One Father's Story

Matt’s Red Bird

By C. Dale Sprewell
February 12, 2004

On January 27, 1998, after his mother re-grounded him for skipping school, Matthew Ryan Sprewell, age 16, decided his life was not what he wanted it to be. He took one of my handguns, several sets of clothes, and with his mother pleading for him not to, he ran away. The only person to see him alive again was his girlfriend whom he visited immediately after leaving home.

After Matt left, there was an intense search by family and friends for the next 20 days. Personally, I looked day and night. I can never forget Cuz (Larry Lane). No matter the time of day I was looking, if he knew about it and was not working, he was in the front seat with me. When we were searching at night, he would shine this huge spotlight in people’s back yards hoping we might spot a black Ford Ranger pickup truck. We knew if we got caught doing this we would have some problems, but it didn’t matter. We had a mission, to find a lost confused child before it was too late.

I told my boss I had to do what I had to do, find Matt. My boss said “I cannot blame you. I would do the same thing. We will be here when you find him.” So every morning for the next few weeks, I was at the Sheriff’s office when the deputies came out of their briefing. I would find whom I needed and see if there were any new developments. I always got the same story: no one had seen him yet. So, I would then give them any information I had and be on my way to ride the roads and look. Matt might be in the next parking lot I rode by or the next dirt road I rode down, I just could not wait for him to come to me.

I was only sleeping two to four hours a night and was running on pure adrenaline.  On the second morning of Matt’s disappearance, I was sitting on the couch in the dark drinking a cup of coffee around 4:30 a.m.  I started to cry. I thought to myself, “You are the most pitiful, self-centered human in the world. Here you have a confused, lost child out in a mean world and you sit here in the dark crying and wanting sympathy.” At that point, I willed myself never to cry again until Matt was safe. There simply was not enough time to waste it crying. I had to be looking for Matt.

For reasons we will never know in this life, God did not answer the many prayers of family and friends. On the cold dreary day of February 16, 1998 Matt was found. He was sitting in the seat of his truck behind the steering wheel, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The truck battery was dead from the ignition key being in the accessory position. He had chosen to die by his own hand listening to what the GBI investigator described as the “worst of the worst music.” The music was by a group called Metallica. Their music is sick and suggestive. The CD he had been playing included one song full of self-pity that even tells you to take nails and seal your own coffin. And yes, Matt knew he was forbidden to listen to this type music. He made the decision. This happened to be another of his decisions that was not a good one.

After the memorial service, we began the ‘Life without Matt’ segment of our lives. We still had Michael, Matt’s younger brother by seven years, to think of and to get through this with as few scars as possible. So Janis, Michael and I, terribly wounded by the tremendous amount of rejection forced upon us, began to take a few small steps in pulling our lives back together. Janis and Michael did a much better job at this than I. She immediately put her heart and soul in God’s hands. For me, it would not be so easy. I felt like someone had sneaked into our lives and stolen Matt from us. The more I learned about the parasitic people Matt was hanging around the more I detested them. I was convinced they were responsible for this. I was determined to get answers and get even. I took an unhealthy position.

During the time of Matt’s disappearance and subsequent death, Janis, Michael and I were supported by our family, friends and community beyond anything we could have ever hoped for. I do want to recognize and offer appreciation for the relentless spiritual backing of one individual. He was able help get my family and I through the darkest period of time we could ever imagine and one I did not think possible to live through. The person is the Rev. J. Howard Cobble, the retired pastor of Tabernacle Baptist, Carrollton, GA. He is the reason I survived this ordeal and am able to receive God’s blessings for the future.

As time went by I would learn that Matt had been pulled in many directions. There were three different cliques in school and Matt tried to belong to each one. So through his own choices he was just adding to his confusion. According to his autopsy, he had no traces of cocaine, marijuana or alcohol in his blood. However, I feel his behavior mirrored methamphetamine use, but he was not tested for that and his blood samples have been destroyed so we will never know. Regardless of whether it was his own hormones or some other chemical driving his behavior, the soft-spoken gentle Matt will be the one we will always hold in our hearts.

Ever so slowly, our lives were moving toward the new normal we were forced to accept. We did not know where this would eventually end up and did not know if we would still fit when we got there. I know I asked God many times, “Why me? Why was I chosen for this duty?” For a long time I felt that if I could just get in front of the person responsible for bringing Matt down, I could get some answers. At the time, it was impossible to see it but now I realize that Matt’s reasons for doing what he did were like drops in a glass of water. There were too many to count and no single one reason for his decision to suicide stood out.

Not long after Matt’s memorial service, I was still very distraught over my inability to come up with definite answers and to convince myself that Matt did this. I decided to visit the Carroll County District Attorney’s office.  I met with two of their representatives and told them rather strongly I was dissatisfied with my answers so far and I desperately needed their help. I explained how the sheriff’s office had not convinced me and neither had the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that this was suicide. I challenged them to prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Matt pulled the trigger. They assured me they could and they would.

In the very beginning of my life without Matt, I prayed for only one thing. I asked God to show me a sign that I would know Matt did this. All the time I was asking for this I was also realizing how impossible this request would be to fill. But, as head of our household, I felt it my duty to somehow provide my family with an answer.

Why was I so driven for these answers? Because I was only 50/50 that Matt could have done this. We still had many questions that were unanswered and many of them raised some strong suspicions. So many questions that I even sat down and made a list of reasons why he ‘could’ have done this and a list of reasons why he ‘could not’ have done this. It took me a long time to admit that the ‘could’ list was much longer. In the meantime, I kept praying for my sign, a sign I would recognize as pertaining to Matt.

Here, I would like to digress a bit. In my family, there is an old superstition that when you saw a red cardinal, it was a positive sign or a sign of good luck, so you made a wish. As Matt was growing up, we would be riding down the road, see a red bird, comment on it and make a wish. If Janis were with us, she would have some fun with our superstitious ways, but we did it anyway.

With a lot of agony, our days without Matt slowly started to go by. My prayers for a sign were constant. One day, we noticed a bright red male cardinal continuing to flutter against our windows. This could not go unnoticed because the house was designed so it had many windows. At first, this seemed normal, just a seasonal romantic ritual that would run its course.

Over time, the persistence of this bird was becoming more obvious. We even had visitors comment on it. He would begin by flying into the window, hitting the glass with his beak and his feet.  He would flutter his wings against the glass and then go to another window and repeat the process. Many times when I would be upstairs the bird would be doing this, so I would go downstairs and the bird would go to a downstairs window. I would go back upstairs and he would go back to an upstairs window. Often I would be up shaving before any daylight was present. With no other lights on in the house other than the bathroom, I could hear this bird hitting on a window in our bedroom. Many times I told Janis I was going to let this bird in the house just to see if it would go to Matt’s bedroom. As the windows begin to become streaked from the oil off the bird, it became necessary to clean them often. After several months, we began to recognize this as very unusual behavior in that the bird was still continuing to come every day. This was obviously not the norm for a male cardinal. It had gone on far too long. During the year that the red bird visited us, I had many thoughts on his purpose but nothing made logical sense.

As the days became weeks and the weeks became months after Matt’s death, Janis and I were just trying to put our lives back together and trying to be there for Michael. Counseling had helped all of us but the void was always there and ready to swallow us. We never imagined we would have to deal with this much rejection had we lived three lifetimes. Every day, we felt as if we had walked to the edge of hell, looked in and were trying to decide if we wanted to join or not. I must admit, at times this idea of joining was considered and looked pretty good.

It seemed the only constant in our lives was the sun rising and the red bird fluttering on the windows every day. Our healing was so slow it felt as if nothing was improving. I often wondered if I would ever hear from the District Attorney’s office. When I would occasionally call them they would tell me they were working on it. I was now working for a company in Birmingham, AL which was keeping me very busy and that was proving to be good therapy.

At work one morning, 12 months after my initial visit, I get a call from the DA’s office. I was told they had information ready for me to review. When I asked if the information would be my proof, I was reassured my questions would be answered. I set a meeting for that afternoon and left the office immediately. On the way, I called my uncle, W.J. Robison, and asked him to join me. Since W.J. is a former sheriff, I felt he would be very helpful in interpreting whatever it was we were going to be looking at. In addition, he had been totally involved as well as offering invaluable counsel during Matt’s search and I knew he would want to help with this.

When we arrived, they showed us to a conference room, told us the information was in a notebook about two inches thick there on the table. We were told to take as much time as needed. They closed the door and left us in the room alone. As we began to go through the information page by page, it became obvious we were looking at copies of documents from the investigation. About a quarter of the way through the notebook, I noticed a page that really caught my eye. It was the first interrogation with Matt’s girlfriend. What caught my attention was the way the information on the copy was presented. Only the first third of the page had been copied. It was obvious a plain piece of paper had been used to block the rest of the page from being copied. The way it had been placed, it brought attention to the last sentence. Matt’s girlfriend had been asked what she and Matt talked about when he came by her house after running away from home. Her simple answer was “Our relationship.”

The interrogation had not stopped there, only the information we were allowed to read. Alone, her answer seems insignificant. But as I told my uncle W.J., knowing the entire story, her two words provide the answer I had been looking and praying for over the past year.

Herein lies the answer. Before leaving home, Matt had been grounded for the previous six weeks for lack of studying and therefore poor grades. During this period, he had been putting extra study time in and was bringing home copies of his tests that showed improving grades. I thought I would offer some incentive. So, on a Sunday night I asked him if he would like to drive his truck instead of riding the school bus. I explained that since I was seeing improvement he could drive to school and back only. He jumped at the opportunity and promised me this is all he would do. This worked good for Monday but he and his girlfriend skipped school on Tuesday. They were caught, his mother was informed and when Matt got home he was grounded again. This is when he left home and as best as we can determine, went straight to his girlfriend. This is also when they talked about “Our relationship.”

Sitting there in the DA’s room, I told W.J. my understanding of what happened. Matt knew he was in trouble. He had thrown away the trust we had put in him, he had left his mother standing in the drive crying and begging him not to leave. Having never shown any animosity of this type before, he was burning a major bridge. He had then gone to the only place he thought he had left for sympathy and understanding and she did not need him anymore. She had been sitting at home for six weeks because he couldn’t go anywhere and she was tired of that. So, when she told him she was breaking up with him, his whole world collapsed. Now, in his mind, he thought he had burned all his bridges had nobody left and nowhere to go. I went on to tell W.J. I had come to the DA’s that day prepared to get my answer, hire a private investigator and/or hire a lawyer. I had my answer now. It may not be what I wanted but I had prayed for an answer and I had received it.

After dropping off W.J., I headed home. As I am driving I am talking to God and Matt about the answer I have just received. I then hear Matt’s voice and it is as plain as if he is sitting in the car with me. “Dad, I did it, I killed myself. But I am OK. I am not where I want to be but I am OK.”

As soon as I arrived home that night, I gathered Janis and Michael at the table and told the whole story. I explained about my efforts in seeking a sign, how I had involved the DA’s office and W.J. and what we had viewed there. I explained that I had a direct sign from God to my question “Did Matt kill himself?” I repeated to them what I had heard Matt say. I then told them “To prove this is what happened, the red bird we all three acknowledge has been beating on our windows for the past year will never return to our house. This will stand as the direct sign from God that Matt killed himself, but he is OK.”

Matt’s red bird never returned to our home in Carrolton, Georgia.

Matt’s memorial service was held on February 19, 1998. Three days later on February 22, Matt would have turned 17.