I have lunch maybe twice a week at a local dive, a small house-cum-restaurant that has been serving food inside its humble walls for over 50 years. The people who work there are mostly city natives who have worked hard all their lives. The owner, Sherrie, has worked in the restaurant since she was a teenager. Her mom Betty owned the business before her and cooked while carrying her in her womb. Betty's been cooking and serving the folks of my hometown good food since many of them were babies. The waitstaff are all very loyal to the small but dynamic family that is just as happy to serve you a cup of coffee as they are a baked chicken dinner. Jennifer Randel, one of the bussing staff, was a tiny, elfin woman of forty who looked twenty five, unless she was bruised. Then she looked sixty. Her story ends badly and continues below the fold.
A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
I hadn't known Jen very long before she turned up at the restaurant with an ugly bruise around one sky-blue eye. For some reason, the sight of that little imp with the marks of violence on her enraged me even more than such things usually do. Her story was typical. Her boyfriend Donald Rolle treated her really well until he didn't. She had thrown him out, demanded he get anger-management counselling, gotten back with him and repeated the cycle many times. Jennifer was one of the most easy-going, forgiving people on the planet and was sure he wouldn't ever hurt her on purpose, even when she kicked him out for good and changed the locks. After his last attack, she even asked the judge to be lenient on him and let him out on bail. It was while he awaiting this assault trial that he took her out on a "date", argued with her at a bar, ordered her into his truck and drove off with her. Witnesses reported the incident but it wasn't until hours later when Jennifer was able to call 911 with Rolle's cell phone that police were able to get a bearing on where Rolle had taken her. During that call she was cut off, but not before the dispatcher heard Rolle scream that he was going to cut Jen's eyes out. She was found by deputies the next morning beaten to death and stabbed many times with a knife her boyfriend had taped to his hand and with which he was trying to kill himself when he was caught a hundred yards from the truck.
Jennifer didn't go without a fight. She had tried several times to get away. Investigators found traces of several species of plants that grow along the roads and ditches in her shoes, nylons and hair, as well as scratches made by them on her legs and arms. Her murderer claimed he had to subdue her because the four-foot nine, 102-pound woman had come for him with the knife, but no defensive wounds were found on the six-foot tall, 180-pound Rolle. Instead he had hacked and slashed at the tiny Jennifer many times, her arms and hands cut to the bone from defending herself. Rolle claimed that he "hadn't killed her but he knew who did" on a suicide note he had written. He also claimed he had "only" hit her head against the windshield and then, after he had caught her running away, "kicked her in the stomach and made her puke blood." No blood was found in Jen's stomach or lungs, but it was found all over Rolle's truck, clothing and in the two other places he stopped to beat her before coming to the irrigation canal.
Stricken by the articles in the paper concerning Rolle's upcoming murder trial, I drove out to the place where he administered the fatal blows. It was easy to find. The newspaper described the mileage perfectly, and I was familiar with that portion of the irrigation canal that delivers water to area alfalfa pastures. Wreathes, birthday balloons and mementoes hung on the barbwire fence. The north wind, hung with steely clouds threatening the first snow of fall, tugged at the fading ribbons and silk flowers and fitfully rattled the "NO TRESPASSING" sign. The surrounding hardscrabble, overused, salty land has seen people die before. Not a dozen years ago a homegrown boy was sucked through the canal's syphon to a pre-graduation death. Most of the clay hills hereabouts are gnawed with bulletholes and strewn with discarded junk used by target shooters. Roadkill and animals slaughtered for sport abound on this open range. It was not a good place for Jennifer—sweet, gentle Jennifer of the new kittens and the horned toads and the salamander from the neighbor's old tire pile and the ancient dogs or any of the other strays that found a loving home in her trailer side-by-side with her and her beloved sons—not a good place for Jennifer to die by the bestial fists of a brute better suited for violent death himself.
Last week Rolle was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. At his sentencing hearing, wishing to appear overwhelmed with self-loathing, Rolle asked to be put to death for the killing. He said that he deserved no less for the pain he had brought to the Randel family and that, had he not been stopped by the deputies, he would have done it himself. Evidence suggests however that he had only given himself superficial wounds with the knife and that he was really just trying to garner sympathy for being abused as a child. He never once mentioned Jennifer during this speech.
I adored Jen with all my heart as anyone else who met her did. The beast who slaughtered her deserves so much to live out his life surrounded by murderers like him, to whom he can gibber his story with the echoes of her screams and the knowledge that the jury didn't believe him in his mind. He savaged to death the thing he supposedly loved most, leaving us without her and himself to the tender mercy of the most barbaric among us. May he live out long days seared with the pain of her loss and the knowledge that, no matter how he tries, nothing he can do can bring her back.
Sometimes, when I fantasize about being Empress of the World, I think that I would chose to somehow magically sweep down into the prison yard and catch the murderous fucker by his shaking leg, spirit him to the canal-side where Jen breathed her last breaths and show him the entire event over and over until he understands what he has really done. He has left us without her. We will never again hear her laugh or her impassioned pleas for someone to take one of the stray kittens she is raising. I will never get to hug this little firecracker hello and in doing so lift her off the floor to leave her tiny feet dangling. There is a small, sparkling emptiness in the restaurant still, like a spark in the corner of your eye. He stole the source of that spark from those of us who loved being warmed by her fire. I would leave him screaming for that warmth, screaming her name. If I were Empress of the World...
...if I were, Donald Rolle would never have been born and Jennifer Randel would be at Sherrie's in the morning.