11-30-01
so. this is what i wrote after bekah's father, brother, stepmother, and i were sat down in a room in long beach with my MADD advocate, the detectives who made the murder case against rambo, some of the other LAPD who responded to bekah's death and/or her killer's arrest, district attorney nicholas rini and a fat southern cop in uniform who was apparently enlisted by either the police or the da to try to make us say "okay" that bekah's killer would do four years in prison and get away with murder. it never got okay. i have a call into rini since yesterday afternoon...no response. i'm falling over from the shock of that. right.

all the raving and writing i have done since the day my girl was killed. all the studying and reading and forcing myself through every page, every letter, every punctuation mark of the traffic report, the hospital records, the autopsy report,the murder book, all of it [i did not and will not look at any of the 243 photos obtained by the police that night, and never saw bekah again]. all the trips to 25th street and even on down the road to pv drive east and the killer's destination post-murder. the death certificate and its little insult. the depositions and their big insults.

all the intense overnights cross legged on the bed i no longer slept in, thinking, thinking, writing, writing. before this plea bargain was reached in November 2001 my life was devoted to achieving justice for bekah...as if i had any power or sway to that end, at all. i did not, do not. but i tried, yeah. two letters to the da, one signed by her father, stepmother, and me, the second just from me and my perspective as the child of a drunk. i slaved over the letter we all signed for at least two or three days; i don't think i have ever in my life tried so hard to get it right, to put out all the arguments in case he missed one or two, to make sure he knew that bekah should still be alive and that her killer needed to go away bigtime. like for life...for murder.

and yet it was just yesterday that i realized that there is actually a logical, sensible reason i've never been able to shake the feeling that rambo pointed her car at bekah that night. when it hit me yesterday, it hit like a truck of insane. i went to the phone and began calling people to bounce this - epiphany? what is the word for a terrible epiphany? - off of someone i knew would be sane. because i did not know that about myself. but today, i think i am sane. i guess i'll never know why this simple reality never occurred to me for over two years after bekah's death.



the scene illustrated contempt more than anything, to me, i think...two chalk boxes marking where her shoes had landed, near the curb on the other side of the street from her car...about 100 feet away, in the median, bekah's blood. not all of it; just the "large pool" described in the police report. just enough so that six months later we could still see the spot.

it may have been a month, maybe less, before the day i called the detective to admit that i could not stop thinking she pointed her car at bekah. the news and police report both documented a speeding car, on the wrong side of the road, no headlights. he asked if i had any reason to believe that bekah may have known rambo; the answer was no. i literally thought bekah was communicating it to me from the other side [she is an excellent communicator after all]. but yesterday, for the first time, i realized, if rambo was driving on the wrong side of the road before she killed bekah, bekah would still be alive.

bekah looked before she crossed, and was close to the opposite curb before rambo scooped her up with the front left part of her car. i know that bekah looked, because she never had an accident in all her years of driving [sixteen year old girls driving for the first time are statistically 100 percent likely to have an accident within the year]. the only injuries she ever got growing up were a concussion because of MY bicycle-riding when she was still in diapers and a broken nose at 4 because she tried too hard to keep up with her big brother and went face first into a concrete bench. nothing after the age of 4. bekah looked out for herself.

rambo was traveling in the same direction as bekah; in other words, Bekah's car was pointed in the same direction and she had pulled to the curb from the same lane rambo was driving in. if bekah had seen a car traveling toward her in the opposite lane, she would have never stepped foot into the street in the first place. she would have just let the car pass and then cross. bekah's crossing when she did tells me that rambo was traveling in the correct lane as bekah began to cross. she had time to get to the other side of the street; she did get to the other side of the street. she should have been safe, but she trusted the driver to stay in her lane.

okay. today i still think i am sane, but i do feel a bit like woody allen in that movie where he can't let the subject of JFK's assassination rest. in my case now that i have done this i can let the subject go.

after i have a word with nicholas rini that is.

- posted by barbara @ 11/07/2003 01:55:00 PM