My friend, Bev
By Kenneth Amos
Special Essay
“I feel like death warmed over,” I muttered quietly to myself a few weeks ago.
I'm sure the feeling stemmed from the AAA combination — aging, allergies and attitude — along with not being as fastidious about exercise and nutrition. It's been easy to go easy, especially during my longest, most dreary winter.
But death warmed over?
I try not to think about death or dying, because life’s final act has been far too prevalent, painful and possible in the past five years.
First came the New Year’s Day 2006 passing of my wonderful, honest and hard-working sister, Betty, and the rapid dementia-aided demise of my mother two years later. Then came the drop-to-your knees shock of my 45-year-old nephew, Brent, who was felled by a heart attack last October.
My Dad died a few months before my son was born in 1992. I told others (and myself) that until that moment I really hadn’t experienced death’s unfailing touch.
But I was wrong.
My emotions have been artificially suppressed — again and again.
Last month, with my wife soundly asleep, I once again was suffering the maddening affects of an every-other-night routine of restlessness and insomnia. Instead of turning to television, I reached for my aging laptop and began hop-scotching Goggle’s late night trends and topics until my tiring eyes landed on this offering — Death Row Inmate Confesses But May Not Be Tried In Slaying.
Up for a good "whodunit," the headline from the Deseret News (Salt Lake City) website had me hooked. But the four-paragraph posting from Dec. 24, 1988 left me floored.
Tears flooded into my eyes as soon as they moved beyond the first sentence.
Authorities say they believe a death row inmate who says he killed a reporter, but they do not plan to prosecute him.
The next paragraph seemed to provide decades-old closure to a most personal mystery — one so baffling, haunting and painful — that I had lost hope of ever knowing what had happened the year I entered the workforce.
"The various statements he made in his confession convinced us he is in fact the responsible party," (said) Robert Dakopolos, an assistant Jackson County prosecutor. Anthony Joe LaRette, 37, of Topeka, Kan., said … that he (had) killed Beverly Wortmann, a reporter for the Jackson County Sentinel-Tribune in Blue Springs, (Mo.). … He also has been linked to slayings of two other young women.
Beverly Wortmann was a cheerful, energetic co-worker who split time between my company’s weekly newspaper bureaus. We met after I became sports editor overseeing coverage of several suburban Kansas City communities. She was a reporter/photographer about a year into the job. Although working out of different offices, occasionally we were paired on assignments.
A joyful chatterbox with unbridled optimism and opinions, Bev really only avoided talking about her privileged upbringing in nearby Mission Hills, Kan. And she was politely vague about why she recently had chosen to move into such a small apartment behind a deteriorating shopping center. Her apartment on Valentine Road was in a sketchy section of Kansas City, but it was near the lure the city’s trendy Old Westport nightlife and the upscale shopping enticements of the nearby Country Club Plaza and Crown Center.
As I covered seven high schools in K.C.’s eastern working-class suburbs – games, track meets, pep rallies, banquets and more – our paths would cross. Increasingly, we looked forward to seeing one another. She was a great audience of one, someone who loved to laugh … and visa versa.
Teasingly, I sometimes would introduce her to friends and coaches as “Beav,” mostly as an opportunity to relate our chance encounter with Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow, child actors of Leave It To Beaver fame.
Returning from an assignment on rainy afternoon, Bev and I had pulled into one of many empty spaces in a strip mall parking lot near her unremarkable one-bedroom apartment. We ran for cover through the screen door of a seedy Laundromat and smack into the now-graying faux Cleaver progeny as they were methodically folding their clothes. Lasting name recognition apparently had brought this odd-couple pairing to town for a weeklong performance at a nearby playhouse.
Wally and Beaver were not the least bit interested in having an unscripted fan encounter – at least not at first. But Bev flashed her wide smile and turned up the charm and adoration level just enough to wow them into giving up their autographs on the backs of a couple of our business cards.
I’m not quite sure if it was days or weeks later, but once again we found ourselves walking toward her apartment — probably after an assignment, Bev asked for one my business cards. I blindly reached into my wallet and handed her the same one with The Beaver’s now-smudged pen strokes. She snorted with laughter and demanded another, on the back of which she simply wrote “Beav” and her telephone number, which she had guarded vigilantly. As she pressed the card back into my hand, she smiled, turned and bounded up the decaying steps of her apartment building. At the top of the steps, she paused and tossed her long dark locks over her left shoulder and said, “Hey, call me later if you want. … I’m going to try out my mom’s lasagna recipe this weekend. You game?”
I won’t classify it as a date, perhaps because it took place on a breezy Sunday evening during which Bev’s too-chatty roommate took far too long to size me up and finally leave. Or, maybe it was because some of my most vivid recollections of the evening revolve around forcing down several bites of unquestionably tangy, meatless-yet-stringy lasagna, and nibbling on an assortment of bitter greens, all while uncomfortably seated at a tiniest two-person dinette set ever made.
But for the next four hours or so, I found myself increasingly smitten and spellbound as I listened to Bev chirp, laugh and map out her dreams of relocating soon to New York City. A poet, musician and artist at heart, this classy lady often looked for and circled the most stylized takes from her black-and-white sports-laden contact sheets; sometimes bypassing the most obvious, decisive moments of action. I gently told her about this perceived flaw in her approach, but she laughed and chattered away about “influence” and “splash” and “panache,” or other words just outside my spectrum of understanding or far from the spirit of the evening as I had envisioned.
Most of all, the tall, lanky, freckled-faced Bev seemed a bit relaxed more than usual. She said she was glad for the company and having someone with whom she could quietly share a bottle of wine, and light up a couple of cigarettes as she for once let down her guard. No one was judging her for a change, she said. I knew not to ask the obvious question.
Bev was kind; articulate yet funny, sometimes mixing up the words she intended to utter.
That was seriously endearing.
She also was passionate yet slightly awkward. Inconceivably, she was uncomfortable with her good looks. She told me of being in awe of fellow high school classmate, singer Nicolette Larson, who already had gone on to early national musical notoriety with her rendition of Neil Young's 'Lotta Love.' Someday soon, Bev said assuredly, she would make her own mark.
This was intriguing, but I could tell there would be opportunities for quite a few other evenings to share more dreams. We were young and Kansas City was not going to hold either of us. But knowing that a new workweek soon would be at hand, I knew I should excuse myself around 10 p.m. to make the 25-minute ride home.
I only missed the mark by about 45 minutes.
As I was promising to make return the favor soon, Bev grabbed her jacket, walked me to her door and we stepped into the musty and dimly lit hallway.
She wanted to walk me to my car, mentioning that she was almost out of cigarettes and a convenience store (actually a liquor store) was just a couple of blocks beyond where I had parked just before dusk. I implored her to please go back inside. “Surely you can stifle your stupid habit until tomorrow,” I said, “Besides, those things are going to kill you someday,” unaware of the prophetic wisdom I had just shared.
Bev relented and we shared a quick embrace. There was a brief kiss, but Bev always was kissing friends. Still, there was a kiss, and at the end we smiled as she stepped back inside and closed the door. I heard the anticipated sound of a deadbolt sliding into position and the rattle of a chain. I was feeling warmth.
As I turned and took a few steps, peripherally, I saw to my left the distinctive shape of a person perched about four steps up a flight of stairs with his or her legs protruding from the shadows. Startled, I hastily descended the same staircase without giving too much thought to the person on the stairs. Besides, heading outside after dark, was foremost on my mind. I figured strange people are everywhere, and at that moment I was most concerned about the strangers outdoors.
As I headed for the parking lot, a brisk three minutes from Bev's apartment, I cringed with each resounding crunch of leaves and broken glass beneath my ever-quickening footsteps. I methodically looked again and again over each shoulder en route to the eventual safe haven provided by my 10-year-old baby blue Chevy. Once inside, I buckled the lone restraint across my lap, started the engine and popped in "No Nukes," the eight-track tape of the moment.
A few minutes and several blocks into my journey home, it dawned on me that I because I was wearing a pullover sweater, I had absent-mindedly left behind the heavy jacket that I had worn to Bev’s apartment. Actually, it was my dad’s actual olive drab U.S. Army jacket with our last name — AMOS —emblazoned in black lettering above the left pocket.
I didn’t want to disturb Bev, I rationalized, but more honestly, I didn’t want to have to make that hasty walk to — and retreat from — her dreary apartment. I would get the jacket some other time. Or, if I were really lucky, maybe she would bring it the next time she came to the office. Besides, I still was burning off my post-kiss warmth.
Monday and Tuesday drifted by, seemingly without incident. And the following morning, Dec. 7, seemed like any other crisp fall Pearl Harbor Day. As I entered our bureau’s storefront office across from the side of Raytown High School, I told myself that Bev usually drops by each Wednesday to process her film and make prints. I also hoped she had my jacket.
Stepping inside, I glanced left toward my desk. I saw frighteningly pale, frozen and contorted faces of four co-workers huddled around the community coffeemaker located near my workspace. To my right, an older man on the Advertising side of the room sat with his head on his desk. There were muffled sobs from every direction. Our secretary, lovingly called “Mother Margaret” by most, was conspicuously absent from her desk by the door. Instead, she was at the far end of the room, near the darkroom. For some reason, she seemed to be pushing against the last of a long row of black file cabinets. Inexplicably, her face was buried in her hands.
A couple of other ad reps milled about, seemingly averting their eyes. Even though I had been on the job for about six months, I still couldn’t remember their names.
Dakopolos said LaRette's statement said he was paid to kill Wortmann, 24, who was stabbed to death
Dan T., my editor, was speaking to another reporter and quickly turned to me and matter-of-factly broke the news. He said Bev had been savagely attacked as she apparently was preparing to leave her apartment sometime Tuesday night.
Eventually, we learned that she had been stabbed 19 times and her throat slashed. She was the ninth young woman murdered in Kansas City that year.
Bev was found wearing jeans, gloves and a coat. She had mentioned to her roommate that she was planning to go out for cigarettes — but none were found. Her body was in the bedroom with no signs of forced entry or any sort of tussle. Nor, was anything missing. Despite her seemingly frugal lifestyle, Bev had plenty of money and items of value in the apartment.
At 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, when police arrived at the crime scene, they immediately took into custody a 25-year-old man. Several tenants (and Bev’s roommate) said they had seen him sitting on the same stairwell that night between 7:30 and 11. The man, clutching a Bible, told police he was waiting for his girlfriend and insisted that he had not been in the apartment building between those times.
Just five months earlier, several people had identified this same man as being in the vicinity of another murder — that of a 15-year-old girl, who had been stabbed 25 times with an ice pick. He had denied being there, too.
Editor Dan wasn’t finished with me.
“The (K.C.) cops want to talk to you; they found your jacket,” he said in careful tones so as not to imply that I was a suspect.
I drove downtown to police headquarters where I was interviewed, not interrogated; I complied fully by telling my whereabouts for the past 18 hours. There was no TV-scripted good-cop/bad-cop routine. And one of two detectives eventually offered, “We have our guy, we just needed to know why your coat was at our crime scene.”
A few hours after I was told to go home, their “guy” was released, per Missouri law, because there was a lack of evidence. He never was seen again. I know, because Dan and I went looking for him.
Co-workers and friends of Bev spent the next several weeks interviewing and re-interviewing the apartment’s tenants, We spoke with Bev’s friends and pursued promising tips and phony leads that routinely turned into dead-ends. We pleaded with the police to do more. But they already had turned their attention to newer cases and advised us to stop playing detective.
The sickening frustration took a great toll on many of us. Dan finally quit, and his sourpuss replacement also had little or no use for an amateur, part-lime sleuth masquerading as a sports editor. So, I, too, soon moved on.
As is natural, new tasks, new opportunities, new friends, new infatuations and new loves eventually blurred and firmly diminished the image of this tragedy. The painful memories were closeted out of necessity.
But, nearly 35 years later, I feel an overwhelming need to tell someone, anyone, and everyone about the grace and goodness of Bev Wortmann. She was a good friend and a stunning treasure taken from us far too soon. While recalling her smirks and smiles, her pouts and laughter, I can’t help but wonder what great, eye-opening events that a normal lifespan might have been in store for her if life itself could have prevailed over death.
He gave us absolutely no means of identifying who this second person might be," Dakopolos said Friday. The prosecutor declined to say how much LaRette claimed to have been paid.
It was a cruel world in 1977 — and it certainly has not gotten any better.
I urge everyone to do everything in your power to protect your loved ones.
Denise and I sometimes lament family, friends and acquaintances felled far too soon. As we thought about some of them, I began to recount stories of other people I have known who have been victims of sudden or especially violent deaths. Unbelievably, this country mouse has witnessed far more bizarre and eventful trauma than has the girl who somehow escaped the meanest streets of north Philadelphia.
In high school, for example, I was quite certain that death was stalking me, as three boys of similar age dies in heinous ways. One, who lived a block away, was struck by lightning on the golf course. Another, about 10 houses away, fell into a grain silo. The last one -- just four houses away, perished after he sped over railroad tracks, went airborne and crashed. Death had visited all their families within a year. It was stealthily making it way up my street, claiming high-school-aged males.
And I was next in line.
But much like death itself, that story -- and my demise -- will have to wait for another day …
Special Essay
“I feel like death warmed over,” I muttered quietly to myself a few weeks ago.
I'm sure the feeling stemmed from the AAA combination — aging, allergies and attitude — along with not being as fastidious about exercise and nutrition. It's been easy to go easy, especially during my longest, most dreary winter.
But death warmed over?
I try not to think about death or dying, because life’s final act has been far too prevalent, painful and possible in the past five years.
First came the New Year’s Day 2006 passing of my wonderful, honest and hard-working sister, Betty, and the rapid dementia-aided demise of my mother two years later. Then came the drop-to-your knees shock of my 45-year-old nephew, Brent, who was felled by a heart attack last October.
My Dad died a few months before my son was born in 1992. I told others (and myself) that until that moment I really hadn’t experienced death’s unfailing touch.
But I was wrong.
My emotions have been artificially suppressed — again and again.
Last month, with my wife soundly asleep, I once again was suffering the maddening affects of an every-other-night routine of restlessness and insomnia. Instead of turning to television, I reached for my aging laptop and began hop-scotching Goggle’s late night trends and topics until my tiring eyes landed on this offering — Death Row Inmate Confesses But May Not Be Tried In Slaying.
Up for a good "whodunit," the headline from the Deseret News (Salt Lake City) website had me hooked. But the four-paragraph posting from Dec. 24, 1988 left me floored.
Tears flooded into my eyes as soon as they moved beyond the first sentence.
Authorities say they believe a death row inmate who says he killed a reporter, but they do not plan to prosecute him.
The next paragraph seemed to provide decades-old closure to a most personal mystery — one so baffling, haunting and painful — that I had lost hope of ever knowing what had happened the year I entered the workforce.
"The various statements he made in his confession convinced us he is in fact the responsible party," (said) Robert Dakopolos, an assistant Jackson County prosecutor. Anthony Joe LaRette, 37, of Topeka, Kan., said … that he (had) killed Beverly Wortmann, a reporter for the Jackson County Sentinel-Tribune in Blue Springs, (Mo.). … He also has been linked to slayings of two other young women.
Beverly Wortmann was a cheerful, energetic co-worker who split time between my company’s weekly newspaper bureaus. We met after I became sports editor overseeing coverage of several suburban Kansas City communities. She was a reporter/photographer about a year into the job. Although working out of different offices, occasionally we were paired on assignments.
A joyful chatterbox with unbridled optimism and opinions, Bev really only avoided talking about her privileged upbringing in nearby Mission Hills, Kan. And she was politely vague about why she recently had chosen to move into such a small apartment behind a deteriorating shopping center. Her apartment on Valentine Road was in a sketchy section of Kansas City, but it was near the lure the city’s trendy Old Westport nightlife and the upscale shopping enticements of the nearby Country Club Plaza and Crown Center.
As I covered seven high schools in K.C.’s eastern working-class suburbs – games, track meets, pep rallies, banquets and more – our paths would cross. Increasingly, we looked forward to seeing one another. She was a great audience of one, someone who loved to laugh … and visa versa.
Teasingly, I sometimes would introduce her to friends and coaches as “Beav,” mostly as an opportunity to relate our chance encounter with Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow, child actors of Leave It To Beaver fame.
Returning from an assignment on rainy afternoon, Bev and I had pulled into one of many empty spaces in a strip mall parking lot near her unremarkable one-bedroom apartment. We ran for cover through the screen door of a seedy Laundromat and smack into the now-graying faux Cleaver progeny as they were methodically folding their clothes. Lasting name recognition apparently had brought this odd-couple pairing to town for a weeklong performance at a nearby playhouse.
Wally and Beaver were not the least bit interested in having an unscripted fan encounter – at least not at first. But Bev flashed her wide smile and turned up the charm and adoration level just enough to wow them into giving up their autographs on the backs of a couple of our business cards.
I’m not quite sure if it was days or weeks later, but once again we found ourselves walking toward her apartment — probably after an assignment, Bev asked for one my business cards. I blindly reached into my wallet and handed her the same one with The Beaver’s now-smudged pen strokes. She snorted with laughter and demanded another, on the back of which she simply wrote “Beav” and her telephone number, which she had guarded vigilantly. As she pressed the card back into my hand, she smiled, turned and bounded up the decaying steps of her apartment building. At the top of the steps, she paused and tossed her long dark locks over her left shoulder and said, “Hey, call me later if you want. … I’m going to try out my mom’s lasagna recipe this weekend. You game?”
I won’t classify it as a date, perhaps because it took place on a breezy Sunday evening during which Bev’s too-chatty roommate took far too long to size me up and finally leave. Or, maybe it was because some of my most vivid recollections of the evening revolve around forcing down several bites of unquestionably tangy, meatless-yet-stringy lasagna, and nibbling on an assortment of bitter greens, all while uncomfortably seated at a tiniest two-person dinette set ever made.
But for the next four hours or so, I found myself increasingly smitten and spellbound as I listened to Bev chirp, laugh and map out her dreams of relocating soon to New York City. A poet, musician and artist at heart, this classy lady often looked for and circled the most stylized takes from her black-and-white sports-laden contact sheets; sometimes bypassing the most obvious, decisive moments of action. I gently told her about this perceived flaw in her approach, but she laughed and chattered away about “influence” and “splash” and “panache,” or other words just outside my spectrum of understanding or far from the spirit of the evening as I had envisioned.
Most of all, the tall, lanky, freckled-faced Bev seemed a bit relaxed more than usual. She said she was glad for the company and having someone with whom she could quietly share a bottle of wine, and light up a couple of cigarettes as she for once let down her guard. No one was judging her for a change, she said. I knew not to ask the obvious question.
Bev was kind; articulate yet funny, sometimes mixing up the words she intended to utter.
That was seriously endearing.
She also was passionate yet slightly awkward. Inconceivably, she was uncomfortable with her good looks. She told me of being in awe of fellow high school classmate, singer Nicolette Larson, who already had gone on to early national musical notoriety with her rendition of Neil Young's 'Lotta Love.' Someday soon, Bev said assuredly, she would make her own mark.
This was intriguing, but I could tell there would be opportunities for quite a few other evenings to share more dreams. We were young and Kansas City was not going to hold either of us. But knowing that a new workweek soon would be at hand, I knew I should excuse myself around 10 p.m. to make the 25-minute ride home.
I only missed the mark by about 45 minutes.
As I was promising to make return the favor soon, Bev grabbed her jacket, walked me to her door and we stepped into the musty and dimly lit hallway.
She wanted to walk me to my car, mentioning that she was almost out of cigarettes and a convenience store (actually a liquor store) was just a couple of blocks beyond where I had parked just before dusk. I implored her to please go back inside. “Surely you can stifle your stupid habit until tomorrow,” I said, “Besides, those things are going to kill you someday,” unaware of the prophetic wisdom I had just shared.
Bev relented and we shared a quick embrace. There was a brief kiss, but Bev always was kissing friends. Still, there was a kiss, and at the end we smiled as she stepped back inside and closed the door. I heard the anticipated sound of a deadbolt sliding into position and the rattle of a chain. I was feeling warmth.
As I turned and took a few steps, peripherally, I saw to my left the distinctive shape of a person perched about four steps up a flight of stairs with his or her legs protruding from the shadows. Startled, I hastily descended the same staircase without giving too much thought to the person on the stairs. Besides, heading outside after dark, was foremost on my mind. I figured strange people are everywhere, and at that moment I was most concerned about the strangers outdoors.
As I headed for the parking lot, a brisk three minutes from Bev's apartment, I cringed with each resounding crunch of leaves and broken glass beneath my ever-quickening footsteps. I methodically looked again and again over each shoulder en route to the eventual safe haven provided by my 10-year-old baby blue Chevy. Once inside, I buckled the lone restraint across my lap, started the engine and popped in "No Nukes," the eight-track tape of the moment.
A few minutes and several blocks into my journey home, it dawned on me that I because I was wearing a pullover sweater, I had absent-mindedly left behind the heavy jacket that I had worn to Bev’s apartment. Actually, it was my dad’s actual olive drab U.S. Army jacket with our last name — AMOS —emblazoned in black lettering above the left pocket.
I didn’t want to disturb Bev, I rationalized, but more honestly, I didn’t want to have to make that hasty walk to — and retreat from — her dreary apartment. I would get the jacket some other time. Or, if I were really lucky, maybe she would bring it the next time she came to the office. Besides, I still was burning off my post-kiss warmth.
Monday and Tuesday drifted by, seemingly without incident. And the following morning, Dec. 7, seemed like any other crisp fall Pearl Harbor Day. As I entered our bureau’s storefront office across from the side of Raytown High School, I told myself that Bev usually drops by each Wednesday to process her film and make prints. I also hoped she had my jacket.
Stepping inside, I glanced left toward my desk. I saw frighteningly pale, frozen and contorted faces of four co-workers huddled around the community coffeemaker located near my workspace. To my right, an older man on the Advertising side of the room sat with his head on his desk. There were muffled sobs from every direction. Our secretary, lovingly called “Mother Margaret” by most, was conspicuously absent from her desk by the door. Instead, she was at the far end of the room, near the darkroom. For some reason, she seemed to be pushing against the last of a long row of black file cabinets. Inexplicably, her face was buried in her hands.
A couple of other ad reps milled about, seemingly averting their eyes. Even though I had been on the job for about six months, I still couldn’t remember their names.
Dakopolos said LaRette's statement said he was paid to kill Wortmann, 24, who was stabbed to death
Dan T., my editor, was speaking to another reporter and quickly turned to me and matter-of-factly broke the news. He said Bev had been savagely attacked as she apparently was preparing to leave her apartment sometime Tuesday night.
Eventually, we learned that she had been stabbed 19 times and her throat slashed. She was the ninth young woman murdered in Kansas City that year.
Bev was found wearing jeans, gloves and a coat. She had mentioned to her roommate that she was planning to go out for cigarettes — but none were found. Her body was in the bedroom with no signs of forced entry or any sort of tussle. Nor, was anything missing. Despite her seemingly frugal lifestyle, Bev had plenty of money and items of value in the apartment.
At 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, when police arrived at the crime scene, they immediately took into custody a 25-year-old man. Several tenants (and Bev’s roommate) said they had seen him sitting on the same stairwell that night between 7:30 and 11. The man, clutching a Bible, told police he was waiting for his girlfriend and insisted that he had not been in the apartment building between those times.
Just five months earlier, several people had identified this same man as being in the vicinity of another murder — that of a 15-year-old girl, who had been stabbed 25 times with an ice pick. He had denied being there, too.
Editor Dan wasn’t finished with me.
“The (K.C.) cops want to talk to you; they found your jacket,” he said in careful tones so as not to imply that I was a suspect.
I drove downtown to police headquarters where I was interviewed, not interrogated; I complied fully by telling my whereabouts for the past 18 hours. There was no TV-scripted good-cop/bad-cop routine. And one of two detectives eventually offered, “We have our guy, we just needed to know why your coat was at our crime scene.”
A few hours after I was told to go home, their “guy” was released, per Missouri law, because there was a lack of evidence. He never was seen again. I know, because Dan and I went looking for him.
Co-workers and friends of Bev spent the next several weeks interviewing and re-interviewing the apartment’s tenants, We spoke with Bev’s friends and pursued promising tips and phony leads that routinely turned into dead-ends. We pleaded with the police to do more. But they already had turned their attention to newer cases and advised us to stop playing detective.
The sickening frustration took a great toll on many of us. Dan finally quit, and his sourpuss replacement also had little or no use for an amateur, part-lime sleuth masquerading as a sports editor. So, I, too, soon moved on.
As is natural, new tasks, new opportunities, new friends, new infatuations and new loves eventually blurred and firmly diminished the image of this tragedy. The painful memories were closeted out of necessity.
But, nearly 35 years later, I feel an overwhelming need to tell someone, anyone, and everyone about the grace and goodness of Bev Wortmann. She was a good friend and a stunning treasure taken from us far too soon. While recalling her smirks and smiles, her pouts and laughter, I can’t help but wonder what great, eye-opening events that a normal lifespan might have been in store for her if life itself could have prevailed over death.
He gave us absolutely no means of identifying who this second person might be," Dakopolos said Friday. The prosecutor declined to say how much LaRette claimed to have been paid.
It was a cruel world in 1977 — and it certainly has not gotten any better.
I urge everyone to do everything in your power to protect your loved ones.
Denise and I sometimes lament family, friends and acquaintances felled far too soon. As we thought about some of them, I began to recount stories of other people I have known who have been victims of sudden or especially violent deaths. Unbelievably, this country mouse has witnessed far more bizarre and eventful trauma than has the girl who somehow escaped the meanest streets of north Philadelphia.
In high school, for example, I was quite certain that death was stalking me, as three boys of similar age dies in heinous ways. One, who lived a block away, was struck by lightning on the golf course. Another, about 10 houses away, fell into a grain silo. The last one -- just four houses away, perished after he sped over railroad tracks, went airborne and crashed. Death had visited all their families within a year. It was stealthily making it way up my street, claiming high-school-aged males.
And I was next in line.
But much like death itself, that story -- and my demise -- will have to wait for another day …