Mother shoots her ‘maniac’ son, ending abuse

Keith Paul

Tuesday, June 4, 2002 | 11:04 a.m.

Mary Lou Gordon lifted a .25 caliber Beretta pistol in her arthritic hand Saturday morning and fired two shots, killing the man holding a bat screaming obscenities at her and demanding money.

Gordon, 71, had been chased into her bedroom, fumbled for the gun and fired two shots that not only ended the threat, but ended what she said were years of abuse: She killed her 39-year-old son Keith Fletchall.

Gordon said the drugs that had gripped her son for more than 20 years long ago took her loving son from her and replaced him with a "maniac."

"He started getting violent. Breaking things. Breaking up the furniture," Gordon said as she started crying. "The language he used. I can't even repeat it. It wasn't him. It wasn't my son anymore. It was some maniac."

Gordon won't likely face charges because of the details of the shooting and the abusive relationship. Metro Police didn't arrest Gordon, and homicide Lt. Tom Monahan said the shooting "by all appearances was an act of self defense."

For the past couple of years Gordon found herself telling lies to people who saw a bruise on her arm or a black eye. She says she would just tell them she walked into a door or some other excuse. What she says she was hiding was that her son was getting increasingly violent in his efforts to get money out of her for drugs.

"I didn't tell people. Some close friends," she said. "But the neighbors could hear. They could hear the arguments."

Gordon's friends tried talk to her about the abuse and giving her son chance after chance.

"I told her just because you gave birth to him doesn't mean you owe him life," said Joe Beth Cassell, a friend of Gordon's for the past 18 years who has seen Fletchall's drug addiction squander his own and his mother's life.

In the past three months or so, Gordon said, the violence had gotten worse. Even as her money had all but run out, she gave what she could to help her son. She bought him an old pickup and a chain saw so he could do trimming work.

But the saw disappeared a day or two after she bought it. She thinks he may have pawned it for money for crack cocaine.

Then Saturday about 9 a.m. Gordon was in her home on Las Lomas Avenue, near Oakey Boulevard and Arville Street, when Fletchall was again demanding money. He needed $75 to register the truck. She had given him $75 the day before, but that money was gone -- likely spent on crack cocaine.

But Gordon said she didn't have any money. All the money she had -- from a pension and retirement -- had been long ago spent on lawyers keeping Fletchall out of jail from the numerous arrests. All of her credit cards had been run up to the limits. She even took out a second mortgage on the home she bought in 1960 when she moved to Las Vegas.

Gordon said her son -- nearly 6 feet tall and weighing about 170 pounds -- chased her down a hallway with a bat in his hand Saturday morning.

Fletchall stood close to her yelling after he chased her into her bedroom, she said. Gordon pulled out the gun. She had bought the gun 20 years ago after taking a class from the North Las Vegas Police.

She said she fired two shots. One hit his shoulder and the other hit him in the head.

"I just knew that he was going to kill me," Gordon said crying so much the words came out spaced apart by sobs. "I was so scared. My knees gave out and I fell ... laid my head on the bed."

She had to step over her bleeding son to called 911 to get him help. Her son died at University Medical Center from the gunshot wounds.

"I won't ever get over what happened," she said. "I can't sleep. I keep seeing him there. I keep seeing what happened."

Her son wasn't always like that. There was a time when she didn't spend her money trying to keep from a prison sentence and her hope that the next time he said he was getting off the drugs would be the last time.

"He was popular in high school. He lifted weights. He was gorgeous," Gordon said as the pain in her voice lifted as she remembered her son who graduated from Clark High School.

She blames herself for letting the drugs ravish his life.

Cassell said she saw her friend's personality change over the years as she constantly took her son back in forgiving him for stealing, lying and hurting her.

"It's up to him to make his own life," Cassell said. "The drugs ruined everything."

But Gordon had already lost one son to drugs. In the 1970s her son John came back from the Vietnam War and died of a drug overdose in California.

"Keith was all I had left," Gordon said. "I didn't want to ever see him in pain. He would say 'I want to stop. I don't want to be a drug addict.' "

And with that hope she would take him back again. The same circle for 20 years. But each time she would take him back and give him money she said either because of the threats or because she thought he was going to straighten up. But in the end she said he would go back to drugs.

The violence would come not when he was on crack, but when he needed it. A few weeks ago he threatened to kill her when she called 911.

"He sold everything I owned," Gordon said. "Pots, pans, patio furniture, televisions, everything. I kept putting up with it because I loved him, and I couldn't stand to see him hurting."