by Julia Dahl
Connie got just one of the boys Joel pushed before being shot: thirteen-year-old Zev Lowenstein. Zev took a bullet to the thigh and died at the hospital. He ran slower than his friends because of a birth defect that left one leg shorter than the other.
Instructor Abe Greenwald, forty, a father of six, originally thought the shooting was fireworks set off by a misbehaving boy. He came outside to investigate, and three bullets tore through his chest before he’d made four steps out the side door. The last person Connie killed was Abe’s brother-in-law, Yosef Schwartz, nineteen. Yosef ran out after Abe, who was married to his sister. He saw the carnage—boys splayed over the new blue and beige playground equipment, screams coming from every direction, and a man dressed like a soldier, walking among it all—and for whatever reason could not keep himself from trying to stop it. The boys watching from inside said he went running, arms waving, shouting for the man to stop. Connie shot him six times, like he was a paper practice target.
Nechemaya also took one of Connie Hall’s bullets. After getting my message the night before, he drove to the yeshiva, remembering that it had been the target of previous vandalism. He parked on the opposite side of the school from the playground, the side at the intersection of two roads. If anyone suspicious came driving up, he would see them. But Connie parked his truck a mile away and walked in through the trees. When the shooting started, Nechemaya ran toward the noise. Connie shot him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. He hit his head on the concrete surrounding the sandbox and blacked out. The bullet missed any major arteries and when paramedics took his pulse they realized he was still alive.
It was acknowledged almost immediately that if Sam Kagan hadn’t shot Connie Hall while he reloaded his rifle, he would probably have killed a lot more people. Connie was wearing a bulletproof vest beneath his jacket. He was strapped with three hundred rounds of ammunition, and carrying two 9mm handguns in addition to the AR-15. Nechemaya called 911 as soon as he heard the shots, and three minutes later another call came in from inside the yeshiva, but it took six minutes for the first deputy to arrive—and the door to the school was unlocked.
Sam, who police found attempting to fashion a tourniquet around Zev Lowenstein’s leg, was handcuffed and interviewed. Witnesses say that he, too, came out of the woods, and that he fired three shots in quick succession. Physical evidence bore this out. Sam’s Smith & Wesson 9mm was originally purchased by a pharmacist at a Georgia gun store in 2004 and made its way to New York through a series of legal, and illegal, transfers. The gun had three bullets missing, and Connie had three bullets in him. Just as Aviva told me and Saul, Sam had surreptitiously installed a GPS tracking application on Connie’s phone, which led him to Roseville that morning. Connie left his phone in the truck, though, and Sam lost track of him in the predawn woods. When the shooting started, he ran toward the noise.
Hank and Nan told police that Sam knew about the plot against Roseville—although, they admitted, not the exact target—and was on board until Pessie died. Sam and Mellie denied this, however. Months later, when I finally interview her on the record, Mellie tells me that she knows she should have sounded the alarm sooner and that speaking up for Sam was her way of making up for it. Sam was arrested on gun and conspiracy charges, but with public opinion firmly on his side, in the end, prosecutors just didn’t think they could convince a jury that a Jew would plot to do such a thing to his fellow Jews.
Nechemaya recovered quickly and immediately became a spokesperson for Roseville. He told Anderson Cooper and Dr. Phil and Charlie Rose and anyone who would listen—and, until the Tsarnaev brothers blew up the finish line of the Boston Marathon two weeks later, the world was listening—that the community supported Sam entirely. He said that they had hired an attorney to represent him and that the rumors he was connected to the Halls were overblown. Whenever he could, Nechemaya said Pessie’s name. Pessie Goldin was the first victim in Roseville, he said on CNN and Fox and the BBC. If corrupt, anti-Semitic local authorities had not ignored her death, this tragedy may never have happened.
Chief John Gregory resigned before they could fire him, and was indicted on charges of official corruption, witness tampering, evidence tampering, and conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. The last charge didn’t stick; there wasn’t really evidence that Gregory knew what Connie was planning. It did stick, however, to both Hank Hall and no-legged Grandma Nan. Mellie’s lawyer—a regular “contributor” on cable news—managed to convince the state that her client was terrified of Hank and his father, virtually a hostage in her home, and that she was a hero for alerting authorities “the minute she realized” what Connie had planned. She had her second baby in shackles, lost custody of Eva to the state, and, in exchange for ten years in prison, made a compelling—if occasionally hostile—witness against what was left of the Hall family. Mellie testified about how the father of her children had tried—and failed—to build a bomb that could be detonated remotely, and that Nan was routinely used as a straw purchaser for firearms. Nancy Grace called her the “terrorist tart” and excoriated prosecutors for giving her a deal. During the trial, Mellie told the court that she initially “thought they were joking” all the times Connie and Hank talked through scenarios about how to achieve the highest number of dead Jews: Should we put the bomb on a bus? Or in a building? For two days #Ithoughttheywerejoking trended on Twitter, with people posting pictures of Hitler and Osama bin Laden (“The guys with the box cutters said they were taking over the plane, but #Ithoughttheywerejoking”), then ever-more gruesome images of dead bodies (“The cops said not to reach into my waistband, but #Ithoughttheywerejoking”; “KKK said not to look at a white girl, but #Ithoughttheywerejoking”).
Halfway through the trial, Hank changed his plea to guilty and took a life without parole sentence. He described Pessie’s death to authorities, and, perhaps because his story matched Ryan’s and Sam’s, they believed him. Hank admitted they’d given up the plan to place an explosive device beneath the yeshiva’s school bus because, just as Mellie had told me, he was a fucking idiot and couldn’t make a bomb.
When prosecutors asked him why Connie targeted innocent children, Hank simply said, “He knew shooting up a playground would get a lot of attention and he wanted people to remember.”
* * *
Roseville provided an angle for every journalist. Anti-Semitism, homophobia, gun control, child sex abuse, police corruption, prison gangs, the right-wing “patriot” movement; a health reporter out of Boston even did a series of articles looking at how terminal cancer diagnoses are delivered and whether dying patients should be monitored for changes in their mental health. The NRA was quick to trumpet the fact that Connie did not commit suicide or find himself in handcuffs, but rather was taken down by “a good guy with a gun.” After a virtual arsenal of unregistered weapons was found at the Hall compound, activists on both sides of the gun control debate seized on the fact that an ex-con with ties to an extremist hate group was not only armed to the teeth in a state with new gun laws, but at the center of a multi-state gun trafficking organization no one in law enforcement was paying attention to. People inclined to loosen regulation saw Connie’s ability to gather so many weapons as an example of the ineffectiveness of gun control laws. The other side argued that Connie’s arsenal exposed loopholes that needed to be closed and an “iron pipeline” that needed to be thwarted. President Obama called the deaths “horrific” and sent his highest-ranking Jewish staffer to the funerals. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged funds for a memorial. There was a lot of talk about cracking down on right-wing hate groups and the Aryan Nations. The feds made a handful of arrests, but soon both law enforcement and the media turned their attention back to the threat of domestic terror inspired by Islamic fundamentalism.
Mike pulled me off the story at noon on the day of the shooting, right after the Associated Press reported Sam’s name. I passed contact information for Aviva and Isaac’s New Paltz neighbors to the Albany stringer and the Trib got
exclusives from them. Matty gave the photo desk a picture he took of the swastika the Halls spraypainted on the yellow house and it got more than five million hits.
Despite my promise in the car on the way to the scene, I did not deliver an interview with Sam. Through Aviva, I warned him and the rest of the Kagans not to say a word to the press, and they took my advice. It wasn’t a tough sell; they were leveled by the shooting and their connection to it. Ashamed and guilt-sick, none seemed able to find solace in the fact that, were it not for Sam, many more people would have died. The media camped out in front of Eli and Penina’s apartment for ten days, but no one came outside. Not once. Neighbors brought food and were accosted, but declined to comment. On the afternoon of the Boston Marathon bombing the reporters finally packed up and left. But the damage was done. Old Avram was dead of a stroke within a month. Diny’s boys were expelled from yeshiva for fighting. A year after the shooting, Aviva was Sam’s only relative still in the U.S; the rest of the Kagans made aliyah and try to rebuild in Israel.
Within a few days, rumors about Sam and Ryan and the “real” reason why Roseville—not Kiryas Joel or Williamsburg or Lakewood—was the target of Connie’s wrath began to surface. Friends of friends told ravenous cable news producers that Sam was “in a relationship” with Connie’s son—but neither gave an interview, and without confirmation and more details, the story eventually fizzled. Mike asked me about it constantly, but I shut him down. The family won’t talk, I kept saying. I didn’t tell him that I also warned Kaitlyn that the best way to help her friends was to stay away from reporters. She must have given my advice to other people who were close with Sam and Ryan because their small circle closed ranks.
People who knew Connie Hall, however, practically lined up to tell their stories. None of them had any idea Connie had a gay son, but just about everyone in the county (in a couple counties, actually) had apparently heard Connie Hall threaten to kill people. That’s what he did, people told the reporters. He got drunk and spouted off about the niggers and liberals and fags he wanted to off. No one seemed surprised he’d finally made good on his threats—especially once they heard about the cancer—but the specific target, and the fact that he murdered children, came as a shock. Or so they said.
In the rest of New York, the focus became seeking forgiveness from the Jews of Roseville. Goyim throughout the state were ashamed of Connie, and even those who had been critical of the Haredi influx in the area took great pains to distance themselves from his ideas. There was a rush to show support and sympathy for the traumatized community. As the town sat shiva, religious organizations throughout the state mobilized to prepare and deliver kosher food, run errands, make phone calls, and provide rides on the Sabbath. Donations poured in: more than a quarter of a million dollars in less than a week to help bury the dead, provide counseling, and create a trust fund for the victims and their families. A month after the shooting, an interfaith group met at Nechemaya’s home to discuss extending and strengthening the relationships forged in sorrow.
* * *
At just after 2:00 P.M. on the day of the shooting, police let the boys out of the yeshiva. They came out holding hands, dozens of them in one long line led by a member of the State Police. They were tiny and tall. Boys as young as four and as old as fourteen, scores of them, all dressed alike, all silent, struck mute by what they’d endured. The parents had by then been moved away from the yeshiva, down the hill and toward the parking lot of a nearby shul. At the edge of the school grounds, the Statie handed the boys off to a group of men from the community, and they all started running—as desperate to get back to their families as their families were to get to them.
I watched the reunions, trying not to gawk at the primitive, almost grotesque displays of emotion erupting all around me. I remember thinking, My job is to approach these people. Did you see the shooter? Do you know anyone who died? How will your community recover? But I couldn’t do it. Instead, I just stood and watched, and through the crush of bodies and the confusion, I spotted Henna, her arms wrapped around a little boy clutching a raccoon pillow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
REBEKAH
A few hours after the shooting, I text my dad to tell him I’m okay and we agree to talk later that night. When he calls, I start with Aviva. The where and when and how. I tell him what I know, which isn’t much: that she lives in a house with another ex-Jew in a town about two hours north of the city; that she cleans houses for a living; that she has been estranged from her family since leaving us, and that her baby brother shot Connie Hall this morning.
“Does she have … other family?” he asks.
He means a husband, children, and I realize I don’t know for certain. I think back to what Saul said about Isaac when Aviva was missing: I think he’s the only one she has to worry about her.
“She seems pretty alone, Dad.”
“Do you think you’ll continue to see her?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Though I guess I don’t know how much. Do you want me to … tell her anything. From you?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Rebekah,” he says. “But thank you for asking.”
“I love you, Dad,” I say.
“I love you, too.”
Despite being officially off the story, I stay upstate for a week after the shooting. Almost a thousand dollars on my credit card, but at least it’s tax deductible. I keep my notebook out at all times, scribbling notes about what I see and hear, engaging in conversation with anyone I can. With no pressure to call new information in to the city desk every couple hours, I actually get to absorb what people are saying—not just listen for good quotes. The rest of the news corps don’t have this luxury. Roseville is a city in shock. The few Haredi who brave the media siege to do their own shopping or try to get back to work ignore the reporters entirely, and everyone is complaining that their editors and producers in Atlanta and L.A. and London don’t get it.
At an ice cream parlor on Roseville’s main street—which becomes a gathering spot for journalists because of its free Wi-Fi and electrical outlets—I meet a woman from a nonprofit called the Center on Culture, Crime and the Media. She tells me that she travels around the world—from Moscow to Mexico City to Roseville—providing resources and leading workshops on how to cover culturally sensitive crimes. I tell her my story and she encourages me to apply for an upcoming fellowship.
“Your connection to the story and this community could make for a really compelling piece,” she says, and gives me her card.
It is at this same ice cream shop that Aviva and I finally have an hour to spend alone together—after all the victims are in the ground, after she’s been questioned and released, after she uses the last of her savings to hire a contractor to make the yellow house livable again, and after she offers her assistance to Eli and Penina, who are too broken and needy not to accept her help. I arrive first and focus my anxiety on sitting up straight so that I appear confident and nonchalant when she walks in. I want to show her what a successful, healthy woman I am. It’s mid-afternoon and the sun shines in through the shop window, making it hard to see who is outside. Aviva is right on time, and as soon as I see her I realize that what I want isn’t really for her to be impressed with me. What I want is for her to acknowledge me—impressive or disappointing. I want her to be forced to contend not just with the memory of me, and what she did to me, but the real live almost grown-up me. She avoided contending with me for more than twenty years, and now I’ve got her. Does she love me? Maybe. What does love look like on a person’s face?
We embrace tentatively and she orders a coffee at the counter. I watch her, noticing everything. The faded faux-leather sack that is her purse, the way she bends over slightly to dig exact change out of a zippered pouch in her wallet. The fact that she speaks to the woman at the counter in Yiddish, and puts sugar but not milk in her mug.
“You must have so many questions,” she says to me. She looks me in the eye for a moment, and then looks down
. She does not wait for me to answer. “With me in your life you would never have become what you have become. You would not have had peace in your home. I am not frum but I was not like your father and his family and there would have been terrible strife.”
It’s such a reasonable explanation it almost makes me laugh. Isn’t there always strife? Does she really not understand that her ghost, always among us, created at least as much strife as a physical body?
“But I know,” she continues, her voice quieter now, “I know that what I did was a sin. I sinned against you, Rebekah. I sinned against your father. I have tried for many years to think of it as something else. Immaturity, or fear, or mental illness. And it was those. But mostly it was a sin. A grave sin. I carry it with me every day. But,” and here she pauses, and looks at me, “I also carry my memories of you. Like the way you loved to point at things. Lights on the ceiling or a dog on the street, or even just me. You would point at me and open your mouth like you’d found something wonderful. And after you sneezed, you always looked happy.” She giggles, thinking back. “Like you’d done something very silly and fun.” She takes a deep breath and the giggles turn to tears. Her chin crumbles. She puts her hand on her heart. “If not for those bits, Rebekah, the sin would have killed me.”
I reach over and put my hand on her elbow.
“I’m glad it didn’t kill you,” I say.
She wipes her eyes. “Are you happy with your life, Rebekah?”
Three weeks ago I was as low as I’ve ever been. I felt guilty and burdened and victimized and broken. And then I got back to work, and all the scary things didn’t seem so scary.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve got it pretty good, I think.”
We stay in the ice cream shop for two hours. I tell her about Iris and Dad and my stepmom Maria, and my brother Deacon. I show her photos on my phone, and she looks at them with genuine interest. She tells me about her ex-husband, and her mother, and her cousin Gitty—the first person she told about me—who contracted HIV and died of pneumonia when she was just thirty. She tells me that she talked to me every day for twenty-three years, in her head. She says that she asked me for advice—What do you think your mommy should do, Rebekah?
