After Judge Gordon-Oliver recused herself from all of attorney DiFabio’s cases — eliminating roughly a third of his Westchester family court practice — the case was reassigned to Judge Nilda Morales-Horowitz.

A visitation conference was scheduled for February 6, 2020. The purpose was procedural — scheduling, status, the bureaucratic machinery of a custody case that had stalled since the last supervisor was removed in September 2019. Steve had not seen Evie since the ambush at Tara Knoll. Five months of silence, and a conference to discuss what came next.

In late January, Kelly required emergency surgery in San Francisco. The procedure necessitated general anesthesia and sedation. It was not elective in the way a surgery is described as elective when the alternative is worse. Steve was with her — in the particular posture of a person who stays beside a hospital bed because the person in the bed is more important than whatever is on the other side of the door.

On January 24, DiFabio wrote to the court. The letter was straightforward: Steve’s fiancée was recovering from surgery in California. He requested permission to appear by telephone at the February 6 conference. The letter also noted a second concern — the spread of COVID-19 in the San Francisco Bay Area, the travel advisories that were beginning to discourage cross-country flights.

The court did not respond.

On February 4 — two days before the conference — DiFabio sent a follow-up. Still no response. The letter asked, for the second time, to confirm that Steve would be permitted to appear by phone at a scheduling conference three thousand miles away.

Five o’clock. The evening before.

The denial arrived at the hour when flights become scarce and plans become impossible and the space between a person and a courthouse three thousand miles away becomes a matter of airline schedules and arithmetic. San Francisco to New York. Red-eye availability. Court calendar. Landing time minus transit time minus the distance between JFK and White Plains.

Steve booked the only available flight — 6:20 a.m. the next morning. He left Kelly in the hospital. He drove to the airport in the dark. He flew through the night, sitting in a pressurized cabin, watching the continent pass below, calculating whether a man who left San Francisco at dawn could reach a courthouse in Westchester by the time the clerk called the case.

He could not.

DiFabio appeared at the conference on Steve’s behalf. He explained the circumstances — the surgery, the January 24 letter, the twelve days of silence, the five o’clock denial, the overnight flight, the landing time. He told the court that Steve was in the air. He told the court that Steve was represented. He told the court that Steve was willing and able to appear by phone and that, given a brief continuance, he would be there in person.

Judge Horowitz entered a default.

The word means absence. It means: the party did not appear. It does not mean: the party’s attorney appeared and explained that his client was on an airplane because the court denied his phone request twelve hours earlier. It does not mean: the party’s fiancée is recovering from surgery and he left her bedside to fly through the night. It does not mean: the party sent two letters requesting accommodation and received no response for twelve days. Default means the record says he was not there. And the record does not hold the reasons.

What happened next was not a scheduling conference.

A visitation conference — a scheduling matter, a procedural checkpoint — had been converted into a ruling on the merits of every pending petition. Permanent custody. Permanent protection order. Release from mental health evaluation. Reversal of the prior judge’s safety conditions. All of it entered in the absence of the party whose daughter was being permanently removed, whose attorney was present and objecting, whose airplane was at that moment descending over the eastern seaboard.

Steve landed in New York in the early morning. He went to the courthouse.

The conference was over.

He filed a motion to vacate the default on January 12, 2021 — eleven months later, after assembling the record: the two letters to the court, the court’s denial, the flight confirmation, the surgical records, Kelly’s testimony. His affidavit was fourteen pages. It described the January 24 request, the twelve days of silence, the five o’clock denial, the overnight flight, the meritorious defenses — the California restraining order against Tara, her sworn admission to drugging him, the sixteen supervised visits, the five supervisors’ consistent findings.

The motion argued what the record showed: Steve’s absence was not willful. His attorney had appeared. The conference was not a hearing. The orders were entered without testimony, without evidence, without argument. There was no default — there was a manufactured absence, converted into a permanent disposition.

The motion was transferred to Judge Humphrey. Tara was given until March 26 to respond. Reply papers were due April 2.

On April 6, 2021, Humphrey recused himself — not from the default motion but from all matters involving DiFabio, citing what he described as a pattern of “disrespectful, discourteous, and borderline unethical” behavior by counsel. Humphrey’s decision and order ran two pages. One paragraph was devoted to the recusal. The rest was an itemized criticism of DiFabio’s courtroom demeanor — appearing in a bathrobe on a virtual conference, being hostile to chamber staff, engaging in “questionable and unproductive litigation tactics.”

The motion to vacate the default went with him.

Three judges. Three recusals. The case transferred again — to Yonkers, to Judge Schauer, who would build the next set of orders on the foundation Horowitz had laid. Each departure reset the clock. Each new judge inherited a record that began with the words: default. The reasons — the surgery, the letters, the flight — were in a motion that no judge had yet decided.

Evie turned three during the recusals. She turned three in the Walsh compound, in the household where Brienne had described being hit, where a grandmother’s nails had left marks on forearms a generation earlier. Steve did not send a gift. He did not know if a gift would reach her. He did not know what she liked now — which books, which toys, which foods. The girl who had taken her first steps during Visit 9 was walking and talking and becoming a person in a house he was not allowed to enter, while three judges in sequence decided they could not decide.

Kelly wrote letters.

Not to Steve’s attorney. Not to the opposing counsel. To the judges themselves.

In February 2021 she wrote to Judge Furman, who was handling interim support. She described their actual life — a shared Ford, a pop-up camper, the modest reality behind the Walsh family’s portrait of extravagance. She described what the default had cost: permanent custody to a woman who had been caught drugging Steve, who had been ordered confined to her family’s compound, who had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies by a forensic psychologist recommended by her own doctor. All of it reversed at a conference Steve’s attorney attended and Steve tried to attend.

In March she wrote to Judge Davidson at the New York Judicial Conduct Commission. In May she wrote to Judge Egitto, the Supervising Judge for Family Courts in the Ninth Judicial District.

Kelly’s letter to Egitto ran four pages. She described six attorneys recusing over ethical issues. Three judges recusing. The Horowitz default. The Humphrey recusal. She called it what it was: “an awful version of Groundhog’s Day.” Each new attorney or judge was a reset. Each reset erased the context that the previous judge had accumulated. The system’s weakness was not corruption — it was rotation. The door kept revolving, and each time it turned, the person inside had to start again.

She described a second default — Tara’s. On March 10, 2021, Tara had failed to appear at an actual hearing. Her attorney had not appeared. She had been properly served. Judge Humphrey rescheduled. On March 24, Tara defaulted again. Same hearing. Same proper service. Same absence.

Two defaults. One manufactured by the system to produce a permanent custody order against a represented father. One genuine, by the mother, twice, on the same matter — rescheduled without consequence.

Judge Egitto’s office responded on May 12, 2021.

The Supervising Judge’s office did not address the six recused attorneys. Did not address the three recused judges. Did not address the default entered over a represented party’s objection at a scheduling conference. Did not address the twelve days of silence before the five o’clock denial. Did not address the surgery, the flight, the two letters.

The response was three paragraphs. The first noted that “Judge Egitto strives to insure that all litigants receive from court personnel, the respect, fairness and attention to which they are entitled.” The second declined to discuss the case due to confidentiality. The third suggested Steve speak with his attorney.

Steve had an attorney. His attorney had appeared at the conference. His attorney had explained the circumstances. His attorney had filed the motion to vacate. The motion had been transferred to a judge who recused himself before deciding it. The suggestion to speak with his attorney was the system’s final word on a default that had removed a father from his daughter’s life — a father whose attorney had been in the courtroom the entire time.

A visitation conference became a permanent custody order. A twelve-day silence became a five o’clock denial. A five o’clock denial became an overnight flight. An overnight flight became a default. A default became a five-year order of protection. A scheduling matter became a final disposition on every pending petition — custody, visitation, protection, mental health evaluation — entered without hearing, without testimony, without evidence, without the presence of the person it most affected, in the presence of the attorney it least concerned.

The foundation was laid. Every order in the file now traced back to a conference room in White Plains on the morning of February 6, 2020, when a man was in the air and a court decided he was absent.

Kelly had called it a tale of two defaults. One father, represented, available by phone, flying through the night — defaulted. One mother, unrepresented, unexcused, absent twice on the same matter — rescheduled.

The system did not see the asymmetry. The system does not look at itself.