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E-mail Story'Joanie died a sad woman,' friend says
This story originally appeared July 11, 2003
| Thursday, Feb 15 2007 1:52 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, Feb 15 2007 1:52 PM
Joanie Harper spent the Saturday before she died upset.
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Photos:
Joanie Harper and baby Marshall Harper.
This photo shows, in front Marques Harper and Lyndsey Harper. In back are Joanie Harper and Earnestine Harper.
Joanie Harper and Lyndsey Michelle Harper.
Confronted with the realization that the man she loved had lied again, she rushed out of her home, according to a friend who also had a child by him.
The truth hurt. Harper couldn't take it.
The last time Shann Kern saw Harper she was speeding away in her black Jeep Cherokee. She had a gut feeling where the mother of three was going.
"She was irritated, pacing. She seemed real fidgety," Kern said. "She didn't even say bye. She just gets her keys, gets in the car and speeds off."
Three days later, Harper, her three children and her mother, Earnestine, were all dead.
"I feel Joanie died a sad woman, a broken-hearted woman," Kern said. "I understand her pain."
It was a despair they both shared. Their punishment for daring to care about the same man -- Vincent Brothers.
He was Harper's husband, but 14 years ago he was engaged to Kern. When she became pregnant with their daughter, Margaret, the relationship quickly soured.
Before Margaret was even born, Brothers had married a different woman, Angela Denise Richardson, court records show.
But that was the past.
Brothers was now married to Harper, and Kern said she wanted her daughter to have a good relationship with Harper's three children, who shared a father.
"I put my personal hurt aside and did what was in the best interest for Margaret," Kern said. "(Brothers) knew that I always had Margaret above everything."
In an exclusive interview with The Californian from a location she doesn't want disclosed, Kern spoke of her relationship with the couple and of conversations she had with the Harpers shortly before their deaths.
Thursday, July 3
Kern called to speak to Joanie but ended up talking for an hour-and-a-half with Earnestine Harper about their suspicions over Brothers.
Three weeks earlier, the Harpers and Brothers planned to attend 14-year-old Margaret's junior high graduation.
Looking back, friends say, that's where Brothers behavior finally started unraveling.
After disinviting the Harpers, he was secretive and sketchy, calling Kern from a cell phone the day before the graduation, claiming he was driving to her home in another county around 11:30 p.m. on June 17.
He asked her about her "man situation." She told him to find a hotel room.
Graduation day came and went and Brothers was nowhere to be found. He left five or six odd messages on her answering machine, claiming he was confused and lost.
"We decided that was the end of that chapter (in their relationship)," Kern said. "(Margaret's) not going through this the next four years of high school. So we stood over a fire and burnt all his (phone) numbers."
Weeks later, Earnestine Harper "flat out" asked Kern what happened at graduation. As the two women talked, Kern said they both came to the same conclusion -- Brothers was lying.
Kern said Brothers told his wife and mother-in-law there was no graduation, and that Kern had lied about it. Still, he didn't explain his whereabouts that June day.
He brought travel brochures of the city where his daughter lives to show Earnestine Harper where he'd been, but she wasn't buying it.
"We concluded that he didn't go. He does that kind of stuff, playing like he did something when the whole time he did nothing," Kern said. "I told Earnestine I was in fear that he was trying to get at me." It was widely known by friends and acquaintances that Brothers had other women in his life.
It took police investigating the murders of the Harper family only hours to learn about the other women. Court records show he had at least one other girlfriend and maintained a close relationship with another woman who he had romanced in the past.
As the two women talked about Brothers, Earnestine Harper told Kern her daughter recently had another baby by him. She told Kern that Brothers was slowly sneaking his things out of the home he shared with the women to a "secret" apartment in another part of town. Court documents show Brothers has an apartment on Real Road, information he hid from his wife.
"She said he only had a few things left (in the house), a jacket, some old clothes and one or two big things. She said, 'I'm going to tell him that he needs to get this out of the house,'" Kern said.
Earnestine Harper wanted Brothers out of her daughter's life, and Kern felt Brothers knew it. There was no love lost between the two. Earnestine Harper believed Brothers hated her. Kern said Earnestine called him "a snake."
She said Brothers had a lot of women over the years, in addition to his three wives. And there are many more children, she said.
He had a way of driving his girlfriends and wives from their families, or purposely searching for girls who had nothing, she said. But it was harder this time.
"Joanie had her mother. With everybody else, he always got away with it because there was nobody stepping up and fighting for us. But Joanie's mom did. I know she did," Kern said.
Kern said the woman was concerned about how her daughter let Brothers come and go as he pleased.
Saturday, July 5
With little to do for the weekend, Kern decided to catch the Greyhound bus and spend the Fourth of July holiday with close friends in Bakersfield.
She tried to get her daughter to come, but Margaret wanted to stay home. She was afraid she'd see her father, so Kern went alone.
After spending time with friends, around 8 p.m. on Saturday Kern had a friend drop her by the Harpers. She brought copies of Margaret's graduation pictures, the ones that revealed Brothers' lie.
"I see Joanie and give her the pictures and I hug Earnestine," Kern said. "It seemed to me that Joanie was very irritated. It seemed like she wanted to talk to me."
But she didn't.
Before Kern knew it, Joanie Harper was leaving the house, agitated and restless. She didn't even say a goodbye as she climbed into her SUV and "peeled out."
Kern wasn't expecting the reaction; she thought Earnestine had told Joanie the truth.
"I'm not trying to be the bearer of bad news. She assured me that she would tell Joanie," Kern said. "I don't know if she believed in the Vincent part. I didn't know how it was going to be."
Kern thinks seeing the pictures struck a nerve in Joanie Harper. Watching Joanie roar away, Kern thought she was going to confront Brothers.
Kern said Earnestine Harper told her that Brothers had left to visit his mother around the first of the month, but "Earnestine never thought he left," Kern said. "She said it was just her gut feeling."
Kern would later take a bus back home, thinking of how she wanted to bring Margaret back to Bakersfield to spend time with the Harpers.
Tuesday, July 8
When a friend called Kern Tuesday telling her Joanie, Earnestine and the children were dead, Kern said she and Margaret were in total disbelief.
Kern was sad for the women she'd grown to know and frightened because Margaret was supposed to be there for the weekend.
"I told Margaret, 'Thank God you didn't go because that's where you would have been,'" Kern said.
Kern said she quickly called Brothers' mother, Margaret Brothers, in North Carolina. Kern said she was shocked when his mother said her son wasn't with her, but was in Ohio visiting his brother.
"Earnestine said Vincent was supposed to see his mother a week ago. It wasn't like Vincent was gone a whole week. Vincent should have been at his mom's house and he wasn't," she said.
Kern said his mother was shocked that her grandchildren and in-laws were dead.
After talking to Brothers' mother, Kern called Bakersfield Police Department detectives, giving them as much information as she could about Brothers' whereabouts and where they could contact him and his family.
Then they told her not to call Brothers' mother again.
Thursday, July 10
On Thursday, Shann Kern was scared.
She plans to file for full custody of her daughter. But she can't break down. She can't cry. She doesn't have a choice.
"One of those things I always hated was everybody always saying you've got to be strong, you're a strong woman. I'm so tired of being strong. Can I break down? Can I cry?" Kern said. "But I've got to be strong for my daughter."
She knows how Joanie Harper felt those days before her death.
She used to be her.
"He was always trying to make us look like we were crazy and we are all good women, decent women," Kern said. "Not hookers. Not sluts. We were decent women and all we wanted was a good man."