the wake of destruction

Next in the series From Christmas to August, Mike Tracey writes of Daxis' lusting after yet a another little girl, gossip and the media, and of course the most horrific experience of his life in that year Tracey was exposed up front and personal to one John Mark Karr.

Meanings, pt. 4: an awful, dark year

I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I’m claiming no high moral ground and recognize that I have vices galore and that, for example, some of the women in my life have decent grounds for a war crimes tribunal. I understood that life is a constant struggle between the competing sides of our nature, and that in fact the whole issue of cultural identity, of the dialogue about what is good and bad in culture is an enlarged version of this agonizing struggle about personal identity, and the vexing question of, is this who I am, is this who I should be?

In this instance, from that first stirring of empathy for the Ramseys to the decision to find Karr, for good or ill, I sought to do the right thing, and I am perplexed that there were those who chose not to see it that way.

I could not get rid of one image in particular, that of his tying the ligatures to her wrists and then hanging her from the window. I don’t know how long I sat there, but there came a point when I could hold it inside no longer and, for the first time in almost a decade of thinking about and talking about the appalling things that were done to JonBenet and to her family, I started to sob. Not just tearing up, not just tears running down my cheeks but a flood and a wail of anguish and sorrow. In that sense Karr may not have killed JonBenet, but he sure as hell came close to destroying me.

Those that have been pulled into the grave with Karr, or those that use his brand of medicine, may have a better understanding of the toll and depth of personal sacrifices made in the spirit of doing the right thing. The world, and all our innocent children especially, need more heros.


This chapter and Tracey's entire essay, From Christmas to August is here.