Bound to Kill Teaser: Final Draft of Chapter 1
French Camp is in Choctaw County, nestled in the rolling hills of Northwestern Mississippi, or Miss-ippi as locals call it. The community is sparse, like many simple southern towns, barely more than some outmoded houses, farming equipment, and telephone lines. The view from main street is deceptively flat. In 2003 only three-hundred and ninety-eight people resided in French Camp.
Despite its seeming simplicity, French Camp is home to a historic village, a rainwater observatory and planetarium, and at the core of it all, a fairly prestigious, private Christian academy and boarding school.
Brick columns flank the school’s gravel entryway, over which a ranch styled metal arch reads: French Camp Academy. The town revolves around the 1,000 acre academy campus, which it also surrounds. In the winter it resembles the leafless trees that frame it, and gives an eerie, festive quality.
Alongside the town runs the Natchez Trace Parkway – a traveler’s trail that closely follows the “Old Natchez Trace”, “a historic travel corridor used by American Indians, ‘Kaintucks,’ European settlers, slave traders, soldiers, and future presidents,” according to the National Park Service.
This picturesque route winds its way across four-hundred and fifty miles of mostly forest from Natchez, Mississippi through Alabama to Nashville, Tennessee. Large trucks are not allowed on the Natchez Trace Parkway, and traffic is light, making it a popular route for bikers and for road-trips, camping, and hiking.
French Camp is mile marker 181 on the "Old Trace", the sign for which is displayed near the town’s Historic Village, which sits on the edge of town, parallel to the historic trail. Its proximity to the trail makes it a fun detour for passersby to stretch roadtrip cramped legs and explore the village’s Sorghum demonstration area, carriage house, and blacksmith shop; all of which are run by French Camp Academy.
Travelers can treat themselves to some of Mississippi's famous Mud Cakes and fresh bread pudding at the nearby Council House Café, with a polite, small town note that reads, “Please call a day in advance for any orders over ten.”
A little over a mile away is the modern, dome-shaped structure of the Rainwater Observatory and Planetarium, standing in marked contrast to the rustic cabins and other quaint antiquities on the other side of town. Its secluded location helps the planetarium avoid light pollution from the nearby houses, making it a quiet retreat destination for stargazers and a unique venue for schools and scouting troops to take field-trips.
By 2003, the Rainwater Observatory had sixteen telescopes and nine buildings for viewing on the hill outside the Planetarium center. The facility itself is part of French Camp Academy, and in all actuality, is located just outside the official perimeter of the town, emphasizing how small French Camp really is.
On the outskirts of the small town, at 180 Mount Salem Road, lived the Antons; a family of five if you include Daisy, the bullmastiff who was currently snoozing on the living room floor next to her best friend Travis.
Travis and his wife, Susan, weren’t exactly the type of people you’d expect to live in such a quaint, seemingly peaceful place like French Camp. Travis and Susan were different, and people took notice, especially of Susan, whose appearance and style shocked most of the people that she came across in French Camp.
They moved to the town because of the educational opportunity FCA could offer their two young children, Dell and Neal. The home they bought was affordable and they’d spent the last year renovating it. The area was also quite remote, which provided a barrier of privacy from the world.
Susan was blue-eyed, tall, thin, and sported a shaved head a la Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor, and she would often wear bright colored synthetic wigs. Susan wore fourteen body piercings and five tattoos. One stood out from the others. She had a large, elaborate tattoo designed to look like a choker necklace.
Over her throat was a crucifix pendant, ornamented with a hibiscus flower. The cross was attached to a chain of green vines, through which more hibiscus flowers were woven. The vine crossed like an untied ribbon around the back of her neck. It was an elaborate and unique tattoo and the first thing to draw one’s eye when seeing the thirty-three year old mom of two.
Travis was tall at 6’1”, and thin, with dark shoulder length hair, a trimmed beard, and blue eyes. He had a purple Celtic design tattooed like a cuff around his bicep, matching the one Susan had, back when that meant something. Something resembling love.
By December of 2003 they had been together for just over ten years, and their relationship was not in good shape.
Travis was an incredibly intelligent and driven man. He was also very funny and generally laid-back. He had fallen asleep on the couch that evening, while waiting for Susan to put the kids to bed. It was Tuesday and well past their bedtime.
According to the conversation police had with Susan after her arrest, Travis startled awake on the couch just before midnight. When Susan was passing through the living room on her way to the kitchen he woke up and murmured to her, “Are the kids asleep yet?”
Susan told him no, and that she was going to make a snack for their younger son.
At that point, Travis was rubbing his eyes, exhausted. He was annoyed but couldn’t wait out the kids any longer. Apparently, he wanted to spend some alone time with his wife, but with kids around, sometimes that was not possible.
He had been up for 24-hours, aside from his recent momentary drift off. Susan told investigators that Travis got up off the couch, mumbling something about needing a tranquilizer gun for the two children as he trudged off to bed. Daisy jumped up and trotted after him.
In the Anton’s kitchen, Susan picked out a sauce pot to make some noodles for her young son Neal. The sink was still full of bubbles from a couple hours prior when Travis had been cleaning transmission fluid out of a bucket that he needed for a project he was working on before he dozed off on the couch.
The project was simple: repurposing the bucket to utilize in an enema set-up. The bucket was meant to act as a commode so that Travis could take pictures of Susan sitting on it. He would then upload these to a website he was running called www.deliaday.com.
The website had been running for about a year and was said to have been making a decent chunk of money. Allegedly around $15,000 a month, which in 2003 is worth about $25,000 today (2023).
This had become a fairly normal operation in the Anton home; the kids would go to sleep, and Travis would sometimes get Susan to work on creating content for the Delia Day website. Susan told investigators that she “couldn’t take it anymore”. She didn’t want to be “Delia Day”. She felt like she couldn’t leave her marriage. “Travis gave me no choice” she said.