My housekeeper told me before she died she had a story to tell. Her secret past still gives me chills

Lee Metoyer was dying. Now 72 years old, the beloved housekeeper had been such an integral part of the Krilich family, they could hardly imagine a world without her in it.

She’d arrived on the doorstep of their sprawling Barrington, Illinois, home nearly three decades earlier – her life before that day shrouded in secrecy.

The Krilich children – Sandra, her four older sisters and baby brother – had always been discouraged from asking questions about her past, lest they scare her off or cause offense. 

But, of course, they’d pieced snippets of the puzzle together over the years.

They knew, for instance, that she’d come to them after a terrible tragedy – her son, Pierre, and husband had both been killed in a devastating car wreck. 

Lee had still been grieving and had spent a long time in hospital recovering from the loss. She kept her treasured photographs of them by her bed until the day she died.

Then there was the fact that she wore a full set of dentures, having lost her teeth in some unnamed accident, was a little hunched over and walked with a shuffle. 

What had caused these injuries? They never asked. And, in time, as they grew to love her, the answer simply ceased to matter.

Lee had hinted, once or twice, that she had a story to tell; one day she’d write her memoir, she would say, and no one would believe it

Lee had even hinted, once or twice, that she had a story to tell; one day she’d write her memoir, she would say, and no one would believe it.

Yet she never put pen to paper. And now, as she lay dying, she grasped Sandra’s hand and begged her to tell the story for her.

Except Sandra hadn’t a clue where to start.

It took another 23 years before she was able to honor Lee’s final wish and uncover her disturbing past and astonishing resilience.

‘I had no idea how I was going to write the story of a woman who’d sidestepped every personal question I’d ever asked her,’ writes Sandra in The Housekeeper’s Secret.

‘Whenever I’d asked about her childhood, her family, her love life, her educational experiences, or anything else personal, she’d offered only a wisp of an answer, like, “Oh, that was a long time ago,” then ended the conversation with, “Finish your homework.”

‘I’d always thought it strange she revealed so little, but I assumed the deaths of her husband and child had been so painful she’d simply wanted to leave her past in the past.’

The truth was so much worse.

The man in the photo that Lee called her husband – Sandra was never able to identify him

Lee treasured this photograph of a baby she claimed had died in a car smash and was called Pierre. Sandra now believes the boy was either Tony or Joey

Lee (in white, sitting) became an integral part of the Krilich family and was like a second mother to the six children

Sandra’s search led her from a slave plantation in Louisiana to the haunted tunnels beneath a long closed psychiatric hospital, where she swore she could still hear the tormented screams of former patients subjected to horrific abuse.

It also led her to Lee’s biological family – her siblings and five children – who had long assumed that she had died. 

Lee had been born Leaner Mae Metoyer, the youngest of five, in Louisiana, before moving to Chicago with her parents.

One December night in 1940, while walking home from work through Grant Park, she was beaten and gang raped. The attack was so brutal, even her own parents couldn’t recognize her.

‘Most of her teeth had been punched out,’ writes Sandra. ‘Her hands, feet, ankles and hips were broken in multiple places.’

She continues: ‘The snow they found her in was drenched with blood… Doctors said she only survived because she’d been lying frozen in the snow all night, which slowed the bleeding.’

The revelation finally made sense of Lee’s false teeth, ‘the odd way she stood, and the deformities of her hands and feet,’ she writes.

Around two months after the beating, Lee’s physical scars were starting to heal, but emotionally she was in terrible shape. She was still unable to walk or speak, and would wake up at night screaming.

It was around this time that her doctors also discovered she was pregnant as a result of the rape.

Her parents – who were both fighting cancer at the time and unable to care for their deeply traumatized daughter – made the difficult decision to send her to Manteno State Hospital, a place now known to have not only used horrific physical punishment on patients, but sexual abuse was also rife.

It was there that her first child, Pierre, was born.

Lee and Barbara always wondered why their beloved housekeeper had dentures and walked with a shuffle

Lee, Sandra, their father Robert Sr and Debbie at Sandra’s wedding in 1991

The Housekeeper’s Secret: A Memoir by Sandra Schnakenburg is published by She Writes Press. The names of Lee’s children have been changed to protect their privacy

The then-19-year-old, still barely able to form a coherent sentence, was forbidden from keeping the child in the asylum. So Pierre was sent to live with Lee’s older brother and his new wife as they waited for her to recover.

But still her condition showed no sign of improving. Her trauma was exacerbated by the death of her mother, and in an attempt to see results, doctors subjected her to three months of inhumane electroshock therapy. 

She was granted home visits, but these proved difficult for everyone as she refused to move from a chair, even to use the toilet – she just sat in her own mess, staring at Pierre.

Then, during one visit home, she was raped again – this time by a distant relative – resulting in a second pregnancy.

Another family member took the baby girl, Angel, in.

Over a period of 13 years at Manteno, Lee had two more children – Tony and Serenity – to a married man who held a senior position at the hospital. She believed he loved her, but he undoubtedly abused a desperately vulnerable young woman in his care.

Both children were sent to foster homes, and the man’s name never appeared on their birth certificates.

‘It seemed every step of this story was like another punch in the gut,’ writes Sandra. ‘I felt rage. Sick, burning rage. I wanted to destroy this guy and burn down the hospital.’

A fifth child, Joey, was born to an unknown father, and none of the family knew what had happened to him.

‘Even just one of the horrors… would be enough to break some people permanently,’ says Sandra. ‘But Lee was a pillar of strength to our family. She was all positive. She was the kindest, wisest, most capable person I’ve ever known.’

Lee with Debbie at her wedding – ‘she was the best thing that ever happened to our family’

Lee dancing with Joey, the first family grandson, at Debbie’s wedding

Lee was ‘an extraordinary blessing… she was deeply loved to the end’

A confused Sandra questioned: ‘Was this the story she wanted me to write? It was dark, sad, and so full of loss, I didn’t think I could bring myself to share it with the world.

‘And even if I could, I needed to find the meaning, to understand the hows and whys.’

That meaning became clear after she managed to track down Lee’s first son Pierre – ‘the man I’d always thought had died tragically in childhood.’

In a nerve-wracking first phone call, Pierre hesitated to ask the biggest question on his mind, about the mother who had been missing for most of his life.

‘She had a good life with your family, is that right?’ he eventually asked.

‘She was the best thing that ever happened to our family,’ Sandra reassured him, ‘an extraordinary blessing… she was deeply loved to the end.’

Understandably nervous about this stranger, he none the less agreed to meet her.

Finally, 23 years after making that promise to a woman she considered her second mother, Sandra walked up the path to Pierre’s home.

She was carrying a very precious gift with her; one that would bring closure to this remarkable story of surviving – and thriving – against all the odds.

‘I carried the urn holding Lee’s ashes in a sturdy bag,’ she writes, ‘intensely aware that each step was taking her closer to being reunited with her family.’

The Housekeeper’s Secret: A Memoir by Sandra Schnakenburg is published by She Writes Press. The names of Lee’s children have been changed to protect their privacy.