R.I.P. Adelle

The service was fairly well attended. Many people from our mutual former employer were there, along with the press, a number of friends and acquaintances and gawkers. And her mother; she did not speak our language and I did not speak hers.

Such services should be a celebration of the decedent’s life, but it is hard to celebrate a life that ends so tragically and violently. It was my first time for all of this. I picked out a nice urn which was surprisingly expensive. For myself the complimentary cardboard container would be sufficient, but this was all that was left of Mrs. A’s little girl, and I felt she deserved better. The minister on retainer to the mortuary appeared to have never read the Bible and delivered a few banalities. If I had it to do over I would have left him off the agenda. I gave a rather stirring eulogy and peppered it with scriptures of hope, although I knew that Adelle was now beyond hope. This was before the era of “open mike” funerals, so the service was short, and then it was over.

The meeting with Mrs. A was scheduled for after the service. I made an appointment with a lawyer who spoke her language. We were no more than five minutes into the meeting when she told the attorney that she did not want to work with him. Adelle had trusted me, so she trusted me and she wanted me to do all the work. What followed were many years when my office staff excitedly looked forward to the Christmas holidays when Mrs. A would, without fail, send a huge box of goodies from her country.

Not a week after the police discovered Adelle’s body, her son was apprehended. He was not far away and seemed to have no real plan of escape. I’ve watched enough TV over the years to know that you replace your license plates, change your appearance and then drive the speed limit in a straight line as far as you can before making a right angle turn for either Canada or Mexico. I really do not think any of it was planned. Spontaneity can be a good thing, unless you feel the urge to do or say something hurtful. In that case I would suggest really thinking over the pros and cons of your considered actions.

Mrs. A asked me to help her grandson. She said she could never speak to him again because of what he had done, but she wanted me to help him. Although I knew the difference between homicide and manslaughter, I was a stranger to the criminal justice system. This is where you realize the value of attending alumni functions. One of my classmates, Seth Metrone, had distinguished himself as a criminal trial lawyer. Several years earlier, I had to take a foreign professional athlete to Seth’s office to have him explain the law of statutory rape. I turned the young man’s case over to Seth.

Every state has a “slayer statute,” a law that says you cannot profit from a death that you cause. If you kill her, you cannot inherit from your mother’s estate, even if you are the only named beneficiary in her will. The standard is not “beyond a reasonable doubt” as it is in a criminal trial; the state cannot convict you unless a jury of your peers finds you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But the slayer statute is not a criminal statute, it simply defines a property right so the standard is “the preponderance of the evidence.” Many people who kill another are never convicted, yet are kept from insurance proceeds and inheritance by this rule. While the young man’s fate had yet to be decided, it was pretty clear he would never see a penny. Or would he?




At the state capital, in the Department of Licensing, a complaint is filed. The first of many.