OPINION|
Jessica Smith tells me hope comes and hope wanes in the seemingly eternal cycle of her daughter's struggles with addiction, mental health issues and incarceration.
Her daughter is Marya Von Brandt, 30, who has spent much of her adult life locked up, mostly in the Greene County Jail.
Von Brandt was 18 when she shot and killed Kevin Engh Nov. 6, 2012. They were in Engh's Mitsubishi car, which was parked off the road near 2009 E. Grand St.
Von Brandt told police she had a “date” with Engh and had performed a sex act on him for money. Then Engh pointed a gun at her.
She said she fought with Engh for control of the gun and accidentally shot him.
Smith tells me her daughter battles addiction and has a history of mental illness. She says she knew her daughter had problems at a young age.
“She has struggled with mental health issues her whole life,” Smith tells me. “It became pretty apparent to me when she was about 4 that there was some stuff going on that I didn't really know what it was.
“She had night terrors, which is kind of the first thing that clued me into her problems. They were pretty severe. … I had her in counseling off and on throughout her life until she was about 14.”
It took years for Marya Von Brandt to become ‘mentally competent' to stand trial
It took five years for the criminal case against Von Brandt to be resolved in Greene County's court system — in large part because it was difficult to improve Von Brandt's mental health status. She needed to be judged “mentally competent” to stand trial.
She pleaded guilty in July 2017 to involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action and was sentenced to nine years in prison — with credit for the four years and seven months she had spent in the Greene County Jail. Von Brandt was originally charged with second-degree murder.
I wrote a column for the Springfield News-Leader about her grandparents' difficulties trying to provide her with reading material, including a Bible, while she was locked up in the county jail.
I met Von Brandt's grandparents at their home and remember them to be kind and educated.
David Adams, her grandfather, was a retired Missouri State University history professor. Meredith L. Adams also was a retired MSU history professor. She died Jan. 2, 2023.
David Adams tells me they love their granddaughter, but it's been difficult. The last time he saw Von Brandt was a few years ago when his wife was still alive.
Von Brandt came to their home. She was high and asked for money.
“Unfortunately, that's the last my wife saw her,” David Adams said. “That's regrettable, because she had kind of grown up with us. We took care of her a great deal in her earlier years.”
Released from prison, arrested 10 months later
Von Brandt served her time in state prison, was released Nov. 4, 2019, and 10 months later was arrested and charged with possessing fentanyl and heroin.
On Nov. 10, 2020, she was back in prison.
The charge this time is possession of a controlled substance, a class D felony punishable by up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 under Missouri law.
Court records indicate Von Brandt was arrested near 510 E. Grand St., four houses down the street from her grandparents' house.
When Von Brandt was arrested this time, her mother had a hard time hanging on to hope that her daughter would improve her life.
“I'm going to be completely honest, hope had waned there for a while,” Smith tells me. “She had gone back to using hard drugs and I kind of lost touch with her.”
These days, Smith says she speaks with her daughter several times a week.
Von Brandt is in the care of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, at the Center for Behavioral Health in Kansas City. She has been there about seven months.
“She sounds so much more lucid than I've heard her be in years,” Smith tells me.
I talk to her on phone about treatment
Von Brandt sounded lucid to me, too. I spoke to her by phone on Friday, June 21.
I asked her what she remembered when Engh was shot and killed.
“It's kind of foggy, like I can't exactly remember,” Von Brandt said. “But I remember there was an altercation.”
A News-Leader story that ran Dec. 20, 2012, states that Von Brandt was taken to a police department building in Springfield right after the shooting and a detective spoke with her for “about seven hours.”
The story states another police officer said Von Brandt appeared to be hysterical but did not look like she was intoxicated. The story states that the detective concluded Von Brandt changed her story several times during questioning.
I am not surprised by that, in light of the fact a possibly hysterical 18-year-old suspect was questioned for about seven hours.
Do you have a mental illness?
Von Brandt is receiving care in Kansas City with the objective of having a Greene County judge declare her mentally competent to stand trial for the pending drug charge.
I asked her about her treatment in Kansas City.
“They give me medications,” she tells me. “They monitor my mental health. We have round-the-clock nurses. So they make sure that we're OK mentally. Basically, they just make sure that we're OK.”
What's a typical day like?
“I wake up, and basically, I read the Bible. I go to groups and stuff after we have morning meeting, which is like a touch-up on what we're going to do for the day. We learn about the system more so we can actually go to court and be level headed.
“I have a test coming up this month. And that test will decide whether I stay here for six more months or whether I go back to county jail.”
The test covers the aspects of the Missouri judicial system and, for example, asks what the role of a judge is in a criminal case.
Do you have a mental illness?
“I thought I just had some abstract thoughts, I guess. Which happens to me sometimes still, but they said that I'm schizophrenic. But I think it's just schizo-affective, which is only sometimes. I'm more level-headed than most of the people I see that are schizophrenic, so I don't think I'm totally schizophrenic.”
What's an abstract thought?
“I don't remember when they happen. Often, I'm told, I call other people names. And like, I'll be really upset. I'll just say things like ‘word salad.' That's what the doctor called it. I feel things that don't make any sense. I'm in a panic and I'm just scared. And I don't understand.”
Do you have problems with illegal drugs?
“Yes, it doesn't help.”
What would you need if you were on your own again to stay out of prison, jail or mental health facilities?
“I'm currently homeless once I'm out of here. Unless I can get to a sober-living place that can assist me with getting a job and, and stuff like that. So I could get closer to having a house or something. But I don't know if I can hold a job — so I don't know.”
Have you ever held a job?
“For like a month, but I was always drunk and high.”
What was it like in the Greene County Jail?
In August 2016, the Springfield News-Leader reported Von Brandt was the inmate who had been in the former county jail in downtown Springfield for the longest period of time, at close to four years. The new county jail on West Division Street opened in June 2022.
I asked Von Brandt if she thought she received the care she needed while in the Greene County Jail?
“For the most part, I got what I needed. I think there was like one or two times they had to change my meds, which didn't exactly help, but we got it figured out OK.”
Did you always have a bed or cot?
“No. Sometimes they were over capacity and I had to sleep on the floor.”
‘A kind of ambiguous grief'
As a youngster, Von Brandt also lived with her aunt, Mariya Adams, in Mexico. She is named after her aunt, with a slightly different spelling.
“Marya spent a great deal of time with me when things were not going well in her house,” Adams tell me. “She even came to Mexico, where I was living at the time. She was always a sweet kid, excellent with people who are differently-abled and animals.
“Though her education was spotty at best, she had an active curiosity and liked to read, and at one point was teaching herself Spanish.
“I am speaking of her in the past tense because once things really fell apart, she became a different person,” Mariya Adams tells me. “This created a kind of ambiguous grief for all of us because she is here physically, yet gone mentally.”
Bounced around, never finished high school
By the time her daughter was 14, Smith tells me, Marya Von Brandt was drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana and was difficult to control.
“Marya has always has been a very strong-willed person,” Smith says. “She's not afraid to let you know what she thinks or how she feels.”
Von Brandt was sent to live with her biological father in Crater Lake, Oregon. She started high school there, but after three months, he sent her back to Springfield.
She also attended high school in Liberty, and then at Parkview in Springfield. She never graduated.
In court proceedings, a psychologist described Von Brandt as a 19-year-old with the mental capacity of a 9-year-old.
Smith disputes that.
“I think she's incredibly intelligent. It's more of her behavior and personality that can make her seem like a child.”
Von Brandt's grandfather, David Adams, recalls the good years.
“I'm mighty old. I'm 87. We saw more of her and did more things with her — oh, probably up to when she was 9 or 10 or so — not so much later on. That was because her life was disorderly, to put it mildly.”
This is Pokin Around column No. 195.
