The Story, part one

Selina Kyle
Jul 30, 2017 · 18 min read

It has been forty years since I first heard of the murder. I don’t know why it stayed close to the surface, unlike so many other details hiding deep in my mind. I’m certain I’ve heard tales more astonishing; more tragic.

But this one lives on. Perhaps I am intended to write it or perhaps it is simply a story to occasionally share during idle lunch conversation, just to vanish again as soon as the words slip from my lips.

I don’t want it to be a paint-by-numbers type of story, a formula with a planned outcome of which the painter is aware as she paints. I’m not sure what I will find as I tell my version and then search for the truth.

I always suspected it was so much more than anything I could make up. I want to know precisely when it happened. How it happened. Why it happened. To compare my notion of the answers to the reality; to see how far off I’ve been all of these years.

Throughout my childhood my older sister was a deep well of lurid information that caused my eyes to widen and my brain to crackle. She was my source for sensationalism, and her stories were riveting.

The first I remember was of the Zodiac Killer. Dianne was babysitting me and our younger sister, who had fallen asleep on the couch.

“Listen,” she warned. “Boys like to take girls to places where they can park the car and neck.”

She had my full attention.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you can’t neck at home. Boys like to drive their cars and there are places called ‘Lover’s Lane’ where kids go to park,” she instructed. “But you can’t do that anymore because of the Zodiac Killer.”

I wanted more, but also knew it was soon time for bed and this was sure to trigger my fear of the dark. I couldn’t say that, of course, because then she wouldn’t tell me the story. I decided the sleeplessness was worth it and urged her to continue.

“What’s the Zodiac Killer?” I asked.

“Well,” she paused, “you know what ‘Zodiac’ means?”

I nodded. “It has something to do with horoscopes, right?”

“Yeah. This guy out in California finds couples who are parked in these spots called ‘Lovers’ Lanes.’ The first time he found a high school boy and girl. He walked up to their car and,” again she hesitated.

“What did he do?” I implored.

“He shot them. He shined a flashlight in their eyes and then shot them right in their faces. He even went back to the car after he heard moaning and shot them again. The boy lived but the girl didn’t. After they were found he sent letters with weird codes and symbols to newspapers, like he was giving them clues. That’s where the Zodiac part comes from.”

“Is he in jail now?” I hoped so, because that confirmation would go a long way in helping me to fall asleep.

“Nope. They can’t catch him. He keeps killing people and he keeps sending letters.”

I was silent.

Dianne’s big brown eyes conveyed regret.

“Listen,” she said in a reassuring tone. “He’s out in California. That’s a long way from here. Plus, you aren’t in high school or college, and you aren’t going to be parking any time soon. But when you ARE old enough don’t go parking.”

“Unless they’ve caught him,” she added.

A few years later, as my date slid his hand between my thighs in the back seat of his Chevy Nova, I squinted into the dark to try to catch a glimpse of what, or who, might be outside. I thought of the Zodiac Killer and wondered if he had been caught.

Another story she shared was that of a young woman who was violently raped. Our family was on vacation in Florida and our parents had gone to dinner with friends. I was sunburned and lying face down on the bed in one of the guest rooms, and again, my younger sister was asleep out on the couch. Dianne was applying aloe to my burned shoulders and back.

“Want to hear something really awful?” she asked, as if she seriously believed I might decline.

“Um, sure,” I replied, my voice muffled by the bedspread. I braced myself.

“You know what rape is, right?”

“I’m not stupid, you know,” I protested, lifting my head just enough to roll my eyes.

“Yeah, sometimes you are,” she asserted.

I shut my mouth, because I didn’t want to risk the loss of both the story and the lotion.

She continued. “A girl was raped by a guy who had broken into her apartment through the sliding glass door.”

She paused.

“Don’t ever get a ground-floor apartment and definitely don’t get one with a sliding glass door.”

I immediately thought of the sliding glass door in the living room of the beach cottage. Through the open door I could hear the sound of the waves pounding onto the shore. I envisioned my little sister sleeping peacefully on the couch as a stranger in black lurked just outside. I fought the urge to jump off the bed to check.

“Anyway. While he was raping her he bit off one of her nipples and she bled to death. Isn’t that awful?” she asked. “Who would think that a bitten nipple would make someone bleed to death?”

“Yeah.” I nodded without lifting my head.

At that time I was still mostly ignorant of the details of sex. Aside from mouth kissing, groping, and intercourse, I didn’t know what all was involved. For some time after I couldn’t figure out why the victim’s nipple was bitten. I didn’t ask; I didn’t want to confirm her suspicion I was stupid.

On the day she told me of the murder she was driving me to a backpacking expedition, the base camp an hour away. It was summer of 1977 and she was home from the University. Our mother worked as a secretary at a local college; Dianne was filling in as back-up mom as she had throughout my childhood.

She took a secondary road, the old route used before the state highway was paved. Secondary roads are narrow and filled with kiss-your-ass curves, absent of protective guard rails. They are the best way to travel, if it’s not snowing and time permits.

Stan, Dianne’s fiancée, had decided I needed discipline and signed me up. The minute we met he adopted a role of big brother. When he visited us in Michigan he made it a point to attend my swim meets and give me feedback about my technique.

They met during their freshman year when they lived in the same dorm and were assigned work study in the cafeteria. One day Dianne’s job was to take the cookies Stan had baked out to the buffet. As the cafeteria emptied Stan continued to bake long past the time he should have stopped. She liked him immediately.

I had looked forward to the trip. I was secretly in love with Stan and considered this an excellent opportunity to forge a common interest. I was determined to prove that I could manage a four-day hike with a 40-pound pack on my back. I had vowed to earn his respect.

So, there we were, maneuvering a winding mountain road, the windows down and singing along with the radio. I looked out at the blue sky held up by the green rolling hills. It was one of those days when I didn’t want the drive to end.

That was also the day I learned that tequila is a liquor served with lemon and salt. I was singing along to the radio and stopped to ask, “What’s a ‘love shaker of salt’?”

Dianne laughed but didn’t make fun of me, unlike the kids I was soon to meet at the camp. She explained how to drink tequila and I decided that I couldn’t wait to try it.

She turned down the volume.

“See that house over there?” Her arm was stretched across my chest, pointing over the berm.

Many years later my husband scoffed at my use of the word ‘berm’, insisting it was just another made-up hillbilly word. ‘Shoulder’ was the correct word, he insisted. I couldn’t help but be smug when later I pointed it out to him from the dictionary.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, spotting a white, two-story clapboard house wedged between the hills.

She wrapped her hand around the ball of the stick-shift and dropped the banana-yellow CVCC into second, slowing the car.

“That,” she said, not averting her eyes from the twisting road, “is where the woman killed her husband.”

I looked down the embankment as the house passed from view. It was lonely, with no cars in front, and no toys or other objects in the yard. The clothesline in the backyard was bare.

“What woman?” I asked, moving my head back into the car.

She shifted into third and the Honda picked up speed.

“You haven’t heard the story?” she challenged.

“No, tell me,” I insisted. “Why’d she do it?”

“Well,” she began, “I heard her husband was a mean man, a really mean man. He drank a lot and hit her a lot.”

She paused, letting that information take hold.

We hadn’t always lived in West Virginia. We were raised in the south suburbs of Detroit, my mother a proud Mountaineer who took the train to D.C. within days of high school graduation. She was pleased to land a job as a switchboard operator for the FBI (just down the hall from J. Edgar, she would brag). She met my father, a Marine from New York (and a guard for Eisenhower, he would brag), who would be deployed to Korea after they married.

When he returned they settled in Michigan. We routinely visited West Virginia and my mother’s extended family, rather than vacationing “up north” as did our neighbors. We stayed with my grandmother, who taught vacation bible school and threatened us with a ruler when we misbehaved. We played with our cousins, swam in the river, and ran the streets of the small town where my mother had grown up.

After graduating from high school Dianne decided to get out of Michigan and away from our father who, while charismatic and loving, could also be a mean man. She chose West Virginia University. This decision displeased my father who thought community college was good enough.

Dianne left anyway.

It was almost two years before my mother made her own escape with me and my younger sister. My grandmother greeted us at her door one morning after a long night of driving. We had packed hurriedly, carrying just a few suitcases. I prayed my mother wouldn’t give in again to my father’s remorse and tears; his promises to stop drinking. When I prayed I felt guilty because what kind of child doesn’t want her parents together, the way it is supposed to be?

At the time of my backpacking trip I was still praying, because the divorce wasn’t yet final.

“How’d she do it?” I asked, envisioning a small woman with a shotgun at one side and a runny-nose toddler at the other.

“She poisoned him. She took rat poison and put a little in his coffee every day for,” Dianne paused. “I don’t know, months.”

“Didn’t he notice?” I asked. I pictured him at a Formica table in a kitchen drinking from a cup and waiting for his eggs. Scowling.

“It took a while. It was just a little bit each day. Slow, you know, not enough to notice right away. He got sicker and sicker. He lost weight. At first he thought it was the flu. But he didn’t get better.”

I thought of all my visits to Dr. Mitchell, for small things compared to a terrible pain in the gut that would keep a big, strong man from working.

“Why didn’t the doctor figure it out?”

“He was stubborn. He didn’t go to the doctor for a long time and by the time he did he was really sick. Everyone thought he had some type of cancer. And she kept on making that coffee.”

I stared out the window, contemplating what his wife thought as she witnessed her husband grow weaker by the day. Did she ever consider stopping and then decided she had gone too far? Or was he just mean enough to make her resolute in her desire to see him dead?

Dianne glanced over. “She started to worry that someone would figure out what was going on. So one day, and I’m not certain of this part, she hit him on the head with a hammer to finish him off. When night came she dragged him out back to the wood pile and cut him into pieces with the ax. Then she burned the body parts.”

I reflected on how it might have happened.

Was he hunched over the table, sickly and weak, but not weak enough to stop harassing her? Did she open a cabinet drawer as he berated her; finding the hammer and turning it over in her calloused hands?

Maybe she simply walked up behind him and swung that hammer down as hard she could, cracking his skull? Did he die fast or did he lie on the floor and groan as blood seeped from his brain, now open and exposed to the air?

“Shut up the hell up, Frank,” she might have said, standing over him with one hand on her hip and the other dangling the hammer at her side. “You had it coming.”

Perhaps she told him what she was doing all those months before, rubbing it in real good so he would know the truth before the last bit of breath left his body.

That his little bitch of a wife had taken matters into her own hands.

That she wasn’t so stupid after all.

I imagined her sitting at the table, sipping her own coffee, waiting for him to die. At nightfall bending over his body, now much lighter because of the poisoning, but still a burden for a small woman.

Perhaps she pulled him up by his shoulders, walking backwards as she dragged him outside in the dark.

Stopping at the woodpile and considering her options. Spying the ax.

Sighing.

And then doing what it was she knew she had to do.

“So, what did she tell people when he went missing?” I asked.

“I think it was snowing at the time. She said he walked out in the snowstorm and never came back. Because he was sick she thought they would believe it. But someone didn’t and reported their suspicions to the police,” she explained.

“I’m not sure of this either, but I was told the police set her up. An officer posed under-cover. She met the guy, fell in love, and then told him what she had done.”

I was amazed.

To go through all of that planning and worrying and then have what would have been a perfect murder ruined because of another man?

Did she whisper her secret to her lover as they lie in bed? Did she think he would understand?

Because he must have known what a horrible man Frank was?

That is the story that stayed with me all of these years.

It wasn’t long before we arrived to the Terra Alta base camp. I hoisted my pack from the hatch and Dianne talked to the camp counselors about arrangements to pick me up in four days.

As Stan hoped, that trip was one of the life experiences that would toughen me up, in more than one way. The night before we departed I sat with other teens from different regions of the state and listened as they shared the names of their favorite bands and highlights of escapades during alcohol and pot-fueled parties. I liked music but couldn’t yet identify most musicians. I had not tried pot, not yet, always aware of my father’s warnings about reefer. He was a cop and was to be obeyed, if not always believed.

“Hey,” one of the older girls barked in my direction. “You like Led Zeppelin?” She wore Levis, with a red tag, and her boots had Vibram marks on the soles. This wasn’t her first camping trip.

I hesitated, afraid any answer would belie my ignorance.

She stared at me, waiting, not willing to allow my silence to be my rescue.

“Um, sure,” I replied. “He’s a great musician.”

The group roared into laughter. I knew it was going to be a rough trip.

By the end of the first day I had bleeding blisters on my heels and my shoulders ached from the weight of the pack. Each step was agonizing.

During the morning of the second day I fell behind, causing the group to wait on me at designated breaks. I told myself that I would not quit, no matter what. During one of the breaks I slipped off my pack and asked a counselor for band-aids. I layered them on my heels, hoping to create a cushion for bleeding wounds. As I slipped on the pack I discovered that my wide hips held the weight, lifting the straps off my shoulders.

By the end of the second day I was at the head of the group, my shoulders relieved of the agony. I started to enjoy myself and found a friend in a guy my age. We decided to share a tent. Soon the group who had teased me the first night sat with us again, deciding that I was okay after all.

On the last day we had to make the trip down the Red Creek trail that we trekked up the first day. It had rained during the night. I tromped ahead, happy to be alone in my thoughts.

About a mile from the forestry shack I slipped on a wet twig, the pack disturbing my balance but protecting my head from injury as I crashed to the ground. I groaned and saw my knee was cut and bleeding. I remembered the counselor’s warnings before we departed: no matter what, if I were to fall and be injured, I was to remain where I was and NOT MOVE.

I lay in a fetal position; one side of my face pressed against wet dirt. I wondered how long it would be before the group caught up.

Soon I heard one of the younger kids who was on the trip with his father. He, too, had walked ahead of the group.

I saw his boots. He knelt and his eyes entered my line of vision.

“What are you listening to?” he whispered.

I laughed. “Joey, I fell. My knee is bleeding. Look.”

“WOW!” he yelled, unstrapping his pack and dropping it to the ground. “Don’t move! I’m going for help!”

I watched his boots as he ran back up the trail to find the group.

It wasn’t long before he and one of the counselors returned. Removing my pack, she helped me to a sitting position and began to dress the wound. As the other counselors and the group arrived they huddled to come up with a plan.

“Can you walk?” one asked as she helped to my feet.

A searing pain tore through my knee and my eyes welled with tears.

“That’s a no,” one said as I was eased back to the ground.

Ultimately a counselor took off his pack and walked ahead of the group to the forestry shed. Joey, his dad, and a counselor stayed with me and the others. Forty or so minutes passed when we saw the counselor accompanied by a tall figure. I noticed his flannel shirt and beard; he looked like a Jeremiah Johnson version of Dan Fogelberg.

Jeremiah Fogelberg was a graduate student stationed for the summer at the Red Creek shack. He instructed the counselor to take my pack. He bent over to scoop me up in his arms, assuring me I would be okay.

He carried me the mile to the shack, with the others tagging behind; Joey excited and blabbering about how he had found me. I buried my face into Jeremiah’s flannel shirt and imagined he was my boyfriend.

When Dianne arrived to the hospital I was seated on a gurney, my knee stitched, and feeling woozy from codeine. She spoke to the doctor and it wasn’t long before we were on the road; my seat pushed back as far as it could go to allow my braced leg to extend.

As she drove I shared the funniest details from the trip, playing my role as comedian. I took great care in relating the details of the fall and the damage to my knee, embellishing the size of the wound and volume of blood.

I was oblivious she had stopped laughing and her face had lost color.

I stopped mid-sentence when she stopped the car abruptly on a wide part of the berm, pulled up the emergency brake, and jumped out.

“What are you doing?” I stretched across the driver’s seat to look out the window.

She was bent over and I heard muffled gagging. She spit a few times to clear her mouth.

“Do you have the flu?” I asked. She hadn’t seemed ill at the hospital.

Nodding “no”, she wiped her mouth with the back of her trembling hand and slid back into the car. I noticed her eyes had filled with tears.

I was struck by a thought. “Are you sick because of ME?”

She nodded, her lips pressed into a little smile. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” She started the car and released the brake.

“Oh, Dianne,” I protested, “I’m okay.”

Our eyes met and we broke into laughter.


My mother’s birthday, in February, was just a few months before the backpacking trip. It hadn’t been much of a celebration but stayed with me, much in the same way as the story of the murder.

We hadn’t yet moved to West Virginia. I had returned home after school to find my mother seated on the couch and crying in the big den of our new home.

I was 13 and unprepared for my new role as “listener” now that Dianne had returned to West Virginia.

My father had given her a $100 bill. No card. Just a terse “Happy Birthday” as he left to go to the bar he and the other police officers frequented.

One of her eyes was encircled by a bruise.

The house wasn’t really “new”, but it was new to us. We had moved in early Autumn 1976 when my parents reunited after a nine month separation.

It was the second change he made after his return: the first was to trade my mom’s 1976 lime green Mustang Ghia, purchased after he left, for a 1976 Buick LeSabre

Now I realize that jazzy little car with the bucket seats represented her ability to thrive without him, and also the threat that she too could be sexual.

When they separated I knew I was supposed to feel sad.

I didn’t.

Instead I felt guilt. Because I was relieved. After all, he hadn’t died, and the news of their separation eased the ever-present tension that pressed against my spirit.

After my mother told me the news I waited until her attention was averted and slipped out to tell my friend Melissa who lived two doors down.

“Listen,” I whispered when Melissa stepped onto her front porch, “you can’t tell anyone this, okay?”

Her eyes widened as I shared the news.

“I’m not sad,” I reassured her, adding the lie, “I’m not happy, but I’m not sad.”

As I walked home I observed my mother standing sentinel at our front door. I knew she knew I had told Melissa and I knew I was in for it. My mother hadn’t told me it was a secret; it was understood. Most everything in our lives was secret. We had our private lives and our public existence.

She opened the door before I reached the first step.

“Did you tell her?” It came out as a hiss between clenched teeth.

I felt shame spread through my body and I kept my eyes averted.

“She won’t tell anyone,” I mumbled.

“Oh yes, she will,” she insisted. “She’ll tell her mother and then everyone will know. People will LOVE that.”

“We don’t tell people our business. They’ll think you’re happy, and this is not something to be happy about,” she added as I entered.

My brain was screaming.

WHY NOT? WHY CAN’T I TALK ABOUT IT? WHY CAN’T I FEEL HAPPY? AREN’T YOU HAPPY?

Soon after he left Dianne decided to take time off from college to help out my mom. She had always been my mother’s confidante and a second mother to me and my younger sister. She had also been the buffer between my father and mother.

It was nice to have Dianne home. Without her my mother seemed sad and lonely; the house had grown increasingly dark and dismal.

Even then I sensed the separation would not be final. With each of my father’s visits he became more jovial; more attentive to my mother. Dianne was absent when he was present. Each visit I scanned my mother’s face for signs and as the summer approached I knew they would reunite.

His return prompted my sister’s departure, the loss of the Mustang, and our freedom.

We gained a Buick and traded our little house for a newer house across town.

We got the bad end of that deal.

The house to which we moved was in the same city but a few miles away from the friends and neighbors we had known a decade. It was also a few miles away from physical and emotional safety as these were the same neighbors from whom we sometimes sought refuge during my father’s most troubled times.

In elementary school teachers taught students to call the police when in danger. I knew that wasn’t true in my home; families of police officers didn’t call the police. Instead, we laid low, tip-toed around the house, and fled when the situation called for it. As a child I relied upon my older sister during those situations.

Once, years before the separation, I was awakened to Dianne instructing me to get out of bed and follow her. She did the same with my younger sister, cautioning us to be very quiet as she helped us with our robes and slippers. Sleepy and confused we quietly obeyed.

The house was dark and we met our mother in the kitchen. She and Dianne whispered to each other and then, leaving my mother, Dianne took us each by the hand and led us down the stairwell to the back door.

After unlocking it she knelt and whispered, “When I tell you to, follow me, and don’t say a word. This is very important, do you understand?”

We nodded.

“Dianne?” I whispered. I couldn’t help it, I had to know.

“What?” she replied, patiently, still on her knees.

“Who are we hiding from and where are we going?”

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