Memories of Murder
“Do you remember killing them?”
My question hung in the air. The seconds ticked by.
Finally, he spoke.
“I kind of do.”
He paused again.
“I would have to say that I do.”
“Where did the knife come from? The kitchen?” I asked.
He confirmed. I typed.
“We’re neck deep in it now,” he noted.
“Yes. We are,” I replied.
I had read the affidavit he sent only a few hours earlier.
The description of the crime scene — the blood, the shirtless woman, the 1-year-old boy lying dead with a wooden-handled knife sticking out of his chest — depicted rage to me.
But that’s not what he recalled.
“I don’t remember feeling any kind of rage.”
Anger, that would be fair to say, he conceded.
“Rage doesn’t seem right.”
He continued: “I don’t know, man, I think I remember just wanting, kind of just wanting shit to be over. I remember getting high, I remember the bathroom door swinging open. From there, from that point on, it was like, ‘Fuck it.’ I had to get out of there.”
Damian has said if he hadn’t been high on crack cocaine the night, he wouldn’t have committed the murders.
For years, he hid his cocaine abuse — a habit he started at 16 — from his wife.
That night, as they watched a movie, he made repeated visits to the bathroom. To get high. His wife grew suspicious. She yanked open the bathroom door to find him in the act.
“I think from being high, I think something was switched off in me,” Damian said.
He said he felt paranoid — like someone was out to get him. He now knows his feelings weren’t based in reality, but at the time he couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction.
“Maybe just being in that lifestyle — like living a double life — maybe somewhere inside of me I wanted to get the fuck away from something,” he theorized. “Maybe that bathroom door swinging open was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I don’t know.”
He continued: “(I’ve) still got a lot of shit that I haven’t dealt with (or) thought about.”
About the Author
Andréa Maria Cecil is a career editor and writer whose experience includes six years as Assistant Managing Editor and Head Writer at CrossFit Inc. headquarters. She spent the first 12 years of her professional life as a journalist — starting with The Associated Press in Detroit and Baltimore — before transitioning to content marketing with an emphasis on authentic storytelling. She is the editor of “Speal: A David and Goliath Story” by Chris Spealler that sold 10,000 copies worldwide.
