Held to answer

Evelyn Decker would’ve been 18 years old when Newsweek published its infamous 1986 cover story, “Too Late for Prince Charming?” warning females that “a single, 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married.”

It would take Newsweek 20 years to apologize for being incorrect, but by then many women – perhaps 
Decker among them – had accepted that prediction of dire loneliness. It might explain why she stayed with a man who beat her to death.

If past behavior is any indication, had Decker survived the final beating on July 29, 2010 that left her purple, red and blue from head to toe, she might have welcomed Christopher Fitzhugh back into her life.

Instead, this week Fitzhugh, 40, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He pleaded guilty in Clatsop County Court to two counts of assault in the second degree. As part of a negotiated plea, Fitzhugh entered into a stipulated facts trial admitting that prosecutors could prove him guilty of murder by abuse.

Decker, 43, was living in Reno, Nev., when she met Fitzhugh several years ago. In Reno she had friends and family, including a son graduating high school, and she had come into a family inheritance of about $300,000. Fitzhugh persuaded her to move to Astoria, Ore., where he said he’d found a job as a welder.

In Astoria, she knew few people, and it turned out there was no job as a welder. Fitzhugh set about controlling her, spending her money and beating her.

“He left her penniless,” said Karen Munson, a close friend of Decker’s. “She was afraid of him. He wouldn’t let her have lunch with friends . . . didn’t want her talking on the phone. . . . He took away her self-esteem – telling her nobody else would have her at her age.”

Decker made excuses for the bruises and scars Fitzhugh left on her and wouldn’t cooperate when doctors tried to help.

“She didn’t want to suffer a third loss. She’d already lost her parents,” Munson said. “Instead of facing that fear, it was easier not to face it.”

Did Decker still love Fitzhugh?

“I think so,” said Munson.

At Fitzhugh’s sentencing, family and friends got to have their say, including her son, Chris Decker, now studying mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada. He brought a photo of him with his mom at his high school graduation. She’s a pleasant-looking woman with long brown hair cascading over her shoulders, but it’s the kind of picture where a woman might fuss over whether her face looks fat.

It would be simple to dismiss Fitzhugh as looking like a knuckle dragger who breaths through his mouth, the way I once heard a bailiff in a Vancouver, Wash., court room casually refer to someone as “the guy in the wife beater shirt.” Some things we just accept. Fitzhugh’s pouty lower lip makes it easy to imagine a man who might throw a fit and a punch if he was annoyed and had a convenient target. But at a certain time and place, a woman might look at him and see big, brown puppy dog eyes.

Investigators from several law enforcement agencies pieced together the history of Fitzhugh’s relationships with women, which began when he was 14 and had a girlfriend, 18. Investigators tracked down nine women (four of them he called “wives” but not all of them confirmed marriages) that Fitzhugh had been involved with in Mississippi and Alabama prior to meeting Decker. Many of the women still feared him.

On a spreadsheet in the Clatsop County District Attorney’s Office, the names of the women are listed across the top, and down the side is a column detailing 31 abuse factors – things like isolation from friends; kicking; choking; threats to kill; interfering with calls for help. Fitzhugh repeated a pattern with them. Find an older woman, assault her, control her and financially exploit her. Only three times in previous relationships was law enforcement called, and nothing happened. No arrest, no prosecution.

At his sentencing, he was flanked by three court-appointed defense attorneys, one of whom briefly offered the usual excuse: Fitzhugh grew up with an abusive father. Given that his last name is Fitzhugh, his attorneys might just as well have blamed his behavior on his Scots-Irish, patriarchal, Catholic ancestry.

In the book “The Woman Who Walked into Doors” Irish writer Roddy Doyle delves into the mind of a battered woman, from her teenage lust for a guy she sees at a dance to their marriage filled with black eyes, broken bones, loose teeth, cracked ribs. She’s a woman who keeps walking into doors – one of the excuses Fitzhugh’s women occasionally used.

Doyle shows how the Irish culture has bred helplessness in females, forcing them to either fight or be left at the mercy of brothers, fathers, boyfriends, husbands, who then claim bullying as a birthright.

In the courtoom at Fitzhugh’s sentencing there was evidence of a different world. Decker’s son exuded gentleness and strength when he spoke. District Attorney Josh Marquis and Detective Andrew Randall and Sgt. Eric Halverson of the Astoria Police Department are men who take domestic violence seriously.

Also in the courtroom were women that Fitzhugh wouldn’t have dared tangle with: Chief Deputy District Attorney Dawn Buzzard, and state Sen. Betsy Johnson, a former helicopter pilot whose no-nonsense manner would send a guy like Fitzhugh skittering for cover.

Decker’s cousin, Drake Pilcher told Fitzhugh, “I hope no other woman is ever, ever subjected to what you put my cousin through.”

You never know.

Fitzhugh will serve at least 23½ years in prison. He could get out when he’s 63. Somewhere there’s a woman who may think he’s quite the catch.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons