True Crime

The Internet isn't always a place of wonder. I have enjoyed the rapid access to all things trivial, the real time information, and the great networking and net-reconnecting potential. I watch obscure movies and old tv shows online, read newspapers from around the world, and listen to vintage radio shows. I love the fact I can ameliorate some nagging need to remember or learn a character actor's name, the capital of Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou - actually I knew this, my favorite capital :), or whether or not Ernest Borgnine is still alive - he is! Despite this wonderful potential, I sometimes learn things I almost wish I hadn't. Such was the case when I was reminiscing about my high school days, and I remembered an old friend, Tim B., probably the most positive, upbeat guy I had ever met. After sorting through a dozen Tim B's on the Internet, I realized the one entry I did not want to read contained the only information available on his life via the Information Super Highway. Or more precisely, his death.
I knew thirty something years ago that Tim had a different heritage than I or most of us in our small town. He was dark-skinned and I knew he was adopted. His adoptive father was the Methodist pastor in town, and his siblings had been adopted as well. It wasn't an issue, and perhaps I am just now realizing his uniqueness. As I read the newspaper article, I learned he had rediscovered his Native American roots, moved to Washington State, and had taken a teaching job at Northwest Indian College. He was an athelete and a poet. By all accounts, he was very popular and was as gregarious and genuine as he had been in high school when I had known him.
At some point, Tim had fallen in love, and was living with his partner and their two young boys. Things had soured though, and he had even become frightened of his children's mother. He often slept in his office, and told his friends that he feared for his life. It would be revealed after his death, that she had attempted to poison him and even tired to rig his truck to explode. Ultimately, while two months pregnant, she strapped their two sons in the car, returned to the house and walked into his bedroom with her mother on the cell phone and a handgun. With maternal urging, she shot Tim in the head as he slept. When apprehended, she would claim domestic abuse as her defense.
Tim's partner and her mother are in prison. The abuse charges were absurd and eventually recanted. Piecing the story together through Internet sites, I was reminded of the plethora of television crime shows scattered throughout the 1200 channels I now peruse. The story was almost too bizarre to be true. Lost in all of that was Tim, and his amazing love of life. How ironic in this Internet age where there is too much out there on too many of us, there are those whose lives are distilled into one story, one tragic fact. I have lost many friends over the years (Robin, Greg, Simon, Larry, Virgil, Bill, Tim),and they are now evanescent ghosts, disappearing as fast as aging links expire. The Internet isn't always a place of wonder.