My daughter Emma Katherine Roey, now Emma Buchheim, lied about a friend being raped and attempting suicide, claimed to have been molested by a priest, and then, just as her attorneys were about to file a law suit, Emma accused her mother (me) of physically abusing her and later of poisoning her with DDT. Emma claimed to have a toxicology report to confirm that her mother (me, again!) poisoned her, but would never turn over this report to my attorney. If you read through the blog, you will find many other examples of Emma’s lying. At one point, she even complained about the way her dad touched her and that he called her a “bitch” and a “slut” everyday. (I refused to listen to her when she talked about her dad like that.) As long as Emma continues with the lies, I will tell her story.  Emma and her current husband, Tyler Buchheim live in Frisco, Texas where Tyler, who has put architecture on hold, is studying to be a Full Stack Developer at the Flatiron School in an effort to avoid a midlife crisis (according to Tyler).  Emma works in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area as an insurance underwriter.   Emma and Tyler are the parents to two little dogs, Arya and Sansa.  (Emma is a huge Game of Thrones fan.)  Love and thanks to all of you who read and have written to me. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com Please continue to share the blog with others.

Ok, so I changed the title of this post, but I’m not changing the post, so if you’ve already read it, don’t bother.  Initially, I was thinking how it’s a mother’s instinct to protect her child, and so I named the post, “A Mother’s Instinct,” but then I started comparing my situation with Emma to the local story of this murdered woman.  I was thinking about how this dying woman did not want to believe her husband shot her on purpose (allegedly).  I heard someone talking about she may have said, “It was an accident.” because she wanted to protect her husband, and I got to thinking about how I still wanted to protect Emma, even though she accused me of child abuse, and even though I was just beginning to uncover her lying habit.  (At the time she accused me though, I had no idea how much lying Emma was doing.  She pretty much lied about everything.)

Well, after a wonderful, relaxing vacation visiting friends in Fla., and then stopping on my way home to Kayak from Amelia Island to Cumberland Island, I got home, back to the grind, had a rather traumatic welcome home surprise at work on my first day back from vacation, and then got hit by a cold. One of those colds that just wears you out, but you keep going, keep working, etc, until you have a day off to crash in the bed all day. Thank goodness I have (knock wood) managed to avoid the flu, so I can’t complain too loudly about being sick, but gosh, darn, I almost made it through the whole sick season without getting sick!

I had the radio on while running around today, and I was listening to a local talk show (Eric Von Haessler—if you haven’t heard of him, I guess you would say he’s a libertarian who talks about current events and he and his crew are very funny.) Eric was talking about a local story that I’d heard about, but really hadn’t paid much attention to– A wealthy, high powered attorney who shot and killed his wife in 2016. Murder or Accident? The trial was starting today.

I was sort of half listening, as I really wasn’t that interested in the Tex McIver case, and there was a legal analyst (Ron Carlson, I think) on, and now I’m going to have to learn how to listen to a Podcast because I want to go back and hear it again, but anyway, they were talking about all the contradictions in the case. Listening to it got me a little curious, so I did some reading about it, and here are some of the things I found out about the death of Diane McIver and her husband Tex:

Tex McIver

Wife much wealthier than he was

owed wife $350,000, hence possible new will, leaving their ranch to her Godson

Offered bribe to make case go away

tried to convince witness to say she wasn’t there

sold off wife’s things shortly after her death

broke bond condition of not possessing any guns when investigators discovered a glock in his sock drawer while executing a search warrant

did not call 911 after wife shot

instead of taking wife to closest hospital, took her to a hospital further away that did not have a trauma center

Prior to his marriage to Diane, was involved in a shooting where he opened fire on three young men in a car

acrimonious divorce from his first wife who accused him of a long-time affair

Diane McIver

while dying, stated to Emory Dr. that it was an “accident”

when Dr. asked wife if she wanted to see husband, she said, “no”

Ok, so that’s for starters, and I have to admit, I’ve gotten more curious, so I’m going to have to do some more reading about the case.

What caught my attention was when the two gentlemen on the radio were discussing why Diane McIver would say her husband shooting her was an “accident.” Was Diane trying to protect her husband and she didn’t want to admit that her husband might have shot her on purpose? Maybe she just didn’t want to believe her husband could do what he’d done.

Like I said, I want to go back and listen to the segment again, but I could really relate to protecting those we love, especially as a mother.

When Emma’s attorney was about to file a law suit, and Emma and I talked about how the attorneys would need to talk to her on-line friend, “Lacey” who Emma claimed was raped and attempted suicide, Emma understood that this would be necessary for her case, to show how “Lacey’s” rape brought up Emma’s repressed memories of being molested by the priest when she was 12. Emma was fine with it and said she understood and would talk to “Lacey” and tell her that the attorneys would need to talk to her.

Of course we know how this story ends, I get the email from the attorney that he is ready to file the suit, and WHAM, all of a sudden my daughter accuses me of physically abusing her to stop the law suit before she is caught in a big fat lie. (This was a brief synopsis for those of you who may be new readers.)

When the legal analyst was talking about how Diane McIver may have been wanting to protect her husband by claiming he shot her by accident (He was in the backseat of the vehicle, how would she know?”) I thought of Emma and how I wanted to protect her.

Shortly before Christmas of 2010, my daughter accused me of abuse and we had the whole DFACS involvement, Emma went to the mental hospital, etc., and after we got her home, I just wanted to get my family back to normal. I’d begun to suspect that Emma really hadn’t been sexually abused, or maybe I’d had some doubts from the beginning, but what parent wants to believe their child made up a lie about being sexually abused?

After Emma accused me of abuse, my mind was made up that the whole thing was a lie, but I didn’t pursue it. We wanted Emma home, we were in family therapy with Suzie McGarvey, (now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates)  and had Emma in therapy, and Phill and I even went without Emma to talk to her therapist. (Big mistake because when Emma found out, she was paranoid about it and thought we were just going to “talk bad” about her, even when I told her we were trying to work on making things better as a family.) With all this going on, I still couldn’t tell anyone that I thought Emma made up the whole, “I was sexually abused by a priest” thing. I didn’t even say anything to Phill, my best friend, husband, and love of close to 30 years. I still wanted to protect her and didn’t want people thinking badly of her, even though I felt it was a lie.

Of course, hindsight is 20-20 and now I feel like Phill and I should have either sat down with Emma or sat down with Emma and a counselor and we should have gotten to the bottom of things. Maybe if we’d pushed Emma to answer some hard questions, we would have gotten to the truth a lot sooner, and my family would have been destroyed by Emma’s power struggle. Even now, I have an tiny unrealistic hope that Emma will grow up and one day tell us why she did what she did, but I guess 99% of me feels like this won’t happen. In 17 years of being Emma’s mom, I saw too much that makes me think she could be a sociopath, a narcissist, and may have some other personality disorders thrown in, so I don’t really expect Emma to change, except maybe to get better at what she does.

So, yes Diane, if you were trying to protect your husband, I completely understand. I tried to protect my daughter from being thought badly of, from her own lies, from herself, even to my own detriment. My first instinct, even with all the horrible things my daughter did, was to protect her.