Yesterday was nuts! I�m on the phone all day long with my family, customers, friends, media (Channel 5) the newspaper guy, and the victims services people. I get home thinking, �Yeah, baby. I got my electric back. It�s only been two days! Well, I�m gonna take a shower and watch some TV�. I had it all planned out.
Well, I go over to feed all my critters (�can I send a shout out to Chedda and Cheesy, my ratties? Heeyyy girls!!�) and I pushed the answering machine button. And, my brain just couldn�t comprehend it, but there was a message on there from Ann Rubin, the reporter from Channel 5 saying she wanted to see me, um, in a few hours. Um, today? I mean, I got frizzy hair from two days of no proper hair maintenance. I�m a fashion don�t too. Alas, I call her. Even Helen Keller could see it was a slow news day and this was my chance in hell to talk to the media. While I waited for her to answer, I�m surveying the damage from two days without power. Oh, yeah. Cleaning to do.
Ann answers right away in that very clear, very precise voice only a reporter can have. I so admire that ability to be verbally crisp and perfunctory. Like I had a choice, but we made an appointment for 5:30 p.m. That�s an hour and a half.
I�m so nervous I�m shaking. What if I laugh because that�s been known to happen if you�re nervous!? Oh, lord, what if I take a deep breath because I�m getting emotional and I, horror of horrors, fart??? On tv? Frozen in time forever? The thought left me deeply disturbed and mortified. But if I was gonna be mortified by own behavior then I at least wanted to be looking mighty fine on TV while doing so.
I little time. I shoved my laundry basket in my bedroom, vacuumed like a madwoman while shouting over the machine to my friend. I cleaned like Jesus himself was coming over to interview me.
Because it�s been so humid in the house for the past few days, I burn some lavender incense. I light candles. Okay, now gotta hop in the shower to wash my butt.
Done, run outside to get makeup out of car and wave to the neighbors and shout about making my debut on the news. They excite. They smile. They wave. They probably also imagined, at least a few of them, that I�ve made it all up and that the men in white coats are gonna come get me. Oh, piss off. That�s my self-doubt trying to make me feel silly for wanting to talk about this. But it�s my cause! My opportunity.
If you can access www.ksdk.com website, there is a streaming video that shows the interview. You can see, I only wavered a little. And it�s funny that before they even came over, I said a prayer that I would come across as loving, not hateful. I prayed I would say what it took for people to notice it, and think about it. And you know what, it was beautiful.
It�s weird seeing yourself on TV. It�s weird knowing that this huge, burdensome secret you�ve carried for years and concealed from most of those around you, is now revealed. It�s so strange. I cried when I saw Rod*ney Lin*coln. It took me right back to that night. I can�t explain what that was like, to see footage of my mom�s body bag being brought out and her brothers and sisters standing there watching it.
I can�t tell you what it�s like to know that I�ve been heard. I can�t tell you what it�s like to know that my mother didn�t die in vain. It�s absolutely wonderful.
My phone rang for two straight hours after the broadcast. My family was very proud. My aunt says that she wishes I felt like I could talk to her more about it, which just illustrates that we�ve all got crossed wires because I thought it made her upset to talk about the attack. I never brought it up for that reason. We are healing. Part of what�s helping me to heal is talking about it and finding out the things that I�ve really wanted to know that no one told me. Specifics, etc.
So, I have collected some information in the past few days.
WARNING: BELOW THIS LINE IS VIOLENTLY EXPLICIT MATERIAL:
*******************************************************************
Things I�ve learned in the last two days about my case:
1.) It took 5 people two weeks to clean up the crime scene. It was my aunt Abby, my Grandma, my sister, and two uncles.
2.) My mom fought him. I found out that my family, while cleaning up the crime scene, found 9 of my mom�s long fingernails, which came all the way off in the struggle, scattered around the house. She had fought him hard.
3.) Citizens of St. Louis paid for Mommy�s burial, and the Shriner�s paid our hospital bills.
4.) After the stab wound to the chest, my mom had 45 minutes before her lungs would fill up with blood. If our ignorant upstairs neighbor would�ve called the police when she heard the screaming, it might�ve prevented my mom from dying. But even though she heard the screaming, she didn�t call the police because she �didn�t want to get involved.� This lady laughed on the witness stand.
5.) Even after my mother was dead, he continued to rape and sodomize her.
6.) When the paramedics and police came, my Grandma actually spent time comforting them, even though she had just lost her daughter and she didn�t know if her Grandkids were going to live. That�s how my Grandma is. These men and women, parents themselves sometimes, were throwing up and crying. It was the worst murder in North St. Louis in 66 years.
7.) The detectives told Rod*ney Linc*oln they hoped he rotted in hell in prison. He was pissed because of the media attention. Guess what? I just gave him more media attention.
8.) Rod*ney Lin*coln only served two years for murdering a man and bashing his head in with a rock. That was 7 years before he met my mom.
9.) I heard, and this is heresay, he sexually assaulted a child in his family prior to our attack.
10.) He was supposedly on PCP when he attacked us. Edited: Toxocology confirmed no chemicals were in his blood. Basically, he was normally a psycho!
11.) After he slit my baby sister�s throat, he threw her back on her bed. Her head hit the wall and she landed in such a position that her blood clotted, and her bleeding slowed way down.
12.) I had to be careful about the way I laid down because one of the stabs came very close to my heart.
13.) Playing dead saved our lives.
14.) Unfortunately, Momma wasn�t playing. She was already dead when he attacked me.
15.) The End for today.
3:03 p.m. - 2003-06-13
Recent entries:
What you missed - January 16, 2012
%%older_entries%%From hell - October 19, 2010
%%older_entries%%a rant from a few weeks ago - August 17, 2010
%%older_entries%%Tired - June 20, 2010
%%older_entries%%A beautiful lie - March 11, 2010
%%older_entries%%
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