By Their Father's Hand: The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre

by Monte Francis

Overview

Based on interviews with the convicted murderer, a journalist provides a true crime account of a father’s sexual abuse and killing of his children.

Neighbors were unaware of what went on behind the tightly closed doors of a house in Fresno, California—the home of an imposing, three-hundred-pound Marcus Wesson, his wife, children, nieces, and grandchildren. But on March 12, 2004, gunshots were heard inside the Wesson home, and police officers responding to what they believed was a routine domestic disturbance were horrified by the senseless carnage they discovered when they entered.

By Their Father's Hand is a chilling true story of incest, abuse, madness, and murder, and one family's terrible and ultimately fatal ordeal at the hands of a powerful, manipulative man—a cultist who envisioned vengeful gods and vampires, and totally controlled those closest to him before their world came to a brutal and bloody halt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061739842
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/18/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	309
Sales rank:	449,041
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Monte Francis is a journalist and writer who has covered several high-profile murder trials. He has received two Emmy Awards for his television news reports and several awards for his news writing from the Associated Press. This is his first book.

Read an Excerpt

By Their Father's Hand
The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre

Chapter One

In the Wesson home, the youngest children lived like vampires. Some of the older children thought of it as an elaborate game invented by their father, but the facts were undeniable: The young ones slept on oversized mahogany coffins and seldom saw the light of day. Marcus Wesson had even given many of the children names associated with vampires. One of the babies was named Jeva, a combination of the words "Jesus" and "vampire." Sedona and Marshey, both one and a half years old, were named after characters in their father's magnum opus, a one thousand page work he referred to as a bible for vampires. The babies along with the other children—8-year-old Illabelle, 7-year-old Jonathan, 7-year-old Aviv, and 4-year-old Ethan—were under their father's strict control. At his orders, they could not go outside to play. Neighbors would later say they had no idea so many children were living inside the small home.

In truth, no one was supposed to live at 761 West Hammond Avenue. The small, flat-roofed building was zoned as a business and sat on the corner of a busy intersection of the Golden State Freeway, which runs parallel to the Union Pacific railroad tracks. The frequent and thunderous sound of passing trains was a constant reminder of the home's precarious location, situated between a residential neighborhood and what was once one of Fresno's thriving business districts. All that remained to the west of the railroad tracks was a strip of liquor stores and a run-down motel. A sprawling park, home to many of the city's homeless and to the city zoo, sat between theUnion Pacific line and Highway 99, the thoroughfare that vertically divides California in half.

The Wesson family had lived in a shed, a tugboat, and a campsite in the mountains. As far as domiciles went, this was perhaps the most conventional. However, the city had just discovered the family's violation of the zoning laws, and since the building was clearly not being used as a place of business, the city had served notice that the Wessons were to evacuate the home immediately. But such warnings didn't faze the family's leader.

On March 12, 2004, Elizabeth Wesson woke up before everyone else. It was the only time the house was completely silent. Her husband and the children were not yet stirring, and she felt that short time in the early morning belonged just to her. She showered and dressed. When she left the house to make her usual trip to Circle K to get a cup of coffee, the younger children were still asleep on their coffins. She knew that if people were aware of her husband's obsession with vampires, the sleeping arrangements might have seemed strange, but she reminded herself that Marcus was using the antique caskets to build furniture, and at any rate it was more comfortable than sleeping on the floor.

When Elizabeth returned to the house with her coffee around 7:30 A.M., the rest of the family was just waking up. She turned on the TV to watch the news. Marcus came out of the bathroom and sat next to his wife and they watched television. Their daughter Kiani was bathing her baby. The other women in the house were caring for the children and cooking breakfast. Seventeen-year-old Lise was preparing the children's schoolwork for the day.

After lunch, Elizabeth left to visit her nephew's girlfriend. Marcus and their 25-year-old daughter Sebhrenah were working on the school bus parked in front of the house. The city had served notice that the strange-looking yellow bus decorated with shiny chrome was violating city code by sitting in the driveway, but Marcus didn't care. It was his latest project, in which he had the whole family involved. He told his children they had to finish transforming the bus into a motor home since the city seemed anxious to evict them from the house. He told them they would drive the bus to Washington to visit his ailing father and then embark on a cross-country journey. As Marcus saw it, the transformation would render the yellow school bus like none other; the rear upper portion of the bus had already been cut off and a hot tub was installed. He planned to gut the inside of the bus, and for seats, use the lids from the ten antique coffins the children had been using as beds. Neighbors described seeing the women in the family dressed in long black dresses, working on the bus at all hours of the day and night under Marcus Wesson's careful supervision. They did labor both of a mechanical and cosmetic nature, making frequent trips between the house and a storage facility where Wesson kept another bus he was using for spare parts.

In truth, Wesson was more than a father to the girls and the women who lived in the house, and notwithstanding his obsession with vampires, that fact would be the one thing he knew the outside world would not understand: He believed in polygamy and incest. He told his young daughters and nieces that it was his job to instruct them on how to please a man, and he felt it was his duty to adequately prepare them for marriage. The girls wore rings he had given them. At his whim, they cleaned his ropelike dreadlocks and scratched his armpits. He shared unofficial marriage vows with several of his own daughters and three of his nieces. The young children in the Wesson family were the result of those incestuous relationships; some were both his children and his grandchildren.

Providing for a family of fourteen was not easy, considering that neither Marcus nor his wife Elizabeth worked. Despite Wesson's conviction for welfare fraud in 1990, for which he served jail time, the family continued to collect government benefits, as well as depending on the income of the women in the household. Many of the older girls had worked catering jobs or at fast food restaurants and turned over their paychecks directly to Wesson, who managed the family's finances. While the family struggled to provide food for the children, he ate heartily and used the family's money to purchase a number of salvaged boats that he kept docked in Tomales Bay, off the Northern California coast. He talked about buying a "world cruiser" and sailing it around the world.

By Their Father's Hand
The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre. Copyright © by Monte Francis. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

"Well written . . . heartbreaking . . . the story by itself is amazing." ---True Crime Book Reviews

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