This story is the second in a four-part series on the life and death of Hays resident Karen Schumacher, who died at the hands of her husband in 2022.
Part 1: A Voice for Karen: Living behind a curtain of silence
Hays man who killed wife sentenced to 10 years in prison
If you are a victim of domestic violence, find help here
By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Karen Schumacher died at the hands of her husband in March 2022 after years of abuse.
Now, two years after her death, her friends and family are looking at her attempts to leave her abusive relationship and what kept drawing her back in.
Even in the early years of their marriage, Jay, Karen's husband, was physically violent with Karen, according to her friends and family.
Karen told her son, Jeremiah, that if she died, it would be by Jay's hands, and she had left proof in the couple's home.
Police searched Jay and Karen's home after Karen's death. Much later, Jeremiah searched the house and found hidden letters that chronicled the abuse dating back to his parents' early marriage.
In one of the letters, Karen describes Jay throwing her against the basement floor. She says she is disappointed in him and that if he does this again, she will leave him "FOREVER."
Leaving and going back
Karen's sister, Sue, initially thought the fights between Karen and Jay were only verbal. Yet, she said Karen still repeatedly tried to leave Jay throughout their marriage.
Sue said Karen drove more than an hour to Sue's home, first in Salina and then in Newton, intending to leave Jay.
"She would panic and say, 'I've got to get back before he gets home from work,' just scared to death. She would drive all the way there for maybe an hour and turn around and drive home. She did that a couple of times when I lived in Newton."
Karen left Jay to stay at the domestic violence shelter many times, Sue said, but she kept going back to Jay.
"She would miss her pets and wonder how they were doing," she said. "One of his controls, Jay, was to strangle cats, throw cats against the wall, kill her cats, take them out in the country and shoot them in front of her.
"[He would say,] 'If you ever leave me, this is what will happen to you. I will hunt you down like the dog you are and kill you.' We believed that. My husband and I believed it. She believed it," Sue said.
"When Jeremiah lived at home, he would threaten Jeremiah. 'I will torture him in front of you. I will kill him and then kill you and kill me,'" Sue said of Jay's words to Karen.
"Then, when Jeremiah left, it turned to me. 'I will kill your sister. You'll have to watch. I'll kill you and then kill me,'" Sue said of Jay's words.
Jeremiah said he was frustrated with his mother for not leaving his father.
“Then I saw what happened any time she tried,” he said.
Jeremiah moved out of his parents' house when he was 19. He initially thought the abuse stopped. "Because I was told I was the reason," he said.
“If we did something he didn’t like, it was bad, man,” Jeremiah said.
Not enough evidence
Sue said Karen would call her and tell her Jay was on the porch.
“I would call the police, and they would say, ‘We’ll talk to him,'” Sue said. “[This happened] 20 times or so.”
“She went directly to the police and said he’s hitting me,” Jeremiah said.
By this time, Jeremiah said, her memory was scrambled.
She was going to the police station two to three times a week, Jeremiah said.
"They would just take her back to the house and say, 'Jay, she says you're hitting her.' 'Oh no, she doesn't know what she's talking about,' [Jay would say] and in she'd go," Jeremiah said.
When Karen was living in Victoria, she filed a protection from abuse order against Jay.
Jay owned a number of guns and voluntarily placed them in the hands of the Victoria Police as he was barred from possessing firearms under the order, according to Victoria Police records.
By the time the protection from abuse order was in place in about 2016, Victoria Police Chief Cole Dinkel said Karen's mental health had deteriorated significantly.
Sue was driving from Newton in an attempt to take care of her sister, who was living alone with Jay out of the house because of the protection from abuse order.
Police reports from the time said Karen often forgot to shower. Her house and clothes also smelled of cat urine as she struggled to care for her home and her animals.
Dinkel said Karen reported abuse, but they were instances that had happened years early. There were never any visible marks on her, and she never called while the alleged violence was occurring, he said. She also made reports and then refused to press charges days later, according to reports from that time.
Karen was taken to Options Domestic and Sexual Violence Services, and that organization brought her back to Victoria, Dinkel said.
Dinkel said he did not have enough evidence to arrest Jay.
"You can't take a man's freedom on a hunch," Dinkel said.
Dinkel said there was one instance in which Jay showed up at the couple's home in Victoria to deliver groceries. The protection from abuse order was in effect, so Dinkel asked Jay to leave. He gave Jay a warning, and Jay left. A report was filed, but no charges.
Dinkel worked with Karen when she was a dispatcher in Hays. He said he regarded her as a friend and tried to get her help. The Department of Children and Families and the Ellis County Attorney's Office were both contacted in regard to Karen. Dinkel said he hoped to establish a care and treatment case.
However, Charlene Brubaker of the Ellis County Attorney's Office said Karen needed someone to serve as her guardian. Sue said she was interested in establishing a power of attorney for Karen, but Dinkel said Karen resisted, telling him she was afraid her sister would institutionalize her.
In 2016, Karen and Jay jointly requested the protection from abuse order to be lifted.
In a report from that time, Dinkel wrote that Karen asked him, "Am I doing the right thing?"
Dinkel said he has no regrets and expressed frustration that he and his colleagues are now being portrayed as "bad guys." He said because Karen was his friend, he went above and beyond to try to help her.
"The entire situation was a mess from the start to the finish," he said.
He added, "You can only help a person as much as they want help. Karen took three steps back for every one step forward."
Jeremiah said he was reluctant to work with the Victoria Police Department because of his father's relationship with them, although Dinkel said he was no more than Jay's acquaintance.
Jeremiah said, “I never tried to report the abuse because my dad had very good friends in the police department, and frankly, we knew it would get back to him.
“I couldn’t afford to put my family through the possibility of what he might do,” Jeremiah said.
“I was terrified of him. We all were,” he said.
Sue said she also called the Hays Police Department, where Karen had worked as a dispatcher. They said they could not do anything because Karen and Jay lived outside of their jurisdiction in Victoria.
Brain damage
After years of abuse, Karen's body and brain showed the effects.
She began forgetting things. It was hard for her to care for herself. Jay claimed she had dementia.
"It was hard to watch. You would never think she was that age. You had to help her learn how to make a plate of food because she didn't know how to do it," Kayci, Jeremiah's wife, said.
At one point, Karen wandered away from her house. Jay was on the road, so the police called Jeremiah to assist his mom.
Jeremiah and Kayci told Jay they would help care for Karen.
“If you can’t deal with this, maybe you should put her in a home or something,” Jeremiah said.
"'I ain't putting her in a Goddamn home, and I'm not paying for that shit,'" Jay told Jeremiah. "'I'll take care of your mom.'"
Karen separated from Jay about five years before her death. She filed for divorce.
Sue sought the opinion of a neurologist who diagnosed brain damage due to repeated head injuries.
Because of Karen's declining health, Sue was trying to gain guardianship.
However, Karen had left beloved pets at the house she shared with Jay. She went back to Jay one last and final time. She dropped the divorce filing.
Jay's control over Karen's life tightened even more. Jeremiah said she was no longer allowed to have keys to a vehicle or a cell phone.
Although Jay allowed Karen to attend some family functions with him present, he completely cut off contact between Jeremiah, his wife and children, and Sue, Jeremiah and Sue said.
Jeremiah said he only saw his mother twice in the years leading up to her death when he bumped into his parents at a store.
“He 100 percent isolated her, at least from us,” Jeremiah said.
Jeremiah would see Facebook posts of his mother in the hospital. He tried to contact his father to find out his mother's condition. Jay would not respond.
"It was his life. Her life that she had that she created, it was over," Kayci, Jeremiah's wife, said.
Scarlett Deutscher, Karen's longtime friend, saw her friend occasionally in the community, but she wasn't the same.
She would forget things, Deutscher said.
She recalled seeing Jay and Karen at a local convenience store.
"I feel bad about it, now looking back," she said. "I would see them every now and again. He said, 'Yeah, Karen's in the car.' I went to the car to go say hi to her. She just wasn't there. I could look into her eyes. I could still make contact with her, and she would kind of look at me and smile."
Deutscher said she thought Jay had finally stepped up to take care of Karen.
"But it was all a big lie he told a best friend," she said, "but I believed it. I believed him that he was taking care of her when, in essence, he wasn't. He was beatin' her. He was being very cruel to her. He was not taking care of her as she should be as a dependent."
“As someone you love. You just don’t do that,” she said.
Editor's note: Scarlett Deutscher is an employee of Eagle Media, which is the parent company of the Hays Post.
How to get help
If you are a survivor of domestic or sexual violence, you can receive help in a variety of ways. You can walk into an Options office at 2716 Plaza, Hays, or 1480 W. Fourth, Colby. You can call Options' 24-hour helpline at 1-800-794-4624 or text HOPE to 847411.
The Options website, https://help4abuse.org/, offers a live chat option or video conference with an advocate.
The website has a safe escape button that allows you to quickly close out of the website and erase your cookies, so anyone who is on the computer after you will not be able to see that you have been on the website.
Options has a free app for Android and Apple devices called "My Mobile Options."