After hanging up, Rachel took a photo of the letter with her phone and emailed it to Pete. It was only when she was stuffing the pages back into the envelope that she noticed writing scribbled on the corner of the envelope, almost as an afterthought.
Maybe we should talk in person. I’ll wait for you at the Morrison’s Point jetty at 2 p.m. sharp.
Rachel tore the envelope into strips. She had no intention of rendezvousing with an anonymous fan and possible stalker at an old jetty. Pete was right. She needed to be careful. The first episode of Season 3 had been released. Her fans knew she was in Neapolis to cover the trial. So did everyone else.
4
Guilty or Not Guilty
Season 3, Episode 1: Victim Blaming
Ever since I announced that I’m covering a rape trial for Season 3, I’ve been inundated by people asking me why. My mother. My brother. My producer. Even my ex called to express his reservations.
The phrase “Rachel, are you crazy?” came up a lot. They’re worried that no matter how I report on the trial, I’m going to rile people up. I’m going to offend people. I’m going to get hate mail and abuse. And, perhaps most frighteningly, I’m going to get crucified on Twitter.
Because rape, for a reason that I can’t understand, is divisive.
Murder is a piece of cake by comparison. Everyone agrees that murder is heinous. There’s no argument about that. There’s no difference of opinion. The Bible says it straight out: “Thou shalt not kill.”
When it comes to rape, the Bible is more ambivalent. Much like rape laws have been for millennia.
Raping women was considered a legitimate spoil of war throughout much of human history. It wasn’t that long ago when a husband could rape his wife without breaking the law in some states. In some countries, a husband can still rape his wife, or even a random woman or girl. As long as he marries her afterward.
That’s why I chose this case rather than cover another murder trial for Season 3. I want to make you think about how rape and the threat of rape affect the lives of women in a hundred different ways.
I suppose there’s another reason why I chose to cover this case. Long before I heard about the rape trial in Neapolis, there was another case I worked on that, well, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that it got to me. Even today, I get kind of teary. And emotional. As you can probably hear … Damn, I promised I wouldn’t cry when I told you the story.
The victim was my age. She lived on my block. We shopped at the same supermarket. We took shortcuts through the same park at night. We took the same train from the same platform. So, yeah, her death felt personal.
It was my park. My neighborhood. And she died there, on a damp stretch of grass where my friends and I would play Frisbee in the summer.
But … if I’m honest, I think there was more to it than that awful, selfish thought that “but for the grace of God go I.” Her story, out of all of the stories that I covered as a crime reporter, tore me up because of the way she was treated after her death.
I won’t say her real name, but let’s call her Cat Girl. She loved cats. She had a miniature sphinxlike cat tattooed on her shoulder. That was how she was identified—through that tattoo. She worked at an animal shelter on Sundays and at a soup kitchen on Wednesdays. She was kind and funny. By all accounts, she was a talented jazz musician with a husky, evocative voice that put chills down my spine the first time I heard a recording of her singing. If that wasn’t enough, she played some seriously good sax.
Cat Girl worked at a little jazz club in Carytown, in downtown Richmond. Music lovers went there for the jazz. College students went there for the Happy Hour specials. The bar was a hole-in-the-wall sort of place. Narrow wooden stairs at a side-street entrance leading down to a basement bar. It had midnight blue walls and grungy water-stained tables with mismatched chairs. Nobody noticed because the place was too dark to see anything except the stage.
It was a Thursday night. Cat Girl performed a few songs in between serving tables. At some point, a big-shot record producer who was out scouting talent gave her his business card and invited her to audition for a band he was putting together. It was the biggest break she’d ever had. His business card was listed in her personal effects in the autopsy report. It was a sobering reminder that her life went from elation to tragedy in the space of hours.
When the bar closed, she walked home instead of taking a cab. Maybe she wanted to unwind. It was early summer. A perfect night for walking. So she walked. Why not. Right?
It took fifteen minutes for her to walk home. The last part was a little dicey. Remember, it was my neighborhood. I knew it like the back of my hand. Before she cut through the park, she texted her friend to say she was almost home. I guess you can figure out the rest.
Her body was found by a jogger. She was lying on the grass in the middle of the park. Her clothes and hair were wet. It had rained overnight. Her underwear lay in a ball in a puddle and her skirt was hiked up. There were bruises around her throat. She’d been raped and strangled.
It was the way that she’d been left exposed by her killer that sickened me most. He’d taken everything from her. He’d taken her life. Yet even in death, he had to degrade her in one final act of humiliation.
The area where she was murdered was a popular neighborhood for college students living in off-campus apartments. Rumors spread like wildfire that she was killed by a serial killer. Well, you can imagine the hysteria.
It didn’t help any when the cops told women living in the area to take precautions. You know, the usual stuff. Hold your keys between your fingers to use as a weapon. Keep your phone in your hand and dial nine-one-one if you’re being followed or feel afraid. If every woman who felt afraid called nine-one-one, the switchboard would melt. That is what women live with every day of our lives.
A lot of women felt the cops were blaming Cat Girl instead of her rapist and killer. These women argued that women should be able to walk wherever they want, whenever they want. If they walk home late at night through a park, they shouldn’t be criticized for it. And they sure as hell shouldn’t be raped and murdered for it.
When school kids are shot by a random shooter, nobody asks whether the victims should have taken more precautions. Nobody suggests that maybe the victims should have skipped school that day. Nobody ever blames the victims.
So why is it that when women are attacked, the onus is on them? “If only she hadn’t walked home alone.” “If only she hadn’t cut through the park.” “If only she’d taken a cab.”
When it comes to rape, it seems to me “if only” is used all the time. Never about the man. Nobody ever says “if only” he hadn’t raped her. It’s always about the woman. If only …
As I was researching possible cases for Season 3, I thought a lot about Cat Girl and what happened to her. Mostly I thought about the way she was blamed for her own rape and murder.
Then I heard about the upcoming trial in Neapolis. Something about it moved me so deeply that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It reminded me of the Cat Girl case even though the Neapolis case is different in so many ways. In almost every way.
There is one thing that is exactly the same. That’s the blame-the-victim game. That hasn’t changed at all. Just like with Cat Girl, I kept hearing people blaming the girl at the center of this case in Neapolis.