She Was Murdered
by David Howard
by David Howard
By looking at the victims of murder and listening to their survivors, we may find a way out. —Eric Schlosser
1
You can’t understand until it happens to you.
The families of murder victims—the survivors—often say this with the grave conviction that they are right and the forlorn hope that they are wrong.
They wish we could, but they know we don’t, won’t and can’t understand.
Until it happens to us.
God forbid.
If we could understand, it is reasonable to suppose, we’d do something about their anguish and their plight.
We’d help.
Or at least we’ll show some respect.
“Murder is not entertainment.”
2
Survivors know we can’t understand, in part, because they remember how they didn’t understand until it happened to them.
They once were us. Unscathed.
Inviolate.
Safe.
But the murderer—-oblivious-—changed them.
Forever.
All murder is mass murder. The mortal wound seeps to brother, sister, friend, mother, cousin, lover.
Murder infects the bloodstream, dreamstream, soulstream.
All murder is molestation, epitomizing the most inappropriate of touching.
Omnirape.
The invasion and annihilation of the heart, mind, voice.
3
Murder is filthy.
Smelly.
Slimy.
Hideous.
Final.
4
Only the voicelessness of the victim and the imperfect pitch—the murmur and gasp—of the survivor make murder intimate, palpable, audible, human.
Numbers numb. Who can empathize with six million Holocausted Jews, ten million slaves wasted on the Middle Passage to America?
Numbers numb.
We empathize with one.
Or one at a time.
Anne Frank must stand for the Jews.
Kim Phuc, naked, napalmed, on the run, must stand for 4,000,000 Vietnamese.
Let each female here remembered stand for our dead: murdered mother, murdered daughter.
She needs us; we need her.
We need to pick up her scent.
5
In 1963 the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was attacked by terrorists.
An eleven-year old girl, Carol McNair, and three fourteen-year-olds, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, were murdered.
Martin Luther King—-five years before his own murder-—spoke at their funeral.
The girls, King explained, “have something to say.”
“They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”
“Death is not a blind alley,” Reverend King told the girls’ parents, “It’s an open door.”
6
The best among us open a door, close a wound.
We hold a survivor’s hand for as long as it takes.
It takes forever.
* * *
The mediocre among us—me, maybe you—are appalled by murder and its industries, the facile killing porn.
The least we can do is abstain: from the smirk of our culture, infatuated with murderer swagger, blithely sowing murder seed.
We, the mediocre, cringe and cover our ears.
* * *
The good among us labor on. Some are compelled; some are compassionate; some are gifted.
Some are just doing their job: teachers, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, physicians and nurses, police officers, legislators, chaplains, journalists, attorneys, judges, activists, advocates, counselors, first responders, and—most of all—the survivors themselves.
* * *
The worst among us revel and profit in murder.
Then, the murderer rises: huffing, puffing, snuffing, annihilating.
For every murder there is an implicit lynch mob—lookie lous, investors, pimps, enablers, purveyors.
7
The survivors guide us, even when they are misguided. Most often they are not. They are just us. Imperfect, dazed, overwhelmed, aching.
Just us, the day after. The decade after. The lifetime after.
Like four Birmingham girls laid out in plain coffins, they have “something to say.”
8
Is there a light within us capable of healing the pain of life after murder?
Is there a darkness within us capable of reckless disregard, depraved indifference, heinous premeditation with malice aforethought?
Murder one. Murder two. Personslaughter.
How heinous? How depraved? How indifferent?
Jurors in capital cases are instructed to consider and calculate the mitigating and aggravating features of a murder.
The Supreme Court of Florida:
"It is our interpretation that heinous means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; that atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile; and, that cruel means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others.”
* * *
In 1985 Cristy was a 13-year old paper girl, making her rounds in Tempe, Arizona. Donald, an apartment custodian on her paper route, abducted, sexually assaulted and suffocated Cristy. He kept her body for three days, and when she started to smell bad, he threw her out, behind the building’s trash dumpster.
At death, the body begins to decompose. Bacteria go to work on the tissues and by 24 to 36 hours the smell of rotting flesh appears and the skin takes on a progressive greenish-red color. By 3 days, gas forms in the body cavities and beneath the skin, which may leak fluid and split (Dr. Douglas Lyle).
* * *
In 1998, at a motel in Bullhead City, Michael was babysitting Shelby, his girlfriend’s 19-month-old daughter. Michael told police that Shelby fell out of bed and stopped breathing. Doctors at the hospital, however, reported that Shelby had suffered anal and vaginal trauma. A medical examiner concluded that Shelby died from blunt force trauma or suffocation. Michael then admitted he had placed his index finger in Shelby’s vagina and rectum. Later, he admitted that it had actually been his penis. Finally, he confessed that he also put his hand over Shelby's mouth to “stop her crying.”
* * *
In September of 1994, Eugene claimed that he woke up and found a dead woman in his bedroom. She was 39-year old Karen, the mother of a seven-year-old girl. Karen’s nipple had been cut off. She suffered major trauma to her vagina and rectal area. Her nose was broken and she had a two-inch cut that exposed her skull. She was covered in blood and fecal matter. A bloody steak knife was found on the bathroom sink. A bloodstained brass pipe and a broom handle were found in the living room. These instruments are believed to have caused Karen’s vaginal and rectal injuries. Eugene claimed he had no idea what happened. He said he had been drinking, but his blood samples showed no presence of drugs or alcohol.
* * *
Michael’s murder of Shelby, Donald’s murder of Cristy and Eugene’s murder of Karen all met Arizona’s aggravation standard of being “especially cruel, heinous and depraved.”
9
Is there—within us—an absolute zero vacuity of conscience? The sociopathic killer.
A relentless sadist? The psychopathic killer.
Will glimpsing—within ourselves—the potential for this sin (what else can we call it?) exorcise it? Keep it at bay? Teach us to forgive? Make us better?
* * *
Should we forgive?
Yes.
But there is nothing harder.
* * *
Should the murderer live, recover, breathe another 50 years, another 450,000,000 breaths, after her last breath?
Yes. For we have forgiven him.
There is nothing harder.
10
Incantations
Serial murder. Spree murder. Rampage murder. Multiple murder. Mass murder. Proxy murder. Contract murder. Drive-by murder. Intimate partner murder. Revenge murder. Thrill murder. Initiation murder. Sexual murder.
Random murder.
The irregular verb: Slay, slew, slain.
Infanticide, fratricide, matricide, patricide, filicide, eldercide, genocide.
Femicide.
Instruments: blunt object, sharp object, firearm, finger, fist.
Murder: Origin Old English morder, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch moord and German mord, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit mará death and Latin mors; reinforced in Middle English by Old French murdre.— Oxford American Dictionary.
11
You can’t understand until it happens to you.
But I want to understand, and I don’t want it to happen to me.
I want everyone to understand, so it happens to fewer of us.
I believe that if we do understand, deeply, we will prevent it from happening to others.
If one of us understands, and if that understanding helps prevent the death of another one of us, it’s worth a book of murders.
12
“A culture of murder surrounds us, like a dark, poisonous cloud,” Schlosser says.
We, in our safety, real or merely presumed, line up to buy a ticket.
We send our children to murder’s amusement park. We buy them toy guns, sporting guns, real guns. We give them murder simulator games for Christmas.
We sing them femicide hymns:
Don’t you get it, Bitch? No one can hear you. Now shut the fuck up and get what’s coming to you. Bleed, bitch, bleed (Eminem).
In the video game Duke Nukem you can shoot naked and bound prostitutes.
In Postal, you can randomly shoot anyone—people coming out of church or members of the high school band.
In Postal 2, you get to chop a woman's head off with a shovel. While another woman begs for her life, you urinate on her.
Vince Desi, the developer of Postal, says he's just trying to make people laugh, provide them with fun.
13
Do we think our voyeurism, our acting out, our pre-adolescentization of murder is a game, a talisman, a vaccine? Is murdertainment the opium of the masses or the crack cocaine? Stimulant or sedative?
Do we propitiate the murder god by watching televised reenactments, or do we procure future victims for him by rearing assassins? Are we pimps of our grandchildren?
Or, is it all just fun?
14
Are we inured to murder?
Scared to death? Stun-gunned?
Aroused or de-libidinized?
There is a murder every half hour in the United States.
Who were the 15 slain last night while we slept?
According to Schlosser, there are more murderers in the United States than doctors, college professors or police officers.
15
Each victim teaches me something different.
But not how to stop bullets or resurrect the dead.
Prevention, intervention, enforcement, litigation, legislation, incarceration, forgiveness, rehabilitation?
Yes, but not now. Not here.
This book is cemetery and sanctuary. A bell tolling for her. A candle.
16
A Footnote
Empathy precedes and supercedes principles.
Nevertheless, I feel obliged to articulate a principle:
I believe it is morally wrong to intentionally take the life of another human being.
There are three ways to do it: war, capital punishment and murder.
All wrong.
Gandhi said, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
Einstein said, “I believe in taking a holy oath never to participate in any act of violence.”
* * *
This book is not about oaths, objections or lofty moral judgments.
It is about her.
17
This is a book about femicide in our country. The victims range in age from 3 months to 84 years.
If you count the pregnancies, the age of the fetuses ranges from four weeks to nearly nine months.
The murders occurred between 1926 and 2006.
18
On what grounds these exhumations?
I mean to respect and love these women.
I mean to apologize.
On behalf of humanity.
We are sorry.
19
A Note on Method
I started out googling the exact phrase “She was murdered.”
“She was 18 years old when she was murdered and her body burned to ashes.”
“Before she was murdered, [she] was raped and sodomized.”
“She was murdered by her boyfriend…”
“She was murdered by the Klan.”
“Even after 50 years, he can’t understand why she was murdered.”
“She was murdered protecting her land.”
“She was murdered on the Reservation.”
“She was murdered trying to hitch a ride to Boston.”
“She was murdered on Tuesday.”
This is an easy book to write. There is a surfeit of raw material, raw meat.
* * *
In 2004 there were 16,137 murders in the United States.
70% of the murders involved guns.
An average of 8 or 9 females were murdered every day.
Most murder victims know their assailant.
One out of three sleeps with him.
* * *
On the Internet it’s survival of the fittest. Even among the dead.
There is the bias of sensationalism—the spectacularly brutal.
All murder is spectacularly brutal.
Politics complicates murder coverage. I have been cautious about politicized cases.
The murders chronicled here occurred in the USA or to US citizens outside the USA.
Some cases are settled in law but still disputed by the parties involved. Often the perpetrator’s version differs from the law enforcement version; witness narratives differ. I have tried to avoid cases where “alleged” would have been the most prudent phrasing.
Many of the sources are newspaper accounts. But sometimes I ignored the media in favor of a loved one’s remembrance. Often the strongest voice is the survivor, writing in first person.
The book is divided into six sections: Infants and Toddlers (age three and under); Children (ages four through twelve); Teenagers; Adults (ages 20-50); Elders (over 50); Multiples.
None of the murders are composites. Each is an individual case.
Nothing is embellished. No names are changed.
Often I clicked to additional links and made expanded searches from the “She was murdered” point of departure—to follow-up, fact-check, add detail, learn an outcome.
I experimented with search terms. Eventually, I discovered I could search under virtually any first name and get quite a few hits:
“Maria was murdered; Marta was murdered; Miriam was murdered; Myra was murdered; Myrna was murdered” etc.
Try it with your own name, your mother’s, your daughter’s. It’s quite remarkable.
* * *
The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the immediate deaths of perhaps 200,000 civilians. Some of those human beings who vanished—vaporized to carbon dust—left ghostly images on the ground.I want to show the ghostly images of our slower degradation.
I wrote this book not for a cause but to cause contemplation.
I wrote it to prevent a murder. Myra’s, Maria’s, Marta’s, Miriam’s, Mary’s. My mother’s. Your girlfriend’s. His sister’s. Her daughter’s.
This book is a prayer.
***
READ the whole book at Femicide: She Was Murdered
