The Officer's Daughter by Elle Johnson

Author:Elle Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Thirty-three years later, Karen’s murder was back in the news. On November 12, 2014, my mother called to tell me there was an article in the New York Daily News about Karen’s killer coming up for parole. I wondered, with a sense of dread, if this meant the Daily News would publish an article every time the killer had a parole board hearing or only if he got out. Even though the Daily News had helped bring in one of the suspects, I still wondered who at the paper was keeping this story alive. Who else, besides family, was unable to let it go?

My mother promised to mail me the news article. It didn’t occur to her that I could just pull it up online. There was a picture of Karen’s Catholic schoolteacher looking both angry and sad, holding an old photo of Karen with her classmates. They were all sitting on the floor—some smiling, others laughing—all sprawled out on top of one another’s laps. “I do beseech you to deny parole to Mr. Ramirez,” the teacher pleaded in a handwritten letter to the parole board that the paper had photographed and put in a box next to the article.

Uncle Warren was quoted in the article as well. “They told us that any letter that comes in, they’ll put it in the pile. All we can do is wait.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen Uncle Warren in person. I had no memory of him after Karen’s funeral. He wasn’t at the family gatherings I attended. He and Aunt Barbara had separated, though they never divorced. I wondered if he knew whether or not my father had visited the parole board hearings for any of the boys who’d taken part in the Burger King robbery. I wanted to ask him, but I felt uncomfortable contacting a man I hadn’t been in touch with for the last thirty-three years, to bring up his dead child. It was clear from his quote that Uncle Warren wanted the killer to stay behind bars. He wasn’t alone.

According to the article, the parole board had been inundated with letters against granting parole. The hearing had been delayed six months due to the sheer volume of letters and an “outstanding litigation.” It sounded as though Karen’s killer had gotten into trouble in prison. Now I would have more time to research the young men who had killed Karen. To find out who they were then and now. I started by collecting all the newspaper articles on the case I could find.

An early article said the gunmen fired for no apparent reason. A subsequent article reported that the gunmen were “extremely nervous and on edge and didn’t seem that familiar in handling guns.” A policeman said, “It’s very possible that the gun went off accidentally.” Then a later article confirmed that a gunman with a Hispanic accent called the police on Saturday morning to say it was an accident.

From an article with the

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