Imaginary Monsters Chased Jonny Holden All His Life, Then a Real One Caught Him

Looking back, there were so many things she would have done differently. Above all else, she would have filed that missing person report. That way, they would have known someone was looking for Jonny. That way, they would have known that someone did, in fact, claim this man.

One of Sharon Bristow's earliest memories of her nephew Jonny took place when he was roughly 5 months old. Her sister Elizabeth had phoned their mother, Catherine Ciravolo, from somewhere in the desert, between Indio, California, and Palm Springs. She'd hitchhiked to a filling station with Jonny and his brother, abandoning her car. She needed a ride.

Brandon Thibodeaux

Jennifer Ciravolo, sister of Jonny, near his unmarked grave.

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Email the author at brantley.hargrove@dallasobserver.com

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• Jennifer Ciravolo
• Catherine Ciravolo
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Before long, Bristow pulled up. She tried to take Jonny from her sister, a beautiful young woman with long, dark hair. Jonny's diaper was soaked and needed changing. But Elizabeth insisted on seeing her teeth first. She said it was because she had to be sure Bristow wouldn't eat Jonny. Bristow took them back to Catherine's house in Palm Springs, where she lived with Jennifer, but Elizabeth didn't stay long. She got into an argument with her mother over the children and set off on foot with Jonny on her hip, wearing sea-green pajamas and clutching a yellow bottle of clabber milk. Bristow found them again a short time later, three miles down the road, heading for Interstate 10. She coaxed her sister into the car once again. This time, the police were waiting when they returned to their mother's house. Elizabeth was involuntarily committed. Jonny never knew his father, a roughneck Elizabeth married briefly in Pecos, Texas, so Jonny's grandmother Catherine was given custody of him.

Roughly two years later, in 1983, Elizabeth made the front page of the Record-Gazette in Banning, California. She led police on a high-speed chase, topping out at 80 mph. It ended when she rammed two squad cars. Police said they had "no idea" why she ran, the paper reported. "She said she was scared," an officer remarked, "but didn't give a reason."

Elizabeth was never more than a temporary presence in Jonny's life. He was raised by his grandmother Catherine, a switchboard operator who retired at the age of 40 following a stroke. She was a sturdily built woman, yet she had a long, graceful neck and delicate features. Jonny could have been her son. They had the same wide-set eyes, and the same gap between their two front teeth. She doted on him, but her mood oscillated wildly. Sometimes she was warm and effusive. At others, she sobbed inconsolably and threatened suicide. Jennifer had to call the police more than once. She begged them to take her and Jonny away, but they never would. It was at times like these, when their grandmother was immobilized by depression, that Ciravolo, just a child herself, fed her brother, bathed him and changed his diapers.

She was the little girl who got a Baby Alive doll each Christmas, and now she was responsible for a real one. She often took Jonny on long walks in his stroller. As they were tugged along in their grandmother's peripatetic existence, Ciravolo and Jonny were inseparable. They never stayed in one place for long, picking up randomly and moving to points in east Oklahoma, California and the Texas coast. Wherever they went, Catherine always kept fishing rods in the trunk. Ciravolo remembered crabbing in the bay near Channelview and fishing in Texas City.

Despite Catherine's tempestuous swings in mood, life with her could be fun. Or it was, until Ciravolo turned 15. She was increasingly at odds with her grandmother. And one day, when they were living in Thousand Palms, California, Catherine took Jonny and left. Ciravolo was on her own. She didn't see as much of Jonny after that. They stayed with her for a short time in California when Jonny got caught with a pistol at his middle school in Idabel, Oklahoma. Catherine abandoned the first house she had ever bought and fled with him. The bank repossessed it. After a few months, they left and relocated to Paris, Texas. Though Ciravolo didn't see Jonny daily, she called him every chance she got, and she always remembered to send him a gift on his birthday.

It wasn't until Catherine was moved into a nursing home that Ciravolo lived with Jonny again. He stayed with her and her two sons in an apartment in Euless in 2000. That year he was the happiest she had ever seen him. He was around 18 years old, though developmentally he was much younger. They fished often in Lake Ray Roberts and in a wet-weather creek that flowed past their home. He would leave with her sons for hours at a time, wandering through the woods, only to return covered in mud. She took him to his first honky-tonk in the Fort Worth Stockyards. Jonny was shy. "Nobody wants to dance with me," he told her. She pushed him in the direction of a girl who had caught his eye and said, "Go on." Jonny ambled over to her in his straw cowboy hat and asked her to dance with him. She said yes, and they swayed to a country ballad. "He had a big ol' smile on his face when the song was over."