A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder And Its Aftermath

by Jeanine Cummins

  Another officer approached Kay and produced a set of keys in a plastic bag, as if this were all some sort of elaborate magic trick. He asked her if she could identify them. They were the keys to her parents’ home, where she and her family were staying on Fair Acres Road.

  “How did you get them?” she asked tentatively, quite sure she did not want to hear the answer.

  “We found them on the bridge, near where the kids were forced off,” he responded.

  “Forced off,” she repeated, unable to make sense of the words.

  When Ginna arrived a short time later, Kay was the first person she spotted. She hurried over to her sister-in-law and started speaking immediately. She had a dozen questions and Kay found that she was unable to answer any of them.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she heard herself telling Ginna.

  And she wished with all of her heart that she really didn’t.

  When the ambulance finally rolled up to the scene, crunching gravel under its big tires, Gene and Kay were over to the back door like a shot. They waited impatiently, fighting back the urge to twist the large metal handles on the double doors, fling them open, and leap inside. They didn’t have to wait long. When the door cracked open, they looked up at the tormented face of their eldest child, their son, slouching on a gurney inside. Tom took one look at his parents and was overcome with emotion. He sobbed sloppily and covered his face, shaking. The next moment Kay and Gene were in the ambulance beside him, hugging him tenderly from each side and trying in vain to comfort him.

  It took Tom several minutes to tell his parents the most basic facts of the ordeal. He curled and uncurled his muddy toes while he talked and his mother stared at them, and at the dirt caked into his ears. She wanted to take him home and wash him as she had when he was a newborn baby. She kept hugging him while he talked and patting his hair when he would break down and sob into her shoulder. Gene and Kay were scarcely able to conceive of the horror of the ordeal, of what Julie and Robin had been through, of what Tom had witnessed and survived.

  “Mom,” Tom said as he concluded his account, shaking his head and gazing trancelike at the empty space in front of him, “those four men should be put to death for what they did.” He spoke softly now, without any malice, his voice sounding more sorrowful and frightened than angry. “They were so evil, they were the face of evil. They really deserve to die.”

  The tears started to dry on his dirty face and Tom was quiet then, having related the whole horror story, briefly, to his parents. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, the parents patting and reassuring the son. There was a knock on the ambulance door and Tom jumped at the sound. Gene reached for the door and twisted the handle. His sister Ginna stood outside in a stunned state of breathless suspension, shielding her eyes from the brightening daylight and looking expectantly into the ambulance. Her face fell when she saw Tom seated inside without her daughters, but she struggled to reset her features into some semblance of normality.

  “I don’t really know what’s going on,” Ginna said feebly, feeling carefully for each word. “No one seems to be able to give me any answers.”

  Her mind would not yet allow her to suspect the worst. Of course the police had told her that Julie and Robin were not yet accounted for, but some impossible hope had nestled into her heart that they were mistaken, that she would open that ambulance door and her girls would be sitting inside with Tom, drinking coffee and warming themselves.

  “Do you mind if Tom and I talk alone for a few minutes?” she asked Kay.

  “Of course not,” Kay replied and stepped over her son’s outstretched legs, kissing him on the way by. She gripped his hand and looked briefly into his eyes, hoping to convey all of her motherly love in that momentary glance. She and Gene climbed out of the ambulance and Ginna climbed in to replace them. She sat next to Tom, and Gene closed the doors to give them some privacy. He and Kay both tried not to think about what Tom had to tell Ginna right now, that her daughters, both of her beautiful daughters, had been hurt in the worst way that anyone’s daughter can ever be hurt. Kay tried not to look at the agonizing contortions that Tom’s face was making as Gene shut the heavy double doors.

  Gene had already put his suitcase into the van the night before, keeping out only his shaving kit and the clothes he had selected for the trip home. He remembered this now, and he and Kay went back to the van together to get Tom some dry clothes. They returned to the ambulance with some jeans that were so big they would have to be duct-taped up, and a checkered button-down shirt that Tom ordinarily wouldn’t even have worn to sleep.

  Ginna was disembarking from the van as they approached. Her face was ashen and blank. She wasn’t crying. She was completely expressionless. She walked past her brother and his wife without seeming to recognize them, as if her mind had mercifully and necessarily turned off.

  When Kay called out to her, she turned, unseeing, toward her brother’s wife. But after a moment she continued walking toward her car, determined to get home quickly so she could collect some clean, dry clothes to bring back for her missing daughters.

  By the time Tom was dressed in the dry, oversized clothes and shoes of his father, a duo of plainclothes officers had approached the ambulance and introduced themselves as Homicide Detectives Gary Stittum and Raymond Ghrist. They were asking Tom if he would accompany them out onto the bridge to walk them through the scenario. Tom nodded eagerly.

  “I’ll do absolutely anything I can to help,” he said.

  “Only if I accompany him,” Gene interjected.

  Over the course of the next hour, Tom walked up and down the bridge deck, pointing out relevant sites and recounting his story yet again. There were markers down all over the bridge now, encircling what seemed to Tom like countless pieces of evidence: a beer label, some change, a cigarette butt, a taffy wrapper, and, most damning — an opened condom.

  The detectives listened closely, nodding and prompting Tom, taking notes in their little spiral-bound pads. Gene played the silent observer, staying very close to his son at all times. The detectives were respectful; they seemed sympathetic and friendly. They heavily implied that Gene’s being allowed on the crime scene was a professional courtesy they were extending to him only because he and his son were both firemen. Gene nodded his appreciation.

  When the group returned to the Missouri bank, they got coffee from the auxiliary van that was set up, and then approached Kay, who was standing waiting impatiently near the van. She was clearly not happy to have been left behind, to have been separated from her son while he was still so fragile, so traumatized. She reached out for him as they approached.

  “Tom, we’d like you to come down to the station with us to make a statement, to help with our ongoing investigation,” Stittum suggested as he took a swig of steaming coffee.

  Tom nodded and curved the fingers of both his hands around his warming paper cup. He was determined to do anything and everything in his power to help catch the monsters who had done these horrible things.

  “I think we’re going to take him home first,” Gene interrupted. “Let him at least get showered and into some clothes that fit him. He’s been through an awful lot.”

  Tom shook his head.

  “I want to stay and help, Dad,” he maintained. “I want to be wherever they think I can be the most help.”

  “We can drive you down there afterwards,” Kay said. “Don’t you want to rest for a little bit and get cleaned up? You’ll be more help to them if you’re refreshed.”

  The family’s decision-making was abruptly interrupted by one of the detectives. “Mr. Cummins, Mrs. Cummins,” Ghrist announced, “you can go home and get freshened up if you want. Do what you have to do. But your son needs to come with us.”

  When the Cumminses’ faces expressed their alarm at these words, Ghrist continued, “We just don’t want to contaminate his memory by removing him from the scene right now. If he’s exposed to his normal family environment, he m
ay begin to block out important details.”

  Kay peered into her son’s face and Tom nodded to her.

  “I want to go and help,” he assured both of his parents.

  They nodded.

  “So you’re not taking him into custody?” Gene asked, demanding perfect clarity before he agreed.

  “Oh, absolutely not, nothing like that,” came the detective’s reply.

  “I’ll be right behind you then,” Gene said. “I’ll swing by the house and pick up some clean clothes for you, and then I’ll meet you down at the station.”

  Tom nodded and his parents hugged him for a moment before turning toward the van.

  Back on Fair Acres Road, the Cummins sisters were doing their best, although begrudgingly, to follow their father’s instructions. When the phone rang at around seven A.M., they both dropped what they were doing and sprang toward the kitchen. Grandma Polly had already picked it up and was “uh-huh”-ing into it while they stood with their anxious faces trained on her. After a brief conversation, she replaced the receiver softly without a formal good-bye.

  “Well, your parents are on their way home,” she announced, her hand still lingering on the phone.

  “And what about Tom?” Kathy asked quickly.

  “He has to go down to the police station,” their grandmother began. “They need him to make a statement.”

  “What kind of a statement?” Tink interrupted. “And what about Julie and Robin?”

  Their grandmother looked up at them with big, watery eyes and bit her bottom lip.

  “Well, that’s what the statement is about. They’re not sure where Julie and Robin are right now. Tom is going to help the police find them,” she explained.

  Tink clutched the counter to steady herself while her grandmother rubbed her shoulder gently and reached to put her arm around Kathy at the same time. This wasn’t right. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. How could the girls possibly be missing? Julie and Robin had just eaten dinner with them a few hours ago. At the card table, Tink had sat next to Julie and admired her older cousin’s well-developed, soccer player’s calf muscle.

  “But she was just here. They were just here,” Tink muttered, waving her hands in front of her. “How can they be missing?”

  The immediacy of such a tactile memory — Julie’s leg beside her at the table — would not allow Tink to accept the word “missing.” She had just hugged her cousin Robin good-bye a few hours ago. They had shared sarcastic tears, and Robin’s braid had brushed her neck as they clung to each other and laughed. Dread spread over the sunny kitchen like a shadow. This was going to be much worse than any of them had at first imagined.

  “Don’t worry yourselves now,” Grandma Polly said. “I’m sure everything’s gonna be just fine. Why don’t you go ahead and get your showers and I’ll make some breakfast. I’m sure your mom and dad will explain everything a bit better when they get here.” She patted both of her granddaughters and they nodded glumly.

  “I’ll go first,” Tink said softly to her sister.

  Kathy was still silent, staring into the Formica countertop as if she might find some answers there, as if it were a Magic 8 Ball. Tink plodded down the basement stairs, opened the door to the big converted bathroom, and stepped inside. She pulled the string that hung from the wall and a lightbulb lit up over the reflection of her unhappy face in the clean bathroom mirror. This room was so big that Tink thought it must have been an old extra bedroom that had been converted to a bathroom — and that the shower’s former life had been that of a walk-in closet.

  She shivered and rubbed her goosebumps as she undressed in the orange glow of the naked bulb. She left her clothes in a rumpled pile on the shaggy yellow rug by the sink and turned toward the shower. The damp, musty basement smell permeated everything here, covering even the spicy berry scents of her shampoo and conditioner. Tink listened to the water dripping down her body, splattering onto the floor under her cold feet, and gurgling as it made its way down the echoey drain beneath her. She fell to her knees on the wet stone floor and hung her head in the stream of tepid water, rocking herself and sobbing for her missing cousins.

  Gene and Kay Cummins arrived at the house on Fair Acres Road at approximately seven-thirty A.M. and were greeted by a flurry of fearful questions. They faced their daughters’ queries with stunned and solemn silence. Tink and Kathy both noticed, suspending their questioning simultaneously with a subconscious desire to postpone the inevitable knowledge. The information they had been waiting so impatiently for all morning suddenly seemed less appealing. They could tell by their parents’ faces that this knowledge wasn’t going to allay their fears — it would only confirm them.

  Gene was abnormally quiet, and he set about his business with determination. His current objective was to grab some clean clothes for Tom and get down to police headquarters as soon as possible. His mother-in-law was scrambling eggs on the stove in the kitchen and their aroma was filtering through the upper rooms of the house. It reached him in the den where he was bent over his son’s duffel bag, rummaging around for a complete set of clothes.

  “Why don’t you have some eggs before you run off, honey,” his mother-in-law said a few minutes later, smiling good-naturedly at him, the spatula in her hand hovering over the pan of steaming yellow goo. “You’ll need to keep your strength up.”

  “Just coffee,” Gene grumbled, stalking into the kitchen and opening a cabinet to reach for a good-sized mug.

  She looked back to the eggs in the pan and stirred them quietly. Gene swallowed the coffee in a few reckless gulps, turned on his heel, and headed for the front door.

  He passed his two daughters, who were sitting silently on the blue couch, looking blankly at the television. Their brother was there on the screen, an image from a few hours earlier, before he had dressed in Gene’s baggy clothes. On the news, he was still wrapped in the fireman’s bright yellow coat. His hair stuck up at angles and he glared at the camera, turning away with a look of disgust at the intrusion. The reporter was saying something about two missing girls and there was a quick image of Ginna, looking terribly distraught, actually wringing her hands.

  Gene bent and kissed his daughters on the tops of their heads, and then rushed out the door. Kay closed the front door as he left and went to sit with her daughters, to answer the questions they no longer wanted to ask.

  Grandma Polly was still working over the hot eggs in the kitchen, and she glanced worriedly at Grandpa Art seated at the kitchen table with his morning paper. For everyone’s sake, he was striving to keep up an appearance of normality. After more than fifty years of marriage, she knew that he was frightened too, but would keep a calm exterior, reading and shuffling around the house, hoping his calm would infect the others.

  The steam from the eggs rose into Grandma Polly’s face and she heard her daughter’s low voice murmuring to Tink and Kathy in the next room. The next moment the two girls erupted into the horrible sounds of grief-stricken hysteria and their mother’s voice continued, soft and low, trying to comfort them. Their cries grew louder and more terrible for several minutes but slowly silence fell. There were light footsteps in the carpeted hallway as Tink ran past the kitchen and into the bathroom to throw up.

  Gang rape was an awfully difficult fact for a fourteen- and a sixteen-year-old girl to face.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dr. Richard Ofshe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is one of this country’s preeminent experts in the field of social psychology. His research interests include coercive social control and police interrogations. He has been certified as an expert witness regarding police interrogations in over twenty-five civil and criminal trials. In a 1992 article entitled “Coercive Persuasion and Attitude Change,” published in the Encyclopedia of Sociology, he said:

  Programs of coercive persuasion appear in various forms in contemporary society. They depend on the voluntary initial participation of targets. This is usually accom
plished because the target assumes that there is a common goal that unites him or her with the organization or that in-common goal that unites him or her with the organization or that involvement will confer some benefit.

  On the morning of April 5, 1991, an unassuming Tom Cummins fit as neatly into Ofshe’s category of “target” as he did into the backseat of the unmarked squad car. Tom certainly assumed that his goals of finding Julie and Robin and bringing in their attackers united him in purpose with Detectives Stittum and Ghrist.

  The two detectives, for their part, were doing everything they could to nurture these feelings. His assistance was invaluable, they kept saying. With his help, the three of them — the two policemen and the brave young fireman — were going to find Julie and Robin. And the entire uniformed city of St. Louis was behind them. They would unite in a fraternal effort between departments: the police spearheading the examination and investigation, and the fire department leading the physical search. It was a great thing that Tom was a firefighter, Stittum and Ghrist stressed. His kind of hands-on experience with traumatic situations was unusual among the general population, and they were sure it would prove invaluable to the investigation.

  So Tom began to feel a small bit better while he chatted with the two detectives. They were stuck in rush-hour traffic on the way to police headquarters, and Tom was anxious to get moving, to get downtown. He was beginning to believe that maybe he really did have something to offer, maybe he wasn’t completely helpless and useless. Just maybe, if he was brave and tireless and sharp, maybe if did everything exactly right, everything that was asked of him, maybe then they would find Julie and Robin. Weren’t there a couple of islands in that stretch of the Mississippi? Or couldn’t the girls be clinging to debris somewhere along the river’s edge now, unable to ascend the steep and slippery bank the way Tom had? For the first time in hours, Tom’s exhaustion and anguish were defeated by a tiny flicker of hope.