An anniversary of murder

I have a friend named Danielle – Dani for short. She’s a tiny, beautiful blonde thing and she is celebrating an anniversary.

March 6th marks the 15th anniversary of her mother’s murder. To this day the case remains unsolved.

51 year old Gail Parker, a vivacious, altruistic, well dressed resident of Tucson, Arizona stopped by a Circle K Store on Saturday night, March 6, 1993. A surveillance camera caught her quick transaction and maybe even a glimpse of the killer but because the crime happened on a weekend no one thought to preserve the tape. Mrs. Parker’s body was found later that night in a stretch of desert, her head bashed in, her pocketbook and jewelry gone. Her husband Barry Parker happened to be watching the news, waiting for his wife to come home, when he heard the chillingly familiar description of a Jane Doe’s clothing. In a state of shock he called police.

On that night so many years ago Dani and her father’s lives changed forever. So did the life of Gail’s elderly mother who began a sad decline of Percocet overuse to try to dull the agony. Her emotional distress drove her to attempt suicide on more than one occasion. She died in 2005 never knowing who took her daughter from this earth. Gail Parker’s murder left a hole in the heart of this family – a hole that can not begin to heal until the person responsible for creating it is found, put on trial and found guilty of the crime.

First denied of their loved one, the Parker family has also had to endure the denial of seeing justice done.

I’ve studied a lot of statistics about murder in America. None so sad as the numbers of unsolved cases. Of course the numbers vary from week to week, month to month as more cases hit the books and more cases are actually solved. But consider the latest government statistics: There were 16,137 murders in the United States. 37.4% of these cases were unsolved — meaning more than 6 thousand people, literally, got away with murder. About a third of all murders went unsolved. And that’s just for the last reporting year, 2004. Don’t forget there were thousands of unsolved murders from 2003, 2002, 2001 … Add them all together and you get my drift.

Now, think of the survivors of homicide like my friend Dani and her family. Grief expert Lu Redmond estimates there are seven to 10 close relatives for each victim. It’s a horrific domino effect that leaves thousands of wounded people to grieve and mourn for the rest of their lives.

It all seems so simple when we watch TV shows like “Cold Case” or “Without a Trace”. Crimes seem to get tied up in a nice little bow by the end of the program. That is not reality.

Over the last 15 years Dani has gone through life’s normal ups and downs: a painful neck injury that nearly left her paralyzed and she got married to a wonderful man named Michael. These are events in life for which you need your mother – but that was impossible for Dani. Her father couldn’t bear to stay in Tucson without his beloved wife of 27 years so he moved east to be closer to Dani, his only child. Today his life revolves around simply getting through the day. Over the years Dani has tried to introduce her father to other women but Gail, he says, was the love of his life. He’d rather be alone with his memories.

As for Dani, I marvel at what she has achieved in life and wonder what more she could have accomplished if she hadn’t had to operate with part of her heart and soul ripped away. Always successful in the public relations area Dani opened her own PR business recently in uber-competitive New York. She’s already building an impressive clientele.

But she wrote to me recently, “Every day is a struggle for me … to get up in the morning, to work, to put a smile on my face when all I feel like doing is crying. To the outside world, I seem like a person who has it together, but I am a complete mess inside.”

You would never know to look at Dani and I’m torn up inside knowing how tough every day must be for her. Now, multiply her life numbing pain by the thousands of other homicide survivors out there.

If lawmakers are struggling for grounds to fund victim’s assistance programs or cold case teams – the reason is staring them in the face.