by Henry Cordes
I finally decided to call the police. A police supervisor came out to the house and spoke to the media, warning them about trespassing on my property. He returned to the house and stayed and talked with us for a while, reassuring us that he would come back if we needed him to, and he gave us some advice about how to handle the media. Before he left, he expressed his sympathy for the situation our family was in and told us to call anytime we needed him. He was very empathetic and helpful. His kindness was appreciated very much at the time.
After the media were ordered off our property, they began to congregate on the sidewalks and on the street outside, waiting for any sign of movement from our house. When Melissa finally made an attempt to leave to go home, she had to run to the car with young Emily, with cameras being shoved in their faces and reporters on their heels. The reporters surrounded the car, preventing her from leaving. She was forced to run back into the house.
After we all calmed down somewhat, we came up with a strategy that would allow them to leave safely without being harassed. They were eventually able to make their escape but not without the media hot on their tails. The media followed her all the way home and converged on her place, where my mother also lived. My mother was in the yard and had to run inside and hide with the children. She kept screaming, “Go away! Leave us alone!”
My brother Eldon came by my house that evening to be with me. As he made his way through the crowd of hungry vultures that circled, waiting to pick at their next victim for information, he was bombarded with questions and asked to comment. He became livid and started yelling at them: “Back the FUCK off, stay away from me, our family, my sister, and her home!” When he finally got to the door, I was afraid to open it because I thought he was another reporter. He had to assure me that it was he and that it was okay.
I sat with him that night, talking about what was going on, and what had happened, but it’s still just a blur to me, even to this day. My mind was racing in so many directions, and I started to have trouble speaking and even breathing. My head and heart were pounding. At one point I grabbed my brother’s hand and said, “Something’s wrong with me, I need to go to the hospital.” He told me, “No, you can’t go out there, they’re everywhere. They’ll swarm you and follow you to the hospital.” He held onto me and kept repeating, “Calm down. Breathe. I’m here. You’re going to be okay.” As much as he tried to calm me, I could see the panic in his eyes, and I could feel his own heart pounding. The rest of that night is a blank. The last thing I remember is being in my brother’s arms and hearing Conrad say, “I’m here, Mama, I won’t leave you.” He assured me he’d secured the house. My next recollection is being in my kitchen the following morning.
The media circus continued over the following days: letters, notes, cards, and gift baskets were dropped off and sent to our home from far and wide. Messages came sympathizing with our situation, requests for interviews and television appearances, offers to write books — anything to get us to talk. Some relentless reporters, despite being cautioned by the police not to trespass, came back onto our property, though less aggressively this time, with cameras still in hand, but not rolling, in a last-ditch effort to get an exclusive story. Our entire family remained tight-lipped and vigilant. We weren’t talking. As a family, we collectively agreed not to talk publicly, and for good reason. Luka had still not been apprehended, and we knew there would be further police questioning and a trial down the road. We didn’t want to impede this process in any way by something we might say. We also took into consideration that Luka might be watching the media coverage. What if seeing us talking about him publicly caused the crisis he was in to worsen?
The gravity of the situation was overwhelming for me. New articles were manifesting daily in the papers and on the television, full of details, rumors, and speculation about Luka and the crime. Through it all, we sat in hiding, trying to absorb each new bit of information. We clung to each other for support. It felt like we were all in the same sinking boat. How could we help each other when we were all in the same predicament? We decided we were going to stick together no matter what. Our family ties had been tested many times before. We had pulled through the sudden death of my younger sister, Andrea, in January 2010, and a house fire in my home in June of the same year. We’d supported each other through break-ups, divorces, custody battles, criminal charges, domestic violence, car accidents, injuries, illnesses, and deaths, but nothing could have prepared us for what we were now facing. So, with our previous battle wounds still healing, we donned our armor yet again and formulated a survival plan. We were going to have to rely heavily on each other’s strengths. We sought love, faith, comfort, understanding, trust, encouragement, patience, wisdom, knowledge, and judgment from one another like never before, and together we kept our sinking lifeboat afloat.
2
Eric
Just because people are related by blood doesn’t mean they deserve to be included in your life. You know who truly has your back when you’re in a difficult situation. Talk is cheap, actions speak—Luka Magnotta
Luka Magnotta was born Eric Kirk Newman on July 24, 1982. His first day in this world was spent in Toronto, Ontario, as the oldest child of Anna Yourkin and Donald Newman. His parents were young, they were still teenagers in fact, and married shortly before he was born. Anna was 16 and Donald 17. Eric would have two siblings, a brother named Conrad who was ten months younger than he was, and a sister named Melissa, who was five years younger.
The family didn’t have a lot of money when Luka was young, and like lots of families in that situation, they moved around a bit. Something would work out, and then it wouldn’t, and they would scramble for a while. Sometimes they had to stay with either Anna’s or Donald’s parents, while they saved up money and waited for things to get better. Which they always did, until the time that they would inevitably get worse again. His mother stayed home and raised the kids while his dad supported the family the best that he could with a job at a local factory.
Donald often wasn’t doing all that well at the time, he was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, but back then he was just thought of as kind of troubled. Things hadn’t been good between Anna and Donald for a long time at that point, and they weren’t getting better. When Luka was around ten years old his parents separated, and Luka and his family moved in with his maternal grandmother and grandfather.
Despite this upheaval in his young life, Luka told me that his childhood was just fine. Luka claims that reporters make his childhood out to be much worse than it was saying: The media is constantly trying to rewrite my history, life and story to fit their sensationalist narrative. I was a very happy child, particularly before the age of 11, always very inquisitive and asking a lot of questions. I enjoyed nature and spent time on our large property. We had a very large house on 2 acres with a lot of different fruit trees and I would pick and eat a lot of peaches, pears, cherries and plums. My grandmother always made me feel like a little prince and favored me. My siblings and cousins were always jealous to be honest. We also had a large family boat that seated 10 people. We would go boating and spend the summers at the cottage and the beach. My parents always tried to give us everything. We didn’t have much access to other children, so we relied on each other for fun.
Anna was single for a while, but soon met a man named Leo. They fell in love, at least what seemed like it at the time, and Anna, Luka and the rest of the family ended up moving into an apartment in Toronto with him. This did not go well for Luka, by all accounts, except for possibly Leo’s. Everyone else say that he treated Luka terribly and was abusive to him both emotionally and physically. Magnotta went to live with his grandmother Phyllis when he was 16 years old, mostly to escape the verbal and physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his new stepfather. When I asked Luka if he cared to expand on his experience with Leo Sr., he replied I won’t even dignify this idiot with a comment except to say he was, is and always will be a complete waste
of oxygen and by far the most useless idiot I have ever encountered.
Luka was close to his grandmother. He felt safe with her. She doted on him when he was a child. He knew that he was her favorite and that his siblings and even his mother were jealous of how close they were. As a child and even when he was grown Luka would call his grandmother daily and has said she was another mother figure to him, while he thought of Anna as more of a big sister when he was growing up. He said that it was his grandmother that had actually raised him when he was young, that he went everywhere with her, slept in her bed with her, and at times she even dressed him in her clothes.
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1.
July 25, 2003
The monster stirred inside him. Most times, he could tame it. Keep it hidden. Silence its screams. But tonight, the beast demanded release.
She lifted her head up. “You’re taking too long. I’m done.”
He pressed her head back down. “You’re done when I say you’re done …”
She wriggled beneath the firmness of his grip. “No!” she protested, forcing herself up from his lap. She stared him straight in the eyes—defiant and unafraid. “That’s all I’m doing for you, Devin.”
His calloused fingertips nervously tapped the upholstered backbench and his spine tingled with an odd mixture of excitement and fear. The beast was rising. There was no going back. Not now. Not ever. “Rape her,” the monster instructed. “Rape the whore!”
*
It had been a long night of hustling for Nilsa Arizmendi and Angel “Ace” Sanchez. Maybe it was the hot weather, but the regular johns were being especially cheap and irritable, and Nilsa was forced to negotiate smaller fees. Ordinarily, she charged $30 for a half hour, but tonight’s tricks were turning a maximum of only $20 and some demanded blowjobs for a measly 10 bucks. Like shrewd customers at a turn-of-the-century street market, the johns knew that the vendor in question was desperate for cash.
Ace loitered around the corners of New Britain Avenue, where his girlfriend worked. He stared glumly at the filthy surroundings, trying not to think about Nilsa’s activities. He did not like their lifestyle. In fact, he despised it. But how else could he and Nilsa score drugs? The couple’s shared habit was not cheap. In July 2003, they were each smoking about 20 to 30 pieces of crack per day and shooting up a bundle-and-a-half of heroin, which translated to about 10 to 15 bags on the streets. Sometimes, Nilsa used up to three bundles of heroin a day, depending on the amount of crack she smoked. It was a nasty cycle. The crack got Nilsa and Ace ramped up and wired and the heroin brought them down. They needed both to survive.
Without the drugs, sickness set in. Being drug sick was terrible—worse than having the flu. In the darkness of their motel room, the childhood sweethearts huddled together in sweat-soaked sheets, shivering with nausea and chills. Every joint and bone ached as invisible bugs furiously crawled beneath the surface of their skin. In between fits of vomiting, their bowels loosened and the bed became soiled. Nilsa kept the curtains drawn and placed the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside door handle for days at a time. The room was a mess. Their lives were a mess. Besides the incessant and all-consuming craving for heroin, she felt shame.
“This shit has to stop,” Ace thought as he watched Nilsa emerge from the back seat of an old man’s car. She walked toward him, tucked her tie-dyed T-shirt into her dungaree shorts and offered a faint smile. Normally 140 pounds, the 5’2”, dark-haired woman was now only skin and bones. “I’m tired,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
On the walk back, Nilsa briefly disappeared and scored a blast of crack at Goodwin Park in Hartford. She returned to Ace and attempted to take his hand. He pulled away. “I’m done with this shit. You gotta go to rehab, Nilsa. We both gotta go.”
She acted like she did not hear him. It was usually the best way to avoid a fight.
But tonight, Ace would not let up. “I’m done with the fucking drugs,” he mumbled, running his hand through his greasy dark hair. Normally, he kept it long, but a few days before, he had cut it short. “Done with the hustling. Fuck. Fuck this shit.”
Their shadowy figures forged into the night, softly illuminated by the neon lights of outdated motels. Rolling hills of forest stood far in the distance, strangely comforting and yet somehow sinister. When Nilsa’s high wore down, they started to quarrel. This time, Ace would not take no for an answer. They both had to go to rehab in the morning.
Nilsa was reluctant. She had been in and out of rehab for years and it never did her any good. Still, she loved her four children and desperately wanted to be done with the drugs and get clean forever and for good. Overhead, the night sky opened and a warm drizzle began to fall. The blue rock watch on Nilsa’s frail wrist ticked into the early morning hours. They walked southbound along the pike, past Cedar Hill Cemetery containing the corpses of Connecticut’s affluent class, including legendary actress Katharine Hepburn, and then a smaller cemetery containing the remains of lesser-known citizens.
Ace gently elbowed Nilsa. “You gonna start singing?”
She sometimes sang Christian hymns that she learned in childhood as they walked along the pike. It passed the time and gave them both a sense of comfort in the midst of all the pain. She smiled beneath the foggy moonlight. “You want me to?”
“You know I like your voice,” he replied.
Her smooth, clear voice chimed like a bell into the darkness of the night:
O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
By the time they reached the parking lot of the Stop & Shop in Wethersfield, Ace had persuaded Nilsa to agree to the plan. Nilsa was worthy of a long and healthy life. After all, Ace needed her. Her mother needed her. Her children needed her. She vowed to never turn another trick again or inject poison into her veins. The party was over and fuck her if it had not been the party from Hell.
Nilsa eyed a lone vehicle parked in the far corner of the store’s lot. “That’s Devin’s van.”
“Let’s get back to the motel,” Ace said.
“I’m just gonna say hi.”
Nilsa walked across the lot to the beat-up blue van owned by their mutual acquaintance, Devin Howell. They had met Howell a few months before. At the time, he was pumping gas at the Exxon gas station on the corner of Broad Street and New Britain Avenue. The rain was heavy and Ace and Nilsa were soaking wet as they approached Howell’s van and asked for a ride to their motel room on the Berlin Turnpike in Wethersfield. “We’ll give you five bucks,” Ace said.
Howell had to go to Lowe’s to price out some supplies for an upcoming job. He was driving in that direction anyway, so it was not a problem to assist two near-strangers who appeared down on their luck. “Yeah, sure. The door’s unlocked.”
Nilsa and Ace squeezed into the bucket seat on the passenger side. Nilsa used her street name, Maria, when she introduced herself to Howell. As they drove to The Almar Motel, Howell told the couple in his mild Southern drawl that he had a lawn-care business. Ace glanced over his shoulder at the back of the van. The space was large, with a long bench sofa littered with lawn service tools and clothing. The stench of body odor pervaded the vehicle’s interior.
When they arrived at the motel, Ace and Nilsa invited Howell into their room to hang out. Howell brought some beer and marijuana. Nilsa and Ace offered to share a little crack, but Howell refused. He was a weed and booze guy. Together, the three got high on their poisons of choice. Howell told them that he was living in his van and he often parked it at the Stop & Shop parking lot in Wethersfield. He left the motel l
ess than an hour later. As he drove back to the Stop & Shop lot to bed down for the night, he glanced at the open ashtray and saw that a $20 bill rolled up inside of it was gone. “No fucking good deed goes unpunished,” he cynically thought. Ace and Nilsa had ripped him off.
In the months that followed, the occasional contact with Howell proved beneficial to Nilsa and Ace. The couple had lived on the Berlin Turnpike for the last 18 months or so, first at The Elm Motel and then at The Almar. Their daily routine involved walking from the motel on the pike to the familiar section of New Britain Avenue in Hartford where Nilsa turned tricks, about 1½ miles from The Almar. Ace had not worked a job for seven or eight months and he no longer had a vehicle of his own. Especially in the cold weather, Nilsa and Ace relied on acquaintances to spot them walking along the busy roadway and offer a lift. Occasionally, they had money for a cab, but that meant less money for drugs.
Howell also proved useful in assisting Nilsa and Ace to cop drugs. He did not mind driving them to local dealers living 15 to 20 minutes away. He would not get high with them when they scored. He seemed content to do them a favor by giving them a ride in exchange for a few dollars. All told, Howell served as the couple’s makeshift Uber driver on about five occasions over the course of one month.
At approximately 2:45 a.m. on July 25, 2003, Ace watched Nilsa’s skeletal form traipse across the empty parking lot. It was hard for him to believe that this was the same woman whose weight had sky-rocketed to 180 pounds when she was last released from federal prison—all beefed up by the cheap, starchy food. Nilsa stopped at the van and appeared to talk to Howell, who sat in the driver’s seat. Then she walked around the van and got into the passenger side. Howell turned on the engine and slowly drove away. It was the last time Ace would see Nilsa alive.
