Mother of missing comic book writer's son speaks

Each night Krystal Carroll pulls up a photograph of her former "partner" Stephen J. Perry on her iPhone and shows their 5-year-old son.

"We talk to his picture every night and he kisses it," Carroll, 26, said, tears streaming down her face as she sat at her mother's kitchen table.

But Leo Perry can't kiss Daddy in person anymore.

"He knows that Daddy's in heaven," his mother said Wednesday. "He asks me how and what happened, but what do you tell a 5-year-old?"

The photograph Carroll shows her son is one that came from a news story. Zephyrhills police have not confirmed that Perry is dead but they confirmed last week that the 56-year-old original writer for the popular 1980s animated show "Thundercats," was missing from his Zephyrhills home under suspicious circumstances. His roommates 45-year-old James "Jimmy" Davis, 46, and Roxanne Davis, 49, had vanished from their home at 38046 Eighth Ave., as well. They have since been found and arrested on unrelated charges.

Roxanne Davis is being held without bail at the Land O' Lakes Jail on a probation violation charge. Husband James is being held on several charges including failure to appear and drug trafficking. His bail is set at $7,626.

Police haven't publicly confirmed that Perry was the victim of a homicide but have said they are investigating a possible killing.

On May 16, police knocked on the door of Carroll's mother's home where she is staying and called Krystal outside. They said they wanted to talk to her alone.

It was hot out so they sat in a cruiser with the air conditioning cranked. They told her Perry - the man she had until a year ago lived with for eight years - was dead.

"I cried. I cried when they told me," she said, looking tired, her belly seven months pregnant from a new relationship with a fellow carnival worker and friend of Perry's.

Police say that Perry hasn't been seen since May 9. And on May 13 he didn't show up for a court hearing on a temporary domestic violence injunction he had sought and got in April and asked the court to make permanent against Carroll.

It was only a day or so before that when officers told Carroll that Perry was missing and asked her whether she knew where he was. She didn't, she said. They took a DNA sample from her by swabbing her mouth. On May 15, they took a swab of her son's mouth but it didn't make sense to her until later.

On May 14, Hillsborough deputies responded to a call of a foul odor coming from a van at the Quality Inn at Bearss Avenue and Interstate 275. The vehicle had been there for a few days before a guest complained about the smell and an employee investigated and was overwhelmed by the smell when opening the van's door. Deputies found a human body part nearby.

Capt. Rob McKinney has said they are keeping information close to the vest so they don't compromise the investigation while awaiting lab results on the recovered body part. Results hadn't been released by Wednesday evening.

Carroll now knows more than she's saying. She was careful not to share too much, saying she didn't want to upset the investigation.

She said she has been questioned - and cleared of any involvement in Perry's disappearance and is helping authorities as much as she can. She even picked out the Davises -- whom she only saw in passing at Perry's home when she was caring for him after he had recent surgery to have seven cancerous tumors removed from his bladder - from photo packs of suspects. She and her son left the home April 30 and she said she hasn't seen or spoken to him since.

He got angry at her, she said, and told her to leave. She said she thinks he didn't recall that days before he asked her to stay because he was too out of it from pain medications.

That same day Perry asked a Pasco circuit judge to grant him a temporary restraining order against Carroll, alleging that Carroll hit him in the head days before when he tried to go to police with Leo after she snatched his cell phone when he tried to dial 911.

The restraining order was granted but dismissed when Perry didn't' show for court May 13.

"The whole injunction thing was being vindictive about getting custody," Carroll said, denying she hit him. "We have never been like that. Never."

On April 26, Carroll asked the courts to give her emergency custody of Leo. After seeing that Perry could hardly take care of himself she wanted to make sure Leo was in her care.

"During my stay he was completely incoherent, immobile, tried to sleep standing up," she wrote in the petition for custody. "... I am afraid my son will be roaming the house alone while his father is passed out from the medication and a strange boarder occupies one room."

Minutes after Perry's domestic violence injunction was granted against Carroll, she was granted custody of their son.

After being diagnosed with bladder cancer about a year ago, Carroll said, Perry's prognosis even with surgery was grim. He was given two years to live, she said.

"I think what hurt him the most was knowing that he was going to die," Carroll said. "He wanted to hang onto whatever he had and love it - Leo."

But it might have been his problem with pain pills that might have taken everything from him sooner. He had even asked "Jimmy" to get him pain medicines on the black market, she wrote to the court.

"He did anything he could to not be in pain," she said. "He didn't' want to suffer."