"A MODERN DAY WRITERS RENDITION OF THE MURDER"
On a hot, Friday night in June, 1948 it was still very much an untamed time in our old....old town.
On that fateful Friday night in June, 12:00 midnight had come and gone. The local bars up and across town closed for the evening as their patrons downed last call cocktails.
On a lonely country road, a short one half mile from our, then sparsely populated 1948 town, the future would end for a young couple and their potential bond.
That night, discovering their passions for each other their lives would be snubbed out and for sixty some years, still remain an unsolved mystery.
After being parched by the hot sun for countless days, even now at that early morning hour the muggy ground heat was still sweltering. Long after dusk the locust were unusually noisy. Almost painfully whining as if the heat and humidity of the night was threatening to burst their small insect bodies.
That night a fair conditioned old blue 1938 Buick four door sedan sat facing east toward the river on this gravel road dividing the north and south farm fields of bothered locusts. The car was about 300 yards off the hard road to its rear. The hard road ran south out of town, not much farther than the railroad tracks that paralleled the lonely gravel road nicknamed, "Lovers Lane".
In the timed voids of the eerie locust calls, in the quiet, it wasn't hard to hear or understand the young couples words of passion that evening. Air was hard to find, so all four windows were rolled down on that big old Buick. In the moonlight it looked like an unlit hollow Jack-O-Lantern sitting on the roadside. Occasional cloud movement made its wide chrome pieces cast a grayish twinkle into the night. That fateful night a dark evil possessed figure slowly approached the rear of the vehicle from the intersection of the hard road. Walking step by step, stopping his steps only when the locusts annoying wailing stopped. Starting only when the mysterious wailing resumed to be assured to cover the crunching noise of his footsteps on the dry marble-like gravel road.
As he approachs methodically, a frenzy of rage builds within the gut of this dark figure, as he listens to the distant sounds of muffled romantic pleasure coming from the open car windows during the locusts silence.
Salty perspiration drips from his brow burning his furious eyes that nearly glow green in the darkness. Now, unable to move in the locust quiet respite and make noise in the loose gravel that would surely alert his prey. His almost growling anger was reaching jealous blood curdling proportions.
Unbeknown to the laughing lovers there would only be two more silent events by the locusts before the unthinkable would shatter the moonlit clouds and silence the night.
The figure is now frozen just 20 short feet off the rear of the Buick's bumper. He boils with rage in the locust's silence, as he listens to the young couples coos.
Impatiently waiting for the crazed frenzy of locust babble to resume, he visions the ignition key dangling from the dashboard, just a lightening quick distance from the young lovers grasp.
In an un-timed, unanticipated, abrupt moment, the loud screaming of the locusts menacing chant returns. The figure lunges nearly the last 20 feet toward the car and couple, only to come to an unbalanced skidding stop. The road gravel still tumbls to a stop just as the insects chant stops and all is dead quiet once again.
So close now he can slowly bend forward and touch the taillight. Like a panther about to strike the neck of his prey, he slowly and calmly draws a pearl handled 32 caliber semi-automatic pistol to his side. His gun joins the gray twinkle of the car in the moonlight.
Within seconds the locusts seem to understand the height of terror they have shrouded and in horror as God's creatures uncontrollably unleash an even louder, more horrific scream that echo's to the depths of hell.
Now that the Mardi gras of noisy madness had begun, in one single pounce on to the drivers door handle the young man is shot in the chest. While recoiling from passionate involvement with his mate, his pupils reel upward in his head. Resisting shock and pain he stands up straight outside the edge of his cars' door. As his lifeless body slams into the gravel, four more shots are applied to his genitals.
The five shots within deafening quick speed mixed with the horrific screams by the girl have now forever silenced this evening as well as the menacing locusts.
With agile speed he wirily returns from dragging the young mans body into the roadside ditch, all while holding his pistol sights on the petrified maiden. Pushing her back into the car as she trys to escape, he burns her breast with the hot barrel of the gun, demanding her to curl up on the floor under the dashboard. The drivers' door slams shut with the sound of an iron clad cell door, then the car speeds off into the darkness of a cloud covered moon and the dark past of our town...
