Now this is probably going to be depressing for some of you but the truth is that the holidays make me think of murder. One murder in particular.
I've covered a lot of murders over the years and after a while they start to bleed together. Today, in the newsroom, an editor was trying to remind me of one but I kept reverting to another one. They happened years apart in separate hotels but we kept mistaking the one for the other.
Anyway, I was working on New Years Day several years ago and ended up in Jackson County for a press conference. We found out that a woman had killed her boyfriend ... five days earlier. He abused her often, according to her attorney, but she kept going back to him. Finally, she had enough and killed him during an argument. Then she wrapped his body up and used a tractor to drag it to the barn. Then she covered the body with tires.
Then ... then, she went about her week, I guess. That part of the story remains a mystery to me. The truth is I don't want to know what she did for a week while her love lay dead in the barn. The truth would ruin whatever my imagination came up with.
On Sunday she went to church. She started to feel bad about what she had done and she called her pastor for counseling. Protestants don't have that confidentiality clause that the Catholics have. Her pastor coaxed the story out of her and then called the law.
Later, much later, I asked her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Walter Smith, why she kept the body close. Why didn't she get rid of it?
"Because she loved him," he said.
