closure

my first year of teaching was a long time ago, and was marred by a tragic incident that i have never completely had closure on. this weekend, via facebook, i got that closure, and it has given me a little peace.

in the mid 80's richmond had a serial killer, the so-called SOUTHSIDE STRANGLER. before he was finally caught, 4 women were raped and strangled to death. his name was timothy spencer, and he was the first person in the usa to be put to death based upon DNA evidence. his last richmond victim was a student of mine, diane cho.

at the time, i was searching for a place to move to, and even though i had always lived on the southside of town, i moved across the river simply out of fear. as it turns out, spencer apparently was scoping out his victims at cloverleaf mall, then stalked them, then killed them. these murders were the number one thing on most people's minds during those months, so when his third victim turned out to be my student, i was affected in a way that i cannot describe. the effects seem to tumble over and over, striking in many areas, touching a lot of lives. and there were lots of "coincidences" that i don't see as such. things happen for a reason, but i still wonder why i was selected.

two weeks before she died, diane had an after school detention with me. too many tardies. so she stayed, washed the board, made a writing box to put kids papers in. after she had finished the busy work, she sat down in front of my desk and we talked. in the course of the conversation, she told me about how she and one of the other korean girls would open up their windows at night after their parents thought they were asleep, and would talk to each other. jenny lived upstairs, diane on the first floor. at any other time this kind of activity would have gone down as quaint and silly. but not during that time. i remember saying to diane "hey, you can't do that anymore! there is a killer out there who is killing women and going through their windows to get them."

and then the strangest things happened. she just smiled at me, and suddenly a shaft of sunlight came through the window and illuminated her face. and i knew then that she wasn't going to close the window. and she didn't.

i came back to school on a monday morning after having been out of town, and i heard teachers whispering in the english workroom "whose student was she?" and i asked what they were talking about. someone said the strangler had killed again over the weekend, and it was a korean girl. and then i knew it was diane, and it was.

she was in a class of 13 kids, and when you have a small number like that, it makes for a more intimate, family like atmosphere. most of the kids in there were from all sorts of backgrounds and brought all sorts of issues to the table. they got along. they argued. but some of them were scared beyond belief when murder and rape struck someone so close to them. one of the boys had seen them take diane's body out on the stretcher, had seen her mother hysterically throwing herself on diane's body. another boy spent the class period that day snapping pencils in half, one by bone. and then there was desi, a tough puerto rican girl who had come from new york. she and diane were friends and lived near each other, and apparently rode the school bus together.

a day or so after the killings, another student approached me and said that desi had info about diane and the person who had killed her. desi apparently was willing to talk to me, and i took her out in the hall and asked her about it. she did have info, and considering the nature of the incidents, it was something i felt had to be turned in. i went to the office and called the cops, and the detectives on the case came to school. desi would only talk to the cops if i was going to go with her. so i did. they covered off my class for the 2 hours it took for them to get there and to conduct the interview. they asked a lot of really strange questions of both desi and i that day. did diane carve herself? did we know anything about her drawing the figure 8 on herself? other things that i couldn't understand that day. desi told them how diane had seen the guy when she had gotten off the bus on that friday afternoon, and she had screamed and run away. she had seen him before and he had stalked her. desi gave a description of what the stalker looked like...and it was eerily close to what timothy spencer actually looked like...only it took them a long time finally to get to him and arrest him. he was caught, convicted and put to death and now it has been 20 years. what was the closure i needed?

years after the incident i worked as a reporter for one summer for the old richmond afternoon paper, the NEWS LEADER. one of my days was spent with the crime reporter at the time, gordon hickey. he had written an article for reader's digest that i think won some sort of award for journalism. in it he had recounted the story of how timothy spencer had operated, how he was caught, and how ultimately he was put to death. i relayed my story about diane to him and he inadvertantly answered a lot of the questions that i had had about what happened to her. most importantly what i learned that day was that desi had been right, and that her information could possibly have led to finding him. desi might have saved some lives, but she would never had known.

and then came facebook, and former students, and the friends and links you click on and the pictures of former students that you look at. yearbook pictures, things from the day. and in looking at one of those, i saw desi's picture, and remembered and wondered about her. another former student asked to friend me, and i looked at her friends, wondering which ones i might know or remember...and there she was.

tentatively, i sent her a short message, asking if she was that desi. she wrote me back...she was that girl, and she, too, remembered diane. i told her what i wanted to say, about the information that gordon had given me years later, and how she had told the truth. she told me that even her own mother hadn't believed her, but she still talked. and it made a difference.

desi is now living in puerto rico, is 37, and has 6 kids. she seems happy. she said that she did what she did because diane was her friend. and that must have meant more than being scared or worrying about whether or not someone would take a 15 year old kid's information seriously. and all these years later, it is still worth something...