I Didn’t Get Involved–Until The Murder Trial

                                                    By Cheryl A. Schwartz

     Her frantic screams begging for him to stop sounded muffled, as if through
a pillow. What seemed like furniture being thrown against the wall jarred the
floor under my feet. It felt like a small earthquake.

My friend and I looked up at each other for a moment during the commotion,
then without a word focused back on the work we were doing at her dining room
table in the condo next door.

Thirty minutes into the screaming and thundering upheaval my friend and I
met eyes again, “This happens over there all the time,” she said.

After an hour I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Do you know who lives there?”
“Does anyone ever call the police?” “Shouldn’t we do something?”

 

“No.”

I knocked over my chair tripping to my friend’s front door, ran out and
started to knock on the fighting neighbors’ door. I stopped. Suddenly I began
assessing possible danger to me — this wasn’t my space — I didn’t know who or
what was behind that door.

Whispering to my friend back in her living room I told her I had never
before shied away from getting involved when lives were at stake. But this one
confused me terribly. I felt I should be doing something to intervene but
decided not to based on my friend’s assessment that they were always fighting
next door. Ninety minutes of ferocious battle had finally quieted. I went
home.

The next day my friend called. “Guess who’s dead?”

The husband was charged with the murder of his wife. He beat and strangled
her to death, dragged her bloody, broken body up stairs to the bathroom, washed
her in the tub, re-dressed her in clean clothes, then shoved her body back down
the staircase where it landed in a heap on the living room floor.

My God! I had heard her being murdered! The woman had been screaming for
her life! 

I phoned the district attorney, told her what I knew, and became a witness
for the prosecution.     

 

Tears dripped down my face as I spoke from the witness stand. I starred
straight in the eyes of the murderer during my entire testimony. He was found
guilty.

The names of the people involved in this domestic abuse case aren’t
important, except for the victim. She had a name. It was Catherine.

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Cheryl A. Schwartz, aka aeropolowoman, is a former print and broadcast
journalist from Los Angeles. She is now a blogging journalist from Clearwater,
Florida. Contact her at: http:/twitter.com/direct_message/create/aeropolowoman,  or  cheryl.schwartz@alumni.uc.edu