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Posted on 07/12/2003 9:41:53 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
At 14, Justine Maxwell discovered Montrose and threw herself headlong into its unconventional, artistic underground.
Though she came from the very representation of suburbia -- a two-story house in the Champions West subdivision with two parents, older siblings and pets -- and grew up with every creature comfort imaginable, a stint at summer camp changed everything. There, Maxwell met some street-savvy girls who showed her how to ride the bus and introduced her to the Montrose way of life.
Everything about the famously eclectic neighborhood appealed to her -- the street kids who answered to no one, the wild hair and tattoos, the exotic shops and coffee bars, the artistic flavor, the humming nightlife.
Until then, Maxwell had been her family's "Macy baby" with a closet full of expensive department store clothes; she took ballet and had a circle of close-knit friends. But finding Montrose was something of an epiphany; there, the increasingly independent Maxwell felt herself reborn, brimming with possibilities.
Feeling trapped in the suffocating confines of Cypress Creek High School -- her parents once were summoned to the principal's office when she refused to wear a bra -- Maxwell began taking the bus to Montrose on weekends and evolved into her crunchy granola, nature-girl persona, adopting the nickname "Buttafly." It was there in later years she met the two loves of her life -- Robert "Stonie" Saulter, a tormented soul with a fondness for body piercings, and Danny Armantrout, a locally celebrated tattoo artist in constant pursuit of the perfect creative expression.
And it was there, last month, that Maxwell and Armantrout died violently as a result of Saulter's apparent inability to let her go.
Maxwell, 24, who had just learned she was pregnant, and Armantrout, 28, were shot multiple times in their duplex on a quiet, tree-lined section of West Main in what police describe as a case of overkill.
The killings happened just days after Maxwell cut off all contact with Saulter, 25, police said.
Amid Maxwell's eclectic book collection -- Healing with Gemstones, The Hemp Cookbook, Erotica, Women's Realities, Women's Choices and selections of Kurt Vonnegut -- family members soon found Saulter's anguished diary, detailing the couple's painful breakup and his angst over her new relationship.
After confessing to the slayings in a surprise, early morning visit with his mother and then disappearing, Saulter was charged with capital murder. He turned up days later in a rural area outside Angleton, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
"It seemed to me he was trying to come to grips with why they broke up," said Richard Patt, 56, whose son was friends with Saulter and who often let Saulter stay over. "He was very good at keeping things to himself -- it was obvious he just couldn't get out of the space he was in."
Perhaps it was no surprise that Buttafly Maxwell was attracted to Saulter and Armantrout at different points in her life. The two men, both fixtures on the Montrose scene, bore a passing resemblance to each other. Each was small in stature and had that wild Westheimer look -- Saulter with his multiple piercings, Armantrout with tattoos covering his body.
No one could really see Maxwell with a conventional guy, because she hardly lived a conventional life. At age 17, three weeks before her high school graduation, she signed herself out of rehab, where drug use had landed her, and traveled across the country. She and her friends planned to follow the Grateful Dead on the road, but when Jerry Garcia died, they ended up hanging with the Rainbow People, a celebrated group of misfits who shun material belongings and gather in the wilderness to celebrate life. Maxwell was a flower child who worked in soup kitchens. She and her friends commandeered an old school bus for their road adventures.
Six months later, Maxwell called her mother and asked to come home. She eventually settled in Montrose, working in the types of places where kids work -- coffee houses, piercing and tattoo shops, Whole Foods Market. She met Saulter at a rave, and the attraction was immediate. They became inseparable.
Saulter, who grew up in the Westbury area as the only child of a single mother, was a well-read eccentric with an intelligent wit and off-beat sense of humor. Though he could be quiet for long periods, he was capable of holding his own in philosophical and political discussions.
"He was a very brilliant young man," said Patt, an English professor at Houston Community College. "There did seem to be something missing from his childhood and background, because he was drawn to spending time with me and talking to me almost as a father figure. He seemed to lack that in his life -- that is, running ideas past someone.
"I don't think if he were here now to answer questions about what happened that he would strike you as antisocial. You would enjoy having him sit at your table talking while you ate dinner. When he did speak, it wasn't just worthless blather, it was insightful."
Saulter held a series of jobs, working at Half Price Books and Whole Foods, and working with sterilizing equipment at Sacred Heart Studio, where Maxwell was a piercing apprentice.
In 1999, the couple posed topless together in a piercing and body art magazine, In the Flesh. A full-page color photo shows the two sticking their tongues out at each other playfully while displaying their many piercings with their arms around each other.
Saulter had aspirations of a better career, but a 1996 arrest caused problems. He was charged with delivery of a controlled substance after he was caught at a YMCA on the South Loop with 827 hits of LSD and 19.2 grams of marijuana, a Houston police report shows. He fought going to jail, but when his appeals ran out he went to Harris County Jail. He bought Maxwell two cats to keep her company during his time away, from September 1999 until February 2000.
When he got out, Saulter was trapped in a downward spiral of depression that he couldn't seem to shake. Living with Maxwell and her parents in suburbia for nine months, he slept all day, kept his head down and avoided contact with others in the house while she went to school.
"You could see the depression growing," said Maxwell's mother, Linda Maxwell, 55.
When the family urged Buttafly to get help for Saulter, she blew up and the couple moved out.
Eventually, though, the emotional turmoil became too much. Maxwell ended the romance last fall, but the couple continued living together for financial reasons. Around that time, she became close to Armantrout, a rising star in the tattoo art world who performed his first work at age 12 or 13.
"It was like he had these visions no one else could see -- he looked at the world through an artist's eyes," said Patricia Scholl of Pearland, the mother of Armantrout's estranged wife.
Saulter seemed to accept the breakup at first, but that facade soon fell away. In December, he held Maxwell hostage at gunpoint for days at her house. Friends called police, but when officers went by to check on her, she claimed she was fine, a Houston police report shows. The officers didn't know Saulter was apparently hiding behind the door with a gun, so they left, said Houston Police Department Sgt. Clarence Douglas.
Saulter also threatened to leave town and kill himself, so Maxwell took several trips with him -- described by friends as desperate attempts to help -- heading to Austin and eventually Canada. In February, she returned alone to Houston and settled down with Armantrout, a father of two who was separated from his wife.
His wife, Andrea Armantrout, and his friends describe Maxwell as a mesmerizing woman who manipulated circumstances and took advantage of his vulnerability prompted by his father's death from cancer. She also seemed in charge of the relationship, they said -- Maxwell was a vegetarian, so Armantrout adopted that diet; e-mails sent to Armantrout were answered by Maxwell, irritating his friends.
"I think he was confused. She came on to him first," said Andrea Armantrout, 29, of Pearland. "My impression is she was playing both ends against the middle so she'd have someone to take care of her."
But Maxwell's family said the couple seemed happy and were planning for the future.
"Justine with Danny reminded me of the early days of Justine and Stonie -- they were just as cute in the beginning," said her father, Fred Maxwell, 57.
The couple signed a one-year lease on a duplex in the 1700 block of West Main, off Dunlavy, and moved in May 1. Weeks later, Maxwell learned she was pregnant and shared the news with her family and friends.
Days before they died, the couple yanked open all the windows in their new home -- windows until then sealed shut with paint.
The first thing homicide investigators noticed when they showed up at the duplex June 10 was the tremendous anger the killer had toward the victims.
Based on the number of wounds, "it was quite evident it was revenge, some kind of lover's quarrel," said Douglas, the HPD homicide investigator assigned to the case. "It wasn't a stranger-on-stranger crime."
Armantrout was shot first inside the house just as the couple returned from a late-night trip to the store. Maxwell, in another room, had no time to escape, police said. She also was hit, but ran out the back door and down the driveway, leaving a blood trail before collapsing in her next-door neighbor's yard. A neighbor reported hearing a "blood-curdling scream" before the final round of gunshots.
"You could see the overkill," Douglas said. "You could see there was a lot of anger in the house, the way things were."
Maxwell's pickup, which she never drove, was missing from the driveway.
Early the next morning, Saulter knocked on the window of his mother's apartment on West Holcombe near Buffalo Speedway. She let him in, and he told her what he had done.
Saulter's mother, Linda Peralta, declined to talk to the Chronicle. But Maxwell's parents said Peralta told them in a phone conversation that her son showed no emotion about the slayings. His eyes were red, but he was calm and did not shake, Peralta told them.
The police report completes the story. Saulter told his mother he climbed through a bathroom window to get into the duplex. While waiting for the couple to return, he logged on to Maxwell's computer and was apparently taken by surprise by e-mails she'd sent announcing her pregnancy. When the couple returned, Saulter told his mother, he "emptied the clip" into Armantrout, killing him. He then shot Maxwell.
Saulter told his mother he had driven down Texas 288, but returned to Houston to say goodbye to her, investigators said. He told her he loved her and said that was the last time she would see him. Saulter then left.
Saulter's mother later discovered her 9 mm Glock pistol missing from a drawer, the criminal complaint shows. Police later found his fingerprints on the bathroom window at Maxwell's house, supporting the story he told his mother.
Saulter was charged with capital murder. His diary, found days later, included a list of people he threatened to kill, including Maxwell and Armantrout. Others on the list were put on notice, but the danger ended June 23, when Saulter's badly decomposed body was found in a wooded area one mile off Texas 288. Maxwell's truck and the gun used in the slayings were found nearby. He left no suicide note.
Investigators believe he had been watching and following Maxwell in the days since she cut off contact with him, but would not elaborate on the evidence suggesting that.
"I guess what I see from all this is untreated depression -- lost hope -- desperation when he found out she was pregnant," said Maxwell's mother. "The thing that keeps coming to my mind is he cracked, he just cracked."
Maxwell's memorial service was as unconventional as her life. It was a relaxed, free-form gathering where mourners wore colorful clothes and sat on the floor, and anyone was allowed to speak. A slide show with pictures of Maxwell taken throughout her life put together by her brother-in-law, HPD officer Clay Steele, was set to music.
As the pictures flashed across a screen, folk singer Iris DeMent's gentle voice intoned, "Infamous Angel going home, to someone who loves her and knows she needed to roam. She grabbed her things and claimed the ticket at the bus depot for: Infamous Angel, Destination: Home."
Armantrout's relatives chose to hold his service separately. Friends held several benefits to help raise funds for his wife and children, ages 9 years and 20 months. Six Houston-based bands -- including the now-defunct Dinosaur Salad, for which Armantrout used to sing -- performed for that purpose at Fitzgerald's last weekend.
Saulter's family held a small, private service outside of Houston, but published no announcements or obituaries. Friends who were unable to attend will hold a party in Houston later this month celebrating his life.
In a sense, Armantrout's family and friends are angry with Maxwell and hold her partly responsible for his death. But Maxwell's family said she couldn't have known how bad things would get. They note that she is a victim, too.
Saulter, everyone agrees, truly loved her -- perhaps too much.
"I did not know he was in a crisis. Looking back now, I can see that he was -- but he made it seem that he was just fine with that smile of his, that soft-spoken attitude," Patt said. "He really fooled me. ... It was as if he didn't think anyone else could help him."
But heaven forbid that someone mention that maybe, just perhaps maybe, alternative morals and the questionable choices found in nearly every sentence of this piece might have been a factor. Yet let a love triangle murder-suicide involve a church-goer(yes, it happens in every side of society, though not in equal proportions), and there will be a thousand articles speculating on how the 'repressive', 'yuppie', 'suburban', 'conservative' environment may have played a role.
Everyone makes their own choices, and each person is ultimately responsible for themselves. But damn to hell all those evil Sirens, peddlers, liars, cons, snakes, and their protectors, who seek to entice Eve to bite every single fruit hanging from the tree. We are free in America to make our choices(as it should be), but we are also free to shout out warning of where the pied pipers lead.
No doubt the Chronicle doesn't feel the least bit of guilt about their loud and unceasing promotion of the sewers of temptations and moral deconstruction.
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The rest of them showed by their actions just how screwed up they were.
Saulter: I am sure he was nicknamed "Stonie" for a reason.
Maxwell: pregnant, overbearing, controlling, and a freak show.
Armantrout: not even divorced before he is moving in with a different girl.
The parents should be slapped around a little too. How can you let a 14-year-old get so out of control that by 17 she is in drug rehab?
Indeed, I got the distinct impression the Chronicle expects us to take these people, their lifestyle choices and their self-inflicted problems seriously.
It's not like Buttafly and Stonie were fools or anything. Y'know?
Every day and every night, in every medium, they just downplay or leave out the consequences and hype the indulgence.
. . .this article/obit is truly a 'silk purse' in the making.
and then there's
"A slide show with pictures of Maxwell taken throughout her life put together by her brother-in-law, HPD officer Clay Steele, was set to music...As the pictures flashed across a screen, folk singer Iris DeMent [sang] "Infamous Angel"
HELLO Texas, we in the mostly blue states count on you folks to keep our values true. This story is a sad commentary on our country.
Mr. Maxwell, and family, I am truly sad to learn that one LOSER lover of your daughter killed her, her unborn child, and her other loser lover, but CUTE should never have been a word that came to mind when your "Macy's baby" became a LOSER.
You see, you all blame NYC and LA for our nation's ills, but look at what is considered "normal" in the rest of the country. The attitude seems to be: They were just cute kids, let's remember them fondly, we never questioned their self-mutilating life-styles, and, well, now they are all gone, so we'll shed a tear and move on.
This story makes me sick on so many levels.
Sorry Texas, you dissed the Chicks, but if you find these dysfunctional, adulterous, murderous people acceptable, I'm sure Bush is ashamed to be from there.
This story is a tragic example of what happens when one goes through life making irresponsible choices. Quite sad...
This girl made a lot of bad choices and the consequences caught up with her. It is sad...tragic I am sure for the parents and family...but it is a result of those things she chose along the way irrespective of how the Chronicle or others wants to paint it. She chose to hang with the wrong crowd...and it contributed (greatly IMHO ) to her death and the death of her unborn.
People all want to be happy (at least all of the sane ones I know)...but sin never was and never will be happiness...just a cheap imitation that accumlates consequebces that sooner or later come to the fore.
Best regards. That was an excellent analysis you gave.
Too many writers today spend most of their time laboring away on the biographies of social misfits and then they inflict them on the public. They could save the ink, most of us are not biting.
Leni
Any pictures of the three individuals who comprised the "Love Triangle" in this story? Thanks.
~ Blue Jays ~
Robert "Stonie" Saulter
"Buttafly" (Justine) Maxwell
Danny Armantrout
Another picture of Danny (left)
The truth will become a lie, and a lie the truth. Never were such truer words spoken in the Bible and in George Orwell's 1984.
Boyfriend #1:
Boyfriend #2 (someone else's husband):
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