, even before her father's murder, was a house of cards. But she had no idea of the pain that awaited her after her son was arrested in 1982 for shooting her father to death four years earlier.
On Sunday morning, July 23, 1978, Marc Schreuder took a cab to Bradshaw's West Salt Lake warehouse and hid behind the loading dock. He waited for his grandfather, who arrived shortly after 7 a.m. They talked for about 15 minutes and then, when Bradshaw turned away from the boy, Schreuder fired two shots, hitting Bradshaw in the head and back. A medical examiner said either bullet would have killed him.
Marc Schreuder said he couldn't bear to look at his grandfather's face while he shot, so he waited for him to look away. He blamed his actions on his mother - and so did his attorneys. In an effort to make Marc Schreuder look like a victim, they portrayed Frances Schreuder as the villain.
Despite her crime, Schreuder seems out of place in the rundown house with mismatched furniture. Articulate and well-dressed, it's hard to see any resemblance to the woman described in news stories, books and movies that claim to chronicle her life, her family and her crime.
She smiles slightly and her eyes seem to sparkle as she begins to talk about her accomplishments and her future ambitions. But a darkness seems to come over her, and sorrow quickly replaces any joy, as she recounts what brought her to prison and to her knees both literally and figuratively.
"Before I went to prison, I'd been a battered wife. I was an emotional wreck. I suffered from a lot of things," Schreuder said in her only interview with the media since leaving prison.
"But going to prison, I really hit rock bottom," she said, folding her hands. After struggling with emotions that ranged from betrayal to anger to guilt, she found hope.
"Suddenly it hit me," she said. "I searched my own values, I looked inside myself, deep inside. Somehow I was going to change my life, going to make positive choices for myself. It was a very, very strong feeling for a long period of time."
That strong feeling grew inside her, pushing the hate and anger out of her heart.
"I realized it was too negative to live that way," she said. "I couldn't survive like that."
Finding her way wasn't easy. "I was a lost soul," she said.
There were three things that guided her as she tried to redefine herself and her life - three things she says made her the woman she is today: getting an education, finding a spiritual connection and accepting responsibility for her crime.
But accepting responsibility is the most painful for her. Questions about the murder and her role in it make her visibly anxious and often bring her to tears.
Some details are still so hurtful, she says, that she still can't talk about them. But there is one thing she's adamant about.
"One thing I'm not guilty of," she said with conviction, "is coercing Marc (into killing her father). It has made me very defensive (to be characterized that way)."
And indeed, the press reports and books that followed her trial in 1983 painted a picture of a greedy, heartless, manipulative woman who would go to any length, even to force her teenage son to kill her father, to maintain her high-society way of life.
Hearing those characterizations, which started when her then-17-year-old son, Marc, told prosecutors it was his mother who masterminded Bradshaw's murder, have angered Frances Schreuder. Marc Schreuder testified that he begged her not to make him kill his grandfather, but she threatened to turn her back on him if he didn't.
Schreuder cries as she talks about the way her son has characterized her - a vicious portrayal she says was an absolute lie.
"It still hurts to think that he said those things about me," she said.
Her denial about that aspect made it impossible for her to accept full responsibility for what she did do.
"I created the climate that made it all possible," she said.
Just how she did that is very complicated, she said. But she admits openly hating her father and knowing her son was going to kill him - even when and where he would. Yet she did nothing.
"I feel as responsible for his death as if I'd shot him myself," she said, her normally strong voice cracking with emotion. "I loved my father, I miss my father, although, there was a time when I hated him.
"I feel like I should be convicted of being responsible for my father's death. I knew what (Marc) was going to do, and I could have stopped him. I feel as responsible as if I'd done it myself, and that's a painful thing for me to say.
"I didn't force Marc to do anything, I couldn't even get him to do the dishes."
Schreuder said her father was abusive and distant.
She recounts a story about her father that offers a glimpse into the Bradshaw home. Not more than 4 or 5 years old, Schreuder said she'd gotten a doll for Christmas.
She was enamored of her beautiful new toy and placed her on the couch while she was busy with other things. Sparks from the fireplace shot out onto the couch and started a small fire. The doll burned and young Frances was devastated.
"I cried and cried," she said. "My father was so angry. He got very upset and said, `I shouldn't have even bothered coming home for Christmas. This is disgusting.' . . . I just wanted a daddy."
A child of the 50's, Schreuder said many of her problems stemmed from moving from her father's house to her husband's house. She never developed an identity or confidence of her own. Independence was a foreign concept, an unreachable goal.
Thus she stumbled into two disastrous and abusive marriages and had three children. Marc was the middle child. She has an older son, Larry, but she doesn't have contact with the boys. She says she does, however, have a pretty good relationship with her daughter, Lavinia, who was just 11 when her mother went to prison.
"You start to believe you really deserve what's happening to you," she said of her abusive relationships. Her advice to anyone, adult or child, in an abusive situation: "Somehow, prepare yourself to be independent. There's a way out."
She hasn't talked to Marc since he was released from prison more than a year ago. She doesn't even know if she wants to or what she'd say if she had the chance.
She also said she's forgiven her father, her son and herself.
"I do understand why he did what he did," she said of her son, who bears her first name as his middle name. "I realized he was scared. I feel sorry for him because I think he's cheating himself."
Schreuder also admits she wasn't coping with her life or her problems very well as Marc was growing up. Like her, he was abused by his stepfather.
"I feel that he suffered very, very much," she said. "But back then, we were just taught you grow up, you marry Mr. Right, and he'll take care of you. You're just supposed to have 2.5 kids and be happy."
But at the worst time in her life, Schreuder learned how to make better decisions, how to believe in herself and how to forgive herself.
As far as big dreams, Schreuder said it was "the little things" she missed while locked up, like bathing in a tub instead of taking a shower.
"It's so nice just sleeping on my own sheets," she adds. An avid reader, she holds onto the dream of owning her own bookstore. She doesn't like to dream too much or too far into the future - it makes her nervous.
Right now, one day at a time, one goal at a time is the way she'll live her new life.
"I know I've got a lot of living to make up for," she said. Despite having two bachelor's degrees, she plans to return to school early next year for a technical degree in health or medicine.
Even with all of the media attention that still seems to follow her, Schreuder said she's not too worried about the stigma that's attached to her name.
"Most people don't even recognize it," she said.