An old friend visited me in Tokyo recently with her daughter. The daughter lives and works in Bangkok, my friend lives in Georgia so Tokyo is a good meet in the middle place. After a day of tromping around Ginza in horrendous Tokyo August heat with crowds of tourists from Asia looking but not buying much unless it was from Don Quijote, we spent a quieter day walking around Kagurazaka. We had lunch in a small quiet vegan cafe close to Akagi Shrine, cooling down with ice coffee and koji amazake, the traditional summer pick me up for Buddhist priests on the go. I had visited her home when the family still lived in Baltimore. At the time she worried about the growing crime, then moved to Atlanta. Not a very safe place either but she was well acquainted with the Atalanta crime profile from working for the district attorney there, and knew how to stay safe. Sightseeing Atlanta with her is always surreal fun, “See that luxury hotel? That used to be a rent by the hour flop house for druggies and prostitutes. Clean sheets were extra…that hospital there is where I’d go to bust nurses who were addicted to pain-killers, stealing and selling them on the side.” During our conversation I made a casual remark about the ‘Luigi Left’ that champions crazy political violence. My friend perked up and said,
“I told you that I know his family right? He’s my youngest one’s age. His two older sisters are my other daughter’s age and they went to school together. I know his parents. They are lovely people. I think he’s mentally ill. Luigi didn’t go to catholic school otherwise he and my youngest would have been classmates. I can remember the two of them crawling around together on the sidelines at soccer games for the older girls. I ran into his mother, Kathy, right before we left Baltimore. The oldest sister had just gotten into medical school at I think Vanderbilt.
The news came out with a broad picture of the family when the shooting occurred. It was only semi accurate. They got general stuff like employment correct but then they twisted it to make it seem sinister or questionable. Luigi went to a very good private boys school. He was always super bright. The family had quite money and you’d never have know they were well off. They were hands on and involved in a lot of things with the church and school but not in the overly religious way. They are just really nice people.
We were watching the news in the afternoon that he was apprehended. I didn’t recognize his picture as I hadn’t seen him in years but they mentioned the town the McDonald’s is located in and it’s in podunk PA and the name Luigi and I told my husband that it had to be him. Luigi isn’t a common name and that location in nowhere PA would be familiar to someone from Baltimore. You can scoot into PA from Baltimore in some places in 20-30 minutes. And about one hour later they have the name and sure enough…
I felt sick for his family.”
It’s one thing to read about a murder that has no connection with your life, completely different when it involves a friend or neighbor and you watch the tragedy play out in their lives. A family is never the same. I listened flabbergasted, thinking about another nice family who lived next to us when we moved to the Chicago suburbs in the early 1970s. We didn’t know it when we moved there but gradually learned their eldest son, a high school student, had been murdered the previous year.
Bits and pieces captured from hushed conversations were gruesome, the son’s body was found in a thick scrubby patch of forest across from the high school. High school kids called it ‘the hole’. A neighbor who was a Chicago city cop took it on himself to identify the body for the son’s family to spare them the trauma but trauma came anyway. The prime suspect was another high school student who lived one block away. There was a trial but the court case failed to convict the suspect as key evidence was inadmissible. The local police department detectives had failed to get a proper search warrant for the garage where the evidence was discovered. There was an appeal but that failed as well. We fled inside when local news camera crews came to film the neighbors house.
Over time the news died but the family quietly disengaged from the neighbors. I was in the same grade as the youngest son Justin. A nice kid in elementary school days, he grew aloof in high school. Not unfriendly exactly, a bit of a showoff. My image of him is manically shooting hoops in the driveway after the camera crew left. Like a fuck you show of doing something normal. His older brother Marty, the 2nd oldest was known as the trouble maker, more like getting into it, but I always found him to be the most real and likable one of the entire family. He had a slightly dark brooding demeanor, but really listened to what you said instead of acting nice, pretending to listen. My image of him is forming a garage band, more like a basement band that was the only place to practice. They sounded awful but the neighbors put up with the racket out of respect. Except maybe the aloof cat lady who lived directly behind our house. In the 8 years we lived there I never saw her. When she complained, she called.
By the time we got to high school the murder had faded into the background. Except when cutting through ‘the hole’ on the way home. By then most of the scrubby forest had been cleared making it a big open field with woody bits around the edges. Enough perfect cover for up to no good high schoolers to go and smoke, the really bad ones smoking reefer. The bad vibes of the place were real. It wasn’t a place you wanted to linger in the daylight. Nighttime was no-go. The hole is long gone and developed now. The danger forgotten, but not gone: bad things happen to good families.
One memory remains stark and clear. One late spring afternoon us kids from the block were hanging out on the Sundstrom’s front porch next door to us as we usually did, listening to Larry Lujack’s top 40 countdown on WCFL. John S, always tinkering with his blue Schwinn 5 speed, make up hilarious song lyrics on the spot, like the one for his younger sister Nancy’s gnarly, not so friendly, stray top poodle Sam.
“Sam, Sam the lavatory man,
Chief engineer in the city can,
Passes out the paper and passes out the towels,
And then he listens to,
The rumble of the bowels.”
John would sing it in campy R&B voice and we’d laugh and laugh. And so we were that day, not a care in the world. A guy walking down the street, not from our block. Young but a few years older than any of us. “It’s Karl,” someone whispered and the laughter died. That Karl, the guy indicted for the murder but not convicted. He walked past us, tall, blonde, muscular, cool. Very cool. Completely ignoring us but radiating fuck you vides. He walked to a post box in front of Mr. Strong’s house at the end of block, put in a letter and walked back past us, again, all cool and ice cold look. The mailman could have picked it up on the regular delivery but he had gone to the trouble of walking two blocks down and back to mail a letter. Suddenly it was time for us to all go home. Not long after that, rumor came round that Karl’s family had moved away. Some years after that our family moved away too to North Carolina.
Like my friend, I feel sick for the family next door as I could not as a 6th grader. The trauma of a murder with no resolution. And even though Luigi’s family is in a very different situation, I suspect there will be no resolution for them either no matter the outcome of his trial. Even so, I hope they find their own resolution and happiness.