It’s the time of year again
when I am reminded anew that Shakespeare was right when he wrote that the
evil men do lives after them.
Evil’s residue has certainly lived long for me; in June 2015, it will be
eighteen years since I began the process of surviving the murder of my friend Jonathan Levin. Although at the
time, I recognized the horror of this day, I didn’t realize the ancillary
ramifications of it. The gunshot
killed Jon but also much more. The
first casualty was privacy; the second was the truth; the third was justice.
My friend became
public property, like the celebrity he was not. People who had never met him, never worked on a project with
him, never had dinner or walked through the city at night with him, were soon telephoning
The New York Times or People magazine
to say that he was a sinner or a saint, but, somehow, never the ordinary human
combination of both. The June 6,
1997 edition of The Washington Post
iterated the “life of privilege” that he left behind to slog through the
socioeconomic mire that was William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx. Had the story’s author, Laurie
Goodstein, ever met Jon or had she just run a quick Dun & Bradstreet on his
dad and allowed her imagination to percolate? If Jon lived a life of privilege, I missed it
completely.
I remember the
first time I saw Jon, dressed in jeans and a corduroy blazer, sitting in Gordon
Pradl’s class at New York University; I thought briefly that he sort of
resembled that guy who ran Time Warner - I’d seen that man’s photograph in a Vanity Fair article about a media
moguls’ annual retreat to Sun Valley, Idaho - but I didn’t consider it deeply
or for very long.
Then, months later, when another classmate told me that the
man in the magazine photo was indeed Jon’s father, I wrote in my journal how
surprised I was because, physical similarities aside, Jon had always been
“sweet . . . and not . . . egotistical” - qualities I have rarely heard applied to media titans. Also, the trappings of Jon’s life
didn’t speak of wealth: he didn’t overdress or flash expensive belongings, and
I knew he lived a few subway stops downtown from my former Upper West Side
apartment, hardly a Sutton Place triplex.
When a group of us
travelled to study abroad at Trinity College, Oxford University, we flew coach. During our time there, we rarely ate
out and attended the famous West End theatre only occasonally. Those times when we did plan an excursion
to London by bus or train, we haunted travel agents for weekend break rates at
tourist hotels where we could share rooms. Mostly, after classes, we wandered downstairs for a cheap
pint at the college pub, then drifted back to our residence hall rooms to
research and write. Once a week - on karaoke night at the Bulldog Pub on Cornmarket Street
(which a publication of Oxford pub crawls describes as a haven for a “mad and
chavvy clientele”) - we sang and danced wildly. Having been
raised by his mother, not his father, Jon seemed to me to treat money with a
level of respect rarely displayed by Upper East Side rich kids.
While the
trust-fund-baby gone a-slumming tales that appeared in the press were lies, they
made interesting copy, although not nearly as fascinating as the self-serving
statements put forth by the accused and the lawyers energetically defending
them. One such remark, attributed to Corey Arthur (at that
point only the accused - not the convicted - murderer he would later become), as
he relayed to the NYPD the aftermath of his blood-soaked encounter with Jon. “This was a traumatic experience and I went shopping for some new clothes." I wasn't the only one dazzled by his comment; the editors of The Chicago Tribune chose it for the July 8, 1997 edition's Quote of the Day. There
was also the hypothesis floated before - then repeated at - trial by defense
lawyer Anthony Ricco; namely, that Jon purchased crack from and smoked crack
with his client. Proof? Oh, no he possessed no proof.
In July I attended
some pretrial meetings at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with Jon’s
mother, Carol. At one point, after
Carol had gone to the ladies room, I naively asked the ADA whether she believed
that they would secure a conviction because I would hate for my friend to have
died for nothing. “I have news for
you,” she replied curtly, gathering her papers, “your friend died for nothing,
anyway.”
Her observation
shocked me at the time, although later I realized that it was true. I couldn’t have believed her on that
sweaty July afternoon, though, because then I wouldn’t have been able to attend
the trial that fall.
I remember entering
Manhattan Criminal Court uncomfortably, scanning the public gallery for empty
seats, then pulling a little notebook from my handbag to scribble quick
impressions so I could remember later what my senses were too overloaded to
process.
We watched jury
selection – twelve regulars and eight alternates (I wrote in my journal “are
they expecting a high drop-out rate?”) and wondered what might really be
learned about people from voir dire.
I remember hearing the judge advise the jury to “use the same methods
you use in your everyday life to determine if someone is telling the truth” and
wondering what exactly those methods might be. The character analysis skills learned in English class didn't seem to work in this room, especially since some in the jury pool (“Juror
number 6 is trying to get off; says he’ll only be paid at work for 2 weeks so
he can’t stay for 6”) didn’t care to determine anything at all.
Among the worst
moments of the trial were hearing from the Medical Examiner (“one puncture in
the back of the neck – three shallow cuts across the throat – one right side
stab wound which hit the liver – one gunshot wound directly into the brain”)
and seeing the autopsy photos passed around (according to my journal, “one of
the jurors has her head between her knees . . . Carol’s face is
red, now white. I think she’s about to pass out . . . Jamie’s left the room . .
. ME doesn’t recognize the photo of Jon because by the time he saw him the body
was so badly decomposed.”)
After this, the misery
of jurisprudence, the moment I had previously thought was the nadir of it all -
the second I learned of Jon’s murder - faded nearly to nothingness when a jury
of my peers found Corey Arthur - the assailant who was arrested wearing clothes
smeared with Jon’s blood - guilty of only second degree murder which earned him
a sentence of twenty-five years to life.
That day paled, too, later, when Corey’s accomplice, Montoun Hart, was acquitted.
Then it was
over. Except it wasn’t over. It isn’t over. Every May 6 is Jon’s birthday and every
May 30 is the anniversary of his murder.
Every June 2 is a recreation of the day his decomposed body was found. Evil’s residue continues to blow over
everyone involved like ash from an incinerator. There is no escaping it.
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