Bound to Kill: The Untold Story of Delia Day Chapter 1
Chapter 1 Sleep
French Camp, Choctaw County, MS – December 2003
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 old 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 simple down home charm, French Camp is also home to a historic village, the Rainwater Observatory and Planetarium, and at the core of it all, a prestigious, private Christian academy and boarding school with brick columns flanking the gravel entryway with a metal arch that reads: French Camp Academy. The town revolves around the 1,000 acre French Camp Academy campus, which it also surrounds. In the winter it resembles the leafless trees that frame it, imparting an eerie vibe.
Alongside the town runs the Natchez Trace Parkway – according to the National Park Service, 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.”
The scenic trail 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 road-trips, with easily accessible 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 on the edge of town, parallel to the historic trail. The proximity to the trail makes it a fun detour to stretch 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, a small town restaurant that asks if you’d, “Please call a day in advance for any orders over ten.”
A little over a mile away is the Rainwater Observatory and Planetarium, its modern dome-shaped structure standing in marked contrast with the rustic cabins and other quaint antiquities on the other side of town. The secluded location helps the planetarium avoid light pollution, making it a quiet retreat for stargazers and a unique destination for schools and scout troops seeking a venue for field-trips.
At the time, the Rainwater Observatory had sixteen telescopes on the hill outside the Planetarium center, which was spread over nine buildings. The facility itself is part of French Camp Academy, and is actually just outside the official perimeter of the town, emphasizing how small French Camp really is.
The Anton family lived on the opposite side of town at 180 Mount Salem Road; a family of five if you include Daisy, the bullmastiff who could usually be found 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 often made people stare.
They moved to the town because of the educational opportunities that French Camp Academy could offer their two young children, Dell and Neal. They bought a very modest home on the outskirts of town, giving the family privacy from the world, and had spent the previous year working on renovations.
Susan was blue-eyed, tall, and thin, with a shaved head a la Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor. She would often wear bright colored synthetic wigs along with her fourteen body piercings and seven tattoos. On her throat was a large, elaborate tattoo designed to look like a choker necklace, with a crucifix pendant, and ornamented with a hibiscus flower.
The cross was attached to a chain of green vines, through which more hibiscus flowers were woven, and the vine crossed like an untied ribbon around the back of her neck. It was an elaborate and unique tattoo and often the first thing people would notice about the thirty-three year old mother 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 tattoo like a cuff around his bicep, matching the one Susan had. 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, but 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. Travis was exhausted, and rubbing at his eyes. He had been awake for 24-hours, aside from his recent momentary drift off. He was annoyed but couldn’t wait out the kids any longer. He had wanted to spend some alone time with his wife, but with kids around, sometimes that was not possible.
Susan told investigators that Travis got up off the couch, mumbled something about needing a tranquilizer gun for the children, and trudged off to bed. Daisy jumped up and trotted after him.
In the kitchen, Susan picked out a sauce pot to make some noodles for her young son Neal. The sink was still full of bubbles from Travis 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 where the bucket was meant to act as a commode so that Travis could take pictures of Susan sitting on it. He would then upload them to a website he was running called www.deliaday.com.
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. The site had been running for about a year and was making a decent chunk of money; allegedly around $15,000 a month in 2003, which is over $25,000 a month in 2024 dollars.
It was almost midnight. Susan was standing in front of the kitchen sink, staring down at the mound of bubbles, watching them glisten and pop as the pot she was holding filled with water. She was running on muscle-memory; fill the pot with water, boil the water, put pasta in the water, cook the pasta for 7-8 minutes, drain the water out of the pot, add butter, add cheese powder, add milk, mix well.
Then she noticed the glistening of bubbles, popping in the food. In the end Susan poured her son a bowl of cereal, signaling the end of the grueling ritual of getting the kids to sleep, which sometimes meant bargaining and bribing them with late-night snacks before she shuffled them off to bed.
Dell was in her room, Neal was in his room, Travis was asleep in their room, and Daisy was curled up on the floor next to him. Susan walked down the hall to the bathroom, closed the door and sat on the toilet seat.
She felt a sharp stinging sensation after sitting on the porcelain seat and winced. Instinctively, she reached down to apply pressure between her legs. She could feel the warm metal that was pinching her skin.
It was pulling on her labia and making it difficult to move comfortably. Travis had locked the large brass padlock on her a few hours prior. He walked inside the house, made a B-line to their bedroom and returned with it, telling Susan to drop her pants.
Travis removed the top barbell of Susan’s genital jewelry (she had 8 piercings, 4 in each labia) and replaced it with a padlock two inches wide and three inches tall. This was not the first time he had done this. He had been documenting their life together for a decade and had amassed a substantial catalog of photos featuring “Delia Day the sex-slave” and she had become quite popular online.
Delia Day was an artsy woman who chose to live her life in a very specific way. She was into “fifty shades” and beyond, presenting her life like a reality show that people paid to see and read about by subscribing to her website, My Illustrated Life as a Sex Slave at www.deliaday.com. People loved her and people hated her. To the police, this online pornography was disturbing.
Delia Day was created by the Antons with Susan's looks and Travis’s voice; according to those who knew them, he did all of the writing on the site for her. They were at the forefront of the Internet age but, like many creative personalities, their intimate relationships proved dysfunctional despite their apparent success.
In nine months Delia gained thousands of fans, many of whom were paying customers, but things between Susan and Travis had become strained. Travis was mainly concerned with making money. He enjoyed what he did, but this was a business he was running. It had taken over. Travis was a workaholic and Susan was suffering some serious psychological setbacks. Her site had become known as - in the words of one fan - “amazing, the most literate, thoughtful, intense, straightforward website from a slave.” Susan was at the mercy of it, and wanted to walk away.
With the kids and Travis in bed, she was finally alone, there was finally silence. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and slid one out, holding it between her lips while fumbling with a cheap imitation bic lighter. Flicking the striker with her thumb, a tiny glowing flame appeared and she lit the pre-rolled tobacco, inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs, and exhaled slowly, her eyes closed.
Her thoughts were dark and they swirled around with the looping, rising smoke. The longer she sat there the angrier she became, the knots in her stomach growing tighter. It was December 2nd now, just past 1 A.M. The witching hours.
Still on the toilet, Susan's thoughts spiraled, and she tossed the butt of the first cigarette into the toilet and lit a second one, letting the flame from the cigarette lighter hover in front of her for a moment before exhaling smoke to extinguish it.
Susan smoked one last cigarette and flushed the toilet before she got up and walked down the hallway. Their bedroom door was cracked open, and she peeked into the small, dark space; Travis was lying in bed fast asleep. The only one who noticed her was Daisy, who was halfway to chasing rabbits in her dreams, and was not alarmed by the familiar presence.
Susan quietly dipped through the doorway; it only took a few steps to get what she was looking for. The shotgun was always loaded, leaning up against the wall in the corner of the master bedroom they shared. She sneaked a glance at her husband as her fingers touched the cold metal of the barrel. He didn’t stir.