Brian, the younger brother, was always the sweet one.

When he was a child, he found a spider in the house, and rather than let his mother stomp it to bits, he waited for it to crawl on a piece of paper and he let it out the front door. To this day, his mother does the same.

Mikey, the older brother, was an entrepreneur. Not as straight-edge as Brian, perhaps, but Celeste Shaw isn’t going to speak unkindly about her boys. Mikey drew pictures at fairs. There’s always someone willing to pay $5 for their own portrait. And right before everything happened the first time around, Mikey was about to start designing clothes.

Brian had dreams. He was the first in his family to attend college and wanted to continue through medical school, perhaps become an obstetrician. One time while he was in high school, Celeste walked in on him looking at a picture of – forgive the crudity – a blown-up vagina. In jest, she asked whether this was what she was paying the school for. ‘Settle down, Mom,’ he said. ‘Settle down.’

They’re both great artists. Mikey, a lefty, sometimes writes his letters in calligraphy. On Valentine’s Day last year, he sent his mother decorated cards and envelopes. Brian’s handwriting was so neat, no pharmacist would misread it. He would make a great doctor.

They’re both in the isolation hole this week. Mikey for … oh, who knows why, or how long? Brian because Celeste brought him a suit with two twisted paper clips and an empty ring box in the pockets. That’s contraband, and there’s no jury in the pen. Brian will get out of isolation on Feb. 17.

Brian, 23, is on trial for second-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the March 23, 2005 death of Chiarra Seals. He was a Syracuse University cheerleader and fraternity brother in Sigma Phi Epsilon. Mikey, 32, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 and will be stationed at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, N.Y., for another 30-odd years.

Standing by their side is Celeste Shaw. They’re her only two boys, and she is so proud of them. That may sound a bit harsh, considering where her sons are now. But Celeste Shaw is certain her boys are good. Circumstances just got in the way.

‘Brian is the holder,’ Celeste says. ‘He doesn’t want to say, ‘Mom, I didn’t want you to know that I wasn’t handling things.’ He had work and cheerleading and school. And that baby. He was handling things so well. He’s not one to call me up and tell me all the things he can’t handle. He handles everything on his own. Mikey’s another amazing child.

‘I’ve always been proud of him. I’m never going to be anything else. … I’m the happiest mother I could possibly be.’

Celeste speaks intently. Her voice grows serious.

‘As human beings, we know if we have something worth defending, we’re gonna stand up for it,’ she says. ‘And nothing’s changed in my view of my sons. Society’s view is something else. But I’m at a point where I can’t understand anyone’s side but my own.’

So now that you know about Celeste Shaw’s boys, what do you think of her? If you’re like most, you’ve probably already started wondering about her. What did she do to these boys? What did she do? When most people hear about her boys’ stories, that’s the reaction. The focus shifts to her.

It’s so common that it’s almost intrinsically human to want to assign blame somewhere. And with two sons with those stories, Celeste Shaw is an easy target.

But like most similar cases, there are no definite answers here. Only deduction.

Because the thing is, upon first impression, Celeste Shaw is extraordinarily likable. She is about 5 feet, 3 inches and 110 pounds, if that. She’s a sweet, artsy woman who relies on drawings and writing to keep her mentally stable. ‘I can fire off a nine-page letter like nothing,’ she says of how she keeps in touch with her sons. She crochets blankets and makes plant holders and surrounds herself with greenery.

‘They purify the air,’ she says.

When Brian’s friends go to support him at court, she sits with them and hugs them following the proceedings.

Considering what she’s dealing with now, she remains approachable and forthcoming. She sits patiently during a two-hour interview and answers all questions. ‘Hey baby,’ she tenderly says to acquaintances, like the grandmother that she is. ‘How’s it goin’?’ At the conclusion of an interview, she hugs her interviewers.

And yet, there’s something deftly mysterious about her. When asked when she first met Brian’s 4-year-old daughter, Essence, she says ‘In ’84.’

‘In ’84? What do you mean in ’84?’

‘Well, it’s ’86 now. And we met her two years ago in ’84.’ Even after she’s corrected, she mentions the 1980s.

In court, she sucks her thumb during police testimony, detailing conversations they had with Shaw that night. She slides her arms up her long-sleeved shirt nervously.

It’s all rather mysterious. Then again, how would you handle it?

Brian T. Shaw was born in the Bronx, where he lived off 128th Street with his mother for the first seven years of his life. After a driver hit him and broke his collarbone, Celeste Shaw wanted to move away from the tumult of the city.

She chose Syracuse, where she knew people. ‘I have 19 sisters,’ she says, though that refers to both family members and close friends. Shaw’s father moved in and out of Brian’s life. They saw each other by chance right before they left the city.

The Shaws moved to the South Side of Syracuse on Thompson Road, where Shaw was hit six more times by cars, never seriously hurt. So much for escaping city traffic. After a Jeep 4-by-4 hit him off his bicycle, Brian jumped right back up. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, waving to the driver. ‘I’m fine.’

At Henninger High School, Shaw wanted to become the first in his family to go to college.

‘He won so many awards,’ Celeste says beaming, remembering Brian’s high school days. ‘He loved school.’

Like his brother, he grew into a low-level entrepreneur, buying designer clothes in bulk in New York City and selling them in Syracuse. Despite financial strains, Brian looked like he was on track for college.

But the days were filled with tragedy, too. As Brian testified Friday, the family was twice robbed with shotguns at their home. Once, Brian was fortunate enough to be in the bathroom when it happened, and he crawled out the window to summon help. The other time, locals caught wind of Brian’s business venture and figured there was a load of cash in the house to take.

Then, when Brian was 16, Mikey got arrested.

As Celeste explains it, there was a dispute one night between a group of people and a fight broke out. Mikey was involved, but nothing serious happened. But tensions spilled over to the next day and a man was shot and killed. While Mikey was out, police arrived at Celeste’s house to explain the situation. Mikey was being charged with the murder. He went into hiding and called Celeste from a pay phone. She asked whether he killed that man and Mikey said no, so she told him there’s no sense in running away.

After the police arrested Mikey, Celeste went into her living room and sat with Brian and talked. Then the story came on the news and they saw Mikey’s name.

Brian put his arms around his mother and held tight. Together, they mourned.

‘We’ve always been support for each other,’ Celeste says. ‘We handled it together. It was hard on both of us. Brian, too. They were brothers. They did brotherly things.’

Though Celeste says witnesses testified that Mikey didn’t pull the trigger, police charged him.

The trial lasted about a week and the jury convicted Mikey, then 25, sentencing him to 37 years in prison.

Celeste says there’s no history of mental illness in the family. Part of Shaw’s defense is that he was mentally unstable at the time. He had two jobs, cheerleading and a baby girl to look after, as well as money concerns. To her, it’s an unfortunate tragedy, but one she can at least piece together.

‘He was under something that now we know, and then we didn’t,’ she says. ‘I know the mental aspect has a lot to do with it. It’s an important section. But it’s not the whole grand picture to say the case should be built on that.

‘He just couldn’t handle the stress of doing it all. We have a limit. We all do. Most of us are able to read a book or eat chocolate or buy things. And Brian had these things. He had cheerleading and work. He just reached his limit.’

With her only two boys in jail, Celeste has lived a life few mothers imagine. When Brian was 17, Celeste moved out of town, and Brian lived with his godmother. He also lived with a school counselor in Eastwood before coming to Syracuse University on scholarship.

Now Celeste lives with Brian’s father, Clayton Jiggetts, in Philadelphia. She belongs to a support group there with other parents of incarcerated children, the first Monday of every month, sitting and chatting with these other families.

What has she done to these boys? The group must wonder, because that’s what everyone wonders. According to Dr. Carl Shrubs, an expert on the recovery and treatment of families of violent criminals in Beverly Hills, Calif., the group can’t provide the support she needs, given the gravity of what’s happened to her.

‘It would always be helpful and beneficial for someone who’s going through this to be going to see professional help in dealing with the emotional impact,’ he said. ‘A group like this does not replace professional therapy.’

Celeste shows signs of weariness. She refers to Brian in the present tense. ‘I’m so proud he’s in school and doing the things he’s doing,’ she says, even though he’s been locked up for almost 10 months now. He had so much going for him; it’s hard for her to believe this happened.

‘It’s like with Brian I’ve been waiting for Alfred Hitchcock to come through the door and solve this crime,’ she says. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time making sure I can get black and blue, like I’m waiting to wake up. … I’m still in that phase where it’s like, ‘No, not Brian. Just not Brian.’

‘He’s got this feeling that he says, ‘I’ve disappointed everyone.’ And I say, ‘Brian, you’ve disappointed no one.’ … I didn’t know I’d have these different children. And they are different. And that’s OK.’

When he was 16, Brian told his mother he stole one of her cigarettes and smoked it. It tasted awful, so he told her he never wanted to smoke again and he wanted her to quit, too. After all, Brian was always the sweet one.

Published on February 7, 2006 at 12:00 pm