PORTAGE, Wis.—A member of a band of drifters accused of killing one of their own and torturing an 11-year-old boy said the violence was sparked when the murdered woman admitted she had sexual fantasies about another member of the group.
Candace Clark told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Saturday that tensions among group members rose after Easter, when Tammie Garlin admitted to having sexual fantasies about Clark.
“It all went downhill,” Clark said at the Columbia County Jail. “All the violence started.”
Clark said her boyfriend, Michael Sisk, was angry and felt betrayed, as was Michaela Clerc, a 20-year-old woman who was having an affair with Garlin, 36.
Clark, 23, Clerc, Sisk, 25 and Garlin’s 15-year-old daughter Felicia, have all been charged with Tammie Garlin’s murder and the repeated abuse of Garlin’s 11-year-old son.
On June 14, police went to a house the group had rented in Portage, acting on a tip from Florida detectives searching for Clark’s 2-year-old daughter, whom they believed Clark had abducted from her Florida foster parents.
The group had begun living together in Florida last year and went around the country before renting a home in Portage in February.
Clark said that Sisk had always been extremely controlling and referred to their group as a “cult.” She said he refused even to allow her to take a bath unless he sat in the bathroom with her. Clark said violence toward Garlin and Garlin’s son peaked after Garlin “blurted out” her fantasy about Clark.
On Friday, Clark told reporters from the Portage Daily Register and the Journal Sentinel, “I am not a monster.”
She denied involvement in the murder. As for the other charges she and the others face, she said, “No one’s innocent in this.”
She said that included the boy whose bloody and burned body are described in the criminal complaint.
“Everybody’s making him out to be perfect. He’s not,” she said.
Clark told the Daily Register that Tammie Garlin “was my best friend in the whole world.” But her children did not like their mother, she said.
“She wasn’t a good mom. Her kids hated her,” Clark said.
Clark said social workers have told her her three children, including the 2-year-old girl, “are fine.” She said her family members were heading to Portage.
She said she has been praying for justice while in jail.
“We have a lot of time to think about things in here,” she said. “I have a lot of time to pray. … You just pray for justice—for myself and the rest of them.”
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Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
